Short Stories 1927-1956 (46 page)

For, though he might not admit it now, she had needed a good deal of persuasion! What kind of froward child would Charles prove to be? There was little of the vixen or tomboy in him – wrong sex! – and still less of the waif and stray. Yet in some respects he might have sat for Humphrey in
Misunderstood.
And oh, how absurdly obstinate, how sure he was of
himself
. And it wasn't disloyal, at least she hoped not, to realize that he was not always too anxious as to what kind of self was being so obstructionary. Pig iron: she smiled to herself in the most charming and charitable of fashions. But anyhow Charles was no Scrooge. Whatever he clamped about his
middle
, it wasn't his cash-box. Not at least when she was concerned.

Far from it; he was generous – her charming little dressing-case, for
ex ample
, with its silver-gilt fittings. But as for bustling out with
The
First
Nowell
and turkey and plum pudding and mince pies for every tramp who called at his country mansion – well, no. But then again, even ‘mansion' wasn't quite fair. To judge from the photographs he had sent her, the
architect
and Charles together, though they had been a little harsh and cold to its antiquity, had done their work admirably. It would be just the kind of house she loved and had always longed for; she was sure of that. And who would have supposed Charles or his mother could have had so perfectly sweet an intuition as to leave two or three of the rooms unfurnished –
waiting
?
Perfectly
sweet. And at this her reverie had come to an end.

‘Do you read
many
of those kind of books?' a voice had suddenly broken in from out of the dusk of its owner's corner. ‘I shouldn't have supposed myself there was much to find in them.'

It was an unusual voice, the timbre of which she would certainly never forget, if you could call anything so flat and monotonous
timbre.
At sound of it she had turned abruptly in the opposite direction, and in that instant became aware that lights were beginning to gleam in streets and at windows in the gliding scene beyond. She was glad of that; glad, too, that a scatter of languid and minute snowflakes were twirling past the glass; that footfalls were approaching from the engine end of the train; and that her
fellow-passenger
, interested in literature, had decided to change over to the other corner. But soon the footfalls had died away, and he was once more back opposite to her and no doubt still awaiting an answer to his question. She took a deep breath, held it a second, raised her chin a fraction of an inch, and looked at him.

How silly such apprehensions! Even if this had not been a luxurious corridor train, but one of the Victorian sort, mere wooden boxes – and not even a bit of string for poor old half-asleep Mr Gold with his
watch-chain
to tug at when the fair, slender, silly-looking young Mr Lefroy rose out of his corner! – there couldn't be
danger
in a grey, ageing face, pitted with shadows around its gloomy eyes, and so desperately packed with misery. And even a face expressive of an active misery is not so tragic as one on which an habitual misery has become little more than a permanent mask.

She continued to scrutinize him from under her pale vermilion hat, in her
long new charmingly cut fur-collar-and-cuffed winter coat, and nothing would ever recall what she was thinking about as she did so. And then she hastily glanced down at the red book.

‘It's a detective story,' she said.

‘That's what I thought,' uttered the mouth in the dark face, but without the faintest hint of an ‘I told you so' in its tones. ‘From what I've seen of them, they don't entertain me much. No more than so much chaff. And I shouldn't have supposed ladies, or anybody else either, could be bothered with them – after the newspapers.'

Lavinia's eyelids descended a little, and she glanced again at her open page. No, she couldn't very well attempt to placate him with her anthology. ‘Why, newspapers?' she retorted, but kept the question that had
immediately
followed it to herself:
That
'
s
not why he is talking, what is he leading up to?

The clumsy head, so thickly thatched with iron-grey hair, had turned aside a little, as if its owner were listening to sounds in the distance. ‘
Whatever
they say, it's facts
they
are about,' he answered. ‘And I shouldn't have supposed that anyone could wish for worse.'

‘No,' said Lavinia brightly, ‘but then you see fiction is not facts; and this is fiction.' And seldom in her life had she said anything so facilely that she had so instantly wished to recall. When things really matter as little as that it is almost beyond stupidity to put them into words. ‘I mean,' she said, ‘of course, there are just
awful
things in the newspapers. And, what in some ways is worse I suppose, one doesn't believe them.'

