The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by L. P. Hartley

  ‘In that case wouldn’t it be better to send him to London? As a matter of fact, his firm has telegraphed for him. He could go quite comfortably in the car.’

  The doctor answered immediately:

  ‘I wouldn’t advise such a course. I think it would be most unwise to move him. His firm—you must excuse me—will have to do without him for a day or two.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Maggie trembling, ‘it’s a matter that could be arranged at his house. They could send over someone from the office. I know they make a fuss about having him on the spot,’ she concluded lamely.

  ‘Or, doctor,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, ‘could you do us a very great kindness and go with him? We could telephone to his doctor to meet you, and the car would get you home by midnight.’

  The doctor squared his shoulders: he was clearly one of those men whose resolution stiffens under opposition.

  ‘I consider it would be the height of folly,’ he said, ‘to move him out of the house. I dare not do it on my responsibility. I will get a colleague over from Ipswich to-morrow morning. In the meantime, with your permission, I will arrange for a trained nurse to be sent to-night.’

  Amid a subdued murmur of final instructions, the doctor left.

  As Maggie, rather late, was walking upstairs to dress for dinner she met Rundle. He looked anxious.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said, ‘but have you seen Mr. Fairfield? I’ve asked everyone else, and they haven’t. I took him up his supper half an hour ago, and he wasn’t in his room. He’d got his dress clothes out, but they were all on the bed except the stiff shirt.’

  ‘Have you been to look since?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘I’ll go and see.’

  She tiptoed along the passage to Antony’s door. A medley of sounds, footsteps, drawers being opened and shut, met her ears.

  She walked back to Rundle. ‘He’s in there all right,’ she said. ‘Now I must make haste and dress.’

  A few minutes later a bell rang in the kitchen.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Miss Winthrop’s room,’ said the cook. ‘Hurry up, Lettice, or you’ll have Rundle on your track—he’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ said Lettice. ‘I tell you I feel that nervous——’

  ‘Nonsense, child,’ said the cook. ‘Run along with you.’

  No sooner had the maid gone than Rundle appeared.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of trouble with Master Antony,’ he said. ‘He’s got it into his head that he wants to come down to dinner. “Rundle,” he said to me, confidentially, “do you think it would matter us being seven? I want them to meet my new friend.” “What friend, Mr. Fairfield?” I said. “Oh,” he said, “haven’t you seen her? She’s always about with me now.” Poor chap, he used to be the pick of the bunch, and now I’m afraid he’s going potty.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll really come down to dinner?’ asked the cook, but before Rundle could answer Lettice rushed into the room.

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘I knew it would be something horrid! I knew it would be! And now she wants a floor cloth and a pail! She says they mustn’t know anything about it! But I won’t go again—won’t bring it down, I won’t even touch it!’

  ‘What won’t you touch?’

  ‘That waste-paper basket.’

  ‘Why, what’s the matter with it?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s all bloody!’

  When the word was out she grew calmer, and even seemed anxious to relate her experience.

  ‘I went upstairs directly she rang’ (’That’s an untruth to start with,’ said the cook) ‘and she opened the door a little way and said, “Oh, Lettice, I’ve been so scared!” And I said, “What’s the matter, miss?” And she said, “There’s a cat in here.” “Well, I didn’t think that was much to be frightened of, so I said, “Shall I come in and catch him, miss?” and she said (deceitful-like, as it turned out), “I should be so grateful.” Then I went in but I couldn’t see the cat anywhere, so I said, “Where is he?” At which she pointed to the waste-paper basket away by the dressing-table, and said, “In that waste-paper basket.” I said, “Why, that makes it easier, miss, if he’ll stay there.” She said, “Oh, he’ll stay there all right.” Of course I took her meaning in a moment, because I know cats do choose queer, out-of-the-way places to die in, so I said, “You mean the poor creature’s dead, miss?” and I was just going across to get him because ordinarily I don’t mind the body of an animal when she said (I will do her that justice), “Stop a minute, Lettice, he isn’t dead; he’s been murdered.” I saw she was all trembling, and that made me tremble, too. And when I looked in the basket—well——’

  She paused, partly perhaps to enjoy the dramatic effect of her announcement. ‘Well, if it wasn’t our Thomas! Only you couldn’t have recognized him, poor beast, his head was bashed in that cruel.’

