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

Below him on the blue rep carpet, the Heriz rug, which had lain unregarded for the past few days, suddenly caught his eye. At first to his bewildered mind it seemed a rug like any other; then slowly it began to assert itself and declare its wordless message. Who had woven it, he wondered, who had coloured it with his thoughts? What passions had gone into it, at the confluence of the pale red and the dark? He could not tell nor did it matter; indeed nothing seemed to matter when once the silken spell began to work.

Christmas Eve had been for all the Marriners, except Mr. Marriner, a most exhausting day. The head of the house usually got off lightly at the festive season, lightly that is as far as personal effort went. Financially, no; Mr. Marriner knew that financially quite a heavy drain was being made on his resources. And later in the evening when he got out his cheque-book to give his customary presents to his family, his relations and the staff, the drain would be heavier. But he could afford it, he could afford it better this Christmas than at any other Christmas in the history of his steadily increasing fortune. And he didn’t have to think, he didn’t have to choose; he only had to consult a list and add one or two names, and cross off one or two. There was quite a big item to cross off, quite a big item, though it didn’t figure on the list or on the counterfoil of his cheque-book. If he saw fit he would add the sum so saved to his children’s cheques. Jeremy and Anne would then think him even more generous than he was, and if his wife made any comment, which she wouldn’t, being a tactful woman, he would laugh and call it a Capital Distribution—‘capital in every sense, my dear!’

But this could wait till after dinner.

So of the quartet who sat down to the meal, he was the only one who hadn’t spent a laborious day. His wife and Anne had both worked hard decorating the house and making arrangements for the party on Boxing Day. They hadn’t spent the time in getting presents, they hadn’t had to. Anne, who was two years older than Jeremy, inherited her mother’s gift for present-giving and had made her selections weeks ago; she had a sixth sense for knowing what people wanted. But Jeremy had left it all to the last moment. His method was the reverse of Anne’s and much less successful; he thought of the present first and the recipient afterwards. Who would this little box do for? Who would this other little box do for? Who should be the fortunate possessor of this third little box? In present-giving his mind followed a one-way track; and this year it was little boxes. They were expensive and undiscriminating presents and he was secretly ashamed of them. Now it was too late to do anything more: but when he thought of the three or four friends who would remain un-boxed his conscience smote him.

Silent and self-reproachful, he was the first to hear the singing outside the window.

‘Listen, there’s some carol-singers!’ His voice, which was breaking, plunged and croaked.

The others all stopped talking and smiles spread over their faces.

‘Quite good, aren’t they?’

‘The first we’ve had this year,’ said Mrs. Marriner.

‘Well, not the first, my dear; they started coming days ago, but I sent them away and said that waits must wait till Christmas Eve.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘Two, I think,’ said Jeremy.

‘A man and a woman?’

Jeremy got up and drew the curtain. Pierced only by a single distant street-lamp, the darkness in the garden pressed against the window-pane.

‘I can’t quite see,’ he said, coming back. ‘But I think it’s a man and a boy.’

‘A man and a boy?’ said Mr. Marriner. ‘That’s rather unusual.’

‘Perhaps they’re choristers, Daddy. They do sing awfully well.’

At that moment the front-door bell rang. To preserve the character of the house, which was an old one, they had retained the original brass bell-pull. When it was pulled the whole house seemed to shudder audibly, with a strangely searching sound, as if its heart-strings had been plucked, while the bell itself gave out a high yell that split into a paroxysm of jangling. The Marriners were used to this phenomenon, and smiled when it made strangers jump: to-night it made them jump themselves. They listened for the sound of footsteps crossing the stone flags of the hall, but there was none.

‘Mrs. Parfitt doesn’t come till washing-up time,’ said Mrs. Marriner. ‘Who’ll go and give them something?’

‘I will,’ Anne said, jumping up. ‘What shall I give them, Daddy?’

‘Oh, give them a bob,’ said Mr. Marriner, producing the coin from his pocket. However complicated the sum required he always had it.

Anne set off with the light step and glowing face of an eager benefactor; she came back after a minute or two at a much slower pace and looking puzzled and rather frightened. She didn’t sit down but stood over her place with her hands on the chair-back.

‘He said it wasn’t enough,’ she said.

‘Wasn’t enough?’ her father repeated. ‘Did he really say that?’

Anne nodded.

‘Well, I like his cheek,’ Even to his family Mr. Marriner’s moods were unforeseeable; by some chance the man’s impudence had touched a sympathetic chord in him. ‘Go back and say that if they sing another carol they shall have another bob.’

But Anne didn’t move.

‘If you don’t mind, Daddy, I’d rather not.’

They all three raised questioning faces to hers.

‘You’d rather not? Why?’

‘I didn’t like his manner.’

‘Whose, the man’s?’

‘Yes. The boy—you were right, Jeremy, it is a boy, quite a small boy—didn’t say anything.’

‘What was wrong with the man’s manner?’ Mr. Marriner, still genial, asked.

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Anne began to breathe quickly and her fingers tightened on the chair-back. ‘And it wasn’t only his manner.’

‘Henry, I shouldn’t——’ began Mrs. Marriner warningly, when suddenly Jeremy jumped up. He saw the chance to redeem himself in his own eyes from his ineffectiveness over the Christmas shopping—from the general ineffectiveness that he was conscious of whenever he compared himself with Anne.

‘Here’s the shilling,’ Anne said, holding it out. ‘He wouldn’t take it.’

‘This will make it two,’ their father said, suiting the action to the word. ‘But only if they sing again, mind you.’

While Jeremy was away, they all fell silent, Anne still trying to compose her features, Mr. Marriner tapping on the table, his wife studying her rings. At last she said:

‘They’re all so class-conscious nowadays.’

‘It wasn’t that,’ said Anne.

‘What was it?’

Before she had time to answer—if she would have answered—the door opened and Jeremy came in, flushed and excited but also triumphant, with the triumph he had won over himself. He didn’t go to his place but stood away from the table looking at his father.

‘He wouldn’t take it,’ he said. ‘He said it wasn’t enough. He said you would know why.’

‘I should know why?’ Mr. Marriner’s frown was an effort to remember something. ‘What sort of man is he, Jeremy?’

‘Tall and thin, with a pulled-in face.’

‘And the boy?’

‘He looked about seven. He was crying.’

‘Is it anyone you know, Henry?’ asked his wife.

‘I was trying to think. Yes, no, well, yes, I might have known him.’ Mr. Marriner’s agitation was now visible to them all, and even more felt than seen. ‘What did you say, Jeremy?’

Jeremy’s breast swelled.

‘I told him to go away.’

‘And has he gone?’

As though in answer the bell pealed again.