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The Damned Chapters V - VI · Incredible Adventures

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Section six of Incredible Adventures by Aldernon Blackwood. This LibriVox recording is in the
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public domain. Read by Ben Tucker, The Damned, Chapter five, we
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were left delightedly to ourselves in this pretentious country mansion with the soul of a
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villa. Francis took up her painting again, and the weather, being propitious,
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spent hours out of doors, sketching flowers, trees, and nooks of
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woodland, garden, even the house itself, where bits of it peered suggestively
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across the orchards. Missus Franklin seemed always busy about something or other, and
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never interfered with us, except to propose motoring tea in another part of the
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lawn, and so forth. She flitted everywhere, preoccupied yet apparently doing nothing.
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The house engulfed her. Rather no visitors called. For one thing,
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she was not supposed to be back from abroad yet, and for another,
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I think the neighborhood, her husband's neighborhood, was puzzled by her sudden cessation
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from good works. Brigades and temperance societies did not ask her to hold their
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meetings in the Big Hall, and the vicar arranged the school treats in another's
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field without explanation. The full length portrait in the dining room and the presence
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of the housekeeper with the burnt back hair, indeed, were the only reminders
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of the man who once had lived to hear. Missus marsh retained her place
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in silence, well paid sinecure, as it doubtless was, yet with no
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hint of that suppressed disapproval one might have expected from her. Indeed, there
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was nothing positive to disapprove, since nothing worldly entered grounds or building in her
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master's lifetime. She had been another brand snatched from the burning, and it
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had been her custom to give vociferous testimony at the revival meetings, where he
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adorned the platform and led in streams of prayer. I saw her sometimes on
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the stairs, hovering wandering, half watching and half listening, and the idea
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came to me once that this woman somehow formed a link with the departed influence
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of her bigoted employer. She alone among us, belonged to the house and
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looked at home there. When I saw her talking, oh, with such
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correct and respectful mien to Missus Franklin, I had the feeling that for all
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her unaggressive attitude. She yet exerted some influence that sought to make her mistress
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stay in the building forever. Live there she would prevent her escape, prevent
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her getting it straight again, thwart somehow her will to freedom, if she
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could. The idea in me was of the most fleeting kind. But another
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time, when I came down late at night to get a book from the
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library ante chamber and found her sitting in the hall alone, the impression left
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upon me was the reverse of fleeting. I can never forget the vivid,
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disagreeable effect it produced upon me. What was she doing there at half past
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eleven at night, all alone in the darkness. She was sitting upright stiff
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in a big chair below the clock. It gave me a turn. It
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was so incongruous and odd. She rose quietly as I turned the corner of
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the stairs, and asked me respectfully, her eyes cast down as usual,
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whether I had finished with the library so that she might lock up. There
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was no more to it than that, but the picture stayed with me unpleasantly.
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These various impressions came to me at odd moments, of course, and
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not in a single sequence as I now relate them. I was hard at
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work before three days were past, not writing, as explained, but reading,
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making notes, and gathering material from the library for future use. It
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was in chance moments that these curious flashes came, catching me unawares, with
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a touch of surprise that sometimes made me start, for they proved that my
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undermind was still conscious of the shadow, and that far away, out of
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sight lay the cause of it. That left me with a vague unrest,
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unsettled, seeking to nest in a place that did not want me. Only
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when this deeper part knows harmony, perhaps can good brain work result. And
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my inability to write was thus explained. Certainly, I was always seeking for
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something here I could not find, an explanation that continually evaded me. Nothing
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but these trivial hints offered themselves. Lumped together, However, they had the
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effect of defining the shadow a little. I became more and more aware of
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its very real existence. And if I had made little mention of Francis and
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my hostess in this connection, it is because they contributed at first little or
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nothing towards the discovery of what this story tries to tell. Our life was
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wholly external, normal, quiet and uneventful, conversation banal missus Franklin's conversation.
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In particular, they said nothing that suggested revelation. Both were in this shadow,
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and both knew that they were in it, but neither betrayed by word
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or act a hint of interpretation. They talked privately, no doubt, but
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of that I can report no details. And so it was that, after
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ten days of a very commonplace visit, I found myself looking straight into the
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face of a strangeness that defied capture at close quarters. There's something here that
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never happens, were the words that rose in my mind, And that's why
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none of us can speak of it. And as I looked out of the
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window and watched the vulgar blackbirds with toes turned in boring out their worms,
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I realized sharply that even they, as indeed everything large and small in the
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house and grounds, shared this strangeness and were twisted out of normal appearance.
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Because of it, Life as expressed in the entire place was crumpled, dwarfed,
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emasculated. God's meanings here were crippled, his love of joy was stunted.
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Nothing in the garden danced or sang. There was hate in it.
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The shadow, my thought hurried on to completion, is a manifest of hate,
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and hate is the devil. And then I sat back, frightened in
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my chair, for I knew that I had partly found the truth. Leaving
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my books, I went out into the open. The sky was overcast,
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yet the day by no means gloomy, for a soft, diffused light oozed
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through the clouds and turned all things warm and almost summary. But I saw
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the grounds now in their nakedness, because I understood hate means strife, and
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the two together weave the robe that terror wears. Having no so called religious
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beliefs myself, nor belonging to any set of dogmas called a creed, I
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could stand outside these feelings and observe. Yet they soaked into me sufficiently for
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me to grasp sympathetically what others with more cabined souls, I flattered myself might
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feel. That picture in the dining room, stalked everywhere, hid behind every
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tree, peered down upon me from the peaked ugliness of the bourgeois towers,
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and left the impress of its powerful hand upon every bed of flowers. You
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must not do this, You must not do that. When it passed me
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through the air. You must not leave these narrow paths, said the rigid
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iron railings of black You shall not walk here, was written on the lawns.
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Keep to the steps, don't pick the flowers. Make no noise of
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laughter. Singing, dancing was placarded all over the rose garden, and trespassers
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will be not prosecuted, but destroyed. Hung from the crest of monkey tree
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and holly. Guarding the ends of each artificial terrace, stood gaunt, implacable
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policemen, warders, jailer's. Come with us, they chanted, or be
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damned eternally. I remember feeling quite pleased with myself that I had discovered this
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obvious explanation of the prison, Feeling the place breathed out that the posthumous influence
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of heavy old Samuel Franklin might be an inadequate solution did not occur to me
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By getting the place straight again. His widow, of course, meant forgetting
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the glamor of fear and foreboding his depressing creed had temporarily forced upon her,
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and Frances, delicately minded being did not speak of it because it was the
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influence of the man her friend had loved. I felt lighter, A load
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was lifted from me to trace the unfamiliar to the familiar. Came back a
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sentence I had read somewhere is to understand. It was a relief I could
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talk with Francis now, even with my hostess, no danger of treading clumsily,
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For the key was in my hands. I might even help to dissipate
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the shadow to get it straight again. It seemed perhaps our long invitation was
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explained. I went into the house, laughing at myself a little. Perhaps,
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after all, the artist's outlook, with no hard and fast dogmas,
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is as narrow as the others. How small humanity is? And why is
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there no possible and true combination of all outlooks. The feeling of unsettling was
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very strong in me just then, in spite of my big discovery, which
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was to clear everything up. And at that moment I ran into Frances on
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the stairs with a portfolio of sketches under her arm. It came across me
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then, abruptly, that although she had worked a great deal since we came,
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she had shown me nothing. It struck me suddenly as odd unnatural.
