Short Stories 1927-1956 (6 page)

In sheer chagrin I drank the stuff, and rose to turn in. Not a bit of it! With covert glances at his watch, Mr Bloom kept me there by hook and by crook until it was long past midnight, and try as he might to conceal it, the
disquietude
that had peeped out earlier in the evening became more and more obvious. The only effect of this restlessness on his talk, however, was to
increase
its volume and incoherence. If Mr Bloom had been play-acting, and had been cast for his own character, his improvisations could not have been more masterly. He made no pretence now of listening to my own small part in this display; and when he did, it was only in order to attend to some other business he had in mind. Ever and again, as if to emphasize his point, he would haul himself up out of his deep-bottomed chair, and edge off towards the door – with the pretence perhaps of looking for a book. He would pause there for but an instant – and the bumbling muffled voice would yet again take up the strain. Once, however, he came to a dead stop, raised his hand and openly stood listening.

‘A nightingale certainly; if not two,’ he murmured
sotto
voce
,
‘but tell me, Mr Dash,’ he called softly out across the room, ‘was I deceived into
thinking
I heard a distant knocking? In a house as large as this; articles of some value perhaps; we read even of violence. You never can tell.’

I enquired with clumsy irony if there would be anything remarkable in a knocking. ‘Don’t your friends ever volunteer even a rap or two on their own account? I should have supposed it would be the least they could offer.’

‘A signal; m’m; a rap or two;’ he echoed me blandly. ‘Why that?’

‘From “the other side”?’

‘Eh? Eh?’ he suddenly broke off, his cheek whitening; the sole cause of his dismay being merely a scratching at the door-panel, announcing that his faithful pet had so much wearied of solitude in the dining-room that he had come seeking even his master’s company. But Mr Bloom did not open the door.

‘Be off!’ he called at the panel. ‘Away, sir! To your mat! That dog, Mr Dash, is more than human – or shall we say, less than human?’ The words were jovial enough, but the lips that uttered them trembled beneath his beard.

I had had enough, and this time had my way. He accompanied me to the door of the study but not further, and held out his hand.

‘If by any chance,’ he scarcely more than murmured, ‘you should want anything in the night, you will remember, of course, where to find me; I am in there.’ He pointed. ‘On the other hand,’ he laid his hand again on my arm, deprecatingly, almost as if with shy affection – ‘I am an exceedingly poor sleeper. And occasionally I find a brief amble round proves a sedative. Follow me up? At any alarm, eh? I should welcome it. But to-night I expect – nothing.’

He drew-to the door behind him. ‘Have you ever tried my own
particular
little remedy for insomnia? Cold air? And perhaps a hard biscuit, to humour the digestion. But
fol,
lol,
a young man – no: the machine
comparatively
new! My housekeeper returns at six: breakfast, I hope, at
eight-thirty
. A most punctual woman; a treasure. But then, servants; I detest the whole race of them. Good-night; good-night. And none of those
Proceed
ings
,
I warn you!’

But even now I had not completely shaken him off. He hastened after me, puffing as he came, and clutched at my coat sleeve.

‘What I was meaning, Mr Dash, is that I have never attempted to make converts – a fruit, let me tell you, that from being at first incredibly raw and unwholesome, rapidly goes rotten. Besides, my secretary had very little talent for marshalling facts. That’s why I mentioned the
Proceedings.
A turn for
writing,
maybe, but no method. Just that. And now, of course, you
must
go. Our evening is at an end. But who knows? Of course. Never matter. What must come, comes.’

At last I was free, though a hoarse whisper presently pursued me down the corridor. ‘No need for caution, Mr Dash, should you need me. No
infants
, no invalids; sleep well.’

Having put my candlestick on the table, shut the door of Mr
Champneys’s
bedroom, and very cautiously locked it, I sat down on the bed to think things over. Easier said than done. The one thing in my mind was relief at finding myself alone again, and of extreme distaste (as I wound my
watch) at the recollection of how many hours still remained before dawn. I opened the window and looked out. My room was at the back of the house, then; and over yonder must lie the lake, ebon-black under the stars. I listened for the water-birds, but not a sound. Mr Bloom’s nightingales, too, if not creatures of his imagination, had ceased to lament. A ground mist wreathed the boles of the chestnut trees, soundlessly lapping their
lowermost
boughs.

