65 Short Stories (90 page)

‘The dream made an extraordinary impression upon both of us. It frightened my wife, and she became for a little less bitter and more tolerant. But when I walked up the stairs to our apartment it was impossible for me not to look over the balusters and reflect how easy it would be to do what she had dreamt. The balusters were dangerously low. A quick gesture and the thing was done. It was hard to put the thought out of my mind. Then some months later my wife awakened me one night. I was very tired and I was exasperated. She was white and trembling. She had had the dream again. She burst into tears and asked me if I hated her. I swore by all the saints of the Russian calendar that I loved her. At last she went to sleep again. It was more than I could do. I lay awake. I seemed to see her falling down the well of the stairs, and I heard her shriek and the thud as she struck the stone floor. I could not help shivering.’

The Russian stopped and beads of sweat stood on his forehead. He had told the story well and fluently so that I had listened with attention. There was still some vodka in the bottle; he poured it out and swallowed it at a gulp. ‘And how did your wife eventually die?’ I asked after a pause.

He took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

‘By an extraordinary coincidence she was found late one night at the bottom of the stairs with her neck broken.’

‘Who found her?’

‘She was found by one of the lodgers who came in shortly after the catastrophe.’

‘And where were you?’

I cannot describe the look he gave me of malicious cunning. His little black eyes sparkled.

‘I was spending the evening with a friend of mine. I did not come in till an hour later.’

At that moment the waiter brought us the dish of meat that we had ordered, and the Russian fell upon it with good appetite. He shovelled the food into his mouth in enormous mouthfuls.

I was taken aback. Had he really been telling me in this hardly veiled manner that he had murdered his wife? That obese and sluggish man did not look like a murderer; I could not believe that he would have had the courage. Or was he making a sardonic joke at my expense?

In a few minutes it was time for me to go and catch my train. I left him and I have not seen him since. But I have never been able to make up my mind whether he was serious or jesting.

THE COLONEL’S LADY

♦

All this happened two or three years before the outbreak of the war.

The Peregrines were having breakfast. Though they were alone and the table was long they sat at opposite ends of it. From the walls George Peregrine’s ancestors, painted by the fashionable painters of the day, looked down upon them. The butler brought in the morning post. There were several letters for the colonel, business letters, 
The Times, 
and a small parcel for his wife Evie. He looked at his letters and then, opening 
The Times, 
began to read it. They finished breakfast and rose from the table. He noticed that his wife hadn’t opened the parcel.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Only some books.’

‘Shall I open it for you?’

‘If you like.’

He hated to cut string and so with some difficulty untied the knots.

‘But they’re all the same,’ he said when he had unwrapped the parcel. ‘What on earth d’you want six copies of the same book for?’ He opened one of them. ‘Poetry’ Then he looked at the title-page.
When Pyramids Decay, 
he read, by E. K. Hamilton. Eva Katherine Hamilton: that was his wife’s maiden name. He looked at her with smiling surprise. ‘Have you written a book, Evie? You are a slyboots.’

‘I didn’t think it would interest you very much. Would you like a copy?’

‘Well, you know poetry isn’t much in my line, but-yes, I’d like a copy; I’ll read it. I’ll take it along to my study. I’ve got a lot to do this morning.’

He gathered up 
The Times, 
his letters, and the book, and went out. His study was a large and comfortable room, with a big desk, leather arm-chairs, and what he called ‘trophies of the chase’ on the walls. On the bookshelves were works of reference, books on farming, gardening, fishing, and shooting, and books on the last war, in which he had won an M.C. and a D.S.O. For before his marriage he had been in the Welsh Guards. At the end of the war he retired and settled down to the life of a country gentleman in the spacious house, some twenty miles from Sheffield, which one of his forebears had built in the reign of George III. George Peregrine had an estate of some fifteen hundred acres which he managed with ability; he was a Justice of the Peace and performed his duties conscientiously. During the season he rode to hounds two days a week. He was a good shot, a golfer, and though now a little over fifty could still play a hard game of tennis. He could describe himself with propriety as an all-round sportsman.

He had been putting on weight lately, but was still a fine figure of a man; tall, with grey curly hair, only just beginning to grow thin on the crown, frank blue eyes, good features, and a high colour. He was a public-spirited man, chairman of any number of local organizations and, as became his class and station, a loyal member of the Conservative Party. He looked upon it as his duty to see to the welfare of the people on his estate and it was a satisfaction to him to know that Evie could be trusted to tend the sick and succour the poor. He had built a cottage hospital on the outskirts of the village and paid the wages of a nurse out of his own pocket All he asked of the recipients of his bounty was that at elections, county or general, they should vote for his candidate. He was a friendly man, affable to his inferiors, considerate with his tenants, and popular with the neighbouring gentry. He would have been pleased and at the same time slightly embarrassed if someone had told him he was a jolly good fellow. That was what he wanted to be. He desired no higher praise.

