Jackson, about to light the gas, with a burning match in his hand, held the door open for the stranger to pass out, and without another word the cripple moved laboriously away. It was not until he had gone that it occurred to me that I had not asked nor been told his name.
“Has that gentleman ever called before, Jackson?”
“I think not, sir.”
But probably I should meet him again.
And now, my thoughts reverted to her. He was mad, of course: and his story was absurd. But as I walked home from the office, those eyes were before me, blazing with the passion which he had lit in them. What eyes they were in truth! How lovely, and how I loved them! And how easy, too, it was to imagine them dilating and engulfing one’s senses until he swooned!
I had not hoped to see her again that day, having spent part of the morning in “helping her to shop,” and expecting to escort her to the theatre on the evening following. So after a solitary dinner at a restaurant, I climbed up to my chambers to dream away the evening alone.
The story which I had heard a few hours before certainly had not in any way altered my feelings towards Mrs. Tierce. Indeed, I hardly thought of the story, except to pity the poor fellow who told it and to speculate upon his history. Who was he? Had he loved her and gone mad for love of her? And should I tell her of his visit? It might pain her by bringing up unpleasant memories; but on the other hand I should like to know something more of the cripple’s history.
But I was restless, and my rooms seemed more than ever lonely and unhomelike that evening; so about nine o’clock, I put on my hat and overcoat and went out into the street.
It was a cold night, damp and raw, with no sign of starlight or moonlight overhead, and a heavy, misty atmosphere through which the street lights shone blurred and twinkling.
Instinctively I turned westward, and, as a matter of course, set my face towards Grasmere Crescent, not with any intention of calling at the house, but with a lover’s longing to see it and to be near to her. I passed the house on the opposite side of the street. No. 19 had a large bow-window in the drawing room, on the first floor, and as I approached, the blind of the narrow side-window facing me being raised some few inches gave a glimpse of the brightly lighted, daintily furnished room, with which I was so familiar, within. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of her, but in the small segment of the room that was visible through the aperture, no figure was to be seen.
After passing on to the end of the street I made a circuit round some by-streets and so back to Grasmere Crescent. As I approached now from the north the house looked dark, save for a narrowest chink of light which outlined the edge of the bow-window. When I had passed I turned to look back at the window of which the blind was raised; and doing so, I saw a curious thing.
It was only instantaneous; but just for that instant I saw two figures standing, herself and one of the servants, whom I recognized. They were facing one another, each, it seemed, leaning slightly forward. But even as I looked, the servant suddenly threw up her hands and fell—fell straight backward, rigidly, as if in a fit. Mrs. Tierce started towards the falling girl, as if to catch her. The movement took her out of my range of vision, the projecting woodwork of the window intervening.
It all happened so suddenly that I stood for a moment bewildered and irresolute. Had I really seen it? It was more like some tableau on a stage, or the flash of a slide from a magic lantern, than a reality.
Recovering my senses, my first impulse was to cross the street and offer my services. But why? The girl had but slipped suddenly upon the polished floor, and doubtless they were laughing over it now. It would be an impertinence for me to thrust myself in with a confession of having been playing spy. So, after standing and gazing at the window for a few moments, during which I once saw Mrs. Tierce pass quickly across the room and back, I moved on to my rooms.
The next morning as I sat at breakfast, a note was brought to me.
“I am very sorry,” she wrote, “to interfere with your theatre party this evening, but a dreadful thing happened here last night. One of my servants—Mary, you know her—died very suddenly. I was talking to her, when she simply threw up her hands and fell down before me, dead. Regretting that I must ask you to excuse me, I am,
“Yours cordially, “EDITH TIERCE.”
I wished now that I had obeyed my first impulse on the preceding evenings and had rung at the door to volunteer my services. I would certainly go and see her immediately after breakfast.
