Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  It was so silly that she herself had never finished it, and now never would. She had even forgotten to return the book to the stuffy little circulating library that had seemed such a ravishing addition to Newhampton the day after she had arrived. That was the queerest thing of all, perhaps – why (when her own little affair – affair! – was over), a story so silly, so exaggerated, so unreal should have become positively nauseating in memory – almost as if it had been an extract from her own autobiography.

  Hearts Aflame: that was the title. And its author had chosen for his hero a man positively made and designed for victories over the inflammable sex. Nothing very original in that, perhaps. He was always most beautifully dressed, either in plus-fours or for the evening, and with one glance of his piercing blue eyes, with one befondlement, and with the iciest sang-froid he broke hearts wherever he went, never even turning aside to glance at the remains. And yet so far as Miss Curtis could see he never got the least bit of pleasure out of any heart in any condition – green, ripe, or rotten. It was merely a habit. He was just a Don Juan. On the other hand he was a Don Juan who had made a slip – before the story opened. For an Italian Countess had somehow succeeded in marrying him in spite of his efforts (even then apparent) to practise the part of Henry VIII without incurring its responsibilities. Poor hysterical racked drugged creature, by Chapter XXIII she had long ago of course lost every shred of belief or faith in him. And yet she had continued to hope (though nothing the author could say persuaded Miss Curtis that the Countess had really hoped) he would some day turn over a new leaf – one, that is, that would not be merely tantamount to turning over a new lady-love. As if such men had any leaves to turn!

  The frail little night-orbed Countess had had her wits about her too. She had remained an angler long after she had caught her fish – or rather had been caught by her fish. But in Chapter XXIV she had begun doing what Miss Curtis had often noticed ladies, especially titled ladies, often do in novels – she had decided to win back her husband by means of her charms. That was odd, too. The author kept on talking about the Countess’s charms, but even Miss Curtis had felt bound to agree with her promiscuous husband that some of them weren’t very conspicuous. They were at any rate hopelessly unpractical, and unlikely even, according to Miss Curtis’s secondhand experience of such matters, to last out a honeymoon. Perhaps this was because she was so foreign. Whether or not, Miss Curtis couldn’t have supposed that anyone – even an Italian Countess, could be of her own sex and yet be so, well, shameless. In such a stupid way, too. She had positively no reserve. She said things to her husband, even when she knew he didn’t care, that you couldn’t possibly say to anybody if you remembered you were ever going to be alone again. She entreated him, she besought him – that was the word – to be ‘kinder’, to return to her, to remember all her sacrifices. ‘Oh,’ she would cry, grovelling at his feet, her sultry lambent eyes raining tears down her pale olive cheeks. ‘Oh, how I love you! How I love you!’ And then in the same breath those very same eyes would be snapping crackers at him, ‘Oh, how I hate you! How I hate you!’ Remarks like that, of course, are like holding the candle of your life in the middle and asking any Don Juan to burn it up at both ends.

  And then had come Chapter XXV. In a desperate effort to retrieve her husband’s affections the Countess had sent to Paris for the most seductive of new confections in ivory silk with jewels to match that Worth could supply – for she had still managed somehow to cling to the remnant of her prenuptial fortune. Miss Curtis had not cared much for the look of this ‘model’ as it appeared in print. Perhaps that was because the book had been written by a man. But how silly of him not to ask his wife or his sister or his mother or a female friend what she thought of it. Anyhow the Countess had sent for it, and it had come, and there it lay, in its original package where her maid had put it – on her own little bed in her own little bedroom. And the Night of Nights was still to come. Alas, when the night did come her husband, morally speaking, had put even himself beyond the pale – though what the Countess thought of it Miss Curtis was never to discover.

  Miss Curtis had got thus far and no further. The wretched man, that is, at his wits’ end to convince his last lady of his good intentions – though lady was perhaps hardly the word to use for her – had given the milliner’s box precisely as it stood and with all its contents – and without even seeing if they would fit, to that last lady and – well, that was the end of it.

