To Monica, meanwhile, in her rather play-less, toy-less life, the doll, her new treasure, was a spot of gold. The fact that it was a “secret” present from her father, added to its value. Many other presents had come to her like that; she thought nothing of it; only, he had never given her a doll before, and it spelt rapture. Never, never, would she betray her pleasure and delight; it should remain her secret and his; and that made her love it all the more. She loved her father too, his taciturn silence was something she vaguely respected and adored. “That’s just like father,” she always said, when a strange new present came, and she knew instinctively that she must never say Thank you for it, for that was part of the lovely game between them. But this doll was exceptionally marvellous.
“It’s much more real and alive than my teddy-bears,” she told the cook, after examining it critically. “What ever made him think of it? Why, it even talks to me!” and she cuddled and fondled the half misshapened toy. “It’s my baby,” she cried taking it against her cheek.
For no teddy-bear could really be a child; cuddly bears were not offspring, whereas a doll was a potential baby. It brought sweetness, as both cook and governess realized, into a rather grim house, hope and tenderness, a maternal flavour almost, something anyhow that no young bear could possibly bring. A child, a human baby! And yet both cook and governess — for both were present at the actual delivery — recalled later that Monica opened the parcel and recognized the doll with a yell of wild delight that seemed almost a scream of pain. There was this too high note of delirious exultation as though some instinctive horror of revulsion were instantly smothered and obliterated in a whirl of overmastering joy. It was Madame Jodzka who recalled — long afterwards — this singular contradiction.
“I did think she shrieked at it a bit, now you ask me,” admitted Mrs. O’Reilly later, though at the actual moment all she said was “Oh, lovely, darling, ain’t it a pet!” While all Madame Jodzka said was a cautionary “If you squash its mouth like that, Monica, it won’t be able to breathe!”
While Monica, paying no attention to either of them, fell to cuddling the doll with ecstasy.
A cheap little flaxen-haired, waxen-faced doll.
That so strange a case should come to us at second hand is, admittedly, a pity; that so much of the information should reach us largely through a cook and housemaid and through a foreigner of questionable validity, is equally unfortunate. Where precisely the reported facts creep across the feathery frontier into the incredible and thence into the fantastic would need the spider’s thread of the big telescopes to define. With the eye to the telescope, the thread of that New Zealand spider seems thick as a rope; but with the eye examining second-hand reports the thread becomes elusive gossamer.
The Polish governess, Madame Jodzka, left the house rather abruptly. Though adored by Monica and accepted by Colonel Masters, she left not long after the arrival of the doll. She was a comely, youngish widow of birth and breeding, tactful, discreet, understanding. She adored Monica, and Monica was happy with her; she feared her employer, yet perhaps secretly admired him as the strong, silent, dominating Englishman. He gave her great freedom, she never took liberties, everything went smoothly. The pay was good and she needed it. Then, suddenly, she left. In the suddenness of her departure, as in the odd reason she gave for leaving, lie doubtless the first hints of this remarkable affair, creeping across that “feathery frontier” into the incredible and fantastic. An understandable reason she gave for leaving was that she was too frightened to stay in the house another night. She left at twenty-four hours’ notice. Her reason was absurd, even if understandable, because any woman might find herself so frightened in a certain building that it has become intolerable to her nerves. Foolish or otherwise, this is understandable. An idée fixe, an obsession, once lodged in the mind of a superstitious, therefore hysterically-favoured woman, cannot be dislodged by argument. It may be absurd, yet it is “understandable.”
The story behind the reason for Madame Jodzka’s sudden terror is another matter, and it is best given quite simply. It relates to the doll. She swears by all her gods that she saw the doll “walking by itself,” walking in a disjointed, hoppity, hideous fashion across the bed in which Monica lay sleeping.
In the gleam of the night-light, Madame Jodzka swears she saw this happen. She was half inside the opened door, peeping in, as her habit and duty decreed, to see if all was well with the child before going up to bed herself. The light, if faint, was clear. A jerky movement on the counterpane first caught her attention, for a smallish object seemed blundering awkwardly across its slippery silken surface. Something rolling, possibly, some object Monica had left outside on falling asleep rolling mechanically as the child shifted or turned over.
