The rain was over, and the long sigh he uttered seemed to fill the whole tea shop as if it were a faint echo of the storm which had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The sun was wanly shining again, gilding the street.
‘You at once guessed, I suppose, the house had been broken into, while you were out?’
He kept his eyes firmly on mine. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what I thought – at first.’
‘But then, I think you said a minute or two ago that Miss Dutton was actually seen again?’
He nodded. ‘That’s just it,’ he said, as if with incredulous lucidity. ‘So you see, the other couldn’t have been. The facts were against it. She was seen that very evening,’ he said, ‘and driving my Ford. By more than one, too. Our butcher happened to be outside his shop door; no friend of mine either. It was a Saturday, cutting up pieces for the 4d. and 6d. trays, and he saw her going by: saw the number too. It was all but broad daylight, though it’s a narrow street. It was about seven then, he said, because he had only just wound his clock. There she was; and a good pace too. And who could be surprised if she looked a bit unusual in appearance? It’s exactly what you’d expect. You don’t bolt out of a house you have lived in comfortable for two or three years as neat as a new pin.’
‘What was wrong with her?’
‘Oh, the man was nothing better than a fool, though promptitude itself when it came to asking a good customer to settle up. He said he’d have hardly recognized her. There, in my car, mind you, and all but broad daylight.’
‘But surely,’ I said as naturally as possible, ‘even if it is difficult sometimes to trace a human being, it is not so easy to dispose of a car. Wasn’t that ever found?’
He smiled at me, and in a more friendly way than I should have deemed possible in a face so naturally inexpressive.
‘You’ve hit the very nail on the head,’ he assented. ‘They did find the car – on the Monday morning. In fact it was found on the Sunday by a young fellow out with his sweetheart, but they thought it was just waiting – picking flowers, or something. It had been left inside a fir-copse about a couple of hundred yards from a railway station, a mile or so out of the town.’
‘Just a countryfied little railway station, I suppose? Had the porter or anybody noticed a lady?’
‘Countryfied – ay, maybe: but the platform crowded with people going to and fro for their week’s marketing, besides a garden party from the Rectory.’
‘The platform going into the town?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said my friend. ‘Covering her tracks.’
At that moment I noticed one of our waitress’s bright-red ‘Eighteens’ whirling past the tea-shop door. It vanished.
‘She had had a letter that morning – postmark Chicago,’ the now far-too-familiar voice edged on industriously. ‘The postman noticed it, being foreign. It’s my belief that caused it. But mind you, apart from that, though I’m not, and never was, complaining, she’d treated me, well —’ But he left the sentence unfinished while he clumsily pushed about with his spoon in the attempt to rescue a fly that had strayed in too far in pursuit of his sweet cold coffee. He was breathing gently on the hapless insect.
‘And I suppose, by that time, you had given the alarm?’
‘Given the alarm?’ he repeated. ‘Why?’
The sudden frigidity of his tone confused me a little. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘not finding Miss Dutton in the house, didn’t you let anybody know?’
‘Now my dear sir,’ he said, ‘I ask you. How was I to know what Miss Dutton was after? I wasn’t Miss Dutton’s keeper; she was perfectly at liberty to do what she pleased, to come and go. How was I to know what she had taken into her head? Why, I thought for a bit it was a friendly action considering all things, that she should have borrowed the car. Mind you, I don’t say I wasn’t disturbed as well, her not leaving a word of explanation, as she had done once before – pinned a bit of paper to the kitchen table – “Yours with love, Edna” – that sort of thing. Though that was when everything was going smooth and pleasant. What I did first was to go off to a cottage down the lane and inquire there. All out, except the daughter in the wash-house. Not a sight or sound of car or Miss Dutton, though she did recollect the honk of a horn sounding. “Was it my horn?” I asked. But they’re not very observant, that kind of young woman. Silly-like. Besides, she wasn’t much more than a child.’
