‘No doubt,’ he continued, hesitatingly, looking round briefly at our row of faces, ‘you are wondering why, having got rid of it in such a deliberate manner, I bought its counterpart the moment I saw one in a shop. The reason is very simple. I was overjoyed at finding that another person besides myself had been to the place. . . . I always think of it as the loneliest inhabited house in England. The atrocious puffball weed told me that the house was indeed the very same. Without doubt, he had tasted the cheese and cider there . . . had stayed there half the night . . . had handled the same set of instruments. . . .’
Harlock stared into the heart of the fire.
‘Very vividly,’ he continued, in a thoughtful voice, ‘I remember that slow and oddly clear September evening when, having walked for the better part of a day, I found myself, with the sea waves at my back, staying inland at a house, a cottage, a habitation—call it what you like—that sprawled beneath a thin protection of stunted and ragged trees at the back of a field of washed-out poppies, under a rising moon. A solitary light was shining below the thatched eaves, and I walked towards it over the poppy field.
‘A nice sort of place to come upon when you’re tired and hungry and have lost your way! Look for yourselves. Did you ever see a more god-forsaken spot, such ragged trees, such a sprawling and shapeless dwelling? And yet, you know, because of its very shapelessness it had a shape—the picture has caught it perfectly, and so did mine. Can you imagine such a ridiculous combination of things as a bloated pancake with a blanket of heavy thatch on the top of it? That’s how it looked, in detail, when I was right up to it. All the straw colour had been soaked out by the sea-wind. And look at that feathery, puff-ball weed! It shows like a ground-mist in the picture, doesn’t it? Up to the thatched eaves in many places; even higher. Heaven knows how I found the door at last, and the courage to thump it. I shall never forget that dead and dismal thumping on the door. Then I tried the latch, and found myself at once in a room that seemed to spread over the whole house. For all I knew, it was the house. The endless sagging beams helped to make it look like that, I think. And at first I could see nothing else in particular—nothing but the lamp on the huge round table, and a multitude of tiny windows with that weed shining beyond them. Then I saw some plates and dishes on the wall, the swinging of a pendulum—and after that . . . I always wish I had never seen the large and pale and flabby woman who was moving towards me from the far end of the room. She was unspeakably large. I stood my ground, staring, and I believe I counted the thumping clicks of the pendulum clock; they must have been, at any rate, the only links between myself and the busy world outside. They pulled me together at last, I suppose, for suddenly I blurted out that I had lost my way and had seen her light; and as she approached the table, smiling at me enormously, she sucked in her tiny lips until they almost disappeared. But the horridest thing about her was that she seemed to have earth in her hair.’
Here Harlock paused; but only a stranger would have broken the silence. ‘I have never seen a fatter woman,’ our host continued. ‘She panted at the slightest exertion—gently enough—it was the only sound that ever came from her—but sufficiently to show me that she was certainly flesh and blood. Otherwise I might have had my doubts about her. For even at a distance the house had looked haunted. Something in the very set of the trees—the flock of feathers on the evening light—and the soughing of the sea. . . . And because of her shortness of breath I began to suspect that her fatness was constitutional. Oh, you mustn’t think that I was working it out as clearly as this! It was merely a matter of instinct, I suppose, roused by my hopes of a good square meal. And in the end, of course, I found I was right: my spirits had risen too high. Risen at the prospect of a well-stocked larder, I mean. For she motioned me up to the table, and I sat on a stool, an antique thing, hollowed and polished with years of sitting; and then she took a loaf of bread and half a cheese from a cupboard, and poured me out a bowl of cider, and I wanted to cry. Or very nearly.
‘She sat there facing me across the table, large and still and silent in her wan, robe-like dress, while in my hunger I tried to swallow my tough bread and crumbly cheese and to wash them down with hurried gulps of cider from the bowl; and whenever I glanced at her over the rim I saw her horrid smile. My hostess sat with her clasped plump hands on the table, smiling at unknown things. Hostess? What a funny word to use! I watched her get up noiselessly, and then—I wish I could make you hear the sound that followed. She went round the room, swishing the little window-curtains on their metal rings and rods: swish, swish, swish, swish, a ripple passing round the room, blotting out the moonlight, blotting out those pictures of feathery, puff-ball weed.
