The Ghost by Arnold Bennett (most popular novels of all time txt) 📖

glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the stained-glass windows, now illumined by September starlight, at the beautiful carving of the choir-stalls, at the ugly rococo screen. I was afraid, and there was no disguising my fear.

Suddenly the clock chimes of the belfry rang forth with startling resonance, and twelve o'clock struck upon the stillness. Then followed upon the bells a solemn and funereal melody.

"How comes that?" I asked the priest, without stopping to consider whether I had the right to speak during my vigil.

"It is the carilloneur," my fellow watcher said, interrupting his whispered and sibilant devotions, and turning to me, as it seemed, unwillingly. "Have you not heard it before? Every evening since the death he has played it at midnight in memory of Alresca." Then he resumed his office.

The minutes passed, or rather crawled by, and, if anything, my uneasiness increased. I suffered all the anxieties and tremors which those suffer who pass wakeful nights, imagining every conceivable ill, and victimized by the most dreadful forebodings. Through it all I was conscious of the cold of the stone floor penetrating my boots and chilling my feet....

The third quarter after one struck, and I began to congratulate myself that the ordeal by the bier was coming to an end. I looked with a sort of bravado into the dark, shadowed distances of the fane, and smiled at my nameless trepidations. And then, as my glance sought to penetrate the gloom of the great western porch, I grew aware that a man stood there. I wished to call the attention of the priest to this man, but I could not—I could not.

He came very quietly out of the porch, and walked with hushed footfall up the nave; he mounted the five steps to the chancel; he approached us; he stood at the foot of the bier; he was within a yard of me. The priest had his back to him. The man seemed to ignore me; he looked fixedly at the bier. But I knew him. I knew that fine, hard, haughty face, that stiff bearing, that implacable eye. It was the man whom I had seen standing under the trees opposite the Devonshire Mansion in London.

For a few moments his countenance showed no emotion. Then the features broke into an expression of indescribable malice. With gestures of demoniac triumph he mocked the solemnity of the bier, and showered upon it every scornful indignity that the human face can convey.

I admit that I was spellbound with astonishment and horror. I ought to have seized the author of the infamous sacrilege—I ought, at any rate, to have called to the priest—but I could do neither. I trembled before this mysterious man. My frame literally shook. I knew what fear was. I was a coward.

At length he turned away, casting at me as he did so one indefinable look, and with slow dignity passed again down the length of the nave and disappeared. Then, and not till then, I found my voice and my courage. I pulled the priest by the sleeve of his cassock.

"Some one has just been in the cathedral," I said huskily. And I told him what I had seen.

"Impossible! Retro me, Sathanas! It was imagination."

His tone was dry, harsh.

"No, no," I said eagerly. "I assure you...."

He smiled incredulously, and repeated the word "Imagination!"

But I well knew that it was not imagination, that I had actually seen this man enter and go forth.

CHAPTER VIII THE MESSAGE

When I returned to Alresca's house—or rather, I should say, to my own house—after the moving and picturesque ceremony of the funeral, I found a note from Rosetta Rosa, asking me to call on her at the Hôtel du Commerce. This was the first news of her that I had had since she so abruptly quitted the scene of Alresca's death. I set off instantly for the hotel, and just as I was going I met my Anglo-Belgian lawyer, who presented to me a large envelope addressed to myself in the handwriting of Alresca, and marked "private." The lawyer, who had been engaged in the sorting and examination of an enormous quantity of miscellaneous papers left by Alresca, informed me that he only discovered the package that very afternoon. I took the packet, put it in my pocket, and continued on my way to Rosa. It did not occur to me at the time, but it occurred to me afterwards, that I was extremely anxious to see her again.

Everyone who has been to Bruges knows the Hôtel du Commerce. It is the Ritz of Bruges, and very well aware of its own importance in the scheme of things. As I entered the courtyard a waiter came up to me.

"Excuse me, monsieur, but we have no rooms."

"Why do you tell me that?"

"Pardon. I thought monsieur wanted a room. Mademoiselle Rosa, the great diva, is staying here, and all the English from the Hôtel du Panier d'Or have left there in order to be in the same hotel with Mademoiselle Rosa."

Somewhere behind that mask of professional servility there was a smile.

"I do not want a room," I said, "but I want to see Mademoiselle Rosa."

