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Roden\'s Corner

H >> Henry Seton Merriman >> Roden\'s Corner



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RODEN'S CORNER

BY

HENRY SETON MERRIMAN

1913


"'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays"



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. IN ST. JACOB STRAAT

II. WORK OK PLAY?

III. BEGINNING AT HOME

IV. A NEW DISCIPLE

V. OUT OF EGYPT

VI. ON THE DUNES

VII. OFFICIAL

VIII. THE SEAMY SIDE

IX. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST

X. DEEPER WATER

XI. IN THE OUDE WEG

XII. SUBURBAN

XIII. THE MAKING OF A MAN

XIV. UNSOUND

XV. PLAIN SPEAKING

XVI. DANGER

XVII. PLAIN SPEAKING

XVIII. A COMPLICATION

XIX. DANGER

XX. FROM THE PAST

XXI. A COMBINED FORCE

XXII. GRATITUDE

XXIII. A REINFORCEMENT

XXIV. A BRIGHT AND SHINING LIGHT

XXV. CLEARING THE AIR

XXVI. THE ULTIMATUM

XXVII. COMMERCE

XXVIII. WITH CARE

XXIX. A LESSON

XXX. ON THE QUEEN'S CANAL

XXXI. AT THE CORNER

XXXII. ROUND THE CORNER





CHAPTER I.

IN ST. JACOB STRAAT.

"The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life."


"It is the Professor von Holzen," said a stout woman who still keeps
the egg and butter shop at the corner of St. Jacob Straat in The Hague;
she is a Jewess, as, indeed, are most of the denizens of St. Jacob
Straat and its neighbour, Bezem Straat, where the fruit-sellers
live--"it is the Professor von Holzen, who passes this way once or
twice a week. He is a good man."

"His coat is of a good cloth," answered her customer, a young man with
a melancholy dark eye and a racial appreciation of the material things
of this world.

Some say that it is not wise to pass through St. Jacob Straat or Bezem
Straat alone and after nightfall, for there are lurking forms within
the doorways, and shuffling feet may be heard in the many passages.
During the daytime the passer-by will, if he looks up quickly enough,
see furtive faces at the windows, of men, and more especially of women,
who never seem to come abroad, but pass their lives behind those
unwashed curtains, with carefully closed windows, and in an atmosphere
which may be faintly imagined by a glance at the wares in the shop
below. The pavement of St. Jacob Straat is also pressed into the
service of that commerce in old metal and damaged domestic utensils
which seems to enable thousands of the accursed people to live and
thrive according to their lights. It will be observed that the vendors,
with a knowledge of human nature doubtless bred of experience, only
expose upon the pavement articles such as bedsteads, stoves, and other
heavy ware which may not be snatched up by the fleet of foot. Within
the shops are crowded clothes and books and a thousand miscellaneous
effects of small value. A hush seems to hang over this street. Even the
children, white-faced and melancholy, with deep expressionless eyes and
drooping noses, seem to have realized too soon the gravity of life, and
rarely indulge in games.

He whom the butter-merchant described as Professor von Holzen passed
quickly along the middle of the street, with an air suggesting a desire
to attract as little attention as possible. He was a heavy-shouldered
man with a bad mouth--a greedy mouth, one would think--and mild eyes.
The month was September, and the professor wore a thin black overcoat
closely buttoned across his broad chest. He carried a pair of
slate-coloured gloves and an umbrella. His whole appearance bespoke
learning and middle-class respectability. It is, after all, no use
being learned without looking learned, and Professor von Holzen took
care to dress according to his station in life. His attitude towards
the world seemed to say, "Leave me alone and I will not trouble you,"
which is, after all, as satisfactory an attitude as may be desired. It
is, at all events, better than the common attitude of the many, that
says, "Let us exchange confidences," leading to the barter of two
valueless commodities.

The professor stopped at the door of No. 15, St. Jacob Straat--one of
the oldest houses in this old street--and slowly lighted a cigar. There
is a shop on the ground-floor of No. 15, where ancient pieces of
stove-pipe and a few fire-irons are exposed for sale. Von Holzen,
having pushed open the door, stood waiting at the foot of a narrow and
grimy staircase. He knew that in such a shop in such a quarter of the
town there is always a human spider lurking in the background, who
steals out upon any human fly that may pause to look at the wares.

This spider presently appeared--a wizened woman with a face like that
of a witch. Von Holzen pointed upward to the room above them. She shook
her head regretfully.

