It was a dreary day during which we waited for the New York physician; one of those days when sunlight seems drearier than mist —a monotonous and hostile glare. I tried reading Lithway's books, but the mere fact that they were his got on my nerves. I decided to go to my room and throw myself on the resources of my own luggage. There would be something there to read, I knew. I closed the library door quietly and went up-stairs. Outside my own door I stopped and looked—involuntarily, with no conscious curiosity—up to the third-story hall. There, in the dim corridor, leaning over the balustrade in a thin shaft of sunlight that struck up from the big window on the landing, stood Mrs. Lithway, with a folded paper in her hand, looking down at me. I did not wish to raise my voice—Lithway, I thought, might be sleeping—so did not speak to her. I don't think, in any case, I should have wanted to speak to her. The look in her eyes was distinctly unpleasant—the kind of look people don't usually face you with. I remember wondering, as our surprised glances met, why the deuce she should hate, me like that—how the deuce a nice young thing could hate any one like that. It must be personal to me, I thought—no nice young thing would envisage the world at large with such venom. I turned away; and as I turned, I saw her, out of the tail of my eye, walk, with her peculiar lightness of step, along the upper corridor to the trunk-loft. She had the air of being caught, of not having wished to be seen. I opened my bedroom door immediately, but as I opened it I heard a sound behind me. Margaret Lithway stood on the threshold of her husband's room, with an empty bottle.
"Would you mind taking the car into the village and getting this filled again?" she asked. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath them; she had evidently not slept, the night before.
I flatter myself that I did not betray to her in any way my perturbation. Indeed, the event had fallen on a mind so ripe for solutions that, in the very instant of my facing her, I realized that what I had just seen above-stairs (and seen by mistake, I can assure you; she had fled from me) was Lithway's old ghost—no less. I took the bottle, read the label, and assured Mrs. Lithway that I would go at once. Mrs. Lithway was wrapped in a darkish house-gown of some sort. The lady in the upper hall had been in white, with a blue sash. ... I was very glad when I saw Mrs. Lithway go into her husband's room and shut the door. I was having hard work to keep my expression where it belonged. For five minutes I stood in the hall; five minutes of unbroken stillness. Then I went to the garage, ordered out the car, and ran into the village, where I presented the bottle to the apothecary. He filled it immediately. As I re-entered the house, the great hall clock struck; it was half-past eleven. I sent the stuff—lime-water, I believe—up to Mrs. Lithway by a servant, went into my room, and locked the door.
I cannot say that I solved the whole enigma of Braythe in the hour before luncheon; but I faced for the first time the seriousness of a situation that had always seemed to me, save for Lithway's curious reactions upon it, more than half fantastic, if not imaginary. I had seen, actually seen, Lithway's ghost. I had not been meant to see her; and I was inclined to regret the sudden impulse that had led me to leave Lithway's library and go to my own room. The identity of the "ghost" with Mrs. Lithway was appalling to me—the more so, that there could have been no mistake about the nature of the personality that had reluctantly presented itself to my vision. I found myself saying: "Could that look in her eyes be the cross light on the stairs?" and then suddenly remembered that I was only echoing the Lithway of years ago. It was incredible that any man should have liked the creature I had seen; and I could account for Lithway's long and sentimental relation with the apparition only by supposing that he had never seen her, as I had, quite off her guard. But if, according to his hint of the night before, he had come to confound the ghost with the real woman—what sort of marriage was that? I asked myself. The ghost was a bad lot, straight through. It brought me into the realm of pure horror. The event explained—oh, I raised my hands to wave away the throng of things it explained! Indeed, until I could talk once more with Lithway, I didn't want to face them; I didn't want
to see clear. I had a horrid sense of being left alone with the phantoms that infested the house: alone, with a helpless, bedridden friend to protect. Mrs. Lithway didn't need protection—that was clearer than anything else. Mrs. Lithway was safe.
Before night, the consultation had been held, and it was decided that Lithway should be rushed straight to town for an operation. The pain was not absolutely constant; he had tranquil moments; but the symptoms were alarming enough to make them afraid of even a brief delay. We were to take him up the next morning. To all my offers of help, Mrs. Lithway gave a smiling refusal. She could manage perfectly, she said. I am bound to say that she did manage perfectly, thinking of everything, never losing her head, unfailingly adequate, though the shadows under her eyes seemed to grow darker hour by hour. A nurse had come down from town, but I could hardly see what tasks Mrs. Lithway left to the nurse. I did my best, out of loyalty to the loyal Lithway, to subdue my aversion to his wife. I hoped that my aversion was quite unreasonable and that, safe in Europe, I should feel it so. I ventured to say, after dinner, that I hoped she would try to get some sleep.
"Oh, yes, I shall!" She smiled. "There will be a great deal to do to-morrow; and the day after, when they operate, will be a strain. There's nothing harder than waiting outside. I know." Her eyes filled, but she went on very calmly. "I am so grateful to you for being here and for going up with us. I have no people of my own, you know, to call on. You have been the greatest comfort." She gave me a cool hand, said "good night," and left me.
