Book: The Good Comrade

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




This great man was naturally only a name to the invalid and her
friends, but they had always plenty to say about him. He was so
distinguished that all the village felt proud to have him live on
their borders, and so disagreeable that they were decidedly in awe of
him. Of his domestic arrangements there was always talk; he lived in
his great gloomy house with an old housekeeper, whom Julia knew by
sight, and a young cook, whom she did not; the former was a
permanency, the latter very much the reverse, it being difficult to
find a cook equal to his demands who would for any length of time
endure the shortness of the housekeeper's temper, and the worse one of
her master. The domestic affairs of the chemist were a favourite
subject of gossip, but sometimes his attainments came in for mention
too; they did to-night, the cousin being in a garrulous mood.
According to her, the great man had done everything in science worth
mentioning, and was not only the first chemist in Holland, but in all
the world; he looked down on all others, she said, regarding two
Germans only as anything approaching his peers, all the English and
French being nothing to him. He had discovered a great many things,
dyes, poisons, and explosives; of the last he had recently perfected
one which was twenty-two times stronger than anything before known.
Its nature was, of course, a secret, but it would eventually raise the
little army of Holland far above those of all other nations.

Julia listened, but especially to the last piece of information, which
struck her as being the one most likely to prove interesting. Soon
after hearing it, however, she was obliged to go. She made her
farewells, and received messages of affection for Mevrouw, condolence
for Mijnheer--who had a cold--and good wishes for Joost's journey.
Then she started homewards, with a light basket and a busy mind.

It did not take her very long to decide that if there was any truth in
this talk of Van de Greutz's achievements, it must be the last
mentioned--the explosive--which brought Rawson-Clew here. Her judgment
of men, for working purposes at least, was quick and fairly accurate,
necessity and experience had helped Nature to make it so. There were
one or two things in connection with Rawson-Clew which were very clear
to her, he was not a scientist pure and simple; she had never met one,
but she knew he was not one, and so was not likely to be interested in
the great chemist for chemistry only. Nor was he a commercial man;
neither his instincts nor his abilities lay in that direction; it was
not a new process, not a trade secret which brought him here. Indeed,
even though he might appreciate the value of such things, he would
never dream of trying to possess himself of them.

Julia understood perfectly the scale in which such acts stood to men
like Rawson-Clew. To attempt to master a man's discovery for one's own
ends (as in a way she was doing) was impossible, rank dishonesty,
never even contemplated; to do it for business purposes--well, he
might admit it was sometimes necessary in business--commerce had its
morality as law, and the army had theirs--but it was not a thing he
would ever do himself, he would not feel it exactly honourable. But to
attempt to gain a secret for national use was quite another thing, not
only justifiable but right, more especially if, as was probably the
case, the attempt was in fulfilment of a direct order. If after Herr
Van de Greutz had a secret worth anything to England, it was that
which had brought Rawson-Clew to the little town. She was as sure of
it as she was that it was the blue daffodil which had brought her.

The hateful blue daffodil! Daily, to possess it grew more imperative.
The intercourse with this man, the curious seeming equality that was
being established between them, cried aloud for the paying of the
debt, and the establishing of the reality of equality. She longed
almost passionately to be able to regard herself, to know that the man
had reason to regard her, as his equal. And yet to possess the thing
seemed daily more difficult; more and more plainly did she see that
bribery, persuasion, cajolery were alike useless. The precious bulb
could be got in one way, and one only; it would never fall into her
hands by skilful accident, or nicely stimulated generosity; she must
take it, or she must do without it. She must get it for herself as
deliberately as, in all probability, Rawson-Clew meant to get Herr Van
de Greutz's secret.

She raised her head and looked at the flat, wet landscape with
unseeing eyes that were contemptuous. How different two not dissimilar
acts could be made to look! If she took the daffodil--and she would
have unique opportunity to try during the next two days--Rawson-Clew
would regard her as little better than a common thief; that is, if he
happened to know about it. She winced a little as she thought of the
faint expression of surprise the knowledge would call up in his
impassive face and cold grey eyes. She could well imagine the slight
difference in his manner to her afterwards, scarcely noticeable to the
casual observer, impossible to be overlooked by her. She told herself
she did not care what he thought; but she did. Pride was grasping at a
desired, but impossible, equality with this man, and here, were the
means used only known, was the nearest way to lose it. At times he had
forgotten the gap of age and circumstances between them--really
forgotten it, she knew, not only ignored it in his well-bred way. He
had for a moment really regarded her as an equal; not, perhaps, as he
might the women of his class, rather the men of like experience and
attainments with himself. That was not what she wanted, but she
recognised plainly that in grasping at a shadowy social feminine
equality by paying the debt, she might well lose this small substance
of masculine equality, for there is no gulf so unbridgeable between
man and man as a different standard of honour.

