Short Stories 1927-1956 (70 page)

‘How do you do? I fear you have had a cold welcome.’

I made no reply. She then asked me who I was, and how I had found my way into the house. Mortally alarmed of her, I muttered my name and
explained
where I had come from. She then inquired what I had come
for.
And that for the moment stumped me.

‘For what you can find, I suppose,’ she jeered. ‘Well, my young man, even magpies have tongues. Whatever else you may think covetable here, you won’t discover anything to
eat.
That I can warrant.’

Her old rouged sallow cheeks puckered up into a grin. She nodded at the snowdrops in my hand.

‘What are those for?’ she asked me.

The knowledge that in my embarrassment my face must have gone red as a beetroot only made me the more timid and disinclined to answer her. I said I had brought them for someone.

‘“Some one?” Some one
here?’
she retorted sharply. ‘Who? When?’

I turned a faltering head, glanced up at the portrait on the wall; and then, still speechless, fixed my eyes on herself again.

‘For that?’ she cried. ‘For
her?’
There was no mistaking her astonishment. ‘Well! And you expect me, my young gentleman, to believe it! Flowers for a picture! A pretty story – even if it is untrue. And who do you suppose that
is
?’

I had heard, I explained, of a princess who had once lived in the house. My father had talked of her, and the servants. The features of the jaded old face set into a stare and the black eyes seemed to pierce me to the marrow.

‘A princess, eh? And what
kind
of a princess, may I ask?’

I told her that I thought she had come from the East.

‘And gone
to
?’

‘I supposed,’ I said, ‘that she was…’ Then I paused.

‘Well? That she was? That she was – what?’

‘Dead,’ I replied; and hung my head.

I cannot describe the precise change in her face at this announcement. Certainly no resentment showed in it. Indeed, for a moment its peevishness seemed to drain away out of it, and much, too, even of its age and its
sardonicism
. Another face, from out of the past, had been faintly disclosed. It seems strange that at that moment I did not realize whose.

‘Oh, “dead”,’ she repeated. ‘So the princess is dead? That’s what they all say, is it? Convenient. But not much of a compliment, do you suppose? And what did you think this princess of yours would look like – well, if she
was
dead?’ I ignored the sinister hint in the question, yet was momentarily
fascinated
by it. I merely nodded again towards the picture.

‘Like that,’ I replied.

‘Very naïve, and charming. Prettiness itself,’ she scoffed. ‘A secret
assignation
? But, if, my young stranger, the young lady was dead, who did you suppose was going to keep the tryst?’

The old creature’s eyes fixed themselves even a shade more intently on my silent face. ‘A ghost, I suppose? … So that’s it?’

I shook my head, and had just enough courage to add, ‘I don’t
think
I should have been frightened.’

‘Not frightened, eh?’ she mocked me. ‘Not at a ghost? Quite a little Sir Galahad! And do you flatter yourself that you didn’t look more than a little frightened when you saw
me
?
Bless you, child, the bloom went out of your cheeks – like
that.
As if you had gulped down a dose of physic – castor oil. But perhaps you supposed that
I
was a ghost?’

There fell again a silence between us. Unless it were fancy, the waterfall had slightly changed its note. The frost, then, was deepening. The quiet lovely room was cold and still as a vault. I continued to gaze at my
questioner
, my hands clammy, my eyes like a bird’s in the spell of a serpent.

‘At first, perhaps, I did think you were a ghost,’ I managed to blurt out at last. ‘I wasn’t sure
what
you were. Not at first. It startled me.’

‘It
, eh? At
first
?
But when you discovered that I was … well, flesh and – and bone, what then? You were still more frightened?’

‘Oh, no,’ I lied;
and added quickly to muffle the lie
up, ‘except at being caught here.’

‘I see,’ she mocked meditatively. ‘And the snowdrops? Were they to be an offering to the paint, or to the spectre?’

Again I shook my head. ‘I was only going to leave them,’ I said.

