The Golden Flame (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  ‘Tell me, what sort of a place is it where you work?’

  ‘It is a pleasant restaurant, tall, quiet, not so noisy as the Galleon, but then there are not the same kind of people there.’

  ‘No dancer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A Maestro?’

  ‘No,’ he said again.

  She replied quickly with a challenge: ‘You are keeping something from me?’

  He had to lie then. He told her that the restaurant was superb, that the music was delightful; he told her that Monsieur was courteous and that the work there made him very happy. There were flowers he said, petunias and fuchsias in brave puce and purple, and deep royal blue. It was a beautiful place! She believed him, and sank back among the pillows relieved. She asked about the bambino. He could talk to her more freely about the bambino because he had visited the convent before coming here to see her, and the child was well and happy.

  The nuns were kind to him, and he had not even cried when his father had left him.

  ‘Good,’ said Josette, and clapped her hands. ‘Soon I shall be well again. Soon I shall be dancing. Think of that, dear Jan, think of that. It was grand that we should have met the English doctor who did all this for us.’

  ‘Of course it was grand.’

  To and fro he went, coming twice a week to see her in the sanatorium. Once he brought some pink roses, the kind with the long expensive stems, and he carried them and said that Monsieur had sent them from the restaurant.

  ‘He must be a nice man,’ she said gaily.

  ‘He is a nice man. I told you so.’

  She lay back for a long time holding the roses in her arms, so that she could smell their delicious scent.

  The day came when he found her dressed, and waiting for him, with her face flushed with joy, and her eyes bright.

  ‘She is better,’ said the nurse.

  He wrote that night to Matina, and told her that there seemed to be hope, and they would not be here for ever as once he had thought.

  Next week the doctor had promised that they would be able to walk in the garden together. Already Josette looked to be a different woman. She was her old gay self, and it made him very happy. To Matina he did not lie about the restaurant, but told her the truth. He hated the fly-blown menus, and the wicked eyes of Monsieur who always noted the tips, and came and asked for them.

  ‘You have no right to take money; there is the taxe-de-service,’ he would say.

  The other waiters hated him, and they told Jan how they stole from him when they could and did anything possible to cheat him, but Jan never cheated him.

  I never will, he wrote to Matina.

  Every week Matina wrote back from Amalia. The season was almost over, and the guests were moving homewards. The Golden Galleon had done well, but both she and the Maestro missed him, and the Padrone too though he never said very much about it. He had had trouble with La Fleur, who had had a terrible scene with one of the guests one evening, and had thrown a pot of roses at him. The pot had broken, and the roses had scattered, and everybody had been very angry. La Fleur had gone, but not before she had told the Padrone just what she thought of him, and in no measured terms.

  The next week Jan was able to walk in the gardens of the sanatorium with Josette. She walked gaily, and not so tiredly. She stopped to admire the flowers.

  ‘You will bring the bambino to see me?’ she asked.

  He consulted the doctor who said that it could be arranged, and one early afternoon Jan called at the convent, and fetched the bambino, all dressed in his best clothes, and looking so rosy and grand that Jan hardly knew him. The nuns liked him, they attended him carefully, and sewed little clothes for him. Jan knew, as he carried him up the hill, that, at every step, the boy seemed to grow heavier.

  He saw Josette waiting for them in the garden. She stood on the threshold of the little arbour where she sat so often and where they brought her her meals.

  ‘Hello,’ she called to them.

  The bambino turned his roguish dark eyes on her, and held out his arms.

  ‘He has not forgotten,’ she cried, and clasped him closely as though she would never let him go any more.

  ‘Of course he has not forgotten you.’

  She said: ‘It’s queer, one gets ideas, doesn’t one? I feel now that I shall never sit like this again, here, in this arbour, with you and the bambino. I have a feeling that this is a farewell!’

  ‘But that is nonsense! That isn’t true. This is a meeting, not a parting.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘But I am sure.’ He knelt eagerly beside her as she sat there with the bambino in her arms. ‘I know that we are going back to Amalia together, and that we shall be starting all over again. You will be dancing at the Galleon once more, just as you did the very first time that I saw you. They want you back, I heard from Matina only to-day.’

  He knew that pleased her.

  ‘Dear Matina, she was always so gentle and so sweet. If anything happened to me, she would see after the bambino?’

  ‘Of course, but nothing will happen to you. You came here to get well, and they are going to make you well and happy again,’ and he drew down her face and kissed her.

  The nurses had warned him not to kiss her, but he did not care! Nothing mattered save Josette. The nurses did not understand that.

  She grew tired soon, and he had to take the child back again. He left early, and watched her as she stood there waving goodbye to him. Then she ran a few steps forward and he had to return.

  ‘Something more?’ he asked.

  ‘Let me look at him once again. He is so sweet! Only once again, the last time,’ she said.

  ‘Josette, you must not talk that way! It is not true, and it is not kind to upset me so much.’

  ‘Darling, I do not mean to hurt you.’

  ‘I know, but it does hurt me.’

