The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories

by Victoria Hislop

  “I own I really felt a loathing compassion for him.

  “We got down the avenue slowly. I kept looking out at the mounted police. But what could I do? Have him pulled? I was afraid to. I was awfully afraid of getting him into the papers.

  “‘I’m going to the New Astor,’ I said at last. ‘Can I take you anywhere?’

  “‘No, thank you,’ says he. ‘I get out when you do. I’m due on West Forty-fourth. I’m dining tonight with Marcelline – all that is left of her!’

  “He put his hand to his hat brim with a gruesome salute. Such a scandalous, foolish old face as he had! When we pulled up at the Astor, I stuck my hand in my pocket and asked him if he’d like a little loan.

  “‘No, thank you, but’ – he leaned over and whispered, ugh! – ‘but save a little, save a little. Forty years from now – a little – comes in handy. Save a little.’

  “His eyes fairly glittered as he made his remark. I jumped out. I’d have jumped into the North River. When he tripped off, I asked my chauffeur if he’d noticed the man who got into the car with me. He said he knew someone was with me, but he hadn’t noticed just when he got in. Want to hear any more?”

  Cavenaugh dropped into his chair again. His plump cheeks were a trifle more flushed than usual, but he was perfectly calm. Eastman felt that the young man believed what he was telling him.

  “Of course I do. It’s very interesting. I don’t see quite where you are coming out though.”

  Cavenaugh sniffed. “No more do I. I really feel that I’ve been put upon. I haven’t deserved it any more than any other fellow of my kind. Doesn’t it impress you disagreeably?”

  “Well, rather so. Has anyone else seen your friend?”

  “You saw him.”

  “We won’t count that. As I said, there’s no certainty that you and I saw the same person in the court that night. Has anyone else had a look in?”

  “People sense him rather than see him. He usually crops up when I’m alone or in a crowd on the street. He never approaches me when I’m with people I know, though I’ve seen him hanging about the doors of theatres when I come out with a party; loafing around the stage exit, under a wall; or across on the street, in a doorway. To be frank, I’m not anxious to introduce him. The third time, it was I who came upon him. In November my driver, Harry, had a sudden attack of appendicitis. I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital in the car, early in the evening. When I came home, I found the old villain in my rooms. I offered him a drink, and he sat down. It was the first time I had seen him in a steady light, with his hat off.

  “His face is lined like a railway map, and as to color – Lord, what a liver! His scalp grows tight to his skull, and his hair is dyed until it’s perfectly dead, like a piece of black cloth.”

  Cavenaugh ran his fingers through his own neatly trimmed thatch, and seemed to forget where he was for a moment.

  “I had a twin brother, Brian, who died when we were sixteen. I have a photograph of him on my wall, an enlargement from a kodak of him, doing a high jump, rather good thing, full of action. It seemed to annoy the old gentleman. He kept looking at it and lifting his eyebrows, and finally he got up, tip-toed across the room, and turned the picture to the wall.

  “‘Poor Brian! Fine fellow, but died young,’ says he.

  “Next morning, there was the picture, still reversed.”

  “Did he stay long?” Eastman asked interestedly.

  “Half an hour, by the clock.”

  “Did he talk?”

  “Well, he rambled.”

  “What about?”

  Cavenaugh rubbed his pale eyebrows before answering.

  “About things that an old man ought to want to forget. His conversation is highly objectionable. Of course he knows me like a book; everything I’ve ever done or thought. But when he recalls them, he throws a bad light on them, somehow. Things that weren’t much off color, look rotten. He doesn’t leave one a shred of self-respect, he really doesn’t. That’s the amount of it.” The young man whipped out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “You mean he really talks about things that none of your friends know?”

  “Oh, dear, yes! Recalls things that happened in school. Anything disagreeable. Funny thing, he always turns Brian’s picture to the wall.”

  “Does he come often?”

