The Door of the Unreal

by Gerald Biss

  But somehow that afternoon—April 16 according to my diary—even with the afternoon sun aslant across its mellow brick, it seemed almost to have assumed some sinister aspect, and the old mullioned windows to frown—imagination, of course, and overwrought nerves, ever on the strain beneath a light exterior and cloak of carelessness, but nevertheless hard to shake off.

  And the unpleasant impression was not lightened of any of its sinister suggestion when the old familiar door was opened, with a clanking and the rattle of the chain, by the old German-Polish servant, Anna Brunnolf, whom I had not seen before——a strange figure with her slanting eyes and towsled grey hair, wearing her habitual cape of brown far. She was not only bizarre in herself and so utterly out of the picture, but there was something about her that gave me a sort of “gooseflesh” feeling. There was an aura of evil, of repulsion, round her to those sensitive to such intangible influences, as I have always been since I can first remember: and she made no effort to welcome us, closing the door behind us, locking it again, and putting up the old chain with an attitude suggestive of hostility.

  “That’s one of Anna’s fads,” said Dorothy, trying to speak lightly. “It has grown on her through living in wild parts of recent years with my nomadic father.”

  Whiskers had made no effort to follow us in, nor had Anna given him either encouragement or chance: and to Burgess’s surprise, when we got home that evening, we found him lying in front of the hall fire, strangely out of spirits and apologetic for his desertion. I made no comment at the time, but felt that there was a special bond of understanding and sympathy between the dog and myself.

  There was no fire in the old oak-panelled hall with its big open fireplace, which had in the old days blazed with big logs and a cheerful glow of welcome, lighting up the armorial shield over the stone arch, this time striking a richer note with its heraldic colourings—azure, a bend gules with the three escallops argent charged upon it, between six bulls’ heads cabossed or. There was no reflection from it either, as of old, upon the minstrel gallery in miniature opposite, or the old oak staircase; and in the deepening light, through the leaded windows, it looked forlorn and cheerless—almost dour.

  Moreover, without the great fire that had burnt for centuries of winters disguising it, its dampness lay revealed; and it was dank and musty with the suggestion of a charnel-house. Again, it seemed to me that there was a slight, almost imperceptible odour of strange decay, faint, yet to me strangely pungent. There was a blight, a gloom over the whole place; and I could not repress a slight shiver as we found ourselves out of the sunlight.

  Dorothy seemed to notice it, and spoke half-apologetically.

  “Come into the drawing-room. It’s always nice and cheerful in there with a big fire—I see to that. Anna won’t be bothered with a lot of fires or have any help: and father and she don’t seem to notice things as I do, as they both keep up their habit of wearing furs, acquired during severe winters in the Balkans and other such places, regardless of the fact that we are in England. And Anna has put away such a lot of Mr. Clymping’s beautiful furniture and nice things in unused bedrooms with sheets over them, like dead bodies, to save trouble and work. Ugh, it all gives me creeps, though I am accustomed to it,” she concluded, leading the way to the drawing-room. “I love light and fires and lots of lovely things everywhere. I often feel that I was made for them, though I have had so little chance of having them—so far.”

  It was unconsciously pathetic.

  I caught a glimpse of Burgess’s face with the sunlight across it. His eyes were fixed intently upon the beautiful girl: and it seemed to me that I could read both displeasure with the present state of things and the unspoken intention of doing all that lay in his power to give her the surroundings she craved for. I could not, however, help wondering, had things been otherwise, how Burgess would have felt and acted towards tenants who treated his intensely venerated ancestral home in such a careless and cavalier fashion, lacking not only artistic appreciation, but even common consideration.

  X

  A few minutes later the door opened abruptly; and in came the saturnine old professor, crossing the room with his long characteristic stride, his strange eyes, under their shaggy, slanting brows, fixing upon each one of us in turn none too kindly, and looking through us half-suspiciously. I took his hand, with the long pointed fingers, and gripped it with apparent heartiness, looking him back straight in the eyes.

  “I have availed myself of your kind invitation to come and have a scientific chat with you, Professor,” I said: “and I trust that I have not come at an inconvenient time.”

  Professor Wolff mastered his disinclination with an effort, and did his best to welcome me.

  “I am delighted to meet anyone interested in my subjects,” he replied. “It is so rare in Sussex. Come into my room; and leave these young people to discuss the sort of things that interest them.”

  He took me into the library, which looked as though it had not been dusted since his arrival. It was both musty and dusty, with the furniture all awry, odd tables of all periods collected from various parts of the house and piled with open books, bundles of notes, specimens, and all the paraphernalia of a student and a bookworm.

  A small fire smouldered on the hearth, and he stirred it impatiently and threw a couple of big logs on before throwing himself down on a big sofa and curling himself up like a dog, with his legs half under him, in one corner, motioning to me to seat myself, as he drew up a great grey fur rug over the lower part of his long body.

