THE QUEST OF THE SHADOW
There came a certain September evening whose memory was destined to
imprint itself ineffaceably on the souls of the three most intimately
associated in the conduct of the Agency.
Gilead had left the office betimes to attend a meeting convened for
the purpose of discussing the _Arts Education Bill_, a measure which
it was proposed to bring before Parliament, and for whose actual
initiation he himself was more than anyone responsible. Its main
purpose was to reform and direct popular taste in all matters which
met the eye; to prevent the disfigurement of the land; to see that
desirable sites were ennobled with suitable erections; to control the
abuse of advertisements; to lead the common view by the ways of beauty
and fitness to an appreciation of both. The promoters of the bill, men
of a rare educational foresight, founded their propaganda on the truth
that, while learning is subjective, taste is objective, and that it is
of little use thinking to conduct towards a millennium of good taste
through groves of architectural and other abominations which outrage
every principle of it. Their idea was that, as oxygen enters by the
mouth to purify the living blood, so taste must be taken in at the
eyes to illuminate and refine the intellectual process, and that
forcibly to educate the community to an understanding of good things,
while confronting and environing it with the very opposite, is to be
likened to putting a man into a lazaretto for a rest-cure. In short,
they believed that the era of universal gentlehood which we all
desire, and can only at present see squalidly foreshadowed in the
cheap presumption engendered of compulsory education, is to be
approached through the eyes rather than the intellect, and that every
desecrated site, every wanton outrage on nature, every vulgar,
tasteless and pretentious edifice allowed to be erected is by so much
a set-back to the progress of race-refinement. Wherefore they proposed
in the first instance the establishment of a Governmental Board of
Callaesthetics, or Beauty-Science, whose expenses should be met by a
levy on the local rates, and whose business it should be to consider
the external plans of every building, public and private, it was
proposed to alter or erect, and to approve or, if offensive to the
cultivated eye, reject the same (the control of structural details was
to remain in the hands of Municipal and local bodies, since these were
business matters fit for men of business and demanding only practical
qualifications).
The scheme, a very fond one to Gilead’s heart, need not here be
discussed in detail. It aimed generally at the overthrow of the
tyranny of the vulgarian; embodied a central Committee of art-experts,
with official representatives in every capital town, and was immensely
far-reaching in its purposes. And, if it was doomed to failure, it was
not so doomed on practical grounds, but on the unquestionable liberty
of the subject to make himself as offensive as he likes within the
law.
On the night in question Gilead, after attending the meeting, had
dined en famille with a Cabinet Minister in sympathy with its objects.
He left early, purposing to pay a visit to the Agency--long-closed, of
course--in order to consult some papers bearing on the matter. As,
nodding to the porter who admitted him, he climbed the long stairs to
his private room, a queer sense of _something accompanying_ seized
upon him all in an instant. It was a quite odd and unusual feeling,
breaking into a preoccupation which had been profound. He looked right
and left in a curious way, stopped, considered a minute--then, with a
little laugh moved on and up. The feeling had gone: perhaps, he
thought, it had outstripped him in that momentary pause. The little
shock and throb of nerve evoked by the thought stopped him a second
time. He gave a self-conscious look, first upwards then backwards, saw
the hall empty and the porter gone, laughed once more, but uneasily,
and turned the corner of the stairs that mounted to his room.
Certainly he did pause in a quick trepidation as he fitted in the key.
His breath fluttered uncomfortably; a sense of enormous isolation in
those attics of swimming night gripped and astounded him; he began to
think of the things that might come bubbling up from the wells of
gloom beneath. But his courage was always the master of his
imagination, potent as that was; and the next instant he had turned
the key and entered. As he switched on the electric light, he saw a
young woman standing above the desk by the blinded window.
In the first moment of discovery he would not doubt but that the
figure was that of Miss Halifax herself, either remaining, or returned
after hours, to get through some arrears of work. He would not doubt,
I say, though he had never yet known the amanuensis moved to such a
course; but in reality he was fighting for nerve and resolution to
meet a shock which he foresaw to be inevitable. And the next instant
it came. The figure turned, revealing itself that of a stranger,
seemed to look at him intently, and in the very fact was gone.
For minutes Gilead remained perfectly motionless where he stood.
Heroes, like monarchs, should meet death erect; and so had not he met
and overcome it? He thought that if he had moved in the first shudder
of the blow, he would have fallen and died. The realization that
he--he himself--had seen an apparition, had endured that mortal
experience from whose fear all take refuge in scepticism, was like a
sudden shocking revelation of a friend’s treachery. Reason alone could
surmount the horror, and he waited rigidly for reason to return.
When it did, he was surprised to find what emotions swept in with it.
