Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  When I had finished the cigarette I thought a moment, my face in my hands. A person of tact — ah, but I have no tact; it has been my undoing on the cardinal occasions of life that I have none. Well, but suppose I were a person of tact — what would I do? Instantly the answer flashed into my brain: Knock, by accident, against a table.

  So I did. I got up quickly and crossed into the hall and knocked against a table, at first with gentleness, and then as there was no result with greater vigour.

  My elder guest behind the handkerchief continued to draw deep regular breaths, but to my joy the younger one stirred and opened her eyes.

  ‘Oh, I do hope I didn’t wake you?’ I exclaimed, taking an eager step towards the sofa.

  She looked at me vaguely, and fell asleep again.

  I went back on to the terrace and lit another cigarette. That was five. I haven’t smoked so much before in one day in my life ever. I felt quite fast. And on my birthday too. By the time I had finished it there was a look about the shadows on the grass that suggested tea. Even if it were a little early the noise of the teacups might help to wake up my guests, and I felt that a call to tea would be a delicate and hospitable way of doing it.

  I didn’t go through the hall on tiptoe this time, but walked naturally; and I opened the door into the kitchen rather noisily. Then I looked round at the sofa to see the effect. There wasn’t any.

  Presently tea was ready, out on the table where we had lunched. At least six times I had been backwards and forwards through the hall, the last twice carrying things that rattled and that I encouraged to rattle. But on the sofa the strangers slept peacefully on.

  There was nothing for it now but to touch them. Short of that, I didn’t think that anything would wake them. But I don’t like touching guests; I mean, in between whiles. I have never done it. Especially not when they weren’t looking. And still more especially not when they were complete strangers.

  Therefore I approached the sofa with reluctance, and stood uncertain in front of it. Poor things, they really were most completely asleep. It seemed a pity to interrupt. Well, but they had had a nice rest; they had slept soundly now for two hours. And the tea would be cold if I didn’t wake them up, and besides, how were they going to get home if they didn’t start soon? Still, I don’t like touching guests. Especially strange guests....

  Manifestly, however, there was nothing else to be done, so I bent over the younger one — the other one was too awe-inspiring with her handkerchief over her face — and gingerly put my hand on her shoulder.

  Nothing happened.

  I put it on again, with a slightly increased emphasis.

  She didn’t open her eyes, but to my embarrassment laid her cheek on it affectionately and murmured something that sounded astonishingly like Siegfried.

  I know about Siegfried, because of going to the opera. He was a German. He still is, in the form of Siegfried Wagner, and I daresay of others; and once somebody told me that when Germans wished to indulge their disrespect for the Kaiser freely — he was not at that time yet an ex-Kaiser — without being run in for lèse majesté, they loudly and openly abused him under the name of Siegfried Meyer, whose initials, S.M., also represent Seine Majestät; by which simple methods everybody was able to be pleased and nobody was able to be hurt. So that when my sleeping guest murmured Siegfried, I couldn’t but conclude she was dreaming of a German; and when at the same time she laid her cheek on my hand, I was forced to realise that she was dreaming of him affectionately. Which astonished me.

  Imbued with patriotism — the accumulated patriotism of weeks spent out of England — I felt that this English lady should instantly be roused from a dream that did her no credit. She herself, I felt sure, would be the first to deplore such a dream. So I drew my hand away from beneath her cheek — even by mistake I didn’t like it to be thought the hand of somebody called Siegfried and, stooping down, said quite loud and distinctly in her ear, ‘Won’t you come to tea?’

  This, at last, did wake her. She sat up with a start, and looked at me for a moment in surprise.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, confused, ‘have I been asleep?’

  ‘I’m very glad you have,’ I said, smiling at her, for she was already again smiling at me. ‘Your climb this morning was enough to kill you.’

