He heard a noise. He hung up hat and coat in the pokey vestibule (they never called it “hall”) and moved softly towards the parlour door, holding the packages behind him. Only of them he thought, not of himself — of his family, that is, not of the packages. Pushing the door cunningly ajar, he peeped in slyly. To his amazement, the room was full of people! He withdrew quickly, wondering what it meant. A party? And without his knowing about it! Extraordinary! ... Keen disappointment came over him. But, as he stepped back, the vestibule, he saw, was full of people too.
He was uncommonly surprised, yet somehow not surprised at all. People were congratulating him. There was a perfect mob of them. Moreover, he knew them all — vaguely remembered them, at least. And they all knew him.
“Isn’t it a game?” laughed some one, patting him on the back. “They haven’t the least idea ...!”
And the speaker — it was old John Palmer, the bookkeeper at the office — emphasised the “they.”
“Not the least idea,” he answered with a smile, saying something he didn’t understand, yet knew was right.
His face, apparently, showed the utter bewilderment he felt. The shock of the collision had been greater than he realised evidently. His mind was wandering. ... Possibly! Only the odd thing was — he had never felt so clear-headed in his life. Ten thousand things grew simple suddenly. But, how thickly these people pressed about him, and how — familiarly!
“My parcels,” he said, joyously pushing his way across the throng. “These are Christmas presents I’ve bought for them.” He nodded toward the room. “I’ve saved for weeks — stopped cigars and billiards and — and several other good things — to buy them.”
“Good man!” said Palmer with a happy laugh. “It’s the heart that counts.”
Mudbury looked at him. Palmer had said an amazing truth, only — people would hardly understand and believe him. ... Would they?
“Eh?” he asked, feeling stuffed and stupid, muddled somewhere between two meanings, one of which was gorgeous and the other stupid beyond belief.
“If you please, Mr. Mudbury, step inside. They are expecting you,” said a kindly, pompous voice. And, turning sharply, he met the gentle, foolish eyes of Sir James Epiphany, a director of the Bank where he worked.
The effect of the voice was instantaneous from long habit.
“They are?” he smiled from his heart, and advanced as from the custom of many years. Oh, how happy and gay he felt! His affection for his wife was real. Romance, indeed, had gone, but he needed her — and she needed him. And the children — Milly, Bill, and Jean — he deeply loved them. Life was worth living indeed!
In the room was a crowd, but — an astounding silence. John Mudbury looked round him. He advanced towards his wife, who sat in the corner arm-chair with Milly on her knee. A lot of people talked and moved about. Momentarily the crowd increased. He stood in front of them — in front of Milly and his wife. And he spoke — holding out his packages. “It’s Christmas Eve,” he whispered shyly, “and I’ve — brought you something — something for everybody. Look!” He held the packages before their eyes.
“Of course, of course,” said a voice behind him, “but you may hold them out like that for a century. They’ll never see them!”
“Of course they won’t. But I love to do the old, sweet thing,” replied John Mudbury — then wondered with a gasp of stark amazement why he said it.
“I think — —” whispered Milly, staring round her.
“Well, what do you think?” her mother asked sharply. “You’re always thinking something queer.”
“I think,” the child continued dreamily, “that Daddy’s already here.” She paused, then added with a child’s impossible conviction, “I’m sure he is. I feel him.”
There was an extraordinary laugh. Sir James Epiphany laughed. The others — the whole crowd of them — also turned their heads and smiled. But the mother, thrusting the child away from her, rose up suddenly with a violent start. Her face had turned to chalk. She stretched her arms out — into the air before her. She gasped and shivered. There was an awful anguish in her eyes.
“Look!” repeated John, “these are the presents that I brought.”
But his voice apparently was soundless. And, with a spasm of icy pain, he remembered that Palmer and Sir James — some years ago — had died.
