OLD MAN'S BEARD Page 5

  ‘Thought!’ cried Arnott, ‘not much thinking about that. Heavens above, I believed it had gone at last! Not a pleasant feeling,’ he added, wiping his forehead.

  ‘What sort of noises do you think you’ve heard?’ asked Walters.

  ‘Steps and creakings like people moving about.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Oh, just now and again, sir. Mrs Rummy, the charwoman, says the same thing.’

  ‘Well, those weren’t steps or creakings,’ said Arnott. ‘Something went then, I’m certain of it, and I thought we were going with it.’ And he mopped his brow again.

  Presently the three partners returned to Arnott’s room.

  ‘You two are going off now, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll wait a bit and clear up. I suppose the van comes for the furniture early tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Walters, ‘at nine punctually.’

  ‘Well, then, I’ll clear up everything tonight. There’s not much to do, and I don’t suppose I’ll be late, but I shall feel happier when I’ve got the Essays’ estimates finally worked out.’

  They said good night, and then Arnott sat down at his desk, took some papers out of a drawer, opened his estimate book, shook his fountain pen and put himself to work. Half-consciously he heard the staff one by one leaving the house; each time the swing-door, which divided the short outer passage from the rest of the building, groaned lightly, it signalled the homeward exit of another. Presently all was silence save for the light, indeterminate stretchings of the oak panelling. Arnott set himself seriously to the problem of how to lower the production cost of the new series of non-copyright essays, the first four titles of which his firm proposed to publish during the next spring. They must be nice little books, in appearance superior to any rival series, but every fraction of a farthing counted and he must get a penny off the cost if it could possibly be managed. He had just turned to the binding estimate when he thought he heard the swing-door creak again.

  He was so absorbed in his figures that for a moment he disregarded this insignificant little sound, but then the echo of it as it were tapped on the back door of his consciousness, and he was saying to himself, ‘Now, who can that be? The charwoman? No, she comes in the morning.’ Did it matter? Well, perhaps he’d better go down and see. He went to his door, turned on the light in the passage, and went down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. There didn’t seem to be anyone about. He visited the trade department, the packing and waiting rooms, each quiet and lifeless. And then he went up again to his room. But he found it difficult to concentrate; he was unable quite to expel the problem of the swing-door from his mind. Presently he recalled that it was accustomed to move without human agency when a westerly wind surged rudely into the Court. So he looked out of his window. Heavens! how the fog had thickened. He could only just see across to the Estate Agent’s office opposite, a mere eight yards away. That swirling dank curtain completely cut off his view of the entrance to Equity Court, and the tiniest breeze would have parted wide that opaque curtain. It couldn’t be the wind then. Well, why worry! Very probably he’d imagined the whole thing. (‘No, you didn’t,’ insinuated his subconscious.) He must get back to business.

  He picked up the book of cloth samples and went through it carefully and critically. He had just decided that a second quality aquamarine would be quite good enough, would mean the saving of a halfpenny per copy, and look bright and attractive, when his head went up and he appeared to be listening intently. If those weren’t footsteps from Wells’s room above him, what were they? He’d heard him stumping about a thousand times. He went to his door, opened it halfway, and listened. No, there wasn’t a sound now. All the same, perhaps he’d better go up. It was just possible there might be someone in the house. How could there be? That swing-door? Probably his imagination. Well, then, those footsteps? Oh, very well, he’d go up, but he’d never finish this job if there were all these interruptions. He ascended the stairs a shade heavily and opened the door of Wells’s room. Of course there was nothing there. This was the last time he’d see the old room. It looked bare, and as if laid out for burial, old and tired, reconciled to being a part of a heap of rubble a few hours later. What weird, tiny sounds there were! Just then, for example, as if there were people whispering; yes, it sounded like whispering, but a whisper was a sound made by human agency — a house could not whisper — yet for a fleeting second he entertained the possibility that there might be something neither human nor composed of bricks and mortar, which might make a noise that could be likened to a whisper, for lack of a more precise word — a very far-carrying conception which he succeeded in repressing.

