Chapter XIV

Upstairs in his bedroom that poor old lonely man—lonely save for his wife (and how grateful he was for her having treated him as she just had done, and for her last look at him as he painfully climbed the stairs)—sat waiting to recover from the ascent. Stairs tried him a great deal now ... his health was breaking ... he thought. Perhaps that’s what accounted for what he had been feeling ... what he thought he had been hearing; and he huddled his shoulders together. He wouldn’t undress at once—he would rest awhile ... rest awhile ... rest awhile. He would get steadier then.

A knock somewhere?... It might have been downstairs, but in his condition he thought it was at his own door, and it made him jump.

“Come in!” he said.

There was no reply; and he went a little white. He steadied himself and leaned forward painfully to take up the poker and stir the fire. But he dropped it with a loud clatter that startled him again.

“Foolishness!” he muttered.

He heard the knock once again. This time he did not say “Come in!” He nerved himself to rise painfully from his chair, and threw the door wide open. There was nothing but empty darkness outside. He shut the door again and fell rather than sank into the place he had just left.

“George,” he said to himself, half aloud, “George, pull yerself together. This’ll never do! You’re ’igh-strung, George, that’s what you are; remember what the doctor said about yer blood pressing. Wot was it ’e said? He said, ‘No whisky,’ ’e said. Well, I don’t know wot’s right about that, but I know it steadies me.” He stretched out his arm to the table by his side, and took up his flask from where it lay on the table—a large flask with a silver cup, and his coat of arms—supporters talbots, three mancuses quartered chevron and the devil and all on a field azure—engraved thereon. It shone under the electric shaded light on the table and the warmer glow of the fire. Other light in the room there was none.

He slowly poured out the strong drink into the silver.

“It’ll calm yer, George,” he said.

Below, he heard the noise of many voices. Too many, he thought, for the few guests. But it was company like. Then he heard people moving across the lawn. Perhaps some neighbours had come in, and gone again. Then the voices quieted down. He took his first sip of the whisky, pre-war.

“That’s better, George,” he said. “That’ll put yer right.”

His back, as he sat in the deep chair facing the fire, was to the side door which led to the little box-room. It opened so noiselessly that he heard no sound, tense though his nerves were.

He waited a moment, less unmanned, raising the silver cup again for a second sip—when there came, whether within his mind or from the air without he could not tell, a hint of rustling, a suspicion of a Presence in the room—near the bed. The start stopped the cup as he still held it in his hand, and he poised it in mid-air, staring—there came the pleading words from very far away:

“Not again, George! Oh, not again! It’s yer pison!”

“It’s me mother’s voice,” groaned the old man in a dreadful whisper.

He let the cup fall to the floor at his feet, careless of the liquor running out upon the rug. His hand shook, as did his whole body.

“’Er voice,” he said again, frozen with fear.

A hand came out from behind the head of the bed—a hand the wrist of which was draped in black. Lord Mere de Beaurivage did not see it—he was staring into the air before him—it was Her Voice.

The hand found the switch, and all was suddenly dark, save for the glow of the fire. He had heard but the slightest of sounds—he looked round into that darkness—and there he saw, dreadfully distinct in the half light which the glowing coals threw upon the dull red damask and the tapestry—what he had seen too often that day in his unhappy mind. There IT stood, for the half second in which he still retained his sanity. He was on his gouty feet groping towards it, his mouth open and giving small inarticular sounds. IT was there by the side of the bed against the wall, agleam on the sword-hilt, tall, black, too vague, but the white ruff standing out glaring—and above that ruff nothing: only the wall. Even as he looked he saw a hand which appeared from beneath the cloak slowly moving. He gave a loud shriek and crashed to the ground.

In a flash the figure had passed the fallen man, and was through the door into the side room, and had turned the key. But quick as the motion was, even as he turned the key in the lock the great swirl of feet was running up the sounding wood of the staircase, the main door of the bedroom was thrown open, all the lights were turned on, and the hubbub of guests and servants flocked to what might be the living or the dead.

Amathea was the first of them, kneeling by her husband, trying to lift him up in her arms, calling him by his name, and sobbing loudly.

Three of the menservants hoisted the motionless form and got it on to the bed. He was breathing. His eyes opened for a moment, but he stared vacantly, seeing no one, and with yet another loud cry and a shudder his head fell back upon the pillow.