Late one afternoon about a week after, Archie was sitting with his old
nurse, Blessington, in the room that had once been his day-nursery. He
had left London the day after Helena had so honourably paid him the five
half-crowns he had won from her, and since then he had been living here
alone with his father. This evening, his mother and Jessie were coming
down from town, his mother to remain here till she went up to London
again for Helena's wedding which had been fixed for the end of the first
week in August, while Jessie was but coming for a long week-end. Helena
remained in town, where she was very busy shopping, and unpacking the
lovely presents which Lord Harlow sent or brought to her, morning, noon,
and night. They were really delightful presents, and the material of
them was large precious stones, exquisitely set.
Archie had long made it a habit, when he was at home, to pay a visit to
his old nurse before he went to dress for dinner. She had become
housekeeper after the fledging of the family, and now, half-way through
the decade of her seventies, did little more, when Archie was away, than
sit white-haired and stately with her sewing or her knitting, and feel
that she was very busy. But when Archie came home she would burst into
violent activities, and constitute herself his nurse again, to whom he
was always "Master Archie," and quite a little boy still. It mattered
not one rap to her that he had his own valet, none other indeed than
William, who in days gone by had fished him out of the lake, and
received a gold watch and chain for the rescue, for Blessington was
always in and out of his room, taking coats and trousers away to have
buttons more securely adjusted, and loading her work-basket with piles
of his socks and underclothing in which her eyes, still needle-sharp for
all her seventy-five years, had detected holes that required darning.
This habit of hers sometimes drove William nearly mad, for Blessington
would take away all Archie's washing when it came back from the laundry,
in order to inspect it thoroughly, and when his distracted valet wanted
clean clothes, and applied to her for them, she would often entirely
forget that she had taken them, and firmly deny the appropriation. Then
William would craftily manage to get her to open her cupboard door, and
lo, there was all Archie's clean linen. And Blessington would exclaim,
"Eh, I must have taken it, and it went out of my head." Or she would
abstract his sponge from the bathroom in order to put a stitch into it,
and Archie, sitting in his bath, would find nothing to wash himself
with. But Blessington was a sacred and a beloved institution, and as
long as she was happy (which she most undoubtedly was when Archie was
there to look after and inconvenience) no one minded these
magpie-annexations of portable property.
* * * * *
Of all hours in the day Blessington loved best this evening visit of
Archie's, when he sat among the tokens of his childhood, the play-table
which now scarcely reached up to his knees, the little arm-chair, with
its bar of wood strung through the arms so as to imprison and guard the
sitter, the box of oak-bricks with which he used to build houses of
amazing architecture, the depleted regiments of lead-soldiers which
still stood on the mantel-shelf. Her great delight was to recall to him
the days of his childhood, his naughtiness, the scrapes he got into, the
whole patchwork of memories that retained still such lively and beloved
colouring. And for him, too, during this last week, there had been in
these talks a way of escape from this nightmare of his present
experience; it was he himself, after all, who had put the coals on his
mother's hearthrug, had fished for pike with William, had attended, in
rapturous trepidation, the advents of Abracadabra. These days seemed
much further off from him than they did from her, for a bitter
impassable water lay between them and him, while for her they had only
receded a little further into the placid and sunny distance of her days.
But, when he talked them over with her, he could recapture a dreamlike
illusion of getting back into a life of which the most alarming feature
was the presence of his father. Over everything else there hung
enchantment.
He was sitting now in Blessington's rocking-chair, having tried without
success to squeeze himself into the imprisoning seat of his childhood,
and she was recalling the awful episode of the burnt rug.
"Eh, whatever possessed you to go and do it," she said, "I can't
understand to this day, Master Archie. I'm speaking of when you set fire
to your mamma's rug."
"Tell me about that," said Archie.
"Well, it was on an afternoon when you had a cold, and your mamma had
allowed you to sit in her room while she went out driving. And what must
you do but empty all the fire from the hearth on to her rug. You nearly
got a whipping for that from your papa!"
Archie remembered that moment quite well, and how he had stood in his
father's study, frightened but defiant, and refusing to say he was sorry
when he was not. Then his mother had come in and had pointed to a bottle
on the table, and told his father that he ought to learn his lesson
first before he gave Archie one... That had puzzled him at the time,
though it was clear enough now. His father still had that lesson to
learn, and Archie, during this last week, had begun to understand a
little why his father had not yet learned it, if learning it implied the
giving up of all that battles stood for.
