Part 12

“I promise absolutely nothing.”

“I don’t want you to. I leave you to her. She could beguile a Saint Anthony.”

“Hey!”

“I mean as a Christian woman should.”

“O! that explains it.”

The following afternoon I went to West Kensington. The little drab was snuffling when she opened the door. She had a little hat on her head.

“Missus wasn’t well,” she said; “and she hadn’t liked to leave her, though by rights she was only engaged for an hour or two in the day.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m a doctor, and will attend to her. You can go.”

She gladly shut me in and herself out. The clang of the door echoed up the narrow staircase, and was succeeded, as if it had started it, by the quick toing and froing of a footfall in the room above. There was something inexpressibly ghostly in the sound, in the reeling dusk which transmitted it.

I perceived, the moment I set eyes on the girl, that there was something seriously wrong with her. Her face was white as wax, and quivered with an incessant horror of laughter. She tried to rally, to greet me, but broke down at the first attempt, and stood as mute as stone.

I thank my God I can be a sympathetic without being a fanciful man. I went to her at once, and imprisoned her icy hands in the human strength of my own.

“What is it? Have you the papers ready for me?”

She shook her head, and spoke only after a second effort.

“I am very sorry.”

“You haven’t done them, then? Never mind. But why not? Didn’t the new machine suit either?”

I felt her hands twitch in mine. She made another movement of dissent.

“That’s odd,” I said. “It looks as if it wasn’t the fault of the tools, but of the workwoman.”

All in a moment she was clinging to me convulsively, and crying—

“You are a doctor—you’ll understand—don’t leave me alone—don’t let me stop here!”

“Now listen,” I said; “listen, and control yourself. Do you hear? I have come _prepared_ to take you away. I’ll explain why presently.”

“I thought at first it was my fault,” she wept distressfully, “working, perhaps, until I grew light-headed” (Ah, hunger and loneliness and that grinding labour!); “but when I was sure of myself, still it went on, and I could not do my tasks to earn money. Then I thought—how can God let such things be!—that the instrument itself must be haunted. It took to going at night; and in the morning”—she gripped my hands—“I burnt them. I tried to think I had done it myself in my sleep, and I always burnt them. But it didn’t stop, and at last I made up my mind to take it back and ask for another—another—you remember?”

She pressed closer to me, and looked fearfully over her shoulder.

“It does the same,” she whispered, gulping. “It wasn’t the machine at all. It’s the place—itself—that’s haunted.”

I confess a tremor ran through me. The room was dusking—hugging itself into secrecy over its own sordid details. Out near the window, the type-writer, like a watchful sentient thing, seemed grinning at us with all its ivory teeth. She had carried it there, that it might be as far from herself as possible.

“First let me light the gas,” I said, gently but resolutely detaching her hands.

“There is none,” she murmured.

None. It was beyond her means. This poor creature kept her deadly vigils with a couple of candles. I lit them—they served but to make the gloom more visible—and went to pull down the blind.

“O, take care of it!” she whispered fearfully, meaning the type-writer. “It is awful to shut out the daylight so soon.”

God in heaven, what she must have suffered! But I admitted nothing, and took her determinedly in hand.

“Now,” I said, returning to her, “tell me plainly and distinctly what it is that the machine does.”

She did not answer. I repeated my question.

“It writes things,” she muttered—“things that don’t come from me. Day and night it’s the same. The words on the paper aren’t the words that come from my fingers.”

“But that is impossible, you know.”

“So _I_ should have thought once. Perhaps—what is it to be possessed? There was another type-writer—another girl—lived in these rooms before me.”

“Indeed! And what became of her?”

“She disappeared mysteriously—no one knows why or where. Maria, my little maid, told me about her. Her name was Lucy Rivers, and—she just disappeared. The landlord advertised her effects, to be claimed, or sold to pay the rent; and that was done, and she made no sign. It was about two months ago.”

“Well, will you now practically demonstrate to me this reprehensible eccentricity on the part of your instrument?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t dare.”

“I would do it myself; but of course you will understand that a more satisfactory conclusion would be come to by my watching your fingers. Make an effort—you needn’t even look at the result—and I will take you away immediately after.”

“You are very good,” she answered pathetically; “but I don’t know that I ought to accept. Where to, please? And—and I don’t even know your name.”

