memory. A family occasion when Uncle Martin Scudamore departed this
life, and they all went up to bury him and hear his Will. The old chap,
whom they had looked on as a bit of a disgrace, money-grubbing up in the
little grey Yorkshire town which owed its rise to his factory, was
expected to make amends by his death, for he had never married--too sunk
in Industry, apparently, to have the time. By tacit agreement, his
nephews and nieces had selected the Inn at Bolton Abbey, nearest beauty
spot, for their stay. They had driven six miles to the funeral in three
carriages. Alicia had gone with him and his brother, the solicitor. In
her plain black clothes she looked quite charming, in spite of the
silver threads already thick in her fine dark hair, loosened by the moor
wind. She had talked of painting to him with all her old enthusiasm, and
her eyes had seemed to linger on his face as if she still had a little
weakness for him. He had quite enjoyed that drive. They had come rather
abruptly on the small grimy town clinging to the river-banks, with old
Martin's long yellow-brick house dominating it, about two hundred yards
above the mills. Suddenly under the rug he felt Alicia's hand seize his
with a sort of desperation, for all the world as if she were clinging to
something to support her. Indeed, he was sure she did not know it was
his hand she squeezed. The cobbled streets, the muddy-looking water, the
dingy, staring factories, the yellow staring house, the little
dark-clothed, dreadfully plain work-people, all turned out to do a last
honour to their creator; the hideous new grey church, the dismal
service, the brand-new tombstones--and all of a glorious autumn day! It
was inexpressibly sordid--too ugly for words! Afterwards the Will was
read to them, seated decorously on bright mahogany chairs in the yellow
mansion; a very satisfactory Will, distributing in perfectly adjusted
portions, to his own kinsfolk and nobody else, a very considerable
wealth. Scudamore had listened to it dreamily, with his eyes fixed on an
oily picture, thinking: "My God! What a thing!" and longing to be back
in the carriage smoking a cigar to take the reek of black clothes, and
sherry--sherry!--out of his nostrils. He happened to look at Alicia. Her
eyes were closed; her lips, always sweet-looking, quivered amusedly. And
at that very moment the Will came to her name. He saw those eyes open
wide, and marked a beautiful pink flush, quite like that of old days,
come into her thin cheeks. "Splendid!" he had thought; "it's really
jolly for her. I _am_ glad. Now she won't have to pinch. Splendid!" He
shared with her to the full the surprised relief showing in her still
beautiful face.
All the way home in the carriage he felt at least as happy over her good
fortune as over his own, which had been substantial. He took her hand
under the rug and squeezed it, and she answered with a long, gentle
pressure, quite unlike the clutch when they were driving in. That same
evening he strolled out to where the river curved below the Abbey. The
sun had not quite set, and its last smoky radiance slanted into the
burnished autumn woods. Some white-faced Herefords were grazing in lush
grass, the river rippled and gleamed, all over golden scales. About
that scene was the magic which has so often startled the hearts of
painters, the wistful gold--the enchantment of a dream. For some minutes
he had gazed with delight which had in it a sort of despair. A little
crisp rustle ran along the bushes; the leaves fluttered, then hung quite
still. And he heard a voice--Alicia's--speaking. "My lovely, lovely
world!" And moving forward a step, he saw her standing on the
river-bank, braced against the trunk of a birch-tree, her head thrown
back, and her arms stretched wide apart as though to clasp the lovely
world she had apostrophised. To have gone up to her would have been like
breaking up a lovers' interview, and he turned round instead and went
away.
A week later he heard from his brother that Alicia had refused her
legacy. "I don't want it," her letter had said simply, "I couldn't bear
to take it. Give it to those poor people who live in that awful place."
Really eccentricity could go no further! They decided to go down and see
her. Such mad neglect of her own good must not be permitted without some
effort to prevent it. They found her very thin, and charming; humble,
but quite obstinate in her refusal. "Oh! I couldn't, really! I should be
so unhappy. Those poor little stunted people who made it all for him!
