Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

  "No one ever thought I was a fool," he muttered.

  He had a feeling of good-natured contempt for the gibbering dead. Then, as he strolled along, he came suddenly upon two coolies digging a grave. He was astonished, for he had not heard that anyone in the community was dead.

  "Who the devil's that for?" he said aloud.

  The coolies did not even look at him, they went on with their work, standing in the grave, deep down, and they shovelled up heavy clods of earth. Though he had been so long in China he knew no Chinese, in his day it was not thought necessary to leam the damned language,, and he asked the coolies in English whose grave they were digging. They did not understand. They answered him in Chinese and he cursed them for ignorant fools. He knew that Mrs. Broome's child was ailing and it might have died, but he would certainly have heard of it, and besides that wasn't a child's grave, it was a man's and a big man's too. It was uncanny. He wished he hadn't gone into that cemetery; he hurried out and stepped into his chair. His good humour had all gone and there was an uneasy frown on his face. The moment he got back to his office he called to his number two:

  "I say, Peters, who's dead, d'you know?"

  But Peters knew nothing. The taipan was puzzled. He called one of the native clerks and sent him to the cemetery to ask the coolies. He began to sign his letters. The clerk came back and said the coolies had gone and there was no one to ask. The taipan began to feel vaguely annoyed: he did not like things to happen of which he knew nothing. His own boy would know, his boy always knew everything, and he sent for him; but the boy had heard of no death in the community.

  "I knew no one was dead," said the taipan irritably. "But what's the grave for?"

  He told the boy to go to the overseer of the cemetery and find out what the devil he had dug a grave for when no one was dead.

  "Let me have a whisky and soda before you go," he added, as the boy was leaving the room.

  He did not know why the sight of the grave had made him uncomfortable. But he tried to put it out of his mind. He felt better when he had drunk the whisky, and he finished his work. He went upstairs and turned over the pages of Punch. In a few minutes he would go to the club and play a rubber or two of bridge before dinner. But it would ease his mind to hear what his boy had to say and he waited for his return. In a little while the boy came back and he brought the overseer with him.

  "What are you having a grave dug for?" he asked the overseer point blank. "Nobody's dead."

  "I no dig glave," said the man.

  "What the devil do you mean by that? There were two coolies digging a grave this afternoon."

  The two Chinese looked at one another. Then the boy said they had been to the cemetery together. There was no new grave there.

  The taipan only just stopped himself from speaking.

  "But damn it all, I saw it myself," were the words on the tip of his tongue.

  But he did not say them. He grew very red as he choked them down. The two Chinese looked at him with their steady eyes. For a moment his breath failed him.

  "All right. Get out," he gasped.

  But as soon as they were gone he shouted for the boy again, and when he came, maddeningly impassive, he told him to bring some whisky. He rubbed his sweating face with a handkerchief. His hand trembled when he lifted the glass to his lips. They could say what they liked, but he had seen the grave. Why, he could hear still the dull thud as the coolies threw the spadefuls of earth on the ground above them. What did it mean? He could feel his heart beating. He felt strangely ill at ease. But he pulled himself together. It was all nonsense. If there was no grave there it must have been an hallucination. The best thing he could do was to go to the club, and if he ran across the doctor he would ask him to give him a look over.

  Everyone in the club looked just the same as ever. He did not know why he should have expected them to look different. It was a comfort. These men, living for many years with one another lives that were methodically regulated, had acquired a number of little idiosyncrasies—one of them hummed incessantly while he played bridge, another insisted on drinking beer through a straw—and these tricks which had so often irritated the taipan now gave him a sense of security. He needed it, for he could not get out of his head that strange sight he had seen; he played bridge very badly; his partner was censorious, and the taipan lost his temper. He thought the men were looking at him oddly. He wondered what they saw in him that was unaccustomed.

  Suddenly he felt he could not bear to stay in the club any longer. As he went out he saw the doctor reading The Times in the reading-room, but he could not bring himself to speak to him. He wanted to see for himself whether that grave was really there and stepping into his chair he told his bearers to take him to the cemetery. You couldn't have an hallucination twice, could you? And besides, he would take the overseer in with him and if the grave was not there he wouldn't see it, and if it was he'd give the overseer the soundest thrashing he'd ever had. But the overseer was nowhere to be found. He had gone out and taken the keys with him. When the taipan found he could not get into the cemetery he felt suddenly exhausted. He got back into his chair and told his bearers to take him home. He would lie down for half an hour before dinner. He was tired out. That was it. He had heard that people had hallucinations when they were tired. When his boy came in to put out his clothes for dinner it was only by an effort of will that he got up. He had a strong inclination not to dress that evening, but he resisted it: he made it a rule to dress, he had dressed every evening for twenty years and it would never do to break his rule. But he ordered a bottle of champagne with his dinner and that made him feel more comfortable. Afterwards he told the boy to bring him the best brandy. When he had drunk a couple of glasses of this he felt himself again. Hallucinations be damned! He went to the billiard room and practised a few difficult shots. There could not be much the matter with him when his eye was so sure. When he went to bed he sank immediately into a sound sleep.

