The Ghost Feeler

by Wharton, Edith

  A momentary silence fell on the group; then Mr Grisben once more addressed himself to Rainer. ‘You ought to have gone, my boy; you ought to have gone.’

  The anxious look returned to the youth’s eyes. ‘My uncle doesn’t think so, really.’

  ‘You’re not a baby, to be always governed by your uncle’s opinion. You came of age today, didn’t you? Your uncle spoils you ... that’s what’s the matter ...’

  The thrust evidently went home, for Rainer laughed, and looked down with a slight accession of colour.

  ‘But the doctor —’

  ‘Use your common sense, Frank! You had to try twenty doctors to find one to tell you what you wanted to be told.’

  A look of apprehension overshadowed Rainer’s gaiety. ‘Oh, come – I say! ... What would you do?’ he stammered.

  ‘Pack up and jump on the first train.’ Mr Grisben leaned forward and laid his hand kindly on the young man’s arm. ‘Look here: my nephew, Jim Grisben, is out there ranching on a big scale. He’ll take you in, and be glad to have you. You say your new doctor thinks it won’t do you any good; but he doesn’t pretend to say it will do you harm, does he? Well, then – give it a trial. It’ll take you out of hot theatres and night restaurants, anyhow ... And all the rest of it ... Eh, Balch?’

  ‘Go!’ said Mr Balch hollowly. ‘Go at once,’ he added, as if a closer look at the youth’s face had impressed on him the need of backing up his friend.

  Young Rainer had turned ashy-pale. He tried to stiffen his mouth into a smile. ‘Do I look as bad as all that?’

  Mr Grisben was helping himself to terrapin. ‘You look like the day after an earthquake,’ he said.

  The terrapin had encircled the table, and been deliberately enjoyed by Mr Lavington’s three visitors (Rainer, Faxon noticed, left his plate untouched) before the door was thrown open to readmit their host.

  Mr Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He seated himself, picked up his napkin and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu. ‘No, don’t bring back the fillet ... Some, terrapin, yes ...’ He looked affably about the table. ‘Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good connection. It must be blowing up for a blizzard.’

  ‘Uncle Jack,’ young Rainer broke out, ‘Mr Grisben’s been lecturing me.’

  Mr Lavington was helping himself to terrapin. ‘Ah – what about?’

  He thinks I ought to have given New Mexico a show.’

  ‘I want him to go straight out to my nephew at Santa Paz and stay there till his next birthday.’ Mr Lavington signed to the butler to hand the terrapin to Mr Grisben who, as he took a second helping, addressed himself again to Rainer. ‘Jim’s in New York now, and going back the day after tomorrow in Olyphant’s private car. I’ll ask Olyphant to squeeze you in if you’ll go. And when you’ve been out there a week or two, in the saddle all day and sleeping nine hours a night, I suspect you won’t think much of the doctor who prescribed New York.’

  Faxon spoke up, he knew not why. ‘I was out there once: it’s a splendid life. I saw a fellow – oh, a really bad case – who’d been simply made over by it.’

  ‘It does sound jolly,’ Rainer laughed, a sudden eagerness in his tone.

  His uncle looked at him gently. ‘Perhaps Grisben’s right. It’s an opportunity —’

  Faxon glanced up with a start: the figure dimly perceived in the study was now more visibly and tangibly planted behind Mr Lavington’s chair.

  ‘That’s right, Frank: you see your uncle approves. And the trip out there with Olyphant isn’t a thing to be missed. So drop a few dozen dinners and be at the Grand Central the day after tomorrow at five.’

  Mr Grisben’s pleasant grey eye sought corroboration of his host, and Faxon, in a cold anguish of suspense, continued to watch him as he turned his glance on Mr Lavington. One could not look at Lavington without seeing the presence at his back, and it was clear that, the next minute, some change in Mr Grisben’s expression must give his watcher a clue.

  But Mr Grisben’s expression did not change: the gaze he fixed on his host remained unperturbed, and the clue he gave was the startling one of not seeming to see the other figure.

