Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  A moment afterwards the door had been firmly shut behind her, the sound of her footsteps had died away, and Ronnie was alone. He sat for a few moments perfectly still, his brown eyes fixed almost gloatingly on the garden. Then a sudden shuddering yawn overtook him. He knew how sleepy, but had not noticed how physically exhausted, he was. Heavens, what a labyrinth of a trap he had walked into! … But how amusing!

  His glance strayed at last to the three-tiered galaxy of flowers on their white-painted shelves in the alcove – early geraniums, wax-like hyacinths, modest flowering musk, and, above all, the peach-like exotic freesia. Then he got up from his chair, yawned again as he turned about, took a pace or so backwards, and fixed his eyes on the portrait of the poet as a boy of seven.

  The heavy gilt frame had woefully tarnished. But the brick red of the tartan kilt and plaid and the mustard yellow of the flaxen corkscrew curls that dangled from under a glengarry about the apple-cheeked, china-blue-eyed face had kept all their ‘pristine bloom’. If the artist had ever really had his eye on his subject he had assuredly detected no symptom of genius there. The stolid little boy that stood in the canvas looked about as intelligent as a bullfinch or a Dutch cheese. Nonetheless – as though symbols will out – he stood armed, as if for mental fight, the point of his cross-hilted wooden toy sword poised straight out of the picture and full in the direction of Ronnie’s stomach.

  Ronnie was nothing if not critical – but less so of pictures than of elegant literature. He could easily manage to swallow Cherry Ripe and even Bubbles, but there was something in the technique of this particular painter that raised his gorge. Indeed the portrait was damnably unfair – on the part of the painter. For, after all, if there was a remarkable feature in the verse that little James had lived to make obscure, it was its technical mastery. ‘Mental fight’, then, there must have been. ‘You can’t,’ Ronnie adjured the child in the picture a little wearily – ‘you can’t build any sort of Jerusalem anywhere without it, and certainly not in that rather less green and, in places, positively unpleasant land that England had rapidly been becoming since you, my poor innocent, were seven!’

  Of James’s particular Jerusalem, nonetheless, he had only the vaguest intimations. He would look it up again perhaps when he got back to London. He might even attempt to worm his way into its secret citadel. But now, anyhow, there was no need to worry about it. He was tired. Poetry of that kind is all very well while you are young and active, and the trailing clouds haven’t completely shredded off. ‘But, heavens!’ Ronnie inwardly ejaculated again, as he continued to gaze at this infant Samuel in tartan, ‘give me his mamma every time.’ Typically English too, almost British, in her own queer way, and overwhelmingly worth writing even to America about. How his young friend would lap her up! And the subtlety of it all!

  The female spider was, of course, notorious not only for its voracity but its astuteness. They even devoured their many husbands. Mrs Cotton had put down, it seemed, every single card in her hand face upwards on the bright green table; and Ronnie had lost – every single trick! She had hopelessly queered his pitch. And yet, as he had sat there, transfixed by those small glittering eyes, a warm (and rather un-Ronnieish) camaraderie had sprung up in his mind. Affection at first sight!

  His glance drifted down from the portrait to a full-length photograph that stood in an old leather frame on the Pembroke table immediately beneath it. He stooped and looked closer. Yes, it was without any doubt a photograph of James’s mother herself and one taken at about the same date as that of the picture. Square and plump and substantial in figure even then; in a neat tight-fitting bodice and flounced flow-away skirts, she stood there, one small shapely hand on a Victorian ‘occasional’ chair, looking as straight and decisively out at the camera as her son at his R.A. And the camera had been kinder than the painter. The wide open face was smiling; there was an almost audacious sparkle of coquetry in the eyes; and even Ronnie’s worldly-wise but still susceptible masculine heart responded to this charming feminine challenge.

