THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SHIELD.
That self-same night, another English passenger of our acquaintance was speeding in hot haste due southward to San Remo, not indeed by the Calais and Marseilles express, but by the rival route via Boulogne, the Mont Cenis, Turin, and Savona. Warren Relf had chosen the alternative road by deliberate design, lest Hugh Massinger and he should happen to clash by the way, and a needless and unseemly scene should perhaps take place before Winifred’s very eyes at some intermediate station.
It was by the merest accident in the world, indeed, that Warren had heard, in the nick of opportunity, of the Massingers’ projected visit to San Remo. For some weeks before, busy with the “boom,” he had hardly ever dropped in for a gossip at his club in Piccadilly. Already he had sent off his mother and sister to the Riviera this time, too, much to his pride and delight, minus the wonted dead-weight cargo of consumptive pupils and being thus left entirely to his own devices at 128 Bletchingley Road, he had occupied every moment of his crowded day with some good hard work in finishing sketches and touching up pictures commissioned in advance from his summer studies, before setting out himself for winter quarters. But on the particular night when Hugh Massinger came up to town en route for the sunny South with Winifred, Warren Relf, having completed a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wage in his own studio he was fulfilling an engagement to enlarge a sketch of the Martellos at Aideburgh for some Sheffield cutlery-duke or some Manchester cotton-marquis strolled round in the evening for a cigar and a chat on the comfortable lounges of the Mother of Genius.
In the cosy smoking-room at the Cheyne Row Club, he found Hatherley already installed in a big armchair, discussing coffee and the last new number of the “Nineteenth Century.”
“Hullo, Relf! The remains of the Bard were in here just now,” Hatherley exclaimed as he entered. “You’ve barely missed him. If you’d dropped in only ten minutes earlier, you might have inspected the interesting relics. But he’s gone back to his hotel by this time, I fancy. The atmosphere of Cheyne Row seems somewhat too redolent of vulgar Cavendish for his refined taste. He smokes nothing nowadays himself but the best regalias!”
“What, Massinger?” Relf cried in some slight surprise. “How was he, Hatherley, and what was he doing in town at this time of year? All good squires ought surely to be down in the country now at their hereditary work of supplying the market with a due proportion of hares and partridges.”
“Oh, he’s a poor wreck,” Hatherley answered lightly. “You’ve hit it off exactly sunk to the level of the landed aristocracy. He exhales an aroma of vested interests. Real estate’s his Moloch at present, and he bows the knee to solidified sea-mud in the temple of Rimmon. He has no views on anything in particular, I believe, but riparian proprietorship: complains still of the German Ocean for disregarding the sacred rights of property; and holds that the sole business of an enlightened British legislature is to keep the sand from blowing in at his own inviolable dining-room windows. Poor company, in fact, since he descended to the Squirearchy. He’s never forgiven me that playful little bantering ballade of mine, either, that I sent to the ‘Charing Cross Review,’ you remember, chaffing him about his ‘Life’s Tomfoolery,’ or whatever else he called the precious nonsense. For my part, I hate such vapid narrowness. A man should be able to bear chaff with good-humor. Talk about the genus irritabile, indeed: your poet should feel himself superior to vindictiveness ‘Dowered with the love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,’ as a distinguished peer admirably words it.”
“How long’s he going to stop in town do you know?” Relf asked curiously.
“Thank goodness, he’s not going to stop at all, my dear fellow. If he were, I’d run down to Brighton for the interval. A month of Massinger at the Cheyne Row would be a perfect harvest for the seaside lodgings. But I’m happy to tell you he’s going to remove his mortal remains for the soul of him’s dead dead and buried long ago in the Whitestrand sandhills to San Remo to morrow. Poor little Mrs. Massinger’s seriously ill, I’m sorry to say. Too much Bard has told at last upon her. Bard for breakfast, Bard for lunch, and Bard for dinner would undermine in time the soundest constitution. Sir Anthony finds it’s produced in her case suppressed gout, or tubercular diathesis, or softening of the brain, or something lingering and humorous of that sort; and he’s ordered her off, post haste, by the first express, to the Mediterranean. Massinger objected at first to San Remo, he tells me, probably because, with his usual bad taste, he didn’t desire to enjoy your agreeable society; but that skimpy little woman, gout or no gout, has a ‘will of her own, I can tell you; San Remo she insists upon, and to San Remo the Bard must go accordingly. You should have seen him chafing with an internal fire as he let it all out to us, hint by hint, in the billiard-room this evening. Poor skimpy little woman, though, I’m awfully sorry for her. It’s hard lines on her. She had the makings of a nice small hostess in her once; but the Bard’s ruined her sucked her dry and chucked her away and she’s dying of him now, from what he tells me.”
Warren Relf looked back with a start of astonishment “To San Remo?” he cried. “You’re sure, Hatherley, he said to San Remo?”
“Perfectly certain. San Remo it is. Observe, hi presto, there’s no deception. He gave me this card in case of error: ‘Hug-h Massinger, for the present, Poste Restante, San Remo.’ No other address forthcoming as yet. He expects to settle down at a villa when he gets there.”
Relf made up his mind with a single plunge as he knocked his ash off. “I shall go by to-morrow’s express to the Riviera,” he said shortly.
“To pursue the Bard? I wouldn’t, if I were you. To tell you the truth, I know he doesn’t love you.”
“He has reason, I believe. The feeling is to some extent mutual. No, not to pursue him to prevent mischief. Hand me over the Continental Bradshaw, will you? Thanks. That’ll do. Do you know whidi line? Marseilles, I suppose? Did he happen to mention it?”
“He told me he was going by Dijon and Lyons.”