  For at this point Miss Curtis had let the book fall back into her lap, had folded her hands on its open pages and – realizing that she must set off now if she was to set off at all – with a long-drawn shuddering sigh of relief, ex pectation, dread and sheer physical fatigue, all in one, had stared vacantly out at the houses on the other side of the street. She would read what came after in bed that night.

  But she didn’t read anything in bed that night. She had lain (though not for nearly so many hours as she had imagined next morning), staring into the dark, and every now and then softly laughing; and in a way in which she had never laughed since, and would never, if she could help it, laugh again.

  For Miss Curtis in less than a week at Newhampton had fallen in love. She had fallen in love with a stranger sitting at a window at the other end of the esplanade. Not that she had ever confessed this in so many raw un-recallable words, even to herself. Not even at the time, when she had been at least five years younger. Five! – more like fifty. But one can know and never say: and if she had not been in love, why had the mere shadow of that homeward-bound, cadaverous blind man in the street made her feel slightly sick? And why, whenever the opportunity came, did she find herself staring like this out of the glass door of the shop into the darkening street if it were not something of a pleasure to feel a little sick like that?

  Well, it didn’t much matter now. She had long ago recovered her balance and could recall without a single pang every little incident that had followed the final putting aside of that utterly fatuous novel. Stories like that were of course known as ‘sensational’. But life! Why the mere packing up of her sandwiches and her bun, her little talk with her landlady as she filled her flask with tea, the last glance of herself in the painted looking-glass between the photographs and the texts over the chimneypiece in her landlady’s sitting-room, the mere catching up of her gloves, as with a whisk of her tailor-made skirt she turned aside and with chin a little raised, bloused shoulders a little squared, she once more faced an experience which had become the very elixir of her existence – what did it all amount to but proof that writers of novels only dabble in tinctures while the essence for ever escapes them! You don’t have to be a clay-coloured little Countess with Southern blood in your veins to find that out!

  Miss Curtis had met her landlady again at the foot of the stairs, and had caught the far-away little cockcrow in her own heart at sight of the faded old eyes ‘taking her in’. Probably they were no longer merely faded now – she had never seen the old woman since, had only written that once, and then no more. And yet the house must still be there, sunning itself in the marine breezes, and maybe somebody else’s card with APARTMENTS in silver letters in the sitting-room window. Things went on whatever your idea of them might be. She remembered even what her landlady had said – just a few words. She had told her to enjoy herself while she was young – as had Solomon the Wise in other terms, and had added: ‘What’s the seaside for but to lay, as you might say, in that direction?’

  Mrs Evan’s seaside, as Miss Curtis had heard two or three times on the very morning of her arrival, had lain so little in that direction that only once during her long married and widowed life at Newhampton had she ventured out to the end of the pier. And then she hadn’t been able to see ‘much in it what they fancy’. But you mustn’t of course judge of good counsel by the counsellor. Miss Curtis had smiled at the old woman, with her head on one side, as if with the thought that, if you want to look as nice as you possibly can, it is as well to practise doing so at every opportunity
.

  And mention had been made of an egg – a nice fresh egg for her supper; she remembered that too, though not the egg itself. ‘There’s always a nice fresh egg’ – they were her landlady’s very words, and Miss Curtis had replied with the utmost gaiety and aplomb that if there weren’t, why, there wouldn’t be any more chickens and therefore there wouldn’t be any more eggs. And they had both of them laughed. At that gush of inward exultation it hadn’t seemed to matter the least bit in the world whether or not she was ever going to eat anything again as long as she lived. But she had nonetheless assured the old woman she would adore an egg – ‘As you boil them, you know!’ – and had then sallied out into the hot air down the sleepy street, and turned off towards the blue, bright, salty, sea-sweet esplanade.

