THE FACE ON THE PILLOW.
Often the first shock of some unexpected mental blow shakes from the
soul, not its corresponding emotion, but that emotion’s exact
antithesis. Thus, when Jason spoke I laughed. I could not on the
moment believe that such hideous retribution was demanded of my
already writhed and repentant conscience, and it seemed to me that he
must be jesting in very ugly fashion.
Perhaps he looked astonished; anyhow he said:
“You needn’t make a joke of it. Are you awake? Modred’s dead, I tell
you.”
I sprung from the bed; I clutched him and pulled him to and fro.
“Tell me you lie--you lie--you lie!” I cried.
He did not. I could see it in his face. There and then the drought of
Tophet withered and constricted my life. I was branded and doomed
forevermore; a thing to shudder at and avoid.
“I will dress and come!” I said, relaxing from my hold on him, and
turned away and began to hurry on my clothes. I had not felt so set in
quietness since the morning of two days past. I could even think
calmly and balance the pros and cons of my future behavior.
Each man must be his own judge, his own plaintiff, his own
defendant--an atom of self-contained equity. By his own ruling in
matters of right and wrong he must abide, suffer his own punishments,
enjoy his own rewards. He is a lonely organism, in whom only himself
took an interest, and as such he must be content to endure with
calmness the misinterpretations of aliens.
Modred had forgiven me. Whatever was the condition, whatever the deed,
it was too late now to convince me that no justification existed for
my rebellion against fate.
My elder, my only brother now, watched me in silence as I dressed.
“Where is he?” I said, when I had finished.
“In bed as he was left,” said Jason. “I went in this morning, while
you were asleep, and found him--ah, he looks horrible,” he cried, and
broke off with a shudder.
I did not shrink; I felt braced up to any ordeal.
They were all in the room when we entered it. My father, Dr.
Crackenthorpe, Zyp--even old Peggy, who was busying herself, with the
vulture relish of her kind, over the little artificial decencies of
dress and posture that seem such an outrage on the solemn unresistance
of the dead.
Directly we came in Zyp ran to Jason and clung to him sobbing. I
noticed it with a sort of dull resignation, and that was all; for
Peggy, who had drawn a sheet over the lifeless face, pulled it down
that I might look.
Then, for all my stoicism, I gave a cry.
I had left my brother the night before tired, needing rest, but, save
for the extra pallor of his complexion that never boasted a great deal
of color, much like his usual self. Now the dead face lying back on
the pillows was awful to look upon. Spots and bars of livid purple
disfigured its waxen whiteness--on the cheeks, the ears, the throat,
where a deep patch was. It was greatly swollen, too, and the mouth so
rigidly open that it had defied all effort to bind it close. A couple
of pennies, like a hideous pair of glasses, lay, one over each eye,
where they could only be kept in position by means of a filament drawn
tightly round the head. The hands, stiffly crossed, with the fingers
crooked like talons, lay over the breast, fastened into position with
a ligature.
I turned away, feeling sick and faint. I think I reeled, for presently
I found that Dr. Crackenthorpe was supporting me against his arm.
“Oh, why is he like that?” I whispered.
“’Tis a common afterclap in deaths by drowning,” said he, speaking in
a loud, insistent voice, as if not for the first time. “A stoppage--a
relapse. During the weak small hours, when the patient’s strength is
at its lowest, the overwrought lungs refuse to work--collapse, and he
dies of suffocation.”
He looked at my father as he spoke, but elicited no response. It was
palpable that the heavy potations of the night had so deadened the
latter’s faculties as to make him incapable for the moment of
realizing the full enormity of the sight before him.
“Mark me,” said the doctor; “it’s a plain case, I say, nothing out of
the way; no complications. The wretched boy to all intents and
purposes has been drowned.”
“Who drowned him?” said my father. He spoke thickly, stupidly; but I
started, with a dreadful feeling that the locked jaws must relax and
denounce me before them all.
Seeing his hopeless state, the doctor took my father’s arm and led him
from the room. Zyp still clung to my brother.
“Cover it up,” whispered Jason. “He isn’t a pretty sight!”
“He wasn’t a pretty boy,” muttered Peggy, reluctantly hiding the
dreadful face; “To a old woman’s view it speaks of more than his
deserts. Nobody’ll come to look at me, I expect.”
“You heard what the doctor said?” asked Jason, looking across at me.
“Yes.”
“Drowned--you understand? Drowned, Renny?”
“Drowned,” I repeated, mechanically.
“Come, Zyp,” he said; “this isn’t the place for you any longer.”
They passed out of the room, she still clinging to him, so that her
face was hidden.
I did not measure his words at that time. I had no thought for nice
discriminations of tone; what did I care for anything any longer?
Presently I heard old Peg muttering again. She thought the room was
emptied of us and she softly removed the face cloth once more.
“Ay, there ye lies, Modred--safe never to spy on poor old Rottengoose
again! Ye were a bad lot, ye were; but Peg’s been more’n enough for
you, she has, my lad.”
Suddenly she saw me out of the tail of her eye, and turned upon me,
livid with fury.
“What are ye listening to, Renalt? A black curse on spies, Renalt, I
say!”
Then her manner changed and she came fawning at me fulsomely.
