The Parts Men Play

by Beverley Baxter

CHAPTER XIV.

STRANGE CRAFT.

I.

One slushy night in December Selwyn was returning from a solitary dinner at a modest Holborn restaurant, when a damp sleet began to fall, making the sickly street-lamps darker still, and defying the protection of mufflers and heavy coats. With hat pulled over his eyes and hands immersed in the pockets of his coat, he made his way through the throng, while the raucous voices of news-venders cried out the latest tidings from the front.

To escape the proximity of the crowds and the nerve-shaking noises of traffic, he turned down a wide thoroughfare, and eventually emerged on Fleet Street. Again the seething discontent of rumbling omnibuses and hurrying crowds irritated him, and crossing to Bouverie Street, where Mr. Punch looks out on England with his genial satire, he followed its quiet channel until he reached the Thames.

In contrast to the throbbing arteries of Holborn and Fleet Street, the river soothed his nerves and lent tranquillity to his mind. Following the Embankment, which was shrouded in heavy darkness, he reached the spot where Cleopatra's Needle, which once looked on the majesty of ancient Egypt, stands, a sentinel of incongruity, on the edge of London's river. Giving way to a momentary whim, Selwyn paused, and finding a spot that was sheltered from the sleet, sat down and leaned against the monument.

In the masque of night he could just make out the sketchy forms of a river-barge and two steamers anchored a few yards out. From their masts he could see the dull glow of red where a meagre lamp was hung, and he heard the hoarse voice of a man calling out to some one across the river. As if in answer, the rattle of a chain came from the deck of some unseen craft, like a lonely felon in a floating prison.

The river's mood was so in keeping with his own that Selwyn's senses experienced a numbing pleasure; the ghostly mariners of the night, the motionless ships at their moorings, the eerie hissing of the sleet upon the water, combined to form a drug that left his eyelids heavy with drowsy contentment.

How long he had remained there he could not have stated, when from the steps beneath him, leading towards the water, he heard a man's slovenly voice.

'Are you going to stay the night here?'

As apparently the remark was intended for him, Selwyn leaned forward and peered in the direction from which the voice had come. At the foot of the dripping steps he could just make out a huddled figure.

'If you're putting up here,' went on the speaker, 'we had better pool resources. I've got a cape, and if you have a coat we can make a decent shift of it. Two sleep warmer than one on a night like this.'

In spite of the sluggish manner of speech, Selwyn could detect a faint intonation which bespoke a man of breeding. He tried to discern the features, but they were completely hidden beneath the pall of night.

'Well,' said the voice, 'are you deaf?'

'I am not staying here for the night,' answered Selwyn.

'Then why the devil didn't you say that before?' For a moment the fellow's voice was energised by a touch of brusqueness, but before the last words were finished it had lapsed into the dull heaviness of physical lethargy. 'Tell me,' said the stranger, after a silence of several minutes, 'how is the war going on?'

'You probably know as much as I.'

'Not likely. I've been beating back from China for three months in a more or less derelict tramp. Chased into every blessed little port, losing our way, and cruising for days without water—we were a fine family of blackguards, and no mistake. Grog could be had for the asking, and a scrap for less than that; but I'd as lief not ship on the Nancy Hawkins again.'

Selwyn leaned back against the obelisk and speculated idly on the strange personality hidden in the dark recess of the descending stairs. It was not difficult to tell that, though he spoke of himself as a sailor, sailoring was not his calling. There was a subtle cadence of refinement in his voice, an arresting lilt on certain words, that remained on the air after the words had ended.

'Did the Germans get to Paris?'

'No,' said Selwyn; 'though they were very near it.'

'Good! How did our chaps do?'

'I believe they fought very bravely, but were pretty well wiped out.'

'I suppose so,' said the other quietly—'wiped out, eh? Tell me—did the Colonies throw in their lot with us?'

'All of them,' said Selwyn, 'even including South Africa.'

'What about Canada?'

'She has over thirty thousand men in England now, ready to cross.'

'Splendid!' muttered the fellow. 'So they're British after all, in spite of the Yankees beside them. . . . The cubs didn't leave the old mother to fight alone, eh? Jove! but it's something to be an Englishman today, isn't it?'

