THE BLUE
ROOM
That nature has her moments of sympathy with man
has been noted often enough,—and generally as a new discovery; to us, who had
never known any other condition of things, it seemed entirely right and fitting
that the wind sang and sobbed in the poplar tops, and in the lulls of it,
sudden spirts of rain spattered the already dusty roads, on that blusterous
March day when Edward and I awaited, on the station platform, the arrival of
the new tutor. Needless to say, this arrangement had been planned by an aunt, from
some fond idea that our shy, innocent young natures would unfold themselves
during the walk from the station, and that on the revelation of each other’s
more solid qualities that must then inevitably ensue, an enduring friendship
springing from mutual respect might be firmly based. A pretty dream,—nothing
more. For Edward, who foresaw that the brunt of tutorial oppression would have
to be borne by him, was sulky, monosyllabic, and determined to be as negatively
disagreeable as good manners would permit. It was therefore evident that I
would have to be spokesman and purveyor of hollow civilities, and I was none
the more amiable on that account; all courtesies, welcomes, explanations, and
other court-chamberlain kind of business, being my special aversion. There was
much of the tempestuous March weather in the hearts of both of us, as we
sullenly glowered along the carriage-windows of the slackening train.
One is apt,
however, to misjudge the special difficulties of a situation; and the reception
proved, after all, an easy and informal matter. In a trainful so uniformly
bucolic, a tutor was readily recognisable; and his portmanteau had been
consigned to the luggage-cart, and his person conveyed into the lane, before I
had discharged one of my carefully considered sentences. I breathed more
easily, and, looking up at our new friend as we stepped out together,
remembered that we had been counting on something altogether more arid,
scholastic, and severe. A boyish eager face and a petulant pince-nez,—untidy hair,—a
head of constant quick turns like a robin’s, and a voice that kept breaking
into alto,—these were all very strange and new, but not in the least terrible.
He proceeded
jerkily through the village, with glances on this side and that; and
“Charming,” he broke out presently; “quite too charming and delightful!”
I had not counted
on this sort of thing, and glanced for help to Edward, who, hands in pockets,
looked grimly down his nose. He had taken his line, and meant to stick to it.
Meantime our
friend had made an imaginary spy-glass out of his fist, and was squinting
through it at something I could not perceive. “What an exquisite bit!” he burst
out; “fifteenth century,—no,—yes, it is!”
I began to feel
puzzled, not to say alarmed. It reminded me of the butcher in the Arabian
Nights, whose common joints, displayed on the shop-front, took to a startled
public the appearance of dismembered humanity. This man seemed to see the
strangest things in our dull, familiar surroundings.
“Ah!” he broke
out again, as we jogged on between hedgerows: “and that field now—backed by the
downs—with the rain-cloud brooding over it,—that’s all David Cox—every bit of
it!”
“That field
belongs to Farmer Larkin,” I explained politely, for of course he could not be
expected to know. “I’ll take you over to Farmer Cox’s to-morrow, if he’s a
friend of yours; but there’s nothing to see there.”
Edward, who was
hanging sullenly behind, made a face at me, as if to say, “What sort of lunatic
have we got here?”
“It has the true
pastoral character, this country of yours,” went on our enthusiast: “with just
that added touch in cottage and farmstead, relics of a bygone art, which makes
our English landscape so divine, so unique!”
Really this
grasshopper was becoming a burden. These familiar fields and farms, of which we
knew every blade and stick, had done nothing that I knew of to be bespattered
with adjectives in this way. I had never thought of them as divine, unique, or
anything else. They were—well, they were just themselves, and there was an end
of it. Despairingly I jogged Edward in the ribs, as a sign to start rational
conversation, but he only grinned and continued obdurate.
“You can see the
house now,” I remarked, presently; “and that’s Selina, chasing the donkey in
the paddock,—or is it the donkey chasing Selina? I can’t quite make out; but
it’s THEM, anyhow.”
Needless to say,
he exploded with a full charge of adjectives. “Exquisite!” he rapped out; “so
mellow and harmonious! and so entirely in keeping!” (I could see from Edward’s
face that he was thinking who ought to be in keeping.) “Such possibilities of
romance, now, in those old gables!”
“If you mean the
garrets,” I said, “there’s a lot of old furniture in them; and one is generally
full of apples; and the bats get in sometimes, under the eaves, and flop about
till we go up with hair-brushes and things and drive ‘em out; but there’s
nothing else in them that I know of.”
“Oh, but there
must be more than bats,” he cried. “Don’t tell me there are no ghosts. I shall
be deeply disappointed if there aren’t any ghosts.”
I did not think
it worth while to reply, feeling really unequal to this sort of conversation;
besides, we were nearing the house, when my task would be ended. Aunt Eliza met
us at the door, and in the cross-fire of adjectives that ensued—both of them
talking at once, as grown-up folk have a habit of doing—we two slipped round to
the back of the house, and speedily put several solid acres between us and
civilisation, for fear of being ordered in to tea in the drawing-room. By the
time we returned, our new importation had gone up to dress for dinner, so till
the morrow at least we were free of him.
