Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘The Goat to Vesta we allot;

  Juno prefers the Water-pot;

  And Neptune has his Fishes got.

  ‘Oh yes, amusing, romantic enough, if you’re that way inclined. And I’m saying nothing against it for those who still happily are tinder to every scientific spark. But’ – he shifted wearily in his luxurious chair – ‘well, I went back into the house. As usual my old mother was sitting by the fire stooped up together in her easy chair in her silk shawl – one of those ugly old Victorian horsehair chairs, made for endurance. And I thought suddenly what a long time it had taken to make her old like that. I thought of what she had gone through – I’m not her only child – to come out there, like that. I thought I might perhaps have to survive her and grow old too – and only strangers to look after me. She was knitting. I don’t know what she was knitting; but her hands are crooked now, and getting clumsy with her needles.

  ‘I bawled, “It’s a fine starry night, Mother.”

  ‘She said, “Eh, Charles?”

  ‘I repeated the observation. She said she was glad it was fine. She is an old lady now. Very rarely goes out, you know; so weather hardly matters to her sitting cooped up indoors by the hearth. And upon my word, doctor, as I looked at her – my own mother – I seemed to see Death himself hooped together there in that chair huddling close down to the fire. It was as if the old villain had taken to that device to pass away the time in his old age! – knitting together a winding-sheet for the whole human race; for this complete ridiculous universe. Yet even as I thought it, I felt I was suffocating with remorse – the odiousness of such a feeling about her! But no. She wasn’t to blame. We understand one another: mother and son. There’s no need of any sense of proportion in that. One’s heart almost breaks at the thought of its own impotence to express, and to comfort, and to tell … Those awful souls one sees in the streets. Awful. Good Lord, doctor, this whole stellar universe of ours may be no more than the bubbles in a bottle of champagne – or soda-water! And we humans the restless maggots in a rotting excretion of the sun. And yet – we go on breeding!’

  The doctor drew his hand gently down over his beard. He coughed softly, glancing sidelong at his eloquent patient. ‘Am I to understand,’ he said, ‘that you actually saw a physical change in your mother – I mean, that it amounted to anything in the nature of an hallucination?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said his visitor suddenly angling himself up in his chair as if someone had pulled the appropriate wire; ‘that’s just it. I did so see it: but only of course, with my inward eye. It was so because I saw it so: but I’m not pressing it as scientific evidence. No, doctor, I can manage the hallucinations all right, whenever I want to; and without trespassing too far over the border. In fact I should of course be a pretty poor scribbler of fiction – worse even than I am – if I couldn’t.’

  ‘But they don’t persist?’ persisted the doctor.

  Once more Mr Pritchard’s features seemed to collect themselves together into a point of intense vacuity; and Dr Lidgett looked away again. Beyond the surgery window was a patch of red-brick wall on which a young fruittree had been espaliered. It was in scanty leaf now, but though its flowers came punctually to the season, its fruit never ripened, for only the beams of a northwest sun ever peeped into this corner of the doctor’s garden. His glance having wandered away from the occupant of his chair rested heavily on its vivid green. This valiant little plum-tree was an old friend of his. He had watched its miracle of revivification recur year after year: had noticed it while he had sat interviewing his patients one after the other, doing his best for them in his own solemn fashion before eagerly returning to that new life of his upstairs. And realizing that it was never likely to bear, he would go out in the evening and pluck a sprig or two of its blossom to bring in for a surprise. It showed greener than ever this particular spring, as if it had taken on an unprecedented verdure, had made the friendliest of efforts, for a particular occasion. And one could hardly blame it if the occasion had suddenly failed, or refused to keep its tryst.

  His visitor, having shaken himself free of a momentary absent-mindedness, had followed the direction of the doctor’s eyes, and himself gazed a moment at the leafing plum.

