carrying the lamp with him and the two pictures which he had taken down
from the wall, and went into the studio. He set the lamp on the table
and drew down the blinds, and his eye fell on the half-empty whisky
bottle from which he had seen her drinking. Though his hand was quite
steady and his mind composed and tranquil, there was yet at the back
of it some impression that was slowly developing, and a good dose of
spirits would no doubt expunge that. He drank half a tumbler of it raw
and undiluted, and though it seemed no more than water in his mouth,
he soon felt that it was doing its work and sponging away from his
mind the picture that had been outlining itself there. In a couple
of minutes he was quite himself again, and could afford to wonder
and laugh at the illusion, for it was no less than that, which had
been gaining on him. For though he could distinctly remember drawing
the noose tight, and seeing the face grow black, and struggling with
the convulsive movements of those withered limbs that soon lay quiet
again, there had sprung up in his mind some unaccountable impression
that what he had left there huddled on the bed was not just the bundle
of withered limbs and strangled neck, but the body of a young girl,
smooth of skin and golden of hair, with mouth that smiled drowsily.
She had been asleep when he came in, and now was half-awake, and was
stirring and stretching herself. In what dim region of his mind that
image had formed itself, he had no idea; all he cared about now was
that his drink had shattered it again, and he could proceed with order
and method to make all secure. Just one drop more first: how lucky it
was that this morning he had been liberal with his money when she came
to the village, for he would have been sorry to have gone without that
fillip to his nerves.
He looked at his watch, and saw to his satisfaction that it was still
only a little after seven o’clock. Half an hour’s walking, with this
gale to speed his steps, would easily carry him from door to door,
round the detour which approached the village from the east, and a
quarter of an hour, so he reckoned, would be sufficient to accomplish
thoroughly what remained to be done here. He must not hurry and thus
overlook some precaution needful for his safety, though, on the other
hand, he would be glad to be gone from the house as soon as might
be, and he proceeded to set about his work without delay. There was
brushwood and fire-kindling to be brought in from the wood-shed in
the yard, and he made three journeys, returning each time with his
arms full, before he had brought in what he judged to be sufficient.
Most of this he piled in a loose heap in the studio; with the rest he
ascended once more to the bedroom above and made a heap of it there in
the middle of the floor. He took the curtains down from the windows,
for they would make a fine wick for the paraffin, and stuffed them into
the pile. Before he left, he looked once more at what lay on the bed,
and marvelled at the illusion which the whisky had dispelled, and as
he looked, the sense that he was free mounted and bubbled in his head.
The thing seemed scarcely human at all; it was a monster from which he
had delivered himself, and now, with the thought of that to warm him,
he was no longer eager to get through with his work and be gone, for
it was all part of that act of riddance which he had accomplished, and
he gloried in it. Soon, when all was ready, he would come back once
more and soak the fuel and set light to it, and purge with fire the
corruption that lay humped on the bed.
The fury of the gale had increased with nightfall, and as he went
downstairs again he heard the rattle of loosened tiles on the roof, and
the crash as they shattered themselves on the cobbles of the yard. At
that a sudden misgiving made his breath to catch in his throat, as he
pictured to himself some maniac blast falling on the house and crashing
in the walls that now trembled and shuddered. Supposing the whole
house fell, even if he escaped with his life from the toppling ruin,
what would his life be worth? There would be search made in the fallen
débris to find the body of her who lay strangled with the whipcord
round her neck, and he pictured to himself the slow, relentless march
of justice. He had bought whipcord only yesterday at a shop in the
village, insisting on its strength and toughness ... would it be wiser
now, this moment, to untie the noose and take it back with him or add
it to his brushwood?... He paused on the staircase, pondering that; but
his flesh quaked at the thought, and master of himself though he had
been during those few struggling minutes, he distrusted his power of
making himself handle once more that which could struggle no longer.
But even as he tried to screw his courage to the point, the violence
of the squall passed, and the shuddering house braced itself again.
