The Damned | Page 5

stairs of the Multitechnic Institute at Peckham--you know--that life-size
one with his fat hand sprinkled with rings resting on a thick Bible and
the other slipped between the buttons of a tight frock-coat. It hangs in
the dining room and rather dominates our meals. I wish Mabel would
take it down. I think she'd like to, if she dared. There's not a single
photograph of him anywhere, even in her own room. Mrs. Marsh is
here--you remember her, his housekeeper, the wife of the man who got
penal servitude for killing a baby or something--you said she robbed
him and justified her stealing because the story of the unjust steward
was in the Bible! How we laughed over that! She's just the same too,
gliding about all over the house and turning up when least expected."
Other reminiscences filled the next two sides of the letter, and ran,
without a trace of punctuation, into instructions about a Salamander
stove for heating my work-room in the flat; these were followed by
things I was to tell the cook, and by requests for several articles she had
forgotten and would like sent after her, two of them blouses, with

descriptions so lengthy and contradictory that I sighed as I read them--
"unless you come down soon, in which case perhaps you wouldn't mind
bringing them; not the mauve one I wear in the evening sometimes, but
the pale blue one with lace round the collar and the crinkly front.
They're in the cupboard--or the drawer, I'm not sure which--of my
bedroom. Ask Annie if you're in doubt. Thanks most awfully. Send a
telegram, remember, and we'll meet you in the motor any time. I don't
quite know if I shall stay the whole month--alone. It all depends...."
And she closed the letter, the italicized words increasing recklessly
towards the end, with a repetition that Mabel would love to have me
"for myself," as also to have a "man in the house," and that I only had
to telegraph the day and the train.... This letter, coming by the second
post, interrupted me in a moment of absorbing work, and, having read
it through to make sure there was nothing requiring instant attention, I
threw it aside and went on with my notes and reading. Within five
minutes, however, it was back at me again. That restless thing called
"between the lines" fluttered about my mind. My interest in the Balkan
States--political article that had been "ordered"--faded. Somewhere,
somehow I felt disquieted, disturbed. At first I persisted in my work,
forcing myself to concentrate, but soon found that a layer of new
impressions floated between the article and my attention. It was like a
shadow, though a shadow that dissolved upon inspection. Once or
twice I glanced up, expecting to find some one in the room, that the
door had opened unobserved and Annie was waiting for instructions. I
heard the buses thundering across the bridge. I was aware of Oakley
Street.
Montenegro and the blue Adriatic melted into the October haze along
that depressing Embankment that aped a riverbank, and sentences from
the letter flashed before my eyes and stung me. Picking it up and
reading it through more carefully, I rang the bell and told Annie to find
the blouses and pack them for the post, showing her finally the written
description, and resenting the superior smile with which she at once
interrupted. "I know them, sir," and disappeared.
But it was not the blouses: it was that exasperating thing "between the
lines" that put an end to my work with its elusive teasing nuisance. The

first sharp impression is alone of value in such a case, for once analysis
begins the imagination constructs all kinds of false interpretation. The
more I thought, the more I grew fuddled. The letter, it seemed to me,
wanted to say another thing; instead the eight sheets conveyed it merely.
It came to the edge of disclosure, then halted.
There was something on the writer's mind, and I felt uneasy. Studying
the sentences brought, however, no revelation, but increased confusion
only; for while the uneasiness remained, the first clear hint had
vanished. In the end I closed my books and went out to look up another
matter at the British Museum library. Perhaps I should discover it that
way--by turning the mind in a totally new direction. I lunched at the
Express Dairy in Oxford Street close by, and telephoned to Annie that I
would be home to tea at five.
And at tea, tired physically and mentally after breathing the exhausted
air of the Rotunda for five hours, my mind suddenly delivered up its
original impression, vivid and clear-cut; no proof accompanied the
revelation; it was mere presentiment, but convincing. Frances was
disturbed in her mind,