The New Collected Short Stories (14 page)

Ethel touched him on the cheek. ‘Papa! I’ve called you three times. All the mules are here.’

‘Mules? What mules?’

‘Our mules. We’re all waiting. Oh, Mr Graham, do help my father on.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ethel.’

‘My dearest papa, we must start. You know we have to get to Olympia tonight.’

Mr Lucas in pompous, confident tones replied: ‘I always did wish, Ethel, that you had a better head for plans. You know perfectly well that we are putting in a week here. It is your own suggestion.’

Ethel was startled into impoliteness. ‘What a perfectly ridiculous idea. You must have known I was joking. Of course I meant I wished we could.’

‘Ah! if we could only do what we wished!’ sighed Mrs Forman, already seated on her mule.

‘Surely,’ Ethel continued in calmer tones, ‘you didn’t think I meant it.’

‘Most certainly I did. I have made all my plans on the supposition that we are stopping here, and it will be extremely inconvenient, indeed, impossible for me to start.’

He delivered this remark with an air of great conviction, and Mrs Forman and Mr Graham had to turn away to hide their smiles.

‘I am sorry I spoke so carelessly; it was wrong of me. But, you know, we can’t break up our party, and even one night here would make us miss the boat at Patras.’

Mrs Forman, in an aside, called Mr Graham’s attention to the excellent way in which Ethel managed her father.

‘I don’t mind about the Patras boat. You said that we should stop here, and we are stopping.’

It seemed as if the inhabitants of the Khan had divined in some mysterious way that the altercation touched them. The old woman stopped her spinning, while the young man and the two children stood behind Mr Lucas, as if supporting him.

Neither arguments nor entreaties moved him. He said little, but he was absolutely determined, because for the first time he saw his daily life aright. What need had he to return to England? Who would miss him? His friends were dead or cold. Ethel loved him in a way, but, as was right, she had other interests. His other children he seldom saw. He had only one other relative, his sister Julia, whom he both feared and hated. It was no effort to struggle. He would be a fool as well as a coward if he stirred from the place which brought him happiness and peace.

At last Ethel, to humour him, and not disinclined to air her modern Greek, went into the Khan with the astonished dragoman to look at the rooms. The woman inside received them with loud welcomes, and the young man, when no one was looking, began to lead Mr Lucas’ mule to the stable.

‘Drop it, you brigand!’ shouted Graham, who always declared that foreigners could understand English if they chose. He was right, for the man obeyed, and they all stood waiting for Ethel’s return.

She emerged at last, with dose-gathered skirts, followed by the dragoman bearing the little pig, which he had bought at a bargain.

‘My dear papa, I will do all I can for you, but stop in that Khan – no.’

‘Are there – fleas?’ asked Mrs Forman.

Ethel intimated that ‘fleas’ was not the word.

‘Well, I’m afraid that settles it,’ said Mrs Forman, ‘I know how particular Mr Lucas is.’

‘It does not settle it,’ said Mr Lucas. ‘Ethel, you go on. I do not want you. I don’t know why I ever consulted you. I shall stop here alone.’

‘That is absolute nonsense,’ said Ethel, losing her temper. ‘How can you be left alone at your age? How would you get your meals or your bath? All your letters are waiting for you at Patras. You’ll miss the boat. That means missing the London operas, and upsetting all your engagements for the month. And as if you could travel by yourself!’

‘They might knife you,’ was Mr Graham’s contribution.

The Greeks said nothing; but whenever Mr Lucas looked their way, they beckoned him towards the Khan. The children would even have drawn him by the coat, and the old woman on the balcony stopped her almost completed spinning, and fixed him with mysterious appealing eyes. As he fought, the issue assumed gigantic proportions, and he believed that he was not merely stopping because he had regained youth or seen beauty or found happiness, but because in that place and with those people a supreme event was awaiting him which would transfigure the face of the world. The moment was so tremendous that he abandoned words and arguments as useless, and rested on the strength of his mighty unrevealed allies: silent men, murmuring water, and whispering trees. For the whole place called with one voice, articulate to him, and his garrulous opponents became every minute more meaningless and absurd. Soon they would be tired and go chattering away into the sun, leaving him to the cool grove and the moonlight and the destiny he foresaw.

