Author: Paul O

It was a battered old book, bound in red buckram. He found it, when he was twelve years old, on an upper shelf in his father’s library; and, against all the rules, he took it to his bedroom to read by candlelight, when the rest of the rambling old Elizabethan house was flooded with darkness. That was how young Mortimer always thought of it. His own room was a little isolated cell, in which, with stolen candle ends, he could keep the surrounding darkness at bay, while everyone else had surrendered to sleep and allowed the outer night to come flooding in. By contrast with those unconscious ones, his elders, it made him feel intensely alive in every nerve and fiber of his young brain. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall below, the beating of his own heart; the long-drawn rhythmical ‘ah’ of the sea on the distant coast, all filled him with a sense of overwhelming mystery; and, as he read, the soft thud of a blinded moth, striking the wall above the candle, would make him start and listen like a creature of the woods at the sound of a cracking twig.

The battered old book had the strangest fascination for him though he never quite grasped the thread of the story. It was called The Midnight Express, and there was one illustration, on the fiftieth page, at which he could never bear to look. It frightened him.

Young Mortimer never understood the effect of that picture on him. He was an imaginative, but not a neurotic youngster; and he avoided the fiftieth page as he might have hurried past a dark corner on the stairs when he was six years old, or as the grown man on the lonely road, in The Ancient Mariner, who, having once looked round, walks on, and turns no more his head. There was nothing in the picture — apparently — to account for this haunting dread. Darkness, indeed, was almost its chief characteristic. It showed an empty railway platform — at night — lit by a single dreary lamp: an empty railway platform that suggested a deserted and lonely junction in some remote part of the country. There was only one figure on the platform: the dark figure of a man, standing almost directly under the lamp with his face turned away towards the black mouth of a tunnel which — for some strange reason — plunged the imagination of the child into a pit of horror. The man seemed to be listening. His attitude was tense, expectant, as though he were awaiting some fearful tragedy. There was nothing in the text, so far the child read, and could understand, to account for this waking nightmare. He could neither resist the fascination of the book, nor face that picture in the stillness and loneliness of the night. He pinned it down to the page facing it with two long pins, so that he should not come upon it by accident. Then he determined to read the whole story through. But, always, before he came to page fifty, he fell asleep; and the outlines of what he had read were blurred; and the next night he had to begin again; and again, before he came to the fiftieth page, he fell asleep.

He grew up, and forgot all about the book and the picture. But half way through his life, at that strange and critical time when Dante entered the dark wood, leaving the direct path behind him, he found himself, a little before midnight, waiting for a train at a lonely junction; and , as the station-clock began to strike twelve he remembered; remembered like a man awakening from a long dream —

There, under the single dreary lamp, on the long, glimmering platform, was the dark and solitary figure that he knew. Its face was turned away from him towards the black mouth of the tunnel. It seemed to be listening, tense, expectant, just as it had been thirty-eight years ago.

But he was not frightened now, as he had been in childhood. He would go up to that solitary figure, confront it, and see the face that had so long been hidden, so long averted from him. He would walk up quietly, and make some excuse for speaking to it: he would ask it, for instance, if the train was going to be late. It should be easy for a grown man to do this; but his hands were clenched, when he took the first step, as if he, too, were tense and expectant. Quietly, but with the old vague instincts awaking, he went towards the dark figure under the lamp, passed it, swung round abruptly to speak to it; and saw — without speaking, without being able to speak —

It was himself — staring back at himself — as in some mocking mirror, his own eyes alive in his own white face, looking into his own eyes, alive —

The nerves of his heart tingled as though their own electric currents would paralyze it. A wave of panic went through him. He turned, gasped, stumbled, broke into a blind run, out through the deserted and echoing ticket-office, on to the long moonlit road behind the station. The whole countryside seemed to be utterly deserted. The moonbeams flooded it with the loneliness of their own deserted satellite.

He paused for a moment, and heard, like the echo of his own footsteps, the stumbling run of something that followed over the wooden floor within the ticket-office. Then he abandoned himself shamelessly to his fear; and ran, sweating like a terrified beast, down the long white road between the two endless lines of ghostly poplars each answering another, into what seemed like a long straight canal, in which one of the lines of poplars was again endlessly reflected. He heard the footsteps echoing behind him. They seemed to be slowly, but steadily, gaining upon him. A quarter of a mile away, he saw a small white cottage by the roadside, a white cottage with two dark windows and a door that somehow suggested a human face. He thought to himself that, if he could reach it in time, he might find shelter and security — escape.

The thin implacable footsteps, echoing his own, were still some way off when he lurched, gasping, into the little porch; rattled the latch, thrust at the door, and found it locked against him. There was no bell or knocker. He pounded on the wood with his fists until his knuckles bled. The response was horribly slow. At last, he heard heavier footsteps within the cottage. Slowly they descended the creaking stair. Slowly the door was unlocked. A tall shadowy figure stood before him, holding a lighted candle, in such a way that he could see little either of the holder’s face or form; but to his dumb horror there seemed to be a cerecloth wrapped round the face.

No words passed between them. The figure beckoned him in; and, as he obeyed, it locked the door behind him. Then, beckoning him again, without a word, the figure went before him up the crooked stair, with the ghostly candle casting huge and grotesque shadows on the whitewashed walls and ceiling.

They entered an upper room, in which there was a bright fire burning, with an armchair on either side of it, and a small oak table, on which there lay a battered old book, bound in dark red buckram. It seemed as though the guest had been long expected and all things were prepared.

The figure pointed to one of the armchairs, placed the candlestick on the table by the book (for there was no other light but that of the fire) and withdrew without a word, locking the door behind him.

Mortimer looked at the candlestick. It seemed familiar. The smell of the guttering wax brought back the little room in the old Elizabethan house. He picked up the book with trembling fingers. He recognized it at once, though he had long forgotten everything about the story. He remembered the ink stain on the title page; and then, with a shock of recollection, he came on the fiftieth page, which he had pinned down in childhood. The pins were still there. He touched them again — the very pins which his trembling childish fingers had used so long ago.

He turned back to the beginning. He was determined to read the end now, and discover what it was all about. He felt that it must all be set down there, in print; and, though in childhood he could not understand it, he would be able to fathom it now.

It was call The Midnight Express; and, as he read the first paragraph, it began to dawn upon him slowly, fearfully, inevitably.

It was the story of a man who, in childhood, long ago, had chanced upon a book, in which there was a picture that frightened him. He had grown up and forgotten it and one night, upon a lonely railway platform, he had found himself in the remembered scene of the picture: he had confronted the solitary figure under the lamp: recognized it, and fled in panic. He had taken shelter in a wayside cottage: had been led to an upper room, found the book awaiting him and had begun to read it right through, to the very end, at last — And this book too was called The Midnight Express. And it was the story of a man who, in childhood — It would go on thus, forever and forever, and forever. There was no escape.

But when the story came to the wayside cottage, for the third time, a deeper suspicion began to dawn upon him, slowly, fearfully, inevitably — Although there was no escape, he could at least try to grasp more clearly the details of the strange circle, the fearful wheel, in which he was moving.

There was nothing new about the details. They had been there all the time; but he had not grasped their significance. That was all. The strange and dreadful being that had led him up the crooked stair — who and what was That?

The story mentioned something that had escaped him. The strange host, who had given him shelter, was about his own height. Could it be that he also — And was this why the face was hidden?

At the very moment when he asked himself that question he heard the click of the key in the locked door.

The strange host was entering — moving toward him from behind — casting a grotesque shadow, larger than human, on the white walls in the guttering candlelight.

It was there, seated on the other side of the fire, facing him. With a horrible nonchalance, as a woman might prepare to remove a veil, it raised its hands to unwind the cerecloth from its face. He knew to whom it would belong. But would it dead or living?

There was no way out but one. As Mortimer plunged forward and seized the tormentor by the throat, his own throat was gripped with the same brutal force. The echoes of their strangled cry were indistinguishable; and when the last confused sounds died out together, the stillness of the room was so deep that you might have heard — the ticking of the old grandfather clock, and the long-drawn rhythmical ‘ah’ of the sea, on a distant coast, thirty-eight years ago.

But Mortimer had escaped at last. Perhaps, after all he had caught the midnight express.

It was a battered old book, bound in red buckram…

Editor’s Note

The power of this small tale is in its cyclical nature. We arrive where we started, and it adds powerful element of the supernatural. It’s a tale very well done.

 

HESTER WARD, SITTING by the open window on this hot afternoon in June, began seriously to argue with herself about the cloud of foreboding and depression which had encompassed her all day, and, very sensibly, she enumerated to herself the manifold causes for happiness in the fortunate circumstances of her life. She was young, she was extremely good-looking, she was well-off, she enjoyed excellent health, and above all, she had an adorable husband and two small, adorable children. There was no break, indeed, anywhere in the circle of prosperity which surrounded her, and had the wishing-cap been handed to her that moment by some beneficent fairy, she would have hesitated to put it on her head, for there was positively nothing that she could think of which would have been worthy of such solemnity. Moreover, she could not accuse herself of a want of appreciation of her blessings; she appreciated enormously, she enjoyed enormously, and she thoroughly wanted all those who so munificently contributed to her happiness to share in it.

She made a very deliberate review of these things, for she was really anxious, more anxious, indeed, than she admitted to herself, to find anything tangible which could possibly warrant this ominous feeling of approaching disaster. Then there was the weather to consider; for the last week London had been stiflingly hot, but if that was the cause, why had she not felt it before? Perhaps the effect of these broiling, airless days had been cumulative. That was an idea, but, frankly, it did not seem a very good one, for, as a matter of fact, she loved the heat; Dick, who hated it, said that it was odd he should have fallen in love with a salamander.

