Ape's Face

by Marion L. Fox

  ‘I do not know why you refer to the —s’ daughter-in-law as a friend,’

  retorted Mr Delane-Morton pettishly; ‘she certainly is no friend of ours to bring an animal like that; and then to have the effrontery to sit and agree to all my most pointed remarks on the subject, without so much as offering to have it removed. No, no, Ellen; do not try to defend the young woman!’

  ‘I am not referring to her at all, my dear John, nor to any dog, for I did not see one. But I refer to that gaunt, yellow-faced old lady who sat opposite to me over against the fireplace, and refused all our hospitality and every effort at conversation. No, John, I do not think they should have brought her, and so I was telling Mr. Armstrong when you came in. And how they could squeeze five people into that very small brougham perhaps you can now explain, for I suppose you shut the door upon them. I suppose they did not put her to sit upon the roof, poor creature.’

  Mr Delane-Morton gaped upon his sister.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I do not understand you; I saw no fifth person.’

  ‘And I saw no dog,’ cried Aunt Ellen acridly. ‘John, you grow almost foolish!’

  ‘Then how about this unpleasant smell?’ he retorted, puffing out his cheeks.

  ‘You are becoming indelicate,’ she returned, ‘but I am sure it was that unpleasant person’s perfume which she used.’

  ‘Indelicate!’ he snorted.

  ‘Yes,’ she returned promptly, ‘some times your language is almost coarse.’

  ‘Coarse,’ he repeated, as if too dumbfounded by the charge to make any retort or denial or defence: then gathering himself together: ‘Gentility is sometimes a cloak to vulgarity,’ he said with heat, ‘and I advise you to be on your guard, Ellen, or you will find people suspect your fear as a want of breeding.’

  ‘I, at least, have never pretended to be other than myself,’ she answered,

  ‘and I never have been ashamed of my name or birth.’

  ‘Do you choose to imply . . .’ began Mr Delane-Morton, and then broke off in an incoherent splutter, his large face purpling and shaking with agitation.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said gently, with a smile Armstrong thought particularly venomous, ‘I imply nothing,’ and she accented the penultimate word. Then glancing quickly round the room: ‘Really, Mr Armstrong, you must not mistake our family banter. John must not embarrass you. Between brothers and sisters there is not the same ceremony observed as between other relations.’

  A look of positive hatred passed from brother to sister which Armstrong could not fail to notice: it came as quickly as a flash of lightning, and was gone as soon. ‘Relationship is a curious thing, I have often thought—a tie of whose binding-power you can never be sure. What makes on one side for the greatest sacrifices, on the other side manifests the basest ingratitude. But I am not one of those who think that sacrifice or benefits should entail gratitude.

  I have never looked for it. I do not demand or even hope for it. If one of my near relatives were to forget any help, small or great, I may have been privileged to give I should not complain.’ She turned to her brother. ‘No, I should not complain,’ she repeated. ‘It is in the small details of life that the happiness of women is concerned, dear Mr Armstrong; and it is in these that most men are so blind to our needs. But we do not complain; only unfortunately our memories are against us; we cannot fail to remember. Yes, we remember. John, pray call Pym to carry me to my room.’

  John obediently rang the bell, but beneath the ponderous curve of his face that new and inimical expression forced a way.

  ‘As to benefits,’ he said, ‘opinions might be found to disagree. Some people give to others what they would wish to have given to themselves, quite irrespective of the recipient’s desires.’

  ‘Some people are too foolish to know what is good for them,’ returned the old lady enigmatically but with the same veiled animosity.

  Here Pym appeared in answer to the bell, and with Mr Delane-Morton’s assistance she was carried from the room.

  It was now nearly six o’clock; the mist had shifted a little and only lay lightly along the slopes; it had become transparent at the lower level, and only upon the heights its density remained unchanged. The window was open, just as Mr Delane-Morton had left it. Ape’s-face was leaning against the sill. She did not move when Armstrong approached her.