The squat figure in the corner at this stared moodily on. ‘“Believe”! Between you and me,' he said, ‘I've had my dose too.' An extraordinary smotheration of messages had spread over his countenance and vanished, and it was with a gulp like that of a barn owl discharging a whole dark night's hunting relics that he added: ‘There's a
friend
of mine on this train. At least there may be. But you'll understand me' – and, what Lavinia liked far less than misery, a gleam of fear and cunning had shown in his eyes – ‘I don't much care to go and see.'

Lavinia listened. ‘Why not?' she said, and at this instant the sad neutral winter landscape, already scarcely perceptible beneath a thin grey skin of frozen snow and a steadily descending veil of tiny flakes from the heavens above it, was suddenly blotted out. The train lights had come on; and the small cabin in which the two of them sat together had become a cage of radiance. How Lavinia hated too much light. So, too, seemingly did her fellow-passenger. His whole face, not merely his eyes, had shut up – as if he had been electrocuted, as indeed in a mild fashion Lavinia had too. Still, she herself had been wishing for more light.

‘Why not?' she almost whispered now. ‘If he is a
friend
?'
And she had not
said it, oddly enough, as though the question implied that she herself was not one.

‘Ay,' said her new acquaintance, ‘I said a friend. You can't find words sometimes …'

‘Not
a friend?' hinted Lavinia.

The head shook slowly. The eyes lifted a little towards the electric bulb and the furious white of the carriage roof over the racks. ‘No. Not.' In infinite weariness he drew a thick fudgy hand over his face. ‘I'm afraid of him. And that, my God's,' he had muttered almost to himself, ‘the solemn truth.'

How many miles, Lavinia wondered, had they gone ravening on into the night by now? They must be in open English country at any rate – peaceful woods and hills and water, perhaps, and an occasional homestead huddled under the mantling snow. He stirred uneasily, moved his mouth, and spoke again.

‘What I'd ask you to
do
,
young lady, is to go and see.'

‘Go and see!' Lavinia repeated blankly, incredulously. The abjectness of it all!
‘Me
?
But… Well, I'm alone, of course. Though
that
,'
she added quickly, ‘doesn't really matter. Besides, I don't know in the least what – what your friend is like.'

‘What he's like? what he's
like?
'
The grubby fingers fumbled steadily down from button to button of the thick great-coat. ‘Yes, of course; what he's like. Why,' and again the old and pallid face had seemed to contract into a look as stupid as it was cunning, ‘he's like – just as usual.'

At which for some obscure reason Lavinia felt even less inclined for the expedition. ‘He's a
littleish
man,' continued the other as if he were actually measuring him with his eye and relieved at being on ground so safe; ‘about my size, but thin and skimpy; with a long nose and red – reddish – hair. But gone bald, you must understand. And though a bit younger than I am,
getting
on. You needn't be afraid of that.'

Lavinia took another deep breath, glancing up at the heat indicator. The very outrageousness of the invitation seemed to have put it, now, at any rate, past refusal. ‘Well,' she said at last, ‘it's very hot in here.' As though that might help! ‘But supposing I do find him, what then? Shall I ask him to come in to you? Speak to him? It would be very awkward.'

‘Not awkward a bit,' he assured her. ‘Far from it. So long as I know where he is. No, I don't want him in here. Oh no!' A trace of suspicion that
she
might showed in his small, restless, burnt-out eyes. ‘All
I
'
m
wanting to
know is if he is – well,
about.
You say you read all there is to read in the newspapers. Mind you, I'm talking to you as a friend; no reason not; as you wouldn't repeat anything to anybody. Why should you? But going back to the newspapers …' He listened. ‘Blackmail?'

