Mr. Fortune (29 page)

Like an angry spider she scrambled out backwards, and ran towards him. Now she will kill me, he thought. That is best; and in the same breath he remembered with embarrassment that she must be tipped. But she had passed him by, running to the arbour. The hens flocked out to meet her, expecting food. She kicked them aside, scrambled up on to the seat, and unhooked the bird-cage. He was still fumbling in his pockets when she re-passed him. Her eye flicked in his direction, her gait slowed. Contemptuously she took the handful of coins, her skinny fingers probing his palm like claws. When she rejoined her companions in the car there was an outburst of hooting laughter.

I must go in, he told himself. It is craven to wait about like this. I must go in and face Angustias. But it was the cold that drove him in at last; and seeing no one about, he sat down before the fire and fell into a daze of misery. An hour more or less, what did it matter?

The doors of the gun-cupboard still stood open, and, as it had done overnight, this change in the custom of the room dominated it. It was as though, while those doors stood open, a presence was at large in the house, and with a host's authority imposed its will, its guidance, upon him. Wait, said that will. I have not spoken yet. Presently I shall speak. Till then, wait.

So he waited; and as hour followed hour the waiting changed from waiting for the disclosure of an impending determination to waiting for a long-delayed meal. Outside, the sky drooped lower. When Angustias came in bearing a lamp he perceived that the room had become almost dark.

“At last!” Every sign of her anger was gone. A little flushed, a little jaded, her triumph spoke only of a domestic warfare.

“I have made pancakes, and soup, and cut sandwiches which we can eat in the car. When we have eaten we will start. You are ready, are you not?”

“No. I am sorry. I forgot. But I will be ready in an instant. But first, I must explain. I...”

Her glance fell on the hearth.

“And I have left you all this while in a cold room. Ah, forgive me! It is these devils of servants; she had left a mouse in the milk. But it is only for a day or two. I have arranged everything; when we come back we shall have two of McGregor's daughters. Good girls, steady, almost English.”

“I shall not come back.”

It was out. But she was puffing with the bellows, and gave no sign of having heard him.

“No, it is dead. But never mind, we will eat in the kitchen. Like tinkers and gipsies.”

He would have spoken again; but Alfredo, entering, announced that the soup was boiling over. She did not answer. Crouched over the fire, round-bosomed and broad-backed like some species of pigeon, she had turned her head with the quick movement of a bird, and was staring at the gun-cupboard as though she also were aware of a presence those opened doors had released. Her listening look was grave and attentive; then, like one breaking off a conversation that would certainly be resumed, she gave a little assuring nod.

“Hurry, hurry,” she said abstractedly, though they were both waiting for her. “We must not be late for the fireworks.” And through the queer meal, makeshift and abundant, that she had prepared, she continued to hasten them, chattering of the joys to come. He had lost all sense of time in this strange day. The brilliant morning he had looked out upon seemed ages away, dismissed to a different epoch by the dusk of impending snow that had followed upon it. When from the cuckoo clock that hung between the portraits of Queen Victoria and the Queen Regent Maria Christina the bird flounced out and cuckooed four times he was not surprised.

“Late, what a nuisance!” she said, rising, and shaking off cares lightly as though they were crumbs. “Alfredo, my child, go and start your splendid car.”

He had gone out without a word. Now, now, was the moment to speak and make all plain.

“Mrs. Bailey, I must speak to you. Forgive me for this, I am ungrateful; but I can stay here no longer.”

She put out her plump white hand, where little shreds of dried dough still clung among her rings, as though staying him. Holding up her head, tall with pride, she raised her black eyes to his, and said, slowly and calmly,

“For the present, you will stay.

“Help me in, please,” she continued, holding out to him an aged and solemn sealskin. Fumbling her way into it she was again what she had always been—a stout, easygoing woman whose black and silver hair, a remnant of bodily luxuriance beyond the attention an old woman could give it, sagged down her yellowing neck. But in that strange instant she had silenced him, and protesting no further he followed her to the door, where the car was waiting.

