Essential Stories Read Online Free Page A

was a packet of virgin receipt forms.
    Now Mrs. Harkaway knew she had said the word which ought not to have been said. She had said something real to him by accident, when the only way she could be happy with him was by inventing a fairyland of pretence. Their talk became painful, bitter, and spasmodic.
    “I ought not to have married you,” she said in a small high voice. She had often said that in the middle of the night, from the safety of her room and the darkness.
    The ripe September cold came in at the window blowing the smell of fallen apples with it and the dampness of the fields. She sighed and he dramatically groaned. She sighed again and beat the sheets with wafts of desolation. He muttered aloud. In a moment they were playing at sighing and being unhappy, until at last startled by the distance to which they had mysteriously slipped, he said.
    “What is it, dear?”
    She would not answer.
    “What is it darling? . . . Oh well, if you won’t speak . . .”
    He sighed miserably and she relenting said, “Darling.”
    This was his turn to enjoy silence.
    “Oh dear, what has happened!” she said.
    A devilish joy gurgled inside him where the bitterness had been. He unclenched his fists and smiled and stretched himself spaciously. Lord, but bicycling didn’t half play up the calves of your legs! There was no way out of it. Once a rent collector always a rent collector. Once a husband always a husband. So on it went day after day, night after night, he yawned. World without end, he went on yawning. Now and ever shall be, he punched the pillow and sank from depth to depth into sleep.
    But Mrs. Harkaway troubled by her pillow, wondering if she were going to be warm enough, if there were any spiders on the ceiling, sitting up to listen for the watch, wondering if that mouse was going to nibble at the wainscot again—in short, refusing to be resigned to anything and determined to do the opposite of all the sleeping people in the world, Mrs. Harkaway lay awake as long as she could. There were always noises; the apples falling off the trees, the creeper rustling, the chickens fluttering in the barn, the sound of the cat padding in the room. Now he was asleep, she thought, she could passionately love her husband. Tears were in her eyes.
    She slept at last with a pretty, defiant heaviness and her head became alive with dreams that burned as clearly as the scenes of a lighted stage. One after another, hour after hour, through the night the caravans passed. She listened astonished to her secret thoughts. She heard herself say in fright “What’s that noise?” Saw herself sit up in bed, saw herself see a man with hob-nailed boots on climb in at the window, and walk through the room; the tall, dark man whom you see when a fortune teller, noting you have no wedding ring, encourages your hopes. But he was a burglar. She heard herself scream. Harkaway said when she screamed: “It’s only a burglar.”
    Wasn’t it like him to be still and doing nothing! Then several men came in and she lay deathly still, stiffening gradually from the toes and keeping herself rigid and holding her breath. She lay so a long time until she woke up gasping as though she had put her head in a bucket of cold water. The eyes of sky between the branches of the trees were looking in at the window. It was morning already and there
were
noises. She was not dreaming. In the garden. Men walking in the garden. She screamed out:
    “Darling, there are men in the garden. Quick.”
    Harkaway sat up in bed dazed. The elms were full and clear, and the sky under the branches was cold and white. The ragged hedge stood up like hair on end. He listened and also heard the sounds. Men in the garden! And then he saw a smooth and silvery shadow pass by the sill. He jumped out of bed, his heart pumping loudly.
    “All right,” he said, trembling, glad she was next door, the wild one. As he fumbled for his slippers he heard an unmistakable stamping of feet, a crunching,