THE MENACE
From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of
the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I
cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say
that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would
punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he
objected. I knew what fear was--the most terrible of all fears--the
fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne
of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which
did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single
glance, a single sneer.
It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me,
and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never
guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been
warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had
taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of
time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour
when a liking for Rosa had arisen in my breast, the ghost of Lord
Clarenceux, always hovering uneasily near to its former love, had
showed itself to me.
The figure opposite the Devonshire Mansion--that was the first
warning. With regard to the second appearance, in the cathedral of
Bruges, I surmised that that only indirectly affected myself.
Primarily it was the celebration of a fiendish triumph over one who
had preceded me in daring to love Rosetta Rosa, but doubtless also it
was meant in a subsidiary degree as a second warning to the youth who
followed in Alresca's footsteps. Then there were the two appearances
during my journey from London to Paris with Rosa's jewels--in the
train and on the steamer. Matters by that time had become more
serious. I was genuinely in love, and the ghost's anger was quickened.
The train was wrecked and the steamer might have been sunk, and I
could not help thinking that the ghost, in some ineffectual way, had
been instrumental in both these disasters. The engine-driver, who said
he was "dazed," and the steersman, who attributed his mistake at the
wheel to the interference of some unknown outsider--were not these
things an indication that my dreadful suspicion was well grounded? And
if so, to what frightful malignity did they not point! Here was a
spirit, which in order to appease the pangs of a supernatural
jealousy, was ready to use its immaterial powers to destroy scores of
people against whom it could not possibly have any grudge. The most
fanatical anarchism is not worse than this.
Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that
acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near
neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous
hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.
In such wise did I reason the matter out to myself. But reasoning was
quite unnecessary. I knew by a sure instinct. All the dark thoughts
of the ghost had passed into my brain, and if they had been
transcribed in words of fire and burnt upon my retina, I could not
have been more certain of their exact import.
As I sat in my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon
my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before?
Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are
continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their
existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to
perceive the truth--that is why the greatest poets are always the
greatest teachers.
As for you who are disposed to smile at the idea of a live man crushed
(figuratively) under the heel of a ghost, I beg you to look back upon
your own experience, and count up the happenings which have struck you
as mysterious. You will be astonished at their number. But nothing is
so mysterious that it is incapable of explanation, did we but know
enough. I, by a singular mischance, was put in the way of the nameless
knowledge which explains all. At any rate, I was made acquainted with
some trifle of it. I had strayed on the seashore of the unknown, and
picked up a pebble. I had a glimpse of that other world which
permeates and exists side by side with and permeates our own.
Just now I used the phrase "under the heel of a ghost," and I used it
advisedly. It indicates pretty well my mental condition. I was cowed,
mastered. The ghost of Clarenceux, driven to extremities by the brief
scene of tenderness which had passed in Rosa's drawing-room, had
determined by his own fell method to end the relations between Rosa
and myself. And his method was to assume a complete sway over me, the
object of his hatred.
How did he exercise that sway? Can I answer? I cannot. How does one
man influence another? Not by electric wires or chemical apparatus,
but by those secret channels through which intelligence meets
intelligence. All I know is that I felt his sinister authority. During
life Clarenceux, according to every account, had been masterful,
imperious, commanding; and he carried these attributes with him beyond
the grave. His was a stronger personality than mine, and I could not
hide from myself the assurance that in the struggle of will against
will I should not be the conqueror.
Not that anything had occurred, even the smallest thing! Upon
perceiving Rosa the apparition, as I have said, vanished. We did not
say much to each other, Rosa and I; we could not--we were afraid. I
went to my hotel; I sat in my room alone; I saw no ghost. But I was
aware, I was aware of the doom which impended over me. And already,
indeed, I experienced the curious sensation of the ebbing of
volitional power; I thought even that I was losing my interest in
life. My sensations were dulled. It began to appear to me unimportant
whether I lived or died. Only I knew that in either case I should love
Rosa. My love was independent of my will, and therefore the ghost of
Clarenceux, do what it might, could not tear it from me. I might die,
I might suffer mental tortures inconceivable, but I should continue to
love. In this idea lay my only consolation.
I remained motionless in my chair for hours, and then--it was soon
after the clocks struck four--I sprang up, and searched among my
papers for Alresca's letter, the seal of which, according to his
desire, was still intact. The letter had been in my mind for a long
time. I knew well that the moment for opening it had come, that the
circumstances to which Alresca had referred in his covering letter had
veritably happened. But somehow, till that instant, I had not been
able to find courage to read the communication. As I opened it I
glanced out of the window. The first sign of dawn was in the sky. I
felt a little easier.
Here is what I read:
"My dear Carl Foster:--When you read this the words I am
about to write will have acquired the sanction which belongs
to the utterances of those who have passed away. Give them,
therefore, the most serious consideration.
"If you are not already in love with Rosetta Rosa you soon
will be. I, too, as you know, have loved her. Let me tell you
some of the things which happened to me.
"From the moment when that love first sprang up in my heart I
began to be haunted by--I will not say what; you know without
being told, for whoever loves Rosa will be haunted as I was,
as I am. Rosa has been loved once for all, and with a passion
so intense that it has survived the grave. For months I
disregarded the visitations, relying on the strength of my
own soul. I misjudged myself, or, rather, I underestimated my
adversary--the great man who in life had loved Rosa. I
proposed to Rosa, and she refused me. But that did not quench
my love. My love grew; I encouraged it; and it was against
the mere fact of my love that the warnings were directed.
