Out of the deep by Walter Delamare. The steely light of daybreak, increasing
in volume and intensity as the east grew larger with the day, showed clearly
at length that prodigious yet elegant Arabian bed was empty. What might tenderly have
cradled the slumbers of some exquisite fare of Romance now contained no human occupant.
To all. The whole immense room, its air, dry and thin as
if burnt, was quiet as a sepulcher. To the right of the bed
towered of vast and heavily carved wardrobe, to the left a lofty fireplace of
stone, flanked by its grinning, frigid dogs. A few cumbrous and obscure
oil paintings hung on the walls, and like the draperies of a proscenium,
the fringed and balanced damask curtains on either side the two high windows poured down
their motionless cataract of crimson. They had had been left undrawn overnight, and
yet gave the scene a slight theatricality, a theatricality which the painted nymphs,
disporting themselves on the ceiling scarcely helped to dispel. Not that these coy and
oggling faces suggested any vestige of chagrin at the absence of the young man who,
for some weeks past had shared the long nights with them, they merely
smiled on. For after all, Jimmy's restless head upon the pillow had never
really been in harmony with his pompous, inanimous surroundings. The thin, high
nose like the beak of a small ship, between the fast sealed lids and
narrow cheekbones, the narrow birdlike brow, the shell of the ear slightly pointed.
If inspired by the distant music of the spheres, the painted creatures had
with this daybreak broken into song, it would certainly not have been to the
tune of Oh Where, and oh where is my little dog Gone? There
was even less likelihood of Jimmy's voice now taking up their strains from out of
the distance, And yet, to judge from appearances, the tongue within that
head might have been that of an extremely vivacious talker, even though apart from
missus thrips its talk these last few days had been for the most part with
himself. Indeed, as one of his friends had remarked, don't you believe
it Jimmy has pots and pots to say, though he don't say it.
That's what makes him such a damn good loser. Whether or not, if
Jimmy had been in the habit of conversing with himself, he must have had
odd company at times. Night after night, he had lain there flat on
his back, his hands crossed on his breast, a pose that never failed
to amuse him. A smooth eminence in the dark, rich quilt about sixty
inches from his chin, indicated to his attentive eye the points of his toes.
The hours had been heavy, the hours had been long. Still there
are only twelve or so of utter darkness in the most tedious of nights,
and Matan tinkles at length, excepting the last of them, a night which
was now apparently forever over. He had occupied this majestic bed for about six
weeks, though on no single occasion could he have confessed to being really at
home in it. He had chosen it not from any characteristic whim or caprice,
and certainly not because it dominated the room in which his uncle Timothy himself
used to sleep, Yes, and for forty years on end, only at
last to expire in it. He had chosen it because when its Venetian blinds
were pulled high up under the fringed cornice, it was as light as a
London april sky could make it. And because well, just one single glance
in from the high, narrow doorway upstairs had convinced him that the attic in
which he was wont to sleep as a small boy was simply out of the
question. A black, heavy flood of rage swept over him at the sight
of it. He had never before positively realized the abominations of that early past.
To a waf and stray, any kind of shelter is, of course
a godsend. But even though this huge, sumptuous barrack of a house had
been left to him, or rather abandoned to him by his uncle Timothy's relict
aunt Charlotte, Jimmy could not, even at his loosest have been described as
homeless, friendless, rather, but that of his own deliberate choice. Not
so very long ago. In fact, he had made a clean sweep of
every single living being, male or female, to whom the term friend could,
with some little elasticity be applied. A little official affair, to put
it politely, eased their exit and then this vacant hostel. The house in
fa act, occupied only by a caretaker in the service of his aunt's lawyers,
had been his for the asking at any time during the last two or
three years, but he had steadily delayed in taking possession of it until there
was practically no alternative circumstances accustom even a young man to a good many inconveniences.
Still, it would have been a little too quixotic to sleep in the
street. Even though his uncle Timothy's house, as a mere property was little
better than a white and unpleasing elephant, he could not sell it. That
is not en mass. It was more than dubious if he was legally entitled
to make away with its contents. But quite apart from an extreme aversion to
you, uncle Timothy's valuables in themselves, you cannot eat, even if you
can subsist on articles of virtue. Sir Richard Grenville, a hero for whom
Jimmy had every respect, may have been accustomed to chewing up his wineglass after
swinging off its contents. But this must have been on the spur of an
impulse, hardly in obedience to the instinct of self preservation. Jimmy would have
much preferred to balance a chair at the foot of his uncle's Arabian bed and
salute the smiling lips of the painted nymphs on the ceiling, though even that
experiment would probably have rather a gritty flavor. Still, possession is nine points
of the law, and necessity is the deadly enemy of convention. Jimmy was
unconscious of the faintest scruples on that score. His scruples, indeed, were
in another direction. Only a few days ago. The day in fact,
before his first indulgence in the queer experience of pulling the bell, he had
sailed out with his aunt Charlotte's black leather dressing bag, positively bulging with a
pair of bow candlesticks, an illuminated missile, mutely exquisite with its blues and
gold walls and crimsons, and a tiny old silver gilt bejutery box. He
was a young man of absurdly impulsive aversions, and a dealer to whom he
carried this further consignment of loot was one of them. After a rapid and
contemptuous examination, this gentleman spread out his palms, shrugged his shoulders, and
suggested a sum that would have caused even a more phlegmatic connoisseur than his customers,
Uncle Timothy, to turn in his grave, and Jimmy replied, nicely,
slurring his ahs. Really, mister soancer, that is impossible, no
doubt the things have an artificial value, but not for me. I must
ask you to oblige me by giving me only half the sum you have kindly
mentioned, rather than accept your figure, you know I would well, perhaps
it would be impolite to tell you what I would prefer to do. Disiree
de zilla, and so on. The dealer flushed, though he had been
apparently content to leave it at that, He was not the man to be
easily insulted by a good customer, and Jimmy's depredations were methodical, with the
fastidiousness of an expert. He selected from the rare and costly contents of the
house only what was light and portable, and became inconspicuous by its absence.
