THE GOING OF THE GOOD COMRADE
The cottage was very quiet. Although it was not late, both Captain
Polkington and Johnny had gone to bed, the one to suit himself, the
other to oblige Julia; she was in the kitchen now, as completely alone
as she could wish. And certainly she did wish it; by the hard light in
her eyes and the grim look about her mouth it was clear she was in no
mood for company. She had got at the truth that evening, or most of
it; the whole affair, with the exception of one point only, was quite
plain to her; not by her father's wish or intention, but plain none
the less. Subterfuge was an art the Polkingtons understood so well
that it was exceedingly difficult to deceive them; Julia was the most
difficult of them all to deceive, and the Captain was least clever at
subterfuge; it was not wonderful, therefore, that she knew nearly all
there was to know. Her heart was bitter within her, but against
herself as well as against her father--after all he had but done what
she had once thought to do. She had stayed her hand because the one
who owned the daffodil was a child to her. Her father had had no such
reason for staying his; the one who owned this daffodil was as cunning
as he. He had done what he had, badly of course he could not do
otherwise--a foredained failure such as he--bungled it hopelessly; but
the idea was the same--a bad travesty of a bad idea, badly worked out.
For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust
and contempt for the method. It was sin without genius, a puerile
theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a
purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an
outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on
creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst.
The really good have little idea how such fool's knavery looks to the
shadily clever; it brings home to them the wrongness of wrong,
disgusting them with it and with themselves, as no preaching in the
world can.
The moon had risen by this time; its first beams shone in at the
unshuttered window. Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked
out. There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one,
was struggling through it, shining with a soft, diffused light that
made the landscape very unearthly.
It was wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of
unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space
and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell
of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her;
she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part nor lot with
these things. "Thief, and daughter of a thief;" the words kept coming
to her--and he, the man whom she never named to herself, had called
her his good comrade! She bowed her face to her knees and sat
motionless.
She had told him the truth about herself; she had not been ashamed;
she would not have been even if she had taken the daffodil. But her
father! She was ashamed for him with a bitter shame; ashamed of
herself and him too, in thought and intention at least they were one,
double-dealers. "Two grubby little people," as she had seen them long
ago when they first stood in company with that man.
"But you don't know; you have not our temptations." She almost spoke
aloud, unconsciously addressing the dewy silence as her mind called
the man plainly before her. "You have never wanted money as I wanted
it, or wanted things as father wanted them. Oh, you would despise the
things he wanted--so do I; they are miserable and mean and sordid; you
couldn't want whisky and comfort as he wanted them, but you can't
think how he did! He would have justified it to himself too; you
wouldn't, couldn't do that, while we--we could justify the devil if we
tried. It is not right, any the more for that, I know it is not; it is
dishonest and disgraceful, I know that as well as you; but I know how
it came about and you--you can never understand!" Her voice sank away.
That was the great difference between herself and this man; it did not
lie in what she did; that was a remedial matter--but rather in what
she knew and felt. Things that did not exist for him were not only
possible but sometimes almost necessary to her and hers. The gulf
between them which had almost seemed bridged in the early summer was
suddenly opened again by the day's work; opened beyond all passage for
her--thief, and daughter of a thief.
She sat on the doorstone looking out with unseeing eyes while the moon
rose higher and the light grew so that the belts of shadow melted and
the misty land was all silver, a world of dreams, very pure and still.
But neither her dreams nor her thoughts were pure and still; they were
full of passion and pain, longing and regret and shame, and yet an
underlying hopeless desire that all could be known and understood.
At last she rose and went in. The pink woolly thing Captain
Polkington had bought her lay on the kitchen-table, half out of its
paper wrappings, a silly, useless thing. As her eyes fell on it they
grew dim and hot while the colour crept up in her cheek. Her father
had bought it for her; he had thought to please her with the foolish
thing; it was like a child's or a fool's gift; she hated herself for
hating it. But he had deceived himself into thinking he was generous
to make it with his illgotten gains; he had salved conscience with
it--it was a liar's gift, a self-deceiver's, a thief's. There was no
kindness, no generosity in it, and she despised him--and he was her
father!
She picked up the thing, paper and all, and crammed it into the dying
fire. Then suddenly she burst into tears. The world was all wrong,
justice was wrong and suffering was wrong and mankind wrong, all was
wrong and inexplicable and pitiful too.
For a minute she sobbed chokingly, then she forced back the tears with
the angry impatience of a hurt animal, and fetching a sheet of paper
and pencil, sat down to write. He was her father and he was a man with
a warped idea of honour, one whose self-respect had been taken away;
it was too late to teach him, one could only safeguard him now.
Opportunity did not make thieves of such as her, but it did of such as
him, and she had left the opportunity--or what he took to be it--open.
She would close it now for ever; she would be rid of the bulb, the
cause of so much trouble. So she wrote hurriedly, a mere scrawl, while
the passion was still upon her, and her eyes were still dim with
tears--
"Joost, if you have ever cared for me, take back the daffodil; take it
back and don't ask me why."
