THE DECOY
Algernon Blackwood
(1919)
"It belonged to the category of unlovely houses about which an ugly
superstition clings, one reason being, perhaps, its inability to inspire
interest in itself without assistance. It seemed too ordinary to possess
individuality, much less to exert an influence. Solid and ungainly, its
huge bulk dwarfing the park timber, its best claim to notice was a
negative one—it was unpretentious.
"From the little hill its expressionless windows stared across the Kentish
Weald, indifferent to weather, dreary in winter, bleak in spring,
unblessed in summer. Some colossal hand had tossed it down, then let
it starve to death, a country mansion that might well strain the
adjectives of advertisers and find inheritors with difficulty. Its soul had
fled, said some; it had committed suicide, thought others; and it was an
inheritor, before he killed himself in the library, who thought this
latter, yielding, apparently, to an hereditary taint in the family. For two
other inheritors followed
suit, with an interval of twenty years
between them, and there was no clear reason to explain the three
disasters. Only the first owner, indeed, lived permanently in the house,
the others using it in the summer months and then deserting it with
relief. Hence, when John Burley, present inheritor, assumed
possession, he entered a house about which clung an ugly superstition,
based, nevertheless, upon a series of undeniably ugly facts.
"This century deals harshly with superstitious folk, deeming them fools
or charlatans; but John Burley, robust, contemptuous of half lights, did
not deal harshly with them, because he did not deal with them at all.
He
was hardly aware of their existence. He ignored them as he ignored,
say, the Esquimaux, poets, and other human aspects that did not touch
his scheme of life. A successful business man, he concentrated on what was real; he dealt with business people. His philanthropy, on a big
scale, was also real; yet, though he would have denied it vehemently,
he had his superstition
as well. No man exists without some taint of
superstition in his blood; the racial heritage is too rich to be escaped
entirely. Burley’s took this form—that unless he gave his tithe to the
poor he would not prosper. This ugly mansion, he decided, would make
an ideal Convalescent Home." . . .
