“Good-night,” he said again, and he went down the stairs.
She looked after him with a smile. When he had gone, she turned her head and called.
“Betty!”
“Yes!”
“Come here and sit with me. Let us watch the moon. Don't talk. I want to think—and to make you think—as I do.”
The cloud which Bellairs had fancied he noticed did not dissolve in the night. It was not drawn up mysteriously into the sun to fade in gold. On the contrary, next day he could no longer pretend to himself that his anxiety as a lover rendered him foolishly self-conscious, dangerously observant of the merest trifles. There really was a change in Betty, and a change which grew. He became seriously alarmed. Could it be possible that the ardent passion which she had displayed in the first moments of their engagement was already subsiding as cynics say passion subsides after marriage? Such a supposition seemed ridiculous. The ardour which has never fulfilled itself is not liable to cool. And Betty was a young girl who had not known love before. If she tired of it after so short anexperience of its delights, she could be nothing less than a wholly unnatural and distorted being. And she was strangely natural. Bellairs rode out alone with her along the built-up brown roads into the desert, and tried to interest her, but she was abstracted and seemed deep in thought. Often she didn't hear what he was saying, and when she did hear and replied, her answers were short and careless, and rather dismissed than encouraged the subject to which they were applied. Bellairs, at last, gave up attempting to talk, and from time to time stole a cautious glance at her pretty face. He noticed that it wore a puzzled expression, as if she were turning over something in her mind and could not come to a conclusion about it. She did not look exactly sad, but merely grave and distrait. At length he exclaimed, determined to rouse her into some sort of comradeship:—
“You never caught that headache, did you?”
“Clarice's, you mean? No.”
“Is it coming on now?”
“Oh, no. I feel perfectly well. What made you think it was?”
“You won't talk to me, and you look so preternaturally serious. I am sure I have unwittingly offended you?”
“No, you haven't. You are just as you always are, better to me than I deserve.”
“You deserve the best man in the world.”
“I already have the best woman.”
“Mdlle. Leroux?”
“Yes; Clarice.”
“You admire her very much.”
“Of course. I would give anything to be like her.”
Bellairs hesitated a moment. Then he said with a slight, uneasy laugh:—
“But you are wonderfully like her.”
Betty looked surprised.
“I don't see how,” she answered.
“No, because we never see ourselves. But when I first knew you both, I was immensely struck by the curious resemblance between you, in mind, in the things you said, in the things you did, the people you liked.”
“We both liked you.”
“Yes.”
“It would have been strange if we had both loved you!” Betty said, musingly.
Bellairs laughed again, and gave his horse a cut with the whip. “I only wanted one to do that,” he said, not quite truthfully. “And, thank God, I have got my desire.”
Betty did not answer.
“Haven't I?” he persisted.
“You know whether you have or not,” she answered. “How beautiful the sunset is going to be to-night. Look at the light over Karnak.”
She pointed towards the temple with her whip. Bellairs felt a crawling despair that numbed himWhat did it all mean? Was he torturing himself foolishly, or was this instinct which gnawed at his heart a thing to be reckoned with? When he left Betty at the dahabeeyah, he walked slowly, in the gathering shadows, along the path which skirts the dingy temple of Luxor. This change in Betty was simply inexplicable. In no way could he account for it. She had not the definite, angry coldness of a girl who had made a dreadful mistake and hated the man who had led her to make it. No; she seemed rather in a state of mental transition. She was setting foot on some bridge, which, Bellairs felt, led away from the shore on which she had been standing with him. Was her first transport of love and joy a pretence? He could not believe so. He knew it was genuine. That was the puzzle which he could not put together. And then he tried to comfort himself by thinking deliberately of the many moods that make the feminine mind so full of April weather, of how they come and pass and are dead. All men had suffered from them, especially all lovers. He could not expect to be exempt—only, till now, Betty had seemed so utterly free from moods, so steadily frank, eager, charming, responsive. Bellairs finally argued himself into a condition of despair, during which he came to a resolve of despair. He silently decided to seek a quiet interview with Clarice, and ask her what was the matter with Betty. After all, there was no reason why he should not take this step.Clarice had evidently not cared deeply for him. Otherwise, she would not have accepted his desertion with such truly agreeable fortitude. Theirs had been a passing flirtation—nothing more. And, indeed, their intimacy gave him the right to consult her, while her close knowledge of Betty must render her an infallible judge of any reasons which there might be to render the latter's conduct intelligible.
Bellairs did not have to wait long before he put his resolve into practice. That evening Betty, who had become more and more abstracted and silent, got up soon after dinner, and said she was tired, and was going to bed. Bellairs tried to get a moment with her alone, but she frustrated the attempt by holding out her hand to him in public and markedly bidding him good-night before Lord and Lady Braydon. When she had disappeared, Bellairs sought Clarice, who was downstairs in the saloon writing letters. Clarice looked up from the blotting-pad as he entered.
“I want to talk to you,” he exclaimed abruptly.
“I am writing letters.”
“Do give me a few minutes.”
“Very well,” she said, pushing her paper away and laying down her pen. “What is it?”
“That's what I want to ask you. What has come over Betty? Is she ill?”
“Betty! Has anything come over her?”
Bellairs tapped his fingers impatiently on the table.
“Don't tell me you haven't noticed the change,” he said. “Forgive me for saying that I couldn't believe it if you did.”
“In that case I won't trouble myself to say it.”
“Ah—you have! Then what's the matter? Tell me.”
“Hush, don't speak so loud or the sailors will hear you, and Abdul understands English. I did not say I knew the reason of this change.”
“You must. You are Betty's other self, or rather she is—was—yours.”
“Was! Do you mean that she is not now?”
“Remember, she loves me.”
“Oh, and that makes a difference?”
“Surely!”
“You have observed it?”
Bellairs hesitated. He scarcely knew whether to reply in the affirmative or the negative. He resolved upon a compromise.
“There has hardly been time yet,” he said; “naturally, I expect that Betty will place me before every one else.”
Mdlle. Leroux's eyes flashed under the hanging lamp.
“What we expect is not always what we get,” she said significantly.
Bellairs flushed. He understood that she wasalluding to his treatment of her, but he preferred to ignore it, and went on:—
“Is Betty ill to-night?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what on earth is the matter? I ask you for a plain answer. I think I deserve so much.”