‘Quite a little romance! Train up the child in the way that he should go. Don’t be alarmed. We all have to begin like that. But for the life of me I
cannot
make up my mind whether our little housebreaker is extremely
backward
for his age, or atrociously forward. How old
are
you?’

‘Speak up,’ she said, when I had answered. ‘You need not be as
frightened
of me as all that. Perhaps you would like a pretty little vase for your posy and some nice cold water? Gracious heavens, try to come alive, boy! I could never abide day-dreamers.’

By now I was ready to burst with misery, rage, and shame. And she saw it. Her face softened a little. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘you can comfort yourself with one thing: I don’t tell
tales.
I may resemble an old parrot; but I don’t tell tales. Never did. I leave that to others.’ She had seated herself at the table.

‘Come here and shake hands on it.’ The last of dusklight was beginning to drain out of the room; a paler, more furtive radiance was stealing in. I hesitated, went over, and held out my hand.

‘God bless the boy,’ she cried, ‘has he
no
manners! I warrant now, if
that
young lady had been sitting here, you wouldn’t have put out a lifeless paw to shake hands with. Not so much of a little Platonist as all that!’ She had tugged off a needlework glove and had thrust out a blue-veined claw of a hand towards me. Its bony fingers were three deep with old rings. ‘There,’ she announced, ‘since I haven’t a mince-pie or a slice of cake to offer you, taste that!’

With infinite disinclination I did
as she had bidden me, and kissed her cold lean hand.

‘So you fancied your lady-love was dead – our innocent adorable nymph up there, of the sidelong look and downward glance! And now, boy, for a little secret. But this, mind you, is not for the servants!’ She waited, staring at me, her head slightly trembling on her old shoulders. ‘Well, there are
two
kinds of ghosts. We may compare them to a nut. The one kind is the kernel. The other is the husk. At this moment you are contemplating the husk. Do I look it? Do I look that kind of ghost? Do I look – well,
dead
?’

God only knows I had never encountered a human being before that in some respects looked less dead, and yet so perilously near it. I turned my head away to hide the distress and aversion in my eyes; and then, such is childhood, I thrust the bunch of snowdrops into one pocket of my jacket, pulled out a dingy handkerchief from the other, and began to cry. The old woman waited until I had pushed back the handkerchief by faltering inches into my pocket again.

‘There!’ she said. ‘April showers. Happy dreams.’ And then she went on in a quavering, put-on, mocking voice, as though to deceive herself as much as me: ‘No, no, my child:

She paused again, and added in tones of an almost metallic intensity yet trembling with derision, ‘“And what may quiet us in a death so noble.” So you see I forgive you, and return you,’ she nodded up at the portrait, ‘to your flawless and ingenuous sweetheart … You love her? … Yes? … Well, if you cannot answer, don’t. But next time, my bonnie laddie,’ she glanced at my kilt and sporran, ‘fix your heart on something a little more solid and unpainted. Not of that
root
… Meanwhile,’ her old fingers had taken a
key-ring
out of her vanity bag, ‘why not a little keepsake?’

She rose and unlocked a small Chinese cabinet that stood against the wall behind her, and held out to me in its opened case an oval miniature,
surrounded
with garnets. I stared at it in the cold of the moonlight; had no knowledge of its value or its skill; but there was no mistaking the face of the child there – a face that even a Leonardo might have lingered over.

‘This,’ she said, tapping her pointed fingernail on the glass, ‘this is where that,’ and she nodded up at the portrait again, ‘came from. And this,’ she made a wry mouth, tapped her breast and cast me an ironical little bow, ‘
this
is where both went to …; just for a while, you know –
Me.
’

A
remote gleam had come into the intense darkness of her eyes, else almost as motionless as the burnt-out ashes of a fire.

‘Now tell me,’ she went on, ‘if
that
had been servants’ gossip, if, before you set out house-breaking today, you had known what had become of your pretty lady-love up there, would you still have come, still have been here this evening?… Don’t gawk, boy; answer me!’

I gazed at her, still hesitating between truth and cowardice, my eyes no doubt like a stricken dove’s to-and-froing over her raddled face. And then at last I faintly shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not if I had known.’ My lips were so dry that I could scarcely utter the words. ‘But wasn’t she,’ I turned my cheek a little towards the picture; ‘wasn’t
she
like that? Even
then
?’

