The Good Comrade Part 37

This was the last reference that was made to the sale of the daffodil and the expedition to town; after that the matter was left out of conversation and Julia behaved as if it had never existed. But Captain Polkington was very unhappy; he could not get over the affair and his own failure; he brooded over it in silence, feeling and resenting that he could not speak to either Johnny or Julia, they being quite unable to understand his emotions. Once or twice he raged weakly against Cross, who had given him five pounds when he had asked twenty for a thing worth two hundred; who had doubted his word, who had behaved as if he were a common thief--who would, doubtless, think him one. More often his indignation burnt up against Julia who would do nothing to remedy this last catastrophe, and clear him and reinstate his honour in the eyes of this man and himself. Most often of all his quarrel was with fate, and then his anger broke down into self-pity as he thought of all the troubles that were crowding about his later years; of his lost reputation, his lack of sympathy and comprehension; the failure of all his plans and hopes, the poverty and feeble health that oppressed him. In these gloomy days he had one ray of comfort only; it lay in the purchase he had made on that day that he went shopping.

That whisky was the solitary thing in the day's adventure about which Julia had not heard; everything else she had been told, but somehow that had escaped. One reason of this, no doubt, lay in the fact that Captain Polkington had not brought his purchase home with him that evening. He had meant to; when the carrier set him and his property down just outside Halgrave, he had fully meant to carry it to the cottage. But he found it so heavy and c.u.mbersome in his weak and dejected state that he had to give it up. So he found a suitable hiding-place in the deep overgrown ditch beside the road, and, thrusting it as much out of sight as he could, left it there and went home unburdened. He meant to tell Julia and Johnny about it, they of course were to have shared, and one or both of them would go with him to fetch it home in the morning. But he did not tell them; it did not seem suitable at first; they, each in a different way, were too unsympathetic about the expedition to town; he determined to wait for a fitting opportunity. The opportunity did not come; but in course of time the whisky was moved and gave comfort of sorts during the autumn days to the Captain's drooping spirits, if it had a less beneficial effect on his failing health.

In the meantime the daffodil, "The Good Comrade," had gone back to its native land, and with it an appeal, written in English, badly written, scrawled almost--but not likely to be refused. Joost read it through once, twice, more times than that; it said little, only, take back the bulb and ask no questions, yet he felt he had been honoured by Julia's confidence. The very style and haste of the letter seemed an honour to him; it showed him she had need and had turned to him in it. Of course he would do as she asked; he would have done things far harder than that. He folded the slip of paper and put it away where he kept some few treasures, and for a time he put with it the bulb she had sent; and sometimes when he went to bed of a night--he had no other free time--he took both out and looked at them.

But "The Good Comrade" did not remain locked away from the light of day.

Joost was a sentimentalist, it is true, and the bulb had come from Julia, winged by an appeal from her. But he was also a bulb grower, and he was that before he was anything else and afterwards too, and the daffodil was a marvel of nature, a novelty, a thing beyond words to a connoisseur. The lover asked that the token should be kept hidden from the eyes of men; but the grower cried that the flower should be given to the light of heaven and should grow and bloom according to Nature's plan. For days the lover was uppermost and the old pain back.

But in time the bitter-sweet madness died down again and, in the atmosphere which was saturated with the beloved work, the old love, the first and last and soundly abiding one, rea.s.serted itself. The daffodil must bloom, the little brown bulb must go back to the brown earth, the strange flower must unfold itself to the sun and wind and rain.

So he went to his father. "My father," he said, and it is to be feared he had learnt something of guile from the source of his bitter-sweet madness. "My father, I have heard from Miss Julia; she would wish us to have the narcissus 'The Good Comrade.'"

Mijnheer was pleased. "That is as it should be," he said; he had felt strongly about the gift of the bulb in the first instance, but that was an affair over and done with long ago between him and his son. He did not reopen it now, he was only gratified to think there was a likelihood of the daffodil coming back to its birthplace, where it certainly ought to be. "How much does Miss Julia ask for it?" he inquired.

