Short Stories 1927-1956 (51 page)

He closed the door, listened again a moment – what
habits
habits
become
! – meditating as he did so on the deep lovely blue of his candle flame, and passed on down the shabbily carpeted corridor to the next nearest
bedroom
. This was his father’s and his mother’s room or rather it had been theirs many years ago. Their son in the meantime, either in act or thought, had little visited it. It remained as they themselves had left it – the
four-poster
bed, the ponderous wardrobe, the grey marble-slabbed mahogany washstand, the Landseer engravings. Nor can you be said to
remember
– certainly not to remember a mother – if the happy event is dependent on some casual reminder.

The twin pair of old Venetian blinds now hung lowered to their very last slack slats. The old red damask curtains were undrawn. And there stood Mr Asprey once more, peering in over his candle flame. And such was the unusual state of his mind that when he came to again he could not have said how long he had remained in this abstracted posture. His
absent-mindedness
however was chiefly due to the fact that his inward gaze meanwhile had been intent on a large visionary granite sarcophagus topped with an eighteenth-century urn and canopied over by the vast, fringed, heavily laden boughs of a prodigious cedar tree, its edges scintillating like a Maharaja with bead-like rows of full-sized raindrops.

It was engrossing to observe how apart from this transient jewellery the
beam of his candle enlivened the delicate greys and browns and blacks of the corrosive lichens and the bright green of the moss on this vast emblem. The moss indeed was almost as vividly verdant as the meadows had been. But
did
moss grow on granite? Still stranger was it, in Mr Asprey’s
experience
, that he should be able to spell out the words that were graven on the stone. He would have supposed them to be long since indecipherable. Amazed at the incredibly gross egotism of the inscription, he read: H
ERE
LIES
M
Y
F … In plain honest lettering, too; nothing Gothic. For though he was unable to peer round to make sure, there was not a doubt in the world that
ATHER
followed immediately after the F. Actuality may be grossly abrupt and inartistic enough, but no
human
stonecutter, surely, had ever so clumsily divided the word
father
as that! It was merely yet another jape of the strange jinnee of the dream world – never busier, Mr Asprey had
frequently
observed, than when one is wide awake.

However that might be, it was abysmally damp here and atrociously dark. As for the brooding cedar that roofed the tomb, to judge by these gigantic water-crystalled twigs, it could hardly be less than a mile high. It all comes of neglect, thought Mr Asprey. But whose? How much was all this his father’s cumulative dark, how much his own? And why this
dateless
urn, when filial forgetfulness had been concerned solely with a
Victorian
angel in Portland stone? Mr Asprey gave it up. Nor could he be certain whether a father who leaves his son so early an orphan, or that son grown old is the more to blame for any sad and protracted oblivion and neglect. Both surely had been indolent – his departed father in his son’s dreams; and he himself in the waking day. Not that this was an hour for
re-criminations
; he must merely strive to be fair. He had too the comfort of realizing that if his mother was lying side by side with that father within these dense cold lost stone walls, she seemed to be perfectly calm and happy.
She
hadn’t even so much as turned to smile at him. And though this might be a consolation as dubious as it was sentimental, it was at least of her own sharing. Besides, like Mr Asprey himself, she had always loved moss – ‘Look, Tony, the very instant rain comes! … It’s just like a parrot!’

This time a little hesitantly then, out came his battered pocket-book again: ‘Have f’s grave attended to,’ he scrawled in it. ‘? remove angel; ?
replace
it with some other kind???’

He paused in a fleeting attempt to petrify even in symbolic image one of Donne’s angels, then added as an afterthought: ‘If possible, go myself’. He trusted nonetheless that the expedition would not entail any attempt to fell that antediluvian cedar. He saw himself looking up at it, axe in hand, and the vast and vacant heavens beyond it.

Mr Asprey closed his parents’ bedroom door after him as reverently as he
hoped that the less fickle-minded son and heir whom he had vowed some day to be responsible for would finally close his bedroom door after
him.
At grave risk of extinguishing his candle, he snuffed its wick between finger and thumb, and continued on his way down the corridor, thus creating the most fantastic shadows in leering and quixotic motion, but at the same time dispersing its narrow darkness as he went. His next two memoranda, or agenda, both of them concerned with a play-room that for many years – seemingly now how unjustly few! – had been used for his mature private work, were of so personal and secret a kind that he laboriously scribbled them into his book in an amateurish shorthand which he had invented in his youth. One of these, briefly translated, ran: ‘Tell Self it didn’t so
much
matter.’ The other was decisively to the opposite effect.

