by Roald Dahl
‘I never forgot the impression made on me by the old man, and often questioned the sisters about the poor caretaker, but they had nothing of any interest to tell me. They merely described him as an “old dear” who had been in their father’s service for years and years. No further light was thrown on his sale of the frog. Naturally, they did not like to question his widow.
‘One evening while I was having tea in the inner room with the elder sister, I picked up a photograph album. Turning its pages, I came on a remarkably fine likeness of the old man. There, before my eyes was that strange, striking countenance; but evidently this photograph had been taken many years before I saw him. The face was fuller and had not yet acquired the frail, infinitely wearied look I remembered. But what magnificent eyes! There certainly was something extraordinarily impressive about the man.
‘ “What a splendid photograph of poor old Holmes!” I said.
‘ “Photograph of Holmes? I’d no idea there was one. Let’s see.”
‘As I handed her the open book, her young sister, Bessie, looked in through the open door.
‘ “I’m off to the movies now,” she called out. “Father’s just rung up to say he’ll be round in a few minutes to have a look at that Sheraton sideboard.’
‘ “All right, Bessie, I’ll be here, and very glad to have father’s opinion,” said Miss Wilson, taking the album from my hand.
‘ “I can’t see any photograph of old Holmes,” she said.
‘I pointed to the top of the page.
‘ “That?” she exclaimed. “Why, that’s my dear father!”
‘ “Your father!” I gasped.
‘ “Yes, I can’t imagine any two people more unlike. It must have been very dark when you saw Holmes!”
‘ “Yes, yes; it was very dark,” I said quickly – just to gain time to think, for I felt bewildered. No degree of darkness could possibly explain any such mistake. I had no moment’s doubt as to the identity of the man I had taken for the caretaker with the one whose photograph I held in my hand. But what an amazing, inexplicable thing!
‘Her father? Why on earth should he have been in the shop unknown to his daughters? For what possible motive had he concealed his sale of the frog? And when he heard of its value, why had he left the girls under the impression that it was Holmes, the dead caretaker, who had sold it?
‘Had he been ashamed to confess his own inadvertence? Or was it possible that the girls had never told him the astonishing sequel to the sale? Did they perhaps not want him to know of their sudden acquisition? Into what strange family intrigue had I stumbled? But, whoever it was who had been so secretive, it was none of my business. I didn’t want to give anyone away. No, I must hold my tongue.
‘The younger sister had said the father was just coming. Would he recognize me as his customer? If so, it might be rather embarrassing.
‘ “It’s a splendid face,” I said shyly.
‘ “Isn’t it?” she said with pleased eagerness. “So clever and strong, don’t you think? I remember when that photograph was taken. It was just before he got religion.” The girl spoke as if she referred to some distressing illness.
‘ “Did he suddenly become very religious?”
‘ “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “Poor father! He made friends with a priest, and became so changed. He was never the same again.”
‘From the break in the girl’s voice, I guessed she thought her father’s reason had been affected. Perhaps this explained the whole affair? On the two occasions when I had seen him, was he wandering in mind as well as body?
‘ “Did his religion make him unhappy?” I ventured to ask, for I was most anxious for more light on the strange being before I met him again.
‘ “Yes, dreadfully.” The girl’s eyes were full of tears. “You see … it was …” She hesitated, but after a glance at me went on, “There’s really no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. I’ve come to look on you as a real friend. My poor father began to think he had done something very wrong. He couldn’t quiet his conscience. You remember me telling you of his extraordinary flair? Well, his fortune had really been founded on three marvellous strokes of business. You see, he had exactly the same sort of luck you had here the other day – that’s why I decided to tell you. It seems such an odd coincidence.”
‘She paused.
‘ “Please go on,” I urged.
‘ “Well, on three separate occasions he bought for a few shillings objects that were of immense value. Only unlike you – he did know what he was about. The profit made on their sale was no surprise to him. Unlike you, he did not then see any obligation to make it up to the ignorant people who had thrown away fortunes. After all, most dealers wouldn’t, would they?” she asked defensively. “Well, father grew richer and richer … Years later, he met this priest, and then he seemed to go sort of – er – morbid. He began to think that our wealth had been founded on what was really no better than theft. He reproached himself bitterly for having taken advantage of those three men’s ignorance. Unhappily in each case he succeeded in discovering what had ultimately happened to those he called his ‘victims’. Most unfortunately, all three customers had died destitute. This discovery made him incurably miserable. Two of these men had died without leaving any children, so, as no relations could be found, my father was unable to make amends.
‘ “The son of the third he traced to America: but there he, too, had died leaving no family. So poor father could find no means of making reparation. That was what he longed for – to make reparation. His failure preyed and preyed on him, until his poor dear mind became quite unhinged. As religion gained stronger and stronger hold on him, he took a queer sort of notion into his head – a regular obsession. ‘The next best thing to doing a good deed yourself,’ he would say, ‘is to provide someone else with the opportunity – to give him his cue. In our sins Christ is crucified afresh. Because I sinned against Him thrice, I must somehow be the cause of three correspondingly good actions that will counter-balance my own sins. In no other way can I atone for my crimes against Christ, for crimes they were.’
