Delphi Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham (Illustrated)

by William Somerset Maugham

  “Don’t be absurd, Eliza.”

  Miss Dwarris rang the bell and, when the butler appeared, ordered him to fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.

  “I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.

  “Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”

  “And, therefore, entitled to do exactly as I like.”

  Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.

  “If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into it again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”

  Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn, most difficult to bear.

  “My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And, really, the cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the worst cook in the metropolis.”

  “She’s been with me for five and twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris, two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal too good for any one else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you still refuse to do as I wish?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

  “Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,” she cried, in tones of thunder.

  “Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’s vagaries.

  Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating good-humour.

  “I hope you realise, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

  “All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley, mockingly, “and shall I return your letters and your photographs?”

  Miss Dwarris sat for a while, in silent anger, watching her cousin, who took up the Morning Post, and, with great calmness, read the fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the four-wheeler was at the door.

  “Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

  “I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,” replied Miss Ley, mildly.

  “It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”

  “Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

  And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

  “I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not now carry out.”

  “You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people: upon my word, considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I think they thoroughly deserve it.”

  “I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside herself; “and if I want to I shall leave every penny of it in charity. You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year, but, apparently, it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your flat when you go away. Remember, that no one has any claims upon me, and I can make you a rich woman.”

  Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

  “My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty years to plague the human race in general and your relations in particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you, to submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous and overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

  Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded without mercy.

  “You have plenty of poor relations — bully them. Vent your spite and ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but pray in future spare me the infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

  Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely. She felt that it was unanswerable, and, with great dignity, walked out. No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris, peremptory, stern, and evangelical to the end, lived in full possession of her faculties for another twenty years. She died at last in a passion occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and as though a heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep and unanimous sigh of relief.

  They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh, strong, domineering old woman. Then, nervously expectant, they begged the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand, and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

  “I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79, Old Queen Street, Westminster, Spinster, hereby revoke all former Wills and Testamentary Dispositions, made by me and declare this to be my last Will and Testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72, Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to be the executrix of this my Will, and I give all my real and personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I give my blessing; and I beseech them to bear in mind the example and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent spirit; I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come; and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund.

  “In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my Will the 4th day of April, 1883.

  “Elizabeth Ann Dwarris.”

  To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation to all that bore the name of Dwarris.

  PART II

  CHAPTER I

  MISS LEY returned to England at the end of February. Unlike the most of her compatriots, she did not go abroad to see the friends with whom she spent much time at home; and though Bella and Herbert Field were at Naples, Mrs. Murray in Rome, she took care systematically to avoid them. Rather was it her practice to cultivate chance acquaintance, for she thought the English in foreign lands betrayed their idiosyncrasies with a pleasant and edifying frankness; in Venice, for example, or at Capri, the delectable isle, romance might be seized, as it were, in the act, and all manner of oddities were displayed with a most diverting effrontery: in those places you meet middle-aged pairs, uncertainly related, whose vehement adventures startled the decorum of a previous generation; you discover how queer may be the most conventional, how ordinary the most eccentric. Miss Ley, with her discreet knack for extracting confidence, after her own staid fashion enjoyed herself immensely; she listened to the strange confessions of men who for their souls’ sake had abandoned the greatness of the world, and now spoke of their past zeal with indulgent irony, of women who for love had been willing to break down the very pillars of heaven, and now shrugged their shoulders in amused recollection of passion long since dead.

  “Well, what have you fresh to tell me?” asked Frank, having met Miss Ley at Victoria, when he sat down to dinner in
Old Queen Street.

  “Nothing much. But I’ve noticed that when pleasure has exhausted a man he’s convinced that he has exhausted pleasure; then he tells you gravely that nothing can satisfy the human heart.”

  But Frank had more important news than this, for Jenny, a week before, was delivered of a still-born child, and had been so ill that it was thought she could not recover; now, however, the worst was over, and if nothing untoward befell, she might be expected slowly to regain health.

  “How does Basil take it?” asked Miss Ley.

  “He says very little; he’s grown silent of late, but I’m afraid he’s quite heart-broken. You know how enormously he looked forward to the baby.”

  “D’you think he’s fond of his wife?”

