The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes

‘What,’ thought Rose, ‘induced me to accept an invitation to this person’s house?’

‘A divine egotism, eh? It jumps with the dear Sarah’s humour. The beggar is an imitative beggar.’

‘Let the beggar speak for himself. He’s in earnest. Haven’t we been bred on the principle of self-sacrifice, till we’ve come to think a man’s self is his uncleanest possession?’

‘There’s no thinking about it. We’ve long been alarmed on your account, I can assure you.’

‘Oh! I’m no saint.’

‘Not you. Your ecstasies are all of the flesh.’

‘Don’t be gross. I—’

‘Oh! take a whisky and seltzer.’

‘If I could escape without exciting observation,’ thought Rose.

Lady Sarah Henbery was his hostess, and the inspired projector of a new scheme of existence (that was, in effect, the repudiation of any scheme) that had become quite the ‘thing’. She had found life an arbitrary design – a coil of days (like fancy pebbles, dull or sparkling) set in the form of a main spring, and each gem responsible to the design. Then she had said, ‘Today shall not follow yesterday or precede tomorrow’; and she had taken her pebbles from their setting and mixed them higgledy-piggledy, and so was in the way to wear or spend one or the other as caprice moved her. And she became without design and responsibility, and was thus able to indulge a natural bent towards capriciousness to the extent that – having a face for each and every form of social hypocrisy and licence – she was presently hardly to be put out of countenance by the extremest expression of either.

It followed that her reunions were popular with worldlings of a certain order.

By-and-by Amos saw his opportunity, and slipped out into a cold and foggy night.

II

De savoir votr’ grand age,

Nous serions curieux;

A voir votre visage,

Vous paraissez fort vieux;

Vous avez bien cent ans,

Vous montrez bien autant?

A stranger, tall, closely wrapped and buttoned to the chin, had issued from the house at the same moment, and now followed in Rose’s footsteps as he hurried away over the frozen pavement.

Suddenly this individual overtook and accosted him. ‘Pardon,’ he said. ‘This fog baffles. We have been fellow-guests, it seems. You are walking? May I be your companion? You look a little lost yourself.’

He spoke in a rather high, mellow voice – too frank for irony.

At another time Rose might have met such a request with some slightly agitated temporising. Now, fevered with disgust of his late company, the astringency of nerve that came to him at odd moments, in the exaltation of which he felt himself ordinarily manly and human, braced him to an attitude at once modest and collected.

‘I shall be quite happy,’ he said. ‘Only, don’t blame me if you find you are entertaining a fool unawares.’

‘You were out of your element, and are piqued. I saw you there, but wasn’t introduced.’

‘The loss is mine. I didn’t observe you – yes, I did!’

He shot the last words out hurriedly – as they came within the radiance of a street lamp – and his pace lessened a moment with a little bewildered jerk.

He had noticed this person, indeed – his presence and his manner. They had arrested his languid review of the frivolous forces about him. He had seen a figure, strange and lofty, pass from group to group; exchange with one a word or two, with another a grave smile; move on and listen; move on and speak; always statelily restless; never anything but an incongruous apparition in a company of which every individual was eager to assert and expound the doctrines of self.

This man had been of curious expression, too – so curious that Amos remembered to have marvelled at the little comment his presence seemed to excite. His face was absolutely hairless – as, to all evidence, was his head, upon which he wore a brown silk handkerchief loosely rolled and knotted. The features were presumably of a Jewish type – though their entire lack of accent in the form of beard or eyebrow made identification difficult – and were minutely covered, like delicate cracklin, with a network of flattened wrinkles. Ludicrous though the description, the lofty individuality of the man so surmounted all disadvantages of appearance as to overawe frivolous criticism. Partly, also, the full transparent olive of his complexion, and the pools of purple shadow in which his eyes seemed to swim like blots of resin, neutralised the superficial barrenness of his face. Forcibly, he impelled the conviction that here was one who ruled his own being arbitrarily through entire fearlessness of death.

‘You saw me?’ he said, noticing with a smile his companion’s involuntary hesitation. ‘Then let us consider the introduction made, without further words. We will even expand to the familiarity of old acquaintanceship, if you like to fall in with the momentary humour.’

‘I can see,’ said Rose, ‘that years are nothing to you.’

‘No more than this gold piece, which I fling into the night. They are made and lost and made again.’

‘You have knowledge and the gift of tongues.’

The young man spoke bewildered, but with a strange warm feeling of confidence flushing up through his habitual reserve. He had no thought why, nor did he choose his words or inquire of himself their source of inspiration.

‘I have these,’ said the stranger. ‘The first is my excuse for addressing you.’

‘You are going to ask me something.’

‘What attraction—’

‘Drew me to Lady Sarah’s house? I am young, rich, presumably a desirable parti. Also, I am neurotic, and without the nerve to resist.’

‘Yet you knew your taste would take alarm – as it did.’

‘I have an acute sense of delicacy. Naturally I am prejudiced in favour of virtue.’

‘Then – excuse me – why put yours to a demoralising test?’

‘I am not my own master. Any formless apprehension – any shadowy fear enslaves my will. I go to many places from the simple dread of being called upon to explain my reasons for refusing. For the same cause I may appear to acquiesce in indecencies my soul abhors; to give countenance to opinions innately distasteful to me. I am a quite colourless personality.’

‘Without force or object in life?’

‘Life, I think, I live for its isolated moments – the first half-dozen pulls at a cigarette, for instance, after a generous meal.’

‘You take the view, then—’

‘Pardon me. I take no views. I am not strong enough to take anything – not even myself – seriously.’

‘Yet you know that the trail of such volitionary ineptitude reaches backwards under and beyond the closed door you once issued from?’

‘Do I? I know at least that the ineptitude intensifies with every step of constitutional decadence. It may be that I am wearing down to the nerve of life. How shall I find that? diseased? Then it is no happiness to me to think it imperishable.’

‘Young man, do you believe in a creative divinity?’

‘Yes.’