Short Stories 1927-1956 (8 page)

Ronnie took it all in, though his eyes remained discreetly downcast, just in case he was being observed from the windows. Better no appearance of boldness. And so, cane in hand, light overcoat over arm, he stepped at last into the embowered porch, and gave a vigorous tug at the twisted iron
bell-pull
. Its distant tinkling dwindled away, and except, as he fancied, for the sound of a firm but hasty footstep that had immediately followed it, only the shrillings of the skylarks overhead now broke the quiet.

Ronnie was no Miss Brontë. He was not one of those shy (and sometimes even elderly) creatures that ring and run away. He was entirely unalarmed at strangers. Nevertheless, as he stood waiting there, he was hoping solely for the best – that nobody was at home. Why not? He had enjoyed his country walk. Here was the house. Let sleeping poets lie. He would have done his duty, and theses might go to the devil.

A moment after, at sight of a stiff, high-capped, ageing, and obviously
unfriendly
maid-servant, he changed his mind. The least symptom of
opposition
not only decoyed him on, but increased his natural suavity. He enquired if this was ‘Willows’, and on being assured by an abrupt nod that it was, he asked if it were still occupied by a lady of the name of Cotton, and
that
being so, might he perhaps be favoured with a few minutes of her valuable time.

‘Mrs Cotton is not well enough to see visitors,’ was the stony retort. And the grey eyes that continued to regard him after the narrow lips had shut again, hinted that for the word visitor he might, if he chose, substitute such a synonym, say, as hawker or tax-collector. But Ronnie was easily able not to feel a little piqued. He smiled, and remarked, ‘I am Mr Ronald Forbes,’ and at the same time drew out of his pocket-book, and presented this dragon with – a visiting-card. ‘I wouldn’t detain Mrs Cotton for more than a few moments,’ he assured her, sagaciously raising his voice a little. ‘It is merely to ask her kindness in a matter in which we are both deeply
interested
. And for this reason I hoped she would forgive me anything in the nature of an intrusion.’

The maid took the card between finger and thumb. She appeared to be still hesitating whether to keep it as a trophy or to return it, when a voice out of the beyond, and apparently from the landing of the shallow staircase nearly opposite the door, decided the question.

‘Show this gentleman into the drawing-room, please, Fanny. I will be with him in a few moments.’

Having proffered his hat to his enemy, who far from accepting it did not
even waste a glance on its beautiful lining, Ronnie laid it with his light
overcoat
on a small mahogany bench that stood beneath an engraving of one of Raphael’s masterpieces. And he stood up his cane beside it. He glanced at the barometer which hung on the ‘flock’ crimson-papered wall on the other side, and an instant afterwards found himself in a room, his first impression of which suggested that he had been shown into a hot-house by mistake.

It was not only a study in all shades of green, but even more verdant in effect than anything which spring had managed to regale him with on his way from the station. Ronnie had a lively eye for colour. It roved from the moss-green carpet to the curtains of green French flowered brocade, to the sage-green wall-paper, and so, one by one, on to the Victorian ‘easy’ chairs, upholstered in a colour which in cooler circumstances would have
suggested
the cucumber.

But this verdure was not all artifice. In a recess near the shut small-paned window on his left stood a wooden erection of shelves, upon which pots of flowers in full bloom were banked in the utmost profusion. With the result that the room – much longer than it was wide, its French windows at the further end being also tight shut, though the afternoon sun swept steadily through them in a motionless cascade – the room smelt like some delicious fruit-pie. Freesia, perhaps.

Ronnie stood there in his elegant West-end clothes, right in the middle of it, as if he were an egg-cup under the crust of the low-moulded ceiling, while portraits in oils of what he assumed to be deceased Cottons surveyed him from every wall. He was warm after his walk in this precocious spring weather, and though his reception had been a little chilly his present haven was very much the reverse. And as he glanced from portrait to portrait he was conscious of an almost irresistible impulse to giggle, and at the same time more disquietingly aware than ever that his dossier, so to speak, was rather on the nebulous side. Ronnie had read the poems, but not lately. He could appreciate verse with extreme rapidity; but now that the crisis was at hand, actual remembrance of salient specimens, and even of the precise quality of the collection, had suddenly eluded him.