  “Yes, oftener, now. Of course I don’t know how he gets in downstairs. The hall boys never see him. But he has a key to my door. I don’t know how he got it, but I can hear him turn it in the lock.”

  “Why don’t you keep your driver with you, or telephone for me to come down?”

  “He’d only grin and go down the fire escape as he did before. He’s often done it when Harry’s come in suddenly. Everybody has to be alone sometimes, you know. Besides, I don’t want anybody to see him. He has me there.”

  “But why not? Why do you feel responsible for him?”

  Cavenaugh smiled wearily. “That’s rather the point, isn’t it? Why do I? But I absolutely do. That identifies him, more than his knowing all about my life and my affairs.”

  Eastman looked at Cavenaugh thoughtfully. “Well, I should advise you to go in for something altogether different and new, and go in for it hard; business, engineering, metallurgy, something this old fellow wouldn’t be interested in. See if you can make him remember logarithms.”

  Cavenaugh sighed. “No, he has me there, too. People never really change; they go on being themselves. But I would never make much trouble. Why can’t they let me alone, damn it! I’d never hurt anybody, except, perhaps—”

  “Except your old gentleman, eh?” Eastman laughed. “Seriously, Cavenaugh, if you want to shake him, I think a year on a ranch would do it. He would never be coaxed far from his favorite haunts. He would dread Montana.”

  Cavenaugh pursed up his lips. “So do I!”

  “Oh, you think you do. Try it, and you’ll find out. A gun and a horse beats all this sort of thing. Besides losing your haunt, you’d be putting ten years in the bank for yourself. I know a good ranch where they take people, if you want to try it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll consider. Do you think I’m batty?”

  “No, but I think you’ve been doing one sort of thing too long. You need big horizons. Get out of this.”

  Cavenaugh smiled meekly. He rose lazily and yawned behind his hand. “It’s late, and I’ve taken your whole evening.” He strolled over to the window and looked out. “Queer place, New York; rough on the little fellows. Don’t you feel sorry for them, the girls especially? I do. What a fight they put up for a little fun! Why, even that old goat is sorry for them, the only decent thing he kept.”

  Eastman followed him to the door and stood in the hall, while Cavenaugh waited for the elevator. When the car came up Cavenaugh extended his pink, warm hand. “Good night.”

  The cage sank and his rosy countenance disappeared, his round-eyed smile being the last thing to go.

  Weeks passed before Eastman saw Cavenaugh again. One morning, just as he was starting for Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court, Cavenaugh telephoned him at his office to ask him about the Montana ranch he had recommended; said he meant to take his advice and go out there for the spring and summer.

  When Eastman got back from Washington, he saw dusty trunks, just up from the trunk room, before Cavenaugh’s door. Next morning, when he stopped to see what the young man was about, he found Cavenaugh in his shirt sleeves, packing.

  “I’m really going; off tomorrow night. You didn’t think it of me, did you?” he asked gaily.

  “Oh, I’ve always had hopes of you!” Eastman declared. “But you are in a hurry, it seems to me.”

  “Yes, I am in a hurry.” Cavenaugh shot a pair of leggings into one of the open trunks. “I telegraphed your ranch people, used your name, and they said it would be all right. By the way, some of my crowd are giving a little dinner for me at Rector’s tonight. Couldn’t you be persuaded, as it’s a farewell occasion?” Cavenaugh looked
at him. hopefully.

  Eastman laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, Cavenaugh, but that’s too gay a world for me. I’ve got too much work lined up before me. I wish I had time to stop and look at your guns, though. You seem to know something about guns. You’ve more than you’ll need, but nobody can have too many good ones.” He put down one of the revolvers regretfully. “I’ll drop in to see you in the morning, if you’re up.”

  “I shall be up, all right. I’ve warned my crowd that I’ll cut away before midnight.”

  “You won’t, though,” Eastman called back over his shoulder as he hurried downstairs.

  The next morning, while Eastman was dressing, Rollins came in greatly excited.

