“I have no expectations, not even any anticipations,” she said. “We may find keepsakes of some kind; there cannot be love-letters, for they scarcely separated a day after they met, or an hour after they married. There may be nothing in the coffin. But I am convinced that whatever it does or does not contain, David's love for Marian is bound up with the closure of that coffin. I believe that if it is opened he will be released from his passion of grief and be free to love me.
“You mean practically to resort to an incantation, a sort of witchcraft. The notion is altogether unworthy of you, especially while so natural a device as travel remains untried.”
“You do not understand,” she said, “that I feel compelled to do something.”
“Is not going for a cruise doing something?” he asked.
“Practically doing nothing,” she replied. “Just being with David and watching for the change that never comes. You don't know how that makes me feel forced to take some action.”
“I do not know,” he said, “because you have not told me.”
“I cannot tell you,” she said, “because I cannot find any words to express what I feel. I could not convey it to you, the loneliness that overwhelms me when I am alone with David. It is worse than being alone; I cannot imagine feeling so lonely lost in a wilderness, solitary in the desert, adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Being with David, as he is, makes me feel — ” (her voice sank to a whisper and her face grew pale, her lips gray) “oh, it makes me feel as if I were worse than with nobody. It makes me feel as if I were with nothing, with nothing at all.”
“I sympathize with you deeply,” said Vargas. “But all you say only deepens my conviction that your one road to safety lies in striving to overcome these feelings; your best hope is change of scene and travel. Above all let that grave alone.”
“My determination is irrevocably taken,” she repeated.
“Mrs. Llewellyn,” Vargas asked, “how, in your belief, did the writing you saw upon the slate come there?”
“I have no conception at all as to how it came there,” she replied. “None at all?” he probed.
“None definitely,” she said. “Vaguely I suppose I conceive it came there by the power of some consciousness and will beyond our ken.”
“Do you mean,” he queried, “by the intervention of a ghost, or spirit or some such disembodied entity?”
“Perhaps,” she admitted, “but I have not thought it out at all.”
“Granted a spirit,” he suggested, “might it not be a malignant sprite, an imp bent on doing you harm, upon entrapping you to your destruction?”
“I don't credit such an idea for a moment,” she said. “The message has given me hope. Your innuendoes seek to rob me of my hope.”
“I seek to save you,” Vargas said, “to dislodge you from your fortalice of resolve.”
“For the third time,” she said, “I tell you that my determination is irrevocably taken.” Vargas awkwardly stood up. He clung to the back of a chair and gazed at her steadily. His face, from a far-off solemn look of resigned desperation gradually took on an expression of prophetic resolve.
“Pardon me,” he said, “if I must shock you. I wish to put to you a question.”
“Put it,” she said coldly.
“Mrs. Llewellyn,” the clairvoyant asked in a deep, slow voice. “Have you kept your marriage vows?”
“Sir,” she said angrily, rising. “You are insulting me.”
“Not a particle,” he persisted. “You have not answered my question.”
“To answer it is superfluous,” she said, facing him in trembling wrath. “Of course I have kept them. You know how utterly I love my husband.”
“You regard your vows as sacred?” he asked relentlessly. “Of course,” she said wearily.
“Why then,” he demanded, “do you attach less sanctity to your verbal compact with your husband? Your duty as a wife is to keep one compact as well as the other. Keep both. Do not be recalcitrant against the terms of your agreement. Endure his indifference and strive patiently to win his love. It is your duty, as much as it is your duty to keep your marriage vows.”
“You assume a role,” she said, “very unsuitable for you. Preaching misfits you, and it has no effect on me. I know and feel all this. But there is the plain meaning of that message. I shall open that grave.”
“I have done all I can,” he said dispiritedly. “I cannot dissuade you.”
“You cannot,” she said.
“How then can I serve you?” he asked. “I have not yet discovered to what I owe the honor of this second visit. Why are you here?”