  Indeed, he was still intent on the photograph – the album and the excellent portrait of the smiling, skull-capped old gentleman with the pug-dog on his lap having been completely ignored – when at the same moment he heard voices from far within, and the clink of teacups near at hand. When the parlour-maid entered the room with her salver he was seated on his chair again, a green-bound Moxon Tennyson in his hand, opened at ‘Mariana’, but upside down …

  In the talk during the meal that followed – and Ronnie failed even to nibble at the scone on his plate until it was stone cold – the elder Mrs Cotton took little part. The two ladies sat opposite to him, while, with his back to the door, and on a stiff barley-sugar-legged prie-dieu chair, he himself faced the little warrior in the portrait. In spite, however, of the hypnotic power of that infantile blue eye, Mrs James Cotton easily held her own. She was almost embarrassingly tall and dark and flat – a tall dark flattishness accentuated rather than enhanced by the black dress she was wearing and the necklace of jet that dangled round her neck beneath a prolonged chin. Still, black against cucumber green is not an unpleasing contrast, and though (as Ronnie was thinking), this countenance was more sombre and equine in its contours even than that of the aged William Wordsworth, she was soon prattling away as if the only marvel were that circumstances had kept them so long apart.

  She was enraptured and earnest and astonished and coy all in the same breath. She assured him again and again how much she adored the country and how beautiful Nature was in the spring. One of her very favourite seasons of the year – everything so fresh, so verdant, ‘so full of lafe, Mr Forbes. And yet just the same – year in, year out!’ Why, if you closed your eyes and listened to the birds, or opened them and looked at the flowers, they might both be exactly the same ones as you had seen last spring and the one before that and the one before that!

  ‘As if, Mr Forbes, there had been no winter in between!’

  But, of course, that couldn’t be so, that was only a fancy. Besides, it was just the reverse. Absolutely. What a perfectly dreadful winter they had had, to be sure: so cold, so gloomy, so protracted. ‘I can’t like the winter, Mr Forbes, I can’t indeed.’ Besides, he must remember, she cried almost with elation, ‘we haven’t any theatres here, or concert halls, or picture galleries. Not one. That’s where London is so different to the country, and especially in winter, and even in the spring, too.’ And London seemed to have been gayer than ever these last few months. So many society functions. She had read of them in the newspapers. Newspapers were a great resource, of course, though not the same as taking part in the functions themselves. Oh, no! At least not quite the same. And how the world changed!

  Ronnie said, ‘Certainly,’ when the opportunity offered, and ‘But I do indeed, really,’ though it wasn’t in the least necessary.

  ‘You see,’ she was repeating yet again, as she peeped for the fourth time into the cream-jug in case Mrs Cotton had forgotten whether it was empty or not, ‘one is so removed from things hidden away here in the country – though the country, of course, as I say, is the country after all – that I sometimes positively pine to see a policeman!’

  She lowered her long head, gazed out of her dark mournful eyes at him, and giggled.

  And the sun was wheeling lower and lower into the west, and a thrush had followed the blackbird on to the concert platform, and the flowers in the pots were continuing to unfurl – Ronnie had seen with precisely how pertinacious yet gentle a motion on the movies. But though a machine may accelerate or slow up the appearances of life, man’s consciousness is as obedient as her flowers to the pace set by Nature. A fact which Mrs Cotton, senior, was herself demonstrating as she munched steadily on, her eyes never now meeting his own, her only share in this sprightly conversation an occasional nod, or a ‘Thank you, Emma,’ or a prompt hand outheld (and again and again, for Ronnie’s thirst was extreme), for his empty cup, or an impatient flick of her fingers at the crumbs in her lap.

&nb
sp; ‘I was so delated to hear,’ said Emma at last, ‘that you are an admirer of my husband’s poetry.’

  ‘Indeed I am,’ cried Ronnie, in a voice that even in his own ear sounded as hollow as a tub.

  ‘And yet, do you know, Mr Forbes, I am sure it must be ages since I have seen any mention of him in the newspapers. But then you don’t even see Lord Tennyson’s name mentioned very much now. Do you?’

  She glanced a little uneasily at her mother-in-law, but only for a moment; her dark uncertain gaze had immediately settled on their visitor again.

  ‘He hasn’t been dead long enough,’ broke in Mrs Cotton abruptly.

