The Altar of the Dead And Other Morbid Tales

by Osie Turner, Algernon Blackwood, Henry James

  “French?” she said with a nod. “How very quaint.”

  Lawford’s eyes fell and rested gravely on the dingy page of Herbert’s mean-looking bundle of print. A queer feeling of cold crept over him. “Yes,” he said vaguely, “French,” and hopelessly failed to fill in the silence that seemed like some rather sleek nocturnal creature quietly waiting to be fed.

  Sheila swept softly towards the door. “Well, Arthur, I think that is all. The servants will have gone by this evening. I have ordered a carriage for half-past twelve. Perhaps you would first write down anything that occurs to you to be necessary? Perhaps, too, it would be better if Dr Simon were told that we shall not need him anymore, that you are thinking of a complete change of scene, a voyage. He is obviously useless. Besides, Mr Bethany, I think, is going to discuss a specialist with you. I have written him a little note, just briefly explaining. Shall I write to Dr Simon too?”

  “You remember everything,” said Lawford, and it seemed to him it was a remark he had heard ages and ages ago. “It’s only this money, Sheila; will you please take that away?”

  “Take it away?”

  “I think, Sheila, if I do take a voyage I should almost prefer to work my passage. As for a mere "change of scene," that’s quite uncostly.”

  “It is only your face, Arthur,” said Sheila solemnly, ‘that suggest these wicked stabs. Some day you will perhaps repent of every one.”

  “It is possible, Sheila; we none of us stand still, you know. One rips open a lid sometimes and the wax face rots before one’s eyes. Take back your blue envelope; and thank you for thinking of me. It’s always the woman of the house that has the head.”

  “I wish,” said Sheila almost pathetically, and yet with a faint quaver of resignation, “I wish it could be said that the man of the house sometimes has the heart. Think it over, Arthur!”

  Sheila, with her husband’s luncheon tray, brought also her farewells. Lawford surveyed, not without a faint, shy stirring of incredulity, the superbly restrained presence. He stood before her dry-lipped, inarticulate, a schoolboy caught redhanded in the shabbiest of offences.

  “It is your wish then that I go, Arthur?” she said pleadingly.

  He handed her her money without a word.

  “Very well, Arthur; if you won’t take it,” she said. “I should scarcely have thought this the occasion for mere pride.”

  ‘the tenth,” she continued, as she squeezed the envelope into her purse, with only the least hardening of voice, “although I daresay you have not troubled to remember it—the tenth will be the eighteenth anniversary of our wedding-day. It makes parting, however advisable, and though only for the few days we should think nothing of in happier circumstances, a little harder to bear. But there, all will come right. You will see things in a different light, perhaps. Words may wound, but time will heal.” But even as she now looked closely into his colourless sunken face some distant memory seemed to well up irresistibly—the memory of eyes just as ingenuous, and as unassuming that even in claiming her love had expressed only their stolid unworthiness.

  “Did you know it? Have you seen it?” she said, stooping forward a little. “I believe in spite of all....” He gazed on solemnly, almost owlishly, out of his fading mask.

  “Wait till Mr Bethany tells you; you will believe it perhaps from him.” He saw the grey-gloved hand a little reluctantly lifted towards him.

  “Goodbye, Sheila,” he said, and turned mechanically back to the window.

  She hesitated, listening to a small far-away voice that kept urging her with an almost frog-like pertinacity to do, to say something, and yet as stubbornly would not say what; and she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman, with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed hand, seated in his tight livery and indescribable hat on the faded cushions. One thing only was in his mind; and it was almost with an audible cry that he turned towards the figure that edged, white and trembling, into the chill room, to fling herself into his arms. “Don’t look at me,” he begged her, “only remember, dearest, I would rather have died down there and been never seen again than have given you pain. Run—run, your mother’s calling. Write to me, think of me; goodbye!”

  He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening—till the door had shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking ship. All the clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzy sickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear, loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end. Death was no end. There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. To give up was to go to perdition: to go forward was to go mad. And even madness—he sat up with trembling lips in the twilight—madness itself was only a state, only a state. You might be bereaved, and the pain and hopelessness of that would pass. You might be cast out, betrayed, deserted, and still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a brave face a friend. But madness!—it surged in on him with all the clearness and emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his hand clutching the bedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for the presences and the voices that have their thin-walled dwelling beneath the shallow crust of consciousness.

  Inky blackness drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he was powerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to turn; no air to breathe. And yet there was a low, continuous, never-varying stir as of an enormous wheel whirling in the gloom. Countless infinitesimal faces arched like glimmering pebbles the huge dim-coloured vault above his head. He heard a voice above the monstrous rustling of the wheel, clamouring, calling him back. He was hastening headlong, muttering to himself his own flat meaningless name, like a child repeating as he runs his errand. And then as if in a charmed cold pool he awoke and opened his eyes again on the gathering darkness of the great bedroom, and heard a quick, importunate, long-continued knocking on the door below, as of someone who had already knocked in vain.

  Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit a candle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door that hung a little open. All in the room seemed acutely fantastically still. The flame burned dim, misled in the sluggish air. He stole slowly to the door, looked out, and again listened. Again the knocking broke out, more impetuously and yet with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding the flame of his candle in the shell of his left hand, Lawford moved slowly, with chin uplifted, to the stairs. He bent forward a little, and stood motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly contracting and expanding as he gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim louring presence that had fallen back before him.

  His mouth opened. “Who’s there?” at last he called.

  “Thank God, thank God!” he heard Mr Bethany mutter. “I mustn’t call, Lawford,” came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman were pressing his lips to speak through the letter-box. “Come down and open the door; there’s a good fellow! I’ve been knocking no end of a time.”

  “Yes, I am coming,” said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his breath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before him the crouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up before him against the darkness, contending the way with him.

  “Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?” came the anxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained.

  “No, no,” muttered Lawford. “I am coming; coming slowly.” He paused to breathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat, and still with eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in the darkness—an adversary that, if he should but for one moment close his lids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with its evil. ‘so long as you don’t get in,” he heard himself muttering, ‘so long as you don’t get in, my friend!”

  “What’s that you’re saying?” came up the muffled, querulous voice; “I can�
�t for the life of me hear, my boy.”

  “Nothing, nothing,” came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs. “I was only speaking to myself.”

  Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes, Lawford pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty drawing-room, and grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black oblique shadow flung across his face, his eyes fixed like an animal’s, then drew the door steadily towards him. And suddenly some power that had held him tense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head, and, his face quivering with fear and loathing, spat defiance as if in a passion of triumph into the gloom.

  Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another moment his light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and black narrow shoulders of his visitor.

  “You gave me quite a fright,” said the old man almost angrily; “have you hurt your foot, or something?”

  “It was very dark,” said Lawford, “down the stairs.”

  “What!” said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his unspectacled eyes; “has she cut off the gas, then?”

  “You got the note?” said Lawford, unmoved.

  “Yes, yes; I got the note.... Gone?”

  “Oh, yes; all gone. It was my choice. I preferred it so.”

  Mr Bethany sat down on one of the hard old wooden chairs that stood on either side of the lofty hall, and breathing rather thickly, rested his hands on his knees. “What’s happened?” he inquired, looking up into the candle. “I forgot my glasses, old fool that I am, and can’t, my dear fellow, see you very plainly. But your voice—”

  “I think,” said Lawford, “I think it’s beginning to come back.”

  “What, the whole thing! Oh no, my dear, dear man; be frank with me; not the whole thing?”

  “Yes,” said Lawford, ‘the whole thing—very, very gradually, imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But I rather feel it than see it; that is all.... I’m cornering him.”

  “Him?”

  Lawford jerked his candle as if towards some definite goal. “In time,” he said.

  The two faces with the candle between them seemed as it were to gain light each from the other.

  “Well, well,” said Mr Bethany, “every man for himself, Lawford; it’s the only way. But what’s going to be done? We must be cautious; must think of—of the others?”

  “Oh, that,” said Lawford; ‘she’s going to squeeze me out.”

  “You’ve—squabbled? Oh, but my dear, honest old, HONEST old idiot, there are scores of families here in this parish, within a stone’s throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other’s eyes out, every day of their earthly lives. It’s perfectly natural. Where should we poor old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and it’s mainly between husband and wife.”

  “Yes,” said Lawford, “but you see, this was not our earthly life. It was between US.”

  “Listen, listen to the dear mystic!” exclaimed the old creature scoffingly. “What depths we’re touching. Here’s the first serious break of his lifetime, and he’s gone stark staring transcendental. Ah well.” He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his curious bird-like poise of head. “But you’re not alone here?” he inquired suddenly; “not absolutely alone?”

  “Yes,” said Lawford. “But there’s plenty to think about—and read. I haven’t thought or read for years.”

  “No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and the book’s called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigrams out of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ. You don’t suppose, you cannot be supposing you are the only serious person in the world? What’s more, it’s only skin deep.”

  Lawford smiled. “Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you’ll see I’m done.”

  “Come here,” said Mr Bethany. “Where’s the whiskey, where’s the cigars? You shall smoke and drink, and I’ll watch. If it weren’t for a pitiful old stomach, I’d join you. Come on!” He led the way into the dining-room.

  He looked sparer, more wizened and sinewy than ever as he stooped to open the sideboard. “Where on earth do they keep everything?” he was muttering to himself.

  Lawford put the candlestick down on the table. “There’s only one thing,” he said, watching his visitor’s rummaging; “what precisely do you think they will do with me?”

  “Look here, Lawford,” snapped Mr Bethany; “I’ve come round here, hooting through your letter-box, to tally sense, not sentiment. Why has your wife deserted you? Without a servant, without a single—It’s perfectly monstrous.”

