Читать книгу Flames - Robert Hichens - Страница 11

Opening the door, they found themselves in a squalid passage. A room on the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was a long window giving onto the passage, and as the shrill tinkle of a bell announced their entrance this window was pushed up, and the large red face and furtive observant eyes of a man stared upon them inquiringly.

"Do you require a room for the night?" he asked, in a husky voice, invaded by a strong French accent. "Because—"

"No," interrupted Julian.

The man nodded, and, strange to say, with apparent content.

"There is trouble in my house," he said. "I am unlucky; I come to England from my country to earn an honest living, and before two years, I have the police here last night."

"Yes," said Julian, "I know."

"What? You know it? Well, it is not my fault. The gentleman come last night with a lady, his wife, I suppose. How am I to know? He ask for a room. He look perfectly well. I give them the room. They go to bed. At four o'clock in the morning I hear a bell ring. I get up. I go on the landing to listen. I hear the bell again. I run to the chamber of the lady and gentleman. The lady is gone. The gentleman falls back on the bed as I come in and dies. Mon Dieu! It is—"

He suddenly paused in his excited narrative. Valentine had moved his position slightly and was now standing almost immediately under the gas-lamp that lit the glass door.

"You—you are relation of him?" he said. "You come to see him?"

"I have come to see him, certainly," said Valentine. "But I am no relation of his. This gentleman," and he pointed to Julian, "knew him well, and wished to look at him once more."

The landlord seemed puzzled. He glanced from Valentine to Julian, then back again to Valentine.

"But," he began, once more addressing himself to the latter, "you are like—there is something; when the poor gentleman fell on the bed and died he had your eyes. Yes, yes, you are relation of him."

"No," Valentine said; "you are mistaken."

"I should think so," exclaimed Julian. "Poor Marr's face was as utterly different from yours, Valentine, as darkness is different from light."

"No, no; it is not the eyes of the gentleman," the landlord continued, leaning forward through his window, and still violently scrutinizing Valentine—"it is not the eyes. But there is something—the voice, the manner—yes, I say there is something, I cannot tell."

"You are dreaming, my friend," Valentine calmly interposed. "Now, Julian, what do you want to do?"

Julian came forward and leant his arm on the counter.

"I am the poor gentleman's great friend," he said. "You must let me see him."

The landlord held up his fat hands with a large gesticulation of refusal.

"I cannot, sir. To-morrow they remove him. They sit on the poor gentleman—"

"I know—the inquest. All this is very hard upon you, an honest man trying to make an honest living."

Julian put some money into one of the agitated hands.

"My friend and I only wish to see him for a moment."

"Monsieur, I cannot. I—"

Julian insinuated another sovereign into his protesting fingers. They took it as an anemone takes a shrimp, and made a gesture of abdication.

"Well, if Monsieur is the friend of the poor gentleman, I have not the heart, I am tender-hearted, I am foolish—"

He disappeared muttering from the window, and in a moment appeared at a door on the left, disclosing himself now fully as a degraded, flaccid-looking, frouzy ruffian of a very low type, flashily dressed, and of a most unamiable expression. Taking a candlestick from a dirty marble-topped slab that projected from the passage-wall, he struck a match, lit the candle, and preceded them up the narrow flight of stairs, his boots creaking loudly at every step. On the landing at the top a smart maid-servant with a very pale face reconnoitered the party for a moment with furtive curiosity, then flitted away in the darkness to the upper regions of the house.

The landlord paused by a door numbered with a black number.

"He is in here," he whispered hoarsely. "Tomorrow they sit on him. After that he go from me. Mon Dieu! I am glad when he is gone. My custom he is spoilt. My house get a bad name, and like a dog they hang him. Mon Dieu!"

He opened the door stealthily, forming "St!" with his fat, coarse lips.

"I light the gas. It is all dark."

"No, no," Julian said, taking the candle from him, "I will do that. Go down."

He motioned him away, and entered the room, followed by Valentine, at whom the landlord again stared with a greedy consideration and curiosity, before turning to retreat softly down the narrow stairs.

They found themselves in a good-sized room, typically of London. It was full of the peculiar and unmistakable metropolitan smell, a stale odor of the streets that suggests smuts to the mind. Two windows, with a long dingy mirror set between them, looked out towards the Euston Road. Venetian blinds and thin white curtains looped with yellow ribbon shrouded them. On a slab that stuck out under the mirror was placed a bundle of curling-pins tied with white tape, a small brush and comb, and a bottle of cherry-blossom scent. Near the mirror stood a narrow sofa covered with red rep. Upon this lay a man's upturned top-hat, in the corner of which reposed a pair of reindeer gloves. A walking-stick with a gold top stood against the wall, in a corner by the marble mantlepiece. In the middle of the room lay a small open portmanteau, disclosing a disorder of shirts, handkerchiefs, and boots, a cheque-book, a bottle of brandy, and some brushes. By the fireplace there was a vulgar-looking arm-chair upholstered in red. The room was full of the faint sound of London voices and London traffic.

