Mary Reilly (24 page)

He let me go all at once and I fell to my hands and knees on the floor. I did not move; from weakness and fear I could not. I listened to his breathing which was
very loud and uneven, and in the big, cold theatre there was only that sound. “What prevents me from taking your life?” he asked, a strange question to put to me, so I thought he must be talking to himself. I did not move, and I felt his boot press into my side, trying to turn me over, but I kept still, my back to him, my face in my hands. He kicked me, but not hard, and said, “It is only that I’ve forgotten my knife.” Then he walked to the steps that lead up to Master’s cabinet and stood leaning against the railing, his back to me, nor did he speak. I sat up and rubbed my shoulder which was sore, but, I found, not bleeding, so I pulled my sleeve up and my cloak back over me.

“Wait here,” he said and his voice was calm, though as it always is, harsh, so it seems he does not like to speak. “I’ll send him down to you.”

I got to my feet as he climbed the stairs. At the landing he stopped and took a key from his coat pocket. Then, without looking back at me, he turned it in the lock and let himself inside.

I stood in the dark theatre listening for the sound of voices but none came to me. I heard someone moving about but I could make out little from the sounds. There was no voices, but I thought I heard a clatter of a dish, and then a groan, though very weak. I wanted to see Master so hard my head ached and it was all I could do to stay where I was and not rush up the stairs and throw myself against the door. “If I could only see him,” I said, but still he did not come. My eyes was quite used to the dark, so I looked about, trying to calm my fear by noting
how nothing had changed. The boxes stood with their straw half pulled out, the same tools, covered with dust, was scattered on the floor, and in a beam of moonlight I could make out a fine cobweb stretched all across a corner of the windowpane. Nothing was disturbed. But, I thought, that is a lie. Everything is disturbed.

I heard a sound near the cabinet door, the handle turned and as the door opened a flood of light poured out, so for a moment my eyes was dazed and I could not see who was standing there. Then I saw it was Master, carrying the lamp in one hand and holding on to the stair rail with the other.

It was Master, but how changed. His shoulders was stooped and it was clear he clung to the rail for fear of falling down the stairs. He seemed all over smaller, thinner, his coat fell open at the collar and so did his shirt, as clothes do hang when they are too big. I could not make out his face clearly but I saw at once that it was gaunt, unshaven; his colour was not healthy but sallow and his beautiful silver hair lay flat and limp against his head, straying over his ears and his collar, for it had not been cut or combed. He came down the stairs slow and painful, mindful of nothing but the trouble to get down. When he was at the bottom, he held the lamp out before him and saw me standing in the darkness. “Mary,” he said. “There you are.”

“Oh, sir,” I cried out. “Come back into the house with me this night. He is killing you.”

“No, no,” Master said, waving his hand before his eyes as if to brush away my words. “It is all my own
doing.” He sat down on the bottom step and put the lamp down at his feet. “I’ll be fine in a moment. I’m just a little dizzy.” He passed his hand across his face, then started at his own shadow, which the lamp had sent shooting up the wall so the movement of his hand had made a giant dark motion behind him. He laughed softly. “When you were a child, Mary,” he said, “did you play shadow games?”

“No, sir,” I said.

Master looked up at me, a smile still playing around his mouth. “Just as well,” he said. “As it turns out, they can be very dangerous.”

“Please, sir,” I said. “I don’t understand you.”

Master held the lamp up before him and, moving his hand, made the shadow leap up again. He watched the shadow play but spoke to me. “How would you say we are related to our shadows, Mary?” he said. “If we cast them, are they not always part of us?”

“Sir,” I said. “They are only a trick of the light.”

Master put the lamp down on the step and fell to adjusting his cuffs, which was turned back. “It may be that
we
are the trick of the light, Mary,” he said. “That has been the direction of my experiments. And I have been so successful, so marvellously successful. Why, no one would believe it.” Then Master pulled himself to his feet by holding on to the rail. He took up the lamp and stood looking about the theatre, seeming pleased with all he saw. “What is the weather like outdoors, Mary?” he said.

“It’s fine, sir,” I said. “Clear and not cold. A fine night.”

“Let us walk about the yard, then,” he said. “It seems a long time since I’ve been out.”