I drew in. The draught had set my candles guttering. Almost
automatically
I opened one of the long drawers in Mr Champneys’s chest. It was crammed with his linen. Had he no relatives, then, I wondered, or had Mr Bloom succeeded to his property? Such gay pyjamas would grace an Arabian prince; of palest blue silk with ‘S.S.C.’ in beautiful scarlet lettering. It was needlessly fastidious perhaps, but I left them undisturbed.

There were a few photographs above the chimneypiece; but photographs of the relatives and friends of a deceased stranger are not exhilarating
company
. Mr Champneys himself being dead, they seemed to be tinged with the same eclipse. One of them was a snapshot of a tall, dark, young man, in tennis clothes. He was smiling; he had a longish nose; a tennis racket was under his arm; and a tiny strip of maroon and yellow ribbon had been glued to the glass of the frame. Another Champneys, a brother, perhaps. I stood there, idly gazing at it for minutes together, as if in search of inspiration.

No talker has ever more completely exhausted me than Mr Bloom. Even while I was still deep in contemplation of the photograph I was seized
suddenly
with a series of yawns almost painful in their extremity. I turned away. My one longing was for the bath-room. But no – Mr Bloom had failed to show me the way there, and any attempt to find it for myself might involve me in more talk. It is embarrassing to meet anyone after farewells have been said – and
that
one? – no. Half-dressed, and having hunted in vain for a second box of matches, I lay down on the bed, drew its purple quilt over me – after all, Mr Bloom’s secretary had not died in it! – and blew out my candle.

I must have at once fallen asleep – a heavy and, seemingly, dreamless sleep. And now, as if in a moment I was awake again – completely wide awake, as if at an inward signal. Night had gone; the creeping grey of dawn was at the window, its colder, mist-burdened airs filled the room. I lay awhile inert, sharply scrutinizing my surroundings, realizing precisely where I was and at the same time that something was radically and
inexplicably
wrong with them. What?

It is difficult to suggest; but it was as if a certain aspect – the
character
of the room, its walls, angles, patterns, furniture, had been peculiarly
intensified
. Whatever was naturally grotesque in it was now more grotesque – and less real. Matter seldom advertises the precariousness imputed to it by
the physicist. But now, every object around me seemed to be proclaiming its impermanence, the danger, so to speak, it was in. With a conviction that thrilled me like an unexpected touch of ice, I suddenly realized that this is how Mr Champneys’s room would appear to anyone who had become for some reason or another intensely afraid. It may sound wildly preposterous, but there it is. I myself was
not
afraid – there was as yet nothing to be afraid of; and yet everything I saw seemed to be dependent on that most
untrustworthy
but vivid condition of consciousness. Once let my mind, so to speak, accept the evidences of my senses, then I should be as helpless as the victim of a drug or of the wildest nightmare. I sat there, stiff and cold, eyeing the door.

And then I heard the sound of voices: the faint, hollow, incoherent sound that voices make at a distance in a large house. At that, I confess, a deadly chill came over me. I stepped soundlessly on to the floor, looked about me but in vain in the half-light for the coat I had been wearing the previous night, and slipped on instead a pair of Mr Champneys’s slippers and the floral silk dressing gown that hung on the door-hook. In these, I was not exactly myself, but at any rate ready for action. It took me half a minute to unlock the door; caution is snail-slow. I was shivering a little, but that may have been due to the cold May morning. The voices were more distinct now; one of them, I fancied, was Mr Bloom’s. But there was a curious
similarity
between them; so much so that I may have been playing eavesdropper to Mr Bloom talking to himself. The sound was filtering down from an upper room; the corridor beneath, and now in its perspective stretching out before me in the pallor of dawn, being as still as a drop-scene in a theatre, the footlights out.

I listened, but could detect no words. And then the talking ceased. There came a sort of thump at the
other
end of the house, and then, overhead, the sound as of someone retreating towards me – heavily, unaccustomedly, but at a pretty good pace. Inaction is unnerving; and yet I hesitated, detesting the thought of meeting Mr Bloom again (and especially if he had company). But that little risk had to be taken; there was no help for it. I tiptoed along the corridor and looked into his study.

