Gilbert Clandon let the book slide to the floor. He could see her in front of him. She was standing on the kerb in Piccadilly. Her eyes stared; her fists were clenched. Here came the car. . . .
He could not bear it. He must know the truth. He strode to the telephone.
“Miss Miller!” There was silence. Then he heard someone moving in the room.
“Sissy Miller speaking” — her voice at last answered him.
“Who,” he thundered, “is B. M.?”
He could hear the cheap clock ticking on her mantelpiece; then a long drawn sigh. Then at last she said:
“He was my brother.”
He WAS her brother; her brother who had killed himself. “Is there,” he heard Sissy Miller asking, “anything that I can explain?”
“Nothing!” he cried. “Nothing!”
He had received his legacy. She had told him the truth. She had stepped off the kerb to rejoin her lover. She had stepped off the kerb to escape from him.
GIPSY, THE MONGREL
‘She had such a lovely smile,’ said Mary Bridger, reflectively. They were talking, the Bridgers and the Bagots, late one night over the fire about old friends. This one, Helen Folliott, the girl with the lovely smile, had vanished. None of them knew what had happened to her. She had come to grief somehow, they had heard, and, they agreed, each of them had always known that she would, and, what was odd, none of them had ever forgotten her.
‘She had such a lovely smile,’ Lucy Bagot repeated.
And so they began to discuss the oddities of human affairs — what a toss up it seems whether you sink or swim, why one remembers and forgets, what a difference trifles make, and how people, who used to meet every day, suddenly part and never see each other again.
Then they were silent. That was why they heard a whistle — was it a train or a siren? — a faint far whistle that sounded over the flat Suffolk fields and dwindled away. The sound must have suggested something, to the Bagots anyhow, for Lucy said, looking at her husband, ‘She had such a lovely smile.’ He nodded. ‘You couldn’t drown a puppy who grinned in the face of death,’ he said. It sounded like a quotation. The Bridgers looked puzzled. ‘Our dog,’ said Lucy. ‘Tell us the story of your dog,’ the Bridgers insisted. They both liked dogs.
Tom Bagot was shy at first, as people are who catch themselves feeling more than is reasonable. He protested too that it wasn’t a story; it was a character study, and they would think him sentimental. But they urged him, and he began straight off—’ “You can’t drown a puppy who grins in the face of death.” Old Holland said that. He said it that snowy night when he held her over the water butt. He was a farmer, down in Wiltshire. He’d heard gipsies — that’s to say a whistle. Out he went into the snow with a dog whip. They’d gone; only they’d left something behind them, a crumpled piece of paper it looked like in the hedge. But it was a basket, one of those rush baskets that women take to market, and in it, stitched up so that she couldn’t follow, was a little scrap of a dog. They’d given her a hunk of bread and a twist of straw -’
‘Which shows,’ Lucy interrupted, ‘that they hadn’t the heart to kill her.’
‘Nor had he,’ Tom Bagot went on. ‘He held her over the water and then—’ he raised his little grizzled moustache over his upper teeth, ‘she grinned up at him like that, in the moonlight. So he spared her. She was a wretched little mongrel, a regular gipsies’ dog, half fox terrier, half the lord knows what. She looked as if she’d never had a square meal in her life. Her coat was as rough as a door scraper. But she had — what d’you call it when you forgive a person a dozen times a day against your better judgment? Charm? Character? Whatever it was, she had that. Or why did he keep her? Answer me that. She made his life a burden to him. Put all the neighbours against him. Chased their hens. Worried the sheep. A dozen times he was on the point of killing her. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it - not until she’d killed the cat, his wife’s favourite. It was the wife who insisted. So once more he took her out into the yard, stood her against the wall, and was about to pull the trigger. And again — she grinned; grinned right into the face of death, and he hadn’t the heart to do it. So they left it to the butcher; he must do what they couldn’t. And then — chance again. It was a little miracle in its way — our letter coming that very morning. A pure fluke, look at it which ever way you will. We lived in London then — we’d a cook, an old Irish body, who swore she’d heard rats. Rats in the wainscot. Couldn’t sleep another night in the place and so on. By chance again — we’d spent a summer there — I thought of Holland, wrote and asked him if he’d a dog to sell us, a terrier, to catch rats. The postman met the butcher; it was the butcher who delivered the letter. So by the skin of her teeth Gipsy was saved again. He was glad I can tell you, - old Holland. He popped her straight into the train with a letter. “Her looks are against her”,’ Bagot quoted again. ‘“But believe me, she’s a dog of character - a dog of remarkable character.” We stood her out on the kitchen table. A more miserable object you never saw. “Rats? Why they’d eat her,” said old Biddy. But we heard no more of that tale.’