  ‘Thomas!’ said the cook. ‘Why he was here only an hour ago.’

  ‘That’s what I said to Miss Winthrop. “Why, he was in the kitchen only an hour ago,” and then I came over funny, and when she asked me to help her clean the mess up I couldn’t, not if my life depended on it. But I don’t feel like that now,’ she ended inconsequently. ‘I’ll go back and do it!’ She collected her traps and departed.

  ‘Thomas!’ muttered Rundle. ‘Who could have wished the poor beast any harm? Now I remember, Mr. Fairfield did ask me to get him out a clean shirt. . . . I’d better go up and ask him.’

  He found Antony in evening dress seated at the writing-table. He had stripped it of writing materials and the light from two candles gleamed on its polished surface. Opposite to him on the other side of the table was an empty chair. He was sitting with his back to the room; his face, when he turned it at Rundle’s entrance, was blotchy and looked terribly tired.

  ‘I decided to dine here after all, Rundle,’ he said. Rundle saw that the Bovril was still untouched in his cup.

  ‘Why, your supper’ll get cold, Mr. Fairfield,’ he said.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said Antony. ‘I’m waiting.’

  The Empire clock on the drawing-room chimney-piece began to strike, breaking into a conversation which neither at dinner nor afterwards had been more than desultory.

  ‘Eleven,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘The nurse will be here any time now. She ought to be grateful to you, Ronald, for getting him into bed.’

  ‘I didn’t enjoy treating Antony like that,’ said Ronald.

  There was a silence.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Maggie suddenly.

  ‘It sounded like the motor.’

  ‘Might have been,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘You can’t tell from here.’

  They strained their ears, but the rushing sound had already died away. ‘Eileen’s gone to bed, Maggie,’ said Mrs. Ampleforth. ‘Why don’t you? We’ll wait up for the nurse, and tell you when she comes.’

  Rather reluctantly Maggie agreed to go.

  She had been in her bedroom about ten minutes, and was feeling too tired to take her clothes off, when there came a knock at the door. It was Eileen.

  ‘Maggie,’ she said, ‘the nurse has arrived. I thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘Oh, how kind of you,’ said Maggie. ‘They were going to tell me, but I expect they forgot. Where is she?’

  ‘In Antony’s room. I was coming from the bath and his door was open.’

  ‘Did she look nice?’

  ‘I only saw her back.’

  ‘I think I’ll go along and speak to her,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Yes, do. I don’t think I’ll go with you.’

  As she walked along the passage Maggie wondered what she would say to the nurse. She didn’t mean to offer her professional advice. But even nurses are human, and Maggie didn’t want this stranger to imagine that Antony was, well, always like that—the spoilt, tiresome, unreasonable creature of the last few hours. She could find no harsher epithets for him, even after all his deliberate unkind
ness. The woman would probably have heard that Maggie was his fiancée; Maggie would try to show her that she was proud of the relationship and felt it an honour.

  The door was still open so she knocked and walked in. But the figure that uncoiled itself from Antony’s pillow and darted at her a look of malevolent triumph was not a nurse, nor was her face strange to Maggie; Maggie could see, so intense was her vision at that moment, just what strokes Antony had used to transform her own portrait into Lady Elinor’s. She was terrified, but she could not bear to see Antony’s rather long hair nearly touching the floor nor the creature’s thin hand on his labouring throat. She advanced, resolved at whatever cost to break up this dreadful tableau. She approached near enough to realize that what seemed a strangle-hold was probably a caress, when Antony’s eyes rolled up at her and words, frothy and toneless like a chain of bursting bubbles, came popping from the corner of his swollen mouth: ‘Get out, damn you!’ At the same moment she heard the stir of presences behind her and a voice saying, ‘Here is the patient, nurse; I’m afraid he’s half out of bed, and here’s Maggie, too. What have you been doing to him, Maggie?’ Dazed, she turned about. ‘Can’t you see?’ she cried; but she might have asked the question of herself, for when she looked back she could only see the tumbled bed, the vacant pillow, and Antony’s hair trailing the floor.

