THE MOVING FIGURE AGAIN
Such was a betrothal, sir, so extraordinary that had my natural repulsion for the unusual permitted me to have told it before, it would have been with belief that others would think me a man deluded by his own fancies. And yet these are facts I have told you—cold and bare and sufficient to have proved to me that the adventure and romance mourned for by some men are not dead, but, were it only known, still flourish, concealed in the hearts and experience of such matter-of-fact persons as myself.
Our marriage, too, was not of the conventional sort. It took place a fortnight later without any of the celebration usual in such cases. The death of the Judge, the fact that Julianna had no other immediate relatives to act as her protectors, and that my own father, whose affection for me has always been of a rather cold and undemonstrative type, approved not only of my choice of a wife, but also of my plan for an immediate marriage, argued against delay. Furthermore, Julianna herself, with a sad but charming little smile, again and again assured herself in my presence that she knew her own heart and that for her part there was no need to prolong a period of preparation.
Often, in those days, she spoke to me of her father, with the deepest affection, not as if he were dead, but rather as if his spirit still remained in the old house. She had one of those rare minds that reject the disagreeable superstitious affectations concerning death and that overcome hysterical grief. To be sure, for hours at a time she would suffer an extraordinary melancholy, and then, in my agony of curiosity, I believed that the spectre which had first appeared before her, the night of the Judge’s death, was whispering to her again. True, however, to my solemn oath, which I have always kept, I asked her nothing, and she always emerged from these periods of meditation into moods of gayety and affection which were more charming than I can describe.
She would romp, mind and body, in all the freshness of youth, with the most entrancing grace of movement and with her natural brilliant play of thought.
“I belong to you!” she would exclaim, retreating before my advance. “Come—take me!”
Then, after I had captured her and she had looked up at me, wrinkling her nose playfully, she would suddenly grow serious, and from her smiling eyes tears of happiness would start, and then, for an hour afterward, she would go singing snatches of song through the house. So that more than once I saw Margaret Murchie stop her household task to listen, shut her old eyes and say, “Thank God for his care of her.”
It need not surprise you that I tell you of her, for, as you may understand when I have told you all, I am now facing circumstances which, for some reason, have caused me to fall in love with her with a strange, new, and even deeper desire, and which raise the necessity for me to save her from some unrevealed menace and win her a second time.
The extraordinary fact in the light of this new situation is that our married life has been, until a year ago, as peaceful as could be. Whatever I might have suffered at first from the fact that I had been forbidden to know or ask of the past, these stings soon lost their power to disturb me. I was glad to forget them because I so hated all things which might tend to disturb the well-ordered life with which well-bred families retain their respectable position.
We found our tastes adapted to a common enjoyment of outdoor and intellectual pleasures, and we spent many hours each week, when alone, in reading the books which pleased us and in playing duets, in which I, being an indifferent player of the piano, contrasted my cold technique with the warmth and expression of her performances upon the ’cello. Indeed, we showed ourselves in these duets as in our companionship, for though I loved her, I believe I may have fallen short in those attentions, those little demonstrations and caresses, upon which some women seem to be nourished. As for her, she remained unchanged by marriage or time. By her humor, her tender sympathy, her refreshing, unaffected ways, she won a large and devoted circle of acquaintance, composed of both women and men. If any of the former, however, desired intimacy, they always found a gentle resistance; if the latter, they were made to see that a fortress had been erected on the borderland.
Until a year ago we were very happy, I think. To be sure, as time passed without the coming of any child, Julianna suffered that peculiar grief which, whatever may be its severity, is like no other. The desire for children was not only in her heart and mind: it was also a keen, instinctive yearning. Quietly, and without inflicting upon me any of her distress over unfulfilled hopes of the past, she persisted in the belief that the gift she most desired would not be withheld from her forever. Other than this no cloud seemed to be creeping up our sky, and, indeed, it was only little by little that I realized that some peculiar change had taken place.
I may say to you, I think, that this strange influence came even more than a year ago. I have tried in my own mind to establish a connection between its beginning and an accident which happened at that time.
