HE had learned to distrust Antonia’s recoveries, but that evening it would have been difficult to believe that their troubles were not over. The very drawing-room, as they came back to it after dinner, looked, he felt, like the drawing-room of a lovely young widow who was soon to marry again. It seemed, with clustered candles, and flowers where he had never seen them before, no longer to wait upon events, but to celebrate them, and Antonia herself, standing before the fire and knitting, in absurd contrast to her bare arms and pearl-clasped hair, a charity sock, had herself an air of celebration and decision. It was for him, he felt, that her hair had been so clasped, and, as she knew he loved to see it, tossed back from her brow. For him, too, the dress as of a Charles the First lady, with falls of lace at elbow and the lace-edged cape held with diamonds and pearls at her breast. Long pearls were in her ears—he had not seen them there since before the war— “What shall we do to amuse ourselves to-night, Cicely?” she asked. She had never asked it before. It had never before been a question of amusing themselves. But, though Miss Latimer, evidently, had “cried and cried,” she herself was not without signs of the evening’s magic. Her little pre-war dress, pathetic in its arrested fashion, its unused richness, became her. She, too, wore pearls, and she, too, oddly, with the straight line of her fringe across her forehead, recalled, all pinched and pallid though she was, the court of Charles the First. No one could have looked less likely to be amused, yet she struck him, to-night, as almost charming. “Shall we have some dummy-bridge?” Antonia went on. “Cicely is very good at bridge, Bevis.” “By all means,” said the young man, smiling across at her from the sofa where he smoked. “Shall I get a table?” He would really rather, he felt, for a little while, “Or,” she went on, starting a new row of her sock, “shall it be table-turning? Cicely is good at that, too. It always turns for her. Do you remember the fun we’ve had with it, Cicely? The night the Austins dined and it hopped into the corner. And the night it rapped out that rude message to Mr. Foster. I feel a little stupid for bridge.” “Yes. I remember. He was very much displeased,” said Miss Latimer. “Comically displeased. He took it all so seriously—though he pretended not to mind. Do you feel like trying it, Cicely? You are the medium, of course. It never did anything without you.” Miss Latimer did not, for some moments, raise her eyes from the fire. She seemed to deliberate. When she looked up it was to say, “One hardly could, with only three.” “Why, we were only three when it went so well, with you and me and poor Mr. Foster. “I imagine he had power.” “Well, Bevis may have power. Have you ever sat, Bevis?” “Once or twice. I’m sure I have no power. And it’s not a game I like.” He felt, as he spoke, that he disliked it very much. So strongly did he dislike it that he wondered at Antonia for her suggestion. “Why, how solemn you are, Bevis! It’s only a game, as you say. I believe you really are a little scared of it, like Mr. Foster, and think it may rap out something rude. You have a guilty secret, Bevis!” “Many, no doubt.” “You do believe in it, then?—that it’s supernatural?” From his sofa, over his cigarette-smoke, his eye at this met hers with a sort of reminder, half grim, half weary. “Still catechisms?” it asked her. She laughed, and now he knew that in her laugh he heard bravado. “As if a game could be!” she answered herself. “At the worst it’s only Cicely’s subconscious trickery. Isn’t it, Cicely? Are you tired? Will you try it? “I am not tired. But why do you think a game will do us good, Antonia?” Miss Latimer asked. Antonia looked down at her fondly; but did he not now detect the fever in her eye. “Games are good for dreary people. We are all dreary, aren’t we? I know, at least, that I am. So be kind, both of you, and play with me.” “Miss Latimer is tired,” said Bevis, looking across at her, feeling reluctance in her colourless replies. “And I’m tired, too. We’d both rather, far, play bridge.” But to this Miss Latimer at once said coldly: “No, I am not tired. Bridge is the more tiring of the two.” “Of course it is. We can all go to sleep around the table, if we like. It’s in the corridor, isn’t it? I’ll get it.” Antonia tossed aside her knitting and moved away. For a moment, after she had left the room, the young man sat on, his hands still clasped behind his head, and contemplated Miss Latimer, meditating a She was outside in the broad balustraded corridor from which one looked down into the hall, and she had lifted a bowl of flowers from a little mahogany table that stood there. Bevis closed the door behind him. He, also, laid his hands on the table, arresting her. “Tony,” he said, “give it up.” The door was closed, but he spoke in a low voice. “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” She, too, spoke in a low voice; and she stood still, her eyes on his. “I don’t like it,” he repeated. “It’s not right. Not now. After what’s happened in these years.” Oh, what a blunder! What a cursed blunder! He saw, as he spoke the words, the fire they lighted in her. She had been an actress, dressed for a part, pretending “You do believe in it, then?