The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  ‘And in consequence of these Barbarities her nature which was soft and yielding at the first was greatly changed, and those who sawe her now (but Pitie seal’d their lips) would have said she had a Bad Hearte.’

  No wonder, thought Maggie, reading with a new and painful interest how the murdered woman avenged herself on various descendants, direct and collateral, of her persecutor. ‘And it hath been generally supposed by the vulgar that her vengeance was directed only against members of that family from which she had taken so many Causeless Hurtes; and the depraved, defective, counterfeit records of those times have lent colour to this Opinion. Whereas the truth is as I now state it, having had access to those death-bed and testamentary depositions which, preserved in ink however faint, do greater service to verity than the relations of Pot-House Historians, enlarged by Memory and confused by Ale. Yet it is on such Testimonies that rash and sceptical Heads rely when they assert that the Lady Elinor had no hand in the late Horrid Occurrence at Low Threshold Hall, which I shall presently describe, thinking that a meer visitor and no blood relation could not be the object of her vengeance, notwithstanding the evidence of two serving-maids, one at the door and one craning her neck from an upper casement, who saw him beare her in: The truth being that she maketh no distinction between persons, but whoso admits her, on him doth her vengeance fall. Seven times she hath brought death to Low Threshold Hall; Three, it is true, being members of the family, but the remaining four indifferent Persons and not connected with them, having in common only this piece of folie, that they, likewise, let her in. And in each case she hath used the same manner of attack, as those who have beheld her first a room’s length, then no further than a Lovers Embrace, from her victim have in articulo mortis delivered. And the moment when she is no longer seen, which to the watchers seems the Clarion and Reveille of their hopes, is in reality the knell; for she hath not withdrawn further, but approached nearer, she hath not gone out but entered in: and from her dreadful Citadel within the body rejoyces, doubtless, to see the tears and hear the groanes, of those who with Comfortable Faces (albeit with sinking Hearts), would soothe the passage of the parting Soul. Their lacrimatory Effusions are balm to her wicked Minde; the sad gale and ventilation of their sighs a pleasing Zephyre to her vindictive spirit.’

  Maggie put down the book for a moment and stared in front of her. Then she began again to read.

  ‘Once only hath she been cheated of her Prey, and it happened thus. His Bodie was already swollen with the malignant Humours she had stirred up in him and his life despaired of when a kitchen-wench was taken with an Imposthume that bled inwardly. She being of small account and but lately arrived they did only lay her in the Strawe, charging the Physician (and he nothing loth, expecting no Glory or Profit from attendance on such a Wretched creature) not to Divide his Efforts but use all his skill to save their Cousin (afterwards the twelfth Lord). Notwithstanding which precaution he did hourly get worse until sodainely a change came and he began to amend. Whereat was such rejoicing (including an Ox roasted whole) that the night was spent before they heard that the serving-maid was dead. In their Revels they gave small heed to this Event, not realizing that they owed His life to Hers; for a fellow-servant who tended the maid (out of charity) declared that her death and the cousin’s recovery followed as quickly as a clock striking Two. And the Physician said it was well, for she would have died in any case.

  ‘Whereby we must conclude that the Lady Elinor, like other Apparitions, is subject to certain Lawes. One, to abandon her Victim and seeking another tenement to transfer her vengeance, should its path be crossed by a Body yet nearer Dissolution: and another is, she cannot possess or haunt the corpse after it has received Christian Buriall. As witness the fact that the day after the Interment of the tenth Lord she again appeared at the Doore and being recognized by her inability to make the Transit was turned away and pelted. And another thing I myself believe but have no proof of is: That her power is circumscribed by the walls of the House; those victims of her Malignitie could have been saved but for the dreadful swiftnesse of the disease and the doctors unwillingness to move a Sicke man; otherwise how could the Termes of her Curse that she pronounced be fulfilled: “They shall be carried out Feet Foremost”?’