‘ “In vain we argued with him, assuring him he had done only as nearly all other men would have done. It was no use. ‘Other men must judge for themselves. I have done what I know to be wrong,’ he would moan. He grew more and more fixed in his idea of – er – expiation. It became positive religious mania!
‘ “Determined to find three human beings who, by their good actions, would, as it were, cancel out the pain caused to Divinity by what he called his ‘three crimes’, he busied himself in finding insignificant-looking works of art which he would offer for a few shillings.
‘ “Poor old father! Never shall I forget his joy when one day a man brought back a vase he had bought for five shillings and then discovered to be worth six hundred pounds: ‘I think you must have made a mistake,’ the man said. Just as you did, bless you!
‘ “Five years later a similar thing occurred, and he was, oh, so radiant. Two of humanity’s crimes cancelled out – two-thirds of his expiation achieved!
‘ “Then followed years and years of weary disappointment. ‘I shall never rest. I can’t. No, never, never, until I find the third,’ he used to say.”
‘Here the girl began to weep. Hiding her face behind her hands, she murmured, “Oh, if only you had come sooner!”
‘I heard the jingle-jangle of the bell.
‘ “How he must have suffered!” I said. “I’m so glad I had the luck to be the third. Is he satisfied now?”
‘Her hands dropped from her face; she stared at me.
‘I heard footsteps approach.
‘ “I’m so glad I’m going to meet him again,” I said.
‘ “Meet him?” she echoed in amazement as the footsteps neared.
‘ “Yes, I may stay and see your father, mayn’t I? I heard your sister say he would soon be here.”
‘ “Oh, now I understand!” she exclaimed. “You mean Bessie’s father! But Bessie and
I are only step-sisters. My poor father died years and years ago.” ’
In the Tube
by E. F. Benson
‘It’s a convention,’ said Anthony Carling cheerfully, ‘and not a very convincing one. Time, indeed! There’s no such thing as Time really; it has no actual existence. Time is nothing more than an infinitesimal point in eternity, just as space is an infinitesimal point in infinity. At the most, Time is a sort of tunnel through which we are accustomed to believe that we are travelling. There’s a roar in our ears and a darkness in our eyes which makes it seem real to us. But before we came into the tunnel we existed for ever in an infinite sunlight, and after we have got through it we shall exist in an infinite sunlight again. So why should we bother ourselves about the confusion and noise and darkness which only encompass us for a moment?’
For a firm-rooted believer in such immeasurable ideas as these, which he punctuated with brisk application of the poker to the brave sparkle and glow of the fire, Anthony has a very pleasant appreciation of the measurable and the finite, and nobody with whom I have acquaintance has so keen a zest for life and its enjoyments as he. He had given us this evening an admirable dinner, had passed round a port beyond praise, and had illuminated the jolly hours with the light of his infectious optimism. Now the small company had melted away, and I was left with him over the fire in his study. Outside the tattoo of wind-driven sleet was audible on the window panes, over-scoring now and again the flap of the flames on the open hearth, and the thought of the chilly blasts and the snow-covered pavement in Brompton Square, across which, to skidding taxicabs, the last of his other guests had scurried, made my position, resident here till tomorrow morning, the more delicately delightful. Above all there was this stimulating and suggestive companion, who, whether he talked of the great abstractions which were so intensely real and practical to him, or of the very remarkable experiences which he had encountered among these conventions of time and space, was equally fascinating to the listener.
‘I adore life,’ he said. ‘I find it the most entrancing plaything. It’s a delightful game, and, as you know very well, the only conceivable way to play a game is to treat it extremely seriously. If you say to yourself, “It’s only a game,” you cease to take the slightest interest in it. You have to know that it’s only a game, and behave as if it was the one object of existence. I should like it to go on for many years yet. But all the time one has to be living on the true plane as well, which is eternity and infinity. If you come to think of it, the one thing which the human mind cannot grasp is the finite, not the infinite, the temporary, not the eternal.’
‘That sounds rather paradoxical,’ said I.
‘Only because you’ve made a habit of thinking about things that seem bounded and limited. Look it in the face for a minute. Try to imagine finite Time and Space, and you find you can’t. Go back a million years, and multiply that million of years by another million, and you find that you can’t conceive of a beginning. What happened before that beginning? Another beginning and another beginning? And before that? Look at it like that, and you find that the only solution comprehensible to you is the existence of an eternity, something that never began and will never end. It’s the same about space. Project yourself to the farthest star, and what comes beyond that? Emptiness? Go on through the emptiness, and you can’t imagine it being finite and having an end. It must needs go on for ever: that’s the only thing you can understand. There’s no such thing as before or after, or beginning or end, and what a comfort that is! I should fidget myself to death if there wasn’t the huge soft cushion of eternity to lean one’s head against. Some people say – I believe I’ve heard you say it yourself – that the idea of eternity is so tiring; you feel that you want to stop. But that’s because you are thinking of eternity in terms of Time, and mumbling in your brain, “And after that, and after that?” Don’t you grasp the idea that in eternity there isn’t any “after”, any more than there is any “before”? It’s all one. Eternity isn’t a quantity: it’s a quality.’
