“There is a story,” he said thoughtfully, “in one of Marryat’s books,
about a beautiful woman who took the form of a wolf at night and
devoured her own children. I wonder what put that idea into Marryat’s
head?”
He pondered for some minutes, and then he cried out for some more
brandy. There was a small bottle of laudanum upon the table, and I
managed, by insisting upon helping him myself, to mix about half a
drachm with the spirits. He drank it off, and sank his head once more
upon the pillow. “Anything better than that,” he groaned. “Death is
better than that. Crime and cruelty; cruelty and crime. Anything is
better than that,” and so on, with the monotonous refrain, until at last
the words became indistinct, his eyelids closed over his weary eyes, and
he sank into a profound slumber. I carried him into his bedroom without
arousing him; and making a couch for myself out of the chairs, I
remained by his side all night.
In the morning Barrington Cowles was in a high fever. For weeks he
lingered between life and death. The highest medical skill of Edinburgh
was called in, and his vigorous constitution slowly got the better of
his disease. I nursed him during this anxious time; but through all his
wild delirium and ravings he never let a word escape him which explained
the mystery connected with Miss Northcott. Sometimes he spoke of her
in the tenderest words and most loving voice. At others he screamed out
that she was a fiend, and stretched out his arms, as if to keep her off.
Several times he cried that he would not sell his soul for a beautiful
face, and then he would moan in a most piteous voice, “But I love her--I
love her for all that; I shall never cease to love her.”
When he came to himself he was an altered man. His severe illness
had emaciated him greatly, but his dark eyes had lost none of their
brightness. They shone out with startling brilliancy from under
his dark, overhanging brows. His manner was eccentric and
variable--sometimes irritable, sometimes recklessly mirthful, but never
natural. He would glance about him in a strange, suspicious manner, like
one who feared something, and yet hardly knew what it was he dreaded. He
never mentioned Miss Northcott’s name--never until that fatal evening of
which I have now to speak.
In an endeavour to break the current of his thoughts by frequent change
of scene, I travelled with him through the highlands of Scotland, and
afterwards down the east coast. In one of these peregrinations of ours
we visited the Isle of May, an island near the mouth of the Firth of
Forth, which, except in the tourist season, is singularly barren and
desolate. Beyond the keeper of the lighthouse there are only one or
two families of poor fisher-folk, who sustain a precarious existence by
their nets, and by the capture of cormorants and solan geese. This grim
spot seemed to have such a fascination for Cowles that we engaged a room
in one of the fishermen’s huts, with the intention of passing a week
or two there. I found it very dull, but the loneliness appeared to be a
relief to my friend’s mind. He lost the look of apprehension which had
become habitual to him, and became something like his old self.
He would wander round the island all day, looking down from the summit
of the great cliffs which gird it round, and watching the long green
waves as they came booming in and burst in a shower of spray over the
rocks beneath.
One night--I think it was our third or fourth on the island--Barrington
Cowles and I went outside the cottage before retiring to rest, to enjoy
a little fresh air, for our room was small, and the rough lamp caused
an unpleasant odour. How well I remember every little circumstance
in connection with that night! It promised to be tempestuous, for the
clouds were piling up in the north-west, and the dark wrack was drifting
across the face of the moon, throwing alternate belts of light and shade
upon the rugged surface of the island and the restless sea beyond.
We were standing talking close by the door of the cottage, and I was
thinking to myself that my friend was more cheerful than he had been
since his illness, when he gave a sudden, sharp cry, and looking round
at him I saw, by the light of the moon, an expression of unutterable
horror come over his features. His eyes became fixed and staring, as
if riveted upon some approaching object, and he extended his long thin
forefinger, which quivered as he pointed.
“Look there!” he cried. “It is she! It is she! You see her there coming
down the side of the brae.” He gripped me convulsively by the wrist as
he spoke. “There she is, coming towards us!”
“Who?” I cried, straining my eyes into the darkness.
“She--Kate--Kate Northcott!” he screamed. “She has come for me. Hold me
fast, old friend. Don’t let me go!”
“Hold up, old man,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Pull yourself
together; you are dreaming; there is nothing to fear.”
“She is gone!” he cried, with a gasp of relief. “No, by heaven! there
she is again, and nearer--coming nearer. She told me she would come for
me, and she keeps her word.”
