"I will not say it," I answered. "Why should you be cursed? What do you mean?"
"I do not know what I mean, but I know what I feel. Look back at my life. My mother died, deserted. My father has died, killed by a mad woman. My dear friend Alresca died--who knows how? Clarenceux--he too died."
"Stay!" I almost shouted, springing up, and the suddenness of my excitement intimidated her. "How do you know that Lord Clarenceux is dead?"
I stood before her, trembling with apprehension for the effect of the disclosure I was about to make. She was puzzled and alarmed by the violent change in me, but she controlled herself.
"How do I know?" she repeated with strange mildness.
"Yes, how do you know? Did you see him die?"
I had a wild desire to glance over my shoulder at the portrait.
"No, my friend. But I saw him after he was dead. He died suddenly in Vienna. Don"t let us talk about that."
"Aha!" I laughed incredulously, and then, swiftly driven forward by an overpowering impulse, I dropped on my knees and seized her hands with a convulsive grasp. "Rosa! Rosa!"--my voice nearly broke--"you must know that I love you. Say that you love me--that you would love me whether Clarenceux were dead or alive."
An infinite tenderness shone in her face. She put out her hand, and to calm me stroked my hair.
"Carl!" she whispered.
It was enough. I got up. I did not kiss her.
A servant entered, and said that some one from the theatre had called to see mademoiselle on urgent business. Excusing herself, Rosa went out. I held open the door for her, and closed it slowly with a sigh of incredible relief. Then I turned back into the room. I was content to be alone for a little while.
Great G.o.d! The chair which Rosa had but that instant left was not empty. Occupying it was a figure--the figure of the man whose portrait hung on the wall--the figure of the man who had haunted me ever since I met Rosa--the figure of Lord Clarenceux, whom Rosa had seen dead.
At last, oh, powers of h.e.l.l, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and jealous spirit--using his spectral influences to crush the mortals bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train, on the steamer--everything was explained. And before that coldly sneering, triumphant face, which bore the look of life, and which I yet knew to be impalpable, I shook with the terrified ague of a culprit.
A minute or a thousand years might have pa.s.sed. Then Rosa returned. In an instant the apparition had vanished. But by her pallid, drawn face and her gray lips I knew that she had seen it. Truly she was cursed, and I with her!
CHAPTER XVII
THE MENACE
From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of the dead Lord Clarenceux had a.s.sumed an ineffable dominion over me. I cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he objected. I knew what fear was--the most terrible of all fears--the fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single glance, a single sneer.
It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me, and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour when a liking for Rosa had arisen in my breast, the ghost of Lord Clarenceux, always hovering uneasily near to its former love, had showed itself to me.
The figure opposite the Devonshire Mansion--that was the first warning. With regard to the second appearance, in the cathedral of Bruges, I surmised that that only indirectly affected myself.
Primarily it was the celebration of a fiendish triumph over one who had preceded me in daring to love Rosetta Rosa, but doubtless also it was meant in a subsidiary degree as a second warning to the youth who followed in Alresca"s footsteps. Then there were the two appearances during my journey from London to Paris with Rosa"s jewels--in the train and on the steamer. Matters by that time had become more serious. I was genuinely in love, and the ghost"s anger was quickened.
The train was wrecked and the steamer might have been sunk, and I could not help thinking that the ghost, in some ineffectual way, had been instrumental in both these disasters. The engine-driver, who said he was "dazed," and the steersman, who attributed his mistake at the wheel to the interference of some unknown outsider--were not these things an indication that my dreadful suspicion was well grounded? And if so, to what frightful malignity did they not point! Here was a spirit, which in order to appease the pangs of a supernatural jealousy, was ready to use its immaterial powers to destroy scores of people against whom it could not possibly have any grudge. The most fanatical anarchism is not worse than this.
Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.
In such wise did I reason the matter out to myself. But reasoning was quite unnecessary. I knew by a sure instinct. All the dark thoughts of the ghost had pa.s.sed into my brain, and if they had been transcribed in words of fire and burnt upon my retina, I could not have been more certain of their exact import.
As I sat in my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before?
Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to perceive the truth--that is why the greatest poets are always the greatest teachers.
As for you who are disposed to smile at the idea of a live man crushed (figuratively) under the heel of a ghost, I beg you to look back upon your own experience, and count up the happenings which have struck you as mysterious. You will be astonished at their number. But nothing is so mysterious that it is incapable of explanation, did we but know enough. I, by a singular mischance, was put in the way of the nameless knowledge which explains all. At any rate, I was made acquainted with some trifle of it. I had strayed on the seash.o.r.e of the unknown, and picked up a pebble. I had a glimpse of that other world which permeates and exists side by side with and permeates our own.
Just now I used the phrase "under the heel of a ghost," and I used it advisedly. It indicates pretty well my mental condition. I was cowed, mastered. The ghost of Clarenceux, driven to extremities by the brief scene of tenderness which had pa.s.sed in Rosa"s drawing-room, had determined by his own fell method to end the relations between Rosa and myself. And his method was to a.s.sume a complete sway over me, the object of his hatred.
How did he exercise that sway? Can I answer? I cannot. How does one man influence another? Not by electric wires or chemical apparatus, but by those secret channels through which intelligence meets intelligence. All I know is that I felt his sinister authority. During life Clarenceux, according to every account, had been masterful, imperious, commanding; and he carried these attributes with him beyond the grave. His was a stronger personality than mine, and I could not hide from myself the a.s.surance that in the struggle of will against will I should not be the conqueror.
