by Paul Hazel
There was the same maddening configuration of light
and shadow, blots more than squares. Yet the blots, by some
as yet unfathomable arrangement, turned in rapid stages into
S q u a r e s . He shook his head. As easily it could have been the
other way round, the pattern shifting, turning peevishly,
F aces in the Earth
9 5
automatically ungeometric. Either interpretation was possible. Between his lips his tobacco-blackened tongue flickered impatiently.
Behind him, from the cramped room that adjoined the
surgery, he could hear his wife turning down the covers of
the cot. He kept a small bed there, fitted snugly under the
shelves of medicines. He could hear his wife humming to
herself under the phials of laudanum, the tinctures of nightshade, and frowned. It was a rich practice. There were maids for such work. For that matter he would have done it himself.
But Amelia’s sense of duty required such small attentions to
his comfort. She did not look in. He waited until the door
squealed. Amelia’s footsteps retreated into the hallway, turning back toward the main house where already the servants were in bed and the children slept. He shrugged his thin
shoulders. He was thinking of death.
Taking the matches from his trouser pocket, he relit his
pipe. The match flared above the photograph.
For that moment, enhanced by the spurt of flame, it
seemed he was staring into a glowing blankness. Patches of
light, jarred subtly, seemed suddenly to come loose. Unfixed,
they began to squirm. He smiled slightly, fascinated by their
curious mobility and yet knowing it could be no more than
the temporary effect of the matchhead, that, or, because he
was mortally tired, the crackling of the ragged circuitry
within his own head. The match burned out and he blinked.
The brightness persisted. He moved and the brightness
moved with him. He sat rigid, holding his breath. The
brightness continued to fall into place. Squibs of light, turning cunningly among the blots he saw were bluffs and hills, joined link by link. The perception was so clear and definite
that he moaned. The air rushed past. Beneath him, suddenly
from a great height, he recognized the fiery line of the river.
Its brightness came down from the mountains.
Tipped as from a cauldron, it burned between hills.
He opened his eyes very wide and saw the distant towns,
lurid and burning where the river itself was choked with
flames. Some instinct made him wish to turn away. But the
river blazed ahead of him. Lightly, luringly, at the bridge at
Ohomowauke, where the river bent, it broadened, spreading
in a widening crack as it reached the levels and wandered
south.
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WINTERKING
He gazed over the earth. Across the southernmost horizon he saw the dismembered channels sunken into hissing silence on the coast. He bit his lip.
And, surprisingly, there was no river. Instead, the brightness suddenly reversed. A darkness— added as the light was added, link by link— changed over to blackness. Blots and
shadows fused, became twisted limbs and climbed. He looked
down into the maw of branches. Black leaves rushed about
his head.
And yet, at the very same instant, he was certain it was
still the river. He saw it then even more clearly. The only
difference was in how he looked. His sallow cheeks reddened.
It was outrageous. He muttered something to himself.
The words were familiar but it was not until he heard his own
voice that he remembered where he had heard them.
He went in his bare feet to the closet. Old man’s legs
and old man’s feet, he thought, feeling the prickly nilmbness
of his flesh, the chill of the cold floor under his feet. Silence
flowed back into the room behind him. Methodically he
began to arrange his coat on its hanger. He knew he ought to
have slept in the surgery. Yet by the time he had returned
Amelia had switched on the lamp.
“I did not mean to imply— ” she started in once more.
She was used to him and had no need to listen to guess that
he had wasted his time. And yet, seeing him, his bare legs
sticking out from under his robe, she added more quietly, “I
fear, Oliver, I do not explain myself well.”
He laid his spectacles on the bureau. Because of the
light in the room he could not look out into the garden.
“Forgive m e,” she said.
“I have.” He spoke with absolute definiteness. “I have
understood perfectly.”
Once again there was silence.
“You will let me see it?” she asked.
“In the morning.”
He climbed in next to her, bringing the cold in with him.
As calmly as she was able she reached out, taking his
hand, waiting for the moment he would grasp her own.
“It is a photograph of the river,” he said. “Only it is more
than the river.”
Deliberately she tightened her hold on his fingers.
F aces In the Earth
97
“Oliver?”
He went on implacably. “But it was what the woman said
that startled me. That convinced me that at last— ”
Her breast rose. “A woman?”
“On the train.” Then finally he had to look at her.
All at once she understood that something had happened.
Until that moment she had not honestly noticed.
She watched him carefully. “She told you something.”
