Something Light

by Margery Sharp

  He looked also, the moment after, suddenly relieved—as might a steeplechaser who finds himself over a first formidable fence before he has had time to think about it.

  “It’s happened before,” said F. Pennon hardily.

  “What has?” asked Louisa.

  “A chap due to marry one woman, and then finding, well, another who suits him better.”

  There was no mistaking his meaning. He was now regarding her with a fixed, urgent appeal. He might be embarrassed, but he was determined—to give himself a chance. He was ready to undergo any amount of awkwardness, face any number of painful scenes, if only Louisa, not Mrs. Anstruther, would marry him.

  As once before in Gladstone Mansions, Louisa sat perfectly still: taking it in.

  There was so much to take.—Literally, so much! House and income (let alone a settlement), car and chauffeur, three square meals a day—so much, all at once, that though it was no more than she’d deliberately set out to bag, from the first moment of reading F. Pennon’s letter, now that it was actually within her grasp Louisa needed a moment to draw breath.

  As once before in Gladstone Mansions—

  “Don’t we get on uncommonly well?” suggested Freddy.

  There was that too: she liked him. She didn’t love him, as probably he didn’t love her; but they liked each other, they got on, as he said, uncommonly well. Even their slight bickering adumbrated a free and easy, friendly companionship. To become genuinely fond of F. Pennon as a husband would be the easiest thing in the world. “A week ago, I’d have been a straight gold-digger,” thought Louisa, “but not now. Now, I’d almost marry him just for the company …”

  He hadn’t taken his eyes from her face. He put out his hand on the chessboard and let it lie there, palm up—spilling bounty. It wasn’t a young man’s hand, but it was hard and scrubbed, perfectly acceptable.

  “What about it?” asked Freddy urgently.

  He was too much absorbed to hear the very slight sound from the hall, but Louisa heard. She glanced across at the open door, and beyond perceived not Mrs. Anstruther, but Mrs. Anstruther’s reflection. Enid Anstruther believed herself hidden, standing so close behind the jamb; only a big mirror opposite betrayed her.

  3

  Louisa could see her quite plainly; and quite plainly she had been eavesdropping. Now she stood with her handkerchief pressed to her mouth, and above it her eyes fixed in an expression of such helpless dismay, she looked like a frightened child.—Not like a bird, or a moth, or a butterfly; like a frightened child.

  It took perhaps an instant, no more, for Louisa to fix the image in every detail; her eye photographed even the lace on the handkerchief, a wisp of hair fallen across one cheek, before she looked swiftly away from the tragic sight.

  For it was tragic.—Only pitifully, not tragic in the grand manner, but nonetheless authentically so. The triviality was of detail only. (The lace on a handkerchief, the ribbon roses on—for heaven’s sake!—a boudoir cap.) Enid Anstruther’s face, ravaged by incredulous dismay, was authentically tragic.

  “And why not?” thought Louisa.

  For what on earth would become of her, without Freddy?—A woman so completely unfitted to face the day and age without a husband?—A woman with neither a penny to her name, nor the least idea how to set about earning one? Nubile and nothing more was Enid Anstruther, even with her profile …

  “She can’t look after herself, and I can,” thought Louisa. “Even if I don’t pick up a settlement, I can look after myself …”

  Oddly enough in one so fond of men, she considered F. Pennon scarcely at all. He could look after himself too. He’d always have Gladstone Mansions as a blow-hole … The point lay, as Louisa saw it, between herself and Mrs. Anstruther; and to scoop up old Freddy away from Enid would be too much like robbing a blind man …

  Regretfully she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Freddy dear …”

  “If you’re thinking of all the fuss and commotion—”

  “I’m not. I can take any amount of either,” said Louisa. What she was thinking of now was Mrs. Anstruther’s resolute vivacity, while her head split, at a dinner table. “I’m just sorry,” said Louisa.

  Again there was a silence. It was a regret again to Louisa that she couldn’t see the effects of her heroism, but she didn’t dare look back. She just took as long as possible, rattling the chessmen into their box, to give Mrs. Anstruther time to get upstairs.

  As once before in Gladstone Mansions—

  “Louisa!” implored F. Pennon desperately.

