And then, while that dreadful house stood listening about us in the
early hours of this chill morning upon the edge of winter, she told
me, with laconic brevity, things about Mabel that I heard as from a
distance. There was nothing so unusual or tremendous in the short
recital, nothing indeed I might not have already guessed for myself. It
was the time and scene, the inference, too, that made it so afflicting:
the idea that Mabel believed herself so utterly and hopelessly
lost--beyond recovery _damned_.
That she had loved him with so passionate a devotion that she had given
her soul into his keeping, this certainly I had not divined--probably
because I had never thought about it one way or the other. He had
‘converted’ her, I knew, but that she had subscribed whole-heartedly
to that most cruel and ugly of his dogmas--this was new to me, and
came with a certain shock as I heard it. In love, of course, the
weaker nature is receptive to all manner of suggestion. This man had
‘suggested’ his pet brimstone lake so vividly that she had listened
and believed. He had frightened her into heaven; and his heaven, a
definite locality in the skies, had its foretaste here on earth in
miniature--The Towers, house and garden. Into his dolorous scheme of a
handful saved and millions damned, his enclosure, as it were, of sheep
and goats, he had swept her before she was aware of it. Her mind no
longer was her own. And it was Mrs. Marsh who kept the thought-stream
open, though tempered, as she deemed, with that touch of craven,
superstitious mercy.
But what I found it difficult to understand, and still more difficult
to accept, was that, during her year abroad, she had been so haunted
with a secret dread of that hideous after-death that she had finally
revolted and tried to recover that clearer state of mind she had
enjoyed before the religious bully had stunned her--yet had tried
in vain. She had returned to The Towers to find her soul again, only
to realise that it was lost eternally. The cleaner state of mind lay
then beyond recovery. In the reaction that followed the removal of his
terrible ‘suggestion,’ she felt the crumbling of all that he had taught
her, but searched in vain for the peace and beauty his teachings had
destroyed. Nothing came to replace these. She was empty, desolate,
hopeless; craving her former joy and carelessness, she found only hate
and diabolical calculation. This man, whom she had loved to the point
of losing her soul for him, had bequeathed to her one black and fiery
thing--the terror of the damned. His thinking wrapped her in this iron
garment that held her fast.
All this Frances told me, far more briefly than I have here repeated
it. In her eyes and gestures and laconic sentences lay the conviction
of great beating issues and of menacing drama my own description fails
to recapture. It was all so incongruous and remote from the world I
lived in that more than once a smile, though a smile of pity, fluttered
to my lips; but a glimpse of my face in the mirror showed rather the
leer of a grimace. There was no real laughter anywhere that night.
The entire adventure seemed so incredible, here, in this twentieth
century--but yet delusion, that feeble word, did not occur once in
the comments my mind suggested though did not utter. I remembered
that forbidding Shadow too; my sister’s water-colours; the vanished
personality of our hostess; the inexplicable, thundering Noise, and the
figure of Mrs. Marsh in her midnight ritual that was so childish yet so
horrible. I shivered in spite of my own ‘emancipated’ cast of mind.
‘There _is_ no Mabel,’ were the words with which my sister sent another
shower of ice down my spine. ‘He has killed her in his lake of fire and
brimstone.’
I stared at her blankly, as in a nightmare where nothing true or
possible ever happened.
‘He killed her in his lake of fire and brimstone,’ she repeated more
faintly.
A desperate effort was in me to say the strong, sensible thing which
should destroy the oppressive horror that grew so stiflingly about us
both, but again the mirror drew the attempted smile into the merest
grin, betraying the distortion that was everywhere in the place.
‘You mean,’ I stammered beneath my breath, ‘that her faith has gone,
but that the terror has remained?’ I asked it, dully groping. I moved
out of the line of the reflection in the glass.
She bowed her head as though beneath a weight; her skin was the pallor
of grey ashes.
‘You mean,’ I said louder, ‘that she has lost her--mind?’
