The Favorite Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham (28 page)

No one knows how they came there or why they settled in that spot. They live their own lives, speak their own language, and have no communication with their neighbours. No one knows whether they are the descendants of a band that was left behind when their nation swept in a vast horde across the continent or whether they are the dying remnant of some great people that in that country once held empire. They are a mystery. They have no future and no history. This odd little family seemed to me to have something of the same character. They were of an era that is dead and gone. They reminded me of persons in one of those leisurely, old-fashioned novels that one’s father read. They belonged to the eighties and they had not moved since then. How extraordinary it was that they could have lived through the last forty years as though the world stood still! They took me back to my childhood and I recollected people who are long since dead. I wonder if it is only distance that gives me the impression that they were more peculiar than anyone is now. When a person was described then as “quite a character,” by heaven, it meant something.

So that evening after dinner I went into the lounge and boldly addressed Mr St Clair.

“I’m sorry I haven’t got a
Whitaker’s Almanack
I said, “but if I have any other book that can be of service to you I shall be delighted to lend it to you.”

Mr St Clair was obviously startled. The two ladies kept their eyes on their work. There was an embarrassed hush.

“It does not matter at all, but I was given to understand by the manageress that you were a novelist.”

I racked my brain. There was evidently some connexion between my profession and
Whitaker’s Almanack
that escaped me.

“In days gone by Mr Trollope used often to dine with us in Leinster Square and I remember him saying that the two most useful books to a novelist were the Bible and
Whitaker’s Almanack
.”

“I see that Thackeray once stayed in this hotel,” I remarked, anxious not to let the conversation drop.

“I never very much cared for Mr Thackeray, though he dined more than once with my wife’s father, the late Mr Sargeant Saunders. He was too cynical for me. My niece has not read
Vanity Fair
to this day.”

Miss Porchester blushed slightly at this reference to herself. A waiter brought in the coffee and Mrs St Clair turned to her husband.

“Perhaps, my dear, this gentleman would do us the pleasure to have his coffee with us.”

Although not directly addressed I answered promptly: “Thank you very much.” I sat down.

“Mr Trollope was always my favourite novelist,” said Mr St Clair. “He was so essentially a gentleman. I admire Charles Dickens. But Charles Dickens could never draw a gentleman. I am given to understand that young people nowadays find Mr Trollope a little low. My niece, Miss Porchester, prefers the novels of Mr William Black.”

“I’m afraid I’ve never read any,” I said.

“Ah, I see that you are like me; you are not up to date. My niece once persuaded me to read a novel by a Miss Rhoda Broughton, but I could not manage more than a hundred pages of it.”

“I did not say I liked it, Uncle Edwin,” said Miss Porchester, defending herself, with another blush, “I told you it was rather fast, but everybody was talking about it.”

“I’m quite sure it is not the sort of book your Aunt Gertrude would have wished you to read, Eleanor.”

“I remember Miss Broughton telling me once that when she was young people said her books were fast and when she was old they said they were slow, and it was very hard since she had written exactly the same sort of book for forty years.”

“Oh, did you know Miss Broughton?” asked Miss Porchester, addressing me for the first time. “How very interesting! And did you know Ouida?”

“My dear Eleanor, what will you say next! I’m quite sure you’ve never read anything by Ouida.”

“Indeed, I have, Uncle Edwin. I’ve read
Under Two Flags
and I liked it very much.”

“You amaze and shock me. I don’t know what girls are coming to nowadays.”

“You always said that when I was thirty you gave me complete liberty to read anything I liked.”

“There is a difference, my dear Eleanor, between liberty and licence,” said Mr St Clair, smiling a little in order not to make his reproof offensive, but with a certain gravity.

I do not know if in recounting this conversation I have managed to convey the impression it gave me of a charming and old-fashioned air. I could have listened all night to them discussing the depravity of an age that was young in the eighteen-eighties. I would have given a good deal for a glimpse of their large and roomy house in Leinster Square. I should have recognized the suite covered in red brocade that stood stiffly about the drawing-room, each piece in its appointed place; and the cabinets filled with Dresden china would have brought me back my childhood. In the dining-room, where they habitually sat, for the drawing-room was used only for parties, was a Turkey carpet and a vast mahogany sideboard “groaning’ with silver. On the walls were the pictures that had excited the admiration of Mrs Humphrey Ward and her uncle Matthew in the Academy of eighteen-eighty.

Next morning, strolling through a pretty lane at the back of Elsom, I met Miss Porchester, who was taking “her walk’. I should have liked to go a little way with her, but felt certain that it would embarrass this maiden of fifty to saunter alone with a man even of my respectable years. She bowed as I passed her and blushed. Oddly enough, a few yards behind her I came upon the funny shabby little man in black gloves with whom I had spoken for a few minutes on the front. He touched his old bowler hat.

“Excuse me, sir, but could you oblige me with a match?” he said.

“Certainly,” I retorted, “but I’m afraid I have no cigarettes on me.”

“Allow me to offer you one of mine,” he said, taking out the paper case. It was empty. “Dear, dear, I haven’t got one either. What a curious coincidence!”

He went on and I had a notion that he a little hastened his steps. I was beginning to have my doubts about him. I hoped he was not going to bother Miss Porchester. For a moment I thought of walking back, but I did not. He was a civil little man and I did not believe he would make a nuisance of himself to a single lady.

I saw him again that very afternoon. I was sitting on the front. He walked towards me with little, halting steps. There was something of a wind and he looked like a dried leaf being driven before it. This time he did not hesitate, but sat down beside me.

