by Hugh Walpole
“What is it, Lucy?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Porter.”
“Did you see something?”
“No, dear.”
“Oh, I thought... I thought..” Suddenly the old lady, with a fierce impetuous movement, pushed the table away from her. She got up, staggered for a moment on her feet, then tumbled to the pink sofa, cowering there, huddled, her sharp, fingers pressing against her face.
“Oh, I can’t bear it... I can’t bear it... I can’t bear it any more! He’s coming. He’s coming. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
Miss Allen, feeling nothing but love and affection for her friend, but realising strangely too the dim and muted attention of the room, knelt down beside the sofa and put her strong arms around the trembling, fragile body.
“What is it? Dear, dear Mrs. Porter. What is it? Who is coming? Of whom are you afraid?”
“Henry’s coming! Henry, who hated me. He’s coming to carry me away!”
“But Mr. Porter’s dead!”
“Yes....” The little voice was now the merest whisper. “But he’ll come all the same.... He always does what he says!”
The two women waited, listening. Miss Allen could hear the old lady’s heart thumping and leaping close to her own. Through the opened windows came the sibilant rumble of the motor-buses. Then Mrs. Porter gently pushed Miss Allen away. “Sit on a chair, Lucy dear. I must tell you everything. I must share this with someone.”
She seemed to have regained some of her calmness. She sat straight up upon the sofa, patting her lace cap with her hands, feeling for the cameo brooch at her breast. Miss Allen drew a chair close to the sofa; turning again towards the mantelpiece, she saw that it stood out boldly and clearly; the tick of the clock came across to her with almost startling urgency.
“Now, dear Mrs. Porter, what is it that is alarming you?” she said.
Mrs. Porter cleared her throat. “You know, Lucy, that I was married a great many years ago. I was only a very young girl at the time, very ignorant of course, and you can understand, my dear, that my father and mother influenced me very deeply. They liked Mr. Porter. They thought that he would make me a good husband and that I should be very happy.... I was not happy, Lucy dear, never from the very first moment!”
Here Mrs. Porter put out her hand and took Miss Allen’s strong one. “I am very willing to believe that much of the unhappiness was due to myself. I was a young, foolish girl; I was disturbed from the very first by the stories that Mr. Porter told me, and the pictures he showed me. I was foolish about those things. He saw that they shocked me, and I think that that amused him. From the first it delighted him to tease me. Then — soon — he tired of me. He had mistresses. He brought them to our house. He insulted me in every way possible. I had years of that misery. God only knows how I lived through it. It became a habit with him to frighten and shock me. It was a game that he loved to play. I think he wanted to see how far I would go. But I was patient through all those many years. Oh! so patient! It was weak, perhaps, but there seemed nothing else for me to be.
“The last twenty years of our married life he hated me most bitterly. He said that I had scorned him, that I had not given him children, that I had wasted his money — a thousand different things! He tortured me, frightened me, disgusted me, but it never seemed to be enough for him, for the vengeance he felt I deserved. Then one day he discovered that he had a weak heart — a doctor frightened him. He saw perhaps for a moment in my eyes my consciousness of my possible freedom. He took my arm and shook me, bent his face close to mine, and said: ‘Ah, you think that after I’m dead you will be free. You are wrong. I will leave you everything that I possess, and then — just as you begin to enjoy it — I will come and fetch you!’ What a thing to say, Lucy, dear! He was mad, and so was I to listen to him. All those years of married life together had perhaps turned both our brains. Six months later he fell down in the street dead. They brought him home, and all that summer afternoon, my dear, I sat beside him in the bedroom, he all dressed in his best clothes and his patent leather shoes, and the band playing in the Square outside. Oh! he was dead, Lucy dear, he was indeed. For a week or two I thought that he was gone altogether. I was happy and free. — Then — oh, I don’t know — I began to imagine .. to fancy.... I moved from Wimbledon. I advertised for someone, and you came. We moved here.... It ought to be... it is... it must be all right, Lucy dear; hold me, hold me tight! Don’t let me go! He can’t come back! He can’t, he can’t!”
