The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by L. P. Hartley

  ‘Christopher’s absence is more potent than his presence,’ I said as lightly as I could.

  ‘Ah, poor Christopher,’ Constantia said. ‘I wish I could feel we were doing what he wanted us to do.’

  ‘What did he want us to do,’ I asked, ‘besides look at the flowers?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Constantia answered.

  I was glad to find myself growing annoyed. Christopher had somehow turned the tables on us; he had got us into his world of make-believe, his emotional climate of self-stultifying sentimentalism. He had becalmed us with his spell of inaction, which made the ordinary pursuits of life seem not worth-while. He had put us into an equivocal position; even in the conventional sense of the term it was equivocal. Well, I must get us out.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to go?’ I said. ‘The Tyrrel Arms is only a mile away.’

  ‘No, no,’ she answered. ‘He wouldn’t want you to, nor do I.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If it was a practical joke it was a damn bad one. You don’t really think he forgot to warn us both that the other would be there?’

  ‘Warn us?’

  ‘Well, would you have come if you’d known I was to be here?’

  ‘Would you?’ she parried.

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, with more decision than I felt. ‘I would go anywhere where you were, Constantia. It would be a plain issue to me. All the issues are plain where you are concerned. I don’t have to dress them up in flowers.’

  ‘Ah, the flowers,’ she said, and turned again to the window.

  ‘If he meant to make us doubt our feelings for each other,’ I argued, ‘he will be disappointed, as far as I’m concerned. He has thrown us together by a trick. He has arranged for us to be alone together in his house. He has put us into the position of an illicit couple. Why don’t we accept the challenge?’

  Constantia frowned. ‘He wanted us to see the flowers,’ she said, and she was still saying it, in effect if not in word, when the time came for week-end visitors to separate for the night.

  I am usually a good sleeper but I could not sleep and was the more annoyed because I felt that Christopher’s influence was gaining—it had spread from the emotional into the physical sphere. First he had surprised and kept me guessing; now he was keeping me awake. I had a shrewd idea that Constantia too was wakeful; and the irony and futility of our lying sleepless in separate rooms all because of some groundless scruple that Christopher had insinuated into our minds enraged me and made me more than ever wakeful, as anger will. About two o’clock I rose and, turning on the light, I stole along the passage towards Constantia’s room. To reach it I had to pass the head of the staircase where it disappeared into the thick darkness of the hall below. Accentuated by the stillness of the night, the blackness seemed to come up at me, as though it was being brewed in a vat and given off like vapour; and though I wasn’t frightened I felt that Christopher was trying to frighten me and this made me still more angry. I listened at Constantia’s door and if I had heard a movement I should have gone in, but there was none, and I would not risk waking her; my love for her was intensified by my irritation against Christopher, and I could not bear to do her a disservice. So I turned away and deliberately bent my steps towards Christopher’s room, for I knew that he left his letters lying about and I thought I might find something that would let me into the secret of his intentions—if intentions he had; but more and more I felt that the conception of the visit was an idle whim, with hardly enough purpose behind it to be mischievous.

  I like a bedroom to be a bedroom, a place for sleeping in, not an extra sitting-room arranged for the display of modish and chi-chi-objects. Christopher’s bedroom was even less austere than I remembered it; there were additions in the shape of fashionable Regency furniture, which I never care for. The bed looked as if it never had been and never could be slept in. And in contrast to this luxury were vases full of withered flowers, lilac and iris; the soup-green water they stood in smelt decidedly unpleasant. The Hancocks were not such perfect servants as Christopher liked to make out. Nothing looks so dead as a dead flower, and the bright light gave these a garish look as though they had been painted. But there was nothing to my purpose; no letters, sketches, no books even; only a tall pile of flower catalogues, topped by a Government pamphlet on pest control.

