‘I could watch it with the glasses as plain as if it had been in touch of my hand, even to the buttons and the hat-band. It wasn’t the first time I had set eyes on the clothes, either, though I couldn’t have laid name to them. And there was something in the appearance of the thing, something in the way it bore itself up, so to speak, with its arms thrown up at the sky and its empty face, which wasn’t what you’d expect of mere sticks and rags. Not, I mean, if they were nothing but just real – real like that there chair, I mean, you are sitting on now.
‘I called George. I said, “George, lay your eye to these glasses” – and his face was still a bit discoloured, though his little affair in the stableyard was now a good three weeks old.
‘“Take a squint through these, George,” I said, “and tell me what you make of that thing over there.”
‘George was a slow dawdling mug if ever there was one – clumsy-fingered. But he fixed the glasses at last, and he took a good long look. Then he gave them back into my hand.
‘“Well?” I said, watching his face.
‘“Why, Mr Blake,” he said, meaning me, “it’s a scarecrow.”
‘“How would you like it a bit nearer?” I said. Just off-hand, like that.
‘He looked at me. “It’s near enough in them,” he said.
‘“Does the air round it strike you as funny at all?” I asked him. “Out-of-the-way funny – quivering, in a manner of speaking?”
‘“That’s the heat,” he said, but his lip trembled.
‘“Well, George,” I said, “heat or no heat, you or me must go and have a look at that thing closer some time. But not this afternoon. It’s too late.”
‘But we didn’t, sir, neither me nor him, though I fancy he went on thinking about it on his own account in between. And lo and behold, when I got up next morning and had slid out of my bedroom early, and went along into the corridor to have another glance at it, and – believe me, sir, as you looked out into the morning the country lay as calm and open as a map – it wasn’t there. The scarecrow, sir. It wasn’t there. It was vanished. Nor could I get a glimpse of it from downstairs through the bushes this side of the stream. And all so still and early that even there from the back door you could hear the water moving. Now who, thinks I to myself, is answerable for this jiggery-pokery?
‘But it’s no good in this world, sir, putting reasons more far-fetched to a thing than are necessary to account for it. That you will agree. Some farmer’s lout, I thought to myself, must have come and moved the old mommet overnight. But, that being so, what was it ever put up for? Harvest done, mind you, and the crows, one would think, as welcome to what they could pick up in the stubble – if they hadn’t picked it all up already – as robins to house crumbs. Besides, what about the peculiar looks of it?
‘I didn’t go out next day, not at all; and there being only George and me in the vicarage, and the Reverend shut off in his room, I never remember such a holy quiet. The heavens like a vault. Eighty-four in the shade by the thingamy in the verandah and this the fourth of September. All day long, and I’ll vouch for it, the whole twenty acres of that field, but for the peewits and the rooks running over it, lay empty. And when, the sun going down, the harvest moon came up that evening – and that summer she showed up punctual as a clock the whole month round – you could see right across the flat country to the hills. And the night-jars croaking too. You could have cut the heat with a knife.
‘What time the old gentleman’s gruel was gone up and George out of the way, I took yet another squint through the glasses from the upper windows. And I am ready to own that something inside of me gave a sort of a hump, sir, when, large as life, I saw that the scarecrow was come back again, though this is where you’ll have, if you please, to go careful with me. What I saw the instant before I began to look, and to that I’d lay my affidavit, was something moving, and pretty rapid, too; and it was only at the very moment I clapped the glasses on to it that it suddenly fixed itself into what I already supposed I should find it to be. I’ve noticed that – though in little things not mattering much – before. It’s your own mind that learns you before what you look at turns out to be what you expect. Else why should we be alarmed by this here solid sometimes? It looks all so; but is it?
‘You might be suggesting that both shape and scarecrow too were all my eye and Betty Martin. But we’ll see later on about that. And what about George? You don’t mean to infer that he could borrow to order a mere fancy clean out of my head and turn it into a scarecrow in the middle of a field and in broad daylight too? That would be the long bow, and no mistake. Ay, and take it in some shape for what we did! No. Yet, as I say, even when I first cast eyes on it, it looked too real to be real. So there’s the two on the one side, and the two on the other, and they don’t make four.
