Speaker 1: Out of the deep by Walter Delamare. The steely light
of daybreak, increasing in volume and intensity as the east
grew larger with the day, showed clearly at length that
prodigious yet elegant Arabian bed was empty. What might tenderly
have cradled the slumbers of some exquisite fare of Romance
now contained no human occupant. To all. The whole immense room,
its air, dry and thin as if burnt, was quiet
as a sepulcher. To the right of the bed towered
of vast and heavily carved wardrobe, to the left a
lofty fireplace of stone, flanked by its grinning, frigid dogs.
A few cumbrous and obscure oil paintings hung on the walls,
and like the draperies of a proscenium, the fringed and
balanced damask curtains on either side the two high windows
poured down their motionless cataract of crimson. They had had
been left undrawn overnight, and yet gave the scene a
slight theatricality, a theatricality which the painted nymphs, disporting themselves
on the ceiling scarcely helped to dispel. Not that these
coy and oggling faces suggested any vestige of chagrin at
the absence of the young man who, for some weeks
past had shared the long nights with them, they merely
smiled on. For after all, Jimmy's restless head upon the
pillow had never really been in harmony with his pompous,
inanimous surroundings. The thin, high nose like the beak of
a small ship, between the fast sealed lids and narrow cheekbones,
the narrow birdlike brow, the shell of the ear slightly pointed.
If inspired by the distant music of the spheres, the
painted creatures had with this daybreak broken into song, it
would certainly not have been to the tune of Oh Where,
and oh where is my little dog Gone? There was
even less likelihood of Jimmy's voice now taking up their
strains from out of the distance, And yet, to judge
from appearances, the tongue within that head might have been
that of an extremely vivacious talker, even though apart from
missus thrips its talk these last few days had been
for the most part with himself. Indeed, as one of
his friends had remarked, don't you believe it Jimmy has
pots and pots to say, though he don't say it.
That's what makes him such a damn good loser. Whether
or not, if Jimmy had been in the habit of
conversing with himself, he must have had odd company at times.
Night after night, he had lain there flat on his back,
his hands crossed on his breast, a pose that never
failed to amuse him. A smooth eminence in the dark,
rich quilt about sixty inches from his chin, indicated to
his attentive eye the points of his toes. The hours
had been heavy, the hours had been long. Still there
are only twelve or so of utter darkness in the
most tedious of nights, and Matan tinkles at length, excepting
the last of them, a night which was now apparently
forever over. He had occupied this majestic bed for about
six weeks, though on no single occasion could he have
confessed to being really at home in it. He had
chosen it not from any characteristic whim or caprice, and
certainly not because it dominated the room in which his
uncle Timothy himself used to sleep, Yes, and for forty
years on end, only at last to expire in it.
He had chosen it because when its Venetian blinds were
pulled high up under the fringed cornice, it was as
light as a London april sky could make it. And
because well, just one single glance in from the high,
narrow doorway upstairs had convinced him that the attic in
which he was wont to sleep as a small boy
was simply out of the question. A black, heavy flood
of rage swept over him at the sight of it.
He had never before positively realized the abominations of that
early past. To a waf and stray, any kind of
shelter is, of course a godsend. But even though this huge,
sumptuous barrack of a house had been left to him,
or rather abandoned to him by his uncle Timothy's relict
aunt Charlotte, Jimmy could not, even at his loosest have
been described as homeless, friendless, rather, but that of his
own deliberate choice. Not so very long ago. In fact,
he had made a clean sweep of every single living being,
male or female, to whom the term friend could, with
some little elasticity be applied. A little official affair, to
put it politely, eased their exit and then this vacant hostel.
The house in fa act, occupied only by a caretaker
in the service of his aunt's lawyers, had been his
for the asking at any time during the last two
or three years, but he had steadily delayed in taking
possession of it until there was practically no alternative circumstances
accustom even a young man to a good many inconveniences. Still,
it would have been a little too quixotic to sleep
in the street. Even though his uncle Timothy's house, as
a mere property was little better than a white and
unpleasing elephant, he could not sell it. That is not
en mass. It was more than dubious if he was
legally entitled to make away with its contents. But quite
apart from an extreme aversion to you, uncle Timothy's valuables
in themselves, you cannot eat, even if you can subsist
on articles of virtue. Sir Richard Grenville, a hero for
whom Jimmy had every respect, may have been accustomed to
chewing up his wineglass after swinging off its contents. But
this must have been on the spur of an impulse,
hardly in obedience to the instinct of self preservation. Jimmy
would have much preferred to balance a chair at the
foot of his uncle's Arabian bed and salute the smiling
lips of the painted nymphs on the ceiling, though even
that experiment would probably have rather a gritty flavor. Still,
possession is nine points of the law, and necessity is
the deadly enemy of convention. Jimmy was unconscious of the
faintest scruples on that score. His scruples, indeed, were in
another direction. Only a few days ago. The day in fact,
before his first indulgence in the queer experience of pulling
the bell, he had sailed out with his aunt Charlotte's
black leather dressing bag, positively bulging with a pair of
bow candlesticks, an illuminated missile, mutely exquisite with its blues
and gold walls and crimsons, and a tiny old silver
gilt bejutery box. He was a young man of absurdly
impulsive aversions, and a dealer to whom he carried this
further consignment of loot was one of them. After a
rapid and contemptuous examination, this gentleman spread out his palms,
shrugged his shoulders, and suggested a sum that would have
caused even a more phlegmatic connoisseur than his customers, Uncle Timothy,
to turn in his grave, and Jimmy replied, nicely, slurring
his ahs. Really, mister soancer, that is impossible, no doubt
the things have an artificial value, but not for me.
I must ask you to oblige me by giving me
only half the sum you have kindly mentioned, rather than
accept your figure, you know I would well, perhaps it
would be impolite to tell you what I would prefer
to do. Disiree de zilla, and so on. The dealer flushed,
though he had been apparently content to leave it at that,
He was not the man to be easily insulted by
a good customer, and Jimmy's depredations were methodical, with the
fastidiousness of an expert. He selected from the rare and
costly contents of the house only what was light and portable,
and became inconspicuous by its absence. The supply, he realized,
though without any perceptible animation, however recklessly it might be squandered,
would easily last out his lifetime, certainly not after having
once made up his mind to accept his uncle Timothy's
posthumous hospitality. The real difficulty was unlikely to be a
conscientious one. It was the attempt merely to accustom himself
to the house, the hated house, that grew more and
more arduous. It falsified his hope that, like other experisperiances,
this one would prove only the more piquant for being
so precarious. Days and moments quickly flying just his one
funny old charwoman Missus thrips himself and the past. After
pausing a while under the dingy and dusty portico, Jimmy
had entered into his inheritance on the last afternoon in March.
