Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  It’s all very well to be preening yourself in that mirror, my girl, her father was thinking, but you’d be far better off in the long run if you did a bit more to help your mother, even though you do earn a fraction of your living. More thinking and less face, I say. And all that — But ‘Why, I never see such a girl as you, Millie,’ he greeted her incredulously, ‘for looking your best! And such a best, too, my dear. Which young spark is it to be this afternoon? Eh?’

  ‘Sparks! Dad; how you do talk. Why, I don’t hardly know, Dad. Sparks!’ Millie’s voice almost invariably ran down the scale like the notes of a dulcimer muted with velvet. ‘I wasn’t thinking of anybody in particular,’ she went on, continuing to watch her moving mouth in the glass, ‘but I promised Nellie Gibbs I … One thing, I am not going to stay out long on a day like this!’

  ‘What’s the matter with the day?’ Mr Thripp inquired.

  ‘The matter! Why, look at it! It’s a fair filthy mug of a day.’ The words slipped off her pretty curved lips like pearls over satin. A delicious anguish seemed to have arched the corners of her eyelids.

  ‘Well, ain’t there such a thing as a mackingtosh in the house, then?’ inquired her father briskly.

  ‘Mackingtosh! Over this? Oh, isn’t that just like a man! I should look a perfect guy.’ She stood gazing at him, like a gazelle startled by the flurry of a breeze across the placid surface of its drinking-pool.

  Now see you here, my girl, that see-saw voice inside her father was expostulating once more, what’s the good of them fine silly airs? I take you for an honest man’s daughter with not a ha’penny to spare on fal-lals and monkey-traps. That won’t get you a husband. But Mr Thripp once more ignored its interruption. He smiled almost roguishly out of his bright blue eyes at his daughter. ‘Ask me what I take you for, my dear? Why, I take you for a nice, well-meaning, though remarkably plain young woman. Eh? But there, there, don’t worry. What I say is, make sure of the best (and the best that’s inside) and let the other young fellows go.’

  He swept the last clean fork on the table into the drawer and folded up the tablecloth.

  ‘Oh, Dad, how you do go on!’ breathed Millie. ‘It’s always fellows you’re thinking of. As if fellows made any difference.’ Her glance roamed a little startledly round the room. ‘What I can’t understand,’ she added quickly, ‘is why we never have a clean tablecloth. How can anybody ask a friend home to their own place if that’s the kind of thing they are going to eat off of?’ The faint nuance of discontent in her voice only made it the more enchanting and seductive. She might be Sleeping Beauty babbling out of her dreams.

  A cataract of invective coursed through the channels of Mr Thripp’s mind. He paused an instant to give the soiled tablecloth another twist and the table another prolonged sweep of that formidable right arm which for twenty-three years had never once been lifted in chastisement of a single one of his three offspring. Then he turned and glanced at the fire.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said, seizing the shovel, ‘I wouldn’t let Mother hear that, my dear. We all have a good many things to put up with. And what I say is, all in good time. You bring that Mr Right along! and I can promise him not only a clean tablecloth but something appetizing to eat off of it. A bit of a fire in the sitting-room too, for that matter.’

  ‘You’re a good sort, Dad,’ said Millie, putting up her face to be kissed – in complete confidence that the tiny powder-puff in her vanity bag would soon adjust any possible mishap to the tip of her small nose. ‘But I don’t believe you ever think I think of anything.’

  ‘Good-bye, my dear,’ said Mr Thripp; ‘don’t kiss me. I am all of a smother with the washing-up.’

  ‘Toodle-loo, Ma,’ Millie shrilled, as her father followed her out into the passage. He drew open the front door, secreting his shirt-sleeves well behind it in case of curious passers-by.

  ‘Take care of yourself, my dear,’ he called after her, ‘and don’t be too late.’

  ‘Late!’ tossed Millie, ‘any one would think I had been coddled up in a hot-house.’

  Out of a seething expense of spirit in Mr Thripp’s mind only a few words made themselves distinct. ‘Well, never mind, my precious dear. I’m with you for ever, whether you know it or not.’

  He returned into the house, and at once confronted his younger son, Charlie, who was at that moment descending the stairs. As a matter of fact he was descending the stairs like fifteen Charlies, and nothing so much exasperated his father as to feel the whole house rock on its foundations at each fresh impact.

