Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“And how’s my friend Meg?” cried Mr. Waite with exaggerated gaiety, holding up a chocolate almond.

“Who? Meg she was a gypsy?” said Mother. “But hadn’t you heard?”

“Heard? No—has anything happened to her?”

“It was dreadful,” cooed Mother, with a smile which seemed to luxuriate in the dreadfulness. “She was found dead in Covey’s barn, by some boys, just a fortnight ago. Covered with straw. She had apparently been dead for some time. And do you know—”

“Agnes!”

“Well, it is too horrible. But Milly’s heard it already—so why shouldn’t Mr. Waite?”

“Mother! Really!” said Mary.

But Mother, smiling mischievously, was not to be stopped.

“The rats had been at her!” said Mother, triumphantly. “Just think of it. The poor old thing—she had just gone in there and died alone.”

“Good gracious!” said Mr. Waite.

“Really, Mother, you’re a perfect savage.”

“Well, I am sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Waite.

“She was such a picturesque figure, too. And what will the local police worry about, with old Meg gone? They seemed to spend most of their time moving her on.… Do you remember the time we met her down by the pig-farm with her shoes in her hand? She was funny!”

Mother gave a sigh, her attention already wandering elsewhere; Father got up to return his cup to the tray; and the conversation dropped. Was this the best a novelist could do in the way of talk? And the best her family could do in the way of entertaining him? It was disgraceful—truly disgraceful. She rose with her teacup—Mr. Waite might have offered to take it from her—and moved lightly to the table.

“More, Mary?”

“No, thank you, Mother.…”

There was a long silence, during which a dozen starlings could be heard, practicing their boyish whistles, and Mrs. Leighton’s voice in the next garden, giving instructions to a gardener. “No, I think the lupins had better go here,” she was saying. “If the slugs will permit.” If the slugs will permit! How silly. Why can’t people be natural? Why must they always be showing off, trying to say facetious things, even to gardeners? If the slugs will permit!

“Well, Frank, I’ve got a letter to write, if you’ll excuse me.”

“And I must do my dishes. Will you stay in the garden?… If garden it can be called. Though I must say that lilac is really lovely. Last year it really almost broke under its weight of bloom!”

“It’s a charming spot,” said Mr. Waite. “I’ll stay here and gobble up Milly’s hard centers.”

He gave Milly a roguish look through his glasses—oh so consciously roguish—and began filling a filthy old briar pipe.

“I’ll let you have just three!” Milly leaned against his knee, in a scandalously abandoned way, with the open box in her outstretched hand. And what made it worse—oh, infinitely worse—was the fact that Mr. Waite seemed to enjoy it. He put his arm around her, hugged her benevolently, and then ran his fingers through her black frizzy hair.

“In exchange for that,” he smiled, “I’ll let you light my pipe. Do you know how to light a pipe for an old gentleman? Eh?”

“Of course I do! Where are your matches?”

Briskly, with the coquettish air of an all-conquering female, she put down her chocolates and began searching his waistcoat pockets for the box of matches; and finding them, struck a match, wrinkling her nose. He gave several rapid puffs, and the blue clouds of smoke rose in the still air. Her gray eyes admired him—she adored him. Then, laughing, she flung away the match as if it might have been a noxious beetle. It blazed for a moment in the tall grass and went out.

Phweeeeee—phweeeee—whistled a starling on the Leightons’ highest chimney-pot. The warm slant sunlight of evening touched him to brilliance; he was seraphically illuminated and idiotically happy. Up the scale went his self-conscious whistle, till it became a mere silvery mouse-tail-tip of sound, and then down it slid again, to end in a series of ecstatic chattering bubbles. The Leightons’ cat—a meager hollow-flanked tortoise-shell—paused in its prowl along the wall-top, and looked up at the feathery thing with a profound yearning.… So it was all going to end like this. There was to be nothing but this. All her preparations had been for just this. She was to be defrauded of her happiness by Milly. Could anything be more monstrous? Of course she could perhaps find some little excuse for sending Milly indoors—tell her it was time for her to do her “prep,” or some such thing—and thus manage to be left alone for a little with Mr. Waite. But, after all, was it worth the trouble? No. Not in the very least. If he could make so little effort to be agreeable, why should she? One had one’s pride. If one was ignored in this fashion, simply ignored—! And there was so much that they might have talked about! So many enchanting things! All of life, all of life.…

“I’m sorry—I’m afraid I’ll have to go and correct some papers,” she said, rising. “I’ve got some beastly Latin exercises to look through.”

She brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead, and gazed, as if absent-mindedly, at the cat, which was emitting a silent miaow in the direction of the starling.

“Oh,” said Mr. Waite. “How dreary. And on an afternoon like this!”

“Beggars can’t be choosers, Mr. Waite.… Perhaps, if you like, Milly will take you for a little walk.…”

Heroic self-sacrifice!… A deep pang opened in her heart as she glided slowly toward the house. Wasted, all wasted. She ought to go and help Mother with the dishes—Mother would be expecting it—but she was hanged if she would. No.… She climbed the stairs to her room, and shut the door with an infinite gentleness. She had an impulse to rip off her sash savagely, and kick her slippers across the room, but instead she picked up the little pile of Latin exercises and sat down at her table. An oblong of rich tawny sunlight lay on the wall beside her, and she could hear Father moving a chair in the library. The starling whistled again, frightfully pleased with himself, and Milly laughed. Why were things like this? Why?… She opened Elspeth Homard’s paper, which was covered, simply covered, with ink-blots, and tried to focus her attention upon it.

Sunt rerum lacrima. Sunt rerum lacrima .… And suddenly a large tear fell on Elspeth Homard’s paper, right on the word “mensa.”

My friend Ward Hamerton and old Miss Thingumabob (he always referred to her thus) had been sent to Italy by some museum or other to examine and catalogue and describe and photograph certain Etruscan ruins and relics. I don’t know exactly where these things were, or what they were, or whether they were worth the trouble. All I do know is that Hamerton found it a great trial. He did the photography—Miss Thingumabob did the rest. They traveled furiously from one part of Italy to another, riding all day in trains, trying to keep down their expenses, putting up at cheap and obscure hotels. Hamerton was bored to death. He hated it. He disliked photography—God knows how he happened to have got so singular a job. And Miss Thingumabob was by no means an ideal companion. She was about twice his age—white-haired, distinguished-looking, ultra-refined, horribly intellectual. After a hard day’s work of travel and photography, running from museum to museum and ruin to ruin, she would be prepared, and eager, at dinner, to discuss the descent of Van Gogh from Cimabue, or the moral implications in the later novels of Henry James. Hamerton would reply in monosyllables, drinking the wine of the country in great quantity. She was awfully nice—he kept saying to me—awfully nice; but she was a holy terror. And the worst of it was that he couldn’t, in decency, abandon her. He couldn’t run off by himself and have a good time; he had to be a gentleman. If Hamerton had been more dashing, more adventurous—but then there would have been no point to this humble story. Hamerton was nothing of the sort. He was shy, finicky, something of a highbrow; and if he nourished in his bosom a secret desire to be something of a Don Juan, he kept it a very dark secret. At any rate, from Miss Thingumabob.