“There’s a Pig Stye somewhere — upstairs probably,” she said to herself, “and there’s something in it I’m going to find. And I’ve got to be quick too!” Her intense sincerity and earnestness kept her calm.
She hurried. She passed through the kitchen, left it by another door and found herself in the banqueting hall. Then she stopped dead. A shrill voice in the distance had reached her ears:
“Maria, child! Where are you?”
“There she is again,” Maria exclaimed to herself impatiently, “shrieking for me even when I’m doing nothing!
But who the “she” referred to hovered just beyond the rim of memory and remained a mystery. It was a voice that was familiar, just as the spontaneous words in her mind were familiar, and further than that at the moment there was no occasion to analyse or question, least of all to feel bothered. Indeed, it was the darkness of the great hall that bothered her far more. There ought surely to have been a bright, giant chandelier that hung blazing from the ceiling.
“But anyhow, I’m all right,” she assured herself. “Jack is with me. Besides,” she comforted herself still further, “I haven’t done anything wrong except dawdle a bit, and if the big chandelier is not blazing — well, it isn’t, and that’s not my fault!”
She walked on across the vast empty floor, feeling as safe as though some mighty power held her by the hand. For no sense of naughtiness, much less of guilt, lay in her. She was here to look for something she had a right to look for: she had come to find something she was perfectly entitled to find: more, she was expected to find. She had delayed and dawdled, yes, but she had never forgotten quite; it had never left her mind entirely. No, never entirely or quite, she told herself. That haunting memory of something important she must find had dogged her whole life.... She had lazed and dreamed and loafed, of course, but — she had not fallen asleep exactly, for playing with a dream of sorts was not precisely sleeping. And if her dream had not been quite real, neither, for that matter, had she herself been quite real. How hard, oh, how hard it was, she now perceived, to keep awake and real! How easy and natural to drift into a sort of mechanical dream-state where things and persons happening outside oneself took on a clever mask of reality, and pricked one into automatic action that seemed real....
“Maria, child! Maria...!” called the distant voice.
Tick tock! Tick tock! Tick tock! beat the ever-ever-hunting footsteps.
She heard them both; the high-pitched, exasperating voice, and the grinding sound that followed the other, the strike close at hand. And while she heard them both and hurried her walk perceptibly, almost running now, strange objects, strange because they were half familiar, came poking up above the horizon of her thoughts, objects that held an air of terrific, startling reality compared to anything she had experienced here. A dear, kindly face with a beard and a ridiculous and helpless smile she saw; a tiger-skin; a teapot; a tray, a plate with prune stones arranged round its white rim; a pair of legs with bulging calves in rough woollen stockings; a mantelpiece where a white-faced clock stared ominously down....
She saw them all motionless, as though suspended calmly in deep water, clear enough in outline, yet blurred by the depth in which they hung and floated. They refused to disclose themselves entirely. There! They popped down again out of sight. They were gone.
“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” she heard herself crying out. “Where is it? It must be upstairs, of course! Upstairs!”
She had crossed two-thirds of the enormous empty room. It seemed endless. She bumped and bruised herself against the corners of the table, the edges of chairs. It was a haunted and a haunting journey, a real nightmare passage, but her pluck did not fail her, her purpose held. She would find the Pig Stye or die in the attempt. Delay even for a single second, she knew, was utterly impossible. It was now or never. And yet her best pace was little better than a crawl. What odd, whispering sounds there were, too! As if others were just in front or just behind her, and more than once she heard a door being opened, another closed, with faint tappings, rattlings of handles, and queer, soft sounds as though someone went past her swiftly in stockinged feet.
“I shall be an old woman before I get to the end,” ran the frightening thought.
“You are already,” came a whisper, as a door opened with a soft thud above her somewhere.
She looked up. —
“You’ve lived your life and haven’t found it. Come, stay with us and play with us....”
The whisper was behind her. She turned, staring across the immense space she had already crossed. The nightmare flooded over her with its appalling power at full tide.
“Maria, child! Where are you?”
Tick tock! Tick tock!
“Streaked like the lightning, stalking every man!”
“Darkness cometh when no man can work!”
“No abiding city here!”
“Pearl of Great Price... few there be that find it... needle in a haystack...!”
“Too late... search and you shall find.... Pig Stye...!”
All these words and phrases, jumbled up together, rushed tumbling through her head as she turned and looked across the immense space of floor that she had just crossed. For there, right before her bewildered eyes, she saw the Fruit Stoners, the whole Ancient Company of her queer Fruit Stoner friends, and they were seated in a circle on the floor. Yes, all seated in a circle on the floor of the vast banqueting hall.
“Was I all that time crossing it?” she asked herself with a bewildered shudder. “How did they manage to slip in like that?”
They had faded horribly. She had entirely forgotten them. She had forgotten everything, all her past life, her married years, her adventures, her voyages... all had faded into some dim, measureless obscurity. How crinkled, dark and tiny their faces looked.... How unimportant and absurd both they and her own past, vivid existence now seemed suddenly....
A shiver as of death passed through her as she stared at this circle of figures seated on the floor. Was nothing, nothing real? Had everything, everything been illusion? She felt lost.
