Short Stories 1895-1926 Page 7

  Nor did I pine for her company either. I kept out of it as much as possible.

  It so happened that she was accustomed to sit with her back to the window of the room which she usually occupied, her grey old indifferent face looking inwards. Whenever necessary, I would steal close up under it, and if I could see there her large faded amethyst velvet cap I knew I was safe from interruption. Sometimes I would take a slice or two of currant bread or (if I could get it) a jam tart or a cheese cake, and eat it under a twisted old damson tree or beside the running water. And if I conversed with anybody, it would be with myself or with my small victims of the chase.

  Not that I was an exceptionally cruel boy; though if I had lived on for many years in this primitive and companionless fashion, I should surely have become an idiot. As a matter of fact, I was unaware even that I was ridiculously old-fashioned – manners, clothes, notions, everything. My grandmother never troubled to tell me so, nor did she care. And the servants were a race apart. So I was left pretty much to my own devices. What wonder, then, if I at first accepted with genuine avidity the acquaintanceship of our remarkable neighbour, Miss Duveen?

  It had been, indeed, quite an advent in our uneventful routine when that somewhat dubious household moved into Willowlea, a brown brick edifice, even uglier than our own, which had been long vacant, and whose sloping garden confronted ours across the Wandle. My grandmother, on her part, at once discovered that any kind of intimacy with its inmates was not much to be desired. While I, on mine, was compelled to resign myself to the loss of the Willowlea garden as a kind of no-man’s-land or Tom Tiddler’s ground.

  I got to know Miss Duveen by sight long before we actually became friends. I used frequently to watch her wandering in her long garden. And even then I noticed how odd were her methods of gardening. She would dig up a root or carry off a potted plant from one to another overgrown bed with an almost animal-like resolution; and a few minutes afterwards I would see her restoring it to the place from which it had come. Now and again she would stand perfectly still, like a scarecrow, as if she had completely forgotten what she was at.

  Miss Coppin, too, I descried sometimes. But I never more than glanced at her, for fear that even at that distance the too fixed attention of my eyes might bring hers to bear upon me. She was a smallish woman, inclined to be fat, and with a peculiar waddling gait. She invariably appeared to be angry with Miss Duveen, and would talk to her as one might talk to a post. I did not know, indeed, until one day Miss Duveen waved her handkerchief in my direction that I had been observed from Willowlea at all. Once or twice after that, I fancied, she called me; at least her lips moved; but I could not distinguish what she said. And I was naturally a little backward in making new friends. Still I grew accustomed to looking out for her and remember distinctly how first we met.

  It was raining, the raindrops falling softly into the unrippled water, making their great circles, and tapping on the motionless leaves above my head where I sat in shelter on the bank. But the sun was shining whitely from behind a thin fleece of cloud, when Miss Duveen suddenly peeped in at me out of the greenery, the thin silver light upon her face, and eyed me sitting there, for all the world as if she were a blackbird and I a snail. I scrambled up hastily with the intention of retreating into my own domain, but the peculiar grimace she made at me fixed me where I was.

  ‘Ah’, she said, with a little masculine laugh. ‘So this is the young gentleman, the bold, gallant young gentleman. And what might be his name?’

  I replied rather distantly that my name was Arthur.

  ‘Arthur, to be sure!’ she repeated, with extraordinary geniality, and again, ‘Arthur,’ as if in the strictest confidence.

  ‘I know you, Arthur, very well indeed. I have looked, I have watched; and now, please God, we need never be estranged.’ And she tapped her brow and breast, making the Sign of the Cross with her lean, bluish forefinger.

  ‘What is a little brawling brook’, she went on, ‘to friends like you and me?’ She gathered up her tiny countenance once more into an incredible grimace of friendliness; and I smiled as amicably as I could in return. There was a pause in this one-sided conversation. She seemed to be listening, and her lips moved, though I caught no sound. In my uneasiness I was just about to turn stealthily away, when she poked forward again.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know you quite intimately, Arthur. We have met here.’ She tapped her rounded forehead. ‘You might not suppose it, too; but I have eyes like a lynx. It is no exaggeration, I assure you – I assure everybody. And now what friends we will be! At times,’ she stepped out of her hiding-place and stood in curious dignity beside the water, her hands folded in front of her on her black pleated silk apron – ‘at times, dear child, I long for company – earthly company.’ She glanced furtively about her. ‘But I must restrain my longings; and you will, of course, understand that I do not complain. He knows best. And my dear cousin, Miss Coppin – she too knows best. She does not consider too much companionship expedient for me.’ She glanced in some perplexity into the smoothly swirling water.

