Bernard Capes

“ Then, with a tingling of the flesh of my thighs and a mental prayer for early deliverance, I stepped upon the blade, with a foot on either side of the rope to which I clung grimly, and in a moment felt myself going down into blackness.
The wheel turned gently under my weight, giving forth no creak or scream; and the dark water below seemed to rise at me rather than to wait my sinking toward it. But though the drip and slime of the pit shut me in, there was action in all I was doing so matter-of-fact as to half-cure me for the moment of superstitious terror. ”

“ There was in my heart no love for Dolly—no passion of that affinity that draws atom to atom in the destiny that is human. There was only the pitying protective sense that came to man through the angels, and, in its sensual surrender, marked their fall from divinity. For to the end, without one thought of wavering, Zyp must shine the mirage of my barren waste of love.
Suddenly I remembered, with a remorseful pang, that all this time I had forgotten Duke. I hurried down to the steps, calling him. He was sitting in the boat, his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. ”

“ And would Modred, satisfied with his knowledge of the dreadful heritage of remorse I had laid up for myself, forego his right to denounce me and to forever make me an outcast and alone? I hardly dared to hope it, yet clung with a strenuous longing to thought of his mercy.
It may have been hours I sat there. I do not know. I had heard footsteps go up and down the stairs many times. And then a silence fell. What was the meaning of it? Was it possible that life had only rallied in him momentarily, like the flame of a dying candle and had suddenly sunk for good and all into endless darkness? ”

“ I could not speak, but only moan like a child for cheer and comfort. And she smiled on me—the angel smiled on me, as Dolly, sweet and loving, had smiled of old. Oh, God! Oh, God! Thus to permit her to come from over the desolate waste for solace of my torment!
Was all this only figurative of the warring clash of passion and conscience? The presence was to me actual and divine. It led me, or seemed to lead, from the mouthing death—across the room—out by the open door, that none had ever shut; and then it was no longer and I stood alone in the gusty passage. ”

“ And I cried “Jason!” in a nightmare voice, and had hardly strength to turn my head away from the sight that I knew was coming. Yet through all my sick panic the shadow of a thought flashed—blame me for it who will—“Let me bear it and not give way, for he is taking the sure way to end his terror.”
The thunder of the monster death came with the thought—shook the air of the hills—broke into a piercing scream of triumph as it rushed down on its victim—passed and clanged away among the hollows, as if the crushed mass in its jaws were choking it to silence. ”

“ Before I reached the mill the rain swept down once more, wrapping the gabled city in high spectral gloom. Not dust to dust, it seemed, was our lot to be in common with the sons of men, but rather the fearfuller ruin of those whose names are “writ in water.”
So fiercely drove the onset of flying deluge that scarcely might I force headway against its icy battalions. Dark was falling when at last I reached the mill, and all conflicting emotions I might have felt on approaching it were numbed by reason of the mere physical effort of pressing forward. ”

“ I screamed; “Jason! Climb up! You are as strong as he! Climb up and defy him! We are two to one!”
Even as the volume of my cry seemed to strike a responsive weak echo from the bowels of the pit, I was conscious that Dr. Crackenthorpe was breathing behind me over my shoulder. And while the sound of my voice ran from beam to beam in devilish harmonics, the cripple suddenly threw up his arms with a quavering screech and leaped upon the threshold of the cupboard.
“The man!” he yelled; “the dog, and now the man! I know him at last!” ”

“ Daily probing and analyzing such darkly dismal problems as these, I slowly crawled through convalescence to recovery.
It was a sweltering morning in early July that I first crept out of doors, with Zyp for my companion. It was happiness to me to have her by my side, though as yet my weak and watery veins could prickle to no ghost of passion. I had thought that life could hold nothing for me ever again but present pain and agonized retrospects. It was not so. The very smell of the freshly watered roads woke a shadowy delight in me as we stepped over the threshold. ”

“ Driven to quick desperation I strode to the door, opened it and descended the stairs.
In the blaze of my anger I burst into the haunted room, thinking to stay the monster with the mere breath of my fury. But the cold blackness drove at me, and, for all my confidence, repelled me on the very threshold.
I rushed away to the sluice, let it fall and shut off the race. Then I returned, breathless and panting, and looked at the open door.
“You’re a very material devil,” I muttered; “a boy could silence your voice, for all its boastfulness.” ”

“ All the pent-up agony of months was in my blow. As I stepped back in the recoil, madly straining even then to beat under the more furious devil that yelled in me for release, I was conscious of a hurried breath at my ear—a swift whisper: “Kill him! Stamp on his mouth! Don’t let him get up again!” and knew that it was Zyp who spoke.
I put her back fiercely. Jason had sprung to his feet—half-blinded, half-stunned. His face was inhuman with passion and was working like a madman’s. But before he could gather himself for a rush, my father had him in his powerful arms. ”

