Short Stories 1927-1956 (40 page)

A dreadful terror seized her. She was shuddering from head to foot, as if in an unearthly cold, as though every slender bone in her body were brittle as ice. Well, she must wait a moment. That might be all that was needed. Then she would perhaps have life and strength to face this fresh ordeal. Yet all that her
own
heart now thirsted for was an infinite peace and silence – a nothingness – wherein to be at rest.

Besides, the Master of the House, as the man had said, might be stealing
in upon her at any moment; and what kind of personage would this be, if his own servant had a face so featureless, so cold, and so indifferent?

She turned instinctively towards the light of the candles. They stood as if in mute collusion on either side of a picture, of what appeared to be a portrait – obscure and sombre. Of a more intense blackness indeed even than the star in the broken window of the coach. Whose portrait? She drew near, and, as it seemed to her, these walls, of an unendurable frigidity, heightened, as if in a dream, as she did so; so that in order to see the
picture
fully she had to mount the stone that stood in front of this altar-like chimneypiece, with its fireless and yawning cavity.

With extreme stealth she gently pushed one of the candlesticks a little nearer and gazed up at the picture. And, as with a sheep that has scented the slaughter-house, a sudden paroxysm of misgiving swept over her mind; and then as swiftly, in an instant, was utterly gone. This, she realized, and as plainly as if the man himself had told her so – this must be the portrait of the Master of the House. And she mustn't stay too long to examine it
because
there was this other thing to do that she so much dreaded. Besides he himself would soon be here.

Nevertheless – and although the face in the portrait was as familiar to her as her own, and had been so even from her early childhood, it seemed that a complete lifetime's scrutiny could not exhaust its mysteries, its promises. She was terrified no longer, but consoled. Indeed it was against this very consolation that, utterly weak and weary, she knew she must strive. Yet still she gazed and hungered on, her glance roving insatiably over the arch of the bare bone above the brows, the fretted exquisite zigzag sutures, like brooks in a wilderness, traversing it north and south, and east and west. Once, however familiar, she could not have endured for long the
fleshlessness
of this countenance, the dark double vacancy where its nostrils should have been. But to say it ‘grinned' – those even teeth set in that narrow arc in their regular sockets – why, even its owner, Emmeline almost smiled at the conviction, would have scoffed at such an insult!

And the vacant orbits gazed back at her, tonguelessly declaring their inexhaustible resources. If you peer down into a grave, it is nothing but a black shallow four-cornered cavity dug out of the passive surface of the earth. But these inscrutable hollows, surely, conveyed an assurance of the immortal mind that had had its dwelling behind, them, even though all memory there (at which irony she again smiled softly to herself) appeared to have vanished.

‘This, Emmeline,' she was repeating to herself,
‘this,
Emmeline, is the Master of the House. This, Emmeline, is the Master of the House.' The childish syllables sounded on in consciousness like a tiny runlet of water threading a dried-up bed of pebbles.

So engrossed had she become that, although her inward attention had for many moments been aware of the inscription beneath the portrait, she had not yet attempted to read it. And now when she endeavoured to do so, the task proved all but as difficult as had been the deciphering of the scrap of paper which she had found in her bag. And yet again like a child she was compelled to spell out the letters. The candles bathed her eyelids with their beams as she stood there, almost
become
a child again.
‘All
hope
abandon
ye
who
enter
here!
'

What?
What?
There must be some mistake! This couldn't be so – not after the serene silence of the blue-eyed conductor, his chin cupped in his hands. She leaned the candle closer till it guttered. No, no, not ‘
all
'.
It was she herself who had made the mistake. It was not
‘all
hope'; it was ‘
no
hope'. Why, then, if so, she promised the all-promising but unpromising sockets whence radiant eyes must once have shone, she need do nothing more than merely wait.

And at this, yet again the frenzied fear seized her that she must – that there was still that other ordeal to be faced, that on this depended her
everlasting
peace, and that in but another moment she would be too late. She seized one of the candlesticks and hastened into the further room, the stones beneath her feet seeming to withdraw themselves as she did so, so that this brief journey left her almost completely exhausted.

