THE STRUGGLE
When I got back to my little sitting-room at the Hôtel de Portugal, I
experienced a certain timid hesitation in opening the door. For
several seconds I stood before it, the key in the lock, afraid to
enter. I wanted to rush out again, to walk the streets all night; it
was raining, but I thought that anything would be preferable to the
inside of my sitting-room. Then I felt that, whatever the cost, I must
go in; and, twisting the key, I pushed heavily at the door, and
entered, touching as I did so the electric switch. In the chair which
stood before the writing-table in the middle of the room sat the
figure of Lord Clarenceux.
Yes, my tormentor was indeed waiting. I had defied him, and we were
about to try a fall. As for me, I may say that my heart sank, sick
with an ineffable fear. The figure did not move as I went in; its back
was towards me. At the other end of the room was the doorway which
led to the small bedroom, little more than an alcove, and the gaze of
the apparition was fixed on this doorway.
I closed the outer door behind me, and locked it, and then I stood
still. In the looking-glass over the mantelpiece I saw a drawn, pale,
agitated face in which all the trouble of the world seemed to reside;
it was my own face. I was alone in the room with the ghost--the ghost
which, jealous of my love for the woman it had loved, meant to revenge
itself by my death.
A ghost, did I say? To look at it, no one would have taken it for an
apparition. No wonder that till the previous evening I had never
suspected it to be other than a man. It was dressed in black; it had
the very aspect of life. I could follow the creases in the frock coat,
the direction of the nap of the silk hat which it wore in my room. How
well by this time I knew that faultless black coat and that impeccable
hat! Yet it seemed that I could not examine them too closely. I
pierced them with the intensity of my fascinated glance. Yes, I
pierced them, for showing faintly through the coat I could discern the
outline of the table which should have been hidden by the man's
figure, and through the hat I could see the handle of the French
window.
As I stood motionless there, solitary under the glow of the electric
light with this fearful visitor, I began to wish that it would move. I
wanted to face it--to meet its gaze with my gaze, eye to eye, and will
against will. The battle between us must start at once, I thought, if
I was to have any chance of victory, for moment by moment I could feel
my resolution, my manliness, my mere physical courage, slipping away.
But the apparition did not stir. Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it
was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favor.
Then I said to myself that I would cross the room, and so attain my
object. I made a step--and drew back, frightened by the sound of a
creaking board. Absurd! But it was quite a minute before I dared to
make another step. I had meant to walk straight across to the other
door, passing in my course close by the occupied chair. I did not do
so; I kept round by the wall, creeping on tiptoe and my eye never
leaving the figure in the chair. I did this in spite of myself, and
the manner of my action was the first hint of an ultimate defeat.
At length I stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom. I could feel
the perspiration on my forehead and at the back of my neck. I fronted
the inscrutable white face of the thing which had once been Lord
Clarenceux, the lover of Rosetta Rosa; I met its awful eyes, dark,
invidious, fateful. Ah, those eyes! Even in my terror I could read in
them all the history, all the characteristics, of Lord Clarenceux.
They were the eyes of one capable at once of the highest and of the
lowest. Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their
cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness,
with their spirituality a hellish turpitude. They were the eyes of two
opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the
conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I had heard from
different people.
But as far as I was concerned that night the eyes held nothing but
cruelty and disaster; though I could detect in them the other
qualities, those qualities were not for me. We faced each other, the
apparition and I, and the struggle, silent and bitter as the grave,
began. Neither of us moved. My arms were folded easily, but my nails
pressed in the palms of my clenched hands. My teeth were set, my lips
tight together, my glance unswerving. By sheer strength of endeavor I
cast aside all my forebodings of defeat, and in my heart I said with
the profoundest conviction that I would love Rosa though the seven
seas and all the continents gave up their dead to frighten me.
So we remained, for how long I do not know. It may have been hours; it
may have been only minutes; I cannot tell. Then gradually there came
over me a feeling that the ghost in the chair was growing larger. The
ghastly inhuman sneer on his thin widening lips assaulted me like a
giant's malediction. And the light in the room seemed to become more
brilliant, till it was almost blinding with the dazzle of its
whiteness. This went on for a time, and once more I pulled myself
together, collected my scattering senses, and seized again the courage
and determination which had nearly slipped from me.
But I knew that I must get away, out of sight of this moveless and
diabolic figure, which did not speak, but which made known its
commands by means of its eyes alone. "Resign her!" the eyes said.
"Tear your love for her out of your heart! Swear that you will never
see her again--or I will ruin you utterly, not only now, but forever
more!"
And though I trembled, my eyes answered "No."
For some reason which I cannot at all explain, I suddenly took off my
overcoat, and, drawing aside the screen which ran across the corner of
the room at my right hand, forming a primitive sort of wardrobe, I
hung it on one of the hooks. I had to feel with my fingers for the
hook, because I kept my gaze on the figure.
"I will go into the bedroom," I said.
And I half-turned to pass through the doorway. Then I stopped. If I
did so, the eyes of the ghost would be upon my back, and I felt that I
could only withstand that glance by meeting it. To have it on my
back!... Doubtless I was going mad. However, I went backwards through
the doorway, and then rapidly stepped out of sight of the apparition,
and sat down upon the bed.
Useless! I must return. The mere idea of the empty sitting-room--empty
with the ghost in it--filled me with a new and stranger fear. Horrible
happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see them!
