Once a month or so, Mrs. Carpenter went up to London for a day’s outing. She made it a ritual. The day was planned in advance: an arrival at about half-past ten, coffee, a tour of the shops, lunch, perhaps a matinée or a picture show in the afternoon (when she could take off her shoes in the friendly darkness), tea, and a leisurely journey home. “It’s my own day, dears,” she would say—“all my very own, to do as I like with. Heavens, I must fly! I’d forgotten all about the League of Helpers meeting! I must do something about this absence of mind—it’s really too trouble-making . . .”
One outing day Mrs. Carpenter set out as usual for the train to London. It was a delicious morning in late summer, sunny and slightly fresh. As she waited in the little station she felt herself full to the brim of well-being and Christian charity. She reflected on her various activities, her church work, her interest in social problems of all sorts—and she felt indeed that her duty was being done. Looking back on her life she could see nothing to mar its smooth moral course: no shade of real vice, no deviation from the straight and narrow path—well, perhaps an occasional lapse when she was a child, a tiny falsehood, a stealing of apples from the orchard next door . . . But these were diminutive things, mere peccadilloes. Nothing to worry about, nothing to affect her character as a Christian woman.
In the train this mood continued. As she glanced through the paper with its accounts of burglaries, adulteries and crimes of all kinds, she thought comfortably how remote she was from the strange tangle of human sin. One paragraph in particular stimulated her complacency. It described how a woman had been arrested for shop-lifting in a big London store. “Silly creature,” thought Mrs. Carpenter. “Of course she was found out. Crime doesn’t pay—there’s a balance in things. People can’t get away from their own guilt. Ah well, poor woman. There, but for the grace of God, goes Maud Carpenter.” And she was still sighing when the train reached London.
She had coffee in solitary dignity and smoked a cigarette—a mild one, which she held inexpertly in her lips, pouting as if she were going to be kissed. And then her tour of the shops began: her small dumpy figure moved slowly but inexorably through piles of heaped-up cloths, through rooms of underwear and oddments, through vast halls glistening with pots and pans and full of whitewood kitchen furniture. She fingered fabrics with an expert, faraway look in her pale eyes, sniffed at cakes of soap, popped samples of sweets into her little pink mouth in the confectionery departments. It was all part of her routine, her outing. “It’s my own day, dears—my very own, to do as I like with.” And it was this, this exquisite dalliance among hardware and drapery—it was this that she liked doing with her very own day. In its solitary, quiet splendour the day was a perfect escape from the confined social flurry of her life at home with all its turmoil and absent-mindedness.
In one or two of the shops she did a little buying—small things, ornaments, bridge cards, a new domestic appliance for cutting carrots and peeling potatoes. And then, towards noon, she entered the big department store in Oxford Street that was her special favourite. Here the piles of cloth were bigger and more imposing than they were anywhere else, the pots and pans shone much more brightly, the whitewood furniture had about it an air of even greater cleanliness and domestic efficiency. Mrs. Carpenter wandered in bliss: at that moment, in spite of her intense Christian charity, she would not have changed place with an Archangel.
It was in the jewellery department that she experienced her greatest joy. Forgotten were the texts about Solomon and all his glory. Here were necklaces, rings, bracelets to grace a million whist-drives and socials. Mrs. Carpenter was forming in her mind an exquisite picture of Mr. MacNaughton partnering her at whist and being unable to concentrate on his hand for surveying her rings and her necklaces, when suddenly she saw—It. It was nestling on a little heap of black velvet, glistening in the bright white light: a perfect little pendant, jewelled cunningly but not elaborately and suspended from a thin, delicately-wrought silvery chain. Mrs. Carpenter coveted the pendant immediately. She put out her plump little hand and touched it, then looked up for an assistant. The girl was at the far end of the counter, talking to a friend, and it was some time before she noticed Mrs. Carpenter.
“Er—how much is this?” asked Mrs. Carpenter, clearing her throat.
“The pendant? Twelve guineas, madam.”