  ‘I wonder which of us is most insane,’ he said; ‘your aunt sees an old lady whom none of us has observed; your father sees a dog which, equally, was visible to no other eye. Have you seen anything that was not apparent to all the rest?’

  She did not answer. The curious outline of her dark face showed clearly against the grey light, and he noticed her mouth tremble.

  ‘One would naturally expect your aunt to have the more vivid imagination; but even that was limited to something in her own experience.’

  ‘It was like a shadow of herself,’ the girl returned slowly. ‘Would one recognise one’s own shadow if one met it? Evidently she sees no resemblance.’

  ‘I shall be seeing the ghost of a tea-cup soon,’ continued Armstrong, laughing, ‘and the doppel-ganger of Pym. And yet . . . the smell is here right enough.’

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried out suddenly, ‘I can’t bear it. It is the last day on which the thing is possible. It grows every minute. That even father and Aunt Ellen should see something unusual is proof enough. You cannot move about the house without feeling that the thing has nearly broken through. I’m so afraid,’ she added after a pause.

  ‘You afraid,’ he said banteringly; ‘why, I thought you never were frightened yet. It was almost the first thing I heard you say. There was the ring of truth in it, too. I did you homage for that.’

  She looked up quickly and down again.

  ‘That is very different. Now I am afraid of myself. I believe the thing might take hold of me just as well as it might take hold of Godfrey or Arthur.

  And I love them so! And yet I can picture myself doing it quite well. Creeping down the passage in the dark, and putting one’s fingers on his throat, one’s knees on his chest. There would be an added power to one’s hands, something one had never owned before. I . . .’ she stopped, shuddering. ‘Isn’t it horrible,’ she cried. ‘To think the place should be ridden by a curse like this at every hundred years! Brother killing brother or brother sister. I don’t know how to bear it.’ She raised a clenched hand and brought it down upon the sill heavily. A thin trickle of blood flowed out along the stone. Some roughness in the surface had broken the skin of her hand. She lifted it and the blood dripped on to the floor; in the stillness of the room they could hear it fall upon the boards. At the same moment both were aware of a curious motion in the place as if the atmosphere were suddenly stirred and intensified. The curtains beside them blew outwards, fluttering; yet there was no wind, no draught. Then slowly before their eyes they saw the blood-drops wiped out and disappear: and as they watched, the thin stream upon the window-sill was rubbed out also, with a strange movement which began at one end of the stain and erased it in a deliberate progress until no trace of the blood was left. They stared at one another across it with wide eyes. Ape’s-face lifted her hand to her mouth to staunch the flow. Armstrong snatched it roughly from her lips, and again the blood dripped down upon the polished boards, only this time thickly. Once more the same feeling supervened and the blood vanished, but more rapidly. The odour in the room was almost overpowering.

  Armstrong flung the window open wide, and as he moved his hand across the frame it encountered some substance that was both smooth and damp, like a wet hand. Yet nothing shewed itself except space; and when he had withdrawn his hand from the neighbourhood of the window he no longer had the strangely unpleasant sensation.

  For a few moments neither moved, but both watched the blood fall and vanish, like people listening to the ticking of a clock which counts treasured moments. Presently the wound was staunched of its own accord and the two moved a little nearer together. When at last they did speak it
was with voices involuntarily lowered. They both knew that the other had marked the occurrence and drawn the same conclusion.

  ‘You see why I am afraid?’ she asked.

  ‘Perfectly,’ he replied, ‘but you have forgotten that Arthur is on his road to London.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said hesitatingly, ‘I suppose I had forgotten. And yet, when I try to picture what he is doing, he does not seem so far away after all. Godfrey is still here, anyhow.’

  ‘True, but we will find a way to trick Fate, never fear.’

  ‘If only you were staying here now,’ she sighed.

  ‘I should not be of much use.’

  ‘You could at least lock us into our rooms.’

  ‘That you can do yourself.’

  ‘I can lock all the doors but my own.’

  ‘You can lock your own and throw the key out of the window.’

  ‘But supposing at the last moment the thing gripped me, and I could not do it?’

  ‘Impossible,’ he said sharply, ‘you are giving way already.’

