‘And as you lost it,’ said Jessie, ‘you must pay for it.’
‘That doesn’t follow! You can’t say I was negligent. You can’t prove negligence.’
‘I don’t need to,’ said Jessie. ‘It was at your request, in the first place, that I let you have the book, and you gave me a receipt for it, and signed across a twopenny stamp. And now I’ve come to ask you either to return it forthwith … ’
‘And that, as you know perfectly well, I can’t do!’
‘Then pay me for what you’ve lost! You yourself put a price on it, and for the sake of family feeling and to preserve peace between us, I’ll agree to accept your valuation. Give me a cheque for ten thousand pounds, and I’ll say no more about it.’
According to travellers, one of the strangest and most frightening noises in the world is heard on the banks of the Orinoco when their vast and dismal vegetation is shaken by earthquake. All the riverine fauna, curious in shape and secret in their habit, leave in panic fear the troubled waters and seek refuge in the depths of the forest. Even the phlegmatic and densely armoured crocodile heaves himself ashore, frantic to escape the boiling current, and from its silent throat — silent throughout its life till now — comes the hoarse and fearful bellow of a creature trying, but without knowing how, to express its inmost agony.
Such a protest came from Max Arbuthnot’s lips when his sister Jessie asked him for £10,000.
In the room below Hoyle and young Atkinson looked up in alarm, for not only had the tormented voice echoed from storey to storey, but the ceiling had been shaken, as if by a minor seismic shock, when Mr Lintot, grasping his chair by the arms, jumped in fright and, in his galvanic grip, made the chair rise and fall with him. Even Jessie, used as she was to her brother’s fits of temper, had momentarily quailed, and now sat with her red-veined eyelids fluttering and her breath coming a little too quickly for comfort. But her spirit was undaunted and she said again, ‘Ten thousand pounds, and remember it’s your own valuation that I’m accepting.’
‘That is a relevant statement,’ said Mr Lintot, bravely denying his fear, ‘and I have with me a list of some eight or nine people in whose hearing you have pledged your judgment that the book was worth that sum. Would you like to see my list?’
‘No,’ said Max, who now dully remembered that he had spoken too often and too loosely of his pride in having handled those eight leaves of unforgivable genius.
‘Mrs Youghal and I,’ said Mr Lintot, ‘are really anxious to save you trouble and unpleasant publicity. You know, as well as I do, the present tendency of the newspapers to exaggerate and “play-up,” as some people say, any dispute of a domestic sort that involves a person as well known as you are. It is a tendency that I deplore as deeply, I am sure, as you do, and that is why we are so anxious — Mrs Youghal and I — to avoid the necessity of bringing suit against you. For it would indeed become a necessity, if Mrs Youghal is to live for the rest of her life in reasonable comfort. Mr Youghal’s estate, apart from the book, so unfortunately lost, was a very small one, and Mrs Youghal’s own income is by no means large.’
‘It would be larger if Max hadn’t cheated me out of a valuable picture,’ said Jessie.
‘That I never did!’ shouted Max. ‘That was a lie from the beginning, and though you repeat it forty times it’ll remain a lie till the end.’
‘It is possible,’ said Mr Lintot, ‘that Mrs Youghal’s version of what happened, on that occasion, would not be generally accepted. But the mere suggestion — if this matter became public, I mean — the mere suggestion, even if you could disprove it, that in the sharing of your inheritance you had taken advantage of your superior knowledge of pictures and painters —it would create a prejudice against you, wouldn’t it? And if such a prejudice were established, it would be to the advantage of my client in her present claim, and — whether fairly or unfairly — to your disadvantage.’
‘You owe me ten thousand pounds,’ said Jessie. ‘Are you going to pay it freely, or wait till you’re forced to?’
‘In law,’ said Max, ‘you haven’t a leg to stand on!’
