"I will pass over as briefly as possible what happened after I was left
behind in that horrible place. By the light of the moon I saw them
go--from the ridge I saw them put out to sea. I watched them until the
boat was a mere speck on the luminous waters, and finally vanished from
sight. I was left alone, a desperately wounded man, on an arid sulphurous
island, without food or water.
"When I was sure the boat had gone I returned to our camping place, and
bound my wounds with strips torn off my shirt. Then I fell asleep. I must
have developed fever in my slumber, for I have no clear recollections of
the next few days. I vaguely recall roaming like a demented being among
those solitudes in search of water, and finding a boiling spring. The
water, when cooled, was drinkable. I suppose that saved my life. For food,
there was shell-fish and mutton-bird eggs, with no lack of boiling water
to cook them.
"I lived there so long that I forgot the flight of time. I became a wild
man--a mere shaggy animal, living, eating, and sleeping like a beast.
"I was rescued by a passing steamer at last, rescued without any effort of
my own, for I had gone past caring. From the ship they saw me leaping
about the naked sides of the volcanic hills like a goat, and they put off
a boat. Some lady passengers were badly scared when I was brought
aboard--and no wonder. They were very kind to me on that ship. She was
homeward bound, and brought me to England. I told the captain my story,
but I could see that he didn't believe me, so I told nobody else. Not that
anybody wanted to know--really. One's misfortunes are never interesting to
other people.
"I had a little money left when I landed in England--not much, but
sufficient to take me to my wife and support me until I found Robert
Turold. I had left my wife living with her parents in a London suburb.
Robert Turold and I had both been in love with her before we left England.
She loved me, but he had some strange kind of influence over her--the
dominance of a strong nature over a weak, I think. Or perhaps it was a
more primitive feminine instinct. He was always the strong man--even
then--ruthless, determined. It was strange that he should have loved such
a gentle timid creature, though that, perhaps, was not so strange as a man
like Robert Turold loving any woman. But love her he did.
"She had a great capacity for affection--she was one of those women who
have to love, and be loved. Her guileless face, her appealing eyes, seemed
to beseech the protection of a masculine shield in a world which has no
mercy for the weak. She was born to be guided, to be led. It was my fear
of her simple trustful disposition which led me to urge her to marry me
secretly before I left England with Turold. Her parents did not favour me,
and they wished their daughter to marry well--there was an aunt from whom
she had expectations, and the aunt had a prospective husband in view for
her. I feared their joint influence. She consented willingly enough; she
was easy to persuade--on the eve of our parting. She clung to me
weeping--her husband.
"I was to make enough money to return to England to claim her in a year or
so--that was the plan. But I had been absent nearly three when I was left
on the island. And another twelve months passed before I reached England
again. Four years! A long time. Almost any combination of circumstances
can be brought about in such a period. People die, marry, or can be
forgotten as though they had never existed. It was my lot to be forgotten.
"I hastened to London, to my wife's old home, and learnt that the family
no longer lived there. Where had they gone to? The maid who opened the
door could not tell me--she did not know. At my request she went for her
mistress. The lady of the house came down to me, a tall slender woman,
indifferent, but well-bred enough to be polite. She had taken the house
from the Bruntons, she said. It was too large for them after their
daughter's marriage. It was dusk, and she could not see my face, but she
heard my startled exclamation--'Married? To whom?' To a Mr. Turold--a very
suitable match. They had been married for some months, and she was
expecting a child.
"How she gathered that last piece of information I do not know. Perhaps
she and Mrs. Brunton exchanged letters--women write to one another on the
slightest pretexts. That thought made me cautious. Fortunately, I had not
given my name. I thanked her, and rose to go. She offered to write down
the Bruntons' address for me (they had gone to live in the country), but I
said I could remember it. And I got away from the house in the gathering
darkness without her actually seeing my face--not that it would have
mattered much, if she had.
