the grotesque dead face and fixed them on Grimshaw. He told me that
the force of his desire must have spoken in that look because Grimshaw
started and stepped back a pace, gripping his cane. Then he laughed.
"Why not?" he said. "Let this be me. And I'll go on, with that
clanking hardware store around my neck. It can be done, can't it?
Better for you and for Dagmar. I'm not being philanthropic. I'm
looking, not for a reprieve, but for release. No one knows this fellow
in Salvan--he probably came up from the Rhone and was on his way to
Chamonix. What d'you think was the matter with him?"
"Heart," Doctor Waram answered.
"Well, what d'you say? This pedlar and I are social outcasts. And
there is Dagmar in England, weeping her eyes out because of divorce
courts and more public washing of dirty linen. You love her. I don't!
Why not carry this fellow to the _rochers_, to-night after dark?
To-morrow, when I have changed clothes with him, we can throw him into
the valley. It's a good thousand feet or more. Would there be much
left of that face, for purposes of identification? I think not. You
can take the mutilated body back to England and I can go on to
Chamonix, as he would have gone." Grimshaw touched the pedlar with his
foot. "Free."
That is exactly what they did. The body, hidden near the roadside
until nightfall, was carried through the woods to the _rochers du
soir_, that little plateau on the brink of the tremendous wall of rock
which rises from the Rhone valley to the heights near Salvan. There
the two men left it and returned to their hotel to sleep.
In the morning they set out, taking care that the proprietor of the
hotel and the professional guide who hung about the village should
know that they were going to attempt the descent of the "wall" to the
valley. The proprietor shook his head and said: "_Bonne chance,
messieurs_!" The guide, letting his small blue eyes rest for a moment
on Grimshaw's slow-moving hulk, advised them gravely to take the road.
"The tall gentleman will not arrive," he remarked.
"Nonsense," Grimshaw answered.
They went off together, laughing. Grimshaw was wearing his conspicuous
climbing clothes--tweed jacket, yellow suede waistcoat,
knickerbockers, and high-laced boots with hob-nailed soles. His green
felt hat, tipped at an angle, was ornamented with a little orange
feather. He was in tremendous spirits. He bellowed, made faces at
scared peasant children in the village, swung his stick. They stopped
at a barber shop in the place and those famous hyacinthine locks were
clipped. Waram insisted upon this, he told me, because the pedlar's
hair was fairly short and they had to establish some sort of a
tonsorial alibi. When the floor of the little shop was thick with the
sheared "petals," Grimshaw shook his head, brushed off his shoulders,
and smiled. "It took twenty years to create that visible
personality--and behold, a Swiss barber destroys it in twenty minutes!
I am no longer a living poet. I am already an immortal--halfway up the
flowery slopes of Olympus, impatient to go the rest of the way.
"Shall we be off?"
"By all means," Waram said.
They found the body where they had hidden it the night before, and in
the shelter of a little grove of larches Grimshaw stripped and then
reclothed himself in the pedlar's coarse and soiled under-linen, the
worn corduroy trousers, the flannel shirt, short coat, and old black
velvet hat. Waram was astounded by the beauty and strength of
Grimshaw's body. Like the pedlar, he was blonde-skinned, thin-waisted,
broad of back.
Grimshaw shuddered as he helped to clothe the dead pedlar in his own
fashionable garments. "Death," he said. "Ugh! How ugly. How
terrifying. How abominable."
They carried the body across the plateau. The height where they stood
was touched by the sun, but the valley below was still immersed in
shadow, a broad purple shadow threaded by the shining Rhone.
"Well?" Waram demanded. "Are you eager to die? For this means death
for you, you know."
"A living death," Grimshaw said. He glanced down at the replica of
himself. A convulsive shudder passed through him from head to foot;
his face twisted; his eyes dilated. He made a strong effort to control
himself and whispered: "I understand. Go ahead. Do it. I can't. It is
like destroying me myself.... I can't. Do it--"
Waram lifted the dead body and pushed it over the edge. Grimshaw,
trembling violently, watched it fall. I think, from what Doctor Waram
told me many years later, that the poet must have suffered the
violence and terror of that plummet drop, must have felt the tearing
clutch of pointed rocks in the wall face, must have known the leaping
upward of the earth, the whine of wind in his bursting ears, the dizzy
spinning, the rending, obliterating impact at last....
