Short Stories 1927-1956 (14 page)

‘I said, “Sponge it down, George, sponge it down. And by good
providence
maybe the old gentleman won’t notice anything wrong.” It wasn’t to reason I could let him off his duties and enter into a lot of silly
peravications
which in the long run might only make things worse. It’s that you have to think of when you are a man in my position. But as for the Reverend’s not noticing it, there, as luck would have it, I was wrong myself.

‘For when the two of us were leaving the dining-room that evening after the table had been cleared and the dessert put on, he looked up from round the candles and told George to stay behind. Some quarter of an hour after that George came along to me snuffling as if he’d been crying. But I asked no questions, not me; and, as I say, he was always pretty slow with his tongue. All that I could get out of him was that he had decocted some
cock-and-bull
story to account for his looks the like of which nobody in his senses could credit, let alone such a power of questioning as the old
gentleman
could bring to bear when roused, and apart from what comes, I
suppose
, from reading so many books. So the fat
was
in the fire and no mistake. And the next thing I heard, after coming back late the following evening, was that our Mr Mengus had been called into the house and given the sack there and then, with a quarter’s wages in lieu of notice. Which, after all, mind you, was as good as three-quarters a gift. What I’m saying is that handsome is as handsome does, and that was the Reverend all over; though I agree, mind you, even money isn’t necessarily everything when there’s what they call character to be taken into account. But if
ever there was one of the quality fair and upright in all his dealings, as the saying goes, then that was the Reverend Somers. And I abide by that. He wouldn’t have any truck with drink topped with insolence. That’s all.

‘Well, our friend came rapping at the back door that evening, shaken to the marrow if ever man was, and just livid. I told him, and I meant it too, that I was sorry for what had occurred: “It’s a bad ending,” I said, “to a tale that ought never to have been told.” I told him too, speaking as quiet and pleasant as I am to you now, that the only hope left was to let bygones be bygones; that he had already had his fingers on George, and better go no further. Not he. He said, and he was sober enough then in all conscience, that, come what come may, here or hereafter, he’d be even with him. Ay, and he made mention of me also, but not so rabid. A respectable man, too; never a word against him till then; and not far short of sixty. And by rabid I don’t mean violent. He spoke as low and quiet as if there was a judge on the bench there to hear him, sentence said and everything over. And then …’

The old creature paused until yet another main-line train had gone roaring on its way. ‘And then,’ he continued, ‘though he wasn’t found till morning, he must have gone straight out – and good-bye said to nobody. He must, I say, have gone straight out to the old barn and hanged himself. The
midmost
rafter, sir, and a drop that would have sufficed for a Giant Goliath. All night. And it’s my belief, good-bye or no good-bye, that it wasn’t so much the
disgrace
of the affair but his daughter – Mrs Shaw by name – and his grandson that were preying on his mind. And yet – why, he never so much as asked me to say a good word for him! Not one.

‘Well, that was the end of that. So far. And it’s a curious thing to me – though they say these Romans aren’t above making use of it – how, going back over the past clears everything up like; at least for the time being. But it’s what you were saying just now about what’s
solid
that sets me thinking and keeps repeating itself in my mind. Solid was the word you used. And they look it, I agree.’ He deliberately twisted his head and fastened a
prolonged
stare on the bench on which he had been seated. ‘But it doesn’t follow there’s much comfort in them even if they are. Solid or not, they go at last when all’s said to what’s little else but gas and ashes once they’re fallen to pieces and been put on the fire. Which holds good, and even more so, for them that sit on them. Peculiar habit that, too – sitting! Yes, I’ve been told, sir, that after what they call this cremation, and all the moisture in us gone up in steam, what’s left would scarcely turn the scales by a single
hounce
!’

If sitting
is
a peculiar habit, it was even more peculiar how etherealizing the effect of my new acquaintance’s misplaced aspirate had been – his one and only lapse in this respect throughout his interminable monologue.