“Well, I have my own reasons for withholding it.”

“It is all so horrible,” she said; “and I am in your hands.”

“They are waiting to transfer you to mamma’s,” said I.

The name seemed an instant inspiration and solace to her. She looked at me, without a word, full of wonder and gratitude; then asked me to bring the candles, and she would acquit herself of her task. She showed the best pluck over it, though her face was ashy, and her mouth a line, and her little nostrils pulsing the whole time she was at work.

I had got her down to one of my circulars, and, watching her fingers intently, was as sure as observer could be that she had followed the text verbatim.

“Now,” I said, when she came to a pause, “give me a hint how to remove this paper, and go you to the other end of the room.”

She flicked up a catch. “You have only to pull it off the roller,” she said; and rose and obeyed. The moment she was away I followed my instructions, and drew forth the printed sheet and looked at it.

It may have occupied me longer than I intended. But I was folding it very deliberately, and putting it away in my pocket when I walked across to her with a smile. She gazed at me one intent moment, and dropped her eyes.

“Yes,” she said; and I knew that she had satisfied herself. “Will you take me away now, at once, please?”

The idea of escape, of liberty once realized, it would have been dangerous to balk her by a moment. I had acquainted mamma that I might possibly bring her a visitor. Well, it simply meant that the suggested visit must be indefinitely prolonged.

Miss Gray accompanied me home, where certain surprises, in addition to the tenderest of ministrations, were awaiting her. All that becomes private history, and outside my story. I am not a man of sentiment; and if people choose to write poems and make general asses of themselves, why—God bless them!

The problem I had set _my_self to unravel was what looked deucedly like a tough psychologic poser. But I was resolute to face it, and had formed my plan. It was no unusual thing for me to be out all night. That night, after dining, I spent in the “converted” flat in West Kensington.

I had brought with me—I confess to so much weakness—one of your portable electric lamps. The moment I was shut in and established, I pulled out the paper Miss Gray had typed for me, spread it under the glow and stared at it. Was it a copy of my circular? Would a sober “First Aid Society” Secretary be likely, do you think, to require circulars containing such expressions as “_William! William! Come back to me! O, William, in God’s name! William! William! William!_”—in monstrous iteration—the one cry, or the gist of it, for lines and lines in succession?

I am at the other end from humour in saying this. It is heaven’s truth. Line after line, half down the page, went that monotonous, heart-breaking appeal. It was so piercingly moving, my human terror of its unearthliness was all drowned, absorbed in an overflowing pity.

I am not going to record the experiences of that night. That unchanging mood of mine upheld me through consciousnesses and sub-consciousnesses which shall be sacred. Sometimes, submerged in these, I seemed to hear the clack of the instrument in the window, but at a vast distance. I may have seen—I may have dreamt—I accepted it all. Awaking in the chill grey of morning, I felt no surprise at seeing some loose sheets of paper lying on the floor. “_William! William!_” their text ran down, “_Come back to me!_” It was all that same wail of a broken heart. I followed Miss Gray’s example. I took out my match-box, and reverently, reverently burned them.

An hour or two later I was at Paul’s Exchange, privately interviewing my manager.

“Did you ever employ a Miss Lucy Rivers?”

“Certainly we did. Poor Lucy Rivers! She rented a machine of us. In fact——”

He paused.

“Well?”

“Well—it is a mere matter of business—she ‘flitted,’ and we had to reclaim our instrument. As it happens, it was the very one purchased by the young lady who so interested you here two days ago.”

“The first machine, you mean?”

“The first—_and_ the second.” He smiled. “As a matter of fact, she took away again what she brought.”

“Miss Rivers’s?”

He nodded.

“There was absolutely nothing wrong with it—mere fad. Women start these fancies. The click of the thing gets on their nerves, I suppose. We must protect ourselves, you see; and I’ll warrant she finds it perfection now.”

“Perhaps she does. What was Miss Rivers’s address?”

He gave me, with a positive grin this time, the “converted” flat.

“But that was only latterly,” he said. “She had moved from——”

He directed me elsewhere.

“Why,” said I, taking up my hat, “did you call her ‘poor Lucy Rivers’?”

