The Collected Short Stories

  "Yes, but--if it should be--you see--I couldn't bear it."

  He let her go, and they drew apart, and the embrace no longer choked them from speaking. He recognised the woman defensive, playing the coward against her own inclinations, and even against her knowledge.

  "If--if!" he exclaimed sharply, so that she shrank with a little fear. "There need be no ifs--need there?"

  "I don't know," she replied, reproachfully, very quietly.

  "If I say so--" he said, angry with her mistrust. Then he climbed the stile, and she followed.

  "But you do know," he exclaimed. "I have given you books--"

  "Yes, but--"

  "But what?" He was getting really angry.

  "It's so different for a woman--you don't know."

  He did not answer this. They stumbled together over the mole-hills, under the oak trees.

  "And look--how we should have to be--creeping together in the dark--"

  This stung him; at once, it was as if the glamour went out of life. It was as if she had tipped over the fine vessel that held the wine of his desire, and had emptied him of all his vitality. He had played a difficult, deeply-moving part all night, and now the lights suddenly switched out, and there was left only weariness. He was silent, tired, very tired, bodily and spiritually. They walked across the wide, dark meadow with sunken heads. Suddenly she caught his arm.

  "Don't be cold with me!" she cried.

  He bent and kissed in acknowledgment the lips she offered him for love.

  "No," he said drearily; "no, it is not coldness--only--I have lost hold--for to-night." He spoke with difficulty. It was hard to find a word to say. They stood together, apart, under the old thorn tree for some minutes, neither speaking. Then he climbed the fence, and stood on the highway above the meadow.

  At parting also he had not kissed her. He stood a moment and looked at her. The water in a little brook under the hedge was running, chuckling with extraordinary loudness: away on Nethermere they heard the sad, haunting cry of the wild-fowl from the North. The stars still twinkled intensely. He was too spent to think of anything to say; she was too overcome with grief and fear and a little resentment. He looked down at the pale blotch of her face upturned from the low meadow beyond the fence. The thorn boughs tangled above her, drooping behind her like the roof of a hut. Beyond was the great width of the darkness. He felt unable to gather his energy to say anything vital.

  "Good-bye," he said. "I'm going back--on Saturday. But--you'll write to me. Good-bye."

  He turned to go. He saw her white uplifted face vanish, and her dark form bend under the boughs of the tree, and go out into the great darkness. She did not say good-bye.

  THE OLD ADAM

  The maid who opened the door was just developing into a handsome womanhood. Therefore she seemed to have the insolent pride of one newly come to an inheritance. She would be a splendid woman to look at, having just enough of Jewish blood to enrich her comeliness into beauty. At nineteen her fine grey eyes looked challenge, and her warm complexion, her black hair looped up slack, enforced the sensuous folding of her mouth.

  She wore no cap nor apron, but a well-looking sleeved overall such as even very ladies don.

  The man she opened to was tall and thin, but graceful in his energy. He wore white flannels, carried a tennis-racket. With a light bow to the maid he stepped beside her on the threshold. He was one of those who attract by their movement, whose movement is watched unconsciously, as we watch the flight of a sea-bird waving its wing leisurely. Instead of entering the house, the young man stood beside the maid-servant and looked back into the blackish evening. When in repose, he had the diffident, ironic bearing so remarkable in the educated youth of to-day, the very reverse of that traditional aggressiveness of youth.

  "It is going to thunder, Kate," he said.

  "Yes, I think it is," she replied, on an even footing.

  The young man stood a moment looking at the trees across the road, and on the oppressive twilight.

  "Look," he said, "there's not a trace of colour in the atmosphere, though it's sunset; all a dark, lustrous grey; and those oaks kindle green like a low fire--see!"

  "Yes," said Kate, rather awkwardly.

  "A troublesome sort of evening; must be, because it's your last with us."

  "Yes," said the girl, flushing and hardening.

  There was another pause; then:

  "Sorry you're going?" he asked, with a faint tang of irony.

  "In some ways," she replied, rather haughtily.

  He laughed, as if he understood what was not said, then, with an "Ah well!" he passed along the hall.