Come to the bed, she paused and listened, steadily surveying the shape that was now outlined there beneath her eyes. Sleeping Prince Charming, and she the Beauty! Again she smiled, but in a languid, self-pitying, wistful fashion, as if under the influence of a dense narcotic. ‘What dreams may come …' she was whispering to herself. That was because of Yorick, of course. How cold these lips must be –
would
be! And did she really
want
to waken the sleeper? Even for his own sake? – when the Master of the House might …

Hsst!
What was that?
Had
a door opened? A chill breath as of jonquils and of that detestable, that odious other sweetness had rilled into the room. A sickening moment of agony followed. Why
try
?
And then suddenly she had stooped and had lifted the uppermost corner of the sheet …

And now it was not Emmeline who was the child, but this Naughty One whom she had found hiding under the sheet in the Master's house,
pretending
, shamming. Cold lips, indeed! Emmeline in all her dreams had never seen a face so youthful or more lovely. It was drawing nearer to her, too, the lips a little parted as if in astonished welcome of her kiss …

And now she had really opened her eyes, to find herself gazing intently into the similitude of this very face, not a dream-face, but a real face, that of a fair young woman, her young head surmounted by a nurse's cap, her
downcast 
gaze fixed on the hands of a watch which she held in her right hand, the fingers of the other hand gently but firmly encircling Emmeline's wrist. For a while Emmeline never so much as stirred. Hardly even her eyes moved except first to survey the strange spotless whiteness of the ceiling above her head, and then to slide tardily downwards and sideways until they rested on a glass-full of jonquils, that stood in the scintillating rays of a little electric lamp beside her bed. Theirs, then, was this delicious fragrance in the air. Motionless, their green stalks piercing the bright and vivid water. They refreshed her thirsty eyes – a miracle of beauty. For centuries, as it seemed – though it can but have been seconds, since the nurse herself was counting them – Emmeline then struggled to make her lips say but one word. They faltered, just like an infant's when it is about to cry, but at last the three syllables managed to escape from them.

‘
Sesame!
'
she whispered, solemnly. No less solemnly the young nurse had lifted her eyelids – eyes blue as the flower of the chicory.

‘That's better!' she said. ‘There's nothing to be afraid of. That's
all
you need say.'

‘But I must,' began Emmeline, groping with hovering fingers over the bandage on her head, ‘I must tell you just one thing … I have been
dreaming
of you and – and … Who was that?' she broke off to exclaim, as if in a momentary panic.

‘Ssh
now! You must keep very, very quiet,' said the nurse. ‘That was only the doctor.'

‘Ah, yes.' Emmeline tremblingly drew her hand down from her head, and in so doing caught the glimmer of the sapphires on her ring finger. The faintest frown of perplexity masking the clear pallor of her brow, she
continued
for a while steadily scrutinizing them. And then – as if a curtain had soundlessly lifted in the little theatre of her mind – recognition came.

‘Look,' she said, holding the finger up to the nurse's inspection. ‘Is – is he …
safe
?'

The blue eyes hadn't faltered. ‘Waiting,' she replied.

‘Well – in that case,' murmured an ever drowsier voice, ‘I am …' – there was a long pause – ‘glad.'

And with that Emmeline had already escaped from actuality again, had fallen asleep; and not even the most vigilant and skilful of nurses can keep a chart of her patient's dreams.

Cape Race

Cape Race
*

It was still early – marvellously sharp and clear and early; and the tang of the open sea simply swept over Lettie from head to foot as she stepped over the brass-bound coaming of the doorway on to the water-darkened deck. Cooped up in her cabin, it seemed that she had been listening to the sailors swabbing down that deck for hours. ‘All through the night’, in fact. The muffled swish and thump of their mops had sounded faintly on even in her dreams as she lay, rocked in her narrow berth, between sleeping and waking. But now the deck was not only swept and garnished, it was
deserted.
It just dipped with its slow gentle lurch and then swam back again. And along the whole length of it there was nothing but empty chairs to be seen – chairs in a long gaping wooden row, naked and vacant, that had themselves watched out life together the whole dark through.

Just now, however, chairs as empty as possible were all the company Lettie needed, and she pushed off into the full glare of the bright windy morning. Like a guinea embedded in black sealing-wax her gold-sleeked head stood out sharply against the diamond-clear deep darkness of the sea – which, having recovered from its childish fit of rage and petulance
overnight
, was now with its scattering crystal foam-beads rocking itself to sleep. Even if the brine-laden breezes were not actually bragging about it, it was plain how early the morning was, for the globe of the burning sun was still low in the east, immense and refulgent, and Lettie was alone.

George shut up in his stateroom, and George’s mamma in hers, were still blind leagues away from this vast welcoming scene that had now burst in with all its radiance upon her senses. Poor George, you couldn’t blame
him
for clinging to his blankets. It was indeed bad luck not only to have been so forlornly and stubbornly sea-sick but for such a humiliatingly long spell. And to be worried to death with forebodings, too – such unnecessary, shapeless, vaporous forebodings. And all these horrors all at the same time! No, indeed; as much as possible of that dreamless slumber which knits up the ravelled sleeve of care for George, poor dear!

