“How do you know that that other hearse was there at all?” she asked.
“Oh, come, Susan, that way madness lies. What you saw last week, you saw and you very foolishly allowed it to impress you. What you saw just now was—”
“Was exactly what I saw last week. The same hearse and the same driver. He looked at me over the gate again, and I recognised him.”
“Merely the complete recollection of what you had actually seen a week ago,” I insisted. Of course it didn’t convince her at all, and I could only possess my soul in patience and wait until her marriage with Gastonleigh — her superstitions being what they were in the matter — should exorcise the ghosts her morbid fancy had evoked.
She was rather a wan, listless thing that week, obsessed, I know, by the conviction that Lady Severnholme’s implacable willing of evil would overtake her before the wedding. She took the most casual interest in the handsome gifts that poured in by every post, and almost less in the contents of boxes from dressmaker, milliner, shoemaker, and other purveyors with which the house was becoming choked.
At last we were on the eve of the wedding. Her boxes were packed, and every thing was ready. We were going to town that night, and we were in my study, where I was giving some final instructions to the butler whilst waiting for the car. Suddenly Susan screamed. I span round, to see her standing again by the window, sheer terror in her eyes.
I ran to her as she swayed towards me, and sank feebly into my arms, conscious but limp.
“I looked out to see if the car was here,” she said. “Instead I saw the hearse standing at the gate. I should have known it would be there. This time...the driver leered at me.”
I looked through the window. There was nothing to be seen; but even as I looked the long limousine slipped into view, and came to an almost silent standstill at the gates. I resorted to a subterfuge that atoned for the blunder of the last occasion.
“You silly child,” I said, and laughed outright. “It’s the car, and your precious hearse-driver is Groves. Look for yourself. Now do you realise what a state you have allowed yourself to get into?”
“But—”
“You can’t argue it away, my dear. You may find authorities to confirm your belief that the immaterial can be visible, but you’ll find none to support your pretence that the material can become invisible, and that’s what must have happened if you saw a hearse instead of a limousine, and a hearse-driver instead of a chauffeur.”
If the subterfuge did not work as well as I could have wished, at least it worked better than I hoped. We got her up to town more or less pacified, more or less convinced she was the victim of her own brooding. Gastonleigh dined with us at the Britannia, and left early, whereupon we all retired. I looked at my watch, as I said good-night to Susan.
“In twelve hours’ time, my dear, you’ll be the happiest woman in England.”
“If I live until then,” she answered me very soberly. “Good-night, Tom dear, and God bless you whatever happens. You’ve been sweet to me.”
I went to bed miserable, I confess.
Next morning all was bustle in our apartments from 6 o’clock onwards, a bustle increased towards 10 by the arrival of the three bridesmaids. At half-past 10 we set out, Susan on my arm, Margaret on her right, and the bridesmaids following. In this order we proceeded more or less processionally down the thickly carpeted corridor. The general excitement had raised the little bride out of her preoccupations.
An obsequious chamberlain had preceded us towards the lift, which glided into view behind its iron lattice as we approached it. The lattice clashed aside, and the lift-attendant, a slim, swarthy faced man in a blue and gold uniform, stood respectfully waiting.
Susan stepped briskly forward, and then checked. Almost in the very act of putting her foot across the metal lintel of the lift, she stopped dead. She shrank back against me so violently that I was almost thrown off my balance. I could feel her body trembling violently against mine, whilst her hands clasped my arm, and her face was overspread with livid, unutterable horror. Faintly, I caught her words, half-wail, half-whisper.
“No, no! No, no! I can’t!”
Thus we stood in that state of indefinable suspense, what time the chamberlain, back obsequiously bent, too polite to stare, held the door aside and waited, and the lift-attendant within the cage frankly looked his mingled concern and astonishment. Thus for a full half-minute, and then quite suddenly a report, like the shot of a gun, reverberated through the corridor; lift and liftman plunged down the shaft, with a rattle and clang that ended in a terrific crash below. Above the gaping space where an instant ago the lift had stood dangled the ragged ends of the steel hawser which had snapped.
We took the half-swooning Susan back to her room, and there applied restoratives. When presently she had regained some self-control her first question concerned the lift-attendant. She was told that he was very seriously injured; my own suspicion was that he had been killed.
She turned to me. “Did you see his face, Tom?” she asked me, almost wildly. “That dark, evil face? It was the face of the driver of the hearse.”
And that is all. I understood then why she had shrunk against me with such signs of terror; why she had hung back from entering the lift, and so saved her life and ours. I say that I understood; but as a matter of fact I understood nothing, for to understand is to have the faculty of explaining, and that is altogether beyond me, as I have said. Susan of course explains it, and by way of proof that she knows what she is talking about, she urges the fact that her premonition that Lady Severnholme’s power of evil would cease with Gastonleigh’s marriage has been confirmed by the events.
