Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  Philip had noticed this many times, but recognition of it at this precise moment had a most curious effect on him in his present state. It was as if the mother who, quite involuntarily, had left him at the age of seven, had thrust a phantom hand over his shoulder, and gently closed the covers of his disastrous book of fate. It as closely resembled the old-fashioned Valentines and Christmas cards as that! Even the phantasm of Sir Leopold dropped instantly clean into the oblivion it deserved.

  Those eyes, into which Philip for this everlasting instant was now gazing, were – and English at times has severe limitations – brown. They were brown as a wren, as hill water over gravel, as wallflowers, as the leather of that unique Elzevir of Catullus in the parlour library of the Popes of Rome. Besides being merely brown they were welling over with consternation and with compassion. Like the waters mirroring Narcissus they seemed to be inviting this young stranger to lose himself and his forlorn woes in their depths.

  But only for the whispering eternity of an instant. At the next the faintly fringed curtains of those eyes had descended upon them. And Philip was able to perceive the face and the slightly-stooping shoulder of the impossible she to whom they belonged. Only dimly though, because of the air that danced between. Lost in thus looking, he forgot all else around him, and found himself wandering in the cinnamon groves of Arabia-Felix, with Mecca at the left-most corner of the firm yet gentle mouth, and Damascus dangling from a tiny ringlet of chestnut hair over the right ear. And the self he had found was one that he had never yet realized he had lost.

  Conscience all that morning had been lying gagged and blindfold in the cellar of Philip’s mind. It now found itself suddenly freed; all pins and needles, and with far too much to do. For after but one fleeting glance at this one human face, Philip had discovered that he abhorred not merely his immediate past, but its whole twenty-one years and a bit that had gone before. That he abhorred it not because it had been so extravagantly base, but so incredibly wasted. He abhorred it because never before had he really wanted anything. Most of the whole long lovely morning that had just gone by had been spent in the belief that he wanted many things. So intense had this apparent rapacity at last become that he had failed to realize that he merely wanted to bag them, which is quite another matter. And so the glut had set in. And now the glut was over. The ten-and-a-penny in his pocket, a few old suits and books, three unmerited prizes for good conduct, a collection of postage stamps, the hypothetical legacy of a shilling and a reputation on the brink of extinction – these were now all the worldly goods he had – and all just now he needed. He had looked at million-pound notes again and again without once reminding himself that they were anything more than mere paper. He knew where there was enough bullion to buy up a score of Midases and hadn’t coveted a single quid. In brief, there wasn’t a trace of mere vulgar acquisitiveness in his constitution. And yet now, all else forgotten, he had been suddenly seized with an overwhelming desperate passion to acquire, to possess, to have for keeps, and to all eternity – just what? Why, this gentle stranger. And failing that, but once to make – to see – her merely smile. And as for buying either, he might just as well make a bid for the Milky Way. He sat on, his chocolate grown cold, his meringue untasted, gazing with an appalling forlornness and nostalgia, straight past the bowed head four yards away from him, and out into the deluge beyond.

  Though, however, his eyes were fixed on the rain his soul was fixed on the young lady, and the attendant spirits of his inmost dreams were at revel in Arcady. He himself meanwhile was conscious of being at the same time happy beyond telling and ineffably sad. For as she sat there, all alone, in her little hat and her April coat – and to an angel clothes are but hindrances to flight – she was clearly in trouble. Philip had instantly detected the ghost of a fork of anxiety between those slightly lifted eyebrows, arched like the crescent moon. He was in trouble too. In considerable trouble. But now his mind was only a cold dark sea on which her small vessel was tossing. Could he but forget his dismal past, and his despair, and by some sheer feat of telepathy scatter a few drops of oil on these troubled waters, and so bring peace to that afflicted bark! A rosy golden evening, placid waters, a ghostly light-house gleaming on its spit of sandy dune, faint stars aglint in the east. If only, if only!

