Harvest Part 19

"Your last letter was 'a bit thick'--you see--it provoked me," said Delane calmly. "Of course you can get the police to chuck me out if you like. You would be quite in your rights. But I imagine the effect on the aristocratic nerves of Berkeley Square would be amusing. However--"

He looked round him--

"As Carlyle said to the old Queen, 'I'm getting old, madam, and with your leave I'll take a chair--'"

He pushed an arm-chair forward.

"And let me make up the fire. It's beginning to freeze outside."

Lady Winton moved quickly to the fireplace, holding out a prohibiting hand.

"There is quite enough fire, thank you. I am going out presently."

Delane sat down, and extended a pair of still shapely feet to the slender flame in the grate.

"d.i.c.k's boots!" he said, tapping them with his cane, and looking round at his sister. "What a lot of wear I've got out of them since he threw them away! His overcoat, too. And now that it's the thing to be shabby, d.i.c.k's clothes are really a G.o.dsend. I defraud Jones. But I have no doubt that Jones gets a good deal more than is good for him."

"Look here, Roger!--suppose you stop talking this nonsense and come to business," said Marianne Winton, in pale exasperation. "I've sent Jones out with a note--but he'll be back directly. And I've got an appointment.

What are you doing? Have you got any work to do?"

She took a seat not far from her brother, who perceived from her tone that he had perhaps gone as far as was prudent.

"Oh, dear, no, I've got no work to do," he said, smiling. "That's not a commodity that comes my way. But I must somehow manage to keep a roof over Anita and the child. So what can I do but count on your a.s.sistance, my dear? My father left you a great deal of money which in equity belonged to me--and I am bound to remind you of it."

"You know very well why he left you so little!" said Lady Winton. "We needn't go into that old story. I ask you again, what do you want?" She took out her watch. "I have just ten minutes."

"What do I want?" He looked at her with a slow, whimsical laugh. "Money, my dear, money! Money means everything that I must have--food, coals, clothes, doctor, chemist, buses--decent houseroom for Anita and myself--"

A shiver of revulsion ran through his sister.

"Have you married that woman?"

He laughed.

"As you seemed to think it desirable, Anita and I did take a trip to a Registry Office about a month ago. It's all lawful now--except for our abominable English law that doesn't legitimize the children. But"--he sprang to his feet with a movement which startled her--"whom do you think I've seen lately?"

His sister stared at him, amazed at the change in him--the animation, the rush of colour in the hollow, emaciated face.

"_Rachel_!--my wife--my former--precious--wife. I thought she was in Canada. No doubt she thought the same of me. But I've stumbled upon her quite by chance--living close to the place where I had taken lodgings for Anita and the babe, in September, in case there were more raids this winter. What do you think of that?"

"It doesn't interest me at all," said Lady Winton coldly.

"Then you have no dramatic sense, my dear. Just think! I stroll out, for want of anything better to do, with Anita, into the market-place of a beastly little country town, to see a silly sort of show--a mixture of a Harvest Festival and a Land Girls' beano--when without a moment's warning--standing up in a decorated wagon--I behold--_Rachel_!--handsomer than ever!--in a kind of khaki dress--tunic, breeches, and leggings--enormously becoming!--and, of course, the observed of all observers. More than that!--I perceive a young man, in an American uniform, dancing attendance upon her--taking her orders--walking her off to church--Oh, a perfectly clear case!--no doubt about it at all. And there I stood--within a few yards of her--and she never saw me!"

He broke off, staring at his sister--a wild, exultant look--which struck her uncomfortably. Her face showed her arrested, against her will.

"Are you sure she didn't see you?"

"Sure. I put the child on my shoulder, and hid behind her. Besides--my dear--even Rachel might find it difficult to recognize her discarded husband--in this individual!"

He tapped his chest lightly. Lady Winton could not withdraw her own eyes from him. Yes, it was quite true. The change in him was shocking--ghastly. He had brought it entirely on himself. But she could not help saying, in a somewhat milder tone,--

"Have you seen that doctor again?"

