“It was only a momentary panic. One of those unreasoning fears that children do have, you know. In fact, as I roved about in my socks, searching for a toy, the room appeared quite friendly. I felt that I had known it all my life—The Viridian Room. I heard the bell tinkling again, jerkily, intermittently. At last I stood in front of a tall cupboard. It wasn't locked. And there were no shelves in it—nothing to throw shadows. On the floor, at the back, I saw the bell shining in the candlelight. It was one of those tiny, round bells that toy reins have on them. I couldn't see why it had rung. By that, I mean, of course, how the bell had rung… the material reason… I took it out,” said Harlock, “I took it out and tinkled it; and presently I went and looked at the box of chalks on the table.
“It was open. I had seen it all the time—seen it without realising exactly what it was, I mean—seen just its existence, and not its purpose; for who would expect a box like that to contain chalks all of the same colour? After tinkling my bell for some time I dropped it on to the table and sat there facing the open cupboard and toying with my chalks, and presently I wanted a sheet of paper to write on. I found it in the drawer beside me, an exercise-book. I pulled up my chair, spread my elbows, and wrote at once, in viridian green, on a new page:
One, two, buckle my shoe;
Three, four, knock at the door;
Five, six, pick up sticks;
Seven, eight, lay them straight;
Nine, ten, a fine fat hen;
Eleven, twelve, dig and delve.
“You remember that nursery rhyme? Until then I had forgotten it. I used to think it was full of sense, even when taken in a lump; and while I was still sitting at the table, looking across it into the open, lighted cupboard, and thinking over the words that I had just written down, I saw the mouse. At the back of the cupboard, against the wall, I saw a mousehole. Clearly the source of the tinkling! While I watched, two black shiny eyes appeared, and the furry shadow glided along the floor of the cupboard and into the room, where it took to moving in fits and starts.
“‘Hi there! What are you up to, you little beggar?’ I called out, starting off in pursuit, and brandishing one of my heavy walking-shoes—but not with any serious purpose; you know I would never hit a creature, don't you? I simply followed the mouse across the room as far as the chest of drawers; and there I found a pair of shoes on the floor… kicked off into the corner between the chest and the wall.
“One, two, buckle my shoe.”
Harlock had dropped into his gentlest voice.
“They did have buckles on them. Buckles as bright as silver. So I put on the shoes, and buckled them up, and found that in them I could walk as stealthily as a cat. I prowled with such gentleness over the room that I hardly made a candle quiver; and presently I stopped in front of the narrow door, the door that I haven't yet told you about.
“You see it the moment you enter the room—a rather low and narrow door on the far side of the table; but you don't really see it until later, when you are standing right in front of it, looking at the little knocker—the kind that you sometimes see on the study door in a vicarage.
“Three, four, knock at the door.”
“I knocked at the door.
“‘Come in!’ called an incredibly high-pitched, thin, and windy voice. I went in, shutting the door behind me.”
At this point, Harlock jumped to his feet, and proposed loudly a round of drinks. He switched on a blaze of light, and we heard him boiling his electric kettle behind our backs.
“All that I could see at first,” he continued, in a steady voice, a minute or so after he had returned to his chair, and while we were still sipping our whisky toddies in the restored fire-light, “was a regiment of moonbeams slanting into the room through uncurtained lattice windows, and a man facing me across the floor, motionless, waiting—myself, in a mirror. What a fool one feels, when one's two selves are brought thus face to face—each of them scared of the other! The first movement—the sudden tentative trial— and the spell is broken, and you turn eagerly to look for the thing that you expect to find. I saw her, at hand, lying on her large bed, slowly kneading the eiderdown beneath her with her fat fingers, pulling in her lips, watching me with her small eyes; and the floor and the bed and the woman were patterned with lattice windows. The bars of shadow and light showed me her rounded, massive bulk to perfection. Five, six, pick up sticks.
