Short Stories 1927-1956 (82 page)

He switched off the light, tiptoed to the window and, neatly and
punctiliously
as a woman, between finger and thumb drew aside the curtain and looked out, and down. Vaguely stirring soundless shadows of trees; shafts of light and of shadow in the small square porch, on the rough red tiles; and nothing besides. Not pausing, even to breathe again, he silently pushed the window ajar, leaned out and looked again. No… He pulled the window to, moistened his lips, pushed the hasp home and drew back the curtains; and this so gently that the metal of curtain-ring scarcely sounded on brass rod. Yet again he listened; then stepped back nimbly; and switched on the light again. What
she
had heard he could not tell. She had fallen sideways along her bed; her face resting between her outstretched arms, as curiously
tranquil
and composed as if she were already a stranger to all life’s longings.

‘Holy God!’ he muttered.

Then he called, though almost inaudibly, across to her, ‘Emily! Emily!! … What’s wrong?’

But no effort could as yet persuade him to go near her. Not for him – not for himself then? But an anniversary! To keep an ‘assignation’? And Jacob had had to wait
seven
years! How fatuous, how preposterous! Breathing so rapidly that a slight giddiness had swept over consciousness, he paused by her motionless body at as great a distance as the wall admitted, stretched
out a trembling arm and lifted the telephone receiver from a small and pretty mahogany table that stood, innocent of any share in the proceedings, on the other side of the bed. With extreme deliberation, as if it were an achievement requiring the utmost skill, he dialled a number.

‘Is that Dr Webster’s?’ he inquired between his lips… ‘Thank you.’

He put his left hand over the mouthpiece and tried to control his breathing.

‘Yes. Thank you. This is Mr Silcot, Mr Aubrey Silcot. It
is
you, Dr Webster? Yes, thank you.
Could
you come?… Yes, now; at once. I am afraid my wife is seriously ill. Only a fainting fit, perhaps. Some kind of heart attack. I cannot say. We were talking quite as usual… “Just home”? I’m sorry. I know what
that
means. But yes; it
is
rather urgent… Yes… Yes – All my thanks!…’

He punctiliously returned the receiver to its slumbers, drew back; tiptoed round the bed, and began to listen again.

And in this transfixture, a single commonplace word came sallying
nonchalantly
up out of his memory as if it were hurt at its not having been duly noticed before – the word ‘unattainable’. Heaven above us! What was
not
unattainable in this world! But
two
victories! A double event! Rage and despair, like a vortex of wind and rain, swept through his mind. The very bridge of his nose seemed to sharpen as presently he stooped over the bed – at a ridiculous corporeal right angle – and his face assumed a stone-like pallor. Slowly, and with the utmost gingerliness, refusing even to touch her pillow, he pushed down his lips close to the ear of his human companion and called softly – a voice cringing yet as ferocious as that of a wolf’s in the blackness of snow-bound mountains, and as though he had addressed it into the very centre of outer darkness – cold, callous and illimitable:

‘Emily, Emily! Are you there? It’s Aubrey … I am in a hell of a mess… Hopeless… What did you mean by “unattainable”? – “un-at-tainable”?’

And again that slowly repeated tapping on the door-panel interrupted him. He crossed the room, and with exquisite caution released the catch in the door, holding this firmly a few inches open.

‘What do you want now?’ he asked.

‘What’s going on in there?’ said the voice. ‘Is the doctor coming?’

‘The doctor?’

‘Yes… And there hasn’t been any knock again from that Mr Hamilton you said was about.’

‘Oh!’ he replied; and was compelled for what seemed yet another
infinitesimal
yet protracted hole in Eternity to gaze palely back – searching the depths of the motionless cold eyes that were fixed upon his own – before his tongue could utter another word.

Bad Company

Bad Company
*

It is very seldom that one encounters what would appear to be sheer
unadulterated
evil in a human face; an evil, I mean, active, deliberate, deadly, dangerous. Folly, heedlessness, vanity, pride, craft, meanness, stupidity – yes. But even Iagos in this world are few, and devilry is as rare as witchcraft.

One winter’s evening some little time ago, bound on a visit to a friend in London, I found myself on the platform of one of its many subterranean railway stations. It is an ordeal that one may undergo as seldom as one can. The glare and glitter, the noise, the very air one breathes affect nerves and spirits. One expects vaguely strange meetings in such surroundings. On this occasion, the expectation was justified. The mind is at times more attentive than the eye. Already tired, and troubled with personal cares and problems, which a little wisdom and enterprise should have refused to entertain, I had seated myself on one of the low, wooden benches to the left of the entrance to the platform, when, for no conscious reason, I was prompted to turn my head in the direction of a fellow traveller, seated across the gangway on the fellow to my bench some few yards away.

