IV
DOWN THE RIVER
At Waterloo the two men parted, with a fair exchange of fittingspeeches, none of which rang really false. And yet Cazalet found himselfemphatically unable to make any plans at all for the next few days;also, he seemed in two minds now about a Jermyn Street hotel previouslymentioned as his immediate destination; and his step was indubitablylighter as he went off first of all to the loop-line, to make sure ofsome train or other that he might have to take before the day was out.
In the event he did not take that train or any other; for the newmiracle of the new traffic, the new smell of the horseless streets, andthe newer joys of the newest of new taxicabs, all worked together and soswiftly upon Cazalet's organism that he had a little colloquy with hissmart young driver instead of paying him in Jermyn Street. He nearly didpay him off, and with something more than his usual impetuosity, aseither a liar or a fool with no sense of time or space.
"But that's as quick as the train, my good fellow!" blustered Cazalet.
"Quicker," said the smart young fellow without dipping his cigarette,"if you were going by the old Southwestern!"
The very man, and especially the manners that made or marred him, wasentirely new to Cazalet as a product of the old country. But he had comefrom the bush, and he felt as though he might have been back there butfor the smell of petrol and the cry of the motor-horn from end to endof those teeming gullies of bricks and mortar.
He had accompanied his baggage just as far as the bureau of the JermynStreet hotel. Any room they liked, and he would be back some time beforemidnight; that was his card, they could enter his name for themselves.He departed, pipe in mouth, open knife in one hand, plug tobacco in theother; and remarks were passed in Jermyn Street as the taxi bounced outwest in ballast.
But indeed it was too fine a morning to waste another minute indoors,even to change one's clothes, if Cazalet had possessed any better thanthe ones he wore and did not rather glory in his rude attire. He was notwearing leggings, and he did wear a collar, but he quite saw that evenso he might have cut an ignominious figure on the flags of KensingtonGore; no, now it was the crowded High Street, and now it was humbleHammersmith. He had told his smart young man to be sure and go that way.He had been at St. Paul's school as a boy--with old Venus Potts--and hewanted to see as many landmarks as he could. This one towered and wasgone as nearly in a flash as a great red mountain could. It seemed toCazalet, but perhaps he expected it to seem, that the red was a littlemellower, the ivy a good deal higher on the great warm walls. He notedthe time by the ruthless old clock. It was after one already; he wouldmiss his lunch. What did that matter?
Lunch?
Drunken men do not miss their meals, and Cazalet was simply andcomfortably drunk with the delight of being back. He had never dreamedof its getting into his head like this; at the time he did not realizethat it had. That was the beauty of his bout. He knew well enough whathe was doing and seeing, but inwardly he was literally blind. Yesterdaywas left behind and forgotten like the Albert Memorial, and to-morrowwas still as distant as the sea, if there were such things as to-morrowand the sea.
Meanwhile what vivid miles of dazzling life, what a subtle autumn flavorin the air; how cool in the shadows, how warm in the sun; what asparkling old river it was, to be sure; and yet, if those weren't thefirst of the autumn tints on the trees in Castlenau.
There went a funeral, on its way to Mortlake! The taxi overhauled it ata callous speed. Cazalet just had time to tear off his great soft hat.It was actually the first funeral he had seen since his own father's;no wonder his radiance suffered a brief eclipse. But in another momenthe was out on Barnes' Common. Then, in the Lower Richmond Road, thesmart young man began to change speed and crawl, and at once there wassomething fresh to think about. The Venture and its team of grays,Oxford and London, was trying to pass a motor-bus just ahead, and a grayleader was behaving as though it also had just landed from the bush.Cazalet thought of a sailing-ship and a dreadnought, and thesailing-ship thrown up into the wind. Then he wondered how one of Cobb'sbush coaches would have behaved, and thought it might have played thebarge!
It had been the bicycle age when he went away; now it was the motor age,and the novelty and contrast were endless to a simple mind under theinfluence of forgotten yet increasingly familiar scenes. But nothing waslost on Cazalet that great morning; even a milk-float entranced him,itself enchanted, with its tall can turned to gold and silver in thesun. But now he was on all but holy ground. It was not so holy withthese infernal electric trams; still he knew every inch of it; and now,thank goodness, he was off the lines at last.
"Slower!" he shouted to his smart young man. He could not say that nonotice was taken of the command. But a wrought-iron gate on the left,with a covered way leading up to the house, and the garden (that hecould not see) leading down to the river, and the stables (that hecould) across the road--all that was past and gone in a veritabletwinkling. And though he turned round and looked back, it was only toget a sightless stare from sightless windows, to catch on a board "_ThisDelightful Freehold Residence with Grounds and Stabling_," and to echothe epithet with an appreciative grunt.