‘She left me abruptly after that—abruptly for her, I mean—and I wondered, with rather mixed feelings, whether she had gone to prepare a room for me—a bed. Perhaps it was because of her unbroken silence, and the even flow of her movements, that I took her hospitality, such as it was, as a matter of course. I don’t remember asking myself whether she would expect to be paid for my night’s lodging; she and money seemed so utterly unrelated to each other, I suppose. But I do remember that this sudden and welcome change in the evening’s entertainment left me somewhat breathless—a bit frightened. Should I run away? While there was time? The same old situation that you come across in books. Such nonsense! But that’s exactly how I felt, just then. The cider didn’t help me. The cheese was appalling. Dry, crumbly stuff. Sour, too. Tasting rather of earth.
‘I was to get many things into my head that night, but never the cider. This woman’s flowing bowl was not of that kind. I could have shattered the silence without an effort, if it had been. In the end I made my effort, and succeeded—but what a fool I felt! “I must do my best,” I thought, “to keep my spirits up. I shall see it out!”—and the sudden sound of my voice startled me and made me laugh. I began at once to examine the room with deep interest. Here and there the ceiling bulged to such an extent that I knew I would bump my head against it sooner or later—running from the house in a moment of panic, for instance—it’s funny what nerves will do! I liked the clock high up on the wall—and that was scarcely higher than head-level. It was one of those ancient timepieces built when time was really slow, with a round, brass face, a leisurely pendulum, and two brass weights on chains—by which I gathered that the clock would strike at any moment now—it was nearly nine—and I was curious to hear its voice. The plates and dishes on the cloudy dresser gave out a sort of phosphorescent light. They had no other use, I thought, but to be seen and wondered at; for a large oak chest was standing in front of the range. The mouth of the chimney above the chest was hollow, dark, and dead. There was no fireside. No chimney corner. Nowhere to sit and tell stories. . . .
‘I never heard it strike,’ he said, with a kind of regret. ‘She came back before that happened. I heard the last of its loud ticks as she closed the door upon them; and I felt quite lonely then, lonely and rather bewildered, for while I was following her along the countless passages and ups and downs of her strange residence she looked like a thick mist rolling in front of me . . . if you can imagine such a silly thing as a solid mist panting for breath.’
Harlock turned, and gazed for several moments—with a certain look of distress, I thought—at the picture in the chair. ‘I want you,’ he said, ‘I want you to get the hang of that room she took me to. I mean especially the feeling of it. But to begin with, it was a very big room, and she had lighted it with six or seven candles. Quite a showy display! Three of them were standing on a large, square table in the middle of the floor. The floor itself was covered with some kind of cork matting. She had stood two candles on a chest of drawers. She had even placed a candle on a chair in one of the corners, near the huge, painted, wooden bed. All the furniture was very massive, and painted. After the candles, it was the colour of the room that I noticed chiefly. The walls were panelled—shallow panels from wainscot to cornice—and painted a bluish green—I may as well call it viridian; a very light
and faded but still rather shiny viridian. The furniture was of the same colour; so was the bed-linen, and the billowy eiderdown; so were the heavy, shallow window-curtains; and because of this prevalent colouring, and in spite of the size of the furniture, the room looked empty and asleep. I sat on the edge of the high bed, on the top of the thick eiderdown, with the toes of my shoes just touching the floor. My mind was all on the room in which I was sitting. I was trying to get the feeling of it. And do you know what it was? You can’t. It was children.
‘It had been a nursery. But whose children, whose nursery, how can we ever know? Hers? That would be the most natural thing in the world . . . and the most horrible. And in any case,’ said Harlock thoughtfully, after a pause, ‘the question didn’t seem to matter very much to me then, and I don’t know that it does now. The feeling was there—the feeling of the nursery itself, I mean, of—merely of children long departed. And that also—I remember thinking to myself after a time—didn’t matter any longer. The history of the room was over. Over and done with. Or was it, perhaps, only “over”, and not yet “done with”?
