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Speaker 1: Out of the deep by Walter Delamare. The steely light

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of daybreak, increasing in volume and intensity as the east

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grew larger with the day, showed clearly at length that

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prodigious yet elegant Arabian bed was empty. What might tenderly

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have cradled the slumbers of some exquisite fare of Romance

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now contained no human occupant. To all. The whole immense room,

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its air, dry and thin as if burnt, was quiet

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as a sepulcher. To the right of the bed towered

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of vast and heavily carved wardrobe, to the left a

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lofty fireplace of stone, flanked by its grinning, frigid dogs.

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A few cumbrous and obscure oil paintings hung on the walls,

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and like the draperies of a proscenium, the fringed and

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balanced damask curtains on either side the two high windows

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poured down their motionless cataract of crimson. They had had

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been left undrawn overnight, and yet gave the scene a

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slight theatricality, a theatricality which the painted nymphs, disporting themselves

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on the ceiling scarcely helped to dispel. Not that these

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coy and oggling faces suggested any vestige of chagrin at

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the absence of the young man who, for some weeks

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past had shared the long nights with them, they merely

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smiled on. For after all, Jimmy's restless head upon the

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pillow had never really been in harmony with his pompous,

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inanimous surroundings. The thin, high nose like the beak of

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a small ship, between the fast sealed lids and narrow cheekbones,

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the narrow birdlike brow, the shell of the ear slightly pointed.

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If inspired by the distant music of the spheres, the

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painted creatures had with this daybreak broken into song, it

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would certainly not have been to the tune of Oh Where,

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and oh where is my little dog Gone? There was

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even less likelihood of Jimmy's voice now taking up their

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strains from out of the distance, And yet, to judge

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from appearances, the tongue within that head might have been

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that of an extremely vivacious talker, even though apart from

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missus thrips its talk these last few days had been

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for the most part with himself. Indeed, as one of

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his friends had remarked, don't you believe it Jimmy has

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pots and pots to say, though he don't say it.

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That's what makes him such a damn good loser. Whether

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or not, if Jimmy had been in the habit of

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conversing with himself, he must have had odd company at times.

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Night after night, he had lain there flat on his back,

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his hands crossed on his breast, a pose that never

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failed to amuse him. A smooth eminence in the dark,

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rich quilt about sixty inches from his chin, indicated to

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his attentive eye the points of his toes. The hours

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had been heavy, the hours had been long. Still there

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are only twelve or so of utter darkness in the

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most tedious of nights, and Matan tinkles at length, excepting

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the last of them, a night which was now apparently

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forever over. He had occupied this majestic bed for about

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six weeks, though on no single occasion could he have

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confessed to being really at home in it. He had

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chosen it not from any characteristic whim or caprice, and

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certainly not because it dominated the room in which his

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uncle Timothy himself used to sleep, Yes, and for forty

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years on end, only at last to expire in it.

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He had chosen it because when its Venetian blinds were

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pulled high up under the fringed cornice, it was as

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light as a London april sky could make it. And

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because well, just one single glance in from the high,

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narrow doorway upstairs had convinced him that the attic in

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which he was wont to sleep as a small boy

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was simply out of the question. A black, heavy flood

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of rage swept over him at the sight of it.

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He had never before positively realized the abominations of that

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early past. To a waf and stray, any kind of

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shelter is, of course a godsend. But even though this huge,

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sumptuous barrack of a house had been left to him,

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or rather abandoned to him by his uncle Timothy's relict

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aunt Charlotte, Jimmy could not, even at his loosest have

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been described as homeless, friendless, rather, but that of his

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own deliberate choice. Not so very long ago. In fact,

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he had made a clean sweep of every single living being,

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male or female, to whom the term friend could, with

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some little elasticity be applied. A little official affair, to

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put it politely, eased their exit and then this vacant hostel.

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The house in fa act, occupied only by a caretaker

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in the service of his aunt's lawyers, had been his

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for the asking at any time during the last two

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or three years, but he had steadily delayed in taking

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possession of it until there was practically no alternative circumstances

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accustom even a young man to a good many inconveniences. Still,

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it would have been a little too quixotic to sleep

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in the street. Even though his uncle Timothy's house, as

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a mere property was little better than a white and

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unpleasing elephant, he could not sell it. That is not

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en mass. It was more than dubious if he was

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legally entitled to make away with its contents. But quite

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apart from an extreme aversion to you, uncle Timothy's valuables

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in themselves, you cannot eat, even if you can subsist

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on articles of virtue. Sir Richard Grenville, a hero for

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whom Jimmy had every respect, may have been accustomed to

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chewing up his wineglass after swinging off its contents. But

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this must have been on the spur of an impulse,

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hardly in obedience to the instinct of self preservation. Jimmy

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would have much preferred to balance a chair at the

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foot of his uncle's Arabian bed and salute the smiling

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lips of the painted nymphs on the ceiling, though even

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that experiment would probably have rather a gritty flavor. Still,

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possession is nine points of the law, and necessity is

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the deadly enemy of convention. Jimmy was unconscious of the

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faintest scruples on that score. His scruples, indeed, were in

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another direction. Only a few days ago. The day in fact,

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before his first indulgence in the queer experience of pulling

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the bell, he had sailed out with his aunt Charlotte's

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black leather dressing bag, positively bulging with a pair of

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bow candlesticks, an illuminated missile, mutely exquisite with its blues

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and gold walls and crimsons, and a tiny old silver

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gilt bejutery box. He was a young man of absurdly

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impulsive aversions, and a dealer to whom he carried this

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further consignment of loot was one of them. After a

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rapid and contemptuous examination, this gentleman spread out his palms,

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shrugged his shoulders, and suggested a sum that would have

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caused even a more phlegmatic connoisseur than his customers, Uncle Timothy,

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to turn in his grave, and Jimmy replied, nicely, slurring

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his ahs. Really, mister soancer, that is impossible, no doubt

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the things have an artificial value, but not for me.

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I must ask you to oblige me by giving me

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only half the sum you have kindly mentioned, rather than

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accept your figure, you know I would well, perhaps it

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would be impolite to tell you what I would prefer

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to do. Disiree de zilla, and so on. The dealer flushed,

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though he had been apparently content to leave it at that,

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He was not the man to be easily insulted by

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a good customer, and Jimmy's depredations were methodical, with the

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fastidiousness of an expert. He selected from the rare and

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costly contents of the house only what was light and portable,

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and became inconspicuous by its absence. The supply, he realized,

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though without any perceptible animation, however recklessly it might be squandered,

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would easily last out his lifetime, certainly not after having

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once made up his mind to accept his uncle Timothy's

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posthumous hospitality. The real difficulty was unlikely to be a

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conscientious one. It was the attempt merely to accustom himself

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to the house, the hated house, that grew more and

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more arduous. It falsified his hope that, like other experisperiances,

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this one would prove only the more piquant for being

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so precarious. Days and moments quickly flying just his one

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funny old charwoman Missus thrips himself and the past. After

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pausing a while under the dingy and dusty portico, Jimmy

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had entered into his inheritance on the last afternoon in March.

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The wind was fallen, the day was beginning to narrow.

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A chill crystal light hung over the unshuttered staircase by

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sheer force of forgotten habit. He at once ascended to

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the attic in which he had slept as a child.

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Pausing on the threshold, he looked in conscious not so much,

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of the few familiar sticks of furniture, the truckle bed,

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the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue banded

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eyewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls

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as of a perfect hive of a borrent memories. That

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high cupboard in the corner from which certain bodiless shapes

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had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering

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out of his dreams. The crab patterned paper that came

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alive as you stared, the window cold with menacing stars,

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the mouseholes, the rusty great trumpet of every wind that blows.

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These objects at once lustily shouted at him in their

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own original tongues. Quite apart from themselves, they reminded him

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of incidents and experiences which at the time could scarcely

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have been so nauseous as they now seemed. In retrospect,

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he found himself suffocatingly resentful, even of what must have

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been kindly intentions. He remembered how his aunt Charlotte used

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to read to him, with her puffy cheeks, plump ringed hands,

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and the moving orbs of her eyes showing under her spectacles.

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He wasn't exactly accusing the asked. Even in his first breeches.

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He was never what could be called a nice little boy.

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He had never ordered himself lowly and reverently to any

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of his betters, at least in their absence. Nevertheless, what

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stirred in his bosom as he gazed in on this

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discarded scene was certainly not remorse. He remembered how gingerly

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and with what peculiar breathings his uncle Timothy used to

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lift his microscope out of its wooden case, and how

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after the necessary manipulation of the instrument, he himself would

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be bidden mount of footstool and fix his dazzled eye

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on the slides of sluggish or darting horrors of minute

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magnified life. And how after a steady, unawing drawl of

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inapprehensible instruction, his uncle would suddenly flick out a huge

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silk pocket handkerchief as a signal that little tongue tied

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and nervous boys were themselves nothing but miserable, sluggish or

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darting reptiles, and that his nephew was the most deplorable

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kind of little boy. Jimmy remembered too, once asking the

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loose bow shaped old gentleman in his chair if he

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might himself twist the wheel, and his uncle Timothy had

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replied in a loud, ringing voice, and almost as if

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he were addressing a public meeting. Um, ah, my boy,

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I say no to that. He said no to most things,

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and just like that if he vouchsafed speech at all.

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And then there was church on Sundays, and his hoop

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on week days in the Crescent, and days when with

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nothing to do, little Jimmy had been wont to sit

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watching the cold, silvery rain on the window, the body

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he was in slowly congealing, the while into a species

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of rancid suet pudding. Mornings too, when his Aunt Charlotte

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would talk nasily to him about Christianity, or when he

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was allowed to help his uncle and a tall, scared

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parlormaid dust and rearranged the contents of a cabinet or bureau.

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The smell of the air, the check duster, the odious

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objet dar, and the aging old man snorting and looking

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like a superannuated silenus beside the neat and frightened parlormaid.

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It was a curious thing. Though death with his luring grin,

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had beckoned him off, there he was alive as ever,

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And when amid these ruminations, Jimmy's eyes had at last

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fixed themselves on the frayed, dangling cord that hung from

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the ceiling over the truckle bed. It was because he

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had already explored all that the name Solmes had stood

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for Solmes the butler, a black clothed, tub bellied, pompous

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man that might have been his uncle Timothy's impoverished first

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cousin or illegitimate step brother. Solmes Solmes, Solmes used frequently

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to wring Jimmy's then protuberant ears. Solmes, sneaked habitually and

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with a sort of gloating piety on his drooping face,

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was invariably present at the subsequent castigation. Solmes had been

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wont to pile up on his plate with lumps of

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fat that even Destiny had never intended to consort with

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any single leg of mutton, or even surloin of beef

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jelly like rapidly cooling nuggets of fat, and Solmes invariably

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brought him cold rice pudding when there was hot ginger roll.

