Debit Account

Oliver Onions

Description

British writer Oliver Onions rose to literary acclaim on the strength of his ability to craft lyrical, uncanny stories of horror. That gift is on full display in the strange and beautiful novel The Debit Account, which is the second book in the Whom God Hath Sundered Trilogy, preceded by the popular In Accordance With the Evidence and followed by the concluding novel The Story of Louis.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776580972
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE DEBIT ACCOUNT
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OLIVER ONIONS
 
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The Debit Account First published in 1913 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-097-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-098-9 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Part I - The Cobden Corner I II III IV V Part II - Verandah Cottage I II III IV V Part III - Well Walk I II III IV V Part IV - Iddesleigh Gate I II Envoi Endnotes
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TOPHILIP CONNARD
Part I - The Cobden Corner
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I
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One day in the early June of the year 1900 I was taking a walk onHampstead Heath and found myself in the neighbourhood of the Vale ofHealth. About that time my eyes were very much open for such things ashouse-agents' notice-boards and placards in windows that announced thathouses or portions of houses were to let. I was going to be married, andwanted a place in which to live.
My salary was one hundred and fifty pounds a year. I figured on thewages-book of the Freight and Ballast Company as "Jeffries, J. H., Int.Ex. Con.," which meant that I was an intermediate clerk of theConfidential Exchange Department, and to this description of myself Iaffixed each week my signature across a penny stamp in formal receipt ofmy three pounds. I could have been paid in gold had I wished, but I hadpreferred a weekly cheque, and I took care never to cash this cheque atour own offices in Waterloo Place. I did not wish it to be known that Ihad no banking account. As a matter of fact, I now had one, though Ishould not have liked to disclose it to the Income Tax Commissioners.The reason for this reticence lay in the smallness, not in thelargeness, of my balance. I had learned that in certain circumstances itpays you to appear better off than you are.
It was a Sunday, a Whit-Sunday, on which I took my walk, and on my wayup from Camden Town across the Lower Heath I had passed among the canvasand tent-pegs and staked-out "pitches" that were the preparation for theBank Holiday on the morrow. Tall chevaux de frises of swings werelocked back with long bars; about the caravans picked out with red andgreen, the proprietors of cocoanut-shies and roundabouts smoked theirpipes; and up the East Heath Road there rumbled from time to time,shaking the ground, a traction-engine with its string of waggons andgaudy tumbrils.
I was alone. Both my fiancée and the aunt with whom she lived in aboarding-house in Woburn Place had gone down to Guildford to attend thefuneral of a friend of the family—a Mrs Merridew; and as I had knownthe deceased lady by name only, my own attendance had not beenconsidered necessary. So until lunch-time, when I had an engagement, Iwas taking my stroll, with a particular eye to the smaller of the housesI passed, and many conjectures about the rent of them.
You will remember, if you happen to know that north-western part ofLondon, that away across the Heath, on the Highgate side, there standsup among the trees a lordly turreted place, the abode (I believe it thenwas) of some merchant prince or other. My eyes had wandered frequentlyto this great house, but I had lost it again as I had descended to thepond with the swans upon it, and approached the tea-garden that, withits swings and automatic machines, makes a sort of miniature standingBank Holiday all the year round. During the whole of a youth and earlymanhood of extraordinary hardship (I was now nearing thirty-five) I hadbeen consumed with a violent but ineffectual ambition, of which thosedistant turrets now reminded me.... I had been hideously poor, but,heaven be thanked, I had managed to get my head above water at last.Those horrible days were over, or nearly so. I had now, for example, abanking account; and though I seldom risked drawing a cheque for morethan two pounds without first performing quite an intricate little sum,the data for which were furnished by my cheque, pass and paying-in booksrespectively, still—I had a banking account. I had also good boots, twofairish suits of clothes (though no evening clothes), an umbrella, awatch, and other possessions that, three or four years before, hadseemed beyond dreams unattainable.
