"When shall we go?" I said. "I can start the day after to-morrow, if you
like."
"Ah, that is perhaps a little too soon; after all, I do not know London
yet, and I suppose a man ought to give the pleasures of his own country
the first choice. But we will go off together in a week or two, so try
and furbish up your French. I only know law French myself, and I am
afraid that wouldn't do."
We were just finishing dinner, and he quaffed off his medicine with a
parade of carousal as if it had been wine from some choicest bin.
"Has it any particular taste?" I said.
"No; I should not know I was not drinking water," and he got up from his
chair, and began to pace up and down the room as if he were undecided as
to what he should do next.
"Shall we have coffee in the drawing-room," I said, "or would you like
to smoke?"
"No; I think I will take a turn, it seems a pleasant evening. Look at
the afterglow; why, it is as if a great city were burning in flames, and
down there between the dark houses it is raining blood fast, fast. Yes,
I will go out. I may be in soon, but I shall take my key, so good-night,
dear, if I don't see you again."
The door slammed behind him, and I saw him walk lightly down the street,
swinging his malacca cane, and I felt grateful to Dr. Haberden for such
an improvement.
I believe my brother came home very late that night; but he was in a
merry mood the next morning.
"I walked on without thinking where I was going," he said, "enjoying the
freshness of the air, and livened by the crowds as I reached more
frequented quarters. And then I met an old college friend, Orford, in
the press of the pavement, and then--well, we enjoyed ourselves. I have
felt what it is to be young and a man, I find I have blood in my veins,
as other men have. I made an appointment with Orford for to-night; there
will be a little party of us at the restaurant. Yes, I shall enjoy
myself for a week or two, and hear the chimes at midnight, and then we
will go for our little trip together."
Such was the transmutation of my brother's character that in a few days
he became a lover of pleasure, a careless and merry idler of western
pavements, a hunter out of snug restaurants, and a fine critic of
fantastic dancing; he grew fat before my eyes, and said no more of
Paris, for he had clearly found his Paradise in London. I rejoiced, and
yet wondered a little, for there was, I thought, something in his gayety
that indefinitely displeased me, though I could not have defined my
feeling. But by degrees there came a change; he returned still in the
cold hours of the morning, but I heard no more about his pleasures, and
one morning as we sat at breakfast together, I looked suddenly into his
eyes and saw a stranger before me.
"Oh, Francis!" I cried; "Oh, Francis, Francis, what have you done?" and
rending sobs cut the words short, and I went weeping out of the room,
for though I knew nothing, yet I knew all, and by some odd play of
thought I remembered the evening when he first went abroad to prove his
manhood, and the picture of the sunset sky glowed before me; the clouds
like a city in burning flames, and the rain of blood. Yet I did battle
with such thoughts, resolving that perhaps, after all, no great harm
had been done, and in the evening at dinner I resolved to press him to
fix a day for our holiday in Paris. We had talked easily enough, and my
brother had just taken his medicine, which he had continued all the
while. I was about to begin my topic, when the words forming in my mind
vanished, and I wondered for a second what icy and intolerable weight
oppressed my heart and suffocated me as with the unutterable horror of
the coffin-lid nailed down on the living.
We had dined without candles, and the room had slowly grown from
twilight to gloom, and the walls and corners were indistinct in the
shadow. But from where I sat I looked out into the street; and as I
thought of what I would say to Francis, the sky began to flush and
shine, as it had done on a well-remembered evening, and in the gap
between two dark masses that were houses an awful pageantry of flame
appeared. Lurid whorls of writhed cloud, and utter depths burning, and
gray masses like the fume blown from a smoking city, and an evil glory
blazing far above shot with tongues of more ardent fire, and below as if
there were a deep pool of blood. I looked down to where my brother sat
facing me, and the words were shaped on my lips, when I saw his hand
resting on the table. Between the thumb and forefinger of the closed
hand, there was a mark, a small patch about the size of a sixpence, and
somewhat of the color of a bad bruise. Yet, by some sense I cannot
define, I knew that what I saw was no bruise at all. Oh, if human flesh
could burn with flame, and if flame could be black as pitch, such was
that before me! Without thought or fashioning of words, gray horror
shaped within me at the sight, and in an inner cell it was known to be a
brand. For a moment the stained sky became dark as midnight, and when
the light returned to me, I was alone in the silent room, and soon after
I heard my brother go out.