"I thought it all over that night. I visualized readily enough what had
happened. Robert Turold, returning to England with some concocted story of
my death, had swept her off her feet, caught her on the rebound. He had
returned a prosperous man, and doubtless his love-making was reinforced by
Alice's worldly parents and the match-making old aunt. The combination was
a strong one, and I was supposed to be dead. So she married him, without
breathing a word to anybody of her previous secret marriage to me. I
realized that at once. She would be too afraid--left to herself. She would
tell herself that it wasn't worth while--that nobody need ever know now. I
could imagine her twisting her little hands together in apprehension as
she faced the problem--our secret--then gradually becoming calmer as
something whispered in her ear that it was her secret now, and need not be
told. You see, I knew her nature so well. There are many such
natures--gentle souls who shrink from responsibility in a world which,
sooner or later, generally sees to it that we are compelled to shoulder
the burden of our own acts.
"I was not long in making up my mind. I determined to do nothing. I take
no special credit to myself for that decision. The marriage with Robert
Turold was an accomplished fact, and my belated reappearance upon the
scene would have plunged her in unhappiness. She was about to become a
mother, too. That weighed with me. I loved her far too well to injure her
or her child. It meant letting Robert Turold go free if I remained dead,
but there are other things in life besides money and revenge. Fortunately
the position from the practical point of view was simplified by the death
of my only relative, my uncle, during my absence from England, who had
bequeathed his small property to me--not much, but sufficient for my own
simple needs.
"I took my uncle's name, the better to conceal my identity, and resumed
the medical studies which had been interrupted by my departure from
England four years before. When I received my degree I searched for a
remote spot where I was not likely to encounter any one who had known me
in my past life, and chose this lonely part of the Cornish coast. And here
I have remained for thirty years.
"They have not been unhappy years. It was not my disposition to waste my
life by hugging the illusions of the past. My days were occupied walking
long distances to see my patients scattered at distant intervals on this
desolate coast, and my nights I spent in antiquarian and archaeological
studies, which were always a favourite pursuit of mine. It was a hobby
which earned me some local repute in the course of the years, and was
ultimately the means of bringing me face to face with Robert Turold again.
That was the last thing in the world I desired to happen. In the early
years I used to think of him wedded to my wife, and wonder whether he had
succeeded in his great ambition. After a while the memory faded, as most
memories do with the passing of the years.
"Then the meeting came--six months ago. I heard Flint House was let,
though not to whom. The news did not interest me. But next evening, when I
returned from my rounds, my servant met me at the door with the
information that the new tenant of Flint House was in the consulting-room
waiting to see me.
"I went in. The tall elderly figure sitting there rose at my entrance and
said: 'Not a patient, doctor--quite another matter.' I started slightly at
the familiar ring to that harsh authoritative voice, but I did not know
who he was until he handed me his card. He had already commenced talking
about that accursed title as he did so, and he did not notice my
agitation. He had come to Cornwall in pursuit of the last pieces of
evidence for his family tree, and some local busybody had told him that I
was versed in Cornish antiquities and heraldry. That piece of information
had brought him to me. He begged for my assistance--my valuable
assistance--in elucidating the last scraps of his genealogy from the
graves of the past.
"I could have cut him short by laughing aloud--though not in mirth. I had
regained my self-command, for I saw that he had not the slightest
suspicion to whom he was talking. That in itself was not surprising. I had
not recognized him. And how much greater was the change in my own case!
Time alters us all in a much less period than thirty years, and there was
more than the passage of time. Those months of horrible solitude on that
island had changed me into an old man in appearance, with grey hair, and
bleared and weak eyes from the sulphur fumes. And Time had made the
disguise impenetrable in the thirty added years. I was an old man. My hair
and beard were white, and I wore thick glasses. I felt I need be under no
apprehension of Robert Turold recognizing me--then, or at any time, unless
I was careless.
"His request for my help had a strange fascination for me. There was an
uncanny thrill in sitting there within an arm's length of him, meeting his
unsuspicious glance, and listening to him with the knowledge that I could
have put his plans and ambitions to flight with a single word, and had him
begging for mercy. I was in the position of Providence, and withheld my
hand, as Providence generally does. My desire to punish Robert Turold had
long since died. At sixty, revenge is a small thing. What is human
retribution to the ferocity of Time's revenge on us all? Retribution and
Justice--these are human catchwords, signifying nothing. What is Justice?
Who is to judge when the scales are even? It was easier to comply with his
request than arouse suspicion by refusal, but that wasn't what weighed
with me. I wanted to see more of him, to win his confidence, if possible.
