Short Stories 1895-1926 Read online

He looked preoccupied and singularly listless; but seemed, none the less, to be pleased to see me.

  We walked up the village street, past the little dingy apothecary’s and the empty forge, and, as on my first visit, skirted the house together, and, instead of entering by the front door, made our way down the green path into the garden at the back. A pale haze of cloud muffled the sun; the garden lay in a grey shimmer – its old trees, its snap-dragoned faintly glittering walls. But now there was an air of slovenliness where before all had been neat and methodical. In a patch of shallowly dug soil stood a worndown spade leaning against a tree. There was an old decayed wheelbarrow. The roses had run to leaf and briar; the fruit-trees were unpruned. The goddess of neglect had made it her secret resort.

  ‘You ain’t much of a gardener, Seaton,’ I said at last, with a sigh of relief.

  ‘I think, do you know, I like it best like this,’ said Seaton. ‘We haven’t any man now, of course. Can’t afford it.’ He stood staring at his little dark oblong of freshly turned earth. ‘And it always seems to me,’ he went on ruminatingly, ‘that, after all, we are all nothing better than interlopers on the earth, disfiguring and staining wherever we go. It may sound shocking blasphemy to say so; but then it’s different here, you see. We are further away.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Seaton, I don’t quite see,’ I said; ‘but it isn’t a new philosophy, is it? Anyhow, it’s a precious beastly one.’

  ‘It’s only what I think,’ he replied, with all his odd old stubborn meekness. ‘And one thinks as one is.’

  We wandered on together, talking little, and still with that expression of uneasy vigilance on Seaton’s face. He pulled out his watch as we stood gazing idly over the green meadows and the dark motionless bulrushes.

  ‘I think, perhaps, it’s nearly time for lunch,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come in?’

  We turned and walked slowly towards the house, across whose windows I confess my own eyes, too, went restlessly meandering in search of its rather disconcerting inmate. There was a pathetic look of bedraggledness, of want of means and care, rust and overgrowth and faded paint. Seaton’s aunt, a little to my relief, did not share our meal. So he carved the cold meat, and dispatched a heaped-up plate by an elderly servant for his aunt’s private consumption. We talked little and in half-suppressed tones, and sipped some Madeira which Seaton after listening for a moment or two fetched out of the great mahogany sideboard.

  I played him a dull and effortless game of chess, yawning between the moves he himself made almost at haphazard, and with attention elsewhere engaged. Towards five o’clock came the sound of a distant ring, and Seaton jumped up, overturning the board, and so ended a game that else might have fatuously continued to this day. He effusively excused himself, and after some little while returned with a slim, dark, pale-faced girl of about nineteen, in a white gown and hat, to whom I was presented with some little nervousness as his ‘dear old friend and schoolfellow’.

  We talked on in the golden afternoon light, still, as it seemed to me, and even in spite of our efforts to be lively and gay, in a half-suppressed, lacklustre fashion. We all seemed, if it were not my fancy, to be expectant, to be almost anxiously awaiting an arrival, the appearance of someone whose image filled our collective consciousness. Seaton talked least of all, and in a restless interjectory way, as he continually fidgeted from chair to chair. At last he proposed a stroll in the garden before the sun should have quite gone down.

  Alice walked between us. Her hair and eyes were conspicuously dark against the whiteness of her gown. She carried herself not ungracefully, and yet with peculiarly little movement of her arms and body, and answered us both without turning her head. There was a curious provocative reserve in that impassive melancholy face. It seemed to be haunted by some tragic influence of which she herself was unaware.

  And yet somehow I knew – I believe we all knew – that this walk, this discussion of their future plans was a futility. I had nothing to base such scepticism on, except only a vague sense of oppression, a foreboding consciousness of some inert invincible power in the background, to whom optimistic plans and love-making and youth are as chaff and thistledown. We came back, silent, in the last light. Seaton’s aunt was there – under an old brass lamp. Her hair was as barbarously massed and curled as ever. Her eyelids, I think, hung even a little heavier in age over their slow-moving, inscrutable pupils. We filed in softly out of the evening, and I made my bow.

