Short Stories 1895-1926 (5 page)

‘The sight did not then surprise or dismay me. It seemed only the lucid sequel to that long heavy night-watch, to all the troubles and perplexities of the past. I felt no sorrow, but stood beside the body, regarding it only with deep wonder and a kind of earnest curiosity, yet perhaps with a remote pity too, that he could not see me in the beautiful morning. His grey hand lay arched in the snow, his darkened face, on which showed a smear of dried blood, was turned away a little as if out of the oblique sunshine. I understood that he was dead, and had already begun speculating on what changes it would make; how I should spend my time; what would happen in the house now that he was gone, his influence, his authority, his discord. I remembered too that I was alone, was master of this immense secret, that I must go home sedately, as if it were a Sunday, and in a low voice tell my mother, concealing any exultation I might feel in the office. I imagined the questions that would be asked me, and was considering the proper answers to make to them, when my morbid dreams were suddenly broken in on by Martha Rodd. She stood in my footsteps, looking down on me from the ridge from which I had but just now descended. She hastened towards me, stooping a little as if she were carrying a heavy bundle, her mouth ajar, her forehead wrinkled beneath its wispy light brown hair.

‘“Look, Martha, look,” I cried, “I found him in the snow; he's dead.” And suddenly a bond seemed to snap in my heart. The beauty and solitude of the morning, the perfect whiteness of the snow – it was all an uncouth mockery against me – a subtle and quiet treachery. The tears gushed into my eyes and in my fear and affliction I clung to the poor girl, sobbing bitterly, protesting my grief, hiding my eyes in terror from that still, inscrutable shape. She smoothed my hair with her hand again and again, her eyes fixed; and then at last, venturing cautiously nearer, she stooped over my father. “O Master Nicholas,” she said, “his poor dark hair! What will we do now? What will your poor mamma do now, and him gone?” She hid her face in her hands, and our tears gushed out anew.

‘But my grief was speedily forgotten. The novelty of being left entirely alone, my own master; to go where I would; to do as I pleased; the experience of being pitied most when I least needed it, and then – when misery and solitariness came over me like a cloud – of being utterly ignored, turned my thoughts gradually away. My father's body was brought home and laid in my mother's little parlour that looked out on to the garden and the snowy orchard. The house was darkened. I took a secret pleasure in peeping in on the sunless rooms, and stealing from door to door through corridors screened from the daylight. My mother was ill; and for some inexplicable reason I connected her illness with the bevy of gentlemen dressed in black who came one morning to the house and walked away together over the heath. Finally Mrs Marshall drove up one afternoon from Islington, and by the bundles she had brought with her and her grained box with the iron handles I knew that she was come, as once before in my experience, to stay.

‘I was playing on the morrow in the hall with my leaden soldiers when there came into my mind vaguely the voices of Mrs Ryder and of Mrs Marshall gossiping together on their tedious way upstairs from the kitchen.

‘“No, Mrs Marshall, nothing,” I heard Mrs Ryder saying, “not one word, not one word. And now the poor dear lady left quite alone, and only the doctor to gainsay that fatherless mite from facing the idle inquisitive questions of all them strangers. It's neither for me nor you, Mrs Marshall, to speak out just what comes into our heads here and now. The ways of the Almighty are past understanding – but a kinder at
heart
never trod this earth.”

‘“Ah,” said Mrs Marshall.

‘“I knew to my sorrow,” continued Mrs Ryder, “there was words in the house; but there, wheresoever you be there's that. Human beings ain't angels, married or single, and in every —”

‘“Wasn't there talk of some — ?” insinuated Mrs Marshall discreetly.

‘“Talk, Mrs Marshall,” said Mrs Ryder, coming to a standstill, “I scorn the word! A pinch of truth in a hogshead of falsehood. I don't gainsay it even. I just shut my ears – there – with the dead.” Mrs Marshall had opened her mouth to reply when I was discovered, crouched as small as possible at the foot of the stairs.

‘“Well, here's pitchers!” said Mrs Marshall pleasantly. “And this is the poor fatherless manikin, I suppose. It's hard on the innocent, Mrs Ryder, and him grown such a sturdy child too, as I said from the first. Well, now, and don't you remember me, little man, don't you remember Mrs Marshall? He ought to, now!”

‘“He's a very good boy in general,” said Mrs Ryder, “and I'm sure I hope and pray he'll grow up to be a comfort to his poor widowed mother, if so be —” They glanced earnestly at one another, and Mrs Marshall stooped with a sigh of effort and drew a big leather purse from a big loose pocket under her skirt, and selected a bright ha'penny-piece from among its silver and copper.

