Short Stories 1895-1926 (8 page)

‘But didn't they shut
hers
? I enquired.

Miss Duveen ignored the question. ‘I am not uttering one word of blame,' she went on rapidly; ‘I am perfectly aware that such things confuse me. Miss Coppin tells me not to think. She tells me that I can have no opinions worth the mention. She says, “Shut up your mouth”. I must keep silence then. All that I am merely trying to express to you, Arthur, knowing you will regard it as sacred between us – all I am expressing is that my dear sister, Caroline, was a gifted and beautiful creature with not a shadow or vestige or tinge or taint of confusion in her mind.
Nothing
. And yet, when they dragged her out of the water and laid her there on the bank, looking —' She stooped herself double in a sudden dreadful fit of gasping, and I feared for an instant she was about to die.

‘No, no, no,' she cried, rocking herself to and fro, ‘you shall
not
paint such a picture in his young, innocent mind. You
shall
not.'

I sat on my stone, watching her, feeling excessively uncomfortable. ‘But what
did
she look like, Miss Duveen?' I pressed forward to ask at last.

‘No, no, no,' she cried again. ‘Cast him out, cast him out.
Retro
Sathanas!
We must not even
ask
to understand. My father and my dear mother, I do not doubt, have spoken for Caroline. Even I, if I must be called on, will strive to collect my thoughts. And that is precisely where a friend, you, Arthur, would be so precious; to know that you too, in your innocence, will be helping me to collect my thoughts on that day, to save our dear Caroline from Everlasting Anger. That, that! Oh dear: oh dear!' She turned on me a face I should scarcely have recognized, lifted herself trembling to her feet, and hurried away.

Sometimes it was not Miss Duveen that was a child again, but I that had grown up. ‘Had now you been your handsome father – and I see him , O, so plainly, dear child – had you been your father, then I must, of course, have kept to the house … I must have; it is a rule of conduct, and everything depends on them. Where would Society be
else
? she cried, with an unanswerable blaze of intelligence. ‘I find, too, dear Arthur, that they increase – the rules increase. I try to remember them. My dear cousin, Miss Coppin, knows them all. But I – I think sometimes one's
memory
is a little treacherous. And then it must vex people.'

She gazed penetratingly at me for an answer that did not come. Mute as a fish though I might be, I suppose it was something of a comfort to her to talk to me.

And to suppose that is
my
one small crumb of comfort when I reflect on the kind of friendship I managed to bestow.

I actually met Miss Coppin once; but we did not speak. I had, in fact, gone to tea with Miss Duveen. The project had been discussed as ‘quite, quite impossible, dear child' for weeks. ‘You must never mention it again.' As a matter of fact I had never mentioned it at all. But one day – possibly when their charge had been less difficult and exacting, one day Miss Coppin and her gaunt maid-servant and companion really did go out together, leaving Miss Duveen alone in Willowlea. It was the crowning opportunity of our friendship. The moment I espied her issuing from the house, I guessed her errand. She came hastening down to the waterside, attired in clothes of a colour and fashion I had never seen her wearing before, her dark eyes shining in her head, her hands trembling with excitement.

It was a still, warm afternoon, with sweet-williams and linden and stocks scenting the air, when, with some little trepidation, I must confess, I followed her in formal dignity up the unfamiliar path towards the house. I know not which of our hearts beat the quicker, whose eyes cast the most furtive glances about us. My friend's cheeks were brightest mauve. She wore a large silver locket on a ribbon; and I followed her up the faded green stairs, beneath the dark pictures, to her small, stuffy bedroom under the roof. We humans, they say, are enveloped in a kind of aura; to which the vast majority of us are certainly entirely insensitive. Nevertheless, there was an air, an atmosphere as of the smell of pears in this small attic room – well, every bird, I suppose, haunts with its presence its customary cage.

‘This,' she said, acknowledging the bed, the looking-glass, the deal washstand, ‘this, dear child, you will pardon; in fact, you will not see. How could we sit, friends as we are, in the congregation of strangers?'

I hardly know why, but that favourite word of Miss Duveen's, ‘congregation', brought up before me with extreme aversion all the hostile hardness and suspicion concentrated in Miss Coppin and Ann. I stared at the queer tea things in a vain effort not to be aware of the rest of Miss Duveen's private belongings.

