Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  It might be a lump of amber, ma’am,

  It might be a stick of coral;

  But what we have to remember, ma’am,

  Is to keep our eye on the moral.

  Ah, my dear Rosie, I have sat on that tower at noonday when the clocks were striking the hour, and in the height – though I prefer to say heighth – of the summer, and I have listened to the nightingales in the midst of the box-wood, though of course in the best families they come at night, and we mustn’t get poetical. And bless my soul – now that your own smudged tears are dry upon your cheeks – I could weep about a bucketful at thought of it – and partly at what didn’t fit, you know – if only it were not improper to do so in so public a resort as this.’

  Nella watched Miss Miller closely, as if in hope of seeing at least one large tear course slowly down her cheek. It would probably keep very close to that long long nose. But far from weeping, Miss Miller was smiling with greater intensity than ever as she sat with that nose turned sidelong towards her little visitor in the shade of the chestnut tree.

  ‘And now,’ she said, ‘instead, my dear Susie, of giving it to you, which might be troublesome, I will return my acorn to my bag. I shall plant it, as a matter of fact, in a pot, and after two or three leaves have appeared it will die. That, my child, is how things go. And come.’ Up went her thin eyebrows, ‘And go again. So why, why, make too much fuss about it?’

  At the word ‘come’, Miss Miller’s singularly attentive eye, which had ever and anon roved the green expanse beyond her canopying chestnut tree, had alighted on an enemy, and one rapidly approaching them.

  ‘A fuss? Certainly not,’ she added emphatically. ‘We are simply not going to lower ourselves. And never, never, I say, because our horrid nurse, as I see, in her long grey odious coat and neat little bonnet is stamping after us at this moment like a buffalo over the savannas of the West. We are not going to make a fuss; oh, no! And it isn’t even mere pride that stops us. What? Eh?’

  Nella had turned her small head with extreme rapidity over her shoulder.

  ‘I must say good-bye now,’ she said, a little drily and sedately, turning once more to her friend. ‘My nurse wants me. I suppose, you know, it must be nearly time for lunch. Good morning.’

  ‘Lunch,’ cried Miss Miller merrily. ‘Why, certainly. I seldom think of it, you know, until I find that most of it isn’t exactly there. And what’s more, it’s a long lane, Miss Sheepshanks, that has no turning, which is not to mention in any particular respect merely red lanes.’

  When Nella had reached the big stone floriated vase that stood beside the bridge over the water – and she hadn’t been listening very closely to the heated remarks which her nurse had been ejaculating from time to time during their walk – she turned her head and looked behind her; but the scroll-shaped seat under the chestnut tree was now vacant, and there was no sign at all of its late occupant.

  But then, at this moment, any one of the ‘prairie’ trees might easily have hidden that long, spare, sharp-boned figure, including even its nose. And so intent was her small mind still upon her talk with this peculiar stranger, that when her nurse, snatching at her arm as if she were a tottering clockwork dummy which she intended to fling clean across the ornamental pond, said, ‘Now, mind your step, you little imp! Just you wait till I get you home, my fine lady. Ooh, but you’ll he hearing of this! You – mark – ME!’ – not the faintest change of expression showed on the child’s face. It was almost as if one could learn to be a ‘philo – so – sophoser’ after one lesson, and that in the open, and without any fee.

  * As printed in BS (1942). First published in The Story-teller, August 1930.

  The House*

  Having ascended the three semi-circular damp-darkened steps into his porch, Mr Asprey slipped his latch-key into its lock with a peculiar disrelish. He was utterly tired, exhausted – finished. Yet nothing, it seemed, could persuade his fevered mind to desist from its futile activities, although its one need was to be at rest …

  In a few brief hours he would be compelled to surrender this very key, since he would be leaving the house he knew so well: finally, if not ‘for good’. Everything had been made ready for his departure. His two maidservants, the ample Emily and the angular Ada, having muffled the furniture with their sepulchral dust-sheets, and left their charge neat and seemly had departed but a few hours before, bound for their new situations. How odd a destiny!