  ‘No,’ Ronnie retorted with spirit, in the forlorn hope of wooing her into the talk, ‘that’s just the very point. I was only saying …’

  But at this moment, though he had been conscious of no interruption, the door behind him seemed to have opened, for the two ladies had simultaneously raised and fixed their eyes on something or somebody behind him and out of his view. It must have been the parlour-maid, for though for the moment a curious transfixedness had spread over Mrs Cotton’s features, and her daughter-in-law looked positively alarmed, as soon as the door had been as softly shut again, Emma, after yet another glance at Mrs Cotton, had instantly begun talking away again at Ronnie with an almost galvanic zest, and apparently with less intention than ever of waiting for his replies.

  ‘I do so hope,’ she said, when Ronnie rose at last to make his adieux, ‘I do so hope that if you should compose anything in print about my husband, you will let me see it, Mr Forbes. Just Willows, near Ashenham, would always find me; the postman knows us; and I should be so very interested to hear what is being thought now about books, and things like that. For being, as I say, in the country as we are, we …’

  Her voice trailed away. The long pale lids of her aggrieved eyes had flick eringly descended, and Mrs Cotton had at last and finally hastened into the breach. She, too, had risen, and had given a decisive tug at the flowered china bell-handle beside the fireplace.

  ‘Good-bye, Mr Forbes,’ she said, as abandoning ‘Emma’, black as a rook on the green of the velvet sofa, she firmly grasped his hand. ‘Good-bye. It has been an absorbing afternoon. And yet I’m afraid …’ They had reached the door; parting was imminent; and she sighed out her regret in so low a voice it seemed it must have been intended for Ronnie’s ear alone, and his inward ear, too – ‘I’m afraid I must have seemed very remiss. If only I had been a little more accustomed to being interviewed! No pencil, no notebook! And now it is too late. Still,’ she smiled at him, ‘not only am I convinced you have a far better memory for such things than Mr Charlton – whom I must say the two of us have treated very harshly – but there is nothing which I feel I could not have securely – securely confided to your keeping. Or in the future either – if the need should ever come.’

  The memorable voice had broken a little at these last few words, and Ronnie gazed back with all his soul into the small grey-green eyes that seemed to have darkened now that her face was no longer in the light of the window.

  ‘Thank you very much indeed for that, Mrs Cotton,’ he cried gallantly. ‘You may rely on me. I assure you. I will be discretion itself!’

  The stiff maid-servant was already awaiting him. He seized his hat, his cane, his light overcoat, and turned; for, as he expected, Mrs Cotton’s steady regard was still fixed on him from the drawing-room door. They exchanged what seemed to Ronnie a last swift full glance of understanding, an intent, almost intimate glance that went even a little deeper into his mind than he could follow it. The next moment the door had been firmly closed behind him, and he was out in the open once more.

  Huge billowy clouds, like enormous bolsters, had ranged themselves on the horizon beneath the infantile blue of the sky. Though the sun-bright dandelions that had greeted him were now raggedly shut for the night, the bladed grass, the leafy willows by the water’s brim stood as if enchanted in an ocean of light and colour, and the air resounded with a mellay of song so wild and vehement that the birds that uttered it seemed to have been seized with an anguish of fear lest the dark to come should deprive them of every hope of ever singing again.

  And Ronnie, too, was conscious of spring-time in his blood. He stepped out buoyantly and in uncommonly high spirits. What a hotchpotch of an afternoon, and yet on the whole how novel, how odd, and how very amusing!

  In less than no time he had come almost to the turn in the weedy drive that would take him clean out of sight even of the upper windows of the house he had left behind him. But there his self-congratulations were suddenly interrupted. A low, clear, but mysterious hail had sounded in his rear. He wheeled about. These were not Mrs Cotton’s now familiar tones.

  No, there could be no mistaking whence the summons had come. The straw-hatted, neatly clad figure of a tubby little man had emerged from under the trees to his left, and was now – so extreme was his haste – almost trotting over the grass to intercept him. And Ronnie waited. Psychologists may maintain that it is humanly impossible to think of more than one thing at a time. But Ronnie knew better. Two perfectly distinct ‘reactions’ had at this moment flashed through his mind. One, the vivid recollection of Tenniel’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee; the other the lightning conviction that he knew – that he seemed to have known for centuries, who precisely this little man was.