  ‘Oh, but,’ she murmured, getting up quickly and straightening her hair, ‘how dreadful to come to your house and go to sleep—’

  And she turned to the elder one, and again astonished me by, with one swift movement, twitching the handkerchief off her face and saying exactly as one says when playing the face-and-handkerchief game with one’s baby, ‘Peep bo.’ Then she turned back to me and smiled and said nothing more, for I suppose she knew the elder one, roused thus competently, would now do all the talking; as indeed she did, being as I feared greatly upset and horrified when she found she had not only been asleep but been it for two hours.

  We had tea; and all the while, while the elder one talked of the trouble she was afraid she had given, and the shame she felt that they should have slept, and their gratitude for what she called my prolonged and patient hospitality, I was wondering about the other. Whenever she caught my pensive and inquiring eye she smiled at me. She had very sweet eyes, grey ones, gentle and intelligent, and when she smiled an agreeable dimple appeared. Bringing my Paley’s Evidences and Sherlock Holmes’ side to bear on her, I reasoned that my younger guest was, or had been, a mother, — this because of the practised way she had twitched the handkerchief off and said Peep bo; that she was either a widow, or hadn’t seen her husband for some time, — this because of the real affection with which, in her sleep she had laid her cheek on my hand; and that she liked music and often went to the opera.

  After tea the elder got up stiffly — she had walked much too far already, and was clearly unfit to go all that long way more — and said, if I would direct them, they must now set out for the valley.

  The younger one put on her toque obediently at this, and helped the elder one to pin hers on straight. It was now five o’clock, and if they didn’t once lose their way they would be at their hotel by half-past seven; in time, said the elder, for the end of table-d’hôte, a meal much interfered with by the very numerous flies. But if they did go wrong at any point it would be much later, probably dark.

  I asked them to stay.

  To stay? The elder, engaged in buttoning her tight kid gloves, said it was most kind of me, but they couldn’t possibly stay any longer. It was far too late already, owing to their so unfortunately having gone to sleep —

  ‘I mean stay the night,’ I said; and explained that it would be doing me a kindness, and because of that they must please overlook anything in such an invitation that might appear unconventional, for certainly if they did set out I should lie awake all night thinking of them lost somewhere among the precipices, or perhaps fallen over one, and how much better to go down comfortably in daylight, and I could lend them everything they wanted, including a great many new toothbrushes I found here, — in short, I not only invited, I pressed; growing more eager by the sheer gathering momentum of my speech.

  All day, while the elder talked and I listened, I had secretly felt uneasy. Here was I, one woman in a house arranged for family gatherings, while they for want of rooms were forced to swelter in the valley. Gradually, as I listened, my uneasiness increased. Presently I began to feel guilty. And at last, as I watched them sleeping in such exhaustion on the sofa, I felt at the bottom of my heart somehow responsible. But I don’t know, of course, that it is wise to invite strangers to stay with one.

  They accepted gratefully. The moment the elder understood what it was that my eager words were pressing on her, she drew the pins out of her toque and laid it on the chair again; and so did the other one, smiling at me.

  When the Antoines came home I went out to meet them. By that time my guests were shut up in their bedrooms with new toothbrushes. They had gone up very early, both of them so stiff that they could hardly walk. Ti
ll they did go up, what moments I had been able to spare from my hasty preparations for their comfort had been filled entirely, as earlier in the day, by the elder one’s gratitude; there had still been no chance of real talk.

  ‘J’ai des visites,’ I said to the Antoines, going out to meet them when, through the silence of the evening, I heard their steps coming up the path.

  Antoine wasn’t surprised. He just said, ‘Ca sera comme autrefois,’ and began to shut the shutters.

  But I am. I can’t go to bed, I’m so much surprised. I’ve been sitting up here scribbling when I ought to have been in bed long ago. Who would have thought that the day that began so emptily would end with two of my rooms full, — each containing a widow? For they are widows, they told me: widows who have lost their husbands by peaceful methods, nothing to do with the war. Their names are Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Jewks, — at least that is what the younger one’s sounded like; I don’t know if I have spelt it right. They come from Dulwich. I think the elder one had a slight misgiving at the last, and seemed to remember what was due to the Lord Mayor, when she found herself going to bed in a strange house belonging to somebody of whom she knew nothing; for she remarked a little doubtfully, and with rather a defensive eye fixed on me, that the war had broken down many barriers, and that people did things now that they wouldn’t have dreamed of doing five years ago.