‘At this point in my speculations I took off my heavy walking-shoes, and lay flat on the bed, under the thick eiderdown, which I pulled up to my chin. I had left all the candles burning, for I was afraid to sleep. I spent some time tracing with my eyes the very faded pattern on the ceiling, pretending that the pattern was a maze and that I was walking about in it, a game that I never get tired of; but even if I had gone to sleep I suppose the little bell would have woken me. You know how it is, in a strange room—things are watching you all the night, and you awaken early, suddenly, all alert: you wake up to listen for something that you have just heard. For some time I had been listening to the far off flump of the slow waves on the shore; and suddenly I heard the tinkle of a bell on the beach. They had washed up a bell? In a few moments, of course, I knew that it had tinkled in the room. I let the thought sink in. Then I threw off the eiderdown!
‘It was only a momentary panic. One of those unreasoning fears that children do have, you know. In fact, as I roved about in my socks, searching for a toy, the room appeared quite friendly. I felt that I had known it all my life—The Viridian Room. I heard the bell tinkling again, jerkily, intermittently. At last I stood in front of a tall cupboard. It wasn’t locked. And there were no shelves in it—nothing to throw shadows. On the floor, at the back, I saw the bell shining in the candlelight. It was one of those tiny, round bells that toy reins have on them. I couldn’t see why it had rung. By that, I mean, of course, how the bell had rung . . . the material reason. . . . I took it out,’ said Harlock, ‘I took it out and tinkled it; and presently I went and looked at the box of chalks on the table.
‘It was open. I had seen it all the time—seen it without realising exactly what it was, I mean—seen just its existence, and not its purpose; for who would expect a box like that to contain chalks all of the same colour? After tinkling my bell for some time I dropped it on to the table and sat there facing the open cupboard and toying with my chalks, and presently I wanted a sheet of paper to write on. I found it in the drawer beside me, an exercise-book. I pulled up my chair, spread my elbows, and wrote at once, in viridian green, on a new page:
One, two, buckle my shoe;
Three, four, knock at the door;
Five, six, pick up sticks;
Seven, eight, lay them straight;
Nine, ten, a fine fat hen;
Eleven, twelve, dig and delve.
‘You remember that nursery rhyme? Until then I had forgotten it. I used to think it was full of sense, even when taken in a lump; and while I was still sitting at the table, looking across it into the open, lighted cupboard, and thinking over the words that I had just written down, I saw the mouse. At the back of the cupboard, against the wall, I saw a mousehole. Clearly the source of the tinkling! While I watched, two black shiny eyes appeared, and the furry shadow glided along the floor of the cupboard and into the room, where it took to moving in fits and starts.
‘ “Hi there! What are you up to, you little beggar?” I called out, starting off in pursuit, and brandishing one of my heavy walking-shoes—but not with any serious purpose; you know I would never hit a creature, don’t you? I simply followed the mouse across the room as far as the chest of drawers; and there I found a pair of shoes on the floor . . . kicked off into the corner between the chest and the wall.
One, two, buckle my shoe.
Harlock had dropped into his gentlest voice.
‘They did have buckles on them. Buckles as bright as silver. So I put on the shoes, and buckled them up, and found that in them I could walk as stealthily as a cat. I prowled with such gentleness over the room that I hardly made a candle quiver; and presently I stopped in front of the narrow door, the door that I haven’t yet told you about.
‘You see it the moment you enter the room—a rather low and narrow door on the far side of the table; but you don’t really see it until later, when you are standing right in front of it, looking at the little knocker—the kind that you sometimes see on the study door in a vicarage.
Three, four, knock at the door.
‘I knocked at the door.
‘ “Come in!” called an incredibly high-pitched, thin, and windy voice. I went in, shutting the door behind me.’
At this point, Harlock jumped to his feet, and proposed loudly a round of drinks. He switched on a blaze of light, and we heard him boiling his electric kettle behind our backs.