Fortunately my theatre party included only two other persons besides Mrs. Tierce and myself, and I was on sufficiently intimate terms with John Bradstreet and his wife to have no fear of offending them. So I wrote Mrs. Bradstreet a short note explaining the situation briefly, enclosing the tickets and hoping she would use the box or not, as she saw fit. Then I drove at once to Grasmere Crescent.
In her quiet, self-possessed way Mrs. Tierce had already done all that was necessary, and I found that there was little excuse for thrusting my services upon her. Still I saw her frequently during the next two days, though never for any length of time and rarely to talk of things not associated immediately with the melancholy ceremony that was impending. The dead girl seemed to have had no family connections, and the funeral was conducted under Mrs. Tierce’s directions. I accompanied her to the church and cemetery, and left her at her own door afterwards, accepting an invitation to call again that evening.
I have spoken before of the curious self-possession, an imperturbable self-reliance, which Mrs. Tierce possessed and which sat very becomingly upon her delicate grave face. Never had this quality in her seemed more admirably perfect to me than during those days when the shadow of death hung over her home.
On the evening of the day of the funeral, she was even more reposeful than usual, in a dreamy mood in which I had seen her before more than once, and in which she seemed hardly conscious of—or rather inattentive to—what passed around her. This mood of hers the cripple had recalled to me when describing the scene in the Oxford walk.
It may have been that the events and scenes of the last few days, with all their appeals to the emotions, had predisposed us both to tenderness. Certainly from the time of my entry when our greeting had been only a hand-clasp, with hardly an audible word on either side, we had spoken constrainedly, in undertones and on personal topics. Though more than once I strove desperately to be matter-of-fact, my voice in spite of myself would sink, and wherever the conversation started from, it ended in herself.
At last some chance word of hers made me broach a subject which I had never approached before, and which she rarely alluded to—her late husband. Before I was conscious of what I was doing, I had said:
“It is not, by any means, I know, your first contact with death. You have told me very little of Mr. Tierce.”
“No,” she said dreamily, “there is little to tell. We were only married a few weeks.”
And then:
“And is it not possible that you might marry again? Could you not?” and I crossed from my chair to take a seat on the sofa by her side, “could you not—is there any hope for me?”
Instead of replying, she sat silent and inattentive, her large swimming eyes looking far into either the past or the future—I wondered which.
“Tell me,” I urged, laying my hand on one of hers, as it rested in her lap, “tell me, is there any hope?”
She did not move, did not answer me. Again I implored her, and at last she spoke, but with seeming irrelevance.
“Did you ever hear of the Court of Love?” she asked, “the court over which the Countess Ermengarde presided in the tenth or eleventh century?”
No, I knew nothing of the Court of Love or the Countess Ermengarde, though I have since looked them up.
“The Court decided, and the decision was affirmed by a later Court composed of half the queens and duchesses of Europe, that true love could not exist between married persons.”
“But you do not believe it? That was nice centuries
ago; and how should queens and duchesses know anything of love?”
“I do not know whether I believe it or not,” she murmured, and turned her head as it lay on the cushions of the sofa, to look at me with eyes that still seemed strangely dreamy and far away.
“But you do know,” I urged impulsively, leaning forward till my face was dangerously close to hers. “You know that you do not believe it. You know that I should always love you—that I must always love you. And if I may love you as my wife—”
She smiled faintly, charmingly, but did not answer me.
“My darling,” I whispered, “say something! Am I to be utterly happy?”
And still she did not answer; but leaned back with the faint half-smile on her lips, and her great inscrutable eyes looking into and through mine. Then in the silence and suspense, the cripple’s story came into my mind. No wonder that he should believe that he had been fascinated in some mysterious way—spell-bound, benumbed—by those eyes! No wonder! And still I looked into them; and still they looked through mine. I forgot the nearness of her lips; forgot that I held her hand. I thought only of, saw only, those eyes. And still I thought only of the cripple and vaguely pitied him.
