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

‘Such as?’

‘Some method that combines secrecy with publicity. For instance, if you were in a railway carriage—only it must be crowded —’

‘Yes?’

‘And you threw the scarab out of the window without anyone seeing—without anyone seeing—’he repeated—‘then you might break its spell. I know it sounds quite silly and there are other ways. You didn’t steal it, did you?’

‘No, I bought it over the counter, as I told you,’ said Marcus huffily.

‘What a pity. But if you could make someone else steal it—stealing is very important in these matters—that might do as well. Where do you keep it?’

‘Locked up in a drawer. To tell you the truth, I almost never look at it. I’d rather not.’

‘Well, take it out of the drawer, and put it in some prominent place—on the chimney-piece, perhaps—and see what happens.’

Marcus pondered the alternatives. He was even more loath to touch the object than he was to look at it; and what made matters worse, he despised himself for entertaining such ridiculous fancies. However, a seed sown in the subconscious mind is hard to eradicate. Events seemed to have confirmed his friend’s warnings. He unlocked the drawer and, hunching his shoulders with distaste, took the ‘creature’ out. Its embryo whiskers, its wings, if wings they were, folded sleekly and closely on its back, disgusted him; its sinister expression alarmed him; and he went so far as to get a pair of tongs to convey it to the chimney-piece in his study.

No one will want to steal it, he told himself; I only wish they would.

Mrs. Crumble, his daily help, had been several months in his employ. She cleaned and dusted and, if, as rarely happened, she broke something, she nearly always told him—rather as if it were his fault. ‘You leave so many things lying about,’ she complained, ‘it’s a wonder they don’t all get broken.’

‘Never mind about breaking them,’ he said, ‘so long as you keep the pieces. Then we can patch them together, if they’re worth it.’

This she always did, but one morning he noticed a gap on the chimney-piece (for his eyes were trained towards the scarab) and a few minutes later Mrs. Crumble came in with a long face.

‘I’m afraid I’ve broken that insect, sir,’ she said. ‘I was only flicking it with the duster, and it fell off the ledge and broke.’

‘Never mind,’ said Marcus, hardly concealing his relief, and added automatically, ‘Did you keep the pieces?’

‘No, sir, I didn’t. It was that broken that no one could have mended it, so I threw the pieces out. I hope it wasn’t valuable?’

‘Not at all,’ said Marcus.

He was just rearranging the objects on the chimney-piece when Henry, his factotum, came in.

‘I don’t want to tell any tales, sir,’ he said, ‘but I happened to see Mrs. Crumble slip that big beetle into her bag. I only say so because I don’t want you to suspect that I or my wife took it. We would never do such a thing, but I thought it was only fair to us to let you know.’

‘Quite right, Henry,’ said Marcus.

Three days later Mrs. Crumble’s daughter, a child of twelve, came in and said importantly, ‘Mum isn’t coming today. She’s been took bad. The doctor thinks it’s appendicitis.’

It turned out to be something worse than that, and within a few days Mrs. Crumble was dead.

Marcus was very much upset, and his conscience smote him, for hadn’t he deliberately exposed the scarab as a bait for somebody’s cupidity? Yet he couldn’t help being relieved that the ‘insect’, the ‘beetle’, the ‘creature’, had been safely disposed of, and out of the house. Imagine, therefore, his consternation when, a few days after the funeral, the doorbell rang, with a particularly piercing buzz, and when he opened the door, there was Mrs. Crumble’s daughter standing on the threshold. She was carrying, linked to her finger, a small parcel wrapped in brown paper.

‘Oh, Mr. Foster,’ she said, and stopped. Her eyes became moist, and tears fell from them. ‘Mum told me, when she knew she had to go, to give you this. It’s that beetle creature you had on your mantlepiece, she said. She said she took a fancy to it, and told you that she had broken it, but it wasn’t true, and she did not want to die with a lie on her lips. Almost the last thing she did, before she was taken from us, was to wrap it up. So here it is,’ said the girl, holding out the parcel for Marcus to take.

For once Marcus was able to make up his mind quickly. Never, never would he accept, above all from a dead woman’s hand, a gift which had given his subconscious mind, however misguided it might be, so much anxiety.

‘It was too kind of her to have thought of it,’ he said, handing the parcel back, ‘and too kind of you to have brought it to me. But please, please , keep it. It may be worth something, my dear child, I don’t know; but if it is, or if it isn’t, I shall be more than thankful for you to have it, in memory of your dear mother’s kindness to me.’

The daughter sniffed a little, and reached for the parcel. ‘It’s quite pretty,’ she said, doubtfully, ‘but since you would like us to keep it—’

‘I should like you to keep it,’ said Marcus firmly, ‘and I hope it will bring you good luck.’

Marcus again asked his superstitious friend to stay with him for a weekend. To Marcus’s surprise, for his friend was punctilious in such matters, many days passed before he received an answer. The friend excused himself; he was in Rome, but would be back in a few days. ‘I met several friends of yours,’ he said, ‘and we talked about you.’ He didn’t say he hoped that Marcus would renew the invitation, as he well might have, for they were old friends, but Marcus did at once renew it. At one time he had spent several winters in Rome, and apart from wanting to see his friend, he wanted to gossip about his Roman friends. So he suggested another weekend, in fact two other weekends.

‘You needn’t worry about the scarab,’ he added, ‘I have disposed of it, I’ll tell you how, and the house is now exorcised and purified.’

His friend replied that he was delighted to hear this, but he could only stay over one night, as he had to be back in London on Sunday evening.

Marcus was slightly hurt by this, but reminded himself of the danger of getting touchy as one grew older.

They talked of many things, of their Roman acquaintances, who seemed to have grown more vivid to Marcus with the passing years; then, inevitably, of the ‘occurrences’ at Paradise Paddock.

‘What have you done with that scarab?’ his friend asked.

‘Oh,’ said Marcus negligently, ‘my daily help stole it.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Oh, then she died. It was very, very sad. But she needn’t have stolen it, need she? I didn’t ask her to.’ He still felt guilty.

‘I think you have been lucky,’ said his friend, looking round him and sniffing the air. ‘I think—I think so, Marcus.’

The open door of the study gaped, at an acute angle, on the open door of the dining-room.

‘It’s strange how right you have been,’ said Marcus. ‘I must confess, I didn’t really believe you about the scarab, but then I was brought up in a sceptical atmosphere. My father—’he paused—‘well, he was a rationalist. You half convinced me—but only half. Calamities happen in every house—this isn’t the only one. You know that local people call it The House of Death?’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Well, they do and the reason may be that for two hundred years it has been called Paradise Paddock—the association between Death and Paradise is rather encouraging and beautiful, I think. Out of one, into the other.’