Hugo by Arnold Bennett (all ebook reader txt) 📖

the minor details of life are lost in large, vague glooms, and only the central figures of the composition emerge clearly, in a sharp and striking brilliance, against the mysterious background.

He knew himself in the cemetery, and immediately, by a tremendous effort of the brain, he had arranged his knowledge of the place and decided exactly where he was. Instinctively he ran by side-alleys till he came to the broad central way which cuts this vast field of the dead north and south. He hurried northwards, and when he had gone about a hundred and fifty yards he turned to the left, and then went north again.

'It's here,' he muttered.

He was in the middle of that strange and sinister city within a city, that flat expanse of silence, decay, and putrefaction which is surrounded on every side by the pulsating arteries of London. The living visit the dead during the day, but at night the dead are left to themselves, and the very flowers which embroider their dissolution close up and forget them. Round about him everywhere trees and shrubs moved restlessly and plaintively in the night breeze; the angular grave-stones raised their kindly lies in the darkness. A few stars flickered in the sky; no moon. And miles off, so it seemed, north, south, east, and west, the yellow lights of human habitations, the lights of warm rooms where living people were so engaged in the business of being alive that they actually forgot death--these lights winked to each other across the waste and desolation of a hundred thousand tombs.

With the certainty of a blind man, the assurance of a seer who has divined what the future holds, he approached the vault. He was aware that the little gate in the railing would be open. It was. He was aware that the iron door in the side of the vault would be unlocked. It was. He pushed it and entered. All difficulties and hindrances had been removed. No odour of death greeted his nostrils, unless the strong smell of chloroform can be called the odour of death. He struck a match. The first thing he saw was a candle and a screwdriver, and then the match blew out. The door of the vault was ajar, and he would not close it. He dared not. He struck another match and put it to the candle, and the vault was full of jumping shadows. And he looked and looked again. Yes, down in that corner she lay, motionless, lifeless, done with for ever and ever. Only her face was visible. The rest of her seemed to be covered with a man's overcoat, flung hastily down. He stared, enchanted by the horror. What was that white stuff round her head? Part of it seemed to be torn, and a strip fluttered across her closed eyelids. He went nearer. He touched--cold! Could she be so soon cold? And then the truth swept over him, and almost swept his senses away, that this image in the corner was not she, but merely that waxen thing made by the sculptor in Paris, that counterfeit which had deceived him in the drawing-room of the flat.

Then where was she? And why was not this counterfeit in its coffin, in which it had been buried with all the rites of the Church? The coffin? Yes, the coffin was there at his feet, with its brass plate, which had rusted at the corners; and below it, in some undefined depth, was another coffin, the sarcophagus of Tudor himself. He stooped and shifted the candle. On Camilla's coffin were a number of screws, rolled about in various directions; only one screw was in its place. He seized the screwdriver--and in that moment a tiny part of his intelligence found leisure to decide that this screwdriver was slightly longer than the one he had used aforetime for a similar purpose--and he unscrewed the solitary screw and raised the lid of the coffin, letting all the screws roll off it with a great rattle.... An overwhelming rush of chloroform vapour escaped.... She lay within, dressed in her black dress, and her dress had been crammed into the coffin hastily, madly, and was thrust down in thick, disorderly folds about her feet, and her hair half covered her face. And her face was slightly flushed, and her eyelids quivered, and the cheeks were warm. He put his hands under her armpits and wrenched her out and carried her from the vault. And then he sank to the ground sobbing.

What caused him to sob? If any man dared now to ask him, and if he dared to answer, he might reply that it was not grief nor joy, nor the reaction from an intolerable strain, but simply the idea of the terrific and heart-breaking cruelty of Ravengar which had dragged from him a sob.

The path followed by the madman's brain was easy to pursue once the clue found. He had been cheated into the belief that Camilla's body rested in that coffin, and when he had discovered that it did not rest there he had determined that the mistake should be rectified, the false made true. That had seemed to him logical and just. She was supposed to be in the coffin; she should really be in the coffin; she should be forced and jammed into it. And his lunatic and inhuman fancy had added even to that conception. She should be drugged and carried to the vault, and drugged again, and then immured, unconscious, but alive; and if by chance she awoke from the chloroform sleep after he had finished screwing in the screws, so much the better! So it was that his mind had worked. And the scheme had been executed with that courage, that calmness, that audacity, that minute attention to detail, of which only madmen at their maddest appear to be capable. Beyond any question the scheme would have succeeded had not Hugo, the moment Albert Shawn uttered the word 'cemetery,' perceived the general trend of it in a single wondrous flash of intuition. He had guessed it, and even while afraid to believe that he was right, had known absolutely and convincingly that he was right.

