The Arthur Machen Megapack: 25 Classic Works (26 page)

“And that is the story, is it?” said Clarke musingly.

“Yes, that is the story.”

“Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it. There are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert’s house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semiconscious way, over what you had heard. I don’t exactly see what more can be said or done in the matter; you evidently think there is a mystery of some kind, but Herbert is dead; where then do you propose to look?”

“I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married.
She
is the mystery.”

The two men sat silent by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating himself on having successfully kept up the character of advocate of the commonplace, and Villiers wrapt in his gloomy fancies.

“I think I will have a cigarette,” he said at last, and put his hand in his pocket to feel for the cigarette-case.

“Ah!” he said, starting slightly, “I forgot I had something to show you. You remember my saying that I had found a rather curious sketch amongst the pile of old newspapers at the house in Paul Street? Here it is.”

Villiers drew out a small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered with brown paper, and secured with string, and the knots were troublesome. In spite of himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke without a word.

There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman’s head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the woman’s soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his memory one summer evening long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a voice speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying, “Clarke, Mary will see the God Pan!” and then he was standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him.

“Who is this woman?” he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.

“That is the woman whom Herbert married.”

Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There certainly was Mary’s face, but there was something else, something he had not seen on Mary’s features when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face, Clarke shuddered before it in his inmost soul, and thought, unconsciously, of Dr. Phillips’s words, “the most vivid presentment of evil I have ever seen.” He turned the paper over mechanically in his hand and glanced at the back.

“Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death.”

Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.

“I don’t feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few minutes.”

Villiers picked up the fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had done.

“You saw that?” he said. “That’s how I identified it as being a portrait of Herbert’s wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?”

“Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don’t think I quite catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to identify the picture?”

“This word—‘Helen’—written on the back. Didn’t I tell you her name was Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan.”

Clarke groaned; there could be no shadow of doubt.

“Now, don’t you agree with me,” said Villiers, “that in the story I have told you tonight, and in the part this woman plays in it, there are some very strange points?”

“Yes, Villiers,” Clarke muttered, “it is a strange story indeed; a strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over; I may be able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now? Well, good-night, Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the course of a week.”

V

THE LETTER OF ADVICE

“Do you know, Austin,” said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing sedately along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, “do you know I am convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the Herberts is a mere episode in an extraordinary history? I may as well confess to you that when I asked you about Herbert a few months ago I had just seen him.”

“You had seen him? Where?”

“He begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell me his history, or at least the outline of it. In brief, it amounted to this—he had been ruined by his wife.”

“In what manner?”

“He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed him, body and soul. The man is dead now.”

“And what has become of his wife?”

“Ah, that’s what I should like to know, and I mean to find her sooner or later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in fact a man of business, but shrewd enough. You understand my meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of the word, but a man who really knows something about men and life. Well, I laid the case before him, and he was evidently impressed. He said it needed consideration, and asked me to come again in the course of a week. A few days later I received this extraordinary letter.”

Austin took the envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously. It ran as follows:—

“My dear Villiers,—I have thought over the matter on which you consulted me the other night, and my advice to you is this. Throw the portrait into the fire, blot out the story from your mind. Never give it another thought, Villiers, or you will be sorry. You will think, no doubt, that I am in possession of some secret information, and to a certain extent that is the case. But I only know a little; I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful still, more incredible than any tale told of winter nights about the fire. I have resolved, and nothing shall shake that resolve, to explore no whit farther, and if you value your happiness you will make the same determination.

“Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful topics than this.”

Austin folded the letter methodically, and returned it to Villiers.

“It is certainly an extraordinary letter,” he said; “what does he mean by the portrait?”

“Ah! I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have made a discovery.”

Villiers told his story as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin listened in silence. He seemed puzzled.

“How very curious that you should experience such an unpleasant sensation in that room!” he said at length. “I hardly gather that it was a mere matter of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short.”

“No, it was more physical than mental. It was as if I were inhaling at every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to penetrate to every nerve and bone and sinew of my body. I felt racked from head to foot, my eyes began to grow dim; it was like the entrance of death.”

“Yes, yes, very strange, certainly. You see, your friend confesses that there is some very black story connected with this woman. Did you notice any particular emotion in him when you were telling your tale?”

“Yes, I did. He became very faint, but he assured me that it was a mere passing attack to which he was subject.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I did at the time, but I don’t now. He heard what I had to say with a good deal of indifference, till I showed him the portrait. It was then he was seized with the attack of which I spoke. He looked ghastly, I assure you.”

“Then he must have seen the woman before. But there might be another explanation; it might have been the name, and not the face, which was familiar to him. What do you think?”

“I couldn’t say. To the best of my belief it was after turning the portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from his chair. The name, you know, was written on the back.”

“Quite so. After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution in a case like this. I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as more commonplace and tedious than the ordinary ghost story of commerce; but really, Villiers, it looks as if there were something very queer at the bottom of all this.”

The two men had, without noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading northward from Piccadilly. It was a long street, and rather a gloomy one, but here and there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark houses with flowers, and gay curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors. Villiers glanced up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at one of these houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill, and daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.

“It looks cheerful, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Yes, and the inside is still more cheery. One of the pleasantest houses of the season, so I have heard. I haven’t been there myself, but I’ve met several men who have, and they tell me it’s uncommonly jovial.”

“Whose house is it?”

“A Mrs. Beaumont’s.”

“And who is she?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I have heard she comes from South America, but, after all, who she is is of little consequence. She is a very wealthy woman, there’s no doubt of that, and some of the best people have taken her up. I hear she has some wonderful claret, really marvellous wine, which must have cost a fabulous sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about it; he was there last Sunday evening. He assures me he has never tasted such a wine, and Argentine, as you know, is an expert. By the way, that reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman, this Mrs. Beaumont. Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do you think she said? ‘About a thousand years, I believe.’ Lord Argentine thought she was chaffing him, you know, but when he laughed she said she was speaking quite seriously, and offered to show him the jar. Of course, he couldn’t say anything more after that; but it seems rather antiquated for a beverage, doesn’t it? Why, here we are at my rooms. Come in, won’t you?”

“Thanks, I think I will. I haven’t seen the curiosity-shop for some time.”

It was a room furnished richly, yet oddly, where every chair and bookcase and table, and every rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a thing apart, preserving each its own individuality.

“Anything fresh lately?” said Villiers after a while.

“No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn’t you? I thought so. I don’t think I have come across anything for the last few weeks.”

Austin glanced round the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an old chest, pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of the room.

“Ah,” he said, “I was forgetting, I have got something to show you.” Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on the table, and resumed the cigar he had put down.

“Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?”

“A little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend of mine. What has become of him? I haven’t heard his name mentioned for some time.”

“He’s dead.”

“You don’t say so! Quite young, wasn’t he?”

“Yes; only thirty when he died.”

“What did he die of?”

“I don’t know. He was an intimate friend of mine, and a thoroughly good fellow. He used to come here and talk to me for hours, and he was one of the best talkers I have met. He could even talk about painting, and that’s more than can be said of most painters. About eighteen months ago he was feeling rather overworked, and partly at my suggestion he went off on a sort of roving expedition, with no very definite end or aim about it. I believe New York was to be his first port, but I never heard from him. Three months ago I got this book, with a very civil letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos Ayres, stating that he had attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his illness, and that the deceased had expressed an earnest wish that the enclosed packet should be sent to me after his death. That was all.”

“And haven’t you written for further particulars?”