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

She might be late, of course, but she wasn’t often late; she prided herself on not being late, but perhaps the taxi they had ordered for her—they must have ordered one—hadn’t recognized her at the station, and she was wandering to and fro outside its precincts, with the desolate feeling that the non-met visitor has—what to do next, where to go next—for there wouldn’t be another taxi at that wayside station. He could almost see her passing and repassing her little pile of luggage—not so little, for she never travelled light—growing more indistinct with each encounter in the growing gloom and more indistinct to herself, also, as the question of how to reach her destination grew more and more pressing until it began to occupy her whole being.

And then, quite suddenly, there she was—not in front of him, but behind him and round about him, a presence rather than a person. Someone must have let her in, as he had been let in, he couldn’t quite remember how, because the front door opened on a little hall divided by a pair of glass doors from the middle hall where he was standing.

But it was she all right. He turned and recognized her not so much by her face, for it was covered by the dark veil she sometimes wore, but by the unmistakeable shape that was as much a part of her personality as she herself was.

‘Valentine!’

‘Helen!’

They must have exchanged those salutations and no doubt others, in a medium for him and perhaps her, of uncontrollable relief as if some terrible disaster had been providentially averted. He didn’t see how, but he had the impression, that her impedimenta had been suitably removed; and the next thing was a compulsive necessity—for his mind could only harbour one idea at a time—to introduce her to her fellow-guests.

Why should they be in the dining-room and not the drawing-room? He didn’t know; but he took it for granted that they were, and he was right, for when he opened the door for Lady Furthermore, he saw them all under the bright light of the chandelier, six or seven of them, seated round the dining-table, which was not laid for dinner, but rather like a board-room table surrounded by directors (bored indeed, for goodness knew how long they had been sitting there).

They all looked up and Valentine, who felt he must make an apology for himself as well as an excuse for her, said ‘Here we are, late I’m afraid. This is Helen Furthermore,’ and he was retreating behind her to let her make the effect which she always made, when the lights went out and the room was filled with darkness.

What to do now? Valentine’s social conscience was still in the ascendant; come what might, he must introduce Helen to her fellow-guests. But how, when they were invisible even to him? No doubt the light would come on again. But it didn’t, and meanwhile there was a slight muttering round the table which boded no good, as though Valentine himself had fused the lights.

It did not seem to surprise Helen to be ushered into an almost pitch-dark room, with in the middle a vague impression of heads and forms ranged round an oblong table. But she was noted for her social tact which had served her on many occasions more important, if less surprising than this; and Valentine, taking courage from her acceptance of it, with the additional encouragement of her hand in his, which nobody could see, began a tour of the table.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, bending over the first head that presented itself, if presented be the word, in the gloom.

‘I’m your Uncle Eustace.’

‘Uncle Eustace, this is Lady Furthermore,’ (he hadn’t meant to give her her title, but the situation seemed to demand it) ‘who has come to spend the weekend with us, as I’m sure you know. May I introduce you to her?’

The head turned round, showing a pallid cheek, that certainly recalled Uncle Eustace.

‘Of course, my dear boy, I am very happy to meet Lady Furthermore. I hope she will forgive me for not getting up, but in this darkness I feel I am safer sitting down.’

His voice quavered. How old could Uncle Eustace be?

‘Please don’t move,’ said Lady Furthermore. ‘I look forward so much to seeing you when . . . when the lights let me.’

Always groping, she and Valentine advanced a step or two. Then Valentine bent forward over a bowed head.

‘Who are you? Please forgive me asking, but it’s so dark I can’t see my hand before my face—or your face,’ he added, hoping it sounded like a joke.

‘I’m your Aunt Agatha.’

It was rather annoying that ‘they’ should recognize him and not he them. But voices change; hers sounded very old.

‘Dear Aunt Agatha. I am so glad to see you—at least I should be, if I could see you!’ The joke, as he knew, fell rather flat. ‘But I want to introduce you to a great friend of mine, Lady Furthermore, who has come to spend the weekend with us.’

‘Lady Furthermore? I seem to know that name.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you do.’

‘She was a child when I—’

‘I’ve always been a child,’ interposed Helen, ‘and I know that when we really see each other—’

‘Yes? Yes?’ said the old lady, who was obviously a little deaf.

‘You will realize that you have weathered the storm better than I have.’

‘Oh nonsense,’ the old lady said. ‘I can’t see much, I couldn’t, even if it wasn’t dark—but I’ve never seen a picture of you since I don’t know when that didn’t look like what you have always looked like.’

‘Thank you,’ Helen said, more moved than she cared to show, but what matter since it couldn’t be shown.

Together the two went on, addressing and being addressed, till they came to the chair at what must be the head of the table.

‘Forgive me,’ said Valentine, ‘but who are you, if I may ask?’

‘I’m your father.’

It took Valentine several moments to recover himself. He wondered if Helen had heard. ‘Dear Daddy,’ he began, ‘this is a great friend of mine, Lady Furthermore. You’ve often heard me speak of her—’

At this moment there was an extraordinary noise between a crash and an explosion, and lights broke out, where it was impossible to say. Yet they were not lights in the sense that they banished the darkness: they were blue flares, wedge-shaped like arrows, piercing the room from end to end. And Valentine said to himself, ‘Of course, it’s the gas!’ For many years ago, when the lighting of the house had been changed, much against his father’s wish, from gas to electricity—‘gas gives a much better light,’ he used to say—he had a gas-bracket left in every room in case the electricity broke down, as he rather hoped it would. And now the gas—not like ordinary gas, but like flares at an old-time fair—was penetrating the room from every angle, blue arrows that like lightning flashes revealed nothing except themselves, and a sickly sheen of terror on the faces round the table.

Valentine grasped Helen’s arm. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ he said, and in a moment they were safe in the hall without apparently opening the dining-room door or shutting it.

Out of sight, out of mind. Valentine’s memories of what had just taken place, perhaps from the excitement of the moment which often obliterates the details of a sensational happening, perhaps from some other cause, were already growing dim; they hadn’t quite passed away, they had left a residue—of feeling? of sensation? of subconscious conviction?—that still lingered. The house didn’t belong to him as he now realized, for there were other claimants. But he never suspected that it still belonged to his father. And this added very much to his new and growing preoccupation. Whoever might own the house, Helen was his guest as they all knew; and so far she had been treated very scurvily. She had not been shown her room: where was it? Upstairs, of course, but which room, the East Room? the South Room? When he tried to think of the bedroom accommodation and its access to bathrooms his mind became confused. All this should have been arranged by whoever the house belonged to, his father presumably, for his mother was long since dead—or was she? She was not at the table with him, at least he didn’t think so, for he had not had time to complete his tour of introductions round the table before the gas fireworks began. Somebody would know, of course; but where was somebody? Where was anybody? He had an invincible reluctance to re-enter the dining-room with its shafts of blue light ( those he could remember) playing on the upturned, frightened faces of his elderly relations and perhaps setting the house on fire despite his father’s faith in the innocuousness of gas.