Walter De la Mare

“ And when amid these ruminations, Jimmie's eyes had at last fixed themselves on the frayed dangling cord that hung from the ceiling over the trucklebed, it was because he had already explored all that the name Soames had stood for. Soames the butler—a black-clothed, tub-bellied, pompous man that might have been his Uncle Timothy's impoverished first cousin or illegitimate step-brother: Soames: Soames. ”

“ And it seemed to Jimmie that in its patient face hung veil upon veil of uncountable faces of the past—in paint, stone, actuality, dream—that he had glanced at or brooded on in the enormous history of his life. That he may have coveted, too. And as well as his rebellious features could and would, he smiled back at her.
“I understand, my dear,” he drew back his dry lips to explain. “Perfectly. And it was courtesy itself of you to look in when I didn't ring. I didn't. I absolutely put my tongue out at the grinning old knob. ... But no more of that. One mustn't talk for talking's sake. ”

“ The mere spectator of gaiety, he concluded, as he stared at the immense picture of the Colosseum on his Uncle Timothy's wall, may have as boring a time as must the slaves who cleaned out the cages of the lions that ate the Christians. And snapping out insults at former old cronies who couldn't help their faces being as tiresome as a whitewashed pigsty had soon grown wearisome.
Jimmie, of course, was accustomed to taking no interest in things which did not interest him; but quite respectable people could manage that equally well. ”

“ The thing must have been Soames Junior's emissary, even if the bird-faced scullery maid with the primroses had not also been one of the “staff.”
That he had desisted simply in case she should herself have answered his summons and so have encountered the spurious animal as she mounted the dark staircase seemed literally too “good” to be true. Not only was Jimmie no sentimentalist, but that particular kind of goodness, even in a state of mind perfectly calm and collected, was not one of his pleasanter characteristics.
Yet facts are facts—even comforting ones. ”

“ Jimmie was violently shivering; his very toes were clinging to the mat on which he stood.
Swaying a little, and casting at the same time a strained whitened glance round the room in which every object rested in the light as if so it had rested from all eternity, he stood mutely and ghastly listening.
Even a large bedroom, five times the size of a small boy's attic, affords little scope for a fugitive, and shutting your eyes, darkening your outward face, is no escape. It had been a silly boast, he agreed—that challenge, that “dare” on the staircase; the boast of an idiot. ”

“ And there was Jimmie, absolutely exhausted, coughing his lungs out, and entirely incapable of concluding whether the new butler was a creature of actuality or of dream. Well, well, well: that was nothing new. That's just how things do take one in one's weak moments, in the dead of night. ”

“ When there hasn't been anything there, nothing can be said to have vanished from the place where it has not been. Still, Jimmie had felt infinitely colder and immeasurably lonelier when his mouth had thus fallen to silence; and he was so empty and completely exhausted that his one apprehension had been lest he should be unable to ascend the staircase to get to bed. ”

“ On reflection Jimmie decided that he had cut almost a gallant figure as he had retorted gaily—yet with extraordinary sobriety:—“You shall have a whole dishful before I'm done, Mrs. Thripps—with a big scoop in it for the gravy. But on my oath, I assure you there's absolutely nothing or nobody in this old barn of a museum except you and me. Nobody, unless, of course, you will understand, one happens to pull the bell. And that we're not likely to do in broad daylight. Are we, Mrs. Thripps?” ”

“ Why, if you were intent only on a little innocent companionship, one or two of those nymphs up there would be far more amusing company than Mrs. Thripps. If, that is, apart from yearning to their harps and viols, they could have been persuaded to scrub and sweep. Jimmie wanted no other kind of help. There is a beauty that is but skin-deep. ”

“ You are the best of good creatures, you are indeed—and it's no good looking at me like Patience on a monument; because at present life is real and life is earnest. All I mean is that if one for a single moment ceases to guide one's conduct on reasonable lines—well, one comes a perfectly indescribable cropper, Mrs. Thripps. Like the pot.”
Mrs. Thripps's grey untidy head had remained oddly stuck out from her body throughout this harangue. “No, sir,” she repeated once more. “High and low I've searched the house down, and there isn't a shadder of what you might be referring to, not a shadder. ”

“ When a fellow is so thin that he can almost hear his ribs grid one against the other when he stoops to pick up a poker, such symptoms must be expected. There was still an hour or two of daylight-—even though clouds admitted only a greyish light upon the world, and his Uncle Timothy's house was by nature friendly to gloom. ”

“ I have told you repeatedly that if you are really in need of anything, just ring the bell for Soames. A good little boy with nothing on his conscience knows that God watches over him. I hope you are at least trying to be a good little boy. There is a limit even to your Uncle's forbearance.”
It was perfectly true. Even bad little boys might be “watched over” in the dead of night, and as for his Uncle Timothy's forbearance, he had discovered the limitations of that fairly early in life. ”

“ Jimmie would have much preferred to balance a chair at the foot of his Uncle's Arabian bed and salute the smiling lips of the painted nymphs on the ceiling. Though even that experiment would probably have a rather gritty flavour. Still, possession is nine points of the law, and necessity is the deadly enemy of convention. ”

“ The house, in fact (occupied only by a caretaker in the service of his Aunt's lawyers) had been his for the asking at any time during the last two or three years. But he had steadily delayed taking possession of it until there was practically no alternative.
Circumstances accustom even a young man to a good many inconveniences. Still it would have been a little too quixotic to sleep in the street, even though his Uncle Timothy's house, as mere “property,” was little better than a white and unpleasing elephant. ”

