Short Stories 1895-1926 (52 page)

‘And how did it end?'

The question was hardly audible even in the quietness of this habitually quiet room. The sound of the words indeed hardly interrupted the capricious little air which the restless water was tapping into its basin behind the screen. Mr Pritchard had leaned forward in his chair as if he were momentarily uncertain if the doctor had spoken at all.

‘Oh,' he replied at last, ‘it never ended at all. You see, when I was half way through, I came across a story by Anton Chekhov – the Russian writer you know – which has a somewhat similar theme. Near enough to mine, at any rate, to ensure that the reviewers would have accused me of plagiarizing if I had published it. But that is one of the amusing things about this deplorable life of ours – we are all incorrigible plagiarists, or, at best, parasites. We live on other people's well-being and happiness, our friends and relations. Even on their characters! Ask a father what he thinks of life when his son has gone to the bad, or – or anything of that kind. We can't help ourselves. Even to die and be free of it all is a woeful slap in the face to one's nearest and dearest. The curious detail in my story,' he pushed on almost gaily, ‘curious, I mean, as things go – was that there was actually a photograph in a silver frame on the doctor's table very much like that one
there
. I mean the
frame
. But in this case my enterprising young Mr McKay could actually see the photograph itself – the photograph of a young woman – a lovely, seductive, dangerous-looking creature. It was a photograph, in fact, of the doctor's wife who had run away. And – as my gingerhaired friend compared the victim and victimized – he could hardly find it in his head to blame the gay seducer. As a matter of fact I hated the story.'

Dr Lidgett stirred heavily in his chair, and for the last time fixed intent eyes on his visitor's face. ‘That was indeed a coincidence,' he said. ‘For the portrait here on my table is also a photograph of my wife.'

He was now quite still and composed again, gazing fixedly but tranquilly at his visitor – yet as if only by keeping him well in focus would he be able to maintain his own professional calm and aloofness. Besides, in spite of the sharpest disinclination, he wished intensely to make the fleeting relation between them friendly and helpful to the end. ‘However, it's a coincidence,' he added, ‘that goes no further. I must some day read the story you mention – by the Russian writer. What did you say the name was?'

‘Chekhov – he was himself a doctor, you know, and a devilish good one too, simply unwearying in doing good, besides being the finest writer of short stories, in my humble opinion, of any I know.'

With these words Mr Pritchard rose hastily out of his chair; and once more that awful vacancy spread up into his face. To look at that face now, it might be merely a cruel caricature of himself – dark, discoloured, null, without interest, hope or desire. He gulped – like a child after a long fit of crying – and held out his hand.

‘Well doctor,' he said, ‘you have been enormously kind to me; far, far kinder than I deserve. But you can have no notion what a help it has been just to – to have talked like this. Quite candidly, I doubt if any remedies can now be of much service; but I will do my best to follow your advice. Anyhow, I am not like that poor wretch's wife in my story: I shan't go to any extreme! In the first place I doubt if I have the courage to – to run away. And in the second, my own conviction is that there are so many people in this world in much the same state of mind as I am, that if any large proportion of us decided – well, to try elsewhere, the statistics would be positively alarming. That alone would solve the Malthusian problem.

‘I suppose – to give it a fine-sounding phrase – it is the disease of our modern civilization: nothing definitely, tragically wrong, but just the general condition of things. Not that I am so foolish as to make any claim to being a thinker; I hardly even deserve the name of a feeler. I look on, chiefly. But it is this fate of being a human being at all, with this appalling power of watching ourselves suffer, that becomes at last almost intolerable. The power, too,' he smiled, ‘of being actually able to describe our symptoms. And at considerable length, doctor. But there, I have had one supreme advantage this afternoon; for
you
have listened to me, whereas we humans in general in these days seem in the long run to have no one whatsoever to confide in. No one, I mean, in heaven or earth whom we really seem to trust any longer.'

He paused, softly drawing his hand round the brim of his hat; then once more smiled – that curiously childish ingratiating smile. ‘Even at that,' he added, ‘I feel you would be right in labelling me something of a fraud; for whatever happens – rest or no rest – I shall probably go on with my work all right. It's an odd thing, but, do you know, nothing seems to have the slightest effect upon that. I dare say that is your experience, too. My old mother sometimes tells our friends, “Charles thoroughly enjoys his work, you know … Charles thoroughly enjoys his writing.” And Charles can't deny it. That alone should be almost enough to convince one that this is a mechanistic universe. Once wound up, and with enough ink and paper in the machine, one just goes on and on, like – well, even better than clockwork!'

