VII
THE OCCUPANT OF THE ROOM
He arrived late at night by the yellow diligence, stiff and crampedafter the toilsome ascent of three slow hours. The village, a singlemass of shadow, was already asleep. Only in front of the little hotelwas there noise and light and bustle--for a moment. The horses, withtired, slouching gait, crossed the road and disappeared into the stableof their own accord, their harness trailing in the dust; and thelumbering diligence stood for the night where they had dragged it--thebody of a great yellow-sided beetle with broken legs.
In spite of his physical weariness the schoolmaster, revelling in thefirst hours of his ten-guinea holiday, felt exhilarated. For the highAlpine valley was marvellously still; stars twinkled over the tornridges of the Dent du Midi where spectral snows gleamed against rocksthat looked like solid ink; and the keen air smelt of pine forests,dew-soaked pastures, and freshly sawn wood. He took it all in with akind of bewildered delight for a few minutes, while the other threepassengers gave directions about their luggage and went to their rooms.Then he turned and walked over the coarse matting into the glare of thehall, only just able to resist stopping to examine the big mountain mapthat hung upon the wall by the door.
And, with a sudden disagreeable shock, he came down from the ideal tothe actual. For at the inn--the only inn--there was no vacant room.Even the available sofas were occupied....
How stupid he had been not to write! Yet it had been impossible, heremembered, for he had come to the decision suddenly that morning inGeneva, enticed by the brilliance of the weather after a week of rain.
They talked endlessly, this gold-braided porter and the hard-faced oldwoman--her face was hard, he noticed--gesticulating all the time, andpointing all about the village with suggestions that he ill understood,for his French was limited and their _patois_ was fearful.
"_There!_"--he might find a room, "or _there_! But we are, _helas_full--more full than we care about. To-morrow, perhaps--if So-and-Sogive up their rooms----!" And then, with much shrugging of shoulders,the hard-faced old woman stared at the gold-braided porter, and theporter stared sleepily at the schoolmaster.
At length, however, by some process of hope he did not himselfunderstand, and following directions given by the old woman that wereutterly unintelligible, he went out into the street and walked towardsa dark group of houses she had pointed out to him. He only knew thathe meant to thunder at a door and ask for a room. He was too weary tothink out details. The porter half made to go with him, but turned backat the last moment to speak with the old woman. The houses sketchedthemselves dimly in the general blackness. The air was cold. The wholevalley was filled with the rush and thunder of falling water. He wasthinking vaguely that the dawn could not be very far away, and thathe might even spend the night wandering in the woods, when there wasa sharp noise behind him and he turned to see a figure hurrying afterhim. It was the porter--running.
And in the little hall of the inn there began again a confusedthree-cornered conversation, with frequent muttered colloquy andwhispered asides in _patois_ between the woman and the porter--the netresult of which was that, "If Monsieur did not object--there _was_ aroom, after all, on the first floor--only it was in a sense 'engaged.'That is to say----"
But the schoolmaster took the room without inquiring too closely intothe puzzle that had somehow provided it so suddenly. The ethics ofhotel-keeping had nothing to do with him. If the woman offered himquarters it was not for him to argue with her whether the said quarterswere legitimately hers to offer.
But the porter, evidently a little thrilled, accompanied the guest upto the room and supplied in a mixture of French and English detailsomitted by the landlady--and Minturn, the schoolmaster, soon sharedthe thrill with him, and found himself in the atmosphere of a possibletragedy.
All who know the peculiar excitement that belongs to high mountainvalleys where dangerous climbing is a chief feature of the attractions,will understand a certain faint element of high alarm that goes withthe picture. One looks up at the desolate, soaring ridges and thinksinvoluntarily of the men who find their pleasure for days and nightstogether scaling perilous summits among the clouds, and conqueringinch by inch the icy peaks that for ever shake their dark terror inthe sky. The atmosphere of adventure, spiced with the possible horrorof a very grim order of tragedy, is inseparable from any imaginativecontemplation of the scene; and the idea Minturn gleaned from thehalf-frightened porter lost nothing by his ignorance of the language.This Englishwoman, the real occupant of the room, had insisted on goingwithout a guide. She had left just before daybreak two days before--theporter had seen her start--and ... she had not returned! The route wasdifficult and dangerous, yet not impossible for a skilled climber, evena solitary one. And the Englishwoman was an experienced mountaineer.Also, she was self-willed, careless of advice, bored by warnings,self-confident to a degree. Queer, moreover; for she kept entirelyto herself, and sometimes remained in her room with locked doors,admitting no one, for days together: a "crank," evidently, of the firstwater.
