The Black Reaper

by Bernard Capes

  I fetched a sigh of content as I broke the seal of the packet and brought out the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden a little sardonic laugh was clipt to silence. It came from groom or maid, no doubt; yet it thrilled me with an odd feeling of uncanniness, and I shivered slightly.

  ‘Bah!’ I said to myself determinedly. ‘There is a shrewd nip in the wind, for all the show of sunlight’; and I rose, pulled down the window, and resumed my seat.

  Then in the closed room, that had become deathly quiet by contrast, I opened and read the dead man’s letter.

  ‘SIR, – I hope you will read what I here put down. I lay it on you as a solemn injunction, for I am a dying man, and I know it. And to who is my death due, and the Governor’s death, if not to you, for your pryin’ and curiosity, as surely as if you had drove a nife through our harts? Therefore, I say, Read this, and take my burden from me, for it has been a burden; and now it is right that you that interfered should have it on your own mortal shoulders. The Major is dead and I am dying, and in the first of my fit it went on in my head like cimbells that the trap was left open, and that if he passed he would look in and it would get him. For he knew not fear, neither would he submit to bullying by God or devil.

  ‘Now I will tell you the truth, and Heaven quit you of your responsibility in our destruction.

  ‘There wasn’t another man to me like the Governor in all the countries of the world. Once he brought me to life after doctors had given me up for dead; but he willed it, and I lived; and ever afterwards I loved him as a dog loves its master. That was in the Punjab; and I came home to England with him, and was his servant when he got his appointment to the jail here. I tell you he was a proud and fierce man, but under control and tender to those he favoured; and I will tell you also a strange thing about him. Though he was a soldier and an officer, and strict in discipline as made men fear and admire him, his hart at bottom was all for books, and literature, and such-like gentle crafts. I had his confidence, as a man gives his confidence to his dog, and before others. In this way I learnt the bitter sorrow of his life. He had once hoped to be a poet, acknowledged as such before the world. He was by natur’ an idelist, as they call it, and God knows what it meant to him to come out of the woods, so to speak, and swet in the dust of cities; but he did it, for his will was of tempered steel. He buried his dreams in the clouds and came down to earth greatly resolved, but with one undying hate. It is not good to hate as he could, and worse to be hated by such as him; and I will tell you the story, and what it led to.

  ‘It was when he was a subaltern that he made up his mind to the plunge. For years he had placed all his hopes and confidents in a book of verses he had wrote, and added to, and improved during that time. A little encouragement, a little word of praise, was all he looked for, and then he was redy to buckle to again, profitin’ by advice, and do better. He put all the love and beauty of his hart into that book, and at last, after doubt, and anguish, and much diffidents, he published it, and give it to the world. Sir, it fell what they call still-born from the press. It was like a green leaf flutterin’ down in a dead wood. To a proud and hopeful man, bubblin’ with music, the pain of neglect, when he come to relise it, was terrible. But nothing was said, and there was nothing to say. In silence he had to endure and suffer.

  ‘But one day, during manoovers, there came to the camp a grey-faced man, a newspaper correspondent, and young Shrike nocked up a friendship with him. Now how it come about I cannot tell, but so it did that this skip-kennel wormed the lad’s sorrow out of him, and his confidents, swore he’d been damnabilly used, and that when he got back he’d crack up the book himself in his own paper. He was a fool for his pains, and a serpent in his croolty. The notice come out as promised, and, my God! the author was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end. Even confidentses he had given to the creature was twisted to his ridicule, and his very appearance joked over. And the mess got wind of it, and made a rare story for the dog days.

  ‘He bore it like a soldier and that he became hart and liver from the moment. But he put something to the account of the grey-faced man and locked it up in his breast.

  ‘He come across him again years afterwards in India, and told him very politely that he hadn’t forgotten him, and didn’t intend to. But he was anigh losin’ sight of him there for ever and a day, for the creature took cholera, or what looked like it, and rubbed shoulders with death and the devil before he pulled through. And he come across him again over here, and that was the last of him, as you shall see presently.

  ‘Once, after I knew the Major (he were Captain then), I was a-brushin’ his coat, and he stood a long while before the glass. Then he twisted upon me, with a smile on his mouth, and says he—

  ‘“The dog was right, Johnson: this isn’t the face of a poet. I was a presumtious ass, and born to cast up figgers with a pen behind my ear.”

  ‘“Captain,” I says, “if you was skinned, you’d look like any other man without his. The quality of a soul isn’t expressed by a coat.”

  ‘“Well,” he answers, “my soul’s pretty clean-swept, I think, save for one Bluebeard chamber in it that’s been kep’ locked ever so many years. It’s nice and dirty by this time, I expect,” he says. Then the grin comes on his mouth again. “I’ll open it some day,” he says, “and look. There’s something in it about comparing me to a dancing dervish, with the wind in my petticuts. Perhaps I’ll get the chance to set somebody else dancing by-and-by.”

  ‘He did, and took it, and the Bluebeard chamber come to be opened in this very jail.

  ‘It was when the system was lying fallow, so to speak, and the prison was deserted. Nobody was there but him and me and the echoes from the empty courts. The contract for restoration hadn’t been signed, and for months, and more than a year, we lay idle, nothing bein’ done.

