‘Oh no,’ was the jealous answer. ‘I would rather be alone with my things. I daren’t leave the house for fear someone takes them away – there was a dreadful time once when an auction sale was held here –’
‘Were you here then?’ asked Miss Pym; but indeed she looked old enough to have been anywhere.
‘Yes, of course,’ Miss Lefain replied rather peevishly, and Miss Pym decided that she must be a relation of old Sir James Sewell. Clara and Mabel had been very foggy about it all. ‘I was very busy hiding all the china – but one set they got – a Crown Derby tea service …’
‘With one plate missing!’ cried Martha Pym. ‘I bought it, and do you know, I was wondering if you’d found it –’
‘I hid it,’ piped Miss Lefain.
‘Oh, you did, did you? Well, that’s rather funny behaviour. Why did you hide the stuff away instead of buying it?’
‘How could I buy what was mine?’
‘Old Sir James left it to you, then?’ asked Martha Pym, feeling very muddled.
‘She bought a lot more,’ squeaked Miss Lefain, but Martha Pym tried to keep her to the point.
‘If you’ve got the plate,’ she insisted, ‘you might let me have it – I’ll pay quite handsomely. It would be so pleasant to have it after all these years.’
‘Money is no use to me,’ said Miss Lefain mournfully. ‘Not a bit of use. I can’t leave the house or the garden.’
‘Well, you have to live, I suppose,’ said Martha Pym cheerfully. ‘And, do you know, I’m afraid you are getting rather morbid and dull, living here all alone – you really ought to have a fire – why, it’s just on Christmas and very damp.’
‘I haven’t felt the cold for a long time,’ replied the other; she seated herself with a sigh on one of the horsehair chairs and Miss Pym noticed with a start that her feet were covered only by a pair of white stockings. ‘One of those nasty health fiends,’ thought Miss Pym; ‘but she doesn’t look too well for all that.’
‘So you don’t think that you could let me have the plate?’ she asked briskly, walking up and down, for the dark, clean, neat parlour was very cold indeed, and she thought that she couldn’t stand this much longer; as there seemed no sign of tea or anything pleasant and comfortable, she had really better go.
‘I might let you have it,’ sighed Miss Lefain, ‘since you’ve been so kind as to pay me a visit. After all, one plate isn’t much use, is it?’
‘Of course not, I wonder you troubled to hide it.’
‘I couldn’t bear,’ wailed the other, ‘to see the things going out of the house!’
Martha Pym couldn’t stop to go into all this; it was quite clear that the old lady was very eccentric indeed and that nothing very much could be done with her; no wonder that she had ‘dropped out’ of everything and that no one ever saw her or knew anything about her; though Miss Pym felt that some effort ought really to be made to save her from herself.
‘Wouldn’t you like a run in my little governess cart?’ she suggested. ‘We might go to tea with the Wyntons on the way back, they’d be delighted to see you; and I really think that you do want taking out of yourself.’
‘I was taken out of myself some time ago,’ replied Miss Lefain. ‘I really was; and I couldn’t leave my things – though,’ she added with pathetic gratitude, ‘it is very, very kind of you –’
‘Your things would be quite safe, I’m sure,’ said Martha Pym, humouring her. ‘Whoever would come up here this hour of a winter’s day?’
‘They do, oh, they do! And she might come back, prying and nosing and saying it was all hers, all my beautiful china here!’
Miss Lefain squealed in her agitation, and rising up ran round the wall fingering with flaccid, yellow hands the brilliant glossy pieces on the shelves.
‘Well, then, I’m afraid that I must go. They’ll be expecting me, and it’s quite a long ride; perhaps some other time you’ll come and see us?’
‘Oh, must you go?’ quavered Miss Lefain dolefully. ‘I do like a little company now and then, and I trusted you from the first – the others, when they do come, are always after my things and I have to frighten them away.’
‘Frighten them away!’ replied Martha Pym. ‘However do you do that?’
‘It doesn’t seem difficult. People are so easily frightened, aren’t they?’