"Nothing," Joost answered; "she does not wish to sell it; she wishes to give it back."

"But, but!" Mijnheer exclaimed, pushing up his spectacles in astonishment; he knew the value of the thing and the offers that must have been made for it; this way was not at all his notion of doing business; also he found it hard to reconcile with the Julia he remembered. He recollected talk he had had with her when she had proved herself an apt pupil in trade and trade dealings, and shown, not only a very good comprehension of such things, but also an eye to the main chance. "This is nonsense," he said; "it is not business."

Joost looked distressed. "I gave her the bulb," he ventured; "she does not want to sell me back my present."

Mijnheer did not recognise any such distinction in business transactions, and for a little it looked as if "The Good Comrade"

would be sent wandering again, sacrificed to his old-fashioned notions of integrity. Joost should not have it unless he paid for it, he said so with decision. He himself would buy it if Joost would not, and if she would not sell it to him then neither of them should have it.

And Joost could not, even if he would, explain why and how the paying was so difficult. He used all the arguments he could; indeed, for one of his nature, he spoke with considerable diplomacy.

"Supposing," he said at last, "that it was only a sport, and that next year it reverts and is blue as are the others, the parent bulbs? Miss Julia thinks of that--she would not like to be paid for it now in case of such a thing, will you not at least wait until the spring? She has given nothing for it herself; it is not as if she had sunk money and wants an immediate return."

Mijnheer did not consider that made any difference and he said so, reading his son a lecture on business morality according to his standard, of a very severe order. Joost listened with meekness to the entirely undeserved reproof for meanness and dishonourable views; then the old man announced finally what he should do. He should write to Julia and offer her a smallish sum down in case the bulb proved to be of no great worth, and a promise of a proportional percentage afterwards if it proved valuable. This idea pleased him very well; it satisfied his notions of integrity and fair dealing and also his thrifty soul, which found trying the otherwise unavoidable duty of paying a long price for what had been freely given. From this Joost could not move him, so there was nothing for him to do but write distressfully to Julia and explain and apologise.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

Julia was at work in the kitchen; it was ten o'clock on a November morning and she was busy; Captain Polkington had had breakfast up-stairs, he often did now, and it delayed the morning's work. Mr.

Gillat brought in two letters which the postman had left; both were for Julia, but she had not time to read them now, so she put them down on the table; they would keep; she did not feel greatly interested to know what was inside them. Things did not interest her as they used; in some imperceptible way she had aged; some of the elasticity and youth was gone, perhaps because hope was gone. It had been dying all the summer, ever since the day when she crouched behind the chopping-block; but gently and gradually, as the year dies, with some beauties unknown in early days and little recurrent spurts of hope and youth, like the flowers that bloom into winter's lap. But it was dead now; there had come to her, as it were, a sudden frost, and, as befalls in the years, too, the late blooming flowers, the coloured leaves, the last beautiful clinging remnants of life withered all at once and fell away. It was unreasonable, perhaps, that the Captain's theft of the daffodil and what arose from it should have had this result; but then it was possibly unreasonable that hope and youth should have had any autumn at all and not died right off when she said "No" and meant it that afternoon in the early summer. But then the mind of man--and woman--is unreasonable.

It was nearly half-an-hour later when Julia picked up the letters; both were from Holland; one, she fancied, was from Mijnheer, one from his son. She opened the latter first; she rather wondered what Joost could have to write about; he had acknowledged the receipt of the daffodil bulb long ago. The matter was soon explained; the letter was as formal and precise as ever, but the emotion that dictated it, the distress and regret, was quite clear to Julia in spite of the primness of expression. Clear, too, to her were the conflicting feelings that lay behind the lover's contrition for what he feared was abuse of his mistress's trust, and the grower's desire that the treasured token should be resolved into, what it was, a wonderful bulb, a triumph of the horticulturist. Julia smiled a little sadly as she read; not that she regretted the existence of the grower with the lover; she was glad to see it and to know that it was triumphing. But the whole affair seemed so far off, so unimportant, so almost childish. She did not care who knew he had the daffodil, or whether it bloomed or rotted. In these days, when her self-apportioned burden was beginning to press heavily upon her shoulders, such things did not seem to matter. She had a sense almost of disloyalty in feeling how little it mattered to her when it appeared to be so much to this loyal friend.

