The Blotting Book (7 page)

He sat in a pleasant parquetted room looking out into the small square
garden at the back of his house in Montpellier Road. Big awnings
stretched from the window over the broad gravel path outside, and in
spite of the excessive heat the room was full of dim coolness. There was
but little furniture in it, and it presented the strongest possible
contrast to the appointments of his partner's flat with its heavy
decorations, its somewhat gross luxury. A few water-colours hung on the
white walls, a few Persian rugs strewed the floor, a big bookcase with
china on the top filled one end of the room, his writing-table, a half
dozen of Chippendale chairs, and the chintz-covered sofa where he now lay
practically completed the inventory of the room. Three or four bronzes, a
Narcissus, a fifteenth-century Italian St. Francis, and a couple of
Greek reproductions stood on the chimney-piece, but the whole room
breathed an atmosphere of aesthetic asceticism.

Since lunch Mr. Taynton had glanced at the paper, and also looked up the
trains from Lewes in order to assure himself that he need not expect his
partner till half past nine, and since then, though his hands and his
eyes had been idle, his mind had been very busy. Yet for all its
business, he had not arrived at much. Morris, Godfrey Mills, and himself;
he had placed these three figures in all sorts of positions in his mind,
and yet every combination of them was somehow terrible and menacing. Try
as he would he could not construct a peaceful or secure arrangement of
them. In whatever way he grouped them there was danger.

The kitchen passage ran out at right angles to the room in which he sat,
and formed one side of the garden. The windows in it were high up, so
that it did not overlook the flowerbeds, and on this torrid afternoon
they were all fully open. Suddenly from just inside came the fierce
clanging peal of a bell, which made him start from his recumbent
position. It was the front-door bell, as he knew, and as it continued
ringing as if a maniac's grip was on the handle, he heard the steps of
his servant running along the stone floor of the passage to see what
imperative summons this was. Then, as the front door was opened, the bell
ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the moment afterward he heard
Morris's voice shrill and commanding.

"But he has got to see me," he cried, "What's the use of you going to ask
if he will?"

Mr. Taynton went to the door of his room which opened into the hall.

"Come in, Morris," he said.

Though it had been Morris's hand which had raised so uncontrolled a
clamour, and his voice that just now had been so uncontrolled, there was
no sign, when the door of Mr. Taynton's room had closed behind them, that
there was any excitement of any sort raging within him. He sat down at
once in a chair opposite the window, and Mr. Taynton saw that in spite of
the heat of the day and the violence of that storm which he knew was
yelling and screaming through his brain, his face was absolutely white.
He sat with his hands on the arms of the Chippendale chair, and they too
were quite still.

"I have seen Sir Richard," said he, "and I came back at once to see you.
He has told me everything. Godfrey Mills has been lying about me and
slandering me."

Mr. Taynton sat down heavily on the sofa.

"No, no; don't say it, don't say it," he murmured. "It can't be true, I
can't believe it."

"But it is true, and you have got to believe it. He suggested that you
should go and talk it over with him. I will drive you up in the car, if
you wish—"

Mr. Taynton waved his hand with a negative gesture.

"No, no, not at once," he cried. "I must think it over. I must get used
to this dreadful, this appalling shock. I am utterly distraught."

Morris turned to him, and across his face for one moment there shot,
swift as a lightning-flash, a quiver of rage so rabid that he looked
scarcely human, but like some Greek presentment of the Furies or Revenge.
Never, so thought his old friend, had he seen such glorious youthful
beauty so instinct and inspired with hate. It was the demoniacal force of
that which lent such splendour to it. But it passed in a second, and
Morris still very pale, very quiet spoke to him.

"Where is he?" he asked. "I must see him at once. It won't keep."

Then he sprang up, his rage again mastering him.

"What shall I do it with?" he said. "What shall I do it with?"

For the moment Mr. Taynton forgot himself and his anxieties.

"Morris, you don't know what you are saying," he cried. "Thank God nobody
but me heard you say that!"

