THE DISAGREEABLE MAN MAKES A LOAN

THE Dutchman was buried in the little cemetery which faced the hospital. Marie’s tin wreath was placed on the grave. And there the matter ended. The Kurhaus guests recovered from their depression: the German Baroness returned to her buoyant vulgarity, the little danseuse to her busy flirtations. The French Marchioness, celebrated in Parisian circles for her domestic virtues, from which she was now taking a holiday, and a very considerable holiday too, gathered her nerves together again and took renewed pleasure in the society of the Russian gentleman. The French Marchioness had already been requested to leave three other hotels in Petershof; but it was not at all probable that the proprietors of the Kurhaus would have presumed to measure Madame’s morality or immorality. The Kurhaus committee had a benign indulgence for humanity provided of course that humanity had a purse an indulgence which some of the English hotels would not have done badly to imitate. There was a story afloat concerning the English quarter, that a tired little English lady, of no importance to look at, probably not rich, and probably not handsome, came to the most respectable hotel in Petershof, thinking to find there the peace and quiet which her weariness required.

But no one knew who the little lady was, whence she had come, and why. She kept entirely to herself, and was thankful for the luxury of loneliness after some overwhelming sorrow.

One day she was requested to go. The proprietor of the hotel was distressed, but he could not do otherwise than comply with the demands of his guests.

“It is not known who you are, Mademoiselle,” he said. “And you are not approved of. You English are curious people. But what can I do? You have a cheap room, and are a stranger to me. The others have expensive apartments, and come year after year. You see my position, Mademoiselle? I am sorry.”

So the little tired lady had to go. That was how the story went. It was not known what became of her, but it was known that the English people in the Kurhaus tried to persuade her to come to them. But she had lost heart, and left in distress.

This could not have happened in the Kurhaus, where all were received on equal terms, those about whom nothing was known, and those about whom too much was known. The strange mixture and the contrasts of character afforded endless scope for observation and amusement, and Bernardine, who was daily becoming more interested in her surroundings, felt that she would have been sorry to have exchanged her present abode for the English quarter. The amusing part of it was that the English people in the Kurhaus were regarded by their compatriots in the English quarter as sheep of the blackest dye! This was all the more ridiculous because with two exceptions firstly of Mrs. Reffold, who took nearly all her pleasures with the American colony in the Grand Hotel; and secondly, of a Scotch widow who had returned to Petershof to weep over her husband’s grave, but put away her grief together with her widow’s weeds, and consoled herself with a Spanish gentleman with these two exceptions, the little English community in the Kurhaus was most humdrum and harmless, being occupied, as in the case of the Disagreeable Man, with cameras and cheese-mites, or in other cases with the still more engrossing pastime of taking care of one’s ill-health, whether real or fancied: but yet, an innocent hobby in itself and giving one absolutely no leisure to do anything worse: a great recommendation for any pastime.

This was not Bernardine’s occupation: it was difficult to say what she did with herself, for she had not yet followed Robert Allitsen’s advice and taken up some definite work: and the very fact that she had no such wish, pointed probably to a state of health which forbade it. She, naturally so keen and hard-working, was content to take what the hour brought, and the hour brought various things: chess with the Swedish professor, or Russian dominoes with the shrivelled-up little Polish governess who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female gamblers. Or the hour brought a stroll with the French danseuse and her poodle, and a conversation about the mere trivialities of life, which a year or two, or even a few months ago, Bernardine would have condemned as beneath contempt, but, which were now taking their rightful place in her new standard of importances. For some natures learn with greater difficulty and after greater delay than others, that the real importances of our existence are the nothingnesses of every-day life, the nothingnesses which the philosopher in his study, reasoning about and analysing human character, is apt to overlook; but which, nevertheless, make him and every one else more of a human reality and less of an abstraction. And Bernardine, hitherto occupied with so-called intellectual pursuits, with problems of the study, of no value to the great world outside the study, or with social problems of the great world, great movements, and great questions, was now just beginning to appreciate the value of the little incidents of that same great world. Or the hour brought its own thoughts, and Bernardine found herself constantly thinking of the Disagreeable Man: always in sorrow and always with sympathy, and sometimes with tenderness.

