Rudyard Kipling's Tales of Horror and Fantasy (79 page)

‘He knows I'm scarcely fit to look after myself,' was Conroy's thought. ‘And he wants me to look after a woman!'

Yet, at the end of half an hour's irresolution, he accepted.

Now Conroy's trouble, which had lasted for years, was this:

On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time – in due time – would bring it forth.

Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These guarantee, on the label, ‘Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.' They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.

Three years of M. Najdol's preparations do not fit a man for many careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.

When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr Gilbert had but given him more drugs – a tonic, for instance, that wouldcouple railway carriages – and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e'en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger ‘a little shaken in her nerves.'

He spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. At such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening Dr Gilbert's tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors.

Waterloo Station shook him into real life. The change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. The old 10.8 from Waterloo to the West was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station.

Dr Gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor coach; an older and stouter man behind him. ‘So glad you're here!' he cried. ‘Let me get your ticket.'

‘Certainly not,' Conroy answered. ‘I got it myself – long ago. My bag's in too,' he added proudly.

‘I beg your pardon. Miss Henschil's here. I'll introduce you.'

‘But – but,' he stammered – ‘think of the state I'm in. If anything happens I shall collapse.'

‘Not you. You'd rise to the occasion like a bird. And as for the self-control you were talking of the other day' – Gilbert swung him round – ‘look!'

A young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly.

‘Oh, but that's only drink,' Conroy said. ‘I haven't had one of my – my things since lunch.'

‘Excellent!' said Gilbert. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Come along. Wait for a minute, Chartres.'

A tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. She bowed herhead as the doctor murmured Conroy knew not what. Then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets.

‘My maid – next compartment,' she said slowly.

Conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver Najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. He snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat.

‘How nice!' said the woman. She leisurely lifted her veil, unbuttoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a Najdolene case.

‘Don't!' said Conroy, not realising he had spoken.

‘I beg your pardon.' The deep voice was measured, even, and low. Conroy knew what made it so.

‘I said “don't”! He wouldn't like you to do it!'

‘No, he would not.' She held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. ‘But aren't you one of the – ah – “soul-weary” too?'

‘That's why. Oh, please don't! Not at first. I – I haven't had one since morning. You – you'll set me off!'

‘You? Are you so far gone as that?'

He nodded, pressing his palms together. The train jolted through Vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the West.

After long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked Conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book.

Conroy shook his head. ‘No. Our sort can't read. Don't!'

‘Were you sent to watch me?' The voice never changed.

‘Me? I need a keeper myself much more –
this
night of all!'

‘This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved
me
when I told them of mine.' She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. ‘Aren't doctors stu-upid? They don't know.'

She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her – till his eyes were blurred with tears.

‘Have
I
been there, think you?' she said.

‘Surely – surely,' Conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, thefine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth.

‘Then – suppose we have one – just one apiece? I've gone without since this afternoon.'

He put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke.

‘Don't! Can't you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? Don't let's both go down together.'

‘But I want one. It's a poor heart that never rejoices. Just one. It's my night.'

‘It's mine – too. My sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.' He shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along.

‘Ah, it's only my thirty-ninth.' She paused as he had done. ‘I wonder if I shall last into the sixties … Talk to me or I shall go crazy. You're a man. You're the stronger vessel. Tell me when you went to pieces.'

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven – eight – I beg your pardon.'

‘Not in the least. I always pretend I've dropped a stitch of my knitting. I count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. Do you?'

‘I don't think I've done very much else for the last—' said Conroy, shivering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised.

‘Oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! It's not always the same date, is it?'

‘What difference would that make?' He unbuttoned his ulster with a jerk. ‘You're a sane woman. Can't you see the wicked – wicked – wicked' (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) ‘unfairness of it? What have
I
done?'

She laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly.

‘If you begin to think over that,' she said, ‘you'll go to pieces and be ashamed. Tell me yours, and I'll tell you mine. Only be quiet – be quiet, lad, or you'll set me off!' She made shift to soothe him, though her chin trembled.

‘Well,' said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, ‘mine's nothing much, of course.'

‘Don't be a fool! That's for doctors – and mothers.'

