A Duel Part 53

He was not only shrinking as close to her as he could get, he was gripping her arm with convulsive fingers, which she could feel were trembling. He was looking in one direction, she in another. She turned to see what he was staring at; when she saw, it is possible that she began to be in a less exultant mood.

Some one, something, was moving along the avenue and coming towards them. It was not easy to determine what it was; it came and went. It was rendered visible by a light which seemed to emanate from its own body, as if it were a kind of phosph.o.r.escence. When the light gleamed it was there plainly, if dimly, to be seen; when the light ceased to gleam, it--the something!--seemed to go with it; there was nothing but the black darkness. This continued, this coming and going, for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, suddenly, the light not only grew brighter, it remained. They could see what the something was--it was a man. But what a man! A huge, unwieldy, bloated, shapeless creature, covered from head to foot with some white garment which was swathed round him like a sheet. He seemed to be floating, rather than walking. They could see no movement of his limbs, and yet he came steadily towards them until he was within five or six feet of where they were standing, when the light faded as suddenly as it had come, and there was nothing but darkness there.

For some instants they remained motionless, both being probably under the impression that though the figure was no longer visible it still was advancing towards them. While they waited, on the alert to discover what was next about to happen, the silence was broken by a curious noise, as by a series of quick, broken gasps, as if some one panted, struggled, for breath.

When all again was still, Mr. Luker asked, in a tone of voice in which was what sounded uncommonly like a note of banter--

"Well, my friend, aren't we to see any more of you? Is that the end of the performance? Won't you favour us with another private view?"

In Mrs. Lamb's voice, on the other hand, there was a suggestion of preternatural gravity.

"It was Cuthbert Grahame."

"What?"

"It was Cuthbert Grahame. Didn't you hear him fighting for breath?"

"Cuthbert fiddlesticks! It was some d.a.m.ned trick, and not over well done either. This entertainment has been prepared for our special benefit; it occurs to me that it has been insufficiently rehea.r.s.ed. We've been treated to the first part up to now; the second part is waiting for us inside the house--if we ever get as far. The prelude's been mere foolery. I imagine that the serious business is to come."

"It was Cuthbert Grahame."

"Nonsense! Where were your eyes, not to speak of your senses?

Didn't you notice----"

"He is waiting for us inside the house."

"Mrs. Lamb, if you'll exercise a little common-sense and allow me to finish, I think I shall be able to prove, even to your satisfaction, that what you've just now witnessed----"

"Don't you see him? He beckons to us. Can't you hear how hard he fights for his breath?"

"No; nor you either. Aren't you well? Is this one of those fits of which you were telling me trying to come back, in which you see things? If so, keep it off as long as you conveniently can.

So far as I'm concerned it will only need that to put a crown and climax on my night's enjoyment. Listen to me, Isabel----"

"Come!" Taking him by the arm, she led him up to the house. When they reached the front door she took a key out of the bag which she still carried. After a momentary hesitation she held it up, as if to call his attention to something that was taking place within. "Listen! Don't you hear? He calls to us! Let us go to him. I've often heard him calling to me like that in the night--often."

During the last few seconds, for some occult reason, a change had taken place in her which had apparently revolutionised the whole woman externally as well as internally; her bearing, her manner, her voice, and especially her face, had changed. The alteration in the latter was nothing short of amazing. Just now its predominating expression was one of boldness, defiance, reckless rage. She had looked as if she feared neither man nor devil; her looks had probably only mirrored her actual feelings.

This air of wildness, of careless contempt for the unknown, unseen perils, which, according to her companion, hemmed her in on every side, had been accentuated by the fact that, having lost her hat when the cart was overturned, her thick black hair had broken loose from its fastenings and hung in tangled ma.s.ses about her face. She had looked what she emphatically was, a dangerous woman in a dangerous frame of mind. Now all that had changed. She looked no longer angry or defiant; all traces of boldness had vanished altogether. Instead, a stolid, fixed expression had come upon her face, one which, as it were, was void of all expression. In her wide-open eyes there was a strained, staring look, which conveyed an uncomfortable impression that she was gazing at something which only she could see, gazing with a fixed intensity of vision as if she was bent on not losing even the minutest details.

As she stood there, with uplifted face, the rays of the lantern lighting up her rigid features, Mr. Luker observed her with an appearance of unmistakable discomfort. The significance of the change which had taken place in her was borne in on him with uncomfortable force. The change in her affected him; he was obviously becoming each second more uneasy. He seemed to make a desperate attempt to conquer his own increasing apprehension, and to restore her to her former state of mind.

"Isabel, you didn't use to be an utter fool. Before you put that key into the lock, before you move another step, rub that look of stark, staring midsummer madness off your face. It doesn't become you, G.o.d knows. Listen to what I have to say; try not to be a fool. Don't you understand----"

Before he could explain what was the appeal he was about to make to her understanding, some one, or something, came swirling at them from the side of the house. The light disappeared in the lantern; the lantern itself was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the lady's hands.

She made no effort to regain it, nor to ascertain how the thing had happened. She stood in the darkness, motionless. Presently she said--

"Luker! Luker!"

There was no answer. She put out her hand to feel for her companion who, a moment before, had been standing close at her side. He was not there.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

TOWARDS JUDGMENT

For possibly a couple of minutes she continued on the doorstep immobile, as if she not only did not understand what had happened, but as if she also still failed to realise that her legal adviser was at least no longer where he was. She repeated his name, at intervals--"Luker! Luker!"--almost as if she was a child who repeated, parrot-like, a meaningless formula. Then, after a while, when still there came no answer, she thrust her hand, as if mechanically, into the bosom of her dress, feeling for something. Presently it emerged, holding a flask. In the same odd, automatic fas.h.i.+on, as if her actions were not the product of her own volition, uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the stopper, she placed the neck between her lips. After a perceptible interval, suddenly slipping between her fingers, it dropped on to the step with a clatter. It had contained ether; she had swallowed its entire contents.