Sometimes, when Anthony talks in this manner, I seem to get a glimpse of that which to his mind is so transparently clear and solidly real, at other times (not having a brain that readily envisages abstractions) I feel as though he was pushing me over a precipice, and my intellectual faculties grasp wildly at anything tangible or comprehensible. This was the case now, and I hastily interrupted.
‘But there is a “before” and “after”,’ I said. ‘A few hours ago you gave us an admirable dinner, and after that – yes, after – we played bridge. And now you are going to explain things a little more clearly to me, and after that I shall go to bed –’
He laughed.
‘You shall do exactly as you like,’ he said, ‘and you shan’t be a slave to Time either tonight or tomorrow morning. We won’t even mention an hour for breakfast, but you shall have it in eternity whenever you awake. And as I see it is not midnight yet, we’ll slip the bonds of Time, and talk quite infinitely. I will stop the clock, if that will assist you in getting rid of your illusion, and then I’ll tell you a story, which, to my mind, shows how unreal so-called realities are; or, at any rate, how fallacious are our senses as judges of what is real and what is not.’
‘Something occult, something spookish?’ I asked, pricking up my ears, for Anthony has the strangest clairvoyances and visions of things unseen by the normal eye.
‘I suppose you might call some of it occult,’ he said, ‘though there’s a certain amount of rather grim reality mixed up in it.’
‘Go on; excellent mixture,’ said I.
He threw a fresh log on the fire.
‘It’s a longish story,’ he said. ‘You may stop me as soon as you’ve had enough. But there will come a point for which I claim your consideration. You, who cling to your “before” and “after”, has it ever occurred to you how difficult it is to say when an incident takes place? Say that a man commits some crime of violence, can we not, with a good deal of truth, say that he really commits that crime when he definitely plans and determines upon it, dwelling on it with gusto? The actual commission of it, I think we can reasonably argue, is the mere material sequel of his resolve: he is guilty of it when he makes that determination. When, therefore, in the term of “before” and “after”, does the crime truly take place? There is also in my story a further point for your consideration. For it seems certain that the spirit of a man, after the death of his body, is obliged to re-enact such a crime, with a view, I suppose we may guess, to his remorse and his eventual redemption. Those who have second sight have seen such re-enactments. Perhaps he may have done his deed blindly in this life; but then his spirit re-commits it with its spiritual eyes open, and is able to comprehend its enormity. So, shall we view the man’s original determination and the material commission of his crime only as preludes to the real commission of it, when with eyes unsealed he does it and repents of it? … That all sounds very obscure when I speak in the abstract, but I think you will see what I mean, if you follow my tale. Comfortable? Got everything you want? Here goes then.’
He leaned back in his chair, concentrating his mind, and then spoke:
‘The story that I am about to tell you,’ he said, ‘had its beginning a month ago, when you were away in Switzerland. It reached its conclusion, so I imagine, last night. I do not, at any rate, expect to experience any more of it. Well, a month ago I was returning late on a very wet night from dining out. There was not a taxi to be had, and I hurried through the pouring rain to the tube station at Piccadilly Circus, and thought myself very lucky to catch the last train in this direction. The carriage into which I stepped was quite empty except for one other passenger, who sat next the door immediately opposite to me. I had never, to my knowledge, seen him before, but I found my attention vividly fixed on him, as if he somehow concerned me. He was a man of middle age, in dress-clothes, and his face wore an expression of intense thought, as if in his mind he was pondering some very significant matter, and his hand which
was resting on his knee clenched and unclenched itself. Suddenly he looked up and stared me in the face, and I saw there suspicion and fear, as if I had surprised him in some secret deed.
‘At that moment we stopped at Dover Street, and the conductor threw open the doors, announced the station and added, “Change here for Hyde Park Corner and Gloucester Road.” That was all right for me since it meant that the train would stop at Brompton Road, which was my destination. It was all right apparently, too, for my companion, for he certainly did not get out, and after a moment’s stop, during which no one else got in, we went on. I saw him, I must insist, after the doors were closed and the train had started. But when I looked again, as we rattled on, I saw that there was no one there. I was quite alone in the carriage.
‘Now you may think that I had had one of those swift momentary dreams which flash in and out of the mind in the space of a second, but I did not believe it was so myself, for I felt that I had experienced some sort of premonition or clairvoyant vision. A man, the semblance of whom, astral body or whatever you may choose to call it, I had just seen, would sometimes sit in that seat opposite to me, pondering and planning.’
‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Why should it have been the astral body of a living man, which you thought you had seen? Why not the ghost of a dead one?’
‘Because of my own sensations. The sight of the spirit of someone dead, which has occurred to me two or three times in my life, has always been accompanied by a physical shrinking and fear, and by the sensation of cold and of loneliness. I believed, at any rate, that I had seen a phantom of the living, and that impression was confirmed, I might say proved, the next day. For I met the man himself. And the next night, as you shall hear, I met the phantom again. We will take them in order.