Four Weird Tales

  II

  It was the habit of Jones, since he was compelled to work amongconditions that were utterly distasteful, to withdraw his mind whollyfrom business once the day was over. During office hours he kept thestrictest possible watch upon himself, and turned the key on all innerdreams, lest any sudden uprush from the deeps should interfere with hisduty. But, once the working day was over, the gates flew open, and hebegan to enjoy himself.

  He read no modern books on the subjects that interested him, and, asalready said, he followed no course of training, nor belonged to anysociety that dabbled with half-told mysteries; but, once released fromthe office desk in the Manager's room, he simply and naturally enteredthe other region, because he was an old inhabitant, a rightful denizen,and because he belonged there. It was, in fact, really a case ofdual personality; and a carefully drawn agreement existed betweenJones-of-the-fire-insurance-office and Jones-of-the-mysteries, by theterms of which, under heavy penalties, neither region claimed him out ofhours.

  For the moment he reached his rooms under the roof in Bloomsbury, andhad changed his city coat to another, the iron doors of the officeclanged far behind him, and in front, before his very eyes, rolled upthe beautiful gates of ivory, and he entered into the places of flowersand singing and wonderful veiled forms. Sometimes he quite lost touchwith the outer world, forgetting to eat his dinner or go to bed, and layin a state of trance, his consciousness working far out of the body. Andon other occasions he walked the streets on air, half-way between thetwo regions, unable to distinguish between incarnate and discarnateforms, and not very far, probably, beyond the strata where poets,saints, and the greatest artists have moved and thought and found theirinspiration. But this was only when some insistent bodily claimprevented his full release, and more often than not he was entirelyindependent of his physical portion and free of the real region, withoutlet or hindrance.

  One evening he reached home utterly exhausted after the burden of theday's work. The Manager had been more than usually brutal, unjust,ill-tempered, and Jones had been almost persuaded out of his settledpolicy of contempt into answering back. Everything seemed to have goneamiss, and the man's coarse, underbred nature had been in the ascendantall day long: he had thumped the desk with his great fists, abused,found fault unreasonably, uttered outrageous things, and behavedgenerally as he actually was--beneath the thin veneer of acquiredbusiness varnish. He had done and said everything to wound all that waswoundable in an ordinary secretary, and though Jones fortunately dweltin a region from which he looked down upon such a man as he might lookdown on the blundering of a savage animal, the strain had neverthelesstold severely upon him, and he reached home wondering for the first timein his life whether there was perhaps a point beyond which he would beunable to restrain himself any longer.

  For something out of the usual had happened. At the close of a passageof great stress between the two, every nerve in the secretary's bodytingling from undeserved abuse, the Manager had suddenly turned fullupon him, in the corner of the private room where the safes stood, insuch a way that the glare of his red eyes, magnified by the glasses,looked straight into his own. And at this very second that otherpersonality in Jones--the one that was ever _watching_--rose up swiftlyfrom the deeps within and held a mirror to his face.

  A moment of flame and vision rushed over him, and for one singlesecond--one merciless second of clear sight--he saw the Manager as thetall dark man of his evil dreams, and the knowledge that he had sufferedat his hands some awful injury in the past crashed through his mind likethe report of a cannon.

  It all flashed upon him and was gone, changing him from fire to ice,and then back again to fire; and he left the office with the certainconviction in his heart that the time for his final settlement with theman, the time for the inevitable retribution, was at last drawing verynear.

  According to his invariable custom, however, he succeeded in puttingthe memory of all this unpleasantness out of his mind with the changingof his office coat, and after dozing a little in his leather chairbefore the fire, he started out as usual for dinner in the Soho Frenchrestaurant, and began to dream himself away into the region of flowersand singing, and to commune with the Invisibles that were the verysources of his real life and being.

  For it was in this way that his mind worked, and the habits of years hadcrystallised into rigid lines along which it was now necessary andinevitable for him to act.