He recalled himself with a jerk: he wanted to get back into the
enchanted land which Blessington's reminiscences outlined for him.
"Yes, that hearthrug," he said. "That was a bad business, wasn't it,
Blessington? What do you think put it into my head to empty the fire on
to it?"
"Bless the boy, I don't know," said Blessington. "It was just mischief."
"Yes, but what's mischief?" asked Archie.
Blessington was a simple and direct theologian.
"Well, I shouldn't wonder if it's doing what Sapum wants you to do,"
said she, Sapum being her equivalent for the arch-enemy.
"I shouldn't wonder either," said Archie. "But it's rather beastly of
Sapum to take possession of a very small boy with a bad cold in the
head."
"Eh, he takes possession of us all, if we let him," observed
Blessington. "But that was the naughtiest thing you ever did, dear. I
wouldn't lay it up to you now."
"Was I good as a rule?" asked he.
"Yes, Master Archie, for a boy you were," said Blessington. "Boys are
more trouble than girls, as is natural and proper."
"But doesn't Sapum enter into girls, too?" asked he, with another
thought in his mind.
"Yes, to be sure, but not so violent-like. And when after that you were
took ill, and we all went out to--eh, what's the name of that place in
Switzerland--I must say you were wonderfully good. It was as if some
angel took possession of you, not one of Sapum's flibertigibbits. You
were no trouble at all; and see how quick you got well."
Archie rocked himself backwards and forwards for a minute in silence.
"I wish I could remember Martin," he said at length. "Tell me something
about Martin."
"Eh, dear lamb!" said she. "Couldn't he be naughty too, when the fit
took him! But then he got ill, and many's the time when I've longed for
him to be naughty again, and he hadn't the spirit for it. He didn't want
to die, and right up to the end he thought he'd get better. You papa
never loved any one like he loved him, and nobody could help loving him.
He was like a April morning, dear--sunshine one minute and squalls the
next. And there was months, Master Archie, when we thought you would
follow him."
Blessington grew a little tearful, with the sweet, easy tears of old-age
over this, and Archie changed the subject.
"And Abracadabra, now?" he asked. "What evenings those birthdays
evenings were, weren't they? I wish Abracadabra came still, bringing all
we wanted. What would you choose, Blessington?"
Blessington beamed again.
"Eh, I know what I'd choose," she said. "I'd choose a nice young lady to
come here, and you and she take a fancy to each other, dear. That's what
I'd choose. Isn't there some nice young lady, Master Archie?"
Archie stopped his rocking for a moment, and a bitter word was on the
end of his tongue. Then he smiled back at his nurse's radiant face.
"I'm going to marry you, Blessington," he said, "when you're old enough.
Don't you go flirting with anybody else now."
Blessington gave a little cackle of soft, toothless laughter.
"Well, I never," she said. "Who ever heard such a thing?"
"Well, you've heard of it now," said he. "Blessington, I believe there's
somebody else after you. I say, did you ever have any lovers once upon a
time?"
Blessington looked solemn again.
"Well, there was your papa's game-keeper once," she said, "who made a
silly of himself, as if I'd got nothing better to do than go and marry
him. I didn't suffer any of his nonsense... And there's the sound of the
motor. That'll be your mamma and Miss Jessie coming. There's a nice
young lady now!"
"Do you like her better than Miss Helena?" asked Archie.
Blessington nodded her head very emphatically.
"Not that I say she isn't a nice young lady, too," she said
mysteriously.
"What's the matter with her then?" asked Archie.
Blessington looked the incarnation of discretion.
"I say nothing," she said. "But there's some as are artful, and some as
are not. Now, my dear, you must go and see your mamma, or she'll be
wondering where you are."
"I'm with my young woman," said Archie.
"There! Get along with you," said Blessington. "Eh, Master Archie, I
love a talk over old times with you."