"Ah! As to that, monsieur, I will inquire." He became stony at once.

"Stay. Take my card."

He accepted it, but with an air which implied that everyone left a card.

In a moment another servant came forth, breathing apologies, and led me to Rosa's private sitting-room. As I went in a youngish, dark-eyed, black-aproned woman, who, I had no doubt, was Rosa's maid, left the room.

Rosa and I shook hands in silence, and with a little diffidence. Wrapped in a soft, black, thin-textured tea-gown, she reclined in an easy-chair. Her beautiful face was a dead white; her eyes were dilated, and under them were dark semicircles.

"You have been ill," I exclaimed, "and I was not told."

She shrugged her shoulders in denial, and shivered.

"No," she said shortly. There was a pause. "He is buried?"

"Yes."

"Let me hear about it."

I wished to question her further about her health, but her tone was almost imperious, and I had a curious fear of offending her. Nevertheless I reminded myself that I was a doctor, and my concern for her urged me to be persistent.

"But surely you have been ill?" I said.

She tapped her foot. It was the first symptom of nervous impatience that I had observed in her.

"Not in body," she replied curtly. "Tell me all about the funeral."

And I gave her an account of the impressive incidents of the interment—the stately procession, the grandiose ritual, the symbols of public grief. She displayed a strange, morbid curiosity as to it all.

And then suddenly she rose up from her chair, and I rose also, and she demanded, as it were pushed by some secret force to the limit of her endurance:

"You loved him, didn't you, Mr. Foster?"

It was not an English phrase; no Englishwoman would have used it.

"I was tremendously fond of him," I answered. "I should never have thought that I could have grown so fond of any one in such a short time. He wasn't merely fine as an artist; he was so fine as a man."

She nodded.

"You understood him? You knew all about him? He talked to you openly, didn't he?"

"Yes," I said. "He used to tell me all kinds of things."

"Then explain to me," she cried out, and I saw that tears brimmed in her eyes, "why did he die when I came?"

"It was a coincidence," I said lamely.

Seizing my hands, she actually fell on her knees before me, flashing into my eyes all the loveliness of her pallid, upturned face.

"It was not a coincidence!" she passionately sobbed. "Why can't you be frank with me, and tell me how it is that I have killed him? He said long ago—do you not remember?—that I was fatal to him. He was getting better—you yourself said so—till I came, and then he died."

What could I reply? The girl was uttering the thoughts which had haunted me for days.

I tried to smile a reassurance, and raising her as gently as I could, I led her back to her chair. It was on my part a feeble performance.

"You are suffering from a nervous crisis," I said, "and I must prescribe for you. My first prescription is that we do not talk about Alresca's death."

I endeavored to be perfectly matter-of-fact in tone, and gradually she grew calmer.

"I have not slept since that night," she murmured wearily. "Then you will not tell me?"

"What have I to tell you, except that you are ill? Stop a moment. I have an item of news, after all. Poor Alresca has made me his heir."

"That was like his kind heart."

"Yes, indeed. But I can't imagine why he did it!"

"It was just gratitude," said she.

"A rare kind of gratitude," I replied.

"Is no reason given in the will?"

"Not a word."

I remembered the packet which I had just received from the lawyer, and I mentioned it to her.

"Open it now," she said. "I am interested—if you do not think me too inquisitive."

I tore the envelope. It contained another envelope, sealed, and a letter. I scanned the letter.

"It is nothing," I said with false casualness, and was returning it to my pocket. The worst of me is that I have no histrionic instinct; I cannot act a part.

"Wait!" she cried sharply, and I hesitated before the appeal in her tragic voice. "You cannot deceive me, Mr. Foster. It is something. I entreat you to read to me that letter. Does it not occur to you that I have the right to demand this from you? Why should he beat about the bush? You know, and I know that you know, that there is a mystery in this dreadful death. Be frank with me, my friend. I have suffered much these last days."

We looked at each other silently, I with the letter in my hand. Why, indeed, should I treat her as a child, this woman with the compelling eyes, the firm, commanding forehead? Why should I pursue the silly game of pretence?

"I will read it," I said. "There is, certainly, a mystery in connection with Alresca's death, and we may be on the eve of solving it."

The letter was dated concurrently with Alresca's will—that is to say, a few days before our arrival in Bruges—and it ran thus: