Nineteen Impressions/Flaws in the Time Scheme/The Late Occupier
III
THE LATE OCCUPIER
THE dull, smooth voice continued its tedious recountal of inessential things, in speech patterned by the phraseology of the house-agent. I had long ceased to gather the sense of the monologue. But every now and again the flat tone was lifted by the ring of one word which found a response in the dead echoes of that unfurnished room. That response hung in my ears; began presently to take shape in my mind. He used that word constantly, lingering almost imperceptibly upon it as though it were a valuable thing, some word he had acquired with difficulty and was now proud to display. At the very beginning of our interview I had noted his precision in using it. He had placed it carefully in his sentences, had given it a post of honour, and yet, with the apparent fastidiousness of an artist, he had seemed to frame for it an entourage that should support rather than emphasise, lest by too glaring a contrast the word should fail to impress one with its complete Tightness, inevitableness. It was that word at last which took possession of me, so that I responded to it even as that horrible unfurnished room responded. "The late occupier … the recent occupier … occupier …"; with every repetition the force of the response grew, till every energy in bare wall, plank floor and bleak fire-place echoed and trembled.
My fascination intensified to fear. What had been a murmur, a mere redundant shaping and mumbling of his definite word, grew to a horrible shouting acclamation. Every sleeping atom in the bleak, grey room was stirring; awakened to a resentful, threatening activity. I would have stopped his discourse, screamed down his recurrent use of the fateful word, but I was paralysed with a still, cold terror. And before I could rally the mischief was done. …
The past which is the present, vibrated once more to a repetition of the old horror, while I, the spectator, spirit of the future in those scenes, slipped unseen through the interstices of incorporated thought.
Backwards I slid through a rush of imperfectly visualised action, in which blurred and dim shapes leapt, staggered and trembled past in a blind streak of furious involution, grey with the speed of confused, blended colour. Until that swift, sickening retrogression was done, I hung giddily between being and consciousness, but when the awful journey had been accomplished I lost sense of being.
He was not then without hope, though he laughed discordantly as he pointed out the words, and his wife shrank and winced, fearing some subtle blasphemy.
"'Occupy till I come,'" he read. "It's an omen, I take that as an explicit direction. We'll hang on, Mary; we'll hang on till our last gasp, if we have to bar them out."
He laughed again and the pale woman shuddered. Was it for this she had lived? To the very heart of her, she longed for the enclosing rampart of fortressed respectability. If it had been the most meagre of cottages, two rooms and the rent paid every week, she would have been happy. This threat of dun and bailiff overbore her strength.
Why would he fight? Why did he find incomprehensible glory in menacing society? Why would he not accept defeat, and take a lower place where they could find security? They could live on so little. …
The old obsession had taken shape in him with that word. "I will occupy," became his phrase; and, later, he spoke of himself as "the occupier."
His tenacity would have been magnificent, had it not been so pitifully incongruous. Never could he have reasonably hoped. Yet even as he sat bowed over the table, forehead on knuckles, while they carried Mary away to the respectable grave she had sought as her last request, he stiffened himself to new effort. Craftily he shot the bolts of the door when the meagre procession had crawled out of sight.
As his beard grew, a new light came into his tawny eyes. He was waiting for the first onslaught. He longed for the active fight with men. It was wearing to fight always with ideas. He went out seldom, and in the street he was almost furtive Always he brought home more provision than was immediately required.
He rejoiced to be behind those bolted doors and tight-closed windows again. The new light grew in his eyes, and sometimes he was impatient with those long-suffering, meek-spirited creditors who delayed to attack him.
Yet his cunning did not forsake him, when they came at last. He parleyed with them from an upper window, gave them a little hope. He wanted to lead them on. …
They soon came back, and afterwards he had the joy of watching the shabby figure in the road, the little slinking man who kept to the railings and regarded the house askance. …
He began to mutter to himself after a time, resentful that no more belligerent methods were being undertaken. He muttered the word to himself, and dwelt with pride on his self-conferred title. "Do your little worst," he muttered. "I am the occupier and I will remain the occupier till the end."
He grew more fierce when they cut off the water,—the gas had been cut off long ago. He resented that, as savouring of trickery. But the cistern was more than half full when he found out that no more water was coming in, and he knew that that would last him for a very long time. He need only drink the water, there was no need for him to wash in his beleaguered city.
He was over-careful with that water. He denied himself needlessly. It was thirst that fed his resentment to such a fever pitch. He would keep comparatively quiet during the day, fearing lest they might obtain some faculty to enter the house by force if he were too violent.
But at night he threw off all restraint. There was no house very near and no one passed along that road after dark. He might have gone out at night, he could have brought in water; but he grew increasingly cautious. He would give them no opportunity. He would occupy till It came, and when they broke in at last they would not find him there, but only a shape which would concern him no longer.
He slept a little when first the darkness covered him. He had no candles, oil or matches, and it seemed natural to lie down and sleep an hour after sunset. But he always woke soon after midnight, and then he would go down to the front room and indulge his resentment. During those long hours of darkness he impressed walls, ceiling and floor of that room with his single idea. He screamed the word aloud and shouted it in his thoughts until every fibre about him was strained to that one key-note. …
Then I missed him, and as I searched feebly among the unmaterial transparencies that were growing more and more evanescent, I saw the symbol of the little shabby figure from the road, staring in at the window.
Amid a turmoil of strange gyrations, I caught a sight of him in that zinc box, huddled knees to chin like a prehistoric corpse—there was yet enough water left to cover him. Afterwards I floated for unrealised years in immensity until a well-known word caught my attention, an enormous word that tapered across the whole arc of heaven. …
"The late occupier …" continued the dull smooth voice. I found that the incredible fool was telling me his version of the story.
I left him with fierce haste.
I left him stupidly affronted and wondering.
1912.
Note. This story, now printed for the first time, is by way of being an original draft for "The Lost Suburb" (p. 85).