The Outcast and the Rite, page 19
His audience agreed effusively; but then they always did when the landlord delivered a judgment. Everybody wondered when the great pantechnicons would come with the furniture, and which of the firms in the county town would get the job for decorating. They observed all the movements of Mr La Vie, and the caretaker who came one night to the Bells had a good deal to say of him.
‘Tapping at the wood, and looking at it through one of them reading glasses. Writing in a little book all the time. I tried to get a sight of it, but it was writ too small.’
‘How about Falkiner’s cottage?’
‘Will he keep James Goodbody on?’
‘How’d I know? He didn’t say a word. Not so much as asked after my leg, though I dragged it cruel. Them’s not gentry ways.’
‘Ah, but them’s not gentry,’ said the landlord, and this summed up the impression of the tap-room council.
Mr La Vie went away, speeding south in his opulent car, and for a month nothing happened. Then Teigne heard that the county town builders had been given a contract, but not to decorate. They were to pull down; to pull down Teigne. The country people were disturbed, like a swarm of bees when their hive is destroyed. For centuries the great house had provided them with themes for speculation and legend. They were used to it. They liked to feel it there, powerful still. They could not know why Mr La Vie had made his decision.
In his rather dark but splendid sitting-room he had told his mother of the interview with Sir Roger, and spoken of the ill-luck which went with his purchase. His mother, who retained the older form of the family name and took curses seriously, was upset by his story. She discouraged him, and refused flatly to live under such a roof.
‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t,’ said Mr La Vie at last. ‘But I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll cut my losses. We’ll gut the place and leave it. And by the time I’ve sold the woodwork and the ceilings and one or two other things there may not be much loss to cut. How’s that? That doesn’t give it much of a chance to do any mischief.’
Mrs Levy agreed.
‘What about buyers?’ she asked.
‘I could sell the interior five times over,’ he replied.
‘Over the water,’ she supplemented, and they both laughed.
In this way the destruction was planned, and according to plan was carried out by the firm in the county town. Every inch of woodwork was stripped from the walls; foot by foot the moulded ceilings were dissected, a difficult matter, for the old plaster held strongly; the doors were taken out; the staircases, hollowed with treading, were loaded on to vans. Windows, floors, lead roofing, gutters, pipes, everything moveable was taken, until only the red shell of the house stood, gaping. Mr La Vie was there as the last load was driven away, and he stood in the shelter of the wrecked doorway to watch it go; when he could no longer hear the sound of wheels, he spat on the threshold and walked briskly to the village by a side-path through the woods.
He had not overstated his case when he told his mother that he was sure of buyers. They came to him from the four winds, American gentlemen with money and English gentlemen with taste; even one gentleman from a Museum came. They bid openly and secretly for the spoils of Teigne, and Mr La Vie, smiling, told himself that he still had an eye for a good thing. Yet, as once he had regretted that all this beauty must pass from those to whom it should belong into the hands of those who could afford it, so now he hated to think that it had been broken apart from the shell that had held it safely so long. He was not proud of the deal. It had been profitable, but he was not tempted to repeat it. One could not reputably live by eviscerating old houses, and it went against the grain with Mr La Vie. So he returned to his lawful enterprises, and as senior partner in the firm of Chester, La Vie, of Bond Street, began once more to distribute pictures, fans and Renaissance jewellery at prices which were a sufficient indication of the reverence in which he held such things.
He loved his galleries. The frail beauty of his wares possessed him with ecstasy. He touched them gently, and tried not to part with them. Sometimes he would buy some exquisite fan, or beaker of coloured glass, and put it aside, hidden so that no strolling casual customer might find it; after a day or two the lure of the treasure would prove irresistible and he would go secretly to look at it, and smooth it with a forefinger. In his divided mind dealer would war with artist, and the victory went always to the latter, so that the lovely thing would be ravished from the galleries and Mr La Vie would sit late that night turning it fondly in his hands or seeking a place for it in the crowded cabinets of his study.
