“It’s you!” he cried, “YOU — !”
A shock ran right through his body from his head to his feet, like a current of electricity, and he caught his breath as though he had been struck. For one brief instant the sinister face of some one who had terrified him in the past came back vividly to his mind, and he shrank away in terror. But it was only for an instant, the twentieth part of an instant. Immediately, before he could even remember the name, recognition passed into darkness and his memory shut down with a snap. He was staring into the face of an utter stranger, about whom he knew nothing and had no feelings particularly one way or another.
“I thought I knew you,” he gasped, “but I’ve forgotten you again — and I thought you were going to be a man, too.”
“Jimbo!” cried the other, and in her voice was such unmistakable tenderness and yearning that the boy knew at once beyond doubt that she was his friend, “Jimbo!”
She knelt down on the floor beside him, so that her face was on a level with his, and then opened both her arms to him. But though Jimbo was glad to have found a friend who was going to help him, he felt no particular desire to be embraced, and he stood obstinately where he was with his back to the window.
The morning sunshine fell upon her features and touched the thick coils of her hair with glory. It was not, strictly speaking, a pretty face, but the look of real human tenderness there was very welcome and comforting, and in the kind brown eyes there shone a strange light that was not merely the reflection of the sunlight. The boy felt his heart warm to her as he looked, but her expression puzzled him, and he would not accept the invitation of her arms.
“Won’t you come to me?” she said, her arms still outstretched.
“I want to know who you are, and what I’m doing here,” he said. “I feel so funny — so old and so young — and all mixed up. I can’t make out who I am a bit. What’s that funny name you call me?”
“Jimbo is your name,” she said softly.
“Then what’s your name?” he asked quickly.
“My name,” she repeated slowly after a pause, “is not — as nice as yours. Besides, you need not know my name — you might dislike it.”
“But I must have something to call you,” he persisted.
“But if I told you, and you disliked the name, you might dislike me too,” she said, still hesitating.
Jimbo saw the expression of sadness in her eyes, and it won his confidence though he hardly knew why. He came up closer to her and put his puzzled little face next to hers.
“I like you very much already,” he whispered, “and if your name is a horrid one I’ll change it for you at once. Please tell me what it is.”
She drew the boy to her and gave him a little hug, and he did not resist. For a long time she did not answer. He felt vaguely that something of dreadful importance hung about this revelation of her name. He repeated his question, and at length she replied, speaking in a very low voice, and with her eyes fixed intently upon his face.
“My name,” she said, “is Ethel Lake.”
“Ethel Lake,” he repeated after her. The words sounded somehow familiar to him; surely he had heard that name before. Were not the words associated with something in his past that had been unpleasant? A curious sinking sensation came over him as he heard them.
His companion watched him intently while he repeated the words over to himself several times, as if to make sure he had got them right. There was a moment’s hesitation as he slowly went over them once again. Then he turned to her, laughing.
“I like your name, Ethel Lake,” he said. “It’s a nice name — Miss — Miss — —” Again he hesitated, while a little warning tremor ran through his mind, and he wondered for an instant why he said “Miss.” But it passed as suddenly as it had come, and he finished the sentence— “Miss Lake, I shall call you.” He stared into her eyes as he said it.
“Then you don’t remember me at all?” she cried, with a sigh of intense relief. “You’ve quite forgotten?”
“I never saw you before, did I? How can I remember you? I don’t remember any of the things I’ve forgotten. Are you one of them?”
For reply she caught him to her breast and kissed him. “You precious little boy!” she said. “I’m so glad, oh, so glad!”
“But do you remember me?” he asked, sorely puzzled. “Who am I? Haven’t I been born yet, or something funny like that?”
“If you don’t remember me,” said the other, her face happy with smiles that had evidently come only just in time to prevent tears, “there’s not much good telling you who you are. But your name, if you really want to know, is — —” She hesitated a moment.
“Be quick, Eth — Miss Lake, or you’ll forget it again.”
She laughed rather bitterly. “Oh, I never forget. I can’t!” she said. “I wish I could. Your name is James Stone, and Jimbo is ‘short’ for James. Now you know.”
She might just as well have said Bill Sykes for all the boy knew or remembered.
“What a silly name!” he laughed. “But it can’t be my real name, or I should know it. I never heard it before.” After a moment he added, “Am I an old man? I feel just like one. I suppose I’m grown up — grown up so fast that I’ve forgotten what came before — —”
“You’re not grown up, dear, at least, not exactly — —” She glanced down at his alpaca knickerbockers and brown stockings; and as he followed her eyes and saw the dirty buttoned-boots there came into his mind some dim memory of where he had last put them on, and of some one who had helped him. But it all passed like a swift meteor across the dark night of his forgetfulness and was lost in mist.
