The Enemy (Walpole)

T a quarter-past eight in the morning, every working day of the year, summer and winter, little Jack Harding left his little house in Ealing for the Charing Cross Road, where he had a little bookshop. A month every year he took a holiday, but even during that month he might be said to go through the same procedure, because, wherever he might be, he woke up at half-past seven and, lying on his back in bed, went through all the stages of dressing, having breakfast, hurrying to the station, changing at Hammersmith, getting out at Leicester Square, walking up to the little shop, scolding the boy with adenoids, opening his correspondence, and entering happily on the business of the day. It was luxurious indeed to lie on one's back and take this journey, hearing the waves murmur outside one's window, or seeing the clouds pass in lazy procession, or hearing the separator hard at work in some distant part of the farmhouse. He enjoyed his holiday, of course, but he enjoyed still more getting back to work again. He loved his shop, although it made him the barest living in these difficult post-war days, and he could not be said to care very generally for books for their own sake. He was a little man, stout and round like a rolling-pin, with very small feet and hands, of which he was immensely proud. He was cheery and optimistic by temperament, loved to hear the sound of his own voice, and, although he was forty-five, was still unmarried. He enjoyed the society of ladies, but liked them in general rather than in particular. An old woman looked after him and his little house, cheated him and robbed him, scolded him and abused him, except when he was ill, when she adored him and took an enormous amount of trouble to make him comfortable. He had only one enemy in the world.

OW the point about this enemy was that he had seldom spoken to him. Some years ago, when he had first come to live in Ealing, he had noticed on his regular morning journey a large, heavy, red-faced man, who lived apparently in his own street, always plunged out of his door at precisely the moment when he, Harding, passed it, and so plunged apparently in order to have a bright morning conversation. In fact, it very soon became Harding's conviction that the large, heavy gentleman waited behind the dining-room curtain until he saw him approach and then made his plunge. Now Harding did not want a bright morning conversation. His mind was busy with the details of the day's work. The catalogue that he was preparing, the cheap lot of books that had come in yesterday and would, most of them, find their way into the sixpenny box outside, and the chances of discovering some unexpected find that would add glory to the aforementioned catalogue: such questions as these made a morning conversation with a stranger extremely irritating, and Harding was English enough to suspect at once of the most abominable crimes anybody who spoke to him without a proper Ealing introduction.

This large man was, in Harding's view, exactly the person of whom you would expect a crime. On the first morning the large man had insisted on walking with Harding to the station, he talked in a great booming voice about the weather, about the neighbouring music-hall and a dainty little piece who was dancing there, about some shares he had somewhere, about his being a widower, about some geraniums in his back garden, about some horses, about indigestion, and about where he was going for his summer holiday. All these things before they reached the station at all. Then in the train he sat next to Harding, might indeed be said almost to sit over him. and went on with a long, cheerful proclamation about potatoes and beans and cabbages, shouting it all out at the top of his voice in rivalry with the noisy train. If there was one thing in the world that Harding detested it was talking against a train, he himself having a rather small, shrill voice which was not at its best when it was unduly raised, as he very well knew. Then this horrible man stuck closely to him at Hammersmith, marched down the platform with him, pushed past the ticket collector, marched up the other platform, and sat over him once again in the Tube. He went all the way with him to Leicester Square and would, Harding believed, have followed him to his bookshop had he not managed to lose him in the crowd. Work was spoilt for Harding that day. Whenever he tried to think clearly that man's booming voice seemed to get in the way, his large, bushy, black moustache seemed to whisk up and down the bookshelves, and his broad, aggressive chest overshadowed the customers.

Harding had not been encouraging, but nevertheless, next day, there was the man again, darting down the steps with a “Well, good morning, good morning, how are we to-day?” so that Harding, who detested to be called “we,“ was so deeply annoyed that he murmured that he had forgotten something, hurried back to his house again, and was twenty minutes late at the bookshop.

