THE SHELTERED SEAT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 543, 21 December 1928, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE SHELTERED SEAT

By

HERE is a seat in the garden f of a house in a great and fc : noble city which shall be I : nameless. The seat is called [ the sheltered seat, because f .• ■ it has been called the shelII m —*n-i=£ tered seat for three-score years and ten by the members of the family in whose possession it has been for that length of time. Of the family there remains but one young man, and he is considered rather strangely behaved by his neighbours and acquaintances —for he has no ri ienU&— by reason of the fact that at certain times and seasons, notably when the moon i 3 full, he will leave the comfort and seclusion of his bed-chamber, and will come and sit upon the seat for a great while. And he will talk. He says he talks to a lady who is sitting on the seat by his side; always is he pleading, but never , are his pleadings heard, and this is the strangeness of it, that there is no lady there. There is nothing there but the seat, the young man—and memory. But once a lady did sit there, and that is the story. Once upon a time the young man, whose name was Geoffrey Malderson Taverner Pelham—he w as a scion of an line, as one may guess by the magnificence of his name —left the society of his aristocratic father and mother and wandered out on to the cool, spacious lawn that sloped away down to the sheltered seat, there to enjoy an after-dinner cigarette. And it was as he was pacing up and down the lawn that he saw the lady again. Twice before he had seen her, and at first he had thought that some of the smoke from his cigarette had got into his eyes, and then when he realised that it had not, he had thought she was a moon-wraith. She wore a little black coat, a little black hat and little black shoes. Her stockings in the moonlight were white, very slim and very shapely. Her little white face was tip-tilted to the moon, and the moon was kissing her, while the wind murmured in jealousy to the leaves of the trees in the garden. Twice before he had seen her and he had been afraid to speak, for she might have been a moon-wraith, and moon-wraiths invariably vanish when addressed by mortal young men. But this night he was determined to speak to her, because he had fallen in love with her. Young men are always doing that. So he threw away his cigarette and crept up to her and sat on the seat at her side. Then he drew a deep sigh. ‘ Shame,’* said the lady softly, as she lowered her eyes from moon. It was too dark to see her eyes, even by the light of the moon; they were pools of mystery, alluring. Inviting, tempting. ‘ Shame,” she said, “to sigh on such a night, when the night itself is a sigh.” Such a husky, soft little voice. At the foot of the garden ran a river, slow-moving, silent, and across the river stood another big house. Borne across the river from a room in the house came the haunting, plaintive strains of “Pofeme.” Music plays the devil with the hearts of susceptible, sensitive young men like Geoffrey Pelham. T sighed,” said Geoffrey, “because I was afraid to speak. I thought you would have vanished if I had have done ■so. Moon-wraiths often do, you know.

“I love you,” said Geoffrey. Slowly the lady turned her little white face to him, and her big black eyes rested upon him. “I love this garden,” she said, “the trees, the shadows, the river. And I love the moon. She is the mother of peace, the sea is her son and the river,” she whispered, “the river is her daughter. There is always the river, though the moon vanes and dies.” “X love you,” said Geoffrey. “Let me give you the garden.” And he had seen her but twice before and did not even know her name. He was in love, anti love knows neither time, nor reason, nor convention. “Yours is the garden,” she murmured, “but mine is the peace it gives me. "Listen!” she said, and a note of bitterness crept into the sweet, husky voice. “Once I was a singer and on the verge of fame, and then I caught influenza, and when I recovered I had lost my voice. Now I am a failure, and the moon is kind to failures.” I

NORMAN BERROW

"I love you,” said Geoffrey. “Let me take cave of you.” Back went her head, and tip-tilted was her face to the moon. “Oh!” she said, sharply, and was silent while the moon kissed her and the wind murmured in jealousy to the leaves of the trees in the garden. “Oh!” she breathed, “I am being taken care of.” “What?” cried Geoffrey. “Are you married, then ?” She shook her head gently. “Are you in love and going to be married?” She shook her head again. “No,” she said, “I am in business.” “Business?” said Geoffrey, “business? 'What business can you be in?” The lady sighed. She rose to her feet and wrapped the little black coat more tightly around her. The wind had dropped and the moon had hidden herself behind a stray cloud. Across the river the last throbbing strains of “Poeme” died on the night air. The peace of the garden had gone. “The oldest,” sighed the lady whose name he did not know. “Oh! surely the oldest in the world. lam being taken care of, thank you.” She waited a second, but Geoffrey was silent, and so she slipped out through the little iron gate. And the garden turned to a desert. She came again, but Geoffrey could not go out down to the sheltered seat, for his friend Jerry Grant was with him that evening. This Mr. Grant was a young man with a charming wife and two lovely kiddies. Mr. Grant knew everything and everybody, and he was Geoffrey’s good friend. So Geoffrey took him carefully out to the porch and pointed her out to him. And he said: “Jerry, who is that girl?” Mr. Grant screwed up his face and peered through the moonlight. “Why,” he said, and then he stopped. The tenseness iu Geoffrey’s voice had told him something. “Oh!” he said casually, “that’s Mary Reynolds. She was a singer once, she had rather a fine voice and then she got ’flu and she lost it. It left her with a weak heart and no money.” He shot a sidelong glance at Geoffrey and read