  “He’s very kind to her. No one could have been gentler than he after the catastrophe. I think she was the more cut up of the two. You see, she looked upon it as the reason of their marriage — and he’s been doing his best to comfort her.”

  “I must go down and see them. And now tell me about Mrs. Castillyon.”

  “I haven’t set eyes on her for ages.”

  Miss Ley observed Frank with deliberation. She wondered if he knew of the affair with Reggie Bassett, but, though eager to discuss it, would not risk to divulge a secret. In point of fact, he was familiar with all the circumstances, but it amused him to counterfeit ignorance that he might see how Miss Ley guided the conversation to the point she wanted. She spoke of the Dean of Tercanbury, of Bella and her husband, then, as though by chance, mentioned Reggie; but the twinkling of Frank’s eyes told her that he was laughing at her stratagem.

  “You brute!” she cried, “why didn’t you tell me all about it, instead of letting me discover the thing by accident?”

  “My sex suggests to me certain elementary notions of honour, Miss Ley.”

  “You needn’t add priggishness to your other detestable vices. How did you know they were carrying on in this way?”

  “The amiable youth told me. There are very few men who can refrain from boasting of their conquests, and certainly Reggie isn’t one of them.”

  “You don’t know Hugh Kearon, do you? He’s had affairs all over Europe, and the most notorious was with a royal princess who shall be nameless; I think she would have bored him to death if he hadn’t been able to flourish ostentatiously a handkerchief with a royal crown in the corner and a large initial.”

  Miss Ley then gave her account of the visit to Rochester, and certainly made of it a very neat and entertaining story.

  “And did you think for a moment that this would be the end of the business?” asked Frank, ironically.

  “Don’t be spiteful because I hoped for the best.”

  “Dear Miss Ley, the bigger blackguard a man is, the more devoted are his lady-loves. It’s only when a man is decent and treats women as if they were human beings that he has a rough time of it.”

  “You know nothing about these things, Frank,” retorted Miss Ley. “Pray give me the facts, and the philosophical conclusions I can draw for myself.”

  “Well, Reggie has a natural aptitude for dealing with the sex. I heard all about your excursion to Rochester, and went so far as to assure him that you wouldn’t tell his mamma. He perceived that he hadn’t cut a very heroic figure, so he mounted the high horse, and, full of virtuous indignation, for a month took no notice whatever of Mrs. Castillyon. Then she wrote most humbly, begging him to forgive her; and this, I understand, he graciously did. He came to see me, flung the letter on the table, and said: ‘There, my boy, if any one asks you, say that what I don’t know about women ain’t worth knowing.’ Two days later he appeared with a gold cigarette-case!”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “One of these days you’ll come the very devil of a cropper.”

  “You showed wisdom and emphasis. I hope with all my heart, he will.”

  “I don’t imagine things are going very smoothly,” proceeded Frank. “Reggie tells me she leads him a deuce of a life, and he’s growing restive; it appears to be no joke to have a woman desperately in love with you. And then he’s never been on such familiar terms with a person of quality, and he’s shocked by her vulgarity; her behaviour seems often to outrage his sense of decorum.”

  “Isn’t that like an Englishman! He cultivates propriety even in the immoral.”

  Then Miss Ley asked Frank about himself, but they had corresponded with diligence, and he had little to tell; the work at Saint Luke’s went on monotonously, lectures to students three times a week and out-patients on Wednesday and Saturday; people were beginning to come to his consulting-room in Harley Street, and he looked forward, without great enthusiasm, to the future of a fashionable physician.

  “And are you in love?”

  “You know I shall never permit my affections to wander so long as you remain single,” he answered, laughing.

  “Beware I don’t take you at your word and drag you by the hair of your head to the altar. Have I no rival?”

  “Well, if you press me, I will confess.”

  “Monster! what is her name?”

  “Bilharzia Holmatobi.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “It’s a parasite I’m studying. I think authorities are all wrong about it; they’ve not got its life-history right, and the stuff they believe about the way people catch it is sheer footle.”

  “It doesn’t sound frightfully thrilling to me, and I’m under the impression you’re only trumping it up to conceal some scandalous amour with a ballet-girl.”

