Almost the first thing which Toby said to me when we met was, “Imogen is in London again.”
Even to Toby to whom this could never mean as much as to the rest of us, it seemed the only thing of immediate importance; to me, more than as pleasure or pain, though, of course, it was both of these, it came as a breaking away of near memories.
For some moment of time the bar where we stood was frozen in space; the handles, the slopped wood, the pallid man beyond them lost perspective; “If you like our beer tell your friends; if you don’t tell us” stood as cut in stone, the ordainment of priest kings, immeasurably long ago; the three years or a little more that stood between now and that grim evening in April fell, unhonoured, into the remote past and there was no sound from the street.
Then, instantly almost, the machine fell to its work again and I said as though nothing had intervened between his voice and mine:
“Was she with him?”
For even now, after three years or more, I could not easily say his name; I spoke of him, as slatternly servants will speak of their master, impersonally. And indeed it was thus I thought of him; the name was an insignificant thing labelling an event. Toby understood something of this as anyone who had known Imogen, must have understood, even he; for he was associated with much that was wholly alien to him; he had been in Adelphi Terrace in that strange evening in April when Hauban had gazed out across the river for two, three hours, and scarcely a word spoken.
To my question, down such valleys of thought, his answer made a way; she had been with him; they in a taxi; Toby had seen it from the top of a bus in Regent Street.
And so, quite naturally, I went to find Hauban, whom I had not thought to seek when I had landed that morning—or was it three and a half years ago? Thus suddenly had I returned to the past. And when I found Hauban, he said:
“So you, also, are returned to England.”
Thus I knew that he too had seen Imogen and with his next words he invited me to dinner where I should meet many old friends, whom he would assemble to greet my return. But he and I and his guests knew that not for my welcome were we assembled, though no word was spoken of Imogen all the evening through.
And the thought of her was about and between us all; with such shy courtesy did we treat her, who had been Queen, for all who had loved her were gathered there and none dared speak even her name.
CONSPIRACY
TO MURDER
During the first week of term, Guy first mentioned his neighbour to me. We were sitting on my window seat looking over the quad, when I noticed slinking out of the J.C.R. a strange shambling man of middle age. He was ill-dressed and rather dirty, and he peered forward as he walked.
“That strange man,” said Guy, “has got the room opposite me.”
We decided that this would be dull for Guy, for we had often seen these strange old men before and knew that they had no interest to offer, except the dull curiosity of asking why they had come to Oxford. And they were nearly always ready to tell their story of miserly saving and the thirst for knowledge. Therefore when, a fortnight later, Guy began to talk of him again, I was considerably surprised.
“You know, he leads an incredible life; my scout told me that he has never been out to a meal or had a single man in to see him. He doesn’t know one of the other freshers and can’t find his way about Oxford. He’s never heard of half the Colleges. I think I shall go in and talk to him one evening. Come up with me.”
So one evening at about half past ten, Guy and I went across to this strange man’s room. We knocked, and getting no answer, opened the door. The room was in darkness, and we were about to go, when Guy said: “Let’s have a look at his room.”
I turned on his light and then gave a gasp of astonishment. The little man was sitting in his arm chair with his hands in his lap looking straight at us. We began to apologize, but he interrupted us.
“What do you want? I do not wish to be disturbed.”
“Our names are Guy Legge and Barnes,” I said, “we just came in to see you, but if you’re busy —” I was strangely discomforted by this man and had not yet recovered from the shock of finding him sitting there in the dark.
“It was unnecessary to come and see me. I don’t want to know you Barnes, or you Legge, or anyone else.”
And outside the door I said, “Well I’m damned. Of all the abominable men —”
But Guy took me by the arm and said, “Dick, that man scared me.”
So it began.
A few nights later I was engrossed in an essay when I heard someone beating on my oak.
“Go away, I’m busy.”
“It’s I, Guy. May I come in?”
“Oh, it’s you. Well do you mind awfully if I work tonight? I’ve got to get this essay done by eleven tomorrow.”
“Let me in, Dick. I won’t disturb you. I only wanted to know if I could come in and read in here.”
So I opened the oak and when he came into the light I saw that he was looking pale and worried.
