Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  The drawer beneath contained only envelopes and letter paper – Montrésor, in large pale-blue letters on a ‘Silurian’ background – and a black book, its cover stamped with the word Diary: and on the fly-leaf, ‘S.S. Champneys’. I glanced up, then turned to the last entry – dated only a few months before – just a few scribbled words: ‘Not me, at any rate: not me. But even if I could get away for —’ the ink was smudged and had left its ghost on the blank page opposite it. A mere scrap of handwriting and that poor hasty smudge of ink – they resembled an incantation. Mr Bloom’s secretary seemed also to be intent on sharing his secrets with me. I shut up that book too, and turned away. I washed my hands in S.S.C.’s basin, and – with my fingers – did my hair in his glass. I even caught myself beginning to undress – sheer reluctance, I suppose, to go back and face another cataract of verbiage.

  To my astonishment a log fire was handsomely burning in the grate when at length I returned to the study, and Mr Bloom, having drawn up two of his voluminous vermilion armchairs in front of it, was now deeply and amply encased in one of them. He had taken off his spectacles, and appeared to be asleep. But his eyes opened at my footstep. He had been merely ‘resting’ perhaps.

  ‘I hope,’ was his greeting, ‘you found everything needful, Mr Dash? In the circumstances …’

  He called this up at me as if I were deaf or at a distance, but his tone subsided again. ‘There’s just one little matter we missed, eh? – night attire! Not that you wouldn’t find a complete trousseau to choose from in the wardrobe. My secretary, in fact, was inclined to the foppish. No blame; no blame; fine feathers, Mr Dash.’

  It is, thank heaven, an unusual experience to be compelled to spend an evening as the guest of a stranger one distrusts. It was not only that Mr Bloom’s manner was obviously a mask but even the occasional stupidity of his remarks seemed to be an affectation – and one of an astute and deliberate kind. And yet Montrésor – in itself it was a house of unusual serenity and charm. Its urbane eighteenth-century reticence showed in every panel and moulding. One fell in love with it at first sight, as with an open, smiling face. And then – a look in the eyes! It reeked of the dubious and distasteful. But how can one produce definite evidence for such sensations as these? They lie outside the tests even of Science – as do a good many other things that refuse to conform with the norm of human evidence.

  Mr Bloom’s company at a dinner-party or a conversazione, shall we say, might have proved refreshingly droll. He did his best to make himself amusing. He had read widely – and in out-of-the-way books, too; and he had an unusual range of interests. We discussed music and art – and he brought out portfolio after portfolio of drawings and etchings to illustrate some absurd theory he had of the one, and played a scrap or two of Debussy’s and of Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit to prove some far-fetched little theory of his own about the other. We talked of Chance and Dreams and Disease and Heredity, edged on to Woman, and skated rapidly away. He dismissed life as ‘an episode in disconcerting surroundings’, and scuttled off from a detraction of St Francis of Assisi to the problem of pain.

  ‘Mr Dash, we fear pain too much – and the giving of it. The very mention of the word stifles us. And how un-Christian!’

  The look he peeked down at me at this was proof enough that he was intent only on leading me on and drawing me out. But I was becoming a little more cautious, and mumbled that that kind of philosophy best begins at home.

  ‘Aye, indeed! A retort, a retort. With Charity on the other side of the hearth in a mob-cap and carpet slippers, I suppose? I see the dear creature: I see her! Still, you will agree, even you will agree that once, Mr Dash, the head has lost its way in the heart, one’s brain-pan might as well be a basin of soap-bubbles. A man of feeling, by all means – but just a trace, a soupçon of rationality, well, it serves! Eh?’

  A few minutes afterwards, in the midst of a discourse on the progress of human thought, he suddenly enquired if I cared for the game of backgammon.

  ‘And why not? Or draughts? Or solitaire, Mr Dash? – a grossly under estimated amusement.’

