Algernon Blackwood

“ Colonel Masters, on the other hand, stood beside her quietly as though nothing unusual had happened, wholly master of himself, calm, collected. At the moment of attack no sound had left his lips, there had been no gesture even of defence. Whatever had come, he had apparently accepted. The words that now fell from his lips were, thus, all the more dreadful in their appalling commonplaceness.
“Hadn’t you better put that counterpane, straight a bit⁠ ⁠... Perhaps?”
Common sense, as always, enables the gas of hysteria to escape. Madame Jodzka gasped, but she obeyed. ”

“ With a queer, hoppity motion of its broken legs and joints, it came fumbling and tumbling across the rough unevenness of the slippery counterpane towards her. Its appearance was deliberate and aggressive. The sounds, as of syllables, came with it⁠—strange, meaningless syllables that yet managed to convey anger. It stumbled towards her like a living thing. Its whole presentment conveyed attack.
Once again, this effect of a mere child’s toy, aping the life of some awful monstrosity with purpose and passion in its hideous tiny outline, brought collapse to the plucky Polish governess. ”

“ Sight, none the less, worked normally; she saw all there was to see, and that was⁠—nothing; nothing unusual, that is, nothing abnormal, nothing terrifying, so that this second time the threat of anticlimax rose to her mind. Had she worked herself up to this peak of horror merely to behold Monica lying sound asleep in a safe and quiet room? The flickering night-light revealed no more than a child in natural slumber without a toy of any sort against her pillow. ”

“ It is unkillable. It is beyond death.
A child with her doll, reflected Madame Jodzka, is an epitome of nature’s remorseless and unconquerable passion, of her dominant purpose⁠—the survival of the race.⁠ ⁠...
Such thoughts, influenced perhaps by her bitter subconscious grievance against nature for depriving her of a child of her own, were unable to hold that level for long; they soon dropped back to the concrete case that perplexed and frightened her⁠—Monica and her flaxen haired, sightless, idiotic doll. ”

“ Monica, the Colonel’s adored yet rather neglected child, was asleep upstairs, but the cook was not frightened lest Monica be disturbed, nor because it seemed a bit late for the bell to ring so violently; she was frightened because when she opened the door to let the fine rain drive in she saw a black man standing on the steps. There, in the wind and the rain, stood a tall, slim nigger holding a parcel.
Dark-skinned, at any rate, he was, she reflected afterwards, whether Negro, Hindu or Arab; the word “nigger” describing any man not really white. ”

“ It brought sweetness, as both cook and governess realized, into a rather grim house, hope and tenderness, a maternal flavour almost, something anyhow that no young bear could possibly bring. A child, a human baby! And yet both cook and governess⁠—for both were present at the actual delivery⁠—recalled later that Monica opened the parcel and recognised the doll with a yell of wild delight that seemed almost a scream of pain. There was this too high note of delirious exultation as though some instinctive horror of revulsion were instantly smothered and obliterated in a whirl of overmastering joy. ”

“ Malignant evil, personified and aggressive, shaped itself in this otherwise ridiculous outline.
It was the doll.
Racing with incredible security across the slippery surface of the crumpled silk counterpane, it dived and climbed and shot forward with an appearance of complete control and deliberate purpose. That it had a definite aim was overwhelmingly obvious. Its fixed, glassy eyes were concentrated upon a point beyond and behind the terrified governess, the point precisely where Colonel Masters, her employer, stood against her shoulder. ”

“ Never before in her whole life had she admired a man more than in this instant when she saw him moving towards what she knew to be physical and spiritual danger⁠—never before, and never again, was such a hideous and dreadful sight to be repeatable in a woman’s life. Pity and horror drowned her in a sea of passionate, futile longing. A man going to meet his fate, it flashed over her, was something none, without power to help, should witness. No human power can stay the course of the stars.
Her eye rested, as it were by chance, on the crumpled ridges and hollows of the discarded counterpane. ”