This was how it began, and every day now the poor little man was overshadowed by this horrible stranger. This horrible man's name was Tonks, and he had something to do with vegetables. He had no children and was thinking of marrying again, but couldn't quite make up his mind. He gave his reluctant companion most unpleasant and intimate details of his earlier married life. He had an especially disagreeable habit of putting his hand on little Harding's shoulder. The really strange thing was that Tonks seemed to have no particular liking for any other of the numerous company who went down to the City at that same hour day by day. There were, as Harding complained, any number of men who would have been delighted with Tonks's confidences, but Tonks appeared to wish to have none of them, and Harding, being a modest little man, could only explain this as a quite definite persecution, deliberately indulged in by Tonks for his own especial annoyance.

Now the passion of Harding's life was his bookshop. He thought about it all day, slept with it all night, ate it at every meal, and was never so happy as when he was imagining wonderful plans for its future. These plans were not really of a literary kind. His vision and dream was an enormous shop containing thousands and thousands and thousands of volumes. Room succeeded room, rows and rows of bookshelves towered up into the mysterious mists of the ceiling. There were so many books that nobody knew how many there were, nor ever would know, and with this sense of size and multitude went also a keen pleasure in what may vulgarly be called “spotting the winner.” Harding never went to horse-races; as he once explained to a friend, he did his horse-racing in the bookshop.

This was just at the time when there was a passion, both in America and England, for modern first editions, and Harding had a special catalogue of modern firsts of which he was immensely proud. This catalogue might have been better, and he would certainly have made more money had he gone in for quality rather than quantity, but he loved his catalogues to be large and full of important names. He had a list of modern writers, and used to mark them up and down in this list week by week according to the value of the moment. At one time it would be, we will say, Drinkwater and De la Mare who were going to win the literary stakes, and his modern catalogue that quarter would be full of Drinkwaters and De la Mares, a great many of them of no value at all, but he would put little mystical notes under the items, like “Very scarce” or “Rare in this state,” and then hope for the best. Nothing pleased him so much as when somebody came into his shop, asked for some tawdry novel, and was then lured by him into a consideration of rare firsts. He loved to see them open their eyes in wide amazement as he explained to them the wonderful speculation that investing in these mysterious Drinkwaters would be, of them going up week by week, that somebody in his shop had bought two years ago a little slim Masefield for almost nothing at all, and that now ten pounds wouldn't buy it. Ladies might be seen going from his shop with a little bundle of mysterious poets, when they had intended to purchase only a very unmysterious story to read in the train. Had this been all, he might truly be said to be encouraging a love of real literature among the masses, but unfortunately those same ladies very often returned at a later date with the same mysterious poets under their arm, expecting him very naively to give them an increased price for these same writers and being greatly indignant when they found that these books had gone down rather than up.

OTHING is perhaps more curious in ordinary daily life than the way in which somebody who has perhaps a very remote connection with ourselves and our affairs creeps in upon our consciousness and dominates it. I remember once staying with a man in a fine country house, surrounded by a magnificent park, shut off most securely from all the world, and worried almost to death by the personality of a certain butcher in a neighbouring village. He didn't even get his meat from the man; he was simply conscious of him, of his red face, his stout body, his bloodstained knife, and this man interfered so seriously with his happiness that he sold his house and went elsewhere. That is an extreme case, I dare say, but we must all of us be able to remember times when we have been affected in something of this fashion.

