Short Stories 1927-1956 (74 page)

The two of them walked on in silence until they reached the end of the street. A few hundred yards beyond the next, the branches of plane trees jutted out at right angles from their parti-coloured boles above the asphalt walks of the ‘Recreation Grounds’. There was a faint musty odour in the air, mingled with that of autumnal flowers, beginning now to go to seed, in the borders around them.

‘Honest, Nora, did you really
fall
into the Ponds?’ George asked. His voice still sounded slightly thick and inhuman, as if an animal were
attempting
to converse.

‘You didn’t think I was telling a lie, George?’

‘I didn’t think nothing about it, except you never told me. Do you often go out alone?’

Nora’s breast rose beneath her jacket. ‘You
know
I often go out alone. And why shouldn’t I? I like being alone. I shall always want to be alone when – when I want to be. There’s no harm in that that I can see. I can take care of myself. Mother just talks. She wants things to go as
she
wants them to go.’

‘You might have been drowned in that pond. It’s a good eight feet deep near that upper bank. If that’s what you call going out alone, why …’

‘But I didn’t get drowned, or I wouldn’t be here now. As if catching cold and that stuff – why, what about them sillies that break the ice in the Serpentine all through the winter? And it wasn’t the falling into the Ponds that I was thinking about. It wasn’t that at all.’

‘If you don’t want to tell me nothing, I don’t know as how I want to hear it,’ mumbled the young man in the billycock hat.

‘Oh lor’, George, for heaven’s sake! There’s a seat. Let’s sit down.’

The two of them seated themselves, a few inches coldly apart, in a dusk cast by a neighbouring lamp-post and by the increasing luminousness of the moon.

‘When in the dark I went down into that pond, George – and I
want
to tell you about it – it was not like what they say about such things. I seemed to be falling into an enormous black pit, and it seemed it would never end. But it wasn’t, as they say, just
memories
that came back to me. There were horrible eyes staring at me, and voices shouting. No, not
at
me; but
together
,
across.
And when at last I came up again, and managed to breathe and to see a little, I was just clutching at anything and … It was a lucky thing for me that stubby root was there.’

But George had guessed, in some obscure groping fashion of his own, that this was not the end, was not even the important part of Nora’s confession. He refused to be sympathetic. He sat stiff as a ramrod, staring straight in front of him under the brim of his hat. ‘You had no call to be there alone at that time of night. You had no call to be doing things secret-like.’

Nora listened, her knees pressed tight together, her lips set hard. There would be time to argue when she had finished what she wished to say.

‘But it wasn’t just that that I’m trying to tell you. There isn’t anything in that. It was what
happened
…
Then.
’

George’s mouth opened a little; his face groped round in her direction.

‘It was the face I saw that won’t … I keep on seeing it. I don’t know how to explain. It was while, knowing I was safe, I was floating there in the water. It was there, above, looking at me; smiling at me, as if’ – her speech had become more and more animated – ‘what I mean is, it wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t in my head, in my
mind
,
as you might say. It wasn’t
fancy.
’
The clear young voice trembled, as if in triumph at the word. ‘I
know
that. It was outside.
There
,
a little above me, before my very eyes. I saw it, George, as I hung there in the water, and I wasn’t excited, or scared, or struggling any more; I looked through my eyes, straight up at it. And by then I think the moon must have come out of the clouds. It was all silver on the water. And that face there – smiling at me. It seemed, as you might say, I had gone in under a dark dreadful tunnel, and come out the other side.’

‘Come out on what other side?’ the young man blurted.

‘Why, the other side’ – Nora lifted her hand, as if she could make a
picture
of what she intended in the air. ‘The other side of all this, I mean. It was real. And yet it wasn’t real. You might almost have been a child, it was so clear, so simple. And it’s never left me. It’s made everything different. You see, George, and oh, I
know
it sounds ridiculous – it was something to do with me myself.’ She stooped forward over her lap, staring hard at the asphalt beneath her foot. ‘And I don’t know as how I’ve ever seen anything
that …’ The square, young, ardent face turned sidelong a little – and lit with a vague, elusive smile he had never seen before – solemnly challenged the young man: ‘You aren’t trying to help me much!’

