Salome and the Head/Chapter 8

walked slowly back to his Inn, fingering his Assyrian beard with his pale hand. As he walked he called himself names—of which fool was the last and least.

“It’s the artistic temperament,” he said, “it betrays me at every turn.” He took off his hat, and held it under his arm, that the wind might play with his long hair. “This impetuosity. . . I should have waited, waited, waited, like the lion for its prey.” He knew nothing about lions, but he drew himself up as he went, running his hands through his hair, as a regular dog of a lion might run his claws through his mane in an access of self-esteem. “If only I’d let her get a little deeper in! But I thought—anyone would have thought. . . And now she’s chucked him. Just my luck. Lord! how damp that swampy wood was, the other side that backwater. Rheumatism in my bow arm, I expect. But it’ll be worth it, my boy—it’ll be worth it—you wait a bit. You’ve frightened her, that’s all. Timid little fawn—timid little idiot! What she wants now is a little encouragement. Just a little push the right way, and over she’ll go. Then you can stand over her and make your own terms. I hate the little greedy cat. Well, Miss Pussy, I’ll file your claws and draw your sharp teeth, and make you dance a new way, to my piping. I should like to encourage the other fool, too—the artistic temperament ought to be inventive.” He went on his way, pondering, between the green hedges.

Denny made haste home. He wanted to see her—to look at her—to be sure that she was still in the same world with him. It was only that that he needed—but he needed, too, to assure himself of it.

He found not Sandra—her blinds were still drawn closely, and no sound of movement rewarded his listening—but Mrs. Mosenthal, darning long silk stockings in a basket chair, in the shade of the brisk little holly-tree by the French window, on whose glass the sunset light shone redly.

“I took the letter,” he said, getting heavily off his machine and letting himself down on the sun-warmed flag-stones at her feet, “and I met the man. He thought I didn’t know him—but I did. He took the letter and swore.”

“What did he say?” she asked, and wished she had sent anybody else.

“Nothing—outside. But inside he swore. And he made up his mind that he meant to go on being a beast: only more so.”

“You can’t possibly know anything about what you’re talking about,” said Aunt Dusa helplessly.

“Perhaps not. I daresay I don’t. I daresay I only fancy things. Only, what you fancy’s just as real to you as the things sensible people are sure of. I can’t think what God was about to let a thing like that be born.”

Aunt Dusa emitted a shocked “Hush!”

“Yes, but you know I’m right,” he persisted, pleating and unpleating the folds of her brown skirt. “I always know. I was right about that housemaid who stole the linen. I told you she wasn’t straight the first time I saw her.”

“How do you know these things?” she asked, not because she believed that he did know, but because she believed that it was good for him to talk. “It relieves his poor brain,” she said.

“I don’t know how it is everyone doesn’t know. It’s as plain as the shadows on the grass. I just see it—like you see them. And I’m never wrong. You remember the Building Society man? You all thought he was so affable and good to the poor. But I knew. And the man at the Ringwood Pearl, that knifed his brother. I knew he was all wrong. I told you so.”

“You certainly did. But,” she persisted, “tell me how you see it. Do they look black in the face like shadows?”

He rubbed his hands impatiently on his knees.

“I can’t tell you. I can’t explain. I can’t make you see. If you don’t see these things you don’t. If you do, you do. But I can’t explain. I might as well try to explain what a shadow was like to a person who’d never seen one.”

“But everyone sees shadows, you know,” said Mrs. Mosenthal patiently; snipped off the ends of silk, and chose a fresh stocking.

“Yes; that’s just it. You see I can’t explain. Only, I know. And I want to tell her to be careful.”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself?”

“She mustn’t know that I know. She’d hate me to know. And if she begins by hating me to know, she might end by hating me for knowing. You tell her that it’s you that thinks he’s dangerous. She’ll mind you. You tell her to be careful. Where is she?”

“Still resting.”

“I’m glad she’s got you,” said Denny, suddenly breaking a silence.

Mrs. Mosenthal was quite moved by the tribute. “Well, I’m sure!” she said.

“And I’m glad you’ve got her.”

“And you’ve got both of us.” Mrs. Mosenthal was really almost sparkling at times in her repartee.

“Ah!” Denny said, “I haven’t got either of you. It’s she who’s got me. And that’s better than nothing. It’s better than anything except the things that don’t happen.”

“Now, Denny,”—Mrs. Mosenthal laid down the stocking-covered hand on her lap, and let the needle-bearing hand fall beside it—“You mustn’t. You know it’s no good.”

“Nothing’s much good.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. It was all very well when you were children, but now she’s a young woman and you’re a young man, and you ought to check such feelings—they’re wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong in my thoughts of her,” he said.

