The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

by Leslie Poles Hartley

  Poor Valentine! So perplexed was he that he changed his mind five times on the way down to the library. He kept repeating to himself the sentence, ‘I’m so sorry, Dick, I find my blood-pressure rather high, and I think I ought to go into a nursing home to-night—Hugh will see me safely there’—until it became meaningless, even its absurdity disappeared.

  Hugh was in the library alone. It was now or never; but Valentine’s opening words were swept aside by his friend, who came running across the room to him.

  ‘Oh, Valentine, the funniest thing has happened.’

  ‘Funny? Where? What?’ Valentine asked.

  ‘No, no, not funny in the sinister sense, it’s not in the least serious. Only it s so odd. This is a house of surprises. I’m glad I came.’

  ‘Tell me quickly.’

  ‘Don’t look so alarmed. It’s only very amusing. But I must show it you, or you’ll miss the funny side of it. Come on up to my room; we’ve got five minutes.’

  But before they crossed the threshold Valentine pulled up with a start.

  ‘Is this your room?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Don’t look as if you had seen a ghost. It’s a perfectly ordinary room, I tell you, except for one thing. No, stop a moment; wait here while I arrange the scene.’

  He darted in, and after a moment summoned Valentine to follow.

  ‘Now, do you notice anything strange?’

  ‘I see the usual evidences of untidiness.’

  A coat was lying on the floor and various articles of clothing were scattered about.

  ‘You do? Well then—no deceit, gentlemen.’ With a gesture he snatched the coat up from the floor. ‘Now what do you see?’

  ‘I see a further proof of slovenly habits—a pair of shoes where the coat was.’

  ‘Look well at those shoes. There’s nothing about them that strikes you as peculiar?’

  Valentine studied them. They were ordinary brown shoes, lying side by side, the soles uppermost, a short pace from the wardrobe. They looked as though someone had taken them off and forgotten to put them away, or taken them out, and forgotten to put them on.

  ‘Well,’ pronounced Valentine at last, ‘I don’t usually leave my shoes upside-down like that, but you might.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hugh triumphantly, ‘your surmise is incorrect. They’re not my shoes.”

  ‘Not yours? Then they were left here by mistake. Franklin should have taken them away.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s where the coat comes in. I’m reconstructing the scene, you see, hoping to impress you. While he was downstairs fetching my bag, to save time I began to undress; I took my coat off and hurled it down there. After he had gone I picked it up. So he never saw the shoes.’

  ‘Well, why make such a fuss? They won’t be wanted till morning. Or would you rather ring for Franklin and tell him to take them away?’.

  ‘Ah!’ cried Hugh, delighted by this. ‘At last you’ve come to the heart of the matter. He couldn’t take them away.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he?’

  ‘Because they’re fixed to the floor!’

  ‘Oh, rubbish!’ said Valentine. ‘You must be dreaming.’

  He bent down, took hold of the shoes by the welts, and gave a little tug. They did not move.

  ‘There you are!’ cried Hugh. ‘Apologize. Own that it is unusual to find in one’s room a strange pair of shoes adhering to the floor.’

  Valentine’s reply was to give another heave. Still the shoes did not budge.

  ‘No good,’ commented his friend. ‘They’re nailed down, or gummed down, or something. The dinner-bell hasn’t rung; we’ll get Franklin to clear up the mystery.’

  The butler when he came looked uneasy, and surprised them by speaking first.

  ‘Was it Mr. Munt you were wanting, sir?’ he said to Valentine. ‘I don’t know where he is. I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find him.’

  ‘Are these his shoes by any chance?’ asked Valentine.

  They couldn’t deny themselves the mild entertainment of watching Franklin stoop down to pick up the shoes, and recoil in perplexity when he found them fast in the floor.

  ‘These should be Mr. Munt’s, sir,’ he said doubtfully—‘these should. But what’s happened to them that they won’t leave the floor?’

  The two friends laughed gaily.