Camilla murmured some phrase, and gave a sigh as she lay on the gravelled path.

She had recovered from the fatal torpor in the cool night air. He said nothing, because he felt that he could do nothing else. Albert and Simon were certainly looking for him in the maze of the cemetery; they would find him soon. It did not seem to him extraordinary that he had left them in that sudden, swift fashion without a word.

Then he heard, or thought he heard, a noise in the vault, and, summoning all his strength of will, he descended the steps again and glanced within. Ravengar was there. Had he been there all the time, hidden behind the door? Or had he fled and stealthily returned? Only Ravengar could say. He had taken up the image from the corner and was replacing it in the coffin. It was as if he had bowed his obstinate purpose to some higher power which was inscrutable to him. Children and madmen can practise this singular and surprising fatalism. Disturbed, he raised his head and caught sight of Hugo. They gazed at one another by the flickering candle.

'Where's the man who helped you?' Hugo demanded faintly.

He had not much heart, much force, much firmness left. Ravengar's eyes, at once empty and significant, blank and yet formidable, startled him. He had the revolver and the handcuffs in his pocket, but he could not have used them. Ravengar's eyes, so fiendish and so ineffably sad, melted his spine. Ravengar stepped forward and Hugo stepped back.

'Let me pass,' said Ravengar, in the tone of one who has suffered much and does not mean to suffer much more.

And Hugo let him pass, inexplicably, weakly; and at the end of a narrow path he merged into the vague, general darkness. And then Hugo heard the sound of a struggle, and the voices of Simon and Albert--young and boisterous and earthly and sane. And then scampering footfalls which died away in the uttermost parts of the cemetery.

And Camilla sat up, rubbing her eyes.

'It's all right,' he soothed her.


CHAPTER XXVIII


BEAUTY

'Hum! he's going to marry her,' Simon had said, and Albert had said, and Lily had said. 'I knew it all along.' When, at the end of six months, Hugo went away, much furnishing of rooms near the Dome took place by his orders during his absence.

Yet here was Hugo back at the end of the fortnight, radiant certainly, but alone.

'There was one little matter I forgot,' Hugo began, rather timidly, as Simon thought, when assured that everything was in order.

'Yes, sir?' said Simon.

'I want you to be good enough to give up your room.'

'My room, sir?'

'To oblige a lady.'

'A lady, sir?'

'I should say a lady's lady.'

Simon paused. He was wounded, but he would not show it.

'With pleasure, sir.'

'To-night,' Hugo proceeded, 'you can occupy my bed in the dome;' and he pointed to the spot where, during the day, the bed lay ingeniously hidden in a recess of the wall. 'I shall no longer need it. To-morrow we can make some more permanent arrangement for you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Also,' Hugo continued, 'I would like you to go along to the offices of the _Morning Post_ for me some time to-night before ten o'clock and take this. There will be a guinea to pay.' Hugo handed him a slip of paper.

'Yes, sir.'

'Read it,' said Hugo.

And Simon read: '"A marriage has been arranged, and"--and--has taken place, sir?'

'Precisely.'

'Precisely, sir. "Has taken place at Hythe between Mr. Owen Hugo, of Sloane Street, London, and Mrs. Camilla Tudor, widow of the late Mr. Francis Tudor."'

'You are the first to know, Simon.'

Simon bowed.

'May I respectfully venture to wish you every happiness, sir?' Simon pronounced at his most formal.

'No, you may not,' said Hugo. 'But you may shake hands with me.'

And he respectfully ventured to explain to Simon how, in the case of a man like himself, with three thousand five hundred tongues ever ready to wag about him, absolute secrecy had been the only policy.

'Telephone down to the refreshment department for Tortoni to come up to me instantly. I must order a dinner for two. My wife and her maid will be here in half an hour. I shall not want you--at any rate, before ten-thirty or so.'

'Yes, sir. And the maid?'

'What about the maid?'

'You said you would order dinner for two, sir.'

'Look here, Simon,' said Hugo. 'If you will take the maid down to dine in the Central Restaurant and keep her there--take her with you for a drive to the _Morning Post_--I shall regard it as a favour. Catch!' And he threw to Simon the gold token, which made Simon master of all the good things in the entire building. 'Make use of that.'

Simon felt a little nervous at the prospect. He had not seen the maid. However, he hoped for the best, and assured Hugo of his delight.

'I forgot to inform you, sir,' he turned back to tell Hugo as he was leaving the room, 'Doctor Darcy called again to-day. He has called several times the last few days. He said he might look in again to-night.'

The bridegroom started.

'If he should,' Hugo ordered, 'don't say I'm in till