VII

That night I was wakened by a hurried tapping at my door, and before

I could answer, Frances stood beside my bed. She had switched on the

light as she came in. Her hair fell straggling over her dressing-gown.

Her face was deathly pale, its expression so distraught it was almost

haggard. The eyes were very wide. She looked almost like another woman.

She was whispering at a great pace: ‘Bill, Bill, wake up, quick!’

‘I _am_ awake. What is it?’ I whispered too. I was startled.

‘Listen!’ was all she said. Her eyes stared into vacancy.

There was not a sound in the great house. The wind had dropped, and all

was still. Only the tapping seemed to continue endlessly in my brain.

The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to half-past two.

‘I heard nothing, Frances. What is it?’ I rubbed my eyes; I had been

very deeply asleep.

‘Listen!’ she repeated very softly, holding up one finger and turning

her eyes towards the door she had left ajar. Her usual calmness had

deserted her. She was in the grip of some distressing terror.

For a full minute we held our breath and listened. Then her eyes rolled

round again and met my own, and her skin went even whiter than before.

‘It woke me,’ she said beneath her breath, and moving a step nearer to

my bed. ‘It was the Noise.’ Even her whisper trembled.

‘The Noise!’ The word repeated itself dully of its own accord. I would

rather it had been anything in the world but that--earthquake, foreign

cannon, collapse of the house above our heads! ‘The noise, Frances! Are

you _sure_?’ I was playing really for a little time.

‘It was like thunder. At first I thought it _was_ thunder. But a minute

later it came again--from underground. It’s appalling.’ She muttered

the words, her voice not properly under control.

There was a pause of perhaps a minute, and then we both spoke at once.

We said foolish, obvious things that neither of us believed in for a

second. The roof had fallen in, there were burglars downstairs, the

safes had been blown open. It was to comfort each other as children do

that we said these things; also it was to gain further time.

‘There’s some one in the house, of course,’ I heard my voice say

finally, as I sprang out of bed and hurried into dressing-gown and

slippers. ‘Don’t be alarmed. I’ll go down and see,’ and from the

drawer I took a pistol it was my habit to carry everywhere with me. I

loaded it carefully while Frances stood stock-still beside the bed and

watched. I moved towards the open door.

‘You stay here, Frances,’ I whispered, the beating of my heart making

the words uneven, ‘while I go down and make a search. Lock yourself in,

girl. Nothing can happen to you. It was downstairs, you said?’

‘Underneath,’ she answered faintly, pointing through the floor.

She moved suddenly between me and the door.

‘Listen! Hark!’ she said, the eyes in her face quite fixed; ‘it’s

coming again,’ and she turned her head to catch the slightest sound. I

stood there watching her, and while I watched her, shook. But nothing

stirred. From the halls below rose only the whirr and quiet ticking of

the numerous clocks. The blind by the open window behind us flapped out

a little into the room as the draught caught it.

‘I’ll come with you, Bill--to the next floor,’ she broke the silence.

‘Then I’ll stay with Mabel--till you come up again.’ The blind sank

down with a long sigh as she said it.

The question jumped to my lips before I could repress it:

‘Mabel is awake. She heard it too?’

I hardly know why horror caught me at her answer. All was so vague and

terrible as we stood there playing the great game of this sinister

house where nothing ever happened.

‘We met in the passage. She was on her way to me.’

What shook in me, shook inwardly. Frances, I mean, did not see it. I

had the feeling just then that the Noise was upon us, that any second

it would boom and roar about our ears. But the deep silence held. I

only heard my sister’s little whisper coming across the room in answer

to my question:

‘Then what is Mabel doing now?’

And her reply proved that she was yielding at last beneath the dreadful

tension, for she spoke at once, unable longer to keep up the pretence.

