Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  The owner of the newspaper snippet was scrutinizing the gay, blurred photograph with as much interest as I was; though to him it was upside-down. There was a queer foolish look on his face, a little feline, perhaps, in its sentimentality.

  I pushed back the cutting across the marble table and he carefully reinterred it in his pocket-book. ‘I was wondering,’ he rambled on as he did so, ‘what you might have thought of it – without prejudice, so to speak, if you had come across it – casually-like; in the newspaper, I mean?’

  The question was not quite so simple as it sounded. It appeared as if my new acquaintance were in wait for a comment which he himself was eager to supply. And I had nothing much to say.

  ‘It’s difficult, you know, to judge from prints in newspapers,’ I commented at last. They are usually execrable even as caricatures. But she looks, if I may say so, an uncommonly genial woman: feminine – and a practical one, too. Not one, I mean, who would be likely to be missing, except on purpose – of her own choice, that is.’ Our eyes met an instant. ‘The whole business must have been very disturbing, a great anxiety to you. And, of course, to Miss … to your sister, I mean.’

  ‘My name,’ he retorted abruptly, shutting his eyes while a bewildering series of expressions netted themselves on his face, ‘my name is Bleet.’

  ‘Miss Bleet,’ I added, glancing at the pocket into which the book had by now disappeared, and speculating, too, why so preposterous an alias should have occurred to apparently so ready a tongue.

  ‘You were saying “genial”,’ he added rapidly. ‘And that is what they all agreed. Even her only male relative – an uncle, as he called himself, though I can swear she never mentioned him in that or in any other capacity. She hadn’t always been what you might call a happy woman, mind you. But they were bound to agree that those two years under my care – in our house – were the happiest in Miss Dutton’s life. We made it a real home to her. She had her own rooms and her few bits of furniture – photographs, whatnots and so on, quite private. It’s a pretty large house considering the rent – countrified, you know; and there was a sort of a new wing added to it fifty years or more ago. Old-fashioned, of course – open fireplace, no bath, enormous kitchen range – swallows coal by the bushel – and so on – very inconvenient but cheap. And though my sister was not in a position to supervise the housekeeping, there couldn’t be a more harmless and affectionate creature. To those, that is, who were kind to her. She’d run away from those who weren’t – just run away and hide. I must explain that my poor sister was not quite – was a little weak in her intellects – from her childhood. It was always a great responsibility. But as time went on,’ he drew his hand wearily over his face, ‘Miss Dutton herself very kindly relieved me of a good deal of that. You said she looked a practical woman; so she was.’

  His narrative was becoming steadily more personal, and disconcerting. And yet – such is humanity – it was as steadily intensifying in interest. A menacing rumble of thunder at that moment sounded over the street, and a horse clattered down with its van beyond the open door. My country friend did not appear to have noticed it.

  ‘You never know quite where you are with the ladies,’ he suddenly ejaculated, and glanced piercingly up – for at that moment our waitress had drawn near.

  ‘It’s a ’Ighteen,’ she said, pencil on lip, and looking vacantly from one to the other of us.

  ‘“Ighteen”,’ echoed her customer sharply; ‘what’s that? Oh the omnibus. You didn’t say what you meant. Thank you.’ She hovered on, check-book in hand. ‘And please bring me another cup of coffee.’ He looked at me as if with the intention of duplicating his order. I shook my head. ‘One cup, then, miss; no hurry.’

  The waitress withdrew.

  ‘It looks as if rain was coming,’ he went on, and as if he were thirsting for it as much as I was. ‘As I was saying, you can never be quite sure where you are with women; and, mind you, Miss Dutton was a woman of the world. She had seen a good deal of life – been abroad – Gay Paree, Monte Carlo, and all that. Germany before the war, too. She could read French as free and easy as you could that mennoo there. Paper-bound books with pictures on them, and that kind of thing.’ He was looking at me, I realized, as if there were no other way of intimating the particular kind of literature he had in mind.

