The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [117]
It was just as my Uncle Andrew had described it.
“Mr. Atwater,” I said, “do I understand that you are the man who killed my father?”
“Don’t put it that way, Mr. Plant. I feel sore enough about it. He was a great artist. I read about him in the papers. It makes it worse, his having been a great artist. There’s too little beauty in the world as it is. I should have liked to be an artist myself, only the family went broke. Father took me away from school young, just when I might have got into the eleven. Since then I’ve had nothing but odd jobs. I’ve never had a real chance. I want to start again, somewhere else.”
I interrupted him, frigidly I thought. “And why, precisely, have you come to me?”
But nothing could disabuse him of the idea that I was well-disposed. “I knew I could rely on you,” he said. “And I’ll never forget it, not as long as I live. I’ve thought everything out. I’ve got a pal who went out to Rhodesia; I think it was Rhodesia. Somewhere in Africa, anyway. He’ll give me a shakedown till I get on my feet. He’s a great fellow. Won’t he be surprised when I walk in on him! All I need is my passage money—third class, I don’t care. I’m used to roughing it these days—and something to make a start with. I could do it on fifty pounds.”
“Mr. Atwater,” I said, “have I misunderstood you, or are you asking me to break the law by helping you to evade your trial and also give you a large sum of money?”
“You’ll get it back, every penny of it.”
“And our sole connection is the fact that, through pure insolence, you killed my father.”
“Oh, well, if you feel like that about it . . .”
“I am afraid you greatly overrate my good nature.”
“Tell you what. I’ll make you a sporting offer. You give me fifty pounds now and I’ll pay it back in a year plus another fifty pounds to any charity you care to name. How’s that?”
“I’m afraid there is no point in our discussing the matter. Will you please go?”
“Certainly I’ll go. If that’s how you take it, I’m sorry I ever came. It’s typical of the world,” he said, rising huffily. “Everyone’s all over you till you get into a spot of trouble. It’s ‘good old Arthur’ while you’re in funds. Then, when you need a pal it’s ‘you overrate my good nature, Mr. Atwater.’”
I followed him across the room, but before we reached the door his mood had changed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “They may send me to prison for this. That’s what happens in this country to a man earning his living. If I’d been driving my own Rolls-Royce they’d all be touching their caps. ‘Very regrettable accident,’ they’d be saying. ‘Hope your nerves have not been shocked, Mr. Atwater’—but to a poor man driving a two seater . . . Mr. Plant, your father wouldn’t have wanted me sent to prison.”
“He often expressed his belief that all motorists of all classes should be treated as criminals.”
Atwater received this with disconcerting enthusiasm. “And he was quite right,” he cried in louder tones than can ever have been used in that room except perhaps during spring-cleaning. “I’m fed to the teeth with motor-cars. I’m fed to the teeth with civilization. I want to farm. That’s a man’s life.”
“Mr. Atwater, will nothing I say persuade you that your aspirations are no concern of mine?”
“There’s no call to be sarcastic. If I’m not wanted, you’ve only to say so straight.”
“You are not wanted.”
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
I got him through the door, but halfway across the front hall he paused again. “I spent my last ten bob on a wreath.”
“I’m sorry you did that. I’ll refund it.”
He turned on me with a look of scorn. “Plant,” he said, “I didn’t think it was in you to say a thing like that. Those flowers were a sacred thing. You wouldn’t understand that, would you? I’d have starved