After staring for some seconds, she then saw that it was not merely an “object,” since it had a living outline, nor was it rolling mechanically, or sliding, as she had first imagined. It was horribly taking steps, small but quite deliberate steps as though alive. It had a tiny, dreadful face, it had an expressionless tiny face, and the face had eyes — small, brightly shining eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Madame Jodzka.
She watched for a few seconds thunderstruck, and then suddenly realised with a shock of utter horror that this small, purposive monster was the doll, Monica’s doll! And this doll was moving towards her across the tumbled surface of the counterpane. It was coming in her direction — straight at her.
Madame Jodzka gripped herself, physically and mentally, making a great effort, it seems, to deny the abnormal, the incredible. She denied the ice in her veins and down her spine. She prayed. She thought frantically of her priest in Warsaw. Making no audible sound, she screamed in her mind. But the doll, quickening its pace, came hobbling straight towards her, its glassy eyes fixed hard upon her own.
Then Madame Jodzka fainted.
That she was, in some ways, a remarkable woman, with a sense of values, is clear from the fact that she realised this story “wouldn’t wash,” for she confided it only to the cook in cautious whispers, while giving her employer some more “washable” tale about a family death that obliged her to hurry home to Warsaw. Nor was there the slightest attempt at embroidery, for on recovering consciousness she had recovered her courage, too — and done a remarkable thing: she had compelled herself to investigate. Aided and fortified by her religion, she compelled herself to make an examination. She had tiptoed further into the room, had made sure that Monica was sleeping peacefully, and that the doll lay — motionless — half way down the counterpane. She gave it a long, concentrated look. Its lidless eyes, fringed by hideously ridiculous black lashes, were fixed on space. Its expression was not so much innocent, as blankly stupid, idiotic, a mask of death that aped cheaply a pretence of life, where life could never be. Not ugly merely, it was revolting.
Madame Jodzka however, did more than study this visage with concentration, for with admirable pluck she forced herself to touch the little horror. She actually picked it up. Her faith, her deep religious conviction denied the former evidence of her senses. She had not seen movement. It was incredible, impossible. The fault lay somewhere in herself. This persuasion, at any rate, lasted long enough to enable her to touch the repulsive little toy, to pick it up, to lift it. She placed it steadily on the table near the bed between the bowl of flowers and the night-light, where it lay on its back helpless, innocent, yet horrible, and only then on shaking legs did she leave the room and up to her own bed. That her fingers remained ice-cold until eventually she fell asleep can be explained, of course, too easily and naturally to claim examination.
Whether imagined or actual, it must have been, none-the-less, a horrifying spectacle — a mechanical outline from a commercial factory walking like a living thing with a purpose. It holds the nightmare touch. To Madame Jodzka, protected since youth within cast-iron tenets, it came as a shock. And a shock dislocates. The sight smashed everything she knew as possible and real. The flow of her blood was interrupted, it froze, the
re came icy terror into her heart, her normal mechanism failed for a moment, she fainted. And fainting seemed a natural result. Yet it was the shock of the incredible masquerade that gave her the courage to act. She loved Monica, apart from any consideration of paid duty. The sight of this tiny monstrosity strutting across the counterpane not far from the child’s sleeping face and folded hands — it was this that enabled her to pick it up with naked fingers and set it out of reach. . . .
For hours, before falling asleep, she reviewed the incredible thing, alternately denying the facts, then accepting them, yet taking into sleep finally the assured conviction that her senses had not deceived her. There seems little, indeed, that in a court of law could have been advanced against her character for reliability, for sincerity, for the logic of her detailed account.
“I’m sorry,” said Colonel Masters quietly, referring to her bereavement. He looked searchingly at her. “And Monica will miss you,” he added with one of his rare smiles. “She needs you.” Then just as she turned away, he suddenly extended his hand. “If perhaps later you can come back — do let me know. Your influence is — so helpful — and good.”