Selwyn made no response, but his brow contracted with the thought that even the flotsam, the dregs thrown up on the river's bank, were imbued with the overwhelming instinct of jingoism. He glanced up from the steps, and saw on either side of the obelisk a sphinx, woman-headed, with the body of a lioness, monuments to the memory of Cleopatra. How little had been accomplished by humanity since the first sphinx had gazed upon the sands of Egypt! It had seen the treachery and the lust of Antony, the slaughter of men by men led blindly to the carnage. . . . Was not the smile, perhaps, its hoarded knowledge of the futility of the ages?

'Can you give me a match?' asked the man from the steps. 'Everything on me is soaked. I'll come up if you have one, but I don't want to shift otherwise.'

'Don't bother,' said Selwyn, getting up and stamping his feet to restore their warmth. 'I'll bring you one, and then I'll have to move along.'

He produced a silver match-box, and feeling his way carefully down the slippery steps, handed it to the stranger. Acknowledging the action with a murmur of thanks, the fellow took it, and making a protection with his cape, struck a match to light his pipe. It flickered for a moment and flared up, illuminating his features grotesquely.

Selwyn uttered a sharp ejaculation of surprise and stepped back a pace.
'Durwent!' he cried.

'Eh?' snapped the other, dropping the match on the wet stone, where it went out with a faint splutter. 'What's your game?'

'I could not see you before,' said the American quickly; 'but though I heard your voice only once, there was something about it I remembered.'

The Englishman struck a second match, and with a casual air of indifference lit his pipe.

'Thanks,' he said, handing the box to the American. Selwyn reached forward to take it, when suddenly his wrists were caught in a grip of steel.

'Damn you!' said Dick Durwent hotly, springing to his feet. 'Are you tracking me? I didn't come back to be caught like a rat. Are you a detective? If you are, by George! I'll drown you in the river.'

'Don't be a fool,' said Selwyn, writhing in pain with the other's torture.

'Who are you?'

'My name is Selwyn. I am an American; a friend of your mother and your sister.'

'Where have you seen me before?'

'At the Café Rouge—a year ago.' Beads of perspiration stood out on Selwyn's head, and his body was faint with the pain of his twisted wrists.

'You're not lying?' said Dick Durwent, slowly relaxing his grip, and peering into the American's eyes. 'No. I seem to remember you somewhere with Elise. I'm sorry.' He released the clutch completely, and resumed his seat on the steps. 'I hope I didn't hurt you.'

'No,' said Selwyn, rubbing each wrist in turn to help to restore the circulation.

Durwent laughed grimly. 'It's a wonder I didn't break something,' he said. 'Once more—I'm sorry. But you can understand the risk I am running in returning here with the police wanting me. They're not going to get me if I can help it.'

'Why didn't you stay away?'

'With the Old Country at war! Not likely. Do you think I should ever have gone if I had known what was going to happen?'

'What are your plans?'

'Fight,' said the other briefly. 'Somewhere—somehow. I'll get into a recruiting line about dawn to-morrow. . . . But—what can you tell me about Elise?'

'I have neither seen nor heard of her since August,' said Selwyn, wondering at the calm level of his own voice in spite of tumultuous heart-beats.

'Too bad. Then you don't know anything about the rest?'

'No. I'—— He paused awkwardly. 'I suppose you haven't heard about your brother?'

There was no response, but Selwyn could feel the Englishman's eyes steeled on his face. 'He was killed,' he went on slowly, 'last August.'

Still there was no sound from the younger son, now heir to his father's title and estates. For the first time Selwyn caught the ripple of the river's current eddying about the steps at the bottom. From the great bridges spanning the river there was the distant thunder of lumbering traffic.

'I understand that he died very bravely,' said the American in an attempt to ease the intensity of the silence.

'Yes,' muttered Durwent dreamily, 'he would. . . . So old Malcolm is dead. . . . Somehow, I always looked on his soldiering as a joke. I never thought that those fellows in the Regulars would ever really go to war. . . . Yet, when the time came, he was ready, and I was skulking off to China like a thief in the night.'