  ‘I used to wonder sometimes what she could find in us, such a lonely place; no company. Though, of course, she was free to ask any friends if she wanted to, and talked of them too when in the mood. Good class, to judge from what she said. What I mean is, she was quite her own mistress. And I must say there could not be more good humour and so on than what she showed my poor sister. At least, until later. She’d talk to her as if conversing; and my sister would sit there by the window, looking back at her and smiling and nodding just as if she were taking it all in. And who knows, perhaps she was. What I mean is, it’s possible to have things in your head which you can’t quite put into so many words. It’s one of the things I look for when I come up to London: the faces that could tell a story though what’s behind them can’t.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I can assure you that before a few weeks were over she had got to be as much at home with us as if we had known her all our lives. Chatty and domesticated, and all that. And using the whole house just as if it belonged to her. All the other arrangements were easy, too. I can say now, and I said it then, that we never once up to then demeaned ourselves to a single word of disagreement about money matters or anything else. A woman like that, who has been all over the continent, isn’t likely to go far wrong in that. I agree the terms were on the generous side; but then, you take me, so were the arrangements.

  ‘She asked herself to raise them when she had been with us upwards of twelve months. But I said “No”. I said, “A bargain’s a bargain, Edna” – we were “Edna” and “William” to one another, by then, and my sister too. She was very kind to my poor sister; got a specialist up all the way from Bath – though for all his prying questions he did nothing, as I knew he wouldn’t. You can’t take those things so late. Mind you, as I say, the business arrangements were not all on one side. Miss Dutton liked things select and comfortable. She liked things to go smoothly; as we all do, I reckon. She had been accustomed to smart boarding-houses and hotels – that kind of thing. And I did my level best to keep things nice.’

  My stranger’s face dropped into a rather gloomy expression, as if poor humanity had sometimes to resign itself to things a little less agreeable than the merely smooth and nice. He laid down his spoon, which he had been using with some vigour, and sipped his coffee.

  ‘What I was going to explain,’ he went on, rubbing at his moustache, ‘is that everything was going perfectly easy – just like clockwork, when the servant question came up. My house, you see, is on what you may call the large side. It’s old in parts, too. Up to then we had had a very satisfactory woman – roughish but willing. She was the wife, or what you might just as well call the widow, of a sailor. I mean he was one of the kind that has a ditto in every port, you know. She was glad of the place, glad to be where her husband couldn’t find her, even though the stipulation was that her wages should be permanent. That system of raising by driblets always leads to discontent. And I must say she was a fair tyrant for work.

  ‘Besides her, there was a help from the village – precious little good she was. Slummocky – and stupid! Still, we had got on pretty well up to then, up to Miss Dutton’s time, and for some months after. But cooking for three mouths is a different thing to two. Besides, Miss Dutton liked her meals dainty-like: a bit of fish, or soup occasionally, toast-rack, tantalus, serviettes on the table – that kind of thing. But all that came on gradual-like – the thin edge of the wedge; until at last, well, “exacting” wasn’t in it.

  ‘And I must say,’ he turned his wandering eye once more on mine, ‘I must say, she had a way of addressing menials which sometimes set even my teeth on edge. She was a lady, mind you – though what that is whe
n the breath is out of your body it’s not so easy to say. And she had the lady’s way with them – those continental hotels, I suppose. All very well in a large establishment where one works up against another and you can call them names behind their backs. But our house wasn’t an establishment. It wouldn’t do there: not in the long run, even if you had an angel for a general, and a cook to match.

  ‘Mind you, as I say, Miss Dutton was always niceness itself to my poor sister: never a hard word or a contemptuous look – not to her face nor behind her back, not up to then. I wouldn’t have tolerated it either. And you know what talking to a party that can only just sit, hands in lap, and gape back at you means, or maybe a word now and then that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what you’ve been saying. It’s a great affliction. But servants were another matter. Miss Dutton couldn’t demean herself to them. She lived in another world. It was, “Do this”; and “Why isn’t it done?” – all in a breath. I smoothed things over, though they got steadily worse and worse, for weeks, and weeks, ay, months. It wore me to a shadow.

