Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  It was the fear of closed spaces. It was claustrophobia I There could no longer be any doubt about it. She was shut in. She was enclosed in a narrow space from which she could not escape. The walls and floor and ceiling shut her in implacably. The doors was fastened; the windows were sealed, there was no escape.

  “That porter might have told me!” she exclaimed inconsequently, mopping her face. Then the foolishness of the saying dawned upon her, and she thought her mind must be going. That was the effect of claustrophobia, she remembered: the mind went, and one said and did foolish things. Oh, to get out into a free open space, uncornered! Here she was trapped, horribly trapped.

  “The guard man should never have locked me in — never !” she cried, and ran up and down between the seats, throwing her weight first against the door and then against the other. Of course, fortunately, neither of them yielded.

  Thinking food might calm her, perhaps, she took down the banana bag and peeled the squashy over ripe fruit, munching it with part of the Bath bun from the other bag, and sitting midway on the forward seat. Suddenly the right-hand window dropped with a bang and a rattle. It had only been stuck after all, and her efforts, aided by the shaking of the train, had completed its undoing, or rather its unclosing. Miss Slumbubble shrieked, and dropped her banana and bun.

  But the shock passed in a moment when she saw what had happened, and that the window was open and the sweet air pouring in from the flying fields. She rushed up and put her head out. This was followed by her hand, for she meant to open the door from the outside if possible. Whatever happened, the one imperative thing was that she must get into open space. The handle turned easily enough, but the door was locked higher up and she could not make it budge. She put her head farther out, so that the wind tore the jet bonnet off her head and left it twirling in the dusty whirlwind on the line far behind, and this sensation of the air whistling past her ears and through her flying hair somehow or other managed to make her feel wilder than ever. In fact, she completely lost her head, and began to scream at the top of her voice:

  “I’m locked in! I’m a prisoner! Help, help!” she yelled.

  A window opened in the next compartment and a young man put his head out “What the deuce is the matter? Are you being murdered? “ he shouted down the wind.

  “I’m locked in! I’m locked in!” screamed the hatless lady, wrestling furiously with the obdurate door handle.

  “Don’t open the door!” cried the young man anxiously.

  “I can’t, you idiot! I can’t!”

  “Wait a moment and I’ll come to you. Don’t try to get out. I’ll climb along the foot-board. Keep calm, madam, keep calm. I’ll save you.”

  He disappeared from view. Good Heavens! he meant to crawl out and come to her carriage by the window! A man, a young man, would shortly be in the compartment with her. Locked in, too! No, it was impossible. That was worse than the claustrophobia, and she could not endure such a thing for a moment. The young man would certainly kill her and steal all her packages.

  She ran once or twice frantically up and down the narrow floor. Then she looked out of the window.

  “Oh, bless my heart and soul!” she cried out, he’s out already!”

  The young man, evidently thinking the lady was being assaulted, had climbed out of the window and was pluckily coming to her rescue. He was already on the foot-board, swinging by the brass bars on the side of the coach as the train rocked down the line at a fearful pace.

  But Miss Slumbubble took a deep breath and a sudden determination. She did, in fact, the only thing left to her to do. She pulled the communication cord once, twice, three times, and then drew the window up with a sudden snap just before the young man’s head appeared round the corner of the sash. Then, stepping backwards, she trod on the slippery banana bag and fell flat on her back upon the dirty floor between the seats.

  The train slackened speed almost immediately and came to a stop. Miss Slumbubble still sat on the floor, staring in a dazed fashion at her toes. She realised the enormity of her offence, and was thoroughly frightened. She had actually pulled the cord! — the, cord that is meant to be seen but not touched, the little chain that meant a £5 fine and all sorts of dire consequences.

  She heard voices shouting and doors opening, and a moment later a key rattled near her head, and she saw the guard swinging up on to the steps of the carriage. The door was wide open, and the young man from the next compartment was explaining volubly what he seen and heard.

  “I thought it was murder,” he was saying.