  ‘I, you know,’ she said suddenly, raising her little piercing eyes to mine, ‘I am Miss Duveen, that’s not, they say, quite the thing here.’ She tapped her small forehead again beneath its sleek curves of greying hair, and made a long narrow mouth at me. ‘Though, of course,’ she added, ‘we do not tell her so. No!’

  And I, too, nodded my head in instinctive and absorbed imitation. Miss Duveen laughed gaily. ‘He understands, he understands!’ she cried, as if to many listeners. ‘Oh, what a joy it is in this world, Arthur to be understood. Now tell me,’ she continued with immense nicety, ‘tell me, how’s your dear mamma?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘I see, I see; Arthur has no mamma. We will not refer to it. No father, either?’

  I shook my head again and, standing perfectly still, stared at my new acquaintance with vacuous curiosity. She gazed at me with equal concentration, as if she were endeavouring to keep the very thought of my presence in her mind.

  ‘It is sad to have no father,’ she continued rapidly, half closing her eyes; ‘no head, no guide, no stay, no stronghold; but we have, O yes, we have another father, dear child, another father – eh? … Where … Where?’

  She very softly raised her finger. ‘On high,’ she whispered, with extraordinary intensity.

  ‘But just now,’ she added cheerfully, hugging her mittened hands together, ‘we are not talking of Him; we are talking of ourselves, just you and me, so cosy, so secret! And it’s a grandmother? I thought so, I thought so, a grandmother! O yes, I can peep between the curtains, though they do lock the door. A grandmother – I thought so; that very droll old lady! Such fine clothes! Such a presence, oh yes! A grandmother.’ She poked out her chin and laughed confidentially.

  ‘And the long, bony creature, all rub and double’ – she jogged briskly with her elbows, ‘who’s that?’

  ‘Mrs Pridgett,’ I said.

  ‘There, there,’ she whispered breathlessly, gazing widely about her. ‘Think of that! He knows; He understands. How firm, how manly, how undaunted! … One t?’

  I shook my head dubiously.

  ‘Why should he?’ she cried scornfully. ‘But between ourselves, Arthur, that is a thing we must learn, and never mind the headache. We cannot, of course, know everything. Even Miss Coppin does not know everything’ – she leaned forward with intense earnestness – ‘though I don’t tell her so. We must try to learn all we can; and at once. One thing, dear child, you may be astonished to hear, I learned only yesterday, and that is how exceedingly sad life is.’

  She leaned her chin upon her narrow bosom pursing her lips. ‘And yet you know they say very little about it … They don’t mention it. Every moment, every hour, every day, every year – one, two, three, four, five, seven, ten,’ she paused, frowned, ‘and so on. Sadder and sadder. Why? why? It’s strange, but oh, so true. You really can have no notion, child, how very sad I am myself at times. In
the evening, when they all gather together, in their white raiment, up and up and up, I sit on the garden seat, on Miss Coppin’s garden seat, and precisely in the middle (you’ll be kind enough to remember that?) and my thoughts make me sad.’ She narrowed her eyes and shoulders. ‘Yes and frightened, my child! Why must I be so guarded? One angel – the greatest fool could see the wisdom of that. But billions! – with their fixed eyes shining, so very boldly, on me. I never prayed for so many, dear friend. And we pray for a good many odd things, you and I, I’ll be bound. But there, you see, poor Miss Duveen’s on her theology again – scamper, scamper, scamper. In the congregations of the wicked we must be cautious! … Mrs Partridge and grandmamma, so nice, so nice; but even that, too, a little sad, eh? She leaned her head questioningly, like a starving bird in the snow.

  I smiled, not knowing what else she expected of me; and her face became instantly grave and set.

