Mr Carmichael purchased his handkerchief and paid for it by handing the girl a sovereign. Up to the present she had paid him no more attention than was demanded by her duties, but as she gave him his change she looked him straight in the face, and he saw, for an instant, a look of exulting triumph flash into her eyes. She instantly averted them. Oliver turned to leave the shop, feeling a faint sensation of fear, an indefinite fear of something that he could not understand. As he reached the door he turned and looked back; the girl was watching him steadily.
He proceeded on his way to the office revolving the little adventure in his mind. At first he treated it but lightly and endeavoured to analyse the cause of his sudden aversion to a perfectly respectable and civil shop-girl. But gradually he found the affair taking on a more serious aspect: the personality of the girl began to oppress him, her image kept rising before him, and it was an image presaging ill and wretchedness to himself. All day the affair haunted him and, even in the evening at his Club and during his usual quiet game of bridge after dinner, that baleful look of evil triumphant in the girl’s eyes continued to obtrude itself.
When at last he went to bed and finally fell asleep he dreamed again, and this time the recollection of his vision remained with him the next day. He dreamed that he was alone on an apparently desert plain, enveloped in a luminous grey mist, which whirled round him in sweeping masses ever driven by the wind. Across this plain he was journeying, exactly whither he knew not, but filled with a set purpose to reach his unknown destination. Suddenly out of the mist a figure loomed up, which he instantly recognised as that of the shop-girl. She came towards him, her eyes gleaming with an evil joy. In wild panic he turned and fled, forgetting his destination, careless of his fate, seeking only to escape from the swift-moving figure which pursued him. The grey luminosity around him grew darker, his confusion increased, the threatening pursuer gained upon him. He woke with a cry; daylight was stealing into the room.
He rose that morning from his bed unrefreshed and still agitated over his dream. He endeavoured in the light of a new day to look at the whole episode more calmly, and gradually forced himself to believe that he had succeeded in stilling the nervous agitation that had possessed him the day before. He found himself presently walking to his office, but it was by a new, a pleasanter route as he fondly imagined; he laughed bitterly to himself as he gradually realised that he had selected this new route to avoid passing the hosier’s shop. All that day the thought of the girl haunted him and at last after much reflection he decided on a new means of obliterating her memory. His annual leave was soon due, affairs at the office were quiet, he would ask his chief to permit him to forestall his holiday, and would go away at once. No sooner decided upon than done. His chief readily gave the required permission, and Mr Carmichael astonished his household by announcing on his return that evening that he was going to Brighton the following day, to remain there for a week before he proceeded on the round of quiet country-house visits which he had arranged for his regular holiday.
To Brighton Oliver Carmichael went accordingly, but change of scene did not serve to distract him from his prevailing obsession. He thought very often of the girl, of whom he now had an unutterable loathing, and he also found himself pursued by other thoughts. Hitherto his life’s habits had induced in him a train of pleasant and amiable ideas, not perhaps marked by any special eminence in the way of ability, but the thoughts of a clean-minded, honourable man. Now he found himself imperceptibly drifting into other trains of thought: evil notions passed through his mind, views of humanity taken from a hostile and a wicked standpoint, impressions of the worst side of human nature obtruded themselves. He fought desperately against these new ideas, but he felt it was a losing fight; he began to lose all confidence in himself, his integrity, his honour; he began to despair.
He no longer dreamed of nights, but lay buried in profound slumber, slumber in which it may well be that the thing we call the soul may leave its earthly shell and wander to realms and seek affinities utterly unknown to our waking personalities.
Mr Carmichael, deep though his sleep might he, was now in the habit of waking unrefreshed and troubled, and though he exerted himself, both inwardly for the sake of his own peace of mind and outwardly for the sake of the conventions of life, to preserve his usual demeanour it was noticed later on by his friends that he seemed distraught and to have lost his former happy and placid content and generous instincts.
