The Altar of the Dead And Other Morbid Tales

by Osie Turner, Algernon Blackwood, Henry James

  And the next instant he had looked up sharply, with a sudden peculiar shrug, and a kind of cry, like the first thin cry of an awakened child, in his mind. Without a moment’s hesitation he climbed swiftly upstairs again to the big sepulchral bedroom. He pressed with his fingernail the tiny spring in the looking-glass. The empty drawer flew open. There were finger-marks still in the dust.

  Yet, strangely enough, beneath all the clashing thoughts that came flocking into his mind as he stood with the empty drawer in his hand, was a wounding yet still a little amused pity for his old friend Mr Bethany. So far as he himself was concerned the discovery—well, he would have plenty of time to consider everything that could possibly now concern himself. Anyhow, it could only simplify matters.

  He remembered waking to that old wave of sickening horror on the first unhappy morning; he remembered the keen yet owlish old face blinking its deathless friendliness at him, and the steady pressure of the cold, skinny hand. As for Sheila, she had never done anything by halves; certainly not when it came to throwing over a friend no longer necessary to one’s social satisfaction. But she would edge out cleverly, magnanimously, triumphantly enough, no doubt, when the day of reckoning should come, the day when, her nets wide spread, her bait prepared, he must stand up before her outraged circle and positively prove himself her lawful husband, perhaps even to the very imprint of his thumb.

  “Poor old thing!” he said again; and this time his pity was shared almost equally between both witnesses to Mr Bethany’s ingenuous little document, the loss of which had fallen so softly and pathetically that he felt only ashamed of having discovered it so soon.

  He shut back the tell-tale drawer, and after trying to collect his thoughts in case anything should have been forgotten, he turned with a deep trembling sigh to descend the stairs. But on the landing he drew back at the sound of voices, and then a footstep. Soon came the sound of a key in the lock. He blew out his candle and leant listening over the balusters.

  “Who’s there?” he called quietly.

  “Me, sir,” came the feeble reply out of the darkness.

  “What is it, Ada? What have you come for?”

  “Only, sir, to see that all was safe, and you were in, sir.”

  “Yes,” he said. “All’s safe; and I am in. What if I had been out?” It was like dropping tiny pebbles into a deep well—so long after came the answering feeble splash.

  “Then I was to go back, sir.” And a moment after the discreet voice floated up with the faintest tinge of effrontery out of the hush. “Is that Dr Ferguson, too sir?”

  “No, Ada; and please tell your mistress from me that Dr Ferguson is unlikely to call again.” A keen but rather forlorn smile passed over his face. “He’s dining with friends no doubt at Holloway. But of course if she should want to see him he will see her tomorrow at any hour at Mrs Lovat’s. And—Ada!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Say that I’m a little better; your mistress will be relieved to hear that I’m a little better; still not quite myself say, but, I think, a little better.”

  “Yes, sir; and I’m sure I’m very glad to hear it,” came fainter still.

  “What voice was that I heard just now?”

  “Miss Alice’s, sir; but she came quite against my wishes, and I hope you won’t repeat it, sir. She promised if she came that mistress shouldn’t know. I was only afraid she might disturb you, or—or Dr Ferguson. And did you say, sir, that I was to tell mistress that he MIGHT be coming back?”

  “Ah, that I don’t know; so perhaps it would be as well not to mention him at all. Is Miss Alice there?”

  “I said I would tell her if you were alone. But I hope you’ll understand that it was only because she begged so. Mistress has gone to St Peter’s bazaar; and that’s how it was.”

  “I quite understand. Beckon to her.”

  There came a hasty step in the hall and a hurried murmur of explanation. Lawford heard her call as she ran up the stairs; and the next moment he had Alice’s hand in his and they were groping together through the gloaming back into the solitude of the empty room again.

  “Don’t be alarmed, dear,” he heard himself imploring. Just hold tight to that clear common sense, and above all you won’t tell? It must be our secret; a dead, dead secret from everyone, even your mother, for just a little while; just a mere two days or so—in case. I’m—I’m better, dear.”