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The way she tried to pass me now confirmed my new born suspicion that well,
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that her results were hardly what they ought to be. Stand and deliver,
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I laughed, stepping in front of her. I've seen nothing you've done
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since you've been here, and as a rule, you show me all your
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things. I believe they are atrocious and degrading. Then my laughter froze.
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She made a sly gesture to slip past me, and I almost decided to
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let her go, for the expression that flashed across her face shocked me.
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She looked uncomfortable and ashamed. The color came and went a moment in her
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cheeks, making me think of a child detected in some secret naughtiness. It
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was almost fear. It's because they're not finished, then, I said,
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dropping the tone of banter, Or because they're too good for me to understand.
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For my criticism of painting, she told me was crude and ignorant sometimes.
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But you'll let me see them later, won't you. Francis, however,
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did not take the way of escape, I offered. She changed her
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mind. She drew the portfolio from beneath her arm. Instead, you can
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see them if you really want to, Bill, she said, quietly,
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and her tone reminded me of a nurse who says to a boy just grown
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out of childhood, you are old enough now to look upon horror and ugliness.
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Only I don't advise it. I do want to, I said,
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and made to go downstairs with her. But instead she said, in the
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same low voice as before, come to my room. We shall be undisturbed
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there. So I guess that she had been on her way to show the
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paintings to our hostess, but did not care for us all three to see
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them together. My mind worked furiously. Mabel asked me to do them,
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she explained, in a tone of submissive horror, once the door was shut.
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In fact, she begged it of me. You know how persistent she
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is in her quiet way. I had to. She flushed and opened the
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portfolio on the little table by the window, standing behind me. As I
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turned the sketches over, sketches of the grounds and trees and garden. In
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the first moment of inspection, however, I did not taken clearly why my
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sister's sense of modesty had been offended. For my attention flashed a second elsewhere
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another bit of the puzzle had dropped into place, defining still further the nature
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of what I call the shadow. Missus Franklin, I now remembered, had
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suggested to me in the library that I might perhaps write something about the place,
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and I had taken it for one of her banal sentences and paid no
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further attention. I realized now that it was said in earnest. She wanted
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our interpretations as expressed in our respective talents painting and writing. Her invitation was
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explained. She left us to ourselves on purpose, I should like to tear
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them up. Frances was whispering behind me with a shudder. Only I promised.
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She hesitated a moment, promised not to, I asked, with a
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queer feeling of distress, my eyes glued to the papers. Promised always to
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show them to her first. She finished so low I barely caught it.
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I have no intuitive, immediate grasp of the value of paintings. Results come
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to me slowly, and though every one believes his own judgment to be good,
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I dare not claim that mine is worth more than that of any other
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layman. Frances has too often convicted me of gross ignorance and error. I
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can only say that I examined these sketches with a feeling of amazement, that
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contained revulsion, if not actually horror and disgust. They were outrageous. I
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felt hot for my sister, and it was a relief to know she had
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moved across the room on some pretense or other and did not examine them with
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me. Her talent, of course, is mediocre, Yet she has her
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moments of inspiration, moments, that is to say, when a view of
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beauty, not normally her own, flames divinely through her. In these interpretations
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struck me forcibly as being thus inspired, not her own. They were uncommonly
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well done. They were also atrocious. The meaning in them, however,
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was never more than hinted. There the unholy skill and power came in,
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they suggested so abominably, leaving most to the imagination. To find such significance
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in a bourgeois villa garden, and to interpret it with such delicate yet legible
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certainty, was a kind of symbolism that was sinister, even diabolical. The
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delicacy was her own, but the point of views in others, and the
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word that rose in my mind was not the gross description of impure, but
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the more fundamental qualification un pure. In silence, I turned the sketches over
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one by one as a boy hurries through the pages of an evil book lest
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he be caught. What does Mabel do with them? I asked, presently,
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in a low tone, as I neared the end. Does she keep
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them? She makes notes about them in a book, and then destroys them.
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Was the reply from the end of the room. I heard a sigh
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of relief. I'm glad you've seen them, Bill. I wanted you to,
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but was afraid to show them. You understand, I understand, was
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my reply, though it was not a question intended to be answered. All
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I understood really was that Mabel's mind was as sweet and pure as my sister's,
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and that she had some good reason for what she did. She destroyed
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the sketches, but first made notes. It was an interpretation of the place
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she sought brother like. I felt resentment, though, that Frances should waste
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her time and talent when she might be doing work that she could sell Naturally,
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I felt other things as well. Mabel pays me five guineas for each
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one I heard, absolutely insists. I stared at her stupidly a moment,
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bereft of speech or wit. I must either accept or go away. She
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went on, calmly, but a little white. I've tried everything. There
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was a scene the third day I was here, when I showed her my
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first result. I wanted to write you, but hesitated. It's unintentional,
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then on your part, forgive my asking it, Francis, dear, I
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blundered, hardly knowing what to think or say. Between the lines of her
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letter came back to me. I mean, you make the sketches in your
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ordinary way, and the result comes out of itself, so to speak.
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She nodded, throwing her hands out like a Frenchman. We needn't keep the
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money for ourselves. Bill. We can give it away, but I must
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either accept or leave, and she repeated the shrugging gesture. She sat down
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on the chair, facing me, staring helplessly at the carpet. You say
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there was a scene. I went on presently, she insisted. She begged
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me to continue. My sister replied, very quietly. She thinks, that
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is, she has an idea or a theory, that there's something about the
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place, something she can't get at quite. Francis stammered badly. She knew
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I did not encourage her wild theories. Something she feels. Yes, I
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helped her more than curious. Oh you know what I mean, Bill,
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She said desperately that the place is saturated with some influence that she is herself
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too positive or too stupid to interpret. She's trying to make herself negative and
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receptive, as she calls it, but can't, of course succeed. Haven't
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you noticed how dull and impersonal, insipid she seems as though she has no
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personality. She thinks impressions will come to her that way, but they don't
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naturally, so she's trying me us what she calls the sensitive and impressionable artistic
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temperament. She says that until she is sure exactly what this influence is,
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she can't fight it, turn it out, get the house straight, as
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she phrases it. Remembering my own singular impressions, I felt more lenient than
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I might have otherwise done. I tried to keep impatience out of my voice.