He had looked into the eyes of a tragedy deep beyond sounding. What it
meant he could not know; yet some intimacy engendered of that
soul-searching had awakened in him a pity profound beyond terror. His
face was very pale, but his lips were firmly set, as he went about his
business of investigating.
He found, and expected to find, nothing to explain the appearance. The
room was empty of all but its customary appointments. Having satisfied
himself--even as to the absurdest, most attenuated lurking-places--he
switched off the light, locked the door deliberately behind him, and,
descending the stairs, summoned the porter. He had just a single
question to ask the man; he put it to him as nonchalantly as possible:
he supposed, in short, that no lady had come to request an interview
with him after closing-time, or had been invited to await his possible
return. The answer was uncompromising, indignantly self-righteous,
reassuring for the best of its worth. The porter knew his duty better;
he was not to be bought or wheedled into such an abuse of trust.
Gilead congratulated him, and went out into the night.
Its familiar commonplaces both comforted and jarred upon him. He felt
like a convalescent from some near-mortal illness, welcoming back life
while half-regretting his balked escape from it. But the direction he
instinctively took brought solace to him with every step. It was over
Miss Halifax’s desk that the apparition had bent; it was to Miss
Halifax that he turned for reassurance and explanation.
Would she have gone to bed? He put on agitated pace with the thought.
The flat was close by, and he was not long in reaching it. Finding the
lift-porter absent, he ran up the stairs in his impatience, and came
upon the gentleman himself in whispering colloquy with the maid at the
young lady’s door. The two were full of confusion; he put it and them
pleasantly by, intimating that he would announce himself. A sound of
music came from the drawing-room, and, without ceremony in his
urgency, he opened the door softly and entered. Miss Halifax was
seated at the piano, and over her, his arm familiarly wreathed about
her neck, stood Herbert Nestle.
They both started, and, turning on the instant, the girl rose to her
feet.
“Mr Balm!” she whispered. The colour fled from her face as he looked
at her; the secretary stood, as he had stepped suddenly back, hanging
his head sheepishly. Without a moment’s hesitation, and with a smile
on his lips, Gilead shut the door and hurried forward.
“O! you must forgive me,” he said. “It is quite undesigned--quite.
But, being so, let us all congratulate ourselves on this accident. I
have long suspected this, believe me, and I wish you both happiness
with all my heart. But why would you never tell me? Be assured I
should have honoured and rejoiced in the confidence.”
Vera’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. She glanced at the
secretary; he lifted his head and cleared his throat in a sudden
spasm. His face was as pale as the young lady’s; his eyes, seen
through his glasses, expressed even a magnified perturbation.
“I--I was on the point of going, sir,” he said. “You--you imply--you
anticipate, at least.”
“I hope not; I am sure not,” answered Gilead gravely. “You must
balance the significance of your words, Nestle. You should know me
sufficiently by this time to trust in the fullness of my sympathy.
There is no reason in the world why this should longer be kept a
secret; and if you ever had any doubts as to my personal approval, so
far as it is in question, rest convinced that I could imagine no union
more ideally conceived. You will not consider yourselves,” he said,
his voice quivering a little, “when wedded and because wedded, the
less wedded to our joint interests, I am certain.”
With tears springing to her eyes, the young lady took an impulsive
step forward.
“Mr Balm,” she began--“this mistake--”
He interrupted her, gently but peremptorily:--
“Was diffidence ever so perverse! It is no mistake; it must be none. I
have not failed to observe, I say; nor must Herbert fail to understand
the dishonour his shyness does you by implication. Well, if it is a
fact that he was on the point of going--”
“Absolutely, sir,” said the secretary.
“Then,” said Gilead, with a smile, “I will beg you, Nestle, to entrust
this rare possession to me for a few minutes. I had come, in fact, in
an emergency, to consult Miss Halifax; and hence my intrusion--I will
not call it mistimed.”
There was no gainsaying his ruling. He himself saw the secretary to
the door, and parted with him with a squeeze of the hand.
“For her sake, Nestle,” he said, “your engagement must not go longer
unacknowledged.”
Returning to the room, he found the girl toying with some music at the
piano, her back turned to him. He stood silent a moment; and then he
exclaimed, with a scarce perceptible sigh:--
“I can say no more in honour now than God bless you both. Miss
Halifax--”
A little to his surprise she faced round on him on the instant, her
cheeks like sunset roses. Her eyes were sparkling; a psychologist
might have read in their expression an impatience of his intolerable
stupidity--or chivalry. But in the very act a consciousness of
something unusual in his look startled and checked her; and the
shadow, as it were, of a desperate word on her lips faded and passed.
“Mr Balm,” she said--her breath came quick--“what is it? What is the
matter?”
He looked straight into her eyes.
“I have seen a ghost,” he said.