  ‘Off to your Match, my boy?’ he cried. ‘Some day I expect you will be taking a hand in the game yourself. Better share than watch!’

  Every single Saturday afternoon during the football season Mr Thripp ventured to express some such optimistic sentiment as this. But Charlie had no objection; not at all.

  ‘Not me, Dad,’ he assured him good-humouredly. ‘I’d sooner pay a bob to see other fellows crocked up. You couldn’t lend me one, I suppose?’

  ‘Lend you what?’

  ‘Two tanners; four frippenies; a twelfth of a gross of coppers.’

  Good God! yelled Mr Thripp’s inward monitor, am I never to have a minute’s rest or relief ? But it yelled in vain.

  ‘Right you are, my son,’ he said instead, and thrusting his fleshy hand into his tight-fitting trouser-pocket he brought out a fistful of silver and pence. ‘And there,’ he added, ‘there’s an extra sixpence, free, gratis, and for nothing, for the table d’hôte. All I say is, Charlie, better say “give” when there isn’t much chance of keeping to the “lend”. I don’t want to preach; but that’s always been my rule; and kept it too, as well as I could.’

  Charles counted the coins in his hand, and looked at his father. He grinned companionably. He invariably found his father a little funny to look at. He seemed somehow to be so remote from anything you could mean by things as they are, and things as they are now. He wasn’t so much old-fashioned, as just a Gone-by. He was his father, of course, just as a jug is a jug, and now and then Charlie was uncommonly fond of him, longed for his company, and remembered being a little boy walking with him in the Recreation Ground. But he wished he wouldn’t be always giving advice, and especially the kind of advice which he had himself assiduously practised.

  ‘Ta, Dad,’ he said; ‘that’s doing me proud. I’ll buy you a box of Havanas with what’s over from the table d’hôte. And now we’re square. Good-bye, dad.’ He paused as he turned to go. ‘Honour bright,’ he added, ‘I hope I shall be earning a bit more soon, and then I shan’t have to ask you for anything.’

  A curious shine came into Mr Thripp’s small lively eyes; it seemed almost to spill over on to his plum cheeks. It looked as if those cheeks had even paled a little.

  ‘Why, that’s all right, Charlie, me boy,’ he mumbled, ‘I’d give you the skin off me body if it would be of any use. That’s all right. Don’t stand about too long but just keep going. What I can’t abide is these young fellows that swallow down their enjoyments like so much black draught. But we are not that kind of a family, I’m thankful to say.’

  ‘Not me!’ said Charles, with a grimace like a good-humoured marmoset, and off he went to his soccer match.

  Hardly had the sound of his footsteps ceased – and Mr Thripp stayed there in the passage, as if to listen till they were for ever out of hearing – when there came a muffled secretive tap on the panel of the door. At sound of it the genial podgy face blurred and blackened.

  Oh, it’s you, you cringing Jezebel is it? – the thought scurried through his mind like a mangy animal. Mr Thripp indeed was no lover of the ultrafeminine. He either feared it, or hated it, or both feared and hated it. It disturbed his even tenor. It was a thorn in the side of the Mr Thripp who not only believed second thoughts were best, but systematically refused to give utterance to first. Any sensible person, he would say, ought to know when he’s a bit overtaxed, and act accordingly.

  The gloved fingers, Delilah-like, had tapped again. Mr
Thripp tiptoed back into the kitchen, put on his coat, and opened the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Mrs Brown,’ he said. ‘Tilda won’t be a moment. She’s upstairs titivating. Come in and take a seat.’

  His eyes meanwhile were informing that inward censor of his precisely how many inches thick the mauvish face-powder lay on Mrs Brown’s cheek, the liver-coloured lipstick on her mouth, and the dye on her loaded eyelashes. Those naturally delicate lashes swept down in a gentle fringe upon her cheek as she smiled in reply. She was a graceful thing, too, but practised; and far more feline, far far more body-conscious than Millie. No longer in the blush of youth either; though still mistress of the gift that never leaves its predestined owner – the impulse and power to fascinate mere man. Still, there were limitations even to Mrs Brown’s orbit of attraction, and Mr Thripp might have been the planet Neptune, he kept himself so far out in the cold.

  He paused a moment at the entrance to the sitting-room, until his visitor had seated herself. He was eyeing her Frenchified silk scarf, her demure new hat, her smart high-heeled patent-leather shoes, but his eyes dropped like stones when he discovered her own dark languishing ones surveying him from under that hat’s beguiling brim.