  At the door of the little restaurant he stopped short, a half-rememberedappointment in his mind. He had made an engagement with some one, butwhere, or with whom, had entirely slipped his memory. He thought it wasfor dinner, or else to meet just after dinner, and for a second it cameback to him that it had something to do with the office, but, whateverit was, he was quite unable to recall it, and a reference to his pocketengagement book showed only a blank page. Evidently he had even omittedto enter it; and after standing a moment vainly trying to recall eitherthe time, place, or person, he went in and sat down.

  But though the details had escaped him, his subconscious memory seemedto know all about it, for he experienced a sudden sinking of the heart,accompanied by a sense of foreboding anticipation, and felt thatbeneath his exhaustion there lay a centre of tremendous excitement. Theemotion caused by the engagement was at work, and would presently causethe actual details of the appointment to reappear.

  Inside the restaurant the feeling increased, instead of passing: someone was waiting for him somewhere--some one whom he had definitelyarranged to meet. He was expected by a person that very night and justabout that very time. But by whom? Where? A curious inner trembling cameover him, and he made a strong effort to hold himself in hand and to beready for anything that might come.

  And then suddenly came the knowledge that the place of appointment wasthis very restaurant, and, further, that the person he had promised tomeet was already here, waiting somewhere quite close beside him.

  He looked up nervously and began to examine the faces round him. Themajority of the diners were Frenchmen, chattering loudly with muchgesticulation and laughter; and there was a fair sprinkling of clerkslike himself who came because the prices were low and the food good, butthere was no single face that he recognised until his glance fell uponthe occupant of the corner seat opposite, generally filled by himself.

  "There's the man who's waiting for me!" thought Jones instantly.

  He knew it at once. The man, he saw, was sitting well back into thecorner, with a thick overcoat buttoned tightly up to the chin. His skinwas very white, and a heavy black beard grew far up over his cheeks. Atfirst the secretary took him for a stranger, but when he looked up andtheir eyes met, a sense of familiarity flashed across him, and for asecond or two Jones imagined he was staring at a man he had known yearsbefore. For, barring the beard, it was the face of an elderly clerk whohad occupied the next desk to his own when he first entered the serviceof the insurance company, and had shown him the most painstakingkindness and sympathy in the early difficulties of his work. But amoment later the illusion passed, for he remembered that Thorpe had beendead at least five years. The similarity of the eyes was obviously amere suggestive trick of memory.

  The two men stared at one another for several seconds, and then Jonesbegan to act _instinctively_, and because he had to. He crossed over andtook the vacant seat at the other's table, facing him; for he felt itwas somehow imperative to explain why he was late, and how it was he hadalmost forgotten the engagement altogether.

  No honest excuse, however, came to his assistance, though his mind hadbegun to work furiously.

  "Yes, you _are_ late," said the man quietly, before he could find asingle word to utter. "But it doesn't matter. Also, you had forgottenthe appointment, but that makes no difference either."

  "I knew--that there was an engagement," Jones stammered, passing hishand over his forehead; "but somehow--"

  "You will recall it presently," continued the other in a gentle voice,and smiling a little. "It was in deep sleep last night we arranged thi
s,and the unpleasant occurrences of to-day have for the moment obliteratedit."

  A faint memory stirred within him as the man spoke, and a grove of treeswith moving forms hovered before his eyes and then vanished again, whilefor an instant the stranger seemed to be capable of self-distortion andto have assumed vast proportions, with wonderful flaming eyes.

  "Oh!" he gasped. "It was there--in the other region?"

  "Of course," said the other, with a smile that illumined his whole face."You will remember presently, all in good time, and meanwhile you haveno cause to feel afraid."

  There was a wonderful soothing quality in the man's voice, like thewhispering of a great wind, and the clerk felt calmer at once. They sata little while longer, but he could not remember that they talked muchor ate anything. He only recalled afterwards that the head waiter cameup and whispered something in his ear, and that he glanced round and sawthe other people were looking at him curiously, some of them laughing,and that his companion then got up and led the way out of therestaurant.

  They walked hurriedly through the streets, neither of them speaking; andJones was so intent upon getting back the whole history of the affairfrom the region of deep sleep, that he barely noticed the way they took.Yet it was clear he knew where they were bound for just as well as hiscompanion, for he crossed the streets often ahead of him, diving downalleys without hesitation, and the other followed always withoutcorrection.

