Part 11

His _co_-trustee--well, not exactly, now--possibly it might have been better for that gentleman, he thought with a bitter sneer, if he were still so. Over this Trust he had come to grief, over this Trust that man--his co-trustee--had shown him no mercy, no saving grace, not even the grace of a two days’ silence. Hard measure, hardly dealt, ‘black sheep--black sheep’--that was all. Well, things square themselves: over this Trust the black sheep would be quits; the documents were _most_ important; the bottom of the Serpentine was quite an admirable place for them.

What construction the law would put upon their disappearance, really--he reflected with a grim smile--he couldn’t say; his Uncle would doubtless know; he knew the consequences of everything so accurately. The memory of that fourteen months in the dim world pressed like lead upon his brain; the revengeful Southern blood leaped in his veins, and he ground his teeth and laughed aloud. He hoped it might be held _criminal_ negligence, the documents were _so_ important; it was, moreover, quite unfortunate for his co-trustee that it was at all events indirectly to the latter’s interest that they should cease to exist. This would be better than speaking his mind. He leapt a paling and looked about him for stones suitable to weld the canvas covering and its contents to their new abode. Let him think; there were also notes and gold, _these_ most certainly, whatever else happened, _that man_ would have to restore, therefore by taking them he robbed nobody.

‘By God! What I take from him is my due; he has taken everything from me; shall there be no exchange?’

‘The notes may go,’ he thought, ‘they’re risky. I’ll give society no more chances, but the gold will give me a fresh start. Uncle Stephen! Uncle Stephen! this isn’t your day out, it’s mine, and by heaven I’ll make the most of it.’

Now, in this matter, as he said when he told me of it afterwards, he acted with conviction; there was no struggle in him as to the right or the wrong of the thing--it was so plain--no single qualm of hesitation or regret tempered the seething delight in the coming revenge, only he was forced to stamp his feet and grind his teeth to get back a clear power of thinking to his whirling brain.

He filled the bag with scientific care, first taking out the roll of gold; then tying the strings, he leapt back across the paling. The nearest way to the Serpentine led him across the path where the packet had been dropped. As he crossed it he saw a figure approaching slowly through the dusk, from the direction in which his Uncle had disappeared; he shrank behind a tree and watched. If it should be that old shark, and he were seen--well--a blow neatly given secured the necessary amount of silence, and did no great harm.

‘He’s an old man, and I don’t want to hurt him, but by heaven I won’t be stopped--.’

The figure advanced very slowly, and Eugene watched it anxiously in the fast waning light. It seemed to move forwards down the path a few feet with a jerk, and then to stop suddenly. It was bent almost double, so that no glimpse of the face could be seen, but a curious, indistinct, shrill murmur like the ‘goo-gooing’ of a dumb man came down to Eugene’s ears.

‘What the devil is it?’ he thought, and as if for answer, one intelligible word ‘Trust’ came in a half-scream through the chill evening air, and then the ‘goo-gooing’ began again. Suddenly, when only some few yards away, the figure straightened itself as if animated by a spring, and Eugene saw his Uncle.

The right arm hung stiffened at his side, the left gesticulated wildly, pointing down the path and then to his mouth, out of one side of which came that weird and curious mumbling. Eugene shuddered; whatever else, there could be no _fear_ of this pitiable being--he stepped from behind the tree and moved forward.

The figure continued to advance, dragging itself painfully along--as it seemed the left leg alone moving--and the eyes fixed on Eugene’s advancing form had an intense look of agonised appeal. There was no recognition in them, only an unasked question; the mouth mumbled, the man’s left hand alternately pointed down the path, and clutched the breast of his overcoat. It seemed to Eugene that the piteous searching in the eyes must pierce the covering which his buttoned coat formed over the lost bag, and with an involuntary movement he threw it open. The figure staggered, and with an inarticulate cry thrust out its hand for the bag. Eugene drew back--he must have time to think. His Uncle, a dim look of recognition struggling through the film of agonised entreaty, crouched almost double again before him. The drizzling mist shrouded the rest of the world, and these two figures stood alone.

A thousand thoughts and feelings surged in the nephew’s mind. Gratified revenge, reluctant pity, and a growing railing at the fates. In a whirl of disgust he found that the thing he had in his heart to do was no longer in his power. Why had he lingered that minute to gloat over his revenge? Why turned his head as he was taking his road _to_ that revenge? A minute sooner, this miserable, crouching, smitten figure, with its dumb, despairing look, and its dumb, despairing voice, would not have been cringing in supplication before him. What had befallen the man, hale a few minutes before, did not trouble him; he was bitterly raging at the failure of his revenge, and disgusted with the stroke of fate which had caused it, tearing from him his fresh start in life.

