II
He did not attempt to move about the room, but simply sank down on to the floor where he was. He was in a state of extreme physical weariness—his body ached from head to foot—but his brain was active and urgent. This was the first time to himself that he had had—with the exception of his cliff climbing—since his leaving the hotel last evening, and he was glad of the loneliness. The darkness seemed to help him; he felt that he could think here more clearly; he sat there, huddled up, his back against the wall, and let his brain go.
At first it would do little more than force him to ask over and over again: Why? Why? Why? Why did we do this imbecile thing? Why, when we had all the world to choose from, did we find our way back into this horrible house? It was a temptation to call the thing magic and to have done with it, really to suggest that the older Crispin had wizard powers, or at least hypnotic, and had willed them back. But he forced himself to look at the whole thing clearly as a piece of real life as true and as actual as the ham-and-eggs and buttered toast that in another hour or two all the world around him would be eating. Yes, as real and actual as a toothbrush, that was what this thing was; there was nothing wizard about Crispin; he was a dangerous lunatic, and there were hundreds like him in any asylum in the country. As for their return he knew well enough that in a fog people either walked round and round in a circle or returned to the place that they had started from.
At this point in his thoughts a tremor shook his body. He knew what that was from, and the anticipation that, lying like a chained animal, deep in the recesses of his brain, must soon be loosed and then bravely faced. But not yet, oh no, not yet! Let his mind stay with the past as long as it might.
In the past was Crispin. He looked back over that first meeting with him, the actual moment when he had asked him for a match, the dinner, the return to the hotel when, influenced then by all that Dunbar had told him, he had seen him standing there, the polite gestures, the hospitable words, the drive in the motor. . . . His mind stopped abruptly there. The door swung to, the lock was turned.
In that earlier Crispin there had been something deeply pathetic—and when he dared to look forward—he would see that in the later Crispin there was the same. So with a sudden flash of lightning revelation that seemed to flare through the whole dark room he saw that it was not the real Crispin with whom they—Hesther, Dunbar and he—were dealing at all.
No more than the ravings of fever were the real patient, the wicked cancerous growth the real body, the broken glass the real picture that seemed to be shattered beneath it.
They were dealing with a wild and dangerous animal, and in the grip of that animal, pitiably, was the true struggling suffering soul of Crispin. Not struggling now perhaps any more; the disease had gone too far, growing through a thousand tiny almost unnoticed stages to this horrible possession.
He knew now—yes, as he had never known it, and would perhaps never have known it had it not been for the sudden love for and tenderness towards human nature that had come to him that night—what, in the old world, they had meant by the possession of evil spirits. What it was that Christ had cast out in His ministry. What it was from which David had delivered King Saul.
Quick on this came the further question. If this were so might he not perhaps when the crisis came—as come he knew it would—appeal to the real Crispin and so rescue both themselves and him? He did not know. It had all gone so far. The animal with its beastly claws deep in the flesh had so tight a hold. He realised that it was in all probability the personality of Hesther herself that had urged it to such extremes. There was something in her clear-sighted simple defiance of him that had made Crispin's fear of his powerlessness—the fear that had always contributed to his most dangerous excesses—climb to its utmost height. He had decided perhaps that this was to be the real final test of his power, that this girl should submit to him utterly. Her escape had stirred his sense of failure as nothing else could do. And then their return, all the nervous excitement of that night, the constant alarm of the neighbourhoods in which they had stayed so that, as the younger Crispin had said, they had been driven "from pillar to post," all these things had filled the bowl of insanity to overflowing. Could he rescue Crispin as well as themselves?
Once more a tremor ran through his body. Because if he could not—— Once more he thrust the anticipation back, pulling himself up from the floor and beginning slowly, feeling the wall with his hand like a blind man, to walk round the room.
His eyes now were better accustomed to the light, but he could make out but little of where he was. He supposed that he was on the second floor where were the rooms of Hesther and the younger Crispin. The place seemed empty, there was no sound from the house. He might have been in his grave. Fantastic stories came to his mind, Poe-like stories of walls and ceilings growing closer and closer, of floors opening beneath the foot into watery dungeons, of fiery eyes seen through the darkness. He repeated then aloud:
"I am Charles Percy Harkness. I am thirty-five years of age. I grew up in Baker, Oregon, in the United States of America. I am in sound mind and in excellent health. I came down to Cornwall yesterday afternoon for a holiday, recommended to do so by Sir James Maradick, Bart."
