Above the Dark Circus

CHAPTER II. SPINDLE-SHANKS IN A DARK GARDEN-2

As a matter of fact, it's my opinion that no one pursued her at all and that she was cross and lonely, poor thing.

In any case, here they were, Lady Borlass picking her way between her two large companions, who marched one on either side of her as though they were protecting her from r**e and battery. She carried in her hand a lorgnette, and every once and again she would stop for a moment and examine the ground exactly like a hen looking for seed.

I have taken some while in describing this family because of its importance in what happened afterwards. The important event on this particular afternoon will take no time at all to describe.

I remember, as though it were yesterday, the immediate change in Osmund as the Borlasses appeared.

To say that it was childish inadequately describes it. His face that had a second before been open, jolly and most handsomely engaging was suddenly rebellious, ill-tempered and petulant. We all know people who are simply unable to behave decently in company that is uncongenial to them, and, however charming they may be, we do on the whole avoid them because of the awkward situations that crop up in their society--so it was now with Osmund. Harry, Helen Cameron and myself were at once uncomfortable. It was as though we had taken out into grown-up company a child who might at any moment behave indecently. Only the Borlasses noticed nothing. They patronized us all, ate their cucumber sandwiches with complete satisfaction, behaved as though they had bought all the world for a song.

The crash came, as unexpectedly for them as though a naked Pan had broken suddenly through the thicket. The affair had upon Lady Borlass just that effect. She had been speaking of her maid-servants; she had a high-pitched, immensely superior voice, cold, like a lump of ice falling into a drink, cultivated, I've no doubt, in the early days when her own family was not quite so 'county' as it might have been. She talked of her servants as though they were a party of savages that had been brought over to England for her from Central Africa. 'After all,' she said, 'one expects stupidity, but such idiocy . . .' Osmund jumped to his feet. The whole of his six foot six hung over us.

'Idiocy! Idiocy!' he cried. 'If that isn't just characteristic of all of you! Because you've got money to spend you think that you're better than the men and women worth a thousand of you. I bet you're as useless a woman as exists. You and your husband just cumber the ground, and it would be better for everyone if you were under it. I haven't been here for months without knowing something about you--with your conceit and laziness and ignorance. . . . Oh, damn! I beg your pardon, Carden. I've behaved like a swine. Sorry. I'll be going. . . .'

It was that or something like that. I only know that after all these years the anger and impatience and lack of control of that outbreak have for me still the effect as though the sky had cracked asunder and a bolt, black and thunderous, crashed to our feet!

Anyway, Osmund went there and then, without another word to any of us, strode furiously across the lawn and was gone. The tea-party, needless to say, was ended. I can see yet the look of staggered surprise in the Borlass countenances, as though a damp rag had been pressed there and wiped all the modelling away. Helen Cameron said not a word.

Next day I met Osmund by the seashore. Shamefaced, he confessed his sins. He had behaved, he supposed, like a perfect cad? I said that he had. Was Carden furious? Yes, Carden was furious. He'd better go up, he supposed, and take his licking. He liked Carden. He'd take any beating he wanted to give him. I suggested that he should write a note of apology to Lady Borlass. But that he wouldn't hear of. He had, he considered, committed no crime at all so far as the Borlasses were concerned. He'd been wanting to say something to them ages back; it was only saying it in Harry Carden's garden that was wrong, under old Harry's roof, so to speak, and in front of myself and Miss Cameron.

But there it was. He had the devil of a temper; he had always had one and never learnt to control it as a kid. People like the Borlasses made him feel sick. But he apologized to me, and would perfectly understand if I never wanted to speak to him again.

I liked him. I couldn't help but like him. You'd have liked him had you known him at that time.

He took then a surprising fancy to myself, and in a short while we were seeing one another very often. Three things I noticed about him. One was that, charming, kindly, humorous as he mostly was, these sudden winds of passion were at any time liable to ruffle his spirit. Secondly, that he was a poet with a real worship of beauty in every possible form--nature, art, music, letters, character, everything--and that, just now, this love of beauty was all directed into the channel of his worship for Helen Cameron. Thirdly, that, as Carden said, he made the oddest intimacies with men quite outside his own class and education.

Not many days passed before I met such a friend, Charlie Buller by name. Buller was short, sturdy, with a certain air of hostler about him. He was a jolly little man, with pleasant wrinkles about his eyes and an apple-brown complexion. He had no especial purpose in life that I could see except to joke about everything. I wouldn't have been at all surprised at his having done time. He was as reticent about his past as his present-altogether not at all the sort of friend for Osmund. But then Osmund, gentleman as he was, was most certainly adventurous also. No one knew anything at all about his past. Helen Cameron herself had no idea whether he had relations, whether he had been in the Army, whether he had any means.