Meanwhile the
March wind, after dropping a while at sundown, had been steadily increasing in
volume; and although I fell asleep at my usual hour, about midnight I was
wakened by the stress and cry of it. In the bright moonlight, wind-swung
branches tossed and swayed eerily across the blinds; there was rumbling in
chimneys, whistling in keyholes, and everywhere a clamour and a call. Sleep was
out of the question, and, sitting up in bed, I looked round. Edward sat up too.
“I was wondering when you were going to wake,” he said. “It’s no good trying to
sleep through this. I vote we get up and do something.”
“I’m game,” I
replied. “Let’s play at being in a ship at sea” (the plaint of the old house
under the buffeting wind suggested this, naturally); “and we can be wrecked on
an island, or left on a raft, whichever you choose; but I like an island best
myself, because there’s more things on it.”
Edward on
reflection negatived the idea. “It would make too much noise,” he pointed out.
“There’s no fun playing at ships, unless you can make a jolly good row.”
The door creaked,
and a small figure in white slipped cautiously in. “Thought I heard you
talking,” said Charlotte. “We don’t like it; we’re afraid—Selina too. She’ll be
here in a minute. She’s putting on her new dressing-gown she’s so proud of.”
His arms round
his knees, Edward cogitated deeply until Selina appeared, barefooted, and
looking slim and tall in the new dressing-gown. Then, “Look here,” he
exclaimed; “now we’re all together, I vote we go and explore!”
“You’re always
wanting to explore,” I said. “What on earth is there to explore for in this
house?”
“Biscuits!” said
the inspired Edward.
“Hooray! Come
on!” chimed in Harold, sitting up suddenly. He had been awake all the time, but
had been shamming asleep, lest he should be fagged to do anything.
It was indeed a
fact, as Edward had remembered, that our thoughtless elders occasionally left
the biscuits out, a prize for the night-walking adventurer with nerves of
steel.
Edward tumbled
out of bed, and pulled a baggy old pair of knickerbockers over his bare shanks.
Then he girt himself with a belt, into which he thrust, on the one side a large
wooden pistol, on the other an old single-stick; and finally he donned a big slouch-hat—once
an uncle’s—that we used for playing Guy Fawkes and Charles-the-Second up-a-tree
in. Whatever the audience, Edward, if possible, always dressed for his parts
with care and conscientiousness; while Harold and I, true Elizabethans, cared
little about the mounting of the piece, so long as the real dramatic heart of
it beat sound.
Our commander now
enjoined on us a silence deep as the grave, reminding us that Aunt Eliza
usually slept with an open door, past which we had to file.
“But we’ll take
the short cut through the Blue Room,” said the wary Selina.
“Of course,” said
Edward, approvingly. “I forgot about that. Now then! You lead the way!”
The Blue Room had
in prehistoric times been added to by taking in a superfluous passage, and so
not only had the advantage of two doors, but enabled us to get to the head of
the stairs without passing the chamber wherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It
was rarely occupied, except when a casual uncle came down for the night. We
entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a
bright strip of moonlight on the floor, across which we must pass for our exit.
On this our leading lady chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to study the
hang of her new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she proceeded, after
the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a minuet down the moonlit
patch with an imaginary partner. This was too much for Edward’s histrionic
instincts, and after a moment’s pause he drew his single-stick, and with flourishes
meet for the occasion, strode onto the stage. A struggle ensued on approved
lines, at the end of which Selina was stabbed slowly and with unction, and her
corpse borne from the chamber by the ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed
after in a clump, with capers and gesticulations of delight; the special charm
of the performance lying in the necessity for its being carried out with the
dumbest of dumb shows.
Once out on the
dark landing, the noise of the storm without told us that we had exaggerated the
necessity for silence; so, grasping the tails of each other’s nightgowns even
as Alpine climbers rope themselves together in perilous places, we fared
stoutly down the staircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier of the hall, to
where a faint glimmer from the half-open door of the drawing-room beckoned to
us like friendly hostel-lights. Entering, we found that our thriftless seniors
had left the sound red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into a cheerful blaze;
and biscuits—a plateful—smiled at us in an encouraging sort of way, together
with the halves of a lemon, already once squeezed but still suckable. The
biscuits were righteously shared, the lemon segments passed from mouth to
mouth; and as we squatted round the fire, its genial warmth consoling our unclad
limbs, we realised that so many nocturnal perils had not been braved in vain.
“It’s a funny
thing,” said Edward, as we chatted, “how; I hate this room in the daytime. It
always means having your face washed, and your hair brushed, and talking silly company
talk. But to-night it’s really quite jolly. Looks different, somehow.”