I was curious to know what kind of life he had given the woman for whose
sake I had let him go free for thirty years.
"He took a liking to me. My knowledge of ancient Cornish lore proved
useful in the final stages of his search--his thirty years' search for a
family tree. It was not long before I discovered that he had found no
happiness in life. At times his face wore a hunted look--the look of a man
who walked his days in fear. His imperfect vision peered out on a darkened
world with apprehension, though not of me. In my strange position with him
I felt like a ghost permitted to watch, unseen and unsuspected, the
travail of a gloomy solitary mind. It was apparent enough, but only to me.
My quickened eyes pierced the outward husk and saw within. I thought I had
outlived my desire for revenge, but it grew again at the sight of a
punishment which was so much more subtle than anything I could have
planned. Death would have put his restless soul to sleep, granted him
eternal respite. The sufferings of the spirit were a living torment. His
was a strange case. His lifelong pursuit of a single idea, his restricted
consciousness of one image, had made him morbid, lonely, introspective.
And so the past had revisited him, darkening and disquieting his mind. He
feared shadows, he was haunted by footsteps.
"Footsteps! I learnt that when he consulted me for sleeplessness. He told
me he used to lie awake at night, imagining he heard footsteps pattering
on the rocks outside. I knew well enough whose footsteps he was haunted
by. I imagined him lying there in that lonely house, sweating with horror,
listening ... listening. He asked me once, did I believe in ghosts? I told
him no, but I said I'd known a case of man returning to life long after he
was supposed to be dead. I related the story--one which had come under my
observation as a medical man. He listened with gnawing lip and pale face,
and from my window afterwards I saw him striding home across the moors,
glancing backwards in the dusk.
"It was his own fault that he ever heard those footsteps in the way he
feared. He did not play the game, according to our poor conception of what
the game is. If he had done so he would have been quite safe from me. But
there are some things too shocking to be contemplated, even in the worst
of our kind. A man does not give away a woman--that is one of the rules.
Robert Turold put a woman to shame in her coffin.
"I had kept out of her way, never going to Flint House because I feared
her feminine eyes might be too sharp for me. But she fell ill, and Robert
Turold asked me to attend her. Refusal was impossible, as there was no
other doctor nearer than Penzance.
"She did not recognize me--at first, but the shock I received when I saw
her left me almost stunned. I had carried her memory through the
years--the image of a pretty slim girl, with brown hair and eyes, and kind
of soft vivacity which was her greatest charm. In her place I found, lying
there, a withered grey woman with dim eyes and broken spirit. God knows
what she had gone through at his hands, but it had destroyed her.
"It was her death-bed. She was worn out in body and spirit, and had no
strength to rally. She was weeks dying, but her life was steadily ebbing
all that time. It was a kind of slow fever. She was delirious when I first
saw her, and delirious or unconscious, with few lucid intervals, until she
died. And the jargon of her wandering mind was in reality the outpouring
of a tortured soul. It was the title and the family name--always that, and
nothing else. She wasn't well-born enough or sufficiently educated to bear
the title as his wife--it seemed that that fact had been impressed on her
again and again in the long lean years of the search for the family tree.
Let her go away ... go away somewhere quietly with Sisily, and she would
never bother him any more. That was the unceasing burden of her cry, a cry
to which I was compelled to listen with a torn heart.
"The reserve, the frame of mind, which I wore like armour in Robert
Turold's company I dropped altogether at her bedside. Her lucid intervals
were few, but I was not afraid of her recognizing the old Cornish doctor
with his muffler, his glasses, his shaggy white hair and beard. The daily
sight of her shrunken ageing features reminded me that I had nothing to
fear--that Time had effectually disguised us from each other's
recognition. We were old, we two. Life had receded from us--what had we to
do with its fever, its regrets, its passions and futile joys? The clock
had ticked the time away, the fire was dying out, the hearth desolate and
cold. I was resigned before, I was resigned then. I did what I could for
her, which was little enough. Human progress, such as it is, has been
acquired through the spirit. The body defies us--we have no control over
it. So she died--mercifully unconscious most of the time--and died, as I
had hoped, without the least suspicion of the truth.