  ‘He’s right; perfectly right. We must speak evil of no one. No one. We must shut our mouths. We —’ She stopped suddenly and, taking a step leaned over the water towards me, with eyebrows raised high above her tiny face. ‘S–sh!’ she whispered, laying a long forefinger on her lips. ‘Eavesdroppers!’ She smoothed her skirts, straightened her cap, and left me; only a moment after to poke out her head at me again from between the leafy bushes. ‘An assignation, no!’ she said firmly, then gathered her poor, cheerful, forlorn, crooked, lovable face into a most wonderful contraction at me, that assuredly meant – ‘But, yes!’

  Indeed it was an assignation, the first of how many, and how few. Sometimes Miss Duveen would sit beside me, apparently so lost in thought that I was clean forgotten. And yet I half fancied it was often nothing but feigning. Once she stared me blankly out of countenance when I ventured to take the initiative and to call out good morning to her across the water. On this occasion she completed my consternation with a sudden, angry grimace – contempt, jealousy, outrage.

  But often we met like old friends and talked. It was a novel but not always welcome diversion for me in the long shady garden that was my privy universe. Where our alders met, mingling their branches across the flowing water, and the kingfisher might be seen – there was our usual tryst. But, occasionally, at her invitation, I would venture across the stepping-stones into her demesne; and occasionally, but very seldom indeed, she would venture into mine. How plainly I see her, tip-toeing from stone to stone, in an extraordinary concentration of mind – her mulberry petticoats, her white stockings, her loose spring-side boots. And when at last she stood beside me, her mittened hand on her breast, she would laugh on in a kind of paroxysm until the tears stood in her eyes, and she grew faint with breathlessness.

  ‘In all danger,’ she told me once, ‘I hold my breath and shut my eyes. And if I could tell you of every danger, I think, perhaps, you would understand – dear Miss Coppin …’ I did not, and yet, perhaps, very vaguely I did see the connection in this rambling statement.

  Like most children, I liked best to hear Miss Duveen talk about her own childhood. I contrived somehow to discover that if we sat near flowers or under boughs in blossom, her talk would generally steal round to that. Then she would chatter on and on: of the white sunny rambling house, somewhere, nowhere – it saddened and confused her if I asked where – in which she had spent her first happy years; where her father used to ride on a black horse; and her mother to walk with her in the garden in a crinolined gown and a locket with the painted miniature of a ‘divine’ nobleman inside it. How very far away these pictures seemed!

  It was as if she herself had shrunken back into this distant past, and was babbling on like a child again, already a little isolated by her tiny infirmity.

  ‘That was before — ’ she would begin to explain precisely, and then a criss-cross many-wrinkled frown would net her rounded forehead, and cloud her eyes. Time might baffle her, but then, time often baffled me too. Any talk about her mother usually reminded her of an elder sister, Caroline. ‘My sister, Caroline,’ she would repeat as if by rote, ‘you may not be aware, Arthur, was afterwards Mrs Bute. So charming, so exquisite, so accomplished. And Colonel Bute – an officer and a gentleman, I grant. And yet … But no! My dear sister was not happy. And so it was no doubt a blessing in disguise that by an unfortunate accident she was found drowned. In a lake, you will understand, not a mere shallow noisy brook. This is one of my private sorrows, which, of course, your grandmamma would be horrified to hear – horrified; and which, of course, Partridge has not the privilege of birth even to be informed of – our secret, dear child – with all her beautiful hair, and her elegant feet, and her eyes no more ajar than this; but blue, blue as the forget-me-not. When the time comes, Miss Coppin will close my own eyes, I hope and trust. Death, dear, dear child, I know they say is only sleeping. Yet I hope and trust that. To be sleeping wide awake; oh no!’ she abruptly turned her small untidy head away.

  ‘But didn’t they shut hers? I enquired.

  Miss Duveen ignored the question. ‘I am not uttering one word of blame,’ she went on rapidly; ‘I am perfectly aware that such things confuse me. Miss Coppin tells me not to think. She tells me that I can have no opinions worth the mention. She says, “Shut up your mouth”. I must keep silence then. All that I am merely trying to express to you, Arthur, knowing you will regard it as sacred between us – all I am expressing is that my dear sister, Caroline, was a gifted and beautiful creature with not a shadow or vestige or tinge or taint of confusion in her mind. Nothing. And yet, when they dragged her out of the water and laid her there on the bank, looking —’ She stooped herself double in a sudden dreadful fit of gasping, and I feared for an instant she was about to die.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she cried, rocking herself to and fro, ‘you shall not paint such a picture in his young, innocent mind. You shall not.’

