Following some subconscious line of thought, he tried the front door to make certain that it was fastened, and then went again to the attic. He lighted the stub of candle which still remained, then blew it out again, and went to the room below. He switched on the light and looked about the room. In contrast to the attic it was handsomely furnished with a large bed in walnut, matched by wardrobe, dressing-table, and washstand. An armchair and a couple of small chairs stood on a beautiful carpet, and on a side-table was a radio-gramophone. A heavy walking-stick in one corner, a man’s hair-brushes and collar-box on the dressing-table, a complete set of dentures in a tooth-glass on the washstand, and several pairs of men’s boots and shoes in a neat row on a set of low shelves by the bed-head gave complete confirmation to Harben’s own certainty that the old man had chosen his own room in which to meet his death.
He went up the stairs again, heaved up the body from the landing, carried it down to the room to which, by inference, it belonged, and laid it with careful reverence on the bed. He arranged the ornate, expensive dressing-gown to fall in straight lines and dignified, sculptured folds.
The old man’s eyes were staring open. Harben closed them. The mouth was open, too, but with that he did not interfere. It was discomforting to see that toothless, astonished maw; pathetic, too; not dreadful. It expressed the man’s last thought—his surprise and horror at his fall; not the impulse which had taken him, as just on midnight, into another person’s room. We die as we have lived, thought Harben, in spite of death-bed repentances and all the last rites of the Church.
Old satyr!—yet the dignity of the body, in the long, gold-glittering robe, was strangely pleasing. Harben covered the face, and, with this discreetly hooded, it was a king who lay there, straight and wonderfully silent, on his bier.
There was a sudden scratching and scrabbling from the heavy dark curtains at the window. Startled, Harben looked up. A small monkey, with a wizened, sad little face, and a parrot of brilliant plumage, both of them clinging to the curtain-pole, were, heads cocked shrewdly, gazing down on him.
CHAPTER SIX
Mermaid
The tide was coming in. There was already water between the tub and the bank. By morning the tub would be afloat.
Harben stepped over the foot and a half of shallow water between her stern and the shore, and opened the door to the cabin. He heard the girl move before he lighted the lamp, but he trimmed it carefully before he turned to look at her. Then he sat down and filled his pipe before he spoke.
“Yes, he was dead. We must call the doctor in the morning. And now, you’d better tell me what really happened, hadn’t you?” he said.
“You know what happened. You saw he was in the wrong room. You know what I told you before.”
Harben struck a match and looked at her over it before he lighted his pipe. But he did not say any more. When his pipe was drawing, he rigged up a screen to shield the light from her eyes, sat down at the cabin table and drew his manuscript towards him. But the mood was gone. He altered a word or two here, and the turn of a sentence there, but at four o’clock he took off his shoes, unhitched a heavy waterproof from its nail and drew it over him as he stretched himself out on the bunk he had been using as a seat.
When he woke he had forgotten the unusual events of the night, and realized only that he was on the wrong side of the cabin. Then he remembered the girl, and leaned up on his elbow to look at her. She was not there, but the blankets were tumbled on the berth and the pillow showed a slight hollow.
Harben got up and filled his kettle from the jar of fresh water in the stern, put the kettle on to boil over a tiny spirit lamp, and then dropped his clothes on the floor and went for his morning swim.
The tub, not yet quite lifted by the tide, was now ten yards from land, and a pebbled beach covered with driftwood and odds and ends, and less than a yard at its widest, was all that could be seen of the expanse of ooze and stones of the previous night.
Harben stepped overside with the caution born of experience, found footing on ooze and not stones, and waded out into the river.
He felt the mud settle and shift between his toes. Suddenly the bed shelved sharply. He was up to his armpits in water, for the centre channel was dredged. He began to swim very fast, for the water was cold. Dark-brown, it swirled and rolled. Harben ducked under and swam with it, frisking like a porpoise to get warm.
The river sucked and streamed, as though it, and not the man, were alive. Harben came to the surface, his head as sleek as a seal’s, his shoulders and chest, his tingling arms and legs, countering the impact of the water.
Downstream there was an island, a narrow, willow-bordered eyot. He swam to it, and climbed out on to the bank. As he landed, he heard a splash from the opposite side, which was hidden from him by the willows. Another swimmer, he thought. A number of boys and men were accustomed to bathe from the foreshore at about that time in the morning.
He took no further heed, but, looking across at the opposite bank of the river, he noticed that the Georgian house was facing him, forcing him to consider the fantastic events of the night. It occurred to him that it would have simplified matters, after all, to have called up a doctor from the house instead of waiting these hours until the morning. It even came into his head that occasions of violent (even if of accidental) death, were, properly, the business of the police.
These first stirrings of discomfort and regret began to nag at him. He blamed himself for not having reported the death as soon as he had known it had occurred. If everything came out, there would be the devil to pay.
The swimmer came round the long spit of mud at the eastern end of the island, and he saw that it was the girl. She swam with ease and great power, and the river, quiet at full tide, curved past her side like the curving wave past a ship.