  He fumbled with the little box of matches, dropped one, broke another; but at last the candle-flame dipped, brightened, and with the door shut and the last pale blueness of dusk at the window Lawford turned and looked at his daughter. She stood with eyes wide open, like the eyes of a child walking in its sleep; then twisted her fingers more tightly within his. “Oh, dearest, how ill, how ill you look,” she whispered. “But there, never mind—never mind. It was all a miserable dream, then; it won’t, it can’t come back? I don’t think I could bear its coming back. And mother told me such curious things; as if I were a child and understood nothing. And even after I knew that you were you—I mean before I sat up here in the dark to see you—she said that you were gone and would never come back; that a terrible thing had happened—a disgrace which we must never speak of; and that all the other was only a pretence to keep people from talking. But I did not believe then, and how could I believe afterwards?”

  “There, never mind now, dear, what she said. It was all meant for the best, perhaps. But here I am; and not nearly so ill as I look, Alice; and there’s nothing more to trouble ourselves about; not even if it should be necessary for me to go away for a time. And this is our secret, mind; ours only; just a dead secret between you and me.”

  They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly along the hushed road Lawford heard in the silence a leisurely indolent beat of little hoofs approaching, and the sound of wheels. A sudden wave of feeling swept over him. He took Alice’s quiet loving face in his hands and kissed her passionately. “Do not so much as think of me yet, or doubt, or question: only love me, dearest. And soon—and soon—”

  “We’ll just begin again, just begin again, won’t we? all three of us together, just as we used to be. I didn’t mean to have said all those horrid things about mother. She was only dreadfully anxious and meant everything for the best. You’ll let me tell her soon?”

  The haggard face turned slowly, listening. “I hear, I understand, but I can’t think very clearly now, Alice; I can’t, dear; my miserable old tangled nerves. I just stumble along as best I can. You’ll understand better when you get to be a poor old thing like me. We must do the best we can. And of course you’ll see, Dillie, how awfully important it is not to raise false hopes. You understand? I mustn’t risk the least thing in the world, must I? And now goodbye; only for a few hours now. And not a word, not a word to a single living soul.”

  He extinguished the candle again, and led the way to the top of the stairs. “Are you there, Ada?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the quiet imperturbable voice from under the black straw brim. Alice went slowly down, but at the foot of the stairs, looking out into the cold, blue, lamplit street she paused as if at a sudden recollection, and ran hastily up again.

  “There was nothing more, dear?” She said, leaning back to peer up.

  ‘“Nothing more?" What?”

  She stood panting a little in the darkness, listening to some cautious yet uneasy thought that seemed to haunt her mind. “I thought—it seemed there was something we had not said, something I could not understand. But there, it is nothing! You know what a fanciful old silly I am. You do love me? Quite as much as ever?”

  “More, sweetheart, more!”

  “Goodnight again, then; and God bless you, dear.”

  The outer door closed softly, the footsteps died away. Lawford still hesitated. He took hold of the stairs above his head as he stood on the landing and leaned his head upon his hands, striving calmly to disentangle the perplexity of his thoughts. His pulses were beating in his ear with a low muffled roa
r. He looked down between the blinds to where against the blue of the road beneath the straggling yellow beams of the lamp stood the little cart and drooping, shaggy pony, and Grisel sitting quietly there awaiting him. He shut his eyes as if in hope by some convulsive effort of mind to break through this subtle glasslike atmosphere of dream that had stolen over consciousness, and blotted out the significance, almost the meaning of the past. He turned abruptly. Empty as the empty rooms around him, unanswering were mind and heart. Life was a tale told by an idiot—signifying nothing.

  He paused at the head of the staircase. And even then the doubt confronted him: Would he ever come back? Who knows? he thought; and again stood pondering, arguing, denying. At last he seemed to have come to a decision. He made his way downstairs, opened and left ajar a long narrow window in a passage to the garden beyond the kitchen. He turned on his heel as he reached the gate and waved his hand as if in a kind of forlorn mockery towards the darkly glittering windows. The drowsy pony awoke at touch of the whip.

  Grisel lifted the rug and squeezed a little closer into the corner. She had drawn a veil over her face, so that to Lawford her eyes seemed to be dreaming in a little darkness of their own as he laid his hand on the side of the cart. “It’s a most curious thing,” he said, “but peeping down at you just now when the sound of the wheels came, a memory came clearly back to me of years and years ago—of my mother. She used to come to fetch me at school in a little cart like this, and a little pony just like this, with a thick dusty coat. And once I remember I was simply sick of everything, a failure, and fagged out, and all that, and was looking out in the twilight; I fancy even it was autumn too. It was a little side staircase window; I was horribly homesick. And she came quite unexpectedly. I shall never forget it—the misery, and then, her coming.” He lifted his eyes, cowed with the incessant struggle, and watched her face for some time in silence. “Ought I to stay?”

