Pagan

by W. F. Morris

  Baron took his unlighted pipe from his mouth with deliberation. “I see all that, Charles, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I think you are a being little sentimental. I remember during the war how some people at home were horrified when they heard that a man would take, let us say, the boots of his best friend who had just been killed and wear them. They thought it callous. But you and I know better.

  “God knows I’m not callous about poor old Roger. He is the finest fellow I ever met, bar none except perhaps old G. B. And the six months we were together he was my best friend. And as you know, six months in the line is worth twenty years with a man in civilian life. So no one can accuse me of being unduly prejudiced in your favour. But much as I love old Roger, we must face the facts without sentiment. The two of you went into the war. You were lucky; Roger wasn’t. It was the luck of the game. He will never be any good any more; you will. You may say it isn’t fair. Perhaps not. Anyway you took the risk. He lost; you won. It is the way the cards were played. And it’s no good trying to put the clock back now. I suppose all of us who came through have asked ourselves sometime or other why we had the luck. We don’t know. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason about it. You were one of those who had the luck; Roger wasn’t. It’s no good trying to reverse it now. The justice of it doesn’t enter in to it; that’s no concern of ours: it’s on the shoulders of the power that arranges these things. We can only accept the fact. Poor old Roger had his innings and went out. He can’t expect to have a second; and he knows it—that’s why he is up there. Your innings is still going on, admittedly, if you like, not because you are a better bat, but you can’t retire in favour of a fellow who has already been in. You can only bless your luck and carry on. It’s not callousness: it’s the luck of the game.”

  Pagan raised his head wearily and thrust his hands into his pockets. “You argue damn well,” he said almost irritably. “But you are only making out a case. I know what is the only decent thing to do, and what’s more you would do the same yourself if you were in my place, wouldn’t you? Now, honestly, wouldn’t you?”

  “What I would do, does not affect the question,” retorted Baron. “Maybe I can see what ought to be done better than you can. If I were in your place, the personal element would come in and possibly spoil my judgment. And just because I am not in your place, I am able to judge better than you can.”

  Pagan shook his head slowly. “I put it to you again, Dicky: would it be playing the game? Answer me that.”

  Baron did not reply for a moment. He pulled out a box of matches and lighted his pipe. “It seems to me, Charles,” he said at last, “that you are thinking too much about yourself and too little about other people.”

  Pagan uttered a mirthless laugh. “I like that!” he exclaimed. “If I were thinking only of myself I would go ahead and say nothing. Do you think it amuses me to chuck away the only thing I have ever really wanted in my life!”

  “You are thinking of yourself, Charles,” repeated Baron. “You say, ‘Is it sporting’ without stopping to consider whether doing what is sporting is really going to make Vigers happy or unhappy. Is it sporting? That is the important question because Charles Pagan is a sportsman and he must not do anything that would lower his sportmanship in his own eyes or in those of other people. It does not matter if being a sport hurts someone else.”

  “Hang it all, I …” began Pagan, but Baron went on imperturbably.

  “You say, ‘What would Clare think of me if she ever found out.’ It is her opinion of Charles Pagan that matters: not her happiness. Far better that she should be made miserable for the rest of her life than that she should think Charles Pagan unsporting. That’s damned selfishness and damned cruelty.”

  “Cruelty!” exclaimed Pagan.

  “Well, isn’t it? To walk up to a girl and say ‘Here’s this fellow you thought was dead, the fellow you’ve loved all these years, whose memory you almost worshipped, that fine handsome soldier Captain Roger Vigers, V. C., look at him now—look at his face.’

  Pagan stirred uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Isn’t that cruelty?” demanded Baron.

  “Who but a fool would do it like that!” protested Pagan, but his voice had lost its ring of confidence.

  “That is what it amounts to, however it’s done,” retorted Baron. “And think what it means to her, Charles. First of all, there is the shock. Then the reopening of all the old wounds that these long years have nearly healed. That sad but pleasant memory of hers destroyed and this, this ghastly reality put in its place.

