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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Hugh Walpole's 'The Silver Thorn: A Book of Stories' is a collection of gripping tales that showcase his masterful storytelling and vivid imagination. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century England, Walpole's literary style intertwines elements of gothic fiction with modern themes of love, betrayal, and redemption. Each story is meticulously crafted, filled with intricate character developments and surprising plot twists that keep readers on the edge of their seats. Hugh Walpole, a prolific British author known for his keen insight into human nature, drew inspiration for 'The Silver Thorn' from his own personal experiences and observations of society. His deep understanding of human emotions and psychological complexities shines through in each narrative, making this collection a must-read for fans of classic literature and psychological fiction. I highly recommend 'The Silver Thorn: A Book of Stories' to readers who appreciate thought-provoking narratives filled with rich characterizations and compelling plotlines. Walpole's timeless tales will leave a lasting impact, resonating with readers long after they have turned the final page.
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The Silver Thorn: A Book of Stories
Table of Contents
THE LITTLE DONKEYS WITH THE CRIMSON SADDLES
The little donkeys went past the shop-window at eight in the morning and seven-thirty in the evening, punctually, rain or shine.
Miss Pope christened them Percy and Emily. The old man whose donkeys they were she had long ago named Voltaire because he looked wicked, un-Christian and clever—and because she liked literary allusions. One thing she often discussed with Miss Menzies, and that was why, being wicked and clever, he had not advanced further in the world. Miss Menzies suggested drink, and Miss Pope thought it probable.
On the other hand, were it drink he would for sure beat and abuse Percy and Emily, and this he did quite plainly not do, because they were both plump and well cared for. That might be, suggested Miss Menzies, that he kept them in good condition to benefit his business. No one cared to ride skeletons. Miss Pope, who was very thin herself, said that stoutness did no one any good, and Miss Menzies, who was plump like the donkeys, replied that it was greatly a matter of God’s will, although, as Miss Pope knew, she had no very good opinion of the Deity and often enough spoke of Him sarcastically.
Percy, Emily, Voltaire, Miss Pope, Miss Menzies, all lived in Silverton-on-Sea. ‘When you say lived,’ Miss Menzies would sometimes impetuously exclaim, ‘you are putting it altogether too high—exist is about the word!’
Miss Pope and Miss Menzies had existed together in Silverton for over ten years now. They kept a shop of fancy work and antiquities. The fancy work was very new, the antiquities very old. The shop, when it was lucky, made a profit, and then they went away for a holiday. They had been to the Lake District, Paris, Vevey, the Isle of Man, and Lake Como. On the other years the shop had not made a profit.
Miss Pope was forty-three years of age, tall, bony, a jutting chin, kind, friendly eyes, reserved, sensitive. She loved Miss Menzies.
Miss Menzies was thirty, round, plump, short, dark pretty hair, also kind, friendly eyes, not at all sensitive, and she loved Miss Pope. But she loved Miss Pope less than Miss Pope loved Miss Menzies.
She was—outwardly, at least—more romantic and sentimental than Miss Pope. She thought often of men. Miss Pope never thought of them at all. Miss Menzies had no doubt but that very shortly she would be married. She had thought this now for fourteen years. She had been once engaged. Ten years ago. That had been to a young man in the war, just after she had joined Miss Pope, but the young man had flirted with other girls. ‘Only his fun,’ he had assured her. ‘Yes, but not mine,’ she had replied. She had a hot temper when roused.
Miss Menzies was the lively one. Miss Pope did the business. Miss Menzies was charming in the shop and sold many an article that the purchaser did not wish to buy. When she was gay, she was very gay. Her bad moods never lasted for long. Sometimes she would be deeply depressed. Was this to go on for ever and ever? Of course, she loved Miss Pope, but this stupid old town, this stupid old shop, this stupid unnatural life. After all, a woman was meant to be married. Not every woman, said Miss Pope.
Although, however, Miss Menzies was very gay with men, went to the local dances, smiled and laughed and delighted in compliments, she had a certain deep fastidiousness—just anyone would not do. With everyone there was something the matter.
The life was certainly monotonous. They lived in a little apartment above the shop. This apartment had four rooms, a sitting-room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The rooms were tiny, but arranged with great taste. Miss Menzies loved possessions and cared deeply for the little Chippendale (half-Chippendale) bureau, the old gilt mirror, some prints from Ackermann’s Microcosm, and the old French clock that had belonged to Miss Pope’s grandfather. Miss Pope cared for these things, too, but chiefly because Miss Menzies cared for them.