The wind was fallen, the day was beginning to narrow.
A chill crystal light hung over the unshuttered staircase by
sheer force of forgotten habit. He at once ascended to
the attic in which he had slept as a child.
Pausing on the threshold, he looked in conscious not so much,
of the few familiar sticks of furniture, the truckle bed,
the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue banded
eyewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls
as of a perfect hive of a borrent memories. That
high cupboard in the corner from which certain bodiless shapes
had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering
out of his dreams. The crab patterned paper that came
alive as you stared, the window cold with menacing stars,
the mouseholes, the rusty great trumpet of every wind that blows.
These objects at once lustily shouted at him in their
own original tongues. Quite apart from themselves, they reminded him
of incidents and experiences which at the time could scarcely
have been so nauseous as they now seemed. In retrospect,
he found himself suffocatingly resentful, even of what must have
been kindly intentions. He remembered how his aunt Charlotte used
to read to him, with her puffy cheeks, plump ringed hands,
and the moving orbs of her eyes showing under her spectacles.
He wasn't exactly accusing the asked. Even in his first breeches.
He was never what could be called a nice little boy.
He had never ordered himself lowly and reverently to any
of his betters, at least in their absence. Nevertheless, what
stirred in his bosom as he gazed in on this
discarded scene was certainly not remorse. He remembered how gingerly
and with what peculiar breathings his uncle Timothy used to
lift his microscope out of its wooden case, and how
after the necessary manipulation of the instrument, he himself would
be bidden mount of footstool and fix his dazzled eye
on the slides of sluggish or darting horrors of minute
magnified life. And how after a steady, unawing drawl of
inapprehensible instruction, his uncle would suddenly flick out a huge
silk pocket handkerchief as a signal that little tongue tied
and nervous boys were themselves nothing but miserable, sluggish or
darting reptiles, and that his nephew was the most deplorable
kind of little boy. Jimmy remembered too, once asking the
loose bow shaped old gentleman in his chair if he
might himself twist the wheel, and his uncle Timothy had
replied in a loud, ringing voice, and almost as if
he were addressing a public meeting. Um, ah, my boy,
I say no to that. He said no to most things,
and just like that if he vouchsafed speech at all.
And then there was church on Sundays, and his hoop
on week days in the Crescent, and days when with
nothing to do, little Jimmy had been wont to sit
watching the cold, silvery rain on the window, the body
he was in slowly congealing, the while into a species
of rancid suet pudding. Mornings too, when his Aunt Charlotte
would talk nasily to him about Christianity, or when he
was allowed to help his uncle and a tall, scared
parlormaid dust and rearranged the contents of a cabinet or bureau.
The smell of the air, the check duster, the odious
objet dar, and the aging old man snorting and looking
like a superannuated silenus beside the neat and frightened parlormaid.
It was a curious thing. Though death with his luring grin,
had beckoned him off, there he was alive as ever,
And when amid these ruminations, Jimmy's eyes had at last
fixed themselves on the frayed, dangling cord that hung from
the ceiling over the truckle bed. It was because he
had already explored all that the name Solmes had stood
for Solmes the butler, a black clothed, tub bellied, pompous
man that might have been his uncle Timothy's impoverished first
cousin or illegitimate step brother. Solmes Solmes, Solmes used frequently
to wring Jimmy's then protuberant ears. Solmes, sneaked habitually and
with a sort of gloating piety on his drooping face,
was invariably present at the subsequent castigation. Solmes had been
wont to pile up on his plate with lumps of
fat that even Destiny had never intended to consort with
any single leg of mutton, or even surloin of beef
jelly like rapidly cooling nuggets of fat, and Solmes invariably
brought him cold rice pudding when there was hot ginger roll.
Jimmy remembered the lines that drooped down from his pale,
long nose, the sleek s of his whiskers as he
stood there in his coat, tails reflected in the glass
of the sideboard carving the Sunday joint, but that slack
green bell cord his very first glimpse of it had
set waggling score of peculiar remembrances first, and not so
very peculiarly. Perhaps it recalled an occasion when, as he
stood before his aunt's footstool to bid her good night,
her aggrieved pupils had visibly swum down from beneath their
lids out of a nap to fix themselves and look
at him at last, as if neither he nor she,
either in this or in any other world, had ever
so much as seen one another before. Perhaps his own face,
if not so puffy, appeared that evening to be unusually
pasty and pallid, with those dark rings which even to
this day added vivacity and luster to his extremely clear eyes.
And as Aunt Charlotte had asked him why he was
such a cowardly boy and so wickedly frightened of the dark,
you know very well your dear uncle will not permit
gassimi attic, so there's no use asking for it. You
have nothing on your conscience. I trust you have not
been talking to the servants infallible liar. He had shaken
his head, and his Aunt Charlotte in return wagged hers
at him. It's no good staring in that rebellious, sullen
way at me. I have told you repeatedly that if
you are really in need of anything, just ring the
bell for solms. A good little boy with nothing on
his conscience knows that God watches over him. I hope
you are at least trying to be a good little boy.
There is a limit even to your uncle's forbearance. It
was perfectly true, even bad little boys might be watched
over in the dead of night. And as for his
uncle Timothy's forbearon, he had discovered the limitations of that
fairly early in life. Well, it was a pity, he
smiled to himself, that his Aunt Charlotte could not be
present to see his uncle Timothy's bedroom on that first
celebration of their prodigal nephew's return. Jimmy's first forey had
been to range the house from attic to cella, where
he had paused to rest for candlesticks, and that night
something like six dozen of the best wax watched over
his heavy and galvanic slumbers in the Arabian bed. Aunt Charlotte,
now rather more accustomed to the dark even than Jimmy himself,
would have opened her eyes at that gamblers are naturally
superstitious folk, he supposed, But that was the queerest feature
of the whole thing. He had not then been conscious
of even the slightest apprehension or speculation. It was far
rather a kind of ribaldry than any sort of foreboding
that had lit up positive constellations of candle, as if
for a prince's, as if for Princely Cardinal's lying in state.
