I
The affectionate if rather mocking friend who had said of Charles
Granter, “He isn’t a man, he’s an edifice,” seemed justified to the
thin dark man following him down Oakley Street, Chelsea, that early
October afternoon. From the square foundations of his feet to his
square fair beard and the top of his head under a square black bowler,
he looked solid as granite, indestructible--too big to be taken by the
board--only fit to be submarined. And the man dodging in his wake right
down to the Embankment ran up once or twice under his counter and fell
behind again as if appalled by the vessel’s size and unconsciousness.
Considering the heat of the past summer the plane-trees were still
very green, and few of their twittering leaves had dropped or turned
yellow--just enough to confirm the glamorous melancholy of early fall.
Granter, though he lived with his wife in some mansions close by, went
out of his way to pass under those trees and look at the river. This
seeming sign of weakness, perhaps, determined the shadowy man to dodge
up again and become stationary close behind. Ravaged and streaked, as
if he had lived submerged, he stood carefully noting with his darting
dark eyes that they were quite alone; then, swallowing violently so
that the strings of his lean neck writhed, he moved stealthily up
beside Granter, and said in a hurried, hoarse voice: “Beg pardon,
mister--ten pound, and I’ll say nothin’.”
The face which Granter turned toward that surprising utterance was
a good illustration of the saying ‘things are not what they seem.’
Above that big building of a body it quivered, ridiculously alive and
complex, as of a man full of nerves, humours, sarcasms; and a deep
continuous chinking sound arose--of Charles Granter jingling coins in
his trousers’ pocket. The quiver settled into raised eyebrows, into
crow’s-feet running out on to the broad cheekbones, into a sarcastic
smile drooping the corners of the lips between moustache and beard. He
said in his rather high voice:
“What’s the matter with you, my friend?”
“There’s a lot the matter with me, mister. Down and out I am. I know
where you live, I know your lady; but--ten pound and I’ll say nothin’.”
“About what?”
“About your visiting that gell, where you’ve just come from. Ten pound.
It’s cheap--I’m a man of me word.”
With lips still sarcastically drooped, Granter made a little derisive
sound. “Blackmail, by George!”
“Guv’nor--I’m desperate, I mean to have that ten pound. You give it me
here at six o’clock this evenin’, if you ’aven’t got it on you.” His
eyes flared suddenly in his hungry face. “But no tricks! I ain’t killed
Huns for nothin’.”
Granter surveyed him for a moment, then turned his back and looked at
the water.
“Well, you’ve got two hours to get it in--six o’clock, mister, just
here; and no tricks--I warn you.”
The hoarse voice ceased, the sound of footsteps died away; Granter was
alone. The smile still clung to his lips, but he was not amused; he was
annoyed with the measured indignation of a big man highly civilised and
innocent. Where had this ruffian sprung from? To be spied on, without
knowing it, like this! His ears grew red. The damned scoundrel!
The thing was too absurd to pay attention to. But, instantly, his
highly-sophisticated consciousness began to pay it attention. How many
visits had he made to this distressed flower-girl? Three? And all
because he didn’t like handing over the case to that society which
always found out the worst. They said private charity was dangerous.
Apparently it was! Blackmail! A consideration came, perching like
a crow on the branches of his mind: Why hadn’t he mentioned the
flower-girl to his wife and made _her_ do the visiting? Why! Because
Olga would have said the girl was a fraud. And perhaps she was! A
put-up job! Would the scoundrel have ventured on this threat at all if
the girl were not behind him? She might support him with lies! His wife
might believe them--she--she had such a vein of cynicism! How sordid,
how domestically unpleasant!
Granter felt quite sick. Every decent human value seemed suddenly in
question. And a second crow came croaking: Could one leave a scoundrel
like this to play his tricks with impunity? Oughtn’t one to go to the
police? He stood extraordinarily still--a dappled leaf dropped from
a plane-tree and lodged on his bowler hat; at the other end of him a
little dog mistook him for a lamp-post. This was no joke! For a man
with a reputation for humanity, integrity and common sense--no joke
at all! A police court meant the prosecution of a fellow-creature;
getting him perhaps a year’s imprisonment, when one had always felt
that punishment practically never fitted crime! Staring at the river
he seemed to see cruelty hovering over himself, his wife, society, the
flower-girl, even over that scoundrel--naked cruelty, waiting to pounce
on one or all. Which ever way one turned the thing was dirty, cruel.