  Maggie read no more. She walked out of the library with the book under her arm. Before going to see how Antony was she would put it in her bedroom where no one could find it. Troubled and oppressed she paused at the head of the stairs. Her way lay straight ahead, but her glance automatically travelled to the right where, at the far end of the passage, Antony’s bedroom lay. She looked again; the door, which she could only just see, was shut now. But she could swear it had closed upon a woman. There was nothing odd in that; Mildred might have gone in, or Muriel, or a servant. But all the same she could not rest. Hurriedly she changed her dress and went to Antony’s room. Pausing at the door she listened and distinctly heard his voice, speaking rapidly and in a low tone; but no one seemed to reply. She got no answer to her knock, so, mustering her courage, she walked in.

  The blind was down and the room half dark, and the talking continued, which increased her uneasiness. Then, as her eyes got used to the darkness, she realized, with a sense of relief, that he was talking in his sleep. She pulled up the blind a little, so that she might see his hand. The brown mark had spread, she thought, and looked rather puffy as though coffee had been injected under the skin. She felt concerned for him. He would never have gone properly to bed like that, in his pyjamas, if he hadn’t felt ill, and he tossed about restlessly. Maggie bent over him. Perhaps he had been eating a biscuit: there was some gritty stuff on the pillow. She tried to scoop it up but it eluded her. She could make no sense of his mutterings, but the word ‘light’ came in a good deal. Perhaps he was only half asleep and wanted the blind down. At last her ears caught the sentence that was running on his lips: ‘She was so light.’ Light? A light woman? Browning. The words conveyed nothing to her, and not wishing to wake him she tiptoed from the room.

  ‘The doctor doesn’t seem to think seriously of any of us, Maggie, you’ll be glad to hear,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, coming into the drawing-room about six o’clock. ‘Eileen’s coming down to dinner. I am to drink less port—I didn’t need a doctor, alas! to tell me that. Antony’s the only casualty: he’s got a slight temperature, and had better stay where he is until to-morrow. The doctor thinks it is one of those damnable horse-flies: his arm is a bit swollen, that’s all.’

  ‘Has he gone?’ asked Maggie quickly.

  ‘Who, Antony?’

  ‘No, no, the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, I’d forgotten your poor head. No, you’ll just catch him. His car’s on the terrace.’

  The doctor, a kindly, harassed middle-aged man, listened patiently to Maggie’s questions.

  ‘The brown mark? Oh, that’s partly the inflammation, partly the iodine—he’s been applying it pretty liberally, you know; amateur physicians are all alike; feel they can’t have too much of a good thing.’

  ‘You don’t think the water here’s responsible? I wondered if he ought to go away.’

  ‘The water? Oh no. No, it’s a bite all right, though I confess I can’t see the place where the devil got his beak in. I’ll come to-morrow, if you like, but there’s really no need.’

  The next morning, returning from his bath, Ronald marched into Antony’s room. The blind went up with a whizz and a smack, and Antony opened his eyes.

  ‘Good morning, old man,’ said Ronald cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d look in and see you. How goes the blood-poisoning? Better?’

  Antony drew up his sleeve and hastily replaced it. The arm beneath was chocolate-coloured to the elbow.

  ‘I feel pretty rotten,’ he said.

  ‘I say, that’s bad luck. What this?’ added Ronald, coming nearer. ‘Have you been sleeping in both beds?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ murmured Antony.

  ‘You have, though,’ said Ronald. ‘If this bed hasn’t been slept in, it�
�s been slept on, or lain on. That I can swear. Only a head, my boy, could have put that dent in the pillow, and only a pair of muddy—hullo! The pillow’s got it, too.’

  ‘Got what?’ asked Antony drowsily.

  ‘Well, if you ask me, it’s common garden mould.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I feel pretty mouldy, too.’

  ‘Well, Antony; to save your good name with the servants, I’ll remove the traces.’

  With characteristic vigour Ronald swept and smoothed the bed.

  ‘Now you’ll be able to look Rundle in the face.’

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘If this is Maggie,’ said Ronald, ‘I’m going.’

