The Black Reaper

by Bernard Capes

  ‘This,’ said the stranger softly, as if to himself, ‘is the woeful proof, indeed, of decadence. Man waives his prerogative of lordship over the irreclaimable savagery of earth. He has warmed his temperate house of clay to be a hot-house to his imagination, till the very walls are frail and eaten with fever.’

  ‘Christ spoke of no spiritual division between the sexes.’

  There followed a brief silence. Preoccupied, the two moved slowly through the fog, that was dashed ever and anon with cloudy blooms of lamplight.

  ‘I wish to ask you,’ said the stranger at length, ‘in what has the teaching of Christ proved otherwise than so impotent to reform mankind, as to make one sceptical as to the divinity of the teacher?’

  ‘Why, what is your age?’ asked Rose in a tone of surprise.

  ‘I am a hundred tonight.’

  The astounded young man jumped in his walk.

  ‘A hundred!’ he exclaimed. ‘And you cannot answer that question yourself?’

  ‘I asked you to answer it. But never mind. I see faith in you like a garden of everlastings – as it should be – as of course it should be. Yet disbelievers point to inconsistencies. There was a reviling Jew, for instance, to whom Christ is reported to have shown resentment quite incompatible with His teaching.’

  ‘Whom do you mean?’

  ‘Cartaphilus; who was said to be condemned to perpetual wandering.’

  ‘A legend,’ cried Amos scornfully. ‘Bracket it with Nero’s fiddling and the hymning of Memnon.’

  A second silence fell. They seemed to move in a dead and stagnant world. Presently said the stranger suddenly—

  ‘I am quite lost; and so, I suppose, are you?’

  ‘I haven’t an idea where we are.’

  ‘It is two o’clock. There isn’t a soul or a mark to guide us. We had best part, and each seek his own way.’

  He stopped and held out his hand.

  ‘Two pieces of advice I should like to give you before we separate. Fall in love and take plenty of exercise.’

  ‘Must we part?’ said Amos. ‘Frankly, I don’t think I like you. That sounds strange and discourteous after my ingenuous confidences. But you exhale an odd atmosphere of witchery; and your scorn braces me like a tonic. The pupils of your eyes, when I got a glimpse of them, looked like the heads of little black devils peeping out of windows. But you can’t touch my soul on the raw when my nerves are quiescent; and then I would strike any man that called me coward.’

  The stranger uttered a quick, chirping laugh, like the sound of a stone on ice.

  ‘What do you propose?’ he said.

  ‘I have an idea you are not so lost as you pretend. If we are anywhere near shelter that you know, take me in and I will be a good listener. It is one of my negative virtues.’

  ‘I don’t know that any addition to my last good counsel would not be an anti-climax.’

  He stood musing and rubbing his hairless chin.

  ‘Exercise – certainly. It is the golden demephitizer of the mind. I am seldom off my feet.’

  ‘You walk much – and alone?’

  ‘Not always alone. Periodically I am accompanied by one or another. At this time I have a companion who has tramped with me for some nine months.’

  Again he pondered apart. The darkness and the fog hid his face, but he spoke his thoughts aloud.

  ‘What matter if it does come about? Tomorrow I have the world – the mother of many daughters. And to redeem this soul – a dog of a Christian – a friend at Court!’

  He turned quickly to the young man.

  ‘Come!’ he said. ‘It shall be as you wish.’

  ‘Do you know where we are?’

  ‘We are at the entrance to Wardour Street.’

  He gave a gesture of impatience, whipped a hand at his companion’s sleeve, and once more they trod down the icy echoes, going onwards.

  The narrow lane reverberated to their footsteps; the drooping fog swayed sluggishly; the dead blank windows and high-shouldered doors frowned in stubborn progression and vanished behind them.

  The stranger stopped in a moment where a screen of iron bars protected a shop front. From behind them shot leaden glints from old clasped bookcovers, hanging tongues of Toledo steel, croziers rich in nielli – innumerable and antique curios gathered from the lumber-rooms of history

  A door to one side he opened with a latch-key. A pillar of light, seeming to smoke as the fog obscured it, was formed of the aperture.