Miss Pym suddenly remembered that Hartleys had the reputation of being haunted – perhaps the queer old thing played on that; the lonely house with the grave in the garden was dreary enough to create a legend.
‘I suppose you’ve never seen a ghost?’ she asked pleasantly. ‘I’d rather like to see one, you know –’
‘There is no one here but myself,’ said Miss Lefain.
‘So you’ve never seen anything? I thought it must be all nonsense. Still, I do think it rather melancholy for you to live here all alone.’
Miss Lefain sighed. ‘Yes, it’s very lonely. Do stay and talk to me a little longer.’ Her whistling voice dropped cunningly. ‘And I’ll give you the Crown Derby plate!’
‘Are you sure you’ve really got it?’ Miss Pym asked.
‘I’ll show you.’
Fat and waddling as she was, she seemed to move lightly as she slipped in front of Miss Pym and conducted her from the room, going slowly up the stairs – such a gross, odd figure in that clumsy dress with the fringe of white hair hanging on to her shoulders.
The upstairs of the house was as neat as the parlour – everything well in its place; but there was no sign of occupancy; the beds were covered with dustsheets. There were no lamps or fires set ready. ‘I suppose,’ said Miss Pym to herself, ‘she doesn’t care to show me where she really lives.’
But as they passed from one room to another, she could not help saying, ‘Where do you live, Miss Lefain?’
‘Mostly in the garden,’ said the other.
Miss Pym thought of those horrible health huts that some people indulged in.
‘Well, sooner you than I,’ she replied cheerfully.
In the most distant room of all, a dark, tiny closet, Miss Lefain opened a deep cupboard and brought out a Crown Derby plate, which her guest received with a spasm of joy, for it was actually that missing from her cherished set.
‘It’s very good of you,’ she said in delight. ‘Won’t you take something for it or let me do something for you?’
‘You might come and see me again,’ replied Miss Lefain wistfully.
‘Oh yes, of course I should like to come and see you again.’
But now that she had got what she had really come for – the plate – Martha Pym wanted to be gone; it was really very dismal and depressing in the house, and she began to notice a fearful smell – the place had been shut up too long, there was something damp rotting somewhere – in this horrid little dark closet no doubt.
‘I really must be going,’ she said hurriedly.
Miss Lefain turned as if to cling to her, but Martha Pym moved quickly away.
‘Dear me,’ wailed the old lady. ‘Why are you in such haste?’
‘There’s – a smell,’ murmured Miss Pym rather faintly.
She found herself hastening down the stairs, with Miss Lefain complaining behind her.
‘How peculiar people are! She used to talk of a smell –’
‘Well, you must notice it yourself.’
Miss Pym was in the hall; the old woman had not followed her but stood in the semi-darkness at the head of the stairs, a pale, shapeless figure.
Martha Pym hated to be rude and ungrateful, but she could not stay another moment; she hurried away and was in her cart in a moment – really, that smell …
‘Goodbye!’ she called out with false cheerfulness. ‘And thank you so much!’
There was no answer from the house.
Miss Pym drove on; she was rather upset and took another way than that by which she had come – a way that led past a little house raised above the marsh. She was glad to think that the poor old creature at Hartleys ha
d such near neighbours, and she reined up the horse, dubious as to whether she should call someone and tell them that poor old Miss Lefain really wanted a little looking after, alone in a house like that and plainly not quite right in her head.
A young woman, attracted by the sound of the governess cart, came to the door of the house and, seeing Miss Pym, called out, asking if she wanted the keys of the house.
‘What house?’
‘Hartleys, mum. They don’t put a board out, as no one is likely to pass, but it’s to be sold. Miss Lefain wants to sell or let it –’
‘I’ve just been up to see her –’
‘Oh no, mum; she’s been away a year, abroad somewhere – couldn’t stand the place. It’s been empty since then; I just run in every day and keep things tidy.’
Loquacious and curious, the young woman had come to the fence; Miss Pym had stopped her horse.