“ Walking into the tap I passed by the open door of the coffee-room, and there inside were they seated at a table together, and a waiter was uncorking a bottle of champagne behind them.
Why didn’t I go in then and there? I had found my quarry and the game might yet be mine. Ask the stricken lover who will pursue his lady hotly through anxious hours and then, when he sees her at last, will saunter carelessly by as if his heart were cold to her attractions. Some such motive, in a form infinitely baser, was mine. I may call it pride, and hear the wheel creak out a sardonic laugh. ”

“ It was all wild, elfin; ineffably strange and unearthly. I felt as if the dead past were revealed to me, and that here I might lay down my burden and yield the poor residue of life to one last ecstasy.
Dipping, swaying; now here, now there, about the dusky plat of lawn; sometimes motionless for an instant, so that its drooping skirts and long, loosened hair made but one tree-like figure of it; again whirling into motion, with its dark tresses flung abroad—the figure circled round to within a yard of where I was standing.
Then in a loud, tremulous tone I cried “Zyp!” ”

“ I felt haggard and old as I struggled into my clothes the next morning, and all unfit to cope with the gigantic possibilities of the day. Jason had gone early to the fatal pool for a bathe.
At breakfast, in the beginning, Zyp’s manner to me was prettily sympathetic and a little shy. It was the first of my great misery that I must repel her on the threshold of our better understanding, and see her fall away from me for lack of the least expression of that passionate devotion and gratitude that filled my heart to bursting. ”

“ Was the old mill uncanny from the first, or is it only the ghosts with which our generation of passions has peopled it that have made it so? This I can say: That I never remember a time when Jason or I, or even Zyp, dared to be in the room of silence alone—and in company never for more than a few minutes. Modred had not the same awe of it, but Modred’s imagination was a swaddled infant. For my father I will not speak. ”

“ Womanliness must have blossomed in her, and with it a sense of the right relationship of soul to body. Perhaps even the glamour of mystery that must surround my manner of life had operated as a growing charm with her, and had made me, in her eyes, something of the fascinating figure she always was and would be in mine.
Sometimes now, in thinking of him, I had fear of Jason, but more often not. Zyp’s parting words to me—that were ever in my ears—seemed weighted with the meaning, at least, that had I fought my battle well I should have won. ”

“ Then he snatched the sponge and plumped it with a slap on the withered forehead. The soot from the tablet ran in wet streaks over the sinister old face and made a grotesque horror of it. The wretched creature moaned and jerked under the shock, as though the water were biting acid.
Not a word was spoken between us for full twenty minutes—not till the fit at length subsided and left the racked body to the rest of exhaustion. The eyes became human, with what humanity was left them; the pallid face fell into its usual lines—the old woman lay flat with closed lids in the extreme of debility. ”

“ Crackenthorpe broke past me with an answering cry:
“He fired my house! Stop him! The hound! Stop him!”
As he sprang forward Duke, with a sudden swoop, seized the lantern from the floor and flung it at him; and at the same instant—as I saw by the flaming arc of light it made—clutched the rope and swung himself into the vault. The lantern crashed and was extinguished. The doctor uttered a fierce oath. Spellbound I stood, and for half a dozen seconds the weltering blackness eddied with a ghastly silence. ”

“ To hold him down and torture the life out of him inch by inch, with the terror in his eyes all the time! Why, I could kill him by that alone—by only looking at him.”
He gloated over the picture called up in his soul. If ever demon’s eyes looked from a human face, they looked from his that night.
“Duke,” I whispered in horror, “you have terrible cause for hate, I know; but oh, think of how one grain of forgiveness on your part would stand you with—with God, Duke.” ”

“ I tore to the rear of the wagon, dashed back the curtain—and there was Modred sitting up and swaying feebly from side to side.
I leaped; I caught him in my arms; my breath came in laughter and sobs. “Oh, Modred, Modred!” I cried. “I didn’t mean it—it wasn’t me—I’m not like that!” and then I broke down and wept long and convulsively, though I would never let him out of my clutch.
“Where am I?” he said, faintly; “oh, it hurts so. Every vein in my body is bursting with pain.”
At this I beat under my hysterical outburst and set to rubbing him all over in frantic eagerness. ”

“ Then she tossed up her arms and, drooping her head, once more fell to a passion of weeping.
“Zyp,” I said, quietly, when she could hear me, “what is it you want me to do?”
“We want money, Renny——” she gasped, still with fluttering sobs, drying her eyes half-fiercely as if in resentment of that brief self-abandonment. “He has no spirit to make it now as he used. We have escaped to Southampton, intending to go abroad somewhere, and lose ourselves and be lost. We fled in a fright, unthinking, and now we can get no further. You’ll help us, Renny, won’t you?” ”