But after all, she asked herself, what did it matter? He need not
know; she would pay, fulfilling her word, and proving her father an
honest man (which he was not); the debtor could not know how it was
done. And if he did, what then? If she told him herself--he would know
no other way--she would do it deliberately with the set purpose of
tarring him with the same brush; she would show him how his attempt on
Herr Van de Greutz might also be made to look. He would not be
convinced, of course, but at bottom the two things were so related
that it would be surprising if she did not get a few shafts home. He
would not show the wounds then, but they would be there; they would
rankle; there would be some humiliation for him, too. A curious light
crept into her eyes at the thought; she was surer of being able to
reduce him than of exalting herself, and it is good, when
circumstances prevent one from mounting, to drag a superior to the
level of one's humiliation. For a moment she understood something of
the feelings of the brute mob that throws mud.

By this time she had reached the town, though almost without knowing
it; so deep was she in her thoughts that she did not see Joost coming
towards her. He had been to escort Denah, who had thoughtfully
forgotten to provide herself with a cloak; he was now coming back,
carrying the wrap his mother had lent her.

Julia started when she became aware of him just in front of her. She
was not pleased to see him; she had no room for him in her mind just
then; he seemed incongruous and out of place. She even looked at him a
little suspiciously, as if she were afraid the fermenting thoughts in
her brain might make themselves felt by him.

He turned and walked beside her. "I have been to take home Miss
Denah," he explained. "I saw you a long way off, and thought perhaps I
might escort you; but you are angry; I am sorry."

Julia could not forbear smiling at him. "I am not angry," she said, as
she would to a child; "I was only thinking."

"Of something unpleasant, then, that makes you angry?"

"No; of something that must have been enjoyable. I was thinking how,
in the French Revolution, the women of the people must have enjoyed
throwing mud at the women of the aristocrats; how they must have liked
scratching the paint and the skin from their faces, and tearing their
hair down, and their clothes off."

Joost stared in amazement. "Do you call that not unpleasant?" he said.
"It is the most grievous, the most pitiable thing in all the world."

"For the aristocrats, yes," Julia agreed; "but for the others? Can you
not imagine how they must have revelled in it?"

Joost could not; he could not imagine anything violent or terrible,
and Julia went on to ask him another question, which, however, she
answered herself.

"Do you know why the women of the people did it? It was not only because
the others had food and they had not; I think it was more because the
aristocrats had a thousand other things that they had not, and could
never have--feelings, instincts, pleasures, traditions--which they could
not have had or enjoyed even if they had been put in palaces and dressed
like queens. It was the fact that they could never, never rise to them,
that helped to make them so furious to pull all down."

There was a sincerity of conviction in her tone, but Joost only said,
"You cannot enjoy to think of such things; it is horrible and
pitiable to remember that human creatures became so like beasts."

Julia's mood altered. "Pitiable, yes; perhaps you are right. After
all, we are pitiful creatures, and, under the thin veneer, like enough
to the beasts." Then she changed the subject abruptly, and began to
talk of his flowers.

But he was not satisfied with the change; instinctively he felt she
was talking to his level. "Why do you always speak to me of bulbs and
plants?" he said. "Do you think I am interested in nothing else?"

"No," she said; "I speak of them because I am interested. Do you not
believe me? It is quite true; you yourself have said that I should
make a good florist; already I have learnt a great deal, although I
have not been here long, and knew nothing before I came."

"That is so," he admitted; "you are very clever. Nevertheless, I do
not think, if you were alone now, you would be thinking of plants. You
were not when I met you; it was the Revolution, or, perhaps, human
nature--you called it the Revolution in a parable, as you often do
when you speak your thoughts."

"Why do you trouble about my thoughts?" Julia said, impatiently. "How
do you know what I think?"