  ‘Nice afternoon after the rain,’ he remarked instantly. ‘Going to the pictures, I suppose? As for meself, these days make me want to be out and in at the same time. It’s the mustry, fusty, smoky dark of them places I can’t stand.’

  Mrs Brown rarely raised her voice much above a whisper. Indeed it appeared to be a physical effort to her to speak at all. She turned her face a little sidelong, her glance on the carpet. ‘Why, it’s the dark I enjoy, Mr Thripp,’ she said. ‘It’ – and she raised her own – ‘it rests the eyes so.’

  For an instant Mr Thripp’s memory returned to Millie, but he made no comment.

  ‘Here’s Mrs Brown, Tilda,’ he called up the staircase. Good heavens, the woman might as well be the real thing, the voice within was declaring. But the words that immediately followed up this piece of news were merely, ‘You’ll be mighty surprised to hear, Tilda, Mrs Brown’s got a new hat.’ A faint catcall of merriment descended the stairs.

  ‘Oh, now, Mr Thripp, listen to that!’ whispered the peculiar voice from out of the little airless sitting-room, ‘you always did make fun of me, Mr Thripp. Do I deserve it, now?’

  A gentle wave of heat coursed over Mr Thripp as he covertly listened to these accents, but he was out of sight.

  ‘Fun, Mrs Brown? Never,’ he retorted gallantly; ‘it’s only my little way:’ and then to his immense relief, on lifting his eyes, discovered Tilda already descending the stairs.

  He saw the pair of them off. Being restored to his coat, he could watch them clean down the drying street from his gatepost. Astonishing, he thought, the difference there can be between two women’s backs! Tilda’s, straight, angular, and respectable, as you might say; and that other – sinuous, seductive, as if it were as crafty a means of expression as the very smile and long-lashed languishments upon its owner’s face. ‘What can the old woman see in her!’ he muttered to himself; ‘damned if I know!’ On this problem Mr Thripp firmly shut his front door. Having shut it he stooped to pick up a tiny white feather on the linoleum; and stooping, sighed. At last his longed-for hour had come – the hour for which his very soul pined throughout each workaday week. Not that it was always his happy fate to be left completely alone like this. At times, indeed, he had for company far too much housework to leave him any leisure. But to-day the dinner things were cleared away, the washing-up was over, the tables fair as a baker’s board, the kitchen spick and span, the house empty. He would just have a look round his own and Tilda’s bedroom (and, maybe, the boys’ and Millie’s). And then the chair by the fire; the simmering kettle on the hearth; and the soft tardy autumnal dusk fading quietly into night beyond the window.

  It was a curious thing that a man who loved his family so much, who was as desperately loyal to every member of it as a she-wolf is to her cubs, should yet find this few minutes’ weekly solitude a luxury such as only Paradise, one would suppose, would ever be able to provide.

  Mr Thripp went upstairs and not only tidied up his own and Tilda’s bedroom, and went on to Millie’s and the boys’, but even gave a sloosh to the bath, slid the soap out of the basin where Charlie had abandoned it, and hung up the draggled towels again in the tiny bathroom. What a place looks like when you come back to it from your little enjoyment – it’s that makes all the difference to your feelings about a home. These small chores done, Mr Thripp put on an old tweed coat with frayed sleeves, and returned to the kitchen. In a quarter of an hour that too more than ever resembled a new pin.

  Then he glanced up at the clocks; between them the time was a quarter to four. He was amazed. He laid the tea, took out of his little old leather bag a pot of jam which he had bought for a surprise on his way home, and arranged a bunch of violets in a small jar beside Tilda’s plate. But apart from these family preparations, Mr Thripp was now depositing a demure little glossy-brown teapot all by itself on the kitchen range. This was his Eureka. This was practically the only sensual secret luxury Mr Thripp had ever allowed himself since he became a family man. Tilda’s cooking was good enough for him provided that the others had their little dainties now and then. He enjoyed his beer, and could do a bit of supper occasionally with a friend. But the ritual of these solitary Saturday afternoons reached its climax in this small pot of tea. First the nap, sweet as nirvana in his easychair, then the tea, and then the still, profound quarter of an hour’s musing before the door-knocker began again.