  Philip, for so fair and frail-looking a young man, could be obstinate. Had he not for two and a half months – for almost eleven complete weeks – never wavered in his mortal conflict with that sheer hulk, a stool in a bank, not to mention that nightmare life-in-death, the prospect of its surviving him? He now lowered his brows a little, set his teeth together and, heedless of M. Coué, began with might and main to will this young stranger to forget her cares. It was no easy feat. To keep, that is, his whole inward being fixed on her very self and his eyes elsewhere, without squinting.

  A few moments slipped by, echoing with the rumour of the fountains of the heavens without and the murmur of feminine voices under the low ceiling within, and then it seemed two phantom messengers had met. For she suddenly raised her head, looked straight across at him, her dark eyes filled with strange, wistful, alarmed, pleading, reproachful questionings, seized the few little parcels that were scattered on the table before her, seized her tiny bead bag and her bill, and turned to depart. Philip had met that inexplicable and profound glance with eyes as innocent and as blue as an infant’s. This one morning’s rapid tuition had taught him that he who hesitates is lost indeed. He leapt to his feet, gripped his alpaca gingham, and strode after her.

  ‘You will forgive me, you must try to forgive me,’ he implored. ‘My name is Philip Pim. Here is my hideous umbrella – sopped. Please, I beseech you, spare me the horror of watching you emerge into that appalling torrent of rain. There isn’t a soul as you see in sight. The umbrella is mine. I have positively paid for it; I couldn’t help myself; though now I realize there is a divinity … I entreat, if only, of course, the wretched thing will not be a bur den. Any policeman would then return it to the Lost Property Office, where it would remain undisturbed for ever. Oh, if England were not renowned for its climate you might have been free from my unwarrantable interference!’

  The young woman watched these words proceed from his lips with the utmost astonishment and interest.

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘we had better go back a moment. I – I understand. You are very, very kind. But it was not – well, just the rain.’

  Philip returned to her table on toes that appeared suddenly to have been converted into cotton-wool. He sat down in a vertigo of agony and joy, and speechlessly watched her replace one by one her dainty little possessions on the table, while at the same moment, though this he could not divine, she strove also to regain her self-possession.

  ‘To tell you the honest truth,’ she said at last, ‘my real worry isn’t the English climate, but an only aunt – from Brazil.’

  Her precise pronunciation of the last word but three erected in Philip’s mind a specimen of Formix Rufa which was nonetheless rufous for being of a dead black, and nonetheless formidable for being in human shape, about five-foot-ten in height, with long straight boots on its feet, a check ulster on its back and a hat with a veil tied round it on its head.

  ‘The odd thing is,’ said Philip, ‘that you having an aunt, I have an uncle. Indeed I have spent the whole morning making what I might call my final peace with him, though it is unlikely to have that appearance. Indeed we, he and I, may never meet again. But his very presence in the world just now is an obvious coincidence, and coincidences come we know not whence. If then by heaven’s help I could be of the least possible service to you, the very least, my only difficulty would be to survive the happiness of it. I do assure you, though what I say may seem to sound like words that have never been taught to do a single thing they are told, that this is so. I assure you it is so. I never felt so anxious or so hopelessly unworthy and useless in my life. But that is just inaction. Please make any kind of use of me, as if I were this miserable umbrella itself. Th
en just hand me too over to a policeman, who will return me also to the Lost Property Office. Lost I say – though no one, let alone my unfortunate uncle, would in any sense consider me as Property.’

  ‘Well but you know, Mr – Pim, you really are terribly amusing. I am inclined to think your ways over here are not exactly our ways over there; but what is life, I say, if one is kind of just to keep to the beaten track?’ Philip nodded violently then shook his head. ‘You see, I landed at Southampton last Saturday week, and my aunt is at this moment landing there this afternoon. She will be in London, I guess, tomorrow afternoon. My family was Scotch before we were South Americans – they’re homely folk, aren’t they? – and at thought of an hotel she just dies, perishes. For all her life long, you see, she has been looking for a really tolerable one – hotel, I mean – and now she knows there isn’t such a thing: that it’s what is called a contradiction in terms. It’s an awful thing when an ideal just evaporates like that. But it has; and now what she is hoping for – what, indeed, poor dear she is positively expecting, is somewhere else to lay her weary head in this queer cunning irresistible old city of yours. And I – I promised to get it ready for her before she came.’