With a kind of relief, as it were, she said it out, looking helplessly

at me like a child:

‘She is weeping and gna----’

My expression must have stopped her. I believe I clapped both hands

upon her mouth, though when I realised things clearly again, I found

they were covering my own ears instead. It was a moment of unutterable

horror. The revulsion I felt was actually physical. It would have given

me pleasure to fire off all the five chambers of my pistol into the air

above my head; the sound--a definite, wholesome sound that explained

itself--would have been a positive relief. Other feelings, though,

were in me too, all over me, rushing to and fro. It was vain to seek

their disentanglement; it was impossible. I confess that I experienced,

among them, a touch of paralysing fear--though for a moment only;

it passed as sharply as it came, leaving me with a violent flush of

blood to the face such as bursts of anger bring, followed abruptly

by an icy perspiration over the entire body. Yet I may honestly avow

that it was not ordinary personal fear I felt, nor any common dread

of physical injury. It was, rather, a vast, impersonal shrinking--a

sympathetic shrinking--from the agony and terror that countless others,

somewhere, somehow, felt for themselves. The first sensation of a

prison overwhelmed me in that instant, of bitter strife and frenzied

suffering, and the fiery torture of the yearning to escape that was yet

hopelessly uttered.... It was of incredible power. It was real. The

vain, intolerable hope swept over me.

I mastered myself, though hardly knowing how, and took my sister’s

hand. It was as cold as ice, as I led her firmly to the door and

out into the passage. Apparently she noticed nothing of my so near

collapse, for I caught her whisper as we went. ‘You _are_ brave, Bill;

splendidly brave.’

The upper corridors of the great sleeping house were brightly lit;

on her way to me she had turned on every electric switch her hand

could reach; and as we passed the final flight of stairs to the

floor below, I heard a door shut softly and knew that Mabel had been

listening--waiting for us. I led my sister up to it. She knocked, and

the door was opened cautiously an inch or so. The room was pitch black.

I caught no glimpse of Mabel standing there. Frances turned to me with

a hurried whisper, ‘Billy, you _will_ be careful, won’t you?’ and went

in. I just had time to answer that I would not be long, and Frances

to reply, ‘You’ll find us here----’ when the door closed and cut her

sentence short before its end.

* * * * *

But it was not alone the closing door that took the final words.

Frances--by the way she disappeared I knew it--had made a swift and

violent movement into the darkness that was as though she sprang.

She leaped upon that other woman who stood back among the shadows,

for, simultaneously with the clipping of the sentence, another sound

was also stopped--stifled, smothered, choked back lest I should also

hear it. Yet not in time. I heard it--a hard and horrible sound that

explained both the leap and the abrupt cessation of the whispered words.

I stood irresolute a moment. It was as though all the bones had been

withdrawn from my body, so that I must sink and fall. That sound

plucked them out, and plucked out my self-possession with them. I am

not sure that it was a sound I had ever heard before, though children,

I half remembered, made it sometimes in blind rages when they knew

not what they did. In a grown-up person certainly I had never known

it. I associated it with animals rather--horribly. In the history of

the world, no doubt, it has been common enough, alas, but fortunately

to-day there can be but few who know it, or would recognise it even

when heard. The bones shot back into my body the same instant, but

red-hot and burning; the brief instant of irresolution passed; I was

torn between the desire to break down the door and enter, and to

run--run for my life from a thing I dared not face.

Out of the horrid tumult, then, I adopted neither course. Without

reflection, certainly without analysis of what was best to do for

my sister, myself or Mabel, I took up my action where it had been

interrupted. I turned from the awful door and moved slowly towards the

head of the stairs. But that dreadful little sound came with me. I

believe my own teeth chattered. It seemed all over the house--in the

empty halls that opened into the long passages towards the music-room,

and even in the grounds outside the building. From the lawns and barren

garden, from the ugly terraces themselves, it rose into the night, and

behind it came a curious driving sound, incomplete, unfinished, as of

wailing for deliverance, the wailing of desperate souls in anguish, the

dull and dry beseeching of hopeless spirits in prison.

That I could have taken the little sound from the bedroom where I

actually heard it, and spread it thus over the entire house and

grounds, is evidence, perhaps, of the state my nerves were in. The

wailing assuredly was in my mind alone. But the longer I hesitated, the

more difficult became my task, and, gathering up my dressing-gown,

lest I should trip in the darkness, I passed slowly down the staircase

into the hall below. I carried neither candle nor matches; every switch

in room and corridor was known to me. The covering of darkness was

indeed rather comforting than otherwise, for if it prevented seeing,

it also prevented being seen. The heavy pistol, knocking against my

thigh as I moved, made me feel I was carrying a child’s toy, foolishly.

