"What has become of Pitting?" asked the Father, grasping Guildea"s hot and feverish hand.
"He has left my service."
"Left your service!" exclaimed the Father in utter amazement.
"Yes, this afternoon."
"May one ask why?"
"I"m going to tell you. It"s all part and parcel of this--this most odious business. You remember once discussing the relations men ought to have with their servants?"
"Ah!" cried the Father, with a flash of inspiration. "The crisis has occurred?"
"Exactly," said the Professor, with a bitter smile. "The crisis has occurred. I called upon Pitting to be a man and a brother. He responded by declining the invitation. I upbraided him. He gave me warning. I paid him his wages and told him he could go at once. And he has gone.
What are you looking at me like that for?"
"I didn"t know," said Father Murchison, hastily dropping his eyes, and looking away. "Why," he added. "Napoleon is gone too."
"I sold him to-day to one of those shops in Shaftesbury Avenue."
"Why?"
"He sickened me with his abominable imitation of--his intercourse with--well, you know what he was at last night. Besides, I have no further need of his proof to tell me I am not dreaming. And, being convinced as I now am, that all I have thought to have happened has actually happened, I care very little about convincing others. Forgive me for saying so, Murchison, but I am now certain that my anxiety to make you believe in the presence of something here really arose from some faint doubt on that subject--within myself. All doubt has now vanished."
"Tell me why."
"I will."
Both men were standing by the fire. They continued to stand while Guildea went on,
"Last night I felt it."
"What?" cried the Father.
"I say that last night, as I was going upstairs to bed, I felt something accompanying me and nestling up against me."
"How horrible!" exclaimed the Father, involuntarily.
Guildea smiled drearily.
"I will not deny the horror of it. I cannot, since I was compelled to call on Pitting for a.s.sistance."
"But--tell me--what was it, at least what did it seem to be?"
"It seemed to be a human being. It seemed, I say; and what I mean exactly is that the effect upon me was rather that of human contact than of anything else. But I could see nothing, hear nothing. Only, three times, I felt this gentle, but determined, push against me, as if to coax me and to attract my attention. The first time it happened I was on the landing outside this room, with my foot on the first stair. I will confess to you, Murchison, that I bounded upstairs like one pursued.
That is the shameful truth. Just as I was about to enter my bedroom, however, I felt the thing entering with me, and, as I have said, squeezing, with loathsome, sickening tenderness, against my side.
Then----"
He paused, turned towards the fire and leaned his head on his arm. The Father was greatly moved by the strange helplessness and despair of the att.i.tude. He laid his hand affectionately on Guildea"s shoulder.
"Then?"
Guildea lifted his head. He looked painfully abashed.
"Then, Murchison, I am ashamed to say I broke down, suddenly, unaccountably, in a way I should have thought wholly impossible to me. I struck out with my hands to thrust the thing away. It pressed more closely to me. The pressure, the contact became unbearable to me. I shouted out for Pitting. I--I believe I must have cried--"Help.""
"He came, of course?"
"Yes, with his usual soft, unemotional quiet. His calm--its opposition to my excitement of disgust and horror--must, I suppose, have irritated me. I was not myself, no, no!"
He stopped abruptly. Then--
"But I need hardly tell you that," he added, with most piteous irony.
"And what did you say to Pitting?"
"I said that he should have been quicker. He begged my pardon. His cold voice really maddened me, and I burst out into some foolish, contemptible diatribe, called him a machine, taunted him, then--as I felt that loathsome thing nestling once more to me,--begged him to a.s.sist me, to stay with me, not to leave me alone--I meant in the company of my tormentor. Whether he was frightened, or whether he was angry at my unjust and violent manner and speech a moment before, I don"t know. In any case he answered that he was engaged as a butler, and not to sit up all night with people. I suspect he thought I had taken too much to drink. No doubt that was it. I believe I swore at him as a coward--I! This morning he said he wished to leave my service. I gave him a month"s wages, a good character as a butler, and sent him off at once."
"But the night? How did you pa.s.s it?"
"I sat up all night."
"Where? In your bedroom?"
"Yes--with the door open--to let it go."
"You felt that it stayed?"
"It never left me for a moment, but it did not touch me again. When it was light I took a bath, lay down for a little while, but did not close my eyes. After breakfast I had the explanation with Pitting and paid him. Then I came up here. My nerves were in a very shattered condition.
Well, I sat down, tried to write, to think. But the silence was broken in the most abominable manner."
"How?"
"By the murmur of that appalling voice, that voice of a love-sick idiot, sickly but determined. Ugh!"
He shuddered in every limb. Then he pulled himself together, a.s.sumed, with a self-conscious effort, his most determined, most aggressive, manner, and added:
"I couldn"t stand that. I had come to the end of my tether; so I sprang up, ordered a cab to be called, seized the cage and drove with it to a bird shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. There I sold the parrot for a trifle. I think, Murchison, that I must have been nearly mad then, for, as I came out of the wretched shop, and stood for an instant on the pavement among the cages of rabbits, guinea-pigs, and puppy dogs, I laughed aloud. I felt as if a load was lifted from my shoulders, as if in selling that voice I had sold the cursed thing that torments me. But when I got back to the house it was here. It"s here now. I suppose it will always be here."
He shuffled his feet on the rug in front of the fire.
"What on earth am I to do?" he said. "I"m ashamed of myself, Murchison, but--but I suppose there are things in the world that certain men simply can"t endure. Well, I can"t endure this, and there"s an end of the matter."
He ceased. The Father was silent. In presence of this extraordinary distress he did not know what to say. He recognised the uselessness of attempting to comfort Guildea, and he sat with his eyes turned, almost moodily, to the ground. And while he sat there he tried to give himself to the influences within the room, to feel all that was within it. He even, half-unconsciously, tried to force his imagination to play tricks with him. But he remained totally unaware of any third person with them.
At length he said,
"Guildea, I cannot pretend to doubt the reality of your misery here. You must go away, and at once. When is your Paris lecture?"
"Next week. In nine days from now."