"Still alive," she said.

And the professor turned toward the stair, but paused at the bottom
step.

"Here," he said, extending his fingers. "Some milk. How much has he
had?"

"Two jugs," she replied, "and three jugs of water. One would say he has
a fire inside him."

"So he has," said the professor, with a grim smile, as he went
upstairs. He ascended slowly, puffing out the smoke of his cigar before
him with a certain skill, so that his progress was a form of
fumigation. The fear of infection is the only fear to which men will
own, and it is hard to understand why this form of cowardice should be
less despicable than others. Von Holzen was a German, and that nation
combines courage with so deep a caution that mistaken persons sometimes
think the former adjunct lacking. The mark of a wound across his cheek
told that in his student days this man had, after due deliberation,
considered it necessary to fight. Some, looking at Von Holzen's face,
might wonder what mark the other student bore as a memento of that
encounter.

Von Holzen pushed open a door that stood ajar at the head of the stair,
and went slowly into the room, preceded by a puff of smoke. The place
was not full of furniture, properly speaking, although it was littered
with many household effects which had no business in a bedroom. It was,
indeed, used as a storehouse for such wares as the proprietor of the
shop only offered to a chosen few. The atmosphere of the room must have
been a very Tower of Babel, where strange foreign bacilli from all
parts of the world rose up and wrangled in the air.

Upon a sham Empire table, _très antique_, near the window, stood three
water-jugs and a glass of imitation Venetian work. A yellow hand
stretching from a dark heap of bedclothes clutched the glass and held
it out, empty, when Von Holzen came into the room.

"I have sent for milk," said the professor, smoking hard, and heedful
not to look too closely into the dark corner where the bed was
situated.

"You are kind," said a voice, and it was impossible to guess whether
its tone was sarcastic or grateful.

Von Holzen looked at the empty water-jugs with a smile, and shrugged
his shoulders. His intention had perhaps been a kind one. A bad mouth
usually indicates a soft heart.

"It is because you have something to gain," said the hollow voice from
the bed.

"I have something to gain, but I can do without it," replied Von
Holzen, turning to the door and taking a jug of milk from the hand of a
child waiting there.

"And the change," he said sharply.

The child laughed cunningly, and held out two small copper coins of the
value of half a cent.

Von Holzen filled the tumbler and handed it to the sick man, who a
moment later held it out empty.

"You may have as much as you like," said Von Holzen, kindly.

"Will it keep me alive?"

"Nothing can do that, my friend," answered Von Holzen. He looked down
at the yellow face peering at him from the darkness. It seemed to be
the face of a very aged man, with eyes wide open and blood-shot. A
thickness of speech was accounted for by the absence of teeth.

The man laughed gleefully. "All the same, I have lived longer than any
of them," he said. How many of us pride ourselves upon possessing an
advantage which others never covet!

"Yes," answered Von Holzen, gravely. "How old are you?"

"Nearly thirty-five," was the answer.

Von Holzen nodded, and, turning on his heel, looked thoughtfully out of
the window. The light fell full on his face, which would have been a
fine one were the mouth hidden. The eyes were dark and steady. A high
forehead looked higher by reason of a growth of thick hair standing
nearly an inch upright from the scalp, like the fur of a beaver in
life, without curl or ripple. The chin was long and pointed. A face,
this, that any would turn to look at again. One would think that such
a man would get on in the world. But none may judge of another in this
respect. It is a strange fact that intimacy with any who has made for
himself a great name leads to the inevitable conclusion that he is
unworthy of it.

"Wonderful!" murmured Von Holzen--"wonderful! Nearly thirty-five!" And
it was hard to say what his thoughts really were. The only sound that
came from the bed was the sound of drinking.

"And I know more about the trade than any, for I was brought up to it
from boyhood," said the dying man, with an uncanny bravado. "I did not
wait until I was driven to it, like most."

"Yes, you were skilful, as I have been told."

"Not all skill--not all skill," piped the metallic voice, indistinctly.
"There was knowledge also."

Von Holzen, standing with his hands in the pockets of his thin
overcoat, shrugged his shoulders. They had arrived by an
oft-trodden path to an ancient point of divergence. Presently Von
Holzen turned and went towards the bed. The yellow hand and arm lay
stretched out across the table, and Holzen's finger softly found the
pulse.

"You are weaker," he said. "It is only right that I should tell you."

The man did not answer, but lay back, breathing quickly. Something
seemed to catch in his throat. Von Holzen went to the door, and furtive
steps moved away down the dark staircase.