  ‘No, no, indeed!’ she cried; ‘but if only you would promise to pick up the key I should feel most secure.’

  ‘It seems absurd,’ he returned, ‘but if it helps you in any way most certainly I comply. I promise. When do you propose that I should call for the key?’

  ‘We always go to bed at ten, Godfrey and father and everyone. Father sees that the front door is locked and then I hear him go past my door to his room. I should think by eleven o’clock the whole household is soundly sleeping. At eleven o’clock I will secure father’s door, lock myself in, and throw my key out of the window. My room is at the corner of the house, overlooking the plantation, at the extreme right of the gallery. One window is on a level with the gallery windows, the other, being round the corner of the house, faces the park. I will throw the key from the gallery side on to the path below; it is only five or six feet from the ground.’

  ‘Then you are sure you will feel safe?’

  ‘Safe, and so grateful,’ she said gently.

  ‘And in the morning?’ he asked. ‘One cannot suppose but that a trick of the sort would be noticed.’

  ‘In the morning Arthur’s flight will be discovered, and the whole affair might pass under one colour—evasion of prisoner, detention of gaolers and all!’ She reflected. ‘Things cannot be worse than they are.’

  ‘Then I will call some time in the course of the morning,’ he said benignly,

  ‘and I am sure you will have nothing terrible to tell me.’

  ‘How I hope you may be right!’ she said very low.

  ‘You are not afraid now?’

  ‘I do not mean to be,’ she answered, half evading his question.

  ‘The room feels different already, doesn’t it?’ he added, anxious to persuade.

  ‘The oppressive feeling has gone, it is quite peaceful, there is no strange odour. I will shut the window.’ He drew the casement to as he spoke, and stood there for some moments speaking about indifferent things, until he was sure by the expression on her face that she was comforted and encouraged.

  His sense of protectiveness towards her had grown since the afternoon. When he saw that she was really happier he fastened the window and began to draw the curtains over the grey twilight outside. Doing so, he saw a woman’s figure appear suddenly on the path which led to the plantation.

  ‘Is that a right of way?’ he asked, pointing with his finger.

  ‘Oh no,’ she answered, looking in the same direction.

  ‘It looks like a tramp.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there are a good many about the downs. I suppose she found the way down through the plantation.’

  ‘But she is going towards it.’

  ‘Perhaps they turned her from the door and directed her this way.’

  ‘An unpleasant-looking lady,’ he said, ‘and she should not wear that draggled feather. I wish tramps would act the part better. Why choose feathers, I wonder?’

  ‘It won’t be nice sleeping on the downs tonight,’ she returned, ‘and I do not envy even your walk to the Drylches.’

  ‘The sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep,’ he said in a would-be jocular tone, and bade her goodbye, feeling both paternal, fraternal, and generally effective.

  XII

  The Woman in the Tree

  THE DREAMS OF ELDERLY PERSONS, if their own accounts may be believed, are self-controlled and unimaginative affairs, generally connected with the crucial matters of food or raiment.

  Armstrong, having supped silently with the girl, had retired to his own room, and passed restlessly through a mild series of dream-adventure in this style—the cheapest kind. He was waiting for the half-hour before ten which should start him on his third journey that day towards the Hall. Three such journeys, and all, inostensibly, in the service of Ape’s-face, concluding with a pre-midnight appointment! What a hero, what a heroine, and what a romance, he laughed drowsily to himself, recalling a remote and somewhat tenuous experience of his youth as contrast; and yet it was an episode that had the glamour of reality upon it.

  The windows of his room were low and grated, latticed and commanding a wide if shortened outlook upon the trees and sky; through the torn curtain of the mist he could see a frail starlight and the skeletons of branches. Where before it had been invading and aggressive, the mist now stood somewhat withdrawn and quiescent, hanging very still and grey upon the atmosphere at a few yards’ distance from the house. His chair faced the light and the lamp at his elbow cast a luminous glow upon the pale expanse. The whole outline of the attic stood reflected on the mist like a charcoal sketch rubbed at the edges.

