A Little Treachery

27

A gritty dust blew down the road and in at the front-door which Catherine held open while looking up, from her disadvantageous position of two steps below the pavement, at the person who had knocked. It was late afternoon. The sun streaming down the road poured a sidelong light upon passers-by, who appeared briefly before door or window in their accidental poses, with the pleasant, diverting informality and in the hard lights and darks of a sunny snapshot. It was thus that her visitor was presented to her. For the high wind blowing in gusts and the noise of the passing traffic carried half one’s words away and the caller’s humorous sense of this was expressed in his abandonment of speech for gestures. It all had a touch of playfulness; and it was in itself a dry comment upon the character of her house.

‘Do come inside,’ she exclaimed. ‘The dust blows in so –’

The tall, fair man of good appearance who was smiling and holding out his hand to her stepped briskly into the room. Yes, it was Hungerford. She closed the door and they shook hands.

At once, smiling and friendly but rather mannered, he had put his hat down, crossed the room and was stooping his tall form to the low-set little window on the garden side to glance sprightlily out. ‘Charming!’ he said, breathing the word with an enthusiast air which she felt to be exaggerative and satirical, though perhaps nervously so. ‘And there’s your lovely view – over which you both rhapsodized, I remember.’ Here he threw at her a glance in which an amused gleam was perceptible.

‘And how is your sister – how is my friend, Miss Clemence? As enchanted with it all as ever?’

In the whimsical tone which he gave this inquiry, in its impertinent form, she discerned his remembrance of certain overstrained expressions of gratitude, of artless flattery, which Clem had lavished on him; which might have been taken by a vain man as an indication that he had made something of a hit.

Yes, light, lively, the corners of his mouth twitching with smiles, Hungerford was amusing himself with the memory of Clem.

Catherine was thinking, ‘Margaret hasn’t told him, probably hasn’t seen him. They’ve failed to mention it to him. He doesn’t know. . . . Or has he perhaps just forgotten? Has the little fact slipped his memory?’ But of course that was nonsense. He did not know.

At any rate, he had not, certainly had not, come to see how they were getting on, and so she explained, ‘I’m afraid Simon is out.’

All this had been carried through in one impulsive and breathless sweep and left them both smiling mechanically.

However, at her introduction of the child’s name, his manner notably changed, showing an underlying concern, and the word, ‘Out!’ escaped him in a tone not of surprise or disappointment but of thoughtfulness. This serious face, to which the drawn eyebrows gave a feeling and anxious air, was a different face from the smiling one, the conscious one which he had hitherto shown, and it occurred to her that it was a face with which she was quite unfamiliar.

‘So you’ve come all the way from Scotland – just to see him?’ she said vaguely.

He explained, ‘Oh, I have business down here – a flying visit I was obliged to make.’ Now he was serious, and his genuine and confidential tone was a better one. ‘Oh, it’s not, Miss Hare, that I don’t realize he’s in good hands! Old friends of Margaret, as you are. But a boy, you know – a boy of his age – For one thing, he should have companions – I mean, children. My wife acted a little hastily, was pushed to it, in fact, by the awkward circumstances. He has been behaving badly with her, you know. A naughty boy, in short. But how do you find him? Troublesome, I’m afraid? Indeed, I’m extremely obliged –’

She was silent, and hung fire so long that he looked at her. It had occurred to her that by some remote chance that rage-inspired sneer in her letter had reached him. Yet, if so, was it possible that he, of all people, could have taken it at its face value? But now a fearful surge of feeling affected her blood, clouding her sight and making her temples beat. Still, she contrived to say, ‘How do I find him? Why, he was a little difficult at first. But, fortunately, I have a young friend staying with me at present who is well used to small boys; she has two small brothers, and she is very good with him. Very sensible.’ As she spoke, she thought that this was the case. ‘He seems quite happy . . .’

Hungerford listened attentively, looking her in the face with an earnestness in which she detected an appeal. He mused, turned his eyes away, and seemed in indecision. He even put out his hand and fingered the match-boarding under the window, and having done this struck it lightly with some papers he was carrying, as if to express contempt (as it seemed to her) of its gimcrack nature, or perhaps cynical knowledge of what its shoddy screen was designed to hide. But all this he did, clearly, quite unconsciously, his mind being full of his boy.

