Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  Ronnie was no Miss Brontë. He was not one of those shy (and sometimes even elderly) creatures that ring and run away. He was entirely unalarmed at strangers. Nevertheless, as he stood waiting there, he was hoping solely for the best – that nobody was at home. Why not? He had enjoyed his country walk. Here was the house. Let sleeping poets lie. He would have done his duty, and theses might go to the devil.

  A moment after, at sight of a stiff, high-capped, ageing, and obviously unfriendly maid-servant, he changed his mind. The least symptom of opposition not only decoyed him on, but increased his natural suavity. He enquired if this was ‘Willows’, and on being assured by an abrupt nod that it was, he asked if it were still occupied by a lady of the name of Cotton, and that being so, might he perhaps be favoured with a few minutes of her valuable time.

  ‘Mrs Cotton is not well enough to see visitors,’ was the stony retort. And the grey eyes that continued to regard him after the narrow lips had shut again, hinted that for the word visitor he might, if he chose, substitute such a synonym, say, as hawker or tax-collector. But Ronnie was easily able not to feel a little piqued. He smiled, and remarked, ‘I am Mr Ronald Forbes,’ and at the same time drew out of his pocket-book, and presented this dragon with – a visiting-card. ‘I wouldn’t detain Mrs Cotton for more than a few moments,’ he assured her, sagaciously raising his voice a little. ‘It is merely to ask her kindness in a matter in which we are both deeply interested. And for this reason I hoped she would forgive me anything in the nature of an intrusion.’

  The maid took the card between finger and thumb. She appeared to be still hesitating whether to keep it as a trophy or to return it, when a voice out of the beyond, and apparently from the landing of the shallow staircase nearly opposite the door, decided the question.

  ‘Show this gentleman into the drawing-room, please, Fanny. I will be with him in a few moments.’

  Having proffered his hat to his enemy, who far from accepting it did not even waste a glance on its beautiful lining, Ronnie laid it with his light overcoat on a small mahogany bench that stood beneath an engraving of one of Raphael’s masterpieces. And he stood up his cane beside it. He glanced at the barometer which hung on the ‘flock’ crimson-papered wall on the other side, and an instant afterwards found himself in a room, his first impression of which suggested that he had been shown into a hot-house by mistake.

  It was not only a study in all shades of green, but even more verdant in effect than anything which spring had managed to regale him with on his way from the station. Ronnie had a lively eye for colour. It roved from the moss-green carpet to the curtains of green French flowered brocade, to the sage-green wall-paper, and so, one by one, on to the Victorian ‘easy’ chairs, upholstered in a colour which in cooler circumstances would have suggested the cucumber.

  But this verdure was not all artifice. In a recess near the shut small-paned window on his left stood a wooden erection of shelves, upon which pots of flowers in full bloom were banked in the utmost profusion. With the result that the room – much longer than it was wide, its French windows at the further end being also tight shut, though the afternoon sun swept steadily through them in a motionless cascade – the room smelt like some delicious fruit-pie. Freesia, perhaps.

  Ronnie stood there in his elegant West-end clothes, right in the middle of it, as if he were an egg-cup under the crust of the low-moulded ceiling, while portraits in oils of what he assumed to be deceased Cottons surveyed him from every wall. He was warm after his walk in this precocious spring weather, and though his reception had been a little chilly his present haven was very much the reverse. And as he glanced from portrait to portrait he was conscious of an almost irresistible impulse to giggle, and at the same time more disquietingly aware than ever that his dossier, so to speak, was rather on the nebulous side. Ronnie had read the poems, but not lately. He could appreciate verse with extreme rapidity; but now that the crisis was at hand, actual remembrance of salient specimens, and even of the precise quality of the collection, had suddenly eluded him.

  Perhaps this was in part because the low firm voice he had heard on the staircase had continued to sound on in his ear. He was still vaguely engaged in an attempt to recover his amour propre, of which he had an ample supply, when the door by which he had entered opened, and he found himself, smile for smile, confronting a lady of substantial proportions, whom he judged to be somewhat on the other side of sixty. Her elaborately dressed hair closely fitted her square practical head. There were still traces of auburn in its grey. And out of the wide flattish face beneath, with its small square formidable nose, green-grey eyes motionlessly examined him.

