The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  Well, there was nothing in that. Eve seemed to remember some­thing from her school days about Mr Gladstone and a window-tax. They had left the curtains up to preserve the look of the place. The shut-off portion of the house was a mere prolongation, and it would have other windows. It was merely odd that the one chosen for obliteration should have been the one with the glorious view.

  In the hall Mrs Hodgson was busy with a broom, sweeping up packing-litter. Eve, returning to the house, stopped to speak to her. Give Mrs Hodgson’s tongue a chance and it was sometimes difficult to stop. It ran on now, about the motor-bus she and her daughter had to take mornings and evenings, making a long hard day of it, and how poorly Alice had been on her feet since her last bad go, though the doctor said she would grow out of it; and much more.

  ‘So it will have to be backwards and forwards till you’re suited, miss, which I’m sure the panel must be sick of the child’s face by this time, well one day and bad again the next – mercy, if she isn’t at it again!’

  Indeed the girl who could give that scream, instantly muffled, was a fit candidate for a doctor. In any setting it would have been dis­cord­ant; in that pleasant hall, full of homely litter and flowery light, it was doubly harsh.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Eve exclaimed.

  Mrs Hodgson seemed to make little of something in which none the less she took a secret pride.

  ‘It’s being in a strange place, miss. That’s nothing to some I’ve heard her out with. You’ve got to see she doesn’t bite her tongue; many’s the bit of firewood I’ve stuck in or anything else I could lay hand on. Then I go on with my work and take no notice.’

  ‘You take no notice! Come at once!’

  The child had not bitten her tongue. They merely found her in the kitchen, with her back to the window, and a straw marketing-bag pressed to her eyes. These, when the bag was taken away, proved to be lustreless but dry, and she could not or would not give any reason for the scream.

  ‘It’s no good asking her. You get used to it,’ said the mother, as one who knew.

  But Eve hoped that the Registry would soon send proper maids rather than that she should have to get used to sounds so startling.

  Andy and Davy came down that afternoon, and the four walked round the gardens, considering the work to be done.

  There was occupation enough. Presumably Mr Laban had not let his house to strangers until the force of circumstances had com­pelled him, and while his housekeeper had made something of the interior, the outside had evidently been too much for his man. The flower-beds were neglected, the grass of the tennis-court ankle-deep. Weeding was to be done, hedges were to trim, moun­tains of rubbish to burn. Eve wanted the masses of jasmine cut away that darkened the dining-room window, blown-down pine-cones here, everywhere to be gathered up. Half the glass of the cold frames was broken, and what was growing inside them she did not know.

  ‘Bags I the tennis-court,’ said Davy. ‘I wonder if that fellow’s anywhere about?’

  ‘What fellow?’

  ‘Uncle Laban’s man. I want to know where I can borrow a scythe.’

  ‘He isn’t our man,’ Andy reminded him.

  ‘I know that, but surely he can tell us where to borrow a scythe. And I haven’t seen any gardening tools yet.’

  ‘That’s all right. They’re in one of the sheds.’

  ‘What I mean is, surely somebody’ll show us round. They can’t simply chuck a place at us and leave us to it.’

  ‘Come, we’ve hardly been in ten minutes.’

  And Davy, who always looked out for the next job before he had started the one in hand, departed to the kitchen-garden to make a bonfire there and then.

  Indeed, if Mr Laban’s man might reasonably have been expected to spare the newcomers half an hour, Mr Laban himself might equally have been expected at least to give them a greeting. But they saw nothing of him that day, nor on the day that followed, nor on the day after that. A week passed, and except for themselves there was no sign of a living soul in the place. And only once during that week did any approach the dwelling from the outside world. This was when a tradesman’s van crunched along the drive and drew up before the closed door in the wall. Mickie happened to be doing something to the car in the yard. It was he who saw the door open and the goods delivered. Then the door closed again, and silence and invisibility descended once more.

  The Peckovers were a singularly united family. Separately, Eve had spent months on end with each of her brothers, keeping house for them at their various stations; and now that by something like a miracle all three of them had got leave together she had looked forward to a summer of unalloyed delight. Later, she was inclined to date the first cloud from that evening when she and Davy went seriously into the matter of the tennis-court.

  With its surrounding netting it would cost at least twenty pounds to set up, and the question was whether after all it was worth it. Davy, looking like a Fred Walker picture as he leaned in his shirt and breeches on the scythe he had borrowed from the farm along the lane, weighed the pros and cons.

  ‘Cost a fortune in balls if we don’t have netting,’ he mused, ‘and on the other hand, Evelet, here we are, three well-set-up young men, not to mention yourself, ornaments to any neighbourhood, and there must be a dozen houses with courts round about. Suppose some of the local denizens will be calling on us.’

  ‘We shall have to have the Trevelyans here for one thing, and they’ll have to be amused.’

  ‘Wonder if old fish-netting would come cheaper,’ Davy meditated. ‘I found a lot of larch-poles that would do for posts. I say, if you’re going in you might get the catalogue – it’s in the smoke-room – ’ he called after her as she turned to the house.

