Short Stories 1927-1956 (34 page)

‘Yes,’ said Philip, realizing how thin was the end of the wedge which Sir Leopold was at this moment insinuating into the matter in hand. ‘Yes, quite.’ And he opened his innocent blue eyes as wide as he could, to
prevent
them from blinking. He kept them fixed, too, on the close-shaven face, its octopus-like mouth and prominent eyes, with ill-suppressed repulsion. To be a fly that had fallen a victim to such a spider as this!

‘It would please me better,’ he went on, ‘if you would arrive as rapidly as possible at the matter you wish to discuss with me. I am free for five minutes, but I must beg you not to waste our time. And please tell your porter over there to go away. Such scenes are distasteful to me.’

The face of the porter who seemed to have been created solely for his bulk, turned as crimson as a specimen of
sang-du-boeuf.
He appeared to be hurt. But wages are of more importance than feelings, and he withdrew.

‘You have had a busy morning, Mr Pim,’ said the secretary. ‘No less than seven of my assistants who have had the privilege of waiting upon you have
been monopolizing me for some time with telephone messages. I hope I am not being too intrusive if I venture to congratulate you, sir, on what I
suppose
to be Colonel Crompton Pim’s approaching —’

‘Candidly, Sir Leopold,’ said Philip firmly, ‘that
would
be venturing too far. Much too far. Let us say no more about it. What precise charge are you intending to bring against me?’

There was a pause while the world continued to rotate.

‘For which article?’ breathed Sir Leopold.

Philip gazed steadily at the full, bland, secretive countenance. It was as if once again he had heard that seraphic bird-like voice sounding in the
remote
blue sky above the storm-clouds that now hung so heavily over his beating heart.

‘Oh, I mean for delivery,’ he said. ‘Mine was – was a large order.’

‘But my dear sir, we shouldn’t dream of making
any
such charge.
Any
service to Colonel Pim… Even the Harp…’ The faint sob in the voice would have done credit to a Caruso.

Philip stooped to hide the cataract of relief that had swept over his face, then raised his head again. How could he be sure that this was anything more than play-acting – the torture of suspense? ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘that is no matter now. I gather there was some other point you had in mind – in
view,
I should say.’

‘Oh, only,’ said Sir Leopold, ‘to ask if Colonel Pim would be so kind as to subscribe as usual to our Fund for the Amelioration of the Conditions of the Offspring of Superannuated Shop Assistants. Mainly orphans, Mr Pim. We must all die, Mr Pim, and some of us have to die earlier in life than others. Still, our average here is little worse than that of any other large London establishment. In Petrograd – or was it Los Angeles? – I am given to understand, a shop assistant at two-and-thirty is a shop assistant with at least one foot in the grave. It is the little orphans, the fatherless ones, who from no apparent fault of their own, have to be left to the tender mercies of a busy world! It would grieve you, sir, which Heaven forbid, if I told you how many of these wee small things there are now on our hands. Chubby, joysome, rosebud little creatures, as happy as the day is long. Nevertheless it is a little thoughtless to marry, Mr Pim, when it is only orphans one can leave behind one. On the other hand, there is a silver lining to
every
cloud. Without these infants we should be deprived of a good cause. An excellent cause. And it’s causes that keep us going. Last year I think Colonel Pim very kindly contributed half a guinea.’

‘In cash?’ Philip inquired sharply.

‘We debited his account,’ said Sir Leopold.

‘Well, then,’ said Philip, ‘please understand that my uncle
regrets
that little laxity. He has hardened. He now entirely disapproves of orphans and
of orphanages. The shop assistant, he was saying to me only the other day, is a person who should be grateful to Providence that he has
no
justification for dabbling in matrimony. The more celibate they are, in his opinion, the better. But recollect, Sir Leopold, that until we arrive at the higher and fewer salaried officials in your establishment, I feel myself in no way bound to
share
my uncle’s views. Your staff is as courteous and considerate as it appears to be unappreciated. A man’s a man for a’ that. And
a’
that. Let us talk of brighter things.’

