The letter of the Colossus was characteristic. Such cordial simplicity
was so like him. In a keen and swift recoil of feeling which cut like
a knife, Helen recalled the man as he had always seemed to her. It was
a case, if ever there was one, of multiple personality. To her Saul
Hartz had appeared a man whose kindliness, charm, generosity it would
have been hard to exaggerate. There might have been motive behind it
all, but so far as Helen was concerned personally there was no reason
to think so. He liked her because he liked her. The human beings for
whom the Colossus had a regard were not many, but certainly she was
among the chosen few admitted to the sunny side of a nature complex,
enigmatic, subtle beyond analysis.
Helen now did not doubt that in sum the Colossus was a bad man; a
creature of abnormal powers of mind who owed the workaday world of men
and things a grudge for having been born into it. He was a natural
enemy, who at the call of a perverted genius was ready to under-pin
civilization, that crazy structure, the moment he got the chance. And
that chance was surely coming, unless----
His friendly letter in hand, Helen had now to harden the will with a
brief restatement of a dreadful plight. She was luring a man who on the
surface was simple and kindly to her house in order to do him to death.
As she sat down to breakfast opposite her husband and toyed with dry
toast and a cup of tea, a ghoulish sense of nightmare seemed to cause
the four walls of their little dining room to contract.
John was very pale. He, too, had not slept. At three o’clock he had got
up and dressed and had spent the night’s remaining hours downstairs
among his books. Helen saw that his hand was trembling as she gave him
his cup. He, too, was living on his nerves.
This long-drawn Thursday was for both an intolerable day. They now
stood together fighting with their wills against an implacable destiny.
John, some instinct told her, was already trying to subdue the whole
force of his nature to the thought of death. Precisely in what form it
would overtake him or when it might be expected to do so, he did all
that he could not to allow her to guess. But in the course of another
night in which neither of them closed their eyes, words escaped his
lips that gave her a clue to the mind process which in the end would
destroy him.
“Macbeth has murdered sleep,” he whispered to her in the winter
darkness. “This side the grave, my darling, I shall never sleep again.”
She hugged him close, as a mother hugs a child. Nature, she knew then,
was nearing exhaustion. All too soon the will that grappled him to life
must relax. And then in a moment of frenzy, of desperation, he would
kill himself.
It behooved her, as long as was possible, to delay that moment. Friday
was already here. And at four o’clock that afternoon Saul Hartz had
promised to come to her. Pray Heaven that he did not fail!
As Helen lay in bed, however, listening hour by hour to the chime of
the clocks of many neighboring steeples, she was haunted by a fear that
the man by her side would not be able to carry on through the day. One
stroke of a razor while he shaved, one step in front of an electric
train, what could be simpler? His controls were yielding. Of that fact
there were many indications. The question was, could he now outlast
this all-important day?
Many times she had urged him to take a bromide, but he had not done
so. Such things were likely to prove worse than futile. Death was the
penalty he inevitably would have to pay; and his mind and will were at
one in that, so far as his soul’s welfare was concerned, it was best
that death came to him through his instincts working in a natural and
unfettered way.
“If one bedevils oneself,” he argued, “with drugs and potions one may
lose control of one’s reason altogether. And that will mean a state of
aphasia compared with which death is more than kind. Hell is a mental
condition. And there is none to equal that of the man who longs for
death and yet has not the nerve to ensue it.”
Helen had felt bound to respect this attitude of mind. But dressing now
in the wintry dawn of Friday, the question that harrowed her was, Could
unaided nature hold him to his course for another four-and-twenty hours?
Immediately their pretense at breakfast was over, they went to a church
close by. Here they stayed nearly three hours. And when they emerged
from its precincts into the December gloom, they felt far down in their
hearts that at the back of everything was still a Friend who was surely
helping them to keep their sanity.
As evidence of this strength that had been given them both were able
to take a little food. And then for Helen came the facing of the grim
problem--How did John propose to spend the afternoon?
She had hoped that he would go down to the House of Commons. But
as soon as luncheon was at an end he retired to the room in which
he worked. An hour passed and yet he made no sign of going out.
Presently the clock struck three; and Helen, no longer able to bear the
suspense, came in and found him sitting apathetically at his table, not
attempting to write or to read.
Her instinct for the practical showed her now the paramount need of
making up his mind for him. She determined to take a strong line.
“It’s such an unpleasant afternoon that I am going to get you a taxi.”
The eyes he lifted to hers seemed to have scarcely a spark of life in
them. “Why--a taxi?” he asked dully.
“To take you to the House.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going there again.”
“Oh, but you are,” she said quickly. “Just once more--to please me.”
The eyes that looked at her were those of a man who was near the end of
his tether. “But I said good-bye to it yesterday,” he muttered.
Plain sense now told her that all must depend on the imperious exercise
of her own strong will. She left the room, to return almost at once
with his coat and hat. “Ferris has gone for a taxi,” she said.
“No, no,” he said wearily, “I don’t feel up to it to-day.”
“Make the effort, my darling--if only because I ask you.”
Loving her as he did, it was hard to refuse. The spirit was willing,
but alas he was no longer in command of himself.
“You needn’t stay long,” said Helen beguilingly. “But in the name of
that in which we both believe and for the sake of the work we have
still to do----”
As one compelled by sheer magnetism he got up slowly from his chair.
With resolute deftness she fixed him up with his overcoat. “Promise me
that you will take a taxi home again.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Promise,” she gently insisted. “Anyhow, I’ll promise for you. And
you’ll come back to me, won’t you? Yes, you will.” She pressed her lips
to his cold cheek. “You shall--you must!”
With the same gentle insistence she led him out of the room and through
the tiny entrance hall. As if he had been a small child going to a New
Year’s party she herded him into the taxi.
As she closed the door upon him, she put her head through the lowered
window with a little laugh that was almost gay. “Something tells me
that Providence is working for us. Promise me, darling, that you’ll
take a taxi and come straight back home?”
As the taxi began to move she ran beside it.
“Promise?”
“I’ll do my best,” he muttered as the taxi began to outpace her.