George once more shifted uneasily in his seat.

‘You told me to shut my mouth a minute ago. So I’m
keeping
it shut. You say you’d never seen him before?’

Nora burst out laughing. She listened to herself laughing – laughter as carefree as a green woodpecker’s. ‘Seen
him
before! Oh, George!
Him
!
I clean don’t know what you’re talking about! I never thought of it as being a him, and I didn’t say it was, either. I’ve had enough of those claptrap islands of Uncle Ben’s this evening, and all that widow talk, and I should have thought you had too. As if there wasn’t anything but he’s and she’s to sniff and snigger about! As if there was nothing but silly jokes about just two people like you and me getting married, and all that. I don’t know how they come to it,
that
I don’t. What
I
’
m
saying is’ – yet again the challenge rang out almost shrilly – ‘that’s what I saw, and keep on seeing. And, I’m asking you, George, why shouldn’t I? As if I cared what people think of me – as long as it’s my own self. Who has any right, I should like to know, to say anything about what happens in anybody’s
mind
?’

She looked away, paused, then turned almost tenderly to the young man.

‘Oh, George, if only I could make
you
see it, too! I don’t believe as you’d ever care to look at me again! There’s pictures; but not like that.
I
’
m
nothing.’

‘And yet,’ cried the rational young man, ‘only a minute or two ago, on this very seat here, you were just making fools of us all for being he’s and she’s. As if that old Nosey! … I can’t make out what you’re getting at, and’ – he gulped – ‘I don’t know as how really I
want
to.’

His voice died away. The earthy cold night air, having been rent asunder by its stridency, welled back unwounded, unreceptive. Not a soul was in sight, and that hastening footstep beyond the clustering trees might be nothing but a phantasm’s for all that was actually visible.

Nora gazed vacantly. She was perfectly at ease, perfectly happy. All would come right. It was curious, indeed, when things looked so muddled and gloomy, that she should be conscious how strong and how free she felt in her body. It seemed that nothing she would ever attempt to do again could possibly fret or weary her – that she was capable of an infinitude of patience, of energy, and labour. But for the moment she must grope along gently and quietly.

‘
This
is what I mean, George,’ she said, ‘if you will try and be a little patient. Did you ever see
any
thing as if you had never
really
seen it before?
I mean, more beautiful, as they say: more as though there was a sort of secret between you and it? Why, this lamp-light here now, George, on this old plank, on the wood; look at that! Do you see? There are two kinds of shadows of the leaves. They are like curious hands, webbed – like ducks’ feet. And you can hardly tell where the dark and where the light begins. It’s the moon and the lamp there; shining together: and here are you and me sitting here together too, and we don’t know where it all comes from or what it all means, either. It’s so
still
,
George. I feel I could escape out of my body for ever and ever. Not that I want to: I’m too strong for that. But
that’s
what I mean when I think about the face I’m telling you of. Only, much more … It will all fade away and go, of course, but’ – she turned eagerly – ‘supposing I’d sunk right down into that pond again, under the willow trees, and my body had stayed there – well, I shouldn’t be here now,
talking
to you, should I, George?’

‘All I can say is,’ retorted the young man bitterly, ‘it’s lucky your
mother
isn’t hearing what you are saying.’

‘I’m leaving Mother out now,’ Nora said. ‘But I believe Father would understand a little what I mean. We don’t
know
,
George. You can’t say that if I’d gone then, I’d be the same as I am now. I don’t believe it. I don’t
believe
that what I was
then
,
sinking down as if for ever into that dark and cold and then looking up calm and peaceful at what was waiting there for me – is what I was when I was sitting there just now hearing Uncle Ben singing that silly rubbish, leering and going on like that, and all. He’s soured – is Uncle Ben. And he doesn’t want to show it.’