  It was, and he suited the action to the word.

  ‘You needn’t trouble to tell me, dearest,’ she said, ‘that you are feeling much better, because I can see that you aren’t.’

  Antony moved his head uneasily on the pillow.

  ‘I don’t feel very flourishing, to tell you the honest truth.’

  ‘Listen’—Maggie tried to make her voice sound casual—‘I don’t believe this is a very healthy place. Don’t laugh, Antony; we’re all of us more or less under the weather. I think you ought to go away.’

  ‘My dear, don’t be hysterical. One often feels rotten when one wakes up. I shall be all right in a day or two.’

  ‘Of course you will. But all the same if you were in Sussex Square you could call in Fosbrook—and, well, I should be more comfortable.’

  ‘But you’d be here!’

  ‘I could stay at Pamela’s.’

  ‘But, darling, that would break up the party. I couldn’t do it; and it wouldn’t be fair to Mildred.’

  ‘My angel, you’re no good to the party, lying here in bed. And as long as you’re here, let me warn you they won’t see much of me.’

  A look of irritation Maggie had never noticed before came into his face as he said, almost spitefully:

  ‘Supposing the doctor won’t allow you to come in? It may be catching, you know.’

  Maggie concealed the hurt she felt.

  All the more reason for you to be out of the house.’

  He pulled up the bedclothes with a gesture of annoyance and turned away.

  ‘Oh, Maggie, don’t keep nagging at me. You ought to be called Naggie, not Maggie.’

  This was an allusion to an incident in Maggie’s childhood. Her too great solicitude for a younger brother’s safety had provoked the gibe. It had always wounded her, but never so much as coming from Antony’s lips. She rose to go.

  ‘Do put the bed straight,’ said Antony, still with face averted. ‘Otherwise they’ll think you’ve been sleeping here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, Ronald said something about it.’

  Maggie closed the door softly behind her. Antony was ill, of course, she must remember that. But he had been ill before, and was always an angelic patient. She went down to breakfast feeling miserable.

  After breakfast, at which everyone else had been unusually cheerful, she thought of a plan. It did not prove so easy of execution as she hoped.

  ‘But, dearest Maggie,’ said Mildred, ‘the village is nearly three miles away. And there’s nothing to see there.’

  ‘I love country post-offices,’ said Maggie; ‘they always have such amusing things.’

  ‘There is a post-office,’ admitted Mildred. ‘But are you sure it isn’t something we could do from here? Telephone, telegraph?’

  ‘Perhaps there’d be a picture-postcard of the house,’ said Maggie feebly.

  ‘Oh, but Charlie has such nice ones,’ Mildred protested. ‘He’s so house-proud, you could trust him for that. Don’t leave us for two hours just to get postcards. We shall miss you so much, and think of poor Antony left alone all the morning.’

  Maggie had been thinking of him.

  ‘He’ll get on all right without me,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Well, wait till the afternoon when the chauffeur or Ronald can run you over in a car. He and Charlie have gone into Norwich and won’t be back till lunch.’

  ‘I think I’ll walk,’ said Maggie. ‘It’ll do me good.’

  ‘I managed that very clumsily,’ she thought, ‘so how shall I persuade Antony to tell me the address of his firm?’

  To her surprise his room was empty. He must have gone away in the middle of writing a letter, for there were sheets lying about on the writing-table and, what luck! an envelope addressed to Higgins & Stukeley, 312 Paternoster Row. A glance was all she really needed to memorize the address; but her eyes wandered to the litter on the table. What a mess! There were several pages of notepaper covered with figures. Antony had been making calculations and, as his habit was, decorating them with marginal illustrations. He was good at drawing faces, and he had a gift for catching a likeness. Maggie had often seen, and been gratified to see, slips of paper embellished with portraits of herself—full-face, side-face, three-quarter-face. But this face that looked out from among the figures and seemed to avoid her glance, was not hers. It was the face of a woman she had never seen before but whom she felt she would recognize anywhere, so consistent and vivid were the likenesses. Scattered among the loose leaves were the contents of Antony’s pocket-book. She knew he always carried her photograph. Where was it? Seized by an impulse, she began to rummage among the papers. Ah, here it was. But it was no longer hers! With a few strokes Antony had transformed her oval face, unlined and soft of feature, into a totally different one, a pinched face with high cheekbones, hollow cheeks, and bright hard eyes, from whose corners a sheaf of fine wrinkles spread like a fan: a face with which she was already too familiar.

