The mournful, terrible
eyes were fixed on me, and it was from them, so I knew, that the bitter
wind proceeded....

Then, quick as the switching off of a lamp, the spectre vanished, and
the bitter wind was still, and opposite to me stood Anthony, in a
quiet, bright-lit room. There was no sense of an unseen presence any
more; he and I were then alone, with an interrupted conversation still
dangling between us in the warm air. I came round to that, as one comes
round after an anæsthetic. It all swam into sight again, unreal at
first, and gradually assuming the texture of actuality. “You were talking to somebody, not to me,” I said. “Who was it? What
was it?”

He passed the back of his hand over his forehead, which glistened in
the light. “A soul in hell,” he said. Now it is hard ever to recall mere physical sensations, when they
have passed. If you have been cold and are warmed, it is difficult to
remember what cold was like: if you have been hot and have got cool,
it is difficult to realise what the oppression of heat really meant. Just so, with the passing of that presence, I found myself unable to
recapture the sense of the terror with which, a few moments ago only,
it had invaded and inspired me. “A soul in hell?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

He moved about the room for a minute or so, and then came and sat on
the arm of my chair. “I don’t know what you saw,” he said, “or what you felt, but there has
never in all my life happened to me anything more real than what these
last few minutes have brought. I have talked to a soul in the hell of
remorse, which is the only possible hell. He knew, from what happened
last night, that he could perhaps establish communication through me
with the world he had quitted, and he sought me and found me. I am
charged with a mission to a woman I have never seen, a message from the
contrite.... You can guess who it is....”

He got up with a sudden briskness. “Let’s verify it anyhow,” he said. “He gave me the street and the
number. Ah, there’s the telephone book! Would it be a coincidence
merely if I found that at No. 20 in Chasemore Street, South Kensington,
there lived a Lady Payle?”

He turned over the leaves of the bulky volume. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. Roderick’s Story




Roderick’s Story


My powers of persuasion at first seemed quite ineffectual; I could
not induce my friend Roderick Cardew to strike his melancholy tent in
Chelsea, and (leaving it struck) steal away like the Arabs and spend
this month of spring with me at my newly acquired house at Tilling to
observe the spell of April’s wand making magic in the country. I seemed
to have brought out all the arguments of which I was master; he had
been very ill, and his doctor recommended a clearer air with as mild a
climate as he could conveniently attain; he loved the great stretches
of drained marsh-land which lay spread like a pool of verdure round the
little town; he had not seen my new home which made a breach in the
functions of hospitality, and he really could not be expected to object
to his host, who, after all, was one of his oldest friends. Besides (to
leave no stone unturned) as he regained his strength he could begin to
play golf again, and it entailed, as he well remembered, a very mild
exertion for him to keep me in my proper position in such a pursuit. At last there was some sign of yielding. “Yes. I should like to see the marsh and the big sky once more,” he
said. A rather sinister interpretation of his words “once more,” made a
sudden flashed signal of alarm in my mind. It was utterly fanciful, no
doubt, but that had better be extinguished first. “Once more?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“I always say ‘once more,’” he said. “It’s greedy to ask for too much.”

The very fact that he fenced so ingeniously deepened my suspicion. “That won’t do,” I said. “Tell me, Roddie.”

He was silent a moment. “I didn’t intend to,” he said, “for there can be no use in it. But
if you insist, as apparently you mean to do, I may as well give in. It’s what you think; ‘once more’ will very likely be the most. But you
mustn’t fuss about it; I’m not going to. No proper person fusses about
death; that’s a train which we are all sure to catch. It always waits
for you.”

I have noticed that when one learns tidings of that sort, one feels,
almost immediately, that one has known them a long time. I felt so now. “Go on,” I said. “Well, that’s about all there is. I’ve had sentence of death passed
upon me, and it will probably be carried out, I’m delighted to say, in
the French fashion. In France, you know, they don’t tell you when you
are to be executed till a few minutes before. It is likely that I shall
have even less than that, so my doctor informs me. A second or two will
be all I shall get. Congratulate me, please.”

I thought it over for a moment. “Yes, heartily,” I said. “I want to know a little more though.”

“Well, my heart’s all wrong, quite unmendably so. Heart-disease! Doesn’t it sound romantic? In mid-Victorian romance, heroes and
heroines alone die of heart-disease. But that’s by the way. The fact
is that I may die at any time without a moment’s warning. I shall give
a couple of gasps, so he told me when I insisted on knowing details,
and that’ll be all. Now, perhaps, you understand why I was unwilling
to come and stay with you. I don’t want to die in your house; I think
it’s dreadfully bad manners to die in other people’s houses. I long
to see Tilling again, but I think I shall go to an hotel. Hotels are
fair game, for the management over-charges those who live there to
compensate themselves for those who die there. But it would be rude of
me to die in your house; it might entail a lot of bother for you, and I
couldn’t apologize----”

“But I don’t mind your dying in my house,” I said. “At least you see
what I mean----”

He laughed. “I do, indeed,” he said. “And you couldn’t give a warmer assurance of
friendship. But I couldn’t come and stay with you in my present plight
without telling you what it was, and yet I didn’t mean to tell you. But
there we are now. Think again; reconsider your decision.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Come and die in my house by all means, if you’ve
got to. I would much sooner you lived there: your dying will, in any
case, annoy me immensely. But it would annoy me even more to know that
you had done it in some beastly hotel among plush and looking-glasses. You shall have any bedroom you like. And I want you dreadfully to see
my house, which is adorable.... O Roddie, what a bore it all is!”

It was impossible to speak or to think differently. I knew well how
trivial a matter death was to my friend, and I was not sure that at
heart I did not agree with him.