  Having pulled down the blind a little in order to prevent any chance of draught, Mr Thripp eased his bootlaces, sat himself in his chair, his cheek turned a little away from the window, his feet on the box that usually lay under the table, and with fingers clasped over his stomach composed himself to sleep. The eyelids closed; the lips set; the thumbs twitched now and again. He breathed deep, and the kettle began a whispered anthem – as if a myriad voices were singing on and on without need of pause or rest, a thousand thousand leagues away.

  But now there was none to listen; and beyond, quiet hung thick in the little house. Only the scarce-perceptible hum of the traffic at the end of the narrow side street was audible on the air. Within, the two clocks on the chimney-piece quarrelled furiously over the fleeting moments, attaining unanimity only in one of many ticks. Ever and again a tiny scutter of dying ashes rejoined those that had gone before in the pan beneath the fire. Soon even these faint stirrings became inaudible and in a few moments Mr Thripp’s spirit would have wafted itself completely free awhile from its earthly tenement, if, suddenly, the image of Millie – more vivid than even the actual sight of her a few minutes before – had not floated up into the narrow darkness of her father’s tight-shut eyes.

  But this was not the image of Millie as her father usually saw her. A pathetic earthly melancholy lay over the fair angelic features. The young cheek was sunken in; the eye was faded, dejected, downcast; and that cheek was stubbornly turned away from her father, as if she resented or was afraid of his scrutiny.

  At this vision a headlong anxiety darted across Mr Thripp’s half-slumbering mind. His heart began heavily beating: and then a pulse in his forehead. Where was she now? What forecast, what warning was this? Millie was no fool. Millie knew her way about. And her mother if anything was perhaps a little too censorious of the ways of this wicked world. If you keep on talking at a girl, hinting of things that might otherwise not enter her head – that in itself is dangerous. Love itself even must edge in warily. The tight-shut lids blinked anxiously. But where was Millie now? Somewhere indoors, but where? Who with?

  Mr Thripp saw her first in a tea-shop, sitting opposite a horrid young man with his hair greased back over his low round head, and a sham pin in his tie. His elbows were on the marble-top table, and he was looking at Millie very much as a young but experienced pig looks at his wash-trough. Perhaps she was at the Pictures? Dulcet accents e
choed into the half-dreaming mind – ‘But I enjoy the dark, Mr Thripp … It rests the eyes.’ Why did the woman talk as if she had never more than half a breath to spare? Rest her eyes! She never at any rate wanted to rest the eyes of any fool in trousers who happened to be within glimpse of her own. It was almost unnaturally dark in the cinema of Mr Thripp’s fancy at this moment, yet he could now see his Millie with her pale, harmless, youthful face, as plainly as if she were the ‘close-up’ of some star from Los Angeles on the screen. And now the young man in her company was almost as fair as herself, with a long-chinned sheepish face and bolting eyes; and the two of them were amorously hand in hand.

  For a moment Mr Thripp sat immovable, as if a bugle had sounded in his ear. Then he deliberately opened his eyes and glanced about him. The November daylight was already beginning to fade. Yes, he would have a word with Millie – but not when she came home that evening. It is always wiser to let the actual coming-home be pleasant and welcoming. Tomorrow morning, perhaps; that is, if her mother was not goading at her for being late down and lackadaisical when there was so much to be done. Nevertheless, all in good time he would have a little quiet word with her. He would say only what he would not afterwards regret having said. He had meant to do that ages ago; but you mustn’t flood a house with water when it’s not on fire. She was but a mere slip of a thing – like a flower; not a wild flower, but one of those sweet waxen flowers you see blooming in a florist’s window – which you must be careful with and not just expose anywhere.

  And yet how his own little place here could be compared with anything in the nature of a hot-house he could not for the life of him understand. Delicate-looking! Everybody said that. God bless me, perhaps her very lackadaisicalness was a symptom of some as yet hidden malady. Good God, supposing! … He would take her round to see the doctor as soon as he could. But the worst of it was you had to do these things on your own responsibility. And though Mr Thripp was now a man close on fifty, sometimes he felt as if he could no longer bear the burden of all these responsibilities. Sometimes he felt as if he couldn’t endure to brood over them as he was sometimes wont to do. If he did, he would snap. People looked old; but nobody was really old inside; not old at least in the sense that troubles were any the lighter, or forebodings any the more easily puffed away; or tongues easier to keep still; or tempers to control.