The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham: East and West (Vol. 1 of 2))

by W. Somerset Maugham

  “I suppose you know a little German?” asked Caypor, interested in the stranger.

  “Oh, yes, I was a student in Germany, and I used to talk it fluently, but that is long ago and I have forgotten. I can still read it very comfortably.”

  “Oh, yes, I noticed you were reading a German book last night.”

  Fool! It was only a little while since he had told Ashenden that he had not seen him at dinner. He wondered whether Caypor had observed the slip. How difficult it was never to make one! Ashenden must be on his guard; the thing that made him most nervous was the thought that he might not answer readily enough to his assumed name of Somerville. Of course there was always the chance that Caypor had made the slip on purpose to see by Ashenden’s face whether he noticed anything. Caypor got up.

  “There is my wife. We go for a walk up one of the mountains every afternoon. I can tell you some charming walks. The flowers even now are lovely.”

  “I’m afraid I must wait till I’m a bit stronger,” said Ashenden, with a little sigh.

  He had naturally a pale face and never looked as robust as he was. Mrs Caypor came downstairs and her husband joined her. They walked down the road, Fritzi bounding round them, and Ashenden saw that Caypor immediately began to speak with volubility. He was evidently telling his wife the results of his interview with Ashenden. Ashenden looked at the sun shining so gaily on the lake; the shadow of a breeze fluttered the green leaves of the trees; everything invited a stroll: he got up, went to his room and throwing himself on his bed had a very pleasant sleep.

  He went in to dinner that evening as the Caypors were finishing, for he had wandered melancholy about Lucerne in the hope of finding a cocktail that would enable him to face the potato salad that he foresaw, and on their way out of the dining-room Caypor stopped and asked him if he would drink coffee with them. When Ashenden joined them in the hall Caypor got up and introduced him to his wife. She bowed stiffly and no answering smile came to her face to respond to Ashenden’s civil greeting. It was not hard to see that her attitude was definitely hostile. It put Ashenden at his ease. She was a plainish woman, nearing forty, with a muddy skin and vague features; her drab hair was arranged in a plait round her head like that of Napoleon’s Queen of Prussia; and she was squarely built, plump rather than fat, and solid. But she did not look stupid; she looked on the contrary, a woman of character, and Ashenden, who had lived enough in Germany to recognize the type, was ready to believe that though capable of doing the housework, cooking the dinner, and climbing a mountain, she might be also prodigiously well-informed. She wore a white blouse that showed a sunburned neck, a black skirt and heavy walking boots. Caypor addressing her in English told her in his jovial way, as though she did not know it already, what Ashenden had told him about himself. She listened grimly.

  “I think you told me you understood German,” said Caypor, his big red face wreathed in polite smiles but his little eyes darting about restlessly.

  “Yes, I was for some time a student in Heidelberg.”

  “Really?” said Mrs Caypor in English, an expression of faint interest for a moment chasing away the sullenness from her face. “I know Heidelberg very well. I was at school there for one year.”

  Her English was correct, but throaty, and the mouthing emphasis she gave her words was disagreeable. Ashenden was diffuse in praise of the old university town and the beauty of the neighbourhood. She heard him, from the standpoint of her Teutonic superiority, with toleration rather than with enthusiasm.

  “It is well known that the valley of the Neckar is one of the beauty places of the whole world,” she said.

  “I have not told you, my dear,” said Caypor then, “that Mr Somerville is looking for someone to give him conversation lessons while he is here. I told him that perhaps you could suggest a teacher.”

  “No, I know no one whom I could conscientiously recommend,” she answered. “The Swiss accent is hateful beyond words. It could do Mr Somerville only harm to converse with a Swiss.”

  “If I were in your place, Mr Somerville, I would try and persuade my wife to give you lessons. She is, if I may say so, a very cultivated and highly educated woman.”

  “Ach, Grantley, I have not the time. I have my own work to do.”

  Ashenden saw that he was being given his opportunity. The trap was prepared and all he had to do was to fall in. He turned to Mrs Caypor with a manner that he tried to make shy, deprecating and modest.

  “Of course it would be too wonderful if you would give me lessons. I should look upon it as a real privilege. Naturally I wouldn’t want to interfere with your work. I am just here to get well, with nothing in the world to do, and I would suit my time entirely to your convenience.”

  He felt a flash of satisfaction pass from one to the other and in Mrs Caypor’s blue eyes he fancied that he saw a dark glow.

  “Of course it would be a purely business arrangement,” said Caypor. “There’s no reason that my good wife shouldn’t earn a little pin-money. Would you think ten francs an hour too much?”

  “No,” said Ashenden. “I should think myself lucky to get a first-rate teacher for that.”

  “What do you say, my dear? Surely you can spare an hour, and you would be doing this gentleman a kindness. He would learn that all Germans are not the devilish fiends that they think them in England.”

  On Mrs Caypor’s brow was an uneasy frown and Ashenden could not but think with apprehension of that hour’s conversation a day that he was going to exchange with her. Heaven only knew how he would have to rack his brain for subjects of discourse with that heavy and morose woman. Now she made a visible effort.

