It was darker still as the storm cloud rolled on down the river on the southwesterly gale, but I then saw the figure of the woman in the black dress. She was dimly standing beneath the center of the tall Gothic arch opposite the St. Stephen’s Hall arch which leads to the public exit and entrance. In the thin light, she looked paler and more ravaged than ever. Beyond doubt, she was aware of me, even looking at me, but certainly not smiling. Smiles are for daylight and the common earth, for girls, for provincial marriages, for the Royal Assent to legislation; not for a rendezvous of this kind. Because a rendezvous it seemed to be. In the dim light, the woman moved her head, as who should say Follow; and I followed.
I followed her out of the central lobby; past the rectangular stonework of the Civil Service Monument, grim and hideous, with the inscription by Sir Henry Taylor; and up more and more stairs. As I stumbled through the murk, I heard behind me the rustle and clatter of the birds, keeping their distance, but plainly following. We traversed long passages, passing committee rooms with light shining out beneath the doors, the only sound a low unbroken moan. We brushed against relegated statues of greater men than the relegators. We climbed still further stairs. It seemed incredible that even our legislators, those who struggle, fight, defame, blarney, manipulate, bribe, and conspire to get power over us and to keep it when got, should demand a still huger building, as demand they constantly do. Soon, surely, we should have reached the eaves.
But then the woman stopped. She was several paces ahead of me and was standing at a door in one of the endless corridors of proof and of power. It was unexpected, and I stopped also. A second time the woman seemed to incline her head and seemed then to pass through the door to the room within. I came on after her, but not before I had noticed that there was now no sound of the birds, or of anything else but the driving rain against the Gothic windows. In the Palace of Westminster I had come upon a patch of silence.
Believe it or not, the door was not only shut but locked. I joggled on the medieval handle but could hardly move it at all. There are rooms in the Palace of Westminster which have not been entered during the last fifty years, a number of them, and some said to be quite large; and that whatever may be asserted by the M.P.s who complain of cramp. Even in the bad light, I could see the rust and grime on my hands; but the real question, of course, was what had become of the pale-haired, pale-faced woman in black.
It was still silent in the corridor. Not only was no one about, but it was hard to believe that any man or woman currently passed that way often. Disregarding the filth, I tried the door handle again, with vigor, perhaps violence. Suddenly something frightening happened. I became aware that another hand was on the other end of the handle, and a strong one. The door burst open, screaming along the stone floor, and standing inside was the individual who had opened it. It was Walter Enright.
The light was so bad that it was difficult to be sure of details, but he seemed to be wearing very old clothes and to be covered in sweat. Nonetheless, his jacket was buttoned up in nineteenth-century style, so that no shirt could be seen, and his trousers were tucked into huge, old-fashioned boots. About one thing there could be no mistake: in his left hand was a small saw—a child’s toy saw, I should imagine.
We stared at one another, perhaps each the more astonished. Then Enright made an effort and deposited the saw on a huge dirty table, of which I could see only a corner.
“Grover-Stacey,” he said, gulping, “my dear old chap. Don’t say I’ve forgotten an appointment?”
“No,” I replied, managing somehow to find the same key. “But possibly it’s time there was one.”
“I’m damned well sure it is.” He was dabbing at his brow, while trying not to draw attention to the fact. “The thing is that we M.P.s have so many different jobs on our hands.” And Enright actually looked at his hands, though only for a second.
“Perhaps you would be able to give me a ring so that I could pass on the latest news?”
A remarkable expression of gratitude lit up Enright’s carved-wooden features. It was as if thankfulness had overpowered him, do what he could to suppress it.
“I’ll do just that,” he said. “Thank you, Grover-Stacey, for reminding me. I’ve been working,” he added lamely.
He felt for his cigarettes and produced the unfashionably elaborate gold case from the side pocket of his pea jacket. Though his hand was shaking, he began to extend the open case to me. “No, of course not.” As he remembered, he seemed to fall into a trance. He just stood there, silent and rigid with the unlighted cigarette in his hands. Then he uttered a sort of groan, dropped the cigarette, and pressed both his hands against his face. Down the passage came the whistle and the clatter of dry wings.
“Get out, Grover-Stacey,” cried Enright, with a degree of urgency that I should never have thought possible and that I shall never forget. “For God’s sake go away!”
He fell to his knees and seemed to be trying to make himself as small as possible against the stone floor. It was obvious that he was under attack, but I could see nothing but his own crouching, cringing contracting mass.
“Go,” he cried in a high voice. “That’s all I ask. Go. Go.”
There were curious new sounds—tapping, shuffling, scraping, might be words for them—but it was difficult to see that Enright was taking any harm, except, so to speak, emotionally. I could see nothing but his grotesque figure, shrinking and shrinking.
I admit that I just stood there, staring no doubt, and listening, but basically just stupefied. I could not even surmise how I or anyone could help.
In the end, quite soon no doubt in reality, I became aware that the odd sounds had stopped. Once more there was nothing to be heard but the rain beating on the tiny medieval panes.
