The Cinder Buggy

by Garet Garrett

  What was it? The Wilkes-Barre consultants had agreed upon one diagnosis. The patient, they said, had been attacked by delusional mania. If the attack subsided he would recover; if not he would die of exhaustion. That might be a matter of weeks. The Philadelphia alienist had only just now seen the patient; yet his mind was made up. He pronounced it a kind of progressive disintegration of the brain matter, with sudden, catastrophic lesions. Death would take place in a few hours. And it certainly was true that all the symptoms grew worse.

  “What is your opinion?” Agnes asked.

  “My own?” said the doctor, casting glances around. He lowered his voice to a nonprofessional tone. “We have different names for it,” he said. “That is scientific. No matter. We are all talking about the same thing.... He... is... possessed.”

  Agnes shuddered.

  “What does he want from these mill workers outside?” Thane asked.

  Yes, yes. The doctor was just coming to that. Mr. Gib had lucid, coherent intervals. They were decreasing in frequency and duration and that was an ominous sign. In the very first of these intervals he seemed to be facing the thought of death and revealed an extreme horror of natural interment. He had in one such interval either conceived a way or remembered one of cheating the earth, which was to be cremated in one of his own furnaces. Thereupon he began to call for certain old puddlers and heaters by name and when they were brought up to him he demanded of them a promise to dispose of his body in that extraordinary way. While he looked at them they had not the strength to say outright they would not; but he could not make them promise, and each time he failed it was very bad for him. The state of terror returned, and if this continued the consequences would be fatal.

  “Would it relieve him if I promised?” Thane asked.

  “Promised what?” the doctor asked moving uneasily.

  “To do what he wants done with his body,” said Thane.

  “But who would do it?” the doctor asked.

  “I would,” said Thane.

  The doctor looked away in all four directions. “Certainly it would relieve him now,” he said, vaguely, as if that were not the point.

  Thane suggested that Agnes be permitted to see him in the next lucid interval, and that afterward, in the same interval if possible, and if not, then in the next one, they should try letting him promise to carry out the old man’s cremation wish.

  The doctor agreed. However, he was not to be held responsible for the consequences. He had been responsible until now for everything because there was no one else. He could not be unaware of the fact that there had been an unfortunate family episode. No one could tell how Mr. Gib would be affected by the unexpected sight of his own daughter. He had not asked to see her. However, she was his daughter and there Was no one else,—no one. How extraordinary!

  He left them to ascertain and report.

  Agnes, putting off her hat and gloves, sat facing the window. Thane took several turns about the room, came up behind her chair, laid his hand gently on her head. She sat quite still and reached over her shoulder for his other hand. They did not speak. The doctor returned in haste, saying: “If Mrs. Thane will come now, at once, very softly, we may try.” Agnes and the doctor walked up the staircase together, Thane following. Her feet were as steady as his own. He was suddenly swept with a feeling of great tenderness for her.

  The Philadelphia alienist and the Wilkes-Barre consultants made a group in the front hall window. They had been arguing technically and stopped to stare a little at Agnes and then at Thane, who fell back and stood leaning against the wall as Agnes and the doctor went on. The doctor opened the door carefully and peered in. Standing aside he motioned Agnes to enter.

  Her father lay in a great four-poster on his back, extended to his full length, his feet together and vertical, his head slightly raised on pillows,—and their eyes met as she crossed the threshhold. He recognized her instantly. She was sure of it,—sure he was in his right mind. Yet he gave not the slightest sign of his feelings. She was surprised that he was not more shrunken. His bulk was intact. But he was the color of sand. His aspect was sepulchral. She advanced slowly, holding his gaze, hardly aware of two men standing alert at the head of the bed, just outside the line of vision, ready to seize him.

  When she was half way to him he began to sit up, lifting his whole trunk from the hips without the use of his arms, his feet at the same time rising a little, under the lower part of the sheet.

  “Go away 1” he said hoarsely, and she stopped. “Go away!” he meant to say again, but as his voice rose he became inarticulate and made guttural sounds. He began to repel her with excited gestures. The doctor interfered. “Come,” he whispered. She half turned to go, but faced her father again. In a clear, loud voice, she uttered the three words he had once with all his strength demanded and could not make her say. “I am sorry.” Their effect was to excite him all the more. He continued to wave her away. When the door had closed behind her he collapsed.

  Thane was waiting outside the door. She leaned on him heavily and seemed about to go under. He took her in his arms and bore her downstairs. She revived at once and sharply declined to be made about, even by the doctor, whose smelling salts she put aside. Thane walked with her in the air.

  Presently the doctor joined them. The idea of bringing Mr. Thane to Mr. Gib’s notice as one who would promise to do the strange thing he desired,-—this idea, he said, had been discussed with the alienist; and it was the alienit’s notion first to put the patient under the suggestion that a puddler named Thane had been sent for, the point being that Mr. Gib might remember Mr. Thane as a puddler and forget him as a son-in-law. This seemed to the doctor too subtle altogether; still, as it couldn’t do any harm he had consented. It had in fact been done with such success that Mr. Gib now lay in a fever of hope. Would Mr. Thane, the puddler, please come at once?