  ‘In this short interval, Mr Withers,’ she remarked amiably, ‘you have put off youth, put on the man. Dear me, how sad it is to see the young days vanishing! Sit down. My nephew tells me you met by chance – or act of Providence, shall we call it? – and in my beloved Strand! You, I understand, are to be best man – yes, best man! Or am I divulging secrets?’ She surveyed Arthur and Alice with overwhelming graciousness. They sat apart on two low chairs and smiled in return.

  ‘And Arthur – how do you think Arthur is looking?’

  ‘I think he looks very much in need of a change,’ I said.

  ‘A change! Indeed?’ She all but shut her eyes at me and with an exaggerated sentimentality shook her head. ‘My dear Mr Withers! Are we not all in need of a change in this fleeting, fleeting world?’ She mused over the remark like a connoisseur. ‘And you,’ she continued, turning abruptly to Alice, ‘I hope you pointed out to Mr Withers all my pretty bits?’

  ‘We only walked round the garden,’ the girl replied; then, glancing at Seaton, added almost inaudibly, ‘it’s a very beautiful evening.’

  ‘Is it?’ said the old lady, starting up violently. ‘Then on this very beautiful evening we will go in to supper. Mr Withers, your arm; Arthur, bring your bride.’

  We were a queer quartet, I thought to myself, as I solemnly led the way into the faded, chilly dining-room, with this indefinable old creature leaning wooingly on my arm – the large flat bracelet on the yellow-laced wrist. She fumed a little, breathing heavily, but as if with an effort of the mind rather than of the body; for she had grown much stouter and yet little more proportionate. And to talk into that great white face, so close to mine, was a queer experience in the dim light of the corridor, and even in the twinkling crystal of the candles. She was naïve – appallingly naïve; she was crafty and challenging; she was even arch; and all these in the brief, rather puffy passage from one room to the other, with these two tonguetied children bringing up the rear. The meal was tremendous. I have never seen such a monstrous salad. But the dishes were greasy and over-spiced, and were indifferently cooked. One thing only was quite unchanged – my hostess’s appetite was as Gargantuan as ever. The heavy silver candelabra that lighted us stood before her high-backed chair. Seaton sat a little removed, his plate almost in darkness.

  And throughout this prodigious meal his aunt talked, mainly to me, mainly at him, but with an occasional satirical sally at Alice and muttered explosions of reprimand to the servant. She had aged, and yet, if it be not nonsense to say so, seemed no older. I suppose to the Pyramids a decade is but as the rustling down of a handful of dust. And she reminded me of some such unshakable prehistoricism. She certainly was an amazing talker – rapid, egregious, with a delivery that was perfectly overwhelming. As for Seaton – her flashes of silence were for him. On her enormous volubility would suddenly fall a hush: acid sarcasm would be left implied; and she would sit softly moving her great head, with eyes fixed full in a dreamy smile; but with her whole attention, one could see, slowly, joyously absorbing his mute discomfiture.

  She confided in us her views on a theme vaguely occupying at the moment, I suppose, all our minds. ‘We have barbarous institutions, and so must put up, I suppose, with a never-ending procession of fools – of fools ad infinitum. Marriage, Mr Withers, was instituted in the privacy of a garden; sub rosa, as it were. Civilization flaunts it in the glare of day. The dull marry the poor; the rich the effete; and so our New Jerusalem is peopled with naturals, plain and coloured, at either end. I detest folly; I detest still more
(if I must be frank, dear Arthur) mere cleverness. Mankind has simply become a tailless host of uninstinctive animals. We should never have taken to Evolution, Mr Withers. “Natural Selection!” – little gods and fishes! – the deaf for the dumb. We should have used our brains – intellectual pride, the ecclesiastics call it. And by brains I mean – what do I mean, Alice? – I mean, my dear child,’ and she laid two gross fingers on Alice’s narrow sleeve, ‘I mean courage. Consider it, Arthur. I read that the scientific world is once more beginning to be afraid of spiritual agencies. Spiritual agencies that tap, and actually float, bless their hearts! I think just one more of those mulberries – thank you.

