The Woman Who Had Imagination (9 page)

The morning sun burned in a sky of marvellous blue serenity, making the drooping leaves of the tree most brilliant and the pale blossoms expand to fullest beauty. The eyes of the old men were also blue, but the brilliance of the summer sky made a mockery of the dim and somnolent light in them. Their thin white hair and drooping skin, their faltering lips and rusted clothes, the huddled bones of their bodies had come to winter. Their hands tottered, their lips were wet and dribbling, and they stared with a kind of earnest vacancy, seeing the world as a stillness of amber mist. They were perpetually silent, for the deafness of one made speech a ghastly effort of shouting and misinterpretation. With their worn sticks between their knees and their worn hands knotted over their sticks they sat as though time had ceased to exist for them.

Nevertheless every movement across the square was an event. Their eyes missed nothing that came within sight. It was as if the passing of every vehicle held for them the possibility of catastrophe; the appearance of a strange face was a revolution; the apparitions of young
ladies in light summer dresses gliding on legs of shell-pink silk had on them something of the effect of goddesses on the minds of young heroes. There were, sometimes, subtle changes of light in their eyes.

Across the square, they observed an approaching figure. They watched it with a new intensity, exchanging also, for the first time, a glance with one another. For the first time also they spoke.

‘Who is it?' said one.

‘Duke, ain't it?'

‘Looks like Duke,' the other said. ‘But I can't see that far.'

Leaning forward on their sticks, they watched the approach of this figure with intent expectancy. He, too, was old. Beside him, indeed, it was as if they were adolescent. He was patriarchal. He resembled a biblical prophet, bearded and white and immemorial. He was timeless.

But though he looked like a patriarch he came across the square with the haste of a man in a walking race. He moved with a nimbleness and airiness that were miraculous. Seeing the old men on the seat he waved his stick with an amazing gaiety at them. It was like the brandishing of a youthful sword. Ten yards away he bellowed their names lustily in greeting.

‘Well Reuben boy! Well Shepherd!'

They mumbled sombrely in reply. He shouted stentoriously about the weather, wagging his white beard strongly. They shifted stiffly along the seat
and he sat down. A look of secret relief came over their dim faces, for he had towered above them like a statue in silver and bronze.

‘Thought maybe you warn't coming,' mumbled Reuben.

‘Ah! been for a sharp walk!' he half-shouted. ‘A sharp walk!'

They had not the courage to ask where he had walked but in his clear brisk voice he told them, and deducing that he could not have travelled less than six or seven miles they sat in gloomy silence, as though shamed. With relief they saw him fumble in his pockets and bring out a bag of peppermints, black-and-white balls sticky and strong from the heat of his strenuous body, and having one by one popped peppermints into their mouths they sucked for a long time with toothless and dumb solemnity, contemplating the sunshine.

As they sucked, the two old men waited for Duke to speak, and they waited like men awaiting an oracle, since he was, in their eyes, a masterpiece of a man. Long ago, when they had been napkinned and at the breast, he had been a man with a beard, and before they had reached their youth he had passed into a lusty maturity. All their lives they had felt infantile beside him.

Now, in old age, he persisted in shaming them by the lustiness of his achievements and his vitality. He had the secret of a devilish perpetual youth. To them the world across the square was veiled in sunny mistiness, but
Duke could detect the swiftness of a rabbit on a hillside a mile away. They heard the sounds of the world as though through a stone wall, but he could hear the crisp bark of a fox in another parish. They were condemned to an existence of memory because they could not read, but Duke devoured the papers. He had an infinite knowledge of the world and the freshest affairs of men. He brought them, every morning, news of earthquakes in Peru, of wars in China, of assassinations in Spain, of scandals among the clergy. He understood the obscurest movements of politicians and explained to them the newest laws of the land. They listened to him with the devoutness of worshippers listening to a preacher, regarding him with awe and believing in him with humble astonishment. There were times when he lied to them blatantly. They never suspected.

As they sat there, blissfully sucking, the shadow of the chestnut-tree began to shorten, its westward edge creeping up, like a tide, towards their feet. Beyond, the sun continued to blaze with unbroken brilliance on the white square. Swallowing the last smooth grain of peppermint Reuben wondered aloud what time it could be.

