‘But the whole story, canon! It’s a shame that it should be wasted. You should get Mr Stanton here to write it for you.’ Dr Curtius and Canon Rathbone looked up at the same moment. Their eyes met, and it seemed to Stanton that Curtius nodded his head.
‘Do I understand,’ said Canon Rathbone, ‘that Mr Stanton is an author? I am afraid I did not know. I am afraid I may have been rather indiscreet, a little precipitate. You will, of course, Mr Stanton, regard what I have said as strictly confidential. I mean, I mean—’
‘We know exactly what you mean,’ said Miss Newton with a laugh. ‘You don’t want fact turned into delightful fiction.’
‘I am sure Mr Stanton knows what I mean. I like to think of myself, Miss Stanton, as a philosophical person who makes modern and familiar, things . . . things that are rather difficult to understand. I fear, I distrust—you will forgive me I know, Mr Stanton, quite probably I am quite mistaken—the imagination of the writer of fiction. Such a dangerous gift it always seems to me, so disturbingly dangerous. Dr Curtius, we must be going. Such a very pleasant visit, Miss Stanton, my . . . my asthma, you know, Mrs Bramley, impossible almost for me to get to church. You must all come and visit us at the Old Vicarage. So very kind of you, such a very enjoyable afternoon. Don’t trouble to see us to the door, Mr Stanton. I assure you we can find our own way out.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Miss Stanton, ‘I am afraid we have done little to entertain Dr Curtius.’
‘I am happy,’ he said as he bowed low over her hand, ‘to be Canon Rathbone’s—what do you say? Disciple? No, follower.’
Stanton went with his visitors to the door. He put his hand for a moment into the hot, moist hand of Canon Rathbone, into the cold, dry hand of Dr Curtius. Without a smile he said goodbye and watched them depart down the narrow gravel path, the old man leading with that curious shuffling gait that yet was almost half a run, the other, black-bearded, black-coated, following in his shadow with long inexorable strides.
He didn’t feel like facing the chatter of the drawing-room. Something queer had happened, and he didn’t know what it was. Of course he couldn’t write that story now. Even if Hilda Newton hadn’t been there he couldn’t have written it. But it didn’t matter. It would only have been a trifle anyway.
But why had they spiked his guns? How did they know that he had guns to spike? Why had he been so unmistakably warned off? Unless . . . unless he had got too near the truth? What was the truth?
With a feeling almost of relief he opened the drawing-room door. The chatter at least was reassuring. He feared to submit himself to an unknown fear.
THE MAN WHO HATED ASPIDISTRAS
THE EARLIEST memories of Ferdinand Ashley Wilton were green memories—of aspidistras.
The aunt with whom he lived at Cheltenham was fond of the plants. As you entered the hall of Claremont Villa there was on the right an upturned drain-pipe painted a sage green and decorated with arum lilies. This contained Miss Wilton’s umbrellas and her father’s walking-stick. Projecting into the hall on the left a fretful erection of mahogany supported a mirror, hooks for cloaks, and two shelves. On the upper shelf was a porcelain bowl that contained the cards of callers; on the lower, in a sea-green earthenware pot, precariously rested the first of the aspidistras. The second stood in the dining-room—in summer in the fire-place, in winter on the ledge of the window that faced south. In the drawing-room was the third, raised high above the ground on a fluted wooden pedestal. The fourth and last aspidistra stood on the round table by the couch in Miss Wilton’s bedroom. At night it was carried out on to the landing, for Miss Wilton, remembering something that her doctor had once said about sick-rooms and flowers, thought it on the whole wisest that she should sleep alone.
The aspidistras dominated Ferdinand’s life. They were always liable to be upset, so that he was not allowed to run about in the hall or dining-room. When he was very small he had a fancy that they repeated to Miss Wilton the many things that he had done amiss, and especially did he distrust that fourth plant, which stood at night, a sleepless sentinel, on the landing close to his bedroom door. As he grew older he learnt, reluctantly, how to sponge their leaves with soapy water. When a gentle rain was falling he would carry them into the garden in order that they might enjoy what Miss Wilton called a thorough soaking. But if Ben, the poodle, were in the garden he had to be brought in straight away and dried. The laws governing the vegetable and animal worlds seemed to Ferdinand strangely different.
