THE SEAMY SIDE.
“For this is death, and the sole death,
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain.”
Mrs. Vansittart told Roden that her house was in Park Street in The
Hague. But she did not mention that it was at the corner of Orange
Street, which makes all the difference. For Park Street is long, and
the further end of it--the extremity furthest removed from the Royal
Palace--is less desirable than the neighbourhood of the Vyverberg. Mrs.
Vansittart's house was in the most desirable part of a most desirable
little city. She was surrounded with houses inhabited by people bearing
names well known in history. These people are, moreover, of a
fascinating cosmopolitanism. They come from all parts of the world, in
an ancestral sense. There are, for instance, Dutch people living here
whose names are Scottish. There are others of French extraction, others
again whose forefathers came to Holland with the Don Juan of the
religious wars whose history reads like a romance.
Outwardly Mrs. Vansittart's house was of dark red brick, with stone
facings, and probably belonged to that period which in England is
called Tudor. Inwardly the house was as comfortable as thick carpets
and rich curtains and beautiful carvings could make it. The Dutch are
pre-eminently the flower-growers of the world, and the observant
traveller walking along Orange Street may note even in midwinter that
the flowers in the windows are changed each day. In this, as in other
_menus plaisirs_, Mrs. Vansittart had assumed the ways of the country
of her adoption. For Holland suggests to the inquiring mind an elderly
gentleman, now getting a little stout, who, after a wild youth, is
beginning to appreciate the blessings of repose and comfort; who,
having laid by a small sufficiency, sits peaceably by the fire, and
reflects upon the days that are no more.
It was Mrs. Vansittart's pleasant habit to surround herself with every
comfort. She was an eminently self-respecting person--of that
self-respect which denies itself nothing except excess. She liked to be
well dressed, well housed, and well served. She possessed money, and
with it she bought these adjuncts, which in a minor degree are within
the reach of nearly everybody, though few have the wit to value them.
She was not, however, a vociferously contented woman. Like many
another, she probably wanted something that money could not buy.
Mrs. Vansittart, in fulfilment of her promise to Percy Roden, called on
Dorothy at the Villa des Dunes, who in due course came to the house at
the corner of Park Street and Orange Street to return the visit.
Dorothy had been out when Mrs. Vansittart called, but she thought she
knew from her brother's description what sort of woman to expect. For
Dorothy Roden had been educated abroad, and was not without knowledge
of a certain class of English lady to be met with on the Continent, who
is always well connected, invariably idle, and usually refers
gracefully to a great sorrow in the past.
But Dorothy knew, as soon as she saw Mrs. Vansittart that she had
formed an entirely erroneous conception. This was not the sort of woman
to seek the admiration of the first-comer, and Percy Roden had allowed
his sister to surmise that, whether it had been sought or not, Mrs.
Vansittart had certainly been accorded his highest admiration.
“It is good of you to return my call so soon,” she said, in a friendly
voice. “You have walked, I suppose, all the way from the Villa des
Dunes. English girls are such great walkers now--a most excellent
thing. I belong to the semi-generation older than yours, which
preferred a carriage. I am an atrocious walker. You are not at all like
your brother.” And she threw back her head and looked speculatively at
her visitor. “Sit down,” she said, with a laugh. “You probably came
here harbouring a prejudice against me. One should never get to know a
woman through her men-folk. That is a rule almost without exception;
you may take it from one who is many years older than you. But--well,
_nous verrons_. Perhaps we are the exception.”
“I hope so,” answered Dorothy, who was ready enough of speech. “At all
events, all that Percy told me made me anxious to meet you. It is
rather lonely, you know, at the Villa des Dunes. You see, Percy is
engaged all day with his malgamiters. And, of course, we know no one
here yet.”
“There is Herr von Holzen,” suggested Mrs. Vansittart, ringing the bell
for tea.
“Oh yes. The man who is associated with Percy at the works? I do not
know him. Percy has not brought him to the villa.”
“Ah! Is that so? That is nice of your brother. Sometimes men, you know,
make use of their wives or their sisters to help them in their business
relationships. I have known a man use his pretty daughter to gain a
client. Beauty levels all, you see. Not nice, no; I suppose Herr von
Holzen, is--well--let us call him a foreign savant. Such a nice broad
term, you know; covers such a plentiful lack of soap.” And she laughed
easily, with eyes that were quite grave and alert.