  ‘They talk about “blind Love”,’ she ran on derisively as she helped herself, her eyes roving over the dish, ‘but why blind? I think, Mr Withers, from weeping over its rickets. After all, it is we plain women that triumph, is it not so – beyond the mockery of time. Alice, now! Fleeting, fleeting is youth, my child. What’s that you were confiding to your plate, Arthur? Satirical boy. He laughs at his old aunt: nay, but thou didst laugh. He detests all sentiment. He whispers the most acid asides. Come, my love, we will leave these cynics; we will go and commiserate with each other on our sex. The choice of two evils, Mr Smithers!’ I opened the door, and she swept out as if borne on a torrent of unintelligible indignation; and Arthur and I were left in the clear four-flamed light alone.

  For a while we sat in silence. He shook his head at my cigarette-case, and I lit a cigarette. Presently he fidgeted in his chair and poked his head forward into the light. He paused to rise, and shut again the shut door.

  ‘How long will you be?’ he asked me.

  I laughed.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that!’ he said, in some confusion. ‘Of course, I like to be with her. But it’s not that. The truth is, Withers, I don’t care about leaving her too long with my aunt.’

  I hesitated. He looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Look here, Seaton,’ I said, ‘you know well enough that I don’t want to interfere in your affairs, or to offer advice where it is not wanted. But don’t you think perhaps you may not treat your aunt quite in the right way? As one gets old, you know, a little give and take. I have an old godmother, or something of the kind. She’s a bit queer, too … A little allowance; it does no harm. But hang it all, I’m no preacher.’

  He sat down with his hands in his pockets and still with his eyes fixed almost incredulously on mine. ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘Well, my dear fellow, if I’m any judge – mind, I don’t say that I am – but I can’t help thinking she thinks you don’t care for her; and perhaps takes your silence for – for bad temper. She has been very decent to you, hasn’t she?

  ‘“Decent”? My God!’ said Seaton.

  I smoked on in silence; but he continued to look at me with that peculiar concentration I remembered of old.

  ‘I don’t think, perhaps, Withers,’ he began presently, ‘I don’t think you quite understand. Perhaps you are not quite our kind. You always did, just like the other fellows, guy me at school. You laughed at me that night you came to stay here – about the voices and all that. But I don’t mind being laughed at – because I know.’

  ‘Know what?’ It was the same old system of dull question and evasive answer.

  ‘I mean I know that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of this. She talks to you; but it’s all make-believe. It’s all a “parlour game”. She’s not really with you; only pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the fooling. She’s living on inside on what you’re rotten without. That’s what it is – a cannibal feast. She’s a spider. It doesn’t much matter what you call it. It means the same kind of thing. I tell you, Withers, she hates me; and you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It’s oceans deeper than that. It just lies behind: herself against myself. Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don’t even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons. What has life been to me? – nothing but a trap. And when one sets oneself free for a while, it only begins again. I thought you might understand; but you are on a different level: that’s all.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ I said contemptuously, in spite of myself.

  ‘I mean what I say,’ he said gutturally. ‘All this outside’s only makebelieve – but there! what’s the good of talking? So far as this is concerned I’m as good as done. You wait.’

  Seaton blew out three of the candles and, leaving the vacant room in semi-darkness, we groped our way along the corridor to the drawing-room. There a full moon stood shining in at the long garden windows. Alice sat stooping at the door, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking out, alone.

  ‘Where is she?’ Seaton asked in a low tone.

  She looked up; and their eyes met in a glance of instantaneous understanding, and the door immediately afterwards opened behind us.

  ‘Such a moon!’ said a voice, that once heard, remained unforgettably on the ear. ‘A night for lovers, Mr Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!’

  Seaton returned with a shawl. They drifted out into the moonlight. My companion gazed after them till they were out of hearing, turned to me gravely, and suddenly twisted her white face into such a convulsion of contemptuous amusement that I could only stare blankly in reply.