  There, she had paused. She had not only paused, but seated herself in one of the little glass and cast-iron shelters and gazed out at the far-away flurry of smoke of a small steamer, that was steadily pushing its way round the extreme edge of the world, bound, like Miss Curtis, for some unknown port. And she had tried, and tried in vain, to take stock of herself.

  Wasn’t it really and truly worse than ridiculous, almost as silly as that black-eyed, painted-up, feather-witted little Italian Countess herself, and much, after all, in the same way, to be sitting there actually out of breath, almost unable to breathe, simply in expectation of seeing a strange man? And him not in the open, mind, but seated at a balconied window similar to but rather more spacious than the one she had just left, and gazing as she was now, out to sea? The crisis had come so suddenly too. One glimpse at that lonely face and shoulders and she was never, never to forget him, though she was to get over him, so to speak.

  Like most things in life that seem to mean anything, it had all happened so instantly, so absolutely unforeseeably. Miss Curtis had been just walking as usual along by herself – off to the sand-dunes once more, and a little absent in mind – and without in the least knowing why, as she came to the flagstaff she had lifted her eyes and looked straight up across at him. And there he was – up there on the other side of the street as if he had been waiting for her for months. There was something extraordinarily gentlemanly in his appearance – gentlemanly in the real sense. This was one of the first things she had noticed afterwards when she was back in her rooms again. And though he had been smiling – smiling straight out across at her, it was impossible to have taken the least offence at such boldness. It wasn’t boldness. It was as natural as a child who likes the look of a stranger – of any sex – and of course doesn’t mind showing it. There wasn’t in fact the least little symptom of the cheeky, of the fast, in that smile. It was quiet, and faraway; lonely – that was the word.

  And taken at a disadvantage like this, Miss Curtis had only been able to gaze blankly back. She was perfectly certain of that. And then after what had seemed an interminable exchange of secrets, she had lowered her head, averted her face, and hastened on to the dunes.

  There, oddly enough, she had eaten up the whole of her tea at least half an hour before its usual time. A most curious thing – that just that first look from a stranger should have given her an appetite like a schoolgirl’s at a birthday party, and that the next should have taken it almost completely away. For there had been a next. More than one. She simply couldn’t help herself. The following afternoon she had no more been able to resist marching steadily along past the striped bathing-machines and the boats, with the sea-wash in her ears, and the marvellous vivacity of it all tingling her senses, and she herself openly bound – she didn’t deny it – for that shallow bow-window and its occupant, than she could stop herself yawning when she was tired.

  And the one gnawing anxiety that followed was not that she ever scanned that window in vain, but that nothing else ever happened at all. There the young man would be – not in the least too young, of course – with that marvellous quiet dark face of his which she knew now by heart if ever woman can, yet with precisely the same remote welcoming smile on its features. That; and nothing more.

  As for herself – and Miss Curtis had never minded acknowledging this the least little bit – why should she? – the third time she had, quite definitely, smiled back. She had raised her square face – and she knew she wasn’t so bad-looking – and welcoming, all-hospitable, had given him smile for smile, and so openly that if they had met in the street, it couldn’t else but have resulted in his raising his hat! And he, not in the least shocked – she wasn’t such an idiotic judge of character as all that – had simply smiled on: a smile not exactly wistful, not exactly melancholy or sad, but as if its owner were in search of something of which he was only vaguely aware.

  But why vaguely? Why vaguely? If only Miss Curtis hadn’t been a little short-sighted, or had had the courage to wear pince-nez – which she did not consider suited her – she might have been able to explore that question more closely. All that she knew for certain was this, that day after day and after she had first smiled back, that dark pale handsome romantic face was always turned in her direction when she came stepping along the sandy esplanade, and that it always wore the same look of genuine expectation, if not exactly of increasing interest. Of all this she was sure. And it had almost in her own phrase worn the inside out of her – the joy and expectation and waiting and doubting and longing of the whole thing.

