The Grotesque Read Online Free PDF

woman with a tight bun on the back of her head and a beaky, red-tipped nose. Her long white hands drooped limply from the wrists, red and rough about the knuckles, I noticed, from all the washing she did. She would not look at me. I clamped the cigar between my teeth, rose to my feet, and began to put on my clean shirt. “Mrs. Fledge,” I said, “what do you think of me?”
    “Oh Sir Hugo,” she murmured, casting at me one quick furtive sideways glance, “that’s not for me to say.”
    “No, come, Mrs. Fledge,” I said, buttoning the shirt, “do you think, for instance, that I am an impossible man?”
    “Oh not a bit, Sir Hugo,” she said, with apparent sincerity. This was something, at any rate.
    “You don’t find me impossible?” I said. “You find me—reasonable?”
    “Yes, Sir Hugo.”
    “Am I absurd to you, Mrs. Fledge?”
    “No, Sir Hugo.”
    “Not absurd? Not impossible? A perfectly decent, reasonable, straightforward man?”
    “Yes, Sir Hugo.”
    “I wonder, Mrs. Fledge, if you would mind fastening my cuff links for me.”
    I sat on the edge of the bed and she leaned over me, fastening my cuff links with her long thin washerwoman’s fingers. She smelled of carbolic soap, but not of sherry—on the wagon, perhaps. “Mrs. Fledge,” I said. I was gazing at the top of her skull, as she bent over me, examining her silver-threaded hair. “Mrs. Fledge, I wanted to ask you about your husband’s sense of humor.”
    “I beg your pardon, Sir Hugo?” she murmured faintly. Her fingertips brushed my left wrist.
    “Fledge’s sense of humor. Does he like a joke? A prank? A bit of fun?”
    “Not so as you’d notice, Sir Hugo.”
    “Laughter does not come easily to him, Mrs. Fledge?” I said. She lifted her head then, and looked me straight in the eye. She twitched her nose and sniffed. Then she dropped her head once more, and busied herself with my right cuff. “We’ve not had much to laugh about, Fledge and I,” she muttered.
    “Is that so?” I said. I chewed my cigar, mulling this over. “A hard life, eh?”
    “Hard enough, Sir Hugo.”
    “You knew hardship in Kenya?”
    “Of a sort, Sir Hugo. There!” She stood up. “Will that be all, Sir Hugo? I’ve still the potatoes to see to.”
    “And what,” I said, ignoring her evident desire to flee, “would amuse your husband, then, Mrs. Fledge?”
    She had retreated to the door. “I’m sure I can’t say, Sir Hugo. Excuse me!” And she was out of the door, leaving only a faint whiff of carbolic behind her. I rather like the smell of carbolic; it reminds me of my own days in Africa.
    ❖
    My little chat with Mrs. Fledge cheered me, in some curious way, and when I descended the stairs, dressed for dinner, some fifteen minutes later, I was feeling a good deal more jaunty than I had all day. Not that I intended to demonstrate this; there were still scores to settle, with Harriet and with Fledge, and I did not intend that this should be a happy evening in Crook. I reached the drawing room to find Harriet asking Sidney whether his bath had been hot enough. Sidney was always animated when he talked to Harriet. “Oh yes, Lady Coal,” he cried—he was sitting on the edge of the couch, beside Cleo, the pair of them like some latter-day Hansel and Gretel—“oh, it was as hot as I could bear it! And I sat there so long I came out wrinkled like a prune and pink as a lobster!”
    I suppressed a savage snort of rage that an inanity like this should be uttered in my own drawing room. Harriet smiled anxiously at the young couple. “I do hope you didn’t catch colds?” she said.
    Cleo was drinking a large gin. She drinks heavily for a girl her age—my fault, I’m afraid, she takes after me. “Well I don’t think you look like a lobster,” she said.
    Sidney turned to her. They were sitting very close together on the couch—it was Cleo’s proximity that permitted him to express himself so freely, despite my glowering, terrifying presence.