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The Interval. By Vincent O'Sullivan · The Best Short Stories of 1917

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  Section twenty four of the Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen. This is a
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  LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
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  or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker,
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  The Best Short Stories of nineteen seventeen by various The Interval by vincent O'Sullivan.
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  Missus Wilton passed through a little alley leading from one of the gates which are
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  around Regent's Park, and came out on the wide and quiet street. She
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  walked along, slowly, peering anxiously from side to side so as not to
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  overlook the number. She pulled her furs closer round her. After her years
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  in India, this London damp seemed very harsh still. It was not a
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  fog to day. A dense haze, gray and tinged ruddy lay between the
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  houses, sometimes blowing with a little wet kiss against the face. Missus Wilton's
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  hair and eyelashes, and her furs were powdered with tiny drops, but there
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  was nothing in the weather to blur the sight. She could see the faces
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  of people some distance off, and read the signs on the shops. Before
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  the door of a dealer in antiques and second hand furniture. She paused and
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  looked through the shabby, uncleaned window at an assorted heap of things, many
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  of them of great value. She read the Polish name fastened on the pane
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  in white letters. Yes, this is the place. She opened the door,
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  which met her entrance with an ill tempered jangle. From somewhere in the
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  black depths of the shop, the dealer came forward. He had a clammy
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  white face with a sparse black beard, and wore a skull cap in spectacles.
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  Missus Wilton spoke to him in a low voice. A look of complicity,
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  of cunning, perhaps of irony, passed through the dealer's cynical and sad
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  eyes, but he bowed gravely and respectfully. Yes, she is here,
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  madam. Whether she will see you or not, I do not know.
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  She is not always well. She has her moods, and then we have
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  to be so careful. The police, not that they would touch a lady
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  like you, But the poor alien has not much chance these days. Missus
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  Wilton followed him to the back of the shop, where there was a winding
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  staircase. She knocked over a few things in her passage and stooped to pick
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  them up, but the dealer kept muttering, It does not matter, surely,
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  it does not matter. He lit a candle. You must go up
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  these stairs. They are very dark. Be careful. When you come to
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  a door, open it and go straight in. He stood at the foot
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  of the stairs, holding the light high above his head as she ascended.
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  The room was not very large, and it seemed very ordinary. There were
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  some flimsy, uncomfortable chairs, and gilt and red. Two large palms were
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  in corners. Under a glass cover. On the table was a view of
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  Rome. The room had not a business like look, thought Missus Wilton.
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  There was no suggestion of the office or waiting room where people came and went
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  all day. Yet you would not say that it was a private room which
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  was lived in. There were no books or papers about. Every chair was
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  in the place it had been placed when the room was last swept. There
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  was no fire, and it was very cold. To the right of the
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  window was a door covered with a plush curtain. Missus Wilton sat down near
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  the table and watched this door. She thought it must be through it that
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  the soothsayer would come forth. She laid her hands listlessly, one on top
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  of the other on the table. This must be the tenth seer she had
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  consulted since Hugh had been killed, she thought them over. No, this
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  must be the eleventh. She had forgotten that frightening man in Paris who said
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  he had been a priest. Yet, of them all, it was only
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  he who had told her anything definite. But even he could do no more
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  than till the past. He told of her marriage. He even had the
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  duration of it right, twenty one months, he told two of their time
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  in India. At least he knew that her husband had been a soldier,
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  and said he had been on some service in the colonies. On the whole,
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  though he had been as unsatisfactory as the others, none of them had
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  given her the consolations she sought. She did not want to be told of
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  the past. If Hugh was gone forever, then with him had gone all
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  her love of living, her courage, all her better self. She wanted
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  to be lifted out of the despair, the dazed, aimless, drifting from
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  day to day, longing at night for the morning and in the morning for
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  the fall of night, which had been her life since his death. If
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  somebody could assure her that it was not all over, that he was somewhere
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  not too far away, unchanged from what he had been here, with his
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  crisp hair and rather slow smile and lean brown face, that he saw her
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  sometimes, that he had not forgotten her. Oh you, darling. When
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  she looked up again, the woman was sitting there before her. Missus Wilton
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  had not heard her come in. With her experience wide enough now of seers
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  and fortune tellers of all kinds, she saw at once that this woman was
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  different from the others. She was used to the quick, appraising look,
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  the attempts, sometimes clumsy, but often cleverly disguised, to collect some fragments
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  of information whereupon to erect a plausible vision. But this woman looked as if
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  she took it out of herself. Not that her appearance suggested intercourse with the
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  spiritual world more than the others had done, it suggested that, in fact,
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  considerably less. Some of the others were frail, yearning, evaporated creatures,
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  and the ex priest in Paris had something terrible and condemned in his look.