  But the guard pushed quickly into the carriage and lifted the panting and dishevelled lady on to the seat.

  “Now, what’s all this about? Was it you that pulled the cord, ma’am?” he asked somewhat roughly. “It’s serious stoppin’ a train like this, you know, a mail train.”

  Now Miss Daphne did not mean to tell a lie. It was not deliberate, that is to say. It seemed to slip out of its own accord as the most natural and obvious thing to say. For she was terrified at what she had done, and had to find a good excuse. Yet how in the world could she describe to this stupid and hurried official all she had gone through? Moreover, he would be so certain to think she was merely drunk.

  “It was a man,” she said, falling back instinctively upon her natural enemy. “There’s a man somewhere!” She glanced round at the racks and under the seats. The guard followed her eyes.

  “I don’t see no man,” he declared; “all I know is you’ve stopped the mail train without any visible or reasonable cause. “I’ll be obliged with your name and address, ma’am, if you please,” he added, taking a dirty note-book from his pocket and wetting the blunt pencil in his mouth.

  “Let me get air — at once,” she said. “I must have air first. Of course you shall have my name. The whole affair is disgraceful.” She was getting her wits back. She moved to the door.

  “That may be, ma’am,” the man said, “but I’ve my duty to perform, and I must report the facts, and then get the train on as quick as possible. You must stay in the carriage, please. We’ve been waiting ‘ere a bit too long already.”

  Miss Slumbubble met her fate calmly. She realised it was not fair to keep all the passengers waiting while she got a little fresh air. There was a brief confabulation between the two guards, which ended by the one who had first come taking his seat in her carriage, while the other blew his whistle and the train started off again and flew at great speed the remaining miles to Folkestone.

  “Now I’ll lake the name and address, if you please, ma’am,” he said politely. “Daphny, yes, thank you, Daphny without a hef, all right, thank you.”

  He wrote it all down laboriously while the hatless little lady sat opposite, indignant, excited, ready to be voluble the moment she could think what was best to say, and above all fearful that her holiday would be delayed, if not prevented altogether.

  Presently the guard looked up at her and put his note-book away in an inner pocket. It was just after he had entered the number of the carriage.

  “You see, ma’am,” he explained with sudden suavity, “this communication cord is only for cases of real danger, and if I report this, as I should do, it means a ‘eavy fine. You must ‘ave just pulled it as a sort of hexperiment, didn’t you?”

  Something in the man’s voice caught her ear; there was a change in it; his manner, too, had altered somehow. He suddenly seemed to have become apologetic. She was quick to notice the change, though she could not understand what caused it. It began, she fancied, from the moment he entered the number of the carriage in his notebook.

  “It’s the delay to the train I’ve got to explain,” he continued, as if speaking to himself, “and I can’t put it all on to the engine-driver—”

  “Perhaps we shall make it up and there won’t be any delay,” ventured Miss Slumbubble, carefully smoothing her hair and rearranging the stray hairpins.

  “ — and I don’t want to get no one into any kind of trouble, least of all myself,” h
e continued, wholly ignoring the interruption. Then he turned round in his seat and stared hard at his companion with rather a worried, puzzled expression of countenance and a shrug of the shoulders that was distinctly apologetic. Plainly, she thought, he was preparing the way for a compromise — for a tip!

  The train was slackening speed; already it was in the cutting where it reverses and is pushed backwards on to the pier. Miss Slumbubble was desperate. She had never tipped a man before in her life except for obvious and recognised services, and this seemed to her like compounding a felony, or some such dreadful thing. Yet so much was at stake: she might be detained at Folkestone for days before the matter came into court, to say nothing of a £5 fine, which meant that her holiday would be utterly stopped. The blue and white mountains swam into her field of vision, and she heard the wind in the pine forest.

  “Perhaps you would give this to your wife,” she said timidly, holding out a sovereign.

  The guard looked at it and shook his head.