He need not fear that; the gale was his friend that would blow on the
flames, not his enemy. The blasts that trumpeted overhead were the
voices of the allies who had come to aid him.
All was arranged then upstairs for the pouring of the paraffin and the
lighting of the pyre; it remained but to make similar dispositions in
the studio. He would stay to feed the flames till they raged beyond all
power of extinction; and now he began to plan the line of his retreat.
There were two doors in the studio: one by the fireplace which opened
on to the little garden; the other gave into the passage entrance from
which mounted the stairs and so to the door through which he had come
into the house. He decided to use the garden-door for his exit; but
when he came to open it, he found that the key was stiff in the rusty
lock, and did not yield to his efforts. There was no use in wasting
time over that; it made no difference through which door he finally
emerged, and he began piling up his heap of wood at that end of the
room. The lamp was burning low; but the fire, which only so few minutes
ago she had fed with a broken chair, shone brightly, and a flaming
ember from it would serve to set light to his conflagration. There was
a straw mat in front of it, which would make fine kindling, and with
these two fires, one in the bedroom upstairs and the other here, there
would be no mistake about the incineration of the house and all that
it contained. His own crime, if crime it was, would perish, too, and
all evidence thereof, victim and whipcord, and the very walls of the
house of sin and hate. It was a great deed and a fine adventure, and
as the liquor he had drunk began to circulate more buoyantly through
his veins, he gloried at the thought of the approaching consummation.
He would slip out of the sordid tragedy of his past life, as from a
discarded garment that he threw into the bonfire he would soon kindle.
All was ready now for the soaking of the fuel he had piled with the
paraffin, and he went out to the shed in the yard where the barrel
stood. A big tin ewer stood beside it, which he filled and carried
indoors. That would be sufficient for the soaking of the pile upstairs,
and fetching the smoky and flickering lamp from the studio, he went
up again, and like a careful gardener watering some bed of choice
blossoms, he sprinkled and poured till his ewer was empty. He gave
but one glance to the bed behind him, where the huddled thing lay
so quietly, and as he turned, lamp in hand, to go down again, the
draught that came in through the window against which the gale blew,
extinguished it. A little blue flame of burning vapour rose in the
chimney and went out; so, having no further use for it, he pitched it
on to the pile of soaked material. As he left the room he thought he
heard some small stir of movement behind him, but he told himself that
it was but something slipping in the heap he had built there.
Again he went out into the storm. The clouds that scudded overhead were
thinner now, though the gale blew not less fiercely, and the blurred,
watery moonlight was brighter. Once for a moment, as he approached
the shed, he caught sight of the full orb plunging madly among the
streaming vapours; then she was hidden again behind the wrack. Close in
front of him were the fir trees of the wood where those sweet trysts
had been held, and once again the vision of her as she had been broke
into his mind and the queer conviction that it was no withered and
bloated hag, who lay on the bed upstairs but the fair, comely limbs
and the golden head. It was even more vivid now, and he made haste to
get back to the studio, where he would find the trusty medicine that
had dispelled that vision before. He would have to make two journeys
at least with his tin ewer before he transported enough oil to feed
the larger pyre below, and so, to save time, he took the barrel off
its stand, and rolled it along the path and into the house. He paused
at the foot of the stairs, listening to hear if anything stirred, but
all was silent. Whatever had slipped up there was steady again; from
outside only came the squeal and bellow of the wind.
The studio was brightly but fitfully lit by the flames on the hearth;
at one moment a noonday blazed there, the next but the last smoulder of
some red sunset. It was easier to decant from the barrel into his ewer
than carry the heavy keg and sprinkle from it, and once and once again
he filled and emptied it. One more application would be sufficient,
and after that he could let what remained trickle out on to the floor.
But by some awkward movement he managed to spill a splash of it down
the front of his trousers: he must be sure, therefore (how quickly his
brain responded with counsels of precautions), to have some accident
with his lamp when he came in to his supper, which should account for
this little misadventure. Or, probably, the wind through which he would
presently be walking would dry it before he reached the village.