  Obeying a gesture, Rose set foot on the threshold. As he was entering, he found himself unable to forbear a thrill of effrontery.

  ‘Tell me,’ said he. ‘It was not only to point a moral that you flung away that coin?’

  The stranger, going before, grinned back sourly over his shoulder.

  ‘Not only,’ he said. ‘It was a bad one.’

  III

  … La Belle Dame sans merci

  Hath thee in thrall!

  All down the dimly luminous passage that led from the door straight into the heart of the building, Amos was aware, as he followed his companion over the densely piled carpet, of the floating sweet scent of amber-seed. Still his own latter exaltation of nerve burned with a steady radiance. He seemed to himself bewitched – translated; a consciousness apart from yesterday; its material fibres responsive to the least or utmost shock of adventure. As he trod in the other’s footsteps, he marvelled that so lavish a display of force, so elastic a gait, could be in a centenarian.

  ‘Are you ever tired?’ he whispered curiously.

  ‘Never. Sometimes I long for weariness as other men desire rest.’

  As the stranger spoke, he pulled aside a curtain of stately black velvet, and softly opening a door in a recess, beckoned the young man into the room beyond.

  He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with potpourri; in one corner a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinée, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half-filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur – such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan – one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tessellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.

  The door behind him swung gently to: his eyes half-closed in a dreamy surrender of will: the voice of the stranger speaking to him sounded far away as the cry of some lost unhappiness.

  ‘Welcome!’ it said only.

  Amos broke through his trance with a cry.

  ‘What does it mean – all this? We step out of the fog, and here – I think it is the guest-parlour of Hell!’

  ‘You flatter me,’ said the stranger, smiling. ‘Its rarest antiquity goes no further back, I think, than the eighth century. The skeleton of the place is Jacobite and comparatively modern.’

  ‘But you – the shop!’

  ‘Contains a little of the fruit of my wanderings.’

  ‘You are a dealer?’

  ‘A casual collector only. If through a representative I work my accumulations of costly lumber to a profit – say thousands per cent – it is only because utility is the first principle of Art. As to myself, here I but pitch my tent – periodically, and at long intervals.’

  ‘An unsupervised agent must find it a lucrative post.’

  ‘Come – there shows a little knowledge of human nature. For the first time I applaud you. But the appointment is conditional on many things. At the moment the berth is vacant. Would yo
u like it?’

  ‘My (paradoxically) Christian name was bestowed in compliment to a godfather, sir. I am no Jew. I have already enough to know the curse of having more.’

  ‘I have no idea how you are called. I spoke jestingly, of course; but your answer quenches the flicker of respect I felt for you. As a matter of fact, the other’s successor is not only nominated, but is actually present in this room.’

  ‘Indeed? You propose to fill the post yourself?’

  ‘Not by any means. The mere suggestion is an insult to one who can trace his descent backwards at least two thousand years.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I meant no disparagement, but—’

  ‘I tell you, sir,’ interrupted the stranger irritably, ‘my visits are periodic. I could not live in a town. I could not settle anywhere. I must always be moving. A prolonged constitutional – that is my theory of health.’

  ‘You are always on your feet – at your age—’

  ‘I am a hundred tonight – But – mark you – I have eaten of the Tree of Life.’

  As the stranger uttered these words, he seized Rose by the wrist in a soft, firm grasp. His captive, staring at him amazed, gave out a little involuntary shriek.

  ‘Hadn’t I better leave? There is something – nameless – I don’t know; but I should never have come in here. Let me go!’

  The other, heedless, half-pulled the troubled and bewildered young man across the room, and drew him to within a foot of the curtain closing the alcove.

  ‘Here,’ he said quietly, ‘is my fellow-traveller of the last nine months, fast, I believe, in sleep – unless your jarring outcry has broken it.’

  Rose struggled feebly.