I experienced in every nerve that primitive vast dread which is the

Thrill of darkness. Merely the child in me was comforted by that pistol.

The night was not entirely black; the iron bars across the glass

front door were visible, and, equally, I discerned the big, stiff

wooden chairs in the hall, the gaping fireplace, the upright pillars

supporting the staircase, the round table in the centre with its books

and flower-vases, and the basket that held visitors’ cards. There, too,

was the stick and umbrella stand and the shelf with railway guides,

directory, and telegraph forms. Clocks ticked everywhere with sounds

like quiet footfalls. Light fell here and there in patches from the

floor above. I stood a moment in the hall, letting my eyes grow more

accustomed to the gloom, while deciding on a plan of search. I made

out the ivy trailing outside over one of the big windows ... and then

the tall clock by the front door made a grating noise deep down inside

its body--it was the Presentation clock, large and hideous, given by

the congregation of his church--and, dreading the booming strike it

seemed to threaten, I made a quick decision. If others beside myself

were about in the night, the sound of that striking might cover their

approach.

So I tiptoed to the right, where the passage led towards the

dining-room. In the other direction were the morning- and drawing-room,

both little used, and various other rooms beyond that had been _his_,

generally now kept locked. I thought of my sister, waiting upstairs with

that frightened woman for my return. I went quickly, yet stealthily.

And, to my surprise, the door of the dining-room was open. It had been

opened. I paused on the threshold, staring about me. I think I fully

expected to see a figure blocked in the shadows against the heavy

sideboard, or looming on the other side beneath his portrait. But the

room was empty; I _felt_ it empty. Through the wide bow-windows that

gave on to the verandah came an uncertain glimmer that even shone

reflected in the polished surface of the dinner-table, and again I

perceived the stiff outline of chairs, waiting tenantless all round it,

two larger ones with high carved backs at either end. The monkey-trees

on the upper terrace, too, were visible outside against the sky, and

the solemn crests of the wellingtonias on the terraces below. The

enormous clock on the mantelpiece ticked very slowly, as though its

machinery were running down, and I made out the pale round patch that

was its face. Resisting my first inclination to turn the lights up--my

hand had gone so far as to finger the friendly knob--I crossed the room

so carefully that no single board creaked, nor a single chair, as I

rested a hand upon its back, moved on the parquet flooring. I turned

neither to the right nor left, nor did I once look back.

I went towards the long corridor, filled with priceless _objets d’art_,

that led through various antechambers into the spacious music-room,

and only at the mouth of this corridor did I next halt a moment in

uncertainty. For this long corridor, lit faintly by high windows

on the left from the verandah, was very narrow, owing to the mass

of shelves and fancy tables it contained. It was not that I feared

to knock over precious things as I went, but that, because of its

ungenerous width, there would be no room to pass another person--if I

met one. And the certainty had suddenly come upon me that somewhere

in this corridor another person at this actual moment stood. Here,

somehow, amid all this dead atmosphere of furniture and impersonal

emptiness, lay the hint of a living human presence; and with such

conviction did it come upon me, that my hand instinctively gripped the

pistol in my pocket before I could even think. Either some one had

passed along this corridor just before me, or some one lay waiting

at its farther end--withdrawn or flattened into one of the little

recesses, to let me pass. It was the person who had opened the door.

And the blood ran from my heart as I realised it.

It was not courage that sent me on, but rather a strong impulsion from

behind that made it impossible to retreat: the feeling that a throng

pressed at my back, drawing nearer and nearer; that I was already half

surrounded, swept, dragged, coaxed into a vast prison-house where there

was wailing and gnashing of teeth, where their worm dieth not and their

fire is not quenched. I can neither explain nor justify the storm of

irrational emotion that swept me as I stood in that moment, staring

down the length of the silent corridor towards the music-room at the

far end, I can only repeat that no personal bravery sent me down it,

but that the negative emotion of fear was swamped in this vast sea of

pity and commiseration for others that surged upon me.