So, for the last time with matches ready in his hand, he mounted the
stairs to set light to the fuel piled in the room above. His second
dose of whisky sang in his head, and he said to himself, smiling at
the humour of the notion, “She always liked a fire in her bedroom; she
shall have it now.” That seemed a very comical idea, and it dwelt in
his head as he struck the match which should light it for her. Then,
still grinning, he gave one glance to the bed, and the smile died on
his face, and the wild cymbals of panic crashed in his brain. The bed
was empty; no huddled shape lay there.
Distraught with terror, he thrust the match into the soaked pile and
the flame flared up. Perhaps the body had rolled off the bed. It must,
in any case, be here somewhere, and when once the room was alight there
would be nothing more to fear. High rose the smoky flame, and banging
the door, he leaped down the stairs to set light to the pile below and
be gone from the house. Yet, whatever monstrous miracle his eye had
assured him of, it could not be that she still lived and had left the
place where she lay, for she had ceased to breathe when the noose was
tight round her neck, and her fight for life and air had long been
stilled. But, if by some hideous witchcraft, she was not dead, it would
soon be over now with her in the stupefaction of the smoke and the
scorching flames. Let be; the door was shut and she within, for him it
remained to be finished with the business, and flee from the house of
terror, lest he leave the sanity of his soul behind him.
The red glare from the hearth in the studio lit his steps down the
passage from the stairway, and already he could hear from above the
dry crack and snap from the fire that prospered there. As he shuffled
in, he held his hands to his head, as if pressing the brain back into
its cool case, from which it seemed eager to fly out into the welter
of storm and fire and hideous imagination. If he could only control
himself for a few moments more, all would be done and he would escape
from this disordered haunted place into the night and the gale, leaving
behind him the blaze that would burn away all perilous stuff. Again
the flames broke out in the embers on the hearth, bravely burning,
and he took from the heart of the glare a fragment on which the fire
was bursting into yellow flowers. He heeded not the scorching of his
hand, for it was but for a moment that he held it, and then plunged it
into the pile that dripped with the oil he had poured on it. A tower
of flame mounted, licking the rafters of the low ceiling, then died
away as if suffocated by its own smoke, but crept onwards, nosing its
way along till it reached the straw mat, which blazed fiercely. That
blaze kindled the courage in him; whatever trick his imagination had
played on him just now, he had nothing to fear except his own terror,
which now he mastered again, for nothing real could ever escape from
the conflagration, and it was only the real that he feared. Spells and
witchcrafts and superstitions, such as for the last twenty years had
battened on him, were all enclosed in that tight-drawn noose.
It was time to be gone, for all was safe now, and the room was growing
to oven-heat. But as he picked his way across the floor over which
runnels of flames from the split barrel were beginning to spread this
way and that, he heard from above the sound of a door unlatched, and
footsteps light and firm tapped on the stairs. For one second the sheer
catalepsy of panic seized him, but he recovered his control, and with
hands that groped through the thick smoke he found the door. At that
moment the fire shot up in a blaze of blinding flame, and there in the
doorway stood Ellen. It was no withered body and bloated face that
confronted him, but she with whom he had trysted in the wood, with the
bloom of eternal youth upon her, and the smooth soft hand, on which
was her wedding-ring, pointed at him.
It was in vain that he called on himself to rush forward out of that
torrid and suffocating air. The front door was open, he had but to pass
her and speed forth safe into the night. But no power from his will
reached his limbs; his will screamed to him, “Go, go! Push by her: it
is but a phantom which you fear!” but muscle and sinew were in mutiny,
and step by step he retreated before that pointing finger and the
radiant shape that advanced on him. The flames that flickered over the
floor had discovered the paraffin he had spilt, and leaped up his leg.
Just one spot in his brain retained lucidity from the encompassing
terror. Somewhere behind that barrier of fire there was the second
door into the garden. He had but cursorily attempted to unlock its
rusty wards; now, surely, the knowledge that there alone was escape
would give strength to his hand. He leaped backwards through the
flames, still with eyes fixed on her who ever advanced in time with
his retreat, and turning, wrestled and strove with the key. Something
snapped in his hand, and there still in the keyhole was the bare shaft.
