SLEEP NO MORE

by L. T. C. Rolt

  Thornton took the knife and opened the blade. ‘Unless I’m much mistaken,’ he answered, ‘there’s a cupboard behind here. Mind if I cut the paper?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ James assured him, and added with a laugh, ‘perhaps it’s full of the old Count’s loot.’

  After a few moments probing, Thornton made a neat rectangular cut in the paper which was interrupted only in three places by what were undoubtedly the hinges and latch of a door. The next thing to do was to open it. After layer upon layer of paper had been peeled off, it became obvious that the cupboard was not locked, but was held by an inside latch the lever of which had been removed and the resulting hole plugged up. To push up the latch with the aid of a strong kitchen knife obtained from Mrs Penrice was the work of a moment. The door opened to reveal a small cupboard of three shelves let into the thickness of the wall, but to their unbounded disappointment it appeared at first glance to be empty.

  ‘Wait a minute, though,’ said Thornton, stooping to peer into the dark lower shelf. ‘What’s this?’ He thrust in his arm and dragged into the light an oblong wooden box about the size of the average deed-box. It was beautifully made of oak with elegant brass mounts.

  ‘Aha!’ exclaimed James exultantly. ‘The treasure. What’s the betting? Diamonds, doubloons or only the missing will?’

  They carried it into the light and set it down on the table by the window. The lid opened quite easily. And then after their high expectations both men burst out laughing at the incongruous nature of their discovery. For it was a musical box.

  Closer inspection, however, revealed that this was no ordinary musical box. It operated upon the normal barrel-and-pin principle, in this case the barrel being of wood studded with brass pins. But instead of striking the usual comb, these pins opened the valves of a set of little organ-pipes which were supplied with air by a diminutive bellows worked from the barrel spindle by a crude form of cam action. The barrel was rotated externally by a neat S-shaped handle which was at present detached and lying snugly in a compartment at the side of the case. It was, in fact, a miniature version of those ‘barrel organs’ which were widely introduced into village churches towards the end of the eighteenth century.

  Most musical boxes exhibit, on the inside of the lid, a list of the tunes which they play, but in this case there appeared a contemporary engraving in mezzotint which occupied the whole surface of the lid and which was even more remarkable than the instrument itself.

  It depicted, with remarkable vigour and detail, a scene of shipwreck. Under an ominous sky and amid mountainous seas a tall three-masted vessel was rapidly breaking up on the rocks beneath towering cliffs. Small figures could be seen clinging desperately to the rigging. Hovering in a lowering cloud in the extreme left-hand top corner of the picture a flying figure directed from inflated cheeks a blast of air upon the sails of the doomed ship in that convention beloved of the early cartographers. But scrutiny revealed that here was no curly-headed, dimpled cherub, but a creature of so unpleasant and menacing an aspect that Thornton quickly turned his attention to the foreground. But here the artist’s singular and grotesque imagination was displayed with equally skilful and disquieting effect. Upon a narrow strip of beach out of reach of the waves, a group of figures, seen in black silhouette, appeared to be dancing before a fire. Finally, upon the cliff-top directly above were two more figures. Of these, one was a tall man who stood at gaze, apparently dispassionately regarding the scene below. The other, a shorter figure, stood, or rather crouched, close beside him. The artist had not accorded this last figure the same precision of treatment and attention to detail which characterised the rest of his work. Its vague and shadowy outline failed to suggest a human shape, yet after careful examination Thornton came to the conclusion that if he were to be confronted with a choice of two such evils he would rather encounter the monster of the air than this creature on the cliff. The engraving was unsigned, but along the margin was an inscription the significance of which Thornton could not comprehend. It ran: HAR, HAR, HOU, HOU, danse ici, danse là, joue ici, joue là.

  ‘Well, what do you make of it?’ asked James, who had been leaning over his shoulder during this examination.

  Thornton raised his eyes from the picture and looked out over the calm sea beyond the window for a few moments before replying. ‘I think,’ he answered slowly, ‘that it’s a most unpleasant thing. I don’t profess to understand what it all means, but if you’ll take my advice you’ll pitch it over the cliff.’

  James looked at him in astonishment. ‘My dear fellow!’ he expostulated. ‘What on earth makes you talk like that? Anyone would think it was an infernal machine. Damn it, man, it’s only a child’s musical box and a very rare one at that from the look of it. We’ve made a find here, and I wouldn’t dream of throwing it away.’