I do not know whether or not Mrs. Lithway slept, but I certainly did not, save in fitful dozes. I was troubled about Lithway: I thought him in very bad shape for an operation; and I had, besides, nameless forebodings of every sort. It was a comfort, the next morning, to hear him, through an open door, giving practical suggestions to his wife and the nurse about packing his things. I went in to see him before we started off. The doctor was down-stairs with Mrs. Lithway.
"Sorry to let you in for this, my boy. But you are a great help." "Mrs. Lithway is wonderful," I said. "I congratulate you." His somber eyes held me. "Ah, you will never know how wonderful —never!" He said it with a kind of brooding triumph, which, at the moment, I did not wholly understand. Now, long afterwards, I think I do.
I left him, and crossed the corridor to my own room. A slight rustle made me turn. Mrs. Lithway stood in the upper hall, looking down at me—the same creature, to every detail of dress, even to the folded paper in her hand, that I had seen the previous morning. This time I braced myself to face the ghost, to examine her with a passionate keenness. I hoped to find her a less appalling creature. But, at once, Mrs. Lithway leaned over the rail and spoke to me—a little sharply, I remember.
"Would you please telephone to the garage and say that the doctor thinks we ought to start ten minutes earlier than we had planned? I shall be down directly."
The hand that held the paper was by this time hidden in the folds of her skirt. She turned and sped lightly along the corridor to the trunk-loft. Save for the voice, it was a precise repetition of what had happened the day before.
"Certainly," I said; but I did not turn away until she had disappeared into the trunk-loft. I went to the telephone and gave the message; it took only a few seconds. Then I went to my own room, leaving the door open so that I commanded the hall. In a few minutes Mrs. Lithway came down the stairs from the third story. "Did you telephone?" she asked accusingly, as she caught my eye. I bowed. She passed on into Lithway's room. There was no paper in her hand. I knew that this time there had been no ghost.
Well. . . . Lithway, as every one knows, died under the ether. His heart suddenly and unaccountably went back on him. He left no will; and, as he had no relations except the cousin whom he had married, everything went to her. I had once, before his second marriage, seen a will of Lithway's myself; but I didn't care to go into court with that information, especially as in that will he had left me his library.
I should have liked, for old sake's sake, to have Lithway's library. His widow sold it, and it is by now dispersed about the land. She told me, after the funeral, that she should go on at Braythe, that she never wanted to leave it; but, for whatever reason, she did, after a few years, sell the place suddenly and go to Europe. I have never happened to see her since she sold it, and I did not know the people she sold it to. The house was burned many years ago, I believe, and an elaborate
golf-course now covers the place where it stood. I have not been to Bray the since poor Lithway was buried.
I took the hunting-trip that Lithway had been so violently and inexplicably opposed to. I think I was rather a fool to do it, for I ought to have realized, after Lithway's death, the secret of the house, its absolutely unique specialty. But such is the peacock heart of man that I still, for myself, trusted in "common sense"—in my personal immunity, at least, from every supernatural law. Indeed, it was not until I had actually encountered my savage, and got the wound I bear the scar of, that I gave entire credence to Lithway's tragedy. I put some time into recovering from the effect of that midnight skirmish in the jungle, and during my recovery I had full opportunity to pity Lithway.
It became quite clear to me that the presences at Braythe concerned themselves only with major dooms. If Lithway's ghost had been his wife, his wife must have been a bad lot. I am as certain as I can be of anything that he was exceedingly unhappy with her. It was a thousand pities that, for so many years, he had misunderstood the vision; that he had permitted himself—for that was what it amounted to—to fall in love with her in advance. She was, quite literally, his "fate." Of course, by this time, I feel sure that he couldn't have escaped her. I don't believe the house went in for kindly warnings; I think it merely, with the utmost insolence, foretold the inevitable and dared you to escape it. If I hadn't gone out for big game in Africa, I am quite sure that my nigger would have got at me somewhere else—even if he had to be a cannibal out of a circus running amuck down Broadway. That was the trick of the house: the worst thing that was going to happen to you leered at you authentically over that staircase. I have never understood why I saw Lithway's apparition; but I can bear witness to the fact that she was furious at my having seen her—as furious as Mrs. Lithway was, the next day, if it comes to that. It was a mistake. My step may have sounded like Lithway's. Who knows? At least it should be clear what Lithway meant when he said that he didn't always know whether he saw her or not. The two were pin for pin alike. The apparition, of course, had, from the beginning, worn the dress that Mrs. Lithway was to wear on the day that Lithway was taken to the hospital. I have never liked to penetrate further into the Lithways' intimate history. I am quite sure that the folded paper was the old will, but I have always endeavored, in my own mind, not to implicate Margaret Lithway more than that. Of course, there could never have been any question of implicating her before the public.
