‘“Why didn’t you tell me? It was that cupboard. All the horror of the house comes out of that. Tell me – have you seen anything yet? Or is it only the nearly seeing and nearly hearing still?”’
‘I said, “You must tell me first what you’ve seen.” He told me, and his eyes wandered, as he spoke, to the shadows by the curtains, and I turned up all three gas lights, and lit the candles on the mantelpiece. Then we looked at each other and said we were both mad, and thanked God that Mabel at least was sane. For what he had seen was what I had seen.
‘After that I hated to be alone with a shadow, because at any moment I might see something that would crouch, and sink, and lie like a black pool, and then slowly draw itself into the shadow that was nearest. Often that shadow was my own. The thing came first at night, but afterwards there was no hour safe from it. I saw it at dawn and at noon, in the dusk and in the firelight, and always it crouched and sank, and was a pool that flowed into some shadow and became part of it. And always I saw it with a straining of the eyes – a pricking and aching. It seemed as though I could only just see it, as if my sight, to see it, had to be strained to the uttermost. And still the sound was in the house – the sound that I could just not hear. At last, one morning early, I did hear it. It was close behind me, and it was only a sigh. It was worse than the thing that crept into the shadows.
‘I don’t know how I bore it. I couldn’t have borne it, if I hadn’t been so fond of them both. But I knew in my heart that, if he had no one to whom he could speak openly, he would go mad, or tell Mabel. His was not a very strong character; very sweet, and kind, and gentle, but not strong. He was always easily led. So I stayed on and bore up, and we were very cheerful, and made little jokes, and tried to be amusing when Mabel was with us. But when we were alone, we did not try to be amusing. And sometimes a day or two would go by without our seeing or hearing anything, and we should perhaps have fancied that we had fancied what we had seen and heard – only there was always the feeling of there being something about the house, that one could just not hear and not see. Sometimes we used to try not to talk about it, but generally we talked of nothing else at all. And the weeks went by, and Mabel’s baby was born. The nurse and the doctor said that both mother and child were doing well. He and I sat late in the dining-room that night. We had neither of us seen or heard anything for three days; our anxiety about Mabel was lessened. We talked of the future – it seemed then so much brighter than the past. We arranged that, the moment she was fit to be moved, he should take her away to the sea, and I should superintend the moving of their furniture into the new house he had already chosen. He was gayer than I had seen him since his marriage – almost like his old self. When I said goodnight to him, he said a lot of things about my having been a comfort to them both. I hadn’t done anything much, of course, but still I am glad he said them.
‘Then I went upstairs, almost for the first time without that feeling of something following me. I listened at Mabel’s door. Everything was quiet. I went on towards my own room, and in an instant I felt that there was something behind me. I turned. It was crouching there; it sank, and the black fluidness of it seemed to be sucked under the door of Mabel’s room.
‘I went back. I opened the door a listening inch. All was still. And then I heard a sigh close behind me. I opened the door and went in. The nurse and the baby were asleep. Mabel was asleep too – she looked so pretty – like a tired child – the baby was cuddled up into one of her arms with its tiny head against her side. I prayed then that Mabel might never know the terrors that he and I had known. That those little ears might never hear any but pretty sounds, those clear eyes never see any but pretty sights. I did not dare to pray for a long time after that. Because my prayer was answered. She never saw, never heard anything more in this world. And now I could do nothing more for him or for her.
‘When they had put her in her coffin, I lighted wax candles round her, and laid the horrible white flowers that people will send near her, and then I saw he had followed me. I took his hand to lead him away.
‘At the door we both turned. It seemed to us that we heard a sigh. He would have sprung to her side, in I don’t know what mad, glad hope. But at that instant we both saw it. Between us and the coffin, first grey, then black, it crouched an instant, then sank and liquefied – and was gathered together and drawn till it ran into the nearest shadow. And the nearest shadow was the shadow of Mabel’s coffin. I left the next day. His mother came. She had never liked me.’
Miss Eastwich paused. I think she had quite forgotten us.
‘Didn’t you see him again?’ asked the youngest of us all.