  ‘You?’ said Philip, gazing at her as if she were an evening primrose gently unfolding its petals into the twilight and full moon. ‘You?’

  ‘Why, yes, me. What’s the good of being my age and coming to Europe every year and college and all that if I can’t be trusted to set up a roof on four sticks to shelter my poor sea-sick globe-trotting adorable aunt? But you see, I have been sort of frittering time away – your shops, Mr Pim, your theatres, your funny little all-sorts-of-unheard-of hidden-aways. And staying with friends isn’t, I assure you, of any use at all if you want to do anything on your own.’

  It appeared to Philip as if at this moment an enormous prehistoric monster – mastodon or pterodactyl perhaps – were lunging on towards him out of a rapidly thinning fog. ‘You mean you want a house?’ he breathed.

  ‘Not me – my aunt.’

  ‘A large house?’

  ‘Enormous; central; bath-rooms; imposing; space. Just all the amenities. She is used to them, adores them, Mr Pim. You must please understand,’ she stooped a little, ‘if brass tacks are necessary, that with this aunt of mine money is no object, though I cannot see myself what else it can be.’

  ‘A spacious, central, unfurnished house?’ Philip solemnly repeated.

  ‘Well now, there!’ said the young lady, leaning back in her chair a little, her whole face shining like a bank of wild flowers in the morning sun. ‘Well now there! Did you kindly conjecture my poor sea-sick pilgrim aunt would find any comfort in bare boards?’

  ‘Oh!’ the word slipped out of his mouth like a little red-throated ‘diver’ into deep water – ‘furnished, then?’

  ‘She wants every kind of fixture, appointment, contrivance, luxury, necessity that civilization can supply – and more. Your civilization, Mr Pim. You …’

  ‘You mean you want to buy it for her?’ said Philip, a cold shudder coursing down his spine at sound of the gross word in her company.

  ‘I mean just that. I mean that in my little bag here is a cheque-book: some of the cheques crossed and some of them uncrossed; and the first are for crackers and candies for me, and the crossed are for the house that ought to be just gently gaping to welcome my poor dear aunt here. Now I ask you: it’s’ – and she glanced at the jimp little watch that was bound to her wrist – ‘it’s just twelve minutes of three. And it seems to me it simply can’t be done. And I assure you that can’t is of all words the one my aunt detests most. She believes in me, and tomorrow afternoon she’ll –’

  ‘Believe in me,’ Philip earnestly interjected, ‘and before tomorrow’s sun is set she shall believe in you more than ever. She shall sit lost in wonder, yet at ease. It is nothing. If only one goes to the right place, before they are shut of course, things are not so difficult in this horrid old crafty London as you suppose. I agree we are passé, antiquated, old-fashioned, but not as once we were; for think for how many years we have now enjoyed your aunt’s example! If she truly and indeed wants a furnished house, say about twenty-four hours from now, I am quite certain it would be simplicity itself to get it. Is she fastidious?’

  ‘Well, she kind of likes things nice.’

  ‘Then here is the time and the place and the – I mean if only you will allow me to leave you – set me free – for an hour or two, I would come straight back here and tell you how I have managed.’

  The young stranger was now sitting as straight and slim as a dart in the little tub-shaped wicker chair drawn up close to the disc-shaped table. She opened her bead bag and took out a cheque-book. Her lips drew the least shade closer together as she did so, and a still quiet, rosy flush crept up into her cheek. She then raised her head, her eyelids drew back, and Philip found himself – helpless, hapless, fearless, forlorn – gazing straight into the garden of her self. She, too, however, had been glancing every now and again at the young man’s unflinching and worshipful blue eyes. And had Philip only known it, this was the precise moment when he should have withdrawn himself into solitude and set to work on an ode to Feminine Insight. But by a curious fatality it was the adoration in his eyes rather than even their crystalline candour that now compelled the young woman to withdraw her own.

