The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  “Thank you, Bates.”

  Sennen went up the stairs and hesitated outside the particular door that concealed a possible hope or a renewed despair. He drew himself up; he knocked. After all—nothing could be worse than the worst.

  “Come in!”

  Sennen entered, and Sackville smiled at him.

  “Oh, it’s you, Sennen. I wanted to see you. Sit down. How’s your wife—to-day?”

  “I was going to see, sir, but I came here first. I suppose you won’t object? . . . I can stay late——”

  Sackville was fingering a typed sheet.

  “Of course not. But what I wanted to say was that it suddenly occurred to me last night that we shall have a billet for you—in spite of the reorganization. I was going through some of my notes. Funny—how one misses a step. Same salary. Will that satisfy you?” Sennen’s natural pallor had increased. His mouth felt dry.

  “I’m very grateful, sir. I’ve always tried——”

  “Quite. That’s all right, Sennen. I’ve got your name down. Now, you had better go along and see—— Yes, let me know the news.”

  * * *

  Again, in Hallech Street, Sennen experienced that fear of a closed door. He stood on the doorstep of the nursing-home and, after ringing the bell, stared at the brass numerals on the green surface. Thirteen. Surely the omen was not happy.

  A nurse opened the door and, like Bates, she smiled at Sennen.

  “Good morning.”

  Sennen clutched his hat.

  “How is she? I hope——”

  “Extraordinarily better. There seems to have been a wonderful change in the night.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Oh, yes; she has been asking for you.”

  Sennen went up without feeling the stairs under his feet. The nurse opened a door. Marie was propped up on pillows; she looked very pale, but her eyes had a brightness. She held out her hands.

  The nurse closed the door, for Sennen was down on his knees beside the bed, kissing his wife’s hands.

  “Oh, my dear——”

  “Poor boyee. Did I frighten you?”

  “They told me——”

  She caressed him, looking at him with the deep glance of a woman conscious of being loved.

  “Yes—I thought I was going to die, Stephen. I seemed to be just sinking through the bed. And then I had such a funnee dream.”

  He looked at her intently.

  “A dream? Tell me!”

  “Yes, a funny old man came and stood beside my bed. He had a blue coat with yellow buttons. He was just like a picture out of a book. And there were other people, but I couldn’t see them clearly. They looked like ghosts.”

  Sennen held his breath.

  “Did the old man speak to you?”

  “Yes. He said: ‘Stephen wants you. We have come to tell you that you must stay on your side of the wall.’ Now, wasn’t that strange! A wall! What did he mean by a wall? But, of course, it was just a dream——”

  “Yes,” said Sennen—“extraordinary! I—too—had a dream. I’ll tell you about it—when you are stronger, chérie. Oh, my dear, I’m—I’m so happy!”

  RACHEL IN SEARCH OF REALITY

  She arrived at Barbury Station, a dark, silent, self-contained young woman, neatly dressed in black. Her trunk of green fibre was removed from the van and trundled on a truck to the entrance, where two or three cars were waiting. A young chauffeur in dark blue livery, his cap pushed back, removed a cigarette and eyed the green trunk.

  “Anyone for Barbury Place? Anyone for Barbury Place?”

  He was the obvious wag, the young fellow-my-lad in uniform but very much off duty. The elderly porter turned the trunk in his direction.

  “Something for you, Bossy.”

  “Right you are, old man. We’ve clicked.”

  He smiled at the dark girl, who was obviously the owner of the green trunk.

  “This is our bus, miss.”

  He jerked a thumb at an old four-seater car that did duty as a staff and luggage car at Barbury Place. His grin was friendly and familiar. He opened the near front door.

  “Bates—that’s me. Nice evenin’ for a drive.”

  He looked at her, and his blue eyes seemed to lose their easy, shallow smile, for the girl was not responsive. She gave him a curt nod and, opening the rear door for herself, got in.

  The chauffeur, with an ironic and perplexed adjustment of his cap, went behind to assist in strapping the green trunk to the grid. The stump of the cigarette remained between his lips. He was saying things to himself, things that could not be said to the elderly porter without the girl overhearing them.