  Thane had never been in a sick room. He had never seen death transacting. He had known two idiots and had an idea of imbecility; insanity he could not imagine. The doctor’s long medical discourse on Enoch’s disorder had filled him with a vague sense of resentment; and the doctor’s private conviction that Enoch was possessed had made him angry. He did not believe in devils. That flash of superstition threw the professional manner into grotesque relief and he was contemptuous of it. His feelings went over and stood with Enoch against these self-important outsiders who by some law of their own had established themselves above him in his own house, were permitted to restrain him in his own bed, who stood about in his hallway disputing as to how and why he should die.

  As Thane entered the room the two nurses were leaning over the old man from opposite sides of the bed, and the sight of them deepened his antagonism. They stood back as he approached. Enoch, slowly opening his eyes, gazed at Thane with a look of tense recognition. Otherwise he lay perfectly inert until Thane stood looking down at him. Then his lips began to move as if he were talking. No sound was audible. Thane, bending lower and lower, dropped on his knees and put his ear very close. Enoch was whispering. His words, though faint, were distinct, almost fluent, and dramatically intentional.

  What he said was that worse puddlers and lesser men than Thane, men he had known all his life, had refused to do for him that service one cannot perform for oneself and must therefore be permitted to ask as a favor. This service was to dispose of his remains agreeably to a certain wish, which was to be cremated. There was no physical difficulty whatever. It was feasible to be done in a puddling furnace!—his own furnace!—his own mill!—his own body! Why not?

  “I will do it,” said Thane, removing his ear and meeting the old man’s eyes. Enoch’s lips continued to move. Thane returned his ear.

  It was to be done in Number One Furnace.

  Thane met his eyes again, saying: “All right. In Number One. I understand.”

  Enoch’s lips were still moving. Thane listened.

  There was one thing more, Enoch said. He had no right to ask it except as a favor for which he wo
uld be deeply grateful. Would Thane listen very carefully? In that walnut secretary by the door, in a secret drawer of it that would come open when the moulding above the pen rack was pressed downward—there he would find the key to a room upstairs, directly above the one they were in. He wished to die in that room opstairs,—by himself. He knew better than to ask the nurses or the doctors. They already thought him mad. Anyhow they would ask questions and he couldn’t tell them why he wished to die in that room alone. He had been saving his strength against an opportunity to give them the slip, intending to lock himself into it. Once in it he would be safe. But his strength had suddenly departed forever. No one knew this yet. It had just happened. The nurses supposed he was resting. The fact was he could not move foot, hand or finger. So now he was utterly helpless and hopeless except for Thane,—and the end was so near.

  Would Thane get the key?—carry him over all obstacles to that room above?—set him in a certain chair, taking care not to move it?—then retire and lock the door and keep them all off for an hour? An hour would do it. In one hour he would be out of their reach.

  Thane did not pause to reflect. The old man’s appeal to be permitted to die as he would in his own house was irresistible. It moved him dynamically. He strode to the walnut secretary, discovered the key, dropped it in his pocket and returned to the bedside.

  The nurses were dumfounded! scandalized! to see him suddenly take the old man up in his arms, sheet and all, and start off with him toward the door.

  They followed, exclaiming and chattering. They were too amazed to act. At the door occurred a scene of pure confusion. As Thane pulled it open the four doctors, having heard the commotion within, were there in a group on the momentum of entry. At sight of Enoch in Thane’s arms they recoiled and stood blankly aghast. The two nurses behind Thane became hysterically vocal, trying all in one breath to exculpate themselves and explain an inconceivable thing.

  Thane was pushing through.

  “He wants to die upstairs,” he said.

  Instantly on speaking of it he became aware that the situation had an irrational aspect; and he wondered how he should clear them out of the room in which Enoch wished to die and keep them out,—for of course they would follow. He could not help that. With a resolve if necessary to throw them all downstairs he crossed the threshold. The alienist from Philadelphia and the two Wilkes-Barre consultants fell back. It was not their case. The family doctor barred Thane’s way at the foot of the staircase.

  “You must be crazy,” he shouted, waving his arms. “This simply cannot be permitted. As his physician I order you to take him back.”

  “Stand aside,” said Thane.

  “You will kill him,” said the doctor. “Do you hear that? This will kill him. I forbid it.”

  Thane seemed not at all impressed. Probably he would have pursued his purpose in a straight line but that his mind was arrested by a startling change in the heft and feeling of his burden.

  It became suddenly so much heavier that he almost lost his balance. And as he looked to see what this could mean there rose out of Enoch a groan unlike any sound concerned with life. With that the body underwent a violent muscular commotion and threw itself into a state of rigid extension. Thane needed all his strength to hold it. Immediately there was another change. The body began slowly to go limp.

  “It’s over,” said the Philadelphia alienist.

  What Thane held in his arms was no longer Enoch, but a distasteful object, fallen in one breath from the first person I, from the second person you, to the state of a pronominal third thing which is spoken of—that!

  Thane carried it back to the bed.

  All of this had taken place in less than half an hour. Thane found Agnes as he had left her, on an iron bench in the maple shade.