“And where do you think I found them? Why, on the bed itself, of course! A couple of bedstaffs. Do you know what a bedstaff is? It's a loose cross-piece of antique bedsteads, often used as a handy weapon. I took them from the head and foot of the bed, and while I was doing so the face of my hostess was twisting about with a kind of cringing, mock terror. Five, six, pick up sticks—seven, eight— lay them straight! I remember that while I was wielding my cudgels I glanced in the mirror and saw the shadows of the window bars slipping along them. Lay them straight, lay them straight! Seven, eight, lay them straight! I laid them good and straight. Once I felt a shiver in my arm—I had hit the ceiling.
“As soon as I had satisfied myself that the flutters of her heart had ceased—I can still feel her wrist between my finger and thumb, you know—I dropped my bedstaffs for good, and hurried off to open one of the two other doors in the room—The Garden Door, I fancied the children had called it. How breathless was the scene through The Garden Door! I held my breath and gazed all over the great neglected garden; then I returned to the woman and picked her up, and I swear she was no heavier than a puff-ball. But what an armful she made! What an armful! What a fine fat hen! I carried her into the garden and over the rank grass and plunged with her into the cluster of weed beyond. I had seen it through The Garden Door, shimmering in the moonlight. The stuff stood higher than my head, and was here in great profusion—a forest of weed. I don't know how long I took to reach my destination. Probably not very long; but when you're pretending to be a pirate—or something of that kind—carrying your booty into the depths of the woods, to bury it, well, you don't care at all how long you take to reach the burial place. I came upon it in a moment, without warning—a sudden breaking from the weed into broad moonlight. ‘This is the place,’ I remember saying—'this is the spot they have chosen.’
“A spade lay ready to my hand, and fluff from the surrounding weed was drifting and settling all the while on to the tumbled earth.
“Eleven, twelve,
Dig and delve.”
“I put down my burden, and took up the spade; and in that spot I dug and delved.
“When I came out of the weed,” said Harlock, in his softest voice, “I saw that the feathers were sticking to my clothes like splashes of plaster.” The fire had burnt low, we could scarcely see each other's faces, and only his voice was holding our little group together. “And I think it was the sight of those feathers,” he said, “that sent me tearing back in a panic over the lawn, slapping my clothes all the time. Escape! I had no other thought but that. The children's rhyme had worked its way with me. Escape from the house and the clump of weed and the infamous thing that I had buried there. I ran through the bedroom and into the viridian nursery and kicked off the buckled shoes—kicked them into the corner, as all the others had done!—and while I was sitting on the bed, putting on my walking shoes, and looking towards the open cupboard, I saw the mouse returning to his hole beside the little bell…
“What was the use of my shutting the cupboard door with a bang? The Viridian Room hardly echoed to it. And even the loudest noise would not have convinced me that in that silent house such a sudden crash must certainly have brought things to an end. I even took steps to prove to my satisfaction that I was right. I ran back into the bedroom, back into all those spears of moonlight; and then—I wish I had never opened the Garden Door again. It was not what I actually saw, but what I knew I would see if I stayed for more than a very few moments… Looking across the wild, moonlit grass, I saw at least a shaking in the tops of the weed—and it wasn't the wind, you know—the movement was
working its way towards me, slowly, jerkily, inch by inch…
“Fear, of course, won in the end. It sent me racing back into the depths of the house, where I caught my head a whack against the ceiling of the living-room, for the lamp was out. She had put it out.
The clock was thumping loudly; and I was scared to death that she might find me there before I got away.
“I hardly know how I got away in time. Hunting for the door, plunging through the puff-balls, sprinting over the poppy field— have you ever seen poppies by moonlight? Sanity! That's what I was after! Sanity, and the breath of the sea! Well, there was no breath, the wind was dead, there were no waves; but I scooped up the water in my two hands, and cooled the bump on my head… And after that I went back to the foreshore and watched the house until I saw her light gleaming again…”
Harlock stared at the dying fire.
“I suppose I ought to have known it at once,” he said, as if to himself. “Especially from a distance. Known that the spot was haunted, I mean. It was there, staring me in the face—the queer shape, the mist of puff-balls, the heavy thatch, the very set of the trees.”
Then one of us, softly, as if to take the edge off the silence that followed, ventured a remark.
“I suppose the real ghost was the children.”
“She was not!” Harlock burst out. “She was something far worse than that!”
