TOWARDS JUDGMENT
For possibly a couple of minutes she continued on the doorstep
immobile, as if she not only did not understand what had
happened, but as if she also still failed to realise that her
legal adviser was at least no longer where he was. She repeated
his name, at intervals--"Luker! Luker!"--almost as if she was a
child who repeated, parrot-like, a meaningless formula. Then,
after a while, when still there came no answer, she thrust her
hand, as if mechanically, into the bosom of her dress, feeling
for something. Presently it emerged, holding a flask. In the
same odd, automatic fashion, as if her actions were not the
product of her own volition, unscrewing the stopper, she placed
the neck between her lips. After a perceptible interval,
suddenly slipping between her fingers, it dropped on to the step
with a clatter. It had contained ether; she had swallowed its
entire contents.
What were the exact physical or mental results of what would
have been a poison to an unaccustomed subject, it would be
difficult to say. One fact may be baldly stated, it robbed her
of her senses. Her capacity of judging between the real and the
unreal had been trembling in the balance. When she emptied that
flask unreality became all that was real. Not perhaps on the
instant, but certainly after the expiration of a very few
seconds.
At first she stood trembling, so that one might almost have
expected to see her sink to the ground from sheer inability to
stand. She stretched out her arms into the darkness, as if
seeking for support, and found none. Then, putting her hands up
to her face, she began to rub them up and down before her eyes,
as if endeavouring to rub away some film which obscured her
sight, and she began to cry, softly, beneath her breath. Then,
dropping her hands to her sides, she began to see the things
which were not, those visions which, in some form, are the
inseparable companions of a mind diseased.
"I am coming!--I heard you!--you need not call so loud!"
The words were uttered not loudly, but with such clearness of
intonation that, proceeding from her as she stood there all
alone in the outer darkness, and addressed apparently to the
circumambient air, they might have produced on unintentional
listeners not an agreeable effect. She turned, making as if to
insert the key which she still held into the lock of the door
behind her, to find that the door already stood wide open, and
that in the hall beyond there was a faint light which was just
sufficient to render objects visible.
In her normal condition the fact that the door had seemingly
opened of its own accord would have occasioned her something
more than wonder; she would at least have taken it for granted
that somewhere in its immediate neighbourhood were helping
hands; and she would promptly have set herself to discover to
whom they belonged, and just where their owners might be found.
In her then state no notion of the kind seemed to enter her
brain. That the fact that the door was open occasioned her
surprise was obvious; but it was surprise of a singular quality,
and it was accompanied by abject terror. The woman seemed all at
once to become stunted, to shrink into sheer physical
insignificance.
"Cuthbert Grahame," she muttered, "why did you open the door?
How did you get out of your bed to open the door?" With a sound
which was part wail, part sob, she stumbled across the threshold
into the hall. "Where shall I go? Shall I go into the room into
which I first went on that first night? Perhaps I'll be safe in
there--perhaps I'll be safe. I don't want to go upstairs--not
yet--not just yet. I daren't--I daren't. Listen! how he calls to
me--how he calls."
She glanced up the staircase, which she approached even while
she shrank from it, and she saw, in the dim, mysterious light,
leaning over the banister, looking down at her from above, a
woman's face--Nannie Foreshaw. She did not stop to ask herself
if the appearance might by any chance be real, a creature of
warm flesh and blood. It was some moments before she realised
who it was that looked at her. When she did, the presence there
was so unexpected, so wholly unforeseen, and thrust so deeply at
her conscience, that it is not impossible that the mere shock
which resulted from the sight was sufficient to disintegrate her
few remaining wits. She at once took it for granted that she was
gazing at a spectre, a shade returned from the tomb to afflict
her before her time. Cowering back against the wall, she broke
into screams of agony.
"Nannie! Nannie!--I didn't kill you!--I didn't kill you! Don't
look at me like that!--don't! don't! don't!" Covering her face
with her hands, she began to sob with such violence that one
could see her shaking as she leaned against the wall. When,
removing her hands, she again ventured to look up, there was no
one there. "She's gone! she's gone!"
The words were uttered with a gasp of relief which it was not
pleasant to hear. For a moment it seemed as if she might be
restored to something like her proper self. Then, while she
seemed to waver, without apparent rhyme or reason, all her
tremors returned. Again she broke into shrieks and cries.
"She's waiting for me in his room! in his room! in his
room!--she's waiting for me! My God! what am I to do?--help
me! help me! I'll have to go to him. Listen how he calls to
me!--listen how he calls! I'm coming!--don't call so loud!" She
began stumbling up the staircase, blunderingly, blindly, as if
she could not see where she was going. Stopping every two or
three steps, clutching at the wall, the rails; glancing back,
looking as though if she could she would descend. But each time,
just as she was about to beat a retreat, there came to her that
insistent voice, summoning her to her fate. She gasped out
expostulations even as she stumbled upwards. "Don't call so
loud! don't call so loud! I'm coming."
And she did come. A singular spectacle she presented as she
went. No one would have recognised in that ill-shaped, mouthing,
struggling woman--though she alone knew what it was with which
she struggled; who seemed unable to stand up straight, and to
experience as much difficulty in ascending an ordinary staircase
as if it had been the scarred surface of some precipitous cliff
which she was forced, very much against her will, to climb--the
flamboyant and somewhat overwhelming lady who was known among a
certain set in London as the handsome Mrs. Lamb. There were no
traces of beauty about her then.
When she had gained the landing her terror seemed, if the thing
were possible, to increase. Descending to her knees, clutching
the railing with both hands, she crawled, as if drawn by some
invisible force, against which all the strength of her
resistance was in vain, towards the room, the bedroom, in which
Cuthbert Grahame had passed so much of the latter part of his
life, and in which, through her action, he had died. And all the
while she protested.
"I won't come! I won't come!" For an instant she would cling not
only with her hands, but, as it were, with her whole body, to
the railings, as if she had finally resolved that nothing should
constrain her to advance another inch. Then again she was
possessed by a paroxysm of terror. "I will come!--don't call so
loud! I am coming!"
When she was in front of the door of the room she did halt for
perhaps more than a minute, crouching in a heap on the floor,
covering her face with her hands, overtaken by such a fury of
weeping that the violence of her sobs seemed as if it would tear
her to pieces. Then, as if actuated by some sudden irresistible
impulse, she rose to her feet, and exclaimed, still weeping--
"Cuthbert Grahame, I hear you calling--I am here".
She threw open the dead man's bedroom door.