Holding his breath, for the heat scorched his throat, he groped towards
where he knew was the window through which he had first seen her that
night. The flames licked fiercely round it, but there, beneath his
hand, was the hasp, and he threw it open. At that the wind poured in as
through the nozzle of a plied bellows, and Death rose high and bright
around him. Through the flames, as he sank to the floor, a face radiant
with revenge smiled on him.
Inscrutable Decrees
Inscrutable Decrees
I had found nothing momentous in the more august pages of _The Times_
that morning, and so, just because I was lazy and unwilling to embark
on a host of businesses that were waiting for me, I turned to the first
page and, beginning with the seventh column, pondered profoundly over
“Situations Vacant,” and hoped that the “Gentlewoman fond of games,”
who desired the position of governess, would find the very thing to
suit her. I glanced at the notices of lectures to be delivered under
the auspices of various learned societies, and was thankful that I had
not got to give or to listen to any of them. I debated over “Business
Opportunities”; I vainly tried to conjecture clues to mysterious
“Personal” paragraphs, and, still pursuing my sideways, crab-fashion
course, came to “Deaths Continued.”
There, with a shock of arrest, I saw that Sybil Rorke, widow of the
late Sir Ernest Rorke, had died at Torquay, suddenly, at the age of
thirty-two. It seemed strange that there should be only this bare
announcement concerning a woman who at one time had been so well-known
and dazzling a figure; and turning to the obituary notices, I found
that my inattentive skimming had overlooked a paragraph there of
appreciation and regret. She had died during her sleep, and it was
announced that an inquest would be held. My laziness then had been
of some use, for Archie Rorke, distant cousin but successor to Sir
Ernest’s estates and title, was arriving that evening to spend a few
country days with me, and I was glad to have known this before he came.
How it would affect him, or whether, indeed, it would affect him at
all, I had no idea.
What a mysterious affair it had been! No one, I supposed, knew the
history of it except he, now that Lady Rorke was dead. If anyone knew,
it should have been myself, and yet Archie, my oldest friend, whose
best man I was to have been, had never opened his lips to a syllable of
explanation. I knew, in fact, no whit more than the whole world knew,
namely, that a year after Sir Ernest Rorke’s death the engagement of
his widow to the new baronet, Sir Archibald Rorke, was made public,
and that within a fortnight of the date fixed for the wedding it was
laconically announced that the marriage would not take place. When,
on seeing that, I rang Archie up on the telephone, I was told that
he had already left London, and he wrote to me a few days later from
Lincote--the place in Hampshire, which he had inherited from his
cousin--saying that he had nothing to tell me about the breaking off
of his engagement beyond the fact that it was true. The whole--he had
written a word and carefully erased it--episode was now an excised leaf
from his life. He was proposing to stay down at Lincote alone for a
month or so, and would then turn on to the new page.
Lady Rorke, so I heard, had also left London immediately and passed
the summer in Italy. Then she took a furnished house in Torquay, where
she lived for the remainder of the year which intervened between
the breaking off of her engagement and her death. She cut herself
completely off from all her friends--and no woman, surely, ever
commanded a larger host of them--saw nobody, seldom went outside her
house and garden, and observed the same unbroken silence as did Archie
about what had happened. And now, with all her youth and charm and
beauty, she had gone down dumb into the Great Silence.