“I wish you to be present at the opening of the coffin,” she said.
“Are you sure,” he demanded, “that that would not he most unseemly? The first Mrs. Llewellyn, I believe, left no near relatives. But would not even her cousins resent such an intrusion as my presence there? Would not your husband still more resent it? Would it not be in very bad taste?”
“I do not make requests,” she said, “that are in bad taste. As for my husband, he resents and will resent nothing, as he approves and will approve of nothing. My brother will be there and he will not find anything unseemly in your presence.”
“Nevertheless I hesitate to agree,” said Vargas.
“You have expressed,” said she, “a very deep regard for me, will you not do this since I ask it?”
“I will,” he said with an effort.
“Then whenever I write you and send a carriage for you, you will be there at the time named?”
“I promise,” he said.
Sometime before the appointed hour, at that spot where a driveway approached nearest to the Llewellyn monument, Vargas painfully emerged from a closed carriage, the blue shades of which were drawn down. He spoke to some one inside and shut the door. He had taken but two or three hobbling steps, when another carriage closely followed his stopped where his had stopped. Its shades were also drawn down. When its door opened a well dressed man got out. As Vargas had done he spoke to some one inside and closed the door. When he turned Vargas saw a man of usual, very conventional appearance, the sort of man visible by scores in fashionable clubs. His build and carriage were those of a man naturally jaunty in his movements. His well- fleshed, healthy face, smooth shaven except for a thick brown mustache, was such a face as lends itself naturally to expressions of good fellowship and joviality. His brown eyes were prone to merriment. But there was no sparkle in them, no geniality in his air, no springiness in his movements. He wore his brown derby a trifle, the merest trifle, to one side, but his expression was careworn, he looked haggard. He had the air of a man used to having his own way, but he held himself now without any elasticity. He looked the deformed clairvoyant up and down with one quick glance, fixed him with a direct gaze as he approached and greeted him with an engaging air of easy politeness, neither stiff nor familiar.
“My name is Palgrave,” he said, “I presume you are Mr. Vargas.”
“The same,” said the clairvoyant, with not a little constraint.
“Pleased to meet you,” said the other holding out his hand and diminishing Vargas' embarrassment by the heartiness of his handshake. “Glad to have a chance for a talk with you. My sister has told me of her visits to you.”
Vargas controlled his expression, but shot one lightning glance at the other's face, reading there instantly how much Mrs. Llewellyn had told her brother and how much she had not told him.
There was something very taking about Mr. Palgrave's manner, which put Vargas completely at his ease. It was more than conciliatory, it was almost friendly, almost sympathetic. It not so much expressed readiness to admit to a confidential understanding, as gave the impression of continuing a well-established natural attitude of entire trust and complete comprehension. It had an unmistakable tinge, as unexpected as gratifying, of level esteem and unspoken gratitude.
There was a rustic seat by the path and by a common impulse both moved toward it. At the club-man's court
eous gesture, the cripple, with his unavoidable wrenching jolt, lowered himself painfully to the level of the bench. Mr. Palgrave seated himself beside him, crossed his knees and half turned toward him. He rested his left elbow on the back of the bench. His other hand held his cane, which he tapped against the side of his foot. The waiting carriages, one behind the other, were under a big elm some distance off; their drivers lay on the grass beside them. No one else was in sight except where, rather farther off in another direction, six laborers, their coats off, sat with a superintendent near them, in the shade of a Norway maple, near the Llewellyn monument; which dominated the neighborhood from its low, broad knoll.
The brief silence Mr. Palgrave broke.
“If you will pardon my saying it, you don't look at all like my idea of a clairvoyant.” Vargas smiled a wan smile. The tone of the words was totally disarming.
“I don't feel like my idea of a clairvoyant,” he said, “I am usually clear-sighted in any matter I take up; usually so clear-sighted in respect to any personality that my advice, as it often is, seems to my clients a mere echo of their own thoughts, a mere confirmation of their own judgments, a mere additional reason for what they would have done anyhow. I am used to touching unerringly the strongest springs of action. So far I have utterly failed to gain that clue to Mrs. Llewellyn's character necessary to make my advice acceptable.”