I agreed at once, thinking that the farther I got him from the cabinet, the closer he was to the house. He set the lamp back down on the floor and I followed him across the theatre to the door. When he stepped out onto the flags he took a deep breath, then looked about cheerfully. “Just as you promised, Mary,” he said. “A beautiful night.”

I fell into step beside him, thinking hard how best to persuade him, for he seemed in a strange way almost childish, so I did not know how to proceed.

He stopped after a few steps and gazed up at the stars. “You see,” he said, “all blackness and only pinpoints of light. Yet even if that is the truth about us, on such a night as this we can be glad we are alive.”

Then I thought my poor Master had gone mad. He’d been shut up for weeks with a murderer and the strain had broken his mind. Still I could only reason with him, so I tried to take the course laid out for me. “As you value your life, sir,” I said, “forget that man we have just left in your cabinet and come into the house.”

Master looked down at me. “Now
he
is one who values his life,” he said, as if it was a great accomplishment and would come as a surprise to me.

“I do not doubt that, sir,” I said. “But he values no other. He has murdered one man that we know of. What is to keep him from murdering you?”

Master laughed. “He would not murder me,” he said, as if the idea was not to be thought of.

“Sir,” I protested, “he does not care for you.”

“That is no matter,” Master said. “He will not murder me. We are so bound up together he cannot. Nor can I walk across the yard and leave him behind, leave him to his fate. It isn’t possible. God knows I wish it were.”

“You are tired, sir,” I said. “You may feel you haven’t the strength …”

Master interrupted me. “It isn’t a question of strength, Mary. Or even of will.”

“Then what, sir?” I said.

“Pride, I suppose,” Master said. “Pride got me into this, though pride of a different order. In that way Edward Hyde has liberated me, strange though it seems. I no longer care what the world thinks of me.”

“Do you only care then for what
he
thinks of you?” I said.

Master frowned at this remark and I thought we both knew it was not my place to make it, yet I was past caring for what was proper, as it seemed to me Master’s life hung in the balance. “Actually,” Master said after a moment, “he does not think of me. Or if he does, it is only as the bandit recalls the cave that shelters him.”

“How long can you shelter him?” I said. “How long before Mr. Poole spies him out, or your friends come to the very door in fear for your life?”

Master looked at me sadly. “Not much longer, Mary,” he said.

“Then, sir,” I pleaded. “Come into the house this
night and call the constables with me. You owe this man nothing and you have brought yourself to death’s door trying to protect him.”

“It’s myself I’m trying to protect,” Master said. His voice was very low and he stood with his face turned away from me so I could not see his expression. “It always has been. I care nothing for Edward Hyde.”

Then a shudder come over him and he groaned, as he had that night in the library. I stepped toward him even as he reached out for me and I held him up, as I had before, looking into his eyes which seemed so strange and wild, I thought he could not see me. I could hear his teeth grinding in his jaws. His hand on my shoulder grew stronger, rather than weaker as I would have thought, and gripped me so hard it was all I could do not to cry out myself. Perhaps it was my fear for him, but as I struggled to hold him up his face seemed to change and his eyes grew dark with a look in them that was not like Master, but black and full of rage, and his lips, which was parted, seemed to swell and darken. Then the pain eased and his face grew pale. Drops of moisture gathered on his brow. His grip loosened on my shoulders and we stood apart. “He is impatient,” Master said.

“Sir,” I said, “is there nothing I can do to persuade you to come into the house with me?”

He stood gazing at me as if my words had no meaning to him. “How pale your face looks in the moonlight, Mary,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen your hair loose like that.”

“Please, sir,” I said, but my voice was small and weak. He stepped close to me and put his arms about me. I rested my cheek against his shirt and closed my eyes. He held me so for a long moment while my heart was breaking and my eyes flooded over with tears. I felt his hands across my back and his mouth against my hair. “You do care for me,” he said. “My dear girl. How I have come to trust you as I trust no other.” When he released me I covered my face with my hands, for the tears were streaming down and I could not speak but only sob a word or two. “Please, sir,” I said again. Master held me by my shoulders at arm’s length. “As you care for me,” he said, “keep this confidence. Tell no one what you have seen. It is the last request I will make of you.”