Nothing further was said while we watched our host returning his picture to the remote corner.
Liszt's Concerto Pathétique
Edna W. Underwood
It was in the winter of 1906 that the following remarkable incidents were communicated to me, and truly in a most remarkable manner. But who may say what shall be the intermediary link, the invisible tie to connect us with the facts of a vanished past? Who may say what vague but mentally potent beings dwell on the border line separating the real from the unreal, floating up perhaps from unthinkable depths of time and space, there to await the propitious moment for tapping some nerve of consciousness in us and establishing telegraphic communication with the soul? Over these spirit wires of thought and feeling they flash faint messages. They set the nerves a-tingle with the consciousness of an infinity of unknown lives surrounding our own, of invisible electric bodies that shock us into the recovery of forgotten memories, of the realisation of a limitless land that spreads beside us and upon the verge of which we live precariously poised.
On an afternoon in the winter of 1906 I attended a concert given by two well-known pianists. The pièce de résistance of the concert—it was for this that I had come—was a two-piano number, the Concerto Pathétique of Liszt, that sonorous tone tragedy with its wildly dramatic incidents, interrupted from time to time by a melody of more than mortal sweetness. As I listened, annoyed by the movements of seat companions, the bobbing black heads in front, or the dry winter light that filtered through a window to the right, striking sharply a corsage ornament or a jewel, and projecting into my eyes daggered light as from a crystal ball, suddenly my surroundings vanished, and I found myself alone looking out across a land that I had never seen.
Before me lay a twilight desert, sombre and lonely. Grey sand, uninterrupted by tree or dwelling, as undulating and as barren as the sea, stretched on and on. After a time I discovered that it was not twilight that caused the dimness. Upon the horizon there was nothing to indicate the vanishing of a sun or the future rising of a moon. Within the sky there were no stars. A Cimmerian twilight lay over all. I realised then that it was some place of purgatorial punishment, where sweet light did not come nor green earth growths, nor rain, nor the sound of leaves. It was a place of puzzling incompleteness and fragmentary physical form. There were arms twisted and bony and unattached to bodies, whose bent-fingered hands thirsted for cruelty or itched for gold. There were legs wrinkled and withered with pain and curved fantastically. There were backs bowed by the bearing of burdens, and a multitude of winged and awful faces forming a discordant chromatic scale of miseries, now flashing out leering and wanton smiles, and anon fading away into monotonous greyness.
It was a land of disembodied pain, where the shadow forms of sorrow dwelled. Regret, remorse, shame, misery, and anguish here got themselves clothed in unearthly substances, and strained futilely earthward where repentance lay. Here evil thoughts and desires were at once translated into form, swiftly to fade back again by uncountable disgusting gradations to the insubstantiality of dreams. Across this desert a woman fled, breathless with haste and terror.
She was young, scarcely more than a child, as years count, and she would have been beautiful had not her features been disfigured by grief. Out behind, a long black robe floated like an emblem of evil, giving to her appearance a certain cloistral touch. Closer inspection proved it to be a nun's cloak. It was unfastened and thrown hastily about her where it was held together by one small nervous hand. Her hair, which was pale gold, was short-cropped and curly, and bore the imprint of a close covering. There was something pitiful in these little clustering curls of faded gold, which were down-soft like the hair on a baby's neck. They told of helplessness and youth. Now in places they were darkened by the perspiration of fear. Cloistral life and the nun's hood had bleached her face and given to it a marble pallor, until it seemed to radiate light in the general dimness. Her eyes were a dark ethereal blue. In their depths lay a light made of blended pain, passion, and regret. As the hideous sand monsters drifted toward her, threatening to block her way, then vanished to reshape themselves into still more hideous forms, childishly she opened her mouth to call for help. But no sound issued from her lips, although the little chin quivered piteously. I knew that she was dumb and could not speak.
As she sped on, upbourne by an unnatural energy, there rang out upon the desert air a melody of more than mortal sweetness, the brief and broken fragment of a phrase. As the music died away upon the moonless space, there fell across the sand the pallid cold radiance of a cross, but so far away, so etherealised by space and distance, that it was scarcely more than a shadow's shadow.
