Book: The Good Comrade

U >> Una L. Silberrad >> The Good Comrade




The town was large and the centre of a large district, not at all like
the retired gentility of Marbridge, very much bigger and busier.
Captain Polkington, who had lived quietly so long, felt rather lost
and bewildered at first in the bustling intricate streets; there were
so many people, especially among the shops, they were always getting
in his way. He only made one purchase before lunch; he would have
plenty of time in the afternoon, he thought, and would be better able
to decide what to buy when he had seen things and had a meal. The
purchase made before lunch was at the wine merchants, it was whisky.

He lunched at the best hotel; that and the whisky made a rather bigger
hole in the five pound note than one would have expected. Still, as he
told himself the whisky really was a vital matter with winter coming
on, a necessity, not a luxury, for all of them--Johnny would be better
for a little--he used to like a glass in the old days; and Julia would
certainly be the better for it, working as she did in the cold. It was
a medicine for them all, not himself alone. The lunch was the only
personal extravagance and really, seeing what he was doing for the
others, there was no need for him to grudge that to himself.

So he lunched and then the trouble began. He was not clear quite how
it happened; at least, owing to the confusion there always was in his
mind between facts as they were, as he wished them to be, and as they
appeared in retrospect--he was never able to explain it thoroughly.
There were other men lunching at the same time; he still had the
Polkington faculty for making friends and acquaintances; he still,
too, had the appearance and manner of a gentleman, if of somewhat
reduced circumstances. He apparently made acquaintances; exactly how
many and what sort is not certain, the account was very confused here.
There was a whisky and soda in it, two whiskies and sodas, or even
three; a cigar, a game of billiards--perhaps there was more than one
game, or some other game besides billiards. At all events there must
have been something more, for the Captain afterwards declared he was
ruined in less than an hour, fleeced, cheated of his little all! It is
quite possible that he was nothing of the kind, and that the
acquaintances were perfectly honest and honourable men. They would not
know he could not afford to lose, a true Polkington always set out to
hide the reality of his poverty. And he was not likely to win, he
seldom did, no matter at what he played or with whom; he was
constitutionally unlucky--or incapable, which is a truer name for the
same thing--it had always been so, even as far back as the old times
in India. That day he lost at something, that at least was clear; then
there was more whisky and soda and more losses, and perhaps more
whisky again; and so on until late in the afternoon, he found himself
standing, miserable and bewildered, in the main street of the town.
Some one had brought him there, a good-natured young fellow who
thought, not that he had spent all he ought, but that he had drunk all
he should.

"Not used to it, you know," he had said with good-humoured apology;
"been rusticating out of the way so long. Better come out and get a
breath of air, it'll pull you together."

And he persuaded him out, walked some way down the street with him and
then, seeing that he seemed all right, left him and went to attend to
his own business.

For a little the Captain stood where he was, the depression, begotten
of whisky and his losses, growing upon him in the old overwhelming
way. No one took any notice of him; passers by jostled against him,
for the pavement was rather narrow, but no one paid any attention to
him. The bustle bewildered his weak head, and the noise and movement
of the traffic in the roadway irritated him unreasonably. A youth ran
into him and he exploded angrily with sudden weak unrestrained fury.
Thereat the boy laughed, and, when he shouted and stamped his foot,
ran away saying something impudent. The Captain turned to run after
him shaking his stick; but he was stiff and rheumatic and weak on his
legs, too, just now. It was no use to try and run. Of course it was no
use, nothing was any use now, he was a miserable failure, he could not
even run after a boy; he must bear every one's taunts; he could almost
have wept in self-pity. Then he became aware that several passers by
were looking at him curiously, arrested by the noise he had made.
Annoyed and ashamed he turned his back on them and pretended to be
examining the goods in a shop window near.

