The Good Comrade Part 36

THE GOING OF THE GOOD COMRADE

The cottage was very quiet. Although it was not late, both Captain Polkington and Johnny had gone to bed, the one to suit himself, the other to oblige Julia; she was in the kitchen now, as completely alone as she could wish. And certainly she did wish it; by the hard light in her eyes and the grim look about her mouth it was clear she was in no mood for company. She had got at the truth that evening, or most of it; the whole affair, with the exception of one point only, was quite plain to her; not by her father's wish or intention, but plain none the less. Subterfuge was an art the Polkingtons understood so well that it was exceedingly difficult to deceive them; Julia was the most difficult of them all to deceive, and the Captain was least clever at subterfuge; it was not wonderful, therefore, that she knew nearly all there was to know. Her heart was bitter within her, but against herself as well as against her father--after all he had but done what she had once thought to do. She had stayed her hand because the one who owned the daffodil was a child to her. Her father had had no such reason for staying his; the one who owned this daffodil was as cunning as he. He had done what he had, badly of course he could not do otherwise--a foredained failure such as he--bungled it hopelessly; but the idea was the same--a bad travesty of a bad idea, badly worked out.

For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust and contempt for the method. It was sin without genius, a puerile theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst.

The really good have little idea how such fool's knavery looks to the shadily clever; it brings home to them the wrongness of wrong, disgusting them with it and with themselves, as no preaching in the world can.

The moon had risen by this time; its first beams shone in at the unshuttered window. Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked out. There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one, was struggling through it, s.h.i.+ning with a soft, diffused light that made the landscape very unearthly.

It was wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable s.p.a.ce and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part nor lot with these things. "Thief, and daughter of a thief;" the words kept coming to her--and he, the man whom she never named to herself, had called her his good comrade! She bowed her face to her knees and sat motionless.

She had told him the truth about herself; she had not been ashamed; she would not have been even if she had taken the daffodil. But her father! She was ashamed for him with a bitter shame; ashamed of herself and him too, in thought and intention at least they were one, double-dealers. "Two grubby little people," as she had seen them long ago when they first stood in company with that man.

"But you don't know; you have not our temptations." She almost spoke aloud, unconsciously addressing the dewy silence as her mind called the man plainly before her. "You have never wanted money as I wanted it, or wanted things as father wanted them. Oh, you would despise the things he wanted--so do I; they are miserable and mean and sordid; you couldn't want whisky and comfort as he wanted them, but you can't think how he did! He would have justified it to himself too; you wouldn't, couldn't do that, while we--we could justify the devil if we tried. It is not right, any the more for that, I know it is not; it is dishonest and disgraceful, I know that as well as you; but I know how it came about and you--you can never understand!" Her voice sank away.

That was the great difference between herself and this man; it did not lie in what she did; that was a remedial matter--but rather in what she knew and felt. Things that did not exist for him were not only possible but sometimes almost necessary to her and hers. The gulf between them which had almost seemed bridged in the early summer was suddenly opened again by the day's work; opened beyond all pa.s.sage for her--thief, and daughter of a thief.

She sat on the doorstone looking out with unseeing eyes while the moon rose higher and the light grew so that the belts of shadow melted and the misty land was all silver, a world of dreams, very pure and still.

But neither her dreams nor her thoughts were pure and still; they were full of pa.s.sion and pain, longing and regret and shame, and yet an underlying hopeless desire that all could be known and understood.

At last she rose and went in. The pink woolly thing Captain Polkington had bought her lay on the kitchen-table, half out of its paper wrappings, a silly, useless thing. As her eyes fell on it they grew dim and hot while the colour crept up in her cheek. Her father had bought it for her; he had thought to please her with the foolish thing; it was like a child's or a fool's gift; she hated herself for hating it. But he had deceived himself into thinking he was generous to make it with his illgotten gains; he had salved conscience with it--it was a liar's gift, a self-deceiver's, a thief's. There was no kindness, no generosity in it, and she despised him--and he was her father!

She picked up the thing, paper and all, and crammed it into the dying fire. Then suddenly she burst into tears. The world was all wrong, justice was wrong and suffering was wrong and mankind wrong, all was wrong and inexplicable and pitiful too.