His holiday over, Mr Carmichael returned to town filled with a new resolve. He would go again and see this ill-omened girl; he persuaded himself that her haunting personality would be dissipated by another sight of her in the flesh. He had made, he said to himself, a mountain out of a molehill; because he had taken a dislike to a girl’s face there was no reason that she should drive him into madness from thinking of her. A second inspection would, no doubt, show her to be just an ordinary plain-faced girl, full of her own affairs, who had never given another thought to the casual buyer of a handkerchief some weeks before. He resolved, therefore, once more to visit the shop on the pretext of making a small purchase, and, this decision being taken, he felt easier in his mind. The next morning he made the trial, and it was, it must be confessed, with a nervous although more hopeful heart that Mr Carmichael pushed opened the shop doors and entered.
His first glance around did not disclose the girl, but when he had approached the well-remembered counter she stepped forward quietly to meet him. As before she moved modestly and demurely; she glanced casually at him, her manner was that of an absolute and totally indifferent stranger. Carmichael felt reassured, he was right: he had made a fool of himself, the girl had never thought of him and did not now even remember him.
She asked him his needs. Mr Carmichael hesitated and then blundered out the first thing he could think of. Gloves. She produced them and asked him his size; Mr Carmichael had forgotten, his valet usually bought such articles for him. Then she must measure his hand.
He held it out and she stooped to her slight task. As she stretched the glove across his hand she touched it with her own, momentarily, perhaps accidentally. The touch sent a shock as of electricity through him, all his self-possession vanished, all his belief in the unreality of the past few weeks. For one blinding instant he saw into deeps hitherto unsuspected and sensed a horror hitherto undreamt of. Scarcely knowing what he did he took the gloves, paid for them and stood for a moment looking at the girl.
So far her manner had been that of the shop assistant, doing her work carefully and politely but somewhat mechanically; she had shown no trace of recognition or of any sense of understanding. Suddenly she raised her eyes and looked straight into his own and once more he saw a blaze of exultation, a look of power light them up. She knew herself mistress of the situation; she knew and understood the secret links that bound him to her, links that he felt dimly controlled him, but the nature of which he could not comprehend.
All this passed in a moment, the girl averted her eyes and turned carelessly from him; Mr Carmichael left the shop almost unmanned. He reached his office, but was utterly incapable of concentrating his mind upon his work, and presently his chief, seeing him to be unwell, advised him to go home. Mr Carmichael leapt at the idea, he would go back to the shop, he felt he must go back to the shop, he would see her again, he felt he must see her again; perhaps she would explain things, perhaps he would see his way clearer. He put on his hat and left the office.
But on arrival at the shop he was doomed to disappointment; it was early closing day and all the assistants had gone home. He walked on towards his own house, in a state of mingled disappointment and relief. He felt he must see her, and yet he dreaded the interview; he knew it would be a decisive one, but how he would emerge from it he felt to be uncertain.
He found himself drawing near home and passing through one of our quiet London squares. As he turned a corner of it, he met his enemy, for so he felt the girl to be, face to face.
She was walking quietly toward
s him, neatly and modestly dressed, demure as ever in her expression, but with perhaps a shade of anxiety in it also. As they approached each other, she raised her eyes. There was no blaze of triumph in them now, they were deep and watchful as they rested on his face. Almost unconsciously he raised his hat; she acknowledged the salute and the next moment found him walking on beside her.
For a few minutes silence reigned, then Mr Carmichael, collecting himself, began: ‘I am glad to have met you, I was anxious to see you, I went by Messrs — and found the shop shut.’ He paused.
‘Yes?’ said the other interrogatively.
‘I do not understand things,’ went on Oliver. ‘Ever since that day nearly five weeks ago when I came into the shop to buy a handkerchief, I have been haunted by you. I have thought of you waking, I have, I know it now, been possessed by you in sleep.’ Again he paused.
‘Are you trying to make love to me?’ said the girl with a short laugh.
This notion so astounded Mr Carmichael that for an instant he was struck dumb. Then he ejaculated: ‘Love! Make love to you! Oh, Heaven forbid!’
