The Ghost Feeler (20 page)

Faxon thought: ‘My God, if I look up now they'll
both
be looking at me!' To avoid raising his eyes he made as though to lift the glass to his lips; but his hand sank inert, and he looked up. Mr Lavington's glance was politely bent on him, but with a loosening of the strain about his heart he saw that the figure behind the chair still kept its gaze on Rainer.

‘Do you think you've seen my double, Mr Faxon?'

Would the other face turn if he said yes? Faxon felt a dryness in his throat. ‘No,' he answered.

‘Ah! It's possible I've a dozen. I believe I'm extremely usual-looking.' Mr Lavington went on conversationally; and still the other face watched Rainer.

‘It was ... a minute ... a confusion of memory ...' Faxon heard himself stammer. Mr Lavington pushed back his chair, and as he did so Mr Grisben suddenly leaned forward.

‘Lavington! What have we been thinking of? We haven't drunk Frank's health!'

Mr Lavington reseated himself. ‘My dear boy! ... Peters, another bottle ...' He turned to his nephew. ‘After such a sin of omission I don't presume to propose the toast myself ... but Frank knows ... Go ahead, Grisben!'

The boy shone on his uncle. ‘No, no, Uncle Jack! Mr Grisben won't mind. Nobody but
you
– today!'

The butler was replenishing the glasses. He filled Mr Lavington's last, and Mr Lavington put out his small hand to raise it ... As he did so Faxon looked away.

‘Well, then – all the good I've wished you in all the past years ... I put it into the prayer that the coming ones may be healthy and happy and many ... and
many
, dear boy!'

Faxon saw the hands about him reach out for their glasses. Automatically, he reached for his. His eyes were still on the table, and he repeated to himself with a trembling vehemence: ‘I won't look up! I won't ... I won't ...'

His fingers clasped the glass and raised it to the level of his lips. He saw the other hands making the same motion. He heard Mr Grisben's genial ‘Hear! Hear!' and Mr Balch's hollow echo. He said to himself, as the rim of the glass touched his lips: ‘I won't look up! I swear I won't' – and he looked.

The glass was so full that it required an extraordinary effort to hold it there, brimming and suspended, during the awful interval before he could trust his hand to lower it again, untouched, to the table. It was this merciful preoccupation which saved him, kept him from crying out, from losing his hold, from slipping down into the bottomless blackness that gaped for him. As long as the problem of the glass engaged him he felt able to keep his seat, manage his muscles, fit unnoticeably into the group; but as the glass touched the table his last link with safety snapped. He stood up and dashed out of the room.

IV

In the gallery, the instinct of self-preservation helped him to turn back and sign to young Rainer not to follow. He stammered out something about a touch of dizziness, and joining them presently; and the boy nodded sympathetically and drew back.

At the foot of the stairs Faxon ran against a servant. T should like to telephone to Weymore,' he said with dry lips.

‘Sorry, sir, wires all down. We've been trying the last hour to get New York again for Mr Lavington.'

Faxon shot on to his room, burst into it, and bolted the door. The lamplight lay on furniture, flowers, books; in the ashes a log still glimmered. He dropped down on the sofa and hid his face. The room was profoundly silent, the whole house was still: nothing about him gave a hint of what was going on, darkly and dumbly, in the room he had flown from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But why into his – just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he had seen? What business was it of
his
, in God's name? Any one of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but
he,
the one weaponless and defenceless spectator, the one whom none of the others would believe or understand if he attempted to reveal what he knew –
he
alone had been singled out, as the victim of this dreadful initiation!

Suddenly he sat up, listening: he had heard a step on the stairs. Someone, no doubt, was coming to see how he was – to urge him, if he felt better, to go down and join the smokers. Cautiously he opened his door; yes, it was young Rainer's step. Faxon looked down the passage, remembered the other stairway and darted to it. All he wanted was to get out of the house. Not another instant would he breathe its abominal air! What business was it of
his
, in God's name?

He reached the opposite end of the lower gallery, and beyond it saw the hall by which he had entered. It was empty, and on a long table he recognized his coat and cap. He got into his coat, unbolted the door, and plunged into the purifying night.

The darkness was deep, and the cold so intense that for an instant it stopped his breathing. Then he perceived that only a thin snow was falling, and resolutely he set his face for flight. The trees along the avenue marked his way as he hastened with long strides over the beaten snow. Gradually, while he walked, the tumult in his brain subsided. The impulse to fly still drove him forward, but he began to feel that he was flying from a terror of his own creating, and that the most urgent reason for escape was the need of hiding his state, of shunning other eyes till he should regain his balance.

He had spent the long hours in the train in fruitless broodings on a discouraging situation, and he remembered how his bitterness had turned to exasperation when he found that the Weymore sleigh was not awaiting him. It was absurd, of course; but, though he had joked with Rainer over Mrs Culme's forgetfulness, to confess it had cost a pang. That was what his rootless life had brought him to: for lack of a personal stake in things his sensibility was at the mercy of such trifles ... Yes, that, and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over which, once or twice before, his terrified brain had hung.

Why else, in the name of any imaginable logic, human or devilish, should he, a stranger, be singled out for this experience? What could it mean to him, how was he related to it, what bearing had it on his case? ... Unless, indeed, it was just because he was a stranger – a stranger everywhere – because he had no personal life, no warm screen of private egotisms to shield him from exposure, that he had developed this abnormal sensitiveness to the vicissitudes of others. The thought pulled him up with a shudder. No! Such a fate was too abominable; all that was strong and sound in him rejected it. A thousand times better regard himself as ill, disorganized, deluded, than as the predestined victim of such warnings!

