We reached his aunt’s house partly by train, partly by a lift in an empty farm-cart, and partly by walking. It was a whole-day holiday, and we were to sleep the night; he lent me extraordinary night-gear, I remember. The village street was unusually wide, and was fed from a green by two converging roads, with an inn, and a high green sign at the corner. About a hundred yards down the street was a chemist’s shop – a Mr Tanner’s. We descended the two steps into his dusky and odorous interior to buy, I remember, some rat poison. A little beyond the chemist’s was the forge. You then walked along a very narrow path, under a fairly high wall, nodding here and there with weeds and tufts of grass, and so came to the iron garden-gates, and saw the high flat house behind its huge sycamore. A coach-house stood on the left of the house, and on the right a gate led into a kind of rambling orchard. The lawn lay away over to the left again, and at the bottom (for the whole garden sloped gently to a sluggish and rushy pond-like stream) was a meadow.
We arrived at noon, and entered the gates out of the hot dust beneath the glitter of the dark-curtained windows. Seaton led me at once through the little garden-gate to show me his tadpole pond, swarming with what (being myself not in the least interested in low life) seemed to me the most horrible creatures – of all shapes, consistencies, and sizes, but with which Seaton was obviously on the most intimate of terms. I can see his absorbed face now as, squatting on his heels he fished the slimy things out in his sallow palms. Wearying at last of these pets, we loitered about awhile in an aimless fashion. Seaton seemed to be listening, or at any rate waiting, for something to happen or for someone to come. But nothing did happen and no one came.
That was just like Seaton. Anyhow, the first view I got of his aunt was when, at the summons of a distant gong, we turned from the garden, very hungry and thirsty, to go in to luncheon. We were approaching the house, when Seaton suddenly came to a standstill. Indeed, I have always had the impression that he plucked at my sleeve. Something, at least, seemed to catch me back, as it were, as he cried, ‘Look out, there she is!’
She was standing at an upper window which opened wide on a hinge, and at first sight she looked an excessively tall and overwhelming figure. This, however, was mainly because the window reached all but to the floor of her bedroom. She was in reality rather an undersized woman, in spite of her long face and big head. She must have stood, I think, unusually still, with eyes fixed on us, though this impression may be due to Seaton’s sudden warning and to my consciousness of the cautious and subdued air that had fallen on him at sight of her. I know that without the least reason in the world I felt a kind of guiltiness, as if I had been ‘caught’. There was a silvery star pattern sprinkled on her black silk dress, and even from the ground I could see the immense coils of her hair and the rings on her left hand which was held fingering the small jet buttons of her bodice. She watched our united advance without stirring, until, imperceptibly, her eyes raised and lost themselves in the distance, so that it was out of an assumed reverie that she appeared suddenly to awaken to our presence beneath her when we drew close to the house.
‘So this is your friend, Mr Smithers, I suppose?’ she said, bobbing to me.
‘Withers, aunt,’ said Seaton.
‘It’s much the same,’ she said, with eyes fixed on me. ‘Come in, Mr Withers, and bring him along with you.’
She continued to gaze at me – at least, I think she did so. I know that the fixity of her scrutiny and her ironical ‘Mr’ made me feel peculiarly uncomfortable. None the less she was extremely kind and attentive to me, though, no doubt, her kindness and attention showed up more vividly against her complete neglect of Seaton. Only one remark that I have any recollection of she made to him: ‘When I look on my nephew, Mr Smithers, I realize that dust we are, and dust shall become. You are hot, dirty, and incorrigible, Arthur.’
She sat at the head of the table, Seaton at the foot, and I, before a wide waste of damask tablecloth, between them. It was an old and rather close dining-room, with windows thrown wide to the green garden and a wonderful cascade of fading roses. Miss Seaton’s great chair faced this window, so that its rose-reflected light shone full on her yellowish face, and on just such chocolate eyes as my schoolfellow’s, except that hers were more than half-covered by unusually long and heavy lids.
There she sat, steadily eating, with those sluggish eyes fixed for the most part on my face; above them stood the deep-lined fork between her eyebrows; and above that the wide expanse of a remarkable brow beneath its strange steep bank of hair. The lunch was copious, and consisted, I remember, of all such dishes as are generally considered too rich and too good for the schoolboy digestion – lobster mayonnaise, cold game sausages, an immense veal and ham pie farced with eggs, truffles, and numberless delicious flavours; besides kickshaws, creams and sweetmeats. We even had a wine, a half-glass of old darkish sherry each.