  “I’m a little late, sir. I was stopped by Harry, Mr. Cavenaugh’s driver. Mr. Cavenaugh shot himself last night, sir.”

  Eastman dropped his vest and sat down on his shoe-box. “You’re drunk, Rollins,” he shouted. “He’s going away today!”

  “Yes, sir. Harry found him this morning. Ah, he’s quite dead, sir. Harry’s telephoned for the coroner. Harry don’t know what to do with the ticket.”

  Eastman pulled on his coat and ran down the stairway. Cavenaugh’s trunks were stripped and piled before the door. Harry was walking up and down the hall with a long green railroad ticket in his hand and a look of complete stupidity on his face.

  “What shall I do about this ticket, Mr. Eastman?” he whispered. “And what about his trunks? He had me tell the transfer people to come early. They may be here any minute. Yes, sir. I brought him home in the car last night, before twelve, as cheerful as could be.”

  “Be quiet, Harry. Where is he?”

  “In his bed, sir.”

  Eastman went into Cavenaugh’s sleeping-room. When he came back to the sitting-room, he looked over the writing table; railway folders, time-tables, receipted bills, nothing else. He looked up for the photograph of Cavenaugh’s twin brother. There it was, turned to the wall. Eastman took it down and looked at it; a boy in track clothes, half lying in the air, going over the string shoulders first, above the heads of a crowd of lads who were running and cheering. The face was somewhat blurred by the motion and the bright sunlight. Eastman put the picture back, as he found it. Had Cavenaugh entertained his visitor last night, and had the old man been more convincing than usual?

  “Well, at any rate, he’s seen to it that the old man can’t establish identity. What a soft lot they are, fellows like poor Cavenaugh!” Eastman thought of his office as a delightful place.

  A Society

  Virginia Woolf

  Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a British writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century. She was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando and the long essay A Room of One’s Own.

  This is how it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner’s shop where the light still shone brightly upon scarlet feathers and golden slippers. Others were idly occupied in building little towers of sugar upon the edge of the tea tray. After a time, so far as I can remember, we drew round the fire and began as usual to praise men – how strong, how noble, how brilliant, how courageous, how beautiful they were – how we envied those who by hook or by crook managed to get attached to one for life – when Poll, who had said nothing, burst into tears. Poll, I must tell you, has always been queer. For one thing her father was a strange man. He left her a fortune in his will, but on condition that she read all the books in the London Library. We comforted her as best we could; but we knew in our hearts how vain it was. For though we like her, Poll is no beauty; leaves her shoe laces untied; and must have been thinking, while we praised men, that not one of them would ever wish to marry her. At last she dried her tears. For some time we could make nothing of what she said. Strange enough it was in all conscience. She told us that, as we knew, she spent most of her time in the London Library, reading. She had begun, she said, with English literature on the top floor; and was steadily working her way down to The Times on the bottom. And now half, or perhaps only a quarter, way through a terrible thing had happened. She could read no more. Books were not what we thought them. ‘Books,’ she cried, rising to her feet and speaking with an intensity of desolation which I shall never forget, ‘are for the most part unutterably bad!’

  Of course we cried out that Shakespeare wrote books, and Milton and Shelley.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she interrupted us. ‘You’ve been well taught, I can see. But you are not members of the London Library.’ Here her sobs broke forth anew. At length, recovering a little, she opened one of the pile of books which she always carried about with her – ‘From a Window’ or ‘In a Garden’ or some such name as that it was called, and it was written by a man called Benton or Henson or something of that kind. She read the first few pages. We listened in silence. ‘But that’s not a book,’ someone said. So she chose another. This time it was a history, but I have forgotten the writer’s name. Our trepidation increased as she went on. Not a word of it seemed to be true, and the style in which it was written was execrable.

  ‘Poetry! Poetry!’ we cried, impatiently. ‘Read us poetry!’ I cannot describe the desolation which fell upon us as she opened a little volume and mouthed out the verbose, sentimental foolery which it contained.