  ‘It’s a curious thing,’ he said, ‘but my mind – what they call the subconscious, I suppose – seems for some little time past to have been exploring in the very direction of the state into which I have been gradually reduced. One might almost suppose, I mean, that things and events of the outside world are only mere properties in the inward scene – farce or melodrama – in which one is the only unquestionably living actor. Not that I am by profession a solipsist! That little tree, there, reminds me, for example, of yet another piece of fiction I managed to write a few months ago. I know I am boring you with all this stuff, Dr Lidgett; but it’s only because it seems to me to be symptomatic so to speak; and I suppose even the smallest particular may be of service in arriving at a diagnosis.’

  The doctor turned back his head again, shifted his elbows on the arms of the chair, leaned his chin on his fingers, and once more out of his calm settled eyes patiently surveyed his visitor. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘We usually, you know, have to extract these things for ourselves. It is a help to have them volunteered. What is this other story you were referring to?’

  ‘Why’ – once more Mr Pritchard’s pallid face lit up with inward animation and the gesticulations of his small long-fingered hands helped him out – ‘why, in this story, it is Nature herself that dries up. Very gradually, of course. At first, indeed, almost imperceptibly. For a succession of autumns the harvests are slightly but cumulatively less abundant; now in this country, now in that. But steadily and incessantly the general average begins to dwindle all over the world. Then, here and there the deficit becomes acute. At first it is only the important – humanly important things, I mean – cereals, sugar, hops, vines, tea, coffee, and so on, that are noticeably deficient – the irony being that less vital though important things flourish. Rubber, cotton, hemp, for example, continue steady. And new gold and diamond mines are actually discovered. There is a positive glut of coal and petroleum. Transportation from one scene of growing desolation to another therefore remains easy.

  ‘And then, doctor, the creeping shadow! First the cautious experts, the statisticians, the exchanges, the markets, and then on and on in ever widening circles of misgiving and panic. And ever more widely the rumour spreads. The merest patch of countryside reveals the secret at last – one glance at the straggling thinning fields, the wilting hedges, the famished cattle, the naked soil, gaping and grinning through the green – growing bald! And so the pinch grows steadily sharper until the world at large – at least the civilized part of it – begins to realize what it is really in for. There is an orgy of crises: changes of Government: International Conferences: ever more and more impotent and ineffectual. And then at last the newspapers fall on the scare like bluebottles on carrion.

  ‘And the following spring the full realization comes. Things of age-long standing – the forests, the trees, the prairies and savannas – falter, pine, dwindle, fade, perish. And man realizes his final destiny. Even his beloved and trusty law of averages has gone to the deuce, and his just and equable old grandmother Nature is obviously playing the jilt. I can tell you this, doctor; the upshot of that little situation was a good deal worse than the European war. Society, of course, simply falls to pieces. Starvation; mobs; rioting; religious frenzies; fanatics; communities of suicide. You can imagine a starving Europe, a starving America – we have caught glimpses of a starving Asia. And in trouble like that the taking of sides is of comparatively little account. Even an imaginary situation such as that refreshes such dried up old problems as, What do we human beings really believe in? and, Exactly how much do we value posterity? For my part – provided that Nature kept things going just for aesthetic reasons, I cannot honestly see that it would be altogether a calamity if humanity did give up the ghost, or at any rate, if a v
ery large proportion of our superabundant populations did. I am ready.’

  The doctor spoke muffledly – through his fingers. ‘The birth-rate is, I believe, actually falling in most European countries. And naturally there are many economists and eugenists who rejoice at it. You have a vivid fancy, Mr Pritchard, if I may venture to say so. But we may hope things won’t reach such an extreme as that.’

  His visitor smiled; candidly, almost eagerly. ‘Perhaps not; and of course you are right about the birth-rate. But the death-rate’s going down too – and so the tide is kept in genial flood. Isn’t that so?’

  But Dr Lidgett seemed to have as suddenly lost interest in the question as he had found it. He shut his mouth, unclenched his fingers, looked away. And once more the dark quick face opposite him also lost life and expression. Mr Pritchard indeed was stifling the rudiments of a yawn.

