Short Stories 1927-1956 (79 page)

What need then was there for worry? Solely and solidly, of course,
because
all this entailed a crucial little question of
£
.s.d. ‘Ghosts’, whatever their texture, may gibber; but
money
talks. And loudly too, if one has the need or the desire to listen. Had Emily, or had she not, made another will? If she had, then, he could be practically certain of disaster. And for the life of him he could not conceive of any hiding-place as yet unattended to. Not at least in the house. If she had not; well, better not inquire too closely. In any case she had not forgotten.

That covertly scrutinized tell-tale face! The lurking shadows, the
hauntedness
beneath those rounded eyelids, had never left it. Neither by day nor by night had it lost either its pallor or its settled melancholy. An abandoned Ophelia, suckling a secret so intense and so profound. Those long lapses too into silence and vacancy. Recently he had done his level best to let this particular sleeping dog lie. And in so doing how much he had missed the amusing but now forbidden sport of stirring its maudlin slumbers. Passive
resistance, passive acceptance – which was the most galling? He had begun to fancy, moreover, that slander – or intuition – had been busy with his own little activities.

Supposing, then, that, after all, with her pestilent mother for accomplice, Emily was debating, still in doubt, whether or not to leave him? No guile, no subtlety, not even his own, could extort so much as a nod from her on that. Was she herself less candid, less transparent than he had supposed? Well, she had discovered long ago what kind of fish she had netted; or been netted by. Why, then, was he fudging and faltering like this?

There had been a light rain that evening, gently weeping clouds; and only at this moment had he become aware that a newish moon was sinking in the west – a moon well on her way to her first quarter, faintly silvering the ash twigs, vaguely adulterating the gloom within. How easily might his
recent
little experience have been a pure deceit? And yet, could the mere
misconception
of some familiar object have continued active for so long? How many moments – minutes – had he been caught up in this idiotic trance?

Aubrey stooped a little, shut his eyes very tight for a few instants, then opened them again. Idiot! The effort had only made them less effective. Those scintillant luminous motes poured softly on.

At length, lifting his left hand – as gently as a Gehazi peering in upon an Elisha – he drew a fan of twigs an inch or two aside.

‘Well!’ he heard his dry lips calling softly into the gloom. ‘What about it, then? … Is that you, Fiske?’

In the complete history of mankind never surely had a more imbecile
question
been addressed into a silence so intent. Not a single syllable of this
dramatic
little adjuration had been consciously present in his mind until he had heard his own voice utter it. A queer voice too. And no wonder. There, in every obscure detail, utterly motionless, mutely and tranquilly challenging, the illusion had taken shape again – or in the interval had remained
unaffected
. There was no active speculation in those eyes – nor assuredly
anything
approaching a ‘glare’. They were still faintly luminous and serenely inquiring, as if in some remote meditation. At this overwhelming proof of his beastly predicament, provoked too perhaps by the shaken and muffled tones of his own voice and the effort to stop his teeth chattering, Aubrey’s wits had become slightly unbalanced. He stooped lower; coughed. He was afraid.

‘Whoever you are,
what
ever
you are,’ he heard his swollen tongue
declare
, ‘you have no bloody business to be here. Understand that! You —! If you want me – or anybody else, for that matter – you know where the gate is, and you can go round to the front. Do you hear me? Go round to the front, curse you; and knock like a gentleman!’

But had he in fact uttered these words? Or had he only overheard one of those inward interlopers who begin so garrulously shouting into one’s ear on the very brink of sleep? He had, at any rate,
thought
them; and the rebuke had done something to restore his confidence. He knew – oh,
absolutely
– that no answer would come. He defied an answer. Indeed, the only perceptible change in his surroundings – the faintest of changes – was that the deepening darkness into which he was peering had been very feebly diminished. As cautiously as an animal venomously resentful of its cage he glanced over his shoulder. Well, he had bidden his visitor go round to the front and knock; and knock like a gentleman. And now, as if for a symbol of how warmly he would be welcomed, a light which must momentarily have shone out and down from an upper window of the house behind him, had suddenly gone out. Its walls and windows – its whole presence now blank again as a sepulchre’s.

