with her head high and her hips swinging. Something in her
carriage--so different from the way she used to slip in and out--struck
me all of a sudden, and there flashed into my mind an old story about
Althea's being the direct descendant of one of the oldest African kings
and a princess in her own right. Absurd, of course, but it makes a lot
of difference whether you regard those people as creeping up to our
democracy or sliding down from their royalty, you see. And with Mynie
the scale had shifted suddenly, and it was the last of an old line that
swung by me, not the first of a new one. Straight across the
commonplace air of my office a wind out of the jungle had blown, a
whiff of something old and unmanageable, and beyond rules, or beneath
'em, perhaps; something there wasn't any prescription for; something
not to be weighed and measured by any of the new methods, because it
antedated method.
"Yes, it was all that. I don't know if I make myself clear at all....
You may think I was working up a fanciful theory just because a pert
servant maid was getting a little wayward, but it wasn't only
that--Lord, no! It was a great deal more than that, and it was just
beginning; just beginning."
There was no doubt that he had the strained attention of all of them:
their hands held the glasses, but they did not drink, looking mostly at
the wet rings on the polished table, or the little heaps of white
ashes. A servant passing through scratched a match with a rasping
splutter, and they twitched angrily at the interruption, fearing it
would throw him off the track--he was so easily quieted, and when once
one of his great gulfs of silence received him, it was hopeless.
But this time he went on.
"After that the house got very still, by degrees. Althea sang less and
less and by and by not at all. There seemed to be no clatter, no
bustle, no homely, chattering machinery of life. Sometimes I would
step out through the dining-room and listen, purposely, to see where
they were. And it was always the same thing: Althea sitting in her
clean kitchen, by her clean table, with a bowl or a pan or what not in
her lap, her yellowish hands lax, her knees as still as marble, her
eyes set ahead of her, thinking, thinking, thinking. Her brows would
be knit and her face all drawn. She had the look of a fighter, a
struggler with something--but there was nothing there. And out on the
side porch Mynie would be sitting, her head thrown back against the
wooden column of the porch, her hands clasped about her knees, smiling,
smiling, always smiling. Sometimes she would hum a sort of low
tuneless chant--it sounded like a pagan ritual of some sort, all
repetitions, rising and falling in a monotonous, haunting drone. And
once, as I stood watching her curiously, the word for that noise
flashed suddenly into my mind--incantation. That was it, incantation.
"Well! All this sounds very feeble, doesn't it? The truth is, I
haven't got the right vocabulary--as a matter of fact, I don't think
anybody has. When you can describe a thing, a sensation, perfectly, I
doubt if it's very important anyhow. It's always so. The big things
simply elude description. And yet we all know them. Falling in love,
for instance: God knows it's as definite as measles, but who ever
described it? The most these writing fellows can manage is to tell you
what a lot of people did who happened to be in that way, and sometimes
they catch a lot of the tricks, but that's all. Then there's dying.
There's a specific atmosphere about that--everybody knows it. The
people know it mostly, themselves. I mean, if any one ever had
occasion to die twice, he'd recognise the symptoms immediately. But
nobody can describe it, though plenty of us know what it is.
"So with that house and the atmosphere in it. Something was happening
there. Something so strong and so actual that it defied all
appearances, all the ordinary influences that might be supposed to act
on the imagination of, say, a sensitive, hysterical, under-occupied
woman. For as a matter of fact there was nothing morbid in the look of
the house--nothing at all. It was sunny and fresh and painted. It was
clean and dry. But it ought not to have been. No ... I've sat there,
late afternoons, when it seemed to me if I touched the walls they'd be
damp and the woodwork rotted and mouldy. The boards should have
creaked there and the stair-rails ought to have given under the
hand--but they didn't. I had them all repaired, you see! But there
were a few things I hadn't had the chance to repair and they ... oh,
well, they were there, that was all.
"There? You'd have said so, any of you, if you'd seen Althea as I saw
her one morning. I stepped into the kitchen suddenly, to give an order
for some beef-tea I wanted to take away with me, and there she sat,
cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her
shoulders and--of all things--a red and blue kerchief twisted into a
turban on her head. She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I
give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that
rig, swaying there!
"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass
earrings in her ears.