She broke into passionate sobbing, cowering back on to the sofa as she had done before. The two women sat there, comforting one another. Miss Allen gathered the frail, trembling little body into her arms, and like a mother with her child, soothed it.
But, as she sat there, she realised with a chill shudder of alarm that moment, a quarter of an hour before, when the room had been dimmed and the clock stilled. Had that been fancy? Had some of Mrs. Porter’s terror seized her in sympathy? Were they simply two lonely women whose nerves were jagged by the quiet monotony and seclusion of their lives? Why was it that from the first she, so unimaginative and definite, should have been disturbed by the thought of Mr. Porter? Why was it that even now she longed to know more surely about him, his face, his clothes, his height... everything.
“You must go to bed, dear. You are tired out. Your nerves have never recovered from the time of Mr. Porter’s death. That’s what it is.... You must go to bed, dear.”
Mrs. Porter went. She seemed to be relieved by her outburst. She felt perhaps now less lonely. It seemed, too, that she had less to fear now that she had betrayed her ghost into sunlight. She slept better that night than she had done for a long time past. Miss Allen sat beside the bed staring into the darkness, thinking....
For a week after this they were happy. Mrs. Porter was in high spirits. They went to the Coliseum and heard Miss Florence Smithson sing “Roses of Picardy,” and in the Cinema they were delighted with the charm and simplicity of Alma Taylor. Mrs. Porter lost her heart to Alma Taylor. “That’s a sweet girl,” she said. “I would like to meet her. I’m sure she’s good.”
“I’m sure she is,” said Miss Allen. Mrs. Porter made friends in the flat. Mr. Nix met them one day at the bottom of the lift and talked to them so pleasantly. “What a gentleman!” said Mrs. Porter afterwards as she took off her bonnet.
Then one evening Miss Allen came into the sitting-room and stopped dead, frozen rigid on the threshold. Someone was in the room. She did not at first think of Mr. Porter. She was only sure that someone was there. Mrs. Porter was in her bedroom changing her dress.
Miss Allen said, “Who’s there?” She walked forward. The dim evening saffron light powdered the walls with trembling colour. The canaries twittered, the clock ticked; no one was there. After that instant of horror she was to know no relief. It was as though that spoken “Who’s there?” had admitted her into the open acceptance of a fact that she ought for ever to have denied.
She was a woman of common sense, of rational thought, scornful of superstition and sentiment. She realised now that there was something quite definite for her to fight, something as definite as disease, as pain, as poverty and hunger. She realised too that she was there to protect Mrs. Porter from everything — yes, from everything and everybody!
Her first thought was to escape from the flat, and especially from everything in the flat — from the pink sofa, the gate-legged table, the bird-cage and the clock. She saw then that, if she yielded to this desire, they would be driven, the two of them, into perpetual flight, and that the very necessity of escaping would only admit the more the conviction of defeat. No, they must stay where they were; that place was their battleground.
She determined, too, that Mr. Porter’s name should not be mentioned between them again. Mrs. Porter must be assured that she had forgotten his very existence.
Soon she arrived at an exact knowledge of the arrival of these “attacks,” as she called them. That month of May gave them wonderful weather. The ev
enings were so beautiful that they sat always with the windows open behind them, and the dim colour of the night-glow softened the lamplight and brought with it scents and breezes and a happy murmurous undertone. She received again and again in these May evenings that earlier impression of someone’s entrance into the room. It came to her, as she sat with her back to the fireplace, with the conviction that a pair of eyes were staring at her. Those eyes willed her to him, and she would not; but soon she seemed to know them, cold, hard, and separated from her, she fancied, by glasses. They seemed, too, to bend down upon her from a height. She was desperately conscious at these moments of Mrs. Porter. Was the old lady also aware? She could not tell. Mrs. Porter still cast at her those odd, furtive glances, as though to see whether she suspected anything, but she never looked at the fireplace nor started as though the door was suddenly opened.