“Men are always so deserving,” she said with bitterness.
“And women are always so exacting,” he retorted. “But please answer my question.”
“I will first ask you another. If you reply frankly to me, I will reply frankly to you.”
She leaned her elbows on the table, supporting her face on the palms of her upturned hands, and looked into his eyes.
“Ask me,” said Bellairs eagerly; “I'll do anything if you'll only explain Betty to me.”
“Why did you try to make me love you? Why did you make love to me?”
Bellairs pushed back his chair and there was an awkward silence. Clarice's question was very unexpected and very difficult to answer.
“Well?” she said, still with her eyes on his.
“Is it any good our discussing this?” he replied at length. “It meant nothing to you. It is over.”
“How do you know it meant nothing to me?”
“You have shown that by your conduct. You care nothing. I am indifferent to you.”
“No, not indifferent, not at all.”
“What? You can't mean—no, it is absurd!”
“What is absurd?”
“You can't—you don't mean that you really have any feeling for me?”
“I do mean it!”
Bellairs felt very uncomfortable. He scarcely knew what to do or say. He fidgeted on his chair almost like a boy caught in a dishonest act.
“We had really better not talk about it,” he said.
“Very well.” Clarice reached out her hand for her pen and drew the blotting-pad towards her.
“But Betty?” said Bellairs uneasily.
“You have not answered my question. I shall not answer yours.” She dipped her pen in the ink and prepared to go on with her letter. Bellairs grew desperate.
“Look here,” he said; “you must tell me the reason of this change in Betty. Now I know you don't care for me, you don't really love me.”
“No, I don't love you,” she said quickly.
“Well, then, since you say that, I will answer your question. I tried to win your heart because I wanted to win Betty's!”
“What do you mean?”
“That Betty is practically you—or was, your echo, in word, deed, thought. Her mind, her heart, followed yours in everything. I loved her, and I knew that if I made you like me very much she must follow you in that feeling as in others. Since you don't love me, I can dare to tell you this.”
Clarice sat silent.
“Are you angry?” he asked.
“Go on,” she said.
“That's all.” Again a silence.
“It was your fault in a way,” Bellairs said awkwardly. “You made Betty your other self. Why did you not let her alone?”
“Can a strong nature help impressing itself on others?”
“Oh, I don't know. I'm no psychologist. But—you must let Betty alone now,” he said.
“Suppose I can't. Suppose this sympathy between us has got beyond my control?”
“I shall release Betty from this bondage to you,” Bellairs said, “my love will—”
“You! Your love!” Clarice said. And she burst into a laugh.
Bellairs suddenly leaned forward across the table.
“I believe you hate me,” he exclaimed.
She, on her part, leaned forward till her face was near his.
“You're right,” she whispered; “I do hate you. Now you know what's the matter with Betty.”
For a moment Bellairs did not understand.
“Now—I know—” he repeated. “I don't—Ah!” Comprehension flashed upon him.
“You devil,” he said—“you she-devil! Curse—curse you!” Clarice laughed again. Bellairs sprang up.
“No, no, I won't believe it,” he cried. “I can't. The thing's impossible.”
“Is it? The pendulum of my heart has swung back from love to hate. Betty's is following.”
“No, no!”
“Wait, and you will see. Already she seems to care less for you. You yourself have remarked it.”
“I have not,” he said with violence.
“To-morrow she will care less, and so less—less—till she too—hates you.”
“Never!”
“Only wait—and you will know. And now, good-night. I must really write my letter. It is to my mother, and must go by to-morrow's mail.”
She resumed her writing quietly. Bellairs watched her for a moment. Then he strode out of the room, across the gangway, up the bank.
How dark the night was.
The explanation of Clarice struck Bellairs with a benumbing force. In vain he argued to himself that it was not the true one, that no heart could follow another as she said Betty's followed hers, that no nature could merely for ever echo another's. Some furtive despair lurking in his soul whispered that she had spoken the truth. An appalling sense of utter impotence seized him, as it seizes a man who fights with a shadow. But he resolved to fight. His whole life's happiness hung on the issue.
On the following day he forced himself to becheerful, gay, talkative. He went early to the dahabeeyah, and proposed to Lord Braydon a picnic to Thebes. Lord Braydon assented. A hamper was packed. The boat was ordered. The little party assembled on the deck of theHatasoofor the start; Lady Braydon, in a wide hat and sweeping grey veil, Clarice with her big white parasol lined with pale green, Lord Braydon in his helmet, his eyes protected by enormous spectacles. But where was Betty? Abdul, the dragoman, went to tell her that they were going. She came, without her hat, or gloves, holding a palm leaf fan in her hand.
“I am not coming,” she said.
Clarice glanced at Bellairs. He pressed his lips together and felt that he was turning white underneath the tan the Egyptian sun rays had painted on his cheeks. Lady Braydon protested.
“What's the matter, Betty?” she said. “The donkeys are ordered and waiting for us on the opposite bank. Why aren't you coming?”
“I have got a headache. I'm afraid of the sun to-day.” All persuasion was useless. They had to set out without her. Bellairs was bitterly angry, bitterly afraid. He could scarcely make the necessary effort to be polite and talkative, but Lord and Lady Braydon readily excused his gloom, understanding his disappointment, and Clarice no longer desired his conversation. That night he did not see Betty. She was confined to her cabinand would see no one but Clarice. On the following day Bellairs went very early to the dahabeeyah and asked for her. Abdul took his message, and, after an interval, returned to him with the following note:—
“Dear Mr Bellairs,—I am very sorry I cannot see you this morning, but I am still very unwell. I think the mental agony I have been and am undergoing accounts for my condition. I must tell you the truth. I cannot marry you. I mistook my feeling for you. I honestly thought it love. I find it is only friendship. Can you ever forgive me the pain I am causing you? I cannot forgive myself. But I should do you a much greater wrong by marrying you than by giving you up. I have told my father and mother. See them if you like. We sail to-morrow morning for Assouan.“Betty.”
“Dear Mr Bellairs,—I am very sorry I cannot see you this morning, but I am still very unwell. I think the mental agony I have been and am undergoing accounts for my condition. I must tell you the truth. I cannot marry you. I mistook my feeling for you. I honestly thought it love. I find it is only friendship. Can you ever forgive me the pain I am causing you? I cannot forgive myself. But I should do you a much greater wrong by marrying you than by giving you up. I have told my father and mother. See them if you like. We sail to-morrow morning for Assouan.