  ‘Near the beginnin’ of this period, one day comes, for the third time of the Major’s seein’ him, the grey-faced man. “Let bygones be bygones,” he says. “I was a good friend to you, though you didn’t know it; and now, I expect, you’re in the way to thank me.”

  ‘“I am,” says the Major.

  ‘“Of course,” he answers. “Where would be your fame and reputation as one of the leadin’ prison reformers of the day if you had kep’ on in that riming nonsense?”

  ‘“Have you come for my thanks?” says the Governor.

  ‘“I’ve come,” says the grey-faced man, “to examine and report upon your system.”

  ‘“For your paper?”

  ‘“Possibly; but to satisfy myself of its efficacy, in the first instance.”

  ‘“You aren’t commissioned, then?”

  ‘“No; I come on my own responsibility.”

  ‘“Without consultation with anyone?”

  ‘“Absolutely without. I haven’t even a wife to advise me,” he says, with a yellow grin. What once passed for cholera had set the bile on his skin like paint, and he had caught a manner of coughing behind his hand like a toast-master.

  ‘“I know,” says the Major, looking him steady in the face, “that what you say about me and my affairs is sure to be actuated by conscientious motives.”

  ‘“Ah,” he answers. “You’re sore about that review still, I see.”

  ‘“Not at all,” says the Major; “and, in proof, I invite you to be my guest for the night, and tomorrow I’ll show you over the prison and explain my system.”

  ‘The creature cried, “Done!” and they set to and discussed jail matters in great earnestness. I couldn’t guess the Governor’s intentions, but, somehow, his manner troubled me. And yet I can remember only one point of his talk. He were always dead against making public show of his birds. “They’re there for reformation, not ignominy,” he’d say. Prisons in the old days were often, with the asylum and the work’us, made the holiday show-places of towns. I’ve heard of one Justice of the Peace, up North, who, to save himself trouble, used to sign a lot of blank orders for leave to view, so that applicants needn’t bother him
when they wanted to go over. They’ve changed all that, and the Governor were instrumental in the change.

  ‘“It’s against my rule,” he said that night, “to exhibit to a stranger without a Government permit; but, seein’ the place is empty, and for old remembrance’ sake, I’ll make an exception in your favour, and you shall learn all I can show you of the inside of a prison.”

  ‘Now this was natural enough; but I was uneasy.

  ‘He treated his guest royly; so much that when we assembled the next mornin’ for the inspection, the grey-faced man were shaky as a wet dog. But the Major were all set prim and dry, like the soldier he was.

  ‘We went straightaway down corridor B, and at cell 47 we stopped.

  ‘“We will begin our inspection here,” said the Governor. “Johnson, open the door.”

  ‘I had the keys of the row; fitted in the right one, and pushed open the door.

  ‘“After you, sir,” said the Major; and the creature walked in, and he shut the door on him.

  ‘I think he smelt a rat at once, for he began beating on the wood and calling out to us. But the Major only turned round to me with his face like a stone.

  ‘“Take that key from the bunch,” he said, “and give it to me.” I obeyed, all in a tremble, and he took and put it in his pocket.

  ‘“My God, Major!” I whispered, “what are you going to do with him?”

  ‘“Silence, sir!” he said; “How dare you question your superior officer!”

  ‘And the noise inside grew louder.

  ‘The Governor, he listened to it a moment like music; then he unbolted and flung open the trap, and the creature’s face came at it like a wild beast’s.

  ‘“Sir,” said the Major to it, “you can’t better understand my system than by experiencing it. What an article for your paper you could write already – almost as pungint a one as that in which you ruined the hopes and prospects of a young cockney poet.”

  ‘The man mouthed at the bars. He was half-mad, I think, in that one minute.

  ‘“Let me out!” he screamed. “This is a hidius joke! Let me out!”

  ‘“When you are quite quiet – deathly quiet,” said the Major, “you shall come out. Not before”; and he shut the trap in its face very softly.

  ‘“Come, Johnson, march!” he said, and took the lead, and we walked out of the prison.

  ‘I was like to faint, but I dared not disobey, and the man’s screeching followed us all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut the first great door on it.

  ‘It may have gone on for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. The creature was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart.

  ‘And from that hour till his death, five months later, he rotted and maddened in his dreadful tomb.’

  There was more, but I pushed the ghastly confession from me at this point in uncontrollable loathing and terror. Was it possible – possible, that injured vanity could so falsify its victim’s every tradition of decency?

  ‘Oh!’ I muttered, ‘what a disease is ambition! Who takes one step towards it puts his foot on Alsirat!’

  It was minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption of the task; but at last I took it up again, with a groan.

  ‘I don’t think at first I realised the full mischief the Governor intended to do. At least, I hoped he only meant to give the man a good fright and then let him go. I might have known better. How could he ever release him without ruining himself?

  ‘The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There was a strange new look of triumph in his face, and in his hand he held a heavy hunting-crop. I pray to God he acted in madness, but my duty and obedience was to him.

  ‘“There is sport towards, Johnson,” he said. “My dervish has got to dance.”