The supply, he realized, though without any perceptible animation, however recklessly it
might be squandered, would easily last out his lifetime, certainly not after having
once made up his mind to accept his uncle Timothy's posthumous hospitality. The real
difficulty was unlikely to be a conscientious one. It was the attempt merely to
accustom himself to the house, the hated house, that grew more and more
arduous. It falsified his hope that, like other experisperiances, this one would
prove only the more piquant for being so precarious. Days and moments quickly flying
just his one funny old charwoman Missus thrips himself and the past. After pausing
a while under the dingy and dusty portico, Jimmy had entered into his inheritance
on the last afternoon in March. The wind was fallen, the day was
beginning to narrow. A chill crystal light hung over the unshuttered staircase by sheer
force of forgotten habit. He at once ascended to the attic in which he
had slept as a child. Pausing on the threshold, he looked in conscious
not so much, of the few familiar sticks of furniture, the truckle bed,
the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue banded eyewer and basin,
the framed illuminated texts on the walls as of a perfect hive of a
borrent memories. That high cupboard in the corner from which certain bodiless shapes had
been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams. The
crab patterned paper that came alive as you stared, the window cold with menacing
stars, the mouseholes, the rusty great trumpet of every wind that blows.
These objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues. Quite
apart from themselves, they reminded him of incidents and experiences which at the time
could scarcely have been so nauseous as they now seemed. In retrospect, he
found himself suffocatingly resentful, even of what must have been kindly intentions. He
remembered how his aunt Charlotte used to read to him, with her puffy cheeks,
plump ringed hands, and the moving orbs of her eyes showing under her
spectacles. He wasn't exactly accusing the asked. Even in his first breeches.
He was never what could be called a nice little boy. He had never
ordered himself lowly and reverently to any of his betters, at least in their
absence. Nevertheless, what stirred in his bosom as he gazed in on this
discarded scene was certainly not remorse. He remembered how gingerly and with what peculiar
breathings his uncle Timothy used to lift his microscope out of its wooden case,
and how after the necessary manipulation of the instrument, he himself would be bidden
mount of footstool and fix his dazzled eye on the slides of sluggish or darting
horrors of minute magnified life. And how after a steady, unawing drawl of
inapprehensible instruction, his uncle would suddenly flick out a huge silk pocket handkerchief as
a signal that little tongue tied and nervous boys were themselves nothing but miserable,
sluggish or darting reptiles, and that his nephew was the most deplorable kind of
little boy. Jimmy remembered too, once asking the loose bow shaped old gentleman
in his chair if he might himself twist the wheel, and his uncle Timothy
had replied in a loud, ringing voice, and almost as if he were
addressing a public meeting. Um, ah, my boy, I say no
to that. He said no to most things, and just like that if
he vouchsafed speech at all. And then there was church on Sundays, and
his hoop on week days in the Crescent, and days when with nothing to
do, little Jimmy had been wont to sit watching the cold, silvery rain
on the window, the body he was in slowly congealing, the while into
a species of rancid suet pudding. Mornings too, when his Aunt Charlotte would
talk nasily to him about Christianity, or when he was allowed to help his
uncle and a tall, scared parlormaid dust and rearranged the contents of a cabinet
or bureau. The smell of the air, the check duster, the odious
objet dar, and the aging old man snorting and looking like a superannuated silenus
beside the neat and frightened parlormaid. It was a curious thing. Though death
with his luring grin, had beckoned him off, there he was alive as
ever, And when amid these ruminations, Jimmy's eyes had at last fixed themselves
on the frayed, dangling cord that hung from the ceiling over the truckle bed.
It was because he had already explored all that the name Solmes had stood
for Solmes the butler, a black clothed, tub bellied, pompous man that
might have been his uncle Timothy's impoverished first cousin or illegitimate step brother. Solmes
Solmes, Solmes used frequently to wring Jimmy's then protuberant ears. Solmes, sneaked
habitually and with a sort of gloating piety on his drooping face, was invariably
present at the subsequent castigation. Solmes had been wont to pile up on his
plate with lumps of fat that even Destiny had never intended to consort with any
single leg of mutton, or even surloin of beef jelly like rapidly cooling nuggets
of fat, and Solmes invariably brought him cold rice pudding when there was hot
ginger roll. Jimmy remembered the lines that drooped down from his pale, long
nose, the sleek s of his whiskers as he stood there in his coat,
tails reflected in the glass of the sideboard carving the Sunday joint, but
that slack green bell cord his very first glimpse of it had set waggling score
of peculiar remembrances first, and not so very peculiarly. Perhaps it recalled an
occasion when, as he stood before his aunt's footstool to bid her good night,
her aggrieved pupils had visibly swum down from beneath their lids out of a
nap to fix themselves and look at him at last, as if neither he
nor she, either in this or in any other world, had ever so
much as seen one another before. Perhaps his own face, if not so
puffy, appeared that evening to be unusually pasty and pallid, with those dark
rings which even to this day added vivacity and luster to his extremely clear eyes.
And as Aunt Charlotte had asked him why he was such a cowardly boy
and so wickedly frightened of the dark, you know very well your dear uncle
will not permit gassimi attic, so there's no use asking for it. You
have nothing on your conscience. I trust you have not been talking to the
servants infallible liar. He had shaken his head, and his Aunt Charlotte in
return wagged hers at him. It's no good staring in that rebellious, sullen
way at me. I have told you repeatedly that if you are really in
need of anything, just ring the bell for solms. A good little boy
with nothing on his conscience knows that God watches over him. I hope you
are at least trying to be a good little boy. There is a limit
even to your uncle's forbearance. It was perfectly true, even bad little boys
might be watched over in the dead of night. And as for his uncle
Timothy's forbearon, he had discovered the limitations of that fairly early in life.