  Mr Asprey, being much older than either of them, had, he assumed, deeper roots. At daybreak it would be his turn, and as yet he was by no means certain of any particular ‘place’. Indeed of recent years he had given little thought to this eventuality. He had merely stayed on.

  And now his eviction was no longer a question of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Why indeed should he ‘wait’ until then? And yet, taken for all in all, this house of his had proved a pleasant one; peculiar here and there in ‘style’ perhaps, yet not wildly eccentric; commodious yet compact, a heritage adjusted to his private purposes, fairly central and yet secluded. He had of course seen and envied residences with amenities more charming – a poor excuse for having neglected his own! But renovation had proved impracticable, and repairs far from satisfactory. In what sense and in what degree it actually belonged to him remained one of its many mysteries. Taxes fell due and he had been compelled to meet them. But of rent – hardly a peppercorn; of definite agreement, contract, in early life so frequently referred to by his spiritual pastors and masters – not a trace. If positive landlord there were (himself perhaps the architect) Mr Asprey of late years had seldom ‘called on’ him, even in a merely metaphorical sense. And now – well, the one thing certain was that he had been given notice to quit.

  Midnight had struck; the stars of the morning, though faintly hazed with a drift of dove-like cloud, were already traversing the heavens. In a little while it would be winter dawn. He had always hated change, and resented decay. Nevertheless destiny was spudding at his tap root.

  The door ajar, and finger still on key, he turned reluctantly to look back. He had been wandering for hours alone in the darkness, and now he gazed forsakenly and forlornly at the gentle familiar prospect – the wooded down ward slope, the faint line of low hills towards the south in the thin illumination of the night, and away, beyond the far horizon line, a soundless sea. The whole world was all but deathly still; and what weak fickle wind there was had lately changed its direction. The dark was turning colder.

  And still – almost as if he were dubious whether he were being deceived by dream or wide awake – Mr Asprey continued to ponder. However sharply he mistrusted the term, he realized that he had been a little psychic of late: that, prey of foreboding, he had been living much too closely secluded (even for him) in his own mind. His staid old family doctor, notoriously incompetent at any such extremity as this, had but yesterday morning given him up. A prying probing alienist, more skilful in analyzing human puddingstone than quartz, might even have declared him a trifle ‘mental’. The notion amused Mr Asprey. Convinced of his own security, and aware that in these hazy matters silence is best, he had always enjoyed being a trifle mental. Partly perhaps for this reason he had no acute hankering to re-enter his house. He hated all good-byes. They entailed not only leaving but being left. Still, only the rankest discourtesy would admit of his posting off from so habitual and, despite its numerous defects and restrictions, so genial a residence with none; not even a grieved adieu, an ironic au revoir. And there was so much to say good-bye to! Houses, as the years collect, become densely populated. This is especially apparent, Mr Asprey meditated, when they are about to be left vacant; and memories vividly revived may prove stubborn to exorcise.

  They resemble a garden once beloved if seldom weeded, its wilder parts, its transitory solitudes, nearest to the heart and to the imagination. Tears cannot now refresh it, or sighs stir its seeded grasses, and the pitcher is broken at the well. This was the sad and enfeebling fact – Mr Asprey was being victimized by hi
s past. What folly! Since the future would see to his own interment, why not let that remain buried? ‘Is thy servant a dog?’ Of recent months, moreover – though often in a perfunctory fashion – it had been Mr Asprey’s odd custom to ‘go over’ his house before retiring for the night. He had become almost timidly apprehensive of fire, indeed of any ‘act of God’; and he had acquired a belated passion for being tidy. Few hours for this were now left to him. He must make the most of them.

  First, then, he would descend into the kitchen if merely to make sure that his breakfast would be ready for him at about half-past seven. Then he would go on his rounds, even more attentively and systematically than he usually did: Who goes there? Qui vive? How fortunate that this was so clearly not an occasion for electric light; since it is not only the most execrable of illuminants to be ‘mental’ by and in, but, owing to pure prejudice, Mr Asprey had refrained from having it installed in his ancestral home. He might be in the nature of an introvert, but he was not a spy on himself. He had always enjoyed using his eyes, but seldom with the intention of showing anything or anybody up. He abhorred ‘high lights’.

