The Nymph and the Lamp

by Thomas H Raddall

  Mrs. Paradee was vigilant and shrewd, as landladies have to be, but she was not the frowsy harridan of the storybooks. She had been a rather striking brunette when young, if a photograph on her piano did not lie, and at the age of forty-two she was still quite handsome in a sharp-featured and full-figured way. This was especially evident on Wednesday and Sunday evenings. On these occasions the daughters, stolid blond-pigtailed girls who attended a school in one of the upper streets, were sent off with tram tickets to spend the evening with a relative in the west end; and Mrs. Paradee had a lingering hot bath in the cell on the second floor, from which she emerged in a bright scarlet wrapper and smelling pleasantly of violets.

  Within her apartment she inserted herself into a pink corset trimmed with black lace, pulled on a pair of sheer black stockings, a pink slip and finally a black silk dress. The gown was sleeveless and fashionably short, revealing all of her round white arms and a good deal of her large but not unshapely legs. At the bosom a net of black lace lent the right touch of modesty to a pair of breasts that all but escaped from the foundation garment. Innocent of rouge or lipstick but with lightly powdered arms and bosom, with her dark hair elaborately curled and her black eyes alight with a light that was never bestowed on her lodgers, Mrs. Paradee awaited the coming of a man.

  Whether or not he was her lover was a matter known only to Mrs. Paradee and the man. The lodgers speculated much upon the point. Every Wednesday and Sunday, exactly twenty minutes after the departure of the stolid girls towards the tram, a man entered the street door, walked briskly up the flight of stairs to the second floor, and tapped on Mrs. Paradee’s door. He was a short and active person with an air of furtive assurance. Not much else was known about him except that he always wore a topcoat and a bowler hat, in the shadow of whose brim there seemed to be a small beaked nose and a pale toothbrush mustache.

  He never had to knock twice. The door opened as if by some magic in his touch, and for a moment there was a glimpse of Mrs. Paradee in full array, unsmiling, wordless, but with a strange luster in her sallow face as if some pale and secret fire had leaped up after smoldering for days. The door closed on a murmur of voices, the woman’s low and vibrant, not at all like Mrs. Paradee’s of the other days, and the man’s almost indistinguishable. There followed a silence as profound as death.

  After two hours the door opened and the man emerged with the punctuality of a cuckoo from a clock, and the occasional lodger passing upstairs or peering from the upper landing saw the topcoat and bowler slip with the same furtive ease into the street and vanish. But this time there was no sight of Mrs. Paradee. The door closed slowly and mysteriously, there was a faint click of the latch, and then the handle slowly turning as it was released. In another hour, sometimes more, the daughters returned, clattering up the stairs, and the landlady greeted them in her normal voice, asking sharply if they had wiped their feet or merely inquiring after the health of Uncle Harold and Aunt Em.

  To the “regulars” this semiweekly phenomenon was an accepted part of the house routine. Transients, like girls from the show at Acker’s or vaudeville people from the Strand, seldom stayed long enough to learn the habits of the house, except the musical-chairs routine of the busy bathrooms, at which they became adept. In any case theatrical people were too full of their own affairs to be curious about Mrs. Paradee’s. A long experience on the road had given them an instinctive hostility towards landladies, an attitude that Mrs. Paradee returned with interest, and they saw as little of her as they could.

  Although she tolerated the late hours and noisy ways of the show girls as part of a game in which she could not make all the rules, Mrs. Paradee gave all her young women lodgers firmly to understand that she would have no nonsense about men in their rooms. On this point she was watchful and adamant. One memorable night a party of show folk had staged an impromptu performance in an upper room, enlivened with whiskey and song, and with a disrobing act by one of the more hilarious girls.

  At the height of the affair Mrs. Paradee had walked in with the policeman on the beat, and ordered them all out, bag and baggage, into the street. Miss Jardine well remembered this, because the row took place on her floor, and she had been bold enough to unlock her door and peep along the hall. It was a startling spectacle: Mrs. Paradee a wrathful presence in long dark plaits and the scarlet robe; the cynical policeman; three men and two women screaming insult at the top of their voices; and the cynosure, a slim girl of eighteen or nineteen wearing nothing more than a pair of stockings and fantastic garters, suddenly gone maudlin and weeping on the policeman’s shoulder.