Morris seemed not to be attending.

"Where is he?" he said again, "are you concealing him here? I have
already been to your office, and he wasn't there, and to his flat, and he
wasn't there."

"Thank God," ejaculated the lawyer.

"By all means if you like. But I've got to see him, you know.
Where is he?"

"He is away in town," said Mr. Taynton, "but he will be back to-night.
Now attend. Of course you must see him, I quite understand that. But you
mustn't see him alone, while you are like this."

"No, I don't want to," said Morris. "I should like other people to see
what I've got to—to say to him—that, that partner of yours."

"He has from this moment ceased to be my partner," said Mr. Taynton
brokenly. "I could never again sign what he has signed, or work with
him, or—or—except once—see him again. He is coming here by
appointment at half-past nine. Suppose that we all meet here. We have
both got to see him."

Morris nodded and went toward the door. A sudden spasm of anxiety seemed
to seize Mr. Taynton.

"What are you going to do now?" he asked.

"I don't know. Drive to Falmer Park perhaps, and tell Sir Richard you
cannot see him immediately. Will you see him to-morrow?"

"Yes, I will call to-morrow morning. Morris, promise me you will do
nothing rash, nothing that will bring sorrow on all those who love you."

"I shall bring a little sorrow on a man who hates me," said he.

He went out, and Mr. Taynton sat down again, his mouth compressed into
hard lines, his forehead heavily frowning. He could not permanently
prevent Morris from meeting Godfrey Mills, besides, it was his right to
do so, yet how fraught with awful risks to himself that meeting would be!
Morris might easily make a violent, even a murderous, assault on the man,
but Mills was an expert boxer and wrestler, science would probably get
the upper hand of blind rage. But how deadly a weapon Mills had in store
against himself; he would certainly tell Morris that if one partner had
slandered him the other, whom he so trusted and revered, had robbed him;
he would say, too, that Taynton had been cognizant of, and had approved,
his slanders. There was no end to the ruin that would certainly be
brought about his head if they met. Mills's train, too, would have left
London by now; there was no chance of stopping him. Then there was
another danger he had not foreseen, and it was too late to stop that now.
Morris was going again to Falmer Park, had indeed started, and that
afternoon Godfrey Mills would get out of the train, as he had planned, at
the station just below, and walk back over the downs to Brighton. What if
they met there, alone?

For an hour perhaps Mr. Taynton delved at these problems, and at the end
even it did not seem as if he had solved them satisfactorily, for when
he went out of his house, as he did at the end of this time to get a
little breeze if such was obtainable, his face was still shadowed and
overclouded. Overclouded too was the sky, and as he stepped out into the
street from his garden-room the hot air struck him like a buffet; and in
his troubled and apprehensive mood it felt as if some hot hand warned him
by a blow not to venture out of his house. But the house, somehow, in the
last hour had become terrible to him, any movement or action, even on a
day like this, when only madmen and the English go abroad, was better
than the nervous waiting in his darkened room. Dreadful forces, forces of
ruin and murder and disgrace, were abroad in the world of men; the menace
of the low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to
get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association
with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some
tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene
was already prepared for them; the setting and stage were ready, the
prompter, and who was he? was in the box ready to tell them the next line
if any of them faltered. The prompter, surely he was destiny, fate, the
irresistible course of events, with which no man can struggle, any more
than the actor can struggle with or alter the lines that are set down for
him. He may mumble them, he may act dispiritedly and tamely, but he has
undertaken a certain part; he has to go through with it.

Though it was a populous hour of the day, there were but few people
abroad when Mr. Taynton came out to the sea front; a few cabs stood by
the railings that bounded the broad asphalt path which faced the sea, but
the drivers of these, despairing of fares, were for the most part dozing
on the boxes, or with a more set purpose were frankly slumbering in the
interior. The dismal little wooden shelters that punctuated the parade
were deserted, the pier stretched an untenanted length of boards over the
still, lead-coloured sea, and it seemed as if nature herself was waiting
for some elemental catastrophe.

