Short Stories 1927-1956 (65 page)

It was doubtful if Dick had been really attending to this prolonged,
halting
, almost monotoned harangue; his face at any rate suggested that his thoughts had journeyed off on a remote and marvelling errand of their own.

‘Well,’ he ventured at last, with a profound half-stifled sigh, ‘I
would
climb it anyway. And not because you dared me to, either. Even
you
couldn’t say what I might not see up there.’

He tiptoed a pace or two nearer the shallow altar steps and again fixed his eyes on his quarry. ‘What about the trumpet?’ he suddenly inquired, with a ring of triumph in his voice, as if he had at last managed to corner his learned friend. ‘The trumpet? You didn’t say a single word about the trumpet.’

‘Well, what if I didn’t?’ was the flat acrimonious answer. ‘I can’t say two things at once, can I? You don’t know
any
thing
.
And that is simply because you never pay any attention. You’re just like a fly buzzing about among the plates seeing what you can pick up. I don’t suppose, if I asked you even now, you could tell me a single word of
all
that I’ve been saying!’

Dick turned, glancing a little sadly and wistfully at his friend. ‘I could, Philip. At least, I think I could. Besides flies do settle sometimes; I suppose then they are asleep.’

‘Oh, well, anyhow,’ replied Philip coldly, ‘I don’t think I want to. But I could if I had the time.’ He sighed. ‘You don’t even seem to understand there are so many
kinds
of trumpets. You don’t seem ever to have heard even of Gideon’s trumpets. Some are made of brass and some are silver and some are great shells and some are made out of sheep’s horns, rams.’ And in the old days, ages ago, war-horses loved the sound of trumpets – I don’t mean just men going hunting. It made them laugh and prance, with all their teeth showing.
“Ha-ha!”
– like that. Simply maddened to go into battle. And besides, clergymen, priests they were called in those days, used to have trumpets, but that was ages before Henry VIII. And they used to blow them, like that one, up there, when there was a new moon; and when,’ he glanced sidelong, his eyelids drooping a little furtively over his full eyes, and his voice fell to a mumble, ‘and when there was a
full
moon too. And at the end there will be incense, and dreadful hail, and fire, and scorpions with claws like huge poisonous spiders. And there’s a Star called Wormwood; and there will be thousands and thousands of men riding on horses with heads like lions …’ He fell silent and sat fumbling for a few moments. ‘But I wasn’t really going to talk about all that. It’s only because
I
have listened. And it’s just what I’ve said already, and I know the very words too.’ He nodded slowly as if he were bent on imparting a deathless and invaluable secret: ‘“The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised.” Those are the very words. And
I
see what they mean.’

Dick had meanwhile become perfectly still, as if some inward self were lost in a strange land. He appeared to be profoundly pondering these
matters
. ‘And supposing,’ he muttered at length, as though like the prophet he had swallowed Philip’s little book and it were sweet as honey, ‘supposing
nothing
happens, Philip? If I do? Perhaps
that
trumpet is only solid wood all through. Then it wouldn’t make
any
sound. Then you would only burst your cheeks, trying. Wouldn’t it be funny – if I burst my cheeks, trying!’

‘That,’ replied Philip, disdaining the suggestion, ‘that would only mean that it isn’t really a trumpet. But you wouldn’t even be
thinking
of that if you weren’t too frightened to try. You’re only talking.’

‘You
wouldn’t.’

‘I like that!’ cried Philip, as if in a brief ecstasy. ‘Oh, I like that! Who
thought
of the angel, may I ask? Who
asked
to be dared? Besides, as I have said again and again, this is my father’s church; and chapel people don’t
believe
in angels. They don’t believe in anything that really matters.’

‘You can say what you like about chapel people,’ said Dick stubbornly, his eyes shining like some dangerous little animal’s that has been caught in a snare. ‘But I’m
not
afeard even if you won’t go yourself.’

‘Oh, well’ – a cold and unforeseen fit of anxiety had stolen into Philip’s mind as he sat staring at his friend. ‘I don’t care. Come on, let’s clear out
of this, I say. You can
try
if you want to, but I’m not going to
watch.
So don’t get blaming anything on to me. It’s nothing to do with me. That’s just what you always do. You’re a silly little weathercock. First, yes; then, no.’

