Grey Roses Part 8

At last he struck his final chord, and rose from the piano. Then he turned to me and said, composedly enough, 'Well, I'm ready.' He, apparently, had in some measure pulled himself together. In the street he took my arm. 'Let's walk in this direction,' he said, leading off, 'towards the Christian quarter of the town.' And in a moment he went on: 'This has been an odd meeting. What brings you to Bordeaux?'

I explained that I was on my way to Biarritz, stopping for the night between two trains.

'Then it's all the more surprising that you should have stumbled into the Bra.s.serie des Quatre Vents. You've altered very slightly. The world wags well with you? You look prosperous.'

I cried out some incoherent protest. Afterwards I said, 'You know what I want to hear. What does this mean?'

He laughed nervously. 'Oh, the meaning's clear enough. It speaks for itself.'

'I don't understand,' said I.

'I'm pianist to the Bra.s.serie des Quatre Vents. You saw me in the discharge of my duties.'

'I don't understand,' I repeated helplessly.

'And yet the inference is plain. What could have brought a man to such a pa.s.s save drink or evil courses?'

'Oh, don't trifle,' I implored him.

'I'm not trifling. That's the worst of it. For I don't drink, and I'm not conscious of having pursued any especially evil courses.'

'Well?' I questioned. 'Well?'

'The fact of the matter simply is that I'm what they call a failure. I never came off.'

'I don't understand,' I repeated for a third time.

'No more do I, if you come to that. It's the will of Heaven, I suppose. Anyhow, it can't puzzle you more than it puzzles me. It seems contrary to the whole logic of circ.u.mstances, but it's the fact'

Thus far he had spoken listlessly, with a sort of bitter levity, an affectation of indifference; but after a little silence his mood appeared to change. His hand upon my arm tightened its grasp, and he began to speak rapidly, feelingly.

'Do you realise that it is nearly fifteen years since we have seen each other? The history of those fifteen years, so far as I am concerned, has been the history of a single uninterrupted _deveine_--one continuous run of ill-luck, against every probability of the game, against every effort I could make to play my cards effectively. When I started out, one might have thought, I had the best of chances. I had studied hard; I worked hard. I surely had as much general intelligence, as much special knowledge, as much apparent talent, as my compet.i.tors. And the stuff I produced seemed good to you, to my friends, and not wholly bad to me. It was musicianly, it was melodious, it was sincere; the critics all praised it; but--it never took on! The public wouldn't have it. What did it lack? I don't know. At last I couldn't even get it published--invisible ink! And I had a wife to support.'

He paused for a minute; then: 'You see,' he said, 'we made the mistake, when we were young, of believing, against wise authority, that it _was_ in mortals to command success, that he could command it who deserved it. We believed that the race would be to the swift, the battle to the strong; that a man was responsible for his own destiny, that he'd get what he merited. We believed that honest labour couldn't go unrewarded. An immense mistake. Success is an affair of temperament, like faith, like love, like the colour of your hair. Oh, the old story about industry, resolution, and no vices! I was industrious, I was resolute, and I had no more than the common share of vices. But I had the unsuccessful temperament; and here I am. If my motives had been ign.o.ble--but I can't see that they were. I wanted to earn a decent living; I wanted to justify my existence by doing something worthy of the world's acceptance. But the stars in their courses fought against me. I have tried hard to convince myself that the music I wrote was rubbish. It had its faults, no doubt. It wasn't great, it wasn't epoch-making. But, as music goes nowadays, it was jolly good. It was a jolly sight better than the average.'

'Oh, that is certain, that is certain,' I exclaimed, as he paused again.

'Well, anyhow, it didn't sell, and at last I couldn't even get it published. So then I tried to find other work. I tried everything. I tried to teach--harmony and the theory of composition. I couldn't get pupils. So few people want to study that sort of thing, and there were good masters already in the place. If I had known how to play, indeed!

But I was never better than a fifth-rate executant; I had never gone in for that; my "lay" was composition. I couldn't give piano lessons, I couldn't play in public--unless in a _gargotte_ like the hole we have just left. Oh, I tried everything. I tried to get musical criticism to do for the newspapers. Surely I was competent to do musical criticism. But no--they wouldn't employ me. I had ill luck, ill luck, ill luck--nothing but ill luck, defeat, disappointment. Was it the will of Heaven? I wondered what unforgiveable sin I had committed to be punished so. Do you know what it is like to work and pray and wait, day after day, and watch day after day come and go and bring you nothing? Oh, I tasted the whole heart-sickness of hope deferred; Giant Despair was my constant bed-fellow.'