‘“I make no doubt he will, poor mite,” she said cheerfully; I took the ha'penny in silence and the two women passed slowly upstairs.

‘In the afternoon, in order to be beyond call of Martha, I went out on to the heath with a shovel, intent on building a great tomb in the snow. Yet more snow had fallen during the night; it now lay so deep as to cover my socks above my shoes. I laboured very busily, shovelling, beating, moulding, stamping. So intent was I that I did not see Miss Grey until she was close beside me. I looked up from the snow and was surprised to find the sun already set and the low mists of evening approaching. Miss Grey was veiled and dressed in furs to the throat. She drew her ungloved hand from her muff.

‘“Nicholas,” she said in a low voice.

‘I stood for some reason confused and ashamed without answering her. She sat down on my shapeless mound of snow and took me by the hand. Then she drew up her veil, and I saw her face pale and darkened, and her clear dark eyes gravely gazing into mine.

‘“My poor, poor Nicholas,” she said, and continued to gaze at me with her warm hand clasping mine. “What can I say? What can I do? Isn't it very, very lonely out here in the snow?”

‘“ I didn't feel lonely much,” I answered, “I was making a – I was playing at building.”

‘“And I am sitting on your beautiful snow-house, then?” she said, smiling sadly, her hand trembling upon mine.

‘“It isn't a house,” I answered, turning away.

‘She pressed my hand on the furs at her throat.

‘“Poor cold, blue hands,” she said. “Do you like playing alone?”

‘“I like you being here,” I answered. “I wish you would come always, or at least sometimes.”

‘She drew me close to her, smiling, and bent and kissed my head.

‘“There,” she said, “I am here now.”

‘“Mother's ill,” I said.

‘She drew back and looked out over the heath towards the house.

‘“They have put my father in the little parlour, in his coffin, of course; you know he's dead, and Mrs Marshall's come, she gave me a ha'penny this morning. Dr Graham gave me a whole crown, though.” I took it out of my breeches pocket and showed it her.

‘“That's very, very nice,” she said. “What lots of nice things you can buy with it! And, look, I am going to give you a little keepsake too, between just you and me.”

‘It was a small silver box that she drew out of her muff, and embossed in the silver of the lid was a crucifix. “I thought, perhaps, I should see you to-day, you know,” she continued softly. “Now, who's given you this?” she said, putting the box into my hand.

‘“You,” I answered softly.

‘“And who am I?”

‘“Miss Grey,” I said.

‘“Your friend, Jane Grey,” she repeated, as if she were fascinated by the sound of her own name. “Say it now – Always my friend, Jane Grey.”

‘I repeated it after her.

‘“And now,” she continued, “tell me which room is – is the little parlour. Is it that small window at the corner under the ivy?”

‘I shook my head.

‘“Which?” she said in a whisper, after a long pause.

‘I twisted my shovel in the snow. “Would you like to see my father?” I asked her. “I am sure, you know, Martha would not mind; and mother's in bed.” She started, her dark eyes dwelling strangely on mine. “But Nicholas, you poor lamb; where?” she said, without stirring.

‘“It's at the back, a little window that comes out – if you were to come this evening, I would be playing in the hall; I always play in the hall, after tea, if I can; and now, always. Nobody would see you at all, you know.”

‘She sighed. “O what are you saying?” she said, and stood up, drawing down her veil.

‘“But would you like to?” I repeated. She stooped suddenly, pressing her veiled face to mine. “I'll come, I'll come,” she said, her face utterly changed so close to my eyes. “We can both still – still be loyal to him, can't we, Nicholas?”

‘She walked away quickly, towards the pool and the little darkened wood. I looked after her and knew that she would be waiting there alone till evening. I looked at my silver box with great satisfaction, and after opening it, put it into my pocket with my crown piece and my ha'penny, and continued my building for a while.

‘But now zest for it was gone; and I began to feel cold, the frost closing in keenly as darkness gathered. So I went home.

‘My silence and suspicious avoidance of scrutiny and question passed unnoticed. Indeed, I ate my tea in solitude, except that now and again one or other of the women would come bustling in on some brief errand. A peculiar suppressed stir was in the house. I wondered what could be the cause of it; and began suddenly to be afraid of my project being discovered.

‘None the less I was playing in the evening, as I had promised, close to the door, alert to catch the faintest sign of the coming of my visitor.

