Five Tales — Themes and Context

e to aesthetic emotion, Keith was curiously affected. He said gently:

“You needn't be afraid. I haven't come to do you harm--quite the contrary. May I sit down and talk?” And, holding up the keys, he added: “Laurence wouldn't have given me these, would he, if he hadn't trusted me?”

Still she did not move, and he had the impression that he was looking at a spirit--a spirit startled out of its flesh. Nor at the moment did it seem in the least strange that he should conceive such an odd thought. He stared round the room--clean and tawdry, with its tarnished gilt mirror, marble-topped side-table, and plush-covered sofa. Twenty years and more since he had been in such a place. And he said:

“Won't you sit down? I'm sorry to have startled you.”

But still she did not move, whispering:

“Who are you, please?”

And, moved suddenly beyond the realm of caution by the terror in that whisper, he answered:

She uttered a little sigh of relief which went to Keith's heart, and, still holding the dark coat together at her throat, came forward and sat down on the sofa. He could see that her feet, thrust into slippers, were bare; with her short hair, and those candid startled eyes, she looked like a tall child. He drew up a chair and said:

“You must forgive me coming at such an hour; he's told me, you see.” He expected her to flinch and gasp; but she only clasped her hands together on her knees, and said:

Then horror and discomfort rose up in him, afresh.

Her whisper echoed him:

“Yes, oh! yes! Awful--it is awful!”

And suddenly realising that the man must have fallen dead just where he was sitting, Keith became stock silent, staring at the floor.

“Yes,” she whispered; “Just there. I see him now always falling!”

How she said that! With what a strange gentle despair! In this girl of evil life, who had brought on them this tragedy, what was it which moved him to a sort of unwilling compassion?

“You look very young,” he said.

“And you are fond of--my brother?”

“I would die for him.”

Impossible to mistake the tone of her voice, or the look in her eyes, true deep Slav eyes; dark brown, not blue as he had thought at first. It was a very pretty face--either her life had not eaten into it yet, or the suffering of these last hours had purged away those marks; or perhaps this devotion of hers to Larry. He felt strangely at sea, sitting there with this child of twenty; he, over forty, a man of the world, professionally used to every side of human nature. But he said, stammering a little:

“I--I have come to see how far you can save him. Listen, and just answer the questions I put to you.”

She raised her hands, squeezed them together, and murmured:

“Oh! I will answer anything.”

“This man, then--your--your husband--was he a bad man?”

“Before he came here last night, how long since you saw him?”

“Where did you live when you saw him last?”

“Does anybody about here know you as Mrs. Walenn?”

“No. When I came here, after my little girl died, I came to live a bad life. Nobody knows me at all. I am quite alone.”

“If they discover who he was, they will look for his wife?”

“I do not know. He did not let people think I was married to him. I was very young; he treated many, I think, like me.”

“Do you think he was known to the police?”

She shook her head. “He was very clever.”

“What is your name now?”

“Were you known by that name before you were married?”

“Wanda is my Christian name. Livinska--I just call myself.”

“I see; since you came here.”

“Did my brother ever see this man before last night?”

“You had told him about his treatment of you?”

“Yes. And that man first went for him.”

“I saw the mark. Do you think anyone saw my brother come to you?”

“I do not know. He says not.”

“Can you tell if anyone saw him carrying the--the thing away?”

“No one in this street--I was looking.”

“Nor going out in the morning?”

“Have you a servant?”

“Only a woman who comes at nine in the morning for an hour.”

“Does she know Larry?”

“Friends, acquaintances?”

“No; I am very quiet. And since I knew your brother, I see no one. Nobody comes here but him for a long time now.”

“Have you been out to-day?”

“What have you been doing?”

It was said with a certain dreadful simplicity, and pressing her hands together, she went on:

“He is in danger, because of me. I am so afraid for him.” Holding up his hand to check that emotion, he said:

She fixed those dark eyes on him, and in her bare throat, from which the coat had fallen back, he could see her resolutely swallowing down her agitation.

“If the worst comes to the worst, and this man is traced to you, can you trust yourself not to give my brother away?”

Her eyes shone. She got up and went to the fireplace:

“Look! I have burned all the things he has given me--even his picture. Now I have nothing from him.”

“Good! One more question: Do the police know you, because--because of your life?”

She shook her head, looking at him intently, with those mournfully true eyes. And he felt a sort of shame.

“I was obliged to ask. Do you know where he lives?”

“You must not go there. And he must not come to you, here.”

Her lips quivered; but she bowed her head. Suddenly he found her quite close to him, speaking almost in a whisper:

“Please do not take him from me altogether. I will be so careful. I will not do anything to hurt him; but if I cannot see him sometimes, I shall die. Please do not take him from me.” And catching his hand between her own, she pressed it desperately. It was several seconds before Keith said:

“Leave that to me. I will see him. I shall arrange. You must leave that to me.”

“But you will be kind?”

He felt her lips kissing his hand. And the soft moist touch sent a queer feeling through him, protective, yet just a little brutal, having in it a shiver of sensuality. He withdrew his hand. And as if warned that she had been too pressing, she recoiled humbly. But suddenly she turned, and stood absolutely rigid; then almost inaudibly whispered: “Listen! Someone out--out there!” And darting past him she turned out the light.