Five or six minutes later the smart young man was driving really slowlyalong a narrow road between patent wealth and blatant semi-gentility; onthe left good grounds, shaded by cedar and chestnut, and on the right arow of hideous little houses, as pretentious as any that ever let forforty pounds within forty minutes of Waterloo.
"This can't be it!" shouted Cazalet. "It can't be here--stop! _Stop!_ Itell you!"
A young woman had appeared in one of the overpowering wooden porticoes;two or three swinging strides were bringing her down the silly littlepath to the wicket-gate with the idiotic name; there was no time toopen it before Cazalet blundered up, and shot his hand across to get agrasp as firm and friendly as he gave.
"Blanchie!"
"Sweep!"
They were their two nursery names, hers no improvement on the propermonosyllable, and his a rather dubious token of pristine proclivities.But out both came as if they were children still, and children who hadbeen just long enough apart to start with a good honest mutual stare.
"You aren't a bit altered," declared the man of thirty-three, with anote not entirely tactful in his admiring voice. But his old chum onlylaughed.
"Fiddle!" she cried. "But you're not altered enough. Sweep, I'mdisappointed in you. Where's your beard?"
"I had it off the other day. I always meant to," he explained, "beforethe end of the voyage. I wasn't going to land like a wild man of thewoods, you know!"
"Weren't you! I call it mean."
Her scrutiny became severe, but softened again at the sight of hisclutched wide-awake and curiously characterless, shapeless suit.
"You may well look!" he cried, delighted that she should. "They're awfulold duds, I know, but you would think them a wonder if you saw wherethey came from: a regular roadside shanty in a forsaken township at theback of beyond. Extraordinary cove, the chap who made them; puts inevery stitch himself, learns Shakespeare while he's at it, knew LindsayGordon and Marcus Clarke--"
"I'm sorry to interrupt," said Blanche, laughing, "but there's your taxiticking up twopence every quarter of an hour, and I can't let it go onwithout warning you. Where have you come from?"
He told her with a grin, was roundly reprimanded for his extravagance,but brazened it out by giving the smart young man a sovereign before hereyes. After that, she said he had better come in before the neighborscame out and mobbed him for a millionaire. And he followed her indoorsand up-stairs, into a little new den crowded with some of the big oldthings he could remember in a very different setting. But if the roomwas small it had a balcony that was hardly any smaller, on top of thatunduly imposing porch; and out there, overlooking the fine groundsopposite, were basket chairs and a table, hot with the Indian summersun.
"I hope you are not shocked at my abode," said Blanche. "I'm afraid Ican't help it if you are. It's just big enough for Mart
ha and me; youremember old Martha, don't you? You'll have to come and see her, butshe'll be horribly disappointed about your beard!"
Coming through the room, stopping to greet a picture and a bookcase(filling a wall each) as old friends, Cazalet had descried a photographof himself with that appendage. He had threatened to take the beastlything away, and Blanche had told him he had better not. But it did notoccur to Cazalet that it was the photograph to which Hilton Toye hadreferred, or that Toye must have been in this very room to see it. Inthese few hours he had forgotten the man's existence, at least in so faras it associated itself with Blanche Macnair.
"The others all wanted me to live near them," she continued, "but as notwo of them are in the same county it would have meant a caravan.Besides, I wasn't going to be transplanted at my age. Here one haseverybody one ever knew, except those who escape by emigrating, simplyat one's mercy on a bicycle. There's more golf and tennis than I canfind time to play; and I still keep the old boat in the old boat-houseat Littleford, because it hasn't let or sold yet, I'm sorry to say."
"So I saw as I passed," said Cazalet. "That board hit me hard!"
"The place being empty hits me harder," rejoined the last of theMacnairs. "It's going down in value every day like all the otherproperty about here, except this sort. Mind where you throw that match,Sweep! I don't want you to set fire to my pampas-grass; it's the onlytree I've got!"
Cazalet laughed; she was making him laugh quite often. But thepampas-grass, like the rest of the ridiculous little garden in front,was obscured if not overhung by the balcony on which they sat. And thesubject seemed one to change.
"It was simply glorious coming down," he said. "I wouldn't swap thatthree-quarters of an hour for a bale of wool; but, I say, there are somechanges! The whole show in the streets is different. I could havespotted it with my eyes and ears shut. They used to smell like a stable,and now they smell like a lamp. And I used to think the old cabbiescould drive, but their job was child's play to the taximan's! We were atHammersmith before I could light my pipe, and almost down here before itwent out! But you can't think how every mortal thing on the way appealedto me. The only blot was a funeral at Barnes; it seemed such a sin to beburied on a day like this, and a fellow like me just coming home toenjoy himself!"
He had turned grave, but not graver than at the actual moment comingdown. Indeed, he was simply coming down again, for her benefit and hisown, without an ulterior trouble until Blanche took him up with a longface of her own.
