Chapter III: Fears and Fantasies

D URING whooping-cough Michael was sometimes allowed to sit in
a room called the library, which was next to his mother’s
bedroom on the first floor and was therefore a dearly loved
resort. Here he discovered the large volume of Don Quixote
illustrated by Doré that influenced his whole life. He would
pore over this work for hours, forgetting everything under a
spell of chivalry. He read the tale seriously and thought it
the saddest tale ever known. He wept over the knight’s
adventures, and big teardrops would spatter the page. He had
not yet encountered much more than mild teazing at the
Kindergarten, that with the unreasonableness of Nurse and his
mother’s absence made up the sum of the incomprehensible
crosses which he had to bear. But even these were enough to
make him sympathize with Don Quixote. He perceived that here
was a man intent upon something—he could not understand exactly
what—thwarted always by other people, thwarted and jeered at
and even physically maltreated. Yet he was a man whose room was
full of dragons and fairies, whose counterpane was the
adventurous field of little knights-at-arms, whose curtains
were ruffled by dwarfs, whose cupboards held enchanters.
Michael loved the tall thin knight and envied Sancho Panza.

When whooping-cough was over, and Michael went back to
Kindergarten, Nurse decided that he should sleep by himself in
the room next to the night-nursery. She never explained to
Michael her reasons for this step, and he supposed
it to be because lately he had always woken up when she came
to bed. This was not his fault, because Nurse always bumped
into his cot as she came, into the room, shaking it so
violently that no one could have stayed asleep. She used to
look at him in a funny way with angry staring eyes, and when
he sometimes spoke she would blow cheese-scented breath at him
and turn away and bump into the washstand.

Everything in this new room was by Michael anticipated with dread. He would go to bed at half-past six: he would settle down in the wide white bed that stretched a long way on either side of him: the gas would be turned down: the door would be left ajar: Nurse’s footsteps would gradually die away and he would be left alone.

The night was divided into two portions of equal horror. First
of all he had to concentrate on closing his mouth when asleep,
because Annie had told him a tale about a woman who slept with
her mouth open, the result of which bad habit was that one
night a mouse ran down it and choked her. Then he had to
explore cautiously with his feet the ice-cold end of the bed,
in case he should touch a nest of mice—another likely
occurrence vouched for by Annie. Then outside, various sounds
would frighten him. A dog would howl in the distance: cats
would spit and wail, making Michael wonder whether they were
coming through his window to claw his face. Presently, far up
the street, newsboys would cry hoarsely the details of a murder
or suicide. As they passed beneath his bedroom window their
voices would swell to a paralyzing roar, and as the voices died
away round the corner, Michael would be left shaking with fear.
Once he was so frightened by a succession of these
murder-shouts that he got out of bed and crept forth on to the
landing, whence he peered down between the banisters into the
quiet red light burning in the hall far below. While he was
leaning over, a door banged suddenly

on the top floor, and Michael fled barefooted down the stairs,
until he reached the cold tiles of the front hall. Should he
dare to descend still lower and disturb Nurse at her supper in
the kitchen? Or were they all lying there, Cook and Annie and
Nurse, with their throats cut? The door leading to the basement
stairs was open, and he stole down over the oilcloth, past the
yawning cellar, past the laundry-basket in the passage, past
the cupboard under the stairs, to listen by the kitchen door.
There was a murmur of voices, familiar yet unfamiliar: the
kitchen door was ajar and he peered round stealthily. There was
Nurse with a very red face in a heap on a chair, shaking her
forefinger at Mrs. Frith, who with an equally red face was
talking very indistinctly to Nurse; while between them, bolt
upright and very pale, sat Annie nervously shaving from the
cheese very thin segments which she ate from the knife’s edge.
They seemed to Michael, as he watched them, like people in a
nightmare, so unreal and horrible were they: they frightened
him more than ever, sitting there nodding at each other in the
kitchen where the blackbeetles ran slyly in and out beneath the
fender. Suddenly Annie saw Michael and waved him back; he
turned at her gesture and withdrew from sight. While he stood
shivering in the dark passage, Annie came out and, picking him
up, carried him out of hearing.

“Whatever made you come downstairs?” she panted on the first-floor landing.

“I was frightened.”

“You frightened _me_ .”

“Who are they murdering?”

“You’ve been having a bad dream,” said Annie.

She led him upstairs again to his room and tucked him up, and at his earnest request turned the gas a trifle higher.

“Why did Nanny and Mrs. Frith look like that?” he asked.

“They’re tired,” said Annie.

“Why?”

“They have to work so hard to look after you.”

Then she left him alone, and he fell asleep before they all came up to bed.