With the prospect of seeing Archie that evening it was no wonder that
the thought of Lady Rorke ran all day in my head like a tune heard
long ago which now recalled itself to my mind in scattered staves of
melody. Meetings and talks with her, phrase by phrase, reconstructed
themselves, and as these memories grew definite and complete I found
that, even as before, when I was actually experiencing them, there
lurked underneath the gay rhythms and joyousness something _macabre_
and mysterious. To-day that was accentuated, whereas before when I
listened for it, trying to isolate it from the rest and so perhaps
dispel it, it was always overscored by some triumphant crescendo: her
presence diverted eye and ear alike. Yet such a simile halts; perhaps,
still in simile, I shall more accurately define this underlying
“something” by saying that her presence was like some gorgeous
rose-bush, full of flowers, and sun, and sweetness; then, even as one
admired and applauded and inhaled, one saw that among its buds and
blossoms there emerged the spikes of some other plant, bitter and
poisonous, but growing from the same soil as the rose, and intertwined
with it. But immediately a fresh glory met your eye, a fresh fragrance
enchanted you.
As I rummaged among my memories of her, certain scenes which
significantly illustrated this curiously vivid impression stirred and
made themselves manifest to me, and now they were not broken in upon
by her presence. One such occurred on the first evening that I ever
met her, which was in the summer before the death of her husband. The
moment that she entered the room where we were waiting before dinner
for her arrival, the stale, sultry air of a June evening grew fresh
and effervescent; never have I come across so radiant and infectious a
vitality. She was tall and big, with the splendour of the Juno-type,
and though she was then close on thirty, the iridescence of girlhood
was still hers. Without effort she Pied-pipered a rather stodgy party
to dance to her flutings, she caused everyone to become silly and
pleased and full of laughter. At her bidding we indulged in ridiculous
games, dumb-crambo, and what not, and after that the carpet was rolled
up and we capered to the strains of a gramophone. And then the incident
occurred.
I was standing with her, for a breath of air, on the balcony outside
the drawing-room windows which faced the park. She had just made a
great curtsey to a slip of the moon that rose above the trees and had
borrowed a shilling of me in order to turn it.
“No, I can’t swear that I believe in moon-luck,” she said, “but after
all it does no harm, and, in case it’s true, you can’t afford to make
an enemy of her. Ah, what’s that?”
A thrush, attracted by the lights inside, had flown between us, dashed
itself against the window, and now lay fluttering on the ground at our
feet. Instantly she was all pity and tenderness. She picked up the
bird, examined it, and found that its wing was broken.
“Ah, poor thing!” she said. “Look, its wing-bone is snapped; the end
protrudes. And how terrified it is! What are we to do?”
It was clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put the bird
out of its pain, but when I suggested that, she took a step back from
me, and covered it with her other hand. Her eyes gleamed, her mouth
smiled, and I saw the tip of her tongue swiftly pass over her lips as
if licking them.
“No, that would be a terrible thing to do,” she said. “I shall take it
home with me ever so carefully, and watch over it. I am afraid it is
badly hurt. But it may live.”
Suddenly--perhaps it was that swift licking of her lips that suggested
the thought to me--I felt instinctively that she was not so much
pitiful as pleased. She stood there with eyes fixed on it, as it feebly
struggled in her hands.
And then her face clouded; over its brightness there came a look of
displeasure, of annoyance.
“I’m afraid it is dying,” she said. “Its poor frightened eyes are
closing.”
The bird fluttered once more, then its legs stretched themselves
stiffly out, and it lay still. She tossed it out of her hands on to the
paved balcony, with a little shrug of her shoulders.
“What a fuss over a bird,” she said. “It was silly of it to fly
against the glass. But I have too soft a heart; I cannot bear that the
poor creatures should die. Let us go in and have one more romp. Oh,
here is your shilling; I hope it will have brought me good luck. And
then I must get home. My husband--do you know him?--always sits up till
I get back, and he will scold me for being so late!”
There, then, was my first meeting with her, and there, too, were the
spikes of the poisonous plant pushing up among the magnificence of her
roses. And yet, so I thought to myself then, and so I think to myself
now, I perhaps was utterly wrong about it all, in thus attributing to
her a secret glee of which she was wholly incapable. So, with a certain
effort I wiped the impression I had received off my mind, determining
to consider myself quite mistaken. But, involuntarily, my mind as if
to justify itself in having delineated such a picture, proceeded to
delineate another.