Algernon Blackwood

“ At that very moment a faint, distant cry was audible in a man’s voice: “Help! Help!” Immediately after it a soprano, fainter still, called from what seemed even greater distance: “Help me!” The direction was not ascertainable. It seemed both in the room, yet far away outside in space above the roofs. A glance at the girl convinced Miss Speke that she had heard nothing.
“Mr. Thorley is not here,” whispered Miss Speke, one hand upon the brass bed-rail for support. ”

“ Their combined shock should have dislocated her system somewhere and have laid her low. But with every individual, it seems, the breaking-point is different. Her system, indeed, was dislocated, and a moment later and she was certainly laid low, yet it was not the effect of the figure, the voice, the gliding approach of Mr. Thorley that produced this. It was the flaw of little human egoism that brought her down. For it was in this instant that she first realised the absence of her own reflection in the mirror. ”

“ Meanwhile, thin strips of white paper, straight, angled, curved, were pinned upon the carpet; threads of finest silk again stretched overhead connecting the top of the door lintel with the window, the high cupboard with the curtain rods⁠—yet too high to be brushed away merely by the head of anyone moving in the room. And the full-length mirror still stood with its face close against the wall.
The mystery of these aerial entanglements increased Miss Speke’s alarm considerably. What could their purpose be? “Thank God,” she thought, “this isn’t war time!” ”

“ Miss Speke, as has been seen, was honourably disposed; she respected the rights of others, their property as well. Yet, included in the odd mood of elation the room and its atmosphere caused her, was also a vagrant, elusive feeling that the intimate, the personal⁠—above all, the personal⁠—had lost their original rigidity. Small individual privacies, secrecy, no longer held their familiar meaning quite. The idea that most things in life were to be shared slipped into her. ”

“ Miss Speke heard his voice from time to time. She heard it in the daytime and at night; calling for help and always with the same words she had first heard: “Help! Help! Help me!” It sounded very far away, withdrawn into immense distance, the distance ever increasing. Occasionally she heard the boy’s voice with it; they called together sometimes; she never heard the soprano voice alone. But the anguish and terror she had first noticed were no longer present. Alarm had gone out of them. ”

“ The idea of moving anything seemed distasteful to him.
“Nothing, Miss Speke, I thank you,” he replied courteously, but without delay. “Everything is really as I like it.” Then, with a little bow, he asked: “I trust my typewriter disturbs nobody. Please let me know if it does.”
Miss Speke assured him that nobody minded the typewriter in the least, nor even heard it, and, with another charming little bow and a smile, Mr. Thorley went out to give his lessons in the higher mathematics. ”

“ It had been given to her by Colonel Lyle, who would now occupy the room, stand on the wondrous carpet, move through the air where once the mysterious silks had floated, sleep in the very bed itself. All this he could do, but the mirror he must not touch.
“I’ll explain to him a little. I’ll beg him not to move it. He’s very understanding,” she said to herself, as she went out to buy some flowers for the sitting-room. Colonel Lyle was expected that very afternoon. Lilac, she remembered, was what he always liked. ”

“ His tall, thin outline flowed down the pavement in long, sweeping curves, yet quite steadily. He was not drunk. He came nearer; he was not twenty feet away; at ten feet she saw his face clearly, and received a shock. It was worn, and thin, and wasted, but a light of happiness, of something more than happiness indeed, shone in it. He reached the area railings. He looked up. ”

“ Mr. Thorley never left anything lying about. Now, a letter Miss Speke would not have thought of reading, but papers, especially learned papers, were another matter. Conscience, nevertheless, did prick her faintly as she cautiously turned over sheaf after sheaf of large white foolscap, covered with designs, and curves, and diagrams in ink, the ink he never spilt, and assuredly in his recent handwriting. ”

“ Her life in the past as a governess, little better than a servant; her life in the present as lodging-house keeper; her struggle with servants, with taxes, with daily expenses; her knowledge that no future but a mere “living” lay in front of her until the grave was reached⁠—these overwhelmed her with an intense depression that the contrast rendered almost insupportable. ”

“ Actual experience possible only to changed consciousness. But good to become mathematically accustomed to it. The mathematical experiments are worth it. They induce the mind, at any rate, to dwell upon the new direction. This helps⁠ ⁠...”
Miss Speke laid down the letter exactly where she had found it. No shame was in her. “G. P.” she knew, meant Gerald Pikestaffe; he was one of her lodger’s best pupils, the one in Belgrave Square. Her feeling of mysterious elation, as already mentioned, seemed above all such matters as small secrecies or petty personal privacies. ”

