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  THE DAMNED

  Algernon Blackwood

  1914

  Chapter I

  "I'm over forty, Frances, and rather set in my ways," I saidgood-naturedly, ready to yield if she insisted that our going togetheron the visit involved her happiness. "My work is rather heavy just nowtoo, as you know. The question is, could I work there--with a lot ofunassorted people in the house?"

  "Mabel doesn't mention any other people, Bill," was my sister'srejoinder. "I gather she's alone--as well as lonely."

  By the way she looked sideways out of the window at nothing, it wasobvious she was disappointed, but to my surprise she did not urge thepoint; and as I glanced at Mrs. Franklyn's invitation lying upon hersloping lap, the neat, childish handwriting conjured up a mental pictureof the banker's widow, with her timid, insignificant personality, herpale grey eyes and her expression as of a backward child. I thought,too, of the roomy country mansion her late husband had altered to suithis particular needs, and of my visit to it a few years ago when itsbarren spaciousness suggested a wing of Kensington Museum fitted uptemporarily as a place to eat and sleep in. Comparing it mentally withthe poky Chelsea flat where I and my sister kept impecunious house, Irealized other points as well. Unworthy details flashed across me toentice: the fine library, the organ, the quiet work-room I should have,perfect service, the delicious cup of early tea, and hot baths at anymoment of the day--without a geyser!

  "It's a longish visit, a month--isn't it?" I hedged, smiling at thedetails that seduced me, and ashamed of my man's selfishness, yetknowing that Frances expected it of me. "There are points about it, Iadmit. 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 sawher tired eyes gazing into the dreariness of Oakley Street and felt apang 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 Iusually 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 mydiminutive study, where I was slaving, just then, at an absorbingarticle on Comparative Aesthetic Values in the Blind and Deaf.

  But Frances did not move. She kept her grey eyes upon Oakley Streetwhere the evening mist from the river drew mournful perspectives intoview. It was late October. We heard the omnibuses thundering across thebridge. The monotony of that broad, characterless street seemed morethan usually depressing. Even in June sunshine it was dead, but withautumn its melancholy soaked into every house between King's Road andthe Embankment. It washed thought into the past, instead of inviting ithopefully towards the future. For me, its easy width was an avenuethrough which nameless slums across the river sent creeping messages ofdepression, and I always regarded it as Winter's main entrance intoLondon--fog, slush, gloom trooped down it every November, waving theirforbidding banners till March came to rout them.

  Its one claim upon my love was that the south wind swept sometimesunobstructed up it, soft with suggestions of the sea. These lugubriousthoughts I naturally kept to myself, though I never ceased to regret thelittle flat whose cheapness had seduced us. Now, as I watched mysister's impassive face, I realized that perhaps she, too, felt as Ifelt, yet, brave woman, without betraying it.

  "And, look here, Fanny," I said, putting a hand upon her shoulder as Icrossed the room, "it would be the very thing for you. You're worn outwith 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 sisterinterposed. "She came back rather unexpectedly, though I never thoughtshe would go there to live--" She stopped abruptly. Clearly, she wasonly speaking half her mind. "Probably," she went on, "Mabel wants topick up old links again."

  "Naturally," I put in, "yourself chief among them." The veiled referenceto the house I let pass.

  It involved discussing the dead man for one thing.

  "I feel I ought to go anyhow," she resumed, "and of course it would bejollier if you came too. You'd get in such a muddle here by yourself,and eat wrong things, and forget to air the rooms, and--oh, everything!"She looked up laughing. "Only," she added, "there's the BritishMuseum--?"

  "But there's a big library there," I answered, "and all the books ofreference I could possibly want. It was of you I was thinking. You couldtake up your painting again; you always sell half of what you paint. Itwould be a splendid rest too, and Sussex is a jolly country to walk in.By all means, Fanny, I advise--"

  Our eyes met, as I stammered in my attempts to avoid expressing thethought that hid in both our minds. My sister had a weakness fordabbling in the various "new" theories of the day, and Mabel, who beforeher marriage had belonged to foolish societies for investigating thefuture life to the neglect of the present one, had fostered thisundesirable tendency. Her amiable, impressionable temperament was opento every psychic wind that blew. I deplored, detested the wholebusiness. But even more than this I abhorred the later influence thatMr. Franklyn had steeped his wife in, capturing her body and soul in hissomber doctrines. I had dreaded lest my sister also might be caught.

