The Penguin Book of English Short Stories

by Christopher Dolley

  Poor little Doris! He would write to her kindly, comfortingly, but he wouldn’t see her again. A servant came to tell him that his horse was saddled and waiting. He mounted and rode off. That morning the old bailiff was more irritating than usual.

  Five days later Doris and Mr Hutton were sitting together on the pier at Southend; Doris, in white muslin with pink garnishings, radiated happiness; Mr Hutton, legs outstretched and chair tilted, had pushed the panama back from his forehead, and was trying to feel like a tripper. That night, when Doris was asleep, breathing and warm by his side, he recaptured, in this moment of darkness and physical fatigue, the rather cosmic emotion which had possessed him that evening, not a fortnight ago, when he had made his great resolution. And so his solemn oath had already gone the way of so many other resolutions. Unreason had triumphed; at the first itch of desire he had given way. He was hopeless, hopeless.

  For a long time he lay with closed eyes, ruminating his humiliation. The girl stirred in her sleep. Mr Hutton turned over and looked in her direction. Enough faint light crept in between the half-drawn curtains to show her bare arm and shoulder, her neck, and the dark tangle of hair on the pillow. She was beautiful, desirable. Why did he lie there moaning over his sins? What did it matter? If he were hopeless, then so be it; he would make the best of his hopelessness. A glorious sense of irresponsibility suddenly filled him. He was free, magnificently free. In a kind of exaltation he drew the girl towards him. She woke, bewildered, almost frightened under his rough kisses.

  The storm of his desire subsided into a kind of serene merriment. The whole atmosphere seemed to be quivering with enormous silent laughter.

  ‘Could anyone love you as much as I do, Teddy Bear?’ The question came faintly from distant worlds of love.

  ‘I think I know somebody who does,’ Mr Hutton replied. The submarine laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence and resound.

  ‘Who? Tell me. What do you mean?’ The voice had come very close; charged with suspicion, anguish, indignation, it belonged to this immediate world.

  ‘A – ah!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You’ll never guess.’ Mr Hutton kept up the joke until it began to grow tedious, and then pronounced the name: ‘Janet Spence.’

  Doris was incredulous. ‘Miss Spence of the Manor? That old woman?’ It was too ridiculous. Mr Hutton laughed too.

  ‘But it’s quite true,’ he said. ‘She adores me.’ Oh, the vast joke! He would go and see her as soon as he returned – see and conquer. ‘I believe she wants to marry me,’ he added.

  ‘But you wouldn’t… you don’t intend…’

  The air was fairly crepitating with humour. Mr Hutton laughed aloud. ‘I intend to marry you,’ he said. It seemed to him the best joke he had ever made in his life.

  When Mr Hutton left Southend he was once more a married man. It was agreed that, for the time being, the fact should be kept secret. In the autumn they would go abroad together, and the world should be informed. Meanwhile he was to go back to his own house and Doris to hers.

  The day after his return he walked over in the afternoon to see Miss Spence. She received him with the old Gioconda.

  ‘I was expecting you to come.’

  ‘I couldn’t keep away,’ Mr Hutton gallantly replied.

  They sat in the summer-house. It was a pleasant place – a little old stucco temple bowered among dense bushes of evergreen. Miss Spence had left her mark on it by hanging up over the seat a blue-and-white Della Robbia plaque.

  ‘I am thinking of going to Italy this autumn,’ said Mr Hutton. He felt like a ginger-beer bottle, ready to pop with bubbling humorous excitement.

  ‘Italy. … ’ Miss Spence closed her eyes ecstatically. ‘I feel drawn there too.’

  ‘Why not let yourself be drawn?’

  ‘I don’t know. One somehow hasn’t the energy and initiative to set out alone.’

  ‘Alone. … ’ Ah, sound of guitars and throaty singing! ‘Yes, travelling alone isn’t much fun.’

  Miss Spence lay back in her chair without speaking. Her eyes were still closed. Mr Hutton stroked his moustache. The silence prolonged itself for what seemed a very long time.