  With a curt but not unfriendly nod of her head this lady referred him to a low flounced armchair, which splayed its short Victorian legs full in the light of the French windows, while she seated herself in a less comfortable one immediately opposite him.

  Ronnie cleared his throat, but paused.

  ‘I understand you wished to see me,’ she said. ‘Am I right in supposing that I owe the pleasure of your visit to an interest in the writings of my son, Mr James Cotton?’

  Ronnie’s neatly proportioned hand wandered to his neck-tie, and he opened his mouth to reply.

  ‘I see,’ Mrs Cotton continued pleasantly – ‘I see I have guessed right. Please tell me then exactly what I can do for you.’

  If only, thought Ronnie, the good lady would look the other way for a moment, he might hope to make a much better show. On the contrary she sat stoically upright in her chair, her shoulders squared above her fortified bosom, her knees close together over her square-toed shoes, her whole frame encased in a primrose-coloured afternoon gown – its only adornments a cameo brooch on a small black bow, a thin gold chain about her neck, and a cluster of sapphires on her wedding-ring finger – while she steadily continued to hold his eyes.

  ‘It is very kind indeed of you,’ began Ronnie. ‘I was afraid that a visit like this from a complete stranger, and without any warning or introduction, could not but seem in the nature of an intrusion. To be quite candid, Mrs Cotton, I was afraid that if I wrote to you first, asking for the privilege of such an opportunity, I might be – well, misunderstood.’

  ‘That,’ was the reply, ‘would all depend on what you actually said in your letter.’

  ‘Yes,’ retorted Ronnie warmly. ‘But then you know what letters are. Besides, as a matter of fact I have come, not on my own behalf – though, in a sense, that very much too, for I am, of course, deeply interested – but on behalf of a friend of mine, a young American, now at the University of Ohio. He is most anxious to —’

  But Mrs Cotton had suavely interrupted him. ‘Almost exactly nine years have gone by, Mr Forbes, since I have heard of anyone being interested enough in my son’s writings to come all the way from London, as I see you have – let alone America – to tell me so. I receive letters now and then, but very few. But although, as I say, nine years have gone by, that particular occasion is still quite fresh in my mind. Your friend may not perhaps have seen an article which appeared about that time in the Modern Literature Review?’

  ‘That was the very reason —’ began Ronnie, but Mrs Cotton had once more intervened, almost as if she were anxious to save him even from the most candid of white lies.

  ‘It is a relief to me that you have seen the – the article. I wonder if you would be very much surprised, Mr Forbes, or whether perhaps you will think me ungracious, if I say that I didn’t entirely approve of it. What are your feelings?’

  The light-coloured eyes under the square brows never swerved by a hair’s-breadth, while Ronnie at last managed to get in his reply.

  ‘You mean, of course,’ he said, ‘Cyril Charlton? Well, quite candidly, Mrs Cotton, and I can say it without the faintest vestige of disloyalty, for I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Mr Charlton, I thought his paper was amateurish and superficial. He is a critic of sorts, of course; and I have no doubt he – he meant well. But, how shall I say it? – the whole thing
was so fumbling and uncertain. He didn’t seem to —’

  ‘In some respects,’ Mrs Cotton interjected, rounding her eye at him as inquiringly as might a robin perched on a sexton’s shovel, ‘in some respects hardly “uncertain”, surely?’

  ‘Oh, you mean in the facts,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘I mean in the facts,’ said Mrs Cotton. ‘I am not suggesting that Mr Charlton was anything but perfectly polite and, if one may say so, plausible, though I use the word in no damaging sense, of course. He knew my son’s poems, I won’t say by heart, but certainly by rote. He sat where you sit now and quoted them to me. Stanza after stanza, as if they had just been dug up out of the grave, as I understand Mr Rossetti’s were. As if I had never read a line of them myself. He was, he assured me, profoundly interested in literature, “profoundly”. He was astonished, seemed genuinely astonished, at the thought that so few lovers of poetry – his own words – had even so much as heard of my son’s books. A fair, rather silly-looking young man; with a cheek like a girl’s. I couldn’t have conceived such fluency possible. He talked and talked. That, of course, was exceedingly nice of him and, so far as it went, reassuring. But, believe me, Mr Forbes, he almost took my breath away. I said to myself, here is a young man whose zeal has outrun his good sense, and therefore, of course, I gave him all the help I could. Such overflowing, such disarming enthusiasm – what harm could there be in that?’

