Short Stories 1927-1956 (45 page)

He asked for some water, but I could not turn him over so that he could drink it. And it was all spilt. I told him about the baby dying, but he didn’t show that he could hear anything; and just as I finished I heard Mother coming back from the churchyard. So I ran out and told her that it was Father.

‘A Froward Child'

‘A Froward Child'
*

Lavinia lay in bed, on her back. She was thinking. The hard vibrant light of the delicate pink-shaded reading lamp – held up at arm's-length by a charming little small-winged china boy – flooded the room. Flooded its rose silk damask curtains, its ‘decorative' water-colours, the plaster walls (left by Charles's architect when renovating the old house discreetly unimproved), the ponderous beam of oak across the ceiling above her eyes. Not exactly elegant this, but strong enough for any conceivable purpose to which it could be put. Indeed Lavinia was finding it more friendly just now than
anything
else in the room, much friendlier at any rate than the other ‘antiques'. And she continued to gaze at it, steadily, as she continued to think.

After London – and a bustling, happy, excited London off on its holidays, too – what a silence! It was a silence that seemed to have no limits, infinitely flat and placid, on which the electric light resembled a brilliantly thin glaze. It was Charles's silence, too, of course. It ‘belonged' to him. So did this room; it was
Charles's
room – and his mother's. And until a few hours ago it might have been hers, Lavinia's. Not her bedroom, that is, but her guest room. What odd transmogrifications life is capable of, and one's self with it. A touch, a scarcely perceptible jar, and the complete pattern changes.

And so it had suddenly changed for Lavinia – her whole future – which until yesterday afternoon had seemed as inevitable as that the church clock out there in the frozen dark should have just tolled two. Exhausted, mind and body, she had long since fallen asleep, but had almost instantly
awakened
again, alert in every nerve. Yet driven into a corner though she was, and in a way which it horrified her to think of arguing about, she was more certain than ever of her decision. Not that once and for all she had yet said No – the worst kind of No, since it would betray a Yes. She had merely made up her mind; and that as suddenly as at times the sun seems to set – goes down, and out.

But though, in this, her mind was made up, it was still in the most ghastly disorder. How
un
like that stolid little bow-fronted walnut chest of drawers over there, containing everything she had brought with her, neatly and nicely disposed of by Charles's mother's miraculous parlour-maid, as stiff and old-fashioned as a black-and-white ribanded maypole – and no May! Charles would have seen to that. He insisted on efficiency – his the mould. He was so like his mother that now he didn't need maternal help, only
maternal corroboration: those solid well-cut features, that downrightness; and she so completely Victorian, silvery, serene and – immovable.

And because Lavinia was so near the brink of dreams, though still wide awake, violent quarrelling voices had begun to talk again in some blind alley of half-consciousness: two stunted old men in a hideous blackened street – dismal windows, shuttered cellars. Oh, but of course, this
was
a dream: since there had actually been only one old man. She shut her eyes tight, and tried hard not to think; first, because this helpless repetition of words and images was hideously fatiguing, and she must do her utmost not to give way to them, and next, because as soon as in the slightest degree she lost grip of herself,
all
that last journey came back – more horrifying in memory even than it had been in fact – and brought … She clenched her fingers under the sheet, so hard that the old emeralds in her ring nipped the skin like a tiny ferret.

And then she deliberately turned her fair head to one side, opened her eyelids and through its pinkish overwhelming brilliance looked straight out across the room. Nothing. And the wall was of a clear neutral grey, too, on which any shadow might show up, any obstruction, even though it were only of the workmanship of the mind. What
are
these images that may so beset us? And even though no terror she might be betrayed into would
induce
her to press the ivory bell-nipple in the wall behind her, she might begin to shiver again, or even to talk to herself. And to lose, in the very least, control over one's body – why, even when she had begun to laugh on and on at some remark of Charles's the evening before, she hadn't enjoyed doing so! But how was it that no story she had ever read had told her that these shapes of the mind, these fantasies, can come at one so rapidly; and, unless she was very, very careful, might come to stay?

All the haunted fields, houses, rooms, human creatures she had ever read of or heard of had become accustomed to their state. That's what the word meant – ‘haunted'. Spectres, shapes of the mind,
didn
'
t
, she had supposed, suddenly pounce, without warning, take possession, uninvited and
undeserved
. And yet, was anything in life quite undeserved? Her No to Charles, say, and the old lady's shattering regret, profound chagrin? She could actually hear the gentle protesting tones, on and on: ‘But I so thought, my dear child – was so
happy
to think that everything – everything … And dear Charles, too; oh, I know these strange impulses, but you will …' And Lavinia would be able to utter to neither of them one word of her real
explanation
. She would still have to prevaricate – lie; unless that hard-faced police inspector came inquiring here.

‘Real life is here our portion: real sorrow, short-lived care.' No, no, of course, not
real
;
‘brief.' And when Lavinia saw herself for an instant
returning
, an unattached spinster, to her London duties again, her Christmas
over, she hardly regretted the ‘brief'. Still, this question was settled, what ever the enormous difficulty might be of persuading Charles that it was. And rather than think of it any more it seemed better to be as clear as she possibly could about – well, about what had led up to it. Besides, the ugliest of things are best faced out, and sheer matter-of-fact, however ugly, keeps fancies from settling. So as she leadenly lay there as if in swan's-down on her bed, staring up at that time-blackened beam against the virgin white of the ceiling, and with not the faintest hope of sleep yet, she went step by step over her journey again.