“Betty.”
Bellairs, crumpling this note in his hand, would have burst forth into a passion of useless rage and despair, but Abdul's lustrous eyes were fixed upon him. Abdul's dignified form calmly waited his pleasure.
“Where is Lord Braydon?” said Bellairs, “I must see him.”
“His lordship is on the second deck, sir.”
“Take me to him.”
The interview that followed only increased the despair of Bellairs. Lord Braydon was most sympathetic, most courteously sorry, but he said thathis daughter's decision was absolutely irrevocable, and he could not attempt to coerce her in such an important matter.
“At any rate, I must see her before you sail,” said Bellairs at last. “I think she owes me at least that one last debt.”
“I think so too,” said Lord Braydon. “Come at six. I will undertake that you shall see her.”
How Bellairs spent the intervening hours he could never remember. He did not go back to the hotel; he must have wandered all day along the river bank. Yet he felt neither the heat, nor any fatigue, nor any hunger. At six o'clock he reached the dahabeeyah. Lady Betty was sitting alone on the deck. She looked very pale and grave.
“My father and mother and Clarice have gone up to the hotel,” she said. “That Austrian is playing again this evening.”
“Is he?” Bellairs answered. He sat down beside her and tried to take her hand. But she would not let him.
“No,” she said. “No, it's no use. I have made a ghastly mistake, but I will not make another. Oh, forgive me, do forgive me!”
“How can I? If you will not try to love me my life is ruined.”
“Don't say that. It's no use to try to love. You know that. We must just let ourselves alone. Love comes, or hate, just as God wills it. We can only accept our fate.”
“As God wills,” Bellairs said passionately; “why do you say that, when you know it is not true?”
“Not true—Mr Bellairs!”
“Yes. If you echoed the will of God how could I blame you? We must all do that—at least, when we are good. And those of us who are wicked I suppose echo the Devil. But you—what do you echo?”
“I—I echo no one. I don't understand you.”
“But you shall, before it is too late. Betty, be yourself. Emancipate your soul. You are the echo of that woman, of Clarice. Don't you see it? Don't you know it? You are her echo—and she hates me!”
Betty drew back from him—she was evidently alarmed.
“Are you mad?” she said. “Why do you say such things to me? Clarice and I love each other, it is true, but our real natures are totally different. She does not hate you, nor do I. She has never said one word against you to me. She has always told me how much she liked you. What are you saying?”
“The truth!”
“I—her echo! Why, then—then if that were the case she must have loved you, or thought she loved you. Do you dare to tell me that?”
“I do not say that,” Bellairs answered hopelessly.
“Of course not. The idea is so absurd.Clarice—oh! how can you talk like this? And if I am only an echo, as you call it, how can you say you care for me, care for another woman's shadow? You do not love me.”
“I do—with all my heart.”
“And yet you say I am nothing, that I have not even a heart of my own, that I love or hate at the will of another.”
“Forgive me, forgive me! I don't know what I say. I only know I love you.”
Her face softened.
“And you deserve to be loved,” she said; “but I—it is so horrible—I cannot!”
Suddenly Bellairs caught her in his arms.
“You shall,” he exclaimed, “you shall. I will make you.” But she pushed him back with a strange strength, and her face hardened till he scarcely recognised it.
“Don't do that—don't touch me—or you'll make me hate you,” she said vehemently.
Bellairs let her go. At that moment there was a step on the deck. Clarice appeared. She did not seem to notice that anything was wrong. She smiled.
“Isn't it sad, Mr Bellairs,” she said, “we sail to-morrow. I love Luxor. I can't bear to leave it.”
Bellairs suddenly turned and hurried away. He could no longer trust himself. There was blood before his eyes.
It was dawn. The Nile was smooth as a river of oil. Light mists rolled upwards gently, discovering the rosy flanks of the Libyan mountains to the sun. The sky began to glimmer with a dancing golden heat. On the brown bank where the boats lie in the shadow a man stood alone. His hands were tightly clenched. His lips worked silently. His eyes were fixed in a stare. And away in the distance up river, a tiny trail of smoke floated towards Luxor. It came from a steam tug that drew a following dahabeeyah.
TheQueen Hatasoowas on her voyage to Assouan.
“No, it will not hurt him to see you,” the doctor said to me; “and I have no doubt he will recognise you. He is the quietest patient I have ever had under my care—gentle, kind, agreeable, perfect in conduct, and yet quite mad. You know him well?”
“He was my dearest friend,” I said. “Before I went out to America three years ago we were inseparable. Doctor, I cannot believe that he is mad, he—Hubert Blair—one of the cleverest young writers in London, so brilliant, so acute! Wild, if you like, a libertine perhaps, a strange mixture of the intellectual and the sensual—but mad! I can't believe it!”
“Not when I tell you that he was brought to me suffering from acute religious mania?”
“Religious! Hubert Blair!”
“Yes. He tried to destroy himself, declaring that he was unfit to live, that he was a curse to some person unknown. He protested that each deed of his affected this unknown person, that his sins were counted as the sins of another, and that this other had haunted him—would haunt him for ever.”
The doctor's words troubled me.
“Take me to him,” I said at last. “Leave us together.”
It was a strange, sad moment when I entered the room in which Hubert was sitting. I was painfully agitated. He knew me, and greeted me warmly. I sat down opposite to him.
There was a long silence. Hubert looked away into the fire. He saw, I think, traced in scarlet flames, the scenes he was going to describe to me; and I, gazing at him, wondered of what nature the change in my friend might be. That he had changed since we were together three years ago was evident, yet he did not look mad. His dark, clean-shaven young face was still passionate. The brown eyes were still lit with a certain devouring eagerness. The mouth had not lost its mingled sweetness and sensuality. But Hubert was curiously transformed. There was a dignity, almost an elevation, in his manner. His former gaiety had vanished. I knew, without words, that my friend was another man—very far away from me now. Yet once we had lived together as chums, and had no secrets the one from the other.
At last Hubert looked up and spoke.
“I see you are wondering about me,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I have altered, of course—completely altered.”
“Yes,” I said, awkwardly enough. “Why is that?”