His third and fourth memoranda, in longhand, related to a seldom-used guest-room. Even in the light of one brief candle, this was a room of a most charming pink and white; and particularly since its old-fashioned chintz curtains were at this moment concealing the view from the shuttered
windows
beyond them – of a dark, leafless, and fruitless orchard behind the house, and an empty dog-kennel. Once within this small sanctuary, and deeply relieved at having passed in furtive celerity his own shut bedroom door without personal and perilous interruption, Mr Asprey might as well have ventured ‘just as he was’ into some evening Reception, so
multitudinous
was the silent company that had at once phantom-wise thronged about him. With sharp febrile nose and dark begloomed eyes, his long lank fingers shielding his candle flame, Mr Asprey paused until they had, so to speak, become accustomed to his intrusion among them, had thereupon mournfully thinned away, and had left him to himself. After all one
can’t
possibly make things right with more than a mere fraction of one’s past! No sinner, surely; hardly even a saint?

At length alone again, Mr Asprey allowed his gaze to rest a little
wistfully
on a portrait in water-colour on the wall. The young woman depicted in it must have sat looking sideways at the artist. Thus the longer Mr Asprey gazed at her, the clearer it became that in a peculiarly open and yet stealthy fashion she was sharing his scrutiny. Twenty years at least now severed him and her; and not a single faded petal or pinch of incense had Mr Asprey
recently
offered at her shrine. It may, or may not, be discreet when you have fallen in love to ‘tell’. That may depend on the degree of the infatuation, the attitude of the object, the propriety of the passion, and even the state of your health. The only alternative is to allow the toxin, the crisis, to become bygones as quietly and rapidly as de-‘crystallization’ permits. Mr Asprey could not now choose between them. He had been more or less in love more than once, and having ‘told’ once or twice, had told no more. And
do
hearts warmed up become as indigestible as he had always feared?

This silent, reticent, searching creature here, with the side-long eyes and early Edwardian sleeves, was herself one of the told-no-mores. But as he continued to meet her motionless eyes, and himself at last ventured to smile faintly, surely she had smiled faintly back? He tried again; there was no doubt of it. How inadequate a word may ‘reassurance’ be! There could of course be only one solution to so arresting an enigma; and this, yet again, a tragically sentimental one. She must whatever
then
her state of being, have loved him ‘all the time’; that is, always; and for ever. In other words, long before they had ever met; to meet no more. That is, until this very moment!

Mr Asprey had turned slightly giddy. He was being ‘mental’ with a vengeance. Still, since he would have no further opportunities for
self-adjustment
in his earthly home, he was now striving to be strictly
honourable
. So he forthwith jotted into his diary: ‘Explain somehow to Frances M. why I
had
to arrange about the pleasant-looking young woman –
good-tempered
, but not temperamental – because of an heir.’ This entry much amused its writer. He looked up, and without question Frances M.’s painted smile revealed an amusement at least equal to his own.

Thus complacent, he was about to continue on his valedictory pilgrimage when his glance, having vaguely wandered over the room, rested on a dark old wooden box in a shadow-infested corner on the other side of the flounced dressing-table. He could hardly believe anything so wooden could be so eloquent. It was as if Conscience had been actually searching for
evidence
against him – and evidence how stale! Yet there was no need – and in any case he had no wish to pass within range of the looking-glass on the table – there was no need to
open
the box. At sight of it Mr Asprey had
recalled
instantly what it secreted; namely, the manuscript of a novel written by a friend. He had left it, long, long ago in Mr Asprey’s keeping in the hope of friendly criticism and appreciation; and three weeks afterwards he had been drowned at sea. Mr Asprey’s heart fell cold within him at
remembering
that he had let a full fortnight pass without even a glance at its first page; that he had, in fact, waited for his friend to be drowned before unsealing his MS. He had then, with increasing distaste and reluctance, read on to a breakfast ‘scene’ between three of the characters in the story one dismal morning in a dastardly December.