She shifted her position, sitting up straight in this low window-seat, for she was intending to make a call on her courage. She had known from the moment she awoke this morning what it was that lay so heavy on her, and now, having done her best to shift the reason of her depression on to anything else, and having completely failed, she meant to look the thing in the face. She was ashamed of doing so, for the cause of this leaden mood of fear which held her in its grip, was so trivial, so fantastic, so excessively silly.

“Yes, there never was anything so silly,” she said to herself. “I must look at it straight, and convince myself how silly it is.” She paused a moment, clenching her hands.

“Now for it,” she said.

She had had a dream the previous night, which, years ago, used to be familiar to her, for again and again when she was a child she had dreamed it. In itself the dream was nothing, but in those childish days, whenever she had this dream which had visited her last night, it was followed on the next night by another, which contained the source and the core of the horror, and she would awake screaming and struggling in the grip of overwhelming nightmare. For some ten years now she had not experienced it, and would have said that, though she remembered it, it had become dim and distant to her. But last night she had had that warning dream, which used to herald the visitation of the nightmare, and now that whole store-house of memory crammed as it was with bright things and beautiful contained nothing so vivid.

The warning dream, the curtain that was drawn up on the succeeding night, and disclosed the vision she dreaded, was simple and harmless enough in itself. She seemed to be walking on a high sandy cliff covered with short down-grass; twenty yards to the left came the edge of this cliff, which sloped steeply down to the sea that lay at its foot. The path she followed led through fields bounded by low hedges, and mounted gradually upwards. She went through some half-dozen of these, climbing over the wooden stiles that gave communication; sheep grazed there, but she never saw another human being, and always it was dusk, as if evening was falling, and she had to hurry on, because someone (she knew not whom) was waiting for her, and had been waiting not a few minutes only, but for many years. Presently, as she mounted this slope, she saw in front of her a copse of stunted trees, growing crookedly under the continual pressure of the wind that blew from the sea, and when she saw those she knew her journey was nearly done, and that the nameless one, who had been waiting for her so long was somewhere close at hand. The path she followed was cut through this wood, and the slanting boughs of the trees on the sea-ward side almost roofed it in; it was like walking through a tunnel. Soon the trees in front began to grow thin, and she saw through them the grey tower of a lonely church. It stood in a graveyard, apparently long disused, and the body of the church, which lay between the tower and the edge of the cliff, was in ruins, roofless, and with gaping windows, round which ivy grew thickly.

At that point this prefatory dream always stopped. It was a troubled, uneasy dream, for there was over it the sense of dusk and of the man who had been waiting for her so long, but it was not of the order of nightmare. Many times in childhood had she experienced it, and perhaps it was the subconscious knowledge of the night that so surely followed it, which gave it its disquiet. And now last night it had come again, identical in every particular but one. For last night it seemed to her that in the course of these ten years which had intervened since last it had visited her, the glimpse of the church and churchyard was changed. The edge of the cliff had come nearer to the tower, so that it now was within a yard or two of it, and the ruined body of the church, but for one broken arch that remained, had vanished. The sea had encroached, and for ten years had been busily eating at the cliff.

Hester knew well that it was this dream and this alone which had darkened the day for her, by reason of the nightmares that used to follow it, and, like a sensible woman, having looked it once in the face, she refused to admit into her mind any conscious calling-up of the sequel. If she let herself contemplate that, as likely or not the very thinking about it would be sufficient to ensure its return, and of one thing she was very certain, namely, that she didn’t at all want it to do so. It was not like the confused jumble and jangle of ordinary nightmare, it was very simple, and she felt it concerned the nameless one who waited for her…. But she must not think of it; her whole will and intention was set on not thinking of it, and to aid her resolution, there was the rattle of Dick’s latch-key in the front-door, and his voice calling her.

She went out into the little square front hall; there he was, strong and large, and wonderfully undreamlike.

“This heat’s a scandal, it’s an outrage, it’s an abomination of desolation,” he cried, vigorously mopping. “What have we done that Providence should place us in this frying-pan? Let us thwart him, Hester! Let us drive out of this inferno and have our dinner at — I’ll whisper it so that he shan’t overhear — at Hampton Court!”

She laughed: this plan suited her excellently. They would return late, after the distraction of a fresh scene; and dining out at night was both delicious and stupefying.

“The very thing,” she said, “and I’m sure Providence didn’t hear. Let’s start now!”

“Rather. Any letters for me?”

He walked to the table where there were a few rather uninteresting-looking envelopes with half penny stamps.

“Ah, receipted bill,” he said. “Just a reminder of one’s folly in paying it. Circular … unasked advice to invest in German marks…. Circular begging letter, beginning ‘Dear Sir or Madam.’ Such impertinence to ask one to subscribe to something without ascertaining one’s sex…. Private view, portraits at the Walton Gallery…. Can’t go: business meetings all day. You might like to have a look in, Hester. Some one told me there were some fine Vandycks. That’s all: let’s be off.”

Hester spent a thoroughly reassuring evening, and though she thought of telling Dick about the dream that had so deeply imprinted itself on her consciousness all day, in order to hear the great laugh he would have given her for being such a goose, she refrained from doing so, since nothing that he could say would be so tonic to these fantastic fears as his general robustness. Besides, she would have to account for its disturbing effect, tell him that it was once familiar to her, and recount the sequel of the nightmares that followed. She would neither think of them, nor mention them: it was wiser by far just to soak herself in his extraordinary sanity, and wrap herself in his affection…. They dined out-of-doors at a river-side restaurant and strolled about afterwards, and it was very nearly midnight when, soothed with coolness and fresh air, and the vigour of his strong companionship, she let herself into the house, while he took the car back to the garage. And now she marvelled at the mood which had beset her all day, so distant and unreal had it become. She felt as if she had dreamed of shipwreck, and had awoke to find herself in some secure and sheltered garden where no tempest raged nor waves beat. But was there, ever so remotely, ever so dimly, the noise of far-off breakers somewhere?

He slept in the dressing-room which communicated with her bedroom, the door of which was left open for the sake of air and coolness, and she fell asleep almost as soon as her light was out, and while his was still burning. And immediately she began to dream.

She was standing on the sea-shore; the tide was out, for level sands strewn with stranded jetsam glimmered in a dusk that was deepening into night. Though she had never seen the place it was awfully familiar to her. At the head of the beach there was a steep cliff of sand, and perched on the edge of it was a grey church tower. The sea must have encroached and undermined the body of the church, for tumbled blocks of masonry lay close to her at the bottom of the cliff, and there were gravestones there, while others still in place were silhouetted whitely against the sky. To the right of the church tower there was a wood of stunted trees, combed sideways by the prevalent sea-wind, and she knew that along the top of the cliff a few yards inland there lay a path through fields, with wooden stiles to climb, which led through a tunnel of trees and so out into the churchyard. All this she saw in a glance, and waited, looking at the sand-cliff crowned by the church tower, for the terror that was going to reveal itself. Already she knew what it was, and, as so many times before, she tried to run away. But the catalepsy of nightmare was already on her; frantically she strove to move, but her utmost endeavour could not raise a foot from the sand. Frantically she tried to look away from the sand-cliffs close in front of her, where in a moment now the horror would be manifested….

It came. There formed a pale oval light, the size of a man’s face, dimly luminous in front of her and a few inches above the level of her eyes. It outlined itself, short reddish hair grew low on the forehead, below were two grey eyes, set very close together, which steadily and fixedly regarded her. On each side the ears stood noticeably away from the head, and the lines of the jaw met in a short pointed chin. The nose was straight and rather long, below it came a hairless lip, and last of all the mouth took shape and colour, and there lay the crowning terror. One side of it, soft-curved and beautiful, trembled into a smile, the other side, thick and gathered together as by some physical deformity, sneered and lusted.

The whole face, dim at first, gradually focused itself into clear outline: it was pale and rather lean, the face of a young man. And then the lower lip dropped a little, showing the glint of teeth, and there was the sound of speech. “I shall soon come for you now,” it said, and on the words it drew a little nearer to her, and the smile broadened. At that the full hot blast of nightmare poured in upon her. Again she tried to run, again she tried to scream, and now she could feel the breath of that terrible mouth upon her. Then with a crash and a rending like the tearing asunder of soul and body she broke the spell, and heard her own voice yelling, and felt with her fingers for the switch of her light. And then she saw that the room was not dark, for Dick’s door was open, and the next moment, not yet undressed, he was with her.

“My darling, what is it?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

She clung desperately to him, still distraught with terror.

“Ah, he has been here again,” she cried. “He says he will soon come to me. Keep him away, Dick.”

For one moment her fear infected him, and he found himself glancing round the room.

“But what do you mean?” he said. “No one has been here.”

She raised her head from his shoulder.

“No, it was just a dream,” she said. “But it was the old dream, and I was terrified. Why, you’ve not undressed yet. What time is it?”

“You haven’t been in bed ten minutes, dear,” he said. “You had hardly put out your light when I heard you screaming.”

She shuddered.

“Ah, it’s awful,” she said. “And he will come again….”

He sat down by her.

“Now tell me all about it,” he said.

She shook her head.

“No, it will never do to talk about it,” she said, “it will only make it more real. I suppose the children are all right, are they?”

“Of course they are. I looked in on my way upstairs.”

“That’s good. But I’m better now, Dick. A dream hasn’t anything real about it, has it? It doesn’t mean anything?”

He was quite reassuring on this point, and soon she quieted down. Before he went to bed he looked in again on her, and she was asleep.