—That the spirits of the dead speak through it?” Cursed blunder! How pale she had become, as if beneath the actress’s rouge. There was no laughter left, or pretence of gaiety. “No: I don’t believe it’s spirits. I believe, as you said, that it’s subconscious trickery. And it’s not a time to mess about with it. That’s all. It’s ugly: out of place.” “If it’s only that—subconscious trickery—that’s what I believe too—why should you mind so much;—or even ugliness?” “And why should you want so much to do it, if that’s all you believe? It’s because you believe more, or are afraid of more, that I ask you to give it up.” “But isn’t that the very reason why you should consent? So that my mind may be set at rest? Don’t be angry with me, Bevis. That frightens me more She had him there, neatly. And why should he mind so much? He did mind, horridly. But that was all the more reason for pretending not to. “Very well,” he said dryly. “I’m not angry. I don’t consent, though; I submit. Here; let me carry it for you.” But he had forgotten his leg. He stumbled as he lifted the table and could only help Antonia carry it into the room and set it down before the fire. “There; it will do nicely there,” said Antonia. “And those three little chairs.” Her voice was still unsteady. Miss Latimer looked round at them as they entered, and then rose. “Isn’t this table a little rickety?” she asked, placing her finger-tips upon it and slightly shaking it. “It’s the one we always use,” said Antonia. “It’s quite solid. If you wanted to tip it, you couldn’t.” “I’ve seen larger and firmer tables tipped, by people “You don’t suspect Bevis, or me, I hope!” laughed Antonia, taking her place. “Not at all. But people don’t suspect themselves,” said Miss Latimer. She, too, sat down. “It’s very good of you, of both of you, to humour me,” said Antonia, still laughing. “I promise you both not to cheat.” “Shall I put out the lamps?” asked Bevis coldly. And it was still Antonia who directed the installation, replying: “Oh, no; that’s not at all necessary. We have never sat in the dark. It was broad daylight, before tea, with Mr. Foster.” Bevis took his place and they laid hands lightly upon the table. “And we may go on talking,” Antonia added. But they did not talk. As if the very spirit of dumbness had emanated from their outspread hands, they sat silent and Bevis felt at once the muffled rhythm of their hearts beating in syncopated measure. Antonia’s hands he knew so well. But he was not to rest in the mere contemplation of their beauty. Everywhere, to-night, the veils of appearance were melting before the emergence of operative yet, till now, unrecognized reality; and so it was that Antonia’s hands, as he looked at them, ceased to express her soft, sweet life, its delicacy, its mournfulness, its merriment, and, like the breathing and the heart-beats, conveyed to him the mysterious and fundamental sources of her being, all in her most potent and most unconscious. Laid out upon the darkness, And his own? Small, delicately fashioned, if resolute, they expressed his own personality in what it had of closest and most alien. He did not like himself, seen at these close quarters, or, rather, he frightened himself. The physical machinery was too fragile an apparatus in his construction. It did not secure him sufficiently. It did not sufficiently secure Antonia. Nerves rather than flesh and blood made his strength, and flesh and blood, dogged, confident, and blind, was a better barrier against fear than mere intelligence. There was more fear in him now than in Antonia, or he was more aware of what was to be feared—which came to the same thing. While she wandered sadly in dreams and abandoned herself to peril because she did not know where peril lay, he saw and felt reality, sharply, subtly, like a scent upon the breeze, like a shadow cast by an unseen presence; and because he was so subtle, so conscious, and so resolute, he was responsible. That was what it came to for him, with a suddenness that had He looked back at her hands and a pang of terror sped through him. Something had happened to them; something had passed from them, or into them. He was an ass, of course, an impressionable, nervous ass; yet he saw them as doomed, unresisting creatures; and, while he still controlled himself to think, feeling himself infected with the virus of the horrid game, the table suddenly, as if with a long-drawn, welling sigh, stirred, rose—he felt it rising under his fingers—and slowly tipped toward Miss Latimer. It was then Antonia who said, as if with frivolity, “We’re off!” Miss Latimer sat silent, her head bent down in an attitude brooding and remote. The table, returning to the level, after a pause rocked slowly to and fro. “Cicely, if it raps, will you say the alphabet for it, while I spell?” Antonia murmured. He recognized the forced commonplace of her voice. Miss Latimer bowed her head in answer. The table rocked more and more violently. Antonia had half to rise in her chair to keep her hands upon it as it tipped from her toward Miss Latimer. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was still, and then he heard a soft yet sharp report, as if of a small electric shock in the very wood itself.—One, two, three; a pause; and—One, two, three, again. A rhythm distinct and detestable. Conjecture raced through his mind. He had said that he had played the game; but he had only seen the table turned and tipped; he had never heard these sounds. Unable to distrust his senses, though aware that any one else’s he would have distrusted, he located them in the very wood under their hands. They did not come from Miss Latimer’s toe-joints; nor from his or Tony’s. Well, what of it? It was some oddity of magnetism, like the tipping, and, now that the experience was actually upon them, he felt, rather than any panic, a dry, almost a light curiosity, seeing, with relief for his delay, that to have interfered, to have stopped the game and made a row, would have been to dignify it and fix it in Tony’s unsatisfied “Are you there?” Miss Latimer was saying, in a prim, automatic voice, as of one long accustomed to these communions—“One for No, and three for Yes and two for Uncertain. Is that agreed?” The table rapped three times. “Are you ready? Shall I begin the alphabet?” Again three raps. Her voice now altered. It was almost dreamily, with head bent down, that she began, evenly, to enumerate the letters. “A, B”—a rap fell neatly at the second sound. “B,” Antonia announced. Miss Latimer resumed: “A, B, C, D, E”—another rap arrested her. “Oh—it is going to be ‘Bevis'!