Short Stories 1927-1956 (67 page)
Read Short Stories 1927-1956 Online
Authors: Walter de la Mare
He reappeared in the solid faded doorway, and the doctor followed him down and across a wide corridor, with pictures on its walls, into a room at the back of the house. He paused at a high window.
‘My word!’ he all but muttered. ‘What a view! And what a tide coming in! … No mistaking
that
music! And if you add, “Bats in the belfry”… Well?’
He had turned towards his companion, only to find himself alone, and that he had been conversing with no one to answer. The glass in the
uncurtained
lofty window-sashes with their heavy shutters can only have slightly diminished the tumultuous reverberations of the sea. The whole house seemed to be gently trembling in the vibrations of air and water. Far to the south, along the rugged coast, a light reiteratedly blinked at this stranger. Footsteps at length sounded again, and Dr Brandt’s factotum
re-entered
the room.
‘He seems to be asleep. Fast. I whispered him close up. He’s dreaming – or looks like it. His bald old face – handsome in a way – was as calm as a tombstone … I’m desperate sorry he’s going. Will you wait here, or shall I wake him? Better not until it’s needed. There’s a barrel of beer in the
kitchen
, and food in the larder. Ay, he said before you came that I was to make you comfortable and at home, and all that. “At home!”’
‘No beer, thank you. Has your master a fire? It’s a comfortless night in spite of the moon. Because, perhaps … Just now, while you were gone –
ssh!
Listen!’
He had stayed his talk, interrupted as it seemed by a perceptible change in the resounding churning of noise, rumour and echo beyond the walls of the house. There had accompanied it, too, what seemed like a gabble, or, rather a remote yet vaguely harmonical babble of voices, either high up or in the interstices of the hiss and clutter of the sea.
‘Is
that
it?’ he inquired sharply. ‘Is that anything like what he means? Yet surely that too is only the in-and-out, the surge and swish of the sandy water in the hollows of the rocks; and the wind’s far-away trumpetings. Strange, though!’
The morose answer to his question seemed needlessly resonant and
argumentative
in the silent house itself —
‘You
can hear what you like.
I
say, that’s all deceiving. What’s strange in a following wind and a spring tide coming in? Fast, too. It – it’s a real bumper,’ he added ironically. ‘You’ll have plenty of time for whatever needs doing. It will be all around us before the clock strikes; and it isn’t
we
who will be able to hie off then.’
‘Well, you live here; you are familiar with all this, and you should know. But there certainly was a sound then, the like of which I cannot recall
having
heard, either from wind
or
water. Not that I haven’t lived by the sea. Dr Brandt hasn’t any instrumental devices that may not be known to you, I suppose? Things I mean for his own amusement, and for his own ear only?’
‘Haven’t I told you, no, again and again! Apart from his old pyanniforty over there, and that crammed cupboard in the corner, there’s nothing else I’ve ever seen. And he hasn’t opened eether of them for months past. I tell you, I’m sick and tired of the whole thing and shall be glad when – when I’m gone. All I’m asking now is a quiet end for the old gentleman, or I wouldn’t have come for you. I shall be at an empty end myself, let alone a loose one, when he’s gone. I tell you I’m
attached
to him, and can’t bear the thought of his weakening and waning. A quiet end, that’s what’d be his greatest earthly blessing.’
‘Certainly,’ said his visitor. ‘But you couldn’t but have come, if you were told to. As for a quiet end, that’s neither here nor there. You can depend on me to do my best for Dr Brandt.’
‘Ay. So say all the others. What
I
am saying is, if we have to go, why not go easy? Would you keep even a cat alive, its eyes green with a poisoned liver?’
The doctor remained silent, his eyes fixed on the distant and revolving lantern of the lighthouse, repeatedly obscured by the tossing surf.
‘But surely,’ he began persuasively at last, ‘aren’t we beating about the bush? All that you say, I agree, is kindly meant. Concerning Dr Brandt’s sick fancies of this music; though scarcely this talk of “others”. It’s not for us to
criticize what we cannot understand. And that is immeasurable! A great, rare and unusual mind has its own pathways to follow. If they are not ours, what wonder? And what
then
?
