Short Stories 1927-1956 (83 page)

It is said that confession is good for the soul. Well then, as publicly as possible, I take this opportunity of announcing that, there and then, I made a little heap of envelope, letter and Will on the hearth and put a match to them. When every vestige of the paper had been consumed, I stamped the ashes down. I had touched nothing else. I would leave the vile, jaded,
forsaken
house to reveal its own secret; and I might ensure that that would not be long delayed.

What continues to perplex me is that so far as I can see no other agency but that of this evil old recluse himself had led me to my discovery. Why? Can it have been with this very intention? I stooped down and peeped and peered narrowly in under the lowered lids in the light of my torch, but not the feeblest flicker, remotest signal – or faintest syllabling echo of any message rewarded me. Dead fish are less unseemly.

And yet. Well – we are all of us, I suppose, at any extreme
capable
of
remorse 
and not utterly shut against repentance. Is it possible that this priceless blessing is not denied us even when all that’s earthly else appear to have come to an end?

A Beginning

In a corner of the Count’s old writing desk I found the Diary and Letters which follow. For the sake of brevity one or two passages have been
omitted
; otherwise, the young man speaks for himself; a task, apparently, by no means uncongenial. Let his youth be his apology. The letters are here, just as they were found, in a bundle wrapped up in brown paper, tied with a piece of red tape; and simply marked on the cover with a big F.

April 25th 18—. In very low spirits all day. It seems to me that one’s moods keep up a kind of see-saw; so that the slightest thing swoops one
mid-air
, or plunges one into Hades. This is weak. Perhaps Fanny does not quite understand me. She does not
come
out
to me. I sometimes wonder if I should not have done something really great in the world, if I had had
someone
who passionately believed in me, a companion for my higher self. But after all, obscurity is more philosophical – and certainly less trouble some! Yet I do detest mere flippant tittle-tattle. Anything abstract depresses women. At least so I find it. I am sick to death of my miserable self. All the virtue is gone out of this musty stolid world.
Vae
Victis!
April 26th. Met Fanny this afternoon in the High Street. She was out
shopping
, so I walked a little way with her. But I did not intend to humble
myself
, craving forgiveness for what I had not done, or intended to do; and she kept looking at everyone, and answering vacantly, and her face was all
indifferent
. So I asked her to tell me what I had done. Whereupon, of course, she began to cry – in a corner by a bonnet shop … I could not help being in a rage, because some counter-jumper was watching us from between the bonnets. And then she flared up, and told me to go away for ever, because she hated me to see her crying! So I shook hands and told her about the counter-jumper.

‘That’s just it,’ she said, ‘you simply glory in making me look silly. I know
I
am
silly, but it’s not so very clever to bring me here to be laughed at by people.’ Of course all this was quite unreasonable, and I pointed it out to her. But we made it up afterwards, and went into Martellini’s and had some tea. I don’t understand women; and yet I do if I think them out. They don’t understand themselves;
that’s
pretty certain.

April 27th. Letter from Uncle R. Threatens to mew me up in Cornwall if I laze about here. There are two sides to that question, sweet guardian! Last night I dreamed vividly of the old house. I have not seen it for thirteen years. I was looking in by the iron gates and saw Mother in a shawl walking in the garden. And there was a fire burning in the dining-room, the flames were shining in the window. And then, just as Mother looked up, the dream went out – as if Morpheus had taken the light away. There is a tinge of
melancholy
in old things. I feel as if I were a traitor in having quite forgotten it all. I shall go down one afternoon and revive the dead past. My memory seems haunted now. Of course this is nonsense, and it is just
thought-connection
. Letter from Fanny. So Madam
did
espy us over our banquet. She puts me in mind of a gooseberry that has spent all its sweetness on its size. Some men have no vocation to be a husband. The intellectual life is highest. Well, I suppose I shall be a maudlin old greybeard in time. We all
come to it if we are such fools as to live long enough. New coat and trousers came home; shall send latter back tomorrow; very bad fit.

To bed!

April 28th. Warm. Sent clothes back. Nil.
April 29th. The Scarlet Lady!!! I started off about 2 o.c. And there, as if all these years it had been preserved under a glass case, was the old place. I dawdled slowly up the narrow street. There in the sawdust sprawled the same narrow curly retriever dog (or a grandson); there in ‘gilty’ row stood the same shabby dusty books in the ‘Library’, and there the same old Mrs Perks (now in the apple-dumpling stage, with silvering hair) peering
between
the illuminated texts. But everything seemed so curiously
small.
I seemed to myself a kind of Werther, or for that matter, a Rip van Winkle. Not a soul recognized me. But I enjoyed the secrecy of the thing. On I went, and at the hilltop under the chestnut trees burst out upon the heath. And like the effeminate ass I am, I had to blink to keep from crying.

Well, I am not ashamed of it, if it was so. If a thing is, it is. And if that is one’s philosophy in life, one is safe from the sham senseless mob. On again I went between the gorse bushes. And about five in the afternoon came in sight of the house. There it was, just as I remembered it. I went on slowly. ‘Hame, hame, hame, name!’ I took hold of the bars of the gate and stared in at the familiar place. There were red curtains in the dining-room
windows
; smoke was winding up from the chimney, and an old man was
digging
in the kitchen garden; I could just see him over the hedge. And while I was standing there, staring like an owl, I heard the
cessation
of footsteps.