“It’s magic,” he cried, “but — I love you, Jinny — I love you — and — and I have always been true to you — as true as steel. We need each other — oh, can’t you see — we go on together — you and I — for ever and ever — —”
“Think,” interrupted an exquisitely tender voice, “don’t shout! They can’t hear you — now.” And, turning, John Mudbury met the eyes of Everard Minturn, their President of the year before. Minturn had gone down with the Titanic.
He dropped his parcels then. His heart gave an enormous leap of joy.
He saw her face — the face of his wife — look through him.
But the child gazed straight into his eyes. She saw him.
The next thing he knew was that he heard something tinkling ... far, far away. It sounded miles below him — inside him — he was sounding himself — all utterly bewildering — like a bell. It was a bell.
Milly stooped down and picked the parcels up. Her face shone with happiness and laughter. ...
But a man came in soon after, a man with a ridiculous, solemn face, a pencil, and a notebook. He wore a dark blue helmet. Behind him came a string of other men. They carried something ... something ... he could not see exactly what it was. But when he pressed forward through the laughing throng to gaze upon it, he dimly made out two eyes, a nose, a chin, a deep red smear, and a pair of folded hands upon an overcoat. A woman’s form fell down upon them then, and ... he heard ... soft sounds of children weeping strangely ... and other sounds ... sounds as of familiar voices ... laughing ... laughing gaily.
“They’ll join us presently. It goes like a flash. ...”
And, turning with great happiness in his heart, he saw that Sir James had said it, holding Palmer by the arm as with some natural yet unexpected love of sympathetic friendship.
“Come on,” said Palmer, smiling like a man who accepts a gift in universal fellowship, “let’s help ‘em. They’ll never understand. ... Still, we can always try.”
The entire throng moved up with laughter and amusement. It was a moment of hearty, genuine life at last. Delight and Joy and Peace were everywhere.
Then John Mudbury realised the truth — that he was dead.
XV
THE TRADITION
The noises outside the little flat at first were very disconcerting after living in the country. They made sleep difficult. At the cottage in Sussex where the family had lived, night brought deep, comfortable silence, unless the wind was high, when the pine trees round the duck-pond made a sound like surf, or if the gale was from the south-west, the orchard roared a bit unpleasantly.
But in London it was very different; sleep was easier in the daytime than at night. For after nightfall the rumble of the traffic became spasmodic instead of continuous; the motor-horns startled like warnings of alarm; after comparative silence the furious rushing of a taxi-cab touched the nerves. From dinner till eleven o’clock the streets subsided gradually; then came the army from theatres, parties, and late dinners, hurrying home to bed. The motor-horns during this hour were lively and incessant, like bugles of a regiment moving into battle. The parents rarely retired until this attack was over. If quick about it, sleep was possible then before the flying of the night-birds — an uncertain squadron — screamed half the street awake again. But, these finally disposed of, a delightful hush settled down upon the neighbourhood, profounder far than any peace of the countryside. The deep rumble of the produce wagons, coming in to the big London markets from the farms — generally about three A.M. — held no disturbing quality.
But sometimes in the stillness of very early morning, when streets were empty and pavements all
deserted, there was a sound of another kind that was startling and unwelcome. For it was ominous. It came with a clattering violence that made nerves quiver and forced the heart to pause and listen. A strange resonance was in it, a volume of sound, moreover, that was hardly justified by its cause. For it was hoofs. A horse swept hurrying up the deserted street, and was close upon the building in a moment. It was audible suddenly, no gradual approach from a distance, but as though it turned a corner from soft ground that muffled the hoofs, on to the echoing, hard paving that emphasised the dreadful clatter. Nor did it die away again when once the house was reached. It ceased as abruptly as it came. The hoofs did not go away.
It was the mother who heard them first, and drew her husband’s attention to their disagreeable quality.
“It is the mail-vans, dear,” he answered. “They go at four A. M. to catch the early trains into the country.”
She looked up sharply, as though something in his tone surprised her.
