Hugo, Arnold Bennett [the false prince TXT] 📗

approached the window, and retired. He noticed that the light within the room was being moved, but it cast no human shadow on the blind. The light came finally to a standstill, and then there followed sounds which Hugo could not diagnose--short, regular sounds, broken occasionally by a sharp clash, as of an instrument falling. And when these had come to an end, there were more footsteps--a precise, quick walking to and fro, which continued for ages of time. Lastly, the footsteps receded; something dropped, not heavily, but rather in a manner gently subsiding, and a groan (or was it a moan, a tired suspiration?) wakened in Hugo's spinal column a curious, strange thrill. Then silence, complete, definitive, terrifying.

By merely pushing the window against the blind, he could enter and know the secret of the universe.

'Why am I doing this?' he asked himself, while he pushed the window. 'Why have I done this?' he asked himself, as he stood within the immense and luxurious room.

He gazed round with a swift and timid glance, as a man would who expects to see that which ought not to be seen. To his left was the fireplace, with a magnificent mirror over it. On the mantelpiece burned a movable electric table--lamp, with twin branched lights. He observed the silk-covered cord lying across the mantelpiece and disappearing over the further edge; by the side of the lamp was a screwdriver. Exactly in front of the lamp, on a couple of trestles such as undertakers use, lay an elm coffin, its head towards the mantelpiece. At the opposite end of the room was another fireplace and another mirror, with the result that Hugo saw an endless succession of coffins and corpse-lights, repeated and repeated, till they were lost in a vague crystal blur, and by every pair of corpse-lights was a screwdriver.

He stood moveless, and listened, and could detect no faintest sound. Across the room from the principal window there was a doorway with a heavy portiere; not a fold of the portiere stirred. To his right, near the other window, was a door--the door by which Camilla had entered that night a month ago; it was shut. His glance searched among the rich confusion of furniture--fauteuils, occasional tables, sofas, statuary, vases, cabinets. He peered into every corner of the silent chamber, and saw nothing that gave a sign of life. He even gazed up guiltily at the decorated ceiling, as though some Freemason's Eye might be scanning him from above.

The coffin reigned in the room; all else was subservient to its massive and sinister presence, and the bright twin-lamps watched over its majesty with dazzling orbs.

Hugo went near the coffin, stepping on tip-toe over the thick-piled rugs, and examined it. There was no name-plate. He looked at himself in the mirror, and again he murmured a question: 'Why am I here?' Then he listened attentively, fearfully. No sound. His hands travelled to the screwdriver on the mantelpiece, and then fifty of his hands picked up fifty screwdrivers. And he listened once more. No sound.

'I must do it. I must,' he thought.

The next moment he was unscrewing the screws in the lid of the coffin, and scarcely had he begun the task when he realized that what he had heard from the balcony was the screwing of these same screws. There were twelve, and some of them were difficult to start, but in due course he had removed them all, and they stood in a row on their heads on the mantelpiece. He listened yet again. No sound. He had only to push the lid of the coffin to the left or to the right, or to lift it up. He spent several seconds in deciding whether he should push or lift, and then at length fifty Hugos lifted bodily the lids of fifty coffins. And after a dreadful hesitation he lowered his gaze and looked.

Yes, it was Camilla! He had known always that it would be Camilla.

The pale repose of death only emphasized the proud and splendid beauty of that head, with its shut eyes, its mouth firmly closed in a faint smile, and its glorious hair surrounded by all the white frippery of the shroud. Here lay the mortal part of the incomparable creature who had been coveted by three men and won by one--for a few brief days' possession. Here lay the repository of Ravengar's secrets, the grave of Hugo's happiness, the dead mate of Tudor's desire. Here lay the eternal woman, symbol of all beauty and all charm, victimized by her own loveliness. For if she had not been lovely, thought Hugo, if the curves of her cheek and her nostrils and the colour of her skin had been ever so slightly different, the world might have contained one widower, one ruined heart, and one murderer the less that night.

He did not doubt, he could not doubt, after Ravengar's threats, that she had been murdered. And yet he was not angry then. He did not feel a great grief. He was conscious of no sensation save a numbed and desolate awe. He had not begun to feel. Ledging the lid crossways on the coffin, he placed his hand gently upon Camilla's brow. It was colder than he had expected, and it had the peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay--that touch which communicates a shudder even to the most impassive.

'I must go,' he whispered, staring spell-bound at her face.

He was surprised to find drops of moisture falling on the shroud. They were his tears, and yet he had not known that he was crying.

