Short Stories 1927-1956 (21 page)

And then, Cecil had suddenly stopped thinking and had actually found
himself attempting to put Eirene’s advice into practice. Hands clenched, heart pounding, pulses drumming, he was endeavouring, if only by the
remotest
fraction of an inch, to raise these abject eyes of his in their sockets. A horrible sweat broke out on his forehead. He was shivering from head to foot. He persisted, nonetheless, until it seemed the very brain beneath his skull was splitting into fragments, and incandescent stars and arrows of light were raining out of the darkness. And then, poor spoiled invalid, he flung himself over on to his pillow, and turning his back upon paradise, wept with rage and chagrin.

When calm returned, there returned with it, hungry as ever, the same old rat. How was he ever to assure the stranger that he was not – well, just another ‘young fellow’? And once more the words that had haunted him repeated themselves over and over again in his mind: ‘I came at last to hate him – to hate him.’ He lay there – stiff and still. Grummumma’s step was sounding on the stair; the First Wardress was approaching. Despair swept over him. The nameless, longed-for one must in sober fact be hating
him
with all her heart and soul this very moment.

But Grummumma (followed by the parlour-maid carrying on a silver salver a dish of sole and a glass of hock), was bringing him, apart from these dainties, news which proved at least that, however extreme that hatred might now be, it was not going to prevent the young people from meeting again. First, she assured him he was much better. That being so she paid very little attention to the grey, damp underpart of the face that lay on the pillow, though even the hair on that pillow was dank with sweat. Being better, he might sit up this afternoon and come down tomorrow. And the afternoon after that he was to receive a visitor. ‘And I wonder, my dear boy, if you can guess who that will be?’

There had been only the faintest trill on the ‘that’, yet at sound of it his heart stood still. ‘Is it Canon Bagshot?’ he muttered stonily.

‘Him, too,’ breathed Grummumma, ‘but who else?’

‘Eirene’s not going away, is she?’

‘Not quite yet,’ smiled Grummumma. ‘But then, Cecil, she is coming back for good.’

‘I give it up,’ said Cecil. ‘And anyhow I should much prefer to be left alone.’

‘My dear boy,’ replied Grummumma, with that hint of unction in her voice she could never keep out of her kindest remarks, ‘you would always prefer to be left alone. And what do you mean by that, may I ask? Left alone with whom? There are limits surely to one’s poor little self. I agree you are tied. But, as Eirene was saying, how long is it since you have made any effort to undo the knot?’

Cecil made no reply.

‘You have unnumbered blessings,’ went on the philanthropist. ‘Solicitous friends, a little income of your own. And though I agree the handicap has been extreme; yes, Cecil, you even have brains. And people with brains, my dear boy, don’t dash their heads against brick walls; don’t fly into silly
entanglements
out of which even the most clear-sighted minds find it difficult to extricate themselves. You
make
little difficulties. And as Dr Lodge agrees, and indeed as specialist after specialist has assured me, a physical habit is bound to reflect itself in the mind, and also, no doubt, in the heart. And if in our various spheres of society we have not a certain amount of proper respect for things as they are; if, that is, we don’t draw the line somewhere, the consequent difficulties merely end in disaster. And
do
,
my dear boy, show
some
little appreciation of that delicious-looking sole before it is stone cold on the dish. No; I didn’t mean to be led away into a discussion on the physical side’ – she flickered in a charmingly helpless fashion her little, fat, ringed hand in the air – ‘I know nothing of all that. All that I merely wanted to tell you was that I have invited a young lady – a friend of yours – to
tea.
’

‘A young lady – a friend of
mine
?’
Cecil mumbled, as if incredulous of such a marvel.

‘Exactly that,’ cried Grummumma brightly. ‘She is an assistant in that large new draper’s, poor thing; and, considering the practice she has, I must say she writes a charmingly illegible hand.’

Cecil plunged clean into the deep end of the bath prepared for him. ‘I am delighted,’ he said.

‘About the handwriting?’ inquired Grummumma.

‘That she is coming to tea,’ said Cecil.

‘In my young days, gallantry would have suggested
suggesting
that Miss Simcox should come to tea. Wasn’t it in the nature of things that we should wish to know her – after you had met, well, as you did meet. You must have realized long ago that I am never likely to be a stickler for
mere
conventions
. Why, then, may I ask, have you been hiding the young lady under your bushel?’ The voice was almost prattling in its geniality.