“In every other respect you seem to have been as clear-sighted as possible,” Mr. Palgrave told him. “No advice could have been better nor more judiciously urged, nor more entirely disinterested.”
“Rather utterly interested,” said Vargas.
“In an altogether different sense,” said the other. “She told me. Until I saw you I was astonished that she had not resented it.”
“She did resent it, and of course,” said the cripple.
“Not as she would from any other man,” said Mr. Palgrave. “There are some things — ” Vargas began. His voice thinned out and he broke off.
“Yes, I understand,” said her brother, “and I want to say that I feel under much obligation to you for the way you behaved and for the manliness and the straightforwardness of your whole attitude.”
“I am greatly complimented,” Vargas replied.
“You deserve complimenting,” said Mr. Palgrave. “You acted admirably. Your consideration, I might say your gentleness shows that you really have her best interests at heart.”
“I truly have,” said Vargas fervently, “and I am more disturbed in mind than I can express.”
“That must be a great deal,” said the clubman, a momentary gleam of his usual self, fading instantly from his eyes. “I certainly cannot express how much I am upset. I hate worry or anxiety and always put such troubles away and forget them. I can't forget this. I have idolized my sister since we were babies. I have hardly slept since she talked to me. She won't hear of a doctor. She don't admit that there could be any pretext for her consulting a doctor, and I can't talk to any one about her. I can talk to you. You seem a very sensible man. I should like to hear your opinion of her condition. Do you think her mind is unsettled?”
“Not as bad as that,” Vargas told him.
“This grave-opening idea seems to me out and out lunacy,” said the other. “Not as bad as that,” Vargas repeated. “It shows a trend of thought which may develop into something worse; but in itself it is only a foolish whim. The worst of it is that it produces a situation of great delicacy, and high tension which may have almost any sort of bad result.”
“I can't imagine,” said Palgrave, “any rational or half rational basis for her whim. I can't conceive what she thinks she will accomplish by opening that coffin or why she wants it opened. I was at Marian's funeral and the two coffins made a precious lot of talk, I can tell you. I assumed that Llewellyn had some wild, sentimental notion of the second coffin waiting there for him. Constance declares it was not empty, but she won't say what she expects to find in it and I believe she don't say because she has no idea at all.”
“You are right,” said the clairvoyant, “she hasn't.”
“Well,” said the other, “what doyou think she will find in it?”
“I have no opinions whatever,” said Vargas, “as to whether it is empty or not or as to what may be in it. I have no basis of conjecture. But whether empty or not or whatever may be in it, I dread the effect on her. She is sure to be baffled in her hopes. Her present state of mind is a sort of reawakening in a civilized, educated, cultured woman of the primitive, childish, savage faith in sorcery, almost in rudimentary fetishism. She would not acknowledge it, but her attitude is very like that of a fetish-worshipper. Her mind does not reason. She is possessed of a blind, vague feeling that her welfare is implicated with whatever is in that coffin, and a compelling hope in the efficiency of the mere act of opening it, as a sort of magic rite. She is buoyed up with uncertainty. Whether she finds something or nothing she will be brought face to face with final unmistakable disappointment. I dread the moment of that realization.”
“I felt something like that,” said her brother. “Anyhow I brought a doctor with me, but she must not suspect that as long as we don't need him.”
“That is why your carriage has the shades down,” Vargas hazarded.
“Is that the reason yours has its shades down?” the other inquired.
“That is it,” Vargas confessed. “I brought a doctor too.”
“Two doctors,” commented Palgrave. “Like a French duel. Hope it will end as harmlessly as the average French duel.”
“That is almost too much to hope for,” said Vargas. “She may pass the critical instant safely. But even if she does she will be thrown back into brooding over her troubles.”