The curtain at the further end of the room was drawn a little aside. A deep-piled Turkey carpet covered the floor. I crossed it, soundlessly, and looked in. The light here was duskier than in my own room, and at first, after one comprehensive glance, I saw nothing unusual except that near at hand and beside a chair on which a black morning-coat had been flung, was a small bed, half-covered by a travelling rug; and standing beside it, a
familiar
pair of boots. Unmistakable, ludicrous, excellent boots! Empty as only boots can be, they squatted there side by side, like creatures by no means mute, yet speechless. And towards the foot of the bed, on a little round table
drawn up beside it, lay the miscellaneous contents, obviously, of Mr Bloom’s pockets. The old gold watch and the spade guinea, a note-case, a pocket-book, a pencil-case, a scrap of carved stained ivory, an antique silver toothpick, a couple of telegram envelopes, a bunch of keys, a heap of loose money – I see them all, but I see even more distinctly – and it was actually hob-nobbing with the spade-guinea – a Yale key. Why Mr Bloom emptied his pockets at night, I cannot guess – a mere habit perhaps. To that habit nonetheless I owe, perhaps, the brevity of my acquaintance with him.

There is, I suppose, no limit to human stupidity. Never until this moment had it occurred to me that Mr Bloom himself might have been responsible for the loss of my key, that he had in fact purloined it. I stole nearer, and examined his. Yale keys at a casual glance are almost as like one another as leaves on a tree. Was this mine? I was uncertain. I must risk it. And it baffles me why I should have been so fastidious about it. Mr Bloom had not been fastidious. The distant footsteps seemed now to be dully thumping down a remote flight of wooden stairs, and it was unmistakably
his
voice that I heard faintly booming as if in querulous protestation, and with all its manlier resonance and its gusto gone.

‘Yes, yes: coming, coming!’ and the footsteps stumped on.

Well, I had no wish to meddle in any assignation. I had long since
suspected
that Mr Bloom’s activities may have proved responsible for guests even more undesirable than myself, even though, unlike myself, they may, perhaps, have been of a purely subjective order. Like attracts like, I assume, in
any
sphere. Still raw prejudices such as mine were not exactly a fair test of his peculiar methods of spiritistic investigation. More generous critics might merely surmise that he had only pressed on a little further than most. That is all: a pioneer.

What – as I turned round – I was not prepared for was the spectacle of Mr Bloom’s bed. When I entered the room, I am certain there had been nothing unusual about that, except that it had not been slept in. True, the light had meanwhile increased a little, but not much. No, the bed had then been empty.

Not so now. The lower part of it was all but entirely flat, the white
cover-lid
having been drawn almost as neat and close from side to side of it as the carapace of a billiard table. But on the pillow – the grey-flecked brown beard protruding over the turned-down sheet – now showed what appeared to be the head and face of Mr Bloom. With chin jerked up, I watched that face steadily, transfixedly. It was a flawless facsimile, waxen, motionless; but it was not a real face and head. It was an hallucination. How induced is quite another matter. No spirit of life, no livingness had ever stirred those soap-like, stagnant features. It was a travesty utterly devoid – whatever its intention – of the faintest hint of humour. It was merely a mask, a life-like
mask (past even the dexterity of a Chinese artist to rival), and – though I hardly know why – it was inconceivably shocking.

My objections to indiscriminate spiritualism the evening before may have been hasty and shallow. They seemed now to have been grotesquely
inadequate
. This house was not haunted, it was infested. Catspaw, poor young Mr Champneys may have been, but he had indeed helped with the chestnuts. A horrible weariness swept over me. Without another glance at the bed, I made my way as rapidly as possible to the door – and broke into a run.

Still thickly muffled with her last journey’s dust – except for the
fingerprints
I afterwards noticed on her bonnet – and just as I had left her the
previous
evening, my car stood awaiting me in the innocent blue of dawn beneath the porch. So must Tobias have welcomed his angel. My heart
literally
stood still as I inserted the key – but all was well. The first faint purring of the engine was accompanied by the sound of a window being flung open. It was above and behind me, and beyond the porch. I turned my head, and detected a vague greyish figure standing a little within cover of the hollies and ilexes – a short man, about twenty or thirty yards away, not looking at me. But he too may have been pure illusion, pure hallucination. When I had blinked and looked again he was gone. There was no sunshine yet; the garden was as still as a mechanical panorama, but the hubbub, the gabbling was increasing overhead.