Cecil took a gulp of hock before replying. ‘Why, Grummumma, since you have asked her to tea, I don’t see where the bushel comes in?’

The black, handsome eyes had fixed their whole attention on his lips. ‘But why not at
your
suggestion, Cecil? It was
that
I was asking.’

‘But surely, Grummumma, one’s invitations are pleasanter when they are given on one’s own initiative. Yours must be, I am sure.’ The water was proving more buoyant than he had expected.

‘My dear!’ she acquiesced. ‘Then why didn’t
you
indulge in one? I find no difficulty in believing that Miss Simcox would have come to tea on Friday with even greater alacrity and pleasure if my poor little note had been in your handwriting.’

‘You didn’t call on her then?’ mumbled Cecil.

‘I proposed to myself the pleasure of her calling on
me
,’ replied Grum mumma. ‘And to whom, my dear boy, do you owe what I am sure must be this charming acquaintance?’

Cecil never lied. And a kind of nausea at the thought of any further fencing or prevarication suddenly swept over him. If the fat was already in the fire, why shouldn’t he set it blazing? He sat up on his bed prim and stiff, his snowy pillows for background; ‘I
believe
,’
he stolidly replied, ‘I just woke up.’

‘Charming, my dear Cecil, most romantic! But my actual question,’ Grummumma persisted equably, ‘was to
whom
do we owe it?’

Cecil jerked up even a little higher and the shade tilted itself almost to the angle of the peak of a guard’s signalling lamp. But, if anything, and in spite of it, the light beneath was red rather than green.

‘To whom
does
one owe any kind of awakening? Why sometimes, I suppose’ – and the voice had fallen flat and cold – ‘to sheer, downright
Providence
.’

‘I must ask Canon Bagshot to give us an address one Sunday on false gods, Cecil. You might learn a little more of the other One – by sheer force of contrast.’

There was a pause.

‘Will Eirene be here?’ Cecil inquired at last, his head now lowered again over his clammy sole.

Mrs le Mercier’s kid-clad right foot was at this moment beating softly on Cecil’s deep-piled bedroom carpet. It was her method of purring. She was looking at the china on the luncheon-tray and smiling gently, as if
consciousness
were just over the border of a charming reverie. Then she laid her other little card on the table, patly and finally, since sooner or later it would almost certainly have to be disclosed. ‘Why yes, Eirene will be with us – would make a point of being with us. Hasn’t she the positive privilege? Even if it were not a pleasure, dear boy, to share your friends, it would be little short of a duty. And Miss Bolsover is coming too. It will be quite a pleasant little party for Miss – Miss Simcox.’

She paused once more, but this time paused in vain. ‘Go on then, my dear boy, as fast as ever you can, getting
better
!’
she harangued him. ‘The
removal
of almost every little misfortune in this life, except those that come from above, is merely a question of time.’

Cecil sat up (physically speaking), and as she had prognosticated, that afternoon, and he went downstairs the next. But so assiduous were those who watched over his convalescence that, except after he had blown out his candle for the night, he was not for a moment left to mope alone. One can mope to some little purpose, however, in the gayest of company.

During the forty-eight hours that succeeded the sole, apart from those which he passed in restless sleep, he enjoyed not a single moment of peace of mind. Nor was the faintest chance given him of bringing his inward conflict into the open. Short of speaking out, which every nerve in him
forbade
, he might drag one red herring after another across the trail in the hopes of leading Grummumma on. But she seemed to have lost all interest in the chase. How had she found him out? Did he talk in his sleep? How had she discovered Miss Simcox’s name – and where she lived? What,
what
had she said to her? But Grummumma positively refused to budge. She believed that silence was best. Miss Simcox was never even mentioned again.

At a quarter to five, however, on the day before the tea-party, and when Eirene was in charge, Cecil made his first and only frontal attack. His
feverish
cold had left its marks behind it. There was something unusually
invalidish
in the look of the young man when, without the faintest preparation, be suddenly blurted out his challenge. ‘I want —’ he said, ‘Miss Simcox’s address!’

