Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  The maid returned.

  ‘Would you give your name, madam? Miss Griffith cannot see you without.’

  Mrs Griffith had foreseen the eventuality, and, unwilling to give her card, had written another little letter, using Edith as amanuensis, so that Daisy should at least open it. She sent it up. In a few minutes the maid came down again.

  ‘There’s no answer,’ and she opened the door for Mrs Griffith to go out.

  That lady turned very red. Her first impulse was to make a scene and call the housemaid to witness how Daisy treated her own mother; but immediately she thought how undignified she would appear in the maid’s eyes. So she went out like a lamb....

  She told George all about it as they sat in the private bar of the public-house, drinking a little Scotch whisky.

  ‘All I can say,’ she remarked, ’is that I hope she’ll never live to repent it. Fancy treating her own mother like that!

  ‘But I shall go to the wedding; I don’t care. I will see my own daughter married.’

  That had been her great ambition, and she would have crawled before Daisy to be asked to the ceremony.... But George dissuaded her from going uninvited. There were sure to be one or two Blackstable people present, and they would see that she was there as a stranger; the humiliation would be too great.

  ‘I think she’s an ungrateful girl,’ said Mrs Griffith, as she gave way and allowed George to take her back to Blackstable.

  XII

  But the prestige of the Griffiths diminished. Everyone in Blackstable came to the conclusion that the new Lady Ously-Farrowham had been very badly treated by her relatives, and many young ladies said they would have done just the same in her place. Also Mrs Gray induced her husband to ask Griffith to resign his churchwardenship.

  ‘You know, Mr Griffith,’ said the vicar, deprecatingly, ‘now that your wife goes to chapel I don’t think we can have you as churchwarden any longer; and besides, I don’t think you’ve behaved to your daughter in a Christian way.’

  It was in the carpenter’s shop; the business had dwindled till Griffith only kept one man and a boy; he put aside the saw he was using.

  ‘What I’ve done to my daughter, I’m willing to take the responsibility for; I ask no one’s advice and I want no one’s opinion; and if you think I’m not fit to be churchwarden you can find someone else better.’

  ‘Why don’t you make it up with your daughter, Griffith?’

  ‘Mind your own business!’

  The carpenter had brooded and brooded over his sorrow till now his daughter’s name roused him to fury. He had even asserted a little authority over his wife, and she dared not mention her daughter before him. Daisy’s marriage had seemed like the consummation of her shame; it was vice riding triumphant in a golden chariot....

  But the name of Lady Ously-Farrowham was hardly ever out of her mother’s lips; and she spent a good deal more money in her dress to keep up her dignity.

  ‘Why, that’s another new dress you’ve got on!’ said a neighbour.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Griffith, complacently, ‘you see we’re in quite a different position now. I have to think of my daughter, Lady Ously-Farrowham. I don’t want her to be ashamed of her mother. I had such a nice long letter from her the other day. She’s so happy with Sir Herbert. And Sir Herbert’s so good to her.’...

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were.’...

  ‘Oh, yes! Of course she was a little — well, a little wild when she was a girl, but I’ve forgiven that. It’s her father won’t forgive her. He always was a hard man, and he never loved her as I did. She wants to come and stay with me, but he won’t let her. Isn’t it cruel of him? I should so like to have Lady Ously-Farrowham down here.’...

  XIII

  But at last the crash came. To pay for the new things which Mrs Griffith felt needful to preserve her dignity, she had drawn on her husband’s savings in the bank; and he had been drawing on them himself for the last four years without his wife’s knowledge. For, as his business declined, he had been afraid to give her less money than usual, and every week had made up the sum by taking something out of the bank. George only earned a pound a week — he had been made clerk to a coal merchant by his mother, who thought that more genteel than carpentering — and after his marriage he had constantly borrowed from his parents. At last Mrs Griffith learnt to her dismay that their savings had come to an end completely. She had a talk with her husband, and found out that he was earning almost nothing. He talked of sending his only remaining workman away and moving into a smaller place. If he kept his one or two old customers, they might just manage to make both ends meet.

