“Hombre! How should it be?” answered Paolo, surprised. “But if they can count on seven such days in the spring, let us buy land in this country. That is what I was thinking.”
Manuel was silent. His own early and hectic impression of England, and the contrast between it and South America, had built up in his mind a picture of a huge commercial entrepôt of which the Albert Docks and Piccadilly Circus were equally typical. That the majority of the population were supported by green farms and market towns he had forgotten. The thought restored some of his confidence in Manning. It was incredible that the man he remembered should have come out of this horrible hive of commerce; but if his background were a province like any other European province he was possible. At any rate he could not be so far mistaken in his character that the Englishman would refuse to give the Salvinis and himself enough to buy a bit of land. But not here! No, por dios, not here! In Spain, It was not very far away. Only three days ago he had seen the gaunt cliffs of Finistierra divide for an instant the pearly Galician mist and pass.
The lights thickened on the wharf ahead. The irregular shadows and blocks of shining black gradually revealed themselves as knots of people, cars, railway trucks, some piles of tarpaulins and a gangplank. A longshoreman’s dinghy cast off from the Sapphire with the final cable that was to fasten her to London. Slowly she was warped into her berth.
Four figures detached themselves from the railway trucks and moved towards the edge of the dock, scanning the stern of the ship. A woman in dark green oilskins and a tall man in a very deep-skirted, swashbuckling raincoat were the first to draw his attention; there were also a short, powerful fellow, vainly trying to shelter himself and his ever-changing neighbour under a large umbrella, and a man in a shabby hat and dirty but serviceable mackintosh. Manuel at once recognised the mackintosh and the angle of the hat.
He did not dare call to him. For the first time in his life Manuel Vargas was utterly unsure of himself and afraid. Four months ago and then only for three days had he known the man. Manuel cursed himself for a coward, walked to the rail and leaned over. Their eyes met, four luminous points glittering in the glare of the arc lights, each pair searching the other to see if the purpose and the friendship were still there. They said not a word, for minutes as it seemed to them, though to the three watchers on the wharf it was but a swift and excited look exchanged before they spoke.
“Eres tú, hermano?”
“Si, Manuel. Aqui estoy, esperándote.”
In that austere language the significance of the tú could not be lost. They had never used it in Valparaiso, for they were neither childhood friends nor of the same family. Only one other relationship could it imply; that of a formal and accepted brotherhood, as of the monastery or a closed and fanatical party.
Impe caught up her two infants and rushed to the rail, exchanging a shout of welcome with the sympathetic señor inglés whose name to this day she had never mastered. She had never had the slightest doubt of a friendly reception. The four capable figures on the dock reinforced her confidence. They were serene. One could trust one’s children to them. To what sort of a community she was bound she had only a very sketchy idea. She had listened to Paolo and Manuel discussing it and had gathered—for which she thanked the Blessed Virgin—that it was less irreligious than the communist party. On the other hand, they talked of creating a class of nobles, which was ridiculous, since one was a mechanic and the other a waiter. Moreover, everyone knew that a ruling class thought only of themselves, which was just what those two never did. She hoped the tall, slim woman with the fair hair would be one of these people who would live with them. A comradely woman. And what? She spoke Italian? Impe poured down a flood of questions and comments into Irma’s upturned and laughing face.
Paolo was more reticent. The Englishman as a fugitive from justice had been a friend; but well dressed against rain, proof positive that he belonged to the capitalist class, he was another creature. The tall man and the woman in the oilskins also gave a very definite impression of wealth. The one who really looked a worker was the stocky man under the umbrella. Paolo returned Toby’s cheerful greeting and remained dignified and silent. Let other people do the talking. He would see.
The gangway was shot into the bowels of the Sapphire and the stewards herded them and their half-dozen fellow immigrants forward into the single-class quarters. Manuel smiled sardonically at the outspoken annoyance of the tourist passengers, especially the women. They had paid so little more than the human freight in the steerage that they were seriously upset at being confounded with them.
He was intensely curious about Toby’s three companions, whether they were merely casual friends or chosen by him to be founders of this abbey; if the latter, what were they and would they distort the whole dream from the outset? He shook Toby’s hand. Recristo! The man was lovable! And calmer, it seemed, than in Valparaiso. Then he was introduced to the rest.
There was no doubt that this Gregory Vassilieff was a leader of men. But he might be another Lara—one could not tell. At any rate it would have been good to have him in Mexico. Irma von Reichensund—a frank and powerful face, a pleasant manner. Well, he couldn’t presume to judge a woman. She was the business of his dear Tobal, and since Impe appeared to accept her, there probably wasn’t much wrong. Simon Bendrihem he doubted. The man was too solid. He seemed to be without attraction. Yet Paolo had undeniably fled to him for refuge. They were exchanging monosyllables in a corner and apparently understanding one another very well.
“A bad half hour, eh? Deprrressing.”
The smiling and ferocious face of Vassilieff was looking down on him.
“Yes. The damned rain.”
“I know. Rrrisks. I can’t take them on a wet day.”