"And all of a sudden it came to me--what was happening there: I felt
very queer for a moment, I tell you! Everything seemed to be rolling
backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed. Not I--I
swear nothing touched me. I was the same. _So was the jeweller. So
was the parson. So was the man before that..._
"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there? Take those rags
off you! Get up immediately! I am ashamed of you.'
"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's--it was nip
and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me. But
she didn't; I won. You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually
controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.
"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.
"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.
"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her
pantry, shaking and muttering. I waited till she came back, and she
was quiet and trim again--herself. She stuffed a bundle into the stove
before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again. She was
a good woman, Althea was.
"But the other--Mynie--well, the game was up with her. Heavens, the
change in that girl's eyes! It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't
that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it. No,
it was more than that--more and worse and deeper and older-- Oh, as
old as Hell! That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put
it? The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of
animalism--the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all
in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that
Nature has coiled in every one of us. The Old Lady wound us up with
that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."
The room was absolutely empty but for the four of them; they stared at
him steadily, his rumbling, husky voice held them like a vise; they
could not miss a word.
"She got fat on it. She bloomed in that infernal house like some
tropical bog-flower; she expanded, she shot up.
"Once, at twilight, I peeped out and saw her sitting on the side porch,
her chin in her hand, staring and staring, and laughing, now and then,
and shutting her eyes. It made me shiver.
"That warm, damp dusk was like a Florida swamp; the air seemed to
thicken, thicken, as I looked. A quick instinct warned me to look for
George in the shadow: it seemed to me that he stood there, in ... glue
... like a caught fly. To let go--to drift in a warm, relaxing current
... I had to shake my shoulders, actually, as if there had been a net
... I felt for him so.
"I went to her mother.
"'Call that girl in!' I said roughly. 'What's the matter with her?'
"She wouldn't look at me.
"'Come, what's all this? Out with it!' I said. But she stood there,
obstinate as a mule, and perfectly silent. You can't do anything with
them, then.
"Well, it was like fighting filthy cobwebs: walking through them,
breathing them, pulling them off from your mouth, your wrists, your
ankles! Not that I felt anything directly, mind you--I could have
lived there for years--alone. But it was all up with Mynie and George,
they were done for, like the others ... like the others.
"What worked there, rotting like some infernal yeast? What terrible
energy, what malignant, vindictive lust infected that place? What
distorted, unhappy soul first sickened there? How long ago? _How long
ago?_ Are there centres of negation? Oh, I tell you, the
table-tippers are harmless beside the sickening truths, the simply
incredible possibilities of this little crevice we walk along!
"Was it like a grain of that nasty musk that gets into a woman's drawer
and taints endlessly?
"I tell you, I saw that girl disintegrate, decay, turn fungoid under my
eyes--ugh!
"There had to be an end, of course. I asked where she was going one
afternoon, and then she smiled and looked up at me sidewise.
"'You needn't come back,' I said abruptly. 'I'll settle with your
mother. Do you understand?'
"She arched her shoulder and flashed a glance straight above me, out of
the open window.
"'I'm sorry you don't want me, doctor,' she said softly. I could see
poor George tremble--the porch vines shook.
"Then I took her by the shoulders and shook her.
"'Get out of my house, you black slut!' I said--but I didn't say
'slut.' And she went. It was the only time I was ever brutal to a
woman."
He gulped the rest of his tumbler.
"The next day I moved my office stuff back, and that damned house was
empty.
"'I'm sorry about Mynie, Althea,' I said to the mother, the day
afterward. 'If you ever need any money----'
"'Thank you, Dr. Stanchon, thank you, seh. You couldn't help it. But
I guess she'll never need money, seh,' she said quietly. And she was
right enough, of course.
"She knew. They're not far from the apes, and they know a lot we've
forgotten, I believe. Perhaps forgetting it is what civilised us.
"I never saw Mynie again. She went off East, and George with her.
They're both dead, now. His wife stayed on in the cottage.
"I gave her all the help I could ... it was my fault, I suppose. And
yet, God knows, I meant nothing. I thought _I_ was undertaking that
damned house, you see--how could I tell how the thing worked?"
They watched him eagerly: his face showed that he had more to tell.
Not a man moved, unless it were to knock the ash from his cigar or to
light a fresh one.
