PRINCE ZALESKI
M[atthew] P[hipps] Shiel
_Come now, and let us reason together._
ISAIAH
_Of the strange things that befell the valiant Knight in the Sable
Mountain; and how he imitated the penance of Beltenebros._
CERVANTES
[Greek: All'est'ekeino panta lekta, panta de tolmaeta;]
SOPHOCLES
1895
TO
MY DEAR MOTHER
CONTENTS
The Race of Orven
The Stone of the Edmundsbury Monks
The S.S.
THE RACE OF ORVEN
Never without grief and pain could I remember the fate of Prince
Zaleski--victim of a too importunate, too unfortunate Love, which the
fulgor of the throne itself could not abash; exile perforce from his
native land, and voluntary exile from the rest of men! Having renounced
the world, over which, lurid and inscrutable as a falling star, he had
passed, the world quickly ceased to wonder at him; and even I, to whom,
more than to another, the workings of that just and passionate mind had
been revealed, half forgot him in the rush of things.
But during the time that what was called the 'Pharanx labyrinth' was
exercising many of the heaviest brains in the land, my thought turned
repeatedly to him; and even when the affair had passed from the general
attention, a bright day in Spring, combined perhaps with a latent
mistrust of the _dénoûment_ of that dark plot, drew me to his place of
hermitage.
I reached the gloomy abode of my friend as the sun set. It was a vast
palace of the older world standing lonely in the midst of woodland, and
approached by a sombre avenue of poplars and cypresses, through which
the sunlight hardly pierced. Up this I passed, and seeking out the
deserted stables (which I found all too dilapidated to afford shelter)
finally put up my _calèche_ in the ruined sacristy of an old Dominican
chapel, and turned my mare loose to browse for the night on a paddock
behind the domain.
As I pushed back the open front door and entered the mansion, I could
not but wonder at the saturnine fancy that had led this wayward man to
select a brooding-place so desolate for the passage of his days. I
regarded it as a vast tomb of Mausolus in which lay deep sepulchred how
much genius, culture, brilliancy, power! The hall was constructed in
the manner of a Roman _atrium_, and from the oblong pool of turgid
water in the centre a troop of fat and otiose rats fled weakly
squealing at my approach. I mounted by broken marble steps to the
corridors running round the open space, and thence pursued my way
through a mazeland of apartments--suite upon suite--along many a length
of passage, up and down many stairs. Dust-clouds rose from the
uncarpeted floors and choked me; incontinent Echo coughed answering
_ricochets_ to my footsteps in the gathering darkness, and added
emphasis to the funereal gloom of the dwelling. Nowhere was there a
vestige of furniture--nowhere a trace of human life.
After a long interval I came, in a remote tower of the building and
near its utmost summit, to a richly-carpeted passage, from the ceiling
of which three mosaic lamps shed dim violet, scarlet and pale-rose
lights around. At the end I perceived two figures standing as if in
silent guard on each side of a door tapestried with the python's skin.
One was a post-replica in Parian marble of the nude Aphrodite of
Cnidus; in the other I recognised the gigantic form of the negro Ham,
the prince's only attendant, whose fierce, and glistening, and ebon
visage broadened into a grin of intelligence as I came nearer. Nodding
to him, I pushed without ceremony into Zaleski's apartment.
The room was not a large one, but lofty. Even in the semi-darkness of
the very faint greenish lustre radiated from an open censerlike
_lampas_ of fretted gold in the centre of the domed encausted roof, a
certain incongruity of barbaric gorgeousness in the furnishing filled
me with amazement. The air was heavy with the scented odour of this
light, and the fumes of the narcotic _cannabis sativa_--the base of the
_bhang_ of the Mohammedans--in which I knew it to be the habit of my
friend to assuage himself. The hangings were of wine-coloured velvet,
heavy, gold-fringed and embroidered at Nurshedabad. All the world knew
Prince Zaleski to be a consummate _cognoscente_--a profound amateur--as
well as a savant and a thinker; but I was, nevertheless, astounded at
the mere multitudinousness of the curios he had contrived to crowd into
the space around him. Side by side rested a palaeolithic implement, a
Chinese 'wise man,' a Gnostic gem, an amphora of Graeco-Etruscan work.
The general effect was a _bizarrerie_ of half-weird sheen and gloom.