  Pest control! It was the pamphlet, no less than the shrivelled flowers, which gave me the idea that burst into full bloom as soon as I was back in bed. The flowers, I felt, represented that part of Christopher with which I was least in sympathy; his instinct to substitute for life something that was apart from life—something that would prettify it, aromatize it, falsify it, enervate and finally destroy it. These flowers were pests and must, in modern parlance, be controlled and neutralized. Thinking how to do it I soon fell asleep.

  I was sitting at Christopher’s writing-table drafting an opinion when, at the hour at which well-to-do women usually make their first appearance, that is to say about half-past eleven, Constantia came in. She was dressed in grey country clothes the severity of which was relieved by a few frivolous touches here and there, and she was wearing a hat, or the rudiments of a hat. I kissed her and asked how she had slept.

  ‘Not very well,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was thinking about Christopher’s flowers,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get them out of my head. I nearly went down to them in the watches of the night. But I’m going now. Will you come with me, Ernest, or are you too busy?’

  ‘I am rather busy,’ I said, ‘and to tell you the truth, Constantia, I think this flower business is rather a bore.’

  Constantia opened her grey eyes wide. ‘Oh, why?’ she said.

  I pulled a chair towards the writing-table as if she was a client come to interview me, and sat down in Christopher’s place.

  ‘Because they distract you from me,’ I replied. ‘That’s one thing. And another is, I have reasons for thinking they are not very good flowers.’

  ‘Not?’ queried Constantia, puzzled. ‘But Christopher has spent so much time and money on them.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I also know that Christopher never gets anything quite right. You must have noticed that yourself.’

  Constantia smiled. ‘Poor Christopher, I suppose he doesn’t quite, but still—Ernest, let’s go out and look at them.’

  ‘I hate the second-rate,’ I said. ‘My motto is, don’t touch it.’

  Constantia shifted in her chair and gave her dress a little pat. ‘Oh well, if you don’t want to, I’ll——’ she began.

  ‘But I don’t want you to, either,’ I said, pointing my pen at her. ‘You’ll only regret it if you do.’

  ‘Regret it?’ she repeated. ‘Ernest, darling, I quite understand if you don’t want to go into the garden now, but please don’t try to stop me.’ She began to get up, but I motioned her to be seated.

  ‘Yes, regret it,’ I said, firmly. ‘Do you know why Christopher played this trick on us?’

  ‘But was it a trick?’ Constantia asked doubtfully.

  ‘Of course it was! He was leading us, if I may say so, up the garden path. I think he had two ideas in his mind, an upper and a lower one, and both were meant to separate us.’

  She looked at me reproachfully and without speaking.

  ‘The first was, frankly, to compromise us.’

  ‘Oh, my dear Ernest!’ Constantia protested.

  ‘Yes, it was. He may not have put it to himself as crudely as that. He may not have meant to publish it abroad; that would have been the natural tiling to do and he doesn’t like the natural. No; the satisfaction he would get—will get—is from knowing that we know that he knows. It will enable him to practise a kind of gentle blackmail on us. We shall never be quite alone together any more; he will always be there, watching our thoughts. He will be like an agent—Cupid’s agent—taking a ten per cent commission on our love. He will expect us to feel guilty and grateful at the same tim
e and it will act like a poison—it will come between us.’

  Constantia made a grimace of distaste. ‘Really, Ernest, I don’t think he meant anything of the sort.’

  But I saw I had impressed her. ‘He did, he did,’ I said. ‘You have no idea what fancies people get when they live alone and play at life.’

  Constantia sighed but she did not meet my eye. ‘What was the other idea?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘But first I must ask you a question which I think our relationship entitles me to ask. He was never your lover, was he?’