“I never can make
out,” I said, “what people come here to tea for. They can have their own tea at
home if they like,—they’re not poor people,—with jam and things, and drink out
of their saucer, and suck their fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come
here from a long way off, and sit up straight with their feet off the bars of
their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of stuff every time.”
Selina sniffed
disdainfully. “You don’t know anything about it,” she said. “In society you
have to call on each other. It’s the proper thing to do.”
“Pooh! YOU’RE not
in society,” said Edward, politely; “and, what’s more, you never will be.”
“Yes, I shall,
some day,” retorted Selina; “but I shan’t ask you to come and see me, so
there!”
“Wouldn’t come if
you did,” growled Edward.
“Well, you won’t
get the chance,” rejoined our sister, claiming her right of the last word.
There was no heat about these little amenities, which made up—as we understood
it—the art of polite conversation.
“I don ‘t like
society people,” put in Harold from the sofa, where he was sprawling at full
length,—a sight the daylight hours would have blushed to witness. “There were
some of ‘em here this afternoon, when you two had gone off to the station. Oh,
and I found a dead mouse on the lawn, and I wanted to skin it, but I wasn’t
sure I knew how, by myself; and they came out into the garden and patted my
head,—I wish people wouldn’t do that,—and one of ‘em asked me to pick her a
flower. Don’t know why she couldn’t pick it herself; but I said, ‘All right, I
will if you’ll hold my mouse.’ But she screamed, and threw it away; and
Augustus (the cat) got it, and ran away with it. I believe it was really his
mouse all the time, ‘cos he’d been looking about as if he had lost something,
so I wasn’t angry with HIM; but what did SHE want to throw away my mouse for?”
“You have to be
careful with mice,” reflected Edward; “they’re such slippery things. Do you
remember we were playing with a dead mouse once on the piano, and the mouse was
Robinson Crusoe, and the piano was the island, and somehow Crusoe slipped down
inside the island, into its works, and we couldn’t get him out, though we tried
rakes and all sorts of things, till the tuner came. And that wasn’t till a week
after, and then—”
Here Charlotte,
who had been nodding solemnly, fell over into the fender; and we realised that
the wind had dropped at last, and the house was lapped in a great stillness.
Our vacant beds seemed to be calling to us imperiously; and we were all glad
when Edward gave the signal for retreat. At the top of the staircase Harold
unexpectedly turned mutinous, insisting on his right to slide down the
banisters in a free country. Circumstances did not allow of argument; I
suggested frog’s-marching instead, and frog’s-marched he accordingly was, the
procession passing solemnly across the moonlit Blue Room, with Harold
horizontal and limply submissive. Snug in bed at last, I was just slipping off into
slumber when I heard Edward explode, with chuckle and snort.
“By Jove!” he
said; “I forgot all about it. The new tutor’s sleeping in the Blue Room!”
“Lucky he didn’t
wake up and catch us,” I grunted, drowsily; and both of us, without another
thought on the matter, sank into well-earned repose.
Next morning we
came down to breakfast braced to grapple with fresh adversity, but were
surprised to find our garrulous friend of the previous day—he was late in
making his appearance—strangely silent and (apparently) preoccupied. Having
polished off our porridge, we ran out to feed the rabbits, explaining to them
that a beast of a tutor would prevent their enjoying so much of our society as
formerly.
On returning to
the house at the fated hour appointed for study, we were thunderstruck to see
the station-cart disappearing down the drive, freighted with our new
acquaintance. Aunt Eliza was brutally uncommunicative; but she was overheard to
remark casually that she thought the man must be a lunatic. In this theory we
were only too ready to concur, dismissing thereafter the whole matter from our
minds.
Some weeks later
it happened that Uncle Thomas, while paying us a flying visit, produced from
his pocket a copy of the latest weekly, Psyche: a Journal of the Unseen; and
proceeded laborously to rid himself of much incomprehensible humour, apparently
at our expense. We bore it patiently, with the forced grin demanded by
convention, anxious to get at the source of inspiration, which it presently
appeared lay in a paragraph circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum
habitation. “Case III.,” it began. “The following particulars were communicated
by a young member of the Society, of undoubted probity and earnestness, and are
a chronicle of actual and recent experience.” A fairly accurate description of
the house followed, with details that were unmistakable; but to this there
succeeded a flood of meaningless drivel about apparitions, nightly visitants,
and the like, writ in a manner betokening a disordered mind, coupled with a
feeble imagination. The fellow was not even original. All the old material was
there,—the storm at night, the haunted chamber, the white lady, the murder
re-enacted, and so on,—already worn threadbare in many a Christmas Number. No
one was able to make head or tail of the stuff, or of its connexion with our
quiet mansion; and yet Edward, who had always suspected the man, persisted in
maintaining that our tutor of a brief span was, somehow or other, at the bottom
of it.
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