‘You are not very polite,’ said his companion. ‘Well, if you are not moved by love, perhaps you are moved by its opposite, and you hate me.’
She looked keenly at him, and Mr Carmichael hesitated for a reply. She went on: ‘You need not trouble to mince matters. I know your feelings, know them far better than you do yourself.’
By this time their wanderings had led them into the Park and the girl, motioning towards two vacant chairs, said: ‘Let us sit down, there may be much to speak of.’
He complied without answering her and looked long and fixedly at her. As always, she looked calm, demure and mistress of herself; only in her eyes there burned a sombre light, powerful, mysterious, menacing. She turned away.
‘What has happened to me?’ he said. ‘Who are you, what do you want of me? I am at sea.’
She answered slowly: ‘You have asked several questions, the full answers to which you are not yet fit to understand, but I will tell you something. Who am I? Well, you will find out some day who and what I really am, but you may now call me by the name my parents gave me, Phyllis Rourke; I was not always, even here, what I now am, a shop-girl. My father was a man of wisdom, a gentleman who taught me how to learn’ – she hesitated – ‘many things, truths, facts, which are obscure to you and all your like. What do I want of you? Well, much, and much that you will dread to part with, but I hold you’ – she detached a blossom from her dress and held it in her hand – ‘like I hold this flower, and I can crush you as I do it.’
She suited her actions to her words and sat silently gazing at the ruined flower. Mr Carmichael struggled between fear and anger. Who was this boastful girl, he thought; was he not a gentleman, a man of position, what had he really to fear from the threats of an unknown girl from a second-class shop?
Summoning up his courage he answered: ‘These are fine words, Miss Rourke, but you do not consider what I may do in the meantime. You indulge in threats to persecute me? Have you considered our relative social positions? Do you know I am Mr Carmichael and a man of influence and reputation? In the last place have you considered – the police? Persons who annoy others are apt to find themselves in trouble.’
He spoke more bravely than he felt. As the words passed his lips he felt his courage evaporating. She listened unmoved, smiling, with something of the air of a cat watching a mouse.
When he had finished, she waited a few moments and then in a low, intensely concentrated voice answered: ‘Oh, you poor fool! How little you understand. Since that night five weeks ago when first I found you, before you saw my living face, have you learned nothing? You talk of your position, of your social influence; you prate of the police.’ Her eyes, dark and gloomy, seemed to devour him as she went on: ‘What can you do? I hold you and shall always hold you. I may never see you again in this body, I want nothing of your material life, I want something more, I want you yourself, I want your soul.’
He shrank back in horror. ‘Are you the Devil?’ he said.
She burst into a fit of terrible, silent laughter. ‘The Devil,’ she said, ‘we are becoming quite mediaeval. Do you expect to see this foot,’ and she pushed forward her own, ‘turned into a hoof? Are you waiting for me to take out a parchment to be signed in your blood?’
She laughed again. ‘No, Mr Carmichael,’ she went on, ‘I am not the Devil. Perhaps you would be better off if I were.’
There was a silence. Mr Carmichael felt like a bird in the presence of a snake. He was fascinated, he was filled with abhorrence: he wished to fly, he could not; he wished to fortify his spirit to resist, he felt it yielding and becoming more and more plastic under the influence of her personality.
Presently she spoke again. ‘There is no more to be said now,’ she began, ‘we have talked long enough. You understand as much as you are yet fitted to understand: you know now what you but feared before, that I control you, control you for a purpose clear to myself, if not to you. We need not meet again, I shall summon you when I choose and you will come to me when I call you in the places of sleep.’
Another shock passed through Oliver Carmichael. Like a lightning flash there passed across him the knowledge that in those deep sleeps he had had recently his soul, detached from his body, communed with that of Phyllis Rourke amidst strange and terrible surroundings. He resolved he must try not to sleep again; she answered his thought with a laugh.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘you will sleep as well as ever. And now,’ she added, ‘it is time to part. I live with my aunt in Fulham and the old soul will wonder where I am.’