  ‘Not anything shameful,’ he whimpered – ‘I have a dread of your manifestations.’

  For answer, the other put out a hand, and swiftly and silently withdrew the curtain. A deepish recess was revealed, into which the soft glow of the lamp penetrated like moonlight. It fell in the first instance upon a couch littered with pale, uncertain shadows, and upon a crucifix that hung upon the wall within.

  In the throb of his emotions, it was something of a relief to Amos to see his companion, releasing his hold of him, clasp his hands and bow his head reverently to this pathetic symbol. The cross on which the Christ hung was of ebony a foot high; the figure itself was chryselephantine and purely exquisite as a work of art.

  ‘It is early seventeenth century,’ said the stranger suddenly, after a moment of devout silence, seeing the other’s eyes absorbed in contemplation. ‘It is by Duquesnoy.’ (Then, behind the back of his hand) ‘The rogue couldn’t forget his bacchanals even here.’

  ‘It is a Christ of infidels,’ said Amos, with repugnance. He was adding involuntarily (his savoir faire seemed suddenly to have deserted him) – ‘But fit for an unbelieving—’ when his host took him up with fury—

  ‘Dog of a Gentile! – if you dare to call me Jew!’

  The dismayed start of the young man at this outburst blinded him to its paradoxical absurdity. He fell back with his heart thumping. The eyes of the stranger flickered, but in an instant he had recovered his urbanity.

  ‘Look!’ he whispered impatiently. ‘The Calvary is not alone in the alcove.’

  Mechanically Rose’s glance shifted to the couch; and in that moment shame and apprehension and the sickness of being were precipitated in him as in golden flakes of rapture.

  Something, that in the instant of revelation had seemed part only of the soft tinted shadows, resolved itself into a presentment of loveliness so pure, and so pathetic in its innocent self-surrender to the passionate tyranny of his gaze, that the manhood in him was abashed in the very flood of its exaltation. He put a hand to his face before he looked a second time, to discipline his dazzled eyes. They were turned only upon his soul, and found it a reflected glory. Had the vision passed? His eyes, in a panic, leaped for it once more.

  Yes, it was there – dreaming upon its silken pillow; a grotesque carved dragon in ivory looking down, from a corner of the fluted couch, upon its supernal beauty – a face that, at a glance, could fill the vague desire of a suffering, lonely heart – spirit informing matter with all the flush and essence of some flower of the lost garden of Eden.

  And this expressed in the form of one simple slumbering girl; in its drifted heap of hair, bronze as copper-beech leaves in spring; in the very pulsing of its half-hidden bosom, and in its happy morning lips, like Psyche’s, night-parted by Love and so remaining entranced.

  A long light robe, sulphur-coloured, clung to the sleeper from low throat to ankle; bands of narrow nolana-blue ribbon crossed her breast and were brought together in a loose cincture about her waist; her white, smooth feet were sandalled; one arm was curved beneath her lustrous head; the other lay relaxed and drooping. Chrysoberyls, the sea-virgins of stones, sparkled in her hair and lay in the bosom of her gown like dewdrops in an evening primrose.

  The gazer turned with a deep sigh, and then a sputter of fury—

  ‘Why do you show me this? You cruel beast, was not my life barren enough before?’

  ‘Can it ever be so henceforward? Look again.’

  ‘Does the devil enter? Something roars in me! Have you no fear that I shall kill you?’

  ‘None. I cannot die.’

  Amos broke into a mocking, fierce laugh. Then, his blood shooting in his veins, he seized the sleeper roughly by her hand.

  ‘Wake!’ he cried, ‘and end it!’

  With a sigh she lifted her head. Drowsiness and startled wonderment struggled in her eyes; but in a moment they caught the vision of the stranger standing aside, and smiled and softened. She held out her long, white arms to him.

  ‘You have come, dear love,’ she said, in a happy, low voice, ‘and I was not awake to greet you.’

  Rose fell on his knees.