  “I’m sorry,” repeated Louisa. “You’ll just have to be brave.” And whether she addressed herself or F. Pennon, she really didn’t know.

  4

  The farewells, next morning, in fact called for a good deal of courage all round. The situation was complex: Mrs. Anstruther knew of Freddy’s treachery—or rather of the treachery he’d aimed at; Freddy didn’t know she knew, as neither was Mrs. Anstruther aware that Louisa knew she knew. Each one of them had thus to play a part—Freddy in the suit of unsmutched loyalty, Enid sugared with confident proprietorship, and Louisa disguised as a gay career woman. They all pulled it off.

  “Good-by, Louisa,” said F. Pennon—a trifle huskily, no more.

  “Dear Louisa, good-by!” breathed Mrs. Anstruther affectionately. “You will, won’t you, let us hear from you soon?”

  She slipped one little hand through Freddy’s arm, and held out the other to her chum.—Louisa, accepting it, couldn’t forbear looking into Mrs. Anstruther’s face. Would there be any sign there of gratitude? It wouldn’t have been, all things considered, misplaced!

  But for once the soft gray glance wasn’t vague at all, and Louisa had no difficulty in reading it: Mrs. Anstruther thought her a damned fool.

  Part Two

  Chapter Eight

  1

  “Have a nice time?” asked the milkman.

  “No,” said Louisa.

  “You still look better for it,” said the milkman.

  “The food was all right,” admitted Louisa.

  “Summer schools must’ve changed since my Auntie’s day,” observed the milkman. “According to her, they fed mostly on prunes. According to my Auntie—”

  “Look,” said Louisa, “I’ve got a busy day. I’m due at a kennels in Surrey—”

  “I can take a hint,” said the milkman.

  He glanced at his nest of cream jars, then back, speculatively, at Louisa; but something in her face told him this was no morning for cream.

  2

  All the same it was a piece of luck, and Louisa thoroughly felt it so, that she had been able to retrieve the dachshund job for the very morrow of her return. She not only needed the fee, and to have her mind occupied, she was also thankful to remove, however briefly, from her usual haunts. Only to Hugo and Mr. Ross had she actually spoken of her approaching marriage, but each, she was well aware, would have hastened to spread the glad news: Louisa was perhaps supersensitive, in feeling that she couldn’t cross a street without meeting either a Pammy (and being congratulated) or one of the boys (and being advised as to settlements); but so she uncontrollably did feel, and even one day’s grace was welcome to her.

  There was no doubt about it, Louisa had returned from Bournemouth considerably changed. Her reactions were far nearer what Enid’s would have been, to a broken engagement, than to what her own would have been even a week before.—With a hand on the receiver to telephone Hugo, why did Louisa refrain? Because she didn’t want to have to tell … and only as she dropped the receiver back remembered that she was in any case giving him the go-by.

  Upon this point her resolve was stiffened. No more sympathy did Louisa intend to waste upon the off-beat, bronchial and indigent. Henceforward, following Mrs. Anstruther’s advice, she intended to reserve it strictly for men at the top. She hoped she’d meet one soon; though probably it wouldn’t be at Kerseymere Kennels …

  3

  Indeed the bus proposed i
n Mrs. Meare’s letter of instructions bore Louisa some five miles from Dorking station to an establishment very unlike either Gladstone Mansions or the villa at Bournemouth. Fifty years earlier, when it was built, Kersey Cottage might have been trim; fifty years hence, might tumble down to picturesqueness; in the meantime, it was simply dilapidated. From the palings by the gate to the curlicues under the eaves, every inch of woodwork needed repainting; the brickwork needed repointing, and several tiles had dropped off from the roof over the porch. A sizable garden exhibited the same characteristics: in the house agent’s term mature, it was also unkempt without being overgrown. (No head-high berceaux of Gloire de Dijon roses, no mysterious gloom of ancient trees; the flower beds just needed weeding, an elm lopping.) Wherever the eye rested, in fact, the need for a bit of money spent was so obvious, what on earth induced the Meares to buy a couple of plaster dwarfs Louisa couldn’t for the life of her imagine.