“ Thripps!”
And before the old lady had had time to seize any one of these seductive threads of conversation, Jimmie had flashed his usual brilliant smile or grimace at her, and soon afterwards sallied out of the house to purchase a further gross or two of candles.
Gently and furtively pushing across the counter half a sovereign—not as a douceur, but merely as from friend to friend—he had similarly smiled back at the secretive-looking old assistant in the staid West End family-grocer's.
“No, I didn't suppose you could remember me. One alters. One ages. One deals elsewhere. ”

“ Calm cold daylight reflection may dismiss almost any nocturnal experience as a dream, if, at any rate, one's temperature in the night hours is habitually above the norm. But Jimmie could not, or would not, absolutely make up his mind. ”

“ He was not the man to be easily insulted by a good customer. And Jimmie's depredations were methodical. With the fastidiousness of an expert he selected from the rare and costly contents of the house only what was light and portable and became inconspicuous by its absence. The supply he realised, though without any perceptible animation, however recklessly it might be squandered, would easily last out his lifetime.
Certainly not. After having once made up his mind to accept his Uncle Timothy's posthumous hospitality, the real difficulty was unlikely to be a conscientious one. ”

“ But Jimmie's face continued to smile.
And then suddenly, every vestige of amusement abandoned it. He stared baldly almost emptily at the faint inmate of his solitude. “All that I have to say,” he muttered, “is just this:—I have Mrs. Thripps. I haven't absolutely cut the wire. I wish to be alone. But if I ring, I'm not asking, do you see? In time I may be able to know what I want. But what is important now is that no more than that accursed Pig were your primroses 'real,' my dear. You see things must be real. ”

“ Her face had seemed to lengthen a little, but that might have been due solely to her efforts to deliver her bowl without spilling its contents. Indeed she actually succeeded in so doing, almost before Jimmie had time to withdraw abruptly from the little gilt-railed table on which she deposited the clumsy pot. Frock, pigtail, red hands—she seemed to be as “real” a fellow creature as you might wish to see. But Jimmie stared quizzically on. Unfortunately primroses have no scent, so that he could not call on his nose to bear witness to his eyes. ”

“ Upstairs under the roof years ago Jimmie as a small boy would rather have died of terror than meddle with the cord above his bed-rail—simply because he knew that Soames Senior was at the other end of it. He had hated Soames; he had merely feared the nothings of his night hours. But, suppose Soames had been a different kind of butler. There must be almost as many kinds as there are human beings. Suppose his Uncle Timothy and Aunt Charlotte had chosen theirs a little less idiosyncratically ”

“ Once it gets going at a certain pressure, well, it is almost impossible to turn it off. And, my hat! what odd things come up with the water! ”

“ He's a very nice gentleman; and one as keeps what should be kept as close to himself as it being his duty he sees right and proper to do. Chasing and racketing of yourself up and down these runs of naked stairs—in the dead of night—is no proper place for you, sir, in your state. And I don't like to take the responsibility. It's first the candles, then the bells, and then the kitching, and then the bason; I know what I'm talking about, sir, having lost two, and one at sea.”
“And suppose, my dear,” Jimmie had almost as brilliantly as ever smiled ”

“ He need ask nothing. He could act. Yes, if he could be perfectly sure that some monstrous porcine caco-demon akin to the shapes of childish nightmare would come hoofing up out of the deeps at his behest—well, he would chance it. ”

“ A plain child, but extraordinarily fair, as fair as the primroses themsleves in the congregation of candle light that motionlessly flooded the room—a narrow-chested long-chinned little creature who had evidently outgrown her strength. Jimmie was well accustomed to take things as they come; and his brief sojourn in his uncle's house in his present state of health had already enlarged the confines of the term “things.” ”

“ My own boy, now: he's in the Navy. ...”
But with one graceful flourish Jimmie had run his long-handled brush clean East to West along the clanging row. “You mustn't,” he shouted, “you shouldn't. Once aboard the lugger, they are free! It's you mothers. ...” He gently shook his peculiar wand at the flat-looking little old woman. “No, Mrs. Thripps; what I'm after is he who is here, here! couchant, perdu, laired, in these same subterranean vaults when you and I are snug in our nightcaps. A most nice-spoken young man! ”

“ Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture—the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls—as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.
That high cupboard in the corner from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; ”

“ A foolish proceeding if one has not the least desire in the world to attract the attention of one's neighbours.
Having at length satisfied himself in a rather confused fashion that whatever understudy of Soames might share the house with him in the small hours, he must be a butler of the migratory order. Jimmie then began experimenting with the bells. ”

“ Poor sleepers should endeavour to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative. ”

“ When indeed you positively press your face, so to speak, against the crystalline window of your eyes, your mind is apt to become a perfect vacuum. ”

“ For a more or less decent-looking young man, seemingly not a day older than himself was now apparent in the room. It might almost be said that he had insinuated himself into the room. But well-trained domestics are accustomed to move their limbs and bodies with a becoming unobtrusiveness. ”

“ For years—for centuries, in fact—Jimmie had been, except in certain unusual circumstances, an exceedingly bad sleeper. He still hated sleeping in the dark. But a multitude of candles at various degrees of exhaustion make rather lively company when you are sick of your Uncle Timothy's cellar. And even the best of vintage wines may prove an ineffectual soporific. His, too, was a wretchedly active mind.
Even as a boy he had thought a good deal about his Uncle and Aunt, and Soames, and the house, and the Rev. Mr. ”

“ Apart from pigs and tweeny-maids, what other peculiar emanations might in the future respond to his summonings, Jimmie's exhausted imagination could only faintly prefigure. For a few minutes a modern St. Anthony sat there in solitude in the vast half-blinded London drawing-room; while shapes and images and apparitions of memory and fantasy sprang into thin being and passed away in his mind. No, no.
“Do to the Book; quench the candles ”