Evening star. [volume], March 08, 1936, Page 6, Image 82

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
Qrecian finger
Dfothing was known about her—
except that she was very
beautiful. It should have been
a warning
o
<lAnother
adventure
of the
unbelievable
Jorkens
by
Lord
Dunsany
It may seem to some of my readers that
the principal occupation of the Billiards
Club is to listen to tales by Jorkens.
This is by no means the view taken by
the club In fact the other day we were all
discussing singing, for no other reason than
that we knew Jorkens to be uninterested in
it and thereby unlikely to join in with a tale;
for, much as we sometimes appreciate Jork
ens' contrast of Africa to our somewhat dark
street, we have an occasional liking for the
sound of our own voices.
We were talking then about singing; Jork
ens broke in with the words: “I never cared
about singing. It never meant anything to
me.”
“You speak,” said Terbut, "as though your
lamentable deficiency were something to be
proud of.”
• It’s meant a good deal to me,” said
Jorkens. “It once saved my life."
“Saved your life?” muttered Terbut.
“I'll tell you,” said Jorkens, "just what
happened. There was a young fellow I knew
called Bob Hosden, who had never travelled
and was rather liable to get in love, which
of course leads to trouble in the long run; and
into his life in London came a woman who
had travelled a long way. all the way from
Greece, and was really beautiful; nobody
seemed to know anything about her, and in
stead of that warning him it attracted him
all the more. If he had ever travelled, he
might have wanted to know what part of the
country she came from: but, as it was, I sup
pose he pictured her home as a little island
in a ceruleum sea, with small ships sailing by.
and somewhere Homer singing. Which made
it all worse, though she was romantic enough
with her dark hair and her fine features, clear
as lines cut in marble, to have caught a
young fellow like him without any other
accessories.
“She was a widow and nobody knew how
many husbands she had had; once she men
tioned two. Nobody knew her age, or indeed
anything of her whatever. She took a nice
flat in Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park.
Even her finances were queer; she had them
in small bags of sailcloth — unstrung, un
pierced pearls and a few nuggets of gold.
Somebody took the nuggets to a bank, and
sold a few of the pearls for her : otherwise she
would have paid her bills with the nuggets
and pearls direct.
“Bob Hosden introduced me to her at a
sherry party, and asked me what I thought
of her. Of course I said she was very nice: it
Illustration by
William Reussweig
wasn't my job to advise him not to amuse
himself. She spoke English after a fashion,
and her talk was fairly full of nautical phrases,
as though she'd learnt it from sailors. And
then one day I heard she’d a fine voice, but
would not sing at concerts, because she only
sang when she felt like it. Temperamental I
supposed, and thought no more about it. I
thought no more about it till one evening
when I was walking along the road that
bounds the south side of the park, the far side
from the houses, and heard a woman singing
softly. It was she, and a crowd wras beginning
to gather. She was up in her flat, out of sight.
She was singing as though in idleness and
only to please herself.
“The crowd increased and she seemed to
be calling. like some shepherd with an incred
ibly beautiful voice calling a message from
hilltops. I went across the road to hear the
message, but it was not in English. Some of
the crowd went down the passage there is.
and I think they rang the bell of the door in
Knightsbridge, but no one opened it. and the
singing went softly on. The evening went
glimmering away; and all the time I knew I
should have gone at once and found Bob
Hosden and warned him, but I could not
leave that song."
l tnougnt you said you cared nothing tor
singing,” said Terbut.
"That’s the whole point,” said Jorkens.
"Here was a song that gripped me so that I
could not let it alone, and I knew that some
thing was wrong.”
"What did you think was wrong?” one of
us asked.
“I didn’t know,” said Jorkens. "But I knew
that singing that could draw me like that
must have something terrible in it, and the
woman must have some power that wasn't
right. Anyway there would be no chance for
Bob Hosden, if he had anything more to do
with her. But how was I to warn him?
"Well, Bob saved me the trouble by coming
that way himself. He never saw me at all;
he brushed against me and turned out of the
park down the passage, I after him. He came
to the street door of the flat in which she
lived, and found it shut; the hall-porter had
shut it because of the crowd that had been
trying to get in. He rang and nobody an
swered. Then he beat on the door.
Finally T said: “I shall have to tell the police”
“After a while he was making such a noise
that someone was bound to come.
“ 'Bob,' I said, ‘chuck it. That’s not your
house.'
“Bob never heard me speak. After a mo
ment I darted off. I couldn't have done it
from the other side of the house, where the
song was in full blast, a song low and soft but
coming straight at you out of the back win
dows. I couldn’t have got away. But in
Knightsbridge l turned and darted oil and
got a policeman. ‘There's a man giving trou
ble,’ I said. ‘Annoying people in the flats.'
“The policeman came at once.
“ 'I've come chiefly on behalf of Mme. An
thropophalus,’ 1 said. 'It's she he’s annoying
mostly.’
“ 'I'll deal with him,' said the constable.
“Well, the first question the constable
asked of Bob, who was making a lot of noise
on the door by now. was: ‘What do you want
in there5' And Bob replied: ‘I want to see
Mme. Anthropophalus.’ So his case was pretty
well prejudiced from the start. The constable
took him away.
“Bob was bound over to keep the peace for
six weeks, and I felt I had saved him that time.’’
It is a curious thing but, though there was
a distinct clique in the club that had tried to
prevent Jorkens from starting his story, im
patience was exhibited now to get him back
to the thread of it.
“What happened to Bob?” asked Terbut.
"The moth and the candle,” said Jorkens.
“She didn’t sing again for some days. But as
soon as she did, back he came again.”
"Did he live in the same street?" asked
Terbut.
"No; the other side of the park.”
"Then how could he hear her?”
"That’s what we shall never know," said
Jorkens. "Well, back he came again one eve
ning, just at the time when I usually take a. ,
walk in the park, and I had heard her singing
and I was there, too. I tried to dissuade him
from going around to the door; but he went
straight on down the passage, with me beside
him, and came to the door of the flat and
found it open, and she was singing all the
time and the air seemed filled with her singing,
as the April woods were filled with the black
birds' chorus at dawn.
"He went straight to the door of the lift
shaft and rang the bell. I had hold of his arm,
but nothing would stop him. After he had
gone I looked up the stairs, down which that
song was rippling; then for the first time in
my life I wished that singing had the irower
to draw me as it seemed to draw other men.
Almost it did; almost I ran up those stairs;
but in the end I only sat down on one of the
steps and wept.
"The singing soon stopped. Then Hob Hos
den came down the stairs looking rather
scared, and we walked away, and when we
got outside he told me that they were engaged
to be married. So I said, ‘For the last time, •
Hob Hosden, can I persuade you to leave her
alone?' And he said No.' So I said, ‘Oh well
then, I congratulate you’; but very sadly, for
I was fond of Bob Hosden.
"I didn’t attend the wedding, but I went
down two days after to see them on their
honeymoon.”
"Wonder you didn’t go next day,” said'
Terbut.
"Lord knows why I didn’t," exclaimed
Jorkens. "I knew I ought to. What 1 could
have done is another matter, but I knew I
ought to have gone. And the strength of that
feeling grew and grew all day, and in the end
(Continued on page IS)