  The pavements were very full, and the usual night crowds of London weresurging to and fro in the glare of the shop lights, but somehow no oneimpeded their rapid movements, and they seemed to pass through thepeople as if they were smoke. And, as they went, the pedestrians andtraffic grew less and less, and they soon passed the Mansion House andthe deserted space in front of the Royal Exchange, and so on downFenchurch Street and within sight of the Tower of London, rising dim andshadowy in the smoky air.

  Jones remembered all this perfectly well, and thought it was his intensepreoccupation that made the distance seem so short. But it was when theTower was left behind and they turned northwards that he began to noticehow altered everything was, and saw that they were in a neighbourhoodwhere houses were suddenly scarce, and lanes and fields beginning,and that their only light was the stars overhead. And, as the deeperconsciousness more and more asserted itself to the exclusion of thesurface happenings of his mere body during the day, the sense ofexhaustion vanished, and he realised that he was moving somewhere in theregion of causes behind the veil, beyond the gross deceptions of thesenses, and released from the clumsy spell of space and time.

  Without great surprise, therefore, he turned and saw that his companionhad altered, had shed his overcoat and black hat, and was moving besidehim absolutely _without sound_. For a brief second he saw him, tall as atree, extending through space like a great shadow, misty and wavering ofoutline, followed by a sound like wings in the darkness; but, when hestopped, fear clutching at his heart, the other resumed his formerproportions, and Jones could plainly see his normal outline against thegreen field behind.

  Then the secretary saw him fumbling at his neck, and at the same momentthe black beard came away from the face in his hand.

  "Then you _are_ Thorpe!" he gasped, yet somehow without overwhelmingsurprise.

  They stood facing one another in the lonely lane, trees meeting overheadand hiding the stars, and a sound of mournful sighing among thebranches.

  "I am Thorpe," was the answer in a voice that almost seemed part of thewind. "And I have come out of our far past to help you, for my debt toyou is large, and in this life I had but small opportunity to repay."

  Jones thought quickly of the man's kindness to him in the office, and agreat wave of feeling surged through him as he began to remember dimlythe friend by whose side he had already climbed, perhaps through vastages of his soul's evolution.

  "To help me _now_?" he whispered.

  "You will understand me when you enter into your real memory and recallhow great a debt I have to pay for old faithful kindnesses of long ago,"sighed the other in a voice like falling wind.

  "Between us, though, there can be no question of _debt_," Jones heardhimself saying, and remembered the reply that floated to him on the airand the smile that lightened for a moment the stern eyes facing him.

  "Not of debt, indeed, but of privilege."

  Jones felt his heart leap out towards this man, this old friend, triedby centuries and still faithful. He made a movement to seize his hand.But the other shifted like a thing of mist, and for a moment the clerk'shead swam and his eyes seemed to fail.

  "Then you are _dead_?" he said under his breath with a slight shiver.

  "Five years ago I left the body you knew," replied Thorpe. "I tried tohelp you then instinctively, not fully recognising you. But now I canaccomplish far more."

  With an awful sense of foreboding and dread in his heart, the secretarywas beginning to understand.

  "It has to do with--with--?"

  "Your past dealings with the Manager," came the answer, as the wind roselouder among the branches overhead and carried off the remainder of thesentence into the air.

  Jones's memory, which was just beginning to stir among the deepestlayers of all, shut down suddenly with a snap, and he followed hiscompanion over fields and down sweet-smelling lanes where the air wasfragrant and cool, till they came to a large house, standing gaunt andlonely in the shadows at the edge of a wood. It was wrapped in utterstillness, with windows heavily draped in black, and the clerk, as helooked, felt such an overpowering wave of sadness invade him that hiseyes began to burn and smart, and he was conscious of a desire to shedtears.

  The key made a harsh noise as it turned in the lock, and when the doorswung open into a lofty hall they heard a confused sound of rustling andwhispering, as of a great throng of people pressing forward to meetthem. The air seemed full of swaying movement, and Jones was certain hesaw hands held aloft and dim faces claiming recognition, while in hisheart, already oppressed by the approaching burden of vast accumulatedmemories, he was aware of the _uncoiling of something_ that had beenasleep for ages.

