Short Stories 1895-1926 (41 page)

‘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 when 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.

‘And then after I had smoothed things over again, she put her cards on the table. Leap Year, and all that tomfoolery, not a bit of it! She was in dead earnest. She told me what I had guessed already, that she had scarcely a friend in the world. Never a word, mind you, of the Colonel – interloping old Pepper-face! She assured me, as I say, she hadn't not only a single relative, but hardly a friend; that she was, as you might say, alone in life, and – well, that her sentiments had become engaged. In honour bound I wouldn't have breathed this to a living soul who knew the parties; but to a stranger, if I may say so, it isn't quite the same thing. What she said was – in the kitchen there, and me in an apron, mind you, tied round me – doing chores – she said – well, in short, that she wanted to make a match of it. She had taken a fancy to me, and was I agreeable.' There was no vanity in his face; only a stark unphilosophical astonishment. He seemed to think that to explain all is to forgive all; and was awaiting my concurrence.

‘You mean she proposed marriage,' I interrupted him with needless pedantry, and at once, but too late, wished the word back. For vestiges of our conversation had evidently reached the counter. Our waitress, still nibbling her pencil, was gazing steadily in our direction. And for some obscure reason this heat that we were sharing with the world at large, combined with this preposterous farrago, was now irritating me almost beyond endurance. The fellow's complacency was incredible.

I beckoned to the young woman. ‘You said this gentleman's bus to King's Cross was an Eighteen, didn't you?'

‘Yes, 'Ighteen,' she repeated.

‘Then would you please bring him an ice.'

Mr Bleet gazed at me in stupefaction; a thick colour had mounted into his face. ‘You don't mean to say,' he spluttered, ‘that I made any such mention of such a thing. I'm sure I never noticed it.'

My impulse had been nothing more than a protest against my own boredom and fatigue; but the way he had taken it filled me with shame. What would the creature's state of mind be like if his memory was as untrustworthy as that? The waitress retired.

It's so devilishly hot in here,' I explained. ‘And even talking is fatiguing in this weather.'

‘Ay,' he said in a low voice. ‘It is. But you aren't having one yourself?'

‘No, thank you,' I said, ‘I daren't. I can't take ices. Indigestion – it's a miserable handicap … You were saying that at the time of Miss Dutton's proposal, you were in the kitchen.'

There was a pause. He sat looking foolishly at the little glass dishful of ice-cream: as surprising a phenomenon apparently as to an explorer from the torrid zone earth's northern snows must first appear. There was a look upon his face as if he had been ‘hurt', as if, like a child, at another harsh word he might burst out crying.

‘I hardly know that it's worth repeating,' he said at last lamely. His fine resonant voice had lost its tone. ‘I suppose she intended it kindly enough. And I wouldn't say I hadn't suspected which way the wind was blowing: Willie this, and Willie that. I've always been William to them that know me, except Bill at school. But it was always Willie with her; and a languishing look to match. Still, I never expected what came after that. It took me aback.

‘There she was, hanging on my every word, looking volumes, and me not knowing what to say. In a way too, I was attached to her. There were two sides to her, I allow that.' He turned away but not, it seemed, in order to see the less conspicuous side more clearly. ‘I asked her to let me think things over, and I said it as any gentleman would. “Let me think it over, Edna,” I said. “You do me honour,” I said. Her hand was on my arm. She was looking at me. God being my witness, I tried to spare her feelings. I eased it over, meaning it all for the best. You see that little prospect had no more than occurred to me, Married life wasn't what I was after. I shouldn't be as old as I am now – and unmarried, I mean – if that had been so. It was uncomfortable to see her carrying on like that: too early. But things having come to such a pass, well, as you might say, we glided into an understanding at last. And with what result? Why … she made it an occasion for putting her foot down all the way round. And hadn't I known it of old?'