THE DUCAL RIVAL
Ainslee’s, November 1903
Across the serene sky of the Duke of Starlingford’s mind there fell a cloud in the shape of a letter from Vavasour.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking of,” wrote that worthy gentleman, “that you don’t look after your property. There is an outsider down here, a lawyer chap named Hawksley, who is making some devilish strong running with Miss Martingale. If I were you I should run down and put matters right, or, if filial awe renders this impossible, you might get your solicitors to write to the fellow and explain matters. His present address is Nayad House, Stollbridge.”
As he read the duke grew very angry, Vavasour was not a man given to exaggeration, and he knew that he might believe every word that his friend wrote. In spite of the fact that he was very fond of Helen Martingale, he could not deny that she was a very impressionable, willful, and capricious young woman. This “lawyer chap” might be quite good-looking — it frequently happened that these plebian creatures were. That he might possess any mental attractions did not enter into the duke’s considerations. He was a man of marked limitations, and his knowledge of the world and his fellowman was confined to that which he beheld upon the surface.
Now, it was common knowledge to everybody who was anybody both in his world and Helen Martingale’s — which were not quite the same worlds, after all — that between the duke and the lady a tacit understanding existed; that, in fact, she was secretly engaged to him, and that next year, when he came of age and could act independently, he would marry her. In the meanwhile a mother who was rather a dragon, and who by no meams approved of the affair, had insisted that the duke, her son, should not go near that impossible Martingale person. It was understood that a distant relative of hers had once manufactured something.
As the Duchess had it in her power to make things extremely uncomfortable for him during his minority, and as he, himself, was a poor, weak thing, morally (physically he had the attributes of a bulldog) a slave to the creature-comforts whereof his mother threatened to deprive him in quite an appreciable degree, he dared not defy her wishes for the present.
But that letter from Vavasour, as I have said, disturbed him. Preposterous though it appeared that Helen should for a moment seriously entertain the wooing of a bourgeois attorney, while he, the Duke
of Starlingford, was behind the arras waiting for the hour to strike when he should come forth to claim her, still the duke’s mind — which was not a great matter — was far from easy.
He determined forthwith to go down to Stollbridge. And so it came to pass that, having changed into a suit of tweeds and a Panama, he left Paddington a couple of hours after the reception of Vavasour’s letter.
On the platform at Stollbridge station he put his hand in his pocket for that letter, only to find that he had left it in his other garments. He had a bad memory — he had really never had occasion to remember anything in his life — and the name of the man he had come down to see was forgotten. He had only read it once. Then a doubt crossed his mind. Was it Nayad or Dryad? The duke knew of some vague connection between the two, and he naturally hit upon the wrong one. He hailed a hansom.
“I say, do you know of a place about here called ‘Dryad House’?”
“D’yer mean Nayad House, sir?” inquired the driver, led to the conclusion by the similarity of sound.
“That’s it — Nayad House. Can you tell me — I mean, do you know the name of the occupier?”
“Mr. Lumley, sir,” answered the man, promptly.
“That’s it — Lumley; that’s it. Drive me there, will you?”
He got in and recited the name half a dozen times in quick succession, so that he might not again forget it.
“I shall not be in for dinner to-night, Roody,” said Hawksley, as he lounged into the poet’s study.
The poet looked up languidly from the proof sheets of “Autumn Leaves” — the embryo of his first book of poems.
“That,” said he, “is an unnecessary announcement. You don’t usually dress to dine with me. I am far from wishing in any way to restrain you from following the bent of your inclinations, but I should like to ask you whether, my dear Tommy, you are supposed to be staying with me, or merely sleeping at my house.”
Hawksley’s chubby red cheeks grew a shade redder with indignation.
“I like that, Roody, on my soul, I do,” he ejacualted. “You are so delightfully naïve at times.”
“Yes,” murmured Lumley, “I am considered rather guileless.”
“I should like to ask you in return whether you ever heard of the duties of a host? If I have been occasionally absent, it is owing to the absolute impossibility of being anything but alone here. It isn’t good for man to be alone, and in this house of yours I’m devilish lonely, thanks to the interminable proof-sheets of your ‘Autumn Leaves.’ I should say,” he continued, opening his opera hat, and speaking in his most withering manner, “to judge by their quantity, that you have collected the cast-off clothing of every forest in England. By the time the book is thrown upon an unsympathetic world, I may begin to think about the holiday I came down here to spend in your company. Had you merely said ‘in your house,’ your invitation would at least have been a more accurate one.” And, setting his hat on the back of his sleek head, the lawyer struck an attitude worthy of Cicero.
“That,” said the poet, smiling, “is a beautiful oration, and when one hears your sonorous, forensic tones, and the pregnancy of your expositions, one wonders that you should have been such a failure in the profession to which you have been relegated.”
“Good-evening,” said the lawyer, huffily, and was gone.
Rudolph Lumley laughed as the door closed upon his departing friend, and turned his mind again to his work. He was disturbed half an hour or so later by the entrance of his man.
“A gentleman to see you, sir.”
Lumley took the card with an annoyed air. He did not wish to be interrupted. But the annoyance on his fine, young face melted quickly into wonder. The card bore the name of Starlingford, and though excellently connected, the poet did not number a duke among his callers.
“Hum — did he say what he wanted, Martin?”