  “He is dead,” she said, on looking at him.

  He answered by sitting by her side in silence.

  She asked him nothing about the end, and he was glad, for it had been extremely harrowing. Still, he was surprised at her want of curiosity, and had a moment of thinking her callous. He had somehow mysteriously arrived at an understanding of Enoch, was shaken by a sense of loss, even grief, and yearned to share his emotion with Agnes.

  Having been for some time withdrawn in thought she started slightly. “Did you promise?” she asked. “Was there time for that?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t let it upset you,” he continued gently. “You won’t have to think about it. I’ve got it worked out in my mind. There can be funeral services here like they have sometimes when nobody goes to the grave or when there ain’t going to be any burial. Then I can go alone with him to the mill. There’s nobody at the mill, you know. It’s shut.”

  She regarded him with a troubled, unbelieving expression.

  “Alone!” she said.

  “I’d rather to,” he said, “with everybody being so superstitious about it.”

  “But I shall go,” she said.

  “May take a long time,” he said uneasily. “I’ll have the furnace going, of course, but it’s got to be kept going and watched I don’t know how long.”

  She met these difficulties with a scornful gesture.

  “All right,” he said. “He’ll be pleased you feel that way.”

  XXXI

  LATE that night Thane was telling John how Enoch died and how his remains were to be disposed of. He had to tell someone. It was a weight on his mind and he was tormented with misgivings about his own conduct. When he came to the key he remembered having it in his pocket still and produced it associatively. John took it out of his hand and continued to regard it thoughtfully long after the narrative was finished.

  “Was I right?” Thane asked, anxiously.

  “Admirable!” said John, a little off the point as it seemed to Thane. He added thoughtfully: “The fate that amuses itself with our lives knew what it wanted when it tangled you in.”

  “Seems there’s a lot as I don’t know,” said Thane, a faint edge to his voice.

  “It’s hard to get at,” said John. He continued: “This place, if you know, was founded by General Woolwine, my great grandfather, whose partner was a younger man named Christopher Gib, this Enoch’s father.”

  So he began, as if opening a book. Some of it was missing, parts were illegible, yet the shape of the drama stood vividly forth. When he came to the end—to where the invisible writing stopped,—it was sudden and for a moment bewildering, almost as if they had forgotten who they were and had been unexpectedly let down in the middle of a story. They sat a while musing.

  “To be continued by the three of us,” said John. “I should like to know what is in that room.”

  “Let’s go see,” said Thane.

  He had come to the hotel only to talk to John and was returning to the mansion. John went with him.

  Enoch’s body lay where it was in the second floor bed chamber. They passed it without stopping and went on to the third floor. On the landing was a little table with a lighted glass lamp, which John took up.

  “That would be it,” he said, indicating a certain doorway. The key fitted the lock, but to their surprise the bolt was already drawn. John held the light. Thane went first. He had but crossed the threshold when he started back, recoiled rather, with a movement so sudden and involuntary that John immediately behind him was thrown off his balance, and dropped the lamp, which burst and harmlessly petered out. They were then in darkness. There was no other light on that floor.

  “Match,” said Thane, now standing quietly.

  John had matches and he divided them by a sense of touch. Each struck one and held it out.

  What had startled Thane was the figure of a woman. As they saw her now in the flickering light of their matches she stood at the other side of the room, her back to the wall, facing them. John recognized her at once as the woman who met him in the front doorway, holding an oil light over her head, the night he carne seeking Agnes and encountered Enoch at the gate. She was dishevelled. Her thick black hai
r had fallen on one side and her face was distorted and swollen from weeping. Her eyes were alight with a kind of wild animal defiance. As they approached her she began to move along the wall, sideways, her arms a little spread. In one hand she held a coil of small rope.

  “Who are you?” Thane asked.

  She did not speak, but continued slowly to edge along the wall, staring at them angrily. They lit fresh matches from the dying ones and pursued her in this way, asking her who she was and what she did there, and she answered only with that wild look, until with more presence of mind than they were able to summon she had worked herself to a position between them and the open door. Their matches gave out and she disappeared in the dark. They heard her go down the back stairway.

  “We’ll have to get a light,” said John.

  They groped their way downstairs, both absurdly unnerved, found some candles and returned to the room. Both had the same thought. From what they had glimpsed of the interior in the light of their matches by a kind of marginal vision it seemed quite empty. And so it was. There was no trace of what had been there, except dust, which on the floor showed evidence of much moving about. The only object of any kind was a key that evidently the woman had dropped. It was a duplicate of the one in Thane’s possession. They examined the room with silent curiosity. The walls gave a dead, solid sound to the rap of their knuckles. The windows were double and grated inside with iron bars.

  Now they went in search of the woman, knowing nothing about her, not even her name. She was probably the housekeeper. Agnes would know. But they hated to disturb Agnes. She was at the other side of the mansion and it was very late. Besides, they had a feeling that the sequel might be distressing.

  The woman had vanished. They could find no trace of her, nor could they raise any servants indoors, for the reason afterward disclosed that latterly Enoch’s menage had consisted of three persons,—housekeeper, gardener and stable man.