"We've had a funeral here. I suppose you know?"
"Yes. I know."
Her chair creaked as she leaned forward with an enthusiastic solemnitythat would have made her shriek if she had seen herself; but it had nosuch effect on Cazalet.
"I wonder who can have done it!"
"So do the police, and they don't look much like finding out!"
"It must have been for his watch and money, don't you think? And yetthey say he had so many enemies!" Cazalet kept silence; but she thoughthe winced. "Of course it must have been the man who ran out of thedrive," she concluded hastily. "Where were you when it happened, Sweep?"
Somewhat hoarsely he was recalling the Mediterranean movements of the_Kaiser Fritz_, when at the first mention of the vessel's name he wasfirmly heckled.
"Sweep, you _don't_ mean to say you came by a German steamer?"
"I do. It was the first going, and why should I waste a week? Besides,you can generally get a cabin to yourself on the German line."
"So that's why you're here before the end of the month," said Blanche."Well, I call it most unpatriotic; but the cabin to yourself wascertainly some excuse."
"That reminds me!" he exclaimed. "I hadn't it to myself all the way;there was another fellow in with me from Genoa; and the last night onboard it came out that he knew you!"
"_Who_ can it have been?"
"Toye, his name was. Hilton Toye."
"An American man! Oh, but I know him very well," said Blanche in a toneboth strained and cordial. "He's great fun, Mr. Toye, with hisdelightful Americanisms, and the perfectly delightful way he says them!"
Cazalet puckered like the primitive man he was, when taken at all bysurprise; and that anybody, much less Blanche, should think Toye, of allpeople, either "delightful" or "great fun" was certainly a surprise tohim, if it was nothing else. Of course it was nothing else, to hisimmediate knowledge; still, he was rather ready to think that Blanchewas blushing, but forgot, if indeed he had been in a fit state to see itat the time, that she had paid himself the same high compliment acrossthe gate. On the whole, it may be said that Cazalet was ruffled withoutfeeling seriously disturbed as to the essential issue which alone leapedto his mind.
"Where did you meet the fellow?" he inquired, with the suitableadmixture of confidence and amusement.
"In the first instance, at Engelberg."
"Engelberg! Where's that?"
"Only one of those places in Switzerland where everybody goes nowadaysfor what they call winter sports."
She was not even smiling at his arrogant ignorance; she was merelyexplaining one geographical point and another of general information. Aclose observer might have thought her almost anxious not to identifyherself too closely with a popular craze.
"I dare say you mentioned it," said Cazalet, but rather as though he waswondering why she had not.
"I dare say I didn't! Everything won't go into an annual letter. It wasthe winter before last--I went out with Betty and her husband."
"And after that he took a place down here?"
"Yes. Then I met him on the river the following summer, and found he'dgot rooms in one of the Nell Gwynne Cottages, if you call that a place."
"I see."
But there was no more to see; there never had been much, but now Blanchewas standing up and gazing out of the balcony into the belt of singingsunshine between the opposite side of the road and the invisible riveracres away.
"Why shouldn't we go down to Littleford and get out the boat if you'rereally going to make an afternoon of it?" she said. "But you simply mustsee Martha first; and while she's making herself fit to be seen, youmust take something for the good of the house. I'll bring it to you on alordly tray."
She brought him siphon, stoppered bottle, a silver biscuit-box ofancient memories, and left him alone with them some little time; for theyoung mistress, like her old retainer in another minute, was simplydying to make herself more presentable. Yet when she had done so, andcame back like snow, in a shirt and skirt just home from the laundry,she saw that he did not see the difference. His devouring eyes shoneneither more nor less; but he had also devoured every biscuit in thebox, though he had begun by vowing that he had lunched in town, andstuck to the fable still.
Old Martha had known him all his life, but best at the period when heused to come to nursery tea at Littleford. She declared she would haveknown him anywhere as he was, but she simply hadn't recognized him inthat photograph with his beard.
"I can see where it's been," said Martha, looking him in the lowertemperate zone. "But I'm so glad you've had it off, Mr. Cazalet."
"There you are, Blanchie!" crowed Cazalet. "You said she'd bedisappointed, but Martha's got better taste."
"It isn't that, sir," said Martha earnestly. "It's because the dreadfulman who was seen running out of the drive, at your old home, _he_ had abeard! It's in all the notices about him, and that's what's put meagainst them, and makes me glad you've had yours off."
Blanche turned to him with too ready a smile; but then she was reallynot such a great age as she pretended, and she had never been in betterspirits in her life.
"You hear, Sweep! I call it rather lucky for you that you were--"
But just then she saw his face, and remembered the things that had beensaid about Henry Craven by the Cazalets' friends, even ten years ago,when she really had been a girl.