It was hard luck that he had no children. He would have been an excellent father, kindly but strict, and would have brought up his sons as gentlemen’s sons should be brought up, sent them to Eton, you know, taught them to fish, shoot, and ride. As it was, his heir was a nephew, son of his brother killed in a motor accident, not a bad boy, but not a chip off the old block, no, sir, far from it; and would you believe it, his fool of a mother was sending him to a coeducational school. Evie had been a sad disappointment to him. Of course she was a lady, and she had a bit of money of her own; she managed the house uncommonly well and she was a good hostess. The village people adored her. She had been a pretty little thing when he married her, with a creamy skin, light brown hair, and a trim figure, healthy too, and not a bad tennis player; he couldn’t understand why she’d had no children; of course she was faded now, she must be getting on for five and forty; her skin was drab, her hair had lost its sheen, and she was as thin as a rail. She was always neat and suitably dressed, but she didn’t seem to bother how she looked, she wore no make-up and didn’t even use lipstick; sometimes at night when she dolled herself up for a party you could tell that once she’d been quite attractive, but ordinarily she was-well, the sort of woman you simply didn’t notice. A nice woman, of course, a good wife, and it wasn’t her fault if she was barren, but it was tough on a fellow who wanted an heir of his own loins; she hadn’t any vitality, that’s what was the matter with her. He supposed he’d been in love with her when he asked her to marry him, at least sufficiently in love for a man who wanted to marry and settle down, but with time he discovered that they had nothing much in common. She didn’t care about hunting, and fishing bored her. Naturally they’d drifted apart. He had to do her the justice to admit that she’d never bothered him. There’d been no scenes. They had no quarrels.

She seemed to take it for granted that he should go his own way. When he went up to London now and then she never wanted to come with him. He had a girl there, well, she wasn’t exactly a girl, she was thirty-five if she was a day, but she was blonde and luscious and he only had to wire ahead of time and they’d dine, do a show, and spend the night together. Well, a man, a healthy normal man had to have some fun in his life. The thought crossed his mind that if Evie hadn’t been such a good woman she’d have been a better wife; but it was not the sort of thought that he welcomed and he put it away from him.

George Peregrine finished his 
Times 
and being a considerate fellow rang the bell and told the butler to take it to Evie. Then he looked at his watch. It was half past ten and at eleven he had an appointment with one of his tenants. He had half an hour to spare.

‘I’d better have a look at Evie’s book,’ he said to himself

He took it up with a smile. Evie had a lot of highbrow books in her sitting-room, not the sort of books that interested him, but if they amused her he had no objection to her reading them. He noticed that the volume he now held in his hand contained no more than ninety pages. That was all to the good. He shared Edgar Allan Poe’s opinion that poems should be short. But as he turned the pages he noticed that several of Evie’s had long lines of irregular length and didn’t rhyme. He didn’t like that. At his first school, when he was a little boy, he remembered learning a poem that began: 
The boy stood on the burning deck, 
and later, at Eton, one that started: Ruin 
seize thee, ruthless king; 
and then there was 
Henry V; 
they’d had to take that, one half He stared at Evie’s pages with consternation.

‘That’s not what I call poetry,’ he said.

Fortunately it wasn’t all like that. Interspersed with the pieces that looked so odd, lines of three or four words and then a line of ten or fifteen, there were little poems, quite short, that rhymed, thank God, with the lines all the same length. Several of the pages were just headed with the word 
Sonnet, 
and out of curiosity he counted the lines; there were fourteen of them. He read them. They seemed all right, but he didn’t quite know what they were all about. He repeated to himself: Ruin 
seize thee, ruthless king.

‘Poor Evie,’ he sighed.

At that moment the fanner he was expecting was ushered into the study, and putting the book down he made him welcome. They embarked on their business.

‘I read your book, Evie,’ he said as they sat down to lunch. ‘Jolly good. Did it cost you a packet to have it printed?’

‘No, I was lucky. I sent it to a publisher and he took it.’

Not much money in poetry, my dear,’ he said in his good-natured, hearty way.

‘No, I don’t suppose there is. What did Bannock want to see you about this morning?’

Bannock was the tenant who had interrupted his reading of Evie’s poems. ‘He’s asked me to advance the money for a pedigree bull he wants to buy. He’s a good man and I’ve half a mind to do it.’

George Peregrine saw that Evie didn’t want to talk about her book and he was not sorry to change the subject. He was glad she had used her maiden name on the title-page; he didn’t suppose anyone would ever hear about the book, but he was proud of his own unusual name and he wouldn’t have liked it if some damned penny-a-liner had made fun of Evie’s effort in one of the papers.

During the few weeks that followed he thought it tactful not to ask Evie any questions about her venture into verse, and she never referred to it. It might have been a discreditable incident that they had silently agreed not to mention. But then a strange thing happened. He had to go to London on business and he took Daphne out to dinner. That was the name of the girl with whom he was in the habit of passing a few agreeable hours whenever he went to town.

‘Oh, George,’ she said, ’is that your wife who’s written a book they’re all talking about?’

‘What on earth d’you mean?’

Well, there’s a fellow I know who’s a critic. He took me out to dinner the other night and he had a book with him. “Got anything for me to read?” I said. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s your cup of tea,” he said. “It’s poetry. I’ve just been reviewing it.”

“No poetry for me,” I said. “It’s about the hottest stuff I ever read,” he said. ‘Selling like hot cakes. And it’s damned good.’

‘Who’s the book by?’ asked George.

‘A woman called Hamilton. My friend told me that wasn’t her real name. He said her real name was Peregrine. “Funny,” I said, “I know a fellow called Peregrine.”

“Colonel in the army,” he said. “Lives near Sheffield.’

‘I’d just as soon you didn’t talk about me to your friends,’ said George with a frown of vexation.

‘Keep your shirt on, dearie. Who d’you take me for? I just said: “It’s not the same one.’ Daphne giggled. ‘My friend said: “They say he’s a regular Colonel Blimp.’

George had a keen sense of humour.

‘You could tell them better than that,’ he laughed. ‘If my wife had written a book I’d be the first to know about it, wouldn’t I?’

‘I suppose you would.’

Anyhow the matter didn’t interest her and when the colonel began to talk of other things she forgot about it. He put it out of his mind too. There was nothing to it, he decided, and that silly fool of a critic had just been pulling Daphne’s leg. He was amused at the thought of her tackling that book because she had been told it was hot stuff and then finding it just a lot of bosh cut up into unequal lines.