Mr Chester could never understand these lapses. He was a businesslike, stolid person, who dwelt among precious things as though they had been turnips, and the eccentricities of his partner were painful to him. But, as he would sometimes explain to a customer, punctuating his speech with significant nods, La Vie was an artist as much as any of these fellows that lay on paint or sing at the Queen’s Hall; he was proud of this alien quality, and he had discovered that it appealed to a certain type of customer.
‘I’m only a business man,’ he would explain, ‘I can’t tell you about that. We’ll ask La Vie. He knows the history of all these things as though he’d made them himself.’
Then, hastily, fearing lest his last sentence should create a false impression, he would add, ‘Funny thing is, he doesn’t do anything. Nothing to show for it. Can’t use his hands at all.’
Theirs was a tactfully conducted and confidential business. They did not often bid at sales. But if some collector wished to dispose of duplicates, or if some lady, last of a family, found herself burdened with unproductive heirlooms, Chester, La Vie, could be trusted to come to some arrangement. They acquired privately, and sold to well-known persons within a limited social circle. They were honest, deliberate. They knew.
It was a comparatively small matter which revealed to them both that there was something wrong with Mr La Vie. A very junior dealer had come with a ring which he said was more in their line than his. Mr La Vie was called to inspect it which he did in his usual leisurely competent way with the aid of a glass; but the glass in this case was unnecessary. It was a plausible Renaissance jewel, one great baroque pearl forming the head and body of a sea-horse; the ordinary kind of monstrosity for which there was a market. This one, however, was not genuine. The colour of the gold was wrong, the method of securing the pearl was wrong. Mr La Vie, handing it back to the dealer, told him so.
‘Fake?’ said the dealer, vanquished, but good-humoured, ‘Fake or not, it’s a beautiful thing.’
‘No,’ Mr La Vie answered, as though repeating the words after some invisible dictator, ‘Fake or not, it’s an ugly thing.’
He sat back, horrified at his own revelation; and when the dealer had departed, the ring in his pocket, he rose and paced about the galleries, miserable because he had lost his conception of beauty, and could not find it among the things which hitherto had brought him comfort.
Later he confided his troubles to Mr Chester, who laughed robustly, and urged him to take a day off.
‘You’re run down, that’s what’s the matter with you,’ Mr Chester declaimed, standing four square in the little office, ‘You get away into the country. You can trust me with your pretties for an hour or two.’
Accordingly, next day Mr La Vie made no appearance in Bond Street, but summoned his chauffeur and drove into the country to appease his questioning mind. They went north into Hertfordshire, and secure in his glass box he surveyed the fleeting hedges with dreary eyes. There were some lazy fields, and a number of fields busy with standing crops. Bridges humped themselves to give the motorist a disagreeable switchback feeling as he rolled over them. Once he saw a mill-wheel slowly churning a quick brown stream to froth. He drove past country policemen, affable on bicycles; and there were the usual children caught back by the skirts, and the usual little towns disfigured by garages plastered with advertisements in primary colours.
Mr La Vie, pressing his shoulders against the yielding cushions, stared indifferently upon it all. He was arguing with himself, trying to make accepted things resume their previous unquestioned status.
‘Beauty,’ he thought, ‘what we’re all after. It must exist. It would be too cruel—have I been fooled all these years? What are we here for, anyhow? Is it that there are so many kinds? Why am I cut off, then? I’ve always kept to the sort I could understand. But now—’
As they left the country behind them, turning in to London again, he was not made wretched by the transition, nor was he conscious of the horrors that elbowed his car as it followed meekly behind a towering tram. It seemed hideous, yet he could not condemn it, for he was bereft of all his standards, and his problem was vivid and restless as ever. He defended himself against the attacks, telling himself that the matter of the ring was unimportant and that his subsequent lassitude and distress of mind were nothing more than a physical intolerance of routine. He tried to be amused at the exaggerated tumult of his ideas, and went up the steps of his mother’s house smiling. He reflected that the country didn’t suit all people; too stimulating, too big, too much repetition; field after field, and the same sky meeting them all. It was enough to upset any man who wasn’t used to it. He was talkative at dinner, but now and then he caught his own eyes in the bevelled glass of the sideboard opposite his chair, and looked away quickly. He could not bear to give that sideboard the benefit of the doubt.