“I see. Yes. Twelve guineas. Well . . .” Mrs. Carpenter paused. It was too much. The pendant was exquisite, but twelve guineas was a lot of money. She had twelve guineas, of course, and she did want the jewel. But still, there were other things . . .
“Yes. I see. Thank you,” she said vaguely, and moved away.
“Good morning, madam,” said the obsequious assistant.
Mrs. Carpenter moved on, into other, less tempting departments. It had been a beautiful pendant—beautiful: but really it was too much. It would have been nice, for instance, with the slightly décolleté gowns she wore when she was a member of a platform party opening a bazaar or a fête. She saw, in her mind’s eye, people in the front rows staring—not at the Reverend MacNaughton as he made his speech, but past him at her, and particularly at her neck and bosom. Well, it would have been nice. But still . . . Mrs. Carpenter sighed and went on her way through the mountains of cretonne, the hats, the posturing wax figures and the shining pots and pans.
Before she went for lunch she walked once more through the jewellery department. The assistant was talking again at the far end of the counter and Mrs. Carpenter was able, unobserved, to put out an envious hand for one quick caress of the pendant. She sighed again, more deeply, and moved away, out of the store this time, to the little restaurant she patronised further along Oxford Street. Beautiful, beautiful. But still . . .
In the afternoon she went to a cinema, walking back past the big store to get to it, and in the darkness she undid her shoes. She sighed joyously at the relief, settled her spectacles more comfortably—she was very short-sighted—and gave herself up to a contemplation of the screen. But something kept her full attention from the mawkish love story she was watching. At first she did not know what it was—something vague and pleasant that her mind was keen to dwell on. And then, suddenly, as her eye caught a glitter from the jewels round the film heroine’s throat, she realised that it was the pendant. Yes—the pendant and her desire for it. And thereafter it went on intruding itself. She had only the vaguest notions as to what the film was about: its scenes were interspersed with other scenes woven by her imagination. At tea, too, back in the little restaurant, the pendant was before her eyes—and in the train on the way back home. It glittered from the pages of the evening paper she tried to read, it shone among the trees and houses that slid past the carriage window. And all the time, as she thought of it, she sighed and went on sighing. Perhaps it was shameful to covet a thing—but she had liked the pendant so much . . .
Mrs. Carpenter went to bed early. She always did after her outings, exhausted as she was in body by the walking on hard hot pavements and in mind by the vast pageant of desirable things she had seen in the shops. She undressed slowly, going over in her mind the doings of the day. She remembered buying the bridge cards and the patent potato peeler, and reached for her handbag to put the receipts on the little metal spike she kept for that purpose in her room. As she opened the bag something fell out on the bed and glittered against the pale green of the eider-down. Without her spectacles Mrs. Carpenter could not see it properly. She picked it up and held it close to her eyes. Then it was as if someone were packing cakes of ice round her heart and someone else had installed a lift in her stomach that went down and down and down. It was the pendant. The truth was appalling—terrible beyond comprehension. But she did comprehend it and sat down weakly on the edge of the bed. She must have lifted the pendant—yes, lifted it and put it in her handbag in a fit of dreadful absent-mindedness!—because she had wanted it so much! . . .
The night was terrible. In it was fought out to the end a grim moral conflict, comparable only to the
conflicts of the ancient saints. When she got over the first ghastly shock of what had happened, Mrs. Carpenter tried, as calmly as she could, to consider how it had happened. The night was hot and clammy in spite of the slight freshness of the morning, and she lay twisting and turning in the darkness, aware that on the dressing-table beside her was the pendant—perhaps, if she had had the courage to look towards it, glowing with the light of evil. There were two possibilities: one, that she had taken the pendant just before lunch when she had walked through the jewellery department (she remembered the assistant at the far end of the counter—had she called her? . . . no—that was the first time): two, that she had gone into the store after lunch on her way to the cinema. Oh this cursed, cursed absence of mind! She had had no idea that it could be so dreadful. After all—she admitted it—it had been . . . well, perhaps a little exaggerated in her accounts of it to Mr. MacNaughton and others. There was a tendency to forgetfulness, of course, and she may have made the most of it for the sake of—well, adding a little picturesqueness to her character (yes—she had to admit it): but this——! In one wild, unbalanced moment she wondered if the whole thing were perhaps some sort of punishment. There had been the few peccadilloes—now that she remembered, something not very nice at school: a theft of something from another girl’s locker. And of course—and here she went cold in spite of the heat of the night—viewed in a certain light, this magnified absence of mind of hers, this romanticising of herself for a little cheap dramatic effect—wasn’t it really living a lie? And wasn’t this dreadful blunder through a sudden real attack of absence of mind—wasn’t this indeed a visitation? Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord . . . Mrs. Carpenter writhed among the hot clinging bedclothes. She was afraid. Even when she considered the high moral trend of her life to date, she was afraid. And she was afraid of what people would say.
