The Collected Short Fiction Part 2

'Why's it so black?' asked Margaret.

'Pudsley. Those chimneys you're so fond of.'

'The prevailing wind's in the other direction. It's behind us.'

'Wish I had my climbing boots,' said Mimi, as they waded into the long gra.s.s. 'Or Wellingtons.' The gra.s.s soaked the double hem of Margaret's mackintosh, which she found a new torture. Two trains pa.s.sed each other, grinding up and charging down. Both appeared to be normal pa.s.senger trains, long and packed. Every single window was closed. This produced an odd effect, as of objects in a bottle; until one realised that it was, of course, a consequence of the weather.

By the time they had stumbled across the soaking fields, and surmounted the high craggy walls between, it was almost completely dark. The house was a square, gaol-like stone box, three storeys high, built about 1860, and standing among large but unluxuriant cypresses. the first trees below the valley ridge. The blackness of the building was no effect of the light, but the consequence of inlaid soot.

'It's right on top of the railway,' cried Mimi. Struggling through the murk, they had not noticed that.

There was a huge front door, grim with grime.

'What a hope!' said Mimi, as she hauled on the bell handle.

'It's a curious bell,' said Margaret, examining the mechanism and valiant to the soaking, shivering end. 'It's like the handles you see in signal boxes.'

The door was opened by a figure illumined only by an oil lamp standing on a wall bracket behind.

'What is it?' The not uneducated voice had a curious throat undertone.

'My friend and I are on a walking tour,' said Margaret, who, as the initiator of the farmhouses project, always took charge on these occasions. 'We got badly lost on the moors. We hoped to reach Pudsley,' she continued, seeing that this was no farmhouse, open to a direct self-invitation. 'But what with getting lost and the rain, we're in rather a mess. Particularly me. I wonder if you could possibly help us? I know it's outrageous, but we are in distress.'

'Of course,' said another voice from the background. 'Come in and get warm. Come in quickly and Beech will shut the door.' This slight inverted echo of the words of the man at the Guest House stirred unpleasing a.s.sociations in Margaret's brain.

The weak light disclosed Beech to be a tall muscular figure in a servant's black suit. The face, beneath a ma.s.s of black hair, cut like a musician's, seemed smooth and pale. The second speaker was a handsome well-built man, possibly in the late forties, and also wearing a black suit and tie, which suggested mourning. He regarded the odd figures of the two women without any suggestion of the unusual, as they lowered their dripping rucksacks to the tiled floor, unfastened their outer clothes running with water, and stood before him, two dim khaki figures, in shirts and shorts. Margaret felt not only ghastly wet but as if she were naked.

'Let me introduce myself,' said the master of the house. 'I am Wendley Roper. I shall expect you both to dine with me and stay the night. Tomorrow will put an entirely different face on things.' A slight lordliness of manner, by no means unattractive to Margaret, suggested that he mingled little with modern men.

Margaret introduced Mimi and herself; then said, 'We heard higher up the valley that a Miss Roper lived here.'

'My aunt. She died very recently. You see.' He indicated his clothes.

'I am so sorry,' said Margaret conventionally.

'It was deeply distressing. I refer to the manner of her death.' He offered the shivering women no details, but continued, 'Now Beech will take you to your room. The Rafters Room, Beech. I fear I have no other available, as the whole first floor and much else is taken up by my grandfather's collection. I trust you will have no objection to occupying the same room? It is a primitive one, I regret to say. There is only one bed at present, but I shall have another moved up.'

They a.s.sured him they had no objection.

'What about clothes? My aunt's would scarcely serve.' Then, unexpectedly, he added, 'And Beech is too big and tall for either of you.'

'It's quite all right,' said Margaret. 'Our rucksacks are watertight and we've both got a change.'

'Good,' said Wendley Roper seriously. 'Beech will conduct you, and dinner will be served when you've changed. There'll be some hot water sent up.'

'You are being most extraordinarily kind to us,' said Margaret.

'We should take the chances life brings us,' said Wendley Roper.

Beech lit a second oil lamp which had been standing on a large tallboy, and, with the women carrying their rucksacks, imperfectly illuminated the way upstairs. On the first-floor landing there were several large doors, such as admit to the bedrooms of a railway hotel, but no furniture was to be seen anywhere, nor were the staircase or either landing carpeted. At the top of the house Beech admitted them to a room the door of which required unlocking. He did not stand aside to let them enter first, but went straight in and drew heavy curtains before the windows, having set down the light on the floor. The women joined him. This time there was a heavy brown carpet, but the primitiveness of the room was indisputable. Beyond the carpet and matching curtains, the furnishings consisted solely of a bedstead. It was a naked iron bedstead, crude and ugly.

'I'll bring you hot water, as Mr Roper said. Then a basin and towels and some chairs and so forth.'

'Thank you,' said Margaret. Beech retired, closing the door.

'Wonder if the door locks?' Mimi crossed the room. 'Not it. The key's on Beech's chain. I don't fancy Beech.'

'Can't be helped.' Margaret had already discarded her clothes, and was drying her body on a small towel removed from her rucksack.