  "Now that she is alone again--"

  I stopped short. Our eyes now made pretence impossible, for the truthhad slipped out inevitably, stupidly, although unexpressed in definitelanguage. We laughed, turning our faces a moment to look at other thingsin the room. Frances picked up a book and examined its cover as thoughshe had made an important discovery, while I took my case out and lit acigarette I did not want to smoke. We left the matter there. I went outof the room before further explanation could cause tension.Disagreements grow into discord from such tiny things--wrong adjectives,or a chance inflection of the voice. Frances had a right to her views oflife as much as I had. At least, I reflected comfortably, we hadseparated upon an agreement this time, recognized mutually, though notactually stated.

  And this point of meeting was, oddly enough, our way of regarding someone who was dead.

  For we had both disliked the husband with a great dislike, and duringhis three years' married life had only been to the house once--for aweekend visit; arriving late on Saturday, we had left after an earlybreakfast on Monday morning. Ascribing my sister's dislike to a naturaljealousy at losing her old friend, I said merely that he displeased me.Yet we both knew that the real emotion lay much deeper. Frances, loyal,honorable creature, had kept silence; and beyond saying that house andgrounds--he altered one and laid out the other--distressed her as anexpression of his personality somehow ('distressed' was the word sheused), no further explanation had passed her lips.

  Our dislike of his personality was easily accounted for--up to a point,since both of us shared the artist's point of view that a creed, cut tomeasure and carefully dried, was an ugly thing, and that a dogma towhich believers must subscribe or perish everlastingly was a barbarismresting upon cruelty. But while my own dislike was purely due to anabstract worship of Beauty, my sister's had another twist in it, forwith her "new" tendencies, she believed that all religions were anaspect of truth and that no one, even the lowest wretch, could escape"heaven" in the long run.

  Samuel Franklyn, the rich banker, was a man universally respected andadmired, and the marriage, though Mabel was fifteen years his junior,won general applause; his bride was an heiress in her own right--breweries--and the story of her conversion at a revivalist meeting whereSamuel Franklyn had spoken fervidly of heaven, and terrifyingly of sin,hell and damnation, even contained a touch of genuine romance. She was abrand snatched from the burning; his detailed eloquence had frightenedher into heaven; salvation came in the nick of time; his words hadplucked her from the edge of that lake of fire and brim
stone where theirworm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. She regarded him as a hero,sighed her relief upon his saintly shoulder, and accepted the peace heoffered her with a grateful resignation.

  For her husband was a "religious man" who successfully combined greatriches with the glamour of winning souls. He was a portly figure, thoughtall, with masterful, big hands, his fingers rather thick and red; andhis dignity, that just escaped being pompous, held in it something thatwas implacable. A convinced assurance, almost remorseless, gleamed inhis eyes when he preached especially, and his threats of hell fire musthave scared souls stronger than the timid, receptive Mabel whom hemarried. He clad himself in long frock-coats hat buttoned unevenly, bigsquare boots, and trousers that invariably bagged at the knee and were alittle short; he wore low collars, spats occasionally, and a tall blackhat that was not of silk. His voice was alternately hard and unctuous;and he regarded theaters, ballrooms, and racecourses as the vestibule ofthat brimstone lake of whose geography he was as positive as of hisgreat banking offices in the City. A philanthropist up to the hilt,however, no one ever doubted his complete sincerity; his convictionswere ingrained, his faith borne out by his life--as witness his nameupon so many admirable Societies, as treasurer, patron, or heading thedonation list. He bulked large in the world of doing good, a broad andstately stone in the rampart against evil. And his heart was genuinelykind and soft for others--who believed as he did.

  Yet, in spite of this true sympathy with suffering and his desire tohelp, he was narrow as a telegraph wire and unbending as a churchpillar; he was intensely selfish; intolerant as an officer of theInquisition, his bourgeois soul constructed a revolting scheme of heaventhat was reproduced in miniature in all he did and planned. Faith wasthe sine qua non of salvation, and by "faith" he meant belief in his ownparticular view of things--"which faith, except every one do keep wholeand undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly." All theworld but his own small, exclusive sect must be damned eternally--apity, but alas, inevitable. He was right.

  Yet he prayed without ceasing, and gave heavily to the poor--the onlything he could not give being big ideas to his provincial and suburbandeity. Pettier than an insect, and more obstinate than a mule, he hadalso the superior, sleek humility of a "chosen one." He was churchwardentoo. He read the lesson in a "place of worship," either chilly oroverheated, where neither organ, vestments, nor lighted candles werepermitted, but where the odor of hair-wash on the boys' heads in theback rows pervaded the entire building.