"To whom you so obligingly sent me? Yes, I saw him yesterday. One lung seems to have finally struck work--_caput_! as the Germans say. The other will last a bit longer yet."

A fit of coughing seized him. His sister instinctively moved farther away from him, looking at him with frightened and hostile eyes.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, as soon as he had found his voice again, "I'm drenched in disinfectant. I take all proper precautions--for the child's sake. Now then"--he rose with an effort to his feet--"what are you going to do for me?"

His aspect had altered, had a.s.sumed a sinister and pa.s.sionate intensity.

His sister was conscious of the menace in it, and hastily taking up a small hand-bag lying near her, she produced a purse from it.

"I have saved twenty pounds for you--out of my own money--with _great_ difficulty," she said, with indignant emphasis. "If I were to tell Richard, he would be furious. And I cannot--do--_anything_--more for you, beyond the allowance I give you. Everything you suffer from, you have brought upon, yourself. It is hopeless to try and help you."

He laughed.

"Well, then, I must try Rachel!" he said carelessly, as he looked for his hat.

"That I think would be the lowest depth!" said Lady Winton, breathing quick, "to beg money from the wife who divorced you!"

"I am ready to beg for money--requisition is the better word--from anybody in the world who has more of it than I. I am a Bolshevist. You needn't talk to me about property, or rights. I don't acknowledge them.

I want something that you've got, and I haven't. I shall take it if I find the opportunity--civilly if I can, uncivilly, if I must."

Lady Winton made no reply. She stood, a statue of angry patience waiting for him to go. He slowly b.u.t.toned on his coat, and then stepped coolly across the room to look at an enlarged photograph of a young soldier standing on the piano.

"Handsome chap! You're in luck, Marianne. I suppose you managed to get him into a staff job of some sort, out of harm's way?"

He turned to her with a sneer on his lips. His sister was still silent.

The man moving about the room was perhaps the thing she feared and hated most in the world. Every scene of this kind--and he forced them on her, in spite of her futile resistance, at fairly frequent intervals--represented to her an hour of torture and humiliation. How to hide the scenes and the being who caused them, from her husband, her servants, her friends, was becoming almost her chief preoccupation.

She was beginning to be afraid of her brother. For some time she had regarded him as incipiently insane, and as she watched him this evening he seemed to her more than ever charged with sinister possibilities. It appeared to be impossible to influence or frighten him; and she realized that as he seemed not to care a fig whether she caused a scandal or not, and she cared with every pulse of her being, she was really in his power, and it was no good struggling.

"Well, good-night, Edith," he said at last, taking up his hat. "This'll last for a bit--but not very long, I warn you--prices being what they are. Oh, by the way, my name just now is Wilson--make a note of it!"

"What's that for?" she said disdainfully.

"Some Canadian creditors of mine got wind of me--worse luck. I had to change my quarters, and drop the old name--for a bit. However--what's in a name?" He laughed, and held out his hand.

"Going to shake hands, Edie? You used to be awfully fond of me, when you were small."

She stood, apparently unmoved, her hands hanging. The pathetic note had been tried on her too often.

"Good-night, Roger. Nannie will show you out."

The door closed on him, and Lady Winton dropped on a sofa by the fire, her face showing white and middle-aged in the firelight. She was just an ordinary woman, only with a stronger will than most; and as an ordinary woman, amid all her anger and fear, she was not wholly proof against such a spectacle as that now presented by her once favourite brother. It was not his words that affected her--but a hundred little personal facts which every time she saw him burnt a little more deeply into her consciousness the irreparableness of his personal ruin--physical and moral. Idleness, drink, disease--the loss of shame, of self-respect, of manners--the sense of something vital gone for ever--all these fatal things stared out upon her, from his slippery emaciated face, his borrowed clothes, his bullying voice--the scent on him of the mews in which he lived!

She covered her face with her hands and cried a little. She could remember when he was the darling and pride of the family--especially of his father. How had it happened? He had said to her once, "There must have been a black drop somewhere in our forbears, Edie. It has reappeared in me. We are none of us responsible, my dear, for our precious selves. I may be a sinner and a loafer--but that benevolent Almighty of yours made me."