“My brother does not say much about him,” answered Dorothy Roden.
“Percy never does tell me much of his affairs, and I am not sorry. I am
sure I should not understand them. Stocks and shares and freights and
things. I never quite know whether a freight is part of a ship; do
you?”
“No. There are so many things more useful to know, are there
not?--things about people and human nature, for instance.”
“Yes,” said Dorothy, looking at her companion thoughtfully--“yes.”
And Mrs. Vansittart returned that thoughtful glance. “And the other
man,” she said suddenly, “Mr.--Cornish--do you know him?”
“He called at the Villa des Dunes. My brother brought him in to tea the
evening of arrival of the first batch of malgamiters,” replied Dorothy.
“Mr. Cornish interests me,” said Mrs. Vansittart. “I knew him when he
was a boy--or little more than a boy. He came to Weimar with a tutor to
learn German when I happened to be living there. I have heard of him
from time to time since. One sees his name in the society papers, you
know. He is one of those persons of whom something is expected by his
friends--not by himself. The young man who expects something of himself
is usually disappointed. Have you ever noticed in the biographies of
great men, Miss Roden that people nearly always began to expect
something of them when they were quite young? As if they were cast in a
different mould from the very first. Really great men, I mean not the
fashionable pianist or novelist of the hour whose portrait is in every
illustrated journal for perhaps two months, and then he is forgotten.”
Mrs. Vansittart spoke quickly in a foreign manner, asking with a
certain vivacity questions which required no answer. Dorothy Roden was
not slow of speech, but she touched topics with less airiness. Her mind
seemed a trifle insular in its tendencies. One topic attracted her, and
the rest were set aside.
“Why does Mr. Cornish interest you?” she asked.
Mrs. Vansittart shrugged her shoulders and leant back in her deep
chair.
“He strikes me as a person with infinite capacity for holding his
cards. That is all. But perhaps he has no good cards in his hand?
Nothing but rubbish--the twos and threes of ordinary drawing-room
smartness--and never a trump. Who can tell? _Qui vivra verra_,
Miss. Roden. It may not be in my time that the world shall hear of Tony
Cornish--the real world, not the journalistic world, I mean. He may
ripen slowly, and I shall be dead. I am getting elderly. How old do you
think I am, Miss Roden?”
“Thirty-five,” replied Dorothy; and Mrs. Vansittart turned sharply to
look at her.
“Ah!” she said, slowly and thoughtfully. “Yes, you are quite right.
That is my age. And I suppose I look it. I suppose others would have
guessed with equal facility, but not everybody would have had the
honesty to say what they thought.”
Dorothy laughed and changed colour. “I said it without thinking,” she
answered. “I hope you do not mind.”
“No, I do not mind,” said Mrs. Vansittart, looking out of the window.
“But we were talking of Mr. Cornish.”
“Yes,” answered Dorothy, buttoning her glove and glancing at the clock.
“Yes; but I must not talk any longer or I shall be late, and my brother
expects to find me at home when he returns from the works.”
She rose and shook hands, looking Mrs. Vansittart in the eyes. When
Dorothy had gone, the lady of the house stood for a minute looking at
the closed door.
“I wonder what she thinks of me?” she said.
And Dorothy Roden, walking down Park Straat, was doing the same. She
was wondering what she thought of Mrs. Vansittart.
Although it was the month of April, the winter mists still rose at
evening and swept seawards from the marshes of Leyden. The trees had
scarcely begun to break into bud, for it had been a cold spring, and
the ice was floating lazily on the canal as Dorothy walked along its
bank. The Villa des Dunes was certainly somewhat lonely, standing as it
did a couple of hundred yards back from a sandy road--one of the many
leading from The Hague to Scheveningen. Between the villa and the road
the dunes had scarcely been molested, except indeed, to cut a narrow
roadway to the house. When Dorothy reached home, she found that her
brother had not yet returned. She looked at the clock. He was later
than usual. The malgamite works had during the last few weeks been
absorbing more and more of his attention. When he returned home, tired,
in the evening, he was not communicative. As for Otto von Holzen, he
never showed his face outside the works now, but seemed to live the
life of a recluse within the iron fence that surrounded the little
colony.
Percy Roden had not returned to the Villa des Dunes at the usual hour
because he had other work to do. Von Holzen and he were now standing in
one of the little huts in silence. The light of the setting sun glowed
through the window upon their faces, upon the bare walls of the room,
rendered barer and in no way beautified by a terrible German print
purporting to represent the features of Prince Bismarck.