The figure on the stone floor began to swell again toward its normal bulk, and in a moment Enright was on his feet. His face was very white, and his narrow blue eyes were bitterly hostile.
“Next time you might do what I ask,” he said, and without saying more, re-entered the room behind him and shut the door. I felt as if I had stared inexcusably while a friend endured a fit or a convulsion. At least that was among the things I felt.
I wove my way down by way of the endless passages and staircases, but it was now the busy coffee period, and I doubt whether anyone paid me particular attention. This may have been just as well because I probably looked very queer. I slipped out through the central lobby and St. Stephen’s Hall without a single interrogation, even though I suspect that in the end I was almost running.
I simply could not go back to the office, though there were many things to be done, and I knew that if I went home, Virginia would be out at work and unable to telephone the girl to explain my absence. I dealt with this situation by just doing nothing. That is to say, I did go home but simply lay down on the daybed.
I dealt with various other elements of the case in much the same way. In particular, I told no one what had happened, or any part of it, not even Virginia.
When Virginia returned, I explained that a horror of Parliament had been steadily rising in me, over the past few months at least. She knew this already and was completely understanding (as she always was until the day she left me—and, as a matter of fact, after that as well). I told her that, quite suddenly, I could stand no more of it and should have to change my job once again. At the time, she seemed nothing but sympathetic.
I don’t know at what hour Jupon ultimately rolled up, only to miss me in turn of course.
I give the impression of having kept my head, of having behaved sensibly, in the degree that is incredible. It would indeed have been incredible. I have set forth the surface of events but must now say a few words, very few, about what was really happening.
It could hardly have been more obvious that sooner or later, even in an obscure attic of the mastodon Palace of Westminster, evidence might be found. The long fear set in, which did not diminish as time passed but grew. Fear, left to itself, feeds on
itself. I could not even decide what was likely to happen to me; the possibilities seemed to range from a serious misunderstanding with Virginia, coupled probably with general social ostracism, to an actual charge of complicity together with who knew what of posthumous retribution. I dreaded, and my spirit shrank and shrank, all without a word to anyone, for at least two years. Believe me, it was incomparably the worst part of the whole experience.
After about two years, I became more or less inured. Samuel Butler suggests that one of the defects in the theory of hell is that, if left there for eternity, the damned would get used to the torments. I must not, however, set my own poor case quite on that level. I admit that in the end I began to wonder whether at least some parts of my experience (which surely had been a terrible one?) might not have been, I will not say a dream, but an hallucination, perhaps originating in too much contact with Parliament by someone unsuited to it temperamentally.
To set against that comparatively comforting notion, I have to consider what happened to my poor friend Enright. Many will, indeed, remember what happened to him, or more or less. I myself never saw or heard from him again after that fantastic morning. Enright was taken ill, as the saying goes, while walking home across Smith Square, only eight or nine days later. It was raining heavily at the time, but three different people who had been crossing the square said at the inquest that Enright, though all of them saw this at some distance, was waving his arms above his head, seeming to beat something off. One of them, an elderly woman, went to help him but found him already dead. The medical evidence was to the effect that his face, and the whole upper part of his body, had been almost torn to shreds, but the coroner thought, as coroners will, that Enright might somehow have done this himself. Coroners are often whimsical in their insights.
Dreadful in itself, Enright’s end was also personally disappointing because it had early occurred to me that I might that morning have done something to save Enright, though possibly at no small cost to myself. That would have been something to show for it all. Now I fear for what may happen to me too in the end for having become involved in these events (even though I no longer worry much about an official hue and cry), and I lack even the satisfaction of having helped my friend. The inevitable depression resulting from these thoughts may have played its part in losing me Virginia. My only hope is that somehow I may have handled in the right way at least the original situation with the woman in the black dress. Time alone can show; but I remain extremely anxious.
I have heard nothing of anyone entering that upstairs room since Enright himself last went there, but of course it is not the sort of thing the authorities would put in the paper, especially now that the authority concerned with the conduct of the palace is the parliamentary membership itself and no longer a court official responsible to a higher quarter.
I myself have never set foot in the place again; but, in fairness, I suppose I should quote an observation I have lately come upon as attributed to Winston Churchill: “Democracy seems impossible, until you examine the other system.” Maybe it really is just part of the fall of man and irredeemable without special grace.
THE VISITING STAR
The first time that Colvin, who had never been a frequent theatre-goer, ever heard of the great actress Arabella Rokeby was when he was walking past the Hippodrome one night and Malnik, the Manager of the Tabard Players, invited him into his office.
Had Colvin not been awarded a grant, remarkably insufficient for present prices, upon which to compose, collate, and generally scratch together a book upon the once thriving British industries of lead and plumbago mining, he would probably never have set eyes upon this bleak town. Tea was over (today it had been pilchard salad and chips); and Colvin had set out from the Emancipation Hotel, where he boarded, upon his regular evening walk. In fifteen or twenty minutes he would be beyond the gas-lights, the granite setts, the nimbus of the pits. (Lead and plumbago mining had long been replaced by coal as the town’s main industry.) There had been no one else for tea and Mrs. Royd had made it clear that the trouble he was causing had not passed unnoticed.
