Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  She knew too that for weeks past she had consistently ignored what had rapidly become a sort of idiotic and even frightening obsession. Age cannot but live a good deal in the past, and especially perhaps in the company of a long-gone childhood. She didn’t mind, in the least, complete hours stolen from her in tender remembrances of that kind; so far-away and enduring too. But couldn’t he, shouldn’t he have seen that this portrait – with its never-ceasing share of a life beyond the grave – was all wrong? And for all three of them?

  It was mean, odious, idiotic, and yes – why deny it – an almost insane speculation, to let anything like that fester and corrupt in her mind. And yet in her present nerve-racked unfamiliar condition she could no more rid herself of this mental misery than one can immediately cure any bodily ill. She had tried – bitterly, intensely – and had failed. Day by day to continue to enter this room, whether vacant or with her husband there, quietly reading or writing in his chair, and that smiling painted phantom on the wall continually surveying the scene which she had been compelled to abandon had become an impossible burden. Merely to discover somehow, without any direct question – impossible thought! – without any sinuous probings even, exactly how she stood, and how she stood! This at last had seemed to have become a sheer necessity. She couldn’t bear the suspense. If – in her present condition it could not be satisfied – well, how live on? Like this?

  Once a busy spectre begins to frequent the mind, you never – she had discovered this long ago – you never know even yourself what devils it may not at length invite in.

  Her husband’s thinning face, those tranquil grey-blue eyes, that had yet recently shown so many marks of weariness, what were they concealing? What could they be concealing – except thoughts, remembrances, and perhaps even gnawing regrets which she could not possibly share? How was it possible to bring him to realize what was corroding away in her every vestige of her peace of mind? It was as if she had discovered a viper curled up in her work-basket. The answer to that question had stolen upon her only a day or two before.

  Awakened suddenly and silently in the small hours as if a cold lean hand had gently shaken her by the shoulder, the vile device seemed to have sprung up in her sleeping mind like Jonah’s gourd. This bold and too-large portrait had scarcely ever been even so much as referred to between them. Why should it have been? It portrayed, not the Harriet who six years ago had died and left him, but the Harriet of at least twenty years before that. Very fair, yet not beautiful, at least not beautiful to most unheeding eyes. A young face, and yet a face full of the past, a face out of some old extravagant romantic story, a face unaware of what just one glimpse of it might bestow, a face which if it were once beloved – no matter what might happen – could not be ever really unbeloved: not deep within; and never forgotten. Forgotten! Why at this moment, as if in the mere fact that it was refusing to look at her, it was an irresistible, an unendurable reminder of her own miserable trick.

  Hating herself, as might a reptile engaged in devouring its own tail, she had stolen down from her bedroom in the small hours and had lit one of the candles here, on her husband’s writing table. Not even the angel Gabriel could have persuaded him to burn electric light. Perhaps she had been not quite awake. And certainly a nightmare mind can manage things the day mind would retch at. However that might be, with an infinite disgust, she had at last mounted a chair and, with the utmost caution and skill, first by igniting, then by extinguishing the tiny flame, burned through about two-thirds of the thickness of the cord behind the picture by which it was suspended from the wall. Even the rotation of the earth may affect at last a hanging picture. So may a mere draught, the jar of traffic, passing footsteps and the slow secret incessant tug of the force of gravitation. Its fate might then prove suspended by a thread. Its downfall could be only a question of days. And then, surely, surely, he would be bound to betray himself. She would at last know.

  It was perhaps in part her passionate nature that had made her so superstitious. Was he? Strangest of facts, she couldn’t really tell. Not for certain. With a faintly whimsical smile, he would do a dare and walk in bravado under a ladder – paint-pot or no paint-pot. He preferred other numbers to 13. At sight of a magpie and solely on his own account he would turn his head, spit, laugh and apologize. Once when she herself, after he had stolen behind her and put his hand over her eyes, had struggled free and had seen, through glass, the exquisite gold thread of the crescent moon tilted very low (the old moon in the new moon’s arms) – when his very aim had been to prevent this – he had seemed really shaken.

