Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  George shut up in his stateroom, and George’s mamma in hers, were still blind leagues away from this vast welcoming scene that had now burst in with all its radiance upon her senses. Poor George, you couldn’t blame him for clinging to his blankets. It was indeed bad luck not only to have been so forlornly and stubbornly sea-sick but for such a humiliatingly long spell. And to be worried to death with forebodings, too – such unnecessary, shapeless, vaporous forebodings. And all these horrors all at the same time! No, indeed; as much as possible of that dreamless slumber which knits up the ravelled sleeve of care for George, poor dear!

  As for George’s mamma, since like a drowsy mouse-wearied pussy-cat she was always miles and miles away from the Here-and-Now, it was a joy to think of her not bothered with it at all. You can’t lose real things in your sleep, that’s one blessing. And after all she had in some degree lost even her beloved George. So Lettie was positively exulting in having the North Atlantic entirely to herself. Her own little secret bout of mal de mer had lasted only a few hours. She felt as fresh as a linnet in an April copse. She gloried in the fatuous but lovely motions of the great ship – its faint murk of smoke thinning up from its yawning funnels – as it wallowed like some vast imperturbable monster along its watery pathway to New York.

  They that go down to the sea in ships and have their business in great waters – Lettie pushed and dipped and danced her way along the slippery deck, and lo and behold, as she came forging on towards the bows of the ship, there, as sharp as a tiny picture across the tumbling sea, lay land. Land! As astonishing, as unexpected and welcome as it was lovely: a flattish land mounding beyond into low bluish hills. And on its coast a huddle of coloured shingle-roofed houses, a red and a red and a green, and what she was morally certain must be a wireless station – its exquisite antennae tapering up into the crystalline blue.

  A man in an old blue jersey, and with bits of the sky for eyes – a seaman too, and not one of these mere urban and obsequious deck stewards – was coming along.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Lettie, pointing her finger.

  ‘That?’ said the seaman. ‘That’s Cape Race. Newfoundland, miss. We don’t sight this coast like that once in a blue moon. Not usually. Fog.’

  ‘So that’s Cape Race – Newfoundland!’ echoed Lettie, her small head poised on her shoulders like a young she-kestrel’s as she gazed across at it. ‘Cape Race. How far to go now, then?’

  ‘A bit over a thousand miles, miss, I should reckon.’

  How romantic and how amazing! Newfoundland indeed! And that it should have been there for centuries upon centuries continually in sound of its perpetual breakers beneath its low moulded hill, and that she had never seen it before! What completely commonplace things could sometimes almost suffocate you, not of course with any novelty, but with some hidden meaning. And if she herself could count those mute dark windows beneath those smokeless chimneys – obviously there might be eyes behind them even at this moment steadfastly scanning this great painted stranger on the deep, as it forged its stealthy course from east to west – eyes of people half asleep, in their night clothes, peering at the ship from beneath those low roofs.

  ‘And what,’ asked Lettie, exceedingly loth to let the sailor go, ‘what is the name of that bit of land jutting out to the left there?’

  ‘That, miss? That’s Mistaken Point,’ he said.

  ‘Why was it mistaken?’

  He shook his head, and smiled out of his sea-clear eyes at her. ‘That’s got me, miss,’ he replied.

  ‘Anyhow,’ cried Lettie with decision, ‘we are not mistaking it now.’ At which little witticism the young sailor laughed and went on his way.

  So this was land! and the journey which was to end in two wonderful beginnings, George’s new career, and, if everything went well, her own marriage, would soon be over. Another day or two and the vast bronze face of Liberty, with her spiked head-dress and uplifted torch, would heave into view and stand sightlessly gazing at her from the harbour mouth. And beyond Liberty the serried austerities of poor George’s abhorred and inexorable skyscrapers. But sufficient unto the morrow are the perils thereof. Why is it that what may seem absolutely unendurable to think of before it comes, can swim up so easily and predestinedly on the day?