  But all this badinage, these high spirits were clearly an elaborate disguise, and a none too complimentary one at that. He was ‘keeping it up’ to keep me up; and maybe, to keep himself up. Much of it was automatic – mere mental antics. Like a Thibetan praying-wheel, his mind went round and round. And his attention was divided. One at least of those long, fleshy, hairy ears was cocked in another direction. And at last the question that had been on my tongue throughout most of the evening popped out almost inadvertently. I asked if he was expecting a visitor. At the moment his round black back was turned on me; he was rummaging in a corner cupboard for glasses to accompany the decanter of whisky he had produced; his head turned slyly on his heavy shoulders.

  ‘A visitor? You astonish me. Here? Now? As if, my dear Mr Dash, this rural retreat were Bloomsbury or Mayfair. You amuse me. Callers! Thank heaven, not so. You came, you saw, but you did not expect a welcome. The unworthy tenant of Montrésor took you by surprise. Confess it! So be it. And why not? What if you yourself were my looked-for visitor? What then? There are surmises, intuitions, forebodings – to give a pleasant tinge to the word. Yes, yes, I agree. I was on the watch; patiently, patiently. In due time your charming little car appears at my gate. You pause: I say to myself, Here he is. Company at last; discussion; pow-wow; even controversy perhaps. Why not? We are sharing the same hemisphere. Plain as a pikestaff. I foresaw your decision as may the shepherd in contemplation of a red sunrise foresee the deluge. I step downstairs; and here we are!’

  My reply came a little more warmly than I intended. I assured Mr Bloom that if it had not been for the loss of my key, I shouldn’t have stayed five minutes. ‘I prefer not to be expected in a strange house.’ It was unutterably gauche.

  He chuckled; he shrugged his shoulders; he was vastly amused. ‘Ah, but are we not forgetting that such little misadventures are merely part and parcel of the general plan? The end-shaping process, as the poet puts it?’

  ‘What general plan?’

  ‘Mr Dash, when you fire out your enquiries at me like bullets out of the muzzle of a gun, I am positively disconcerted, I can scarcely keep my wits together. Pray let us no longer treat each other like witnesses in the witness-box, or even’ – a cat-like smile crept into his face – ‘like prisoners in the dock. Have a little whisky? Pure malt; a tot? It may be whimsical, but for me one of the few exasperating things about my poor secretary, Mr Champneys, was his aversion to “alcohol”. His own word! £300 a year – Mr Dash. No less. And everything “found”. No expenses except tobacco, shockers – his own word again – pyjamas, tooth-powder and petrol – a motor-bicycle, in fact, soon hors de combat. And “alcohol”, if you please! The libel! These specialists! Soda water or Apollinaris?’

  In sheer chagrin I drank the stuff, and rose to turn in. Not a bit of it! With covert glances at his watch, Mr Bloom kept me there by hook and by crook until it was long past midnight, and try as he might to conceal it, the disquietude that had peeped out earlier in the evening became more and more obvious. The only effect of this restlessness on his talk, however, was to increase its volume and incoherence. If Mr Bloom had been play-acting, and had been cast for his own character, his improvisations could not have been more masterly. He made no pretence now of listening to my own small part in this display; and when he did, it was only in order to attend to some other business he had in mind. Ever and again, as if to emphasize his point, he would haul himself up out of his deep-bottomed chair, and edge off towards the door – with the pretence perhaps of looking for a book. He would pause there for but an instant – and the bumbling muffled voice would yet again take up the strain. Once, however, he came to a dead stop, raised his hand and openly stood listening.

  ‘A nightingale certainly; if not two,’ he murmured sotto voce, ‘but tell me, Mr Dash,’ he called softly out across the room, ‘was I deceived into thinking I heard a distant knocking? In a house as la
rge as this; articles of some value perhaps; we read even of violence. You never can tell.’

  I enquired with clumsy irony if there would be anything remarkable in a knocking. ‘Don’t your friends ever volunteer even a rap or two on their own account? I should have supposed it would be the least they could offer.’

  ‘A signal; m’m; a rap or two;’ he echoed me blandly. ‘Why that?’

  ‘From “the other side”?’

  ‘Eh? Eh?’ he suddenly broke off, his cheek whitening; the sole cause of his dismay being merely a scratching at the door-panel, announcing that his faithful pet had so much wearied of solitude in the dining-room that he had come seeking even his master’s company. But Mr Bloom did not open the door.