The next morning Julia posted a small parcel, and at dinner time told
Johnny and her father that she had sent the famous daffodil back to
its native land.
Johnny looked up in mild surprise; he had been to the outhouse that
morning to see if the bulbs were keeping dry. "Why," he said, "it's in
the shed!"
"No, it is not," Julia answered, "and it never was. The one you think
it is one of the large double pale ones; I told you at the time we put
them away, but you have got mixed, I expect."
"Ah, yes, of course," Mr. Gillat said; "I remember now; of course, I
remember."
The Captain swallowed something, but contrived to keep quiet, and only
darted a glance at Johnny, the muddler, whose information could never
be depended on.
When the meal was over and Mr. Gillat in the back kitchen, Captain
Polkington spoke to his daughter.
"Julia," he said, moistening his dry lips, "that man Cross thought it
was the streaked daffodil that I, that--"
His voice tailed away, but Julia only said, "Well?"
"I pledged by word of honour that it was the true one."
Again Julia said, "Well?"
"What is to be done?" the Captain asked.
She showed no signs of grasping his meaning or at all events of
helping him out. He burst out irritably, "What on earth have you sold
it for? Nothing would induce you to do so before when I asked you to;
now, all at once you have taken a freak and parted with it without any
consideration whatever. I never saw anything like women, so utterly
irrational!"
"I have not sold it," Julia told him; "only sent it away."
"What for? It is perfectly absurd! I suppose you can get it back? You
must get it back."
Julia asked "What for?" in her turn.
The Captain enlightened her. "There is Cross," he said; "I told him
that was the daffodil, and it is not. Something must be done; we can't
cheat him; we must send him the daffodil, or else refund the five
pounds. We should have to do that--and we can't."
"No," Julia agreed grimly; "and we would not if we could."
"But what are you going to do?" her father asked.
"Nothing."
"Nothing! But I pledged my word! You don't understand, I am in honour
bound."
Julia forbore to make and comment on her father's notion of honour;
indeed, it struck her as almost pathetic in its grotesqueness and
certainly very characteristic of the Polkingtons.
"Cross paid five pounds for the streaked daffodil," the Captain went on to
say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible
plainness, "and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money
back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I
guaranteed the thing."
"He paid five pounds for a speculation," Julia said; "your guarantee
was nothing, and though he may have asked for it, it was just a form
and did not count one way or the other. He knew there was a chance
that you had come by the true bulb somehow and so had it to sell; he
risked five pounds on that--and lost it."
Captain Polkington looked bewildered. "He paid five pounds for the
bulb," he persisted; "he said it was worth no more to him."
"Very likely not, if he could get it for that," Julia said; "but if
he could have been sure of it, it would have been worth two hundred
pounds."
"Two hundred!" Captain Polkington gasped, turning rather white.
Julia nodded. "With my guarantee," she said. "You had not got that; I
suppose you let him see it when you wrote first so he knew that,
though you might have the real bulb, you were not in a position to
sell it well."
The Captain flushed as suddenly as he had paled. "You think he thought
I had not come by it honestly, that I had no right in my daughter's
affairs?"
"I don't see it matters what he thought," Julia answered, taking up
the dishes. "He risked his money, and lost it, knowing very well what
he did; he does not mind doing business in that way; I don't admire it
myself, but I guessed he would do it when I first made his
acquaintance."
"You ----" the Captain said.
"I have nothing to do with it, and shall have nothing."
"But the money must be paid; it is a debt of honour; I must clear
myself."
Julia shrugged her shoulders.
"You do not wish me cleared?" her father demanded haughtily.
"Paying the five pounds would not clear you," she said; "neither that
nor anything else. No, I am not going to pay it; I don't feel any
obligation in the matter. If Mr. Cross goes in for those sort of
dealings he must put up with the consequence, and I am afraid you
must, too." And with that she went away.
This was the last reference that was made to the sale of the daffodil
and the expedition to town; after that the matter was left out of
conversation and Julia behaved as if it had never existed. But Captain
Polkington was very unhappy; he could not get over the affair and his
own failure; he brooded over it in silence, feeling and resenting that
he could not speak to either Johnny or Julia, they being quite unable
to understand his emotions. Once or twice he raged weakly against
Cross, who had given him five pounds when he had asked twenty for a
thing worth two hundred; who had doubted his word, who had behaved as
if he were a common thief--who would, doubtless, think him one. More
often his indignation burnt up against Julia who would do nothing to
remedy this last catastrophe, and clear him and reinstate his honour
in the eyes of this man and himself. Most often of all his quarrel was
with fate, and then his anger broke down into self-pity as he thought
of all the troubles that were crowding about his later years; of his
lost reputation, his lack of sympathy and comprehension; the failure
of all his plans and hopes, the poverty and feeble health that
oppressed him. In these gloomy days he had one ray of comfort only; it
lay in the purchase he had made on that day that he went shopping.