‘Cecil!’ cried his remote cousin in unconcealed amazement, ‘you don’t even know so much as her address!’

‘No,’ said Cecil, ‘not so much as her address. And I want to write to her
now.
’

‘But, my
dear
,
the creature will be here tomorrow afternoon. Surely you need not be so intemperate as all that?’

The young man sat as still as a draper’s model in his armchair. ‘I don’t know what you mean by “intemperate”,’ he said, ‘and I don’t much care. The point is, I want to write to her. And I want you to give me the chance of doing so when Grummumma is not here. What’s more, Eirene, if you breathe a word of what I am saying to a living soul – then, I assure you, you will regret it.’

Eirene had never before heard trumpets in her cousin’s voice and had never before noticed that he sometimes sat so motionless as to resemble not exactly granite, but at least Portland stone. Her hands clasped themselves in her lap. ‘I think it’s perfectly monstrous of you,’ she cried lamentably, ‘to talk to me like that. Why, you are threatening me, Cecil! And who am I, may I ask, to be a skulking go-between? A nice kind of a creature this friend of yours must be to reduce you to that. I simply flatly refuse. Besides, I don’t
know
her address.’

‘How did Grummumma find her out?’ said Cecil. ‘Did
you
help?’

‘My Heavens!’ shrilled Eirene. ‘And now you accuse me of being a spy! As if anyone like you isn’t conspicuous a mile off. Even a shop-girl might have known that. I expect she did.’

‘And do you suppose I
mind
having been seen?’ cried Cecil furiously. ‘But
I’m not going to argue about that. You are merely misleading me. Please keep to the point. You swear you haven’t her address?’

‘I will swear nothing,’ said Eirene. ‘It isn’t right. I
say
I haven’t her
address
. And I simply don’t care
where
she is – or ever will be.’

‘Then I believe you,’ said Cecil out of a horrible vacancy and yet as if he were conferring a royal favour. ‘But please understand, if you repeat a single word of what I said just now to anyone – well – we shall both of us be sorry for it.’

Eirene rose to her feet. ‘To think,’ she sobbed, ‘that I should live to listen to this. Why, you must have known her for ages. She has corrupted every vestige of nice feeling you ever had. And you sit there without caring a fig what I suffer. I detest the very sight of you.’ She broke into a renewed flood of tears, and hastened out of the room.

Strangely enough, though her last remark was intended to be the truth, the frail creature had suddenly discovered that she was as near as she ever would be to being in love. In her frantic haste to be alone with her rage and resentment, she managed to push past Grummumma, who
attempted
to intercept her in the hall. She managed even to refrain from enlightening that lady regarding the cause of the little scene she had been too late to interrupt. Grummumma, however, was by nature and habit a sagacious woman, and knew when to hold back. To have succeeded in pumping a little emotion into Eirene was almost as much of an
achievement
as to have succeeded in pumping whatever she had managed to pump into the mind of Miss Simcox. She awaited her little tea-party with folded hands.

And almost before Cecil had any opportunity to realize that the
tournament
had begun, it was over. The odds had been appalling. The only ally of the young stranger had scarcely uttered a word. With eyes fixed now on the floriations of the drawing-room carpet, and now on Canon Bagshot’s ecclesiastical boots, Cecil had sat mutely listening to the talk. Indeed, no better prize could be offered in recognition of Grummumma’s tactics than the fact that never at any moment was there any real opening for him. No kind of social gathering from a school treat to a
tête-à-tête
with a
philanthropic
duchess could exhaust Canon Bagshot’s finesse. And Mrs le Mercier had all her life apparently been an authority on the grievances of
shop-assistants
. Eirene, with her puffy hair, elegant hands, and pale, fine features, merely held a watching brief, though she saw to it that their guest was never without the creamiest and the chocolatest of the cakes for tea – just to give her something to do with her fingers while she tried to hold her own with her tongue.

As for ‘dear Miss Bolsover’, she rolled her blue eyes and occasionally tapped with her blunt-toed shoe (but rather like a dog thumping its
tail-stump 
than a cat purring), and remained tactful to the last degree. If the parlour-maid had been given three guesses as to which of the party in the drawing-room had been responsible for the presence of the young lady in black in its midst, Miss Bolsover would almost certainly have been given the glory of being the last runner-up.