I longed to probe this madness of his that I might convince myself of it, otherwise Hubert's situation must for ever appal me.
He answered quietly, “I will tell you—nobody else knows—and even you may—”
He hesitated, then he said:—
“No, you will believe it.”
“Yes, if you tell me it is true.”
“It is absolutely true.
“Bernard, you know what I was when you left England for America—gay, frivolous in my pleasures, although earnest when I was working. You know how I lived to sound the depths of sensation, how I loved to stretch all my mental and physical capacities to the snapping-point, how I shrank from no sin that could add one jot or tittle to my knowledge of the mind of any man or woman who interested me. My life seemed a full life then. I moved in the midst of a thousand intrigues. I strung beads of all emotions upon my rosary, and told them until at times my health gave way. You remember my recurring periods of extraordinary and horrible mental depression—when life was a demon to me, and all my success in literature less than nothing; when I fancied myself hated, and could believe I heard phantom voices abusing me. Then those fits passed away, and once more I lived as ardently as ever, the mostpersistent worker, and the most persistent excitement-seeker in London.
“Well, after you went away I continued my career. As you know, my success increased. Through many sins I had succeeded in diving very deep into human hearts of men and women. Often I led people deliberately away from innocence in order that I might observe the gradual transformation of their natures. Often I spurred them on to follies that I might see the effect our deeds have upon our faces—the seal our actions set upon our souls. I was utterly unscrupulous, and yet I thought myself good-hearted. You remember that my servants always loved me, that I attracted people. I can say this to you. For some time my usual course was not stayed. Then—I recollect it was in the middle of the London season—one of my horrible fits of unreasonable melancholy swept over me. It stunned my soul like a heavy blow. It numbed me. I could not go about. I could not bear to see anybody. I could only shut myself up and try to reason myself back into my usual gaiety and excitement. My writing was put aside. My piano was locked. I tried to read, but even that solace was denied to me. My attention was utterly self-centred, riveted upon my own condition.
“Why, I said to myself, am I the victim of this despair, this despair without a cause? What is this oppression which weighs me down without reason? It attacks me abruptly, as if it were sentto me by some power, shot at me like an arrow by an enemy hidden in the dark. I am well—I am gay. Life is beautiful and wonderful to me. All that I do interests me. My soul is full of vitality. I know that I have troops of friends, that I am loved and thought of by many people. And then suddenly the arrow strikes me. My soul is wounded and sickens to death. Night falls over me, night so sinister that I shudder when its twilight comes. All my senses faint within me. Life is at once a hag, weary, degraded, with tears on her cheeks and despair in her hollow eyes. I feel that I am deserted, that my friends despise me, that the world hates me, that I am less than all other men—less in powers, less in attraction—that I am the most crawling, the most grovelling of all the human species, and that there is no one who does not know it. Yet the doctors say I am not physically ill, and I know that I am not mad. Whence does this awful misery, this unmeaning, causeless horror of life and of myself come? Why am I thus afflicted?
“Of course I could find no answer to all these old questions, which I had asked many times before. But this time, Bernard, my depression was more lasting, more overwhelming than usual. I grew terribly afraid of it. I thought I might be driven to suicide. One day a crisis seemed to come. I dared no longer remain alone, so I put on my hat and coat, took my stick, and hurriedout, without any definite intention. I walked along Piccadilly, avoiding the glances of those whom I met. I fancied they could all read the agony, the degradation of my soul. I turned into Bond Street, and suddenly I felt a strong inclination to stop before a certain door. I obeyed the impulse, and my eyes fell on a brass plate, upon which was engraved these words:—
Vane.Clairvoyant.11 till 4 daily.
“I remember I read them several times over, and even repeated them in a whisper to myself. Why? I don't know. Then I turned away, and was about to resume my walk. But I could not. Again I stopped and read the legend on the brass plate. On the right-hand side of the door was an electric bell. I put my finger on it and pressed the button inwards. The door opened, and I walked, like a man in a dream, I think, up a flight of narrow stairs. At the top of them was a second door, at which a maidservant was standing.
“‘You want to see Mr Vane, sir?’
“‘Yes. Can I?’
“‘If you will come in, sir, I will see.’
“She showed me into a commonplace, barely-furnished little room, and, after a short period of waiting, summoned me to another, in which stood a tall, dark youth, dressed in a gown rather like acollege gown. He bowed to me, and I silently returned the salutation. The servant left us. Then he said:—
“‘You wish me to exert my powers for you?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Will you sit here?’
“He motioned me to a seat beside a small round table, sat down opposite to me, and took my hand. After examining it through a glass, and telling my character fairly correctly by the lines in it, he laid the glass down and regarded me narrowly.
“‘You suffer terribly from depression,’ he said.
“‘That is true.’
“He continued to gaze upon me more and more fixedly. At length he said:—
“‘Do you know that everybody has a companion?’
“‘How—a companion?’
“‘Somebody incessantly with them, somebody they cannot see.’
“‘You believe in the theory of guardian angels?’
“‘I do not say these companions are always guardian angels. I see your companion now, as I look at you. His face is by your shoulder.’
“I started, and glanced hastily round; but, of course, could see nothing.
“‘Shall I describe him?’
“‘Yes,’ I said.
“'His face is dark, like yours; shaven, like yours. He has brown eyes, just as brown asyours are. His mouth and his chin are firm and small, as firm and small as yours.'
“‘He must be very like me.’
“‘He is. But there is a difference between you.’
“‘What is it?’
“‘His hair is cut more closely than yours, and part of it is shaved off.’
“‘He is a priest, then?’
“‘He wears a cowl. He is a monk.’
“‘A monk! But why does he come to me?’
“‘I should say that he cannot help it, that he is your spirit in some former state. Yes’—and he stared at me till his eyes almost mesmerised me—‘you must have been a monk once.’
“‘I—a monk! Impossible! Even if I have lived on earth before, it could never have been as a monk.’
“‘How do you know that?’
“‘Because I am utterly without superstitions, utterly free from any lingering desire for an ascetic life. That existence of silence, of ignorance, of perpetual prayer, can never have been mine.’
“‘You cannot tell,’ was all his answer.