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Jimmy remembered the lines that drooped down from his pale,

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long nose, the sleek s of his whiskers as he

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stood there in his coat, tails reflected in the glass

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of the sideboard carving the Sunday joint, but that slack

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green bell cord his very first glimpse of it had

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set waggling score of peculiar remembrances first, and not so

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very peculiarly. Perhaps it recalled an occasion when, as he

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stood before his aunt's footstool to bid her good night,

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her aggrieved pupils had visibly swum down from beneath their

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lids out of a nap to fix themselves and look

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at him at last, as if neither he nor she,

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either in this or in any other world, had ever

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so much as seen one another before. Perhaps his own face,

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if not so puffy, appeared that evening to be unusually

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pasty and pallid, with those dark rings which even to

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this day added vivacity and luster to his extremely clear eyes.

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And as Aunt Charlotte had asked him why he was

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such a cowardly boy and so wickedly frightened of the dark,

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you know very well your dear uncle will not permit

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00:16:08,320 --> 00:16:12,480
gassimi attic, so there's no use asking for it. You

235
00:16:12,559 --> 00:16:15,480
have nothing on your conscience. I trust you have not

236
00:16:15,559 --> 00:16:20,559
been talking to the servants infallible liar. He had shaken

237
00:16:20,600 --> 00:16:24,159
his head, and his Aunt Charlotte in return wagged hers

238
00:16:24,200 --> 00:16:28,159
at him. It's no good staring in that rebellious, sullen

239
00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:31,639
way at me. I have told you repeatedly that if

240
00:16:31,639 --> 00:16:34,360
you are really in need of anything, just ring the

241
00:16:34,399 --> 00:16:38,399
bell for solms. A good little boy with nothing on

242
00:16:38,480 --> 00:16:43,679
his conscience knows that God watches over him. I hope

243
00:16:43,679 --> 00:16:46,600
you are at least trying to be a good little boy.

244
00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:51,240
There is a limit even to your uncle's forbearance. It

245
00:16:51,360 --> 00:16:55,720
was perfectly true, even bad little boys might be watched

246
00:16:55,799 --> 00:16:58,519
over in the dead of night. And as for his

247
00:16:58,639 --> 00:17:02,360
uncle Timothy's forbearon, he had discovered the limitations of that

248
00:17:02,559 --> 00:17:07,440
fairly early in life. Well, it was a pity, he

249
00:17:07,480 --> 00:17:10,440
smiled to himself, that his Aunt Charlotte could not be

250
00:17:10,480 --> 00:17:13,400
present to see his uncle Timothy's bedroom on that first

251
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:18,400
celebration of their prodigal nephew's return. Jimmy's first forey had

252
00:17:18,440 --> 00:17:21,359
been to range the house from attic to cella, where

253
00:17:21,359 --> 00:17:24,960
he had paused to rest for candlesticks, and that night

254
00:17:25,240 --> 00:17:29,000
something like six dozen of the best wax watched over

255
00:17:29,039 --> 00:17:33,720
his heavy and galvanic slumbers in the Arabian bed. Aunt Charlotte,

256
00:17:33,880 --> 00:17:37,039
now rather more accustomed to the dark even than Jimmy himself,

257
00:17:37,279 --> 00:17:41,480
would have opened her eyes at that gamblers are naturally

258
00:17:41,519 --> 00:17:45,480
superstitious folk, he supposed, But that was the queerest feature

259
00:17:45,519 --> 00:17:48,680
of the whole thing. He had not then been conscious

260
00:17:48,720 --> 00:17:53,279
of even the slightest apprehension or speculation. It was far

261
00:17:53,400 --> 00:17:57,359
rather a kind of ribaldry than any sort of foreboding

262
00:17:57,640 --> 00:18:00,640
that had lit up positive constellations of candle, as if

263
00:18:00,640 --> 00:18:05,119
for a prince's, as if for Princely Cardinal's lying in state.

264
00:18:06,680 --> 00:18:09,440
It had taken a devil of a time too. His

265
00:18:09,559 --> 00:18:12,160
uncle Timothy's port was not the less potent for a

266
00:18:12,160 --> 00:18:15,279
long spell of obscure mellowing, and the hand that held

267
00:18:15,279 --> 00:18:19,119
the taper had been a shaky one, yet it had

268
00:18:19,160 --> 00:18:24,279
provided an amusing process too, almost childish. Jimmy hadn't laughed

269
00:18:24,319 --> 00:18:28,039
like that for years. Certainly, until then he had been

270
00:18:28,079 --> 00:18:33,000
unconscious of the feeblest, squeamish inkling of anything apart from

271
00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:39,240
old remembrances peculiar in the house. Yet well, no doubt

272
00:18:39,279 --> 00:18:43,119
even the first absurd, impulsive experiment that followed had shaken

273
00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:47,880
him up. Its result would have been less unexpected if

274
00:18:47,920 --> 00:18:51,240
he hadn't made a point and almost the duty of

275
00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:57,200
continually patrolling the horrible old vacant London mansion. Hardly a

276
00:18:57,279 --> 00:19:00,000
day had lately passed, and there was nothing better today,

277
00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:03,680
But it found him on his rounds. He was not

278
00:19:03,759 --> 00:19:07,359
waiting for anything except for the hour maybe when he

279
00:19:07,400 --> 00:19:11,960
would have to wait no more. Nevertheless, faithful as the

280
00:19:12,000 --> 00:19:16,640
sentinel on Elsinore's hoary ramparts, he would find himself day

281
00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:21,200
after day, treading almost catlike on from room to room,

282
00:19:21,839 --> 00:19:26,319
surveying his paradoxical inheritance, dotting down a list in a

283
00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:32,079
nice order of the next sacrifices, grimacing at the ming divinities,

284
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:36,519
and pirouetting an occasional long nose at the portraits on

285
00:19:36,559 --> 00:19:41,079
the walls. He had sometimes had a few words animated

286
00:19:41,079 --> 00:19:44,839
ones too, with missus Thripps. And perhaps if he could

287
00:19:44,880 --> 00:19:49,200
have persuaded himself to talk sensibly, and not to gesticulate,

288
00:19:49,599 --> 00:19:52,279
not to laugh himself so easily into a fit of coughing,

289
00:19:52,799 --> 00:19:57,359
she would have proved better company. She was amazingly honest

290
00:19:57,400 --> 00:20:01,119
and punctual, and quiet and white heaven, a woman with

291
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:05,160
such excellent qualities should customarily wear so scared a gleam

292
00:20:05,279 --> 00:20:09,680
in her still colorless eyes, and be so idiotically timid

293
00:20:09,720 --> 00:20:13,680
and nervous in his company. He could not imagine she

294
00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:17,759
was being paid handsome wages anyhow, And naturally he was

295
00:20:17,799 --> 00:20:21,400
aware of no rooted objection to other people helping themselves,

296
00:20:21,920 --> 00:20:24,559
at least if they managed it as skillfully as he

297
00:20:24,599 --> 00:20:29,599
did himself. But missus Thripps, it seemed, had never been able,

298
00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:33,119
in any sense at all, to help herself. She was

299
00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:38,839
simply a crape bonneted motherly creature, if not excessively intelligent,

300
00:20:39,440 --> 00:20:44,200
if a little slow in seeing points. It was indeed

301
00:20:44,319 --> 00:20:46,960
her alarm when he asked her if she had happened

302
00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:49,680
to notice any young man about the house that had

303
00:20:49,759 --> 00:20:53,839
irritated him, though of course it was hardly fair not

304
00:20:53,960 --> 00:20:57,480
to explain what had given rise to the question that

305
00:20:57,640 --> 00:21:03,079
was perfectly simple. It was like this for years, for centuries.

306
00:21:03,079 --> 00:21:08,519
In fact, Jimmy had been, except in certain unusual circumstances,

307
00:21:08,839 --> 00:21:13,400
an exceedingly bad sleeper. He still hated sleeping in the dark.

308
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:17,039
But a multitude of candles at various degrees of exhaustion

309
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:19,720
make rather lively company when you are sick of your

310
00:21:19,799 --> 00:21:23,079
uncle Timothy Seller, and even the best of vintage wines

311
00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:27,759
may prove an ineffectual soporific. His too, was a wretchedly

312
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:31,920
active mind. Even as a boy he had thought a

313
00:21:31,960 --> 00:21:35,559
good deal about his uncle and aunt and Solmes and

314
00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:40,720
the house, and the reverend mister Grayson, and specters and schoolmasters,

315
00:21:40,759 --> 00:21:45,160
and painted nymphs, and running away to sea, and curios

316
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:50,799
and dead silence, and his early childhood. And though since

317
00:21:50,839 --> 00:21:55,599
then other enigmas had engaged his attention, this purely automatic

318
00:21:55,720 --> 00:22:01,079
and tiresome activity of mind still persisted. On his oath.

319
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:05,079
He had been, in some respects, and in secret rather

320
00:22:05,200 --> 00:22:08,720
a goody, goody little boy, though his piety had been

321
00:22:08,839 --> 00:22:12,599
rather the offspring of fear than of love. Had he

322
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:15,920
not been expelled from melishes almost solely for that reason,

323
00:22:16,759 --> 00:22:19,720
What on earth was the good of repeatedly thrashing a

324
00:22:19,759 --> 00:22:23,519
boy when you positively knew that he has lied merely

325
00:22:23,559 --> 00:22:27,519
from terror of your roaring voice and horrible white face.

326
00:22:28,799 --> 00:22:31,319
But there it was. If there had been some one

327
00:22:31,359 --> 00:22:33,720
to talk to, he would not have talked so much

328
00:22:33,759 --> 00:22:37,839
to himself. He would not have lain awake thinking night

329
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:42,160
after night, like a rat in a trap. Thinking was

330
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:45,640
like a fountain. Once it gets going at a certain pressure,

331
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:49,240
well it is almost impossible to turn it off. And

332
00:22:49,519 --> 00:22:52,640
my hat, what odd things come up with the water.

333
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,519
On the particular night in question, In spite of the

334
00:22:57,559 --> 00:23:00,920
candles and the mice and the moon, he badly wanted

335
00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:05,759
company in a moment of pining yet listless jocosity. Then

336
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:10,920
he had merely taken his Aunt Charlotte's advice true. The

337
00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:15,319
sumptuous crimson pleated silk bell pull dangling like a serpent

338
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:18,799
with a huge tassel for skull over his uncle Timothy's pillow,

339
00:23:19,319 --> 00:23:22,200
was a more formidable instrument than the yard or two

340
00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,720
a frayed green cord in the attic. Yet they shared

341
00:23:25,759 --> 00:23:29,960
the same purpose many a time. Must his uncle Timothy

342
00:23:30,079 --> 00:23:32,960
have stretched up a large, loose hand in that direction

343
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:38,480
when in need of Solmes's nocturnal ministrations. And now, alas

344
00:23:39,079 --> 00:23:42,359
both master and man were long since gone the way

345
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:47,119
of all flesh, you couldn't, it appeared, pull bells in

346
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:52,160
your coffin. But Jimmy was not as yet in his coffin.