“You mustn’t judge by these silly clothes,” he laughed. “I shall change them as soon as I get — as soon as I can find — —” He stopped short. No words came. A feeling of utter loneliness and despair swept suddenly over him, drenching him from head to foot. He felt lost and friendless, naked, homeless, cold. He was ever on the brink of regaining a whole lot of knowledge and experience that he had known once long ago, ever so long ago, but it always kept just out of his reach. He glanced at Miss Lake, feeling that she was his only possible comfort in a terrible situation. She met his look and drew him tenderly towards her.
“Now, listen to me,” she said gently, “I’ve something to tell you — about myself.”
He was all attention in a minute.
“I am a discharged governess,” she began, holding her breath when once the words were out.
“Discharged!” he repeated vaguely. “What’s that? What for?”
“For frightening a child. I told a little boy awful stories that weren’t true. They terrified him so much that I was sent away. That’s why I’m here now. It’s my punishment. I am a prisoner here until I can find him — and help him to escape — —”
“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed quickly, as though remembering something. But it passed, and he looked up at her half-bored, half-politely. “Escape from what?” he asked.
“From here. This is the Empty House I told the stories about; and you are the little boy I frightened. Now, at last, I’ve found you, and am going to save you.” She paused, watching him with eyes that never left his face for an instant.
Jimbo was delighted to hear he was going to be rescued, but he felt no interest at all in her story of having frightened a little boy, who was himself. He thought it was very nice of her to take so much trouble, and he told her so, and when he went up and kissed her and thanked her, he saw to his surprise that she was crying. For the life of him he could not understand why a discharged governess whom he met, apparently, for the first time in the Empty House, should weep over him and show him so much affection. But he could think of nothing to say, so he just waited till she had finished.
“You see, if I can save you,” she said between her sobs, “it will be all right again, and I shall be forgiven, and shall be able to escape with you. I want you to escape, so that you can get back to life again.”
“Oh, t
hen I’m dead, am I?”
“Not exactly dead,” she said, drying her eyes with the corner of her black hood. “You’ve had a funny accident, you know. If your body gets all right, so that you can go back and live in it again, then you’re not dead. But if it’s so badly injured that you can’t work in it any more, then you are dead, and will have to stay dead. You’re still joined to the body in a fashion, you see.”
He stared and listened, not understanding much. It all bored him. She talked without explaining, he thought. An immense sponge had passed over the slate of the past and wiped it clean beyond recall. He was utterly perplexed.
“How funny you are!” he said vaguely, thinking more of her tears than her explanations.
“Water won’t stay in a cracked bottle,” she went on, “and you can’t stay in a broken body. But they’re trying to mend it now, and if we can escape in time you can be an ordinary, happy little boy in the world again.”
“Then are you dead, too?” he asked, “or nearly dead?”
“I am out of my body, like you,” she answered evasively, after a moment’s pause.
He was still looking at her in a dazed sort of way, when she suddenly sprang to her feet and let the hood drop back over her face.
“Hush!” she whispered, “he’s listening again.”
At the same moment a sound came from beneath the floor on the other side of the room, and Jimbo saw the trap-door being slowly raised above the level of the floor.
“Your number is 102,” said a voice that sounded like the rushing of a river.
Instantly the trap-door dropped again, and he heard heavy steps rumbling away into the interior of the house. He looked at his companion and saw her terrified face as she lifted her hood.
“He always blunders along like that,” she whispered, bending her head on one side to listen. “He can’t see properly in the daylight. He hates sunshine, and usually only goes out after dark.” She was white and trembling.
“Is that the person who brought me in here this morning at such a frightful pace?” he asked, bewildered.
She nodded. “He wanted to get in before it was light, so that you couldn’t see his face.”
“Is he such a fright?” asked the boy, beginning to share her evident feeling of horror.
“He is Fright!” she said in an awed whisper. “But never talk about him again unless you can’t help it; he always knows when he’s being talked about, and he likes it, because it gives him more power.”
Jimbo only stared at her without comprehending. Then his mind jumped to something else he wanted badly to have explained, and he asked her about his number, and why he was called No. 102.
“Oh, that’s easier,” she said, “102 is your number among the Frightened Children; there are 101 of them, and you are the last arrival. Haven’t you seen them yet? It is also the temperature of your broken little body lying on the bed in the night nursery at home,” she added, though he hardly caught her words, so low were they spoken.
Jimbo then described how the children had sung and danced to him, and went on to ask a hundred questions about them. But Miss Lake would give him very little information, and said he would not have very much to do with them. Most of them had been in the House for years and years — so long that they could probably never escape at all.
“They are all frightened children,” she said. “Little ones scared out of their wits by silly people who meant to amuse them with stories, or to frighten them into being well behaved — nursery-maids, elder sisters, and even governesses!”
“And they can never escape?”
“Not unless the people who frightened them come to their rescue and run the risk of being caught themselves.”
As she spoke there rose from the depths of the house the sound of muffled voices, children’s voices singing faintly together; it rose and fell exactly like the wind, and with as little tune; it was weird and magical, but so utterly mournful that the boy felt the tears start to his eyes. It drifted away, too, just as the wind does over the tops of the trees, dying into the distance; and all became still again.
