Short Stories 1927-1956 (84 page)

‘Isn’t it splendid?’ she said. ‘I always told you he’d come —’

‘Fancies, fancies, my dear child,’ said the old fellow vacantly. ‘It is
hazardous
to put your faith in fancies. Everything passes. Things are what they are in essence; there is no change.’

He said this or some such stuff, standing erect, as if he were some antique philosopher with the gods for audience. And then for the first time I noticed he was a clergyman. A remarkable old man. However eccentric.
Real.

‘And now I suppose I must tell you the secret,’ said Florence, as she led me out and bade me wait at the foot of the staircase, while she ran up, singing. And that gave me time to think.

It seemed awfully strange to find myself standing alone in the house again, so acutely familiar, and yet utterly changed. And it was devilish melancholy. I seemed to hear again my mother’s footstep behind me; and when the strange woman – strange to
me
–
came upstairs from the kitchen I fancied for a moment it was her maid, Martha, who used always to be muttering about the house with her feather broom.

Eheu!
I have gone through many years and a good deal of experience since those days. And I see life in its true colours. I suppose it’s rather
ridiculous
to be writing down all this stuff. Still, it seemed even in its own time a kind of epoch or crisis in my life. Besides, this girl was quite different from all my previous experience of her monotonous sex – so whimsical and mysterious, and almost dictatorial to me. Nor was she a bit pretty, or even beautiful – except her eyes. But after all, in the words of the proverb, beauty is only skin deep.
‘The
Lady
in
Scarlet,’
a
Romance
in
three
volumes
by
a
new,
original
and
talented
Author!!!

When she came downstairs she had taken off her hat, and her dark hair was drawn back loosely from her forehead, quite plain. There’s a sort of curve about her eyes: it’s difficult to describe, but her face is so much
herself
; not the least bit like Fanny.

‘Now, come into the garden,’ she said, ‘and I’ll show it thee.’ I remember the ‘thee’ distinctly! So out I went after her into the garden. In an instant I shrunk up into the breeches age. There it was quite unchanged, only a little wilder and greener; cherry and apple and hawthorn, lilac and laburnum; and melting sweet with wallflowers – it was Mother. All herself.

‘There, Mr Nicholas,’ she said brightly, leaning forward an instant, ‘have we been fickle? Do you remember?’ And then her face was all grave again. ‘How am I to excuse myself,’ she continued, ‘I am ashamed to think of it. Up at the window there, looking out over the tree-tops, I saw it all in a flash. And I was utterly ashamed. I don’t know what you must think of me, but whatever it is, it is true; still, if you have the heart of the little boy whose
face I know so well, you will easily forgive me. For, don’t you see, living here alone day by day, and day by day, one learns to conduct one’s self as if one were only and always in one’s own company. With other people of course you must be in their company, and … there, think it in your own words. At any rate… Well?’

I mumbled that it was very kind of her and all that, and that ‘I was much obliged to Mr…’

‘Our name is Lindsay,’ she broke in quickly. ‘I forgot. My father has no curacy or anything of that kind here. We just live on together…’

‘He is very fortunate to have such a companion,’ I said, and nearly bit my tongue off. I can’t help saying silly things to women. Her frown went away, she closed her lips, and looked almost distressed. She shook herself, and all the ring had gone out of her voice.

‘Well, as I was coming downstairs, that was not in the least what I wanted to say. Yet somehow or other I have to explain myself, and this is the only way. This picture. I don’t want now to show it you in the least; not now. But after we had moved into the house, we found a litter of old papers in one of my father’s cupboards. And this was among them. I stole it. I hate showing it to you – it is like betraying a friend. But still I must do so, and please if you wouldn’t mind, will you give it me back quickly?’

After all this beating about the bush she put into my hand a little pencil drawing of a child framed in an oval of ebony. And underneath it was written in my old infantile scrawl, ‘This is me, Nicholas.’ Of course I
remembered
it instantly. It was the little drawing Mother made of me years ago. I remember her standing me by the copper coal-scuttle in her little parlour, and afterwards sitting me on her knee and telling me what to write and guiding my hand. I can almost feel the heat of the fire on my bare legs, and my tongue anxiously protruded while I scrawled. I told her that it was my mother’s drawing. ‘She used to play with me sometimes,’ I said.