  Faxon’s first impulse was to look away, to look anywhere else, to resort again to the champagne glass the watchful butler had already brimmed; but some fatal attraction, at war in him with an overwhelming physical resistance, held his eyes upon the spot they feared.

  The figure was still standing, more distinctly, and therefore more resembling, at Mr Lavington’s back; and while the latter continued to gaze affectionately at his nephew, his counterpart, as before, fixed young Rainer with eyes of deadly menace.

  Faxon, with what felt like an actual wrench of the muscles, dragged his own eyes from the sight to scan the other countenances about the able; but not one revealed the least consciousness of what he saw, and a sense of mortal isolation sank upon him.

  ‘It’s worth considering, certainly —’ he heard Mr Lavington continue; and as Rainer’s face lit up, the face behind his uncle’s chair seemed to gather into its look all the fierce weariness of old unsatisfied hates. That was the thing that, as the minutes laboured by, Faxon was becoming most conscious of. The watcher behind the chair was no longer merely malevolent: he had grown suddenly, unutterably tired. His hatred seemed to well up out of the very depths of balked effort and thwarted hopes, and the fact made him more pitiable, and yet more dire.

  Faxon’s look reverted to Mr Lavington, as if to surprise in him a corresponding change. At first none was visible: his pinched smile was screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a whitewashed wall. Then the fixity of the smile became ominous: Faxon saw that its wearer was afraid to let it go. It was evident that Mr Lavington was unutterably tired, too, and the discovery sent a colder current through Faxon’s veins. Looking down at his untouched plate, he caught the soliciting twinkle of the champagne glass; but the sight of the wine turned him sick.

  ‘Well, we’ll go into the details presently,’ he heard Mr Lavington say, still on the question of his nephew’s future. ‘Let’s have a cigar first. No – not here, Peters.’ He turned his smile on Faxon. ‘When we’ve had coffee I want to show you my pictures.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, Uncle Jack – Mr Faxon wants to know if you’ve got a double?’

  ‘A double?’ Mr Lavington, still smiling, continued to address himself to his guest. ‘Not that I know of. Have you seen one, Mr Faxon?’

  Faxon thought: ‘My God, if I look up now they’ll both be looking at me!’ To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr Lavington’s glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain about his heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its gaze on Rainer.

  ‘Do you think you’ve seen my double, Mr Faxon?’

  Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his throat. ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘Ah! It’s possible I’ve a dozen. I believe I’m extremely usual-looking.’ Mr Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched Rainer.

  ‘It was ... a minute ... a confusion of memory ...’ Faxon heard himself stammer. Mr Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr Grisben suddenly leaned forward.

  ‘Lavington! What have we been thinking of? We haven’t drunk Frank’s health!’

  Mr Lavington reseated himself. ‘My dear boy! ... Peters, another bottle ...’ He turned to his nephew. ‘After such a sin of omission I don’t presume to propose the toast myself ... but Frank knows ... Go ahead, Grisben!’

  The boy shone on his uncle. ‘No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr Grisben won’t mind. Nobody but you – today!’

  The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr Lavington’s last, and Mr Lavington put out his small hand to raise it ... As he did so Faxon looked away.

  ‘Well, then – all the good I’ve wish
ed you in all the past years ... I put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and many ... and many, dear boy!’

  Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses. Automatically, he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence: ‘I won’t look up! I won’t ... I won’t ...’

  His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr Grisben’s genial ‘Hear! Hear!’ and Mr Balch’s hollow echo. He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his lips: ‘I won’t look up! I swear I won’t’ – and he looked.

  The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.

  IV

  In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy nodded sympathetically and drew back.

  At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. T should like to telephone to Weymore,’ he said with dry lips.

  ‘Sorry, sir, wires all down. We’ve been trying the last hour to get New York again for Mr Lavington.’

  Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But why into his – just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he had seen? What business was it of his, in God’s name? Any one of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but he, the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew – he alone had been singled out, as the victim of this dreadful initiation!

  Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs. Someone, no doubt, was coming to see how he was – to urge him, if he felt better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his door; yes, it was young Rainer’s step. Faxon looked down the passage, remembered the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get out of the house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominal air! What business was it of his, in God’s name?