Not that anything had occurred, even the smallest thing! Upon perceiving Rosa the apparition, as I have said, vanished. We did not say much to each other, Rosa and I; we could not--we were afraid. I went to my hotel; I sat in my room alone; I saw no ghost. But I was aware, I was aware of the doom which impended over me. And already, indeed, I experienced the curious sensation of the ebbing of volitional power; I thought even that I was losing my interest in life. My sensations were dulled. It began to appear to me unimportant whether I lived or died. Only I knew that in either case I should love Rosa. My love was independent of my will, and therefore the ghost of Clarenceux, do what it might, could not tear it from me. I might die, I might suffer mental tortures inconceivable, but I should continue to love. In this idea lay my only consolation.
I remained motionless in my chair for hours, and then--it was soon after the clocks struck four--I sprang up, and searched among my papers for Alresca"s letter, the seal of which, according to his desire, was still intact. The letter had been in my mind for a long time. I knew well that the moment for opening it had come, that the circ.u.mstances to which Alresca had referred in his covering letter had veritably happened. But somehow, till that instant, I had not been able to find courage to read the communication. As I opened it I glanced out of the window. The first sign of dawn was in the sky. I felt a little easier.
Here is what I read:
"My dear Carl Foster:--When you read this the words I am about to write will have acquired the sanction which belongs to the utterances of those who have pa.s.sed away. Give them, therefore, the most serious consideration.
"If you are not already in love with Rosetta Rosa you soon will be. I, too, as you know, have loved her. Let me tell you some of the things which happened to me.
"From the moment when that love first sprang up in my heart I began to be haunted by--I will not say what; you know without being told, for whoever loves Rosa will be haunted as I was, as I am. Rosa has been loved once for all, and with a pa.s.sion so intense that it has survived the grave. For months I disregarded the visitations, relying on the strength of my own soul. I misjudged myself, or, rather, I underestimated my adversary--the great man who in life had loved Rosa. I proposed to Rosa, and she refused me. But that did not quench my love. My love grew; I encouraged it; and it was against the mere fact of my love that the warnings were directed.
"You remember the accident on the stage which led to our meeting. That accident was caused by sheer terror--the terror of an apparition more awful than any that had gone before.
"Still I persisted--I persisted in my hopeless love. Then followed that unnamed malady which in vain you are seeking to cure, a malady which was accompanied by innumerable and terrifying phenomena. The malady was one of the mind; it robbed me of the desire to live. More than that, it made life intolerable. At last I surrendered. I believe I am a brave man, but it is the privilege of the brave man to surrender without losing honor to an adversary who has proved his superiority. Yes, I surrendered. I cast out love in order that I might live for my art.
"But I was too late. I had pushed too far the enmity of this spectral and unrelenting foe, and it would not accept my surrender. I have dashed the image of Rosa from my heart, and I have done it to no purpose. I am dying. And so I write this for you, lest you should go unwarned to the same doom.
"The love of Rosa is worth dying for, if you can win it. (I could not even win it.) You will have to choose between Love and Life. I do not counsel you either way. But I urge you to choose. I urge you either to defy your foe utterly and to the death, or to submit before submission is useless.
"Alresca."
I sat staring at the paper long after I had finished reading it, thinking about poor Alresca. There was a date to it, and this date showed that it was written a few days before his mysterious disease took a turn for the better.
The communication accordingly needs some explanation. It seems to me that Alresca was mistaken. His foe was not so implacable as Alresca imagined. Alresca having surrendered in the struggle between them, the ghost of Lord Clarenceux hesitated, and then ultimately withdrew its hateful influence, and Alresca recovered. Then Rosa came again into his existence that evening at Bruges. Alresca, scornful of consequences, let his pa.s.sion burst once more into flame, and the ghost instantly, in a flash of anger, worked its retribution.
Day came, and during the whole of that day I pondered upon a phrase in Alresca"s letter, "You will have to choose between love and life." But I could not choose. Love is the greatest thing in life; one may, however, question whether it should be counted greater than life itself. I tried to argue the question calmly, dispa.s.sionately. As if such questions may be argued! I could not give up my love; I could not give up my life; that was how all my calm, dispa.s.sionate arguments ended. At one moment I was repeating, "The love of Rosa is worth dying for;" at the next I was busy with the high and dear ambitions of which I had so often dreamed. Were these to be sacrificed? Moreover, what use would Rosa"s love be to me when I was dead? And what use would my life be to me without my love for her?
A hundred times I tried to laugh, and said to myself that I was the victim of fancy, that I should see nothing further of this prodigious apparition; that, in short, my brain had been overtaxed by recent events, and I had suffered from delusions. Vain and conventional self-deceptions! At the bottom of my soul lay always the secret and profound conviction that I was doomed, cursed, caught in the toils of a relentless foe who was armed with all the strange terrors of the unknown; a foe whose onslaughts it was absolutely impossible for me to parry.
As the hours pa.s.sed a yearning to see Rosa, to be near her, came upon me. I fought against it, fearing I know not what as the immediate consequence. I wished to temporize, or, at any rate, to decide upon a definite course of conduct before I saw her again. But towards evening I felt that I should yield to the impulse to behold her. I said to myself, as though I needed some excuse, that she would have a great deal of trouble with the arrangements for Sir Cyril"s funeral, and that I ought to offer my a.s.sistance; that, indeed, I ought to have offered my a.s.sistance early in the day.
I presented myself after dinner. She was dressed in black, and her manner was nervous, flurried, ill at ease. We shook hands very formally, and then could find nothing to say to each other. Had she, with a woman"s instinct, guessed, from that instant"s view of the thing in the chair last night, all that was involved for me in our love? If not all, she had guessed most of it. She had guessed that the powerful spirit of Lord Clarenceux was inimical, fatally inimical, to me. None knew better than herself the terrible strength of his jealousy. I wondered what were her thoughts, her secret desires.
At length she began to speak of commonplace matters.
"Guess who has called," she said, with a little smile.