That little, awful town! I simply couldn't be reminded. Don't talk about
it, please. I'm quite all right as I am." They had threatened her with
lurid pictures of the workhouse and a destitute old age. To no purpose,
she would not take the money. She had been forty when she refused that
aid from heaven--forty, and already past any hope of marriage. For
though Scudamore had never known for certain that she had ever wished or
hoped for marriage, he had his theory--that all her eccentricity came
from wasted sexual instinct. This last folly had seemed to him monstrous
enough to be pathetic, and he no longer avoided her. Indeed, he would
often walk over to tea in her little hermitage. With Uncle Martin's
money he had bought and restored the beautiful old house over the River
Arun, and was now only five miles from Alicia's across country. She too
would come tramping over at all hours, floating in with wild flowers or
ferns, which she would put into water the moment she arrived. She had
ceased to wear hats, and had by now a very doubtful reputation for
sanity about the countryside. This was the period when Watts was on
every painter's tongue, and he seldom saw Alicia without a disputation
concerning that famous symbolist. Personally, he had no use for Watts,
resenting his faulty drawing and crude allegories, but Alicia always
maintained with her extravagant fervour that he was great because he
tried to paint the soul of things. She especially loved a painting
called "Iris"--a female symbol of the rainbow, which indeed in its
floating eccentricity had a certain resemblance to herself. "Of course
he failed," she would say; "he tried for the impossible and went on
trying all his life. Oh! I can't bear your rules, and catchwords, Dick;
what's the good of them! Beauty's too big, too deep!" Poor Alicia! She
was sometimes very wearing.
He never knew quite how it came about that she went abroad with them to
Dauphine in the autumn of 1904--a rather disastrous business--never
again would he take anyone travelling who did not know how to come in
out of the cold. It was a painter's country, and he had hired a little
_chateau_ in front of the Glandaz mountain--himself, his wife, their
eldest girl, and Alicia. The adaptation of his famous manner to that
strange scenery, its browns and French greys and filmy blues, so
preoccupied him that he had scant time for becoming intimate with these
hills and valleys. From the little gravelled terrace in front of the
annex, out of which he had made a studio, there was an absorbing view
over the pan-tiled old town of Die. It glistened below in the early or
late sunlight, flat-roofed and of pinkish-yellow, with the dim, blue
River Drome circling one side, and cut, dark cypress-trees dotting the
vineyarded slopes. And he painted it continually. What Alicia did with
herself they none of them very much knew, except that she would come in
and talk ecstatically of things and beasts and people she had seen. One
favourite haunt of hers they did visit, a ruined monastery high up in
the amphitheatre of the Glandaz mountain. They had their lunch up there,
a very charming and remote spot, where the watercourses and ponds and
chapel of the old monks were still visible, though converted by the
farmer to his use. Alicia left them abruptly in the middle of their
praises, and they had not seen her again till they found her at home
when they got back. It was almost as if she had resented laudation of
her favourite haunt. She had brought in with her a great bunch of golden
berries, of which none of them knew the name; berries almost as
beautiful as these spindleberries glowing on the stone of the wall. And
a fourth memory of Alicia came.
Christmas Eve, a sparkling frost, and every tree round the little
_chateau_ rimed so that they shone in the starlight, as though dowered
with cherry blossoms. Never were more stars in clear black sky above
the whitened earth. Down in the little town a few faint points of yellow
light twinkled in the mountain wind, keen as a razor's edge. A
fantastically lovely night--quite "Japanese," but cruelly cold. Five
minutes on the terrace had been enough for all of them except Alicia.
She--unaccountable, crazy creature--would not come in. Twice he had gone
out to her, with commands, entreaties, and extra wraps; the third time
he could not find her, she had deliberately avoided his onslaught and
slid off somewhere to keep this mad vigil by frozen starlight. When at
last she did come in she reeled as if drunk. They tried to make her
really drunk, to put warmth back into her. No good! In two days she was
down with double pneumonia; it was two months before she was up again--a
very shadow of herself. There had never been much health in her since
then. She floated like a ghost through life, a crazy ghost, who still
would steal away, goodness knew where, and come in with a flush in her
withered cheeks, and her grey hair wild blown, carrying her spoil--some
flower, some leaf, some tiny bird, or little soft rabbit. She never
painted now, never even talked of it. They had made her give up her
cottage and come to live with them, literally afraid that she would
starve herself to death in her forgetfulness of everything. These
spindleberries even! Why, probably she had been right up this morning to
that sunny chalk-pit in the lew of the Downs to get them, seven miles
there and back, when you wouldn't think she could walk seven hundred
yards, and as likely as not had lain there on the dewy grass, looking up
at the sky, as he had come on her sometimes. Poor Alicia! And once he
had been within an ace of marrying her! A life spoiled! By what, if not
by love of beauty! But who would have ever thought that the intangible
could wreck a woman, deprive her of love, marriage, motherhood, of fame,
of wealth, of health! And yet--by George!--it had!