  This portrait of the banker, who accumulated riches both on earth and inheaven, may possibly be overdrawn, however, because Frances and I were"artistic temperaments" that viewed the type with a dislike and distrustamounting to contempt. The majority considered Samuel Franklyn a worthyman and a good citizen. The majority, doubtless, held the saner view. Afew years more, and he certainly would have been made a baronet. Herelieved much suffering in the world, as assuredly as he caused manysouls the agonies of torturing fear by his emphasis upon damnation.

  Had there been one point of beauty in him, we might have been morelenient; only we found it not, and, I admit, took little pains tosearch. I shall never forget the look of dour forgiveness with which heheard our excuses for missing Morning Prayers that Sunday morning of oursingle visit to The Towers. My sister learned that a change was madesoon afterwards, prayers being "conducted" after breakfast instead ofbefore.

  The Towers stood solemnly upon a Sussex hill amid park-like moderngrounds, but the house cannot better be described--it would be sowearisome for one thing--than by saying that it was a cross between anovergrown, pretentious Norwood villa and one of those saturnineInstitutes for cripples the train passes as it slinks ashamed throughSouth London into Surrey. It was "wealthily" furnished and at firstsight imposing, but on closer acquaintance revealed a meagerpersonality, barren and austere. One looked for Rules and Regulations onthe walls, all signed By Order. The place was a prison that shut out"the world." There was, of course, no billiard-room, no smoking-room, noroom for play of any kind, and the great hall at the back, once achapel, which might have been used for dancing, theatricals, or otherinnocent amusements, was consecrated in his day to meetings of variouskinds, chiefly brigades, temperance or missionary societies. There was aharmonium at one end--on the level floor--a raised dais or platform atthe other, and a gallery above for the servants, gardeners, andcoachmen. It was heated with hot-water pipes, and hung with Dor?'spictures, though these latter were soon removed and stored out of sightin the attics as being too unspiritual. In polished, shiny wood, it wasa representation in miniature of that poky exclusive Heaven he tookabout with him, externalizing it in all he did and planned, even in thegrounds about the house.

  Changes in The Towers, Frances told me, had been made during Mabel'syear of widowhood abroad--an organ put into the big hall, the librarymade livable and re-catalogued--when it was permissible to suppose shehad found her soul again and returned to her normal, healthy views oflife, which included enjoyment and play, literature, music and the arts,without, however, a touch of that trivial thoughtlessness usually termedworldliness. Mrs. Franklyn, as I remembered her, was a quiet littlewoman, shallow, perhaps, and easily influenced, but sincere as a dog andthorough in her faithful Friendship. Her tastes at heart were catholic,and that heart was simple and unimaginative. That she took up with thevarious movements of the day was sign merely that she was searching inher limited way for a belief that should bring her peace. She was, infact, a very ordinary woman, her caliber a little less than that ofFrances. I knew they used to discuss all kinds of theories together, butas these discussions never resulted in action, I had come to regard heras harmless. Still, I was not sorry when she married, and I did notwelcome now a renewal of the former intimacy. The philanthropist she hadgiven no children, or she would have made a good and sensible mother. Nodoubt she would marry again.

  "Mabel mentions that she's been alone at The Towers since the end ofAugust," Frances told me at teatime; "and I'm sure she feels out of itand lonely. It would be a kindness to go. Besides, I always liked her."

  I agreed. I had recovered from my attack of selfishness. I expressed mypleasure.

  "You've written to accept," I said, half statement and half question.

  Frances nodded. "I thanked for you," she added quietly, "explaining thatyou were not free at the moment, but that later, if not inconvenient,you might come down for a bit and join me."

  I stared. Frances sometimes had this independent way of deciding things.I was convicted, and punished into the bargain.

  Of course there followed argument and explanation, as between brotherand sister who were affectionate, but the recording of our talk could beof little interest. It was arranged thus, Frances and I both satisfied.Two days later she departed for The Towers, leaving me alone in the flatwith everything planned for my comfort and good behavior--she was rathera tyrant in her quiet way--and her last words as I saw her off fromCharing Cross rang in my head for a long time after she was gone:

  "I'll write and let you know, Bill. Eat properly, mind, and let me knowif anything goes wrong."

  She waved her small gloved hand, nodded her head till the featherbrushed the window, and was gone.