She was the last from being feminine in the foolish sense. She
searched his face a moment; then, her own very white, seated herself
on the music-stool, and looked up at him steadily.
“Whose?” she said.
“Ah!” he answered--“I thought perhaps you could tell me.”
“_I!_” she exclaimed.
“I had a reason for returning to the office to-night,” he said. “That
was only a few minutes ago. As I mounted the stairs it seemed to me
that something went beside me, and, when I paused, passed on and up. I
was in a deep abstraction at the time, and--”
“The condition most favourable, they say, to ghost-seeing.”
“Yes, I can understand it--when the consciousness of externals falls
away. I felt odd--vaguely, indescribably expectant of something; and,
when I opened the door, it was there--the figure of a young woman.”
Her eyes never left his face; but her lips, though they moved, uttered
no sound.
“It stood,” he said, “in the corner by the window, leaning over your
desk. As I regarded it, it turned, looked at me, and was gone.” He
paused a moment, before he went on. “I was calm on the whole; I
searched the room thoroughly; there was no explanation. Some might
say, perhaps, that the very nature of our business invites its
visitations. If you feel nervous--that spot, henceforth, and its
associations--”
She rose hurriedly, interrupting him. Seeing her so white, he
instinctively advanced an arm to her support. She caught and held to
it, more in her secret heart from emotion than weakness.
“I would not surrender it--the place where I sit--for the world,” she
said, in a low full voice--“the least if I thought that any troubled
soul had sought it for help and counsel.”
“Now, before God,” said Gilead, “that is to regard it in the gentle
light--not Christian but Christlike. Yes, some troubled soul. You
shame me out of fear.”
“Tell me,” she said, looking in his face--“did you see this apparition
plainly?”
“For the moment,” he answered, “as plainly as I see you now.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Yes, I can describe it. It bore the appearance of--no, it _was_ a
young woman, very young and in a way attractive. There was an
expression on her face--how can I explain it? Can you imagine a spoilt
child, its tearful pettishness corrected for the first time in its
life by a heavy blow? The shock, the amazement, the rising flood of
self-pity--they seemed all there in suspense. I am putting it very
badly, I know, but that is the impression it conveyed to me. As to
distinctive features, there was a very definite vertical line between
the eyebrows, apparent even in repose, and quite peculiar in so pretty
a face. That, and the protruding very scarlet lower lip--but, after
all, I am no more than generalizing; and it was vivid--ineffaceable.
Does it suggest anything whatever to you?”
“I cannot be quite sure--the general impression--tell me, how was she
dressed?”
“Ah! dressed? I am not certain I can remember. She was slight; she
wore a large black mushroom-shaped hat with cherries in it; I noticed
that her neck was white, because her frock was cut rather low about
it, and that her arms were bare from the elbow. And I noticed--yes, I
noticed that she had on a wedding-ring, for her closed left hand was
lifted to the light.”
“It was not a wedding-ring. It was a little common turquoise thing,
the stones turned inwards to her palm to deceive.”
“Miss Halifax! Good God! You know who it was?”
“Yes, I know,” she answered, hardly above a whisper--“I am sure I
know. The hat--yes, and the description. She was to have come to me
again in her need, poor wretched importunate child, if all else
failed--and it has failed.”
She was so patently agitated, that he turned away during the minute in
which she fought to recover herself.
“Now,” she said, “let us talk it over, please. You have described, I
haven’t a doubt, poor Cicely Fleming. She was one, if not of the
submerged tenth, of those that buoy themselves on scraps of driftwood
and float on for a little--a typist, trained in an office, and
afterwards seeking to make herself an independence through a small
private connection. I need not dwell upon her story. So many of them,
lacking the essential fibre, go under. Passionate, wrong-headed,
persistent only in her claim to more consideration than she deserved,
she fell an easy prey to flattery. A little better luck--for her--and
she might have become a good man’s vixen; as it was, a villain found
and used her. He came in the guise of a client--she confessed it all
to me--and when sin called for its wages, he left her alone to bear
the penalty, and disappeared.
“You will understand, Mr Balm, will you not? The girl was only one of
the many whose misery is my province. In her despair she advertised
for a little loan of fifteen pounds to tide her over a trouble. I
understood, of course, and had her here. That was a week ago, perhaps.
She was ready with her poor story--was married, of course, in all but
the name. She would not give me his. She still had hopes that his
desertion was only temporary--easy of explanation; and she would not
yield his name to scandal. He had promised her before he went that he
would let her know where to follow him; and she had promised for her
part to be loyal and silent. Only the weeks had gone on, and he had
made no sign; and at length, driven to desperation--”
“Yes, yes--she advertised.”