As for George’s mamma, since like a drowsy mouse-wearied pussy-cat she was always miles and miles away from the Here-and-Now, it was a joy to think of her not bothered with it at all. You can’t lose
real
things in your sleep, that’s one blessing. And after all she
had
in some degree lost even her beloved George. So Lettie was positively exulting in having the North Atlantic entirely to herself. Her own little secret bout of
mal
de
mer
had
lasted only a few hours. She felt as fresh as a linnet in an April copse. She gloried in the fatuous but lovely motions of the great ship – its faint murk of smoke thinning up from its yawning funnels – as it wallowed like some vast imperturbable monster along its watery pathway to New York.

They that go down to the sea in ships and have their business in great waters – Lettie pushed and dipped and danced her way along the slippery deck, and lo and behold, as she came forging on towards the bows of the ship,
there,
as sharp as a tiny picture across the tumbling sea, lay land. Land! As astonishing, as unexpected and welcome as it was lovely: a
flattish
land mounding beyond into low bluish hills. And on its coast a huddle of coloured shingle-roofed houses, a red and a red and a green, and what she was morally certain must be a wireless station – its exquisite antennae tapering up into the crystalline blue.

A man in an old blue jersey, and with bits of the sky for eyes – a seaman too, and not one of these mere urban and obsequious deck stewards – was coming along.

‘What’s that?’ said Lettie, pointing her finger.

‘That?’ said the seaman. ‘That’s Cape Race. Newfoundland, miss. We don’t sight this coast like that once in a blue moon. Not usually. Fog.’

‘So that’s Cape Race – Newfoundland!’ echoed Lettie, her small head poised on her shoulders like a young she-kestrel’s as she gazed across at it. ‘Cape Race. How far to go now, then?’

‘A bit over a thousand miles, miss, I should reckon.’

How romantic and how amazing! Newfoundland indeed! And that it should have been there for centuries upon centuries continually in sound of its perpetual breakers beneath its low moulded hill, and that she had never seen it before! What completely commonplace things could sometimes almost suffocate you, not of course with any
novelty,
but with some hidden meaning. And if she herself could count those mute dark windows beneath those smokeless chimneys – obviously there might be eyes behind them even at this moment steadfastly scanning this great painted stranger on the deep, as it forged its stealthy course from east to west – eyes of people half asleep, in their night clothes, peering at the ship from beneath those low roofs.

‘And what,’ asked Lettie, exceedingly loth to let the sailor go, ‘what is the name of that bit of land jutting out to the left there?’

‘That, miss? That’s Mistaken Point,’ he said.

‘Why was it mistaken?’

He shook his head, and smiled out of his sea-clear eyes at her. ‘That’s got me, miss,’ he replied.

‘Anyhow,’ cried Lettie with decision, ‘we are not mistaking it now.’ At which little witticism the young sailor laughed and went on his way.

So this was land! and the journey which was to end in two wonderful
beginnings, George’s new career, and, if everything went well, her own marriage, would soon be over. Another day or two and the vast bronze face of Liberty, with her spiked head-dress and uplifted torch, would heave into view and stand sightlessly gazing at her from the harbour mouth. And
beyond
Liberty the serried austerities of poor George’s abhorred and
inexorable
skyscrapers. But sufficient unto the morrow are the perils thereof. Why is it that what may seem absolutely unendurable to think of before it comes, can swim up so easily and predestinedly on the day?

Anyhow, she wasn’t going to bother about the future. Not now. And no; never more! Indeed she couldn’t possibly have told anybody how every electric particle of her was exulting in the buffeting wind, in the flecked light-bright beads of spray, in the glitter and the splendour and motion of it all, and not least in that queer huddled little nest of humans over there, tucked away beyond its surf on this remote coast line. And all as natural and like a picture as a village in the Cotswolds!

Should she, or should she
not,
tap on George’s little round thick glass port? No daisy of the sea, no marine heartsease flowered in those smooth dark hollows of water, else Ophelia-wise she might have put the question to the test. So doubtful she herself remained that she had actually stepped in from off the open deck on her way below long before she had decided that she would. But here she was; and the long wide glass-walled saloon – that too was perfectly empty.

But no: yet another marvel. It was not empty. For even as she came
stooping
in on its light and solitude some winged thing flashed before her eyes, and had dashed with a sullen tiny thump against the plate-glass window. It was only a bird, a very slender bird with coloured feathers, as small as one of her own English warblers; but now it was fluttering in frenzy against the crystal walls of its strange prison-house in vain exhausting efforts to escape this human stranger and to reach the sun.

‘You poor
poor
little creature,’ Lettie was whispering to herself as she watched it. ‘It’s silly to do that. Just stay still awhile and wait!’ Why, it must have come dipping in over-night or possibly at daybreak from the very hills she had just been contemplating across the few severing miles of the sea. And alas, how could she hope to free the mite unharmed? If she ran out for help, it might beat itself to death while she was gone. What an omen!