347
00:23:52,599 --> 00:23:54,839
And as soon as his fingers slipped down from the

348
00:23:54,839 --> 00:23:58,559
smooth pull, the problem in the abstract, as it were,

349
00:23:59,240 --> 00:24:04,440
began to fascinate him. With cold, froggy hands crossed over

350
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:08,240
his beautiful puce patterned pajamas, he lay staring at the

351
00:24:08,279 --> 00:24:12,000
crimson tassel till he had actually seen the hidden fangs

352
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:17,359
thickeringly jet out at him. The effort, then, must have

353
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:22,119
needed some little courage. It might almost have needed a

354
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:26,319
tinge of inspiration. It was in no sense intended as

355
00:24:26,359 --> 00:24:31,400
a challenge. He would in fact rather remain alone than chance,

356
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:36,519
summoning well any once animate relic of the distant past.

357
00:24:37,759 --> 00:24:41,240
But obviously, the most practical way of proving, if only

358
00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:44,319
to yourself, that you can be content with your own

359
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:48,279
reconnaissances in the very dead of night, was to demonstrate

360
00:24:48,279 --> 00:24:51,160
to that self that even if you should ask for it,

361
00:24:51,559 --> 00:24:56,359
assistance would not be forthcoming. He had been as fantastic

362
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:03,240
as that at the prolonged, pulsating, faint, distant tintinabulation. He

363
00:25:03,279 --> 00:25:06,319
had fallen back onto his pillow with an absurd little

364
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:09,720
quicket of laughter, like that of a naughty boy up

365
00:25:09,759 --> 00:25:15,680
to mischief, but instant sobriety followed. Poor sleepers should endeavor

366
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:20,559
to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes

367
00:25:20,559 --> 00:25:25,759
in pitch black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. And then,

368
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:30,680
as he lay striving with an extraordinary fervor not to listen,

369
00:25:31,079 --> 00:25:33,839
but to concentrate his mind on the wardrobe, and to

370
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,759
keep his eyes from the door. That door must gently

371
00:25:38,279 --> 00:25:44,680
have opened. It must have opened, and as noiselessly closed again,

372
00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,000
for a more or less decent looking young man, seemingly

373
00:25:49,079 --> 00:25:51,960
not a day older than himself, was now apparent in

374
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:55,480
the room. It might almost be said that he had

375
00:25:55,519 --> 00:25:59,839
insinuated himself into the room. But well trained domestics, or

376
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,000
customed to move their limbs and bodies with a becoming unobtrusiveness.

377
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:09,799
There was also that familiar slight inclination of the apologetic

378
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,960
in this young man's pose, as he stood there, solitary

379
00:26:13,000 --> 00:26:17,200
in his black in that terrific blaze of candlelight, and

380
00:26:17,279 --> 00:26:20,720
for a sheer, solid minute, the occupant of the Arabian

381
00:26:20,799 --> 00:26:26,680
bed had really stopped thinking. When indeed, you positively press

382
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:30,200
your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of

383
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:35,079
your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.

384
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:39,880
And Jimmy's first rapid and instinctive who the devil had

385
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:44,920
remained inaudible. In the course of the next few days,

386
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:48,279
Jimmy was to become familiar, at least in memory, with

387
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:52,000
the looks of this new young butler or valet. But

388
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:56,559
first impressions are usually the vividest, the dark blue gray eyes,

389
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:01,720
the high nose, the scarcely perceptible smile, the slight stoop

390
00:27:01,759 --> 00:27:05,279
of the shoulders. There was no doubt of it. There

391
00:27:05,319 --> 00:27:09,519
was just a flavor, a flicker there of resemblance to himself,

392
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:13,359
Not that he himself could ever have cut as respectful

393
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:17,759
and respectable a figure as that, and the smile. The

394
00:27:17,839 --> 00:27:22,079
fellow seemed to be ruminating over a thousand dubious, long

395
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:26,319
interred secrets, secrets such as one may be a little

396
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:31,640
cautious of digging up, even to share with one's self.

397
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,920
His face turned sidelong on his pillow and through air

398
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:38,880
as visibly transparent as a sheet of glass, Jimmy had

399
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:43,880
steadily regarded this strange bell answerer, and the bell answerer

400
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:47,440
had never so much as stirred his frigid, glittering eyes

401
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:52,759
in response. The silence that hung between them produced eventually

402
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:57,720
a peculiar effect on Jimmy. Menials, as a general rule,

403
00:27:57,839 --> 00:28:03,359
should be less emphatic personally. Their unobtrusiveness should surely not

404
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:07,359
emphasize their imminence. It had been Jimmy who was the

405
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:10,160
first to withdraw his eyes, only once more to find

406
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:15,359
them settling, as if spell bound, on those of his visitor. Yet,

407
00:28:15,799 --> 00:28:18,559
after all, there was nothing to take offense at in

408
00:28:18,599 --> 00:28:22,240
the young man's countenance or attitude. He did not seem

409
00:28:22,279 --> 00:28:24,880
even to be thinking back at the bell pullar, but

410
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:29,759
merely to be awaiting instructions. Yet Jimmy's heart at once

411
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:33,039
rapidly began to beat again beneath his icy hands, And

412
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:38,160
at last he made a perfect idiotic response, wagging his

413
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,640
head on his pillow, he turned abruptly away. It was

414
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:43,720
only to tell you that I shall need nothing more

415
00:28:43,759 --> 00:28:49,160
to night, he had said. Good heavens, the fatuity of it.

416
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:55,400
He wanted thirsted force, scores upon scores of things. Aladdin's

417
00:28:55,480 --> 00:29:00,519
was the cupidity of a simpleton, by comparison time the past,

418
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:03,359
for instance, and the ability to breathe again as easily

419
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,279
as if it were natural, as natural as the processes

420
00:29:06,319 --> 00:29:10,319
of digestion. Why, if you were intent only on a

421
00:29:10,319 --> 00:29:13,640
little innocent companionship, one or two of those nymphs up

422
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:16,519
there would be far more amusing company than missus thrips.

423
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,279
If that is, apart from yearning to their harps and

424
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,680
vials that he could have been persuaded to scrub and sweep.

425
00:29:24,839 --> 00:29:27,680
Jimmy wanted no other kind of help. There is a

426
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:33,240
beauty that is but skin deep. Altogether, it had been

427
00:29:33,279 --> 00:29:39,240
a far from satisfactory experience. Jimmy was nettled, his mincing

428
00:29:39,359 --> 00:29:43,079
tones echoed on in his mind. They must have suggested

429
00:29:43,119 --> 00:29:45,720
that he was unaccustomed to menservants and bell pulls and

430
00:29:45,759 --> 00:29:49,640
opulent surroundings. And the fellow had instantly taken him at

431
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:54,559
his word, a solemn, little, rather agreeable and unservile inclination

432
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:58,799
of the not unfriendly head. And he was gone. And

433
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,359
there was Jimmy, absolutely exhausted, coughing his lungs out, and

434
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,920
entirely incapable of concluding whether the new butler was a

435
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:12,720
creature of actuality or of dream. Well, well, well that

436
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:15,920
was nothing new. That's just how things do take one

437
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:20,119
in one's weak moments in the dead of night. Nevertheless,

438
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:24,880
the experience had apparently provoked sedative. He had slept like

439
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:31,440
an infant. The morning found him vivacious with curiosity. He

440
00:30:31,519 --> 00:30:35,160
had paused to make only an exceedingly negligent toilet before

441
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:40,119
beginning his usual wanderings about the house. Calm, cold daylight

442
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:44,119
reflection may dismiss almost any nocturnal experience as a dream,

443
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,640
if at any rate one's temperature in the night hours

444
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:51,640
is habitually above the norm. But Jimmy could not or

445
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:56,359
would not absolutely make up his mind. So clear a

446
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,000
picture had his visit and imprinted on his memory, that

447
00:30:59,079 --> 00:31:02,480
he found himself just like a specialist sounding a patient

448
00:31:02,559 --> 00:31:06,079
in search of the secret ravages of thysis. He had

449
00:31:06,079 --> 00:31:09,880
found himself stealthily tapping over the basement walls, as if

450
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,680
in search of a concealed pantry, a foolish proceeding if

451
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:15,680
one has not the least desire in the well to

452
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:20,359
attract the attention of one's neighbors. Having at length satisfied

453
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:24,279
himself in a rather confused fashion, that whatever understudy of

454
00:31:24,319 --> 00:31:26,720
somes might share the house with him in the small hours,

455
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:30,960
he must be a butler of the migratory order. Jimmy

456
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,200
then began experimenting with the bells mounted on a kitchen chair,

457
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:38,519
cornice brush in hand. He had been surprised by Missus

458
00:31:38,519 --> 00:31:42,319
Thrips in her quiet boots as he stood gently knocking

459
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:45,880
one by one the full eighteen of the long green,

460
00:31:46,079 --> 00:31:50,359
crooked jingle row, which hung open mouthed above the immense dresser.

461
00:31:51,319 --> 00:31:53,960
She had caught him in the act, and Jimmy had

462
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,759
once more exercised his customary glib presence of mind. They

463
00:31:58,759 --> 00:32:01,440
ought to be hung in a scale, you know, wouldn't they,

464
00:32:01,519 --> 00:32:05,400
Missus Thrips. Then we could have home, sweet home, and

465
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,359
a hunting up and a hunting down, grand sires and

466
00:32:08,480 --> 00:32:13,319
treble bobs and a grand Maximus, even on weekdays. And

467
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,559
if we were in danger of any kind of fire,

468
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,680
which you will never be, we could ring them backwards.

469
00:32:18,839 --> 00:32:22,359
Couldn't be, Missus Thrips. Not there's much quality in them,

470
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:26,119
no medieval monkish tone or timber in them. They're a

471
00:32:26,119 --> 00:32:29,279
bit moldy too, and one can't tell t'other from which

472
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,880
it's not like Saint Faith's. One would recognize that old

473
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,119
clankor in one shroud, wouldn't one, Missus Thrips. Has it

474
00:32:36,119 --> 00:32:39,119
ever occurred to you that the first Campanologist's real intention

475
00:32:39,599 --> 00:32:42,480
was not so much to call the congregation as to summon,

476
00:32:43,119 --> 00:32:48,799
well what the congregations after, Yes, sir, Missus Thrips had agreed,

477
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,279
Her watery gray eyes fixed largely on the elevated young man.

