The British Barbarians
Page 13
XII
Mad as he was with jealousy, that lowest and most bestial of all thevile passions man still inherits from the ape and tiger, Robert Monteithwas yet quite sane enough to know in his own soul what deed he hadwrought, and in what light even his country's barbaric laws would regardhis action. So the moment he had wreaked to the full his fiery vengeanceon the man who had never wronged him, he bent over the body withstrangely eager eyes, expecting to see upon it some evidence of hisguilt, some bloody mark of the hateful crime his own hand had committed.At the same instant, Frida, recovering from his blow that had sent herreeling, rushed frantically forward, flung herself with wild passionon her lover's corpse, and covered the warm lips with hot, despairingkisses.
One marvellous fact, however, impressed them both with a vague sense ofthe unknown and the mysterious from the very first second. No spot nortrace of blood marred the body anywhere. And, even as they looked, astrange perfume, as of violets or of burning incense, began by degreesto flood the moor around them. Then slowly, while they watched, a faintblue flame seemed to issue from the wound in Bertram's right side andrise lambent into the air above the murdered body. Frida drew back andgazed at it, a weird thrill of mystery and unconscious hope beguilingfor one moment her profound pang of bereavement. Monteith, too, stoodaway a pace or two, in doubt and surprise, the deep consciousness ofsome strange and unearthly power overawing for a while even his vulgarand commonplace Scotch bourgeois nature. Gradually, as they gazed, thepale blue flame, rising higher and higher, gathered force and volume,and the perfume as of violets became distinct on the air, like thesavour of a purer life than this century wots of. Bit by bit, the wanblue light, flickering thicker and thicker, shaped itself into the formand features of a man, even the outward semblance of Bertram Ingledew.Shadowy, but transfigured with an ineffable glory, it hovered for aminute or two above the spot on the moor where the corpse had lain; fornow they were aware that as the flame-shape formed, the body that laydead upon the ground beneath dissolved by degrees and melted into it.Not a trace was left on the heath of Robert Monteith's crime: nota dapple of blood, not a clot of gore: only a pale blue flame and apersistent image represented the body that was once Bertram Ingledew's.
Again, even as they looked, a still weirder feeling began to creep overthem. The figure, growing fainter, seemed to fade away piecemeal inthe remote distance. But it was not in space that it faded; it appearedrather to become dim in some vaguer and far more mysterious fashion,like the memories of childhood or the aching abysses of astronomicalcalculation. As it slowly dissolved, Frida stretched out her hands toit with a wild cry, like the cry of a mother for her first-born. "OBertram," she moaned, "where are you going? Do you mean to leave me?Won't you save me from this man? Won't you take me home with you?"
Dim and hollow, as from the womb of time unborn, a calm voice came backto her across the gulf of ages: "Your husband willed it, Frida, and thecustoms of your nation. You can come to me, but I can never return toyou. In three days longer your probation would have been finished. But Iforgot with what manner of savage I had still to deal. And now I must goback once more to the place whence I came--to THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY."
The voice died away in the dim recesses of the future. The pale blueflame flickered forward and vanished. The shadowy shape melted throughan endless vista of to-morrows. Only the perfume as of violets or ofa higher life still hung heavy upon the air, and a patch of daintierpurple burned bright on the moor, like a pool of crimson blood, wherethe body had fallen. Only that, and a fierce ache in Frida's torturedheart; only that, and a halo of invisible glory round the rich red lips,where his lips had touched them.