The pedlar lay in the valley. Grimshaw stood on the brink of the
"wall." He turned, and saw Doctor Waram walking quickly away across
the plateau without a backward glance. They had agreed that Waram was
to return at once to the village and report the death of "his friend,
Mr. Grimshaw." The body, they knew, would be crushed beyond
recognition--a bruised and broken fragment, like enough to Cecil
Grimshaw to pass whatever examination would be given it. Grimshaw
himself was to go through the wood to the highroad, then on to Finhaut
and Chamonix and into France. He was never again to write to Dagmar,
to return to England, or to claim his English property....
Can you imagine his feelings--deprived of his arrogant personality,
his fame, his very identity, clothed in another man's dirty garments,
wearing about his neck a clattering pedlar's outfit, upon his feet the
clumsy boots of a peasant? Grimshaw--the exquisite futurist, the
daffodil, apostle of the aesthetic!
He stood for a moment looking after Douglas Waram. Once, in a panic,
he called. But Waram disappeared between the larches, without,
apparently, having heard. Grimshaw wavered, unable to decide upon the
way to the highroad. He could not shake off a sense of loneliness and
terror, as if he himself had gone whirling down to his death. Like a
man who comes slowly back from the effects of ether, he perceived, one
by one, the familiar aspects of the landscape--the delicate flowers
powdering the plateau, the tasselled larches on the slope, the lofty
snow-peaks still suffused with rosy morning light. This, then, was the
world. This clumsy being, moving slowly toward the forest, was
himself--not Cecil Grimshaw but another man. His mind sought clumsily
for a name. Pierre--no, not Pierre; too common-place! Was he still
fastidious? No. Then Pierre, by all means! Pierre Pilleux. That would
do. Pilleux. A name suggestive of a good amiable fellow, honest and
slow. When he got down into France he would change his identity
again--grow a beard, buy some decent clothes. A boulevardier... gay,
perverse, witty.... The thought delighted him and he hurried through
the forest, anxious to pass through Salvan before Doctor Waram got
there. He felt extraordinarily light and exhilarated now, intoxicated,
vibrant. His spirit soared; almost he heard the rushing of his old
self forward toward some unrecognizable and beautiful freedom.
When he struck the road the sun was high and it was very hot. Little
spirals of dust kicked up at his heels. He was not afraid of
recognition. Happening to glance at his hands, he became aware of
their whiteness, and stooping, rubbed them in the dust.
Then a strange thing happened. Another herd of goats trotted down from
the grassy slopes and spilled into the road-way. And another dog with
lolling tongue and wagging tail wove in and out, shepherding the
little beasts. They eddied about Grimshaw, brushing against him, their
moon-stone eyes full of a vague terror of that barking guardian at
their heels. The dog drove them ahead, circled, and with a low whine
came back to Grimshaw, leaping up to lick his hand.
Grimshaw winced, for he had never had success with animals. Then, with
a sudden change of mood, he stooped and caressed the dog's head.
"A good fellow," he said in French to the goatherd.
The goatherd looked at him curiously. "Not always," he answered. "He
is an unpleasant beast with most strangers. For you, he seems to have
taken a fancy.... What have you got there--any two-bladed knives?"
Grimshaw started and recovered himself with: "Knives. Yes. All sorts."
The goatherd fingered his collection, trying the blades on his broad
thumb.
"You come from France," he said.
Grimshaw nodded. "From Lyons."
"I thought so. You speak French like a gentleman."
Grimshaw shrugged. "That is usual in Lyons."
The peasant paid for the knife he fancied, placing two francs in the
poet's palm. Then he whistled to the dog and set off after his flock.
But the dog, whining and trembling, followed Grimshaw, and would not
be shaken off until Grimshaw had pelted him with small stones. I think
the poet was strangely flattered by this encounter. He passed through
Salvan with his head in the air, challenging recognition. But there
was no recognition. The guide who had said "The tall monsieur will not
arrive" now greeted him with a fraternal: "How is trade?"
"Very good, thanks," Grimshaw said.
Beyond the village he quickened his pace, and easing the load on his
back by putting his hands under the leather straps, he swung toward
Finhaut. Behind him he heard the faint ringing of the church bells in
Salvan. Waram had reported the "tragedy." Grimshaw could fancy the
excitement--the priest hurrying toward the "wall" with his crucifix in
his hands; the barber, a-quiver with morbid excitement; the stolid
guide, not at all surprised, rather gratified, preparing to make the
descent to recover the body of that "tall monsieur" who had, after
all, "arrived." The telegraph wires were already humming with the
message. In a few hours Dagmar would know.