—It’s for you, Bevis!” Antonia murmured. “Rap!” said the table. “That is No. It is not for Captain Saltonhall,” said Miss Latimer drowsily and, drowsily, she took up the alphabet. The table, uninterrupted by any comment, spelled out the word, “Beside. “Beside. How odd,” said Antonia. It was very wearisome. Already they seemed to have sat there for hours. His fear had not returned; but curiosity no longer consciously sustained him. An insufferable languor, rather, fell upon him and fumes of sleep seemed to coil heavily about his eyelids. He wished he could have a cigarette. He wished the thing would go more quickly and be over. “T,H,E,” had been spelled out and Antonia had reported “the.” Miss Latimer’s drugged voice had taken up the alphabet again and the table had rapped at “F.” Now the word demanded nearly the whole alphabet for the finding of its letters. “O” came. Then “U.” Antonia sat still. Her eyes were fixed, strangely, devouringly, upon Miss Latimer, whose head, drooping forward, seemed that of a swooning person. “F,O,U,N,T,” she spelt. Not till then did it flash upon him, and it came from Antonia’s face rather than from the half-forgotten phrase. He sprang up, stumbling, nearly falling, catching Miss Latimer’s hands slid into her lap. She sat as if profoundly asleep. Antonia rose from her place, and at last she looked at him. “Beside the fountain. Beside the fountain. He is there,” she said. He had seized her arms now as if to hold her back more forcibly. “Nonsense!” he cried loudly. “Miss Latimer is a medium—as you know. Her subconsciousness got at yours. They are the words you used the other morning.” “He is there,” she repeated; “and I must see him. He has come for me. And I must see him.” He held her for a moment longer, measuring his fear by hers. Then, releasing her, “Very well,” he said. “I’ll come too. We shall see nothing.” But he was not sure. They crossed the room, Antonia swiftly going before him. She paused so that he might come up with “Are you satisfied?” Bevis asked her. He placed his arm around her waist and a passionate triumph filled him. Empty. They were safe. Motionless within his grasp she stared and stared and found nothing. Only the fountain was there, a thin spear of wavering light, and the fritillaries, rising like ghosts from their narrow beds. “Are you satisfied?” Bevis repeated. They seemed measurelessly alone there at the exorcised window, alone, after the menace, as they had never been. He held her closely while they looked out, putting his other arm around her, too, as if for final security. “Will you come away with me to-morrow?” he whispered. She looked at him. No; it was not triumph yet. Her eyes were empty; but of him, too. They showed him only a blank horror. “What does it mean?” she said. Dropping the curtain behind them, he looked round at Miss Latimer. Had she just moved forward? Or for how long had she been leaning like that on the table, her head upon her arms? “It means her,” he said. “She read your fear; she saw it. Have you had enough of it, Tony? Have you done playing with madness?” “How could she read my fear? I was not thinking of it. I had forgotten it. It was not she. It came from something else.” She was shuddering within his arms, and her eyes, with their devouring question, were on the seated figure. “No, it didn’t. From nothing else at all. It came from you and from me—and from her; all of us together. It was some power in her that conveyed it to our senses.” “You, I, and she—and something else,” said Antonia. She drew away from him and went toward the fire, but so unsteadily that she had to pause and lay her hand on a chair as she went. At the table she stopped. Miss Latimer still sat fallen forward upon it. Silently Antonia stood looking at her. “She’s asleep, I think,” said Bevis. He wished that she were dead. “It has exhausted her.” Antonia put out her hand and touched her. “It never was like this before.—Yes,” she said, after a pause, “she is breathing very quietly. She must be asleep. And I will go now.” She moved away swiftly; but, striding after her, he caught her at the door, seizing her hand on the lock. “What do you want?” she said, stopping still and looking at him. He said nothing for a moment. “You mustn’t be alone,” he then answered. “What do you mean?” she repeated, and she continued to look at him with a cold gentleness. “I must be alone.” “I must come with you. I make my claim; in spite of what you feel; for your sake.” Still with the cold gentleness, she shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You couldn’t say that, if you understood. Good-night.” When she had closed the door behind her, he stood Restless, questioning, he limped up and down; and, going again to the window, he drew the curtain and again looked out. Nothing. Of course nothing. Only the fountain and the white fritillaries, strange, ghostly, pallid, and brooding. Well, they would get through the night. To-morrow should be the end of it. He promised himself, as he turned away, that Antonia should come with him to-morrow. |