  ‘And one day the woman – Bridget was her name – Irish, you know – she flared up in earnest and gave her, as they say, as good as she got. I wasn’t there at the time. But I heard afterwards all that passed, and three times over – on the one side at least. I had been into the town in the runabout. And when I came home, Mrs Tantrums had packed up her box, got a gig from the farm, and was gone for good. It did me a world of harm, that did.

  ‘Pretty well upset, I was too, as you can imagine. I said to Miss Dutton, “Edna,” I said, “all I am saying is, was it necessary to go to such extremes? Not,” I said, “mind you, Edna, that she was all sugar and honey even to me. I knew the wrong side of her mouth years before you appeared on the scene. What you’ve got to do with such people is – to manage – be firm, keep ’em low, but manage. It isn’t commonsense to cut off your tongue to spite your teeth. She’s a woman, and Irish at that,” I said, “and you know what to expect of them.”

  ‘I was vexed, that’s a fact, and perhaps I spoke rather more sharply than need have been. But we were good friends by that time: and if honest give-and-take isn’t possible between friends, where are you? I ask you. There was by that time too, nothing left over-private between us, either. I advised her about her investments and so on, though I took precious good care not to be personally involved. Not a finger stirring unless she volunteered it first. That all came out too. But it was nothing to do with me, now, was it, as man to man, if the good lady took a fancy into her head to see that my poor sister was not left to what’s called the tender mercies of this world after my death?

  ‘And yet, believe me, they fixed on that, like leeches. My hell, they did! At the Inquiry, I mean. And I don’t see how much further their decency could have gone if they had called it an Inquest; and …’

  Yet another low (almost gruff) volley of thunder interrupted his discourse. He left the sentence in the air; his mouth ajar. I have never met any one that made such active use of his chin in conversation, by the way, as Mr Bleet did. It must have been exceedingly fatiguing. I fancy he mistook just then the expression on my face for one of inquiry. He leant forward, pushing down towards me that long hairy finger on the marble table-top.

  ‘When I say “tender mercies”,’ he explained, ‘I don’t mean that my sister would have been left penniless, even if Miss Dutton or nobody like her had come into the house. There was money of my own too, though, owing to what I need not explain’ – he half swallowed the words – ‘not much.’ He broke off. ‘It seems as if we are in for a bit of a thunderstorm. But I’d sooner it was here than down my way. When you’re alone in the house you seem to notice the noise more.’

  ‘I fancy it won’t be much,’ I assured him. ‘It will clear the air.’

  His eyes opened as if in astonishment that any mere act of nature could bring such consolation.

  ‘You were saying,’ I exclaimed, ‘that you lost your maid?’ He glanced up sharply. Though of course,’ I added hastily, ‘you mustn’t let me intrude on your private affairs.’

  ‘Not at all; oh, not at all,’ he interrupted with relief. ‘I thought you said, “lost my head”. Not at all. It makes all the difference to me – I can assure you – to be able to go over it like this. Friendly like. To get a listener who has not been fed up on all that gossip and slander. It takes some living down, too. Nothing satisfies them: nothing. From one week’s end to another you can’t tell where they’ll unearth themselves next.’

  It was becoming difficult to prevent a steadily growing distaste for my companion from showing itself in my face. But then self-pity is seldom ingratiating. Fortunately the light where we sat was by now little better than dusk. Indeed, to judge from the growing gloom in our tea-shop, the heavens at this moment were far from gracious. I determined to wait till the rain was over. Besides, though my stranger himself was scarcely winning company, and his matter was not much above the sensational newspaper order, the mere zigzagging of his narrative was interesting. Its technique, I mean, reminded me of the definition of a crab: ‘The crab is a little red animal that walks backwards.’