“When I left Bond Street that afternoon I was full of disbelief. However, I had paid my half-guinea and escaped from my own core of misery for a quarter of an hour. That was something. I didn't regret my visit to this man Vane, whom I regarded as an agreeable charlatan. For a moment he had interested me. For a moment he had helped me to forget my useless wretchedness. I ought to have been grateful to him. And, as always, my soul regained its composure at last. One morning I awoke and said to myself that I was happy. Why? I did not know. But I got up. I was able to write once more. I was able to play. I felt that I had friends who loved me and a career before me. I could again look people in the face without fear. I could even feel a certain delightful conceit of mind and body. Bernard, I was myself. So I thought, so I knew. And yet, as days went by, I caught myself often thinking of this invisible, tonsured, and cowled companion of mine, whom Vane had seen, whom I did not see. Was he indeed with me? And, if so, had he thoughts, had he the holy thoughts of a spirit that has renounced the world and all fleshly things? Did he still keep that cloistered nature which is at home with silence, which aspires, and prays, and lives for possible eternity, instead of for certain time? Did he still hold desolate vigils? Did he still scourge himself along the thorny paths of faith? And, if he did, how must he regard me?
“I remember one night especially how this lastthought was with me in a dreary house, where I sinned, and where I dissected a heart.
“And I trembled as if an eye was upon me. And I went home.
“You will say that my imagination is keen, and that I gave way to it. But wait and hear the end.
“This definite act of mine—this, my first conscious renunciation—did not tend, as you might suppose, to the peace of my mind. On the contrary, I found myself angry, perturbed, as I analysed the cause of my warfare with self. I have naturally a supreme hatred of all control. Liberty is my fetish. And now I had offered a sacrifice to a prisoning unselfishness, to a false god that binds and gags its devotees. I was angry, and I violently resumed my former course. But now I began to be ceaselessly companioned by uneasiness, by a furtive cowardice that was desolating. I felt that I was watched, and by some one who suffered when I sinned, who shrank and shuddered when I followed where my desires led.
“It was the monk.
“Soon I gave to him a most definite personality. I endowed him with a mind and with moods. I imagined not only a heart for him, but a voice, deep with a certain ecclesiastical beauty, austere, with a note more apt for denunciation than for praise. His face was my own face, but with an expression not mine, elevated, almost fanatical, yetnobly beautiful; praying eyes—and mine were only observant; praying lips—and mine were but sensitively sensual. And he was haggard with abstinence, while I—was I not often haggard with indulgence? Yes, his face was mine, and not mine. It seemed the face of a great saint who might have been a great sinner. Bernard, that is the most attractive face in all the world. Accustoming myself thus to a thought-companion, I at length—for we men are so inevitably materialistic—embodied him, gave to him hands, feet, a figure, all—as before, mine, yet not mine, a sort of saintly replica of my sinfulness. For do not hands, feet, figure cry our deeds as the watchman cries the hour in the night?
“So, I had the man. There he stood in my vision as you are now.
“Yes, he was there; but only when I sinned.
“When I worked and yielded myself up to the clear assertion of my intellect, when I fought to give out the thoughts that lingered like reluctant fish far down in the deep pools of my mind, when I wrestled for beauty of diction and for nameless graces of expression, when I was the author, I could not see him.
“But when I was the man, and lived the fables that I was afterwards to write, then he was with me. And his face was as the face of one who is wasted with grey grief.
“He came to me when I sinned, as if by mysins I did him grave injury. And, allowing my imagination to range wildly, as you will say, I grew gradually to feel as if each sin did indeed strike a grievous blow upon his holy nature.
“This troubled me at last. I found myself continually brooding over the strange idea. I was aware that if my friends could know I entertained it, they would think me mad. And yet I often fancied that thought moved me in the direction of a sanity more perfect, more desirable than my sanity of self-indulgence. Sometimes even I said to myself that I would reorganise my life, that I would be different from what I had been. And then, again, I laughed at my folly of the imagination, and cursed that clairvoyant of Bond Street, who made a living by trading upon the latent imbecility of human nature. Yet, the desire of change, of soul-transformation, came and lingered, and the vision of the monk's worn young face was often with me. And whenever, in my waking dreams, I looked upon it, I felt that a time might come when I could pray and weep for the wild catalogue of my many sins.
“Bernard, at last the day came when I left England. I had long wished to travel. I had grown tired of the hum of literary cliques, and the jargon of that deadly parasite called ‘modernity.’ Praise fainted, and lay like a corpse before my mind. I was sick of gaiety. It seemed to methat London was stifling my powers, narrowing my outlook, barring out real life from me with its moods and its fashions, and its idols of the hour, and its heroes of a day, who are the traitors of the day's night.
“So I went away.
“And now I come to the part of my story that you may find it hard to believe. Yet it is true.
“One day, in my wanderings, I came to a monastery. I remember the day well. It was an afternoon of early winter, and I wasen routeto a warm climate. But to gain my climate, and snatch a vivid contrast such as I love, I toiled over a gaunt and dreary pass, presided over by heavy, beetling-browed mountains. I rode upon a mule, attended only by my manservant and by a taciturn guide who led a baggage-mule. Slowly we wound, by thin paths, among the desolate crags, which sprang to sight in crowds at each turn of the way, pressing upon us, like dead faces of Nature, the corpses of things we call inanimate, but which had surely once lived. For the earth is alive, and gives life. But these mountains were now utterly dead. These grey, petrified countenances of the hills subdued my soul. The pattering shuffle of the mules woke an occasional echo, and even an echo I hated. For the environing silence was immense, and I wished to steep myself in it. As we still ascended, in the waste winter afternoon, towards the hour of twilight, snow—the first snow of the season—began to fall. I watched the white vision of the flakes against the grey vision of the crags, and I thought that this path, which I had chosen as my road to Summer, was like the path by which holy men slowly gain Paradise, treading difficult ways through life that they may attain at last those eternal roses which bloom beyond the granite and the snows. Up and up I rode, into the clouds and the night, into the veil of the world, into the icy winds of the heights. An eagle screamed above my head, poised like a black shadow in the opaque gloom. That flying life was the only life in this waste.
“And then my mule, edging ever to the precipice as a man to his fate, sidled round a promontory of rock and set its feet in snow. For we had passed the snow-line. And upon the snow lay thin spears of yellow light. They streamed from the lattices of the monastery which crowns the very summit of the pass.
