Devil's Wind

by Patricia Wentworth

  “You are not going—”

  “My dear lady, fifty doctors wouldn’t do her any good by staying. All the same, I’d stay if I could, but I’ve come from the Jamesons’ now. She’s bad, very bad, and he’s tearing his hair out, poor boy, and looking down the road to see if I’m in sight. Oh, she’s not going to die; but he’s nervous, and she’s quite bad enough. I shall be there all night.”

  Helen opened her lips again.

  “What can I do?”

  “Make her comfortable; be nice to her. Talk? No, it won’t make any difference, if she wants to. It’s just a sputter before the flame goes out. I suppose she does want to talk to another woman, after all those months—”

  And Dr. Renshaw swore under his breath, apologised to Helen for having done so, and stumbled out upon the verandah, catching his heel in the matting as he went.

  Helen followed him, obtained a few more instructions, and then stood still, and heard him ride away.

  When he was gone she came very slowly back into the room where Adela was lying. The numbness that had deadened feeling, had passed an hour ago. In Dick’s arms it had merged into an exaltation that partook at the same time of the in tensest pain and the most exquisite joy.

  Every fresh realisation, every new revelation of love, is joy. Even the sharp dividing sword of death, or deathlike parting, cannot alter that truth. The joy and pain do not mix. They lie apart, with the sword between, and every pulse, and every feeling, quivers to the double passion.

  Now the exaltation which had possessed and sustained Helen fluttered, dropped, passed in its turn into a purely human feeling of pity.

  Suddenly as she crossed the lamp-lit room, there were tears at her heart. She came up close to the bed, and saw that Adela was weeping, in a weak and desolate way, that brought the tears in a stinging rush from her heart to her eyes.

  “Adie—don’t—what is it?” she whispered, and she knelt by the bed, and put her arm across the heaving breast.

  Adela made a small, vexed movement.

  “You might have made me fit to be seen,” she said feebly. “You just brought him in—that horrid man—it was most unkind.”

  “But you are quite, quite tidy,” said Helen soothingly. “There, Adie, don’t. It is so bad for you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that you must rest. He is sending you some medicine.”

  Adela caught at her cousin’s wrist, and held it tight. Her fingers were very thin and dry.

  “Nellie,” she whispered, “am I very ill? Sometimes I feel so—frightened. Nellie, don’t let him come again—that man.”

  “He is very kind,” began Helen, but the fingers at her wrist became rigid.

  “Doctors come—when you die,” said Adela. Her teeth chattered. For a moment she looked ghastly.

  A panic seized Helen.

  “Adie,” she said, forcing her voice, “would you like—to see—Dick?” She kneeled up straight beside the bed as she spoke. Adela started; she turned her eyes on Helen’s face. They were frightened and brilliant.

  “No—oh, no,” she half sobbed. “Don’t let him—don’t let him come—see me—like this.”

  With her free hand she drew the sheet up close. The other burned on Helen’s.

  There was a knock on the door and Helen released herself, and took a medicine bottle from the waiting servant, who averted his eyes respectfully from the half-opened door.

  Standing by the lamp, Helen measured out the prescribed dose, and then came back to her old place.

  When Adela had drunk the medicine she lay quite still for ten minutes. Then she said in a languid voice:

  “Give me your hand glass, Helen.”

  Helen looked startled.

  “Yes, I want it. Get it for me.”

  Helen got up, but she went first to a box that stood in the corner of the room. She bent over it for a moment, and then came back with a light scarf of Honiton lace in her hand.

  Adela reached out her shaking fingers for it with a pleased look.

  “How pretty! Where did you get it?”

  “It was a present,” said Helen in a low voice.

  It had been Floss Monteith’s wedding present. She remembered how she and Dick had unfastened the parcel together. As she answered, she stooped and arranged the scarf lightly about Adela’s head and shoulders, as she lay high upon the pillows. The lace folds, with the pattern of field flowers and butterflies, came down on either side of the thin cheeks and hid the hollows in them. The light, close tracery disguised the lack of those pretty curls which had been Adela’s pride.

  When Helen held up the glass, Adela smiled in a vague, pleased manner.

  “I look—nice,” she said, “quite nice—but it wants colour. Have you anything pink? I do love pink—and”—with one of her old inconsequent tones—“I’m not really a widow, you see, am I? The pink won’t matter.”

  She accentuated the last word, and an inward spasm of a laughter more tragic than tears shook Helen, and made composure very hard.

  “No, it won’t matter,” she said gently, and fetched a strand of rose-coloured velvet, knotting it in the lace at Adela’s breast. Nothing mattered except to give a little relief, a little pleasure where there had been so much pain.

  Adela lay there smiling at her own image. She would not let Helen take the glass away. Sometimes she shut her eyes, and then again she would open them upon a startled, questioning look. Then when she saw Helen and her own reflection she would smile once more.

  Once the smile went suddenly, and she put out her hand and touched Helen. Her fingers fluttered.

  “Nellie,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” asked Helen.

