The house of silence, p.7
The House of Silence, page 7
I hope I shall never again know a moment of terror so blank and absolute. I could not have moved or spoken to save my life. Either all the known laws of nature were nothing, or I was mad. I stood trembling, but, I am thankful to remember, I stood still, while the black velvet gown swept across the hearthrug towards me.
Next moment a hand touched me — a hand, soft, warm, and human — and a low voice said, ‘You called me. I am here.’
At that touch and that voice, the world seemed to give a sort of bewildering half-turn. I hardly know how to express it, but at once it seemed not awful, not even unusual, for portraits to become flesh — only most natural, most right, most unspeakably fortunate.
I laid my hand on hers. I looked from her to my portrait. I could not see it in the firelight.
‘We are not strangers,’ I said.
‘Oh, no, not strangers.’ Those luminous eyes were looking up into mine, those red lips were near me. With a passionate cry, a sense of having recovered life’s one great good, that had seemed wholly lost, I clasped her in my arms. She was no ghost, she was a woman, the only woman in the world.
‘How long,’ I said, ‘how long is it since I lost you?’
She leaned back, hanging her full weight on the hands that were clasped behind my head.
‘How can I tell how long? There is no time in hell,’ she answered.
It was not a dream. Ah! no — there are no such dreams. I wish to God there could be. When in dreams do I see her eyes, hear her voice, feel her lips against my cheek, hold her hands to my lips, as I did that night, the supreme night of my life! At first we hardly spoke. It seemed enough
… after long grief and pain,
To feel the arms of my true love,
Round me once again.
☙
It is very difficult to tell my story. There are no words to express the sense of glad reunion, the complete realisation of every hope and dream of a life, that came upon me as I sat with my hand in hers and looked into her eyes.
How could it have been a dream, when I left her sitting in the straight-backed chair, and went down to the kitchen to tell the maids I should want nothing more — that I was busy, and did not wish to be disturbed; when I fetched wood for the fire with my own hands, and, bringing it in, found her still sitting there — saw the little brown head turn as I entered, saw the love in her dear eyes; when I threw myself at her feet and blessed the day I was born, since life had given me this?
Not a thought of Mildred; all the other things in my life were a dream — this, its one splendid reality.
‘I am wondering,’ she said, after a while, when we had made such cheer, each of the other, as true lovers may after long parting — ‘I am wondering how much you remember of our past?’
‘I remember nothing but that I love you — that I have loved you all my life.’
‘You remember nothing — really nothing?’
‘Only that I am truly yours; that we have both suffered; that — tell me, my mistress dear, all that you remember. Explain it all to me. Make me understand. And yet — No, I don’t want to understand. It is enough that we are together.’
If it was a dream, why have I never dreamed it again?
She leaned down towards me, her arm lay on my neck, and drew my head till it rested on her shoulder. ‘I am a ghost, I suppose,’ she said, laughing softly; and her laughter stirred memories which I just grasped at and just missed. ‘But you and I know better, don’t we? I will tell you everything you have forgotten. We loved each other — ah! no, you have not forgotten that — and when you came back from the wars, we were to be married. Our pictures were painted before you went away. You know I was more learned than women of that day. Dear one, when you were gone, they said I was a witch. They tried me. They said I should be burned. Just because I had looked at the stars and gained more knowledge than other women, they must needs bind me to a stake and let me be eaten by the fire. And you far away!’
Her whole body trembled and shrank. Oh love, what dream would have told me that my kisses would soothe even that memory?
‘The night before,’ she went on, ‘the devil did come to me. I was innocent before — you know it, don’t you? And even then my sin was for you — for you — because of the exceeding love I bore you. The devil came, and I sold my soul to eternal flame. But I got a good price. I got the right to come back through my picture (if anyone, looking at it, wished for me), as long as my picture stayed in its ebony frame. That frame was not carved by man’s hand. I got the right to come back to you, oh, my heart’s heart. And another thing I won, which you shall hear anon. They burned me for a witch, they made me suffer hell on earth. Those faces, all crowding round, the crackling wood and the choking smell of the smoke —’
‘Oh, love, no more, no more!’
‘When my mother sat that night before my picture, she wept and cried, ‘Come back, my poor, lost child!’ And I went to her with glad leaps of heart. Dear, she shrank from me, she fled, she shrieked and moaned of ghosts. She had our pictures covered from sight and put again in the ebony frame. She had promised me my picture should stay always there. Ah, through all these years your face was against mine.’
She paused.
‘But the man you loved?’
‘You came home. My picture was gone. They lied to you, and you married another woman; but some day I knew you would walk the world again and that I should find you.’
‘The other gain?’ I asked.
‘The other gain,’ she said slowly, ‘I gave my soul for. It is this. If you also will give up your hopes of heaven, I can remain a woman, I can remain in your world — I can be your wife. Oh my dear, after all these years, at last — at last!’