  The smoke-room was the bow-windowed room with the Land­seers, next to the lobby. Its door stood partly open, and as she approached it she heard her brother Michael’s voice, apparently concluding some recital.

  ‘ – depend on this, that at the very first sign of anything I’ll have a few of my people down in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

  ‘That’s always supposing he’s your man,’ came Andrew’s voice.

  ‘I’m not mistaken. He’s my friend of the temple. And I’m not the man to take such a thing seriously unless – ’ he broke off abruptly as Eve entered.

  There was a moment of dead embarrassed silence. Andy broke in.

  ‘Want something, Eve?’

  ‘Yes. Gamage’s catalogue.’

  ‘David had it last.’

  ‘He says he left it in here. What’s this about a temple?’

  ‘A temple? What about a temple?’

  ‘Mickie was saying something about a temple, and having some­body here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

  ‘Quite mistaken, my dear. We were talking about polo.’

  ‘And you said you took something seriously –’

  ‘Of course. Polo has to be taken seriously. What’s Davy doing?’

  ‘He’s over by the tennis-court. And at least he isn’t saying things and then saying he didn’t say them,’ Eve returned as she passed out of the door.

  3

  She didn’t like being treated as if she was a child. Leaving the house, she did not rejoin Davy on the tennis-court. She sought the orchard instead. It was an evening of purest beauty, with a sky full of ameth­yst light and the apple-petals fallen among the forget-me-nots like faint kissing lips, but she had no eyes for the evening. She was cross. Why had they put her off like that? Hadn’t she ears? They had been talking about a temple, having somebody down, and taking some­thing seriously. And it wasn’t the first time Mickie had behaved like that. Why had he slid out of the car and stolen across the yard after that man that day? Why was that window blocked up? Why had that child screamed like that? And why, except that apparently a cart came once a w
eek with provisions, did never a sound come from the other portion of the house? Oh, she knew that every one of these questions could be answered. Who took any notice of what a halfwit child did? If people got on very well with a window closed why spend money on opening it again? What more convenient than to place a standing order with tradespeople when the village was four miles away? And wasn’t it natural, seeing a man crossing a yard, to ask him to bear a hand with a trunk?

  But these were not answers. Mickie and Andy had not been talking about polo. And Mickie had run to that door as if he wished to see somebody while remaining unobserved himself. And as for the win­dow, it almost looked as if it had been sealed, not to shut a beautiful view out, but to shut something in.

  Supper that even – cold supper, for Mrs Hodgson and her daughter had departed, and they had to wait upon themselves and one another – was a scrambling sort of meal. It was not worth changing clothes for, and except that Davy put a collar on they did not change. The trifling family jests were mostly Davy’s, and became even more so as the meal went on. If Mickie and Andy were hiding something from her it looked as if they were hiding it from Davy too. She glanced at Mickie past the duplex lamp. More than ever did he seem Andy’s senior, more haunted with responsibility, with deeper histories in his eyes. She had only the very vaguest notion of where he had got that scar: it had almost healed when she had first seen it. And she wished he wouldn’t wear what she called that going-away look – the kind of look people have who hope their friends will remember them, but must put up with it if they do not.

  ‘I say, Eve,’ said Davy, cheerfully rising to change plates, ‘when you do get maids get some we can look at. When I see old Mother What’s-her-Name I nearly choke with virtue.’

  ‘I’m doing my best,’ said Eve, who was beginning to dislike the very look of food that Mrs Hodgson had touched. ‘She has to bring the child, because she can’t leave her alone in the house.’

  She wished, however, that she had not mentioned the child. The child reminded her of only one thing – that sudden scream. And now for the first time the scream made her conscious of something else, namely that in an hour or two, candle in hand, she would have to make her way to a room in one corner of which was a papered-over door, and beyond that a window that showed lace curtains and roller-blinds to the world but allowed the world to see nothing in return.

  Suddenly Andy spoke. – ‘When do the Trevelyans want you to go and stay with them, Eve?’

  Eve was still a little hurt. – ‘They haven’t asked me,’ she replied.

  ‘You don’t wait for the Trevelyans to ask you, do you?’

  ‘Of course I could get myself asked, but till we get servants –’

  ‘Of course. Nobody says go tomorrow. But we can look after ourselves, and they’ll expect you before long.’

  ‘Anybody’d think you were trying to get me out of the house,’ said Eve with a nervous laugh; and it was so obviously the truth that a silence fell.

  After supper they walked in the garden; that is to say Eve walked in the garden, while Andy and Davy cleared away. In the circular space of a flagged Dutch walk was a sundial, but now the day was in ashes overhead, and its gnomon slept. It was by the sundial that she came upon Mickie. He seemed lost in thought. He looked up.

  ‘Hallo, Eve. Didn’t hear you coming.’

  She spoke without preface. – ‘Mickie, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Matter? What matter?’

  ‘I want to talk to you, and not to be shut up.’

  ‘Dear, I’m not shutting you up.’

  ‘You are. And first of all I want to know why you followed that man across the yard that day.’

  Mickie’s finger was rubbing the edge of the gnomon, tracing patterns on the dial. – ‘Do you mean the day you and I came down together?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. You were out of the car without even opening the door, and followed him across the yard.’