He laughed aloud. The white road spun beneath him. His hands, pressed
against his body by the weight of the leather straps, were hot and
wet; he could feel the loud beating of his heart.
His senses were acute; he had never before felt with such
gratification the warmth of the sun or known the ecstasy of motion. He
saw every flower in the roadbank, every small glacial brook, every new
conformation of the snow clouds hanging above the ragged peaks of the
Argentières. He sniffed with delight the pungent wind from off the
glaciers, the short, warm puffs of grass-scented air from the fields
in the Valley of Trient. He noticed the flight of birds, the lazy
swinging of pine boughs, the rainbow spray of waterfalls. Once he
shouted and ran, mad with exuberance. Again he flung himself down by
the roadside and, lying on his back, sang outrageous songs and laughed
and slapped his breast with both hands.
That night he came to Chamonix and got lodging in a small hotel on the
skirts of the town. His spirits fell when he entered the room. He put
his pedlar's pack on the floor and sat down on the narrow bed,
suddenly conscious of an enormous fatigue. His feet burned, his legs
ached, his back was raw where the heavy pack had rested. He thought:
"What am I doing here? I have nothing but the few hundred pounds Waram
gave me. I'm alone. Dead and alive."
He scarcely looked up when the door opened and a young girl came in,
carrying a pitcher of water and a coarse towel. She hesitated and said
rather prettily: "You'll be tired, perhaps?"
Grimshaw felt within him the tug of the old personality. He stared at
her, suddenly conscious that she was a woman and that she was smiling
at him. Charming, in her way. Bare arms. A little black bodice laced
over a white waist. Straight blonde hair, braided thickly and twisted
around her head. A peasant, but pretty.... You see, his desire was to
frighten her, as he most certainly would have frightened her had he
been true to Cecil Grimshaw. But the impulse passed, leaving him sick
and ashamed. He heard her saying: "A sad thing occurred to-day down
the valley. A gentleman.... Salvan ... a very famous gentleman.... And
they have telegraphed his wife.... I heard it from Simon Ravanel....
It seems that the gentleman was smashed to bits--_brise en morceau.
Épouvantable, n'est ce pas_?"
Grimshaw began to tremble. "Yes, yes," he said irritably. "But I am
tired, little one. Go out, and shut the door!"
The girl gave him a startled glance, frightened at last, but for
nothing more than the lost look in his eyes. He raised his arms, and
she fled with a little scream.
Grimshaw sat for a moment staring at the door. Then with a violent
gesture he threw himself back on the bed, buried his face in the dirty
pillow and wept as a child weeps, until, just before dawn, he fell
asleep....
As far as the public knows, Cecil Grimshaw perished on the
"wall"--perished and was buried at Broadenham beneath a pyramid of
chrysanthemums. Perished, and became an English immortal--his sins
erased by his unconscious sacrifice. Perished, and was forgiven by
Dagmar. Yet hers was the victory--he belonged to her at last. She had
not buried his body at Broadenham, but she had buried his work there.
He could never write again....
During those days of posthumous whitewashing he read the papers with a
certain contemptuous eagerness. Some of them he crumpled between his
hands and threw away. He hated his own image, staring balefully from
the first page of the illustrated reviews. He despised England for
honouring him. Once, happening upon a volume of the "Vision of
Helen"--the first edition illustrated by Beardsley--in a book-stall at
Aix-les-Bains, he read it from cover to cover.
"Poor stuff," he said to the bookseller, tossing it down again. "Give
me 'Ars ne Lupin'." And he paid two sous for a paper-covered,
dog-eared, much-thumbed copy of the famous detective story, not
because he intended to read it, but in payment for his hour of
disillusionment. Then he slung his pack over his shoulders and tramped
out into the country. He laughed aloud at the thought of Helen and her
idolaters. A poetic hoax. Overripe words. Seductive sounds. Nonsense!
"Surely I can do better than that to-day," he thought.
He saw two children working in a field, and called to them.
"If you will give me a cup of cold water," he said, "I'll tell you a
story."
"Gladly, monsieur."
The boy put down his spade, went to a brook which threaded the field
and came back with an earthenware jug full to the brim. The little
girl stared gravely at Grimshaw while he drank. Grimshaw wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand.
"What story shall it be?" he demanded.