  Anyhow, she wasn’t going to bother about the future. Not now. And no; never more! Indeed she couldn’t possibly have told anybody how every electric particle of her was exulting in the buffeting wind, in the flecked light-bright beads of spray, in the glitter and the splendour and motion of it all, and not least in that queer huddled little nest of humans over there, tucked away beyond its surf on this remote coast line. And all as natural and like a picture as a village in the Cotswolds!

  Should she, or should she not, tap on George’s little round thick glass port? No daisy of the sea, no marine heartsease flowered in those smooth dark hollows of water, else Ophelia-wise she might have put the question to the test. So doubtful she herself remained that she had actually stepped in from off the open deck on her way below long before she had decided that she would. But here she was; and the long wide glass-walled saloon – that too was perfectly empty.

  But no: yet another marvel. It was not empty. For even as she came stooping in on its light and solitude some winged thing flashed before her eyes, and had dashed with a sullen tiny thump against the plate-glass window. It was only a bird, a very slender bird with coloured feathers, as small as one of her own English warblers; but now it was fluttering in frenzy against the crystal walls of its strange prison-house in vain exhausting efforts to escape this human stranger and to reach the sun.

  ‘You poor poor little creature,’ Lettie was whispering to herself as she watched it. ‘It’s silly to do that. Just stay still awhile and wait!’ Why, it must have come dipping in over-night or possibly at daybreak from the very hills she had just been contemplating across the few severing miles of the sea. And alas, how could she hope to free the mite unharmed? If she ran out for help, it might beat itself to death while she was gone. What an omen!

  She would have to remain completely still, then seize her opportunity. In this inner hush she could hear the fluttering of its wings and the tapping of its small horny beak against the glass even above the vast wash and soughings of the ocean. Grief and dismay filled her heart; she stood tautly stooping, utterly at a loss how to save it from its own wild fears. And perhaps because she had meanwhile never stirred by so much as an inch, head or foot; perhaps, also, because compassion may make itself felt even between things so alien to one another as wild bird and Man, it had now, wearied out for the while, pushed its small bony framework into a corner and crevice of the window, its head crooked on its ruffled neck, its sun-diamonded round eye fixed, it seemed, on herself, its primrose-tinted wing forlornly drooping.

  With infinite caution Lettie pushed a chair the least bit nearer. Then poising herself, as stealthily as a weasel, on feet and ankles almost as slender in proportion as the bird’s own legs and claws, she gradually raised herself towards its lair. And still this panting little atom of life in its damp-darkened feathers just eyed her glassily back.

  ‘There now,’ she whispered seductively with pursed-up lips, ‘it’s only me, I’ll take care of you. Just – yes, there! – just trust yourself for one – sigh of – an instant – and …’

  It was almost as if she had hypnotized the wild and tiny creature. It had neither struggled any longer, nor pecked at her fingers; it had scarcely stirred; and Lettie with extreme caution had climbed inch by inch down from her rocking perch again, and now held her throbbing, warm-downed, living prey clasped safely in her hand. Its flat and pointed head lay gently couched on the knuckle of one of her fore-fingers, while with the tip of the other she smoothed its exquisite feathers from crown to tail. She smiled, whistling softly, but the bright black-ringed fierce grey unspeculating eyes paid no heed.

  Lettie’s heart was beating under her young ribs as violently as its own. It was an omen; she was desperately reluct
ant to let it go, and yet confident that, given its liberty, it would find its way back to safety and home. So bidding it be of good courage and fear nothing – as if she were talking to a child – she hooded it softly over with her scrap of a handkerchief and went out again on to the deck. There she gingerly picked her way foot by foot and yard by yard – though she had long since found her sea-legs – sternwards.

  A rather pallid and heavy young man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles, whom she had more than once noticed during the voyage, had also decided to savour the morning breezes. Perhaps he was anxious to take the taste of something overnight from out of his mouth. He had come lurching round the corner like a bear after honey. And as he cocked a discreetly interrogative eye in her direction, Lettie openly smiled at him. She would have smiled at Beelzebub. It was as if she had seen him thousands and thousands of times before, and she said ‘Good morning’, as if she really did desperately hope it would be a very good morning for him. Then, still with her weightless burden in her hand, she hastened on, and down the narrow steps of the companion ladder to the deck below.

