Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  SHEELAGH: Coming to see me? Mother, how silly! We just talked of anything and everything else that came into our heads after that. At least I did.

  MOTHER: After what?

  SHEELAGH: After I had told him how odd it was he should have an old friend living about here called Willing – I mean, that it was your name.

  MOTHER: And what did he say then?

  SHEELAGH: Nothing. Not at first. He looked at me as though he were waiting for me to go on. Then he turned away and then smiled at me again, as if we were old friends. And that is true, Mother, isn’t it? I mean, some people – strangers – you seem to know almost at once, don’t you? But I don’t think it means past lives, do you? That was what I felt. And Daddy I’m sure …

  MOTHER: Daddy? What has Daddy to do with this? I can’t imagine what he would say if he knew of it. You must promise me, Sheelagh – on no account – to tell him even a syllable of what you have confided in me. He’d never have a happy moment again if he felt that … You promise?

  SHEELAGH: If you ask. Of course, Mother.

  MOTHER: You say he, this stranger – looked well? Did he, did he seem happy, too?

  SHEELAGH: Oh, Mother! He looked very well; and I believe if you and I had been together, and he’d begun to talk to us, we’d have laughed over it just like two cats. You would have loved it. And then it would have been our little secret! But I wouldn’t say he had always been happy. When he asked about my childhood and, and the future, he looked almost as if he were homesick – well, you know what I mean – envious. I don’t think, although there was a ring on his finger, that he was married. I don’t think so.

  (A little bell sounds.)

  MOTHER: That’s luncheon – the second time.

  SHEELAGH: You won’t say anything to Miss Pearce, Mother, will you? I do wish you hadn’t telephoned.

  MOTHER: No, I promise. He asked, you say, if I was happy? Didn’t that strike you as curious?

  SHEELAGH: I didn’t say so. But he did. Not so very ‘curious’. He was telling me about his having been abroad, and how gay and cheerful the people are. And you see, if, at the beginning I had told you what he said last – though you wouldn’t give me a chance – you would have seen there couldn’t have been anything silly or wrong in my talking to him. You know how fond I am of Daddy, but I do sometimes find it very hard – well, to say all that I mean – everything I think he is always interested and yet … well, I’m sure he doesn’t understand me, not quite as you do, you dear sweet thing. He listened – as if even a schoolgirl … Oh, Mother, do cheer up. I do wish you didn’t look so pale and tired and – and troubled about this. There isn’t the very least need to. And you know I’m sorry.

  MOTHER: Yes. But you mustn’t, dearest, think like that about your father. He loves you – just as – as I do. But he – the stranger, what did he say ‘last’?

  SHEELAGH: Why, he stayed silent a moment, and then he said, ‘Perhaps it would be as well to mention to your Mother that we’ve had this little talk. Especially as you have gone on too far with me. She may be anxious about you. Tell her that I have been away from England a long time and shall be leaving again soon. Say what a pleasure it has been to talk to you’ – to me, Mother! ‘She will understand.’ Those were his very words. And I suppose I must have looked a little anxious, too. ‘Like Mother – like Daughter’, he said, and smiled again. And we stood there under the chestnut tree by Dr Symmons’s; and we shook hands and said ‘Goodbye’. And I don’t think he wanted to – not for always. And after a little, I looked back, and he was looking back; and we waved to one another. I am perfectly certain, Mother dear, you’d have liked him – immensely. But – well – I don’t believe, somehow, that I shall ever see him again.

  MOTHER: No?

  SHEELAGH: No, Mother.

  MOTHER: Sheelagh, my precious, precious one. Don’t look at me like that! You know I would never, never deny you a real friend. Never. It was – kind of him to send me such a message. I am glad now that you were outspoken, and your own natural, impulsive self. It was only that at first I was a little frightened, alarmed … My precious and precious! All these years! Why, you are crying, silly; and – and so am I. God bless you. I must run upstairs a moment. What will Jessie think of us! I won’t – I won’t be long.

  (She pauses as she opens the door, her slender fingers on the painted china door-handle, her lips apart as if she were about to speak again – an ecstatic and passionate expression of tenderness, sorrow, love, transfixing her beautiful face. But she decides against doing so, and goes out.)