"There was a Catholic priest there, then," he said slowly. "He's been
moved higher up, since, and you'd all know his name, if I gave it.
We'll call him Father Kelly--though that wasn't it, of course. He and
I were great friends--he was a little older than I was--and we used to
have many a good talk together, meeting on our rounds, you see. Often
I'd take him miles on his way, and drop my driver out on the road, just
for the pleasure of his company. Of course we disagreed entirely on
what he considered the most important points, but leaving them out, we
were thoroughly congenial, and we were often glad of each other's
opinion, I can tell you, for we often had the same patients.
"Well, a day or two after I'd moved my stuff out of that cursed house,
he came to the office with a drug case he was trying to reform: he'd
persuaded the fellow as far as the pledge went, and I was to talk to
him about diet and exercise and all the rest. After the man left,
Father Kelly looked at me once or twice, talked a bit about the
weather, and finally pulled out his old blackened pipe and looked
around the office.
"'Have ye a bit of tobacco about ye, doctor?' says he. 'If so, and
you're not too busy, I could do with a little rest--I was up all night.'
"I was glad enough, for I felt blue and out of sorts, and we pulled our
chairs in front of the fireplace, from habit, and after a few minutes I
found myself telling him the whole business.
"'Now what do you make of it, Father?' I asked.
"'I make the devil out of it, doctor,' said he, very placidly.
"'Oh, well,' I began impatiently, 'of course I can't be expected----'
"'Now, wait a bit, doctor,' he put in. 'If you don't go with my
diagnosis, what's your own? What do you make out of it?'
"Well, there he had me.
"'Of course,' I said, 'it's a mere coincidence.'
"'Ah,' says he, 'then would you be willing to go and live there with
your wife?'
"'Good God, no!' I burst out, before I thought. And then I wouldn't
back out of it. You see, there had been five women. Five good,
ordinary, honest women--six, if you count Miss Jessop.
"'I thought not,' said he quietly.
"He sat and puffed awhile.
"Finally, 'I'll have to be taking a look at your house, doctor,' he
said.
"'All right,' said I. 'When?'
"'This evening,' he said, 'after my confessions. Say about nine. And
I'll go home and have a nap. I'm thinking I'll need one.'
"And he knocked out his pipe and left.
"I was busy all the afternoon, so busy that I almost forgot the whole
thing, and as a matter of fact, I had had no time for dinner, when he
called for me. He was so fresh and bright and jolly that you'd never
have suspected he'd just got a murderer to agree to give himself up,
gone with him to see him safely jailed, and sent his confession up to
the governor--oh, he was a remarkable man, that man! And it's a
remarkable institution, the Confessional. We're learning to do more
with it now than we did twenty years ago. But they've always known ...
they've always known..."
He ruminated long, and crushed the ashes in the brass tray before him.
The men nodded, but kept silence, dreading lest he lose the thread.
"I had the horse ready and drove myself. When I unlocked the door of
the house I lighted the lamp in the hall, and so on in every room we
went through, kitchen and all. In every room there was a fresh shining
lamp, filled and ready, for Althea had left everything like a new pin,
and in every room that lamp was lighted, when we left it. You know
what a nice, warm glow an old-fashioned kerosene lamp gives a
place--electricity's nothing to it, in my opinion.
"'This seems a good sort of house, doctor,' said Father Kelly to me, as
we came back and sat down in the pretty little sitting-room, with a
palm in it, and cushions my wife had made, and books on the table. 'I
can't see any harm here.'
"'All right,' said I, 'then let's go home. I missed my dinner. Since
you see there's no devil here----'
"'I don't see that,' said he, calmly, 'I only see that I haven't found
him yet. If a woman has a cancer, doctor, you don't know it the moment
you shake hands with her, do ye? So with me and my patients. Now
let's think a bit, and if you don't object, I'll call a little
consultation.'
"So he takes a little black book out of his pocket, and actually sits
there reading! I humoured him, and smoked. After a while he looks up,
crosses himself, puts away the book and nods at me contentedly.
"'Now, which room would all of these women use the most, doctor?' says
he.
"'The kitchen,' I said directly, thinking of Mynie and Althea. Then,
'No, no, for Mrs. Mears used this for her consulting-room. But the
parson's wife spent most of her time in her bedroom. Still, the
jeweller's wife didn't--they used the dining-room to sit in. There's
no one room, you see.'