…
How often does this music, which even we ourselves may think at times we hear, as if between waking and
sleeping
– how often does it occur, or seem to occur? At set times? At certain states of the weather, of the tides perhaps? Why is it sometimes pleasing, and at others – what you said – alarming? Terrifying? Has anyone else heard it! What do you yourself think its cause to be?’
‘Answer for question, that’s a mouthful, and no mistake! And you can leave what
I
think of the master to me. We trust one another. I won’t even go for to allow it
is
music – more, at least, than all that tumbling and
roaring
there beyond the window, and which these old chimneys perhaps could part explain. It comes one night; and then not again. Once in June – a
summer’s
afternoon, and that whole hedge there of honeysuckle in bloom, and he sitting proud as a child – it seemed there was a-harping near all around us in the warm sweet air; and that’s what he said. And what its cause? – no more than the insects and the sea-ripplings and the birds, and the breeze in the hot stones of the wall. I’ve talked and I’ve argyfied, and I’ve
not
talked. I’ve had my say; and now this is the end. And then
you
come along’, he all but jeered, ‘and chatter about the weather and states of the tide. As if I couldn’t draw a map of the place, ocean and all, and rocks for the seamaids? In my sleep! I ask you! How could anybody else have heard if there’s none to listen? Or none with, as you might say, the innocence. To believe even their
own
ears, maybe.
‘By God!’ – it seemed he had almost shouted, though he had scarcely raised his voice, ‘that’s just where you are mistaken. That’s just where you are jumping though you haven’t anything to jump from. Louder! different! louder! You may think, if you want to, that it’s
my
tiles that are loose. Who cares? What he says, what the old man, what my old master in there,
says,
is that there will come a moment, and pretty soon maybe, when nothing human could
stay
to listen: neither choice nor power. There’ll come a crack, a burst of it, a sound like some almighty threat of thunder; only
music,
mind you, that may snap your backbone and stun you for good and all. That’s what he says. And then p’raps, he looks at me, sad and smiling for all the world as if he had gone back to his mother’s apron-strings again. And next moment he’s trembling and half-scared like a lost dog, and longing only for sleep. And he has not had any real sweetening bout of that that I could
mention
for three days or more. He —’
He had been interrupted.
‘What’s that over there? By the door there?’ had interjected the doctor.
‘That,’ was the contemptuous reply, ‘that’s a cat, that is.’ He stooped and softly snapped his fingers towards the shadowy creature in the dusk. ‘This
here,’ he cajoled, ‘is the Doctor, Fanny. Come to see Master, he has. Shake hands …
She’s
a listener, too. Look at her! Ah, she’s gone.’
In the pause that followed there sounded out of the back parts of the house a low desolate caterwauling, and then a faint ethereal echo, as of some child’s home-made little harp, and then other stranger, more sonorous instruments, rising and falling, yet as though unintentionally, with the myriad sighings and sifflings of the sea.
‘Well, there’s no mistaking that,’ said the doctor. ‘And it is meeting
together
too. And I take back what I said. There are those who talk of
elementals
. And they might easily be alarming – alone here. Or, as some might say, it is the house that is haunted. It is a sea house. It is the place itself and its past. It entices these visitations, and so affects our human sensibilities.’ He seemed to have begun talking to himself. ‘We have only a short stay in this world. We can but listen, and …’
‘And
I
say, I tell you, it’s only imagining. My poor old master is dying in there. He’s music-mad. What’s more, tide in, there’ll be an end to it. And with the ebb, which should be about a quarter to four, he’ll be gone. Shall you still be waiting? Or shall I take you in to him?’
The doctor hesitated, ‘If you are sure he’s quiet and sleeping, I will wait. Besides, to judge from the look of the sea, the tide by now must be well over the track. Best not to disturb him. Look in again, in a few minutes’ time.’