478
00:32:52,920 --> 00:32:55,559
But it don't matter which of them you ring. I'll

479
00:32:55,599 --> 00:32:59,839
answer Henry at least while I'm in the house. Hi,

480
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:03,799
don't think, sir, you rest your mind enough. My own

481
00:33:03,839 --> 00:33:08,200
boy now he's in the navy. But with one graceful

482
00:33:08,240 --> 00:33:11,680
flourish Jimmy had run his long handled brush clean east

483
00:33:11,759 --> 00:33:15,880
to west along the clanging row. You mustn't, he shouted,

484
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,079
You shouldn't. Once aboard the lugger. They are free. It's

485
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:24,160
you mother's. He gently shook his peculiar wand at the

486
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:28,359
flat looking little old woman. No, Missus thrips. What I'm

487
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:34,079
after is he who is here here couchamp perdieu leiree,

488
00:33:34,640 --> 00:33:37,920
in these same subterranean vaults, when you and I are

489
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:42,240
snug in our nightcaps, a most nice spoken young man,

490
00:33:42,759 --> 00:33:46,720
not in the navy. Missus thrips. And before the old

491
00:33:46,799 --> 00:33:49,119
lady had had time to seize any one of these

492
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:53,079
seductive threads of conversation, Jimmy had flashed his usual brilliant

493
00:33:53,119 --> 00:33:56,519
smile or grimace at her, and soon afterwards sailed out

494
00:33:56,559 --> 00:33:59,039
of the house to purchase a further gross or two

495
00:33:59,039 --> 00:34:04,640
of candles, gently and furtively pushing across the counter half

496
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:07,759
a sovereign, not as a du sur, but merely from

497
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,440
friend to friend. He had similarly smiled back at the

498
00:34:11,519 --> 00:34:17,320
secretive looking old assistant in the stead west End family grosses. No,

499
00:34:17,599 --> 00:34:22,079
I don't suppose you could remember me. One altars, one ages,

500
00:34:22,679 --> 00:34:27,159
one deals elsewhere. But anyhow, a happy new year to

501
00:34:27,199 --> 00:34:31,199
you if the next ever comes. You know you see, sir,

502
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:36,360
the straight aproned old man had retorted, with equal confidentiality.

503
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:40,000
It is not so much the alterations. They are what

504
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:47,239
you might call uncircumventable, sir. It's the stream, sir, behind

505
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,920
the counter here we are like rocks in it. But

506
00:34:51,079 --> 00:34:53,920
even if I can't for the moment put a thought

507
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:57,280
to your face, though it's already stirring in me, in

508
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,519
a manner of speaking, I shall in the fuature, sir.

509
00:35:01,079 --> 00:35:04,719
You may rely upon that, and the same, sir, to

510
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:09,480
you and many of them. I'm sure, somehow or other,

511
00:35:09,599 --> 00:35:13,880
Jimmy's vanity had been mollified by this pleasing little ceremoniousness,

512
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:17,039
and that even before he had smiled yet once again

513
00:35:17,079 --> 00:35:20,000
at the saffron young lady in the pay box. The

514
00:35:20,039 --> 00:35:22,840
truth is, my dear, he had assured himself, as he

515
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:26,920
once more ascended into the dingy porch. The truth is,

516
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,760
when once you begin to tamper, you won't know where

517
00:35:30,760 --> 00:35:35,239
you are. You won't really And that night he had

518
00:35:35,360 --> 00:35:39,519
lain soberly on in a peculiar state of physical quiescence

519
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:44,519
and self satisfaction, his dark bright eyes wandering from nymph

520
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:48,440
to nymph, his hands folded over his breast under the bedclothes,

521
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:54,159
his heart persisting in its usual habits. Nevertheless, the fountain

522
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:57,559
of his thoughts had continued softly to splash on in

523
00:35:57,639 --> 00:36:00,840
its worn basin. With ear year as a cock, he

524
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:06,280
had frankly enjoyed inhaling the parched, spent brilliant air. And

525
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:10,280
when his fingers had at last manifested the faintest possible

526
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,280
itch to experiment once more with the bellbill, he had

527
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:17,199
slipped out of bed, and, hastily searching through a little

528
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,559
privy case of his uncle's bedside books, had presently slipped

529
00:36:20,599 --> 00:36:24,159
back again, armed with a fat little copy of The

530
00:36:24,199 --> 00:36:30,079
Mysteries of Paris in its original French. The next day,

531
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:34,440
a horrible lassitude descended upon him. For the better part

532
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:37,000
of an hour, he had stood staring out of the

533
00:36:37,119 --> 00:36:41,199
drawing room window into the London street. At last, with

534
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:43,559
a yawn that was almost a groan, and with an

535
00:36:43,599 --> 00:36:49,400
absurdly disproportionate effort, he turned himself about. Heavily hung the

536
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,199
gilded chandeliers in the long vista of the room, heavily gloomed,

537
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,639
the gilded furniture, scarcely distinguishable in the obscurity of the

538
00:36:57,679 --> 00:37:00,800
further wall, stood watching him from a mirror what might

539
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:05,000
have appeared to be the shadowy reflection of himself. With

540
00:37:05,079 --> 00:37:09,039
a still yet extreme aversion, he kept his eyes fixed

541
00:37:09,079 --> 00:37:13,719
on this distant nonentity, hardly realizing his own fantastic resolve

542
00:37:14,079 --> 00:37:17,800
that if he did catch the least faint independent movement there,

543
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,880
he would give Solmes Junior a caustic peace of his mind.

544
00:37:24,199 --> 00:37:27,320
He must have been abominably fast asleep for hours, when

545
00:37:27,559 --> 00:37:30,960
a night or two afterwards he had suddenly awakened, sweat

546
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:34,280
streaming along his body, his mouth stretched into a long,

547
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:37,880
narrow oh, and his right hand clutching the bell rope

548
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:42,079
as might a drowning man a straw. The room was

549
00:37:42,119 --> 00:37:47,119
a drowse with light. All was still. The flitting horrors

550
00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:50,599
between dream and wake in his mind were already thinning

551
00:37:50,639 --> 00:37:54,639
into air through their transparency he looked out once more

552
00:37:54,679 --> 00:37:59,360
on the substantial, the familiar. His breath came heavily, like

553
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:02,639
puffs of wind over a stormy sea, and yet a

554
00:38:02,679 --> 00:38:07,719
profound peace and tranquility was swathing him in. The relaxed

555
00:38:07,800 --> 00:38:13,639
mouth was now faintly smiling. Not a sound, not the feeblest, distant,

556
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:18,719
unintended tinkling, was trembling up from the abyss, And for

557
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:22,320
a moment or two the young man refrained even from

558
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:26,800
turning his head at the soundless opening and closing of

559
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:32,320
the door. He lay fully conscious that he was not alone,

560
00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:37,480
that quiet eyes had him steadily in regard. But like rats,

561
00:38:37,599 --> 00:38:41,480
his wits were beginning to busy themselves again. Sheer relief

562
00:38:41,599 --> 00:38:45,599
from the terrors of sleep, shame of his extremity and weakness,

563
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:50,519
a festering sense of humiliation. Yes, he must save his

564
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,840
face at all costs. He must put this preposterous spying

565
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:59,920
valet in his place. Oddly enough, too, out of the depths,

566
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:05,239
a peculiar little vision of recollection had inexplicably obtruded itself

567
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:09,400
into consciousness. It would be a witticism of the first water.

568
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,760
They are dreadfully out of season, you know. He began

569
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:18,719
murmuring effectively into the hush, dreadfully. But what I'm really

570
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:23,639
pining for is a bunch of primroses. A primrose by

571
00:39:23,679 --> 00:39:29,000
the river's brim must be a little conservative. His voice

572
00:39:29,159 --> 00:39:33,719
was once more trailing off into a maudlin drowsiness. With

573
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,920
an effort, he roused himself, and now with an extremely

574
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,199
sharp twist of his head, he turned to confront his visitor,

575
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:45,280
But the room was already vacant. The door Ajar and

576
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:48,400
Jimmy's lids were on the point of closing again, sliding

577
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:52,320
down over his tired eyes like leaden shutters which no

578
00:39:52,519 --> 00:39:56,639
power on earth could hinder or restrain. When at the faintest,

579
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:00,599
far whisper of sound, they swept back, suddenly and almost

580
00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:03,960
incredibly wide, to drink in all they could of the

581
00:40:04,039 --> 00:40:08,079
spectacle of a small, odd looking child, who at that

582
00:40:08,280 --> 00:40:12,280
moment had embodied herself in the doorway. She seemed to

583
00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:15,760
have not the least intention of returning the compliment. Her

584
00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:19,840
whole gaze, from out of her fair, flaxen pigtailed face,

585
00:40:20,199 --> 00:40:23,639
was fixed on the coarse blue banded kitchen bowl, which

586
00:40:23,679 --> 00:40:26,840
she was carrying with extreme care and caution in her

587
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:31,360
two narrow hands. The idiots down below had evidently filled

588
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:34,360
it too full of water, for the pale, wide petaled

589
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:39,079
flowers and thick, clinkered leaves it contained were floating buoyantly nid,

590
00:40:39,199 --> 00:40:42,159
nod to and fro as she moved, pushing on each

591
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,079
slippered foot in turn in front of the other, her

592
00:40:45,119 --> 00:40:50,599
whole mind concentrated on her task. A plain child, but

593
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:55,239
extraordinarily fair, as fair as the primroses themselves. In the

594
00:40:55,239 --> 00:40:59,639
congregation of candlelight that motionlessly flooded the room, a narrow

595
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,880
chest did long chinned little creature who had evidently outgrown

596
00:41:03,920 --> 00:41:08,000
her strength. Jimmy was well accustomed to take things they come,

597
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:11,039
and his brief sojourn in his uncle's house in his

598
00:41:11,159 --> 00:41:14,679
present state of health had already enlarged the confines of

599
00:41:14,719 --> 00:41:19,800
the term things. Anyhow, she was a relief from the valet.

600
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:24,199
He found himself then, watching this new visitor without the

601
00:41:24,280 --> 00:41:28,159
least trace of astonishment or even of surprise. And as

602
00:41:28,199 --> 00:41:31,360
his dark eyes coursed over the child, he simply couldn't

603
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:35,559
decide whether she most closely took after Solmes Junior or

604
00:41:35,559 --> 00:41:39,599
Missus Thrips. All he could positively assure himself of was

605
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:44,039
just the look the family likeness, and that in itself

606
00:41:44,119 --> 00:41:47,360
was a queerest coincidence, since whatever your views might be

607
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,599
regarding Solmes Junior, Missus Thrips was real enough, as real

608
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:54,599
at any rate as her scrubbing brush and her wholesome,

609
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:58,800
evil smelling soap. As a matter of fact, Jimmy was

610
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:03,000
taking a very tight of himself. His mind might fancifully

611
00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:06,639
be compared to a quiet, green, swarming valley between steep

612
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,239
rock bound hills, in which a violent battle was preceding.

613
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:14,719
Standards and horsemen and smoke and terror and violence, but

614
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:20,159
no sound. Deep down somewhere, he really wanted to be

615
00:42:20,559 --> 00:42:24,280
nice to the child. She meant no ill. She was

616
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:30,639
a demure, far away, harmless looking creature ages ago. On

617
00:42:30,679 --> 00:42:33,079
the other hand, he wished to Heaven they would leave

618
00:42:33,159 --> 00:42:37,840
him alone. They were pestering him. He knew perfectly well

619
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:42,079
how far he was gone, and bitterly resented this renewed interference.