‘And your sister: where actually was she, after all?’
He looked at me as if once more in compliment of my sagacity.
‘That, I take it – to find and question her, I mean, was a matter of course. I went up to her room, opened the door, and I can hear myself actually saying it now: “Have you seen anything of Edna, Maria?”
‘It was very quiet in her room – stuffy, too, and for the moment I thought she wasn’t there; and then I saw her – I detected her there – crouching in the farthest corner out of the light. I saw her white face turn round, it must have been covered up. “Where’s Edna, Maria?” I repeated. She shook her head at me, sitting there beyond the window. I could scarcely see her. And you don’t seem to have realized that any kind of direct or sudden question always confused her. It didn’t seem she understood what I was saying. In my belief it was nothing short of brutal the way they put her through it. I mean that Colonel, as he calls himself. Over and over and over again.
‘Well, we weren’t in any mood for food, as you may guess, when eight, nine, went by – and no sign of her. At last it was no use waiting any longer; but just to make sure, I went over to the farm two miles or so away – a little off the road, too, she must have taken to the town. We were still pretty friendly there. It was about half-past nine, I suppose, and they had all gone to bed. The dog yelled at me as if it was full moon and he had never seen me before. I threw a handful of gravel up at the old man’s window, and I must say, considering all things, he kept his temper pretty well. Specially as he had seen nothing. Nothing whatever, he said.
‘“Well,” I said, speaking up at him, and they were my very words, “I should like to know what’s become of her.” He didn’t seem to be as anxious as I was – thought she’d turn up next morning. “That kind of woman knows best what she’s about,” he said. So I went home and went to bed, feeling very uneasy. I didn’t like the feel of it, you understand. And I suppose it must have been about three or four in the morning when I heard a noise in the house.’
‘You thought she had come back?’
‘What?’ he said.
‘I say, you thought she had come back?’
‘Yes, of course. Oh yes. And I looked out of my bedroom door over the banisters. By that time there was a bit of moonlight showing, striking down on the plaster and oilcloth. It was my sister, with an old skirt thrown over her nightgown. She was as white as a sheet, and shivering.
‘“Where have you been, Maria?” I asked her in as gentle a voice as I could make it. The curious thing is, she understood me perfectly well. I mean she answered at once, because often I think really and truly she did understand, only that she couldn’t as quickly as most people collect her wits as they say.
‘She said, mumbling her words, she had been looking for her.
‘“Looking for who?” I said, just to see if she had taken me right.
‘“For her,” she said.
‘“For Edna?” I asked. “And why should you be looking for Edna this time of night?” I spoke a little more sternly.
‘She looked at me, and the tears began to roll down her face.
‘“For God’s sake, Maria, why are you crying?” I said.
‘“Oh,” she said, “she’s gone. And she won’t come back now.”
‘I put my arm round her and drew her down on to the stairs. “Compose yourself,” I said to her, “don’t shiver and shake like that.” I forgot she had been standing barefoot on the cold oilcloth. “What do you mean, Gone? Don’t take on so. Who’s to know she won’t come back safe and sound?” I am giving you the words just as they cam
e out of our mouths.
‘“Oh,” she said, “William, you know better than me – I won’t say anything more. Gone. And never knowing that I hadn’t forgotten how kind she was to me!”
‘“Kind, my girl!” I said. “Kind! In good part, maybe,” I said, “but not surely after what she said to you that day?”
‘But I could get nothing more out of her. She shrank up moaning and sobbing. She had lost herself again, her hair all draggled over her eyes, and she kept her face averted from me, and her shoulders were all humped, shaking under my hands – you know what women are. So I led her off to her room and made her as comfortable as I could. But all through the night I could hear her afterwards when I went to listen, and talking too.