Toby and Bendrihem were busy with the immigration officer and a sheaf of papers. Vassilieff linked his arm in Manuel’s and led him into the alleyway outside the saloon. He took a flask from his pocket.
“Brandy?”
Manuel took a long pull.
“Thanks.”
“The rest are excited,” Vassilieff said, explaining his apparent lack of hospitality. “They don’t need it.”
“I did.”
“Of course.”
“You are—”
For the moment Manuel’s English came hardly to his tongue.
“Joining you? Well, now that I’ve seen you—yes.”
“I’m glad. You’re the Russian colonel from Rumania?”
“I am. I had a letter from Manning there. It interested me, so I came. Partly this; chiefly on business. But I wasn’t sure. He talks too much. One can’t judge an idea. One goes by the men who hold it.”
“But the idea was your own.”
“Mine? Not in the least. I believe in a ruling class. If you’re prepared to back it—”
“I am not.”
“What?”
Vassilieff hesitated, staring into the deep eyes that smouldered insolently. What a swordsman he would make with that lithe body and those eyes!
“Words!” shouted Vassilieff. “Words—God damn them! A servant class—a ruling class—what does it matter? Do we want the same or not? Nobility. Find it!”
“Forgive me—I couldn’t know.”
“Of course. We’re all dependent on Manning for the moment. He’s the interpreter—of our ideas, I mean.”
“Who else is there? Tell me all you can.”
“There’s Tina, my wife. She’ll join us later. I have to go back to Bucharest first and clear up my business. She’s all right—if she doesn’t give the whole abbey to the poor. And Albert Whitehead. No doubt about him.”
“What about the Jew?”
“Straight. You’ll see. He’s done as much for you as Manning—he and another man. One of these mad Englishmen. But energetic. He won’t join us yet. He’s in love. It will pass.”
At th
e request of a steward sent to fetch him, Manuel returned to the saloon to be interviewed. The immigration officer smiled at him as if to imply that all his formalities were a joke and Manuel’s proletarian appearance an amusing eccentricity. He indicated the chair opposite his own.
“I’m afraid you’ve been subjected to some discomfort, Mr Vargas,” he said.
“Discomfort?” asked Manuel—and then understood that the inspector was referring to the well-sprung bunks and solid food of the steerage. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
At first sight the officer had put down this shabby figure as certainly a communist and probably a crook; that air of independence was presumptuous in an intending immigrant. He now admitted to himself that his first impression had been wrong, and that the Spaniard was obviously a man of original character.
Manuel was well aware of both the interpretations of his appearance, and that one had been changed to the other by the certified copy of his bank balance. He felt a sudden sense of responsibility, as if a financial bishop had laid hands upon him and solemnly declared that henceforward his sins would no more be passed through the Almighty’s petty cash but posted to a special account in the ledger. The bank certificate gave him no greater confidence in his own power to influence other human beings; he had that power—witness the fact that he had extracted from the British consul at Valparaiso visas for himself and the Salvinis simply on his word and the obscure cable that Toby had sent from Laredo. But the possession of money did make him, he recognised, a more dangerous man. It put him into the class saluted by policemen, and thus released a store of energy that had been consumed in the daily routine of adjusting himself to society.
“Is this your first visit to the United Kingdom, Mr Vargas?”
“No. I was here before the war.”
Manuel wondered if the darkness of London still held a record of his highly successful deals with the enemy. Evidently it did not; or, if it did, his name was buried in some remote file that would not be touched until the next mobilisation.
The immigration officer asked a few more questions and handed him back his passport.
“There will be no difficulty about having your permit extended if you wish it,” he said. “Just report to the nearest police station every three months and see that your servants do so.”
“My servants?”
“He means the Salvinis,” said Toby quickly.
“I see. Yes, that’s the simplest. But does it tie them, Tobal?”
“Not in the least. Simon Bendrihem has guaranteed their return fare. If they want to leave to-morrow they can.”
Manuel looked again at the impassive, heavy face on the stocky man standing behind Toby and Paolo. The Jew had something fatherly about him—the Emperor Trajan looking on while one of his praetors did justice between a Briton, a Spaniard and an Italian. Manuel caught the eye of the tall Austrian woman and exchanged an amused glance with her. He liked her. She obviously knew what he had doubted, what he now felt, and was telling him that she had felt very much the same herself.
The immigration officer asked some questions of Paolo and Impe in halting Italian, which Manuel was able to follow. Far from resenting his temporary status as a servant, which Bendrihem had already explained to him, Paolo entered into the part with gusto and described his duties as if he had been applying for a job. Ignorant of what valets really did or why they were required at all, he drew freely on imagination. He lifted his Señor Vargas out of bed, bathed him, fed him and took him for walks. The presence of so devoted a male nurse at last explained to the immigration officer the eccentricities of the wealthy Spaniard and the protective manner of his friends. He smiled sympathetically at Toby and allowed the party to land.
“Where are we going?” Manuel asked Toby, as the Salvinis and the laundry basket that was all their luggage were packed into the first of two waiting cars.
“Bendrihem’s house. He insisted on putting you up,”
“Three of us and four children are a lot. What is his wife like?”