We had gone for a week-end visit to the Tencorts’ farm in the Sweetbriar Hills, and much against my wishes, expressed, however, sleepily, Julianna had gone out at sunrise, chosen a rangy mare, saddled the creature herself, for the grooms were not up, and had ridden off across the wet fields, alone. Breakfast had already been announced when we heard the hoofs of the animal and caught glimpses of the horse’s yellow neck and Julianna’s plaid jacket, bobbing toward us under the arching trees.
“Your lady is hardly what one might call a gentle rider,” said Jack Tencort. “As for me, I’m glad to see the mare in a foam for once, but I would not be pleased to have my own wife—Hello, she is using her right hand.”
I, too, could see that Julianna’s left arm was hanging by her side, and as she pulled up the panting mare below the porch, I noticed that her lips were white.
“I’m sorry to have forced your animal,” she said, “but I was in a hurry to get back. Jerry! Please hurry. Help me off.”
“What’s the matter?” cried our host behind me.
“To tell the truth,” she said. “I have had my arm broken.”
“Thrown?” cried Tencort, looking for signs of mud or dust on her costume.
Julianna smiled gamely.
“That is a matter wholly between myself and the mare,” she answered.
You know, of course, that in spite of her unconcerned answers the thing was serious. The great trouble, I have always thought, was that no good surgeon was within reaching distance; the country doctor who set the bones failed to discover the presence of some splinters at the elbow, which the injury had thrust up into and displaced some of the nerves and sinew there.
When we had come back home and Nederlinck, the surgeon, had discovered how the healing process had gone on, he told me that for many weeks my wife would have to suffer great pain from the readjustment of the irritated nerves. For two months he did what little he could and then left the rest to time.
Julianna suffered silently. She complained little, but I could see a marked change in her. She became restless. I have seen her pace up and down a room for hours, like a captured animal longing for the jungle, and remain at the dinner-table, after the time had come to go to our library for coffee, with her great round eyes staring before her until some one spoke to her. Her vigor disappeared. The moods which had followed the reading of the post-mortem message from the Judge returned; her little exhibits of affection and, I think, even her innocence of personality disappeared. The spectre, whatever it was, seemed present once more. At times I believed I saw in her beautiful face a look of guilt, of fear—the look of a soul in a panic. She became suspicious of her friends and withdrew from them more and more, at times with such awkward haste that it seemed as if she believed they were about to observe some fact which she must, at any cost, hide. Little by little, too, I believed that I detected signs that she was drawing away from me.
For some reason I have always dated the beginning of this change to that morning when Julianna went off to ride alone. Yet, if I wanted to be sure of bringing back to her face an old trace of her mischievous smile, it was only necessary for me to question her about the cause of her accident.
“I have promised the horse never to tell,” she would say, putting her finger to her red lips. And I have never been able to decide whether she was concealing, playfully, some little folly or awkwardness of her own, or, behind her light manner, some more serious experience.
In any case, it was plain that some accursed thing had come between us. I found after some months that I must face this as a fact. We said little to each other from morning till night. When evening had come I did not go home, as I always had, with a little thrill of the old expectation which had never seemed to wear out. Instead I had a subconscious reluctance to enter a relation in which each day sympathy and understanding grew less and less. I began to suffer from a desire to demand from her a complete disclosure of all that had been hidden from me, and this temptation to break my solemn promise grew when, asking her on several occasions as to where she had been at this or that hour, I found that she was evading my questions.
At last it became evident enough that I had not been deceived in my increasing suspicions that something was wrong. One evening she burst into tears as she stood before my chair, and then falling on her knees, caught up my hands in her own and pressed them to her neck, cheeks, and forehead.
“Whatever happens, you will love me?” she cried out desperately. “Say you will! Say you will!”
“You know that,” I said.
Perhaps I had answered as badly as I could, for it seemed to cause her the greatest pain.
“I wish you had not said so,” she exclaimed, with a wild look in her eyes. “It is your goodness that hurts. Don’t you see what comfort it must be to a woman to have her husband cruel to her—beat her—abuse her!”
I drew back from my wife, astounded.
“Stop!” I said, with the first show of stern authority I had ever made since I had known her. “It’s time for you who dare to speak like that—to tell—”
“No! No!”she cried. “For God’s sake, don’t forget your promise. If you do we are lost—I am lost.”