Dr Lidgett took the hand stretched out to him and held it for the briefest moment clasped warmly in his own. His lips moved a little, as if in an attempt to express the inexpressible; or even to utter a syllable or two of kindliness concerning Mr Pritchard's old mother. But he made no further remark. He led the way to the door, then followed his visitor across the hall. A Sheraton barometer stood opposite the hat-stand. Something had gone wrong with its works. Its needle stood at ‘Set Fair', whereas but one casual glance at the exquisite mackerel sky above the trees under the open porch was proof enough of the caprices of an English spring. Dr Lidgett stood holding the handle of the front door; and, looking out, watched his visitor until he had reached the gate.

For some reason, most of his patients, he had noticed, were punctilious in the matter of closing the gate after them, when they left his house. They did it firmly, scrupulously, finally, and without noise. This patient – Mr Pritchard – went even further. He once more turned, showing under his hard felt hat that dark white face – rather like a telescopic rendering of the landscapes of the moon. Then he raised that hat, and smiled. Dr Lidgett in response lifted his hand; and his visitor vanished behind the privet hedge.

These, of course, were but gestures of common courtesy. And yet, in the quiet damp air, in that darkening spring twilight, they seemed to be pregnant signals rushing to meet and to cross and to combine – like secret messages in the sphere of the telepathic.

Having bidden his visitor this almost solemn adieu, Dr Lidgett had then as gently and firmly shut his front door, and turned back into his surgery. He at once sat down at his desk and scribbled into his day-book a neat and methodical account of the interview that had just come to an end. He then shut the book, leaned back in his chair, folded his well-kept, competent hands; and his empty eyes, as if of their own volition, strayed towards the photograph on his table.

That too was the photograph of a young and lovely face, but not a ‘dangerous' one. And its owner had certainly not ‘run away'. She had merely ‘gone' away, and for good, and very unwillingly.

The Nap

The Nap
1

The autumnal afternoon was creeping steadily on towards night; the sun after the morning's rain was now – from behind thinning clouds – glinting down on the chimney pots and slate roofs of Mr Thripp's suburb. And the day being a Saturday, across Europe, across England, an immense multitudinous stirring of humanity was in progress. It had begun in remote Australia and would presently sweep across the Atlantic into vast America, resembling the rustling of an ant-heap in a pine wood in sunny June. The Christian world, that is, was preparing for its weekly half-holiday; and Mr Thripp was taking his share.

As if time were of unusual importance to him, two clocks stood on his kitchen mantelpiece: one, gay as a peepshow in the middle, in a stained wood case with red and blue flowers on the glass front; the other an ‘alarm' – which though it was made of tin had a voice and an appearance little short of the brazen. Above them, as if entirely oblivious to their ranting, a glazed King Edward VII stared stolidly out of a Christmas lithograph, with his Orders on his royal breast.

Mr Thripp's kitchen table was at this moment disordered with the remains of a meal straggling over a tablecloth that had now gallantly completed its full week's service. Like all Saturday dinners in his household, this had been a hugger-mugger dinner – one of vehement relays. Mr Thripp himself had returned home from his office at a quarter to two – five minutes after his daughter Millie and Mrs Thripp had already begun. Charlie Thripp had made his appearance a little before the hour; and James – who somehow had never become Jim or Jimmie – arrived soon afterwards. To each his due, kept warm.

But the hasty feeding was now over. Mr Thripp in his shirt-sleeves, and with his silver watch-chain disposed upon his front, had returned once more from the scullery with his empty tray. He was breathing heavily, for he inclined nowadays, as he would sometimes confess, to the
ongbong
pong
. He had remarkably muscular arms for a man of his sedentary profession, that of ledger clerk in Messrs Bailey, Bailey and Company's counting house. His small eyes, usually half-hidden by their plump lids, were of a bright, clear blue. His round head was covered with close-cut hair; he had fullish lips, and his ample jowl always appeared as if it had been freshly shaved – even on Saturday afternoons.

Mr Thripp delighted in Saturday afternoons. He delighted in housework. Though he never confessed it to a living soul (and even though it annoyed Tilda to hear him) he delighted too in imitating the waitresses in the tea-shops, and rattled the plates and dishes together as if they were made of a material unshatterable and everlasting. When alone at the sink he would hiss like a groom currying a full-grown mare. He packed the tray full of dirty dishes once more, and returned into the steam of the scullery.

‘You get along now, Tilda,' he said to his wife who was drying up. ‘We shall have that Mrs Brown knocking every minute, and that only flusters you.'