* * * * *
Archie went reluctantly away to greet his mother and Jessie, for these
talks with Blessington had become to him a sort of oasis in this weary
wilderness of scorching sand through which he had to travel all day and
for many hours of the night. She was the comforter of the troubles of
his earliest childhood; it was she who had always been by him if some
nightmare snatched him from sleep, or if the dark developed terrors, and
that habit of calling on her for aid, established among the mists of
dawning consciousness he found still alive as an instinct, when there
came on him now the maturer woes of love and manhood. Throughout his
school life and his three years at Cambridge, he had never quite let go
of Blessington's hand, which had been the first to direct and sustain
his tottering attempts at locomotion. Now, too, she was the only member
of his immediate circle who did not know of his trouble, and it was an
unutterable relief to feel that he was not being pitied and sympathized
with by somebody. For, though there is nothing in the world better than
sympathy and pity, no sufferer smarting from a recent wound wants to
live exclusively in such surroundings. Pity and sympathy, though they
heal, yet touch the wound, and he never got over the impression when he
was with his mother, for instance, that his wound was being dressed...
Jessie did not force that on him so much, yet with her he was always
being reminded of the fact that she was Helena's sister. But with
Blessington he could go back into the sunlight of the past: talk with
her, and another occupation, temporary, he told himself, to tide him
over those days, enabled him to get away to some extent, from himself.
He met his mother in the hall, and instantly those anxious eyes of love,
which, for all his affection for her, he found irritating, were on him.
She was at his wound again, taking off the bandages, seeing how it was
getting on...
"And how are you, darling?" she said, looking at him with the tenderness
that got on his nerves.
Archie kissed her.
"I am quite well, thanks," he said. "I have just been having a talk with
Blessington."
"My dear, how she would like that!" said Lady Tintagel with eager
cordiality. "That was thoughtful of you."
Archie jerked himself away from her: though his mother said nothing
direct, he felt that pity filled her mind. He was in its presence, and
longed to get away from it. All the time another distinct piece of his
mind wanted to hear about Helena. But he could not ask any question
about her.
"How are you, Archie?" said Jessie quietly.
Archie's exasperation suddenly flared up.
"I have just told my mother I am very well," he said. "I am still very
well, thank you."
Jessie laughed; she managed better than Lady Tintagel.
"In that case, come and have a game of golf-croquet with me," she said.
"There's time before we need dress, isn't there? I do want some air so
badly after town."
Archie glanced at the clock; he usually went to his father's study about
this time, when they celebrated the approaching advent of dinner with a
cocktail or two. That was the beginning of the tolerable part of the
day: there was plenty of wine at dinner, and afterwards a succession of
whiskies and sodas, and to be alive became quite a bearable condition
again. On that first evening when Helena had told him her news and paid
her half-crowns he had found that alcohol broke down his sense of being
stunned, of being made of wood. Now he drank for another reason: by
drink he got rid of the misery of normal consciousness and emerged into
some sort of life again. It stimulated his brain, he could by its means
escape for a little from that one perpetual thought of Helena that went
round in his head like a stick in a backwater, and get into the current
again. Sometimes he would go to his room, taking a whisky and soda with
him, and wrestle with the sea-sketches he had so enthusiastically worked
at at Silorno. By degrees the liquid in his glass ebbed, and his pile of
cigarette-ends mounted, and he would go back for fresh supplies. But,
while these hours lasted, he lived, and what to-morrow should bring he
did not in the least care. He could escape for a few hours now, and that
was sufficient. Also, when he went to bed, he could sleep heavily and
dreamlessly.
There was still time for a game with Jessie, before going in to his
father; Jessie would take longer to dress for dinner than he, and there
would be a few minutes to spare after she went upstairs. But, even as
they were strolling across the lawn to get the croquet-balls from their
box, she a little ahead of him as he nursed a match for his cigarette,
he looked up, and there in front of him might have been Helena. The two
were of the same height and build, they moved like each other. It was
Jessie, of course, but just for a second, while his match burned up in
the hollow of his hand, it was not she at all...
He threw the match away.
"Get the balls out, will you?" he said. "I've left my cigarette-case in
my father's room."
He ran back to the house, and went in through the garden door of his
father's study. Lord Tintagel was sitting in the big leather arm-chair,
with his feet up on another, and a glass beside him.
"Just come for a cocktail, father," said Archie. "Hullo, they're not
here yet. It doesn't matter; I'll take a glass of whisky and soda."
"By all means; take what you like," said the other drowsily. "You
mother's come, hasn't she?"
"Yes, mother and Jessie," said Archie, pouring himself out some whisky.
The soda-water was nearly exhausted, but the dregs of it gurgled
pleasantly over the spirit. He drank it in a couple of gulps.
"What are you going to do now?" asked his father.
"Only have a game with Jessie."
"All right. Call in here when it's time to go up and dress. There'll be
a cocktail for you then. Infernal lazy fellows the servants are not to
bring them in earlier. Chuck me over the evening paper, will you?"
