It was an occupation that especially tended to abstraction of mind – the noting in detail of the little things of the street that he had forgotten with such completeness that they awakened only tardy responses in his memory now that his eyes rested on them again. The shape of a doorknocker, the grouping of an old chimney-stack, the crack, still there, in a flagstone – somewhere deep in the past these things had associations; but they lay very deep, and the disturbing of them gave Romarin a curious, desolate feeling, as of returning to things he had long out-grown.
But, as he continued to stare at the objects, the sluggish memories roused more and more; and for each bit of the old that reasserted itself scores of yards of the new seemed to disappear. New shop-frontages went; a wall, brought up flush where formerly a recess had been, became the recess once more; the intermittent electric sign at the street’s end, that wrote in green and crimson the name of a whiskey across a lamp-lit façade, ceased to worry his eyes; and the unfamiliar new front of the little restaurant he was passing and repassing took on its old and well-known aspect again.
Seven o’clock. He had thought, in dismissing his hansom, that it had been later. His appointment was not until a quarter past. But he decided against entering the restaurant and waiting inside; seeing who his guest was, it would be better to wait at the door. By the light of the restaurant window he corrected his watch, and then sauntered a few yards along the street, to where men were moving flats of scenery from a back door of the new theatre into a sort of tumbril. The theatre was twenty years old, but to Romarin it was ‘the new theatre’. There had been no theatre there in his day.
In his day! . . . His day had been twice twenty years before. Forty years before, that street, that quarter, had been bound up in his life. He had not, forty years ago, been the famous painter, honoured, decorated, taken by the arm by monarchs; he had been a student, wild and raw as any, with that tranquil and urbane philosophy that had made his success still in abeyance within him. As his eyes had rested on the doorknocker next to the restaurant a smile had crossed his face. How had that door-knocker come to be left by the old crowd that had wrenched off so many others? By what accident had that survived, to bring back all the old life now so oddly? He stood, again smiling, his hands folded on his stick. A Crown Prince had given him that stick, and had had it engraved, ‘To my Friend, Romarin’.
‘You oughtn’t to be here, you know,’ he said to the door-knocker. ‘If I didn’t get you, Marsden ought to have done so . . . ’
It was Marsden whom Romarin had come to meet – Marsden, of whom he had thought with such odd persistency lately. Marsden was the only man in the world between whom and himself lay as much as the shadow of an enmity; and even that faint shadow was now passing. One does not guard, for forty years, animosities that take their rise in quick outbreaks of the young blood; and, now that Romarin came to think of it, he hadn’t really hated Marsden for more than a few months. It had been within those very doors (Romarin was passing the restaurant again) that there had been that quick blow, about a girl, and the tables had been pushed hastily back, and he and Marsden had fought, while the other fellows had kept the waiters away . . . And Romarin was now sixty-four, and Marsden must be a year older, and the girl – who knew? – probably dead long ago . . . Yes, time heals these things, thank God; and Romarin had felt a genuine flush of pleasure when Marsden had accepted his invitation to dinner.
But – Romarin looked at his watch again – it was rather like Marsden to be late. Marsden had always been like that – had come and gone pretty much as he had pleased, regardless of inconvenience to others. But, doubtless, he had had to walk. If all reports were true, Marsden had not made very much of his life in the way of worldly success, and Romarin, sorry to hear it, had wished he could give him a leg-up. Even a good man cannot do much when the current of his life sets against him in a tide of persistent ill-luck, and Romarin, honoured and successful, yet knew that he had been one of the lucky ones . . .
But it was just like Marsden to be late, for all that.
At first Romarin did not recognise him when he turned the corner of the street and walked towards him. He hadn’t made up his mind beforehand exactly how he had expected Marsden to look, but he was conscious that he didn’t look it. It was not the short stubble of grey beard, so short that it seemed to hesitate between beard and unshavenness; it was not the figure nor carriage – clothes alter that, and the clothes of the man who was advancing to meet Romarin were, to put it bluntly, shabby; nor was it . . . but Romarin did not know what it was in the advancing figure that for the moment found no response in his memory. He was already within half a dozen yards of the men who were moving the scenery from the theatre into the tumbril, and one of the workmen put up his hand as the edge of a fresh ‘wing’ appeared . . .
But at the sound of his voice the same thing happened that had happened when the clock had struck seven. Romarin found himself suddenly expectant, attentive, and then again curiously satisfied in his memory. Marsden’s voice at least had not changed; it was as in the old days – a little envious, sarcastic, accepting lower interpretations somewhat willingly, somewhat grudging of better ones. It completed the taking back of Romarin that the chiming of the clock, the doorknocker, the grouping of the chimney-stack and the crack in the flagstone had begun.
‘Well, my distinguished Academician, my –’
Marsden’s voice sounded across the group of scene-shifters . . .
‘ ’Alf a mo, if you please, guv’nor,’ said another voice . . .
For a moment the painted ‘wing’ shut them off from one another.
* * *
In that moment Romarin’s accident befell him. If its essential nature is related in arbitrary terms, it is that there are no other terms to relate it in. It is a decoded cipher, which can be restored to its cryptic form as Romarin subsequently restored it.
