JOSEPH: A STORY

KATHERINE RICKFORD


They were sitting round the fire after dinner--not an ordinary fire, one
of those fires that has a little room all to itself with seats at each
side of it to hold a couple of people or three.

The big dining-room was panelled with oak. At the far end was a handsome
dresser that dated back for generations. One's imagination ran riot when
one pictured the people who must have laid those pewter plates on the
long, narrow, solid table. Massive, mediæval chests stood against the
walls. Arms and parts of armour hung against the panelling; but one
noticed few of these things, for there was no light in the room save
what the fire gave.

It was Christmas Eve. Games had been played. The old had vied with the
young at snatching raisins from the burning snapdragon. The children had
long since gone to bed; it was time their elders followed them, but they
lingered round the fire, taking turns at telling stories. Nothing very
weird had been told; no one had felt any wish to peep over his shoulder
or try to penetrate the darkness of the far end of the room; the
omission caused a sensation of something wanting. From each one there
this thought went out, and so a sudden silence fell upon the party. It
was a girl who broke it--a mere child; she wore her hair up that night
for the first time, and that seemed to give her the right to sit up so
late.

"Mr. Grady is going to tell one," she said.

All eyes were turned to a middle-aged man in a deep armchair placed
straight in front of the fire. He was short, inclined to be fat, with a
bald head and a pointed beard like the beards that sailors wear. It was
plain that he was deeply conscious of the sudden turning of so much
strained yet forceful thought upon himself. He was restless in his chair
as people are in a room that is overheated. He blinked his eyes as he
looked round the company. His lips twitched in a nervous manner. One
side of him seemed to be endeavouring to restrain another side of him
from a feverish desire to speak.

"It was this room that made me think of him," he said thoughtfully.

There was a long silence, but it occurred to no one to prompt him.
Everyone seemed to understand that he was going to speak, or rather that
something inside him was going to speak, some force that craved
expression and was using him as a medium.

The little old man's pink face grew strangely calm, the animation that
usually lit it was gone. One would have said that the girl who had
started him already regretted the impulse, and now wanted to stop him.
She was breathing heavily, and once or twice made as though she would
speak to him, but no words came. She must have abandoned the idea, for
she fell to studying the company. She examined them carefully, one by
one. "This one," she told herself, "is so-and-so, and that one there
just another so-and-so." She stared at them, knowing that she could not
turn them to herself with her stare. They were just bodies kept working,
so to speak, by some subtle sort of sentry left behind by the real
selves that streamed out in pent-up thought to the little old man in the
chair in front of the fire.

"His name was Joseph: at least they called him Joseph. He dreamed, you
understand--dreams. He was an extraordinary lad in many ways. His
mother--I knew her very well--had three children in quick succession,
soon after marriage; then ten years went by and Joseph was born. Quiet
and reserved he always was, a self-contained child whose only friend was
his mother. People said things about him, you know how people talk. Some
said he was not Clara's child at all, but that she had adopted him;
others, that her husband was not his father, and these put her change of
manner down to a perpetual struggle to keep her husband comfortably in
the dark. I always imagined that the boy was in some way aware of all
this gossip, for I noticed that he took a dislike to the people who
spread it most."

The little man rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and let the
tips of his fingers meet in front of him. A smile played about his
mouth. He seemed to be searching among his reminiscences for the one
that would give the clearest portrait of Joseph.

"Well, anyway," he said at last, "the boy was odd, there is no
gainsaying the fact. I suppose he was eleven when Clara came down here
with her family for Christmas. The Coningtons owned the place then--Mrs.
Conington was Clara's sister. It was Christmas Eve, as it is now, many
years ago. We had spent a normal Christmas Eve; a little happier,
perhaps, than usual by reason of the family reunion and because of the
presence of so many children. We had eaten and drank, laughed and played
and gone to bed."

"I woke in the middle of the night from sheer restlessness. Clara,
knowing my weakness, had given me a fire in my room. I lit a cigarette,
played with a book, and then, purely from curiosity, opened the door and
looked down the passage. From my door I could see the head of the
staircase in the distance; the opposite wing of the house, or the
passage rather beyond the stairs, was in darkness. The reason I saw the
staircase at all was that the window you pass coming downstairs allowed
the moon to throw an uncertain light upon it, a weird light because of
the stained glass. I was arrested by the curious effect of this patch of
light in so much darkness when suddenly someone came into it, turned,
and went downstairs. It was just like a scene in a theatre; something
was about to happen that I was going to miss. I ran as I was,
barefooted, to the head of the stairs and looked over the banister. I
was excited, strung up, too strung up to feel the fright that I knew
must be with me. I remember the sensation perfectly. I knew that I was
afraid, yet I did not feel fright."