‘Only once,’ Miss Eastwich answered, ‘and something black crouched then between him and me. But it was only his second wife, crying beside his coffin. It’s not a cheerful story is it? And it doesn’t lead anywhere. I’ve never told anyone else. I think it was seeing his daughter that brought it all back.’
She looked towards the dressing-room door.
‘Mabel’s baby?’
‘Yes – and exactly like Mabel, only with his eyes.’
The youngest of all had Miss Eastwich’s hands, and was petting them.
Suddenly the woman wrenched her hands away, and stood at her gaunt height, her hands clenched, eyes straining. She was looking at something that we could not see, and I know what the man in the Bible meant when he said: ‘The hair of my flesh stood up.’
What she saw seemed not quite to reach the height of the dressing-room door handle. Her eyes followed it down, down – widening and widening. Mine followed them – all the nerves of them seemed strained to the uttermost – and I almost saw – or did I quite see? I can’t be certain. But we all heard the long-drawn, quivering sigh. And to each of us it seemed to be breathed just behind us.
It was I who caught up the candle – it dripped all over my trembling hand – and was dragged by Miss Eastwich to the girl who had fainted during the second extra. But it was the youngest of all whose lean arms were round the housekeeper when we turned away, and that have been round her many a time since, in the new home where she keeps house for the youngest of us.
The doctor who came in the morning said that Mabel’s daughter had died of heart disease – which she had inherited from her mother. It was that that had made her faint during the second extra. But I have sometimes wondered whether she may not have inherited something from her father. I have never been able to forget the look on her dead face.
THE DETECTIVE
I
His mind was made up. There should be no looking back, no weakening, no foolish relentings. Civilisation had no place for him in her scheme of things; and he in his turn would show the jade that he was capable of a scheme in which she had no place, she and her pinchbeck meretricious substitutions of stones for bread, serpents for eggs. What exactly it was that had gone wrong does not matter. There was a girl in it, perhaps; a friend most likely. Almost certainly money and pride and the old detestation of arithmetic played their part. His mother was now dead, and his father was dead long since. There was no one nearer than a great-uncle to care where he went or what he did; whether he throve or went under, whether he lived or died. Also it was springtime. His thoughts turned longingly to the pleasant green country, the lush meadows, the blossoming orchards, nesting birds and flowering thorn, and to roads that should wind slowly, pleasantly, between these. The remembrance came to him of another spring day when he had played truant, had found four thrushes nests and a moorhen’s, and tried to draw a kingfisher on the back of his Latin prose; had paddled in a mill stream between bright twinkling leaves and the bright twinkling counterfeits in the glassy water, had been caned at school next day, and his mother had cried when he told her. He remembered how he had said, ‘I will be good, oh, mother, I will!’ and then added with one of those odd sudden cautions that lined the fluttering garment of his impulsive soul, ‘at least, I’ll try to be good.’
Well, he had tried. For more than a year he had trie
d, bearing patiently the heavy yoke of ledger and costs book, the weary life of the office the great-uncle had found for him. There had been a caged bird at the cobbler’s in the village at home, that piped sweetly in its prison and laboured to draw up its own drinking water by slow chained thimblefulls. He sometimes thought that he was like that caged bird, straining and straining for ever at the horrible machinery which grudgingly yielded to his efforts the little pittance that kept him alive. And all the while the woods and fields and the long white roads were calling, calling.
And now the chief had been more than usually repulsive, and the young man stood at the top of the stairs, smoothing the silk hat that stood for so much, and remembering in detail the unusual repulsiveness of the chief. An error of two and sevenpence in one column, surely a trivial error, and of two hundred pounds in another, quite an obvious error that, and easily rectified, had been the inspiration of the words that sang discordantly to his revolted soul. He suddenly tossed his hat in the air, kicked it as it fell, black and shining, and sent it spinning down the stairs. The office boy clattered out, thin-necked, red-eared, slack mouth well open.
‘My hat!’ was his unintentionally appropriate idiom.
‘Pardon me, my hat,’ said the young man suavely. But the junior was genuinely shocked.