Here Tom Bagot paused. He had come it seemed to a part of his story that he found it difficult to tell. It is difficult for a man to say why he fell in love with a woman, but it is still more difficult to say why he fell in love with a mongrel terrier. Yet that was what had happened evidently — the little beast had exerted over him some indescribable charm. It was a love story he was telling. Mary Bridger was sure of that by something in his voice. A fantastic idea came to her that he had been in love with
Helen Folliott, the girl with the lovely smile. He connected the two somehow. Aren’t all stories connected? she asked herself, and thus dropped a sentence or two of what he was saying. The Bagots, when she listened, were remembering absurd little stories that they hardly liked to tell, and yet they meant so much.
‘She did it all off her own bat,’ Tom Bagot was saying. ‘We never taught her a thing. Yet every day she’d have something new to show us. One little trick after another. She’d bring me letters in her mouth. Or, Lucy lighting a match, she’d put it out’ — he brought his fist down upon a match— ‘so. With her naked paw. Or she’d bark when the telephone rang. “Curse that bell” she’d say as plain as anything. And visitors — d’you remember how she’d size our friends up as if they were her own? “You may stay” - she’d jump and lick your hand; “No, we don’t want you” and she’d rush to the door as if to show them the way out. And she’d never make a mistake. She was as good a judge of people as you are.’
‘Yes,’ Lucy confirmed him, ‘she was a dog of character. And yet,’ she added, ‘lots of people didn’t see it. Which was another reason for liking her. There was that man who gave us Hector.’
Bagot took up the story.
‘Hopkins by name,’ he said. ‘By calling a stockbroker. Very proud of his little place in Surrey. You know the sort — all boots and gaiters, like the pictures in the sporting papers. It’s my belief he didn’t know one end of a horse from the other. But he “couldn’t endure to see us with a wretched little mongrel like that”.’ Bagot was quoting again. The words had evidently had a sting in them. ‘So he made so bold as to give us a present. A dog called Hector.’
‘A red setter,’ Lucy explained.
‘With a tail like a ramrod,’ Bagot continued, ‘and a pedigree as long as your arm. She might have sulked - Gipsy. She might have taken it amiss. But she was a dog of sense. Nothing petty about her. Live and let live — it takes all sorts to make a world. That was her motto. You’d meet ’em in the High Street — arm in arm, I was going to say, trotting round together. She taught him a thing or two I’ll be bound...’
‘Give him his due, he was a perfect gentleman,’ Lucy interrupted.
‘A little lacking in the upper storey,’ said Tom Bagot tapping his forehead.
‘But with perfect manners,’ Lucy argued.
There is nothing like a dog story for bringing out people
’s characters, Mary Bridger reflected. Of course, Lucy had been on the side of the gentleman; Tom on the side of the lady. But the lady’s charms had vanquished even the Lucy Bagot who was inclined to be hard on her sex. So she must have had something in her.
‘And then?’ she prompted them.
‘All went smoothly. We were a happy family,’ Tom continued. ‘Nothing to break the harmony until -’ here he hesitated. ‘Come to think of it,’ he blurted out, ‘you can’t blame nature. She was in the prime of life — two years old. What’s that for a human being? Eighteen? Twenty? And full of life - full of fun — as a girl should be.’ He stopped.
‘You’re thinking of the dinner party,’ his wife helped him. ‘The night the Harvey Sinnotts dined with us. The fourteenth of February — which,’ she added with a queer little smile, ‘is St Valentine’s day.’
‘Coupling day they call it in my part of the country,’ Dick Bridger interposed.
‘So it was,’ Tom Bagot resumed. ‘St Valentine’s day — the God of love isn’t he? Well, people of the name of Harvey Sinnott were dining with us. Never met ’em before. Connected with the firm,’ (Tom Bagot was the London partner in the great Liverpool engineering firm of Harvey, Marsh and Coppard). ‘It was a formal occasion. For simple people like ourselves a bit of an ordeal. We wished to show them hospitality. We did our best. She,’ he indicated his wife, ‘took no end of trouble, fussed about for days beforehand. Everything must be just so. You know Lucy...’ He gave her a little pat on the knee. Mary Bridger knew Lucy. She could see the table spread; the silver shining, everything as Tom said “just so” for the honoured guests.