"Go," he said authoritatively, "for the doctor, at once." Then he came
back towards the bed. "Will you take my price?" he said to its
occupant. "I offer it to you for the last time."

"A thousand gulden?"

"Yes."

"It is too little money," replied the dying man. "Make it twelve
hundred."

Von Holzen turned away to the window again thoughtfully. A silence
seemed to have fallen over the busy streets, to fill the untidy room.
The angel of death, not for the first time, found himself in company
with the greed of men.

"I will do that," said Von Holzen at length, "as you are dying."

"Have you the money with you?"

"Yes."

"Ah!" said the dying man, regretfully. It was only natural, perhaps,
that he was sorry that he had not asked more. "Sit down," he said, "and
write."

Von Holzen did as he was bidden. He had also a pocket-book and pencil
in readiness. Slowly, as if drawing from the depths of a long-stored
memory, the dying man dictated a prescription in a mixture of dog-Latin
and Dutch, which his hearer seemed to understand readily enough. The
money, in dull-coloured notes, lay on the table before the writer. The
prescription was a long one, covering many pages of the note-book, and
the particulars as to preparation and temperature of the various liquid
ingredients filled up another two pages.

"There," said the dying man at length, "I have treated you fairly. I
have told you all I know. Give me the money."

Von Holzen crossed the room and placed the notes within the yellow
fingers, which closed over them.

"Ah," said the recipient, "I have had more than that in my hand. I was
rich once, and I spent it all in Amsterdam. Now read over your writing.
I will treat you fairly."

Von Holzen stood by the window and read aloud from his book.

"Yes," said the other. "One sees that you took your diploma at Leyden.
You have made no mistake."

Von Holzen closed the book and replaced it in his pocket. His face bore
no sign of exultation. His somewhat phlegmatic calm successfully
concealed the fact that he had at last obtained information which he
had long sought. A cart rattled past over the cobble-stones, making
speech inaudible for the moment. The man moved uneasily on the bed. Von
Holzen went towards him and poured out more milk. Instead of reaching
out for it, the sick man's hand lay on the coverlet. The notes were
tightly held by three fingers; the free finger and the thumb picked at
the counterpane. Von Holzen bent over the bed and examined the face.
The sick man's eyes were closed. Suddenly he spoke in a mumbling
voice--"And now that you have what you want, you will go."

"No," answered Von Holzen, in a kind voice, "I will not do that. I will
stay with you if you do not want to be left alone. You are brave, at
all events. I shall be horribly afraid when it comes to my turn to
die."

"You would not be afraid if you had lived a life such as mine. Death
cannot be worse, at all events." And the man laughed contentedly
enough, as one who, having passed through evil days, sees the end of
them at last.

Von Holzen made no answer. He went to the window and opened it, letting
in the air laden with the clean scent of burning peat, which makes the
atmosphere of The Hague unlike that of any other town; for here is a
city with the smell of a village in its busy streets. The German
scientist stood looking out, and into the room came again that strange
silence. It was an odd room in which to die, for every article in it
was what is known as an antiquity; and although some of these relics of
the past had been carefully manufactured in a back shop in Bezem
Straat, others were really of ancient date. The very glass from which
the dying man drank his milk dated from the glorious days of Holland
when William the Silent pitted his Northern stubbornness and deep
diplomacy against the fire and fanaticism of Alva. Many objects in the
room had a story, had been in the daily use of hands long since
vanished, could tell the history of half a dozen human lives lived out
and now forgotten. The air itself smelt of age and mouldering memories.

Von Holzen came towards the bed without speaking, and stood looking
down. Never a talkative man, he was now further silenced by the shadow
that lay over the stricken face of his companion. The sick man was
breathing very slowly. He glanced at Von Holzen for a moment, and then
returned to the dull contemplation of the opposite wall. Quite suddenly
his breath caught. There were long pauses during which he seemed to
cease to breathe. Then at length followed a pause which merged itself
gently into eternity.

Von Holzen waited a few minutes, and then bent over the bed and softly
unclasped the dead man's hand, taking from it the crumpled notes.
Mechanically he counted them, twelve hundred gulden in all, and
restored them to the pocket from which he had taken them half an hour
earlier.

He walked to the window and waited. When at length the district doctor
arrived, Von Holzen turned to greet him with a stiff bow.

"I am afraid, Herr Doctor," he said, in German, "You are too late."