‘I don’t see as how the songs were particularly silly, as you call it,’ George lied. ‘There’s some like to take a high-and-mighty view.’

‘Well, never mind, George, they were,’ Nora said. ‘I didn’t mean to be high and mighty; only just the truth. And it doesn’t matter either way. If you want me, George, I suppose you’ve got to have all of me, but if you don’t know what’s there, you can’t blame me if some of it’s kept back. No, I don’t mean that either.
No
one can ever have
all
of anybody, I mean. Now and then when I think of it, I’m almost sorry I didn’t
not
come back last night. I’d
like
to be where that face came from. Why shouldn’t I be, if it was my own? You can call it just a silly dream or you can call it a nightmare, if you like. What’s words? It’s what it meant to me that matters most, and if you can’t put up with me, George, I don’t know what we
shall
do.’

Nora hadn’t suspected that the nerves of the young man beside her were quite so near the snapping point. The only sound he uttered was a sort of breathless grunt as he stooped forward, his elbows on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, thrusting back his hard, round hat on his neatly oiled hair, as he did so.

‘I don’t know by what right —’ Nora looked at him and looked again,
‘I don’t know by what right you’re taking what I’ve said like that, George. I needn’t have told you at all.’

‘What I don’t follow,’ replied a stubborn, almost blubbering voice, ‘is why anybody should want to hush up anything about their own faces. How could it have been more lovely-like if it
was
yours?’

‘You didn’t mean that so nice as it sounds! Haven’t
you
– don’t
you
carry about any picture of yourself better than the reflections of what you see in a glass? And even that’s often better than real. You don’t think, George, surely, it’s just your
face
I love – and looking like that either! Why, it’s you;
you
;
what perhaps nobody else sees at all. We don’t know where we come from, do we …?’

‘Keep your secrets,’ groaned the young man. ‘And I’ll keep mine.’

‘If you call
that
secrets, George,’ she flamed, ‘then all I can say is, you’re treating me mean. But, oh, you don’t seem to see it. I’ve never been so happy as I was all the time when I was alone today sitting up there in my bedroom and you with your pigeons and the sunshine and all. And I thought – I thought perhaps you might understand … I don’t think I wish to be sitting here any more like this, now. We’ll go home …’

They walked in silence together till they reached the turn of the street, and then Nora slipped her firm hand into George’s hard square one as he stalked along beside her. And so they arrived at No.29. The lights had been put out in the sitting-room. Not a gleam showed between the Venetian blinds, but the moon had now begun to shine full on Allenbury Street. They came to a standstill. Nora drew her hand away, lifted her face, and looked up at the solitary glaring satellite.

‘Won’t you say a single word?’ George breathed huskily. ‘You aren’t going to leave me like that?’

Nora stooped forward, the hard brim of her young man’s hat biting deep into her cheek as she did so.

‘I don’t believe as you’re anything more than a child, George, when all’s said. Are you jealous because my face is more lovely than
you
’
ll
ever see it?
My
face! Lord!’

‘You can’t marry a child,’ George almost sobbed. ‘Promise. Nora, promise —’

Nora drew back. ‘I’ll never promise a single thing,’ she retaliated. ‘As if you don’t know that whatever was
not
me wouldn’t just shed off like – like the skin from an onion. I’ll just keep what I’ll keep. And what I meant was, I’m glad to be back, but I’m gladder still to know …’ She stared at the moon, squeezed the hard hand clutched in hers, but could get no further. And in less than a minute the door had closed behind her.

And George, a few tiny drops of dew chilling his face, having surveyed the
glittering curtained windows, presently went on, along with his shadow, in his dark clothes and his round-topped hat, along the narrow, vast-skied, vacant, moon-glossed street.