  “Come a little nearer. Bend down. Put your head here on the pillow, like you used to do—long ago. Nellie—it was a dear little baby. It was only a little bit dark, and its eyes were very like mine. I wish you had seen it. I didn’t like babies before, but it had such a little soft round head. I cried—all day—when it died.”

  Helen drew in her breath sharply, but Adela’s hand strayed from hers, and fidgeted aimlessly with the hem of the sheet. After some time she said in a faint voice:

  “Is—Richard—angry?”

  “Oh, no one is angry, Adie—Adie dear,” said Helen.

  “I couldn’t— help it.”

  After a pause she said again:

  “Where is Richard?”

  “Do you want him?”

  “Yes—I think so—if he isn’t cross. His hands are so warm; I’m cold.”

  Helen went through the silent house to Richard Morton’s study, and found him sitting at his table writing. His pen drove hard across the sheet of paper before him. He threw her a fierce, almost antagonistic glance as she came in, and she divined the anger, the jealous passion which would hold her against herself, against the world.

  She stood by him for a moment, putting her hand on his, drawing him gently. Then she said in a low voice:

  “Dick, she wants you.”

  He turned on her; his face was hard.

  “Helen, you must understand me. I will not see her. She has no claim—not a shadow. I will provide for her, but I will not see her. What you are made of, God knows. It’s not decent. For Heaven’s sake get her out of this house, or come out of it with me. Can’t you see it is impossible—outrageous—that we should be under the same roof?”

  “She is dying, Dick,” said Helen in her low, even tones.

  He pushed back his chair and stared at her.

  “What did you say?”

  “She is dying—Adela is dying.”

  “How?”

  His tone was incredulous and angry. He had had no time to adjust it to this new shock.

  Helen looked away, because his eyes hurt her so.

  “She has had dysentery,�
� she said quickly. “She has had it for weeks. Now her heart is failing. You know it was never very strong, and Aunt Lucy—she died of heart trouble. Dr. Renshaw says that nothing can be done. He says that she won’t suffer. And—Dick, she wants you.”

  Richard Morton got up. His face was quite grey. To the end, to the very end, he must play his part in this intolerable tragedy. He must go to this dying woman who was Adela, who had been his wife and his beloved, and he must take her hand, and go down with her amongst the shadows.

  At the door Helen stopped him.

  “She doesn’t know she is dying,” she whispered; “and, Dick, I think she doesn’t realise—anything. It is so pitiful.”

  A yard inside the lamp-lit room, Helen’s feet faltered. Adela had turned a little upon the pillows. Her eyes were very bright, but they had an unseeing look. The colour in her cheeks flickered.

  “Richard,” she called; and as Richard Morton went forward and sat down beside the bed Helen drew back, and shut the door upon them. Then she groped for a chair, and sat down upon it, whilst the room spun about her, and a long, long time went by. Every now and then one of the servants came and asked for an order. Helen answered composedly.

  Food was to be left on the table. No, there would be no dinner that night. The memsahib was too ill. Imam Bux must stay in the sahib’s office, within call. Milk must be boiled, and brought here.

  Helen arranged everything with method. Then she sent even the ayah away into her dressing room, bidding her sleep, and sat down for the night’s vigil.

  It was a very long night.

  The shaded lamp stood in a corner. Just beneath it was a circle of golden light. Outside this circle, the room was full of shadows that grew deeper and softer as they stretched away from the lamplight.

  One very black shadow lay like a pool of deep, still water across the threshold of that closed door. Long, long afterwards, when people spoke of haunted houses, Helen’s heart went back to that room, the room where Richard and Adela were. If one poor, disembodied soul may have a power of terror upon men, what dreadful power may not the embodied soul exert upon itself? The ghosts that haunt men’s lives are the ghosts they have raised themselves. The most terrible spirit of all is the spirit of love profaned.

  In the room with the closed doors, where Adela was dying, death was the least fearful thing. It had ceased even to terrify Adela, as she lay with its rising mists about her, deadening thought and fear before they stopped the failing, faltering heart. She lay in peace, and became less and less aware of the warmth of Richard’s hand that held her own.

  And Richard Morton?

  At the first touch of that thin, fluttering hand the anger went out of him, and a quick wave of pity rose until it took his very breath. So frail—so weak—so broken—and those brilliant eyes, large and startled as they met his. He in his strength to enter into judgment? Was he the Almighty who had made this frailty? Who but the Almighty and the All-Merciful could mete out judgment and pity to His creature?

  There was no sound in the room, except the soft sound of their breathing and a little crackling rustle from the dry wood that burned upon the open hearth. The firelight reached out into the dusk and warmed it. The lamp burned steadily in a distant corner. The room was very still.

  And Richard Morton began to remember. Quick memories stabbed his heart. The firelight, and the darkness, and that small hand in his. The past came up about him as he sat and held his vigil. Once the door opened, and Helen came in. Richard did not move. He saw her touch first the wall and then a chair as she came. Her black hair had fallen low upon her neck. She leaned a while against the dressing table, then steadied her hand to pour another dose of the medicine, and brought it to the bedside, moving very slowly.

  But Adela turned her head aside with a little moaning sound. Helen knelt down, and tried again, and yet again.