He tried no more experiments, and returned next morning to Bond Street.
Mr Chester, approaching in a hearty manner to question him, was foiled by an assumption of the absent-minded silence which his partner’s reputation as an artist excused. All that morning, whether he spoke with customers or walked among the treasures displayed, or merely sat at his desk pushing back the skin from his fingernails the same question bothered him.
‘It isn’t in these things. Where, then? Can’t you buy it and sell it? For centuries people have said these things were beautiful. They can’t all have been wrong. I thought it was to be found in things that people had made with their hands, made carefully and with love; but it’s not. Nature—no, not for me. Though even those things are made, carefully too, for all we know. I don’t understand.’
He ranged among the cabinets and tables, stooping, minutely examining. He saw little pieces of yellow and grey metal, thin sticks of ivory inlaid with dull stones, thread worked painfully into meaningless patterns, aimlessly repeated, mirrors whose dark glasses reflected him and offered new problems to bewilder him. He turned his back on them all and went again to sit at his desk, frowning at his nails.
At about half past five a customer entered the gallery, a countess whose income was so deplorably irregular that it was never possible to forecast whether she came to sell or to buy. Mr Chester, who greeted her, was soon able to discover, by her admiration of everything she saw, that she did not come as a purchaser. She hovered before a dessert service of painted glass, wailing that it was too heavenly to exist; in a Venetian mirror she tilted her hat to another angle, exclaiming that it was abominably put on; finally she produced from her bag a jewelled watch, dusty with pink powder, the face of it painted with the judgment of Paris, and on its back the letters M. A. twined in a cypher with a crown above. Mr Chester took it, and inwardly assessed the value of the sapphires in the monogram, but he would not commit himself. He said, as was customary, ‘A lovely thing. We’ll have to show this to La Vie. He’s the expert.’
‘Oh, but of course,’ the countess agreed.
Mr La Vie was summoned from his desk and came slowly forward, going carefully, from habit, among the crowded tables. The countess tittered, as Chester handed him the watch, ‘You won’t be too hard on me, will you? Really, you know, it’s historical, my poor watch. I do so hate to part with it. But now-a-days, what is one to do? It’s so impossible to make ends meet, isn’t it? You’ll be kind, won’t you, Mr La Vie?’
‘My partner hasn’t been at all well,’ said Mr Chester, ‘but it will do him good to look at such a beautiful thing.’
His words were for the jewel, but his eyes for the countess, who bridled.
‘You know, it used to belong to Marie Antoinette. It’s tremendously old, and so attractive, don’t you think? You must really be generous. I could easily have found an American for it, but I brought it to you.’
Mr La Vie studied the watch coldly, turning it over, and peering at it closely. He opened the case, and saw, engraved upon the gold rim which the case covered, the words, ‘Boehme, Wien.’ Austrian made; a gift perhaps from Maria Theresa to her daughter. The crown was not the royal crown of France, but a coronet such as the daughter of an empress might bear. A gift to the child princess before her mother had arranged the marriage with France. Exquisite work. The countess talked on.
‘You must never let my husband know. He’s so old-fashioned. He’d starve surrounded by heirlooms rather than sell. He gave me this, though. It’s quite my own. I do not think that’s such a foolish attitude to take up. The times have quite gone by, haven’t they? Do tell me your verdict, Mr La Vie.’
She turned suddenly to him, and he, startled from his preoccupation, let the precious thing fall from his hands, face downwards on the floor. There was a little tingling crash. Mr La Vie, stooping, saw that the glass was broken and the enamel blotched with white; a dust of coloured particles lay at his feet. He did not know that he had laughed as it fell, not harshly, but delightedly, like a child pleased by the noise. Now his partner and customer saw his face alter. He made a little gesture towards them with his hands as though to implore their help. Tears came to his eyes, and he said wildly, forgetful of race, of dignity, of all save his immense trouble, ‘Christ! What’s got me? I don’t care any more—’
And began to sob, standing helplessly in front of them.