  Mrs Griffith was burning with anger. She looked at her husband, sitting in front of her with his helpless look.

  ‘You fool!’ she said.

  She thought of herself coming down in the world, living in a pokey little house away from the High Street, unable to buy new dresses, unnoticed by the chief people of Blackstable — she who had always held up her head with the best of them!

  George and Edith came in, and she told them, hurling contemptuous sarcasms at her husband. He sat looking at them with his pained, unhappy eyes, while they stared back at him as if he were some despicable, noxious beast.

  ‘But why didn’t you say how things were going before, father?’ George asked him.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I didn’t like to,’ he said hoarsely; those cold, angry eyes crushed him; he felt the stupid, useless fool he saw they thought him.

  ‘I don’t know what’s to be done,’ said George.

  His wife looked at old Griffith with her hard, grey eyes; the sharpness of her features, the firm, clear complexion, with all softness blown out of it by the east winds, expressed the coldest resolution.

  ‘Father must get Daisy to help; she’s got lots of money. She may do it for him.’

  Old Griffith broke suddenly out of his apathy.

  ‘I’d sooner go to the workhouse; I’ll never touch a penny of hers!’

  ‘Now then, father,’ said Mrs Griffith, quickly understanding, ‘you drop that, you’ll have to.’

  George at the same time got pen and paper and put them before the old man. They stood round him angrily. He stared at the paper; a look of horror came over his face.

  ‘Go on! don’t be a fool!’ said his wife. She dipped the pen in the ink and handed it to him.

  Edith’s steel-grey eyes were fixed on him, coldly compelling.

  ‘Dear Daisy,’ she began.

  ‘Father always used to call her Daisy darling,’ said George; ‘he’d better put that so as to bring back old times.’

  They talked of him strangely, as if he were absent or had not ears to hear.

  ‘Very well,’ replied Edith, and she began again; the old man wrote bewilderedly, as if he were asleep. ‘Daisy Darling, — ... Forgive me!... I have been hard and cruel towards you.... On my knees I beg your forgiveness.... The business has gone wrong ... and I am ruined.... If you don’t help me ... we shall have the brokers in ... and have to go to the workhouse.... For God’s sake ... have mercy on me! You can’t let me starve.... I know I have sinned towards you. — Your broken-hearted ... Father.’

  She read through the letter. ‘I think that’ll do; now the envelope,’ and she dictated the address.

  When it was finished, Griffith looked at them with loathing, absolute loathing — but they paid no more attention to him. They arranged to send a telegram first, in case she should not open the letter, —

  ‘Letter coming; for God’s sake open! In great distress. — Father.’

  George went out immediately to send the wire and post the letter.

  XIV

  The letter was sent on a Tuesday, and on Thursday morning a telegram came from Daisy to say she was coming down. Mrs Griffith was highly agitated.

  ‘I’ll go and put on my silk dress,’ she said.

  ‘No, mother, that is a silly thing; be as shabby as you can.’

  ‘How’ll father
be?’ asked George. ‘You’d better speak to him, Edith.’

  He was called, the stranger in his own house.

  ‘Look here, father, Daisy’s coming this morning. Now, you’ll be civil, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’ll go and spoil everything,’ said Mrs Griffith, anxiously.

  At that moment there was a knock at the door. ‘It’s her!’

  Griffith was pushed into the back room; Mrs Griffith hurriedly put on a ragged apron and went to the door.

  ‘Daisy!’ she cried, opening her arms. She embraced her daughter and pressed her to her voluminous bosom. ‘Oh, Daisy!’

  Daisy accepted passively the tokens of affection, with a little sad smile. She tried not to be unsympathetic. Mrs Griffith led her daughter into the sitting-room where George and Edith were sitting. George was very white.

