He stood to let the thing pass. But it did not pass; it slowed up, and swung towards the entrance. Its light shone upon Gledhill. The rider, legs straddling, feet on the ground, pulled up.
“There’s been a smash down there.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, car with a lady from the hotel. Some drunken fools crashed into it at the cross-roads. They want a doctor and an ambulance. I said I’d rush up and get the hotel to phone.”
Gledhill stood staring.
“Not—a girl—in a rose-coloured dress?”
“Yes——”
“She’s not——?”
“I left her lying on the grass. The chauffeur was able to speak to me.”
Gledhill was out on the road.
“Go up and telephone. You’ll find the night porter. It’s—it’s the girl who has been dancing with me.”
He ran. He had a feeling of floating down that great hill. The darkness met him like water, and bore him as he ran. Good God, what a tragedy, that he—a miserable failure who had come down here to die—should have dragged this other creature to disaster! Less than half an hour ago she had been dancing with him, and now—— What would he find? He had expected lights, perhaps a crowd, but as he came along the level stretch to the cross-roads the place seemed strangely silent. He had a glimpse of a twisted, dark shape lying tilted against a hedge. Someone was groaning. A solitary figure in the middle of the road appeared to be acting as traffic control, with a bloody handkerchief in one hand.
A car, coming from Epsom way, lit up the cross-roads as Gledhill appeared. The man with the handkerchief spread his arms. Another car, overturned, was blocking half the road. The headlights showed Gledhill a figure lying on the grass, and the colour of her dress was like a red wound in the darkness.
He was down on his knees.
“Marie——”
He saw her pale face and closed eyes. He could see no blood on her face. Yes, but on her dress! She seemed to be unconscious. Was she dead? My God, were they both to die on this terribly sweet night?
“Marie—my darling——”
Her eyes opened. For a moment he hardly dared to believe that she was looking at him.
“Jack——”
“O, my dear—I thought you were—dead. Are you—in pain?”
He felt for one of her hands, and she flinched, and then managed to smile.
“Not that one, Jack. I’m afraid that arm’s broken.”
“O, my dear. I’ve brought you this. Just damned selfishness. I wanted——”
He was holding her other hand, and her eyes looked up at him.
“I’m all right, dear. We were so happy.”
“Happy! I’ve never brought anybody any happiness. They have sent for a doctor, Marie.”
There was silence between them for a moment, and then he bent down and put his lips to her hand.
“You’ll have to try and forgive me, dear. I seem to have made of you a sort of sacrifice.”
He felt the pressure of her fingers.
“Well—perhaps it was—meant.”
Doctor and ambulance arrived within three minutes of each other, and Gledhill stood back to watch and wait. What would the verdict be? He found himself helping to place Marie on a stretcher and carry her to the ambulance.
“Don’t leave me, Jack.”
“I’m coming with you.”
He caught the doctor by the arm.
“Is she—going—to live?”
The doctor had other wreckage to attend to.
“Don’t fuss, sir——” and then he said gently and consolingly, “I think she will be all right. Some ribs and an arm broken. Relation of hers?”
“No,” said Gledhill, “no; just—a friend.”
But they would not let him go with her in the ambulance. There was the other human wreckage to be rescued, and he was left at the cross-roads with a little shadowy group of strangers. He was aware of a voice saying, “Nobody seems to have thought of the A.A. box.” Another voice answered, “Perhaps nobody had a key. I’d give those blighters in the sports model a year each.” “One of ’em is dead, my son,” said the other voice. Gledhill turned away. He went slowly along the road and up the hill to Newlands Corner. He was half-way up it when his right hand happened to touch the metal thing in his pocket. He drew it out, hesitated a moment, and then sent the pistol flying into a bush.
“No more cowardice.”
At Newlands he found the hotel dark and silent. Sleep? No—he was in no mood to go to bed. In fact he spent the night in a deck-chair under a plum tree on the lawn, a man in a dinner-jacket with his thoughts among the stars. He found himself uttering a kind of prayer: “Stars, if she lives—I’ll fight, fight—like—the devil.”