‘You can tell I was by now in a pretty state myself. That was a long night for me. And what do you think: when I repeated that conversation to the Colonel, and the Inspector himself standing by, he as good as told me he didn’t believe me. “Friendly questions”! I could have wrung his nose. But then by that time my poor sister couldn’t put two words together, he bawled at her so; until even the Inspector said it was not fair on her, and that she wouldn’t be any use, anyhow, whatever happened.’
Once again there fell a pause in my stranger’s disjointed story. He took two or three spoonfuls in rapid succession of his half-melted ice-cream. Even though the rain and the storm had come and gone, the air was not appreciably cooler, or rather it was no less heavy and stagnant. Our waitress had apparently given us up as lost souls, and I glanced a little deprecatingly at the notice, ‘No gratuities’, on the wall.
‘How long did the drought last after that?’ I inquired at last.
‘The drought?’ said my friend. ‘The questions you ask! Why, it broke that very night. Over an inch of rain we had in less than eight hours.’
‘Well, that, at any rate, I suppose, was something of a comfort.’
‘I don’t see quite why,’ he retorted.
‘And then you informed the police?’
‘On the Sunday.’ He took out a coloured silk handkerchief from the pocket of his neat pepper-and-salt jacket, and blew his nose. It is strange how one can actually anticipate merely from the general look of a man such minute particulars as the trumpeting of a nose. Strange, I mean, that all the parts and properties of human beings seem to hang so closely together, as if in positive collusion. Anyhow, the noise resounded through the glass-walled marbled room as sharp as a cockcrow.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s where I stand. Looking at me, you wouldn’t suppose perhaps that everything that a man wants most in this world has been destroyed and poisoned away. I had no call perhaps to be confiding in a mere stranger. But you couldn’t credit the relief. I have nothing left now. I came up here to lose myself in the noise – so shocking quiet it is there, now. But I have to go back – can’t sleep much, though: wake up shouting. But what’s worst is the emptiness: it’s all perished. I don’t want anything now. I’d as lief die and have done with it, if I could do it undriven. I’ve never seen a desert, but I reckon I know what the inside of one’s like now. I stop thinking sometimes, and get dressed without knowing it. You wouldn’t guess that from my appearance, I dare say. But once begin living as you feel underneath living is, where would most of us be? They have hounded me on and they’ve hounded me down, and presently they’ll be sealing me up, and me never knowing from one day to another what news may come of – of our friend. And my sister gone and all.’
‘She isn’t “missing” too, I hope?’ As I reflect on it, it was a vile question to have put to the man. I don’t see how anything could have justified it. His face was like a burnt-out boat. The effect on him was atrocious to witness. His swarthy cheek went grey as ashes. The hand on the marble table began to tremble violently.
‘Missing?’ he cried. ‘She’s dead. Isn’t that good enough for you?’
At this, no doubt because I was hopelessly in the wrong, I all but lost control of myself.
‘What do you mean?’ I exclaimed in a low voice. ‘What do you mean by speaking to me like that? Haven’t I wasted the better part of a Saturday afternoon listening to a story which, if I cared, I could read in your own county newspaper? What’s it all to me, may I ask? I want to have nothing more to do with it – or you either.’
‘You didn’t say that at the beginning,’ he replied furiously, struggling to his feet. ‘You led me on.’
‘Led you on, by God! What do you mean by such a piece of impudence? I say I want nothing more to do with you. And if that’s how you accept a kindness, take my advice and keep your troubles to yourself in future. Let your bygones be bygones. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.’
It was a foul outburst, due in part, I hope, to the heat; in part to the suffocating dehumanizing foetor which spreads over London when the sun has been pouring down on its bricks and mortar as fiercely as on the bones and sands of some Eastern mud village.
My stranger had sat down again abruptly, had pushed his ice away from him and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders were jumping as if with hiccups. It was fortunate perhaps that at the moment there was no other eater in the café. But the waitresses were clustered together at the counter. They must have been watching us for some little time. And the manageress was there, too, looking at us like a scandalized hen over her collar through her pince-nez. We were evidently causing a disturbance – on the brink of a ‘scene’. A visionary placard flaunted across my inward eye: Fracas in a Restaurant.