  The maid stood for a few moments clenching her young fists, clenching her very breast in revolt. Then she closed the door.

  Edward Severn went into the dining-room. It was eight o'clock, very dark for a June evening; on the dusk-blue walls only the gilt frames of the pictures glinted pale. The clock occupied the room with its delicate ticking.

  The door opened into a tiny conservatory that was lined with a grapevine. Severn could hear, from the garden beyond, the high prattling of a child. He went to the glass door.

  Running down the grass by the flower-border was a little girl of three, dressed in white. She was very bonny, very quick and intent in her movements; she reminded him of a fieldmouse which plays alone in the corn, for sheer joy. Severn lounged in the doorway, watching her. Suddenly she perceived him. She started, flashed into greeting, gave a little gay jump, and stood quite still again, as if pleading.

  "Mr. Severn," she cried, in wonderfully coaxing tones: "Come and see this."

  "What?" he asked.

  "Com' and see it," she pleaded.

  He laughed, knowing she only wanted to coax him into the garden; and he went.

  "Look," she said, spreading out her plump little arm.

  "What?" he asked.

  The baby was not going to admit that she had tricked him thither for her amusement.

  "All gone up to buds," she said, pointing to the closed marigolds. Then "See!" she shrieked, flinging herself at his legs, grasping the flannel of his trousers, and tugging at him wildly. She was a wild little Mænad. She flew shrieking like a revelling bird down the garden, glancing back to see if he were coming. He had not the heart to desist, but went swiftly after her. In the obscure garden, the two white figures darted through the flowering plants, the baby, with her full silk skirts, scudding like a ruffled bird, the man, lithe and fleet, snatching her up and smothering his face in hers. And all the time her piercing voice reechoed from his low calls of warning and of triumph as he hunted her. Often she was really frightened of him; then she clung fast round his neck, and he laughed and mocked her in a low, stirring voice, whilst she protested.

  The garden was large for a London suburb. It was shut in by a high dark embankment, that rose above a row of black poplar trees. And over the spires of the trees, high up, slid by the golden-lighted trains, with the soft movement of caterpillars and a hoarse, subtle noise.

  Mrs. Thomas stood in the dark doorway watching the night, the trains, the flash and run of the two white figures.

  "And now we must go in," she heard Severn say.

  "No," cried the baby, wild and defiant as a bacchanal. She clung to him like a wild-cat.

  "Yes," he said. "Where's your mother?"

  "Give me a swing," demanded the child.

  He caught her up. She strangled him hard with her young arms.

  "I said, where's your mother?" he persisted, half smothered.

  "She's op'tairs," shouted the child. "Give me a swing."

  "I don't think she is," said Severn.

  "She is. Give me a swing, a swi-i-ing!"

  He bent forward, so that she hung from his neck like a great pendant. Then he swung her, laughing low to himself while she shrieked with fear. As she slipped he caught her to his breast.

  "Mary!" called Mrs. Thomas, in that low, songful tone of a woman when her heart is roused and happy.

 
"Mary!" she called, long and sweet.

  "Oh, no!" cried the child quickly.

  But Severn bore her off. Laughing, he bowed his head and offered to the mother the baby who clung round his neck.

  "Come along here," said Mrs. Thomas roguishly, clasping the baby's waist with her hands.

  "Oh, no," cried the child, tucking her head into the young man's neck.

  "But it's bed-time," said the mother. She laughed as she drew at the child to pull her loose from Severn. The baby clung tighter, and laughed, feeling no determination in her mother's grip. Severn bent his head to loosen the child's hold, bowed, and swung the heavy baby on his neck. The child clung to him, bubbling with laughter; the mother drew at her baby, laughing low, while the man swung gracefully, giving little jerks of laughter.

  "Let Mr. Severn undress me," said the child, hugging close to the young man, who had come to lodge with her parents when she was scarce a month old.

  "You're in high favour to-night," said the mother to Severn. He laughed, and all three stood a moment watching the trains pass and repass in the sky beyond the garden-end. Then they went indoors, and Severn undressed the child.