“But there’s no sound of wheels,” she said. And then, as he did not reply, she added gravely, “You have heard it too, John. I can tell.”
“I have,” he said. “I have heard it — twice.”
And they looked at one another searchingly, each trying to read the other’s mind. She did not question him; he did not propose writing to complain in a newspaper; both understood something that neither of them understood.
“I heard it first,” she then said softly, “the night before Jack got the fever. And as I listened, I heard him crying. But when I went in to see he was asleep. The noise stopped just outside the building.” There was a shadow in her eyes as she said this, and a hush crept in between her words. “I did not hear it go.” She said this almost beneath her breath.
He looked a moment at the ground; then, coming towards her, he took her in his arms and kissed her. And she clung very tightly to him.
“Sometimes,” he said in a quiet voice, “a mounted policeman passes down the street, I think.”
“It is a horse,” she answered. But whether it was a question or mere corroboration he did not ask, for at that moment the doctor arrived, and the question of little Jack’s health became the paramount matter of immediate interest. The great man’s verdict was uncommonly disquieting.
All that night they sat up in the sick room. It was strangely still, as though by one accord the traffic avoided the house where a little boy hung between life and death. The motor-horns even had a muffled sound, and heavy drays and wagons used the wide streets; there were fewer taxicabs about, or else they flew by noiselessly. Yet no straw was down; the expense prohibited that. And towards morning, very early, the mother decided to watch alone. She had been a trained nurse before her marriage, accustomed when she was younger to long vigils. “You go down, dear, and get a little sleep,” she urged in a whisper. “He’s quiet now. At five o’clock I’ll come for you to take my place.”
“You’ll fetch me at once,” he whispered, “if — —” then hesitated as though breath failed him. A moment he stood there staring from her face to the bed. “If you hear anything,” he finished. She nodded, and he went downstairs to his study, not to his bedroom. He left the door ajar. He sat in darkness, listening. Mother, he knew, was listening, too, beside the bed. His heart was very full, for he did not believe the boy could live till morning. The picture of the room was all the time before his eyes — the shaded lamp, the table with the medicines, the little wasted figure beneath the blankets, and mother close beside it, listening. He sat alert, ready to fly upstairs at the smallest cry.
But no sound broke the stillness; the entire neighbourhood was silent; all London slept. He heard the clock strike three in the dining-room at the end of the corridor. It was still enough for that. There was not even the heavy rumble of a single produce wagon, though usually they passed about this time on their way to Smithfield and Covent Garden markets. He waited, far too anxious to close his eyes. ... At four o’clock he would go up and relieve her vigil. Four, he knew, was the time when life sinks to its lowest ebb. ... Then, in the middle of his reflections, thought stopped dead, and it seemed his heart stopped too.
Far away, but coming nearer with extraordinary rapidity, a sharp, clear sound broke out of the surrounding stillness — a horse’s hoofs. At first it was so distant that it might have been almost on the high roads of the country, but the amazing speed with which it came closer, and the sudden increase of the beating sound, was such, that by the time he turned his head it seemed to have entered the street outside. It was within a hundred yards of the building. The next second it was before the very door. And something in him blenched. He knew a moment’s complete paralysis. The abrupt cessation of the heavy clatter was strangest of all. It came like lightning, it struck, it paused. It did not go away again. Yet the sound of it was still beating in his ears as he dashed upstairs three steps at a time. It seemed in the house as well, on the stairs behind him, in the little passage-way, inside the very bedroom. It was an appalling sound. Yet he entered a room that was quiet, orderly, and calm. It was silent. Beside the bed his wife sat, holding Jack’s hand and stroking it. She was soothing him; her face was very peaceful. No sound but her gentle whisper was audible.
He controlled himself by a tremendous effort, but his face betrayed his consternation and distress. “Hush,” she said beneath her breath; “he’s sleeping much more calmly now. The crisis, bless God, is over, I do believe. I dared not leave him.”