Mrs Thripp looked more ill-tempered than she really was – with her angular face and chin, pitch-dark eyes, and black straight hair. With long damp fingers she drew back a limp strand of it that had straggled over her forehead.

‘What beats me is, you never take a bit of enjoyment yourself,' she replied. ‘It isn't fair to
us
. I slave away, morning, noon and night; but that's just as things are. But other husbands get out and about; why not you?
Let
her knock! She's got too much money to waste; that's what's the matter with
her
. I don't know what you wouldn't take her for in that new get-up she's got.'

Then what the devil do you go about with her for? were the words that entered Mr Thripp's mind; and as for slaving, haven't I just
asked
you to give over? Have reason, woman! But he didn't utter them. ‘That'll be all right,' he said instead, in his absurd genial way. ‘You get on along off, Tilda; I'll see to all this. I enjoy myself my own way, don't you fear. Did you never hear of the selfish sex? Well, that's me!'

‘Oh yes, I know all about that,' said his wife sententiously: ‘a pinch of salt on a bird's tail! But there's no need for sarcasms. Now do be careful with that dish, there. It don't belong to us, but to next door. She gave me one of her pancakes on it – and nothing better than a shapeless bit of leather, eether. Just to show she was once in service as a cook-general, I suppose; though she never owns to it.'

A spiteful old mischief-maker, if you asked me, was Mr Thripp's inward comment. But ‘Oh well, Tilda, she means all right,' he said soothingly. ‘Don't you worry. Now get along off with you; it's a hard day, Saturday, but you won't know yourself when you come down again.' As if forced into a line of conduct she deprecated and despised, Tilda flung her wet tea-cloth over a chair, and, with heart beating gaily beneath her shrunken breast, hastened away.

Mr Thripp began to whistle under his breath as he turned on the hot water tap again. It was the one thing he insisted on – a lavish supply of hot water. He was no musician and only himself knew the tune he was in search of; but it kept him going as vigorously as a company of grenadiers on the march, and he invariably did his household jobs against time. It indulged a sort of gambling instinct in him; and the more he hated his job the louder he whistled. So as a small boy he had met the challenge of the terrors of the dark. ‘Keep going,' he would say. ‘Don't let things mess over. That's waste!'

At that moment, his elder son, James, appeared in the scullery doorway. James took after his mother's side of the family. In his navy-blue serge suit, light-brown shoes, mauve socks and spotted tie, he showed what careful dressing can do for a man. A cigarette sagged from his lower lip. His head was oblong, and flat-sided, and his eyes had a damp and vacant look. He thrust his face an inch or two into the succulent steam beyond the doorway.

‘Well, Dad, I'm off,' he said.

Oh, my God! thought his father; if only you'd drop those infernal fags. Smoke, smoke, smoke, morning to night; and you that pasty-looking I can't imagaine what the girl sees in you, with your nice superior ways. ‘Right you are, my son', he said aloud, ‘I won't ask you to take a hand! Enjoy yourself while you're young, I say. But slow and steady does it. Where might
you
be bound for this afternoon?'

‘Oh, tea with Ivy's people,' said James magnanimously. ‘Pretty dull going, I can tell you.'

‘But it won't be tea all the evening, I suppose?' said his father, pushing a steaming plate into the plate-rack.

‘Oh, I dare say we shall loaf off to a Revoo or something,' said James. He tossed his cigarette end into the sink, but missed the refuse strainer. Mr Thripp picked it up with a fork and put it into the receptacle it was intended for, while James ‘lit up' again.

‘Well, so long,' said his father, ‘don't spoil that Sunday-go-to-Meeting suit of yours with all this steam. And by the way, James, I owe you five shillings for that little carpentering job you did for me. It's on the sitting-room shelf.'

‘Right ho. Thanks, Dad,' said James. ‘I thought it was six. But never mind.'

His father flashed a glance at his son – a glance like the smouldering of a coal. ‘That so? Well, make it six, then,' he said. ‘And I'm much obliged.'

‘Oh, that's nothing,' replied James graciously. ‘Cheerio; don't overdo it, Dad.'

Mr Thripp returned to his washing-up. He was thinking rapidly with an extraordinary medley of feeling – as if he were not one Mr Thripp, but many. None the less, his whistling broke out anew as though, like a canary, in rivalry with the gushing of the tap. After loading up his tray with crockery for the last time, he put its contents away in the cupboard, and on the kitchen dresser; cleansed the drain, swabbed up the sink, swabbed up the cracked cement floor, hung up his dish-clout, rinsed his hands, and returned into the kitchen.