  The other lodgers had thought the affair disgusting or a tremendous lark, according to their sex and inclinations. Not Miss Jardine. For days she was haunted by the memory of the girl, at once bold and pitiful in the light of the hall bulb; and the whispers and laughter of the “regulars” as the strange little procession went shouting down the stairs at last, sketchily dressed and carrying bags. She wondered what became of that woeful creature. She was tortured by dreams of that tearful face crying appeals to a succession of hard-faced landladies and policemen up and down the town. And sometimes these visions turned to nightmares in which Miss Jardine herself stood naked on the stairs, shrinking under the cold gaze of Mrs. Paradee and the policeman, and hearing the comment of the lodgers in the distance like a twitter of malicious birds. At such times she awoke in a clammy stupor, groping feverishly for things to say or do in this frightful situation and wishing she could die.

  But in general life in Mrs. Paradee’s establishment was much like life anywhere, a monotony enlivened with occasional excitements that were usually annoying but sometimes droll. In this hive from which the bees departed every morning, most of them not to return until night, Mrs. Paradee was queen absolute. The force of her personality was such that, although the lodgers seldom had more than a passing glimpse of her except when paying their rent, they felt her physical presence everywhere, morning and night, as if the house were haunted by a dozen Mrs. Paradees, all but one invisible. And this uncanny sensation convinced them that she rummaged their belongings, read their letters, fingered their clothes, probed the inmost recesses of suitcases and drawers in search of something illicit—or merely indulging her curiosity, they were never quite sure which.

  To some extent it was true, for Mrs. Paradee made a daily round of her menage and she had at least her share of curiosity. But chiefly her rounds were made to keep an eye (and a tongue) on the maid-of-all-work, a lean and silent Negro woman whose angular figure was sometimes to be seen working crab-like down the lower stairs, with buckets and scrubbing-brush, towards the end of a day’s work. The landlady herself did much of the dusting, a transformed Mrs. Paradee in long smock and bandana; and she was not above pushing a broom with vigor about the floors, for besides a scorn of laziness she had a concern for her figure that would have surprised all but her more intuitive lodgers.

  Miss Jardine was afraid of this formidable person but at the same time she recognized in her a pillar of order, which has its virtue for timid single women in the world of lodginghouses. And so she kept her room and the contents of her closet and chest of drawers in a state of rigid neatness, with the unquestioning discipline of a private who knows that all his things must pass muster under the eye of a sergeant major, not for the sergeant major’s sake alone, but for the good order of the regiment.

  Her window looked upon a small back court, from which an alley led to Water Street. It was a kind of no man’s land, shut in by four walls of unpainted shingles and tiers of windows exactly like Miss Jardine’s. The court itself was littered with broken glass, most of it flung down by the great Halifax explosion of ’17, which had smashed every pane in the lower town; and there were oddments of other kinds, rusty cans, rags, bottles and the shards of tumbled flowerpots, and of course the ash and garbage barrels of the restaurant and other establishments using the court.

  In this deep wooden pit, festooned with lines of heavy washing each fine Monday,
and given a festive note on other days of the week by long silk stockings and brief wisps of underwear fluttering here and there, in various arrangements, like the dots and dashes of a feminine Morse code, the sunshine never crept lower than Miss Jardine’s floor. But there, except in midwinter, it touched her window cheerfully whenever the weather was fine. By standing close to the right-hand side she could see down the alley and catch a glimpse of harbor water on the farther side of Water Street, like a vertical blue pencil stroke between the buildings.

  The back court made a small world, cheerful at night, when lights sprang in all the rooms and there were snatches of talk and laughter, the tunes of assorted gramophones, male shouts, mysterious little feminine cries, savory smells from the restaurant kitchen, and a pleasant and general air of release from toil. Few people drew their blinds. The court was a Peeping Tom’s paradise. Miss Jardine’s blind was invariably drawn; but often when she had undressed for bed, laid aside her book and switched off the light, she paused after running up the blind and gazed across the pit.