  “Ain’t she ’aughty? Back seat. Well, I’m blowed! Why, the real ladies are much more pally.”

  He climbed into the driver’s seat, slammed the door with a suggestion of swagger, and drove her to Barbury Place at forty-five miles an hour.

  * * *

  Barbury Place stood on the southern slope of a hill and in the midst of a park. Everything was old about it, the beeches and the cedars and the magnificent chestnuts, the terrace, the walled garden, the lake. But not quite everything; for there were two new hard tennis-courts close to the rose garden, and a bright timber and plaster garage splashed and spoilt the blurred harmony of the older buildings. The garage had to house five cars, and at week-ends there would be yet more cars.

  Also, the Crasswell family was not ancient. Someone had described them as “Hims and Hers, Ancient and Modern, Revised Version.”

  Bates drove her round to the back of the hall, and skipping out, with an ironic hat in his hand, opened the door for her.

  “We have arrived, madam. Mrs. Mills should be waiting to receive you.”

  Mrs. Mills was the housekeeper; also she was the wife of Mr. Mills, the butler. She had a sitting-room of her own which she shared with Mr. Mills and a Yorkshire terrier, but Mr. Mills was there on sufferance. In the passage a girl’s head was poked out of the staff-room doorway, and a very up-to-date young person greeted the new arrival.

  “Hello! Name of Smith?”

  The dark girl smiled and nodded.

  “The new housemaid.”

  “I’m parlour. Name of Sass. The old girl wants you upstairs. She left word.”

  “What, Mrs. Crasswell?”

  “No; old Mother Mills. I’ll show you.”

  Miss Smith was shown the way up to the house-keeper’s room, where the Yorkshire terrier yapped at her.

  Mrs. Mills was a formidable person with a fringe and a big bosom, and the girth of her suggested that a voluminous voice should emanate from the chair in which she sat.

  “Miss Smith, I suppose?”

  Mrs. Mills’ voice was a little squeak. It reminded the girl of the sound emitted by one of those figures which—when squeezed—give out a thin complaint. But the housekeeper did not wait for a reply, but went on addressing her, for Mrs. Mills always had plenty to say, and the more mute you remained the more quickly the discourse was done with. She observed the girl. She did not ask her to sit down, but Miss Smith did sit down.

  “I hope you are up to your work.”

  “I believe so.”

  “It’s an exacting house. I always believe in being frank, though it isn’t so easy to face both ways. Bribery—that’s it. You’re one of those who have to be bribed to come down here. Well, there’s plenty of bribery, and the tips are not so bad. There’s wireless, and a gramophone, and a weekly dance, and a car into Woking or Guildford twice a week, though I can’t say I think much of either place, if you ask me. And you’re to get sixty. That’s the situation.”

  The dark girl nodded.

  “Caps worn?”

  “Caps—are—worn. Now you had better go and get your tea.”

  The dark girl smiled and went towards the door, but Mrs. Mills had one other remark to make.

  “You look a quiet, dignified sort of girl. Some of the gentlemen who come down here are a bit larky. Keep it in mind.”

 
“Thank you, I will.”

  So Miss Rachel Smith had her tea in the staff-room and made the acquaintance of the cook and Mrs. Crasswell’s French maid and the various other ladies who lived and worked at Barbury Place. They were a cheerful and a friendly crowd, and they had no illusions as to the splendour of the Crasswell family. No one had.

  Rachel found that her room overlooked the fruit garden and the wooded hillside behind the house. It was not a bad little room, and she unpacked and changed into her uniform, and at six o’clock she went on duty under the direction of Mrs. Mills.

  The Crasswell family had its idiosyncrasies, and it was as well for her to know them. Mr. Crasswell disliked any interference with the books and papers on the table beside his bed, and he took dry toast with his early morning tea. Mrs. Crasswell disliked conversation in the early morning. The Misses Crasswell preferred pulling up their own blinds, and a discreet maid would leave Mr. Tony Crasswell to pull up his.