  He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it saw the hall by which he had entered. It was empty, and on a long table he recognized his coat and cap. He got into his coat, unbolted the door, and plunged into the purifying night.

  The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow was falling, and resolutely he set his face for flight. The trees along the avenue marked his way as he hastened with long strides over the beaten snow. Gradually, while he walked, the tumult in his brain subsided. The impulse to fly still drove him forward, but he began to feel that he was flying from a terror of his own creating, and that the most urgent reason for escape was the need of hiding his state, of shunning other eyes till he should regain his balance.

  He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was not awaiting him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had joked with Rainer over Mrs Culme’s forgetfulness, to confess it had cost a pang. That was what his rootless life had brought him to: for lack of a personal stake in things his sensibility was at the mercy of such trifles ... Yes, that, and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.

  Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish, should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What could it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had it on his case? ... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a stranger – a stranger everywhere – because he had no personal life, no warm screen of private egotisms to shield him from exposure, that he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled him up with a shudder. No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that was strong and sound in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard himself as ill, disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of such warnings!

  He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The wind had risen and was sweeping the snow into his face. The cold had him in its grasp again, and he stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the test and go back? He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house. A single ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights, the flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and plunged out into the road ...

  He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed out the road to Northridge, and he began to walk in that direction. Once in the road he had the gale in his face, and the wet snow in his moustache and eyelashes instantly hardened to ice. The same ice seemed to be driving a million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, the vision of the warm room pursuing him.

  The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and sank into drifts, and the wind drove against him like a granite cliff. Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand had tightened an iron band about his body; then he started again, stiffening himself against the stealthy penetration of the cold. The snow continued to descend out of a pall of inscrutable darkness, and once or twice he paused, fearing he had missed the road to Northridge; but seeing no sign of a turn, he ploughed on.

  At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he halted and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first because it put his back to the wind, and then because, far down the road, it showed him the gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming – a sleigh that might, perhaps, give him a lift to the village! Fortified by the hope, he began to walk back towards the light. It came forward very slowly, with unaccountable zigzags and waverings; and even when he was within a few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh bells. Then it paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold. The thought made Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was stooping over a motionless figure huddled against the snow-bank. The lantern had dropped from its bearer’s hand, and Faxon, fearfully raising it, threw its, light into the face of Frank Rainer.

  ‘Rainer! What on earth are you doing her?’

  The boy smiled back through his pallor. ‘What are you, I’d like to know?’ he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch on Faxon’s arm, he added gaily: ‘Well, I’ve run you down!’

  Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad’s face was grey.

  ‘What madness —’ he began.

  ‘Yes, it is. What on earth did you do it for?’

  ‘I? Do what? ... Why I ... I was just taking a walk ... I often walk at night ...’

  Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. ‘On such nights? Then you hadn’t bolted?’

  ‘Bolted?’<
br />
  ‘Because I’d done something to offend you? My uncle thought you had.’

  Faxon grasped his arm. ‘Did your uncle send you after me?’

  ‘Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with you when you said you were ill. And when we found you’d gone we were frightened – and he was awfully upset – so I said I’d catch you ... You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘Ill? No. Never better.’ Faxon picked up the lantern. ‘Come; let’s go back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room.’

  ‘Yes; I hoped it was only that.’

  They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon questioned: ‘You’re not too done up?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s a lot easier with the wind behind us.’

  ‘All right. Don’t talk any more.’

  They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided them, more slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The fact of his companion’s stumbling against a drift gave Faxon a pretext for saying: ‘Take hold of my arm,’ and Rainer obeying, gasped out: ‘I’m blown!’

  ‘So am I. Who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘What a dance you led me! If it hadn’t been for one of the servants happening to see you —’

  ‘Yes; all right. And now, won’t you kindly shut up?’

  Rainer laughed and hung on him. ‘Oh, the cold doesn’t hurt me ...’

  For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety for the lad had been Faxon’s only thought. But as each labouring step carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was not distraught and deluded – he was the instrument singled out to warn and save; and here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back to his doom!

  The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But what could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of the cold, into the house and into his bed. After that he would act.