She sprang up and away from me, and with her bare arms crossed over her face and her hands over her ears to shut out all sounds, she ran from the room.
This, sir, was seven weeks ago, and for many days following she would sit and look at me constantly, until, feeling her eyes, I would raise my own to find her face drawn as by a weary period of sleeplessness. At these moments it seemed to me that she was trying to make me understand, just as a faithful dog tries at times to communicate his thoughts by the expectancy, the love, or the pleading shining from his eyes. How much would I now give had I been able to do it!
Within the space of a week she brought to me the suggestion and the plan, which I, being driven to desperation by the impending wreck of our happiness, was mad enough to accept without foreseeing the punishment I would have to suffer through giving for the second time a solemn word of honor.
I think on that morning Julianna was more like her old self than she had been for weeks. Her apartments, though separate from my own, are entered from mine by a narrow door. I had prepared for breakfast,—which we do not have served in our rooms according to the degenerate modern custom,—and then had gone to find her, with the thought in my mind that, whatever she suffered or feared, it was my duty to help her as best I might. I had promised myself to be cheerful, yielding, and as entertaining as possible.
She was sitting on the side of her bed when I came in. The whiteness of the linen and the pale blue of her morning gown served to bring out the delicate color of her skin. I was so delighted with this indication of renewed health that I opened my mouth to express my admiration.
She was quicker than I.
“You find me attractive this morning,” she said with a sad little smile. “I am glad. I wish that I might be attractive to you forever and ever.—I mean my shoulders, my arms, my hands—free from wrinkles or fat or dryness.”
“I’d love you now if you were to assume the shape of a Chinese dragon,” I said seriously, “—or the Sheik of Baalbec.”
The truth was that I had almost forgotten this latter creature, the automaton. Apparently she had, too, for at first a puzzled look came to her eyes, then she smiled up at me with a bit of her own individual coquetry.
“You are making love this morning?” she said in a gay voice. Yet it seemed to me that in it was a trace of eagerness, shrewdly directed toward a concealed purpose.
“I am going to ask you to go away, Jerry,” she went on timidly, but still smiling.
“Go away? When? For what purpose?” I exclaimed.
“Just go away for me—for my sake,” she answered, straightening her body, raising her head, and looking squarely at me with some of her old strength. “You can go to live in a hotel. You can explain that you are forced to do so for some business reason. You can say that I have gone away.”
She must have seen the flush of my anger, for she raised her hand.
“Don’t!” she pleaded. “I know very well how unreasonable I may seem. But if I have earned any gratitude or respect or love from you, just give me what I ask now and give it to me blindly—without question.”
Her eyes held my own as she said these words and I knew she had cast her spell over me.
“What do you propose to do for these three weeks?” I asked roughly.
“I shall stay in this house,” she answered, spacing her words. “Margaret will stay, too. The rest of the servants I shall send away. But of this I want to be sure—you must not come to find me for three weeks. God only knows what would happen if you did.”
“You are insane!” I cried out, with my hand gripping her round wrist. “It’s that which has hung over us.”
She shook her head.
“Worse,” said she.
Then, as if to assure me that she had not lost her reason, she recalled the months which had just gone and described, as I could not, the change in our home, our life, ourselves.
“It is for you!” she broke out finally, as if she were no longer able to be calm. “For you and for our future I am begging you to do what I ask.”
“Tell me this,” said I, stirred by seeing her tremble so violently. “Has something come to you out of the past?”
“Yes,” she said, reaching behind her for the wall. “Ask nothing more. It has come out of the old, old past. For the love of all that is good, promise to do as I say.”
“Come back to me. I shall be here—then.”
I bowed my head.
“On your word of honor,” she commanded.
“On my word of honor,” said I, and turned away.
I had scarcely done so, however, before I felt her arms about me, the impact and the clinging of her body. Close to me, plucking at my fingers, my sleeves, my wrist, her body shaking with her sobs, she covered me with caresses like those given at some parting for eternity.
“You—are not—in danger of death!” I exclaimed, holding her away from me at arm’s length.
“No, I cannot believe that,” she said quietly. “Such as I am, I shall be when you come back.”