  * First published in London Magazine, September 1954.

  Neighbours

  Miss Guthrie’s arduous day closed in complete lassitude. Body and mind alike relaxed utterly after its unusual intensity. It was Miss Pugh, indeed, who had hitherto originated: she herself had merely by incessant exertion deprived her rival of glory by instant imitative counter-stroke. Today, however, had been spent in feverish hope that at last her own somewhat prosaic industry had stolen a march upon the curious placid genius she could not deny to her neighbour.

  Well before it was usual or quite genteel to be abroad she had visited a distant florist, and carried off, roots and all, absolutely the newest of novelties in standard roses. The whole morning had then been spent in precise and secret preparations. And, at last, in late afternoon, when Miss Pugh, she felt assured, would be resting and out of sight of the two gardens, she had tugged on her old leather gardening gloves, dug the hole, trodden down the loam over the roots, and set the meagre glorious thing firmly upright in its place. Thence in the fullness of time it should advance to a triumph unsuspected until it was inevitable.

  And now, worn-out, in petticoat and slippers, her ‘shocker’ open and unheeded beneath her reading lamp, she sat listlessly on, an extraordinary indifference in her heart. The struggle was over for the time being; her wits were no longer stretched well nigh beyond their limits, she gazed almost in panic through her glasses into a future empty and dull. The very essence of life had been dependent upon a neighbour’s enmity.

  It came to that, she thought, perceiving for a moment what a majesty of retort might still lie in Miss Pugh’s simple withdrawal from the contest. The struggle had become foolish, sordid, profitless. How much better if she herself had kept aloof from even acknowledging the feud! How much easier had been her days if with perfect courtesy, and a crushing superiority, she had refused the battle her neighbour had offered. Her church, her parish work, her little social round – these would not then have suffered in the least. How many a sleepless night, how many a virulent pang of animosity would have been spared her! How much more dignified, and richer, her existence might have been if, with insufferable indifference, she had recognized her enemy only to ignore her importance.

  Now, however, it was much too late. The fret was incessant; the Vicar had become a remote fruit of the Hesperides that a third and fleshlier antagonist would seize. Even her choicest acquaintances, and remote relatives, her friends, her sister were now banners and battlecries. She overheard herself positively parading them in talk with her visitors – talk meant to be overheard. Her garden that had once been her solace, her shrine of kindly remembrances – what was it now? – a mere imitative and ineffective effrontery to the next.

  ‘“Gardens”!’ she thought with sudden disdain – when neither lady could afford more than one weekly visit from the same itinerant job-man; when neither could do else than deny herself the simplest of luxuries in order to purchase every expensive, listless, hideous and filth-devouring rarity the floriculturist might ordain. Like a dream of Vanity life seemed to her tired mind. ‘Only for a little peace!’ she kept lamenting to herself. ‘Only to forget “that” woman!’ – who dealt with such magnificent ease almost intolerable blows.

  ‘What will the creature do next?’ she reminded herself: and at that the memory of her own insidious and secret triumph returned renewed. She rose and drew aside the blind to view that last most formidable retort.
She perceived at the far end of the next garden Miss Pugh herself – feverishly planting by moonlight.

  There was no need to watch. Intuition, poisonous as a serpent’s tooth, had instantly whispered what deed she was at. Unique rose for Unique rose, cluster for cluster, would break into blossom alike, flaunting each its own lost novelty with every bud. Tit for tat! A Roland for an Oliver! – the foes were quits again; the great effort had proved abortive.

  The elderly lady let fall the corner of the blind. She turned with tears in her eyes, her heart a fiery coal of wrath and disappointment. So vehement and deadly was her rage that her cheek flushed scarlet at the thought which had zigzagged across her mind. ‘If it weren’t for that interloper! …’ She eyed herself hotly in the looking-glass, Cain answering to Cain.

  Next morning she thought over matters more calmly. It was evident that a brief quiescence must follow this last effort. Tempted at first to uproot her rose tree then and there, she at last decided on the wiser course – to leave it apparently unconsidered, in hope that it might perhaps surpass expectation in its wealth and gaiety of bloom. Otherwise, she must return to the old doglike vigilance, ready to countervail without delay whatever tactics, whatever enterprise, her indefatigable and serene enemy might devise.