“All right. That’s it. The Marseilles route. Arrive at San Remo at 4:30. I’ll go round the other way by Turin and intercept him. Trains arrive within five minutes of one another, I see. That’ll be just in time to prevent any contretemps.”
“Your people are at San Remo already, I believe?”
“My people yes. But how did’ you know? They were at Mentone for a while, and they only went on home to the Villa Rossa the day before yesterday.”
“So I heard from Miss Relf,” Hatherley answered with a slight cough. “She happened to be writing to me about a literary matter a mere question of current artcriticism on Wednesday morning.”
Warren hardly noticed’ the slight hesitation: and there was nothing odd in Edie’s writing to Hatherley: that best of sisters was always jogging the memory of inattentive critics. While Edie lived, indeed, her brother’s name was never likely to be forgotten in the weekly organs of artistic opinion. She insured it, if anything, an undue prominence. For her much importunity, the sternest of them all, like the unjust judge, was compelled in time to notice every one of her brother’s performances.
So Warren hurried off by himself at all speed to San Remo, and reached it at almost the same moment as Massinger. If Hugh and Elsie were to meet unexpectedly, Warren felt the shock might be positively dangerous.
As he emerged from the station, he hired a close carriage, and ordered the vetturino to draw up on the far side of the road and wait a few minutes till he was prepared for starting. Then he leaned back in his seat in the shade of the hood, and held himself in readiness for the arrival of the Paris train from Ventimiglia.
He had waited only a quarter of an hour when Hugh Massinger came out hastily and called a cab. Two porters helped him to carry out Winifred, now seriously ill, and muttering inarticulately as they placed her in the carriage. Hugh gave an inaudible order to the driver, who drove off at once with a nod and a smile and a cheery “Si, signer.”
“Follow that carriage!” Warren said in Italian to his own cabman. The driver nodded and followed closely. They drove up through the narrow crowded little streets of the old quarter, and stopped at last opposite a large and dingy yellow-washed pension, in the modern part of the town, about the middle of the Avenue Vittorio-Emmanuele. The house was new, but congenitally shabby. Hugh’s carriage blocked the way already. Warren waite’d outside for some ten minutes without showing his face, till he thought the Massingers would have engaged rooms: then he entered the hall boldly and inquired if he could have lodgings.
“On what floor has the gentleman who has just arrived placed himself?” he asked of the landlord, a portly Piedmontese, of august dimensions.
“On the second story, signer.”
“Then I will go on the third,” Warren Relf answered with short decision. And they found him a room forthwith without further parley.
The pension was one of those large and massive solid buildings, so common on the Riviera, let out in flats or in single apartments, and with a deep well of a square staircase occupying the entire center of the block like a covered courtyard. As Warren Relf mounted to his room on the third floor, with the chatty Swiss waiter from the canton Ticino, who carried his bag, he asked quietly if the lady on the segondo who seemed so ill was in any immediate or pressing danger.
“Danger, signer? She is ill, certainly; they carried her upstairs: she couldn’t have walked it. Ill but ill.” He expanded his hands and pursed his lips up. “But what of that? The house expects it. They come here to die, many of these English. The signora no doubt will die soon. She’s a very bad case. She has hardly any life in her.”
Little reassured by this cold comfort, Warren sat down at the table at once, as soon as he had washed away the dust of travel, and scribbled off a hasty note to Edie “Dearest E., “Just arrived. Hope you received my telegram from Paris. For heaven’s sake, don’t let Elsie stir out of the house till I have seen you. This is most imperative. Massinger and Mrs. Massinger are here at this pension. He has brought her South for her health’s sake. She’s dying rapidly. I wouldn’t for worlds let Elsie see either of them in their present condition: above all, she mustn’t run up against them unexpectedly. I may not be able to sneak around to-night, but at “all hazards keep Elsie in till I can get to the Villa Rossa to consult with you.
Elsie must of course return to England at once, now Massinger’s come here. We have to face a very serious crisis. I won’t write further, preferring to come and arrange in person. Meanwhile, say nothing to Elsie just yet; I’ll break it to her myself.
“In breathless haste, “Yours ever, very affectionately, “Warren.”
He sent the note round with many warnings by the Swiss waiter to his mother’s house. When Edie got it, she could have cried with chagrin. Could anything on earth have been more unfortunate? To think that Elsie should just have gone out shopping before the note arrived and should be going to call at the Grand Hotel Royal in that very Avenue Vittorio-Emmanuele!
If Warren had only known that fact, he would have gone out at all risks to intercept and prevent her. But as things stood, he preferred to lurk unseen on his third floor till night came on. He wanted to keep as quiet as possible. He didn’t wish Massinger to know, for the present at least, of his arrival in San Remo. Later on, perhaps, when Elsie had safely started for England, he might see whether he could be of any service to Winifred.
And to Hugh, too; for in spite of all, though he had told Hatherley their dislike was mutual, he pitied Massinger too profoundly now not to forget his righteous resentment at such a moment. If Warren’s experience and connection at San Remo were of any avail, he would gladly place them at Massinger’s disposal. Too manly himself to harbor a grudge, he scarcely recognized the existence of vindictive feeling in others.
Warren Relf! That serpent! That reptile! That eavesdropper! How strangely each of us looks to each! How grotesquely our perverted inner mirror, with its twists and curves, distorts and warps the lineaments of our fellows! Warren Relf! That implacable malignant enemy, forever plotting and planning and caballing against him! Why, Warren Relf, whom Hugh so imaged himself in his angry mind, was sitting that moment with his head bent down to the bare table, and muttering half aloud through his teeth to himself: “Poor, poor Massinger! How hard for him to bear! Alone with that unhappy little dying soul! Without one friend to share his trouble! I wish I could do anything on earth to help him!”