“We meet again, sir. The world is a small place. If it will not inconvenience you perhaps you will allow me to rest a few minutes. I am a wee bit tired.”

“This is a public bench, and you have just as much right to sit on it as I.”

I did not wait for him to ask me for a match, but at once offered him a cigarette.

“How very kind of you, sir! I have to limit myself to so many cigarettes a day, but I enjoy those I smoke. As one grows older the pleasures of life diminish, but my experience is that one enjoys more those that remain.”

“That is a very consoling thought.”

“Excuse me, sir, but am I right in thinking that you are the well-known author?”

“I am an author,” I replied. “But what made you think it?”

“I have seen your portrait in the illustrated papers. I suppose you don’t recognize me?”

I looked at him again, a weedy little man in neat but shabby black clothes, with a long nose and watery blue eyes.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I dare say I’ve changed,” he sighed. “There was a time when my photograph was in every paper in the United Kingdom. Of course, those press photographers never do you justice. I give you my word, sir, that if I hadn’t seen my name underneath I should never have guessed that some of them were meant for me.”

He was silent for a while. The tide was out and beyond the shingle of the beach was a strip of yellow mud. The breakwaters were half buried in it like the backbones of prehistoric beasts.

“It must be a wonderfully interesting thing to be an author, sir. I’ve often thought I had quite a turn for writing myself. At one time and another I’ve done a rare lot of reading. I haven’t kept up with it much lately. For one thing my eyes are not so good as they used to be. I believe I could write a book if I tried.”

“They say anybody can write one,” I answered.

“Not a novel, you know. I’m not much of a one for novels; I prefer histories and that-like. But memoirs. If anybody was to make it worth my while I wouldn’t mind writing my memoirs.”

“It’s very fashionable just now.”

“There are not many people who’ve had the experiences I’ve had in one way and another. I did write to one of the Sunday papers about it some little while back, but they never answered my letter.”

He gave me a long, appraising look. He had too respectable an air to be about to ask me for half a crown.

“Of course you don’t know who I am, sir, do you?”

“I honestly don’t.”

He seemed to ponder for a moment, then he smoothed down his black gloves on his fingers, looked for a moment at a hole in one of them, and then turned to me not without self-consciousness.

“I am the celebrated Mortimer Ellis,” he said.

“Oh?”

I did not know what other ejaculation to make, for to the best of my belief I had never heard the name before. I saw a look of disappointment come over his face, and I was a trifle embarrassed.

“Mortimer Ellis,” he repeated. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know.”

“I’m afraid I must. I’m very often out of England.”

I wondered to what he owed his celebrity. I passed over in my mind various possibilities. He could never have been an athlete, which alone in England gives a man real fame, but he might have been a faith-healer or a champion billiard-player. There is of course no one so obscure as a Cabinet Minister out of office and he might have been the President of the Board of Trade in a defunct administration. But he had none of the look of a politician.

“That’s fame for you,” he said bitterly. “Why, for weeks I was the most talked-about man in England. Look at me. You must have seen my photograph in the papers. Mortimer Ellis.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

He paused a moment to give his disclosure effectiveness.

“I am the well-known bigamist.”

Now what are you to reply when a person who is practically a stranger to you informs you that he is a well-known bigamist? I will confess that I have sometimes had the vanity to think that I am not as a rule at a loss for a retort, but here I found myself speechless.

“I’ve had eleven wives, sir,” he went on.

“Most people find one about as much as they can manage.”

“Ah, that’s want of practice. When you’ve had eleven there’s very little you don’t know about women.”

“But why did you stop at eleven?”

“There now, I knew you’d say that. The moment I set eyes on you I said to myself, he’s got a clever face. You know, sir, that’s the thing that always grizzles me. Eleven does seem a funny number, doesn’t it? There’s something unfinished about it. Now three anyone might have, and seven’s all right, they say nine’s lucky, and there’s nothing wrong with ten. But eleven! That’s the one thing I regret. I shouldn’t have minded anything if I could have brought it up to the Round Dozen.”

He unbuttoned his coat and from an inside pocket produced a bulging and very greasy pocket-book. From this he took a large bundle of newspaper cuttings; they were worn and creased and dirty. But he spread out two or three.

“Now just you look at those photographs. I ask you, are they like me? It’s an outrage. Why, you’d think I was a criminal to look at them.”

The cuttings were of imposing length. In the opinion of sub-editors Mortimer Ellis had obviously been a news item of value. One was headed, A Much Married Man; another, Heartless Ruffian Brought to Book; a third, Contemptible Scoundrel Meets his Waterloo.

“Not what you would call a good press,” I murmured.

“I never pay any attention to what the newspapers say,” he answered, with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “I’ve known too many journals myself for that. No, it’s the judge I blame. He treated me shocking and it did him no good, mind you; he died within the year.”

I ran my eyes down the report I held.

“I see he gave you five years.”

“Disgraceful, I call it, and see what it says.” He pointed to a place with his forefinger.

“‘Three of his victims pleaded for mercy to be shown to him.’ That shows what they thought of me. And after that he gave me five years. And just look what he called me, a heartless scoundrel-me, the best-hearted man that ever lived-a pest of society and a danger to the public. Said he wished he had the power to give me the cat. I don’t so much mind his giving me five years, though you’ll never get me to say it wasn’t excessive, but I ask you, had he the right to talk to me like that? No, he hadn’t, and I’ll never forgive him, not if I live to be a hundred.”

The bigamist’s cheeks flushed and his watery eyes were filled for a moment with fire. It was a sore subject with him.