“She could not work; her rent was in arrears; I made her--I hope you
will justify me, Mr Balm; she so clung to me; so opened her poor
little bursting heart, with all its load of passion and vanity--I made
her an advance provisionally, with a promise of further help if she
should need and apply to me again.”
“_I_ justify you? I bless you and congratulate myself.”
The girl rose to her feet, greatly overcome.
“She is only one,” she said; “and there are so many. Why, of all, is
it she to return and haunt us? What has happened? What does it
presage?”
“Hush!” said Gilead. “You must not give way. That is for me to
discover. Tell me--did she ever give you her address?”
“O, yes! It is in the York Road, not far from Waterloo Station. I have
it written down. I will fetch it for you.”
He glanced about him when he was left alone. This room, so warm and
fragrant and quiet! Its intimacy was to count henceforth among the
ghosts of lost and vanished things. He had been haunted and doubly
haunted this night; but the spectre of a hopeless passion--he
recognized it now, had come to realize it in a moment--was the spirit
potent above all others to possess and absorb a man. In its shadow all
lesser visitations sank into insignificance.
“Are you not frightened?” said the girl, as, returning, she put the
address into his hand.
“No,” he said, with a smile. “There is nothing necessarily terrifying
in this. Psychists will tell you that intense desire may, and often
does, manifest itself in bodily shape to its object. What more likely
than that Miss Fleming, being seized with an ungovernable wish to
consult you, flew astrally to the one spot she associated with your
presence?”
“O! I hope so,” she answered earnestly. “I hope it is nothing worse
than that. You are not going there to-night?”
“Yes, to-night.”
“But--”
“It would be unadvisable, cruel, to delay. I had better see her, if
possible, at once--at least learn what I can of her movements.”
She stopped him an instant to say: “You never rest or spare yourself
where help may be given”--and thereafter the look in her eyes alone
haunted him.
He went like a soul exalted through some great renunciation; his flesh
knew no tremors nor his spirit weakness. It was but a few minutes’
drive, at top speed, to his destination; it seemed to him a sparrow
flight from kerb to kerb.
Big Ben was booming out eleven as he mounted three or four steps to a
dingy door in the York Road. The house to which it belonged was of the
typical low-London pattern. It was one of a row--one of a black, sooty
wall of houses, so like its neighbours and its neighbours’ neighbours
inside and out, that, if Cogia Hassan had come in the night and played
general post with the numbers of them all, the life of the terrace
would probably have continued with as little sense of dislocation as
if number ten’s letters were not being delivered at number fourteen,
or number twelve’s lodger had not come home at midnight to sup on
number eight’s bread and cheese. Gilead looked down into the squalid
area and up at the dirty fanlight over the door, where a card, warped
and bleared with age, bent curiously to canvas the unlikely likelihood
of his applying for the apartments it advertised; and he wondered if
the mines, the docks, Princetown itself, were not preferable to
existence in such a place, so dreary, so colourless, so uneventful.
He had time to consider, and was indeed beginning to judge his mission
fruitless for that night, when the door opened suddenly, and a large
man with a candle in his hand appeared standing in the opening.
“O!” said Gilead. “Good evening to you. Are you the landlord?”
At the acceptable word, the individual backed heavily, motioning him
to enter. Gilead had been prepared for the typical lodging-house
shrew, tart, hungry, aggressive; instead, he saw before him a
substantial churchy gentleman, like a sanctimonious verger, with a
moist lip and side-whiskers. His waistcoat and trousers were black;
his coat was off, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow.
“I have come,” said Gilead, “to enquire about a Miss Fleming. Does she
live here?”
A certain tentative smile, oily and ineffable, left the man’s lips on
the instant.
“Work?” said he. “It’s late to come on business.”
“It’s late, as you say. Is she up?”
“She’s up to too much of this sort of thing to suit my book,” said the
landlord, with a disagreeable change of manner. “I don’t keep your
kind of shop, mister. No, she’s not up, and she’s not in.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“I believe you do.”
“Will you please to get out, now, or shall I call the police?”
“I will save you the trouble,” said Gilead. In fact he had observed
the approach on the moment of a constable known to him. “Gregory,” he
said, “will you come here a minute. This person is pleased to question
my credentials. I only ask you to convince him.”
“O! I’ll convince him sharp enough, Mr Balm, sir,” said the officer.
“I meant no offence,” said the landlord, in an injured voice.
“You have given none,” said Gilead. “On the contrary, I gather some
reassurance from your manner. Only you jump too hastily to
conclusions, Mr --?”
“Nolan,” said the constable.
“Now, Mr Nolan,” said Gilead, “I ask you, in the presence of this
officer, does Miss Fleming live here?”
The man looked from one to the other. His face perspired.
“She did,” he said, “until three days ago.”
“Where has she gone?”
“How am I to know?”