  ‘The fact is,’ he went on, ‘on that occasion – I mean about the servant – Miss Dutton and I had words. I own it. Not that she resented my taking the thing up in a perfectly open and friendly way. She knew she had put me in a fair quandary. But my own private opinion is that when you are talking to a woman it’s best not to bring in remarks about the sex in general. A woman is herself or nothing, if you follow me. What she thinks is no more than another skin. Keep her sex out of it, and she’ll be reasonable. But no further. As a matter of fact, I never argue with ladies. But I soon smoothed that over. It was only a passing cloud. And I must say, considering what a lady she was, she took the discomforts of having nothing but a good-for-nothing slattern in the house very generously, all things considered.

  ‘Mind you, I worked myself, fit for any couple of female servants: washed up dishes, laid the table, kept the little knick-knacks going. Ay, and I’d go into the town to fetch her out little delicacies: tinned soups and peaches, and suchlike; anything she might have a taste to. And I taught her to use the runabout for herself, though to hear her changing gear was like staring ruin in the face. A gallon of petrol to a hank of crimson silk – that kind of thing. Believe me, she’d go all those miles for a shampoo-powder, or to have tea at a tea-shop – though you can’t beat raw new-laid eggs and them on the premises. They got to know her there. She was a rare one for the fashions: scarves and motor-veils, and that kind of thing. But I never demurred. It wasn’t for me to make objections, particularly as she’d do a little shopping on the housekeeping side as well, now and then. Though, mind you, she knew sixpence from a shilling, and particularly towards the last.

  ‘What was the worst hindrance was that my poor sister seemed to have somehow come to know there were difficulties in the house. I mean that there had begun to be. You don’t know how they do it; but they do. And it doesn’t add to your patience, I grant, when what you have done at one moment is done wrong over again the next. But she meant well, poor creature: and scolding at her only made things worse. Still, we got along happily enough for a time, until’ – he paused once more with mouth ajar – ‘until Miss Dutton took it into her head to let matters come to a crisis. Now judging from that newspaper cutting I showed you, what would you take the lady’s age to be? Allowing, as you might say, for all that golden hair?’

  It was an indelicate question. Though why the mere fact that Miss Dutton was now missing should intensify its indelicacy, it is not easy to say.

  ‘Happiness makes one look younger than one really is,’ I suggested.

  He gaped at me, as if in wonderment that in a world of woe he himself was not possessed of a white beard as long as your arm.

  ‘“Happiness?”’ he echoed.

  ‘Yes, happiness.’

  ‘Well, what I mean is, you wouldn’t say she was in the filly class; now, would you? High-
spirited, easy-going, and all that; silly, too, at times: but no longer young. Not in her heyday, I mean.’

  I pushed my empty cup aside and looked at him. But he looked back at me without flinching, as if indeed it was a pleasant experience to be sharing with a stranger sentiments so naïve regarding ‘the fair sex’.

  ‘Mind you, I don’t profess to be a young man either. But I can assure you on my word of honour, that what she said to me that evening – I was doing chores in the kitchen at the time, and she was there too, arranging flowers in a vause for supper; she had a dainty taste in flowers – well, she asked me why I was so unkind to her, so unresponsive, and – it came on me like a thunderbolt.’

  As if positively for exemplification, a violent clap of thunder at that moment resounded overhead. The glasses and crockery around us softly tinkled in sympathy. We listened in silence to its reverberations dying away across the chimney-tops; though my companion seemed to be taking them in through his mouth rather than through his ears. His cheek paled a little.

  ‘That’s what she asked me, I say. And I can tell you it took me on the raw. It was my turn to flare up. We had words again: nothing much, only a storm in a tea-cup.’ Instead of smiling at the metaphor in the circumstances, he seemed astonished, almost shocked, at its aptitude. But he pushed on boldly.