“O, I don’t know!” he said. “She was rather an attractive young lady. But we had to discontinue our patronage. She developed the most extraordinary—but it’s no business of mine. She was one of the submerged tenth; and she’s gone under for good, I suppose.”

I made my way to the _other_ address—a little lodging in a shabby-genteel street. A bitter-faced landlady, one of the “preordained” sort, greeted me with resignation when she thought I came for rooms, and with acerbity when she heard that my sole mission was to inquire about a Miss Lucy Rivers.

“I won’t deceive you, sir,” she said. “When it come to receiving gentlemen privately, I told her she must go.”

“Gentlemen!”

“I won’t do Miss Rivers an injustice,” she said. “It was _ha_ gentleman.”

“Was that latterly?”

“It was not latterly, sir. But it was the effects of its not being latterly which made her take to things.”

“What things?”

“Well, sir, she grew strange company, and took to the roof.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Just precisely what I say, sir; through the trap-door by the steps, and up among the chimney-pots. _He’d_ been there with her before, and perhaps she thought she’d find him hiding among the stacks. He called himself an astronomer; but it’s my belief it was another sort of star-gazing. I couldn’t stand it at last, and I had to give her notice.”

It was falling near a gloomy midday when I again entered the flat, and shut myself in with its ghosts and echoes. I had a set conviction, a set purpose in my mind. There was that which seemed to scuttle, like a little demon of laughter, in my wake, now urging me on, now slipping round and above to trip me as I mounted. I went steadily on and up, past the sitting-room door, to the floor above. And here, for the first time, a thrill in my blood seemed to shock and hold me for a moment. Before my eyes, rising to a skylight, now dark and choked with snow, went a flight of steps. Pulling myself together, I mounted these, and with a huge effort (_the bolt was not shot_) shouldered the trap open. There were a fall and rustle without; daylight entered; and, levering the door over, I emerged upon the roof.

Snow, grim and grimy and knee-deep, was over everything, muffling the contours of the chimneys, the parapets, the irregularities of the leads. The dull thunder of the streets came up to me; a fog of thaw was in the air; a thin drizzle was already falling. I drove my foot forward into a mound, and hitched it on something. In an instant I was down on my knees, scattering the sodden raff right and left, and—my God!—a face!

She lay there as she had been overwhelmed, and frozen, and preserved these two months. She had closed the trap behind her, and nobody had known. Pure as wax—pitiful as hunger—dead! Poor Lucy Rivers!

Who was she, and who the man? We could never learn. She had woven his name, his desertion, her own ruin and despair into the texture of her broken life. Only on the great day of retribution shall he answer to that agonized cry.

THE FAIR WITH GOLDEN HAIR

Ho! bring me some _lovers_, fat or lean, That I may crunch ’em my teeth between! I could eat so many, so many, so many, That in the wide world there would not be left any.

Ho! Here is Avenant to be seen, Who comes to draw your teeth so keen; He’s not the greatest man to view, But he’s big enough to conquer you.

Planché’s “D’Aulnoy,” slightly misquoted.

Sir Richard Avenant came home from Abyssinia to an interesting notoriety. He had been associated—a sort of explorative free-lance—with the expedition of Mr. Bruce, who was not yet returned from his adventures up the Nile in quest of the sources of that bewildering water; and, upon his arrival in London, he found himself engaged to a romance which was certainly remote from his deserts.

Now he was a strong, saturnine man, but apt to whimsical decisions, whose consequences, the fruits of whatever odd impulses, he never had a thought but to hold by; and as the self-reserved must suffer the character accorded to their appearance (the only side of them confessed), Sir Richard found himself accredited, by anticipation, with deeds adapted to the countenance he had always addressed to the world.

He was strolling, some days after his return, through the streets, when he was accosted by an acquaintance, a _preux chevalier_ of the highest _ton_, curled, be-ruffed, and imperturbably self-assured.

“Why, strike me silly, Dick!” cried this exquisite, “what do you, wandering unsociable in a shag coat, and all London by the ears to lionize ye?”

“Well, I know not, George. What have I done to be lionized?”