It had taken a devil of a time too. His
uncle Timothy's port was not the less potent for a
long spell of obscure mellowing, and the hand that held
the taper had been a shaky one, yet it had
provided an amusing process too, almost childish. Jimmy hadn't laughed
like that for years. Certainly, until then he had been
unconscious of the feeblest, squeamish inkling of anything apart from
old remembrances peculiar in the house. Yet well, no doubt
even the first absurd, impulsive experiment that followed had shaken
him up. Its result would have been less unexpected if
he hadn't made a point and almost the duty of
continually patrolling the horrible old vacant London mansion. Hardly a
day had lately passed, and there was nothing better today,
But it found him on his rounds. He was not
waiting for anything except for the hour maybe when he
would have to wait no more. Nevertheless, faithful as the
sentinel on Elsinore's hoary ramparts, he would find himself day
after day, treading almost catlike on from room to room,
surveying his paradoxical inheritance, dotting down a list in a
nice order of the next sacrifices, grimacing at the ming divinities,
and pirouetting an occasional long nose at the portraits on
the walls. He had sometimes had a few words animated
ones too, with missus Thripps. And perhaps if he could
have persuaded himself to talk sensibly, and not to gesticulate,
not to laugh himself so easily into a fit of coughing,
she would have proved better company. She was amazingly honest
and punctual, and quiet and white heaven, a woman with
such excellent qualities should customarily wear so scared a gleam
in her still colorless eyes, and be so idiotically timid
and nervous in his company. He could not imagine she
was being paid handsome wages anyhow, And naturally he was
aware of no rooted objection to other people helping themselves,
at least if they managed it as skillfully as he
did himself. But missus Thripps, it seemed, had never been able,
in any sense at all, to help herself. She was
simply a crape bonneted motherly creature, if not excessively intelligent,
if a little slow in seeing points. It was indeed
her alarm when he asked her if she had happened
to notice any young man about the house that had
irritated him, though of course it was hardly fair not
to explain what had given rise to the question that
was perfectly simple. It was like this for years, for centuries.
In fact, Jimmy had been, except in certain unusual circumstances,
an exceedingly bad sleeper. He still hated sleeping in the dark.
But a multitude of candles at various degrees of exhaustion
make rather lively company when you are sick of your
uncle Timothy Seller, and even the best of vintage wines
may prove an ineffectual soporific. His too, was a wretchedly
active mind. Even as a boy he had thought a
good deal about his uncle and aunt and Solmes and
the house, and the reverend mister Grayson, and specters and schoolmasters,
and painted nymphs, and running away to sea, and curios
and dead silence, and his early childhood. And though since
then other enigmas had engaged his attention, this purely automatic
and tiresome activity of mind still persisted. On his oath.
He had been, in some respects, and in secret rather
a goody, goody little boy, though his piety had been
rather the offspring of fear than of love. Had he
not been expelled from melishes almost solely for that reason,
What on earth was the good of repeatedly thrashing a
boy when you positively knew that he has lied merely
from terror of your roaring voice and horrible white face.
But there it was. If there had been some one
to talk to, he would not have talked so much
to himself. He would not have lain awake thinking night
after night, like a rat in a trap. Thinking was
like a fountain. Once it gets going at a certain pressure,
well it is almost impossible to turn it off. And
my hat, what odd things come up with the water.
On the particular night in question, In spite of the
candles and the mice and the moon, he badly wanted
company in a moment of pining yet listless jocosity. Then
he had merely taken his Aunt Charlotte's advice true. The
sumptuous crimson pleated silk bell pull dangling like a serpent
with a huge tassel for skull over his uncle Timothy's pillow,
was a more formidable instrument than the yard or two
a frayed green cord in the attic. Yet they shared
the same purpose many a time. Must his uncle Timothy
have stretched up a large, loose hand in that direction
when in need of Solmes's nocturnal ministrations. And now, alas
both master and man were long since gone the way
of all flesh, you couldn't, it appeared, pull bells in
your coffin. But Jimmy was not as yet in his coffin.
And as soon as his fingers slipped down from the
smooth pull, the problem in the abstract, as it were,
began to fascinate him. With cold, froggy hands crossed over
his beautiful puce patterned pajamas, he lay staring at the
crimson tassel till he had actually seen the hidden fangs
thickeringly jet out at him. The effort, then, must have
needed some little courage. It might almost have needed a
tinge of inspiration. It was in no sense intended as
a challenge. He would in fact rather remain alone than chance,
summoning well any once animate relic of the distant past.
But obviously, the most practical way of proving, if only
to yourself, that you can be content with your own
reconnaissances in the very dead of night, was to demonstrate
to that self that even if you should ask for it,
assistance would not be forthcoming. He had been as fantastic
as that at the prolonged, pulsating, faint, distant tintinabulation. He
had fallen back onto his pillow with an absurd little
quicket of laughter, like that of a naughty boy up
to mischief, but instant sobriety followed. Poor sleepers should endeavor
to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes
in pitch black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. And then,
as he lay striving with an extraordinary fervor not to listen,
but to concentrate his mind on the wardrobe, and to
keep his eyes from the door. That door must gently
have opened. It must have opened, and as noiselessly closed again,
for a more or less decent looking young man, seemingly
not a day older than himself, was now apparent in
the room. It might almost be said that he had
insinuated himself into the room. But well trained domestics, or
customed to move their limbs and bodies with a becoming unobtrusiveness.
There was also that familiar slight inclination of the apologetic
in this young man's pose, as he stood there, solitary
in his black in that terrific blaze of candlelight, and
for a sheer, solid minute, the occupant of the Arabian
bed had really stopped thinking. When indeed, you positively press
your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of
your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum.
And Jimmy's first rapid and instinctive who the devil had
remained inaudible. In the course of the next few days,
Jimmy was to become familiar, at least in memory, with
the looks of this new young butler or valet. But
first impressions are usually the vividest, the dark blue gray eyes,
the high nose, the scarcely perceptible smile, the slight stoop
of the shoulders. There was no doubt of it. There
was just a flavor, a flicker there of resemblance to himself,
Not that he himself could ever have cut as respectful
and respectable a figure as that, and the smile. The
fellow seemed to be ruminating over a thousand dubious, long
interred secrets, secrets such as one may be a little
cautious of digging up, even to share with one's self.
His face turned sidelong on his pillow and through air
as visibly transparent as a sheet of glass, Jimmy had
steadily regarded this strange bell answerer, and the bell answerer
had never so much as stirred his frigid, glittering eyes
in response. The silence that hung between them produced eventually
a peculiar effect on Jimmy. Menials, as a general rule,
should be less emphatic personally. Their unobtrusiveness should surely not
emphasize their imminence. It had been Jimmy who was the
first to withdraw his eyes, only once more to find
them settling, as if spell bound, on those of his visitor. Yet,
after all, there was nothing to take offense at in
the young man's countenance or attitude. He did not seem
even to be thinking back at the bell pullar, but
merely to be awaiting instructions. Yet Jimmy's heart at once
rapidly began to beat again beneath his icy hands, And
at last he made a perfect idiotic response, wagging his
head on his pillow, he turned abruptly away. It was
only to tell you that I shall need nothing more
to night, he had said. Good heavens, the fatuity of it.
