Roden's Corner Part 21

They were seated in front of the humble Cafe de l'Europe, which lies concealed in an alley that runs between the Keize Straat and the lighthouse of Scheveningen. It was quite dark and a lonely reveler at the next table seemed to be asleep. The economical proprietor of the Cafe de l'Europe had conceived the idea of constructing a long-shaped lantern, not unlike the arm of a railway signal, which should at once bear the insignia of his house and afford light to his out-door custom.

But the idea, like many of the higher flights of the human imagination, had only left the public in the dark.

"Yes," continued the unchallenged speaker, in a voice which may be heard issuing from the door of any tavern in England on almost any evening of the week--the typical voice of the tavern-talker--"yes, they've always called me Uncle Ben. Seems as if they're sort o' fond of me. Me has seen many hundreds of 'em come and go. But nothing like this. Lord save us!"

His hand fell heavily on the iron table, and he looked round him in semi-intoxicated stupefaction. He was in a confidential humour, and when a man is in this humour, drunk or sober, he is in a parlous state.

It was certainly rather unfortunate that Uncle Ben should have in this expansive moment no more sympathetic companion than an ancient, intoxicated Frenchman, who spoke no word of English.

"What I want to know, Frenchy," continued the Englishman, in a thick, aggrieved voice, "is how long you've been at this trade, and how much you know about it--you and the other Frenchy. But there's none of us speaks the other's lingo. It is a regular Tower of Babble we are!" And Uncle Ben added to his mental confusion a further alcoholic fog.

"That's why I showed yer the way out of the works over the iron fence by the empty casks, and brought yer by the beach to this 'ere house of entertainment, and stood yer a bottle of brandy between two of us--which is handsome, not bein' my own money, seeing as how the others deputed me to do it--me knowing a bit of French, comprenny?" Benjamin, like most of his countrymen, considering that if one speaks English in a loud, clear voice, and adds "comprenny" rather severely, as indicating the intention of standing no nonsense, the previous remarks will translate themselves miraculously in the hearer's mind. "You comprenny--eh? Yes. Oui." "Oui," replied the Frenchman, holding out his gla.s.s; and Uncle Ben's was that pride which goes with a gift of tongues.

He struck a match to light his pipe--one of the wooden, sulphur-headed matches supplied by the _cafe_--and the guest at the next table turned in his chair. The match flared up and showed two faces, which he studied keenly. Both faces were alike unwashed and deeply furrowed.

White, straggling beards and whiskers accentuated the redness of the eyelids, the dull yellow of the skin. They were hopeless and debased faces, with that disquieting resemblance which is perceptible in the faces of men of dissimilar features and no kinship, who have for a number of years followed a common calling, or suffered a common pain.

These two men were both half blind; they had equally unsteady hands.

The clothing of both alike, and even their breath, was scented by a not unpleasant odour of sealing-wax.

It was quite obvious that not only were they at present half intoxicated, but in their soberest moments they could hardly be of a high intelligence.

The reveller at the next table, who happened to be Tony Cornish, now drew his chair nearer.

"Englishman?" he inquired.

"That's me," answered Uncle Ben, with commendable pride, "from the top of my head to me boots. Not that I've anything to say against foreigners."

"Nor I; but it's pleasant to meet a countryman in a foreign land."

Cornish deliberately brought his chair forward. "Your bottle is empty,"

he added; "I'll order another. Friend's a Frenchman, eh?"

"That he is--and doesn't understand his own language either," answered Uncle Ben, in a voice indicating that that lack of comprehension rather intensified his friend's Frenchness than otherwise.

The proprietor of the Cafe de l'Europe now came out in answer to Cornish's rap on the iron table, and presently brought a small bottle of brandy.

"Yes," said Cornish, pouring out the spirit, which his companions drank in its undiluted state from small tumblers--"yes, I'm glad to meet an Englishman. I suppose you are in the works--the Malgamite?"

"I am. And what do you know about malgamite, mister?"

"Well, not much, I am glad to say."

"There is precious few that knows anything," said the man, darkly, and his eye for a moment sobered into cunning.