But somehow—when it began I knew not—I found that the expression of the eyes had changed. They were no longer dreamy and far away, but intensely earnest, with a passion in them that was almost hunger.
“Yes,” I thought to myself (and I must have smiled in thinking it), “this is what he described. No wonder that they seemed to him to flame. They are not looking at my eyes now, but through, into my brain, into me. My eyes are no more than two pieces of glass in the path of her vision.” And I felt a curious, half-gratified recognition of the accuracy of the other’s description. And still the eyes seemed to expand until they were many times larger than my own; till I could see nothing but them.
Have you ever, in a half-darkened room, set your face close against a mirror and looked into your own eyes and seen what terrible things they are; how the view of everything else is shut out and all your sense is drawn into the pupils confronting you? So I felt my whole being concentrating itself in—merging itself into—drowning in—her eyes. A strange feeling of intoxication possessed me; of ecstacy. I could have laughed aloud, but that it seemed as if to do it I would somehow have to summon my faculties from too far away.
At what point this strange calmness gave way to conscious fear, I do not know. I saw the pupils of her eyes expanding and contracting, as if with the regular beats of a passionate pulse behind them. I saw, or rather I was aware, that the colour flushed into her cheeks and died again, that her breath, which was warm on my face, came short and gasping. Her lips closed and parted, moist and glistening, suggesting to me somehow the craving of some animal in the presence of food which it could not reach. Her nostrils dilated, quivering, and her whole being strained with a passion which seemed carnivorous.
“It was as if she preyed upon my very life,” he had said, and I understood him now. But the memory of the cripple was fading from me. I was conscious only of myself and of her; of the terror of her fierce hunger and my own helplessness. The power of motion was gone from me; even volition seemed slipping away. The burning of her eyes was in my brain which was as if laid open before her; as a hollow dish set open to the scorching sun. I was utterly at her mercy, without power of resistance; and as her breath grew yet more rapid and more heavy, I knew that she was in some way inhaling my very life.
Suddenly a flash of fear passed across her face—a spasm of agonised disappointment. For a moment it was as if she would, in one long, indrawn breath, draw the last of my strength from me; and then a man’s voice sounded in my ear.
“I hope I am in time!”
She had fallen reclining against the cushions of the sofa. I looked up dazedly, and the cripple stood in the centre of the room, his hat in his hand.
“You had better let me take you away,” he said, and I heard it half consciously. Turning to look at her, I saw her lie panting and exhausted. I cannot tell the horror of her appearance. Her eyes still sought mine hungrily as before. Her hands, lying in her lap, fumbled each other, her fingers knotting and intertwining. Her lips moved, and all her body quivered with passion. It was a dreadful fancy, but I could liken her to nothing but some bloodsucking thing; some human leech or vampire, torn from its prey, quivering dumbly with its unsated appetite.
At the time I only half understood what passed around me. I knew that the danger was over and what escape lay before me. I saw the cripple waiting for me to rise and was conscious of the horror with which she inspired me. But I was bewildered. My brain seemed numb, and when I endeavoured to stand up my limbs refused their office. Seeing my powerlessness the cripple moved forward and with his healthy arm assisted me. It was with difficulty I stood, for there was no sensation in my feet or legs and it was only by leaning on my companion that I made my way laboriously to the door.
No word had been spoken beyond the two sentences which the cripple had uttered. Reaching the door of the room I turned to look at her once more, supporting myself against the door-post. She had not moved. Under the influence of the passion that was upon her she evidently had no thought or emotion. There was no sign of shame or confusion on her face; nothing but the blind craving for the prey that was being taken from her. Even there, across the full width of the room, her eyes sought mine with the same despairing longing. But she only made me shudder now. The cripple still supporting me, we passed together from the house.