‘If I could,’--he swung the bag doubtfully in his hand, and felt the gold in his pocket; ‘_if_ I only could,--but I can’t, and there’s an end of it. The old brute--he’s down, and I _can’t_ kick him.’ All feeling of pity for the miserable object before him was swallowed up in an amazing regret. He even cursed the training which caused him to feel the impossibility of that kick.

‘A good many of my late friends would have been on in this piece,’ he thought bitterly, ‘and glad of the chance.’

He plucked the bag from under his coat, and opening it, dropped the stones out one by one.

‘I suppose this’ll have to go back too,’ he muttered, and replaced the gold, with a sigh of disgust. The stricken man’s eyes gleamed, and he put out his left hand feebly. Eugene put the bag into it, but the grasp was uncertain, and it fell again to the ground. The shock of seemingly losing it a second time was too much for the disordered intellect, and in a dead swoon, Stephen Rattray fell stiffly forward on to his nephew’s shoulder.

Eugene laid him on the ground, carefully buttoned the packet into the inner pocket of his Uncle’s coat, and then drew himself away to think. He couldn’t get a clear grasp of things with that hated figure touching his. Leaning apart against a tree, and looking down at the helpless form, he dealt grimly and despitefully in his heart with the feeling that troubled him; let it stand for want of better phrasing at ‘common humanity.’ He railed at it; he even took some steps of retreat; he reasoned with himself.

This man, when a nod of the head might have saved, had reduced him to the level of the brute beasts--what duty then lay upon him to act but upon that level? This man lay there, dependent on him for a chance perhaps of further life. Yes, but there had been a bitter hour, when their positions had been reversed, and the closing of that hour, with its depths of horror and degradation, its blotting out of all hope and life, was vividly before him. This, too, was an old man, at the end of things, and he had been a young man at the beginning--that was but an aggravation. As things now were he had done him no wrong, taken no revenge; the packet was found; it was even himself that had restored it: the stroke had come through a visitation of the fates, through no dealing of his.

He searched, and he failed to see any reason why he should lift a finger to give back life to this hulk. It was adding insult to injury indeed to expect him to carry his enemy perhaps a mile in search of help. Leave him here?--and get help?--he would certainly die before it came. No, either all or nothing; and it should be, by heaven, _nothing_!

He turned on his heel,--and straightway it came upon him that these things were not done. Just as impossible as kicking a fellow on the ground, or shooting an unarmed man.

‘By Gad! the other thing’s got to be done! When I’ve lived a few years in Borneo or some such place, I shall know better how to deal with you, my friend; in the meantime--’ he lifted him, and with wearily slow steps bore him disgustedly in the direction of the Alexandria Gate.

Now that he had begun, he meant to see it through; and with many a halt, for his Uncle was a heavy man, he got him through the fast closing fog to the crossing of Rotten Row.

‘I don’t want any fuss,’ he thought, as he put his burden down and paused for breath; ‘can’t afford to have it advertised that I played the good Samaritan. Evening paper paragraphs--“The Admirable Convict,” “Rattray Repents,” “Remarkable occurrence in connection with a scandal in high life, showing the beneficial influences of our prison system--Nephew and Uncle”--Good Lord!’

He wiped his brow, and propping his Uncle’s motionless form against a rail, went in search of a cab. He found a four-wheeler at the gate of the Park, and drove back in it.

‘Now, my friend, bear a hand,’ he said to the driver; ‘this gentleman’s had a stroke; we must get him home at once. Double fare, and look sharp--it’s the only chance.’ He gave the astonished man the address, and between them they lifted the helpless form into the cab.

When they drew up at the house, Eugene leapt out and rang the bell.

‘Hope it’s Ashton,’ he thought. The old butler, a man who had known him from his youth up, opened the door, and recoiled in blank astonishment when he saw who was there.

‘Master Eugene!’ he said.

‘All right, Ashton, don’t make a row. Look here, my Uncle’s had a stroke; he’s in that cab; I came across him in the Park walking home; better get him in-doors at once. And look here, Ashton,’ he lifted his hat significantly, and said grimly, ‘you know all about me, I suppose; well, see that my name doesn’t come out in this business.’

He held out his hand to the old man.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the butler, taking it, ‘always proud to take your hand, sir, believe me. I’ll make it all right,--say I picked him up myself, if necessary; you can depend on me, sir.’

‘Thank you, Ashton,’ said Eugene; ‘and look here, give that chap a sovereign,’ he pointed to the cabman waiting at the door, ‘and lend me another, there’s a good fellow.’

The butler pulled two sovereigns out of his pocket.

‘Proud to be of any use to you, sir,’ he said.

Eugene, with a choke in his throat, helped them carry his Uncle into the house; and as the door closed, turned to the cabman.