He wanted thirsted force, scores upon scores of things. Aladdin's
was the cupidity of a simpleton, by comparison time the past,
for instance, and the ability to breathe again as easily
as if it were natural, as natural as the processes
of digestion. Why, if you were intent only on a
little innocent companionship, one or two of those nymphs up
there would be far more amusing company than missus thrips.
If that is, apart from yearning to their harps and
vials that he could have been persuaded to scrub and sweep.
Jimmy wanted no other kind of help. There is a
beauty that is but skin deep. Altogether, it had been
a far from satisfactory experience. Jimmy was nettled, his mincing
tones echoed on in his mind. They must have suggested
that he was unaccustomed to menservants and bell pulls and
opulent surroundings. And the fellow had instantly taken him at
his word, a solemn, little, rather agreeable and unservile inclination
of the not unfriendly head. And he was gone. And
there was Jimmy, absolutely exhausted, coughing his lungs out, and
entirely incapable of concluding whether the new butler was a
creature of actuality or of dream. Well, well, well that
was nothing new. That's just how things do take one
in one's weak moments in the dead of night. Nevertheless,
the experience had apparently provoked sedative. He had slept like
an infant. The morning found him vivacious with curiosity. He
had paused to make only an exceedingly negligent toilet before
beginning his usual wanderings about the house. Calm, cold daylight
reflection may dismiss almost any nocturnal experience as a dream,
if at any rate one's temperature in the night hours
is habitually above the norm. But Jimmy could not or
would not absolutely make up his mind. So clear a
picture had his visit and imprinted on his memory, that
he found himself just like a specialist sounding a patient
in search of the secret ravages of thysis. He had
found himself stealthily tapping over the basement walls, as if
in search of a concealed pantry, a foolish proceeding if
one has not the least desire in the well to
attract the attention of one's neighbors. Having at length satisfied
himself in a rather confused fashion, that whatever understudy of
somes might share the house with him in the small hours,
he must be a butler of the migratory order. Jimmy
then began experimenting with the bells mounted on a kitchen chair,
cornice brush in hand. He had been surprised by Missus
Thrips in her quiet boots as he stood gently knocking
one by one the full eighteen of the long green,
crooked jingle row, which hung open mouthed above the immense dresser.
She had caught him in the act, and Jimmy had
once more exercised his customary glib presence of mind. They
ought to be hung in a scale, you know, wouldn't they,
Missus Thrips. Then we could have home, sweet home, and
a hunting up and a hunting down, grand sires and
treble bobs and a grand Maximus, even on weekdays. And
if we were in danger of any kind of fire,
which you will never be, we could ring them backwards.
Couldn't be, Missus Thrips. Not there's much quality in them,
no medieval monkish tone or timber in them. They're a
bit moldy too, and one can't tell t'other from which
it's not like Saint Faith's. One would recognize that old
clankor in one shroud, wouldn't one, Missus Thrips. Has it
ever occurred to you that the first Campanologist's real intention
was not so much to call the congregation as to summon,
well what the congregations after, Yes, sir, Missus Thrips had agreed,
Her watery gray eyes fixed largely on the elevated young man.
But it don't matter which of them you ring. I'll
answer Henry at least while I'm in the house. Hi,
don't think, sir, you rest your mind enough. My own
boy now he's in the navy. But with one graceful
flourish Jimmy had run his long handled brush clean east
to west along the clanging row. You mustn't, he shouted,
You shouldn't. Once aboard the lugger. They are free. It's
you mother's. He gently shook his peculiar wand at the
flat looking little old woman. No, Missus thrips. What I'm
after is he who is here here couchamp perdieu leiree,
in these same subterranean vaults, when you and I are
snug in our nightcaps, a most nice spoken young man,
not in the navy. Missus thrips. And before the old
lady had had time to seize any one of these
seductive threads of conversation, Jimmy had flashed his usual brilliant
smile or grimace at her, and soon afterwards sailed out
of the house to purchase a further gross or two
of candles, gently and furtively pushing across the counter half
a sovereign, not as a du sur, but merely from
friend to friend. He had similarly smiled back at the
secretive looking old assistant in the stead west End family grosses. No,
I don't suppose you could remember me. One altars, one ages,
one deals elsewhere. But anyhow, a happy new year to
you if the next ever comes. You know you see, sir,
the straight aproned old man had retorted, with equal confidentiality.
It is not so much the alterations. They are what
you might call uncircumventable, sir. It's the stream, sir, behind
the counter here we are like rocks in it. But
even if I can't for the moment put a thought
to your face, though it's already stirring in me, in
a manner of speaking, I shall in the fuature, sir.
You may rely upon that, and the same, sir, to
you and many of them. I'm sure, somehow or other,
Jimmy's vanity had been mollified by this pleasing little ceremoniousness,
and that even before he had smiled yet once again
at the saffron young lady in the pay box. The
truth is, my dear, he had assured himself, as he
once more ascended into the dingy porch. The truth is,
when once you begin to tamper, you won't know where
you are. You won't really And that night he had
lain soberly on in a peculiar state of physical quiescence
and self satisfaction, his dark bright eyes wandering from nymph
to nymph, his hands folded over his breast under the bedclothes,
his heart persisting in its usual habits. Nevertheless, the fountain
of his thoughts had continued softly to splash on in
its worn basin. With ear year as a cock, he
had frankly enjoyed inhaling the parched, spent brilliant air. And
when his fingers had at last manifested the faintest possible
itch to experiment once more with the bellbill, he had
slipped out of bed, and, hastily searching through a little
privy case of his uncle's bedside books, had presently slipped
back again, armed with a fat little copy of The
Mysteries of Paris in its original French. The next day,
a horrible lassitude descended upon him. For the better part
of an hour, he had stood staring out of the
drawing room window into the London street. At last, with
a yawn that was almost a groan, and with an
absurdly disproportionate effort, he turned himself about. Heavily hung the
gilded chandeliers in the long vista of the room, heavily gloomed,
the gilded furniture, scarcely distinguishable in the obscurity of the
further wall, stood watching him from a mirror what might
have appeared to be the shadowy reflection of himself. With
a still yet extreme aversion, he kept his eyes fixed
on this distant nonentity, hardly realizing his own fantastic resolve
that if he did catch the least faint independent movement there,
he would give Solmes Junior a caustic peace of his mind.
