The Wish House and Other Stories (44 page)

‘What wonder of Heaven’s coming now?’ I thought.

‘Manna – manna – manna,’ he said at last, under wrinkled brows. ‘That’s what I wanted. Good! Now then! Now then! Good! Good! Oh, by God, that’s good!’ His voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:

He repeated it once more, using ‘blander’ for ‘smoother’ in the second line; then wrote it down without erasure, but this time (my set eyes missed no stroke of any word) he substituted ‘soother’ for his atrocious second thought, so that it came away under his hand as it is written in the book – as it is written in the book.

A wind went shouting down the street, and on the heels of the wind followed a spurt and rattle of rain.

After a smiling pause – and good right had he to smile – he began anew, always tossing the last sheet over his shoulder:

Then prose: ‘It is very cold of mornings when the wind brings rain and sleet with it. I heard the sleet on the window-pane outside, and thought of you, my darling. I am always thinking of you. I wish we could both run away like two lovers into the storm and get that little cottage by the sea which we are always thinking about, my own dear darling. We could sit and watch the sea beneath our windows. It would be a fairyland all of our own – a fairy sea – a fairy sea…’

He stopped, raised his head, and listened. The steady drone of the Channel along the sea-front that had borne us company so long leaped up a note to the sudden fuller surge that signals the change from ebb to flood. It beat in like the change of step throughout an army – this renewed pulse of the sea – and filled our ears till they, accepting it, marked it no longer.

He grunted again with effort and bit his underlip. My throat dried, but I dared not gulp to moisten it lest I should break the spell that was drawing him nearer and nearer to the highwater mark but two of the sons of Adam have reached. Remember that in all the millions permitted there are no more than five – five little lines – of which one can say: ‘These are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry.’ And Mr Shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them!

I vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and re-repeating:

But though I believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals and cigarette-smoke.

Here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I had first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of sweat trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back of my hand.

‘Not yet – not yet,’ he muttered, ‘wait a minute.
Please
wait a minute. I shall get it then –

Ouh
, my God!’

From head to heel he shook – shook from the marrow of his bones
outwards – then leaped to his feet with raised arms, and slid the chair screeching across the tiled floor where it struck the drawers behind and fell with a jar. Mechanically, I stooped to recover it.

As I rose, Mr Shaynor was stretching and yawning at leisure.

‘I’ve had a bit of a doze,’ he said. ‘How did I come to knock the chair over? You look rather —‘

‘The chair startled me,’ I answered. ‘It was so sudden in this quiet.’

Young Mr Cashell behind his shut door was offendedly silent.

‘I suppose I must have been dreaming,’ said Mr Shaynor.

‘I suppose you must,’ I said. ‘Talking of dreams – I – I noticed you writing – before —‘

He flushed consciously.

‘I meant to ask you if you’ve ever read anything written by a man called Keats.’

‘Oh! I haven’t much time to read poetry, and I can’t say that I remember the name exactly. Is he a popular writer?’

‘Middling. I thought you might know him because he’s the only poet who was ever a druggist. And he’s rather what’s called the lover’s poet.’

‘Indeed. I must dip into him. What did he write about?’

‘A lot of things. Here’s a sample that may interest you.’

Then and there, carefully, I repeated the verse he had twice spoken and once written not ten minutes ago.

‘Ah! Anybody could see he was a druggist from that line about the tinctures and syrups. It’s a fine tribute to our profession.’

‘I don’t know,’ said young Mr Cashell, with icy politeness, opening the door one half-inch, ‘if you still happen to be interested in our trifling experiments. But, should such be the case —‘

I drew him aside, whispering, ‘Shaynor seemed going off into some sort of fit when I spoke to you just now. I thought, even at the risk of being rude, it wouldn’t do to take you off your instruments just as the call was coming through. Don’t you see?’

‘Granted – granted as soon as asked,’ he said, unbending. ‘I
did
think it a shade odd at the time. So that was why he knocked the chair down?’

‘I hope I haven’t missed anything,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid I can’t say that, but you’re just in time for the end of a rather curious performance. You can come in too, Mr Shaynor. Listen, while I read it off.’

The Morse instrument was ticking furiously. Mr Cashell interpreted:
“‘K.K.V. Can make nothing of your signals.”’
A pause. ‘“M.M.V. M.M.V. Signals unintelligible. Purpose anchor Sandown Bay.
Examine instruments tomorrow.”
Do you know what that means? It’s a couple of men-o’-war working Marconi signals off the Isle of Wight. They are trying to talk to each other. Neither can read the other’s messages, but all their messages are being taken in by our receiver here. They’ve been going on for ever so long. I wish you could have heard it.’

‘How wonderful!’ I said. ‘Do you mean we’re overhearing Portsmouth ships trying to talk to each other – that we’re eavesdropping across half South England?’

‘Just that. Their transmitters are all right, but their receivers are out of order, so they only get a dot here and a dash there. Nothing clear.’

‘Why is that?’

‘God knows – and science will know tomorrow. Perhaps the induction is faulty; perhaps the receivers aren’t tuned to receive just the number of vibrations per second that the transmitter sends. Only a word here and there. Just enough to tantalize.’

Again the Morse sprang to life.

‘That’s one of ’em complaining now. Listen:
“Disheartening – most disheartening.”
It’s quite pathetic. Have you ever seen a spiritualistic séance? It reminds me of that sometimes – odds and ends of messages coming out of nowhere – a word here and there – no good at all.’