Julian went straight up to the gas chandelier and lit all three jets. His action was hurried and abrupt. Then he set the candle down beside the bundle of curling-pins, and turned sharply round to face the bed. The room was now a glare of light, and in this glare of light the broad bed with its white counterpane and sheets stood out harshly enough. The sheets were turned smoothly down under the blue chin of the dead man, who lay there upon his back, his face with fast-shut eyes dusky white, or rather grey, among the pillows. As Julian looked upon him he exclaimed:

"Good God, it isn't Marr! Valentine, it isn't Marr!"

"Not?"

"No. And yet—wait a moment—"

Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the corpse. Then he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at the other side of the bed.

"Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a chair to the bedside, he sank down upon it. "This is strange. What is it death does to a man? Yes; this is Marr. I see now; but so different, so altered! The whole expression—oh, it is almost incredible."

He stared again upon the face.

It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the face of a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very various things. No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, completely characteristic. Yet this face was full of a character that seemed curiously at war with the shape of the features and with the position of the closed eyes, which were very near together. Julian, in describing Marr to Valentine, had pronounced him Satanic, and this dead face was, in truth, somewhat Mephistophelean. An artist might well have painted it upon his canvas as a devil. But he must have reproduced merely the features and colouring, the blue, shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets; for the expression of his devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead, looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking, "That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The dead face was wonderfully happy.

Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head of the bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers look.

Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man.

There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of the narrow garden. They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of life, details of home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and common hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close by these two friends, under three flaring gas-jets, watched the unwinking dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, without looking up, said:

"Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. Formerly he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were thanking God because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, it's just like that. Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued."

As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of the bed at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said nothing; for he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It seemed to him that there, under the hard glare of the gas-lamps, the soul of Marr spoke, stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. That was like a possession of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil chose for a moment to lurk and to do evil in the sanctuary of a church, to blaspheme at the very altar. Valentine did not speak. He was looking down on the dead serenity of Marr, vindictively. A busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes, meditating vigorously upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following him craftily to the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely, if it might be.

This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.

"Valentine!" Julian cried at last.

Valentine looked up.

And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The death-chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.

"Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said.

Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.

Julian examined him narrowly.

"Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine."

"Opposite to you! Why not?"

"Nothing, nothing. Or—everything. What is the matter with this room? and me? and you? And why is Marr so changed?"

"How is he changed? You know I have never seen his face before."

"You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was Marr as I knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away and left something quite different. Let us go."

Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier. He had turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others when Julian checked him.

"No; leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in the light."

They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her.

"You showed the gentleman—the gentleman who is dead—to his room last night?"

"Yes, sir. Oh, sir, I can't believe he's really gone so sudden like."

"Then you saw the lady with him?"

"Yes, of course. Oh—"

"Hush! What was she like?"

The housemaid's nose curled derisively.

"Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not at all like the poor gentleman, sir."

"Young?"

"Not to say old, sir. No; I couldn't bring that against her. She wore a hat, sir, and feathers—well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I'll be bound."

"Feathers!"

A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid questions to the housemaid. But she could only say again that Marr's companion had been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she—the housemaid—would care to go out of a Sunday. Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing. Then he and Valentine descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken unawares by their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's face, still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this, and recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between Marr and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently unremembered, had remained lurking in his mind, and was accountable for his own curious deception. Or could it be that there really was some vague, fleeting resemblance between the dead man and the living which the landlord saw continuously, he only at moments? Looking again at Valentine he could not believe it. No; the landlord was deceived now, as he had been in the death-chamber above stairs.

"May we come into your room for a moment?" Julian asked the man. "I want to put to you a few questions."

"But certainly, sir, with pleasure."

He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum beyond the glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, crowded with fumes of stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or three French prints of more than doubtful decency. A table with a bottle and two or three glasses ranged on it occupied the middle of the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil Bias was thrown in a crumpled attitude. One gas-burner flared, unshaded by any glass globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused the landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously at the inartistic improprieties of the prints.

"Did you let in the gentleman who came last night?" asked Julian.

