Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  However that might be, it was abysmally damp here and atrociously dark. As for the brooding cedar that roofed the tomb, to judge by these gigantic water-crystalled twigs, it could hardly be less than a mile high. It all comes of neglect, thought Mr Asprey. But whose? How much was all this his father’s cumulative dark, how much his own? And why this dateless urn, when filial forgetfulness had been concerned solely with a Victorian angel in Portland stone? Mr Asprey gave it up. Nor could he be certain whether a father who leaves his son so early an orphan, or that son grown old is the more to blame for any sad and protracted oblivion and neglect. Both surely had been indolent – his departed father in his son’s dreams; and he himself in the waking day. Not that this was an hour for re-criminations; he must merely strive to be fair. He had too the comfort of realizing that if his mother was lying side by side with that father within these dense cold lost stone walls, she seemed to be perfectly calm and happy. She hadn’t even so much as turned to smile at him. And though this might be a consolation as dubious as it was sentimental, it was at least of her own sharing. Besides, like Mr Asprey himself, she had always loved moss – ‘Look, Tony, the very instant rain comes! … It’s just like a parrot!’

  This time a little hesitantly then, out came his battered pocket-book again: ‘Have f’s grave attended to,’ he scrawled in it. ‘? remove angel; ? replace it with some other kind???’

  He paused in a fleeting attempt to petrify even in symbolic image one of Donne’s angels, then added as an afterthought: ‘If possible, go myself’. He trusted nonetheless that the expedition would not entail any attempt to fell that antediluvian cedar. He saw himself looking up at it, axe in hand, and the vast and vacant heavens beyond it.

  Mr Asprey closed his parents’ bedroom door after him as reverently as he hoped that the less fickle-minded son and heir whom he had vowed some day to be responsible for would finally close his bedroom door after him. At grave risk of extinguishing his candle, he snuffed its wick between finger and thumb, and continued on his way down the corridor, thus creating the most fantastic shadows in leering and quixotic motion, but at the same time dispersing its narrow darkness as he went. His next two memoranda, or agenda, both of them concerned with a play-room that for many years – seemingly now how unjustly few! – had been used for his mature private work, were of so personal and secret a kind that he laboriously scribbled them into his book in an amateurish shorthand which he had invented in his youth. One of these, briefly translated, ran: ‘Tell Self it didn’t so much matter.’ The other was decisively to the opposite effect.

  His third and fourth memoranda, in longhand, related to a seldom-used guest-room. Even in the light of one brief candle, this was a room of a most charming pink and white; and particularly since its old-fashioned chintz curtains were at this moment concealing the view from the shuttered windows beyond them – of a dark, leafless, and fruitless orchard behind the house, and an empty dog-kennel. Once within this small sanctuary, and deeply relieved at having passed in furtive celerity his own shut bedroom door without personal and perilous interruption, Mr Asprey might as well have ventured ‘just as he was’ into some evening Reception, so multitudinous was the silent company that had at once phantom-wise thronged about him. With sharp febrile nose and dark begloomed eyes, his long lank fingers shielding his candle flame, Mr Asprey paused until they had, so to speak, become accustomed to his intrusion among them, had thereupon mournfully thinned away, and had left him to himself. After all one can’t possibly make things right with more than a mere fraction of one’s past! No sinner, surely; hardly even a saint?

  At length alone again, Mr Asprey allowed his gaze to rest a little wistfully on a portrait in water-colour on the wall. The young woman depicted in it must have sat looking sideways at the artist. Thus the longer Mr Asprey gazed at her, the clearer it became that in a peculiarly open and yet stealthy fashion she was sharing his scrutiny. Twenty years at least now severed him and her; and not a single faded petal or pinch of incense had Mr Asprey recently offered at her shrine. It may, or may not, be discreet when you have fallen in love to ‘tell’. That may depend on the degree of the infatuation, the attitude of the object, the propriety of the passion, and even the state of your health. The only alternative is to allow the toxin, the crisis, to become bygones as quietly and rapidly as de-‘crystallization’ permits. Mr Asprey could not now choose between them. He had been more or less in love more than once, and having ‘told’ once or twice, had told no more. And do hearts warmed up become as indigestible as he had always feared?