“Done! _Done?_ asks the man that will not devour a steak but ’tis cut raw from the buttock of the living beast! _Done?_ asks Bluebeard (and stap me, Dick, but your chin is as blue as a watchman’s!)—_done_, he says, that brings grass-petticoats in his train enough to furnish the Paradise of the Grand Turk! Prithee, Dick, where hast stowed ’em all? O, thou hast a great famous reputation, I assure thee, to justify thyself of with the women! Such is the report of thy peris—their teeth, their raven hair, their eyes like stars of the night—there’s no virtue in town could resist, if asked, to be thy queen and theirs.”

He was chuckling, and taking a delicate pinch of martinique, with his little finger cocked to display a glittering stone, when his eyes lighted on a house over against which they were standing.

“Hist!” said he, pointing with his cane; “pan my honour, the single reservation.”

“Single reservation?” repeated the explorer. “To what? To this London of frailties?”

“To be sure,” said the other. “The one party, I’ll dare swear, that would not put her nose in a ring for thy sake.”

“Indeed!” said Avenant. “Then she’s the one I must wed.”

The elegant cocked his head, squinting derisive.

“I lay you a double pony to a tester you don’t, within the decade.”

“Done! Tell me about her.”

“I’ll do more. I’ll carry you in to her, here and at once. Tell me about her, quotha! She’s the Fair with Golden Hair, and a guinea and a suitor to every thread of it.”

“Whence comes she?”

“From Arcadia, man, with a fortune of gold and roses. She cuts out hearts raw, as you do steaks, and devours them by the dozen. O, you shall know her!”

“But by what name, George, by what name?”

“Have I not told you? It shall suffice for all your needs. Thou shalt take a pack of Cabriolles, and never hunt her to the death. Come, my friend!”

He led Sir Richard to the house, and had himself announced. They ascended a flight of stairs, going up into a heaven of floating fragrance and melodious sounds. Their feet moved noiseless over silken carpets. They crossed an anteroom ruffling with lackeys, and were ushered into the Fair’s boudoir.

She sat at her mirror, in the hands of her perruquier. She was the most beautiful insolent creature Sir Richard had ever seen. There was not an inch of her which Nature could have altered to its improvement. The very patch on her cheek was a theft from perfection. But to so much loveliness her hair was the glory, a nimbus which, condensing in the heavy atmosphere of adoration, dropped in a melting flood of gold, which, short of the ground only, shrank and curled back from its gross contact.

All round and about her hummed her court—poets, lords, minstrels—suitors straining their wits and their talents for her delectation, while they bled internally. Many of them greeted Sir Richard’s chaperon, many Sir Richard himself—good-humouredly, jealously, satirically, as the case might be—as the two pushed by. A stir went round, however, when the rough new-comer’s name was put about; and some rose in their seats, and all dwelt inquisitively on the explorer’s reception.

It was condescending enough; as was that of his friend, who loved himself too well, and too wittily, to show a heart worth the beauty’s discussing.

“Have you got back your appetite, sir,” said the Fair to Avenant, “for dressed meats?”

“And ladies?” whispered Sir Richard’s friend.

“O, fie!” said madam.

“I will return the question on you,” said Sir Richard, in a low voice.

The Fair lifted her brows.

“Why, I am told, madam,” said Avenant, “that you feed on raw hearts; but I am willing to believe that the one lie is as certain as the other.”

The imperious beauty bit her underlip, and laughed.

“I perceive, Sir Richard,” she said, “that you do not court by flattery.”

“I do not court at all, madam,” he answered.

“Ah, true!” she replied. “You buy in the open market. It must be simpler; though, in the plain lodging where I hear you lie at present, the disposal of so responsible an establishment must exercise your diplomacy.”

She spoke aloud, evoking a general titter; and so aloud Avenant answered her.

“By no means, madam. I have in my sleeping-room a closet with three shelves. On one of these lies Beauty, unspoiled by adulation; on another lies Virtue, that respects her sex too well to traduce it; on the third lies feminine Truth, loveliest of her sisters. These are my whole establishment; and as they are shadows all, existing only in the imagination, they exercise nothing but my fondness for unattainable ideals.”

The company broke into much laughter over this Jeremiad; and the girl joined her young voice to theirs. But a little glow of colour was showing in her cheek, verily as if Sir Richard had flicked that fair surface with his glove.