Captain Polkington had of late had several sudden attacks of a faintness which more often than not amounted to unconsciousness.

"Heart," the doctor had said when he was summoned after the first one; he had not regarded them as very dangerous, that is to say not likely to prove fatal at any moment if properly treated at the time. He had given instructions as to suitable treatment, emphasising the fact that the patient ought never to be long out of ear-shot of some one, as the attacks required immediate remedy. He forbade excitement and much exertion, orders easy to fulfil in this case, and also stimulants of all sorts, an order not quite so easy. Captain Polkington was much displeased about this last; he said it plainly showed the doctor a fool who did not know his business; stimulant, as every one knew, being the first necessity for a weak heart. Julia pointed out that that must vary with the const.i.tution, nature and disease; she also recalled the fact that alcohol never had suited her father. He was naturally not convinced by her logic, and so was decidedly sulky; even in time, by dint of dwelling upon the subject, came to regard the treatment as a conspiracy to annoy him. Julia regretted this but did not think it mattered very much, seeing that she had the keys; but then she did not know of that purchase made in the town. The Captain, rebelling against the doctor's order, hugged himself as he thought of it and of the comparatively sparing use he had made of it so far--for fear of being found out. There was no need of him to die by inches while he had that store of life and comfort; so he told himself, and secretly made use of it, with anything but good result. Julia, marking the disimprovement in his health, thought it was the natural course and saved him all work, carrying out the doctor's instructions more carefully than ever. The hidden whisky remained unknown to her, for although in the larger affairs of duplicity and diplomacy she easily outmatched her father, in matters requiring small cunning he was much nearer her equal. In this one he showed almost preternatural skill; his whole heart was in it, and his wits, where it was concerned, were sharpened above the average; he clung to his secret as a man clings to his one chance of life, made only the more pertinacious by the contrary advice he had received. But on that November morning, after Julia had brought her father round by the proper remedies, she began to have suspicions. They were not founded on anything definite; she could not imagine how he should have got stimulant, and his condition hardly justified her in suspecting it, yet she did. And Captain Polkington knew by experience that that was enough to prove unpleasant; it did not matter much at which end Julia got hold of his affairs, she had a knack of arriving at the middle before he was at all ready for her. He resented what she said to him that morning very much indeed. He denied everything and defended himself well; although he was in fear all the time that some unwary word or unwise denial should betray him to his cross-examiner who, being herself no mean expert in the double-dealing arts, could frequently learn as much from a lie as from the truth. In the end, what between anxiety and annoyance, he lost control of his temper and from peevish irritability broke out suddenly into a fit of weak ungovernable rage. Julia was obliged at once to desist, seeing with regret that she had transgressed one of the doctor's rules and excited the patient very much indeed.

She left him to recover control of himself and went to look for Mr.

Gillat.

"Johnny," she said, when she found him. "I believe father has got whisky. I don't know where, but I shall have to find out; you must help me."

Johnny professed his willingness, looking puzzled and unhappy; he looked so at times, again now, for even he had begun to discern a shadow coming on the life which for a year had been so happy to him.

"You will have to keep a watch on father," Julia said. "He won't do much while I am watching; he will wait till he is alone with you.

Don't try to prevent him; that is no good; just watch and tell me."