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  He might well up with the devil that man, and probably did in
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  some way or other. But this was a little, fat, wary faced
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  woman about fifty, who only did not look like a cook, because she
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  looked more like a simpstress. Her black dress was all covered with white threads.
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  Missus Wilton looked at her with some embarrassment. It seemed more reasonable to
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  be asking a woman like this about altering a gown than about intercourse with the
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  dead. That seemed even absurd in such a very commonplace presence. The woman
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  seemed timid and impressed. She breathed heavily and kept rubbing her dingy hands,
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  which looked moist one over the other. She was always wetting her lips and
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  coughed with a little dry cough. But in her these signs of nervous exhaustion
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  suggested over work in a close atmosphere, bending too close over the sewing machine,
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  Her uninteresting hair, like a rat's pelt, was eked out with a
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  false sedition of another color. Some threads had got into her hair too.
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  Her harried, uneasy look caused Missus Wilton to ask compassionately, are you much
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  worried by the police, Oh, the police, Why don't they leave us
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  alone? You never know who comes to see you? Why don't they leave
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  me alone? I'm a good woman. I only think what I do.
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  It's no harm to any one, she continued in an uneven, querulous voice,
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  always rubbing her hands together nervously. She seemed to the visitor to be
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  talking at random, just gabbling like children do sometimes before they fall asleep.
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  I wanted to explain hesitated, missus Wilson, But the woman, with her
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  head pressed close against the back of the chair, staring beyond her at the
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  wall, her face had lost whatever little expression it had. It was blank
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  and stupid. When she spoke, it was very slowly, and her voice
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  was guttural. Can't you see him? It seems strange to me that you
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  can't see him. He's so near you. He is passing his round your
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  shoulders. This was a frequent gesture of Hughes, and indeed, at that
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  moment she felt that somebody was very near her, bending over her. She
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  was enveloped in tenderness. Only a very thin veil, she felt prevented her
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  from seeing. But the woman saw she was describing Hugh minutely, even the
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  little things like the burn on his right hand. Is he happy? Oh?
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  Ask him? Does he love me? The result was so far beyond
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  anything she had hoped for that. She was stunned. She could only stammer
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  the first thing that came into her head. Does he love me? He
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  loves you? He won't answer, but he loves you. He wants me
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  to make you see him. He's disappointed, I think, because I can't.
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  But I can't unless you do it yourself. After a while, she
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  said, I think you will see him again, you think, if nothing
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  else, he's very close to us now. Then she collapsed and fell into
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  a heavy sleep and lay there motionless, hardly breathing. Missus Wilton put some
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  notes on the table and stole out on tiptoe. She seemed to remember that
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  downstairs, in the dark shop, the dealer with the waxen face detained her
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  to show some old silver jewelry and such like, But she did not come
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  to herself. She had no precise recollection of anything till she found herself entering
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  a church near Portland Place. It was an unlikely act in her normal moments.