Well, it was a pity, he smiled to himself, that his Aunt
Charlotte could not be present to see his uncle Timothy's bedroom on that first celebration
of their prodigal nephew's return. Jimmy's first forey had been to range the house
from attic to cella, where he had paused to rest for candlesticks, and
that night something like six dozen of the best wax watched over his heavy and
galvanic slumbers in the Arabian bed. Aunt Charlotte, now rather more accustomed to
the dark even than Jimmy himself, would have opened her eyes at that gamblers
are naturally superstitious folk, he supposed, But that was the queerest feature of
the whole thing. He had not then been conscious of even the slightest apprehension
or speculation. It was far rather a kind of ribaldry than any sort of
foreboding that had lit up positive constellations of candle, as if for a prince's,
as if for Princely Cardinal's lying in state. It had taken a devil
of a time too. His uncle Timothy's port was not the less potent for
a long spell of obscure mellowing, and the hand that held the taper had
been a shaky one, yet it had provided an amusing process too, almost
childish. Jimmy hadn't laughed like that for years. Certainly, until then he
had been unconscious of the feeblest, squeamish inkling of anything apart from old remembrances
peculiar in the house. Yet well, no doubt even the first absurd,
impulsive experiment that followed had shaken him up. Its result would have been less
unexpected if he hadn't made a point and almost the duty of continually patrolling the
horrible old vacant London mansion. Hardly a day had lately passed, and there
was nothing better today, But it found him on his rounds. He was
not waiting for anything except for the hour maybe when he would have to wait
no more. Nevertheless, faithful as the sentinel on Elsinore's hoary ramparts, he
would find himself day after day, treading almost catlike on from room to room,
surveying his paradoxical inheritance, dotting down a list in a nice order of
the next sacrifices, grimacing at the ming divinities, and pirouetting an occasional long
nose at the portraits on the walls. He had sometimes had a few words
animated ones too, with missus Thripps. And perhaps if he could have persuaded
himself to talk sensibly, and not to gesticulate, not to laugh himself so
easily into a fit of coughing, she would have proved better company. She
was amazingly honest and punctual, and quiet and white heaven, a woman with
such excellent qualities should customarily wear so scared a gleam in her still colorless eyes,
and be so idiotically timid and nervous in his company. He could not
imagine she was being paid handsome wages anyhow, And naturally he was aware of
no rooted objection to other people helping themselves, at least if they managed it
as skillfully as he did himself. But missus Thripps, it seemed, had
never been able, in any sense at all, to help herself. She
was simply a crape bonneted motherly creature, if not excessively intelligent, if a
little slow in seeing points. It was indeed her alarm when he asked her
if she had happened to notice any young man about the house that had irritated
him, though of course it was hardly fair not to explain what had given
rise to the question that was perfectly simple. It was like this for years,
for centuries. In fact, Jimmy had been, except in certain unusual
circumstances, an exceedingly bad sleeper. He still hated sleeping in the dark.
But a multitude of candles at various degrees of exhaustion make rather lively company when
you are sick of your uncle Timothy Seller, and even the best of vintage
wines may prove an ineffectual soporific. His too, was a wretchedly active mind.
Even as a boy he had thought a good deal about his uncle and
aunt and Solmes and the house, and the reverend mister Grayson, and specters
and schoolmasters, and painted nymphs, and running away to sea, and curios
and dead silence, and his early childhood. And though since then other enigmas
had engaged his attention, this purely automatic and tiresome activity of mind still persisted.
On his oath. He had been, in some respects, and in
secret rather a goody, goody little boy, though his piety had been rather
the offspring of fear than of love. Had he not been expelled from melishes
almost solely for that reason, What on earth was the good of repeatedly thrashing
a boy when you positively knew that he has lied merely from terror of your
roaring voice and horrible white face. But there it was. If there had
been some one to talk to, he would not have talked so much to
himself. He would not have lain awake thinking night after night, like a
rat in a trap. Thinking was like a fountain. Once it gets going
at a certain pressure, well it is almost impossible to turn it off.
And my hat, what odd things come up with the water. On the
particular night in question, In spite of the candles and the mice and the
moon, he badly wanted company in a moment of pining yet listless jocosity.
Then he had merely taken his Aunt Charlotte's advice true. The sumptuous crimson pleated
silk bell pull dangling like a serpent with a huge tassel for skull over his
uncle Timothy's pillow, was a more formidable instrument than the yard or two a
frayed green cord in the attic. Yet they shared the same purpose many a
time. Must his uncle Timothy have stretched up a large, loose hand in
that direction when in need of Solmes's nocturnal ministrations. And now, alas both
master and man were long since gone the way of all flesh, you couldn't,
it appeared, pull bells in your coffin. But Jimmy was not as
yet in his coffin. And as soon as his fingers slipped down from the
smooth pull, the problem in the abstract, as it were, began to
fascinate him. With cold, froggy hands crossed over his beautiful puce patterned pajamas,
he lay staring at the crimson tassel till he had actually seen the hidden
fangs thickeringly jet out at him. The effort, then, must have needed
some little courage. It might almost have needed a tinge of inspiration. It
was in no sense intended as a challenge. He would in fact rather remain
alone than chance, summoning well any once animate relic of the distant past.
But obviously, the most practical way of proving, if only to yourself,
that you can be content with your own reconnaissances in the very dead of night,
was to demonstrate to that self that even if you should ask for it,
assistance would not be forthcoming. He had been as fantastic as that at
the prolonged, pulsating, faint, distant tintinabulation. He had fallen back onto
his pillow with an absurd little quicket of laughter, like that of a naughty
boy up to mischief, but instant sobriety followed. Poor sleepers should endeavor to
compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch black pits
of darkness is scarcely sedative. And then, as he lay striving with an
extraordinary fervor not to listen, but to concentrate his mind on the wardrobe,
and to keep his eyes from the door. That door must gently have opened.
It must have opened, and as noiselessly closed again, for a more
or less decent looking young man, seemingly not a day older than himself,
was now apparent in the room. It might almost be said that he had
insinuated himself into the room. But well trained domestics, or customed to move
their limbs and bodies with a becoming unobtrusiveness. There was also that familiar slight
inclination of the apologetic in this young man's pose, as he stood there,
solitary in his black in that terrific blaze of candlelight, and for a sheer,
solid minute, the occupant of the Arabian bed had really stopped thinking.
When indeed, you positively press your face, so to speak, against the
crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.
And Jimmy's first rapid and instinctive who the devil had remained inaudible. In
the course of the next few days, Jimmy was to become familiar, at
least in memory, with the looks of this new young butler or valet.
But first impressions are usually the vividest, the dark blue gray eyes, the
high nose, the scarcely perceptible smile, the slight stoop of the shoulders.
There was no doubt of it. There was just a flavor, a flicker
there of resemblance to himself, Not that he himself could ever have cut as
respectful and respectable a figure as that, and the smile. The fellow seemed
to be ruminating over a thousand dubious, long interred secrets, secrets such as
one may be a little cautious of digging up, even to share with one's
self. His face turned sidelong on his pillow and through air as visibly transparent
as a sheet of glass, Jimmy had steadily regarded this strange bell answerer,
and the bell answerer had never so much as stirred his frigid, glittering eyes
in response. The silence that hung between them produced eventually a peculiar effect on
Jimmy. Menials, as a general rule, should be less emphatic personally.
Their unobtrusiveness should surely not emphasize their imminence. It had been Jimmy who was
the first to withdraw his eyes, only once more to find them settling,
as if spell bound, on those of his visitor. Yet, after all,
there was nothing to take offense at in the young man's countenance or attitude.
He did not seem even to be thinking back at the bell pullar,
but merely to be awaiting instructions. Yet Jimmy's heart at once rapidly began to
beat again beneath his icy hands, And at last he made a perfect idiotic
response, wagging his head on his pillow, he turned abruptly away. It
was only to tell you that I shall need nothing more to night, he
had said. Good heavens, the fatuity of it. He wanted thirsted force,
scores upon scores of things. Aladdin's was the cupidity of a simpleton,
by comparison time the past, for instance, and the ability to breathe again
as easily as if it were natural, as natural as the processes of digestion.