‘“Run down to the kitchen, dearie,” said Martha. Her cheeks were flushed. She was carrying a big can of steaming water. “You must keep very,
very
quiet this evening and go to bed like a good boy, and perhaps tomorrow morning I'll tell you a great secret.” She kissed me with hasty rapture. I was not especially inquisitive of her secret just then, and eagerly promised to be quite quiet if I might continue to play where I was.

‘“Well, very,
very
quiet then, and you mustn't let Mrs Marshall,” she began, but hurried hastily away in answer to a peremptory summons from upstairs.

‘“Almost as soon as she was gone I heard a light rap on the door. It seemed that Jane Grey had brought in with her the cold and freshness of the woods. I led the way on tiptoe down the narrow corridor and into the small, silent room. The candles burned pure and steadfastly in their brightness. The air was still and languid with the perfume of flowers. Overhead passed light, heedful footsteps; but they seemed not a disturbing sound, only a rumour beyond the bounds of silence.

‘“I am very sorry,” I said, “but they have nailed it down. Martha says the men came this afternoon.”

‘Miss Grey took a little bunch of snowdrops from her bosom, and hid them in among the clustered wreaths of flowers; and she knelt down on the floor, with a little silver cross which she sometimes wore pressed tight to her lips. I felt ill at ease to see her praying, and wished I could go back to my soldiers. But while I watched her, seeing in marvellous brilliancy everything in the little room, and remembering dimly the snow lying beneath the stars in the darkness of the garden, I listened also to the quiet footsteps passing to and fro in the room above. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a small, continuous, angry crying.

‘Miss Grey looked up. Her eyes were very clear and wonderful in the candle-light.

‘“What was that?” she said faintly, listening.

‘I stared at her. The cry welled up anew, piteously; as if of a small remote and helpless indignation.

‘“Why it sounds just like a – little baby,” I said.

‘She crossed herself hastily and arose. “Nicholas!” she said in a strange, quiet, bewildered voice – yet her face was most curiously bright. She looked at me lovingly and yet so strangely I wished I had not let her come in.

‘She went out as she had entered. I did not so much as peep into the darkness after her, but busy with a hundred thoughts returned to my play.

‘Long past my usual bedtime, as I sat sipping a mug of hot milk before the glowing cinders of the kitchen fire, Martha told me her secret …

‘So my impossible companion in the High Street yesterday was own and only brother to your crazy old friend, Richard,' said the Count. ‘His only brother,' he added, in a muse.

The Count's Courtship

The Count's Courtship
1

It had long been our custom to muse and gossip through the summer evening twilight, and now we had lingered so late that the darkness of night had come into the room. But two, at least, of the three of us were well content so to moon on, the fitful summer lightnings shining pale on our faces as we sat at the window. As for myself, I can only confess that with every tick of the clock I had been more and more inclined to withdraw, and so give the others the opportunity and ease of my absence. But likely enough, had I done so, the Count would have bluffly recalled me, or my aunt would have roused herself from her reverie to candles and common sense.

So I held my tongue, after my aunt's example, who sat, still and erect, looking out through her glasses, her hands upon the arms of her chair, while the Count spoke seldom, and that generally in a kind of inarticulate discourse with himself.

There was plenty to busy my thoughts. The Count was evidently on the point of abandoning his long-cherished platonicism. My aunt, of late, had been far from her usual self, now brisk, now apathetic; but neither and nothing for long together. Matrimony was in the air, and I must soon be an exile. Soon, doubtless, a wife (and how capable and prudent a wife) would relieve me of my duties to my eloquent, arbitrary old friend. I had become superfluous. The most amiable of chaperons now found himself gradually converted into a tartish gooseberry. The quick lightning had but just now illumined the Count's face as he bent towards her. In his eyes was inspiration. And my aunt's almost uncivil withdrawal of her hand was evidently all but the last capricious valedictory gesture to middle age and widowhood.

My aunt apparently suddenly realized this, and the hazard of keeping silent. She rose abruptly, smoothing out her silk skirts as if she had thought to herself, ‘Well, that's done with.'

‘I fear I was nodding, Count; I beg pardon,' she said in a rather faint voice, and behind the semblance of a yawn. ‘The air's close and heavy. It seems a storm's gathering.'

We neither of us answered her.

‘Richard,' she said, ‘oblige me by ringing the bell.'

The Count deftly intercepted me.

‘It's a waste of peace and quietness,' said he appealingly. ‘Won't you sit but a few minutes longer? Who knows: not so many days may be left, with such quiet ends – the twilight, summer? Richard shall fetch you a shawl. We'll take a turn in the garden.'

‘Very pretty sentiments, Count,' answered my aunt, ‘but you must take pity on old bones. Upstairs must be my garden to-night. I'm tired and drowsy – it's been a hot, dusty day – and I think I'll be getting to my rest while the thunder is out of hearing.'