A hand in the darkness crept into her own, though she could see no outline of a figure. She felt long, slender fingers clasp her own. There was a fantastic, a magical delicacy of touch. A shock, as of delicious lightning, that stung yet did not injure, raced with fiery conviction along her arm and straight into her heart. She was aware of some touch of instinctive, infallible guidance. A flash of delirious, joyful radiance burned her.
“Then — love is real, at least!” darted across her being in its depths, for she recognized the touch, the guidance, with a spasm of such intensity that it was pain.
“Watch,” came an answering whisper. And the guiding hand, ever invisible, drew her to the side of the room. “I tell you this, because you have given everything. Watch... when you see it — act. We shall enter paradise together...!”
Without understanding, she yielded to the guidance and obeyed. Leaning against the wall, she stood and watched.
In a dim light which seemed to come from nowhere, and was more like pale moonlight than anything she could think of, she saw the Fruit Stoners in a circular group, not upright and standing, but seated in the middle of the vast floor. There they were in a circle, sitting cross-legged fashion, and busily intent upon something they were doing.
She held her breath, still as any mouse, and stared. What on earth were they so intent upon? Their whole attention was concentrated on it. They evidently had not noticed Judas scamper across the floor, they seemed equally unaware that she now stood watching them. Their whole minds were focused on what they were doing.
What was it? It looked like a game. They seemed to be playing a game of sorts. Behind their backs, under the arches of their legs, they were passing something swiftly from one to another. They were trying to hide it, trying to find it, each making sudden violent grabs to snatch at it before it was passed beyond the reach of the outstretched hand. She then saw the Gentleman rise abruptly, and wi
th top-hat on the back of his head, eyeglass swinging and coat-tails flying, tear round and round outside the seated circle, and make frantic efforts to seize the mysterious object over their shoulders.
A trembling of great violence ran over her. She had flashed back into childhood with a sudden bang that startled her. This game they were playing secretly was a game she knew, a game she had played herself somewhere long ago, though where and when escaped her. She felt herself upon the verge of remembering. Any instant now her memory would pour back in a flood. It balanced just out of sight, hovering, ready to topple over and declare itself.
She would remember what she had come to find! The purpose of her whole life and being would be fulfilled!
The game rushed madly on, half alarming, half absurd, yet of stupendous importance, for the object the Fruit Stoners kept hiding, snatching, passing from one to the other, was, of course, the object she had come to find.
“I am a silly ass to have forgotten it!” she cried under her breath. “I know exactly what it is. I’ve known it all along. It’s — it’s—”
But the name still held away. The name escaped her.
Immense periods, as she stood there watching, seemed to stretch behind her, years and years and years; she had stood there for ages; childhood, youth, maturity had all slipped past her since she first came.
... Moreover, it was all as familiar as getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. She had lived through it all a hundred times before, and she would live through it all a hundred times again. The whole business just went on happening over and over again in this recurrent, mechanical, futile way....
She became abruptly aware that the Gentleman was looking straight at her with a fixed and unsheathed eye. The object he had just successfully snatched from the Tinker in front of him was actually in his hand. His fingers clutched and hid it, but she knew he held it, her precious object, her Pearl of Great Price, the thing of ultimate importance, whose finding would explain the purpose of her coming here, the aim and meaning of her entire life and being.
That fixed, unsheathed eye looked steadily at her, and Maria returned the gaze unflinchingly. The whole Company now turned their heads to stare at her. A sudden horror invaded her as she met their stare, a sense of the horrible futility of all these doll-like, mechanical, unreal figures she had created, a horror due to the awful realization that she herself — almost — resembled them. The same instant she sprang forward.
“Give it to me!” she shouted frantically at the top of her voice. “Give me that thing at once! It’s mine! It’s what I came to find! And your game is nothing but — but—”
The name escaped her. It hung just out of sight... as she dashed across the floor. A piercing scream escaped her as she ran. For at the same moment the grinding sound of the terrible Tick tock! broke on the air like thunder. Close, quite close to her, crackled out the roaring clamour of the long-dreaded strike.
It was the first strike of six o’clock.
Her Five Minutes were almost up.
She had already taken half a dozen rapid strides, her hands stretched out almost within touching distance of her precious object, when the Gentleman darted back and mingled with the main body of the still seated Fruit Stoners. The same moment the whole circle rose to its feet. And what happened then was so swift, so unexpected, so atrociously of nightmare quality, that she could hardly believe her eyes. For it took place instantly, and instantly it was over. Above the great banqueting hall ran the circular gallery underneath the high white ceiling, and the entire Company of Fruit Stoners, led by the hideously agile Gentleman, had whirled across the floor, flowed up the wide staircase, and were seated round the upper gallery before she could even draw a breath. Like the loops and coils of a flung rope, whirling like a turned wheel, they were there above her, seated again and playing their ridiculous game, the game she could not quite remember. Maria craned her neck upwards, stared in amazement. The very next moment she had reached the foot of the stairs, and was flying up them when her eye saw the tall grandfather’s clock standing on the landing at the top, its round white face staring grimly down at her. It had not been there before. It looked enormous. Was it — horrors! — moving? It was there the awful strike had sounded, the first stroke of the dreaded six o’clock that had haunted her whole existence.
