Rupert was adding up the score and nobody spoke. At last Rupert said, ‘I make it twelve hundred. Anybody got anything different?’

No one challenged the score.

‘How do you feel about another?’ Rupert asked, still ignoring Uncle Tim.

The man on Rupert’s left found his voice.

‘It depends what you mean by another. Another whisky, yes.’

‘Help yourself,’ said Rupert, ‘and get me one too. It’s Crème de Menthe for you, Birdie?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said the lady so addressed.

During the pause that followed Rupert lit a cigar with great deliberation.

‘Well, who’s for going on?’ he asked. Again there was a silence, broken finally by the other woman. She spoke in a tone that sounded extraordinarily cool and sweet.

‘I think your uncle would like us to go in.’

‘Oh, him,’ said Rupert, rising heavily from his chair. ‘He has such Vic—Victorian ideas. Haven’t you, Uncle Tim?’

‘I don’t want to influence you,’ said Uncle Tim. ‘I only thought you mightn’t have noticed how late it was.’

‘Yes, it is late, deuced late,’ Rupert drawled, refilling his glass. ‘That’s what I like about it. Whisky, Uncle Tim? Drown your sorrows.’ He held the glass out with an unsteady hand. Meanwhile all the players had risen.

‘I want to go to bye-bye,’ said the other man.

‘Put me in my little bed,’ carolled Birdie, and they laughed.

Everyone blew out a candle except Rupert, who could not extinguish his, and finally knocked it on to the ground where it continued to burn until smothered by his foot. The sudden darkness was confusing. Even Uncle Tim felt it; but Rupert lost his balance and fell heavily against the trunk of the apple tree. It seemed as though all the fruit had ripened simultaneously. It thudded softly on the turf, pattered sharply on the card-table, and crashed among the glasses. Uncle Tim struck a match to ascertain the damage. It was negligible. The fruit was lying all round in pre-Raphaelite profusion. Rupert recovered himself.

‘Apples!’ he cried. ‘Look at those bloody apples!’ He stooped to pick one up, but his stomach revolted from it and, clutching the tree, he tossed it, wounded by his teeth, away into the darkness.

The match went out.

‘What about these things?’ called Uncle Tim, who could not keep pace with the others. It was beginning to rain. ‘Shall I leave them, Rupert?’ There was no answer.

A SUMMONS

It could not have been long after midnight when I found myself awake, and so thoroughly awake, too. I did not feel the misty withdrawal or the drowsy approaches of sleep. I had apparently been reasoning, for some seconds, with admirable lucidity on the practical question: how had I come to wake up? The night was still. The ridiculous acorn-shaped appendage to the blind-cord no longer flapped in its eddying elliptical movement. And what of that odious bluebottle fly? Doubtless it had crept into some corner, a fold in the valance, perhaps. I could not believe it was asleep. It might be scratching itself with one foot, in the way flies have; a curious gesture that seems to imply a kind of equivocal familiarity with oneself—an insulting salute, a greeting one couldn’t possibly acknowledge. Flies have a flair for putrefaction; what had brought this one to my bedside, what strange prescience had inspired its sharp, virulent rushes and brought that note of deadly exultation into its buzz? It had been all I could do to keep the creature off my face. Now it was biding its time, but my ears were apprehensive for the renewal of its message of mortality, its monotonous memento mori. That spray of virginia creeper, too, had apparently given up its desultory, stealthy, importunate attack upon the window. Perhaps it had annoyed the window-cleaner, and he, realizing the trouble it gave, had cut it off and dropped it to lie withering on the grass. I seemed to see its shrivelled, upturned leaves, its pathetic, strained curve of a creature that curls up to die. . . . Surely this was not particularly sensible. A thought came to me suddenly.

It must have been someone knocking. My small sister slept in the next room. I remembered her parting words, uttered in a voice that was half appeal, half command: ‘Now, if I dream I’m being murdered I shall knock on the wall, and I shall expect you to come.’ Of course, I reflected with uneasy amusement, my sister always had a lot to say at bedtime. It was a recognized device; it gained time; it gave an effect of stately deliberation to her departure. It was, in fact, the exercise of a natural right. One could not be packed off to bed in the middle of a sentence. One would linger over embraces, one would adopt attitudes and poses too rich and noble for irreverent interruption. One would drift into conversations and display a sudden interest. . . .

Tap—tap—tap—tap.

As I thought. Now what had put this silly idea into my sister’s head? It was absurd that a child should dream of being murdered. It would not occur to her that there were such dreams. But perhaps someone had suggested it—a servant whose mind was brimful of horrors. I myself had mentioned a dream of my own. Well, it was nothing. Still it had something about a murder in it. Otherwise I suppose I shouldn’t have thought it worth telling. Dreams seem so stupid to other people, so flat, so precisely the commonplace thing that wouldn’t invade a first-rate imagination. Surely it is a privilege to be let into the secret of another person’s dreams? And yet one recalls the despair, hurriedly transformed into a look of conventional interest, that greets confessions of this kind. But an elder brother’s dreams are not to be dismissed lightly. Perhaps I had embroidered mine a little.

Tap—tap—tap.

If I went in, what, after all, could I do? Fears are intangible things, but they distort the features. It must be curious to see people looking very much frightened. Would their eyes bulge, their fingers twitch, their mouths be twisted into some unmeaning expression? As a general proposition it would be quite amusing. But to see one’s sister in that deplorable condition! She would probably be in bed, clutching the sheet, peering over the edge like one of Bluebeard’s wives; or perhaps chewing it, the first symptom of feeble-mindedness! Very likely, though, she would be huddled up under the bedclothes, a formless lump that I should be tempted to smack! But there are people who shrink from covering their heads, lest someone should come and hold down the bedclothes and stifle them. It is not very pleasant to think of such a person bending over you. . . . Perhaps the child wouldn’t be in bed; she would have to get out to knock. At first I might not see her at all; she might be crouching behind some piece of furniture, or even hidden in the wardrobe with her head among the hooks. I should have to strike a match. How often they go out; you throw them on the carpet, and the smouldering head burns a little hole. How funny: if she were lying at my feet, I might drop several matches on her and never notice till she screamed.

Tap—tap.

It was much feebler that time. Better after all not to go in. It would create a sort of precedent, and one could not set up as a professional smoother of pillows. Besides, children grow out of this sort of thing much more quickly if left to themselves. Of course, I should not tell my sister I had heard her knocking; she might mistake my reason for not going to the rescue, and think I had somehow left her in the lurch. That would be absurd, for in spite of the cold I would get out this minute, slip on my dressing-gown, and say, ‘There, there, everything’s all right, it’s only a dream!’ Perhaps when my sister grew up I would tell her that I stayed away intentionally, feeling it was better for her to fight her battles alone; we had all gone through it. Everyone keeps a few such explanations up his sleeve; age mellows them, and there is a kind of pleasure in telling a story against oneself. For the present it was to remain my little secret. For my sister knew, or would know now at any rate, that I was a heavy sleeper; and if she referred to the matter at breakfast I would use a little pious dissimulation—children are so easily put off. Probably she would be ashamed to mention it. After all it wasn’t my fault; I couldn’t direct people’s dreams; at her age, too, I slept like a top. Dreaming about murders . . . not very nice in a child. I would have to talk to her alone about it some time.