  ‘Dear innocent children!’ she said, with inimitable unctuousness. ‘Well, well, Mr Withers, we poor seasoned old creatures must move with the times. Do you sing?’

  I scouted the idea.

  ‘Then you must listen to my playing. Chess’ – she clasped her forehead with both cramped hands – ‘chess is now completely beyond my poor wits.’

  She sat down at the piano and ran her fingers in a flourish over the keys. ‘What shall it be? How shall we capture them, those passionate hearts? That first fine careless rapture? Poetry itself.’ She gazed softly into the garden a moment, and presently, with a shake of her body, began to play the opening bars of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. The piano was old and woolly. She played without music. The lamplight was rather dim. The moonbeams from the window lay across the keys. Her head was in shadow. And whether it was simply due to her personality or to some really occult skill in her playing I cannot say; I only know that she gravely and deliberately set herself to satirize the beautiful music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with mockery and bitterness. I stood at the window; far down the path I could see the white figure glimmering in that pool of colourless light. A few faint stars shone, and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out of the unwilling keys her wonderful grotesquerie of youth and love and beauty. It came to an end. I knew the player was watching me. ‘Please, please, go on!’ I murmured, without turning. ‘Please go on playing, Miss Seaton.’

  No answer was returned to this honeyed sarcasm, but I realized in some vague fashion that I was being acutely scrutinized, when suddenly there followed a procession of quiet, plaintive chords which broke at last softly into the hymn, ‘A Few More Years Shall Roll’.

  I confess it held me spellbound. There is a wistful, strained plangent pathos in the tune; but beneath those masterly old hands it cried softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the world. Arthur and his lady-love vanished from my thoughts. No one could put into so hackneyed an old hymn tune such an appeal who had never known the meaning of the words. Their meaning, anyhow, isn’t commonplace.

  I turned a fraction of an inch to glance at the musician. She was leaning forward a little over the keys, so that at the approach of my silent scrutiny she had but to turn her face into the thin flood of moonlight for every feature to become distinctly visible. And so, with the tune abruptly terminated, we steadfastly regarded one another; and she broke into a prol
onged chuckle of laughter.

  ‘Not quite so seasoned as I supposed, Mr Withers. I see you are a real lover of music. To me it is too painful. It evokes too much thought …’

  I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids.

  ‘And now,’ she broke off crisply, ‘tell me, as a man of the world, what do you think of my new niece?’

  I was not a man of the world, nor was I much flattered in my stiff and dullish way of looking at things by being called one; and I could answer her without the least hesitation.

  ‘I don’t think, Miss Seaton, I’m much of a judge of character. She’s very charming.’

  ‘A brunette?’

  ‘I think I prefer dark women.’

  ‘And why? Consider, Mr Withers; dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark night, dark vision, dark death, dark grave, dark DARK!’

  Perhaps the climax would have rather thrilled Seaton, but I was too thick-skinned. ‘I don’t know much about all that,’ I answered rather pompously. ‘Broad daylight’s difficult enough for most of us.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, with a sly inward burst of satirical laughter.

  ‘And I suppose,’ I went on, perhaps a little nettled, ‘it isn’t the actual darkness one admires, it’s the contrast of the skin, and the colour of the eyes, and – and their shining. Just as,’ I went blundering on, too late to turn back, ‘just as you only see the stars in the dark. It would be a long day without any evening. As for death and the grave, I don’t suppose we shall much notice that.’ Arthur and his sweetheart were slowly returning along the dewy path. ‘I believe in making the best of things.’

  ‘How very interesting!’ came the smooth answer. ‘I see you are a philosopher, Mr Withers. H’m! “As for death and the grave, I don’t suppose we shall much notice that.” Very interesting … And I’m sure,’ she added in a particularly suave voice, ‘I profoundly hope so.’ She rose slowly from her stool. ‘You will take pity on me again, I hope. You and I would get on famously – kindred spirits – elective affinities. And, of course, now that my nephew’s going to leave me, now that his affections are centred on another, I shall be a very lonely old woman … Shall I not, Arthur?’