‘Well, sir, I must say that from that moment on I didn’t like the look of things, and never have I shared a meal so mum as when George and me sat to supper that evening. From being a hearty eater his appetite was fallen almost to a cipher. He munched and couldn’t swallow. I doubt if his vittles had a taste of them left. And we both of us knew as though it had been printed on the tablecloth what the other was thinking about.
‘It was while we sat there, George and me alone, him on the right and the window opposite, and me on the cupboard side in what was called the servants’ hall, that we heard some words said. Not what you could understand, but still, words. I couldn’t tell from where, except that it wasn’t from the Reverend, and I couldn’t tell what. But they dropped upon us and between us as if there was a parrot in the room, clapping its horny bill, so to say, motionless in the air. At this George stopped munching for good, his face little short of green. But except for a cockling up inside of me, I didn’t make any sign I’d heard. After all, it was nothing that made any difference to me, though what was going on was, to say the least of it, not all as it should be. And if you knew the old vicarage you’d agree.
‘Lock-up time came at last. And George took his candle and went up to bed. Not quite as willing as usual, I fancied; though he had always been a glutton for his full meed of sleep. You could notice by the sound of his feet on the stairs that he was as you might say pushing of himself on. As for me, it had always been my way to sit up after him reading a bit with the Reverend’s Times. But that night, I went off early. I gave a last look in on the old gentleman, and I might as well mention – though dilatory isn’t the word for these doctors, even when they are called in in reasonable time – I say a nurse had been sent for, and his sister was now expected any day from Scotland. All well there, and him lying as peaceful on his bed as if the end had come already. Well, sir, that done, coming back along the corridor I blew out my candle and stood waiting. The candle out, the moon came streaming in, and the outside from the window lay spread out beneath me almost bright as day. I looked this ways and I looked that ways, back and front; but nothing to be seen, nor heard neither. Yet it seemed not more than one deep breath after I had closed my eyes in sleep that night that I was stark wide awake again, trying to make sense of some sound I’d heard.
‘Old houses – I’m used to them; the timbers crinkle like a bee-hive. But this wasn’t timbers, oh no! It might maybe have been wind, you’ll say. But what chance of wind with not a hand’s-breadth of cloud moving in the sky, and such a blare of moonlight as would keep even a field mouse from peeping out of its hole? What’s more, not to know whether what you are listening to is in or outside of your head isn’t much help to a good night’s rest. Still I fell off at last, unnoticing.
‘Next morning, as George came back from taking up the breakfast tray, I had a good look at him in the sunlight, but you couldn’t tell whether the marks round his eyes were natural – from what had gone before with the other, I mean – or from insommia. Best not to meddle, I thought; just wait. So I gave him good morning and poured out the coffee and we sat to it as usual, the wasps coming in over the marmalade as if nothing had happened.
‘All quie
t that day, only rather more so, as it always is in a sick-room house. Doctor come and gone, but no nurse yet; and the old gentleman I thought looking very ailing. But he spoke to me quite cheerful. Just like his old self, too, to be sympathizing with me for the double-duty I’d been doing in the house. He asked after the garden, too, though there was as fine a bunch of black grapes on his green plate as any out of Canaan. It was the drought was in his mind. And just as I was leaving the room, my hand on the door, he mentioned one or two compliments about my having stayed on with him so long. “You can’t pay for that out of any Bank,” he said to me, smiling at me almost merry-like, his beard over the sheet.
‘“I hope and trust, sir,” I said, “while I am with you, there will be no further fuss.” But I had a surety even as I said the words that he hadn’t far to go, so that fusses, if come they did, didn’t really much matter to him. I don’t see how you would be likely to notice them when things are drawing to a last conclusion; though I am thankful to say that what did occur, was kept from him to the end.
