The Journeying Boy

by Michael Innes

  The Bolderwoods, father and son, had fallen behind together for domestic discussion, and Mr Thewless was about to make some remark to Humphrey about the possibility of one day visiting the lighthouse that was at play above them, when the voice of the elder Mr Bolderwood was heard clearly behind them in tones of characteristic incautious exasperation.

  ‘Bless my soul, Ivor! You don’t mean to tell me that the imbeciles have put the boy in the haunted room?’

  Mr Thewless, appalled by this luckless stroke of fate, glanced swiftly at Humphrey and saw that mischief had indeed been done. The boy looked thoroughly alarmed. But in a second Ivor had overtaken them, and laid his hand on Humphrey’s shoulder with a cheerful laugh. ‘Humphrey,’ he said, ‘would give quite a lot for the chance of sleeping in a haunted room! But, as a matter of fact, I rather want to move him to the one next my own. Shall you mind, Humphrey? It means that we can slip out quite early with the guns, and nobody need be disturbed.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Mr Thewless had the wit instantly to back up this deft sparing of his pupil’s amour propre. ‘I should hate to be wakened up by Humphrey and his gun bumping about together next door to me. And perhaps you will be able to bring something back for breakfast.’

  Ivor laughed again. ‘To eke out the skirlie-mirlie? Perhaps we shall. Well, come along, and we’ll make the move now.’

  And at this the party returned to the house and, without calling upon menial assistance, transferred an evidently relieved Humphrey to his new quarters. There he was bidden good night, and Mr Thewless was carried off by his hosts to desultory conversation and a generous provision of Irish whiskey in Mr Bolderwood’s study. At eleven o’clock Mr Bolderwood announced that he proposed to lock up the house.

  This proved to be an occupation of some labour, and began with the securing of a door which shut off the servants’ quarters – an out-of-the-way proceeding sufficiently explained by Mr Bolderwood’s whimsical conviction of the unreliability and dishonesty of those who attended him. There was then much bolting of other doors and securing of windows – and this again was unremarkable in one who believed the countryside to be alive with robbers. Mr Thewless, however – although by this time thoroughly sleepy, slightly fuddled and only intermittently attentive – was mildly surprised when his host proceeded to make a thorough search of the house. In this operation, which was rendered considerably more troublesome by the fact that the only artificial light at Killyboffin was supplied by oil lamps and candles, Mr Bolderwood was assisted by his son with rather more vigour than was necessary simply for the purpose of humouring an eccentric parent. Whether the proceeding was customary, and with a rational basis in the apprehension of robbery, or whether it was a matter of the tiresome imaginative aura of Humphrey Paxton at work once more, was a question that Mr Thewless was now much too tired to entertain. When the Bolderwoods had satisfied themselves that reasonable security reigned at Killyboffin he took up his candle, bade his hosts good night, and took himself thankfully to bed.

  15

  It was the healthful custom of Mr Thewless to sleep with his window open to its fullest extent. When he had undressed, therefore, he extinguished the lamp which had been burning in his room, drew back his curtains, and threw open the casement. The waning moon was hidden in cloud and the night was almost completely dark; he had the sense, rather than the perception, of standing at a considerable elevation, and he remembered that what was commanded from this aspect of the house must be a view of the sea. A single light was visible at a distance not easy to determine, presently he distinguished that this was faintly reflected in water; and it occurred to him that it might well represent a riding-light on the motor cruiser noticed by Humphrey before dinner. There was still a chilly breeze, and Mr Thewless climbed without more ado into bed. He had been not without fears, reasonably bred by the marked unreliability of the furniture around him, that the night might bring discomforts of its own. He found, however, that the bed was in excellent order and soothingly sheeted in the finest linen. As he tumbled in, he became aware of a dim radiance gliding smoothly across the ceiling of his room. It must be the faint reflection of the beam from the lighthouse that he had previously remarked as touching the upper part of the house. The effect was too slight to be disturbing. Within a minute Mr Thewless was asleep.