"'Unless they all had the same bedroom,' he suggested quietly.
"'By George, they did, then!' I cried, 'for I gave it to Mynie and
Althea because it was the coolest. I always sleep on the ground floor.'
"'Then we'll try the bedroom, doctor,' says he, and we went up-stairs.
He was a stocky, short little fellow, strong as a bull, with iron-grey
hair, very solid on his feet, yet quick and active, like a thin man.
He sat down in the rocking-chair in the neat, empty bedroom and I
brought in another lamp from across the hall.
"'You don't think you'll need the dark for your materializations,
Father?' I said, half laughing, as I set my lamp on the bureau.
"'No, no, doctor,' he answered, smiling. 'The Church doesn't work in
the dark, you know. We're all for candles, and plenty of 'em.'
"I had to grin at that. He was as quick a man with his tongue as I
ever met.
"Well, we sat there, and sat there, and he shut his eyes and tipped
back and forth in that chair like a woman, and I might as well have not
been there. I mean I was out of his consciousness entirely. Finally I
got nervous and bored.
"'There's nothing here, Father,' I said, rather testily. 'Haven't I
been here hours on end with the parson's wife? Wouldn't I have known
it?'
"He never opened his eyes.
"'Probably not, doctor,' he said pleasantly. 'It's not your job, you
see. You were thinking about her liver.'
"'And you?' said I.
"'Her life everlasting,' said he.
"And his eyes shut, all the time!
"So I shut my mouth and watched him. And suddenly his lips began to
work, and he was mumbling to himself, and I saw that his hands were
grasping the arms of the wooden chair tight, so tight that as he
prayed, he actually worked himself over the floor, as a child will, you
know. After he'd moved several feet that way, between me and the
fireplace--I was counting the inches, to keep myself quiet--he stopped
suddenly, opened his eyes and loosened his hands.
"'I've got it now, thanks be!' he said, looking straight at me. 'It's
this room, sure enough, doctor!'
"'What do you mean, for heaven's sake?' I said, getting up and coming
to him, interested enough, now, you can believe.
"'_For hell's sake_, would be nearer the mark,' he answered me, gently
enough, but his jaw was set and there was a light in his eye I'd seen
there once or twice. 'This is a bad business. This'll take more than
sitting down, this will.'
"And flat on his knees he plumped, ahead of his chair, and crossed
himself and started praying in Latin. He made no special noise nor
movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead
and his face was drawn and pale--and grew paler. Every now and then
he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on
his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten
minutes he was almost in the fireplace. With anybody else I could
never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly,
and I can tell you that whatever prayers he prayed, they were no
perfunctory mumblings: they took it out of him! He was like a man
fighting, blindfolded--he breathed like a prize fighter, I tell you!
And just at the edge of the hearth, when I thought I must stop him
(that sort of auto-hypnosis will take a person straight out of an open
six-story window, you know) he stopped himself, opened his eyes with a
jerk, and pointed ahead of him.
"'Mother of God,' he said in a husky whisper, 'but it's there!'
"'There!' said I. 'What's there, Father? There can't be anything in
that fireplace--I've seen a dozen fires in it.'
"He got up from his knees as unconcerned as he'd gotten down on them
and cleared his throat.
"'Not in it, perhaps, doctor,' he said, 'but then, under it. Or over
it, perhaps. But there, somewhere, it is.'
"'You mean the bricks?' I cried, and he nodded his head like a man too
weak to talk.
"'Maybe,' he whispered. 'Look and see."
"There was a full set of fire-irons there, and I took the poker and
tapped all about the hearth, as excited as a boy on a treasure hunt,
though of course I didn't believe in it, any more than the boy does,
really.
"'No, Father,' I said, 'there's nothing to show--' and then, just
between the andirons, I hit a blow that rang as hollow as a drum!
"'But there's no brick loose!' I cried, and he whispered, 'Then break
it!'
"It took more than a few blows and I broke the poker, but finally I
loosened the mortar and there under the two centre bricks was an iron
box, about seven inches square, made like a little trunk. I fished it
out and opened it--it opened from the side--and pulled out two thick
handfuls of yellow letters, without envelopes. I opened the top one
eagerly, but it had no date nor address. For signature there was only
the name 'Olive.'"
