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

‘The gentleman,’ I said, ‘has left this,’ and I thrust the card into the butler’s hand.

‘Why, that must be Mr. Santander!’ the servant of Mr. Santander’s wife at last brought out.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and I think perhaps as it’s getting late, we ought to try and find Mrs. Santander. The dinner will be quite spoiled.’

Telling the butler to wait and not to alarm the servants, I went alone to Gertrude’s room. From the end of a long passage I saw the door standing partly open; I saw, too, that the room was in darkness. There was nothing strange in that, I told myself; but it would be methodical, it would save time, to examine the intervening rooms first. Examine! What a misleading word. I banished it, and ‘search’ came into my mind. I rejected that too. As I explored the shuttered silences I tried to find a formula that would amuse Gertrude, some facetious understatement of my agitated quest. ‘A little tour of inspection’—she would like that. I could almost hear her say: ‘So you expected to find me under a sofa!’ I wouldn’t tell her that I had looked under the sofas, unless to make a joke of it: something about dust left by the housemaid. I rose to my knees, spreading my hands out in the white glow. Not a speck. But wasn’t conversation—conversation with Gertrude—made up of little half-truths, small forays into fiction? With my hand on the door—it was of the last room and led on to the landing—I rehearsed the pleasantry aloud: ‘During the course of a little tour of inspection, Gertrude, I went from one dust-heap to another, from dust unto dust I might almost say. . . .’ This time I must overcome my unaccountable reluctance to enter her room. Screwing up my courage, I stepped into the passage, but for all my resolution I got no further.

The door still stood as I had first seen it—half open; but there was a light in the room—a rather subdued light, possibly from the standard lamp by the bed. I knocked and called ‘Gertrude!’ and when there was no reply I pushed open the door. It moved from right to left so as not to expose the bulk of the room, which lay on the left side. It seemed a long time before I was fairly in.

I saw the embers of the fire, the pale troubled lights of the mirror, and, vivid in the pool of light by the bed, a note. It said: ‘Forgive me dearest, I have had to go. I can’t explain why, but we shall meet some time. All my love, G.’ There was no envelope, no direction, but the handwriting was hers and the informality characteristic of her. It was odd that the characters, shaky as they were, did not seem to have been written in haste. I was trying to account for this, trying to stem, by an act of concentration, the tide of disappointment that was sweeping over me, when a sudden metallic whirr sounded in my ear. It was the telephone—the small subsidiary telephone that communicated with the servants’ quarters. ‘It will save their steps,’ she had said, when I urged her to have it put in; and I remembered my pleasure in this evidence of consideration, for my own motives had been founded in convenience and even in prudence. Now I loathed the black shiny thing that buzzed so raucously and never moved. And what could the servants have to say to me except that Mr. Santander had—well, gone. What else was there for him to do? The instrument rang again and I took up the receiver.

‘Yes?’

‘Please, sir, dinner is served.’

‘Dinner!’ I echoed. It was nearly ten, but I had forgotten about that much-postponed meal.

‘Yes, sir. Didn’t you give orders to have it ready immediately? For two, I think you said, sir.’ The voice sounded matter-of-fact enough, but in my bewilderment I nearly lost all sense of what I was doing. At last I managed to murmur in a voice that might have been anybody’s: ‘Yes, of course, for two.’

On second thoughts, I left the telephone disconnected. I felt just then that I couldn’t bear another summons. And, though my course was clear, I did not know what to do next; my will had nothing but confusion to work with. In the dark, perhaps, I might collect myself. But it didn’t occur to me to turn out the light; instead, I parted the heavy curtains that shut off the huge bow-window and drew them behind me. The rain was driving furiously against the double casements, but not a sound vouched for its energy. A moon shone at intervals, and by the light of one gleam, brighter than the rest, I saw a scrap of paper, crushed up, lying in a corner. I smoothed it out, glad to have employment for my fingers, but darkness descended on the alcove again and I had to return to the room. In spite of its crumpled condition I made out the note—easily, indeed, for it was a copy of the one I had just read. Or perhaps the original; but why should the same words have been written twice and even three times, not more plainly, for Gertrude never tried to write plainly, but with a deliberate illegibility?

There was only one other person besides Gertrude, I thought, while I stuffed the cartridges into my revolver, who could have written that note, and he was waiting for me downstairs. How would he look, how would he explain himself? This question occupied me to the exclusion of a more natural curiosity as to my appearance, my explanation. They would have to be of the abruptest. Perhaps, indeed, they wouldn’t be needed. There were a dozen corners, a dozen points of vantage all well known to Mr. Santander between me and the dining-room door. It came to me inconsequently that the crack of a shot in that house would make no more noise than the splintering of a tooth-glass on my washing-stand. And Mr. Santander, well versed no doubt in South American revolutions, affrays, and shootings-up, would be an adept in the guerilla warfare to which military service hadn’t accustomed me. Wouldn’t it be wiser, I thought, irresolutely contemplating the absurd bulge in my dinner jacket, to leave him to his undisputed mastery of the situation, and not put it to the proof? It was not like cutting an ordinary engagement. A knock on the door interrupted my confused consideration of social solecisms.

‘Mr. Santander told me to tell you he is quite ready,’ the butler said. Through his manifest uneasiness I detected a hint of disapproval. He looked at me askance; he had gone over. But couldn’t he be put to some use? I had an idea.

‘Perhaps you would announce me,’ I said. He couldn’t very well refuse, and piloted by him I should have a better chance in the passages and an entry valuably disconcerting. ‘I’m not personally known to Mr. Santander,’ I explained. ‘It would save some little awkwardness.’

Close upon the heels of my human shield I threaded the passages. Their bright emptiness reassured me; it was inconceivable, I felt, after several safely negotiated turns, that anything sinister could lurk behind those politely rounded corners—Gertrude had had their angularities smoothed into curves; it would be so terrible, she said, if going to bed one stumbled (one easily might) and fell against an edge ! But innocuous as they were, I preferred to avoid them. The short cut through the library would thus serve a double purpose, for it would let us in from an unexpected quarter, from that end of the library, in fact, where the large window, so perilous-looking—really so solid on its struts and stays—perched over the roaring sea.

‘This is the quickest way,’ I said to the butler, pointing to the library door. He turned the handle. ‘It’s locked, sir.’

‘Oh, well.’

We had reached the dining-room at last. The butler paused with his hand on the knob as though by the mere sense of touch he could tell whether he were to be again denied admittance. Or perhaps he was listening or just thinking. The next thing I knew was that he had called out my name and I was standing in the room. Then I heard Mr. Santander’s voice. ‘You can go, Collins.’ The door shut.