There were times when Miss Allen, relaxing her self-control, admitted without hesitation that someone was in the room. He was tall, wore spectacles behind which he scornfully peered. She challenged him to pass her guard and even felt the stiff pride of a victorious battle. They were fighting for the old lady, and she was winning....
At all other moments she scorned herself for this weakness. Mrs. Porter’s nerves had affected her own. She had not believed that she could be so weak. Then, suddenly, one evening Mrs. Porter dropped her cards, crumpled down into her chair, screamed, “No, no... Lucy!... Lucy! He’s here!...”
She was strangely, at the moment of that cry, aware of no presence in the room. It was only when she had gathered her friend into her arms, persuading her that there was nothing, loving her, petting her, that she was conscious of the dimming of the light, the stealthy withdrawal of sound. She was facing the fireplace; before the mantelpiece there seemed to her to hover a shadow, something so tenuous that it resembled a film of dust against the glow of electric light. She faced it with steady eyes and a fearless heart.
But against her will her soul admitted that confrontation. From that moment Mrs. Porter abandoned disguise. Her terror was now so persistent that soon, of itself, it would kill her. There was no remedy; doctors could not help, nor change of scene. Only if Miss Allen still saw and felt nothing could the old lady still hope. Miss Allen lied and lied again and again.
“You saw nothing, Lucy?”
“Nothing.”
“Not there by the fireplace?”
“Nothing, dear.... Of course, nothing!”
Events from then moved quickly, and they moved for Miss Allen quite definitely in the hardening of the sinister shadow. She led now a triple existence: one life was Mrs. Porter’s, devoted to her, delivered over to her, helping her, protecting her; the second life was her own, her rational, practical self, scornful of shadow and of the terror of death; the third was the struggle with Henry Porter, a struggle now as definite and concrete as though he were a blackmailer confining her liberty.
She could never tell when he would come, and with every visit that he paid he seemed to advance in her realisation of him. It appeared that he was always behind her, staring at her through those glasses that had, she was convinced, large gold rims and thin gold wires. She fancied that she had before her a dim outline of his face — pale, the chin sharp and pointed, the ears large and protuberant, the head dome-shaped and bald. It was now that, with all her life and soul in the struggle for her friend, she realised that she did not love her enough. The intense love of her life had been already in earlier years given. Mrs. Porter was a sweet old lady, and Miss Allen would give her life for her — but her soul was atrophied a little, tired a little, exhausted perhaps in the struggle so sharp and persistent for her own existence.
“Oh, if I were younger I could drive him away!” came back to her again and again. She found too that her own fear impeded her own self-sacrifice. She hated this shadow as something strong, evil, like mildew on stone, chilling breath. “I’m not brave enough.... I’m not good enough.... I’m not young enough!” Incessantly she tried to determine how real her sensations were. Was she simply influenced by Mrs. Porter’s fear? Was it the blindest imagination? Was it bred simply of the close, confined life that they were leading?
She could not tell. They had resumed their conspiracy of silence, of false animation and ease of mind. They led their daily lives as though there was nothing between them. But with every day Mrs. Porter’s strength was failing; the look of horrified anticipation in her eyes was now permanent. At night they slept together, and the little frail body trembled like a leaf in Miss Allen’s arms.
The appearances were now regularised. Always when they were in the middle of their second game of “Patience” Miss Allen felt that impulse to turn, that singing in her ears, the force of his ironical gaze. He was now almost complete to her, standing in front of the Japanese screen, his thin legs apart, his hostile, conceited face bent towards them, his pale, thin hands extended as though to catch a warmth that was not there.
A Sunday evening came. Earlier than usual they sat down to their cards. Through the open window shivered the jangled chimes of the bells of St. James’s.
“Well, he won’t come yet.. was Miss Allen’s thought. Then with that her nightly resolve: “When he comes I must not turn — I must not look. She must not know that I know.”
Suddenly he was with them, and with a dominant force, a cruelty, a determination that was beyond anything that had been before.
