Short Stories 1927-1956 (91 page)

‘You?’ said Philip, gazing at her as if she were an evening primrose gently unfolding its petals into the twilight and full moon. ‘You?’

‘Why, yes, me. What’s the good of being my age and coming to Europe
every year and college and all that if I can’t be trusted to set up a roof on four sticks to shelter my poor sea-sick globe-trotting adorable aunt? But you see, I have been sort of frittering time away – your shops, Mr Pim, your theatres, your funny little all-sorts-of-unheard-of hidden-aways. And
staying
with friends isn’t, I assure you, of any use at all if you want to do
anything
on your own.’

It appeared to Philip as if at this moment an enormous prehistoric monster – mastodon or pterodactyl perhaps – were lunging on towards him out of a rapidly thinning fog. ‘You mean you want a
house
?’
he breathed.

‘Not me – my aunt.’

‘A large house?’

‘Enormous; central; bath-rooms; imposing; space. Just all the amenities. She is used to them, adores them, Mr Pim. You must please understand,’ she stooped a little, ‘if brass tacks
are
necessary, that with this aunt of mine money is
no
object, though I cannot see myself what else it can be.’

‘A spacious, central, unfurnished house?’ Philip solemnly repeated.

‘Well now, there!’ said the young lady, leaning back in her chair a little, her whole face shining like a bank of wild flowers in the morning sun. ‘Well now there! Did you kindly conjecture my poor sea-sick pilgrim aunt would find any comfort in bare boards?’

‘Oh!’ the word slipped out of his mouth like a little red-throated ‘diver’ into deep water – ‘furnished, then?’

‘She wants every kind of fixture, appointment, contrivance, luxury, necessity that civilization can supply – and more.
Your
civilization, Mr Pim. You …’

‘You mean you want to buy it for her?’ said Philip, a cold shudder coursing down his spine at sound of the gross word in her company.

‘I mean just that. I mean that in my little bag here is a cheque-book: some of the cheques crossed and some of them uncrossed; and the first are for crackers and candies for me, and the crossed are for the house that ought to be just gently gaping to welcome my poor dear aunt
here.
Now I ask you: it’s’ – and she glanced at the jimp little watch that was bound to her wrist – ‘it’s just twelve minutes of three. And it seems to me it simply can’t be done. And I assure you that
can’t
is of all words the one my aunt detests most. She
believes
in me, and tomorrow afternoon she’ll –’

‘Believe in
me
,’ Philip earnestly interjected, ‘and before tomorrow’s sun is set she shall believe in
you
more than ever. She shall sit lost in wonder, yet at ease. It is nothing. If only one goes to the right place, before they are shut of course, things are not so difficult in this horrid old crafty London as you suppose. I agree we are passé, antiquated, old-fashioned, but not as once we were; for think for how many years we have now enjoyed your aunt’s example! If she truly and indeed wants a furnished house, say about
twenty-four hours from now, I am quite certain it would be simplicity itself to get it. Is she fastidious?’

‘Well, she kind of likes things nice.’

‘Then here is the time and the place and the – I mean if only you will allow me to leave you – set me free – for an hour or two, I would come straight back here and tell you how I have managed.’

The young stranger was now sitting as straight and slim as a dart in the little tub-shaped wicker chair drawn up close to the disc-shaped table. She opened her bead bag and took out a cheque-book. Her lips drew the least shade closer together as she did so, and a still quiet, rosy flush crept up into her cheek. She then raised her head, her eyelids drew back, and Philip found himself – helpless, hapless, fearless, forlorn – gazing straight into the garden of her self. She, too, however, had been glancing every now and again at the young man’s unflinching and worshipful blue eyes. And had Philip only known it, this was the precise moment when he should have withdrawn himself into solitude and set to work on an ode to Feminine Insight. But by a curious fatality it was the adoration in his eyes rather than even their
crystalline
candour that now compelled the young woman to withdraw her own.

‘Well, that being so, Mr Pim, and I won’t waste valuable minutes by
wondering
how, if you would just tell me, within a few thousand dollars or so, how much I am to write down, I could give you the cheque at once. I kind of hate to say it, but that’s actually where we are.’