  “And then what is she going to do? Well, there are only two courses open, aren’t there? Either to stick to the original contract and marry him … but that is out of the question. She couldn’t do it. You see that. Why you shied like a horse just now when I mentioned it. But supposing she did; do you think that they would be happy? Apart from his disfigurement, do you think that Vigers can be the same man that he was all those years ago? That ghastly disfigurement must have affected his character as well as his body. And anyway he hasn’t stood still all these years; neither has she. You and I are not the same as we were fifteen years ago, and neither are they. But do you think that their two lines of development have converged since 1918? I don’t.

  “But take the other course. She is terribly, terribly sorry for him, but she cannot bring herself to marry him. What then? Isn’t the picture of that terribly disfigured man going to be with her for the rest of her life? That and the picture of what he once was? And isn’t the thought of him up there in his dug-out going to take the edge off every enjoyment? Do you think she would ever be really happy again? Wouldn’t it be cruelty to force her to make a choice?”

  Pagan nodded his head miserably.

  “And how about Vigers? He is content now in his way, but I would be prepared to swear that it has taken him some years of careful self-discipline to reach that state of content. All those years of effort and self-denial would be chucked on the muck heap. All the old hopelessness, misery and longing would be let loose again. He could never go back to his dug-out again and be content. What is left of his life would be wrecked.

  “That is why he is living up there—because he knows all this. He is not doing it for the fun of it; he is doing it for her. He does not want her to know. Any time during the last fifteen years he could have let her know if he had wanted to. But he hasn’t. You talk about it being unsporting to Clare not to let her know. I think it would be damned unsporting to Vigers to tell. It would be directly contrary to what are obviously his wishes and it would be to destroy deliberately all his years of patience and self-sacrifice.

  “He has made his choice. He is able to judge for himself. What is more, he has the right to judge for himself, and you haven’t the right to butt in and reverse his judgment. He has thought it all out. He must know damn well that a woman like Clare can’t go about without somebody wanting to marry her. And if I know old Roger at all, he wants her to marry. He is thinking of her; he wants her to be happy. And you, Charles, haven’t the right to stop his efforts to make her happy. Supposing you were Vigers. Supposing you had done what he has done. Supposing you had deliberately chosen that life in order that the girl you loved should never know your tragedy and be made miserable by it; what would you say if some clumsy conscientious fool butted in and spoilt it all?”

  Pagan nodded his head slowly without speaking. “I suppose you are right, Dicky,” he said at last. “But it seems so callous and dirty somehow, to leave him up there.”

  “But it is the only decent thing to do; isn’t it now— honestly?”

  “I suppose it is,” answered Pagan.

  A long silence ensued. To Pagan the harsh, garish sunshine seemed irritating and cruel. “You will go and see him?” he asked at last.

  Baron thought for a moment, and then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I would like to, but I think it would be kinder not to. It might bring back old times rather vividly, and it would be bound to bring up the su
bject of Clare. I should probably have to tell lies; I mean I couldn’t tell him she was here in Munster and that the other night she was within half a mile of him. The whole thing would be too unsettling and unfair to him. It would not do any good, and would only make things more difficult for him. As it is he does not know I am here, and had he really wanted to get in touch with me he could have done so any time during all these years. I can always send little comforts to him by way of Kleber from time to time. I don’t suppose he makes much of a living out of those carvings.”

  Pagan shook his head. “They are too well done to be a commercial success,” he agreed. “But didn’t you say he had some money—oh, but of course as he is officially dead, he can’t touch that.”

  Baron nodded. “Yes, but I think I told you that he left all he had to Clare. And don’t you see, that is another complication. Obviously he wants her to have it, but if she knew he was alive she would give it back; and it would complicate that difficult choice of hers too, wouldn’t it? She would feel she was bound to him in a way. The more we look at this thing, Charles, the more certain it becomes that we have got to keep quiet. It’s all a horrible mess up.”