Almost at once came a knock on the door. He could feel--actually feel the terror of this girl beside him in the dark. And he, too, felt terror. Who could it be? No one came but Larry, she had said. Who else then could it be? Again came the knock, louder! He felt the breath of her whisper on his cheek: “If it is Larry! I must open.” He shrank back against the wall; heard her open the door and say faintly: “Yes. Please! Who?”

Light painted a thin moving line on the wall opposite, and a voice which Keith recognised answered:

“All right, miss. Your outer door's open here. You ought to keep it shut after dark.”

God! That policeman! And it had been his own doing, not shutting the outer door behind him when he came in. He heard her say timidly in her foreign voice: “Thank you, sir!” the policeman's retreating steps, the outer door being shut, and felt her close to him again. That something in her youth and strange prettiness which had touched and kept him gentle, no longer blunted the edge of his exasperation, now that he could not see her. They were all the same, these women; could not speak the truth! And he said brusquely:

“You told me they didn't know you!”

Her voice answered like a sigh:

“I did not think they did, sir. It is so long I was not out in the town, not since I had Larry.”

The repulsion which all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at those words. His brother--son of his mother, a gentleman--the property of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event! But she had turned up the light. Had she some intuition that darkness was against her? Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless save for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly, so unaccountably good, and like a child's.

“I am going now,” he said. “Remember! He mustn't come here; you mustn't go to him. I shall see him to-morrow. If you are as fond of him as you say--take care, take care!”

She sighed out, “Yes! oh, yes!” and Keith went to the door. She was standing with her back to the wall, and to follow him she only moved her head--that dove-like face with all its life in eyes which seemed saying: '.ook into us; nothing we hide; all--all is there!'

In the passage he paused before opening the outer door. He did not want to meet that policeman again; the fellow's round should have taken him well out of the street by now, and turning the handle cautiously, he looked out. No one in sight. He stood a moment, wondering if he should turn to right or left, then briskly crossed the street. A voice to his right hand said:

There in the shadow of a doorway the policeman was standing. The fellow must have seen him coming out! Utterly unable to restrain a start, and muttering “Goodnight!” Keith walked on rapidly:

He went full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and uneasy feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had been taken for a frequenter of a lady of the town. The whole thing--the whole thing!--a vile and disgusting business! His very mind felt dirty and breathless; his spirit, drawn out of sheath, had slowly to slide back before he could at all focus and readjust his reasoning faculty. Certainly, he had got the knowledge he wanted. There was less danger than he thought. That girl's eyes! No mistaking her devotion. She would not give Larry away. Yes! Larry must clear out--South America--the East--it did not matter. But he felt no relief. The cheap, tawdry room had wrapped itself round his fancy with its atmosphere of murky love, with the feeling it inspired, of emotion caged within those yellowish walls and the red stuff of its furniture. That girl's face! Devotion; truth, too, and beauty, rare and moving, in its setting of darkness and horror, in that nest of vice and of disorder!... The dark archway; the street arab, with his gleeful: “They 'ain't got 'im yet!”; the feel of those bare arms round his neck; that whisper of horror in the darkness; above all, again, her child face looking into his, so truthful! And suddenly he stood quite still in the street. What in God's name was he about? What grotesque juggling amongst shadows, what strange and ghastly eccentricity was all this? The forces of order and routine, all the actualities of his daily life, marched on him at that moment, and swept everything before them. It was a dream, a nightmare not real! It was ridiculous! That he--he should thus be bound up with things so black and bizarre!

He had come by now to the Strand, that street down which every day he moved to the Law Courts, to his daily work; his work so dignified and regular, so irreproachable, and solid. No! The thing was all a monstrous nightmare! It would go, if he fixed his mind on the familiar objects around, read the names on the shops, looked at the faces passing. Far down the thoroughfare he caught the outline of the old church, and beyond, the loom of the Law Courts themselves. The bell of a fire-engine sounded, and the horses came galloping by, with the shining metal, rattle of hoofs and hoarse shouting. Here was a sensation, real and harmless, dignified and customary! A woman flaunting round the corner looked up at him, and leered out: “Good-night!” Even that was customary, tolerable. Two policemen passed, supporting between them a man the worse for liquor, full of fight and expletives; the sight was soothing, an ordinary thing which brought passing annoyance, interest, disgust. It had begun to rain; he felt it on his face with pleasure--an actual thing, not eccentric, a thing which happened every day!

He began to cross the street. Cabs were going at furious speed now that the last omnibus had ceased to run; it distracted him to take this actual, ordinary risk run so often every day. During that crossing of the Strand, with the rain in his face and the cabs shooting past, he regained for the first time his assurance, shook off this unreal sense of being in the grip of something, and walked resolutely to the corner of his home turning. But passing into that darker stretch, he again stood still. A policeman had also turned into that street on the other side. Not--surely not! Absurd! They were all alike to look at--those fellows! Absurd! He walked on sharply, and let himself into his house. But on his way upstairs he could not for the life of him help raising a corner of a curtain and looking from the staircase window. The policeman was marching solemnly, about twenty-five yards away, paying apparently no attention to anything whatever.