Perhaps this was in part because the low firm voice he had heard on the staircase had continued to sound on in his ear. He was still vaguely engaged in an attempt to recover his
amour
propre,
of which he had an ample
supply
, when the door by which he had entered opened, and he found himself, smile for smile, confronting a lady of substantial proportions, whom he judged to be somewhat on the other side of sixty. Her elaborately dressed hair closely fitted her square practical head. There were still traces of auburn in its grey. And out of the wide flattish face beneath, with its small square formidable nose, green-grey eyes motionlessly examined him.

With a curt but not unfriendly nod of her head this lady referred him to
a low flounced armchair, which splayed its short Victorian legs full in the light of the French windows, while she seated herself in a less comfortable one immediately opposite him.

Ronnie cleared his throat, but paused.

‘I understand you wished to see
me
,’ she said. ‘Am I right in supposing that I owe the pleasure of your visit to an interest in the writings of my son, Mr James Cotton?’

Ronnie’s neatly proportioned hand wandered to his neck-tie, and he opened his mouth to reply.

‘I see,’ Mrs Cotton continued pleasantly – ‘I see I have guessed right. Please tell me then exactly what I can do for you.’

If only, thought Ronnie, the good lady would look the other way for a moment, he might hope to make a much better show. On the contrary she sat stoically upright in her chair, her shoulders squared above her fortified bosom, her knees close together over her square-toed shoes, her whole frame encased in a primrose-coloured afternoon gown – its only
adornments
a cameo brooch on a small black bow, a thin gold chain about her neck, and a cluster of sapphires on her wedding-ring finger – while she steadily continued to hold his eyes.

‘It is very kind indeed of you,’ began Ronnie. ‘I was afraid that a visit like this from a complete stranger, and without any warning or introduction, could not but seem in the nature of an intrusion. To be quite candid, Mrs Cotton, I was afraid that if I wrote to you first, asking for the privilege of such an opportunity, I might be – well, misunderstood.’

‘That,’ was the reply, ‘would all depend on what you actually said in your letter.’

‘Yes,’ retorted Ronnie warmly. ‘But then you know what letters are.
Besides
, as a matter of fact I have come, not on my own behalf – though, in a sense, that very much too, for I am, of course,
deeply
interested – but on behalf of a friend of mine, a young American, now at the University of Ohio. He is most anxious to —’

But Mrs Cotton had suavely interrupted him. ‘Almost exactly nine years have gone by, Mr Forbes, since I have heard of anyone being interested enough in my son’s writings to come all the way from London, as I see you have – let alone America – to tell me so. I receive letters now and then, but very few. But although, as I say, nine years have gone by, that particular occasion is still quite fresh in my mind. Your friend may not perhaps have seen an article which appeared about that time in the
Modern
Literature
Review
?’

‘That was the very reason —’ began Ronnie, but Mrs Cotton had once more intervened, almost as if she were anxious to save him even from the most candid of white lies.

‘It is a relief to me that you
have
seen the – the article. I wonder if you would be very much surprised, Mr Forbes, or whether perhaps you will think me ungracious, if I say that I didn’t entirely approve of it. What are
your
feelings?’

The light-coloured eyes under the square brows never swerved by a
hair’s-breadth
, while Ronnie at last managed to get in his reply.

‘You mean, of course,’ he said, ‘Cyril Charlton? Well, quite candidly, Mrs Cotton, and I can say it without the faintest vestige of disloyalty, for I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Mr Charlton, I thought his paper was amateurish and superficial. He is a critic of sorts, of course; and I have no doubt he – he meant well. But, how shall I say it? – the whole thing was so fumbling and uncertain. He didn’t seem to —’

‘In some respects,’ Mrs Cotton interjected, rounding her eye at him as
inquiringly
as might a robin perched on a sexton’s shovel, ‘in some respects hardly “
uncertain
”,
surely?’

‘Oh, you mean in the facts,’ said Ronnie.