Flemish sepulchral brasses companied strangely with runic tablets,
miniature paintings, a winged bull, Tamil scriptures on lacquered
leaves of the talipot, mediaeval reliquaries richly gemmed, Brahmin
gods. One whole side of the room was occupied by an organ whose thunder
in that circumscribed place must have set all these relics of dead
epochs clashing and jingling in fantastic dances. As I entered, the
vaporous atmosphere was palpitating to the low, liquid tinkling of an
invisible musical box. The prince reclined on a couch from which a
draping of cloth-of-silver rolled torrent over the floor. Beside him,
stretched in its open sarcophagus which rested on three brazen
trestles, lay the mummy of an ancient Memphian, from the upper part of
which the brown cerements had rotted or been rent, leaving the
hideousness of the naked, grinning countenance exposed to view.
Discarding his gemmed chibouque and an old vellum reprint of Anacreon,
Zaleski rose hastily and greeted me with warmth, muttering at the same
time some commonplace about his 'pleasure' and the 'unexpectedness' of
my visit. He then gave orders to Ham to prepare me a bed in one of the
adjoining chambers. We passed the greater part of the night in a
delightful stream of that somnolent and half-mystic talk which Prince
Zaleski alone could initiate and sustain, during which he repeatedly
pressed on me a concoction of Indian hemp resembling _hashish_,
prepared by his own hands, and quite innocuous. It was after a simple
breakfast the next morning that I entered on the subject which was
partly the occasion of my visit. He lay back on his couch, volumed in a
Turkish _beneesh_, and listened to me, a little wearily perhaps at
first, with woven fingers, and the pale inverted eyes of old anchorites
and astrologers, the moony greenish light falling on his always wan
features.
'You knew Lord Pharanx?' I asked.
'I have met him in "the world." His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once
at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.
I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very
peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour--a
strong likeness between father and son.'
I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these
as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.
'The father,' I said, 'held, as you know, high office in a late
Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has
also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and
author of a book on Modern Ethics. His son was rapidly rising to
eminence in the _corps diplomatique_, and lately (though, strictly
speaking, _unebenbürtig_) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin
Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-üppigen, a lady with a strain of
indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins. The Orven family is
a very old and distinguished one, though--especially in modern
days--far from wealthy. However, some little time after Randolph had
become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for
immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the
reproach of poverty is now swept from the race. Six months ago, almost
simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions
_en bloc_. But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption
that you have not already read it in the papers.'
'A modern newspaper,' he said, 'being what it mostly is, is the one
thing insupportable to me at present. Believe me, I never see one.'
'Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness
of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats. A good many
years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and,
with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since
exchanged a word. But some little time after the retirement of the
father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in
India. Considered as the first step in the _rapprochement_ of this
proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable
message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph
official; it ran:
'"_Return. The beginning of the end is come._" Whereupon Randolph did
return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England,
Lord Pharanx was dead.'
'_Murdered_?'
A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by
Zaleski puzzled me. It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me
an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question. I must have looked
this feeling, for he said at once:
'I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know. Perhaps I
might even have foretold it, years ago.'
'Foretold--what? Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?'
'Something of that kind,' he answered with a smile; 'but proceed--tell
me all the facts you know.'
Word-mysteries of this sort fell frequent from the lips of the prince.
I continued the narrative.
'The two, then, met, and were reconciled. But it was a reconciliation
without cordiality, without affection--a shaking of hands across a
barrier of brass; and even this hand-shaking was a strictly
metaphorical one, for they do not seem ever to have got beyond the
interchange of a frigid bow. The opportunities, however, for
observation were few. Soon after Randolph's arrival at Orven Hall, his
father entered on a life of the most absolute seclusion. The mansion is
an old three-storied one, the top floor consisting for the most part of
sleeping-rooms, the first of a library, drawing-room, and so on, and
the ground-floor, in addition to the dining and other ordinary rooms,
of another small library, looking out (at the side of the house) on a
low balcony, which, in turn, looks on a lawn dotted with flower-beds.