Generally speaking, the first part of the night, however bad
the outside noises, was not so fearful as the second part.
Mostly the second portion of the night was preceded by a bad
dream in which Michael’s nerves were so much shaken that he had
no courage or common-sense left to grapple with the long hours
in the ghastly stillness of his room. There was one dream in
particular which he dreaded, and indeed it was the only one
that repeated itself at regular intervals without any essential
change. He would find himself alone in a long street in the
middle of the night. Usually it would be shining with wet, but
sometimes it would be dry and airless. This street stretched as
far as one could see. It had on either side lamp-posts which
burned with a steady staring illumination, long rows of
lamp-posts that converged in the farthest distance. The houses
all seemed empty, yet everyone was in some way a malignant
personality. Down this street Michael would have to walk on and
on. He would meet nobody, and the only living thing was a bony
hound that pattered behind him at whatever pace he went,
whether he ran or whether he loitered. He would in his dream be
filled with a desire to enter one of these houses, and often he
would mount the steps and knock a summons on the door—a knock
that echoed all over the gloom within. While he knocked, the
bony hound would howl in the shadows of the basement. Every
house at which he knocked Michael would be more and more
anxious to pass, more and more fearful to disturb. Yet however
much he struggled against it, he would ultimately be compelled
to knock his loud challenge. The street would now stretch for
miles of lighted lamps before
and behind him, and the knowledge would gradually be borne in
upon Michael that sooner or later in one of these grey houses
the door would open. He would hurry along, but however fast he
travelled some house would draw him inexorably to its
threshold, and he would wait in agony lest slowly the great
door should swing back to a dim hall. The climax of the dream
would now be reached. One house would simultaneously repel and
draw him more than any of those left behind. He would struggle
to go by, but he would find himself on the steps with legs
that refused to carry him away. He would knock: very slowly
the door would swing back and, convulsed and choking and
warding off horror, Michael would wake in a frenzy of fear to
his own real house of ghastly stillness, where no longer did
even a belated luggage-train or jingling hansom assure him of
life’s continuity.

He did not always wake up suddenly: sometimes he would be aware
that he was slowly waking and would struggle to keep asleep,
lying for a long time without moving a muscle, in order to
cheat himself into the belief that he was not awake. But
gradually the strain would be too much and he would have to
become conscious of the room. First of all he would turn on to
his left side and view apprehensively the door ajar. This would
seem to tremble, as he looked, to some invisible hand trying
it. Then along the wall the wardrobe would creak, and every
knot of its varnished surface would take on a fantastic
countenance. He would wonder what was inside, and try to gain
comfort and the sense of commonplace daytime existence by
counting the cats swinging on a roundabout in one of Louis
Wain’s Christmas pictures. In the corner beyond the wardrobe
was a large clothes-basket that crackled and snapped and must
surely hold somebody inside, hidden as the Forty Thieves were
hidden in the oil-jars. The fire-place, opposite the foot of
the bed, seemed a centre for the noise of mice.
How he hoped they would be content to play upon the hearth and
not venture to leap over the fender and scuttle about the
room. Then the door would begin to frighten him again, and
Michael would turn very quietly on to his back, staring at the
luminous ceiling where the gas-jet made a huge moon whose
edges wavered perpetually. But the gas-jet itself became
terrifying, when looked at too long, with its queer blue base
and slim solemn shape, so melancholy, so desolate, so
changeless. The ceiling would very soon become unendurable
because various black marks would seem with intensest
contemplation more and more like spiders and beetles. Michael
would have to give up lying on his back and turn upon his
right side. He would count each slat of the Venetian blinds
and long passionately and sadly for the grey streaks to appear
at the sides in proclamation of the approach of day. Without
these grey streaks the windows were unbearable, so menacing
were they with the unknown infinite night behind them. The
curtains, too, would quiver, and even Michael’s clothes,
heaped upon a chair, would assume a worm-like vitality. The
washstand made him feel oppressed, so silent and white were
the jug and basin and soap-dish, so cold and chill were they.
There was nothing to be done but to bury his head beneath the
clothes and, trembling, try to believe in the reality of
guardian angels. He would shut his eyes very tightly until the
wheels of coloured lights thus evoked would circle and
revolve, changing their colours in some mysterious way. These
dissolving spots were a great consolation and passed the time
for a little while, until the dread of fire began to come. He
would fling back the clothes in a paroxysm and, heedless of
any other danger, sit up with staring eyes and listening ears
and keen nostrils, dreading and imagining and doubting. Surely
he could hear a crackle; he could smell smoke. The house was
on fire; yet not for anything could he have got out of bed to
reassure himself.
What might not be underneath, a burglar, a dead body, a
murderer, a skeleton, a mad dog?

Underneath the clothes he would plunge, and then he would be sure that someone was coming into the room to smother him. He held his breath, waiting; with an effort he flung back the clothes again. There was nothing but the ghastly stillness and the solemn gaslight and the viewless blinds and the expectant door ajar. The bedposts would now take on a sort of humanity. They would look at him and wink and shiver. The wall-paper, normally a pattern of rosebuds and roses, began to move, to swim with unnatural life. The cistern upstairs began to clank; the bath began to drip. It must be blood—Nanny had been murdered. The blood was dripping slowly. Michael choked with horror. Somebody was tapping at the window-pane, yes, somebody was tapping. It was horrible this endless tapping. Cats must be coming in. The wardrobe creaked and rapped and groaned. Some of his clothes slid off the chair on to the floor with a soft plump; Michael tried to shriek his dismay; but his tongue was dry. Underneath him a knife was being pushed through the bed. A death-watch was ticking in the fastness of the wall at his head. A rat was gnawing his way into the room. Black-beetles were coming up the stairs.

Then along the edge of the Venetian blinds appeared a blue
streak. It widened. It became more luminous. It turned from
blue to grey. It turned from grey to dimmest silver. Hark!
‘Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep!’ The sparrows were beginning.
Their chorus rose. Their noise was cool as water to Michael’s
fever. An early cart rattled cheerfully down the road. It was
morning.