  “On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn’t have gone on. Alone I all but forget this—this lupus. Every turn of her little finger reminded me of it. We are all of us alone, whether we know it or not; you said so yourself. And it’s better to realize it stark and unconfused. Besides, you have no idea what—what odd things.... There may be; there IS something on the other side. I’ll win through to that.”

  Mr Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from his knees with a half-empty syphon of sodawater. “See here, Lawford,” he said; “if you really want to know what’s your most insidious and most dangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual pride. You’ve won what you think a domestic victory; and you can scarcely bear the splendour. Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what IS this "other side" which the superior double-faced creature’s going to win through to now?” He rapped it out almost bitterly, almost contemptuously.

  Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly arisen the peace, the friendly unquestioning stillness, the thunderous lullaby old as the grave. “It’s only a fancy. It seemed I could begin again.”

  “Well, look here,” said Mr Bethany, his whole face suddenly lined and grey with age. “You can’t. It’s the one solitary thing I’ve got to say, as I’ve said it to myself morn, noon, and night these scores of years. You can’t begin again; it’s all a delusion and a snare. You say we’re alone. So we are. The world’s a dream, a stage, a mirage, a rack, call it what you will—but YOU don’t change, YOU’RE no illusion. There’s no crying off for YOU no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You’ve got this—this trouble, this affliction—my dear, dear fellow what shall I say to tell you how I grieve and groan for you oh yes, and actually laughed, I confess it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it. You’ve got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it’s come like a thief in the night; but bear it you must, and ALONE! They say death’s a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life’s a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade. Well then, and not another word of sense shall you worm out of my worn-out old brains after today—all I say is, don’t give in! Why, if you stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, the old, fat, sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off under my eyes in his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything about human nature I’d say it to your face, and a fig for your vanity and resignation—your last state would be worse than the first. There!”

  He bunched up a big white handkerchief and mopped it over his head. “That’s done,” he said, “and we won’t go back. What I want to know now is what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping? What are you going to think about? I’ll stay—yes, yes, that’s what it must be: I must stay. And I detest strange beds. I’ll stay, you SHAN’t be alone. Do you hear me, Lawford?—you SHAN’T be alone!”

  Lawford gazed gravely. “There is just one little thing I want to ask you before you go. I’ve wormed out an extraordinary old French book; and—just as you say—to pass the time, I’ve been having a shot at translating it. But I’m frightfully rusty; it’s old French; would you mind having a look?”

  Mr Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time to judge his friend’s eyes, to gain as best he could some sustained and unobserved glance at this baffling face. “Where is your pr
ecious French book?” he said irritably.

  “It’s upstairs.”

  “Fire away, then!” Lawford rose and glanced about the room. “What, no light there either?” snapped Mr Bethany. “Take this; I don’t mind the dark. There’ll be plenty of that for me soon.”

  Lawford hesitated at the door, looking rather strangely back. “No,” he said, ‘there are matches upstairs.” He shut the door after him. The darkness seemed cold and still as water. He went slowly up, with eyes fixed wide on the floating luminous gloom, and out of memory seemed to gather, as faintly as in the darkness which they had exorcised for him, the strange pitiful eyes of the night before. And as he mounted a chill, terrible, physical peace seemed to steal over him.

  Mr Bethany was sitting as he had left him, looking steadily on the floor, when Lawford returned. He flattened out the book on the table with a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle nearer, and stooping his nose close to the fusty print, he began to read.

  “Was this in the house?” he inquired presently.

  “No,” said Lawford; “it was lent to me by a friend—Herbert.”

  “Hm! Don’t know him. Anyhow, precious poor stuff this is. This Sabathier, whoever he is, seems to be a kind of clap-trap eighteenth-century adventurer who thought the world would be better off, apparently, for a long account of all his sentimental amours. Rousseau, with a touch of Don Quixote in his composition, and an echo of that prince of bogies, Poe! What, in the name of wonder, induced you to fix on this for your holiday reading?”

  ”Sabathier’s alive, isn’t he?”

  “I never said he wasn’t. He’s a good deal too much alive for my old wits, with his Mam’selle This and Madame the Other; interesting enough, perhaps, for the professional literary nose with a taste for patchouli.”

  “Yet I suppose even that is not a very rare character?” Mr Bethany peered up from the dingy book at his ingenuous questioner. “I should say decidedly that the fellow was a very rare character, so long as by rare you don’t mean good. It’s one of the dullest stupidities of the present day, my dear fellow, to dote on a man simply because he’s different from the rest of us. Once a man strays out of the common herd, he’s more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels. From what I can gather in just these few pages this Sabathier appears to have been an amorous, adventurous, emotional Frenchman, who went to the dogs as easily and as rapidly as his own nature and his period allowed. And I should say, Lawford, that he made precious bad reading for a poor old troubled hermit like yourself at the present moment.”