The evening remission from deadness and dulness and misery had begun for
Archie. He played his game with Jessie, drank his cocktail, and by the
end of dinner had risen to such naturalness of good spirits again, that
his mother commended herself for the wisdom of her plan that he should
leave London and seek a change of mind in a change of scene. He had done
some writing since he had been here; he seemed pleased with the way it
was going, and she talked hopefully to Jessie when they held a rather
protracted sitting in the drawing-room before the two men joined them.
Perhaps they had both overrated the strength of Archie's attachment:
certainly to-night he did not appear like a boy who had so lately
suffered an overwhelming disappointment in his affections.
"And Blessington says he has been just as delightful and affectionate to
her as usual," said Lady Tintagel. "He goes and talks to her every
evening as he always did. I think you must have been wrong, dear Jessie,
when you thought he was so mortally hurt."
Jessie did not reply at once: she felt sure that she, with the insight
of that love which is more comprehending than any mother's love, was
somehow right about that point. It was not the mere lapse of a week that
had restored Archie. Besides, Blessington did not know about his
troubles. She could easily conjecture what a relief he might find in
that. She knew that she would feel the same in his place; she could
understand how much easier it was to behave normally with those who did
not know than with those who did. Yet Archie's father knew, and all
through dinner she had seen how friendly and intimate the two had
become. Archie used to be constrained and awkward with his father, while
his father used to be rather contemptuous of him. But this evening there
had been none of that on either side, and now they lingered together a
long time over their talk and their cigarettes. It was as if some bond
of sympathy was springing up between them. But she shrank from admitting
the explanation to herself: it might be that a man, who had been so
bitterly disappointed about a girl, found something in another man that
suited his mood. Women would remind him of a woman...
There was a shout of laughter in the hall outside, and Archie came in,
followed by his father. He did not communicate the grounds for his
merriment, but, looking a little flushed, very handsome, and very
content, sat down on the sofa by his mother.
"Well, mother darling?" he said.
Instantly her love yearned forth to him.
"My dear, it is good to hear you laugh," she said. "What have you and
your father been talking about?"
The sense of being watched, the love that irritated did not trouble
Archie now. The sunny hours would stretch unclouded until he fell into
bed. He laughed again, looking across to his father.
"I say, father," he said, "shall I tell her, or would she think it not
quite...?"
"Just as you like," said Lord Tintagel.
The door into the garden, already ajar, swung gently open, admitting a
breath of cool night-air into the room. It stirred in Jessie's hair as
it passed her, and moved across to Archie, making the flowers in a vase
near him vibrate. And for just that moment some impulse from the
untainted tranquillity stirred in his soul, and his overheated,
stimulated brain drank it thirstily in. His own laughter, and the
subject of his laughter, the whole contents of the last hour or two,
seemed stale and stuffy. The air of them was thick with the fumes of
wine, with the fancies and images that it evoked, smoke-wreaths that
hung heavy in the atmosphere, swirling and turning like dancers and
melting into other shapes. But for that moment when the night-air came
in from the crystal-clear dusk outside, that liquid tabernacle of
sapphire in the holy night, where stars sang together and nightingales
burned, the hot fumes dispersed, and he drew in long, tranquillizing
breaths. This physical impression had, too, its psychical counterpart,
for even as the air that stirred in Jessie's hair brought a coolness and
a refreshment to him, so from the girl herself there seemed to stream
into it a current of something wholesome and human and unfevered,
unvexed by desire, and untouched by bitterness...
"It's rather hot in here," he said. "Will you come for a stroll,
Jessie?"
They went out together... The heavens were full of stars, and a slip of
a moon was near to its setting. Over the beds below the windows there
hovered the fainter fragrance of sleeping flowers that stood with
hanging heads and leaves that glimmered with the falling dew. Beyond lay
the dimmed mirror of the lake, and beside it rose the dark mass of the
wood in which the nightingales were singing. The scene seemed prepared
for some human love-duet, when lovers fancy that nature is arranging her
most sensuous effects for their benefit, though in reality she is but
pursuing the path ordained for her by the wheeling seasons, and
predicted by barometers and apparatus that is concerned only with heat
and movements of the moon. And, of lovers, there was one of each pair
absent, as the two walked quietly towards the wood of the nightingales;
for Jessie there was no eager mate, and for Archie none... Two hungry
souls, both longing, both unsatisfied, went forth on that twilit
pilgrimage. Spring still stirred in them, and there burned above them
the everlasting choir of the stars. But that helped in no way: had they
been lovers, an autumn squall or a winter snow-storm would have served
their purpose just as well.