"I have heard that it is a very dangerous trade, and if you want to get out of it I'm connected with an a.s.sociation in London to provide situations for elderly men who are no longer up to their work," said Cornish, carelessly.

"Thank ye, mister; not for me. I'm making my five-pound note a week, I am, and each cove that dies off makes the survivors one richer, so to speak--survival of the fittest, they call it. So we don't talk much, and just pockets the pay."

"Ah, that is the arrangement, is it?" said Cornish, indifferently.

"Yes. We've got a clever financier, as they call it, I can tell yer.

We're a good-goin' concern, we are. Some of us are goin' pretty quick, too."

"Are there many deaths, then?"

"Ah! there you're asking a question," returned the man, who came of a cla.s.s which has no false shame in refusing a reply.

Cornish looked at the man beneath the dim light of the unsuccessful lamp--a piteous specimen of humanity, depraved, besotted, without outward sign of a redeeming virtue, although a certain courage must have been there--this and such as this stood between him and Dorothy Roden. Uncle Ben had known starvation at one time, for starvation writes certain lines which even turtle soup may never wipe out--lines which any may read and none may forget. Tony Cornish had seen them before--on the face of an old dandy coming down the steps of a St. James's Street club. The malgamiter had likewise known drink long and intimately, and it is no exaggeration to say that he had stood cheek by jowl with death nearly all his life.

Such a man was plainly not to be drawn away from five pounds a week.

Cornish turned to the Frenchman--a little, cunning, bullet-headed Lyonnais, who would not speak of his craft at all, though he expressed every desire to be agreeable to monsieur.

"When one is _en fete_," he cried, "it is good to drink one's gla.s.s or two and think no more of work."

"I knew one or two of your men once," said Cornish, returning to the genial Uncle Ben. "William Martins, I remember, was a decent fellow, and had seen a bit of the world. I will come to the works and look him up some day."

"You can look him up, mister, but you won't find him."

"Ah, has he gone home?"

"He's gone to his long home, that's where he's gone."

"And his brother, Tom Martins, both London men, like myself?" inquired Cornish, without asking that question which Uncle Ben considered such exceedingly bad form.

"Tom's dead, too."

"And there were two Americans, I recollect--I came across from Harwich in the same boat with them--Hewlish they were called."

"Hewlishes has stepped round the corner, too," admitted Uncle Ben. "Oh yes; there's been changes in the works, there's no doubt. And there's only one sort o' change in the malgamite trade. Come on, Frenchy, time's up."

The men stood up and bade Cornish good night, each after his own manner, and went away steadily enough. It was only their heads that were intoxicated, and perhaps the brandy of the Cafe de l'Europe had nothing to do with this.

Cornish followed them, and, in the Keize Straat, he called a cab, telling the man to drive to the house at the corner of Oranje Straat and Park Straat, occupied by Mrs. Vansittart. That lady, the servant said, in reply to his careful inquiry, was at home and alone, and, moreover, did not expect visitors. The man was not at all sure that madame would receive.

"I will try," said Cornish, writing two words in German on the corner of his visiting-card. "You see," he continued, noticing a well-trained glance, "that I am not dressed, so if other visitors arrive, I would rather not be discovered in madame's salon, you understand?"

Mrs. Vansittart shook hands with Cornish in silence, her quick eyes noted the change in him which the shrewd butler had noticed in the entrance-hall. The Cornish of a year earlier would have gone back to the hotel to dress.

"I was just going out to the Witte society concert," said Mrs.

Vansittart. "I thought the open air and the wood would be pleasant this evening. Shall we go or shall we remain?" She stood with her hand on the bell looking at him.

"Let us remain here," he answered.

She rang the bell and countermanded the carriage. Then she sat slowly down, moving as under a sort of oppression, as if she foresaw what the next few minutes contained, and felt herself on the threshold of one of the surprises that Fate springs upon us at odd times, tearing aside the veils behind which human hearts have slept through many years. For indifference is not the death, but only the sleep of the heart.

"You have just arrived?"

"No; I have been here a week."

"At The Hague?"

"No," answered Cornish, with a grave smile; "at a little inn in Scheveningen, where no questions are asked."