The Cartouche

The Cartouche
*

The clatter of the mowing-machine from beyond the laurel hedge had ceased. An almost complete silence had fallen – the silence of the ended. Every daisy that during the previous week had ventured to lift its eager face to the sun, every skulking or audacious dandelion had been swiftly
beheaded
. For lawns are lawns. They are intended to follow the even tenor of man’s way, and not to indulge in the wild. The only sound that now
interrupted
the minute and steady click of Mrs Millington’s needle was the slightly rasping lament of a greenfinch, or the
whsst
of a swallow’s wing, hawking low – stealthy as destiny – through the air of approaching evening.

Mrs Millington’s dark pretty head was stooping lower than appeared to be necessary over her sewing as she sat by the dark-framed wide-open window. The light cast up by the frilled linen pillow-case which she was mending paled the green reflected on cheek and brow from the sunlit leaves of the garden beyond and the intertwined bush of honeysuckle now languidly sweetening the sultry air.

The sun would soon be setting – as it had set the evening before, and the evening before that. The sun of all her yesterdays indeed. But with how many different kinds of adieu! – cloudless, ardent, of fair promise;
indifferent
, cold, obscure. Soon would come twilight, then deepening dusk, then night. And at night, although her heart then became more restless with longing, with hope reiteratedly deferred and with an ever-encroaching despair, her mind and her thoughts were more closely her own.

Even now her eyes appeared to be intent on something a good deal further away than her needle. She had begun to think again; to feed upon memory. Then suddenly and not for the first time in these last few months, she had realized that thought itself
might
conceivably become audible. As if to make sure that this was not so, she glanced up stealthily into and across the room she was sharing – her husband’s book-room.

Two quite different tastes, two natures and ages and upbringing were
revealed
in its furniture, its colours, its very ornaments. The senseless-looking clock of black marble on the mantelpiece – whose hands never failed to
circle unflinchingly over its face to tell mutely what the exact ‘time’ was in its own small share of normal human affairs – had been a gift to her
husband
from an old bachelor long-gone friend of his – a Dr Edmund Briggs. No less clearly the worn-leather armchair in which he was now sitting, the lean knuckly fingers of his two large hands extending to the extremities of its two stuffed arms, had not been of her choosing. It was as masculine and durable as the benches in a railway waiting-room. The embroidered cushion which, on sitting down, he had carefully placed on the floor was feminine enough; not so the lamp-shade beside his chair, which was merely
something
to keep the light out of his eyes; nor the blotter on the leather-covered writing table, scattered untidily with books and papers. One hankers after one’s own order of comfort in advancing age, and it becomes something of a virtue as well as a convenience to be domesticated. The foot-
flattened-out
green and red Turkey carpet was also as clearly an heirloom as was the portrait of Mrs Millington’s mother-in-law on the wall, whose painted eyes, it seemed, were now inhumanly surveying them both at the same time, and with some little asperity. It was a good likeness, but not a good picture; yet good enough for her son William, whatever his age – to recall her by, and perhaps so recall her candid counsel: when, that is, he paid any attention to it.

And now Mrs Millington’s exploring glance had settled on her husband again. Where had he been this last two days? And nights? Why was he so silent? Why did the expression on his brooding face suggest more than mere weariness? Sheer fag and even depression? And why wasn’t he hungrily and audibly munching up his bread and butter? Was there – could there be – it had become a question recurrent as cockcrow – something wrong? Would the answer to it ever be in the affirmative? Once she had feared, and yet with a faint hope and relief, that it might be so. Now she feared this
outcome
no less, but with scarcely the faintest gleam of hope; with a sort of caged-in despair, rather. She pushed her silver thimble a little more firmly on to her finger, and began stitching again.

‘Well, William?’ she said. The lank, weary face, with its grey eyes and long nose, turned slowly a fraction of an inch in her direction.

‘Yes, my dear?’ he replied. ‘Oh? … I was only thinking!’

The non-committal smile that had died out over his face as he peered round at her might have been intended for a child; for, say, their small boy, Harold. But Harold, just now miles away at his prep school, was fielding rather indolently at Long Stop.