It was this smaller library on the ground-floor that was now divested
of its books, and converted into a bedroom for the earl. Hither he
migrated, and here he lived, scarcely ever leaving it. Randolph, on his
part, moved to a room on the first floor immediately above this. Some
of the retainers of the family were dismissed, and on the remaining few
fell a hush of expectancy, a sense of wonder, as to what these things
boded. A great enforced quiet pervaded the building, the least undue
noise in any part being sure to be followed by the angry voice of the
master demanding the cause. Once, as the servants were supping in the
kitchen on the side of the house most remote from that which he
occupied, Lord Pharanx, slippered and in dressing-gown, appeared at the
doorway, purple with rage, threatening to pack the whole company of
them out of doors if they did not moderate the clatter of their knives
and forks. He had always been regarded with fear in his own household,
and the very sound of his voice now became a terror. His food was taken
to him in the room he had made his habitation, and it was remarked
that, though simple before in his gustatory tastes, he now--possibly
owing to the sedentary life he led--became fastidious, insisting on
_recherché_ bits. I mention all these details to you--as I shall
mention others--not because they have the least connection with the
tragedy as it subsequently occurred, but merely because I know them,
and you have requested me to state all I know.'
'Yes,' he answered, with a suspicion of _ennui_, 'you are right. I may
as well hear the whole--if I must hear a part.'
'Meanwhile, Randolph appears to have visited the earl at least once a
day. In such retirement did he, too, live that many of his friends
still supposed him to be in India. There was only one respect in which
he broke through this privacy. You know, of course, that the Orvens
are, and, I believe, always have been, noted as the most obstinate, the
most crabbed of Conservatives in politics. Even among the
past-enamoured families of England, they stand out conspicuously in
this respect. Is it credible to you, then, that Randolph should offer
himself to the Radical Association of the Borough of Orven as a
candidate for the next election in opposition to the sitting member? It
is on record, too, that he spoke at three public meetings--reported in
local papers--at which he avowed his political conversion; afterwards
laid the foundation-stone of a new Baptist chapel; presided at a
Methodist tea-meeting; and taking an abnormal interest in the debased
condition of the labourers in the villages round, fitted up as a
class-room an apartment on the top floor at Orven Hall, and gathered
round him on two evenings in every week a class of yokels, whom he
proceeded to cram with demonstrations in elementary mechanics.'
'Mechanics!' cried Zaleski, starting upright for a moment, 'mechanics
to agricultural labourers! Why not elementary chemistry? Why not
elementary botany? _Why_ mechanics?'
This was the first evidence of interest he had shown in the story. I
was pleased, but answered:
'The point is unimportant; and there really is no accounting for the
vagaries of such a man. He wished, I imagine, to give some idea to the
young illiterates of the simple laws of motion and force. But now I
come to a new character in the drama--the chief character of all. One
day a woman presented herself at Orven Hall and demanded to see its
owner. She spoke English with a strong French accent. Though
approaching middle life she was still beautiful, having wild black
eyes, and creamy pale face. Her dress was tawdry, cheap, and loud,
showing signs of wear; her hair was unkempt; her manners were not the
manners of a lady. A certain vehemence, exasperation, unrepose
distinguished all she said and did. The footman refused her admission;
Lord Pharanx, he said, was invisible. She persisted violently, pushed
past him, and had to be forcibly ejected; during all which the voice of
the master was heard roaring from the passage red-eyed remonstrance at
the unusual noise. She went away gesticulating wildly, and vowing
vengeance on Lord Pharanx and all the world. It was afterwards found
that she had taken up her abode in one of the neighbouring hamlets,
called Lee.
'This person, who gave the name of Maude Cibras, subsequently called at
the Hall three times in succession, and was each time refused
admittance. It was now, however, thought advisable to inform Randolph
of her visits. He said she might be permitted to see him, if she
returned. This she did on the next day, and had a long interview in
private with him. Her voice was heard raised as if in angry protest by
one Hester Dyett, a servant of the house, while Randolph in low tones
seemed to try to soothe her. The conversation was in French, and no
word could be made out. She passed out at length, tossing her head
jauntily, and smiling a vulgar triumph at the footman who had before
opposed her ingress. She was never known to seek admission to the house
again.
'But her connection with its inmates did not cease. The same Hester
asserts that one night, coming home late through the park, she saw two
persons conversing on a bench beneath the trees, crept behind some
bushes, and discovered that they were the strange woman and Randolph.
The same servant bears evidence to tracking them to other
meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to
Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually
unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become,
that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal
in the new political convert. The _rendezvous_--always held under cover
of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful
Hester--sometimes clashed with the science lectures, when these latter
would be put off, so that they became gradually fewer, and then almost
ceased.'
'Your narrative becomes unexpectedly interesting,' said Zaleski; 'but
this unearthed letter of Randolph's--what was in it?'
