While the Light Lasts. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ the House was empty!

      Quite empty and exquisitely peaceful. It was as he remembered it ten years before. He had not forgotten. There was a huge black furniture van moving slowly away from the House. The last tenant, of course, moving out with his goods. He went up to the men in charge of the van and spoke to them. There was something rather sinister about that van, it was so very black. The horses were black, too, with freely flowing manes and tails, and the men all wore black clothes and gloves. It all reminded him of something else, something that he couldn’t remember.

      Yes, he had been quite right. The last tenant was moving out, as his lease was up. The House was to stand empty for the present, until the owner came back from abroad.

      And waking, he had been full of the peaceful beauty of the empty House.

      A month after that, he had received a letter from Maisie (she wrote to him perseveringly, once a month). In it she told him that Allegra Kerr had died in the same home as her mother, and wasn’t it dreadfully sad? Though of course a merciful release.

      It had really been very odd indeed. Coming after his dream like that. He didn’t quite understand it all. But it was odd.

      And the worst of it was that he’d never been able to find the House since. Somehow, he’d forgotten the way.

      The fever began to take hold of him once more. He tossed restlessly. Of course, he’d forgotten, the House was on high ground! He must climb to get there. But it was hot work climbing cliffs—dreadfully hot. Up, up, up—oh! he had slipped! He must start again from the bottom. Up, up, up—days passed, weeks—he wasn’t sure that years didn’t go by! And he was still climbing.

      Once he heard the doctor’s voice. But he couldn’t stop climbing to listen. Besides the doctor would tell him to leave off looking for the House. He thought it was an ordinary house. He didn’t know.

      He remembered suddenly that he must be calm, very calm. You couldn’t find the House unless you were very calm. It was no use looking for the House in a hurry, or being excited.

      If he could only keep calm! But it was so hot! Hot? It was cold—yes, cold. These weren’t cliffs, they were icebergs—jagged cold, icebergs.

      He was so tired. He wouldn’t go on looking—it was no good. Ah! here was a lane—that was better than icebergs, anyway. How pleasant and shady it was in the cool, green lane. And those trees—they were splendid! They were rather like—what? He couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter.

      Ah! here were flowers. All golden and blue! How lovely it all was—and how strangely familiar. Of course, he had been here before. There, through the trees, was the gleam of the House, standing on the high ground. How beautiful it was. The green lane and the trees and the flowers were as nothing to the paramount, the all-satisfying, beauty of the House.

      He hastened his steps. To think that he had never yet been inside! How unbelievably stupid of him—when he had the key in his pocket all the time!

      And of course the beauty of the exterior was as nothing to the beauty that lay within—especially now that the owner had come back from abroad. He mounted the steps to the great door.

      Cruel strong hands were dragging him back! They fought him, dragging him to and fro, backwards and forwards.

      The doctor was shaking him, roaring in his ear. ‘Hold on, man, you can. Don’t let go. Don’t let go.’ His eyes were alight with the fierceness of one who sees an enemy. Segrave wondered who the Enemy was. The black-robed nun was praying. That, too, was strange.

      And all he wanted was to be left alone. To go back to the House. For every minute the House was growing fainter.

      That, of course, was because the doctor was so strong. He wasn’t strong enough to fight the doctor. If he only could.

      But stop! There was another way—the way dreams went in the moment of waking. No strength could stop them—they just flitted past. The doctor’s hands wouldn’t be able to hold him if he slipped—just slipped!

      Yes, that was the way! The white walls were visible once more, the doctor’s voice was fainter, his hands were barely felt. He knew now how dreams laugh when they give you the slip!

      He was at the door of the House. The exquisite stillness was unbroken. He put the key in the lock and turned it.

      Just a moment he waited, to realize to the full the perfect, the ineffable, the all-satisfying completeness of joy.

      Then—he passed over the Threshold.

      AFTERWORD

      ‘The House of Dreams’ was first published in the Sovereign Magazine in January 1926. The story is a revised version of ‘The House of Beauty’, which Christie wrote some time before the First World War and identified in her autobiography as being ‘the first thing I ever wrote that showed any sign of promise’. Whereas the original story was obscure and excessively morbid in tone, ‘The House of Dreams’ comes close to the threatening ghost stories of the Edwardian age, and especially those of E. F. Benson. It is a great deal clearer and less introspective than the original which Christie heavily revised for publication: to develop the characters of the two women she toned down the otherworldliness of Allegra and built up Maisie’s rôle. A similar theme is explored in ‘The Call of Wings’, another early story, collected in The Hound of Death (1933).

      In 1938, Christie reflected on ‘The House of Beauty’, recalling that, while she had found ‘the imagining of it pleasant and the writing of it down extremely tedious’, the seed had been sown—‘The pastime grew on me. When I had a blank day—nothing much to do—I would think out a story. They always had sad endings and sometimes very lofty moral sentiments.’ An important spur in these early years was a neighbour on Dartmoor, Eden Phillpotts, a celebrated novelist and a close friend of the family, who advised Christie—Agatha Miller as she was then—on her stories and recommended writers whose style and vocabulary were to provide added inspiration. In later years, when her own fame had long since eclipsed his, Christie described how Phillpotts had provided the tact and sympathy so necessary to sustain the confidence of a young writer—‘I marvel at the understanding with which he doled out only encouragement and refrained from criticism.’ On Phillpotts’ death in 1960, she wrote, ‘For his kindness to me as a young girl just beginning to write, I can never be sufficiently grateful.’

       The Actress

      The shabby man in the fourth row of the pit leant forward and stared incredulously at the stage. His shifty eyes narrowed furtively.

      ‘Nancy Taylor!’ he muttered. ‘By the Lord, little Nancy Taylor!’

      His glance dropped to the programme in his hand. One name was printed in slightly larger type than the rest.

      ‘Olga Stormer! So that’s what she calls herself. Fancy yourself a star, don’t you, my lady? And you must be making a pretty little pot of money, too. Quite forgotten your name was ever Nancy Taylor, I daresay. I wonder now—I wonder now what you’d say if Jake Levitt should remind you of the fact?’

      The curtain fell on the close of the first act. Hearty applause filled the auditorium. Olga Stormer, the great emotional actress, whose name СКАЧАТЬ