Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction (25 page)

“And she’s right, you know. What she says is unanswerable. She’s thinking for both of you. I respect her, and her decision, and so will you if you’re wise.”

“What do you know about it?” He broke out in fury, not rowdy fury, but a deadly white quiet. “What do you know of what’s behind it all? You with your respect, you’re half dead!” He used a curious phrase then. “I’ve earned that woman, and I’m going to have her.”

“That’s your affair. I won’t help.”

“I don’t want your help. Where’s she gone?”

“I don’t know.”

This was true; I was surprised that she should so soon have cut herself adrift. He considered me, whistling softly through his teeth.

“You’re a liar, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out.”

“If you love her, you’ll let her alone.”

“I can’t let her alone,” said Mortimer, snarling, and turning to the door.

He might never have found her but for one thing; she had to live, and she knew only one way of earning money. If I had pressed a loan on her there in the teashop it might have prevented the whole tragedy—and yet, I don’t know; I couldn’t have kept on subsidising her, and she must, sooner or later,
have gone back to her trade. She went far enough off, but mediums are easy to keep track of, especially such a woman as she was, well known and nearly honest. Mortimer ran her to earth in Edinburgh within three months of her departure from London, and began without delay or haste to make his siege.

Poor woman! She did resist as she had promised; fled the town, tried to get passage to America, and was brought up short, like a dog on a chain, by the imperious eternal need of money. He followed again and found her in some sort of dingy lodgings, where he fairly bullied her into consenting. All this I had from her long afterwards, and I remember the words she used:

“They say if a man gets thirsty enough he’ll drink seawater though he knows it’ll send him off his head. I’d got to that state. I knew it was mad, but I was thirsty for him.”

It would have been superhuman to expect her to put up yet another fight. She had done her best for the decencies, and for the ultimate happiness of both of them; he, and the world, and the circumstances of her life would have none of her best. She gave in.

Having yielded, she kept nothing back—no rashness, no absurdity of affection. She let herself go with his desire like a flower dropped on a quick stream; or, rather, since that comparison suggests something frail, like a whole tree swept towards Niagara. She would not marry him, so far she held out, until the year was past from the date of his wife’s death, but she planned, doted, spent fifteen hours a day in his company, and with a snap of her big fingers gave her whole spiritualist connection the go-by.

She it was who wrote to me, for I believe that after those half-dozen sentences exchanged between us on the evening of her flight Mortimer would have seen me dead and damned before he put his foot over my door. She, on the other hand, remembered that I had understood both sides of the question. I wrote back congratulating, and suggesting that they should come one evening to dine. She accepted enthusiastically by telephone.

“Oh, please, Mr Findlay,” I heard her unlovely voice; “if it isn’t a rude question, will anybody else be coming?”

“That’s as you choose,” I answered. “Plain party, or coloured; you shall decide.”

“Oh, then, just us, if you don’t mind, Mr Findlay.” She had that infuriating trick of using one’s name at every sentence. “Unless—” the voice trailed off.

“Unless?” Then I suppose I must have caught her unspoken thought. “What about Pybus and Tarrant, if they’re in London? A final meeting of the circle?”

“Oh, yes,” said she, noisily glad; “that’s what I was hoping you’d say. After all, it was with you all, and sitting for you, I met Lance. It would be nice to say sort of goodbye.”

“You’re giving up your work, I suppose?”

“Lance says I’ve got to,” she answered, and the clumsy words, as she spoke them in her unbearable voice, gave an
impression of joyous surrender difficult to describe.

So this was the party, four men, one woman, just as we had met often before. Pybus and Tarrant turned up first together, so that I was able to let them know the state of affairs. They were incredulous, as I had been when I came upon the ill-assorted couple in the Park.

“They say,” said Tarrant, “a man always goes for the same type of woman. Here’s proof he doesn’t. You couldn’t have two women less alike than the Bain and Aileen.”

“Few husbands have energy enough to experiment in domesticity,” I said, busy with the sherry. “If a man’s happy with one type he’ll stick to that.”

Pybus, always literal, took up my words as he accepted his glass.

“Wasn’t Mortimer happy, then, with Aileen?”

Tarrant jumped on him, of course. Aileen, so fine, such a darling, who wouldn’t be happy with her? Pybus, making appreciative faces over his sherry, agreed that he had said something idiotic, and the topic dropped—dropped, and took root in my mind uncomfortably, like the barbed seed of some desert flower. They went back to the marvellous alliance.