After the hurry-scurry of getting away, the packing, the locking up of her flat, the hasty lunch, the wild scramble in search of the last Christmas gift, the farewells, the congratulations, what bliss it had been to find herself – the porter tipped, her turquoise-blue dressing-case on the seat in front of her (Charles's choice and how exquisitely feminine), her two books beside her on the seat – actually in the train, and that train about to start! Marvel of marvels, too, with not a soul in her compartment beside herself. This, of course, was wholly a stroke of luck – tinged with sagacity, the porter's. Taking his advice, she had watched the first irradiated trainload of holiday passengers glide out of the station before her very eyes. Hers was a relief train, an extra. Lavinia was a slow settler-in, but when in a few minutes she had arranged her many small belongings in the far left-hand corner, her back to the engine, she had resigned herself to the luxury of realizing how deliciously she was enjoying herself. Her mind at this moment had been as gay and radiant and hung about with pretty-pretties, past and to come, as a child's Christmas tree, with, just possibly, Charles for Santa Claus on its topmost twig. That of course, anyhow, was where he ought to be. And in this scintillating inward scene – ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim' – she had sat idly looking clean across the carriage and out of its window.

What a queer sort of animal human beings look in railway stations; more like automata, even, than animals. Could indeed anyone, even really nice, look
really
nice forging along a wooden platform in that predatory fashion in search of a corner seat? But then railway travelling – all
gregarious
functions – are rather dehumanizing. They evoke enterprise and selfishness, even at the ‘festive season'. She herself had become only a kind of animated luggage, though only she herself knew what delicious
gewgaws
it concealed. That perhaps was why Charles was so excellent a
traveller
. He knew what he meant to have – to the last cleek! As for the other kind
of people, the not-quite-nice, railway influences hardly improved them either!

Her heart was beating a little faster than usual, her lips ajar, her eyes
darting
rapidly to and fro – suspense, expectation. In another moment solitude would be assured – that furred-up first-class young lady with the Pekinese had positively thawed into a scamper. Only one last human was for the moment now in sight, or rather just in sight – there, a pace or two within the doorway of the passage or corridor opposite, something to do with ‘Goods'. He had been standing there for minutes together, alone. She had noticed him at once, small and old, keeping guard over his luggage, a dingy shapeless bag, clipped between his ankles. But could anything so
motionless
be real – alive? He looked like some glass-eyed dressed-up figure in wax, for show; although in that case his proprietors could hardly have chosen him a worse pitch. Indeed, in that shadowy obscurity he looked even more like an obscure shadow himself!

Yes, the trickle of humanity had now dried up. A faint high whistle from the barrier pierced the air, as if from far out of the past. It was followed by another nearer the engine – as if from out of the future. Then the platform, the wheeled tea-stand, the fruit-booth, and the tubby benign little station master in his glossy topper began almost imperceptibly to glide away. Quite safe now! But no! There had followed a vaguely-seen sudden sort of
lurching
animal-rush across the platform; and the next moment, with a dying shout of ‘Stand away there!' the outer door had been dragged open and, bag clutched in hand, the little man from out of his gloomy refuge had edged, wrestled, hauled himself in, had slammed the door, and was now
sitting
opposite to her in the further corner.

Above the remote voluminous puffing of the engine and the gentle, accelerating
thump-thumpity-thump
of the wheels, she could hear him breathing – a squat man, rather than merely a small, with a head too big for his long thick body and short legs, and a face that looked at the same time cold and shockingly pale. But Lavinia had glanced away the very instant after he had come in, and was now at the same time watching the wheeling departure of the last outworks of the railway terminus, and
listening
. The stertorous gaspings were now less violent. Her new companion must have edged round in his seat towards his window; yes, and now he had stood up, and, after a pause, had lifted his bag, and, as if with a supreme effort, had managed to deposit it on the rack. There, it appeared, he had watched it for a moment before sitting down.

Lavinia, after another prolonged pause, turned again too, and with a flicker of a glance in his direction withdrew the smaller and slimmer of her two books from under its fellow. She opened it at random. The few lines of dainty print she had thus chanced on had a complete page to themselves:

‘When all is done (they were trying to tell her), human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.'

But although Lavinia's clear intent eyes were doing their best for her, she was merely reading – not marking, learning or digesting. Instead, she was wishing she were alone. She was wishing for other company. She had begun to wonder what kind hers actually was; if it mattered; who was next door; if she could possibly make a change; where first the train stopped – and had suddenly thought of Charles Dickens.

Surely all nondescript carpet bags with leather handles must long ago have followed that Magician into the shades except this one – this dingy green and red one on the rack. It was Christmas Eve, too, though not one of
his
conjuration – grey air, grey sky, and the stark grey London scene beyond her window, smitten with cold, and only the last sullen red of a December sunset fading behind her back, and night pursuing it down. Why hadn't they put on the lights? After the coruscations of the platform, the parcels, the poultry, the holly, the bustle, it was stupid to damp down one's passengers in such a gloom. And at this of all seasons of the year! – one which the newspapers were shouting for joy to predict as a white one.
What
a hideous phrase, ‘a white Christmas', like something screened and huddled up under a sheet, and a sheet that has never been to the wash either.

‘A froward child …' – Lavinia had yet again read over Sir William Temple's lines. They were lovely – but false. For isn't it when the froward child
has
fallen asleep – in
that
final fashion – that the keenest of the ‘care' begins? Or was this being hypercritical? ‘The greatest and the best', too; what is that? Anyhow, though Lavinia herself had been unhappy pretty often, she had never been wretched. Her young days over, she too had been tethered up like most humans to a peg on the common. But her grazing usually had been fresh and green, abundant enough for the day, and with a rather pleasant view. This view, her inward view, that is, was exceedingly pleasant in some ways at this very moment. It would be, possibly, even more pleasant in the future. Charles would see to that. At least he must see to a good deal of it, and for that very reason it was only common sense to keep the ‘in some ways'.