Short Stories 1927-1956 (5 page)

‘There, there: I refuse to disagree,’ he was saying. ‘Your company has been very welcome to me; and – well, one should never embark on one’s little private preserves without encouragement. My own in particular meet with very scant courtesy usually. That animal could tell a tale.’ The
crunching
continued. ‘Couldn’t yer, you old rascal? Where’s Steve; where’s Steve? Now get along back!’ The scrunching ceased. The yellowish dog retreated into its corner.

‘And now, Mr Dash,’ declared Mr Bloom, ‘if you have sufficiently
refreshed
yourself, let us leave these remains. These last few months I have detested being encumbered with servants in the house. A foreign element. They are further away from us, I assure you, in all that really matters, than that rascal, Chunks, there in the corner. Eh, you old devil?’ he called at his pet, ‘Ain’t it so? Now, let me see,’ he took out his watch, a gold half-hunter, its engraving almost worn away with long service – ‘nine o’clock; h’m; h’m; h’m! Just nine! We have a long evening before us. Believe me, I am
exceedingly
grateful for your company, and regret that – but there, I see you have already condoned an old man’s foibles.’

There was something curiously aimless, even pathetic in the tone of that last remark. He had eaten with excellent appetite, and had accounted for at least four-fifths of our champagne. But he rose from the table looking more
dejected than I should have supposed possible, and shuffled away in his
slippers
, as if the last ten minutes had added years to his age.

He was leading the way with one of the candlesticks in his hand, but, to avoid their guttering, I suppose, had blown out two of its candles. A dusky moonlight loomed beyond the long hinged windows of his study. The faint earthy odour of spring and night saturated the air, for one of them was open. He paused at sight of it, glancing about him.

‘If there is an animal I cannot endure,’ he muttered over his shoulder at me, ‘it is the cat – the feline cat. They have a history; they retreat into the past; we meet them in far other circumstances. Yes, yes.’

He had closed and bolted the window, drawn shutters and curtains, while he was speaking.

‘And now, bless my soul, Mr Dash, how about your room – a room for you? I ought to have thought of that before: bachelor habits. Now where shall we be – put?’ With feet close together he stood looking at me. ‘My secretary’s, now? Would that meet the case? He was a creature for comfort. But one has fancies, reluctances, perhaps. As I say, the upper rooms are all bare, dismantled, though we
might
together put up a camp-bed and – and water in the bath-room. I myself sleep in here.’

He stepped across and drew aside a curtain hung between the bookcases. But there was not light enough to see beyond it.

‘The room I propose is also on this floor, so we should not, if need be, be far apart. Eh? What think we? Well, now, come this way.’

He paused. Once more he led me out, and stopped at the third door of the corridor on the left-hand side. So long was
this
pause, one might have supposed he was waiting for permission to enter. I followed him in. It was a lofty room – a bed and sitting-room combined, and its curtains and
upholstery
were of a pale purple. Its window was shut, the air stuffy and faintly sweet. The bed was in the further corner to the left of the window; and there again the dusky moonlight showed.

I stood looking at the mute inanimate things around me in that blending of the two faint lights. No doubt if I had been ignorant that the owner, or rather user, of the room had made his last exit thence, I should have noticed nothing unusual in its stillness, its vacant calm. And yet, well, I had left a friend only that afternoon still a little breathless after his scramble up the nearer bank of the Jordan. And now – this was the last place on earth – these four walls, these colours, this bookcase, that table, that window – which Mr Bloom’s secretary had set eyes on before setting out, not to return.

My host watched me. He would, I think, have shut and pulled the curtains over these windows too, if I had given him the opportunity.

‘How’s that, then? You think, you will be – but there, I hesitate to press the matter … In fact, Mr Dash, this is the only room I
can
offer you.’

I mumbled my thanks and assured him not very graciously that I should be comfortable.

‘Capital!’ cried Mr Bloom. ‘Eureka! My only apprehension – well, you know how touchy, how sensitive people can be. Why, my dear Mr Dash, in a world as superannuated as ours is every other mouthful of air we breathe must have been
some
body’s last. I leave you reconciled, then. You will find me in the study, and I can promise you that one little theme shall not
intrude
on us again. The bee may buzz, but Mr Bloom will keep his bonnet on! The
fourth
door on the right – after turning to your
right
down the
corridor
. Ah! I am leaving you no light.’