In very dry weather the bath would be half filled and the four aspidistras would stand in a row for hours partially submerged. Ferdinand was not allowed to sail his boat among the gloomy islands of this archipelago, but, if his conduct had been satisfactory he was permitted to pull the plug before going to bed.
Ferdinand was still a very little boy when he was sent away to school. He was constantly ailing and even when he was well he received more than his due share of kicks and bruises. In the matron’s room he felt as if he were back again in Cheltenham, the pot of aspidistras reminded him so much of his aunt. On it he vented the hatred of his schoolboy world. When the matron was called out of the room he would share with the aspidistras vegetable laxatives and iron tonics, or impart to their leaves an unnatural glow of health by polishing them with Scott’s emulsion or liquid paraffin. A vertical section of the pot illustrating Ferdinand’s activities would have shown a thimble, three hairpins, a number of needles, the case of a clinical thermometer and, an inch below the surface, an almost complete tessellated pavement of sugar-coated pills.
When, however, in a rash moment, Ferdinand, in applying the contents of a bottle of tincture of iodine to the leaves, found to his alarm that the black stains were irremovable, the fat was in the fire. The matron made a formal complaint, but nobody owned up. The ten more or less ailing boys who had visited the room on that fatal morning were indiscriminately punished. To them it was known that Ferdinand was the delinquent. He did not escape. Like the aspidistra he was poked and prodded and shaken to the roots.
Boyhood passed. At the university Ferdinand achieved a certain success. He published a volume of verse and was founder and secretary of the Mid-Victorians. He only met two aspidistras during the whole of the time he was up, one in the porter’s lodge whose leaves he would absent-mindedly trim with pocket scissors, and the other in a dentist’s waiting-room.
Miss Wilton died. She left to her nephew the villa at Cheltenham and four hundred pounds a year. Ferdinand was able to devote himself to literature, and from Bloomsbury lodging-houses wrote his first series of Antimacassar Papers. It was at this period of his life that he found himself once again under the influence of aspidistras. He began by nagging them, treating them as ash-trays, pen-wipers, and cemeteries for safety razor blades. He ended by torturing them. One, he slowly did to death with weed-killer; into another, following the example of the Good Samaritan, he would pour in oil and wine. A third he garrotted with rubber bands; a fourth, slowly succumbing to a solution of bath salts, filled his room for weeks with the faint perfume of lavender. A horticultural detective would, of course, have quickly got on the track of the Bloomsbury murders, but no suspicion ever fell upon Ferdinand. He was so inoffensive, so subtle, so respectable, and in his own way so quietly ornamental. His requirements were so few and he needed little looking after. His landladies were always sorry when he went. The aspidistras never got over his departure.
Ferdinand, of course, should have realised that it is dangerous to indulge in hatred. The man who hates open spaces as likely as not will be killed when crossing a square. It isn’t the motor car but the square that kills him. Ferdinand had his warnings. Once on a wet morning a pot of aspidistras fell from a third-storey window ledge on to the pavement at his feet. On another occasion when travelling by train a sudden stop brought down from the rack a heavy and bulky package that indubitably involved risk of injury to passengers. If Ferdinand had not been sitting with his back to the engine he would have been struck on the head by the most mons
trous aspidistra he had ever seen.
He was smoking one day in a despondent mood when his friend Basset Tankerville chanced to call. The Blue Review had noticed his latest volume of essays with less than its usual appreciation. ‘Listen to this,’ said Ferdinand to Basset. ‘ “We begin to be conscious of the limitations of his point of view—the interstices of a venetian blind. He is the embodiment of the aspidistra.” And then,’ said Ferdinand, ‘they have the impertinence to give half a column to a review of Gertrude Stein.’