  Pressed to stay to dinner, Mr Hutton did not refuse. The fun had hardly started. The table was laid in the loggia. Through its arches they looked out on to the sloping garden, to the valley below and the farther hills. Light ebbed away; the heat and silence were oppressive. A huge cloud was mounting up the sky, and there were distant breathings of thunder. The thunder drew nearer, a wind began to blow, and the first drops of rain fell. The table was cleared. Miss Spence and Mr Hutton sat on in the growing darkness.

  Miss Spence broke a long silence by saying meditatively:

  ‘I think everyone has a right to a certain amount of happiness, don’t you?’

  ‘Most certainly.’ But what was she leading up to? Nobody makes generalizations about life unless they mean to talk about themselves. Happiness: he looked back on his own life, and saw a cheerful, placid existence disturbed by no great griefs or discomforts or alarms. He had always had money and freedom; he had been able to do very much as he wanted. Yes, he supposed he had been happy – happier than most men. And now he was not merely happy; he had discovered in irresponsibility the secret of gaiety. He was about to say something about his happiness when Miss Spence went on speaking.

  ‘People like you and me have a right to be happy some time in our lives.’

  ‘Me?’ said Mr Hutton surprised.

  ‘Poor Henry! Fate hasn’t treated either of us very well.’

  ‘Oh well it might have treated me worse.’

  ‘You’re being cheerful. That’s brave of you. But don’t think I can’t see behind the mask.’

  Miss Spence spoke louder and louder as the rain came down more and more heavily. Periodically the thunder cut across her utterances. She talked on, shouting against the noise.

  ‘I have understood you so well and for so long.’

  A flash revealed her, aimed and intent, leaning towards him. Her eyes were two profound and menacing gun-barrels. The darkness re-engulfed her.

  ‘You were a lonely soul seeking a companion soul. I could sympathize with you in your solitude. Your marriage…’

  The thunder cut short the sentence. Miss Spence’s voice became audible once more with the words:

  ‘…could offer no companionship to a man of your stamp. You needed a soul-mate.’

  A soul-mate – he! a soul-mate. It was incredibly fantastic. ‘Georgette Leblanc, the ex-soul-mate of Maurice Maeterlinck.’ He had seen that in the paper a few days ago. So it was thus that Janet Spence had painted him in her imagination – as a soul-mater. And for Doris he was a picture of goodness and the cleverest man in the world. And actually, really, he was what? – Who knows?

  ‘My heart went out to you. I could understand; I was lonely, too.’ Miss Spence laid her hand on his knee. ‘You were so patient.’ Another flash. She was still aimed, dangerously. ‘You never complained. But I could guess – I could guess.’

  ‘How wonderful of you!’ So he was an âme incomprise. ‘Only a woman’s intuition…’

  The thunder crashed and rumbled, died away, and only the sound of the rain was left. The thunder was his laughter, magnified, externalized. Flash and crash, there it was again, right on top of them.

  ‘Don’t you feel that you have within you something that is akin to this storm?’ He could imagine her leaning forward as she uttered the words. ‘Passion makes one the equal of the elements.’

  What was his gambit now? Why, obviously, he should have said ‘Yes’, and ventured on some unequivocal gesture. But Mr Hutton suddenly took fright. The ginger beer in him had gone flat. The woman was serious – terribly serious. He was appalled.

  Passion? ‘No,’ he desperately answered. ‘I am without passion.’

  But his remark was either unheard or unheeded, for Miss Spence went on with a growing exaltation, speaking so rapi
dly, however, and in such a burningly intimate whisper that Mr Hutton found it very difficult to distinguish what she was saying. She was telling him, as far as he could make out, the story of her life. The lightning was less frequent now, and there were long intervals of darkness. But at each flash he saw her still aiming towards him, still yearning forward with a terrifying intensity. Darkness, the rain, and then flash! her face was there, close at hand. A pale mask, greenish white; the large eyes, the narrow barrel of the mouth, the heavy eyebrows. Agrippina, or wasn’t it rather – yes, wasn’t it rather George Robey?’

  He began devising absurd plans for escaping. He might suddenly jump up, pretending he had seen a burglar – Stop thief! stop thief! – and dash off into the night in pursuit. Or should he say that he felt faint, a heart attack? Or that he had seen a ghost Emily’s ghost – in the garden? Absorbed in his childish plotting, he had ceased to pay any attention to Miss Spence’s words. The spasmodic clutching of her hand recalled his thoughts.