Mrs Forman and the dragoman had indeed already started, amid the piercing screams of the little pig, and the struggle might have gone on indefinitely if Ethel had not called in Mr Graham.

‘Can you help me?’ she whispered. ‘He is absolutely unmanageable.’

‘I’m no good at arguing – but if I could help you in any other way——’ and he looked down complacently at his well-made figure.

Ethel hesitated. Then she said: ‘Help me in any way you can. After all, it is for his good that we do it.’

‘Then have his mule led up behind him.’

So when Mr Lucas thought he had gained the day, he suddenly felt himself lifted off the ground, and sat sideways on the saddle, and at the same time the mule started off at a trot. He said nothing, for he had nothing to say, and even his face showed little emotion as he felt the shade pass and heard the sound of the water cease. Mr Graham was running at his side, hat in hand, apologizing.

‘I know I had no business to do it, and I do beg your pardon awfully. But I do hope that some day you too will feel that I was – damn!’

A stone had caught him in the middle of the back. It was thrown by the little boy, who was pursuing them along the mule track. He was followed by his sister, also throwing stones.

Ethel screamed to the dragoman, who was some way ahead with Mrs Forman, but before he could rejoin them, another adversary appeared. It was the young Greek, who had cut them off in front, and now dashed down at Mr Lucas’ bridle. Fortunately Graham was an expert boxer, and it did not take him a moment to beat down the youth’s feeble defence, and to send him sprawling with a bleeding mouth into the asphodel. By this time the dragoman had arrived, the children, alarmed at the fate of their brother, had desisted, and the rescue party, if such it is to be considered, retired in disorder to the trees.

‘Little devils!’ said Graham, laughing with triumph. ‘That’s the modern Greek all over. Your father meant money if he stopped, and they consider we were taking it out of their pocket.’

‘Oh, they are terrible – simply savages! I don’t know how I shall ever thank you. You’ve saved my father.’

‘I only hope you didn’t think me brutal.’

‘No,’ replied Ethel with a little sigh. ‘I admire strength.’

Meanwhile the cavalcade reformed, and Mr Lucas, who, as Mrs Forman said, bore his disappointment wonderfully well, was put comfortably on to his mule. They hurried up the opposite hillside, fearful of another attack, and it was not until they had left the eventful place far behind that Ethel found an opportunity to speak to her father and ask his pardon for the way she had treated him.

‘You seemed so different, dear father, and you quite frightened me. Now I feel that you are your old self again.’

He did not answer, and she concluded that he was not unnaturally offended at her behaviour.

By one of those curious tricks of mountain scenery, the place they had left an hour before suddenly reappeared far below them. The Khan was hidden under the green dome, but in the open there still stood three figures, and through the pure air rose up a faint cry of defiance or farewell.

Mr Lucas stopped irresolutely, and let the reins fall from his hand.

‘Come, father dear,’ said Ethel gently.

He obeyed, and in another moment a spur of the hill hid the dangerous scene for ever.

II

It was breakfast time, but the gas was alight, owing to the fog. Mr Lucas was in the middle of an account of a bad night he had spent. Ethel, who was to be married in a few weeks, had her arms on the table, listening.

‘First the door bell rang, then you came back from the theatre. Then the dog started, and after the dog the cat. And at three in the morning a young hooligan passed by singing. Oh yes: then there was the water gurgling in the pipe above my head.’

‘I think that was only the bath water running away,’ said Ethel, looking rather worn.

‘Well, there’s nothing I dislike more than running water. It’s perfectly impossible to sleep in the house. I shall give it up. I shall give notice next quarter. I shall tell the landlord plainly, “The reason I am giving up the house is this: it is perfectly impossible to sleep in it.” If he says – says – well, what has he got to say?’