I read as follows:
'"Dear Mdlle. Cibras,--I am exerting my utmost influence for you with
my father. But he shows no signs of coming round as yet. If I could
only induce him to see you! But he is, as you know, a person of
unrelenting will, and meanwhile you must confide in my loyal efforts on
your behalf. At the same time, I admit that the situation is a
precarious one: you are, I am sure, well provided for in the present
will of Lord Pharanx, but he is on the point--within, say, three or
four days--of making another; and exasperated as he is at your
appearance in England, I know there is no chance of your receiving a
_centime_ under the new will. Before then, however, we must hope that
something favourable to you may happen; and in the meantime, let me
implore you not to let your only too just resentment pass beyond the
bounds of reason.
"Sincerely yours,
"RANDOLPH."'
'I like the letter!' cried Zaleski. 'You notice the tone of manly
candour. But the _facts_--were they true? _Did_ the earl make a new
will in the time specified?'
'No,--but that may have been because his death intervened.'
'And in the old will, _was_ Mdlle. Cibras provided for?'
'Yes,--that at least was correct.'
A shadow of pain passed over his face.
'And now,' I went on, 'I come to the closing scene, in which one of
England's foremost men perished by the act of an obscure assassin. The
letter I have read was written to Maude Cibras on the 5th of January.
The next thing that happens is on the 6th, when Lord Pharanx left his
room for another during the whole day, and a skilled mechanic was
introduced into it for the purpose of effecting some alterations. Asked
by Hester Dyett, as he was leaving the house, what was the nature of
his operations, the man replied that he had been applying a patent
arrangement to the window looking out on the balcony, for the better
protection of the room against burglars, several robberies having
recently been committed in the neighbourhood. The sudden death of this
man, however, before the occurrence of the tragedy, prevented his
evidence being heard. On the next day--the 7th--Hester, entering the
room with Lord Pharanx's dinner, fancies, though she cannot tell why
(inasmuch as his back is towards her, he sitting in an arm-chair by the
fire), that Lord Pharanx has been "drinking heavily."
'On the 8th a singular thing befell. The earl was at last induced to
see Maude Cibras, and during the morning of that day, with his own
hand, wrote a note informing her of his decision, Randolph handing the
note to a messenger. That note also has been made public. It reads as
follows:
'"Maude Cibras.--You may come here to-night after dark. Walk to the
south side of the house, come up the steps to the balcony, and pass in
through the open window to my room. Remember, however, that you have
nothing to expect from me, and that from to-night I blot you eternally
from my mind: but I will hear your story, which I know beforehand to be
false. Destroy this note. PHARANX."'
As I progressed with my tale, I came to notice that over the
countenance of Prince Zaleski there grew little by little a singular
fixed aspect. His small, keen features distorted themselves into an
expression of what I can only describe as an abnormal _inquisitiveness_
--an inquisitiveness most impatient, arrogant, in its intensity.
His pupils, contracted each to a dot, became the central _puncta_
of two rings of fiery light; his little sharp teeth seemed to
gnash. Once before I had seen him look thus greedily, when, grasping a
Troglodyte tablet covered with half-effaced hieroglyphics--his fingers
livid with the fixity of his grip--he bent on it that strenuous
inquisition, that ardent questioning gaze, till, by a species of
mesmeric dominancy, he seemed to wrench from it the arcanum it hid from
other eyes; then he lay back, pale and faint from the too arduous
victory.
When I had read Lord Pharanx's letter, he took the paper eagerly from
my hand, and ran his eyes over the passage.
'Tell me--the end,' he said.
'Maude Cibras,' I went on, 'thus invited to a meeting with the earl,
failed to make her appearance at the appointed time. It happened that
she had left her lodgings in the village early that very morning, and,
for some purpose or other, had travelled to the town of Bath. Randolph,
too, went away the same day in the opposite direction to Plymouth. He
returned on the following morning, the 9th; soon after walked over to
Lee; and entered into conversation with the keeper of the inn where
Cibras lodged; asked if she was at home, and on being told that she had
gone away, asked further if she had taken her luggage with her; was
informed that she had, and had also announced her intention of at once
leaving England. He then walked away in the direction of the Hall. On
this day Hester Dyett noticed that there were many articles of value
scattered about the earl's room, notably a tiara of old Brazilian
brilliants, sometimes worn by the late Lady Pharanx. Randolph--who was
present at the time--further drew her attention to these by telling her
that Lord Pharanx had chosen to bring together in his apartment many of
the family jewels; and she was instructed to tell the other servants of
this fact, in case they should notice any suspicious-looking loafers
about the estate.