  He tip-toed back to his room in a stealthy way which his common-sense derided, but the state of his nerves dictated, and once again tried to lash his mind back to those numerals and abstractions, which faded out with such craven obsequiousness at the suggestion of these small, uncertain sounds. How hard it is, he tried not to tell himself, to concentrate when one is expecting — well, not exactly expecting, some new little interruption. And concentration becomes impossible when that diluted kind of expectation is fulfilled, for if those soft tappings were not made by someone coming down the stairs from the floor above — well, what the devil were they? Now they seemed to have paused just outside his door, just outside. Acting on a sudden and, he realised, ill-advised impulse, he picked up a box of matches and flung it at the door, and then was very angry with himself for having done so, for a person only did a thing like that to drive someone or something away — or to reassure oneself that there was nothing to drive away — no one or nothing to startle. And then, insidiously, the echo of the manager’s remark came back to his mind: ‘When I’ve stayed late, I’ve thought I heard sounds sometimes’, ‘and unlike me,’ thought Arnott, ‘had the guts to disregard them. But I wonder if he heard steps coming down the stairs and halting outside his room. Well, have I? Why should I call them steps? Instead of just vague, indeterminate — vague, indeterminate what?’

  He got up again to distract his thoughts from their fuddled peregrinations and went to have a last look at his mantelpiece, a masterpiece of its period, about which those who had expert knowledge of such things were enthusiastic. What would be its latter end? It belonged to the ground landlord and he’d probably sell it to a Yank; and it would end up in Park Avenue; and why not? He liked Yanks, admired their taste, and in certain moods preferred them to his own ruddy countrymen. That chap who’d been sketching Number 5 for the Sunday Budget had passed his hand up and down the embossed detail of the mantelpiece and told him he got a sharp, sensuous delight from such a contact. Very possible and plausible. Let him see if he got any such sensation. Yes, he did. It was exquisitely smooth, silky — in a way feminine — and warm, yes, most curiously warm. And then he remembered how that person had been surprised to find that sort of cowled head screened in the foliage, and had said he’d never seen a more or less conventional floral design of this period housing any such sly intruder, a joke on the part of the carver, he had considered it. He’d feel that too. And then he swung his hand back sharply. Good God! It seemed red-hot. Yet he’d turned his electric stove off an hour since. Well, his imagination was running away with him. He’d better chuck work and be off. It was natural enough to be a little fallaciously percipient on his last night in the old house.

  Good heavens! there was another of those frightful rending sounds, and then he felt something drop lightly on his head and he looked up. Yes, that was plaster falling, and that rent in the ceiling had suddenly stretched two inches. The house was on its last legs, dying slowly — perhaps not so slowly — considering that plaster and that extending crack above him. And then there was a sharp metallic tap and his door wavered uncertainly for a moment, and then swung on its hinges with a decisive, and final, and muted crash. That last settling down of the house must have wrenched the latch out of true. And then in came the fog, questingly and waveringly, like a lady curtsying into a Throne-Room. And in with i
t came that whispering, so that Arnott had a horrible impression that he was no longer alone in his room. He must, must, must fight his way down. Could he? Dared he? He must! Never mind his hat and coat. To be outside — that was everything. But supposing he ran down and fumbled with the latch of the front door! Fumbled and fumbled, and those steps kept coming down those last two flights! Would he be able to open it in time and dash outside? To be outside — that was everything.

  He had just poised himself to run when there came a dreadful, ripping rending. And then there was a second’s pause, and then he felt himself flung forward and down the plaster poured on to him. The window crashed outward, his light bulb swung wildly and shattered, and he was hurled through a splintered wall, his arms flung out beseechingly. And as he dropped through space a fleeting thought came to him — ‘That was how they said it would go.’ And then he was prone on his back and a welter of bricks, desks, chairs and tiles splashed wildly down beside him.