Sir Leopold did his utmost to conceal the wound to his vanity. ‘I am sorry to seem to be persistent,’ he assured his client, ‘but Colonel Pim only
yesterday
was so kind as to say he would
consider
my appeal. I take it, then, that he has changed his mind?

‘My uncle,’ retorted Philip tartly, ‘has a mind that is the better for being changed.’ For an instant he saw the face before him as it would appear in due course in the witness-box; and his very soul revolted. That pitiless Machine called Society might have its merits, but not
this
cog in its wheel! ‘I myself implored my uncle,’ he added bitterly, ‘to give the orphans the cold shoulder. What in the chronic sirocco of his next world would be the use to him of a mere half-guinea’s worth of cooling breezes? Scarcely a sop in the pan. Indeed, only a passion for the conventional prevented him from
asking
for his previous donations to be returned.’

Sir Leopold appeared to be engaged in rapidly bolting something – possibly his pride. It was at any rate no part of his secretarial duties to detect insanity in the family of any solvent shareholder.

‘There is only one other little point,’ he went on rather hollowly. ‘Colonel Pim asked me to send him a detailed account of his purchases during the last month. We met by happy chance as he was yesterday alighting from a taxicab at the entrance to his bank. After today’s purchases that will perhaps take an hour or two. But it shall reach him tomorrow morning – without fail.’

Philip had risen. It is better to stand when one is at bay. While with a gentle absent smile he stood drawing on his gloves he was faced with the wildest effort of his life – to make sure of what lay in hiding behind these last remarks. Anything
might.

‘Oh, he did – did he,’ he remarked very softly. ‘I fancy’ – and at last he lifted
his gentle eyes to meet his adversary’s – ‘I
believe
there’s an empty whisky jar that has not yet been credited to him. Perhaps that was on his mind.’

‘Well, Mr Pim,’ said Sir Leopold, ‘turning’ at last, ‘if
that’s
his only jar it’s soon adjusted.’

Philip took a deep breath. He playfully wagged a finger.

‘Now
that,
Sir Leopold,’ he said, ‘was blank verse. I hope you don’t
intend 
to put my little purchases of this morning into
rhyme
!
The effort, I assure you, would be wasted on my uncle.’

He wheeled lightly, and turned towards the door. Sir Leopold, his face now at liberty to resume its office of expressing his feelings, accompanied him. Indeed he continued to accompany him to the very entrance of his gigantic abode. And there Philip almost fainted. A deluge, compared with which that of Noah and his family was nothing but an April shower, was descending on the street.

‘A taxi,’ roared Sir Leopold at a group of his satellites in the porch, caparisoned in shiny waterproofs, and armed with gigantic
parapluies.

But though at least nineteen of these vehicles were instantly battling their way towards this goal, Philip with incredible agility had eluded their
attention
. Before Sir Leopold had had time even to arrange his face to smile a farewell, our young friend had gone leaping up the staircase behind him, and had without a moment’s pause vanished into the Tropical Department. One fugitive glance at its pith and pukka contents, and at the dusky
assistants
in attendance, had only accelerated his retreat. In less than half a minute he found himself confronting a young woman seated in the midst of a stockade of umbrellas.

The coincidence was too extreme to be ignored. He would at least carry off
some
little souvenir of his morning’s outing. What better value could he get for hard cash than an implement that would be at the same time a refuge from the elements – for other he would soon presently have none – and a really formidable weapon at hand for his next interview with Sir Leopold?

He had but just enough breath left to express himself. He pointed.

‘I
want
one, please,’ he cried at the young woman. ‘Cash.’

‘One, two, three, four,
five
guineas?’ she murmured, looking as if she were less in need of her stock than of her lunch. ‘Partridge, malacca, horn, ivory, rhinoceros, natural,
gold
?
Union, gloria, glacé, taffeta, cotton, mixture,
twill
?’

‘Not a toy; an umbrella,’ Philip expostulated. ‘To keep off rain. A nephew returning to school – ten years’ wear. Gingham, alpaca, calico, cast-iron –
anything
;
so long as it is hefty, solid, endurable, awful, and
cheap.’

‘We have here what is
called
an umbrella,’ replied the assistant a trifle coldly. ‘The “Miss and Master Brand”. Lignum-vitae stick, whalebone ribs, blunted ferrule, non-poisonous handle, guaranteed not to break, fray, fade, or scale. Nine and elevenpence complete.’