  ‘I followed him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door, but the place was silent as the grave. But from the cell, when we reached it, came a low, whispering sound.

  ‘The Governor slipped the trap and looked through.

  ‘“All right,” he said, and put the key in the door and flung it open.

  ‘He were sittin’ crouched on the ground, and he looked up at us vacant-like. His face were all fallen down, as it were, and his mouth never ceased to shake and whisper.

  ‘The Major shut the door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved to the creature with his whip.

  ‘“Up!” he cried. “Up, you dervish, and dance to us!” and he brought the thong with a smack across his shoulders.

  ‘The creature leapt under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry, and the Major whipped him till he danced. All round the cell he drove him, lashing and cutting – and again, and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on the floor whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give an account of this some day. I shall have to whip my master with a red-hot serpent round the blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it with agony, because here my love and my obedience was to him.

  ‘When it was finished, he bade me put down food and drink that I had brought with me, and come away with him; and we went, leaving him rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him alone in the empty prison until we should come again at the same time tomorrow.

  ‘So day by day this went on, and the dancing three or four times a week, until at last the whip could be left behind, for the man would scream and begin to dance at the mere turning of the key in the lock. And he danced for four months, but not the fifth.

  ‘Nobody official came near us all this time. The prison stood lonely as a deserted ruin where dark things have been done.

  ‘Once, with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he would account for the inmate of 47 if he was suddenly called upon by authority to open the cell; and he answered, smiling—

  ‘“I should say it was my mad brother. By his own account, he showed me a brother’s love, you know. It would be thought a liberty; but the authorities, I think, would stretch a point for me. But if I got sufficient notice, I should clear out the cell.”

  ‘I asked him how, with my eyes rather than my lips, and he answered me only with a look.

  ‘And all this time he was, outside the prison, living the life of a good man – helping the needy, ministering to the poor. He even entertained occasionally, and had more than one noisy party in his house.

  ‘But the fifth month the creature danced no more. He was a dumb, silent animal then, with matted hair and beard; and when one entered he would only look up at one pitifully, as if he said, “My long punishment is nearly ended.” How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him I know not, but none ever was. Perhaps he was one of the wandering gentry that nobody ever knows where they are next. He was unmarried, and had apparently not told of his intended journey to a soul.

  ‘And at the last he died in the night. We found him lying stiff and stark in the morning, and scratched with a piece of black crust on a stone of the wall these strange words: “An Eddy on the Floor”. Just that – nothing else.

  ‘Then the Governor came and looked down, and was silent. Suddenly he caught me by the shoulder.

  ‘“Johnson,” he cried, “if it was to do again, I would do it! I repent of nothing. But he has paid the penalty, and we call quits. May he rest in peace!”

  ‘“Amen!” I answered low. Yet I knew our turn must come for this.

  ‘We buried him in quicklime under the wall where the murderers lie, and I made the cell trim and rubbed out the writing, and the Governor locked all up and took away the key. But he locked in more than he bargained for.

  ‘For months the place was left to itself, and neither of us went anigh 47. Then one day the workmen was to be put in, and the Major he took me round with him for a last examination of the place before they come.

  ‘He hesitated a bit outside a particular cell; but at last he drove in the key and kicked open the door.

  ‘“My God!” he says, “he’s dancing still!”

  ‘My heart was thumpin’, I tell you, as I looked over his shoulder.
What did we see? What you well understand, sir; but, for all it was no more than that, we knew as well as if it was shouted in our ears that it was him, dancin’. It went round by the walls and drew towards us, and as it stole near I screamed out, “An Eddy on the Floor!” and seized and dragged the Major out and clapped to the door behind us.

  ‘“Oh!” I said, “in another moment it would have had us.”

  ‘He looked at me gloomily.

  ‘“Johnson,” he said, “I’m not to be frightened or coerced. He may dance, but he shall dance alone. Get a screwdriver and some screws and fasten up this trap. No one from this time looks into this cell.”

  ‘I did as he bid me, swetin’; and I swear all the time I wrought I dreaded a hand would come through the trap and clutch mine.

  ‘On one pretex’ or another, from that day till the night you meddled with it, he kep’ that cell as close shut as a tomb. And he went his ways, discardin’ the past from that time forth. Now and again a over-sensitive prisoner in the next cell would complain of feelin’ uncomfortable. If possible, he would be removed to another; if not, he was dam’d for his fancies. And so it might be goin’ on to now, if you hadn’t pried and interfered. I don’t blame you at this moment, sir. Likely you were an instrument in the hands of Providence; only, as the instrument, you must now take the burden of the truth on your own shoulders. I am a dying man, but I cannot die till I have confessed. Per’aps you may find it in your hart some day to give up a prayer for me – but it must be for the Major as well.

  ‘Your obedient servant,

  J. JOHNSON’

  What comment of my own can I append to this wild narrative? Professionally, and apart from personal experiences, I should rule it the composition of an epileptic. That a noted journalist, nameless as he was and is to me, however nomadic in habit, could disappear from human ken, and his fellows rest content to leave him unaccounted for, seems a tax upon credulity so stupendous that I cannot seriously endorse the statement.