Why, if you were intent only on a little innocent companionship, one
or two of those nymphs up there would be far more amusing company than missus
thrips. If that is, apart from yearning to their harps and vials that
he could have been persuaded to scrub and sweep. Jimmy wanted no other kind
of help. There is a beauty that is but skin deep. Altogether,
it had been a far from satisfactory experience. Jimmy was nettled, his mincing
tones echoed on in his mind. They must have suggested that he was unaccustomed
to menservants and bell pulls and opulent surroundings. And the fellow had instantly taken
him at his word, a solemn, little, rather agreeable and unservile inclination
of the not unfriendly head. And he was gone. And there was Jimmy,
absolutely exhausted, coughing his lungs out, and entirely incapable of concluding whether
the new butler was a creature of actuality or of dream. Well, well,
well that was nothing new. That's just how things do take one in
one's weak moments in the dead of night. Nevertheless, the experience had apparently
provoked sedative. He had slept like an infant. The morning found him vivacious
with curiosity. He had paused to make only an exceedingly negligent toilet before beginning
his usual wanderings about the house. Calm, cold daylight reflection may dismiss almost
any nocturnal experience as a dream, if at any rate one's temperature in the
night hours is habitually above the norm. But Jimmy could not or would not
absolutely make up his mind. So clear a picture had his visit and imprinted
on his memory, that he found himself just like a specialist sounding a patient
in search of the secret ravages of thysis. He had found himself stealthily tapping
over the basement walls, as if in search of a concealed pantry, a
foolish proceeding if one has not the least desire in the well to attract the
attention of one's neighbors. Having at length satisfied himself in a rather confused fashion,
that whatever understudy of somes might share the house with him in the small
hours, he must be a butler of the migratory order. Jimmy then began
experimenting with the bells mounted on a kitchen chair, cornice brush in hand.
He had been surprised by Missus Thrips in her quiet boots as he stood gently
knocking one by one the full eighteen of the long green, crooked jingle row,
which hung open mouthed above the immense dresser. She had caught him in
the act, and Jimmy had once more exercised his customary glib presence of mind.
They ought to be hung in a scale, you know, wouldn't they,
Missus Thrips. Then we could have home, sweet home, and a
hunting up and a hunting down, grand sires and treble bobs and a grand
Maximus, even on weekdays. And if we were in danger of any kind
of fire, which you will never be, we could ring them backwards.
Couldn't be, Missus Thrips. Not there's much quality in them, no medieval
monkish tone or timber in them. They're a bit moldy too, and one
can't tell t'other from which it's not like Saint Faith's. One would recognize that
old clankor in one shroud, wouldn't one, Missus Thrips. Has it ever
occurred to you that the first Campanologist's real intention was not so much to call
the congregation as to summon, well what the congregations after, Yes, sir,
Missus Thrips had agreed, Her watery gray eyes fixed largely on the elevated
young man. But it don't matter which of them you ring. I'll answer
Henry at least while I'm in the house. Hi, don't think, sir,
you rest your mind enough. My own boy now he's in the navy.
But with one graceful flourish Jimmy had run his long handled brush clean east
to west along the clanging row. You mustn't, he shouted, You shouldn't.
Once aboard the lugger. They are free. It's you mother's. He
gently shook his peculiar wand at the flat looking little old woman. No,
Missus thrips. What I'm after is he who is here here couchamp perdieu leiree,
in these same subterranean vaults, when you and I are snug in our
nightcaps, a most nice spoken young man, not in the navy. Missus
thrips. And before the old lady had had time to seize any one of
these seductive threads of conversation, Jimmy had flashed his usual brilliant smile or grimace
at her, and soon afterwards sailed out of the house to purchase a further
gross or two of candles, gently and furtively pushing across the counter half a
sovereign, not as a du sur, but merely from friend to friend.
He had similarly smiled back at the secretive looking old assistant in the stead west
End family grosses. No, I don't suppose you could remember me. One
altars, one ages, one deals elsewhere. But anyhow, a happy new
year to you if the next ever comes. You know you see, sir,
the straight aproned old man had retorted, with equal confidentiality. It is
not so much the alterations. They are what you might call uncircumventable, sir.
It's the stream, sir, behind the counter here we are like rocks
in it. But even if I can't for the moment put a thought to
your face, though it's already stirring in me, in a manner of speaking,
I shall in the fuature, sir. You may rely upon that,
and the same, sir, to you and many of them. I'm sure,
somehow or other, Jimmy's vanity had been mollified by this pleasing little ceremoniousness,
and that even before he had smiled yet once again at the saffron young
lady in the pay box. The truth is, my dear, he had
assured himself, as he once more ascended into the dingy porch. The truth
is, when once you begin to tamper, you won't know where you are.
You won't really And that night he had lain soberly on in a peculiar
state of physical quiescence and self satisfaction, his dark bright eyes wandering from nymph
to nymph, his hands folded over his breast under the bedclothes, his heart
persisting in its usual habits. Nevertheless, the fountain of his thoughts had continued
softly to splash on in its worn basin. With ear year as a cock,
he had frankly enjoyed inhaling the parched, spent brilliant air. And when
his fingers had at last manifested the faintest possible itch to experiment once more with
the bellbill, he had slipped out of bed, and, hastily searching through
a little privy case of his uncle's bedside books, had presently slipped back again,
armed with a fat little copy of The Mysteries of Paris in its original
French. The next day, a horrible lassitude descended upon him. For the
better part of an hour, he had stood staring out of the drawing room
window into the London street. At last, with a yawn that was almost
a groan, and with an absurdly disproportionate effort, he turned himself about.
Heavily hung the gilded chandeliers in the long vista of the room, heavily gloomed,
the gilded furniture, scarcely distinguishable in the obscurity of the further wall,
stood watching him from a mirror what might have appeared to be the shadowy reflection
of himself. With a still yet extreme aversion, he kept his eyes fixed
on this distant nonentity, hardly realizing his own fantastic resolve that if he did
catch the least faint independent movement there, he would give Solmes Junior a caustic
peace of his mind. He must have been abominably fast asleep for hours,
when a night or two afterwards he had suddenly awakened, sweat streaming along his
body, his mouth stretched into a long, narrow oh, and his right
hand clutching the bell rope as might a drowning man a straw. The room
was a drowse with light. All was still. The flitting horrors between dream
and wake in his mind were already thinning into air through their transparency he looked
out once more on the substantial, the familiar. His breath came heavily,
like puffs of wind over a stormy sea, and yet a profound peace and
tranquility was swathing him in. The relaxed mouth was now faintly smiling. Not
a sound, not the feeblest, distant, unintended tinkling, was trembling up
from the abyss, And for a moment or two the young man refrained even
from turning his head at the soundless opening and closing of the door. He
lay fully conscious that he was not alone, that quiet eyes had him steadily
in regard. But like rats, his wits were beginning to busy themselves again.