‘Bill; in haste; cash; just as it is; thanks,’ cried Philip and seized the
dreadful
object. With a groan he laid his Uncle Charles’s sovereign in the narrow brass trough of the pay-desk. The obese young person in the wooden box seemed about to lift it to her lips, glanced at him again, put it aside, smiled, and gave him his change.

‘The way to the back exit, I think, is over there?’ Philip murmured, waving his gloves due west.

The young person smiled again, and he withdrew. He withdrew down the back steps and into the deluge: there to face a watery world, the possessor of ten shillings and a penny (in his pocket), a wardrobe of old suits, about a hundred and fifty books, three of them unmerited prizes for good
conduct
, a juvenile collection of postage stamps, a hypothetical legacy of a shilling, and an uncle who, if he faced his liabilities as an English gentleman must, had to all intents and purposes overdrawn his bank account that afternoon, by, say roughly, a couple of hundred thousand pounds.

The Picnic

The Picnic
*

There was an empty, pensive look on Miss Curtis’s face as she stood there, solitary, by the (as yet unblinded) shop-door, the finger and thumb of her small firm hand idly twisting the pencil stuck in between the two little black buttons of her black bodice. She was looking out through the glass of the door into the street, while Miss Mavor on the further side of the shop was drawing down the other blinds – a swoop and a swish to each, in turn. Miss Mavor did everything like that.

It was the first week of a hot September. The homeward stream of people in the street outside had long since begun to ebb. A late evening sky hung over London, painting with its faint colours the glassy windows of the houses opposite – right down, Miss Curtis noticed, to the top of the first floor. There the darker parts began. All quiet; all serene; and the close of another busy competent day.

With her set, square, capable face, its dark eyes in curious contrast to the pallor of the skin, she seemed to have fallen into a reverie. She herself with her neat handbag and her admirable umbrella would soon be returning to her lodgings. All lights out, she would open this door, shut it, lock the
padlock
, give it a tug and, after one look to left and right just in case of ‘
suspicious
characters’, she would go off home. And anybody who happened to meet and look at her would know that she was a woman well able to take care of herself – or of anybody or anything else, for that matter.

Miss Curtis wasn’t proud of it, but she knew she could be relied on. And so she had got on in the world, and was still getting on. You can never tell,
indeed, into what comfortable port a capable head will not finally conduct you if softly and steadily you follow its nose. Miss Curtis’s nose stood out straight and able. She would have made a formidable figure-head if, head and bust, she had been modelled in wood and dyed with woad and crimson for the purpose. But though, since she was now manageress of the ‘
establishment
’ and to that extent her own mistress, she could in most things have her own way, yet she was always the first to come, and to-night as on all other nights she would be the last to go. She just lived for her business; that’s what it came to.

Silly pretty little Phyllis had left the shop at least an hour before. Miss Curtis had been reminded of her by the sight of yet another belated
tip-tap
young woman tripping along in her champagne stockings to her own particular tryst. The child had asked her for time off – and much too soon after the last occasion. But it is difficult to say No, even to a butterfly – when it happens to be in love. Miss Curtis had always believed in a firm hand, but not in
too
firm a hand. You must keep up appearances, and you must keep the rules – or discipline will suffer. But the rod of iron was not one of her fetishes, except in relation to herself.

Nobody was watching her now, the day was over, and for the moment she could let appearances take care of themselves. So every sign of
competence
and efficiency had gradually drained out of her features as she went on looking out into the street. Her face had become gentle, almost demure. It now resembled, quite unknown to herself, the plush-framed photograph on her mantelpiece which had been taken of her as a fat little girl in a round hat. She had sunk into the deeps as much as that, reducing her to the wish that this pensive coloured scene might go on for ever.