This time, too, when he himself wheeled swiftly round again, there was absolutely nothing to be seen but his mute own familiar pump beneath its writhen wattled tent of intertwining ash-boughs.

And a silence had fallen, curdled only by that one tiny monotonous watery whimper, intent not only on repeating the same tune on and on and over and over again, but on
singing
it! God help him! Counterfeit or not, the ‘Black Man’ had certainly taken shape. The shape of Fiske.

And, although Aubrey’s lean, long-chinned face, his pale eyes and
brass-coloured
hair hardly suggested that he was likely to be the victim of nerves, this precisely was what he was in danger of now…And for how long? He swallowed the hoarse laugh of bravado that had slid into his throat before it had become audible, and for yet another moment or two still hesitated to intrude, from out of the open, into the little tent of darkness that until this evening had been his all but unfailingly happy heritage as tenant of his garden. What the eye cannot see, the skin may become aware of! Still, go right in he did at last, and waited until his pitcher was three parts full, striving the while to breathe less quickly the dank autumnal air, and to slow up his silly heartbeats. He was alone now, acutely so. His visitor, his visitant, had absconded. But never never again would his
idolized
garden be able to convince him that his solitude was absolute and
complete
.

The mists from the rain-soaked flats beyond his wicket-gate were now not only visible but smellable and tasteable. Whereas his late visitant – well, he could not say what precise conspiracy of his senses had been responsible for
him.
He had assuredly not been audible. ‘So much for that!’ Aubrey muttered to himself, as he gave a violent wrench to the cold water-wet tap in the hope of silencing its silly, officious, doll-like musical box. ‘Now for the rest of the play!’ He even regretted he had not reminded his
meddlesome
enemy that there was a notice-board at the gate out of the market-gardens proclaiming: ‘No Admittance: except on Business.’

The faint tinkle of a bell sounded from the house behind him. He swore under his breath. ‘That’s just what these idiots
would
be doing at such a moment.’ And as yet he had had no time for a wash or to change his
gardening
boots – dumpers, half an inch thick with sodden soil. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and head. He was exhausted, solely by the strain of standing motionless, for, perhaps, three complete minutes! Or was it months? He must go in; and quickly. A cold, jagged smile broke over his features. Supposing that a little while ago, he had been taken at his word! A rat-tat-tat-tat?…
Qui
vive?
…Who knows? And what then?

Or had what happened in the solitude of the garden been only a novel and beastly symptom of one of his own familiar little attacks? Yet another bout – and as early as October? A glimpse of himself, feeble and sweating on a sick-bed, swam into his view. How much he loathed repeated,
parrot-like
inquiries and that evening-tray laden with its tail-swallowed whiting, or insipid minced chicken, and miniature ‘light pudding’. Or tapioca! That would be when he was getting better. Getting better, yes: but then, you never knew!

However, he was no weakling. He had schooled himself in the past to face what may come, and particularly if he had arranged for it. Dunning letters, for example; plea-ful letters; indiscreet, passionate, aggrieved outpourings of the heart; rate-collectors; and now and then the moneylender’s jackal. Just wait! And above all, keep calm! Think before you speak. Watch! And never never – unless you are positively cornered – never lose your temper or your balance.

Unless, in the next world, space is of no consequence, unless time is
nonexistent
in eternity, it would take his
revenant,
his come-back, his spook, if not his hallucination, at least ten minutes to get round from his garden gate to the front door. Why, he wondered, must the thought of a slow but sure walking apparition be so much less savoury in the fancy, than, say, the classic method devised for its reappearance by the usual medium? A Fiske consisting of ectoplasm! And why was he himself
still
listening? The squeal of his front gate could be heard a mile off. But had he shut it? What the hell was the use of asking himself such fatuous questions?

He pushed back his handkerchief into his pocket, lifted his pitcher of well-water – twice as heavy as it had ever been before – trod steadily and stealthily back to the house, set it down on the stones in the back porch, opened the door and went in.