“That is not for me to say. But I intend to find out.”
“I don’t want to prevent you,” said the man--“before God I don’t. She
owed me money.”
“She was given money to pay you.”
“She didn’t pay me, then--not in full. What are you driving at? I’ll
tell you the truth--every word of it so far as I’m concerned.”
“Observe, Gregory,” said Gilead.
“She’s lodged with me a year and more,” said the landlord. “I don’t
know who she was nor where she come from. We can’t afford to be
particular here about references. It was enough for me that she kept a
typewriter and paid her rent off it. People visited her on
business--of course they did. It was no call of mine to enquire into
their characters--no, not even when they left late. There was a’many
of them, men and women; and I swear I haven’t even my suspicions. She
came to be in trouble--it was plain enough to see; and then her
customers fell off. She owed me money, I say; and I told her she must
go. Humanity’s a luxury for the rich, and I couldn’t afford it. At the
last she found me something on account; and at the last of all she
came to tell me that it was all right, that he was going to do the
handsome thing by her, and that he had written to her to join him.
Wild horses wouldn’t drag from her where, or what was the man’s name.
She had promised him, she said; and, once arrived, she was going to
write to me and settle my account. I saw her off myself from Waterloo.
I always liked the girl, in spite of her temper, and I carried down
her bag for her, and saw her start by the Windsor train. That was
three days ago, and an end of her so far as any message to me is
concerned.”
“She went by the Windsor train, you say?”
“That is so, sir--third class single; and, as she had only a fi-pun
note left, I lent her a half sovereign to pay for her ticket, and she
gave me eight shillings change. It’s the truth. What reason should I
have to deceive you?”
“None whatever; and no intention.”
To the landlord’s astonishment, the stranger shook him warmly by the
hand.
“You acted according to your lights,” said Gilead; “and they shone on
the whole. You have no suspicion where she’s gone?”
“Not a ghost, sir.”
“Or of the man’s name?”
“Even less, if possible.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr Nolan. Good-night!”
“Gregory,” said Gilead, as, leaving the petrified householder, he
walked away with the constable, “this is all Greek to you, of course.
Isn’t there some saying about a nod sufficing for a wise man and a rod
for a fool?”
“I daresay there is, Mr Balm.”
“I wonder which I am? Windsor is a terminus on the South Western,
isn’t it, and she took the Windsor train, third class single? Her
ticket cost two shillings--twenty-four miles at a penny a mile. That
ought to tell us what station she was bound for.”
“It ought, sir. I think you’re very clever.”
“O, don’t anticipate! The rod may be in pickle for me yet. Well, it’s
too late to put it to the proof. For to-night good-night, Gregory.”
Nevertheless he went to the station, too restless to postpone
conclusions altogether. Applying his test to the time-table, he found
that the twenty-four mile theory carried him to Datchet--not a mile
before or beyond. There was a train that started at ten minutes after
midnight. Should he dare everything and go by it?
A taxicab whirled him to his rooms, waited while his whirled together
a few necessaries, whirled him back again. At 1.18 A.M. he was
hammering, still highly strung, at the door of the solitary inn in
Datchet.
Reason and reaction only came with the morning. His prescience and his
calculations seemed all ridiculously out of gear. He quite blushed
over his coffee and kidney, thinking of the shame of the castigation
he had earned for his shoulders. No doubt the two shillings had
represented only part of the price of the ticket, the remainder being
supplied from Miss Fleming’s own pocket. Or perhaps she had taken but
not used the whole of that sum, retaining a few pence for tips. Either
way hopelessly threw out his reckoning.
He felt so discomfited all of a sudden, that he was almost on the
point of taking the next train back to London. However, he forbore,
deciding for his restoration on a balmy day in the country; and,
evading, even in thought, all tentative enquiries as to recent
arrivals in the village, he set out after breakfast for a walk.
It was a sweet and glowing morning of late September, frank, fresh and
life-stirring--the last to associate itself with thoughts of death and
apparitions. The whole country seemed enjoying a restful convalescence
from the low fever of August; the blatant tripper had fled; blazers of
garish hue flowered no longer among the rushed; the sweeping cry of
the swallows cut the wide air in place of chaff and banjo. Walking
round by the Victoria Bridge, Gilead stopped to lean over the parapet
and drink in the quiet beauty of the scene.