‘That night there came something sounding about the house that wasn’t natural, and no mistake. I had scarcely slept a wink, and as soon as I heard it, I was on with my tail-coat over my night-shirt in a jiffy, though there was no need for light. I had fetched along my winter overcoat, too, one the Reverend himself had passed on to me – this very coat on my back now – and with that over my arm, I pushed open the door and looked in on George. Maybe he had heard my coming, maybe he had heard the other, I couldn’t tell which, but there he was, sitting up in bed – the moonlight flooding in on his long white face and tousled hair – and his trousers and braces thrown down anyhow on the chair beside it.
‘I said to him, “What’s wrong, George? Did you hear anything? A voice or anything?”
‘He sat looking at me with his mouth open as if he couldn’t shut it, and I could see he was shaken to the very roots. Now, mind you, here I was in the same quandary, as they call it, as before. What I’d heard might be real, some animal, fox, badger, or the like, prowling round outside, or it might not. If not, and the house being exercised, as I said, though a long way back, and the Reverend gentleman still in this world himself, I had a kind of trust that what was there, if it was anything, couldn’t get in. But naturally I was in something of a fever to make sure.
‘“George,” I said, “You mustn’t risk a chill or anything of that sort” – and it had grown a bit cold in the small hours – “but it’s up to us – our duty, George – with the Reverend at death’s door and all, to know what’s what. So if you’ll take a look round on the outside I’ll have a search through on the in. What we must be cautious about is that the old gentleman isn’t disturbed.”
‘George went on looking at me, though he had by this time shuffled out of bed and into the overcoat I had handed him. He stood there, with his boots in his hand, shivering, but more maybe because he felt cold after the warmth of his sheets than because he had quite taken in what I had said.
‘“Do you think, Mr Blake,” he asked me, sitting down again on his bed, “– you don’t think he is come back again?”
‘Come back, he said, just like that. And you’d have supposed from the quivering of his mouth I might have stopped it!
‘“Who’s, George, come back?” I asked him.
‘“Why, what we looked through the glasses at in the field,” he said. “It had his look.”
‘“Well, George,” I said, speaking as moderate and gentle as you might to a child, “we know as how dead men tell no tales. Let alone scarecrows, then. All we’ve got to do is just to make sure. You do as you’re bid, then, my lad. You go your ways, and I’ll go mine. There’s never any harm can befall a man if his conscience is easy.”
‘But that didn’t seem to satisfy him. He gave a gulp and stood up again, still looking at me. Stupid or not, he was always one for doing his duty, was George. And I must say that what I call courage is facing what you’re afraid of in your very innards, and not mere crashing into danger, eyes shut.
‘“I’d lief as not go down, Mr Blake,” he said. “Leastways, not alone. He never took much of a liking to me. He said he’d be evens. Not alone, Mr Blake.”
‘“What have you to fear, George, my lad?” I said. “Man or spectre, the fault was none of yours.”
‘He buttoned the coat up, same as I am wearing it now, and he gave me just one look more. It’s hard to say all that’s in a fellow-creature’s eyes, sir, when they are full of what no tongue in him could tell. But George had shut his mouth at last, and the moon on his face gave him a queer look, far away-like, as if all that there was of him, this world or the next, had come to keep him company. I will say that.
‘And when the hush that had come down on the house was broken again, and this time it was the wind, though away high up over the roof, he didn’t look at me any more. It was the last between us. He turned his back on me and went off out into the passage and down the stairs, and I listened until I could hear him in the distance scrabbling with the bar at the back. It was one of those old-fashioned doors, sir, you must understand, just loaded with locks and bolts, like in all old places.