"You cannot faintly imagine the shock of Turold's announcement on the day
of her burial, to me, who had been so arrogantly certain that the secret
was safe. If you remember what took place at Flint House on that occasion
you will recall that it was a question from me which brought the truth to
light. Your brother's answer awakened my suspicions, and made me
determined to find out what he actually knew. He brought out the truth
then, as I've no doubt now he intended to do in any case.
"The puzzle to me was the exact extent of his knowledge. He knew two
things for certain. One was that I had married Alice before leaving
England, and the other was that I was still alive. But he obviously did
not know that I was Remington. How had he found out the two facts? I
guessed that the woman he believed to be his wife had revealed the secret
of her earlier marriage on her death-bed, but the other was a problem
which I could not solve. Nor did I try to. When I reached home I went mad.
The calmness, the self-repression of thirty years, vanished in an instant
in the monstrous infamy of that disclosure. There was something too
horribly sinister in the character of a man who could be driven by
ambition to make such a disclosure without regret, almost without
hesitation. He sacrificed and put to shame two gentle creatures at the
beck of his implacable mania. For the title he had forfeited tenderness,
pity, decency--all the human attributes--with a brazen and unashamed face.
That man walked the earth alone. By that act he set himself apart, defying
all laws, all feeling--everything.
"As I grew calmer I reflected that he could not defy me. I could bring him
tumbling from his lofty perch with a few words. He might brazen out his
attitude to the whole world, but not to me. What was more, I could dictate
to him--could keep his mouth shut with a threat of reviving the past, of
putting him on his trial for robbery and attempted murder thirty years
before.
"I determined to do it--to see him and reveal myself, and let him know
that my own course of action would be decided by his. If he chose to keep
silent, he would have nothing to fear from me.
"I set out across the moors in the darkness. It was raining, and I walked
fast until Flint House loomed out of the blackness before me. Then I
paused to consider my course of action. I was about to thwart a madman
with a fixed idea, in a lonely house where he had in his service another
man who could be depended on to make common cause against me when he knew
the truth. I was not afraid of Robert Turold, but I was of Thalassa. I
knew he was strong enough to hurl me through the window into the sea.
These elements in the situation called for caution. I crept across the
rocks towards the kitchen window. As I did so I thought I saw a figure
move among the rocks, and I ran quickly to the narrow lip of cliff which
overhangs the sea at the back of the house. There I stood for awhile, but
could hear nothing but the sea raging far down beneath me. I came to the
conclusion that I had been mistaken. Who was likely to be prowling round
Flint House in a storm--except myself? I crept round the side of the house
and looked through the kitchen window.
"Thalassa's wife was in the kitchen, alone, with some playing cards spread
out on the table in front of her. But before long the door leading into
the passage opened, and Thalassa came in. He sat down, but after the lapse
of a few minutes he rose from his chair and approached the window. I
shrank back into the shadow of a rock, watching him. He stood looking out
into the darkness for perhaps five minutes, then I saw him start, turn his
head, and go out of the room. I heard the front door open, followed by the
sound of footsteps ascending the stairs. A moment later I heard the murmur
of voices in Robert Turold's room upstairs.
"I went nearer to try and find out what had happened, but it was no use. I
could see a gleam of light in the study window, and could hear Robert
Turold's voice mingled with feminine tones, then--silence, followed once
more by the sound of an opening door. From my place of concealment I saw
two people going down the garden path--Thalassa and a female figure. They
passed through the gate and vanished into the darkness of the moors.
"My opportunity had come. I went to the house and tried the front window.
It was unlocked, and yielded. I got through, and went quickly upstairs. A
light was shining underneath the study door. I opened it, and saw Robert
Turold sitting at his table writing with his back towards me.
"At the sight of that atrocious scoundrel sitting there immersed in his
shameful project against a woman I had loved, my self-control gave way
utterly, completely. I had intended to be calm, to reason with him, to
exact my terms with a cold logical brain. I did none of these things.
Without a word of warning, before he even knew I was in the room, I sprang
on him, clutching him, shaking him in a blind insensate fury till my
strength suddenly failed me and left me sick and giddy.