‘You haven’t earned that sovereign yet,’ he said, handing him one, ‘it’s all right, but you’ve got to shut your head--d’ye see? Now go on to the docks, and drive like Hell.’

He sat back in the cab that rattled eastwards through the fog, and he ground his teeth.

‘That’s over; and the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I’d do it again,’ he said between them; and with those words, Eugene Rattray disappeared from among his fellows, and the place thereof knew him no more.

THE DEMI-GODS

[Music]

PROLOGUE

Into the garden of rest had come trouble and pain, for the end was at hand.

He sat in the sun, on the stone wall that divided the garden from the great lake, and swung his legs, silently gazing with his soul in his eyes, and SHE, in a long wicker chair, sideways to him, shaded her face with her hand and looked down. The soul went out of him, and hovering over the waving hair, and the dimple at the corner of the drooping mouth, peeped through the fingers of the dear hand at its true and only resting places--those brown pools over whose depths lay the clouding shadow of the morrow.

_But_ another twenty-four hours, and then back to prison--to prison--to prison. The thought beat through both hearts, with the level monotony of a tolling for the dead, for the glorious dead, for the month past of a sweet and lovely life together in the garden of rest.

To-morrow was the ending of all life and light, bringing with it for her a separation from the true self, a return behind the triumphant car of a mocking and over-riding fate, to a caged existence, a loathed companionship, a weary, weary beating of the breast against the bars; for him--a legion of mind-devils, torturing, twisting, lying in wait at every turn and corner of life, ever alert and ever cruel, and a dreary, craving ache.

To-morrow was the farewell of their love, perhaps till the grave--who knows? their great and burning love, that had given all and taken all, that had cared with an exceeding tenderness for every thought and movement, that was old, yet had not tired, that had known and understood, having no depths left to sound, no heights to win; that tree which, planted in the moist, cool earth of comradeship, had grown steadily and grandly till it rejoiced in the sweet foliage of a perfect trust, and the glorious flowers of passion. The day looked on, and laughed in slanting rays of heat and light, and presently on a snow-cooled breeze wafted between two towering heights came a chime of far-off Italian bells.

She looked up into his face, and smiled.

‘Shall I sing my Love a little song?’ she said. And as he knelt beside her, she held his head in her two hands, and sang shyly into his ear, in time to the drifting cadence.

* * * * *

Out of his eyes fled hunger and pain, and he leaned his forehead on her breast, and so they drank of the merciful well of peace. The chime floated faintly past them with a note of invitation.

* * * * *

‘The bells have got into my head, darling. I’m mad, I think,--I can’t feel anything--Child of mine, come for a drive, and find the bells; we’ll get drunk on sun, and air, and sky, and mountains, and--kisses, and forget there is a to-morrow and an ending.’

He stood up straight and strong, and drew her to him.

So they waited, and the chime floated once more past, while they looked life again into each other’s eyes.

Then, with his arm around her shoulder, and hers drawn round his waist, they walked through the garden of rest to the gate where the angel of Publicity threatened such proceeding with a flaming and respectable sword.

* * * * *

_The Meditations of Pietro._

‘The sun is very yellow and hot here by the side of the water, and the flies are like to a hundred devils on my good Nicolas--Ugh! Pighead, what good to shake thy bell! It is not good sitting here, for I have only money for one--two--three--yes, for four drinkings, in my pouch, and the last a little one, and the day is hot. Eleven of the clock, for there begins the morning tolling from San Felice. Where be these fools of strangers? There be many things to see, also my chariot is very strong, and beautiful exceedingly, and my good grey Nicolas, is he not a most willing puller, being still young and lusty? Yet, forsooth, because it is the Sabbath, they will not stir forth--these fools--but sit at home in sad garments, and eat, thinking to make the day holy.

‘Ai! What are these? Can it be they are coming? Ai--Ai--_si signore, si, si, signora, si, si, si.... This_ is several drinkings; moreover they appear to be English. A very curious peoples, the English--for some reason known only of God they speak to me in French, as if I, Pietro, understood French, forsooth. However, it is all the same thing; the _he_ waves his hat to the West, and says--“_San Felice_;”--now San Felice is in the South;--the _she_ says “_Campenella_,” and does not wave anythings,--decidedly she is the more intelligent; and I, Pietro, the most intelligent of all, for I nod my top once, twice, three times strongly, and say “San Felice, si, si,” and beat my grey, and lo! we are off, and they have forgotten to bargain. Ho! A very curious peoples!

‘And yet, now that I regard, perhaps I have done to the English an injustice. _These_ are no doubt mad, they have a very queer look, their eyes are all shiny, and they sit very close together, though even I, Pietro, am hot, sitting up here alone on the head of my chariot.