He reached the gates and paused before the darkened lodge. The wind had risen and was sweeping the snow into his face. The cold had him in its grasp again, and he stood uncertain. Should he put his sanity to the test and go back? He turned and looked down the dark drive to the house. A single ray shone through the trees, evoking a picture of the lights, the flowers, the faces grouped about that fatal room. He turned and plunged out into the road ...

He remembered that, about a mile from Overdale, the coachman had pointed out the road to Northridge, and he began to walk in that direction. Once in the road he had the gale in his face, and the wet snow in his moustache and eyelashes instantly hardened to ice. The same ice seemed to be driving a million blades into his throat and lungs, but he pushed on, the vision of the warm room pursuing him.

The snow in the road was deep and uneven. He stumbled across ruts and sank into drifts, and the wind drove against him like a granite cliff. Now and then he stopped, gasping, as if an invisible hand had tightened an iron band about his body; then he started again, stiffening himself against the stealthy penetration of the cold. The snow continued to descend out of a pall of inscrutable darkness, and once or twice he paused, fearing he had missed the road to Northridge; but seeing no sign of a turn, he ploughed on.

At last, feeling sure that he had walked for more than a mile, he halted and looked back. The act of turning brought immediate relief, first because it put his back to the wind, and then because, far down the road, it showed him the gleam of a lantern. A sleigh was coming – a sleigh that might, perhaps, give him a lift to the village! Fortified by the hope, he began to walk back towards the light. It came forward very slowly, with unaccountable zigzags and waverings; and even when he was within a few yards of it he could catch no sound of sleigh bells. Then it paused and became stationary by the roadside, as though carried by a pedestrian who had stopped, exhausted by the cold. The thought made Faxon hasten on, and a moment later he was stooping over a motionless figure huddled against the snow-bank. The lantern had dropped from its bearer's hand, and Faxon, fearfully raising it, threw its, light into the face of Frank Rainer.

‘Rainer! What on earth are you doing her?'

The boy smiled back through his pallor. ‘What are
you,
I'd like to know?' he retorted; and, scrambling to his feet with a clutch on Faxon's arm, he added gaily: ‘Well, I've run you down!'

Faxon stood confounded, his heart sinking. The lad's face was grey.

‘What madness —' he began.

‘Yes, it
is.
What on earth did you do it for?'

‘I? Do what? ... Why I ... I was just taking a walk ... I often walk at night ...'

Frank Rainer burst into a laugh. ‘On such nights? Then you hadn't bolted?'

‘Bolted?'

‘Because I'd done something to offend you? My uncle thought you had.'

Faxon grasped his arm. ‘Did your uncle send you after me?'

‘Well, he gave me an awful rowing for not going up to your room with you when you said you were ill. And when we found you'd gone we were frightened – and he was awfully upset – so I said I'd catch you ... You're
not
ill, are you?'

‘Ill? No. Never better.' Faxon picked up the lantern. ‘Come; let's go back. It was awfully hot in that dining-room.'

‘Yes; I hoped it was only that.'

They trudged on in silence for a few minutes; then Faxon questioned: ‘You're not too done up?'

‘Oh, no. It's a lot easier with the wind behind us.'

‘All right. Don't talk any more.'

They pushed ahead, walking, in spite of the light that guided them, more slowly than Faxon had walked alone into the gale. The fact of his companion's stumbling against a drift gave Faxon a pretext for saying: ‘Take hold of my arm,' and Rainer obeying, gasped out: ‘I'm blown!'

‘So am I. Who wouldn't be?'

‘What a dance you led me! If it hadn't been for one of the servants happening to see you —'

‘Yes; all right. And now, won't you kindly shut up?'

Rainer laughed and hung on him. ‘Oh, the cold doesn't hurt me ...'

For the first few minutes after Rainer had overtaken him, anxiety for the lad had been Faxon's only thought. But as each labouring step carried them nearer to the spot he had been fleeing, the reasons for his flight grew more ominous and more insistent. No, he was not ill, he was not distraught and deluded – he was the instrument singled out to warn and save; and here he was, irresistibly driven, dragging the victim back to his doom!

The intensity of the conviction had almost checked his steps. But what could he do or say? At all costs he must get Rainer out of the cold, into the house and into his bed. After that he would act.

The snowfall was thickening, and as they reached a stretch of the road between open fields the wind took them at an angle, lashing their faces with barbed thongs. Rainer stopped to take breath, and Faxon felt the heavier pressure of his arm.

‘When we get to the lodge, can't we telephone to the stable for a sleigh?'

‘If they're not all asleep at the lodge.'

‘Oh, I'll manage. Don't talk!' Faxon ordered; and they plodded on ...

At length the lantern ray showed ruts that curved away from the road under tree-darkness.

Faxon's spirits rose. ‘There's the gate! We'll be there in five minutes.

As he spoke he caught, above the boundary hedge, the gleam of a light at the farther end of the dark avenue. It was the same light that had shone on the scene of which every detail was burnt into his brain; and he felt again its overpowering reality. No – he couldn't let the boy go back!

They were at the lodge at last, and Faxon was hammering on the door. He said to himself: ‘I'll get him inside first, and make them give him a hot drink. Then I'll see – I'll find an argument.'

There was no answer to his knocking, and after an interval Rainer said: ‘Look here – we'd better go on.'

‘No!'

‘I can, perfectly —'