To his right stretched the stately tree-haunted swards of the Home
Park, the foliage just touched as with healthy sunburn. A royal lodge
with a pleasant garden watched the bridge-end. Below, the water
sparkled on in a never-ending pageant of ripples. To the left a long
withy-bed, bushed with pale-leafed alders, reached away towards the
village in a green perspective. Here was favourite mooring-ground for
houseboats, since the royal demesne on one side and the osiers on the
other kept the place private and unapproachable. In August one might
see a dozen of them anchored off the willow-bank--vessels of varying
degrees of importance, from the magnificent floating pleasure-house,
to the cocky little bomb-ketch with a cuddy for cooking and
sleeping-place. Now, however, all were gone but two--a huge hulk of a
thing, patently deserted and dismantled, which lay away towards
Datchet, and a much smaller affair, moored just clear of a patch of
rushes but a long stone’s-throw from the bridge on which he stood.
Gilead wished to find that this boat was abandoned also. There was not
a soul to be seen or heard anywhere; he liked to think that the place
was utterly given over to Autumn and its fragrant silences. But in
that he was to be disappointed. As he leaned, half hypnotised,
watching the running water, and conscious of the pale green oblong of
the little houseboat coming indistinctly into his field of vision, of
a sudden something moving there caught his attention, and he raised
his head. A man in grey flannels and a low-brimmed Panama hat was
stepping from its side into a rowing skiff, and the next moment he had
cast off and was pulling towards the bridge.
As the boat approached, Gilead saw that there was a woman seated in
her stern. He had not observed her enter, and was quite startled for
the moment. But the next, he reflected that his abstraction might
easily account for the mistake, and he smiled over his own befooling.
But the smile, in the very instant of its birth, withered from his
lips. The skiff came on fast, urged by muscular, one might have
thought furious arms, and as its occupants forged into clear range, he
saw bare arms, and a bare neck, and a black mushroom-shaped hat with
cherries in it.
His heart seemed to leap so that it left a physical pain. He stood
rigid, preparing for the charge; and the next moment the boat had
swept under the bridge, carrying with and in it the apparition of last
night.
With its vanishing, nerve returned to him. He hurried across the road
to see the boat shoot from the further side; yet, quick as he was, the
rower’s energy was so great that it was already three times its own
length beyond. As he caught at the railing, the man, as if moved by
some telepathic instinct, lifted his face and saw him. He stopped on
the instant, resting on his sculls.
A minute must have passed thus while they regarded one another, each
perfectly still in his place. Neither did the figure of the girl, now
with its back to Gilead, make the least movement. The boat, with the
way on it, continued to float up-stream; the face of the staring man
grew smaller and less distinct; but it was always to Gilead a stiff
blotch of yellow, like the face of a rigid corpse.
He could not have said why it struck him thus, but so it did. It was a
not uncomely face, of the strong blunt-featured type, in itself. The
man had looked young, though past his first youth--a muscular, compact
fellow, with curly dark hair and a hint of swagger and vulgarity. The
cock of his hat, the brilliant scarf about his waist, confessed the
bounder; yet what did a bounder on the river in late-September?
Something redeeming, the watcher hoped and prayed. Yet there had
seemed little that was human in that face. It had contrasted oddly
with the pink and white of the girl’s, just glimpsed in passing. The
apparition’s was the reassuring one of the two.
Suddenly, as he looked, the rower resumed his sculls; but he paddled
slowly, his eyes on the figure on the bridge all the while. Not until
the boat had vanished round a bend were they, Gilead felt, withdrawn,
releasing him to his own thoughts.
Those were strange enough in all conscience--compact of wonder and
perplexity. It was a certain comfort to him to find his theory
vindicated; that he had run his quarry actually to earth--or water. It
was a comfort also to find that last night’s case, psychically, was
one of those, as he had suggested, of astral visitation, and that his
ghost had represented no disembodied spirit. The girl had passed at
this moment beneath his eyes alive and in the flesh, which laid all
haunting of a worser suspicion. At the same time what intensity of
longing had materialized her spirit in Miss Halifax’s place, and how
was he, without laying himself open to a charge of insufferable
interference, to find out?
He crossed the bridge again, and stared at the pale-green houseboat.
It lay very solitary, well off the bank, in a deep pool near the
rushes. As far as he could make out, it appeared a luxurious
well-fitted craft of moderate size, with an over awning and plenty of
bright brass about it; while, swinging at its stern was a smart racing
punt. Well, that told him nothing, unless perhaps that its owner was
independent and well-to-do. He might discover, maybe, more at Datchet.
Oddly preoccupied, he continued his walk, lunched at Windsor, and
leisurely towards evening returned to the village and strolled down
upon the hard. The river looked pleasantly inviting, and a thought
occurred to him. Averse from exciting too much curiosity, he decided
upon hiring a boat and boatman, and, while being pulled up-stream,
putting what cautious questions should occur to him. A minute or two
later he was afloat.
“I was looking over the bridge this morning,” he said presently. “Who
owns that green houseboat near by?”
“The _Dragonfly_, sir? Name of Dangerfield, sir,” said the man. “He’s
said to be an acting gentleman. He took it off of another party for
the season.”
