‘I buttoned my coat closer, and tried to divert my thoughts by thinking of next Sunday’s sermon.
‘I had chosen to preach on Job. There is much in the old-fashioned notion of the book, apart from all the subtleties of the higher criticism, that appeals to country people; the loss of herds and crops, the break up of the family. I would not have dared to speak, had not I too been a farmer; my own glebe land had been flooded three weeks before, and I suppose I stood to lose as much as any man in the parish. As I walked along the road repeating to myself the first chapter of the book, I stopped at the twelfth verse:
‘ “And the Lord said unto Satan: Behold, all that he hath is in thy power . . .”
‘The thought of the bad harvest (and that is an awful thought in these valleys) vanished. I seemed to gaze into an ocean of infinite darkness.
‘I had often used, with the Sunday glibness of the tired priest, whose duty it is to preach three sermons in one day, the old simile of the chess-board. God and the Devil were the players: and we were helping one side or the other. But, until that night I had not thought of the possibility of my being only a pawn in the game, that God might throw away that the game might be won.
‘I had reached the place where we are now, I remember it by that rough stone water-trough, when a man suddenly jumped up from the roadside. He had been seated on a heap of broken road metal.
‘ “Which way are you going, guv’ner?” he said.
‘I knew from the way he spoke that the man was a stranger. There are many at this time of the year who come up from the south, tramping northwards with the ripening corn. I told him my destination.
‘ “We’ll go along together,” he replied.
‘It was too dark to see much of the man’s face, but what little I made out was coarse and brutal.
‘Then he began the half-menacing whine I knew so well—he had tramped miles that day, he had had no food since breakfast, and that was only a crust.
‘ “Give us a copper,” he said, “it’s only for a night’s lodging.”
‘He was whittling away with a big clasp knife at an ash stake he had taken from some hedge.’
The clergyman broke off.
‘Are those the lights of your house?’ he said. ‘We are nearer than I expected, but I shall have time to finish my story. I think I will, for you can run home in a couple of minutes, and I don’t want you to be frightened when you are out on the moors again.
‘As the man talked he seemed to have stepped out of the very background of my thoughts, his sordid tale, with the sad lies that hid a far sadder truth.
‘He asked me the time.
‘It was five minutes to nine. As I replaced my watch I glanced at his face. His teeth were clenched, and there was something in the gleam of his eyes that told me at once his purpose.
‘Have you ever known how long a second is? For a third of a second I stood there facing him, filled with an overwhelming pity for myself and him; and then without a word of warning he was upon me. I felt nothing. A flash of lightning ran down my spine, I heard the dull crash of the ash stake, and then a very gentle patter like the sound of a far distant stream. For a minute I lay in perfect happiness watching the lights of the house as they increased in number until the whole heaven shone with twinkling lamps.
‘I could not have had a more painless death.’
Miss Craig looked up. The man was gone; she was alone on the moor.
She ran to the house, her teeth chattering, ran to the solid shadow that crossed and recrossed the kitchen blind.
As she entered the hall, the clock on the stairs struck the hour.
It was nine o’clock.
AUGUST HEAT
PENISTONE ROAD, CLAPHAM,
20th August, 190-.
I HAVE had what I believe to be the most remarkable day in my life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible.
Let me say at the outset that my name is James Clarence Withencroft.
I am forty years old, in perfect health, never having known a day’s illness.
By profession I am an artist, not a very successful one, but I earn enough money by my black-and-white work to satisfy my necessary wants.
My only near relative, a sister, died five years ago, so that I am independent.
I breakfasted this morning at nine, and after glancing through the morning paper I lighted my pipe and proceeded to let my mind wander in the hope that I might chance upon some subject for my pencil.
The room, though door and windows were open, was oppressively hot, and I had just made up my mind that the coolest and most comfortable place in the neighbourhood would be the deep end of the public swimming-bath, when the idea came.
I began to draw. So intent was I on my work that I left my lunch untouched, only stopping work when the clock of St Jude’s struck four.
The final result, for a hurried sketch, was, I felt sure, the best thing I had done.
It showed a criminal in the dock immediately after the judge had pronounced sentence. The man was fat—enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin; it creased his huge, stumpy neck. He was clean-shaven (perhaps I should say a few days before he must have been clean shaven) and almost bald. He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers clasping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse.
There seemed nothing in the man strong enough to sustain that mountain of flesh.
I rolled up the sketch, and without quite knowing why, placed it in my pocket. Then with the rare sense of happiness which the knowledge of a good thing well done gives, I left the house.
I believe that I set out with the idea of calling upon Trenton, for I remember walking along Lytton Street and turning to the right along Gilchrist Road at the bottom of the hill where the men were at work on the new tram lines.
From there onwards I have only the vaguest recollection of where I went. The one thing of which I was fully conscious was the awful heat, that came up from the dusty asphalt pavement as an almost palpable wave. I longed for the thunder promised by the great banks of copper-coloured cloud that hung low over the western sky.