  I sat on my stone, watching her, feeling excessively uncomfortable. ‘But what did she look like, Miss Duveen?’ I pressed forward to ask at last.

  ‘No, no, no,’ she cried again. ‘Cast him out, cast him out. Retro Sathanas! We must not even ask to understand. My father and my dear mother, I do not doubt, have spoken for Caroline. Even I, if I must be called on, will strive to collect my thoughts. And that is precisely where a friend, you, Arthur, would be so precious; to know that you too, in your innocence, will be helping me to collect my thoughts on that day, to save our dear Caroline from Everlasting Anger. That, that! Oh dear: oh dear!’ She turned on me a face I should scarcely have recognized, lifted herself trembling to her feet, and hurried away.

  Sometimes it was not Miss Duveen that was a child again, but I that had grown up. ‘Had now you been your handsome father – and I see him , O, so plainly, dear child – had you been your father, then I must, of course, have kept to the house … I must have; it is a rule of conduct, and everything depends on them. Where would Society be else? she cried, with an unanswerable blaze of intelligence. ‘I find, too, dear Arthur, that they increase – the rules increase. I try to remember them. My dear cousin, Miss Coppin, knows them all. But I – I think sometimes one’s memory is a little treacherous. And then it must vex people.’

  She gazed penetratingly at me for an answer that did not come. Mute as a fish though I might be, I suppose it was something of a comfort to her to talk to me.

  And to suppose that is my one small crumb of comfort when I reflect on the kind of friendship I managed to bestow.

  I actually met Miss Coppin once; but we did not speak. I had, in fact, gone to tea with Miss Duveen. The project had been discussed as ‘quite, quite impossible, dear child’ for weeks. ‘You must never mention it again.’ As a matter of fact I had never mentioned it at all. But one day – possibly when their charge had been less difficult and exacting, one day Miss Coppin and her gaunt maid-servant and companion really did go out together, leaving Miss Duveen alone in Willowlea. It was the crowning opportunity of our friendship. The moment I espied her issuing from the house, I guessed her errand. She came hastening down to the waterside, att
ired in clothes of a colour and fashion I had never seen her wearing before, her dark eyes shining in her head, her hands trembling with excitement.

  It was a still, warm afternoon, with sweet-williams and linden and stocks scenting the air, when, with some little trepidation, I must confess, I followed her in formal dignity up the unfamiliar path towards the house. I know not which of our hearts beat the quicker, whose eyes cast the most furtive glances about us. My friend’s cheeks were brightest mauve. She wore a large silver locket on a ribbon; and I followed her up the faded green stairs, beneath the dark pictures, to her small, stuffy bedroom under the roof. We humans, they say, are enveloped in a kind of aura; to which the vast majority of us are certainly entirely insensitive. Nevertheless, there was an air, an atmosphere as of the smell of pears in this small attic room – well, every bird, I suppose, haunts with its presence its customary cage.

  ‘This,’ she said, acknowledging the bed, the looking-glass, the deal washstand, ‘this, dear child, you will pardon; in fact, you will not see. How could we sit, friends as we are, in the congregation of strangers?’

  I hardly know why, but that favourite word of Miss Duveen’s, ‘congregation’, brought up before me with extreme aversion all the hostile hardness and suspicion concentrated in Miss Coppin and Ann. I stared at the queer tea things in a vain effort not to be aware of the rest of Miss Duveen’s private belongings.

  Somehow or other she had managed to procure for me a bun – a saffron bun. There was a dish of a grey pudding and a plate of raspberries that I could not help suspecting (and, I am ashamed to say, with aggrieved astonishment), she must have herself gathered that morning from my grandmother’s canes. We did not talk very much. Her heart gave her pain. And her face showed how hot and absorbed and dismayed she was over her foolhardy entertainment. But I sipped my milk and water, sitting on a black bandbox, and she on an old cane chair. And we were almost formal and distant to one another, with little smiles and curtseys over our cups, and polished agreement about the weather.