  ‘Have it your own way, then,’ said the other, with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘Perhaps I’m being a fool. But,’ he added, ‘I would hardly describe it as a toy. That pretty picture on the lid would give most children the horrors.’ Thornton paced across the room to the fireplace while James again bent over the musical box.

  ‘It’s certainly in rather queer taste,’ he admitted. As he said this he took out the little curved handle and fitted it over the barrel.

  Thornton heard the faint click as it went home and turned to see what he was doing. Without knowing what prompted him to do so he cried out, ‘For God’s sake leave the thing alone!’ But James only laughed and turned the handle.

  At first the instrument only produced a sibilant noise, not unlike the eager panting of an excited dog; then suddenly it broke into a shrill piping tune to the rhythm of a lively jig. But it was like no tune that Thornton had ever heard before. It reached a top note that, like the squeak of a bat, was almost beyond the range of audibility and whose piercing quality positively hurt the ear-drum. The tune rose to this thin yet deafening climax, or fell away again in a series of exuberant cappricios quite horrible to hear because the dissonance of their diminished intervals never seemed to find resolution. Again, despite the comparatively small volume of sound it produced, the instrument seemed to possess the power to awake sympathetic resonance, not only in the table upon which it stood, but in surrounding objects, until the whole room seemed to be whistling in unison.

  Thornton, who thought he had never heard so hideous a sound, eventually found he could stand it no longer and shouted out, ‘For heaven’s sake, stop that fiendish din!’

  Obediently, James stopped, withdrew the handle, replaced it carefully in its compartment, and closed the lid. He was smiling in a curious, sly sort of way.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you like it? Perhaps I’ve got no ear for music, but personally I think it’s rather fun.’ He tucked the box carefully under his arm and moved towards the door.

  ‘Well, I think it’s horrible,’ said Thornton bluntly. ‘Where are you going with it, anyway?’

  ‘I’m taking it up to my room,’ the other answered. ‘I’m not going to give you the chance to smash my musical box when I’m not looking.’

  ‘I wish to hell I could,’ Thornton muttered as James disappeared up the stairs.

  In a brief half-hour the wretched thing seemed not only to have raised a barrier of mistrust between them but to have emptied the house of all content. The happiness of yesterday, and even the pleasure and excitement of the morning, already seemed to have receded into a remote past. With difficulty, Thornton tried to analyse his feelings. It was as though they had somehow awakened Trevarthen House from sleep, and that this wakefulness was hostile. He realised that he hated the place and was filled with an urgent desire to get away from it as soon as possible.

  As he could give no valid reasons for this impression, Thornton hesitated to mention it to James, who appeared to be insensitive to any such change of atmosphere. For the rest of the evening he seemed in high good humour and continued eagerly to discuss his proposed alterations. Yet although it may have been imagination, Thornton thought
he could detect a certain forced quality about James’s gaiety, a certain nervous restlessness which had not been noticeable the previous evening. He thought, too, that Mrs Penrice seemed to be ill at ease and to look strangely at his host while she was serving dinner.

  Thornton slept badly that night. To begin with, the weather broke unexpectedly, the wind veering to the southwest and rising to a gale which was accompanied by lashing squalls of rain. Though his room was on the landward side, he could hear, above the tumult of the wind, the thunder of heavy seas breaking upon the rocks. On its exposed site, Trevarthen caught the full force of the gale so that the house seemed full of sound. Casements rattled, there were minor creaking noises which suggested stealthy movement, and once a door slammed somewhere. At one time he awakened from an uneasy doze and thought he could hear faintly the eldritch sound of the musical box, but decided that it must be the piping of the wind. Once, too, he thought he heard James talking, or rather calling out, in his sleep.

  By the time dawn broke, a grey, reluctant dawn of flying cloud, Thornton had finally resolved to leave the place as quickly as he conveniently could. James came down late. He looked pale and distracted and yet, in a queer sort of way, rather smug, as though he nursed a secret joke. In response to his friend’s enquiry he protested that he had slept well, though Thornton noticed that he seemed reluctant to look him straight in the face. The barrier of reserve which had come between them now seemed to have grown insurmountable, yet Thornton doubted his ability to excuse his premature departure convincingly. It was a measure of the change which had come over their relationship that he found it necessary, on the pretext of posting an urgent letter, to send himself a telegram from the post office in the neighbouring village. It arrived while they were at lunch.

