Distraught with terror, he thrust the match into the soaked pile and
the flame flared up. Perhaps the body had rolled off the bed. It must,
in any case, be here somewhere, and when once the room was alight there
would be nothing more to fear. High rose the smoky flame, and banging
the door, he leaped down the stairs to set light to the pile below and
be gone from the house. Yet, whatever monstrous miracle his eye had
assured him of, it could not be that she still lived and had left the
place where she lay, for she had ceased to breathe when the noose was
tight round her neck, and her fight for life and air had long been
stilled. But, if by some hideous witchcraft, she was not dead, it would
soon be over now with her in the stupefaction of the smoke and the
scorching flames. Let be; the door was shut and she within, for him it
remained to be finished with the business, and flee from the house of
terror, lest he leave the sanity of his soul behind him. The red glare from the hearth in the studio lit his steps down the
passage from the stairway, and already he could hear from above the
dry crack and snap from the fire that prospered there. As he shuffled
in, he held his hands to his head, as if pressing the brain back into
its cool case, from which it seemed eager to fly out into the welter
of storm and fire and hideous imagination. If he could only control
himself for a few moments more, all would be done and he would escape
from this disordered haunted place into the night and the gale, leaving
behind him the blaze that would burn away all perilous stuff. Again
the flames broke out in the embers on the hearth, bravely burning,
and he took from the heart of the glare a fragment on which the fire
was bursting into yellow flowers. He heeded not the scorching of his
hand, for it was but for a moment that he held it, and then plunged it
into the pile that dripped with the oil he had poured on it. A tower
of flame mounted, licking the rafters of the low ceiling, then died
away as if suffocated by its own smoke, but crept onwards, nosing its
way along till it reached the straw mat, which blazed fiercely. That
blaze kindled the courage in him; whatever trick his imagination had
played on him just now, he had nothing to fear except his own terror,
which now he mastered again, for nothing real could ever escape from
the conflagration, and it was only the real that he feared. Spells and
witchcrafts and superstitions, such as for the last twenty years had
battened on him, were all enclosed in that tight-drawn noose. It was time to be gone, for all was safe now, and the room was growing
to oven-heat. But as he picked his way across the floor over which
runnels of flames from the split barrel were beginning to spread this
way and that, he heard from above the sound of a door unlatched, and
footsteps light and firm tapped on the stairs. For one second the sheer
catalepsy of panic seized him, but he recovered his control, and with
hands that groped through the thick smoke he found the door. At that
moment the fire shot up in a blaze of blinding flame, and there in the
doorway stood Ellen. It was no withered body and bloated face that
confronted him, but she with whom he had trysted in the wood, with the
bloom of eternal youth upon her, and the smooth soft hand, on which
was her wedding-ring, pointed at him. It was in vain that he called on himself to rush forward out of that
torrid and suffocating air. The front door was open, he had but to pass
her and speed forth safe into the night. But no power from his will
reached his limbs; his will screamed to him, “Go, go! Push by her: it
is but a phantom which you fear!” but muscle and sinew were in mutiny,
and step by step he retreated before that pointing finger and the
radiant shape that advanced on him. The flames that flickered over the
floor had discovered the paraffin he had spilt, and leaped up his leg. Just one spot in his brain retained lucidity from the encompassing
terror. Somewhere behind that barrier of fire there was the second
door into the garden. He had but cursorily attempted to unlock its
rusty wards; now, surely, the knowledge that there alone was escape
would give strength to his hand. He leaped backwards through the
flames, still with eyes fixed on her who ever advanced in time with
his retreat, and turning, wrestled and strove with the key. Something
snapped in his hand, and there still in the keyhole was the bare shaft. Holding his breath, for the heat scorched his throat, he groped towards
where he knew was the window through which he had first seen her that
night. The flames licked fiercely round it, but there, beneath his
hand, was the hasp, and he threw it open. At that the wind poured in as
through the nozzle of a plied bellows, and Death rose high and bright
around him. Through the flames, as he sank to the floor, a face radiant
with revenge smiled on him. Inscrutable Decrees




Inscrutable Decrees


I had found nothing momentous in the more august pages of _The Times_
that morning, and so, just because I was lazy and unwilling to embark
on a host of businesses that were waiting for me, I turned to the first
page and, beginning with the seventh column, pondered profoundly over
“Situations Vacant,” and hoped that the “Gentlewoman fond of games,”
who desired the position of governess, would find the very thing to
suit her. I glanced at the notices of lectures to be delivered under
the auspices of various learned societies, and was thankful that I had
not got to give or to listen to any of them. I debated over “Business
Opportunities”; I vainly tried to conjecture clues to mysterious
“Personal” paragraphs, and, still pursuing my sideways, crab-fashion
course, came to “Deaths Continued.”

There, with a shock of arrest, I saw that Sybil Rorke, widow of the
late Sir Ernest Rorke, had died at Torquay, suddenly, at the age of
thirty-two. It seemed strange that there should be only this bare
announcement concerning a woman who at one time had been so well-known
and dazzling a figure; and turning to the obituary notices, I found
that my inattentive skimming had overlooked a paragraph there of
appreciation and regret. She had died during her sleep, and it was
announced that an inquest would be held. My laziness then had been
of some use, for Archie Rorke, distant cousin but successor to Sir
Ernest’s estates and title, was arriving that evening to spend a few
country days with me, and I was glad to have known this before he came. How it would affect him, or whether, indeed, it would affect him at
all, I had no idea. What a mysterious affair it had been! No one, I supposed, knew the
history of it except he, now that Lady Rorke was dead. If anyone knew,
it should have been myself, and yet Archie, my oldest friend, whose
best man I was to have been, had never opened his lips to a syllable of
explanation.