All this happened in less than a second. She could hardly think, she could scarcely feel, for there was no time left for either. But she could, at least, see. The chaos in her mind was beyond all telling, but sight remained clear and vivid. There were five strokes of that monstrous clock to sound yet before her Five Minutes were up, and it was in the intervals between these strokes of doom that her eyes saw what they saw.
She gave one last upward look. Was it an optical delusion? Was the great space of gallery and ceiling shrinking? Was the ceiling lowering itself towards the ring of seated Fruit Stoners, growing smaller as it dropped?
She had no time to ask herself these questions; it was simply that her eyes told her what was happening. The circle of Fruit Stoners, and the vast white ceiling above them, both grew still — till she saw nothing but a ring of crinkly prune-stone faces placed at tiny intervals round the white edge of a — yes, of a white plate.
She saw also, beyond all possible confusion of her senses, the huge upright clock, standing like a lion in her way. She would have to pass this giant clock that barred her way. She must rush upstairs close underneath its dreadful figure in order to reach the tiny figure that still clutched her precious object, her Pearl of Great Price. It was already grinding. Any second the second stroke would crash out upon the air.
“The Pig Stye! The Pig Stye!” roared through her frantic mind.
There was not a second, not a fraction of a second, to lose. She braced her muscles, but her muscles seemed so heavy; in spite of the most violent efforts, her legs carried her so slowly, oh, so slowly towards the stairs. Her heart was bursting. Her very tendons seemed to crack. A curious pungent odour stung her nostrils. “Time is a tiger, stalking every man, streaked like the lightning...” whizzed across her brain. She sniffed. She coughed. Her breath betrayed her. Though her courage did not fail, her body refused obstinately to hurry, so that where she should have rushed, she merely crawled.
Could she believe her eyes? Had it really moved again? Was it still moving, imperceptibly, very slightly, but yet definitely now standing squarely between her and the stairs — leaving hardly room for her to pass?
Just beyond its grim, menacing outline, she could see the ring of crinkled-faced Fruit Stoners, one of them clutching her Pearl of Great Price in its fading little hand.
Oh, she must seize her precious object by force, by violence, she must be up the stairs and in the gallery before — before she could say Knife! Knife! Knife!
Only there was a better name, a better phrase than Knife! What was it? What was that powerful, comforting name that had once helped her, and now was lost again? Only the half of it came to her.
Her mind was a ghastly whirlpool. Pig Stye! Pearl! Fruit Stoners! The purpose of her life fulfilled! That dangerous, acrid smell! Tiger! The Man who Wound the Clocks! The Tyrant who had given her five minutes in which to accomplish the ultimate aim of her whole life and being!
Crash! The second stroke fell with its violent thunder on the air.
She took several racing but faltering steps and reached the foot of the great staircase. She managed the first few stairs in a brave, reckless stride. She knew then that her eyes had not deceived her. The giant grandfather’s clock had moved. It was moving now. It was bending forward, its slow, lumbering giant outline distinctly visible. The whole eight feet of it, the great square shoulders hunching themselves, leant over towards her, till the white, menacing visage seemed to thrust itself in front of her very face. The white disc almost shone. There was not a foot between them.
She stared straight into the appalling visage of her enemy.
“I knew I must meet you sooner or later,” ran a w
hisper of icy courage through her inmost heart.
And nightmare opened its awful mouth and took the entire universe in its jaws. Had it been possible, Maria would have closed her eyes, only the lids refused to work. Her eyes remained wide open as if they would never close again. The clock changed even as she looked. The main body of it shortened, the square outline below divided into two straight supports like legs. Long stripes ran down them. They were legs, legs in striped trousers. Below the hunched shoulders a pair of arms thrust out. The white disc became a human face, the face of a man. She gazed at the monster, the tyrant, who had given her her Five Minutes.
For a second she held her ground, though he was now close enough to touch. Then, as she gave a shuddering start, the striped trousers, the black tailcoat as well, took on a yellowish tinge. The body grew longer suddenly, the flanks showed curiously lean and hollow, the arms and shoulders wore a tawny, streaked appearance, the eyes flashed with amber fire. The lips next drew back upon long pointed teeth, and the same instant the whole immense body dropped upon all fours. It leapt.
The Man who Wound the Clocks! The Tiger! Which was it? Were they both the same?
For a rushing instant she saw the glaring disc that was its face. A terrible white dial she saw. The two hands hung in a dead straight line, the big hand uppermost, the little one below.
It was six o’clock. She had — at most — some thirty seconds left.
It was an animal she faced, streaked like the lightning, a tiger, and a tiger about to spring. There was a grinding of its entrails. The third stroke was upon her. Already it had risen upright again, its seven feet of terror erect upon its hind legs. The dreadful mouth was open wide.
CRASH! came the third terrific roar.
Bereft, stripped bare, empty, her courage met it with the single-hearted prayer that saved her.
“Robinson!” she gave back a terrific shriek. “Jack Robinson!” And was past it and up the stairs at lightning speed, the monster at her heels.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 316