Coningsby Dawson

“ Life's a wonderful dream that lies all before you. You haven't known sorrow. Do you know what you seemed to be saying when you spoke to me through the shadows? 'Everybody has always loved and trusted me, so you love and trust me, too.' If it hadn't been for that, that I saw that you'd always been loved and were lonely for the moment, I shouldn't have sat here talking with you for the last hour. You'll get everything you want from life, if you'll only wait for it. ”

“ He was glad that she was alone. He was glad that it was in this same room that they had met. He was glad in a curious unreasoning way for the faint fragrance of Jacqueminot that surrounded her. It had been just like this at the Front that he had thought of her—thought of her so intensely that he had almost caught the scent and the rustle of her dress, moving towards him through the squalor of the trench. ”

“ Against the cold melancholy of the London sky, like silhouettes crayoned on a wall of ice, roofs and chimneys stood smudged. In flickering pin-points of incandescence street-lamps wakened; night came drifting like a ship into harbour under shrouded sails.
She had been sitting listening for a long time, haunted by childish fears that he would not come. At seven promptly a taxi panted into the square and drew up wheezing and coughing before the little house. Seizing her evening-wrap, she ran down the stairs and had her hand on the door before his knock had sounded. ”

“ Who wants a story that does not end happily, especially a Christmas story? To have been responsible for the happy ending is pretty nearly as clever as to have made the story up out of one's own head or, as we houses say, out of one's own walls.
Perhaps you never heard before of a house telling a story. If that be so, it is because you don't listen or because you go to bed too early. Unlike people, we houses sleep all day long; but after midnight we wake up and talk. When the clock strikes twelve, our stairs begin to crack and our windows to rattle and our floors to creak. ”

“ I have at least escaped that, for our square is a backwater of quiet and leads to nowhere, having an entrance only at one end. All the houses in the square were built at the same time as I was, which makes things companionable. We all look very much alike, with tiny areas, three stone steps leading up from the pavement, one window blinking out from the ground-floor, two blinking out from each of the other floors and a verandah running straight across us. In summer-time the verandah is gay with flowers. Our only difference is the colour we are painted, especially the colour of our doors. ”

“ I want to crowd every second with gratefulness for the mere fact of living. That's what's been bringing me here so often. That's why I've been so glad to carry Joan and Robbie away. Kiddies mean so tremendously much more to me than they did before I nearly died. And then there's home and women. I took them for granted once, but now... It's like saying one's prayers to be in a good woman's presence. ”

“ We're very proud of the front-doors in our square. In the middle stands a railed-in garden, to which none but our owners have access. Its trees are as ancient as ourselves. Behind us, so hidden that it is almost forgotten, stands the grey parish-church, surrounded by a graveyard in which many of the people who have been merry in us rest. ”

“ From far and near out of the swamp of darkness rose a medley of panic and sound. Prodding the sky, like detectives with lanterns, searchlights hunted and turned back the edges of the clouds. Then ominously, with solemn anger, the guns opened up and in fierce defiance the first bomb fell. The pattering of feet ceased suddenly. Streets grew forlorn and empty. The commotion of living and the terror of dying were transferred from the earth to the air. ”

“ And here was the woman's price for such caring, “He'll never come back.”
He turned his head slowly; by the light of the crackling wood for the first time he saw her. The little boy was lying wearied out, with his head bowed in her lap. The little girl sat drowsing against her shoulder.
She herself was leaning forward, gazing at and beyond him with a curious air of resigned intensity. She seemed to him to be listening for someone, whom she knew in her heart was never coming. He noticed the white half-moon of her shoulders faintly showing beneath her chinchilla wrap. ”

“ Three shadows grew out of the gloom, a small one on either side and a bigger one in the centre; as they drew near they resolved themselves into a lady in an evening-wrap and two children.
I was more glad than I cared to own, for I'd been feeling lonely. Now that peace has come and we've won the war, I don't mind acknowledging that I'd been feeling frightened; at the time I wouldn't have confessed it for the world lest the Huns should have got to know it. We London houses, trying to live up to the example of our soldiers, always pretended that we liked the excitement of airraids. ”

“ Being on the ground-floor, it gazes across the pavement under the trees and sees many things after nightfall which are missed by the upper storeys. The first and second time that something unusual happened I was not told; not until the third time was I taken into the secret. The dining-room window does most of the watching for the entire house; it sees so much that it has learnt to be discreet. ”

“ Soon she would fold away her work, put out the lights and climb the narrow stairs to her quiet bed.
It seemed very sad that, when she was so young, she should have to spend so many hours in talking to a rascally old bird. One can be young for so short a time. How short, those who are old know best.
There were evenings, however, when, after the parrot had answered “Robbie,” she would whisper, “I wonder!” and clasp her hands in her lap, gazing straight before her. ”

“ By this time everything in the house, from the kettle in the kitchen to the carpet on the topmost landing, was aware that a one-armed man was hidden beneath the trees across the road, watching. The whole house was on the alert, listening and waiting—everybody, that is to say, except the people most concerned, who inhabited us. ”

“ I kept thinking of my air-raid visitors, wondering where they were and hoping that the American officer had re-found the little lady. If he had, I felt sure he would be good to her. I told myself a foolish fairy-story, as old houses will, of how, when the war was ended, they would drive up to my door together, as if by accident, and exclaim, “Why, it's the little house where we first met!” Then the TO LET sign would be taken down and, having fetched Joan and Robbie, we would all live together forever. With luck and love we might have smaller feet to toddle up and down my stairs. ”