"Perhaps I don't," he answered; "only sometimes it seems to me your
voice tells me though your words do not."

"My voice?"

"Yes; it is full of notes like a violin, and speaks more than words. I
suppose all voices have many notes really, but people do not often use
them; they use only a few. You use many; that is why I like to listen
to you when you talk to my parents, or any one. It is like a master
playing on an instrument; you make simple words mean much, more than I
understand sometimes; you can caress and you can laugh with your
voice; I have heard you do it when I have not been able to understand
what you caress, or at what you laugh, any more than an ignorant
person can understand what the violin says, although he may enjoy to
hear it. To-night you do not caress or laugh; there is something black
in your thoughts."

"That is human nature, as you say," Julia said shortly, ignoring the
comment on her voice. "Human nature is a hateful, ugly thing; there is
no use in thinking about it."

"It has certainly fallen," Joost allowed; "but I have sometimes
thought perhaps, if it were not so, it would be a little--a very
little--monotonous."

"You would not find it dull," Julia told him. "I believe you would not
have got on very well in the Garden of Eden, except that, since all
the herbs grew after their own kind, there would be no opportunity to
hybridise them."

But the mystery of production and generation, even in the vegetable
world, was not a subject that modesty permitted Joost to discuss with
a girl. His manner showed it, to her impatient annoyance, as he
hastily introduced another aspect of man's first estate. "If we were
not fallen," he added, "we should have no opportunity to rise. That,
indeed, would be a loss; is it not the struggle which makes the grand
and fine characters which we admire?"

"I don't admire them," Julia returned; "I admire the people who are
born good, because they are a miracle."

He stopped to unfasten the gate; it did not occur to him that she was
thinking of himself.

"I cannot agree with you," he said, as they went up the drive
together. "Rather, I admire those who have fought temptation, who are
strong, who know and understand and have conquered; they inspire me to
try and follow. What inspiration is there in the other? Consider Miss
Denah, for an example; she has perhaps never wanted to do more wrong
than to take her mother's prunes, but is there inspiration in her? She
is as soft and as kind as a feather pillow, and as inspiring. But
you--you told me once you were bad; I did not believe you; I did not
understand, but now I know your meaning. You have it in your power to
be bad or to be good; you know which is which, for you have seen
badness, and know it as men who live see it. You have fought with it
and conquered; you have struggled, you do struggle, you have strength
in you. That is why you are like a lantern that is sometimes bright
and sometimes dim, but always a beacon."

"I am nothing of the sort," Julia said sharply. They were in the dense
shadow of the trees, so he could not see her face, but her voice
sounded strange to him. "You do not know what you are talking about,"
she said; "hardly in my life have I asked myself if a thing is right
or wrong--do you understand me? Right and wrong are not things I think
about."

"It is quite likely," he said, serenely; "different persons have
different names for the same things, as you have once said; one calls
it 'honourable' and 'dishonourable,' and another 'right' and 'wrong,'
and another 'wise' and 'unwise.' But it is always the same thing; it
means to choose the more difficult path that leads to the greater end,
and leave the other way to the lesser and smaller souls."

Julia caught her breath with a little gasping choke. Joost turned and
looked at her, puzzled at last; but though they had now reached the
house, and the lamplight shone on her, he could make out nothing; she
brushed past him and went in quickly.

The next day Joost started for Germany. It rained more or less all
day, and Julia did not go out, except for half-an-hour during the
morning, when she was obliged to go marketing. She met Denah bound on
the same errand, and heard from her, what she knew already, that she
would not be able to come and superintend the crochet that day. And
being in a black and reckless mood, she had the effrontery to laugh a
silent, comprehending little laugh in the face of the Dutch girl's
elaborate explanations. Denah was a good deal annoyed, and, though her
self-esteem did not allow her to realise the full meaning of the
offence, she did not forget it.

Julia went home with her purchases, and spent the rest of the day in
the usual small occupations. It was an interminably long day she
found. She contrived to hide her feelings, however, and behaved
beautifully, giving the suitable attention and suitable answers to all
Mevrouw's little remarks about the weather, and Joost's wet journey
(though, since he was in the train, Julia could not see that the wet
mattered to him), and about Mijnheer's cold, which was very bad
indeed.