The greatest fun that they had was when they went on buying expeditions. They went to London, Canterbury, Winchester, any number of places. They had a little Morris-Oxford which they called after Miss Menzies’ silly uncle, Fortescue.
The position of their shop was very agreeable. It possessed a charming Jane-Austenish bow-window and looked on to the cobbled path that turned down to the sea. From the side windows the sea, in all its glories, its sulks, its rages, and its ‘comedies’ was splendidly visible. In front of the bow-window was the path, a small green common, and the house of a retired lieutenant-colonel. Outside the shop hung a sign with a picture, beautifully painted, of an eighteenth-century street. Over the door was painted in large blue letters: ‘THE SERENDIPITY SHOP.’ No one knew what this meant, but it was out of Horace Walpole’s letters. A very superior London bookseller who dealt only in ancient and priceless editions called his shop by this name.
In the bow-window were arranged a number of enchanting things, brass candlesticks, fire-screens, pewter mugs, brightly coloured samplers, a silver ship, old paste brooches, necklaces, and pins. Miss Menzies loved some of these things so much that it was an agony for her to sell them. For the silver ship indeed she asked so impossible a price that it was still gloriously with her.
Miss Pope and Miss Menzies never quarrelled, because Miss Pope refused to hear of such a thing. At times Miss Menzies would indignantly exclaim that Miss Pope had no feelings, but in her heart she knew that the opposite of this was true. Miss Pope’s feelings were so deep that no trivial dispute was allowed to touch them.
There were occasions when Miss Menzies wished passionately that Miss Pope didn’t love her with such strength and obstinacy. It seemed that nothing could shake Miss Pope’s love for her, which made that love on occasion both unexciting and frightening. Miss Menzies felt that she wasn’t worthy of it.
That she wasn’t worthy of it was no fault of her own. Jane Pope had put all of her force into this one affection, while Alice Menzies allowed hers to spread out over a thousand things—over the silver ship, the Chippendale bureau, the Sealyham puppy next door, the curl of the sea as, on a fine morning, beyond the side window, it slipped back from the shining road, the kindliness of Mrs. Masham the fruiterer, the jolly twin of young Mr. Hexton, with whom she often danced, the touching loneliness and devotion to duty of the two little donkeys—these and many, many other things drew from Alice little impulses of love and tenderness. What she needed was to meet someone who would draw out of her all this love and tenderness to one aim and object, only, unlike Jane Pope, this someone must be a man.
She thought that, after all these years, possibly at last this man had arrived, Mr. Hunting, Mr. Maurice Hunting.
It was twenty minutes past seven of a fine summer morning, and she was standing at the bow-window—waiting for the donkeys to pass. Breakfast and the donkeys synchronised. Half-past seven the year round. They would maybe have had their breakfast at eight in winter-time had it not been for the donkeys, but because the donkeys did not relax they must not.
Although really, when you thought of it, seven-thirty in the morning was ridiculously early for donkeys in the winter-time. No clients would appear before ten. And how few in the winter in any case there must be!
Miss Menzies walked sometimes to the long strip of smooth sand over whose shiny surface Percy and Emily carried their little charges, and on cold, wet days they would look desolate enough—standing bravely there on duty, with their faded crimson saddles, and Old Voltaire, crooked and bent and wicked, staring malevolently out to sea.
No one in the world behaved more finely, more patiently, more decently than Percy and Emily with their soft sad eyes, their faint brown coats, their stubborn ears.
Now, how was Miss Menzies going to behave?
She stood there at the window seeing all the colour, the faint blue sky like a bird’s wing, the clear-sparkling grass of the little green, the poplars over to the right of the colonel’s house swaying musically in the morning breeze, and, through the open window, the hush-hush, the stir-stir of the gentle morning sea.
How was she going to behave? Last Tuesday Mr. Hunting had asked her to marry him. To-day she was to give him her answer.
She had said no word as yet to Jane Pope.
Of course she would accept him. There would be no possible doubt. She would have accepted him last Tuesday had not some strange unreasoning caution warned her to wait just for a day or two. He was physically most attractive—the type that she preferred. Not too young (he had told her that he was six-and-thirty), broad and strong, his colour red-brown with health, hair and short toothbrush moustache black, not stout as yet (although he must take care of that), most neat and cleanly in appearance, by profession a doctor with a good practice in Bristol.