He must have been abominably fast asleep for hours, when
a night or two afterwards he had suddenly awakened, sweat
streaming along his body, his mouth stretched into a long,
narrow oh, and his right hand clutching the bell rope
as might a drowning man a straw. The room was
a drowse with light. All was still. The flitting horrors
between dream and wake in his mind were already thinning
into air through their transparency he looked out once more
on the substantial, the familiar. His breath came heavily, like
puffs of wind over a stormy sea, and yet a
profound peace and tranquility was swathing him in. The relaxed
mouth was now faintly smiling. Not a sound, not the feeblest, distant,
unintended tinkling, was trembling up from the abyss, And for
a moment or two the young man refrained even from
turning his head at the soundless opening and closing of
the door. He lay fully conscious that he was not alone,
that quiet eyes had him steadily in regard. But like rats,
his wits were beginning to busy themselves again. Sheer relief
from the terrors of sleep, shame of his extremity and weakness,
a festering sense of humiliation. Yes, he must save his
face at all costs. He must put this preposterous spying
valet in his place. Oddly enough, too, out of the depths,
a peculiar little vision of recollection had inexplicably obtruded itself
into consciousness. It would be a witticism of the first water.
They are dreadfully out of season, you know. He began
murmuring effectively into the hush, dreadfully. But what I'm really
pining for is a bunch of primroses. A primrose by
the river's brim must be a little conservative. His voice
was once more trailing off into a maudlin drowsiness. With
an effort, he roused himself, and now with an extremely
sharp twist of his head, he turned to confront his visitor,
But the room was already vacant. The door Ajar and
Jimmy's lids were on the point of closing again, sliding
down over his tired eyes like leaden shutters which no
power on earth could hinder or restrain. When at the faintest,
far whisper of sound, they swept back, suddenly and almost
incredibly wide, to drink in all they could of the
spectacle of a small, odd looking child, who at that
moment had embodied herself in the doorway. She seemed to
have not the least intention of returning the compliment. Her
whole gaze, from out of her fair, flaxen pigtailed face,
was fixed on the coarse blue banded kitchen bowl, which
she was carrying with extreme care and caution in her
two narrow hands. The idiots down below had evidently filled
it too full of water, for the pale, wide petaled
flowers and thick, clinkered leaves it contained were floating buoyantly nid,
nod to and fro as she moved, pushing on each
slippered foot in turn in front of the other, her
whole mind concentrated on her task. A plain child, but
extraordinarily fair, as fair as the primroses themselves. In the
congregation of candlelight that motionlessly flooded the room, a narrow
chest did long chinned little creature who had evidently outgrown
her strength. Jimmy was well accustomed to take things they come,
and his brief sojourn in his uncle's house in his
present state of health had already enlarged the confines of
the term things. Anyhow, she was a relief from the valet.
He found himself then, watching this new visitor without the
least trace of astonishment or even of surprise. And as
his dark eyes coursed over the child, he simply couldn't
decide whether she most closely took after Solmes Junior or
Missus Thrips. All he could positively assure himself of was
just the look the family likeness, and that in itself
was a queerest coincidence, since whatever your views might be
regarding Solmes Junior, Missus Thrips was real enough, as real
at any rate as her scrubbing brush and her wholesome,
evil smelling soap. As a matter of fact, Jimmy was
taking a very tight of himself. His mind might fancifully
be compared to a quiet, green, swarming valley between steep
rock bound hills, in which a violent battle was preceding.
Standards and horsemen and smoke and terror and violence, but
no sound. Deep down somewhere, he really wanted to be
nice to the child. She meant no ill. She was
a demure, far away, harmless looking creature ages ago. On
the other hand, he wished to Heaven they would leave
him alone. They were pestering him. He knew perfectly well
how far he was gone, and bitterly resented this renewed interference.
And if there was one thing he detested it was
being made to look silly. I hope you are trying
to be a good little boy. You have not been
talking to the servants that kind of thing. It was therefore,
with mixed feelings and with a tinge of shamefacedness, that
he heard his own sneering, toneless voice insinuate itself into
the silence. And what Missikins, can I do for you?
What you will understand? Not how the sneer had degenerated
into a snarl. The child at this had not perceptibly faltered.
Her face had seemed to lengthen a little, but that
might have been due solely to her efforts to deliver
her bowl without spilling its contents. Indeed, she actually succeeded
in doing so, almost before Jimmy had time to withdraw
abruptly from the little gilt rail table on which she
deposited the clumsy bot frock pigtail red hands. She seemed
to be as real a fellow creature as you might
wish to see, But Jimmy stared quizzically on. Unfortunately, primroses
have no scent, so that he could not call on
his nose to bear witness to his eyes, and the
congested conflict in the green valley was still proceeding. The
child had paused, her hands hung down now as if
they were accustomed to service, and her pale blue eyes
were fixed on his face. In that exasperating manner, which
suggests that the owner of them is otherwise engaged. Not
that she was looking through him. Even the sharpest of
his female friends had never been able to boast of
that little accomplishment. She was looking into him as if
he occupied time rather than space. Or was she sneered
that weary inwood voice again, was she merely waiting for
a tip? Look here, said Jimmy dexterously, raising himself to
his elbow on the immense lace fringed pillow. It's all
very well. You have managed things quite admirably, considering your
age and the season and so on. But I didn't
ask for primroses. I asked for violets. That's very old trick,
very old trick for one. Further, in instant, dark and fair,
crafty and simpleton face communed each with each, but the
smile on the one had fainted into a profound childlike contemplation.
And then so swift and imperceptible had been his visitants
in vanishment out of the room, that the very space
she had occupied seemed to remain for a while outlined
in the air, a nebular shell of vacancy. She must
apparently have glided backwards through the doorway, for Jimmy had
assuredly not been conscious of the remotest glimpse of her
pig tail from behind. Instantly on that the stony hillside
within had resounded with a furious clangor cries and shouts
and screamings, and Jimmy, his face bloodless with rage, his
eyes almost blind with it, had leaped out of the
great bed, as if in murderous pursuit. There must, however,
have been an unusual degree or so a fever in
his veins that night, So swift was his reaction. For
the moment he was on his feet, an almost unendurable
self pity had swept into possession of him, to take
a poor devil, as literally as that, to catch him
off his guard, not to give him the mere fleck
of an opportunity to get his balance, to explain, to
answer back, curse the primroses. But there was no time
to lose. With one hand clutching his pajamas, the other
carrying the bowl, he poked forward out of the flare
of the room into the cold lightlessness of the wide
stone staircase. Look here, he called down, in a low
argumentative voice, look here. You you can cheat, and you
can cheat, but to half strangle a fellow in his
sleep and then send him up the snuffling caretaker's daughter. No, no,
next time, you old make believe we'd prefer company a
little more, a little more congenial. He swayed slightly, grimacing
vacantly into the darkness and listening to his speech as
dimly as mitas somnambulist, to the distant roar of falling water.