Alfredo said, “Get in by me.”

I am between them now, he thought, as he obeyed. My will has gone, they must toss me between them. And it seemed to him that he had lost all feeling as to what became of him, even his curiosity was atrophied. Whether he returned to the Salutation or sat down under an arc light to die was immaterial. They could decide, fighting over him as they pleased. It was no concern of his. The car had started. The thought came, I may never see the house again. But it was already too late to look back. And as though some other man, known only by hearsay, had come to this place in search of a sorrow, he sat indifferent while the car rushed through the darkened landscape, not knowing when it carried him beyond the bounds of what he had known so well.

It was rolled up in a minute or two, the familiar ground, shrivelled like the parched scroll of the judgment day hymn. He had never surmised that a car could go so fast; but with the flicker of attention that acknowledged this he put it by also, feeling neither wonder nor apprehension. The headlights were on, smashing the faint remnants of day. Beyond the path they scythed so scornfully nothing had any validity, a continent was no more than the file of grasses and weeds that fringed the unrolling track.

At first the car had flinched and swayed on the rough surface; now they were on a metalled road, a smooth rod that rushed towards them, bearing its tribute of obscurity, delivering it up to their light, vanishing under them, a momentary show of reality was blown out like a bubble at that impact. It was as though the car and the road together made up some infallible machine. Sometimes a geometrical arm of light reared up from the darkness before them, to be snuffed out and to reappear as the headlights of an approaching car; and that too would rush upon them, and be blown out by the wind of their passing.

It would be best, it seemed, to go on like this for ever, existing henceforth as some small determined part of a machine, a bolt or screw that gliding back and forth on the life of a piston is carried across the Atlantic. He stared ahead until his sight seemed only the closely fitting tube through which rushed the rod of the inexhaustible road. His body, in comfort, warm and well-sprung, complied with the oscillation of the car. The noise of the engine wound his hearing upon it, as though silk were being wound upon a reel. It was not until Alfredo spoke that his mind awakened, connecting the speeding car with the flesh and blood that guided it, sitting scornfully languid and detached beside him. But he had no time to wonder, for he must listen to the words.

“McGregor the gardener has a story, Señor, that might interest you. He told it to me when I was a child. I forgot it, as a childish thing. But finding you in our house has recalled it to me. This is the story. It appears that in Scotland there was a farmer, a thriving and prosperous man. But one day, by some ill chance, a creature, not moral, a goblin, as one would say, arrived at the farm and could not be driven out. I think McGregor called it a Brown. An English name, is it not? This Brown brought evil and mischance with it. From the day it came, nothing prospered. The cattle died, the crops failed, the people of the house sickened, everything went to ruin. Except the Brown. The Brown thrived, and grew fat, and lived idle. It had no care, the interloper! Things at the farm went from bad to worse. Still nothing ailed the Brown, and nothing, not prayers, nor threats, nor incantations, could drive it away. At last...”

There was a cry from the back of the car.

“Look, look! The fireworks. Ah!”

At some unknown distance a rocket had soared up, and exploded in a bouquet of stars, that now on a languorous curve turned to earth again, and floated down the sky. Another sprang out, as though to embrace it, blossoming where the first blossoms had been, diving its shaken petals down to sift and mingle among the other's withering fires.

The road vanished before them.

“I have switched the headlights off that you may see better,” said Alfredo, over his shoulder, as though speaking indulgently to a child. Lowering his voice again, he continued,

“At last, as I was telling you, the farmer decided that since the Brown would not budge, he must. His few poor cattle were driven to the new farm, the furniture was carted, the last loaded wagon stood at the gate, ready to drive off. Then he heard a voice. ‘We're all going,' it said. ‘And I'm going too.' And there, on the last wagon, sat the Brown, smiling and rubbing its hands. This is the story that comes into my mind, Señor, as I drive you in my car to see the fireworks.”