The silence, the cold, the curious light, the solitude between us seemed to have intensified and the whole house to be listening. Then, ‘God bless my soul,’ the old woman cackled, ‘the boy’s incorrigible! We should have met before. “There would have been a time …” There, put that bauble into your
pocket before I think better of it; and go away. And next time, beware of man-traps!’

Her derisive face had hardened again. And at that, with some idiotic wish, I suppose, at the back of my mind to be quits, or possibly to make amends, I pulled my little bunch of snowdrops out of my pocket and held them out to her. She took them, sniffed greedily their earthy smell, looked at me, turned about, put them into the cabinet, and locked its door. And before she could say another word I had obeyed her, and was gone – out into the full wintry moonlight and the virgin loveliness of the snow.

The Guardian

The Guardian
*

There are, I am well aware, many excellent people in this world who shun anything in the nature of the tragic in connection with
children.
And
particularly
if it carries with it what they consider to be a strain of morbidity. My own conviction, nonetheless, is that childhood is a state of extremes; alike of happiness and of unhappiness. And I speak from my own
knowledge
– derived from observation and experience long before this ‘
psychiatry
’ became a craze – when I say, not only that some of the saddest, gravest, most dreadful and most profound experiences in life may occur in our earliest years, but that,
if
they do, the effects of them in after-life
persist.

I am not a mother. I am what is called ‘an old maid’; but even ‘old maids’, I assume, are entitled to their convictions.

I might first explain that I am the last of my family. In my earlier years I had three sisters. Philip was the only son – and a posthumous child – of the youngest of them – Rachel. And his mother was the only one of us to marry. What opportunities the others had to follow her example is nothing here to the point. At all events, they remained single. My sister’s choice was a tragic one; her head was at the mercy of her heart. Her husband was a man who may be described in one word: he was wicked. He was selfish, malicious and vindictive, and the moment I saw him I warned my sister against him. But in vain. He failed even to contrive to die respectably. I mention this merely because his character may have some bearing on what I have to relate. But what, I can hardly say.

Philip was born three months after his father’s death. In spite of the grief and affliction which my poor sister had endured during the brief period of her married life, there appeared to be nothing amiss with
him.
Nature goes
her own way. He was a quiet and tractable child, although he was subject to occasional outbreaks of passion and naughtiness. He was what is called a winning little boy, and I loved him very dearly. He was small for his age and slenderly built. In his earlier years his hair, and he had a long and narrow head, was of a pale gold – straw-coloured in fact; but it darkened later to a pretty lightish brown, and was very fine. Hairdressers frequently remarked on this. He had a small nose, and deep-set but clear grey eyes of a colour seldom seen in company with
that
coloured hair. He looked delicate, but was in fact not so.

This appearance – and he was by nature a sensitive and solitary child – suggested effeminacy. But since in his case it implied only fineness and delicacy of mind as well as of body, it was nothing but a tribute to him. I consider it a poor compliment to a
woman
,
at any rate, to be regarded as mannish and masculine. Let us all keep to what we
are
and as much of it as possible. On this account, however, I counselled his mother to send him to no school until he was in his ninth year. She herself was inclined to be indulgent. Still, I am a great believer in the influence of a good home-life on a young child. Affection is by no means always a flawless mentor; but I know no better. And as my sister, still a young woman, had been left badly off, I had the pleasure and privilege of paying for Philip’s education.

I selected an excellent young governess with a
character.
She taught him, five mornings a week, and with ease, the usual elements; and I especially
advised
her to keep as far as possible to the
practical
side of things. His own nature and temperament would supply him with the romantic. And that I regarded with misgiving. Later, he was sent to what an old friend of mine assured me was a school – a preparatory school – where even a sensitive and difficult child might have at least every opportunity of doing well and of being happy.