‘If I sacrifice my soul,’ I said slowly, and the words did not seem an imbecility, ‘if I sacrifice my soul I win you? Why, love, it’s a contradiction in terms. You are my soul.’
Her eyes looked straight into mine. Whatever might happen, whatever did happen, whatever may happen, our two souls in that moment met and became one.
‘Then you choose, you deliberately choose, to give up your hopes of heaven for me, as I gave up mine for you?’
‘I will not,’ I said, ‘give up my hope of heaven on any terms. Tell me what I must do that you and I may make our heaven here, as now.’
‘I will tell you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Be alone here tomorrow night — twelve is ghost’s time, isn’t it? — and then I will come out of the picture and never go back to it. I shall live with you, and die, and be buried, and there will be an end of me. But we shall live first, my heart’s heart.’
I laid my head on her knee. A strange drowsiness overcame me. Holding her hand against my cheek, I lost consciousness. When I awoke the grey November dawn was glimmering, ghost-like, through the uncurtained window. My head was pillowed on my arm, which rested — I raised my head quickly — ah! not on my lady’s knee, but on the needleworked cushion of the straight-backed chair. I sprang to my feet. I was stiff with cold and dazed with dreams, but I turned my eyes on the picture. There she sat, my lady, my dear love. I held out my arms, but the passionate cry I would have uttered died on my lips. She had said twelve o’clock. Her lightest word was my law. So I only stood in front of the picture and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.
‘Oh! my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?’
No thought, then, of my whole life’s completion and consummation being a dream.
I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.
I remembered, at one o’clock, Mildred’s coming and her existence.
Now, indeed, the dream began.
With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be someone else’s. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was not there.
Still, the situation was not intolerable, until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and her mother kept the conversational pot boiling with a profusion of genteel commonplaces, and I bore it, as one in sight of heaven can bear mild purgatory. I looked up at my sweetheart in the ebony frame, and I felt that anything which might happen, any irresponsible imbecility, any bathos of boredom, was nothing, if, after all, she came to me again.
And yet, when Mildred, too, looked at the portrait, and said: ‘Doesn’t she think a lot of herself? Theatrical character, I suppose? One of your flames, Mr Devigne?’ I had a sickening sense of impotent irritation which became absolute torture when Mildred — how could I ever have admired that chocolate-box barmaid style of prettiness? — threw herself into the high-backed chair, covering the needlework with ridiculous flounces, and added, ‘Silence gives consent! Who is it, Mr Devigne? Tell us all about her: I am sure she has a story.’
Poor little Mildred, sitting there smiling, serene in her confidence that her every word charmed me — sitting there with her rather pinched waist, her rather tight boots, her rather vulgar voice — sitting in the chair where my dear lady had sat when she told me her story! I could not bear it.
‘Don’t sit there,’ I said, ‘it’s not comfortable!’
But the girl would not be warned. With a laugh that set every nerve in my body vibrating with annoyance, she said, ‘Oh, dear! mustn’t I even sit in the same chair as your black-velvet woman?’
I looked at the chair in the picture. It was the same, and in her chair Mildred was sitting. Then a horrible sense of the reality of Mildred came upon me. Was all this a reality after all? But for fortunate chance, might Mildred have occupied, not only her chair, but her place in my life? I rose.
‘I hope you won’t think me very rude,’ I said, ‘but I am obliged to go out.’
I forget what appointment I alleged. The lie came readily enough.
I faced Mildred’s pouts with the hope that she and her mother would not wait dinner for me. I fled. In another minute I was safe, alone, under the chill, cloudy, autumn sky — free to think, think, think of my dear lady.
I walked for hours along streets and squares; I lived over and over again every look, word, and hand-touch — every kiss; I was completely, unspeakably happy.
Mildred was utterly forgotten; my lady of the ebony frame filled my heart, and soul, and spirit.
As I heard eleven boom through the fog, I turned and went home.
When I got to my street, I found a crowd surging through it, a strong red light filling the air.
A house was on fire. Mine!
I elbowed my way through the crowd.
The picture of my lady — that, at least, I could save.
As I sprang up the steps, I saw, as in a dream — yes, all this was really dream-like — I saw Mildred leaning out of the first-floor window, wringing her hands.
‘Come back, sir,’ cried a fireman; ‘we’ll get the young lady out right enough.’
But my lady? The stairs were cracking, smoking, and as hot as hell. I went up to the room where her picture was. Strange to say, I only felt that the picture was a thing we should like to look on through the long, glad, wedded life that was to be ours. I never thought of it as being one with her.
As I reached the first floor I felt arms about my neck. The smoke was too thick for me to distinguish features.
‘Save me,’ a voice whispered. I clasped a figure in my arms and bore it with a strange dis-ease, down the shaking stairs and out into safety. It was Mildred. I knew that directly I clasped her.
‘Stand back,’ cried the crowd.
‘Everyone’s safe,’ cried a fireman.
The flames leaped from every window. The sky grew redder and redder. I sprang from the hands that would have held me. I leaped up the steps. I crawled up the stairs. Suddenly the whole horror came to me. ‘As long as my picture remains in the ebony frame.’ What if picture and frame perished together?