  She was as usual compelled to toil on even to keep level. Weeding, pricking-out, pinching off, tying back, syringing, mulching, manuring – these were but a few of her laborious duties. The Parish, the Vicarage, the Guilds, the Teas, the Missions demanded each of them perpetual effort. With what ensuing ennui and surfeit only she herself could tell.

  It was in an immense flood of light when the two rivals were next confronted. From stooping at their toil, they rose unexpectedly face to face across the dividing fence. Miss Pugh a little in the shadow of a dark tree, yet with spectacles brilliantly silvered; Miss Guthrie, petite, mousey, dowdy and insignificant in the full western blaze. Each bowed to the other curtly, frigidly, with a sneer in the extreme silence between them. Yet around them exulted the little earthly paradises of their own and of Nature’s devising – smell, colour, sunshine, shade; the seemingly rapturous singing of their own refuges.

  Almost involuntarily the two ladies turned away, and presently were busied as far apart as their fenced-in domains would admit.

  But one eventuality was yet to appear; and upon its consummation Miss Guthrie’s attention was now centred. To her amazement, almost to her awe, she made the discovery that of these two rarest of rose trees her own was certainly the more prosperous, vital and verdant. There seemed a youthful vigour even in its thorns that its rival lacked. Not yet languishing, perhaps, but surely beginning to cease to progress.

  Miss Pugh stood there, shivering amid its luxuriant company. Buds it had in plenty, but flaccid, nidnodding buds on blight-enfeebled stalks. Was it blight? Or an organic weakness? Or had Miss Pugh blundered?

  Miss Guthrie narrowed her eyelids in derisive anticipation, and yet in perplexity. Miss Pugh had never failed yet. What kind of triumph then might this apparent failure predict? Hatred of her rival kindled anew at this instinctive testimony to her powers.

  Nonetheless, as Miss Guthrie covertly eyed the neighbouring garden, or squinnied down on it from her bath-room window, a hardly believable symptom was everywhere revealing itself to her long-practised eye – the signs of a brief neglect. Warnings ignored by Isaac Watts’s sluggard. Just that one scarcely perceptible lapse from exactitude in everything that betokened a Nature stirring in her bonds. She drew off her stiff and filthy gloves and folded them together. A gush of malicious warmth swept through her, wherein she suddenly perceived that a bleak wind was blowing in the garden – a wind absolutely impartial, absolutely indifferent.

  She shot a quick speculative glance at Miss Pugh’s windows, displeased, she knew not why, at being alone. What are flowers, their beauty passed away, their sweetness gone? ‘Tell her that wastes her time and me …’ She turned with a shrug of disgust from their frailty, their useless loveliness, their meaningless parade. She had no brains, never was clever, she remembered. She could not puzzle the problem out, nor evolve of herself what things in her existence might ever be really always satisfactory. If she could but find one unique object, set it up beyond cavil and beyond reproach so that even Miss Pugh must acknowledge defeat with honour. Then? Why, then – her heart warmed to think how friendly a body she herself could be; how pleasingly apt to praise and flatter; how delightfully prone to seek advice; while before, her every thought had been acrimony and pretence.

  There was no such talisman, however, to be found by a tired and dull person. Industry, therefore, came to her aid as usual, and the metallic din of her midget mowing machine sounded above the voice of the bird.

  Next day Miss Pugh caught up again. The tall, large woman worked without a sigh from dawn to nightfall. And by then Nature, so far as she was concerned, was once more in exile. One thing only was beyond even genius; and strangely enough, and still as if she had some further overwhelming stratagem in her mind, she paid no heed to her last and latest rose tree – manifestly perishing. She passed it by with a broad rancorous smile almost audible – even to Miss Guthrie – once more peeping and peering from behind her curtains. She took no rest else, spent herself out, was a man in energy, a woman in ease and dexterity, and she returned by her back door in to her house at last with infinite slowness bearing her floral tribute – it’s the spoils of all, their radiance reflected on her own flushed, damp brow.