He turned towards the man with a faint smile, almost as if they were old friends.
‘This seems to be a strange and very solitary house. Do you ever
see
anything
?’
‘Old as the Ark; and about as seaworthy! “See” things? That’s easy if you shut your eyes. And what’s the difference with listening? It’s neether
common
-sense nor natural. And who listens, nowadays? These roaring crazy towns. Who ever
stops
talking in ’em. Why, there’s not enough talk in this house in a month to last a rookery for half an afternoon. I’m dog-sick of it. What I said to myself, coming along in the gig, was: You keep your mouth shut, my son! You keep your teeth locked over your tongue. Let the medicine-man find out for himself. And there you go again, asking
questions
! And even now that you’ve had the answers, be damned if you haven’t followed along the same road again … Not that I’m minding!
‘Put fancies into people’s heads, I say, and they breed – or rot. Music! Give me a brass band or a hurdy-gurdy and I’m with you. But all this church palaver. All this flocking up of the quiet of the air, this talk of voices – the whole world over, they say … I’m with the old man, every inch, mind you. I’ve done for him with these two hands day and night for fifteen years. And he’s no lightweight now – to get him back into bed at times. I’ve borne with him, and no nurse could have done more. Nor his own mother neether. And
never a word, except to you. But it will be a release for him, and I can take care of myself. As for this “music” – strike me blind, deaf and dumb,
before
I’ll say yes to that!’
For the few moments that followed, it seemed as though they had been listening to one another
not
talking. And the doctor began softly:
‘I’m not denying a word you say. Why get beside ourselves? Nothing is lost by being civil – even to what is round us and may never answer back. I know. I realize it must have been a trying time for you. A thread running and knotting itself through your life. And you can depend on me to do my best. On the other hand, as I see myself,
now.
Nothing could be served by pretending that Dr Brandt is merely a victim of what we call fancy … Why, our own ears …’
There had followed the sound of a slow protracted gush, a seventh wave, of the inning tide; and yet again the hoot of a steamer’s siren. And then, from out of the moonlit emptiness and huge vacancy of the night, steadily gathering, as if the very stars in their courses had stayed to listen, there followed a music – a music drawing nearer until the whole canopy of the heavens enveloping the world seemed to be welling with a vast strangely beautiful and terrifying strain of harmony. It died away like a falling rumour of itself into the wail of a rising wind and the incessant din of the breakers … A kind of pallor appeared to have fallen on the two human faces, although the moon must have been on the other side of the house …
‘Someone is coming?’
‘Ay, he’s coming himself.’
There followed, and seemingly from far away, yet distinct, a voice
inquiring
, ‘Is that you, Raven? Is that you? You are back? Are you alone? I’m here; I’m coming. It doesn’t matter now. It is only to thank you and say that I shall not want you any more. I have heard … nothing wrong now. You must get back to sleep, Raven …’
*
First published as ‘Music from the Sea’ in
Adelphi,
April–June 1952.
The midday sunshine is flooding through the french windows of the little parlour as it is called – and almost as if, furtively, revealing colour by colour the pattern of the carpet on the floor. The only occupant of the room is
sitting
at the piano – her back to the window – a girl in her earlier teens. She is pale, dark-haired, grey-eyed, and at this moment, pensive. Her thoughts are far away as she continues slowly ruining the opening bars of ‘When other lips and other hearts Their tales of love shall tell’. However clumsy she may be at the moment, she is engrossed; but after yet another
heartrending
discord her hands fall to her lap and she sits motionless for the few moments before her mother enters the room. She is breathless but speaks in a low ‘inward’ voice rapidly and impulsively.
MOTHER
: Where
have
you been, Sheelagh? When did you come in? You are nearly three-quarters of an hour late. I have been wandering about
everywhere
– to meet you. And since that poor child – … And those wretched motor cars. You are so heedless, so headstrong – in everything –
SHEELAGH
: I’m sorry, Mother. But I hadn’t any more pennies to pay the tram fare.
MOTHER
: But surely, child, I can’t have forgotten giving —.
