The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  ‘And here you are able to indulge it,’ I said, glancing towards the great house which made a rectangle of intense dark in the night sky.

  ‘But service isn’t what it was before the war,’ he rather platitudinously remarked. ‘The trouble I’ve had, looking for a footman! Still, I think you’ll find your bath has been turned on for you.’

  I took the hint and was moving away when suddenly he called me back.

  ‘Look!’ he said, ‘don’t let’s change for dinner. I’ve got an idea. Fairclough hasn’t been before; it’s his first visit, too. He hasn’t seen the statues. After dinner we’ll play a game of hide and seek. I’ll hide, and you and he shall seek—here, among the statues. It may be a bit dull for you, because you’ll be in the secret. But if you’re bored, you can hunt for me, too—I don’t think you’ll find me. That’s the advantage of knowing the terrain—perhaps rather an unfair one. We’ll have a time-limit. If you haven’t found me within twenty minutes, I’ll make a bolt for home, whatever the circumstances.’

  ‘Where will “home” be?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later. But don’t say anything to Fairclough.’

  I promised not to. ‘But, forgive me,’ I said, ‘I don’t quite see the point——’

  ‘Don’t you? What I want to happen is for Fairclough to mistake the statue for me. I want to see him . . . well . . . startled by it.’

  ‘He might tackle it low and bring it crashing down.’

  My host looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘If you think that, you don’t know him. He’s much too timid. He won’t touch it—they never do until they know what it is.’

  By ‘they’ I supposed him to mean his dupes, past, present and to come.

  We talked a little more and parted.

  I found the footman laying out my dress-suit on the bed. I told him about not changing and asked if Mr. Fairclough had arrived yet.

  ‘Yes, sir, he’s in his room.’

  ‘Could you take me to it?’

  I followed along a passage inadequately lit by antique hanging lanterns, most of which were solid at the bottom.

  Fairclough was changing. I told him we were to wear our ordinary clothes.

  ‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘But he always changes for dinner.’

  ‘Not this evening.’ I didn’t altogether like my rôle of accomplice, but Fairclough had the weakness of being a know-all. Perhaps it would do him no harm to be surprised for once.

  ‘I wonder if Postgate changed,’ I said, broaching the topic which had been exercising my mind ever since I set foot in the house.

  ‘He must have done,’ said Fairclough. ‘Didn’t you know? His dress-clothes were never found.’

  ‘I don’t remember the story at all well,’ I prompted him.

  ‘There’s very little to remember,’ Fairclough said. ‘He arrived, as we have; they separated to change for dinner, as we have; and he was never seen or heard of again.’

  ‘There were other guests, weren’t there?’

  ‘Yes, the house was full of people.’

  ‘When exactly did it happen?’

  ‘Three years ago, two years after Vayne resigned the chairmanship.

  ‘Postgate had a hand in that, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, don’t you know?’ said Fairclough. ‘It was rather generous of Vayne to forgive him in the circumstances. It didn’t make much difference to Vayne; he’d probably have resigned in any case, when he inherited this place from his uncle. It was meant to be a sort of reconciliation party, burying the hatchet, and all that.’

  I agreed that it was magnanimous of Vayne to make it up with someone who had got him sacked. ‘And he’s still loyal to the old firm,’ I added, ‘or we shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Yes, and we’re such small fry,’ Fairclough said. ‘It’s the company, not us, he’s being kind to.’

  I thought of the small ordeal ahead of Fairclough, but it hardly amounted to a breach of kindness.

  ‘I suppose we mustn’t mention Postgate to him?’ I said.

  ‘Why not? I believe he likes to talk about him. Much better for him than bottling it up.’

  ‘Would you call him a vain man?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly, Vayne by name and vain by nature.’

  ‘He seemed rather pleased with himself as a sculptor,’ I remarked.

  ‘A sculptor?’ echoed Fairclough.

  I realized my indiscretion, but had gone too far to draw back. ‘Yes, didn’t you know?’ I asked maliciously. ‘He’s done a statue. A sort of portrait. And he talks of doing some more. Portraits of his friends in plaster. He asked me if I’d be his model.’

