Transcript

Chapter XI · Sinister House

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Chapter eleven of Sinister House by Leland Hall. This LibriVox recording is in the
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public domain. Read by Ben Tucker, Chapter eleven. In the room,
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Annette was the first to move. She turned off the gas which was escaping
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from the burner. Then she came and took my arm. Together we looked
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down at Eric, still kneeling bent over the head of his wife. A
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figure of unutterable woe. Was Julia dead. She did not move, she
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did not make a sound. Eric too, was motionless and silent. We
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waited a long time, my wife and I. At last she went softly
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up to Eric and touched his shoulder, And when even then he did not
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notice us, she raised his head and, with calm tenderness, asked,
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is Julia living? Eric? He merely looked up at her dumbly. So
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she lifted Julia from his arms and let her down on the bed. She
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lay as wide and as peaceful as marble. But she was not cold.
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SHELI. After we had watched her for half an hour and were assured that
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she slept tranquility and unmolested, Annette directed my attention to Eric, who all
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that time had remained sitting cross legged on the floor, his head dropped low
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over his chest. I roused him from his profound absorption, made him understand
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that he too must go to bed and sleep, and gave him a hand
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to help him to his feet. He was dazed and already a little out
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of his head again. I let him stand and look down at Julia a
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while, but he said nothing, and though his gaze was fixed upon her
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face, his look was vague. He followed me meekly enough into the next
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room, and without a murmur, let me undress him and get him to
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bed. But instead of falling into a reposeful sleep, he became more and
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more restless. His face flushed with fever, and his sunken eyes began to
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blaze with delirious excitement. Yet I felt strangely relieved. The instinct which had
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informed me that the happiness of Eric and Julia was menaced by a secret peril,
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now assured me no less certainly that that peril, the nature of which
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had been revealed to me, was exercised and banished. The time I spent
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at Eric's bedside seemed to me, for all the darkness, the cold,
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and the unelectric night wind of autumn, like the relaxed afternoon hours which follow
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a heavy thunder storm in midsummer. Between Julia and the sun, the jet
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black clouds of Eric's past life had mounted. I had been beside her in
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the ever deepening shadow, had shared with her the dread of destructive wild forces,
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not knowing when they would be entirely loosened, or where or how they
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would strike. But we had withstood the worst, and now I felt as
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I felt looking upon the rear of such storms, softened by the mists of
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recent rain in the air, majestic yet no longer threatening, a jumbled and
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indistinct splendor. Of course, this was only a queer vision in my mind,
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which, while relieved of the worst anxiety, was tired and vaporish.
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Nothing I have since learned of Morgan Snart and his daughter could suggest a comparison
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with any of the magnificent aspects of nature, not even with the cruel beasts,
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or with cold blooded and repugnant creatures of what we call lower forms of
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life. They were a cold and an unkind pair. They remained unwarmed even
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by the suffering they inflicted upon others, which none the less apparently thrilled some
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secret nerve of voluptuousness within them. But there was a wild and for the
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moment a ruined splendor about Eric. It was a strange waning of the night
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I passed through by his bed. Not until just before dawn did his ravings
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become quite incoherent, And for more than an hour I answered his odd questions
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in hopes that he would quiet down. When he sat up in bed,
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I pressed him back as gently as I could. I can see him well
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now as I write, tall and thin, his old facts and nightgown.
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I had sought for pajamas, but could find none, hanging loose and open
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from his shoulders. When before I got him to lie down again, he
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would sit leaning forward over his knees. I remember clearly certain looks on his
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face, especially the sober thoughtfulness in his eyes. When for the first few
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times he mentioned the telegram. He spoke of this again and again, in
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the midst of a gentle discourse on the merits of Jonathan Edwards, or of
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something sentimental about the return of a lost lamb to the fold. He would
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say, I have always thought telegrams brought bad news, but it was good
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news. I must always be honest. Of course, God knew that I
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was glad to hear that he too was dead. God sent the automobile against
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him. But I no longer believe he did that to please me. I
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did not think I could be so glad again. She must have been dead
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a long time. She was stiff on the floor. I would not touch
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her. No, but the telegram, with the glad tidings, I laid
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it across her dead hand. Oh no, that would not have killed her.