When he told her about the one sacrifice, she could have wished to wrap him round with love and tenderness. If he could only have known it, he had never been so near love as then. She had suffered so much herself, and, with increasing weaknesses, had so wished to put off the burden of the flesh, that her whole heart went out to him.

Would he get his freedom, she wondered, and would he use it? Sometimes when she was with him, she would look up to see whether she could read the answer in his face; but she never saw any variation of expression there, nothing to give her even a suggestion. But this she noticed: that there was a marked variation in his manner, and that when he had been rough in bearing, or bitter in speech, he made silent amends at the earliest opportunity by being less rough and less bitter. She felt this was no small concession on the part of the Disagreeable Man.

He was particularly disagreeable on the day when the Dutchman was buried, and so the following day when Bernardine met him in the little English library, she was not surprised to find him almost kindly.

He had chosen the book which she wanted, but he gave it up to her at once without any grumbling, though Bernardine expected him to change his mind before they left the library.

“Well,” he said, as they walked along together, “and have you recovered from the death of the Dutchman?”

“Have you recovered, rather let me ask?” she said. “You were in a horrid mood last night.”

“I was feeling wretchedly ill,” he said quietly.

That was the first time he had ever alluded to his own health.

“Not that there is any need to make an excuse,” he continued, “for I do not recognise that there is any necessity to consult one’s surroundings, and alter the inclination of one’s mind accordingly. Still, as a matter of fact, I felt very ill!”

“And to-day?” she asked.

“To-day I am myself again,” he answered quickly: “that usual normal self of mine, whatever that may mean. I slept well, and I dreamed of you. I can’t say that I had been thinking of you, because I had not. But I dreamed that we were children together, and playmates. Now that was very odd: because I was a lonely child, and never had any playmates.”

“And I was lonely too,” said Bernardine.

“Every one is lonely,” he said, “but every one does not know it.”

“But now and again the knowledge comes like a revelation,” she said, “and we realise that we stand practically alone, out of any one’s reach for help or comfort. When you come to think of it, too, how little able we are to explain ourselves. When you have wanted to say something which was burning within you, have you not noticed on the face of the listener that unmistakable look of non-comprehension, which throws you back on yourself? That is one of the moments when the soul knows its own loneliness!”

Robert Allitsen looked up at her.

“You little thing,” he said, “you put things neatly sometimes. You have felt, haven’t you?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “But that is true of most people.”

“I beg your pardon,” he answered, “most people neither think nor feel: unless they think they have an ache, and then they feel it!”

“I believe,” said Bernardine, “that there is more thinking and feeling than one generally supposes.”

“Well, I can’t be bothered with that now,” he said. “And you interrupted me about my dream. That is an annoying habit you have.”

“Go on,” she said. “I apologize!”

“I dreamed we were children together, and playmates,” he continued. “We were not at all happy together, but still we were playmates. There was nothing we did not quarrel about. You were disagreeable, and I was spiteful. Our greatest dispute was over a Christmas-tree. And that was odd, too, for I have never seen a Christmas-tree.”

“Well?” she said, for he had paused. “What a long time you take to tell story.”

“You were not called Bernardine,” he said. “You were called by some ordinary sensible name. I don’t remember what. But you were very disagreeable. That I remember well. At last you disappeared, and I went about looking for you ‘If I can find something to cause a quarrel,’ I said to myself, ‘she will come back.’ So I went and smashed your doll’s head. But you did not come back. Then I set on fire your doll’s house. But even that did not bring you back. Nothing brought you back. That was my dream. I hope you are not offended. Not that it makes any difference if you are.”

Bernardine laughed.

“I am sorry that I should have been such an unpleasant playmate,” she said. “It was a good thing I did disappear.”

“Perhaps it was,” he said. “There would have been a terrible scene about that doll’s head. An odd thing for me to dream about Christmas-trees and dolls and playmates: especially when I went to sleep thinking about my new camera.”

“You have a new camera?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered, “and a beauty, too. Would you like to see it?”