‘I mean in the facts,’ said Mrs Cotton. ‘I am not suggesting that Mr Charlton was anything but perfectly polite and, if
one may say so, plausible, though I use the word in no damaging sense, of course. He knew my son’s poems, I won’t say by heart, but certainly by rote. He sat where you sit now and quoted them to me. Stanza after stanza, as if they had just been dug up out of the grave, as I understand Mr Rossetti’s were. As if I had never read a line of them myself. He was, he assured me, profoundly interested in literature, “profoundly”. He was astonished, seemed genuinely astonished, at the thought that so few lovers of poetry – his own words – had even so much as heard of my son’s books. A fair, rather silly-looking young man; with a cheek like a girl’s. I couldn’t have conceived such fluency possible. He talked and talked. That, of course, was exceedingly nice of him and, so far as it went, reassuring. But, believe me, Mr Forbes, he almost took my breath away. I said to myself, here is a young man whose zeal has outrun his good sense, and
therefore,
of course, I gave him all the help I could. Such overflowing, such disarming enthusiasm – what harm could there be in that?’

Ronnie tried hard to prevent his face from showing the smallest change of expression while he hastily masticated this question. In these domestic surroundings, ordinary enough in some respects but startlingly novel in others, it was so difficult to be certain what degree of irony this rather
formidable
lady intended. And at whose expense? Ten years ago: yet still the very accents of that flaxen ass of a Charlton seemed to be haunting these green recesses! Ronnie became so horribly tongue-tied at last that he felt a blush mounting up into his cheek – as he sat mutely on, seeking inspiration and finding none in the view from the French windows.

The lawn beyond had been recently mown. Its daffodils stood as
motionless
in their clusters as if they had been drugged by the sunshine. In a looping flash of blue a tom-tit alighted for an instant on the dangling coconut shell in the verandah, glanced in from its reptilian blunt little head at
Ronnie
, and with a flutter of wing posted off again. And still he could think of nothing to say.

Meanwhile, it seemed, Mrs Cotton, by no means expecting an answer, had been steadily engaged in taking him in. Her slightly mannish and
astringent
voice again broke the silence.

‘We have used the word “facts”, Mr Forbes,’ she suavely invited him. ‘Tell me what – in that absurd account of my son’s early years – amused you most?’

‘Quite frankly?’ Ronnie, suddenly refreshed, turned quickly about and met her eyes. ‘Well, quite frankly, Mrs Cotton, that he had died in Trinidad. I felt morally certain that
that
was, well,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘
fiddle-dedee
’ …

The rather frog-like ageing face had not faltered at this intimate
reference
, and Ronnie at once pressed on.

‘Trinidad, first. And next, the fantastic little account of how while he was still only an infant in arms he used to dance in his nurse’s lap at the window during a thunderstorm and clap his hands at the lightning. It wasn’t so much the thing in itself, but simply Charlton’s namby-pamby way of putting it. It simply wasn’t true, and had been cribbed of course from
Coleridge
. Or was it Walter Scott? Oh, a host of things.’

What resembled a merry but not very resonant peal of laughter had greeted this burst of scepticism.

‘I see,’ cried Mrs Cotton, still laughing, ‘but
why
did you conclude – Trinidad?’

Ronnie had begun to breathe a little more freely again.

‘Why, don’t you see, things surely, even apart from words, are true – right, I mean – only in their appropriate setting. The thunderstorm at the nursery window (even though he didn’t say lattice or casement), manifestly wasn’t. It wasn’t in the
picture,
or rather – to put it exactly opposite to that – it was just what a writer like Cyril Charlton would be bound to say, when once he had started on that kind of thing. He led himself on. Just roses, roses all the way; and nothing to show that he knew one variety from another. He
meant
well, oh yes. But there is simply no bottom to the abyss of mere blague into which such a sentimentalist can sink. Oh, I think you can rely on me in that. As a matter of fact’ – it was a bold move Ronnie felt in the circumstances, but he risked it – ‘it was chiefly
because
of – of all this that I ventured to inflict myself upon you today. Trinidad! It was to say the least of it so idiotically inartistic. I almost burst out
laughing at thought of it on my way from the station. And what adorable country!’

But Mrs Cotton ignored the enticing compliment.

‘And yet, Mr Forbes,’ she was saying, and much more thoughtfully than the truism seemed to warrant, ‘Trinidad or no Trinidad, I suppose we all have to die somewhere. Nor did I realize there was anything “inartistic” in his saying that. To me it was merely untrue. It
may
have been my
mentioning
that my husband was at
Trinity
led him astray; but even at that – well, it was so completely out of the blue. Even, too, if Trinidad
had
been the – the scene of my son’s death, what then?’