Archie chattered for a little while, comparing the moon to a clipped
finger-nail, the dimmed mirror of the lake to a frozen rink in
Switzerland, with all the hollowness of superficial talk, when the
tongue speaks from habit, which is as lightly rooted as the seed on
stony ground. Heart-whole, he had often chattered like that, and Jessie
had sunned herself and responded to those silly things; but now she
knew, as well as he, that the babble was no more than blown sea-foam. It
made her heart ache that he should talk it to her, for, though she made
no claim on his love, it was miserable that he could not recognize how
true a friend it was who was by his side in this song-haunted darkness.
She knew--none better--that he had no love to give her, but her love
that was so disciplined to go hungry without crying out, starved for a
word from him that should fly the flag of friendship, noblest of all
ensigns that are not of royal emblazonment.
They had come to the edge of the lake, and a moor-hen steered its
water-logged flight across the surface. And then Archie's foolish
chatter died, and he was silent as he watched the rayed ripple of water.
The wash died away in the reeds, and chuckled on the bank, and at last
he spoke.
"Why did Helena treat me like that?" he said. "It wasn't fair on me. Why
did she encourage me? She might so easily have shown me that she didn't
care. She knew: don't tell me she didn't know! Do answer me. Didn't she
know? All the time that we were in town together she knew. And she let
me go on. She was waiting to see if she could catch the Bradshaw. If she
couldn't, perhaps she would have taken me. Was it so? You ought to know:
you're her sister."
His voice had risen from the first reproach of his speech to a fury of
indignation.
"Did she love me or didn't she?" he cried. "Do tell me if you know."
His passion had found combustible material in her: she flamed with it.
"Helena doesn't love anybody," she said. "Oh, Archie, poor Helena!"
"Poor Helena!" said he. "Why 'poor'? Surely it's far more comfortable to
love nobody. Oh, don't remind me of that stupid rot about it being
better to have loved and lost. Anyhow, a worse thing is to have loved
and not found. That's what has happened to me, and she made me think I
had found. She meant to make me think that. Damned well she succeeded,
too. And, if you're right about her not loving anybody, do you mean that
she doesn't love the Bradshaw?"
Archie had closed a grip on her arm: now she shook his hand off, though
loving to have it there.
"I can't answer you that," she said. "And I oughtn't to have said that
Helena loves nobody. I withdraw that entirely."
"The saying of it, you mean," said he. "You don't withdraw your belief
in it."
"I don't know the truth of it. What I said was only my opinion, and I
withdraw it. I oughtn't to have said it."
"But you keep your opinion?" asked he.
"You shouldn't ask me that. I have withdrawn what I said. Please accept
that."
In this high noon of stars she could see his face very clearly. It was
not angry any longer: it was just empty, as if there was no one there
behind the eyes and the mouth. It was a face empty, swept, and
garnished, ready for any occupant who might take possession. The sweet,
clean water of his nature must have run out on to desert sands; the
cistern of the body into which it had so swiftly and boyishly bubbled
all these years was empty. Just for one second that impression lasted,
inscrutably frightening her, with some nightmare touch.
"Archie," she cried, "are _you_ there? Is it you?" She heard a dreary
little laugh for answer.
"Oh, I suppose so," he said. "I answer to my name, don't I?"
She longed, with a force of passion quite new to her, to be able to
reach him in some way, to let her love be coined into the commoner metal
of friendship, if only that could get to him, and give him the sense
that he had something in his pocket worth having, even though it was not
gold. She would have gleefully melted all her love into a currency that
could have enriched him, for he did not want her love, and she had no
other use for it except to help him in some way. And, as if to answer
her yearning, he took her arm again, not angrily now, but with the quiet
pressure of a man with a sympathetic friend.
"You're a good pal, Jessie," he said. "I'm awfully grateful to you. You
won't play me false with your friendship, will you?"
"No, my dear," said she, stumbling a little on the words. "I'm--I'm not
like that. The more you count on me the better I shall be pleased. I'm
stupid at saying things, but, oh Archie, if a friend is any use to you,
you've got one. And let me say, just once, how sorry I am for all this
miserable business."
