Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy

by Rebecca West

  Sliding the telephone book and the turtle-shell box together again, he moved along to the mantelpiece and stared at himself in the mirror behind it, smoothing back the raven hair that was apt (there was a Levantine on his mother’s side) to lie over his ears in something too like Disraeli’s locks. Give him a neckcloth and he might have been any of the statesmen who were great when Corn Laws and Reform Bills were all the go. He had the right aquilinity of head which was preserved from suspicion of above-earthness by the square shoulders, themselves preserved from the contrary suspicion of peasant grossness by the lean waist, the temperate hips. Also he had the intense black gaze and the dark pluminess of brows, beetling much for so young a man, that are the very thing, as one has seen in a hundred prints, for thinking about politics in a park under thunderclouds; and he had to a T that ample, marbly Romanness of profile which, would make them think he had written his speech in the library of his place, beneath the cold eyes of the third earl, a bust, and Cicero, a remarkably fine tern. It was a type that would have its day again. People were growing tired of the serviceability that had been the only temperamental wear for young politicians during the war. They were ready now to be entertained by wit and floridity; and once they looked to one for entertainment what one would produce in the way of sense had the dramatic power of the unexpected; and if one could enact at will the romantic gesture, so endearing to the populace, of burning one’s boats behind one because of an inflaming principle, one would be safe for life. He pursed his lips, which were full, firm, and discreetly red, ending in two small vertical creases in handsome flesh, as do the cupid’s bows of all the Elgin Marbles; and faced the glass indifferently, not caring if it were there, as five years ahead he would face the Opposition Benches, not caring if they were there. “Oh, I am fortunate!” he thought in a drawl; and suddenly his mask cracked and showed his real face, that was as young as his real years. He reflected how fortunate he had been to gain Harriet, how nearly he had not met her, how kindly she had bent herself to his will, and how little he deserved her.

  Tears stood in his eyes. He could no longer see anything in the glass. He told himself that though he had but little money to spend just then he could go out next morning and buy her a ring, and would not need to feel ashamed however modest it was, as her heart would understand how much he loved her and refer its modesty to the proper cause. Not in the least would he mind that she should know how little a way he had travelled on his path to fame and fortune; he could even imagine owning to her how ridiculously few dress-shirts were in his wardrobe. Sweet Harriet, she would take any secret he gave her, fold it neatly as if it were a fine linen handkerchief, and pop it inside her bodice between the little mounts that were indubitably a woman’s breasts yet did not prevent her form being very childish, and there it would lie, safe as a packet at the Mint; and while she wore it so her face would look at the world with an expression of the most nearly universal benevolence and the most gallant obstinacy, as if she were saying that she would give it anything it wished save only that. And at the thought of how pretty she would look then, and of how little the ring would have to be to fit her finger, he felt a serene contraction of the throat, and two tears had to be dealt with by his forefinger. “Dear Harriet! Dear Harriet!” he muttered, and liked to see his handsomeness taking the words out of his mouth in the mirror. Yes, he was fortunate in that his handsomeness saved him from being too painfully outstripped by her in beauty. Yet still she was too good for him. He choked, thinking of ways he might try to deserve her.

  It was then that the whine, of the hinge grew loud enough for him to hear; and on turning his head he saw that Harriet was standing still in the doorway with a tray in her arms, and had, he guessed, from something rigid in her attitude, been rooted there for more than an instant. Immediately he felt, perhaps because there was something witch-like in the stooping of her slenderness over the weight of the tray, the coldest apprehension regarding the feeling which had held her so and lit a most perplexing brilliance in her face. She was, of course, as blooming as every woman is when a man has just proved that he loves her; that is to say, a fairy masseuse had patted her flesh into delicious infant contours on the cheekbones and had shaped her lips into a smile suited to approval of nothing less than divine conditions and left them bright as wet paint, as the bitten meat of cherries. But over and above that bloom she wore a radiance that had been but newly applied, and stood taut with a tensity derived from some galvanic force that still electrified the air about her, and had not been dissipated by time at all.

  She was, he saw, about to speak. But on the explanation of what had happened to her he waited with no joy at all. For so soon as he had found himself surprised he had been taken in charge by that most miserable part of him which believed that the whole world was furtively deriding one Arnold Condorex and which ascribed to derision supreme power over the universe, against which love and justice might range themselves in vain; and it whispered in his ear that what had transfigured the girl could be nothing less than this omnipotence of mocking laughter.

  Blackly he moved to take her burden from her, and was about to say, with a stiff laugh, “Well, you have caught me looking in the glass,” when she said happily: “Well, who would not, left alone in a room!” and then cried out, as if she had been hurt, “Oh, I was not laughing at you! Arnold, how could you think I was laughing at you!” She ran beside him to the table, clinging to his sleeve with both hands, and as soon as he had set down the tray pinned herself to his bosom. “What have I done that you should think I would laugh at you and think meanly of you?” she asked piteously; and looking down into her wet eyes he knew that he was a fool.