This gave him some little satisfaction; to himself he continued, still walking and touching the wall-paper with his hand: "I am shut up in a dark room in a strange house at four in the morning for no other reason than that I meddled in other people's affairs. And I am glad that I meddled. I am in love, and whatever comes out of this I do not regret it. I would do over again exactly what I have done except that I should hope to do it better next time."
He felt then seized with an intense weariness. He had known that he was, long ago, physically tired, but excitement had kept that at bay. Now quite instantly as though a spring in the middle of his back had broken, he collapsed. He sank down there on the floor where he was, and all huddled up, his head hanging forward into his knees, he slept. He had a moment of conscious subjective rebellion when something cried to him: "Don't surrender. Keep awake. It is part of his plan that you should sleep here. You are surrendering to him."
And from long misty distances he seemed to hear himself reply:
"I don't care what happens any more. They can do what they like. . . . They can do what they like. . . ."
And almost at once he was conscious that they were summoning him. A tall thin figure, like an old German drawing, with wild hair, set mouth, menacing eye like Baldung's "Saturnus," stood before him and pointed the way into vague misty space. Other figures were moving about him, and he could see as his eyes grew stronger, that a vast multitude of naked persons were sliding forward like pale lava from a volcano down a steep precipitous slope.
As they moved there came from them a shuddering cry like the tremor of the ground beneath his feet.
"Not there! Not there!" Harkness cried, and Saturnus answered, "Not yet! You have not been judged."
Almost instantly judgment followed—judgment in a narrow dark passage that rocked backward and forward like the motion of a boat at sea. The passage was dark, but on either side of its shaking walls were cries and shouts and groans and piteous wails, and clouds of smoke poured through, as into a tunnel, blinding the eyes and filling the nostrils with a horrible stench.
No figure could be seen, but a voice, strong and menacing, could be heard, and Harkness knew that it was himself the voice was addressing. His naked body, slippery with sweat, the acrid smoke blinding him, the voices deafening him, the rocking of the floor bewildering him, he felt desperately that he must clear his mind to answer the charges brought against him.
The voice was clear and calm: "On February 2, 1905, your friend Richard Hentley was accused in the company of many people during his absence, of having ill-treated his wife while in Florence. You knew that this was totally untrue and could have given evidence to that effect, but from cowardice you let the moment pass and your friend's position was seriously damaged. What have you to say in your defence?"
The thick smoke rolled on. The walls tottered. The cries gathered in anguish.
"On March 13, 1911, you wired to your sisters in America that you were ill in bed when you were in perfect health, because you wished to stay for a week longer in London in order to attend some races. What have you to say in your defence?"
"On October 3, 1906, you grievously added to the unhappiness of Mrs. Harrington-Adams by asserting in mixed company that no one in New York would receive her and that all Americans were astonished that she should be received at all in London."
Here at any rate was an opportunity. Through the smoke he cried:
"There at least I am innocent. I have never known Mrs. Harrington-Adams. I have never even seen her."
"No," the voice replied. "But you spoke to Mrs. Phillops who spoke to Miss Cator who then cut Mrs. Adams. Other people followed Miss Cator's example, and you were quoted as an authority. Mrs. Adams's London life was ruined. She had never done you any harm."
"On December 14, 1912, you told your sisters that you hated the sight of them and their stuffy ways, that their attempts at culture were ridiculous, and that, like all American women, they were absurdly spoilt."
Through the smoke Harkness shouted: "I am sure I never said——"
The voice replied: "I am quoting your exact words."
"In a moment of pique I lost my temper. Of course I didn't mean——"
"On June 3, 1913, you went secretly into the library of a friend and stole his book of Rembrandt drawings. You knew in your heart that you had no intention of returning it to him, and when, some months later, he spoke of it, wishing to lend it to you and wondered why he could not find it you said nothing to him about your own possession of it."
Harkness blushed through the rolling smoke. "Yes, that was shameful," he cried. "But I knew that he didn't care about the book and I——"
"What have you to say against these charges?"
"They are all little things," Harkness cried, "small things. Every one does them. . . ."
"Judgment! Judgment! Judgment!" cried the voice, and suddenly he felt himself moving in the vast waters of human nudity that were slipping down the incline. He tried to stay himself, he flung out his hands and touched nothing but cold slimy flesh.
Faster and faster and faster. Colder and colder and colder. Darker and darker and darker. Despair seized him. He called on his friends. Others were calling on every side of him. Thousands and thousands of names mingled in the air. The smoke came up to meet them—vast billowing clouds of it. He knew with a horrible consciousness that below him a sea of upturned swords, were waiting to receive them. Soon they would be impaled. . . . With a shriek of agony he awoke.