  “I see no "ought,’“ she said. “No one is there?”

  “Only a miserable broken voice out of a broken cage—called Conscience.”

  “Don’t you think, perhaps, that even that has a good many disguises—convention, cowardice, weakness, ennui; they all take their turn at hooting in its feathers? You must, you really must have rest. You don’t know; you don’t see; I do. Just a little snap, someone last exquisite thread gives way, and then it is all over. You see I have even to try to frighten you, for I can’t tell you how you distress me.”

  “Why do I distress you?—my face, my story you mean?”

  “No; I mean you: your trouble, that horrible empty house, and—oh, dear me, yes, your courage too.”

  “Listen,” said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see the pale, veiled face through this mist that had risen up over his eyes. “I have no courage apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to come!—a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted—every one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the pretence—oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my mother, the face, the friend I’ve never seen; the voice that every dream leaves echoing. Ask me to come.”

  She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse stooped a little closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his.

  “I hear, you know; I hear too,” she whispered. “But we mustn’t listen. Come now. It’s growing late.”

  The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter of the pony’s hoofs. Night had darkened to its deepest when their lamp shone white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely spoken. Lawford had simply watched pass by, almost without a thought, the arching trees, the darkening fields; had watched rise up in a mist of primrose light the harvest moon to shine in saffron on the faces and shoulders of the few wayfarers they met, or who passed them by. The still grave face beneath the shadow of its veil had never turned, though the moon poured all her flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in sudden alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden doubt had assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his hand to touch her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and stillness should be, even as the moment’s fancy had suggested, only a far-gone memory returned in dream.

  Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came down, and they talked a little in the cold air of the garden. He lit a cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove the drowsy little pony off into the moonlight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him, he scattered out upon the others” silence. Lawford apparently had not yet shaken himself free from the sorcery of the moonlight. His eyes shone dark and full like those of a child who has trespassed beyond its hour for bed, and sits marvelling at reality in a waking dream.

  Long after they had bidden each other goodnight, long after Herbert had trodden on tiptoe with his candle past his closed door, Lawford sat leaning on his arms at the open window, staring out across the motionless moonlit trees that seemed to stand like draped and dreaming pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana at last beside the crashing music of the waters. And he himself, the self that never sleeps beneath the tides and waves of consciousness, was listening, too, almost as unmovedly and unheedingly to the thoughts that clashed in conflict through his brain.

  Why, in a strange transitory life was one the slave of these small cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters—what if there, too, were merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely a blind and reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an impossible dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with their still pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. “Here’s not your rest,” cried one insistent voice; ‘she is the mystery that haunts day and night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance has given you back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull fools men are!” He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down, too weary even to try to rest.

  Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He saw their sharp-beaked heads turn this way, that way, as they floated on outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the hoarse roar of the water under the huge thin-leafed trees, not a sound was stirring. “One thing,” he seemed to hear himself mutter as he turned with a shiver from the morning air, “it won’t be for long. You can, at least, poor devil, wait the last act out.” If in this foolish hustling mob of the world, hired anywhere and anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of a penny—if it was only his own small dull part to carry a mock spear, and shout huzza with the rest—there was nothing for it, he grunted obstinately to himself, shout he would with the loudest.

  He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it. Not the echo of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his mind. He knew vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the last few days was gone. But the thought had no power to move him now. Sheila’s good sense, and Mr Bethany’s stubborn loyalty were alike old stories that had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that portentous family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy during these last few days around his dining-room table, discussing with futile decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him down. Half dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly open and, like the timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before the stricke
n and astonished company. His eyes opened half-fearfully, and glanced up in the morning twilight. Their perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands twitched awhile in sleep.

  Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the unfamiliar long S’s, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched, or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, or else was only the meaningless ramblings of an idle pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the spruce clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called Life.

  “Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?” he asked at last, taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room.

  “Bless me, no; not a bit—not a bit,” said Herbert amiably, laying down his pen. “I’m afraid the old leatherjackets have been boring you. It’s a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at second-hand—purely a bad habit, like morphia, like laudanum. But once in, you know there’s no recovery Anyhow, I’m neck-deep, and to struggle would be simply to drown.”

  “I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier at home.”

  “My dear fellow—” began Herbert reassuringly.

  “It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I get muddled up with other things groping through the dictionary.”