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                                  The
                            Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham




                          THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




                          The Merry-go-round

                        By W. Somerset Maugham

                            [Illustration]

                               NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                 1904

                      COPYRIGHT, SEPT., 1904, BY
                          W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM




PART ONE




THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




CHAPTER I


All her life Miss Elizabeth Dwarris had been a sore trial to her
relations. A woman of means, she ruled tyrannously over a large number
of impecunious cousins, using her bank-balance like the scorpions of
Rehoboam to chastise them, and, like many another pious creature, for
their soul’s good making all and sundry excessively miserable. Nurtured
in the evangelical ways current in her youth, she insisted that her
connections should seek salvation according to her own lights; and, with
harsh tongue and with bitter gibe, made it her constant business to
persuade them of their extreme unworthiness. She arranged lives as she
thought fit, and ventured not only to order the costume and habits, but
even the inner thought of those about her: the Last Judgment could have
no terrors for any that had faced her searching examination. She invited
to stay with her in succession various poor ladies who presumed on a
distant tie to call her Aunt Eliza, and they accepted her summons, more
imperious than a royal command, with gratitude by no means unmixed with
fear, bearing the servitude meekly as a cross which in the future would
meet due testamentary reward.

Miss Dwarris loved to feel her power. During these long visits--for, in
a way, the old lady was very hospitable--she made it her especial object
to break the spirit of her guests; and it entertained her hugely to see
the mildness with which were borne her extravagant demands, the humility
with which every inclination was crushed. She took a malicious pleasure
in publicly affronting persons, ostensibly to bend a sinful pride, or
in obliging them to do things which they particularly disliked. With a
singular quickness for discovering the points on which they were most
sensitive, she attacked every weakness with blind invective till the
sufferer writhed before her, raw and bleeding: no defect, physical or
mental, was protected from her raillery, and she could pardon as little
an excess of avoirdupois as a want of memory. Yet, with all her heart,
she despised her victims, she flung in their face insolently their
mercenary spirit, vowing that she would never leave a penny to such a
pack of weak fools; it delighted her to ask for advice in the
distribution of her property among charitable societies, and she heard,
with unconcealed hilarity, their unwilling and confused suggestions.

With one of her relations only, Miss Dwarris found it needful to observe
a certain restraint, for Miss Ley, perhaps the most distant of her
cousins, was as plain-spoken as herself, and had, besides, a far keener
wit whereby she could turn rash statements to the utter ridicule of the
speaker. Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit;
she looked upon her in fact with a certain degree of affection and not a
little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to
enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity,
readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious: it confounded,
but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much
poorer than herself, with no smaller claims than others to the coveted
inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but
even to carry war into her very camp. Miss Ley, really not grieved to
find some one to whom without prickings of conscience she could speak
her whole mind, took a grim pleasure in pointing out to her cousin the
poor logic of her observations or the foolish unreason of her acts. No
cherished opinion of Miss Dwarris was safe from satire--even her
evangelicism was laughed at, and the rich old woman, unused to argument,
was easily driven into self-contradiction; and then--for the victor
took no pains to conceal her triumph--she grew pale and speechless with
rage. The quarrels were frequent, but Miss Dwarris, though it was a
sharp thorn in her flesh that the first advances must be made by her, in
the end always forgave; yet at last it was inevitable that a final
breach should occur. The cause thereof, characteristically enough, was
very trivial.

Miss Ley, accustomed, when she went abroad in the winter, to let her
little flat in Chelsea, had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to
return to England while her tenants were still in possession; and had
asked Miss Dwarris whether she might stay with her in Old Queen Street.
The old tyrant, much as she hated her relations, hated still more to
live alone; she needed some one on whom to vent her temper, and through
the illness of a niece, due to spend March and April with her, had been
forced to pass a month of solitude; she wrote back, in the peremptory
fashion which, even with Miss Ley, she could not refrain from using,
that she expected her on such and such a day by such and such a train.
It is not clear whether there was in the letter anything to excite in
Miss Ley a contradictory spirit, or whether her engagements really
prevented it; but, at all events, she answered that her plans made it
more convenient to arrive on the day following and by a different train.
Miss Dwarris telegraphed that, unless her guest came on the day and at
the hour mentioned in her letter, she could not send the carriage to
meet her, to which the younger lady replied concisely: “Don’t.”

“She’s as obstinate as a pig,” muttered Miss Dwarris, reading the
telegram; and she saw in her mind’s eye the thin smile on her cousin’s
mouth when she wrote that one indifferent word. “I suppose she thinks
she’s very clever.”

Her hostess greeted Miss Ley, notwithstanding, with a certain grim
affability reserved only for her; she was, at all events, the least
detestable of her relations, and, though neither docile nor polite, at
least was never tedious. Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris so that
with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her
overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman, of
not altogether unamiable disposition.