  As they advanced he heard the doors close with a muffled thunder behindthem, and saw that the shadows seemed to retreat and shrink away towardsthe interior of the house, carrying the hands and faces with them. Heheard the wind singing round the walls and over the roof, and itswailing voice mingled with the sound of deep, collective breathing thatfilled the house like the murmur of a sea; and as they walked up thebroad staircase and through the vaulted rooms, where pillars rose likethe stems of trees, he knew that the building was crowded, row upon row,with the thronging memories of his own long past.

  "This is the _House of the Past_," whispered Thorpe beside him, as theymoved silently from room to room; "the house of _your_ past. It is fullfrom cellar to roof with the memories of what you have done, thought,and felt from the earliest stages of your evolution until now.

  "The house climbs up almost to the clouds, and stretches back into theheart of the wood you saw outside, but the remoter halls are filled withthe ghosts of ages ago too many to count, and even if we were able towaken them you could not remember them now. Some day, though, they willcome and claim you, and you must know them, and answer their questions,for they can never rest till they have exhausted themselves againthrough you, and justice has been perfectly worked out.

  "But now follow me closely, and you shall see the particular memoryfor which I am permitted to be your guide, so that you may know andunderstand a great force in your present life, and may use the sword ofjustice, or rise to the level of a great forgiveness, according to yourdegree of power."

  Icy thrills ran through the trembling clerk, and as he walked slowlybeside his companion he heard from the vaults below, as well as frommore distant regions of the vast building, the stirring and sighing ofthe serried ranks of sleepers, sounding in the still air like a chordswept from unseen strings stretched somewhere among the very foundationsof the house.

  Stealthily, picking th
eir way among the great pillars, they moved up thesweeping staircase and through several dark corridors and halls, andpresently stopped outside a small door in an archway where the shadowswere very deep.

  "Remain close by my side, and remember to utter no cry," whispered thevoice of his guide, and as the clerk turned to reply he saw his face wasstern to whiteness and even shone a little in the darkness.

  The room they entered seemed at first to be pitchy black, but graduallythe secretary perceived a faint reddish glow against the farther end,and thought he saw figures moving silently to and fro.

  "Now watch!" whispered Thorpe, as they pressed close to the wall nearthe door and waited. "But remember to keep absolute silence. It is atorture scene."

  Jones felt utterly afraid, and would have turned to fly if he dared, foran indescribable terror seized him and his knees shook; but some powerthat made escape impossible held him remorselessly there, and with eyesglued on the spots of light he crouched against the wall and waited.

  The figures began to move more swiftly, each in its own dim light thatshed no radiance beyond itself, and he heard a soft clanking of chainsand the voice of a man groaning in pain. Then came the sound of a doorclosing, and thereafter Jones saw but one figure, the figure of an oldman, naked entirely, and fastened with chains to an iron framework onthe floor. His memory gave a sudden leap of fear as he looked, for thefeatures and white beard were familiar, and he recalled them as thoughof yesterday.

  The other figures had disappeared, and the old man became the centre ofthe terrible picture. Slowly, with ghastly groans; as the heat below himincreased into a steady glow, the aged body rose in a curve of agony,resting on the iron frame only where the chains held wrists and anklesfast. Cries and gasps filled the air, and Jones felt exactly as thoughthey came from his own throat, and as if the chains were burning intohis own wrists and ankles, and the heat scorching the skin and fleshupon his own back. He began to writhe and twist himself.

  "Spain!" whispered the voice at his side, "and four hundred years ago."

  "And the purpose?" gasped the perspiring clerk, though he knew quitewell what the answer must be.

  "To extort the name of a friend, to his death and betrayal," came thereply through the darkness.

  A sliding panel opened with a little rattle in the wall immediatelyabove the rack, and a face, framed in the same red glow, appeared andlooked down upon the dying victim. Jones was only just able to chokea scream, for he recognised the tall dark man of his dreams. Withhorrible, gloating eyes he gazed down upon the writhing form of the oldman, and his lips moved as in speaking, though no words were actuallyaudible.