  ‘Well, that was the story. A mere shocker, of course. It sold well, too. But I agree Nature has as yet ignored my hint.’ He looked about him, as if in search of something lost long ago, as if searching had become little more than an automatic reaction. He appeared to be a little uneasy too, as if his conscience were at last chiding him for taking an advantage so extreme of a fellow-professional who merely happened to be at a loose end, and, kindly and tolerant enough to listen to him.

  ‘But quite, quite seriously, doctor,’ he began again apologetically, ‘why are some of us singled out to realize the appalling trap we are all in? How many of us, do you suppose, do realize it: have the courage or the fatuity to face the question? And, as for the rest, what is the impulse, the impetus that keeps them going? Deceives them, if you like, but still keeps them going? Are we really to acknowledge that it is a purely physical thing? This fountain of life that keeps green our philosophical fallacies, keeps green our delight in things, our interest in our fellow-creatures, our faith in Hope, or, at any rate, in a decent courage, even though there is not the slightest logical justification for it – is it really and indeed nothing but a sort of physical well-being? If it’s merely that, then I suppose treatment might put it right, Dr Lidgett? Treatment, at any rate, could prevent my concerning myself with it any longer. Say a fraction of a grain of prussic acid. But if it’s mental, of the soul, well, my God, I shall keep a very silent tongue in my head when talking to anybody else than a man of your profession! On the other hand, if it is mental, why, somehow I feel I ought to try to fight it out. What do you suggest?’

  Dr Lidgett having so long and so patiently (and so unenterprisingly) waited for this opportunity, asked his visitor a few sedate, commonplace questions concerning his actual health: his appetite, the hours he kept, how much he smoked, how badly he slept. But then, he had nothing else to do this long spring afternoon, nothing whatever except to look through a few bundles of discarded letters, to write a cheque or two, one in payment of a nominal fee to a specialist on cancer, another for services rendered by yet another kind of specialist – and then to leave his vacant, his incredibly vacant house, and to go away for a few days. He had indeed already once or twice during his visitor’s jerky conversation seen himself pacing the deserted but ‘bracing’ esplanade of a small southern watering-place. This untimely creature would not detain him much longer. Besides, he was himself by nature and habit cautious and thorough. He submitted his patient to a close and exhaustive examination; heart, lungs, stomach, knee-jerk and the rest. Then he once more resumed his seat and looked out of the window.

  Having no looking-glass handy, Mr Pritchard was now apparently taking particular care over the adjustment of his collar and tie, though the sidelong twist of his head at the moment suggested that of a bird past all care on a poulterer’s hook. But his eyes meanwhile were busily exploring the neat efficient furnishings of Dr Lidgett’s consulting-room. From object to object they darted, bright as fireflies on a summer’s evening. They had become by long practice the willing servants of his craving for ‘local colour’. It was a habit that would no doubt persist even when only a few minutes remained to him of his earthly existence. Indeed, though he must be even in an unusual degree the conscious centre of his own small universe, he was profoundly interested in his fellow-creatures – their absurd little ways and habits and eccentricities. Nothing human shocked or failed to concern him, except possibly most of his fellow-authors’ fiction.

  On the other hand, though his eyes and senses were at this moment as active as ever, his thoughts were otherwise engaged. Since it could lead to nothing, he was upbraiding himself again for giving all this trouble to the quiet sedate figure seated in the chair over there. He looked a good sort, if ever there was one – probably intensely kind to his poorer patients, even his panel patients, though, as probably, quite unable to appreciate what he himself had been saying, even if he had considered it worthy of attention. A general practitioner must often have to make allowances for patients that appear to him to be little better than freaks; women especially – with nerves rather than minds to pester them.