This much Minturn gathered clearly enough from the porter's talk whilehis luggage was brought in and the room set to rights; further, too,that the search party had gone out and _might_, of course, return atany moment. In which case---- Thus the room was empty, yet still hers."If Monsieur did not object--if the risk he ran of having to turn outsuddenly in the night----" It was the loquacious porter who furnishedthe details that made the transaction questionable; and Minturndismissed the loquacious porter as soon as possible, and prepared toget into the hastily arranged bed and snatch all the hours of sleep hecould before he was turned out.
At first, it must be admitted, he felt uncomfortable--distinctlyuncomfortable. He was in some one else's room. He had really no rightto be there. It was in the nature of an unwarrantable intrusion; andwhile he unpacked he kept looking over his shoulder as though some onewere watching him from the corners. Any moment, it seemed, he wouldhear a step in the passage, a knock would come at the door, the doorwould open, and there he would see this vigorous Englishwoman lookinghim up and down with anger. Worse still--he would hear her voice askinghim what he was doing in her room--her bedroom. Of course, he had anadequate explanation, but still----!
Then, reflecting that he was already half undressed, the humour of itflashed for a second across his mind, and he laughed--_quietly_. And atonce, after that laughter, under his breath, came the sudden sense oftragedy he had felt before. Perhaps, even while he smiled, her body laybroken and cold upon those awful heights, the wind of snow playing overher hair, her glazed eyes staring sightless up to the stars.... Itmade him shudder. The sense of this woman whom he had never seen, whosename even he did not know, became extraordinarily real. Almost he couldimagine that she was somewhere in the room with him, hidden, observingall he did.
He opened the door softly to put his boots outside, and when he closedit again he turned the key. Then he finished unpacking and distributedhis few things about the room. It was soon done; for, in the firstplace, he had only a small Gladstone and a knapsack, and secondly, theonly place where he could spread his clothes was the sofa. There was nochest of drawers, and the cupboard, an unusually large and solid one,was locked. The Englishwoman's things had evidently been hastily putaway in it. The only sign of her recent presence was a bunch of faded_Alpenrosen_ standing in a glass jar upon the washhand stand. This, anda certain faint perfume, were all that remained. In spite, however, ofthese very slight evidences, the whole room was pervaded with a curioussense of occupancy that he found exceedingly distasteful. One momentthe atmosphere seemed subtly charged with a "just left" feeling; thenext it was a queer awareness of "still here" that made him turn coldand look hurriedly behind him.
Altogether, the room inspired him with a singular aversion, and thestrength of this aversion seemed the only excuse for his tossing thefaded flowers out of the window, and then hanging his mackintosh uponthe cupboard door in such a way as to screen it as much as possiblefrom view. For the sight of tha
t big, ugly cupboard, filled with theclothing of a woman who might then be beyond any further need ofcovering--thus his imagination insisted on picturing it--touched in hima startled sense of the Incongruous that did not stop there, but creptthrough his mind gradually till it merged somehow into a sense of arather grotesque horror. At any rate, the sight of that cupboard wasoffensive, and he covered it almost instinctively. Then, turning outthe electric light, he got into bed.
But the instant the room was dark he realised that it was more than hecould stand; for, with the blackness, there came a sudden rush of coldthat he found it hard to explain. And the odd thing was that, when helit the candle beside his bed, he noticed that his hand trembled.
This, of course, was too much. His imagination was taking libertiesand must be called to heel. Yet the way he called it to order wassignificant, and its very deliberateness betrayed a mind that hasalready admitted fear. And fear, once in, is difficult to dislodge.He lay there upon his elbow in bed and carefully took note of all theobjects in the room--with the intention, as it were, of taking aninventory of everything his senses perceived, then drawing a line,adding them up finally, and saying with decision, "That's all the roomcontains! I've counted every single thing. There is nothing more._Now_--I may sleep in peace!"