"You remember the accident on the stage which led to our
meeting. That accident was caused by sheer terror--the terror
of an apparition more awful than any that had gone before.
"Still I persisted--I persisted in my hopeless love. Then
followed that unnamed malady which in vain you are seeking to
cure, a malady which was accompanied by innumerable and
terrifying phenomena. The malady was one of the mind; it
robbed me of the desire to live. More than that, it made life
intolerable. At last I surrendered. I believe I am a brave
man, but it is the privilege of the brave man to surrender
without losing honor to an adversary who has proved his
superiority. Yes, I surrendered. I cast out love in order
that I might live for my art.
"But I was too late. I had pushed too far the enmity of this
spectral and unrelenting foe, and it would not accept my
surrender. I have dashed the image of Rosa from my heart, and
I have done it to no purpose. I am dying. And so I write this
for you, lest you should go unwarned to the same doom.
"The love of Rosa is worth dying for, if you can win it. (I
could not even win it.) You will have to choose between Love
and Life. I do not counsel you either way. But I urge you to
choose. I urge you either to defy your foe utterly and to the
death, or to submit before submission is useless.
"Alresca."
I sat staring at the paper long after I had finished reading it,
thinking about poor Alresca. There was a date to it, and this date
showed that it was written a few days before his mysterious disease
took a turn for the better.
The communication accordingly needs some explanation. It seems to me
that Alresca was mistaken. His foe was not so implacable as Alresca
imagined. Alresca having surrendered in the struggle between them, the
ghost of Lord Clarenceux hesitated, and then ultimately withdrew its
hateful influence, and Alresca recovered. Then Rosa came again into
his existence that evening at Bruges. Alresca, scornful of
consequences, let his passion burst once more into flame, and the
ghost instantly, in a flash of anger, worked its retribution.
Day came, and during the whole of that day I pondered upon a phrase in
Alresca's letter, "You will have to choose between love and life." But
I could not choose. Love is the greatest thing in life; one may,
however, question whether it should be counted greater than life
itself. I tried to argue the question calmly, dispassionately. As if
such questions may be argued! I could not give up my love; I could not
give up my life; that was how all my calm, dispassionate arguments
ended. At one moment I was repeating, "The love of Rosa is worth dying
for;" at the next I was busy with the high and dear ambitions of which
I had so often dreamed. Were these to be sacrificed? Moreover, what
use would Rosa's love be to me when I was dead? And what use would my
life be to me without my love for her?
A hundred times I tried to laugh, and said to myself that I was the
victim of fancy, that I should see nothing further of this prodigious
apparition; that, in short, my brain had been overtaxed by recent
events, and I had suffered from delusions. Vain and conventional
self-deceptions! At the bottom of my soul lay always the secret and
profound conviction that I was doomed, cursed, caught in the toils of
a relentless foe who was armed with all the strange terrors of the
unknown; a foe whose onslaughts it was absolutely impossible for me to
parry.
As the hours passed a yearning to see Rosa, to be near her, came upon
me. I fought against it, fearing I know not what as the immediate
consequence. I wished to temporize, or, at any rate, to decide upon a
definite course of conduct before I saw her again. But towards evening
I felt that I should yield to the impulse to behold her. I said to
myself, as though I needed some excuse, that she would have a great
deal of trouble with the arrangements for Sir Cyril's funeral, and
that I ought to offer my assistance; that, indeed, I ought to have
offered my assistance early in the day.
I presented myself after dinner. She was dressed in black, and her
manner was nervous, flurried, ill at ease. We shook hands very
formally, and then could find nothing to say to each other. Had she,
with a woman's instinct, guessed, from that instant's view of the
thing in the chair last night, all that was involved for me in our
love? If not all, she had guessed most of it. She had guessed that the
powerful spirit of Lord Clarenceux was inimical, fatally inimical, to
me. None knew better than herself the terrible strength of his
jealousy. I wondered what were her thoughts, her secret desires.
At length she began to speak of commonplace matters.
"Guess who has called," she said, with a little smile.
"I give it up," I said, with a smile as artificial as her own.
"Mrs. Sullivan Smith. She and Sullivan Smith are on their way home
from Bayreuth; they are at the Hôtel du Rhin. She wanted to know all
about what happened in the Rue Thiers, and to save trouble I told
her. She stayed a long time. There have been a lot of callers. I am
very tired. I--I expected you earlier. But you are not listening."
I was not. I was debating whether or not to show her Alresca's letter.
I decided to do so, and I handed it to her there and then.
"Read that," I murmured.
She read it in silence, and then looked at me. Her tender eyes were
filled with tears. I cast away all my resolutions of prudence, of
wariness, before that gaze. Seizing her in my arms, I kissed her again
and again.
"I have always suspected--what--what Alresca says," she murmured.
"But you love me?" I cried passionately.
"Do you need to be told, my poor Carl?" she replied, with the most
exquisite melancholy.
"Then I'll defy hell itself!" I said.
She hung passive in my embrace.