He was, he told her, no longer a boy. He wanted a wife who would be a companion, a friend, who would help him in his work—and yet even as he spoke these quite assured words his voice had trembled, he had taken her hand and pressed it quite freely—there was a light in his dark eyes that seemed to speak of something more than a mere desire for companionship. He had fine tastes, too, read the novels of Mr. Galsworthy and the works of Mr. Lytton Strachey, admired the paintings of Sargent, and was a subscriber to the Bristol concerts. He was also a man who played golf—could sail a boat, loved dogs, enjoyed watching Rugby football.
A many-sided man. He had thought too about life, considered that wars were shameful and must be stopped, was a patriot, too, and thought Bolshevism an infernal crime, did not go to church, but yet had religious feelings.
Of course, she would marry him. He was the very man for whom she had for so long been waiting. And yet was she truly in love? Why, at this moment, as she looked out on to the shining grass and heard the rustle of the sea, was she not longing to be caught into his arms; why was it rather of Jane Pope that she was thinking and of all the little things—the little things that had seemed to her for so long to be tiresome, intolerable hindrances binding her to slavery? Why——
Ah! There were the donkeys!
They turned the corner, as they always did, at a little trot. Then, when they came to the stretch of flat with the gleaming green on their right they made a movement in the direction towards it, and then Voltaire, as he always did, switched them back to their proper place.
They paused opposite the bow-window, before resigning themselves to their inevitable duty.
Their crimson saddles—faded long ago with the wind and the rain—gave them their unusual note. Once those saddles must have been grand indeed with their splendid rich colour; even now there was colour enough to place them in a class by themselves. No other donkeys anywhere had saddles like these.
Miss Menzies leaned out of the window and waved to them. Percy and Emily looked neither to the right nor to the left; patiently, with childish dignity they stared down the road.
Then, after a switch of Voltaire’s little stick, on they trotted again.
‘Breakfast ready!’ cried Miss Pope from the room above. Miss Menzies, sighing, turned away from the window. The moment had arrived. She must deal with it as honestly as she could.
The little sitting-room was very gay in the morning sun, the Ackermann prints smiled behind their glass, the sampler on the wall with its purple flowers and its ‘Jane Bowl made this’ in amber letters, everything welcomed Alice Menzies when indeed she did not want to be welcomed at all, but sat down like a condemned prisoner to her herring.
And Jane Pope at once knew. When you love anyone as deeply as she loved Alice Menzies you know everything.
‘What’s the matter, Alice?’ she asked in her sharp, kind and rather masculine voice.
‘You know Mr. Hunting——’ began Alice Menzies.
‘Yes,’ said Jane Pope, who had met him once.
‘He asked me to marry him last Tuesday. To-day I’m to give him my answer.’
‘Well?’
‘Of course I’m going to accept him.’
Jane Pope put down her cup. Alice knew she was trembling; she knew it although she did not look at her. She did not dare to look at her.
But Jane Pope’s voice was quite firm when she said:
‘I’m very glad, darling. It’s what I’ve been wanting for you.’
Then, after another pause, she got up, went over to Alice Menzies’ chair, bent over and kissed her. Alice put up her hand and touched Jane Pope’s cheek. They stayed for a moment thus.
Then Jane Pope, moving back to her seat again, said:
‘I expect that American woman will be in this morning after those two chairs. She’s got bargains there.’
‘She has indeed,’ said Alice Menzies. And that was every word that they exchanged on the matter.
Should not one be happy when one is going to fulfil the desire of one’s heart? The sun is shining, the waters are rolling white-capped on the shore, the skylark is singing above the cornfield, the air is warm with summer scents, it is the day after the heart of all the poets from Syracusan Theocritus to Mr. Wordsworth of Grasmere. In the hollow of the cliff, high over the shore glittering now mother-of-pearl behind the retreating tide, cornfields behind him and wine-purple sea in front of him, Mr. Hunting, passion in his heart and a ring (charming, in excellent taste, three little pearls and a thin gold band) in his pocket, is waiting. Below him are bathing-tents, maidenly in a row like early Victorian ladies; to the left of him along the broad stretch of sand Percy and Emily (their crimson saddles invisible from this distance) are trotting under their infant burdens; above him the cornfields like burnt sugar; everywhere happiness and life and colour. Only Miss Menzies advancing in a dress of pink and white.