Late as it was, I put on my bonnet and went to Dr. Haberden, and in his
great consulting-room, ill-lighted by a candle which the doctor brought
in with him, with stammering lips, and a voice that would break in spite
of my resolve, I told him all; from the day on which my brother began to
take the medicine down to the dreadful thing I had seen scarcely half an
hour before.
When I had done, the doctor looked at me for a minute with an expression
of great pity on his face.
"My dear Miss Leicester," he said, "you have evidently been anxious
about your brother; you have been worrying over him, I am sure. Come,
now, is it not so?
"I have certainly been anxious," I said. "For the last week or two I
have not felt at ease."
"Quite so; you know, of course, what a queer thing the brain is?"
"I understand what you mean; but I was not deceived. I saw what I have
told you with my own eyes."
"Yes, yes, of course. But your eyes had been staring at that very
curious sunset we had to-night. That is the only explanation. You will
see it in the proper light to-morrow, I am sure. But, remember, I am
always ready to give any help that is in my power; do not scruple to
come to me, or to send for me if you are in any distress."
I went away but little comforted, all confusion and terror and sorrow,
not knowing where to turn. When my brother and I met the next day, I
looked quickly at him, and noticed, with a sickening at heart, that the
right hand, the hand on which I had clearly seen the patch as of a black
fire, was wrapped up with a handkerchief.
"What is the matter with your hand, Francis?" I said in a steady voice.
"Nothing of consequence. I cut a finger last night, and it bled rather
awkwardly, so I did it up roughly to the best of my ability."
"I will do it neatly for you, if you like."
"No, thank you, dear, this will answer very well. Suppose we have
breakfast; I am quite hungry."
We sat down, and I watched him. He scarcely ate or drank at all, but
tossed his meat to the dog when he thought my eyes were turned away; and
there was a look in his eyes that I had never yet seen, and the thought
fled across my mind that it was a look that was scarcely human. I was
firmly convinced that awful and incredible as was the thing I had seen
the night before, yet it was no illusion, no glamour of bewildered
sense, and in the course of the morning I went again to the doctor's
house.
He shook his head with an air puzzled and incredulous, and seemed to
reflect for a few minutes.
"And you say he still keeps up the medicine? But why? As I understand,
all the symptoms he complained of have disappeared long ago; why should
he go on taking the stuff when he is quite well? And by the bye where
did he get it made up? At Sayce's? I never send any one there; the old
man is getting careless. Suppose you come with me to the chemist's; I
should like to have some talk with him."
We walked together to the shop. Old Sayce knew Dr. Haberden, and was
quite ready to give any information.
"You have been sending that in to Mr. Leicester for some weeks, I think,
on my prescription," said the doctor, giving the old man a pencilled
scrap of paper.
The chemist put on his great spectacles with trembling uncertainty, and
held up the paper with a shaking hand.
"Oh, yes," he said, "I have very little of it left; it is rather an
uncommon drug, and I have had it in stock some time. I must get in some
more, if Mr. Leicester goes on with it."
"Kindly let me have a look at the stuff," said Haberden; and the chemist
gave him a glass bottle. He took out the stopper and smelt the contents,
and looked strangely at the old man.
"Where did you get this?" he said, "and what is it? For one thing, Mr.
Sayce, it is not what I prescribed. Yes, yes, I see the label is right
enough, but I tell you this is not the drug."
"I have had it a long time," said the old man, in feeble terror. "I got
it from Burbage's in the usual way. It is not prescribed often, and I
have had it on the shelf for some years. You see there is very little
left."
"You had better give it to me," said Haberden. "I am afraid something
wrong has happened."
We went out of the shop in silence, the doctor carrying the bottle
neatly wrapped in paper under his arm.