Miss Seaton enjoyed and indulged an enormous appetite. Her example and a natural schoolboy voracity soon overcame my nervousness of her, even to the extent of allowing me to enjoy to the best of my bent so rare a spread. Seaton was singularly modest; the greater part of his meal consisted of almonds and raisins, which he nibbled surreptitiously and as if he found difficulty in swallowing them.
I don’t mean that Miss Seaton ‘conversed’ with me. She merely scattered trenchant remarks and now and then twinkled a baited question over my head. But her face was like a dense and involved accompaniment to her talk. She presently dropped the ‘Mr’, to my intense relief, and called me now Withers, or Wither, now Smithers, and even once towards the close of the meal distinctly Johnson, though how on earth my name suggested it, or whose face mine had reanimated in memory, I cannot conceive.
‘And is Arthur a good boy at school, Mr Wither?’ was one of her many questions. ‘Does he please his masters? Is he first in his class? What does the reverend Dr Gummidge think of him, eh?’
I knew she was jeering at him, but her face was adamant against the least flicker of sarcasm or facetiousness. I gazed fixedly at a blushing crescent of lobster.
‘I think you’re eighth, aren’t you, Seaton?’
Seaton moved his small pupils towards his aunt. But she continued to gaze with a kind of concentrated detachment at me.
‘Arthur will never make a brilliant scholar, I fear,’ she said, lifting a dexterously burdened fork to her wide mouth …
After luncheon she preceded me up to my bedroom. It was a jolly little bedroom, with a brass fender and rugs and a polished floor, on which it was possible, I afterwards found, to play ‘snow-shoes’. Over the washstand was a little black-framed water-colour drawing, depicting a large eye with an extremely fishlike intensity in the spark of light on the dark pupil; and in ‘illuminated’ lettering beneath was printed very minutely, ‘Thou God Seest ME’, followed by a long looped monogram, ‘S.S.’, in the corner. The other pictures were all of the sea; brigs on blue water; a schooner over-topping chalk cliffs; a rocky island of prodigious steepness, with two tiny sailors dragging a monstrous boat up a shelf of beach.
This is the room, Withers, my poor dear brother William died in when a boy. Admire the view!’
I looked out of the window across the tree-tops. It was a day hot with sunshine over the green fields, and the cattle were standing swishing their tails in the shallow water. But the view at the moment was no doubt made more vividly impressive by the apprehension that she would presently enquire after my luggage, and I had brought not even a toothbrush. I need have had no fear. Hers was not that highly civilized type of mind that is stuffed with sharp, material details. Nor could her ample presence be described as in the least motherly.
‘I would never consent to question a schoolfellow behind my nephew’s back,’ she said, standing in the middle of the room ‘but tell me, Smithers, why is Arthur so unpopular? You, I understand, are his only close friend.’ She stood in a dazzle of sun, and out of it her eyes regarded me with such leaden penetration beneath their thick lids that I doubt if my face c
oncealed the least thought from her. ‘But there, there,’ she added very suavely, stooping her head a little, ‘don’t trouble to answer me. I never extort an answer. Boys are queer fish. Brains might perhaps have suggested his washing his hands before luncheon; but – not my choice, Smithers. God forbid! And now, perhaps, you would like to go into the garden again. I cannot actually see from here, but I should not be surprised if Arthur is now skulking behind that hedge.’
He was. I saw his head come out and take a rapid glance at the windows.
‘Join him, Mr Smithers; we shall meet again, I hope, at the tea-table. The afternoon I spend in retirement.’
Whether or not, Seaton and I had not been long engaged with the aid of two green switches in riding round and round a lumbering old grey horse we found in the meadow, before a rather bunched-up figure appeared, walking along the field-path on the other side of the water, with a magenta parasol studiously lowered in our direction throughout her slow progress, as if that were the magnetic needle and we the fixed Pole. Seaton at once lost all nerve and interest. At the next lurch of the old mare’s heels he toppled over into the grass, and I slid off the sleek broad back to join him where he stood, rubbing his shoulder and sourly watching the rather pompous figure till it was out of sight.
