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

My host didn’t turn round at once. All I could make out, in the big room lighted only by its four candles and the discreet footlights of dusky pictures, was his back, and—reflected in the mirror over the mantelpiece—his eyes and forehead. The same mirror showed my face too, low down on the right-hand side, curiously unrelated. His arms were stretched along the mantelpiece and he was stirring the fire with his foot. Suddenly he turned and faced me.

‘Oh, you’re there,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

We moved to the table and sat down. There was nothing to eat.

I fell to studying his appearance. Every line of his dinner-jacket, every fold in his soft shirt, I knew by heart; I seemed always to have known them.

‘What are you waiting for?’ he suddenly demanded rather loudly. ‘Collins!’ he called. ‘Collins!’ His voice reverberated through the room, but no one came. ‘How stupid of me,’ he muttered; ‘of course, I must ring.’ Oddly enough he seemed to look to me for confirmation. I nodded. Collins appeared, and the meal began.

Its regular sequence soothed him, for presently he said: ‘You must forgive my being so distrait. I’ve had rather a tiring journey—come from a distance, as they say. South America, in fact.’ He drank some wine reflectively. ‘I had one or two things to settle before . . . before joining the Army. Now I don’t think it will be necessary.’

‘Necessary to settle them?’ I said.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I have settled them.’

‘You mean that you will claim exemption as an American citizen?’

Again Mr. Santander shook his head. ‘It would be a reason, wouldn’t it? But I hadn’t thought of that.’

Instinct urged me to let so delicate a topic drop; but my nerves were fearful of a return to silence. There seemed so little, of all that we had in common, to draw upon for conversation.

‘You suffer from bad health, perhaps?’ I suggested. But he demurred again.

‘Even Gertrude didn’t complain of my health,’ he said, adding quickly, as though to smother the sound of her name: ‘But you’re not drinking.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ I stammered. I had meant to say I was a teetotaller.

My host seemed surprised. ‘And yet Gertrude had a long bill at her wine merchant’s,’ he commented, half to himself.

I echoed it involuntarily: ‘Had?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s been paid. That’s partly,’ he explained, ‘why I came home—to pay.’

I felt I couldn’t let this pass.

‘Mr. Santander,’ I said, ‘there’s a great deal in your behaviour that I don’t begin (is that good American?) to understand.’

‘No?’ he murmured, looking straight in front of him.

‘But,’ I proceeded, as truculently as I could, ‘I want you to realize——’

He cut me short. ‘Don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘that I attribute all my wife’s expenditure to you.’

I found myself trying to defend her. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘she has the house to keep up; it’s not run for a mere song, a house like this.’ And with my arm I tried to indicate to Mr. Santander the costly immensity of his domain. ‘You wouldn’t like her to live in a pigsty, would you? And there’s the sea to keep out—why, a night like this must do pounds’ worth of damage!’

‘You are right,’ he said, with a strange look; ‘you even underestimate the damage it has done.’

Of course, I couldn’t fail to catch his meaning. He meant the havoc wrought in his affections. They had been strong, report said—strong enough for her neglect of them to make him leave the country. They weren’t expressed in half-measures, I thought, looking at him with a new sensation. He must have behaved with a high hand, when he arrived. How he must have steeled himself to drive her out of the house, that stormy night, ignoring her piteous protestations, her turns and twists which I had never been able to ignore! She was never so alluring, never so fertile in emotional appeals, as when she knew she was in for a scolding. I could hear her say, ‘But, Maurice, however much you hate me, you couldn’t really want me to get wet !’ and his reply: ‘Get out of this house, and don’t come back till I send for you. As for your lover, leave me to look after him.’ He was looking after me, and soon, no doubt, he would send for her. And for her sake, since he had really returned to take part in her life, I couldn’t desire this estrangement. Couldn’t I even bridge it over, bring it to a close? Beati pacifici . Well, I would be a peace-maker too.

Confident that my noble impulses must have communicated themselves to my host, I looked up from my plate and searched his face for signs of abating rigour. I was disappointed. But should I forego or even postpone my atonement because he was stiff-necked? Only it was difficult to begin. At last I ventured.

‘Gertrude is really very fond of you, you know.’

Dessert had been reached, and I, in token of amity and good-will, had helped myself to a glass of port wine.

For answer he fairly glared at me. ‘Fond of me!’ he shouted.

I was determined not to be browbeaten out of my kind offices.

‘That’s what I said; she has a great heart.’

‘If you mean,’ he replied, returning to his former tone, ‘that it has ample accommodation!—but your recommendations come too late; I have delegated her affections.’

‘To me?’ I asked, involuntarily.

He shook his head. ‘And in any case, why to you?’

‘Because I——’

‘Oh, no,’ he exclaimed passionately. ‘Did she deceive you—has she deceived you into believing that —that you are the alternative to me? You aren’t unique—you have your reduplications, scores of them!’

My head swam, but he went on, enjoying his triumph. ‘Why, no one ever told me about you! She herself only mentioned you once. You are the least—the least of all her lovers!’ His voice dropped. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

‘Where should I be?’ I fatuously asked. But he went on without regarding me.

‘But I remember this house when its silence, its comfort, its isolation, its uniqueness were for us, Gertrude and me and... and for the people we invited. But we didn’t ask many—we preferred to be alone. And I thought at first she was alone,’ he wound up, ‘when I found her this evening.’

‘Then why,’ I asked, ‘did you send her away and not me?’

‘Ah,’ he replied with an accent of finality, ‘I wanted you.’

While he spoke he was cracking a nut with his fingers and it must have had sharp edges, for he stopped, wincing, and held the finger to his mouth.

‘I’ve hurt my nail,’ he said. ‘See?’

He pushed his hand towards me over the polished table. I watched it, fascinated, thinking it would stop; but still it came on, his body following, until if I hadn’t drawn back, it would have touched me, while his chin dropped to within an inch of the table, and one side of his face was pillowed against his upper arm.

‘It’s a handicap, isn’t it?’ he said, watching me from under his brows.

‘Indeed it is,’ I replied; for the fine acorn-shaped nail was terribly torn, a jagged rent revealing the quick, moist and gelatinous. ‘How did you manage to do that?’ I went on, trying not to look at the mutilation which he still held before my eyes.

‘Do you really want to know how I did it?’ he asked. He hadn’t moved, and his question, in its awkward irregular delivery, seemed to reflect the sprawled unnatural position of his body.

‘Do tell me,’ I said, and added, nervously jocular, ‘but first let me guess. Perhaps you met with an accident in the course of your professional activities, when you were mending the lights, I mean, in the library.’