Algernon Blackwood

The Damned

Algernon Blackwood

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I

good-naturedly, ready to yield if she insisted that our going together

on the visit involved her happiness. ‘My work is rather heavy just now

too, as you know. The question is, could I work there—with a lot of

unassorted people in the house?’

‘Mabel doesn’t mention any other people, Bill,’ was my sister’s

rejoinder. ‘I gather she’s alone—as well as lonely.’

By the way she looked sideways out of the window at nothing, it was

obvious she was disappointed, but to my surprise she did not urge the

point; and as I glanced at Mrs. Franklyn’s invitation lying upon her

sloping lap, the neat, childish handwriting conjured up a mental

picture of the banker’s widow, with her timid, insignificant

personality, her pale grey eyes and her expression as of a backward

child. I thought, too, of the roomy country mansion her late husband

had altered to suit his particular needs, and of my visit to it a few

years ago when its barren spaciousness suggested a wing of Kensington

Museum fitted up temporarily as a place to eat and sleep in. Comparing

it mentally with the poky Chelsea flat where I and my sister kept

impecunious house, I realised other points as well. Unworthy details

flashed across me to entice:

the fine library, the organ, the quiet workroom I should have,

perfect service, the delicious cup of early tea, and hot baths at any

moment of the day—without a geyser!

‘It’s a longish visit, a month—isn’t it?’ I hedged, smiling at the

details that seduced me, and ashamed of my man’s selfishness, yet

knowing that Frances expected it of me. ‘There are points about it, I

admit. If you’re set on my going with you, I could manage it all

right.’

I spoke at length in this way because my sister made no answer. I

saw her tired eyes gazing into the dreariness of Oakley Street and

felt a pang strike through me. After a pause, in which again she said

no word, I added: ‘So, when you write the letter, you might hint,

perhaps, that I usually work all the morning, and—er—am not a very

lively visitor! Then she’ll understand, you see.’ And I half-rose to

return to my diminutive study, where I was slaving, just then, at an

absorbing article on Comparative Aesthetic Values in the Blind and

Deaf.

But Frances did not move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Street

where the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives into

view. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across

the bridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed

more than usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but

with autumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King’s Road

and the Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of

inviting it hopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was

an avenue through which nameless slums across the river sent creeping

messages of depression, and I always regarded it as Winter’s main

entrance into London—fog, slush, gloom trooped down it every

November, waving their forbidding banners till March came to rout them.

Its one claim upon my love was that the south wind swept sometimes

unobstructed up it, soft with suggestions of the sea. These lugubrious

thoughts I naturally kept to myself, though I never ceased to regret

the little flat whose cheapness had seduced us. Now, as I watched my

sister’s.impassive face, I realised that perhaps she, too, felt as I

felt, yet, brave woman, without betraying it.

‘And, look here, Fanny,’ I said, putting a hand upon her shoulder

as I crossed the room, ‘it would be the very thing for you. You’re

worn out with catering and housekeeping. Mabel is your oldest friend,

besides, and you’ve hardly seen her since he died—’

‘She’s been abroad for a year, Bill, and only just came back,’ my

sister interposed. ‘She came back rather unexpectedly, though I never

thought she would go there to live—’ She stopped abruptly. Clearly,

she was only speaking half her mind. ‘Probably,’ she went on, ‘Mabel

wants to pick up old links again.’

‘Naturally,’ I put in, ‘yourself chief among them.’ The veiled

reference to the house I let pass.

It involved discussing the dead man for one thing.