  Pagan nodded his head slowly. “It is,” he agreed with a sigh.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I

  BEFORE the dessert stage was reached that evening at dinner, the orchestra in the big chandelier-hung room adjoining the restaurant began to beat out the plaintive rhythm of a fox trot; and here and there among the tables spoons beat time above pink and yellow ices and the light glinted upon sheeny shingled heads that swayed unconsciously to the compelling rhythm. One by one the tables emptied, and the solitary couple gliding over the polished parquet in the adjoining room were soon joined by many others.

  Out of doors the stars were beginning to shimmer in the dusk above the mountains: indoors the lights flooded down upon the bright frocks of the dancers and were reflected from the polished brown panelling of the walls. There were three long windows from floor to ceiling, each covered by heavy blue plush curtains with a gold braided pelmet across the top. Young Cecil stood by the centre one, talking with a bored proprietary air to a striking-looking girl to whom he had paid marked but peculiarly off-hand attention ever since her arrival in the hotel that morning. She had sleek, short flaxen hair, brushed back like a boy’s, and she wore a scarlet frock.

  Before Pagan’s eyes, however, as he glided beneath the brilliant crystal electroliers with Clare in his arms, there floated persistently the picture of Vigers, disfigured and forlorn in his bizarre dug-out on the mountain. Clare gave a little low peal of amusement as she glided past her brother and his colourful companion.

  “Cecil is deliciously young, isn’t he!” she laughed. “He is terribly attracted by that pretty little scarlet minx. He has been following her round ever since she arrived, but neither she nor we are supposed to know. Hence his bored look of male superiority and his off-hand cave-man manner.”

  Pagan nodded. “Yes, he is rather like a young eastern potentate chatting with one of his female slaves.”

  “It is really rather clever of him if he only knew it,” smiled Clare. “Girls at that age sometimes find that sort of treatment attractive.”

  “Only at that age?” asked Pagan innocently.

  She tilted her head and cocked an eye at him suspiciously. “At twenty a girl takes a man, more or less at his own valuation,” she retorted. “At thirty she makes her own valuation of him.”

  “I see,” answered Pagan with a whimsical smile. “And of course that valuation is never as high as his!”

  She shook her head cheerfully. “No; not in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, though in the thousandth usually for no apparent reason, it is far higher.”

  “And then?” he asked.

  She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Then she marries him or else makes a fool of herself.”

  He laughed. “Then women, after they have reached years of discretion, are not really illogical—only once in a thousand times!”

  She nodded her head. “Um-m.”

  “Now I understand the meaning of divine illogically,” he smiled. “That thousandth time.”

  The music slowed to an end, and they walked into the cooler lounge and sat upon a sofa by the great staircase.

  “You have been very solemn all the evening,” she said presently.

  “Have I?” he answered.

  She nodded. “I have been solemn too, inside,” she said. “I cannot get the thought of that poor lonely, disfigured man out of my head.”

  “Nor can I,” he admitted.

  She sipped the little cup of coffee that had been brought to her. “I am so glad he seemed pleased with our little present.”

  “He seemed very pleased,” answered Pagan. “Which reminds me that I must not forget to send up the spare battery when it arrives.”

  “It came just before dinner,” she told him. “And I asked Griffin to take it up to Kleber.”

  “Oh did you; thanks very much,” he said.

  “Poor lonely man,” she murmured softly.

  Pagan stirred his coffee absently and regarded the slowly revolving spoon with a frown. “Do you,” he asked without looking up, “do you think he is right in the course he has chosen?”

  “You mean—to cut himself off from the world for the sake of others?”

  Pagan nodded.

  She stared at her cup with a little frown of concentration. “It is rather splendid, don’t you think?”

  He did not answer, and she glanced at him quickly. “You do not admire that kind of self-sacrifice?” There was a tinge of disappointment in her tone.

  He answered without looking up. “On the contrary, I should like to think that I would have the grit to do the same if I were in his place.”

  She stared at her foot in silence. “I think you would,” she said slowly at last.