What was wrong with him? He was enveloped in a loose cape or cloak, sombre and motionless. He appeared to be wholly unaware of my abrupt scrutiny. And yet I doubt it; for the next moment, although the door of the nearest coach gaped immediately opposite him, he had shuffled into the compartment I had entered myself, and now in its corner, confronted me, all but knee to knee. I could have touched him with my hand. We had, too, come at once into an even more intimate contact than that of touch. Our eyes – his own fixed in a dwelling and lethargic stare – had instantly met, and no less rapidly mine had uncharitably recoiled, not only in misgiving, but in something little short of disgust. The effect resembled that of an acid on milk, and for the time being cast my thoughts into confusion. Yet that one glance had taken him in.

He was old – over seventy. A wide-brimmed rusty and dusty black hat concealed his head – a head fringed with wisps of hair, lank and paper-grey. His loose, jaded cheeks were of the colour of putty; the thin lips above the wide unshaven and dimpled chin showing scarcely a trace of red. The cloak suspended from his shoulders mantled him to his shins. One knuckled, cadaverous, mittened hand clasped a thick ash stick, its handle black and polished with long usage. The only sign of life in his countenance was secreted in his eyes – fixed on mine – hazed and dully glistening, as a snail
in winter is fixed to a wall. There was a dull deliberate challenge in them, and, as I fancied, something more than that. They suggested that he had been in wait for me; that for him, it was almost ‘well met!’.

For minutes together I endeavoured to accept their challenge, to make sure. Yet I realized, fascinated the while, that he was well aware of the futility of this attempt, as a snake is of the restless, fated bird in the branches above its head.

Such a statement, I am aware, must appear wildly exaggerated, but I can only record my impression. It was already lateish – much later than I had intended. The passengers came and went, and, whether intentionally or not, none consented to occupy the seat vacant beside him. I fixed my eyes on an advertisement – that of a Friendly Society I remember! – immediately above his head, with the intention of watching him in the field of an eye that I could not persuade to meet his own in full focus again.

He had instantly detected this ingenuous device. By a fraction of an inch he had shifted his grasp upon his stick. So intolerable, at length, became the physical – and psychical – effect of his presence on me that I determined to leave the train at the next station, and there to await the next. And at this precise moment, I was conscious that he had not only withdrawn his eyes but closed them.

I was not so easily to free myself of his company. A glance over my shoulder as, after leaving the train, I turned towards the lift, showed him hastily groping his way out of the carriage. The metal gate clanged. The lift slid upwards and, such is the contrariness of human nature, a faint
disappointment
followed. One may, for example, be appalled and yet
engrossed
in reading an account of some act of infamous cruelty.

Concealing myself as best I could at the book-stall, I awaited the next lift-load. Its few passengers having dispersed, he himself followed. In spite of age and infirmity, he
had,
then, ascended alone the spiral staircase.
Glancing
, it appeared, neither to right nor left, he passed rapidly through the barrier. And yet –
had
he not seen me?

The ticket collector raised his head, opened his mouth, watched his
retreating
figure, but made no attempt to retrieve
his.
It was dark now – the dark of London. In my absence underground, minute frozen pellets of snow had fallen, whitening the streets and lulling the sound of the traffic. On emerging into the street, he turned in the direction of the next station – my own. Yet again – had he, or had he not, been aware that he was being watched? However that might be, my journey lay his way, and that way my feet directed me; although I was already later than I had intended. I followed him, led on no doubt in part – merely by the effect he had had on me. Some twenty or thirty yards ahead, his dark shapelessness showed – distinct against the whitening pavement.

The waters of the Thames, I was aware, lay on my left. A muffled blast from the siren of a tug announced its presence. Keeping my distance, I followed him on. One lamp-post – two – three. At that, he seemed to pause for a moment, as if to listen, momentarily glanced back (as I fancied) and vanished.

When I came up with it, I found that this third lamp-post vaguely
illuminated
the mouth of a narrow, lightless alley between highish walls. It led me, after a while, into another alley, yet dingier. The wall on the left of this was evidently that of a large garden; on the right came a row of nondescript houses, looming up in their neglect against a starless sky.

The first of these houses
appeared
to be occupied. The next two were vacant. Dingy curtains, soot-grey against their snowy window-sills, hung over the next. A litter of paper and refuse – abandoned by the last long gust of wind that must have come whistling round the nearer angle of the house – lay under the broken flight of steps up to a mid-Victorian porch. The small snow clinging to the bricks and to the worn and weathered cement of the wall only added to its gaunt lifelessness.

In the faint hope of other company coming my way, and vowing that I would follow no further than to the outlet of yet another pitch-black and uninviting alley or court – which might indeed prove a dead end – I turned into it. It was then that I observed, in the rays of the lamp over my head, that in spite of the fineness of the snow and the brief time that had elapsed, there seemed to be no trace on its surface of recent footsteps.