“Oh, yes, there is,” she insisted; “and if it goes on you won’t be able to go on living with us the same as what you have done. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been there, my boy—I’ve been there. If you go on encouraging yourself to thoughts you didn’t ought to have—about how you wish you was playing prince to her princess, and about how hard it is you being as you are—well, you’ll upset everything, and you and us’ll have to part. Not but what I own it is hard, cruel hard. But for you being like you are, poor dear, she might have fancied you——”

“You don’t know anything,” said he fiercely, “not anything at all. If I’d been straight and strong and all that God meant me to be, she’d never have looked at me. Do you think I don’t know that? It’s because I do know that, because I know there never could have been a chance for me if I’d been everything that I’m not—it’s because of that that I’m not afraid to love her. Oh! if you want it you shall have it. You’ve tramped into my heart with your soft, heavy boots, and now you can look round, and welcome. I’ve no chance. I’ve never had a chance—I never could have had a chance. So I can put all my soul into loving her. I tell you it hurts too much for it to be wrong. Wrong things never hurt like that. Did you ever hear of the monks who had spiky crosses under their shirts and pressed them to them so that the spikes ran into their breasts, and loved the pain better than any pleasure? That’s what my love for her is—it’s the sharp pointed cross; and I hold it to my heart with both hands, tight, tight, and I’ll die holding it. Do you think you can stop me, do you?—do you?”

He had his arm on her knee, and crouching by her made her eyes meet his.

“Hush, dear,” she said equably. “Don’t you get so excited. You know how bad it is for you. . . .”

“Don’t you understand at all?” he insisted, “not the least little bit? Is it possible to say what I’ve said, and for the person you say it to not understand a single word? I suppose it is.”

He took his arm from her knee and sat down on the flagstone again.

“Of course I understand every word,” she said, “and if you really understand it’s hopeless—as you say you do——”

“Hopeless!” he interjected scornfully.

“Well, then, as long as you don’t worry her about it, I dare say it’s all right, though I do think what you said about the cross is a little profane, dear, don’t you? Come now, when you think it over quietly?”

He frowned. Then laughed.

“Ah!” he said, “you’re a good, kind, sensible old dear, and I don’t know what I should do without you. Don’t mind my nonsense. I shall never do anything to worry her; you know that well enough. Give me a kiss and tell me what there is for supper.”

She gave him the kiss and the information with an equally calm readiness.

“I’ll go to bed early to-night,” he said. “I’ve got that wretched neuralgia again.”

“If you write a bit of that piece you’re composing, now,” she said, “or play a tune on your fiddle softly, so as not to disturb her—you know that always does you good.”

His face clouded again.

“I can’t,” he said, “how often am I to tell you that I can’t. There isn’t any music in this place. Don’t you understand? Some people play tunes on the violin. I don’t. I make music. And you can’t make music out of nothing: you have to draw it to yourself as you play, out of the air round you. It comes creeping closer, closer, like a beautiful ghost, and then you catch it and materialise it in what you call a tune. And there’s no music in this place. There’s only horror, and fear, and the ghosts of things that ought never to have been. If I were to play I might materialise those things, and the tune I should play then would send you raving mad.”

“If you ask me,” she said, bundling the stockings into the basket at her feet and getting up briskly, “I think you ought to get to bed directly, this minute, with a nice cup of tea and a hot bottle to your feet. We shall be having you ill next, and a nice set out that’ll be for her—and her having to begin her dancing again Monday and all, and you laid up and not able to play for her. Now be a good boy and you do what I tell you. You know I only do it for your own good. Come along indoors with you, do, for goodness sake. I’ll get your little friend, and take the chair in afterwards.”

She fetched his crutch, and they went in.

It was when the house was quiet that night that Sandra withdrew her bolts and went down. She had, through the fast door, bidden Mrs. Mosenthal put something to eat in the dining-room and go to bed. If she were hungry she would come down later.

“I don’t want to see anyone to-night,” she said, “not even you, dear. Go to bed, there’s a darling, and don’t come down if you hear me moving about, for I can’t stand it. I shall be all right to-morrow.”

It was past midnight when she got up and dressed. She had had her sleep out. Now she would go down and eat; spend the rest of the night in packing. It would save time in the morning.

When she opened the dining-room door she found the lamp keeping watch in a silence that the tall clock emphasised with deliberate tickings, over a white spread table where chicken and bread and fruit and wine were laid out with pretty daintinesses of silver, glass, china, flowers.