Von Holzen stood, with his hands clasped behind his back, and looked
out of the window across the dreary dunes. Roden stood beside him,
slouching and heavy-shouldered, with his hands in his trouser pockets.
His lower lip was pressed inward between his teeth. His eyes were drawn
and anxious.
On the bed, between the two men, lay a third--an old-looking youth with
lank red hair. It was the story of St. Jacob Straat over again, and it
was new to Percy Roden, who could not turn his eyes elsewhere. The man
was dying. He was a Pole who understood no word of English. Indeed,
these three men had no language in common in which to make themselves
understood.
“Can you do nothing at all?” asked Roden, for the second or third time.
“Nothing,” answered Von Holzen, without turning round. “He was a doomed
man when he came here.”
The man lay on the bed and stared at Von Holzen's back. Perhaps that
was the reason why Von Holzen so persistently looked out of the window.
The work-hours were over, and from some neighbouring cottage the sounds
of a concertina came on the quiet air. The musician had chosen a
popular music-hall song, which he played over and over again with a
maddening pertinacity. Roden bit his lip, and frowned at each
repetition of the opening bars. Von Holzen, with a still, pale face and
stern eyes, seemed to hear nothing. He had no nerves. At times he
twisted his lips, moistening them with his tongue, and suppressed an
impatient sigh. The man was a long time in dying. They had been waiting
there two hours. This little incident had to be passed over as quietly
as possible on account of the feelings of the concertina player and the
others.
The door stood ajar, and in the adjoining room a professional nurse, in
cap and apron, sat reading a German newspaper. This also was a bedroom.
The cottage was, in point of fact, the hospital of the malgamite
workers. The nurse, whose services had not hitherto been wanted, had
since the inauguration of the works spent some pleasant weeks at a
pension at Scheveningen. She read her newspaper very philosophically,
and waited.
Roden it was who watched the patient. The dying man never heeded him,
but looked persistently towards Von Holzen. The expression of his eyes
indicated that if they had had a language in common he would have
spoken to him. Roden saw the direction of the man's glance, and perhaps
read its meaning. For Percy Roden was handicapped with that greatest of
all drags on a successful career--a soft heart. He could speak harshly
enough of the malgamiters as a class, but he was drawn towards this
dumb individual, with a strong desire to effect the impossible. Von
Holzen had not promised that there should be no deaths. He had merely
undertaken to reduce the dangers of the malgamite industry gradually
and steadily until they ceased to exist. He had, moreover, the strength
of mind to give to this incident its proper weight in the balance of
succeeding events. He was not, in a word, handicapped as was his
colleague.
The sun set beyond the quiet sea and over the sand dunes the shades of
evening crept towards the west. The outline of Prince Bismarck's iron
face faded slowly in the gathering darkness, until it was nothing but a
shadow in a frame on the bare wall. The concertina player had laid
aside his instrument. A sudden silence fell upon land and sea.
Von Holzen turned sharply on his heel and leant over the bed.
“Come along,” he said to Roden, with averted eyes. “It is all over.
There is nothing more for us to do here.”
With a backward glance towards the bed, Roden followed his companion,
out of the room into the adjoining apartment where the nurse was
sitting, and where their coats and hats lay on the bed. Von Holzen
spoke to the woman in German.
“So!” she answered, with a mild interest, and folded her paper.
The two men went out into the keen air together, and did not look
towards each other or speak. Perhaps they knew that if there is any
difficulty in speaking of a subject it is better to keep silence. They
crossed the sandy space between this cottage and the others grouped
round the factory like tents around their headquarters. One of these
huts was Von Holzen's--a three-roomed building where he worked and
slept. Its windows looked out upon the factory, and commanded the only
entrance to the railed enclosure within which the whole colony was
confined. It was Von Holzen's habit to shut himself within his cottage
for days together, living there in solitude like some crustacean within
its shell. At the door he turned, with his fingers on the handle.
“You must not worry yourself about this,” he said to Roden, with
averted eyes. “It cannot be helped, you know.”
“No; I know that.”
“And of course we must keep our own counsel. Good night, Roden.”
“Of course. Good night, Von Holzen.”
And Percy Roden passed through the gateway, walking slowly across the
dunes towards his own house; while Von Holzen watched him from the
window of the little three-roomed cottage.