Read Online Short Stories 1895-1926 by Walter de la Mare - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Walter de la Mare
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seldom missed.
Until but a few steps separated them, it was one of Sarahâs queer habits to make believe, so to speak, that Alice was not there at all. Then, as regularly, from her place of vantage on the other side of the wall, she would slowly and heavily lift her eyes to her face, with a sudden energy which at first considerably alarmed the young girl, and afterwards amused her. For certainly you are amused in a sort of fashion when any stranger you might suppose to be a little queer in the head proves perfectly harmless. Alice did not exactly like Sarah. But she could no more resist her advances than the garden could resist the coming on of night.
Miss Lennox, too, it must be confessed, was a rather tedious and fretful companion for wits (like Aliceâs) always wool-gathering â wool, moreover, of the shimmering kind that decked the Golden Fleece. Her own conception of the present was of a niche in Time from which she was accustomed to look back on the dim, though once apparently garish, panorama of the past; while with Alice, Time had kept promises enough only for a surety of its immense resources â resources illimitable, even though up till now they had been pretty tightly withheld.
Or, if you so preferred, as Alice would say to herself, you could put it that Miss Lennox had all her eggs in a real basket, and that Alice had all hers in a basket that was not exactly real â only problematical.
All the more reason, then, for Alice to think it a little queer that it had been Miss Lennox herself and not Sarah who had first given shape and substance to her vaguely bizarre intuitions concerning the garden â a walled-in space in which one might suppose intuition alone could discover anything in the least remarkable.
âWhen my cousin, Mary Wilson (the Wilsons of Aberdeen, as I may have told you), when my cousin lived in this house,â she had informed her young companion, one evening over her own milk and oatmeal biscuits, âthere was a silly talk with the maids that it was haunted.â
âThe house?â Alice had enquired, with a sudden crooked look on a face that Nature, it seemed, had definitely intended to be frequently startled; âThe house?â
âI didnât say the house, â Miss Lennox testily replied â it always annoyed her to see anything resembling a flush on her young companionâs cheek, âand even if I did, I certainly meant the garden. If I had meant the house, I should have used the word house. I meant the garden. It was quite unnecessary to correct or contradict me; and whether or not, itâs all the purest rubbish â just a tale, though, not the only one of the kind in the world, I fancy.â
âDo you remember any of the other tales?â Alice had enquired, after a rather prolonged pause.
âNo, noneâ; was the flat reply.
And so it came about that to Sarah (though she could hardly be described as the Serpent of the situation) to Sarah fell the opportunity of enjoying to the full an opening for her fantastic âloreâ. By insinuation, by silences, now with contemptuous scepticism, now with enormous warmth, she cast her spell, weaving an eager imagination through and through with the rather gaudy threads of superstition.
âLor, no, Crimes, maybe not, though blood is in the roots for all I can say.â She had looked up almost candidly in the warm, rainy wind, her deadish-looking hair blown back from her forehead.
âSomeâll tell you only the old people have eyes to see the mystery; and some, old or young, if so be theyâre ripe. Nothing to me either way; Iâm gone past such things. And what it is, âorror and darkness, or golden like a saint in heaven, or pictures in dreams, or just like dying fireworks in the air, the Lord alone knows, Miss, for I donât. But this I will say,â and she edged up her body a little closer to the wall, the raindrops the while dropping
Until but a few steps separated them, it was one of Sarahâs queer habits to make believe, so to speak, that Alice was not there at all. Then, as regularly, from her place of vantage on the other side of the wall, she would slowly and heavily lift her eyes to her face, with a sudden energy which at first considerably alarmed the young girl, and afterwards amused her. For certainly you are amused in a sort of fashion when any stranger you might suppose to be a little queer in the head proves perfectly harmless. Alice did not exactly like Sarah. But she could no more resist her advances than the garden could resist the coming on of night.
Miss Lennox, too, it must be confessed, was a rather tedious and fretful companion for wits (like Aliceâs) always wool-gathering â wool, moreover, of the shimmering kind that decked the Golden Fleece. Her own conception of the present was of a niche in Time from which she was accustomed to look back on the dim, though once apparently garish, panorama of the past; while with Alice, Time had kept promises enough only for a surety of its immense resources â resources illimitable, even though up till now they had been pretty tightly withheld.
Or, if you so preferred, as Alice would say to herself, you could put it that Miss Lennox had all her eggs in a real basket, and that Alice had all hers in a basket that was not exactly real â only problematical.
All the more reason, then, for Alice to think it a little queer that it had been Miss Lennox herself and not Sarah who had first given shape and substance to her vaguely bizarre intuitions concerning the garden â a walled-in space in which one might suppose intuition alone could discover anything in the least remarkable.
âWhen my cousin, Mary Wilson (the Wilsons of Aberdeen, as I may have told you), when my cousin lived in this house,â she had informed her young companion, one evening over her own milk and oatmeal biscuits, âthere was a silly talk with the maids that it was haunted.â
âThe house?â Alice had enquired, with a sudden crooked look on a face that Nature, it seemed, had definitely intended to be frequently startled; âThe house?â
âI didnât say the house, â Miss Lennox testily replied â it always annoyed her to see anything resembling a flush on her young companionâs cheek, âand even if I did, I certainly meant the garden. If I had meant the house, I should have used the word house. I meant the garden. It was quite unnecessary to correct or contradict me; and whether or not, itâs all the purest rubbish â just a tale, though, not the only one of the kind in the world, I fancy.â
âDo you remember any of the other tales?â Alice had enquired, after a rather prolonged pause.
âNo, noneâ; was the flat reply.
And so it came about that to Sarah (though she could hardly be described as the Serpent of the situation) to Sarah fell the opportunity of enjoying to the full an opening for her fantastic âloreâ. By insinuation, by silences, now with contemptuous scepticism, now with enormous warmth, she cast her spell, weaving an eager imagination through and through with the rather gaudy threads of superstition.
âLor, no, Crimes, maybe not, though blood is in the roots for all I can say.â She had looked up almost candidly in the warm, rainy wind, her deadish-looking hair blown back from her forehead.
âSomeâll tell you only the old people have eyes to see the mystery; and some, old or young, if so be theyâre ripe. Nothing to me either way; Iâm gone past such things. And what it is, âorror and darkness, or golden like a saint in heaven, or pictures in dreams, or just like dying fireworks in the air, the Lord alone knows, Miss, for I donât. But this I will say,â and she edged up her body a little closer to the wall, the raindrops the while dropping
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