SHEELAGH
: Yes, but I mean
back,
Mother.
MOTHER
: Back from where?
SHEELAGH
: I don’t see why you should be so cross about it. I just went … I was carried on too far.
MOTHER
: Too far? What can you mean? In the tram? What were you doing? Learning a lesson? How can you have been so foolish – so absent minded?
SHEELAGH
: I’m sorry, Mother. We got right up past Beulah Road before I realized. (Scornfully.) ‘Learning a lesson’, indeed! Of course not. I shouldn’t have mentioned it if I thought you’d make such a fuss about it – I was talking to someone.
MOTHER
: ‘Talking to someone?’ Who? A friend? But didn’t
she
tell you that you had gone beyond the stopping place? …What were you talking about?
SHEELAGH
: It wasn’t a ‘she’, Mother. It was a man.
MOTHER
: A man! Who? What kind of man?
SHEELAGH
: A stranger, Mother.
Kind
of man? – why, our kind of man, of course.
MOTHER
: Look, Sheelagh. Have I never told you that it is never advisable to talk to any stranger, and particularly … It doesn’t matter a bit – man or woman. What should anyone want to talk to a schoolgirl for?
SHEELAGH
: I don’t see why
not
to a schoolgirl. After all, I’m not a child. Besides, I didn’t talk to him; he talked to me.
MOTHER
: I didn’t say you were a child. I thought you had better sense. ‘Talked to
me
’:
you
know
that’s merely quibbling. What did he talk to you about? What was he like? Have you seen him before?
SHEELAGH
: O, Mother! All those questions. I don’t
think
I’ve ever seen him
before. And yet – I don’t know quite how to describe the feeling. How can one tell? For certain? I may have. He wanted to pay my fare back, but I wouldn’t let him.
MOTHER
: Of course not. Did he get out, or …
SHEELAGH
: When I did? Yes, I should think he walked about two
lamp-posts
with me. Then he went on the other way.
MOTHER
: I asked you what he talked to you about. You say he was a
gentleman
? How could he, in that case … What was he like?
SHEELAGH
: As if I didn’t know a gentleman by this time! He was dark – very dark, except his eyes. He had blue eyes. And no one could possibly have been nicer, more polite, I mean. And I’m sure you’d agree, Mother, he was
very
good-looking.
MOTHER
: Very good-looking! Good heavens, child! What have good looks to do with it?
SHEELAGH
: But I didn’t say they
had,
Mother. But it wasn’t so much his face as his voice. I remember Daddy once saying that you can tell a
person’s
character better by that than by anything else. Whether, I mean, one’s telling the truth or not. I don’t
think
he was quite English.
MOTHER
: Really, Sheelagh! You are being purposely provoking, just
keeping
everything back. Why didn’t you say at once he was a foreigner. If only I had gone that way to meet you! It never even occurred to me, though I knew you had left the school, because I telephoned. And what might
not
have become of you? You might have had a bad accident, been killed. For all I knew … Oh, Sheelagh!
SHEELAGH
: But even if I had, I don’t see why it must have been my
fault.
Besides,
then,
you might not have heard
yet.
And he wasn’t a foreigner. All I meant was that he didn’t speak – well, just like most people. It was a little like Miss O’Reilly’s brother, the gym mistress. (There is a pause, and Sheelagh begins faintly strumming her tune again.)
MOTHER
: (In a low, tense voice.) Miss O’Reilly? She’s Irish, isn’t she? Do you mean …? (Angrily.) Will you please stop strumming that silly
sentimental
song and turn your face to me. I don’t want to be hasty, and I’m not hurt in any way. But you keep on evading my questions. What did this stranger talk to you
about
?
SHEELAGH
: I hope you don’t mean that,
because
my back was turned, I was telling lies. I wouldn’t tell lies with my back turned, anyhow. And you didn’t say it was a silly song when we heard it the other day —. I saw you listening.