A faintly thudding echo accompanied me on my way. I have found it very useful – in the country – always to carry a small electric torch in my great-coat pocket; but for the time being I refrained from using it. This alley proved not to be blind. Beyond a patch of waste ground, a nebulous, leaden-grey vacancy marked a loop here of the Thames – I decided to go no further; and then perceived a garden gate in the wall to my right. It was ajar, but could not long have been so because no more than an instant’s flash of my torch showed marks in the snow of its recent shifting. And yet there was little wind. On the other hand, here was the open river; just a breath of a breeze across its surface might account for this. The cracked and blistered paint was shimmering with a thin coat of rime – of hoar-frost, and as if a finger had but just now scrawled it there, a clumsy arrow showed, its ‘V’ pointing inward. A tramp, an errand-boy, mere accident might have accounted for this. It may indeed have been a mark made some time before on the paint.

I paused in an absurd debate with myself, chiefly I think because I felt some little alarm at the thought of what might follow; yet led on also by the conviction that I had been intended, decoyed to follow. I pushed the gate a little wider open, peered in, and made my way up a woody path beneath
ragged unpruned and leafless fruit trees towards the house. The snow’s own light revealed a ramshackle flight of steps up to a poor, frenchified sort of canopy above french windows, one half of their glazed doors ajar. I ascended, and peered into the intense gloom beyond it. And thus and then prepared to retrace my steps as quickly as possible, I called (in tones as near those of a London policeman as I could manage):

‘Hello there! Is anything wrong? Is anyone wanted?’ After all, I could at least explain to my fellow-passenger if he appeared that I found both his gate and his window open; and the house was hardly pleasantly situated.

No answer was returned to me. In doubt and disquietude, but with a
conviction
that all was not well, I flashed my torch over the walls and furniture of the room and its heavily framed pictures. How could anything be ‘well’ – with unseen company such as this besieging one’s senses! Ease and pleasant companionship, the room may once have been capable of giving; in its dirt, cold, and neglect it showed nothing of that now. I crossed it, paused again in the passage beyond it, and listened. I then entered the room beyond that. Venetian blinds, many of the slats of which had outworn their webbing, and heavy, crimson chenille side-curtains concealed its windows.

The ashes of a fire showed beyond rusty bars of the grate under a black marble mantelpiece. An oil lamp on the table, with a green shade, exuded a stink of paraffin; beyond was a table littered with books and papers, and an overturned chair. There I could see the bent-up old legs, perceptibly lean beneath the trousers, of the occupant of the room. In no doubt of whose remains these were, I drew near, and with bared teeth and icy, trembling fingers, drew back the fold of the cloak that lay over the face. Death has a strange sorcery. A shuddering revulsion of feeling took possession of me. This cold, once genteel, hideous, malignant room – and this!

The skin of the blue loose cheek was drawn tight over the bone; the mouth lay a little open, showing the dislodged false teeth beneath; the dull unspeculative eyes stared out from beneath lowered lids towards the black mouth of the chimney above the fireplace. Vileness and iniquity had left their marks on the lifeless features, and yet it was rather with compassion than with horror and disgust that I stood regarding them. What desolate solitude, what misery must this old man, abandoned to himself, have
experienced
during the last years of his life; encountering nothing but enmity and the apprehension of his fellow creatures. I am not intending to excuse or even commiserate what I cannot understand, but the almost complete absence of any goodness in the human spirit cannot but condemn the heart to an appalling isolation. Had he been murdered, or had he come to a violent but natural end? In either case, horror and terror must have
supervened
.

That I had been enticed, deliberately led on, to this discovery I hadn’t
the least doubt, extravagant though this, too, may seem. Why? What for?

I could not bring myself to attempt to light the lamp. Besides, in that last vigil, it must have burnt itself out. My torch revealed a stub of candle on the mantelpiece. I lit that. He seemed to have been engaged in writing when the enemy of us all had approached him in silence and had struck him down. A long and unsealed envelope lay on the table. I drew out the contents – a letter and a Will, which had been witnessed some few weeks before, apparently by a tradesman’s boy and, possibly, by some derelict charwoman, Eliza Hinks. I knew enough about such things to be sure that the Will was valid and complete. This old man had been evidently more than fairly rich in this world’s goods, and reluctant to surrender them. The letter was addressed to his two sisters: ‘To my two Sisters, Amelia and Maude.’ Standing there in the cold and the silence, and utterly alone – for, if any occupant of the other world had decoyed me there, there was not the faintest hint in consciousness that he or his influence was any longer present with me – I read the vilest letter that has ever come my way. Even in print. It stated that he knew the circumstances of these two remaining relatives – that he was well aware of their poverty and physical conditions. One of them, it seemed, was afflicted with cancer. He then proceeded to explain that, although they should by the intention of their mother have had a due share in her property and in the money she had left, it rejoiced him to think that his withholding of this knowledge must continually have added to their wretchedness. Why he so hated them was only vaguely suggested.

The Will he had enclosed with the letter left all that he died possessed of to – of all human establishments that need it least – the authorities of
Scotland
Yard. It was to be devoted, it ran, to the detection of such evil-doers as are ignorant or imbecile enough to leave their misdemeanours and crimes detectable.