Sheer relief from the terrors of sleep, shame of his extremity and weakness,
a festering sense of humiliation. Yes, he must save his face at
all costs. He must put this preposterous spying valet in his place. Oddly
enough, too, out of the depths, a peculiar little vision of recollection
had inexplicably obtruded itself into consciousness. It would be a witticism of the first
water. They are dreadfully out of season, you know. He began murmuring
effectively into the hush, dreadfully. But what I'm really pining for is a
bunch of primroses. A primrose by the river's brim must be a little conservative.
His voice was once more trailing off into a maudlin drowsiness. With an
effort, he roused himself, and now with an extremely sharp twist of his
head, he turned to confront his visitor, But the room was already vacant.
The door Ajar and Jimmy's lids were on the point of closing again,
sliding down over his tired eyes like leaden shutters which no power on earth could
hinder or restrain. When at the faintest, far whisper of sound, they
swept back, suddenly and almost incredibly wide, to drink in all they could
of the spectacle of a small, odd looking child, who at that moment
had embodied herself in the doorway. She seemed to have not the least intention
of returning the compliment. Her whole gaze, from out of her fair,
flaxen pigtailed face, was fixed on the coarse blue banded kitchen bowl, which
she was carrying with extreme care and caution in her two narrow hands. The
idiots down below had evidently filled it too full of water, for the pale,
wide petaled flowers and thick, clinkered leaves it contained were floating buoyantly nid,
nod to and fro as she moved, pushing on each slippered foot in
turn in front of the other, her whole mind concentrated on her task.
A plain child, but extraordinarily fair, as fair as the primroses themselves.
In the congregation of candlelight that motionlessly flooded the room, a narrow chest did
long chinned little creature who had evidently outgrown her strength. Jimmy was well accustomed
to take things they come, and his brief sojourn in his uncle's house in
his present state of health had already enlarged the confines of the term things.
Anyhow, she was a relief from the valet. He found himself then,
watching this new visitor without the least trace of astonishment or even of surprise.
And as his dark eyes coursed over the child, he simply couldn't decide whether
she most closely took after Solmes Junior or Missus Thrips. All he could positively
assure himself of was just the look the family likeness, and that in itself
was a queerest coincidence, since whatever your views might be regarding Solmes Junior,
Missus Thrips was real enough, as real at any rate as her scrubbing brush
and her wholesome, evil smelling soap. As a matter of fact, Jimmy
was taking a very tight of himself. His mind might fancifully be compared to
a quiet, green, swarming valley between steep rock bound hills, in which
a violent battle was preceding. Standards and horsemen and smoke and terror and violence,
but no sound. Deep down somewhere, he really wanted to be nice
to the child. She meant no ill. She was a demure, far
away, harmless looking creature ages ago. On the other hand, he wished
to Heaven they would leave him alone. They were pestering him. He knew
perfectly well how far he was gone, and bitterly resented this renewed interference.
And if there was one thing he detested it was being made to look silly.
I hope you are trying to be a good little boy. You have
not been talking to the servants that kind of thing. It was therefore,
with mixed feelings and with a tinge of shamefacedness, that he heard his own
sneering, toneless voice insinuate itself into the silence. And what Missikins, can
I do for you? What you will understand? Not how the sneer had
degenerated into a snarl. The child at this had not perceptibly faltered. Her
face had seemed to lengthen a little, but that might have been due solely
to her efforts to deliver her bowl without spilling its contents. Indeed, she
actually succeeded in doing so, almost before Jimmy had time to withdraw abruptly from
the little gilt rail table on which she deposited the clumsy bot frock pigtail red
hands. She seemed to be as real a fellow creature as you might wish
to see, But Jimmy stared quizzically on. Unfortunately, primroses have no scent,
so that he could not call on his nose to bear witness to his
eyes, and the congested conflict in the green valley was still proceeding. The
child had paused, her hands hung down now as if they were accustomed to
service, and her pale blue eyes were fixed on his face. In that
exasperating manner, which suggests that the owner of them is otherwise engaged. Not
that she was looking through him. Even the sharpest of his female friends had
never been able to boast of that little accomplishment. She was looking into him
as if he occupied time rather than space. Or was she sneered that weary
inwood voice again, was she merely waiting for a tip? Look here,
said Jimmy dexterously, raising himself to his elbow on the immense lace fringed pillow.
It's all very well. You have managed things quite admirably, considering your
age and the season and so on. But I didn't ask for primroses.
I asked for violets. That's very old trick, very old trick for one.
Further, in instant, dark and fair, crafty and simpleton face communed
each with each, but the smile on the one had fainted into a profound
childlike contemplation. And then so swift and imperceptible had been his visitants in vanishment
out of the room, that the very space she had occupied seemed to remain
for a while outlined in the air, a nebular shell of vacancy. She
must apparently have glided backwards through the doorway, for Jimmy had assuredly not been
conscious of the remotest glimpse of her pig tail from behind. Instantly on that
the stony hillside within had resounded with a furious clangor cries and shouts and screamings,
and Jimmy, his face bloodless with rage, his eyes almost blind with
it, had leaped out of the great bed, as if in murderous pursuit.
There must, however, have been an unusual degree or so a fever
in his veins that night, So swift was his reaction. For the moment
he was on his feet, an almost unendurable self pity had swept into possession
of him, to take a poor devil, as literally as that, to
catch him off his guard, not to give him the mere fleck of an
opportunity to get his balance, to explain, to answer back, curse the
primroses. But there was no time to lose. With one hand clutching his
pajamas, the other carrying the bowl, he poked forward out of the flare
of the room into the cold lightlessness of the wide stone staircase. Look here,
he called down, in a low argumentative voice, look here. You
you can cheat, and you can cheat, but to half strangle a fellow
in his sleep and then send him up the snuffling caretaker's daughter. No,
no, next time, you old make believe we'd prefer company a little more,
a little more congenial. He swayed slightly, grimacing vacantly into the darkness
and listening to his speech as dimly as mitas somnambulist, to the distant roar
of falling water. And then poor benighted creature Jimmy tried to spit, but
his lips and tongue were dry, and that particular insult was spared him.