Mr. Tonks crept in upon the consciousness of Mr. Harding very slowly. Mr. Harding could not really be said to be a very imaginative man. He had only an imagination about the possible size of his bookshop. With regard to his own daily affairs he was very practical and sensible. Nevertheless he found himself after a week or two hesitating before he took his walk to the station. Would Tonks be there springing down the steps towards him? Would his cheery laugh ring through South Ealing? Would Harding this time be ahead of him? He noticed soon that he did not move off to the station with his accustomed alacrity, that he paused a little in his bit of garden, and that once or twice he peered down the street to see whether there were anyone there. He began to have a physical feeling about Tonks, as though he were an egg ever so slightly bad, or a bird just a tiny bit too high. He contemplated the possibility of reaching the station by some other route. He thought that perhaps it would be almost as quick to go from Ealing Broadway, but, as a matter of honest fact, he knew that it would not. Then he concocted for himself an elaborate conversation with Tonks: how he said to him, very politely, “Good morning,” how they started off to the station together, and how on the way he explained very gravely but with the utmost politeness that it was quite essential for him to have absolute silence on his journey down to Charing Cross Road because there were so many business problems that only that morning hour before the morning rush could solve. He saw himself then bowing to Mr. Tonks, saying that he hoped that he understood, that no kind of offence was intended, and that if there was one person in the world with whom he would like to talk at that moment it was Mr. Tonks, but that, in fact, there must be nobody at all. Harding thought this all out very carefully, and it seemed to him that there was nothing whatever to prevent him from carrying out his desire. There was, in fact, nothing to prevent him except that the words would not come. Something tied him when he saw Mr. Tonks, just as though a seal had been placed on his lips, and this made him more irritated than ever. “I should have thought,” he complained angrily to himself, “that the fellow could see that I don't want him. I surely make it plain enough.” However, the fellow did not see, and Mr. Tonks became more and more amiable, more and more voluble, was ever more and more persistently there.

HE next stage in the proceedings was that Harding dreamt about Tonks. He was not a man who dreamt very often; only occasionally, when he had had a late supper, he fell screaming from an enormous height, and he did occasionally dream about somebody coming into his shop with a first “Pilgrim's Progress”, in perfect condition, and offering it to him for sixpence, but he was on the whole most definitely not a dreamer. One night he saw Tonks standing in his room in his night-shirt. The vision was so vivid, the smile on Tonks's face so real, the night-shirt so exactly what in real life it would be, that it was hard to believe it was a dream. “What have you come here for?” he asked, angrily. “I'm never going to leave you again,” the figure replied. Poor Harding woke with a scream. Then the dream came quite frequently. There were different aspects of it. The worst was when Tonks's naked feet could be heard padding up the stairs. Then there was a pause outside the bedroom door, and Tonks's laboured breathing came like a whistle through the woodwork. Then the door slowly opened, and first Tonks's head was seen peering round, and then the whole big body came into view. Then the door was softly closed, and Tonks stood there watching. Always Harding said the same thing—“What have you come here for?” and Tonks said, “I'm never going to leave you again.”

There suddenly came a week when Tonks did not appear—no sign of him at all. Harding absolutely sighed with relief. Perhaps Tonks had gone away. Perhaps he was on a holiday and would be drowned in the sea or ridden over by a motor-car. Perhaps he had committed some crime and left the country. At any rate, for a week he disappeared, and Harding was astounded and secretly irritated to find that towards the end of the week he missed him quite seriously, just because to have somebody so thoroughly to dislike seemed to give piquancy to the work of the day, but, lo and behold! there on Monday morning was Tonks again, hurrying down the steps with his, “Well, well, how are we, then, to day?” and then going on to explain that he had had a horribly bad cold, that his throat had hurt him something terribly, and his inside not been at all the thing. On that day Harding could have killed him, and he did manage to say as they drew near to the station, “Look here, I've got to think something out. Let me be quiet, won't you?” to which Tonks, who had been sneezing hysterically all down the road, replied through his cold-invaded nose: “All right, old feller; forgive by sneezing, won't you? Terrible things to get rid of, colds.”

The next stage of this affair was that Tonks's personality invaded the shop. It can only have been hysteria on the part of Harding, and he was most certainly very far from being an hysterical person, but one morning, opening the door of the shop, stepping in, sniffing as he invariably did the aroma of old decaying books, the beautiful scent of piled-up dusty volumes, it seemed to him that Tonks had followed in after him. He whisked sharply around, but of course there was no one there, but for half a moment he could have sworn that out of the tail of his eye he saw the heavy shoulder, the rough red of the cheek, the beginning of that hateful smile.