His first reports – and I had myself insisted on being taken over the whole school, scullery to attics, and on having a few words
alone
with the matron – were completely promising. Indeed, in his third term, Philip won a prize for good conduct – a prize that in these days, I regret to hear, is disparaged, even sneered at. Not that rewards of this kind are necessarily an enduring advantage – even to the clever. Much depends, naturally, on what is meant by goodness.

Now, in my view, it is a mistake to screen and protect even a young child too closely. Mind; I say,
too
closely. I am no believer in cosseting. A child has to face life. For this he has been given his own defences and resources. Needless to add, I am not defending carelessness or stupidity. I remember seeing at a children’s party a little girl in a flimsy muslin frock and pale blue ribbons – a pretty little creature, too – who exhibited every symptom of approaching measles. Shivery, languid, feverish, running at the eyes and
nose – the usual thing: and I kept her by me and I warned her nurse. But it was too late. Thirteen children at that one small party eventually fell victims to this stupidity. As with risks to physical health, so with mental ailments and weaknesses.

Night
fears and similar bogies may be introduced into a young and
innocent
mind by a silly nurse-maid or by too harsh a discipline, or perhaps by an obscure inheritance. They may also be
natural
weeds. When I was a girl, even I myself was not entirely immune from them. I dreaded company, for example; was shy of speaking my own mind, and of showing affection. I used both to despise and to envy the delicate – the demonstrative; and even on a summer’s day was always least happy in the twilight. Least at home. The dark, on the other hand, had no terrors for me. As events proved, such fears not only affected Philip a good deal more than they affect most
children
, but with a peculiar difference. Indeed, I have never since encountered a similar case.

Towards the end of December in that year he came as usual to spend his Christmas holidays with me. This was an arrangement with which my sister willingly complied. But I had only suggested it; I never made demands. His trunk was taken up to his bedroom, and we sat down to tea, at which my cook, who had been many years in my service, provided for him a
lightly-boiled
egg – and I have never encountered even an old man who did not
regard
a boiled egg with his tea as a delicacy! As he sat facing me at the tea-table and in the full light of the lamp, I noticed at once that he looked more than usually pale. His face was even a little drawn and haggard. And ‘haggard’ is hardly a word one would willingly use in relation to a child. But it is the right word. Moreover, his clear but wearied eyes were encircled with bluish, tell-tale shadows.
That
meant bad nights!

‘You are not looking very well, Philip,’ I said. ‘You don’t seem to be
hungry
after that long journey. What time do you go to bed? Do you have any supper? Are your lessons at school worrying you? Have you perhaps got into hot water with one of your masters?… No, I don’t think
that
!’
As far as I can remember, these were the harmless and unprying questions I put to him. Like most children, he made no attempt to answer them. I didn’t
expect
him to; I intended to
glean.

‘Thank you, Auntie Caroline,’ he assured me twice over, in his usual rather prim manner, for he was a demure little boy, and I object to
artificial
baby talk. ‘Thank you, Auntie Caroline,’ he said, ‘I feel very well. And I came out third or fourth in everything but French and Arithmetic. I was all but top in English.’ And then, after a pause, while I continued to smile at him, he added that at times he had not been
sleeping
very well. ‘I – often lie awake at night. And it goes on, you see, Auntie Caroline, sometimes into the day.’ Strange: I failed even to ask him what precisely he meant by that ‘it’.

‘Well, Philip,’ I said, ‘that I think we can easily remedy,’ although I had also failed to understand all the child may have meant by the words,
goes
on.
‘You must have plenty of fresh air in your bedroom, and a sufficiency of blankets: a glass of hot milk with a little water, and a biscuit for supper; and in case you happen to wake up, Pattie (my excellent parlour-maid) shall see that there is a night-light in your soap basin. Do you have a light in your bedroom at home?’

‘Yes, Auntie,’ he said, ‘but not at school. And it’s not a night-light. It’s just a bead of gas. It’s blue; and sometimes when I have woken up in the middle of the night, I thought it was an eye looking at me out of the dark. But, of course, it wasn’t an eye. It was only a bead of gas.’

‘Well, it shall be a night-light,’ said I. ‘No one could mistake
that
for an eye, Philip?’

