Selected Stories

by E. M. Forster

  The gesture with which he returned the handkerchief troubled her with vague memories. Before she could thank him he was back in the doorway, standing sideways, so that the slight curve of his stomach was outlined against the view. He was speaking to a youth of athletic but melancholy appearance, who was fidgeting in the portico without. ‘I told you the percentage,’ she heard. ‘If you had agreed to it, I would have recommended you. Now it is too late. I have enough guides.’

  Our generosity benefits more people than we suppose. We tip the cabman, and something goes to the man who whistled for him. We tip the man who lights up the stalactite grotto with magnesium wire, and something goes to the boatman who brought us there. We tip the waiter in the restaurant, and something goes off the waiter’s wages. A vast machinery, whose existence we seldom realize, promotes the distribution of our wealth. When the concierge returned, Miss Raby asked, ‘And what is the percentage?’

  She asked with the definite intention of disconcerting him, not because she was unkind, but because she wished to discover what qualities, if any, lurked beneath that civil, efficient exterior. And the spirit of her inquiry was sentimental rather than scientific.

  With an educated man she would have succeeded. In attempting to reply to her question, he would have revealed something. But the concierge had no reason to pay even lip service to logic. He replied: ‘Yes, madam! this is perfect weather, both for our visitors and for the hay’, and hurried to help a bishop, who was selecting a picture postcard.

  Miss Raby, instead of moralizing on the inferior resources of the lower classes, acknowledged a defeat. She watched the man spreading out the postcards, helpful yet not obtrusive, alert yet deferential. She watched him make the bishop buy more than he wanted. This was the man who had talked of love to her upon the mountain. But hitherto he had only revealed his identity by chance gestures bequeathed to him at birth. Intercourse with the gentle classes had required new qualities—civility, omniscience, imperturbability. It was the old answer: the gentle classes were responsible for him. It is inevitable, as well as desirable, that we should bear each other’s burdens.

  It was absurd to blame Feo for his worldliness—for his essential vulgarity. He had not made himself. It was even absurd to regret his transformation from an athlete: his greasy stoutness, his big black kiss-curl, his waxed moustache, his chin which was dividing and propagating itself like some primitive form of life. In England, nearly twenty years before, she had altered his figure as well as his character. He was one of the products of ‘The Eternal Moment’.

  A great tenderness overcame her—the sadness of an unskilful demiurge, who makes a world and beholds that it is bad. She desired to ask pardon of her creatures, even though they were too poorly formed to grant it. The longing to confess, which she had suppressed that morning beside the bed of Signora Cantù, broke out again with the violence of a physical desire. When the bishop had gone she renewed the conversation, though on different lines, saying: ‘Yes, it is beautiful weather. I have just been enjoying a walk up from the Biscione. I am stopping there!’

  He saw that she was willing to talk, and replied pleasantly: ‘The Biscione must be a very nice hotel: many people speak well of it. The fresco is very beautiful.’ He was too shrewd to object to a little charity.

  ‘What lots of new hotels there are!’ She lowered her voice in order not to rouse the Prince, whose presence weighed on her curiously.

  ‘Oh, madam! I should indeed think so. When I was a lad—excuse me one moment.’

  An American girl, who was new to the country, came up with her hand full of coins, and asked him hopelessly ‘whatever they were worth’. He explained, and gave her change: Miss Raby was not sure that he gave her the right change.

  ‘When I was a lad—’ He was again interrupted, to speed two parting guests. One of them tipped him; he said ‘Thank you.’ The other did not tip him; he said ‘Thank you’, all the same but not in the same way. Obviously he had as yet no recollections of Miss Raby.

  ‘When I was a lad, Vorta was a poor little place.’

  ‘But a pleasant place?’

  ‘Very pleasant, madam.’

  ‘Kouf!’ said the Russian Prince, suddenly waking up and startling them both. He clapped on a felt hat, and departed at full speed for a constitutional. Miss Raby and Feo were left together.