“ Miss Speke brushed it away, giving it no further thought, and went about her usual daily duties.
II But in her mind was established now a vague uneasiness, though so vague that at first she did not recognise it. Her thought would suddenly pause. “Now, what is it?” she would ask herself. “Something’s on my mind. What is it I’ve forgotten?” The picture of her first-floor lodger appeared, and she knew at once. “Oh, yes, it’s that mirror and the diagrams, of course.” Some taut wire of alarm was quivering at the back of her mind. ”

“ They had clubbed together, seeing that Miss Speke retained her wonderful health, and had established her in a nice little house where she could take respectable lodgers⁠—men for preference⁠—giving them the three B’s⁠—bed, bath, and breakfast. Being a capable woman, Miss Speke more than made both ends meet. She wanted for nothing. She kept going.
Applicants for her rooms, especially for the first-floor suite, had to be recommended. She had a stern face for those who rang the bell without a letter in their pockets. She never advertised. ”

“ Thorley was of no consequence, whereas Sir Mark was a figure in the public eye.
Mr. Thorley’s life, as enquiry proved, held no mystery. He had left everything in order. He did not owe a penny. He owned, indeed, considerable property, both in land and securities, and teaching mathematics, especially to promising pupils, seemed to have been a hobby merely. ”

“ Thorley had written various strangest “squiggles”; higher mathematics, Miss Speke supposed. In the opposite margin, also in her lodger’s writing, were these words:
“We must agree on a word to use when frightened. Help, or Help me, seems the best. To be uttered with the whole being.” ”

“ Miss Speke stared, touched, examined for some seconds without speaking. She remembered the thread that had tickled her own cheek. She looked enquiringly round the room, and the servant, following her suggestion, indicated where the threads had been attached to walls and furniture. No marks, however, were left; there was no damage done.
“I’ll mention it to Mr. Thorley,” said her mistress briefly, unwilling to discuss the matter with the new servant, much less to admit that she was uncomfortably at sea. “Mr. Thorley,” ’ she added, as though there was nothing unusual, “is a high mathematician. ”

“ The two upper floors had been occupied by the same tenants for many years⁠—a chief clerk in a branch bank and a retired clergyman respectively. It was only the best suite that sometimes “happened to be vacant at the moment.” From two guineas inclusive before the war, her price for this had been raised, naturally, to four, the tenant paying his gas-stove, light, and bath extra. Breakfast⁠—she prided herself legitimately on her good breakfasts⁠—was included.
For a long time now this first-floor suite had been unoccupied. The cost of living worried Miss Speke, as it worried most other people. ”

“ She explains, further, that her overmastering curiosity to look into the mirror, as Colonel Lyle had evidently looked himself, prevented her from immediately rendering first-aid to that gentleman, as she unquestionably should have done. Instead, she crossed the room, stepped over his huddled form, turned the mirror a little further round towards her, and looked straight into it.
The eye, apparently, takes in a great deal more than the mind is consciously aware of having “seen” at the moment. Miss Speke saw everything, she claims. ”

“ Thorley she found suddenly utterly impossible.
“Prayer,” the old man interrupted her halfway, “prayer, my dear lady. Prayer, I find,” he repeated smoothly, “is always the best course in all one’s troubles and perplexities. Leave it to God. He knows. And in His good time He will answer.” He advised her to read the Bible and Longfellow. She added Florence Barclay to the list and followed his advice. The books, however, comforted her very little.
After some hesitation she then tried her other tenant. But the “banker” stopped her even sooner than the clergyman had done. ”

“ The one link between them appeared to have been an amazing, an exceptional gift for higher mathematics. The Pikestaffe Case merely added one more to the insoluble mysteries with which commonplace daily life is sprinkled.
It was some six weeks to a month after the event that Miss Speke received a letter from one of her former charges, the most generous one, now satisfactorily finished with the Bankruptcy Court. He had honourably discharged his obligations; he was doing well; he wrote and asked Miss Speke to put him up for a week or two. “And do please give me Mr. Thorley’s room,” he asked. ”

“ These words formed part of the ritual she recited in the hall, facing her proposed tenants on the linoleum by the hat-rack; and it was these words she addressed to the tall, thin, pale-faced man with scanty hair and spotless linen, who informed her that he was a tutor, a teacher of higher mathematics to the sons of various families⁠—he mentioned some first-class names where references could be obtained⁠—a student besides and something of an author in his leisure hours. His pupils he taught, of course, in their respective houses, one being in Belgrave Square, another in The Albany ”

“ They tend to survive the grown-up married men and women they once taught as children. They hang on forever, as a man might put it crudely, a man, that is, who, taught by one of them in his earliest schoolroom days, would answer enquiries fifty years later without enthusiasm: “Oh, we keep her going, yes. ”