  ‘I wonder if he’d do one of me?’ asked Fairclough, with instinctive egotism. ‘I should make rather a good statue, I think.’ Half-undressed, he surveyed himself in the mirror. Long and willowy, fair complexioned as his name, he had a bulging knobby forehead under a thin thatch of hair. ‘Did you say yes?’ he asked.

  ‘I said I couldn’t stand, but if he would make it a recumbent effigy, I would lie to him.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘Where’s his studio?’ asked Fairclough, almost humbly.

  ‘Underground. He says he prefers to work by artificial light.’

  We both thought about this, and some association of ideas made me ask:

  ‘Is the house haunted?’

  ‘Not that I ever heard of,’ Fairclough said. ‘But there’s a legend about a bath.’

  ‘A bath?’

  ‘Yes, it’s said to be on the site of an old lift-shaft, and to go up and down. Funny how such stories get about. And talking of baths,’ Fairclough went on, ‘I must be getting into mine. You may not know it, but he doesn’t like one to be a minute late.’

  ‘Just let me look at it,’ I said. ‘Mine’s down a passage. You have one of your own, you lucky dog.’

  We inspected the appointments, which were marble and luxurious, and very up to date, except for the bath itself, which was an immense, old-fashioned mahogany contraption with a lid.

  ‘A lid!’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know the story of the Mistletoe Bough?’ Fairclough clearly didn’t, and with this parting shot I left him.

  In spite of Fairclough’s warning, I was a few minutes late for dinner. How that came about occupied my thoughts throughout the marvellous meal, though I could not bring myself to speak of it and would much rather not have thought about it. I’m afraid I was a dull guest, and Vayne himself was less animated than he had been before dinner. After dinner, however, he cheered up, and when he was giving us our orders for the evening, editing them somewhat for Fairclough’s benefit, he had recovered all his old assurance. We were to divide, he said; I was to take the left-hand range of yew compartments, or temene, as he liked to call them, Fairclough the right. From the top of the terrace steps, a long steep flight, he indicated to us our spheres of action. ‘And home will be here, where I’m standing,’ he wound up. ‘I’ll call “coo-ee” when I’m ready.’

  He strolled off in the direction of the house. Fairclough and I walked cautiously down the steps on to the great circle of grass from which the two blocks of temene diverged. Here we bowed ceremoniously and parted. Fairclough disappeared into the black wall of yew.

  At last I was alone with my thoughts. Of course it was only another of Vayne’s practical jokes; I realized that now. But at the moment when it happened, I was scared stiff. And I still couldn’t help wondering what would have become of me if—well, if I had got into the bath. I just put my foot in, as I often do, to test the water. I didn’t pull it out at once, for the water was rather cool. In fact I put my whole weight on it.

  ‘Coo-ee!’

  Now the hunt was up. Fairclough would be peering in the shadows. But mine was merely a spectator’s rôle; I was Vayne’s stooge. His stooge. . . .

  Directly I felt something give, I pulled my foot out, and the lid came down and the bath sank through the floor like a coffin at a cremation service. Goodness, how frightened I was! I he
ard the click as the bath touched bottom; but I couldn’t see it down the shaft. Then I heard rumbling again, and saw the bath-lid coming up. But I did not risk getting in, not I.

  ‘Coo-ee!’

  I jumped. It sounded close beside me. I moved into another temenos, trying to pretend that I was looking for Vayne. Really it would serve him right if I gave him away to Fairclough. He had no business to frighten people like that.

  ‘Coo-ee!’

  Right over on Fairclough’s side, now. But it sounded somehow different; was it an owl? It might not be very easy to find Fairclough; there must be half a hundred of these blasted temene, and the moon was hidden by clouds. He might go out through one opening just as I was entering by another, and so we might go on all night. Thank goodness the night was warm. But what a silly farce it was.

  I could just see to read my watch. Another quarter of an hour to go. Fairclough must be getting jumpy. I’ll go and find him, I thought, and put him wise about the figure. Vayne would never know. Or would he? One couldn’t tell where he was, he might be in the next temenos, watching me through a hole.