‘Yes, they say that so far as this
solid
goes, we amount to no more than what you could put into a walnut. And my point, sir,’ he was emphasizing with a forefinger that only just showed itself beyond the long sleeve of his greatcoat, ‘my point is
this
– that if
that’s
all there is to you and me, we shouldn’t need much of the substantial for what you might call the mere sole look of things, if you follow me, if
we
chose or chanced to come back. When gone, I mean. Just enough, I suppose, to be obnoxious, as the
Reverend
used to say, to the naked eye.

‘But all that being as it may be, the whole thing had tided over, and George was pretty nearly himself again, and another gardener advertised for – and I must say the Reverend, though after this horrible affair he was never the same man again, treated the young woman I mentioned as if he himself had been a father – I say, the whole thing had tided over, and the house was as silent as a tomb again, ay, as the sepulchre itself; when I began to notice something peculiar.

‘At first maybe, little more
than
mere silence. What, in the contrast, as
a matter of fact, I took for
peace.
But afterwards not so. There was a strain, so to speak, as you went about your daily doings. A strain. And especially after dark. It may have been only in one’s head. I can’t say. But it was there: and I could see without watching that even George had noticed it, and
he’d
hardly notice a black-beetle on a pancake.

‘And at last there came something you could put word to, catch in the act, so to speak. I had gone out towards the cool of the evening after a
broiling
hot day, to get a little air. There was a copse of beeches, which as
perhaps
you may know, is a very pleasant tree for shade, sir, at a spot a bit under the mile from the back of the vicarage. And I sat there quiet for a minute or two, with the birds and all – they were beginning to sing again, I remember – and – you know how memory strays back, though sometimes it’s more like a goat tethered to a peg on a common – I was thinking over what a curious thing it is how one man’s poison is another man’s meat. For the funeral over, and all that, the old gentleman had thanked me for all I had done. You see what had gone before had been a hard break in his trust of a man, and he looked up from his bed at me almost with tears in his eyes. He said he wouldn’t forget it. He used the word substantial, sir; and I ought by rights to have mentioned that he was taken ill the night of the inquest; a sort of stroke, the doctor called it, though he came round, I must say,
remarkably
well considering his age.

‘Well, I had been thinking over all this on the fringe of the woods there, and was on my way back again to the house by the field-path, when I looked up as if at call and saw what I take my oath I never remembered to have seen there before – a scarecrow. A scarecrow – and that right in the middle of the cornfield that lay beyond the stream with the bulrushes at the back of the house. Nothing funny in that, you may say. Quite so. But mark me, this was early September, and the stubble all bleaching in the sun, and it didn’t look an
old
scarecrow, either. It stood up with its arms out and an old hat down over its eyes, bang in the middle of the field, its back to me, and its front to the house. I knew that field as well as I know my own face in the looking-glass. Then how could I have missed it? What wonder then I stood stock still and had a good long stare at it, first because, as I say, I had never seen it before, and next because – but I’ll be coming to that later.

‘That done, and
not
to my satisfaction, I turned back a little and came along on the other side of the hedge, and so, presently at last, indoors. Then I stepped up to the upper storey to have a look at it from the windows. For you never know with these country people what they are up to, though they may seem stupid enough. Looked at from there, it wasn’t so much in the middle of the field as I had fancied, seeing it from the other side. But how, thought I to myself could you have escaped me, my friend, if you had been
there all through the summer? I don’t see how it could; that’s flat. But if not, then it must have been put up more recently.

‘I had all but forgotten about it next morning, but as afternoon came on I went upstairs and had another look. There was less heat-haze or
something
, and I could see it clearer and nearer, so to speak, but not quite clear enough. So I whipped along to the Reverend’s study, him being still, poor gentleman, confined to his bed, in fact he never got up from it; I whipped along, I say, to the study to fetch his glasses, his boniculars, and I fastened them on that scarecrow like a microscope on a fly. You will hardly credit me, sir, when I say that what seemed to me then most different about it – different from what you might expect – was that it didn’t look in any ordinary manner of speaking, quite
real.

‘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?