  “I shall be very pleased to give Mr Somerville conversation lessons.”

  “I congratulate you, Mr Somerville,” said Caypor noisily. “You’re in for a treat. When will you start, tomorrow at eleven?”

  “That would suit me very well if it suits Mrs Caypor.”

  “Yes, that is as good an hour as another,” she answered.

  Ashenden left them to discuss the happy outcome of their diplomacy. But when, punctually at eleven next morning, he heard a knock at his door (for it had been arranged that Mrs Caypor should give him his lesson in his room) it was not without trepidation that he opened it. It behoved him to be frank, a trifle indiscreet, but obviously wary of a German woman, sufficiently intelligent, and impulsive. Mrs Caypor’s face was dark and sulky. She plainly hated having anything to do with him. But they sat down and she began, somewhat peremptorily, to ask him questions about his knowledge of German literature. She corrected his mistakes with exactness and when he put before her some difficulty in German construction explained it with clearness and precision. It was obvious that though she hated giving him a lesson she meant to give it conscientiously. She seemed to have not only an aptitude for teaching, but a love of it, and as the hour went on she began to speak with greater earnestness. It was already only by an effort that she remembered that he was a brutal Englishman. Ashenden, noticing the unconscious struggle within her, found himself not a little entertained; and it was with truth that, when later in the day Caypor asked him how the lesson had gone, he answered that it was highly satisfactory; Mrs Caypor was an excellent teacher and a most interesting person.

  “I told you so. She’s the most remarkable woman I know.”

  And Ashenden had a feeling that when in his hearty, laughing way Caypor said this he was for the first time entirely sincere.

  In a day or two Ashenden guessed that Mrs Caypor was giving him lessons only in order to enable Caypor to arrive at a closer intimacy with him, for she confined herself strictly to matters of literature, music, and painting; and when Ashenden, by way of experiment, brought the conversation round to the war, she cut him short.

  “I think that is a topic that we had better avoid, Herr Somerville,” she said.

  She continued to give her lessons with the greatest thoroughness, and he had his money’s worth, but every day she came with the same sullen face and
it was only in the interest of teaching that she lost for a moment her instinctive dislike of him. Ashenden exercised in turn, but in vain, all his wiles. He was ingratiating, ingenuous, humble, grateful, flattering, simple, and timid.

  She remained coldly hostile. She was a fanatic. Her patriotism was aggressive, but disinterested, and obsessed with the notion of the superiority of all things German she loathed England with a virulent hatred because in that country she saw the chief obstacle to their diffusion. Her ideal was a German world in which the rest of the nations under a hegemony greater than that of Rome should enjoy the benefits of German science and German art and German culture. There was in the conception a magnificent impudence that appealed to Ashenden’s sense of humour. She was no fool. She had read much, in several languages, and she could talk of the books she had read with good sense. She had a knowledge of modern painting and modern music that not a little impressed Ashenden. It was amusing once to hear her before luncheon play one of those silvery little pieces of Debussy; she played it disdainfully because it was French and so light, but with an angry appreciation of its grace and gaiety. When Ashenden congratulated her she shrugged her shoulders.

  “The decadent music of a decadent nation,” she said. Then with powerful hands she struck the first resounding chords of a sonata by Beethoven; but she stopped. “I cannot play, I am out of practice, and you English, what do you know of music? You have not produced a composer since Purcell!”

  “What do you think of that statement?” Ashenden, smiling, asked Caypor, who was standing near.

  “I confess its truth. The little I know of music my wife taught me. I wish you could hear her play when she is in practice.” He put his fat hand, with its square, stumpy fingers, on her shoulder. “She can wring your heartstrings with pure beauty.”

  “Dummer Kerl,” she said, in a soft voice, “Stupid fellow,” and Ashenden saw her mouth for a moment quiver, but she quickly recovered. “You English, you cannot paint, you cannot model, you cannot write music’

  “Some of us can at times write pleasing verses,” said Ashenden, with good-humour, for it was not his business to be put out, and, he did not know why, two lines occurring to him he said them:

  “Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,

  Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Caypor, with a strange gesture, “you can write poetry. I wonder why.”

  And to Ashenden’s surprise she went on, in her guttural English, to recite the next two lines of the poem he had quoted.

  “Come, Grantley, Mittagessen is ready, let us go into the dining-room.”

  They left Ashenden reflective.