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And this influence, what whose is it? We use the pronoun that
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followed in the same breath, For I answered my own question at the same
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moment as she did his. Our heads nodded involuntarily towards the door, the
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dining room being directly underneath, and my heart sank my curiosity away. On
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the instant, I felt bored. A commonplace haunted house was the last thing
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in the world to amuse or interest me. The mere thought, exasperated with
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its suggestions of imagination overwrought nerves, hysteria, and the rest, mingled with
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my other feelings with certainly disappointment to see a figure or feel a presence and
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report from day to day strange incidents to each other would be a form of
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weariness I could never tolerate. But really, Francis, I said firmly,
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after a moment's pause, it's too far fetched. This explanation a curse,
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you know, belongs to the ghost stories of early Victorian days. And only
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my positive conviction that there was something, after all worth discovering, and that
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it most certainly was not this prevented my suggesting that we terminate our visit forthwith,
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or as soon as we decently could. This is not a haunted house,
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whatever it is, I concluded, somewhat vehemently, bringing my hand down
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a her odious portfolio. My sister's reply revived my curiosity sharply. I was
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waiting for you to say that Mabel says exactly the same he is in it.
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But it's something more than that alone, something far bigger and more complicated.
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Her sentence seemed to indicate the sketches, and though I caught the inference,
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I did not take it up, having no desire to discuss them with
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her just then. Indeed, if ever I merely stared at her and listened
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questions I felt sure would be of little use. It was better she should
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say her thought in her own way. He is one influence, the most
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recent. She went on, slowly and always very calmly. But there are
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others, deeper layers, as it were, underneath. If his were the
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only one, something would happen. But nothing ever does happen. The others
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hinder and prevent, as though each were struggling to predominate. I had felt
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it already myself. The idea was rather horrible, I shivered. That's what
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is so ugly about it, that nothing ever happens, she said. There
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is this endless anticipation, always on the dry edge of a result that never
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materializes. It is torture. Mabel is at her wits end, you see.
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And when she begged me what I felt about my sketches, I mean,
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she stammered, badly. As before I stopped her, I had judged
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too hastily that queer symbolism in her paintings pagan and yet not innocent. Was
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I understood the result of mixture. I did not pretend to understand, but
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at least I could be patient. I consequently held my peace. We did
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talk on a little longer, but it was more general talk that avoided successfully
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our hostess, the paintings, wild theories, and him, until at length
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the emotion Frances had hitherto so successfully kept under burst vehemently forth again. It
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had hidden between her calm sentences, as it had hidden between the lines of
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her letter. It swept now from head to foot, packed tight in the
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thing. She then said, then, Bill, if it is not an
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ordinary haunted house, she asked, what is it? The words were commonplace
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enough. The emotion was in the tone of her voice that trembled, in
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the gesture she made, leaning forward and clasping both hands upon her knees,
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and in the slight blanching of her cheeks, as her brave eyes asked the
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question and searched my own with anxiety that bordered upon panic. In that moment
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she put herself under my protection I winced, and why, she added,
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lowering her voice to a still and furtive whisper. Does nothing ever happen?
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If only this, with great emphasis, something would happen, break this awful
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tension, bring relief. It's the waiting I cannot stand. And she shivered
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all over as she said it, a touch of wildness in her eyes.
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I would have given much to have made a true and satisfactory answer. My
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mind searched frantically for a moment, but in vain there lay no sufficient answer.
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In me. I felt what she felt, though with differences, no
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conclusive explanation lay within reach. Nothing happened. Eager as I was to shoot
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the entire business into the rubbish heap, where ignorance and superstition discharge their poisonous
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weeds, I could not honestly accomplish this. To treat Frances as a child
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and merely explain away would be to strain her confidence in my protection, so
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affectionately claimed. It would further be dishonest to myself weep besides, to deny
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that I had also felt a strain and tension even as she did. While
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my mind continued searching, I returned her stare in silence and Francis, then,
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with more honesty and insight than my own, gave suddenly the answer herself,
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an answer whose truth and adequacy, so far as they went, I
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could not readily gainsay, I think, Bill, because it is too big
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to happen here, to happen anywhere, indeed all at once, and too
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awful to have tossed the sentence asie as nonsense, argued it away, proved
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that it was really meaningless, would have been easy at any other time or
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in any other place, And had the past week brought me none of the
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vivid impressions it had brought me, this is doubtless what I should have done.
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My narrowness again was proved we understand in others only what we have in
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ourselves. But her explanation, in a measure I knew was true. It
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hinted at the strife and struggle that my notion of a shadow had seemed to
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cover thinly. Perhaps, I murmured lamely, waiting in vain for her to
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say more. But you said just now that you felt the thing was in
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layers as it were, Do you mean each one, each influence fighting for
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the upper hand. I used her phraseology to conceal my own poverty terminology,
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after all, was nothing provided we could reach the idea itself. Her eyes
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said yes, she had her clear conception, arrived at independently, as was
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her way, and unlike her sex, she kept it clear, unsmothered by
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too many words. One set of influence gets at me, another gets at
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you. It's according to our temperaments. I think she glanced significantly at the
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vile portfolio. Sometimes they are mixed, and therefore faults. There has always
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been in me more than in you, the pagan thing, perhaps, though
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never thank God like that. The frank confession, of course, invited my
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own, as it was meant to do. Yet it was difficult to find
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the words what I have felt in this place, Francis, I honestly can
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hardly tell you, because my impressions have not arranged themselves in any definite form.
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I can describe the strife, the agony of vainly sought escape, and
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the unrest, a sort of prison atmosphere. This I have felt at different
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times and with varying degrees of strength, But I find as yet no final
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label to attach. I couldn't say pagan, Christian or anything like that.
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I mean as you do, as with the blind and deaf, you may
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have an intensification of certain senses denied to me, or even another sense altogether
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in embryo. Perhaps she stopped me, anxious to keep to thet you feel
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it as Mabel does, she feels the whole thing complete. That is also
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possible, I said, very slowly. I was thinking behind my words.
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Her odd remark that it was big and awful came back upon me as true.
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A vast sensation of distress and discomfort swept me. Suddenly. Pity was
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in it, and a fierce contempt, a savage, bitter anger as well.
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Fury against some sham authority was part of it. Francis, I said,
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caught unawares and dropping all pretense, What in the world can it be?
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I looked hard at her for some minutes. Neither of us spoke.