CHAPTER II

WORK OR PLAY?

"Get work, get work;
Be sure 'tis better than what you work to get."


Two men were driving in a hansom cab westward through Cockspur Street.
One, a large individual of a bovine placidity, wore the Queen's
uniform, and carried himself with a solid dignity faintly suggestive of
a lighthouse. The other, a narrower man, with a keen, fair face and
eyes that had an habitual smile, wore another uniform--that of society.
He was well dressed, and, what is rarer carried his fine clothes with
such assurance that their fineness seemed not only natural but
indispensable.

"Sic transit the glory of this world," he was saying. At this moment
three men on the pavement--the usual men on the pavement at such
times--turned and looked into the cab.

"'Ere's White!" cried one of them. "White--dash his eyes! Brayvo!
brayvo, White!"

And all three raised a shout which seemed to be taken up vaguely in
various parts of Trafalgar Square, and finally died away in the
distance.

"That is it," said the young man in the frock-coat; "that is the glory
of this world. Listen to it passing away. There is a policeman touching
his helmet. Ah, what a thing it is to be Major White--to-day!
To morrow--_bonjour la gloire_"

Major White, who had dropped his single eye-glass a minute earlier, sat
squarely looking out upon the world with a mild surprise. The eye from
which the glass had fallen was even more surprised than the other. But
this, it seemed, was a man upon whom the passing world made, as a rule,
but a passing impression. His attitude towards it was one of dense
tolerance. He was, in fact, one of those men who usually allow their
neighbours to live in a fool's-paradise, based upon the assumption of a
blindness or a stupidity or an indifference, which may or may not be
justified by subsequent events.

This was, as Tony Cornish, his companion, had hinted, _the_ White of
the moment. Just as the reader may be the Jones or the Tomkins of the
moment if his soul thirst for glory. Crime and novel-writing are the
two broad roads to notoriety, but Major White had practiced neither
felony nor fiction. He had merely attended to his own and his country's
business in a solid, common-sense way in one of those obscure and tight
places into which the British officer frequently finds himself forced
by the unwieldiness of the empire or the indiscretion of an
effervescent press.

That he had extricated himself and his command from the tight place,
with much glory to themselves and an increased burden to the cares of
the Colonial Office, was a fact which a grateful country was at this
moment doing its best to recognize. That the authorities and those who
knew him could not explain how he had done it any more than he himself
could, was another fact which troubled him as little. Major White was
wise in that he did not attempt to explain.

"That sort of thing," he said, "generally comes right in the end." And
the affair may thus be consigned to that pigeon-hole of the past in
which are filed for future reference cases where brilliant men have
failed and unlikely ones have covered themselves with sudden and
transient glory.

There had been a review of the troops that had taken part in a short
and satisfactory expedition of which, by what is usually called a lucky
chance, White found himself the hero. He was not of the material of
which heroes are made; but that did not matter. The world will take a
man and make a hero of him without pausing to inquire of what stuff he
may be. Nay, more, it will take a man's name and glorify it without so
much as inquiring to what manner of person the name belongs.

Tony Cornish, who went everywhere and saw everything, was of course
present at the review, and knew all the best people there. He passed
from carriage to carriage in his smart way, saying the right thing to
the right people in the right words, failing to see the wrong people
quite in the best manner, and conscious of the fact that none could
surpass him. Then suddenly, roused to a higher manhood by the tramp of
steady feet, by the sight of his lifelong friend White riding at the
head of his tanned warriors, this social success forgot himself. He
waved his silk hat and shouted himself hoarse, as did the honest
plumber at his side.

"That's better work than yours nor mine, mister," said the plumber,
when the troops were gone; and Tony admitted, with his ready smile,
that it was so. A few minutes later Tony found Major White solemnly
staring at a small crowd, which as solemnly stared back at him, on the
pavement in front of the Horse Guards.

"Here, I have a cab waiting for me," he had said; and White followed
him with a mildly bewildered patience, pushing his way gently through
the crowd as through a herd of oxen.

He made no comment, and if he heard sundry whispers of "That's 'im," he
was not unduly elated. In the cab he sat bolt upright, looking as if
his tunic was too tight, as in all probability it was. The day was hot,
and after a few jerks he extracted a pocket-handkerchief from his
sleeve.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Well, I was going to Cambridge Terrace. Joan sent me a card this
morning saying that she wanted to see me," explained Tony Cornish. He
was a young man who seemed always busy. His long thin legs moved
quickly, he spoke quickly, and had a rapid glance. There was a
suggestion of superficial haste about him. For an idle man, he had
remarkably little time on his hands.