  At the further end of this, past the tight-wedged hatches and the bollards and the cook-house, was a niche now familiar to her. She and George had spent many a dark stolen moment there, gazing – he mournfully, she comfortingly – away back out over the yeasty wake of the great vessel towards home. There with the fumes of bacon and coffee in her nostrils she now stayed a while, completely screened from sight, to give her prize as long a respite as it might need before she committed it to its fate.

  The sky was as blue as a hedge-sparrow’s egg – bluer. Its vast empty vault, where still the stars in their invisible constellations must be shining, though not even the Ancient Mariner’s eye could now have picked them out, arched itself over her head. And the unfathomable and inexplorable sea, which she and the ship were abandoning to its own eyeless solitude again, stretched out in its measureless leagues beyond and beyond and beyond her. Nonetheless even Lettie realized – had not George himself pointed it out to her? – how narrow a circle of its waters was actually scannable from where she stood; a small horizon which was, too, continually changing as the ship plunged on.

  And now, on her left hand, the silent shores, the squat vigilant lighthouse, the smokeless shack roofs, the uplands of Cape Race were wheeling more clearly into view. Soon they would have drifted by, be gone, have vanished – and, so far as she was concerned, probably for ever. There was not a moment to lose. She raised her hand to her lips, and imprinted a kiss light as thistledown on the snakelike feathery head, showering on it a host of blessings as multitudinous as the morning dew. Her very life for the moment seemed to be bound up with its destiny. She had saved it from ship’s cat or ship’s boy, perhaps, or from one of those odious little tallow-faced gentilities she had seen scuttling in and out of the most expensive ‘suite’ of staterooms on the upper deck. How dreadful then if, in spite of it all, it should come to grief! Why, during the last voyage of this very ship, in the latening dusk, had not a mad miserable and heartbroken woman attempted to fling herself overboard from this very rail on which Lettie was now leaning? ‘Not the ghost of a chance for her there,’ George had declared, almost as if with satisfaction at something definite in a universe of flux. ‘Not a ghost!’ and he had gone on staring down into the pale green seething pit of water under the keel.

  Lettie sighed. And at length she lifted her hand high above her head, and with breath held tight in her bosom, relaxed the four fingers and the thumb. The bird fell a few inches like a stone, and dipped, fluttering a moment, helplessly. But with the next, its wings had gained the mastery they needed over the quiet air in the shelter of the ship. It soared up into the wind, was drifted a few yards in its great sweeping sightless flood like weed on the sea, and then, the gay colours of its plumage still discernible in the sunbeams, it had sped off away towards the shore.

  Lettie watched it till it had become a drifting speck – until her eyes were overflowing from the dark dazzle of the sea. She turned away. ‘Safe!’ She had actually uttered the word aloud, and was so elated at her morning’s act of mercy that she very nearly repeated the prayers which she had hurried through only a few minutes before.

  How absurd, how silly people were! What ridiculous little webs of mere coincidences they kept on spinning round themselves! Talk about horizons! Good heavens, it was lucky she hadn’t shared her little burst of fireworks with her future mother-in-law.

  Not that George’s ‘mumsie’ wouldn’t have sympathized with ‘the darling little bird’. She would have sent one of the stewards for some canary seed, or would have had a special bowl of bread and milk brought up, and would probably have suffocated her little protégé. She might even have asked the captain – ‘so very approachable a man, my dear!’ – to back in and land the tiny creature on the nearest beach.

  For you can kill, as well as save, all sorts of things by kindness. For this very reason Lettie had made up her mind long ago that she would scrutinize at once all kindnesses to herself when they came her way. So many were showered on her that she was apt to shower them back, without really thinking much about them. And it was absolutely essential not to be merely sympathetic but to be reasonable with George. Not to give way too much to his absurd fits of depression. Not to pamper him. Pampered husbands become perfectly horrible: indolent, cumbrous, oily and otiose, yes and cynical. Creases appear and deepen beneath their several chins, and they always go bald early – lose every scrap of hair!