‘You are very silent. Even although you have only just come back? Can’t you think and talk and munch and drink your tea at the same time? It isn’t, you know, exactly the kind of absence which makes the heart grow fonder!’ And as she listened to the vacuous words, it seemed as though she had
memorized
them ages and ages ago; as if they were the echo of a voice from another existence.

‘I’m sorry, my dear: tiresome, tedious company, I’m afraid,’ he mumbled, through a half-suppressed yawn. ‘And yet – well, as a matter of fact, you’ll never guess where I
have
been. I didn’t know myself, so to say, until
yesterday
evening. I hope you weren’t – weren’t in the least anxious about me?’

She stitched on.

‘I
try
,’
she replied at length, ‘never to be anxious. About anything. I was a little surprised, of course; and wondered at your not coming home as you had arranged, and – at getting no message. But no; not – anxious. Why,’ and once more she seemed to be vacantly listening to something learned by rote, ‘why shouldn’t you have a night off, now and again? I mean —.’ She stopped to bite off with her small teeth a cotton-end, which she now no less deliberately removed from the tip of her red tongue. ‘I mean, no one could say you weren’t methodical, William.’

‘No? Oh, “methodical”, you mean. No.’ He bent forward, seized his cup, gazed at the grey-filmed brownish liquid in it, took a loud gulp, and sat back again.

‘Well, I was a little afraid you might be. I was
dissuaded
from
telephoning
, you see. In a sort of way. And now that you have mentioned it, I can’t really see why. Anyhow, there it is.’

Mrs Millington pondered on this a moment. ‘Perhaps,’ she replied, ‘your friend thought that if you did telephone, the wandering sheep would be
dissuaded
from
staying
?
Lady or …? Don’t listen to me, William. I’m being nothing but a silly parrot. I
wasn’t
anxious; I was only the least bit surprised – and extra glad to have you safely back. But now I’m terribly inquisitive. Unless of course it is, well, something private?’

‘No,’ was the answer; ‘no marks for that, my dear. There’s nothing private between you and me. There never will be. Not from now. Nor was it a “she” either. As a matter of fact, indeed, it was a “he”. You look very charming in that light. I have always enjoyed seeing anybody sitting at an open window. I can remember, oh, years ago, my dear mother, and my poor Aunt Agnes too – she was always sitting at her open window during those last days …

‘Perhaps a storm is coming. It’s strangely still this evening. Bless me, with that light on your face, you don’t look a single day older than when —. On the contrary, this last year or so you have got positively younger, as if you had been sipping at the Fountain of Perpetual Youth. And I hope, my dear, you have, even although that, the change – I was reminded of it only last night again – would be nothing short of a calamity. The fact is, you should never have married me.’

He had lifted his cup again, but refrained from drinking. The click of the
needle had ceased. Without moving her head, Mrs Millington had raised her dark eyes and was gazing out almost vacantly into the garden, as if she had forgotten or had taken no interest in what her husband had said. ‘Never married you?’ she repeated. ‘But why not?’

‘Because, you silly, magnanimous, heaven-sent creature, I am, in what matters most, perhaps, so stupid, habitual, matter-of-fact.
You
never were; and now, as tinder, I’m damper than ever.’

She breathed again, almost with a sigh. ‘Oh, William. Again! I know all about that. That’s a very old story. And who, pray, if it were true, is the “silly”? Besides all that came back into your mind
after
you had been
thinking
. What about? and why? “Last night”?’ She could see only one greying cheek and a few tufts of her husband’s grizzled hair, as he sat there
lounging
in his old shabby leather-covered armchair. He shifted his head round again to glance at her.

