Welsh Rarebit Tales

by Harle Oren Cummins

The end of it all came one night two weeks later, about ten o’clock in the evening, when one of the maids came down to my house, white and trembling, to tell me that “Master Richard was down with the horrors again, worse than ever, and would I please come up as quick as possible.” I hurried on a hat and coat, and followed her up the hill. As we turned in at the little gate in the garden I was startled by a shriek so terrible that I turned to the trembling maid questioningly.

“That’s the way he’s been at it for an hour, sir,” she whispered, and her teeth chattered as she spoke, though the night was not cold.

She left me at the door of his room and I went in alone. At first I could see nothing, for the light was turned down; but from the bed there came a low, moaning noise. Then, suddenly, the clothes were thrown aside, and, God help me, I saw a face the like of which I pray I may never see again. I have doctored many men in my time, and I have seen some sights that are not nice to think about; but never have I seen such nameless horror, such uncontrollable fear, as looked at me from the eyes of that man.

He stood there for a minute gibbering and making strange noises like a beast; and then jumping from the bed, he ran to a piece of canvas standing against the wall and covered by a thick drapery. He pulled the cover aside a little way and peeped fearfully behind. Then, in a very paroxysm of terror, he ran shrieking and screaming to the bed. He buried himself under the clothes, and I could hear him sobbing and moaning again as when I first came in. There is to me something inexpressibly pitiful in the sight of a man in tears, and yet I had to stay there for three mortal hours and watch that man. Always the same program,—the look behind the drapery, and then that horrible fright, which in a few minutes was followed by another look.

Toward two in the morning he quieted down suddenly, and I went and sat by the bedside trying to soothe him to sleep; but he wanted to talk.

“I am almost done for, doctor,” he whispered; “but I have finished it, and it has finished me. I have lived a bad life, a very bad life, but on the canvas behind that drapery is the thing God sent me to avenge my wasted life; and when I am gone and you see what it is that I have lived with for the last two years, you will believe me when I say that I do not fear the terrors of any hell hereafter.”

He broke off suddenly and glanced fearfully about the room, but as if reassured by the pressure of my hand, he continued,—

“I lived straight, for over a year, after the pledge I made you, the night of my first trouble. I left all the old companions, and worked hard. You saw the notice of my picture?” he asked eagerly, and I nodded.

“During that year I met a woman who was the very type of all that is pure and innocent, and I even dared to think that sometime, after I had lived down my frightful past, I might make her my wife. But one day as I was straining my eyes to catch the last light of the fading afternoon, I chanced to glance over the canvas, and, my God, there creeping out of the darkness, was that hideous thing. I was unconscious for several hours, but when I came to myself I consulted the best physician in Paris, and was under his care for over a month, but it was of no use. Since that day it has followed me everywhere, day and night. I tried to drown it in drink, and it only came the oftener. Then I sent the crowd home, and resolved to paint a likeness of the thing, to have always with me, so as to accustom myself to it, but it was too awful.” His voice trailed off into a shuddering whisper.

I tried to turn his thoughts to pleasant things, and at last he began to talk of his childhood, and how he used to ride about the country in the little pony chaise with his mother, and the children of the village called him “young Master Dick.” Then, even as I watched him, I saw creeping into his face again that nameless horror. The pupils of his eyes grew larger and larger till you could scarcely see the blue. The sweat of fear started from his forehead in huge drops; and in less time than it takes to tell it he was again a madman.