“What a good lad to stay wi’ his brother! But Peg’ll do the tending,
Renalt. She be a crass old body and apt to reviling in her speech, but
she don’t mean it, bless you; it’s the tic doldrums in her head.”
I repelled the horrible old creature and fled from the room. What she
meant I neither knew nor cared, for we had always looked upon her as a
feckless body, with a big worm in her brain.
All the long morning I wandered about the house, scarcely knowing what
I did or whither I went. Once I found myself in the room of silence,
not remembering when I had come there or for what reason. The fact,
merely, was impressed upon me by a gradual change in the nature of my
sensations. Something seemed to be asking a question of me which I was
striving and striving to answer. It didn’t distress me at first, for a
nearer misery overwhelmed everything, but by and by its insistence
pierced a passage through all dull obstacles, and the something took
up its abode in me and reigned and grew. I felt myself yielding,
yielding; and strove now to beat off the inevitable horror of the
answer that was rising in me. I did not know what it was, or the
question to which it was a response--only I saw that if I yielded to
it and spoke it, I should die then and there of the black terror of
its revelation.
I sprung to my feet with a cry, and saw, or thought I saw, Modred
standing by the water wheel and beckoning to me. If I had strength to
escape, it was enough for that and no more, for everything seemed to
go from me till I found myself sitting at the foot of the stairs, with
Jason looking oddly down upon me.
“I needn’t get up,” I said. “Modred isn’t dead, after all.”
I think I heard him shout out. Anyhow, I felt myself lifted up and
carried somewhere and put down. If they had thought to restrain me,
however, they should have managed things better; for I was up in a
moment and out at the window. I had often thought one wanted only the
will to forget gravity and float through the air, and here I was doing
it. What a glorious sensation it was! I laughed to think how long I
had remained like a reptile, bound to the plodding miserable earth,
when all the time I had power to escape from myself and float on and
on far away from all those heart-breaking troubles. If I only went
very swiftly at first I should soon be too distant for them to track
me, and then I should be free. I felt a little anxious, for there was
a faint noise behind me. I strove to put on pace; if my limbs had
responded to my efforts no bird could have outstripped me. But I saw
with agony that the harder I fought the less way I made. I struggled
and sobbed and clutched myself blindly onward, and all the time the
noise behind grew deeper. If I pushed myself off with a foot to the
ground I only floated a very little way now. Then I saw a railing and
pulled myself along with it toilsomely, but some great pressure was in
front of me and my feet slipped into holes at every step. Panting,
straining, slipping, as if on blood--why! It was blood! I had to yield
at last.
My passion of hope was done with. I lay in a white set horror, not
daring to move or look. How deadly quiet the room was, but not for
long, for a little stealthy rustle of the sheet beside me prickled
through my whole being with its ghastly stirring. Then I knew it had
secretly risen on its elbow and was leaning over and looking down upon
me. If I could only perspire, I thought, my bonds would loosen and I
could escape from it. But it was cunning and knew that, too, and it
sealed all the surface of my skin with its acrid exhalations. Suddenly
it clutched me in its crooked arms and bore me down, down to the room
of silence. There was a sickening odor there and the covering of the
wheel was open. Then, with a shudder, as of death, I thought I found
the answer; for now it was plain that the great wheel was driven by
blood, not water. As I looked aghast, straining over, it gave me a
stealthy push and, with a shriek, I splashed among the paddles and was
whirled down. For ages I was spun and beaten round and round, mashed,
mangled, gasping for breath and choked with the horrible crimson broth
that fed the insane and furious grinding of the wheel. At the end,
glutted with torture, it flung me forth into a parching desert of
sand, and, spinning from me, became far away a revolving disk of red
that made the low-down sun of that waste corner of the world.
I was alone, now--always alone. No footsteps had ever trod that
trackless level, nor would, I knew, till time was ended. I had no
hope; no green memory for oasis; no power of speech even. Then I knew
I was dead; had been dead so long that my body had crackled and fallen
to decay, leaving my soul only, like the stone of a fruit, quick with
wretched impulse to shoot upward but dreadfully imprisoned from doing
so.
Sometimes in the world the massive columns of the cathedral had
suggested to me a like sensation; a moral impress of weight and
stoniness that had driven me to bow my head and creep, sweating away
from their inexorable stolidity. Now I was built into such a
body--more, was an integral part of it. Yet could my pinioned nerves
never assimilate its passionless obduracy, but jerked and struggled in
agony to be free. Oh, how divine is the instinct that paints heaven
all light and airiness, and innocent forevermore of the sense of
weight!
Suddenly I heard Zyp’s voice, singing outside in the world, and in a
moment tears, most blessed, blessed tears, sprung from my eyes and I
was free. The stone cracked and fell asunder, and I leaped out madly
shrieking at my release.
She was sitting under a tree in a beautiful meadow and her young voice
rose sweetly as she prinked her hat with daisies and yellow king-cups.
She called me to her and gave me tender names and smoothed away the
pain from my forehead with kisses and the cunning of her elfish brown
hand.
“Come, drink,” she said, “and you will be better.”
I woke to life and looked up. She was standing by my bed, holding a
cup toward my lips, and at the foot Jason leaned, looking on.
“Have I been ill?” I said, in a voice so odd to me that I almost
laughed.
“Yes, yes--a little; but you have come out of the black pit now into
the forest.”