Short Stories 1895-1926 (63 page)

Her small son was of that fairness which almost suggests the unreal. He had flung back his bedclothes – as if innocence in this world needed no covering or defence – and lay at ease, the dews of sleep on lip, cheek, and forehead. He was breathing so quietly that not the least movement of shoulder or narrow breast was perceptible.

‘The lovely thing!' I muttered, staring at him. ‘Where is he now, I wonder?' His mother lifted her face and smiled at me with a drowsy ecstatic happiness, then sighed.

And from out of the distance, there came the first prolonged whisper of a wind from over the sea. It was eleven by my watch, the storm after the long heat of the day seemed to be drifting inland; but All Hallows, apparently, had forgotten to wind its clock.

The Wharf

The Wharf
1

She gave a critical pat or two to the handsome cherry bow, turning her head this way then that, as she did so; pulled balloonishly out its dainty loops; then once more twisted round the small figure with its dark little face and dancing burning eyes, and scanned the home-made party frock from in front.

‘What does it
look
like, Mother?' the small creature cried in the voice of a mermaid: then tucked in her chin like a preening swan to see herself closer. The firelight danced from the kitchen range. There was an inch of snow on the sill of the window, and the evergreen leaves of the bushes of euonymus beyond bore each its saucerful of woolly whiteness.

‘Please, Mother. What do I look like?' the chiming voice repeated; ‘my frock?'

With that wearer within it, it looked for all the world like the white petals of a flower; its flashing crimson fruit just peeping out from beneath. It looked like spindle-tree blossom and spindle berries both together. And the creature inside danced up and down with the motion of a bird on its claws, at sight, first, of the grave intentness and ardour and love in its mother's eyes; and next, in expectation of the wonderful party, which was now floating there in the offing like a ship in full sail upon the enormous ocean.

‘Then I look nice, Mother, nice, nice, nice?' she cried. And her mother smiled with half-closed eyes, just as if she were drinking up a little glass of some strange far-fetched wine.

‘You do my precious one,' she said, still gazing at her. ‘And you will be
very
good? And eat just a little at a time, and not get over-excited?'

‘Oh dear, oh dear,' cried the mite, her dark face turning aside in dismay like a tiny cloud from the sunrise; ‘they won't never, never be done dressing.'

‘There, now, be still, my dear,' her mother pleaded. ‘You mustn't excite yourself. Why, there they are, you see, coming down the stairs.'

And when the three – the two elder fair ones and this – were safely off, she returned to the fire, knelt down to poke it into a blaze, and then reclining softly back upon her heels, remained there a while, quite still – brooding on a distant day indeed.

Something had reminded her of a scene – a queer little scene when you came to think of it, but one she would never forget, though she seldom had even the time to brood over it. And now there was one whole long hour of peace and solitude before her. She was with herself. It was a scene, even in this distant retrospect entangled, drenched, in a darkness which, thank Heaven, she could only just vaguely recall. To return back even in thought into that would be like going down into a coal-mine. Worse; for ‘nerves' have other things to frighten one with than merely impenetrable darkness. The little scene itself, of course, quite small now because so far away, had come afterwards. It shone uncommonly like a star on a black winter night. And yet not exactly winter; for cold wakens the body before puttting it to sleep. And that time was like the throes of a nightmare in a hot, still, huge country – a country like Africa; enormous and sinister and black.

And so, piece by piece, as it had never returned to her before, she explored the whole beginning of that strange experience. She remembered kneeling as she was now, half sitting on her heels, and looking into a fire. A kitchen fire, then, as now; though not this kitchen. And not winter, but early May. And behind her the two elder children were playing, in their blue overalls, the fair hair gently shimmering in the napes of their necks as they stooped over their toys. It was, of course, before this house, before tiny Nell had come – dark and different from her two quiet sisters. And yet – good gracious me, how strange things are!

As now at this moment, she had been alone in that kitchen, even though the children were there. And alone as she had never been before. It seemed as though she had come to the end of things – a vacant abyss. Her husband had gone on to his work after having been with her to the doctor. She remembered that doctor – a taciturn, wide-faced man, who had listened to her symptoms without the least change of countenance, just steadily fixing his grey eyes on her face. Still, however piercing their attention, and whatever the symptoms, they could only have guessed at the horror within.

And then her husband had brought her home again, and after consoling her as best he could, had gone off late and anxious to his work, leaving her in utter despair. She must go away at once into the country, the doctor had said, and go away without company: must leave everything and rest. Rest! She had hated the very thought of the country: its green fields, its living things, and the long days and evenings with nothing to do; and then the nights! Even though a farm was the very place in the world she would have wished to have been born in, to live in, and there to die, she would be more than ever at the mercy there of those horrors within. And country people can stare and pry, too. They despise Londoners.

The extraordinary thing was that though her husband had reeled off to the doctor, as if he had learned it all by heart, as if he wanted to get rid of it once and for all, the long list of her symptoms, the one worst symptom of them all he had never had the faintest glimpse of. His pale face, that queer frown between his eyebrows and the odd uncertain way in which he had moved his mouth as he was speaking, though they showed that he was talking by rote – or, rather, talking just as men do, with the one idea of making himself clear and business-like, were yet proof too of what he was feeling. But not a single word he had said had touched her inmost secret. He hadn't an inkling that her awful state, body and soul, was centred on
him
.

She could smile to herself now to think what contortions the body may twist itself into when anything goes wrong in the mind. That detestation of food, those dizzying moments when you twirl helplessly on a kind of vacant devilish merry-go-round; that repetition of one thought on and on like a rat in a cage; those forebodings rising up one after the other like clouds out of the sea in an Arabian tale. Why, she had had symptoms enough for every patent medicine there was. She smiled again at thought of her portrait appearing in the advertisements in the newspapers for pills and tonics, her hand clutching the small of her back, or clamped over a knotted forehead.