‘Was that your aunt, Seaton?’ I enquired; but not till then.
He nodded.
‘Why didn’t she take any notice of us, then?’
‘She never does.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, she knows all right, without; that’s the dam awful part of it.’ Seaton was one of the very few fellows at Gummidge’s who had the ostentation to use bad language. He had suffered for it too. But it wasn’t, I think, bravado. I believe he really felt certain things more intensely than most of the other fellows, and they were generally things that fortunate and average people do not feel at all – the peculiar quality, for instance, of the British schoolboy’s imagination.
‘I tell you, Withers,’ he went on moodily, slinking across the meadow with his hands covered up in his pockets, ‘she sees everything. And what she doesn’t see she knows without.’
‘But how?’ I said, not because I was much interested, but because the afternoon was so hot and tiresome and purposeless, and it seemed more of a bore to remain silent. Seaton turned gloomily and spoke in a very low voice.
‘Don’t appear to be talking of her, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s – because she’s in league with the Devil.’ He nodded his head and stooped to pick up a round flat pebble. ‘I tell you,’ he said, still stooping, ‘you fellows don’t realize what it is. I know I’m a bit close and all that. But so would you be if you had that old hag listening to every thought you think.’
I looked at him, then turned and surveyed one by one the windows of the house.
‘Where’s your pater?’ I said awkwardly.
‘Dead, ages and ages ago, and my mother too. She’s not my aunt even by rights.’
‘What is she, then?’
‘I mean she’s not my mother’s sister, because my grandmother married twice; and she’s one of the first lot. I don’t know what you call her, but anyhow she’s not my real aunt.’
‘She gives you plenty of pocket-money.’
Seaton looked steadfastly at me out of his flat eyes. ‘She can’t give me what’s mine. When I come of age half of the whole lot will be mine; and what’s more’ – he turned his back on the house – ‘I’ll make her hand over every blessed shilling of it.’
I put my hands in my pockets and stared at Seaton; ‘Is it much?’
He nodded.
‘Who told you?’ He got suddenly very angry, a darkish red came into his cheeks, his eyes glistened, but he made no answer, and we loitered listlessly about the garden until it was time for tea …
Seaton’s aunt was wearing an extraordinary kind of lace jacket when we sidled sheepishly into the drawing-room together. She greeted me with a heavy and protracted smile, and bade me bring a chair close to the little table.
‘I hope Arthur has made you feel at home,’ she said as she handed me my cup in her crooked hand. ‘He don’t talk much to me; but then I’m an old woman. You must come again, Wither, and draw him out of his shell. You old snail!’ She wagged her head at Seaton, who sat munching cake and watching her intently.
‘And we must correspond, perhaps.’ She nearly shut her eyes at me. ‘You must write and tell me everything behind the creature’s back.’ I confess I found her rather disquieting company. The evening drew on. Lamps were brought in by a man with a nondescript face and very quiet footsteps. Seaton was told to bring out the chess-men. And we played a game, she and I, with her big chin thrust over the board at every move as she gloated over the pieces and occasionally croaked ‘Check!’ – after which she would sit back inscrutably staring at me. But the game was never finished. She simply hemmed me in with a gathering cloud of pieces that held me impotent, and yet one and all refused to administer to my poor flustered old king a merciful coup de grâce.
‘There,’ she said, as the clock struck ten – ‘a drawn game, Withers. We are very evenly matched. A very creditable defence, Withers. You know your room. There’s supper on a tray in the dining-room. Don’t let the creature over-eat himself. The gong will sound three-quarters of an hour before a punctual breakfast.’ She held out her cheek to Seaton, and he kissed it with obvious perfunctoriness. With me she shook hands.
‘An excellent game,’ she said cordially, ‘but my memory is poor, and’ – she swept the pieces helter-skelter into the box – ‘the result will never be known.’ She raised her great head far back. ‘Eh?’
It was a kind of challenge, and I could only murmur: ‘Oh I was absolutely in a hole, you know!’ when she burst out laughing and waved us both out of the room.