Millie in a neat, tailor-made costume which had that week marvellously survived dyeing, was now posed before the little cracked square of kitchen looking-glass. She was a pale, slim thing. Her smooth hair, of a lightish brown streaked with gold and parted in the middle, resembled a gilded frame surrounding her mild angelic face – a face such as the medieval sculptors in France delighted to carve on their altar-pieces. Whatever she wore became her – even her skimpy old pale-blue flannel dressing-gown.

She turned her narrow pretty face sidelong under her hat and looked at her father. She looked at every human being like that – even at her own reflection in a shop window, even at a flower in a glass. She spent her whole life subtly, instinctively, wordlessly courting. She had as many young men as the White Queen has pawns: though not all of them remained long in her service.

It's all very well to be preening yourself in that mirror, my girl, her father was thinking, but you'd be far better off in the long run if you did a bit more to help your mother, even though you do earn a fraction of your living. More thinking and less face, I say. And all that — But ‘Why, I never see such a girl as you, Millie,' he greeted her incredulously, ‘for looking your best! And such a best, too, my dear. Which young spark is it to be
this
afternoon? Eh?'

‘Sparks! Dad; how you do talk. Why, I don't hardly know, Dad. Sparks!' Millie's voice almost invariably ran down the scale like the notes of a dulcimer muted with velvet. ‘I wasn't thinking of anybody in particular,' she went on, continuing to watch her moving mouth in the glass, ‘but I promised Nellie Gibbs I … One thing, I am not going to stay out long on a day like this!'

‘What's the matter with the day?' Mr Thripp inquired.

‘The matter! Why, look at it! It's a fair filthy mug of a day.' The words slipped off her pretty curved lips like pearls over satin. A delicious anguish seemed to have arched the corners of her eyelids.

‘Well, ain't there such a thing as a mackingtosh in the house, then?' inquired her father briskly.

‘Mackingtosh! Over this? Oh, isn't that just like a man! I should look a perfect guy.' She stood gazing at him, like a gazelle startled by the flurry of a breeze across the placid surface of its drinking-pool.

Now see you here, my girl, that see-saw voice inside her father was expostulating once more, what's the good of them fine silly airs? I take you for an honest man's daughter with not a ha'penny to spare on fal-lals and monkey-traps.
That
won't get you a husband. But Mr Thripp once more ignored its interruption. He smiled almost roguishly out of his bright blue eyes at his daughter. ‘Ask
me
what I take you for, my dear? Why, I take you for a nice, well-meaning, though remarkably plain young woman. Eh? But there, there, don't worry. What I say is, make sure of the best (and the best that's
inside
) and let the other young fellows go.'

He swept the last clean fork on the table into the drawer and folded up the tablecloth.

‘Oh, Dad, how you do go on!' breathed Millie. ‘It's always fellows you're thinking of. As if fellows made any difference.' Her glance roamed a little startledly round the room. ‘What I can't understand,' she added quickly, ‘is why we never have a clean tablecloth. How can anybody ask a friend home to their own place if that's the kind of thing they are going to eat off of?' The faint nuance of discontent in her voice only made it the more enchanting and seductive. She might be Sleeping Beauty babbling out of her dreams.

A cataract of invective coursed through the channels of Mr Thripp's mind. He paused an instant to give the soiled tablecloth another twist and the table another prolonged sweep of that formidable right arm which for twenty-three years had never once been lifted in chastisement of a single one of his three offspring. Then he turned and glanced at the fire.

‘I wouldn't,' he said, seizing the shovel, ‘I wouldn't let Mother hear that, my dear. We all have a good many things to put up with. And what I say is, all in good time.
You
bring that Mr Right along! and I can promise him not only a clean tablecloth but something appetizing to eat off of it. A bit of a fire in the sitting-room too, for that matter.'

‘You're a good sort, Dad,' said Millie, putting up her face to be kissed – in complete confidence that the tiny powder-puff in her vanity bag would soon adjust any possible mishap to the tip of her small nose. ‘But I don't believe you ever think I think of anything.'

‘Good-bye, my dear,' said Mr Thripp; ‘don't kiss me. I am all of a smother with the washing-up.'

‘Toodle-loo, Ma,' Millie shrilled, as her father followed her out into the passage. He drew open the front door, secreting his shirt-sleeves well behind it in case of curious passers-by.

‘Take care of yourself, my dear,' he called after her, ‘and don't be too late.'