  The nurse was a sensible woman. Fortified by tea, she soon bundled everybody out of the room. A deeper quiet than night ordinarily brings invaded the house. The reign of illness had begun.

  A special embargo was laid on Maggie’s visits. The nurse said she had noticed that Miss Winthrop’s presence agitated the patient. But Maggie extracted a promise that she should be called if Antony got worse. She was too tired and worried to sleep, even if she had tried to, so she sat up fully dressed in a chair, every now and then trying to allay her anxiety by furtive visits to Antony’s bedroom door.

  The hours passed on leaden feet. She tried to distract herself by reading the light literature with which her hostess had provided her. Though she could not keep her attention on the books, she continued to turn their pages, for only so could she keep at bay the conviction that had long been forming at the back of her mind and that now threatened to engulf her whole consciousness: the conviction that the legend about Low Threshold was true. She was neither hysterical nor superstitious, and for a moment she had managed to persuade herself that what she had seen in Antony’s room was an hallucination. The passing hours robbed her of that solace. Antony was the victim of Lady Elinor’s vengeance. Everything pointed to it: the circumstances of her appearance, the nature of Antony’s illness, the horrible deterioration in his character—to say nothing of the drawings, and the cat.

  There were only two ways of saving him. One was to get him out of the house; she had tried that and failed; if she tried again she would fail more signally than before. But there remained the other way.

  The old book about The Tragicall Happenings at Low Threshold Hall still reposed in a drawer; for the sake of her peace of mind Maggie had vowed not to take it out, and till now she had kept her vow. But as the sky began to pale with the promise of dawn and her conviction of Antony’s mortal danger grew apace, her resolution broke down.

  ‘Whereby we must conclude,’ she read, ‘that the Lady Elinor, like other Apparitions, is subject to certain Lawes. One, to abandon her Victim and seeking another tenement enter into it and transfer her vengeance, should its path be crossed by a Body yet nearer Dissolution. . . .’

  A knock, that had been twice repeated, startled her out of her reverie.

  ‘Come in!’

  ‘Miss Winthrop,’ said the nurse, ‘I’m sorry to tell you the patient is weaker. I think the doctor had better be telephoned for.’

  ‘I’ll go and get someone,’ said Maggie. ‘Is he much worse?’

  ‘Very much, I’m afraid.’

  Maggie had no difficulty in finding Rundle; he was already up.

  ‘What time is it, Rundle?’ she asked. ‘I’ve lost count.’

  ‘Half-past four, miss.’ He looked very sorry for her.

  ‘When will the doctor be here?’

  ‘In about an hour, miss, not more.’

  Suddenly she had an idea. ‘I’m so tired, Rundle, I think I shall try to get some sleep. Tell them not to call me unless . . . unless . . .’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ said Rundle. ‘You look altogether done up.’

  About an hour! So she had plenty of time. She took up the book again. ‘Transfer her vengeance . . . seeking another tenement . . . a Body nearer Dissolution.’ Her idle thoughts turned with compassion to the poor servant girl whose death had spelt recovery to Lord Deadham’s cousin but been so little regarded: ‘the night was spent’ before they heard that she was dead. Well, this night was spent already. Maggie shivered. ‘I shall die in my sleep,’ she thought. ‘But shall I feel her come?’ Her tired body sickened with nausea at the idea of such a loathsome violation. But the thought still nagged at her. ‘Shall I realize even for a moment that I’m changing into . . . into?’ Her mind refused to frame the possibility. ‘Should I have time to do anyone an injury?’ she wondered. ‘I could tie my feet together with a handkerchief; that would prevent me from walking.’ Walking . . . walking. . . . The word let loose on her mind a new flood of terrors. She could not do it! She could not lay herself open for ever to this horrible occupation! Her tormented imagination began to busy itself with the details of her funeral; she saw mourners following her coffin into the church. But Antony was not amongst them; he was better but too ill to be there. He could not understand why she had killed herself, for the note she had left gave no hint of the real reason, referred only to continual sleeplessness and nervous depression. So she would not have his company when her body was committed to the ground. But that was a mistake; it would not be her body, it would belong to that other woman and be hers to return to by the right of possession.