  “I ‘aven’t got a wife, exackly,” he said; “ but it isn’t money I want. What I want is to ‘ush this little matter up as quietly as possible. I may lose my job over this — but if you’ll agree to say nothing about it, I think I can square the driver and t’other guard.”

  “I won’t say anything, of course,” stammered the astonished lady. “But I don’t think I quite understand—”

  “You couldn’t understand either till I tell you,” he replied, looking greatly relieved; “but the fac’ is, I never noticed the carriage till I come to put the number down, and then I see it’s the very one — the very same number—”

  “What number?”

  He stared at her for a moment without speaking. Then he appeared to take a great decision.

  “Well, I’m in your ‘ands anyhow, ma’am, and I may as well tell you the lot, and then we both ‘elps the other out It’s this way, you see. You ain’t the first to try and jump out of this carriage — not by a long ways. It’s been done before by a good number—”

  “Gracious!”

  “But the first who did it was that German woman, Binckmann—”

  “Binckmann, the woman who was found on the line last year, and the carriage door open? “ cried Miss Slumbubble, aghast.

  “That’s her. This was the carriage she jumped from, and they tried to say it was murder, but couldn’t find any one who could have done it, and then they said she must have been crazy. And since then this carriage was said to be ‘aunted, because so many other people tried to do the same thing and throw theirselves out too, till the company changed the number—”

  “To this number?” cried the excited spinster, pointing to the figures on the door.

  “That’s it, ma’am. And if you look you’ll see this number don’t follow on with the others. Even then the thing didn’t stop, and we got orders to let no one in. That’s where I made my mistake. I left the door unlocked, and they put you in. If this gets in the papers I’ll be dismissed for sure. The company’s awful strict about that.”

  “I’m terrified! “ exclaimed Miss Slumbubble, “for that’s exactly what I felt—”

  “That you’d got to jump out, you mean? “ asked the guard.

  “Yes. The terror of being shut in.”

  “That’s what the doctors said Binckmann had — the fear of being shut up in a tight place. They gave it some long name, but that’s what it was: she couldn’t abide being closed in. Now, here we are at the pier, ma’am, and, if you’ll allow me, I’ll help you to carry your little bits of luggage.”

  “Oh, thank you, guard, thank you,” she said faintly, taking his proffered hand and getting out with infinite relief on to the platform.

  “Tchivalry ain’t dead yet, Miss,” he replied gallantly, as he loaded himself up with her packages and led the way down to the steamer.

  Ten minutes later the deep notes of the syren echoed across the pier, and the paddles began to churn the green sea. And Miss Daphne Slumbubble, hatless but undismayed, went abroad to flutter the remnants of her faded youth before the indifferent foreigners in the cheap pension among the Alps.

  THE WOMAN’S GHOST STORY

  “Yes,” she said, from her seat in the dark corner, “I’ll tell you an experience if you care to listen. And, what’s more, I’ll tell it briefly, without trimmings — I mean without unessentials. That’s a thing story-tellers never do, you know,” she laughed. “They drag in all the unessentials and leave their listeners to disentangle; but I’ll give you just the essentials, and you can make of it what you please. But on one condition: that at the end you ask no questions, because I can’t explain it and have no wish to.”

  We agreed. We were all serious. After listening to a dozen prolix stories from people who merely wished to “talk” but had nothing to tell, we wanted “essentials.”

  “In those days,” she began, feeling from the quality of our silence that we were with her, “in those days I was interested in psychic things, and bad arranged to sit up alone in a haunted house in the middle of London. It was a cheap and dingy lodging-house in a mean street, unfurnished. I had already made a preliminary examination in daylight that afternoon, and the keys from the caretaker, who lived next door, were in my pocket. The story was a good one — satisfied me, at any rate, that it was worth investigating; and I won’t weary you with details as to the woman’s murder and all the tiresome elaboration as to why the place was alive. Enough that it was.