And then poor benighted creature Jimmy tried to spit, but
his lips and tongue were dry, and that particular insult
was spared him. He had stooped laboriously, had put down
the earthenware bowl on the persian mat at the head
of the staircase, and was self congratulatorally re welcoming himself
into the scene of still luster. He had dared for
that protracted minute to abandon when he heard, as if
from beneath and behind him, a kind of lullaping disquietude,
and the sound as of a clumsy, clawed but persistent
animal pushing its uncustomary awkward way up the soap polished
marble staircase. It was to be tit for tat. Then
the miserable my nage had let loose it's menagerie that
they were going to experiment with the mouse, cupboard and
keyhole trickery of his childhood. Jimmy was violently shivering. His
very toes were clinging to the mat on which he stood,
swaying a little, and casting at the same time a strained,
whitened glance round the room, in which every object rested
in the light, as if so it had rested from
all eternity. He stood mutely and ghastly listening. Even a
large bedroom five times the size of a small boy's attic,
affords little scope for a fugitive, and shutting your eyes,
darkening your outward face is no escape. It had been
a silly boast, he agreed, that challenge that dare on
the staircase, the boast of an idiot. For the congenial
company that had now managed to hoof and scrabble its
way up the slippery marble staircase was already on the threshold.
All was utterly silent. Now there was no obvious manifestation
of danger. What was peering steadily in upon him out
of the obscurity beyond the door was merely a blurred,
whitish beastlike shape, with still passive, almost stagnant eyes in
its immense fixed face, a perfectly ludicrous object on paper,
yet a creature so nauseous to soul and body, and
with so obscene agreed in its motionless piglike grin that
with one retigenous swell, Jimmy's candles had swept up in
his hand like a lateral race of streaming planets into
outer darkness. If his wet, groping fingers had not then
encountered one of the carved pedestin of his uncle's bedstead,
Jimmy would have fallen. Jimmy would have found in fact
the thing's physical level, try as he might, he had
never in the days that followed made quite clear in
his mind why for the third time he had not
made a desperate plunging clutch at the bowl rope. The
thing must have been Solme's junior's emissary, even if the
bird faced scullery made with the primroses had not also
been one of the staff that he had desisted, simply
in case she should herself have answered his summons and
so have encountered the spurious animal as she mounted the
dark staircase, seemed literally too good to be true. Not
only was Jimmy no sentimentalist, but that particular kind of goodness,
even in a state of mind perfectly calm and collected,
was not one of his pleasanter characteristics. Yet acts are facts,
even comforting ones. And unless his memory was utterly untrustworthy,
he had somehow, somehow contrived to regain his physical balance.
Candelabrum in hand, he had actually indeed at last emerged
from the room and stooped his dark head over the
balusters in search of what, unaccountably had not awaited his
near acquaintance, and he had he must have flung the substantial,
little blue banded slop basin primroses and all clean, straight
down in the direction of any kind of sentient target
that happened to be in its way. You must understand,
missus Thripps. He had afterwards solemnly explained, I don't care
to be disturbed, and particularly at night, all litter should
of course be immediately cleared away. That's merely as things
go in a well regulated household, as in fact they
do go. And I see you have replaced the one
or two little specimens I was looking over out of
the cabinet on the staircase. Pretty things too, though you
hadn't the advantage of being in the service of their
late owner, my uncle, as I was. Of course, two
breakages cannot be avoided. There. I assure you you are
absolutely free moth and rust, Missus thrips. No, all that
I was merely inquiring about at the moment is that
particular pot. There was an accident last night, primroses and
so on, and one might have expected, one might almost
have sworn, Missus Strips that at least a shard or two,
as the Psalmist says, would have been pretty conspicuous, even
if the water had completely dried away. Not that I
heard the smash mine. I don't go so far as that,
nor am I making any insinuations. Whatever. You are the
best of good creatures. You are, indeed, and it's no
good looking at me like patience on a monument, because
at present life is real and life is earnest. All
I mean is that if one, for a single moment
ceases to guide one's conduct on reasonable lines, well one
comes a perfectly indescribable cropper Missus Strips like the pot.
Missus Thrips's gray, untidy head had remained oddly stuck out
from her body throughout this harangue. No, sir, she repeated,
once more, high and low, I've searched the house down,
and there isn't a shadder of what you might be
referring to, not a shadder. And once more I ask you, sir,
let me call in doctor Stokes. He's a very nice gentleman,
and one as keeps what should be kept as close
to himself as it being his duty. He sees right
and proper to do chasing and racketing of yourself up
and down these runs of naked stairs in the dead
of night is no proper place for you, sir, in
your state. And I don't like to take the responsibility.
It's first the candles, then the bells, then the kitchen,
and then the basin. I know what I'm talking about, sir,
having lost two and one at sea. And suppose my
dear Jimmy had almost brilliantly as ever smiled, suppose we
are all of us at sea. What then, why then, sir,
Missus Strips had courageously retorted, I had, as life be
at the bottom of it. There's been as much worry
and trouble and making two ends meet in my life,
not to make the getting out of it what you'd
stand on no ceremony, For I say it with all
detai respect for what's respectful and proper, Sir, that there
isn't a morning I step down those area steps. But
my heart's in my mouth for fear there won't be
anything in the house. But what can't answer back. It's
been a struggle to keep on, sir, and as you generous,
as gentlemen as need be, if only you'd remain warm
and natural in your bed. When once there a little
inward trickle of laughter had entertained Jimmy as he watched
the shapeless, patient old mouth utter these last few words.
That's just it, missus thrips, he had replied softly. You've
done for me far more effectively than anyone I care
to remember in my insignificant little lifetime. You have. Indeed,
Jimmy had even touched the hand bent like the claw
of a bird around the broom handle. In fact, you know,
and I'm bound to confess it as gratefully as need be.
They are, all of them doing for me as fast
as they can. I don't complain, not the least little
bit in the world. All that I might be asking
is how the devil, to put it politely, how the
goodness gracious is one to tell which is which? In
my particular case, it seems to be the miller that
sets the wind, Not of course, that he's got any
particular graintgrind, not even wild out you, funny old mother
of a youthful mariner. No, no, no. Even the fact
that there wasn't perhaps any pot after all, you will understand,
doesn't positively prove that neither could there have been any
primoses than before next January is four months old. We
shall be at the end of yet another April, at least,
and a sort of almost bluish pallor had spread like
a shadow over his face. At least you will be
all of which is only to say, dear Madam, as
Beckfield remarked to old Vic that I am thanking you now,
at which Missus thrips, immediately fell upon her knees on
her housemaid's pad, and plunged her hands into her zinc pail,
only instantly after to sit back on her heels. Skinny
hands on canvas apron. All I says, sir, is we
go as we go, and a nicer gentleman taking things
on the surface I never worked for. But one don't
want to move too much in the public, high, Sir,
of all the houses below stairs I've worked for, and
all alone in, I don't want a chance on a
more private in a manner of speaking than this. All
that I was saying, sir, and I wouldn't to none,
but you is the life skeetting on my nerves. When
that door there closes after me, and every day drawing
out steady as you can see, without so much as
glancing at the clock, I say to myself, well, better
that poor young gentleman alone up there at night coffin
all than me. I wouldn't sleep in this house, sir,
not if you was to offer me a plateful of sovereigns,
unless sir, you wanted me. On reflection, Jimmy decided that
he had cut almost a gallant figure, as he had
retorted gaily, yet with extraordinary sobriety, you shall have a
whole dishful before I'm done. Missus thrips with a big
scoop in it for the gravy. But on my oath
I assure you there's absolutely nothing or nobody in this
old barn of a museum except you and me. Nobody, unless,
of course, you will understand one happens to pull the bell,
and that we're not likely to do in broad daylight?