Hester had a stern interview with herself when Dick had gone down to his office next morning. She told herself that what she was afraid of was nothing more than her own fear. How many times had that ill-omened face come to her in dreams, and what significance had it ever proved to possess? Absolutely none at all, except to make her afraid. She was afraid where no fear was: she was guarded, sheltered, prosperous, and what if a nightmare of childhood returned? It had no more meaning now than it had then, and all those visitations of her childhood had passed away without trace…. And then, despite herself, she began thinking over that vision again. It was grimly identical with all its previous occurrences, except…. And then, with a sudden shrinking of the heart, she remembered that in earlier years those terrible lips had said: “I shall come for you when you are older,” and last night they had said: “I shall soon come for you now.” She remembered, too, that in the warning dream the sea had encroached, and it had now demolished the body of the church. There was an awful consistency about these two changes in the otherwise identical visions. The years had brought their change to them, for in the one the encroaching sea had brought down the body of the church, in the other the time was now near….

It was no use to scold or reprimand herself, for to bring her mind to the contemplation of the vision meant merely that the grip of terror closed on her again; it was far wiser to occupy herself, and starve her fear out by refusing to bring it the sustenance of thought. So she went about her household duties, she took the children out for their airing in the park, and then, determined to leave no moment unoccupied, set off with the card of invitation to see the pictures in the private view at the Walton Gallery. After that her day was full enough, she was lunching out, and going on to a matinée, and by the time she got home Dick would have returned, and they would drive down to his little house at Rye for the week-end. All Saturday and Sunday she would be playing golf, and she felt that fresh air and physical fatigue would exorcise the dread of these dreaming fantasies.

The gallery was crowded when she got there; there were friends among the sightseers, and the inspection of the pictures was diversified by cheerful conversation. There were two or three fine Raeburns, a couple of Sir Joshuas, but the gems, so she gathered, were three Vandycks that hung in a small room by themselves. Presently she strolled in there, looking at her catalogue. The first of them, she saw, was a portrait of Sir Roger Wyburn. Still chatting to her friend she raised her eye and saw it….

Her heart hammered in her throat, and then seemed to stand still altogether. A qualm, as of some mental sickness of the soul overcame her, for there in front of her was he who would soon come for her. There was the reddish hair, the projecting ears, the greedy eyes set close together, and the mouth smiling on one side, and on the other gathered up into the sneering menace that she knew so well. It might have been her own nightmare rather than a living model which had sat to the painter for that face.

“Ah, what a portrait, and what a brute!” said her companion. “Look, Hester, isn’t that marvellous?”

She recovered herself with an effort. To give way to this ever-mastering dread would have been to allow nightmare to invade her waking life, and there, for sure, madness lay. She forced herself to look at it again, but there were the steady and eager eyes regarding her; she could almost fancy the mouth began to move. All round her the crowd bustled and chattered, but to her own sense she was alone there with Roger Wyburn.

And yet, so she reasoned with herself, this picture of him — for it was he and no other — should have reassured her. Roger Wyburn, to have been painted by Vandyck, must have been dead near on two hundred years; how could he be a menace to her? Had she seen that portrait by some chance as a child; had it made some dreadful impression on her, since overscored by other memories, but still alive in the mysterious subconsciousness, which flows eternally, like some dark underground river, beneath the surface of human life? Psychologists taught that these early impressions fester or poison the mind like some hidden abscess. That might account for this dread of one, nameless no longer, who waited for her.

That night down at Rye there came again to her the prefatory dream, followed by the nightmare, and clinging to her husband as the terror began to subside, she told him what she had resolved to keep to herself. Just to tell it brought a measure of comfort, for it was so outrageously fantastic, and his robust common sense upheld her. But when on their return to London there was a recurrence of these visions, he made short work of her demur and took her straight to her doctor.

“Tell him all, darling,” he said. “Unless you promise to do that, I will. I can’t have you worried like this. It’s all nonsense, you know, and doctors are wonderful people for curing nonsense.”

She turned to him.

“Dick, you’re frightened,” she said quietly.

He laughed.

“I’m nothing of the kind,” he said, “but I don’t like being awakened by your screaming. Not my idea of a peaceful night. Here we are.”

The medical report was decisive and peremptory. There was nothing whatever to be alarmed about; in brain and body she was perfectly healthy, but she was run down. These disturbing dreams were, as likely as not, an effect, a symptom of her condition, rather than the cause of it, and Dr. Baring unhesitatingly recommended a complete change to some bracing place. The wise thing would be to send her out of this stuffy furnace to some quiet place to where she had never been. Complete change; quite so. For the same reason her husband had better not go with her; he must pack her off to, let us say, the East coast. Sea-air and coolness and complete idleness. No long walks; no long bathings; a dip, and a deck-chair on the sands. A lazy, soporific life. How about Rushton? He had no doubt that Rushton would set her up again. After a week or so, perhaps, her husband might go down and see her. Plenty of sleep — never mind the nightmares — plenty of fresh air.

Hester, rather to her husband’s surprise, fell in with this suggestion at once, and the following evening saw her installed in solitude and tranquillity. The little hotel was still almost empty, for the rush of summer tourists had not yet begun, and all day she sat out on the beach with the sense of a struggle over. She need not fight the terror any more; dimly it seemed to her that its malignancy had been relaxed. Had she in some way yielded to it and done its secret bidding? At any rate no return of its nightly visitations had occurred, and she slept long and dreamlessly, and woke to another day of quiet. Every morning there was a line for her from Dick, with good news of himself and the children, but he and they alike seemed somehow remote, like memories of a very distant time. Something had driven in between her and them, and she saw them as if through glass. But equally did the memory of the face of Roger Wyburn, as seen on the master’s canvas or hanging close in front of her against the crumbling sand-cliff, become blurred and indistinct, and no return of her nightly terrors visited her. This truce from all emotion reacted not on her mind alone, lulling her with a sense of soothed security, but on her body also, and she began to weary of this day-long inactivity.

The village lay on the lip of a stretch of land reclaimed from the sea. To the north the level marsh, now beginning to glow with the pale bloom of the sea-lavender, stretched away featureless till it lost itself in distance, but to the south a spur of hill came down to the shore ending in a wooded promontory. Gradually, as her physical health increased, she began to wonder what lay beyond this ridge which cut short the view, and one afternoon she walked across the intervening level and strolled up its wooded slopes. The day was close and windless, the invigorating sea-breeze which till now had spiced the heat with freshness had died, and she looked forward to finding a current of air stirring when she had topped the hill. To the south a mass of dark cloud lay along the horizon, but there was no imminent threat of storm. The slope was easily surmounted, and presently she stood at the top and found herself on the edge of a tableland of wooded pasture, and following the path, which ran not far from the edge of the cliff, she came out into more open country. Empty fields, where a few sheep were grazing, mounted gradually upwards. Wooden stiles made a communication in the hedges that bounded them. And there, not a mile in front of her, she saw a wood, with trees growing slantingly away from the push of the prevalent sea winds, crowning the upward slope, and over the top of it peered a grey church tower.

For the moment, as the awful and familiar scene identified itself, Hester’s heart stood still: the next a wave of courage and resolution poured in upon her. Here, at last was the scene of that prefatory dream, and here was she presented with the opportunity of fathoming and dispelling it. Instantly her mind was made up, and under the strange twilight of the shrouded sky, she walked swiftly on through the fields she had so often traversed in sleep, and up to the wood, beyond which he was waiting for her. She closed her ears against the clanging bell of terror, which now she could silence for ever, and unfalteringly entered that dark tunnel of wood. Soon in front of her the trees began to thin, and through them, now close at hand, she saw the church tower. In a few yards farther she came out of the belt of trees, and round her were the monuments of a graveyard long disused. The cliff was broken off close to the church tower: between it and the edge there was no more of the body of the church than a broken arch, thick hung with ivy. Round this she passed and saw below the ruin of fallen masonry, and the level sands strewn with headstones and disjected rubble, and at the edge of the cliff were graves already cracked and toppling. But there was no one here, none waited for her, and the churchyard where she had so often pictured him was as empty as the fields she had just traversed.

 

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A huge elation filled her; her courage had been rewarded, and all the terrors of the past became to her meaningless phantoms. But there was no time to linger, for now the storm threatened, and on the horizon a blink of lightning was followed by a crackling peal. Just as she turned to go her eye fell on a tombstone that was balanced on the very edge of the cliff, and she read on it that here lay the body of Roger Wyburn.

Fear, the catalepsy of nightmare, rooted her for the moment to the spot; she stared in stricken amazement at the moss-grown letters; almost she expected to see that fell terror of a face rise and hover over his resting-place. Then the fear which had frozen her lent her wings, and with hurrying feet she sped through the arched pathway in the wood and out into the fields. Not one backward glance did she give till she had come to the edge of the ridge above the village, and, turning, saw the pastures she had traversed empty of any living presence. None had followed; but the sheep, apprehensive of the coming storm, had ceased to feed, and were huddling under shelter of the stunted hedges.

Her first idea, in the panic of her mind, was to leave the place at once, but the last train for London had left an hour before, and besides, where was the use of flight if it was the spirit of a man long dead from which she fled? The distance from the place where his bones lay did not afford her safety; that must be sought for within. But she longed for Dick’s sheltering and confident presence; he was arriving in any case to-morrow, but there were long dark hours before to-morrow, and who could say what the perils and dangers of the coming night might be? If he started this evening instead of to-morrow morning, he could motor down here in four hours, and would be with her by ten o’clock or eleven. She wrote an urgent telegram: “Come at once,” she said. “Don’t delay.”