  ‘I honoured you for that, Henry,’ she was saying.

  Honoured him for what?

  ‘Marriage is a sacred tie, and your respect for it, even when the marriage was, as it was in your case, an unhappy one, made me respect you and admire you, and – shall I dare say the word? –’

  Oh, the burglar, the ghost in the garden! But it was too late.

  ‘… yes, love you, Henry, all the more. But we’re free now, Henry.’

  Free? There was a movement in the dark, and she was kneeling on the floor by his chair.

  ‘Oh, Henry, Henry, I have been unhappy too.’

  Her arms embraced him, and by the shaking of her body he could feel that she was sobbing. She might have been a suppliant crying for mercy.

  ‘You mustn’t, Janet,’ he protested. Those tears were terrible, terrible. ‘Not now, not now! You must be calm; you must go to bed.’ He patted her shoulder, then got up, disengaging himself from her embrace. He left her still crouching on the floor beside the chair on which he had been sitting.

  Groping his way into the hall, and without waiting to look for his hat, he went out of the house, taking infinite pains to close the front door noiselessly behind him. The clouds had blown over, and the moon was shining from a clear sky. There were puddles all along the road, and a noise of running water rose from the gutters and ditches. Mr Hutton splashed along, not caring if he got wet.

  How heartrendingly she had sobbed! With the emotions of pity and remorse that the recollection evoked in him there was a certain resentment: why couldn’t she have played the game that he was playing – the heartless, amusing game? Yes, but he had known all the time that she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, play that game; he had known and persisted.

  What had she said about passion and the elements? Something absurdly stale, but true, true. There she was, a cloud black-bosomed and charged with thunder, and he, like some absurd little Benjamin Franklin, had sent up a kite into the heart of the menace. Now he was complaining that his toy had drawn the lightning.

  She was probably still kneeling by that chair in the loggia, crying.

  But why hadn’t he been able to keep up the game? Why had his irresponsibility deserted him, leaving him suddenly sober in a cold world? There were no answers to any of his questions. One idea burned steady and luminous in his mind – the idea of flight. He must get away at once.

  4

  ‘What are you thinking about, Teddy Bear?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  There was a silence. Mr Hutton remained motionless, his elbows on the parapet of the terrace, his chin in his hands, looking down over Florence. He had taken a villa on one of the hilltops to the south of the city. From a little raised terrace at the end of the garden one looked down a long fertile valley on to the town and beyond it to the bleak mass of Monte Morello and, eastward of it, to the peopled hill of Fiesole, dotted with white houses. Everything was clear and luminous in the September sunshine.

  ‘Are you worried about anything?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Tell me, Teddy Bear.’

  ‘But, my dear, there’s nothing to tell.’ Mr Hutton turned round, smiled, and patted the girl’s hand. ‘I think you’d better go in and have your siesta. It’s too hot for you here.’

  ‘Very well, Teddy Bear. Are you coming too?’

  ‘When I’ve finished my cigar.’

  ‘All right. But do hurry up and finish it, Teddy Bear.’ Slowly, reluctantly, she descended the steps of the terrace and walked towards the house.

  Mr Hutton continued his contemplation of Florence. He had need to be alone. It was good sometimes to escape from Doris and the restless solicitude of her passion. He had never known the pains of loving hopelessly, but he was experiencing now the pains of being loved. These last weeks had been a period of growing discomfort. Doris was always with him, like an obsession, like a guilty conscience. Yes, it was good to be alone.

  He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and opened it, not without reluctance. He hated letters; they always contained something unpleasant – nowadays, since his second marriage. This was from his sister. He began skimming through the insulting home-truths of which it was composed. The words ‘indecent haste’, ‘social suicide’, ‘scarcely cold in her grave’, ‘person of the lower classes’, all occurred. They were inevitable now in any communication from a well-meaning and right-thinking relative. Impatient, he was about to tear the stupid letter to pieces when his eye fell on a sentence at the bottom of the third page. His heart beat with uncomfortable violence as he read it. It was too monstrous! Janet Spence was going about telling everyone that he had poisoned his wife in order to marry Doris. What damnable malice! Ordinarily a man of the suavest temper, Mr Hutton found himself trembling with rage. He took the childish satisfaction of calling names – he cursed the woman.