  After a pause Constantia said, ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘No need for you to say anything,’ I said. ‘By shielding him you have answered my question. He was not. He kept you for years—where? In his enchanted garden, among the loves of the plants, despising this trivial act of union, infecting you with his unreality; and now he means us to meet in his Eden (he called it Eden in his letter) exposed to this same beauty of flowers, like Adam and Eve before the Fall, with this difference’—here I tapped the table with my pen and it gave out a sharp, dry sound—‘that we shall have been warned. We shan’t dare to eat of the tree of knowledge; we shall be trapped for life in a labyrinth of false values, captives of a memory too gracious and delicate to be contaminated by such an ugly fact as man and wife. Yes,’ I went on, for I saw that against herself she was being convinced, ‘if you went out into that garden now you might well find a snake and what would it be? An incarnation of our old friend Christopher, luring us back to his eunuch’s paradise!’

  With frightened eyes Constantia looked about her; but I noticed that her glance avoided the window, through which I could see the rhododendrons stirring in the gentle summer breeze.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I think you are more fanciful than poor Christopher ever was, but if you like I’ll go and write some letters until lunch-time.’

  ‘And you promise not to go into the garden?’

  ‘Yes, since you’re so childish.’

  ‘And you won’t even speak of going?’

  ‘No, not till four o’clock.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. I knew that Constantia would be as good as her word.

  After luncheon we decided that our morning’s hard work entitled us to a siesta. Constantia had kept her promise, she had not even mentioned the garden; but she stipulated that Hancock should rouse us at a quarter to four, in case either of us overslept.

  I did not sleep, however. The watch ticking on my wrist was not more careful of the minutes than I was. After half an hour of this I got up (it was just on three) and decided to take a walk. Where? I knew the walks round Crossways, of course, quite well. Two of them, the best two, were reached by the garden gate that opened on the lane. What of it? The flowers were dangerous to Constantia, but not to me. Anyhow, I needn’t look. But as I started out my steps came slower; I stopped and glanced back at the house. ‘Confound it!’ I thought. ‘Confound Christopher and all his works!’ I found myself walking back to the house and my rage against him redoubled. Then I had an idea. I had brought a pair of dark glasses with me, sun-glasses, so strong they turned day into night. I put them on and started out with firmer tread. Such colours as I saw were wholly falsified by an admixture of dark sepia tints. I was not looking at Christopher’s flowers. But indeed I kept my eyes fixed on the broad path, I did not have to look about me, and here was the gate, the door rather, that led into the lane; and according to Christopher’s custom the key had been left in it, for the convenience of guests bent on exercise. The key out of Eden! I unlocked the door, locked it on the other side, put the key in my pocket, and drew a deep breath.

  I had been walking for some time when my first plan occurred to me, and I wondered why I had not thought of it before, for it was such an obvious one. I would not go back; I would leave Constantia to keep her tryst with Christopher’s spirit, for she would keep it: I had shaken her mind, but not her resolution. She would go through the silly ritual by herself and it would mean to her—well, whatever it did mean. It could not fail to be something of an anti-climax. She would wait, toeing the line like a runner, and looking round for me; she would give me a minute or two, and then she would start off. And as she went through that afternoon blaze of flowers, very slowly, drinking it in and thinking of Christopher, as no doubt he had enjoined her to—what would her reactions be? What would any woman’s reactions be? Would she think less kindly of Christopher and more kindly of me? She would remember the many times she had walked there with him, wishing, no doubt, that he was other than he was, but indulgent to his faults, as women are, perhaps half liking him for them, not minding his ineffectualness. And the flowers would plead for him. She would not care if they were poor specimens (I had invented that), it would only make her feel sorry for him, and protective.

  No, it would not do to let her go down the Long Walk alone. And nor would I escort her, for that would be the ultimate surrender to all that I was saving her from.

  It was time to turn back and I still had formed no plan. I stopped and as I put my hands in my pockets the key of the garden door jingled and seemed to speak to me. At once the peace of decision, unknown to men of Christopher’s type, descended on me. I felt that the problem of the garden was already solved. I had plenty of time to get back by a quarter to four, so I did not hurry, indeed I loitered. Suddenly I wondered why the familiar landscape looked so odd, and I remembered I was still wearing my dark glasses. I took them off and immediately felt interested in the wayside flowers, the dog-roses and honeysuckle of the hedgerows. In spite of what Christopher said I am really quite fond of flowers, and it gave me an intimate sense of power and freedom to examine these, which he had not asked me to examine. What plainer proof could I have that I was free of him and that my will was uncontaminated by his?