620
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,239
And if there was one thing he detested it was

621
00:42:45,320 --> 00:42:48,840
being made to look silly. I hope you are trying

622
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,480
to be a good little boy. You have not been

623
00:42:51,519 --> 00:42:57,400
talking to the servants that kind of thing. It was therefore,

624
00:42:57,519 --> 00:43:01,400
with mixed feelings and with a tinge of shamefacedness, that

625
00:43:01,480 --> 00:43:05,840
he heard his own sneering, toneless voice insinuate itself into

626
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:10,280
the silence. And what Missikins, can I do for you?

627
00:43:11,599 --> 00:43:16,840
What you will understand? Not how the sneer had degenerated

628
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:21,800
into a snarl. The child at this had not perceptibly faltered.

629
00:43:22,599 --> 00:43:25,840
Her face had seemed to lengthen a little, but that

630
00:43:26,039 --> 00:43:28,480
might have been due solely to her efforts to deliver

631
00:43:28,559 --> 00:43:33,159
her bowl without spilling its contents. Indeed, she actually succeeded

632
00:43:33,159 --> 00:43:36,119
in doing so, almost before Jimmy had time to withdraw

633
00:43:36,159 --> 00:43:38,920
abruptly from the little gilt rail table on which she

634
00:43:39,079 --> 00:43:45,559
deposited the clumsy bot frock pigtail red hands. She seemed

635
00:43:45,599 --> 00:43:48,000
to be as real a fellow creature as you might

636
00:43:48,039 --> 00:43:54,000
wish to see, But Jimmy stared quizzically on. Unfortunately, primroses

637
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:56,280
have no scent, so that he could not call on

638
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:59,239
his nose to bear witness to his eyes, and the

639
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:04,400
congested conflict in the green valley was still proceeding. The

640
00:44:04,519 --> 00:44:08,199
child had paused, her hands hung down now as if

641
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,119
they were accustomed to service, and her pale blue eyes

642
00:44:11,119 --> 00:44:14,199
were fixed on his face. In that exasperating manner, which

643
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:18,159
suggests that the owner of them is otherwise engaged. Not

644
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,159
that she was looking through him. Even the sharpest of

645
00:44:21,199 --> 00:44:24,239
his female friends had never been able to boast of

646
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:28,559
that little accomplishment. She was looking into him as if

647
00:44:28,599 --> 00:44:33,440
he occupied time rather than space. Or was she sneered

648
00:44:33,519 --> 00:44:37,000
that weary inwood voice again, was she merely waiting for

649
00:44:37,039 --> 00:44:41,920
a tip? Look here, said Jimmy dexterously, raising himself to

650
00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:44,880
his elbow on the immense lace fringed pillow. It's all

651
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:48,400
very well. You have managed things quite admirably, considering your

652
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:51,199
age and the season and so on. But I didn't

653
00:44:51,199 --> 00:44:55,920
ask for primroses. I asked for violets. That's very old trick,

654
00:44:56,559 --> 00:45:01,840
very old trick for one. Further, in instant, dark and fair,

655
00:45:02,199 --> 00:45:06,960
crafty and simpleton face communed each with each, but the

656
00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:11,719
smile on the one had fainted into a profound childlike contemplation.

657
00:45:12,599 --> 00:45:15,840
And then so swift and imperceptible had been his visitants

658
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,280
in vanishment out of the room, that the very space

659
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,440
she had occupied seemed to remain for a while outlined

660
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:26,840
in the air, a nebular shell of vacancy. She must

661
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:31,039
apparently have glided backwards through the doorway, for Jimmy had

662
00:45:31,039 --> 00:45:34,239
assuredly not been conscious of the remotest glimpse of her

663
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:39,000
pig tail from behind. Instantly on that the stony hillside

664
00:45:39,039 --> 00:45:43,159
within had resounded with a furious clangor cries and shouts

665
00:45:43,159 --> 00:45:47,119
and screamings, and Jimmy, his face bloodless with rage, his

666
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:50,119
eyes almost blind with it, had leaped out of the

667
00:45:50,159 --> 00:45:54,440
great bed, as if in murderous pursuit. There must, however,

668
00:45:54,639 --> 00:45:57,079
have been an unusual degree or so a fever in

669
00:45:57,119 --> 00:46:00,360
his veins that night, So swift was his reaction. For

670
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,760
the moment he was on his feet, an almost unendurable

671
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:08,159
self pity had swept into possession of him, to take

672
00:46:08,199 --> 00:46:11,519
a poor devil, as literally as that, to catch him

673
00:46:11,519 --> 00:46:14,320
off his guard, not to give him the mere fleck

674
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:17,159
of an opportunity to get his balance, to explain, to

675
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:22,280
answer back, curse the primroses. But there was no time

676
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:25,800
to lose. With one hand clutching his pajamas, the other

677
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:28,960
carrying the bowl, he poked forward out of the flare

678
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:32,280
of the room into the cold lightlessness of the wide

679
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:37,599
stone staircase. Look here, he called down, in a low

680
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:41,719
argumentative voice, look here. You you can cheat, and you

681
00:46:41,760 --> 00:46:44,519
can cheat, but to half strangle a fellow in his

682
00:46:44,599 --> 00:46:49,760
sleep and then send him up the snuffling caretaker's daughter. No, no,

683
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,159
next time, you old make believe we'd prefer company a

684
00:46:54,199 --> 00:47:00,599
little more, a little more congenial. He swayed slightly, grimacing

685
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:04,159
vacantly into the darkness and listening to his speech as

686
00:47:04,199 --> 00:47:08,519
dimly as mitas somnambulist, to the distant roar of falling water.

687
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:14,400
And then poor benighted creature Jimmy tried to spit, but

688
00:47:14,559 --> 00:47:18,159
his lips and tongue were dry, and that particular insult

689
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:24,119
was spared him. He had stooped laboriously, had put down

690
00:47:24,159 --> 00:47:26,639
the earthenware bowl on the persian mat at the head

691
00:47:26,679 --> 00:47:31,039
of the staircase, and was self congratulatorally re welcoming himself

692
00:47:31,079 --> 00:47:33,800
into the scene of still luster. He had dared for

693
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,840
that protracted minute to abandon when he heard, as if

694
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:43,239
from beneath and behind him, a kind of lullaping disquietude,

695
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:47,599
and the sound as of a clumsy, clawed but persistent

696
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:53,239
animal pushing its uncustomary awkward way up the soap polished

697
00:47:53,519 --> 00:47:58,320
marble staircase. It was to be tit for tat. Then

698
00:47:59,199 --> 00:48:03,199
the miserable my nage had let loose it's menagerie that

699
00:48:04,119 --> 00:48:07,039
they were going to experiment with the mouse, cupboard and

700
00:48:07,119 --> 00:48:12,719
keyhole trickery of his childhood. Jimmy was violently shivering. His

701
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,639
very toes were clinging to the mat on which he stood,

702
00:48:16,679 --> 00:48:20,559
swaying a little, and casting at the same time a strained,

703
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:24,199
whitened glance round the room, in which every object rested

704
00:48:24,239 --> 00:48:27,039
in the light, as if so it had rested from

705
00:48:27,199 --> 00:48:34,960
all eternity. He stood mutely and ghastly listening. Even a

706
00:48:35,079 --> 00:48:38,679
large bedroom five times the size of a small boy's attic,

707
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:43,400
affords little scope for a fugitive, and shutting your eyes,

708
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:48,719
darkening your outward face is no escape. It had been

709
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:52,559
a silly boast, he agreed, that challenge that dare on

710
00:48:52,639 --> 00:48:57,320
the staircase, the boast of an idiot. For the congenial

711
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,519
company that had now managed to hoof and scrabble its

712
00:49:01,599 --> 00:49:06,440
way up the slippery marble staircase was already on the threshold.

713
00:49:08,480 --> 00:49:14,519
All was utterly silent. Now there was no obvious manifestation

714
00:49:14,599 --> 00:49:19,199
of danger. What was peering steadily in upon him out

715
00:49:19,239 --> 00:49:22,599
of the obscurity beyond the door was merely a blurred,

716
00:49:23,079 --> 00:49:29,039
whitish beastlike shape, with still passive, almost stagnant eyes in

717
00:49:29,079 --> 00:49:35,360
its immense fixed face, a perfectly ludicrous object on paper,

718
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,360
yet a creature so nauseous to soul and body, and

719
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:45,280
with so obscene agreed in its motionless piglike grin that

720
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:49,679
with one retigenous swell, Jimmy's candles had swept up in

721
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:52,840
his hand like a lateral race of streaming planets into

722
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:58,039
outer darkness. If his wet, groping fingers had not then

723
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:01,239
encountered one of the carved pedestin of his uncle's bedstead,

724
00:50:01,599 --> 00:50:05,480
Jimmy would have fallen. Jimmy would have found in fact

725
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:11,679
the thing's physical level, try as he might, he had

726
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,880
never in the days that followed made quite clear in

727
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:18,679
his mind why for the third time he had not

728
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:22,800
made a desperate plunging clutch at the bowl rope. The

729
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,840
thing must have been Solme's junior's emissary, even if the

730
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:29,920
bird faced scullery made with the primroses had not also

731
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:35,199
been one of the staff that he had desisted, simply

732
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,320
in case she should herself have answered his summons and

733
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:41,239
so have encountered the spurious animal as she mounted the

734
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:46,760
dark staircase, seemed literally too good to be true. Not

735
00:50:46,840 --> 00:50:51,440
only was Jimmy no sentimentalist, but that particular kind of goodness,

736
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:54,760
even in a state of mind perfectly calm and collected,

737
00:50:55,280 --> 00:51:01,440
was not one of his pleasanter characteristics. Yet acts are facts,

738
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:07,000
even comforting ones. And unless his memory was utterly untrustworthy,

739
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:11,760
he had somehow, somehow contrived to regain his physical balance.

