Mortal Coils Part 6

"It's really too grotesque. What do you all take me for? A cinema hero?"

He had begun to lose his temper. All the exasperation, all the fear and bewilderment of the day, was transformed into a violent anger against her. "It's all such d.a.m.ned stupidity. Haven't you any conception of a civilised man's mentality? Do I look the sort of man who'd go about slaughtering people? I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me to marry you. It was all a d.a.m.ned stupid, practical joke. And now you go about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it."

Mr. Hutton stamped towards the door. He had said horrible things, he knew--odious things that he ought speedily to unsay. But he wouldn't.

He closed the door behind him.

"Teddy Bear!" He turned the handle; the latch clicked into place. Teddy Bear! The voice that came to him through the closed door was agonised.

Should he go back? He ought to go back. He touched the handle, then withdrew his fingers and quickly walked away. When he was half-way down the stairs he halted. She might try to do something silly--throw herself out of the window or G.o.d knows what! He listened attentively; there was no sound. But he pictured her very clearly, tiptoeing across the room, lifting the sash as high as it would go, leaning out into the cold night air. It was raining a little. Under the window lay the paved terrace.

How far below? Twenty-five or thirty feet? Once, when he was walking along Piccadilly, a dog had jumped out of a third-storey window of the Ritz. He had seen it fall; he had heard it strike the pavement. Should he go back? He was d.a.m.ned if he would; he hated her.

He sat for a long time in the library. What had happened? What was happening? He turned the question over and over in his mind and could find no answer. Suppose the nightmare dreamed itself out to its horrible conclusion. Death was waiting for him. His eyes filled with tears; he wanted so pa.s.sionately to live. "Just to be alive." Poor Emily had wished it too, he remembered: "Just to be alive." There were still so many places in this astonishing world unvisited, so many queer delightful people still unknown, so many lovely women never so much as seen. The huge white oxen would still be dragging their wains along the Tuscan roads, the cypresses would still go up, straight as pillars, to the blue heaven; but he would not be there to see them. And the sweet southern wines--Tear of Christ and Blood of Judas--others would drink them, not he. Others would walk down the obscure and narrow lanes between the bookshelves in the London Library, sniffing the dusty perfume of good literature, peering at strange t.i.tles, discovering unknown names, exploring the fringes of vast domains of knowledge. He would be lying in a hole in the ground. And why, why? Confusedly he felt that some extraordinary kind of justice was being done. In the past he had been wanton and imbecile and irresponsible. Now Fate was playing as wantonly, as irresponsibly, with him. It was t.i.t for tat, and G.o.d existed after all.

He felt that he would like to pray. Forty years ago he used to kneel by his bed every evening. The nightly formula of his childhood came to him almost unsought from some long unopened chamber of the memory. "G.o.d bless Father and Mother, Tom and Cissie and the Baby, Mademoiselle and Nurse, and everyone that I love, and make me a good boy. Amen." They were all dead now all except Cissie.

His mind seemed to soften and dissolve; a great calm descended upon his spirit. He went upstairs to ask Doris's forgiveness. He found her lying on the couch at the foot of the bed. On the floor beside her stood a blue bottle of liniment, marked "Not to be taken"; she seemed to have drunk about half of it.

"You didn't love me," was all she said when she opened her eyes to find him bending over her.

Dr. Libbard arrived in time to prevent any very serious consequences.

"You mustn't do this again," he said while Mr. Hutton was out of the room.

"What's to prevent me?" she asked defiantly.

Dr. Libbard looked at her with his large, sad eyes. "There's nothing to prevent you," he said. "Only yourself and your baby. Isn't it rather bad luck on your baby, not allowing it to come into the world because you want to go out of it?"

Doris was silent for a time. "All right," she whispered. "I won't."

Mr. Hutton sat by her bedside for the rest of the night. He felt himself now to be indeed a murderer. For a time he persuaded himself that he loved this pitiable child. Dozing in his chair, he woke up, stiff and cold, to find himself drained dry, as it were, of every emotion. He had become nothing but a tired and suffering carcase. At six o'clock he undressed and went to bed for a couple of hours' sleep. In the course of the same afternoon the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of "Wilful Murder," and Mr. Hutton was committed for trial.