  He had seized her hands, had kissed her cheek and mouth almost frenziedly, saying, ‘There, it must be all right now, mustn’t it? God forbid!’

  Well, surely if he was as superstitious even as that, she couldn’t but surprise some exclamation, some instinctive disclosure, some dreadful change of face when in its own moment the portrait should crash to the ground! And now, she herself never for an instant ceased to be awaiting that crash. If she had not come to hate and detest the face it portrayed perhaps? – but it was too late now. Or was it too late?

  She stole soundlessly to the window again. An age seemed to have passed since she had last looked out. It could have been only a few moments. Her husband was where she had left him. Soon, he would begin his afternoon’s potterings. There was Turner, watering-can in hand, coming towards him. How dreadfully weary, narrowed in, even disconsolate he looked, as if all but worn out by some inward struggle. A shuddering revulsion of feeling came over her. Think of it! Some day she might perhaps be looking back on this from beyond an awful gulf of utter darkness. An evil done, even if it remain undiscovered, is an ineradicable horror, a scar no power in earth or heaven could ever remove.

  Well, she was awake now. She must do her utmost to undo what she had done, and must chance discovery. Trembling knees and hands, she dragged up a chair, mounted it, and with both arms extended attempted to lift the portrait from the wall. To snap and re-knot the string while it hung there was out of the question. But the frame was heavier even than she had expected. The cord refused to unloop itself from its hook. Her heart continued steadily thundering against the cage of her ribs. She tried again, and was compelled to desist. Very gradually she allowed the portrait to slide down the full length of the cord again; but the strain was too great, and even as, with a murderous splintering of glass, it crashed to the floor she heard his step along the corridor outside. In sheer panic she leapt from the chair, stumbled, all but fell, attempted to escape and met him full in the doorway.

  ‘Why, my dear, my dear! You poor thing, what’s wrong? What’s the matter?’

  Her teeth were chattering, she had begun to hiccough.

  ‘I tried, I tried,’ she was almost shouting at him. ‘I had been watching you. I was anxious about you. Don’t look. Come away. It was a miserable deception – worse. I can’t bear it.’

  ‘“Watching me”?’ he repeated. ‘“Couldn’t bear it” – can’t bear what?’ His face had gone a deadly grey, even his lips. ‘Just that? My own dear, loved, loving thing. How can that matter?… “Anxious about me”? I should have to have told you soon. But I don’t understand. Why, only a week or two ago I – you know how mere time wears out everybody, and I … And now,’ he added turning towards the wall, ‘this horrible thing has happened. It must have startled you to death.’

  Still clasping her hand, he stooped over the portrait lying face downwards on the floor, and lifted the end of the severed cord. No attentive eye could have been deceived by that.

  ‘Why!’ he began meditatingly. ‘How queer! That’s not an ordinary … It’s charred. It’s been …’

  Releasing her hand, he turned to look at her. The dark distraught face, fingers clenched, eyes shut, seemed to be as brightly illuminated in the half-curtained room as some ridiculous painted clown’s in the limelight of the stage.

  ‘It was I, me,’ she was saying. ‘I fancied she – you – I. I must go now. What did you mean, what di
d you mean by “I should have told you soon”? Not that – that.’ She nodded her head towards the fallen portrait.

  ‘That!’ he exclaimed. ‘You poor precious angel thing. My dear, my dear! That! Why, I hadn’t a notion! It was only – only the letter that came from – that was enclosed with Dr Brown’s. I fancied you had guessed it had – it had not been very favourable. But my own dear; we had both foreseen it, known it, realized it – underneath? Hadn’t we? When one is so old … well, one can’t go on – indefinitely.’ The words ceased. He was gazing at the back of the picture … ‘What a lucky thing,’ he added, smiling up into her face, ‘that we knew all along things weren’t quite right.’

  * First published in Argosy, February 1955.