“He hasn’t one—only an aged mother and a collection of carpets. I’ve never been there. He’s as secretive as a Spaniard about his home. And then it’s the devil of a way from anywhere—somewhere right in the east end. But you can safely accept. It’s a sort of gesture on his part or his mother’s I think. He is offering what is most sacred to him straight away.”
The cars, travelling northwards through the East End of London, picked their way through a bewildering jumble of bare streets. The rain stopped and the blank rows of houses poured forth their inhabitants on to the pavement. Manuel intently watched the life of this unhappy district—the little pubs, the glaring shops of cheap foods, the half-lit fruit stalls. Even here there were men whose faces spoke to him, with humorous lips and firm, ironical eyes. Apparently the human spirit could be gay and gentle under any circumstances.
Well, he, Manuel Vargas, should know that as well as any man—yet the gallant bearing of some of these passers-by surprised him. He saw that his imagination had not hitherto realised several very common circumstances of poverty. Upon his easy southern continent no man was so poor that he had not sun, wine and food within his reach if he were free to move to it; he might be dirty and without money or shelter, but, if he were not sunk in the lethargies of alcohol, coca or hookworm, there were many novel and curious forms of labour open to him beyond the mountains or the plain. That was not so in the streets of Bow and Bromley. If a man could keep his temper, his pride and his freedom of action in such surroundings, he was indeed a leader.
Tobal had set himself the harder task in attempting to find the noble among the commercial middle classes, each of them wrapped up and hidden away under the respectability of his fellows. It was here and in the slums of Paris, Hamburg and Antwerp that the noble would be most easily found, and most worthy of help. Each of these streets would have its infeliz, its honourable man, duke of his people in all that was not violence; some poor devil striving to justify his way of life by a political or religious creed and yet abhorring its dishonesties. One would only have to run a fruit stall for a month to know who he was.
The street into which they turned was lined on one side only by semi-detached residences of red brick with high Gothic gables. The houses looked out over an arm of Victoria Park which had the quietude of a village green, its border inhabited by solid Victorian solicitors, doctors and retired manufacturers. Doctors there were still, to judge by two brass plates, one on each side of Bendrihem’s house. The rest of the dignified row was in decay. They were lodging houses for the better-paid bachelor foremen and bookkeepers of the surrounding factories.
The door was opened by a pretty maid. Behind her stretched a long prayer rug, giving an air of graciousness to the narrow hall, with its mahogany hat stand, its ferns, its table and its massive barometer. At the foot of the stairs was Mrs Bendrihem, a slim figure dressed in black. Watching her greet Impe and Irma in the soft gaslight at the far end of the hall, Manuel put her down as rather younger than either woman. When Bendrihem introduced him, he saw that she was fifty years older than he had thought. Her hair was pure white, but eyebrows and a slight down on the upper lip had remained black, giving her an extraordinary air of vivacity. Her face was not wrinkled; or rather it was so closely and finely lined that at a distance the parchment skin of old age seemed to be a soft olive complexion. She carried proud and erect a slight body that, but for the swelling and retrocession of the breasts, had changed little since she was thirteen years old.
There was a shy warmth in her greeting which increased the sense that she was a young girl, a treasure whom Bendrihem had hidden away with his carpets and his private life.
“You are so welcome,” she said. “Thank you for coming to me.”
“You are very kind,” answered Manuel, bowing. “I am—honoured.”
He sought to translate the traditional courtesies of his native tongue into English
, and could not. But the sincerity behind his simple words delighted her.
He was amazed at the ease with which she received six complete strangers and their children into her house. The woman was queenly. In spite of her shyness, she seemed to be sure of the adequacy of her home and the behaviour of her guests. And they must, Manuel admitted, be an alarming bunch: Vassilieff, with his air of having just hung sword belt and revolver on the hat stand; Paolo, a firm-mouthed, self-willed barbarian with the oil of the concrete mixers still ingrained in the texture of his battered coat and trousers; himself, a waiter who had been out of a job for a month and looked it.
Mrs Bendrihem took Impe and the children upstairs, while her son laid out a decanter of whisky and glasses. Manuel sat down by Toby and listened to a rapidly outlined history of the recovery of the gold.
“And Almádena?” Toby asked.
“All right. He’s gone back to Spain. They all have, the grandees. They think they’ll get their lands back again under this government.”
“Will they?”
“What do I know? Your Spanish politics are more up to date than mine. If they try it, they will have something more serious on their hands than the Austrian revolt. I’m sure of that. Rosario sent you her compliments by the way.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Not badly. She insisted on making you a partner. I really believe she will send you a few pesos from time to time.”
“Good lord! The moral earnings of immoral women—another asset for the finance committee!”
“Is there a committee yet?”
“No. We’ll make a start to-morrow. Bendrihem has put his office at our disposal for the day.”
“Bendrihem again!”
Manuel smiled at the iron-grey emperor about to refill his glass.
“It just happens that I’m the only one to have an office and a convenient house,” Simon answered. “Whitehead wanted to put you up, but his place is very small and rather far out.”
“Whitehead? Let me see. Vassilieff mentioned him—”
The Third Hour Page 40