And it was during this absurd process of enumerating the furniture ofthe room that the dreadful sense of distressing lassitude came over himthat made it difficult even to finish counting. It came swiftly, yetwith an amazing kind of violence that overwhelmed him softly and easilywith a sensation of enervating weariness hard to describe. And itsfirst effect was to banish fear. He no longer possessed enough energyto feel really afraid or nervous. The cold remained, but the alarmvanished. And into every corner of his usually vigorous personalitycrept the insidious poison of a _muscular_ fatigue--at first--that in afew seconds, it seemed, translated itself into _spiritual_ inertia. Asudden consciousness of the foolishness, the crass futility, of life,of effort, of fighting--of all that makes life worth living, shot intoevery fibre of his being, and left him utterly weak. A spirit of blackpessimism that was not even vigorous enough to assert itself, invadedthe secret chambers of his heart....
Every picture that presented itself to his mind came dressed ingrey shadows: those bored and sweating horses toiling up the ascentto--nothing! that hard-faced landlady taking so much trouble to let herdesire for gain conquer her sense of morality--for a few francs! Thatgold-braided porter, so talkative, fussy, energetic, and so anxiousto tell all he knew! What was the use of them all? And for himself,what in the world was the good of all the labour and drudgery he wentthrough in that preparatory school where he was junior master? Whatcould it lead to? Wherein lay the value of so much uncertain toil, whenthe ultimate secrets of life were hidden and no one knew the finalgoal? How foolish was effort, discipline, work! How vain was pleasure!How trivial the noblest life!...
With a fearful jump that nearly upset the candle Minturn pulled himselftogether. Such vicious thoughts were usually so remote from his normalcharacter that the sudden vile invasion produced a swift reaction. Yet,only for a moment. Instantly, again, the black depression descendedupon him like a wave. His work--it could lead to nothing but thedreary labour of a small headmastership after all--seemed as vainand foolish as his holiday in the Alps. What an idiot he had been,to be sure, to come out with a knapsack merely to work himself intoa state of exhaustion climbing over toilsome mountains that led tonowhere--resulted in nothing. A dreariness of the grave possessed him.Life was a ghastly fraud! Religion childish humbug! Everything wasmerely a trap--a trap of death; a coloured toy that Nature used asa decoy! But a decoy for what? For nothing! There was no meaning inanything. The only _real_ thing was--DEATH. And the happiest peoplewere those who found it soonest.
_Then why wait for it to come?_
He sprang out of bed, thoroughly frightened. This was horrible. Surelymere physical fatigue could not produce a world so black, an outlook sodismal, a cowardice that struck with such sudden hopelessness at thevery roots of life? For, normally, he was cheerful and strong, fullof the tides of healthy living; and this appalling lassitude sweptthe very basis of his personality into Nothingness and the desire fordeath. It was like the development of a Secondary Personality. He hadread, of course, how certain persons who suffered shocks developedthereafter entirely different characteristics, memory, tastes, andso forth. It had all rather frightened him. Though scientific menvouched for it, it was hardly to be believed. Yet here was a similarthing taking place in his own consciousness. He was, beyond question,experiencing all the mental variations of--_some one else_! It wasun-moral. It was awful. It was--well, after all, at the same time, itwas uncommonly interesting.
And this interest he began to feel was the first sign of his returningnormal Self. For to feel interest is to live, and to love life.
He sprang into the middle of the room--then switched on the electriclight. And the first thing that struck his eye was--the big cupboard.
"Hallo! There's that--beastly cupboard!" he exclaimed to himself,involuntarily, yet aloud. It held all the clothes, the swingingskirts and coats and summer blouses of the dead woman. For he knewnow--somehow or other--that she _was_ dead....
At that moment, through the open windows, rushed the sound of fallingwater, bringing with it a vivid realisation of the desolate, snow-sweptheights. He saw her--positively _saw_ her!--lying where she had fallen,the frost upon her cheeks, the snow-dust eddying about her hair andeyes, her broken limbs pushing against the lumps of ice. For a momentthe sense of spiritual lassitude--of the emptiness of life--vanishedbefore this picture of broken effort--of a small human force battlingpluckily, yet in vain, against the impersonal and pitiless Potencies ofInanimate Nature--and he found himself again, his normal self. Then,instantly, returned again that terrible sense of cold, nothingness,emptiness....