  Rachel did a tour of the upper floors of Barbury Place. It had been very much renovated in the new style, and it had bedsteads that were painted blue and scarlet and yellow, and sofas with zigzag patterns and cushions of black and orange and purple. The Misses Crasswell kept gramophones in their bedrooms.

  Rachel’s introduction to the Crasswell family was gradual and incidental.

  Mr. Crasswell, very large and red, with a flat head and staring blue eyes, seemed to float about the place like a thunderstorm seeking an explosion. He was very rich and very irritable. There were occasions when he shouted. His wife had an equine face and a bosom of sound dimensions, like a cushion very tightly stuffed. She spoke haughtily.

  Miss Pip and Miss Polly were long leggy young women with Eton crops and carefully cultivated complexions. They talked like a snappy gossip on the wireless.

  Mr. Tony wore sky-blue and cerise pyjamas, and had his morning bath at nine, and used solid brilliantine on his very black hair, and did nothing in particular—and did not do it very well.

  Rachel had no conversation with the members of the Crasswell family. They were people apart.

  Mr. Crasswell grunted when she entered his room in the morning.

  “Your tea, sir.”

  “Put it there.”

  She ceased to announce the arrival of his tea. She went swiftly and silently about her affairs. She had much to do, and the Misses Crasswell provided her with etceteras. They were incredibly casual and untidy. They threw things about, stockings, shoes, undies, dresses. They never put anything away. They were abrupt and exacting.

  “Smith, there’s something off my knickers. See to it.”

  Or—“Smith, I’m out of gramophone needles. Get some up from the music-room.”

  They were expensive, expansive, restless young women. They would turn a car out at ten o’clock at night, and rush up to some night-club. They started up their gramophones while they were dressing in the morning. They were far more active than their brother, who put eau-de-Cologne into his shaving water, and went up to town looking like a male mannequin—an exquisite drooping lily of a lad.

  Barbury Place contained two worlds, and the lower world stood in no awe of the upper one. It was completely candid in its criticisms. It made fun of the Crasswell family; it had nicknames for all its members.

  Mr. Crasswell was “Old Rhino;” his wife, “Mrs. Buster Brown;” the young ladies, “Pip and Squeak;” Mr. Anthony, “The Little Bow-wow.” A most irreverent crowd, and especially so when Mr. Crasswell expected to be knighted, and Mrs. Crasswell’s bosom was preparing to add yet another cushion to its distinguished but unfashionable firmness.

  Rachel was very much amused. She found the staff-room breezy yet a little tiring, but the Crasswells were gorgeous. She rolled them under her tongue. She went about with a demure, aloof apartness. She watched and listened, and laughed within herself. Yes, they were gorgeous. She wallowed in the splendour of these charming people. Almost she loved them.

  But that was a passing mood. There came a time when she ceased to love them, because she became infected with somebody else’s secret shame and hatred. It happened quite suddenly.

  There were week-end parties at Barbury Place.

  One week-end in June Mr. Crasswell, having been lodged at his London flat for some days, returned to Barbury with his secretary. Mr. Main had been to Barbury on other occasions, but not during Rachel’s maidship, and when she first cast eyes upon him she was puzzled. There was something about Mr. Richard Main that set her wondering.

  He was a fiercely restrained, palely polite young man, yet not so very young. He had a scar on one cheek. His eyes suggested wounded prides and secret dissatisfactions. He was very silent; he went about silently; he appeared to spend most of his time in the library.

  Rachel heard Mr. Crasswell shouting for Mr. Main.

  “Main—Main!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why don’t you keep about?”

  “I was in the library, sir, waiting for you.”

  “I don’t want a man in the library when I’m rowing with the head chauffeur, do I? Too much petrol used here. You’ve got to check it.”

  Something in Rachel grew hot and combative. How dared that commercial bully shout at his secretary like a farmer at a plough-boy! And why did Main stand it?

  In the staff-room she heard the secretary referred to as Mr. Main. He had no nickname. Apparently, for some reason or other, he was liked and respected. Even the hoity-toity Miss Sass allowed him to be a gentleman and a “sport.” The staff were sorry for Mr. Main.