  A light mist was descending, which obscured the heads of such statues as I could see projecting above the high walls of the temene. If it grew thicker, I might not see Fairclough even if he were close to me, and we might wander about till Doomsday—at least, for another ten minutes, which seemed just as long to wait.

  I looked down, and saw that my feet had left tracks, dark patches in the wet grass. They seemed to lead in all directions. But were they all mine? Had I really walked about as much as that? I tried to identify the footprints and see if they tallied.

  ‘Coo-ee!’

  That almost certainly was an owl; the sound seemed to come from above. But perhaps Vayne added ventriloquism to his other accomplishments. He was capable of anything. Not a man one could trust. Postgate hadn’t trusted him—not, at least, as the chairman of the company.

  It was my duty, I now felt, to warn Fairclough. And I should be quite glad to see him myself, quite glad. But where was he?

  I found myself running from one temenos to another and getting back to the one I started from. I could tell by the figure: at least that didn’t move. I started off again. Steady, steady. Here was a temenos with no footprints on it—a virgin temenos. I crossed it and found myself in the central circle. I crossed that too.

  Now I was in Fairclough’s preserves. Poor Fairclough! To judge by the footprints, he had been running round even more than I had. But were they all his? Here was the figure of Pan—the god of panic. Very appropriate.

  ‘Fairclough! Fairclough!’ I began to call as loudly as I dared having nearly but not quite lost my head.

  ‘Fairclough! Fairclough!’ I couldn’t bring myself to hug the walls; the shadows were too thick; I stuck to the middle of each space.

  I suppose I was expecting to find him, and yet when I heard him answer ‘Here!’ I nearly jumped out of my skin. He was crouching against a hedge. He evidently had the opposite idea from mine; he felt the hedge was a protection; and I had some difficulty in persuading him to come out into the open.

  ‘Listen!’ I whispered. “What you’ve got to do is——’

  ‘But I’ve seen him,’ Fairclough said. ‘There’s his footmark.’

  I looked: the footmark was long and slurred, quite unlike his or mine.

  ‘If you were sure it was him,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you speak to him?’

  ‘I did,’ said Fairclough, ‘but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even turn round.’

  ‘Someone may have got into the garden,’ I said, ‘some third person. But we’ll find out. I’ll take you to the statue.’

  ‘The statue?’

  ‘I’ll explain afterwards.’

  I had regained my confidence, but could not remember in which direction Vayne’s statue lay.

  Suddenly I had an idea.

  ‘We’ll follow the footprints.’

  ‘Which?’ asked Fairclough.

  ‘Well, the other person’s.’

  Easy to say; easy to distinguish them from ours; but which way were they pointing? That was the question.

  ‘He walks on his heels,’ I said. ‘It’s this way.’

  ‘We followed and reached the temenos where the statue had stood. No possibility of mistake. We saw the patches of dead grass where its feet had been; we saw the footprints leading away from them. But the statue was not there.

  ‘Vayne!’ I shouted. ‘Vayne!’

  ‘Coo-ee!’ came a distant call.

  ‘To the steps,’ I cried. ‘To the steps! Let’s go together!’

  Vayne was standing on the terrace steps: I saw him plainly; and I also saw the figure that was stalking him: the other Vayne. Two Vaynes. Vayne our host, the shorter of the two, stood lordly, confident, triumphing over the night. ‘Coo-ee!’ he hooted to his moonlit acres. ‘Coo-ee!’ But the other Vayne had crept up the grass slope and was crouching at his back.

  For a moment the two figures stood one behind the other, motionless as cats. Then a scream rang out; there was a whirl of limbs, like the Manxman’s wheel revolving; a savage snarl, a headlong fall, a crash. Both fell, both Vaynes. “When the thuds of their descent were over, silence reigned.

  They were lying in a heap together, a tangled heap of men and plaster. A ceiling might have fallen on them, yet it was not a ceiling; it was almost a third man, for the plaster fragments still bore a human shape. Both Vaynes were dead but one of them, we learned afterwards, had been dead for a long time. And this Vayne was not Vayne at all, but Postgate.