740
00:51:12,840 --> 00:51:17,639
Candelabrum in hand, he had actually indeed at last emerged

741
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:20,840
from the room and stooped his dark head over the

742
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:25,960
balusters in search of what, unaccountably had not awaited his

743
00:51:26,119 --> 00:51:32,159
near acquaintance, and he had he must have flung the substantial,

744
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:37,039
little blue banded slop basin primroses and all clean, straight

745
00:51:37,119 --> 00:51:40,199
down in the direction of any kind of sentient target

746
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:44,519
that happened to be in its way. You must understand,

747
00:51:44,679 --> 00:51:49,159
missus Thripps. He had afterwards solemnly explained, I don't care

748
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:53,920
to be disturbed, and particularly at night, all litter should

749
00:51:54,079 --> 00:51:58,079
of course be immediately cleared away. That's merely as things

750
00:51:58,119 --> 00:52:01,599
go in a well regulated household, as in fact they

751
00:52:01,679 --> 00:52:05,119
do go. And I see you have replaced the one

752
00:52:05,199 --> 00:52:08,039
or two little specimens I was looking over out of

753
00:52:08,079 --> 00:52:12,360
the cabinet on the staircase. Pretty things too, though you

754
00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:14,800
hadn't the advantage of being in the service of their

755
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:20,000
late owner, my uncle, as I was. Of course, two

756
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:24,360
breakages cannot be avoided. There. I assure you you are

757
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:30,920
absolutely free moth and rust, Missus thrips. No, all that

758
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,920
I was merely inquiring about at the moment is that

759
00:52:34,039 --> 00:52:39,679
particular pot. There was an accident last night, primroses and

760
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:44,400
so on, and one might have expected, one might almost

761
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:48,719
have sworn, Missus Strips that at least a shard or two,

762
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:52,639
as the Psalmist says, would have been pretty conspicuous, even

763
00:52:52,679 --> 00:52:56,719
if the water had completely dried away. Not that I

764
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:00,039
heard the smash mine. I don't go so far as that,

765
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:06,039
nor am I making any insinuations. Whatever. You are the

766
00:53:06,079 --> 00:53:09,320
best of good creatures. You are, indeed, and it's no

767
00:53:09,440 --> 00:53:12,360
good looking at me like patience on a monument, because

768
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:17,559
at present life is real and life is earnest. All

769
00:53:17,599 --> 00:53:20,519
I mean is that if one, for a single moment

770
00:53:20,840 --> 00:53:26,079
ceases to guide one's conduct on reasonable lines, well one

771
00:53:26,199 --> 00:53:31,119
comes a perfectly indescribable cropper Missus Strips like the pot.

772
00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,559
Missus Thrips's gray, untidy head had remained oddly stuck out

773
00:53:36,559 --> 00:53:41,199
from her body throughout this harangue. No, sir, she repeated,

774
00:53:41,199 --> 00:53:44,039
once more, high and low, I've searched the house down,

775
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:46,559
and there isn't a shadder of what you might be

776
00:53:46,599 --> 00:53:51,639
referring to, not a shadder. And once more I ask you, sir,

777
00:53:52,199 --> 00:53:56,360
let me call in doctor Stokes. He's a very nice gentleman,

778
00:53:56,880 --> 00:53:59,519
and one as keeps what should be kept as close

779
00:53:59,599 --> 00:54:02,480
to himself as it being his duty. He sees right

780
00:54:02,559 --> 00:54:07,159
and proper to do chasing and racketing of yourself up

781
00:54:07,199 --> 00:54:10,239
and down these runs of naked stairs in the dead

782
00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:14,519
of night is no proper place for you, sir, in

783
00:54:14,599 --> 00:54:19,079
your state. And I don't like to take the responsibility.

784
00:54:20,119 --> 00:54:23,639
It's first the candles, then the bells, then the kitchen,

785
00:54:24,119 --> 00:54:27,880
and then the basin. I know what I'm talking about, sir,

786
00:54:28,039 --> 00:54:32,920
having lost two and one at sea. And suppose my

787
00:54:33,079 --> 00:54:37,000
dear Jimmy had almost brilliantly as ever smiled, suppose we

788
00:54:37,039 --> 00:54:43,039
are all of us at sea. What then, why then, sir,

789
00:54:43,519 --> 00:54:47,400
Missus Strips had courageously retorted, I had, as life be

790
00:54:47,480 --> 00:54:50,639
at the bottom of it. There's been as much worry

791
00:54:50,679 --> 00:54:53,199
and trouble and making two ends meet in my life,

792
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:55,679
not to make the getting out of it what you'd

793
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:59,599
stand on no ceremony, For I say it with all

794
00:54:59,679 --> 00:55:03,840
detai respect for what's respectful and proper, Sir, that there

795
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:07,039
isn't a morning I step down those area steps. But

796
00:55:07,159 --> 00:55:10,079
my heart's in my mouth for fear there won't be

797
00:55:10,159 --> 00:55:14,159
anything in the house. But what can't answer back. It's

798
00:55:14,199 --> 00:55:18,519
been a struggle to keep on, sir, and as you generous,

799
00:55:18,559 --> 00:55:22,320
as gentlemen as need be, if only you'd remain warm

800
00:55:22,400 --> 00:55:26,800
and natural in your bed. When once there a little

801
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:30,559
inward trickle of laughter had entertained Jimmy as he watched

802
00:55:30,599 --> 00:55:34,440
the shapeless, patient old mouth utter these last few words.

803
00:55:35,599 --> 00:55:40,519
That's just it, missus thrips, he had replied softly. You've

804
00:55:40,559 --> 00:55:43,760
done for me far more effectively than anyone I care

805
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:48,360
to remember in my insignificant little lifetime. You have. Indeed,

806
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:52,320
Jimmy had even touched the hand bent like the claw

807
00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:55,599
of a bird around the broom handle. In fact, you know,

808
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:59,440
and I'm bound to confess it as gratefully as need be.

809
00:56:00,239 --> 00:56:03,039
They are, all of them doing for me as fast

810
00:56:03,039 --> 00:56:07,119
as they can. I don't complain, not the least little

811
00:56:07,159 --> 00:56:10,039
bit in the world. All that I might be asking

812
00:56:10,159 --> 00:56:14,440
is how the devil, to put it politely, how the

813
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:19,000
goodness gracious is one to tell which is which? In

814
00:56:19,079 --> 00:56:21,760
my particular case, it seems to be the miller that

815
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:25,199
sets the wind, Not of course, that he's got any

816
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:29,480
particular graintgrind, not even wild out you, funny old mother

817
00:56:29,559 --> 00:56:33,800
of a youthful mariner. No, no, no. Even the fact

818
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:37,880
that there wasn't perhaps any pot after all, you will understand,

819
00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:41,480
doesn't positively prove that neither could there have been any

820
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:45,440
primoses than before next January is four months old. We

821
00:56:45,519 --> 00:56:48,239
shall be at the end of yet another April, at least,

822
00:56:49,199 --> 00:56:52,400
and a sort of almost bluish pallor had spread like

823
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:55,719
a shadow over his face. At least you will be

824
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:59,639
all of which is only to say, dear Madam, as

825
00:56:59,639 --> 00:57:03,920
Beckfield remarked to old Vic that I am thanking you now,

826
00:57:05,159 --> 00:57:08,559
at which Missus thrips, immediately fell upon her knees on

827
00:57:08,639 --> 00:57:12,000
her housemaid's pad, and plunged her hands into her zinc pail,

828
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:15,679
only instantly after to sit back on her heels. Skinny

829
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:20,400
hands on canvas apron. All I says, sir, is we

830
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:24,400
go as we go, and a nicer gentleman taking things

831
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:28,079
on the surface I never worked for. But one don't

832
00:57:28,079 --> 00:57:30,400
want to move too much in the public, high, Sir,

833
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:34,440
of all the houses below stairs I've worked for, and

834
00:57:34,599 --> 00:57:37,519
all alone in, I don't want a chance on a

835
00:57:37,599 --> 00:57:42,159
more private in a manner of speaking than this. All

836
00:57:42,199 --> 00:57:45,079
that I was saying, sir, and I wouldn't to none,

837
00:57:45,119 --> 00:57:49,400
but you is the life skeetting on my nerves. When

838
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,960
that door there closes after me, and every day drawing

839
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:55,880
out steady as you can see, without so much as

840
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:00,760
glancing at the clock, I say to myself, well, better

841
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:04,400
that poor young gentleman alone up there at night coffin

842
00:58:04,519 --> 00:58:08,280
all than me. I wouldn't sleep in this house, sir,

843
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:12,079
not if you was to offer me a plateful of sovereigns,

844
00:58:12,639 --> 00:58:18,199
unless sir, you wanted me. On reflection, Jimmy decided that

845
00:58:18,280 --> 00:58:21,079
he had cut almost a gallant figure, as he had

846
00:58:21,119 --> 00:58:26,280
retorted gaily, yet with extraordinary sobriety, you shall have a

847
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:29,840
whole dishful before I'm done. Missus thrips with a big

848
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:33,320
scoop in it for the gravy. But on my oath

849
00:58:33,639 --> 00:58:37,400
I assure you there's absolutely nothing or nobody in this

850
00:58:37,559 --> 00:58:43,119
old barn of a museum except you and me. Nobody, unless,

851
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:46,920
of course, you will understand one happens to pull the bell,

852
00:58:48,079 --> 00:58:50,639
and that we're not likely to do in broad daylight?

853
00:58:51,239 --> 00:58:54,880
Are we missus? Thrips upon which he had hastily caught

854
00:58:54,960 --> 00:58:57,639
up his aunt's hand bag and had emerged into a

855
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:01,199
daylight a good deal bleaker, if not broader than he

856
00:59:01,239 --> 00:59:07,960
could gratefully stomach for a while, Jimmy had let well alone. Indeed,

857
00:59:08,159 --> 00:59:10,360
if it had been a mere matter of choice, he

858
00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,119
would far rather have engaged in a friendly and jocular

859
00:59:13,159 --> 00:59:16,239
conversation of this description with his old charwoman than in

860
00:59:16,280 --> 00:59:19,280
the endless monologues in which he found himself submerged on

861
00:59:19,360 --> 00:59:24,599
other occasions. One later afternoon, for instance, at half past three,

862
00:59:24,679 --> 00:59:27,800
by his watch, sitting there by a small fire in

863
00:59:27,880 --> 00:59:31,679
the large muffled drawing room, he at length came definitely

864
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:35,039
to the conclusion that some kind of finality should be

865
00:59:35,079 --> 00:59:37,559
reached in his relations with the night staff in his

866
00:59:37,679 --> 00:59:42,199
uncle Timothy's. It was pretty certain that his visit would

867
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:45,840
soon be drawing to a close. Staying out at night

868
00:59:45,960 --> 00:59:48,880
until he was almost too exhausted to climb down to

869
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:52,480
the pavement from his hansom. The first April silver of

870
00:59:52,559 --> 00:59:56,599
dawn warning the stark and empty chimney pots had proved

871
00:59:56,599 --> 01:00:02,719
a dull and tedious alternative The spectator of gaiety, he concluded,

872
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:05,480
as he stared at the immense picture of the Colosseum

873
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:08,480
on his uncle Timothy's wall, may have as boring a

874
01:00:08,559 --> 01:00:11,239
time as must the slaves who cleaned out the cages

875
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:15,239
of the lions that ate the Christians, and snapping out

876
01:00:15,280 --> 01:00:19,320
insults at former old cronies who couldn't help their faces

877
01:00:19,360 --> 01:00:26,079
being as tiresome as a whitewashed pigstye had soon grown wearisome. Jimmy,

878
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:29,280
of course, was accustomed to taking no interest in things

879
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:33,480
which did not interest him, But quite respectable people could

880
01:00:33,559 --> 01:00:38,000
manage that equally well. What fretted him almost beyond endurance

881
01:00:38,079 --> 01:00:40,840
was an increasing inability to keep his attention fixed on

882
01:00:40,920 --> 01:00:45,679
what was really there. What, at least all such respectable people,

883
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:50,679
one might suppose, would unanimously agree was there a moment's

884
01:00:50,719 --> 01:00:53,760
fixture of the eyes, and he would find himself steadily

885
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:58,079
steadily listening. Now in a creeping dread that somewhere down

886
01:00:58,119 --> 01:01:01,039
below there was a good deal that needed an almost

887
01:01:01,079 --> 01:01:05,199
constant attention, and now in sudden alarm that after all

888
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:11,920
there was absolutely nothing. Again and again in recollection, he

889
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:15,760
had hung over the unlighted staircase, listening in an extremity

890
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,239
of foreboding for the outbreak of a rabbit like childish

891
01:01:19,320 --> 01:01:24,000
squeal of terror, which would have proved, well, what would

892
01:01:24,000 --> 01:01:28,280
it have proved, My god, what a wild You can

893
01:01:28,360 --> 01:01:32,920
prove nothing. The fact that he was all but certain

894
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:36,599
that any such intolerably helpless squeal never had wailed up

895
01:01:36,639 --> 01:01:38,960
to him out of its pit of blackness could be

896
01:01:39,159 --> 01:01:43,679
only a partial consolation. He hadn't meant to be a beast.