  He thanked her with a far-away little smile. “You think then that he has chosen rightly, both from his own point of view and from that of his friends?” he persisted presently.

  “You mean of course chiefly—the girl?”

  He nodded his head. “Yes.” And then he added in a low voice, “Suppose you were in her place.”

  She tilted her cup and regarded the dregs at the bottom. “It is always so much easier to decide theoretically what is best,” she murmured. “The personal element complicates things terribly, don’t you think?”

  “It does,” he agreed solemnly. “But still, tell me: I would like to know—if you were in her place?”

  Clare stared at her cup with a little frown of concentration. “Of course,” she said reflectively, “she does not know he is alive, and the early bitterness of her grief must have worn off a little. But if I were in her place and I were given the choice of having him alive and so ghastly disfigured or just—dead; I—I don’t know.” She cupped her chin in her hand and frowned at the little pointed toe of her shoe. “I—I almost think I would have him dead and at peace.”

  Pagan nodded his head slowly. “And … and supposing the girl suddenly discovered he was alive—what then?”

  “Yes: I have been thinking of that all the time,” she answered slowly.

  “What then?” repeated Pagan solemnly after a pause.

  She smoothed her frock upon her knee absently. “In a novel of course one would marry him and try to compensate him for his infirmity. But, in real life I—I wonder.” She gazed again at her shoe. “Is his poor face very horrible?” she asked in a low voice.

  Pagan nodded his head slowly. “Terrible.”

  She nodded her head sadly. “We say it is not the face that we love,” she went on almost as though she were talking to herself. “And that is true: it is not the face, but the whole man. And yet how much of the whole man the face really is! All the little tricks of eye and expression. Without those it is hardly the same person, is it? Without arms or without legs it is the same person that we loved before, even dearer now perhaps beca
use of the pathetic helplessness; but without the dear face… . And yet it is the same person really—inside. It must be—unless such a terrible change affects not only the outside, but the whole man. It might; I believe it would in a case like this where a man has lived for years alone with his thoughts.”

  “That was what Baron said,” murmured Pagan.

  She nodded. “I wonder. Our characters certainly affect our faces, but it does not follow necessarily that the opposite is true. Poor man!”

  “Poor girl,” murmured Pagan gently.

  “Yes, poor girl,” she repeated. “I wonder what she would do. She might love him so much that she would see only the man that she had known and not the poor wretch that he had become. Pray heaven that she would. Otherwise it would be terrible for her and for him. Pray heaven that she may never have to make the choice.”

  “Amen,” said Pagan.

  They sat in silence for some moments, occupied with their own thoughts.

  Presently Pagan passed a hand wearily across his forehead. “It’s all wrong,” he burst out suddenly. “It’s all wrong. He should be either dead or else alive and well and married to her. It’s all so hopelessly unfair.

  “Other men will want to marry her—and although he, poor fellow, is out of the running, he at least has had the satisfaction of knowing that she loved him. Whereas the other fellow, if he knew, would feel a skunk to push his claim.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and frowned at the little crumpled red cigar band in the big palm pot beside him. “Why is it that life is so complicated?” he complained. “Why is there never a straightforward issue? Why are there always nagging details that dull the edge of enjoyment? We ourselves complicate it too. We hesitate and delay among tabus and inhibitions as though life went on for ever and the sun always shone.” He looked up at the ceiling and quoted with a sigh of exasperation. “Thus is the native hue of resolution sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. Why can’t we go straight for what we want and enjoy it without regret and without remorse?” he demanded savagely. “Surely the war is not so old that we have forgotten that we can count only upon this very moment. What is not said now may be forever left unsaid.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and turned impulsively towards her. His face was puckered with the intensity of his feelings. “I love you, Clare,” he murmured earnestly, “I love you, dear. Say, ‘I love you, Charles, and one day soon if life still goes on I will be your wife’—or else say, ‘I can never love you,’ and let me go away and take what else there is left to me in life.”