‘Some more toast, father?’

‘Thank you, my dear.’ He took it, and there was an interval of peace.

But he soon recommenced. ‘I’m not going to submit to the practising next door as tamely as they think. I wrote and told them so – didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ said Ethel, who had taken care that the letter should not reach. ‘I have seen the governess, and she has promised to arrange it differently. And Aunt Julia hates noise. It will sure to be all right.’

Her aunt, being the only unattached member of the family, was coming to keep house for her father when she left him. The reference was not a happy one, and Mr Lucas commenced a series of half articulate sighs, which was only stopped by the arrival of the post.

‘Oh, what a parcel!’ cried Ethel. ‘For me! What can it be! Greek stamps. This is most exciting!’

It proved to be some asphodel bulbs, sent by Mrs Forman from Athens for planting in the conservatory.

‘Doesn’t it bring it all back! You remember the asphodels, father. And all wrapped up in Greek newspapers. I wonder if I can read them still. I used to be able to, you know.’

She rattled on, hoping to conceal the laughter of the children next door – a favourite source of querulousness at breakfast time.

‘Listen to me! “A rural disaster.” Oh, I’ve hit on something sad. But never mind. “Last Tuesday at Plataniste, in the province of Messenia, a shocking tragedy occurred. A large tree” – aren’t I getting on well? – “blew down in the night and” – wait a minute – oh, dear! “crushed to death the five occupants of the little Khan there, who had apparently been sitting in the balcony. The body of Maria Rhomaides, the aged proprietress, and of her daughter, aged forty-six, were easily recognizable, whereas that of her grandson” – oh, the rest is really too horrid; I wish I had never tried it, and what’s more I feel to have heard the name Plataniste before. We didn’t stop there, did we, in the spring?’

‘We had lunch,’ said Mr Lucas, with a faint expression of trouble on his vacant face. ‘Perhaps it was where the dragoman bought the pig.’

‘Of course,’ said Ethel in a nervous voice. ‘Where the dragoman bought the little pig. How terrible!’

‘Very terrible!’ said her father, whose attention was wandering to the noisy children next door. Ethel suddenly started to her feet with genuine interest.

‘Good gracious!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is an old paper. It happened not lately but in April – the night of Tuesday the eighteenth – and we – we must have been there in the afternoon.’

‘So we were,’ said Mr Lucas. She put her hand to her heart, scarcely able to speak.

‘Father, dear father, I must say it: you wanted to stop there. All those people, those poor half savage people, tried to keep you, and they’re dead. The whole place, it says, is in ruins, and even the stream has changed its course. Father, dear, if it had not been for me, and if Arthur had not helped me, you must have been killed.’

Mr Lucas waved his hand irritably. ‘It is not a bit of good speaking to the governess, I shall write to the landlord and say, “The reason I am giving up the house is this: the dog barks, the children next door are intolerable, and I cannot stand the noise of running water.”’

Ethel did not check his babbling. She was aghast at the narrowness of the escape, and for a long time kept silence. At last she said: ‘Such a marvellous deliverance does make one believe in Providence.’

Mr Lucas, who was still composing his letter to the landlord, did not reply.

I

THE AIR-SHIP

Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk – that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh – a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.

An electric bell rang.

The woman touched a switch and the music was silent.

‘I suppose I must see who it is,’ she thought, and set her chair in motion. The chair, like the music, was worked by machinery, and it rolled her to the other side of the room, where the bell still rang importunately.

‘Who is it?’ she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people; in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.

But when she listened into the receiver, her white face wrinkled into smiles, and she said:

‘Very well. Let us talk, I will isolate myself. I do not expect anything important will happen for the next five minutes – for I can give you fully five minutes, Kuno. Then I must deliver my lecture on “Music during the Australian Period”.’

She touched the isolation knob, so that no one else could speak to her. Then she touched the lighting apparatus, and the little room was plunged into darkness.