The storm which had flickered on the south now came quickly up, and soon after it burst in appalling violence. For preface there were but a few large drops that splashed and dried on the roadway as she came back from the post-office, and just as she reached the hotel again the roar of the approaching rain sounded, and the sluices of heaven were opened. Through the deluge flared the fire of the lightning, the thunder crashed and echoed overhead, and presently the street of the village was a torrent of sandy turbulent water, and sitting there in the dark one picture leapt floating before her eyes, that of the tombstone of Roger Wyburn, already tottering to its fall at the edge of the cliff of the church tower. In such rains as these, acres of the cliffs were loosened; she seemed to hear the whisper of the sliding sand that would precipitate those perished sepulchres and what lay within to the beach below.

By eight o’clock the storm was subsiding, and as she dined she was handed a telegram from Dick, saying that he had already started and sent this off en route. By half-past ten, therefore, if all was well, he would be here, and somehow he would stand between her and her fear. Strange how a few days ago both it and the thought of him had become distant and dim to her; now the one was as vivid as the other, and she counted the minutes to his arrival. Soon the rain ceased altogether, and looking out of the curtained window of her sitting-room where she sat watching the slow circle of the hands of the clock, she saw a tawny moon rising over the sea. Before it had climbed to the zenith, before her clock had twice told the hour again, Dick would be with her.

It had just struck ten when there came a knock at her door, and the page-boy entered with the message that a gentleman had come for her. Her heart leaped at the news; she had not expected Dick for half an hour yet, and now the lonely vigil was over. She ran downstairs, and there was the figure standing on the step outside. His face was turned away from her; no doubt he was giving some order to his chauffeur. He was outlined against the white moonlight, and in contrast with that, the gas-jet in the entrance just above his head gave his hair a warm, reddish tinge.

She ran across the hall to him.

“Ah, my darling, you’ve come,” she said. “It was good of you. How quick you’ve been!” Just as she laid her hand on his shoulder he turned. His arm was thrown out round her, and she looked into a face with eyes close set, and a mouth smiling on one side, the other, thick and gathered together as by some physical deformity, sneered and lusted.

The nightmare was on her; she could neither run nor scream, and supporting her dragging steps, he went forth with her into the night.

 

#

 

Half an hour later Dick arrived. To his amazement he heard that a man had called for his wife not long before, and that she had gone out with him. He seemed to be a stranger here, for the boy who had taken his message to her had never seen him before, and presently surprise began to deepen into alarm; enquiries were made outside the hotel, and it appeared that a witness or two had seen the lady whom they knew to be staying there walking, hatless, along the top of the beach with a man whose arm was linked in hers. Neither of them knew him, but one had seen his face and could describe it.

The direction of the search thus became narrowed down, and though with a lantern to supplement the moonlight they came upon footprints which might have been hers, there were no marks of any who walked beside her. But they followed these until they came to an end, a mile away, in a great landslide of sand, which had fallen from the old churchyard on the cliff, and had brought down with it half the tower and a gravestone, with the body that had lain below.

The gravestone was that of Roger Wyburn, and his body lay by it, untouched by corruption or decay, though two hundred years had elapsed since it was interred there. For a week afterwards the work of searching the landslide went on, assisted by the high tides that gradually washed it away. But no further discovery was made.

#

Editor’s note

I love this tale. For me, it luxuriates in a creeping fear. And all that business about having dreamed of this place and this entity for such a long time is a masterful technique for building tension. E.F. Benson is someone who really knew what they were doing! 

Such ordinary things make me afraid. Sunshine. Sharp shadows on grass. White roses. Children with red hair. And the name – Harry. Such an ordinary name.

Yet the first time Christine mentioned the name, I felt a premonition of fear.

She was five years old, due to start school in three months’ time. It was a hot, beautiful day and she was playing alone in the garden, as she often did. I saw her lying on her stomach in the grass, picking daisies and making daisy-chains with laborious pleasure. The sun burned on her pale red hair and made her skin look very white. Her big blue eyes were wide with concentration.

Suddenly she looked towards the bush of white roses, which cast its shadow over the grass, and smiled.

“Yes, I’m Christine,” she said. She rose and walked slowly towards the bush, her little plump legs defenceless and endearing beneath the too short blue cotton skirt. She was growing fast.

“With my mummy and daddy,” she said clearly. Then, after a pause, “Oh, but they are my mummy and daddy.”

She was in the shadow of the bush now. It was as if she’d walked out of the world of light into darkness. Uneasy, without quite knowing why, I called her:

“Chris, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.” The voice sounded too far away.

“Come indoors now. It’s too hot for you out there.”

“Not too hot.”

“Come indoors, Chris.”

She said: “I must go in now. Goodbye,” then walked slowly towards the house.

“Chris, who were you talking to?”

“Harry,” she said.

“Who’s Harry?”

“Harry.”

I couldn’t get anything else out of her, so I just gave her some cake and milk and read to her until bedtime. As she listened, she stared out at the garden. Once she smiled and waved. It was a relief finally to tuck her up in bed and feel she was safe.

When Jim, my husband, came home I told him about the mysterious “Harry”. He laughed.

“Oh, she’s started that lark, has she?”

“What do you mean, Jim?”

“It’s not so very rare for only children to have an imaginary companion. Some kids talk to their dolls. Chris has never been keen on her dolls. She hasn’t any brothers or sisters. She hasn’t any friends her own age. So she imagines someone.”

“But why has she picked that particular name?”

He shrugged. “You know how kids pick things up. I don’t know what you’re worrying about, honestly I don’t.”

“Nor do I really. It’s just that I feel extra responsible for her. More so than if I were her real mother.”

“I know, but she’s all right. Chris is fine. She’s a pretty, healthy, intelligent little girl. A credit to you.”

“And to you.”

“In fact, we’re thoroughly nice parents!”

“And so modest!”

We laughed together and he kissed me. I felt consoled.

Until next morning.

Again the sun shone brilliantly on the small, bright lawn and white roses. Christine was sitting on the grass, cross-legged, staring towards the rose bush, smiling.

“Hello,” she said. “I hoped you’d come… Because I like you. How old are you?… I’m only five and a piece… I’m not a baby! I’m going to school soon and I shall have a new dress. A green one. Do you go to school?… What do you do then?” She was silent for a while, nodding, listening, absorbed.

I felt myself going cold as I stood there in the kitchen. “Don’t be silly. Lots of children have an imaginary companion,” I told myself desperately. “Just carry on as if nothing were happening. Don’t listen. Don’t be a fool.”

But I called Chris in earlier than usual for her mid-morning milk.

“Your milk’s ready, Chris. Come along.”

“In a minute.” This was a strange reply. Usually she rushed in eagerly for her milk and the special sandwich cream biscuits, over which she was a little gourmande.

“Come now, darling,” I said.

“Can Harry come too?”

“No!” The cry burst from me harshly, surprising me.

“Goodbye, Harry. I’m sorry you can’t come in but I’ve got to have my milk,” Chris said, then ran towards the house.

“Why can’t Harry have some milk too?” she challenged me.

“Who is Harry, darling?”

“Harry’s my brother.”

“But Chris, you haven’t got a brother. Daddy and mummy have only got one child, one little girl, that’s you. Harry can’t be your brother.”

“Harry’s my brother. He says so.” She bent over the glass of milk and emerged with a smeary top lip. Then she grabbed at the biscuits. At least “Harry” hadn’t spoilt her appetite!

After she’d had her milk, I said, “We’ll go shopping now, Chris. You’d like to come to the shops with me, wouldn’t you?”

“I want to stay with Harry.”

“Well you can’t. You’re coming with me.”

“Can Harry come too?”

“No.”

My hands were trembling as I put on my hat and gloves. It was chilly in the house nowadays, as if there were a cold shadow over it in spite of the sun outside. Chris came with me meekly enough, but as we walked down the street, she turned and waved.

I didn’t mention any of this to Jim that night. I knew he’d only scoff as he’d done before. But when Christine’s “Harry” fantasy went on day after day, it got more and more on my nerves. I came to hate and dread those long summer days. I longed for grey skies and rain. I longed for the white roses to wither and die. I trembled when I heard Christine’s voice prattling away in the garden. She talked quite unrestrainedly to “Harry” now.

One Sunday, when Jim heard her at it, he said:

“I’ll say one thing for imaginary companions, they help a child on with her talking. Chris is talking much more freely than she used to.”

“With an accent,” I blurted out.

“An accent?”

“A slight cockney accent.”

“My dearest, every London child gets a slight cockney accent. It’ll be much worse when she goes to school and meets lots of other kids.”

“We don’t talk cockney. Where does she get it from? Who can she be getting it from except Ha…” I couldn’t say the name.

“The baker, the milkman, the dustman, the coalman, the window cleaner – want any more?”

“I suppose not.” I laughed ruefully. Jim made me feel foolish.

“Anyway,” said Jim, “I haven’t noticed any cockney in her voice.”

“There isn’t when she talks to us. It’s only when she’s talking to – to him.”

“To Harry. You know, I’m getting quite attached to young Harry. Wouldn’t it be fun if one day we looked out and saw him?”

“Don’t!” I cried. “Don’t say that! It’s my nightmare. My waking nightmare. Oh, Jim, I can’t bear it much longer.”

He looked astonished. “This Harry business is really getting you down, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is! Day in, day out, I hear nothing but ‘Harry this,’ ‘Harry that,’ ‘Harry says,’ ‘Harry thinks,’ ‘Can Harry have some?’, ‘Can Harry come too?’ – it’s all right for you out at the office all day, but I have to live with it: I’m – I’m afraid of it, Jim. It’s so queer.”

“Do you know what I think you should do to put your mind at rest?”

“What?”

“Take Chris along to see old Dr Webster tomorrow. Let him have a little talk with her.”

“Do you think she’s ill – in her mind?”

“Good heavens, no! But when we come across something that’s a bit beyond us, it’s as well to take professional advice.”