Of the remainder of that evening my memory is confused and faint. I know that I was helping to my chambers and that there, with the assistance of the cripple and some third person, though who, or whence he joined us, I know not, I was put to bed. That night was one long, half-waking swoon, and far into the next afternoon I lay motionless upon my back without speaking or wishing to speak, save only to tell the woman who took care of my rooms that I needed no help or food. As the twilight fell the same good woman came again, and yet again late at night. But I was scarcely conscious, and had no wishes. Even speech was an effort.
For seven days, all through the Christmas holidays, I lay in this state, taking little nourishment; hardly speaking, hardly thinking clearly. At last, on the day after Christmas, I found courage and strength to attack the mail which had been accumulating on my sick-room table. I had expected to find her handwriting on one at least of the envelopes. In this I was disappointed. But some instinct led me to open first one envelope the address of which was written in a hand that was strange to me. It contained nothing but a newspaper clipping:
“A sad accident occurred last night at 19 Grasmere Crescent, W. The house was inhabited by Mrs. Walter Tierce, the widow of the late Walter Tierce, Esq. Last evening Mrs. Tierce, who was twenty-six years of age, retired to rest as usual. This morning she failed to answer the knock of the servant at the door, and on the maid entering the room she noticed a strong and peculiar odour. She was frightened and went out and fetched another servant. The two entered the room and found Mrs. Tierce dead, and an overturned bottle of chloroform by the pillow. It was evidently an accident, and no inquest will be held. A curious coincidence in connection with the sad affair is that this is the second death in the same house within a week. On Monday last, a maid in the service of Mrs. Tierce died suddenly of heart disease. Her funeral occurred yesterday afternoon, when Mrs. Tierce attended it.”
Attached to this clipping with a pin was the date line of the evening newspaper from which it was taken—“Friday, December 19th.” That was the day after that terrible evening, and a week ago now. The funeral must have already taken place.
Though, as I have said, the handwriting on the envelope was unfamiliar to me, I had my conjecture as to whom the message was from, and after keeping the envelope for all these years, the clue has come which shows that the conjecture was correct. Six weeks ago I received information that I had been appointed executor of the estate of the late James Livingston, of Hereford. James Livingston
? The name was unknown to me. Thinking that there might be some mistake, I called at the solicitor’s office from which the intimation came. No, there was no mistake, the solicitor informed me; he had drawn up the will, and Mr. Livingston had given him special instructions how to communicate with me.
“And you say you never knew him at all?” he asked musingly, “that is certainly curious for he seemed to know you. But you could not well have forgotten him. He was a cripple—almost entire paralysed in his right side.”
R. Murray Gilchrist: The Lover’s Ordeal (1905)
Robert Murray Gilchrist (1867–1917) is an anomaly. He wrote several novels about rural life in the Peakland District of Derbyshire, but he is remembered today for his decadent fiction; including his contributions to Aubrey Beardsley’s The Yellow Book—which published his vampire tale “The Crimson Weaver” in July of 1895.
His first collection, The Stone Dragon and Other Tragic Romances (London: Methuen, 1894) is treasured for its contents and is extremely rare. Charon Press published a facsimile edition of The Stone Dragon in 1998, while Ash Tree Press collected all of Gilchrist’s horror stories in a limited edition titled The Basilisk: And Other Tales of Dread in 2003.
“The Lover’s Ordeal” first appeared in The London Magazine (June 1905), which often carried supernatural stories by the likes of Richard Marsh and H. G. Wells.
Mary Padley stood near the leaden statue of Diana on the terrace at Calton Dovecote, gazing towards the stone-arched gate that barred the avenues of limes—sweet scented, with their newly opened bloom—from the dusty high-road.
She wore white—a mantua of thin silk, a stiff petticoat spread over a great hoop, and a quaint stomacher, lilac in colour, and embroidered with silver beads.
Her hair was cushioned and powdered, Madam Padley, her grandmother and guardian, insisting that, since she would probably soon change her estate, she must cease playing the hoyden, and devote herself to a careful study of such fashions as leaked from town to the Peak Country.
Vintage Vampire Stories Page 28