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I closed her fingers with my foot, but my shoe was on it.
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I would not have touched her, and I am sure I did not
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step on her hand. Then, when I thought he was about to lose
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this train of thought, he invariably went on, You did not think that
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telegram killed her, did you? I assure you I did not kill her
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either. Her heart split with wickedness while I was out of doors. I
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ran very fast away from the house because I hated her so and I walked
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very slowly back because I did not know what to do. Her heart split
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with wickedness while I was away, and she fell down dead on the floor.
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That is why I put the telegram in her dead hand. It was
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a perfect vengeance. He would have died a second time, to know that
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I got his money so little too. I have put this down more coherent
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then he said it. But even from his confused ramblings that night, I
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guessed what his crime had been. As I tell you, he went through
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this cycle of thought many times, and feverish as he was, he had
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a way of fastening his eyes on mine each time he went through it,
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always with the same sober thoughtfulness I have mentioned. I am glad to say
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I never caught in them the faintest glimmer of craftiness or calculation. As he
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grew wilder, his repetitions of the story were less and less detailed, but
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he insisted with louder and firmer voice, that she died before he did,
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and that he had punished them, just as if he took great pride in
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letting the world know that he alone had been able to execute a proper vengeance
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upon them. I shall never know precisely what was in his mind when,
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by the mere act of laying the telegram and the dead hold a hand,
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he made it appear beyond question that the news of her father's sudden death had
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killed her. That he did so deliberately, I did not doubt with a
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holy acute realization that his act would make him heir to whatever Morgan Snart had
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willed to his daughter, but that he acted from covetousness. I will never
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believe some hardly more than instinctive demand for retribution, a cold passion for revenge,
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a single lust for triumph over them, something of all those, I
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think sprang into one swift, clear and irrevocable act, the revolt from their
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persistent and consciously refined cruelties. Subsequently, he could not have escaped the knowledge
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that he had committed an act that made him a criminal in the eyes of
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the law. But the small inheritance he had acquired, the old house in
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Stanton and some broken down property in Buffalo remained for him the hard and vast
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substance of his victory Overholda and Morgan Snart, and he would never relinquish it.
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He brought Julia to see the house behind the hemlocks. He had never
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been in it before, because he imagined that to be happy there with her
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would make that victory supreme. Well, they had risen up to score on
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him again, and the second scoring was more terrible than the first. I
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assure you that I had no curiosity in regard to the details of what he
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had lived through with them, How or where he ever met the wicked woman
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who wore upon his early religious fervor, hypnotized him, and finally married him,
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perhaps only to torture his fine sensibilities. I have never sought to learn
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of what seethed up out of the mutilated heart while I sat by his bed.
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I have only fragmentary recollections. Much was too painful to bear repeating.
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None of us knows how sensitive the other fellow may be. Some things,
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such as the wanton uprooting of the few flowers he had planted secretly, and
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the stripping of everything of beauty and comfort from the house, wounded him deeply.
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One might be tempted to think him as softy for that. Others The
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crude disfigurement of his mother's photograph and the cutting off by lies and malice of
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every soul dispose to be friendly to him, would have made most men entirely
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angry, but Eric until he finally turned against him, suffered in heart,
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first, surprised, later afraid and horrified. When he did turn, it
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was over an unmentionable piece of cruelty. To a bird. His revulsion of
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feeling was so fierce that he never got over it, more than I imagine
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the surface of the earth rent by a volcanic eruption, ever becomes whole again
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as it was before. It was about half past four when he began humming,
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and from then on he was hardly sane for a minute. He sang
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snatches of hymns, not quiet old household favorites, but wild revival hymns which
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make the blood curdle. And though it was the rising fever that was overthrowing
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his reason, I think he maddened himself a good deal with his own singing,
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as I have been told fanatical persons often do. Between the crazy strains
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of song, he would sometimes subside to say such things as, when I
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was a boy, I loved flowers, yet my mother was a Christian woman.