She would have to remain completely still, then seize her opportunity. In this inner hush she could hear the fluttering of its wings and the tapping of its small horny beak against the glass even above the vast wash and
soughings
of the ocean. Grief and dismay filled her heart; she stood tautly
stooping
, utterly at a loss how to save it from its own wild fears. And perhaps because she had meanwhile never stirred by so much as an inch, head or foot; perhaps, also, because compassion may make itself felt even between
things so alien to one another as wild bird and Man, it had now, wearied out for the while, pushed its small bony framework into a corner and crevice of the window, its head crooked on its ruffled neck, its
sun-diamonded
round eye fixed, it seemed, on herself, its primrose-tinted wing forlornly drooping.

With infinite caution Lettie pushed a chair the least bit nearer. Then poising herself, as stealthily as a weasel, on feet and ankles almost as slender in proportion as the bird’s own legs and claws, she gradually raised herself towards its lair. And still this panting little atom of life in its damp-darkened feathers just eyed her glassily back.

‘There now,’ she whispered seductively with pursed-up lips, ‘it’s only me,
I
’ll take care of you. Just – yes, there! – just trust yourself for one – sigh of – an instant – and …’

It was almost as if she had hypnotized the wild and tiny creature. It had neither struggled any longer, nor pecked at her fingers; it had scarcely stirred; and Lettie with extreme caution had climbed inch by inch down from her rocking perch again, and now held her throbbing, warm-downed, living prey clasped safely in her hand. Its flat and pointed head lay gently couched on the knuckle of one of her fore-fingers, while with the tip of the other she smoothed its exquisite feathers from crown to tail. She smiled, whistling softly, but the bright black-ringed fierce grey unspeculating eyes paid no heed.

Lettie’s heart was beating under her young ribs as violently as its own. It
was
an omen; she was desperately reluctant to let it go, and yet confident that, given its liberty, it would find its way back to safety and home. So
bidding
it be of good courage and fear nothing – as if she were talking to a child – she hooded it softly over with her scrap of a handkerchief and went out again on to the deck. There she gingerly picked her way foot by foot and yard by yard – though she had long since found her sea-legs –
sternwards
.

A rather pallid and heavy young man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles, whom she had more than once noticed during the voyage, had also decided to savour the morning breezes. Perhaps he was anxious to take the taste of something overnight from out of his mouth. He had come lurching round the corner like a bear after honey. And as he cocked a discreetly
interrogative
eye in her direction, Lettie openly smiled at him. She would have smiled at Beelzebub. It was as if she had seen him thousands and thousands of times before, and she said ‘Good morning’, as if she really did desperately hope it would be a
very
good morning for him. Then, still with her
weightless
burden in her hand, she hastened on, and down the narrow steps of the companion ladder to the deck below.

At the further end of this, past the tight-wedged hatches and the bollards
and the cook-house, was a niche now familiar to her. She and George had spent many a dark stolen moment there, gazing – he mournfully, she
comfortingly
– away back out over the yeasty wake of the great vessel towards home. There with the fumes of bacon and coffee in her nostrils she now stayed a while, completely screened from sight, to give her prize as long a respite as it might need before she committed it to its fate.

The sky was as blue as a hedge-sparrow’s egg – bluer. Its vast empty vault, where still the stars in their invisible constellations must be shining, though not even the Ancient Mariner’s eye could now have picked them out, arched itself over her head. And the unfathomable and inexplorable sea, which she and the ship were abandoning to its own eyeless solitude again, stretched out in its measureless leagues beyond and beyond and beyond her.
Nonetheless
even Lettie realized – had not George himself pointed it out to her? – how narrow a circle of its waters was actually scannable from where she stood; a small horizon which was, too, continually changing as the ship plunged on.

And now, on her left hand, the silent shores, the squat vigilant lighthouse, the smokeless shack roofs, the uplands of Cape Race were wheeling more clearly into view. Soon they would have drifted by, be gone, have vanished – and, so far as she was concerned, probably for ever. There was not a moment to lose. She raised her hand to her lips, and imprinted a kiss light as thistledown on the snakelike feathery head, showering on it a host of blessings as multitudinous as the morning dew. Her very life for the moment seemed to be bound up with its destiny. She had saved it from ship’s cat or ship’s boy, perhaps, or from one of those odious little tallow-faced
gentilities
she had seen scuttling in and out of the most expensive ‘suite’ of
staterooms
on the upper deck. How dreadful then if, in spite of it all, it should come to grief! Why, during the last voyage of this very ship, in the latening dusk, had not a mad miserable and heartbroken woman attempted to fling herself overboard from this very rail on which Lettie was now leaning? ‘Not the ghost of a chance for her
there
,’ George had declared, almost as if with satisfaction at
something
definite in a universe of flux. ‘Not a ghost!’ and he had gone on staring down into the pale green seething pit of water under the keel.