'On the 10th, both father and son remained in their rooms all day,
except when the latter came down to meals; at which times he would lock
his door behind him, and with his own hands take in the earl's food,
giving as his reason that his father was writing a very important
document, and did not wish to be disturbed by the presence of a
servant. During the forenoon, Hester Dyett, hearing loud noises in
Randolph's room, as if furniture was being removed from place to place,
found some pretext for knocking at his door, when he ordered her on no
account to interrupt him again, as he was busy packing his clothes in
view of a journey to London on the next day. The subsequent conduct of
the woman shows that her curiosity must have been excited to the utmost
by the undoubtedly strange spectacle of Randolph packing his own
clothes. During the afternoon a lad from the village was instructed to
collect his companions for a science lecture the same evening at eight
o'clock. And so the eventful day wore on.
'We arrive now at this hour of eight P.M. on this 10th day of January.
The night is dark and windy; some snow has been falling, but has now
ceased. In an upper room is Randolph engaged in expounding the elements
of dynamics; in the room under that is Hester Dyett--for Hester has
somehow obtained a key that opens the door of Randolph's room, and
takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is
Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all
over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one
hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is
gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old
casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which
frighten her to death. She has just time to see that the whole room is
in the wildest confusion, when suddenly a rougher puff blows out the
flame, and she is left in what to her, standing as she was on that
forbidden ground, must have been a horror of darkness. At the same
moment, clear and sharp from right beneath her, a pistol-shot rings out
on her ear. For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.
'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
his face work, but no sound comes. Only after a time is he able to
gasp: "Did you hear something--from below?" They answer "yes" in
chorus; then one of the lads takes a lighted candle, and together they
troop out, Randolph behind them. A terrified servant rushes up with the
news that something dreadful has happened in the house. They proceed
for some distance, but there is an open window on the stairs, and the
light is blown out. They have to wait some minutes till another is
obtained, and then the procession moves forward once more. Arrived at
Lord Pharanx's door, and finding it locked, a lantern is procured, and
Randolph leads them through the house and out on the lawn. But having
nearly reached the balcony, a lad observes a track of small
woman's-feet in the snow; a halt is called, and then Randolph points
out another track of feet, half obliterated by the snow, extending from
a coppice close by up to the balcony, and forming an angle with the
first track. These latter are great big feet, made by ponderous
labourers' boots. He holds the lantern over the flower-beds, and shows
how they have been trampled down. Some one finds a common scarf, such
as workmen wear; and a ring and a locket, dropped by the burglars in
their flight, are also found by Randolph half buried in the snow. And
now the foremost reach the window. Randolph, from behind, calls to them
to enter. They cry back that they cannot, the window being closed. At
this reply he seems to be overcome by surprise, by terror. Some one
hears him murmur the words, "My God, what can have happened now?" His
horror is increased when one of the lads bears to him a revolting
trophy, which has been found just outside the window; it is the front
phalanges of three fingers of a human hand. Again he utters the
agonised moan, "My God!" and then, mastering his agitation, makes for
the window; he finds that the catch of the sash has been roughly
wrenched off, and that the sash can be opened by merely pushing it up:
does so, and enters. The room is in darkness: on the floor under the
window is found the insensible body of the woman Cibras. She is alive,
but has fainted. Her right fingers are closed round the handle of a
large bowie-knife, which is covered with blood; parts of the left are
missing. All the jewelry has been stolen from the room. Lord Pharanx
lies on the bed, stabbed through the bedclothes to the heart. Later on
a bullet is also found imbedded in his brain. I should explain that a
trenchant edge, running along the bottom of the sash, was the obvious
means by which the fingers of Cibras had been cut off. This had been
placed there a few days before by the workman I spoke of. Several
secret springs had been placed on the inner side of the lower
horizontal piece of the window-frame, by pressing any one of which the
sash was lowered; so that no one, ignorant of the secret, could pass
out from within, without resting the hand on one of these springs, and
so bringing down the armed sash suddenly on the underlying hand.