  But there the dwarfs were, one on each side of the gate, and there the Meares were too. On the head of each dwarf was a scarlet cap; the Meares wore Panama hats—Mrs. Meare’s with a Liberty scarf round it, her husband’s with a plain black band; both equally recognizable, from the tint of the yellowed straw, as hats not bought, but inherited. They looked about the same age as the Meares’ cottage.—So did Mr. and Mrs. Meare themselves, though they’d worn better: achieving between youth and decrepitude (unlike their hats and their house) a comfortable middle age …

  “Miss Datchett? We’ve the chaps all ready for you,” said Mr. Meare. “Or would you like to see—”

  “The kennels first?” said Mrs. Meare.

  Looking straight over their heads—for she was a good deal taller than either—Louisa perceived a dachshund-shaped weathervane (probably stuck, since in the light westerly breeze it pointed due north) attached to some sort of outbuilding. It didn’t exactly beckon, but the Meares so obviously wished to show her round, she gave the polite answer.

  “We thought you might!” said Mrs. Meare. “Be a little careful of the whitewash, will you?—Ted only finished it this morning.”

  As Louisa by now anticipated, it wasn’t much of a kennels. Compared with the splendid York establishment starred by My Lucky, My Winsome, and now My Handsome, Kerseymere was practically amateur. (So was Mr. Meare’s whitewashing amateur: streaky above, coagulated below.) The lying-in room had obviously been a toolshed, the puppy-run adjoined a cabbage patch; Mrs. Meare frankly did kennel maid herself. (“It’s so nice that we can manage everything between us!” she observed happily. “Teddy’s a vet, you know. Of course I have to let the garden go a little!”) But the dachshunds themselves were all right—clean-bred and sturdy, classically colored, alert and gay; and before Sebastian the Third of Kerseymere Louisa at last unslung her camera with genuine relief. She had by this time a feeling that her fee had been saved up in a piggy bank.

  “If we can only get him into Country Month!” sighed Mrs. Meare. “I don’t mean in an advertisement—though we have advertised, once—I mean among the proper photographs!”

  “Don’t worry,” said Louisa absently. “He’s about the best dachs I’ve seen yet. Anyway, I know the editor …”

  For the next hour she was completely absorbed, as upon the rough grass obediently paraded Sebastian, Viola and Orsino of Kerseymere. The Meares’ handling of them was impeccable; indeed, only a minimum was required. (The poodles at Cannes had been more of hams, but strictly on their own temperamental terms.) “These must be a gift to show,” said Louisa appreciatively. “Who shows them?”

  “Molly does,” said Mr. Meare. “A woman catches the judge’s eye,” he added seriously.

  —Louisa glanced at Mrs. Meare’s weatherbeaten cheek under the Panama hat, and continued photographing Sebastian the Third. As though reading her thoughts, he glanced severely back at her; Louisa got a rather good shot. Her last, a trickier one, was of a tumble of Viola’s offspring; then she packed up, but only because she’d run out of film.

  “What trouble you’ve taken!” exclaimed Mrs. Meare gratefully. “Now you must have tea and a nice sit-down!”

  4

  At least Louisa, at this period, was getting a good many free meals. Calibrating a cup of char with Rossy as one extreme, and tea at Gladstone Mansions as the other, tea with the Meares, which they took out of doors, came about halfway. There was no solid silver, but there were clean plates, and the milk wasn’t poured from the bottle but from a jug with a Devonshire motto on it. (Referring actually to cream: O Devonshire cream, like Devonshire lasses/For richness and beauty the world surpasses—a souvenir of the Meares’ honeymoon.) There were no scones, but there was brown bread and butter; and if no plum cake, rock cakes, homemade.

  “Molly makes ’em,” munched Teddy Meare.

  “I’m afraid these got a little burnt,” apologized his wife.

  “Personally I like ’em a bit burnt,” said Teddy.

  “So do I,” said Louisa sincerely.

  Between them they cleared the plate; when only one rock cake was left, and Louisa couldn’t be persuaded to take it, the Meares wordlessly divided it between them …

  As she sat back replete, her mind no longer on her job, Louisa considered the Meares with more attention.

