The Second E.F. Benson Megapack. E.F. Benson
but a faint blur of light behind the gathering clouds.
Case had used a solitary match to light his lamp, and did not know where, in his own bungalow, he might find a box. But he could get one for certain out of Oldham’s bedroom, for he was a person of extremely orderly habits, and always kept one on a ledge just inside his bedroom door. Case got up and in the dark groped his way across the lobby out of which Oldham’s bedroom opened, and feeling with his hand, immediately found the box on the ledge at the foot of his bed. Standing there, he lit a match, and his eye fell on the bed itself. It was covered with a dark blanket, and on the centre of it, coiled and sleeping, like a round pool of black water, lay a huge cobra. On the moment the match went out—it had barely been lit—and, closing the bedroom door, he went out again on to the veranda.
He did not rekindle his lamp, but sat, laying the forgotten match-box on his table, and looking out into the blackness of the yawning night. The wind that had extinguished his light had died away again, and all round he heard the heavy plump of the rain, which was beginning to fall heavily. Before five minutes were past, the sluices of the sky were fully open again, and the downpour had become torrential. The lightning, that an hour ago had but winked remotely on the horizon, was becoming more vivid, and the response of the thunder more immediate. At the gleam of the frequent flashes from the sky, the trees in front of the bungalow, the road, and the fields that lay beyond it, started into colour seen through the veil of the rain, that hung like a curtain of glass beads, firm and perpendicular, and then vanished again into the impenetrable blackness. He was not conscious of thought; it seemed only that a vivid picture was spread before his mind—the picture of a dark-blanketed bed on which, like a round black pool, there lay the coiled and sleeping cobra. The door of that room was shut, and a man entering it would no longer find, as he had done, a match-box ready to his hand, close beside the door.
For another hour he sat there, this mental picture starting from time to time into brilliant illumination, even as at the lightning flashes the landscape in front of him leaped into intolerable light and colour. The roar of the rain and the incessant tumult of the approaching thunder had roused the dogs, and by the flare of the storm Case could see that Boxer and his wife were both sitting tense and upright, staring uneasily into the night. Then simultaneously they both broke into chorus of deep-throated barking and strained at their chains. By the next flash Case saw what had roused their vigilance. The figure of a man with flapping coat was running at full speed from the direction of the mess-room towards the bungalow. He recognized who it was, and now the dogs recognized him, too, for their barking was exchanged for whimpers of welcome and agitated tails.
Oldham leaped the little hedge that separated the road from the fields and ran dripping into shelter of the veranda. In the gross darkness he could not see Case, and stood there, as he thought, alone, stripping off his mackintosh. Then, by the light of a fierce violet streamer in the clouds, he saw him.
“Hullo, Case,” he said, “is that you?”
Oldham moved towards him as he spoke, and by the next flash Case saw him close at hand, tall and slim, with handsome, boyish face.
“You got my letter?” asked Oldham.
“Yes, I got your letter.”
Case paused a moment.
“Do you expect me to congratulate you?” he asked.
“No, I can’t say that I do. But I want to say something, and I hope you won’t find it offensive. Anyhow, it is quite sincere. I am most awfully sorry for you. And I can’t forget that we used to be the greatest friends. I hope you can remember that, too.”
He sat down on the step that led into Case’s section of the bungalow, and in the darkness Case could hear Boxer making affectionate slobbering noises. That kindled a fresh point of jealous hatred in his mind; both dogs, who obeyed him as a master, adored Oldham as a friend. Hotly burned that hate, and he thought again of the closed bedroom door and the black pool on the blanket. Then he spoke slowly and carefully.
“I quite remember it,” he said, “and it seems to me the most amazing thing in the world. I can recall it all, all my—my love for you, and the day when we settled into this bungalow together, and the joy of it. I recall, too, that you have taken from me everything you could lay hands on, money, the affection of the dogs even—”
Oldham interrupted in sudden resentment at this injustice.
“As regards money, I may remind you, since you have chosen to mention it, that I have not succeeded in taking any away from you,” he remarked.
Case was not roused by this sarcasm; he could afford, knowing what he knew, to keep calm.
“I am sorry for having kept you waiting so long,” he said. “But you may remember that you begged me to pay you at my convenience. It will be quite convenient tomorrow.”
“My dear chap,” broke in Oldham again, “as if I would have mentioned it, if you hadn’t!”
Case felt himself scarcely responsible for what he said; the tension of the storm, the infernal tattoo of the rain, the heat, the bellowing thunder, seemed to take demoniacal possession of him, driving before them the sanity of his soul.
“Perhaps you wouldn’t mention it,” he said, “until you had sold my debt to some Jewish money-lender.”
In the darkness he heard Oldham get up.
“There is no use in our talking, if you talk like a madman,” he said.
The sky immediately above them was torn asunder, and a flickering spear of intolerable light stabbed downwards, striking a tree not a hundred yards in front of the bungalow, and for the moment the stupendous crack of the thunder drowned thought and speech alike. Boxer gave a howl of protest and dismay, and nestled close to Oldham, while Case, starting involuntarily from his chair, held his hands to his ears until the appalling explosion was over.
“Rather wicked,” he said, and poured himself out a dram of neat spirits.
That steadied him, and, recovering himself a little, he felt that he was behaving very foolishly in letting the other see the madness of his rage and resentment. It was far better that he should lull Oldham into an unsuspicious frame of mind; otherwise he might suspect, might he not, that something was prepared for him in his room? Others, subsequently, if they quarrelled, might guess that he himself had known what lay there…but it was all dim and fantastic. Then the fancied cunning and caution of an unbalanced man who is at the same time ready to commit the most reckless violence took hold of him, and instantly he changed his tone. He must be quiet and normal; he must let things take their natural course, without aid or interference from himself.
“The storm has played the deuce with my nerves,” he said, “that and the news in your letter, and the sight of you coming like a wraith through the rain. But I won’t be a lunatic any longer. Sit down, Percy, and try to forgive all the wild things I have been saying. Of course, I don’t deny that I have had an awful blow. But, as you have reminded me, we used to be great friends. She and I were great friends, too, and I can’t afford to lose the two people I really care most about in the world, just because they have found each other. Let’s make the best of it; help me, if you can, to make the best of it.”
It was not in Oldham’s genial nature to resist such an appeal, and he responded warmly.
“I think that is jolly good of you,” he said, “and, frankly, I hate myself when I think of you. But, somehow, it isn’t a man’s fault when he falls in love. I couldn’t help myself; it came on me quite suddenly. It was as if someone had come quickly up behind me and pitched me into the middle of it. At one moment I did not care for her; at the next I cared for nothing else.’”’
Case had himself thoroughly in hand by this time. He even took pleasure in these reconciliatory speeches, knowing the completeness with which a revenge prepared without his planning should follow on their heels. Had a loaded pistol been ready to his hand, and he himself secure from detection, he would probably not have pulled the trigger on his friend, but it was a different matter that he should merely acquiesce in his walking in the dark into the room where