And though the afternoon was of such hideous and sultry heat, Mr.
Taynton, though he walked somewhat more briskly than his wont, was
conscious of no genial heat that produced perspiration, and the natural
reaction and cooling of the skin. Some internal excitement and fever of
the brain cut off all external things; the loneliness, the want of
correspondence that fever brings between external and internal
conditions, was on him. At one moment, in spite of the heat, he
shivered, at another he felt that an apoplexy must strike him.

For some half hour he walked to and fro along the sea-wall, between the
blackness of the sky and the lead-coloured water, and then his thoughts
turned to the downs above this stricken place, where, even in the
sultriest days some breath of wind was always moving. Just opposite him,
on the other side of the road, was the street that led steeply upward to
the station. He went up it.

It was about half-past seven o'clock that evening that the storm burst. A
few huge drops of rain fell on the hot pavements, then the rain ceased
again, and the big splashes dried, as if the stones had been blotting
paper that sucked the moisture in. Then without other warning a streamer
of fire split the steeple of St. Agnes's Church, just opposite Mr.
Taynton's house, and the crash of thunder answered it more quickly than
his servant had run to open the door to Morris's furious ringing of the
bell. At that the sluices of heaven were opened, and heaven's artillery
thundered its salvoes to the flare of the reckless storm. In the next
half-hour a dozen houses in Brighton were struck, while the choked
gutters overflowing on to the streets made ravines and waterways down the
roadways. Then the thunder and lightning ceased, but the rain still
poured down relentlessly and windlessly, a flood of perpendicular water.

Mr. Taynton had gone out without umbrella, and when he let himself in by
his latch-key at his own house-door about half-past eight, it was no
wonder that he wrung out his coat and trousers so that he should not soak
his Persian rugs. But from him, as from the charged skies, some tension
had passed; this tempest which had so cooled the air and restored the
equilibrium of its forces had smoothed the frowning creases of his brow,
and when the servant hurried up at the sound of the banged front-door, he
found his master soaked indeed, but serene.

"Yes, I got caught by the storm, Williams," he said, "and I am drenched.
The lightning was terrific, was it not? I will just change, and have a
little supper; some cold meat, anything that there is. Yes, you might
take my coat at once."

He divested himself of this.

"And I expect Mr. Morris this evening," he said. "He will probably have
dined, but if not I am sure Mrs. Otter will toss up a hot dish for him.
Oh, yes, and Mr. Mills will be here at half-past nine, or even sooner, as
I cannot think he will have walked from Falmer as he intended. But
whenever he comes, I will see him. He has not been here already?"

"No, sir," said Williams, "Will you have a hot bath, sir?"

"No, I will just change. How battered the poor garden will look tomorrow
after this deluge."

Mr. Taynton changed his wet clothes and half an hour afterwards he sat
down to his simple and excellent supper. Mrs. Otter had provided an
admirable vegetable soup for him, and some cold lamb with asparagus and
endive salad. A macedoine of strawberries followed and a scoop of cheese.
Simple as his fare was, it just suited Mr. Taynton's tastes, and he was
indulging himself with the rather rare luxury of a third glass of port
when Williams entered again.

"Mr. Assheton," he said, and held the door open.

Morris came in; he was dressed in evening clothes with a dinner jacket,
and gave no salutation to his host.

"He's not come yet?" he asked.

But his host sprang up.

"Dear boy," he said, "what a relief it is to see you. Ever since you left
this afternoon I have had you on my mind. You will have a glass of port?"

Morris laughed, a curious jangling laugh.

"Oh yes, to drink his health," he said.

He sat down with a jerk, and leaned his elbows on the table.

"He'll want a lot of health to carry him through this, won't he?" he
asked.

He drank his glass of port like water, and Mr. Taynton instantly filled
it up again for him.

"Ah, I remember you don't like port," he said. "What else can I
offer you?"