Somehow or other she had managed to procure for me a bun – a saffron bun. There was a dish of a grey pudding and a plate of raspberries that I could not help suspecting (and, I am ashamed to say, with aggrieved astonishment), she must have herself gathered that morning from my grandmother's canes. We did not talk very much. Her heart gave her pain. And her face showed how hot and absorbed and dismayed she was over her foolhardy entertainment. But I sipped my milk and water, sitting on a black bandbox, and she on an old cane chair. And we were almost formal and distant to one another, with little smiles and curtseys over our cups, and polished agreement about the weather.

‘And you'll strive not to be sick, dear child,' she implored me suddenly, while I was nibbling my way slowly through the bun. But it was not until rumours of the tremendous fact of Miss Coppin's early and unforeseen return had been borne in on us that Miss Duveen lost all presence of mind. She burst into tears; seized and kissed repeatedly my sticky hands; implored me to be discreet; implored me to be gone; implored me to retain her in my affections, ‘as you love your poor dear mother, Arthur,' and I left her on her knees, her locket pressed to her bosom.

Miss Coppin was, I think, unusually astonished to see a small strange boy walk softly past her bedroom door, within which she sat, with purple face, her hat strings dangling, taking off her boots. Ann, I am thankful to say, I did not encounter. But when I was safely out in the garden in the afternoon sunshine, the boldness and the romance of this sally completely deserted me. I ran like a hare down the alien path, leapt from stone to stone across the river; nor paused in my flight until I was safe in my own bedroom, and had – how odd is childhood! – washed my face and entirely changed my clothes.

My grandmother, when I appeared at her tea-table, glanced at me now and again rather profoundly and inquisitively, but the actual question hovering in her mind remained unuttered.

It was many days before we met again, my friend and I. She had, I gathered from many mysterious nods and shrugs, been more or less confined to her bedroom ever since our escapade, and looked dulled and anxious; her small face was even a little more vacant in repose than usual. Even this meeting, too, was full of alarms; for in the midst of our talk, by mere chance or caprice, my grandmother took a walk in the garden that afternoon, and discovered us under our damson tree. She bowed in her dignified, aged way. And Miss Duveen, with her cheeks and forehead the colour of her petticoat, elaborately curtseyed.

‘Beautiful, very beautiful weather,' said my grandmother.

‘It is indeed,' said my friend, fixedly.

‘I trust you are keeping pretty well?'

‘As far, ma'am, as God and a little weakness of the heart permit,' said Miss Duveen. ‘He knows all,' she added, firmly.

My grandmother stood silent a moment.

‘Indeed He does,' she replied politely.

‘And that's the difficulty,' ventured Miss Duveen, in her odd, furtive, friendly fashion.

My grandmother opened her eyes, smiled pleasantly, paused, glanced remotely at me, and, with another exchange of courtesies, Miss Duveen and I were left alone once more. But it was a grave and saddened friend I now sat beside.

‘You see, Arthur, all bad things, we know, are best for us. Motives included. That comforts me. But my heart is sadly fluttered. Not that I fear or would shun society; but perhaps your grandmother … I never had the power to treat my fellow-creatures as if they were stocks and stones. And the effort not to notice it distresses me. A little hartshorn might relieve the
palpitation,
of course; but Miss Coppin keeps all keys. It is this shouting that makes civility such a task.'

‘This shouting' – very faintly then I caught her meaning, but I was in no mood to sympathize. My grandmother's one round-eyed expressionless glance at me had been singularly disconcerting. And it was only apprehension of her questions that kept me from beating a retreat. So we sat on, Miss Duveen and I, in the shade, the day drawing towards evening, and presently we walked down to the water-side, and under the colours of sunset I flung in my crumbs to the minnows, as she talked ceaselessly on.