‘As for myself, I didn’t move for a bit. There wasn’t any hurry that I could see. Oh, no. I just sat down on the bed on the place where George had sat, and waited. And you may depend upon it, I stayed pretty quiet there – with all that responsibility, and not knowing what might happen next. And then presently what I heard was as though a voice had said something – very sharp and bitter; then said no more. There came a sort of moan, and then no more again. But by that time I was on my way on my rounds inside the house, as I’d promised; and so, out of hearing: and when I got back to my bedroom again everything was still and quiet. And I took it of course that George had got back safe to his …’
Since the fire had faded and the light of day was gone, the fish-like phosphorescence of the gas-mantles had grown brighter, and this elderly man, whose name was Blake, I understood, was looking at me out of his white, almost leper-like face in this faint gloom as steadily almost as George must have been looking at him a few minutes before he had descended the back stairs of the vicarage, never, I gathered, to set foot on them again.
‘Did you manage to get any more sleep that night?’ I said.
Mr Blake seemed to be pleasingly surprised at so easy a question.
‘That was the mistake of it,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t found till morning. Cold for hours, and precious little to show why.’
‘So you did manage to get a little sleep?’
But this time he made no answer.
‘Your share, I suppose, was quite a substantial one?’
‘Share?’ he said.
‘In the will …?’
‘Now, didn’t I tell you myself,’ he protested with some warmth, ‘that that, as it turned out, wasn’t so; though why, it would take half a dozen or more of these lawyers to explain. And even at that, I don’t know as what I did get has brought me anything much to boast about. I’m a free man, that’s true. But for how long? Nobody can stay in this world here for ever, can he?’
With a peculiar rocking movement of his small head he peered round and out of the door. ‘And though in this world,’ he went on, ‘you may have not one iota of harm to blame yourself for to yourself, there may still be misunderstandings, and them that have been deceived by them may be waiting for you in the next. So when it comes to what the captain of the Hesper —’
But at this moment our prolonged tête-à-tête was interrupted by a thickset vigorous young porter carrying a bucket of coals in one hand, and a stumpy torch of smouldering brown paper in the other. He mounted one of our chairs and with a tug of finger and thumb instantly flooded our dingy quarters with an almost intolerable gassy glare. That done, he raked out the ash-grey fire with a lump of iron that may once have been a poker, and flung all but the complete contents of his bucket of coal on to it. Then he looked round and saw who was sitting there. Me he passed over. I was merely
a bird of passage. But he greeted my fellow derelict as if he were an old acquaintance.
‘Good evening, sir,’ he said, and in that slightly indulgent and bantering voice which suggests past favours rather easily earned. ‘Let in a little light on the scene. I didn’t notice you when I came in and was beginning to wonder where you had got to.’
His patron smirked back at him as if any such trifling human attention was a peculiar solace. This time the porter deliberately caught my eye. And his own was full of meaning. It was as if there were some little privy and ironical understanding between us in which this third party was unlikely to share. I ignored it, rose to my feet and clutched my bag. A passenger train had come hooting into the station, its gliding lighted windows patterning the platform planks. Alas, yet again it wasn’t mine. Still – such is humanity, I preferred my own company, just then.
When I reached the door, and a cold and dingy prospect showed beyond it, I glanced back at Mr Blake, sitting there in his great-coat beside the apparently extinguished fire. With a singularly mournful look, as of a lost dog, on his features, he was gazing after me. He seemed to be deploring the withdrawal even of my tepid companionship. But in that dreadful gaseous luminosity there was nothing, so far as I could see, that any mortal man could by any possibility be afraid of, alive or dead. So I left him to the porter. And – as yet – we have not met again.
* As printed in BS (1942). First published in London Mercury, July 1929.
At First Sight*
At first sight any passer-by chancing to notice the grey-flannelled figure of the young man who was now making his way round the eastern horn of Galloway Crescent, would have assumed that he was blind. But this was not so. It is true the slender cane he carried in his hand was poised exploringly in front of him as he stepped quietly on, but then he never tapped with it; and though his eyes were hidden from view beneath a green silk shade attached to his head under his hat, an occasional slight sidelong movement of that head suggested that he was making at least some rudimentary use of them.
Short Stories 1927-1956 Page 11