‘It was a slap up affair and no mistake about it,’ Tom Bagot went on. ‘A trifle on the formal side...’
‘She was one of those women,’ Lucy struck in, ‘who seemed to be asking themselves “What’s it cost? Is it real?” while they talk to you. And rather over dressed. She was saying — dinner half through — what a pleasure it was - they were staying as they always did at the Ritz, or at the Carlton - to have a quiet little meal. So simple, so homely. It was such a rest....’
‘No sooner were the words out of her mouth,’ Bagot broke in, ‘than there was an explosion... A sort of under table earthquake. A scuffle. A squeak. And she rose to her feet in all her...’ he spread his arms wide to show the voluminous lady, ‘panoply,’ he hazarded, ‘and screamed, “Something’s biting me! Something’s biting me!”’ he squeaked in imitation. ‘I ducked under the table.’ (He looked under the flounce of a chair.) ‘Oh that abandoned little creature! That imp of mischief! There on the floor at the good lady’s feet... she’d given birth... she’d had a puppy!’
The memory was too much for him. He lay back in his chair shaking with laughter.
‘So,’ he continued, I wrapped a napkin round ‘em. I carried ’em both out. (Mercifully the puppy was dead, stone dead.) I faced her with the fact. I held it under her nose. Out in the back yard. Out in the moonlight, under the pure gaze of the stars. I could have beaten her within an inch of her life. But how can you beat a dog that grins...’
‘In the face of morality?’ Dick Bridger suggested.
‘If you like to put it that way,’ Bagot smiled. ‘But her spirit! By Jove! She scampered round the yard, the little hussy, chasing a cat... No, I hadn’t the heart to do it.’
‘And the Harvey Sinnotts were very nice about it,’ Lucy added, it broke the ice. We were all good friends after that.’
‘We forgave her,’ Tom Bagot continued. ‘We said it mustn’t happen again. And it didn’t. Never again. But other things did. Lots of things. I could tell you one story after another. But the truth is,’ he shook his head, ‘I don’t believe in stories. A dog has a character just as we have, and it shows itself just as ours do, by what we say, by all sorts of little things.’
‘You’d find yourself asking, when you came into a room — it sounds absurd but it’s true,’ Lucy added, ‘now why did she do that? just as if she were a human being. And being a dog one had to guess. Sometimes one couldn’t. The leg of mutton for instance. She took it off the dinner table, held it in her forepaws, laughing. By way of a joke? A joke at our expense? It seemed so. And one day we tried to play a trick on her. She had a passion for fruit - raw fruit, apples, plums. We gave her a plum with a stone in it. What’ll she do with it? we asked. Rather than hurt our feelings, if you’ll believe me, she held that plum in her mouth, and then, when she thought we weren’t looking, dropped the stone in her bowl of water and came back wagging her tail. It was as if she’d said, “Had you there!’”
‘Yes,’ said Tom Bagot, ‘she taught us a lesson. I’ve often wondered,’ he went on, ‘what was she thinking of us - down there among all the boots and old matches on the hearthrug? What was her world? Do dogs see what we see or is it something different?’
They too looked down at the boots and old matches, tried for a moment to lie nose on paws gazing into the red caverns and yellow flames with a dog’s eyes. But they couldn’t answer that question.
‘You’d see them lying there,’ Bagot continued, ‘Gipsy on her side of the fire, Hector on his, as different as chalk from cheese. It was a matter of birth and breeding. He was an aristocrat. She a dog of the people. It was natural with her mother a poacher, her father the lord knows who, and her master a gipsy. You’d take them out together. Hector prim as a policeman, all on the side of law and order. Gipsy jumping the railings, scaring the royal ducks, but always on the side of the sea gulls. Vagabonds like herself. We’d take her along the river, where people feed the gulls. “Take your bit of fish,” she’d say. “You’ve earned it.” I’ve seen her, if you’ll believe me, let one of them feed out of her mouth. But she had no patience with the pampered rich - the pug dogs, the lap dogs. You could fancy they argued the matter, down there on the hearthrug. And by Jove! she converted the old Tory. We ought to have known better. Yes, I’ve often blamed myself. But there it is - after a thing’s over, it’s easy to see how it could have been prevented.’