And he found himself standing opposite the big cupboard where herclothes were. He wanted to see those clothes--things she had used andworn. Quite close he stood, almost touching it. The next second he hadtouched it. His knuckles struck upon the wood.
Why he knocked is hard to say. It was an instinctive movement probably.Something in his deepest self dictated it--ordered it. He knocked atthe door. And the dull sound upon the wood into the stillness of thatroom brought--horror. Why it should have done so he found it as hardto explain to himself as why he should have felt impelled to knock.The fact remains that when he heard the faint reverberation inside thecupboard, it brought with it so vivid a realisation of the woman'spresence that he stood there shivering upon the floor with a dreadfulsense of anticipation: he almost expected to hear an answering knockfrom within--the rustling of the hanging skirts perhaps--or, worsestill, to see the locked door slowly open towards him.
And from that moment, he declares that in some way or other he musthave partially lost control of himself, or at least of his betterjudgment; for he became possessed by such an overmastering desireto tear open that cupboard door and see the clothes within, that hetried every key in the room in the vain effort to unlock it, and then,finally, before he quite realised what he was doing--rang the bell!
But, having rung the bell for no obvious or intelligent reason attwo o'clock in the morning, he then stood waiting in the middle ofthe floor for the servant to come, conscious for the first time thatsomething outside his ordinary self had pushed him towards the act. Itwas almost like an internal voice that directed him ... and thus, whenat last steps came down the passage and he faced the cross and sleepychambermaid, amazed at being summoned at such an hour, he found nodifficulty in the matter of what he should say. For the same power thatinsisted he should open the cupboard door also impelled him to utterwords over which he apparently had no control.
"It's not _you_ I rang for!" he said with decision and impatience, "Iwant a man. Wake the porter and send him up to me at once--hurry! Itell you, hurry----!"
And when the girl had gone, frightened at his earnestness, Minturnrealised that the words surprised
himself as much as they surprisedher. Until they were out of his mouth he had not known what exactlyhe was saying. But now he understood that some force foreign to hisown personality was using his mind and organs. The black depressionthat had possessed him a few moments before was also part of it. Thepowerful mood of this vanished woman had somehow momentarily takenpossession of him--communicated, possibly, by the atmosphere of thingsin the room still belonging to her. But even now, when the porter,without coat or collar, stood beside him in the room, he did notunderstand _why_ he insisted, with a positive fury admitting no denial,that the key of that cupboard must be found and the door instantlyopened.
The scene was a curious one. After some perplexed whispering withthe chambermaid at the end of the passage, the porter managed to findand produce the key in question. Neither he nor the girl knew clearlywhat this excited Englishman was up to, or why he was so passionatelyintent upon opening the cupboard at two o'clock in the morning. Theywatched him with an air of wondering what was going to happen next.But something of his curious earnestness, even of his late fear,communicated itself to them, and the sound of the key grating in thelock made them both jump.
They held their breath as the creaking door swung slowly open. Allheard the clatter of that other key as it fell against the woodenfloor--within. The cupboard had been locked _from the inside_. But itwas the scared housemaid, from her position in the corridor, who firstsaw--and with a wild scream fell crashing against the bannisters.
The porter made no attempt to save her. The schoolmaster and himselfmade a simultaneous rush towards the door, now wide open. They, too,had seen.
There were no clothes, skirts or blouses on the pegs, but, all byitself, from an iron hook in the centre, they saw the body of theEnglishwoman hanging by the neck, the head bent horribly forwards, thetongue protruding. Jarred by the movement of unlocking, the body swungslowly round to face them.... Pinned upon the inside of the door was ahotel envelope with the following words pencilled in straggling writing:
"Tired--unhappy--hopelessly depressed.... I cannot face life anylonger.... All is black. I must put an end to it.... I meant to do iton the mountains, but was afraid. I slipped back to my room unobserved.This way is easiest and best...."
Day and Night Stories Page 7