  It was then that she ceased to hesitate, and determined to remind him that they had met before. All day she had sought for a spark of life, and it might be summoned by pointing to that other fire which she discerned, far back in the travelled distance, high up in the mountains of youth. What he would do, if he also discerned it, she did not know; but she hoped that he would become alive, that he at all events would escape the general doom which she had prepared for the place and the people. And what she would do, during their joint contemplation, she did not even consider.

  She would hardly have ventured if the sufferings of the day had not hardened her. After much pain, respectability becomes ludicrous. And she had only to overcome the difficulty of Feo’s being a man, not the difficulty of his being a concierge. She had never observed that spiritual reticence towards social inferiors which is usual at the present day.

  ‘This is my second visit,’ she said boldly. ‘I stayed at the Biscione twenty years ago.’

  He showed the first sign of emotion: that reference to the Biscione annoyed him.

  ‘I was told I should find you up here,’ continued Miss Raby. ‘I remember you very well. You used to take us over the passes.’

  She watched his face intently. She did not expect it to relax into an expansive smile. ‘Ah!’ he said, taking off his peaked cap, ‘I remember you perfectly, madam. What a pleasure, if I may say so, to meet you again!’

  ‘I am pleased, too,’ said the lady, looking at him doubtfully.

  ‘You and another lady, madam, was it not? Miss—’

  ‘Mrs Harbottle.’

  ‘To be sure; I carried your luggage. I often remember your kindness.’

  She looked up. He was standing near an open window, and the whole of fairyland stretched behind him. Her sanity forsook her, and she said gently: ‘Will you misunderstand me, if I say that I have never forgotten your kindness either?’

  He replied: ‘The kindness was yours, madam; I only did my duty.’

  ‘Duty?’ she cried; ‘what about duty?’

  ‘You and Miss Harbottle were such generous ladies. I well remember how grateful I was: you always paid me above the tariff fare-’

  Then she realized that he had forgotten everything; forgotten her, forgotten what had happened, even forgotten what he was like when he was young.

  ‘Stop being polite,’ she said coldly. ‘You were not polite when I saw you last.’

  ‘I am very sorry,’ he exclaimed, suddenly alarmed.

  ‘Turn round. Look at the mountains.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ His fishy eyes blinked nervously. He fiddled with his watch chain which lay in a furrow of his waistcoat. He ran away to warn some poorly dressed children off the view terrace. When he returned she still insisted.

  ‘I must tell you,’ she said, in calm, business-like tones. ‘Look at that great mountain, round which the road goes south. Look halfway up, on its eastern side—where the flowers are. It was there that you once gave yourself away.’

  He gaped at her in horror. He remembered. He was inexpressibly shocked.

  It was at that moment that Colonel Leyland returned.

  She walked up to him, saying, ‘This is the man I spoke of yesterday.’

  ‘Good afternoon; what man?’ said Colonel Leyland fussily. He saw that she was flushed, and concluded that someone had been rude to her. Since their relations were somewhat anomalous, he was all the more particular that she should be treated with respect.

  ‘The man who fell in love with me when I was young.’

  ‘It is untrue!’ cried the wretched Feo, seeing at once the trap that had been laid for him. ‘The lady imagined it. I swear, sir�
��I meant nothing. I was a lad. It was before I learnt behaviour. I had even forgotten it. She reminded me. She has disturbed me.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Colonel Leyland. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘I shall lose my place, sir; and I have a wife and children. I shall be ruined.’

  ‘Sufficient!’ cried Colonel Leyland. ‘Whatever Miss Raby’s intentions may be, she does not intend to ruin you.’

  ‘You have misunderstood me, Feo,’ said Miss Raby gently.

  ‘How unlucky we have been missing each other,’ said Colonel Leyland, in trembling tones that were meant to be nonchalant. ‘Shall we go a little walk before dinner? I hope that you are stopping.’