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Or I loved animals, and they are God's creatures like the rest of
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us. I liked the rest of us all but that cursed pair that must
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have been weaned in a hell of ice before they ever came upon this earth.
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At the height of his frenzy, he sprang out of bed and shouted,
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shaking his fist defiantly above his head. No, I was not created
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for suffering. With the help of Annette, who had been roused from her
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slumber at Julia's bed by his cry, I got him back where he belonged.
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He had exhausted his strength in a wild reenactment of his great outburst upon
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Holda. Just before he relapsed into complete unconsciousness, he had a moment's calm
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in which he looked up at a net, mistaking her for Julia, and
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said, tenderly, she will not dare haunt me, dear. I frightened
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her to death, and she will be shut up fast in hell for her
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wickedness. There was something so childlike and pathetic in the way he said this
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that the tears came into my eyes. It doesn't do any good at all
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to say boo at the past when you're afraid of it. I went over
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to the window and parted the curtains. The night was just beginning to give
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way. I couldn't see the river in the deep shadow of its gorge,
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but to the right I could make out against the dim gray sky, the
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bowing and slipping of the hemlock tops, and the cold and steady wind.
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I don't know why. I recalled the picture of my wife's walking up and
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down with her son in her arms, shouting boo at the horrid dream.
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How they had dogged poor Eric, how terribly they had scored against him once
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more. But I had faith that against him and Julia united, they should
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never hereafter prevail, Annette said I had better go for the doctor, so
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I stole out of the chamber. But when I found myself in the dark
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upper hallway, the memory of how earlier in the night we had struggled up
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the stairs against the nameless and then invisible evil swept over me like a chill.
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For a moment, I lost my nerve. I slunk back into Eric's
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room for another word with a net. I didn't like to leave her and
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go down those stairs alone. I took a good long look at Eric's flushed
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face. Even in his ravings, there had been something human, something warm.
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What's the matter, my wife asked me. I don't know, I
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answered foolishly. I feel queer in that hallway. It's cold and ruined.
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I saw her turn pale. They will not come back again, she whispered,
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It gives me the creeps. But I wasn't going to ask her to
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come downstairs with me. I returned to the hall alone and started down.
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The drafts were icy cold. I noticed, with a sick feeling at my
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heart that the banister rails had been broken, and the rose damask that had
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hung down from the upper wall had been pulled from its fastenings and was all
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awry and torn. Half way down, I felt as if I could go
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no farther over the way those fiends had made off on. There was a
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sort of dim, gray luminousness in the lower hallway, the dawn stealing in
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through the front door, in which the glass panels had been smashed. The
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curtains that used to cover them had been ripped from their rods and dangled in
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tatters to the floor from the edges of the broken panes. I think I
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was about to break into tears, but my strained eyes caught sight of something
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that stiffened me with horror. Prone on the floor at the foot of the
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stairs, amid all the debris lay g Aisles, I whispered his name.
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He did not answer. He lay still on the floor, vague in the
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gloomy and imperfect light of the early dawn, screwing up the last poor shred
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of my nerve. I went down to him. He was breathing. I
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was devoutly thankful for that, yet another human life saved out of this night
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of wickedness. Gently as I could, I turned him on his back,
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and then I fetched water from the kitchen and sprinkled it on his face.