Scudamore flipped the four pink berries off the wall. The radiance and
the meandering milky waters; that swan against the brown tufted rushes;
those far, filmy Downs--there was beauty! _Beauty!_ But, damn it
all--moderation! Moderation! And, turning his back on that prospect,
which he had painted so many times, in his celebrated manner, he went
in, and up the expensively restored staircase to his studio. It had
great windows on three sides, and perfect means for regulating light.
Unfinished studies melted into walls so subdued that they looked like
atmosphere. There were no completed pictures--they sold too fast. As he
walked over to his easel, his eye was caught by a spray of colour--the
branch of spindleberries set in water, ready for him to use, just where
the pale sunlight fell, so that their delicate colour might glow and the
few tiny drops of moisture still clinging to them shine. For a second he
saw Alicia herself as she must have looked, setting them there, her
transparent hands hovering, her eyes shining, that grey hair of hers all
fine and loose. The vision vanished! But what had made her bring them
after that horrified "God!" when he spoke of using them? Was it her way
of saying: "Forgive me for being rude!" Really she was pathetic, that
poor devotee! The spindleberries glowed in their silver-lustre jug,
sprayed up against the sunlight. They looked triumphant--as well they
might, who stood for that which had ruined--or, was it, saved?--a life!
Alicia! She had made a pretty mess of it, and yet who knew what secret
raptures she had felt with her subtle lover, Beauty, by starlight and
sunlight and moonlight, in the fields and woods, on the hilltops, and by
riverside! Flowers, and the flight of birds, and the ripple of the wind,
and all the shifting play of light and colour which made a man despair
when he wanted to use them; she had taken them, hugged them to her with
no afterthought, and been happy! Who could say that she had missed the
prize of life? Who could say it?... Spindleberries! A bunch of
spindleberries to set such doubts astir in him! Why, what was beauty but
just the extra value which certain forms and colours, blended, gave to
things--just the extra value in the human market! Nothing else on earth,
nothing! And the spindleberries glowed against the sunlight, delicate,
remote!
Taking his palette, he mixed crimson lake, white, and ultramarine. What
was that? Who sighed, away out there behind him? Nothing!
"Damn it all!" he thought; "this is childish. This is as bad as Alicia!"
And he set to work to paint in his celebrated manner--spindleberries.
1918.
II
EXPECTATIONS
Not many years ago a couple were living in the South of England whose
name was Wotchett--Ralph and Eileen Wotchett; a curious name, derived,
Ralph asserted, from a Saxon Thegn called Otchar mentioned in Domesday,
or at all events--when search of the book had proved vain--on the edge
of that substantial record.
He--possibly the thirtieth descendant of the Thegn--was close on six
feet in height and thin, with thirsty eyes, and a smile which had fixed
itself in his cheeks, so on the verge of appearing was it. His hair
waved, and was of a dusty shade bordering on grey. His wife, of the same
age and nearly the same height as himself, was of sanguine colouring and
a Cornish family, which had held land in such a manner that it had
nearly melted in their grasp. All that had come to Eileen was a
reversion, on the mortgageable value of which she and Ralph had been
living for some time. Ralph Wotchett also had expectations. By
profession he was an architect, but perhaps because of his expectations,
he had always had bad luck. The involutions of the reasons why his
clients died, became insolvent, abandoned their projects, or otherwise
failed to come up to the scratch were followed by him alone in the full
of their maze-like windings. The house they inhabited, indeed, was one
of those he had designed for a client, but the 'fat chough' had refused
to go into it for some unaccountable reason; he and Eileen were only
perching there, however, on the edge of settling down in some more
permanent house when they came into their expectations.