"'I am Remington,' I said--'Jim Remington.' I leaned against the table,
panting and exhausted, looking at him. His self-control was something to
marvel at. He just sat still, returning my look with cold motionless eyes,
no doubt trying to discern the features of the man he had wronged through
the film of age. But in spite of his self-control I could see the grey
pallor of fear creeping into his face, and he could not keep his lips from
trembling. Twice he essayed to speak, but his mouth refused to utter the
words. What he did say was strange to me, when he got it out at last. 'I
was right'--I heard him whisper, almost to himself--'I knew, I knew.' He
repeated those words several times. It was then I saw that his
self-control arose from the fact that although he was terrified he did not
appear to be so greatly surprised. Surprised he was, but not in the way I
had expected. His prime difficulty seemed to be to get out of his head the
identity by which he had known me. 'You are Ravenshaw--Dr. Ravenshaw,' he
said. 'How can you be Remington?' He brought out this with an effort, like
a man trying to shake off an unreasoning horror.
"I had expected him to face it out, to challenge me, perhaps deny all
knowledge of my existence. Instead, he merely sat there staring at me with
an air of terrified realization, like a person gazing upon the dreadful
materialization of an expected phantom. I told him the truth in the fewest
possible words, and he listened silently, never removing his eyes from me,
the phantom of his past. When I had finished he lay back in his chair, but
his eyes stared up at me with a kind of dead look, like half-closed eyes
in a coffin. 'I knew that you were rescued from the island,' he said. 'But
I thought you were long since dead.'
"That statement surprised me. I asked him how he had learned of it. He
told me it was through the medium of an overheard conversation in a London
hotel nearly thirty years before. He had gone up to town to see his
lawyer, and one of the people at the hotel where he put up happened to be
one of the passengers of the _Erechtheus_, the steamer which had
rescued me. The man sat at the next table, and Turold heard him tell the
story to a friend one night at dinner. It had happened just like
that--quite simply, but it was a possibility I had overlooked. Not that it
mattered, as it happened, but it would have--if Alice had been with him.
Turold, of course, kept his knowledge to himself. He was too cautious to
approach the passenger, but he instructed his lawyer to make guarded
inquiries at the shipping office of the vessel in order to verify the
story. Then he returned home, consumed by anxiety, no doubt, to wait for
my reappearance. As the months slipped past and I did not appear, hope
revived within him. It appears that he had heard the passenger say that I
was a wreck--a physical wreck. That must have been a cheering item in a
bad piece of news. I can imagine its growing importance in Turold's mind
as the time went on and I made no sign. Finally (and thankfully) he
reached the conclusion that I was indeed dead, and that he had nothing
more to fear. There was an element of uncertainty about it, though, a lack
of definite knowledge. I fancy that was one of the reasons which led him
to take Thalassa into his service when he turned up some time later. It
was a deep and subtle thing to do. Thalassa was bound to help him against
me, if ever I came back.
"The years went on, and he grew quite certain, as any man in his position
would, in the circumstances. He forgot all about me. That frame of mind
lasted until he came to Cornwall, and then, it seemed, I came back into
his life in the strangest way. I haunted him in the spirit, and he never
once guessed that I might be there in the flesh. Who can explain this?
"As he spoke of it he looked as though he had a grievance against me, as,
perhaps, he had--from his point of view. 'You faded from my mind for
twenty years,' he said. 'But here--in Cornwall--your memory began to haunt
me. It was your footsteps, principally. I used to fancy you were following
me across the moors. Tonight for the first time I actually heard
them--heard them above the noise of the storm. They came to my ears clear
and sharp, around the house, on the rocks, under the window.' He cast on
me an appalled, a hopeless glance. 'Why have you left it so long?' he
cried. 'What do you want--now?'
"He positively had no glimmering of my feelings. His fixed idea, like a
cancerous growth, had sucked all the healthy life out of him. Hot anger
stirred within me again, but I retained control of myself this time. I
asked him how he had found out about the earlier marriage, and he told me
Alice had babbled something in her delirium--enough to arouse his
suspicions. It seemed that he had waited for one of her lucid intervals,
and wormed the truth out of her. 'The proofs--of course you've obtained
them?' I asked casually. Yes, he had the proofs. He had sent to London for
them immediately. I asked him where they were. 'What do you want to know
for?' he asked in an agitated voice. I told him quite simply, that he must
give me his proofs and tell the members of his family that he had been
mistaken--that Alice's first husband had really died before she married
him. If he agreed to do that he had nothing farther to fear from me--I
would remain dead forever. 'You can destroy proofs, but not facts,' he
muttered in reply to this. I told him the facts were never likely to come
to light if he entered into a compact of silence.