He had no doubt of what the answer would be. He was well-satisfied (a state not uncustomary for him). This was all that he needed, a lady, pretty, cultivated, with good taste, to manage his house, charm his friends, assist the growth of his practice, share his bed and bear him two children. Two. A boy and a girl. Percy, after his uncle who, when he died, would leave him money, Emily after his aunt who had left him some money already. He would take that house towards Clifton, the house with the verandah and the garage near the gate. He would——
Alice, as she sat down beside him, wished (Oh, how she wished!) that he had not chosen just this spot in which to make his proposal. Had she thought of it (but when does one think of these things?) there could not possibly be anywhere worse—here where she could see all the familiar things—the little town white and shining in the sun, huddled together so happily as though cosily inviting her congratulation (she so old a friend) at its contentment, the great sweep of purple, green-striped sea, the silver beach, the cornfields and the singing larks. Yes—and then, surely she could see them quite clearly, Percy and Emily trotting bravely, little midgets of patience and determination, to their inevitable destiny.
She had hated all these things. She had regarded them as tyrants holding her to sterility, old-maidhood, failure and negation. But how differently they seemed now that she was about to leave them! And the shadow of Jane, Jane’s nobility and kindliness and love, the touch of her cheek, the unselfish fidelity of her soul, Jane’s shadow hung over all the scene.
Turning to Mr. Hunting, she was forced to confess that he was noble too. Sitting forward, staring at the sea, square and strong, and so very masculine, he seemed indeed a rock—not a rock of Jane’s less romantic kind—a masculine rock with all the masculine allure. His voice, too, was extremely firm and decided.
‘Alice,’ he said, ‘I thought you were never coming. I didn’t know how I was going to wait. It has been cruel of you to keep me so long in doubt.’
He took her hand in his. She expected her heart to bound with excitement and joy. It did not. But that was because her eye had been caught by the shining spire of St. John’s Church. St. John’s, where indeed she very seldom went, whose bells, however, seemed to belong to her, to be hers by right of every tiny happening of the last ten years.
‘I hope—I mean——’ she hesitated. ‘I’ve been thinking a great deal of what you said. It was kind of you to give me a day or two——’
‘That was only fair. You wanted a little time, and so I gave it you. If you had been my patient and you’d wanted a day or two to consider whether you’d have an operation or no, I’d give you time. Of course I would. This is a sort of operation, you know.’
He laughed in a very jolly human way, but she knew at once that her sense of humour was not his. She would never laugh at the things that he would laugh at—or was it that her eye now had travelled to the cluster of red house-roofs that sheltered, as she so thoroughly knew, the market-place? The market-place where on Fridays all the farmers, the dogs, the sheep——
‘Well, darling,’ his firm voice reminded her, ‘I want my answer.’ Gently (but very firmly) he put his arm round her and drew her close to him. She could smell the stuff of his coat and the scent of a rather strong tobacco. His heart was beating with steady beats. His body, as she realised her contact with it, seemed to be made of iron.
‘I want,’ she said in a small faltering voice (and her eye now had caught the flag that always flew so bravely in the season from the tower of the little building—the Plaza it was called—where the concerts, the dances, the lectures were held), ‘to try and explain.’
‘To explain?’ His hand tightened on hers. ‘Why, of course; explain away!’
‘You see’—and the flag on the Plaza seemed to be waving quite especially in her direction—I’m not a child any longer. It isn’t as though either of us were children.’
‘Quite,’ he said, encouraging her.
(The flag above the Plaza seemed to tell her that he had said ‘Quite’ a great many times the other day.)
‘And one knows more about life than one did when one was very young, and so one’s more cautious of making a change.’
‘Quite.’
‘And one’s got fixed into a sort of groove, hard to get out of——’
‘Quite,’ he said, as she paused.
‘What I mean is that I’m not sure even now, after your so kindly giving me these days to think it over, whether I really love you enough——’
‘Of course you do,’ he answered, laughing the laugh of victory. ‘Don’t you think I could tell that the first moment we met?’
‘Oh, but I don’t think I did love you the first moment we met! Really, you’re a little wrong there. Of course, I liked you, but liking is very different from love, isn’t it?’