  Unable to look at it she turned away and saw Antony standing behind her. He seemed to have come from the bath for he carried a towel and was wearing his dressing-gown.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s an improvement?’

  She could not answer him, but walked over to the washstand and took up the thermometer that was lying on it.

  ‘Ought you to be walking about like that,’ she said at last, ‘with a temperature of a hundred?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he replied, making two or three goat-like skips towards the bed. ‘But I feel rather full of beans this morning.’

  Maggie edged away from his smile towards the door.

  ‘There isn’t anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Not to-day, my darling.’

  The term of endearment struck her like a blow.

  Maggie sent off her telegram and turned into the village street. The fact of being able to do something had relieved her mind: already in imagination she saw Antony being packed into the Ampleforths’ Daimler with rugs and hot-water bottles, and herself, perhaps, seated by the driver. They were endlessly kind, and would make no bones about motoring him to London. But though her spirits were rising her body felt tired; the day was sultry, and she had hurried. Another bad night like last night, she thought, and I shall be a wreck. There was a chemist’s shop over the way, and she walked in.

  ‘Can I have some sal volatile?’

  ‘Certainly, madam.’

  She drank it and felt better.

  ‘Oh, and have you anything in the way of a sleeping draught?’

  ‘We have some allodanol tablets, madam.’

  ‘I’ll take them.’

  ‘Have you a doctor’s prescription?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to sign the poison book. Just a matter of form.’

  Maggie recorded her name, idly wondering what J. Bates, her predecessor on the list, meant to do with his cyanide of potassium.

  ‘We must try not to worry,’ said Mrs. Ampleforth, handing Maggie her tea, ‘but I must say I’m glad the doctor has come. It relieves one of responsibility, doesn’t it? Not that I feel disturbed about Antony—he was quite bright when I went to see him just before lunch. And he’s been sleeping since. But I quite see what Maggie means. He doesn’t seem himself. Perhaps it would be
a good plan, as she suggests, to send him to London. He would have better advice there.’

  Rundle came in.

  ‘A telegram for Mr. Fairfield, madam.’

  ‘It’s been telephoned: “Your presence urgently required Tuesday morning—Higgins & Stukeley.” Tuesday, that’s to-morrow. Everything seem to point to his going, doesn’t it, Charles?’

  Maggie was delighted, but a little surprised, that Mrs. Ampleforth had fallen in so quickly with the plan of sending Antony home. ‘Could he go to-day?’ she asked.

  ‘To-morrow would be too late, wouldn’t it?’ said Mr. Ampleforth drily. ‘The car’s at his disposal: he can go whenever he likes.’

  Through her relief Maggie felt a little stab of pain that they were both so ready to see the last of Antony. He was generally such a popular guest.

  ‘I could go with him,’ she said.

  Instantly they were up in arms. Ronald the most vehement of all. ‘I’m sure Antony wouldn’t want you to. You know what I mean, Maggie, it’s such a long drive, in a closed car on a stuffy evening. Charlie says he’ll send a man, if necessary.’ Mr. Ampleforth nodded. ‘But if he were ill!’ cried Maggie.

  The entrance of the doctor cut her short. He looked rather grave. ‘I wish I could say I was satisfied with Mr. Fairfield’s progress,’ he said, ‘but I can’t. The inflammation has spread up the arm as far as the shoulder, and there’s some fever. His manner is odd, too, excitable and apathetic by turns.’ He paused. ‘I should like a second opinion.’ Mr. Ampleforth glanced at his wife.