“She’s older than he is. And—how about Bain? Who and what was Bain?”

“He’s dead, she told me once.”

“Well, it’s Mortimer’s funeral. I wouldn’t care for a wife myself that had been long on this job.” Spiritualism, Pybus implied.

“She’s giving it up.”

Tarrant laughed.

“How can she give it up?” Which was just what Mortimer had said to me, concerning his pursuit of her. “She’s—a sort of spirit right-of-way. After there’s been going and coming for years you can’t suddenly padlock a gate that people have got used to using.”

“You can,” said Pybus, the literal. “It’s entirely a question of how long the trespassing has been permitted.”

“She’s been working as a medium for twenty-five years,” I said, and Pybus’ face fell.

“What I mean is,” Tarrant went on, “she won’t be able to help stuff coming through. It’s a queer situation. Suppose Aileen wanted to get in touch with Lance?”

“Talk of something else,” I said; “they’re on the stairs.”

A moment later they were in the room. She came first, untidy as ever, but grander. Her hair was wound up in a large bun, lop-sided already, and secured with a flashing slide of some kind at the back. Her dress was a savage orange colour which must have killed any clothing set near it save masculine blacks and whites—a terrific dress, but her face dominated it. Big and untended and uncouth as she was, there was about her a happiness so shining that it lent her almost beauty; as the two men congratulated, and she smiled with her eyes on Mortimer, I could read astonishment behind their civil masks. They were used to her as the medium, a powerful blank body, strong enough physically to stand the strain of the trances, having no very definite personality to oppose the entrance of the otherworld forces, whatever they were. The instrument had become a woman, and though I was prepared for it, knowing the circumstances and having had that conversation in the tearoom, it was something of a revelation, even to me.

Mortimer, too, looked different, settled, as if at last he had come home. There had been hunger in that face when I last saw it snarling over his shoulder, and now that the hunger appeased he was again the pleasant-mannered fellow that his dub knew; the snarling face became something seen in nightmare, and which for her sake I hoped he might never show again.

Yet, despite the perfect contentment of the chief guests, or possibly because of it, our meal was not successful. The talk was spasmodic, gusty; it rose and died, and even the wine could not keep it to an even flow. The truth was, of course, that we were about the most ill-assorted party conceivable, having only one interest in common—a topic barred by the idiotic prejudice against talking shop. Somehow or other we laboured along, in friendly but difficult converse, to the moment of coffee, which at my suggestion we took at the table, all sitting together round the candles. It is a good moment, that after-dinner quarter hour’s dawdle, wine circling, smoke ascending, and whether or no there is talk seems to matter little enough. I saw Mrs. Bain, as she stirred her coffee, gaze about her with kindliness. We had always held our circle in the dining-room, which lies at the back of the house, insulated from noise, and she was evidently remembering. I put it to her.

“A penny, Mrs. Bain?”

She came back to reality, looking a little puzzled.

“Penny? Oh, I see what you mean—for my thoughts. I was thinking about all that had happened in this room. We got grand results, didn’t we?”

Everybody nodded, and there was a murmur of “That we did. Thanks to you. Wonderful phenomena.”

She went on, looking steadily and lovingly at Mortimer:

“I’m giving it up, you know, for good.”

“You won’t be able to,” said Tarrant, who, it must be remembered, was a believer born. “It will come over you sometimes, a rush of communication.”

Mortimer laughed rather shortly.

I’ll keep her to earth,” he said, and glanced over at her for response. But for once she was not looking at him. She was staring down into her coffee cup, where the round of shining black liquid seemed to hold her eyes. Tarrant was going on with his argument, using over again his simile of the right-of-way.

“There aren’t so many short cuts,” he persisted, “and those there are get known; both sides of the fence they get known. How many mediums are there—proved, honest ones, I mean—in London? And how many wanting to use them on the other side? Do you suppose they’re going to sit back and let—”

“Look out,” I said sharply.

Mrs. Bain’s head had fallen forward, though her eyes still were open, staring into the dark pool of the cup. Mortimer swore, and thrust back his chair. He was sitting on my left, opposite her, and I shoved him back and down. It is not healthy for sleepwalkers to wake them in mid-progress, and the same holds good for people entranced. I had, I may say, from the first moment, no doubt whatever that this was a genuine performance. Her colour was deathly, the breathing had slackened, the pupils of her eyes were contracted as if she had taken a stiff shot of morphia. She had looked like that once before, on the occasion when she stripped, and I remembered these preliminary signs most clearly.