‘Quite,’ he assured her.
Yes, it was different. She knew it as her eyes moved down the line of roofs, all sparkling now like lumps of quartz in the sun, down to the lower, irregular circle of chimneys and windows that covered just the ground where for ten years herself and Jane Pope had been living.
She knew, with a sudden passionate burst of revelation, that she loved that ground; that there, exactly there where gathered together were the chimney-pots, the bow-windows, tables and chairs, pots and pans, dresses hanging on hooks, rows of shoes in cupboard, squares of green grass, thousands and thousands of pebbles, fires and streamers of smoke, eggs on the boil and books behind glass, white-enamelled baths and the Ackermann prints—just there, with their confused collection of oddities, her heart was stirred and moved as—oh, most certainly not!—it was not stirred and moved by Mr. Hunting.
In her distress she turned towards him, and at once Silverton, the beach, the fields, the sea, the sky were excluded and instead there was Mr. Hunting filling all the horizon. Mr. Hunting, so close that she could see the red veins of his cheeks, the short, sharp bristles of his moustache.
As she turned to him, he caught her to him and kissed her.
‘There,’ he said, ‘that settles it!’
Had he but kissed her and said nothing about it, it might have been done. She liked the kisses (if truth be told) extremely. But the words offended her liberty.
‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried; ‘it hasn’t!’
And her heart cried out to the shining roofs, to the gleaming beach, to the white-capped sea to come and defend her! In a moment she was going to yield. His physical presence was too eliminating. She wanted to be loved by a man, to fling aside her old-maidhood for ever, to be as other women, full of life’s experience, and a living, consciously completed woman. But, oh, she didn’t want to marry Mr. Hunting, to exchange Mr. Hunting for Jane, to suffer his masculine cocksureness, his arrogance, his lack of imagination, to change Bristol and his dull doctor’s house, the monotonous routine of his uninteresting friends, his male self-satisfaction, for Jane’s beauty of heart, her lovely imagination, for the silver ship, the little things of the shop and the flat, the friends, the beloved little town with its crooked streets, its intimate shops, its salty air, its shining reaches of sand and sea. Oh, no! Oh, no!
But she was yielding. Mr. Hunting now had caught her very close to himself. He had kissed her again and yet again, and now he was telling her all about himself—all about his childhood, how he had been considered always the promising one of the family, how his mother had always said that he would go far, and his Uncle Percy, who was also a doctor——
‘Percy,’ thought Alice Menzies, and her soul for an instant escaped the snarer, her eyes fled outwards, downwards. She saw the sand, now blazing under the sun, and there, brave little heroes,—there they were, trotting for their very lives, Voltaire, a black doll, running at their sides.
‘His’ Uncle Percy, seeing his ability, had promised to help him. So, indeed, he’d gone from strength to strength; done well at Bart’s (he’d played half-back for the hospital football team), stayed on there as surgeon, then found a small practice in Lambeth. Been there a year or two when his Aunt Emily—(‘Emily,’ cried Alice Menzies’ soul, and once more she escaped. Now her eyes were fixed on that broad stretch of sand, and she could see how her little friends had come to the end of their journey there; far, far little black toys in the glittering sun)—his Aunt Emily, admiring him as she did, had helped him with money, and he had bought the practice at Bristol. Here had he gone from strength to strength. He might be said, without undue vanity, he hoped, to be now the most promising doctor in Bristol.
People were coming to him from all sides. Why, only last week—here he apologised, lest he should seem to be boasting. He kissed her again. Her soul was caught again. She wanted to be kissed. She wanted to be loved.
And so, he assured her, she would have a wonderful time. He would buy this splendid house with ten bedrooms, garden, garage, and tennis-court. There she should entertain his friends. He knew all the best people in Bristol.
And then—he caught her yet closer to himself—he knew that she would want children. She was that kind of woman. He couldn’t love a woman who didn’t want children. Two, he thought, would be a nice number. Not more than two in these days when living was so costly. A boy and a girl would be splendid, if they only had the luck——
(She was sinking, sinking. Her heart was beating against his. Her hair brushed his cheek.)
A boy and a girl. And he thought, if they were so fortunate, that it would be jolly to call them Emily, after the aunt who had been already good, and Percy, after the uncle who shortly (because he was now seventy-two and had a weak heart) would be.