A curious but not unpleasant cold spread over Philip’s limbs as his gaze dwelt on her at this moment. Any nephew of Colonel Crompton Pim’s would have been of course a gentleman by birth, though this particular nephew was subject to oddish aberrations of conduct. But even a Knight of the Round Table or of the Golden Fleece might have been momentarily astonished at a gesture so magnanimous. He accepted it, nonetheless, as it was offered.

‘But why not come too!’ he said. ‘Then when we had – er – finished, we could make a little sum, add it up, and find out exactly. If
you
helped the answer would be sure to come right.’ As soon as the words were uttered, he realized his danger; they went sounding off into his mind like the
rumbling
of the wheels of a tumbril. ‘But of course, of course, if it would save you trouble, I …’

‘It’s not the trouble,’ she said, ‘and I
do
know my aunt’s tastes. I have been with her most of the time she was learning them, Mr Pim. They are chameleonic. When in Rome, do as Rome does, is her motto; and now you see it
will be London. For
taste
then, just the very best
English.
Then again – and there isn’t a single soul in the wide world I’d dream of confiding this to – this dear dear aunt of mine, my Aunt Chloe (and I can’t tell you what
treasures you would find in her once you have taken off the wraps) is just too romantic. But why because you are forty-five and fastidious and neither fair nor fat and have had military tendencies in the family, you shouldn’t be certain of not saying No, if the right kind of husband – decorations, blue blood,
savoir
faire
and all that – were to ask you to be
his,
I don’t see any use at all in taxing one’s mind in attempting to decide. Being as I am, you see, only a niece.’

Philip gasped. Her last three words seemed such a very simple way of
saying
so much.

‘Not,
Mr Pim, that my Aunt Chloe is just a hero-worshipper, or anything like that. Although she has been proposed to scores of times, and always – because it couldn’t
but
be – in part for herself, she doesn’t even dream I know that any vestige of such a thought has ever entered her head. Up to the present it has stood waiting in the porch. It hasn’t even rung the bell. But wanting a house she is bound to want something nice to put into it. Naturally. And
I
say, why not a man? Oh, dear, you will think I come from Utah next.’

If Paradise could be spelt in four letters Philip was perfectly willing they should be u,t,a,h. But his mind was elsewhere.

‘Is your aunt the kind of woman that insists on having her own way – against any odds, even a husband, I mean?’

‘Mr Pim, when I am in her company – and do please remember how you have had to persuade me to talk like this – I am a straw in a cataract. And as for odds, she has no more respect for them than the prophet Daniel in his den. What she needs is someone to take care, to take charge, of her, and to look after her money. And he couldn’t do that of course if he hadn’t some of his own. It wouldn’t be nice of him.’

With extreme difficulty Philip withdrew his glance from the avenue of possibilities this last two minutes had revealed to him. His uncle, the Colonel, he was now faintly assuring himself,
might
have intended to be kind. He might. It was difficult to be more than exceedingly dubious at so short a notice. And one good turn – even a worm’s – deserves another.

‘How strange are the ways of Providence,’ was all he said; but added
instantly
, ‘then you do really honestly prefer that I should go
alone’
he sighed hastily ‘and – and shop for you all by myself? Everything really and truly of the best as near as I can get it, and money
no
object?’

At sound of this dreadful phrase on his own lips his cheek bloomed like a peony. The young stranger turned her dark head away.

‘If only you would believe,’ she replied, ‘that on my side of this gimcrack little table sits an aspen leaf shivering on the edge of an appalling disgrace! It’s simply not in my aunt’s family, Mr Pim, and I am an insignificant little bit of it, to understand the word failure. And there was I, only a minute ago,
standing on the very brink and staring down into that awful abyss!
Without
your help I…’ She looked hastily away and paused an instant. ‘And though I
know
it’s not exactly what I ought to be doing, I am just pining to be helped. Think of me then as – but there, I don’t know what I do want you to think of me as. It is what one feels that really matters.’

Philip could contain himself no longer. The shower was over. The sun was out. The street outside now blazed with glory. Rapture had swept into the air, as if a myriad birds had been released over the metropolis and all
London
was in song. The empty cup at his elbow, the coloured tartlets on their dish, the gilded cupids dancing their garlands along the cornice of the
low-pitched
room, as if by the wand of an enchanter had suddenly consented to reveal a loveliness until then entirely hidden from view. But Londoners themselves are constricted, secretive folk – at least those of the West End. At sound of his laughter no fewer than three discreet young persons had raised their heads and glanced in sombre discomposure in his direction.