He saw in a moment that she was right, and an untenable relief passed over him. He sat down beside her, very cold, yet perspiring with heat.
“You heard —— ?” he asked after a pause.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly, “except his pitiful, wild words when the delirium was on him. It’s passed. It lasted but a moment, or I’d have called you.”
He stared closely into her tired eyes. “And his words?” he asked in a whisper. Whereupon she told him quietly that the little chap had sat up with wide-opened eyes and talked excitedly about a “great, great horse” he heard, but that was not “coming for him.” “He laughed and said he would not go with it because he ‘was not ready yet.’ Some scrap of talk he had overheard from us,” she added, “when we discussed the traffic once. ...”
“But you heard nothing?” he repeated almost impatiently.
No, she had heard nothing. After all, then, he had dozed a moment in his chair. ...
Four weeks later Jack, entirely convalescent, was playing a restricted game of hide-and-seek with his sister in the flat. It was really a forbidden joy, owing to noise and risk of breakages, but he had unusual privileges after his grave illness. It was dusk. The lamps in the street were being lit. “Quietly, remember; your mother’s resting in her room,” were the father’s orders. She had just returned from a week by the sea, recuperating from the strain of nursing for so many nights. The traffic rolled and boomed along the streets below.
“Jack! Do come on and hide. It’s your turn. I hid last.”
But the boy was standing spellbound by the window, staring hard at something on the pavement. Sybil called and tugged in vain. Tears threatened. Jack would not budge. He declared he saw something.
“Oh, you’re always seeing something. I wish you’d go and hide. It’s only because you can’t think of a good place, really.”
“Look!” he cried in a voice of wonder. And as he said it his father rose quickly from his chair before the fire.
“Look!” the child repeated with delight and excitement. “It’s a great big horse. And it’s perfectly white all over.” His sister joined him at the window. “Where? Where? I can’t see it. Oh, do show me!”
Their father was standing close behind them now. “I heard it,” he was whispering, but so low the children did not notice him. His face was the colour of chalk.
“Straight in front of our door, stupid! Can’t you see it? Oh, I do wish it had come for me. It’s such a beauty!” And he clapped his hands with pleasure and excitement. “Quick, quick! It’s go
ing away again!”
But while the children stood half-squabbling by the window, their father leaned over a sofa in the adjoining room above a figure whose heart in sleep had quietly stopped its beating. The great white horse had come. But this time he had not only heard its wonderful arrival. He had also heard it go. It seemed he heard the awful hoofs beat down the sky, far, far away, and very swiftly, dying into silence, finally up among the stars.
THE END
WOLVES OF GOD, AND OTHER FEY STORIES
CONTENTS
THE WOLVES OF GOD
CHINESE MAGIC
RUNNING WOLF
FIRST HATE
THE TARN OF SACRIFICE
THE VALLEY OF THE BEASTS
THE CALL
EGYPTIAN SORCERY
THE DECOY
THE MAN WHO FOUND OUT (A NIGHTMARE)
THE EMPTY SLEEVE
WIRELESS CONFUSION
CONFESSION
THE LANE THAT RAN EAST AND WEST
VENGEANCE IS MINE
THE WOLVES OF GOD
1
As the little steamer entered the bay of Kettletoft in the Orkneys the beach at Sanday appeared so low that the houses almost seemed to be standing in the water; and to the big, dark man leaning over the rail of the upper deck the sight of them came with a pang of mingled pain and pleasure. The scene, to his eyes, had not changed. The houses, the low shore, the flat treeless country beyond, the vast open sky, all looked exactly the same as when he left the island thirty years ago to work for the Hudson Bay Company in distant N. W. Canada. A lad of eighteen then, he was now a man of forty-eight, old for his years, and this was the home-coming he had so often dreamed about in the lonely wilderness of trees where he had spent his life. Yet his grim face wore an anxious rather than a tender expression. The return was perhaps not quite as he had pictured it.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 532