“He makes the season a late one, it seems.” The man
laughed--significantly, Gilead fancied. “Honeymooning, perhaps?” he
continued. “I saw him, as I passed, put off with a lady.”
“Yes, I seen her,” said the man--“we all seen her, and like her looks
as little as he seems to. It’s not his first. They comes and goes, and
we asks no questions. This one turned up from nowhere three days ago.
She was just there; and maybe in a week or so she’ll be gone. O, he’s
a caution!”
Gilead bit his lip, considering awhile. “_Why_ don’t you like her
looks?” he asked suddenly.
The man paused in his rowing to squeeze his mouth together.
“Why?” he said vacantly. “I shouldn’t fancy her for a mate, that’s
all. Mostly temper in a face makes a man hot to look at it, but hers
turns one cold. It’s my opinion he’s hooked a fish this time that’s
one too many for him. He looks as if he’d like to shake her off, and
can’t, and is mortal afeard of being pulled in himself. They’re up and
down the river these three days--up and down. She might, for all the
love that’s lost between ’em, be in another boat, and he bursting
himself trying to pull away from her. Ho-ho! It’s a queer start--and
here they come, too!”
Gilead sat up. They had reached the withy-bed, and suddenly round the
counter of the big dismantled houseboat shot the skiff with the man
and woman in it. It would have moved faster than before in any case
going down-stream; but no normal pace appeared sufficient for the
rower, who sculled with a fury that seemed to make the planks of the
frail craft stretch and gape. From time to time, since his companion
sat without movement not steering, he would turn his head to snatch a
course; and it was in one of these glances that, when close upon it,
he saw the other boat.
As instantly as in the morning he stopped. The skiff sped past and in
a moment was twenty astern.
“If he asked my advice I should say a liver-pill,” said the boatman.
“Did you see his face, sir?”
Gilead nodded. How could he have failed to--or that other, the face of
last night? It had not looked at him; its eyes, he had seen, were
fixed unwinkingly on the livid mask before them. But there had been
the same expression of startled resentment, the same suggestion of
obstinate importunateness, the same frowning vertical line between the
brows, the same full lower lip, so full and so scarlet that it might
have stood for a vampire’s gorged with blood.
“Hullo!” said the boatman; “he’s turning, by his looks, to come after
us!”
He put his back into his work; but sure enough, sturdily as he pulled,
the skiff overhauled them. More than half way up the withy-bed it
passed, hugging the shore, so that the faces were sunk in shadow.
“Keep it up,” said Gilead. “I want you to take me to the _Dragonfly_.”
He had made up his mind in that moment. After all, Cicely Fleming had
sought the help of the Agency, and was entitled to its advice and, if
necessary, its protection. He could not altogether ignore that shadowy
appeal. It must have portended something, and it would be base to turn
away, leaving it unquestioned.
The boatman bending to his task, the skiff gained so little on them
that at the last reach, coming out into the open to avoid the rushes,
it was a bare fifty yards ahead as it made straight for the pale-green
houseboat lying solitary on the water. But it had kept, and even
increased its lead a little as it ran home and the man leapt on board
and disappeared into the saloon.
Gilead could not guess why he thus, and so obviously, fled to escape
him. He felt his own task to be a gentle and propitiatory one, and he
had no intention of imperilling its object by assuming any
impertinently censorious attitude. Moreover, how was his intention
foreseen--unless, indeed, the girl herself had recognised and
explained him? He saw her, just an instant, standing at the door; and
then she too vanished.
A score of strokes now, and they were across the intervening space,
when, at the moment the boatman unshipped his left scull, to run under
the _Dragonfly’s_ counter, sudden and startling a shot slammed out
from within. The man, gripping at the gunwale, slipped his hand in the
shock, then caught on again and held.
“God of mercy, sir!” he exclaimed. “What’s that?”
He had hardly spoken when Gilead, with a white face, was up and on
board. He ran round, and was out of sight in an instant. Immediately
a faint cry came to the ears of the waiting man. He hallooed in
answer, but shakily, and sat sweating in his place. Suddenly his fare
reappeared, but approaching agitated from the further end.
“He’s shot himself through the head,” said Gilead hoarsely. “The
revolver’s in his hand. You must fasten on and come up. Good God--the
girl! What’s become of her? I’ve been right through the boat.”
The man heaved himself, like a rheumatic creature, to his feet. His
cheeks were patched with yellow; he fancied the job the least in the
world. But he came, and saw; and was very sick by and by.
“Dead!” he whispered. “A man can’t live without a head.”
“But what’s become of her?”
“She must be hiding--she can’t have got away; or did he--no, there was
only one shot.”
They hunted high and low; they ransacked every corner.
