THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER
It is several years since I bore my part in the events which I have
rapidly sketched,--or I should not have felt justified in giving them
publicity. Exactly how many years, for reasons which should be
sufficiently obvious, I must decline to say.
Marjorie Lindon still lives. The spark of life which was left in her,
when she was extricated from among the débris of the wrecked express,
was fanned again into flame. Her restoration was, however, not merely
an affair of weeks or months, it was a matter of years. I believe that,
even after her physical powers were completely restored--in itself a
tedious task--she was for something like three years under medical
supervision as a lunatic. But all that skill and money could do was
done, and in course of time--the great healer--the results were
entirely satisfactory.
Her father is dead,--and has left her in possession of the family
estates. She is married to the individual who, in these pages, has been
known as Paul Lessingham. Were his real name divulged she would be
recognised as the popular and universally reverenced wife of one of the
greatest statesmen the age has seen.
Nothing has been said to her about the fateful day on which she
was--consciously or unconsciously--paraded through London in the
tattered masculine habiliments of a vagabond. She herself has never
once alluded to it. With the return of reason the affair seems to have
passed from her memory as wholly as if it had never been, which,
although she may not know it, is not the least cause she has for
thankfulness. Therefore what actually transpired will never, in all
human probability, be certainly known and particularly what precisely
occurred in the railway carriage during that dreadful moment of sudden
passing from life unto death. What became of the creature who all but
did her to death; who he was--if it was a ‘he,’ which is extremely
doubtful; whence he came; whither he went; what was the purport of his
presence here,--to this hour these things are puzzles.
Paul Lessingham has not since been troubled by his old tormentor. He
has ceased to be a haunted man. None the less he continues to have what
seems to be a constitutional disrelish for the subject of beetles, nor
can he himself be induced to speak of them. Should they be mentioned in
a general conversation, should he be unable to immediately bring about
a change of theme, he will, if possible, get up and leave the room.
More, on this point he and his wife are one.
The fact may not be generally known, but it is so. Also I have reason
to believe that there still are moments in which he harks back, with
something like physical shrinking, to that awful nightmare of the past,
and in which he prays God, that as it is distant from him now so may it
be kept far off from him for ever.
Before closing, one matter may be casually mentioned. The tale has
never been told, but I have unimpeachable authority for its
authenticity.
During the recent expeditionary advance towards Dongola, a body of
native troops which was encamped at a remote spot in the desert was
aroused one night by what seemed to be the sound of a loud explosion.
The next morning, at a distance of about a couple of miles from the
camp, a huge hole was discovered in the ground,--as if blasting
operations, on an enormous scale, had recently been carried on. In the
hole itself, and round about it, were found fragments of what seemed
bodies; credible witnesses have assured me that they were bodies
neither of men nor women, but of creatures of some monstrous growth. I
prefer to believe, since no scientific examination of the remains took
place, that these witnesses ignorantly, though innocently, erred.
One thing is sure. Numerous pieces, both of stone and of metal, were
seen, which went far to suggest that some curious subterranean building
had been blown up by the force of the explosion. Especially were there
portions of moulded metal which seemed to belong to what must have been
an immense bronze statue. There were picked up also, more than a dozen
replicas in bronze of the whilom sacred scarabaeus.
That the den of demons described by Paul Lessingham, had, that night,
at last come to an end, and that these things which lay scattered, here
and there, on that treeless plain, were the evidences of its final
destruction, is not a hypothesis which I should care to advance with
any degree of certainty. But, putting this and that together, the facts
seem to point that way,--and it is a consummation devoutly to be
desired.
By-the-bye, Sydney Atherton has married Miss Dora Grayling. Her wealth
has made him one of the richest men in England. She began, the story
goes, by loving him immensely; I can answer for the fact that he has
ended by loving her as much. Their devotion to each other contradicts
the pessimistic nonsense which supposes that every marriage must be of
necessity a failure. He continues his career of an inventor. His
investigations into the subject of aërial flight, which have brought
the flying machine within the range of practical politics, are on
everybody’s tongue.
The best man at Atherton’s wedding was Percy Woodville, now the Earl of
Barnes. Within six months afterwards he married one of Mrs Atherton’s
bridesmaids.
It was never certainly shown how Robert Holt came to his end. At the
inquest the coroner’s jury was content to return a verdict of ‘Died of
exhaustion.’ He lies buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, under a handsome
tombstone, the cost of which, had he had it in his pockets, might have
indefinitely prolonged his days.
It should be mentioned that that portion of this strange history which
purports to be The Surprising Narration of Robert Holt was compiled
from the statements which Holt made to Atherton, and to Miss Lindon, as
she then was, when, a mud-stained, shattered derelict he lay at the
lady’s father’s house.
Miss Lindon’s contribution towards the elucidation of the mystery was
written with her own hand. After her physical strength had come back to
her, and, while mentally, she still hovered between the darkness and
the light, her one relaxation was writing. Although she would never
speak of what she had written, it was found that her theme was always
the same. She confided to pen and paper what she would not speak of
with her lips. She told, and re-told, and re-told again, the story of
her love, and of her tribulation so far as it is contained in the
present volume. Her MSS. invariably began and ended at the same point.
They have all of them been destroyed, with one exception. That
exception is herein placed before the reader.
On the subject of the Mystery of the Beetle I do not propose to
pronounce a confident opinion. Atherton and I have talked it over many
and many a time, and at the end we have got no ‘forrarder.’ So far as I
am personally concerned, experience has taught me that there are indeed
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,
and I am quite prepared to believe that the so-called Beetle, which
others saw, but I never, was--or is, for it cannot be certainly shown
that the Thing is not still existing--a creature born neither of God
nor man.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Alterations to the text:
Reformat TOC.
Change several instances of _anyrate_ to _any rate_ and _Sidney_ to
_Sydney_.
Minor punctuation corrections.
Note: minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies (e.g.
“bedclothes”/“bed-clothes”, “pigeon-hole”/“pigeon hole”, etc.) have
been preserved. Ligatured Latin characters have been modernized.
Interior images provided by the British Library via Wikipedia. Images
that divided a paragraph were moved to the end of said paragraph.
[Chapter IX]
Change “his yellow fangs gleamed _though_ his parted lips” to
_through_.
[Chapter XVI]
“to _skeddadle_ towards the door” to _skedaddle_.
[Chapter XXIII]
“association is _synonymus_ with logic” to _synonymous_.
[Chapter XXXIX]
“Miss Coleman would let her _emptey_ house” to _empty_.
[Chapter XLI]
“the most _woe-begone_ of faces” to _woebegone_.
“explain his extraordinary _insistance_ on taking it” to _insistence_.
“talk in that _cock-sure_ way” to _cocksure_.
[Chapter XLII]
“bulged out in all directions _it’s_ presence didn’t” to _its_.
[Chapter XLIV]
“indeed, extravagant _attentuation_, to be more...” to _attenuation_.
[Chapter XLV]
“till I come upon this _pore_ young man” to _poor_.
[Chapter XLVII]
“probably the _execretion_ of some variety of lizard” to _excretion_.
[End of Text]