Next day I took Chris to see Dr Webster. I left her in the waiting-room while I told him briefly about Harry. He nodded sympathetically, then said:

“It’s a fairly unusual case, Mrs James, but by no means unique. I’ve had several cases of children’s imaginary companions becoming so real to them that the parents got the jitters. I expect she’s rather a lonely little girl, isn’t she?”

“She doesn’t know any other children. We’re new to the neighbourhood, you see. But that will be put right when she starts school.”

“And I think you’ll find that when she goes to school and meets other children, these fantasies will disappear. You see, every child needs company of her own age, and if she doesn’t get it, she invents it. Older people who are lonely talk to themselves. That doesn’t mean that they’re crazy, just that they need to talk to someone. A child is more practical. Seems silly to talk to oneself, she thinks, so she invents someone to talk to. I honestly don’t think you’ve anything to worry about.”

“That’s what my husband says.”

“I’m sure he does. Still, I’ll have a chat with Christine as you’ve brought her. Leave us alone together.”

I went to the waiting-room to fetch Chris. She was at the window. She said: “Harry’s waiting.”

“Where, Chris?” I said quietly, wanting suddenly to see with her eyes.

“There. By the rose bush.”

The doctor had a bush of white roses in his garden.

“There’s no one there,” I said. Chris gave me a glance of unchildlike scorn. “Dr Webster wants to see you now, darling,” I said shakily. “You remember him, don’t you? He gave you sweets when you were getting better from chicken pox.”

“Yes,” she said and went willingly enough to the doctor’s surgery. I waited restlessly. Faintly I heard their voices through the wall, heard the doctor’s chuckle, Christine’s high peal of laughter. She was talking away to the doctor in a way she didn’t talk to me.

When they came out, he said: “Nothing wrong with her whatever. She’s just an imaginative little monkey. A word of advice, Mrs James. Let her talk about Harry. Let her become accustomed to confiding in you. I gather you’ve shown some disapproval of this ‘brother’ of hers so she doesn’t talk much to you about him. He makes wooden toys, doesn’t he, Chris?”

“Yes, Harry makes wooden toys.”

“And he can read and write, can’t he?”

“And swim and climb trees and paint pictures. Harry can do everything. He’s a wonderful brother.” Her little face flushed with adoration.

The doctor patted me on the shoulder and said: “Harry sounds a very nice brother for her. He’s even got red hair like you, Chris, hasn’t he?”

“Harry’s got red hair,” said Chris proudly, “Redder than my hair. And he’s nearly as tall as daddy only thinner. He’s as tall as you, mummy. He’s fourteen. He says he’s tall for his age. What is tall for his age?”

“Mummy will tell you about that as you walk home,” said Dr Webster. “Now, goodbye, Mrs James. Don’t worry. Just let her prattle. Goodbye, Chris. Give my love to Harry.”

“He’s there,” said Chris, pointing to the doctor’s garden. “He’s been waiting for me.”

Dr Webster laughed. “They’re incorrigible, aren’t they?” he said. “I knew one poor mother whose children invented a whole tribe of imaginary natives whose rituals and taboos ruled the household. Perhaps you’re lucky, Mrs James!”

I tried to feel comforted by all this, but I wasn’t. I hoped sincerely that when Chris started school this wretched Harry business would finish.

Chris ran ahead of me. She looked up as if at someone beside her. For a brief, dreadful second, I saw a shadow on the pavement alongside her own – a long, thin shadow – like a boy’s shadow. Then it was gone. I ran to catch her up and held her hand tightly all the way home. Even in the comparative security of the house – the house so strangely cold in this hot weather – I never let her out of my sight. On the face of it she behaved no differently towards me, but in reality she was drifting away. The child in my house was becoming a stranger.

For the first time since Jim and I had adopted Chris, I wondered seriously: Who is she? Where does she come from? Who were her real parents? Who is this little loved stranger I’ve taken as a daughter? Who is Christine?

Another week passed. It was Harry, Harry all the time. The day before she was to start school, Chris said:

“Not going to school.”

“You’re going to school tomorrow, Chris. You’re looking forward to it. You know you are. There’ll be lots of other little girls and boys.”

“Harry says he can’t come too.”

“You won’t want Harry at school. He’ll –…” I tried hard to follow the doctor’s advice and appear to believe in Harry – “He’ll be too old. He’d feel silly among little boys and girls, a great lad of fourteen.”

“I won’t go to school without Harry. I want to be with Harry.” She began to weep, loudly, painfully.

“Chris, stop this nonsense! Stop it!” I struck her sharply on the arm. Her crying ceased immediately. She stared at me, her blue eyes wide open and frighteningly cold. She gave me an adult stare that made me tremble. Then she said:

“You don’t love me. Harry loves me. Harry wants me. He says I can go with him.”

“I will not hear any more of this!” I shouted, hating the anger in my voice, hating myself for being angry at all with a little girl – my little girl – mine –

I went down on one knee and held out my arms.

“Chris, darling, come here.”

She came, slowly. “I love you,” I said. “I love you, Chris, and I’m real. School is real. Go to school to please me.”

“Harry will go away if I do.”

“You’ll have other friends.”

“I want Harry.” Again the tears, wet against my shoulder now. I held her closely.

“You’re tired, baby. Come to bed.”

She slept with the tear stains still on her face.

It was still daylight. I went to the window to draw her curtains. Golden shadows and long strips of sunshine in the garden. Then, again like a dream, the long thin clear-cut shadow of a boy near the white roses. Like a mad woman I opened the window and shouted:

“Harry! Harry!”

I thought I saw a glimmer of red among the roses, like close red curls on a boy’s head. Then there was nothing.

When I told Jim about Christine’s emotional outburst he said: “Poor little kid. It’s always a nervy business, starting school. She’ll be all right once she gets there. You’ll be hearing less about Harry too, as time goes on.”

“Harry doesn’t want her to go to school.”

“Hey! You sound as if you believe in Harry yourself!”

“Sometimes I do.”

“Believing in evil spirits in your old age?” he teased me. But his eyes were concerned. He thought I was going “round the bend” and small blame to him!

“I don’t think Harry’s evil,” I said. “He’s just a boy. A boy who doesn’t exist, except for Christine. And who is Christine?”

“None of that!” said Jim sharply. “When we adopted Chris we decided she was to be our own child. No probing into the past. No wondering and worrying. No mysteries. Chris is as much ours as if she’d been born of our flesh. Who is Christine indeed! She’s our daughter – and just you remember that!”

“Yes, Jim, you’re right. Of course you’re right.”

He’d been so fierce about it that I didn’t tell him what I planned to do the next day while Chris was at school.

Next morning Chris was silent and sulky. Jim joked with her and tried to cheer her, but all she would do was look out of the window and say: “Harry’s gone.”

“You won’t need Harry now. You’re going to school,” said Jim.

Chris gave him that look of grown-up contempt she’d given me sometimes.

She and I didn’t speak as I took her to school. I was almost in tears. Although I was glad for her to start school, I felt a sense of loss at parting with her. I suppose every mother feels that when she takes her ewe-lamb to school for the first time. It’s the end of babyhood for the child, the beginning of life in reality, life with its cruelty, its strangeness, its barbarity. I kissed her goodbye at the gate and said:

“You’ll be having dinner at school with the other children, Chris, and I’ll call for you when school is over, at three o’clock.”

“Yes, mummy.” She held my hand tightly. Other nervous little children were arriving with equally nervous parents. A pleasant young teacher with fair hair and a white linen dress appeared at the gate. She gathered the new children towards her and led them away. She gave me a sympathetic smile as she passed and said: “We’ll take good care of her.”

I felt quite light-hearted as I walked away, knowing that Chris was safe and I didn’t have to worry.

Now I started on my secret mission. I took a bus to town and went to the big, gaunt building I hadn’t visited for over five years. Then, Jim and I had gone together. The top floor of the building belonged to the Greythorne Adoption Society. I climbed the four flights and knocked on the familiar door with its scratched paint. A secretary whose face I didn’t know let me in.

“May I see Miss Cleaver? My name is Mrs James.”

“Have you an appointment?”

“No, but it’s very important.”

“I’ll see.” The girl went out and returned a second later. “Miss Cleaver will see you, Mrs James.”

Miss Cleaver, a tall, thin, grey haired woman with a charming smile, a plain, kindly face and a very wrinkled brow, rose to meet me. “Mrs James. How nice to see you again. How’s Christine?”

“She’s very well. Miss Cleaver, I’d better get straight to the point. I know you don’t normally divulge the origin of a child to its adopters and vice versa, but I must know who Christine is.”

“Sorry, Mrs James,” she began, “our rules…”

“Please let me tell you the whole story, then you’ll see I’m not just suffering from vulgar curiosity.”

I told her about Harry.

When I’d finished, she said: “It’s very queer. Very queer indeed. Mrs James, I’m going to break my rule for once. I’m going to tell you in strict confidence where Christine came from.”

“She was born in a very poor part of London. There were four in the family, father, mother, son and Christine herself.”

“Son?”

“Yes. He was fourteen when – when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“Let me start at the beginning. The parents hadn’t really wanted Christine. The family lived in one room at the top of an old house which should have been condemned by the Sanitary Inspector in my opinion. It was difficult enough when there were only three of them, but with a baby as well life became a nightmare. The mother was a neurotic creature, slatternly, unhappy, too fat. After she’d had the baby she took no interest in it. The brother, however, adored the little girl from the start. He got into trouble for cutting school so he could look after her.”

“The father had a steady job in a warehouse, not much money, but enough to keep them alive. Then he was sick for several weeks and lost his job. He was laid up in that messy room, ill, worrying, nagged by his wife, irked by the baby’s crying and his son’s eternal fussing over the child – I got all these details from neighbours afterwards, by the way. I was also told that he’d had a particularly bad time in the war and had been in a nerve hospital for several months before he was fit to come home at all after his demob. Suddenly it all proved too much for him.”