  Her first, hasty impression had been simply that they were rather like a couple of dachshunds themselves. It has often been remarked that any long-married pair tend to resemble one another, as do also dog-owner and dog; in the case of the Meares, both factors seemed to have worked in conjunction. Plump, sleek Mrs. Meare was but nearer chestnut, her husband nearer tan. As they jumped up into their basket-chairs for tea—or rather, as they sat down; it was the two canine patriarchs of the establishment who jumped up beside them—Louisa could have offered each a lump of sugar. Now, she began to see the flippancy misplaced.

  There was a peaceableness about them. What peace and content, indeed, lay over the whole shabby house, the whole shabby garden! And what did it spring from, if not from the relation between the Meares themselves?—Another thought struck Louisa: that in Teddy Meare, for almost the first time in her life, she’d met a man who made no demands on her sympathy.

  If Teddy Meare wanted sympathy, he’d get it from his wife; and wasn’t that a very right and proper thing?

  Unconsciously, Louisa sighed.

  “You’re tired,” said Mrs. Meare kindly. “Why not stay a little? There’s another train at six, and if you’ll wait till Ted’s watered the cabbages—”

  “I’ll run you to the station,” said Mr. Meare.

  Louisa hesitated. She wanted to stay, but she didn’t know whether they wanted her.

  “Won’t it be a nuisance—?” she began uncertainly.

  “Not a bit!” cried both the Meares together.

  5

  Off stumped Teddy to uncoil the hose. Mrs. Meare went indoors and fetched her knitting. One of the dachshunds packed itself comfortably behind Louisa’s ankles. She began to feel like a neighbor who had dropped in for a quiet, customary chat.—But such evidently wasn’t the view taken by her hostess.

  “Ted’s going to enjoy driving you to the station,” confided Mrs. Meare. “You look so Londony! I expect half the village, tomorrow, will be asking who you are!”

  Obviously one of Louisa’s newly acquired notions needed adjusting. A man’s car being so much a man’s appanage, shouldn’t a wife, even more than a prospective wife, be naturally jealous of it? Mrs. Meare didn’t sound jealous in the least: she sounded gleeful.

  “It does him so much good,” she explained, “to cut a little dash now and again! (Just give Sebastian a push, if he’s annoying you.) We live,” added Mrs. Meare unnecessarily, “such a very quiet life.”

  Louisa felt she could hardly imagine a quieter, if driving herself to the station constituted cutting a dash. Yet it evidently suited Mrs. Meare; Louisa had never seen a woman more content …

  Had she married the life, wondered Louisa suddenly, or the man? It seemed important to find out.

  “Did
you always,” asked Louisa—going a bit roundabout—“mean to breed dachshunds?”

  “Some sort of dog,” agreed Mrs. Meare innocently. “We settled on dachs because they’re so easy. Even when we show, I just rub them over in the car with a loofah glove …”

  For a moment Louisa was tempted to visualize the Meares at Cruft’s; they probably looked as though they’d been rubbed over with a loofah too. But she was becoming more and more in earnest.

  “Well, did you always mean to live in the country?”

  “I suppose so,” said Mrs. Meare, more vaguely. “Not that dachs take up much room. But of course Teddy being a vet—”

  (“Ah!” thought Louisa—feeling her hand on a clue. The life, not the man: if you want to breed dogs, marry a vet.)

  “—the country seemed obvious. Of course, I didn’t know he was a vet,” added Mrs. Meare. “When we met, in the war, he was heavily disguised as a gunner! Actually we bought the cottage out of his gratuity …”

  She looked affectionately over her shoulder towards the peeling paint, the unpointed brick; glanced fondly at the plaster dwarfs. Louisa found a compliment surprisingly easy to produce.

  “It’s so peaceful,” said Louisa. “It’s quite marvelous … Would you mind going back a bit? How did you know—or didn’t you know?—it would work out so well?”

  “I saw Ted was steady,” said Mrs. Meare simply. “That’s all a woman wants, don’t you think? I mean, surely it’s the basis? We’ll never be rich, but Ted has a wonderfully steady little practice; and if he wasn’t a vet he’d be something else steady!—Now I’ve just talked about myself,” said Mrs. Meare remorsefully, “and there he is with the car!”