  ‘It must have been written by a woman,’ one of us urged. But no. She told us that it was written by a young man, one of the most famous poets of the day. I leave you to imagine what the shock of the discovery was. Though we all cried and begged her to read no more she persisted and read us extracts from the Lives of the Lord Chancellors. When she had finished, Jane, the eldest and wisest of us, rose to her feet and said that she for one was not convinced.

  ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘if men write such rubbish as this, should our mothers have wasted their youth in bringing them into the world?’

  We were all silent; and, in the silence, poor Poll could be heard sobbing out, ‘Why, why did my father teach me to read?’

  Clorinda was the first to come to her senses. ‘It’s all our fault,’ she said. ‘Every one of us knows how to read. But no one, save Poll, has ever taken the trouble to do it. I, for one, have taken it for granted that it was a woman’s duty to spend her youth in bearing children. I venerated my mother for bearing ten; still more my grandmother for bearing fifteen; it was, I confess, my own ambition to bear twenty. We have gone on all these ages supposing that men were equally industrious, and that their works were of equal merit. While we have borne the children, they, we supposed, have borne the books and the pictures. We have populated the world. They have civilised it. But now that we can read, what prevents us from judging the results? Before we bring another child into the world we must swear that we will find out what the world is like.’

  So we made ourselves into a society for asking questions. One of us was to visit a man-of-war; another was to hide herself in a scholar’s study; another was to attend a meeting of business men; while all were to read books, look at pictures, go to concerts, keep our eyes open in the streets, and ask questions perpetually. We were very young. You can judge of our simplicity when I tell you that before parting that night we agreed that the objects of life were to produce good people and good books. Our questions were to be directed to find out how far these objects were now attained by men. We vowed solemnly that we would not bear a single child until we were satisfied.

  Off we went then, some to the British Museum; others to the King’s Navy; some to Oxford; others to Cambridge; we visited the Royal Academy and the Tate; heard modern music in concert rooms, went to the Law Courts, and saw new plays. No one dined out without asking her parents certain questions and carefully noting his replies. At intervals we met together and compared our observations. Oh, those were merry meetings! Never have I laughed so much as I did when Rose read her
notes upon ‘Honour’ and described how she had dressed herself as an Aethiopian Prince and gone aboard one of His Majesty’s ships. Discovering the hoax, the Captain visited her (now disguised as a private gentleman) and demanded that honour should be satisfied. ‘But how?’ she asked. ‘How?’ he bellowed. ‘With the cane of course!’ Seeing that he was beside himself with rage and expecting that her last moment had come, she bent over and received, to her amazement, six light taps upon the behind. ‘The honour of the British Navy is avenged!’ he cried, and, raising herself, she saw him with the sweat pouring down his face holding out a trembling right hand. ‘Away!’ she exclaimed, striking an attitude and imitating the ferocity of his own expression. ‘My honour has still to be satisfied!’ ‘Spoken like a gentleman!’ he returned, and fell into profound thought. ‘If six strokes avenge the honour of the King’s Navy,’ he mused, ‘how many avenge the honour of a private gentleman?’ He said he would prefer to lay the case before his brother officers. She replied haughtily that she could not wait. He praised her sensibility. ‘Let me see,’ he cried suddenly, ‘did your father keep a carriage?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Or a riding horse?’ ‘We had a donkey,’ she bethought her, ‘which drew the mowing machine.’ At this his face lightened. ‘My mother’s name—’ she added. ‘For God’s sake, man, don’t mention your mother’s name!’ he shrieked, trembling like an aspen and flushing to the roots of his hair, and it was ten minutes at least before she could induce him to proceed. At length he decreed that if she gave him four strokes and a half in the small of the back at a spot indicated by himself (the half conceded, he said, in recognition of the fact that her great-grandmother’s uncle was killed at Trafalgar) it was his opinion that her honour would be as good as new. This was done; they retired to a restaurant; drank two bottles of wine for which he insisted upon paying; and parted with protestations of eternal friendship.