‘Glorious jingles,’ said Basset. ‘You should really try your hand at them yourself. “Ferdinand Ashley Wilton with his dashed aspidistras that wilt unless fertilised with black tobacco ash. Ad astra Aspidistra.” But seriously you do remind me of the plants. You are becoming more and more green with envy, more and more pot-bound. And, by the way, have you ever thought of how applicable to aspidistras is St Paul’s description of charity? “That specimen which I see before me suffereth long and is kind. It vaunteth not itself, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” And the same, Ferdinand, in a large measure is true of you. You and the aspidistra are one.’
Those light words of Basset Tankerville, spoken as they were in jest, marked an epoch in Wilton’s life. They stirred the vegetable fibres of his being. His conversation became more and more torpid. The wit that had enlivened the Antimacassar Papers vanished and though from time to time he still wrote, his style—polished and stately as it was—became dull. He left London to live once again in Cheltenham, but it was as an invalid that he lived. Though he took the waters regularly his skin acquired an unmistakable greenish tinge which the dark green cloak he always wore made all the more noticeable. A little odd, his housekeeper thought him, and very old-fashioned, but Mr Wilton gave next to no trouble. On sunny days she would pull up the venetian blinds and place his chair in the window, where he would sit quietly for hours occasionally sponging his long leaf-like hands with soap and water. He was happiest, however, when the faintest of drizzles was falling. Then the man who hated aspidistras would be wheeled out into the rain to enjoy a thorough soaking.
DOUBLE DEMON
GEORGE CRANSTOUN put down the newspaper to watch more closely the two women who sat in the shade of the cedar on the far side of the lawn.
He had decided that the time had come to inform them of his decision. Its success would depend on his reading of their characters. Were they, in a word, capable of entertaining the idea of murder? He thought they were.
He looked at his sister Isobel reclining on her chaise-longue, sixty years old, very much an invalid, an aristocrat to her finger tips, used to giving orders, relentless, not unconventional but above conventions, a woman who could keep a secret and proud, devilishly proud. Unprincipled?
Well, if to stick at nothing for a principle was that, he supposed she was. The good name of the family was what Isobel cared for most in the world. Provided that were safe she could be trusted to keep silent.
And Judith? A beautiful woman, Judith. More beautiful since his sister had persuaded her to stop wearing her nurse’s uniform. Clever, too, as clever as they make them, and a born actress. She knew how to get her own way right enough and had patience to wait for it. A hard, unscrupulous woman. Isobel had made a mistake in keeping her on when she had really no need for a full-time nurse. Half nurse, half companion was an obviously unsatisfactory arrangement. They were bound to get on each other’s nerves.
He wondered sometimes if Judith shared a secret with his sister; and that Isobel hated her for this. So much the better if it were so. It would make his task easier.
There was a movement of the chairs on the other side of the lawn. Isobel was going in to rest. Judith picked up the books and cushions and followed her.
George lit a cigarette. It was hot in the garden, infernally hot. From where he sat in the old stone summer-house his eye took in the long low front of Cranstoun Hall with its white portico. There were too many trees about the house, he told himself. They shut it in on every side except where the gardens sloped down to the park with its lake and templed island. All right perhaps in spring, but in late July the deep green of the foliage was too sombre. Far too many flies about too. A wind ought to blow through the place and there was no breath of wind.
Ah, there was Judith!
He got up and crossed the lawn to meet her.
‘What about a stroll in the rock garden?’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘I don’t mind where I go as long as you give me a cigarette. What’s the matter, George? You’ve been moody all day. Is anything worrying you?’
‘You can’t expect me to be my brightest and best in this infernal heat, but what I’ve got to say is important, damned important, and you’ve got to listen. I’ve loved you now—how long? We can’t marry; as things are at present, there’s no chance of it.’
Judith gave him a curious smile.
‘Have I said I wanted to marry you, George?’
‘Not in so many words, but we understand each other very well. You’ve made it clear that you don’t want to flirt with me. That’s policy.’
‘Well, perhaps it is.’
‘Anyhow I love you.’