  He was a most wonderful man, unpleasant as he was personally and abhorrent physically; and he had a rare and marvellous brain. I shall never forget that hour with him, sitting opposite to him, fascinated not only by his ceaseless talk upon recondite subjects which were obviously everyday commonplaces to him, but by his extraordinary personality, which, above all things, I had come to study: and the only thing was that the one warred with the other and divided my attention, while he watched me the whole time intently, yet withal furtively and with shifty eyes, as I listened to the rough, guttural sentences pouring from him like a scientific avalanche.

  I can hardly say whether I was glad or sorry when Dorothy tapped on the door and nervously announced that tea was ready. It broke the spell but I had accomplished the real object of my visit, and my last lingering doubt—if any there had been—had vanished as to the inwardness of the strange genius, with whom I had sat in such close proximity all alone in the fading light—a weird experience in the twentieth century for one who knew the horrible truth the whole time.

  “Come,” he said abruptly, as though the spell had been broken, “we must go back to your friends as they will be anxious to be leaving before the light entirely departs.”

  The drawing-room was bright and cheerful, a pleasant contrast, which I welcomed with every fibre of my body. Even my intellect felt surcharged.

  I stood by Dorothy while she poured out the tea, the Professor standing on the hearthrug and talking intermittently to Burgess with his mouth full as he greedily devoured sandwich after sandwich—a most unpleasing sight.

  “I do not know whether you dainty English will care for my special sandwiches,” he remarked truculently. “I have them made of raw meat. Some of our leading professors in Germany advocate them; and they are given to invalids as they are so strengthening and so easily”—he paused for an instant for the word, munching the while—“what you call assimilated. I find my brain works much better on them. Once you folk got over your silly ideas and prejudices you would find that they are delicious—much better than your dry, tough, scorched meat. I am teaching Dorothea to eat them.”

  I looked at the girl a trifle anxiously.

  “Yes,” she said without affectation; “and I hope you won’t think it horrid of me, but I am quite beginning to like them, though they don’t seem very dainty, and I have never eaten them in public. I have always looked at them from the scientific or medical point of view.”

  I saw the Pr
ofessor’s eyes fixed furtively upon her.

  “Where is the flower that I gave you, Dorothea?” he asked across the room, in a rough, angry voice.

  She put her hand instinctively to her breast and looked down.

  “I—I must have lost it,” she answered, flushing.

  “You are very careless,” began the old man with something that sounded very much like a snarl; and then he broke off, as though conscious of his visitors.

  One thing was certain in my mind—to my relief—at any rate he was not suspicious, and never dreamt that perhaps people were even then hovering upon the fringe of his horrid secret.

  I turned to the girl, asking for a second cup of tea to cover any awkwardness, feeling that she was afraid of the old German, who was obviously an autocrat and a bit of a bully in his own household.

  “Thank you for not giving me away,” I said in a low voice, as Burgess began to speak about sending one of his men down to tidy up. “Is your name really ‘Dorothea’ and not ‘Dorothy?’ ”

  “My father always calls me by the German form—perhaps not unnaturally,” she answered; “but my mother always used to call me ‘Dorothy.’”

  “Your mother?” I asked sympathetically.

  “She died when I was quite a little girl,” she answered very softly, as though not wishing to be overheard and nursing something very sacred to herself. “I always like to call myself Dorothy and to be called Dorothy by my friends, as it reminds me of her.”

  “May I call you Dorothy?” I asked upon impulse.

  “If you care to,” she answered, with a little look of friendly confidence, which was much in my mind during the next few urgent, anxious days.

  ***

  I was glad and relieved when we found ourselves once more out in the open air, and I heard old Anna shoot the bolts and clank the chain behind us, though my heart was very heavy for the poor doomed girl inside—doomed unless by the grace of God she could be saved from a fate too hideous to contemplate: and I was not very talkative on the way home, as we hurried as well as we could through the dark wood, which had grown so strangely oppressive to me.

  When we reached the terrace I drew a deep breath of relief and filled my lungs with the crisp, clean air.

  “You are lucky to live up here on the hill, old chap,” I said to Burgess, speaking from the bottom of my heart: but all the evening I was depressed, though I did my best to conceal it, and somehow I did not seem able to get the unpleasant odour of decay out of my nostrils.

  XI

  The next morning brought strange news.

  As we were smoking in the ball over the papers after breakfast, Jevons announced our old friend Mutton; and Burgess ordered him to be shown in at once.

  “Dirty work on the downs last night, gentlemen,” he announced solemnly, “but nothing like as serious as before—no connexion with the other in fact. Two of Farmer Stiles’s sheep have been killed and mutilated on the downs.”

  “That’s bad business,” said Burgess, with a low whistle. “What do you make of it?”

  I made no remark. My only feeling was one of relief, in a way, that it was nothing worse.

  “It looks something like that Great Wyrley business up in Staffordshire,” answered Mutton, pleased to have a theory. “Both are torn, badly lacerated, and partially disembowelled; and it looks like some devil’s mischief.”

  Yes, that’s just what it is,” I rejoined, “sheer wanton devil’s mischief, inspector, without apparent object. We will come along with you and have a look at it.”

  It was four or five miles away; so Burgess ordered the car, and it was not long before we were on the spot.