‘Time?' said Duke. He spoke ominously. ‘Time?' he repeated.

They watched his hand solemnly uplift itself and vanish into his breast. They had no watches. Duke alone could tell them the passage of time while appearing to mock at it himself. Very slowly he drew out an
immense watch, held it out at length on its silver chain, and regarded it steadfastly.

They regarded it also, at first with humble solemnity and then with quiet astonishment. They leaned forward to stare at it. Their eyes were filled with a great light of unbelief. The watch had stopped.

The three old men continued to stare at the watch in silence. The stopping of this watch was like the stopping of some perfect automaton. It resembled almost the stopping of time itself. Duke shook the watch urgently. The hand moved onward for a second or two from half-past three and then was dead again. He lifted the watch to his ear and listened. It was silent.

For a moment or two longer the old man sat in lugubrious contemplation. The watch, like Duke, was a masterpiece, incredibly ancient, older even than Duke himself. They did not know how often he had boasted to them of its age and efficiency, its beauty and pricelessness. They remembered that it had once belonged to his father, that he had been offered incredible sums for it, that it had never stopped since the battle of Waterloo.

Finally Duke spoke. He spoke with the mysterious air of a man about to unravel a mystery. ‘Know what 'tis?'

They could only shake their heads and stare with the blankness of ignorance and curiosity. They could not know.

Duke made an ominous gesture, almost a flourish, with the hand that held the watch. ‘It's the lectric.'

They stared at him with dim-eyed amazement.

‘It's the lectric,' he repeated. ‘The lectric in me body.'

Shepherd was deaf. ‘Eh?' he said.

‘The lectric,' said Duke significantly, in a louder voice.

‘Lectric?' They did not understand and they waited.

The oracle spoke at last, repeating with one hand the ominous gesture that was like a flourish.

‘It stopped yesterday. Stopped in the middle of me dinner,' he said. He was briefly silent. ‘Never stopped as long as I can remember. Never. And then stopped like that, all of a sudden, just at pudden-time. Couldn't understand it. Couldn't understand it for the life of me.'

‘Take it to the watch maker's?' Reuben said.

‘I did,' he said ‘I did. This watch is older'n me, I said, and it's never stopped as long as I can remember. So he squinted at it and poked it and that's what he said.'

‘What?'

‘It's the lectric, he says, that's what it is. It's the lectric — the lectric in your body. That's what he said. The lectric.'

‘Lectric light?'

‘That's what he said. Lectric. You're full o' lectric, he says. You go home and leave your watch on the shelf and it'll go again. So I did.'

The eyes of the old men seemed to signal intense
questions. There was an ominous silence. Finally, with the watch still in his hand, Duke made an immense flourish, a gesture of serene triumph.

‘And it went,' he said, ‘It went!'

The old men murmured in wonder.

‘It went all right. Right as a cricket! Beautiful!'

The eyes of the old men flickered with fresh amazement. The fickleness of the watch was beyond the weakness of their ancient comprehension. They groped for understanding as they might have searched with their dim eyes for a balloon far up in the sky. Staring and murmuring they could only pretend to understand.

‘Solid truth,' said Duke. ‘Goes on the shelf but it won't go on me. It's the lectric.'

‘That's what licks me,' said Reuben, ‘the lectric.'

‘It's me body,' urged Duke. ‘It's full of it.'

‘Lectric light?'

‘Full of it. Alive with it.'

He spoke like a man who had won a prize. Bursting with glory, he feigned humility. His white beard wagged lustily with pride, but the hand still bearing the watch seemed to droop with modesty.

‘It's the lectric,' he boasted softly.

They accepted the words in silence. It was as though they began to understand at last the lustiness of Duke's life, the nimbleness of his mind, the amazing youthfulness of his patriarchal limbs.

The shadow of the chestnut-tree had dwindled to a
small dark circle about their seat. The rays of the sun were brilliantly perpendicular. On the chestnut-tree itself the countless candelabra of blossoms were a pure blaze of white and rose. A clock began to chime for noon.

Duke, at that moment, looked at his watch, still lying in his hand.