‘And if I say that I don’t love you?’
‘Policy again. You sympathise with me, don’t you?’
‘I’m awfully sorry for you.’
‘But you do sympathise. You understand me better than I do myself. And I’ve kissed you, not nearly as many times as I want to and as I hope to do, and you’ve put up with it. Now let’s be frank. You are poor, ambitious, unscrupulous. (I know all about your going through my letters.) You’ve played up to Isobel, making out that she is far worse than she is so that you could keep your job.
‘I want you badly and since it’s the only way, we must marry. You’d like the job of running this place, and you’d do it damned well. You would make an excellent hostess. Isobel has lost all interest in that side of things, with the result that we are shunned as if we had the plague. We could travel too and rent a villa on the Riviera. You’d enjoy a flutter at Monte Carlo.
‘All this to me is a delightful prospect. But I can’t marry you while Isobel lives. She treats me like a boy. You know my father left me practically nothing. She got everything; she’s rolling in money, and I’m her dependant. She’s so madly jealous of me that I can’t even invite my friends here without first asking her leave. She grudges me any new acquaintance I might make. She barely lets me out of her sight. You agree?’
They had reached the rock garden. Judith sat down on a seat by the side of a miniature cascade, dabbling her fingers in the cool water.
‘You’ve put the case very clearly, George, but it doesn’t seem to get us much further.’
‘Exactly. We are up against a dead wall. Isobel must go. She’s been ill now for months. She can’t get much pleasure out of life. Years ago she tried to commit suicide—news to you, but it’s true all the same. We can get a great deal of pleasure out of life on certain conditions. I shall help her to go.’
‘How?’ said Judith, still dabbling her fingers in the cool water of the cascade.
George lowered his voice as he told her how.
‘And when?’ asked Judith.
George told her when.
‘And you’ll swear,’ she said after a pause, looking him straight in the eyes, ‘that it won’t be before?’
‘Yes, I swear it won’t. It may be later because it depends on a number of things. But it won’t be before.’
‘And Isobel won’t suspect?’
‘No, I shall tell her a story about you. She’ll think it’s you 1 am going to put out of the way. There’s something secretive about Isobel, something she wishes to hide from me, and I think I know what it is. She’s jealous of you, she hates you. As I said, she has never got much out of life and you, the daughter of a clerk in Balham, ha
ve, and are going to get more.
‘So now you know all about it, any beautiful Judith,’ he went on. ‘In a year’s time you’ll hardly know this place. We shall be entertaining the gayest of house parties and you doubtless will be flirting with someone a little more presentable than your friend Dr Croft. It appeals to you? I see it does. Well, all you have to do is to keep quiet and leave the rest to me. If you have finished washing your hands we will go back to the house.’
Dinner that evening was more than usually silent. Judith complained of a headache. Nurse companions are not expected to suffer from headaches. ‘Too long an exposure to the sun, my dear,’ said Miss Cranstoun acidly. ‘You should wear a hat.’ George did little to keep the conversation going. His interest centred in the decanter.
They adjourned to the library. Judith, refusing coffee, made letter-writing an excuse for an early withdrawal, and the two Cranstouns, brother and sister, were left alone.
‘George,’ said Isobel, ‘you drank far too much at dinner. You know very well you are supposed to be on a definite regimen. If you can’t keep to the amount stipulated we shall have to give up wine altogether. I don’t want to do that. The servants will draw their own conclusions, but you can’t go on as you have been doing.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Isobel,’ George replied. ‘For a clever woman your obtuseness sometimes amazes me. You keep me on the leash, you treat me as a boy, you give me no responsibility, and then expect me to find complete satisfaction in life. But I’m not going to quarrel with you. I have other far more important things to talk about. If I told you I wanted to marry that Wentworth girl what would you say?’
‘Impossible, George. You hardly know her.’
‘That’s not my fault. You take such precious care nowadays to prevent our making new friends. You have no objection to her family?’
‘Of course not. They are as old as ours. But you can’t marry her.’
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