  It would have been no more than fair had his late vicissitudes earned him a full night’s oblivion. But his undisturbed sleep was of short duration, and was succeeded by uneasy and perplexing dreams. In these he was himself at first the only living participant and he moved amid a décor which his waking consciousness – as we have seen, nicely informed in such matters – would have assured him reflected the alarms and dismays which had attended a singularly frightening episode of his career undertaken jointly with his mother some fifty years before. Painful progressions through narrow tunnels, terrifying drops through space, sudden assaults upon eye and ear by unanalysable lights and sounds, the dread presage of unknown modes of being: all these things, in a confusion somewhat suggestive of the best modern music, formed as it were the overture to his nocturnal drama. And then it was as if the curtain rose and slowly, with a careful regard for the sluggish understanding of the audience, the actors appeared one by one. The first of these was Mr Thewless himself, aware – and surprised, but only mildly so, at his awareness – that he was no longer very substantially Mr Thewless, since he had assumed the vastly more distinguished role or identity of Sir Bernard Paxton. Mr Thewless having become Sir Bernard, and having gained thereby an insight into Sir Bernard, remarked that Sir Bernard (who was himself) was by no means so impressive a spectacle when viewed from within as he (Mr Thewless, that was to say) had found him when viewed from without. In particular he was prone to behave in an indecisive and timorous fashion when confronted by heights. And this was the position now. In a vast, void darkness Thewless-Paxton trod falteringly the brink of some unimaginable precipice. Far below shone a single light dimly reflected in dreadful waters; to a sickening plunge towards this he felt himself irresistibly impelled; his head swam, his knees gave way beneath him and he fell. But from the darkness a strong arm stretched out and held him and, turning in air, he recognized that his preserver was Humphrey Paxton, who was his son. Again he trod the precipice, the boy holding his hand and guiding him as he went, and presently their path through darkness began to rock and pulse beneath them. It was a path no longer, but the corridor of an express train, its outer side cut away to expose them to the hurtling night, its inner giving upon a series of compartments through the glass of which there gibbered and mowed monsters and prodigies in endless sinister diversity. But in every compartment too sat Ivor Bolderwood – always in the same corner an Ivor Bolderwood, his glance composed and direct through his large round glasses, in his lap a bowl of boxty from which he ceaselessly fed the horrors around him with a long-handled wooden spoon. But whether Ivor was master of the rout or whether he was in their thrall Mr Thewless could by no means determine as the boy hurried him onwards down the interminable train, his lips parted and his eyes, bright with challenge, fixed upon some distant and shrouded goal.

  The dream seemed interminable: always the monsters, always an Ivor, always the swaying corridor beneath the feet. Once Mr Thewless turned his head and behind him saw the bearded man with pebble glasses, in his hand a bludgeon raised and prepared to strike. But even as Mr Thewless shrank in anticipation of the blow the bearded man was transformed into Mr Wambus, swathed and powerless in his bandages, like a corpse in some old picture. Once – and once only – the dread monotony of the teeming compartments was varied, and Mr Thewless glimpsed the solitary figure of Miss Liberty, a volume by Sapper in her lap. But her face was blank and sightless; or rather – he realized with a chill of sudden horror – it was no face at all, but simply the dial of a clock from which the hands had been wrenched so as to render it useless.

  And now the unending train was devouring not only space but time as well; it was hurtling at such speed through aeons of
time that Mr Thewless recognized in a rhythmic sweep of light and darkness about him an actual procession of nights and days. And suddenly he knew the destination of the train. It was hurtling towards the sun. This was the goal upon which the eyes of the boy who still guided and supported him were set; ahead was nothing but empty space, with that vast conflagration at the end. And then it was before him – burning, incandescent light. Mr Thewless felt the leap and lick of its vast tongues of flame upon his brow. He woke up.

  Mr Thewless woke up and on his retina there glowed and swam a single orb of orange fire. He stared at it and instantly, from its voyaging place a thousand million miles away, his mind made a wonderful leap at objective fact. Somebody had shone an electric torch in his face. Hence the sun as terminus to that unending journey; hence now this fading spot of colour on his brain. And this realization was followed by another almost as immediate. The swift procession of nights and days through which his dream had moved as over a chequer-board of darkness and light had also been physically determined. It was dark now; presently there would pass over his ceiling the faint illumination from the lighthouse. In this illumination it would be possible to see.

  Yet long before that tiny wash of light swept into the room he knew by some sufficient instinct what would be revealed by it. Watchers stood beside his bed, waiting in absolute stillness to know whether their inspection had aroused him. Mr Thewless kept his eyes shut and opened all his ears. A soft breathing was unquestionably distinguishable on either side of him.

  The humble creatures that turn immobile at danger, and whom not even a thrusting stick or nudging toe can stir to any sign of life, have no monopoly of this primitive notion of self-protection. Mr Thewless had a very strong impulse simply to lie still, keep his eyes shut, and trust that the mysterious presences would depart. Indeed, this was less a proposal of his mind, a plan or craft to act on, than simply something that was happening to his body as it lay. Cautiously he endeavoured to flex a knee and was by no means convinced that he had the power to do so. He wondered if he could even open his mouth, and he remembered those worst nocturnal terrors of childhood in which there is reft from one the power of calling out.

  And Mr Thewless endeavoured to seek security by returning into his dream. In his dream there had been safety amid innumerable hazards because…yes, because he had been in the charge of Humphrey Paxton. And suddenly, with an agility altogether surprising, Mr Thewless leapt out of bed. For Humphrey Paxton was his charge; he was responsible for the safety of the boy; and to hesitate in the face of undefined danger was to cling ignobly to the topsy-turvy realm of sleep. It might be by his own bedside that threatening figures hovered. Nevertheless, he knew himself to be a person of no consequence, and if they did so hover there this was merely incidental in some way to a design against the boy. Therefore it was the boy’s safety that was to be seen to.

