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

‘Ha!’ he said, drawing a fold of the window-curtain on to the table and sitting on it. ‘What are you doing here, with a face as long as three wet days?’ He had a vigorous vocabulary and his work was exuberantly morbid.

‘I pass away the time,’ I said.

‘You should have been where I’ve come from,’ he proclaimed. ‘Then you wouldn’t be looking like a candidate for confirmation.’ I disliked his tone, and felt little interest in the place that had made him what he was; but he forestalled my inquiry.

‘I’ve been at Witheling End.’

‘Why,’ I exclaimed in spite of myself, ‘I was there a week ago!’

‘And didn’t you enjoy it?’ he demanded.

‘If you mean in the sense that one enjoys poor health,’ I replied, ‘I enjoyed it immensely. Frankly, I loathed every minute of it.’

He examined me curiously, as though I had some disease.

‘Well!’ he declared. ‘You are a comical character.’

‘I didn’t amuse Oswald,’ I said.

At that he laughed aloud, slipped off the table and danced up and down the room chanting:

‘He’s one of Oswald’s misfits! He’s one of Oswald’s misfits!’

‘Tell me the secret of your success,’ I said, fascinated by his ungainly antics. ‘I suppose you fitted like a glove.’

My friend struck an attitude.

‘It was bone to his bone,’ he assured me.

I tried to visualize this composite skeleton.

‘When I arrived,’ he went on, ‘the place felt unhome-like. Oswald wanted to wrap me up in cotton-wool. But I soon put the lid on that.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘I waited till we were alone,’ said Ponting. His face wore a puzzled expression, as though he were inwardly marvelling at his own astuteness, and he spoke slowly and emphatically, studying the exits and apertures of my room, anxious to bring home to me, by pantomime, the very scent and savour of his discretion.

‘Yes?’ I said.

He looked at me hard, to make sure I had taken it in.

‘I waited till we were alone,’ he repeated, ‘and when we were alone I just touched him on the shoulder like that. Nothing more.’

He gave me a heavy pat. The ‘more’, from which he had refrained, would certainly have been a knock-down blow.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘and then?’

‘He seemed surprised,’ Ponting said, ‘so I drew him aside——’

‘But you told me you were alone,’ I objected.

‘I drew him aside,’ Ponting went on, ‘and said, “Now that we’re between ourselves, there’s something I want to say to you,” and Oswald said “Say on!” or something like that. I think it was “say on” he said.’

‘And what did you say?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t want to be heavy about it,’ Ponting remarked carelessly. ‘I said, “A truce to all this palaver. I shan’t melt, Oswald, and I shan’t break. There’s no need to treat me like a Vestal Virgin.” That was all; but it did the trick.’

‘What trick?’ I inquired.

‘Why,’ said Ponting, plunging into metaphor, ‘the Gateless Barrier was surmounted; the walls of Jericho fell down. It was his soul to my soul, from that time forth. We talked—it was more than that—we conversed; for all the world like two love-birds on an identical twig. “Spit it out,” I said, meaning his trouble, whatever it was. And he did, too. He told me everything.’

‘Ah!’I breathed.

‘I can’t remember his exact words,’ Ponting continued. ‘I can remember better what I said. But he told me he never meant a week-end party to be a frost; his true intent, he said, was all for our delight. That was an eye-opener to me, I tell you, and it sounded like a quotation, that’s how I came to recall it. He said he’d been afraid he’d offended me, and he mentioned you, and some others; so he asked us to Witheling End to make it up. He thought we had a down on him, while we thought he had a down on us,’ Ponting lucidly explained. ‘And then it struck me that I had been a bit snappy the last time he came to see me; I was feeling seedy, off colour, and got my tail thoroughly down. He stayed a long time and I got fed up, and said the studio wasn’t a home for lost animals.’

‘I didn’t say anything like that,’ I mused.

‘No?’ said Ponting. ‘Well, everyone has his own way of being rude. I didn’t mean any harm, but he must have taken it to heart. He said it made him nervous and shy, looking after people in his own house, especially when he felt he had got on their nerves. He did everything he could, he went out of his way to give them a jolly time; but it was killing work, he said, like trying to warm up an icicle; they just moped and drooped and dripped. What he really meant was, they were like warmed-up death. But he didn’t blame them; he said it was all his fault. Then we laughed over the whole affair. Lord, how we laughed! My sides still ache!’ He rocked with merriment and even I couldn’t help laughing a little.

‘Well,’ Ponting said at last, ‘I mustn’t stop any longer, mooning about. Oswald’s waiting for me.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Why, where I deposited him, I suppose,’ said Ponting. ‘To wit, at the foot of the stairs. He won’t thank me for telling you, though. He didn’t want you to know. Would you like to see him?’

I hesitated. ‘I thought I would wait until he called on me.’

Ponting burst into another guffaw. ‘But that’s just what he said about you!’

I began to feel rather foolish. ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘Invite him to come up. But no, stop!’ I cried, for Ponting was already on the landing. ‘Tell him to come up!’

‘I’ll whistle him,’ said Ponting, and I stopped my ears. Ponting was a genius; I should never have thought of that.

How it became known in Settlemarsh that Mr. Blandfoot was the owner of an interesting picture it would be hard to say: the rumour of its existence seemed to come simultaneously from many quarters. But in the full tide of its popularity as a subject of discussion, when its authorship was being eagerly disputed at greater and lesser tea-parties, the question of its origin got somehow overlooked. No one with any reverence for the established order of Settlemarsh society could doubt that Mrs. Marling, of The Grove, would be the first to pronounce judgment on it, or that Mrs. Pepperthwaite, of The Pergola, would be among the first to make inquiry about it: their respective roles were to ask questions and to answer them.

‘So you haven’t met him yet?’ suggested Mrs. Pepperthwaite.

As always, Mrs. Marling paused before replying, and fixed upon her interlocutor that wintry look which had blighted so much budding conversation.

‘Met him?’ she said. ‘No, why should I have met him?’

Mrs. Marling’s questions were generally rhetorical.

‘So you haven’t heard about his picture?’ Mrs. Pepperthwaite suggested.

‘I don’t see why you connect the two things,’ rejoined Mrs. Marling. ‘Have you heard about Raphael’s pictures?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you met Raphael?’

‘No, but Raphael is dead, and Mr. Blandfoot is very much alive; I only just missed him yesterday at Mrs. Peets’s. He had only that moment gone, she told me.’

‘I can’t think why you visit that woman,’ Mrs. Marling observed. ‘Tell me what you see in her.’

The conversation lapsed; but none the less a seed was sown, or rather it was watered. Of course, Mrs. Marling had heard about the picture; she heard about everything in Settlemarsh. But she never decided hastily. She collected evidence, she felt her way, and when the moment was ripe she acted. She invited or she did not invite, and on her action depended or was said to depend, the fate of the newcomer to Settlemarsh. It was chiefly due to her that though Settlemarsh was a large place its society remained a small one. Her verdicts seemed capricious, but they were not really the outcome of caprice; she took her duties as social censor much more seriously than those who murmured at but accepted her decrees would have believed. The reasons she gave for disliking people were generally frivolous, and painful to the parties concerned when they became known, as they nearly always did; but at the back of them, as often as not, was a valid objection which she had unearthed with difficulty and which, to do her justice, she did not always make public.