He had stooped laboriously, had put down the earthenware bowl on the persian mat
at the head of the staircase, and was self congratulatorally re welcoming himself into
the scene of still luster. He had dared for that protracted minute to abandon
when he heard, as if from beneath and behind him, a kind of
lullaping disquietude, and the sound as of a clumsy, clawed but persistent animal
pushing its uncustomary awkward way up the soap polished marble staircase. It was to
be tit for tat. Then the miserable my nage had let loose it's menagerie
that they were going to experiment with the mouse, cupboard and keyhole trickery of
his childhood. Jimmy was violently shivering. His very toes were clinging to the
mat on which he stood, swaying a little, and casting at the same
time a strained, whitened glance round the room, in which every object rested
in the light, as if so it had rested from all eternity. He
stood mutely and ghastly listening. Even a large bedroom five times the size of
a small boy's attic, affords little scope for a fugitive, and shutting your
eyes, darkening your outward face is no escape. It had been a silly
boast, he agreed, that challenge that dare on the staircase, the boast
of an idiot. For the congenial company that had now managed to hoof and
scrabble its way up the slippery marble staircase was already on the threshold. All
was utterly silent. Now there was no obvious manifestation of danger. What was
peering steadily in upon him out of the obscurity beyond the door was merely a
blurred, whitish beastlike shape, with still passive, almost stagnant eyes in its
immense fixed face, a perfectly ludicrous object on paper, yet a creature so
nauseous to soul and body, and with so obscene agreed in its motionless piglike
grin that with one retigenous swell, Jimmy's candles had swept up in his hand
like a lateral race of streaming planets into outer darkness. If his wet,
groping fingers had not then encountered one of the carved pedestin of his uncle's bedstead,
Jimmy would have fallen. Jimmy would have found in fact the thing's physical
level, try as he might, he had never in the days that followed
made quite clear in his mind why for the third time he had not made
a desperate plunging clutch at the bowl rope. The thing must have been Solme's
junior's emissary, even if the bird faced scullery made with the primroses had not
also been one of the staff that he had desisted, simply in case she
should herself have answered his summons and so have encountered the spurious animal as she
mounted the dark staircase, seemed literally too good to be true. Not only
was Jimmy no sentimentalist, but that particular kind of goodness, even in a
state of mind perfectly calm and collected, was not one of his pleasanter characteristics.
Yet acts are facts, even comforting ones. And unless his memory was
utterly untrustworthy, he had somehow, somehow contrived to regain his physical balance.
Candelabrum in hand, he had actually indeed at last emerged from the room and
stooped his dark head over the balusters in search of what, unaccountably had not
awaited his near acquaintance, and he had he must have flung the substantial,
little blue banded slop basin primroses and all clean, straight down in the direction
of any kind of sentient target that happened to be in its way. You
must understand, missus Thripps. He had afterwards solemnly explained, I don't care
to be disturbed, and particularly at night, all litter should of course be
immediately cleared away. That's merely as things go in a well regulated household,
as in fact they do go. And I see you have replaced the one
or two little specimens I was looking over out of the cabinet on the staircase.
Pretty things too, though you hadn't the advantage of being in the service
of their late owner, my uncle, as I was. Of course,
two breakages cannot be avoided. There. I assure you you are absolutely free
moth and rust, Missus thrips. No, all that I was merely inquiring
about at the moment is that particular pot. There was an accident last night,
primroses and so on, and one might have expected, one might almost
have sworn, Missus Strips that at least a shard or two, as the
Psalmist says, would have been pretty conspicuous, even if the water had completely
dried away. Not that I heard the smash mine. I don't go so
far as that, nor am I making any insinuations. Whatever. You are
the best of good creatures. You are, indeed, and it's no good
looking at me like patience on a monument, because at present life is real
and life is earnest. All I mean is that if one, for a
single moment ceases to guide one's conduct on reasonable lines, well one comes a
perfectly indescribable cropper Missus Strips like the pot. Missus Thrips's gray, untidy head
had remained oddly stuck out from her body throughout this harangue. No, sir,
she repeated, once more, high and low, I've searched the house
down, and there isn't a shadder of what you might be referring to,
not a shadder. And once more I ask you, sir, let me
call in doctor Stokes. He's a very nice gentleman, and one as keeps
what should be kept as close to himself as it being his duty. He
sees right and proper to do chasing and racketing of yourself up and down these
runs of naked stairs in the dead of night is no proper place for you,
sir, in your state. And I don't like to take the responsibility.
It's first the candles, then the bells, then the kitchen, and
then the basin. I know what I'm talking about, sir, having lost
two and one at sea. And suppose my dear Jimmy had almost brilliantly as
ever smiled, suppose we are all of us at sea. What then,
why then, sir, Missus Strips had courageously retorted, I had, as
life be at the bottom of it. There's been as much worry and trouble
and making two ends meet in my life, not to make the getting out
of it what you'd stand on no ceremony, For I say it with all
detai respect for what's respectful and proper, Sir, that there isn't a morning
I step down those area steps. But my heart's in my mouth for fear
there won't be anything in the house. But what can't answer back. It's
been a struggle to keep on, sir, and as you generous, as
gentlemen as need be, if only you'd remain warm and natural in your bed.
When once there a little inward trickle of laughter had entertained Jimmy as he
watched the shapeless, patient old mouth utter these last few words. That's just
it, missus thrips, he had replied softly. You've done for me far
more effectively than anyone I care to remember in my insignificant little lifetime. You
have. Indeed, Jimmy had even touched the hand bent like the claw of
a bird around the broom handle. In fact, you know, and I'm
bound to confess it as gratefully as need be. They are, all of
them doing for me as fast as they can. I don't complain, not
the least little bit in the world. All that I might be asking is
how the devil, to put it politely, how the goodness gracious is one
to tell which is which? In my particular case, it seems to be
the miller that sets the wind, Not of course, that he's got any
particular graintgrind, not even wild out you, funny old mother of a youthful
mariner. No, no, no. Even the fact that there wasn't perhaps
any pot after all, you will understand, doesn't positively prove that neither could
there have been any primoses than before next January is four months old. We
shall be at the end of yet another April, at least, and a
sort of almost bluish pallor had spread like a shadow over his face. At
least you will be all of which is only to say, dear Madam,
as Beckfield remarked to old Vic that I am thanking you now, at which
Missus thrips, immediately fell upon her knees on her housemaid's pad, and plunged
her hands into her zinc pail, only instantly after to sit back on her
heels. Skinny hands on canvas apron. All I says, sir, is
we go as we go, and a nicer gentleman taking things on the surface
I never worked for. But one don't want to move too much in the
public, high, Sir, of all the houses below stairs I've worked for,
and all alone in, I don't want a chance on a more private
in a manner of speaking than this. All that I was saying, sir,
and I wouldn't to none, but you is the life skeetting on my
nerves. When that door there closes after me, and every day drawing out
steady as you can see, without so much as glancing at the clock,
I say to myself, well, better that poor young gentleman alone up there
at night coffin all than me. I wouldn't sleep in this house, sir,
not if you was to offer me a plateful of sovereigns, unless sir,
you wanted me. On reflection, Jimmy decided that he had cut almost
a gallant figure, as he had retorted gaily, yet with extraordinary sobriety,
you shall have a whole dishful before I'm done. Missus thrips with a big
scoop in it for the gravy. But on my oath I assure you there's
absolutely nothing or nobody in this old barn of a museum except you and me.