“ While Monica, paying no attention to either of them, fell to cuddling the doll with ecstasy.
A cheap little flaxen-haired, waxen-faced doll.
That so strange a case should come to us at second hand is, admittedly, a pity; that so much of the information should reach us largely through a cook and housemaid and through a foreigner of questionable validity, is equally unfortunate. Where precisely the reported facts creep across the feathery frontier into the incredible and thence into the fantastic would need the spider’s thread of the big telescopes to define. ”

“ And she remembered also having clutched an inert, waxen doll with frantic fingers, clutched and crushed and crumpled its awful little frame till the sawdust came spurting from its broken joints and its tiny body was mutilated beyond recognition, if not annihilated⁠ ⁠... then stuffing it down ruthlessly on a table far out of Monica’s reach, Monica lying peacefully in deepest sleep. ”

“ The Polish governess, Madame Todzka, left the house rather abruptly. Though adored by Monica and accepted by Colonel Masters, she left not long after the arrival of the doll. She was a comely, youngish widow of birth and breeding, tactful, discreet, understanding. She adored Monica, and Monica was happy with her; she feared her employer, yet perhaps secretly admired him as the strong, silent, dominating Englishman. He gave her great freedom, she never took liberties, everything went smoothly. ”

“ It’s the frank, corn-haired man who invites sympathy and generous comment. He enjoyed his Bridge, however, and was accepted as a first-class player. Thus, he went out nightly, and rarely came back before midnight. He was welcome among the gamblers evidently, while the fact that he had an adored child at home softened the picture of this “mysterious” man. Monica, though rarely seen, appealed to the women of the neighbourhood, and “whatever her origin” said the gossips, “he loves her.”
To Monica, meanwhile, in her rather play-less, toy-less life, the doll, her new treasure, was a spot of gold. ”

“ O’Reilly was afraid of Colonel Masters, and only his professed love of Monica made her believe that he was quite human. He paid her well, oh yes, and sometimes he smiled, and he was a handsome man, if a bit too dark for her fancy, yet he also paid her an occasional compliment about her curry, and that soothed her for the moment. ”

“ This brief exchange of spoken words, though it takes a minute to describe, occurred simultaneously with the action⁠—perhaps ten seconds all told, for while the governess fumbled with the counter-pane, Colonel Masters was in the act of brushing something from his neck. Nothing else was audible, nothing but his quick gasp and sudden intake of breath: but something else⁠—she swears it on her Warsaw priest⁠—was visible. Madame Jodzka maintains by all her gods she saw this other thing.
In moments of paralysing stress it is not the senses that act less speedily nor with less precision ”

“ Some nights are merely dark, others are dark in a suggestive way as though something ominous, mysterious, is going to happen. In certain remote outlying suburbs, at any rate, this seems true, where great spaces between the lamps go dead at night, where little happens, where a ring at the door is a summons almost, and people cry “Let’s go to town!” ”

“ O’Reilly, “for you ain’t saying what’s true or what you reely know.”
She turned to the governess.
“There’s more talk what means nothing about this doll,” she said by way of apology, “than all the fairy tales I was brought up with as a child in Mayo, and I⁠—I wouldn’t be believing anything of it.”
Turning her back contemptuously on the chattering housemaid, she came close to Madame Jodzka.
“There’s no harm coming to Miss Monica, Madame,” she whispered vehemently, “you can be quite sure about her. Any trouble there may be is for someone else.” And again she crossed herself. ”

“ In the villa gardens the mangy cedars sigh in the wind, but the hedges stiffen, there is a muffling of spontaneous activity.
On this particular November night a moist breeze barely stirred the silver pine in the narrow drive leading to the “Laurels” where Colonel Masters lived. Colonel Hymber Masters, late of an Indian regiment, with many distinguished letters after his name. The housemaid in the limited staff being out, it was the cook who answered the bell when it rang with a sudden, sharp clang soon after ten o’clock⁠—and gave an audible gasp half of surprise, half of fear. ”