  Thus did Mr Thewless for the moment bring wisdom from his dream. He leapt from his bed, aware of startled movement on either side of him, and by some paranormal sense of direction also dredged up from sleep, precipitated himself across and out of the room. In an instant he was at the next door, and as he opened it and entered the dim illumination from the lighthouse swept across it. It was, of course, empty and the bed undisturbed; his mind in prompting him to sudden action had missed a step, and he had forgotten about Humphrey’s having been moved to another part of the house. He paused irresolutely, and as action failed him fear returned. There were people in his own room. It was a testing moment – and the more so because he saw before him a rational yet surely craven plan. The door on which his hand now rested had a key on its inner side. In an instant he could lock himself in, and from the refuge thus obtained raise a loud alarm. In a sense this was even his wisest, his most responsible, course. For if he returned to encounter the intruders alone it was very possible that he might be instantly and silently overpowered, and the villains might then achieve with impunity whatever further mischief they proposed.

  But as these sensible considerations presented themselves to Mr Thewless’ mind something altogether more potent and primitive stirred in his blood. Sapper, it might be said, and not simple sapience took control; a glorious anger sang suddenly in his ears; he took a deep breath and marched back to his own room. The corridor which he had briefly to traverse was for the moment sufficiently lit through some skylight to make observation possible to his sharpened sense. Nothing stirred in the long vista it presented. The intruders must be awaiting him in his own room still.

  Mr Thewless belonged to a clerkly caste whose immemorial weapon has been words. As he took the half-dozen further steps that would confront him with the enemy he absurdly tested out on his inner ear some form of words that would confound them. He would point out that they had been detected, that the household contained a considerable number of able-bodied men, that firearms were available to these and – since prevarication was surely permissible in a situation like the present – that the police had already been summoned by telephone. But at the same time as he prepared this mere logomachy he had the good sense to wish himself possessed of a poker or even an empty bottle. And in default of anything of the sort, he clenched his fists in a manner suggesting itself to him as the right posture for pugilistic encounter and walked into his room.

  He was standing in the middle of it and nothing had happened. The glint of light came and went, revealing seeming emptiness. He walked boldly to his bedside and lit his candle. Still nothing revealed itself. He searched, and satisfied himself that he was alone. And at that, feeling slightly giddy, he sat down on the bed.

  Deep in the mind there is a clock that never goes wrong. Hypnotists can exploit it as an alarm, enjoining one to blow one’s nose at four twenty-five next Thursday. Of this instrument, which is said to work with particular nicety during sleep, Mr Thewless was still sufficiently possessed to have an instinctive assurance that the interval during which he had been in Humphrey’s late room was insufficient to have permitted anyone to escape down the corridor. He stood up and had a second look under his bed. He crossed to the window and satisfied himself that no creature not possessed of wings could have departed that way with any hope of an unbroken neck. And at this he sat down again upon his bed, possessed by a new alarm. The nature of this may be guessed. He feared that his imagination had been playing tricks with him – and doing so with more resounding success than any substantial sanity would have allowed. He was now resigned to believing himself highly susceptible to melodrama viewed as a sort of infection or plague, and even to the hypothesis – nebulous but nevertheless haunting – that he and his pupil were in some degree of rapport in matters of the sort. Yes, that would be it. Humphrey had been having a nightmare on the lines upon which his fantasy commonly ran, and the shadow of it had fallen upon himself at the other end of the house. But at least Humphrey, whether or not he too had actually awakened to the conviction of lurking presences, had not made night hideous with his alarms; and Mr Thewless was thankful that he had himself at the critical moment at least managed to refrain from doing this. Assuredly it had all been a figment. The only thing to do was to go to sleep again.

  His candle afforded only the most feeble illumination, but when he turned to light the oil lamp which had stood at the bottom of his bed he found that in his hasty rising he had overturned it and knocked it to the floor. This was both tiresome and embarrassing, as was also the evidence of an extreme of terrified violence with which he must have acted. For his bed was in quite surprising confusion, its various furnishings tumbled around it and a heavy mattress, of the kind comfortably constructed with an interior springing, dragged cornerwise to the floor. This he now set about remedying, an apparently simple if vexatious task which presently revealed itself as an unexpected difficulty. At first he made considerable progress, only to find upon scrutiny that he had employed as an under sheet what was demonstrably some species of linen coverlet. To leave matters so disposed might be to excite surprise and even ridicule in Mr Bolderwood’
s domestics in the morning. He therefore started again. But this time he could find no sheets at all; the candle was burning unnervingly near its socket; and for a moment he paused between irritation and discouragement.

  In this pause his conscience stirred. If it was indeed true that his recent alarming experience was no more than a sympathetic response to some nightmare or even hallucination of Humphrey’s was it not his duty to inform himself as to the boy’s condition now? That Humphrey had raised no outcry was a fact capable of a distressing equally with a reassuring interpretation. Indeed, the fact that this abnormal experience had come to his tutor as some sort of message from another mind was surely an indication of that mind’s having been perilously disturbed. And Mr Thewless had a sudden and vivid picture of the unfortunate child, prone to believe in sinister powers intent to shut him up in dark, confined spaces, lying strained and motionless in a bed round which he believed these powers to have gathered for a final onslaught. Humphrey’s removal to another part of the house had not left him altogether happy – not because he judged Ivor Bolderwood other than in every way reliable, but because it was to himself, after all, that the boy had been confided, and it was he, again, who was best acquainted with the distresses to which he was liable.