"He sat for a few moments as if contemplating the alternatives I had
placed before him--sat with one hand in his table-drawer, seeking for
papers, I thought. He desisted from doing this, and said quite suddenly,
'The proofs are in the clock-case.'
"I had no suspicion. He had once shown me a curious receptacle in the
bottom of the clock-case, where he kept papers. I went towards the clock,
and was stooping over the drawer in the bottom of the case when I heard a
swift footstep behind me. I turned. He was approaching with a revolver.
The secret of his disclosure and the open drawer were explained. I suppose
I owed my life to his dim sight, which compelled him to come so near.
"I sprang at him, and we struggled. That struggle brought down the clock
with a shattering crash. Robert Turold and I were locked in one another's
arms, wrestling desperately for the revolver, when I saw the great moon
face of the clock flit past my vision like the face of a man taking a
header off a pier. The crash startled Robert Turold. His hand loosened,
and I got the revolver from him. As I tore it from his fingers it went
off, and shot him.
"He backed away from me with a kind of frozen smile, then crumpled up and
slid to the floor. I bent over him. He made a slight movement, but I could
see that he was dying--that he had only a very few moments to live.
"Coolly and rapidly I reflected. The fall of the clock would be heard
downstairs. Flight! There was a chance, if Thalassa had not returned. My
other instinct was to secure the proofs first, though they were really
useless then. I rummaged in the clock-case, and found a large envelope
which I stuffed in my pocket. The face stared up at me; the clock had
stopped at a minute to nine. I had an idea--an inspiration. I pulled the
long hand down to the hour-half--to half-past nine. If I escaped from the
house undiscovered, with only that half-stupid little woman downstairs, I
would rush across the moors home--call my servant on some pretext as soon
as I got in, and ask her the time. Then I should be quite safe--could defy
everybody. Make it ten o'clock, then! No--too long to be safe. It might be
discovered.
"It is strange how quickly the brain works when the instinct of
self-preservation is aroused. These thoughts flashed through my mind in a
kind of mental lightning. In the briefest possible space of time I was on
my feet and out of the room. I locked the door on the outside, intending
to take the key to defer discovery, but it slipped from my fingers in my
haste, and fell in the dark passage. I dared not stop to search, for just
then I heard a sound--or thought I did. Panic seized me. I feared I was
trapped--my escape cut off. I flung precaution aside and went leaping
downstairs to the door. I fumbled for the door-catch in the darkness,
flung open the door, and ran out into the night--across the moors and
home.
"I had hardly got inside before your sister came with her husband to see
me--to beg me to go with her to Flint House and reason with your brother.
To reason with him! He was beyond the futility of argument, the folly of
retort. I did not want to go--at first. Then it dawned upon me that a
kindly fate offered me a providential chance of securing my safety. No
suspicion could fall on me if I went back--and found the body.
"And so it turned out. We reached Flint House just at the right moment,
for me. I broke into the room and found him--dead. He was not where I had
left him. In a last paroxysm he had struggled to his feet and fallen
across the clock-case, with the intention, as I shall always believe, of
putting back the hand of the clock. I think his dying vision saw me alter
it, and his last thought--his last effort--was to thwart my intention to
mislead those upon whom would devolve the duty of investigating his death.
But death was too quick to allow him to carry out his intention."
The cessation of the speaker's voice was followed by silence. Thalassa had
nothing to say--no need for words. Austin Turold could not trust himself
to speak. It was not that his cynical philosophy of life failed him at
that moment. The eternal staging of the drama was the eternal tragedy of
the performers. But he was thinking of his son. He had vision enough to
realize that in Sisily's death Charles had lost all. His own hardness of
outlook melted at that thought. It crumbled his worldliness to ashes,
flooded his heart with vain regret, found utterance at last in the
whispered words--
"How am I to tell my son?"
His eyes, dwelling on the door of the inner room, revealed the direction
of his thought.