She rose from her chair. ‘Goodbye, Mr Carmichael,’ she said. ‘Au revoir, my dear affinity, till tonight.’
She left him and Oliver remained sitting dazed, helpless and despairing, till a park keeper warned him of the closing gates.
Mr Carmichael returned home in a state verging on stupefaction; the amazing conversation which had taken place, the force and malevolent disposition of Phyllis Rourke appalled him. He felt, as before said, like a bird fascinated by a snake, he desired to struggle, to escape from the toils which were closing round him, but no avenue presented itself. Vainly he racked his brains and vainly he tried to summon up will-power sufficient to effect – he scarcely knew what. He was threatened from a quarter totally unguarded and by dangers the very existence of which he had never hitherto suspected. And he was threatened by what? That again he did not know. Tangible evils affecting his life or his possessions he would have known how to face or to endeavour to face, but this was an evil affecting his soul. Like many other people who have always led smooth and peaceful lives, the problems of the soul had never disturbed him. He was vaguely conscious of its existence, he had in his youth been an orthodox member of the English Church, but of late years he had slipped imperceptibly into a mild form of agnosticism and, while always ready to offer a helping hand to those needing his assistance, he had never really given any consideration to the problems of suffering or wrong. He had sought to avoid them; he knew of their existence, but only after an ill-defined fashion, and he had endeavoured to retain his own happy calm by minimising them and hiding them from his consciousness as far as possible.
Now all was changed in an instant. He found himself in the grip of what seemed to him Evil incarnate. He knew the mind of the girl to be as fertile a field for evil as he had hitherto imagined his own to be for good. And he was powerless to resist her. What would become of him? Was she destined to drag him down to her own low plane and destroy that entity, his soul, which he now for the first time began clearly to realise existed?
He thought and thought, but little help came to him. Only one way finally illumined his darkness and this he well realised might prove a will-o’-the-wisp. The girl had threatened to seek him out in sleep. Well, he would turn night into day, he would watch at night and rest in the daylight hours, when he fondly imagined that she would be attending to her waking duties. Somewha
t encouraged at having at least found a chance of salvation, he passed through the rest of the evening endeavouring to collect and control himself and at the usual hour for going to rest he made up his fire and selecting a book settled down to his nocturnal vigil.
But he found it impossible to concentrate on the printed page. His thoughts wandered to Phyllis Rourke. What was she doing, was she triumphing over him, was she even now striving to approach him? He tried to dismiss these thoughts; he resumed his book.
* * *
He woke with a start. The fire was out, the lamp had died down, daylight streamed into the room and he fancied as he regained his consciousness he heard Phyllis Rourke’s low, mocking laugh.
* * *
This night was the beginning of despair for Oliver Carmichael. His hope for protection against his unseen assailant had failed him and he knew of no other help.
To detail the events of the next few months would be as difficult as useless; to the end of his life Oliver Carmichael looked back upon them as a descent into bell itself. It will suffice to summarise his experiences briefly. After his one effort at an all-night vigil he decided it was useless to attempt to vary his ordinary form of life and he returned to it and lived it as heretofore. Dealing first with this external existence, it may be said, that his acquaintances found him gradually changing; the differences were not very marked, but it was noticed that he did not take quite his old placid, kindly view of human nature. His judgment grew more bitter, he became prone to attribute bad motives rather than good to the actions of others; his good temper became less marked, his desire to help others faded, he became selfish, cold, unmerciful. Socially, he became more ambitious; he frequented parties, he entertained at home, but although he thus joined more in the life of the body politic, yet he was less popular than of old. His more intimate friends grieved over the change in him, endeavoured to reason with him and, failing to convince, drew gradually away from him. In his work he did well and earned the approbation, without increasing the affection, of his colleagues. So much for the outer Mr Carmichael. It will be harder to paint the inner man.
In Ghostly Company (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) Page 16