She mumbled some phrase with a promise in it, yet she left with a queer, deep impression that it was not merely, not chiefly perhaps, Monica who needed her. She wished he had not used quite those words. A sense of shame lay in her, almost as though she were running away from duty, or at least from a chance to help that God had put in her way. “Your influence is — so good.”
Already in the train and on the boat conscience attacked her, biting, scratching, gnawing. She had deserted a child she loved, a child who needed her, because she was scared out of her wits. No, that was a one-sided statement. She had left a house because the Devil had come into it. No, that was only partially true. When a hysterical temperament, engrained since early childhood in fixed dogmas, begins to sift facts and analyse reactions, logic and common sense themselves become confused. Thought led one way, emotion another, and no honest conclusion dawned on her mind.
She hurried on to Warsaw, to a stepfather, a retired General whose gay life had no place for her and who would not welcome her return. It was a derogatory prospect for this youngish widow who had taken a job in order to escape from his vulgar activities to return now empty-handed. Yet it was easier, perhaps, to face a step-father’s selfish anger than to go and tell Colonel Masters her real reason for leaving his service. Her conscience, too, troubled her on another score as thoughts and memories travelled backwards and half-forgotten details emerged.
Those spots of blood, for instance, mentioned by Mrs. O’Reilly, the superstitious Irish cook. She had made it a rule to ignore Mrs. O’Reilly’s silly fairy tales, yet now she recalled suddenly those ridiculous discussions about the laundry list and the foolish remarks that the cook and housemaid had let fall.
“But there ain’t no paint in a doll, I tell you. It’s all sawdust and wax and muck,” from the housemaid. “I know red paint when I sees it, and that ain’t paint, it’s blood.” And from Mrs. O’Reilly later: “Mother o’ God! Another red blob! She’s biting her fingernails — and that’s not my job . . . !”
The red stains on sheets and pillow cases were puzzling certainly, but Madame Jodzka, hearing these remarks by chance as it were, had paid no particular attention to them at the moment. The laundry lists were hardly her affair. These ridiculous servants anyhow . . . ! And yet, now in the train, those spots, be they paint or blood, crept back to trouble her.
Another thing, oddly enough, also troubled her — the ill-defined feeling that she was deserting a man who needed help, help that she could give. It was too vague to put into words. Was it based on his remark that her influence was “good” perhaps? She could not say. It was an intuition, and few intuitions bear analysis. Supporting it, however, was a conviction she had felt since first she entered the service of Colonel Masters, the conviction, namely, that he had a past that frightened him. There was something he had done, something he regretted and was probably ashamed of, something at any rate, for which he feared retribution. A retribution, moreover, he expected; a punishment that would come like a thief in the night and seize him by the throat.
It was against this dreaded vengeance that her influence was “good,” a protective influence possibly that her religion supplied, something on the side of the angels, in any case, that her personality provided.
Her mind worked thus, it seems; and whether a concealed admiration for this sombre and mysterious man, an admiration and protective instinct never admitted even to her inmost self, existed below the surface, hidden yet urgent, remains the secret of her own heart.
It was naturally and according to human nature, at any rate, that after a few weeks of her stepfather’s outrageous behaviour in the house, his cruelty too, she decided to return. She prayed to her gods incessantly, also she found oppressive her sense of neglected duty and failure of self-respect. She returned to the soulless suburban villa. It was understandable; the welcome from Monica was also understandable, the relief and pleasure of Colonel Masters still more so. It was expressed, this latter, in a courteous message only, tactfully worded, as though she had merely left for a brief necessity, for it was some days before she actually saw him to speak to. From cook and housemaid the welcome was voluble and — disquieting. There were no more inexplicable “spots of red,” but there were other unaccountable happenings even more distressing.
“She’s missed you something terrible,” said Mrs. O’Reilly, “though she’s found something else to keep her quiet — if you like to put it that way.” And she made the sign of the cross.