  His escape was always afterwards described as ‘a miracle’, for he was absolutely untouched. The débris rained down beside him, but not one particle touched a hair of his head. For a moment he lost consciousness and then for a few seconds came to himself. He saw the dust rising up to meet and mingle curiously with the fog, and it seemed to him that out from the piled ruin two little cowled figures stepped delicately; and that one of these figures hesitated for a moment, and then turned back and came and looked down on him, and the impression he received was that he was regarded very benignly and gently and sweetly, and, as it were, said ‘goodbye’ to by something which gazed for a long, deep moment into his eyes and then slipped down the court and disappeared.

  The Cairn

  ‘I’D LIKE TO GO WITH YOU,’ said Welland, ‘but I think I had better nurse this heel if I’m to get through the rest of the trip.’

  ‘Yes, certainly,’ agreed Seebright, ‘you’d be a fool to attempt it. But I like the look of those silvery slopes above the wood. Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved high hills and virgin snow. I don’t imagine it will take me more than four hours or so up and down. All the same it might be as well to get one of the locals to go with me — it’s easy to miss the shortest way even on such a simple climb as old Brudon looks to be.’

  ‘Well, ring for our worthy host and see if he can arrange it.’

  Seebright pulled the bell-knob, and a moment later the landlord appeared, a tubby, rubicund Midlander, genial, of andante intelligence and consequently at perfect peace with the world.

  ‘Oh, Mr Reddle,’ said Seebright, ‘I’m going to climb Brudon tomorrow. Mr Welland has a bad heel and I want a companion; would someone from the village go with me?’

  ‘I don’t believe they would, sir,’ replied the landlord.

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Don’t they like the look of me?’

  Mr Reddle shifted about on his feet. ‘It isn’t that, sir, but the chaps about here won’t climb Brudon when snow’s lying.’

  ‘Why the devil not?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s just that way. They won’t go beyond the wood on any account, and most of ’em don’t like setting foot on the hill when snow’s lying.’

  ‘But why? I can’t imagine a simpler or easier climb. Is it because it’s too much like work?’

  ‘No, ’tain’t that. I’m not a native of these parts, so I don’t hear everything as a local chap would; but they’ve got some reason why they won’t go above Dim Wood in the snow.’

  ‘Is that big spinney half-way up Dim Wood?’ asked Welland.

  ‘Yes, sir. The fact is they think there’s something that wanders on the slopes above it when snow’s there.’

  ‘And hides behind the cairn and pounces on the unsuspecting climber?’ suggested Seebright, laughing.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Mr Reddle, looking startled, ‘that’s just what they does think.’

  ‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Seebright. ‘Do they think they’ve seen it?’

  ‘They’re pretty close about it, sir. The chaps get sullen like and changes the subject if it’s mentioned, but it seems as though they think they’ve seen some marks. I gather it’s a very old story, a sort of village secret.’

  ‘A very typical piece of folk-funk,’ said Welland. ‘A few probably perfectly explainable marks in the snow, and, of course, the devil or some other undesirable is abroad. Away goes the snow, away go the marks and away goes the devil.’

  ‘Well, landlord,’ said Seebright, ‘you’re above that sort of thing. Come with me tomorrow and help to lay what must be rather an inconvenient bogey.’

  ‘I don’t believe I will, sir,’ said Mr Reddle.

  ‘What!’ cried Seebright, ‘you don’t mean to say you believe this tripe?’

  ‘I don’t say I does, but I believes in being on the safe side in such things. I’d do the same if I was you, sir.’

  ‘Be damned to that! I’ll climb Brudon if it snows ink!’

  ‘As you please, sir, but in any case you wouldn’t want a guide, the way is as easy to find as hard to miss. I’ll show you, if you’ll look through the telescope. You takes the third turn to the right in the village — Dim Lane — that takes you up to that big clump of oaks; then you follows the hedge till you comes to a gate, and then you goes straight up to the wood. There is a path through that and then it’s all plain sailing to the cairn. And now I must go and see about your dinners, sir.’