‘And yet,' she concluded, after how involved a monologue, ‘and yet, Arthur, I feel it is for your forgiveness I should be pleading. So much to do; such an arch of beautiful things might have been my gift to you. It is here,' she said, touching her forehead. ‘I do not think, perhaps, that all I might say would be for your good. I must be silent and discreet about much. I must not provoke' – she lifted her mittened finger, and raised her eyes – ‘Them,' she said gravely. ‘I am tempted, terrified, persecuted. Whispering, wrangling, shouting: the flesh is a grievous burden, Arthur; I long for peace. Only to flee away and be at rest! But,' she nodded, and glanced over her shoulder, ‘about much – great trials, sad entanglements, about much the Others say, I must keep silence. It would only alarm your innocence. And that I will never,
never
do. Your father, a noble, gallant gentleman of the world, would have understood my difficulties. But he is dead … Whatever that may mean. I have repeated it so often when Miss Coppin thought that I was not – dead, dead, dead, dead. But I don't think that even now I grasp the meaning of the word. Of you, dear child, I will never say it. You have been life itself to me.'

How generously, how tenderly she smiled on me from her perplexed, sorrowful eyes.

‘You have all the world before you, all the world. How splendid it is to be a Man. For my part I have sometimes thought, though they do not of course intend to injure me, yet I fancy, sometimes, they have grudged me
my
part in it a little. Though God forbid but Heaven's best.'

She raised that peering, dark, remote gaze to my face, and her head was trembling again. ‘They are saying now to one another – “
Where is she?
where is she? It's nearly dark, m'm, where is she?
” O, Arthur, but there shall be no night
there.
We must believe it, we must – in spite, dear friend, of a weak horror of glare. My cousin, Miss Coppin, does not approve of my wishes. Gas, gas, gas, all over the house, and when it is not singing, it roars. You would suppose I might be trusted with but just my own one bracket. But no – Ann, I think – indeed I fear, sometimes, has no —' She started violently and shook her tiny head. ‘When I am gone,' she continued disjointedly, ‘you will be prudent, cautious, dear child? Consult only your heart about me. Older you must be … Yes, certainly, he must be older,' she repeated vaguely. ‘Everything goes on and on – and round!' She seemed astonished, as if at a sudden radiance cast on an old and protracted perplexity.

‘About your soul, dear child,' she said to me once, touching my hand, ‘I have never spoken. Perhaps it was one of my first duties to keep on speaking to you about your soul. I mention it now in case they should rebuke me when I make my appearance there. It is a burden; and I have so many burdens, as well as pain. And at times I cannot think very far. I
see
the thought; but it won't alter. It comes back, just like a sheep – “
Ba-aa-ah
”
,
like that!' She burst out laughing, twisting her head to look at me the while. ‘Miss Coppin, of course, has no difficulty; gentlemen have no difficulty. And this shall be the occasion of another of our little confidences. We are discreet?' She bent her head and scanned my face. ‘Here,' she tapped her bosom, ‘I bear his image. My only dear one's. And if you would kindly turn your head, dear child, perhaps I could pull him out.'

It was the miniature of a young, languid, fastidious-looking officer which she showed me – threaded on dingy tape, in its tarnished locket.

‘Miss Coppin, in great generosity, has left me this,' she said, polishing the glass on her knee, ‘though I am forbidden to wear it. For you see, Arthur, it is a duty not to brood on the past, and even perhaps, indelicate. Some day, it may be, you, too, will love a gentle girl. I beseech you, keep your heart pure and true. This one could not. Not a single word of blame escapes me. I own to my Maker,
never
to anyone else, it has not eased my little difficulty. But it is not for us to judge. Whose office is that, eh?' And again, that lean small forefinger, beneath an indescribable grimace; pointed gently, deliberately, from her lap upward. ‘Pray, pray,' she added, very violently, ‘pray, till the blood streams down your face! Pray, but rebuke not. They all whisper about it. Among themselves,' she added, peering out beneath and between the interlacing branches. ‘But I simulate inattention, I simulate …' The very phrase seemed to have hopelessly confused her. Again, as so often now, that glassy fear came into her eyes; her foot tapped on the gravel.

‘Arthur,' she cried suddenly, taking my hand tightly in her lap, ‘you have been my refuge in a time of trouble. You will never know it, child. My refuge, and my peace. We shall seldom meet now. All are opposed. They repeat it in their looks. The autumn will divide us; and then, winter; but, I think, no spring. It is so, Arthur, there is a stir; and then they will hunt me out.' Her eyes gleamed again, far and small and black in the dusky pallor of her face.