  This silent, reticent, searching creature here, with the side-long eyes and early Edwardian sleeves, was herself one of the told-no-mores. But as he continued to meet her motionless eyes, and himself at last ventured to smile faintly, surely she had smiled faintly back? He tried again; there was no doubt of it. How inadequate a word may ‘reassurance’ be! There could of course be only one solution to so arresting an enigma; and this, yet again, a tragically sentimental one. She must whatever then her state of being, have loved him ‘all the time’; that is, always; and for ever. In other words, long before they had ever met; to meet no more. That is, until this very moment!

  Mr Asprey had turned slightly giddy. He was being ‘mental’ with a vengeance. Still, since he would have no further opportunities for self-adjustment in his earthly home, he was now striving to be strictly honourable. So he forthwith jotted into his diary: ‘Explain somehow to Frances M. why I had to arrange about the pleasant-looking young woman – good-tempered, but not temperamental – because of an heir.’ This entry much amused its writer. He looked up, and without question Frances M.’s painted smile revealed an amusement at least equal to his own.

  Thus complacent, he was about to continue on his valedictory pilgrimage when his glance, having vaguely wandered over the room, rested on a dark old wooden box in a shadow-infested corner on the other side of the flounced dressing-table. He could hardly believe anything so wooden could be so eloquent. It was as if Conscience had been actually searching for evidence against him – and evidence how stale! Yet there was no need – and in any case he had no wish to pass within range of the looking-glass on the table – there was no need to open the box. At sight of it Mr Asprey had recalled instantly what it secreted; namely, the manuscript of a novel written by a friend. He had left it, long, long ago in Mr Asprey’s keeping in the hope of friendly criticism and appreciation; and three weeks afterwards he had been drowned at sea. Mr Asprey’s heart fell cold within him at remembering that he had let a full fortnight pass without even a glance at its first page; that he had, in fact, waited for his friend to be drowned before unsealing his MS. He had then, with increasing distaste and reluctance, read on to a breakfast ‘scene’ between three of the characters in the story one dismal morning in a dastardly December.

  It described to perfection a virulent quarrel in which the unhappy human beings concerned had said everything they thought, or thought they thought, of human life and of one another. And in the course of this dispute a pot of liquid marmalade had been upset over an iniquitous love letter and the French tablecloth. Poe’s raven’s Nevermore was a cry of lyrical rapture by comparison with that marmalade. The whole chapter was one of the most vivid and caustic fragments of realism, or actualism, in fiction that Mr Asprey had ever had the misfortune to share. And having heard of its author’s tragic end, he had put the MS away in this box, had entombed it there, with a relief beyond words. He had always fondly suspected that even naturalistic books may deeply affect their readers, and that, ‘in parts’, life is so real that it is wiser not to be too earnest about it. An overdose of honey, yes: but liquid marmalade?

  Indeed, he himself, having finished this eighth chapter, had decided to read no more. And that no doubt had been grossly unfair. He acknowledged it; while his drowned fair-haired friend amid gently wavering sea-flowers out of his submarine ooze now quietly continued to watch him from beneath half-shut lids – an indefensible device, since his body had be
en recovered and interred inland! However that might be, his somnolent eyes were fixed on Mr Asprey’s, and Mr Asprey continued serenely to meet them; with more serenity, indeed, than he had confronted Frances M. in the water-colour – all reservations over. He agreed, oh, yes! that there was money in the MS; and, possibly, even a few years’ fame. He agreed that his friend’s widow would have enjoyed the money – though not perhaps the fame, since she had never inquired after her husband’s masterpiece. Nonetheless Conscience was astray this time, and he mustn’t give in. With a little nervous nod at the mute drowned face, he put his candle down on the bed and opened his notebook again: ‘At very first opportunity burn O.P.’s novel. And better not tell Mrs P. (or the younger P.’s – not, at least, without a look at them first), when it is done; i.e. in this case help “the dead past”.’