I too sat down, and beckoned peremptorily to the young lady who had been so attentive about the bus.
‘My bill, please,’ I said – ‘this gentleman’s and mine.’ And then, foolishly, I added, ‘It’s hot, isn’t it?’
She made no reply until, after damping her lead pencil, she had added up her figures and had handed me between her finger-tips the mean scrap of paper. Then she informed me crisply, in fastidious Cockney, that some people seemed to find it hotter than most, and that it was past closing time, and would I please pay at the desk.
My accomplice had regained a little of his self-restraint by now. He put out a wavering hand and took up his hard felt hat. It was almost incredible that so marked a change should have come over so insensitive a face in that brief space of time. Its touch of bravado, its cold clear stare as of a watchful dog, even the neatness of it, had disappeared. He looked ten years older – lost and abandoned. He put out his other hand for the check. It was a curious action for a man with an intense closeness – if not meanness – clearly visible on his features. ‘I should prefer, if you don’t mind, to pay my bill myself,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ I replied brusquely. ‘It was my ice-cream. I must apologize for having been so abrupt.’
He tried to smile; and it was like the gleam of a sickly evening sunshine after heavy winter rain.
‘It’s broken me: that’s all I can say,’ he said. ‘What I say is, you read such things in the newspapers, but you don’t know what they mean to them as are most concerned. I don’t see how you can. But anyhow, I can pay my way.’
I hesitated. A furious contest – dim spread-eagled figures silhouetted, as it were, against a background of utter black – seemed to be proceeding in some dream in my mind, a little beyond actual consciousness. ‘Well,’ I blurted, ‘I hope time will make things better. I can guess what I should feel like myself in similar circumstances. If I were you, I should …’ But at sight of him, the words, I am thankful to say, faded out before I could utter them. ‘If I were you’ – how easy! But how is that metamorphosis conceivable?
He looked at his hat; he looked at his ice-cream, now an insipid mush; he looked anxiously and searchingly at the table – marked over with the hieroglyphics of dark ugly marble. And at last he raised his eyes – those inexpressive balls of glass – and looked at me. He changed his hat from his right to his left hand, and still looking at me, hesitated, holding the empty hand out a little above the table. Then turning away, he drew it back.
&nb
sp; I pretended not to have noticed the action. ‘There should be another Eighteen in a few minutes,’ I volunteered. ‘And I think I noticed a stopping-place a few yards down.’
Nevertheless I couldn’t for the moment leave him there – to the tender mercies of those censorious young waitresses in their exquisitely starched caps. ‘I am going that way,’ I said. ‘Shall I see you into it?’
‘It’s the heat,’ he said. ‘No, thank you. You have been a …’
With a gasp I repelled as well as I could the distaste for him that was once more curdling as if with a few drops of vinegar my very blood. What monsters of hatred and uncharitableness we humans can be! And what will my little record look like, I wonder, when the secrets of all hearts are opened?
It seemed for the time being as though the whole of my right arm had become partially paralysed. But with an effort I put out my hand at last; and then he, too, his – a large green solitaire cuff-link showing itself against his wristband as he did so. We shook hands – though I doubt if a mere fleshly contact can express much while the self behind it is dumb with instinctive distaste.
Besides, the effect on him even of a friendly action as frigid as this was horribly disconcerting. It reminded me of ice pitted and crumbling in a sudden thaw. He seemed to have been reduced to a state of physical and spiritual helplessness as if by an extremity of emotion, or by a drug. It was nauseating. It confused me and made me ashamed and miserable. I turned away abruptly; paid our bill at the desk, and went out. And London enveloped me.
1 As printed in BS (1942), but also including a manuscript alteration made by de la Mare in his copy of C (1926).
Short Stories 1895-1926 Page 38