the young man’s soul, naked in his eyes. He hesitated a moment, then, because he was Geoffrey’s very good friend, he turned the knife. “She lives with a man named Montressor, but who the devil this Montressor is I have never been able to find out.” “Montressor," breathed Geoffrey, “Montressor!” But his friend took his arm and led him inside where they had a game of billiards, a few cocktails and another game of billiards. Then Jerry Grant went home, and he went with pursed lips for he loved his friend. Geoffrey went down to the sheltered seat. She was still there and he stole down to the sheltered seat and sat beside her. “Mary,” he said, “Oh! Mary, I love you.” She did not speak, but she suddenly swayed against him, and he saw that her face was drawn with pain. She held one slim, white hand tightly against her heart. “It’s my heart,” she whispered. Some of the pain in her face was reflected in Geoffrey’s, and he rose hurriedly to his feet. “I’ll get you a drink of water," he said, but she shook her head and pulled him down on the seat again. “It will be all right again in a minute,” she said. So he sat down and he sat silent, watching her.

The pain was gradually leaving her little white “Mary,” he said presently, “I love you. Why won’t you let me take care of you?” “But,” protested the lady, in her soft, husky little voice, “I am being taken care of. I told you.” _ “Oh! I know all about that,” said Geoffrey. I know all about your Mr. Montressor. But, Mary, you don’t love this Mr. Montressor.” She was silent, and he knew she meant “no. “That is why you steal in here like a moonwraith, coming to sit here to seek peace and forgetfulness. You don’t love Mr. Montressor, whoever he may be. Who is this Mr. Monti essor, Mary?” “Mr. Montressor,” murmured Mary, tantalisingly. “You don’t love him,” said Geoffrey roughly; “you love this place. You love this sheltered seat, the garden, the trees, and the river. You love the people of the garden. Mary, you love me.^ She was silent, and he knew she meant * yes- “ Come to me, Mary,” he whispered; "why won t you come to me?” “Mr. Montressor/* she said, suddenly, clearly, “has been very good to me, very kind He gave me a little house, and clothes, pretty clothes, and money. He gave me a sanctuary against the world, he gave me a little world of my own, when the other world disowned me/*

“But you don't love him/* said Geoffrey. “He knew me when I was famous/* she went on in her soft, husky little voice, “and then when I lost my voice he nursed me through my illness, and then —then he looked after me/*

“But you don’t love him,” said Geoffrey. “But he did not marry me. He could not. And now I want marriage. I want to he married,’ she went on fiercely, hungrily. “Oh! it’s not tor myself that I care. You have never known what it is to be able to sing and then suddenly to have your voice change to a croak. I want to be married, I want— children. I know my children could sing.” The soft, husky little voice died away. Across li 10 j - i v('i", borne on the night air, came the Quiver* ing, throbbing strains of “Poeme,” for it was then being speedily played to an exhausted death. And all the shades of Geoffrey Malderson Taverner Pelham’s ancestors gathered round him and held his tongue, for a Pelham does not lightly entei into wedlock with the mistress of a Montressor. “X i can’t,” he muttered. “Oh! Mary, I love you, and you love me. What has marriage to do with love?” “Nothing,” said the husky little voice. “Nothing. But my daughter, my little laughing daughter with the glorious voice, she must have a name.” They fell to silence, Geoffrey and the lady, and again she tilted her little white face to the moon, and the moon kissed her, while the wind murmured in jealousy to the leaves of the trees in the garden. From the big house came the sound of soft voices and happy laughter, the happy laughter of the world that denied Mary Reynolds. “X shall not come here again,” said Mary. “It hurts me. You have taken the peace of the garden from me.” Geoffrey fumbled blindly for her hands, caught them and held them. •“But, Mary,” he protested, “the garden is yours.” Gently she shodk her head. “Mary—” he said, but she stopped him, freeing her hands and rising to her feet. “If you love me,” she whispered, drawing the little black coat tightly around her, “enough to give me a name, come to my house to-morrow. I shall wait for you, but I shall not come here again.” Then suddenly she caught a hand to her heart and a spasm of pain twisted her sweet white face. “My heart,” she panted, “it’s my heart.” Geoffrey rose swiftly.