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Have you felt no desire to interpret it? She asked? Presently. Mabel
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did suggest my writing something about the house was my reply, but I felt
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nothing imperative. That sort of writing is not my line, you know,
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my only feet, I added, noticing that she waited for more. Is
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the impulse to explain, discover get it out of me? Somehow? And
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so get rid of it, not by writing, though, as yet and
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again I repeated my former question, what in the world do you think it
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is? My voice had become involuntarily hushed. There was awe in it.
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Her answer, given with slow emphasis, brought back all my reserve. The
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phraseology provoked me. Rather, whatever it is, Bill, it is not
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of God. I got up to go downstairs. I believe, I shrugged
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my shoulders. Would you like to leave, Frances? Shall we go back
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to town? I suggested this at the door, and, hearing no immediate
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reply, I turned back to look. Frances was sitting with her head bowed
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over and buried in her hands. The attitude horribly suggested tears. No woman,
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I realized, can keep back the pressure of strong emotion as long as
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Frances had done, without ending in a fluid collapse. I waited a moment,
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uneasily, longing to comfort, yet afraid to act, and in this
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way discovered the existence of the appalling emotion in myself, hitherto but half guessed.
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At all costs a scene must be prevented. It would involve such exaggeration
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and overstatement brutally, such as the weakness of the ordinary man. I turned
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the handle to go out, but my sister then raised her head. The
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sunlight caught her face, framed untidily in its auburn hair, and I saw
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her wonderful expression with a start. Pity, tenderness, and sympathy shone in
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it like a flame. It was undeniable. There shone through all her features
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the imperishable love and yearning to sacrifice self for others, which I have seen
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in only one type of human being. It was the great Mother. Look,
28:56
we must stay by Mabel and help her get straight, she whispered,
29:02
making the decision for us. Both I murmured agreement, abashed and half ashamed.
29:07
I stole softly from the room and went out into the grounds. And
29:11
the first thing clearly realized when alone, was this that the long scene between
29:15
us was without definite result. The exchange of confidence was really nothing but hints
29:22
and vague suggestion. We had decided to stay, but it was a negative
29:26
decision not to leave, rather than a positive action. All of our words
29:30
and questions are guesses, inferences, explanations, our most subtle allusions and insinuations,
29:37
even the odious paintings themselves, were without definite result. Nothing had happened
29:45
Chapter six, and instinctively, once alone, I made for the places where
29:51
she had painted her extraordinary pictures. I tried to see what she had seen.
29:56
Perhaps, now that she had opened my mind to another view, I
30:00
should be sensitive to some similar interpretation, and possibly by way of literary expression,
30:06
if I were to write about the place, I asked myself, how
30:10
should I treat it? I deliberately invited an interpretation in the way that came
30:14
easiest to me writing. But in this case there came no such revelation.
30:19
Looking closely at the trees and flowers, the bits of lawn and terrace,
30:23
the rose garden, and corner of the house where the flaming creeper hung so
30:29
thickly, I discovered nothing of the odious, unpure thing her color and grouping
30:33
had unconsciously revealed. At first, That is, I discovered nothing. The
30:38
reality stood there, commonplace and ugly, side by side with her distorted version
30:44
of it that lay in my mind. It seemed incredible. I tried to
30:48
force it, but in vain my imagination plowed less deeply than hers. Or
30:52
to another pattern grew different seed where I saw the gross soul of an overgrown
30:57
suburban garden and fired by the spirit of a vulgar, rich revivalist who loved
31:03
to preach damnation. She saw this rush of pagan liberty and joy, the
31:07
strange license of primitive flesh, which tainted by the other, produced the adulterated,
31:12
vile result. Certain things, however, gradually then became apparent, forcing
31:18
themselves upon me willy nilly. They came slowly but overwhelmingly. Not that facts
31:23
had changed or natural details altered in the grounds this was impossible, but that
31:29
I noticed for the first time various aspects I had not noticed before. Trivial
31:33
enough yet for me just then significant saw I remembered from previous days. Others
31:40
I saw now as I wandered to and fro uneasy, uncomfortable. Almost it
31:44
seemed watched by someone who took note of my impressions. The details were so
31:48
foolish, the total result so formidable. I was half aware that others tried
31:53
hard to make me see it was deliberate. My sister's phrase, one layer
31:59
got at me, another gets at you, flashed undesired upon me. For
32:04
I saw, as with the eyes of a child, what I can only
32:07
call a goblin garden, house, grounds, trees, and flowers belonged to
32:13
a goblin world that children enter through the pages of their fairy tales, And
32:19
what made me first aware of it was the whisper of the wind behind me,
32:22
so that I turned with a sudden start, feeling that something had moved
32:25
closer. An old ash tree, ugly and ungainly, had been artificially trained
32:31
to form an arbor at one end of the terrace that was a tennis lawn,
32:37
and the leaves of it now went rustling together, swishing as they rose
32:40
and fell. I looked at the ash tree and felt as though I had
32:45
passed that moment between doors into this goblin garden that crouched behind the real one.
32:50
Below. At a deeper layer, perhaps lay hidden the one my sister
32:53
had entered to deal with my own. However, I call it goblin because
32:59
an odd asspe of the quaint in it yet never quite achieved the picturesque grotesque
33:05
probably is the truer word for everywhere I noticed, and for the first time
33:08
this slight alteration of the natural, due either to the exaggeration of some detail
33:14
or to its suppression. Generally, I think, to the latter life everywhere
33:17
appeared to me as blocked from the full delivery of its sweet and lovely message.
33:22
Some counter influence stopped it, suppression or sent it awry. Exaggeration.
33:30
The house itself, mere expression of course of a narrow, limited mind,
33:35
was sheer ugliness. It required no further explanation. With the grounds and garden
33:39
so far as shape and general plan were concerned, this was also true.
33:45
But that leaves and flowers and other natural details should share the same deficiency perplexed
33:50
my logical soul and even dismayed it. I stood and stared, then moved
33:55
about, and stood and stared again. Everywhere was this mockery of a sinister
34:01
unfinished aspect. I sought in vain to recover my normal point of view.
34:07
My mind had found this goblin garden and wandered to and fro in it,
34:10
unable to escape. The change was in myself, of course, and so
34:15
trivial were the details which illustrated it that they sounded absurd. Thus, mentioned
34:21
one by one for me, they proved It is all I can affirm.
34:25
The goblin touch lay plainly everywhere, in the forms of the trees planted at
34:30
neat intervals along the lawns, and this twisted ash that rustled just behind me,
34:36
in the shadow of the gloomy Wellingtonias, whose sweeping skirts obscured the grass,
34:40
But especially I noticed in the tops and crests of them, For here
34:45
the delicate, graceful curves of last year's growth seemed to shrink back into themselves.