‘You’ve humiliated me all my life,’ said Jessie, ‘and now you’ve lost the only thing of value that poor Charlie was able to leave me. And for that I can’t forgive you! Either you pay me the value you put on it, or I’ll bring you into open court and sue you for it. I don’t know what kind of court it would be, that’s Mr Lintot’s business, not mine: but this I do know, that if all is made public, I have less to lose than you. I have nothing to lose! Now that Charlie has been taken from me, there’s nothing at all except the knowledge that he out of love did what he could to provide for me in my widowhood. And that knowledge, and that provision — I tell you again, Max — I will not give up!’
She sat upright in her chair, and under their reddish lids her pale, weak eyes shone with an implacable spirit. On the wall behind her, now handsomely enclosed in an ornately gilded Victorian frame, hung Landseer’s Highland Piper, and looking from her to the picture Max saw in Jessie that abomination of realism which is the enemy of fine art. There she sat — his own sister — an obstacle to pleasure. Neither force nor guile could budge her, but she could be bought. That was the weakness of realism: it could be bought. But at what a price!
£10,000 … But in her position he would have asked as much, for he was vulnerable and she was not. £10,000 …
Now the pale, weak eyes that stared at him clouded with tears, and Jessie, rising from her chair, came to his broad table and beat upon it with her small, gloved hands. ‘That was what Charlie left me,’ she cried, ‘and you’re not going to rob me of it! You always despised him, but now you’re going to respect him! You were the favoured one of the family, but favour doesn’t last for ever, and I’m going to have my right, or I’ll ruin you in public esteem — which you value, and for which I care nothing!’
He had always been a little frightened of her — frightened of her small, ungainly singularity, of her indifference to what he thought important — and now, in her aspect of mingled grief and terrible resolution, she overwhelmed him with a fear, not only of her, but of the calamity in which she would be the storm-centre. He retreated from her tears and anger, and said nervously, ‘Now, now, there’s no need to excite yourself. I’ll give you what you want, if you want it as much as that. I didn’t realize you felt so deeply about it, but as you do — oh, go and sit down, Jessie! Go and sit down, and I’ll give you a cheque for it. Ten thousand pounds, my God!’
He pulled out a drawer in his table, and took from it a long, cardboard-bound cheque-book. He opened it and saw, still attached to its counterfoil, the cheque he had drawn, some weeks ago, in favour of The Hector Macrae Memorial Theatre Fund, that was to become payable when other subscriptions and receipts amounted to £20,000. A cheque for £10,000. And that, he thought, was a liability he could ignore for a long time to come. Apart from his own putative contribution and the sum received for an option on The Wheelbarrow, only £1427 had, until now, been subscribed. It was a remote and tenuous liability. But it was, of course, a liability he had accepted, and if he were to give this cheque to Jessie, and not to the Fund, his sense of loss (though not his actual loss) would be much reduced. The money that the cheque represented was not exactly his own; and to pay Jessie with someone else’s money would be a very comforting escape from the pain he felt in giving her a sum so grossly extortionate.
His spirits rose a little, and taking a ruler he carefully crossed out The Hector Macrae Memorial Theatre Fund, initialled the erasure, and wrote above it, Mrs Jessie Youghal.
‘There you are,’ he said and handed the cheque to his sister.
She looked at it suspiciously, and gave it to Mr Lintot. ‘Is that all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, though a little reluctantly, ‘yes, it seems perfectly acceptable to me.’ And returning it to Jessie he sat pulling the lobe of his right ear — which was appreciably longer than its fellow on the other side of his head — and looked
at Max with deep respect. It was seldom that he met a man who could produce, already inscribed, a cheque for £10,000.
‘Am I taking what you meant to give to this Theatre Fund?’ asked Jessie.
‘No, no,’ said Max, now happily in control of the situation, ‘it’s only a question of priorities. There’s no hurry about subscribing to the Fund. No hurry at all! But you wanted your money at once, and you’ve got it. You’ve got it, Jessie, and always remember this: it was freely given!’