  The Quincunx*

  On opening the door and in no good humour at so late and apparently timid a summons I fancied at first glance that the figure standing at the foot of the four garden steps was my old and precious friend Henry Beverley – unexpectedly back in England again. At the moment there was only obscured moonlight to see him by and he stood rather hummocked up and partly in shadow. If it hadn’t been Henry one might have supposed this visitor was the least bit apprehensive.

  ‘Bless my heart!’ I began – delight mingled with astonishment – then paused. For at that moment a thin straight shaft of moonlight had penetrated between the chimney stacks and shone clear into the face of a far less welcome visitor – Henry’s brother, Walter.

  I knew he was living rather dangerously near, but had kept this knowledge to myself. And now in his miniature car, which even by moonlight I noticed would have been none the worse off for a dusting, he had not only routed me out, but was also almost supplicating me to spend the night with him – in a house which had, I heard with surprise, been left to him by an eccentric aunt, recently deceased – about two miles away.

  Seldom can moonshine have flattered a more haggard face. Had he no sedatives? Sedatives or not, how could I refuse him? Besides, he was Henry’s brother. So having slowly climbed the stairs again, with a lingering glance of regret at the book I had been reading, I extinguished my green glass-shaded lamp (the reflex effects of which may have given poor Walter an additional pallor) pushed myself into a great-coat, and jammed a hat on my head, and in a moment or so we were on our way, with a din resembling that of a van-load of empty biscuit-tins. I am something of a snob about cars, though I prefer them borrowed. It was monstrous to be shattering the silence of night with so fiendish a noise, all the blinds down and every house asleep. ‘On such a night …’ And as for poor Walter’s gear-changing – heaven help the hardiest of Army lorries!

  ‘Of course,’ he repeated, ‘it would be as easy as chalk to dismiss the whole affair as pure fancy. But that being so, how could it possibly have stood up to repeated rational experiment? Don’t think I really care a hoot concerning the “ghostly” side of this business. Not in the least. I am out for the definite, I am dog-tired, and I am all but beaten.’

  Beaten, I thought to myself not without some little satisfaction. But beaten by what, by whom?

  ‘Beaten?’ I shouted through the din. We were turning a corner.

  ‘You see – for very good reasons I don’t doubt – my late old aunt could not do away with me. She found precious little indeed to please her in my complete side of the family – not even the saintly Henry. My own idea is that all along she had been in love with my father. And I, thank heaven, don’t take after him. There is a limit to imbecile unpracticality, and —’ he dragged at his hand-brake, having failed to notice earlier a cross-road immediately in front of us under a lamp-post.

  ‘She never intended me to inherit so much as a copper bed-warmer, or the leg of a chair. Irony was not her strong point – otherwise I think she might have bequeathed me her wheezy old harmonium. I always had Salvation Army leanings. But Fate was too quick for her, and the house came to me – to me, the least beloved of us all. At first merely out of curiosity, I decided to live in the place, but there’s living and living, and there’s deucedly little cash.’

  ‘But she must have …’ I began.

  ‘Of course she must have,’ he broke in. ‘Even an old misbegotten aunt-by-marriage can’t have lived on air. She had money; it was meant, I believe – she mistrusted lawyers – for my cousin Arthur and the rest. And’ – he accelerated – ‘I am as certain as instinct and common-sense can make me, that there are stocks, shares, documents, all sorts of riff-raff, and possibly private papers, hidden away somewhere in her own old house. Where she lived for donkeys’ years. Where I am trying to exist now.’ He shot me a rapid glance rather like an animal looking round.

  ‘In short, I am treasure-hunting; and there’s interference. That’s the situation, naked and a bit ashamed of it. But the really odd thing is – she knows it.

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘She knows I am after the loot,’ he answered, ‘and cannot rest in her grave. Wait till you have seen her face my dear feller, then scoff, if you can. She was a secretive old cat and she hated bipeds. Soured, I suppose. And she never stirred out of her frowsy seclusion for nearly twenty years. And now – her poor Arthur left gasping – she is fully aware of what her old enemy is at. Of every move I make. It’s a fight to – well, past “the death between us”. And she is winning.’