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘if you would just stay here and give me a cheque …
How
long is your aunt staying in London?’

‘She goes to Paris – if she isn’t really comfortable – on the 20th of this month.’

‘Well, then,’ Philip repeated, and he took another breath, ‘say a few
thousand
pounds. These people are so dreadfully mercenary, and my own bank balance at the moment is all noughts. But there is my uncle’s, there was my uncle’s. She
shall
be comfortable. Oh, I vow it. Then when I come back – and that will be in no time – I could tell you how much more we shall want.’

The young lady drew back into her chair, and poised herself there for an instant as if she were sitting to a Michael Angelo for her bust. ‘There now,’ she cried softly, ‘that’s what I call
It.
But my Aunt Chloe says, and she has a knowledge of the world, Mr Pim, which you wouldn’t think any possible world could endure for long unshaken –
her
view is that one should always be candid when one has anything pleasant to say. Which means, I reckon, that her Scots blood isn’t so crystal pure as once it was. And what
I
say is, looking at you just then, I didn’t guess you were a mathematician – not like that, I mean.’

‘Oh, but you see,’ Philip hastened to explain, ‘the few thousands I
mentioned
was only a guess – a little “something on account”, you know – and that of course, is only a quotation. Say three, or perhaps
four,
thousand. The total will, of course, be quantities more than that. I love shopping.’ He positively heard himself saying it, and trembled like a rock in an earthquake. ‘At least I used to.’

‘Well, it’s really only totals which seem much to interest my aunt. I should put another O on, don’t you think?’

Philip’s blue eyes wavered for the flicker of a moment. For O stands not
only for Ought, but for Obligation. He lowered his gentle head and
drawing
his fingers steadily along the edge of the little table as if he were
describing
a diagram incident to the higher ethics, he murmured, ‘You really do mean that your aunt wants a dreadfully complete, brand-new, expensive domicile, a slap-up British estancia, as supplied ready-made by a quite, of course, respectable firm of universal caterers? You see,’ he added lamely, ‘what some people are after is a home, and I don’t mean merely a brass knocker, a privet hedge and an aspidistra in the window. I mean – well, you know what I mean. I believe,’ he sighed, and his fingers desisted from their expedition, ‘I believe you know everything I mean. And to know all is to …’

But the young American stranger was now too intent on practical matters to notice the cliché.

‘I am scrawling in thirty thousand,’ she said. ‘I do so love threes, though I’d almost put dollars. And I’ll leave you, Mr Pim, just to gather from out of that wonderful sagacity of yours what my aunt would mean by a home. And the name?’

‘Philip – P-h-i-1-i-p,’ Philip told her, ‘
P-I-M
.’

‘One “M”, and no “e” at the end of it!! Why that’s English all over. And “Philip” – I didn’t know that name sounded exactly like that before: “Philip Pim”.’

Between her finger and thumb she held out the tiny document, and shook it in the air to make it dry.

‘Now how long shall I stay here, or might I, do you think, take a look at some of those cute little hats over the way until you come back? Honestly, Mr Pim, I do think you are perfectly and completely wonderful. And to trust a stranger like me, whom you have never so much as even seen a glimpse of until now! It’s – well, I really don’t know what it isn’t!’

Philip rose. He felt, for the second time that day, as though his physical frame were composed of nothing more stable than calf’s foot jelly. But a fire once more burned in his brain. The spectral yet obese shape of Sir Leopold Bull had intruded itself.

‘I have left my watch on the piano,’ he said; ‘but I will be back here in less than an hour.’

The young stranger glanced up at the little French clock on the café chimneypiece.

‘That will be exactly six minutes of five, then. And if you should lose the cheque you’ll find me in the hat-shop. And shan’t I be enjoying myself – expecting you. Oh, if only you knew the burden that is off my shoulders, and how, well, elevated I am, you would realize what a good Samaritan
you
are, and I’d say it even if it meant sending my gentle Aunt Chloe clean to Jericho.’