The Englishman's voice was so low that it seemed as if he were talking more to himself than to his listener.

'What happened to that swine?' he ejaculated suddenly. 'I mean the one
I almost killed. By any chance, did he die?'

'I saw in a paragraph last week,' said Selwyn, 'that he was out on crutches for the first time. The paper also commented on your complete disappearance.'

'I wish I had killed him,' said the young man grimly. 'If I ever get a chance I'll tell you about him. I was drunk at the time—that's what saved his life. If I had been sober I should have finished him. Well, it's a damp night, my friend, and I won't keep you any longer from a decent billet.'

'Look here, Durwent,' said Selwyn; 'come along to my rooms. You're soaked to the skin, and I could give you a change and a shakedown for the night.'

'Thanks very much; but I'm accustomed to this kind of thing.'

'You won't be seen,' urged Selwyn. 'I have accepted so much from your family that you would do me a kindness in coming.'

'Well, I must say I'm not married to this place. If you don't mind taking in a disreputable wharf-rat'——

'That's the idea,' said Selwyn, helping him to his feet. The
Englishman shivered slightly.

'You haven't a flask, have you?' he queried. 'I didn't know how cold I was.'

'I haven't anything with me,' said the American; 'but I can give you a whisky and something to eat at my rooms.'

'Right! Thanks very much.'

Tucking the cape under his arm, and shaking his waterproof cap to clear it of water, Dick Durwent followed the American on to the Embankment, where the two sphinxes of Egypt squatted, silent sentinels.

II.

To avoid the crowds as much as possible, the two men followed the Embankment, and had reached the Houses of Parliament, intending to make a detour into St. James's Square, when Selwyn felt a hand upon his shoulder. He turned quickly about, and Durwent moved off to one side to be out of the light of a lamp.

'Sweet son of liberty,' said the new-comer, 'how fares it?'

It was Johnston Smyth, more airily shabby than ever. Over his head he held an umbrella in such disrepair that the material hung from the ribs in shreds. A profuse black tie hid any sign of shirt, and both the legs of his trousers and the sleeves of his coat seemed to have shrunk considerably with the damp.

'How are you?' said Selwyn, shaking hands.

'Temperamentally on tap; artistically beyond question; gastronomically unsatisfied.' At this concise statement of his condition, Smyth took off his hat, gazed at it as if he had been previously unaware of its existence, and replaced it on the very back of his head.

'Things are not going too well, then?' said Selwyn, glancing anxiously towards Durwent, and wondering how he could get rid of the garrulous artist.

'Not going well?' Smyth straightened his right leg and relaxed the left one. 'In the last three weeks a pair of pyjamas, my other coat, two borrowed umbrellas, and a set of cuff-links have gone. If things go much better I shall have to live in a tub like Diogenes. But—do the honours, Selwyn.'

'I beg your pardon,' said the American. 'Mr—Mr. Sherwood,' he went on, taking the first name that came to his lips, 'allow me to introduce Mr. Johnston Smyth.'

'How are you?' said the artist, making an elaborate bow and seizing the other's hand.

'As you may have gathered from my costume and the ventilated condition of my umbrella, I am not in that state of funds which lends tranquillity to the mind and a glow of contentment to the bosom. Yet you see before you a man—if I may be permitted a sporting expression—who has set the pace to the artists of England. I am glad to know you. Our mutual friend from Old Glory has done himself proud.'

With which flourish Smyth left off shaking hands and closed his umbrella, immediately opening it and putting it up again. Dick Durwent replaced his hands in his pockets, and Selwyn heard his quivering breath as he shivered with cold.

'However,' went on the loquacious artist, 'though my art has been heralded as a triumph, though it has filled columns of the press, though my admirers can be found on every page of the directory, I can only say, like our ancient enemy across the Channel after Austerlitz, "Another such victory and I am ruined!" . . . Selwyn, shall we indulge in the erstwhile drop?'

'Have you a flask?' broke in Durwent, his dull eyes lighting greedily.

'I think not,' said Smyth, handing the umbrella to Selwyn, and carefully searching all his pockets. 'I am afraid my valet has neglected that essential part of a gentleman's wardrobe. But what do you say, gentlemen, to a short pilgrimage to Archibald's?'

