Flames. Robert Hichens
staring at the dead man.
There was a very long silence in the room. The rain leaped upon the tall windows on each side of the mirror and ran down them with an unceasing chilly vivacity. Lights from the street flickered through the blinds to join the glare of the gas. All the music of the town wandered round the house as a panther wanders round a bungalow by night. And the thin stream of people flowed by on the shining pavement beyond the iron railing of the narrow garden. They spoke, as they went, of all the minor things of life, details of home, details of petty sins, details of common loves and common hopes and fears, all stirring feebly under umbrellas. And close by these two friends, under three flaring gas-jets, watched the unwinking dead man, whose face seemed full of relief. Presently Julian, without looking up, said:
"Death has utterly changed him. He is no longer the same man. Formerly he looked all evil, and now it's just as if his body were thanking God because it had got rid of a soul it had hated. Yes, it's just like that. Valentine, I feel as if Marr had been rescued."
As he said the last words Julian looked up across the barrier of the bed at his friend. His lips opened as if to speak, but he said nothing; for he was under the spell of a wild hallucination. It seemed to him that there, under the hard glare of the gas-lamps, the soul of Marr spoke, stared from the pure, proud face of Valentine. That was like a possession of his friend. It was horrible, as if a devil chose for a moment to lurk and to do evil in the sanctuary of a church, to blaspheme at the very altar. Valentine did not speak. He was looking down on the dead serenity of Marr, vindictively. A busy intellect flashed in his clear blue eyes, meditating vigorously upon the dead man's escape from bondage, following him craftily to the very door of his freedom, to seize him surely, if it might be.
This is what Julian felt in his hallucination, that Valentine was pursuing Marr, uselessly, but with a deadly intention, a deadly hatred.
"Valentine!" Julian cried at last.
Valentine looked up.
And in an instant the spell was removed. Julian saw his friend and protector rightly again, calm, pure, delicately reserved. The death-chamber no longer contained a phantom. His eyes were no longer the purveyors of a terrible deception to his mind.
"Oh, Valentine, come here," Julian said.
Valentine came round by the end of the bed and stood beside him.
Julian examined him narrowly.
"Never stand opposite to me again, Valentine."
"Opposite to you! Why not?"
"Nothing, nothing. Or—everything. What is the matter with this room? and me? and you? And why is Marr so changed?"
"How is he changed? You know I have never seen his face before."
"You do not see it now. He has gone out of it. All that was Marr as I knew him has utterly gone. Death has driven it away and left something quite different. Let us go."
Julian got up. Valentine took up the candle from its place beside the curling-pins and lifted his hand to the gas-chandelier. He had turned out one of the burners, and was just going to turn out the two others when Julian checked him.
"No; leave them. Let the landlord put them out. Leave him in the light."
They went out of the room, treading softly. A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian beckoned to her.
"You showed the gentleman—the gentleman who is dead—to his room last night?"
"Yes, sir. Oh, sir, I can't believe he's really gone so sudden like."
"Then you saw the lady with him?"
"Yes, of course. Oh—"
"Hush! What was she like?"
The housemaid's nose curled derisively.
"Oh, sir, quite the usual sort. Oh, a very common person. Not at all like the poor gentleman, sir."
"Young?"
"Not to say old, sir. No; I couldn't bring that against her. She wore a hat, sir, and feathers—well, more than ever growed on one ostrich, I'll be bound."
"Feathers!"
A vision of the lady of the feathers sprang up before Julian, wrapped in the wan light of the early dawn. He put several rapid questions to the housemaid. But she could only say again that Marr's companion had been a very common person, a very common sort of person indeed, and flashily dressed, not at all as she—the housemaid—would care to go out of a Sunday. Julian tipped her and left her amazed upon the dim landing. Then he and Valentine descended the stairs. The landlord was waiting in the passage in an attentive attitude against the wall. He seemed taken unawares by their appearance, but his eyes immediately sought Valentine's face, still apparently questioning it with avidity. Julian noticed this, and recollected that the man had insisted on a likeness existing between Marr and Valentine. Possibly that fact, although apparently unremembered, had remained lurking in his mind, and was accountable for his own curious deception. Or could it be that there really was some vague, fleeting resemblance between the dead man and the living which the landlord saw continuously, he only at moments? Looking again at Valentine he could not believe it. No; the landlord was deceived now, as he had been in the death-chamber above stairs.
"May we come into your room for a moment?" Julian asked the man. "I want to put to you a few questions."
"But certainly, sir, with pleasure."
He opened the side door and showed them into his sanctum beyond the glass window. It was a small, evil-looking room, crowded with fumes of stale tobacco. On the walls hung two or three French prints of more than doubtful decency. A table with a bottle and two or three glasses ranged on it occupied the middle of the floor. On a chair by the fire the Gil Bias was thrown in a crumpled attitude. One gas-burner flared, unshaded by any glass globe. Julian sat down on the Gil Bias. Valentine refused the landlord's offer of a chair, and stood looking rather contemptuously at the inartistic improprieties of the prints.
"Did you let in the gentleman who came last night?" asked Julian.
"But, sir, of course. I am always here. I mind my house. I see that only respect-"
"Exactly. I don't doubt that for a moment. What was the lady like—the lady who accompanied him?"
"Oh, sir, very chic, very pretty."
"Didn't you hear her go out in the night?"
The landlord looked for a moment as if he were considering the advisableness of a little bluster. He stared hard at Julian and thought better of it.
"Not a sound, not a mouse. Till the bell rang I slept. Then she is gone!"
"Would you recognize her again?"
"But no. I hardly look at her, and I see so many."
"Yes, yes, no doubt. And the gentleman. When you went into his room?"
"Ah! He was half sitting up. I come in. He just look at me. He fall back.
He is dead. He say nothing. Then I—I run."
"That's all I wanted to know," Julian said. "Valentine, shall we go?"
"By all means."
The landlord seemed relieved at their decision, and eagerly let them out into the pouring rain. When they were in the dismal strip of garden Julian turned and looked up at the lit windows of the bedroom on the first story. Marr was lying there in the bright illumination at ease, relieved of his soul. But, as Julian looked, the two windows suddenly grew dark. Evidently the economical landlord had hastened up, observed the waste of the material he had to pay for, and abruptly stopped it. At the gate they called a cab.
"No; let us have the glass up," Julian said; "a drop of rain more or less doesn't matter. And I want some air."
"So