“At this monastery I was to spend the night. The good monks entertain all travellers, and in summer-time their hospitalities are lavishly exercised. But in winter, wanderers are few, and these holy men are left almost undisturbed in their meditative solitudes. My mule paused upon arocky plateau before the door of the narrow grey building. The guide struck upon the heavy wood. After a while we were admitted by a robed figure, who greeted us kindly and made us welcome. Within, the place was bare and poor enough, but scrupulously clean. I was led through long, broad, and bitterly cold corridors to a big chamber in which I was to pass the night. Here were ranged in a row four large beds with white curtains. I occupied one bed, my servant another. The rest were untenanted. The walls were lined with light wood. The wooden floor was uncarpeted. I threw open the narrow window. Dimly I could see a mountain of rocks, on which snow lay in patches, towering up into the clouds in front of me. And to the left there was a glimmer of water. On the morrow, by that water, I should ride down into the land of flowers to which I was bound. Till then I would allow my imagination to luxuriate in the bleak romance of this wild home of prayer. The pathos of the night, shivering in the snow, and of this brotherhood of aspiring souls, detached from the excitement of the world for ever, seeking restlessly their final salvation day by day, night by night, in clouds of mountain vapour and sanctified incense, entered into my soul. And I thought of that imagined companion of mine. If he were with me now, surely he would feel that he had led me to his home at length. Surely he would secretly long to remain here.
“I smiled, as I said to myself—‘Monk, to-morrow, if, indeed, you are fated to be my eternal attendant, you must come with me from this cold station of the cross down into the sunshine, where the blood of men is hot, where passions sing among the vineyards, where the battle is not of souls but of flowers. To-morrow you must come with me. But to-night be at peace!’
“And I smiled to myself again as I fancied that my visionary companion was glad.
“Then I went down into the refectory.
“That night, before I retired to my room of the four beds, I asked if I might go into the chapel of the monastery. My request was granted. I shall never forget the curious sensation which overtook me as my guide led me down some steps past a dim, little, old, painted window set in the wall, to the chapel. That there should be a church here, that the deep tones of an organ should ever sound among these rocks and clouds, that the Host should be elevated and the censer swung, and litanies and masses be chanted amid these everlasting snows, all this was wonderful and quickening to me. When we reached the chapel, I begged my kind guide to leave me for a while. I longed to meditate alone. He left me, and instinctively I sank down upon my knees.
“I could just hear the keening of the wind outside. A dim light glimmered near the altar, and in one of the oaken stalls I saw a bent form praying. I knelt a long time. I did not pray. At first I scarcely thought definitely. Only, I received into my heart the strange, indelible impression of this wonderful place; and, as I knelt, my eyes were ever upon that dark praying figure near to me. By degrees I imagined that a wave of sympathy flowed from it to me, that in this monk's devotions my name was not forgotten.
“‘What absurd tricks our imaginations can play us!’ you will say.
“I grew to believe that he prayed for me, there, under the dim light from the tall tapers.
“What blessing did he ask on me? I could not tell; but I longed that his prayer might be granted.
“And then, Bernard, at last he rose. He lifted his face from his hands and stood up. Something in his figure seemed so strangely familiar to me, so strangely that, on a sudden, I longed, I craved to see his face.
“He seemed about to retreat through a side door near to the altar; then he paused, appeared to hesitate, then came down the chapel towards me. As he drew near to me—I scarcely knew why—but I hid my face deep in my hands, with a dreadful sense of overwhelming guilt which dyed my cheeks with blood. I shrank—I cowered. I trembled and was afraid. Then I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. I looked up into the face of the monk.
“Bernard, it was the face of my invisible companion—it was my own face.
“The monk looked down into my eyes searchingly. He recoiled.
“‘Mon démon!’ he whispered in French. ‘Mon démon!’
“For a moment he stood still, like one appalled. Then he turned and abruptly quitted the chapel.
“I started up to follow him, but something held me back. I let him go, and I listened to hear if his tread sounded upon the chapel floor as a human footstep, if his robe rustled as he went.
“Yes. Then he was, indeed, a living man, and it was a human voice which had reached my ears, not a voice of imagination. He was a living man, this double of my body, this antagonist of my soul, this being who called me demon, who fled from me, who, doubtless, hated me. He was a living man.
“I could not sleep that night. This encounter troubled me. I felt that it had a meaning for me which I must discover, that it was not chance which had led me to take this cold road to the sunshine. Something had bound me with an invisible thread, and led me up here into the clouds, where already I—or the likeness of me—dwelt, perhaps had been dwelling for many years. I had looked upon my living wraith, and my living wraith had called me demon.
“How could I sleep?
“Very early I got up. The dawn was bitterly cold, but the snow had ceased, though a coating of ice covered the little lake. How delicate was the dawn here! The gathering, growing light fell upon the rocks, upon the snow, upon the ice of the lake, upon the slate walls of the monastery. And upon each it lay with a pretty purity, a thin refinement, an austerity such as I had never seen before. So, even Nature, it seemed, was purged by the continual prayers of these holy men. She, too, like men, has her lusts, and her hot passions, and her wrath of warfare. She, too, like men, can be edified and tended into grace. Nature among these heights was a virgin, not a wanton, a fit companion for those who are dedicated to virginity.
“I dressed by the window, and went out to see the entrance of the morning. There was nobody about. I had to find my own way. But when I had gained the refectory, I saw a monk standing by the door.
“It was my wraith waiting for me.
“Silently he went before me to the great door of the building. He opened it, and we stepped out upon the rocky plateau on which the snow lay thickly. He closed the door behind us, and motioned me to attend him among the rocks till we were out of sight of the monastery. Then he stopped, and we faced one another, still without a word, the grey light of the wintry dawn clothing us so wearily, so plaintively.
“We gazed at each other, dark face to dark face, brown eyes to brown eyes. The monk's pale hands, my hands, were clenched. The monk's strong lips, my lips, were set. The two souls looked upon each other, there, in the dawn.
“And then at last he spoke in French, and with the beautiful voice I knew.
“‘Whence have you come?’ he said.
“‘From England, father.’
“‘From England? Then you live! you live. You are a man, as I am! And I have believed you to be a spirit, some strange spirit of myself, lost to my control, interrupting my prayers with your cries, interrupting my sleep with your desires. You are a man like myself?’