A shadow crossed his face, as if he remembered some little tragedy that, as he said, could have been prevented, and yet to the listener would mean nothing more than the fall of a leaf, or the death of a butterfly by drowning. The Bridgers set their faces to hear whatever it was. Perhaps a car had run over her, or perhaps she had been stolen.
it was that old fool Hector,’ Bagot continued, ‘never like handsome dogs,’ he explained. ‘There’s no harm in them, but there’s no character. He may have been jealous. He hadn’t her sense of what’s fitting. Just because she did a thing, he’d tried to go one better. To cut the matter short — one fine day he jumped over the garden wall, crashed through a neighbour’s glass house, ran between an old chap’s legs, collided with a car, never hurt himself but made a dint in the bonnet - that day’s work cost us five pound ten and a visit to the police court. It was all her doing. Without her he’d have been as tame as an old sheep. Well, one of them had to go. Strictly speaking it should have been Gipsy. But look at it this way. Say you’ve two maids; you can’t keep them both; one’s sure of a place, but the other - she’s not everybody’s money, might find herself out of a job, in the soup. You wouldn’t hesitate - you’d do as we did. We gave Hector to friends; we kept Gipsy. It was unjust perhaps. Anyhow, that was the beginning of the trouble.’
‘Yes, things went wrong after that,’ said Lucy Bagot. ‘She felt she’d done a good dog out of a home. She showed it in all sorts of ways, those queer little ways that are all a dog has after all.’ There was a pause. The tragedy whatever it was came closer, the absurd little tragedy which both these middle-aged people found it so hard to tell and so hard to forget.
‘We never knew till then,’ Bagot continued, ‘how much feeling she had in her. With human beings, as Lucy says, they can speak. They can say “I’m sorry” and there’s an end of it. But with a dog it’s different. Dogs can’t talk. But dogs,’ he added, ‘remember.’
‘She remembered,’ Lucy confirmed him. ‘She showe
d it. One night for instance she brought an old rag doll into the drawing-room. I was sitting there alone. She took it and laid it on the floor, as if it was a present — to make up for Hector.’
‘Another time,’ Bagot went on, ‘she brought home a white cat. A wretched beast, covered with sores, hadn’t even a tail. And he wouldn’t leave us. We didn’t want him. She didn’t either. But it meant something. To make up for Hector? Her only way? Perhaps...’
‘Or there may have been another reason,’ Lucy went on. ‘That’s what I never could decide. Did she want to give us a hint? To prepare us? If only she could have spoken! Then we could have reasoned with her, tried to persuade her. As it was we knew vaguely all that winter that something was wrong. She’d fall asleep and start yelping, as if she were dreaming. Then she’d wake up, run round the room with her ears cocked as if she’d heard something. Often I’d go to the door and look out. But there wasn’t anyone. Sometimes she’d begin trembling all over, half afraid, half eager. If she’d been a woman, you’d have said that some temptation was gradually overcoming her. There was something she tried to resist, but couldn’t, something in her blood so to speak that was too strong for her. That was the feeling we had... And she wouldn’t go out with us any longer. She would sit there on the hearthrug listening. But it’s better to tell you the facts and let you judge for yourselves.’
Lucy stopped. But Tom nodded at her. ‘You tell the end,’ he said, for the plain reason that he couldn’t trust himself, absurd though it seemed, to tell the end himself.
Lucy Bagot began; she spoke stiffly as if she were reading from a newspaper.
it was a winter’s evening, the sixteenth of December 1937.
Augustus, the white cat, sat on one side of the fire, Gipsy on the other. Snow was falling. All the street sounds were dulled 1 suppose by the snow. And Tom said: “You could hear a pin drop. It’s as quiet as the country.” And that of course made us listen. A bus passed in a distant street. A door slammed. One could hear footsteps retreating. Everything seemed to be vanishing away, lost in the falling snow. And then - we only heard it because we were listening — a whistle sounded - a long low whistle — dwindling away. Gipsy heard it. She looked up. She trembled all over. Then she grinned...’ She stopped. She controlled her voice and said, ‘Next morning she was gone.’
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 287