Considering the vicissitudes and disappointments of their life together,
it was remarkable how certain they remained that they would at last
cross the bar and reach the harbour of comfortable circumstance. They
had, one may suppose, expectations in their blood. The germ of getting
'something for nothing' had infected their systems, so that, though they
were not selfish or greedy people, and well knew how to rough it, they
dreamed so of what they had not, that they continually got rid of what
they had in order to obtain more of it. If for example Ralph received an
order, he felt so strongly that this was the chance of his life if
properly grasped, that he would almost as a matter of course increase
and complicate the project till it became unworkable, or in his zeal
omit some vital calculation such as a rise in the price of bricks; nor
would anyone be more surprised than he at this, or more certain that all
connected with the matter had been 'fat choughs' except--himself. On
such occasions Eileen would get angry, but if anyone suggested that
Ralph had overreached himself, she would get still angrier. She was very
loyal, and fortunately rather flyaway both in mind and body; before long
she always joined him in his feeling that the whole transaction had been
just the usual 'skin-game' on the part of Providence to keep them out of
their expectations. It was the same in domestic life. If Ralph had to
eat a breakfast, which would be almost every morning, he had so many and
such imaginative ways of getting from it a better breakfast than was in
it, that he often remained on the edge of it, as it were. He had special
methods of cooking, so as to extract from everything a more than
ordinary flavour, and these took all the time that he would have to eat
the results in. Coffee he would make with a whole egg, shell and all,
stirred in; it had to be left on the hob for an incomparable time, and
he would start to catch his train with his first cup in his hand; Eileen
would have to run after him and take it away. They were, in fact, rather
like a kitten which knows it has a tail, and will fly round and round
all day with the expectation of catching that desirable appendage.
Sometimes indeed, by sheer perseverance, of which he had a great deal in
a roundabout way, Ralph would achieve something, but, when this
happened, something else, not foreseen by him, had always happened
first, which rendered that accomplishment nugatory and left it expensive
on his hands. Nevertheless they retained their faith that some day they
would get ahead of Providence and come into their own.
In view of not yet having come into their expectations they had waited
to have children; but two had rather unexpectedly been born. The babes
had succumbed, however, one to preparation for betterment too ingenious
to be fulfilled, the other to fulfilment, itself, a special kind of food
having been treated so ingeniously that it had undoubtedly engendered
poison. And they remained childless.
They were about fifty when Ralph received one morning a solicitor's
letter announcing the death of his godmother, Aunt Lispeth. When he read
out the news they looked at their plates a full minute without speaking.
Their expectations had matured. At last they were to come into something
in return for nothing. Aunt Lispeth, who had latterly lived at Ipswich
in a house which he had just not built for her, was an old maid. They
had often discussed what she would leave them--though in no mean or
grasping spirit, for they did not grudge the 'poor old girl' her few
remaining years, however they might feel that she was long past enjoying
herself. The chance would come to them some time, and when it did of
course must be made the best of. Then Eileen said:
"You must go down at once, Ralph!"
Donning black, Ralph set off hurriedly, and just missed his train; he
caught one, however, in the afternoon, and arrived that evening in
Ipswich. It was October, drizzling and dark; the last cab moved out as
he tried to enter it, for he had been detained by his ticket which he
had put for extra readiness in his glove, and forgotten--as if the
ticket collector couldn't have seen it there, the 'fat chough!' He
walked up to his Aunt's house, and was admitted to a mansion where a
dinner-party was going on. It was impossible to persuade the servant
that this was his Aunt's, so he was obliged to retire to a hotel and
wire to Eileen to send him the right address--the 'fat choughs' in the
street did not seem to know it. He got her answer the following midday,
and going to the proper number, found the darkened house. The two
servants who admitted him described the manner of their mistress's
death, and showed him up into her room. Aunt Lispeth had been laid out
daintily. Ralph contemplated her with the smile which never moved from
his cheeks, and with a sort of awe in his thirsty eyes. The poor old
girl! How thin, how white! It had been time she went! A little stiffened
twist in her neck, where her lean head had fallen to one side at the
last, had not been set quite straight; and there seemed the ghost of an
expression on her face, almost cynical; by looking closer he saw that it
came from a gap in the white lashes of one eye, giving it an air of not
being quite closed, as though she were trying to wink at him. He went
out rather hastily, and ascertaining that the funeral was fixed for noon
next day, paid a visit to the solicitor.