Are we missus? Thrips upon which he had hastily caught
up his aunt's hand bag and had emerged into a
daylight a good deal bleaker, if not broader than he
could gratefully stomach for a while, Jimmy had let well alone. Indeed,
if it had been a mere matter of choice, he
would far rather have engaged in a friendly and jocular
conversation of this description with his old charwoman than in
the endless monologues in which he found himself submerged on
other occasions. One later afternoon, for instance, at half past three,
by his watch, sitting there by a small fire in
the large muffled drawing room, he at length came definitely
to the conclusion that some kind of finality should be
reached in his relations with the night staff in his
uncle Timothy's. It was pretty certain that his visit would
soon be drawing to a close. Staying out at night
until he was almost too exhausted to climb down to
the pavement from his hansom. The first April silver of
dawn warning the stark and empty chimney pots had proved
a dull and tedious alternative The spectator of gaiety, he concluded,
as he stared at the immense picture of the Colosseum
on his uncle Timothy's wall, may have as boring a
time as must the slaves who cleaned out the cages
of the lions that ate the Christians, and snapping out
insults at former old cronies who couldn't help their faces
being as tiresome as a whitewashed pigstye had soon grown wearisome. Jimmy,
of course, was accustomed to taking no interest in things
which did not interest him, But quite respectable people could
manage that equally well. What fretted him almost beyond endurance
was an increasing inability to keep his attention fixed on
what was really there. What, at least all such respectable people,
one might suppose, would unanimously agree was there a moment's
fixture of the eyes, and he would find himself steadily
steadily listening. Now in a creeping dread that somewhere down
below there was a good deal that needed an almost
constant attention, and now in sudden alarm that after all
there was absolutely nothing. Again and again in recollection, he
had hung over the unlighted staircase, listening in an extremity
of foreboding for the outbreak of a rabbit like childish
squeal of terror, which would have proved, well, what would
it have proved, My god, what a wild You can
prove nothing. The fact that he was all but certain
that any such intolerably helpless squeal never had wailed up
to him out of its pit of blackness could be
only a partial consolation. He hadn't meant to be a beast.
It was only his facetious little way, and you would
have to be something pretty piggish in pigs to betray
a child. However insubstantial into the nausea and vertigo he
had experienced in the presence of that unspeakable abortion, the
whole thing had become a fatuous obsession. If it appeared
you only remained solitary and secluded enough and let your
mind wander on in its own sweet way. The problem
was almost bound to become if not your one and
only at least your chief concern, unless you were preter
naturally busy and preoccupied. You simply couldn't live on and
on in a haunted house without being occasionally reminded of
its ghosts. To dismiss the matter as pure illusion, to
dismiss the matter as pure illusion, the spectral picturing of
life's fitful fever might be all very well, that is,
if you had the blood of a fish. But who
on earth had ever found the world the pleasanter and
sweeter place to bid goodbye to simply because it was
obviously substantial, whatever that might mean, Simply because it did
nothing you wanted it to do, unless you paid for
it pretty handsomely, or unless you were accept did what
it proffered with as open a hospitality as Jimmy had
bestowed on his pilgrims of the night, not that he
much wanted, however, pressing the invitation to wander off out
of his body into a better world, or for that matter,
into a worse upstairs under the roof. Years ago, Jimmy,
as a small boy, would rather have died of terror
than meddle with the cord above his bed rail simply
because he knew that Solmes Senior was at the other
end of it. He had hated Solmes, He had merely
feared the nothings of his night hours. But suppose Solmes
had been a different kind of butler. There must be
almost as many kinds as there are human beings. Suppose
his uncle Timothy and aunt Charlotte had chosen theirs a
little less sidiosyncratically. What then, Well, anyhow, in a sense
he was not sorry. Life had been a little exciting
these last few weeks. How odd that what all but
jelly your soul in your body at night or in
a dream might merely amuse you like a shilling shocker
in the safety of day, the safety of day. That
the very cadence of the words in his mind. As
he sat there in his aunt's salon, his limbs huddled
over missus Thripps's fire, Jimmy's eyes had fixed themselves again again.
He was listening. Was it that if you saw in
your mind any distant room of place, that place must actually,
at the moment contain you some self, some astral body.
If so, wouldn't of course you hear yourself moving about
in it? There was a slight whining wind in the
street outside the rainy window that afternoon, and once more,
the bright idea crossed Jimmy's mind that he should steal
upstairs before it was dark, mount up on to the
Arabian bed, and just cut the bell pull once for all.
But would that necessarily dismiss the staff necessarily? His eyes
wandered to the discreet s of yet another bell pull,
that which graced the wall beneath the expansive white marble
chimney piece. He hesitated. There was no doubt his mind
was now hopelessly jaundiced against bell ropes, whether they failed
to summon one to church or persisted in summoning one
to a six foot hole in the cemetery. His uncle
Timothy lay in a moresoleum. On the other hand, he
was properly convinced that a gentleman is as a gentleman does,
and that it was really up to you to treat
all bell answerers with decent courtesy, no matter who, when where.
A universal rule like that is a sheer godsend. If
they didn't answer, well, you couldn't help yourself, or rather
you would have to. This shivering was merely physical when
a fellow is so thin that he can almost hear
his ribs grid one against the other when he stoops
to pick up a poker. Such symptoms must be expected.
There was still an hour or two of daylight, even
though clouds admitted only a grayish light upon the world,
and his uncle Timothy's house was by nature friendly to gloom.
That house, at this moment seemed to hang domed upon
his shoulders like an immense, imponderable shell. The flames in
the chimney whispered, fluttered, hovered like fitfully playing once happy birds. Supposing, if,
even against his better judgment, he leaned forward now in
his chair, and what was infinitely more conventional, and in
a sense more proper than summoning unforeseen entities to one's bedside.