That whisky was the solitary thing in the day's adventure about which
Julia had not heard; everything else she had been told, but somehow
that had escaped. One reason of this, no doubt, lay in the fact that
Captain Polkington had not brought his purchase home with him that
evening. He had meant to; when the carrier set him and his property
down just outside Halgrave, he had fully meant to carry it to the
cottage. But he found it so heavy and cumbersome in his weak and
dejected state that he had to give it up. So he found a suitable
hiding-place in the deep overgrown ditch beside the road, and,
thrusting it as much out of sight as he could, left it there and went
home unburdened. He meant to tell Julia and Johnny about it, they of
course were to have shared, and one or both of them would go with him
to fetch it home in the morning. But he did not tell them; it did not
seem suitable at first; they, each in a different way, were too
unsympathetic about the expedition to town; he determined to wait for
a fitting opportunity. The opportunity did not come; but in course of
time the whisky was moved and gave comfort of sorts during the autumn
days to the Captain's drooping spirits, if it had a less beneficial
effect on his failing health.
In the meantime the daffodil, "The Good Comrade," had gone back to its
native land, and with it an appeal, written in English, badly written,
scrawled almost--but not likely to be refused. Joost read it through
once, twice, more times than that; it said little, only, take back the
bulb and ask no questions, yet he felt he had been honoured by Julia's
confidence. The very style and haste of the letter seemed an honour to
him; it showed him she had need and had turned to him in it. Of course
he would do as she asked; he would have done things far harder than
that. He folded the slip of paper and put it away where he kept some
few treasures, and for a time he put with it the bulb she had sent;
and sometimes when he went to bed of a night--he had no other free
time--he took both out and looked at them.
But "The Good Comrade" did not remain locked away from the light of day.
Joost was a sentimentalist, it is true, and the bulb had come from
Julia, winged by an appeal from her. But he was also a bulb grower,
and he was that before he was anything else and afterwards too, and
the daffodil was a marvel of nature, a novelty, a thing beyond words
to a connoisseur. The lover asked that the token should be kept hidden
from the eyes of men; but the grower cried that the flower should be
given to the light of heaven and should grow and bloom according to
Nature's plan. For days the lover was uppermost and the old pain back.
But in time the bitter-sweet madness died down again and, in the
atmosphere which was saturated with the beloved work, the old love,
the first and last and soundly abiding one, reasserted itself. The
daffodil must bloom, the little brown bulb must go back to the brown
earth, the strange flower must unfold itself to the sun and wind and
rain.
So he went to his father. "My father," he said, and it is to be feared
he had learnt something of guile from the source of his bitter-sweet
madness. "My father, I have heard from Miss Julia; she would wish us
to have the narcissus 'The Good Comrade.'"
Mijnheer was pleased. "That is as it should be," he said; he had felt
strongly about the gift of the bulb in the first instance, but that
was an affair over and done with long ago between him and his son. He
did not reopen it now, he was only gratified to think there was a
likelihood of the daffodil coming back to its birthplace, where it
certainly ought to be. "How much does Miss Julia ask for it?" he
inquired.
"Nothing," Joost answered; "she does not wish to sell it; she wishes
to give it back."
"But, but!" Mijnheer exclaimed, pushing up his spectacles in
astonishment; he knew the value of the thing and the offers that must
have been made for it; this way was not at all his notion of doing
business; also he found it hard to reconcile with the Julia he
remembered. He recollected talk he had had with her when she had
proved herself an apt pupil in trade and trade dealings, and shown,
not only a very good comprehension of such things, but also an eye to
the main chance. "This is nonsense," he said; "it is not business."
Joost looked distressed. "I gave her the bulb," he ventured; "she does
not want to sell me back my present."
Mijnheer did not recognise any such distinction in business
transactions, and for a little it looked as if "The Good Comrade"
would be sent wandering again, sacrificed to his old-fashioned notions
of integrity. Joost should not have it unless he paid for it, he said
so with decision. He himself would buy it if Joost would not, and if
she would not sell it to him then neither of them should have it.
And Joost could not, even if he would, explain why and how the paying
was so difficult. He used all the arguments he could; indeed, for one
of his nature, he spoke with considerable diplomacy.
"Supposing," he said at last, "that it was only a sport, and that next
year it reverts and is blue as are the others, the parent bulbs? Miss
Julia thinks of that--she would not like to be paid for it now in case
of such a thing, will you not at least wait until the spring? She has
given nothing for it herself; it is not as if she had sunk money and
wants an immediate return."
Mijnheer did not consider that made any difference and he said so,
reading his son a lecture on business morality according to his
standard, of a very severe order. Joost listened with meekness to the
entirely undeserved reproof for meanness and dishonourable views; then
the old man announced finally what he should do. He should write to
Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be
of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage
afterwards if it proved valuable. This idea pleased him very well; it
satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his
thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty of
paying a long price for what had been freely given. From this Joost
could not move him, so there was nothing for him to do but write
distressfully to Julia and explain and apologise.