“Thanks awfully, Dick. I hope you don’t mind my coming in. I couldn’t work in my room.”
So I returned to my essay and in two hours it was finished. I turned round and saw that Guy was not working. He was just sitting gazing into my fire.
“Well,” I said, “I’ve finished this thing and I’m going to bed.”
He roused himself, “Well, I suppose I must get back,” and then at the door, “You know, Dick, that man next door haunts me. I’ve never met a man who hated me as he does. When we meet on the stairs, he shrinks away and snarls like a beast.”
And I, sleepily, laughed at him and went to bed.
And for the next week or so, Guy came to my room every evening until one Sunday night he said, “Dick, I don’t want to go back, I’m not sleepy. May I read in front of your fire all night?”
I told him not to be a fool; he was looking thoroughly tired. And then he said, “Dick, don’t you understand, I’m afraid of that man next door. He wants to kill me.”
“Guy,” I said, “go to bed and don’t be an ass. You have been working too hard.”
But a quarter of an hour later, I felt that I could not go to bed and leave Guy like this, so I went up to his room. As I passed the strange man’s door, I could not help a little qualm of fear. I knocked at Guy’s bedroom door and inside I heard a little cry of terror and the sound of bare feet. I turned the handle, but the door was locked and I could hear Guy’s breathing through the door; he must have been pressed against it on the other side.
“D’you always lock your bedder door?” I asked, and at the sound of my voice, I heard him sigh with relief.
“Hullo, Dick. You quite startled me. What do you want?”
So I went in and talked to him; he always slept with his door locked now, and his light on; he was very much scared but after a few minutes he became calmer and soon I went away, but behind me I heard him lock his door.
Next day he avoided me until evening; then he came in again and asked if he might work. I said:
“Look here, Guy, tell me what is the matter with you.” And almost immediately I wished that I had not asked him, because he poured out his answers so eagerly.
“Dick, you can’t think what I’ve been through in the last ten days. I’m living up there alone with only a door between me and a madman. He hates me, Dick, I know it. It is not imagination. Every night he comes and tries at my door and then shuffles off again. I can’t stand it. One night I shall forget and then God knows what that man will do to me.”
So it went on and one day I went up to Guy’s room in the morning. He was not there, but his scout was, and I found him in the act of taking the key from Guy’s bedroom door. I knew I had no right to ask him, but I said:
“Hullo, Ramsey, what are you doing with Mr. Legge’s key?”
Ramsey showed, as only a scout can show, that I had been guilty of a gross breach of good manners and answered me:
“The gentleman next door wanted it, sir. He has
lost his and wanted to see if it would fit.”
“Did Mr. Legge say that you could take it?”
“No, sir. I did not think it necessary to ask him.”
“Then put it back at once and don’t touch things in his room whatever the gentleman next door says.”
I had no right to say this to Guy’s scout, but I was definitely frightened. A sudden realization had come to me that Guy might have some reason for his fear. That evening I went up to see him and we decided to work in his room. He did not mind if I were with him.
“But shut the oak, Dick,” he said.
We worked until eleven o’clock and then we both sat up listening; someone was fumbling against the oak; then he knocked quietly.
Guy had started up white and panting.
“You see, I haven’t been lying. He’s coming at me. Keep him off, Dick, for God’s sake.”
The knocking was repeated.
“Guy,” I said, “I’m going to open that oak. Brace up, man, we two can look after ourselves against anyone. Don’t you see? We’ve got to open that oak.”
“Dick, for God’s sake don’t. I can’t stand it,” but I went towards the door. I opened it and there was only the oak between us and the man beyond. Suddenly Guy’s face became twisted with hatred and his voice harsh. “So you’re in it, too. You’re going to betray me to that fiend. He’s bought you as he has bought Ramsey. There’s not a man in the College he hasn’t bought or bullied into it and I can’t fight the lot,” his voice suddenly fell to a tone of blind despair and he rushed into his bedroom, slamming the door. I hesitated between the two doors and then, picking up a heavy candlestick, opened the oak.
On the threshold, blinking in the light, was the strange man.
