REDIVIVA!
Hugh sat that evening, that crowded evening, alone in his dingy, stingy rooms with his dead Winifred. Alone with his weary, dreary thoughts his thoughts, and a corpse, and a ghostly presence! Two women had loved him dearly in their time, and he had killed them both Elsie and Winifred. That was the burden of his moody brooding. What curse, he asked himself, lay upon his head? And his own heart told him, in fitful moments of remorse, the curse of utter and ingrained selfishness. He pretended not to listen to it or to believe its witness; but he knew it spoke true, true and clear in spite of itself.
He sat there bitterly, late into the night, with two candles burning dim on the bare table by his side, and his head buried between his feverish hands in gloomy misery. It was a hateful night hateful and ghastly; for in the bedroom at the side, the attendants of death, dispatched by the doctor, were already busy at their gruesome work, performing the last duties for poor martyred Winifred.
He had offered her up on the altar of his selfish remorse and regret for poor martyred Elsie. The last victim had fallen on the grave of the first. She, too, was dead. And now his house was indeed left unto him desolate.
Somehow, as he sat there, with whirling brain and heated brow, on fire in soul, he thought of Elsie far more than of Winifred. The new bereavement, such as it was, seemed to quicken and accentuate the sense of the old one. Was it that Winifred’s wild belief in her recognition of Elsie that day in the street had roused once more the picture of his lost love’s face and form so vividly in his mind? Or was it that the girl whom Winifred had pointed out to him did really to some slight extent resemble Elsie, and so recall her more definitely before him? He hardly knew; but of one thing he was certain Elsie that night monopolized his consciousness. His threeyear-old grief was still fresh and green. He thought much of Elsie, and little of Winifred.
It was a fixed idea with poor Winifred, he knew, that Elsie was alive and settled at San Remo. How the idea first came into her poor little head, he really knew not. He thought now the story about Warren Relf having given her the notion was itself a mere piece of her dying hysterical delirium. So was her confident immediate identification of the girl in the street as the actual Elsie. No trusting, of course, to a dying woman’s impressions. Still, it was strange that Winifred should have died with Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, floating ever in her mind’s eye before her. Strange, too, that the second victim of his selfish love should have died with her soul so fiercely intent upon the fixed and permanent image of the first one. Strange, furthermore, that a girl seen casually in the street should as a matter of fact, even in his own unprejudiced eyes, have so closely and curiously resembled Elsie. It was all odd. It all fitted in to a nicety with the familiar patness of that curious fate that seemed through life to dog him so persistently. Coincidence jostled against coincidence to confound him: opportunity ran cheek by jowl with occasion to work him ill. And yet, had he but known the whole truth as it really was, he would have seen there was never a genuine coincidence anywhere in it all that everything had come pat by deliberate design: that Winifred had fixed upon San Remo on purpose, because she actually knew Elsie to be living there: and that the girl they had seen in the street that afternoon was none other than Elsie herself his very Elsie in flesh and blood, not nny vain or deceptive delusion.
Late at night, the well-favored landlady came up, courteous and Italian, all respectful sympathy, in a black gown and a mourning head-dress, hastily donned, as becomes those who pay visits of condolence in whatever capacity to the recently bereaved. As for Hugh himself, he wore still his rough traveling suit of gray homespun, and the dust of his journey lay thick upon him. But he roused himself listlessly at the landlady’s approach. She was bland, but sympathetic. Where would Monsieur sleep? the amiable proprietress inquired in lisping French. Hugh started at the inquiry. He had never thought at all of that. Anywhere, he answered, in a careless voice: it was all the same to him: sous les toits, if necessary.
The landlady bowed a respectful deprecation. She could offer him a small room, a most diminutive room, unfit for Monsieur, in his present condition, but still a chambre de maitre, just above Madame. She regretted she was unable to afford a better; but the house was full, or, in a word, crowded. The world, you see, was beginning to arrive at San Remo for the season. Proprietors in a health-resort naturally resent a death on the premises, especially at the very outset of the winter: they regard it as a slight on the sanitary reputation of the place, and incline to be rude to the deceased and his family. Yet nothing could be more charming than the landlady’s manner; she swallowed her natural internal chagrin at so untoward an event in her own house and at such an untimely crisis, with commendable politeness. One would have said that a death rather advertised the condition of the house than otherwise. Hugh nodded his head in blind acquiescence. “Ou vous voulez, Madame,” he answered wearily. “Upstairs, if you wish. I’ll go now. I’m sorry to have caused you so much inconvenience; but we never know when these unfortunate affairs are likely to happen.”