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  Why did she go in there? She acted like one walking in her
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  sleep. The church was old and dim, with high black pews. There
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  was nobody there. Missus Wilton sat down in one of the pews and bent
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  forward with her face in her hands. After a few minutes, she saw
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  that a soldier had come in noiselessly and placed himself about half a dozen rows
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  ahead of her. He never turned round, but she was struck by something
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  familiar in the figure. First she thought vaguely that the soldier looked like her
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  hue. Then when he put up his hand, she saw who it was.
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  She hurried out of the pew and ran towards him. Oh, Hugh,
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  Hugh, have you come back. He looked round with a smile.
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  He had not been killed. It was all a mistake. He was going
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  to speak. Footsteps sounded hollow in the empty church. She turned and glanced
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  down the dim aisle. There was an old sexton or aversure, who approached.
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  I thought I heard you call, he said, I was speaking to
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  my husband. But Hugh was nowhere to be seen. He was here a
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  moment ago. She looked about in anguish. He must have gone to the
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  door. There's nobody here, said the old man gently, only you and
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  me. Ladies are often taken funny since the war. There was one in
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  here yesterday afternoon. Said she was married in this church, and her husband
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  had promised to meet her here. Perhaps you were married here, No,
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  said missus Wilton, desolately, I was married in India. It might have
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  been two or three days after that when she went into a small Italian restaurant
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  in the Bayswater district. She often went out for her meals. Now she
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  had developed an exhausting cough, and she found that it somehow became less troublesome
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  when she was in a public place looking at strange faces. In her flat
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  there were all the things that Hugh had used. The trunks and bags still
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  had his name on them, with the labels of places where they had been
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  together. They were like stabs. In the restaurant, people came and went,
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  many soldiers too, among them just glancing at her in her corner.
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  This day, as it chanced, she was rather late, and there was
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  nobody there. She was very tired. She nibbled at the food they brought
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  her. She could almost have cried from tiredness and loneliness and the ache in
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  her heart. Then suddenly he was before her, sitting there opposite at the
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  table. It was as it was in the days of their engagement, when
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  they used sometimes to lunch at restaurants. He was not in uniform he smiled
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  at her and urged her to eat, just as he used in those days.
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  I met her that afternoon as she was crossing Kensington Gardens, and she
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  told me about it. I have been with Hugh. She seemed most happy.
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  Did he say anything now? He yes, I think he did,
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  but I could not quite hear. My head was so very tired the next
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  time. I did not see her for some time after that. She found
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  I think that by going to places where she had once seen him, the
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  old church, the little restaurant, she was more certain to see him again.
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  She never saw him at home, but in the street or the park
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  he would often walk along beside her. Once he saved her from being run
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  over. She said she actually felt his hand grabbing her arm suddenly, when
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  the car was nearly upon her. She had given me the address of the
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  clairvoyant. And it is through that strange woman that I know, or seemed
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  to know what followed. Missus Wilton was not exactly ill last winter, not
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  so ill at least as to keep to her bedroom. But she was very
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  thin, and her great handsome eyes always seemed to be staring at some point
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  beyond searching. There was a look in them that seamen's eyes sometimes have when
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  they are drawing on a coast of which they are not very certain. She
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  lived almost in solitude. She hardly ever saw anybody, except when they sought
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  her out. To those who were anxious about her, she laughed and said
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  she was very well. One sunny morning, she was lying awake waiting for
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  the maid to bring her tea. The shy London sunlight peeped through the blinds.
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  The room had a fresh and happy look. When she heard the door
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  open, she thought that the maid had come in. Then she saw that
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  Hugh was standing at the foot of the bed. He was in uniform this
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  time, and looked as he had looked the day he went away. Oh,
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  Hugh, speak to me, Will you not say just one word?
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  He smiled and threw back his head, just as he used to in the
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  old days at her mother's house. When he wanted to call her out of
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  the room without attracting the attention of the others, He moved towards the door,
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  still signing her to follow him. He picked up her slippers on his
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  way and held them out to her as if he wanted her to put them
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  on. She slipped out of bed, hastily. It is strange that when
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  they came to look through her things after her death, the slippers could never
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  be found. End of section twenty four