  "He asks again for the name," explained the other, as the clerkstruggled with the intense hatred and loathing that threatened everymoment to result in screams and action. His ankles and wrists pained himso that he could scarcely keep still, but a merciless power held him tothe scene.

  He saw the old man, with a fierce cry, raise his tortured head and spitup into the face at the panel, and then the shutter slid back again, anda moment later the increased glow beneath the body, accompanied by awfulwrithing, told of the application of further heat. There came the odourof burning flesh; the white beard curled and burned to a crisp; the bodyfell back limp upon the red-hot iron, and then shot up again in freshagony; cry after cry, the most awful in the world, rang out withdeadened sound between the four walls; and again the panel slid backcreaking, and revealed the dreadful face of the torturer.

  Again the name was asked for, and again it was refused; and this time,after the closing of the panel, a door opened, and the tall thin manwith the evil face came slowly into the chamber. His features weresavage with rage and disappointment, and in the dull red glow that fellupon them he looked like a very prince of devils. In his hand he held apointed iron at white heat.

  "Now the murder!" came from Thorpe in a whisper that sounded as if itwas outside the building and far away.

  Jones knew quite well what was coming, but was unable even to close hiseyes. He felt all the fearful pains himself just as though he wereactually the sufferer; but now, as he stared, he felt something morebesides; and when the tall man deliberately approached the rack andplunged the heated iron first into one eye and then into the other, heheard the faint fizzing of it, and felt his own eyes burst in frightfulpain from his head. At the same moment, unable longer to controlhimself, he uttered a wild shriek and dashed forward to seize thetorturer and tear him to a thousand pieces. Instantly, in a flash, theentire scene vanished; darkness rushed in to fill the room, and he felthimself lifted off his feet by some force like a great wind and borneswiftly away into space.

  When he recovered his senses he was standing just outside the house andthe figure of Thorpe was beside him in the gloom. The great doors werein the act of closing behind him, but before they shut he fancied hecaught a glimpse of an immense veiled figure standing upon thethreshold, with flaming eyes, and in his hand a bright weapon like ashining sword of fire.

  "Come quickly now--all is over!" Thorpe whispered.

  "And the dark man--?" gasped the clerk, as he moved swiftly by theother's side.

  "In this present life is the Manager of the company."

  "And the victim?"

  "Was yourself!"

  "And the friend he--_I_ refused to betray?"

  "I was that friend," answered Thorpe, his voice with every momentsounding more and more like the cry of the wind. "You gave your life inagony to save mine."

  "And again, in this life, we have all three been together?"

  "Yes. Such forces are not soon or easily exhausted, and justice is notsatisfied till all have reaped what they sowed."

  Jones had an odd feeling that he was slipping away into some other stateof consciousness. Thorpe began to seem unreal. Presently he would beunable to ask more questions. He felt utterly sick and faint with itall, and his strength was ebbing.

  "Oh, quick!" he cried, "now tell me more. Why did I see this? What mustI do?"

  The wind swept across the field on their right and entered the woodbeyond with a great roar, and the air round him seemed filled withvoices and the rushing of hurried movement.

  "To the ends of justice," answered the other, as though speaking outof the centre of the wind and from a distance, "which sometimes isentrusted to the hands of those who suffered and were strong. One wrongcannot be put right by another wrong, but your life has been so worthythat the opportunity is given to--"

  The voice grew fainter and fainter, already it was far overhead with therushing wind.

  "You may punish or--" Here Jones lost sight of Thorpe's figurealtogether, for he seemed to have vanished and melted away into thewood behind him. His voice sounded far across the trees, very weak, andever rising.

  "Or if you can rise to the level of a great forgiveness--"

  The voice became inaudible.... The wind came crying out of the woodagain.

  * * * * *

  Jones shivered and stared about him. He shook himself violently andrubbed his eyes. The room was dark, the fire was out; he felt cold andstiff. He got up out of his armchair, still trembling, and lit the gas.Outside the wind was howling, and when he looked at his watch he sawthat it was very late and he must go to bed.

  He had not even changed his office coat; he must have fallen asleep inthe chair as soon as he came in, and he had slept for several hours.Certainly he had eaten no dinner, for he felt ravenous.