Flames Part 26

Julian came forward and leant his arm on the counter.

"I am the poor gentleman's great friend," he said. "You must let me see him."

The landlord held up his fat hands with a large gesticulation of refusal.

"I cannot, sir. To-morrow they remove him. They sit on the poor gentleman--"

"I know,--the inquest. All this is very hard upon you, an honest man trying to make an honest living."

Julian put some money into one of the agitated hands.

"My friend and I only wish to see him for a moment."

"Monsieur, I cannot. I--"

Julian insinuated another sovereign into his protesting fingers. They took it as an anemone takes a shrimp, and made a gesture of abdication.

"Well, if Monsieur is the friend of the poor gentleman, I have not the heart, I am tender-hearted, I am foolish--"

He disappeared muttering from the window, and in a moment appeared at a door on the left, disclosing himself now fully as a degraded, flaccid-looking, frouzy ruffian of a very low type, flashily dressed, and of a most unamiable expression. Taking a candlestick from a dirty marble-topped slab that projected from the pa.s.sage-wall, he struck a match, lit the candle, and preceded them up the narrow flight of stairs, his boots creaking loudly at every step. On the landing at the top a smart maid-servant with a very pale face reconnoitered the party for a moment with furtive curiosity, then flitted away in the darkness to the upper regions of the house.

The landlord paused by a door numbered with a black number.

"He is in here," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "Tomorrow they sit on him. After that he go from me. Mon Dieu! I am glad when he is gone. My custom he is spoilt. My house get a bad name, and like a dog they hang him. Mon Dieu!"

He opened the door stealthily, forming "St!" with his fat, coa.r.s.e lips.

"I light the gas. It is all dark."

"No, no," Julian said, taking the candle from him, "I will do that. Go down."

He motioned him away, and entered the room, followed by Valentine, at whom the landlord again stared with a greedy consideration and curiosity, before turning to retreat softly down the narrow stairs.

They found themselves in a good-sized room, typically of London. It was full of the peculiar and unmistakable metropolitan smell, a stale odor of the streets that suggests s.m.u.ts to the mind. Two windows, with a long dingy mirror set between them, looked out towards the Euston Road.

Venetian blinds and thin white curtains looped with yellow ribbon shrouded them. On a slab that stuck out under the mirror was placed a bundle of curling-pins tied with white tape, a small brush and comb, and a bottle of cherry-blossom scent. Near the mirror stood a narrow sofa covered with red rep. Upon this lay a man's upturned top-hat, in the corner of which reposed a pair of reindeer gloves. A walking-stick with a gold top stood against the wall, in a corner by the marble mantlepiece.

In the middle of the room lay a small open portmanteau, disclosing a disorder of shirts, handkerchiefs, and boots, a cheque-book, a bottle of brandy, and some brushes. By the fireplace there was a vulgar-looking arm-chair upholstered in red. The room was full of the faint sound of London voices and London traffic.

Julian went straight up to the gas chandelier and lit all three jets.

His action was hurried and abrupt. Then he set the candle down beside the bundle of curling-pins, and turned sharply round to face the bed.

The room was now a glare of light, and in this glare of light the broad bed with its white counterpane and sheets stood out harshly enough. The sheets were turned smoothly down under the blue chin of the dead man, who lay there upon his back, his face with fast-shut eyes dusky white, or rather grey, among the pillows. As Julian looked upon him he exclaimed:

"Good G.o.d, it isn't Marr! Valentine, it isn't Marr!"

"Not?"

"No. And yet--wait a moment--"

Julian came nearer to the bed and bent right down over the corpse. Then he drew away and looked at Valentine, who was at the other side of the bed.

"Oh, Valentine, this is strange," he whispered, and drawing a chair to the bedside, he sank down upon it. "This is strange. What is it death does to a man? Yes; this is Marr. I see now; but so different, so altered! The whole expression,--oh, it is almost incredible."

He stared again upon the face.

It was long in shape, thin and swarthy, very weary looking, the face of a man who had seen much, who had done very many, very various things.

No face with shut eyes can look, perhaps, completely characteristic.

Yet this face was full of a character that seemed curiously at war with the shape of the features and with the position of the closed eyes, which were very near together. Julian, in describing Marr to Valentine, had p.r.o.nounced him Satanic, and this dead face was, in truth, somewhat Mephistophelean. An artist might well have painted it upon his canvas as a devil. But he must have reproduced merely the features and colouring, the blue, shaven cheeks, and hollow eye-sockets; for the expression of his devil he would have been obliged to seek another model. Marr, dead, looked serene, kind, gentle, satisfied, like a man who has shaken himself free from a heavy burden, and who stretches himself to realize the sudden and wonderful ease for which he has longed, and who smiles, thinking, "That ghastly thrall is over. I am a slave no longer. I am free." The dead face was wonderfully happy.

Julian seemed entirely fascinated by it. After his last smothered exclamation to Valentine, he sat, leaning one arm upon the head of the bed, gazing till he looked stern, as all utterly ardent observers look.

Valentine, too, was staring at the dead man.

There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of the narrow garden. They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of life, details of home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and common hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close by these two friends, under three flaring gas-jets, watched the unwinking dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, without looking up, said:

"Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. Formerly he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were thanking G.o.d because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, it's just like that.

Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued."

As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of the bed at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said nothing; for he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It seemed to him that there, under the hard glare of the gas-lamps, the soul of Marr spoke, stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. That was like a possession of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil chose for a moment to lurk and to do evil in the sanctuary of a church, to blaspheme at the very altar. Valentine did not speak. He was looking down on the dead serenity of Marr, vindictively. A busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes, meditating vigorously upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following him craftily to the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely, if it might be.

This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.

"Valentine!" Julian cried at last.

Valentine looked up.

And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The death-chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.

"Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said.

Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.

Julian examined him narrowly.

"Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine."

"Opposite to you! Why not?"

"Nothing, nothing. Or--everything. What is the matter with this room?

and me? and you? And why is Marr so changed?"

"How is he changed? You know I have never seen his face before."

"You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was Marr as I knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away and left something quite different. Let us go."

Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier. He had turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others when Julian checked him.

"No; leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in the light."

They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her.