At first, I thought that the music was in some inexplicable way related to the beauty of her face—that perhaps they were one. There was a similarity between them. Both set to vibrating the same responsive fibres of the heart. Both were penetratingly sweet, yet touched with sorrow.
Further consideration proved this conjecture to be vain, and that the music came from some alien yet nearby place. I could see by the woman's face that it caused her joy and sorrow, and I felt that it always sang on in her heart, and that her trembling lips tried to frame its sounds. Yet—in some way I could not understand—it kept her forever outside the radiance of the cross.
Again and again it rang out—a melody of more than mortal sweetness. And each time the woman hastened her pace. The face of the desert began to change, and in the distance there was something that lay like the shimmer of light. I watched it as it grew brighter. Colours were distinguishable. It was a garden! Oh, the yearning in her face! Oh, the effort with which she summoned strength to reach it! Her eyes grew black with determination. Her little curls were spotted with moisture. Sweeter and more penetrating became the breath of melody. It winged her feet with courage. It put strength into her heart. Yes, yes, there it lay! A fresh, bright, green garden, where a happy multitude of tiny blue and white flowers grew. Over it iris-winged insects fluttered. The sun shone resplendently. Here was the home of the melody. Its sweetness was that of love and the fullness of life. Now the radiance of the cross no longer touched the sandy waste. It remained high in the air, aloof and far, a wan gold shadow of exquisite remoteness, like the ghost of a vanished joy.
As she drew nearer, more intense became the light that fell upon the garden. It became a blue and dazzling glory, beneath which the tiny flowers expanded and expanded until they were lilies of mammoth size and proportion. Oh, so lustrous, so satin soft, so voluptuously lovely was their texture! A rare fragrance filtered from them through the sand-thick air, a languorous, seductive, benumbing
fragrance, like the intangible soul of pleasure. When again the music came, the giant lily buds burst open, disclosing in place of pistil and stamen the white glorious bodies of women, whose hair outfloated in bright crinkles like blown flame, and whose feet trod an amorous measure.
Now I knew whence the music came. It was made by the twining beauty of seductive arms, the swaying of bright torsos, the interlacing of lithe limbs, the argent light struck from bared breasts and brows. It was their white passion, their wanton loveliness, their amorous longing, their electric, vital, and indomitable youth translated into tone.
Far above the desert now, the wan cross hung in dim remoteness, a faint frown of light, withdrawing coldly into the depths of space. The garden glory touched the woman's face. The sand monsters fell back, no longer encumbering her. Happiness and courage shone from her eyes. The journey was nearly over. A step—a dozen steps and she would have gained the garden. She was all but there. She flung away the convent cloak. The sweet wind lifted the little curls upon her brow. A blue lily leaned amorously to meet her, its petals ready to enfold her. The strange light swathed her about like a robe. The melody touched her heart to joy. She was ready to grasp a waiting flower; one white hand reached for it, when a thunder of many wings was heard.
From across the desert, from the sky above, a multitude of blackish green-winged monsters, darkening the air to a dun midnight, dashed down. Their black and sullen bodies, outspread wing on wing, shut out the garden and formed a hideous wall of crawling heads. The great wings surrounded and engulfed her, beating her back—back—back—with lightning-like rapidity. Away, away, away they swept her, so swiftly that the desert was left behind. And still they swept her on and on, across another land—a land of granite, bleak and sterile and black, whose darkness was shivered from time to time by the angry glare of whirling swords that formed the mighty gate of a realm of night. Here the whirring wings uplifted her. She had no more hold upon the earth. Below, above, beside, were depth on depth of overlapping wings. Once, for an instant, the swaying, fluttering band fell back. Sharp sword light streaked her face. I saw its white horror and the little curls a-dance with fear. Then more monsters came rushing. The earth and the air were a-quiver with wings. There was a rush and a roar. There was a noise as of many waters. Then the monsters swept away into the land of darkness beyond, where nothing was distinguishable, where there was no measurement of time or space. Again the granite land was lone and silent, its grey immovableness disturbed only by the swinging gate of swords, which streaked the rocks with floating ribbons of light.
There Is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man Page 17