Still, though she quite agreed now, and had almost agreed then, that it had been wise to see the doctor, and though she agreed now beyond all telling that she owed him what was infinitely more precious even than life itself; still she hadn't breathed to her husband one word about that dream; not a word. And never would. Not even if she lay dying, and if its living horror came to her then again – though it never would – in the hope of crushing her once for all, utterly and for ever.

It was something no one could tell to anybody. There were vile things enough in the world for every one to read and share, but this was one not even a newspaper could print, simply because she supposed no one could realize except herself how abject, how unendurable it was. Perhaps this was because it was a dream, she wondered. Dreams are more terrible than anything that happens in the day, in the real world.

A gentle quietude had descended upon her face lit up by the firelight there. It was as if the very thought of a dream had endued it with the expression of sleep. Nor, of course, was there anything to harm her now. This was yet another mystery concerning the life one's spirit lives in a dream, in sleep. The worst of haunting dreams may lose not only its poison, its horror, it may even lose its meaning, just as dreams of happiness and peace, in the glare and noise of day, may lose the secret of their beauty. Not that
this
particular dream had ever lost its meaning. It had kept its meaning, though what came after had completely changed it – turned it outside in, so to speak.

And now, since she was sane and ‘normal' again, just the mother of her three children, with her work to do, and able to do it – the meanings did not seem really to matter very much. You must just live on, she was thinking to herself, and do all you have to do, and not push about or pierce too much into your hidden mind. Leave it alone; you will be happier so. Griefs come of themselves. They break in like thieves, destroying as they go. No need to seek
them
out, anticipate
them
!

But what a mercy her husband had been the kind of man he was – so patient over those horrible symptoms, so matter-of-fact. It was absurd of the doctor to try to hurry him on, to get testy. Clever people are all very well, but if her husband had been clever or conceited he would have noticed she was keeping something back – might have questioned her. And then she would have been beyond hope – crazy.

And that, of course, put one face to face with the unanswerable question: was what she had seen real?
Was
there such a place? Were there such dreadful beings? After all, places you could not see had real existence – think of the vast mountainous forests of the world and the deserts and all their horrors! And perhaps after death? … For a while the white-faced clock on the wall overhead, hanging above the burnished row of kitchen tins, ticked out its seconds, without so much as one further thought passing in her mind. The room was deliciously warm; all the familiar things in it were friendly. This was home. And in an hour or two her husband would return to it; and a little later their three girls: the two fair ones, with the little dark creature – tired probably and a little fretful – between them. And life would begin again.

She was happy now. But thinking too much was unwise. That had really been at the root of her Uncle Willie's malady. He could not rest, and then had become hopelessly ‘silly' – then, his ‘visitors'! What a comfort to pretend for a moment to be like one of those empty jugs on the dresser; or, rather, not quite empty but with a bunch of flowers in one! And a fresh bunch every morning. If you remain empty, ideas come creeping in – as horrible things as the ‘movies' show; prowling things. And in sleep, too, one's mind is empty, waiting for dreams to well in. It is always dangerous – leaving doors ajar.

And so – she had merely come round to the same place once more. But now, and for the first time since that visit to the country, she could afford to face the whole experience. It was surprising how its worst had evaporated. It had begun in the March by her being just ‘out of sorts', overtired and fretful. But she had got better. And then, while she was going up to bed that night – seven years ago now – her candle had been blown out by a draught from the dark open landing window. Nothing of consequence had happened during the evening. Her husband had been elated by a letter from an old friend of his bachelor days, and she herself had been doing needlework. And yet, this absurd little accident to her candle had resembled the straw too many on the camel's back.

It had seemed like an enemy – that puff of wind: as if a spectre had whispered, ‘Try the dark!' And she had sat down there on the stairs in the gloom and had begun to cry. Without a sound the burning tears had slowly rolled down her cheeks as if from the very depths of her life. ‘So
this
was the meaning of everything!' they seemed to tell her. ‘It is high time you were told.' The fit was quickly over. The cold air at the landing window had soothed her, and in a moment or two she had lit her candle again, and, as if filled with remorse, had looked in on her two sleeping children, and after kissing them, gone on to bed.

And it was in the middle of that night her dream had come. After stifling in her pillow a few last belated sobs, lest her husband should hear her, she had fallen asleep. And she had dreamed that she was standing alone on the timbers of a kind of immense wharf, beside a wide sluggish stream. There was no moon, and there were no stars, so far as she could remember, in the sky. Yet all around her was faintly visible. The water itself as if of its own slow-moving darkness, seemed to be luminous. She could see that darkness as if by its own light: or rather was conscious of it, as if all around her was taking its light from herself. How absurd!

The wharf was built on piles that plunged down into the water and into the slime beneath. There were flights of stone steps on the left, and up there, beyond, loomed what appeared to be immense unwindowed buildings, like warehouses or granaries; but these she could not see very plainly. Confronting her, further down the wharf, and moored to it by a thick rope, floated on the river a huge and empty barge. There was a wrapped figure stooping there, where the sweeps jut out, as if in profound sleep. And above the barge, on the wharf itself, lay a vague irregular mass of what apparently had come out of the barge.

It was at the spectacle of the mere shape of this foul mass, it seemed, that she had begun to be afraid. It would have horrified her even if she had been alone in the solitude of the wharf – even in the absence of the gigantic apparition-like beings who stood round about it; busy with great shovels, working silently in company. They, she realized, were unaware of her presence. They laboured on, without speech, intent only on their office. And as she watched them — She could not have conceived it was possible to be so solitary and terrified and lost.