She expressed a wish to see it, and when they reached the Kurhaus, she went with him up to his beautiful room, where he spent his time in the company of his microscope and his chemical bottles and his photographic possessions.

“If you sit down and look at those photographs, I will make you some tea,” he said. “There is the camera, but please not to touch it until I am ready to show it myself.”

She watched him preparing the tea; he did everything so daintily, this Disagreeable Man. He put a handkerchief on the table, to serve for an afternoon tea-cloth, and a tiny vase of violets formed the centre-piece. He had no cups, but he polished up two tumblers, and no housemaid could have been more particular, about their glossiness. Then he boiled the water and made the tea. Once she offered to help him; but he shook his head.

“Kindly not to interfere.” he said grimly. “No one can make tea better than I can.”

After tea, they began the inspection of the new camera, and Robert Allitsen showed her all the newest improvements. He did not seem to think much of her intelligence, for he explained everything as though he were talking to a child, until Bernardine rather lost patience.

“You need not enter into such elaborate explanations,” she suggested. “I have a small amount of intelligence, though you do not seem to detect it.”

He looked at her as one might look at an impatient child.

“Kindly not to interrupt me,” he replied mildly. “How very impatient you are! And how restless! What must you have been like before you fell ill?”

But he took the hint all the same, and shortened his explanations, and as Bernardine was genuinely interested, he was well satisfied. From time to time he looked at his old camera and at his companion, and from the expression of unease on his face, it was evident that some contest was going on in his mind. Twice he stood near his old camera, and turned round to Bernardine intending to make some remark. Then he chanced his mind, and walked abruptly to the other end of the room as though to seek advice from his chemical bottles. Bernardine meanwhile had risen from her chair, and was looking out of the window.

“You have a lovely view,” she said. “It must be nice to look at that when you are tired of dissecting cheese-mites. All the same, I think the white scenery gives one a great sense of sadness and loneliness.”

“Why do you speak always of loneliness?” he asked.

“I have been thinking a good deal about it,” she said. “When I was strong and vigorous, the idea of loneliness never entered my mind. Now I see how lonely most people are. If I believed in God as a Personal God, I should be inclined to think that loneliness were part of his scheme: so that the soul of man might turn to him and him alone.”

The Disagreeable Man was standing by his camera again: his decision was made.

“Don’t think about those questions,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry and fret too much about the philosophy of life. Leave philosophy alone, and take to photography instead. Here, I will lend you my old camera.”

“Do you mean that?” she asked, glancing at him in astonishment.

“Of course I mean it,” he said.

He looked remarkably pleased with himself, and Bernardine could not help smiling.

He looked just as a child looks when he has given up a toy to another child, and is conscious that he has behaved himself rather well.

“I am very much obliged to you,” she said frankly. “I have had a great wish to learn photography.”

“I might have lent my camera to you before, mightn’t I?” he said thoughtfully.

“No,” she answered. “There was not any reason.”

“No,” he said, with a kind of relief, “there was not any reason. That is quite true!”

“When will you give me my first lesson?” she asked. “Perhaps, though, you would like to wait a few days, in case you change your mind.”

“It takes me some time to make up my mind,” he replied, “but I do not change it. So I will give you your first lesson to-morrow. Only you must not be impatient. You must consent to be taught; you cannot possibly know everything!”

They fixed a time for the morrow, and Bernardine went off with the camera; and meeting Marie on the staircase, confided to her the piece of good fortune which had befallen her.

“See what Herr Allitsen has lent me, Marie!” she said.

Marie raised her hands in astonishment.

“Who would have thought such a thing of Herr Allitsen?” said Marie. “Why, he does not like lending me a match.”

Bernardine laughed and passed on to her room.

And the Disagreeable Man meanwhile was cutting a new scientific book which had just come from England. He spent a good deal of money on himself. He was soon absorbed in this book, and much interested in the diagrams.

Suddenly he looked up to the corner where the old camera had stood, before Bernardine took it away in triumph.

“I hope she won’t hurt that camera,” he said a little uneasily. “I am half sorry that” . . .

Then a kinder mood took possession of him.

“Well, at least it will keep her from fussing and fretting and thinking. Still, I hope she won’t hurt it.”