  ‘My legs are long enough.’

  ‘Then the way you were talking in the smoke-room when I came in.’

  ‘Fellow was half choking that dog,’ said Mickie reflectively.

  ‘What have you and Andy got between you?’

  Mickie passed his arm about her. But he didn’t tell her what she wanted to know.

  ‘Got between us? Well, we’ve got a sister for one thing. And I say, you’re cold. Baths in this house aren’t any too hot, and this is only spring. What about a tune on that marmalade piano?’

  ‘Mickie, must you shut me out like this?’ she pleaded.

  ‘Shut you out? Look here, this house-hunting’s been too much for you. Why don’t you do as Andy says and go to the Trevelyans for a week or two?’

  ‘You do want to get me out!’ broke from Eve. ‘But I’m not going, and if it’s anything to do with this house I shouldn’t dream of going!’

  ‘This house? Why this house?’ Mickie asked quickly.

  ‘I won’t be treated like a child!’ she said passionately as she broke away. ‘If you keep things to yourself so shall I!’

  Yet what after all had she to tell?

  Little as it was, she wished later that she had told him there and then, for, to anticipate matters by a few hours, her sleep that night was not without incident. The candles were kept in a row on the table at the foot of the stairs. Eve took hers and ascended to her room. With a taper she lighted her lamp, glancing once at the plate-mark to the right of the mantelpiece and then resolutely resisting the temptation to look again. She undressed, put out her light, and got into bed. She had hardly expected to go to sleep at once, but she did so, easily and immediately. Outside the moon rode high. Because of its height it shone only a little way into the room, and even then the rays that entered the two windows were further dimmed by the lace curtains. So Eve’s eyes, when sometime or other during the night she suddenly opened them, were unsure of themselves. A bright light makes the immediate shadow obscurer, but an intercepted one veils all in a dim clarity. It was into this dim clarity, a little below her bed-foot, that her eyes were bent.

  Even as she looked she could hardly have sworn to it. Her door was closed, but there seemed to have announced himself from some­where, entered from somewhere, somebody she had certainly never seen before. As if a process had been dispensed with, she felt that she could equally have been with her lids closed. He was a shrunken old man, who seemed almost too weak to bear the weight of his shabby old brown dressing-gown. His short white beard was thin and ragged, and his white hair fell about his face. And there was that of unutterable appeal about him, a cry, not to judgment, but to the unquestioning mercy that is in us all, that made Eve wellnigh throw out her arms in pity. ‘I don’t know what it is you need, you poor old thing!’ she wanted to cry. ‘Tell me what it is! Tell me what we can do! It isn’t right they should use you so! Tell me what they have been doing to you! Tell me how you can be helped!’ But she lay there, still and gazing, not uttering a word. And as she gazed something happened. Deeply muffled, but from somewhere quite close at hand, there came the low warning ‘Woof!’ of a dog. He at whom Eve looked seemed to hear it too. The piteous eyes were turned in a last imploring look. Then, just as she had turned down her lamp on going to bed, all grew dim. Just as she had puffed across the lamp chimney, all went out. And there was the dim lacy moonlight on the floor again.

  But what Michael George Peckover, of the Indian Political Service, still standing by the sundial, was deeply wondering, was how in the Name of Darkness that fellow Binian came to be here.

  4

  ‘Andy, I’m writing a note,’ said Eve in the morning-room the next day, after breakfast.

  ‘Post it in town for you if you like,’ Andy replied. ‘Did I tell you Mickie and I were going up for the day? Davy’ll drive us to the station.’

  ‘I don’t want it posted. I shall send it by hand. I’m aski
ng Mr Laban to have dinner with us.’

  ‘Hm! That’s an idea,’ Andy remarked. ‘One rather gathered he wished to be left alone though.’

  ‘No. I think that that’s simply his sensitiveness. He thought it was what we should prefer. Here’s a poor old man, driven to let his house to strangers –’

  ‘You seem to know a good deal about him! Who’s going to wait on him? Us? Mrs Hodgson?’

  Eve had got up that morning with something glowing and exalted in her heart, that took no account of anything but itself. She had actually been on the point of writing her letter, forgetful that that would be to ask a guest to a servantless house.

  ‘Of course. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘No particular hurry. Leave it for a few days,’ said Andy. ‘Mrs Hodgson – hang it all –’

  ‘Then perhaps I’d better come into Willowmere with you and have another try,’ Eve sighed, her dream of the night before as if it had never been.

  But who knows by what slender accidents fortune may bring her good to pass? Eve had not known her brothers were going to Lon­don that day. She might well not have accompanied them as far as Willowmere. But the fortune was this, nothing less – that entering Mrs Hickman’s Registry Office, she saw two fresh and buxom young women already there, whose frank and friendly eyes were turned on hers for a moment and then away again.

  ‘Yes, I’ve had an enquiry from Lady Onslow – ’ Mrs Hickman was saying, when Eve stepped forward.

  ‘Can either of you cook?’ she asked.

  One girl whispered to the other, who spoke.

  ‘Yes, ’m.’

  ‘Are you looking for a place?’

  ‘Yes, ’m. Both of us.’