  For Mr. Main had committed a ghastly blunder. He wrote poetry; he had published a volume of poems, and he had allowed the Crasswell family to discover this secret sottishness. Apparently they had found Mr. Main as a poet intensely and toppingly funny. Mr. Tony always referred to him as “The Bard.”

  Rachel, in the course of her duties, had to go into Mr. Main’s room. It was a poor little room, high up in one of the gables and facing north, yet Mr. Main managed to have a table by the window, and it was obvious to Rachel that Mr. Main sat at that table and worked. Rachel allowed herself to glance at the papers on Mr. Main’s table, and she discovered half the body and soul of a sonnet. It began—“What a slave of sottishness am I?” She read five or six lines, and then turned away as though she had caught herself prying into the man’s secret humiliations.

  Mr. Main kept a photograph on the table, and out of the little round silver frame a gentle and elderly face looked at the world with tired yet humorous eyes. Yes; obviously it was the face of Mr. Main’s mother. The likeness between them was evident.

  Miss Smith was touched, though the soul of a housemaid is not supposed to be touched by lyric sadness and suffering. But she had remembered something, and her compassion was able to allow itself the flicker of a secret smile.

  * * *

  For Mr. Main’s martyrdom was relative. Being what he was, he heated his own hot plate and walked on it with naked, sensitive feet. Pip and Squeak were raffish young women, and a man with less of Mr. Main’s looks and more beef to his soul might have found compensations.

  But, as it was, they persecuted. Always they addressed him as Mr. Main, as though carefully classing him one grade below Mr. Mills, the butler.

  “Mr. Main, get out the cushions, will you?” or, “Mr. Main, did you order those tennis balls?”

  They did not catch him out on these details. He was too murderously thorough both in his functioning and in his pride. He allowed them no self-made opportunities; but with Mr. Anthony it was otherwise. He might be Mr. Crasswell’s pup, but he would be no pup to Tony.

  Rachel happened to overhear that row. It happened somewhere on the stairs. It was heard or seen by no one else.

  “Oh—I say—Mr. Main. You might go and tell Bates that I want the ‘Spitz’ at two sharp.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I’m not an errand-boy. I suggest that you——”

  “Oh, don’t be a silly ass, Main.”

  “
You can go to hell, my lad.”

  Which rude forcefulness caused Rachel a little tremor of approval. She looked over the rail and saw Mr. Anthony mincing down the stairs and Main looking as though he was restraining a foot. Though Mr. Anthony sneaked to his father.

  “That fellow Main’s getting a bit uppish.”

  Mr. Crasswell had a liver.

  “You leave Main alone; he’s my pup.”

  It became evident to Rachel that she was giving more service to Mr. Main’s little room than any of the Crasswell chambers. She noticed that he had things that needed mending. She noticed that he was writing a short story, and also, having read three pages of it, she knew that it was a very good short story. Also, she became aware of the fact that Mr. Main looked at her queerly whenever they met or passed. Always he was cautious, a little shy, friendly.

  “Good morning, Smith. Somebody put flowers——”

  “Did they, sir?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think it was someone else, sir.”

  “Oh, possibly.”

  There came a day when Rachel was dusting the library, and Mr. Main walked in with a letter file and a book of accounts, and sat down at the desk, and Rachel offered to remove herself.

  “I shall be disturbing you, sir.”

  “Not a bit. Please continue.”

  She continued, and he sat down at the desk and arranged his papers, and there was the silence of their mutual and almost noiseless activities. Rachel had to move the steps to get at another shelf, and she had reascended the steps when she became aware of him speaking.

  “Haven’t been here long, have you?”

  He was speaking to her.

  “No, Mr. Main.”

  “Staying long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Most of you don’t. What a blessed thing is the scarcity of labour! I would——”

  But he pulled himself up. He rustled the leaves of the ledger; he bent over the desk, and she went on with her dusting. He was entering items in the ledger, and his shoulders looked intent and rebellious.