For a minute she sobbed chokingly, then she forced back the tears with the angry impatience of a hurt animal, and fetching a sheet of paper and pencil, sat down to write. He was her father and he was a man with a warped idea of honour, one whose self-respect had been taken away; it was too late to teach him, one could only safeguard him now.

Opportunity did not make thieves of such as her, but it did of such as him, and she had left the opportunity--or what he took to be it--open.

She would close it now for ever; she would be rid of the bulb, the cause of so much trouble. So she wrote hurriedly, a mere scrawl, while the pa.s.sion was still upon her, and her eyes were still dim with tears--

"Joost, if you have ever cared for me, take back the daffodil; take it back and don't ask me why."

The next morning Julia posted a small parcel, and at dinner time told Johnny and her father that she had sent the famous daffodil back to its native land.

Johnny looked up in mild surprise; he had been to the outhouse that morning to see if the bulbs were keeping dry. "Why," he said, "it's in the shed!"

"No, it is not," Julia answered, "and it never was. The one you think it is one of the large double pale ones; I told you at the time we put them away, but you have got mixed, I expect."

"Ah, yes, of course," Mr. Gillat said; "I remember now; of course, I remember."

The Captain swallowed something, but contrived to keep quiet, and only darted a glance at Johnny, the muddler, whose information could never be depended on.

When the meal was over and Mr. Gillat in the back kitchen, Captain Polkington spoke to his daughter.

"Julia," he said, moistening his dry lips, "that man Cross thought it was the streaked daffodil that I, that--"

His voice tailed away, but Julia only said, "Well?"

"I pledged by word of honour that it was the true one."

Again Julia said, "Well?"

"What is to be done?" the Captain asked.

She showed no signs of grasping his meaning or at all events of helping him out. He burst out irritably, "What on earth have you sold it for? Nothing would induce you to do so before when I asked you to; now, all at once you have taken a freak and parted with it without any consideration whatever. I never saw anything like women, so utterly irrational!"

"I have not sold it," Julia told him; "only sent it away."

"What for? It is perfectly absurd! I suppose you can get it back? You must get it back."

Julia asked "What for?" in her turn.

The Captain enlightened her. "There is Cross," he said; "I told him that was the daffodil, and it is not. Something must be done; we can't cheat him; we must send him the daffodil, or else refund the five pounds. We should have to do that--and we can't."

"No," Julia agreed grimly; "and we would not if we could."

"But what are you going to do?" her father asked.

"Nothing."

"Nothing! But I pledged my word! You don't understand, I am in honour bound."

Julia forbore to make and comment on her father's notion of honour; indeed, it struck her as almost pathetic in its grotesqueness and certainly very characteristic of the Polkingtons.

"Cross paid five pounds for the streaked daffodil," the Captain went on to say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible plainness, "and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I guaranteed the thing."

"He paid five pounds for a speculation," Julia said; "your guarantee was nothing, and though he may have asked for it, it was just a form and did not count one way or the other. He knew there was a chance that you had come by the true bulb somehow and so had it to sell; he risked five pounds on that--and lost it."

Captain Polkington looked bewildered. "He paid five pounds for the bulb," he persisted; "he said it was worth no more to him."

"Very likely not, if he could get it for that," Julia said; "but if he could have been sure of it, it would have been worth two hundred pounds."

"Two hundred!" Captain Polkington gasped, turning rather white.

Julia nodded. "With my guarantee," she said. "You had not got that; I suppose you let him see it when you wrote first so he knew that, though you might have the real bulb, you were not in a position to sell it well."

The Captain flushed as suddenly as he had paled. "You think he thought I had not come by it honestly, that I had no right in my daughter's affairs?"

"I don't see it matters what he thought," Julia answered, taking up the dishes. "He risked his money, and lost it, knowing very well what he did; he does not mind doing business in that way; I don't admire it myself, but I guessed he would do it when I first made his acquaintance."

"You ----" the Captain said.

"I have nothing to do with it, and shall have nothing."

"But the money must be paid; it is a debt of honour; I must clear myself."

Julia shrugged her shoulders.

"You do not wish me cleared?" her father demanded haughtily.

"Paying the five pounds would not clear you," she said; "neither that nor anything else. No, I am not going to pay it; I don't feel any obligation in the matter. If Mr. Cross goes in for those sort of dealings he must put up with the consequence, and I am afraid you must, too." And with that she went away.