"Thanks, Jessie," said he.
They had turned back towards the house, and Jessie, unconscious of
anything else except Archie, saw that they were already half across the
lawn that lay dripping with dew. Her thin satin shoes were soaked, and
the hem of her dress trailed on the grass. But she regarded that no more
than she would have regarded it had she been walking in the dark with
her lover.
Then Archie spoke again--there was no more emotion in his voice than if
he had been speaking through a telephone.
"Do keep on trying to be friends with me, Jessie," he said. "I'm nothing
at all just now; I'm dead, but will you watch by the corpse? It likes to
know you are there. There's no complaint if you go away, but when
sometimes you have nothing to do, you might just sit with it."
"Archie, dear, don't talk such nonsense," she said.
"I daresay it is nonsense, but it seems to me sense. I don't feel as if
I was anybody... I can imagine what a house feels like that has been
happily lived in for years, when the family goes away, and leaves it
empty. There's a board up 'To let, unfurnished,' and the windows get
dirty, and the knocker and door-handle, which were so well rubbed and
polished, get dull. There used to be curtains in the windows, and in the
evening passers-by in the street could see chinks of light from within,
and perhaps hear sounds of laughter. But now there are no curtains, and
the pictures have gone from the walls, leaving oblong marks where they
used to hang. And the spirit of the house stares mournfully out,
thinking of the days when there was laughter and love within its walls.
Haven't you ever seen a house like that? They're common enough."
She pressed the hand that lay loose in the crook of her elbow.
"Oh, Archie, you give me such a heartache," she said.
"Well, I won't again. But if you think me wanting in affection to
mother, or you, or anybody, just remember that I'm an empty house for
the present. I daresay somebody will take me again."
Jessie felt that this was a truer Archie than he who had stopped so long
in the dining-room and come in afterwards with a shout of laughter over
something that he would not recount. But by now their stroll had taken
them close to the long grey front of the house, and for the present
Archie had no more to say, and was evidently meaning to go indoors
again. Upstairs all was dark, but below, the five windows of the
drawing-room, uncurtained and open, cast oblongs of light on to the
gravel, and next to them the two windows of Lord Tintagel's study were
lit. Even as they stepped from the grass on to the walk, and their
footsteps became audible again, his figure, silhouetted against the
light, appeared there, and the window-sash rattled as he opened it
wider.
"Is that you, Archie?" he called. "Come in and see me before you go
upstairs."
"All right, father," said he, "we're just coming in."
Jessie heard a fresh vigour in his quickened voice, and in the light
from the windows she could see that his face was alert again. And it was
with a sense of certainty that she guessed what had given him this
sudden animation. Perhaps it was only the knowledge of his father's
habits that informed her, perhaps it was a brain-wave passing from him
to her that told her that inside his father's room were the things for
which he craved, the cool hiss of bubbling water on to the ice that swam
in the spirits...
"You're not going to sit up long, are you?" she said.
"Oh, I don't know. My father and I often have a talk in the evening. And
sometimes I do some writing before I go to bed. It's quite a good time
for writing when every one has gone to bed and the house is quiet."
"You always used to say at Silorno that you wrote best in the morning."
"Yes, but that was at Silorno, where I could lie on the beach, and go
for a swim at intervals. Lord! What jolly days they were! It's a pity
they are all dead."
They went through the French window into the drawing-room, and found
that Lady Tintagel had already gone upstairs. Archie stood by Jessie,
shifting from one foot to the other, in evident impatience at her
lingering.
"Well, you'll be wanting to go to bed," he said. "I daresay you'll go in
and have a talk with my mother. And, do you know, my father's waiting
for me; I think I'll join him. I shall soon come upstairs, I expect. I
feel rather like writing to-night."
"I'm glad you're going on with that," she said. "That's something left,
isn't it? The house isn't quite empty, Archie."
He laughed.
"No, I can trace my name in the dust on the window-panes," he said. "But
I'll go to my father. Good-night, Jessie."
* * * * *
Lord Tintagel, rather unusually, was deep in the evening paper when
Archie entered. Archie noticed, with some surprise, that his glass still
stood untouched on the tray.
"Rather nasty news," he said, not looking up. "Give me my drink, Archie,
there's a good fellow. Plenty of ice and not much soda."
"And what's the news?" asked Archie.