The landlady considered in her own mind that the gentleman’s tone was of the most distinguished. Such sweet manners! So thoughtful so considerate so kindly respectful for the house’s injured feelings! She was conscious that his courtesy called for some slight return. “You have eaten nothing, Monsieur,” she went on, compassionately. “In effect, our sorrow makes us forget these details of everyday life. You do not derange us at all; but you must let me send you up some little refreshment.”
Hugh nodded again.
She sent him up some cake and red wine of the country by the Swiss waiter, and Hugh ate it mechanically, for he was not hungry. Excitement and fatigue had worn him out His game was played. He followed the waiter up to the floor above, and was shown into the next room to Warren’s.
He undressed in a stupid, half dead-alive way, and lay down on the bed with his candle still burning. But he didn’t sleep. Weariness and remorse kept him wide awake, worn out as he was, tossing and turning through the long slow hours in silent agony. He had time to sound the whole gamut of possible human passion. He thought of Elsie, the weary night through: of dead Elsie, and at times, more rarely, of dead Winifred too, alone in the chamber of death beneath him. Elsie, in her nameless grave away at Orfordness: Winifred, unburied below, here at San Remo. A wild unrest possessed his fevered limbs. He murmured Elsie’s name to himself, in audible tones, a hundred times over.
Strange to say, the sense of freedom was the strongest of all the feelings that crowded in upon him. Now that Winifred was dead, he could do as he chose with his own. He was no longer tied to her will and her criticisms. When he got back to England, as he would get back, of course, the moment he had decently buried Winifred he meant to put up a fitting gravestone at Orfordness, if he sold the wretched remainder of Whitestrand to do it. A granite cross should mark that sacred spot. Dead Elsie’s grave should no longer be nameless. So much, at least, his remorse could effect for him.
For Winifred was dead, and Whitestrand was his own. At the price of that miserable manor of blown sand he had sold his own soul and Elsie’s life; and now he would gladly get rid of it all, if only he could raise out of its shrunken relics a monument at Orfordness to Elsie. For three long years that untended grave had silently accused the remnants of his conscience: he determined it should accuse his soul no longer.
He would have to begin life all over again, of course. This first throw had turned out a fatal error. He had staked everything upon winning Whitestrand; and with what result? Elsie lost, and Whitestrand, and Winifred! Loss all round: loss and confusion. In the end, he found himself far worse off than he had ever been at the very outset, when the world was still before him where to choose. No new career now opened its doors to him. The bar was closed: he had had his chance there, and missed it squarely. Bohemia was estranged; small room for him now in literature or journalism. Whitestrand had spoilt his whole scheme of life for him. He was wrecked in port. And he could never meet with another Elsie.
The big clock on the landing ticked monotonously. Each swing of the pendulum tortured him afresh; for it called aloud to his heart in measured tones. It cried as plain as words could say: “Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!”
Ah, yes. He was young enough to begin life afresh, if that were all. To begin all over again is less than nothing to a brave man. But for whom or for what? Selfish as he was, Hugh Massinger couldn’t stand up and face the horrid idea of beginning afresh for himself alone. He must have some’ one to love, or go under forever.
And still the clock ticked and ticked on: and still it cried in the silence of the night: “Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!”
At last day dawned, and the morning broke. Pale sunlight streamed in at the one south window. The room was bare a mere servant’s attic. Hugh lay still and looked at the gaping cracks that diversified the gaudily painted Italian ceiling. All night through, he had fervently longed for the morning, and thought when it came he would seize the first chance to rise and dress himself. Now it had really come, he lay there unmoved, too tired and too feeble to think of stirring.
Five six half-past six seven. He almost dozed out of pure weariness.
Suddenly, he woke with a quick start. A knock at the door! a timid knock. Somebody come with a message, apparently. Hugh rose in haste, and held the door just a little ajar to ask in his bad Italian, “What is it?”
A boy’s hand thrust a letter sideways through the narrow opening. “Is it for you, signer?” he asked, peering with black eyes through the chink at the Englishman.
Hugh glanced at the letter in profound astonishment-Oh, Heavens, what is this? How incredible how mysterious! For a moment the room swam wildly around him; he hardly knew how to believe his eyes. Was it part of the general bewilderment of things that seemed to conspire by constant shocks against his perfect sanity? Was he going mad, or was some enemy trying to confuse and confound him? Had some wretch been dabbling in hideous forgeries? For the envelope was addressed Oh, horror of horrors! in dead Elsie’s hand; and it bore in those well-known angular characters the simple inscription, “Warren Relf, Esq., Villa della Fontana (Piano 3), Avenue Vittorio Emmanuele, San Remo.”
He recognized this voice from the grave at once. Dead Elsie! To Warren Relf! His fingers clutched it with a fierce mad grip. He could never give it up. To Warren Relf! And from dead Elsie!