  ‘You don’t mean to say you walked here!’ said Mrs Griffith, as she shut the front door. ‘Fancy that, when you could have all the carriages in Blackstable to drive you about!’

  ‘Welcome to your home again,’ said George, with somewhat the air of a dissenting minister.

  ‘Oh, George!’ she said, with the same sad, half-ironical smile, allowing herself to be kissed.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ said Edith, coming forward. ‘I’m George’s wife; I used to be Edith Pollett.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Daisy put out her hand.

  They all three looked at her, and the women noticed the elegance of her simple dress. She was no longer the merry girl they had known, but a tall, dignified woman, and her great blue eyes were very grave. They were rather afraid of her; but Mrs Griffith made an effort to be cordial and at the same time familiar.

  ‘Fancy you being a real lady!’ she said.

  Daisy smiled again.

  ‘Where’s father?’ she asked.

  ‘In the next room.’ They moved towards the door and entered. Old Griffith rose as he saw his daughter, but he did not come towards her. She looked at him a moment, then turned to the others.

  ‘Please leave me alone with father for a few minutes.’

  They did not want to, knowing that their presence would restrain him; but Daisy looked at them so firmly that they were obliged to obey. She closed the door behind them.

  ‘Father!’ she said, turning towards him.

  ‘They made me write the letter,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘Won’t you kiss me?’

  He stepped back as if in replusion. She looked at him with her beautiful eyes full of tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry I’ve made you unhappy. But I’ve been unhappy too — oh, you don’t know what I’ve gone through!... Won’t you forgive me?’

  ‘I didn’t write the letter,’ he repeated hoarsely; ‘they stood over me and made me.’

  Her lips trembled, but with an effort she commanded herself. They looked at one another steadily, it seemed for a very long time; in his eyes was the look of a hunted beast.... At last she turned away without saying anything more, and left him.

  In the next room the three were anxiously waiting. She contemplated them a moment, and then, sitting down, asked about the affairs. They explained how things were.

  ‘I talked to my husband about it,’ she said; ‘he’s proposed to make you an allowance so that you can retire from business.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Sir Herbert all over,’ said Mrs Griffith, greasily — she knew nothing about him but his name!

  ‘How much do you think you could live on?’ asked Daisy.

  Mrs Griffith looked at George and then at Edith. What should they ask? Edith and George exchanged a glance; they were in agonies lest Mrs Griffith should demand too little.

  ‘Well,’ said that lady, at last, with a little cough of uncertainty, ‘in our best years we used to make four pounds a week out of the business — didn’t we, George?’

  ‘Quite that!’ answered he and his wife, in a breath.

  ‘Then, shall I tell my husband that if he allows you five pounds a week you will be able to live comfortably?’

  ‘Oh, that’s very handsome!’ said Mrs Griffith.

  ‘Very well,’ said Daisy, getting up.

  ‘You’re not going?’ cried her mother.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that is hard. After not seeing you all these years. But you know best, of course!’

  ‘There’s no train up to London for two hours yet,’ said George.

  ‘No; I want to take a walk through Blackstable.’

  ‘Oh, you’d better drive, in your position.’

  ‘I prefer to walk.’

  ‘Shall George come with you?’

  ‘I prefer to walk alone.’

  Then Mrs Griffith again enveloped her daughter in her arms, and told her she had always loved her and that she was her only daughter; after which, Daisy allowed herself to be embraced by her brother and his wife. Finally they shut the door on her and watched her from the window walk slowly down the High Street.

  ‘If you’d asked it, I believe she’d have gone up to six quid a week,’ said George.