“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris, when they sat down to
dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and
crowsfeet.

“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for a
woman who has determined on a single life.”

“I suppose, like the rest of them, you would have married if any one had
asked you.”

Miss Ley smiled.

“Two months ago an Italian prince offered me his hand and heart, Eliza.”

“A <DW7> would do anything,” replied Miss Dwarris. “I suppose you told
him your income and he found he’d misjudged the strength of his
affections.”

“I refused him because he was so virtuous.”

“I shouldn’t have thought at your age you could afford to pick and
choose, Polly.”

“Allow me to observe that you have an amiable faculty of thinking of one
subject at one time in two diametrically opposed ways.”

Miss Ley was a slender woman of middle size, her hair, very plainly
arranged, beginning to turn gray, and her face, already much wrinkled,
by its clear precision of feature indicating a comfortable strength of
character; her lips, thin but expressive, mobile, added to this
appearance of determination. She was by no means handsome, and had
certainly never been pretty; but her carriage was not without grace nor
her manner without fascination. Her eyes were very bright and so shrewd
as sometimes to be almost disconcerting: without words, they could make
pretentiousness absurd; and most affectations, under that searching
glance, part contemptuous, part amused, willingly hid themselves. Yet,
as Miss Dwarris took care to remind her, she was not without her own
especial pose, but it was carried out so admirably, with such a
restrained, comely decorum, that few observed it, and such as did found
not the heart to condemn: it was the perfect art that concealed itself.
To execute this æsthetic gesture, it pleased Miss Ley to dress with the
greatest possible simplicity, usually in black, and her only ornament
was a renaissance jewel of such exquisite beauty that no museum would
have disdained to possess it: this she wore around her neck attached to
a long gold chain, and she fingered it with pleasure to show, according
to her plain-spoken relative, the undoubted beauty of her hands. Her
well-fitting shoes and the elaborate open-work of her silk stockings
suggested also a not unreasonable pride in a shapely foot, small and
high of instep. Thus attired, when she had visitors, Miss Ley sat in an
oak, Italian straight-backed chair, delicately carved, which was placed
between two windows against the wall; and she cultivated already a
certain primness of manner which made very effective the audacious
criticism of life wherewith she was used to entertain her friends.

Two mornings after her arrival in Old Queen Street, Miss Ley announced
her intention to go out. She came downstairs with a very fashionable
parasol--a purchase on her way through Paris.

“You’re not going out with that thing?” cried Miss Dwarris, scornfully.

“I am indeed.”

“Nonsense; you must take an umbrella. It’s going to rain.”

“I have a new sunshade and an old umbrella, Eliza: I feel certain it
will be fine.”

“My dear, you know nothing about the English climate. I tell you it will
pour cats and dogs.”

“Fiddlesticks, Eliza.”

“Polly,” answered Miss Dwarris, her temper rising. “I wish you to take
an umbrella. The barometer is going down, and I have a tingling in my
feet, which is a sure sign of wet. It’s very irreligious of you to
presume to say what the weather is going to be.”

“I venture to think that, meteorologically, I am no less acquainted with
the ways of Providence than you.”

“That I think is not funny, but blasphemous, Polly. In my house, I
expect people to do as I tell them, and I insist on your taking an
umbrella.”

“Don’t be absurd, Eliza.”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell and, when the butler appeared, ordered him to
fetch her own umbrella for Miss Ley.

“I absolutely refuse to use it,” said the younger lady, smiling.

“Pray remember that you are my guest, Polly.”

“And, therefore, entitled to do exactly as I like.”

Miss Dwarris rose to her feet, a massive old woman of commanding
presence, and stretched out a threatening hand.

“If you leave this house without an umbrella, you shall not come into it
again. You shall never cross this threshold so long as I am alive.”

Miss Ley cannot have been in the best of humours that morning, for she
pursed her lips in the manner already characteristic of her, and looked
at her elderly cousin with a cold scorn, most difficult to bear.

“My dear Eliza, you have a singularly exaggerated idea of your
importance. Are there no hotels in London? You appear to think I stay
with you for pleasure rather than to mortify my flesh. And, really, the
cross is growing too heavy for me, for I think you must have quite the
worst cook in the metropolis.”

“She’s been with me for five and twenty years,” answered Miss Dwarris,
two red spots appearing on her cheeks, “and no one has ventured to
complain of the cooking before. If any of my guests had done so, I
should have answered that what was good enough for me was a great deal
too good for any one else. I know that you’re obstinate, Polly, and
quick-tempered, and this impertinence I am willing to overlook. Do you
still refuse to do as I wish?”

“Yes.”

Miss Dwarris rang the bell violently.