  And what if it had? Wasn’t every seaside resort frequented by dark piratical creatures, or fresh curly-haired fair ones, on the look-out for conquests? And much older ones, too: and much worse. But far from bothering about them, Miss Curtis had never paid any more attention to the species than she had to the Dad-and-Mum-and-three-little-nippers kind of tripper at Easter or in August, or to the let-the-world-go-by young lovers on the beach. This young man at the window hadn’t the faintest resemblance to such buccaneers. Obviously he wasn’t even a visitor. He didn’t even wear clothes different from the clothes you wear in London; just dark blue or dark grey, so far as she could see, and always, unless her short sight misled her, as nicely finished off as if he had just left the hands of a valet.

  At first her heart had sunk at the thought that he was perhaps a ‘resident’. Residents of course never take the smallest notice of mere visitors. Far from it. Except on Sundays at church-time or when they go shopping they don’t even appear on the esplanade, and if they do, they take good care to show that they are used to it and not much enjoying it. Why merely living at the seaside should make you so haughty and exclusive Miss Curtis had never troubled to consider. Besides, this young man at the window – he must be a little under thirty, she supposed – wasn’t haughty and he was obviously not absolutely exclusive. Perhaps then he couldn’t be a resident. But if he were neither a resident nor a visitor, what on earth could he be? And if he was a resident would he ever come out?

  While Miss Curtis was only at Chapter XXI of Hearts Aflame she had ventured on in speculation even as far as that. And it was not because of any – well, whatever you like to call it – but because she couldn’t be quite certain what the smile meant, that she hadn’t quite consciously ventured further yet. Worse, she had begun to realize that though still far-away, his was a smile neither serene nor happy but a little pathetic. It was the smile of someone who is in search of something. What? Understanding? Companionship? Sympathy? Miss Curtis simply didn’t know. And if it was any of these things, what ought she to do? If only – not the sexes themselves – but the conduct of the sexes could be sometimes reversed! Without any fatal results. If only she could have marched up to the door, knocked, asked for him and said, ‘Well, here I am, you see. You want me? I have come. What can I do? Positively anything you ask of me.’ A smile can sink as deep into one’s innermost consciousness as that!

  Miss Curtis, who was at this moment quite alone – for Miss Mavor was now putting on her things – as she gazed on vacantly out into the London street, all its sunset colours now faded, didn’t care a jot now what he had wanted. The only thing that mattered was that he hadn’t wanted her. Not that s
he bore him any ill-will on that score. Not only would she never see him again; she would never see his like again. On his account she had given up all interest in men absolutely and for ever. Her every faculty was now centred on the practical – on her ‘career’. The only male creature she still had any interest in was a nephew and she was going to leave him all her savings. Besides, look at that flossy little fly-away Phyllis and the dark secretive Miss Mavor and the rest. What a stupid waste, when every hour even of their working day was merely a wait between the acts of some silly love affair. The ‘Pictures’, a joy-ride, some young man always sapping their efficiency.

  Miss Curtis’s affair would never have been a mere love affair; it would have been a life affair. She knew that, at any rate. She knew perfectly well that if that smiling one at the window had suggested – quite simply even at their first meeting – that he wanted her to spend the rest of her life in his service, she wouldn’t have hesitated. She knew that if for some reason best known to himself, he had merely nodded his head at her, to let her know that only her dead body washed up from out of the sea next morning would be of any use to him, in she’d have gone.

  That would have been a funny eventuality if you like. But are eventualities that don’t occur of the slightest importance? No smile now would ever bring Miss Curtis’s sound healthy body to any such pass as that. Old age might, but so far as she knew she was not intolerably terrified at the thought that her sea might then be a trifle cold. Even the fact that five years ago, she was already tending towards the spinsterish hadn’t seemed to matter in the least. It made the shock when it came the more amusing to recall. It was almost her last little lesson, so to speak, on the brink. That thermos flask of tea, for example – and what an indescribable flavour it always had, like tepid metal, and those damp raspberry-jam sandwiches! In a moment of weakness she had owned that raspberry jam was her favourite of all jams, and her landlady had remembered it.