They let him see her next day in hospital. He sat for a little while by her bed. It had a screen round it and he was glad of the screen. Her hair looked so black, and her face so pale, but her eyes had no death in them.
“I’ve got to go back to work to-morrow, Marie. But may I come down next week-end?”
She lay and looked at him.
“Yes. I wish you would see my people, Jack, and reassure them.”
“They must be hating me, Marie.”
“Poor dears.”
“You are going to be all right now?”
“Of course.”
As he climbed the office stairs on that Monday morning he felt that years might have passed. A strange new world, and the same rather shabby door. What would he find? Only the old problems, the old worries, defeat, and the glum and impersonal face of his secretary. She was there before him, putting a mirror back into her bag. It had never occurred to him that Miss Smale could be interested in her face.
“Any letters, Miss Smale?”
“Yes. I haven’t opened them.”
Letters on a Monday morning! That was rather surprising. He sat down at his desk, and opened the first. It was a bill. Something in him seemed to laugh, whimsically, grimly. He opened another, read it, and sat staring. Well, of all the astounding coincidences! Someone was going to pay him money, quite a considerable sum which he had written off as a bad debt. He opened a third letter. Good God, was the world coming to life again—as well—as he? Someone was wanting to do business, good business. He got up and walked to the window and stood looking down into the narrow street.
He thought “And I should have been lying somewhere—on those hills—with a bullet through my head. Ye gods—— I’m alive—alive—— Shall I ever tell her? I think not.”
His reticence was relative. He rang up the hospital twice a day to inquire for Marie; he sent down flowers, by post. Life was giving him his second chance, and this time he was not going to play the diffident fool and lose it. Marie was out of danger. She had been transferred to her people’s house, and on the Saturday Gledhill went down to Newlands Corner, and walked along the downs into Guildford.
As a lover he was both shy and ardent. He might be a romanticist, but he was remembering that Marie was a young woman of the world with a job of her own. Would she cast her modern independence and consent to run in double harness with a middle-aged fellow who was just a business man? He allowed four week-ends to pass before he had his inspiration.
“What about your job, Marie?”
“My job and I have lost each other.”
“You don’t mean to say that the mean beasts have——?”
“Is anyone indispensable, Jack? Someone slipped into my shoes.”
It was dastardly of him, but he felt secretly grateful to those mean beasts, and he was ready to prove to her that she was indispensable.
“I have an idea, Marie. Do you think we could dare to risk it again?”
“Just what?”
“Another evening at Newlands Corner. I’ll hire the largest car in Guildford, or a motor-coach, and tell the man not to do more than fifteen miles an hour.”
She laughed.
“Am I so very fragile, Jack?”
“You ar
e very precious,” he said.
It is one of the world’s platitudes that one should not attempt to repeat a particular and exquisite experience, but in this case the provocation was different. They sat at the same table and danced to the same music, and the September night was soft and kind. Neither the wine nor the music was needed for the production of those simple words. He told her that she was the most adorable thing in the world, and looking in his eyes she did not contradict him.
MANNERS AND MEN
His name was Eustace Montgomery.
For a number of years he had lived to the high sounding level of that name, walking down from the small villa in Rudyard Road to the shop of Messrs. Pendlebury in High Street. He was the senior assistant and fifty-three years old, with a wife and two children at home. Messrs. Pendlebury, chemists, had been established in St. Helen’s-on-Sea for nearly half a century. It was a business with a bouquet, mellow, sympathetic, almost pontifical.
Mr. Montgomery might be a nobody on five pounds ten a week, but behind the Pendlebury counter he had always felt himself to be a somebody. He walked down the High Street each morning, a sleek, black and white, suavely solid citizen, head well up, shoulders squared. He had carried with him through all the years a happy illusion of singularity.