897
01:01:44,559 --> 01:01:47,639
It was only his facetious little way, and you would

898
01:01:47,719 --> 01:01:51,719
have to be something pretty piggish in pigs to betray

899
01:01:51,760 --> 01:01:56,480
a child. However insubstantial into the nausea and vertigo he

900
01:01:56,599 --> 01:02:01,360
had experienced in the presence of that unspeakable abortion, the

901
01:02:01,400 --> 01:02:05,679
whole thing had become a fatuous obsession. If it appeared

902
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:08,960
you only remained solitary and secluded enough and let your

903
01:02:09,039 --> 01:02:12,159
mind wander on in its own sweet way. The problem

904
01:02:12,239 --> 01:02:14,800
was almost bound to become if not your one and

905
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:19,360
only at least your chief concern, unless you were preter

906
01:02:19,519 --> 01:02:23,079
naturally busy and preoccupied. You simply couldn't live on and

907
01:02:23,199 --> 01:02:26,719
on in a haunted house without being occasionally reminded of

908
01:02:26,719 --> 01:02:31,880
its ghosts. To dismiss the matter as pure illusion, to

909
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:35,559
dismiss the matter as pure illusion, the spectral picturing of

910
01:02:35,639 --> 01:02:39,719
life's fitful fever might be all very well, that is,

911
01:02:40,039 --> 01:02:43,280
if you had the blood of a fish. But who

912
01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:46,039
on earth had ever found the world the pleasanter and

913
01:02:46,119 --> 01:02:49,280
sweeter place to bid goodbye to simply because it was

914
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:54,679
obviously substantial, whatever that might mean, Simply because it did

915
01:02:54,679 --> 01:02:57,039
nothing you wanted it to do, unless you paid for

916
01:02:57,079 --> 01:03:00,360
it pretty handsomely, or unless you were accept did what

917
01:03:00,440 --> 01:03:03,440
it proffered with as open a hospitality as Jimmy had

918
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:06,840
bestowed on his pilgrims of the night, not that he

919
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:10,800
much wanted, however, pressing the invitation to wander off out

920
01:03:10,800 --> 01:03:14,000
of his body into a better world, or for that matter,

921
01:03:14,519 --> 01:03:19,920
into a worse upstairs under the roof. Years ago, Jimmy,

922
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:22,519
as a small boy, would rather have died of terror

923
01:03:22,679 --> 01:03:25,480
than meddle with the cord above his bed rail simply

924
01:03:25,519 --> 01:03:28,280
because he knew that Solmes Senior was at the other

925
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:32,400
end of it. He had hated Solmes, He had merely

926
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:37,400
feared the nothings of his night hours. But suppose Solmes

927
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,800
had been a different kind of butler. There must be

928
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,239
almost as many kinds as there are human beings. Suppose

929
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:47,239
his uncle Timothy and aunt Charlotte had chosen theirs a

930
01:03:47,280 --> 01:03:53,599
little less sidiosyncratically. What then, Well, anyhow, in a sense

931
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:56,119
he was not sorry. Life had been a little exciting

932
01:03:56,159 --> 01:03:59,480
these last few weeks. How odd that what all but

933
01:03:59,599 --> 01:04:01,880
jelly your soul in your body at night or in

934
01:04:01,920 --> 01:04:05,360
a dream might merely amuse you like a shilling shocker

935
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:09,719
in the safety of day, the safety of day. That

936
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:12,199
the very cadence of the words in his mind. As

937
01:04:12,199 --> 01:04:15,559
he sat there in his aunt's salon, his limbs huddled

938
01:04:15,559 --> 01:04:21,199
over missus Thripps's fire, Jimmy's eyes had fixed themselves again again.

939
01:04:21,360 --> 01:04:24,679
He was listening. Was it that if you saw in

940
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:29,599
your mind any distant room of place, that place must actually,

941
01:04:29,639 --> 01:04:34,280
at the moment contain you some self, some astral body.

942
01:04:35,519 --> 01:04:40,559
If so, wouldn't of course you hear yourself moving about

943
01:04:40,559 --> 01:04:44,840
in it? There was a slight whining wind in the

944
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:48,480
street outside the rainy window that afternoon, and once more,

945
01:04:48,559 --> 01:04:51,800
the bright idea crossed Jimmy's mind that he should steal

946
01:04:51,880 --> 01:04:54,960
upstairs before it was dark, mount up on to the

947
01:04:55,000 --> 01:04:59,519
Arabian bed, and just cut the bell pull once for all.

948
01:05:01,199 --> 01:05:06,920
But would that necessarily dismiss the staff necessarily? His eyes

949
01:05:07,039 --> 01:05:10,360
wandered to the discreet s of yet another bell pull,

950
01:05:11,039 --> 01:05:14,360
that which graced the wall beneath the expansive white marble

951
01:05:14,440 --> 01:05:18,960
chimney piece. He hesitated. There was no doubt his mind

952
01:05:19,039 --> 01:05:22,559
was now hopelessly jaundiced against bell ropes, whether they failed

953
01:05:22,559 --> 01:05:25,239
to summon one to church or persisted in summoning one

954
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:28,239
to a six foot hole in the cemetery. His uncle

955
01:05:28,239 --> 01:05:31,760
Timothy lay in a moresoleum. On the other hand, he

956
01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:35,239
was properly convinced that a gentleman is as a gentleman does,

957
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:38,760
and that it was really up to you to treat

958
01:05:38,800 --> 01:05:43,800
all bell answerers with decent courtesy, no matter who, when where.

959
01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:48,639
A universal rule like that is a sheer godsend. If

960
01:05:48,679 --> 01:05:52,760
they didn't answer, well, you couldn't help yourself, or rather

961
01:05:53,039 --> 01:05:58,679
you would have to. This shivering was merely physical when

962
01:05:58,719 --> 01:06:00,920
a fellow is so thin that he can almost hear

963
01:06:00,960 --> 01:06:03,559
his ribs grid one against the other when he stoops

964
01:06:03,559 --> 01:06:06,360
to pick up a poker. Such symptoms must be expected.

965
01:06:07,280 --> 01:06:09,760
There was still an hour or two of daylight, even

966
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:12,599
though clouds admitted only a grayish light upon the world,

967
01:06:12,760 --> 01:06:16,519
and his uncle Timothy's house was by nature friendly to gloom.

968
01:06:17,239 --> 01:06:20,920
That house, at this moment seemed to hang domed upon

969
01:06:20,960 --> 01:06:25,800
his shoulders like an immense, imponderable shell. The flames in

970
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:33,599
the chimney whispered, fluttered, hovered like fitfully playing once happy birds. Supposing, if,

971
01:06:33,920 --> 01:06:36,920
even against his better judgment, he leaned forward now in

972
01:06:36,960 --> 01:06:40,800
his chair, and what was infinitely more conventional, and in

973
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,719
a sense more proper than summoning unforeseen entities to one's bedside.

974
01:06:45,360 --> 01:06:49,719
Supposing he gave just one discreet little tug at that

975
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:54,920
small porcelain knob, What would he ask for? He need

976
01:06:54,960 --> 01:06:58,920
ask nothing. He could act. Yes, if he could be

977
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:03,480
perfectly sure that some monstrous, poor signed kakademon akin to

978
01:07:03,559 --> 01:07:06,480
the shapes of childish nightmare would come hoofing up out

979
01:07:06,480 --> 01:07:10,400
of the deeps at his behest well, he would chance it.

980
01:07:11,119 --> 01:07:13,760
He would have it out with the brute it was

981
01:07:13,800 --> 01:07:18,960
still day. It was still day, But maybe the ear

982
01:07:19,199 --> 01:07:24,039
of pleasanter visitors might catch the muffled tinkle in the

983
01:07:24,119 --> 01:07:27,239
young man's mind. There was now no vestige of jocularity

984
01:07:28,000 --> 01:07:30,880
in an instant's lightness of heart. He had once thought

985
01:07:30,880 --> 01:07:33,400
of purchasing from the stiff aproned old assistant at his

986
01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:37,079
aunt Charlotte's family grocer's a thumping big box of chocolates.

987
01:07:37,800 --> 01:07:41,000
Why just that one small bowl in famil rows up

988
01:07:41,119 --> 01:07:44,079
there could be bartered for the prettiest little necklet of

989
01:07:44,159 --> 01:07:48,400
seed pearls. She had done her best with her skimpy shoulders,

990
01:07:48,519 --> 01:07:54,159
skimpier pigtail, and soda reddened hands. Pigtail, but no, you

991
01:07:54,239 --> 01:07:58,760
might pour real bells to pull dubiously genuine pigtails seemed

992
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:02,199
now a feeble jest. The old Jimmy of that kind

993
01:08:02,239 --> 01:08:06,599
of facetiousness was a thing of the past. Apart from

994
01:08:06,639 --> 01:08:10,760
pigs and tweeny maids, what other peculiar emanations might in

995
01:08:10,800 --> 01:08:15,480
the future respond his summonings. Jimmy's exhausted imagination could only

996
01:08:15,559 --> 01:08:20,079
faintly prefigure for a few minutes. A modern Saint Antony

997
01:08:20,159 --> 01:08:23,600
sat there in solitude in the vast half blinded London

998
01:08:23,680 --> 01:08:27,560
drawing room, while shapes and images and apparitions of memory

999
01:08:27,640 --> 01:08:31,840
and fantasy sprang into thin being and passed away in

1000
01:08:31,920 --> 01:08:38,279
his mind. No, no, due to the book quench, the

1001
01:08:38,359 --> 01:08:44,520
candles ring, the bell, Amen, Amen. He was done with

1002
01:08:44,560 --> 01:08:48,920
all that maledictions and anathemas they only tangled the hank.

