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Page 40
Wilford left for England without dining again at the H�tel
d'Angleterre. We were busy 'doing' the country, and never chanced to
be at Biarritz at the dinner hour. During that week I scarcely saw Sir
Richard Maistre.
Another little circumstance that rankles especially now would have
been ridiculous except for the way things have ended. It isn't easy to
tell--it was so petty and I am so ashamed. Colonel Escott had been
abusing London, describing it as the least beautiful of the capitals
of Europe, comparing it unfavourably to Paris, Vienna, and St.
Petersburg. I took up the cudgels in its defence, mentioned its
atmosphere, its tone; Paris Vienna, St. Petersburg were lyric, London
was epic; and so forth and so forth. Then, shifting from the �sthetic
to the utilitarian, I argued that of all great towns it was the
healthiest, its death-rate was lowest. Sir Richard Maistre had
followed my dissertation attentively, and with a countenance that
signified approval; and when, with my reference to the death-rate, I
paused, he suddenly burned his ships. He looked me full in the eye,
and said, 'Thirty-seven, I believe?' His heightened colour, a nervous
movement of the lip, betrayed the effort it had cost him; but at last
he had _done it_--screwed his courage to the sticking-place, and
spoken. And I--I can never forget it--I grow hot when I think of
it--but I was possessed by a devil. His eyes hung on my face, awaiting
my response, pleading for a cue. 'Go, on,' they urged. 'I have taken
the first, the difficult step--make the next smoother for me.' And
I--I answered lackadaisically with just a casual glance at him, 'I
don't know the figures,' and absorbed myself in my viands.
Two or three days later his place was filled by a stranger, and
Flaherty told me that he had left for the Riviera.
All this happened last March at Biarritz. I never saw him again till
three weeks ago. It was one of those frightfully hot afternoons in
July; I had come out of my club, and was walking up St. James's
Street, towards Piccadilly; he was moving in an opposite sense; and
thus we approached each other. He didn't see me, however, till we had
drawn rather near to a conjunction: then he gave a little start of
recognition, his eyes brightened, his pace slackened, his right hand
prepared to advance itself--and I bowed slightly, and pursued my way.
Don't ask why I did it. It is enough to confess it without having to
explain it. I glanced backwards, by and by, over my shoulder. He was
standing where I had met him, half turned round, and looking after me.
But when he saw that I was observing him, he hastily shifted about,
and continued his descent of the street.
That was only three weeks ago. Only three weeks ago I still had it in
my power to act. I am sure--I don't know why I am sure, but I _am_
sure--that I could have deterred him. For all that one can gather from
the brief note he left behind, it seems he had no special, definite
motive; he had met with no losses, got into no scrape; he was simply
tired and sick of life and of himself. 'I have no friends,' he wrote.
'Nobody will care. People don't like me; people avoid me. I have
wondered why; I have tried to watch myself and discover; I have tried
to be decent. I suppose it must be that I emit a repellent fluid; I
suppose I am a "bad sort."' He had a morbid notion that people didn't
like him, that people avoided him! Oh, to be sure, there were the
Bunns and the Krausskopfs and their ilk, plentiful enough: but he
understood what it was that attracted _them_. Other people, the people
_he_ could have liked, kept their distance--were civil, indeed, but
reserved. He wanted bread, and they gave him a stone. It never struck
him, I suppose, that they attributed the reserve to him. But I--I knew
that his reserve was only an effect of his shyness; I _knew_ that he
wanted bread: and that knowledge constituted my moral responsibility.
I didn't know that his need was extreme; but I have tried in vain to
absolve myself with the reflection. I ought to have made inquiries.
When I think of that afternoon in St. James's Street--only three weeks
ago--I feel like an assassin. The vision of him, as he stopped and
looked after me--I can't banish it. Why didn't some good spirit move
me to turn back and overtake him?
It is so hard for the mind to reconcile itself to the irretrievable.
I can't shake off a sense that there is something to be done. I can't
realise that it is too late.
CASTLES NEAR SPAIN
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