  Ought he to fly? Surely, in spite of those last few words in the house, no such encounter as this had been included in the compact he had but just now signed and sealed with the poet’s mother? But it was too late. Breathless, triumphant, the little man had caught him up. Bright blue eyes of an extraordinary intensity were surveying him from beneath arched brows under the brim of the antiquated black straw hat.

  ‘I am speaking,’ the little man inquired with a charming courtesy, ‘to …?’

  ‘My name is Forbes,’ said Ronnie.

  ‘Ah, yes, Forbes. I was not aware of that, Mr Forbes. Forgive me. I am kept a little in the dark. And better so, perhaps,’ he smiled, ‘for even in a place as remote as this and with very few visitors, you never know, do you …?’ He faltered. ‘At least, so I am told. But that said, or not said, as the case may be, I couldn’t let this opportunity go by without – without, as a matter of fact, asking you to accept this. At times I find them crumpled up in the grass. But what can be expected of errand-boys? It is, and I hope’ – he cast a furtive glance over his shoulder as he thrust a folded piece of paper that had apparently been torn from a tradesman’s paper bag, into Ronnie’s hand – ‘I hope you will let it be a little private matter between us – it’s in the nature of an epigram. My last.’

  The candid blue eyes in the countenance on which it seemed age had decided to leave not one disfiguring mark became a little troubled as they searched Ronnie’s smiling and aware face.

  ‘You will agree, Mr Forbes,’ he pressed on earnestly, raising, like a bishop, his small white hand a little into the summer air, ‘there are things – evidences, messages, that may be shared, though even the very meaning of the words may have become corrupted – decayed – all rotted away?’

  It isn’t always that any inmate is looking out of a human eye. But at this particular moment an exceedingly alert inmate, as keenly and austerely challenging as the gaze of an angel, was confronting Ronnie from the tranquil deeps of this little man’s stare. His fingers fluttered an instant, as if inclined to snatch back what he had given.

  ‘I must not distrust … I must leave it at that, Mr Forbes,’ he said hurriedly, raised his straw hat, and was gone.

  Ronnie remained for a moment where he was, the paper in his hand. He, too, glanced over his shoulder. The house was still just in sight, nestling, with its willows, low in the gold of the western sun. But there was too much of a glare in the sky to be sure if any of its occupants were looking out after him from the upper windows.

  He went on until he had come again to the narrow stone bridge over the stream. There he unfolded the poet’s scrap of paper and sc
anned the four lines of tiny and almost illegible script it contained. He picked his way through them again and again and again; and there could be no doubt whatever at last of their intrinsic obscurity. Worse, Ronnie had grave misgivings even of the soundness of their metrical technique. Not so the writer of them, apparently, for at the foot of the four lines which had been placed with extreme care in the very middle of the paper, there sprawled a long-looped, an almost Napoleonic J.C.

  Baa, baa, sang out the woolly sheep on the other side of the green-springing hedge. But Ronnie paid no heed. He had instantly realized what a treasure for transatlantic academicism, or English either for that matter, he held in his hand. It was a fragment of holograph – of an unpublished poem – very late – in mint condition – recently signed with this said-to-be-deceased and unique minor poet’s own initials!

  He refolded this odd manuscript and placed it carefully in his pocket-book. Nor did he spend any more idle moments on the minnows in the brook beneath the bridge, but continued rapidly on his way to the railway station. Having there inquired for a later – and as it proved to be, its last – train back to London, the next being due in a few minutes, he set off for Ashenham itself.

  The old woman in the little smelly village post office to whom he handed in his message to his young American friend had never heard of Wellspring, Ohio. By the deep look she gave Ronnie over her spectacles she seemed, indeed, for a moment to have supposed it was a piece of untimely jocularity. But she managed to produce at last an official Guide; and Ronnie, horn-rimmed spectacles on his fastidious but rather stubby nose, helped her all he could with the infinitesimal print. And to such effect that he all but charged himself twice the official rate per word. But lavish telegraphing was one of his many little weaknesses.