  The other one didn’t say nothing, but actually kissed me. I hope she wasn’t again mistaking me for Siegfried.

  August 15th

  My guests have gone again, but only to fetch their things and pay their hotel bill, and then they are coming back to stay with me till it is a little cooler. They are coming back to-morrow, not to-day. They are entangled in some arrangement with their pension that makes it difficult for them to leave at once.

  Mrs. Barnes appeared at breakfast with any misgivings she may have had last night gone, for when I suggested they should spend this hot weather up here she immediately accepted. I hadn’t slept for thinking of them. How could I possibly not ask them to stay, seeing their discomfort and my roominess? Towards morning it was finally clear to me that it wasn’t possible: I would ask them. Though, remembering the look in Mrs. Barnes’s eye the last thing last night, I couldn’t be sure she would accept. She might want to find out about me first, after the cautious and hampering way of women, — oh, I wish women wouldn’t always be so cautious, but simply get on with their friendships! She might first want assurances that there was some good reason for my being here all by myself. Alas, there isn’t a good reason; there is only a bad one. But, fortunately, to be alone is generally regarded as respectable, in spite of what Seneca says a philosopher said to a young man he saw walking by himself: ‘Have a care,’ said he, ‘of lewd company.’

  However, I don’t suppose Mrs. Barnes knew about Seneca. Anyhow she didn’t hesitate. She accepted at once, and said that under these circumstances it was certainly due to me to tell me a little about themselves.

  At this I got my dean ready to meet the Lord Mayor, but after all I was told nothing more than that my guests are sisters; for at this point, very soon arrived at, the younger one, Mrs. Jewks, who had slipped away on our getting up from breakfast, reappeared with the toques and gloves, and said she thought they had better start before it got any hotter.

  So they went, and the long day here has been most beautiful — so peaceful, so quiet, with the delicate mountains like opals against the afternoon sky, and the shadows lengthening along the valley.

  I don’t feel to-day as I did yesterday, that I want to talk. To-day I am content with things exactly as they are: the sun, the silence, the caresses of the funny little white kitten with the smudge of black round its left eye that makes it look as though it must be somebody’s wife, and the pleasant knowledge that my new friends are coming back again.

  I think that knowledge makes to-day more precious. It is the last day for some time, for at least a week judging from the look of the blazing sky, of what I see now that they are ending have been wonderful days. Up the ladder of these days I have climbed slowly away from the blackness at the bottom. It has been like finding some steps under water just as one was drowning, and crawling up them to air and light. But now that I have got at least most of myself back to air and light, and feel hopeful of not slipping down again, it is surely time to arise, shake myself, and begin to do something active and fruitful. And behold, just as I realise this, just as I realise that I am, so to speak, ripe for fruit-bearing, there appear on the scene Mrs. Barnes and Mrs. Jewks, as it were the midwives of Providence.

  Well, that shall be to-morrow. Meanwhile there is still to-day, and each one of its quiet hours seems very precious. I wonder what my new friends like to read. Suppose — I was going to say suppose it is The Rosary; but I won’t suppose that, for when it comes to supposing, why not suppose something that isn’t The Rosary? Why not, for instance, suppose they like Eminent Victorians, and that we three are going to sit of an evening delicately tickling each other with quotations from it, and gently squirming in our seats for pleasure? It is just as easy to suppose that as to suppose anything else, and as I’m not yet acquainted with these ladies’ tastes one supposition is as likely to be right as another.

  I don’t know, though — I forgot their petticoats. I can’t believe any friends of Mr. Lytton Strachey wear that kind of petticoat, eminently Victorian even though it be; and although he wouldn’t, of course, have direct ocular proof that they did unless he had stood with me yesterday at the bottom of that wall while they on the top held up their skirts, still what one has on underneath does somehow ooze through into one’s behaviour. I know once, when impelled by a heat wave in America to cast aside the undergarments of a candid mind and buy and put on pink chiffon, the pink chiffon instantly got through all my clothes into my conduct, which became curiously dashing. Anybody can tell what a woman has got on underneath by merely watching her behaviour. I have known just the consciousness of silk stockings, worn by one accustomed only to wool, produce dictatorialness where all before had been submission.