“No, sir,” replied the man, in tones that intimated that a duke was not a tradesman. Lumley thought for a moment, then:
“Show him in here,” said he.
An instant later the poet beheld a young man of middle height in a suit of tweeds, thick-set and ungainly of shape, with a brick-red face of coarse features. Lumley looked with interest at his patrician visitor, and inwardly commented that Lavater would, at sight, have pronounced him a plowboy. He arose and inclined his head slightly.
“You are Mr. Lumley?” the duke suggested.
“Lumley,” amended the poet, “is my name.”
“I have taken the liberty of calling upon you,” said the duke aggressively.
“Ye-es,” assented the poet, wondering vaguely what firm the duke might be traveling for. “Won’t you sit down?”
“No thanks. I mean, I shan’t stay long. The fact is, sir — what I mean to say is that you are very — very unwarrantably interfering with me.”
“I — interfering with you?”
“Yes, and I — I mean I’m not going to stand it.”
“I see,” said the poet. He wondered whether this might not be some escaped lunatic whom it were politic to humor. The man’s preposterous statement, and his still more preposterous attitude, awakened in Lumley a spirit of gentle badinage.
“If I am interfering with you,” said he, “I quite agree with your determination not to endure it. No self-respecting man could.”
The duke was staggered. He had come to wage battle, and to beat down resistance. Acquiescence disarmed him, and he was at a loss how to proceed.
“If you will give yourself the trouble of reciting the sum of my interference, we may arrive at some mutually desirable understanding,” said the poet.
“I refer to Miss Martingale,” the duke announced, and the poet remembered suddenly that he had heard her name mentioned in connection with Starlingford’s.
“I beg your pardon?” said he.
“I refer to Miss Martingale. You may not know that between the lady and me — I mean that there is an understanding between us.”
“I heard something to that effect, sir, and I’m sure that it is very flattering to have you come here to confide in me. But may I venture to inquire how the matter concerns me?”
“Damn it, Mr. Lumley, don’t you think it would be as well if you stopped asking questions?” cried the duke, rudely.
“It certainly appears rather useless,” sighed the poet.
“I am not a fool, sir,” the duke protested, getting heated.
“Indeed?” murmured the poet.
“And I mean I’m not going to stand by and see another man pay attentions to her in my absence.”
“May I suggest that such a course — that of standing by and seeing things, and yet being absent — would border upon the miraculous?” quoth the poet, playfully.
The duke was speechless with rage for a second. It had just dawned upon him that this smiling bounder was pulling his ducal leg.
“I have warned you off, sir, and I shall be glad if you’ll take my warning,” he thundered.
“One moment, your grace,” said the poet, in surprise, comprehension dawning at last upon him. “Do you lay it to my charge that I have been paying attentions, as you call it, to Miss Martingale?”
“Everybody knows it,” growled Starlingford.
“Then everybody knows something that is false. I am happy to set your mind at rest, sir. You have been misinformed.”
“Now, that’s not true. I mean, it’s a deliberate falsehood,” cried the duke, goaded to it by his opponent’s coolness.
Lumley’s brows contracted suddenly. He pressed a button on his desk.
“I don’t know where the devil you learned your manners, sir,” said he, “but it must have been a low sort of place. Martin, show his grace to the door, will you?”
The duke grew livid.
“You shall hear from my solicitors,” he threatened.
The poet bowed, and sat down once more to his proof-sheets, while the duke — who never in his twenty years of life had been so insulted — suffered himself
to be shown out.
But when he was gone, Lumley found work impossible. He thought over the duke’s accusation, and weighed the absurdity of it. Then he thought of the beautiful Miss Martingale, and, somehow, after a little more thinking, Starlingford’s charge appeared less absurd. He had seen her quite frequently lately — they were neighbors of his — and she being usually the brightest and smartest girl available, it was natural that he had singled her out on most of these occasions. Clearly, people had noticed it, and talked; proverbially, onlookers saw more of the game. Perhaps she had noticed it herself. He remembered that she had always been particularly pleasant to him.
Then an all-illuminating flash fell across his brain. Good Lord, how blind he had been! How blind to his own feelings, even! She was a charming creature, he swore, and from his present introspection he discovered that he had fallen in love with her without noticing it. It had taken this yokel-duke of hers to pluck the scales from his eyes, and he had actually told the duke an untruth. Well, the duke was clearly an ass, and if the duke intended to be jealous of him, he would see to it that the duke should not lack for cause. If he should end by cutting Starlingford out altogether — which then seemed to him an eminently probable solution of the problem — the duke had only himself to blame for it. She should find the laurels that would anon — in a figurative sense — encircle his poet’s brow, more alluring than the strawberry leaves with which an accident of birth had crowned his grace of Starlingford.
Thus ran the poet’s thoughts, and by such sophisms did conviction sink into his soul, inspiring a vista of the future which he should tread on rose-strewn paths beside the beautiful, the ravishing Helen Martingale — who had preferred to know a great love rather than to share a ducal coronet.
That he had frequently had such visions in which other women were to have been his companions did not at the time occur to him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 491