VI

Miss Spence was not at all well. She had found her public appearances in the witness-box very trying, and when it was all over she had something that was very nearly a breakdown. She slept badly, and suffered from nervous indigestion. Dr. Libbard used to call every other day. She talked to him a great deal--mostly about the Hutton case.... Her moral indignation was always on the boil. Wasn't it appalling to think that one had had a murderer in one's house. Wasn't it extraordinary that one could have been for so long mistaken about the man's character? (But she had had an inkling from the first.) And then the girl he had gone off with--so low cla.s.s, so little better than a prost.i.tute. The news that the second Mrs. Hutton was expecting a baby the posthumous child of a condemned and executed criminal--revolted her; the thing was shocking an obscenity. Dr. Libbard answered her gently and vaguely, and prescribed bromide.

One morning he interrupted her in the midst of her customary tirade.

"By the way," he said in his soft, melancholy voice, "I suppose it was really you who poisoned Mrs. Hutton."

Miss Spence stared at him for two or three seconds with enormous eyes, and then quietly said, "Yes." After that she started to cry.

"In the coffee, I suppose."

She seemed to nod a.s.sent. Dr. Libbard took out his fountain-pen, and in his neat, meticulous calligraphy wrote out a prescription for a sleeping draught.

II: PERMUTATIONS AMONG THE NIGHTINGALES

A PLAY

_It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the garden facade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage--a bare white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the lounge, a double door of gla.s.s, open now, through which a yellow radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a ma.s.s of dark foliage, ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set.

At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the pa.s.sing of each successive hour. When the curtain rises the terrace is almost deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest_, COUNT ALBERTO TIRETTA, _is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully sympathetic at his side_, ALBERTO _is a little man with large l.u.s.trous eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ--almost as pretty and sentimental as Murillo's little beggars._

ALBERTO (_making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left covering his eyes_). Whereupon, Waiter (_he is reciting a tale of woes_), she slammed the door in my face. (_He brings down his gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table_.)

WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible!

ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a little weary. (_The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under his arm and fills Alberto's gla.s.s._)

WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore.

ALBERTO (_throwing down a note_). Keep the change.

WAITER (_bowing_). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I should beat her. (_He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of ill.u.s.tration slaps its black polished flanks._)

ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her.

WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I a.s.sure you, Signore, a pleasure.

ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts.

My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity.

Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please.

WAITER (_pouring out the brandy_). Delicacy, purity.... Ah, believe me, Signore ... That will be one lira twenty-five.

ALBERTO (_throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic gesture_). Keep the change.

WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, purity.... You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the Signore's sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen years old, and what eyes, what forms!

ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of the young lady (_he points towards the gla.s.s doors_). Remember she is an American. (_The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel_.)

SIDNEY DOLPHIN _and_ MISS AMY TOOMIS

_come out together on to the terrace._ MISS AMY _supports a well-shaped head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten Toomis millions_. SIDNEY DOLPHIN _has a romantic aristocratic appearance. The tailoring of_ 1830 _would suit him. Balzac would have described his face as_ plein de poesie. _In effect he does happen to be a poet. His two volumes of verse, "Zeotrope and 'Trembling Ears," have been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are poetry n.o.body, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain. They may be merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain.

Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at one of the little iron tables_, ALBERTO _they do not see; the shadow of the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There is a long, uncomfortable silence_. DOLPHIN _a.s.sumes the Thinker's mask--the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead_, AMY _regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her interest in him_, DOLPHIN _racks his brains to think of some way of exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests_. AMY _makes a social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones._ AMY. It's been a wonderful day, hasn't it?

DOLPHIN (_starting, as though roused from profoundest thought_). Yes, yes, it has.

AMY. You don't often get it as fine as this in England, I guess.