  MONKSHOOD MANOR

  ‘He’s a strange man,’ said Nesta.

  ‘Strange in what way?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, just neurotic. He has a fire-complex or something of the kind. He lies awake at night thinking that a spark may have jumped through the fireguard and set the carpet alight. Then he has to get up and go down to look. Sometimes he does this several times a night, even after the fire has gone out.’

  ‘Does he keep an open fire in his own house?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, he does, because it’s healthier, and other people like it, and he doesn’t want to give way to himself about it.’

  ‘He sounds a man of principle,’ I observed.

  ‘He is,’ my hostess said. ‘I think that’s half the trouble with Victor. If he would let himself go more he wouldn’t have these fancies. They are his sub-conscious mind punishing him, he says, by making him do what he doesn’t want to. But somebody has told him that if he could embrace his neurosis and really enjoy it——’

  I laughed.

  ‘I don’t mean in that way,’ said Nesta severely. ‘What a mind you have, Hugo! And he conscientiously tries to. As if anyone could enjoy leaving a nice warm bed and creeping down cold passages to look after a fire that you pretty well know is out!’

  ‘Are you sure that it is a fire he looks at?’ I asked. ‘I can think of another reason for creeping down a cold passage and embracing what lies at the end of it.’

  Nesta ignored this.

  ‘It’s not only fires,’ she said, ‘it’s gas taps, electric light switches, anything that he thinks might start a blaze.’

  ‘But seriously, Nesta,’ I said, ‘there might be some method in his madness. It gives him an alibi for all sorts of things besides love-making: theft, for instance, or murder.’

  ‘You say that because you don’t know Victor,’ Nesta said. ‘He’s almost a Buddhist—he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Does he want people to know about his peculiarity?’ I asked. ‘I know he’s told you——’

  ‘He does and he doesn’t,’ Nesta answered.

  ‘It’s obvious why he doesn’t. It isn’t so obvious why he does,’ I observed.

  ‘It’s rather complicated,’ Nesta said. ‘I doubt if your terre-à-terre mind would understand it. The whole thing is mixed up in his mind with guilt——’

  ‘There you are!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, but not real guilt. And he thin
ks that if someone caught him prowling about at night they might——’

  ‘I should jolly well think they would!’

  ‘And besides, he doesn’t want to keep it a secret, festering. He would rather people laughed at him.’

  ‘Laugh!’ I repeated. ‘I can’t see that it’s a laughing matter.’

  ‘No, it isn’t really. It all goes back to old Œdipus, I expect. Most men suffer from that, more or less. I expect you do, Hugo.’

  ‘Me?’ I protested. ‘My father died before I was born. How could I have killed him?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Nesta, pityingly. ‘But what I wanted to say was, if you should hear an unusual noise at night——’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Or happen to see somebody walking about——’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ll know it’s nothing to be alarmed at. It’s just Victor, taking what he calls his safety precautions.’

  ‘I’ll count three before I fire,’ I said.

  Nesta and I had been taking a walk before the other week-end guests arrived.

  The house came into sight, long and low with mullioned windows, crouching beyond the lawn. This was my first visit to Nesta’s comparatively new home. She was always changing houses. Leaving the subject of Victor we talked of the other guests, of their matrimonial intentions, prospects or entanglements. Our conversation had the pre-war air which Nesta could always command.

  ‘Is Walter here?’ I asked. Walter was her husband.

  ‘No, he’s away shooting. He doesn’t come here very much, as you know. He never cared for Monkshood, I don’t know why. Oh, by the way, Hugo,’ she went on, ‘I’ve an apology to make to you. I never put any books in your room. I know you’re a great reader, but——’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I go to bed to sleep.’

  She smiled. ‘Then that’s all right. Would you like to see the room?’

  I said I would.

  ‘It’s called the Blue Bachelor’s room, and it’s on the ground floor.’

  We joked a bit about the name.

  ‘Bachelors are always in a slight funk,’ I said, ‘because of the designing females stalking them. But why didn’t you give the room to Victor? It might have saved him several journeys up and down stairs.’