  August 19th

  I haven’t written for three days because I have been so busy settling down to my guests.

  They call each other Kitty and Dolly. They explained that these were inevitably their names because they were born, one fifty, the other forty years ago. I inquired why this was inevitable, and they drew my attention to fashions in names, asserting that people’s ages could generally be guessed by their Christian names. If, they said, their birth had taken place ten years earlier they would have been Ethel and Maud; if ten years later they would have been Muriel and Gladys; and if twenty years only ago they had no doubt but what they would have been Elizabeth and Pamela. It is always Mrs. Barnes who talks; but the effect is as though they together were telling me things, because of the way Mrs. Jewks smiles, — I conclude in agreement.

  ‘Our dear parents, both long since dead,’ said Mrs. Barnes, adjusting her eyeglasses more comfortably on her nose, ‘didn’t seem to remember that we would ever grow old, for we weren’t even christened Katharine and Dorothy, to which we might have reverted when we ceased being girls, but we were Kitty and Dolly from the very beginning, and actually in that condition came away from the font.’

  ‘I like being Dolly,’ murmured Mrs. Jewks.

  Mrs. Barnes looked at her with what I thought was a slight uneasiness, and rebuked her. ‘You shouldn’t,’ she said. ‘After thirty-nine no woman should willingly be Dolly.’

  ‘I still feel exactly like Dolly,’ murmured Mrs. Jewks.

  ‘It’s a misfortune,’ said Mrs. Barnes, shaking her head. ‘To be called Dolly after a certain age is bad enough, but it is far worse to feel like it. What I think of,’ she said, turning to me, ’is when we are really old, — in bath chairs, unable to walk, and no doubt being spoon fed, and yet obliged to continue to be called by these names. It will rob us of dignity.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll mind,’ murmured Mrs. Jewks. ‘I shall still feel exa
ctly like Dolly.’

  Mrs. Barnes looked at her, again I thought with uneasiness — with, really, an air of rather anxious responsibility.

  And afterwards, when her sister had gone indoors for something, she expounded a theory she said she held, the soundness of which had often been proved to her by events, that names had much influence on behaviour.

  ‘Not half as much,’ I thought (but didn’t say), ‘as underclothes.’ And indeed I have for years been acquainted with somebody called Trixy, who for steady gloom and heaviness of spirit would be hard to equal. Also I know an Isolda; a most respectable married woman, of a sprightly humour and much nimbleness in dodging big emotions.

  ‘Dolly,’ said Mrs. Barnes, ‘has never, I am sorry to say, shared my opinion. If she had, many things in her life would have been different, for then she would have been on her guard as I have been. I am glad to say there is nothing I have ever done since I ceased to be a child that has been even remotely compatible with being called Kitty.’

  I said I thought that was a great deal to be able to say. It suggested, I said, quite an unusually blameless past. Through my brain ran for an instant the vision of that devil who, seeking his tail, met Antoine in the passage. I blushed. Fortunately Mrs. Barnes didn’t notice.

  ‘What did Dol — what did Mrs. Jewks do,’ I said, ‘that you think was the direct result of her Christian name? Don’t tell me if my question is indiscreet, which I daresay it is, because I know I often am, but your theory interests me.’

  Mrs. Barnes hesitated a moment. She was, I think, turning over in her mind whether she would give herself the relief of complete unreserve, or continue for a few more days to skim round on the outskirts of confidences. This was yesterday. After all, she had only been with me two days.

  She considered awhile, then decided that two days wasn’t long enough, so only said: ‘My sister is sometimes a little rash, — or perhaps I should say has been. But the effects of rashness are felt for a long time; usually for the rest of one’s life.’