‘Of course. Ah, yes, good. . . . And, after all, it’s only a few months.’ He was uneasy now, in open discomfort of mind; he would have been supremely thankful if he could have found some reasonable excuse for catching up Simon and carrying him away, time and means and some reasonable excuse, but had none of these. ‘And a few months in such surroundings won’t –’ Then with a change to consciousness and the social tone, ‘What splendid weather! It looks as if we’re in for a fine spell. He’s out of doors, I suppose, most of the time?’

‘Much of it.’

He cast his eyes round the floor, where the boarding showed beyond the carpet and had been renewed; glanced at the ceiling, at the damp-stained wall. And all these little unconscious gestures betrayed him, to her eyes. Or was she now in such a sensitized state that the least hint of guilty consciousness reached her fearfully magnified? He expelled, at length, a resigned breath. ‘Perhaps it’s as well – that he’s out, I mean. Perhaps I should take it as a sign and withdraw? I came quite on an impulse, you know – haven’t even seen my wife yet to mention it – she would certainly have told me I should only unsettle him. What do you think? You won’t thank me if I upset him again, I suppose? As well, perhaps, simply not to tell him that I came. He’s really quite fit? And happy, you say? Yes, I know you sent a good report – but I had a hankering to investigate for myself.’ A short awkward laugh. ‘You know he has been a thoroughly bad fellow at home of late! And I seem nowadays always so frantically busy. So you had some little trouble with him at the start?’

‘He was rather difficult. He seemed to have made up his mind not to talk to us.’

‘Ah!’ Hungerford threw in, as if struck painfully.

‘But my friend has quite won him over. It’s really all her doing. She has taken him to Aldershot this afternoon. They’re to have tea there.’

‘A young girl, you say? Ah, yes, that’s part of the trouble, though, he likes companions much older than himself.’ And his brow clouded and he pinched his lip. ‘He doesn’t mix well with children of his own age – or younger – and he must learn to do so.’

Then he asked her various questions, which she answered calmly and equably. She took him upstairs to show him where the child slept; fortunately she had just cleared up Emmy’s distinctive litter and set the room all in careful order; it was sunny and airy, and there had been space enough, with a little manœuvring, for Simon’s cot by the window, where his toys were ranged on the sill. Nevertheless, he did not like it. His eye fell upon the little boy’s playthings and for some moments he stood fingering these, while into his face there came a kind of stillness and misery, a look of pained tenderness. It was, or it should have been, affecting; yet where in all this display of solicitude was there any thought but for his own?

‘You’ll see that he doesn’t play too near the stream? – but, yes, of course you will! It’s deep and the current’s strong.’

It could be seen that he was profoundly dissatisfied with the position, but that he was a man pressed with business, and, casting about in his mind for an alternative, could for the moment hit upon nothing. He lingered, pondered. He roused himself to speak courteously and with appreciation of the evidences of her care. Singularly enough, whatever he doubted, it was not her trustworthiness. He simply doubted, perhaps, whether it was a house fit for human habitation.

At last, ‘Oh, well, I see I must go! That’s how it is!’ he cried, throwing out his hands in resignation and laughing slightly. She had an impression that he was in a sense relieved, that he had dreaded a scene with the child.

‘And you are both happy in your little house, I hope?’ he then brought out carelessly, while picking up his hat, as if simply to introduce gracefully the moment of leave-taking, though his thoughts were elsewhere.

With that strange, weak insufficiency, that enormity of understatement, which seems the only possible tone when one is forced to make reference to a subject too anguishing to speak of at all, she answered, ‘No.’

‘You are not satisfied! But what is wrong?’ But it seemed as if he did not take her to be serious, or perhaps that he did not intend to take her seriously; at all events, he kept to a light tone. ‘Well, I see you’ve not tackled the garden yet. But perhaps you prefer it wild? I remember how you admired the wild flowers,’ he said gaily, openly bantering.

‘The house is very damp,’ she heard herself answering at last, and was stopped by the sound of her own voice, so timid and uncertain of itself that it was absurd in a woman of her age, she felt.