Yes, that was it. Suppose she were arrested? She remembered the paragraph she had read in the train about the woman shop-lifter. “There, but for the grace of God, goes Maud Carpenter” . . . The grace of God had left her: there indeed did go Maud Carpenter. To what? To prison? No good pleading absent-mindedness—worse, worse. They would laugh at her naïveté in offering such an excuse. They would laugh—and they would talk. That was worse than prison—much, much worse. She could hear the thin, viperish voices at whist-drives and socials—Mr. MacNaughton’s high indignant tenor, the others, contralto and soprano, as a chorus hissing round him. Mrs. Carpenter a thief. Absence of mind indeed. Tush!—an attempt to fob us off, an excuse built up against the day when she might be found out—as indeed she has been found out. And to think—to think of her as the treasurer of the League of Helpers . . . Absence of mind indeed!
The anguish was intense, the night interminable. Mrs. Carpenter was beset by evil visions, eternal variations on a theme. All her high record as a church and social worker—all that was lost now for ever. She had sinned, she could see, in attempting to build up for herself a false character—and now (she shuddered at the word) she had stolen. She had stolen something that she had coveted. All was ended. Hic jacet Maud Carpenter.
Then suddenly she saw a gleam. Suppose—she hardly dared breathe it to herself—suppose she did nothing? It was unlikely that the shop people would have noticed the theft immediately—otherwise why had she not been accused and arrested before she left? And that being so, who was to connect the disappearance of the pendant with her? Even supposing they did suspect the little fat woman who had asked the price of the pendant—how were they to know that woman’s name? . . . Her heart leapt, and for the first time that night she lay still, perfectly still. There was a chance. She could hide the pendant—bury it, burn it—and say nothing . . . For a moment—one exquisite moment—there opened before her a vision of the blissful continuance of her career after all. And then she realised that it was false, that it was not to be. She saw that she was a Christian woman—and besides, if she were found out, how much worse it would make the case against her if it were disclosed that she had tried to cover up her tracks. She remembered her thoughts of the morning: there was a balance in things, people couldn’t get away from their own guilt . . . She was a Christian woman. She was Maud Carpenter—and Maud Carpenter was a creature of high integrity. Maud Carpenter would play the game. She had decided—suddenly and finally—on the higher ethic. And if people talked—well, she was prepared for it. She—Maud Carpenter—would be able to hold up her head without shame. She would know—and she alone—how this night’s temptation had been conquered. After all, this was what it was all about—this was why one went to church and disciplined oneself in philanthropy—to be able to make high ethical decisions. Yes—let them talk: Maud Carpenter was of nobler stuff than would heed them. The course was set, the game had to be played. To-morrow she would go to London. She would go to the shop. She would return the pendant. And—she would confess.
Towards dawn, Mrs. Carpenter fell into an uneasy sleep. Before she did so she stretched out her hand to touch the pendant by her bedside. It was cold and hard to the touch—seeming somehow, to Mrs. Carpenter’s inflamed imagination, malignantly vindictive.
Next day, Mrs. Carpenter took the morning train to London. She was in a dream. The ice-blocks were still round her heart, the lift was still going down in her stomach.