And when I say that I had for long been ragingly ambitious, I do notmerely mean that I had constantly thought how fine it would be could Iwake up one morning and find myself rich and powerful and respected.Had that been the whole of it, I don't think I should have differedgreatly from the costers and showmen who dotted the Heath thatWhit-Sunday morning. No; the point rather was, that I saw in the mainhow I was going to get what I wanted. I, or rather my coadjutor "Judy"Pepper and I between us, had ideas that we intended to "play" as oneplays a hand at cards. Therefore, as I walked, I dare say I thought asmuch about that distant castellated house as I did about the far humblerabode I intended to take the moment I could find a suitable one.
I wandered among the alleys and windings of the Vale of Health, notingthe villas with peeling plaster and the weather-boarded andhalf-dilapidated cottages that make the place peculiar; and I wasascending a steep hillock with willows at the foot of it and the levelridge of the Spaniards Road running like a railway embankment past thepines at the top, when, chancing to turn my head, I saw what appeared tobe the very place for me.
It could not have been very long empty, for I had passed its door, anivy-green one with lace curtains behind its upper panels of glass,without noticing the usual signs of uninhabitation. Then I rememberedthe approaching Quarter Day and smiled. The chances were that somebodyhad done a "moonlight flit" and had left the lace curtains up in orderthat his going might not be observed. There was no doubt, as I couldsee from where I stood, about the place being untenanted now, nor thatit would not remain so for very long. I stood for a moment examining itfrom half-way up the hillock.
There was not much of it to examine. It was very small, fronted withstucco, and had a little square verandah built out on wooden posts overits tiny garden. More than that I could hardly see of it, but itadjoined a much larger house, and to this I turned my eyes. This largerhouse was a low, French-windowed dwelling, with a pleasantly eaved andflat-pitched roof, very refreshing to think of in these days of GardenCity roofs and diminutive dormers; and its garden was well kept, and gaywith virginia stock borders and delphinium and Canterbury bells in thebeds behind. It seemed likely that formerly the two houses had been one.
I was descending the hillock for a closer view when I remembered that Icould hardly expect to be shown round that day. I looked at my watch. Itwas half-past twelve, and my appointment, which was with Pepper, was notfor another hour. There would be plenty of time for me to walk round bymy turreted place and back by Hampstead Lane. I left the Vale of Health,crossed the Viaduct, and continued my saunter.
But I walked slowly, and in a deepening abstraction. The sight of thatlittle house had set my thoughts running on my fiancée again. And asI presently took that little house, and married my fiancée not longafterwards, and as, moreover, my meditation of that morning has a gooddeal to do with my tale, I had better state at the beginning what thetrouble was, and have done with it.
I had known Evie Soames for close on five years; and though I had lovedher ever since the days when, with her skirt neither short nor long, andher hair neither loose nor yet properly revealing the shape of herslender and birch-like nape, she and I had attended the same BusinessCollege in Holborn, it had been only during the last six months that wehad become engaged. On either of our parts a former engagement had endedabruptly; and this, for her sake at least, was the reason why I wouldgladly have had her anywhere but at Guildford that Sunday morning.
For it had been to the late Mrs Merridew's son that she had beenengaged, and the affair had terminated with tragical suddenness indeed.You cannot but call it tragical when a young man is discovered, on hiswedding morning, hanging by the neck from a hook in his bedroom door,with a letter in his pocket that only partly sets forth his reason fortaking his life, leaving the rest for the medical evidence todetermine—and then to be kept for very pity from his womenfolk. Yetthis had happened four years before; and it was because I dreaded torevive the memory of it, and especially to revive the memories of thosesubsequent days when Evie must have tormented herself with vain andfruitless guessings at what a coroner and a jury-panel and a doctor inStore Street had smothered up among themselves, that I walked broodingand with downhung head.
And about women generally I had better confess myself at once as, pastpraying for, a Philistine. I subscribe to nothing whatever that this NewMan so strangely risen in our midst nowadays appears to hold about theancient and changeless feminine. And I take it that most men notprofligates or fools will understand me when I say that I think thereare some things that it is worse than useless that women should know,and that this sordid four-year-old business was one of them. To thoseborn to knowledge, knowledge will come; the others will never know, nomatter what the facts of their experience may be. Oh, I had seen theseweak and vainglorious vessels go to Life's Niagara before, thinking tofill themselves at it—and had seen the flinders into which they hadbeen dashed. Therefore I