  “I was a good deal bored, therefore, to see a man, whom I took to be the talkative old caretaker, waiting for me on the steps when I went in at “P.M., for I had sufficiently explained that I wished to be there alone for the night “‘I wished to show you the room,’ he mumbled, and of course I couldn’t exactly refuse, having tipped him for the temporary loan of a chair and table.

  ““Come in, then, and let’s be quick,’ I said.

  “We went in, he shuffling after me through the unlighted hall up to the first floor where the murder had taken place, and I prepared myself to hear his inevitable account before turning him out with the half-crown his persistence had earned. After lighting the gas I sat down in the arm-chair he had provided — a faded, brown plush arm-chair — and turned for the first time to face him and get through with the performance as quickly as possible. And it was in that instant I got my first shock. The man was not the caretaker. It was not the old fool, Carey, I had interviewed earlier in the day and made my plans with. My heart gave a horrid jump.

  “‘Now who are you, pray? ‘ I said. “You’re not Carey, the man I arranged with this afternoon. Who are you?’

  “I felt uncomfortable, as you may imagine. I was a I psychical researcher,’ and a young woman of new tendencies, and proud of my liberty, but I did not care to find myself in an empty house with a stranger. Something of my confidence left me. Confidence with women, you know, is all humbug after a certain point. Or perhaps you don’t know, for most of you are men. But anyhow my pluck ebbed in a quick rush, and I felt afraid.

  “‘Who are you?’ I repeated quickly and nervously. The fellow was well dressed, youngish and good-looking, but with a face of great sadness. I myself was barely thirty. I am giving you essentials, or I would not mention it. Out of quite ordinary things comes this story. I think that’s why it has value.

  “‘ No,’ he said; ‘I’m the man who was frightened to death.’

  “His voice and his words ran through me like a knife, and I felt ready to drop. In my pocket was the book I had bought to make notes in. I felt the pencil sticking in the socket. I felt, too, the extra warm things I had put on to sit up in, as no bed or sofa was available — a hundred things dashed through my mind, foolishly and without sequence or meaning, as the way is when one is really frightened. Unessentials leaped up and puzzled me, and I thought of what the papers might say if it came out, and what my ‘smart’ brother-in-law would think, and whether it would be told that I had cigarettes in my pocket, and was a free-thinker.”

  ‘“The man who
was frightened to death!’” I repeated aghast “‘That’s me,’ he said stupidly.

  “I stared at him just as you would have done — any one of you men now listening to me — and felt my life ebbing and flowing like a sort of hot fluid. You needn’t laugh! That’s how I felt. Small things, you know, touch the mind with great earnestness when terror is there — real terror. But I might have been at a middle-class tea-party, for all the ideas I had: they were so ordinary!”

  “‘But I thought you were the caretaker I tipped this afternoon to let me sleep here!’ I gasped.

  ‘Did — did Carey send you to meet me?’

  “‘No,’ he replied in a voice that touched my boots somehow. ‘I am the man who was frightened to death. And what is more, I am frightened now,”

  “‘So am I!’ I managed to utter, speaking instinctively. ‘I’m simply terrified.’

  “‘Yes,’ he replied in that same odd voice that seemed to sound within me. ‘But you are still in the flesh, and I — am not!’

  “I felt the need for vigorous self-assertion. I stood up in that empty, unfurnished room, digging the nails into my palms and clenching my teeth. I was determined to assert my individuality and my courage as a new woman and a free soul.

  “‘You mean to say you are not in the flesh!’ I gasped. ‘What in the world are you talking about?’

  “The silence of the night swallowed up my voice. For the first time I realised that darkness was over the city; that dust lay upon the stairs; that the floor above was untenanted and the floor below empty. I was alone in an unoccupied and haunted house, unprotected, and a woman. I chilled. I heard the wind round the house, and knew the stars were hidden. My thoughts rushed to policemen and omnibuses, and everything that was useful and comforting. I suddenly realised what a fool I was to come to such a house alone. I was icily afraid I thought the end of my life had come. I was an utter fool to go in for psychical research when I had not the necessary nerve.