  “Why, nothing,” he said, and gravely kissed her. “It is only that I am sometimes black and bitter and that …” What he had in his heart to say was that in his journey up from sordid God-knows-where he had had to overcome so many ambushed memories that it was not surprising if his fretted vigilance saw enemies everywhere. But it was hard for him to admit even to Harriet how long and hard that journey had been; and Harriet relieved him of the need to, for she nodded her head and patted his hand as if he had already confided in her. “But tell me, dear, has anything happened to you? When you stood at the door I had the queerest notion that you were so excited about something that you were going to burst out singing, or laughing, or crying—”

  “Oh, yes, something has happened!” Harriet told him; and drew away from him, solemn and open-mouthed with wonder, very much as she had done by the window on the balcony, not so long before. “You will not believe it! But you will have to believe it!” Then she looked a little disconsolate, as if she had divined that though he might believe it he would not like it. “Let us have tea first!” she begged rather sadly; but smiled brilliantly under her lashes, as if she thought that she would lead him to it, and it was not in human nature after that first amazement he should not like it.

  Nor was it in human nature not to like the meal, to which her little wrists moving about the tea equipage gave the air of a doll’s tea-party. Of the two cups and saucers on her tray one was India red, and the other that pale blue which Victorian ladies used freely in their water-colour drawings of the Bay of Naples, and she offered him his choice between them; and bade him speak if he liked to drink his tea out of any other colour, for there were four more of the harlequin set in the china cupboard. Fondly she asked, “Will you not have another, my dear?” though there are no dairy Falstaffs who push excess to the point of the third egg; and she had opened for him a new pot of the quince jelly and the apple jelly flavoured with orange, though only the other day he had heard her lamenting that such conserves lose their flavour almost as soon as they are exposed to the air. Tenderly he reflected that her little head, which was almost egglike in its oval blandness, was as full as an egg is of meat with the desire to please. But for that his shrewdness rebuked him. There must be much else besides. She had mastered the shining black leviathan that just behind her proclaimed Bechstein its parent. L
ike him she had crawled up the dark tunnel which leads from obscurity to the light, and had performed the feat more expeditiously. She must be in league with formidable forces, he reflected with sudden gloom, if her fragility could carry positions one would judge impregnable save by the heaviest artillery. If that were so, would it not be certain that she despised him, and that the illumination to which he had been subject at the door was an explosion of mocking laughter? He pushed away his plate.

  Excluding from his tones all hint of apprehension, he asked with an uneasy smile, “Now, Harriet, tell me what made you look so lovely at the door.”

  “Do not be apprehensive,” she answered gaily. “It was something lovelier than anything that has ever happened to me before, and something lovelier than has ever happened to you, I will swear.” Yet she was fearful; he knew that from the way her little hand was nuzzling into his palm. Did that not mean that she must be feeling guilty? “You must know,” she continued, “that when I went into the kitchen I found that the big kettle had been left on the hob and had just come to the boil. This meant that I could make tea on the instant; my servant had left out the tray with all prepared; and it was but a matter of five minutes to boil the eggs. I reflected that I would not return to you as I had meant to do if I had had to fill the kettle with cold water, and there had been twenty minutes to wait; for I loathe nothing more than people whisking in and out of rooms. I believed too I could better occupy the few minutes opening new pots of quince and apple jelly, as I remembered that you liked one better than the other, and I knew that you are so amiable that you would pretend whichever I took in was that one, even if it were not; and here you must always have what you like best. Well, I was standing by my kitchen table, putting a knife to the string round the jam-pot, and thinking very tenderly of you as you rested here on my couch, when—when—”

  Her fingers were floating towards her brow. He laughed aloud. It was that nonsense again. Well, he had been alarming himself unnecessarily.

  “—I had that patch of headache here; and just as I was when we saw those children through those windows, I was in your mind. And because I was in your mind I knew what your body was doing. You were pulling back the curtains—”

  He made a grimace that paid himself several compliments. For the smile which was its beginning showed that he was too canny to be deceived, that he realised she could see he had pulled the curtains as soon as she had entered the room, and thereby had been inspired to act her galvanisation and improvise this story; and the insincere attempt to suppress that smile which followed showed him a large-minded and tolerant man who would not be too hard on women for that in them which runs to telling fibs about the occult.

  “Yes, truly,” she persisted, with meek bravery, “I could feel that you were pulling back the curtains, and then that you felt a need for rhythm, that you wanted to enjoy a sense of ebb and flow without greatly exerting yourself. I had never before understood why people smoke. There were cigarettes in your case, but you had no matches. You thought of my pretty box on the mantelpiece that I bought at King’s Lynn. You went to it, and lit a match, and thought how much better my small things are than my big ones—”

  He pushed back his chair, he made to rise, his hand dragged his collar from his choking throat. The preposterous thing was true, and its truth was not bearable. He saw himself loafing about the room, prying and appraising, and it did not seem to him that one decent thought had passed through his mind. It was not humane to spy upon him so.

  Harriet was at his feet, suddenly, like a bird that was on a bush and is on the path. Pressing her body against his knees, and slipping her hand into his, she compelled him to sit down again, and dumbfounded him by lifting a face calm as a primrose with happiness.