  She did not attend. She was watching Feo. His alarm had subsided; and he revealed a new emotion, even less agreeable to her. His shoulders straightened, he developed an irresistible smile, and, when he saw that she was looking and that Colonel Leyland was not, he winked at her.

  It was a ghastly sight, perhaps the most hopelessly depressing of all the things she had seen at Vorta. But its effect on her was memorable. It evoked a complete vision of that same man as he had been twenty years before. She could see him to the smallest detail of his clothes or his hair, the flowers in his hand, the graze on his wrist, the heavy bundle that he had loosed from his back, so that he might speak as a freeman. She could hear his voice, neither insolent nor diffident, never threatening, never apologizing, urging her first in the studied phrases he had learnt from books, then, as his passion grew, becoming incoherent, crying that she must believe him, that she must love him in return, that she must fly with him to Italy, where they would live for ever, always happy, always young. She had cried out then, as a young lady should, and had thanked him not to insult her. And now, in her middle age, she cried out again, because the sudden shock and the contrast had worked a revelation. ‘Don’t think I’m in love with you now!’ she cried.

  For she realized that only now was she not in love with him: that the incident upon the mountain had been one of the great moments of her life—perhaps the greatest, certainly the most enduring: that she had drawn unacknowledged power and inspiration from it, just as trees draw vigour from a subterranean spring. Never again could she think of it as a half-humorous episode in her development. There was more reality in it than in all the years of success and varied achievement which had followed, and which it had rendered possible. For all her correct behaviour and lady-like display, she had been in love with Feo, and she had never loved so greatly again. A presumptuous boy had taken her to the gates of heaven; and, though she would not enter with him, the eternal remembrance of the vision had made life seem endurable and good.

  Colonel Leyland, by her side, babbled respectabilities, trying to pass the situation off as normal. He was saving her, for he liked her very much, and it pained him when she was foolish. But her last remark to Feo had frightened him; and he began to feel that he must save himself. They were no longer alone. The bureau lady and the young gentleman were listening breathlessly, and the porters were tittering at the discomfiture of their superior. A French lady had spread amongst the guests the agreeable news that an Englishman had surprised his wife making love to the concierge. On the terrace outside, a mother waved away her daughters. The bishop was preparing, very leisurely, for a walk.

  But Miss Raby was oblivious. ‘How little I know!’ she said. ‘I never knew till now that I had loved him and that it was a mere chance—a little catch, a kink—that I never told him so.’

  It was her habit to speak out; and there was no present passion to disturb or prevent her. She was still detached, looking back at a fire upon the mountains, marvelling at its increased radiance, but too far off to feel its heat. And by speaking out she believed, pathetically enough, that she was making herself intelligible. Her remark seemed inexpressibly coarse to Colonel Leyland.

  ‘But these beautiful thoughts are a poor business, are they not?’ she continued, addressing Feo, who was losing his gallant air and becoming bewildered. ‘They’re hardly enough to grow old on. I think I would give all my imagination, all my skill with words, if I could recapture one crude fact, if I could replace one single person whom I have broken.’

  ‘Quite so, madam,’ he responded, with downcast eyes.

  ‘If only I could find someone here who would understand me, to whom I could confess, I think I should be happier. I have done so much harm in Vorta, dear Feo—’

  Feo raised his eyes. Colonel Leyland struck his stick on the parquetry floor.

  ‘—and at last I thought I would speak to you, in case you understood me. I remembered that you had once been very gracious to me—yes, gracious: there is no other word. But I have harmed you also: how could you understand?’

  ‘Madam, I understand perfectly,’ said the concierge, who had recovered a little and was determined to end the distressing scene, in which his reputation was endangered, and his vanity aroused only to be rebuffed. ‘It is you who are mistaken. You have done me no harm at all. You have benefited me.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Colonel Leyland. ‘That is the conclusion of the whole matter. Miss Raby has been the making of Vorta.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. After the lady’s book, foreigners come, hotels are built, we all grow richer. When I first came here, I was a common ignorant porter who carried luggage over the passes; I worked, I found opportunities, I was pleasing to the visitors—and now!’ He checked himself suddenly. ‘Of course I am still but a poor man. My wife and children—’

  ‘Children!’ cried Miss Raby, suddenly seeing a path of salvation. ‘What children have you?’

