4
The end came with a sudden and sickening rush. And yet it was an end worth waiting and working for. In the street just outside his home, Bellingham was knocked down by a passing cab. Joan saw the accident from the window. By the sheerest chance he escaped with nothing worse than bruises and flesh wounds, but his excitement and terror reached their climax as he was helped back, limp and bleeding, to his rooms. The policeman, with a kindly word, handed him over to Joan’s care. She was all for summoning a doctor, but Bellingham would not hear of it. White-faced, hiding his rising tumult behind a mask of steely calm, he told her curtly to fetch me. She obeyed, poor child, in terror of her life and his own. I was with them ten minutes later.
‘Saunders,’ he greeted me, without preamble. ‘God has flung down His last challenge.’
‘You mean this accident!’ said I, scoffing gently.
‘Accident!’ retorted Bellingham. ‘Do you, a priest of God, talk to me of accident! Not a sparrow falls without God. No, it was no accident. It was the last warning. I feel in my bones that this is the end. At any moment now He will strike, and I shall burn in hell for ever more, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.’ He had the true missioner’s flow of quotations, mostly misapplied; but I knew better than to cross him then. Something of his own passion infected me.
We were standing in the bedroom, where he was at last submitting, with the most complete indifference, to the medical ministrations of Joan. ‘Let’s go into the other room,’ I suggested, ‘and discuss this quietly and in comfort.’ I led the way, and they followed. The living-room, as I fancy they called it, was more cheerful by a long way. There was a fire in the grate, and a lamp like a great harvest moon glowed yellow on the table.
‘Listen to me, Saunders,’ cried Bellingham, refusing to sit down. ‘You are my best friend, my only friend; and Joan is my wife, the finest wife that any man had. The All-Seeing Eye is watching me now, as always; that street-accident, as you call it, was the plain speech of God telling me to desert this woman. I’m a doomed man, Saunders, and I can speak my mind now. I believe in God as firmly as ever I believed in Him, but I have learned something. He is not worth serving. I tell you, Saunders, that the God we have both worshipped is as evil as He is powerful. Almighty Evil sits upon the throne of the universe, and I will curse Him and die.’ Poor fellow, he could not believe me when I told him that it was the God in himself that was speaking those wild words, the God in himself that was fighting a heroic battle against the demon of fear that Joan by her woman’s tenderness had cast out.
There came, suddenly, a crash of something falling in one of the lower rooms of the house. It jarred our tense nerves horribly. And then, for the last time, the terror came to Bellingham, as if in answer to his taunt. He alone saw it, and you will quickly interpose that it was his mind alone that created it. And in a sense I believe you are right, but you’ll find it hard before I finish to maintain that the apparition was a purely subjective thing. Can an hallucination cause windows to rattle and doors to move? I believe for my part that in some unfathomable way the old Bellingham, or rather the riot of evil fancies about God that had victimized the old Bellingham, had woven for itself some external form. Language is crude and clumsy, crushing the truth at which it grasps; but it seems to me that in some sense—and a sense not too metaphorical—the man was, as I said before, cloven in twain, divided against himself. But your face warns me that I’m boring you.
‘There it is,’ shouted Bellingham, pointing towards a corner of the room. Joan, afraid of her lover, rushed to me, and my arms closed round her instinctively. We stared and saw nothing. ‘The same evil eyes,’ said Bellingham, more quietly, ‘the same accusing finger.’ And then began an uncanny one-sided colloquy. Bellingham conversed with his invisible mentor. ‘I will not leave her, God,’ said Bellingham. ‘I despise your dirty counsels. Kill me, damn me, burn me. Send me to hell, where I may see your hateful staring face no more.’
The windows began unaccountably to rattle. Joan clung to me, sobbing, on the verge of hysteria. Bellingham strode towards the table and with one swift gesture put out the light. ‘I am not afraid of your darkness,’ he flung out.
For a moment, silence; and a darkness made ghastly by bright moonlight. Then the windows rattled again, and then, quite without warning, Bellingham collapsed and fell against me. My body had broken his fall, and I now released Joan in order to turn my attention to her lover. The sight of him prostrate restored her to courage. She was always ready when needed. I left Bellingham to her care for a moment and turned again to that haunted corner. I have never known fear such as I knew at that moment, and yet I felt infinitely braced by the dramatic significance of this conflict with an unknown terror. It was as if hell had invaded earth, and that God had left me as His sole witness. At such crises a man with religion turns to it. Your old-fashioned agnosticism will be shocked by my method of exorcising evil.
‘In the Name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, I charge you to leave this man in peace!’ I made the sign of the cross.
And still I stared, and still I saw nothing. Joan was busy with Bellingham, who was beginning to shew signs of returning consciousness. I could not move my eyes away from the corner by the door. And while I stared, something at last happened. Thank Heaven that I alone saw it! The door leading to the bedroom, which had been left half-open, began closing. It closed, pulled to from the other side, and the knob moved and the catch clicked, as though released from the hand of the Unseen. I ran to it, opened it, and looked out. And saw—nothing at all.
SLEEPING BEAUTY