He knew half St. Helen’s, the more prosperous half of St. Helen’s. He was so tactful and sympathetic. Shy customers preferred to be served by Mr. Montgomery. Occasionally there were half whispered colloquies across the counter. Mr. Montgomery could produce the airs of a father confessor.
“Yes, madam, I—quite understand. Yes—I think if you allow just fifteen minutes before meals. Yes, and the tablets—— May I suggest one in half a tumbler of hot water.”
No one could sell soap or bath-salts or a tooth brush as Mr. Montgomery sold them. He was so suave, so kind, without ever appearing familiar.
There had been occasions when Montgomery had overheard remarks about himself. He was “Such a gentleman.” He had “Such a fine head.” He had. He was rather proud of his forehead, and of his meticulously clean pink hands. Mr. Pendlebury regarded him as a valuable man. He knew everybody’s whims and peculiarities and their pet ailments. He was persona grata to the doctors. Each Christmas Mr. Montgomery received a pleasant little bonus from the firm.
At home in the villa in Rudyard Road, Mr. Montgomery was very much the paternal person. His two children—Ralph and Irene—aged fifteen and twelve—adored him. He was so much the good companion, so much the authority upon life, without being too pompous. His wife, a gentle little woman, knew him to be a good fellow. As a young man he had been a little too impressionable, but that phase had passed.
Ralph was at the local grammar-school. Since the boy lived at home, his parents managed to pay his fees, and to send Irene to a private school for girls. The Christmas bonus was a great help in meeting the cost of the children’s education. Mr. Montgomery met all his financial responsibilities with chest well out.
“It has always been my ambition—to give my children a good start in life.”
Eustace had inherited a family tradition and nothing else. His father, Fitzroy Montgomery, stationer and librarian, who had posed as the highbrow of St. Helen’s, had left his son a collection of books, some old clothes, two or three worthless manuscripts, and a few bad debts. Fitzroy had always assumed that Eustace would become a partner with the Pendleburys. There were other people who traded innocently on the same assumption.
Irene had to compete with schoolfellows whose parents owned grocery businesses and butchers’ shops.
“Yes, my father is a partner, you know.”
Ralph was equally careful of the family honour.
“If you ask me—I can tell you we—are—Pendlebury. My pater’s the brains of the business.”
So, at the age of fifty-three Mr. Montgomery still confronted the world with some confidence. He owned his villa, and his life was insured for £250. He was healthy and keen and something of a person. His children were growing up, and at the end of another five or six years his responsibilities would slacken. He still hoped in secret that Mr. John Pendlebury would give him an interest in the business. He rather thought that he had earned it.
Then fate cracked a whip.
Mr. Pendlebury had an apoplectic seizure, and though he recovered to a point, the doctors insisted upon retirement. The shop, stock, and goodwill were on the market. Certainly, Mr. Montgomery could have purchased Pendleburys had he been able to command the necessary capital. He approached his bank, but he had no securities to lodge with them save his insurance policy and a possible mortgage on his villa, seven or eight hundred pounds at the outside. The bank could not accommodate him.
So, Pendleburys was bought by a Mr. Robert Cragg, who owned half a dozen shops on the south coast. He was what was called a cash chemist, and as for cash he had it in abundance.
Mr. Montgomery was seriously disturbed by his first interview with Mr. Cragg. There was no suavity about this new broom. A large, red man who bulged in all directions, with chops and a double chin and aggressive blue eyes, he invaded the shop and spoke to Mr. Montgomery as though the elderly assistant was already his servant.
“You’re in charge here, what?”
Mr. Montgomery tried his very best manners upon Mr. Cragg, but without any obvious effect.
“All right, wash out the soft soap. I’m here to look into things before I sign any contract.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“I’ve been through the books. I want to go through the stock.”
It was the morning of Wednesday, St. Helen’s early closing day, and always a busy morning.
“We are always rather rushed on Wednesdays, sir.”
“Nothing wrong with the afternoon, is there? You meet me here at two o’clock, Mr. Montgomery.”