“I saw her standing there--at the door--but a moment ago,” said
Gilead, gulping.
The boat lay moored in its placid pool; everything around slept quiet
and unruffled; not a ripple, not a swaying in the reeds was there to
account for the instant disappearance. The punt swung by its painter;
the skiff floated as it had been run in, its nose wedged under the
counter. Suddenly the man gripped Gilead’s sleeve, and pointed.
“Look, sir,” he said--“them cushions where she sat!”
[image: images/img_243.jpg
caption: “‘LOOK, SIR,’ HE SAID--‘THEM CUSHIONS WHERE SHE SAT!’”]
They were soft, silken, well-rounded things; and they showed no least
impression of anybody having recently rested on them.
“I’m off, sir,” said the man. He went scrambling for the boat, white
to the lips. Once secure in his seat he looked up. “I understand now,”
he said, “what he was a’trying to escape from. There’s more somewhere
here than meets the eye. Come along, sir, in God’s name!”
“No,” said Gilead. “Go you, while I wait, and fetch assistance.
Supposing that we both went, and somebody not knowing were to board
here and look in?”
Merciful and considerate for others as always, he set himself
resolutely to endure his vigil.
* * * *
There was a strange scene at the inquest, which led to its
postponement sine die. The body was identified, as many people will
remember, and the fact reaffirmed, for all that it is worth, that a
first-rate actor may be a tenth-rate man. This man had led the double,
the quadruple life--a brutal, worthless creature, whose crowning grace
had been his ending it voluntarily. He was married and had children.
Fortunately for them he had played, and he died, under a
nom-de-théâtre.
But the odd thing at the inquest was the conflict of evidence as to
his latest victim. Even local witnesses, when questioned as to her
local existence, faltered and contradicted themselves. They fancied
that they had seen some one with him, on this day or the other, but,
when confronted with the oath, they would not swear. It would have
been comical if not so tragical.
It was the great London philanthropist--by then made known and
suitably reverenced--who caused the final sensation in the Coroner’s
Court. Gilead had risen to account for his presence on the scene; he
had described how, in the interests of his Agency, he had traced a
very vilely-used young woman to the neighbourhood, with the purpose of
redeeming her if possible from the shame, and saving her from the
misery to which she appeared committed. And there he had hesitated and
stopped. It had been unnecessary and quite useless to quote the
supernatural raison d’être of his mission; but how was _he_ going to
deal with the illusion, if illusion it were, which had lured him to a
pursuit otherwise unjustified? His companion on the occasion had
already wavered, like the others, in his evidence: there might have
been someone, he had ventured vacantly--he was not sure--the sun in
his eyes, and so forth. And then even he, Gilead, had found himself
unaccountably wondering if the apparition might not have been after
all but a bugbear of the suicide’s own haunted conscience,
hypnotically suggested to others. He answered a remark from the
coroner, abstractedly looking down:--
“I believe that the young woman in question joined the deceased on the
date specified--my information justifies the assumption--” and then he
had glanced up, given a very palpable start, and continued
mechanically, like one repeating a lesson: “I believe that he met her
by appointment, that he took her to the boat, and that during the next
two days she was often seen with him, _in the flesh_, upon the water.
I believe that during the night of the third day he murdered her, and
sunk her body in the deep pool under the houseboat, and that it lies
there now. That is my opinion, sir--I cannot explain why--and I give
it to you to act upon as you think fit.”
Exitus acta probat. Here was the sensation, and with every incitement,
on the initiative of such a witness, to prosecute it to the end.
That end makes a well-known chapter in criminal history. The inquest
was adjourned, the river dragged, and the body of the unfortunate girl
actually found as suggested. She had been shot in the breast, lashed
firmly to a heavy iron bar, and dropped overboard.
What provocation underlay the desperate horrible deed, whether it had
been premeditated or committed in a moment of uncontrollable frenzy,
will never be known.
Nor was it known for long, to any but himself and one other, what had
inspired Gilead to that tragic statement. The explanation shall be
given in his own words, as uttered, in awe and solemnity, to a young
lady:--
“I had been trying to argue it out in my own mind; I had fallen into a
state of odd moral confusion, when, looking up, I saw her. She stood
beside the Coroner facing me, as she had stood that night in the
office, and, as her lips moved without sound, I simply took from them
and repeated the purport of their message. The moment I had uttered it
she was gone.
“I spoke and walked for long afterwards as in a shattering, a
tremendous dream. I hope and pray that such an experience can come to
a man only once in his lifetime. Her spirit, have you realized, must
have sprung to us--to you--for help, on the instant that his intention
betrayed itself?”
“And afterwards?” whispered Vera. “That nature of hers, so persistent,
so vindictive! O, wicked as he was, my whole soul shudders for him!”