THE bleak rawness of a grey December day held sway over St. James’s Park,
that sanctuary of lawn and tree and pool, into which the bourgeois
innovator has rushed ambitiously time and again, to find that he must
take the patent leather from off his feet, for the ground on which he
stands is hallowed ground.
In the lonely hour of early afternoon, when the workers had gone back to
their work, and the loiterers were scarcely yet gathered again, Francesca
Bassington made her way restlessly along the stretches of gravelled walk
that bordered the ornamental water. The overmastering unhappiness that
filled her heart and stifled her thinking powers found answering echo in
her surroundings. There is a sorrow that lingers in old parks and
gardens that the busy streets have no leisure to keep by them; the dead
must bury their dead in Whitehall or the Place de la Concorde, but there
are quieter spots where they may still keep tryst with the living and
intrude the memory of their bygone selves on generations that have almost
forgotten them. Even in tourist-trampled Versailles the desolation of a
tragedy that cannot die haunts the terraces and fountains like a
bloodstain that will not wash out; in the Saxon Garden at Warsaw there
broods the memory of long-dead things, coeval with the stately trees that
shade its walks, and with the carp that swim to-day in its ponds as they
doubtless swam there when “Lieber Augustin” was a living person and not
as yet an immortal couplet. And St. James’s Park, with its lawns and
walks and waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone order
of men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into its history,
dim and grey as they were once bright and glowing, like the faded pattern
worked into the fabric of an old tapestry. It was here that Francesca
had made her way when the intolerable inaction of waiting had driven her
forth from her home. She was waiting for that worst news of all, the
news which does not kill hope, because there has been none to kill, but
merely ends suspense. An early message had said that Comus was ill,
which might have meant much or little; then there had come that morning a
cablegram which only meant one thing; in a few hours she would get a
final message, of which this was the preparatory forerunner. She already
knew as much as that awaited message would tell her. She knew that she
would never see Comus again, and she knew now that she loved him beyond
all things that the world could hold for her. It was no sudden rush of
pity or compunction that clouded her judgment or gilded her recollection
of him; she saw him as he was, the beautiful, wayward, laughing boy, with
his naughtiness, his exasperating selfishness, his insurmountable folly
and perverseness, his cruelty that spared not even himself, and as he
was, as he always had been, she knew that he was the one thing that the
Fates had willed that she should love. She did not stop to accuse or
excuse herself for having sent him forth to what was to prove his death.
It was, doubtless, right and reasonable that he should have gone out
there, as hundreds of other men went out, in pursuit of careers; the
terrible thing was that he would never come back. The old cruel
hopelessness that had always chequered her pride and pleasure in his good
looks and high spirits and fitfully charming ways had dealt her a last
crushing blow; he was dying somewhere thousands of miles away without
hope of recovery, without a word of love to comfort him, and without hope
or shred of consolation she was waiting to hear of the end. The end;
that last dreadful piece of news which would write “nevermore” across his
life and hers.
The lively bustle in the streets had been a torture that she could not
bear. It wanted but two days to Christmas and the gaiety of the season,
forced or genuine, rang out everywhere. Christmas shopping, with its
anxious solicitude or self-centred absorption, overspread the West End
and made the pavements scarcely passable at certain favoured points.
Proud parents, parcel-laden and surrounded by escorts of their young
people, compared notes with one another on the looks and qualities of
their offspring and exchanged loud hurried confidences on the difficulty
or success which each had experienced in getting the right presents for
one and all. Shouted directions where to find this or that article at
its best mingled with salvos of Christmas good wishes. To Francesca,
making her way frantically through the carnival of happiness with that
lonely deathbed in her eyes, it had seemed a callous mockery of her pain;
could not people remember that there were crucifixions as well as joyous
birthdays in the world? Every mother that she passed happy in the
company of a fresh-looking clean-limbed schoolboy son sent a fresh stab
at her heart, and the very shops had their bitter memories. There was
the tea-shop where he and she had often taken tea together, or, in the
days of their estrangement, sat with their separate friends at separate
tables. There were other shops where extravagantly-incurred bills had
furnished material for those frequently recurring scenes of
recrimination, and the Colonial outfitters, where, as he had phrased it
in whimsical mockery, he had bought grave-clothes for his burying-alive.
The “oubliette!” She remembered the bitter petulant name he had flung at
his destined exile. There at least he had been harder on himself than
the Fates were pleased to will; never, as long as Francesca lived and had
a brain that served her, would she be able to forget. That narcotic
would never be given to her. Unrelenting, unsparing memory would be with
her always to remind her of those last days of tragedy. Already her mind
was dwelling on the details of that ghastly farewell dinner-party and
recalling one by one the incidents of ill-omen that had marked it; how
they had sat down seven to table and how one liqueur glass in the set of
seven had been shivered into fragments; how her glass had slipped from
her hand as she raised it to her lips to wish Comus a safe return; and
the strange, quiet hopelessness of Lady Veula’s “good-bye”; she
remembered now how it had chilled and frightened her at the moment.