  Then suddenly he saw the ridiculous side of the situation. The notion that he should have murdered anyone in order to marry Doris! If they only knew how miserably bored he was. Poor, dear Janet! She had tried to be malicious; she had only succeeded in being stupid.

  A sound of footsteps aroused him; he looked round. In the garden below the little terrace the servant girl of the house was picking fruit. A Neapolitan, strayed somehow as far north as Florence, she was a specimen of the classical type – a little debased. Her profile might have been taken from a Sicilian coin of a bad period. Her features, carved floridly in the grand tradition, expressed an almost perfect stupidity. Her mouth was the most beautiful thing about her; the calligraphic hand of nature had richly curved it into an expression of mulish bad temper. … Under her hideous black clothes, Mr Hutton divined a powerful body, firm and massive. He had looked at her before with a vague interest and curiosity. Today the curiosity defined and focused itself into a desire. An idyll of Theocritus. Here was the woman; he, alas, was not precisely like a goatherd on the volcanic hills. He called to her.

  ‘Armida!’

  The smile with which she answered him was so provocative, attested so easy a virtue, that Mr Hutton took fright. He was on the brink once more – on the brink. He must draw back, oh! quickly, quickly, before it was too late. The girl continued to look up at him.

  ‘Ha chiamato?’ she asked at last.

  Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

  ‘Scendo,’ he called back to her. Twelve steps led from the garden to the terrace. Mr Hutton counted them. Down, down, down, down. … He saw a vision of himself descending from one circle of the inferno to the next – from a darkness full of wind and hail to an abyss of sinking mud.

  5

  For a good many days the Hutton case had a place on the front page of every newspaper. There had been no more popular murder trial since George Smith had temporarily eclipsed the European War by drowning in a warm bath his seventh bride. The public imagination was stirred by this tale of a murder brought to light months after the date of the crime. Here, it was felt, was one of those incidents in human life, so
notable because they are so rare, which do definitely justify the ways of God to man. A wicked man had been moved by an illicit passion to kill his wife. For months he had lived in sin and fancied security – only to be dashed at last more horribly into the pit he had prepared for himself. Murder will out, and here was a case of it. The readers of the newspapers were in a position to follow every movement of the hand of God. There had been vague, but persistent, rumours in the neighbourhood; the police had taken action at last. Then came the exhumation order, the postmortem examination, the inquest, the evidence of the experts, the verdict of the coroner’s jury, the trial, the condemnation. For once Providence had done its duty, obviously, grossly, didactically, as in a melodrama. The newspapers were right in making of the case the staple intellectual food of a whole

  Mr Hutton’s first emotion when he was summoned from Italy to give evidence at the inquest was one of indignation. It was a monstrous, a scandalous thing that the police should take such idle, malicious gossip seriously. When the inquest was over he would bring an action for malicious prosecution against the Chief Constable; he would sue the Spence woman for slander

  The inquest was opened; the astonishing evidence unrolled itself. The experts had examined the body, and had found traces of arsenic; they were of opinion that the late Mrs Hutton had died of arsenic poisoning.

  Arsenic poisoning. … Emily had died of arsenic poisoning? After that, Mr Hutton learned with surprise that there was enough arsenicated insecticide in his greenhouse to poison an army.

  It was now, quite suddenly, that he saw it: there was a case against him. Fascinated, he watched it growing, growing, like some monstrous tropical plant. It was enveloping him, surrounding him; he was lost in a tangled forest.

  When was the poison administered? The experts agreed that it must have been swallowed eight or nine hours before death. About lunch-time? Yes, about lunch-time. Clara, the parlourmaid, was called. Mrs Hutton, she remembered, had asked her to go and fetch her medicine. Mr Hutton had volunteered to go instead; he had gone alone. Miss Spence – ah, the memory of the storm, the white aimed face! the horror of it all! – Miss Spence confirmed Clara’s statement, and added that Mr Hutton had come back with the medicine already poured out in a wine-glass not in the bottle.