Seaton and I stood and ate our supper, with one candlestick to light us, in a corner of the dining-room. ‘Well, and how would you like it?’ he said very softly, after cautiously poking his head round the doorway.
‘Like what?’
‘Being spied on – every blessed thing you do and think?’
‘I shouldn’t like it at all,’ I said, ‘if she does.’
‘And yet you let her smash you up at chess!’
‘I didn’t let her!’ I said indignantly.
‘Well, you funked it, then.’
‘And I didn’t funk it either,’ I said; ‘she’s so jolly clever with her knights.’ Seaton stared at the candle. ‘Knights,’ he said slowly. ‘You wait, that’s all.’ And we went upstairs to bed.
I had not been long in bed, I think, when I was cautiously awakened by a touch on my shoulder. And there was Seaton’s face in the candlelight – and his eyes looking into mine.
‘What’s up?’ I said, lurching on to my elbow.
‘Ssh! Don’t scurry,’ he whispered. ‘She’ll hear. I’m sorry for waking you, but I didn’t think you’d be asleep so soon.’
‘Why, what’s the time, then?’ Seaton wore, what was then rather unusual, a night-suit, and he hauled his big silver watch out of the pocket in his jacket.
‘It’s a quarter to twelve. I never get to sleep before twelve – not here.’
‘What do you do, then?’
‘Oh, I read: and listen.’
‘Listen?’
Seaton stared into his candle-flame as if he were listening even then. ‘You can’t guess what it is. All you read in ghost stories, that’s all rot. You can’t see much, Withers, but you know all the same.’
‘Know what?’
‘Why, that they’re there.’
‘Who’s there?’ I asked fretfully, glancing at the door.
‘Why, in the house. It swarms with ’em. Just you stand still and listen outside my bedroom door in the middle of the night. I have, dozens of times; they’re all over the place.’
‘Look here, Seaton,’ I said, ‘you asked me to come here, and I didn’t mind chucking up a leave just to oblige you and because I’d promised; but don’t get
talking a lot of rot, that’s all, or you’ll know the difference when we get back.’
‘Don’t fret,’ he said coldly, turning away. ‘I shan’t be at school long. And what’s more, you’re here now, and there isn’t anybody else to talk to. I’ll chance the other.’
‘Look here, Seaton,’ I said, ‘you may think you’re going to scare me with a lot of stuff about voices and all that. But I’ll just thank you to clear out; and you may please yourself about pottering about all night.’
He made no answer; he was standing by the dressing-table looking across his candle into the looking-glass; he turned and stared slowly round the walls.
‘Even this room’s nothing more than a coffin. I suppose she told you – ‘It’s all exactly the same as when my brother William died’ – trust her for that! And good luck to him, say I. Look at that.’ He raised his candle close to the little water-colour I have mentioned. ‘There’s hundreds of eyes like that in this house; and even if God does see you, He takes precious good care you don’t see Him. And it’s just the same with them. I tell you what, Withers, I’m getting sick of all this. I shan’t stand it much longer.’
The house was silent within and without, and even in the yellowish radiance of the candle a faint silver showed through the open window on my blind. I slipped off the bedclothes, wide awake, and sat irresolute on the bedside.
‘I know you’re only guying me,’ I said angrily, ‘but why is the house full of – what you say? Why do you hear – what you do hear? Tell me that, you silly fool!’
Seaton sat down on a chair and rested his candlestick on his knee. He blinked at me calmly. ‘She brings them,’ he said, with lifted eyebrows.
‘Who? Your aunt?’
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘I told you,’ he answered pettishly. ‘She’s in league. You don’t know. She as good as killed my mother; I know that. But it’s not only her by a long chalk. She just sucks you dry. I know. And that’s what she’ll do for me; because I’m like her – like my mother, I mean. She simply hates to see me alive. I wouldn’t be like that old she-wolf for a million pounds. And so’ – he broke off, with a comprehensive wave of his candlestick – ‘they’re always here. Ah, my boy, wait till she’s dead! She’ll hear something then, I can tell you. It’s all very well now, but wait till then! I wouldn’t be in her shoes when she has to clear out – for something. Don’t you go and believe I care for ghosts, or whatever you like to call them. We’re all in the same box. We’re all under her thumb.’
Out of the Deep: And Other Supernatural Tales Page 8