"Dr. Haberden," I said when we had walked a little way--"Dr. Haberden."
"Yes," he said, looking at me gloomily enough.
"I should like you to tell me what my brother has been taking twice a
day for the last month or so."
"Frankly, Miss Leicester, I don't know. We will speak of this when we
get to my house,"
We walked on quickly without another word till we reached Dr.
Haberden's. He asked me to sit down, and began pacing up and down the
room, his face clouded over, as I could see, with no common fears.
"Well," he said at length, "this is all very strange; it is only natural
that you should feel alarmed, and I must confess that my mind is far
from easy. We will put aside, if you please, what you told me last night
and this morning, but the fact remains that for the last few weeks Mr.
Leicester has been impregnating his system with a drug which is
completely unknown to me. I tell you, it is not what I ordered; and what
that stuff in the bottle really is remains to be seen."
He undid the wrapper, and cautiously tilted a few grains of the white
powder on to a piece of paper, and peered curiously at it.
"Yes," he said, "it is like the sulphate of quinine, as you say; it is
flaky. But smell it."
He held the bottle to me, and I bent over it. It was a strange sickly
smell, vaporous and overpowering, like some strong anæsthetic.
"I shall have it analyzed," said Haberden. "I have a friend who has
devoted his whole life to chemistry as a science. Then we shall have
something to go upon. No, no, say no more about that other matter; I
cannot listen to that, and take my advice and think no more about it
yourself."
That evening my brother did not go out as usual after dinner.
"I have had my fling," he said with a queer laugh; "and I must go back
to my old ways. A little law will be quite a relaxation after so sharp a
dose of pleasure," and he grinned to himself, and soon after went up to
his room. His hand was still all bandaged.
Dr. Haberden called a few days later.
"I have no special news to give you," he said. "Chambers is out of town,
so I know no more about that stuff than you do. But I should like to see
Mr. Leicester if he is in."
"He is in his room," I said; "I will tell him you are here."
"No, no, I will go up to him; we will have a little quiet talk together.
I dare say that we have made a good deal of fuss about very little; for,
after all, whatever the white powder may be, it seems to have done him
good."
The doctor went upstairs, and standing in the hall I heard his knock,
and the opening and shutting of the door; and then I waited in the
silent house for an hour, and the stillness grew more and more intense
as the hands of the clock crept round. Then there sounded from above the
noise of a door shut sharply, and the doctor was coming down the stairs.
His footsteps crossed the hall, and there was a pause at the door. I
drew a long sick breath with difficulty, and saw my face white in a
little mirror, and he came in and stood at the door. There was an
unutterable horror shining in his eyes; he steadied himself by holding
the back of a chair with one hand, and his lower lip trembled like a
horse's, and he gulped and stammered unintelligible sounds before he
spoke.
"I have seen that man," he began in a dry whisper. "I have been sitting
in his presence for the last hour. My God! and I am alive and in my
senses! I, who have dealt with death all my life, and have dabbled with
the melting ruins of the earthly tabernacle. But not this! Oh, not this,"
and he covered his face with his hands as if to shut out the sight
of something before him.
"Do not send for me again, Miss Leicester," he said with more composure.
"I can do nothing in this house. Good-bye."
As I watched him totter down the steps and along the pavement towards
his house, it seemed to me that he had aged by ten years since the
morning.