'No, Smyth,' said the American, putting his hand in Durwent's arm.
'For certain reasons, Mr. Sherwood'——

'Ha!' said Smyth, with a dramatic pose of his legs, 'Archibald is the soul of discretion. Compared to him, an Egyptian mummy is a pithy paragrapher. Mes amis, Archibald's is just across the bridge, and I can assure you that the Twilight Tinkle, in which I have the honour to have collaborated, is guaranteed to change the most elongated countenance of glum into a globular surface of blithesome joy.'

'No,' began Selwyn impatiently.

'Let us try it,' said Durwent eagerly. 'I think this chill has got into my blood. I'd give a lot for a shot of rum or brandy.'

'We can have anything in my rooms,' protested the American. 'You want to get your wet things off—and, besides, it's a risk going in there.'

'No risk—no risk,' said Durwent, laughing foolishly and rubbing his hands together.—'Where is this hole, Smyth?'

'Gentlemen,' said the artist, 'after the custom of these military days,
I urge you "fall in."'

Getting in the centre and adjusting his hat at a precipitate angle on the extreme left of his head, Smyth took Dick Durwent's arm, and extending the other to Selwyn, marched the pair across the bridge, holding the absurd umbrella over each in turn as if it offered some real resistance to the scurvy downpour.

III.

'This way, gentlemen,' said Smyth, leading them up an alley, across a court, and into a lane. 'Permit me to welcome you to Archibald's.'

They entered a dimly lit tavern, where a dozen or so men sat about the room at little tables. Instead of the usual pictures one sees in such places, pictures of dancers with expressive legs, and race-horses with expressive faces, the walls were hung with dusty signed portraits of authors, artists, and actors, most of whom had attained distinction during the previous half-century. Sir Henry Irving as Othello held the place of honour over the bar, with Garrick as his vis-à-vis on the opposite wall. The divine Sarah cast the spell of her eternal youth on all who gathered there; and Lewis Waller, with eyes intent on his sword-handle, seemed oblivious to the close proximity of Lily Langtry and Ellen Terry, those empresses of the dual realms of Beauty and Intelligence. Without any companion portrait, the puffy sensuality of Oscar Wilde held a prominent place. And between the spectacled face of Rudyard Kipling on one side and the author of Peter Pan on the other, Forbes-Robertson in the garb of the Melancholy Dane looked out with his fine nobility of countenance. The room was heavy with tobacco-smoke, which seemed to have been accumulating for years, and to have darkened the very beams of the ceiling. Over the floor a liberal coating of sawdust was sprinkled.

'Strange place, this,' whispered Johnston Smyth as they took a table in an unfrequented corner. 'It's an understood thing that the habitués of Archibald's are trailers in the race of life. If you have a fancy for human nature, gentlemen, this is the shop to come to. We've got some queer goods on the shelves—newspaper men with no newspapers to write for; authors that think out new plots every night and forget 'em by morning; playwrights that couldn't afford the pit in the Old Vic.—Do you see that old chap over there?'

'The little man,' said Selwyn, 'with the strange smile?'

'That's right. He's been writing a play now for twenty years, but hasn't had time to finish the last act. "There's no hurry," he says; "true art will not permit of haste"—and the joke of it is that he has a cough that'll give him his own curtain long before he ever writes it on his play. There he goes now.'

The old playwright had been seized with a paroxysm of coughing that took his meagre storehouse of breath. Weakly striking at his breast, he shook and quivered in the clutch of the thing, leaning back exhausted when it had passed, but never once losing the odd, whimsical smile.

'What about something to drink?' broke in Dick Durwent hurriedly, his eyes narrowing.

'Directly,' said Smyth, beckoning to the proprietor, a small man, who, in spite of his years and an oblong head undecorated by a single hair, appeared strangely fresh and unworried, as if he had been sleeping for fifty years in a cellar, and had just come up to view the attending changes.

'Archibald,' said Smyth, 'these are my friends the Duke of Arkansas and
Sir Plumtree Crabapple.'

The extraordinary little man smiled toothlessly and fingered his tray.