'There was, of course, a trial. The poor culprit, in mortal terror of
death, shrieked out a confession of the murder just as the jury had
returned from their brief consultation, and before they had time to
pronounce their verdict of "guilty." But she denied shooting Lord
Pharanx, and she denied stealing the jewels; and indeed no pistol and
no jewels were found on her, or anywhere in the room. So that many
points remain mysterious. What part did the burglars play in the
tragedy? Were they in collusion with Cibras? Had the strange behaviour
of at least one of the inmates of Orven Hall no hidden significance?
The wildest guesses were made throughout the country; theories
propounded. But no theory explained _all_ the points. The ferment,
however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
on the gallows.'
Thus I ended my narrative.
Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the _Lakmé_ of
Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
up to an ivory _escritoire_, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.
'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you--you do
not get a clean _coup d'oeil_ of the whole regiment of facts, and their
causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
world at large--shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
attainment in general, as _mood_ in particular. Whether or when such
mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
often think that when the era of civilisation begins--as assuredly it
shall some day begin--when the races of the world cease to be
credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a _clairvoyant_ culture.
But nowhere, and at no time during the very few hundreds of years that
man has occupied the earth, has there been one single sign of its
presence. In individuals, yes--in the Greek Plato, and I think in your
English Milton and Bishop Berkeley--but in humanity, never; and hardly
in any individual outside those two nations. The reason, I fancy, is
not so much that man is a hopeless fool, as that Time, so far as he is
concerned, has, as we know, only just begun: it being, of course,
conceivable that the creation of a perfect society of men, as the first
requisite to a _régime_ of culture, must nick to itself a longer loop
of time than the making of, say, a stratum of coal. A loquacious
person--he is one of your cherished "novel"-writers, by the way, if
that be indeed a Novel in which there is nowhere any pretence at
novelty--once assured me that he could never reflect without swelling
on the greatness of the age in which he lived, an age the mighty
civilisation of which he likened to the Augustan and Periclean. A
certain stony gaze of anthropological interest with which I regarded
his frontal bone seemed to strike the poor man dumb, and he took a
hurried departure. Could he have been ignorant that ours is, in
general, greater than the Periclean for the very reason that the
Divinity is neither the devil nor a bungler; that three thousand years
of human consciousness is not nothing; that a whole is greater than its
part, and a butterfly than a chrysalis? But it was the assumption that
it was therefore in any way great in the abstract that occasioned my
profound astonishment, and indeed contempt. Civilisation, if it means
anything, can only mean the art by which men live musically
together--to the lutings, as it were, of Panpipes, or say perhaps, to
triumphant organ-bursts of martial, marching dithyrambs. Any formula
defining it as "the art of lying back and getting elaborately tickled,"
should surely at this hour be _too_ primitive--_too_ Opic--to bring
anything but a smile to the lips of grown white-skinned men; and the
very fact that such a definition can still find undoubting acceptance
in all quarters may be an indication that the true [Greek: _idéa_]
which this condition of being must finally assume is far indeed--far,
perhaps, by ages and aeons--from becoming part of the general
conception. Nowhere since the beginning has the gross problem of living
ever so much as approached solution, much less the delicate and
intricate one of living _together: à propos_ of which your body
corporate not only still produces criminals (as the body-natural
fleas), but its very elementary organism cannot so much as catch a
really athletic one as yet. Meanwhile _you_ and _I_ are handicapped.