Cramped and spiritless, he had got down from his pew and, as if
absent-mindedly
, had pushed his magic dumb-bell flint into his great-coat pocket and shut off the light of his lantern. The moonlight, which a few moments before, from pavement to arching roof, had suffused the small church through and through, had begun to thin away into a delicate dusk again; and at the withdrawal even of the tiny coloured lights of the lantern, its pallor on the zigzag-fretted walls and squat thick stone shafts of the piers had become colder. Moreover the quietude around them had at once
immeasurably
deepened again now that the two boys’ idle chirruping voices were stilled.

Philip took up the lantern, and looked at his friend. A curious, crooked, scornful alarm showed on his own delicate features. But it was the scorn in it that his ardent, undersized and peeping devotee had detected most clearly. His intensely dark eyes were searching Philip’s face with an astonishing rapidity.

‘You said, “blaming”,’ he half entreated. ‘And did I ever? I – I … Haven’t I always shown that we – I …! It’s only because I didn’t think anything might happen. But I’m not afeard, whatever you may think. Besides, you asked me, Philip. And anything –
any
thing
you asked me … So it couldn’t be
only
a dare.’

Like a cork on a shallow stream that has come momentarily to rest in the midst of rippling and conflicting currents, Philip stood motionless, his pondering eyes intent on the young adventurer whom he had at last decoyed into action. A faintly apprehensive, faintly melancholy expression had now crept into his features. The cold detaining fingers he had thrust out of his coat-sleeve fell slackly to his side again. For Dick had already straddled over the thick red plaited cord that dangled between nave and chancel, disclosing as he did so a frayed gaping hole in the canvas of one of his shoes. Their rubber soles made not the faintest sound as he trod lightly over the thick Persian rug and the stone slabs towards the great monument in the further corner, only a few paces from the altar.

It was a monument constructed of many ornate marbles, and these
supplied
cold couch and canopy for the effigy in alabaster of a worthy knight who, as its inscription declared, had long ago surrendered the joys and
sorrows
of this world. He reposed, rather uneasily, on his left elbow; his attire, ruff and hose, not less decorative and rococo than the wreathings and
carvings
, the cherubs and pilasters of his tomb. But like an Oriental bed in a small English bedroom, the tomb was a size or two too large for the church.

Until this moment Philip had not fully realized its loftiness, and how angularly its pinnacles soared up under the roof. Dark and dwarfed against the whiteness of its marble, Dick had now begun to climb. But he had mounted only a few feet from the ground when Philip noticed that the moon had now abandoned the carved ringlets, the rounded cheeks, the
upturned
sightless face of his angel. Though her pinions and feet were still chequered with its silvering beams, her trump now lifted its mouth into a cold and sullen gloom. An unendurable misgiving had begun to stir in him.

‘The moon’s gone, Dick,’ he whispered across. ‘What’s the good? Come down!’

‘I say,’ came the muffled but elated answer, ‘the ledges are simply thick with dust, and don’t they just cut into the soles of your feet. I can’t hear what you’re saying.’

‘I said,’ repeated Philip, still patiently, ‘come down!’ But he might as well have been pleading with the angel itself. There came no response. ‘Dick, Dick,’ he reiterated, ‘I said, Come down! Oh, I’m going.’ In a sudden fever he pushed his way under the curtain into the vestry and vanished. But it was only a ruse. He came flying back in a few moments as if in utter
consternation
.

‘Quick, Dick; quick, I say!’ he all but shouted. ‘Come down! There’s someone, something
coming.
It isn’t a man and it isn’t a woman. Quick! It won’t be a minute before it’s in the church. Oh you silly, silly fool! I tell you there’s someone coming!’ His voice broke away into a sob of bewilderment, rage, apprehension and despair. ‘My God,’ he called, ‘I’ll tell my father of this! You see if I don’t.’

But the snail-slow groping figure, still radiantly lit with the moon’s downcast beams as it continued to scale the monument, was far too much
engrossed
in its mission to pay any attention to him now, and hardly paused until with a small, black, broken-nailed hand it had securely clasped the angel’s foot. ‘I’m nearly up, Philip,’ he called down at last. ‘Look!
Look
where I am! I’m even with the gallery now, and can hardly see because of the dazzle. It’s cold and still and awful, but oh,
peace
ful;
and I can see into the moon. The angel’s lovely too, close to, but much, much bigger.
Supposing
I blow with all my might and the trumpet doesn’t sound? It won’t be my fault, will it? And we will still keep friends, always, won’t we, Philip?’