“ She suppressed an involuntary gasp, but paid no attention to the maid’s interruption otherwise.
Mrs. O’Reilly seemed to mismanage her breath for a moment.
“It ain’t Miss Monica it’s after,” she announced in a defiant whisper as soon as she recovered herself, “it’s someone else. That’s what I mean. And no man as black as he was,” she let herself go, “ever brought no good into a house, not since I was born.”
“Someone else⁠—?” repeated Madame Jodzka almost to herself, seizing the vital words.
“You and yer black man!” interjected the housemaid. “Get along with yer! ”

“ The maternity instinct defies, even denies death. The doll, whether left upside down on the floor with broken teeth and ruined eyes, or lovingly arranged to be overlaid in the night, squashed, tortured, mutilated, survives all cruelties and disasters, and asserts finally its immortal qualities. ”

“ When a hysterical temperament, engrained since early childhood in fixed dogmas, begins to sift facts and analyse reactions, logic and common sense themselves become confused. Thought led one way, emotion another, and no honest conclusion dawned on her mind. ”

“ But the doll, quickening its pace, came hobbling straight towards her, its glassy eyes fixed hard upon her own.
Then Madame Jodzka fainted.
That she was, in some ways, a remarkable woman, with a sense of values, is clear from the fact that she realised this story “wouldn’t wash,” for she confided it only to the cook in cautious whispers, while giving her employer some more “washable” tale about a family death that obliged her to hurry home to Warsaw. ”

“ Would Mrs. O’Reilly have time to slip across the hall before he caught her? More⁠—and worse⁠—would he come up and peep into Monica’s bedroom on his way up to bed, as he rarely did? Madame Jodzka listened, her nerves in rags. She heard him fling dowm his coat. He was a man quick in such actions. The stick or umbrella was banged down noisily, hastily. The same instant his step sounded on the stairs. He was coming up. Another minute and he would start into the passage where she crouched against Monica’s door. ”

“ Colonel Hymber Masters, was, it seems, what’s called a “disappointed” man, a man whose fate forced him to live in surroundings he detested, disappointed in his career probably, possibly in love as well, Monica a love-child doubtless, and limited by his pension to face daily conditions that he loathed. ”

“ Colonel Masters uttered one of his rare laughs. “Of course, all children’s toys are horrible, but if she’s pleased with it⁠ ⁠... I haven’t seen it. I’m no judge⁠ ⁠... If you can buy something better⁠—” and he shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t buy it,” she cried desperately. “It was brought. It makes sounds by itself⁠—syllables. I’ve seen it move⁠—move by itself. It’s a doll.”
He turned from the front door which he had just reached as though he had been shot ”

“ An idée fixe, an obsession, once lodged in the mind of a superstitious, therefore hysterically-favoured woman, cannot be dislodged by argument. It may be absurd, yet it is “understandable.”
The story behind the reason for Madame Jodzka’s sudden terror is another matter, and it is best given quite simply. It relates to the doll. She swears by all her gods that she saw the doll “walking by itself.” It was walking in a disjointed, hoppity, hideous fashion across the bed in which Monica lay sleeping. ”

“ The cook reflected, probably because she found no immediate answer.
“Well,” she puffed out presently, “D’you know wot I think? You don’t. So I’ll tell you. It was something the master’s afraid of, that’s wot it was. He’s afraid of something⁠—ever since I been here I’ve known that. And that’s wot it was. He done somebody wrong in India long ago and that lanky nigger brought wot’s coming to him, and that’s why I says I put it on the stove⁠—see?” She dropped her voice. “It was a bloody idol,” she whispered, “that’s wot it was, that parcel, and he⁠—why, he’s a bloody secret worshipper.” ”

“ She watched Monica; she watched the doll. All seemed as normal as in a thousand other homes. Her mind reviewed the position, and where mind and superstition clashed, the former held its own easily. During her evening off she enjoyed the local cinema, leaving the heated building with the conviction that coloured fantasy benumbed the faculties, and that ordinary life was in itself prosaic. Yet before she had covered the half-mile to the house, her deep, unaccountable uneasiness returned with overmastering power.
Mrs. O’Reilly had seen Monica to bed for her, and it was Mrs. ”