My senses, at least, were no whit confused; if anything, my brain

registered impressions with keener accuracy than usual. I noticed, for

instance, that the two swinging doors of baize that cut the corridor

into definite lengths, making little rooms of the spaces between them,

were both wide open--in the dim light no mean achievement. Also that

the fronds of a palm plant, some ten feet in front of me, still stirred

gently from the air of some one who had recently gone past them. The

long green leaves waved to and fro like hands. Then I went stealthily

forward down the narrow space, proud even that I had this command of

myself, and so carefully that my feet made no sound upon the Japanese

matting on the floor.

It was a journey that seemed timeless. I have no idea how fast or slow

I went, but I remember that I deliberately examined articles on each

side of me, peering with particular closeness into the recesses of wall

and window. I passed the first baize doors, and the passage beyond

them widened out to hold shelves of books; there were sofas and small

reading-tables against the wall. It narrowed again presently, as I

entered the second stretch. The windows here were higher and smaller,

and marble statuettes of classical subjects lined the walls, watching

me like figures of the dead. Their white and shining faces saw me, yet

made no sign. I passed next between the second baize doors. They, too,

had been fastened back with hooks against the wall. Thus all doors were

open--had been recently opened.

And so, at length, I found myself in the final widening of the corridor

which formed an ante-chamber to the music-room itself. It had been

used formerly to hold the overflow of meetings. No door separated it

from the great hall beyond, but heavy curtains hung usually to close

it off, and these curtains were invariably drawn. They now stood wide.

And here--I can merely state the impression that came upon me--I knew

myself at last surrounded. The throng that pressed behind me, also

surged in front: facing me in the big room, and waiting for my entry,

stood a multitude; on either side of me, in the very air above my

head, the vast assemblage paused upon my coming. The pause, however,

was momentary, for instantly the deep, tumultuous movement was resumed

that yet was silent as a cavern underground. I felt the agony that

was in it, the passionate striving, the awful struggle to escape. The

semi-darkness held beseeching faces that fought to press themselves

upon my vision, yearning yet hopeless eyes, lips scorched and dry,

mouths that opened to implore but found no craved delivery in actual

words, and a fury of misery and hate that made the life in me stop

dead, frozen by the horror of vain pity. That intolerable, vain Hope

was everywhere.

And the multitude, it came to me, was not a single multitude, but many;

for, as soon as one huge division pressed too close upon the edge of

escape, it was dragged back by another and prevented. The wild host was

divided against itself. Here dwelt the Shadow I had ‘imagined’ weeks

ago, and in it struggled armies of lost souls as in the depths of some

bottomless pit whence there is no escape. The layers mingled, fighting

against themselves in endless torture. It was in this great Shadow I

had clairvoyantly seen Mabel, but about its fearful mouth, I now was

certain, hovered another figure of darkness, a figure who sought to

keep it in existence, since to her thought were due those lampless

depths of woe without escape.... Towards me the multitudes now surged.

* * * * *

It was a sound and a movement that brought me back into myself. The

great clock at the farther end of the room just then struck the hour

of three. That was the sound. And the movement--? I was aware that a

figure was passing across the distant centre of the floor. Instantly I

dropped back into the arena of my little human terror. My hand again

clutched stupidly at the pistol butt. I drew back into the folds of the

heavy curtain. And the figure advanced.

I remember every detail. At first it seemed to me enormous--this

advancing shadow--far beyond human scale; but as it came nearer, I

measured it, though not consciously, by the organ pipes that gleamed in

faint colours, just above its gradual soft approach. It passed them,

already half-way across the great room. I saw then that its stature was

that of ordinary men. The prolonged booming of the clock died away. I

heard the footfall, shuffling upon the polished boards. I heard another

sound--a voice, low and monotonous, droning as in prayer. The figure

was speaking. It was a woman. And she carried in both hands before her

a small object that faintly shimmered--a glass of water. And then I

recognised her.