'I'm not wet through, like you, but G.o.d it's cold for the time of year.' Mimi's alternative outfit consisted of a dark grey polo-necked sweater and a pair of lighter flannel trousers. Soon she had donned it, first putting on a bra.s.siere and knickers to mark renewed contact with society. 'Bit of a pigsty, isn't it?' she continued. 'But I suppose we must give thanks.'

'I rather liked our host. At least he didn't shilly-shally about taking us in.' Margaret was towelling systematically.

'Got a nice voice too.' Mimi decided that she would be warmer with her sweater inside her trousers, and made the alteration. 'Unlike Beech. Beech talks like plum jam. Where, by the way, are the rafters?'

The room, which was much longer than it was wide, and contained windows only in each end wall, a great distance apart, was ceiled with orthodox, though cracked and dirty, plaster.

'I expect they're just above us.'

'Up there?' Mimi indicated a trap-door in a corner of the ceiling.

Margaret had not previously noticed it. But before she could speak, the room was filled with a sudden rumbling crescendo, which made the ma.s.sive floorboards vibrate and the light bed leap up and down upon them. Even the big black stones of the walls seemed slightly to jostle.

'The trains!'

Dashing to a window, Mimi dragged back the curtains, and lifting the sash, waved, her mood suddenly one of excitement, as the uproar swept down towards Pudsley.

Then she cried, 'Margaret! The window's barred.'

But Margaret's attention was elsewhere. During the din the door had opened, and Beech, a large old-fashioned can steaming in one hand, a large old-fashioned wash-basin dangling from the other, was in the room, and she absurdly naked.

'I beg your pardon,' he was saying. 'I don't think you heard me knock.'

'Get out,' said Mimi, flaming, her soul fired by an immemorial tabu.

'It's perfectly all right,' intervened Margaret, grasping the small wet towel.

'I'll fetch you some towels.'

He was gone again. He seemed totally undisturbed.

'He couldn't help it,' said Margaret. 'It was the train.'

Mimi lowered the window and re-drew the thick curtains. 'I've an idea,' she said.

'Oh! What? About Beech?'

'I'll tell you later. I'm going to wait at the door.'

Soon Beech returned with two large and welcome bath towels and a huge, improbable new cake of expensive scented soap. Margaret had filled the rose-encircled basin with glorious hot water; but before washing, Mimi stood by the door to receive two simple wooden bedroom chairs, a large wooden towel-horse and a capacious chamber-pot, before Beech descended to a.s.sist with dinner. 'I'll set you up another bed and bring along some bedding later,' he said, as his tall shape descended the tenebrous stair, now lit at intervals by oil lamps flickering on brackets.

Mimi rolled up the sleeves of her sweater and immersed her rather fat arms to the elbows. Margaret was drawing on a girdle. Her spare clothes consisted in another shirt, similar to the one the rain had soaked, but stiff and unworn, a cream-coloured linen skirt of fashionable length, and a tie which matched the skirt. She also had two pairs of expensive stockings, and a spare pair of shoes of lighter weight than Mimi's. Soon she was dressed, had knotted her tie, and was easing the stockings up what she felt must be starkly weather-roughed legs. She felt wonderfully dry, warm, and well. Her underclothes felt delightful. She felt that, after all, things might have turned out worse.

While Margaret was dressing, Mimi had been scrubbing her hands and forearms, then submitting her short hair to a vigorous, protracted grooming with a small bristly hairbrush. She was to busy to speak. She concentrated upon her simple toilet with an absorption Margaret would not have brought to dressing for her first dinner in evening clothes with a man.

With one stocking attached to its suspender, the other blurring her ankle, Margaret leaned back comfortably and asked, 'What was your idea?'

Mimi returned brush and comb to her rucksack. 'I think it's obvious. Old Ma Roper was mad.'

Margaret's warm world waned a little. 'You mean the window bars? This might have been a nursery.'

'Not only. You remember what he said? "The manner of her death was deeply distressing." And that's not all.'

'What else?'

'Don't you remember? Her waving to the trains?'

'I don't think that means she was mad. She might merely have been lonely.'

'Long time to be lonely. Let's go down if you're ready.'

Beech was waiting for them in the gloomy hall. 'This way, please.'

He opened a huge door and they entered the dining room.

Very large plates, dishes, and cutlery covered the far end of a heavy-looking wooden table, at the head of which sat their host, with a place laid on either side of him. The room was lit by two sizzling oil lamps, vast and of antiquated pattern, which hung from heavy circular plaster mouldings in the discoloured ceiling. The marble and iron fireplace was in ma.s.sive keeping with the almost immovable waiting-room chairs. On the dark-green lincrusta of the walls engravings hung behind gla.s.s so dirty that in the weak green light it was difficult to make out the subjects. A plain round clock clicked like a revolving turnstile from above the fireplace. As the women appeared, it jerked from 2:26 to 2:27. By habit Mimi looked at her watch. The time was just after eight o'clock.

'Immediately you entered the house, the rain stopped,' said Wendley Roper by way of greeting.