  He had taken a liking to Dr Lidgett; he liked that placid, cautious manner – the reserve of the man. What kind of inward life did he lead, he wondered. What kind of home life? ‘Have you – er – any family?’ – the doctor’s question recurred to him so amusingly that it brought the ghost of a smile into his mind. It must be an odd thing to spend one’s days tinkering about with deranged human machines – deranged simply because the silly fool of an engineer has neglected or overworked them. On the other hand, the mere human norm must be as uninteresting as it is probably unprofitable. What ‘family doctors’ wanted were patients with plenty of money and small recurrent ailments. For his own particular purpose he himself preferred the human machine that was not running as smoothly as one of those ghastly electric dynamos with the huge buzzing fly-wheel. So much fuel; so much energy: so much lubricating oil; so much pressure to the square inch. Was it even possible to be fully and vividly conscious and physically sound and normal at the same time?

  Apart too from the thoughts in Mr Pritchard’s mind, dizzying themselves like wasps fluttering round a honey-pot, there lay only half-concealed beneath them the steady horrible conviction that nothing now was of the slightest account; that the spirit within him, past all hope of ease and happiness and reassurance, resembled a wretched fiend howling in the midst of a black cloud – darkness, and tempest. Once more leaning his head a little sidelong he glanced at his reflection in the glass of a picture, and buttoned up the last button of his waistcoat.

  ‘I am afraid, doctor,’ he murmured, ‘I must have been the worst possible type of patient. And what is as bad, I ought not to have forced myself on you at this particular time – outside your consulting hours, I mean, which I confess to having seen on the doorplate. I gather too that just now you are actually taking a holiday. It was infamous. I hope you will forgive me!’

  There was something curiously winning and amiable in the looks of the little man as the doctor glanced up at him and smiled, assuring him that there was no need whatever for such apologies. Indeed Dr Lidgett’s one inward and unspoken regret was his incapacity to be of any real service to his patient. Only in the most rudimentary fashion could he minister to a mind diseased – even his own. That he knew. He knew too, only too well, that he could but potter around the problem which had been presented to him, and that even any practical advice he might give – a few little common-sensical directions regarding work, exercise, food, sleep and so on – would probably be ignored and forgotten as soon as his visitor was out of the house.

  Was not Humanity itself for that matter habitually ignoring counsel and directions from mind and heart that were none the less sound for being instinctive and commonplace? The pity was that when so little was really wrong – for, so far as the mere circumstances of his visitor were concerned, there appeared to be absurdly little justification for complaint – there was no obvious handle to take hold of. These maladies of the spirit – what cure for them? Probably his best advice would be: Try the streets, my friend, for a week or two;
without a halfpenny in your pocket and with your jacket for shirt. Or, Give away all you’ve got and get a dustman’s, or stoker’s, or fish-porter’s job; and then come back to me in a month’s time. Or, Take up some beastly philanthropic work – visiting cancer patients or syphilitic children. No doubt what Mr Pritchard was really in need of was a moral shock: something to ‘larn him’ to be a pessimist and a hypochondriac.

  Nothing of all this showed on Dr Lidgett’s tranquil and sober face, however. He went about what he was at with an almost feminine neatness and circumspection. And though his hand trembled a little as he held out the prescription he had written down, he talked quietly on awhile, specifying with precision the little things that might be of benefit, and assuring his visitor that the worst thing in the world was to look too closely at things. Except, of course, at things of nature, which after all (and in spite of his little extravaganza) had up to the present proved astonishingly faithful, and bore even the keenest scrutiny with triumphant ease. Provided you accepted its mute decrees and vetoes, with as much resolution as you were capable of.

  He did not utter this last thought aloud, however. It had occurred to him merely because his eye had once more strayed to the young green leafing plum-tree crucified upon his garden wall. But the rest of his professional advice had not fallen on deaf ears, apparently. With a smiling reference to his ‘pestilent’ memory, his visitor had actually gone so far as to scribble down a few memoranda in his pocket-book while the doctor was speaking.