  But suddenly he awoke. He had dreamed of that open grave and the coolies digging leisurely. He was sure he had seen them. It was absurd to say it was an hallucination when he had seen them with his own eyes. Then he heard the rattle of the night watchman going his rounds. It broke upon the stillness of the night so harshly that it made him jump out of his skin. And then terror seized him. He felt a horror of the winding multitudinous streets of the Chinese city, and there was something ghastly and terrible in the convoluted roofs of the temples with their devils grimacing and tortured. He loathed the smells that assaulted his nostrils. And the people. Those myriads of blue clad coolies, and the beggars in their filthy rags, and the merchants and the magistrates, sleek, smiling, and inscrutable, in their long black gowns. They seemed to press upon him with menace. He hated the country. China. Why had he ever come? He was panic-stricken now. He must get out. He would not stay another year, another month. What did he care about Shanghai?

  "Oh, my God," he cried, "if I were only safely back in England."

  He wanted to go home. If he had to die he wanted to die in England. He could not bear to be buried among all these yellow men, with their slanting eyes and their grinning faces. He wanted to be buried at home, not in that grave he had seen that day. He could never rest there. Never. What did it matter what people thought? Let them think what they liked. The only thing that mattered was to get away while he had the chance.

  He got out of bed and wrote to the head of the firm and said he had discovered he was dangerously ill. He must be replaced. He could not stay longer than was absolutely necessary. He must go home at once.

  They found the letter in the morning clenched in the taipan's hand. He had slipped down between the desk and the chair. He was stone dead.

  From The Great Fog, by H. F. Heard, reprinted by permission of The Vanguard Press and Cassell & Co. Ltd.

  Trie Rousini

  f Mr. Brad

  By H. F.

  HEARD

  MR. BRADEGAR WAS NOT ALARMED, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN EXAG-gerat
ion, and a disparaging exaggeration—which is, in itself, so unusual as to awaken doubt. But Mr. Bradegar had been waked in an unusual way, in a way which—he would have been quite happy to allow it, had there been anyone to make happy by the allowance—might well have been alarming to a more highly strung nature. Indeed, the trouble about this sudden summons back from dreams to reality was that Mr. Bradegar was quite at a loss to know what it was that had summoned him. It was not "rosy-fingered dawn." A glance hadn't shown much—indeed, had shown so little that it seemed clear that dawn wasn't in the offing and would not be for a long while; otherwise you ought to see where "the casement grows a glimmering square." No —if he had his bearings right—it is hard to be sure when you are waked too quickly—but to the best of his knowledge, the window was where he was looking, and there was no suspicion of a glimmering square about it. Well, ears might be better than eyes. With the fingers of his upper hand, which, with its under fellow, had been folded near his face in the attitude of fetal humility, which we resume when we would rest, Mr. Bradegar got ready to push back the edge of the sheet, under which he lay up to the ears—then paused.

  What was that? A rustle? No, it was only the small sound made as his too-vigilant ear moved on its own, obeying an impulse almost as ancient as his sleeping pose, trying to cock itself, but only succeeding now in producing a small sound—the sound of its own movement against the sheet edge—instead of detecting an external disturbance. He must have his ears clear if his eyes wouldn't work. There, now he was unlapped. It was his good ear, too; so he must be lying on his left side! so, again, he must be right about the window and, further, about the time, within limits. It was his good ear, because he could hear the discreet pulse of the mantel clock. Yes, he was now quite awake and had himself well arranged in relation to his whereabouts. He noticed, too, that his heart was beating more slowly. He reflected on this. "I must have had a start in my sleep. Perhaps it was only a dream."

  He worked the back of his neck a little deeper into the pillow until he was quite comfortable, gave up staring into the dark, but still left his "weather ear" uncovered. Half over on his back, he could keep a casual watch until sleep relieved him. It evidently was closer at hand than he thought, for in no perceptible length of time he found himself of the opinion that he was out in the street, just about to cross, when a small dog ran in front of him, turned its head, and barked sharply, "Wake up!" Mr. Bradegar obeyed instantly and, as instantly, he was aware that the same whatever-it-was that had first startled him to wakefulness must have done it again. His car was still uncovered; the window still as noncommittal; only the mantel clock, after a soft preliminary whirring, began to strike—if strike is not too emphatic a word for its perfect night-nurse manner. But it hadn't much to say: "One, Two." Mr. Bradegar also noticed again that his heart had evidently caught on to this thing even before it had waked him. It was slackening down from a more rapid pace. "Dormio, sed cor . . ." he quoted to himself.

  Two A.M. The heart should now be at its slowest. Poor old thing, having to put in some overheats, when it should be on its half time. Mr. Bradegar was sensibly concerned—not alarmed—about his heart. "Guest and companion of my clay," he quoted again; a little more sadly and secularly this time; for sixty years beating away to get him enough energy—to be born, to fight at school, row himself blind at college, pull himself, for a dozen seasons, to the top of two score Alpine "first-class" peaks, and leap down the throats of "the opposing attorney" and his witnesses, day after day, for half a lifetime. It was a reputable record for a soft piece of sinew which has to be as precise as the best clockwork and as ready as a rattler. He must give it a chance. That is what Wilkinshaw, the big heart man, had said. "Give it a chance"—and give me a hundred dollars for asking you to do what you intend! Easy job, these big doctors; easier than ours in the courts. I'd never have been able to pay to ask him to disapprove of the pace I've had to live at if I hadn't worked harder than he ever had to work. "Give it a chance!" I never could let my heart or anyone else have a chance till I was over fifty. Heart and head, lungs and liver, kidneys and skin, all had to stand the racket, or give if they couldn't.