  Pat Seebright and Leonard Welland differed in temperament as much as they differed in their command of this world’s goods. Yet to have laid down his life for the other would have been considered a privilege by either of them. If the summons had come, neither of them would have hesitated for a moment. They had been the fastest, firmest friends for twenty years. Pat made an easy £10,000 a year in his father’s stockbroker’s firm. Leonard secured from the National Income a precarious £250 as an usher in a small school. Yet the overwhelming disparity between their income-tax returns had never in the slightest degree tarnished their friendship, and Pat had never lent Leonard a penny. All he had done was to persuade him to allow him occasionally to do a little marginal speculation on his behalf with a rather mythical £50. These occasional flutters came off in a most magical manner, and every year a most welcome little increment was paid into Leonard’s bank. Intellectually, Pat was a child in comparison with Leonard, but in the practical affairs of life he was absolutely his master. Each envied and complemented the other. Pat was of an enterprising and inquiring type of mind, and Leonard stimulated and vitalised strata of his brain which would otherwise have perished of malnutrition.

  Neither was ever quite happy when separated from the other, though an innate sense of the supreme obscenity of sentimentality would ever have prevented them from acknowledging the fact. Their affection for each other so far surpassed the love of woman that had they been forced to face the conventionally considered ultimate tie of friendship by falling in love with the same one, they would have left her to celibacy or a third person with absolute contentment, in the certain knowledge that such a competition would have been essentially discordant and disgusting. Each secretly dreaded the possible marriage of the other, though in the case of poor Leonard, who had to think twice about purchasing packets of cigarettes, and who met about three fresh females per annum, such a contingency was highly improbable. (As things turned out there was no need for either of them to worry.) They always spent their holidays together, and on this occasion were passing the Christmas vacation in tramping the Lake District. Their time was almost up, for in three days’ time they were due to drive back to London in Pat’s impressive car. Perhaps it was this which seemed to cast a shadow over their dinner together that night. Both felt it and confessed to it. Pat applied his usually infallible antidote to irrational gloom by ordering a bottle of Mr Reddle’s champagne and two large glasses of his mediocre port. However, this medicine was not quite as successful as it should have been — the shadow remained.

  ‘That’s a curious yarn about Brudon and the snow,’ said Wellan
d. ‘In other circumstances it would be easier to explain. This alleged bogey might be, let us say, the personified terror of avalanches, but I don’t suppose an avalanche has sprayed down Brudon since the end of the Ice Age, and even the traditional memory of the good folk of Borthwaite cannot be as long as that. Still, even on Brudon a blizzard might not be too pleasant; are you sure you’re wise to go alone?’

  ‘Oh, perfectly,’ replied Seebright; ‘anyway, I shan’t start if the weather breaks. How’s the glass, Mr Reddle?’

  ‘Steady enough, sir. From the looks of the sky I’d say ’twill be fine but dullish tomorrow.’

  They went to bed early and Welland was asleep at once, but his rest was disturbed by the recurrence of a very idiotic little dream. It seemed to him that it was moonlight and that he was gazing through the telescope at the cairn, which was throwing a hard shadow on to the snow. And then this shadow began to move, and as it moved it changed its shape and became more like a crouching beast of some kind than any such shadow had a right to be. And were those flaming points red eyes? And each time, before he could make up his mind on this — for some reason or other — rather urgent question, he awoke. ‘Now I will not dream that again,’ he said to himself, but a moment later he was once more scrutinising with a growing anxiety and distaste this erratic and enigmatic shade. After this had happened five or six times he sat up in bed. Self-flatterers, he said to himself, would attribute this bother to nerves; honest men to alcohol. What should he do about it? Well, it occurred to him that if he crept very quietly downstairs and swung the telescope on to the cairn and proved to his full consciousness that nothing of the sort was abroad, then his subconscious — or whatever it was — would be convinced that no such wearisome phenomenon, such change of shape, was occurring at the crest of Brudon.

  The moon was filtering vague rays through light clouds. So much of his dream was true. Well, here was the telescope and there was Brudon. He put his eye to the lens and swung the glass to the cairn. And then he put it down and rubbed his eyes, and then he took it up again, stared through it intently for a full twenty seconds and put it down again. And then he returned rather slowly and thoughtfully to bed.