  Ronnie tried hard to prevent his face from showing the smallest change of expression while he hastily masticated this question. In these domestic surroundings, ordinary enough in some respects but startlingly novel in others, it was so difficult to be certain what degree of irony this rather formidable lady intended. And at whose expense? Ten years ago: yet still the very accents of that flaxen ass of a Charlton seemed to be haunting these green recesses! Ronnie became so horribly tongue-tied at last that he felt a blush mounting up into his cheek – as he sat mutely on, seeking inspiration and finding none in the view from the French windows.

  The lawn beyond had been recently mown. Its daffodils stood as motionless in their clusters as if they had been drugged by the sunshine. In a looping flash of blue a tom-tit alighted for an instant on the dangling coconut shell in the verandah, glanced in from its reptilian blunt little head at Ronnie, and with a flutter of wing posted off again. And still he could think of nothing to say.

  Meanwhile, it seemed, Mrs Cotton, by no means expecting an answer, had been steadily engaged in taking him in. Her slightly mannish and astringent voice again broke the silence.

  ‘We have used the word “facts”, Mr Forbes,’ she suavely invited him. ‘Tell me what – in that absurd account of my son’s early years – amused you most?’

  ‘Quite frankly?’ Ronnie, suddenly refreshed, turned quickly about and met her eyes. ‘Well, quite frankly, Mrs Cotton, that he had died in Trinidad. I felt morally certain that that was, well,’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘fiddle-dedee’ …

  The rather frog-like ageing face had not faltered at this intimate reference, and Ronnie at once pressed on.

  ‘Trinidad, first. And next, the fantastic little account of how while he was still only an infant in arms he used to dance in his nurse’s lap at the window during a thunderstorm and clap his hands at the lightning. It wasn’t so much the thing in itself, but simply Charlton’s namby-pamby way of putting it. It simply wasn’t true, and had been cribbed of course from Coleridge. Or was it Walter Scott? Oh, a host of things.’

  What resembled a merry but not very resonant peal of laughter had greeted this burst of scepticism.

  ‘I see,’ cried Mrs Cotton, still laughing, ‘but why did you conclude – Trinidad?’

  Ronnie had begun to breathe a little more freely again.

  ‘Why, don’t you see, things surely, even apart from words, are true – right, I mean – only in their appropriate setting. The thunderstorm at the nursery window (even though he didn’t say lattice or casement), manifestly wasn’t. It wasn’t in the picture, or rather – to put it exactly opposite to that – it was just what a writer like Cyril Charlton would be bound to say, when once he had started on that kind of thing. He led himself on. Just roses, roses all the way; and nothing to show that he knew one variety from another. He meant well, oh yes. But there is simply no bottom to the abyss of mere blague into which such a sentimentalist can sink. Oh, I think you can rely on me in that. As a matter of fact’ – it was a bold move Ronnie felt in the circumstances, but he risked it – ‘it was chiefly because of – of all this that I ventured to inflict myself upon you today. Trinidad! It was to say the least of it so idiotically inartistic. I almost burst out laughing at thought of it on my way from the station. And what adorable country!’

  But Mrs Cotton ignored the enticing compliment.

  ‘And yet, Mr Forbes,’ she was saying, and much more thoughtfully than the truism seemed to warrant, ‘Trinidad or no Trinidad, I suppose we all have to die somewhere. Nor did I realize there was anything “inartistic” in his saying that. To me it was merely untrue. It may have been my mentioning that my husband was at Trinity led him astray; but even at that – well, it was so completely out of the blue. Even, too, if Trinidad had been the – the scene of my son’s death, what then?’

  But for the life of him, Ronnie couldn’t blurt out the question that had at once offered itself. He merely went on listening.

