Short Stories 1895-1926 (13 page)

She confided in us her views on a theme vaguely occupying at the moment, I suppose, all our minds. ‘We have barbarous institutions, and so must put up, I suppose, with a never-ending procession of fools – of fools
ad infinitum.
Marriage, Mr Withers, was instituted in the privacy of a garden;
sub rosa,
as it were. Civilization flaunts it in the glare of day. The dull marry the poor; the rich the effete; and so our New Jerusalem is peopled with naturals, plain and coloured, at either end. I detest folly; I detest still more (if I must be frank, dear Arthur) mere cleverness. Mankind has simply become a tailless host of uninstinctive animals. We should never have taken to Evolution, Mr Withers. “Natural Selection!” – little gods and fishes! – the deaf for the dumb. We should have used our brains – intellectual pride, the ecclesiastics call it. And by brains I mean – what do I mean, Alice? – I mean, my dear child,' and she laid two gross fingers on Alice's narrow sleeve, ‘I mean courage. Consider it, Arthur. I read that the scientific world is once more beginning to be afraid of spiritual agencies. Spiritual agencies that tap, and actually float, bless their hearts! I think just one more of those mulberries – thank you.

‘They talk about “blind Love”,' she ran on derisively as she helped herself, her eyes roving over the dish, ‘but why blind? I think, Mr Withers, from weeping over its rickets. After all, it is we plain women that triumph, is it not so – beyond the mockery of time. Alice, now! Fleeting, fleeting is youth, my child. What's that you were confiding to your plate, Arthur? Satirical boy. He laughs at his old aunt: nay, but thou didst laugh. He detests all sentiment. He whispers the most acid asides. Come, my love, we will leave these cynics; we will go and commiserate with each other on our sex. The choice of two evils, Mr Smithers!' I opened the door, and she swept out as if borne on a torrent of unintelligible indignation; and Arthur and I were left in the clear four-flamed light alone.

For a while we sat in silence. He shook his head at my cigarette-case, and I lit a cigarette. Presently he fidgeted in his chair and poked his head forward into the light. He paused to rise, and shut again the shut door.

‘How long will you be?' he asked me.

I laughed.

‘Oh, it's not that!' he said, in some confusion. ‘Of course, I like to be with her. But it's not that. The truth is, Withers, I don't care about leaving her too long with my aunt.'

I hesitated. He looked at me questioningly.

‘Look here, Seaton,' I said, ‘you know well enough that I don't want to interfere in your affairs, or to offer advice where it is not wanted. But don't you think perhaps you may not treat your aunt quite in the right way? As one gets old, you know, a little give and take. I have an old godmother, or something of the kind. She's a bit queer, too … A little allowance; it does no harm. But hang it all, I'm no preacher.'

He sat down with his hands in his pockets and still with his eyes fixed almost incredulously on mine. ‘How?' he said.

‘Well, my dear fellow, if I'm any judge – mind, I don't say that I am – but I can't help thinking she thinks you don't care for her; and perhaps takes your silence for – for bad temper. She has been very decent to you, hasn't she?

‘“Decent”? My God!' said Seaton.

I smoked on in silence; but he continued to look at me with that peculiar concentration I remembered of old.

‘I don't think, perhaps, Withers,' he began presently, ‘I don't think you quite understand. Perhaps you are not quite our kind. You always did, just like the other fellows, guy me at school. You laughed at me that night you came to stay here – about the voices and all that. But I don't mind being laughed at – because I know.'

‘Know what?' It was the same old system of dull question and evasive answer.

‘I mean I know that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of this. She
talks
to you; but it's all make-believe. It's all a “parlour game”. She's not really with you; only pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the fooling. She's living on inside on what you're rotten without. That's what it is – a cannibal feast. She's a spider. It doesn't much matter what you call it. It means the same kind of thing. I tell you, Withers, she hates me; and you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It's oceans deeper than that. It just lies behind: herself against myself. Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don't even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons. What has life been to me? – nothing but a trap. And when one sets oneself free for a while, it only begins again. I thought you might understand; but you are on a different level: that's all.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' I said contemptuously, in spite of myself.