  But when I reached the lane that bordered his garden wall I stopped botanizing and put on my sun-glasses again, for I still judged it better not to take risks. And I had thought out all my actions during the next twenty minutes so carefully that it came as a great surprise when I found that something had happened outside my calculations.

  The garden door was open.

  There could only be one explanation and it disturbed me: Constantia must have opened the door, and to do so must have passed through the garden. She must have asked Hancock for one of the several duplicate keys that Christopher had had made (the key of the garden door was always getting lost) and gone for a walk as I had. I did not want to disturb the rest of my plan so I left the door as it was and went towards the house. I did not return by the Long Walk; I went another way, invisible from the house, for I did not want to be seen by anyone just then.

  But Constantia had not gone out; she was sitting by the drawing-room window. She jumped up. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘thank goodness, here you are. I was afraid you were going to be late. But I have a bone to pick with you. You stole a march on me.’

  ‘How?’ I challenged her.

  ‘You’ve been to see the flowers already.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘I saw you in the Long Walk, don’t tell me it wasn’t you!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About ten minutes ago.’

  ‘What was I doing?’

  ‘Oh, Ernest, don’t be so mysterious! You were looking at the flowers, of course.’

  I joined her at the window.

  ‘You couldn’t see from here,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I could! And you were ashamed—you didn’t want to be seen, you dodged in and out of the bushes, and pretended to be a rhododendron. But I knew you by your hat.’

  Nothing she said made any sense to me; I hadn’t gone out in a hat; but I said quickly, ‘I think you’re imagining things, but afterwards I’ll explain.’ It was like being back on the main road after a traffic diversion. ‘Now what is our plan of campaign? At the stroke of four we are to walk from the fountain to the temple?’

  Constantia hurriedly searched in
her bag and brought out a letter. ‘No, no, Ernest,’ she said in agitation. ‘He says from the temple to the fountain.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Did you promise him to do it?’

  ‘Yes, did you?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I did. But my instructions were the other way round. He means us to meet in the middle, then.’

  ‘Yes. What time is it, Ernest? We mustn’t be late.’

  ‘Three minutes to four. Just let me get my stick.’

  ‘Stick, you won’t want a stick. What do you want a stick for?’

  ‘To beat you with,’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Be quick, then.’

  I hurried out, shutting the door behind me and turning the key in the lock. Suddenly feeling tired I sat down on a chair on the landing.

  In the hall below me the grandfather clock struck four.

  Oh, the ecstasy of that moment! It seemed to me that my whole life was being fulfilled in it. I heard Constantia’s voice calling ‘Ernest! Ernest!’ But I could not move, I could not even think, for the waves of delight that were surging through me. I heard the rattle of the door-handle; I could see it stealthily turning, backwards and forwards, in a cramped semi-circle. Soon she began to beat upon the door. ‘Her little fists will soon get tired of that,’ I thought. ‘And she can’t get out through the window: there’s a drop of twenty feet into the garden.’

  As distinctly as if there had been no door between us I saw her face clenched in misery and fury. Ah, but this was real! This was no sentimental saunter down a garden-path! Presently the hammering ceased and another sound began. Constantia was crying: she did not do it prettily: she did not know she had a listener: she coughed her tears out. That, too, ministered to my ecstasy; I was the king of pain. I sat on, savouring it till all sounds ceased, except the ticking of the clock below.

  How long my drowse lasted I cannot tell, but it was broken by the crack of a shot. It seemed to be inside me, it hurt me so much. I jumped up as if it was I who had been hit. I pressed the key against the lock too hard: it turned unwillingly, but at last I was in the room.