‘Oh, you fool, you idiot crock fool,’ called Philip hoarsely. ‘Didn’t I
tell
you, didn’t I tell you, what might come to
every
body? … And you believed it! Oh, it was all a story, a lie, a story. Dick, I will give you anything in the world if you will only come down.’

‘I don’t want anything in the world,’ was the dull, stubborn retort. Even as he spoke, the lower dust-dried hand had crept cautiously up to join its
fellow, and in a few moments, himself half in and half out of the moonlight, his fingers were clutching the acorn tassels of the cord that bound its
convoluted
hood to the angel’s head. Philip was now all but past motion or speech. He was shivering from head to foot, and praying inarticulately in his terror, ‘Oh God, make him come down! Oh God, make him come down!’

‘I believe,’ a calm but rapturous voice was declaring, ‘it
is
hollow, and I
think
she knows I’m here. You won’t say I was afraid now! Philip, I’d do anything in the world for you.’

But at this moment, it seemed, the ancient guardians of the sanctity of the edifice had deemed it discreet to intervene. A cock crowed from its perch in the hen-roost at the farm where Rebecca now lay fast asleep. A vast solemn gust of wind evoked from nowhere out of space had swept across the churchyard and in at the open vestry door, powerful enough in its gust to belly out the dark green felt curtain and to add its edge of terror to Philip’s appalled state of mind. ‘Look! Quick! It’s coming. Didn’t I
say
it was all …’

And this time the small human creature clinging to its goal, a lean skinny arm outstretched above his head, had heard the warning cry. ‘Who? What’s coming?’ he called, faint and far. ‘Oh, it’s lovely up here. I’m alone. I can’t stop now. I’m nearly there.’

‘I say, you are
not
to, you are
not
to.’ Philip was all but dancing in
helpless
fear and fury. ‘It’s wicked! It’s
my
angel, it’s
my
trumpet! I hate you! Listen! – I tell you! I
command
you to come down!’

But his adjurations had become as meaningless as is now the song the Sirens sang.

A rending snap, abrupt as that of a pistol shot, had echoed through the church. The tapering wooden trumpet, never since its first fashioning visited by any other living creature than capricious fly and prowling spider, had splintered off clean from the angel’s grasp. And without a cry, a syllable, either of triumph or despair, Dick had fallen vertically on to the flag-stones beneath, the thud of his small body, and the minute crack as of some
exquisitely
delicate and brittle vessel exposed to too extreme a tension being followed by a silence soft, and thick, and deep as deep and heavy snow.

The stolid pendulum had resumed its imperturbable thumping again, the fussy vestry clock its protest against such indifference. By any miracle of mercy,
could
this be only yet another of this intrepid restless little Yorick’s infinite jests? The sharp-nosed crusader continued alabaster-wise to stare into his future. The disgraced angel, breast to lock-crowned head, stood now in shadow as if to hide her shame. Her mute wooden trumpet remained clutched in a lifeless hand … No.

‘Dick! Dick!’ an anguished stuttering voice at last contrived to whisper.
‘I didn’t mean it. On my oath I didn’t mean it. Don’t let me down … Dick, are you dead?’

But since no answer was volunteered, and all courage and enterprise had ebbed into nausea and vertigo, the speaker found himself incapable of
venturing
nearer, and presently, as thievishly as he had entered it, crept away out into the openness of the churchyard, and so home.

Odd Shop

Odd Shop
*

A silence, peculiar to itself, seemed to possess the little dark shop in the back street running up from the river – the silence, as it were, of intent listeners. It was suddenly shattered by the muffled ringing of a little verdigrised bell hanging up in the corner, and a chance visitor groping his way down its two wooden steps at once perceived it, became indeed curiously aware of it when the hospitable jangle had fallen into silence.

Nothing happened during the two or three minutes short of one o’clock that followed, leaving practically nothing behind them except the sense of their moments of peace and quiet and vague mystery. He then ventured an apologetic rap on the wooden counter. A few moments afterwards an old man quietly and carefully emitted himself through the glazed and curtained door of the shop parlour. He raised his chin and paused, having scrutinized, as far as his spectacles permitted, his visitor.

He watches his visitor mount the narrow street and vanish into the
thickening
fog. No one, not even a cat, is otherwise in sight. The no one, indeed, might almost have been nothing. Merely an old man’s memory – after the muffled jangling of the shop-bell had ceased.