  By that time most of the windows were dark, or had their shades drawn for the bedtime rites; but here and there, lit in their separate frames like pictures hung without regard to subject, she could see a variety of portraits and tableaux. A young woman, or two sharing a room, undressed and yawned over their bedtime toilette with a careless indifference to eyes across the court. A respectable-looking old gentleman with a clipped white mustache lay on a bed, reading a newspaper and clad in a suit of soiled woolen underwear. On summer nights a stout woman in a nightdress appeared at a window and gazed downward at the back door of the restaurant, scratching herself and smoking a cigarette.

  None of these was worth a second glance. But one scene caught and held Miss Jardine’s attention. It was always the same, although the actors changed from week to week, and it was not always staged in the same room. A group of men, usually young men in trousers and undershirts, sat about a bed playing cards in a blue haze of tobacco smoke. They were sailors, or perhaps merchant marine officers waiting for a ship, for their arms were tattooed and muscular. Miss Jardine watched them as they flicked the cards and passed a bottle back and forth. There were times when she longed to be a man like one of these, with their reckless faces, their hard bodies, their unconscious attitudes of utter fearlessness. She wondered how many of them had loved women, and what sort, and where, and if they ever thought of them. Probably not. You knew what sailors were. And yet how wonderful to be so free and so utterly sure of everything, from women to the chances of the sea, with that same careless confidence in the next shuffle of the cards, and never a look back!

  These visions and speculations perished in winter, when the windows were shut and masked with frost, and all the inmates of the lodginghouses shivered over their tepid radiators and crept early to bed. But worst were rainy Sundays, when there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nothing to see but the sordid little court streaming in the downpour of the gutterspouts. In the gray daylight the windows were blank and lifeless. Now and again a mysterious hand parted the curtains for a moment and flicked them back again in evident disgust, or tossed a cigarette stub into the rain. These were the empty pages in their lives, not to be skipped over as they skipped a dull chapter in the battered books they passed from room to room.

  On fine Sundays in spring, summer and autumn the warren was deserted during the daylight hours. Nearly all of the lodgers made their way to the Public Gardens, to Point Pleasant, to the park at Northwest Arm, or sat about the slopes of the Citadel looking over the rooftops at the harbor and the Dartmouth shore. At night they returned with a pleasant air of accomplishment; their rooms seemed no longer cells in a prison from which there was no escape; they took off their shoes and sprawled on their beds and contemplated the familiar walls and furniture with a sense of home and ownership.

  When Miss Jardine returned from Point Pleasant she ran lightly up the stairs and entered her room with all the relish of a sailor entering port after a voyage. She felt refreshed. It was nice to get back, and she had a good appetite for tea. She did not look forward to tomorrow’s tea with the same relish. Now that she had time to think it over, an evening with the man from Marina seemed rather an ordeal, an act of charity that she must perform with all possible grace. She knew she would feel embarrassed and a little ridiculous, going about the streets with that gentle bearded giant in his suit of shabby reach-me-downs.

  The odd thing was that beneath these doubts she felt a tingle of elation, and she wondered why. Because she had a date with a man? Pooh! Besides, Carney wasn’t a man in the sense that enabled you to say in the office next morning, with a casual air and if possible a yawn, in the manner of the Benson girl, “I was out with a man again last night. Oh dear!”

  Miss Benson was a virtuous girl who nevertheless enjoyed a good time and made full use of her charms in getting what she wanted. Men came to her like wasps to jam. Most of them were wireless operators, good-looking youngsters from the ships, who met her in the office, admired her person, and quite misread the invitation in her eyes. One after another, like suitors of a modern Atalanta, they pursued her through dinners, dances and shows, casting their golden apples in the modern form of flowers, chocolates, stockings, scarves or jewelry, according to their funds and their thirst for conquest. It was a splendid game, and unlike Atalanta, Miss Benson always managed to pick up the apples and win.