Now that its glaring eyes were shut, the car had become an animal, swift and low to the ground, a nocturnal beast of prey. Or like some furious fish it darted through the semi-darkness. So many rockets had gone up that the colour of the sky was changed, livid and thick like turbid water. Already they could see the distant town, its domes and factory chimneys silhouetted against the puffs of Bengal lights.

“You have no comment to make on my little story? It does not interest you?”

“Why do you hate me like this?”

“Why do I hate you?”

The car leaped forward as though it had sighted its quarry, so swiftly and infallibly stalked, and an ascending rocket let loose a hive of writhing golden serpents.

“So you have perceived that I hate you? You have been a little dense, Englishman. But you come of a stupid race. However, you admit that I hate you. Good. We will now go further. We will discuss my reasons. I hate you because you are an interloper, an abuser of hospitality, a leech. You arrive from nowhere. You fall sick, a convenient sickness. A household of women runs to and fro, attending on you. They wash your feet, they pick the lice out of your beard, they weep over their Jesus. Presently, all in good time, you deign to recover. You grow strong, strong enough to walk about the property, counting the cattle, measuring the acres. But you are not strong enough to walk off. Then you attend to the house a little. You pry through the cupboards, you acquaint yourself with everything, and you advise that this should be mended, and that altered. Then, since you are prudent, you look into the accounts. But there you overreach yourself, my friend. For there are others not so blind as an infatuated old woman.”

The car was wholly an animal now. Soft, warm, and regular, he could feel its breath patting the back of his neck. His hand tried the catch of the door, but its mechanism baffled him. The voice went on, low and slighting, a film on the noise of the engine.

“Yes, you were too clever there, or too complacent. You should not have advertised so soon your ownership of the Salutation. Those accounts were prettily drawn up, one could see the practised hand. For I suppose this is not the first time that you have played this game. How nice, my mother said, that Mamaçita should have found so good a bailiff. And unpaid, too. But, Englishman, you have not only women to deal with. You have to deal with me.”

“To deal with a child. That sometimes requires patience.”

She spoke the few words easily, so easily that they might have seemed casually spoken had it not been for the skill of utterance that poised them, as the violinist poises the first notes of his entry into the concerto.

“I am not a child.”

“Indeed you are a child. Only a child would deny it so passionately. What is more, you are my grandchild. Were it not for that I should not have borne with you for so long. But since you will not admit that you are a child let me remind you of something else—though sometimes you seem too ready to remember it. You are my heir, my direct heir. When I die the property of the Salutation will come to you, whether your father is living or no.”

It was as though a fish had leapt in the darkness. But the boy had not stirred, his finger-tips resting on the wheel, his eyes not flickering from their watch of the darkness ahead, where the rockets soared and broke and melted on their languorous curve.

“Remark, I do not threaten you. I say plainly that the House of the Salutation shall be yours. But while I live it is mine; mine to direct, mine to guard. And I do not choose that it shall come to you sullied with a fault of hospitality.”

“Hospitality!”

The voice that had been so cold and certain, as though in its insults repeating something known by heart and negligible, was awakened now; and under the increment of passion it had lost its infallibility, plunged from word to word, rocked, as the car did, shuddering away from the rough ground at the side of the road.

“And when it comes to me I suppose I shall inherit with it a guest, a pensioner, a lapdog that cannot be kicked out. A family servant, grey-haired, faithful to you for a lifetime, can be turned away, for hospitality does not forbid that. No! Hospitality demands it, or the guest does. And I—I with this place in my blood, loving it all my life long, proud of it—I do not matter! For I am only a child of the house, hospitality is more than me.”

“True, my child. Hospitality is more than a servant, more than you or I. It is a matter of honour.”

“God, what an honour! To have it told through the countryside that a stranger lives at the House of the Salutation as though it were his own. A tramp, an interloper, a sycophant! But he stays there, while servant and grandson are sent packing, because he pleases its mistress, because he has deluded her, exploited her, bewitched her. That is what they will say. Doña Angustias and her gigolo!”