‘I say, Mr Sellinge,’ he said solemnly, ‘it’ll never be the same again, that tile won’t. Ironing it won’t do it, no, nor yet blocking.’
‘Bates,’ the young man retorted with at least equal solemnity, ‘I shall never wear that hat again. Remove your subservient carcase. I’m going back to tell the chief.’
‘About your hat?’ the junior asked, breathless, incredulous.
‘About my hat,’ Sellinge repeated.
The chief looked up a little blankly. Clerks who had had what he knew well that they called the rough side of his tongue rarely returned to risk a second helping. And now this hopeless young incompetent, this irreverent trifler with the columns of the temple of the gods L. s. and d., was standing before him, and plainly, standing there to speak, not merely to be spoken to.
‘Well, Sellinge,’ he said, frowning a little, but not too much, lest he should scare away an apology more ample than that with which Sellinge had met the rough side. ‘Well, what is it?’
Sellinge, briefly, respectfully, but quite plainly told him what it was. And the chief listened, hardly able to believe his respectable ears.
‘And so,’ the tale ended, ‘I should like to leave at once, please, sir.’
‘Do you realise, young man,’ the head of the firm asked heavily, ‘that you are throwing away your career?’
Sellinge explained what he did realise.
‘Your soul, did you say?’ The portly senior looked at him through gold-rimmed glasses. ‘I never heard of such a thing in my life!’
Sellinge waited respectfully, and the Head of the House looked suddenly older. The unusual is the disconcerting. The chief was not used to hearing souls mentioned except on Sundays. Yet the boy was the grand-nephew of an old friend, a valued and useful business friend, a man whom it would be awkward for him to offend or annoy. This is the real meaning of friendship in the world of business. So he said, ‘Come, come, now, Sellinge; think it over. I’ve had occasion to complain, but I’ve not complained unjustly, not unjustly, I think. Your opportunities in this office – what did you say?’
The young man had begun to say, quite politely, what he thought of the office.
‘But, God bless my soul,’ said the older man, quite flustered by this impossible rebellion. ‘What is it you want? Come now,’ he said, remembering the usefulness of that eminent great-uncle, and unbending as he remembered, ‘if this isn’t good enough for you, a respectable solicitor’s office and every chance of rising, every chance,’ he repeated pensively, oblivious now of all that the rough side had said; ‘if this isn’t good enough for you, what is? What would you like?’ he asked, with a pathetic mixture of hopelessness, raillery, and the certitude that his question was unanswerable.
‘I should like,’ said Sellinge slowly, ‘to be a tramp, or a burglar—’
(‘Great Heavens!’ said the chief.)
‘—or a detective. I want to go about and do things. I want—’
‘A detective?’ said the chief. ‘Have you ever—’
‘No,’ said Sellinge, ‘but I could.’
‘A new Sherlock Holmes, eh?’ said the chief, actually smiling.
‘Never,’ said the clerk firmly, and he frowned. ‘May I go now, sir? I’ve no opening in the burgling or detective line, so I shall be a tramp, for this summer at least. Perhaps I’ll go to Canada. I’m sorry I haven’t been a success here. Bates is worth twice my money. He never wavers in his faith. Seven nines are always sixty-three with Bates.’
Again the chief thought of his useful city friend.
‘Never mind Bates,’ he said. ‘Is the door closed? Right. Sit down, if you please, Mr Sellinge. I have something to say to you.’
Sellinge hesitated, looked round at the dusty leather-covered furniture, the worn Turkey carpet, the black, shiny deed-boxes, and the shelves of dull blue and yellow papers. The brown oblong of window framed a strip of blue sky and a strip of the opposite office’s dirty brickwork. A small strayed cloud, very white and shining, began to cross the strip of sky.
‘It’s very kind of you, sir,’ said Sellinge, his mind more made up than ever; ‘but I wouldn’t reconsider my decision for ten times what I’ve been getting.’
‘Sit down,’ said the chief again. ‘I assure you I do not propose to raise your salary, nor to urge you to reconsider your decision. I merely wish to suggest an alternative, one of your own alternatives,’ he added persuasively.
