The White People and Other Weird Stories (29 page)

“A paying guest! I never thought of it. Where should we put him?”

“Why, I was thinking of the spare room. The plan would obviate your objection, wouldn't it? Lots of men in the City take them, and make money of it too. I dare say it would add ten pounds a year to our income. Redgrave, the cashier, finds it worth his while to take a large house on purpose. They have a regular lawn for tennis and a billiard-room.”

Mary considered gravely, always with the dream in her eyes. “I don't think we could manage it, Edward,” she said; “it would be inconvenient in many ways.” She hesitated for a moment. “And I don't think I should care to have a young man in the house. It is so very small, and our accommodation, as you know, is so limited.”

She blushed slightly, and Edward, a little disappointed as he was, looked at her with a singular longing, as if he were a scholar confronted with a doubtful hieroglyph, either wholly wonderful or altogether commonplace. Next door children were playing in the garden, playing shrilly, laughing, crying, quarrelling, racing to and fro. Suddenly a clear, pleasant voice sounded from an upper window.

“Enid! Charles! Come up to my room at once!”

There was an instant sudden hush. The children's voices died away.

“Mrs. Parker is supposed to keep her children in great order,” said Mary. “Alice was telling me about it the other day. She had been talking to Mrs. Parker's servant, I listened to her without any remark, as I don't think it right to encourage servants' gossip; they always exaggerate everything. And I dare say children often require to be corrected.”

The children were struck silent as if some ghastly terror had seized them.

Darnell fancied that he heard a queer sort of cry from the house, but could not be quite sure. He turned to the other side, where an elderly, ordinary man with a grey moustache was strolling up and down on the further side of his garden. He caught Darnell's eye, and Mrs. Darnell looking towards him at the same moment, he very politely raised his tweed cap. Darnell was surprised to see his wife blushing fiercely.

“Sayce and I often go into the City by the same 'bus,” he said, “and as it happens we've sat next to each other two or three times lately. I believe he's a traveller for a leather firm in Bermondsey. He struck me as a pleasant man. Haven't they got rather a goodlooking servant?”

“Alice has spoken to me about her—and the Sayces,” said Mrs. Darnell. “I understand that they are not very well thought of in the neighbourhood. But I must go in and see whether the tea is ready. Alice will be wanting to go out directly.”

Darnell looked after his wife as she walked quickly away. He only dimly understood, but he could see the charm of her figure, the delight of the brown curls clustering about her neck, and he again felt that sense of the scholar confronted by the hieroglyphic. He could not have expressed his emotion, but he wondered whether he would ever find the key, and something told him that before she could speak to him his own lips must be unclosed. She had gone into the house by the back kitchen door, leaving it open, and he heard her speaking to the girl about the water being “really boiling.” He was amazed, almost indignant with himself; but the sound of the words came to his ears as strange, heartpiercing music, tones from another, wonderful sphere. And yet he was her husband, and they had been married nearly a year; and yet, whenever she spoke, he had to listen to the sense of what she said, constraining himself, lest he should believe she was a magic creature, knowing the secrets of immeasurable delight.

He looked out through the leaves of the mulberry tree. Mr. Sayce had disappeared from his view, but he saw the light-blue fume of the cigar that he was smoking floating slowly across the shadowed air. He was wondering at his wife's manner when Sayce's name was mentioned, puzzling his head as to what could be amiss in the household of a most respectable personage, when his wife appeared at the dining-room window and called him in to tea. She smiled as he looked up, and he rose hastily and walked in, wondering whether he were not a little “queer,” so strange were the dim emotions and the dimmer impulses that rose within him.