‘I mean what I say,' he said gutturally. ‘All this outside's only makebelieve – but there! what's the good of talking? So far as this is concerned I'm as good as done. You wait.'

Seaton blew out three of the candles and, leaving the vacant room in semi-darkness, we groped our way along the corridor to the drawing-room. There a full moon stood shining in at the long garden windows. Alice sat stooping at the door, with her hands clasped in her lap, looking out, alone.

‘Where is she?' Seaton asked in a low tone.

She looked up; and their eyes met in a glance of instantaneous understanding, and the door immediately afterwards opened behind us.

‘
Such
a moon!' said a voice, that once heard, remained unforgettably on the ear. ‘A night for lovers, Mr Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!'

Seaton returned with a shawl. They drifted out into the moonlight. My companion gazed after them till they were out of hearing, turned to me gravely, and suddenly twisted her white face into such a convulsion of contemptuous amusement that I could only stare blankly in reply.

‘Dear innocent children!' she said, with inimitable unctuousness. ‘Well, well, Mr Withers, we poor seasoned old creatures must move with the times. Do you sing?'

I scouted the idea.

‘Then you must listen to my playing. Chess' – she clasped her forehead with both cramped hands – ‘chess is now completely beyond my poor wits.'

She sat down at the piano and ran her fingers in a flourish over the keys. ‘What shall it be? How shall we capture them, those passionate hearts? That first fine careless rapture? Poetry itself.' She gazed softly into the garden a moment, and presently, with a shake of her body, began to play the opening bars of Beethoven's ‘Moonlight' Sonata. The piano was old and woolly. She played without music. The lamplight was rather dim. The moonbeams from the window lay across the keys. Her head was in shadow. And whether it was simply due to her personality or to some really occult skill in her playing I cannot say; I only know that she gravely and deliberately set herself to satirize the beautiful music. It brooded on the air, disillusioned, charged with mockery and bitterness. I stood at the window; far down the path I could see the white figure glimmering in that pool of colourless light. A few faint stars shone, and still that amazing woman behind me dragged out of the unwilling keys her wonderful grotesquerie of youth and love and beauty. It came to an end. I knew the player was watching me. ‘Please, please, go on!' I murmured, without turning. ‘
Please
go on playing, Miss Seaton.'

No answer was returned to this honeyed sarcasm, but I realized in some vague fashion that I was being acutely scrutinized, when suddenly there followed a procession of quiet, plaintive chords which broke at last softly into the hymn, ‘A Few More Years Shall Roll'.

I confess it held me spellbound. There is a wistful, strained plangent pathos in the tune; but beneath those masterly old hands it cried softly and bitterly the solitude and desperate estrangement of the world. Arthur and his lady-love vanished from my thoughts. No one could put into so hackneyed an old hymn tune such an appeal who had never known the meaning of the words. Their meaning, anyhow, isn't commonplace.

I turned a fraction of an inch to glance at the musician. She was leaning forward a little over the keys, so that at the approach of my silent scrutiny she had but to turn her face into the thin flood of moonlight for every feature to become distinctly visible. And so, with the tune abruptly terminated, we steadfastly regarded one another; and she broke into a prolonged chuckle of laughter.

‘Not quite so seasoned as I supposed, Mr Withers. I see you are a real lover of music. To me it is too painful. It evokes too much thought …'

I could scarcely see her little glittering eyes under their penthouse lids.

‘And now,' she broke off crisply, ‘tell me, as a man of the world, what do you think of my new niece?'

I was not a man of the world, nor was I much flattered in my stiff and dullish way of looking at things by being called one; and I could answer her without the least hesitation.

‘I don't think, Miss Seaton, I'm much of a judge of character. She's very charming.'

‘A brunette?'

‘I think I prefer dark women.'

‘And why? Consider, Mr Withers; dark hair, dark eyes, dark cloud, dark night, dark vision, dark death, dark grave, dark DARK!'