“It was the dead man really. She was simply repeating
it.” Suddenly he pulled away. Both his hands were free and
he thrust them alongside his temples and into his hair.
She had made her voice soft. “Can it matter?” she asked.
The house was silent.
But now, when he opened his hands and she could look
again into his eyes, she was frightened.
However inimical, the pattern had to be the same. He
understood this, even though he was quite as certain he was
dreaming. The blackness of the trunk, which even in his
sleep was wholly separate, wholly distinguishable from the
river, existed, nonetheless, because the river existed. Seeing
one meant the other was not, not simply faded, but gone. Yet
they shared the same space. They were, or at the very least
must be thought to be, contemporaneous. It was this that
troubled him.
He had not chosen which he would see. Had he been
given a choice, he would have dreamed of the oak. Its leafy
vaults were elegiac and sad, matching his thoughts. Their
darkness consoled him. In an earlier age such a dream would
have been called a prefigurement of death. The strength of
his youth was behind him. The yearnings of his early manhood, which had once filled him with impossible anguish, were over. Now, although he slept with a woman beside him,
it was many years since he had found her naked in his arms.
It was not his will or even his intention that determined
which, for a moment, prevailed. In fact he had dreamt of the
great sprawling branches and continued to dream of them,
intermittently. But where he had expected their pattern to
hold he found in
stead its odd symmetry broken.
His numbed feet paddled through the bright water.
Holmes pressed his nose into the pillow.
Because it was a dream it hardly seemed he was climbing.
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WINTERKING
Slowly he made his way forward. Down the river went and
then up again, its queer shining current spilling outward over
the steep valley wall. The heavy branch swayed. Increasingly
it became difficult to hold his balance. Caught between wind
and water, struck by the real possibility of falling, he no
longer looked down.
The river forked.
Rather like a passage in a book he had read twice without, until the end, noticing, he realized that he had made this same passage before. To the left the river tumbled into more
vivid life. Its brightness reflected up into brambles, lighted
the meadows won long ago from the wood. But if he blinked?
He made no decision. He did not dismiss one or embrace the
other. There lay behind him years of speculation and doubt.
They made no difference. There were endless worlds, each
with its own composition and laws, each waiting invisibly for
summoning. And it was chance that called them forth. Chance
only that mattered. His child-sized hands pressed blindly into
the bedclothes. For the briefest moment his exhausted eyes
flickered. . . .
Against his cold fingers he felt the. harsh, scored bark.
The great oak coiled away under him.
He awoke with an erection.
Except for the blood in his loins, there was yet no
warmth. Dawn merely edged the bricks on the back garden
wall. He lay chilled and motionless. To his nostrils came
unmistakably the scent of horses. He moved his neck. Someone was knocking.
“Yes?” he called out. His voice seemed unusually distant. What was it he had been thinking?
“Yes?” he answered once more, uncertain whether whoever it was could have heard him.
His daughter did not enter the room. “Father,” she
called softly. “There is someone waiting down in the surgery.”
He struggled into his robe. This at least was a world he
knew. He looked down at the sleeping form of his wife. Her
tiny fishlike mouth opened and closed noiselessly.
“I shall be down in a moment,” he whispered.
His daughter went on before him. He had gone himself,
more slowly, into the hall and had just finished buttoning his
fly when she crept back. She looked at him hesitantly, her
F aces in the Earth
9 9
normally proud features suddenly perplexed. Somehow she
had been found wanting. Not by himself certainly. Beginning
to wonder, Holmes straightened his collar.
He padded in his slippers to the bottom of the stairs. He
took a shortcut through the kitchen and, because he had
gained a moment, paused, snatching a hopeful glance at the
garden. The sky had not yet taken on enough color to 'allow
him to see more than the roughest outline of the hedge. The
barberry seemed pale and ordinary and failed to cheer him.
In his mind he kept smelling the damnable scent of horses.
He trotted down the corridor.
The man had been standing at the far side of the room
facing the street.
He unfolded his manicured fingers. “Please forgive the
inconvenience,” he said.
Holmes took hold of the presented hand. The grip was
firm and yet along the cool fingers he felt the slightest twinge
of anxiety. His own small hand stiffened. Nearly at once
Holmes placed the name that went under the large, well-
proportioned head. “Rather, it is an honor, Your Grace,” he
said.
Without actually frowning the Duke conveyed the impression of a frown.
Holmes managed a look of absorbed seriousness. “Perhaps you would care to tell me the nature of your complaint,”
he suggested.
“I have been out driving,” the Duke said.