  ‘That’s what we want to know,’ Hugh Curtis chuckled. ‘That’s why we called you: we thought you could help us.’

  ‘They’re Mr. Munt’s right enough,’ muttered the butler. ‘They must have got something heavy inside.’

  ‘Damned heavy,’ said Valentine, playfully grim.

  Fascinated, the three men stared at the upturned soles, so close together that there was no room between for two thumbs set side by side.

  Rather gingerly the butler stooped again, and tried to feel the uppers. This was not as easy as it seemed, for the shoes were flattened against the floor, as if a weight had pressed them down.

  His face was white as he stood up.

  ‘There is something in them,’ he said in a frightened voice.

  ‘And his shoes were full of feet,’ carolled Valentine flippantly. ‘Trees, perhaps.’

  ‘It was not as hard as wood,’ said the butler. ‘You can squeeze it a bit if you try.’

  They looked at each other, and a tension made itself felt in the room.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out,’ declared Hugh Curtis suddenly, in a determined tone one could never have expected from him.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Take them off.’

  ‘Take what off?’

  ‘His shoes off, you idiot.’

  ‘Off what?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know yet, you bloody fool!’ Curtis almost screamed; and kneeling down, he tore apart the laces and began tugging and wrenching at one of the shoes.

  ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ he cried. ‘Valentine, put your arms around me and pull, that’s a good fellow. It’s the heel that’s giving the trouble.’

  Suddenly the shoe slipped off.

  ‘Why, it’s only a sock,’ whispered Valentine; ‘it’s so thin.’

  ‘Yes, but the foot’s inside it all right,’ cried Curtis in a loud strange voice, speaking very rapidly. ‘And here’s the ankle, see, and here’s where it begins to go down into the floor, see; he must have been a very small man; you see I never saw him, but it’s all so crushed—’

  The sound of a heavy fall made them turn.

  Franklin had fainted.

  FEET FOREMOST

  The house-warming at Low Threshold Hall was not an event that affected many people. The local newspaper, however, had half a column about it, and one or two daily papers supplemented the usual August dearth of topics with pictures of the house. They were all taken from the same angle, and showed a long, low building in the Queen Anne style flowing away from a square tower on the left which was castellated and obviously of much earlier date, the whole structure giving somewhat the impression to a casual glance of a domesticated church, or even of a small railway train that had stopped dead on finding itself in a park. Beneath the photograph was written something like ‘Suffolk Manor House re-occupied after a hundred and fifty years,’ and, in one instance, ‘Inset, (L.) Mr. Charles Ampleforth, owner of Low Threshold Hall; (R.) Sir George Willings, the architect responsible for the restoration of this interesting mediaeval relic’ Mr. Ampleforth’s handsome, slightly Disraelian head, nearly spiked on his own flagpole, smiled congratulations at the grey hair and rounded features of Sir George Willings who, suspended like a bubble above the Queen Anne wing, discreetly smiled back.

  To judge from the photograph, time had dealt gently with Low Threshold Hall. Only a trained observer could have told how much of the original fabric had been renewed. The tower looked particularly convincing. While as for the gardens sloping down to the stream which bounded the foreground of the picture—they had that old-world air which gardens so quickly acquire. To see those lush lawns and borders as a meado
w, that mellow brickwork under scaffolding, needed a strong effort of the imagination.

  But the guests assembled in Mr. Ampleforth’s drawing-room after dinner and listening to their host as, not for the first time, he enlarged upon the obstacles faced and overcome in the work of restoration, found it just as hard to believe that the house was old. Most of them had been taken to see it, at one time or another, in process of reconstruction; yet even within a few days of its completion, how unfinished a house looks! Its habitability seems determined in the last few hours. Magdalen Winthrop, whose beautiful, expressive face still (to her hostess’ sentimental eye) bore traces of the slight disappointment she had suffered earlier in the evening, felt as if she were in an Aladdin’s palace. Her glance wandered appreciatively from the Samarcand rugs to the pale green walls, and dwelt with pleasure on the high shallow arch, flanked by slender columns, the delicate lines of which were emphasized by the darkness of the hall behind them. It all seemed so perfect and so new; not only every sign of decay but the very sense of age had been banished. How absurd not to be able to find a single grey hair, so to speak, in a house that had stood empty for a hundred and fifty years! Her eyes, still puzzled, came to rest on the company, ranged in an irregular circle round the open fireplace.