'But--with your connections--' I began.

'Oh, my connections!' he cried. 'There was the rub. London is the cruellest town in Europe. For sheer cold blood and heartlessness give Londoners the palm. I had connections enough for the first month or so, and then people found out things that didn't concern them. They found out some things that were true, and they imagined other things that were false. They wouldn't have my wife; they told the most infamous lies about her; and I wouldn't have _them_. Could I be civil to people who insulted and slandered _her_? I had no connections in London, except with the underworld. I got down to copying parts for theatrical orchestras; and working twelve hours a day, earned about thirty s.h.i.+llings a week.'

'You might have come back to Paris.'

'And fared worse. I couldn't have earned thirty pence in Paris. Mind you, the only trade I had learned was that of a musical composer; and I couldn't compose music that people would buy. I should have starved as a copyist in Paris, where copyists are more numerous and worse paid. Teach there? But to one competent master of harmony in London there are ten in Paris. No; it was a hopeless case.'

'It is incomprehensible--incomprehensible,' said I.

'But wait--wait till you've heard the end. One would think I had had enough--not so? One would think my cup of bitterness was full. No fear! There was a stronger cup still a-brewing for me. When Fortune takes a grudge against a man, she never lets up. She exacts the uttermost farthing. I was pretty badly off, but I had one treasure left--I had G.o.delinette. I used to think that she was my compensation.

I would say to myself, "A man can't have all blessings. How can you expect others, when you've got her?" And I would accuse myself of ingrat.i.tude for complaining of my unsuccess. Then she fell ill. My G.o.d, how I watched over, prayed over her! It seemed impossible--I could not believe--that she would be taken from me. Yet, Harry, do you know what that poor child was thinking? Do you know what her dying thoughts were--her wishes? Throughout her long painful illness she was thinking that she was an obstacle in my way, a weight upon me; that if it weren't for her, I should get on, have friends, a position; that it would be a good thing for me if she should die; and she was hoping in her poor little heart that she wouldn't get well! Oh, I know it, I knew it--and you see me here alive. She let herself die for my sake--as if I could care for anything without her. That's what brought us here, to France, to Bordeaux--her illness. The doctors said she must pa.s.s the spring out of England, away from the March winds, in the South; and I begged and borrowed money enough to take her. And we were on our way to Arcachon; but when we reached Bordeaux she was too ill to continue the journey, and--she died here.'

We walked on for some distance in silence, then he added: 'That was four years ago. You wonder why I live to tell you of it, why I haven't cut my throat. I don't know whether it's cowardice or conscientious scruples. It seems rather inconsequent to say that I believe in a G.o.d, doesn't it?--that I believe one's life is not one's own to make an end of? Anyhow, here I am, keeping body and soul together as musician to a _bra.s.serie-a-femmes_. I can't go back to England, I can't leave Bordeaux--she's buried here. I've hunted high and low for work, and found it nowhere save in the _bra.s.serie-a-femmes_. With that, and a little copying now and then, I manage to pay my way.'

'But your uncle?' I asked.

'Do you think I would touch a penny of his money?' Pair retorted, almost fiercely. 'It was he who began it. My wife let herself die. It was virtual suicide. It was he who created the situation that drove her to it.'

'You are his heir, though, aren't you?'

'No, the estates are not entailed.'

We had arrived at the door of my hotel. 'Well, good-night and _bon voyage_,' he said.

'You needn't wish me _bon voyage_,' I answered. 'Of course I'm not leaving Bordeaux for the present.'

'Oh, yes, you are. You're going on to Biarritz to-morrow morning, as you intended.'

And herewith began a long and most painful struggle. I could persuade him to accept no help of any sort from me. 'What I can't do for myself,' he declared, 'I'll do without. My dear fellow, all that you propose is contrary to the laws of Nature. One man can't keep another--it's an impossible relation. And I won't be kept; I won't be a burden. Besides, to tell you the truth, I've got past caring. The situation you find me in seems terrible to you; to me it's no worse than another. You see, I'm hardened; I've got past caring.'

'At any rate,' I insisted, 'I shan't go on to Biarritz. I'll spend my holiday here, and we can see each other every day. What time shall we meet to-morrow?'