  ‘Three dear little boys,’ he replied, without enthusiasm.

  ‘How old is the youngest?’

  ‘Madam, five.’

  ‘Let me have that child,’ she said impressively, ‘and I will bring him up. He shall live among rich people. He shall see that they are not the vile creatures he supposes, always clamouring for respect and deference and trying to buy them with money. Rich people are good: they are capable of sympathy and love: they are fond of the truth; and when they are with each other they are clever. Your boy shall learn this, and he shall try to teach it to you. And when he grows up, if God is good to him he shall teach the rich: he shall teach them not to be stupid to the poor. I have tried myself, and people buy my books and say that they are good, and smile and lay them down. But I know this: so long as the stupidity exists, not only our charities and missions and schools, but the whole of our civilization, are vain.’

  It was painful for Colonel Leyland to listen to such phrases. He made one more effort to rescue Miss Raby. ‘Je vous prie de ne pas—’ he began gruffly, and then stopped, for he remembered that the concierge must know French. But Feo was not attending, nor, of course, had he attended to the lady’s prophecies. He was wondering if he could persuade his wife to give up the little boy, and, if he did, how much they dare ask from Miss Raby without repulsing her.

  ‘That will be my pardon,’ she continued, ‘if out of the place where I have done so much evil I bring some good. I am tired of memories, though they have been very beautiful. Now, Feo, I want you to give me something else: a living boy. I shall always puzzle you; and I cannot help it. I have changed so much since we met, and I have changed you also. We are both new people. Remember that; for I want to ask you one question before we part, and I cannot see why you shouldn’t answer it. Feo! I want you to attend.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam,’ said the concierge, rousing himself from his calculations. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Answer “yes” or “no”; that day when you said you were in love with me—was it true?’

  It was doubtful whether he could have answered, whether he had now any opinion about that day at all. But he did not make the attempt. He saw again that he was menaced by an ugly, withered, elderly woman, who was trying to destroy his reputation and his domestic peace. He shrank towards Colonel Leyland, and faltered: ‘Madam, you must excuse me, but I had rather you
did not see my wife; she is so sharp. You are most kind about my little boy; but, madam, no, she would never permit it.’

  ‘You have insulted a lady!’ shouted the colonel, and made a chivalrous movement of attack. From the hall behind came exclamations of horror and expectancy. Someone ran for the manager.

  Miss Raby interposed, saying, ‘He will never think me respectable.’ She looked at the dishevelled Feo, fat, perspiring, and unattractive, and smiled sadly at her own stupidity, not at his. It was useless to speak to him again; her talk had scared away his competence and his civility, and scarcely anything was left. He was hardly more human than a frightened rabbit. ‘Poor man,’ she murmured, ‘I have only vexed him. But I wish he would have given me the boy. And I wish he would have answered my question, if only out of pity. He does not know the sort of thing that keeps me alive.’ She was looking at Colonel Leyland, and so discovered that he too was discomposed. It was her peculiarity that she could only attend to the person she was speaking with, and forgot the personality of the listeners. ‘I have been vexing you as well: I am very silly.’

  ‘It is a little late to think about me,’ said Colonel Leyland grimly.

  She remembered their conversation of yesterday, and understood him at once. But for him she had no careful explanation, no tender pity. Here was a man who was well born and well educated, who had all those things called advantages, who imagined himself full of insight and cultivation and knowledge of mankind. And he had proved himself to be at the exact spiritual level of the man who had no advantages, who was poor and had been made vulgar, whose early virtue had been destroyed by circumstance, whose manliness and simplicity had perished in serving the rich. If Colonel Leyland also believed that she was now in love with Feo, she would not exert herself to undeceive him. Nor indeed would she have found it possible.