Jessie, on the point of replying, thought better of it, and said nothing. She folded the cheque, put it in her purse, and the purse in her bag. Max rose and opened the door. Jessie followed him obediently, and at the door said meekly, ‘Thank you, Max.’ Mr Lintot gravely shook hands and said, ‘It has been a privilege to meet you, Mr Arbuthnot.’
They were half-way down the stairs when Max stopped them, for a moment, with a timely reminder. ‘Don’t forget,’ he said, ‘that a sum like that requires careful consideration about how to invest it. And any time you want it, Jessie, I’m more than willing to give you my advice.’
He went back to his room feeling satisfied and benign, and sitting down behind his table looked with unfailing pleasure at Landseer’s Piper in his golden frame. There was nothing now to spoil his enjoyment of it. He had paid his debt, and poor Jessie was the happier in consequence. A man has to do something for his own kith and kin, he thought. £10,000 was a lot of money — but ‘Damn it!’ he said aloud, ‘I’ve got another ten thousand, and I paid Jessie out of my liabilities, which is more than most people can do.’
But perhaps, he thought, I should do something to encourage that good chap, that theatre-manager, who must be feeling a bit despondent about his appeal. I’d better send him a little baksheesh, something to tide him along and let him feel he’s gaining ground. And I’ll tell him, of course, that it won’t discount my real contribution when it falls due. — Which won’t be for a long time yet. I’ll give him, now what shall I give him?
He wrote a short letter to the manager and enclosed a cheque for £100. This new disbursement convinced him that his dominant motive in life was, and always had been, charity; and he remembered his daughter Jane.
Jane deserved a present, if anyone did. Grass-widowed by the politics of a world nonsensically divided, Jane had not been left alone, but left in servitude to her husband’s family. His old, tired mother had fallen and broken her leg. His sister — the unmarried one — was recovering from a nervous breakdown. So Jane had had to go and look after a stricken household somewhere in Hampshire. Jane should have a present too.
He felt, in his waistcoat pocket, the miniature by Cosway that he had lately bought. It was a pretty thing, and valuable. She would like that, and if he gave it away it might prevent him from starting a collection. It might, in the long run, be an economy to give it away. And Jane would appreciate it.
He rang for Hoyle, and handed him the miniature. ‘Have it properly packed,’ he said, ‘and send it to Mrs Telfer. Registered, of course. Here’s her address.’
He sat back in his chair, and taking a cigar from the box on the table, lighted it carefully and looked at the Highland Piper through a puff of blue smoke.
‘Myself as a boy,’ he said. ‘Trying a tune on the chanter. Shy and irresolute. I’ve come a long way since then, and with normal luck there’s ten years still to go.’
Lisbon, he thought. A lifetime’s devotion to the wine of Portugal has been rewarded, and the week after next I’ll be dancing with Paula at Estoril. ‘And I’ve paid for my pleasure!’ he exclaimed. ‘Paid handsomely, and all round the clock!’
It’s a life worth living, he thought, if you’ve a good digestion and a bad memory. I remember nothing but my fortunate hours. Them, and the times I’ve given happiness to others. £10,000 to Jessie, by God!
Leaning back in his chair, he cocked his feet on the table and began to sing:
‘Oh Lord of Heav’n, and earth, and sea,
To Thee all praise and glory be:
How shall we show our love to Thee,
Who givest all?
For peaceful homes, and healthful days,
For all the blessings earth displays,
We owe Thee thankfulness and praise,
Who givest all.’
His voice grew stronger as the joyful noise of the hymn enlarged his confidence, and in the room below Hoyle and young Atkinson looked up to the ceiling with some foreboding when they heard his stentorian tones resound in the triumphal assertion:
‘Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee,
Repaid a thousandfold will be —-
Then gladly will we give to Thee,
Who givest all!’
1 The Five Sisters of Kintail: a cluster of mountains in Wester Ross.
1 A down cod is a feather pillow.
1 Dwine means to dwindle or decay.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1959 Eric Linklater
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ISBN: 9781448204410
eISBN: 9781448203826
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The Merry Muse Page 27