Mortimer subsided under my hand, but spoke to her.

“Ruby, come back. You’re having dinner with Findlay, not giving a sitting. Ruby!”

She took no notice at all, she who all the evening had been quiveringly alive to every glance and gesture of his. She stared into the cup, opening her mouth now and then. It was Tarrant who said, triumph in his whisper:

“Better let her get it over. What about the lights?”

“No!” said Mortimer loudly. “Ruby, listen to me.”

“She doesn’t hear you,” Pybus told him unnecessarily; “something’s coming through.”

Tarrant got up quietly and, leaning over the table, blew out the candles, our only illuminants, one by one. We sat in the silence and dark, I with my hand still on Mortimer’s arm, listening to strong sighs that came from her, seeming to shake her; great sighs, deep and endless, as though her whole trunk were hollow, a mere cavern for air. Then a voice sounded, broken and often half-lost, like some person speaking against the wind.

“Cruel,” it said. “Oh, cruel! You hurt me so.”

Nothing more for a minute. I took upon myself to be leader, since the others were silent.

“Who are you?” I asked. “Will you tell us who you are?”

“He knows,” answered the voice; “Lance knows.”

“Have you a message for Lance?”

A laugh; a pause; then a little husky sound of singing, an old song, familiar words, the folk-tune of “Lord Rendel.”

“Oh, that was strong poison, Rendel my son;

Oh, that was strong poison, my pretty one—”

I felt the muscles contract in Mortimer’s arm as involuntarily my fingers gripped tighter; we were both hearing the same thing, Aileen’s light voice with a touch of County Kerry in it, singing an accustomed tune through the mouth of her supplanter. I remembered, troubled, that on this day a year ago she had died.

“Aileen,” I said, “we know you now. What have you come to say?”

The voice fluttered on with its song.

“Oh, make my bed soon;

I’m sick to my heart, and fain would lie down.”

Still Mortimer did not speak, and I supposed that the shock of the thing was keeping him quiet. We all of us know that voice and recognised it with the conviction that this was no trickery. Aileen spoke quite inimitably. This was herself.

“Lance, Lance,” it went on. “What are you doing, my dear one? I’m sick, take that dope away. Must I have it, Lance? Ah, you’ve killed me, my poor creature, my dear lover; wasn’t I dying fast enough—was that it? It’s kind stuff you’re using, gentle stuff, sleepy; but oh, the cruel pain at my heart! You wanted that big woman, did you? Poor Lance, and I was in the way, my sweet pretty one.” Then the voice went wavering off into its tune again.

“I’m sick to my heart, and fain—and fain—”

It went away in ghostly heavings and sighs, cavernous breaths on which now and then a note of the song could still be heard riding. There was a pause, a deadly five seconds. Then the arm under my hand flexed, Mortimer’s fist drove at me in the dark and caught me over the heart; there was the screech of a chair on the parquet, and a shaft of light struck in upon us through a door torn open. In an instant a wave of noise seemed to rise; feet scuffling, the voices, angrily loud, of Tarrant and Pybus in the hall, a struggle in which a mirror went down, and through which I could hear the scrape of steel. Mortimer’s blow had been fierce enough to sicken me. I sat limp, hearing the struggle, which at the height of its din suddenly died away to silence, following the sound of a man’s fall.

“He’s done it. My God,” from Tarrant; “how do you stop blood?”

“You’ll never stop that,” Pybus speaking. “Better than the hangman’s trap, anyway.”

I got to my feet with a groan, and pitched forward to the door, to whose handle I clung, looking out. Mortimer had made a job of it with one of the Chinese swords hung for ornament on the wall, my yellow wall that was streaked where blood had spurted towards it from the side of his neck. He died while I watched, with a writhing of the face, a rictus above clenched teeth that I do not now care to recall. We stood away from him, and stared down on him dying, without compassion of any sort for the man who had murdered Aileen. Not one of us doubted that; and if it may sound absurd wholly
and instantly to believe a woman whom we knew to be not above using the tricks of her trade—well, we had seen the glow of her happiness before that voice came out of nowhere, singing and murmuring damnation to her hope. We looked down on him, and then round at each other, silently with a question. What to do?

Before there could be any consultation, a sound from the dining-room made me start and turn; that most ordinary of sounds, a long, untrammelled yawn. I went in at once, shutting the door behind me, and switched on the lights. Mrs. Bain was lying back in her chair, very white but conscious, and rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand like a child.