  She was a beautiful girl, a bacchanal with her wild, dull-gold hair tossing about like a loose chaplet, her hazel eyes shining daringly, her small, spaced teeth glistening in little passions of laughter within her red, small mouth. The young man loved her. She was such a little bright wave of wilfulness, so abandoned to her impulses, so white and smooth as she lay at rest, so startling as she flashed her naked limbs about. But she was growing too old for a young man to undress.

  She sat on his knee in her high-waisted night-gown, eating her piece of bread-and-butter with savage little bites of resentment: she did not want to go to bed. But Severn made her repeat a Pater Noster. She lisped over the Latin, and Mrs. Thomas, listening, flushed with pleasure; although she was a Protestant, and although she deplored the unbelief of Severn, who had been a Catholic.

  The mother took the baby to carry her to bed. Mrs. Thomas was thirty-four years old, full-bosomed and ripe. She had dark hair that twined lightly round her low, white brow. She had a clear complexion, and beautiful brows, and dark-blue eyes. The lower part of her face was heavy.

  "Kiss me," said Severn to the child.

  He raised his face as he sat in the rocking-chair. The mother stood beside, looking down at him, and holding the laughing rogue of a baby against her breast. The man's face was uptilted, his heavy brows set back from the laughing tenderness of his eyes, which looked dark, because the pupil was dilated. He pursed up his handsome mouth, his thick close-cut moustache roused.

  He was a man who gave tenderness, but who did not ask for it. All his own troubles he kept, laughingly, to himself. But his eyes were very sad when quiet, and he was too quick to understand sorrow, not to know it.

  Mrs. Thomas watched his fine mouth lifted for kissing. She leaned forward, lowering the baby, and suddenly, by a quick change in his eyes, she knew he was aware of her heavy woman's breasts approaching down to him. The wild rogue of a baby bent her face to his, and then, instead of kissing him, suddenly licked his cheek with her wet, soft tongue. He started back in aversion, and his eyes and his teeth flashed with a dangerous laugh.

  "No, no," he laughed, in low strangled tones. "No dog-lick, my dear, oh no!"

  The baby chuckled with glee, gave one wicked jerk of laughter, that came out like a bubble escaping.

  He put up his mouth again, and again his face was horizontal below the face of the young mother. She looked down on him as if by a kind of fascination.

  "Kiss me, then," he said with thick throat.

  The mother lowered the baby. She felt scarcely sure of her balance. Again the child, when near to his face, darted out her tongue to lick him. He swiftly averted his face, laughing in his throat.

  Mrs. Thomas turned her face aside; she would see no more.

  "Come then," she said to the child. "If you won't kiss Mr. Severn nicely--"

  The child laughed over the mother's shoulder like a squirrel crouched there. She was carried to bed.

  It was still not quite dark; the clouds had opened slightly. The young man flung himself into an arm-chair, with a volume of French verse. He read one lyric, then he lay still.

  "What, all in the dark!" exclaimed Mrs. Thomas, coming in. "And reading by this light." She rebuked him with timid affectionateness. Then, glancing at his white-flannelled limbs sprawled out in the gloom, she went to the door. There she turned her back to him, looking out.

  "Don't these flags smell strongly in the evening?" she said at length.

  He replied with a few lines of the French he had been reading.

  She did not understand. There was a peculiar silence.

  "A peculiar, brutal, carnal scent, iris," he drawled at length. "Isn't it?"

  She laughed shortly, saying: "Eh, I don't know about that."

  "It is," he asserted calmly.

  He rose from his chair, went to stand beside her at the door.

  There was a great sheaf of yellow iris near the window. Farther off, in the last twilight, a gang of enormous poppies balanced and flapped their gold-scarlet, which even the darkness could not quite put out.

  "We ought to be feeling very sad," she said after a while.

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Well--isn't it Kate's last night?" she said, slightly mocking.

  "She's a tartar, Kate," he said.

  "Oh, she's too rude, she is really! The way she criticises the things you do, and her insolence--"

  "The things I do?" he asked.

  "Oh no; you can't do anything wrong. It's the things I do." Mrs. Thomas sounded very much incensed.