  Then she shook her head, rose to her feet, and went out, holding to the doorpost as she went.

  Once more the door was shut.

  Helen waited alone, leaning back, her head against the wooden rail of the chair, her arms stretched out on either side, her hands open and relaxed. She looked past the fluttering lamp, into the darkness that hid the corners of the room, and into the black pool-like shadow that lay across the threshold which she had just crossed. The door was shut now between her and Dick. The door was shut and fastened. Dick was behind it, not with Adela who was dying, who might even now be dead, but with his memories of Adela. Memories never die. They sleep. We think them dead, then they rise up, and the face of the sun is darkened with them in the full midday of love.

  They never die.

  To Adela, Richard Morton had given his youth, his aspirations, and his love. That she had not been able to receive them mattered very little. They were given, and given with both hands, the gifts of an ardent heart.

  Dick was in there with his gifts, and dead gifts have ghastly faces. Helen had her gifts too, but she and they were shut out. She had neither part nor lot. In that hour she knew the meaning of the outer darkness. It closed upon her, her being was alone in it. Somewhere beyond it Dick called with a voice of pain.

  Once before he had called and she had followed through the deep waters. Now she could not rise and go to him because it was not she to whom he called. He called to that which had no longer the breath of life. She could not go to him. She could not help him.

  Love does not ask for gifts, it asks to give. When it can give no longer, it turns to anguish. Helen’s suffering became very great. She bore with Adela the burden of dying, and with Dick the burden of remembrance.

  And she too remembered. Every kiss, every touch, every word.

  The hours of the night went by. When at last Helen moved, and rose from her chair, she stood by the door for a long time listening, her feet in the black shadow, her head bowed forward in the dusk that was mingled of the lamplight and the first beginnings of the day.

  When she had stood listening for a long while, a bird chirped at one of the high windows. Helen trembled a little, then pushed the door and passed the threshold.

  A greyish dimness came in through the small window that was under the roof. It looked like a mist, as it mixed with the shadows that clung about the raftered ceiling. The lamp on the dressing-table burned with a garish yellow flame. Its light reached across to the bed, but fell short of Adela’s face.

  Helen came near, kneeled down, and put her hand on Dick’s, which had lost its warmth, and upon Adela’s, which was cold.

  After a breathless moment she hid her face and prayed.

  She prayed for them all. For Adela—poor Adie—not her fault. How could it be her fault when she was made like that?—and we loved her—we did love her—poor, poor Adie. For Dick—he has been so hurt, don’t hurt him any more— please, please don’t hurt him any more. For herself—that I may comfort—that I may help.

  She prayed these childish phrases over and over. Not her fault—don’t hurt him—let me comfort. O God—God—God—

  All form was gone. Only the power that is within, the spirit which is man, beat at the immortal doors, cried to the Immortal Love.

  And in the end there was light—something that shone—that answered,—an inflowing of life.

  Helen leaned upon the bed, and rose unsteadily to her feet.

  “Dick,” she said very low, and he moved, showing her a face she scarcely knew.

  “She is—gone,” Helen said in a quivering voice. She put out her hand, and touched Adela upon the brow. The cold of death was there, but Helen’s hand lingered in a sort of trembling tenderness, before she drew the sheet up high and smooth above the pillow and above Adela’s dead face of peace. When it was done she turned towards Richard Morton, swaying.

  “Dick,” she said again, and her shaking hand found his, and drew him, until he came stiffly to his feet, and stood beside her. Her touch clung rather than compe
lled, and he obeyed its tremulous weakness. They passed the threshold; and the door was shut.

  In the farther room the lamp was living upon the very last of its spent oil. It flickered, and the shadows leapt, it died, and they crowded in upon the dying glow. Helen put out her hand and turned the wick down.

  For a moment the dark was all. Then she went to the window, drew back the curtain that hung there, unlatched the long glass door, and flung it wide to the cold morning air.

  Richard Morton moved past her as she drew back. Without turning his head he went out upon the verandah, and Helen followed. It was dusk still, and there were no stars, but it was not the darkness of the closely curtained room. There was a greyness mixed with it, and a faint shining light that awoke far off in the east.

  Helen watched the sky where the stars had faded, and words from the gospel of Saint John rose up in her mind. She saw them there like slowly floating birds with tender, dawn-flushed wings. “The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

  “When you understand, it grows light,” she said under her breath.

  She looked at Richard Morton, and her heart yearned over him. If he were her child, she could comfort him now. Was there no comfort for the father of her child? The greyness increased, until the dark was gone. She saw his haggard face, and the strained endurance with which he met the day. In that moment her love for him became pure agony. The need to speak, to touch him, burned in her; but there were no words to vex this stillness of the dawn. She took his hand, still chilly from Adela’s touch, lifted it to her bosom, and held it there. Her heart beat against it. It grew warm, and closed on hers in a strong grip that hurt, and healed.

  The light brightened in the east. They stood together and waited for the sun to rise.

  Originally published in 1912

  Cover design by Andrea Worthington

  978-1-4804-4266-5

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com