34:51
None of them pointed upwards. Their life had failed and turned aside,
34:54
just when it should have become triumphant. The character of a tree reveals itself
35:00
chiefly at the extremities, and it was precisely here that they all drooped and
35:04
achieved this hint of goblin distortion. In the growth, that is, of
35:07
the last few years, What ought to have been fairy, joyful, natural,
35:14
was instead uncomely to the verge of the grotesque. Spontaneous expression was arrested.
35:20
My mind perceived a goblin garden, and was caught in it. The
35:23
place grimaced at me with the flowers. It was similar, though far more
35:28
difficult to detect in detail for description. I saw the smaller vegetable growth as
35:34
impish, half malicious. Even the terraces sloped ill, as though their ends
35:39
had sagged since they had been so lavishly constructed. Their varying angles gave a
35:45
queerly bewildering aspect to their sequence that was unpleasant to the eye. One might
35:51
wander among their deceptive lengths and get lost, lost among open terraces. With
35:57
the house quite close at hand, only seemed the entire garden unable to give
36:01
repose, restlessness in it everywhere, almost strife and discord. Certainly, moreover,
36:09
the garden grew into the house, the house into the garden, and
36:13
in both was this idea of resistance to the natural, the spirit that says
36:16
no to joy. All over it I was aware of the effort to achieve
36:22
another end, the struggle to burst forth and escape into free, spontaneous expression
36:27
that should be happy and natural. Yet the effort, forever frustrated by the
36:30
weight of this dark shadow that rendered it abortive. Life crawled aside into a
36:36
channel that was a cul de sac, then turned horribly upon itself. Instead
36:40
of blossom and fruit, there were weeds. This approach of life I was
36:44
conscious of then dismal failure. There was no fulfillment, nothing happened. And
36:52
so through this singular mood I came a little nearer to understand the unpure thing
36:57
that had stammered out into expression through my sister's talent for the unpure is merely
37:04
negative. It has no existence. It is but the cramped expression of what
37:08
is true, stammering its way brokenly over false boundaries that seek to limit and
37:14
confine great full expression of anything is pure. Whereas here was only the incomplete,
37:22
unfinished, and therefore ugly, there is strife and pain and desire to
37:27
escape. I found myself shrinking from house and grounds, as one shrinks from
37:31
the touch of the mentally arrested, those in whom life has turned AWRYE there
37:37
is almost mutilation in it. Past items too, now flocked to confirm this
37:42
feeling that I walked liberty, captured and half maimed in a monstrous garden.
37:47
I remember days of rain that refreshed the countryside, but left these grounds cracked
37:52
with the summer heat, unsatisfied and thirsty. And how big The winds that
37:58
cleaned the woods and fields everywhere crawled here with difficulty through the dense foliage that
38:02
protected the towers from the north and west and east. They were ineffective,
38:07
sluggish currents. There was no real wind. Nothing happened. I began to
38:12
realize, far more clearly than in my sister's fanciful explanation about layers that here
38:17
were many contrary influences of work, mutually destructive of one another. House and
38:24
grounds were not haunted merely they were the arena of past thinking and feeling,
38:30
perhaps of terrible impure beliefs, each striving to suppress the others, Yet no
38:36
one of them achieving supremacy, because no one of them was strong enough,
38:39
no one of them was true. Each moreover, tried to win me over,
38:45
though only one was able to reach my mind at all, for some
38:47
obscure reason, possibly because my temperament had a natural bias towards the grotesque.
38:53
It was the goblin layer with me, It was the line of least resistance
39:00
in my own thoughts. This goblin garden revealed, of course, merely my
39:04
personal interpretation. I felt now objectively what long ago my mind had felt subjectively.
39:09
My work, essential sign of spontaneous life with me had stopped dead.
39:15
Production had become impossible. I stood now considerably closer to the cause of this
39:20
sterility. The cause, rather turned bolder, had stepped insolently nearer. Nothing
39:27
happened anywhere. House, garden, mind alike were barren, abortive, torn
39:31
by the strife of frustrate, impulse, ugly, hateful, sinful. Yet
39:37
behind it all was still the desire of life, desire to escape, accomplish
39:43
hope, an intolerable hope. I became startlingly aware, crowned torture, and
39:50
realizing this, though in some part of me where reason lost her hold,
39:53
There rose upon me then another, and a darker thing that caught me by
39:58
the throat and made me shrink with a sense of revulsion that touched actual loathing.
40:04
I knew instantly whence it came this wave of abhorrence and disgust. For
40:08
even while I saw red and felt revolt rise in me, it seemed that
40:13
I grew partially aware of the layer next below the goblin. I perceived the
40:16
existence of this deeper stratum. One opened the way for the other. As
40:22
it were, there were so many, yet all interrelated. To admit one
40:27
was to clear the way for all. If I lingered, I should be
40:30
caught. Horribly They struggled with such violence for supremacy among themselves, however,
40:36
that this latest uprising was instantly smothered and crushed back, though not before a
40:40
glimpse had been revealed to me, and the redness in my thoughts transferred itself
40:45
to color my surroundings thickly and appallingly with blood. This lurid aspect drenched the
40:52
garden, smeared the terraces, lent to the very soil, a tinge as
40:57
of sacrificial rites that choked the breadth me. While it seemed to fix me
41:01
to the earth, my feet so long to leave. It was so revolting
41:05
that at the same time I felt a dreadful curiosity as of fascination. I
41:09
wished to stay between these contrary impulses. I think I actually reeled a moment,
41:15
transfixed by a fascination of the awful through the lighter, goblin veil.
41:21
I felt myself sinking down, down, down, into this turgid layer that
41:27
was so much more violent and so much more ancient. The upper layer indeed
41:30
seemed fairy by comparison with this terror born of the lust for blood, thick
41:37
with the anguish of human sacrificial victims. Upper then I was already sinking.
41:44
My feet were caught. I was actually in it. What atavistic strain hidden
41:49
deep within me had been touched into vile response. Giving this flash of intuitive
41:53
comprehension, I cannot say. The coatings laid on by civilization are probably thin
41:59
enough in all of us. I made a supreme effort. The sun and
42:05
wind came back, I could almost swear. I opened my eyes. Something
42:09
very atrocious surged back into the depths, carrying with it a thought of tangled
42:15
woods, of big stones standing in a circle, motionless white figures, the
42:21
one form bound with ropes, and the ghastly gleam of the knife like smoke
42:27
upon a battlefield. It rolled away. I was standing on the gravel path
42:31
below the second terrace when the familiar Goblin garden danced back again, doubly grotesque,
42:37
now doubly mocking, yet by way of contrast, almost welcome. My
42:44
glimpse into the depths was momentary, it seems, and had passed utterly away.
42:50
The common world rushed back with a sense of glad relief, yet ominous.