“He stretched out his hand and touched mine.
“‘Yes; it is indeed so,’ he murmured.
“‘And you,’ I said in my turn, ‘are no spirit. Yet, I, too, believed you to be a wraith of myself, interrupting my sins with your sorrow, interrupting my desires with your prayers. I have seen you. I have imagined you. And now I find you live. What does it mean? For we are as one and yet not as one.’
“‘We are as two halves of a strangely-mingled whole,’ he answered. ‘Do you know what you have done to me?’
“‘No, father.’
“‘Listen,’ he said. ‘When a boy I dedicated myself to God. Early, early I dedicated myself,so that I might never know sin. For I had heard that the charm of sin is so great and so terrible that, once it is known, once it is felt, it can never be forgotten. And so it can make the holiest life hideous with its memories. It can intrude into the very sanctuary like a ghost, and murmur its music with the midnight mass. Even at the elevation of the Host will it be present, and stir the heart of the officiator to longing so keen that it is like the Agony of the Garden, the Agony of Christ. There are monks here who weep because they dare not sin, who rage secretly like beasts—because they will not sin.’
“He paused. The grey light grew over the mountains.
“‘Knowing this, I resolved that I would never know sin, lest I, too, should suffer so horribly. I threw myself at once into the arms of God. Yet I have suffered—how I have suffered!’
“His face was contorted, and his lips worked. I stood as if under a spell, my eyes upon his face. I had only the desire to hear him. He went on, speaking now in a voice roughened by emotion:
“‘For I became like these monks. You’—and he pointed at me with outstretched fingers—'you, my wraith, made in my very likeness, were surely born when I was born, to torment me. For, while I have prayed, I have been conscious of your neglect of prayer as if it were my own. When I have believed, I have been conscious ofyour unbelief as if it were my own. Whatever I have feebly tried to do for God, has been marred and defaced by all that you have left undone. I have wrestled with you; I have tried to hold you back; I have tried to lead you with me where I want to go, where I must go. All these years I have tried, all these years I have striven. But it has seemed as if God did not choose it. When you have been sinning, I have been agonising. I have lain upon the floor of my cell in the night, and I have torn at my evil heart. For—sometimes—I have longed—how I have longed!—to sin your sin.'
“He crossed himself. Sudden tears sprang into his eyes.
“‘I have called you my demon,’ he cried. ‘But you are my cross. Oh, brother, will you not be my crown?’
“His eyes, shadowed with tears, gazed down into mine. Bernard, in that moment, I understood all—my depression, my unreasoning despair, the fancied hatred of others, even my few good impulses, all came from him, from this living holy wraith of my evil self.
“‘Will you not be my crown?’ he said.
“Bernard, there, in the snow, I fell at his feet. I confessed to him. I received his absolution.
“And, as the light of the dawn grew strong upon the mountains, he, my other self, my wraith, blessed me.”
There was a long silence between us. Then I said:—
“And now?”
“And now you know why I have changed. That day, as I went down into the land of the sunshine, I made a vow.”
“A vow?”
“Yes; to be his crown, not his cross. I soon returned to England. At first I was happy, and then one day my old evil nature came upon me like a giant. I fell again into sin, and, even as I sinned, I saw his face looking into mine, Bernard, pale, pale to the lips, and with eyes—such sad eyes of reproach! Then I thought I was not fit to live, and I tried to kill myself. They saved me, and brought me here.”
“Yes; and now, Hubert?”
“Now,” he said, “I am so happy. God surely placed me here where I cannot sin. The days pass and the nights, and they are stainless. And he—he comes by night and blesses me. I live for him now, and see always the grey walls of his monastery, his face which shall, at last, be completely mine.”
“Good-bye,” the doctor said to me as I got into the carriage to drive back to the station. “Yes, he is perfectly happy, happier in his mania, I believe, than you or I in our sanity.”
I drove away from that huge home of madness,set in the midst of lovely gardens in a smiling landscape, and I pondered those last words of the doctor's:—
“You and I—in our sanity.”
And, thinking of the peace that lay on Hubert's face, I compared the so-called mad of the world with the so-called sane—and wondered.
Theatmosphere of the room in which Sergius Blake was sitting seemed to him strange and cold. As he looked round it, he could imagine that a light mist invaded it stealthily, like miasma rising from some sinister marsh. There was surely a cloud about the electric light that gleamed in the ceiling, a cloud sweeping in feathery, white flakes across the faces of the pictures upon the wall. Even the familiar furniture seemed to loom out faintly, with a gaunt and grotesque aspect, from shadows less real, yet more fearful, than any living form could be.
Sergius stared round him slowly, pressing his strong lips together. When he concentrated his gaze upon any one thing—a table, a sofa, a chair—the cloud faded, and the object stood out clearly before his eyes. Yet always the rest of the room seemed to lie in mist and in shadows. He knew that this dim atmosphere did not really exist, that it was projected by his mind. Yet it troubled him, and added a dull horror to his thoughts, which moved again and again, in persistent promenade, round one idea.
The hour was seven o'clock of an autumn night. Darkness lay over London, and rain made a furtive music on roofs and pavements. Sergius Blake listened to the drops upon the panes of his windows. They seemed to beckon him forth, to tell him that it was time to exchange thought for action. He had come to a definite and tremendous resolution. He must now carry it out.
He got up slowly from his chair, and with the movement the mist seemed to gather itself together in the room and to disappear. It passed away, evaporating among the pictures and ornaments, the prayer-rugs and divans. A clearness and an insight came to Sergius. He stood still by the piano, on which he rested one hand lightly, and listened. The rain-drops pattered close by. Beyond them rose the dull music of the evening traffic of New Bond Street, in which thoroughfare he lived. As he stood thus at attention, his young and handsome face seemed carved in stone. His lips were set in a hard and straight line. His dark-grey eyes stared, like eyes in a photograph. The muscles of his long-fingered hands were tense and knotted. He was in evening dress, and had been engaged to dine in Curzon Street; but he had written a hasty note to say he was ill and could not come. Another appointment claimed him. He had made it for himself.
Presently, lifting his hand from the piano, he took up a small leather case from a table thatstood near, opened it, and drew out a revolver. He examined it carefully. Two chambers were loaded. They would be enough. He put on his long overcoat, and slipped the revolver into his left breast pocket. His heart could beat against it there.