‘It's Hell,' Conroy muttered. ‘It begins on a steamer – on a stifling hot night. I come out of my cabin. I pass through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.'

‘I've travelled too,'she said.

‘Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher's meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.'

Again she nodded.

‘It's a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea's lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea – perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines – dull grey. All this time I know something's going to happen.'

‘
I
know. Something going to happen,' she whispered.

‘Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down – like fire-irons – and then two most awful yells. They're more like hoots, and I know – I know while I listen – that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them – in most awful pain. Do you understand?'

‘I ought to. Go on.'

‘That's the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, “My friend! All is lost!” Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.' He panted and wiped his forehead.

‘So that is your night?' she said.

‘That is my night. It comes every few weeks – so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.'

‘Get sentence? D'you mean
this
?'She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. ‘ “Notice” I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.'

She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes.

‘Listen now!' said she. ‘I walk down a road, a white sandyroad near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.'

‘Just men? Do they speak?'

‘They try to. Their faces are all mildewy – eaten away,' and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. ‘It's the Faces – the Faces!'

‘Yes, like my two hoots.
I
know.'

‘Ah! But the place itself– the bareness – and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run … I know what's coming too. One of them touches me.'

‘Yes! What comes then? We've both shirked that.'

‘One awful shock – not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!'

‘As though your soul were being stopped – as you'd stop a finger-bowl humming?' he said.

‘Just that,' she answered. ‘One's very soul – the soul that one lives by – stopped. So!'

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. ‘And now,' she whined to him, ‘now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have just one?'

‘No,' said Conroy, shaking. ‘Let's hold on. We're past'– he peered out of the black windows – ‘Woking. There's the Necropolis. How long till dawn?'

‘Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.'

‘And how d'you find that this' – he tapped the palm of his glove – ‘helps you?'

‘It covers up the thing from being too real – if one takes enough – you know. Only – only – one loses everything else. I've been no more than a bogie-girl for two years. What would you give to be real again? This lying's such a nuisance.'

‘One must protect oneself – and there's one's mother to think of,' he answered.

‘True. I hope allowances are made for us somewhere. Our burden – can you hear? – our burden is heavy enough.'

She rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. Conroy's ungentle grip pulled her back.

‘Now
you
are foolish. Sit down,' said he.

‘But the cruelty of it! Can't you see it? Don't you feel it? Let's take one now – Before I—'

‘Sit down!' cried Conroy, and the sweat stood again on his forehead. He had fought through a few nights, and had been defeated on more, and he knew the rebellion that flares beyond control to exhaustion.

She smoothed her hair and dropped back, but for a while her head and throat moved with the sickening motion of a captured wry-neck.

‘Once,' she said, spreading out her hands, ‘I ripped my counterpane from end to end. That takes strength. I had it then. I've little now. “All dorn,” as my little niece says. And you, lad?'

‘“All dorn”! Let me keep your case for you till the morning.'

‘But the cold feeling is beginning.'

‘Lend it me, then.'

‘And the drag down my right side. I shan't be able to move in a minute.'

‘I can scarcely lift my arm myself,' said Conroy. ‘We're in for it.'

‘Then why are you so foolish? You know it'll be easier if we have only one – only one apiece.'

She was lifting the case to her mouth. With tremendous effort Conroy caught it. The two moved like jointed dolls, and when their hands met it was as wood on wood.

‘You must – not!' said Conroy. His jaws stiffened, and the cold climbed from his feet up.

‘Why – must – I – not?' She repeated the words idiotically.

Conroy could only shake his head, while he bore down on the hand and the case in it.

Her speech went from her altogether. The wonderful lips rested half over the even teeth, the breath was in the nostrils only, the eyes dulled, the face set grey, and through the glove the hand struck like ice.

Presently her soul came back and stood behind her eyes – only thing that had life in all that place – stood and looked forConroy's soul. He too was fettered in every limb, but somewhere at an immense distance he heard his heart going about its work as the engine-room carries on through and beneath the all but overwhelming wave. His one hope, he knew, was not to lose the eyes that clung to his, because there was an Evil abroad which would possess him if he looked aside by a hairbreadth.