The little girl said quickly: "The black king and the white princess
and the beast who lived in the wood."
"Not that one," the boy cried. "Tell us about a battle."
"I will sing about life," Grimshaw said.
It was hot in the field. A warm, sweet smell rose from the spaded
earth and near by the brook rustled through the grass like a beautiful
silver serpent. Grimshaw sat cross-legged on the ground and words spun
from his lips--simple words. And he sang of things he had recently
learned--the gaiety of birds, the strength of his arms, the scent of
dusk, the fine crystal of a young moon, wind in a field of wheat....
At first the children listened. Then, because he talked so long, the
little girl leaned slowly over against his shoulder and fell asleep,
while the boy fingered the knives, jangled the key-rings, clipped
grass stalks with the scissors, and wound the watches one after the
other. The sun was low before Grimshaw left them. "When you are grown
up," he said, "remember that Pierre Pilleux sang to you of life."
"_Oui, monsieur_," the boy said politely. "But I should like a watch."
Grimshaw shook his head. "The song is enough."
Thereafter he sang to any one who would listen to him. I say that he
sang--I mean, of course, that he spoke his verses; it was a minstrel's
simple improvisation. But there are people in the villages of southern
France who still recall that ungainly, shambling figure. He had grown
a beard; it crinkled thickly, hiding his mouth and chin. He laughed a
great deal. He was not altogether clean. And he slept wherever he
could find a bed--in farmhouses, cheap hotels, haylofts, stables, open
fields. Waram's few hundred pounds were gone. The poet lived by his
wits and his gift of song. And for the first time in his remembrance
he was happy.
Then one day he read in _Le Matin_ that Ada Rubenstein was to play
"The Labyrinth" in Paris. Grimshaw was in Poitiers. He borrowed three
hundred francs from the proprietor of a small café in the Rue Carnot,
left his pack as security, and went to Paris. Can you imagine him in
the theatre--it was the Odéon, I believe--conscious of curious, amused
glances--a peasant, bulking conspicuously in that scented auditorium?
When the curtain rose, he felt again the familiar pain of creation. A
rush of hot blood surged around his heart. His temples throbbed. His
eyes filled with tears. Then the flood receded and left him trembling
with weakness. He sat through the rest of the performance without
emotion of any sort. He felt no resentment, no curiosity.
This was the last time he showed any interest in his old existence. He
went back to Poitiers, and then took to the road again. People who saw
him at that time have said that there was always a pack of dogs at his
heels. Once a fashionable spaniel followed him out of Lyons and he was
arrested for theft. You understand, he never made any effort to
attract the little fellows--they joined on, as it were, for the
journey. And it was a queer fact that after a few miles they always
whined, as if they were disappointed about something, and turned
back....
He finally heard that Dagmar had married Waram. She had waited a
decent interval--Victorian to the end! A man who happened to be in
Marseilles at the time told me that "that vagabond poet, Pilleux,
appeared in one of the cafés, roaring drunk, and recited a marriage
poem--obscene, vicious, terrific. A crowd came in from the street to
listen. Some of them laughed. Others were frightened. He was an ugly
brute--well over six feet tall, with a blonde beard, a hooked nose,
and a pair of eyes that saw beyond reality. He was fascinating. He
could turn his eloquence off and on like a tap. He sat in a drunken
stupor, glaring at the crowd, until someone shouted: "_Eh bien,
Pilleux_--you were saying?" Then the deluge! He had a peasant's
acceptance of the elemental facts of life--it was raw, that hymn of
his! The women of the streets who had crowded into the caf listened
with a sort of terror; they admired him. One of them said: "Pilleux's
wife betrayed him." He lifted his glass and drank. "No, _ma petite_,"
he said politely, "she buried me."
That night his pack was stolen from him. He was too drunk to know or
to care. They say that he went from café to café, paying for wine with
verse, and getting it, too! At his heels a crowd of loafers, frowsy
women and dogs. His hat gone. His eyes mad. A trickle of wine through
his beard. Bellowing. Bellowing again--the untamed centaur cheated of
the doe!
And now, perhaps, I can get back to the reasons for this story. And I
am almost at the end of it....
In the most obscure alley in Marseilles there is a caf frequented by
sailors, riff-raff from the waterfront and thieves. Grimshaw appeared
there at midnight. A woman clung to his arm. She had no eyes for any
one else. Her name, I believe, was Marie--a very humble Magdalen of
that tragic back-water of civilization. Putting her cheek against
Grimshaw's arm, she listened to him with a curious patience as one
listens to the eloquence of the sea.