  And for a moment Mrs Cotton watched him doing so. ‘But since,’ she pressed on, ‘you have used that particular word – “inartistic”, I mean – do please enlighten me. What kind of people really enjoy Mr Charlton’s kind of writing? It was more or less new to me at the time; but I have noticed since then that though his performance was a little sillier than most, it was quite in the new fashion. Nowadays one has only to write a book, it seems, to make even one’s kitchen cat an animal worth adorning a newspaper with. And not merely literary men but quite young actresses, apart from soaps and cigarettes and cosmetics and that sort of thing, are invited, almost as a matter of course apparently, by editors of newspapers who must be quite intelligent men, to air their views on marriage, or the soul, or a future life – on that sort of thing. Quite as a matter of course. Do you think it much helps?’

  Ronnie gallantly met her eye. ‘Whom?’ he said.

  ‘Ah, who? I was thinking myself of what is called the “man in the street” and the women under his roof. But then, I suppose, there have always been a few talkative sillies in the world who completely underestimate the common-sense of people in general. Or is it getting old, Mr Forbes, that makes the sillies of one’s latter days seem a little sillier than usual? My own small view is that life may be tragic and sorrowful enough in the long-run – and for the young actresses, too, poor things; they’ve much to lose: but that it isn’t – well, just Trinidad and thunderstorms. There may be things, I mean, better left unsaid.’

  Ronnie stirred in his chair. He hadn’t intended this little turn to the talk. ‘Exactly,’ he agreed. ‘Still you wouldn’t suggest even Cyril Charlton meant to be as bad as all that?’

  ‘Be fair to me, Mr Forbes. Haven’t I already confessed that I thought him an almost entirely harmless-looking young man? “Meant to be”, indeed! I doubt if he was conscious of so much as brushing the down off a butterfly’s wing. Yet, would you believe it, my brother, Major Winslow, at that time in India, was inclined, though not for my son’s sake only, to take more drastic steps. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded him not to consult his lawyer.’

  Yet again a curiously muffled and not quite unjangled peal of little bells sounded between the walls. Mrs Cotton had laughed. And at sound of it a remote, fiery, defiant gleam had flamed up and vanished in Ronnie’s brown eye.

  ‘If I may venture to say so,’ he said stoutly, ‘I think that course would have been as ill-advised as it would have been ineffective.’

  Mrs Cotton graciously beamed at him. ‘I am delighted to hear you say so,’ she assured him. ‘Those were, I believe, almost the precise wor
ds I used in my reply to Major Winslow. Idle nonsense of that sort, however shallow and however false, is not libellous. And – whether or not after actual consultation with his lawyer, I cannot say – he came round in the end to our way of looking at it. Poor Mr Charlton! I can see him in the witness-box! But I referred to Major Winslow merely as an example of what I suppose would be called the Philistine view of Mr Charlton’s form of entertainment. My brother’s and mine. What is more, I am entrusting these little confidences to your ear alone, simply because even if we neither of us have any particular friendliness for this young man, we don’t bear him any ill-will. So far as I am concerned, he can be left to stew in his own juice.’ Mrs Cotton nearly doubled her substantial shape in two as she leaned forward in her chair to insist on this vulgarism.

  ‘You see,’ she hurried on, ‘I am taking it for granted that you are really interested in my son’s work, and would be far more severe on some of Mr Charlton’s shortcomings – the artistic ones, for instance – even than I should be myself: his own mother, I mean. But tell me, has this young American friend of whom you speak any intention of publishing his thesis? If so, I hope I may be allowed to see it. Or is it to be a little private venture undertaken solely with the intention of keeping to the poems and of putting Mr Charlton right?’

  For a moment or two Ronnie pondered both these questions. They seemed to be equally crucial and dangerous. Ponder, alas! when he could hardly hear himself think, so loud were his inward execrations of the young friend in question. Solely with the intention of putting that silly, precious, sentimental ass of a C.C. right! – he could picture the young post-graduate’s exultant grin at such an opportunity, even to the glinting gold of his exquisite ‘dentures’. He gave a sharp impatient tug at his hardly less exquisite Bond Street trousering, and briskly crossed his legs.