The park was filling again with its floating population of loiterers, and
Francesca’s footsteps began to take a homeward direction. Something
seemed to tell her that the message for which she waited had arrived and
was lying there on the hall table. Her brother, who had announced his
intention of visiting her early in the afternoon would have gone by now;
he knew nothing of this morning’s bad news—the instinct of a wounded
animal to creep away by itself had prompted her to keep her sorrow from
him as long as possible. His visit did not necessitate her presence; he
was bringing an Austrian friend, who was compiling a work on the
Franco-Flemish school of painting, to inspect the Van der Meulen, which
Henry Greech hoped might perhaps figure as an illustration in the book.
They were due to arrive shortly after lunch, and Francesca had left a
note of apology, pleading an urgent engagement elsewhere. As she turned
to make her way across the Mall into the Green Park a gentle voice hailed
her from a carriage that was just drawing up by the sidewalk. Lady
Caroline Benaresq had been favouring the Victoria Memorial with a long
unfriendly stare.
“In primitive days,” she remarked, “I believe it was the fashion for
great chiefs and rulers to have large numbers of their relatives and
dependents killed and buried with them; in these more enlightened times
we have invented quite another way of making a great Sovereign
universally regretted. My dear Francesca,” she broke off suddenly,
catching the misery that had settled in the other’s eyes, “what is the
matter? Have you had bad news from out there?”
“I am waiting for very bad news,” said Francesca, and Lady Caroline knew
what had happened.
“I wish I could say something; I can’t.” Lady Caroline spoke in a harsh,
grunting voice that few people had ever heard her use.
Francesca crossed the Mall and the carriage drove on.
“Heaven help that poor woman,” said Lady Caroline; which was, for her,
startlingly like a prayer.
As Francesca entered the hall she gave a quick look at the table; several
packages, evidently an early batch of Christmas presents, were there, and
two or three letters. On a salver by itself was the cablegram for which
she had waited. A maid, who had evidently been on the lookout for her,
brought her the salver. The servants were well aware of the dreadful
thing that was happening, and there was pity on the girl’s face and in
her voice.
“This came for you ten minutes ago, ma’am, and Mr. Greech has been here,
ma’am, with another gentleman, and was sorry you weren’t at home. Mr.
Greech said he would call again in about half-an-hour.”
Francesca carried the cablegram unopened into the drawing-room and sat
down for a moment to think. There was no need to read it yet, for she
knew what she would find written there. For a few pitiful moments Comus
would seem less hopelessly lost to her if she put off the reading of that
last terrible message. She rose and crossed over to the windows and
pulled down the blinds, shutting out the waning December day, and then
reseated herself. Perhaps in the shadowy half-light her boy would come
and sit with her again for awhile and let her look her last upon his
loved face; she could never touch him again or hear his laughing,
petulant voice, but surely she might look on her dead. And her starving
eyes saw only the hateful soulless things of bronze and silver and
porcelain that she had set up and worshipped as gods; look where she
would they were there around her, the cold ruling deities of the home
that held no place for her dead boy. He had moved in and out among them,
the warm, living, breathing thing that had been hers to love, and she had
turned her eyes from that youthful comely figure to adore a few feet of
painted canvas, a musty relic of a long departed craftsman. And now he
was gone from her sight, from her touch, from her hearing for ever,
without even a thought to flash between them for all the dreary years
that she should live, and these things of canvas and pigment and wrought
metal would stay with her. They were her soul. And what shall it profit
a man if he save his soul and slay his heart in torment?
On a small table by her side was Mervyn Quentock’s portrait of her—the
prophetic symbol of her tragedy; the rich dead harvest of unreal things
that had never known life, and the bleak thrall of black unending Winter,
a Winter in which things died and knew no re-awakening.
Francesca turned to the small envelope lying in her lap; very slowly she
opened it and read the short message. Then she sat numb and silent for a
long, long time, or perhaps only for minutes. The voice of Henry Greech
in the hall, enquiring for her, called her to herself. Hurriedly she
crushed the piece of paper out of sight; he would have to be told, of
course, but just yet her pain seemed too dreadful to be laid bare.
“Comus is dead” was a sentence beyond her power to speak.
“I have bad news for you, Francesca, I’m sorry to say,” Henry announced.
Had he heard, too?
“Henneberg has been here and looked at the picture,” he continued,
seating himself by her side, “and though he admired it immensely as a
work of art he gave me a disagreeable surprise by assuring me that it’s
not a genuine Van der Meulen. It’s a splendid copy, but still,
unfortunately, only a copy.”
Henry paused and glanced at his sister to see how she had taken the
unwelcome announcement. Even in the dim light he caught some of the
anguish in her eyes.
“My dear Francesca,” he said soothingly, laying his hand affectionately
on her arm, “I know that this must be a great disappointment to you,
you’ve always set such store by this picture, but you mustn’t take it too
much to heart. These disagreeable discoveries come at times to most
picture fanciers and owners. Why, about twenty per cent. of the alleged
Old Masters in the Louvre are supposed to be wrongly attributed. And
there are heaps of similar cases in this country. Lady Dovecourt was
telling me the other day that they simply daren’t have an expert in to
examine the Van Dykes at Columbey for fear of unwelcome disclosures. And
besides, your picture is such an excellent copy that it’s by no means
without a value of its own. You must get over the disappointment you
naturally feel, and take a philosophical view of the matter. . . ”
Francesca sat in stricken silence, crushing the folded morsel of paper
tightly in her hand and wondering if the thin, cheerful voice with its
pitiless, ghastly mockery of consolation would never stop.