  ‘Be off!’ he called at the panel. ‘Away, sir! To your mat! That dog, Mr Dash, is more than human – or shall we say, less than human?’ The words were jovial enough, but the lips that uttered them trembled beneath his beard.

  I had had enough, and this time had my way. He accompanied me to the door of the study but not further, and held out his hand.

  ‘If by any chance,’ he scarcely more than murmured, ‘you should want anything in the night, you will remember, of course, where to find me; I am in there.’ He pointed. ‘On the other hand,’ he laid his hand again on my arm, deprecatingly, almost as if with shy affection – ‘I am an exceedingly poor sleeper. And occasionally I find a brief amble round proves a sedative. Follow me up? At any alarm, eh? I should welcome it. But to-night I expect – nothing.’

  He drew-to the door behind him. ‘Have you ever tried my own particular little remedy for insomnia? Cold air? And perhaps a hard biscuit, to humour the digestion. But fol, lol, a young man – no: the machine comparatively new! My housekeeper returns at six: breakfast, I hope, at eight-thirty. A most punctual woman; a treasure. But then, servants; I detest the whole race of them. Good-night; good-night. And none of those Proceedings, I warn you!’

  But even now I had not completely shaken him off. He hastened after me, puffing as he came, and clutched at my coat sleeve.

  ‘What I was meaning, Mr Dash, is that I have never attempted to make converts – a fruit, let me tell you, that from being at first incredibly raw and unwholesome, rapidly goes rotten. Besides, my secretary had very little talent for marshalling facts. That’s why I mentioned the Proceedings. A turn for writing, maybe, but no method. Just that. And now, of course, you must go. Our evening is at an end. But who knows? Of course. Never matter. What must come, comes.’

  At last I was free, though a hoarse whisper presently pursued me down the corridor. ‘No need for caution, Mr Dash, should you need me. No infants, no invalids; sleep well.’

  Having put my candlestick on the table, shut the door of Mr Champneys’s bedroom, and very cautiously locked it, I sat down on the bed to think things over. Easier said than done. The one thing in my mind was relief at finding myself alone again, and of extreme distaste (as I wound my watch) at the recollection of how many hours still remained before dawn. I opened the window and looked out. My room was at the back of the house, then; and over yonder must lie the lake, ebon-black under the stars. I listened for the water-birds, but not a sound. Mr Bloom’s nightingales, too, if not creatures of his imagination, had ceased to lament. A ground mist wreathed the boles of the chestnut trees, soundlessly lapping their lowermost boughs.

  I drew in. The draught had set my candles guttering. Almost automatically I opened one of the long drawers in Mr Champneys’s chest. It was crammed with his linen. Had he no relatives, then, I wondered, or had Mr Bloom succeeded to his property? Such gay pyjamas would grace an Arabian prince; of palest blue silk with ‘S.S.C.’ in beautiful scarlet lettering. It was needlessly fastidious perhaps, but I left them undisturbed.

  There were a few photographs above the chimneypiece; but photographs of the relatives and friends of a deceased stranger are not exhilarating company. Mr Champneys himself being dead, they seemed to be tinged with the same eclipse. One of them was a snapshot of a tall, dark, young man, in tennis clothes. He was smiling; he had a longish nose; a tennis racket was under his arm; and a tiny strip of maroon and yellow ribbon had been glued to the glass of the frame. Another Champneys, a brother, perhaps. I stood there, idly gazing at it for minutes together, as if in search of inspiration.

  No talker has ever more completely exhausted me than Mr Bloom. Even while I was still deep in contemplation of the photograph I was seized suddenly with a series of yawns almost painful in their extremity. I turned away. My one longing was for the bath-room. But no – Mr Bloom had failed to show me the way there, and any attempt to find it for myself might involve me in more talk. It is embarrassing to meet anyone after farewells have been said – and that one? – no. Half-dressed, and having hunted in vain for a second box of matches, I lay down on the bed, drew its purple quilt over me – after all, Mr Bloom’s secretary had not died in it! – and blew out my candle.