Nobody, unless, of course, you will understand one happens to pull
the bell, and that we're not likely to do in broad daylight? Are
we missus? Thrips upon which he had hastily caught up his aunt's hand bag
and had emerged into a daylight a good deal bleaker, if not broader than
he could gratefully stomach for a while, Jimmy had let well alone. Indeed,
if it had been a mere matter of choice, he would far rather
have engaged in a friendly and jocular conversation of this description with his old charwoman
than in the endless monologues in which he found himself submerged on other occasions.
One later afternoon, for instance, at half past three, by his watch,
sitting there by a small fire in the large muffled drawing room, he
at length came definitely to the conclusion that some kind of finality should be reached
in his relations with the night staff in his uncle Timothy's. It was pretty
certain that his visit would soon be drawing to a close. Staying out at
night until he was almost too exhausted to climb down to the pavement from his
hansom. The first April silver of dawn warning the stark and empty chimney pots
had proved a dull and tedious alternative The spectator of gaiety, he concluded,
as he stared at the immense picture of the Colosseum on his uncle Timothy's wall,
may have as boring a time as must the slaves who cleaned out the
cages of the lions that ate the Christians, and snapping out insults at former
old cronies who couldn't help their faces being as tiresome as a whitewashed pigstye had
soon grown wearisome. Jimmy, of course, was accustomed to taking no interest
in things which did not interest him, But quite respectable people could manage that
equally well. What fretted him almost beyond endurance was an increasing inability to keep
his attention fixed on what was really there. What, at least all such
respectable people, one might suppose, would unanimously agree was there a moment's fixture
of the eyes, and he would find himself steadily steadily listening. Now in
a creeping dread that somewhere down below there was a good deal that needed an
almost constant attention, and now in sudden alarm that after all there was absolutely
nothing. Again and again in recollection, he had hung over the unlighted staircase,
listening in an extremity of foreboding for the outbreak of a rabbit like childish
squeal of terror, which would have proved, well, what would it have
proved, My god, what a wild You can prove nothing. The fact
that he was all but certain that any such intolerably helpless squeal never had wailed
up to him out of its pit of blackness could be only a partial consolation.
He hadn't meant to be a beast. It was only his facetious little
way, and you would have to be something pretty piggish in pigs to betray
a child. However insubstantial into the nausea and vertigo he had experienced in the
presence of that unspeakable abortion, the whole thing had become a fatuous obsession.
If it appeared you only remained solitary and secluded enough and let your mind wander
on in its own sweet way. The problem was almost bound to become if
not your one and only at least your chief concern, unless you were preter
naturally busy and preoccupied. You simply couldn't live on and on in a haunted
house without being occasionally reminded of its ghosts. To dismiss the matter as pure
illusion, to dismiss the matter as pure illusion, the spectral picturing of life's
fitful fever might be all very well, that is, if you had the
blood of a fish. But who on earth had ever found the world the
pleasanter and sweeter place to bid goodbye to simply because it was obviously substantial,
whatever that might mean, Simply because it did nothing you wanted it to do,
unless you paid for it pretty handsomely, or unless you were accept did
what it proffered with as open a hospitality as Jimmy had bestowed on his pilgrims
of the night, not that he much wanted, however, pressing the invitation
to wander off out of his body into a better world, or for that
matter, into a worse upstairs under the roof. Years ago, Jimmy,
as a small boy, would rather have died of terror than meddle with the
cord above his bed rail simply because he knew that Solmes Senior was at the
other end of it. He had hated Solmes, He had merely feared the
nothings of his night hours. But suppose Solmes had been a different kind of
butler. There must be almost as many kinds as there are human beings.
Suppose his uncle Timothy and aunt Charlotte had chosen theirs a little less sidiosyncratically.
What then, Well, anyhow, in a sense he was not sorry.
Life had been a little exciting these last few weeks. How odd that what
all but jelly your soul in your body at night or in a dream might
merely amuse you like a shilling shocker in the safety of day, the safety
of day. That the very cadence of the words in his mind. As
he sat there in his aunt's salon, his limbs huddled over missus Thripps's fire,
Jimmy's eyes had fixed themselves again again. He was listening. Was it
that if you saw in your mind any distant room of place, that place
must actually, at the moment contain you some self, some astral body.
If so, wouldn't of course you hear yourself moving about in it? There
was a slight whining wind in the street outside the rainy window that afternoon,
and once more, the bright idea crossed Jimmy's mind that he should steal upstairs
before it was dark, mount up on to the Arabian bed, and just
cut the bell pull once for all. But would that necessarily dismiss the staff
necessarily? His eyes wandered to the discreet s of yet another bell pull,
that which graced the wall beneath the expansive white marble chimney piece. He hesitated.
There was no doubt his mind was now hopelessly jaundiced against bell ropes,
whether they failed to summon one to church or persisted in summoning one to a
six foot hole in the cemetery. His uncle Timothy lay in a moresoleum.
On the other hand, he was properly convinced that a gentleman is as a
gentleman does, and that it was really up to you to treat all bell
answerers with decent courtesy, no matter who, when where. A universal rule
like that is a sheer godsend. If they didn't answer, well, you
couldn't help yourself, or rather you would have to. This shivering was merely
physical when a fellow is so thin that he can almost hear his ribs grid
one against the other when he stoops to pick up a poker. Such symptoms
must be expected. There was still an hour or two of daylight, even
though clouds admitted only a grayish light upon the world, and his uncle Timothy's
house was by nature friendly to gloom. That house, at this moment seemed
to hang domed upon his shoulders like an immense, imponderable shell. The flames
in the chimney whispered, fluttered, hovered like fitfully playing once happy birds.