  Thus poor Mr Asprey proceeded on his way, tidying things up, placating, as far as he was capable, his jinnee, his familiar – to the tune of at least ten small pages of illegible notes; until at length, the winter night very much older, he returned into the kitchen again. Poor gentleman, there was no need to remind himself that the small hours are an inept opportunity for the making of inventories, and that a house which one is about to leave for ever is not their happiest place. It entails far too hasty an elaboration; and sentimentalists and romanticists may be fully as conscientious as cynics. Was it not true that, whichever Dean Swift may have been, he bequeathed to a friend in his will his third best hat?

  Mr Asprey glanced at his watch. Gracious heaven, it was a quarter-past seven. Adieux may exhaust a large quantity of time. There was to be no more sleep for him now. In less than an hour the conveyance – to use as conciliatory a word for it as possible – would be calling for him, to take him away. Winter daybreak, indeed, was already thievishly groping on the glass behind the dark blue canvas blind and the rusted bars of the kitchen window. He shivered. But since he had attempted to lay so many ghosts on his rounds it was no wonder that this semi-subterranean chamber struck now so cold and so still. Foolishly, perhaps, he began listening again. This would never do. Besides, Mr Asprey was tired of listening. He left his guttering stub of candle on the table, put his notebook down on the stove, and lit the gas under his antiquated tin coffee-pot. None of your new-fangled glass contrivances for Emily!

  He turned about and glanced at his breakfast things. The shrouded loaf was on the table as he had left it: but the eggs were now mere eggs. They had lost all their looks. And where was his table-napkin? He recollected that even overnight he had noticed that something was missing, and nothing, of course, could be allowed to be missing on such an occasion as this; certainly not a napkin. As do the dinner-jacketed in the remotest oases of the Empire, Mr Asprey felt he must keep up appearances. But where was the missing napkin? Upstairs in the sideboard, probably. Shunning what might be a fruitless journey, he hauled open one of the drawers in the kitchen dresser, just in case. And he did this so violently that it fell on to the floor at his feet, to be immediately followed by a small dark object that had apparently been wedged in and had long lain concealed behind it. And lo and behold, as he stooped to examine this nondescript object, with a most peculiar suggestion of the sea having yet again given up its dead, he recognized it.

  It was a pocket-wallet, his: a wallet that had mysteriously vanished at least nine years ago. On the other hand it was a pocket-wallet that had vanished not quite so mysteriously as not to result in the dismissal with the usual month’s notice of the reigning Emily-and-Ada dynasty at that time. It is impossible to discriminate in these matters. Under a common cloud they were, under a common cloud they went. And here, except that in this fuscous candle-gleam he couldn’t tell at a glance whether the wallet now contained the treasure it had once contained – here was ample proof that he had been at least, say, half justified. Whether half or even wholly, however, should he have left the question where left it had been? He had never inquired into the fate of the two females concerned; he had merely left them to their future. To do so now would be a signally belated procedure, even if a practicable one. Well, then, that being so, should he or should he not examine the wallet? To be hesitating again – pestilent habit – at such a moment as this!

  Elderly Mr Asprey stood up, a little giddy after that few moments’ concentration at such an angle; and there, standing immediately opposite to him, rounded, squat, in a large apron, with wisps of faded straw-coloured hair and a tallowish face, was none other than the very Emily in question. By no means a shy or demurring or furtive or embarrassed Emily either; she stood there looking at him, quietly, almost pensively, more than resignedly – as if perhaps she were waiting for morning orders. And what set her apart from all the other old friends he had been negotiating with up above was the fact – and it sharply interested him – that her apparition obstructed the view of what was immediately behind it. To this degree – and to this degree alone, no doubt – she was substantial; whereas what the mere jinnee of fevered memory produces for one’s comfort or otherwise can very seldom be said to be that. And though Mr Asprey had never succumbed to Materialism, this was a soothing discovery. He might need Emily later. Besides if she was not wholly ideal, pure fantasy, mere mind-stuff of the past, was there not less likelihood of sentimentality in this encounter? However that might be, here was this dumpy, anxious, tallow-faced Mrs Grosvenor, quite as large as life, though obviously many years dead, looking up and back at him as if she had come to bid him a discreet god-speed, and was meanwhile asking for … what?