He lit the twin wax candles on his late secretary’s dressing-table, and withdrew.

I myself stood for awhile gazing stupidly out of the window. In spite of his extraordinary fluency, Mr Bloom, I realized, was a secretive old man. I had realized all along of course that it was not my beautiful eyes he was after; nor even my mere company. The old creature – admirable mask though his outward appearance might be – was on edge. He was detesting his solitude, though until recently, at any rate, it had been the one aim of his life. It had even occurred to me that he was not much missing his
secretar
y. Quite the reverse. He had spoken of him with contempt, but not exactly with the contempt one feels for the completely gone and worsted. Two things appeared to have remained unforgiven in Mr Bloom’s mind
indeed
: some acute disagreement between them, and the fact that Mr
Champneys
had left him without due notice – unless inefficient lungs constitute due notice.

I took one of the candles and glanced at the books. They were chiefly of fiction and a little poetry, but there was one on mosses, one on English birds, and a little medical handbook in green cloth. There was also a
complete
row of manuscript books with pigskin backs labelled
Proceedings.
I turned to the writing-table. Little there of interest – a stopped clock, a dried-up inkwell, a tarnished silver cup, and one or two more books:
The
Sentimental
Journey,
a
Thomas
à
Kempis,
bound in limp maroon leather. I opened the
Thomas
à
Kempis
and read the spidery inscription on the fly-leaf: ‘To darling Sidney, with love from Mother. F.C.’ It startled me, as if I had been caught spying. ‘Life surely should never come quite to this,’ some secret sentimental voice within piped out of the void. I shut the book up.

The drawer beneath contained only envelopes and letter paper –
Mon
trésor
,
in large pale-blue letters on a ‘Silurian’ background – and a black book, its cover stamped with the word
Diary
:
and on the fly-leaf, ‘S.S. Champneys’. I glanced up, then turned to the last entry – dated only a few months before – just a few scribbled words: ‘Not me, at any rate: not
me.
But even if I could get away for —’ the ink was smudged and had left its ghost on the blank page opposite it. A mere scrap of handwriting and that poor hasty smudge of ink – they resembled an incantation. Mr Bloom’s
secretary
seemed also to be intent on sharing his secrets with me. I shut up that book too, and turned away. I washed my hands in S.S.C.’s basin, and – with my fingers – did my hair in his glass. I even caught myself beginning to
undress
– sheer reluctance, I suppose, to go back and face another cataract of verbiage.

To my astonishment a log fire was handsomely burning in the grate when at length I returned to the study, and Mr Bloom, having drawn up two of his voluminous vermilion armchairs in front of it, was now deeply and amply encased in one of them. He had taken off his spectacles, and appeared to be asleep. But his eyes opened at my footstep. He had been merely ‘resting’ perhaps.

‘I hope,’ was his greeting, ‘you found everything needful, Mr Dash? In the circumstances …’

He called this up at me as if I were deaf or at a distance, but his tone
subsided
again. ‘There’s just one little matter we missed, eh? – night attire! Not that you wouldn’t find a complete trousseau to choose from in the
wardrobe
. My secretary, in fact, was inclined to the foppish. No blame; no blame; fine feathers, Mr Dash.’

It is, thank heaven, an unusual experience to be compelled to spend an evening as the guest of a stranger one distrusts. It was not only that Mr Bloom’s manner was obviously a mask but even the occasional stupidity of his remarks seemed to be an affectation – and one of an astute and
deliberate
kind. And yet Montrésor – in itself it was a house of unusual serenity and charm. Its urbane eighteenth-century reticence showed in every panel and moulding. One fell in love with it at first sight, as with an open, smiling face. And then – a look in the eyes! It reeked of the dubious and
distasteful
. But how can one produce definite evidence for such sensations as these? They lie outside the tests even of Science – as do a good many other things that refuse to conform with the norm of human evidence.