Alice was all shining purple and strong scent, as she brought in the teapot and the jug of hot water. It seemed that a visit to the kitchen had inspired Mrs. Darnell in her turn with a novel plan for disposing of the famous ten pounds. The range had always been a trouble to her, and when sometimes she went into the kitchen, and found, as she said, the fire “roaring halfway up the chimney,” it was in vain that she reproved the maid on the ground of extravagance and waste of coal. Alice was ready to admit the absurdity of making up such an enormous fire merely to bake (they called it “roast”) a bit of beef or mutton, and to boil the potatoes and the cabbage; but she was able to show Mrs. Darnell that the fault lay in the defective contrivance of the range, in an oven which “would not get hot.” Even with a chop or a steak it was almost as bad; the heat seemed to escape up the chimney or into the room, and Mary had spoken several times to her husband on the shocking waste of coal, and the cheapest coal procurable was never less than eighteen shillings the ton. Mr. Darnell had written to the landlord, a builder, who had replied in an illiterate but offensive communication, maintaining the excellence of the stove and charging all the faults to the account of “your good lady,” which really implied that the Darnells kept no servant, and that Mrs. Darnell did everything. The range, then, remained, a standing annoyance and expense. Every morning, Alice said, she had the greatest difficulty in getting the fire to light at all, and once lighted it “seemed as if it fled right up the chimney.” Only a few nights before Mrs. Darnell had spoken seriously to her husband about it; she had got Alice to weigh the coals expended in cooking a cottage pie, the dish of the evening, and deducting what remained in the scuttle after the pie was done, it appeared that the wretched thing had consumed nearly twice the proper quantity of fuel.

“You remember what I said the other night about the range?” said Mrs. Darnell, as she poured out the tea and watered the leaves. She thought the introduction a good one, for though her husband was a most amiable man, she guessed that he had been just a little hurt by her decision against his furnishing scheme.

“The range?” said Darnell. He paused as he helped himself to the marmalade and considered for a moment. “No, I don't recollect. What night was it?”

“Tuesday. Don't you remember? You had ‘overtime,' and didn't get home till quite late.”

She paused for a moment, blushing slightly; and then began to recapitulate the misdeeds of the range, and the outrageous outlay of coal in the preparation of the cottage pie.

“Oh, I recollect now. That was the night I thought I heard the nightingale (people say there are nightingales in Bedford Park), and the sky was such a wonderful deep blue.”

He remembered how he had walked from Uxbridge Road Station, where the green 'bus stopped, and in spite of the fuming kilns under Acton, a delicate odour of the woods and summer fields was mysteriously in the air, and he had fancied that he smelt the red wild roses, drooping from the hedge. As he came to his gate he saw his wife standing in the doorway, with a light in her hand, and he threw his arms violently about her as she welcomed him, and whispered something in her ear, kissing her scented hair. He had felt quite abashed a moment afterwards, and he was afraid that he had frightened her by his nonsense; she seemed trembling and confused. And then she had told him how they had weighed the coal.

“Yes, I remember now,” he said. “It is a great nuisance, isn't it? I hate to throw away money like that.”

“Well, what do you think? Suppose we bought a really good range with aunt's money? It would save us a lot, and I expect the things would taste much nicer.”

Darnell passed the marmalade, and confessed that the idea was brilliant.

“It's much better than mine, Mary,” he said quite frankly. “I am so glad you thought of it. But we must talk it over; it doesn't do to buy in a hurry. There are so many makes.”

Each had seen ranges which looked miraculous inventions; he in the neighbourhood of the City; she in Oxford Street and Regent Street, on visits to the dentist. They discussed the matter at tea, and afterwards they discussed it walking round and round the garden, in the sweet cool of the evening.

“They say the ‘Newcastle' will burn anything, coke even,” said Mary.

“But the ‘Glow' got the gold medal at the Paris Exhibition,”
⁶
said Edward.

“But what about the ‘Eutopia' Kitchener? Have you seen it at work in Oxford Street?” said Mary. “They say their plan of ventilating the oven is quite unique.”

“I was in Fleet Street the other day,” answered Edward, “and I was looking at the ‘Bliss' Patent Stoves. They burn less fuel than any in the market—so the makers declare.”

He put his arm gently round her waist. She did not repel him; she whispered quite softly—

“I think Mrs. Parker is at her window,” and he drew his arm back slowly.

“But we will talk it over,” he said. “There is no hurry, I might call at some of the places near the City, and you might do the same thing in Oxford Street and Regent Street and Piccadilly, and we could compare notes.”