“Four, five, six....” The cards trembled in Mrs. Porter’s hand. “And there’s the spade, Lucy dear.”
He came closer. He was nearer to her than he had ever been. She summoned all that she had — her loyalty, her love, her honesty, her self-discipline. It was not enough.
She turned. He was there as she had always known that she would see him, his cruel, evil, supercilious face, conscious of its triumph, bent toward them, his grey clothes hanging loosely about his thin body, his hands spread out. He was like an animal about to spring.
“God help me! God help me!” she cried. With those words she knew that she had failed. She stood as though she would protect with her body her friend. She was too late.
Mrs. Porter’s agonised cry, “You see him, Lucy!... You see him, Lucy!” warned her.
“No, no,” she answered. She felt something like a cold breath of stagnant water pass her. She turned back to see the old woman tumble across the table, scattering the little cards.
The room was emptied. They two were alone; she knew, without moving, horror and self-shame holding her there, that her poor friend was dead.
LOIS DRAKE
MISS LOIS DRAKE lived in one of the attics at the top of Hortons. That sounds poverty-struck and democratic, but as a matter of fact it was precisely the opposite.
The so-called “attics” at Hortons are amongst the very handsomest flats in London, their windows command some of the very best views, and the sloping roof that gives them their name does not slope enough to make them inconvenient, only enough to make them quaint.
Miss Drake was lucky, and asked Mr. Nix whether he had any flats to let on the very day that one of the attics was vacated. But then, Miss Drake was always lucky, as you could see quite well if you looked at her. She was a tall, slim girl, with dark brown hair, an imperious brow, and what her friends called a “bossy” mouth. It was, indeed, her character to be “bossy.” Her father, that noted traveller and big-game hunter, had encouraged her to be “bossy”; the Drakes and the Bosanquets and the Mumpuses, all the good old county families with whom she was connected, encouraged her to be “bossy.” Finally, the war had encouraged her to be “bossy.” She had become in the early days of 1915 an officer in the “W.A.A.C.” and since then she had risen to every kind of distinction. She had done magnificently in France; had won medals and honours. No wonder she believed in herself. She was born to command other women; she had just that contempt for her sex and approval of herself necessary for command. She believed that women were greatly inferior to men; nevertheless, she was always indignant did men not f
all down instantly and abase themselves before the women of whom she approved. “She bore herself as a queen,” so her adoring friends said; quite frankly she considered herself one. The “W.A.A.C.” uniform suited her; she liked stiff collars and short skirts and tight belts. She was full-breasted, had fine athletic limbs, her cheeks were flushed with health. Then the Armistice came, and somewhere in March she found herself demobilised. It was then that she took her attic at Hortons. Her father had died of dysentery in Egypt in 1915, and had left her amply provided for. Her mother, who was of no account, being only a Chipping-Basset and retiring by nature, lived at Dolles Hall, in Wiltshire, and troubled no one. Lois was the only child.
She could, then, spend her life as she pleased, and she soon discovered that there was plenty to do. Her nature had never been either modest or retiring; she had from the earliest possible age read everything that came her way, and five years at Morton House School, one year in Germany, and four months in East Africa with her father had left her, as she herself said, “with nothing about men that she didn’t know.”
The war took away her last reserves. She was a modern woman, and saw life steadily and saw it whole.
She also saw it entirely to her own advantage. The strongest element in her nature was, perhaps, her assured self-confidence in her management of human beings. She had, she would boast, never been known to fail with men or women. Her success in the war had been largely due to the fact that she had applied certain simple rules of her own to everybody alike, refusing to believe in individualities. “Men and women fall into two or three classes. You can tell in five minutes the class you’re dealing with; then you act accordingly.” Her chief theory about men was that “they liked to be treated as men.”
“They want you to be one of themselves.” She adopted with them a masculine attitude that fitted her less naturally than she knew. She drank with them, smoked with them, told them rather “tall” stories, was never shocked by anything that they said, “gave them as good as they gave her.”