I must have walked five or six miles, when a small boy roused me from my reverie by asking the time.
It was twenty minutes to seven.
When he left me I began to take stock of my bearings. I found myself standing before a gate that led into a yard bordered by a strip of thirsty earth, where there were flowers, purple stock and scarlet geranium. Above the entrance was a board with the inscription:
CHS. ATKINSON. MONUMENTAL MASON.
WORKER IN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN MARBLES.
From the yard itself came a cheery whistle, the noise of hammer blows, and the cold sound of steel meeting stone.
A sudden impulse made me enter.
A man was sitting with his back towards me, busy at work on a slab of curiously veined marble. He turned round as he heard my steps and I stopped short.
It was the man I had been drawing, whose portrait lay in my pocket.
He sat there, huge and elephantine, the sweat pouring from his scalp, which he wiped with a red silk handkerchief. But though the face was the same, the expression was absolutely different.
He greeted me smiling, as if we were old friends, and shook my hand.
I apologised for my intrusion.
‘Everything is hot and glary outside,’ I said. ‘This seems an oasis in the wilderness.’
‘I don’t know about the oasis,’ he replied, ‘but it certainly is hot, as hot as hell. Take a seat, sir!’
He pointed to the end of the gravestone on which he was at work, and I sat down.
‘That’s a beautiful piece of stone you’ve got hold of,’ I said. He shook his head. ‘In a way it is,’ he answered; ‘the surface here is as fine as anything you could wish, but there’s a big flaw at the back, though I don’t expect you�
��d ever notice it. I could never make really a good job of a bit of marble like that. It would be all right in a summer like this; it wouldn’t mind the blasted heat. But wait till the winter comes. There’s nothing quite like frost to find out the weak points in stone.’
‘Then what’s it for?’ I asked.
The man burst out laughing.
‘You’d hardly believe me if I was to tell you it’s for an exhibition, but it’s the truth. Artists have exhibitions: so do grocers and butchers; we have them too. All the latest little things in headstones, you know.’
He went on to talk of marbles, which sort best withstood wind and rain, and which were easiest to work; then of his garden and a new sort of carnation he had bought. At the end of every other minute he would drop his tools, wipe his shining head, and curse the heat.
I said little, for I felt uneasy. There was something unnatural, uncanny, in meeting this man.
I tried at first to persuade myself that I had seen him before, that his face, unknown to me, had found a place in some out-of-the-way corner of my memory, but I knew that I was practising little more than a plausible piece of self-deception.
Mr Atkinson finished his work, spat on the ground, and got up with a sigh of relief.
‘There! what do you think of that?’ he said, with an air of evident pride.
The inscription which I read for the first time was this:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
JAMES CLARENCE WITHENCROFT.
BORN JAN. 18TH, 1860.
HE PASSED AWAY VERY SUDDENLY
ON AUGUST 20TH, 190-
‘In the midst of life we are in death’
For some time I sat in silence. Then a cold shudder ran down my spine. I asked him where he had seen the name.
‘Oh, I didn’t see it anywhere,’ replied Mr Atkinson. ‘I wanted some name, and I put down the first that came into my head. Why do you want to know?’
‘It’s a strange coincidence, but it happens to be mine.’
He gave a long, low whistle.
‘And the dates?’
‘I can only answer for one of them, and that’s correct.’
‘It’s a rum go!’ he said.
But he knew less than I did. I told him of my morning’s work. I took the sketch from my pocket and showed it to him. As he looked, the expression of his face altered until it became more and more like that of the man I had drawn.
‘And it was only the day before yesterday,’ he said, ‘that I told Maria there were no such things as ghosts!’
Neither of us had seen a ghost, but I knew what he meant.
‘You probably heard my name,’ I said.
‘And you must have seen me somewhere and have forgotten it! Were you at Clacton-on-Sea last July?’
I had never been to Clacton in my life. We were silent for some time. We were both looking at the same thing, the two dates on the gravestone, and one was right.
‘Come inside and have some supper,’ said Mr Atkinson.
His wife is a cheerful little woman, with the flaky red cheeks of the country-bred. Her husband introduced me as a friend of his who was an artist. The result was unfortunate, for after the sardines and watercress had been removed, she brought out a Doré Bible, and I had to sit and express my admiration for nearly half an hour.
I went outside, and found Atkinson sitting on the gravestone smoking.
We resumed the conversation at the point we had left off.
‘You must excuse my asking,’ I said, ‘but do you know of anything you’ve done for which you could be put on trial?’
He shook his head.
‘I’m not a bankrupt, the business is prosperous enough. Three years ago I gave turkeys to some of the guardians at Christmas, but that’s all I can think of. And they were small ones, too,’ he added as an afterthought.
He got up, fetched a can from the porch, and began to water the flowers. ‘Twice a day regular in the hot weather,’ he said, ‘and then the heat sometimes gets the better of the delicate ones. And ferns, good Lord! they could never stand it. Where do you live?’
