Part 8

Toward two in the morning he quieted down suddenly, and I went and sat by the bedside trying to soothe him to sleep; but he wanted to talk.

“I am almost done for, doctor,” he whispered; “but I have finished it, and it has finished me. I have lived a bad life, a very bad life, but on the canvas behind that drapery is the thing God sent me to avenge my wasted life; and when I am gone and you see what it is that I have lived with for the last two years, you will believe me when I say that I do not fear the terrors of any hell hereafter.”

He broke off suddenly and glanced fearfully about the room, but as if reassured by the pressure of my hand, he continued,--

“I lived straight, for over a year, after the pledge I made you, the night of my first trouble. I left all the old companions, and worked hard. You saw the notice of my picture?” he asked eagerly, and I nodded.

“During that year I met a woman who was the very type of all that is pure and innocent, and I even dared to think that sometime, after I had lived down my frightful past, I might make her my wife. But one day as I was straining my eyes to catch the last light of the fading afternoon, I chanced to glance over the canvas, and, my God, there creeping out of the darkness, was that hideous thing. I was unconscious for several hours, but when I came to myself I consulted the best physician in Paris, and was under his care for over a month, but it was of no use. Since that day it has followed me everywhere, day and night. I tried to drown it in drink, and it only came the oftener. Then I sent the crowd home, and resolved to paint a likeness of the thing, to have always with me, so as to accustom myself to it, but it was too awful.” His voice trailed off into a shuddering whisper.

I tried to turn his thoughts to pleasant things, and at last he began to talk of his childhood, and how he used to ride about the country in the little pony chaise with his mother, and the children of the village called him “young Master Dick.” Then, even as I watched him, I saw creeping into his face again that nameless horror. The pupils of his eyes grew larger and larger till you could scarcely see the blue. The sweat of fear started from his forehead in huge drops; and in less time than it takes to tell it he was again a madman.

He jumped to his feet and stood there for a minute, his knees knocking drunkenly together, and his teeth rattling like a pair of castanets, while his eyes stared straight ahead of him at the bare wall, and then he started for the picture again. But he never reached it. God in his mercy spared him the agony of that last look, and he fell forward, one hand clutching the drapery, which went down with him to the floor and left me staring at the thing it had covered.

I looked, and something dragged me nearer, for painted on the canvas I saw an evil, formless thing which made my blood run cold. It might have been a man, for it stood upon two feet, and had arms and a head, and yet, thank God, it was no man. Or it might have been a devil, for if ever an imp of hell looked down from canvas it must have had a face like that. Yet there were no definite outlines to it. When you tried to place a certain contour it faded off into the somber background, and all that remained was the head, a great flabby thing without any nose which looked down at you and grinned horribly.

If that was the demon which had haunted Richard Crew’s fevered and disordered brain for two long years, I thanked my God that I was not a drinking man. I looked again and could not turn my eyes away. Then, as I looked, I felt that indescribable, sickening fear coming over me that I had read in the dead man’s eyes.

The grinning thing seemed to be moving slowly. I could see the rocking motion of the body as it waddled toward me.

By a mighty effort of the will I tore myself from the spot, and seizing a French dueling sword that hung on the wall, I hacked and cut that leering face till only an empty frame remained, with a few clinging shreds of tattered canvas.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright by S. S. McClure & Co.

[2] Copyright by F. A. Munsey.

[3] Copyright by F. A. Munsey & Co.

[4] Copyright, 1901, by the Shortstory Publishing Co.

[5] Copyright by E. B. Terhune.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

End of Project Gutenberg's Welsh Rarebit Tales, by Harle Oren Cummins