“So you’re here, too, Barnes,” he said slowly; “but that is excellent. What I wish to say is for you as well as Legge. I want to apologize for being so rude that evening when you two came up to see me. I was very nervous. But where is Legge?”
And from the bedroom came a sound of hysterical sobbing, the wild, hideous sobbing of a mad man.
UNACADEMIC EXERCISE:
A NATURE STORY
After half an hour I said what I had been pondering ever since we started.
“Billy, this is a crazy business. I’m willing to call the bet off if you are.”
But he answered gravely.
“I’m sorry, my friend, but I’m not going to lose the opportunity of making a fiver.”
Then there was silence again until Anderson looked back from the wheel and said:
“Look here, Billy, let’s stop at this pub and then go home. I can lend you a fiver or more if you want it. You needn’t pay me until you want to.”
But Billy was resolute:
“No, Dick, I owe enough already. I should like to earn an honest meal for once.”
So Anderson drove on and soon we came into sight of the grim place which Craine had chosen for our experiment. I saw that Billy was beginning to lose his nerve for he was shivering in his big overcoat and his feet were very still, pressed down with all his might.
“Billy,” I said, “I don’t think we need go any further; we should only be wasting time. You’ve obviously won the bet.”
And I think he would have yielded—for he was rather a child—when Craine’s voice answered for him.
“What damned nonsense. The thing isn’t begun yet. Donne’s bet that he has the nerve to go through the whole werewolf ceremony. Just getting to the place is nothing. He doesn’t yet know what he has to do. I’ve got as far as this twice before—once in Nigeria with a man of forty, but he hadn’t the nerve to go through with it, and once in Wales with the bravest thing in the world, a devoted woman; but she couldn’t do it. Donne may, because he’s young and hasn’t seen enough to make him easily frightened.”
But Billy was frightened, badly, and so were Anderson and I and for this reason we let ourselves be overborne by Craine because he knew that we were; and he smiled triumphant as a stage Satan in the moonlight.
It was strange being beaten like this by Craine who in College was always regarded as a rather unsavoury joke. But then this whole expedition was strange and Craine was an old man—thirty-three—an age incalculable to the inexperience of twenty-one; and Billy was only just nineteen.
We had started off merrily enough down St. Aldate’s; Billy had said:
“I wonder what human flesh tastes like; what d’you suppose one should drink with it?” and when I had answered with utter futility, “Spirits, of course,” they had all laughed; which shows that we were in high good humour.
But once in Anderson’s car and under that vast moon, a deep unquiet had settled upon us and when Craine said in his sinister way:
“By the way, Donne, you ought to know in case you lose us; if you want to regain your manhood all you have to do is to draw some of your own blood and take off the girdle.”
Anderson and I shuddered. He said it with a slight sneer on “manhood” and we resented it that he should speak to Billy in this way, but more than this we were shocked at the way in which the joke was suddenly plunged into reality. This was the first time that evening on which I had felt fear and all through the drive it had grown more and more insistent, until on the heath, bleak and brilliantly moonlit, I was sickeningly afraid and said:
“Billy, for God’s sake let’s get back.”
But Craine said quietly:
“Are you ready, Donne? The first thing you have to do is to take off your clothes; yes, all of them.”
And Billy without looking at us, began with slightly trembling hands to undress. When he stood, white beside his heap of clothes under the moon, he shivered and said: “I hope I get a wolf skin soon; it’s damned cold.” But the pathetic little joke faltered and failed and left us all shivering; all except Craine who was pouring something out into the cup of his flask.
“You have to drink this—all right it isn’t poisonous. I brewed it myself out of roots and things.”
So the rites began. Billy was told to draw a circle about himself in the ground and he obeyed silently. Another potion was given to him.
“Put this on your hands, eyelids, navel and feet. Just a drop or two. That’s right.”
I was trembling unrestrainedly and I dared not look at Anderson because I knew that he was too. Craine went on evenly:
“And now comes a less pleasant part. I am afraid that you have to taste human blood,” and then to us, like a conjuror borrowing a watch, “will either of you two volunteer to lend some?”
Anderson and I started, thoroughly alarmed.
“Look here, Craine, this is beastly.”
“You can’t go on, Craine.”
