Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Don’t you ever feel like that? When I go on the stage I feel as though I never want to come off, whatever part I’m playing. It’s easier on the stage.’ Still Miss Ponsonby was silent.
    When Barley went up to bed presently she heard the sound of the violin downstairs. Miss Ponsonby was playing ‘Hark, hark the lark’. She played it over and over again, and then tried it on the piano, singing it in her pure and limpid boy-like voice. It touched Barley. But after a time she got tired of it. ‘Why can’t the old geezer go to bed?’ she muttered, turning over and over and trying to blot out the sound by burying her face in the pillow.
    Not long after this, Polly took to going to the Spiritualist Church at the bottom end of Baker’s Lane. Although she had for years been a communicant at the parish church, she had often admitted to Barley that the services never quite gave her the satisfaction she needed. Then it came out, in conversation, that shortly before the end of his life, Mr Ponsonby had also fallen for spiritualism. This was because he had dreamt one night that a client with six toes on one foot (two of them permanently crossed) would call upon him; and the next day it had happened. Old Ponsonby had never been quite the same man after that. ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth’ he had muttered over his evening baked-beans-on-toast; and a few days later had ambled self-consciously off to the little red-brick building, with the green slate roof, which he had previously so despised.
    Polly would never accompany him to this haunt of spirit-rappers, and always shied off the subject whenever he brought it up. He stopped going to Church to the dismay of the vicar, for Mr Ponsonby had been a sidesman, and would occasionally consent to sing in the choir if the anthem had a suitable solo for him. It caused an unhappy rift between Polly and her father; but she never attempted to make him change his mind, neither did he seek to convert her to his new religion. Only once, after the first delicate arguments, did he refer to whatever it was that went on down the lane. (It was always referred to as ‘Down the Lane’.) That was when he said, casually, one rainy night on his return:
    ‘Your mother spoke tonight.’
    Polly had naturally been startled, even scared. But she hid this. ‘What did she say?’ she asked.
    Mr Ponsonby thought a long time before replying. Then, ‘Only, that there was no dratted music where she’d gone.’
    He looked at his wife’s picture on the sideboard. It stood in an intricately carved silver frame and showed Amelia Ponsonby in the full richness of womanhood, aged thirty-five, with large silky eyelashes, a mount of hair like a finely turned loaf, and a generous bosom which Mr Ponsonby dreamt of more frequently than his daughter could have guessed. It was the one thing he had really liked about his wife.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ he had said after studying her picture for a long time, ‘that your mother wasn’t right to hate music. It gets you nowhere.’
    This had made Polly flush with anger. ‘On the contrary, it gets you everywhere,’ she snapped. ‘And I didn’t think I’d live to hear you say such things, Father. Spiritualism has ruined you.’
    It had been a painful moment. Never was the subject mentioned again, and Mr Ponsonby went less frequently down the lane, spending more of his time in the Talma Tavern where he would play darts. Musical evenings became rare, to Polly’s great sorrow.
    That was all many years ago. The war had passed since then, bringing severe tests of Polly’s Faith. She had continued to go to Church, to sing and play the piano and the violin, sometimes with a friend or two in the Choral Society, more often alone. Flying bombs only brought out an inherent courage in her. Nothing would make her move to the country, she said. If God meant her to die here, let Him take her in His own way. She even got rather doggedly fond of the ‘doodlebugs’ after