Harben pushed back among the willows, content to watch her. The thin green leaves of the willows touched his hair and moved restlessly over his shoulders. The rough ground pricked his hams and the backs of his thighs. Coarse grass thrust between his toes and against his legs, and his heels were sunk in the ooze.
When he lost sight of the girl behind the piers of the bridge, he slipped into the water again and began to swim, with a long, strong stroke, easily and lazily after her; but had not gone halfway towards the bridge when she saw her returning. She did not slacken speed, but swam as fish swim, unheeding, and as though her body were merely heavier and more opaque than the element which supported and confirmed it. She was a part of that element, and more than native to it. It was as though she and the water were the same thing differently expressed by an artist whose creative power was limitless, thought Harben, and all of whose creatures had the perfection of immortality.
Harben turned again and swam after the girl. He thought she had not seen him, but, after a moment, she also turned (he could have sworn he caught the flash of a fish’s tail) and they swam side by side towards the boat.
“I’d like to swim out to sea,” she suddenly said.
“We’re going that way,” said Harben. She laughed, and the face she turned towards him was young and fresh, pink as the inside of a sea-shell, and with all the weariness and childish distress of the nightfall washed out of it as though the river had magic, to take away suffering and evil.
When they came to the boat she climbed aboard. Harben swam past, but she leaned out over the side and clutched his thick, boyish hair. Pain made him stop. He laughed.
“Come aboard. You’re cold,” she said. She released him, and he clambered over the stern and picked up a bucket for water to rinse his muddy feet. Then he put down the bucket and pushed her towards the cabin. She resisted the pressure on her shoulder, and turned towards him. They held each other’s eyes as antagonists will before a fight, and then she pulled him inside. They left the door swinging, dried themselves with anticipatory haste, knocked elbow against elbow, laughed, drew sharp, short breath, as though they had been running very fast.
Their bodies were cold from
the river, and then, with frightening suddenness, surgingly warm, except for cold fingers clutching at shoulder and waist, and a cold mouth pressed on the living warmth of the flesh. Lean belly and rounded thigh, the pressure of deltoid and heel, strong shoulder and urgent hand, lost shape and meaning. Agony passed like a sword, effort broke out in sweat, and stars stood, shivered, and swam.
Harben recovered soonest. He pushed the wet hair from his eyes, got off the bunk, picked up his shirt, and said sadly:
“Well, that’s that. And now what the devil do we do?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fugitive
The girl finished combing her hair. Without looking at Harben she went to the stern of the tub and blocked the doorway with her body. Harben, after a pause, went out to her and stood behind her, putting his hands on her arms.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s got to be done, I’m afraid. Do you very much mind going back?”
“No,” she answered, “of course not.” Her eyes were still gazing at the river as it endlessly, endlessly flowed. For the river there was no going back; not even the flood tide could take the stream back to its beginnings. Such were her nebulous thoughts, but she did not word them; she did not think in words, as Harben did.
“Come along,” he said, “we’ve got to report it, you know. You’re not to blame, and nothing can harm him now.”
They had to use the dinghy, which they beached on the small spit of gravel and mud which the outgoing tide had left at the foot of the steps.
They met no one between the top of the steps and the house they sought, except for a couple of old men from the almshouses enjoying a stroll in the sunshine. There were men in the boat-builder’s yard, and men in the slip, but they did not see them, although they could hear them working. Harben greeted the two old men, but they did not seem to recognize the girl.
The girl had the key of the house. Harben had remembered to return it. She unlocked the fine, broad door and pushed it open. Then she stood back and let Harben go in first. He went to the foot of the stairs, then turned and said:
“Coming up? We’d better see him first, you know.”
“Aren’t you going to telephone?” she asked.
“Yes, if you like. I just thought—” He went back to where she stood on the step and, taking her hand, drew her in. But she refused to go even as far as the foot of the staircase.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asked.
“To see him? No. I will wait for you. Please don’t be long. And don’t shut the front door. I want it open. I want to be able to run.”
He looked at her, but said nothing. He was not long. In fact, he came down again immediately, the news in his face before he spoke.
“He’s gone!” he said. “He isn’t there any more.”
“Gone? Gone from the attic?” Her green eyes were clear as glass, and as expressionless.
“I carried him—I thought he’d be better in his own room. At least, I supposed it was his room. The room directly underneath. I—you wouldn’t care to come up? In fact, you’ve got to come up.” He shut the front door with a bang and turned to face her.
She made no protest, and, this time, showed no fear and no reluctance. She followed him up the stairs without a word. He noticed that her footfalls made no sound. He looked round twice; but she was there, very pale, green-haired and ghost-like, just behind his shoulder.
Harben looked into the room, but still the great bed was empty. The counterpane was smooth and showed no crease, the pillows were plumped up as though the old man’s head had not been placed there. The curtains were all drawn back and the room was sunny. The light shone on the sombre walls of the room, but not on the golden patterns of the old man’s splendid gown.
“I laid him on the bed,” said Harben. The girl had come up beside him. And had placed a long hand on his arm. “I laid him there on the bed and covered his face.”
“What with?” The question seemed banal and inappropriate, and he glanced at her sharply as he answered.
“My handkerchief. I had a silk handkerchief in my pocket.”