The individual travaileth in pain. In the struggle for quality, powers,
air, he spends his strength, and yet hardly escapes asphyxiation. He
can no more wriggle himself free of the psychic gravitations that
invest him than the earth can shake herself loose of the sun, or he of
the omnipotences that rivet him to the universe. If by chance one
shoots a downy hint of wings, an instant feeling of contrast puffs him
with self-consciousness: a tragedy at once: the unconscious being "the
alone complete." To attain to anything, he must needs screw the head up
into the atmosphere of the future, while feet and hands drip dark
ichors of despair from the crucifying cross of the crude present--_a
horrid strain_! Far up a nightly instigation of stars he sees: but he
may not strike them with the head. If earth were a boat, and mine, I
know well toward what wild azimuths I would compel her helm: but
gravity, gravity--chiefest curse of Eden's sin!--is hostile. When
indeed (as is ordained), the old mother swings herself into a sublimer
orbit, we on her back will follow: till then we make to ourselves
Icarian "organa" in vain. I mean to say that it is the plane of station
which is at fault: move that upward, you move all. But meantime is it
not Goethe who assures us that "further reacheth no man, make he what
stretching he will"? For Man, you perceive, is not many, but One. It is
absurd to suppose that England can be free while Poland is enslaved;
Paris is _far_ from the beginnings of civilisation whilst Toobooloo and
Chicago are barbaric. Probably no ill-fated, microcephalous son of Adam
ever tumbled into a mistake quite so huge, so infantile, as did Dives,
if he imagined himself rich while Lazarus sat pauper at the gate. Not
many, I say, but one. Even Ham and I here in our retreat are not alone;
we are embarrassed by the uninvited spirit of the present; the adamant
root of the mountain on whose summit we stand is based ineradicably in
the low world. Yet, thank Heaven, Goethe was not _quite_ right--as,
indeed, he proved in his proper person. I tell you, Shiel, I _know_
whether Mary did or did not murder Darnley; I know--as clearly, as
precisely, as a man can know--that Beatrice Cenci was not "guilty" as
certain recently-discovered documents "prove" her, but that the Shelley
version of the affair, though a guess, is the correct one. It _is_
possible, by taking thought, to add one cubit--or say a hand, or a
dactyl--to your stature; you may develop powers slightly--very
slightly, but distinctly, both in kind and degree--in advance of those
of the mass who live in or about the same cycle of time in which you
live. But it is only when the powers to which I refer are shared by the
mass--when what, for want of another term, I call the age of the
Cultured Mood has at length arrived--that their exercise will become
easy and familiar to the individual; and who shall say what
presciences, prisms, _séances_, what introspective craft, Genie
apocalypses, shall not _then_ become possible to the few who stand
spiritually in the van of men.
'All this, you will understand, I say as some sort of excuse for
myself, and for you, for any hesitation we may have shown in loosening
the very little puzzle you have placed before me--one which we
certainly must not regard as difficult of solution. Of course, looking
at all the facts, the first consideration that must inevitably rivet
the attention is that arising from the circumstance that Viscount
Randolph has strong reasons to wish his father dead. They are avowed
enemies; he is the _fiancé_ of a princess whose husband he is probably
too poor to become, though he will very likely be rich enough when his
father dies; and so on. All that appears on the surface. On the other
hand, we--you and I--know the man: he is a person of gentle blood, as
moral, we suppose, as ordinary people, occupying a high station in the
world. It is impossible to imagine that such a person would commit an
assassination, or even countenance one, for any or all of the reasons
that present themselves. In our hearts, with or without clear proof, we
could hardly believe it of him. Earls' sons do not, in fact, go about
murdering people. Unless, then, we can so reason as to discover other
motives--strong, adequate, irresistible--and by "irresistible" I mean a
motive which must be _far_ stronger than even the love of life
itself--we should, I think, in fairness dismiss him from our mind.
'And yet it must be admitted that his conduct is not free of blame. He
contracts a sudden intimacy with the acknowledged culprit, whom he does
not seem to have known before. He meets her by night, corresponds with
her. Who and what is this woman? I think we could not be far wrong in
guessing some very old flame of Lord Pharanx's of _Théâtre des
Variétés_ type, whom he has supported for years, and from whom, hearing
some story to her discredit, he threatens to withdraw his supplies.
However that be, Randolph writes to Cibras--a violent woman, a woman of
lawless passions--assuring her that in four or five days she will be
excluded from the will of his father; and in four or five days Cibras
plunges a knife into his father's bosom. It is a perfectly natural
sequence--though, of course, the _intention_ to produce by his words
the actual effect produced might have been absent; indeed, the letter
of Lord Pharanx himself, had it been received, would have tended to
produce that very effect; for it not only gives an excellent
opportunity for converting into action those evil thoughts which
Randolph (thoughtlessly or guiltily) has instilled, but it further
tends to rouse her passions by cutting off from her all hopes of
favour. If we presume, then, as is only natural, that there was no such
intention on the part of the earl, we _may_ make the same presumption
in the case of the son. Cibras, however, never receives the earl's
letter: on the morning of the same day she goes away to Bath, with the
double object, I suppose, of purchasing a weapon, and creating an
impression that she has left the country. How then does she know the
exact _locale_ of Lord Pharanx's room? It is in an unusual part of the
mansion, she is unacquainted with any of the servants, a stranger to
the district. Can it be possible that Randolph _had told her_? And here
again, even in that case, you must bear in mind that Lord Pharanx also
told her in his note, and you must recognise the possibility of the
absence of evil intention on the part of the son. Indeed, I may go
further and show you that in all but every instance in which his
actions are in themselves _outré_, suspicious, they are rendered, not
less _outré_, but less suspicious, by the fact that Lord Pharanx
himself knew of them, shared in them. There was the cruel barbing of
that balcony window; about it the crudest thinker would argue thus to
himself: "Randolph practically incites Maude Cibras to murder his
father on the 5th, and on the 6th he has that window so altered in
order that, should she act on his suggestion, she will be caught on
attempting to leave the room, while he himself, the actual culprit
being discovered _en flagrant délit_, will escape every shadow of
suspicion." But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative--for he
leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
with the letter to Cibras on the 8th--Randolph despatches it, but the
earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
Randolph--finding now that Cibras has "left the country," that, in
fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him--could
he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who "_chose_" to gather the
jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the _class_.
Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of _that_ seem natural.
But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph's
room just overhead, caused by his preparation for "a journey to
London." But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the
master. And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord
Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its
significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?
'A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that
Randolph was guilty of something--some evil intention--though of
precisely what he would remain in doubt. But a more careful reasoner
would pause: he would reflect that _as_ the father was implicated in
those acts, and _as_ he was innocent of any such intention, so might
possibly, even probably, be the son. This, I take it, has been the view
of the officials, whose logic is probably far in advance of their
imagination. But supposing we can adduce one act, undoubtedly actuated
by evil intention on the part of Randolph--one act in which his father
certainly did _not_ participate--what follows next? Why, that we revert
at once to the view of the hasty reasoner, and conclude that _all_ the
other acts in the same relation were actuated by the same evil motive;
and having reached that point, we shall be unable longer to resist the
conclusion that those of them in which his father had a share _might_
have sprung from a like motive in _his_ mind also; nor should the mere
obvious impossibility of such a condition of things have even the very
least influence on us, as thinkers, in causing us to close our mind
against its logical possibility. I therefore make the inference, and
pass on.
'Let us then see if we can by searching find out any absolutely certain
deviation from right on the part of Randolph, in which we may be quite
sure that his father was not an abettor. At eight on the night of the
murder it is dark; there has been some snow, but the fall has
ceased--how long before I know not, but so long that the interval
becomes sufficiently appreciable to cause remark. Now the party going
round the house come on two tracks of feet meeting at an angle. Of one
track we are merely told that it was made by the small foot of a woman,
and of it we know no more; of the other we learn that the feet were big
and the boots clumsy, and, it is added, the marks were _half
obliterated by the snow_. Two things then are clear: that the persons
who made them came from different directions, and probably made them at
different times. That, alone, by the way, may be a sufficient answer to
your question as to whether Cibras was in collusion with the
"burglars." But how does Randolph behave with reference to these
tracks? Though he carries the lantern, he fails to perceive the
first--the woman's--the discovery of which is made by a lad; but the
second, half hidden in the snow, he notices readily enough, and at once
points it out. He explains that burglars have been on the war-path. But
examine his horror of surprise when he hears that the window is closed;
when he sees the woman's bleeding fingers. He cannot help exclaiming,
"My God! what has happened _now_?" But why "now"? The word cannot refer
to his father's death, for that he knew, or guessed, beforehand, having
heard the shot. Is it not rather the exclamation of a man whose schemes
destiny has complicated? Besides, he should have _expected_ to find the
window closed: no one except himself, Lord Pharanx, and the workman,
who was now dead, knew the secret of its construction; the burglars
therefore, having entered and robbed the room, one of them, intending
to go out, would press on the ledge, and the sash would fall on his
hand with what result we know. The others would then either break the
glass and so escape; or pass through the house; or remain prisoners.
That immoderate surprise was therefore absurdly illogical, after seeing
the burglar-track in the snow. But how, above all, do you account for
Lord Pharanx's silence during and after the burglars' visit--if there
was a visit? He was, you must remember, alive all that time; _they_ did
not kill him; certainly they did not shoot him, for the shot is heard
after the snow has ceased to fall,--that is, after, long after, they
have left, since it was the falling snow that had half obliterated
their tracks; nor did they stab him, for to this Cibras confesses. Why
then, being alive, and not gagged, did he give no token of the presence
of his visitors? There were in fact no burglars at Orven Hall that
night.'
'But the track!' I cried, 'the jewels found in the snow--the
neckerchief!'
Zaleski smiled.