“That man's getting on my nerves,” he said to himself. “I really must refuse to think of him any longer.” But he could not help himself. There was something about Tonks as though he had been Frankenstein's monster of Harding's own creation. Harding, like all Englishmen, was, underneath his British exterior, a desperately sentimental man. A little of a sycophant too, something of a crawler, and the odd thing was that if he had met Tonks just a little differently—that is, on a convivial evening at the house of a mutual friend—he might have liked him very much indeed, so close are love and hatred to one another. As it was, he hated him, and every day with increasing fervour. He was perhaps working too hard, bothering himself too strenuously about his new catalogue. Perhaps he was taking too little exercise and eating things that did not agree with him. Whatever the explanation, certain it is that Tonks's shadow was always now appearing at the shop, hiding behind the counter, squeezing itself in between the covers of books, balancing itself precariously on ladders, always turning up in the most unexpected places. And then one day came the climax. Tonks did make a real appearance in the true flesh. He came in one morning about midday, sauntering in, one hand in his pocket, smiling all over his face. Harding was alone in the shop at the time.

“Well, well, how are we?” he called out. “I've caught you in your lair at last. You never would tell me where you worked, and I've had to find it out for myself.”

So he'd been spying on him? Harding's face crimsoned. He had to bend over a book that he was examining to hide his agitation. Yes, he'd been spying on him, the beast!

Tonks waited a moment for a reply, and getting none went on most genially, “Well, well, I'm sure you're busy to-day. I've come in to buy a book from you.”

“What sort of a book?” said Harding, almost in a whisper.

“Well, it's for a young lady friend of mine, and she's taking a long journey up to the North of Scotland, and wants something to read. 'Why,' I said to her, 'I know the very man. He's a great friend of mine and very clever, and I'll ask him to advise me.'”

Harding suddenly looked up and leaned across the counter, his face pushed forward. The two men were very close to one another.

“I'm not your friend,” he said, “and I'll have you know it. I hate the very sight of you. I've been wanting to tell you this a long time.”

The smile suddenly left Tonks's face as though it had been snatched away by somebody standing behind him. His eyes were wide with surprise.

“Well, I never!” he said. “Do you really feel like that about me? I wonder why?”

“Never mind why,” said Harding, furiously. “The fact's true, and that's enough. You've been irritating me for months, walking along to the station with me, only I haven't had the courage to tell you so. I should have thought a man would have seen it.”

He bent down, his face still crimson, staring into his book. The puzzled expression deepened on Tonks's countenance. His whole body seemed to grow puzzled, too. His waistcoat developed new creases, his hands seemed to wrinkle. Then his great chest heaved a mighty sigh.

“It's strange,” he said. “I wonder if you know anything against me? Not that there is much against me that I can think of, but it's curious because I took a liking to you. A great liking to you. Most unusually quick it was. At the very first sight of you, as one might say. I suppose I'm slow to notice things, but there's never been a man I'd have liked for a friend so much as I'd have liked you. There's something about you sort of appeals to me. I suppose you couldn't explain a little?” “No, I couldn't,” said Harding, ferociously. “I just don't like you, and that's all there is about it. We're better apart, if you'll excuse me for saying so.”

“Oh, I'll excuse you,” said Tonks, shaking his head slowly, pulling himself together; “but it's a great pity—a terrible pity. I'm a lonely sort of man. Being a widower's a bit difficult, because, you see, if you've liked the first woman it's most improbable you're going to be pleased with the second, and if you haven't liked the first woman, why, you're off matrimony altogether, so to speak. If you understand what I mean. I'm sort of lonely in that house. I've been wanting to ask you in for weeks past. I've got an organ in the dining-room you'd love to hear. It's as good as a church. You've never seen my dog, have you?”

“No, I haven't,” said Harding, “and don't want to.”