Mr. Gillat said he would, though he did not like the job, and certainly was ill-fitted for it. Julia knew that, but knew also that to discover anything she must depend a good deal upon him, unless she could by searching light upon the store of spirit which she could not help thinking her father had in or near the house. She determined to make a systematic search; but before she did so she found time to open Mijnheer's letter.

It was rather a long letter and very neat. It set forth in formal Dutch the old man's ideas concerning the daffodil bulb and his offer regarding it. It should be kept, he said, if it was paid for, not otherwise. Something now, she was to name her terms, while it was still uncertain whether its flower would be blue or streaked or even common yellow--more later, in accordance with the flowering and the profits likely to arise.

So Julia read and sat staring. An offer for "The Good Comrade." Money from the people to whom it had always practically belonged in her estimation. She could not take it from them, it was impossible; the thing was virtually their own! But if she did not. She re-read Joost's letter with its protestations, and Mijnheer's with its offer--if she did not, the little brown bulb would be sent back to her. Mijnheer, now that he knew of its coming, would insist on its return unless it were paid for; and Joost, she knew very well, would not deceive his father and keep it secretly, or defy his father and keep it openly; the money or the bulb she must have. And the bulb she could not, would not have again; so the money, unearned, distasteful, having a not too pleasant savour, must be hers. At last, in this way, without her contrivance, against her will, there had come a way to pay the debt of honour!

She sat down and wrote to Mijnheer and named her price. Thirty pounds she asked for, no more in the future, no less now; that was the only price she could take for "The Good Comrade," it was the sum Rawson-Clew had paid to his cousin two years ago.

Johnny posted the letter that afternoon while Julia began her search for her father's hidden whisky.

All the afternoon Captain Polkington sat in the easy-chair, watching her contemptuously when she was in sight and moving uneasily when she was not. He did not think she would find anything, at least not at once, though he was afraid she would if she kept on long enough and he left his treasure in its present hiding-place. It would not last so much longer--he dared not contemplate the time when it should all be gone; it was characteristic of him that he was easily able to avoid doing so. The princ.i.p.al thought in his mind was a determination that it should not be found while any remained. That could not and should not happen; the last little which he had carefully h.o.a.rded, which he had stinted and deprived himself to save--to have that taken away, to be robbed of that--the tears gathered in his eyes at the pathos of the thought.

But the whisky was not found that day, and the Captain, who slept but badly at this time, lay awake long in the night planning how and when he could move it to a place of safety further away from the house. He would have gone down then and there, in spite of the fact that it was a bl.u.s.tering night of wind and rain and he not fitted to go out in such weather, but he was afraid of Julia. She was certain to hear and follow; she had almost an animal's alertness when once she was on the trail of anything. So he lay and planned and waited, hoping that a chance would come during the next day.

It did not. Julia was at home all day and, as she had foreseen, he made no move while she was about. But the following morning she had to go to Halgrave about the killing of a pig; Johnny was hardly equal to making the necessary arrangements and certainly could not do so good as she. Accordingly, she went herself, not very reluctantly, for she was nearly certain her father would make an effort to get at his whisky, if he had any, as soon as her back was turned, and so give Johnny a chance of finding out about it. Of course it was quite likely that Johnny, being Johnny, would miss the chance, but he might not, and even if he did they would not be much worse off than before. So she thought as she started, leaving the Captain, who was still in bed, with a very vague idea as to when she would be back.

He was a good deal annoyed by this vagueness; it meant he would have to hurry, a thing he hated and did very badly; and, perhaps, entirely without reason, too, for she might be three hours gone; though, equally of course, only two, or perhaps--she was capable of anything unpleasant and unexpected--only one. He began to dress as quickly as he could; but, owing to long habit of doing it as slowly as he could so as to postpone more arduous tasks, that was not very fast. He wished he had known sooner that Julia was going to Halgrave, he would have begun getting up before this; he would even have got to breakfast if only she had let him know; so he fumed to himself as he shuffled about, dropping things with his shaking fingers. At last he was dressed and came down-stairs to find Johnny, pink and apologetic as he used to be in the Marbridge days, laboriously doing odd jobs which did not need doing.