‘She is terror incarnate,’ was the whispered answer. ‘Mabel has lost
her soul. Her soul is--there!’ She pointed horribly below. ‘She is
seeking it...?’
The word ‘soul’ stung me into something of my normal self again.
‘But her terror, poor thing, is not--cannot be--transferable to _us_!’
I exclaimed more vehemently. ‘It certainly is not convertible into
feelings, sights and--even sounds!’
She interrupted me quickly, almost impatiently, speaking with that
conviction by which she conquered me so easily that night.
‘It is her terror that has revived “the Others.” It has brought her
into touch with them. They are loose and driving after her. Her
efforts at resistance have given them also hope--that escape, after
all, _is_ possible. Day and night they strive.’
‘Escape! Others!’ The anger fast rising in me dropped of its own accord
at the moment of birth. It shrank into a shuddering beyond my control.
In that moment, I think, I would have believed in the possibility of
anything and everything she might tell me. To argue or contradict
seemed equally futile.
‘His strong belief, as also the beliefs of others who have preceded
him,’ she replied, so sure of herself that I actually turned to look
over my shoulder, ‘have left their shadow like a thick deposit over
the house and grounds. To them, poor souls imprisoned by thought, it
was hopeless as granite walls--until her resistance, her effort to
dissipate it--let in light. Now, in their thousands, they are flocking
to this little light, seeking escape. Her own escape, don’t you see,
may release them all!’
It took my breath away. Had his predecessors, former occupants of this
house, also preached damnation of all the world but their own exclusive
sect? Was this the explanation of her obscure talk of ‘layers,’ each
striving against the other for domination? And if men are spirits,
and these spirits survive, could strong Thought thus determine their
condition even afterwards?
So many questions flooded into me that I selected no one of them, but
stared in uncomfortable silence, bewildered, out of my depth, and
acutely, painfully distressed. There was so odd a mixture of possible
truth and incredible, unacceptable explanation in it all; so much
confirmed, yet so much left darker than before. What she said did,
indeed, offer a quasi-interpretation of my own series of abominable
sensations--strife, agony, pity, hate, escape--but so far-fetched that
only the deep conviction in her voice and attitude made it tolerable
for a second even. I found myself in a curious state of mind. I could
neither think clearly nor say a word to refute her amazing statements,
whispered there beside me in the shivering hours of the early morning
with only a wall between ourselves and--Mabel. Close behind her words
I remember this singular thing, however--that an atmosphere as of the
Inquisition seemed to rise and stir about the room, beating awful wings
of black above my head.
Abruptly, then, a moment’s common-sense returned to me. I faced her.
‘And the Noise?’ I said aloud, more firmly, ‘the roar of the closing
doors? We have _all_ heard that! Is that subjective too?’
Frances looked sideways about her in a queer fashion that made my
flesh creep again. I spoke brusquely, almost angrily. I repeated the
question, and waited with anxiety for her reply.
‘What noise?’ she asked, with the frank expression of an innocent
child. ‘What closing doors?’
But her face turned from grey to white, and I saw that drops of
perspiration glistened on her forehead. She caught at the back of
a chair to steady herself, then glanced about her again with that
sidelong look that made my blood run cold. I understood suddenly then.
She did not take in what I said. I knew now. She was listening--for
something else.
And the discovery revived in me a far stronger emotion than any mere
desire for immediate explanation. Not only did I not insist upon an
answer, but I was actually terrified lest she _would_ answer. More,
I felt in me a terror lest I should be moved to describe my own
experiences below-stairs, thus increasing their reality and so the
reality of all. She might even explain them too!
Still listening intently, she raised her head and looked me in the
eyes. Her lips opened to speak. The words came to me from a great
distance, it seemed, and her voice had a sound like a stone that drops
into a deep well, its fate though hidden, known.
‘We are in it with her, too, Bill. We are in it with her. Our
interpretations vary--because we are--in parts of it only. Mabel is in
it--_all_.’