He hid her again beneath the elm plank, and, taking the screws one by one from the mantel-piece, shut her up for ever from any human gaze. And then, nearly collapsing under a nervous tension such as he had never before experienced, he turned to leave the apartment as he had entered it, like a thief. But the mystery of the heavy velvet portiere invincibly attracted him. His steps wavered towards it. He fancied he saw something dark protruding under the curtain, and he pulled the curtain aside with a movement almost hysteric. A man lay extended at full length on his chest in the passage beyond--what Hugo had noticed was his boot.

'Tudor!' he exclaimed, kneeling to examine the half-concealed face.

At the same moment a figure came quietly down the passage. Hugo looked up, and saw a sallow-featured man of about thirty-five in a tourist suit, with light beard and hair, and long thin hands.

'What is this?' asked the stranger evenly. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Hugo,' Hugo answered with assurance. 'I was walking along the balconies, as I do sometimes at night, and I heard strange sounds here, and as the window was open I stepped in and found this. Are you a friend of Mr. Tudor's?'

The other bent in his turn, and after examining the prone body said:

'I was. He has no friends now.'

'You mean he is dead?'

'He must have died within the last quarter of an hour or so.'

'And nothing can be done?'

'Nothing can be done with death!'

'I take it you are a doctor?' said Hugo.

'My name is Darcy,' the other replied. 'Besides being Tudor's friend, I was his physician.'

'Yet even for a physician,' Hugo pursued, 'it seems to me that you have been able to decide very quickly that your friend and patient is dead. I have always understood that to say with assurance that death has taken place means a very careful and thorough examination.'

'You are right,' Darcy agreed, stroking his short, bright, silky beard. 'There is only one absolute proof of death.'

'And that is?'

'Putrefaction. Nevertheless, the inquest will show whether or not I have been in error.'

'There will have to be an inquest?'

'Certainly. In such a case as this no doctor in his senses would give his certificate without a post-mortem, and though I am an enthusiast, I am in my senses, Mr. Hugo.'

'An enthusiast?'

'Let me explain. My friend Tudor was suffering from one of the rarest of all maladies--malignant disease of the heart. The text-books will tell you that malignant disease of the heart has probably never been diagnosed. It is a disease of which there are no symptoms, in which the patient generally suffers no pain, and for which there is no treatment. Nevertheless, in my enthusiasm, I have diagnosed in this case that a very considerable extent of the cardiac wall was affected by epithelioma. We shall see. Not long since I condemned Tudor to an early and sudden death--a death which might be hastened by circumstances.'

'Poor chap!' Hugo murmured.

The dead man looked so young, artless, and content.

'Why "poor"?' Darcy turned on him sharply but coldly. 'Is not a sudden death the best? Would you not wish it for yourself, for your friends?'

'Yes,' said Hugo; 'but when one is dead one is dead. That's all I meant.'

'I have heard much of you, Mr. Hugo,' said the other. 'And, if I may be excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you not learnt that it is only _they_ who are happy?' He vaguely indicated the corpse. 'If you will be so good as to assist me--'

'Willingly,' said Hugo, who could find nothing else to say. 'I suppose we must call the servants?'

'Why call the servants? To begin with, there is only one here, a somewhat antique housekeeper. Let her sleep. She has been through sufficient to-day. Morning will be time enough for the futile formalities which civilization has invented to protect itself. Night, which is the season of death, should not be disturbed by them.'

'As you think best,' Hugo concurred.

'And now,' Darcy began, in a somewhat relieved tone, when he had finished his task, and the remains of Francis Tudor lay decently covered on a sofa in the drawing-room, that mortuary chamber, 'will you oblige me by coming into the study for a while? I am not in the mood for sleep, and perhaps you are not. And I will admit frankly that I should prefer not to be alone at present. Yes,' he added, with a faint deprecatory smile, 'my theories about death are thoroughly philosophical, but one cannot always act up to one's theories.'

And in the study, at the other end of the flat, far from the relics of humanity, he began to roll cigarettes with marvellous swiftness in his long thin fingers.

Hugo surmised that under his singular and almost glacial calm the man concealed a temperament highly nervous and sensitive.

'You do not inquire about the--the coffin?' said Darcy at length, when they had smoked for a few moments in silence.

As a fact, Hugo had determined that, at no matter what cost to his feelings, he would not be the first to mention the other fatality.

The two men looked at each other, and each blew out a lance of smoke.

'What did she die of?' Hugo demanded curtly.

'You are aware, then, who it is?'

'Naturally, I guessed.'

'Ah! she died of typhoid fever. You knew her?'

'I knew her.'

'Of course; I remember. She was in your employ. Yes,' he sighed; 'she contracted typhoid fever in Paris. It's always more or less endemic there. And what with this hot summer and their