The Ghost Ship by Richard Middleton

  Blue Blood

  He sat in the middle of the great cafe with his head supportedon his hands, miserable even to bitterness. Inwardly he cursed theancestors who had left him little but a great name and a small andridiculous body. He thought of his father, whose expensiveeccentricities had amused his fellow-countrymen at the cost of hisfortune; his mother, for whom death had been a blessing; hisgrandparents and his uncles, in whom no man had found any good. Butmost of all he cursed himself, for whose follies even heredity mightnot wholly account. He recalled the school where he had made nofriends, the University where he had taken no degree. Since he hadleft Oxford, his aimless, hopeless life, profligate, butdishonourable, perhaps, only by accident, had deprived even his titleof any social value, and one by one his very acquaintances hadleft him to the society of broken men and the women who are anythingbut light. And these, and here perhaps the root of his bitternesslay, even these recognised him only as a victim for their mockery, athing more poor than themselves, whereon they could satisfy the angerof their tortured souls. And his last misery lay in this: that hehimself could find no day in his life to admire, no one past dream tocherish, no inmost corner of his heart to love. The lowest tramp, theleast-heeded waif of the night, might have some ultimate pride, buthe himself had nothing, nothing whatever. He was a dream-pauper, anemotional bankrupt.

  With a choked sob he drained his brandy and told the waiter to bringhim another. There had been a period in his life when he had beenable to find some measure of sentimental satisfaction in the stuporof drunkenness. In those days, through the veil of illusion whichalcohol had flung across his brain, he had been able to regard thecontempt of the men as the intimacy of friendship, the scorn of thewomen as the laughter of light love. But now drink gave himnothing but the mordant insight of morbidity, which cut through hisrotten soul like cheese. Yet night after night he came to this place,to be tortured afresh by the ridicule of the sordid frequenters, andby the careless music of the orchestra which told him of a flowerlessspring and of a morning which held for him no hope. For his lastemotion rested in this self-inflicted pain; he could only breathefreely under the lash of his own contempt.

  Idly he let his dull eyes stray about the room, from table to table,from face to face. Many there he knew by sight, from none could hehope for sympathy or even companionship. In his bitterness he enviedthe courage of the cowards who were brave enough to seek oblivion orpunishment in death. Dropping his eyes to his soft, unlovely hands,he marvelled that anything so useless should throb with life, and yethe realised that he was afraid of physical pain, terrified at thethought of death. There were dim ancestors of his whose valour hadthrilled the songs of minstrels and made his name lovely in theglowing folly of battles. But now he knew that he was a coward, andeven in the knowledge he could find no comfort. It is not given toevery man to hate himself gladly.

  The music and the laughter beat on his sullen brain with a mockinginsistence, and he trembled with impotent anger at the apparenthappiness of humanity. Why should these people be merry when he wasmiserable, what right had the orchestra to play a chorus of triumphover the stinging emblems of his defeat? He drank brandy afterbrandy, vainly seeking to dull the nausea of disgust which hadstricken his worn nerves; but the adulterated spirit merely maddenedhis brain with the vision of new depths of horror, while his bodylay below, a mean, detestable thing. Had he known how to pray hewould have begged that something might snap. But no man may win tofaith by means of hatred alone, and his heart was cold as the marbletable against which he leant. There was no more hope in theworld. . . .

  When he came out of the cafe, the air of the night was so pureand cool on his face, and the lights of the square were so tender tohis eyes, that for a moment his harsh mood was softened. And in thatmoment he seemed to see among the crowd that flocked by a beautifulface, a face touched with pearls, and the inner leaves of pinkrosebuds. He leant forward eagerly. "Christine!" he cried,"Christine!"

  Then the illusion passed, and, smitten by the anger of the pitilessstars, he saw that he was looking upon a mere woman, a woman of theearth. He fled from her smile with a shudder.

  As he went it seemed to him that the swaying houses buffeted himabout as a child might play with a ball. Sometimes they threw himagainst men, who cursed him and bruised his soft body with theirfists. Sometimes they tripped him up and hurled him upon the stonesof the pavement. Still he held on, till the Embankment broke beforehim with the sudden peace of space, and he leant against theparapet, panting and sick with pain, but free from the tyranny ofthe houses.

  Beneath him the river rolled towards the sea, reticent butmore alive, it seemed, than the deeply painful thing which fate hadattached to his brain. He pictured himself tangled in the darkperplexity of its waters, he fancied them falling upon his face likea girl's hair, till they darkened his eyes and choked the mouthwhich, even now, could not breathe fast enough to satisfy him. Thethought displeased him, and he turned away from the place that heldpeace for other men but not for him. From the shadow of one of theseats a woman's voice reached him, begging peevishly for money.

  "I have none," he said automatically. Then he remembered and flungcoins, all the money he had, into her lap. "I give it to you becauseI hate you!" he shrieked, and hurried on lest her thanks should spoilhis spite.

  Then the black houses and the warped streets had him in their griponce more, and sported with him till his consciousness waxed to onewhite-hot point of pain. Overhead the stars were laughing quietly inthe fields of space, and sometimes a policeman or a chance passer-bylooked curiously at his lurching figure, but he only knew thatlife was hurting him beyond endurance, and that he yet endured. Upand down the ice-cold corridors of his brain, thought, formless andtimeless, passed like a rodent flame. Now he was the universe, a vastthing loathsome with agony, now he was a speck of dust, an atom whoseinfinite torment was imperceptible even to God. Always there wassomething--something conscious of the intolerable evil called life,something that cried bitterly to be uncreated. Always, while his soulbeat against the bars, his body staggered along the streets, a thinghelpless, unguided.

  There is an hour before dawn when tired men and women die, and withthe coming of this hour his spirit found a strange release frompain. Once more he realised that he was a man, and, bruised andweary as he was, he tried to collect the lost threads of reason,which the night had torn from him. Facing him he saw a vast buildingdimly outlined against the darkness, and in some way it served totouch a faint memory in his dying brain. For a while he wanderedamongst the shadows, and then he knew that it was the keep ofa castle, his castle, and that high up where a window shone upon thenight a girl was waiting for him, a girl with a face of pearls androses. Presently she came to the window and looked out, dressed allin white for her love's sake. He stood up in his armour and flashedhis sword towards the envying stars.

  "It is I, my love!" he cried. "I am here."

  And there, before the dawn had made the shadows of the Law Courtsgrey, they found him; bruised and muddy and daubed with blood,without the sword and spurs of his honour, lacking the scented tokenof his love. A thing in no way tragic, for here was no misfortune,but merely the conclusion of Nature's remorseless logic. For centuryafter century those of his name had lived, sheltered by the prowessof their ancestors from the trivial hardships and afflictions thatmake us men. And now he lay on the pavement, stiff and cold, a babethat had cried itself to sleep because it could not understand,silent until the morning.