“Is it for you, signer?” the boy asked once more, as he let it go with reluctance from his olive-brown fingers.
“For me? Yes,” Hugh answered, still clutching it eagerly. “For me! Who sends it?”
“The signorina at the Villa Rossa Signorina Cialoner,” the boy replied, getting as near as his Italian lips could manage to the sound of Challoner. “She told me most stringently to deliver it up to yourself, signor, into your proper ringers, and on no account to let it fall into the hands of the English gentleman on the second story.”
“Good,” Hugh answered, closing the door softly. “That’s quite right. Tell her you gave it me.” Then he added in English with a cry of triumph: “Good morning, jackanapes!” After which he flung himself down on the bed once more in a perfect frenzy of indecision and astonishment.
For two minutes he couldn’t make up his mind to break open that mysterious missive from the world of the dead, so strangely delivered by an unknown hand at his own door on the very morrow of Winifred’s sudden death, and addressed in buried Elsie’s hand, as clear as of old, to his dearest enemy. What a horrible concatenation of significant circumstances! He turned it over and over again, unopened, in his awe; and all the time that morose clock outside still ticked in his ear, less loudly than before. At last making up his mind with a start, he opened it half overcome with a pervading sense of mystery. And this was what he read in it, beyond shadow of doubt, in dead Elsie’s very own handwriting:
“Villa Rossa, Thursday, 7:30, morning. “Dearest Warren, “I will be ready, as you suggest, by the 9:40. But you musn’t go with me farther than Paris. That will allow you to get back to Edie and the Motherkin by the 6:39 on Saturday evening. I wish I could have waited here in San Remo till after dear Winifred’s funeral was over; but I quite see with you how dangerous such a course might prove. Every moment I stop exposes me to the chance of an unexpected meeting. You must call on Hugh when you get back from Paris, and give him poor Winifred’s last forgiving message. Some day you know when, dearest I may face seeing him myself, perhaps; and then I can fulfill my promise to her in person. But not till then. And that may be never. I hardly know what I’m writing, I feel so dazed; but I’ll meet you at the station at the hour you mention. No time for more. In great haste my hand shakes with the shock still “Yours, ever lovingly and devotedly, “Elsie.”
The revulsion was awful. For a minute or two Hugh failed to take it all in. You cannot unthink past years at a jump. The belief that Elsie was dead and buried at Orfordness had grown so ingrained in the fabric of his brain that at first he suspected deliberate treachery. Such things have been. He had forged himself: might not Warren Relf, that incarnate fiend, be turning his own weapon meanly against him?
But as he gazed and gazed at dead Elsie’s hand dead Elsie’s own hand unmistakably hers no forger on earth (not even himself) was ever half so clever the truth grew gradually clearer and clearer. Dead Elsie was Elsie dead no longer; she had escaped on that awful evening at Whitestrand. It wasn’t Elsie at all that was buried in the nameless grave at Orfordness. The past was a lie. The present alone the present was true. Elsie was here, today, at San Remo!
With a great thrill of joy, that fact at last came clearly home to him. The world whirled back through the ages again. Then Elsie, his Elsie, was still living! He hadn’t killed her. He was no murderer. It was all a hideous, hideous mistake. The weight, the weight was lifted from his soul. A mad delight usurped its place. His heart throbbed with a wild pulsation. The clock on the staircase ticked loud for joy: “Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!”
He buried his face in his hands and wept wept as he never had wept for Winifred wept as he never had wept in his life before wept with frantic gladness for Elsie recovered.
Slowly his conceptions framed themselves anew. His mind could only take it all in piecemeal. Bit by bit he set himself to the task no less a task than to reconstruct the universe. Winifred must have known Elsie was here. It was Elsie herself that Winifred and he had seen yesterday.
Fresh thoughts poured in upon him in a bewildering flood. He was dazzled, dazed, dumbfounded with their number. Elsie was alive, and he had something left, therefore, to live for. Yesterday morning that knowledge would have been less than nothing worth to him while Winifred lived. To-day, thank Heaven for Winifred was dead it meant more to him than all the wealth of Croesus.
He saw through that miserable money-grubbing now. Gold, indeed! what better was gold than any other chemical element? Next time next time, he would choose more wisely. Wisdom in life, he thought to himself with a flash of philosophy, means just this to know what things will bring you most happiness.
How opportunely Winifred had disappeared from the scene! In the nick of time on the very stroke and crisis of his fate! At the turn of the tide that leads on to fortune! Felix opportunitate mortis, indeed! He had no regret, no remorse now, for poor betrayed and martyred Winifred.
Winifred! What was Winifred to him, or he to Winifred, in a world that still held his own beloved Elsie?