  Miss Ley’s visit to Barnes seemed welcome neither to Jenny nor to Basil, who looked harassed and unhappy, and only with a visible effort assumed a cheerful manner when he addressed his wife. Jenny was still in bed, very weak and ill, but Miss Ley, who had never before seen her, was surprised at her great beauty; her face, whiter than the pillows against which it rested, had a very touching pathos, and, notwithstanding all that had gone before, that winsome, innocent sweetness which has occasioned the comparison of English maidens to the English rose. The observant woman noticed also the painful, questioning anxiety with which Jenny continually glanced at her husband, as though pitifully dreading some unmerited reproach.

  “I hope you like my wife,” said Basil, when he accompanied Miss Ley downstairs.

  “Poor thing! She seems to me like a lovely bird imprisoned by fate within the four walls of practical life, who should by rights sing careless songs under the open skies. I’m afraid you’ll be very unkind to her.”

  “Why?” he asked, not without resentment.

  “My dear, you’ll make her live up to your blue china teapot. The world might be so much happier if people wouldn’t insist on acting up to their principles.”

  Mrs. Bush had been hurriedly sent for when Jenny’s condition seemed dangerous, but, in her distress and excitement, she had sought solace in Basil’s whiskey-bottle to such an extent that he was obliged to beg her to return to her own home. The scene was not edifying. Surmising an alcoholic tendency, Kent, two or three days after her arrival, locked the side-board and removed the key. But in a little while the servant came to him.

  “If you please, sir, Mrs. Bush says, can she ‘ave the whiskey; she’s not feelin’ very well.”

  “I’ll go to her.”

  Mrs. Bush sat in the dining-room with folded hands, doing her utmost to express on a healthy countenance maternal anxiety, indisposition, and ruffled dignity; she was not vastly pleased to see her son-in-law instead of the expected maid.

  “Oh, is that you, Basil?” she said; “I can’t find the sideboard key anywhere, and I’m that upset I must ‘ave a little drop of something.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you, Mrs. Bush. You’re much better without it.”

  “Oh, indeed!” she answered, bristling. “P’raps you know more about me inside feelings than I do myself. I’ll just trouble you to give me the key, young man, and look sharp about it. I’m not a woman to be put upon by any one, and I tell you straig
ht.”

  “I’m very sorry, but I think you’ve had quite enough to drink. Jenny may want you, and you would be wise to keep sober.”

  “D’you mean to insinuate that I’ve ‘ad more than I can carry?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite so far as that,” he answered, smiling.

  “Thank you for nothing,” cried Mrs. Bush indignantly. “And I should be obliged if you wouldn’t laugh at me, and I must say it’s very ‘eartless with me daughter lying ill in her bedroom. I’m very much upset and I did think you’d treat me like a lady, but you never ‘ave, Mr. Kent — no, not even the first time I come here. Oh, I ‘aven’t forgot, so don’t you think I ‘ave — a sixpenny ‘alfpenny teapot was good enough for me, but when your lady-friend come in out pops the silver, and I don’t believe for a moment it’s real silver. Blood’s all very well, Mr. Kent, but what I say is, give me manners. You’re a nice young feller, you are, to grudge me a little drop of spirits when me poor daughter’s on her death-bed. I wouldn’t stay another minute in this ‘ouse if it wasn’t for ‘er.”

  “I was going to suggest it would be better if you returned to your happy home in Crouch End,” answered Basil, when the good woman stopped to take breath.

  “Were you, indeed! Well, we’ll just see what Jenny ‘as to say to that. I suppose my daughter is mistress in ‘er own ‘ouse.”

  Mrs. Bush started to her feet and made for the door, but Basil stood with his back against it.

  “I can’t allow you to go to her now. I don’t think you’re in a fit state.”

  “D’you think I’m going to let you prevent me? Get out of my way, young man.”

  Basil, more disgusted than out of temper, looked at the angry creature with a cold scorn which was not easy to stomach.

  “I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Bush, but I think you’d better leave this house at once. Fanny will put your things together. I’m going to Jenny’s room, and I forbid you to come to it. I expect you to be gone in half an hour.”