“O!” she said, “this is a sad regale! Sure, sir, does the climate of Abyssinia breed no hotter than Leicestershire Quakers? Why, I have heard a lion roar fiercer in a caravan. Now, pray, Sir Richard, put off your civilities, and give us news instead of lessons. They say there is a form of lawless possession in the women of the country you visited.”

“It is very true there is, madam. It is called the _Tigrétier_—a seizure of uncontrollable vanity, during which the victim is so self-centred that she is unable to attend to the interests, or even to distinguish the sexes of those about her. She will, for instance, surround herself with a circle of male admirers, assuming all the time, apparently, that they are the gossips of her own sex, with whom, like a decent woman, she would wont ordinarily, of course, to consort in private.”

The Fair cried out, “Enough! Your stories are the most intolerable stuff, sir. I wish Mr. Bruce joy of your return, as I hear you are not to remain in England.”

Then she turned her shoulder to him, her flush deepening to fire; and Sir Richard, bowing and moving away, fell into conversation with one or two of his acquaintances. Presently, looking up, he was surprised to see the room near empty. Goldenlocks had, in fact, issued her wilful mandate, and her court was dismissing itself.

The explorer was pressing out after the rest, when a maidservant touched his sleeve, and begged him to return to her lady, who desired a word with him. Sir Richard acquiesced immediately. He found the Fair standing solitary by her dressing-table, frowning, her head bent, her fingers plucking at a wisp of lace. Her hair, still undressed, hung down deep over her shoulders, mantling them with heavy gold, like a priest’s chasuble.

“Did you seek my acquaintance, sir,” she said imperatively, “with the sole purpose to insult me?”

“Nay, madam,” he answered, as cool as tempered steel; “but because you was described to me as the one woman in London that I might not marry, if I had the will to.”

“Why not?” was on the tip of her tongue; he saw it there. But she caught at herself, and answered, “So, sir, like sour reynard, I suppose, you would spite what you found it useless to covet.”

“_I_ covet, madam!” he said, in a tone of astonishment. “_I_ aspire to wrest this wealth and beauty from a hundred worthier candidates! Believe me, my ambition halted far short of such attainment.”

Her lips smiled, despite herself. What were the value, she suddenly thought, in a world of suitors that did not include this shagg’d and rugged Jeremiah? Her speech fell as caressing as the sound of water in a wood.

“Yet you confess to some ambition?” she murmured.

“True,” he answered; “the virtuoso’s.”

She lifted her beautiful brows.

“I will be candid, madam,” he said. “I have the collector’s itch. Whithersoever I visit, I lay my toll on the most characteristic productions of the tribes—robes, carvings, implements of war—even scalps. Madam, madam, you must surely be of the sun children! Your hair is the most lovely thing! I would give my soul—more, I would give a thousand pounds to possess it.”

“I see, sir,” she said; “to carry your conquest at your belt.”

“Nay,” he answered, with feigned eagerness. “Not a soul need know. The thing is done constantly. You have but to subscribe to the fashion of powder, and you gain a novel beauty, and I a secret I swear to hold inviolate.”

“O!” she said softly “This is Samson come with the shears to turn the tables on poor Delilah!”

And on the instant she flashed out, breaking upon him in a storm of passion. That he dared, that he dared, on no warrant but his reputation for inhumanity, so to outrage and insult her.

“Go, sir!” she cried. “Return to your Nubians and Dacoits—to countries where head-hunting is considered an honourable proof of manliness!”

He stood, as outwardly insensate as a bull.

“Then you decline to deal?”

Her only answer was to throw herself into a chair, and to abandon herself to incomprehensible weeping. But even her sobs seemed to make no soft impression on him. He took a step nearer to her, and spoke in the same civil and measured tone he had maintained throughout.

“Take care, madam. I never yet set my will upon a capture that in the long run escaped me.”

She checked her tears, to look up at him with a little furious laugh.

“Poor boaster!” she said. “I think, perhaps, that recounting of your Tigrétier hath infected you with it.”

“By my beard, madam,” said he, “I will make that hair my own!”

“See,” she cried jeeringly, “how a boaster swears by what he has not!”

Sir Richard felt to his chin.

“That is soon remedied,” said he. “And so, till my oath is redeemed, to consign my razors to rust!” And with these words, bowing profoundly, he turned and left the room.

Shortly after this he sailed to rejoin his expedition, and was not again in England during a period of eighteen months.