"This is no place for thee," he said to her. "Leave me now, _ma
petite_."
But she laughed and went with him. Imagine that room--foul air, sanded
floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale
humanity. Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly
Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour.
They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it--sat staring at the
smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram
at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the
terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar's bright room which had
always been scented, warm, remote----
He had been reciting, of course, in French. Now he broke abruptly into
English. No one but the American Negro understood. The proprietor
shouted: "Hi, there, Pilleux--no gibberish!" The woman, her eyes on
Grimshaw's face, said warningly: "Ssh! He speaks English. He is
clever, this poet! Pay attention." And the Negro, startled, jerked his
drunken body straight and listened.
I don't know what Grimshaw said. It must have been a poem of home, the
bitter longing of an exile for familiar things. At any rate, the Negro
was touched--he was a Louisianian, a son of New Orleans. He saw the
gentleman, where you and I, perhaps, would have seen only a maudlin
savage. There is no other explanation for the thing that happened....
The Gascon, it seems, hated poetry. He tipped over Grimshaw's glass,
spilling the wine into the woman's lap. She leaped back, trembling
with rage, swearing in the manner of her kind.
"Quiet," Grimshaw said. And her fury receded before his glance; she
melted, acquiesced, smiled. Then Grimshaw smiled, too, and putting the
glass to rights with a leisurely gesture, said, "Cabbage. Son of pig,"
and flipped the dregs into the Gascon's face.
The fellow groaned and leaped. Grimshaw didn't stir--he was too drunk
to protect himself. But the Negro saw what was in the Gascon's hand.
He kicked back his chair, stretched out his arms--too late. The
Gascon's knife, intended for Grimshaw, sliced into his heart. He
coughed, looked at the man he had saved with a strange questioning,
and collapsed.
Grimshaw was sobered instantly. They say that he broke the Gascon's
arm before the crowd could separate them. Then he knelt down by the
dying Negro, turned him gently over and lifted him in his arms,
supporting that ugly bullet head against his knee. The Negro coughed
again, and whispered: "I saw it comin', boss." Grimshaw said simply:
"Thank you."
"I'm scared, boss."
"That's all right. I'll see you through."
"I'm dyin', boss."
"Is it hard?"
"Yessir."
"Hold my hand. That's right. Nothing to be afraid of."
The Negro's eyes fixed themselves on Grimshaw's face--a sombre look
came into their depths. "I'm goin', boss."
Grimshaw lifted him again. As he did so, he was conscious of feeling
faint and dizzy. The Negro's blood was warm on his hands and wrists,
but it was not wholly that--He had a sensation of rushing forward; of
pressure against his ear-drums; a violent nausea; the crowd of curious
faces blurred, disappeared--he was drowning in a noisy darkness.... He
gasped, struggled, struck out with his arms, shouted, went down in
that suffocating flood of unconsciousness....
Opening his eyes after an indeterminate interval, he found himself in
the street. The air was cool after the fetid staleness of that room.
He was still holding the Negro's hand. And above them the stars
burned, remote and calm, like beacon lamps in a dark harbour....
The Negro whimpered: "I don't know the way, boss. I'm lost."
"Where is your ship?"
"In the _Vieux Port_, near the fort."
They walked together through the silent streets. I say that they
walked. It was rather that Grimshaw found himself on the quay, the
Negro still at his side. A few prowling sailors passed them. But for
the most part the waterfront was deserted. The ships lay side by
side--an intricate tangle of bowsprits and rigging, masts and chains.
Around them the water was black as basalt, only that now and again a
spark of light was struck by the faint lifting of the current against
the immovable hulls.
The Negro shuffled forward, peering. A lantern flashed on one of the
big schooners. Looking up, Grimshaw saw the name: "_Anne Beebe, New
Orleans_." A querulous voice, somewhere on the deck, demanded: "That
you, Richardson?" And then, angrily: "This damned place--dark as
hell.... Who's there?"
Grimshaw answered: "One of your crew."
The man on deck stared down at the quay a moment. Then, apparently
having seen nothing, he turned away, and the lantern bobbed aft like a
drifting ember. The Negro moaned. Holding both hands over the deep
wound in his breast, he slowly climbed the side ladder, turned once,
to look at Grimshaw, and disappeared....