The day wore on. Julia missed Joost's presence at meals; they were not
in the habit of talking much to each other at such times, it is true,
but she always knew when she talked to his parents that he was
listening, and putting another and fuller interpretation on her words.
That was stimulating and pleasant too; it was a new form of
intercourse, and she did not pretend she did not enjoy it for itself,
as well as for the opportunity it gave her of probing his mind and
trying different ideas on him.

At last dinner was over, and tea; the tea things were washed, and the
long-neglected fancy work brought out. A clock in the passage struck
the hour when, of late, after an exhilirating verbal skirmish with the
anxious Denah, she had set out for the village and Rawson-Clew.

She did not pretend to herself that she did not enjoy that too, she
did immensely; there was a breath from the outside world in it; there
was sometimes the inspiring clash of wits, of steel on steel, always
the charm of educated intercourse and quick comprehension. To-night
there was nothing; no exercise to stir the blood, no solitude to
stimulate the imagination, no effort of talk or understanding to rouse
the mind. Nothing but to sit at work, giving one-eighth of attention
to talk with Mevrouw--more was not needed, and the rest to the blue
daffodils that lay securely locked up in a place only too well known.

Evening darkened, grey and dripping, to-night, supper-getting time
came, and the hour for locking up the barns. Mijnheer, snuffling and
wheezing a good deal, put on a coat, a mackintosh, a comforter, a pair
of boots and a pair of galoshes; took an umbrella, the lantern, a
great bunch of keys, and went out. Julia watched him go, and said
nothing; she had been the rounds a good many times with Joost now; the
family had talked about it more than once, and about her bravery with
regard to rats and robbers. Neither of the old people would have been
surprised if she had volunteered to go in place of Mijnheer, even if
his cold had not offered a reason for such a thing. But she did not do
it; he went alone, and the blue daffodil bulbs lay snug in their
locked place.

The next day it still rained, but a good deal harder. There was a
sudden drop in the temperature, too, such as one often finds in an
English summer. The Van Heigens did not have a fire on that account,
their stoves always kept a four months' sabbath; the advent of a
snow-storm in July would not have been allowed to break it. Mijnheer's
cold was decidedly worse; towards evening it grew very bad. He came in
early from the office, and sat and shivered in the sitting-room with
Julia and his wife, who was continuing the crochet unaided, and so
laying up much future work for Denah. At last it was considered dark
enough for the lamp to be lighted. Julia got up and lit it, and drew
the blind, shutting out the grey sheet of the canal and the slanting
rain.

"Dear me," Mevrouw said once again, "how bad the rain must be for
Joost!"

Julia agreed, but reminded her--also once again--that it was possibly
not raining in Germany.

Mijnheer looked up from his paper to remark that the weather was very
bad for the crops.

"It is bad for every one," his wife rejoined; "but worse of all for
you. You should be in bed. Indeed, it is not fit that you should be
up; the house is like a cellar this evening."

Mijnheer did not suggest the remedy of a fire; he, too, shared the
belief that stoves should not be lighted before the appointed time; he
only protested at the idea of bed. "Pooh!" he said. "Make myself an
invalid with Joost away! Will you go and nurse my nose, and put
plasters on my chest? Go to bed now, do you say? No, no, my dear, I
will sit here; I am comfortable enough; I read my paper, I smoke my
cigar; by and by, I go out to see that my barns are all safe for the
night."

But at this Mevrouw gave an exclamation; the idea of his going out in
such weather was terrible, she said, and she said it a good many
times.

Julia bent over her work; she heard the swish of the rain on the
window, the uneven sob of the fitful wind; she heard the old people
talk, the husband persist, the wife protest. She did not look up; her
eyes were fixed on her needle, but she hardly saw it; more plainly she
saw the dark barns, the crowded shelves, the place where the blue
daffodils were. She could find them with perfect ease; could choose
one in the dark as easily as Mijnheer himself; she could substitute
for it another, one of the common sort of the same shape and size; no
one would be the wiser; even when it bloomed, with the simple yellow
flower that has beautified spring woods so long, no one would know it
was not a sport of nature, a throw back to the original parent. It was
the simplest thing in all the world; the safest. Not that that
recommended it; she would rather it had been difficult or dangerous,
it would have savoured more of a fair fight and less of trickery.
Besides, such safety was nothing; anything can be made safe with care
and forethought.