“Well, well,” said Tonks, slowly, “that's the end of that. I'm glad I've got the dog, though,” he said, as he went out of the shop

HERE began after this an even worse period for Harding, because although Tonks never actually met him now on the way to the station, never spoke to him indeed, he was always just round the corner. Harding could never pass his house without feeling sure he was hiding behind the dining room curtain and longing to rush out and speak to him. At Hammersmith their paths were sometimes crossed, and then Tonks had a mixture of pride and pleading on his large round face that was terrible to see. Harding had now a curious sense that in one way or another he was in the wrong. Absurd, of course, but there you are. He only hated the man the more for it. The man became a proverb in his mind. When he was talking with his friends he would quote him as an instance of the depth of his feeling. “There's a man I know,” he would say, “whom you wouldn't believe the way I hate, and I really couldn't tell you why. Just his face or his smile or something. Case of Dr. Fell, I suppose. Really gives me the creeps. You might say there's nothing against him, and yet in a way there is. His being alive's against him, if you understand what I mean.” And then all the friends would laugh together and say that they understood perfectly.

There was one morning a most difficult moment when Tonks came down the steps with his dog, the most hideous mongrel you ever saw, kind of a fox-terrier with a black spot on its nose, and one ear half bitten off in a dog fight. The awkward thing was that the dog leapt upon Harding as though he were an old, old friend.

“Come 'ere, Spot, come 'ere!” Tonks called out, looking extremely embarrassed, but Spot persisted in claiming Harding for an old friend. He simply wouldn't leave him alone. The two men stopped and looked at one another, and Harding had the most curious feeling, as though he would like to go up and embrace Tonks and put his hat straight. A most curious and un-British feeling, as everybody will allow, and Tonks and the dog went one way and Harding went another. Bah! how he hated that man! Why couldn't he go and live somewhere else? Nevertheless, all the way to the shop he felt ashamed of himself and couldn't settle down to anything for the rest of the day.

HREE days later, about six in the evening, he was returning home. He left the shop a little earlier than usual because it was so fine and pleasant. He wanted to get into his little garden and do some digging. He got out at South Ealing Station and walked briskly down the road homewards.

Outside Tonks's house there was an agitation. Several people were hanging about and a police man was looking into space.

“Excuse me, constable, is there anything the matter?” asked Harding.

“Gentleman been run over by a motor omnibus.” said the policeman. “Just round the corner here. No use taking 'im to the 'ospital. 'E's done for.”

“Done for!” gasped Harding.

“Dead as mutton,” said the policeman. Harding turned white. It was as though he himself had killed him.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said the policeman. “Are you a friend of the gentleman?”

“Why?” asked Harding.

“Why, because 'e don't seem to have anybody in the house who does belong. Nobody but an old woman who comes in and does for 'im and a dawg. The dawg won't leave his bed. Must 'ave been a lonely sort of life for a man.”

“Yes. I am a friend of his,” said Harding, suddenly, “a very great friend.”

He pushed past the policeman and went into the house.

There was a doctor there, an old woman crying, the dog sitting on his hindquarters at the foot of the bed and not moving. There was Tonks himself in a nice clean night-shirt with his hair brushed, looking very calm and quiet, a suggestion of a smile hovering about his mouth.

“Caught him in the stomach,” said the doctor. “Instantaneous. Are you a friend of the deceased?” he asked.

“Yes, I am.” said Harding, “a great friend.”

“Well, there doesn't seem to be anybody else,” said the doctor. “Must have been a lonely sort of life.”

The old woman sobbed. “Oh, 'e was a kind gentleman,” she said.

“I was his best friend,” said Harding. “We used to go into town together every morning. I'll see to everything.”

He did. For weeks he worked at Tonks's affairs, which were in a curiously complicated state. There seemed to be no relations. In the end, when everything was sold and all debts paid, there were a few hundred pounds, and these Harding gave to the old woman. No one seemed to question for a moment that Harding was Tonks's best friend. The action of the dog only confirmed it. He refused to go near anyone save Harding. Harding had take him home to live with him.

“No, he's not much of a dog,” he would say, “but, you see, his master was my best friend, so there you are.”

And the funny part of it all was that that was true.