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I got a piece of glass stuck in my foot, too, for I
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had not put on my shoes since I had gone up just before one o'clock
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to Julia's room. Maybe it was partly the pain of that which made me
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feel like snickering, for that is how I did feel, even before I
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assured myself that Giles had been dazed by a heavy blow on the forehead and
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was not dying. When he opened his eyes and looked up at me,
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kneeling like a musculman behind him in the gloom, I wanted more than anything
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in the world to jibber. After a minute or two, he recognized me,
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and then between his groans, he said, something came down as stairs.
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It hit me what the devil was it? And that was just too
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much for me. I sat back on my stockinged heels, hid my face
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in my hands, and laughed like a fool. Well, here's an end
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to the strange story. You would not be interested in the convalescence of Eric
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and his wife. They were not your friends as they were mine. You
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never saw the You never went into their queer house. What's more, you
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never will go into it, because it was burned down the following Christmas.
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Neither Annette nor I ever entered it again. After the doctor came and took
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charge of Eric, bound up Giles's head, pronounced Julia, recovering from her
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cold, drew the glass from my foot and told my wife she looked tired
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and better go home for a little sleep. Julia was up the very next
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day and had Eric taken to New York. Later. While they were away,
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they hired men to move out their furniture and close up the house.
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It was presently for sale. No one knows how the fire that destroyed it
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started. By that time, the old place had been entirely deserted for more
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than six weeks. But oh, my own house, our good looking little
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cement house. Nothing ever looked better to my eyes than that did the morning
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we returned to it, and it was still locked up tight too. Felicia
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had obeyed Annette to the letter. She would never have opened a door or
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a window until hunger drove her out. I must confess that when we scurried
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up the ground an aolithic walk, the little house did look like a county
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jail. You remember, That's how Giles thought most of the houses and foresby
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looked. But poor Giles didn't get a glimpse of it. That morning.
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His head was aching very painfully. He swore he had been struck by lightning.
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I remember I had to help him up to the front door, and
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I was limping at that. We must all have looked ridiculous. Little Bobby
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tumbled out on us like a puppy, and old Felicia mopped her eyes with
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the corner of her apron, muttering Christian thinks and glorifications. I don't suppose
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she knew just the nature of the peril which had threatened us, and which,
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glory be to God, we had escaped. But she had felt it.
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That is the infallible barometer. Now, when I feel the creeps,
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I know there's something doing, whether I see it or not, which God
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forbid I should ever see again. Dear old Giles, he had the strength
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of a bull. It took more than the blow of a ghost to lay
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him low in a blood soaked field. Sometimes I wonder if he didn't really
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save us, if it wasn't he that shocked out of Eric the words that
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did the trick. When he left us, he asked me to drive to
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the station by way of the old house. We went right up to the
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front door. In the ford. Boards were nailed over the smashed glass panes
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in the door. Every window was shuttered in perfect silence. We cast an
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eye over it all, each absorbed in his own thoughts. When we were
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back on the flat highway again, he said, turning away from me,
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She is a fine woman, Pierre. I hope they will be happy.
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Now there's lightning and lightning, and still another lightning after all. As for
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Annette, she will not voluntarily recall those dreadful nights to her mind. In
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the three years that have passed, we have talked of them only once.
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I know she fears the effect of them upon me. That's all. She
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acknowledged, however, that there was something unusual in the house the night Julia
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was so sick and Eric went out of his head. Now, if I
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try to talk of it again, she looks at me as if I were
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out of my mind that worries her, for I'm the bread winner. So
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I go on commuting and keep my mouth shut about the upper or nether spheres.
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To tell the truth, I shall be glad when the memory has faded.
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Take it all and all. There was nothing in it but terrible suffering
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for Julia and Eric. You should see foresby in the winter time. There's
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a foot of snow on the ground now in the middle of January, and
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the nights are very cold, but it's healthy for the children, and hard
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as it is sometimes to get to and from the station and the ford.