42:53
Now forever I felt for the knowledge of what its past had built upon
42:59
and street, in theater, in the festivities of friends and music room,
43:04
or playing field, even indeed in church. How could the memory of what
43:08
I had seen and felt not leave its hideous trace. The very structure of
43:13
my thought, it seemed to me, was stained. What has been thought
43:16
by others can never be obliterated. Until with a start, my reverie broke
43:22
and fled, scattered by a violent sound that I recognized for the first time
43:24
in my life as wholly desirable. The returning motor meant that my hostess was
43:30
back. Yet so urgent had been my temporary obsession, that my presentation of
43:34
her was well not as I knew her. Now floating along with a face
43:39
of anguished torture, I saw Mabel, a mere effigy, captured by others,
43:44
thinking pass down into those depths of fire and blood that only just had
43:47
closed beneath my feet. She dipped away, she vanished, Her fading eyes
43:52
turned to the last towards some savior who had failed her, and that strange,
43:58
intolerable hope was in her face. The mystery of the place was pretty
44:01
thick about me. Just then it was the fall of dusk, and the
44:06
ghost of slanting sunshine was as unreal as though badly painted, the garden stood
44:10
at attention all about me. I cannot explain it, but I can tell
44:14
it, I think exactly as it happened, for it remains vivid in me
44:17
forever, that for the first time. Something almost happened myself, apparently the
44:23
combining link through which it pressed towards delivery. I had already turned towards the
44:29
house in my mind or pictures not actual thoughts, of the motor tea on
44:34
the veranda, my sister Mabel, when there came behind me, this tumultuous,
44:37
awful rush as I left the garden, the ugliness, the pain,
44:42
the striving to escape, the whole negative and suppressed agony that was the place
44:47
focused that second into a concentrated effort to produce a result. It was a
44:52
blinding tempest of long, frustrate desire that heaved at me, surging appallingly behind
44:58
me like an anguished mob. I was in the act of crossing the frontier
45:01
into my normal self again when it came, catching fearfully at my skirts.
45:07
I might use an entire dictionary of descriptive adjectives, yet come no nearer to
45:10
it than this, the conception of a huge assemblage determined to escape with me,
45:15
or to snatch me back among themselves. My legs trembled for an instant,
45:21
and I caught my breath, then turned and ran as fast as possible
45:24
up the ugly terraces at the same instant, as though the clinging of an
45:29
iron gate cut short the unfinished phrase, I thought, the beginning of an
45:34
awful thing, the damned. Like this, it rushed after me from that
45:38
goblin garden that had sought to keep me the damned. For there was sound
45:45
in it, I know, fool well. It was subjective, not actually
45:49
heard at all. Yet somehow sound was in it, a great volume,
45:53
roaring and booming thunderously far away and below me. The sentence dipped back into
45:59
the depths that gave it birth, unfinished, its completion was prevented. As
46:04
usual, nothing happened, but it drove behind me like a hurricane as I
46:07
ran towards the house. And the sound of it I can only liken to
46:10
those terrible undertones you may hear standing beside Niagara. They lie behind the mere
46:16
crash of the falling flood. Within it, somehow not audible to all felt,
46:22
rather than definitely heard. It seemed to echo back from the surface of
46:28
those sacking terraces as I flew across their sloping ends, For it was somehow
46:31
underneath them. It was in the rustle of the wind that stirred the skirts
46:36
of the drooping Wellingtonia's the bed of formal flowers, passed it on to the
46:39
creepers, red as blood, that crept over the unsightly building into the structure
46:45
of the vulgar and forbidding house. It sank away the towers took it home.
46:51
The uncomely doors and windows seemed almost like mouths that had uttered the words
46:55
themselves, and on the upper floors, at that very moment I saw two
47:00
maids in the act of closing them again and on the verandah. As I
47:04
arrived, breathless and shaken in my soul, Frances and Mabel, standing by
47:08
the tea table, looked up to greet me, and the faces of both
47:13
were clearly legible the signs of shock they watched me coming, yet so full
47:19
of their own distress that they hardly noticed the state in which I came.
47:22
In the face of my hostess, however, I read another, and a
47:25
bigger thing than in the face of Frances. Mabel knew she had experienced what
47:31
I had experienced. She had heard that awful sentence I had heard, but
47:37
heard it not for the first time. Heard it moreover, I verily believe
47:40
complete and to its dreadful end. Bill, Did you hear that curious noise
47:45
just now? Frances asked it sharply, before I could say a word.
47:50
Her manner was confused. She looked straight at me, and there was a
47:52
tremmer in her voice. She could not hide. There's wind about, I
47:58
said, wind in the trees and sweeping around the walls. It's risen.
48:00
Rather suddenly my voice faltered. Rather, No, it wasn't the wind,
48:07
she insisted, with a significance, meant for me alone, but badly hidden.
48:12
It was more like distant thunder. We thought, how you ran,
48:15
too, She added, what a pace you came across the terraces. I
48:19
knew instantly from the way she said it that they had both already heard the
48:22
sound before and were anxious to know if I had heard it, and how
48:25
my interpretation was what they sought. It was a curiously deep sound. I
48:30
admit it may have been big guns at sea, I suggested, forts are
48:37
cruisers practicing. The coast isn't so very far, and with the wind in
48:42
the right direction. The expression on Mabel's face stopped me dead. Like huge
48:46
doors closing, she said softly in her colorless voice. Enormous metal doors shutting
48:53
against a mass of people clamoring to get out the gravity. The note of
48:59
hopelessness and tones was shocking. Frances had gone into the house the instant Mabel
49:04
began to speak. I'm cold, she had said, I think I'll get
49:08
a shawl. Mabel and I were alone. I believe it was the first
49:13
time we had been really alone since I arrived. She looked up from the
49:16
teacups, fixing her pallid eyes on mine. She had made a question of
49:21
the sentence. You hear it like that, I asked, innocently. I
49:27
purposely used the present tense. She changed her stare from one eye to the
49:31
other. It was absolutely expressionless. My sister's step sounded on the floor of
49:37
the room behind us. If only Mabel began then stopped, and my own
49:42
feelings, leaping out instinctively completed the sentence I felt was in her mind.