The next day at luncheon I thought he looked a little better. This, to be precise, was two days before Christmas. It was our first day ‘Holidays Feast’, as we used to call it; and luncheon consisted of roast chicken and vegetables, followed by a nice baked custard and some stewed prunes. In those days the small tart French prunes were still obtainable. Philip was exceedingly fond of bread sauce, and if it is not too richly flavoured, that is wholesome enough too. He steadily improved in looks during these holidays, and enjoyed his usual pantomime and one or two little Christmas parties. Nonetheless, I noticed that whatever his spirits might be during the day, he became far less talkative at the approach of evening.

A little girl, the daughter of a neighbour whose name it is needless to mention, would sometimes come with her nurse to play with him. She was one of those apple-cheeked, nice-mannered, sensible little girls who in these times seem so rare. During the early afternoon the two children would be perfectly happy together; but towards nightfall, when the day began to droop, Philip’s spirits would perceptibly languish. He would then only pretend to play, and at tea it was Rosie and I who talked; though I am sure that in her childish fashion she did her best to persuade him to come out of his shell and to smile again. But a child of seven who refuses to eat a slice of plum cake when he is neither ill nor homesick must be troubled in
mind
or already sick; I knew that and kept my eyes open; and presently the trouble came out.

When Rosie was gone, Philip took a picture book – a Christmas present – and sat down on a stool by the fire, while I resumed my knitting. A cautious glance or two at him soon revealed the fact that he had ceased to read, although his eyes remained fixed upon his book. With a sigh he would begin again: and yet again his attention would wander. That night I twice visited his bedroom. He lay quietly asleep, his night-light burning on the wash-stand. In the small hours I fancied I heard a cry. I listened, nothing
followed; and I left my bedroom door ajar. Next morning, after breakfast, he trod by accident on my cat’s tail. It proved to be a
fortunate
accident – at least, for Philip. Animal and child, they were on excellent terms with one another, but at the sudden exasperated squeal from the startled animal he was peculiarly affected, began to tremble, and suddenly burst into tears. Now
that
I regarded at once as an unmistakable symptom of nervous trouble. I waited until the table had been cleared, then I called him to me and said, ‘Philip, you must have had bad dreams last night. Pattie had not forgotten your night-light, I hope?’ This, I am afraid, was a prevarication.

I see him now, in the holland overall which he always wore at meal-times and was then outgrowing, standing in front of me, his hand in mine, on the fur rug by the brass fender. A portrait of his maternal grandfather, whom he clearly resembled and who was not only a hard-working clergyman but a scholar, hung over the chimneypiece above his head. The light of the
window
– and it was a healthy, frosty, wintry morning – shone full upon his face.

‘No, Auntie,’ he replied, ‘I had the light.’ But as he stood looking up at me I noticed that his eyes had begun to move away, as if involuntarily,
towards
the right, and that it was with an effort that he turned them towards
me
again; and then it was too late for him to suppress a faint expression of alarm on his pale, delicate features. What does this mean? thought I.

‘Is anything frightening you now?’ I inquired. Colour crept into his cheek, and a sob shook him. He nodded.

‘In this very room?’ said I, and searched with my glance the corner of it towards which he had turned. Nothing whatever was there that could account for his apprehension; no more unusual object, at any rate, than a bust of Cicero on its pedestal by the book-case – a precious possession of my dear father’s. But with a child, one never knows.

‘What’s troubling you now?’ I said. ‘Tell me, Philip.’ And I spoke in a quiet easy voice, gently fondling his small fingers.

‘It’s what, Aunt Caroline,’ he replied. ‘I see.’

‘See where?’ I pressed him. ‘Look at the bright, sparkling garden – at the trees and the hoar-frost on their branches, thick almost as snow. Darkness, you know, Philip, can only remove that out of
view.
They themselves remain the same – no enemies there. Just as we two remain the same – light or no light. Is there perhaps anything troubling your
mind
? Look at Puss, now. He knows as well as I do that what happened just now was nothing but an accident.’