  She laughed then, rather like a child herself. ‘Very well, then I will be happy, and say that we will meet many more times. Take him home, Jan, take him back to the good nuns and tell them to care for him for me. Come again to-morrow. To-morrow, Jan, or I may not be here.’

  As he walked down towards the little town, he thought in distress of her. It was terrible that she should be so depressed. It would not last, he told himself.

  The fat nun greeted him at the door and took the bambino herself.

  ‘Well, and was his mother very pleased?’

  ‘She thought he looked splendid. She asked me to thank you.’

  ‘Soon he will talk,’ said the fat nun, ‘soon he will be able to throw out his hands and say little words. We will teach him to say Mother. That will be nice,’ and she crooned to the baby as she turned into the convent.

  He said: ‘Yes, that will be very nice,’ and turned rather miserably down to the restaurant where he was due to be at work.

  V

  The sanatorium sent a messenger for him next morning, whilst he was still asleep. The messenger was one of the gardeners and he had not wanted to leave his garden to come all this way. He had had difficulty in finding the small humble room where Jan lodged and, having found it, disliked having to wait for a reply.

  Jan knew that it was bad news.

  He thought of little Josette as a ‘fey’ creature who could read the morrows, and had seen how blank they were. The note scribbled by the sister-in-charge asked him to come at once. There had been a haemorrhage in the night, she said, would he make all haste?

  She need not have emphasized that point!

  The gardener was amazed to find that Jan intended returning with him. He was an oldish man and he hated the fact that Jan could so easily outstrip him. They went up the hill, the older man lagging noticeably, but Jan did not see it. On and on he went, and now with the sanatorium in sight, looking, as Josette had said like a white palace, he began to run. He turned in at the gates, and up the drive, and rang the bell at the main entrance.

  Inside it was still leisurely and calm.
<
br />   The porter admitted him and he did not wait for directions. He sped along the corridor, wide with its waxed floors, and its quiet doors in balconies on either side. He came at last to the little room at the far end, just as the Sister came out with a bowl in her hand.

  She looked immensely relieved.

  ‘We are so glad that you have come.’

  ‘What is the matter?’

  He stood there, his hat held in his two hands, his eager eyes trying to read the truth from hers.

  ‘She had a haemorrhage. It often happens in these cases, you know; just as you think they are going to be well, then something like this occurs.’

  ‘She’ll get better?’

  He saw that her eyes were evasive then, he read the truth behind them, knew that she dared not admit it.

  ‘You must see her,’ was all that she said.

  He went into the little room and saw Josette, and now it seemed that life had been drained from her. She lay very still staring at them with those lovely eyes, and she was not in pain.

  ‘You, Jan,’ she said, ‘I told you to come early.’

  ‘I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘You will care for the bambino, he is so little. One day he will be a great man, I feel it in my bones. You will care for him.’

  ‘With my life, Josette.’

  ‘And Matina, Matina must help you. She was always so good.’

  She gave him her hand confidingly, like a little child. So she lay holding his, and gradually her eyes closed, and he thought that she slept. He did not move for fear of waking her, and much later, the sister-in-charge tapped him on the shoulders.

  ‘Come,’ she said quite tenderly, ‘you cannot stay much longer.’

  ‘But Josette, when she wakes …’ he murmured stupidly.

  She gave no answer but indicated the quiet figure curled on her side on the bed, and then he knew that the time for waking had passed and Josette still slept.

  She slept the sleep which is for ever.

  PART TWO

  IN ENGLAND

  One

  I

  In Soho there was a small restaurant, so tiny that one almost passed it by. It was wedged in between a couple of little shops and a big restaurant which did much business, and had a name for itself, but the little restaurant kept its clients, because those who came once, came twice.

  It was clean, too.

  A black cat sunned itself on the wide white step, and in its kitten days played contemptuously with the leaves of the creeper which grew beside that step, green in spring, and rosying with autumn.

  A dark-eyed child sometimes toddled to that step, but was always caught and taken back again before he went too far.

  ‘The bambino must not run away,’ his father would say.

  The clients mistook the dark-eyed madonna-like woman for his wife, but they were given to understand that the owner of the restaurant had suffered a tragedy, and that his wife, a dancer, very young, and very charming, had died in a sanatorium in Switzerland, and that this girl was one who had worked with him when he was younger, and had come to England with him to help run this restaurant into which all his savings were invested.

  There was no romance behind it.

  In truth Matina had gone to Switzerland the moment that she had heard of the death of Josette. Jan had sent for her; he had felt suddenly empty, distressingly alone; he had not known what to do for the best, and was like a man who has been hit on the head and does not know which way to turn next.

  In the first ungovernable agony of grief he had written to Matina. She had received the letter, just as she was going to the Galleon to play. She read it sitting on the shore, where she had sat with him that first night when they had walked here together. Then she had known that he meant a great deal to her, then she had realized that she wanted him more than anybody else in the world, and almost instantly that it was not to be.

  But she had steeled herself against the blow. She had not even been jealous of poor little Josette who had been so unhappy.