No wonder blackmail was accounted such a heinous crime. No other human
act was so cold-blooded, spider-like, and slimy; none plunged so deadly
a dagger into the bowels of compassion, so eviscerated humanity, so
murdered faith! And it would have been even worse, if his conscience
had not been clear. But was it so extremely clear? Would he have taken
the trouble to go to that flower-girl’s dwelling, not once but three
times, unless she had been attractive, unless her dark-brown eyes had
been pretty, and her common voice so soft? Would he have visited the
blowsy old flower-woman at that other corner, in circumstances, no
doubt, just as strenuous? Honestly: No. Still, if he did like a pretty
face he was not vicious--he was fastidious and detested subterfuge.
But then Olga was so cynical, she would certainly ask him why he
hadn’t visited the old flower-woman as well, and the lame man who sold
matches, and all the other stray unfortunates of the neighbourhood.
_Well_, there it was; and a bold course always the best! The bold
course--which was it? To go to the police? To his wife? To that girl,
and find out if she were in this ramp? To wait till six o’clock, meet
the ruffian and shake the teeth out of him? Granter could not decide.
All seemed equally bold--would do equally well. And a fifth course
presented itself which seemed even bolder: Ignore the thing!
The tide had just turned, and the full waters below him were very
still, of a sunlit soft grey colour. This stillness of the river
restored to Charles Granter something of the impersonal mood in which
he had crossed the Embankment to look at it. Here, by the mother stream
of this great town, was he, tall, strong, well-fed, and, if not rich,
quite comfortable; and here, too, were hundreds of thousands like
that needy flower-girl and this shadowy scoundrel skating on the edge
of destitution. And here was this water--to him a source of æsthetic
enjoyment; to them--a possible last refuge. The girl had talked of
it--beggar’s patter, perhaps, like the blackmailer’s words: “I’m
desperate--I’m down and out.”
One wanted to be just! If he had known all about them--but he knew
nothing!
‘Can’t believe she’s such an ungrateful little wretch!’ he thought;
‘I’ll go back and see her.’
He retraced his way up Oakley Street to the mews which she inhabited,
and ascended a stairway scented with petrol. Through the open doorway
he could see her baby, of doubtful authorship, seated in an empty
flower-basket--a yellow baby, who stared up at him with the placidity
of one recently fed. That stare seemed to Granter to be saying: ‘You
look out that you’re not taken for my author. Have you got an alibi,
old man?’ And almost unconsciously he began to calculate where he
had been about fourteen or fifteen months ago. Not in London--thank
goodness! In Brittany with his wife--all that July, August, and
September. Jingling his money, he contemplated the baby. It seemed
more, but it _might_ be only four months old! The baby opened a
toothless mouth, “Ga” it said, and stretched out a tiny hand. Granter
ceased to jingle the coins and gazed round the room. The first time he
came, a month ago, to test her street-corner story, its condition had
been deplorable. His theory that people were never better than their
environments had prompted the second visit, and that of this afternoon.
He had wanted to know that he was not throwing away his money. And
there certainly was some appearance of comfort now in a room so small
that he and the baby and a bed almost filled it. But he felt a fool
for ever having come there even with those best intentions which were
the devil. And, turning to go, he saw the girl herself ascending the
stairs, a paper bag in her hand, an evident bull’s-eye in her mouth,
for a scent of peppermint preceded her. Surely her cheekbones were
higher than he had thought, her eyebrows more oblique--a gipsy look!
Her eyes, dark and lustrous as a hound puppy’s, smiled at him, and he
said in his rather high voice:
“I came back to ask you something.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know a dark man with a thin face and a slight squint, who’s
been in the Army?”
“What’s his name, sir?”
“I don’t know; but he followed me from here, and tried to blackmail me
on the Embankment. You know what blackmail is?”
“No, sir.”
Feline, swift, furtive, she had passed him and taken up her baby,
slanting her dark glance at him from behind it. Granter experienced
a very queer sensation. Really it was as if--though he disliked
poetic emphasis--as if he had suddenly seen something pre-civilised,
pre-human, snake-like, cat-like, monkey-like too, in those dark sliding
eyes and that yellow baby. She was in it; or, if not in it, she knew of
it!
“A dangerous game, that,” he said. “Tell him--for his own good--he had
better drop it.”
And, while he went, very square, downstairs, he thought: ‘This is one
of the finest opportunities you ever had for getting to the bottom of
human nature, and you’re running away from it.’ So strongly did this
thought obsess him that he halted, in two minds, outside. A chauffeur,
who was cleaning his car, looked at him curiously. Charles Granter
moved away.