“It’s just like the wind,” he said, “and I do love the wind. It makes me feel so sad and so happy. Why is it?”
The governess did not answer.
“How old am I really?” he went on. “How can I be so old and so ignorant? I’ve forgotten such an awful lot of knowledge.”
“The fact is — well, perhaps, you won’t quite understand — but you’re really two ages at once. Sometimes you feel as old as your body, and sometimes as old as your soul. You’re still connected with your body; so you get the sensations of both mixed up.”
“Then is the body younger than the soul?”
“The soul — that is yourself,” she answered, “is, oh, so old, awfully old, as old as the stars, and older. But the body is no older than itself — of course, how could it be?”
“Of course,” repeated the boy, who was not listening to a word she said. “How could it be?”
“But it doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you feel, as long as you don’t hate me for having frightened you,” she said after a pause. “That’s the chief thing.”
He was very, very puzzled. He could not help feeling it had been rather unkind of her to frighten him so badly that he had literally been frightened out of his skin; but he couldn’t remember anything about it, and she was taking so much trouble to save him now that he quite forgave her. He nestled up against her, and said of course he liked her, and she stroked his curly head and mumbled a lot of things to herself that he couldn’t understand a bit.
But in spite of his new-found friend the feeling of over-mastering loneliness would suddenly rush over him. She might be a protector, but she was not a real companion; and he knew that somewhere or other he had left a lot of other real companions whom he now missed dreadfully. He longed more than he could say for freedom; he wanted to be able to come and go as he pleased; to play about in a garden somewhere as of old; to wander over soft green lawns among laburnums and sweet-smelling lilac trees, and to be up to all his old tricks and mischief — though he could not remember in detail what they were.
In a word, he wanted to escape; his whole being yearned to escape and be free again; yet here he was a wretched prisoner in a room like a prison-cell, with a sort of monster for a keeper, and a troop of horrible frightened children somewhere else in the house to keep him company. And outside there was only a hard, narrow, paved courtyard with a high wall round it. Oh, it was too terrible to think of, and his heart sank down within him till he felt as if he could do nothing else but cry.
“I shall save you in time,” whispered the governess, as though she read his thoughts. “You must be patient, and do what I tell you, and I promise to get you out. Only be brave, and don’t ask too many questions. We shall win in the end and escape.”
Suddenly he looked up, with quite a new expression in his face. “But I say, Miss Cake, I’m frightfully hungry. I’ve had nothing to eat since — I can’t remember when, but ever so long ago.”
“You needn’t call me Miss Cake, though,” she laughed.
“I suppose it’s because I’m so hungry.”
“Then you’ll call me Miss Lake when you’re thirsty, perhaps,” she said. “But, anyhow, I’ll see what I can get you. Only, you must eat as little as possible. I want you to get very thin. What you feel is not really hunger — it’s only a memory of hunger, and you’ll soon get used to it.”
He stared at her with a very distressful little face as she crossed the room making this new announcement; and just as she disappeared through the trap-door, only her head being visible, she added with great emphasis, “The thinner you get the better; because the thinner you are the lighter you are, and the lighter you are the easier it will be to escape. Remember, the thinner the better — the lighter the better — and don’t ask a lot of questions about it.”
With that the trap-door closed over her, and Jimbo was left alone with her last stran
ge words ringing in his ears.
CHAPTER VII. THE SPELL OF THE EMPTY HOUSE
It was not long before Jimbo realised that the House, and everything connected with it, spelt for him one message, and one only — a message of fear. From the first day of his imprisonment the forces of his whole being shaped themselves without further ado into one intense, single, concentrated desire to escape.
Freedom, escape into the world beyond that terrible high wall, was his only object, and Miss Lake, the governess, as its symbol, was his only hope. He asked a lot of questions and listened to a lot of answers, but all he really cared about was how he was going to escape, and when. All her other explanations were tedious, and he only half-listened to them. His faith in her was absolute, his patience unbounded; she had come to save him, and he knew that before long she would accomplish her end. He felt a blind and perfect confidence. But, meanwhile, his fear of the House, and his horror for the secret Being who meant to keep him prisoner till at length he became one of the troop of Frightened Children, increased by leaps and bounds.
Presently the trap-door creaked again, and the governess reappeared; in her hand was a small white jug and a soup plate.
“Thin gruel and skim milk,” she explained, pouring out a substance like paste into the soup plate, and handing him a big wooden spoon.
But Jimbo’s hunger had somehow vanished.
“It wasn’t real hunger,” she told him, “but only a sort of memory of being hungry. They’re trying to feed your broken body now in the night-nursery, and so you feel a sort of ghostly hunger here even though you’re out of the body.”
“It’s easily satisfied, at any rate,” he said, looking at the paste in the soup plate.
“No one actually eats or drinks here — —”
“But I’m solid,” he said, “am I not?”
“People always think they’re solid everywhere,” she laughed. “It’s only a question of degree; solidity here means a different thing to solidity there.”
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 5