‘You, mean,' said Lavinia, ‘have I read about that? Blackmail?' The
gutted
miserable eyes merely continued to hold her own. ‘Why yes,' she went on, ‘I have – now and then. And I think,' a fiery furnace of indignation had suddenly shot open its iron doors in her very soul, like the flare from a
railway
engine – ‘I think it's an utterly filthy thing! Almost worse than murder.'

This was scarcely ladylike language, and yet not quite extreme enough apparently for the situation. The stranger in the corner had been not in the least moved by it. The effect on him had merely become little more than a dark concentrated stare. Then he nodded. ‘You're right there; even if you don't know what you are talking about. Not likely. Besides, I don't see why
“almost
”,' he added, almost peevishly. ‘And who's to believe you? Eh?'

Lavinia gave up attempting to find her way through this muddled harangue. ‘You mean –
he
was? Blackmail? You are afraid of him?' All seemed much easier now. ‘You think he may be on this train – to pursue you, persecute you, come in here? Well, even at that' – and in this bold moment she had really felt her company might make all the difference – ‘I should be here too. Yes. Yes, I'll go: I'll go now – if it can be of any real help.'

But even as she had leaned forward to rise, her hand resting on the seat, she had added, groping slowly on through the shadowy misgivings that had flocked into her mind, ‘I can't imagine
anything
one could have done, almost, that would have justified —' But she had failed to finish this rash generalization. Thus stooping, she could see more clearly the colourless
exhausted
face – the face as of a corpse but for its horror and woe. And she had said no more.

And now she had risen, yet nonetheless had paused another instant
before
plunging beyond him out at the open door. This accomplished, she glanced back over her shoulder with yet another nod of reassurance. But even in this instant he too had risen, and, on tiptoe, was clumsily groping with his hand to draw the green lampshade for night-travellers over the carriage light. Well, she could pull it back again when she returned. ‘A little thin man; your height, but thin,' she whispered over her shoulder, her left hand on the cold brass rail protecting the glass beyond; ‘going bald, with a long nose and what was red hair: is that it?' How utterly lifeless the description seemed!

‘Ay,' he said. ‘That's it; like a weasel.' With shoulders humped, he was blankly surveying her. ‘But you'll have to look pretty close for all that.'

What
that
meant Lavinia was not to realize for the time being, and
already she was on her way. How many carriages? she wondered, as, shaken and clutching, she groped steadily on. And what would she say to the guard or ticket-man if she met him? Oh, yes, of course – she was looking for the restaurant car. The attendant himself would be round later. It was lucky – for both of them – herself and her new acquaintance – that their train was an extra. Five passengers packed in on each side of a compartment, and possibly two or three standing in it would have been a rather too richly diversified assortment for her errand! On she went, covertly glancing. An old lady, a pale young man with a velvet collar to his coat, and what looked like a brewer, asleep; two sailors with bundles and a bunch of mistletoe, and a man in spectacles, reading; three assorted school-girls with hard black straw hats and pigtails, jawing like monkeys, and an aunt, possibly, with the
Spectator.
And so on and on, from compartment to compartment, and, over the swaying little metal bridges between them from carriage on to carnage, Lavinia forged her way – and without reward. There was not a vestige of a fellow-creature who was not merely skimpy or ageing or
long-nosed
or rufous or semi-hairless or vulturous – (how vividly now she could see the ‘filthy' phantom!) – but all these together. Such unifications, please heaven, must be pretty rare even in this densely populated world.

It had not been quite so easy to venture through the restaurant car, even though it was already dotted with would-be eaters. But Lavinia, as her
partner
in their little business would have agreed, and even Charles, too, though he much preferred feminine qualities in his womenkind – Lavinia was rather pestered at times by her sense of duty. She had
said
she would search the train, and search it she did, omitting only the guard's van, of whose inmate she caught but one intimidating glimpse, as he stood surveying his
miscellaneous
holiday freight – from dead hares and turkeys to wooden horses, from wads of newspapers to a weeping Sealyham and what appeared to be a cage of love-birds. Blackmailers there might be, whirling along with her over these wheels this Christmas Eve, but the one she was after was not apparent.