  A sudden revulsion of feeling had settled over Lettie’s mind. How very queer! the sea, the sky, the morning were only a few moments older and couldn’t by any possibility have faded since she had bent her steps this way. And the light sparkling breezes from the twelve corners of the heavens still sang briskly about her ears, as she turned away towards breakfast. And yet, merely because she had caught a glimpse in her mind’s eye of being stout and forty-four and as used to your excellent domesticated job as a cat is to cream, everything seemed to have darkened and tarnished a little. Why, only death itself can free that kind of ‘bird’!

  It was the same old story: she was always being silly and wrought-up and impulsive like this. And by no means always with success. And invariably the reaction came; then life went flat and spiritless, and the future loomed as ghostly and ghastly before her as a London wrapt in a pea-soup November fog. And now there wasn’t any captive aboard at all that could be given its freedom – a sudden headlong gust of sea-sprayed wind had slapped her blue skirts tight against her legs as she pushed on towards its bows. None: except, possibly, herself.

  Wasn’t she engaged to be married, good heavens, and wasn’t there a most beautiful sapphire ring welded two joints under the third claw of her left hand? Why, even her hair was as yellow as the bird’s wing. They shared the very same badge. She’d a jolly good mind to throw herself overboard and trust to Providence to give his angels charge over her, to fan her up and waft her away towards that cosy little cluster of houses over there, which was so very like England – never, never, perhaps, to be seen again. And then, when the fogs had drifted down once more, perhaps George could come too. She could see them both in sea-sodden old clothes and rubber boots, hunting for their morning cockles along the beach. Why all these forebodings, this confusion and anxiety merely about salary and prospects? Who ever recognized the very handsomest of prospects – when it came? Why not the simple life, with mamma-in-law in an Early Victorian rocking-chair of colonial manufacture beside the kettled hob!

  ‘Good morning,’ she cried suddenly, and this time entirely by mistake, to the sleek heavy young man in the tortoise-shell spectacles, and this time he cocked an inquiring eye indeed. How absurd! That belarded hee-haw! And yet just this silly little mistake had almost restored her good spirits again. If George wasn’t up by now, she would make the devil of a fuss about it. It was all very well to be ranging round like a roaring young lioness in the wild bright jungle of the morning, but, after all, you did sometimes want a g
limpse of your solemn shag-necked lord and master too.

  Wonder of wonders, there he was! Balancing himself gingerly along the deck exactly like a reanimated flounder in a fish shop. She had never noticed before what a charmingly genteel and pacifying effect gold-rimmed spectacles have on a quiet, round, and even slightly owlish face – compared, that is, with those goggling tortoise-shell things.

  ‘George,’ she said, ‘I found a bird just now in the concert room, a bird from the land, a land-bird – Cape Race, over there, never seen before – a tiny thing, as light as a postage stamp and almost dead with exhaustion and terror. Oh, such a lovely helpless little thing, and it never stirred a hair’s-breadth when it saw I was coming. Fancy daring to start off at evening or dawn just because you saw something like a faint lighted palace far out to sea. What kind do you suppose it was: dark head, very slim, a crest, golden yellow on its wings, and a sharp narrow bill?’

  She led him in, without the least intention of waiting for an answer, and down the stairs and into the dining-saloon. Dining-saloon! They were the very first passengers to come and eat. How frigid and insecure, how select and horribly discreet it all looked. It would have been far, far better fun to have gone steerage. And they sat down at the table, the little silver vase of iced flowers right in the middle of it, and the crisp rolls and the enormous breakfast menu in front of them – steak and sturgeon and kedgeree, fifteen kinds of meats and five-and-twenty jams, not to mention ‘Vigorbrits’, ‘Drenergy’ and exploded rice! …

  And there was George, just because they had sighted land, looking glummer even than twenty flounders, his cheeks no longer sea-green, but positively putty-like with anxiety, and even his silly freckled and sunburned hand trembling a little as it lay with its thumb sticking out on the damask tablecloth.