  Though he made polite protestations of disappointment at the news of his friend’s imminent departure, James made no attempt to dissuade him; in fact, Thornton thought he seemed secretly relieved. He even helped to speed his parting guest by looking up time-tables.

  ‘There’s a bus from the corner,’ he announced, ‘which connects with the eight-forty night sleeper from Penzance. That’ll get you into Town in time for your appointment in the morning.’

  That evening, as he stood on the doorstep bidding goodbye to his host, Thornton’s conscience smote him at the thought of his precipitate desertion. While nothing would have induced him to change his mind, he felt guilty and uneasy at the thought of leaving James alone at Trevarthen; but, illogical though it was, this feeling of uneasiness could be associated with nothing more tangible than a musical box.

  ‘I know you think I’m a fool,’ he said diffidently, as he took James’s hand, ‘but do take my advice and get rid of that musical box; I couldn’t tell you why, but I just don’t like it.’

  But it was no use. James only laughed. ‘Nonsense, my dear chap!’ he exclaimed, and then quoted mockingly, ‘ “HAR, HAR, HOU, HOU, danse ici, danse là, joue ici, joue là” ’. As he did so he executed a little capering dance on the doorstep in time with the words, and then giggled.

  Thornton did not appreciate the joke. ‘Goodbye,’ he said abruptly, and turned on his heel.

  ‘Come and see me again when I’ve finished my alterations,’ the other called after him as he walked off through the dusk.

  Then the door closed.

  The months slipped by and Thornton received no further invitation to visit Trevarthen House; not that he would have felt inclined to accept it, if he had. For a while he continued to feel concern for his friend, but in time he tended to dismiss the cause of this concern as so much imagination. Finally, other preoccupations drove the memory of James Heneage and Trevarthen House out of his thoughts. Or nearly so, for the unprecedented storms of the next two winters brought Press reports of wrecks on the Goat Reef, and this reminded him of James who, he thought, must be having an exciting time.

  Three years passed before, one summer’s evening, we again find Thornton descending the lane to Trevarthen Cove. Business had brought him to Cornwall and, remembering James Heneage, his curiosity had got the better of him. He drove out from Penzance, but as the weather was fine he decided to leave his car at the crossroads and walk to the house as on the previous occasion. Everything recalled the keen anticipation of that first arrival; the sound of the sea in crescendo as he descended the hill, the cliffs of Carn Zawn, and there, as he turned the corner, Trevarthen House. As he approached the door he realised that his previous impression, which he now most vividly recalled, had not been due merely to imagination. Why he knew this it is difficult to say, but his instinctive impulse was to turn back the way he had come, so that to advance to the door and pull the iron bell-ring called for a considerable effort of will. His summons was answered, not by the reassuring figure of Mrs Penrice, but by a soft-footed and obsequious manservant who ushered him into the room where he had made his discovery.

  ‘The master will be with you in a few moments, sir,’ he said, speaking with a slightly foreign accent and with a curious emphasis upon the word ‘master’.

  Thornton looked round the room. James had certainly transformed it, though his taste seemed to have altered considerably. In earlier days he had shared with Thornton a preference for what might be described as comfortable simplicity. But the taste that had furnished this room could only be described as opulent. Or was ‘sensuous’ a better word? Walls, fitted bookcases, and the deep pile carpet were of a pale greyish-green colour, which was certainly an admirable foil for the rose velvet coverings of the luxurious sofas and chairs and the magnificent brocade window-curtains. One corner of the room was occupied by a grand piano. The cupboard beside the fireplace which he had discovered had been converted into a small embrasure. The door had been taken off, the interior painted in a shade of colour slightly darker than the walls and cleverly illuminated by concealed strip lighting. In it reposed the only article in the room which he recognised—the musical box. It was highly polished, and the brass mounts gleamed in the light. The blazing fire made the room almost uncomfortably warm, while there was a faint, cloying scent in the air not unlike incense or perhaps some sort of potpourri.