With these words she pushed me gently from the room; I found myself looking into the broad white panel of a closed door. I stood there a moment, dazed, then going to my chamber, I, with my own hands, packed a large kit bag, preparing to do as she had asked. It was only after I had reflected on my promise that I went again to speak with her. I knocked. There was no answer. I tried the latch. The door was locked.
Without eating my breakfast and with a strange conflict between my trust in my wife and the memory of my experiences since I had known her, I left the house and have not passed its threshold, though it is two weeks to-morrow morning since I left it.
Do you wonder, sir, that I have suffered all the torments which anxiety can devise or imagination, with its swift picture-film, may unroll before one’s eyes? I have stifled as best I could these uncertain terrors. By day, when I have plunged into my work at the office, at times I have been able to shut my mind to the everlasting rehearsal around and around, over and over again, of the facts which I have told you to-night; but when night has come, I am the prey of my own thoughts. For six days, in spite of my exaggerated fear of scandal, I have prowled like a ghost before my own house, lurking behind trees, watching my own door like a ten-dollar-a-day detective. Dodging the policeman who would know me, I have kept my eyes for hours on the dim light that sometimes burns in my wife’s room, and when I have seen the shadow of some one passing and repassing behind the drawn shade, I have felt my heart in my throat, and have scarcely been able to restrain myself from calling out into the night air, “Julianna! Julianna!”
Finally, I must tell you one thing more. I had believed that perhaps the crisis which had come to her had done so independently of any personality but mine or hers. I was wrong. To-night, unable to remain inactive any longer, and by the accumulation of restraint made desperate, I rung up my house on the telephone. No answer was returned. The feeling that my wife, in danger, was calling upon me, swept over me until, had I been open to such beliefs, I would have felt sure that across the affection and sympathy between us, as across wires, the message came.
I walked hastily from the hotel into the park, taking the path which I had used in the pleasant June days when I had met her at the Monument. You know the kind of night it has been. Therefore when I reached the border of trees opposite my house, I hardly thought it necessary to seek the screen of the shrubbery; the arc lights were throwing the dancing shadows of tree limbs across the pavement, the rush of the wind drowned the noise of footsteps, and the street was deserted, I thought, except for the clouds of whirling dust that passed downtown like so many huge and ghostly pedestrians. I saw that a dim light shone through her blinds and that the house was the picture of peace, suggesting that the walls contained comfort, happiness, and the quiet of a peaceful family. So the fronts of houses lie to us!
At the very moment that this thought came, I saw from my position under the shadow of a spreading oak, which has not yet dropped its leaves, that I was not the only person who was observing the light behind the blinds. A figure was standing not more than a hundred feet away from me, peering out from beyond one of the light poles. It wore a vizored cap, I thought, and its head rolled this way and that on top of its spare, bent, and agile body. Now and then, however, it ceased this grotesque movement to gaze up at the window. One would have said that this creature was less a man than an ape.
I am not a coward. “Here,” thought I, “is a tangible factor. My word of honor to Julianna is not broken if I seize this customer, whatever he may be, and make him explain the part he is acting.” I stepped forward immediately, but he saw me before I had made two steps. From my bearing and the place where I had concealed myself, he knew at once, I suppose, that I had been watching him, for, turning with a swift motion, he plunged into the shrubs and evergreens behind him. That the thing was as frightened as a rabbit, there can be no doubt; the single little cry it gave forth was not a scream. You would have called it a squeal! In a jiffy I was after him, tearing through the branches among which, with a sinuous twisting of his body, he had just slid; a moment later I reached the open lawn again. The man had vanished.
I knew well enough that he was hiding, probably flattened on the ground, among the evergreens. At another time, on a quiet evening, listening for his movements or even his breathing, might have told me where he lay, but now the wind and the rattle of dead leaves made it necessary for me to use my eyes in my search. Therefore I went back through the bushes, kicking at dark shadows with my foot, my heart thumping with the excitement of the hunt.
As I reached the street again, I looked up toward my house, and there, at the front door, I saw a crack widen and a black figure of a man come out and down the steps. It crossed the street, and when it had gone into the park, I followed it. You know what happened; this second man was you.
And now I ask you, Doctor, man to man—For God’s sake, tell me what you know!
| BOOK III THE DOCTOR’S LIMOUSINE |