Percy and Emily! Her heart pounded! She was seized with an hysterical passion of laughter. Percy and Emily! She was out of his arms and, standing there, looking down to the sea, cried:
‘Oh, no! Don’t you see? The ridiculous coincidence! Oh, it’s too funny! It’s terribly funny! Percy and Emily! But those are the names of the donkeys. The donkeys—Jane and I have always called them so. And our children—yours and mine. What a silly coincidence! Oh, I’m so sorry! Forgive me!’
For she saw, in the very middle of her laughter, that he was offended, terribly offended.
‘Donkeys! Donkeys! Our children!’ he repeated, staring at her as though she had gone suddenly mad.
‘Yes, I know.’ Her breath was coming in little gasps. ‘It’s the coincidence. There never was anything so absurd. I can never explain, and if I did you’d never see it. It’s only that there are two donkeys—two dear little donkeys——’
‘Two dear little donkeys!’ he exclaimed. ‘Forgive me if I don’t see the joke. I was speaking to you more seriously than I’ve ever spoken to anyone in my life, speaking of the most serious things a man and woman can speak of, and——’
‘Oh, I know!’ She couldn’t now at all control herself. ‘I know how shocking it is. I’m ashamed. I can’t stop. It’s so silly. Our children—you’re so solemn about them—and then, Percy and Emily running about down there.’
He was growing angry. She saw, in a flash, that he would be angry whenever his vanity was hurt.
‘Please explain; I’m sorry if I am slow. I was talking about our children. That seems a joke to you. I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, no, it isn’t a joke. Of course they aren’t a joke.’ She was struggling to control herself. ‘It’s because for ever so long Jane and I have watched two donkeys pass our window and their names are Percy and Emily.’
She paused for breath.
‘Really, Miss Menzies!’ Yes, now he was deeply insulted. ‘I think you don’t understand me. I’ve always imagined a proposal of marriage was a serious affair, something——’
‘Oh, it is, it is! Terribly serious. But that’s the worst of life. Ridiculous things are always breaking in, and if people don’t see the same ridiculous things, think the same ridiculous things, they oughtn’t to marry. I know they oughtn’t.’
But forgive me—how can I see what’s ridiculous if you won’t tell me?’
‘No, but you’d never see. And Jane always sees. She loves the donkeys just as I do.’
‘But what donkeys?’ Yes, now he was most justly in a rage. ‘What have these donkeys, wherever they are, to do with our marriage?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I apologise. Terribly. It was the coincidence. That our children should have the same names as your uncle and your aunt. Life’s so funny. We’re so absurd, and if you don’t see how absurd we are it wouldn’t do for us to marry. Really it wouldn’t!—I’m sorry,’ she went on, with a pang of misgiving. ‘I’ve behaved abominably. You can’t forgive me, and you’re right.’
She came to him, bent forward, and gently kissed his forehead.
‘You’ve been very good to me. You’ve paid me a great compliment. But it would never, never do.’
And, turning, she left him.
At first she scarcely knew the way she went. Then everything stole out and around her, the green slope of the hill over whose breast the late afternoon shadows were now falling, the thick, dark coolness of the oaks, the bright colour of the path that led down to the town, the great sweeps of purple shadow that now lay like islands upon the breast of the violet sea; above all, the sky that glittered with light and into whose great field of faintly rose pearl a piled-up cumulus of ivory cloud was now mounting.
She slipped into the little house. The green shutters had been put up over the bow-window.
She ran straight up to the sitting-room. The lamp with the ivory parchment shade was lit. The table was spread for supper. The French clock struck the quarter.
Jane Pope, who was standing at the window, turned.
Alice, waiting at the door, cried:
‘Jane, I’ve refused him!’
‘No, no, no!’
‘Yes, yes, yes! It never would have done. He had no sense of humour. He suggested—Jane, just think of it!—that our children, when we had them, should be called Percy and Emily.’
‘Percy and——’
‘Yes. He didn’t know, of course, about our Percy and Emily. How should he? But I laughed, and he was offended, and—there you are! Oh, it never would have done!’
And everything in the room repeated: ‘It never, never would have done!’
She ran to Jane Pope, clung to her.
‘Oh, Jane, I didn’t know. I had never guessed—how good, how sweet all this time you have been.’
So Jane, who had waited for many years, most patiently, had her great moment.