Mary was quite pleased with her husband's good temper. It was so nice of him not to find fault with her plan; “He's so good to me,” she thought, and that was what she often said to her brother, who did not care much for Darnell. They sat down on the seat under the mulberry, close together, and she let Darnell take her hand, and as she felt his shy, hesitating fingers touch her in the shadow, she pressed them ever so softly, and as he fondled her hand, his breath was on her neck, and she heard his passionate, hesitating voice whisper, “My dear, my dear,” as his lips touched her cheek. She trembled a little, and waited. Darnell kissed her gently on the cheek and drew away his hand, and when he spoke he was almost breathless.

“We had better go in now,” he said. “There is a heavy dew, and you might catch cold.”

A warm, scented gale came to them from beyond the walls. He longed to ask her to stay out with him all night beneath the tree, that they might whisper to one another, that the scent of her hair might inebriate him, that he might feel her dress still brushing against his ankles. But he could not find the words, and it was absurd, and she was so gentle that she would do whatever he asked, however foolish it might be, just because he asked her. He was not worthy to kiss her lips; he bent down and kissed her silk bodice, and again he felt that she trembled, and he was ashamed, fearing that he had frightened her.

They went slowly into the house, side by side, and Darnell lit the gas in the drawing-room, where they always sat on Sunday evenings. Mrs. Darnell felt a little tired and lay down on the sofa, and Darnell took the arm-chair opposite. For a while they were silent, and then Darnell said suddenly—

“What's wrong with the Sayces? You seemed to think there was something a little strange about them. Their maid looks quite quiet.”

“Oh, I don't know that one ought to pay any attention to servants' gossip. They're not always very truthful.”

“It was Alice told you, wasn't it?”

“Yes. She was speaking to me the other day, when I was in the kitchen in the afternoon.”

“But what was it?”

“Oh, I'd rather not tell you, Edward. It's not pleasant. I scolded Alice for repeating it to me.”

Darnell got up and took a small, frail chair near the sofa.

“Tell me,” he said again, with an odd perversity. He did not really care to hear about the household next door, but he remembered how his wife's cheeks flushed in the afternoon, and now he was looking at her eyes.

“Oh, I really couldn't tell you, dear. I should feel ashamed.”

“But you're my wife.”

“Yes, but it doesn't make any difference. A woman doesn't like to talk about such things.”

Darnell bent his head down. His heart was beating; he put his ear to her mouth and said, “Whisper.”

Mary drew his head down still lower with her gentle hand, and her cheeks burned as she whispered—

“Alice says that—upstairs—they have only—one room furnished. The maid told her—herself.”

With an unconscious gesture she pressed his head to her breast, and he in turn was bending her red lips to his own, when a violent jangle clamoured through the silent house. They sat up, and Mrs. Darnell went hurriedly to the door.

“That's Alice,” she said. “She is always in in time. It has only just struck ten.”

Darnell shivered with annoyance. His lips, he knew, had almost been opened. Mary's pretty handkerchief, delicately scented from a little flagon that a school friend had given her, lay on the floor, and he picked it up, and kissed it, and hid it away.

The question of the range occupied them all through June and far into July. Mrs. Darnell took every opportunity of going to the West End and investigating the capacity of the latest makes, gravely viewing the new improvements and hearing what the shopmen had to say; while Darnell, as he said, “kept his eyes open” about the City. They accumulated quite a literature of the subject, bringing away illustrated pamphlets, and in the evenings it was an amusement to look at the pictures. They viewed with reverence and interest the drawings of great ranges for hotels and public institutions, mighty contrivances furnished with a series of ovens each for a different use, with wonderful apparatus for grilling, with batteries of accessories which seemed to invest the cook almost with the dignity of a chief engineer. But when, in one of the lists, they encountered the images of little toy “cottage” ranges, for four pounds, and even for three pounds ten, they grew scornful, on the strength of the eight or ten pound article which they meant to purchase—when the merits of the divers patents had been thoroughly thrashed out.