Flames. Robert Hichens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ when the rooks were going home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of holidays."

      "Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes; I am feeling a bit out of sorts to-night. Last night, you see—and then to-day."

      "Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting—but no, forgive me.

       I've got your promise. Well, what is it?"

      Julian replied quickly:

      "That man I told you about, Marr, is dead."

      Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent allusions to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had impressed him as it had impressed Valentine. However, he only said:

      "Heart disease?"

      "I don't know. There is going to be an inquest."

      "When did he die?"

      "Last night, or rather at four in the morning; just as Valentine came out of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the clock striking?"

      "Certainly, I do. But why do you connect the two circumstances?"

      "Doctor, how can you tell that I do?"

      "By your expression, the tone of your voice."

      "You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told Valentine so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."

      "You have just come from that deathbed now?"

      "Yes."

      Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of the dead man.

      "He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him," he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."

      "The man was gone, you see, Addison."

      "Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the body?"

      "Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an impression."

      "But there was something more here—more than peace. There was a—well, a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."

      The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky, and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor, still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes fixed on the fire. He did not speak again until he was half way through his gruel. Then he said:

      "And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history?"

      "No; nothing."

      "I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of study. If I knew it I might understand the startling change from the aspect of evil to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man must have been far less evil than you thought him, for dead faces express something that was always latent, if not known, in the departed natures. Ignorantly, you possibly attributed to Marr a nature far more horrible than he ever really possessed."

      But Julian answered:

      "I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was one of the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. I never felt about any man as I did about him! And he impressed others in the same way."

      "I wish I had seen him," Doctor Levillier said.

      An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him.

      "He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say?"

      "Yes."

      "How? In what way, exactly?"

      Julian hesitated.

      "It's difficult to say," he answered. "Awfully difficult to put such a thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great power of intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he suggested a bad, a damnably bad, character. A woman said to me once about him that it was like an emanation."

      "Ah!"

      The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table beside him.

      "By the way, where did Marr live? Anywhere in my direction? Would he, for instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by Regent Street?"

      "I don't know at all where he lived."

      "Have you ever seen him with animals—with dogs, for instance?"

      "No."

      "If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have avoided him."

      "Well, but dogs avoid perfection too."

      "Hardly, Addison."

      "But Rip and Valentine!"

      The remark struck the doctor; that was obvious. He pushed his right foot slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking up the dog's loose skin in heavy folds.

      "Yes," he said; "Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do you mean to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine to-day?"

      "This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had touched him,

       I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put him out of the room."

      "H'm!"

      "Isn't it unaccountable?"

      "I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If Rupert and Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it would strike at my heart more fiercely than the deed of any man could."

      He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back.

      "The cheap satirist," he said, "is forever comparing the fickleness of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that. I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many men whom I could, and would, implicitly trust."

      "There is one, doctor, whom we both know."

      "Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. And yet his own dog flies at him."

      Doctor Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly that he could not dismiss it from his mind.

      "There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said; "yet with

       all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I cannot divine it.

СКАЧАТЬ