Keith woke at five o'clock, his usual hour, without remembrance. But the grisly shadow started up when he entered his study, where the lamp burned, and the fire shone, and the coffee was set ready, just as when yesterday afternoon Larry had stood out there against the wall. For a moment he fought against realisation; then, drinking off his coffee, sat down sullenly at the bureau to his customary three hours' study of the day's cases.

Not one word of his brief could he take in. It was all jumbled with murky images and apprehensions, and for full half an hour he suffered mental paralysis. Then the sheer necessity of knowing something of the case which he had to open at half-past ten that morning forced him to a concentration which never quite subdued the malaise at the bottom of his heart. Nevertheless, when he rose at half-past eight and went into the bathroom, he had earned his grim satisfaction in this victory of will-power. By half-past nine he must be at Larry's. A boat left London for the Argentine to-morrow. If Larry was to get away at once, money must be arranged for. And then at breakfast he came on this paragraph in the paper:

“Enquiry late last night established the fact that the Police have discovered the identity of the man found strangled yesterday morning under an archway in Glove Lane. An arrest has been made.”

By good fortune he had finished eating, for the words made him feel physically sick. At this very minute Larry might be locked up, waiting to be charged-might even have been arrested before his own visit to the girl last night. If Larry were arrested, she must be implicated. What, then, would be his own position? Idiot to go and look at that archway, to go and see the girl! Had that policeman really followed him home? Accessory after the fact! Keith Darrant, King's Counsel, man of mark! He forced himself by an effort, which had something of the heroic, to drop this panicky feeling. Panic never did good. He must face it, and see. He refused even to hurry, calmly collected the papers wanted for the day, and attended to a letter or two, before he set out in a taxi-cab to Fitzroy Street.

Waiting outside there in the grey morning for his ring to be answered, he looked the very picture of a man who knew his mind, a man of resolution. But it needed all his will-power to ask without tremor: “Mr. Darrant in?” to hear without sign of any kind the answer: “He's not up yet, sir.”

“Never mind; I'll go in and see him. Mr. Keith Darrant.”

On his way to Laurence's bedroom, in the midst of utter relief, he had the self-possession to think: 'This arrest is the best thing that could have happened. It'll keep their noses on a wrong scent till Larry's got away. The girl must be sent off too, but not with him.' Panic had ended in quite hardening his resolution. He entered the bedroom with a feeling of disgust. The fellow was lying there, his bare arms crossed behind his tousled head, staring at the ceiling, and smoking one of many cigarettes whose ends littered a chair beside him, whose sickly reek tainted the air. That pale face, with its jutting cheek-bones and chin, its hollow cheeks and blue eyes far sunk back--what a wreck of goodness!

He looked up at Keith through the haze of smoke and said quietly: “Well, brother, what's the sentence? 'Transportation for life, and then to be fined forty pounds?'.

The flippancy revolted Keith. It was Larry all over! Last night horrified and humble, this morning, “Don't care” and feather-headed. He said sourly:

“Oh! You can joke about it now?”

Laurence turned his face to the wall.

Fatalism! How detestable were natures like that!

“I've been to see her,” he said.

“Last night. She can be trusted.”

“I had to see for myself. You must clear out at once, Larry. She can come out to you by the next boat; but you can't go together. Have you any money?”

“I can foot your expenses, and lend you a year's income in advance. But it must be a clean cut; after you get out there your whereabouts must only be known to me.”

A long sigh answered him.

“You're very good to me, Keith; you've always been very good. I don't know why.”

“Nor I. There's a boat to the Argentine tomorrow. You're in luck; they've made an arrest. It's in the paper.”

The cigarette end dropped, the thin pyjama'd figure writhed up and stood clutching at the bedrail.

The disturbing thought flitted through Keith's brain: 'I was a fool. He takes it queerly; what now?'

Laurence passed his hand over his forehead, and sat down on the bed.

“I hadn't thought of that,” he said; “It does me!”

Keith stared. In his relief that the arrested man was not Laurence, this had not occurred to him. What folly!

“Why?” he said quickly; “an innocent man's in no danger. They always get the wrong man first. It's a piece of luck, that's all. It gives us time.”

How often had he not seen that expression on Larry's face, wistful, questioning, as if trying to see the thing with his--Keith's-eyes, trying to submit to better judgment? And he said, almost gently--

“Now, look here, Larry; this is too serious to trifle with. Don't worry about that. Leave it to me. Just get ready to be off'. I'll take your berth and make arrangements. Here's some money for kit. I can come round between five and six, and let you know. Pull yourself together, man. As soon as the girl's joined you out there, you'd better get across to Chile, the further the better. You must simply lose yourself: I must go now, if I'm to get to the Bank before I go down to the courts.” And looking very steadily at his brother, he added:

“Come! You've got to think of me in this matter as well as of yourself. No playing fast and loose with the arrangements. Understand?”

But still Larry gazed up at him with that wistful questioning, and not till he had repeated, “Understand?” did he receive “Yes” for answer.