'Gentlemen,' said Smyth, 'name your brands.'

'Give me a double brandy,' said Durwent, blowing on his chilled fingers. 'Better make it two doubles in a large glass.'

'Soda, sir?' queried the proprietor in a high-pitched, tranquil voice.

'No,' said Durwent. 'You can bring a little water in a separate glass.'

'What is your pleasure, your Grace?' said Smyth, addressing the American. 'If you will do Archibald and myself the honour of trying the Twilight Tinkle, it would be an event of importance to us both.'

'Anything at all,' said Selwyn, sick at heart as he saw the nervous interlocked fingers of Dick Durwent pressed together with such intensity that they were left white and bloodless.

'This is a little slice of London's life,' said Smyth after he had given the order, crossing his left leg over the right, 'that you visitors would never find. You hear about the chaps who succeed and those who come a cropper, but these are the poor beggars who never had a chance to do either. There's genius in this room, gentlemen, but it's genius that started swimming up-stream with a millstone round its neck.'

With a profound shaking of the head, Smyth straightened his left leg, and after carefully taking in its shape with partially closed eyes, he replaced it on its fellow.

'How do they live?' queried Selwyn.

'Scavengers,' said Smyth laconically. 'Scavengers to success. Do you see that fellow there with the poached eyes and a four-days' beard?'

Selwyn looked to the spot indicated by Smyth, and saw a heavily built man with a pale, dissipated face, who was fingering an empty glass and leering cynically with some odd trend of thought. It was a face that gripped the attention, for written on it was talent—immense talent. It was a face that openly told its tale of massive, misdirected power of mentality, fuddled but not destroyed by alcohol.

'That's Laurence De Foe,' said Smyth; 'a queer case altogether. Barnardo boy—doesn't know who his parents were, but claims direct descent from Charlemagne. He's never really drunk, but no one ever saw him sober. If he wanted to, he could write better than any man in London. Last year, when the critics scored Welland's play Salvage for its rotten climax, the author himself came to De Foe. All night they sat in his stuffy room, and when Welland went away he had a play that made his name for ever. I could tell you of two of the heavy artillery among the London leader-writers who always bring their big stuff to De Foe before they fire it. Last July, when the war was making its preliminary bow, and Hemphill was thundering those editorials of his that warned the Old Lion he would have to wake up and clean the jungle, Hemphill was simply the errand urchin. There's the man who wrote "To Arms, England!" one day after the Austrian note to Serbia. Hemphill got the credit and the money—but Laurence De Foe did it.'

Smyth's stream of narrative, which carried considerably less impedimenta of caricature and persiflage than was usual with him, came to an end with the arrival of two Twilight Tinkles and a generous-sized tumbler, more than half-full of brandy. After an elaborate search of his coat and trousers pockets to locate a five-pound note, Smyth was forced to allow Selwyn to pay for the refreshment, promising to knock him up before six next morning and repay him.

'Well, gentlemen,' said the conscientious artist, 'here's success to crime!'

Not waiting to honour the misanthropic toast, Dick Durwent had reached greedily for his glass, and poured its contents down his throat. With a heavy sigh of gratification, he leaned back in his chair, and the pallor of his cheeks showing beneath the weather-beaten surface of tan was flecked with patches of colour. For an instant only his eyes went yellow, as on the night at the Café Rouge; but the horrible glare died out, and was succeeded by the calm, blue tranquillity that had reigned before.

'By St. George!' said Smyth admiringly, 'but we have no amateur with us, Selwyn.'

The solitary figure of De Foe, who had been watching them, left his table, and lurching over to them, stood swaying unevenly.

'Bon soir, gentlemen,' he said, speaking with the deep sonorousness which comes of long saturation of the vocal cords with undiluted spirits, 'I think one or two of these faces are new to Archibald's. Am I right?'

'Yes, sir,' said Smyth, rising. 'Permit me, Mr. De Foe, to introduce'——

The writer stopped him with a slow, majestic movement of the hand. 'What care I who they are?' he said heavily. 'Names mean nothing—pretty labels on empty vessels. By what right do these gentlemen invade the sanctity of Archibald's?' He drew a chair near them and sat down sullenly, hanging his arm over the back. 'Do I see aright?' he queried thickly, opening his eyes with difficulty, and revealing their lustreless shade. 'There are three of you? Humph! The one I know—a clumsy dauber in a smudgy world.'