Mr Bloom’s company at a dinner-party or a
conversazione
,
shall we say, might have proved refreshingly droll. He did his best to make himself amusing. He had read widely – and in out-of-the-way books, too; and he had an unusual range of interests. We discussed music and art – and he brought out portfolio after portfolio of drawings and etchings to illustrate some absurd theory he had of the one, and played a scrap or two of Debussy’s and of Ravel’s
Gaspard
de
la
Nuit
to prove some far-fetched little theory of his own about the other. We talked of Chance and Dreams and Disease and Heredity, edged on to Woman, and skated rapidly away. He
dismissed life as ‘an episode in disconcerting surroundings’, and scuttled off from a detraction of St Francis of Assisi to the problem of pain.

‘Mr Dash, we
fear
pain too much – and the giving of it. The very
mention
of the word stifles us. And how un-Christian!’

The look he peeked down at me at this was proof enough that he was intent only on leading me on and drawing me out. But I was becoming a little more cautious, and mumbled that that kind of philosophy best begins at home.

‘Aye, indeed! A retort, a retort. With Charity on the other side of the hearth in a mob-cap and carpet slippers, I suppose? I see the dear creature: I see her! Still, you will agree, even
you
will agree that once, Mr Dash, the head has lost its way in the heart, one’s brain-pan might as well be a basin of soap-bubbles. A man of feeling, by all means – but just a trace, a
soupçon
of rationality, well, it serves! Eh?’

A few minutes afterwards, in the midst of a discourse on the progress of human thought, he suddenly enquired if I cared for the game of
backgammon
.

‘And why not? Or draughts? Or
solitaire
,
Mr Dash? – a grossly
under estimated
amusement.’

But all this badinage, these high spirits were clearly an elaborate disguise, and a none too complimentary one at that. He was ‘keeping it up’ to keep
me
up; and maybe, to keep himself up. Much of it was automatic – mere mental antics. Like a Thibetan praying-wheel, his mind went round and round. And his attention was divided. One at least of those long, fleshy, hairy ears was cocked in another direction. And at last the question that had been on my tongue throughout most of the evening popped out almost inadvertently. I asked if he was expecting a visitor. At the moment his round black back was turned on me; he was rummaging in a corner cupboard for glasses to accompany the decanter of whisky he had produced; his head turned slyly on his heavy shoulders.

‘A visitor? You astonish me. Here? Now? As if, my dear Mr Dash, this rural retreat were Bloomsbury or Mayfair. You amuse me. Callers! Thank heaven, not so. You came, you saw, but you did not
expect
a welcome. The unworthy tenant of Montrésor took you by surprise. Confess it! So be it. And why not? What if you yourself were my looked-for visitor? What then? There are surmises, intuitions, forebodings – to give a pleasant tinge to the word. Yes, yes, I agree. I was on the watch; patiently,
patiently.
In due time your charming little car appears at my gate. You pause: I say to myself, Here he is. Company at last; discussion; pow-wow; even controversy perhaps. Why not? We are sharing the same hemisphere. Plain as a pikestaff. I
foresaw
your decision as may the shepherd in contemplation of a red sunrise foresee the deluge. I step downstairs; and here we are!’

My reply came a little more warmly than I intended. I assured Mr Bloom that if it had not been for the loss of my key, I shouldn’t have stayed five minutes. ‘I prefer
not
to be expected in a strange house.’ It was unutterably
gauche.

He chuckled; he shrugged his shoulders; he was vastly amused. ‘Ah, but are we not forgetting that such little misadventures are merely part and parcel of the general plan? The end-shaping process, as the poet puts it?’

‘What general plan?’

‘Mr Dash, when you fire out your enquiries at me like bullets out of the muzzle of a gun, I am positively disconcerted, I can scarcely keep my wits together. Pray let us no longer treat each other like witnesses in the
witness-box
, or even’ – a cat-like smile crept into his face – ‘like prisoners in the dock. Have a little whisky? Pure malt; a tot? It may be whimsical, but for me one of the few exasperating things about my poor secretary, Mr
Champneys
, was his aversion to “alcohol”. His own word!
£
300 a year – Mr Dash. No less. And everything “found”. No expenses except tobacco, shockers – his own word again – pyjamas, tooth-powder and petrol – a motor-bicycle, in fact, soon
hors
de
combat.
And “alcohol”, if you please! The libel! These specialists! Soda water or Apollinaris?’