  ‘What’s the matter, Maggie?’ said a man at her side, obviously glad to turn the conversation away from bricks and mortar. ‘Looking for something?’

  Mrs. Ampleforth, whose still lovely skin under the abundant white hair made her face look like a rose in snow, bent forward over the cream-coloured satin bedspread she was embroidering and smiled. ‘I was only thinking,’ said Maggie, turning to her host whose recital had paused but not died upon his lips, ‘how surprised the owls and bats would be if they could come in and see the change in their old home.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope they won’t,’ cried a high female voice from the depths of a chair whose generous proportions obscured the speaker.

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, Eileen,’ said Maggie’s neighbour in tones that only a husband could have used. ‘Wait till you see the family ghost.’

  ‘Ronald, please! Have pity on my poor nerves!’ The upper half of a tiny, childish, imploring face peered like a crescent moon over the rim of the chair.

  ‘If there is a ghost,’ said Maggie, afraid that her original remark might be construed as a criticism, ‘I envy him his beautiful surroundings. I would willingly take his place.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ agreed Ronald. ‘A very happy haunting-ground. Is there a ghost, Charles?’

  There was a pause. They all looked at their host.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, who rarely spoke except after a pause and never without a slight impressiveness of manner, ‘there is and there isn’t.

  The silence grew even more respectful.

  ‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall,’ Mr. Ampleforth continued, ‘is no ordinary ghost.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be,’ muttered Ronald in an aside Maggie feared might be audible.

  ‘It is, for one thing,’ Mr. Ampleforth pursued, ‘exceedingly considerate.’

  ‘Oh, how?’ exclaimed two or three voices.

  ‘It only comes by invitation.’

  ‘Can anyone invite it?’

  ‘Yes, anyone.’

  There was nothing Mr. Ampleforth liked better than answering questions; he was evidently enjoying himself now.

  ‘How is the invitation delivered?’ Ronald asked. ‘Does one telephone, or does one send a card: “Mrs. Ampleforth requests the pleasure of Mr. Ghost’s company on—well—what is to-morrow?—the eighteenth August, Moaning and Groaning and Chain Rattling. R.S.V.P.”?’

  ‘That would be a sad solecism,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘The ghost of Low Threshold Hall is a lady.’

  ‘Oh,’ cried Eileen’s affected little voice. ‘I’m so thankful. I should be less frightened of a female phantom.’

  ‘She hasn’t attained years of discretion,’ Mr. Ampleforth said. ‘She was only sixteen when—’

  ‘Then she’s not “out”?’

  ‘Not in the sense you mean. I hope she’s not “out” in any sense,’ said Mr. Ampleforth, with grim facetiousness.

  There was a general shudder.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we can’t ask her to an evening party,’ observed Ronald. ‘A ghost at tea-time is much less alarming. Is she what is called a “popular girl”?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then why do people invite her?’

  ‘They don’t realize what they’re doing.’

  ‘A kind of pig in a poke business, what? But you haven’t told us yet how we’re to get hold of the little lady.’

  ‘That’s quite simple,’ said Mr. Ampleforth readily. ‘She comes to the door.’

  The drawing-room clock began to strike eleven, and no one spoke till it had finished.

  ‘She comes to the door,’ said Ronald with an air of deliberation, ‘and then—don’t interrupt, Eileen, I’m in charge of the cross-examination—she—she hangs about—’

  ‘She waits to be asked inside.’