  That was why he was alone. Mabel wouldn't stand for it, nor the

  two girls. They sided with their mother. Girls usually don't. One of

  them nearly always likes her father. But both went with Mabel. "Men-

  tal cruelty!" If all day you've been getting their living, and they

  wanted a lot, by watching like a pike to see if the other fellow couldn't

  be snapped up, you couldn't turn off the trick when you came home.

  You'd got into the way of striking as quickly, as surely, as automatically

  as a sidewinder. Well, they wouldn't stand for it. So here he was now

  with his heart to watch, and nothing else. He'd done well and, he'd

  hoped, as soon as he was through with getting on, he'd get liked. He'd

  do the things—he'd have time—that get you liked: the big, generous

  things with which the big, easy, famous men convince everyone, every-

  one who now wants to forget that they were ever small, keen, mean.

  They're formidable still, of course, but in such a grand way. They just

  go on getting their way, but with no more than an inflection of the

  voice—they don't have so much as to raise a finger any longer. The old

  proverbial success of success. But—"Where are the monuments of those

  who were drowned?" "Nothing succeeds like succession: nothing suc-

  ceeds like surcease." The phrase "declined" itself, as one used to say

  of verbs in school grammar lessons. . . . He was trying to memorize

  the whole conjugation. There was only a little time. The clock above

  the desks showed that the preparation hour was nearly over. He had

  learned all the other irregular verbs but this silly one: "Success, suc-

  cession, surcease--- " How did the rest of it go? "Success, succession,

  surcease, decease, death, cremation"—that was it—not a very irregular verb, after all: you could tell each declension from the one before pretty well. He'd be able to remember it when called out to say it in front of the class. He looked up at the clock again. It was just going to strike the hour but, instead, it remarked in a sharper tone of voice, "Wake up!"

  Mr. Bradegar once more sprang to attention to find as before that he was horizontal, sheet-swathed, pillow-sunk—and had once more missed the tide. He had been called, but by the time he'd hurried up to the doors of his body, the summoner, like a "ring-and-run" street urchin, had made off. But had it? Mr. Bradegar's mood, which had nearly risen to the vigorous daylight state of irritated disappointment, suddenly sank, sank to apprehension. Perhaps he wasn't going to be disappointed this time? Perhaps, this time, the ringer hadn't run?

  He was now fully awake and realized how keenly sorry he was that he wasn't going to be disappointed. "This is the third time I've been roused," he remarked to himself. There was a gentle whirring, and, as if in answer to his half-question, the clock announced that it was Three. But, whether it was because he was more awake this time, the tone of voice in which his timepiece made this, its third, summons to a new day, struck Mr. Bradegar as being a trifle more peremptory, less deferential than the discreet summons of an hour ago. Then it had almost seemed to say by its tone, "Excuse me, sir, but should you be wishing to know the precise hour, I beg to inform you that it is just two A.M." Now its stroke rather suggested, "Take it or leave it," with perhaps even a hint of, "But if you do slip off again I'm not responsible if you never wake up in time."

  But what was Mr. Bradegar meant to do? He was roused, but for what? The only thing was to set oneself to listen. Putting on the light wouldn't throw any on what might be present but which always seemed just to have done what it was up to and escaped into the past. "If I did put on the light," he reflected, "I'd only have the unpleasant feeling that whatever it i
s that's nibbling at me had been looking right at me the moment before I pressed the switch." That thought was so unpleasantly convincing that Mr. Bradegar, who had been vainly peering over the sheet's fold into the dark, involuntarily shut his eyes—only for a moment, he felt sure. But the clock had another opinion. Mr. Bradegar was all ears as, having started striking, as if worked up to a kind of angry protest, the clock went on making its points like a lawyer pressing a conviction: "One, Two, Three, Four." "What?" thought Mr. Bradegar. "Five, Six." Six! And there was no doubt that the clock's tone was as harshly startling as the information it imparted.

  Mr. Bradegar's attention flooded from ears to eyes. He opened 240

  HEARD: THE ROUSING OF MR. BRADEGAR

  them, found the sheet was over them, pushed it aside with an impatiently anxious finger—and, in a flash, realized what had happened. His whole body signaled it. Every sense, with a sort of cannonading broadside, thundered the fact. He blinked his eyes—yes, the room was light, but he could see only faintly, blurredly. He moved his legs, yes, with difficulty. He knew at once: he was not the sort of fool that fools himself. He knew how to diagnose that curious sense of constriction, that feeling as though one were walking along the foot of the bed, that imaginary sensation. Of course, it was the typical projection phenomenon, the massive sensation-pattem similar to the acute nerve response which the leg-amputation patient feels when he says his toes are being pinched.