Outside it was blowing as well as raining, so that Palmerston Street was almost deserted. The Hippodrome (called, when built, the Grand Opera House) stood at the corner of Palmerston Street and Aberdeen Place. Vast, ornate, the product of an unfulfilled aspiration that the town would increase in size and devotion to the Muses, it had been for years unused and forgotten. About it like rags, when Colvin first beheld it, had hung scraps of posters: “Harem Nights. Gay! Bright! ! Alluring ! ! !” But a few weeks ago the Hippodrome had reopened to admit the Tabard Players (“In Association with the Arts Council”); and, it was hoped, their audiences. The Tabard Players offered soberer joys: a new and respectable play each week, usually a light comedy or West End crook drama; but, on one occasion, Everyman. Malnik, their Manager, a youngish bald man, was an authority on the British Drama of the Nineteenth Century, upon which he had written an immense book, bursting with carefully verified detail. Colvin had met him one night in the Saloon Bar of the Emancipation Hotel; and, though neither knew anything of the other’s subject, they had exchanged cultural life-belts in the ocean of apathy and incomprehensible interests which surrounded them. Malnik was lodging with the sad-faced Rector, who let rooms.
Tonight, having seen the curtain up on Act I, Malnik had come outside for a breath of the wind. There was something he wanted to impart; and, as he regarded the drizzling and indifferent town, Colvin obligingly came into sight. In a moment, he was inside Malnik’s roomy but crumbling office.
“Look,” said Malnik.
He shuffled a heap of papers on his desk and handed Colvin a photograph. It was yellow, and torn at the edges. The subject was a wild-eyed young man with much dark curly hair and a blobby face. He was wearing a high stiff collar, and a bow like Chopin’s.
“John Nethers,” said Malnik. Then, when no light of rapture flashed from Colvin’s face, he said “Author of Cornelia.”
“Sorry,” said Colvin, shaking his head.
“John Nethers was the son of a chemist in this town. Some books say a miner, but that’s wrong. A chemist. He killed himself at twenty-two. But before that I’ve traced that he’d written at least six plays. Cornelia, which is the best of them, is one of the great plays of the nineteenth century.”
“Why did he kill himself?”
“It’s in his eyes. You can see it. Cornelia was produced in London with Arabella Rokeby. But never here. Never in the author’s own town. I’ve been into the whole thing closely. Now we’re going to do Cornelia for Christmas.”
“Won’t you lose money?” asked Colvin.
“We’re losing money all the time, old man. Of course we are. We may as well do something we shall be remembered by.”
Colvin nodded. He was beginning to see that Malnik’s life was a single-minded struggle for the British Drama of the Nineteenth Century and all that went with it.
“Besides I’m going to do As You Like It also. As a fill-up.” Malnik stooped and spoke close to Colvin’s ear as he sat in a bursting leather armchair, the size of a Judge’s seat. “You see, Arabella Rokeby’s coming.”
“But how long is it since—”
“Better not be too specific about that. They say it doesn’t matter with Arabella Rokeby. She can get away with it. Probably in fact she can’t. Not altogether. But all the same, think of it. Arabella Rokeby in Cornelia. In my theatre.”
Colvin thought of it.
“Have you ever seen her?”
“No, I haven’t. Of course she doesn’t play regularly nowadays. Only special engagements. But in this business one has to take a chance sometimes. And golly what a chance!”
“And she’s willing to come? I mean at Christmas,” Colvin added, not wishing to seem rude.
Malnik did seem slightly unsure. “I have a contract,” he said. Then he added: “She’ll love it when she gets here. After all: Cornelia! And she must know that the nineteenth-century theatre is m
y subject.” He had seemed to be reassuring himself, but now he was glowing.
“But As You Like It?” said Colvin, who had played Touchstone at his preparatory school. “Surely she can’t manage Rosalind?”
“It was her great part. Happily you can play Rosalind at any age. Wish I could get old Ludlow to play Jaques. But he won’t.” Ludlow was the company’s veteran.
“Why not?”
“He played with Rokeby in the old days. I believe he’s afraid she’ll see he isn’t the Grand Old Man he should be. He’s a good chap, but proud. Of course he may have other reasons. You never know with Ludlow.”
The curtain was down on Act I.
Colvin took his leave and resumed his walk.
Shortly thereafter Colvin read about the Nethers Gala in the local evening paper (“this forgotten poet”, as the writer helpfully phrased it), and found confirmation that Miss Rokeby was indeed to grace it (“the former London star”). In the same issue of the paper appeared an editorial to the effect that wide-spread disappointment would be caused by the news that the Hippodrome would not be offering a pantomime at Christmas in accordance with the custom of the town and district.
“She can’t ’ardly stop ’ere, Mr. Colvin,” said Mrs. Royd, when Colvin, thinking to provide forewarning, showed her the news, as she lent a hand behind the saloon bar. “This isn’t the Cumberland. She’d get across the staff.”
“I believe she’s quite elderly,” said Colvin soothingly.
“If she’s elderly, she’ll want special attention, and that’s often just as bad.”
The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 32