The fusty room beyond, although it contained his pet primulas and
gloxinias
, was scarcely worthy of being called a conservatory, and there was
only darkness now to see his treasures by; so that, when he opened the french window and pushed back the curtain that concealed the dining-room beyond, the instantaneous electric blaze for the instant all but blinded him. It was as sudden as a blow in the face.

The room was vacant; but everything lay ready on the table and on the sideboard, flowers, china, silver, shining and twinkling there, mute and peaceful. ‘Still life!’ He glanced at the clock on the chimneypiece – a
wedding
present. It at once began to tick. He went softly in, then out into the demure scrupulously clean and garnished little ‘hall’ beyond. Fingers and thumb on the newel of its post, he paused at the foot of the staircase.

And, as if he had been heard listening – ‘Oh! Is that you, Aubrey? Supper’s ready,’ a voice called faintly from upstairs. ‘I am just coming. I was getting a handkerchief.’

‘Right, darling!’ he shouted back, but louder than he had intended. ‘But don’t come down. I am coming up. I must have a wash. I was kept in the garden. I mean I could not get…’

‘“Kept in the garden”?’ echoed the voice, a little nearer now, and even as if the owner of it were awaiting, even dreading, what so simple an
explanation
might mean, although he had carefully refrained from making it
unusual
by even a fraction of a syllable.

‘Don’t come down,’ he repeated. ‘I am coming up – this moment.’ He paused to swallow. ‘Everything all right?’ Dam’ fool!

‘Oh, very well,’ came the answer, yet faintlier. ‘Yes, everything. I shall be in the bathroom. I am getting a hot-water bottle.’

A hot-water bottle! The old self-pampering! More invalidism – and
doctors
’ bills. The old ‘pains’, he supposed. But surely she couldn’t be going to bed! ‘Clay – clay-cold is my earthy mouth’… How
did
the old borderland jingle go?

Treading with an almost cat-like punctilio on the mats, from door to door, with two almost soundless intervening steps on the linoleum between them, he made his way into the kitchen. All that for the moment he could see of its only inmate was a hummock of black skirts, a strip of what appeared to be a petticoat, and exposed heels. The rest of her was concealed by the open door of the gas oven.

‘Mary,’ he cried softly. ‘Don’t dish up just yet. I am not ready. And —’

A long, dark and intent face had made its appearance above the oven door.

‘What I was going to say,’ he explained, ‘is that – well, there
may
be a visitor. And I don’t want Mrs Silcot to be worried just now. She seems to be over-tired.’

Yet again he listened to an ejected statement that he could have taken his Bible oath he had never meant to make. Well, he must stick to it.

The dark stare from above the oven door had intensified. Sullen rat! Who paid her wages?

‘A visitor!… Staying for supper!’

‘Yes. Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. Only that if anyone should knock whom you may not recognize – don’t
necessarily
ask him in. I see there is no light in the hall yet; I’ll switch that on first. It may, of course, be nothing at all; merely a false alarm. I mean, of course, there’s only a possibility… In the City this afternoon…’

Why had the stolid colourless face stirred not so much as an eyelid? Merely stared?

‘I mean,’ he fumbled on, ‘if no one comes, it does not matter. Obviously. There is no need to wait about, I mean; except
not
to dish up for the time being. But, if so –
if
anyone should – then just come to
me,
and say, “A Mr Hamilton wishes to see you. It’s about a picture.” Something of that kind. I am not suggesting, mind’ – and an all but winsome smile edged into his grey features – ‘that it
will
be a Mr Hamilton. Or about a picture. It might be somebody else. However, that will be all right.
I
shall understand. Do you see what I mean?’

Mary abruptly turned her head away; paused, as it seemed, to exchange a few words with the interior of the oven; then rose to her feet. She then firmly shut-to the oven door. She knew that she had been watching him more intently than was necessary while he had given his directions, his ‘orders’. But then you can never be sure what some people are up to.
That
rigmarole! – and a face like a half-starved ferret. She looked at him again point-blank, with her pitch-black, disciplined eyes. A bleak, plain, honest stare; and intelligent.