"All Hallows," by Walter de la Mare, 1926.
After all of these decades, I've come to accept that I might never understand most of de la Mare's fiction, but this helps to make his work fascinating: a sense of layers beyond my comprehension.
Even so, I feel especially conflicted over this one. It combines de la Mare's gift for expressing the uncanny and for leaving me baffled, all at the same time.
Right from the start, the strengths become apparent:
"It was about half-past three on an August afternoon when I found myself for the first time looking down upon All Hallows. And at glimpse of it, fatigue and vexation passed away. I stood 'at gaze', as the old phrase goes -- like the two children of Israel sent in to spy out the Promised Land. How often the imagined transcends the real. Not so All Hallows. Having at last reached the end of my journey -- flies, dust, heat, wind -- having at last come limping out upon the green sea-bluff beneath which lay its walls -- I confess the actuality excelled my feeble dreams of it.
"What most astonished me, perhaps, was the sense not so much of its age, its austerity, or even its solitude, but its air of abandonment. It lay couched there as if in hiding in its narrow sea-bay. Not a sound was in the air; not a jackdaw clapped its wings among its turrets. No other roof, not even a chimney, was in sight; only the dark-blue arch of the sky; the narrow snowline of the ebbing tide; and that gaunt coast fading away into the haze of a west over which were already gathering the veils of sunset."
But then frustration sets in: the narrator broods on and on and on, takes forever to reach the front door.
Once he finally manages to get inside the building, the story comes to life:
"I looked close at the dim face in profile against that narrow oblong of night. 'It is so difficult to be sure of oneself,' I said. 'Have you ever actually encountered anything -- near at hand, I mean?'
"'I keep a sharp look-out, sir. Maybe they don't think me of enough importance to molest -- the last rat, as they say.'
"'But have you?' -- I might myself have been communicating with the phantasmal genius loci of All Hallows -- our muffled voices; this intense caution and secret listening; the slight breathlessness, as if at any instant one's heart were ready for flight: 'But have you?'"
Again, frustration sets in: de la Mare hits the oldest writing speed-bump on the road.
"What appeared to represent an eagle was perched on the image's lifted wrist -- an eagle resembling a vulture. The head beneath it was poised at an angle of defiance -- its ears abnormally erected on the skull; the lean right forearm extended with pointing forefinger as if in derision. Its stony gaze was fixed upon the stars; its whole aspect was hostile, sinister and intimidating. I drew aside. The faintest puff of milk-warm air from over the sea stirred on my cheek."
You can toss around adjectives like "hostile" and "sinister" as much as you'd like, but unless your object behaves in a hostile way, or becomes vividly sinister to the reader's eye, your adjectives are a waste of time. "The faintest puff of milk-warm air from over the sea stirred on my cheek" -- this evokes a definite response; "hostile" and "sinister" evoke nothing.
But in contrast to this empty vagueness, the forces at work in All Hallows are much more bizarre:
"'There was a sound like clanging metal -- but I don't think it was metal. It drew near at a furious speed, then passed me, making a filthy gust of wind. For some instants I couldn't breathe; the air was gone.'
"'And no other sound?'
"'No other, sir, except out of the distance a noise like the sounding of a stupendous kind of gibberish. A calling; or so it seemed -- no human sound. The air shook with it. You see, sir, I myself wasn't of any consequence, I take it -- unless a mere obstruction in the way."
- - - - -
"And then, without the slightest warning, I became aware of a peculiar and incessant vibration. It is impossible to give a name to it. It suggested the remote whirring of an enormous mill-stone, or that -- though without definite pulsation -- of revolving wings, or even the spinning of an immense top."
- - - - -
"At that instant, a dull enormous rumble reverberated from within the building -- as if a huge boulder or block of stone had been shifted or dislodged in the fabric; a peculiar grinding nerve-wracking sound. And for the fraction of a second the flags on which we stood seemed to tremble beneath our feet.
"The fingers tightened on my arm. 'Come, sir; keep close; we must be gone at once' the quavering old voice whispered; 'we have stayed too long.'"
The effect, here, is what you might encounter while sneaking at night through a factory: all around you, the walls and floors tremble at the touch of some alien process, but what it might be, or what it might imply, are nothing you can grasp in the dark.
It's a fascinating method (used to great effect, later on, by Nigel Kneale in his teleplays), and here, it certainly conveys a mood of something detached and remote from human concerns.
But what does it all mean? You'll have to guess; I'm a stranger here, myself.