  As is the way with book-lovers, Thornton ran his eye along the bookshelves to discover that James’s literary taste had changed no less markedly. He noticed the works of the Marquis de Sade and De Lancre, Glanvil’s Sadducismus Triumphatus, Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered and various other obscure works of which he had never heard, bearing such titles as Demoniality or Eleau des Demons et Sorciers. He turned for relief to the walls, but found there evidence of an equally unhealthy preoccupation: reproductions of engravings by Albrecht Dürer, including the celebrated ‘The Knight, Death and Satan’; the ‘Temptations’ of Hieronymus Bosch; a small painting by Fuselli, and a drawing of Beardsley’s from Under the Hill. On the wall between the windows which faced the sea hung a single painting in oils of the surrealist school. At the first glance it appeared to be an ordinary seascape; an expanse of sea stretching to the horizon with rocks in the foreground. But closer inspection revealed that these rocks were of strange shape. In fact, Thornton began to doubt whether the huddled forms upon the beach were rocks at all. He was examining this picture intently and was rapidly forming the conclusion that it was probably the most unpleasant thing in the room, when someone chuckled softly, and he swung round to discover that James had come noiselessly into the room and was standing close behind him. He had grown paler and thinner since he had last seen him, and his eyes were very restless.

  ‘Hullo, Thornton,’ he said, extending his hand, ‘Glad to see you. What do you think of it?’ he went on, nodding towards the picture. ‘Don’t you think it’s rather nice? It’s a bit of La Pucelle’s work.’

  ‘La Pucelle,’ Thornton repeated, mystified, and the other laughed.

  ‘Oh, that’s only her nickname. Just my little joke in the tradition of the house. Her real name is Jeanne. You’ll meet her in a few moments.’ While he was speaking Thornton noticed that h
is friend had acquired some peculiar nervous mannerisms of speech and gesture. At the same time, however, there was something smug and self-satisfied about him as though he still harboured some secret joke. Yet James seemed genuinely pleased to see him. ‘I am glad you came,’ he averred with apparent sincerity. ‘Sit down and have a drink. Sherry? You’ll stay to dinner, of course.’ He took a heavy cut-glass decanter and two glasses from the shelf below the bookcase.

  ‘My word,’ said Thornton, as he sipped his drink, ‘where did you get this? I can’t buy sherry like this in London.’

  The other giggled and looked sly. ‘You shouldn’t ask such questions in Cornwall,’ he admonished. ‘But, as a matter of fact, I’ll tell you. We have to thank the Goat Reef for this. You may have read in the papers last winter about the wreck of the Santa Maria. She was bound from Portugal to Dublin, but she got blown hopelessly off her course. A good many of the barrels were broached, but we managed to save quite a few. Sounds like the good old smuggling days, doesn’t it? But when you live on the Cornish coast you soon learn to keep a sharp eye on the beach.’ He giggled again, rubbing his hands one over the other. ‘Oh, yes! I’m quite deeply indebted to the Goat Reef.’

  Thornton did not care for the way he said this, and there was an awkward pause which was broken by the opening of the door.

  ‘Here’s Jeanne,’ James exclaimed, and the two men stood up. ‘Jeanne, this is an old friend of mine, Tom Thornton.’

  The girl, who was standing on the threshold of the room, inclined her head and smiled. She was tall and of a pale but perfect complexion which contrasted strikingly with a pair of unusually large dark eyes and the mass of black curls which clustered closely about her head. She wore an elegant long-skirted dress which suggested the style of the Second Empire, and as she advanced towards him, moving with superb grace and assurance, Thornton thought she was the most striking woman he had ever seen. Striking, and yet in some indefinable way repellent. He realised that she bore an almost uncanny resemblance to the woman in Fuselli’s evil little painting which hung behind his chair. She was doing her best to put him at his ease; talking in a soft, low-pitched, slightly husky voice and emphasising her words with expressive movements of the hands which seemed to belie her perfect English. But she only partly succeeded, for her hands absorbed most of Thornton’s attention. He found himself gazing at them in much the same way as a rabbit stares at a stoat. They were exceptionally long-fingered, and they were bare except for one large and curiously wrought intaglio ring which winked in the firelight. The almond-shaped nails were lacquered the colour of blood. Her presence seemed to heighten the oppressive atmosphere of the room, and Thornton felt mightily relieved when a gong summoned them to dinner.