‘Poor mite,’ she said, smiling in her old way. ‘And have you been happy since? Oh, what a fool I am to be asking such questions. Well, anyhow, now you know why I – liked to see you – and it accounts for my pitiful
familiarity
– my ignorance – does it?’

I stumbled over some remark, repeating, ‘kindness, pleasure’, and so on.

‘Ah,’ she said, and took the picture from me. ‘Dreams! Other people are not like me – and there’s no conceit in that! I cannot talk to you, Mr Nicholas; you’re listening with all your manners on. And I have forgotten the few I ever had. Well; we must go in.’ She hesitated in the porch, half smiling, yet frowning. ‘Have you ever said to yourself when anything vividly happens – or you see anything sharply —’ She jerked her hand
towards
the garden.
‘This
I shall remember
always
;
just as it
is. And when the remembrance comes – well, it isn’t quite what one expected. Come in, Mr
Nicholas; I don’t know, and will never ask your surname. “This is you, Nicholas”; that is all.’

We took tea in what, I suppose, is the drawing-room (our dining-room) very old fashioned and rather shabby. All the house is drab and silent. Mr L. sat in an old leather armchair, his knees at an acute angle. And ever and again, his eyes would melt out of reverie, and he would make a remark. He seemed to be at pains to be good company, and to be always forgetting his good intentions. He munched, like an old mare, and sipped five cups of tea, and his nose was beaked between his eyes. So on the whole I felt devilish
de
trop.
It was a mutes’ tea-party for me. Florence hardly spoke at all. She seemed to have been exhausted with talking, although her eyes were still smouldering. So we stolidly sat on, with an occasional supping noise from Mr Lindsay, and the whistling of the birds in the garden. By and by, to my intense relief, Mr L. put down his cup for the last time, and sat with his hands on his knees.

‘I doubt, sir,’ he said presently, as if my very thoughts had been audible, ‘I doubt if this house was ever so quiet in your childhood. We are hermits. And solitude attenuates the rumour of the world. But I hope you will pay us another visit some day. We do not order ourselves much by formality, as you perceive, but you will be welcome.’ It was evidently a hint for me to be gone; and I jumped at the opportunity. So I thanked him again for his
courtesy
, and shook him by the hand. He stood up stiff as a lamp-post and seemed to gaze down out of his vacant blue eyes like a caged bird.

Florence showed me to the door. ‘There,’ she said as she opened it, ‘it is growing dusk. I am afraid we have detained you. Have I?’

‘Really,
no,’ I said, ‘I cannot tell you how grateful I am. Fancy to have come to an
empty
house, or to have found it all —’ ‘Well, it would not have been faithless,’ she said, ‘it would never have been that. We love its silence and solitude; or rather we do not feel them. We are egoists. Our fancies bewitch our eyes… That is
my
garden,’ she looked far away over the dusky heath, dark and boundless to the shining of the stars. ‘And will you come again, do you think? Dear me, how hard it is to get used to all the
conventions
. Good-bye, Mr Nicholas. And I shall keep your picture, and – unless you do come again with your real self on your arm – shall forget you. How still the night is! It is almost as if someone were listening…’

Here endeth the first chapter. And once again I am in my own sweet
company
, thank Jupiter.

It’s the dolefullest household I ever was in. She had no genuine interest in me, I think. She scarcely gave me an opportunity to speak; she harped so incessantly on the drawing – rather childish, I thought. But so is she, with not a symptom of
savoir
faire.
Yet her face is old. She must be at least
nineteen
or so. I could read that face like a book one moment, and then she frowned or something, and I was all wrong. Her faintest smile changes it; now and then it is almost as if she were beautiful. I was miserably awkward in her company, not at all myself. She must think me absurdly green. There’s some skeleton in the old father’s cupboard, I’ll wager. A broken love affair, perhaps. Anyhow, I loathe tea-parties. Why can’t people speak out as God made them?