There he was told that the lawyer himself was sole executor, and
he--Ralph--residuary legatee. He could not help a feeling of exultation,
for he and Eileen were at that time particularly hard pressed. He
restrained it, however, and went to his hotel to write to her. He
received a telegram in answer next morning at ten o'clock: 'For
goodness' sake leave all details to lawyer, Eileen,' which he thought
very peculiar. He lunched with the lawyer after the funeral, and they
opened his Aunt's will. It was quite short and simple, made certain
specific bequests of lace and jewellery, left a hundred pounds to her
executor the lawyer, and the rest of her property to her nephew Ralph
Wotchett. The lawyer proposed to advertise for debts in the usual way,
and Ralph with considerable control confined himself to urging all speed
in the application for Probate, and disposal of the estate. He caught a
late train back to Eileen. She received his account distrustfully; she
was sure he had put his finger in the pie, and if he had it would all go
wrong. Well, if he hadn't, he soon would! It was really as if loyalty
had given way in her now that their expectations were on the point of
being realised.
They had often discussed his Aunt's income, but they went into it again
that night, to see whether it could not by fresh investment be
increased. It was derived from Norwich and Birmingham Corporation
Stocks, and Ralph proved that by going into industrial concerns the four
hundred a year could quite safely be made into six. Eileen agreed that
this would be a good thing to do, but nothing definite was decided. Now
that they had come into money they did not feel so inclined to move
their residence, though both felt that they might increase their scale
of living, which had lately been at a distressingly low ebb. They spoke,
too, about the advisability of a small car. Ralph knew of one--a
second-hand Ford--to be had for a song. They ought not--he thought--to
miss the chance. He would take occasion to meet the owner casually and
throw out a feeler. It would not do to let the fellow know that there
was any money coming to them, or he would put the price up for a
certainty. In fact it would be better to secure the car before the news
got about. He secured it a few days later for eighty pounds, including
repairs, which would take about a month. A letter from the lawyer next
day informed them that he was attending to matters with all speed; and
the next five weeks passed in slowly realising that at last they had
turned the corner of their lives, and were in smooth water. They ordered
among other things the materials for a fowl-house long desired, which
Ralph helped to put up; and a considerable number of fowls, for feeding
which he had a design which would enable them to lay a great many more
eggs in the future than could reasonably be expected from the amount of
food put into the fowls. He also caused an old stable to be converted
into a garage. He still went to London two or three times a week, to
attend to business, which was not, as a rule, there. On his way from
St. Pancras to Red Lion Square, where his office was, he had long been
attracted by an emerald pendant with pearl clasp, in a jeweller's shop
window. He went in now to ask its price. Fifty-eight pounds--emeralds
were a rising market. The expression rankled in him, and going to Hatton
Garden to enquire into its truth, he found the statement confirmed. 'The
chief advantage of having money,' he thought, 'is to be able to buy at
the right moment.' He had not given Eileen anything for a long time, and
this was an occasion which could hardly be passed over. He bought the
pendant on his way back to St. Pancras, the draft in payment absorbing
practically all his balance. Eileen was delighted with it. They spent
that evening in the nearest approach to festivity that they had known
for several years. It was, as it were, the crown of the long waiting for
something out of nothing. All those little acerbities which creep into
the manner of two married people who are always trying to round the
corner fell away, and they sat together in one large chair, talking and
laughing over the countless tricks which Providence--that 'fat
chough'--had played them. They carried their light-heartedness to bed.
They were awakened next morning by the sound of a car. The Ford was
being delivered with a request for payment. Ralph did not pay; it would
be 'all right' he said. He stabled the car, and wrote to the lawyer that
he would be glad to have news, and an advance of L100. On his return
from town in the evening two days later he found Eileen in the
dining-room with her hair wild and an opened letter before her. She
looked up with the word: "Here!" and Ralph took the letter:
Lodgers & Wayburn, Solicitors, Ipswich
Dear Mr. Wotchett,