He started with instant guilt. The hands had moved miraculously to four o'clock and in the stillness of the summer air he could hear the tick of wheels.

With hasty gesture of resignation he dropped the watch into his pocket again. He looked quickly at the old men, but they were sunk in sombre meditation. They had not seen or heard.

Abruptly he rose. ‘That's what it is,' he said. ‘The lectric.' He made a last gesture as though to indicate that he was the victim of some divine manifestation. ‘The lectric,' he said.

He retreated nimbly across the square in the hot sunshine and the old men sat staring after him with the innocence of solemn wonder. His limbs moved with the haste of a clockwork doll and he vanished with incredible swiftness from sight.

The sun had crept beyond the zenith and the feet of the old men were bathed in sunshine.

A white river steamer was travelling smoothly up the Rhine in the heat of an August afternoon. The sky was very blue and brilliant and far away and the sun was burning like a flaming ball of brass over the hills on the southern bank of the stream. The steamer, like a comet, left behind it a white tail of foam, but the smooth water was coloured a soft green, very clear and beautiful, as though stained to its depths with the reflected green of the vineyards terracing the high slopes on either side. As the slopes went smoothly past an occasional solitary peasant working high up among the vines would appear and wave his arm at the steamer and the passengers would wave their hands languidly in reply. Sometimes the steamer would overtake a slower steamer or would meet another advancing tranquilly downstream. The trembling white reflections of the boats, the threshed white foam on the water, the laughter and the waving of hands among the passengers all produced a sensation of great excitement when one boat passed another. Travelling up and down the river also were long chains of barges, often as many as ten in a chain, black and sluggish in the water with their merchandise. The foremost barge was often a family affair; there would be a big woman
in a dirty blouse and kerchief, and a string of children hanging over the side watching the steamer out of sight. The children and the women and the bargees themselves would all wave their hands and smile shyly and rather sweetly as though having their portraits taken. Sometimes there appeared narrow beaches of white sand peopled with colonies of holiday-makers lying half-naked and very brown in the hot sun. Groups of brown swimmers would race each other almost to within the path of the steamer, and occasionally light canoes, each propelled by a man and a girl, extremely serious and brown and beautiful, would dart alongside or bob across the white wake of foam. The paddlers seemed to regard the steamer with indifference and contempt, for they never turned their heads to look at it and never waved their hands. The bodies of the girls were marvellously tanned and slender and they had short yellow hair and fine breasts that hung loose in their white singlets as they leaned forward over the paddles.

A young man was sitting in the bows of the steamer. He was not more than twenty-two or three and he had brown, very English-looking hair, a thin sunburnt face and sensitive blue eyes that looked a little tired. He was travelling on the Rhine for the first time in his life. The broad hills reminded him of the hills of Derbyshire, but there was something quite foreign and dreamlike to him about the peasants, the endless vineyards and the immensity of the Rhine itself. He felt drowsy
with the heat of the afternoon, the stream flowing sleepily past and the sunlight blinking like quicksilver on the green water.

Presently he closed his eyes and sat for what seemed a long time in a sort of half-sleep, conscious of nothing but the motion of the steamer, the voices about him on the deck and the jingling of a gramophone playing somewhere in the stern. He was aroused by a sudden commotion. The passengers were thronging to the taffrail and he heard a sudden clicking of many cameras. He sat up. At that moment a pair of prismatic glasses was put into his hands and an excited voice with a faint German accent exclaimed:

‘Richardson, the Lorelei, quick, quick, the Lorelei.'

He automatically raised the glasses to his eyes. He had a sleepy impression of rocky slopes and afterwards of terraces of vineyards which seemed to come down to within touching distance until he could see the sunlight fretting the under-branches of the trees with soft shapes of gold and the green clusters of grapes standing out from among the vine leaves. The vines had been sprayed, so that the leaves were clouded over with a delicate vitriol-blue, like a lovely vapour. He had an impression also that the horizon was blurred with the haze of a thunderstorm. He lowered the glasses at last and looked up at the man who had thrust them into his hands. He was leaning on the taffrail, turning over the leaves of a Baedeker. The young man touched his arm with the glasses.