Each time his heart pulsed, Sergius seemed to hear the silence of another heart.
And now, though his mind was quite clear, and the mists and shadows had slunk away, his familiar room looked very peculiar to him. The very chair in which he generally sat wore the aspect of a stranger. Was the wall paper really blue? Sergius went close up to it and examined it narrowly, and then he drew back and laughed softly, like a child. In the sound of his laugh irresponsibility chimed. “What is the cab fare to Phillimore Place, Kensington?” he thought, searching in his waistcoat pocket. “Half a crown?” He put the coin carefully in the ticket pocket of his overcoat, buttoned the coat up slowly, took his hat and stick, and drew on a pair of lavender gloves. Just then a new thought seemed to strike him and he glanced down at his hands.
“Lavender gloves for such a deed!” he murmured. For a moment he paused irresolute, even partially unbuttoned them. But then he smiled and shook his head. In some way the gloves would not be wholly inappropriate. Sergius cast one final glance round the room.
“When I stand here again,” he said aloud, “I shall be a criminal—a criminal!”
He repeated the last word, as if trying thoroughly to realise its meaning.
Then he opened the door swiftly and went out on to the staircase.
Just as he was putting a hasty foot upon the first stair, a man out in the street touched his electric bell. Its thin tingling cry made Sergius start and hesitate. In the semi-twilight he waited, his hands deep in his pockets, his silk hat tilted slightly over his eyes. The porter tramped along the passage below. The hall door opened, and a deep and strong voice asked, rather anxiously and breathlessly:—
“Is Mr. Blake at home?”
“I rather think he's gone out, sir.”
“No—surely—how long ago?”
“I don't know, sir. He may be in. I'll see.”
“Do—do—quickly. If he's in, say I must see him—Mr Endover. But you know my name.”
“Yes, sir.”
The porter, mounting the stone staircase, suddenly came upon Sergius standing there like a stone figure.
“Lord, sir!” he ejaculated. “You give me a start!” His voice was loud from astonishment.
“Hush!” Sergius whispered. “Go down at once and say that I've gone out!”
The man turned to obey, but Anthony Endover was half-way up the stairs.
“It's all right,” he exclaimed, as he met the porter.
He had passed him in an instant and arrived at the place where Sergius was standing.
“Sergius,” he cried, and there was a great music of relief in his voice. “Hulloa! Now you're not going out.”
“Yes, I am, Anthony.”
“But I want to talk to you tremendously. Where are you going?”
“To dine with the Venables in Curzon Street.”
“I met young Venables just now, and he said you'd written that you were ill and couldn't come. He asked me to fill your place.”
Sergius muttered a “Damn!” under his breath.
“Well, come in for a minute,” he said, attempting no excuse.
He turned round slowly and re-entered his flat, followed by Endover.
For some years Endover had been Sergius Blake's close friend. They had left Eton at the same time; had been at Oxford together. Their intimacy, born in the playing fields, grew out of its cricket and football stage as their minds developed,and the world of thought opened like a holy of holies—beyond the world of action. They both passed behind the veil, but Anthony went farther than Sergius. Yet this slight separation did not lead to alienation, but merely caused the admiration of Sergius for his friend to be mingled with respect. He looked up to Anthony. Recognising that his friend's mind was more thoughtful than his own, while his passions were far stronger than Anthony's, he grew to lean upon Anthony, to claim his advice sometimes, to follow it often. Anthony was his mentor, and thought he knew instinctively all the workings of Sergius' mind and all the possibilities of his nature. The mother of Sergius was a Russian and a great heiress. Soon after he left Oxford, she died. His father had been killed by an accident when he was a child. So he was rich, free, young, in London, with no one to look after him, until Anthony Endover, who had meanwhile taken orders, was attached as fourth—or fifth—curate to a smart West End church, and came to live in lodgings in George Street, Hanover Square.
Then, as Sergius laughingly said, he had a father confessor on the premises. Yet to-night he had bidden his porter to tell a lie in order to keep his father confessor out. The lie had been vain. Sergius led the way morosely into his drawing-room, and turned on the light. Anthony walked up to the fire, and stretched his tall athletic figure inits long ebon coat. His firm throat rose out of a jam-pot collar, but his thin, strongly-marked face rather suggested an intellectual Hercules than a Mayfair parson, and neither his voice nor his manner was tinged with what so many people consider the true clericalism.
For all that he was a splendid curate, as his rector very well knew.
Now he stood by the fire for a minute in silence, while Sergius moved uneasily about the room. Presently Anthony turned round.
“It's beastly wet,” he said in a melodious ringing voice. “The black dog is on me to-night, Sergius.”
“Oh!”
“You don't want to go out, really,” Anthony continued, looking narrowly at his friend's curiously rigid face.
“Yes, I do.”
“Not to Curzon Street. They've filled up your place. I told Venables to ask Hugh Graham. I knew he was disengaged to-night. Besides—you're seedy.”
Sergius frowned.
“I'm all right again now,” he said coldly, “and I particularly wished to go. You needn't have been so deuced anxious to make the number right.”
“Well, it's done now. And I can't say I'm sorry, because I want to have a talk with you. I say, Serge, take off those lavender gloves, pull offyour coat, let's send out for some dinner, and have a comfortable evening together in here. I've had a hard day's work, and I want a rest.”
“I must go out presently.”
“After dinner then.”
“Before ten o'clock.”
“Say eleven.”
“No—that's too late.”
A violent, though fleeting expression of anxiety crossed Endover's face. Then, with a smile, he said:—
“All right. Shall I ring the bell and order some dinner to be sent in from Galton's?”
“If you like. I'm not hungry.”
“I am.”
Anthony summoned the servant and gave the order. Then he turned again to Sergius.
“Here, I'll help you off with your coat,” he said.
But Sergius moved away.
“No thanks, I'll do it. There are some cigarettes on the mantelpiece.”
Anthony went to get one. As he was taking it, he looked into the mirror over the fireplace, and saw Sergius—while removing his overcoat—transfer something from it to the left breast pocket of his evening coat.
He wanted still to feel his heart beat against that tiny weapon, still to hear—with each pulse of his own heart—the silence, not yet alive, but so soon to be alive, of that other heart.