She was hypnotized by him as, to a certain degree, I was myself.

Then an awful thing happened. I fell in love with Helen Cameron. How often in the years that followed I looked back and asked myself whether I could have done anything, anything at all, to have prevented this. Now I know that I could not. It was one of the strands--and not the least important one either--in the strange plot in which we were all at last to figure.

At the time it was madness and worse. I was Osmund's friend, for one thing; for another, I didn't want just then to fall in love with anyone; for a third, I had no reason to think that she had any interest in me: if she thought of me at all, she seemed to dislike me. But it happened--as inevitably and, it seemed, as hopelessly as all the rest of this incredible business.

And, what is more, I knew the exact moment when it happened.

I had walked with Osmund and Helen to the Park gate. As we reached it the rain began. All the trees above our heads trembled; there were the secret urgent whispers of a coming storm. He drew her under the cover of his waterproof, but just before they turned down the windy road, meeting the rain, she looked back and smiled.

I stood there looking after her, looking beyond her into an angry tear of yellow sky that slashed the thick gray. I knew in that moment that I loved her. I hoped at first that it was a passing fever, caught from the quietness and remoteness of our life in this little place. I left next morning for London. I returned a week later, knowing that this was something far different from any love affair of my life. Yes, and by God, so it has been!

I returned to find one or two odd things. One was that Osmund's friend, Charlie Buller, had someone lodging with him, a big flabby balloon-like man with a remarkably small head. His name was Hench. He had a funny squeaky voice like a woman's, but he seemed not a bad fellow, from Osmund's account of him, kindly, ready to do anything for anyone. All the same, they were, both of them, strange friends for Osmund to have. And then I discovered a queerer thing yet. They were both of them, Buller and Hench, hand in glove with the horrible Pengelly. I saw the three of them constantly together, and, stranger yet, Osmund, it seemed, on passable terms with Pengelly. I spoke to Carden about this. He only shrugged his shoulders. Since that scandalous outburst he had seen very little of Osmund. A fellow who behaved like that to your guests--well, it made a chap uncomfortable. . . .

Then things moved quickly. Looking back now, I feel that I was in a kind of dream during those weeks, and not a very pleasant dream either. Now that I had fallen in love with Helen, I perceived in her every kind of sweetness, nobility and charm. But I had to behave decently. I avoided her persistently. Everyone thought that I disliked her-Carden, Osmund, and Helen herself. I think that it was this sense of my dislike of her that first stirred her interest in me. And she wasn't--although at the time I had no idea of this--at all happy: frightened, uneasy, desperately apprehensive. The more she knew of Osmund the more apprehensive she became.

Even I could see, during those weeks, what a queer fellow he was. Madness does not cover it, neither then nor later. I shall not attempt any analysis of him. At the moment I am concerned only with events; but at least from the very first I realized that Osmund was, so to speak, 'out-size'--not only in physical things, but especially in spiritual. He had--he must always have had--a sort of wild impatience with life. Things that he read in the paper--little casual wayside things--made him mad with irritation. He wanted to 'get at' people and punish or praise or comfort or expose. He hated injustice and cruelty and meanness with a ferocity that I've never seen equalled in any other human being, but he was himself, in that very hatred, unjust and cruel--mean never.

He really believed, I think, that, were he given a free, omnipotent hand, he would by wholesale executions and wholesale rewards set all the world right. And yet he was not conceited, did not believe in his own powers. I think that it was partly his sense of his own weakness and ignorance that exasperated him.

And beside Osmund and Helen stood Pengelly. Even at that time, before anything had happened, I realized by a kind of spiritual sniffing of the air that Pengelly was mixed up with all of this. I cannot possibly describe the way in which he was forever turning up. He wore a thin, gray Aquascutum that flapped about his bony legs and, c****d sideways, a bowler too large for him that badly needed brushing. He had a thin cane, with which he used to tap his teeth.

He had nothing to do with any of us, and yet he was always appearing round the corner. He would grin, touch his shabby bowler, look at us as though he had something very important to say and slouch away.

I remember saying to Osmund that I wondered that Charlie Buller made a friend of him. Buller seemed a decent little chap.

'Oh, it isn't Charlie that's Pengelly's friend,' said Osmund, 'it's Hench.'

And Hench? What was he doing here? Like Buller and Pengelly, nothing at all apparently, slouching about like a bladder that needed pricking, a really comic figure, with that little mild face staring above the big wobbly body. And his voice, whenever I heard it, made me want to giggle like a schoolgirl.

What were they doing? We very soon knew. The climax crashed in upon us as though a gray muddy sky had swamped down and choked us.

I heard it from Carden.