'No, no, I can't meet you again. Don't ask me to; you mean it kindly, I know, but you're mistaken. It's done me good to talk it all out to you, but I can't meet you again. I've got no heart for friends.h.i.+p, and--you remind me too keenly of many things.'

'But if I come to the _bra.s.serie_ to-morrow night?'

'Oh, if you do that, you'll oblige me to throw up my employment there, and hide from you. You must promise not to come again--you must respect my wishes.'

'You're cruel, you know.'

'Perhaps, perhaps. But I think I'm only reasonable. Anyhow, good-bye.'

He shook my hand hurriedly, and moved off. What could I do? I stood looking after him till he had vanished in the night, with a miserable baffled recognition of my helplessness to help him.

A RESPONSIBILITY

It has been an episode like a German sentence, with its predicate at the end. Trifling incidents occurred at haphazard, as it seemed, and I never guessed they were by way of making sense. Then, this morning, somewhat of the suddenest, came the verb and the full stop.

Yesterday I should have said there was nothing to tell; to-day there is too much. The announcement of his death has caused me to review our relations, with the result of discovering my own part to have been that of an accessory before the fact. I did not kill him (though, even there, I'm not sure I didn't lend a hand), but I might have saved his life. It is certain that he made me signals of distress--faint, shy, tentative, but unmistakable--and that I pretended not to understand: just barely dipped my colours, and kept my course. Oh, if I had dreamed that his distress was extreme--that he was on the point of foundering and going down! However, that doesn't exonerate me: I ought to have turned aside to find out. It was a case of criminal negligence. That he, poor man, probably never blamed me, only adds to the burden on my conscience. He had got past blaming people, I dare say, and doubtless merely lumped me with the rest--with the sum-total of things that made life unsupportable. Yet, for a moment, when we first met, his face showed a distinct glimmering of hope; so perhaps there was a distinct disappointment. He must have had so many disappointments, before it came to--what it came to; but it wouldn't have come to that if he had got hardened to them. Possibly they had lost their outlines, and merged into one dull general disappointment that was too hard to bear. I wonder whether the Priest and the Levite were smitten with remorse after they had pa.s.sed on. Unfortunately, in this instance, no good Samaritan followed.

The bottom of our long _table d'hote_ was held by a Frenchman, a Normand, a giant, but a pallid and rather flabby giant, whose name, if he had another than Monsieur, I never heard. He professed to be a painter, used to sketch birds and profiles on the back of his menu-card between the courses, wore shamelessly the multi-coloured rosette of a foreign order in his b.u.t.tonhole, and talked with a good deal of physiognomy. I had the corner seat at his right, and was flanked in turn by Miss Etta J. Hicks, a bouncing young person from Chicago, beyond whom, like rabbits in a company of foxes, cowered Mr.

and Mrs. Jordan P. Hicks, two broken-spirited American parents. At Monsieur's left, and facing me, sat Colonel Escott, very red and cheerful; then a young man who called the Colonel Cornel, and came from Dublin, proclaiming himself a barr'ster, and giving his name as Flarty, though on his card it was written Flaherty; and then Sir Richard Maistre. After him, a diminis.h.i.+ng perspective of busy diners--for purposes of conversation, so far as we were concerned, inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension.

Of our immediate constellation, Sir Richard Maistre was the only member on whom the eye was tempted to linger. The others were obvious--simple equations, soluble 'in the head.' But he called for slate and pencil, offered materials for doubt and speculation, though it would not have been easy to tell wherein they lay. What displayed itself to a cursory inspection was quite unremarkable: simply a decent-looking young Englishman, of medium stature, with square-cut plain features, reddish-brown hair, grey eyes, and clothes and manners of the usual pattern. Yet, showing through this ordinary surface, there was something cryptic. For me, at any rate, it required a constant effort not to stare at him. I felt it from the beginning, and I felt it to the end: a teasing curiosity, a sort of magnetism that drew my eyes in his direction. I was always on my guard to resist it, and that was really the inception of my neglect of him. From I don't know what stupid motive of pride, I was anxious that he shouldn't discern the interest he had excited in me; so I paid less ostensible attention to him than to the others, who excited none at all. I tried to appear unconscious of him as a detached personality, to treat him as merely a part of the group as a whole. Then I improved such occasions as presented themselves to steal glances at him, study him _a la derobee_--groping after the quality, whatever it was, that made him a puzzle--seeking to formulate, to cla.s.sify him.