She went straight to the store in Oxford Street. In the jewellery department, where she stood helplessly surveying the counters, she was approached by an urbane shopwalker. In the minute detail with which, one is told, the condemned observe, she noticed a small stain on the lapel of his otherwise immaculate coat.
“That one,” she said helplessly—“that assistant.” And she pointed to the girl who had told her the price the day before.
The shop-walker beckoned and the girl came forward.
“Yes, madam?” she asked. Mrs. Carpenter wanted to faint, but she held her courage high.
“I’ve come,” she said, in a thin croaking voice. The assistant was smiling blandly. What knowledge had she of the immense spiritual turmoil expressed in that high, hoarse whisper?
“I’m sorry—I . . . I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to . . .” Mrs. Carpenter almost broke down. But with an immense effort she took the pendant from her handbag and laid it on the counter.
“I—I don’t suppose you remember me,” she said.
“But of course, madam—of course I remember. Madam was in the shop yesterday.” The assistant’s face wore a strange expression—half puzzled, half suspicious.
“There it is—take it back,” went on Mrs. Carpenter incoherently. “I didn’t mean to steal it.”
“Steal it, madam? Steal it?” The girl was horrified. Then she smiled.
“But madam—surely you remember? You bought it—yesterday. You said not to bother putting it in a box. I can show you the copy of the receipt.” And she suddenly laughed. “Madam must be very absent minded. Really she must. She must suffer indeed from absence of mind . . .”
The shop-walker was in time—only just in time—to catch Mrs. Carpenter as she fainted.
Hands
My life was a black charnel. I have caught
an everlasting cold . . .
John Neville had been teaching for three years; six months’ relief in a small school in the south of Scotland, two and a half years in Cruach Academy in the north. He taught English, and there were two masters above him in his section—Grant and Hamden. Hamden was the senior. He was fifty-five, thin, tall and dry. His hair was lifeless and untidy, it dangled in a sort of limp hook over his collar at the back. He had a habit of wrinkling up his thin nostrils as if in a continual sniff of disapproval, and his watery, pale blue eyes seemed always strained and painful. But it was his hands that fascinated Neville. They protruded from his eternally frayed cuffs, long and gaunt, with huge knobbed knuckles and bulging veins.
Grant was different in every way. He was beefy and good-natured, he made fatuous broad jokes and roared with laughter over them, he was lenient with his pupils and lamentably i
ncompetent. He was married to a big vulgar woman as coarse as he was himself. Hamden was unmarried—he was (his own word) a misogynist.
Neville did not like either of his colleagues. He could tolerate Grant more easily than Hamden, but Mrs. Grant gave him an uncomfortable and overpowered feeling. The only woman he had ever really liked (apart from his mother, whom he had adored) had been a fellow-student of his at St. Andrew’s University: a girl named Rosemary. But that was all far off and on another planet. On this planet were only the enormous fleshy bulk of Mrs. Grant and the huge abominable hands of Hamden: and of course the children—the serried ranks of the children, hastily scrabbling through Addison and Steele and Shelley and Keats.
2
“Dear Herbert,—It is after eleven o’clock, but I do not feel like going to bed. Perhaps it will relieve my mind to write to you for a bit. Yet what do I mean when I say it will ‘relieve my mind’? I don’t think I’m unhappy—I know I’m not. Only bored—interminably, unbelievably bored. Yes, I’m a very odd fish. I went to the cinema to-night, then had a glass of beer and went for a walk. I went up the hill and sat on the grass. It was very quiet. A mist was over the town, then beyond it the mountains, very dim and mysterious and majestic. There were long fingers of purple cloud with the gleam of the setting sun through them, then a mauve and pale blue sky with some half-hearted stars. When I came down I found that my old landlady had gone to bed and left out my usual glass of milk. And here I am. To-morrow we start the tests for next month’s exams. You know:—‘Put the following poem into your own words. What did the poet mean when he said . . .’ etc. etc. Ugh! Think of it—I’ve been here for almost three years. Is it any different teaching in England? I don’t suppose so.
The Other Passenger Page 8