It was almost a pity that the villagers of Teigne could not have witnessed the scene.
11 The Pledge
In the old town was a most unexpected street, which, neglecting the opportunity offered by the level land to the north, turned away southwards to go shouldering up the hill in whose lee the town had been built, and under whose sheltering trees it lay like a ship at anchor. The street was like a street of ships, and had been built by seafarers. The houses were ribbed with oak, their upper stories leant forward so that to a person standing in the street they seemed like wooden hulls curving to earth instead of water; their flanks showed round windows here and there, portholes against which on stormy nights the rain flung itself with a sound as of spray. The street was like that. People had heard of it, and came in cars and buses to ascend it on foot, for the incline baffled all mechanism; these outlanders could be seen any day, staring right and left with the wistful look of those who have been told what to admire, but are uncertain as to details. Their conversation as a rule was fragmentary, owing to the climb. They said, ‘This’ll soon get that fat off you, Annie.’
‘Charming, of course, but almost too artificial.’
‘I should think they must get a lot of painters coming here in the summer.’
‘My! If my husband could see this street he’d want to buy it right up.’
‘I wouldn’t live in one of them, not if you was to pay me. I do like a nice bright room. Where we live we got a great big window where you can ’ave a nice pot of ferns—’
But the inhabitants of the crooked leaning houses were used to it; and the street, oddly enough, did not break out into little tea-shops with orange curtains, or little antique shops with brass candlesticks writhing in the window. A certain tenacity and unfriendliness came to the aid of the inhabitants. They refused to resign their houses, and the visitors had to retire to the far end of the town where in a charming but adroitly aged hotel they might consume the cakes and purchase the Staffordshire figures which the barbarians of the street denied them.
The barbarians, in spite of their houses, had ceased to think of the sea. They had forgotten it, since it no longer occupied their immediate horizon. It had gone, leaving the marsh behind it, rich land where sheep were pastured; and so gradually did the meadows slope to a shingle and the shingle to water, that although it was only two miles distant the sea was not visible save on bright days as a thin silvery line. They built no ships now, and no houses save in ignoble rows with disciplined roofs. They were no longer adventurers and free men of the sea; the land held them fast. Only the strangers remembered.
Miss Alquist lived in one of the narrow houses halfway up the street of the ships. She was a newcomer. She had arrived one day from the outer world, unheralded, and at once, by artifice or simply by strength of character, had contrived to secure a foothold among the ship-dwellers. She lodged with a family of them, renting one room at first, and gradually, as the elder children married, extending her domain till she possessed the whole ground floor with a lien upon the kitchen. As time went on she proceeded, to the dismay of her hosts, to oust their furniture and replace it with odds and ends of her own, which came sewn up in sacking from some place abroad whose name the Frants could never succeed in reading. They found themselves crowded in the remaining rooms, compelled to uncomfortable proximity and obsessed by the rejected furniture which advanced upon them like a tide with their lodger’s every acquisition.
Miss Alquist never considered the inconvenience, and had never been heard to apologize. She was shabby and haughty and quite without consideration for the Frants, who, though appalled by her assurance, lacked the courage to send her packing. It is possible that had they tried to do so she might not have consented to go, and before that only too probable situation the stern overnight resolutions of the Frants would pale to morning civility. Her advantage was a moral one, and her strength lay in this, that for some reason unknown she loved the street of the ships. This passion, unsuspected by the rightful heirs, would have astounded them. They found sufficient matter for astonishment in the account of her possessions and the manner of the arrangement; for whereas they had iron beds with speckled knobs of brass, tables made of bamboo, and gilded vases, Miss Alquist kept her rooms bare, uncarpeted and vaguely redolent of salt and spices. She slept in a little narrow bed which had no wire mattress but was corded with rope; a bright coloured blanket covered it. Under the window of the back room stood a big dark chest with brass corners from which the smell of spices seemed to come; but in all the years of her residence the Frants had never once found it unlocked. That, with a small folding chair and hanging curtains in two corners, was all the furnishing of the bedroom.