  ‘Oh, God in Heaven!’ he cried, ‘bear witness that this is monstrous and unnatural! Let me die rather than see it.’

  The stranger moved forward.

  ‘Do honour, Adnah, to this our guest; and minister to him of thy pleasure.’

  The white arms dropped. The girl’s face was turned, and her eyes, solemn and witch-like, looked into Amos’s. He saw them, their irises golden-brown shot with little spars of blue; and the soul in his own seemed to rush towards them and to recoil, baffled and sobbing.

  Could she have understood? He thought he saw a faint smile, a gentle shake of the head, as she slid from the couch and her sandals tapped on the marble floor.

  She stooped and took him by the hand.

  ‘Rise, I pray you,’ she said, ‘and I will be your handmaiden.’

  She led him unresisting to a chair, and bade him sweetly to be seated. She took from him his hat and overcoat, and brought him rare wine in a cup of crystal.

  ‘My lord will drink,’ she murmured, ‘and forget all but the night and Adnah.’

  ‘You I can never forget,’ said the young man, in a broken voice.

  As he drank, half-choking, the girl turned to the other, who still stood apart, silent and watchful.

  ‘Was this wise?’ she breathed. ‘To summon a witness on this night of all – was this wise, beloved?’

  Amos dashed the cup on the floor. The red liquid stained the marble like blood.

  ‘No, no!’ he shrieked, springing to his feet. ‘Not that! It cannot be!’

  In an ecstasy of passion he flung his arms about the girl, and crushed all her warm loveliness against his breast. She remained quite passive – unstartled even. Only she turned her head and whispered: ‘Is this thy will?’

  Amos fell back, drooping, as if he had received a blow.

  ‘Be merciful and kill me,’ he muttered. ‘I – even I can feel at last the nobility of death.’

  Then the voice of the stranger broke, lofty and passionless.

  ‘Tell him what you see in me.’

  She answered, low and without pause, like one repeating a cherished lesson—

  ‘I see – I have seen it for t
he nine months I have wandered with you – the supreme triumph of the living will. I see that this triumph, of its very essence, could not be unless you had surmounted the tyranny of any, the least, gross desire. I see that it is incompatible with sin; with offence given to oneself or others; that passion cannot live in its serene atmosphere; that it illustrates the enchantment of the flesh by the intellect; that it is happiness for evermore redeemed.’

  ‘How do you feel this?’

  ‘I see it reflected in myself – I, the poor visionary you took from the Northern Island. Week by week I have known it sweetening and refining in my nature. None can taste the bliss of happiness that has not you for master – none can teach it save you, whose composure is unshadowed by any terror of death.’

  ‘And love that is passion, Adnah?’

  ‘I hear it spoken as in a dream. It is a wicked whisper from far away. You, the lord of time and of tongues, I worship – you, only you, who are my God.’

  ‘Hush! But the man of Nazareth?’

  ‘Ah! His name is an echo. What divine egotism taught He?’

  Where lately had Amos heard this phrase? His memory of all things real seemed suspended.

  ‘He was a man, and He died,’ said Adnah simply.

  The stranger threw back his head, with an odd expression of triumph; and almost in the same moment abased it to the crucifix on the wall.

  Amos stood breathing quickly, his ears drinking in every accent of the low musical voice. Now, as she paused, he moved forward a hurried step, and addressed himself to the shadowy figure by the couch—

  ‘Who are you, in the name of the Christ you mock and adore in a breath, that has wrought this miracle of high worship in a breathing woman?’

  ‘I am he that has eaten of the Tree of Life.’

  ‘Oh, forego your fables! I am not a child.’

  ‘It could not of its nature perish’ (the voice went on evenly, ignoring the interruption). ‘It breathes its immortal fragrance in no transplanted garden, invisible to sinful eyes, as some suppose. When the curse fell, the angel of the flaming sword bore it to the central desert; and the garden withered, for its soul was withdrawn. Now, in the heart of the waste place that is called Tiah-Bani-Israïl, it waits in its loveliness the coming of the Son of God.’