I never had a chance, after my own accident, to consult Wender. I stuck to Europe unbrokenly for many years, as he stuck to America. Both Wender and I, I fancy, were chary of writing what might have been written. Some day, I thought, we would meet and have the whole thing out; but that day never came. Suddenly, one autumn, I had news of his death. He was a member of a summer expedition in Utah and northern Arizona—I think I mentioned that he had gone in for American ethnology. There are, as every one knows, rich finds in our western States for any one who will dig long enough; and they were hoping to get aboriginal skulls and mummies. All this his sister referred to when she wrote me the particulars of his death. She dwelt with forgivable bitterness on the fact of Wender's having been told beforehand that the particular section he was assigned to was free from rattlesnakes: "Perhaps you know," she wrote, "that my brother had had, since childhood, a morbid horror of reptiles." I did know it—Lithway had told me. Wender's death from the bite of a rattlesnake was perhaps the most ironic of the three adventures; for Wender was the one of us who put most faith in the scenes produced on the stage of Braythe. I never heard Wender's theory; but I fancy he realized, as Lithway and I did not, that since the "ghosts" we saw were not of the past they must be of the future—a most logical step, which I am surprised none of us should have taken until after the event.
Wender's catastrophe killed in me much of my love of wandering. At least, it drove me to Harry Medway; and Harry Medway did the rest. I am not afraid of another warrior's cutting at me with his assegai; but I do not like to be too far from specialists. I have already been warned that I may sometime go blind; and I know that other complications may be expected. Pathology and surgery are sealed books to me; but I still hold so far to logic that I fully expect to die some time as an indirect result of that wound. The scar reminds me daily that its last word has not been said.
I am a fairly old man—the older that I no longer wander, and that I cling so weakly to the great capitals which hold the great physicians. The only thing that I was ever good at I can no longer do. Curiosity has died in me, for the most.part; one or two such mighty curiosities have been, you see, already so terribly appeased. But I think I would rise from my death-bed, and wipe away with my own hand the mortal sweat from my face, for the chance of learning what it was that drove Mrs. Lithway, in midwinter, from Braythe. If I could once know what she saw on the staircase, I think I should ask no more respite. The scar might fulfill its mission.
From The Beast with Five Fingers, by William Fryer Harvey, reprinted by permission of £. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York, and J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., of Canada and England.
August Heat
By WILLIAM FRYER HARVEY
Phenistone Road, Clapham August 20th, 190—
I HAVE HAD WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE THE MOST REMARKABLE DAY IN MY
life, and while the events are still fresh in my mind, I wish to put them down on paper as clearly as possible.
Let me say at the outset that my name is James Clarence Withencroft.
I am forty years old, in perfect health, never having known a day's illness.
By profession I am an artist, not a very successful one, but I earn enough money by my black-and-white work to satisfy my necessary wants.
My only near relative, a sister, died five years ago, so that I am independent.
I breakfasted this morning at nine, and after glancing through the morning paper I lighted my pipe and proceeded to let my mind wander in the hope that I might chance upon some subject for my pencil.
The room, though door and windows were open, was oppressively hot, and I had just made up my mind that the coolest and most comfortable place in the neighbourhood would be the deep end of the public swimming bath, when the idea came.
I began to draw. So intent was I on my work that I left my lunch untouched, only stopping work when the clock of St. Jude's struck four.
The final result, for a hurried sketch, was, I felt sure, the best thing I had done.
It showed a criminal in the dock immediately after the judge had pronounced sentence. The man was fat—enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin; it creased his huge, stumpy neck. He was clean shaven (perhaps I should say a few days before he must have been clean shaven) and almost bald. He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers clasping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of honor as of utter, absolute collapse.
There seemed nothing in the man strong enough to sustain that mountain of flesh.
I rolled up the sketch, and without quite knowing why, placed it in my pocket. Then with the rare sense of happiness which the knowledge of a good thing well done gives, I left the house.
I believe that I set out with the idea of calling upon Trenton, for I remember walking along Lytton Street and turning to the right along Gilchrist Road at the bottom of the hill where the men were at work on the new tram lines.
From there onwards I have only the vaguest recollection of where I went. The one thing of which I was fully conscious was the awful heat, that cam
e up from the dusty asphalt pavement as an almost palpable wave. I longed for the thunder promised by the great banks of copper-coloured cloud that hung low over- the western sky.
I must have walked five or six miles, when a small boy roused me from my reverie by asking the time.
It was twenty minutes to seven.
When he left me I began to take stock of my bearings. I found myself standing before a gate that led into a yard bordered by a strip of thirsty earth, where there were flowers, purple stock and scarlet geranium. Above the entrance was a board with the inscription—
CHS. ATKINSON MONUMENTAL MASON WORKER IN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN MARBLES
From the yard itself came a cheery whistle, the noise of hammer blows, and the cold sound of steel meeting stone.
A sudden impulse made me enter.
A man was sitting with his back towards me, busy at work on a slab of curiously veined marble. He turned round as he heard my steps and I stopped short.
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