He stopped abruptly and stared at the thick-bellied decanter before
him. His voice sank lower.
"I have never heard or read that name since," he said slowly, "without
a thrill at my nerves like a picked violin string. They were the
wickedest letters ever written, I think. Even for a woman, they were
incredible."
The men stared at him, mystified, confused, eager.
"One, the third, I think, said something like this: '_They may bury me,
now that you want me no longer. They shall never bury these letters--I
swear it. Here in the room where I wrote them, they shall live after I
am gone._'
"And they lived--God, they lived! As I pored over them, cross-legged
by that little hearth, I believe that I was as lost to the world about
me as Father Kelly had been a few moments before. They were not
written for me, they offered me nothing, the writer was beyond doubt
dead and gone; but for the moment those yellow papers held me, soul and
body, in such a grip as I have never known before or since. I can't
tell you ... I didn't know such things could be written...." He shook
his head slowly.
"I'd always been fairly decent, you see--there were circumstances ... I
couldn't take advantage...
"Did you ever turn over a good old sunny rock, flat, a little mossy,
but clean and wholesome? And underneath it crawls--it crawls! Black,
slimy slug things ... muck of the Pit!
"That was me. And every time my eyes fell on one of those amazing
phrases on that yellow page, I had to hold the rock down!
"Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped like a woman. Father
Kelly stood over me, and he looked, from where I sat below him,
unhumanly tall. He held out his hand.
"'Give them to me,' he said.
"'But, Father, you don't want to see them!' I burst out. 'I'm going to
destroy them. You--you mustn't see them! Let me burn them----'
"'Give them to me, my son," he repeated, and I gave them up like a
child. It was remarkable.
"'At any rate, I warn you,' I began. But he only smiled.
"'When you are warned of fever in a house, do you pass it by, my son?'
he asked me softly. 'But this is a different matter.'
"I admit that I couldn't meet his eyes.
"Well, he read them all through placidly, and then he sighed and shook
his head.
"'Poor things, poor things!' he said, 'and now we'll burn them. There
is nothing I can do.'
"So we burned them there and put back the bricks and he muttered some
short prayer or other and made the sign of the cross over the fireplace
and then turned to me.
"'Didn't I see some bread and ham and a cheese in that wire safe in the
cellar, doctor?' says he. 'I had no supper to-night.'
"We went down and got them and a bottle of Scotch, too, and I remember
perfectly that we polished off half a small ham, a whole Edam cheese, a
loaf of bread and nearly a bottle of the Scotch--the bottle wasn't
quite full, to begin with, you see.
"After we'd finished we had a smoke, and then I stared at him straight.
"'What's the meaning of it all, Father?' I asked.
"'I can't tell you, my son,' said he (he never called me so before or
since that night) 'but you may be sure of one thing--God reigns. And
now, what are you thinking to do?'
"'Burn down this house,' said I, 'and send for my wife to come back.'
"'By all means send for your wife,' says he quickly, 'but if you're
bound to destroy this house--which strikes me as a very good sort of
house--why not give it me?'
"'To you?' I cried. 'You don't mean that you'd use it?'
"'I could put a parochial school for girls there next week,' he said
cheerfully. 'We need one at this end badly, but I hadn't the money."
"'And you'd put innocent girls in this place?'
"'Give me a chance, and then come hear Sister Mary Eustacia sing with
'em, next Sunday,' he said.
"So I deeded it to him, land and all, and they had a great kick-up
there with little boys in lace night-gowns, and incense and what not.
And, by George, the girls did sing for me, too, with Sister
Somebody-or-other bowing and blushing behind 'em--all in white they
were, with blue sashes, and voices like larks ... I never had a
daughter...."
He half rose, heavily, leaning on his elbows. "Mind you, there's
something there!" he said slowly.
"There's a Pit below--you have to count on it. Perhaps we're
shovelling it in, all the time, shovelling it in...
"And the more you whistle, the better you'll work, of course. Very
well, then, whistle! But don't mistake--it's there ... it's there."
They drew long breaths and pushed away from the table; the rain had
stopped.
And still in silence they walked out together into the fresh, damp
evening.
THE ORACLES