She closed the door and sat down. There were two notes on her plate: one from Dusa. The other laid beside it was addressed in a hand that had once addressed letters breathing of hope and fame and Art—letters that she had watched for and treasured. Now. ..

With a little thrill of yielding cowardice she let it lie—and opened Dusa’s and read:

My darling child, do make a good supper. You must need it. There is a good fire in the kitchen and a kettle, if you want chocolate or anything. And there is a raspberry cream in the refrigerator. Wish you had let me sit up. Would much rather have. Be a brave girl and eat the liver-wing [sic] and a bit of the breast.

Well. . . she would be a brave girl.

It was not cowardice but courage now that left the other letter still unopened beside her as she carved the chicken, cut bread, pressed out the cork of the little gold cravatted bottle, and ate and drank, leisurely and sufficiently. She was not going to let his hateful letters upset her. If chicken and champagne could make one brave, brave she would be.

When the meal was over she opened the letter without undue haste.

It was longer than she expected. She had looked for a brief pleading for money—threats perhaps. She got this:

,—Your attitude is very unwise and ill-chosen. I have always wished to be your friend, and if I once deceived you, believe me it was for your own good. I wish to speak to you. I see that your household has gone to bed, and was interested in the little feast set out—which can but be for you. So I have opened your window and written this at your writing-table. . . .”

She threw round the room a swift, keen glance of fear.

“I shall leave this by your plate and wait at the gate of the shrubbery. If you are absent I shall see you as you return, and this note will be unnecessary. If, as I imagine, you are resting, you will find this note waiting when you come to your, alas! solitary supper. Me you will find waiting at the shrubbery gate. Will you come and speak to me? I do not wait by the house lest anyone should see me. We cannot be too careful. All this must be entirely between ourselves—between you and me. You will be perfectly safe with me. You had better come—if not for my sake for the sake of your new friend. .″

“P.S.—It occurs to me that you may think that last is a threat. You have misunderstood me for all these years. It is not a threat. I have something to propose—for his advantage and yours, as well as for my own, of course. I don’t pretend to be disinterested after the way you and your grandfather have treated me. Be wise: come and meet me quietly. If you don’t I shall come to the house. This is not a threat either, but an alternative. Do just as you like about it.

To let him come to the house at that hour in the night, to have Dusa coming down, probably Denny as well, explanations to Denny, and before that brute. . . No, it was impossible. She would go out and meet the man. Perhaps he really had something to propose. Perhaps he knew of some way by which she might be free of him. . . . for a price. Money was all he wanted, after all. If she could buy her freedom! That man would know if anyone did. She would go: she was not afraid of him, the hateful little sneak! All the same. ..

She went up to her room to get a dark cloak, and took from the corner drawer the little revolver that Mr. Mosenthal had given her when she first began to spend her holidays at Wood House. It lay there as if it meant nothing in particular—it looked quite innocent, almost frivolous, among her lavender-scented laces and handkerchiefs. But it was a serious little person, too; and Mr. Mosenthal had taught her how to make it speak straight and to the point. It lay beside her on the writing-table as she in turn wrote a letter. She took it up and pushed it under Dusa’s door, very gently, in the dark.

She got her bicycle lamp out of the back kitchen, lighted it, and went down to the shrubbery gate. The night air was chill, and the branches that she thrust aside as she went dripped with dew.

A few paces from the gate she stopped.

“Are you there?” she said.

“Put out that lamp,” said a voice in the darkness. “Do you want to attract every tramp in the neighbourhood?”

“I will put the lamp out if you like,” she said distinctly and gently, “but you are not to come near me. I have a revolver—and if I hear you move I shall shoot. I have a quick ear, and I’m a good shot. So I advise you to keep where you are.”

“You’re still the old spit-fire,” he said, “and I’ve no desire to come near you. What I’ve got to say can be said quite as well without our being in each other’s arms—though of course that’s where we ought to be.”

“If I were you,” she said quietly, “I shouldn’t say things like that.”

He did not answer. She stood rigid in the darkness, her hand gripping the little revolver. Now that the lamp was out her eyes were straining themselves to see into the darkness. And the night seemed full of little sounds. How could she be sure that none of them were the sounds of him moving, coming stealthily towards her?

“You’d better,” she reminded him, “say what you’ve got to say. I don’t intend to wait long for it.”

“If I were you,”—he repeated her words,—“I shouldn’t say things like that. Don’t be so high-flying, my lovely wife. You don’t like that? Well, I’m not frightened of you. And you are frightened of me. You needn’t be. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your pretty head. You’re too valuable, my child. Now this is what I’ve got to say—just a plain, straightforward business offer. I didn’t mean to tease you; only you and your little revolver were a little too much for my temper. Now here’s the offer; give me a decent income—luxury I don’t ask for; a cultivated leisure for the pursuit of the arts is all I want—say £500 a year, and do what you like. I’ll never interfere.”