(It’s a very curious example of the senses being disconnected with the Ego, because I am quite convinced I had not actually heard the footsteps
themselves
.)

I turned round, and there stood a girl, top to toe in scarlet. She stood there, rather slim and pale, looking out gravely at me from under her beaver hat. I can’t for the life of me think who she reminded me of. At last I
managed to stutter out some apology, and opened the gate for her. She bowed solemnly and, still looking at me with her bright grave eyes, passed through. The gate swung to after her, and up to the heavens went its old whinnying squeal. And just as I was about to go, she turned towards me with one hand held irresolutely out of her muff, the red sleeve hanging down like the wing of a wounded bird. She frowned a little, raising and
lowering
her eyebrows (a little trick of hers) and to my intense surprise, spoke to me. Her voice was soft and quick with a lot of notes in it, rather pretty.

‘Pray forgive me,’ she said very nervously, ‘but perhaps, I – are you – perhaps you would like to walk in the garden?’

Consequently, I must needs out with why I was staring in at her gate. Anyone would think that I had never set eyes on a woman before. Still she
was
rather disconcerting. ‘O, then, pray come in!’ she said. ‘My father would be so very pleased to have you see it all again. I think, you know – it’s very strange – but even when I saw you standing here at the gate as I came up, I recognized you; the stoop, the turn of the head – just a little something in the attitude. But, dear me, how ridiculous this must seem to you. For you have never so much as seen the glimmer of the ghost of me – have you? Dreaming or waking. I wonder. But I know
you,
and very well too; though it is not quite the same face – wiser, you know; no, not wiser – more experienced. It’s a very long time ago since you lived here.’

She might have been talking to herself; her voice ran on so easily. ‘Thirteen years,’ I said. ‘But how —’

‘Yes, so it is, so it is,’ she answered, ‘exactly thirteen years – thirteen!… My father bought the house, you know.’

‘Then he must have bought it from my – from the executors.’

‘Yes, poor mite; and you not so high then; just up to my waist here, I should think. And long straight hair, and big eyes in a wan face. Oh, I have pitied you sometimes.’ I am not sure that I was overgrateful for her pity. She laughed mysteriously, and knocked at the door. A middle-aged woman in slippers opened to her. She looked quickly at me with pale grey eyes. ‘This is Nicholas, Helen,’ said the Scarlet Lady, and looked back at me again.

‘Is that so, Miss?’ said the woman. She smoothed her sleek hair with the palm of her hand. An abominable person!

‘There, you see!’ “Miss” added to me. ‘I know your name too. You must come in and see my father. And we’ll have tea, please, Helen; Mr Nicholas must taste my honey. The garden, I am afraid, is not nearly so prim and proper as it should be – all waste and sweetness. Thomas is growing old, and the birds come in legions, so of course the fruit is theirs, cherries and strawberries! We haven’t had a dishful for years. But then they sing – the birds, you know – just as you too must have heard them thirteen years ago.’ She rambled on without stopping, as if she had known me all her life; and
yet I am sure she was nervous of me because her hands were trembling. She had opened the door of my mother’s little parlour. And instantly a picture flashed in on me of the little room in the old days, with its muslin curtains and its carpet of moss-roses, and its blue silk work-basket, and my mother’s little favourite cane-chair, where she used to sit in the bow-window over her needlework.

But now instead here a gaunt old gentleman sat bolt upright in a stiff wooden chair before an empty grate. Rows of musty folios to duodecimos lined the shelves in the walls; and there was a lame old clock ticking. On one side of the bow-window stood a mouldering bureau, gaping and
choke-full
of papers.

It reeked of mortality. The old boy had reluctantly put down his book and now got up stiffly from his chair when we approached him – a
lamp-post
of a man, with a large high nose. He bowed absent-eyedly over my hand like a schoolmaster; until I felt I was being carpeted. And on bare boards too!

‘This gentleman has come to look over the house and walk in the garden, Father,’ said Florence. He bowed again. Florence moved her eyebrows up and down, and coughed – another little trick of hers.

‘It is really
his
house, of course, and we are just barbarians – interlopers. He was the little boy, who came into the world here and who knows every nook and cranny, every cupboard –
corner
too, I’ll be bound, and the views spread out from every window. Like a picture-book. He says
Sesame,
and there it is. I found him peeping through the bars of the gate just as he used to peep – ten inches high. So what could I do but behave unladylike-ly, and ask him to come in.’ She went to the window, squeezing in between the bureau and the panels of the wall and turned her back on us, standing quite still. It was curious to see her scarlet in the bare room. The old fellow’s face was like a mask.

‘I shall be happy to be of any service to you, sir,’ he said. ‘The roots of childhood strike very deep. In the first years we learn our whereabouts. I have no doubt the house recalls much to your remembrance. Will you please be quite at liberty here; I think I once had the honour of meeting your mother many…’

‘“Mother!” His mother?’ said the girl whipping round. ‘And this is the first… Oh, tell me… Oh but…’ She eyed me anxiously as if she feared she might have hurt me. ‘Now you must come and see the garden,’ she added, breaking off with a smile, ‘or else night will be catching us up. Will you?’

‘Pray excuse me, sir, if I do not accompany you into the garden,’ said the old gentleman. ‘It is, I fear, but poorly tended. Things are left to grow in their own free way. My daughter prefers it so; and I think I prefer it so too.
Please put yourself quite at your ease, and spare us nothing to be of service to you.’ I saw Florence squeeze his hand as she passed.