‘Oh!’ said Sellinge, sitting down abruptly, ‘which?’
II
And now behold the dream realised. A young man with bare sun-bleached hair that looks as though it had never known the shiny black symbol of civilisation, boots large and dusty, and on his back the full equipment of an artist in oils; all a little too new the outfit, but satisfactory and complete. He goes slowly along through the clean white dust of the roads, and his glance to right and left embraces green field and woodland with the persuasive ardour of a happy lover. The only blot on the fair field of life outspread before him the parting words of the chief.
‘It’s a very simple job for a would-be detective. Just find out whether the old chap’s mad or not. You get on with the lower orders, you tell me. Well, get them to talk to you. And if you find that out, well, there may be a career for you. I’ve long been dissatisfied with the ordinary enquiry agent. Yes, three pounds a week, and expenses. But in reason. Not first-class, you know.’
This much aloud. To himself he had said, ‘A simpleton’s useful sometimes, if he’s honest. And if he doesn’t find out anything we shall be no worse off than we were before, and I shall be able to explain to his uncle that I really gave him exceptional opportunities. Exceptional.’
Sellinge also, walking along between the dusty powdered white-flowered hedges, felt that the opportunity was exceptional. All his life people had told him things, and the half-confidences of two people often make up a complete sphere of knowledge, if only the confidant possess the power of joining the broken halves. This power Sellinge had. He knew many things; the little scandals, the parochial intrigues and intricacies of the village where he was born were clearer to him than to the principal performers. He looked forward pleasantly to the lodging in the village ale-house, and to the slow gossip on the benches by the door.
The village (he was nearing it now) was steep and straggling, displaying its oddly assorted roofs amid a flutter of orchard trees, a carpet of green spaces. The Five Bells stood to the left, its tea-gardens beside it, cool and alluring.
Sellinge entered the dark sandy passage where the faint smell of last night’s tobacco and this morning’s beer contended with the fresh vigour of a bunch of wallflowers in a blue jug on the ring-marked bar.
With
in ten minutes he had engaged his room, a little hot white attic under the roof, and had learned that it was Squire who lived in the big house, and that there was a lot of tales, so there was, but it didn’t do to believe all you heard, nor yet more’n half you see, and least said soonest mended, and the house was worth looking at, or so people said as took notice of them old ancient tumble-down places. No, it wasn’t likely you could get in. Used to be open of a Thursday, the ’ouse and grounds, but been closed to visitors this many year. Also that, for all it looked so near, the house was a good four-and-a-half miles by the road.
‘And Squire’s mighty good to the people in the village,’ the pleasant-faced fat landlady behind the bar went on; ‘pays good wages, ’e does, and if anyone’s in trouble he’s always got his hand in his pocket. I don’t believe he spends half on himself to what he gives away. It’ll be a poor day for Jevington when anything happens to him, sir, you take that from me. No harm in your trying to see the house, sir, but as for seeing him, he never sees no one. Why, listen’ – there was the sound of hoofs and wheels in the road – ‘look out, sir, quick!’
Sellinge looked out to see an old-fashioned carriage and pair sweep past, in the carriage a white-haired old man with a white thin face and pale clouded eyes.
‘That’s him,’ said the landlady beside him, ducking as the carriage passed. ‘Yes, four-and-a-half miles by the road, sir.’
Harnessed in his trappings of colour-box and easel, the young detective set out. There was about him none of the furtivity of your stage detective. His disguise was perfect, mainly because it was not a disguise. Such disguise as there was hung over his soul, which was pretending to itself that the errand was one of danger and difficulty. The attraction of the detective’s career was to him not so much the idea of hunting down criminals as the dramatic attitude of one who goes about in the world with a false beard and a make-up box in one hand and his life in the other. To find out the truth about an old gentleman’s eccentricities was quite another pair of sleeves, but of these, as yet, our hero perceived neither the cut nor the colour. He had wanted to be a tramp or a detective, and here he was, both. One has to earn one’s bread, and what better way than this?