‘All that I could see at first,’ he continued, in a steady voice, a minute or so after he had returned to his chair, and while we were still sipping our whisky toddies in the restored fire-light, ‘was a regiment of moonbeams slanting into the room through uncurtained lattice windows, and a man facing me across the floor, motionless, waiting—myself, in a mirror. What a fool one feels, when one’s two selves are brought thus face to face—each of them scared of the other! The first movement—the sudden tentative trial—and the spell is broken, and you turn eagerly to look for the thing that you expect to find. I saw her, at hand, lying on her large bed, slowly kneading the eiderdown beneath her with her fat fingers, pulling in her lips, watching me with her small eyes; and the floor and the bed and the woman were patterned with lattice windows. The bars of shadow and light showed me her rounded, massive bulk to perfection. Five, six, pick up sticks.
‘And where do you think I found them? Why, on the bed itself, of course! A couple of bedstaffs. Do you know what a bedstaff is? It’s a loose cross-piece of antique bedsteads, often used as a handy weapon. I took them from the head and foot of the bed, and while I was doing so the face of my hostess was twisting about with a kind of cringing, mock terror. Five, six, pick up sticks—seven, eight—lay them straight! I remember that while I was wielding my cudgels I glanced in the mirror and saw the shadows of the window bars slipping along them. Lay them straight, lay them straight! Seven, eight, lay them straight! I laid them good and straight. Once I felt a shiver in my arm—I had hit the ceiling.
‘As soon as I had satisfied myself that the flutters of her heart had ceased—I can still feel her wrist between my finger and thumb, you know—I dropped my bedstaffs for good, and hurried off to open one of the two other doors in the room—The Garden Door, I fancied the children had called it. How breathless was the scene through The Garden Door! I held my breath and gazed all over the great neglected garden; then I returned to the woman and picked her up, and I swear she was no heavier than a puff-ball. But what an armful she made! What an armful! What a fine fat hen! I carried her into the garden and over the rank grass and plunged with her into the cluster of weed beyond. I had seen it through The Garden Door, shimmering in the moonlight. The stuff stood higher than my head, and was here in great profusion—a forest of weed. I don’t know how long I took to reach my destination. Probably not very long; but when you’re pretending to be a pirate—or something of that kind—carrying your booty into the depths of the woods, to bury it, well, you don’t care at al
l how long you take to reach the burial place. I came upon it in a moment, without warning—a sudden breaking from the weed into broad moonlight. “This is the place,” I remember saying—“this is the spot they have chosen.”
‘A spade lay ready to my hand, and fluff from the surrounding weed was drifting and settling all the while on to the tumbled earth.
Eleven, twelve,
Dig and delve.
‘I put down my burden, and took up the spade; and in that spot I dug and delved.
‘When I came out of the weed,’ said Harlock, in his softest voice, ‘I saw that the feathers were sticking to my clothes like splashes of plaster.’ The fire had burnt low, we could scarcely see each other’s faces, and only his voice was holding our little group together. ‘And I think it was the sight of those feathers,’ he said, ‘that sent me tearing back in a panic over the lawn, slapping my clothes all the time. Escape! I had no other thought but that. The children’s rhyme had worked its way with me. Escape from the house and the clump of weed and the infamous thing that I had buried there. I ran through the bedroom and into the viridian nursery and kicked off the buckled shoes—kicked them into the corner, as all the others had done!—and while I was sitting on the bed, putting on my walking shoes, and looking towards the open cupboard, I saw the mouse returning to his hole beside the little bell. . . .
‘What was the use of my shutting the cupboard door with a bang? The Viridian Room hardly echoed to it. And even the loudest noise would not have convinced me that in that silent house such a sudden crash must certainly have brought things to an end. I even took steps to prove to my satisfaction that I was right. I ran back into the bedroom, back into all those spears of moonlight; and then—I wish I had never opened The Garden Door again. It was not what I actually saw, but what I knew I would see if I stayed for more than a very few moments. . . . Looking across the wild, moonlit grass, I saw at least a shaking in the tops of the weed—and it wasn’t the wind, you know—the movement was working its way towards me, slowly, jerkily, inch by inch. . . .
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