There was not a detective lost in Mr. Gillat, he had not the making of a sleuth-hound in him; or even a watch-dog, except, perhaps, of that well-meaning kind which gets itself perennially kicked for incessant and incurable tail wagging at inopportune times. The half-hour which followed Captain Polkington's coming down-stairs was a trying one. The Captain went to the back door to look out; Mr. Gillat followed him, though scarcely like his shadow; he was not inconspicuous, and neither he nor his motive were easy to overlook. The Captain said something approbious about the weather and the high wind and occasional heavy swishes of rain; then he went to the sitting-room which lay behind the kitchen, and near to the front door. Johnny followed him, and the Captain faced round on him, irritably demanding what the devil he wanted.

"To--to see if the register is shut," Mr. Gillat said, beaming at his own deep diplomacy and the brilliancy of the idea which had come to him--rather tardily, it is true, still in time to pa.s.s muster.

The Captain flung himself into a chair with a sigh of irritation. "It is a funny thing I can't be let alone a moment," he said. "I came in here for a little quiet and coolness, I didn't want you dodging after me."

"No," Johnny agreed amiably; "no, of course not." Then, after a long pause, as if he had just made sure of the fact, "It is cool in here."

It was, very; it might even have been called cold and raw, for there had not been a fire there for days, but the Captain did not move, and Johnny, stooping by the fire-place, examined the register of the chimney, fondly believing in his own impenetrable deceptiveness.

"I can't help thinking it ought to be shut," he observed, looking thoughtfully up the chimney; "the rain will come down; it might rain a good deal if the wind were to drop."

"The wind is not going to drop for hours," the Captain snapped; "it is getting higher."

A great gust rumbled in the chimney as he spoke, and flung itself with the thud of a palpable body against the window-pane. Mr. Gillat heard it; he could not well do otherwise. "Still," he said, "it might rain; one never knows."

He took hold of the register with the tongs and tried to shut it. It was obstinate, and he pulled this way and that, working in his usual laborious and conscientious way. At last it slipped and he managed to get it jammed crossways. Thus he had to leave it, for Captain Polkington, apparently cool enough now, wandered back into the kitchen.

Mr. Gillat, of course, followed and arranged and rearranged pots on the stove till the Captain said he had left his handkerchief up-stairs. Stairs were trying to his heart, so Johnny had to go for it. Up he went as fast as he could, and came down again almost faster, for he tumbled on the second step and slipped the rest of the way with considerable noise and b.u.mping.

After that Captain Polkington gave up his efforts to get rid of his guard and resigned himself to fate. At least, so thought Mr. Gillat, who no amount of experience could instruct in the guilt of the human race in general and the Polkingtons in particular. The first hour of Julia's absence had pa.s.sed when Johnny went into the back kitchen to clean knives. He left the door between the rooms open, but from habit more than from any thought of keeping an eye on his charge. They had been talking in the ordinary way for some time now, the Captain sitting so peacefully by the fire that Mr. Gillat had begun to forget he was supposed to watch. And really it would seem he was justified, for the Captain, of his own accord, left the easy-chair and followed him into the back kitchen, standing watching the knife-cleaning. He had been talking of old times, recalling far back incidents regretfully; he continued to do so as he watched Johnny at work until he was interrupted by a loud sizzling in the kitchen.

"Hullo!" he said, "there's a pot boiling over!" and he made as if he would go to it but half stopped. "It is the big one," he said, "perhaps you had better take it off; I'm not good at lifting weights now-a-days."

"No, no!" Johnny said hastily; "don't you do it, you leave it to me,"

and he hurried into the kitchen to take from the fire a pot which, had he only remembered it, had not been so near the blaze when he left it.

"It is too heavy for you," he went on as he lifted it; "I don't know what is inside, only water, I think; it will be all right here by the side."