‘Miss Lefain is there now,’ she said. ‘She must have just come back –’
‘She wasn’t there this morning, mum. ’Tisn’t likely she’d come, either – fair scared she was, mum, fair chased away, didn’t dare move her china. Can’t say I’ve noticed anything myself, but I never stay long; and there’s a smell –’
‘Yes,’ murmured Martha Pym faintly, ‘there’s a smell. What – what – chased her away?’
The young woman, even in that lonely place, lowered her voice.
‘Well, as you aren’t thinking of taking the place, she got an idea in her head that old Sir James … well, he couldn’t bear to leave Hartleys, mum. He’s buried in the garden, and she thought he was after her, chasing round them bits of china –’
‘Oh!’ cried Miss Pym.
‘Some of it used to be his, she found a lot stuffed away; he said they were to be left in Hartleys, but Miss Lefain would have the things sold, I believe – that’s years ago.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Miss Pym with a sick look. ‘You don’t know what he was like, do you?’
‘No, mum; but I’ve heard tell he was very stout and very old – I wonder who it was you saw up at Hartleys?’
Miss Pym took a Crown Derby plate from her bag.
‘You might take that back when you go,’ she whispered. ‘I shan’t want it, after all.’
Before the astonished young woman could answer, Miss Pym had darted off across the marsh; that short hair, that earth-stained robe, the white socks, ‘I generally live in the garden …’
Miss Pym drove away at breakneck speed, frantically resolving to mention to no one that she had paid a visit to Hartleys, nor lightly again to bring up the subject of ghosts.
She shook and shuddered in the damp, trying to get out of her clothes and her nostrils that indescribable smell.
HUGH WALPOLE
(1884–1941)
Born in New Zealand, Hugh Walpole was educated in England, where he found boarding school an experience of ‘sheer, stark, unblinking terror’, exacerbated by a series of nightmares which continued into later life and ‘took exactly the sense of sudden death’. In adult life he became a prolific and successful novelist, cultivating close friendships with other writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad and Henry James, the last of whom he addressed as ‘très cher maître’ in his letters. Although one of the most prominent literary figures of his age, he complained of feeling as if he had ‘my true self jumping up inside me and saying, “Well, you know you’re not a writer of the first rank, you know.”’ His reputation suffered a fatal blow when W. Somerset Maugham caricatured him as the sycophantic and mediocre novelist Alroy Kear in Cakes and Ale. Walpole’s diary reveals his emotions on opening the book for the first time: ‘Read on with increasing horror. Unmistakeable portrait of myself. Never slept!’
THE TARN
I
As Foster moved unconsciously across the room, bent towards the bookcase and stood leaning forward a little, choosing now one book, now another with his eye, his host, seeing the muscles of the back of his thin, scraggy neck stand out above his low flannel collar, thought of the ease with which he could squeeze that throat, and the pleasure, the triumphant, lustful pleasure, that such an action would give him.
The low, white-walled, white-ceilinged room was flooded with the mellow, kindly Lakeland sun. October is a wonderful month in the English Lakes, golden, rich and perfumed, slow suns moving through apricot-tinted skies to ruby evening glories; the shadows lie then thick about that beautiful country, in dark purple patches, in long web-like patterns of silver gauze, in thick splotches of amber and grey. The clouds pass in galleons across the mountains, now veiling, now revealing, now descending with ghost-like armies to the very breast of the plains, suddenly rising to the softest of blue skies and lying thin in lazy languorous colour.
Fenwick’s cottage looked across to Low Fells; on his right, seen through side windows, sprawled the hills above Ullswater.
Fenwick looked at Foster’s back and felt suddenly sick, so that he sat down, veiling his eyes for a moment with his hand. Foster had come up there, come all the way from London, to explain. It was so like Foster to want to explain, to want to put things right. For how many years had he known Foster? Why, for twenty at least, and during all those years Foster had been forever determined to put things right with everybody. He could never bear to be disliked; he hated that anyone should think ill of him; he wanted everyone to be his friend. That was one reason, perhaps, why Foster had got on so well, had prospered so in his career; one reason, too, why Fenwick had not.
For Fenwick was the opposite of Foster in this. He did not want friends, he certainly did not care that people should like him – that is, people for whom, for one reason or another, he had contempt – and he had contempt for quite a number of people.