  I must have at once fallen asleep – a heavy and, seemingly, dreamless sleep. And now, as if in a moment I was awake again – completely wide awake, as if at an inward signal. Night had gone; the creeping grey of dawn was at the window, its colder, mist-burdened airs filled the room. I lay awhile inert, sharply scrutinizing my surroundings, realizing precisely where I was and at the same time that something was radically and inexplicably wrong with them. What?

  It is difficult to suggest; but it was as if a certain aspect – the character of the room, its walls, angles, patterns, furniture, had been peculiarly intensified. Whatever was naturally grotesque in it was now more grotesque – and less real. Matter seldom advertises the precariousness imputed to it by the physicist. But now, every object around me seemed to be proclaiming its impermanence, the danger, so to speak, it was in. With a conviction that thrilled me like an unexpected touch of ice, I suddenly realized that this is how Mr Champneys’s room would appear to anyone who had become for some reason or another intensely afraid. It may sound wildly preposterous, but there it is. I myself was not afraid – there was as yet nothing to be afraid of; and yet everything I saw seemed to be dependent on that most untrustworthy but vivid condition of consciousness. Once let my mind, so to speak, accept the evidences of my senses, then I should be as helpless as the victim of a drug or of the wildest nightmare. I sat there, stiff and cold, eyeing the door.

  And then I heard the sound of voices: the faint, hollow, incoherent sound that voices make at a distance in a large house. At that, I confess, a deadly chill came over me. I stepped soundlessly on to the floor, looked about me but in vain in the half-light for the coat I had been wearing the previous night, and slipped on instead a pair of Mr Champneys’s slippers and the floral silk dressing gown that hung on the door-hook. In these, I was not exactly myself, but at any rate ready for action. It took me half a minute to unlock the door; caution is snail-slow. I was shivering a little, but that may have been due to the cold May morning. The voices were more distinct now; one of them, I fancied, was Mr Bloom’s. But there was a curious similarity between them; so much so that I may have been playing eavesdropper to Mr Bloom talking to himself. The sound was filtering down from an upper room; the corridor beneath, and now in its perspective stretching out before me in the pallor of dawn, being as still as a drop-scene in a theatre, the footlights out.

  I listened, but could detect no words. And then the talking ceased. There came a sort of thump at the other end of the house, and then, overhead, the sound as of someone retreating towards me – heavily, unaccustomedly, but at a pretty good pace. Inaction is unnerving; and yet I hesitated, detesting the thought of meeting Mr Bloom again (and especially if he had company). But that little risk had to be taken; there was no help for it. I tiptoed along the corridor and looked into his study.

  The curtain at the further end of the room was drawn a little aside. A deep-piled Turkey carpet covered the floor. I crossed it, soundlessly, and looked in. The light here was duskier than in my own room, and at first, after one comprehensive glance, I saw nothi
ng unusual except that near at hand and beside a chair on which a black morning-coat had been flung, was a small bed, half-covered by a travelling rug; and standing beside it, a familiar pair of boots. Unmistakable, ludicrous, excellent boots! Empty as only boots can be, they squatted there side by side, like creatures by no means mute, yet speechless. And towards the foot of the bed, on a little round table drawn up beside it, lay the miscellaneous contents, obviously, of Mr Bloom’s pockets. The old gold watch and the spade guinea, a note-case, a pocket-book, a pencil-case, a scrap of carved stained ivory, an antique silver toothpick, a couple of telegram envelopes, a bunch of keys, a heap of loose money – I see them all, but I see even more distinctly – and it was actually hob-nobbing with the spade-guinea – a Yale key. Why Mr Bloom emptied his pockets at night, I cannot guess – a mere habit perhaps. To that habit nonetheless I owe, perhaps, the brevity of my acquaintance with him.

  There is, I suppose, no limit to human stupidity. Never until this moment had it occurred to me that Mr Bloom himself might have been responsible for the loss of my key, that he had in fact purloined it. I stole nearer, and examined his. Yale keys at a casual glance are almost as like one another as leaves on a tree. Was this mine? I was uncertain. I must risk it. And it baffles me why I should have been so fastidious about it. Mr Bloom had not been fastidious. The distant footsteps seemed now to be dully thumping down a remote flight of wooden stairs, and it was unmistakably his voice that I heard faintly booming as if in querulous protestation, and with all its manlier resonance and its gusto gone.