Soon candles gleamed on the wall; the pensive romantic twilight of evening was over. My aunt turned her face slowly, even reluctantly, I fancied, into their radiance. She looked pale, tired; and seemed disturbed and perplexed.

‘I think, Richard, I'd like your arm up the stairs.' Again the Count forestalled me. ‘Bless me, Count,' said my aunt in shaken, almost querulous tones, ‘you'll be completely spoiling me with your – your kindness. I wouldn't rob you of your peace and quiet for all the world. There, Richard, that's it.'

She leaned a little heavily on my arm, walking slowly and deliberately. In the doorway she turned; hesitated.

‘And now, good-night, my dear Count,' she said.

The Count stood, stark as a patriot, against the wall. It was not to be ‘roses all the way'.

‘Good-night, my dear lady,' said he.

As we slowly ascended the stairs I could hardly refrain from gently taxing my aunt with what seemed very like coquetry. Yet something in her words had set me doubting. And as I now looked sidelong at her, I fancied I could detect a gravity in her face which no mere feminine caprice could cause or explain. At her bedroom door I handed her the candle.

‘I wish you could have stayed a little,' I mumbled inanely; ‘he really meant it, you know. I ought to have realized that …'

She took the candle, staring vacantly into my face the while.

‘I should like to see you, Richard, in about ten minutes' time,' she said. ‘Step up cautiously to my room here. I shall be awaiting you. I want a few minutes' quiet,
sensible
talk – you understand?'

And with that she went in and shut the door.

‘Richard, Richard,' I heard the Count's stealthy whisper at the foot of the stairs; but I made a clatter with the door handle, pretending not to have heard him.

I sat in my bedroom speculating in vain what my aunt wanted with me.

In ten minutes I tapped softly, and she herself opened the door. She was attired in a voluminous dressing-gown of scarlet flannel; her hair was loosely plaited and looped up on her shoulders, with less of grey in it than I had supposed. She shut the door after me, and rather stiffly signed to me to sit down.

‘I'll trouble you, please, to speak rather softly, Richard,' she said, ‘because my window is open for air, and the Count is walking in the garden.' She seated herself on a stiff bedroom chair, clasping her hands in her ample lap. ‘I've called you in, my boy, to tell you that I am going to leave here tomorrow.'

I leaned forward to speak, but she peremptorily waved me back. ‘Janet has ordered a cab for me; it will be at the door at eleven o'clock in the morning. My trunks – these two, just what I shall require – are packed and ready. Janet will see to the rest. And I'll ask you to be kind enough to send the others to me by the railway before the end of the week. See that they're securely locked and corded; the keys are under the clock there. What's more – I want you to take the Count for a walk early tomorrow morning, and not to return with him till luncheon, when I shall be – when I shall be, well – out of the house. Don't keep on opening your mouth, Richard; it distracts me. Then in some sort of explanation you are to tell him that his hospitality was so – so congenial to me that I hadn't the heart nor the words either – to say good-bye. Tell him I'll
write
good-bye … Is that perfectly clear, now?'

A languid breath of air gently lifted the white blind, as if to cool the flush that had spread over my aunt's cheek. Her face was inscrutable.

‘What address did you say for the boxes?'

‘Bless the boy! send them home.'

‘Very well, Aunt Lucy,' I answered, and rose from my chair. My aunt lifted her hand, and let it fall again into her lap.

‘Is there anything else?' I said.

The inscrutability of her expression angered and baffled me. She continued to look at me with an open solemnity, but as if I were a hundred miles away.

‘Why do you pick and choose your words, make such a pretence, Richard, when you might speak out?'

‘“Pretence,” Aunt Lucy?'

‘If an old woman came in such straits to me, and I was a tolerably sensible young man like yourself, I hope and trust I'd use my wits to better purpose. I am in some anxiety. You see it.
You
are not blind. But you are saying to yourself, in your conceit and pique – “I won't ask her what it is.” You think – “I'll wait for the old lady's confession; it's bound to come.” I ask you candidly, is that open and manly? Is that the English frankness and chivalry we never weary of boasting about? Do you suppose that mere cleverness watched over your cradle? Do you think mere cleverness will ever win you a wife? Would – would the Count?'

Colour once more had welled into her cheeks, and her carpet-slippered foot was thrust impatiently out from beneath her dressing-gown.

‘I did not suppose you wished me to intrude,' I stammered. ‘You have your own reasons, I assume, for ordering me about. I assume, you had your own reasons, too, for not taking me into your confidence. I am sorry, Aunt Lucy, but I don't see what else I could have done.'