She caught her own name in the talk now; husband and wife were
speaking lower, evidently arguing as to the propriety of asking her to
go the rounds; for a moment she pretended not to hear, then she raised
her head, contempt for her own weakness in her mind. It is not
opportunity that makes thieves of thinking folk, and she knew it;
rather it is the thief that makes opportunity, if he is up to his
work. Why should she be afraid to go to the barns? She would not take
the daffodil the more for going; if she meant to do it, and, through
cowardice, let this opportunity slip, she would soon find another. And
if she did not mean to, the proximity of the thing would not make her
take it.

She put down her work. "I will lock up for you, Mijnheer; give me the
keys."

He protested, and his wife protested, much more feebly, and thanked
her for going the while. They gave her many directions, and told her
she must put on this, that, and the other, and must be careful not to
get her feet wet, and really need not to be too particular in
examining all the doors. She answered them with impatient politeness,
as one does who is waiting for the advent of a greater matter; she
was not irritated by the trivial interruptions which came between her
and the decision which was yet to be made; it was somehow so great to
her that it seemed as if it could wait. At last she was off,
Mijnheer's galoshes wallowing about her feet, his black-caped
mackintosh thrown round her shoulders. She had neither hat nor
umbrella. Mevrouw literally wailed when she started; but it made no
impression, she came of the nation most indifferent to getting wet,
and most-susceptible to death by consumption of any in Europe.

She slopped along in the great galoshes, her back to the lighted house
now, her face to the dark barns. There they were, easily accessible,
waiting for her. Was she to take one, or was she not? She did not give
herself any excuse for taking it, or tell herself that one out of six
was not much; or that Joost, could he know the case, would not have
grudged her one of his precious bulbs. There was only one thing she
admitted--it was there, and her need for it was great. With it she
could pay a debt that was due, show her father an honourable man, and,
seeing that the affair could always remain secret, raise herself
nearer to Rawson-Clew's level. Without it she could not.

She had come to the first barn now, and, unbarring the door, went in.
Almost oppressive came the dry smell of the bulbs to her; very
familiar, too, as familiar as the distorted shadows that her lantern
made. Together they brought vividly to her mind the first time she
went the rounds with Joost--the night when she told him she was bad,
the worst person he knew. Poor Joost, he had interpreted her words his
own way; she remembered very plainly what he said but two nights
ago--right and wrong, honourable and dishonourable, wise and unwise,
they meant the same thing to different people, the choosing of the
higher, the leaving of the lower--and he believed no less of her. That
belief, surely, was a thing that fought on the side of the angels? And
then there was that other man, able, well-bred, intellectual, her
superior, who had treated her as an equal, and so tacitly demanded
that she should conform to his code of honour. And there was Johnny
Gillat, poor, old round-faced Johnny, who, under his silly, shabby
exterior, had somewhere, quite understood, the same code, and standard
of a gentleman, and never doubted but that she had it too--surely
these two, also, were on the side of the angels?

But it was not a matter of angels, neither was it a matter of this
man's thought, or that. At bottom, it seemed all questions could be
brought to plain terms--What do I think? I, alone in the big, black,
contradictory world. Julia realised it, and asked herself what it
mattered if he, if they, if all the world called it wrong?
What--pitiless, logical question--was wrong? Why should to take in one
case be so called, and in another not? By whose word, and by what law
was a thing thus, and why was she to submit to it?

She faced the darkness, the lantern at her feet, her back against the
shelves, and asked herself the world-old question; and, like many
before her, found no answer, because logic, merciless solvent of faith
and hope and law, never answers its own riddles. Only, as she stood
there, there rose up before her mind's eye the face of Joost, with its
simple gravity, its earnest, trusting blue eyes. She saw it, and she
saw the humble dignity with which he had shown her his six bulbs. Not
as a proud possessor shows a treasure, rather as an adept shares some
secret of his faith or art; so had he placed them in her power, given
her a chance to so use this trust. She almost groaned aloud as she
recalled him, and recalled, sorely against her will, a horrible tale
she had once read, of a Brahmin who murdered a little child for her
worthless silver anklets. Joost was a veritable child to her,
powerless before her ability, trusting in her good faith, a child
indeed, even if he had not placed his secret in her grasp. And it was
he--this child--that she, with her superior strength, was going to
rob!

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