“One morning, in the small hours, a woman in the ground floor room saw something fall past her window and heard a thud on the ground. She went out to look. The son of the family was there on the ground. Christine was in his arms. The boy’s neck was broken. He was dead. Christine was blue in the face but still breathing faintly.”

“The woman woke the household, sent for the police and the doctor, then they went to the top room. They had to break down the door, which was locked and sealed inside. An overpowering smell of gas greeted them, in spite of the open window.”

“They found husband and wife dead in bed and a note from the husband saying:

 

“I can’t go on. I am going to kill them all.

It’s the only way.”

 

“The police concluded that he’d sealed up door and windows and turned on the gas when his family were asleep, then lain beside his wife until he drifted into unconsciousness, and death. But the son must have wakened. Perhaps he struggled with the door but couldn’t open it. He’d be too weak to shout. All he could do was pluck away the seals from the window, open it, and fling himself out, holding his adored little sister tightly in his arms.”

“Why Christine herself wasn’t gassed is rather a mystery. Perhaps her head was right under the bedclothes, pressed against her brother’s chest – they always slept together. Anyway, the child was taken to hospital, then to the home where you and Mr James first saw her… and a lucky day that was for little Christine!”

“So her brother saved her life and died himself?” I said.

“Yes. He was a very brave young man.”

“Perhaps he thought not so much of saving her as of keeping her with him. Oh dear! That sounds ungenerous. I didn’t mean to be. Miss Cleaver, what was his name?”

“I’ll have to look that up for you.” She referred to one of her many files and said at last: “The family’s name was Jones and the fourteen-year-old brother was called ‘Harold’.”

“And did he have red hair?” I murmured.

“That I don’t know, Mrs James.”

“But it’s Harry. The boy was Harry. What does it mean? I can’t understand it.”

“It’s not easy, but I think perhaps deep in her unconscious mind Christine has always remembered Harry, the companion of her babyhood. We don’t think of children as having much memory, but there must be images of the past tucked away somewhere in their little heads. Christine doesn’t invent this Harry. She remembers him. So clearly that she’s almost brought him to life again. I know it sounds far-fetched, but the whole story is so odd that I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“May I have the address of the house where they lived?”

She was reluctant to give me this information, but I persuaded her and set out at last to find No. 13 Canver Row, where the man Jones had tried to kill himself and his whole family and almost succeeded.

The house seemed deserted. It was filthy and derelict. But one thing made me stare and stare. There was a tiny garden. A scatter of bright uneven grass splashed the bald brown patches of earth. But the little garden had one strange glory that none of the other houses in the poor sad street possessed – a bush of white roses. They bloomed gloriously. Their scent was overpowering.

I stood by the bush and stared up at the top window.

A voice startled me: “What are you doing here?”

It was an old woman, peering from the ground floor window.

“I thought the house was empty,” I said.

“Should be. Been condemned. But they can’t get me out. Nowhere else to go. Won’t go. The others went quickly enough after it happened. No one else wants to come. They say the place is haunted. So it is. But what’s the fuss about? Life and death. They’re very close. You get to know that when you’re old. Alive or dead. What’s the difference?”

She looked at me with yellowish, bloodshot eyes and said: “I saw him fall past my window. That’s where he fell. Among the roses. He still comes back. I see him. He won’t go away until he gets her.”

“Who – who are you talking about?”

“Harry Jones. Nice boy he was. Red hair. Very thin. Too determined though. Always got his own way. Loved Christine too much I thought. Died among the roses. Used to sit down here with her for hours, by the roses. Then died there. Or do people die? The church ought to give us an answer, but it doesn’t. Not one you can believe. Go away, will you? This place isn’t for you. It’s for the dead who aren’t dead, and the living who aren’t alive. Am I alive or dead? You tell me. I don’t know.”

The crazy eyes staring at me beneath the matted white fringe of hair frightened me. Mad people are terrifying. One can pity them, but one is still afraid. I murmured:

“I’ll go now. Goodbye,” and tried to hurry across the hard hot pavements although my legs felt heavy and half-paralysed, as in a nightmare.

The sun blazed down on my head, but I was hardly aware of it. I lost all sense of time or place as I stumbled on.

Then I heard something that chilled my blood.

A clock struck three.

At three o’clock I was supposed to be at the school gates, waiting for Christine.

I made frantic inquiries of passers-by, who looked at me fearfully, as I had looked at the old woman. They must have thought I was crazy.

At last I caught the right bus and, sick with dust, petrol fumes and fear, reached the school. I ran across the hot, empty playground. In a classroom, the young teacher in white was gathering her books together.

“I’ve come for Christine James. I’m her mother. I’m so sorry I’m late. Where is she?” I gasped.

“Christine James?” The girl frowned, then said brightly: “Oh, yes, I remember, the pretty little red-haired girl. That’s all right, Mrs James. Her brother called for her. How alike they are, aren’t they? And so devoted. It’s rather sweet to see a boy of that age so fond of his baby sister. Has your husband got red hair, like the two children?”

“What did – her brother – say?” I asked faintly.

“He didn’t say anything. When I spoke to him, he just smiled. They’ll be home by now, I should think. I say, do you feel all right?”

“Yes, thank you. I must go home.”

I ran all the way home through the burning streets.

“Chris! Christine, where are you? Chris! Chris!” Sometimes even now I hear my own voice of the past screaming through the cold house. “Christine! Chris! Where are you? Answer me! Chrrriiiiiss!” Then: “Harry! Don’t take her away! Come back! Harry! Harry!”

Demented, I rushed out into the garden. The sun struck me like a hot blade. The roses glared whitely. The air was so still I seemed to stand in timelessness, placelessness. For a moment, I seemed very near to Christine, although I couldn’t see her. Then the roses danced before my eyes and turned red. The world turned red. Blood red. Wet red. I fell through redness to blackness to nothingness – to almost death.

For weeks I was in bed with sunstroke which turned to brain fever. During that time Jim and the police searched for Christine in vain. The futile search continued for months. The papers were full of the strange disappearance of the red-haired child. The teacher described the “brother” who had called for her. There were newspaper stories of kidnapping, baby-snatching, child-murders.

Then the sensation died down. Just another unsolved mystery in police files.

And only two people knew what had happened. An old crazed woman living in a derelict house, and myself.

Years have passed. But I walk in fear.

Such ordinary things make me afraid. Sunshine. Sharp shadows on grass. White roses. Children with red hair. And the name – Harry. Such an ordinary name!

I.

 

Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting placidly by the fire.

“Hark at the wind,” said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.

“I’m listening,” said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand. “Check.”

“I should hardly think that he’d come to-night,” said his father, with his hand poised over the board.

“Mate,” replied the son.

“That’s the worst of living so far out,” bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; “of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent. I don’t know what people are thinking about. I suppose because only two houses in the road are let, they think it doesn’t matter.”

“Never mind, dear,” said his wife, soothingly; “perhaps you’ll win the next one.”

Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard.

“There he is,” said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came toward the door.

The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, “Tut, tut!” and coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall, burly man, beady of eye and rubicund of visage.

“Sergeant-Major Morris,” he said, introducing him.

The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched contentedly while his host got out whiskey and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the fire.

At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair and spoke of wild scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples.

“Twenty-one years of it,” said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. “When he went away he was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him.”

“He don’t look to have taken much harm,” said Mrs. White, politely.

“I’d like to go to India myself,” said the old man, “just to look round a bit, you know.”

“Better where you are,” said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He put down the empty glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.

“I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers,” said the old man. “What was that you started telling me the other day about a monkey’s paw or something, Morris?”

“Nothing,” said the soldier, hastily. “Leastways nothing worth hearing.”

“Monkey’s paw?” said Mrs. White, curiously.

“Well, it’s just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps,” said the sergeant-major, offhandedly.

His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absent-mindedly put his empty glass to his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.

“To look at,” said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, “it’s just an ordinary little paw, dried to a mummy.”

He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace, but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.

“And what is there special about it?” inquired Mr. White as he took it from his son, and having examined it, placed it upon the table.

“It had a spell put on it by an old fakir,” said the sergeant-major, “a very holy man. He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it.”

His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred somewhat.

“Well, why don’t you have three, sir?” said Herbert White, cleverly.

The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. “I have,” he said, quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.

“And did you really have the three wishes granted?” asked Mrs. White.

“I did,” said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth.

“And has anybody else wished?” persisted the old lady.

“The first man had his three wishes. Yes,” was the reply; “I don’t know what the first two were, but the third was for death. That’s how I got the paw.”

His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.

“If you’ve had your three wishes, it’s no good to you now, then, Morris,” said the old man at last. “What do you keep it for?”

The soldier shook his head. “Fancy, I suppose,” he said, slowly. “I did have some idea of selling it, but I don’t think I will. It has caused enough mischief already. Besides, people won’t buy. They think it’s a fairy tale; some of them, and those who do think anything of it want to try it first and pay me afterward.”

“If you could have another three wishes,” said the old man, eyeing him keenly, “would you have them?”

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I don’t know.”

He took the paw, and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.

“Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly.

“If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it to me.”

“I won’t,” said his friend, doggedly. “I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.”

The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. “How do you do it?” he inquired.

“Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said the sergeant-major, “but I warn you of the consequences.”

“Sounds like the Arabian Nights,” said Mrs. White, as she rose and began to set the supper. “Don’t you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?”

Her husband drew the talisman from pocket, and then all three burst into laughter as the sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm.

“If you must wish,” he said, gruffly, “wish for something sensible.”

Mr. White dropped it back in his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table. In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat listening in an enthralled fashion to a second instalment of the soldier’s adventures in India.