“You don’t think—” She studied his face. “You don’t think you left him in the attic? You don’t think you dreamt you moved him?”
“I know I carried him down here. There was a monkey up on the curtain pole, and a parrot.”
“Then what are we going to do? It must mean that someone has been here, and—there wasn’t anyone to come! And why don’t you call me Leda? You sound so cold and unkind!”
“But why should anyone come here? And why should they move him? I’m going up to the attic!” said Harben brusquely.
And up he went, leaving her on the landing. He opened the attic door, but the body was not to be seen. He went to the window and looked out on to the river. Then he explored the adjoining rooms. They were musty, but not more so than most disused rooms of their kind. One of them overlooked the lush, untidy garden, and he noted a giant laburnum, which trailed incredible inflorescences like arrested cascades of gold, almost on to the ground.
He returned to the first attic, looked out of the window, and pondered on something that was wrong; not wildly, nightmarishly wrong, like the dead man’s disappearance and the tidying-up of the room, but mundanely, ordinarily wrong, some small thing out of focus. He could not call anything to mind, shouted cheerfully over the banisters to the girl, then came down the stairs and went again into the bedroom. He felt like a squirrel in a cage. Something was certainly amiss.
He went to the window and looked out. His eyes roved up and down the river. The girl was no longer in the room. She must have gone downstairs again; and, what was more, the dinghy was no longer at the foot of the steps, and the tub was no longer at her moorings. That was what had been wrong with the view from the attic window. He had seen it without realizing what he had noticed; his mind had been so crowded with strange thoughts that the obvious had not immediately impinged upon his consciousness.
Curiously enough, he did not at once connect the disappearance of his property with the girl. It was some time later that he discovered that she had gone. He had made another discovery. The old man had been terribly sick before his death. Harben, accustomed to seasick passengers—for the tub was a sea-going craft—cleaned up the vomit methodically, and then left the house.
He ran downstairs, pulled open the great front door, and peered cautiously out. Two women went past. He waited, then peered out again. A boat, ferried quickly and skilfully with one oar over the stern, was paddled into the mud-beach by a waterman’s boy, who jumped ashore and came whistling up the steps and turned into his grandfather’s yard. Harben knew him well, and waited until he had gone.
After that, there was no one. Harben shut the door, walked quickly to the nearest narrow alley, ran down it with long strides, dropped into a walk at the end, gained a side-street, and walked along it, and came out at the foot of the bridge.
A friend of his had a boat there, kept at private moorings in a dirty little backwater on the Middlesex side of the river.
The friend was not on the boat, so Harben borrowed it. But there was no sign of the tub, and he found himself in a dilemma, for the girl might have gone downstream towards London just as easily as up-river. There was nothing to guide him in his search.
He went up-river as far as Windsor, and there, at moorings just off Clewer, settled down for the night. He could not sleep, and had not even his manuscript to console him. He thought continually and unprofitably of the girl and his odd adventure. He got up as soon as it was dawn, and decided to go for a swim. The sun was not up, but in the grey-gold morning he could see a pennon fluttering at the stern. He dropped his towel and put out a hand to touch the pennon, for it was his own. At least, he thought so at first. Then he discovered that it was like his, but a new one. A piece of paper was pinned to the gay little triangle of silk. He fingered the pennon curiously before he took out the pins. Where had she got it? he wondered.
Naked and shivering, he carried the paper bac
k with him into the cabin, sat down on his bunk, and pulled the blankets round him, and, by the glow of the cabin lamp, which he had left burning because the cabin portholes were too small to let in the feeble light of the dawn, he read the note.
“I love you too much to get you into trouble. The tub is by the lock near the Great Park. Finish your book. I shall read it. Good-bye. I shall pray for you. Leda.”
Harben turned it over. There was no more. He went on deck again, tore the message across, and dropped the pieces in the river. The river sang softly here in the upper reaches. Mechanically, he tied his towel about him, leaned over the side, and craned his head to watch the paper dancing downstream.
People from other moorings began to clatter plates, preparing breakfast. Voices and laughter came across the water. The trees of the island swayed, and rustled their leaves. The river slipped quietly by, as green and dark as the dreams with which poets have so often compared it.
Harben put a hand on the gunwale and neatly jumped over the stern. His down-dropping feet touched weed. He kicked himself up to the surface, and, swimming his strongest, rounded the bend of the backwater out to where the main stream, flashing grey-silver in the sun, and running in sullen green beneath the banks, wound like a serpent from Windsor to Boveney Lock.
The current was strong. He breasted it, swimming madly until his arms ached. Then he swam round to the backwater, loose-muscled and tired. The water was calm at the moorings; he could see the dark hull of the boat like a wavering snake. Then he lifted his head, and her outline was firmly before him.
People were up and about, and the backwater rang with their voices. He tried to imagine that Leda would bend towards him over the gunwale, her damp hair dark with the water, its gold and its green all gone, her witch’s mouth smiling, her green eyes alight with laughter. He tried to believe she would catch him again by the hair, and draw him into the cabin.
Sunset Over Soho (Mrs. Bradley) Page 5