‘Well, you see,’ he began methodically, ‘it was like this. You will only laugh at me. At Cambridge, when I got to the railway station, there was a train at a standstill
in
it. There was plenty of room. And the ticket
collector
told me that it was a fast one. And, for a wonder, so it proved to be. But the signal happened to be against us at one of the stations about halfway up. And it stopped. This woke me; I had been dozing. It was a lovely
afternoon
, very, very peaceful. I put my head out of the window and
there
was its name-board. Well, I thought to myself, this can’t be chance. Indeed it seemed providential. I looked at my watch, realized that I should have at least two hours to spare at this end, seized my bag
and
hat
and
umbrella and got out. The train had begun to move – pretty fast – by then. Someone shouted, and the station-master all but threatened to report me. It appears that if trains, even if solely for their own convenience, stop at stations which they are not intended to stop at, no passenger is entitled to get out. It
suggests
pure Gilbert and Sullivan, but it’s positively true and no doubt desirable. But imagine if life were like that!
Never
take advantage of an
unexpected
opportunity!
Never
follow an impulse!’

There was an oddly hollow tone, a hint even of caution in the feminine comment that followed this not very original attack on railway by-laws. ‘But you may not be right. It’s much more likely that it was because the train was already moving; and, as you said, pretty fast. That’s dangerous at any – at any time; and I’m always warning Harold against it.’ She paused again. ‘What, William,’ she ventured at last, ‘was the name of the station?
What
, as you say, couldn’t have been “chance”?’

‘Ah, there you are! You’d never guess. It was – Ebbingham! And of course I instantly thought of Louis. Had you realized, my dear, that we haven’t seen or heard from him for
months
– why, not since June. Unless, perhaps,
you
did when I was in Warwickshire.’

Mrs Millington glanced up swiftly as if to make sure what her husband was looking at, at this moment. Her hand was trembling a little; and the colour had changed in her cheek. ‘Ebbingham!’ she repeated. ‘You mean – you really mean, William, that you were foolish enough to take such a risk – like some headlong schoolboy. And so late in the day, without even
knowing
whether he was at home. No wonder I was a little anxious. And then, about trains. You
say
you hadn’t heard. But surely you remember I told you that his sister – I dislike her so much that I can’t even recall her name for the moment – Oh, yes, Mildred – that I told you we had met by chance in town, and that she had said he was going away? I am sure I told you.’

‘Alas, my dear,’ said her husband, still staring at the fan-shaped piece of paper concealing his empty grate, ‘I don’t remember. But no doubt you are right. You are too kind to this rapidly decaying memory of mine. It’s
getting
worse and worse; I was reminded of it too only yesterday. Anyhow, there it is. I had been wanting to have a word with him about the
examinations
next month and he is very dilatory; but it would have involved a long letter; and I am tired – just a little. So why not? Nothing venture, nothing win. Anyhow, I was out of the train and in the only cab available before I had realized he might not be at home.’

‘Yes?… Was he?’

‘Oh, rather. We had quite a business talk. A good talk, too – within limits. He showed little surprise and no dismay at seeing me; or anyhow, it wasn’t noticeable. Rather the contrary even; he
might
almost have been expecting me. He seemed very well too; a bit absent perhaps. But then, he always appears to have two minds at work at the same time. Did you ever know a more zigzag talker?

‘I forgot all about the trains; tea came in, we talked on and on, long after we had finished our little business matters; and then he said something about taking pot luck; and – well, would I make a night of it? There was no way out of that – unless I preferred to face getting home in the small hours. Unfortunately, as I say, his telephone was out of order. And I couldn’t very well suggest that you might be anxious. He’s changed. Had you noticed that? Of course, one never could predict what he might not do next. He
seems
happy-go-lucky enough; and yet never somehow quite at his ease. A queer blend. I should think in fact he had positively practised most ‘nexts’. All impulse one minute and the wisdom of the serpent the next. He interests me. He’s thinner; but not a bit less – well, attractive, I suppose. But
you
would know best about that. I find it so difficult in some things to get the woman’s point of view. There’s a kind of challenging Faust-like
adventurousness
in his face. And I’m not perfectly sure if one can positively and finally depend upon him. One can’t always be certain what he is after. I
supposed
for a while that he had invited me to stay on because he wanted to
consult
me
about something. But that must have been a mistake … And – but there, my dear, what a disastrous thing it would be if the power were suddenly conferred on us to share one another’s thoughts – without any words, I mean.’