“You won’t be allowed to interfere as it is,” she said, setting her teeth in the darkness.

“You’ve changed,” he said; “you used not to be dense. As you say we aren’t married in the sight of God and——”

“I didn’t say so.”

“Oh, well,” he said, “if you think we are married in the sight of God, let’s go home together like sensible married people and say no more about it.”

He heard her stamp in the darkness.

“Well, we’re not married in the sight of God, but we are married in the eye of the law. Is that it? Now the law won’t free you from me. But I will. Give me a decent living, go your own way, marry who you like—and I’ll never interfere.”

“Do you think I’d trust you?” she asked scornfully, “even if I was such a beast as you think me, do you think I’d be fool enough to trust you?”

“You might,” he said, and she was astonished to find that she believed him. And she was astonished and sickened to find herself experiencing a fleeting pang at the thought that she had told her lover her secret and parted from him forever. The next moment she was glad. It was at least out of her power to yield to this horrible tempter. “I shouldn’t quarrel with my income,” he went on. “And he need never know. He’d see all blue, as they say in France. Your new friend looks very confiding. Or you could tell him was dead. It might be safer—and then he’d never have anything to find out.”

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

He knew by her voice that nothing he could say would make any difference—that this, like his other attempts, had failed. Already another plan was germinating in his brain. It grew to maturity even as he went on speaking: and coloured the words he used, and the voice he spoke with. And as he spoke he was wondering how he would look without his beard.

“You’ve had enough of marriage? Well, perhaps you’re right. It’s all humbug, anyhow. And you’re a dancer, aren’t you? Marriage is a little out of your line, perhaps? Well, if you want to try the other thing, the sum I’ve named will make me a complacent husband. Yes, you’re certainly wise. I often wonder what you actresses and dancers get married for—just as a prelude to the divorce scene, I suppose. Well, whatever you call it, I’ll leave you free—on that simple condition, that you make it worth my while. Think it over, will you? I’m going now—don’t shoot me when I move, please.”

“You are not to move, not till I have gone. I will not do any of the horrible things you say. And I won’t give you a penny. Do what you like!”

“Shall I tell you what I shall do?” he said. “Yes. I’ll tell you one or two things that I can do. I can make you live with me. I daresay I should like married life when I got used to it. Or I can let everyone know where you live. No more quiet week-ends with your new friend then. Interviewers and snap-shotters: Sylvia in her boat—Sylvia bathing—Sylvia kissing her latest lover under the oak tree. I can make it impossible for you to do anything without seeing it next day in the paper. I don’t want to drive you to sin, my immaculate lily; but, by God! if you make a slip—even so little a slip as a kiss or two—every office boy in London shall know it. Sylvia and her ‘cavalière servente’—Sylvia asking her young man to take her to Ostend. Go your own way. I’ve given you your chance. Go your own way, and take your own time. I can wait. I give you six months to come crawling to my feet, begging and praying me to take any money to let you alone. And I’ll do it, my dear; when I’ve dragged your name through the dirt I’ll do it. . . at a price. But it won’t be the price you’ve refused to give me tonight.”

“Now,” she said, “if you’ve no more to say, I’ll go. You can do what you choose. You shall never have anything from me. You can make my life hell—and I’ve no doubt you will. But you shall do it just for the love of the thing, you devil, and not for any good that you’ll ever get out of it. Do what you like. I don’t care.”

She turned; her eyes, used by now to the darkness, showed plainly the path through the shrubbery. She got back to the house, bolted and shuttered the windows and sat down by the table where the revolver lay. Mrs. Mosenthal found her there when she came downstairs at seven. “Oh, God!” she was saying, “what have I done to deserve this—what have I done!” She seemed to herself to have been saying just that, over and over again, for many hours.

But next night she delighted her audience at the Hilarity, and it was remarked that she had never danced so well, and Pan was considered to have surpassed himself. Aunt Dusa sat up late that night talking to Uncle Moses. He frowned at most of her story, but at last he laughed.

“It is simple like the day, my good Harriet,” he said. “She can get the marriage annulled. I will see my solicitor about it to-morrow. But tell her nothing till I am sure. It is well for her that she has the Uncle Moses. That he should dare to threaten the child! The melodrama-villain—the contemptible undergrabber! The foredamned, pestilent, cursed swine-hound!”

Which shocking expressions warmed Mrs. Mosenthal’s cold heart like a comforting spiced cordial.