"Well, it looks as if there might really be trouble brewing. Servia has
appealed to Russia against the Austrian ultimatum. I wonder if Germany
can really be at the bottom of it all. And the city takes a gloomy view
of it. All Russian securities are heavily down."
"Does that affect you?" asked Archie, bringing him his drink.
"Yes, I've got a big account open in them. I wonder if I had better
sell. Of course there won't be war; we're always having these scares,
and they always come to nothing. But if dealers are anxious, prices may
fall a good bit yet, and I should find it difficult to pay my
differences."
Archie poured himself out his first tumbler. He held it in his hand a
moment, not tasting it, now that he had got it. Delay, when the delay
was voluntary, would but add deliciousness to the moment when his mouth
and throat would feel that cold sting...
"I don't understand," he said, watching the bubbles stream up from the
sides and bottom of his glass.
His father threw down the paper.
"It's as simple as heads and tails," he said. "I've bought a quantity of
Russian mining shares, without paying for them, in the hope that they
will go up. If they do, I shall sell at the higher price and pocket the
difference. But if they go down I shall have to pay the difference at
the next account. If the shares are each worth L8 now, and at the next
account are only standing at L6, I shall have to pay L2 on each share.
If I like, I can telegraph to my broker to sell now, while they're at
L8. I shall have a loss because I bought them at L9, but I shall no
longer be running any risks. But it's thirsty work talking. Just fill my
glass again."
"But then, if the scare dies down again, I suppose your shares will go
up," said Archie.
His father laughed.
"Sound business head you've got, Archie," he said. "You've got the hang
of it; it's just heads and tails. Never you speculate: it's a rotten
business. I've got into the habit now, but I recommend you not to take
to it. It's easy enough to take to it, but it's the devil to break it.
Same with other things. Make a habit of virtue, and you'll never go to
the deuce."
He watched Archie a moment, who with head thrown back, and young, strong
throat throbbing as he swallowed, was reaping the rewards of his delay
in drinking. And when, with brightened eyes, he put his glass down, he
stood there like some modern incarnation of Dionysus, his face pure
Greek from the low-growing brown curls to the straight nose and the
short round chin. With a cloak over his shoulders in exchange for his
dress-clothes, with sandals for his patent leather shoes, and a wine-cup
for his tall glass, he might have stepped straight from some
temple-frieze, and his father wondered how any girl in her senses could
have chosen the precise, pedantic man whom she was soon going to marry,
when Archie was but waiting, as she must have known, for his moment. He,
poor fellow, was often a very dreary and dispirited boy all day; but in
the evening he came to himself again, and was what he used to be. And
yet, though it seemed to Lord Tintagel a cruel thing to wish to deprive
him of the few hours of the joy of living that were his during the day,
he was smitten, with the easy and vague remorse of a man only
half-sober, to see the effect that alcohol had on Archie, who, all his
life till now, had scarcely tasted it. But he remembered when he himself
had been at that stage; he remembered also his father giving him just
such a warning as he now proposed to give Archie. He wished he had taken
notice of it, and he hoped that Archie would.
That evening, thirty years ago, he recalled now with extreme
distinctness. The scene had taken place in this very room, and his
father, already half-tipsy, as his habit was, had warned him of the
dangers of drink, and he remembered how laughable and grotesque such a
warning had seemed coming from lips that had lost all precision of
utterance. But he told himself that he was not going to commit any such
absurdity: he was perfectly sober, indeed it seemed very likely that it
had never entered Archie's head to think of him as a drunkard. Sometimes
he stumbled a little going upstairs at night, sometimes he had an
impression that his pronunciation was not quite distinct; but he never
became incapable, as he could remember his father becoming, and being
carried off to bed by two perspiring footmen.
He put down his second glass without tasting it.
"There's something I want to speak to you about, Archie," he said, "and
you mustn't be vexed with me, because I'm only doing what I believe to
be my duty. You won't be vexed, will you?"
Archie looked at him in surprise.
"No, I don't suppose I shall, father," he said. "What is it?"
His father got up and stood by his chair quite steadily, for he leaned
back against the high chimney-piece.
"Well, I want to you be careful about that stuff," he said, pointing to
the bottle. "That's one of the habits I was speaking about, which they
say is so easy to keep clear of, but so hard to break. You drink rather
freely, you know, whereas a few months ago you never touched wine or
spirits. It's an awful snare--you may get badly entangled in it before
you know you are caught at all."