What were the exact physical or mental results of what would have been a poison to an unaccustomed subject, it would be difficult to say. One fact may be baldly stated, it robbed her of her senses. Her capacity of judging between the real and the unreal had been trembling in the balance. When she emptied that flask unreality became all that was real. Not perhaps on the instant, but certainly after the expiration of a very few seconds.

At first she stood trembling, so that one might almost have expected to see her sink to the ground from sheer inability to stand. She stretched out her arms into the darkness, as if seeking for support, and found none. Then, putting her hands up to her face, she began to rub them up and down before her eyes, as if endeavouring to rub away some film which obscured her sight, and she began to cry, softly, beneath her breath. Then, dropping her hands to her sides, she began to see the things which were not, those visions which, in some form, are the inseparable companions of a mind diseased.

"I am coming!--I heard you!--you need not call so loud!"

The words were uttered not loudly, but with such clearness of intonation that, proceeding from her as she stood there all alone in the outer darkness, and addressed apparently to the circ.u.mambient air, they might have produced on unintentional listeners not an agreeable effect. She turned, making as if to insert the key which she still held into the lock of the door behind her, to find that the door already stood wide open, and that in the hall beyond there was a faint light which was just sufficient to render objects visible.

In her normal condition the fact that the door had seemingly opened of its own accord would have occasioned her something more than wonder; she would at least have taken it for granted that somewhere in its immediate neighbourhood were helping hands; and she would promptly have set herself to discover to whom they belonged, and just where their owners might be found.

In her then state no notion of the kind seemed to enter her brain. That the fact that the door was open occasioned her surprise was obvious; but it was surprise of a singular quality, and it was accompanied by abject terror. The woman seemed all at once to become stunted, to shrink into sheer physical insignificance.

"Cuthbert Grahame," she muttered, "why did you open the door?

How did you get out of your bed to open the door?" With a sound which was part wail, part sob, she stumbled across the threshold into the hall. "Where shall I go? Shall I go into the room into which I first went on that first night? Perhaps I'll be safe in there--perhaps I'll be safe. I don't want to go upstairs--not yet--not just yet. I daren't--I daren't. Listen! how he calls to me--how he calls."

She glanced up the staircase, which she approached even while she shrank from it, and she saw, in the dim, mysterious light, leaning over the banister, looking down at her from above, a woman's face--Nannie Foreshaw. She did not stop to ask herself if the appearance might by any chance be real, a creature of warm flesh and blood. It was some moments before she realised who it was that looked at her. When she did, the presence there was so unexpected, so wholly unforeseen, and thrust so deeply at her conscience, that it is not impossible that the mere shock which resulted from the sight was sufficient to disintegrate her few remaining wits. She at once took it for granted that she was gazing at a spectre, a shade returned from the tomb to afflict her before her time. Cowering back against the wall, she broke into screams of agony.

"Nannie! Nannie!--I didn't kill you!--I didn't kill you! Don't look at me like that!--don't! don't! don't!" Covering her face with her hands, she began to sob with such violence that one could see her shaking as she leaned against the wall. When, removing her hands, she again ventured to look up, there was no one there. "She's gone! she's gone!"

The words were uttered with a gasp of relief which it was not pleasant to hear. For a moment it seemed as if she might be restored to something like her proper self. Then, while she seemed to waver, without apparent rhyme or reason, all her tremors returned. Again she broke into shrieks and cries.

"She's waiting for me in his room! in his room! in his room!--she's waiting for me! My G.o.d! what am I to do?--help me! help me! I'll have to go to him. Listen how he calls to me!--listen how he calls! I'm coming!--don't call so loud!" She began stumbling up the staircase, blunderingly, blindly, as if she could not see where she was going. Stopping every two or three steps, clutching at the wall, the rails; glancing back, looking as though if she could she would descend. But each time, just as she was about to beat a retreat, there came to her that insistent voice, summoning her to her fate. She gasped out expostulations even as she stumbled upwards. "Don't call so loud! don't call so loud! I'm coming."

And she did come. A singular spectacle she presented as she went. No one would have recognised in that ill-shaped, mouthing, struggling woman--though she alone knew what it was with which she struggled; who seemed unable to stand up straight, and to experience as much difficulty in ascending an ordinary staircase as if it had been the scarred surface of some precipitous cliff which she was forced, very much against her will, to climb--the flamboyant and somewhat overwhelming lady who was known among a certain set in London as the handsome Mrs. Lamb. There were no traces of beauty about her then.

When she had gained the landing her terror seemed, if the thing were possible, to increase. Descending to her knees, clutching the railing with both hands, she crawled, as if drawn by some invisible force, against which all the strength of her resistance was in vain, towards the room, the bedroom, in which Cuthbert Grahame had pa.s.sed so much of the latter part of his life, and in which, through her action, he had died. And all the while she protested.

"I won't come! I won't come!" For an instant she would cling not only with her hands, but, as it were, with her whole body, to the railings, as if she had finally resolved that nothing should constrain her to advance another inch. Then again she was possessed by a paroxysm of terror. "I will come!--don't call so loud! I am coming!"

When she was in front of the door of the room she did halt for perhaps more than a minute, crouching in a heap on the floor, covering her face with her hands, overtaken by such a fury of weeping that the violence of her sobs seemed as if it would tear her to pieces. Then, as if actuated by some sudden irresistible impulse, she rose to her feet, and exclaimed, still weeping--

"Cuthbert Grahame, I hear you calling--I am here".

She threw open the dead man's bedroom door.

CHAPTER x.x.xV