‘Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, sighs my old friend the bell, as Nicolas shakes his ears at the road; _si, si, amico_, it is long, and it is white, and--pouff--dusty, and in places even steep.

‘Yes, now I know for a certainty they are mad; it is not for them the road either too long or too steep or too dusty; they only sit like coo-doves, and the _he_ sighs, and every now and then he starts upon his feet, greatly endangering his neck, and points with his fist, and says, “Look, Carissima, how grand, how _beaut_iful!”

‘I think he talks foolishness, for it is always the same whether we come to a pool or a mountain, or even where the trees grow thickly, or there are flowers on the ground. And then what does the _she_ but uprise also, ah! She is “bella,” the _she_! And puts her hand on his shoulder, ah! The lucky shoulder! and before she has looked, Nicolas gives a big pull so that both sit down on a sudden, upon their ends, and laugh greatly.

‘They laugh always, these--when they do not sigh, and when they sigh sometimes there comes also to my ears another sound, very gentle, like the end of a good drinking. Can they already, then, be thirsty? Why, even I, Pietro, am not yet thirsty, but soon shall be.

‘Yet no, when I turn, saying ‘_Il Signore--ha parlato_?’’ is he not always tying on his boot--very curious must be the boots of the English--and she hooking her glove, and both laughing, yes, always laughing? nor can I see any bottle.

‘Overhead the sky is quite blue, and the sun very yellow, and there be no shade, but the _he_ throws off his hat, and says, “Grand, glorious, ’twill make to grow the hair, Carissima;” this he says many times, so that I learn it by stomach, and the _she_ strokes his top, where the hairs did no longer kiss one another, and purrs--all these things I know through the back of my hat where the brim is broad, and a man half-turning can see with the corner of his eyeball.

‘Now, in a good time we come to where the valley runs away down from the road, and Nicolas, as is the habit of this pighead, when the sun is hot even to the winking of his master’s eye, walks over till he hangs above the valley by the hairs of his tail and the strength of my right arms, and presently with much thanking of God and cursings of that pighead, I pull him up again; at the which what does the _he_ but cast himself back laughing, and say, “Do it again, do it again,” which I am supposing is of great wit, for the _she_ laughs also greatly.

‘Do they think, perchance, that I, Pietro, cannot drive? Chickenheads! it is now of a surety they are mad--I, Pietro, who am a celebration! I too laugh, and so we laugh all three, until we come to where there is good drinking.

‘“_Goutez un petit peu_,” I speak to them in that fool’s tongue--this much knowing, and that quite enough.

‘“_Si, si_,” they say, and nod their tops, yet do not descend. Certainly they have drunk upon the voyage, for the day is hot. Well, well, I, Pietro, am thirsty and so inwards; Nicolas also will drink, but not of the Asti that bubbles sweet and yellow. Ai! Good! Very good drinking; is it not so, my pighead? And what of these? they have not drunk, yet are their eyes shinier than even before, and surely they are _very_ near together.

‘So we go down into the valley from whence on both hands the big hills roll up their limbs, and I, coming to that place where it is of the custom to show where the man from the market was bereft of his goods, and where his body was cut off, turn on my head, and tell them in usual words the story.

‘Chickenheads! never yet did any understand, and my Italian is very pure, very--always in great estimation.

‘These only say, “_Si, si!_” and presently many times: “How far San Felice? How far? How far?” What shall this mean? I know not, yet surely I must to tell them--being of great intelligence, so I stop my Nicolas and speak of the country and how many peoples live in the town, and the name of the mayor; and then, for greater satisfaction of these, because they will pay largely--turning a little to think the better, and outspit once, twice, very skilfully on two hairs of Nicolas’ back-tail--again to them, concerning the other road, and the number of horses my master has, and how I, Pietro, have a wife (whom God plant!) and several offsprings.

‘But these only laugh, and point in many ways, having no intelligence, and say, “How far, how far? More?”

‘Chickenheads! and do? What to do? But nod my top, and on again where the brown water runs swiftly down from the hills towards its Mother, the great blue lake. Ai--so it runs busily from the hills where the snow cloak lies shining in the sun. And now these are quiet, quiet as the deep Mother herself, or as the tall Father with his white head. Perhaps they are frightened; well, _I_ was frightened once; that was many years ago, being but a whipperling; for the Mother is very blue and still and deep, and the Father is of a giantness strong as the death itself.

‘So the little brown Son runs over between them, and carries messages and greeting.

‘Yet not always, for in the great heat comes the Fiery One and licks him up for a space, and tears off the Father’s white hairs that get thinner and thinner with every golden dawning. Surely the _he_ with the hat, upon which he sits, should regard and understand of this, taking warning lest the same befall; yet perchance there is a difference, his hair being of a fair mud, as is that of all the English.