‘Sit down, Richard,' she said.

‘Look here, Aunt Lucy,' I interposed a little hotly, ‘you ask me to speak out. You've said a good many things a fellow would resent pretty warmly from – any one else. Now let me have my say too. And I can't help it if I do offend you; or if you think I'm butting in on what doesn't concern me. I say this – it's a mean, shabby thing to treat the Count like this. You've talked and walked with him. You know what he thinks – what he feels. He's not the unfeeling simpleton you think
me
. But he can't help hoping. Now is it fair and square then to go off like this behind his back – because you daren't meet him and brave him to his face? He simply can't help himself. That's the point. I'm not blind. You can't explain and you daren't wait to be asked for an explanation. It's simply selfishness, that's what it is. And, what is worse, you don't want to go.' I blundered on and on to the grim lady, venturing much further than I had ever dreamed of doing; and then fell suddenly silent.

‘In some respects, that is the truth, Richard,' she said at last, quite gently – ‘I own that freely. But it's not fear or pusillanimity, and no injury, my boy. I am in the right; and yet it's true I daren't go to him and tell him so. If I lifted a finger – if, just as I am, I walked downstairs and went out and took a turn with him in the garden, on the man's arm – well, I
ask
you. What would he do?'

‘He'd pop the question,' I said vulgarly and resentfully, ‘and you know it. And a jolly good thing too, for both of you. What's more, you've never given him an atom of reason to suppose you wouldn't accept him.'

‘I say
that's
untrue, Richard. And who asked for your views on that, pray? Be smart, sir, in better season. The Count, you say, would ask me to be his wife – what then? I am not too old; I am not too feeble; I am a practical housekeeper! and – I like the man. He'd ask me to be his wife – and then – as I walked in the garden with him, I should be stumbling and peering, pushing and poking my way. Dark to me! Whatever the happiness within. Richard, you poor blind creature, don't you see it? Can the Count marry a woman who's all but
eyeless,
who can but glimmer to-day out of what will be sightless and hopeless as that night outside, to-morrow? I have been struggling against the truth. I like being here. I like – Oh, I have stayed too long. You stupid, short-sighted men! He has seen me day after day. He has seen me go fingering on from chair to chair. Was I hiding it? Do I or do I not wear spectacles? Do they distort my eyes till I look like an owl in a belfry? Should I wear this hideous monstrosity if – you should have seen, you should have guessed.'

I put my hand on my aunt's as it lay on her knee.

‘Good Lord,' I muttered, and choked into silence again.

‘That's it, Richard, that's common sense,' she said, squeezing my fingers. ‘It's all perfectly plain. As duty always is, thank the Lord. He wants a bright, active, capable wife – if he wants any. A blind old woman can't be that. She can't be, even if she had the heart. I'm a silly, Richard, for all my sour ways. Poor man, poor volatile generous creature. He's not quiet and stay-at-home, as his age should be. He's all capers, and fancies, and – and romance. God bless me, romance! … And that's the end of it.'

She stayed; and we heard a light restless footfall upon the gravel beneath the window.

‘I never thought I should be saying all this stuff to you; I had no such intention, Richard. But you're of my own blood, and that's something. And now off to bed with you, and not another word. Out with him at ten and back with him at twelve. And my boxes at the week's end.'

‘Look here, my dear aunt — ' I began.

‘You are going to tell me,' she said, ‘that it's all my fancy; that my eyes are as good as yours; that I shall wreck our old friend's happiness. My dear Richard, do you suppose that my questions to the little snuff-coloured oculist were not sharp and to the point? Do you think life has not given me the courage to know that one's eyesight is at least as precious and mortal as one's heart? Do you think that an old woman, who was never idle in learning, has not by this time read through and through your old friend's warm, fickle, proud, fantastic heart? There are good things a woman can admire in a man, besides mere stubborn adoration. And the Count has most of 'em. So you see, you would have told me only what ninety-nine young men would have told me nearly as well. I think too much of you to listen to it. The hundredth for me. There, give me a kiss and go away, Richard. I wish to retire.'

My aunt rose hastily, kissed me sharply on the cheek, hurried me out of the room, and locked the door after me.

While sitting there in her presence, I had almost failed to see the folly of the business. Her pitiless commonsense had made me an unwilling accomplice. But as I turned over our talk in my mind, I was tempted at once to betray her secret to the Count. He, too, could be resolute and rational and inflexible at need. Nevertheless, I realized how futile, how fatal the attempt might prove.