Read Online Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Dennis Parry - Free Book Online

said.
    Mrs. Ellison was looking at the mantelshelf, on which stood a faded cabinet photograph of a woman in Victorian dress. She lay propped up on a sofa. She might have been rather pretty but for the emaciation of her face which tightened the skin and gave her eyes an unnatural prominence like those of a Belgian hare.
    ‘Poor Fanny,’ said Mrs. Ellison, ‘later on it was harder for her.’ She fumbled the next words, then said quite distinctly: ‘We tried to take her mind off, to distract her. We made her a museum and she was very patient about it . . . but it’s not the same thing having a museum as the use of your backbone.’
    In Mrs. Ellison’s company I often felt that I was being sprinkled with an incredibly bland and refined irony. It fell as lightly as droplets flicked off the fingers. But to this day I cannot tell whether it was a real attribute or one with which I invested my hostess out of my own mind.
    ‘Still,’ she said, ‘you might find some of the curiosities amusing. They’re kept in the room above yours.’
    In spite of her courtesy I suspected that she was anxious to have the sitting-room to herself. I went upstairs and lay down on my bed. After an hour I felt distinctly better and boredom began to seep in. Since I had neglected to provide myself with a book, I thought I would accept the invitation to look over the museum.
    It was rather a pathetic place; the threadbare intention of comfort which was behind it peeped through the assorted muddle. Who really believes that sea-shells can exorcise the loneliness of the bath-chair or snuff-boxes the fear of death? Trays for the smaller objects ran along the walls; whilst in the centre of the room there was a huge cage of glass, with sliding partitions, which contained stuffed humming birds and a stuffed monkey and an armadillo which had undergone some kind of embalmery. On a rack hanging from the roof rested a couple of long Tibetan devil-trumpets.
    These were the hard core, the intractables, among the curios. As I have already explained, the specimens judged capable of domestication, including the clocks, had long ago been dispersed for the general beautification of the house. I should have liked to see the museum when it was full: the density of the whole mass must have been roughly that of plum-pudding.
    Some of the articles were genuinely interesting. Placed across a corner near the windows stood an enormous screen made out of mother-of-pearl and the feathers of kingfishers. I examined it for several minutes and then was filled with a desire to see how the constructor had dealt with the reverse side. Presumably he could not have left it as a mass of rough matrix and quills.
    I slipped behind the panels, where I was concealed but not blinded, since the fabric of shell and feathers, though ostensibly solid, was in fact pierced with numerous tiny peepholes. I had scarcely gone into this accidental retreat when the door opened and there entered a big man with wavy iron-grey hair. He walked slowly down the left-hand row of cases, pausing at intervals to inspect them. Finally he appeared to find the one he wanted, for he opened its lid and took out an object which I could not see.
    It suddenly struck me that my situation, originally excusable on grounds of surprise, was quickly becoming that of a spy.
    I stepped out from shelter, coughing modestly. At the same time my head again began to ache abominably.
    When he saw me the man’s face assumed an expression which is seldom seen except in diluted form. It was concentrated suspicion. And yet in spite of its idiosyncrasy the look was strangely familiar.
    ‘I was up here glancing at the things,’ I said.
    ‘You’re that boy,’ he said, as if to himself.
    Unless today’s young man of twenty has changed it is no way to his heart to refer to him as ‘that boy’.
    ‘I’m staying with Mrs. Ellison,’ I said stiffly.
    All over his face, he switched on an entirely different sort of stage-lighting. The