  “You thought so beautifully about me!” she rejoiced. “You were sorry for me because I am so poor, and you reflected how alike we were in our utter lack of fortune. Ah, dear! I am so grateful to you for that thought. It is so rarely people think how needy I must be, on the little that is all musicians can earn until they are recognised as very great. They think I have no nice things because I am a sloven and do not care. They ask me on visits to their grand houses, where I have to give the servants what I ought to spend on a week’s food. Oh, it was kind of you to have a mind to my poverty! And then you wondered who I am and whence I come. I have often wondered that about you, but since you did not offer to tell me I did not ask. But—yes, I will own that I have been a little hurt because you never asked me about myself. I wanted you to be eager for all of what I was, as well as for all of what I am. So I was happy then, and happy when you remembered that at times you had thought me a princess, and at others a little trollop, for, of course, every woman would like to be both. There are some very enviable effects a trollop can make which are beyond the reach of a princess. Then you looked at my book-case, and marked how I read nothing except the newspapers, and remembered—oh, how flatteringly well!—how I must sit when I read them, because of my poor eyes. And you laughed at me a little, but did not like me any less, because I cannot be interested in anything that does not touch my life, and see nothing as real that does not hold a clue which leads back to me in my little house. It is, as you said, for news of Sir George that I read my paper.

  “And then it was that you caught sight of those photographs behind the telephone directory and my turtle-shell tea-caddy. Oh, my love, when you saw them you showed such wisdom, such kind wisdom, though I fear you have bought it dearly! You looked at them furtively, you held the book and the box so that you might slip them back in place on the instant if I returned. Oh, that was right. When people seek complete knowledge of us it is ten to one they do it to find out the perfect place to shoot an arrow; so we acquire a habit of fearing those, who make that search. With this new power I have to read your mind, I know that what you did proceeded from pure love for me, but had I come in unenlightened and you had not taken the precautions that you did, I might have winced. Do not be ashamed! You were acting as, knowing all, I would have you act. Then your eyes dwelt on my mother’s face. You are right, she is more beautiful than I am. But your other thoughts were far too hopeful. There is nothing to be done. Poor darling, she believes each thunderclap to be a Divine warning. Myself”—she looked a little priggishly at her piano—“I would not care to allege that any sound had so simple a meaning. It is sad, for you are right about my father, who breaks the silence of our hills with a tiresomeness that has something their own air of enduring for ever. Then, thinking of her and him, you began to dream a day-dream of going to lonely places in the North and finding splendid women starved by climate and circumstance, like jewels dropped in peat, and redeeming them by coming dark and handsome into their homes by night. Dearest, I was so glad when you thought that, for it showed me how like you are to me! For never, I will now confess to you, have I travelled on the Underground without expecting the ticket-collector to throw aside that pert, snapping metal thing, and pop down on his knees, disclosing himself to be the Prince of Wales who (I admit very oddly) has chosen to find his bride by acting in that capacity, having had from childhood an ambition to marry that woman of the realm who has the smallest hand and the most darned gloves. We are both silly children, and how fortunate it is that we have found each other, so that we can play together without fear of being scorned by the other for our silliness!

  “And we are not so silly either,” she continued gravely, “for indeed we are marvellous, and should be able to command marvellous things! Yes, all the things you imagined when you looked at yourself in the mirror should come true! That fame, that power over the people, that house with the pillars and the pediments, and a park with the wooded knoll in it from which one can see five counties—there is no reason why you should not have them all! Indeed you do deserve them, for thinking of another human being as you thought of me just after that! Oh, Arnold, I stood in my kitchen and could not believe that I could have inspired such sentiments! I felt proud and humble, and I cried a little, and I lo
nged to give you a present that would not be just a present but would be appropriate to you, would be a present specially designed to please that quality in you which I find so pleasing; and lo! in that thought I found my mind meeting yours. You were thinking the very same thing about me! At that I picked up my tray and told myself to stop day-dreaming; but as I came along the passage I knew that I would find you standing by the mantelpiece, and that I would see in your face that you had been all overthrown and disturbed by the kindness of your feeling for me. I said aloud, ‘Nonsense, he will be on the couch where I left him, and he will be drowsed and indifferent.’ And then my tray pushed open the door—and oh, Arnold! Arnold!”

  Her voice trilled up like a bird’s, her face soared to the level of his face for kisses. He delayed only for a minute to gasp. “It is true. Every word is true! And it is a miracle!” before he clipped her to him and embraced her as if they were being swept off the solid earth by a tide of prodigiousness. There was an added marvel in feeling under his hand her heartbeat which showed that though her spirit was so marvellously transcending all ordinary human limitations, she nevertheless kept as faithful a bond with fact as the tick of a clock. Dizzied, he tried to recall himself to order, the world to order. He jerked back in his chair and loosened her arms. “Harriet!” he protested, “this cannot be!”

  “It is,” she meekly claimed.

  “But, my love, this is the real world! Over on that table I see the horrid form which has been sent you by the Income Tax Commissioners. The things are not compatible. Such miracles of thought cannot occur!”

  “But have I not told you what you were thinking?” she answered calmly. “And can there be any other test?”