“Come into the house,” I said. His hand, as I grasped it, was as cold as
ice.
“Ah, I knew it!” he shouted. “There she is, waving her arms. She is
beckoning to me. It is the signal. I must go. I am coming, Kate; I am
coming!”
I threw my arms around him, but he burst from me with superhuman
strength, and dashed into the darkness of the night. I followed him,
calling to him to stop, but he ran the more swiftly. When the moon
shone out between the clouds I could catch a glimpse of his dark figure,
running rapidly in a straight line, as if to reach some definite goal.
It may have been imagination, but it seemed to me that in the flickering
light I could distinguish a vague something in front of him--a
shimmering form which eluded his grasp and led him onwards. I saw his
outlines stand out hard against the sky behind him as he surmounted the
brow of a little hill, then he disappeared, and that was the last ever
seen by mortal eye of Barrington Cowles.
The fishermen and I walked round the island all that night with
lanterns, and examined every nook and corner without seeing a trace
of my poor lost friend. The direction in which he had been running
terminated in a rugged line of jagged cliffs overhanging the sea. At one
place here the edge was somewhat crumbled, and there appeared marks upon
the turf which might have been left by human feet. We lay upon our faces
at this spot, and peered with our lanterns over the edge, looking down
on the boiling surge two hundred feet below. As we lay there, suddenly,
above the beating of the waves and the howling of the wind, there rose
a strange wild screech from the abyss below. The fishermen--a naturally
superstitious race--averred that it was the sound of a woman’s laughter,
and I could hardly persuade them to continue the search. For my own part
I think it may have been the cry of some sea-fowl startled from its nest
by the flash of the lantern. However that may be, I never wish to hear
such a sound again.
And now I have come to the end of the painful duty which I have
undertaken. I have told as plainly and as accurately as I could the
story of the death of John Barrington Cowles, and the train of events
which preceded it. I am aware that to others the sad episode seemed
commonplace enough. Here is the prosaic account which appeared in the
Scotsman a couple of days afterwards:--
“Sad Occurrence on the Isle of May.--The Isle of May has been the scene
of a sad disaster. Mr. John Barrington Cowles, a gentleman well known
in University circles as a most distinguished student, and the present
holder of the Neil Arnott prize for physics, has been recruiting his
health in this quiet retreat. The night before last he suddenly left his
friend, Mr. Robert Armitage, and he has not since been heard of. It
is almost certain that he has met his death by falling over the cliffs
which surround the island. Mr. Cowles’ health has been failing for some
time, partly from over study and partly from worry connected with family
affairs. By his death the University loses one of her most promising
alumni.”
I have nothing more to add to my statement. I have unburdened my mind of
all that I know. I can well conceive that many, after weighing all
that I have said, will see no ground for an accusation against Miss
Northcott. They will say that, because a man of a naturally excitable
disposition says and does wild things, and even eventually commits
self-murder after a sudden and heavy disappointment, there is no reason
why vague charges should be advanced against a young lady. To this,
I answer that they are welcome to their opinion. For my own part, I
ascribe the death of William Prescott, of Archibald Reeves, and of John
Barrington Cowles to this woman with as much confidence as if I had seen
her drive a dagger into their hearts.
You ask me, no doubt, what my own theory is which will explain all these
strange facts. I have none, or, at best, a dim and vague one. That Miss
Northcott possessed extraordinary powers over the minds, and through the
minds over the bodies, of others, I am convinced, as well as that her
instincts were to use this power for base and cruel purposes. That some
even more fiendish and terrible phase of character lay behind this--some
horrible trait which it was necessary for her to reveal before
marriage--is to be inferred from the experience of her three lovers,
while the dreadful nature of the mystery thus revealed can only be
surmised from the fact that the very mention of it drove from her those
who had loved her so passionately. Their subsequent fate was, in my
opinion, the result of her vindictive remembrance of their desertion of
her, and that they were forewarned of it at the time was shown by the
words of both Reeves and Cowles. Above this, I can say nothing. I lay
the facts soberly before the public as they came under my notice. I have
never seen Miss Northcott since, nor do I wish to do so. If by the words
I have written I can save any one human being from the snare of those
bright eyes and that beautiful face, then I can lay down my pen with the
assurance that my poor friend has not died altogether in vain.