Smyth nodded delightedly to his companions to indicate that the compliment was intended for him.

'Or your friends,' went on the heavy resonant voice, 'one has the face of a dreamer. Come, sir, tell me of these dreams that are keeping you awake of nights. I am descended from Joseph by the line of Charlemagne, and I have it in my power to interpret them. Are you a writer?'

'I am,' said Selwyn calmly.

'You are not English. You haven't the leathery composure of our race.'

'I am an American.'

'I thought as much. You show the smug complacency of your nation. How dare you write, sir? What do you know of life?'

'We have learned something on that subject,' said Selwyn with a slight smile, 'even over there. You see, we have the mistakes of your older countries by which we can profit.'

'Bah!' said the other contemptuously. 'Cant—platitudes—words! Since when have either nations or individuals learned from the mistakes of others? Take you three. Which of you lies closest to life? Which of you has drunk experience to the dregs? The dauber?—You, author-dreamer, fired by the passion of a robin for a cherry?—No, neither of you. . . . That boy there—that youngster with the blue eyes of a girl; he is the one to teach—not you. He has the stamp of failure on him. Welcome, sir—the Prince of Failures welcomes you to Archibald's.'

He lurched forward and extended an unsteady hand to Dick Durwent, who rose slowly from his chair to take it. As Selwyn watched the two men standing with clasped hands over the table, he felt his heart-strings contract with pain.

Although separated by more than thirty years, there was a cruel similarity in the pair—in the half-bravado, half-timorous poise of the head; in the droop of sensuous lips; in the dark hair of each, matted over pallid foreheads. It was as if De Foe had summoned some black art to show the future held in the lap of the gods for the youngest Durwent.

'My boy,' said De Foe drunkenly, but with a moving tenderness, 'life has refused me much, but it has left me the power to read a man's soul in his eyes. The world brands you as a beaten man—and by men's standards it is right. But Laurence De Foe can read beyond those sea-blue eyes of yours; he it is who knows that behind them lies the gallant soul of a gallant gentleman. End your days in a gutter or on the gibbet—what matters it where the actor sleeps when the drama is done?—but to-night you have done great honour to the Prince of Failures by letting him grasp your hand.'

He slowly released the young man's hand, and turned wearily away as Durwent sank into his chair, his eyes staring into filmy space. Moving clumsily across the room, De Foe reached the bar and ordered a drink. When it had been poured out for him he turned about, and, leaning back lazily, looked around the room, with his eyes almost hidden by the close contraction of thick, black eyelashes. Such was the unique power of his personality that the disjointed threads of conversation at the various tables wound to a single end as if by a signal.

'Mes amis,' said De Foe—and his voice was low and sonorous—'I see before me many, like myself, who have left behind them futures where other men left only pasts. I see before me many, like myself, who had the gift of creating exquisite, soul-stirring works of art and literature. But because we were not content to be mere mouthy clowns, with pen or brush, jabbering about the play of life, we have paid the penalty for thinking we could be both subject and painter, author and actor. Because we chose to live, we have failed. The world goes on applauding its successful charlatans, its puny-visioned authors pouring their thoughts of sawdust in the reeking trough of popularity; while we, who know the taste of every bitter herb in all experience—we are thrust aside as failures. . . . But the gift of prophecy is on me to-night. There is a youth here who has a soul capable of scaling heights where none of us could follow—and a soul that could sink to depths that few of us have known. He is one of us, and he has chosen to fight for England. I can see the glory of his death written in his eyes. Gentlemen—you who are adrift with uncharted destinies—drink to the boy of the sea-blue eyes. May he die worthy of himself and of us.'

Throughout the dimly lit room every one rose to his feet, incoherently echoing the last words of the speaker. . . . Still with the filmy wistfulness about his eyes and a tired, weary smile, Dick Durwent sat in his chair beating a listless tattoo on the table with his hand.

From across the room came the sound of the old playwright's hacking cough.