'Then we'd better be on our way after dinner,' said Mimi.

'Most certainly not. I meant only that if you'd arrived a few minutes later, I might have lost the pleasure of your company. Will you sit here?' He was drawing back the heavy chair for Mimi to sit on his right. Beech performed the like office for Margaret. 'I should have been utterly disconsolate. You both look remarkably attractive.'

Beech disappeared and returned with a tureen so capacious that neither of the women would have cared to lift it. Roper ladled out soup into the huge plates. As he did so, a train roared past outside.

'I suppose the railway came after the house had been here some time?' asked Margaret, feeling that some reference to the matter seemed called for.

'By no means,' answered Roper. 'The man who built the railway, built the house. He was my grandfather, Joseph Roper, generally known as Wide Joe. Wide Joe liked trains.'

'There's not much else for company,' remarked Mimi, engulfing the hot soup.

'This was one of the last main line railways to be built,' continued Roper. 'Everyone said it was impossible, but they were keen all the same, partly because land in this valley was very cheap, as it still is. But my grandfather was an engineering genius, and in the end he did it. The engravings in this room show the different stages of the work.'

'I suppose he regarded it as his masterpiece and wanted to live next to it when he retired?' politely enquired Margaret.

'Not when he retired. As a matter of fact, he never did retire. He built this house right at the beginning of the work and lived here until the end. The railway took twenty years to build.'

'I don't know much about railway building, but that's surely a very long time?'

'There were difficulties. Difficulties of a kind my grandfather had never expected. The cost of them ruined the company, which had to amalgamate in consequence. They nearly drove my grandfather mad.' Margaret could not stop herself from glancing at Mimi. 'Everything conspired together against him. Things happened which he had not looked for.'

Beech reappeared and, removing the soup, subst.i.tuted a pile of sausages contained in a rampart of mashed potato. As he manuvred the hot and heavy dish, Margaret noticed a large, dull coal-black ring on the third finger of his left hand.

'Primitive fare,' apologized Roper. 'All you can get nowadays.'

None the less, the two women found it unbelievably welcome.

'I do see now what you might call railway influences about the house,' said Margaret.

'My grandfather lived in the days when a railway engineer was responsible for every detail of design. Not only of the tunnels and bridges, but the locomotives and carriages, the stations and signals, even the posters and tickets. He had sole responsibility for everything. An educated man could never have stood the strain. Wide Joe educated himself.'

At intervals through dinner, pa.s.sing trains rattled the heavy table and heavy objects upon it.

'Now tell me about yourselves,' said Wendley Roper, as if he had just concluded the narrative of his own life. 'But first have another sausage each. There's only stewed fruit ahead.' They accepted.

'We're civil servants,' said Mimi. 'That's what brought us together. I come from London, and Margaret comes from Devonshire. My father is a hairdresser and Margaret's father is a Lord. Now you know all about us.'

'An entirely bankrupt Lord, I regret to say,' added Margaret quietly.

'I gather more Lords are bankrupt in these times,' said Roper sympathetically.

'And many hairdressers,' said Mimi.

'Everyone but civil servants, in fact?' said Roper.

'That's why we're civil servants,' replied Mimi, eviscerating her last sausage from its inedible skin. 'Though you don't seem altogether bankrupt,' she added. Food was increasing her vitality.

He made no reply. Beech had entered with a big gla.s.s bowl, deeply but unbeautifully cut, filled with stewed damsons.

'The local fruit,' said Roper despondently.

But they even ate stewed damsons.

'I am absolutely delighted to have you here,' he remarked when he had served them. 'I see almost no one. Least of all attractive women.'

His tones were so direct and sincere that Margaret immediately felt pleased. Having, until this year she took a job, lived all her life against a background of desperate and, as she thought, undeserved money troubles, and in a remote country district, she had had little to do with men. Even such a simple compliment from a good-looking and well-spoken man still meant disproportionately much to her. She observed that Mimi seemed to notice nothing whatever.

'I don't know what would have become of us without you,' said Margaret.

'Food for the crows,' said Mimi.

Suddenly the conversation loosened up, becoming comparatively cordial, intimate, and general. Roper disclosed himself as intelligent, well-informed, and a good listener to those less intelligent and well-informed, at least when they were young women. Mimi's conversation became much steadier and more pointed than usual. Margaret found herself saying less and less, while enjoying herself more.

'Beech will bring us coffee in the drawing-room,' said Roper, 'if drawing-room's the right expression.'

They moved across the hall to another bleak apartment, this time walled with official-looking books, long series of volumes bound in dark-blue cloth or in stout, rough-edged paper. Again there were two complicated but not very efficient lamps hissing and spurting from the coffered ceiling. The furniture consisted in old-fashioned leather-covered armchairs and sofas; and, before the window at the end of the room, a huge desk, bearing high heaps of varied doc.u.ments, disused and dusty. About the room in gla.s.s cases were scale models of long-extinct locomotives and bygone devices for ensuring safety on the railways. Above the red marble mantel was a vast print of a railway accident, freely coloured by hand.

'You do keep things as the old man left them,' said Mimi.