  He lay at the borderland between sleeping and waking, where you can suggest the subject of your dream, and then allow it to take its course. The way of remembrance suggested his dream now, and half-actor, half-spectator, he passed back through thirty years into the presence of his first real attachment. The sentimentality and the self-pity which return with later middle-age coloured the moonlight shadows of the lawn and creeper-hung windows of his dream-house, mingling and interweaving themselves with the reality outside the farm. He saw the dark smoothness of the dream-lady’s little head move into view within the window-frame. The scent and fragrance of the night which went up like incense was the breath of jessamine; it always hung about her person, he remembered, and long afterwards the least suggestion had the power to startle him. She had lighted the candles of her table, and had paused to look out into the shadows where he stood concealed.

  Her young shoulders rose out of the soft outlines of her bodice, all smooth and curved and fragrant too: he suddenly remembered the frock, a white thing like the froth on a waterfall (thirty years ago they wore draperies bunched up behind, and falling like a young cascade). Not a line of her perfect head was disguised (thirty years ago they dressed their hair quite plainly). He let her move about the room, luxuriating in the sense of watching her once more. A very pretty girl, he apostrophised her, and the lad in the bushes down there was worshipping her very shadow. Yes, it did the lad some credit that he had the taste to admire her somewhat classic beauty.

  ‘Helen, thy beauty is to me . . .’ The boy had moved out from the bushes, and come on to the lawn below the windows. There were lights in one or two of the other windows of the house, but at the far end, notably from her father’s smoking-room. He would only be able to speak to her in the lowest voice; her sister’s room was next door too. He was alternately brave and full of tremors. ‘Lo! in yon sheltered window-niche how statue-like I see you stand!’

  The young ass quoting Poe! apostrophised the dreamer. But certainly a very pretty girl, worthy a better quotation and a less callow admirer. The expectancy upon her name once uttered was pleasurable and painful at once; all the fragrant under-current made rejoinder. Helen had not heard. The lad could not see what passed in the room above, neither, of course could the dreamer.

  Then suddenly she was at the window, little dark head with candle-light
on shining braids at the back. He spoke her name again, only somehow it would not come quite clearly. His tongue was clumsy with joy and pain. Curious how differently it sounded, almost like some other word. Ella! no, certainly not Ella: and yet he had repeated it. No, it was the same as in Poe’s poem. Try quoting while she waits listening. If you are not quick she will go again, you young fool! quoth the dreamer to his young self on the lawn. ‘Ella, thy beauty is to me! . . .’ Fool! quoth the dreamer once more and more violently.

  The jessamine scent seemed to faint and vanish at his anger, the very house appeared to shrink and the colour pale—the rich colour of old brick in pallor dismayed him. He moved uneasily. The lad on the lawn was still gazing up at the shadowed face gazing down. He tried a third time to speak her name.

  The moonlight fainted, too, and he shivered. A voice behind him spoke the name he had evoked already twice, but had not meant to say. ‘Ella!’ She stooped her head from the window, it came nearer and nearer, it changed in a curiously inexplicable fashion—a fashion that was mysterious and terrifying to dreamer and the lad alike. For now he was completely in dream, where actor and spectator are merged in one. He tried to move from the face that neared his own, he was frozen and could not stir. Horror was cold upon him.

  He feared to look at the dark face, and shut his eyes. And at that Armstrong awoke. From the window he could see the same expanse of dark grass, the outlines of a house, the framework of a window; below the window a man’s figure, and in the frame-work the dark head of a girl. All just as in his dream, and yet all altered. He himself was cold enough, that was certain anyhow.

  ‘Ella,’ said the voice outside. The shadowed head bent from the window and laughed. (Helen, the real dream Helen had only whispered.)

  ‘Is that you?’ she said. No one in a dream could have said that. Armstrong knew now that he was wide awake.

  ‘Yes, I, Godfrey,’ said the voice outside.

  ‘Oh, Godfrey,’ repeated the voice of the girl half mockingly.

  ‘I want to speak to you.’