How vividly those words came back to him now: “Don’t I know how you’ve brought me to San Remo, dying as I am, to be near her and to see her when I’m dead and buried! You’ve tried tc murder me by slow degrees, to marry Elsie! Well, you’ve carried your point: you’ve killed me at last; and when I’m dead and gone, you can marry Elsie.”
He hadn’t meant it; he had never dreamed of it. But how neat and exact it had all come out! How fortune, whom he reviled, had been playing his game! His sorrow was turned at once into wild rejoicing. Winifred dead and Elsie living! What fairy tale ever ended so pat? He repeated it over and over again to himself: “They were both married and lived happily ever after.”
All’s well that ends well. The Winifred episode had come and gone. But Elsie remained as permanent background.
And how strangely Winifred herself, in her mad desire, had contributed to this very denouement of his troubles. “I shall go to San Remo, if I go at all, and to nowhere else on the whole Riviera. I prefer to face the worst, thank you!” The words flashed back with fresh meaning on his soul. If she hadn’t so set her whole heart on San Remo, he himself would never have thought of going there. And then he would never have known about Elsie. For that, at least, he had to thank Winifred.
“When I’m dead and gone, you can marry Elsie!”
But what was this discordant note in the letter Elsie’s letter to Warren Relf Warren Relf, his dearest enemy? Was Warren Relf at the pension, then? Had Warren Relf been conspiring against him? In another flash, it all came back to him the two scenes at the Cheyne Row Club Warren’s conversation with his friend Potts the mistakes and errors of his hasty preconceptions. How one fundamental primordial blunder had colored and distorted all his views of the case! He felt sure now, morally sure, that Warren Relf had rescued Elsie the sneak, the eavesdropper, in his miserable mud-boat! And yet if Warren Relf hadn’t done so, there would be no Elsie at all for him now to live for. He recognized the fact; and he hated him for it. That he should own his Elsie to that cur, that serpent!
And all these years Warren Relf insidious creature had kept her in hiding, for his own base objects, and had tried to wriggle himself, with snake-like and lizardlike contortions and twistings, into Hugh’s own rightful place in Elsie’s affections! The mean, mean reptile! to worm his way in secret into the sacred love of another man’s maiden! Hugh loathed and hated him!
Discordant note! Why, yes see this: “Some day you know when, dearest I may face seeing him myself, perhaps.” Then surely Elsie must, have consented to fling herself away upon Relf, as he, Hugh, had flung himself away upon Winifred. But that was before Winifred died. He was free now free, free as the wind, to marry Elsie. And Elsie would marry him: he was sure of that. Elsie’s heart would come back to roost like his own, on the old perch. Elsie would never belie her love! Elsie would love him; Elsie would marry him.
What! Accept that creature Relf in his own place? Hyperion to a Satyr! Impossible! Incredible! Past all conception! No Eve would listen to such a serpent nowadays. Especially not when he, Hugh Massinger, was eager and keen to woo and wed her. “The crane,” he thought, with his old knack of seeing everything through a haze of poetry “the crane may chatter idly of the crane, the dove may murmur of the dove, but I an eagle clang an eagle to the sphere.” When once he appeared in his panoply before her eyes as Elsie’s suitor, your Warren Relfs and’ your lesser creatures would be forgotten and forsaken, and he would say to Elsie, like the Prince to Ida: “Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.”
And Elsie, Elsie herself felt it; felt it already of that he was certain. Felt this Relf creature was not worthy of her; felt she must answer to her truer instincts; felt her old love must soon return. For did she not say in this very letter, “But not till then. And that may be never?
That may be never! Oh, precious words! She was leaving the door half-open, then, for her poet.
Poet! His heart leaped up at the thought. New vistas old vistas long since closed opened out afresh in long perspective before him. Ay, with such a fount of inspiration as that, to what heights of poetry might he not yet attain! What peaks of Parnassus might he not yet On what pinnacles of glory might he not yet poise himself!
Elsie, Elsie, Elsie, Elsie! That was a talisman to crush all opposition, an “Open Sesame” to prize all doors. With Elsie’s love, what would be impossible to him?
Life floated in new colors before his eager eyes. He dreamed dreams and saw visions, as he lay on his bed in those golden moments. Earth was dearer, fairer, than he ever deemed it. The fever of love and ambition and hate was upon him now in full force. He reeled and reveled in the plentitude of his own wild and hectic imagination. He could do anything, everything, anything. He could move mountains in his fervent access of faith; he could win worlds in his mad delight; he could fight wild beasts in his sudden glory of heroic temper.
And all the while, poor dead Winifred lay cold and white in the bedroom below. And Elsie was off off to England with Warren Relf that wretch! that serpent! by the 9:40.