But Craine said:
“Well, Donne, what are we going to do?” and Billy answered evenly, “Go on with it, Craine.”
It was the first time he had spoken since he drew the circle and he stood now quite calm and looking incredibly defenceless.
“Well, if neither of you two friends of his are willing, I suppose I must offer my blood.”
But by a sudden intuition, we both of us knew that this thing must be averted at all costs; I was conscious of the most immediate and overpowering danger and dreamlike stood unmoving; Anderson had started forward.
“If Billy wants to go on with this, he had better have mine.”
And Craine answered easily:
“As you like, my friend. Do not step inside the circle and cut deeply because he will need a good deal. That is all I ask you,” but he and Anderson and I knew that he had been in some strange way checked.
So Anderson rolled up his sleeve and cut his arm and Billy without hesitation put his lips to the wound. After a few moments, Craine said, “That should be enough”; so Anderson bound up his arm roughly with a handkerchief and Billy straightened himself; there was a small trickle of blood running down his chin. He was made to repeat some jumbled sentences in a foreign tongue and then Craine produced a strip of fur.
“The gi
rdle,” he said, “put it on Donne.”
“And now you have to kneel down and say a paternoster backwards. You had better repeat it after me.”
And then there occurred something of which, I think, I shall never lose the memory. Billy did not kneel down; he crouched back on his haunches like an animal and threw his head right back; his fair hair stirred in the moonlight, but on his face there came a look of awakening and of savagery, his lips drawn back and showing his teeth. I stood there in wild horror and saw this happen.
“Amen, Saeculorum Saecula in gloria.”
And the Thing in the circle drew in its breath. I dare not now think what that sound might have been. I refuse resolutely to let myself consider the possibility that it might not have been Billy’s voice; that the Thing in the circle was not Billy, his face contorted by some trick of the moonlight. Even then, in that moment of terror, I would not let myself consider this but I knew by an animal apprehension of the Unknown that that sound must be stopped if we were to keep our sanity; that from the moment we heard it our lives must be wholly altered. Anderson knew this, too; and, always quicker to act than I, he was in the circle while I stood numb with horror. He was a strong man and he flung Billy across the scratched circumference, tearing the girdle from him; he fell in a heap and his elbow struck on a stone; a drop of blood oozed through the earth. Then he raised himself, and, holding his elbow said, “Dick, are you mad? Why on earth did you do that? You’ve hurt me damnably.” And then suddenly turning on to his face he burst into a fit of hysterical crying and lay there shaking from head to foot and we three watching him. Craine, of course, spoke first.*
*The rest omitted owing to blind stupidity of editor and printer.
THE NATIONAL GAME
My brother said to me at breakfast:
“When you last played cricket, how many runs did you make?” And I answered him, truthfully, “Fifty.”
I remembered the occasion well for this was what happened. At school, oh! many years ago now, I had had my sixth form privileges taken away for some unpunctuality or other trifling delinquency and the captain of cricket in my house, a youth with whom I had scarcely ever found myself in sympathy, took advantage of my degraduation to put me in charge of a game, called quite appropriately a “Remnants’ game.” I had resented this distinction grimly, but as a matter of fact the afternoon had been less oppressive than I had expected. Only twenty-one boys arrived so, there being none to oppose me, I elected to play for both while they were batting. I thus ensured my rest and for an hour or so read contentedly having gone in first and failed to survive the first over. When eventually by various means the whole of one side had been dismissed—the umpire was always the next batsman, and, eager for his innings, was usually ready to prove himself sympathetic with the most extravagant appeal—I buckled on the pair of pads which a new boy had brought, although they were hotly claimed by the wicket keeper, and went out to bat. This other side bowled less well and after missing the ball once or twice, I suddenly and to my intense surprise hit it with great force. Delighted by this I did it again and again. The fielding was half-hearted and runs accumulated. I asked the scorer how many I had made and was told: “Thirty-six.” Now and then I changed the bowlers, being still captain of the fielding side and denounced those who were ostentatiously slack in the field. Soon I saw a restiveness about both sides and much looking at watches. “This game shall not end,” I ordained, “until I have made fifty.” Almost immediately the cry came “Fifty” and with much clapping I allowed the stumps to be drawn.