‘Talk
to me?’ The stranger in the tram? I’m sure, for one thing, he wouldn’t have at all – if he had known this would happen. How silly it all is! A book slipped off my lap, my French book, and he picked it up and smiled at me. He came in immediately after me. He said it was a lovely day. And so it was, Mother; look at the sun! I saw the first
May-tree
in bloom this morning: and you could hear the birds, the thrushes, even in the tram. I agree, Mother, he did stare rather. But not a bit in a horrid way. And then I thought he wasn’t going to say anything more. And, well, I was sorry. But at last he turned back from looking out at the driver and asked me what school I came from.
MOTHER
: Oh! Sheelagh, how can you have been so foolish – so, so unwise!
SHEELAGH
: You won’t let me go on. Of course, I told him the school. Why, the letters are on my hat. And then he asked me if I was going home, and how old I was, and when my birthday was. Perhaps he’ll send me a lovely present. Wouldn’t that be fun?
You’d
choose a doll for your little girl! Oh, do be a sport, Muzzie dear.
MOTHER
: (In rapid anxious tones.) Listen, darling. Please don’t joke and be silly. If you had had my ex — if you knew, I mean, what I know of this world, you’d realize that I had cause for being uneasy, anxious. It’s
be
cause
you are not a child, and so trustful and impulsive, and just follow your heart and not your head. And I don’t mean that you shouldn’t, but … What did he say then?
SHEELAGH
: He looked at me, and smiled. And then he asked me where I lived.
MOTHER
: And you
told
him?
SHEELAGH
: Well, I did wonder a little at that. Then I remembered that after all he only had to follow me to find out. Besides, as I keep on saying, I knew he was just – just being kind. And after that, well, we talked – almost as if we were old friends. He asked me what I should like to do when I left school, and whether I should be able to. He said, ‘You look very happy. Are you?’ That
was
rather queer, wasn’t it? Of course, I’m happy – generally.
MOTHER
: Follow you! Kind! Happy! I can’t think what girls you can have been mixing with – putting things into your head like that. And now you are turning your back again. I’m dreadfully tired, I must sit down and rest a minute.
SHEELAGH
: I was only looking in the glass, Mother. Mummy,
dear
!
And you do that yourself, don’t you? Sometimes? I’ve watched you. You purse your lips like this, and turn your head first to one side and then to the other. And
I
think you look adorable. It’s just then, if I was a man, I’d fall in love with you! And I suppose you’ll think it’s only horrid conceit or something if – well,
do
dark hair and blue-grey eyes – like, like mine – often go together? Miss O’Reilly has greenish eyes.
Your
eyes, Mother, are brown – like pansies. And I adore them; and you know that I wouldn’t for the world let the tiniest cloud … There, don’t let’s say any thing more. Please.
MOTHER
: I’m asking you to be serious, Sheelagh. I don’t
like
this man. He
can’t
have been a gentleman. Did you tell him your name? Surely you must have known … And you confided in him – a perfect stranger – that you were happy? And what have eyes and hair to do with that?
SHEELAGH
: Yes, I did. You wouldn’t wish me to have told him a fib about that surely. I wanted to ask him
his
name. That would have been only fair. But I didn’t like to.
MOTHER
: Then he
did
ask you yours? What did you say?
SHEELAGH
: You just go on
telling
me what he said to me! And he didn’t ask me my name, either. He guessed it – or saw it on my book. That was the only other curious little thing. Because I don’t think –
now
I mean – that at first he wanted to know anything about
me
!
But about another girl!
MOTHER
: (Momentarily relieved.) Oh! Another girl. Who?
SHEELAGH
: Quite at the beginning, he asked me if I had a school-fellow named Willing. He said he once had an old friend who lived about here who had a daughter, that this was his friend’s name, and he thought that perhaps …
MOTHER
:
Willing!
You’re absolutely sure that he said Willing?
SHEELAGH
: Why, of course! And I said what a very curious thing it was that he should have asked me that.
MOTHER
: Why – ‘curious’?
SHEELAGH
: He smiled at me. And I said it was because that name was once …
MOTHER
: (Prompting her.) ‘That name was once’ …?