Supposing he gave just one discreet little tug at that
small porcelain knob, What would he ask for? He need
ask nothing. He could act. Yes, if he could be
perfectly sure that some monstrous, poor signed kakademon akin to
the shapes of childish nightmare would come hoofing up out
of the deeps at his behest well, he would chance it.
He would have it out with the brute it was
still day. It was still day, But maybe the ear
of pleasanter visitors might catch the muffled tinkle in the
young man's mind. There was now no vestige of jocularity
in an instant's lightness of heart. He had once thought
of purchasing from the stiff aproned old assistant at his
aunt Charlotte's family grocer's a thumping big box of chocolates.
Why just that one small bowl in famil rows up
there could be bartered for the prettiest little necklet of
seed pearls. She had done her best with her skimpy shoulders,
skimpier pigtail, and soda reddened hands. Pigtail, but no, you
might pour real bells to pull dubiously genuine pigtails seemed
now a feeble jest. The old Jimmy of that kind
of facetiousness was a thing of the past. Apart from
pigs and tweeny maids, what other peculiar emanations might in
the future respond his summonings. Jimmy's exhausted imagination could only
faintly prefigure for a few minutes. A modern Saint Antony
sat there in solitude in the vast half blinded London
drawing room, while shapes and images and apparitions of memory
and fantasy sprang into thin being and passed away in
his mind. No, no, due to the book quench, the
candles ring, the bell, Amen, Amen. He was done with
all that maledictions and anathemas they only tangled the hank.
So when at last his meager, stooping body mutely played
on by the flamelight, he jerked round his dark, narrow
head to glance at the distant mirror. It must have
been on the mere after image, so to speak, of
the once quite substantial looking tweeny maid that his exhausted
eyes thirstily fixed themselves. She was there, over there, where
Solmes Junior had more than once taken up his obsequious station.
She was smiling, if the dusk of the room could
be trusted that far and not through. But really at Jimmy,
she was fairer than ever, Fairer than the flaxenest of
nymphs on his uncle's ceiling, fairer than the saffronist of
young ladies in the respectablest of family grossers, Fairer even
than Jimmy hung on this simple vision as did divies
on the spectacle of Lazarus in bliss at once. Of course,
after his very first sigh of relief and welcome, he
had turned back on his lips a glib little speech
suggesting forgiveness, Let old acquaintance be forgot that kind of thing.
He was too tired even to be clever now, and
the oddest of convictions had at once come into his mind,
seemed almost to fill his body, even that she was
waiting for something else. Yes, she was smiling, as if
in hope, she was waiting to be told to go.
Jimmy was no father. He didn't want to be considerate
to the raw little creature to cling to her company
for but a few minutes longer, with a view to
returns in kind. No nothing of all that. Oh, my god,
my god, her voice groaned within him, But not at
any unprecedented jag or stab of pain. The child was
still waiting quite quietly there, as if a shadow, as
if a secret and obscure ray of light. And it
seemed to Jimmy that in its patient face hung veil
upon veil of uncountable faces of the past in paint
stone actuality. Dream that he had glanced at or brooded
on in the enormous history of his life that he
may have coveted too, and as well as his rebellious
features could and would. He smiled back at her. I understand,
my dear, he drew back his dry lips to explain perfectly.
And it was courtesy itself of you to look in
When I didn't ring, I didn't. I absolutely put my
tongue out at the grinning old knob. But no more
of that. One mustn't talk for talking's sake. Else why
all those old Trappists, though none of them such a
bag of bones as me, I bet, but without jesting,
you know? Once more, A distant voice spoke in Jimmy's ear.
It's important, it said. You really must hold your tongue
until well it holds itself. But Jimmy's face continued to smile,
and then suddenly every vestige of amusement abandoned it. He
stared head baldly, almost emptily, at the faint inmate of
his solitude. All that I have to say, he muttered,
is just this. I have, missus thrips. I have absolutely
cut the wire. I wish to be alone. But if
I ring, I'm not asking do you see? In time
I may be able to know what I want. But
what is important now is that no more than the
accursed pig where your primrose is real? My dear, you see,
things must be real. And now I suppose he had
begun shivering again. You must go to you must go.
But listen, listen, we part friends, the coals in the grate,
with a scarcely audible shuffling, recompose themselves to their consuming.
When there hasn't been anything there. Nothing can be said
to have vanished from the place where it has not
been still. Jimmy had felt infinitely colder and immeasurably lonelier
when his mouth had thus fallen to silence, and he
was so empty and completely exhausted, that his one apprehension
had been lest he should be unable to ascend the
staircase to get to bed. There was no doubt of it.
His ultimatum had been instantly effective. The whole house was
now preternaturally empty. It was needless even to listen to
prove that, so absolute was its pervasive quietude that, when
at last he gathered his bones together in the effort
to rise, to judge from the withering color of the
cinders and ashes in the fireplace. He must have been
for some hours asleep, and daybreak must be near. He
managed the feet at last gathered up the tartan traveling
shawl that tented in his scarecrow knees, and lit the
only candle in its crystal stick in his aunt Charlotte's
drawing room. And it was an almost chiotically peaceful though
for bodeful Jimmy, who stepped by step the fountain of
his thoughts completely stilled his night mind as clear and
sparkling as a cavern bedangled with stalagmites and stalactites. Climbed
laboriously on and up from wide, shallow marble stair to stair.
He paused in the corridor above. But the nymphs within, muses, graces, fates,
what not, piped in vain their mute decoy. His uncle
Timothy's Arabian bed in vain summoned him to its downy embraces.
At the wide open door. He brandished his guttering candle
in a last smiling gesture of farewell, and held on.
That is why, when next morning, out of a sound andading,
slanting shower of rain, missus Thripps admitted herself into the house.
At the area door, she found the young man still
in his clothes, lying very fast asleep, indeed on the
truckle bed in the attic. His hands were not only crossed,
but convulsively clenched in that position on his breast, and
it appeared from certain distressing indications that he must have
experienced a severe struggle to refrain from a wild, blind
tug at the looped up length of knotted whip cord
over his head. As a matter of fact, it did
not occur to the littered old Charlm's mind to speculate
whether or not Jimmy had actually made such a last attempt,
or whether he had been content merely to wait on
a Solmes, who might, perhaps, like all good servants, come
when he was wanted, rather than when he was called.
All her own small knowledge of Solmes's, though not without comfort,
had been acquired at second hand. Nor did missus Thrips
waste time in surmising how Jimmy could ever have persuaded
himself to loop up the chord like that out of
his reach, unless he had first become abysmally ill content
with his small, primitive and belated knowledge of Campanology. She
merely looked at what was left of him, her old
face almost comically transfixed in its appearance of pity, horror,
astonishment and curiosity. End of out of the deep,