It described to perfection a virulent quarrel in which the unhappy human beings concerned had said everything they thought, or thought they thought, of human life and of one another. And in the course of this dispute a pot of liquid marmalade had been upset over an iniquitous love letter and the French tablecloth. Poe’s raven’s
Nevermore
was a cry of lyrical rapture by comparison with that marmalade. The whole chapter was one of the most vivid and caustic fragments of realism, or actualism, in fiction that Mr Asprey had ever had the misfortune to share. And having heard of its
author’s tragic end, he had put the MS away in this box, had entombed it there, with a relief beyond words. He had always fondly suspected that even naturalistic books may deeply affect their readers, and that, ‘in parts’, life is so real that it is wiser not to be too earnest about it. An overdose of honey, yes: but liquid marmalade?

Indeed, he himself, having finished this eighth chapter, had decided to read no more. And that no doubt had been grossly unfair. He acknowledged it; while his drowned fair-haired friend amid gently wavering sea-flowers out of his submarine ooze now quietly continued to watch him from
beneath
half-shut lids – an indefensible device, since his body had been
recovered
and interred inland! However that might be, his somnolent eyes
were
fixed on Mr Asprey’s, and Mr Asprey continued serenely to meet them; with more serenity, indeed, than he had confronted Frances M. in the water-colour – all reservations over. He agreed, oh, yes! that there was money in the MS; and, possibly, even a few years’ fame. He agreed that his friend’s widow would have enjoyed the money – though not perhaps the fame, since she had never inquired after her husband’s masterpiece.
Nonetheless
Conscience was astray this time, and he mustn’t give in. With a little nervous nod at the mute drowned face, he put his candle down on the bed and opened his notebook again: ‘At very first opportunity burn O.P.’s novel. And better not tell Mrs P. (or the younger P.’s – not, at least, without a look at them first), when it is done; i.e. in this case
help
“the dead past”.’

Thus poor Mr Asprey proceeded on his way, tidying things up, placating, as far as he was capable, his jinnee, his familiar – to the tune of at least ten small pages of illegible notes; until at length, the winter night very much older, he returned into the kitchen again. Poor gentleman, there was no need to remind himself that the small hours are an inept opportunity for the making of inventories, and that a house which one is about to leave for ever is not their happiest place. It entails far too hasty an elaboration; and
sentimentalists
and romanticists may be fully as conscientious as cynics. Was it not true that, whichever Dean Swift may have been, he bequeathed to a friend in his will his third best hat?

Mr Asprey glanced at his watch. Gracious heaven, it was a quarter-past seven. Adieux may exhaust a large quantity of time. There was to be no more sleep for him now. In less than an hour the conveyance – to use as conciliatory a word for it as possible – would be calling for him, to take him away. Winter daybreak, indeed, was already thievishly groping on the glass behind the dark blue canvas blind and the rusted bars of the kitchen window. He shivered. But since he had attempted to lay so many ghosts on his rounds it was no wonder that this semi-subterranean chamber struck now so cold and so still. Foolishly, perhaps, he began listening again. This
would never do. Besides, Mr Asprey was tired of listening. He left his
guttering
stub of candle on the table, put his notebook down on the stove, and lit the gas under his antiquated tin coffee-pot. None of your new-fangled glass contrivances for Emily!

He turned about and glanced at his breakfast things. The shrouded loaf was on the table as he had left it: but the eggs were now mere eggs. They had lost all their looks. And where was his table-napkin? He recollected that even overnight he had noticed that something was missing, and nothing, of course, could be allowed to be missing on such an occasion as this; certainly not a napkin. As do the dinner-jacketed in the remotest oases of the Empire, Mr Asprey felt he must keep up appearances. But where
was
the missing napkin? Upstairs in the sideboard, probably. Shunning what might be a fruitless journey, he hauled open one of the drawers in the kitchen dresser, just in case. And he did this so violently that it fell on to the floor at his feet, to be immediately followed by a small dark object that had apparently been wedged in and had long lain concealed behind it. And lo and behold, as he stooped to examine this nondescript object, with a most peculiar suggestion of the sea having yet again given up its dead, he
recognized
it.