Supposing, if, even against his better judgment, he leaned forward now in
his chair, and what was infinitely more conventional, and in a sense more
proper than summoning unforeseen entities to one's bedside. Supposing he gave just one discreet
little tug at that small porcelain knob, What would he ask for? He
need ask nothing. He could act. Yes, if he could be perfectly
sure that some monstrous, poor signed kakademon akin to the shapes of childish nightmare
would come hoofing up out of the deeps at his behest well, he would
chance it. He would have it out with the brute it was still day.
It was still day, But maybe the ear of pleasanter visitors might catch
the muffled tinkle in the young man's mind. There was now no vestige of
jocularity in an instant's lightness of heart. He had once thought of purchasing from
the stiff aproned old assistant at his aunt Charlotte's family grocer's a thumping big box
of chocolates. Why just that one small bowl in famil rows up there could
be bartered for the prettiest little necklet of seed pearls. She had done her
best with her skimpy shoulders, skimpier pigtail, and soda reddened hands. Pigtail,
but no, you might pour real bells to pull dubiously genuine pigtails seemed
now a feeble jest. The old Jimmy of that kind of facetiousness was a
thing of the past. Apart from pigs and tweeny maids, what other peculiar
emanations might in the future respond his summonings. Jimmy's exhausted imagination could only faintly
prefigure for a few minutes. A modern Saint Antony sat there in solitude in
the vast half blinded London drawing room, while shapes and images and apparitions of
memory and fantasy sprang into thin being and passed away in his mind. No,
no, due to the book quench, the candles ring, the bell,
Amen, Amen. He was done with all that maledictions and anathemas they
only tangled the hank. So when at last his meager, stooping body mutely
played on by the flamelight, he jerked round his dark, narrow head to
glance at the distant mirror. It must have been on the mere after image,
so to speak, of the once quite substantial looking tweeny maid that his
exhausted eyes thirstily fixed themselves. She was there, over there, where Solmes
Junior had more than once taken up his obsequious station. She was smiling,
if the dusk of the room could be trusted that far and not through.
But really at Jimmy, she was fairer than ever, Fairer than the flaxenest
of nymphs on his uncle's ceiling, fairer than the saffronist of young ladies in
the respectablest of family grossers, Fairer even than Jimmy hung on this simple vision
as did divies on the spectacle of Lazarus in bliss at once. Of course,
after his very first sigh of relief and welcome, he had turned back
on his lips a glib little speech suggesting forgiveness, Let old acquaintance be forgot
that kind of thing. He was too tired even to be clever now,
and the oddest of convictions had at once come into his mind, seemed almost
to fill his body, even that she was waiting for something else. Yes,
she was smiling, as if in hope, she was waiting to be
told to go. Jimmy was no father. He didn't want to be considerate
to the raw little creature to cling to her company for but a few minutes
longer, with a view to returns in kind. No nothing of all that.
Oh, my god, my god, her voice groaned within him,
But not at any unprecedented jag or stab of pain. The child was still
waiting quite quietly there, as if a shadow, as if a secret and
obscure ray of light. And it seemed to Jimmy that in its patient face
hung veil upon veil of uncountable faces of the past in paint stone actuality.
Dream that he had glanced at or brooded on in the enormous history of his
life that he may have coveted too, and as well as his rebellious features
could and would. He smiled back at her. I understand, my dear,
he drew back his dry lips to explain perfectly. And it was courtesy
itself of you to look in When I didn't ring, I didn't. I
absolutely put my tongue out at the grinning old knob. But no more of
that. One mustn't talk for talking's sake. Else why all those old Trappists,
though none of them such a bag of bones as me, I bet,
but without jesting, you know? Once more, A distant voice spoke
in Jimmy's ear. It's important, it said. You really must hold your
tongue until well it holds itself. But Jimmy's face continued to smile, and
then suddenly every vestige of amusement abandoned it. He stared head baldly, almost
emptily, at the faint inmate of his solitude. All that I have to
say, he muttered, is just this. I have, missus thrips.
I have absolutely cut the wire. I wish to be alone. But if
I ring, I'm not asking do you see? In time I may be
able to know what I want. But what is important now is that no
more than the accursed pig where your primrose is real? My dear, you
see, things must be real. And now I suppose he had begun shivering
again. You must go to you must go. But listen, listen,
we part friends, the coals in the grate, with a scarcely audible shuffling,
recompose themselves to their consuming. When there hasn't been anything there. Nothing
can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been still.
Jimmy had felt infinitely colder and immeasurably lonelier when his mouth had thus fallen
to silence, and he was so empty and completely exhausted, that his one
apprehension had been lest he should be unable to ascend the staircase to get to
bed. There was no doubt of it. His ultimatum had been instantly effective.
The whole house was now preternaturally empty. It was needless even to listen
to prove that, so absolute was its pervasive quietude that, when at last
he gathered his bones together in the effort to rise, to judge from the
withering color of the cinders and ashes in the fireplace. He must have been
for some hours asleep, and daybreak must be near. He managed the feet
at last gathered up the tartan traveling shawl that tented in his scarecrow knees,
and lit the only candle in its crystal stick in his aunt Charlotte's drawing room.
And it was an almost chiotically peaceful though for bodeful Jimmy, who stepped
by step the fountain of his thoughts completely stilled his night mind as clear and
sparkling as a cavern bedangled with stalagmites and stalactites. Climbed laboriously on and up
from wide, shallow marble stair to stair. He paused in the corridor above.
But the nymphs within, muses, graces, fates, what not,
piped in vain their mute decoy. His uncle Timothy's Arabian bed in vain summoned
him to its downy embraces. At the wide open door. He brandished his
guttering candle in a last smiling gesture of farewell, and held on. That
is why, when next morning, out of a sound andading, slanting shower
of rain, missus Thripps admitted herself into the house. At the area door,
she found the young man still in his clothes, lying very fast asleep,
indeed on the truckle bed in the attic. His hands were not only
crossed, but convulsively clenched in that position on his breast, and it appeared
from certain distressing indications that he must have experienced a severe struggle to refrain from
a wild, blind tug at the looped up length of knotted whip cord over
his head. As a matter of fact, it did not occur to the
littered old Charlm's mind to speculate whether or not Jimmy had actually made such a
last attempt, or whether he had been content merely to wait on a Solmes,
who might, perhaps, like all good servants, come when he was
wanted, rather than when he was called. All her own small knowledge of
Solmes's, though not without comfort, had been acquired at second hand. Nor
did missus Thrips waste time in surmising how Jimmy could ever have persuaded himself to
loop up the chord like that out of his reach, unless he had first
become abysmally ill content with his small, primitive and belated knowledge of Campanology.
She merely looked at what was left of him, her old face almost comically
transfixed in its appearance of pity, horror, astonishment and curiosity. End of
out of the deep,