“Tell Martha to pack Miss Ley’s boxes at once, and call a four-wheeler,”
she cried, in tones of thunder.

“Very well, Madam,” answered the butler, used to his mistress’s
vagaries.

Then Miss Dwarris turned to her guest, who observed her with irritating
good-humour.

“I hope you realise, Polly, that I fully mean what I say.”

“All is over between us,” answered Miss Ley, mockingly, “and shall I
return your letters and your photographs?”

Miss Dwarris sat for a while, in silent anger, watching her cousin, who
took up the _Morning Post_, and, with great calmness, read the
fashionable intelligence. Presently the butler announced that the
four-wheeler was at the door.

“Well, Polly, so you’re really going?”

“I can hardly stay when you’ve had my boxes packed and sent for a cab,”
replied Miss Ley, mildly.

“It’s your own doing; I don’t wish you to go. If you’ll confess
that you were headstrong and obstinate, and if you’ll take an
umbrella, I am willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“Look at the sun,” answered Miss Ley.

And, as if actually to annoy the tyrannous old woman, the shining rays
danced into the room and made importunate patterns on the carpet.

“I think I should tell you, Polly, that it was my intention to leave you
ten thousand pounds in my will. This intention I shall, of course, not
now carry out.”

“You’d far better leave your money to the Dwarris people: upon my word,
considering that they’ve been related to you for over sixty years, I
think they thoroughly deserve it.”

“I shall leave my money to whom I choose,” cried Miss Dwarris, beside
herself; “and if I want to I shall leave every penny of it in charity.
You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year,
but, apparently, it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your
flat when you go away. Remember, that no one has any claims upon me, and
I can make you a rich woman.”

Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.

“My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty
years to plague the human race in general and your relations in
particular. It is not worth my while, on the chance of surviving you, to
submit to the caprices of a very ignorant old woman, presumptuous and
overbearing, dull and pretentious.”

Miss Dwarris gasped and shook with rage, but the other proceeded without
mercy.

“You have plenty of poor relations--bully them. Vent your spite and
ill-temper on those wretched sycophants, but pray in future spare me the
infinite tediousness of your conversation.”

Miss Ley had ever a discreet passion for the rhetorical, and there was a
certain grandiloquence about the phrase which entertained her hugely.
She felt that it was unanswerable, and, with great dignity, walked out.
No communication passed between the two ladies, though Miss Dwarris,
peremptory, stern, and evangelical to the end, lived in full possession
of her faculties for another twenty years. She died at last in a passion
occasioned by some trifling misdemeanour of her maid; and as though a
heavy yoke were removed from their shoulders, her family heaved a deep
and unanimous sigh of relief.

They attended her funeral with dry eyes, looking still with silent
terror at the leaden coffin which contained the remains of that harsh,
strong, domineering old woman. Then, nervously expectant, they begged
the family solicitor to disclose her will. Written with her own hand,
and witnessed by two servants, it was in these terms:

     “I, Elizabeth Ann Dwarris, of 79, Old Queen Street, Westminster,
     Spinster, hereby revoke all former Wills and Testamentary
     Dispositions, made by me and declare this to be my last Will and
     Testament. I appoint Mary Ley, of 72, Eliot Mansions, Chelsea, to
     be the executrix of this my Will, and I give all my real and
     personal property whatsoever to the said Mary Ley. To my
     great-nephews and great-nieces, to my cousins near and remote, I
     give my blessing; and I beseech them to bear in mind the example
     and advice which for many years I have given them. I recommend them
     to cultivate in future strength of character and an independent
     spirit; I venture to remind them that the humble will never inherit
     this earth, for their reward is to be awaited in the life to come;
     and I desire them to continue the subscriptions which, at my
     request, they have so long and generously made to the Society for
     the Conversion of the Jews and to the Additional Curates Fund.

     “In witness whereof, I have set my hand to this my Will the 4th day
     of April, 1883.

“ELIZABETH ANN DWARRIS.”



To her amazement, Miss Ley found herself at the age of fifty-seven in
possession of nearly three thousand pounds a year, the lease of a
pleasant old house in Westminster, and a great quantity of early
Victorian furniture. The will was written two days after her quarrel
with the eccentric old woman, and the terms of it certainly achieved the
three purposes for which it was designed: it occasioned the utmost
surprise to all concerned; it heaped coals of fire on Miss Ley’s
indifferent head; and caused the bitterest disappointment and vexation
to all that bore the name of Dwarris.




PART II




THE MERRY-GO-ROUND




CHAPTER I


Miss Ley returned to England at the end of February. Unlike the most of
her compatriots, she did not go abroad to see the friends with whom she
spent much time at home; and though Bella and Herbert Field were at
Naples, Mrs. Murray in Rome, she took care systematically to avoid them.
Rather was it her