49:46
Something would happen. She instantly corrected me. I had caught her thought,
49:52
yet somehow phrased it wrongly. We could escape. She lowered her tone a
49:59
little, saying it hurried the wee amazed and horrified me. But something in
50:02
her voice and manner struck me utterly dumb. There was ice and terror in
50:07
it. It was a dying woman speaking a lost and hopeless soul. In
50:12
that atrocious moment, I hardly noticed what was said exactly, but I remember
50:16
that my sister returned with a great shawl about her shoulders, and that Mabel
50:21
said, in her ordinary voice again, it is chilly. Yes, let's
50:23
have tea inside, and that two mates, one of them the grenadier,
50:29
speedily carried the loaded trays into the morning room and put a match to the
50:31
logs in the great open fireplace. It was, after all foolish to risk
50:37
the sharp evening air, for dusk was falling steadily, and even the sunshine
50:40
of the day just fading, could not turn autumn into summer. I was
50:45
the last one to come in. Just as I left the verandah, a
50:49
large blackbird swooped down in front of me, past the pillars. It dropped
50:52
from overhead, swerved abruptly to one side as it caught sight of me,
50:57
and flapped heavily towards the shrubberies on the left of them, the terraces,
51:00
where it disappeared into the gloom. It flew very low, very close,
51:06
and it startled me, I think, because in some way it seemed like
51:08
my shadow materialized, as though the dark horror that was rising everywhere from house
51:14
and garden, then settling back so thickly yet so imperceptibly upon us. All
51:19
were incarnated in that whirring creature that passed between the daylight and the coming night.
51:25
I stood a moment wondering if it would appear again, before I followed
51:30
the others indoors, And as I was in the act of closing the windows
51:32
after me, I caught a glimpse of a figure on the lawn. It
51:37
was some distance away, on the other side of the shrubberies, in fact,
51:39
where the bird had vanished, But in spite of the twilight that half
51:43
magnified, half obscured it, the identity was unmistakable. I knew the housekeeper's
51:49
stiff walk too well to be deceived. Missus marsh taking the air, I
51:53
said to myself, I felt the necessity of saying it, and I wondered
51:57
why she was doing so at this particular hour. If I had other thoughts,
52:00
they were so vague and so quickly and utterly suppressed that I cannot recall
52:05
them sufficiently to relate them here. And once indoors, it was to be
52:09
expected that there would come explanation, discussion, conversation at any rate regarding the
52:15
singular noise and its cause. Some uttered evidence of the mood that had been
52:20
strong enough to drive us all inside, Yet there was none. Each of
52:24
us purposely and with various skill, ignored it. We talked little, and
52:30
when we did, it was of anything in the world but that personally.
52:32
I experienced a touch of that same bewilderment which had come over me during my
52:37
first talk with Francis on the evening of my arrival. For I recalled now
52:42
the acute tension and the hope, yet dread that one or other of us
52:45
must sooner or later introduce the subject. It did not happen, However,
52:52
no reference was made to it even remotely. It was the presence of Mabel.
52:55
I felt positive that prohibited as soon might we have discussed death in the
53:00
bedroom of a dying woman. The only scrap of conversation I remember, where
53:06
all was ordinary and commonplace, was when Mabel spoke casually to the grenadier,
53:09
asking why missus Marsh had omitted to do something or other? What it was
53:15
I forget, and that the maid replied respectfully that Missus Marsh was very sorry,
53:20
but her and still painder. I inquired, though so casually that I
53:23
scarcely know what prompted the words, whether she had injured herself severely. In
53:28
the reply, she upset the lamp and burnt herself, was said in a
53:31
tone that made me feel my curiosity was indiscreet. But she always has an
53:36
excuse for not doing things she ought to do. The little bit of conversation
53:40
remained with me, and I remember particularly the quick way Francis interrupted and turned
53:45
the talk upon the delinquencies of servants in general, telling incidents of her own
53:51
at our flat, with a volubility that perhaps seemed forced, and that certainly
53:55
did not encourage general talk as it may have been intended to do. We
54:00
lapsed into silence immediately she finished. But for all our care and all our
54:05
calculated silence, each knew that something had in these last moments come very close.
54:10
It had brushed us, and passing it had retired. And I am
54:15
inclined to think now that the large dark thing I saw writing the dusk,
54:19
probably bird of prey, was in some sense a symbol of it in my
54:22
mind, that actually there had been no bird at all. I mean,
54:27
but that my mood of apprehension and dismay had formed the vivid picture in my
54:30
thoughts. It had swept past us, it had retreated, but it was
54:36
now, at this moment in hiding very close, and it was watching us,
54:42
perhaps too. It was mere coincidence that I encountered missus marsh his housekeeper
54:46
several times that evening, in the short interval between tea and dinner, and
54:51
that on each occasion the sight of this gaunt, half saturnine woman fed my
54:54
prejudice against her. Once, on my way to the telephone, I ran
54:59
in to her, just where the passage is somewhat jammed by a square table
55:02
carrying the Chinese gong, a grandfather's clock, and a box of croquet mallets.
55:07
We both gave way, then both advanced, then again gave way simultaneously.
55:13
It seemed impossible to pass. We stepped with decision to the same side,
55:17
finally colliding in the middle, while saying those futile little things half apology,
55:22
half excuse that are inevitable at such times. In the end, she
55:25
stood upright against the wall for me to pass, taking her place against the
55:30
very door I wished to open. It was ludicrous, excuse me I was
55:35
just going in to telephone, I explained, and she sidled off, murmuring
55:40
apologies, but opening the door for me. While she did so, our
55:45
hands met a moment on the handle. There was a second's awkwardness. It
55:49
was so stupid. I remember her injury, and by way of something to
55:52
say, I inquired after it. She thanked me. It was entirely healed
55:55
now, but it might have been much worse. And there was something about
55:59
the mercy of the Lord that I didn't quite catch while telephoning. However,
56:04
a London call and my attention focused on it. I realized sharply that this
56:07
was the first time I had spoken with her, also that I had touched
56:12
her. It happened to be a Sunday, and the lines were clear.