White took up his eye-glass, examined it with short-sighted
earnestness, and screwed it solemnly into his eye.

"Cambridge Terrace?" he said, and stared in front of him.

"Yes. Have you seen the Ferribys since your glorious return to
these--er--shores?" As he spoke, Cornish gave only half of his
attention. He knew so many people that Piccadilly was a work of
considerable effort, and it is difficult to bow gracefully from a
hansom cab.

"Can't say I have."

"Then come in and see them now. We shall find only Joan at home, and
she will not mind your fine feathers or the dust and circumstance of
war upon your boots. Lady Ferriby will be sneaking about in the
direction of Edgware Road--fish is nearly two pence a pound cheaper
there, I understand. My respected uncle is sure to be sunning his
waistcoat in Piccadilly. Yes, there he is. Isn't he splendid? How do,
uncle?" and Cornish waved a grey Suède glove with a gay nod.

"How are the Ferribys?" inquired Major White, who belonged to the curt
school.

"Oh, they seem to be well. Uncle is full of that charity which at all
events has its headquarters in the home counties. Aunt--well, aunt is
saving money."

"And Miss Ferriby?" inquired White, looking straight in front of him.

Cornish glanced quickly at his companion. "Oh, Joan?" he answered. "She
is all right. Full of energy, you know--all the fads in their courses."

"You get 'em too."

"Oh yes; I get them too. Buttonholes come and buttonholes go. Have you
noticed it? They get large. Neapolitan violets all over your left
shoulder one day, and no flowers at all the week after." Cornish spoke
with a gravity befitting the subject. He was, it seemed a student of
human nature in his way. "Of course," he added, laying an impressive
forefinger on White's gold-laced cuff, "it would never do if the world
remained stationary."

"Never," said the major, darkly. "Never."

They were talking to pass the time. Joan Ferriby had come between them,
as a woman is bound to come between two men sooner or later. Neither
knew what the other thought of Joan Ferriby, or if he thought of her at
all. Women, it is to be believed, have a pleasant way of mentioning the
name of a man with such significance that one of their party changes
colour. When next she meets that man she does it again, and perhaps he
sees it, and perhaps his vanity, always on the alert, magnifies that
unfortunate blush. And they are married, and live unhappily ever
afterwards. And--let us hope there is a hell for gossips. But men are
different in their procedure. They are awkward and _gauche_. They talk
of newspaper matters, and on the whole there is less harm done.

The hansom cab containing these two men pulled up jerkily at the door
of No. 9, Cambridge Terrace. Tony Cornish hurried to the door, and rang
the bell as if he knew it well. Major White followed him stiffly. They
were ushered into a library on the ground floor, and were there
received by a young lady, who, pen in hand, sat at a large table
littered with newspaper wrappers.

"I am addressing the Haberdashers' Assistants," she said, "but I am
very glad to see you."

Miss Joan Ferriby was one of those happy persons who never know a
doubt. One must, it seems, be young to enjoy this nineteenth-century
immunity. One must be pretty--it is, at all events, better to be
pretty--and one must dress well. A little knowledge of the world, a
decisive way of stating what pass at the moment for facts, a quick
manner of speaking--and the rest comes _tout seul_. This cocksureness
is in the atmosphere of the day, just as fainting and curls and an
appealing helplessness were in the atmosphere of an earlier Victorian
period.

Miss Ferriby stood, pen in hand, and laughed at the confusion on the
table in front of her. She was eminently practical, and quite without
that self-consciousness which in a bygone day took the irritating form
of coyness. Major White, with whom she shook hands _en camarade_, gazed
at her solemnly.

"Who are the Haberdashers' Assistants?" he asked.

Miss Ferriby sat down with a grave face. "Oh, it is a splendid
charity," she answered. "Tony will tell you all about it. It is an
association of which the object is to induce people to give up riding
on Saturday afternoons, and to lend their bicycles to haberdashers'
assistants who cannot afford to buy them for themselves. Papa is
patron."

Cornish looked quickly from one to the other. He had always felt that
Major White was not quite of the world in which Joan and be moved. The
major came into it at times, looked around him, and then moved away
again into another world, less energetic, less advanced, less rapid in
its changes. Cornish had never sought to interest his friend in sundry
good works in which Joan, for instance, was interested, and which
formed a delightful topic for conversation at teatime.

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