“Do have a seat.”
“Yes, of course.”
The Duke drew up a chair.
“I was out for a drive,” the Duke repeated. “Out quite
early.” He raised his eyes. His hands rested easily in his lap.
He said: “Generally I have my driver go north. I am fond of
the river.” He looked to see if there were any reaction. Now
that he had begun to speak, deliberately, in a low voice, he
seemed utterly calm. Only his eyes were more intense. They
moved across Holmes’s face, watchful and yet deprecating.
"I believe that eventually I must have slept,” he said.
“When I woke I recognized the mills. It was at that point that
I thought of you.”
Holmes waited.
The Duke put his hand into his pocket. “I remembered
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WINTERKING
that you had signed the death certificate.” He paused before
drawing it forth. “Since this arrived at the bank,” he said, “I
have carried it about with me." He gave the paper to Holmes.
“You have a clear hand, doctor. Hie name is quite unmistakable.”
Holmes did not bother to examine the paper. “But
something isn’t ,” he said.
The Duke was staring at him.
“I needed to talk with you,” he began. “I have already
spoken with the police.”
Holmes remembered the two young policemen on the
train. “I imagine they were of no help,” he offered.
“He had never been sick,” the Duke said bluntly. “Not
even as a child. I spoke with the mother. In the family there
is no history of illness. Even his grandparents are still alive.”
“You came by accident?” Holmes asked dryly. “You were
out driving, being driven— ”
His Grace might have smiled then but did not. “The
hour at least was chance,” he said. “I was already in Bristol.
In any case I should have insisted on seeing you.” He drew
himself forward. “Forgive m e,” he said. “I confess to impatience. I might at least have waited until you had had your breakfast.”
Holmes shook his head. “It is a doctor’s life.”
“But in this instance the patient is already buried.’
Holmes noticed how for a moment the Duke’s fingers
dug into the arms of the chair. Holmes waited. “There was
literally nothing to be done,” he said. “The young man had
been dead for some minutes when 1 was called to him.”
“I have implied no impropriety.”
“Then why have you come?”
In the hall outside the surgery there was a step. The
door opened. His daughter Amelia (named after her mother
as Oliver, his oldest, was named for himself) pushed in with a
tray bearing two white cups and a steaming china pot. She
came and stood by her father, meeting his reproachful glare
with her prettiest smile. He saw how trimly she had dressed
herself, her mobile, flirtatious face clothed with impertinent
cheerfulness. Rather as if in revenge, he thought. Somehow
His Grace had offended her, probably by taking no notice.
The man after all was at least as old as himself and, Duke or
not, unless he seriously misjudged him, not the sort to have
> his head turned by a pink complexion and a new spring dress.
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101
Holmes gave her a second provoking look.
“I listened,” Amelia said, setting the tray down disobediently. “You were only talking. It isn’t as if. . . ”
His Grace had got to his feet when she entered. Standing himself, Holmes was struck, possibly for the first time, by the Duke’s stature. The Duke made a vague gesture and
Amelia extended her hand.
“My daughter, Your Grace,” Holmes said.
“Your Grace,” she repeated.
Oddly, that seemed enough. Having won or at least
drawn even in a contest which remained to Holmes essentially mysterious, she poured quickly and with scarcely another look curtsied. As the door closed Holmes found His Grace
staring after her.
“Undoubtedly,” Holmes said, faintly embarrassed, “you
have children of your own.’
As if to banish some foreboding, the Duke laughed. “I
am just an old bachelor,” he conceded.
“Confirmed?” The question slipped out without intention.
It surprised them both when for a moment the Duke did
not answer.
2.
When Wykeham stepped onto the platform of Bristol
station it was exactly dawn. He was freshly shaved; the
air felt agreeably mild on his cheek. His head turned expectantly.
It was one of those suddenly bright spring mornings, mimicking summer, which give the solid practical earth the appearance of a dream. lake all real places met in sleep, the city below him seemed at once larger and more intimate. Wykeham
smiled to himself. He went down the steps and onto the
pavement.
He was dressed with more than usual care in a light gray
suit which, although out of fashion, was on this occasion not
conspicuously so. Earlier, soon after rising, his chin lathered,
he had examined his face in the mirror. He had understood
this was foolishness. After fifty years she was probably dead.
At best she had gone off, as old unmarried women often did,
to live precariously and barely tolerated with her younger
relations. She did have sisters. He remembered he had met
them, once, in the dining room of the King’s Porter Hotel.
He had taken her down to the little seaside town on their last