Archie kept his lucid eyes fixed on his father's, and not a tremor of
his beautiful mouth betrayed his inward laughter, his derisive merriment
at this solemn adjuration delivered by a man who spoke very carefully
for fear of his words all running into each other like the impress of
ink on blotting-paper. It really was ludicrously funny, and the immortal
Mr. Stiggins came into his mind.
"I hope you don't think a whisky and soda after dinner is dangerous,
father," he said. "You usually have one yourself, you know."
He moved across to the table as he spoke, and handed his father the
drink he had mixed for him but a few moments before. Lord Tintagel,
quite missing the irony of the act, began sipping it as he talked.
"No, of course not, my dear boy," he said. "I'm not a faddist who thinks
there's a microbe of delirium tremens in every glass of wine.
But--though you may never have heard it--your grandfather was a man who
habitually took too much, and it's strange how that sort of failing runs
in families."
Archie's mouth broadened into a smile.
"Skipping a generation now and then," he said gravely.
His father turned sharply on him.
"Eh? What?" he asked.
He looked hard at Archie for a moment--as hard, that is, as his rather
wandering power of focus allowed him--and suddenly beheld himself with
Archie's eyes, even as, thirty years ago, he had beheld his father when
he spoke to him on precisely the same theme. He put down his glass, and
a wave of shame as he saw himself as Archie saw him, went over him.
"I know: this doesn't come very well from me, Archie," he said. "It's
ridiculous, isn't it? But I meant well."
He looked at the boy with a pathetic, deprecating glance.
"If I make an effort, will you make one, too?" he asked. "I've gone far
along that road, and I should be sorry to see you following me. I should
indeed. Just now I know you're unhappy, and a bottle of wine makes
things more tolerable, doesn't it?"
Archie, in his empty, exasperated heart felt a sort of pity for his
father, which was based on scorn. Something inside Lord Tintagel was
probably serious and sincere, and yet it was what he had drunk that
stimulated his scruples for Archie. He was in a mellow, kindly,
moralizing stage in his cups that Archie had often noticed before.
Certainly he himself did not want to become like that, but he felt that
he was not within measurable distance of the need of making any
resolution on the subject, so far was he from needing the exercise of
his will. Just at present, even as his father had said, he was unhappy,
and his unhappiness melted in the sunshine of drink. He did not care for
it in itself; he but took it, so he told himself, like medicine because
his mind was ailing.
"Well, let us talk about it to-morrow," he said. "We'll make some rule,
shall we, father? And don't imagine for a moment that I am vexed with
you. But I shall go upstairs now, I think. I've got some writing I want
to do."
He hesitated a moment.
"I'll just take a night-cap with me," he said. "Good-night, father."
"Good-night, my dear boy; God bless you! We'll have a talk to-morrow."
Archie took the glass he had filled out into the hall, and waited there
a moment, and the pity faded from his mind, leaving only contempt. It
was just the maudlin mood that had prompted his father to be so
ridiculous, and talk about resolutions. Certainly resolutions would do
him no harm, and the keeping of them would undoubtedly do him good, for,
instead of the firm, masterful man whom Archie had known as the rather
prodigious denizen of that formidable room, there sat there now a weak,
entangled creature. Archie could hardly believe that, in years not so
long past, he had been afraid of his father: now his whole force, that
dominating, intangible quality, had vanished. Occasionally he still flew
into fits of anger that alarmed nobody, but that was all that was left
of his power.
Archie sat for a few minutes on the hall-table, instead of going
upstairs, for he meant, with a certain object in view, to go back to his
father's room, on some trivial errand, and, as he waited, the big clock
ticked him back into boyhood. There was the fire-place by which
Abracadabra sat on the last of her appearances; there the screen behind
which, as he had subsequently ascertained, William had hidden with a
trumpet and the servants' dinner-bell, there the side-door into the
gardens through which, pleasingly excited, he had hurried with the box
for coffin of the dead bird which the cat had killed... A hundred
memories crowded about him, and not one, save where Blessington was
concerned, held any romance or tenderness for him. They were as
meaningless as pictures taken out from the empty house and leaning
against the railings in the street: in the house itself, his bitter,
lonely spirit, there was nothing left but the places where once they
hung.
He went back to his father's room, crossing the hall with light foot,
and turning the handle of the door with swiftness and silence. There was
his father by the table, filling his glass again. It was just that which
Archie wished to verify.
"I only came back for a book," he said. "Good-night again."