‘But mediums are all imposters,’ said Mr Shaynor, in the doorway, lighting an asthma-cigarette. ‘They only do it for the money they can make. I’ve seen ’em.’

‘Here’s Poole, at last-clear as a bell. L.L.L.
Now
we shan’t be long.’ Mr Cashell rattled the keys merrily. ‘Anything you’d like to tell ’em?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I’ll go home and get to bed. I’m feeling a little tired.’

Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs’ dove-winged races –

Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome;

Plucking the radiant robes of the passers-by, and with pitiful faces

Begging what Princes and Powers refused: ‘Ah, please will you let us go home?’

Over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them Mary the Mother,

Kneeled and caressed and made promise with kisses, and drew them along to the gateway–

Yea, the all-iron unbribeable Door which Peter must guard and none other.

Straightway She took the Keys from his keeping, and opened and freed them straightway.

Then to Her Son, Who had seen and smiled, She said: ‘On the night that I bore Thee

What didst Thou care for a love beyond mine or a heaven that was not my arm?

Didst Thou push from the nipple, O Child, to hear the angels adore Thee?

When we two lay in the breath of the kine?’ And He said: – ‘Thou hast done no harm.’

So through the Void the Children ran homeward merrily hand in hand,

Looking neither to left nor right where the breathless Heavens stood still;

And the Guards of the Void resheathed their swords, for they heard the Command:

‘Shall I that have suffered the children to come to me hold them against their will?’

O
NE
view called me to another; one hilltop to its fellow, half across the county, and since I could answer at no more trouble than the snapping forward of a lever, I let the county flow under my wheels. The orchid-studded flats of the East gave way to the thyme, ilex, and grey grass of the Downs; these again to the rich cornland and fig-trees of the lower coast, where you carry the beat of the tide on your left hand for fifteen level miles; and when at last I turned inland through a huddle of rounded hills and woods I had run myself clean out of my known marks. Beyond that precise hamlet which stands godmother to the capital of the United States, I found hidden villages where bees, the only things awake, boomed in eighty-foot lindens that overhung grey Norman churches; miraculous brooks diving under stone bridges built for heavier traffic than would ever vex them again; tithe-barns larger than their churches, and an old smithy that cried out aloud how it had once been a hall of the Knights of the Temple. Gypsies I found on a common where the gorse, bracken, and heath fought it out together up a mile of Roman road; and a little farther on I disturbed a red fox rolling dog-fashion in the naked sunlight.

As the wooded hills closed about me I stood up in the car to take the bearings of that great Down whose ringed head is a landmark for fifty miles across the low countries. I judged that the lie of the country would bring me across some westward-running road that went to his feet, but I did not allow for the confusing veils of the woods. A quick turn plunged me first into a green cutting brim-full of liquid sunshine, next into a gloomy tunnel where last year’s dead leaves whispered and scuffled about my tyres. The strong hazel stuff meeting overhead had not been cut for a couple of generations at least, nor had any axe helped the moss-cankered oak and beech to spring above them. Here the road changed frankly into a carpeted ride on whose brown velvet spent primrose-clumps showed like jade, and a few sickly, white-stalked bluebells nodded together. As the slope favoured I shut off the power and slid over the whirled leaves, expecting every moment to meet a keeper; but I only heard a jay, far off, arguing against the silence under the twilight of the trees.

Still the track descended. I was on the point of reversing and working my way back on the second speed ere I ended in some swamp, when I saw sunshine through the tangle ahead and lifted the brake.

It was down again at once. As the light beat across my face my fore-wheels took the turf of a great still lawn from which sprang horsemen ten feet high with levelled lances, monstrous peacocks, and sleek round-headed maids of honour – blue, black, and glistening – all of clipped yew. Across the lawn – the marshalled woods besieged it on three sides – stood an ancient house of lichened and weather-worn stone, with mullioned windows and roofs of rose-red tile. It was flanked by semi-circular walls, also rose-red, that closed the lawn on the fourth side, and at their feet a box hedge grew man-high. There were doves on the roof about the slim brick chimneys, and I caught a glimpse of an octagonal dove-house behind the screening wall.

Here, then, I stayed: a horseman’s green spear laid at my breast; held by the exceeding beauty of that jewel in that setting.

‘If I am not packed off for a trespasser, or if this knight does not ride a wallop at me,’ thought I, ‘Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth at least must come out of that half-open garden door and ask me to tea.’

A child appeared at an upper window, and I thought the little thing waved a friendly hand. But it was to call a companion, for presently another bright head showed. Then I heard a laugh among the yew-peacocks, and turning to make sure (till then I had been watching the house only) I saw the silver of a fountain behind a hedge thrown up against the sun. The doves on the roof cooed to the cooing water; but between the two notes I caught the utterly happy chuckle of a child absorbed in some light mischief.

The garden door-heavy oak sunk deep in the thickness of the wall – opened further: a woman in a big garden hat set her foot slowly on the time-hallowed stone step and as slowly walked across the turf. I was forming some apology when she lifted up her head, and I saw that she was blind.

‘I heard you,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a motor car?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake in my road. I should have turned off up above – I never dreamed —‘ I began.

‘But I’m very glad. Fancy a motor car coming into the garden! It will be such a treat—‘ She turned and made as though looking about her. ‘You – you haven’t seen any one, have you – perhaps?’