  Mr Asprey hesitated no longer. He stooped again, picked up the wallet, and there and then, without the least investigatory squeeze between finger and thumb, handed it over to the poor old soul. But why ‘poor’? It is little short of idiotic to call the perfectly competent, whatever their ‘state in life’ may be, poor. ‘And would you tell Ada?’ Mr Asprey smilingly added.

  The one queer thing in this little interchange, was that as the wallet passed from Mr Asprey’s outstretched hand into Mrs Grosvenor’s – and she herself had hardly stretched out hers at all, not so much even as if she were suggesting a small gratuity or remembrance – it had ceased to be real. Unlike the marmalade in the MS, it had ceased even to be realistic. Or rather it had become Mrs Grosvenor’s real. And she had accepted it with so natural and benign a grace that it suggested nothing short of, ‘Well, sir, I must say one good turn deserves another.’ With which, almost as if she were on her way at once to keep the implied promise, her background reappeared. Mrs Grosvenor was gone.

  She had vanished so abruptly and irretrievably that a disastrous sense of dejection and loss and discomfort – cold, kitchen solitude, hushed mice, day-secreted cockroaches – had descended again like a veil of the dingiest crape upon Mr Asprey’s mind. Almost any interruption would be better than that.

  And at once, and as if to order, an interruption came; and with it an overpowering, almost stifling, aroma of coffee. He turned about, but turned too late. Fountaining over in a miracle of iridescent bubbles stood his beautiful burnished coffee-pot, foaming like Etna with her billowing lava, its lid dancing – more fatefully than any receptacle James Watt had ever idly spied upon – above its froth. This, of course, in itself was a minor tragedy that could easily be remedied. The homely aroma was deliciously refreshing. But no expert of any museum of any country in the wide world would be able to decipher for him the sodden script which Mr Asprey now gingerly attempted to rescue from this overwhelming cascade. It was a disaster. He had taken the utmost pains he could with his corrigenda, at what had seemed so brief a notice. There was no time now to begin again; and even if there were, any revised list, even if it were twice as long as the original, would prove, he knew, to be completely different. Indeed while, sad-eyed and breathless, having turned off the gas tap, Mr Asprey continued to survey these sordid relics, he fancied he heard the sound of wheels. Wheels! Now! Surely, surely not!

  Tragi-comedy by all means; but was there the least need to be ironical? His will hovered in an agony
of hesitation; his eye discovered no help anywhere. There is no peace for the wicked. He hastened out of the kitchen as fast as – being so old and weary – he could hasten, without positively breaking into an undignified canter in his own house. And – oh, for a respite! Oh that his ears had misled him and there were even but one mere moment left! The instant he reached his front door he flung it open; and there and then, in astonishment, but not in dismay, Mr Asprey all but fell down dead.

  Another order of jinnee than his had also been busy in the small hours. The December sun was rising in the east. Out of the east came he. And above that sun, a strange celestiality had usurped the wide horizon: low luminous clouds, in tiers of dappling colour against the crystalline nought of space. Line upon line they lay, in horizontal glory, waiting. Where had Mr Asprey seen before this description of beauty, marvellous and cold? So much for the far. And the near? From the tiniest of the leaves of the bushes at his elbow, from every two-edged blade of grass on the powdery path, to the remotest wood between his house and the calm sea, this private world of his was edged, skinned, furred with hoar-frost – hoar-frost of such a splendour that it seemed to be all the colours in earth and heaven, and eye and mind, blazing in a rapture of delight. Alas, Mr Asprey! – how vulgar now and mean seemed all his efforts. He had ceased to breathe. It was as though his mortal being had become a mere organ of vision: ‘Orgy in Silver by Jinnium Naturae’ – a masterpiece! His very soul had begun pondering on the catalogue his nimble mind had presented him with. It must be merely Nature’s; the blind enchantress’s – it always had been. How else?