“I’m a brute,” he said. “Wait. I will get you a drink of water.” But when he came back with the glass of water she had gone. Geoffrey did not sleep that night. Instead, he paced the velvet thickness of the Pelham lawn, and whenever he came to the sheltered seat he swore softly, and then sighed loudly. Young men in troubled'love are always doing that. And the next morning he went about his business sluggishly and with heavy eyes. He did not go to her house that day, though every nerve in his body ached with repressed desire. Then with the evening came his friend, Jerry Grant, who came to comfort and remained to torment. Mr. Grant pushed his friend gently into the billiardsroom and insinuated a cocktail into his hand. “You look devilishly like a plague, laddie,”

said Mr. Grant, studying him with anxious eyes: “Do you feel like a plague?” Geoffrey swallowed his cocktail and never knew the going thereof. He fell limply into a huge leather armchair and gazed at a point in space ten million miles away. “Mary,” he muttered. “Oh, God! Jerry, I love that girl!” . Geoffrey was very young, very sensitive and very much in love, so he said these things, the memory of which, later on, would wake him up in the small hours of the morning and make his face feel furiously hot. Mr. Grant said nothing. “Jerry,” said Geoffrey, “why can’t I marry her?” “Because you can’t,” said Mr. Grant. “Because you’re a Pelham, and sne is a ” “She’s a what?” demanded Geoffrey, snapping his head up. “She is a perquisite of a gentleman named Montressor,” said Mr. Grant, smoothly. “But she doesn’t love him,” said Geoffrey, “she loves me. Montressor was a mistake. We all make mistakes.” Mr. Grant shook his head and swirled the cocktail around in his glass. He gazed at the cocktail, thoughtfully. “The Pelhams don’t,” he said. “Centuries of careful marriage and giving in marriage, and centuries of careful training went to make the Pelhams.” “Yes,” whispered Geoffrey, bitterly, “like racehorses.” “Look at your garden,” went on Mr. Grant, ignoring the interruption, “the gardens of the Pelhams and other people like the Pelhams; no sickly plants, no weakling shrubs, and never a weed. As with the garden, so with the Family. Laddie, you can’t, you mustn’t, bring a weed into the Family.” Geoffrey looked at the garden, bathed In the cool, colourless daylight of the moon. “It was in the garden I saw her first,” he sighed. “Oh, Hell!” snapped Mr. Grant, and busied himself with his cocktail. Geoffrey continued to gaze at the point in space ten million miles away. “Jerry,” he said, “I am going to marry her.” “Oh, laddie, laddie!” said Mr. Grant, urgently, “you can’t. Think, think of your family. Think of your position. Think of your mother.” Geoffrey thought of them; had been thinking of them all day and all night. “But I love her,” he said. “Well, think of your friends.” Geoffrey thought of them also. “My friends will be her friends,” he said, "or else they will not be my friends. “I love her,” he said. “Others have loved like you. Have loved and suffered and lost, and in the end they have been glad they lost.” “But there will be no end to this,” said Geoffrey. “She has my love, and I have her love, and how can we lose that which we don’t possess?” Then Jerry Grant slammed his glass down on the billiards table and some of his cocktail slopped over and stained the cloth. And because he was Geoffrey’s very good friend he came and stood over him and glared at him, and he said some bitter things. “And what of the other lover, the shameful lover? What of this Mr. Montressor? Will he let her go just because you want her? Will this unknown lover, this lover who never shows his face, clasp your hands and say: ‘Bless you my children!’ ? Or will he make a scene? Perhaps he will quietly, underhandedly, make the shame of your lady known to the world. Or perhaps he will blackmail you, and her, in secret, and neither of you will know that the other is receiving the blackmailing notes, and you will be living a lie and you will see the life-blood being gradually drained out of your unhappy lady.” “Oh, stop! stop!” shouted Geoffrey, and lie jumped to his feet and held out his hands to ward off the spectacle of this awful thins “FnGod’s sake, stop!” He thrust his face into that of his fvi enc i and Mr. Grant gave way. “I don’t believe there is a Montressor,” he crier! passionately. ’ “Then why does she talk of him?” demanded Mr. Grant. u “Perhaps—perhaps—l don’t know. uh get out!” he stormed. “Go away, go away, damn you! And damn Montressor!” Then Jerry Grant seized his glass again aud he raised it to his lips. * “I drink to that toast!” he said Quietly And he caught up his hat and went soberly