I shook my head, no. “I cannot,” I said. He took my chin in his hand and lifted my face so that he could look into it. “Mary,” was all he said.

“I cannot,” I said again. He smiled at me and brushed my hair back gently and I turned my face into his hand to kiss his fingers as they went by. Then while I stood, still sobbing, tears falling so I could not see and I knew I would not stop crying for many minutes to come, Master turned away from me and walked back to the theatre, going in at once and closing the door behind him.

Now as I write this, Annie is asleep, our house is quiet, but I will have no rest. All day I have made a show of working, but I could not say now even what I did, for I have my mind always across the yard where
Master is shut away from me, but not alone, as I am. I go over his words again and again, and feel his arms about me, his breath at my ear.

Where is my obligation? What do I owe my master? He asks for my silence, but how can I be silent if his life is in danger? And how can I make sense of the strange things he says to me, that he is bound up with this murderer in some way, that he would abandon him but cannot, that his pride has somehow brought him low and that, though he no longer cares for the world’s opinion, it is himself he seeks to protect?

I can hardly breathe in this room, it feels so close. I know it is cold, but I cannot feel it, for it seems as if I am burning up, as if my blood is boiling. Even the candle casts a hot, reddish light on my page. I hear Master’s voice and then the other—I cannot bear to hear it—saying, “
I
am your master.
I
am your master. Don’t you know that yet?”

M
aster was right. It did not last much longer. Four days passed and I did what I told him I could not do, I kept his confidence. Now I wonder was it right to do so. He left me in the yard believing I would do as he asked, even though I told him I could not, so it seems Master knows me better than I know myself.

All the next day the house was in a sorry way, for
Mr. Poole was sent running all over town in search of some chemical which was never the right one, for no sooner had he delivered it to the cabinet door then another order was thrown on the stairs. Master would hardly speak to him, but to say he must come to the steps every hour, so that no time would be wasted in having his orders filled. Mr. Poole told Cook something was not right and he did not like it, but could do nothing about it as he was always running. The breakfast tray came back untouched, but the lunch and dinner trays was empty, so Cook said at least he is eating, but I thought, one of them is eating but I doubt it is Master. Three days passed in this way. Then on Tuesday Cook told me Mr. Poole come into the kitchen after lunch looking as if he had run across town, though he’d only come across the yard. He sunk down in a chair and put his head down on the table. When Cook went to his side to see what ailed him she said he only turned his face towards her and said, “There is foul play.” So she saw he’d had a shock and she made him a cup of tea, which he drank, hardly speaking, then said he’d gone into the theatre and surprised a man, not Master, digging about in the packing crates, looking for something. When the man saw Mr. Poole he let out a cry of fear and ran up the cabinet steps, closing the door behind him. Mr. Poole did not follow, for, he said, he was too stunned. He told Cook he’d felt something was amiss for many weeks now and this discovery had nearly broke his reason. Cook asked who was the man, but Mr. Poole said he hadn’t seen him clear enough and could
not say, only that he was a small man and very dark. So Cook said we mun call the constables but Mr. Poole did not like that plan and had another of his own, which was to go to Master’s solicitor, Mr. Utterson, and tell him there could be no doubt Master was in some terrible danger if there had not already been foul play.

When I heard all this Mr. Poole was already gone for Mr. Utterson. Cook said it mun be Mr. Edward Hyde and no other, for he answers Mr. Poole’s description, though he did not say it was him. I only nodded my head but said nothing and I thought, good then, it is not my doing but the business is found out and Master will be saved.

W
hen I woke up I could not think where I was and it was many moments before the truth came to me, that Edward Hyde has killed himself and Master disappeared. This was the news Mr. Poole brought us after he and Mr. Utterson broke down the cabinet door to find the dying man gasping his last breath on the floor. And there was no doubt, Mr. Poole said, he was a self-destroyer, for he’d the empty bottle clutched in his hand and Mr. Utterson said he recognized the odour of the poison. So they searched for Master in the theatre and along the passage but he was not to be found, nor was there any way, as far as they could tell,
he could have gone, for there was cobwebs clinging to every entry, all undisturbed, and they found the key to the passage broken on the flags on the street side of the door.