My brother remained in his room. He called out to me in a voice I hardly
recognized, that he was very busy, and would like his meals brought to
his door and left there, and I gave the order to the servants. From that
day it seemed as if the arbitrary conception we call time had been
annihilated for me. I lived in an ever present sense of horror, going
through the routine of the house mechanically, and only speaking a few
necessary words to the servants. Now and then I went out and paced the
streets for an hour or two and came home again; but whether I were
without or within, my spirit delayed before the closed door of the upper
room, and, shuddering, waited for it to open. I have said that I
scarcely reckoned time, but I suppose it must have been a fortnight
after Dr. Haberden's visit that I came home from my stroll a little
refreshed and lightened. The air was sweet and pleasant, and the hazy
form of green leaves, floating cloud-like in the square, and the smell
of blossoms, had charmed my senses, and I felt happier and walked more
briskly. As I delayed a moment at the verge of the pavement, waiting for
a van to pass by before crossing over to the house, I happened to look
up at the windows, and instantly there was the rush and swirl of deep
cold waters in my ears, and my heart leapt up, and fell down, down as
into a deep hollow, and I was amazed with a dread and terror without
form or shape. I stretched out a hand blindly through folds of thick
darkness, from the black and shadowy valley, and held myself from
falling, while the stones beneath my feet rocked and swayed and tilted,
and the sense of solid things seemed to sink away from under me. I had
glanced up at the window of my brother's study, and at that moment the
blind was drawn aside, and something that had life stared out into the
world. Nay, I cannot say I saw a face or any human likeness; a living
thing, two eyes of burning flame glared at me, and they were in the
midst of something as formless as my fear, the symbol and presence of
all evil and all hideous corruption. I stood shuddering and quaking as
with the grip of ague, sick with unspeakable agonies of fear and
loathing, and for five minutes I could not summon force or motion to my
limbs. When I was within the door, I ran up the stairs to my brother's
room, and knocked.
"Francis, Francis," I cried, "for heaven's sake answer me. What is the
horrible thing in your room? Cast it out, Francis, cast it from you!"
I heard a noise as of feet shuffling slowly and awkwardly, and a
choking, gurgling sound, as if some one was struggling to find
utterance, and then the noise of a voice, broken and stifled, and words
that I could scarcely understand.
"There is nothing here," the voice said, "Pray do not disturb me. I am
not very well to-day."
I turned away, horrified and yet helpless. I could do nothing, and I
wondered why Francis had lied to me, for I had seen the appearance
beyond the glass too plainly to be deceived, though it was but the sight
of a moment. And I sat still, conscious that there had been something
else, something I had seen in the first flash of terror before those
burning eyes had looked at me. Suddenly I remembered; as I lifted my
face the blind was being drawn back, and I had had an instant's glance
of the thing that was moving it, and in my recollection I knew that a
hideous image was engraved forever on my brain. It was not a hand: there
were no fingers that held the blind, but a black stump pushed it aside;
the mouldering outline and the clumsy movement as of a beast's paw had
glowed into my senses before the darkling waves of terror had
overwhelmed me as I went down quick into the pit. My mind was aghast at
the thought of this, and of the awful presence that dwelt with my
brother in his room; I went to his door and cried to him again, but no
answer came. That night one of the servants came up to me and told me in
a whisper that for three days food had been regularly placed at the door
and left untouched; the maid had knocked, but had received no answer;
she had heard the noise of shuffling feet that I had noticed. Day after
day went by, and still my brother's meals were brought to his door and
left untouched; and though I knocked and called again and again, I could
get no answer. The servants began to talk to me; it appeared they were
as alarmed as I. The cook said that when my brother first shut himself
up in his room, she used to hear him come out at night and go about the
house; and once, she said, the hall door had opened and closed again,
but for several nights she had heard no sound. The climax came at last.
It was in the dusk of the evening, and I was sitting in the darkening
dreary room when a terrible shriek jarred and rang harshly out of the
silence, and I heard a frightened scurry of feet dashing down the
stairs. I waited, and the servant maid staggered into the room and faced
me, white and trembling.
"O Miss Helen," she whispered. "Oh, for the Lord's sake, Miss Helen,
what has happened? Look at my hand, miss; look at that hand!" I drew her
to the window, and saw there was a black wet stain upon her hand.
"I do not understand you," I said. "Will you explain to me?"
"I was doing your room just now," she began. "I was turning down the
bedclothes, and all of a sudden there was something fell upon my hand
wet, and I looked up, and the ceiling was black and dripping on me."
I looked hard at her, and bit my lip. "Come with me," I said. "Bring
your candle with you."
The room I slept in was beneath my brother's, and as I went in I felt I
was trembling. I looked up at the ceiling, and saw a patch, all black
and wet and a dew of black drops upon it, and a pool of horrible liquor
soaking into the white bedclothes.