"But, sir, of course. I am always here. I mind my house. I see that only respect-"

"Exactly. I don't doubt that for a moment. What was the lady like—the lady who accompanied him?"

"Oh, sir, very chic, very pretty."

"Didn't you hear her go out in the night?"

The landlord looked for a moment as if he were considering the advisableness of a little bluster. He stared hard at Julian and thought better of it.

"Not a sound, not a mouse. Till the bell rang I slept. Then she is gone!"

"Would you recognize her again?"

"But no. I hardly look at her, and I see so many."

"Yes, yes, no doubt. And the gentleman. When you went into his room?"

"Ah! He was half sitting up. I come in. He just look at me. He fall back.

He is dead. He say nothing. Then I—I run."

"That's all I wanted to know," Julian said. "Valentine, shall we go?"

"By all means."

The landlord seemed relieved at their decision, and eagerly let them out into the pouring rain. When they were in the dismal strip of garden Julian turned and looked up at the lit windows of the bedroom on the first story. Marr was lying there in the bright illumination at ease, relieved of his soul. But, as Julian looked, the two windows suddenly grew dark. Evidently the economical landlord had hastened up, observed the waste of the material he had to pay for, and abruptly stopped it. At the gate they called a cab.

"No; let us have the glass up," Julian said; "a drop of rain more or less doesn't matter. And I want some air."

"So do I," said Valentine. "The atmosphere of that house was abominable."

"Of course there can be no two opinions as to its character," Julian said.

"Of course not."

"What a dreary place to die in!"

"Yes. But does it matter where one dies? I think not. I attach immense importance to where one lives."

"It seems horrible to come to an end in such a place, to have had that wretched Frenchman as the only witness of one's death. Still, I suppose it is only foolish sentiment. Valentine, did you notice how happy Marr looked?"

"No."

"Didn't you? I thought you watched him almost as if you wondered as I did."

"How could I? I had never seen him before."

"It was curious the landlord seeing a likeness between you and him."

"Do you think so? The man naturally supposed one of us might be a relation, as we came to see Marr. I should not suppose there could be much resemblance."

"There is none. It's impossible. There can be none!"

They rattled on towards Piccadilly, back through the dismal thoroughfares, towards the asphalt ways of Bloomsbury. Presently Julian said:

"I wish I had seen Marr die."

"But why, Julian? Why this extraordinary interest in a man you knew so slightly and for so short a time?"

"It's because I can't get it out of my head that he had something to do with our sittings, more than we know."

"Impossible."

"I am almost certain the doctor thought so. I must tell him about Marr's death. Valentine, let us drive to Harley Street now."

Valentine did not reply at once, and Julian said:

"I will tell the cabman."

"Very well."

Julian gave the order.

"I wonder if he will be in," Julian said presently. "What is the time?"

He took out his watch and held it up sideways until the light of a gas-lamp flashed on it for a moment.

"Just eleven. So late? I am surprised."

"We were a good while at the 'European.'"

"Longer than I thought. Probably the doctor will have come in, even if he has been out dining. Ah, here we are!"

The cab drew up. Julian got out and rang the bell in the rain.

"Is Doctor Levillier at home?"

"No, sir. He is out dining. But I expect him every moment. Will you come in and wait?" said the man-servant, who knew Julian well.

"Thanks; I think I will. I rather want to see him. I will just ask Mr.

Cresswell. He's with me to-night."

Julian returned to the cab, in which Valentine was sitting.

"The doctor will probably be home in a few minutes. Let us go in and wait for him."

"Yes, you go in."

"But surely—"

"No, Julian," Valentine said, and suddenly there came into his voice a weariness, "I am rather tired to-night. I think I'll go home to bed."

"Oh," Julian said. He was obviously disappointed. He hesitated.

"Shall I come too, old chap? You're sure—you're certain that you are not feeling ill after last night?"

He leant with his foot on the step of the cab to look at Valentine more closely.

"No; I am all right. Only tired and sleepy, Julian. Well, will you come or stay?"

"I think I will stay. I want badly to have a talk with the doctor."

"All right. Good-night."

"Good-night!"

Valentine called his address to the cabman, and the man whipped up his horse. Just as the cab was turning round Valentine leaned out over the wooden door and cried to Julian, who was just going into the house:

"Give my best regards to the doctor, Julian."

The cab disappeared, splashing through the puddles.

Julian stood still on the doorstep.

"Who said that, Lawler?" he asked.

The servant looked at him in surprise.

"Mr. Valentine, sir."

"Mr. Valentine?"

"Yes, sir."