“Her troubles seem to me largely imaginary,” said the clubman.
“All the more danger in that,” said Vargas. “If merely subjective.”
“In this case they ought to evaporate,” said her brother, “if she acted sensibly, and yet they are not wholly imaginary. I don't wonder that she is troubled. David Llewellyn is not himself at all. His dead-and-alive demeanor is enough to prey on anybody's mind. Moping about here with him makes it worse. But going for a cruise might cure both of them and would be likely to wake him up and certain to clear her head. She ought to take your advice.”
“She will not,” said Vargas dejectedly, “and I scarcely wonder at her determination. Her dreams were enough to affect anybody. And the message on that slate was enough to influence anyone. Believing it addressed directly to her she is irresistibly urged to act upon it. I myself, merely a spectator, have been thrown by it into a terrible confusion of my whole mentality. I have believed in no real mystery in the universe. I am confronted by an unblinkable, an insoluble puzzle. My reliance upon the laws of space and time, as we think we know them, is, for the time being, wrenched from its foundations. My faith in the indestructibility of matter, in the continuity of force, in the fundamental laws of motion, is shaken and tottering. My belief in the necessary sequence of cause and effect, in causation and causality in general, is totally shattered. I could credit any marvel, could accept any monstrous portent as altogether to be expected. The universe no longer seems to me a scene, at least in front of the great, blank curtain of the unknowable, filled by an orderly progress of more or less cognizable and predictable occurrences, depending upon interrelated causes; it seems the playground of the irresponsible, prankish, malevolent somethings, productive of incalculabilities. I am in a delirium of dread, in a daze of panic.”
“I hardly follow your meaning,” said the other, “but I feel we can do nothing.”
“No,” said Vargas, “we can only hope for the best and fear the worst.”
“And what will be the worst?” her brother demanded.
“I conceive,” said Vargas, “that upon the opening of the coffin she will suffer some sort of shock, whether it be from disappointment, surprise, or whatever else. At the worst she might scream and drop dead before our eyes or shriek and hopel
essly lose her reason.
“Yes,” said Mr. Palgrave, “that would be the worst, I suppose.”
“And yet,” said Vargas, “I cannot escape from the feeling that the worst, in some incalculable, unpredictable, inconceivable way, will be something a great deal worse than that; something unimaginably, unutterably, ineffably worse than anything I can definitely put into words or even vaguely think.”
“I cannot express myself as fluently as you can,” her brother responded, “but I have had much the same sort of feeling. I have it now. I feel as if I were not now in a cemetery for the purpose of being present at the opening of a grave; but far away, or long ago, about to participate in some uncanny occurrence fit to make Saul's experience at Endor or Macbeth's with the witches seem humdrum and commonplace.”
“I feel all that,” said Vargas, “and more; as if we were not ourselves at all, but the actors in some vast drama of wretchedness, apocalyptically ignorant of an enormous shadow of unescapable doom steadily darkening over our impotence. We cannot modify, we cannot alter, we cannot change, we cannot ward off, we cannot even postpone what is about to happen.”
“What is about to happen,” said his companion, “is going to happen now. Here they come. The two men rose and watched the Llewellyn carriage draw up where theirs had stopped. Its door opened and a large man stepped down.
Vargas had previously seen David Llewellyn only momentarily at a distance, and now scrutinized him with much attention. He was a tall man, taller than his brother-in-law and was solidly and very compactly made. His manner, as he turned to the carriage, was solicitous, and deferential as he helped his wife out. As they approached, walking side by side, Vargas eyed the man. He was powerfully built and showed an immense girth of chest. His close-cut beard did not disguise the type of his countenance, the face belonged to an athletic college-bred man, firm chin, set lips, straight nose and clear gray eyes. He was very handsome and reminders of what had been downright beauty in his boyhood were manifest not only in the face but in the general effect of his presence.
Lukundoo and Other Stories Page 12