But it wouldn’t. Life wasn’t like that, though you
had
to stand aside sometimes and have a look at it, if only in order to keep on taking your part. Otherwise the less attention you gave it the better. It was hopeless to let it interfere with your – career. Still you had your melting moments – silly ones, too; even dangerous perhaps. Mere memories of them did no harm, though. They helped. They made even really silly people more intelligible – and there was scarcely a moment in Miss Curtis’s day when there wasn’t some silly person about. They also kept a firm hand flexible. Indeed there were little events even in Miss Curtis’s past – just a few – that would occasionally intrude into her mind like shy exotic animals into a highly
conventional
park – as if positively on purpose to amuse her.

Perhaps the queerest of all, the most absurd and ridiculous, yet in some ways the easiest to recall without minding much – simply because it
was
so absurd, so meaningless – was that few days’ holiday she had spent at the seaside, about five years ago. Some memories are like ghosts. So was this. Miss Curtis, at any rate, never knew when it was not going to reappear. And
she was almost sure to find it lurking in wait for her at this particular hour of this particular sort of day.

And here, as if to prove it, was that blind man again, with his black goggles and his tin and his stick and his dog, tapping and groping along the darkening pavement outside. He never failed to call its cue. No marvel in that. Occasionally, if nobody was looking, Miss Curtis had slipped out to put a soundless penny into his tin, and he would lift his unshaven chin at her as if he still hoped he could take a look at so unexpected a patron through those awful lantern-like spectacles. Once, one summer evening, she had actually dropped a shilling into his tin. It wasn’t sentiment; she knew he wasn’t to be pitied so much as all that; but there are ways of letting
your
self
down,
if you harden right off. But to-night – well, Miss Mavor was close upon her. ‘There goes that old one-eyed humbug with the dog,’ she was
saying
, and down came her last blind. ‘I bet
he’s
got some money in the bank.’

Miss Curtis watched him absently out of sight. She didn’t reply; Miss Mavor said everything like that. As for the blind beggar’s having money in the bank, so had Miss Curtis, and a good deal more than this time five years ago. That particular summer indeed she had not only been out of a job for a few weeks, but instead of at once looking for another she had taken a holiday and just blued some of her savings. In really nice apartments, too. But then of course Miss Curtis, at her age, was never in any doubt of a job when she wanted one. She wasn’t exactly lucky; she was efficient. Yet heavens, what a fool she had been! What a simpleton! – and absolutely nothing to show for it, not even to herself when the lights were out, and she was alone.

Simply because she
was
so efficient, and looked so ungullible and was so completely trustworthy, it was almost a solace now to realize that she could ever have been quite so fantastically silly – idiotic. Still, with memories of that kind silence is best. There are limits. Miss Curtis would no more have dreamed of sharing this old ghost with, say, Miss Mavor, than a crocus would dream of blossoming at the foot of the North Pole. And the funny thing was, it was partly because it hadn’t been bad
enough
– looked at in cold blood. You can stand up to the really tragic and – and brazen things out. At least Miss Curtis supposed you could.

It had been at Newhampton – a nice quiet select little place. And it hadn’t been in the horrible height of August either – the Newhampton ‘season’ – but at the end of May, when only the idle rich can afford to enjoy such resorts. She remembered it as clearly as if she had been reading about it the night before in a novel. For the matter of that she remembered even
what
novel she had been reading about an hour or two before she had set out that afternoon on her last solitary picnic – the picnic that had never come off. Oh dear me, how amusing! – with her broken thermos flask, her
raspberry-jam sandwiches and her currant bun. After that little
contretemps
she had sat alone under the sand-dunes, staring at the sea, or with her eyes tight shut – for three solid hours; and then at last by a long way round had come back, sandwiches and bun still uneaten, to her apartments.

Lying half inside her bedroom, in shadow, and half on its canopied balcony, in the sun, she had spent the first part of that afternoon in a
deckchair
– dressed ready to go out – her rather dingy-looking novel in her hand. By stooping forward a little and peeping round the brick corner of the balcony to the left she could see the placid English Channel, steadfastly intent on its imitation of the colour of a baby’s eyes. A tang of salt and sea-weed and stale fish was in the air, and that queer fizz of expectation which frequents all seaside places was in her mind.