  “Looks as if they had been worried by some big dogs,” said Burgess; and I assented, purposely not taking any very marked interest or advancing any theory of my own.

  “You don’t know of any savage dog or other big animal in the neighbourhood?” I asked Mutton casually.

  “No,” he answered, shaking his head; “but I will put my men on to search. It looks as though some lads or young ruffians had set something on to worry the poor brutes.”

  “And the rest of the flock?” I asked.

  “Oh, they were evidently frightened out of what little wits sheep have, and were found no end of a way off, all huddled together and sort of dazed, if you can say such a thing of a sheep. Farmer Stiles has had them all driven into a field near his house.”

  We had a talk with the farmer, who could throw no light on the subject; and then, as we turned to go home, I saw the new moon for the first time from the top of the downs, and I calculated that it was the third day.

  I gazed at it without remark, fascinated at the thought of the possibilities of horror with which it was fraught. Why should the moon have such a malign influence, I asked myself? Was it soured virginity, or revenge for the havoc Endymion had wrought? And each day and night after that I watched her growing crescent approaching full face, wondering each time what it was going to bring forth.

  XII

  Thursday and Friday passed without event, everything going well on the surface; and we seemed to be living through beautiful spring days without a worry or a horror in the world, especially in dear old sleepy Sussex.

  Bullingdon made capital progress and gave the doctors every cause for satisfaction; and on Saturday morning he was so much better that he began to worry, and expressed a desire to see his host. He was insistent; and Ann came down to Burgess and myself and told us. In view of Sir Humphrey Bedell’s contingent permission and the state of the patient, the nurses considered that it would do no harm—in fact, that it would do more good than harm, as it would keep him from worrying.

  “All right, dear,” said Burgess, rising, “I’ll go up.”

  Then once more I intervened, a little awkwardly.

  “It is a strange thing to ask even of such an old friend in his own house,” I said, laying my hand on his arm, “and I don’t want to appear to take too much upon myself: but do you mind if I am the first to see him? I have my own particular reasons.”

  Burgess looked at me for a moment in surprise—a little chagrined, I thought—and I must confess that I was more than a trifle uncomfortable in view of the secretive attitude I had felt compelled to take up.

  “His first impressions may be valuable to my theory,” I explained—“the theory upon which I build so much to clear up the whole of this ghastly business. More depends upon it than perhaps you can ever guess.”

  “All right, old chap,” came his prompt reply: and I don’t think I have ever admired his character and his staunchness so much. It made me more than ever determined to repay him if it lay in my power—if by my instrumentality his life’s happiness could be secured.

  “Thank you,” was all I dared say at the moment, however; and I went straight upstairs.

  Young Bullingdon was looking frail, but he had made wonderful progress the last day or two; and I took his hand and sat down near him.

  “You mustn’t worry, Lord Bullingdon,” I said reassuringly. “You are in good hands and making splendid progress.”

  “What has happened?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

  “You had a bad accident with your big car and have been lying between life and death for over a fortnight.”

  “I don’t remember anything about it,” he said blankly.

  It was as I expected I might almost say, hoped.

  The shock, as in so many cases of sudden and severe accident, had left his mind a complete blank with regard to the event; and perhaps, in the circumstances it was better, if memory upon the point returned at all, that it should be later rather than sooner, when he would be both physically and mentally better able to bear the shock. In some cases on record shock has cut memory clean off at a point long before and often totally unconnected with the accident; and I was anxious particularly to test the reaction in this case.

  “What do you remember last?” I inquired, speaking casually.

  “Supper, or dinner, or something of t
he sort—at Brighton, I think,” he answered confusedly. “I can’t be quite sure. It makes my head ache to think.”

  “Well then, don’t try to think; leave it at that,” I answered encouragingly, afraid lest he might remember Miss St. Clair and begin to ask inconvenient questions. “You have not got to worry about anything at present, the doctors say, until you are better: and now I’m going to leave you, if you will promise not to trouble about anything. Mr. Clymping will come to see you any time the doctors allow him, he is very pleased to have you here: and Colonel Gorleston has been down and will come down again soon.”

  I could see that anything more at the moment would be too much for him; so, nodding to the nurse, I left him with a reassuring pressure of the hand.

  Then I went downstairs and told Burgess and Ann exactly how he was: and, with Burgess’s permission, I telephoned Major Blenkinsopp at Scotland Yard and advised him exactly how things stood, and that, so far, Lord Bullingdon remembered nothing that could assist—in fact, that his memory was a blank upon the whole subject.

  After that he went on famously, the subject of the accident being studiously avoided, and no reference being made to anything that might disturb him. Burgess and Ann were both allowed to see him; and the latter, to her delight, was permitted to take her share of sitting with and reading to him. Colonel Gorleston ran down again with Sir Humphrey Bedell on the Sunday: and he was promised in due course that he should see Bellingham and Verjoyce. To Miss St. Clair he made no reference. Possibly she had temporarily been banished from his mind in connexion with the accident by the shock; or he was waiting to ask them about her.