  She read the letter, in its stark stilted little sentences, and she understood how terrible he felt.

  I shall go to him, she told herself.

  When she entered the Galleon, she told the old Maestro.

  ‘Josette is dead, and I shall have to go to Jan, he needs me so dreadfully.’

  The Maestro who had been busy with his bow and the resin, glanced up at her thoughtfully. He said: ‘Are you sure that it is wise?’

  ‘He needs me,’ she said simply.

  The old man, who was wise in the ways of this world, did not argue. It was the Padrone who made the fuss when Matina told him about it.

  ‘I shall be going to-morrow,’ she said.

  ‘You will be going?’

  ‘Yes, to Jan and the child. Josette is dead. They need me.’

  The Padrone flung up his hands in horror. He cried: ‘There has been nothing but trouble ever since I brought that boy from Villefranche to my restaurant, nothing but trouble all the time! And now you must go traipsing across Europe after him. You, of all people. Why?’

  ‘Because he needs me so much.’

  ‘I need you. You do not think of that. I need you badly.’

  ‘I know, but there are other people you can get to play the piano for you, and there is no one else that Jan can get to bind his wounds.’

  ‘Tst. You’re crazy!’ said the Padrone, getting very angry indeed.

  ‘I shall have to go.’

  She went home that night hardly realizing that to-morrow she would have left Amalia for ever. She went up to her room. She had always lived very cheaply. She had spent so little on herself, for her needs had been small, and she had harvested any extra money that she had made.

  There had been moments, of course, when the Padrone had been generous, and when there had been good nights at the Galleon and people had sent up money to the musicians. She had saved all of it. Now she counted it carefully, and was surprised to find that it amounted to so much. She could get to Jan easily, better still she could pay for all of them to go away, perhaps to England!

  She always thought of England with longing. It was quiet there. England was an island which kept serenely away from the hotbed that Europe could be. You could live freely, and no one interfered. You were allowed to go your own way.

  We will go to England, she decided.

  On that long journey she sat there, with a handkerchief tied round her head, and her few belongings bundled together in her lap, and her heart kept beating with the thunder of the train, and she kept saying to herself: ‘We will go to England.’

  She had made up her mind to that, long before she met Jan.

  She found him sitting dully in his room. He had not been to the restaurant to work again, somehow he had not had the courage, from the first he hated Monsieur, and the duties there; he had loathed the atmosphere of the place, cheap with cheap people. He did not care now if he starved! He had his savings, as he had told himself, the savings that were to have bought a little restaurant for himself and Josette, where he would be maître d’hotel, and she would dance, and where they would make goulash and risotto.

  That dream had died with a hundred others, in the sanatorium on the hill.

  ‘Life is over,’ he told Matina.

  ‘Life is beginning,’ she said.

  She sat down by his side on the cheap hard bed, and she took his hand. She knew that he hardly grasped that she was there, that he was bewildered and that somebody else would have to make plans for him.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘we will take the bambino and go right away. We will go to England.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘I would like that,’ he said.

  He remembered the English people who had come to Villefranche, interesting people with kind eyes. They were peace-loving, and kind to strangers.

  ‘I would like to go to England,’ he said.

  Madame, who ran the lodgings, eyed Matina with some suspicion, an
d for the sake of quieting her doubts, they said that she was Jan’s cousin, come to help him with the baby.

  Although Madame’s doubts may not have been silenced, she said no more.

  Jan himself fetched the child from the convent, and brought his little bundle of new clothes with him. He looked well and strong, and had grown tremendously.

  ‘He is a fine lad, you will be proud of him one day,’ said Matina, and she took him into her arms, and knew that from this time onward he would be as her own son.

  Jan was himself like a pliable docile child, he did not mind where he went, nor what he did; he accepted Matina’s arrival as part of a fate. He was thankful to her, and trusted her as he would have trusted his own mother, only perhaps more so. There had been little true bond between him and his mother, and the fact that what she had predicted had proved to be true, had made him even more bitter about things.

  Now he would never hear from her again, because she would not know where he was nor what was happening to him, and he did not care.

  ‘When we have made the journey, you will feel different,’ said Matina, sitting on the hard sofa in their lodgings and counting out their resources. She had saved more than she had supposed, and Jan had put by. He and Josette had earned good money between them, and they had few expenses. Only this last difficult trip to Switzerland and all that it had entailed.

  ‘We will start at once,’ he said.

  She was glad that he did not demur, and that he did not even want to take her to the little cemetery where all that once had been so gay and vivacious now rested. There had been enough sadness. She tried to attract his interest to the child, and they started for England two days later.

  II

  The journey bore them through the lovely rugged country of Switzerland, into bleak France, and upwards to the sea. Neither of them said much. The child slept and woke, and cried for his food, sucked noisily, and then was set to sleep again. When he wanted to play he amused himself with trying to catch the flies on the window pane. There were many of these, for it was the autumn and hot days and cold nights which brought them out into the sunshine.

  Matina held him.

  ‘He is a beautiful baby, you must be proud of him,’ said other people in the carriage, taking him to be her own child.