* * *
As the painter took Marsden’s arm and entered the restaurant, he noticed that while the outside of the place still retained traces of the old, its inside was entirely new. Its cheap glittering wall-mirrors, that gave a false impression of the actual size of the place, its Loves and Shepherdesses painted in the style of the carts of the vendors of ice-cream, its hat-racks and its four-bladed propeller that set the air slowly in motion at the farther end of the room, might all have been matched in a dozen similar establishments within hail of a cab-whistle. Its gelatine-written menu-cards announced that one might dine there à la carte or table d’hôte for two shillings. Neither the cooking nor the service had influenced Romarin in his choice of a place to dine at.
He made a gesture to the waiter who advanced to help him on with his coat that Marsden was to be assisted first; but Marsden, with a grunted ‘All right’, had already helped himself. A glimpse of the interior of the coat told Romarin why Marsden kept waiters at arm’s-length. A little twinge of compunction took him that his own overcoat should be fur-collared and lined with silk.
They sat down at a corner table not far from the slowly moving four-bladed propeller.
‘Now we can talk,’ Romarin said. ‘I’m glad, glad to see you again, Marsden.’
It was a peculiarly vicious face that he saw, corrugated about the brows, and with stiff iron-grey hair untrimmed about the ears. It shocked Romarin a little; he had hardly looked to see certain things so accentuated by the passage of time. Romarin’s own brow was high and bald and benign, and his beard was like a broad shield of silver.
‘You’re glad, are you?’ said Marsden, as they sat down facing one another. ‘Well, I’m glad – to be seen with you. It’ll revive my credit a bit. There’s a fellow across there has recognised you already by your photographs in the papers . . . I assume I may . . . ?’
He made a little upward movement of his hand. It was a gin and bitters Marsden assumed he might have. Romarin ordered it; he himself did not take one. Marsden t
ossed down the apéritif at one gulp; then he reached for his roll, pulled it to pieces, and – Romarin remembered how in the old days Marsden had always eaten bread like that – began to throw bullets of bread into his mouth. Formerly this habit had irritated Romarin intensely; now . . . well, well, Life uses some of us better than others. Small blame to these if they throw up the struggle. Marsden, poor devil . . . but the arrival of the soup interrupted Romarin’s meditation. He consulted the violet-written card, ordered the succeeding courses, and the two men ate for some minutes in silence.
‘Well,’ said Romarin presently, pushing away his plate and wiping his white moustache, ‘are you still a Romanticist, Marsden?’
Marsden, who had tucked his napkin between two of the buttons of his frayed waistcoat, looked suspiciously across the glass with the dregs of the gin and bitters that he had half raised to his lips.
‘Eh?’ he said. ‘I say, Romarin, don’t let’s go grave-digging among memories merely for the sake of making conversation. Yours may be pleasant, but I’m not in the habit of wasting much time over mine. Might as well be making new ones . . . I’ll drink whiskey and soda.’
It was brought, a large one; and Marsden, nodding, took a deep gulp.
‘Health,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Romarin – instantly noting that the monosyllable, which matched the other’s in curtness, was not at all the reply he had intended. ‘Thank you – yours,’ he amended; and a short pause followed, in which fish was brought.
This was not what Romarin had hoped for. He had desired to be reconciled with Marsden, not merely to be allowed to pay for his dinner. Yet if Marsden did not wish to talk it was difficult not to defer to his wish. It was true that he had asked if Marsden was still a Romanticist largely for the sake of something to say; but Marsden’s prompt pointing out of this was not encouraging. Now that he came to think of it, he had never known precisely what Marsden had meant by the word ‘Romance’ he had so frequently taken into his mouth; he only knew that this creed of Romanticism, whatever it was, had been worn rather challengingly, a chip on the shoulder, to be knocked off at some peril or other. And it had seemed to Romarin a little futile in the violence with which it had been maintained . . . But that was neither here nor there. The point was, that the conversation had begun not very happily, and must be mended at once if at all. To mend it, Romarin leaned across the table.
‘Be as friendly as I am, Marsden,’ he said. ‘I think – pardon me – that if our positions were reversed, and I saw in you the sincere desire to help that I have, I’d take it in the right way.’
Again Marsden looked suspiciously at him. ‘To help? How to help?’ he demanded.
‘That’s what I should like you to tell me. But I suppose (for example) you still work?’
‘Oh, my work!’ Marsden made a little gesture of contempt. ‘Try again, Romarin.’
‘You don’t do any? . . . Come, I’m no bad friend to my friends, and you’ll find me – especially so.’
But Marsden put up his hand.
‘Not quite so quickly,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you mean by help first. Do you really mean that you want me to borrow money from you? That’s help as I understand it nowadays.’
‘Then you’ve changed,’ said Romarin – wondering, however, in his secret heart whether Marsden had changed very much in that respect after all.
Marsden gave a short honk of a laugh.
‘You didn’t suppose I hadn’t changed, did you?’ Then he leaned suddenly forward. ‘This is rather a mistake, Romarin – rather a mistake,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘This – our meeting again. Quite a mistake.’
Romarin sighed. ‘I had hoped not,’ he said.