He had not been asleep for more, perhaps, than ten minutes, but the dream had unnerved him. When he rose from the ground he tottered and stood trembling. He knew now why it was that his enemy had designed that he should sleep; he knew now that he could no longer ward off the animal that on padded feet had been approaching him—the pain! The pain! The pain!
The sweat beaded his forehead, his knees gave way and he sank yet again upon the floor. He was murmuring: "Anything but that. Anything but that. I can't stand pain. I can't stand pain, I tell you. Don't you know that I have always funked it all my life long? That I've always prayed that whatever else I got it wouldn't be that. That I've never been able to bear to see the tiniest thing hurt, and that in all my thought about going to the war, although I didn't try to escape it, it was even more the pain that I would see than the pain that I would feel.
"And now to wait for it like this, to know that it may be torture of the worst kind, that I am in the power of a man who can reason no longer, who is himself in the power of something stronger and more evil than any of us."
Then dimly it came through to him that he had been given three tests to-night, and as it always is in life the three tests especially suited to his character, his strength and weakness, his past history. The dance had stripped him of his aloofness and drawn him into life, his love for Hesther that he had surrendered had taken from him his selfishness—and now he must lose his fear of pain.
But that? How could he lose it? It was part of the very fibre of his body, his nerves throbbed with it, his heart beat with it. He could not remember a time when it had not been part of him. When he had been five or six his father had decided that he must be beaten for some little crime. His father was the gentlest of human beings, and the beating would be very little, but at the sight of the whip something had cracked inside his brain.
He was not a coward; he had stood up to the beating without a tear, but the sense of the coming pain had been more awful than anything that he could have imagined. It was the same afterwards at school. He was no coward there either, shared in the roughest games, stood up to bullies, ventured into the most dangerous places.
But one night earache had attacked him. It was a new pain for him and he thought that he had never known anything so terrible. Worse than all else were the intermissions between the attacks and the warnings that a new attack was soon to begin. That approach was what he feared, that terrible and fearful approach. He had said very little, had only lain there white and trembling, but the memory of all those awful hours stayed with him always.
Any thought of suffering in others—of poor women in childbirth, of rabbits caught in traps, of dogs poisoned, of children run over or accidentally wounded—these things, if he knew of them, produced an odd sort of sympathetic pain in himself. The strangest thing had been that the war, with all its horrors, had not driven him crazy as he might have expected from his earlier history. On so terrible a scale was it that his senses soon became numbed? He did the work that he was given to do, and heard of the rest like cries beyond the wall. Again and again he had tried to mingle, himself, in it; he had always been prevented.
A dog run over by a motor car struck him more terribly than all the agonies of Ypres.
But these things, what had they to do with his present case? He could not think at all. His brain literally reeled, as though it shook, tried to steady itself, could not, and then turned right over. His body was alive, standing up with all its nerves on tiptoe. How was he to endure these hours that were coming to him?
"I must get out of this!" some one, not himself, cried. It seemed to him that he could hear the strange voice in the room. "I must get out of this. How dare they keep me if I demand to be let out? I am an American citizen. Let me out of this. Can't you hear? Bring me a light and let me out. I have had enough of this dark room. What do you mean by keeping me here? You think that you are stronger than I. Try it and see. Let me out, I say! Let me out!"
He tottered to his feet and ran across the room, although he could not see his way, blundering against the opposite wall. He beat upon it with his hands.
"Let me out, do you hear! Let me out!"
He was not himself, Harkness. He could no longer repeat those earlier words. He was nobody, nothing, nothing at all. They could not hurt him then. Try as they might they could not hurt him, Harkness, when he was not Harkness. He laughed, stroking the wall gently with his hand as though it were his friend.
"It's all right, do you see? You can't hurt me because you can't find me. I'm hiding, I don't know where to find myself, so that it isn't likely you will find me. You can't hurt nothing, you know. You can't indeed."
He laughed and laughed and laughed—gently enjoying his own joke. There was a sudden knocking at the door.
"Come in!" he said in a whisper. "Come in!"
His heart stood still with fear.
The door opened, splashing into the darkness a shower of light like water flung from a bucket. In the centre of this the two Japanese were standing.
"Master says please come. If you ready he ready."
At sight of the Japanese a marvellous thing had happened. All his fear had on the instant left him, his beastly physical fear. It fell from him like an old suit of clothes, discarded. He was himself, clear-headed, cool, collected, and in some strange new way, happy.
Harkness followed them.