Leslie Hartley - The Complete Short Stories of L.P. Hartley

Here was another kind of symbolism and Philip didn’t altogether like it. . . . But the top shelf was still unoccupied. Into it he put the little clock, the cigarette-box and the comb, all the gleanings of his tortoise-shell harvest. He thrust them to the back, without any regard to military formation, and in front of them erected a barricade of miscellaneous objects—a long roll of cotton-wool in a blue wrapper, some packets of paper handkerchiefs, and other things of vaguely medical use, which effectually obscured them.

Putting the matter out of his mind he was turning to go when a thought struck him: Why not lock the medicine-cupboard? He went back. The cupboard had a lock, and it had a key; but the key didn’t turn in the lock, and the tongue of the lock had no slot to fit into-the slot had been torn out. Philip frowned. The vandalism of these days! The deception, so characteristic of them, of fitting a sham lock which didn’t do its job! The eyewash! Then he smiled at himself and almost blushed. What had induced him to think of locking the cupboard, as if it was some sort of Bluebeard’s chamber, as if it harboured a threat! It was too silly, and might offend Mrs. Weaver, whose only fault was that she had been kind enough to tidy up for him. Besides, she would have no reason to go to the cupboard again; it would be the daily woman’s job to ‘do’ his bedroom; Mrs. Weaver wasn’t even under contract to ‘do’ his sitting-room—the ‘lounge’ as she called it.

At eight o’clock next day Mrs. Weaver brought him his early morning tea. Bethinking himself, he said, ‘How kind of you to put my medicine-cupboard straight. It was in an awful mess.’ She gave him a surprised, uncomprehending look, so he repeated what he had said, with additional expressions of gratitude. Still getting no reply he asked her to give him his bed-jacket. This she did, at once, helping him into it with affectionate concern.

Presently he began to hear the whirr of the carpet-sweeper, the swish of dustpan and brush, the creak and thump of moving furniture, noises which sound so sweetly in the ear of the lie-abed. Mrs. Featherstone, of course! He must remember to have a word with her. At last his staff problem was solved: everything was under control.

There remained the orders—the kitchen orders—for the day. At half-past ten Mrs. Weaver came into his sitting-room with a preoccupied air, but without the writing-pad she usually carried. She came to a stand in front of him, her hands clasped across her body. Philip rose.

‘I’m afraid I can’t stay with you any longer,’ she said. ‘You see, I’ve become too fond of you.’

Philip was utterly taken aback. His first impulse was to resent this intrusion on his feelings which he had guarded from assault for so many years. Dismay succeeded resentment as he saw his domestic edifice crumbling.

‘You see, I’ve become too fond of you,’ Mrs. Weaver repeated inexorably.

Philip had to say something.

‘You’ll . . . you’ll get over that,’ he faltered. ‘These things . . . do happen, but. . . they soon wear off. You . . . you will find someone else.’ Not too soon, I hope, he added mentally.

‘I was very fond of my husband,’ said Mrs. Weaver, ‘but it was nothing to what I feel for you.’

Philip longed to say, ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ but he was a kind-hearted though a far from passionate man, and felt he must meet her on a human plane. But how? He had never received a declaration of love before.

‘Don’t you think you could give it a trial?’ he coaxed. ‘I mean, to stay here and see how you felt in a few days’ time? You might see another side of me, you might even’—his voice rose hopefully—‘come to dislike me!’

Bursting into tears Mrs. Weaver left the room.

Philip paced up and down it, breathing out noisy sighs. How clumsy he had been! Yet could he have done better? Had she mistaken the expressions of sympathy and appreciation which her previous employer had enjoined on him, for signs of love? Utterly at a loss, half rueful, half angry, he wandered into the passage where he met Mrs. Featherstone, sweeping the stairs. At the sight of him she straightened up; a tallish woman, painfully thin, with a high complexion, bleached blue eyes, and frizzy hair dyed almost red. Longing to talk to someone, he engaged her in conversation, and so much did he appreciate her tart and salty remarks, in which no hint of a tender emotion was discernible, that he chattered far more freely, and more intimately, than he meant to, and was only deterred from taking her into his confidence about Mrs. Weaver by noticing that the kitchen door, a short way down the passage, was half-open, like a listening ear.

‘Oh,’ he broke off, ‘you must be wanting your elevenses. See you to-morrow, shan’t I?’

Mrs. Weaver did not return to the topic of her affection; she neither withdrew her notice nor renewed it, and Philip began to hope that she was thinking better of it. Try as he would, he couldn’t meet her on the old cordial terms; his voice, he knew, was distant and formal, his enunciation too distinct, and his good-night cold. Shutting his bedroom door he vaguely felt he was shutting something out. Perhaps he needed a tranquillizer, a dose of bromide. He went to the corner cupboard.

At first he didn’t take in what he saw, he only realized there was a change. The stage which had been empty was now occupied—but by what? At the back a small broken bottle reared its jagged edges, its base strewn with splintered glass; and in front of it lay a white object made of cotton-wool, roughly shaped to form a female figure. But it wasn’t white all over, for covering the middle of the body was the blood-red petal of a rose. Beside the prostrate figure, pointing at its vitals, was the unsheathed blade of Philip’s pocket-knife.

Otherwise there was no change: the serried ranks of bottles looked on, unmoved in any sense.

Philip backed away, severely shaken. He tried to tell himself that it was all an accident—well, not an accident, his pen-knife couldn’t have got there by accident, nor could the cotton-wool, but somebody rummaging in the medicine-cupboard, not meaning anything special, perhaps trying to get a bottle out (some servants didn’t think that taking their employer’s medicine was stealing), might have produced these odd, surrealist effects. For a moment he thought of calling Mrs. Weaver and confronting her with it; but how did he know she had done it? The daily woman might have.

Somehow he felt he couldn’t go to sleep with that thing in the room; it had the air of being dynamic, not static; the intention that created it was still at work. He couldn’t lock his bedroom door, it had no key. He would have liked to move into another room; but would the bed be aired? Better the ju-ju concoction in the corner cupboard than a damp bed. But he would need something stronger than bromide now; one of those small red sausages from the phial that seemed to kneel so gloatingly beside the . . . well, the corpse. Overcoming his distaste he gingerly detached the phial from its rank, and opening it swallowed two capsules.

‘Good morning, Mrs. Weaver,’ he said, as she placed the tray by his bedside. Feeling muzzy, he was slow to come to himself. ‘Would you mind giving me my bed-jacket?’ When she did not appear to hear, a resentment against her mounted in him, and he said with anger in his voice, ‘Would you be good enough to give me my bed-jacket?’ Said in that imperious way the request sounded silly, and his resentment mounted. ‘Can’t you give me that jacket?’ he almost shouted, and then she handed it to him, holding it away from her as though it was something that needed decontamination. ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘When I give you an order, I expect you to obey it, do you hear?’ She didn’t answer, and her silence seemed to give her an advantage over him. ‘And there’s another thing,’ he said. ‘Are you responsible for the tomfoolery in the medicine-cupboard?’ And when again she didn’t answer he jumped out of bed and, taking her roughly by the arm, pushed her towards the cupboard and opened the doors, ‘Look at that filthy mess,’ he said. ‘Did you do it, or didn’t you?’