The desire for violence came over me. If only she would say a definite
thing in plain King’s English! If only I could find it in me to give
utterance to what shouted so loud within me! If only--the same old
cry--something would happen! For all this elliptic talk that dazed my
mind left obscurity everywhere. Her atrocious meaning, none the less,
flashed through me, though vanishing before it wholly divulged itself.
It brought a certain reaction with it. I found my tongue. Whether I
actually believed what I said is more than I can swear to; that it
seemed to me wise at the moment is all I remember. My mind was in a
state of obscure perception less than that of normal consciousness.
‘Yes, Frances, I believe that what you say is the truth, and that we
are in it with her’--I meant to say it with loud, hostile emphasis,
but instead I whispered it lest she should hear the trembling of my
voice--‘and for that reason, my dear sister, we leave to-morrow, you
and I--to-day, rather, since it is long past midnight--we leave this
house of the damned. We go back to London.’
Frances looked up, her face distraught almost beyond recognition.
But it was not my words that caused the tumult in her heart. It was
a sound--the sound she had been listening for--so faint I barely
caught it myself, and had she not pointed I could never have known
the direction whence it came. Small and terrible it rose again in the
stillness of the night, the sound of gnashing teeth. And behind it came
another--the tread of stealthy footsteps. Both were just outside the
door.
The room swung round me for a second. My first instinct to prevent my
sister going out--she had dashed past me frantically to the door--gave
place to another when I saw the expression in her eyes. I followed her
lead instead; it was surer than my own. The pistol in my pocket swung
uselessly against my thigh. I was flustered beyond belief and ashamed
that I was so.
‘Keep close to me, Frances,’ I said huskily, as the door swung wide and
a shaft of light fell upon a figure moving rapidly. Mabel was going
down the corridor. Beyond her, in the shadows on the staircase, a
second figure stood beckoning, scarcely visible.
‘Before they get her! Quick!’ was screamed into my ears, and our arms
were about her in the same moment. It was a horrible scene. Not that
Mabel struggled in the least, but that she collapsed as we caught her
and fell with her dead weight, as of a corpse, limp, against us. And
her teeth began again. They continued, even beneath the hand that
Frances clapped upon her lips....
We carried her back into her own bedroom, where she lay down peacefully
enough. It was so soon over.... The rapidity of the whole thing robbed
it of reality almost. It had the swiftness of something remembered
rather than of something witnessed. She slept again so quickly that it
was almost as if we had caught her sleep-walking. I cannot say. I asked
no questions at the time; I have asked none since; and my help was
needed as little as the protection of my pistol. Frances was strangely
competent and collected.... I lingered for some time uselessly by the
door, till at length, looking up with a sigh, she made a sign for me to
go.
‘I shall wait in your room next door,’ I whispered, ‘till you come.’
But, though going out, I waited in the corridor instead, so as to hear
the faintest call for help. In that dark corridor upstairs I waited,
but not long. It may have been fifteen minutes when Frances reappeared,
locking the door softly behind her. Leaning over the banisters, I saw
her.
‘I’ll go in again about six o’clock,’ she whispered, ‘as soon as it
gets light. She is sound asleep now. Please don’t wait. If anything
happens I’ll call--you might leave your door ajar, perhaps.’ And she
came up, looking like a ghost.
But I saw her first safely into bed, and the rest of the night I spent
in an armchair close to my opened door, listening for the slightest
sound. Soon after five o’clock I heard Frances fumbling with the key,
and, peering over the railing again, I waited till she reappeared and
went back into her own room. She closed her door. Evidently she was
satisfied that all was well.
Then, and then only, did I go to bed myself, but not to sleep. I could
not get the scene out of my mind, especially that odious detail of it
which I hoped and believed my sister had not seen--the still, dark
figure of the housekeeper waiting on the stairs below--waiting, of
course, for Mabel.