home to his charming wife and his two lovely kiddies, and he cursed women from Eve to Marv Reynolds, for he loved his friend. When he had gone Geoffrey went down to the sheltered seat and passed the night there, and because he was a healthy young man he slept there though the seat was hard as well as sheltered, but he slept very badly. And in the morning he woke up stiff and unrefreshed, and another day came and went. Came another evening also, and another night of torment, but Jerry Grant did not come that evening for he had done his best, and had been damned and sent home for his pains. So Geoffrey went down to the sheltered seat and he sat there and gazed at the point in space ten million miles away, and he thought of all the reasons why he should not marry Mary Reynolds. And though he could forget his family, his friends, his position, his father, and even his mother, he knew that he

could never forget the words that •? err^ n^ r ®? t had whispered so fiercely to him m the billiardsroom that last evening. So he sat there, and presently the moon rose and came _ high and flooded the garden in a sheet of dead dayligh-, and from the big house across the river came the sounds of soft voices and happy laughter; the happy laughter of the world that denied Mary Reynolds. And then the pendulum swung back. For one blazing moment, while the voices in the big house across the river were stilled, while the wind dropped and the moon was hidden, while the world swam on in a devastating silence, the eyes of Geoffrey Malderson Taverner Pelham were opened and he walked hand in hand with Truth down the corridors of Time, and he passed through Time and looked through the dim, endless vista of Eternity. And he saw from the beginning of all things how it had been ordained that Mary Reynolds was to be his woman, his mate, and that Montressor, and all the Montressors of Life, were but milestones in the byways cf Mistakes that led to the road of High Adventure. Then that blazing moment of ultimate sanity fled, and he shook himself —to find Mary on the sheltered seat at his side, and this was strange, for she had not been there the instant before. She was there as he had seen her before. Her little white face was tilted to the moon, but this time the moon was hidden, and the wind no longer murmured in jealousy to the leaves of the trees in the garden, for the wind knew. And across the river the big house stood out bleak and gaunt and silent. With a cry that was half a sob, Geoffrey threw himself at her feet, and caught hold of her hands. “Oh, Mary!” he sighed, “I love you. I have been blind, but I can see now. Let me marry you, Mary.” But she smiled ever so faintly, and she shook her head ever so gently, and the next instant she was gone. Then Geoffrey leapt to his feet, and a terrible fear gripped his heart. And he ran to his garage, and from between the two sleek, shining limousines he took out his own low-hung, snaky roadster, and he tore as fast as the roadster would take him to the little house that Mr. Montressor had given Mary Reynolds. But he was too late; he was twenty-four hours too late, and though Time is pictured as the feeblest of feeble old men, the fastest of fast, snaky roadsters can never catch up with him. Geoffrey swung off the main road and rushed with the wind up the little dark street to the little dark house where Mary Reynolds lived. The little house was so small that it seemed full of Peonleu though there w r ere only the doctor, the nurse,’ Jerry Grant there. The doctor pursed looked over his spectacles at Geoffrey. ™ “Is your name Geoffrey?” he asked, and Geoffrey nodded breathlessly. The sudden sharp fear he had experienced in the garden had turned to a dead weight that numbed his brain and clouded his eyes. The doctor took off his spectacles and wiped them carefully. He seemed very tired and rather bored. The nurse looked at Geoffrey curiously. Jerry Grant said nothing. “She has been calling for you all day and all last night,” said the doctor, “and you did not come. She died ten minutes ago. Heart failure.” Geoffrey said nothing. The dead weight lay ou his brain and anchored his tongue. The doctor went back to the room where the slim, white shell of Mary Reynolds lay. The nurse gathered things together and went out, still casting that curious, resentful look at Geoffrey. And Jerry Grant was left alone with his friend. Then he spoke. “She was happy before she found your garden.” be said, and his voice sounded infinitely weary and exhausted. Geoffrey said nothing. The dead weight had grown agonisingly heavy. “I loved her, and you killed her,” said Mr. Grant. Then Geoffrey found his voice. “What?” he cried, sharply. “What are y°— talking about? You loved her?” “I loved her,” muttered Mr. Grant, dully. Geoffrey stared at him. And then, once againthat flaming moment of Truth lifted the dead w eight off his brain, and Truth smashed the glass through which we see darkly, and he saw clearly and poignantly. “Oh, God!” he cried. “You’re Montressor. You're Montressor /” And Mr. Grant nodded miserably.