Moreover, the ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too
appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something,
otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it
had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of
such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze;
my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them,
they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be
compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for
them. No, no, I must return to the sitting-room. And I returned.
The gaze met me in the doorway. And now there was something novel in
it--an added terror, a more intolerable menace, a silent imprecation
so frightful that no human being could suffer it. I sank to the
ground, and as I did so I shrieked, but it was an unheard shriek,
sounding only within the brain. And in reply to that unheard shriek I
heard the unheard voice of the ghost crying, "Yield!"
I would not yield. Crushed, maddened, tortured by a worse than any
physical torture, I would not yield. But I wanted to die. I felt that
death would be sweet and utterly desirable. And so thinking, I faded
into a kind of coma, or rather a state which was just short of coma. I
had not lost consciousness, but I was conscious of nothing but the
gaze.
"Good-by, Rosa," I whispered. "I'm beaten, but my love has not been
conquered."
The next thing I remembered was the paleness of the dawn at the
window. The apparition had vanished for that night, and I was alive.
But I knew that I had touched the skirts of death; I knew that after
another such night I should die.
The morning chocolate arrived, and by force of habit I consumed it. I
felt no interest in any earthly thing; my sole sensation was a dread
of the coming night, which all too soon would be upon me. For several
hours I sat, pale and nerveless, in my room, despising myself for a
weakness and a fear which I could not possibly avoid. I was no longer
my own master; I was the slave, the shrinking chattel of a ghost, and
the thought of my condition was a degradation unspeakable.
During the afternoon a ray of hope flashed upon me. Mrs. Sullivan
Smith was at the Hôtel du Rhin, so Rosa had said; I would call on
her. I remembered her strange demeanor to me on the occasion of our
first meeting, and afterwards at the reception. It seemed clear to me
now that she must have known something. Perhaps she might help me.
I found her in a garish apartment too full of Louis Philippe
furniture, robed in a crimson tea-gown, and apparently doing nothing
whatever. She had the calm quiescence of a Spanish woman. Yet when she
saw me her eyes burned with a sudden dark excitement.
"Carl," she said, with the most staggering abruptness, "you are
dying."
"How do you know?" I said morosely. "Do I look it?"
"Yet the crystal warned you!" she returned, with apparent but not real
inconsequence.
"I want you to tell me," I said eagerly, and with no further pretence.
"You must have known something then, when you made me look in the
crystal. What did you know--and how?"
She sat a moment in thought, stately, half-languid, mysterious.
"First," she said, "let me hear all that has happened. Then I will
tell you."
"Is Sullivan about?" I asked. I felt that if I was to speak I must not
be interrupted by that good-natured worldling.
"Sullivan," she said a little scornfully, with gentle contempt, "is
learning French billiards. You are perfectly safe." She understood.
Then I told her without the least reservation all that had happened to
me, and especially my experiences of the previous night. When I had
finished she looked at me with her large sombre eyes, which were full
of pity, but not of hope. I waited for her words.
"Now, listen," she said. "You shall hear. I was with Lord Clarenceux
when he died."
"You!" I exclaimed. "In Vienna! But even Rosa was not with him. How--"
"Patience! And do not interrupt me with questions. I am giving away a
secret which carries with it my--my reputation. Long before my
marriage I had known Lord Clarenceux. He knew many women; I was one of
them. That affair ended. I married Sullivan.
"I happened to be in Vienna at the time Lord Clarenceux was taken with
brain fever. I was performing at a music-hall on the Prater. There was
a great rage then for English singers in Vienna. I knew he was alone.
I remembered certain things that had passed between us, and I went to
him. I helped to nurse him. He was engaged to Rosa, but Rosa was far
away, and could not come immediately. He grew worse. The doctors said
one day that he must die. That night I was by his bedside. He got
suddenly up out of bed. I could not stop him: he had the strength of
delirium. He went into his dressing-room, and dressed himself fully,
even to his hat, without any assistance.
"'Where are you going?' I said to him.
"'I am going to her,' he said. 'These cursed doctors say I shall die.
But I sha'n't. I want her. Why hasn't she come? I must go and find
her.'
"Then he fell across the bed exhausted. He was dying. I had rung for
help, but no one had come, and I ran out of the room to call on the
landing. When I came back he was sitting up in bed, all dressed, and
still with his hat on. It was the last flicker of his strength. His
eyes glittered. He began to speak. How he stared at me! I shall never
forget it!
"'I am dying!' he said hoarsely. 'They were right, after all. I shall
lose her. I would sell my soul to keep her, yet death takes me from
her. She is young and beautiful, and will live many years. But I have
loved her, and where I have loved let others beware. I shall never be
far from her, and if another man should dare to cast eyes on her I
will curse him. The heat of my jealousy shall blast his very soul. He,
too, shall die. Rosa was mine in life, and she shall be mine in death.
My spirit will watch over her, for no man ever loved a woman as I
loved Rosa.' Those were his very words, Carl. Soon afterwards he
died."
She recited Clarenceux's last phrases with such genuine emotion that I
could almost hear Clarenceux himself saying them. I felt sure that she
had remembered them precisely, and that Clarenceux would, indeed, have
employed just such terms.
"And you believe," I murmured, after a long pause, during which I
fitted the remarkable narration in with my experiences, and found that
it tallied--"you believe that Lord Clarenceux could keep his word
after death?"
"I believe!" she said simply.
"Then there is no hope for me, Emmeline?"
She looked at me vaguely, absently, without speaking, and shook her
head. Her lustrous eyes filled with tears.