He emphasized every syllable of the name as though he thought it stilted and ridiculous. Montgomery indeed! Smith was good enough for any assistant, and it had the virtue of brevity. And the fellow appeared to be a little above himself, throaty and superior.
“Two o’clock, sharp.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mr. Montgomery saw that the shutters were closed at one, and hurried home to lunch. The family had planned a picnic on the Gorse Hills for the afternoon, and Mr. Montgomery explained that they would have to picnic without him. He appeared a little flurried and preoccupied.
“Yes, business. Mr. Cragg is looking into things.”
Mary Montgomery observed her husband. He was very far from being his cheerful, suave self. She went to the front door with him when he was preparing to hurry back.
“What sort of man—is he, Eustace?”
“No gentleman, my dear—certainly, no gentleman. Very rough and ready.”
His wife looked worried.
“I’m sorry. Perhaps——”
Mr. Montgomery tried to reassure both her and himself.
“Just on the surface, probably, just on the surface. You go and enjoy your afternoon, Mary,” and he kissed her and hurried off.
To put it bluntly, as a business man Mr. Cragg was a bully. He was a creature with a large frame and large appetites, and that sort of truculent shrewdness which bludgeons its way through life. Success had encouraged him to assume that his ideas upon discipline and efficiency were the attributes of a dictator. He was the strong man who stood no nonsense, and who believed that God had created all the Craggs in the world for the chastening of the incompetent, and the unfit. Not that the man had no genial side to him. On the contrary he liked to shine, and his shrewdness was incontestable.
But the Pendlebury days had passed, and possibly the business was on the edge of growing passé. Mr. Cragg set about infusing into it fresh hæmoglobin. He had bought a house in Gore Park on the hill behind St. Helen’s, for whenever he took over a new business he established himself in the neighbourhood to supervise its progress. He was driven down daily in his private car, and took up his post as observer at nine-thirty.
“What have you got to show ’em? Three big bottles of coloured water. A camera. A couple of douche cans. Some adverts., and a few bottles of scent!”
Mr. Montgomery tactfully attempted to explain the Pendlebury tradition.
“We have never found it necessary, sir, to rely on our window.”
Mr. Cragg caught him up.
“What’s this, a shop?”
“We have always regarded it more from the pharmaceutical point of view.”
“Oh, have you! Well, may I suggest, Montgomery, that a shop’s business is to sell things, and to sell as many things as it jolly well can. You go and have a look at Timothy Taylor’s window.”
“I’ve seen it, sir. We never set out to compete——”
“Well, you will now. We don’t budget for old ladies in bath-chairs, but for the million, my man. I’m sending in a professional window-dresser to show you how to do things. You’ve got to get colour and glitter into a window.”
“I quite understand, sir.”
“All right. Keep the flower shop, or the toy shop in your mind’s eye. Grown-ups are just like kids. I suppose you’d put a hot water bottle in the window—naked?”
“The quality of our rubber, sir——”
Mr. Cragg laughed. He had to have his joke.
“Some—things—are nice—naked, Montgomery. Ha—ha! But not—hot water bottles. Brighten ’em up. Make ’em look like honeymoon affairs, rosy raptures, what! Imagination, man, imagination.”
Mr. Montgomery found a smile. He was eager to propitiate Mr. Cragg and hating himself for this eagerness.
“I see, sir, say it with flowers and bath-salts.”
“Exactly. You can’t catch the public with douche cans and tooth brushes.”
The suave gravity of the establishment shortened its skirts and attended to its complexion. Mr. Cragg imported a cash-desk and a girl-cashier. He was proposing to enlarge the shop, and to add a circulating library. Mr. Montgomery began to be very much worried, for at the age of fifty-three it was not comforting to feel that you were upon trial. Mr. Cragg loomed in the background, observing and criticizing, and always Mr. Montgomery was conscious of the glare of those blue eyes. There were occasions when Mr. Cragg would come forward and make himself polite to some customer and flatter her by causing a slight commotion.
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