“If the tale about the monkey’s paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us,” said Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, “we sha’nt make much out of it.”

“Did you give him anything for it, father?” inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.

“A trifle,” said he, colouring slightly. “He didn’t want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed me again to throw it away.”

“Likely,” said Herbert, with pretended horror. “Why, we’re going to be rich, and famous and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can’t be henpecked.”

He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.

Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. “I don’t know what to wish for, and that’s a fact,” he said, slowly. “It seems to me I’ve got all I want.”

“If you only cleared the house, you’d be quite happy, wouldn’t you?” said Herbert, with his hand on his shoulder. “Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that ’ll just do it.”

His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a solemn face, somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few impressive chords.

“I wish for two hundred pounds,” said the old man distinctly.

A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old man. His wife and son ran toward him.

“It moved,” he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor.

“As I wished, it twisted in my hand like a snake.”

“Well, I don’t see the money,” said his son as he picked it up and placed it on the table, “and I bet I never shall.”

“It must have been your fancy, father,” said his wife, regarding him anxiously.

He shook his head. “Never mind, though; there’s no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the same.”

They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to retire for the night.

“I expect you’ll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed,” said Herbert, as he bade them good-night, “and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains.”

He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand grasped the monkey’s paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to bed.

***

 

II.

 

In the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table he laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.

“I suppose all old soldiers are the same,” said Mrs. White. “The idea of our listening to such nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two hundred pounds hurt you, father?”

“Might drop on his head from the sky,” said the frivolous Herbert.

“Morris said the things happened so naturally,” said his father, “that you might if you so wished attribute it to coincidence.”

“Well, don’t break into the money before I come back,” said Herbert as he rose from the table. “I’m afraid it’ll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you.”

His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road; and returning to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband’s credulity. All of which did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman’s knock, nor prevent her from referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that the post brought a tailor’s bill.

“Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home,” she said, as they sat at dinner.

“I dare say,” said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; “but for all that, the thing moved in my hand; that I’ll swear to.”

“You thought it did,” said the old lady soothingly.

“I say it did,” replied the other. “There was no thought about it; I had just—What’s the matter?”

His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who, peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was well dressed, and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.

She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room, and her husband’s coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited as patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at first strangely silent.

“I—was asked to call,” he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his trousers. “I come from ‘Maw and Meggins.’”

The old lady started. “Is anything the matter?” she asked, breathlessly. “Has anything happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?”

Her husband interposed. “There, there, mother,” he said, hastily. “Sit down, and don’t jump to conclusions. You’ve not brought bad news, I’m sure, sir;” and he eyed the other wistfully.

“I’m sorry—” began the visitor.

“Is he hurt?” demanded the mother, wildly.

The visitor bowed in assent. “Badly hurt,” he said, quietly, “but he is not in any pain.”

“Oh, thank God!” said the old woman, clasping her hands. “Thank God for that! Thank—”

She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw the awful confirmation of her fears in the other’s averted face. She caught her breath, and turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long silence.

“He was caught in the machinery,” said the visitor at length in a low voice.

“Caught in the machinery,” repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, “yes.”

He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife’s hand between his own, pressed it as he had been wont to do in their old courting-days nearly forty years before.

“He was the only one left to us,” he said, turning gently to the visitor. “It is hard.”

The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. “The firm wished me to convey their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss,” he said, without looking round. “I beg that you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders.”

There was no reply; the old woman’s face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath inaudible; on the husband’s face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried into his first action.

“I was to say that ‘Maw and Meggins’ disclaim all responsibility,” continued the other. “They admit no liability at all, but in consideration of your son’s services, they wish to present you with a certain sum as compensation.”

Mr. White dropped his wife’s hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, “How much?”

“Two hundred pounds,” was the answer.

Unconscious of his wife’s shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.

***

 

III.

 

In the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to happen —something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear.

But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation—the hopeless resignation of the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.

It was about a week after that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

“Come back,” he said, tenderly. “You will be cold.”

“It is colder for my son,” said the old woman, and wept afresh.

The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a start.

“The paw!” she cried wildly. “The monkey’s paw!”

He started up in alarm. “Where? Where is it? What’s the matter?”

She came stumbling across the room toward him. “I want it,” she said, quietly. “You’ve not destroyed it?”

“It’s in the parlour, on the bracket,” he replied, marvelling. “Why?”

She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

“I only just thought of it,” she said, hysterically. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Why didn’t you think of it?”

“Think of what?” he questioned.

“The other two wishes,” she replied, rapidly. “We’ve only had one.”

“Was not that enough?” he demanded, fiercely.

“No,” she cried, triumphantly; “we’ll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our boy alive again.”

The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. “Good God, you are mad!” he cried, aghast.

“Get it,” she panted; “get it quickly, and wish—Oh, my boy, my boy!”

Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. “Get back to bed,” he said, unsteadily. “You don’t know what you are saying.”

“We had the first wish granted,” said the old woman, feverishly; “why not the second?”

“A coincidence,” stammered the old man.

“Go and get it and wish,” cried his wife, quivering with excitement.

The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. “He has been dead ten days, and besides he—I would not tell you else, but—I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was too terrible for you to see then, how now?”

“Bring him back,” cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. “Do you think I fear the child I have nursed?”

He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece. The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.

Even his wife’s face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.

“Wish!” she cried, in a strong voice.

“It is foolish and wicked,” he faltered.

“Wish!” repeated his wife.

He raised his hand. “I wish my son alive again.”

The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.

He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman peering through the window. The candle-end, which had burned below the rim of the china candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and apathetically beside him.

Neither spoke, but lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.

At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house.

“What’s that?” cried the old woman, starting up.

“A rat,” said the old man in shaking tones—“a rat. It passed me on the stairs.”

His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.

“It’s Herbert!” she screamed. “It’s Herbert!”

She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her tightly.

“What are you going to do?” he whispered hoarsely.

“It’s my boy; it’s Herbert!” she cried, struggling mechanically. “I forgot it was two miles away. What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door.”

“For God’s sake don’t let it in,” cried the old man, trembling.

“You’re afraid of your own son,” she cried, struggling. “Let me go. I’m coming, Herbert; I’m coming.”

There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly from the socket. Then the old woman’s voice, strained and panting.

“The bolt,” she cried, loudly. “Come down. I can’t reach it.”

But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw. If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey’s paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the chair drawn back, and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted road.

***

The Tower by Marghanita Laski

The road begins to rise in a series of gentle curves, passing through pleasing groves of olives and vines. 5 km. on the left is the fork for Florence. To the right may be seen The Tower of Sacrifice (470 steps) built in 1535 by Niccolo di Ferramamo: superstitious fear left the tower intact when in 1549, the surrounding Village was completely destroyed.

 

TRIUMPHANTLY CAROLINE LIFTED her finger from the fine italic type. There was nothing to mar the success of this afternoon. Not only had she taken the car out alone for the first time, driving unerringly on the right-hand side of the road, but what she had achieved was not a simple drive but a cultural excursion. She had taken the Italian guidebook Neville was always urging on her and hesitantly, haltingly, she had managed to piece out enough of the language to choose a route that took in four well thought of frescoes, two universally admired campaniles, and one wooden crucifix in a village church quite a long way from the main road. It was not after all such a bad thing that the British council meeting had kept Neville in Florence. True, he was certain to know all about the campaniles and the frescoes, but there was just a chance that he hadn’t discovered the crucifix and how gratifying if she could at last have something of her own to contribute to his constantly accumulating horde of culture.

But could she still add more? There was at least another hour of daylight and it wouldn’t take more than 35 minutes to get back to the flat in Florence. Perhaps there would just be time to add this Tower to her dutiful collection. What was it called? She bent to the guidebook again carefully tracing the text with her finger to be sure she was translating it correctly word by word.

But this time her moving finger stopped abruptly at the name of Niccolo di Ferramano. There had risen in her mind a picture. No — not a picture a portrait — of a thin white face with deep-set black eyes that stared intently into hers. Why a portrait? she asked and then she remembered.

It had been about three months ago just after they were married when Neville had first brought her to Florence. He himself had already lived there for two years and during that time had been at least as concerned to accumulate Tuscan culture for himself as to disseminate English culture to the Italians. What more natural that he should wish to share —perhaps to even show off — his discoveries to his young wife?

Caroline had come out to Italy with the idea that when she had worked through one or two Galleries and made a few trips — say to Assisi and Sienna — she would have done her duty as a British Council wife and could then settle down to examining the Floren‐ tine shops, which everyone told her were too marvellous for words, but Neville had been contemptuous of her programme. ‘You can see the stuff in the galleries at anytime he had said but I’d like you to start with the pieces the ordinary tourist doesn’t see,’ and of course Caroline couldn’t possibly let herself be classed as an ordinary tourist.

She had been proud to accompany Neville to castles and palaces privately owned to which his work gave him entry and there to gaze with what she hoped was pleasure on the undiscovered Raphael, the Titian that hung on the same wall ever since it was painted, the Giotto fresco under which the family had originally commissioned it still said their prayers. It had been on one of these pilgrimages that she had seen the face of the young man with the black eyes. They had made a long slow drive over narrow ill-made roads, and at last had come to a castle on the top of the hill. The family was, to Neville’s disappointment, away, but the housekeeper remembered him and led them to a long Gallery lined with five centuries of family portraits, Though she could not have admitted it even to herself Caroline had become almost anaesthetised to Italian art. Dutifully, she had followed never along the gallery listening politely while in his light well-bred voice.

He had told her intimate anecdotes of history and involuntarily she had let her eyes wander around the room glancing anywhere but at the particular portrait of Neville’s immediate dissertation. It was thus that her eye was caught by a face on the other side of the room and forgetting what was due to politeness, she called her husband’s arm and demanded ‘Neville who’s that girl over there?’