  XV

  Daisy walked down the High Street slowly, looking at the houses she remembered, and her lips quivered a little; at every step smells blew across to her full of memories — the smell of a tannery, the blood smell of a butcher’s shop, the sea-odour from a shop of fishermen’s clothes.... At last she came on to the beach, and in the darkening November day she looked at the booths she knew so well, the boats drawn up for the winter, whose names she knew, whose owners she had known from her childhood; she noticed the new villas built in her absence. And she looked at the grey sea; a sob burst from her; but she was very strong, and at once she recovered herself. She turned back and slowly walked up the High Street again to the station. The lamps were lighted now, and the street looked as it had looked in her memory through the years; between the ‘Green Dragon’ and the ‘Duke of Kent’ were the same groups of men — farmers, townsfolk, fishermen — talking in the glare of the rival inns, and they stared at her curiously as she passed, a tall figure, closely veiled. She looked at the well-remembered shops, the stationery shop with its old-fashioned, fly-blown knick-knacks, the milliner’s with cheap, gaudy hats, the little tailor’s with his antiquated fashion plates. At last she came to the station, and sat in the waiting-room, her heart full of infinite sadness — the terrible sadness of the past....

  And she could not shake it off in the train; she could only just keep back the tears.

  At Victoria she took a cab and finally reached home. The servants said her husband was in his study.

  ‘Hulloa!’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect you to-night.’

  ‘I couldn’t stay; it was awful.’ Then she went up to him and looked into his eyes. ‘You do love me, Herbert, don’t you?’ she said, her voice suddenly breaking. ‘I want your love so badly.’

  ‘I love you with all my heart!’ he said, putting his arms round her.

  But she could restrain herself no longer; the strong arms seemed to take away the rest of her strength, and she burst into tears.

  ‘I will try and be a good wife to you, Herbert,’ she said, as he kissed them away.

  THE END

  CUPID AND THE VICAR OF SWALE

  Swale is a place of many advantages. It is strikingly picturesque and eminently respectable; the people who live in it excite the admiration of the world in general, not only by their affluence, but by their gentility also, and in these degenerate days the one does not always accompany the other. They inhabit mansions overgrown with creepers, and they all keep a carriage. Here and there a few poor people live in artistic cottages for the special conveniences of the young ladies, who paint in water-colours. But the poor people, even, are of the nicest class, the class that looks so pleasant in Academy pictures. Alas! it is a type that is fast disappearing in England. Now the labourer is an independent creature with no feelings of gratitude; he does not touch his hat to the parson, and his wife drops no curtsey to the squire; he is f
ull of new-fangled Radical notions, and neither looks nice in pictures nor in reality. He has become distinctly vulgar. But Swale is still different, and long may it keep free from the corruption of external influence! As I said, the cottages are delightful, with little leaded windows admitting neither light nor air — but that is a detail; they are most pleasing to the fair sketcher; honeysuckle and roses climb about the doorway, many of the roofs are thatched, and the whole appearance is exquisitely dilapidated.

  One landlord, in a thoughtless moment, decided to pull down those on his own estate, and erect new ones with sanitary conveniences, and all kinds of modern improvements; but an indignation meeting was held, and a deputation of ladies called upon him to protest against the desecration. Being quite a plebeian creature, the only person in Swale history whose breeding was not irreproachable, he would not listen to their arguments on abstract beauty, and they did not even convince him by showing that he would utterly ruin the type of good honest English peasant. They appealed to his patriotism: the English countryman was the backbone of the British Army, and how could he be expected to retain his native candour, his obedience and deference to his betters, if he were born and bred, not in a picturesque old cottage covered with honeysuckle, but in a new-fangled place with a bath-room? But fortunately, Mr. Simpson, the owner of the estate in question, was called to a world where it is to be hoped horrid Radicals are in the minority, and his daughters were comparatively innocuous. The poor of Swale were left in peace and quietness, to their own content, for they looked upon it as somehow a merciful dispensation of Providence that every winter their children should die of diphtheria or typhoid. For many centuries they had been used to look upon themselves as different beings from the gentry, and they were not going to begin now to give themselves airs. The gentry were the gentry: they were only common people whose part in life it was to minister to their betters’ needs, and there was an end of it. It must be said that the richer inhabitants of Swale behaved very well in any calamity. They showered jellies and port-wine and coals upon the indigent, and read the Bible to them for hours.