  All at once the screen which had recorded such vivid images to her mind’s eye went blank; and her physical eye, released, roamed wildly about the room. It rested on the book she was still holding. ‘She cannot possess or haunt the corpse,’ she read, ‘after it has received Christian Buriall.’ Here was a ray of comfort. But (her fears warned her) being a suicide she might not be allowed Christian burial. How then? Instead of the churchyard she saw a cross-roads, with a slanting signpost on which the words could no longer be read; only two or three people were there; they kept looking furtively about them and the grave-digger had thrown his spade aside and was holding a stake. . . .

  She pulled herself together with a jerk. ‘These are all fancies,’ she thought. ‘It wasn’t fancy when I signed the poison book.’ She took up the little glass cylinder; there were eighteen tablets and the dose was one or two. Daylight was broadening apace; she must hurry. She took some notepaper and wrote for five minutes. She had reached the words ‘No one is to blame’ when suddenly her ears were assailed by a tremendous tearing, whirring sound: it grew louder and louder until the whole room vibrated. In the midst of the deafening din something flashed past the window, for a fraction of a second blotting out the daylight. Then there was a crash such as she had never heard in her life.

  All else forgotten, Maggie ran to the window. An indescribable scene of wreckage met her eyes. The aeroplane had been travelling at a terrific pace: it was smashed to atoms. To right and left the lawn was littered with fragments, some of which had made great gashes in the grass, exposing the earth. The pilot had been flung clear; she could just see his legs sticking out from a flower-bed under the wall of the house. They did not move and she thought he must be dead.

  While she was wondering what to do she heard voices underneath the window.

  ‘We don’t seem to be very lucky here just now, Rundle,’ said Mr. Ampleforth.

  ‘No, sir.’

  There was a pause. Then Mr. Ampleforth spoke again.

  ‘He’s still breathing, I think.’

  ‘Yes, sir, he is, just.’


  ‘You take his head and I’ll take his feet, and we’ll get him into the house.’

  Something began to stir in Maggie’s mind. Rundle replied:

  ‘If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, I don’t think we ought to move him. I was told once by a doctor that if a man’s had a fall or anything it’s best to leave him lying.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll matter if we’re careful.’

  ‘Really, sir, if you’ll take my advice——’

  There was a note of obstinacy in Rundle’s voice. Maggie, almost beside herself with agitation, longed to fling open the window and cry ‘Bring him in! Bring him in!’ But her hand seemed paralysed and her throat could not form the words.

  Presently Mr. Ampleforth said:

  ‘You know we can’t let him stay here. It’s beginning to rain.’

  (Bring him in! Bring him in!)

  ‘Well, sir, it’s your responsibility . . .’

  Maggie’s heart almost stopped beating.

  ‘Naturally I don’t want to do anything to hurt the poor chap.’

  (Oh, bring him in! Bring him in!)

  The rain began to patter on the pane.

  ‘Look here, Rundle, we must get him under cover.’

  ‘I’ll fetch that bit of wing, sir, and put over him.’

  (Bring him in! Bring him in!)

  Maggie heard Rundle pulling something that grated on the gravel path. The sound ceased and Mr. Ampleforth said:

  ‘The very thing for a stretcher, Rundle! The earth’s so soft, we can slide it under him. Careful, careful!’ Both men were breathing hard. ‘Have you got your end? Right.’ Their heavy, measured footfalls grew fainter and fainter.

  The next thing Maggie heard was the motor-car returning with the doctor. Not daring to go out, and unable to sit down, she stood, how long she did not know, holding her bedroom door ajar. At last she saw the nurse coming towards her.

  ‘The patient’s a little better, Miss Winthrop. The doctor thinks he’ll pull through now.’