But he was pleased with her. He said, ‘Ah, I’m glad you picked that one out. It’s generally thought to be the best thing in the collection — a Bronzino, of course,’ and they went over to look at it. The picture was painted in rich pale colours, a green curtain, a blue dress, a young face with calm brown eyes and the plaits of honey gold hair. Caroline read out the name under the picture. Giovanna di Ferramano: 1531 to 1549.

That was the year the village was destroyed, she remembered now sitting in the car by the roadside, but then she had exclaimed. ‘Oh Neville! She was only 18 when she died.’

‘They married young in those days.’ Neville commented and Caroline said in surprise, ‘Oh, was was she married?’ It had been the radiantly virginal character of the face that had caught at her innatention.

‘Yes, she was married,’ Neville answered and added, ‘Look at the portrait beside her. It’s Bronzino again when you think of it?’ and this was when Caroline had seen the pale young man. There were no clear light colours in this picture. There was only the white‐ ness of his face, the blackness of the eyes, the hair, the clothes and the glint of gold letters on the pile of books on which the young man rested his hand underneath this picture was written: ‘Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman.’

‘Do you mean he’s her husband?’ Caroline asked. ‘Surely they’d know if he was, instead of calling him an “unknown gentleman.”’

‘He is Niccolo di Ferramano, all right,’ said Neville. ‘I’ve seen another portrait of him somewhere and it’s not a face one would forget, but,’ he added reluctantly because he hated to admit igno‐ rance. ‘There’s apparently some queer scandal about him and though they don’t turn his picture out, they won’t even mention his name. Last time I was here the old Count himself took me through the gallery. I asked him about little Giovanna and her husband.’ He laughed uneasily, ‘Mind you my Italian was far from perfect at that time, but it was horribly clear that I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘But what did he say?’ Caroline demanded.

‘I tried to remember,’ said Neville. ‘For some reason it stuck in my mind. He said either she was lost or she was damned. But which word it was I can never be sure. The portrait of Niccolo he just ignored altogether.’

‘What was wrong with Niccolo, I wonder?’ mused Caroline and Neville answered.

‘I don’t know but I can guess. Do you notice the lettering on those books up there under his hand. It’s all in Hebrew or Arabic. Undoubtedly, the unmentionable Niccolo dabbled in Black Magic.’

Caroline shivered. ‘I don’t like him,’ she said. ‘Let’s look at Giovanna again,’ and they had moved back to the first portrait and Neville had said casually, ‘Do you know, she’s rather like you?’

 

#

 

I’VE JUST GOT time to look at the tower Caroline now said aloud and she put the guide book back in the pigeon hole under the dash‐ board and drove carefully along the gentle curves until she came to the fork for Florence on the left. On the top of the little hill to the right stood a tall round tower.

There was no other building in sight. In a land where every available piece of ground is cultivated. There was no cultivated ground around this tower. On the left was the fork for Florence. On the right a rough track led up to the top of the hill.

Caroline knew that she wanted to take the fork to the left — to Florence and home and Neville and said a sudden urgent voice inside her — for safety.

This voice so much shocked her that she got out of the car and began to trudge up the dusty track towards the tower.

After all, I may not come this way again, she argued. It seems silly to miss the chance of seeing it when I’ve already got a reason for being interested. I’m only just going to have a quick look, and she glanced at the setting sun, telling herself that she would indeed have to be quick if she were to get back to Florence before dark.

And now she had climbed the hill was standing in front of the tower.

It was built of narrow red bricks and only thin slits pierced its surface right up to the top where Caroline could see some kind of narrow platform encircling it. Before her was an arched doorway.

I’m just going to have a quick look she assured herself again, and then she walked in.

She was in an empty room with a low arched ceiling and a narrow stone staircase clung to the wall and circled around the room to disappear through a hole in the ceiling.

There ought to be a wonderful view at the top said Caroline firmly to herself, and she laid her hand on the rusty rail and started to climb and, as she climbed, she counted: thirty-nine, forty, forty- one, she said, and with the forty-first step, she came through the ceiling and saw over her head far far above the deep blue evening Sky a small circle of blue framed in a narrowing shaft round which the narrow staircase spiralled.

There was no in a wall only the rusty railing protected the climber on the inside.

Eighty-three, eighty-four, counted Caroline.

The sky above her was losing its colour and she wondered why the narrow slit windows in the wall had all been so placed that they spiralled around the staircase too high for anyone climbing it to see through them.

‘It’s getting dark very quickly,’ said Caroline at the hundred and fiftieth step.

‘I know what the tower is like now, it would be much more sensible to give up and go home.’

At the two hundred and sixty-ninth step, her hand moving forward on the railing met only empty space. For an interminable second, she shivered, pressing back to the hard brick on the other side. Then hesitantly, she groped forward, upwards and, at last, two fingers met the rusty rail again. And again, she climbed. But now the breaks in the rail became more and more frequent. Sometimes she had to climb several steps with her left shoulder pressed tightly to the brick wall before her searching hand could find the tenuous rusty comfort again.

At the three-hundred and seventy-fifth step the rail, as the moving hand clutched it, crumpled away under her fingers.

‘I’d better just go by the wall,’ she told herself, and now her left hand traced the rough brick as she climbed up, and up.

‘Four hundred and twenty-two, four hundred and twenty-three,’ counted Caroline with part of her brain. ‘I really ought to go down now,’ said another part. ‘I wish, oh, I want to go down now!’ but she could not. ‘It’ll be so silly to give up,’’ she told herself, desperately trying to rationalise what drove her on: ‘Just because one’s afraid,’ and then she had to stifle that thought too. There was nothing left in her brain, but the steadily mounting tally of the steps.

‘Four hundred and seventy!’ said Caroline aloud with explosive relief, and then she stopped abruptly because the steps had stopped too.

There was nothing ahead but a piece of broken railing barring her way and the sky drained now of all its colour still some twenty feet above her head.

‘But how idiotic!’ she said to the air. ‘The whole thing’s absolutely pointless.’ And then the fingers of the left hand exploring the wall beside her met not brick, but wood.

She turned to see what it was and there in the wall level with the top step was a small wooden door. ‘So it does go somewhere after all,’ she said, and fumbled with the rusty handle. The door pushed open and she stepped through.

She was on a narrow stone platform about a yard wide. It seemed to encircle the tower. The platform sloped downwards away from the tower and its stones were smooth and very shiny. And this was all she noticed before she looked beyond the stones and down. She was immeasurably, unbelievably high and alone. And the ground below was a world away. It was not credible, not possible, that she should be so far from the ground.

All her being was suddenly absorbed in the single impulse to hurl herself from the sloping platform. ‘I cannot go down any other way,’ she said and then she heard what she said and stepped back, frenziedly clutching the soft rotten wood of the doorway with hands sodden with sweat.

‘There is no other way,’ said the voice in her brain, ‘there is no other way.’

‘This is vertigo,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve only just got to close my eyes and keep still for a minute and it’ll pass off. It’s bound to pass off. I’ve never had it before but I know what it is and it’s vertigo.’

She closed her eyes and kept very still and felt the cold sweat running down her body.

‘I should be all right now,’ she said at last and carefully she stepped back through the doorway onto the four hundred and seventieth step and pulled the door shut before her. She looked up at the sky swiftly darkening with night. Then for the first time she looked down to the shaft at the tower down to the narrow and protected staircase spiralling round and round and round and disappearing into the dark.

She said, she screamed, ‘I can’t go down.’

She stood still on the top step staring downwards and slowly the last light faded from the tower. She could not move. It was not possible that she should dare to go down step by step down the unprotected stairs into the dark below. It would be much easier to fall, said the voice in her head: to take one step to the left and fall and would all be over. You cannot climb down.

She began to cry — shuddering with the pain of her sobs. It could not be true that she had brought herself to this peril that there could be no safety for her and that she could climb down the menacing stairs. The reality must be that she was safe at home with Neville, but this was the reality and here were the stairs.

At last she stopped crying and said, ’Now I shall go down.’ ‘One,’ she counted. And her right hand tearing at the brick wall.

She moved first one and then the other foot down to the second step.

‘Two,’ she counted and then she thought of the depth below her and stood still stupefied with terror. The stone beneath her feet, and the brick against her hand were too frail protections for her exposed body.

They could not save her from the voice that repeated that it would be easier to fall. Abruptly. She sat down on the step. ‘Two,’ she counted again and spreading both her hands tightly against the step on either side of her, she swung her body off the second step down onto the third.

‘Three,’ she counted, then ‘four’ then ‘five’, pressing close and close into the wall away from the empty drop on the other side.

At the twenty-first step, she said, ‘I think I can do it. Now.’ She slid her right hand up the rough wall and slowly stood upright Then with her other hand, she reached for the railing.

It was now too dark to see but it was not there.

For Timeless time, she stood there knowing nothing but fear. ’Twenty-one,’, she said. ‘Twenty-one,’ over and over again, but she could not step onto the twenty-second stair.

Something brushed her face. She knew it was a bat not a hand that touched her but still it was horror beyond conceivable horror and it was this horror without any sense of moving from dread to safety that, at last, impelled her down the stairs.

‘Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five,’ she counted and around her the air was full of whispering skin-stretched wings. If one of them should touch her again, she must fall.

‘Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.’

The skin of her right hand was torn and hot with blood for she would never lift it from the wall, only press it slowly down and force her rigid legs to move from the knowledge of each step to the peril of the next. So Caroline came down the dark tower.

She could not think. She could know nothing but fear. Only her brain remorselessly recorded the tally. Five hundred and one, it counted: five hundred-and-two, and three and four.