56:15
I got my connection quickly, and the incident was forgotten while my thoughts went
56:20
up to London. On my way upstairs, then the woman came back into
56:22
my mind so that I recalled other things about her. How she seemed all
56:27
over the house in unlikely places often, how I had caught her sitting in
56:30
the hall alone that night, how she was forever coming and going with her
56:35
lugubrious bissage, and that untidy hair at the back that had made me laugh
56:38
three years ago, with the idea that it looked singed or burnt. And
56:44
how the impression of my first arrival at the Towers was that this woman somehow
56:47
kept alive, though its evidence was outwardly suppressed, the influence of her late
56:52
employer and of his somber teachings. Somewhere with her was associated the idea of
56:57
punishment, vindictiveness, revenge. I remembered again suddenly my odd notion that she
57:02
sought to keep her present mistress here a prisoner in this bleak and comfortless house,
57:07
and that really, in spite of her obsequious silence, she was intensely
57:12
opposed to the change of thought that had reclaimed Mabel to a happier view of
57:15
life. All this in a passing second flashed in review before me and I
57:20
discovered, or at any rate reconstructed the real Missus marsh She was decidedly in
57:25
the shadow. More she stood in the forefront of it, stealthily leading an
57:30
assault, as it were, against the Towers and its occupants. As though
57:34
consciously or unconsciously, she labored incessantly to this hateful end. I can only
57:39
judge that some state of nervousness in me permitted the series of insignificant thoughts to
57:44
assume this dramatic shape, and that what had gone before prepared the way and
57:49
led her up the head of so formidable a procession. I related exactly as
57:52
it came to me. My nerves were doubtless somewhat on edge by now,
57:57
Otherwise I should hardly have been a prey to the exaggeration at all. I
58:00
seemed open to so many strange impressions. Nothing else, perhaps can explain my
58:06
ridiculous conversation with her, When, for the third time that evening I came
58:08
suddenly upon the woman half way down the stairs, standing by an open window,
58:13
as if in the act of listening. She was dressed in black,
58:16
a black shawl over her square shoulders, and black gloves. On her big
58:20
broad hands, two black objects prayer books apparently she clasped, and on her
58:24
head she wore a bonnet with shaking beads of jet. At first I did
58:29
not know her as I came running down upon her from the landing. It
58:32
was only when she stood aside to let me pass that I saw her profile
58:36
against the tapestry and recognized missus Marsh, and to catch her on the front
58:39
stairs dressed like this struck me as incongruous, impertinent. I paused at my
58:45
dangerous descent. Through the opened window came the sound of bells, church bells,
58:51
a sound more depressing to me than superstition, and as nauseating. Though
58:55
the action was ill judged, I obeyed the sudden, prompting it a secret
59:00
desire to attack, perhaps, and spoke to her been to church, I
59:06
suppose, missus Marsh, I replied, or just going. Perhaps Her face
59:12
as she looked up a second to reply was like an iron doll that moved
59:15
its lips and turned its eyes, but made no other imitation of life at
59:19
all. Some of us still goes, sir, she said unctiously. It
59:24
was respectful enough, Yet the implied judgment of the rest of the world made
59:28
me almost angry. A deferential insolence lay behind the affected meekness. For those
59:34
who believe no doubt it is helpful, I smiled. True religion brings peace
59:38
and happiness. I'm sure joy missus marsh joy. I found keen satisfaction in
59:45
the emphasis. She looked at me like a knife. I cannot describe the
59:50
implacable thing that shone in her fixed stern eyes, nor the shadow of felt
59:53
darkness that stole across her face. She glittered. I felt hate in her.
1:00:00
She knew too, who was in the thoughts of us both at that
1:00:02
moment, she replied, softly, never forgetting her place for an instant.
1:00:08
There is joy, sir, in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, And
1:00:14
in church there goes a prayer to God for those who well for the others,
1:00:17
sir, who She cut short her sentence. Thus the gloom about her,
1:00:22
she said, it was like the gloom about a hearse a to whomb,
1:00:25
a darkness of great hopeless dungeons. My tongue ran on of itself with
1:00:30
a kind of bitter satisfaction. We must believe there are no others, missus
1:00:35
marsh. Salvation, you know, would be such a failure if there were
1:00:38
no merciful all foreseeing God could ever have devised such a fearful plan. Her
1:00:45
voice, interrupting me, seemed to rise out of the bowels of the earth.
1:00:49
They rejected this salvation when it was offered to them, sir, unearthed,
1:00:53
But you wouldn't have them tortured forever because of one mistaken ignorance, I
1:00:58
said, fixing her with my eye. Come now, would you, missus,
1:01:01
marsh No God worth worshiping could permit such cruelty. Think a moment what
1:01:07
it means. She stared at me, a curious expression in her stupid eyes.
1:01:12
It seemed to me as though the woman in her revolted, while yet
1:01:15
she dared not suffer her grim belief to trip. That is, she would
1:01:20
willingly have had it otherwise, but for a terror that prevented. We may
1:01:23
pray for them, sir, and we do. We may hope. She
1:01:28
dropped her eyes to the carpet. Good good, I put in, cheerfully,
1:01:32
sorry now that I had spoken at all. That's more hopeful at any
1:01:36
rate, isn't it. She murmured something about Abraham's bosom and the time of
1:01:39
salvation not being forever. As I tried to pass her. Then a half
1:01:45
gesture that she made stopped me. There was something more she wished to say,
1:01:49
To ask. She looked up furtively in her eyes. I saw the
1:01:52
woman peering out through fear. Perhaps, sir, she faltered as though lightning
1:01:58
must strike her dead. Would you think a drop of cold water given in
1:02:04
his name might moisten? But I stopped her, for the foolish talk had
1:02:07
lasted long enough. Of course, I exclaimed, of course, for God
1:02:13
is love, remember, and love means charity, tolerance, sympathy, and
1:02:16
sparing other's pain. And I hurried past her, determined to end the outrageous
1:02:21
conversation for which yet I knew myself entirely to blame. Behind me, she
1:02:24
stood stock still for several minutes, half bewildered, half alarmed, as I
1:02:30
suspected. I caught the fragment of another sentence, one word of it rather
1:02:35
punishment, but the rest escaped me. Her arrogance and condescending tolerance exasperated me,
1:02:42
while I was at the same time secretly pleased that I might have touched
1:02:45
some string of remorse or sympathy in her. After all, her belief was
1:02:50
iron she dared not let it go. Yet somewhere underneath there lurked the germ
1:02:54
of a wholesome revulsion. She would help them if she dared her question proved
1:03:00
it. Half ashamed of myself, I turned and crossed the hall quickly lest
1:03:06
I should be tempted to say more. And in me was a disagreeable sensation,
1:03:09
as though I had just left the incurable ward of some great hospital.
1:03:14
A reaction caught me as of nausea. Ugh. I wanted such people cleansed
1:03:20
by fire. They seemed to me as centers of contamination, whose vicious thoughts
1:03:24
flowed out to staining God's glorious world. I saw myself Francis Mabel too,
1:03:30
especially on the rack, while that odious figure of cruelty and darkness stood over
1:03:35
us and ordered the awful handles turned in order that we might be saved,
1:03:38
forced, that is, to think and believe exactly as she thought and believed.
1:03:44
I found relief for my somewhat childish indignation by letting myself loose upon the
1:03:49
organ, than the flood of Bach and Beethoven brought back the sense of proportion.
1:03:53
It proved, however, at the same time, that there had been
1:03:57
this growth of distortion in me, and that it had been provided, apparently
1:04:01
by my closer contact for the first time, with that funereal personality, the
1:04:08
woman who, like her master, believed that all holding views of God that
1:04:11
differed from her own must be damned eternally. It gave me, moreover,
1:04:15
some faint clue, perhaps, though a clue I was unequal to. Following
1:04:19
up to the nature of the strife and terror, and frustrate influence in the
1:04:23
house that housekeeper had to do with it. She kept it alive. Her
1:04:29
thought was like a spell she waved above her mistress's head. End of Section six.