I told him my address. It would take an hour’s quick walk to get back home.
‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘We’ll look at the matter straight. If you go back home tonight, you take your chance of accidents. A cart may run over you, and there’s always banana skins and orange peel, to say nothing of falling ladders.’
He spoke of the improbable with an intense seriousness that would have been laughable six hours before. But I did not laugh.
‘The best thing we can do,’ he continued, ‘is for you to stay here till twelve o’clock. We’ll go upstairs and smoke; it may be cooler inside.’
To my surprise I agreed.
***
We are sitting now in a long, low room beneath the eaves. Atkinson has sent his wife to bed. He himself is busy sharpening some tools at a little oilstone, smoking one of my cigars the while.
The air seems charged with thunder. I am writing this at a shaky table before the open window. The leg is cracked, and Atkinson, who seems a handy man with his tools, is going to mend it as soon as he has finished putting an edge on his chisel.
It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour. But the heat is stifling.
It is enough to send a man mad.
SAMBO
ONE THING is certain: Arthur ought never to have sent Janey the doll.
It came about like this.
He wrote us one of his absurd letters from a place in Africa, where he had been helping to put down a native rising. It was embellished as usual with lively pen-and-ink sketches of his black soldiers (who seemed to bear an extraordinary likeness to Christy Minstrels), and in a postscript contained the information that he was sending Janey a little black doll he had discovered in a deserted hut.
The doll appeared a fortnight later, wrapped up in a year-old engineering supplement of The Times, tied together with three knotted pieces of string. The stamps I put by for my three-year-old nephew, until the time arrived when he would be able to appreciate their value.
Janey was disappointed, and I do not wonder at it. She had been looking forward to the arrival of this new member of her family, all the more eagerly because Cicely White had been unbearably conceited about a doll her godmother had sent from Paris. The little African, instead of having a neatly painted trunk containing an elaborate wardrobe, appeared on the removal of his paper covering in a state of absolute nudity. I think Janey could have forgiven his lack of clothes if he had been less ugly. Without doubt he was hideous. His nose was a shapeless, protruding lump; his lips were thick, and his hair was represented by a collection of knobs. The one redeeming feature was his size; he measured just two feet and a half, and could stand unsupported in the bath of Condy’s fluid to which he was subjected. But I thought my sister wrong in punishing Janey for her tears; the contrast between Sambo and Cicely White’s gay Parisienne was too great.
For three whole days Sambo remained unnoticed and uncared for, in the engineering supplement. During that period Mary in her leisure moments made a few alterations in a scarlet petticoat she had originally intended for a youthful inhabitant of Uganda.
Clothed in this garment, Sambo looked uglier than before. Janey would not come near him. She hated him. He was not a nice doll. She even asked Mary to take him away. But my sister has never spoiled her nephews and nieces. She drew a graphic if inaccurate picture of Arthur’s surprise and resentment if he knew the manner in which his gift had been received.
Her authority, but not her arguments, prevailed. After an altogether unreasonable amount of crying, even in so sensitive a child as Janey, Sambo’s rights were acknowledged.
Sambo was a name for which Janey was not responsible. If she had been left to herself she would have called the doll IT, and nothing more. But Mary is one of those people who believe that all dogs should be called Rover and all canaries Dick. When Sambo arrived there was never any doubt in her m
ind as to the name; my diffident suggestion of Lobengula was contemptuously dismissed on the ground that that individual came from an altogether different part of Africa.
The doll, at the period of his adoption, had fourteen brothers and sisters of different nationalities. As was natural, he took his place at the bottom of the class, was the last to be washed, the first to be put to bed, and if the plates and cups gave out at teatime, he was the one to suffer.
Sambo arrived at the beginning of October; by the end of the month a change had set in. One day I surprised Janey at tea. Sambo was sitting in the fourteenth place with the last cup and saucer before him, and Gulielma Maria, a plain but well-meaning doll, was going supperless to bed.
Needless to say, I accused my niece of injustice and favouritism. She was very pale, and tears were in her eyes. She told me that she was sorry for Guly, but she could not help it. It was Sambo’s fault, and she hated him for it.
I thought the explanation a trifle lame, and offered to take Guly to tea downstairs; my proposal was promptly and joyfully accepted.
A week later Sambo was ninth on the list, Nelson, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a golliwog, and Gulielma Maria being, below him, and on his plate, in the manner of Benjamin of old, was a double portion.
In vain I remonstrated. It seemed that Sambo had insisted. Janey was exceedingly sorry for the others, but she could not help it.
On 1st November, Sambo had risen to the fourth place. He wore, in addition to his scarlet petticoat, a pair of stockings which belonged to the Salvation Army lass sitting next to him, and whose feet seemed to have suffered from the exposure that the absence of their usual covering involved. I asked Janey if she had offered the stockings to him of her own free will. No, the Salvation Army lass had almost broken her heart. It was Sambo’s fault. He wanted them, and Janey had pulled them off when Susan was asleep.
The Double Eye Page 4