  ‘Well, that being so, Mr Pim, and I won’t waste valuable minutes by wondering how, if you would just tell me, within a few thousand dollars or so, how much I am to write down, I could give you the cheque at once. I kind of hate to say it, but that’s actually where we are.’

  A curious but not unpleasant cold spread over Philip’s limbs as his gaze dwelt on her at this moment. Any nephew of Colonel Crompton Pim’s would have been of course a gentleman by birth, though this particular nephew was subject to oddish aberrations of conduct. But even a Knight of the Round Table or of the Golden Fleece might have been momentarily astonished at a gesture so magnanimous. He accepted it, nonetheless, as it was offered.

  ‘But why not come too!’ he said. ‘Then when we had – er – finished, we could make a little sum, add it up, and find out exactly. If you helped the answer would be sure to come right.’ As soon as the words were uttered, he realized his danger; they went sounding off into his mind like the rumbling of the wheels of a tumbril. ‘But of course, of course, if it would save you trouble, I …’

  ‘It’s not the trouble,’ she said, ‘and I do know my aunt’s tastes. I have been with her most of the time she was learning them, Mr Pim. They are chameleonic. When in Rome, do as Rome does, is her motto; and now you see it will be London. For taste then, just the very best English. Then again – and there isn’t a single soul in the wide world I’d dream of confiding this to – this dear dear aunt of mine, my Aunt Chloe (and I can’t tell you what treasures you would find in her once you have taken off the wraps) is just too romantic. But why because you are forty-five and fastidious and neither fair nor fat and have had military tendencies in the family, you shouldn’t be certain of not saying No, if the right kind of husband – decorations, blue blood, savoir faire and all that – were to ask you to be his, I don’t see any use at all in taxing one’s mind in attempting to decide. Being as I am, you see, only a niece.’

  Philip gasped. Her last three words seemed such a very simple way of saying so much.

  ‘Not, Mr Pim, that my Aunt Chloe is just a hero-worshipper, or anything like that. Although she has been proposed to scores of times, and always – because it couldn’t but be – in part for herself, she doesn’t even dream I know that any vestige of such a thought has ever entered her head. Up to the present it has stood waiting in the porch. It hasn’t even rung the bell. But wanting a house she is bound to want something nice to put into it. Naturally. And I say, why not a man? Oh, dear, you will think I come from Utah next.’

  If Paradise could be spelt in four letters Philip was perfectly willing they should be u,t,a,h. But his mind was elsewhere.

&n
bsp; ‘Is your aunt the kind of woman that insists on having her own way – against any odds, even a husband, I mean?’

  ‘Mr Pim, when I am in her company – and do please remember how you have had to persuade me to talk like this – I am a straw in a cataract. And as for odds, she has no more respect for them than the prophet Daniel in his den. What she needs is someone to take care, to take charge, of her, and to look after her money. And he couldn’t do that of course if he hadn’t some of his own. It wouldn’t be nice of him.’

  With extreme difficulty Philip withdrew his glance from the avenue of possibilities this last two minutes had revealed to him. His uncle, the Colonel, he was now faintly assuring himself, might have intended to be kind. He might. It was difficult to be more than exceedingly dubious at so short a notice. And one good turn – even a worm’s – deserves another.

  ‘How strange are the ways of Providence,’ was all he said; but added instantly, ‘then you do really honestly prefer that I should go alone’ he sighed hastily ‘and – and shop for you all by myself? Everything really and truly of the best as near as I can get it, and money no object?’

  At sound of this dreadful phrase on his own lips his cheek bloomed like a peony. The young stranger turned her dark head away.

  ‘If only you would believe,’ she replied, ‘that on my side of this gimcrack little table sits an aspen leaf shivering on the edge of an appalling disgrace! It’s simply not in my aunt’s family, Mr Pim, and I am an insignificant little bit of it, to understand the word failure. And there was I, only a minute ago, standing on the very brink and staring down into that awful abyss! Without your help I…’ She looked hastily away and paused an instant. ‘And though I know it’s not exactly what I ought to be doing, I am just pining to be helped. Think of me then as – but there, I don’t know what I do want you to think of me as. It is what one feels that really matters.’