  ‘But my dear Beverley …’ I began.

  ‘My dear Rubbish,’ he said, squeezing my arm. ‘I am as sane as you are – only a little jarred and piqued. Besides I am not dragging you out at this time of night on evidence as vague as all that. I’ll give you positive proof. Perhaps you shall have some pickings!’

  We came at length to a standstill before his antiquated inheritance. An ugly awkward house, it abutted sheer on to the pavement. A lamp shone palely on its walls, its few beautifully-proportioned windows; and it seemed, if possible, a little quieter behind its two bay-trees – more resigned to-night – than even its darkened neighbours were. We went in, and Beverley with a candle led the way down a long corridor.

  ‘The front room,’ he said, pointing back, ‘is the dining-room. There’s nothing there – simply the odour of fifty years of lavendered cocoon; fifty years of seed-cake and sherry. But even to sit on, there alone, munching one’s plebeian bread-and-cheese, is to become conscious – well, is to become conscious. In here, though, is the mystery.’

  We stood together in the doorway, peering beneath our candle into a low-pitched, silent, strangely attractive and old-fashioned parlour. Everything within it, from its tarnished cornice to its little old parrot-green beaded footstool, was the accumulated record of one mind, one curious, solitary human individuality. And it was as silent and unresponsive as a clam.

  ‘What a fascinating old lady!’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered in a low voice. ‘There she is!’

  I turned in some confusion, but only to survey the oval painted portrait of Miss Lemieux herself. She was little, narrow, black-mittened, straight-nosed, becurled; and she encountered my eyes so keenly, darkly, tenaciously, that I began to sympathize with both antagonists.

  ‘Now this is the problem,’ he said, making a long nose at it, and turning his back on the picture. ‘I searched the house last week from garret to cellar and intend to begin again. The doubloons, the diamonds, the documents are here somewhere, and as R.L.S. said in another connection, If she’s Hide, then I’m Seek. On Sunday I came in here to have a think. I sat there, in that little chair, by the window staring vacantly in front of me, when presently in some indescribable fashion I became aware that I was being stared at.’ He touched the picture hanging up on its nail behind him with the back of his head. ‘So we sat, she and I, for about ten solid minutes, I should think. Then I tired of it. I turned the old Sphinx to the wall again, and went out. A little after nine I came back. There wasn’t a whisper in the house. I had my supper, sat thinking again, and fell asleep. When I awoke, I was shivering cold.

  ‘I got up immediately, went out, shut the dining-room door with my face towards this on
e, went up a few stairs, my hand on the banister and then vaguely distinguished by the shadow that the door I had shut was ajar. I was certain I had shut it. I came back to investigate. And saw – her.’ He nodded towards the picture again. ‘I had left her as I supposed in disgrace, face to the wall: she had, it seemed, righted herself. But this may have been a mistake. So I deliberately took the old lady down from her ancestral nail and hid her peculiarly intent physiognomy in that cushion:

  Dare not, wild heart, grow fonder!

  Lie there, my love, lie yonder!

  Then I locked windows, shutters and door and went to bed.’

  He paused and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. ‘I dare say it sounds absurd,’ he said, ‘but next morning when I came down I dawdled about for at least half an hour before I felt impelled to open this door. The chair was empty. She was “up”!’

  ‘Any charwoman?’ I ventured.

  ‘On Tuesdays, Fridays and at the week-ends,’ he said.

  ‘You are sure of it?’ He looked vaguely at me, tired and protesting. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘last night’s was my fifth experiment.’

  ‘And you want me …?’

  ‘Just to stay here and keep awake. I can’t. That’s all. Theorizing is charming – and easy. But the nights are short. You don’t appear to have a vestige of nerves. Tell me who is playing this odd trick on me! Mind you, I know already. Somehow it’s this old She who is responsible, who is manoeuvring. But how?’

  I exchanged a long look with him – with the cold blue gaze in the tired pallid face; then glanced back at the portrait. Into those small, feminine, dauntless, ink-black eyes.