I fought with the fire and with my own choking inability to fight with it. I pushed on. I must save my picture. I reached the drawing-room.
As I sprang in, I saw my lady, I swear it, through the smoke and the flames, hold out her arms to me — to me — who came too late to save her, and to save my own life’s joy. I never saw her again.
Before I could reach her, or cry out to her, I felt the floor yield beneath my feet, and I fell into the flames below.
☙
How did they save me? What does that matter? They saved me somehow — curse them. Every stick of my aunt’s furniture was destroyed. My friends pointed out that, as the furniture was heavily insured, the carelessness of a nightly-studious housemaid had done me no harm.
No harm!
That was how I won and lost my only love.
I deny, with all my soul in the denial, that it was a dream. There are no such dreams. Dreams of longing and pain there are in plenty; but dreams of complete, of unspeakable happiness — ah, no — it is the rest of life that is the dream.
But, if I think that, why have I married Mildred and grown stout, and dull, and prosperous?
I tell you, it is all this that is the dream; my dear lady only is the reality. And what does it matter what one does in a dream?
5 From the Dead
I
‘But true or not true, your brother is a scoundrel. No man — no decent man — tells such things.’
‘He did not tell me. How dare you suppose it? I found the letter in his desk; and since she was my friend and your sweetheart, I never thought there could be any harm in my reading anything she might write to my brother. Give me back the letter. I was a fool to tell you.’
Ida Helmont held out her hand for the letter.
‘Not yet,’ I said, and I went to the window. The dull red of a London sunset burned on the paper, as I read in the pretty handwriting I knew so well, and had kissed so often:
Dear, I do — I do love you; but it’s impossible. I must marry Arthur. My honour is engaged. If he would only set me free — but he never will. He loves me foolishly. But as for me — it is you I love — body, soul, and spirit. There is no one in my heart but you. I think of you all day, and dream of you all night. And we must part. Goodbye — Yours, yours, yours,
Elvira
I had seen the handwriting, indeed, often enough. But the passion written there was new to me. That I had not seen.
I turned from the window. My sitting-room looked strange to me. There were my books, my reading-lamp, my untasted dinner still on the table, as I had left it when I rose to dissemble my surprise at Ida Helmont’s visit — Ida Helmont, who now sat looking at me quietly.
‘Well — do you give me no thanks?’
‘You put a knife in my heart, and then ask for thanks?’
‘Pardon me,’ she said, throwing up her chin. ‘I have done nothing but show you the truth. For that one should expect no gratitude — may I ask, out of mere curiosity, what you intend to do?’
‘Your brother will tell you —’
She rose suddenly, very pale, and her eyes haggard.
‘You will not tell my brother?’ she began.
She came towards me — her gold hair flaming in the sunset light.
‘Why are you so angry with me?’ she said. ‘Be reasonable. What else could I do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Would it have been right not to tell you?’
‘I don’t know. I only know that you’ve put the sun out, and I haven’t got used to the dark yet.’
‘Believe me,’ she said, coming still nearer to me, and laying her hands in the lightest touch on my shoulders, ‘believe me, she never loved you.’
There was a softness in her tone that irritated and stimulated me. I moved gently back, and her hands fell by her sides.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘I have behaved very badly. You were quite right to come, and I am not ungrateful. Will you post a letter for me?’
I sat down and wrote:
I give you back your freedom. The only gift of mine that can please you now.
Arthur
I held the sheet out to Miss Helmont, but she would not look at it. I folded, sealed, stamped, and addressed it.
‘Goodbye,’ I said then, and gave her the letter. As the door closed behind her, I sank into my chair, and cried like a child, or a fool, over my lost plaything — the little, dark-haired woman who loved someone else with ‘body, soul, and spirit’.
I did not hear the door open or any foot on the floor, and therefore I started when a voice behind me said:
‘Are you so very unhappy? Oh, Arthur, don’t think I am not sorry for you!’
‘I don’t want anyone to be sorry for me, Miss Helmont,’ I said.
She was silent a moment. Then, with a quick, sudden, gentle movement she leaned down and kissed my forehead — and I heard the door softly close. Then I knew that the beautiful Miss Helmont loved me.
At first that thought only fleeted by — a light cloud against a grey sky — but the next day reason woke, and said:
‘Was Miss Helmont speaking the truth? Was it possible that —?’
I determined to see Elvira, to know from her own lips whether by happy fortune this blow came, not from her, but from a woman in whom love might have killed honesty.
I walked from Hampstead to Gower Street. As I trod its long length, I saw a figure in pink come out of one of the houses. It was Elvira. She walked in front of me to the corner of Store Street. There she met Oscar Helmont. They turned and met me face to face, and I saw all I needed to see. They loved each other. Ida Helmont had spoken the truth. I bowed and passed on. Before six months were gone, they were married, and before a year was over, I had married Ida Helmont.