Perhaps the climax would have rather thrilled Seaton, but I was too thick-skinned. ‘I don't know much about all that,' I answered rather pompously. ‘Broad daylight's difficult enough for most of us.'

‘Ah,' she said, with a sly inward burst of satirical laughter.

‘And I suppose,' I went on, perhaps a little nettled, ‘it isn't the actual darkness one admires, it's the contrast of the skin, and the colour of the eyes, and – and their shining. Just as,' I went blundering on, too late to turn back, ‘just as you only see the stars in the dark. It would be a long day without any evening. As for death and the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that.' Arthur and his sweetheart were slowly returning along the dewy path. ‘I believe in making the best of things.'

‘How very interesting!' came the smooth answer. ‘I see you are a philosopher, Mr Withers. H'm! “As for death and the grave, I don't suppose we shall much notice that.” Very interesting … And I'm sure,' she added in a particularly suave voice, ‘I profoundly hope so.' She rose slowly from her stool. ‘You will take pity on me again, I hope. You and I would get on famously – kindred spirits – elective affinities. And, of course, now that my nephew's going to leave me, now that his affections are centred on another, I shall be a very lonely old woman … Shall I not, Arthur?'

Seaton blinked stupidly. ‘I didn't hear what you said, Aunt.'

‘I was telling our old friend, Arthur, that when you are gone I shall be a very lonely old woman.'

‘Oh, I don't think so;' he said in a strange voice.

‘He means, Mr Withers, he means, my dear child,' she said, sweeping her eyes over Alice, ‘he means that I shall have memory for company – heavenly memory – the ghosts of other days. Sentimental boy! And did you enjoy our music, Alice? Did I really stir that youthful heart? … O. O, O,' continued the horrible old creature, ‘you billers and cooers, I have been listening to such flatteries, such confessions! Beware, beware, Arthur, there's many a slip.' She rolled her little eyes at me, she shrugged her shoulders at Alice, and gazed an instant stonily into her nephews's face.

I held out my hand. ‘Good night, good night!' she cried. ‘He that fights and runs away. Ah, good night, Mr Withers; come again soon!' She thrust out her cheek at Alice, and we all three filed slowly out of the room.

Black shadow darkened the porch and half the spreading sycamore. We walked without speaking up the dusty village street. Here and there a crimson window glowed. At the fork of the high-road I said good-bye. But I had taken hardly more than a dozen paces when a sudden impulse seized me.

‘Seaton!' I called.

He turned in the cool stealth of the moonlight.

‘You have my address; if by any chance, you know, you should care to spend a week or two in town between this and the – the Day, we should be delighted to see you.'

‘Thank you, Withers, thank you,' he said in a low voice.

‘I dare say' – I waved my stick gallantly at Alice – ‘I dare say you will be doing some shopping; we could all meet,' I added, laughing.

‘Thank you, thank you, Withers – immensely,' he repeated.

And so we parted.

But they were out of the jog-trot of my prosaic life. And being of a stolid and incurious nature, I left Seaton and his marriage, and even his aunt, to themselves in my memory, and scarcely gave a thought to them until one day I was walking up the Strand again, and passed the flashing gloaming of the second-rate jeweller's shop where I had accidentally encountered my old schoolfellow in the summer. It was one of those stagnant autumnal days after a night of rain. I cannot say why, but a vivid recollection returned to my mind of our meeting and of how suppressed Seaton had seemed, and of how vainly he had endeavoured to appear assured and eager. He must be married by now, and had doubtless returned from his honeymoon. And I had clean forgotten my manners, had sent not a word of congratulation, nor – as I might very well have done and as I knew he would have been pleased at my doing – even the ghost of a wedding present. It was just as of old.

On the other hand, I pleaded with myself, I had had no invitation. I paused at the corner of Trafalgar Square, and at the bidding of one of those caprices that seize occasionally on even an unimaginative mind, I found myself pelting after a green bus, and actually bound on a visit I had not in the least intended or foreseen.