  "Poor Kate, she'll have to lower her key," said Severn.

  "Indeed she will, and a good thing too."

  There was silence again.

  "It's lightning," he said at last.

  "Where?" she asked, with a suddenness that surprised him. She turned, met his eyes for a second. He sank his head, abashed.

  "Over there in the north-east," he said, keeping his face from her. She watched his hand rather than the sky.

  "Oh," she said uninterestedly.

  "The storm will wheel round, you'll see," he said.

  "I hope it wheels the other way, then."

  "Well, it won't. You don't like lightning, do you? You'd even have to take refuge with Kate if I weren't here."

  She laughed quietly at his irony.

  "No," she said, quite bitterly. "Mr. Thomas is never in when he's wanted."

  "Well, as he won't be urgently required, we'll acquit him, eh?"

  At that moment a white flash fell across the blackness. They looked at each other, laughing. The thunder came broken and hesitatingly.

  "I think we'll shut the door," said Mrs. Thomas, in normal, sufficiently distant tones. A strong woman, she locked and bolted the stiff fastenings easily. Severn pressed on the light. Mrs. Thomas noticed the untidiness of the room. She rang, and presently Kate appeared.

  "Will you clear baby's things away?" she said, in the contemptuous tone of a hostile woman. Without answering, and in her superb, unhastening way, Kate began to gather up the small garments. Both women were aware of the observant, white figure of the man standing on the hearth. Severn balanced with a fine, easy poise, and smiled to himself, exulting a little to see the two women in this state of hostility. Kate moved about with bowed defiant head. Severn watched her curiously; he could not understand her. And she was leaving to-morrow. When she had gone out of the room, he remained still standing, thinking. Something in his lithe, vigorous balance, so alert, and white, and independent, caused Mrs. Thomas to glance at him from her sewing.

  "I will let the blinds down," he said, becoming aware that he was attracting attention.

  "Thank you," she replied conventionally.

  He let the lattice blinds down, then flung himself into his chair.

  Mrs. Thomas sat at the table, near him, sewing. She was a good-looking woma
n, well made. She sat under the one light that was turned on. The lamp-shade was of red silk lined with yellow. She sat in the warm-gold light. There was established between the two a peculiar silence, like suspense, almost painful to each of them, yet which neither would break. Severn listened to the snap of her needle, looked from the movement of her hand to the window, where the lightning beat and fluttered through the lattice. The thunder was as yet far off.

  "Look," he said, "at the lightning."

  Mrs. Thomas started at the sound of his voice, and some of the colour went from her face. She turned to the window.

  There, between the cracks of the Venetian blinds, came the white flare of lightning, then the dark. Several storms were in the sky. Scarcely had one sudden glare fluttered and palpitated out, than another covered the window with white. It dropped, and another flew up, beat like a moth for a moment, then vanished. Thunder met and overlapped; two battles were fought together in the sky.

  Mrs. Thomas went very pale. She tried not to look at the window, yet, when she felt the lightning blench the lamplight, she watched, and each time a flash leaped on the window, she shuddered. Severn, all unconsciously, was smiling with roused eyes.

  "You don't like it?" he said, at last, gently.

  "Not much," she answered, and he laughed.

  "Yet all the storms are a fair way off," he said. "Not one near enough to touch us."

  "No, but," she replied, at last laying her hands in her lap, and turning to him, "it makes me feel worked up. You don't know how it makes me feel, as if I couldn't contain myself."

  She made a helpless gesture with her hand. He was watching her closely. She seemed to him pathetically helpless and bewildered; she was eight years older than he. He smiled in a strange, alert fashion, like a man who feels in jeopardy. She bent over her work, stitching nervously. There was a silence in which neither of them could breathe freely.

  Presently a bigger flash than usual whitened through the yellow lamplight. Both glanced at the window, then at each other. For a moment it was a look of greeting; then his eyes dilated to a smile, wide with recklessness. He felt her waver, lose her composure, become incoherent. Seeing the faint helplessness of coming tears, he felt his heart thud to a crisis. She had her face at her sewing.