There was still an instant’s time before she reached me, and I made use

of it. I shrank back, flattening myself against the wall. Her voice

ceased a moment, as she turned and carefully drew the curtains together

behind her, closing them with one hand. Oblivious of my presence,

though she actually touched my dressing-gown with the hand that pulled

the cords, she resumed her dreadful, solemn march, disappearing at

length down the long vista of the corridor like a shadow. But as she

passed me, her voice began again, so that I heard each word distinctly

as she uttered it, her head aloft, her figure upright, as though she

moved at the head of a procession:

‘A drop of cold water, given in His name, shall moisten their burning

tongues.’

It was repeated monotonously over and over again, droning down into the

distance as she went, until at length both voice and figure faded into

the shadows at the farther end.

For a time, I have no means of measuring precisely, I stood in that

dark corner, pressing my back against the wall, and would have drawn

the curtains down to hide me had I dared to stretch an arm out. The

dread that presently the woman would return passed gradually away. I

realised that the air had emptied, the crowd her presence had stirred

into activity had retreated; I was alone in the gloomy under-spaces of

the odious building.... Then I remembered suddenly again the terrified

women waiting for me on that upper landing; and realised that my skin

was wet and freezing cold after a profuse perspiration. I prepared to

retrace my steps. I remember the effort it cost me to leave the support

of the wall and covering darkness of my corner, and step out into the

grey light of the corridor. At first I sidled, then, finding this

mode of walking impossible, turned my face boldly and walked quickly,

regardless that my dressing-gown set the precious objects shaking as I

passed. A wind that sighed mournfully against the high, small windows

seemed to have got inside the corridor as well; it felt so cold; and

every moment I dreaded to see the outline of the woman’s figure as she

waited in recess or angle against the wall for me to pass.

Was there another thing I dreaded even more? I cannot say. I only know

that the first baize doors had swung-to behind me, and the second ones

were close at hand, when the great dim thunder caught me, pouring up

with prodigious volume so that it seemed to roll out from another

world. It shook the very bowels of the building. I was closer to it

than that other time, when it had followed me from the goblin garden.

There was strength and hardness in it, as of metal reverberation. Some

touch of numbness, almost of paralysis, must surely have been upon me

that I felt no actual terror, for I remember even turning and standing

still to hear it better. ‘That is the Noise,’ my thought ran stupidly,

and I think I whispered it aloud; ‘_the Doors are closing_.’

The wind outside against the windows was audible, so it cannot have

been really loud, yet to me it was the biggest, deepest sound I have

ever heard, but so far away, with such awful remoteness in it, that I

had to doubt my own ears at the same time. It seemed underground--the

rumbling of earthquake gates that shut remorselessly within the rocky

Earth--stupendous ultimate thunder. _They_ were shut off from help

again. The doors had closed.

I felt a storm of pity, an agony of bitter, futile hate sweep through

me. My memory of the figure changed then. The Woman with the glass of

cooling water had stepped down from Heaven; but the Man--or was it

Men?--who smeared this terrible layer of belief and Thought upon the

world!...

I crossed the dining-room--it was fancy, of course, that held my

eyes from glancing at the portrait for fear I should see it smiling

approval--and so finally reached the hall, where the light from the

floor above seemed now quite bright in comparison. All the doors I

closed carefully behind me; but first I had to open them. The woman had

closed every one. Up the stairs, then, I actually ran, two steps at a

time. My sister was standing outside Mabel’s door. By her face I knew

that she had also heard. There was no need to ask. I quickly made my

mind up.

‘There’s nothing,’ I said, and detailed briefly my tour of search. ‘All

is quiet and undisturbed downstairs.’ May God forgive me!

She beckoned to me, closing the door softly behind her. My heart beat

violently a moment, then stood still.

‘Mabel,’ she said aloud.

It was like the sentence of a judge, that one short word.

I tried to push past her and go in, but she stopped me with her arm.

She was wholly mistress of herself, I saw.

‘Hush!’ she said in a lower voice. ‘I’ve got her round again with

brandy. She’s sleeping quietly now. We won’t disturb her.’

She drew me farther out into the landing, and as she did so, the clock

in the hall below struck half-past three. I had stood, then, thirty

minutes in the corridor below. ‘You’ve been such a long time,’ she said

simply. ‘I feared for you,’ and she took my hand in her own that was

cold and clammy.