‘Mind!’ Why your very inside gives a little happy jump every time even an idle boatman suggests a sail. She could even recall the exact look of the table at her midday meal – some dry cold tongue and stewed gooseberries and cream – though she hadn’t eaten very much of either. That done, and cleared away, there she had lolled – yes, lolled – two cushions behind her head, her legs drawn up sideways under her, but very very carefully so that neither blouse nor tailor-made skirt should suffer from creases, while she continued to devour that precious novel. Simply to make the time go by. Not think of two things at once! What utter nonsense. Yet how silly a story it had been. Even Phyllis would have turned up her nose at such a ‘fullyton’ as that.

It was so silly that she herself had never finished it, and now never would. She had even forgotten to return the book to the stuffy little circulating library that had seemed such a ravishing addition to Newhampton the day after she had arrived. That was the queerest thing of all, perhaps – why (when her own little affair – affair! – was over), a story so silly, so
exaggerated
, so unreal should have become positively nauseating in memory – almost as if it had been an extract from her own autobiography.

Hearts
Aflame
: that was the title. And its author had chosen for his hero a man positively made and designed for victories over the inflammable sex. Nothing very original in that, perhaps. He was always most beautifully dressed, either in plus-fours or for the evening, and with one glance of his piercing blue eyes, with one befondlement, and with the iciest
sang-froid
he broke hearts wherever he went, never even turning aside to glance at the
remains
. And yet so far as Miss Curtis could see he never got the least bit of pleasure out of any heart in any condition – green, ripe, or rotten. It was merely a habit. He was just a Don Juan. On the other hand he was a Don Juan who had made a slip – before the story opened. For an Italian Countess had somehow succeeded in marrying him in spite of his efforts (even then apparent) to practise the part of Henry VIII without incurring its
responsibilities. Poor hysterical racked drugged creature, by Chapter XXIII she had long ago of course lost every shred of belief or faith in him. And yet she had continued to hope (though nothing the author could say
persuaded
Miss Curtis that the Countess had
really
hoped) he would some day turn over a new leaf – one, that is, that would not be merely tantamount to turning over a new lady-love. As if such men had any leaves to turn!

The frail little night-orbed Countess had had her wits about her too. She had remained an angler long after she had caught her fish – or rather had been caught by her fish. But in Chapter XXIV she had begun doing what Miss Curtis had often noticed ladies, especially titled
ladies, often do in novels – she had decided to win back her husband by means of her charms. That was odd, too. The author kept on talking about the Countess’s charms, but even Miss Curtis had felt bound to agree with her promiscuous husband that some of them weren’t very conspicuous. They were at any rate hopelessly unpractical, and unlikely even, according to Miss Curtis’s secondhand experience of such matters, to last out a honeymoon. Perhaps this was because she was so foreign. Whether or not, Miss Curtis couldn’t have supposed that anyone – even an Italian Countess, could be of her own sex and yet be so, well, shameless. In such a stupid way, too. She had positively no reserve. She said things to her husband, even when she knew he didn’t care,
that you couldn’t
possibly say to
any
body
if you remembered you were ever going to be alone again. She entreated him, she besought him – that was the word – to be ‘kinder’, to return to her, to remember all her sacrifices. ‘Oh,’ she would cry, grovelling at his feet, her sultry lambent eyes raining tears down her pale olive cheeks. ‘Oh, how I love you! How I love you!’ And then in the same breath those very same eyes would be snapping crackers at him, ‘Oh, how I
hate
you!
How
I hate you!’ Remarks like that, of course, are like holding the candle of your life in the middle and asking
any
Don Juan to burn it up at both ends.

And then had come Chapter XXV. In a desperate effort to retrieve her husband’s affections the Countess had sent to Paris for the most seductive of new confections in ivory silk with jewels to match that Worth could supply – for she had still managed somehow to cling to the remnant of her prenuptial fortune. Miss Curtis had not cared much for the look of this ‘model’ as it appeared in print. Perhaps that was because the book had been written by a man. But how silly of him not to ask his wife or his sister or his mother or a female friend what she thought of it. Anyhow the Countess had sent for it, and it had come, and there it lay, in its original package where her maid had put it – on her own little bed in her own little bedroom. And the Night of Nights was still to come. Alas, when the night did come her husband, morally speaking, had put even himself beyond the pale – though what the Countess thought of it Miss Curtis was never to discover.