1003
01:08:50,479 --> 01:08:54,079
So when at last his meager, stooping body mutely played

1004
01:08:54,079 --> 01:08:57,359
on by the flamelight, he jerked round his dark, narrow

1005
01:08:57,439 --> 01:09:00,359
head to glance at the distant mirror. It must have

1006
01:09:00,439 --> 01:09:03,399
been on the mere after image, so to speak, of

1007
01:09:03,479 --> 01:09:07,439
the once quite substantial looking tweeny maid that his exhausted

1008
01:09:07,520 --> 01:09:13,119
eyes thirstily fixed themselves. She was there, over there, where

1009
01:09:13,199 --> 01:09:16,880
Solmes Junior had more than once taken up his obsequious station.

1010
01:09:18,079 --> 01:09:20,760
She was smiling, if the dusk of the room could

1011
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:25,199
be trusted that far and not through. But really at Jimmy,

1012
01:09:26,319 --> 01:09:29,439
she was fairer than ever, Fairer than the flaxenest of

1013
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:33,119
nymphs on his uncle's ceiling, fairer than the saffronist of

1014
01:09:33,199 --> 01:09:37,600
young ladies in the respectablest of family grossers, Fairer even

1015
01:09:37,680 --> 01:09:42,479
than Jimmy hung on this simple vision as did divies

1016
01:09:42,640 --> 01:09:47,239
on the spectacle of Lazarus in bliss at once. Of course,

1017
01:09:47,520 --> 01:09:50,920
after his very first sigh of relief and welcome, he

1018
01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:53,800
had turned back on his lips a glib little speech

1019
01:09:54,000 --> 01:09:58,600
suggesting forgiveness, Let old acquaintance be forgot that kind of thing.

1020
01:09:59,399 --> 01:10:02,079
He was too tired even to be clever now, and

1021
01:10:02,159 --> 01:10:05,199
the oddest of convictions had at once come into his mind,

1022
01:10:05,720 --> 01:10:08,560
seemed almost to fill his body, even that she was

1023
01:10:08,640 --> 01:10:13,359
waiting for something else. Yes, she was smiling, as if

1024
01:10:13,399 --> 01:10:16,760
in hope, she was waiting to be told to go.

1025
01:10:18,039 --> 01:10:20,960
Jimmy was no father. He didn't want to be considerate

1026
01:10:21,000 --> 01:10:23,359
to the raw little creature to cling to her company

1027
01:10:23,399 --> 01:10:25,560
for but a few minutes longer, with a view to

1028
01:10:25,600 --> 01:10:31,600
returns in kind. No nothing of all that. Oh, my god,

1029
01:10:32,119 --> 01:10:35,680
my god, her voice groaned within him, But not at

1030
01:10:35,760 --> 01:10:39,840
any unprecedented jag or stab of pain. The child was

1031
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:44,279
still waiting quite quietly there, as if a shadow, as

1032
01:10:44,279 --> 01:10:47,520
if a secret and obscure ray of light. And it

1033
01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:50,880
seemed to Jimmy that in its patient face hung veil

1034
01:10:51,119 --> 01:10:55,640
upon veil of uncountable faces of the past in paint

1035
01:10:56,159 --> 01:11:01,079
stone actuality. Dream that he had glanced at or brooded

1036
01:11:01,119 --> 01:11:04,359
on in the enormous history of his life that he

1037
01:11:04,399 --> 01:11:08,039
may have coveted too, and as well as his rebellious

1038
01:11:08,079 --> 01:11:13,319
features could and would. He smiled back at her. I understand,

1039
01:11:13,439 --> 01:11:17,359
my dear, he drew back his dry lips to explain perfectly.

1040
01:11:18,279 --> 01:11:20,680
And it was courtesy itself of you to look in

1041
01:11:20,760 --> 01:11:25,039
When I didn't ring, I didn't. I absolutely put my

1042
01:11:25,119 --> 01:11:27,920
tongue out at the grinning old knob. But no more

1043
01:11:27,920 --> 01:11:32,119
of that. One mustn't talk for talking's sake. Else why

1044
01:11:32,159 --> 01:11:35,199
all those old Trappists, though none of them such a

1045
01:11:35,239 --> 01:11:38,199
bag of bones as me, I bet, but without jesting,

1046
01:11:38,439 --> 01:11:42,920
you know? Once more, A distant voice spoke in Jimmy's ear.

1047
01:11:43,720 --> 01:11:48,319
It's important, it said. You really must hold your tongue

1048
01:11:48,960 --> 01:11:54,119
until well it holds itself. But Jimmy's face continued to smile,

1049
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:59,640
and then suddenly every vestige of amusement abandoned it. He

1050
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:03,119
stared head baldly, almost emptily, at the faint inmate of

1051
01:12:03,119 --> 01:12:07,760
his solitude. All that I have to say, he muttered,

1052
01:12:08,359 --> 01:12:13,840
is just this. I have, missus thrips. I have absolutely

1053
01:12:13,960 --> 01:12:18,840
cut the wire. I wish to be alone. But if

1054
01:12:19,199 --> 01:12:24,319
I ring, I'm not asking do you see? In time

1055
01:12:24,800 --> 01:12:28,159
I may be able to know what I want. But

1056
01:12:28,239 --> 01:12:31,880
what is important now is that no more than the

1057
01:12:31,960 --> 01:12:37,039
accursed pig where your primrose is real? My dear, you see,

1058
01:12:37,039 --> 01:12:42,560
things must be real. And now I suppose he had

1059
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:47,039
begun shivering again. You must go to you must go.

1060
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:54,720
But listen, listen, we part friends, the coals in the grate,

1061
01:12:55,119 --> 01:12:59,800
with a scarcely audible shuffling, recompose themselves to their consuming.

1062
01:13:02,079 --> 01:13:05,319
When there hasn't been anything there. Nothing can be said

1063
01:13:05,359 --> 01:13:07,760
to have vanished from the place where it has not

1064
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:13,960
been still. Jimmy had felt infinitely colder and immeasurably lonelier

1065
01:13:14,239 --> 01:13:17,640
when his mouth had thus fallen to silence, and he

1066
01:13:17,720 --> 01:13:22,359
was so empty and completely exhausted, that his one apprehension

1067
01:13:22,640 --> 01:13:24,960
had been lest he should be unable to ascend the

1068
01:13:24,960 --> 01:13:28,880
staircase to get to bed. There was no doubt of it.

1069
01:13:29,479 --> 01:13:34,319
His ultimatum had been instantly effective. The whole house was

1070
01:13:34,359 --> 01:13:39,399
now preternaturally empty. It was needless even to listen to

1071
01:13:39,439 --> 01:13:44,199
prove that, so absolute was its pervasive quietude that, when

1072
01:13:44,239 --> 01:13:47,119
at last he gathered his bones together in the effort

1073
01:13:47,159 --> 01:13:50,119
to rise, to judge from the withering color of the

1074
01:13:50,159 --> 01:13:53,039
cinders and ashes in the fireplace. He must have been

1075
01:13:53,119 --> 01:13:58,319
for some hours asleep, and daybreak must be near. He

1076
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:01,960
managed the feet at last gathered up the tartan traveling

1077
01:14:02,000 --> 01:14:05,399
shawl that tented in his scarecrow knees, and lit the

1078
01:14:05,399 --> 01:14:08,800
only candle in its crystal stick in his aunt Charlotte's

1079
01:14:08,840 --> 01:14:13,359
drawing room. And it was an almost chiotically peaceful though

1080
01:14:13,399 --> 01:14:16,680
for bodeful Jimmy, who stepped by step the fountain of

1081
01:14:16,720 --> 01:14:19,840
his thoughts completely stilled his night mind as clear and

1082
01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:24,239
sparkling as a cavern bedangled with stalagmites and stalactites. Climbed

1083
01:14:24,319 --> 01:14:29,199
laboriously on and up from wide, shallow marble stair to stair.

1084
01:14:30,960 --> 01:14:36,840
He paused in the corridor above. But the nymphs within, muses, graces, fates,

1085
01:14:36,880 --> 01:14:41,439
what not, piped in vain their mute decoy. His uncle

1086
01:14:41,439 --> 01:14:45,399
Timothy's Arabian bed in vain summoned him to its downy embraces.

1087
01:14:46,479 --> 01:14:49,840
At the wide open door. He brandished his guttering candle

1088
01:14:49,960 --> 01:14:54,279
in a last smiling gesture of farewell, and held on.

1089
01:14:56,840 --> 01:15:00,239
That is why, when next morning, out of a sound andading,

1090
01:15:00,359 --> 01:15:04,960
slanting shower of rain, missus Thripps admitted herself into the house.

1091
01:15:05,039 --> 01:15:08,439
At the area door, she found the young man still

1092
01:15:08,439 --> 01:15:12,079
in his clothes, lying very fast asleep, indeed on the

1093
01:15:12,079 --> 01:15:16,279
truckle bed in the attic. His hands were not only crossed,

1094
01:15:16,439 --> 01:15:20,119
but convulsively clenched in that position on his breast, and

1095
01:15:20,199 --> 01:15:23,640
it appeared from certain distressing indications that he must have

1096
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:27,920
experienced a severe struggle to refrain from a wild, blind

1097
01:15:28,039 --> 01:15:30,920
tug at the looped up length of knotted whip cord

1098
01:15:31,079 --> 01:15:34,680
over his head. As a matter of fact, it did

1099
01:15:34,720 --> 01:15:37,920
not occur to the littered old Charlm's mind to speculate

1100
01:15:37,960 --> 01:15:41,199
whether or not Jimmy had actually made such a last attempt,

1101
01:15:41,560 --> 01:15:44,199
or whether he had been content merely to wait on

1102
01:15:44,319 --> 01:15:48,479
a Solmes, who might, perhaps, like all good servants, come

1103
01:15:48,640 --> 01:15:51,640
when he was wanted, rather than when he was called.

1104
01:15:53,239 --> 01:15:57,520
All her own small knowledge of Solmes's, though not without comfort,

1105
01:15:57,920 --> 01:16:02,199
had been acquired at second hand. Nor did missus Thrips

1106
01:16:02,199 --> 01:16:05,479
waste time in surmising how Jimmy could ever have persuaded

1107
01:16:05,560 --> 01:16:08,279
himself to loop up the chord like that out of

1108
01:16:08,279 --> 01:16:12,119
his reach, unless he had first become abysmally ill content

1109
01:16:12,319 --> 01:16:17,800
with his small, primitive and belated knowledge of Campanology. She

1110
01:16:17,960 --> 01:16:20,720
merely looked at what was left of him, her old

1111
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:25,520
face almost comically transfixed in its appearance of pity, horror,

1112
01:16:26,119 --> 01:16:33,680
astonishment and curiosity. End of out of the deep,