They stood at the open window looking out. The sea lay milky-white, like the smoky glass of a mirror. The sun, very low, lit the green on the other side of the path with a fierce flame. Everything was as still and as gently coloured as a bed of crocus.
Suddenly there was a jingle.
‘Oh, the donkeys!’ cried Alice. ‘They are before their time!’
Round the corner they came. Under the window, as usual, they stopped. Then, attracted perhaps by the light of the lamp that was pale against the evening sun, Percy looked up.
For an instant his patient, friendly eyes gazed into theirs. Then, with a twitch of his ear he had turned with Emily hopefully towards the grass.
Once again, as on a thousand earlier days, they were disappointed, and, bending their heads in submission, trotted away round the corner towards home.
THE ENEMY IN AMBUSH
I
Captain John Ford lodged, in Moscow, with the family Ivanoff. He had been directed by the English Consulate to the family Ivanoff, the lady of the house being used to officers, the flat being in a pleasant part of the town (Kriwarbatsky Pereoulok, D.11. k.s.), and the food ‘simple but excellent.’ He had arrived with a great many boxes at the beginning of September and (of course, he did not realise this) Mme. Ivanoff’s heart had sunk when she saw him. She had had English officers in her house now for fifteen years, but she had never seen anyone so alarming as Captain John Ford. He was handsome but stiff as a deal board. His clothes were surely made of iron, such creases were there in the trousers, so severe were the sleeves of his jacket: he was very tall and very thin, with eyes like cold blue stones, a brown moustache that expressed in its every hair haughty and contemptuous surprise, and black shining boots that showed her, poor woman, that before many days were over Masha would incur his severest displeasure.
She would have liked to have said that her rooms were all occupied, but she had just then no one at all and needed the money. She looked at his healthy, tanned and self-satisfied countenance, and her knees trembled. However, Mme. Ivanoff was a brave woman. She thought of Kostia, of Anna, of little Vladimir.... She said that she was delighted to see him.
II
Captain Ford’s first impression was that ‘he couldn’t have believed there could have been such a country.’ Certainly the weather during the first days towards the end of September was not propitious. It rained very often; the mud rose higher and higher in the streets; on many days a thick heavy pall hung over the place and everyone walked with bent shoulders as though they dreaded a blow. The houses seem to be made of papier-mâché, the towers of gold and blue and green were cheap and tawdry, and the noise of the clanging trams was deafening. The Isvoschiks splashed mud over Captain Ford’s trousers, and officious people were always attempting to take his coat, hat and stick away from him when he wished to retain them. No one walked on the right side of the street, church bells were always ringing when he wanted to slumber. At the Opera he was late and had to stand in the passage during a whole act, he tumbled continually over holes in the pavement, and was kept waiting in his bank two hours before they gave him his money.
‘I simply couldn’t have believed such a country possible,’ he said to himself again and again....
Then the Ivanoff family was like nothing that he’d ever known. Mme. Ivanoff herself, soft and fluffy and plump, with eyes that were always filling with tears, and the prettiest broken English, had been in the opinion of many English officers ‘a dear little woman.’ They wrote to her long after they had left her and told her that one day they would come back to live in Russia. She treasured their letters in a box that one of them had given her with ‘A Present from Brighton’ in red paint on the lid. But Captain Ford simply found her irritating. She was frightened with him, and when she gave him lessons in the morning lost her head, forgot her English and sometimes even her Russian.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you,’ his moustache would say to her.
And she would stammer:
‘Oh! How say it in Engleesh? What is that word—yes? You know—’appy, merry, gay—no, not gay. Ah—Tak!’ and he would wait with a terrible patience, staring just over her head at the Ikon in the corner of the room.
Then she was certainly absent-minded and believed that good-nature was of more value than sharpness of intellect. She simply wanted life to be pleasant for everyone and was never happier than when six stout ladies of her acquaintance came early in the afternoon and played lotto with her until dinner-time. Her husband also wished life to be pleasant. He was an inventor who had, many years ago, had considerable success with a Patent Clip that held papers for you with an iron clasp above your writing-table. Since then he had invented many things—boot-polish, a new way of peeling oranges, a game with horses and counters, a book-rest and a collapsible chair that became an umbrella-stand when you had sat upon it long enough. Only the paperclip had been really successful, but he lived in great hope and was one of the most cheerful people in Moscow except at sudden moments of utter despair when he loudly proclaimed his disdain of God and told the cook (very much a friend of the family) that he intended to commit suicide before nightfall. He was a little man with a red moustache and large blue baby eyes—he was sentimental and absolutely credulous; he believed anything that anyone told him.