  Ashenden admired goodness, but was not outraged by wickedness. People sometimes thought him heartless because he was more often interested in others than attached to them, and even in the few to whom he was attached his eyes saw with equal clearness the merits and the defects. When he liked people it was not because he was blind to their faults, he did not mind their faults but accepted them with a tolerant shrug of the shoulders, or because he ascribed to them excellencies that they did not possess; and since he judged his friends with candour they never disappointed him and so he seldom lost one. He asked from none more than he could give. He was able to pursue his study of the Caypors without prejudice and without passion. Mrs Caypor seemed to him more of a piece and therefore the easier of the two to understand;

  she obviously detested him; though it was necessary for her to be civil to him her antipathy was strong enough to wring from her now and then an expression of rudeness; and had she been safely able to do so she would have killed him without a qualm. But in the pressure of Caypor’s chubby hand on his wife’s shoulder and in the fugitive trembling of her lips Ashenden had divined that this unprepossessing woman and that mean fat man were joined together by a deep and sincere love. It was touching. Ashenden assembled the observations that he had been making for the past few days and little things that he had noticed but to which he had attached no significance returned to him. It seemed to him that Mrs Caypor loved her husband because she was of a stronger character than he and because she felt his dependence on her; she loved him for his admiration of her, and you might guess that till she met him this dumpy, plain woman with her dullness, good sense, and want of humour could not have much enjoyed the admiration of men; she enjoyed his heartiness and his noisy jokes, and his high spirits stirred her sluggish blood; he was a great big bouncing boy and he would never be anything else and she felt like a mother towards him; she had made him what he was, and he was her man and she was his woman, and she loved him, notwithstanding his weakness (for with her clear head she must always have been conscious of that), she loved him, ach, was, as Isolde loved Tristan. But then there was the espionage. Even Ashenden with all his tolerance for human frailty could not but feel that to betray your country for money is not a very pretty proceeding. Of course she knew of it, indeed it was probably through her that Caypor had first been approached; he would never have undertaken such work if she had not urged him to it. She loved him and she was an honest and an upright woman. By what devious means had she persuaded herself to force her husband to adopt so base and dishonourable a calling? Ashenden lost himself in a labyrinth of conjecture as he tried to piece together the actions of her mind.

  Grantley Caypor was another story. There was little to admire in him, but at that moment Ashenden was not looking for an object of admiration; but there was much that was singular and much that was unexpected in that gross and vulgar fellow. Ashenden watched with entertainment the suave manner in which the spy tried to inveigle him in his toils. It was a couple of days after his first lesson that Caypor after dinner, his wife having gone upstairs, threw himself heavily into a chair by Ashenden’s side. His faithful Fritzi came up to him and put his long muzzle with its black nose on his knee.

  “He has no brain,” said Caypor, “but a heart of gold. Look at those little pink eyes. Did you ever see anything so stupid? And what an ugly face, but what incredible charm!”

  “Have you had him long?” asked Ashenden.

  “I got him in 1914 just before the outbreak of war. By the way, what do you think of the news today? Of course my wife and I never discuss the war. You can’t think what a relief to me it is to find a fellow-countryman to whom I can open my heart.”

  He handed Ashenden a cheap Swiss cigar and Ashenden, making a rueful sacrifice to duty, accepted it.

  “Of course they haven’t got a chance, the Germans,” said Caypor, “not a dog’s chance. I knew they were beaten the moment we came in.”

  His manner was earnest, sincere, and confidential. Ashenden made a commonplace rejoinder.

  “It’s the greatest grief of my life that owing to my wife’s nationality I was unable to do any war work. I tried to enlist the day war broke out, but they wouldn’t have me on account of my age, but I don’t mind telling you, if the war goes on much longer, wife or no wife, I’m going to do something. With my knowledge of languages I ought to be of some service in the Censorship Department. That’s where you were, wasn’t it?”

  That was the mark at which he had been aiming and in answer now to his well-directed questions Ashenden gave him the information that he had already prepared. Caypor drew his chair a little nearer and dropped his voice.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me anything that anyone shouldn’t know, but after all these Swiss are absolutely pro-German and we don’t want to give anyone the chance of overhearing.”

  Then he went on another tack. He told Ashenden a number of things that were of a certain secrecy.

  “I wouldn’t tell this to anybody else, you know, but I have one or two friends who are in pretty influential positions, and they know they can trust me.”

  Thus encouraged, Ashenden was a little more deliberately indiscreet and when they parted both had reason to be satisfied. Ashenden guessed that Caypor’s typewriter would be kept busy next morning and that extremely ener
getic Major in Berne would shortly receive a most interesting report.

  One evening, going upstairs after dinner, Ashenden passed an open bathroom. He caught sight of the Caypors.

  “Come in,” cried Caypor in his cordial way. “We’re washing our Fritzi.”

  The bull-terrier was constantly getting himself very dirty, and it was Caypor’s pride to see him clean and white. Ashenden went in. Mrs Caypor with her sleeves turned up and a large white apron was standing at one end of the bath, while Caypor, in a pair of trousers and a singlet, his fat, freckled arms bare, was soaping the wretched hound.

  “We have to do it at night,” he said, “because the Fitzgeralds use this bath and they’d have a fit if they knew we washed the dog in it. We wait till they go to bed. Come along, Fritzi, show the gentleman how beautifully you behave when you have your face scrubbed.”

  The poor brute, woebegone but faintly wagging his tail to show that however foul was this operation performed on him he bore no malice to the god who did it, was standing in the middle of the bath in six inches of water. He was soaped all over and Caypor, talking the while, shampooed him with his great fat hands.