  ‘I suppose there is a time-honoured formula of invitation. “Sweet Ermyntrude, in the name of the master of the house I bid thee welcome to Low Threshold Hall. There’s no step, so you can walk straight in.” Charles, much as I admire your house, I do think it’s incomplete without a doorstep. A ghost could just sail in.’

  ‘There you make a mistake,’ said Mr. Ampleforth impressively. ‘Our ghost cannot enter the house unless she is lifted across the threshold.’

  ‘Like a bride,’ exclaimed Magdalen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr. Ampleforth. ‘Because she came as a bride.’ He looked round at his guests with an enigmatic smile.

  They did not disappoint him. ‘Now, Charlie, don’t be so mysterious! Do tell us! Tell us the whole story.’

  Mr. Ampleforth settled himself into his chair. ‘There’s very little to tell,’ he said, with the reassuring manner of someone who intends to tell a great deal, ‘but this is the tale. In the time of the Wars of the Roses the owner of Low Threshold Hall (I need not tell you his name was not Ampleforth) married en troisièmes noces the daughter of a neighbouring baron much less powerful than he. Lady Elinor Stortford was sixteen when she came and she did not live to see her seventeenth birthday. Her husband was a bad hat (I’m sorry to have to say so of a predecessor of mine), a very bad hat. He ill-treated her, drove her mad with terror, and finally killed her.’

  The narrator paused dramatically but the guests felt slightly disappointed. They had heard so many stories of that kind.

  ‘Poor thing,’ said Magdalen, feeling that some comment was necessary, however flat. ‘So now she haunts the place. I suppose it’s the nature of ghosts to linger where they’ve suffered, but it seems illogical to me. I should want to go somewhere else.’

  ‘The Lady Elinor would agree with you. The first thing she does when she gets into the house is make plans for getting out. Her visits, as far as I can gather, have generally been brief.’

  ‘Then why does she come?’ asked Eileen.

  ‘She comes for vengeance,’ Mr. Ampleforth’s voice dropped at the word. ‘And apparently she gets it. Within a short time of her appearance, someone in the house always dies.’

  ‘Nasty spiteful little girl,’ said Ronald, concealing a yawn. ‘Then how long is she in residence?’

  ‘Until her object is accomplished.’

  ‘Does she make a dramatic departure—in a thunderstorm or something?’

  ‘No, she is just carried out.’

  ‘Who carries her this time?’

  ‘The undertaker’s men. She goes out with the corpse. Though some say—’

  ‘Oh, Charlie, do stop!’ Mrs. Ampleforth interrupted, bending down to gather up the corners of her bedspread. ‘Eileen will never sleep. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘No! No!’ shouted Ronald. ‘He can’t leave off like that. I must hear the rest. My flesh was just beginning to creep.’

  Mr. Ampleforth looked a
t his wife.

  ‘I’ve had my orders.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Ronald, resigned. ‘Anyhow, remember what I said. A decent fall of rain, and you’ll have a foot of water under the tower there, unless you put in a doorstep.’

  Mr. Ampleforth looked grave. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that. That would be to invite er—er—trouble. The absence of a step was a precaution. That’s how the house got its name.’

  ‘A precaution against what?’

  ‘Against Lady Elinor.’

  ‘But how? I should have thought a draw-bridge would have been more effective.’

  ‘Lord Deadham’s immediate heirs thought the same. According to the story they put every material obstacle they could to bar the lady’s path. You can still see in the tower the grooves which contained the portcullis. And there was a flight of stairs so steep and dangerous they couldn’t be used without risk to life and limb. But that only made it easier for Lady Elinor.’

  ‘How did it?’

  Why, don’t you see, everyone who came to the house, friends and strangers alike, had to be helped over the threshold! There was no way of distinguishing between them. At last when so many members of the family had been killed off that it was threatened with extinction, someone conceived a brilliant idea. Can you guess what it was, Maggie?’

  ‘They removed all the barriers and levelled the threshold, so that any stranger who came to the door and asked to be helped into the house was refused admittance.’