"On the stairs nothing moved. The little hall down here was lost in
darkness. Looking over the banister I was facing the stained glass
window. You know how the stairs run round three sides of the hall; well,
it occurred to me that if I went half-way down and stood under the
window I should be able to keep the top of the stairs in sight and see
anything that might happen in the hall. I crept down very cautiously and
waited under the window. First of all, I saw the suit of empty armour
just outside the door here. You know how a thing like that, if you stare
at it in a poor light, appears to move; well, it moved sure enough, and
the illusion was enhanced by clouds being blown across the moon. By the
fire like this one can talk of these things rationally, but in the dead
of night it is a different matter, so I went down a few steps to make
sure of that armour, when suddenly something passed me on the stairs. I
did not hear it, I did not see it, I sensed it in no way, I just knew
that something had passed me on its way upstairs. I realized that my
retreat was cut off, and with the knowledge fear came upon me."

"I had seen someone come down the stairs; that, at any rate, was
definite; now I wanted to see him again. Any ghost is bad enough, but a
ghost that one can see is better than one that one can't. I managed to
get past the suit of armour, but then I had to feel my way to these
double doors here."

He indicated the direction of the doors by a curious wave of his hand.
He did not look toward them nor did any of the party. Both men and women
were completely absorbed in his story, they seemed to be mesmerized by
the earnestness of his manner. Only the girl was restless, she gave an
impression of impatience with the slowness with which he came to his
point. One would have said that she was apart from her fellows, an alien
among strangers.

"So dense was the darkness that I made sure of finding the first door
closed, but it was not, it was wide open, and, standing between them, I
could feel that the other was open, too. I was standing literally in the
wall of the house, and as I peered into the room, trying to make out
some familiar object, thoughts ran through my mind of people who had
been bricked up in walls and left there to die. For a moment I caught
the spirit of the inside of a thick wall. Then suddenly I felt the
sensation I have often read about but never experienced before: I knew
there was someone in the room. You are surprised, yes, but wait! I knew
more: I knew that that someone was conscious of my presence. It occurred
to me that whoever it was might want to get out of the door. I made
room for him to pass. I waited for him, made sure of him, began to feel
giddy, and then a man's voice, deep and clear:

'There is someone there; who is it?'

"I answered mechanically: 'George Grady.'

'I'm Joseph.'

"A match was drawn across a match-box, and I saw the boy bending over a
candle waiting for the wick to catch. For a moment I thought he must be
walking in his sleep, but he turned to me quite naturally and said in
his own boyish voice:

'Lost anything?'

"I was amazed at the lad's complete calm. I wanted to share my fright
with someone, instead I had to hide it from this boy. I was conscious of
a curious sense of shame. I had watched him grow, taught him, praised
him, scolded him, and yet here he was waiting for an explanation of my
presence in the dining-room at that odd hour of the night."

"Soon he repeated the question: 'Lost anything?'

'No,' I said, and then I stammered: 'Have you?'

'No,' he said with a little laugh. 'It's that room, I can't sleep in
it.'

'Oh,' I said. 'What's the matter with the room?'

'It's the room I was killed in,' he said quite simply.

"Of course I had heard about his dreams, but I had had no direct
experience of them; when, therefore, he said that he had been killed in
his room I took it for granted that he had been dreaming again. I was at
a loss to know quite how to tackle him; whether to treat the whole thing
as absurd and laugh it off as such, or whether to humour him and hear
his story. I got him upstairs to my room, sat him in a big armchair, and
poked the fire into a blaze."

"'You've been dreaming again,' I said bluntly.

'Oh, no I haven't. Don't you run away with that idea.'

"His whole manner was so grown up that it was quite unthinkable to treat
him as the child he really was. In fact, it was a little uncanny, this
man in a child's frame."

'I was killed there,' he said again.

"'How do you mean killed?' I asked him.

'Why, killed--murdered. Of course it was years and years ago, I can't
say when; still I remember the room. I suppose it was the room that
reminded me of the incident.'

"'Incident!' I exclaimed.

'What else? Being killed is only an incident in the existence of
anyone. One makes a fuss about it at the time, of course, but really
when you come to think of it...'

"'Tell me about it,' I said, lighting a cigarette. He lit one too, that
child, and began.

'You know my room is the only modern one in this old house.