As I look back I realize that she did not even shake hands with me – seemed almost to avoid doing so. I shouldn’t think she really takes the slightest
interest
in me; she’s an egoist. And here I am, wasting all this time (not to mention weeks of diary-space) scribbling rubbish. I shall give up trying to analyse every little thing I do or think. I don’t suppose Shakespeare or Napoleon did. The real thing is to forget one’s self and live for others. How much wiser is a man than his tongue! – Wrote to Uncle Robert.
Marvellously
starry night.

April 29th. Went to concert with ‘Madame’ and Fanny. Madame is
good-humoured
enough, but otherwise a more or less meaningless mixture of frivolity, sententiousness and Scandal. It seemed as if I had not seen F. for weeks. I said nothing about my visit.

April 30th. Dreamed again of the old house. It was sunny, and the door opened, and old L. came out into the garden – half encircled in a nimbus!! Henceforward I shall keep an account of my dreams, I think. Man dreams probably all the time he is asleep; because
thinking
is to
be,
and we can’t become nothing, or we should remain so. Took a constitutional in the
afternoon
, met G.M. A little Frenchiness is a dangerous thing. Mrs Giles interred at 3.30.

May 1st. May-day. Awoke with, and in, a fit of the miserables. Wet. Read some of that affected minx, Addison. He has no more essential knowledge of human nature than a fly! Have a good mind to write and thank F.L. for my visit. They were very civil, considering. Young, young man, beware!

May 3rd. Learn to control thy thoughts lest thy thoughts learn to control thee!

May 5th. Went for a walk with Fanny. She never once ceased chattering about her sister’s forthcoming wedding; a heathen custom; and we brag about our civilization, forsooth! It’s no better than any other primitive rite, and so are Funerals. Bury me in an apple-barrel at the cross-roads! say I. It’s more real and human, at any rate, than crapulous coachmen and
crocodile
tears. Fanny asked me why I was ‘different’. She does not understand that a man may have more than one side to his character and nature. I am not a machine, although I may some day be a husband.

May 6th. Went down again this morning. It seemed as if the caravans of Spring were camping on the heath. There was a kind of immense warm
stillness
, a haze of sunshine – and all dazzlingly green. And almost the first
person
I encountered was F.L. herself.

She was sitting on a little knoll of turf, her face turned away from me. And though all her finery was gone, yet I recognized her instantly. I walked quickly over the turf, but though I scarcely made a sound she heard me and turned quickly. By the brightness of her eyes I fancied for a moment she had been crying. But I think she looks best in black. All women do. She put out her hand, looking at me; and something in the gesture, or in her expression, reminded me strangely of Mother. I made some silly remark about it’s not being a
red-
letter
day.

‘Don’t talk about
me
,’
she said, ‘I am dead-alive, dulled out, fey. And the scarlet – I think I wore it out of spite. I said to myself, I will be April, too. And indeed I was – the First! … I thought you might come again
before
today. I always believe people will do what I hope they will – until they don’t. But there, do not listen. “The rain is over and gone.”’ She clasped her hands like a child, ‘I often think…’ she began again, almost as if she were speaking to herself; and then it was just as if a shadow had come over her face.

‘What do you often think?’ I said.

‘Never mind,’ she said under her breath; then she looked up at me with one of her curious smiles. ‘Will you come back with me? Father would be delighted to see you. Will you come? Besides, I have not showed you half the house yet. Come, and you shall go straight back, and be a child again. And to tell you the truth I want to get used to the idea of you – grown-up, and polite, and clever and all that. Oh, you are sadly altered. Still I want to see you as you are, and fit you into the house. Will you come?’

I could not be boor enough to refuse, though it was a precious nuisance. She was different from last time. Beneath all she said was something else; I can’t express it exactly. But I was not the least bit more at my ease with her.

Mr Lindsay rose up lank and stark as ever. Poor old man, his face does not practise his philosophical sermons. He sat there, his white cravat awry, a jagged frown on his forehead. Time has dried him up and ploughed him deep. Still he’s frightfully heavy, and for the life of me I couldn’t see the point of most of what he said. He seems to speak by rote. Gad, let me die green! I saw the woman, Helen; I suppose she’s a kind of housekeeper.