“ It's rather stupid to have to live and yet to be treated as though you ought to be dead. One fights against it at first; then one gradually becomes reconciled to be out of the running. If one's wise, she puts all her living into her children. ”

“ He swung round, leaning over the back of the couch, his entire attitude one of amazement.
She met his surprise with a quiet smile. “I'm perfectly serious. But you know the reason why we feel so safe in each other's company? It's because, in our different ways, we're both lonely people. We're not like the rest of the world; we don't move in pairs. I'm lonely because I'm a woman on my own, and you're lonely because you're in hospital in a foreign country. ”

“ You're just like Robbie. When Robbie wants to tell me something that's difficult, he has a special place against which he hides his face; it's easier to tell me there. You men are all such little boys. If it's difficult to tell, you do the same and say it without looking at me.”
She reseated herself beneath the lamp and took up her sewing. ”

“ She might be many things to her children; she could never be a man.... What did Robbie think? That you bought a father from an agency or engaged him through an advertisement? She smiled sadly, “Not so easy as that.”
“What shall we talk about?” asked the parrot.
She drew the curtains together, extinguished the lights and groped her way up to bed.
But her eyes had not peered far enough into the blackness. There was another person in London who had not danced or climbed lamp-posts or ridden on the roofs of taxis that night. ”

“ Suddenly to the lady in the lonely house, from being a creature of dread, he became a heaven-sent protector. Who could tell how many less desirable visitors might not call before the raid was ended? The care-taker might return. Were that to happen, it would be much more comfortable to have this male trespasser present to help make the explanations. Just as he was withdrawing, the lady rose from the shabby couch and called him back.
“Oh, please, we'd much rather you didn't go.”
“But who are we?”
“I and Robbie and Joan. We did the same thing as you. The house doesn't belong to us. ”

“ He would ask it with his head cocked on one side, while he rubbed his feathers up and down the bars. “What shall we talk about?” he would ask the little lady as she sat sewing beneath the lamp of an evening. She was always by herself when the children had been put to bed. ”

“ Though she made no effort to entertain him, the entire household had re-organised itself in readiness for his sharp rat-a-tat. Everyone, without expressing the fact, recognised that it was nice to have a man about the house. When one rose in the morning, there was something to which to look forward now. A man dropping in, even occasionally, gave this group of women a sense of protection and of contact with the unwidowed world.
To Robbie and Joan he stood for something midway between a big brother and a pal. ”

“ You can stay at home and yet beat off attacks in the front-line trench. We women defeat despair by keeping on smiling when there's nothing left to smile about, and by wearing pretty dresses when there's no one to take a pride in what we wear. ”

“ I expect they knew...”
“Yes, Joan,” her mother interrupted quickly, “I expect they knew.”
“And when I'm a man they won't dare to come to London, either,” said Robbie. “How many of them did father...?”
But at that moment, before he could finish his question, his mother pressed her finger against his lips warningly. Above the roar of what was going on in the clouds, she had heard another and more alarming sound; the front-door closed quietly, a match struck and then the slow deliberate tread of someone groping up the stairs. ”

“ There was only one other grown person in the house beside the little lady—Nurse; and Nurse had been in bed since the afternoon with a sick headache. He could not have known that. It was at precisely eight that he consulted his luminous wrist-watch, crossed the road, hesitated and raised the knocker very determinedly, as if he had only just arrived and had not much time to spare. Rat-tat-tat! The sound echoed alarmingly through the silence. The little lady dropped her sewing in her lap and listened. The sound was repeated. Rat-tat-tat! ”

“ More little children have been born beneath our roofs than we have stairs on which to count. We reckon things on our stairs, just as people reckon things on their fingers. When our stairs crack after midnight, it's usually because we're counting' the births and love-makings and marriages we have watched. ”

“ Seeing her distress, he laughed gaily. “Losing an arm wasn't the worst that might have happened. I'm one of the fortunate ones; I'm still above ground. The thing wasn't very painful—nothing is when you've simply got to face it. It's the thinking about pain that hurts.... Hulloa, look at the time; I can just get back to the hospital by ten. If we're late, they punish us by keeping us in next night.”
At the top of the stairs as she was seeing him out, he halted and looked back into the room. “It's quiet and cosy in there. I don't want to leave; I feel like a boy being packed off to school. ”

“ Dragging half-clad children by the hand and carrying babies snatched up from their warm beds, they commenced to run hither and thither, seeking the faint red lights of shelters, where cellars and overhead protection might be found. ”

“ She spent the afternoon before the mirror, brushing and re-brushing her hair, and in laying out all the pretty clothes which she knew men liked. It was three years since she had dressed with the deliberate intent that a man should admire her. ”

“ The world has no place for a widow. It doesn't mean to be unkind, but it simply doesn't know what to do with her. Unmarried women consider her an unfair rival; they think she's seeking a second chance before they've had their first. ”

“ In the last two years, since she'd been by herself, she'd become used to men doing things like that. She had ceased to bank overmuch on masculine chivalry. Few men had leisure to expend on a woman, however charming and beautiful, whose children had always to be included in the friendship. ”

“ And we have so many things to remember and to think about, especially we old houses who have been standing for almost two hundred years. We have seen so much; we have been the friends of so many generations. ”

“ She could never give them the sense of security that a man could have given without effort, even though he had loved them less. It was a bitter realisation—one which vaguely she had always dreaded must come to her. ”