Fenwick looked at that long, thin, bending back and felt his knees tremble. Soon Foster would turn round and that high, reedy voice would pipe out something about the books. ‘What jolly books you have, Fenwick!’ How many, many times in the long watches of the night, when Fenwick could not sleep, had he heard that pipe sounding close there – yes, in the very shadows of his bed! And how many times had Fenwick replied to it, ‘I hate you! You are the cause of my failure in life! You have been in my way always. Always, always, always! Patronising and pretending, and in truth showing others what a poor thing you thought me, how great a failure, how conceited a fool! I know. You can hide nothing from me! I can hear you!’
For twenty years now Foster had been persistently in Fenwick’s way. There had been that affair, so long ago now, when Robins had wanted a subeditor for his wonderful review, the Parthenon, and Fenwick had gone to see him and they had had a splendid talk. How magnificently Fenwick had talked that day; with what enthusiasm he had shown Robins (who was blinded by his own conceit, anyway) the kind of paper the Parthenon might be; how Robins had caught his own enthusiasm, how he had pushed his fat body about the room, crying, ‘Yes, yes, Fenwick – that’s fine! That’s fine indeed!’ – and then how, after all, Foster had got that job.
The paper had only lived for a year or so, it is true, but the connection with it had brought Foster into prominence just as it might have brought Fenwick!
Then, five years later, there was Fenwick’s novel, The Bitter Aloe – the novel upon which he had spent three years of blood-and-tears endeavour – and then, in the very same week of publication, Foster brings out The Circus, the novel that made his name; although, heaven knows, the thing was poor enough sentimental trash. You may say that one novel cannot kill another – but can it not? Had not The Circus appeared would not that group of London know-alls – that conceited, limited, ignorant, self-satisfied crowd, who nevertheless can do, by their talk, so much to affect a book’s good or evil fortunes – have talked about The Bitter Aloe and so forced it into prominence? As it was, the book was stillborn and The Circus went on its prancing, triumphant way.
After that there had been many occasions – some small, some big – and always in one way or another that thin, scraggy body of Foster’s was int
erfering with Fenwick’s happiness.
The thing had become, of course, an obsession with Fenwick. Hiding up there in the heart of the Lakes, with no friends, almost no company and very little money, he was given too much to brooding over his failure. He was a failure and it was not his own fault. How could it be his own fault with his talents and his brilliance? It was the fault of modern life and its lack of culture, the fault of the stupid material mess that made up the intelligence of human beings – and the fault of Foster.
Always Fenwick hoped that Foster would keep away from him. He did not know what he would not do did he see the man. And then one day, to his amazement, he received a telegram:
Passing through this way. May I stop with you Monday and Tuesday? – Giles Foster.
Fenwick could scarcely believe his eyes, and then – from curiosity, from cynical contempt, from some deeper, more mysterious motive that he dared not analyse – he had telegraphed, ‘Come.’
And here the man was. And he had come – would you believe it? – to ‘put things right’. He had heard from Hamlin Eddis that Fenwick was hurt with him, had some kind of grievance.
‘I didn’t like to feel that, old man, and so I thought I’d just stop by and have it out with you, see what the matter was and put it right.’
Last night after supper Foster had tried to put it right. Eagerly, his eyes like a good dog’s who is asking for a bone that he knows he thoroughly deserves, he had held out his hand and asked Fenwick to ‘say what was up’.
Fenwick simply had said that nothing was up; Hamlin Eddis was a damned fool.
‘Oh, I’m glad to hear that!’ Foster had cried, springing up out of his chair and putting his hand on Fenwick’s shoulder. ‘I’m glad of that, old man. I couldn’t bear for us not to be friends. We’ve been friends so long.’
Lord! How Fenwick hated him at that moment!
II
‘What a jolly lot of books you have!’ Foster turned round and looked at Fenwick with eager, gratified eyes. ‘Every book here is interesting! I like your arrangement of them, too, and those open bookshelves – it always seems to me a shame to shut up books behind glass!’
Tales from the Dead of Night Page 6