It was a large draper's, rather a cheap one; the better shops were
higher up the street. In this one the things were all priced and
labelled plainly; the Captain at first did not notice this one way or
the other; he simply looked in to cover his confusion. But after a
little he became aware of what he looked at, and it recalled to his
mind the fact that he was going to buy something for Julia. He did not
quite know what, he had had large ideas at one time; they had had to
be diminished once because five pounds will not do as much as twenty;
they had to be diminished again because he had been fleeced of so much
of the five pounds. A wave of anger shook him as he thought of that,
but he suppressed it; he felt that he must not give way, so he looked
steadily at the window. There were furs displayed there, muffs and
collarettes of skunk and other animals, even the humble rabbit
artistically treated to meet the insatiable female appetite for sable
at all prices. The Captain decided on the best collarette displayed
and turned towards the shop door feeling a little better in the glow
of benevolence that returned to him as he thought of how much he was
going to spend for Julia. Just as he was going in he caught sight of a
girl selling violets in the street. She was a good-looking impudent
girl, and catching his eye she pressed her wares on him glibly; he
hesitated, smiled--here was one who treated him as a man, who
considered it worth while. He looked defiantly at the passers by--he
was a man, not an object for curiosity or kindly contempt. He returned
the girl's glance with an ogle and, stepping as jauntily as he could
to the edge of the pavement, took a bunch of flowers with some
suitable pleasantry. Half-way through his remark he stopped dead; he
had felt in his pocket for a penny and found nothing. Quickly,
feverishly, almost desperately, he felt in the other pocket;
there were three coins there; by the size he could tell that one at
least was a penny; he took it out and gave it to the girl; he had not
the courage to put down the flowers and go without them. Then he
turned away. A narrow passage ran down between the draper's and the
next house; fewer people went that way and in the window there, common
and less expensive goods were displayed. The Captain went down the
foot-way and examined the two remaining coins. They were a shilling
and a penny.

People passed and repassed along the main road; carts and carriages
rumbled over the uneven stones; no one heeded the shabby hopeless
figure by the side window. They were lighting up in the draper's
though outside there was still daylight; the gas jets were considered
to make the place look more attractive. They shone warmly on the furs
and silk scarves in the front window, making them look rich and
luxurious. Two girls stopped to look in; then, their means being more
suitable to the goods there, they came to examine the side window.
They were two servants out for the afternoon; they wore winter coats
open over summer dresses and hats that might be called autumnal,
seeing that they were an ingenious blending of the best that was left
from the headgear of both seasons.

"I shall get one of them woolly neck things, I shall," one said;
"they're quite as nice as fur and not so dear."

The other could not agree. "Don't care about them myself," she said;
"I must say I like a bit of sable."

"Can't get it under two and eleven," her companion rejoined; "and
those things are only a shilling three. Look at that pink one there;
it looks quite as good as feathers any day. I'm not so gone on sable
myself; you can't have it pink, and pink's my colour."

They moved on to another window; they, no more than the passers by,
noticed the old man who stood just at their elbow. When they had gone
he looked drearily in where they had looked. There were the woolly
things they had spoken of, short woven strips of loopy wool, to be
tied about the neck by the two-inch ribbons that dangled from the
ends. "Ostrich wool boas in all colours, price, one shilling and three
farthings," they were ticketed. He read the ticket mechanically. He
still held his two coins; he held them mechanically; had he thought
about it he would scarcely have troubled to do so, they were so
cruelly, so mockingly inadequate. He read the ticket again; it
obtruded itself upon him as trivial things do at unexpected times.
But now its meaning began to be impressed upon his brain--"one
shilling and three farthings"--that, then, was the interpretation of
the servant girl's "shilling three." He had a shilling and a penny--a
shilling and three farthings. He could buy one of those ostrich wool
boas--he would buy it--that pink one for Julia.

The Halgrave carrier made it a rule to receive his passengers' fares
at the beginning of the expedition; if they were coming back as well
as going with him they paid for the double journey at the outset in
the morning. Captain Polkington had so paid, and it was that fact,
coupled with the early arrival at the stables of his one purchase,
which induced the carrier to wait nearly half-an-hour for him. The
cart was packed, everything was ready, and the good man and the only
other passenger he was taking back were growing impatient, when the
Captain, carrying a small crushed paper parcel, appeared. He had lost
his way to the stables and had wandered hopelessly in his efforts to
find it. The carrier was rather short-tempered about it, and the other
passenger said something to the effect that "They didn't oughter let
him out alone!" The Captain payed no attention but climbed into the
back of the cart and sat down near his whisky. The other passenger got
up beside the driver, and in a few minutes they were lumbering down
the crooked streets. Soon they were out of the town and jogging
quietly along the quiet lanes; the driver leaned forward to get a
light from his passenger's pipe; his face for a moment showed ruddy in
the glow of the one lamp, then it sunk into gloom again. Captain
Polkington did not notice; he did not notice the voices in
intermittent talk, or the fume of their tobacco that hung on the moist
air and mingled with the scent of the drooping violets in his coat.
He knew nothing and was aware of nothing except that he was the most
miserable, the most unfortunate of men. Throughout the whole
interminable journey he dwelt on that one thing as he sat by his
whisky in the dark, clutching tightly the soft paper parcel and
finding his only fragment of comfort in it. He had after all bought
something; poor, disappointed, fleeced as he was, he had spent his
last money in buying a present for his daughter.




CHAPTER XXI

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.

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