  If the young men were disappointed they seldom reproached her, and most of them admired her skill. Indeed they talked about it in foreign ports, in distant stations up the coast, in dot-and-dash chat far at sea. With less than five years’ experience in the radio world Miss Benson in her own way was almost as famous as Carney was in his. She did not know this, and she would have been indignant if she had; but the knowledge would not have spoiled her amusing and rewarding game for a moment.

  Miss Benson in moments of candor described herself as a flirt. The young men had another word. Miss Jardine considered her a heartless fraud. After all the young men were simply healthy animals following natural instincts, and Miss Benson’s game was not only dishonest but rather cruel. For her part Miss Benson enjoyed the indignant look of Miss Jardine whenever a new victim came under her spell. She was well aware that this tall pale creature made a perfect foil for her own attractions, and on occasion she felt sorry for her.

  Sometimes when dancing with an ardent young officer from one of the ships she would say earnestly, “I wish you’d find a friend for Miss Jardine—you know, the other girl in the office.” Usually he had failed to notice the other girl, or at best he would exclaim, “What! The spinster with the glasses?” And she would reply, with the instinctive arithmetic of a woman who does not really like another, “She’s only a bit over thirty,” or if Miss Jardine had been unusually severe that day, “She’s thirty-four, that’s not very old,” and she would add, “Miss Jardine’s really quite clever. She goes to lectures and studies art.” The young officer would laugh, and so would she; but in these little exchanges Miss Benson felt that she had discharged an obligation to the plain girl at the other desk.

  CHAPTER 5

  Carney was early at the meeting place, wearing the reward of a day’s search amongst the shops, a suit of light gray flannel, a hat to match, and a new shirt with a smart soft collar and tie, all of which fitted him fairly well. He had even bought a packet of cigarettes. It seemed a futile way to take tobacco, but he stood beside the post office puffing smoke in a determined way and regarding the bronze soldier on the monument across the street.

  He recalled the Boer War very well. At one time he had thought of enlisting in a regiment for South Africa. The chap on the monument seemed to him a fool, standing on a boulder and holding a rifle high above his head, a signal that meant “Enemy in sight.” A silly thing to do in sight of the Boers, who shot so very straight. Carney’s gaze was fixed in a disapproving stare when he heard Miss Jardine’s voice at his elbow.

  “Here I am, Mr. Carney, fifteen minutes l
ate!” Her face was pink and she seemed a little breathless, as if she had been running. She was wearing her brown skirt and white blouse, with a short brown jacket and a prim little hat.

  “Let’s walk along this way,” she said quickly. She did not offer to take his arm. They joined the stream of office workers pouring along Hollis Street.

  “You’ve got some new clothes,” she observed. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have known you except for the beard. But that’s not true. You’re so big. I’d have known you anywhere.”

  Carney smiled. “Why don’t you say I stuck out of the crowd like a brand-new fire engine. That’s the way I felt.”

  She tipped back her head and laughed. “I could see that. You stared so grimly at the monument. But, no joking, that gray suit becomes you. It goes very nicely with that golden beard. With a hat on you look quite distinguished. Really!”

  He fell into her mood and they were still talking gaily when she touched his arm and turned in to a teashop. It was a small clean place with electric fans buzzing against the heat of a summer evening, and the waitresses wore short green frocks and looked very cool and fresh.

  “They only serve light things here,” Miss Jardine said. “Soups and omelettes and sandwiches and things like that. But you can have a steak if you ask for it. And the pastry’s very nice.”

  Across a small table against the wall they smiled at each other.

  “Any further news of the Elgin?” Carney asked.

  “You’ve got another three days.”

  “Good!”

  “I thought you were anxious to get back.”

  “So I was. But now that I’ve bought some new clothes I might as well get a little wear out of them.”

  “Don’t you ever dress up on Marina?”

  Carney chuckled. “If the people out there could see me now, they’d think I’d gone potty at last. So would Hurd for that matter. And—I say—he must have been busy today, he kept you so long.”