The Moon Rock

by Arthur J. Rees

“Thalassa’s wife was in the kitchen, alone, with some playing cards spread out on the table in front of her. But before long the door leading into the passage opened, and Thalassa came in. He sat down, but after the lapse of a few minutes he rose from his chair and approached the window. I shrank back into the shadow of a rock, watching him. He stood looking out into the darkness for perhaps five minutes, then I saw him start, turn his head, and go out of the room. I heard the front door open, followed by the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs. A moment later I heard the murmur of voices in Robert Turold’s room upstairs.

“I went nearer to try and find out what had happened, but it was no use. I could see a gleam of light in the study window, and could hear Robert Turold’s voice mingled with feminine tones, then—silence, followed once more by the sound of an opening door. From my place of concealment I saw two people going down the garden path—Thalassa and a female figure. They passed through the gate and vanished into the darkness of the moors.

“My opportunity had come. I went to the house and tried the front window. It was unlocked, and yielded. I got through, and went quickly upstairs. A light was shining underneath the study door. I opened it, and saw Robert Turold sitting at his table writing with his back towards me.

“At the sight of that atrocious scoundrel sitting there immersed in his shameful project against a woman I had loved, my self-control gave way utterly, completely. I had intended to be calm, to reason with him, to exact my terms with a cold logical brain. I did none of these things. Without a word of warning, before he even knew I was in the room, I sprang on him, clutching him, shaking him in a blind insensate fury till my strength suddenly failed me and left me sick and giddy.

“‘I am Remington,’ I said—‘Jim Remington.’ I leaned against the table, panting and exhausted, looking at him. His self-control was something to marvel at. He just sat still, returning my look with cold motionless eyes, no doubt trying to discern the features of the man he had wronged through the film of age. But in spite of his self-control I could see the grey pallor of fear creeping into his face, and he could not keep his lips from trembling. Twice he essayed to speak, but his mouth refused to utter the words. What he did say was strange to me, when he got it out at last. ‘I was right’—I heard him whisper, almost to himself—‘I knew, I knew.’ He repeated those words several times. It was then I saw that his self-control arose from the fact that although he was terrified he did not appear to be so greatly surprised. Surprised he was, but not in the way I had expected. His prime difficulty seemed to be to get out of his head the identity by which he had known me. ‘You are Ravenshaw—Dr. Ravenshaw,’ he said. ‘How can you be Remington?’ He brought out this with an effort, like a man trying to shake off an unreasoning horror.

“I had expected him to face it out, to challenge me, perhaps deny all knowledge of my existence. Instead, he merely sat there staring at me with an air of terrified realization, like a person gazing upon the dreadful materialization of an expected phantom. I told him the truth in the fewest possible words, and he listened silently, never removing his eyes from me, the phantom of his past. When I had finished he lay back in his chair, but his eyes stared up at me with a kind of dead look, like half-closed eyes in a coffin. ‘I knew that you were rescued from the island,’ he said. ‘But I thought you were long since dead.’

“That statement surprised me. I asked him how he had learned of it. He told me it was through the medium of an overheard conversation in a London hotel nearly thirty years before. He had gone up to town to see his lawyer, and one of the people at the hotel where he put up happened to be one of the passengers of the Erechtheus, the steamer which had rescued me. The man sat at the next table, and Turold heard him tell the story to a friend one night at dinner. It had happened just like that—quite simply, but it was a possibility I had overlooked. Not that it mattered, as it happened, but it would have—if Alice had been with him. Turold, of course, kept his knowledge to himself. He was too cautious to approach the passenger, but he instructed his lawyer to make guarded inquiries at the shipping office of the vessel in order to verify the story. Then he returned home, consumed by anxiety, no doubt, to wait for my reappearance. As the months slipped past and I did not appear, hope revived within him. It appears that he had heard the passenger say that I was a wreck—a physical wreck. That must have been a cheering item in a bad piece of news. I can imagine its growing importance in Turold’s mind as the time went on and I made no sign. Finally (and thankfully) he reached the conclusion that I was indeed dead, and that he had nothing more to fear. There was an element of uncertainty about it, though, a lack of definite knowledge. I fancy that was one of the reasons which led him to take Thalassa into his service when he turned up some time later. It was a deep and subtle thing to do. Thalassa was bound to help him against me, if ever I came back.

“The years went on, and he grew quite certain, as any man in his position would, in the circumstances. He forgot all about me. That frame of mind lasted until he came to Cornwall, and then, it seemed, I came back into his life in the strangest way. I haunted him in the spirit, and he never once guessed that I might be there in the flesh. Who can explain this?

“As he spoke of it he looked as though he had a grievance against me, as, perhaps, he had—from his point of view. ‘You faded from my mind for twenty years,’ he said. ‘But here—in Cornwall—your memory began to haunt me. It was your footsteps, principally. I used to fancy you were following me across the moors. Tonight for the first time I actually heard them—heard them above the noise of the storm. They came to my ears clear and sharp, around the house, on the rocks, under the window.’ He cast on me an appalled, a hopeless glance. ‘Why have you left it so long?’ he cried. ‘What do you want—now?’

“He positively had no glimmering of my feelings. His fixed idea, like a cancerous growth, had sucked all the healthy life out of him. Hot anger stirred within me again, but I retained control of myself this time. I asked him how he had found out about the earlier marriage, and he told me Alice had babbled something in her delirium—enough to arouse his suspicions. It seemed that he had waited for one of her lucid intervals, and wormed the truth out of her. ‘The proofs—of course you’ve obtained them?’ I asked casually. Yes, he had the proofs. He had sent to London for them immediately. I asked him where they were. ‘What do you want to know for?’ he asked in an agitated voice. I told him quite simply, that he must give me his proofs and tell the members of his family that he had been mistaken—that Alice’s first husband had really died before she married him. If he agreed to do that he had nothing farther to fear from me—I would remain dead forever. ‘You can destroy proofs, but not facts,’ he muttered in reply to this. I told him the facts were never likely to come to light if he entered into a compact of silence.