  Thereafter the days went by swiftly. Miss Pugh’s bright grass rose up and flourished; her flowers (how gratefully!) faded unheeded to blessed seed. Caterpillar, snail and slug revelled unreproved. Greener than their foliage the greenfly swarmed into being – into generations – and ravaged the roses. And when, at last, Miss Guthrie’s Unique broke all of a lovely gaiety to the sun, a budless skeleton, its brown leaves curled and tapping in her neighbour’s garden, answered it again.

  But Miss Guthrie, as she had in that one vivid moment in the past foreseen, found that only disaster lay in unmarked and unrecorded triumph. Her garden was become a burden to her; the new Vicar was more insipid than ever with no envious rival at hand to mark his affability. And beyond this, a strange and extraordinary uneasiness took possession of her.

  Her disordered thoughts seemed to curtail themselves, only to give place to others as immature and untidy. She went about her chores like a person who has lost a thing invaluable and is ever inwardly on the alert to find it. For days together her charwoman flourished unreproved. She wished, with a strange anxiety, to hear of her neighbour. What was her malady, and when might she look for her return? For still it was this enemy, it was Miss Pugh, who was the only clear object in a mist of doubt and misgiving. Her head ached almost incessantly, and she would find her memory at a loss suddenly when most to be depended upon. She all but pined to be ill too; simply to have an excuse to give up, to surrender, to turn over a new leaf. And yet, stranger yet, only her garden, or rather Miss Pugh’s garden, eased her care.

  For there she might admire the lovely heedlessness of Nature and her ways. How casually the blooms clustered where the wind had come in the night; here where the linnet made ruin at rest with its singing. All grudge was gone, all malice was over now. Miss Pugh away, nothing seemed worthwhile, none great enough to continue the contest even in project. It was extraordinary, Miss Guthrie thought gloomily, how shallow had been her animosity against her; how poor a thing by contrast with this chill sense of solitude and fading laurels. She hid her eyes with her hand when she remembered her own homely face in the glass darkly, grotesquely transfigured.

  With a sudden revulsion, she all but stripped her Unique of its blooms, and hastened indoors to tie them together for her neighbour, out of touch for so long with all such delights. But even when the flowers were ready, and the formal, child-like note had been written, she happened to think that perhaps even in illness that taciturn formidable soul might refuse her offering.

  But there, what would it
matter, she asked herself with shining eyes, if she were scorned and rejected, she would at least have made the attempt. Only, in case these particular flowers of all others might cause the anguish of resentment that Miss Guthrie herself knew so well, she changed her mind, put the roses in a bowl, and hatless, her gloves in her hand, opened the door with the intention of visiting the florist who at least might have some bloom, perhaps the flowers of a fruit far from the Dead Sea and all unforgivingness, which neither of the two gardens could show. She passed out, shut to her door and stood an instant at her gate, staring back, blank and cold, at her neighbour’s windows. Were there really so many Venetian blinds to so few windows? Down, down, down, every one of them. And Miss Pugh dead, then!

  She turned back into the house, ascending the steps with dry trembling lips. She stared at the purse already in her hand for the florist. She paused within the porch, in a miserable silence and uncertainty. The churchyard? The grave? No, she decided. If her secluded neighbour knew of her intent, she would prefer now – and without the least acrimony – to be left alone. Some day, perhaps, solely for her own sake, she would bring her a few wild flowers from her own now deserted garden.

  The Princess*

  Is there any human being in this sorrowful cynical world, I wonder, who treasures no memory of his childhood? Silly, sentimental, pitiful, tragic, passionate; even vilely realistic – its kind is immaterial. We continue to warm our ageing hands at some small fire which went out perhaps thirty, forty, sixty years ago!

  Why? Because, I suppose, the experiences thus hoarded concerned some silent very self – they were rooted deep down, close in …

  Such an experience, for example, as falling in love; and that not merely with a pretty face: but with, say, a scene, a book, a character out of a story – yes, and even with a phantom in a dream. Lord Byron had his amorous adventures. But I doubt if he was ever more truly, selflessly and faithfully in love than when he was a boy of nine or so – and in love, and with a child, too – Mary Duff.