“The doll?” asked Madame Jodzka with a start of shocked horror, forcing herself to come straight to the point and forcing herself also to speak lightly, casually.
“That’s it, Madame. The bleeding doll.”
The governess had heard the strange adjective many times already, but did not know whether to take it figuratively or not. She chose the latter.
“Blood?” she asked in a lowered voice.
The cook’s body gave an odd jerk. “Well,” she explained, “I meant more the way it goes on. Like a thing of flesh and blood, if you get me. And the way she treats it and plays with it,” and her voice, while loud, had a hush of fear in it somewhere. She held her arms before her in a protective, shielding way, as though to ward off aggression.
“Scratches ain’t proof of nothing,’’ interjected the housemaid scornfully.
“You mean,” asked Madame Jodzka gravely, “there’s a question of — of injury — to someone?” She suppressed an involuntary gasp, but paid little attention to the maid’s interruption.
Mrs. O’Reilly seemed to mismanage her breath for a moment.
“It ain’t Miss Monica it’s after,” she announced in a defiant whisper as soon as she recovered herself, “it’s someone else. That’s what I mean. And no man as black as he was ever brought no good into a house, not since I was born.”
“Someone else — ?” repeated Madam Jodzka almost to herself, seizing the vital words.
“You and yer black man!” interjected the housemaid. “Get along with yer! Thank God I ain’t a Christian or anything like that! But I did ‘ear them sort of jerky shuffling footsteps one night, I admit, and the doll did look bigger — swollen like — when I peeked in and looked—”
“Stop it!” cried Mrs. O’Reilly, “for you ain’t saying what’s true or what you reely know.”
She turned to the governess.
“There’s more talk what means nothing about this doll,” she said by way of apology, “than all the fairy tales I was brought up with as a child in Mayo, and I — I wouldn’t be believing anything of it.”
Turning her back contemptuously on the chattering housemaid, she came close to Madame Jodzka.
“There’s no harm coming to Miss Monica, Madame,” she whispered vehemently, “you can be quite sure about her. Any trouble there may be is for someone else.” And again she crossed herself.
&
nbsp; Madame Jodzka, in the privacy of her room, reflected between her prayers. She felt a deep, a dreadful uneasiness.
A doll! A cheap, tawdry little toy made in factories by the hundred, by the thousand, a manufactured article of commerce for children to play with . . . But . . .
“The way she treats it and plays with it . . .” rang on in her disturbed mind.
A doll! But for the maternal suggestion, a doll was a pathetic, even horrible plaything, yet to watch a child busy with it involved deep reflections, since here the future mother prophesied. The child fondles and caresses her doll with passionate love, cares for it, seeks its welfare, yet stuffs it down into the perambulator, its head and neck twisted, its limbs broken and contorted, leaving it atrociously upside down so that blood and breathing cannot possibly function, while she runs to the window to see if the rain has stopped or the sun has come out. A blind and hideous automatism dictated by the Race, provided nothing of more immediate interest interferes, yet a herd-instinct that overcomes all obstacles, its vitality insuperable. The maternity instinct defies, even denies death. The doll, whether left upside down on the floor with broken teeth and ruined eyes, or lovingly arranged to be overlaid in the night, squashed, tortured, mutilated, survives all cruelties and disasters, and asserts finally its immortal qualities. It is unkillable. It is beyond death.
A child with her doll, reflected Madame Jodzka, is an epitome of nature’s remorseless and unconquerable passion, of her dominant purpose — the survival of the race. . . .
Such thoughts, influenced perhaps by her bitter subconscious grievance against nature for depriving her of a child of her own, were unable to hold that level for long; they soon dropped back to the concrete case that perplexed and frightened her — Monica and her flaxen haired, sightless, idiotic doll. In the middle of her prayers, falling asleep incontinently, she did not even dream of it, and she woke refreshed and vigorous, facing the fact that sooner or later, sooner probably, she would have to speak to her employer.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 565