  He withdrew the key, groped his way into the house, lit the candle which he had left ready in its old dish-shaped brass holder on a table, and shut the door. For a few moments he stood listening to the tardy and stentorian Now-then: Now-then of his grandfather’s clock, then made his way to the back parts of the house and down the worn stone steps into the kitchen quarters. What mice were abroad at once scampered away with alacrity to warn their housemates that he was approaching: a few sluggish cockroaches were departing at leisure with the same tidings. Mr Asprey scanned them an instant to make sure that they were real – aware at the same moment of the surmise that his next abode might be frequented by another species of vermin – then glanced about him. Everything was prepared. Everything was in order. That, of course, was Emily’s doing.

  Half the long speckless deal table was covered with a charming chequered tablecloth; the mound under the tea-cloth was without doubt a loaf of bread; the milk was creaming; and there the toast-rack, and the butter in its almost lordly dish. A conical coffee-pot dominated the neighbouring stove, for in spite of silly antiquated aversions, Mr Asprey had been unable to evade gas. And two plump new-laid eggs stood side by side in their cups upon a plate. From their calm featureless faces they openly surveyed Mr Asprey, and he them. Human existence, they seemed to be preaching, resembles an egg. In spite of a myriad apparent replicas it is unique, self-contained. Break the shell, you cannot repair it again. Some eggs are good, others are horrid. The stale are an affliction to God and man. And not every specimen need necessarily harbour a chick. And as he stood thus quietly looking, he was also listening. It was as though the vacant house over his head were an echoing shell, and he its hermit crab.

  Otherwise there was no reason to linger here; none whatever. Well, he would ascend to the attics and, room by room, proceed slowly down again. The actual order mattered little, except that it is perhaps the doors of a house that should be examined last. They are the usual way out, and in.

  Stair by stair went up poor weary Mr Asprey; but, come to the attics, made no attempt to enumerate, or to individualize the many Emilys and Adas who had occupied them each in turn. He had always prided himself on being by intention at least a righteous master. He had never deliberately thought of Emilys or Adas as being of else than flesh and blood. He knew we are all human.

  Nonetheless he could clearly recall one or two of whose felicity when they were under his roof he now felt a little uncertain. And in retrospect even a discourtesy may seem a crime. Nor, he noticed, had he hitherto been aware either that his last Emily had had no mat on her old oilcloth, or that her ewer was chipped; that a castor was wanting to Ada’s bed and that there was no fire-grate in her room. Pampering, oh no! But he might have inquired, Are you quite happy here? And if he could stay on a little, he would see that their successors … Alone on this uppermost landing close under the roof – a trickle of water ding-donging there like funeral bells in the old lead cistern bespeaking a leaky tap below – he could see into either attic just as he pleased. Each in turn, he solemnly bowed to them – it was the most he could manage – and went on.

  As fleeting a look into the lumber room also sufficed. It would never do to botanize long there! But at the closed door of the room at the foot of the top staircase he paused indeed. It had been of old his nursery; and he was aware how easy it is to be otiose concerning one’s early years. One is so seldom in retrospect a Child of the World. He opened the door and looked in – high fender, coloured pictures in their maple frames, rocking-horse, box of bricks. What dreadful emblems objects may become! And although, with that inward eye of his, which had recently been so active, he saw for a vivid instant his old nurse sitting beside the empty grate – slippered feet, stooping head, and clicking needles all complete – she immediately vanished. And instead, he was looking at a small boy, who was now exactly as far away in time as she was; though much further away in most things else.

  He was sitting in a bare empty-looking room at a desk, stained with ink, and scarred with letters cut in the wood; and out of his blue eyes and plain face, pen between fingers, he was gazing through the window and over the low brick wall beyond it. It was a spring day out there in the meadows, and the towering clouds with their scarves of rain had but just drifted from over the face of the sun. So that at this moment the whole scene was lit – bright grass, green-beaded trees, tumbling stream – with a miraculously radiant panorama of delicate light. Mr Asprey didn’t look at things like that now, or rather no April morning ever enravished him like that now. His psychic skull must have contracted. It was as if all things were lovely if only you could see them – and in the proper light.