SHEELAGH
: Oh, Mother, how can you be so slow? That it was once
your
name. And I do think, considering how kind and how nice he was, and interested – almost as if I was grown-up, I mean: I don’t see why you should judge him – or me – like that. I wouldn’t have dreamed of talking to him – because of what you once said – if he had been horrid or nosy or silly – that kind of thing. But he wasn’t. I
liked
him. I hoped then I might see him again. But, now, how can I, after what you have said? Why, I wouldn’t be as suspicious and stand-offish as that even to the
conductor
. But there! I suppose I mustn’t, in future, say ‘Good-morning’ even to him.
MOTHER
: Sheelagh, I want you to be – I can’t quite say what I mean – but I want you always to realize that I never tell you what to do or what not to do unless I think –
know
it’s for the best. There are – dangers; even when everything … ourselves as well as others. And although a supreme, a priceless blessing may … You see, life leads us on and on, but there is always the
past.
You can never, never, root out that. Never know when it may not rise up again out of – out of its ashes. I am sure now, from what you have told me, that, that – this stranger hadn’t any – any
designs
;
nothing like that. Still, I want you to promise that, for a few days at any rate, you’ll come home another way. It will only mean your being a little later than usual, and the walk will do you good. (Gropingly – as if against her will.) You say you liked him? Why? His voice? How did he look? (Anxiously.) Did he, did he say that he might be coming to see you? No, of course not.
SHEELAGH
: Coming to see me? Mother, how silly! We just talked of
anything
and everything else that came into our heads after that. At least I did.
MOTHER
: After what?
SHEELAGH
: After I had told him how odd it was he should have an old friend living about here called Willing – I mean, that it was your name.
MOTHER
: And what did he say then?
SHEELAGH
: Nothing. Not at first. He looked at me as though he were
waiting
for me to go on. Then he turned away and then smiled at me again, as if
we
were old friends. And that is true, Mother, isn’t it? I mean,
some
people – strangers – you seem to know almost at once, don’t you? But I don’t think it means past lives, do you? That was what I
felt.
And Daddy I’m sure …
MOTHER
: Daddy? What has Daddy to do with this? I can’t imagine what he would say if he knew of it. You must promise me, Sheelagh – on no account – to tell him even a syllable of what you have confided in me. He’d never have a happy moment again if he felt that … You promise?
SHEELAGH
: If you ask. Of course, Mother.
MOTHER
: You say he, this stranger – looked
well
?
Did he, did
he
seem happy, too?
SHEELAGH
: Oh, Mother! He looked very well; and I believe if you and I had been together, and he’d begun to talk to
us,
we’d have laughed over it just like two cats. You would have loved it. And then it would have been
our
little secret! But I wouldn’t say he had
always
been happy. When he asked about my childhood and, and the future, he looked almost as if he were homesick – well, you know what I mean – envious. I don’t think, although there was a ring on his finger, that he was married. I don’t
think
so.
(A little bell sounds.)
MOTHER
: That’s luncheon – the second time.
SHEELAGH
: You won’t say anything to Miss Pearce, Mother, will you? I do wish you hadn’t telephoned.
MOTHER
: No, I promise. He asked, you say, if
I
was happy? Didn’t that strike you as curious?
SHEELAGH
: I didn’t say so. But he did. Not so very ‘curious’. He was telling me about his having been abroad, and how gay and cheerful the people
are. And you see, if, at the beginning I had told you what he said last – though you wouldn’t give me a chance – you would have seen there couldn’t have been anything silly or wrong in my talking to him. You know how fond I am of Daddy, but I do sometimes find it very hard – well, to say all that I mean – everything I think he is always interested and yet … well, I’m sure he doesn’t understand me, not quite as you do, you dear sweet thing.
He
listened – as if even a schoolgirl … Oh, Mother, do cheer up. I do wish you didn’t look so pale and tired and – and troubled about this. There isn’t the very least need to. And you know I’m sorry.