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We wouldn't move into the city for anything. Think of giving up the spotless
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fields and roads of snow for the city's soot, or the silence of the
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nights for the racket and town, or the whole expanse of clear black sky
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with its brilliant independent stars for the street lights and a rift between the roof
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tops. We have a blazing fire on the hearth every night, and we
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sit before it until it's time to go to bed, my wife and I,
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sometimes reading, sometimes talking, sometimes dreaming, but never haunted. A
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day or two ago we had a letter from Julia who with Eric, has
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gone to France. They are going to devote themselves in what is theirs,
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to the alleviation of the great suffering that has come upon the world. I
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mustn't forget to tell you that Julia's small fortune has recently been increased. As
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for what Eric inherited from Morgan Snart, I will never, please Heaven write
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that name again. They have made that over to some relief organization. They
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too have gone in the Red Cross. Last night I sat here before the
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fire with my pencil and my manuscript. Annette was reading one of the two
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new magazines to which we have subscribed, either The House Decorated or The Home
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Beautiful. Isn't that a funny trace of it all? I couldn't write anything,
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as you know, there's nothing more to write. My unguided pencil just
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went on scrawling over the paper. The Singing House. A piece of burning
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wood snapped and sent a big spark out on the rug. I got up
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to kick it back to the hearthstone, and then I went over to the
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door and went out on the porch. It was cold and still. There
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was no moon, and the stars were like diamonds, just as the mighty
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things will always go on being to humans when the air is clear. I
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looked to the north, and in my mind I saw the black spread of
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charred embers on the snow where the old house had stood. I could not
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hear a sound, and with my eyes could see nothing but the expanse of
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white snow, and a long way down the road to the right, a
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light in the window of our nearest neighbor's house. So I came back again
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to the fire, but not to try to write, just to think,
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Giles gone. Well, it will come to me too, and before long.
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But what a life to look back on, What a memory always this
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house and this life of mine, and this wife and my children. That's
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the point I've had it. Whereas Eric, they have gone, and we
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shall not see them again, at least not for a long time. Only
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a mass of charred embers marks the place where their house of horror stood.
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Here is my wife training her mind to see in houses a beauty she thought
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she missed in theirs. Here am I regarding still as a nightmare. What
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entered into my flesh as a most terrible reality? And has I know colored
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my outlook upon life for the rest of my mortal days. What does it
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all amount to if it isn't just a story to tell first and last,
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like all stories, not to be explained, like all stories first and last.
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True, there, said Annette to me, handing me over a Cromo
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from the home. Beautiful is a hanging on that wall, like the one
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Julia had in her house. I wonder how a curtain or something would look
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on the wall upstairs, but I guess not. It would only catch the
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dust in things, Yes, I repeated, quite like a melancholy tragedy,
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and of the hollow old school, dust and things, things and dust.
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What's the matter with you, Pierre? You're talking nonsense. You've been getting
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up and sitting down and going to the door as if you expected somebody to
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come. I looked at her and grinned. Nobody would come so late as
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this, My love, you've been working too long on that book. You're
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tired out, and you'd better go to bed, Annette, I said,
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laying my hand over hers. There isn't any dustin things in this house.
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That's why we're so happy. Let's be sure there never is any. She
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gave me a funny look with her shrewd blue eyes. You mind your business,
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Pierre, and I'll mind mine. Now, run along to bed.
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It's late, so I locked the doors and windows just as I always locked
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them, went upstairs after my wife, put out the lights downstairs from the
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switch on the upper floor, and made ready for bed. But before I
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turned in, I had to look out the window a little while. There
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wasn't a thing to see except stars and snow. Annette warned me that I
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should catch my death of cold. Well. After I'd put out the little
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light on the table by my bed, I strained my ears to hear something,
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and I heard the whistle of the last train from New York. There
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was not a sound in our dark house. Surely, I whispered to my
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wife, finding her hand and giving her a good night squeeze. No one
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will come so late as this, of course, not. What are you
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thinking of? Nothing? Go to sleep. Then I did so, and
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met nothing on the way. End of chapter eleven, end of Sinister House
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by Leland Hall