  Yet in the very midst of this ecstatic reverie of looking, this inky boy – he realized – knew how intensely unhappy he was. He was homesick; he was a muff; he was being kept in; and he deserved to be. Nonetheless, at sight of the child, Mr Asprey had become aware of a peculiar compassion. Unhappy the creature might be, but there was no sign that he knew that he himself – whether unhappy or not – would soon be gone for ever. Also, Mr Asprey was even more perfectly confident that in that young distant mind there was not a vestige of regret that when its owner grew up to be a man he would remain childless. How odd then that at the precise moment when he was abandoning his house for good, he should suddenly be convicting himself of the charge of deliberate heirlessness! To be leaving positively no one behind him who might some day be doing as he was doing now – well, he did not at all enjoy the look of the black cap that topped the bewigged, long, grey, thin-nosed judicial countenance already engaged in trying his case. Black cap apart, even the severest judge upon the bench, glancing up at his prisoner, may nod with a cold, ‘Be calm, take your time; I am listening. One word even yet might put you right.’

  This in mind, Mr Asprey promptly took his little notebook out of his pocket – battered and dingy after more than eleven months’ wear – and jotted down: ‘Secure as soon as may be a natural, pleasant young woman, quiet, non-temperamental, easy, happy-looking, and in need of a good home – to ensure a son and heir. Leave her practically everything. This appears to be rather urgent.’ It appeared to be so urgent that Mr Asprey added his initials: A.A.A. Even in the act of writing he noticed, too, but did not stay to consider it, that a quite definite young woman for this purpose had emerged out of the groves of memory, was now in his mind’s eye. But since he could not have been more than eight years old when she stole his heart away, not even a line in the Agony Column of The Times, that had so little to do with time absolute, would now be likely to have any effect. It was a pity. He was afraid it was now too late to be doing even ‘his best’.

  He closed the door, listened again a moment – what habits habits become! – meditating as he did so on the deep lovely blue of his candle flame, and passed on down the shabbily carpeted corridor to the next nearest bedroom. This was his father’
s and his mother’s room or rather it had been theirs many years ago. Their son in the meantime, either in act or thought, had little visited it. It remained as they themselves had left it – the four-poster bed, the ponderous wardrobe, the grey marble-slabbed mahogany washstand, the Landseer engravings. Nor can you be said to remember – certainly not to remember a mother – if the happy event is dependent on some casual reminder.

  The twin pair of old Venetian blinds now hung lowered to their very last slack slats. The old red damask curtains were undrawn. And there stood Mr Asprey once more, peering in over his candle flame. And such was the unusual state of his mind that when he came to again he could not have said how long he had remained in this abstracted posture. His absent-mindedness however was chiefly due to the fact that his inward gaze meanwhile had been intent on a large visionary granite sarcophagus topped with an eighteenth-century urn and canopied over by the vast, fringed, heavily laden boughs of a prodigious cedar tree, its edges scintillating like a Maharaja with bead-like rows of full-sized raindrops.

  It was engrossing to observe how apart from this transient jewellery the beam of his candle enlivened the delicate greys and browns and blacks of the corrosive lichens and the bright green of the moss on this vast emblem. The moss indeed was almost as vividly verdant as the meadows had been. But did moss grow on granite? Still stranger was it, in Mr Asprey’s experience, that he should be able to spell out the words that were graven on the stone. He would have supposed them to be long since indecipherable. Amazed at the incredibly gross egotism of the inscription, he read: HERE LIES MY F … In plain honest lettering, too; nothing Gothic. For though he was unable to peer round to make sure, there was not a doubt in the world that ATHER followed immediately after the F. Actuality may be grossly abrupt and inartistic enough, but no human stonecutter, surely, had ever so clumsily divided the word father as that! It was merely yet another jape of the strange jinnee of the dream world – never busier, Mr Asprey had frequently observed, than when one is wide awake.