Marsden leaned forward again, with another gesture Romarin remembered very well – dinner knife in hand, edge and palm upwards, punctuating and expounding with the point.
‘I tell you, it’s a mistake,’ he said, knife and hand balanced. ‘You can’t reopen things like this. You don’t really want to reopen them; you only want to reopen certain of them; you want to pick and choose among things, to approve and disapprove. There must have been somewhere or other something in me you didn’t altogether dislike – I can’t for the life of me think what it was, by the way; and you want to lay stress on that and to sink the rest. Well, you can’t. I won’t let you. I’ll not submit my life to you like that. If you want to go into things, all right; but it must be all or none. And I’d like another drink.’
He put the knife down with a little clap as Romarin beckoned to the waiter.
There was distress on Romarin’s face. He was not conscious of having adopted a superior attitude. But again he told himself that he must make allowances. Men who don’t come off in Life’s struggle are apt to be touchy, and he was, after all, the same old Marsden, the man with whom he desired to be at peace.
‘Are you quite fair to me?’ he asked presently, in a low voice.
Again the knife was taken up and its point advanced.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Marsden in a slightly raised voice; and he indicated with the knife the mirror at the end of the table. ‘You know you’ve done well, and I, to all appearances, haven’t; you can’t look at that glass and not know it. But I’ve followed the line of my development too, no less logically than you. My life’s been mine, and I’m not going to apologise for it to a single breathing creature. More, I’m proud of it. At least, there’s been singleness of intention about it. So I think I’m strictly fair in pointing that out when you talk about helping me.’
‘Perhaps so, perhaps so,’ Romarin agreed a little sadly. ‘It’s your tone more than anything else that makes things a little difficult. Believe me, I’ve no end in my mind except pure friendliness.’
‘No-o-o,’ said Marsden – a long ‘no’ that seemed to deliberate, to examine, and finally to admit. ‘No. I believe that. And you usually get what you set out for. Oh yes. I’ve watched your rise – I’ve made a point of watching it. It’s been a bit at a time, but you’ve got there. You’re that sort. It’s on your forehead – your destiny.’
Romarin smiled.
‘Hallo, that’s new, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your habit to talk much about destiny, if I remember rightly. Let me see; wasn’t this more your style – “will, passion, laughs-at-impossibilities and says”, et cetera – and so forth? Wasn’t that it? With always the suspicion not far away that you did things more from theoretical conviction than real impulse after all?’
A dispassionate observer would have judged that the words went somewhere near home. Marsden was scraping together with the edge of his knife the crumbs of his broken roll. He scraped them into a little square, and then trimmed the corners. Not until the little pile was shaped to his liking did he look surlily up.
‘Let it rest, Romarin,’ he said curtly. ‘Drop it,’ he added. ‘Let it alone. If I begin to talk like that, too, we shall only cut one another up. Clink glasses – there – and let it alone.’
Mechanically Romarin clinked; but his bald brow was perplexed.
‘ “Cut one another up?” ’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Let it alone.’
‘ “Cut one another up?” ’ he repeated once more. ‘You puzzle me entirely.’
‘Well, perhaps I’m altogether wrong. I only wanted to warn you that I’ve dared a good many things in my time. Now drop it.’
Romarin had fine brown eyes, under Oriental arched brows. Again they noted the singularly vicious look of the man opposite. They were full of mistrust and curiosity, and he stroked his silver beard.
‘Drop it?’ he said slowly . . . ‘No, let’s go on. I want to hear more of this.’
‘I’d much rather have another drink in peace and quietness . . . Waiter!’
Either leaned back in his chair, surveying the other.
‘You’re a per-verse devil still,’ was Romarin’s thought. Marsden’s, apparently, was of nothing but the whiskey and soda the waiter had gone to fetch.
* * *
Romarin was inclined to look askance at a man who could follow up a gin and bitters with three or four whiskeys and soda without turning a hair. It argued the seasoned cask. Marsden had bidden the waiter leave the bottle and the syphon on the table, and was already mixing himself another stiff peg.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘since you will have it so – to the old days.’
‘To the old days,’ said Romarin, watching him gulp it down.
‘Queer, looking back across all that time at ’em, isn’t it? How do you feel about it?’
‘In a mixed kind of way, I think; the usual thing: pleasure and regret mingled.’
‘Oh, you have regrets, have you?’
‘For certain things, yes. Not, let me say, my turn-up with you, Marsden,’ he laughed. ‘That’s why I chose the old place – ’ he gave a glance round at its glittering newness. ‘Do you happen to remember what all that was about? I’ve only the vaguest idea.’
Marsden gave him a long look. ‘That all?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I remember in a sort of way. That “Romantic” soap-bubble of yours was really at the bottom of it, I suspect. Tell me,’ he smiled, ‘did you really suppose Life could be lived on those mad lines you used to lay down?’
‘My life,’ said Marsden calmly, ‘has been.’
‘Not literally.’
‘Literally.’
‘You mean to say that you haven’t outgrown that?’
‘I hope not.’
Romarin had thrown up his handsome head. ‘Well, well!’ he murmured incredulously.
The Dead of Night Page 28