The children, Kostia, Anna and Vladimir, were just like other children, loved their parents but only occasionally obeyed them, made a tremendous noise, cried and laughed and sang. Kostia, however, was now a boy of fourteen and was beginning to regard life seriously, he read the newspaper, was often grave and silent and patronised his father. But the most remarkable member of the family was Uncle Anton, Mr. Ivanoff’s brother. Some people might have said that he was not quite right in his head, but all eccentricities were forgiven him for his ‘remarkable ideas.’
‘What kind of ideas?’ said Captain Ford suspiciously when Mme. Ivanoff first told him this.
‘Wonderful things,’ said Mme. Ivanoff, ‘about Russia, and God, and the Soul of Man.’
‘Really!’ was all Captain Ford said.
Uncle Anton was remarkable to look upon, a giant of a man with a long brown untidy beard, shaggy brown eyebrows and a mop of utterly uncared-for hair. He was dirty and shabby and sometimes not quite decent in his appearance. He ate his food in a horrible manner, blew his soup all over the table and gnawed bones in his hands like a savage. What Captain Ford thought of these things may be imagined—no consolation to him that Uncle Anton loved humanity and would walk a mile rather than tread on a worm—no consolation at all. But the worst of it was that Uncle Anton took, from the first, a great liking to Captain Ford. ‘Here was a proper man,’ he said, ‘a man to whom I can talk,’ and talk to him he did. It was one of Mme. Ivanoff’s hardest tasks to keep Uncle Anton out of Captain Ford’s room. ‘He has other interests,’ she would tell her brother-in-law. ‘He is different from us.’
‘All men are the same,’ Uncle Anton replied, smiling down upon her. ‘We are all brothers. My heart is warm towards him.’
Indeed, at first, the hearts of all the family were warm; they were prepared absolutely to make Captain Ford one of themselves. But Captain Ford did not like vodka, hated Schee, could not touch little cucumbers, and had a real terror of Rabcheek. He watched with paralysed fascination little Vladimir’s manner of mastication. Uncle Anton’s preoccupation with a chicken bone paled the soldier’s bronzed cheek.
Then he had never, at any time, been a great conversationalist. He had always distrusted talkers, and one of his favourite dicta was: ‘If you’ve got something you want to say, just think first as to whether it’s really worth while, you’re sure to find it isn’t.’ The Ivanoffs certainly never thought first. They said exactly what came into their heads, talking all together, screaming and shouting if necessary, happy and friendly and merry. Madame Ivanoff soon discovered that Captain Ford disliked noise at meal-times, and she did her best—but unfortunately her memory was short, she was easily excited, and her apologies afterwards seemed to give him very little pleasure. Other Englishmen had smiled at the noise and confusion. Captain Ford looked as though he were called on by his country to perform an especially hazardous and unpleasant duty. It was evident to anyone that he was not happy. There were many other little things. He wanted a cold bath every morning, and that should have been simple enough, but the taps were eccentric, the water was sometimes brown and thick, the catch would not fasten on the bathroom door (upon one occasion when the Captain was in his bath Uncle Anton entered, and, instead of retiring, proposed that they should have a bath together). Then there was the matter of ‘the wash.’ In England this was a perfectly regular affair. You sent your washing on Monday and received it back again on Friday; but here, whatever you might do or say, the ‘wash’ had its own habits and customs. Frequently the arrival of Prazniky would delay things for a fortnight or so. Masha would be sent to the laundry with orders to die rather than return without the Captain’s collars. Nevertheless, she did return without them; she had had a wonderful conversation with the head of the laundry—he was an agreeable man and hoped by next Tuesday or Wednesday to have discovered most of the Captain’s things.
‘You see what it is—on nas,’ said Mme. Ivanoff, smiling happily.
‘But, Good God!——’ cried the Captain.
He shut himself then into an impenetrable reserve, and the family regarded him with frightened eyes. He felt their terror and was irritated by it. He flung himself into the learning of Russian with a ferocity and pertinacity that was devastating. He was not very clever, but of an amazing doggedness. His accent was appalling, but he never made a mistake in grammar. It promised to be a dismal winter for the Ivanoffs....