Sure enough, he compressed his lips ironically. But now he was slightly sulky, barely restraining impatience, like a man made to feel awkward by a socially clumsy woman, and resenting it.

‘Oh, these walls are not cavity walls, they are solid, they don’t build like this nowadays; with such walls there is always condensation. But you can’t, you know, expect of a house at least three centuries old – and at that price, too, a very low price, a bargain price – that it shouldn’t have its little weaknesses. You’re aware, of course, that the unblemished period house has an altogether arbitrary value? You know I told you – I warned you – you remember, of course?’ And he positively laughed, though no longer quite amiably, rallying her on some little lack of reason, some naïveté.

She said not a word more, and he went on talking, while a strange, detached feeling, something like, ‘This is very interesting,’ came over her, and she found herself studying the man’s face minutely (such was her degree of detachment) till he presently turned his head away and went to the window again.

‘Damp! Ah, that, I’m afraid, is simply a feature of the whole valley, as I told you at the time. In districts like this, the water table is very high. Yes, my dear Miss Hare – why – a stream, those deep ponds – the very name of the place, the Spring Plots, as it’s known locally – come! What did you expect? You must pay for these picturesque accessories to your property. Didn’t I warn you that the lower parts of the town are very damp – sometimes flooded? Oh, yes, undoubtedly I did! But you were so keen, you remember, you would hardly listen.’

‘I didn’t know it was called the Spring Plots – I have never heard the name till this moment!’ Catherine exclaimed, almost lightly, in the mild inconsequent manner of one whose thoughts have been diverted by some surprising trifle at a moment of tragedy.

His manner was now quite contemptuous, it was so openly amused. ‘Surely I did tell you? Perhaps you thought it referred to the season, just a pretty name? No, this ground is full of springs.’

He spoke very naturally, and once more glanced round the tiny room.

‘It is cramped, I dare say. Far too small for comfort. But that you could see for yourselves. Well, now, what could we do about it? What about an extension? Have you thought any more of that suggestion of mine? You may remember I suggested that this middle room might be added to – a bay carried out on pillars, you know, over the right-of-way – even a few feet would vastly improve it. It would be a simple matter.’ He had retained his good manners, he was prepared to be patient and helpful; he was, perhaps, genuinely sorry that they should have any complaint; if he was a little offended (because, after all, the whole thing had been a condescension on his part) he was now doing his best to hide it from her. But he was unguarded; and it was the slighting expression in his eyes as they now and again swept over her person which suddenly enlightened her.

‘But that’s only the local name, the Spring Plots? One would not have heard it unless one had spoken to the local people? It isn’t the postal address – not the address given us by the agent –’

‘Naturally not,’ he murmured, smiling.

‘And you knew it was called that, and why! And you knew that the neighbourhood was very poor, regarded like that locally. A very poor little bit of property – a squalid little house –’

‘You also, I take it, must have seen that! Come, how could you expect to get anything else for the money? That was really – if you’ll excuse bluntness – rather simple.’

Ah, yes, in a flash she understood it all; it was as if, with that glance, he had deliberately allowed her to look clear into his mind; and her sense of what she saw there was so overwhelming that she cried out involuntarily, in a voice which shook a little with shock, ‘I see! Yes, I see how it is. You simply thought it was good enough for us!’

He turned his handsome face with a glare of astonishment – but astonishment which, she fancied, after the first second was mingled with a sort of guilty, smiling recognition; the faintest flicker, suppressed instantly.

Yes, that had been his thought. Exactly that!

‘But – of course! If I had not thought it good enough –!’ he mildly returned. And that adroit change of emphasis at once caught up the situation, re-adjusted the civilized screen over the abyss where the knife was used, into which she had all but precipitated them.

Then, deeply relieved, thankful to be going, he held out his hand, saying that he knew she would take good care of his little boy.

She stood motionless behind the closed door.

But did one not suffer so to be thought of, in the end, by light and prosperous people of much wider, much shallower experiences, as a creature for whom anything was good enough, a creature hardly possessed of human rights?

So he had thought this squalid dwelling-place good enough for Clem.