 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read and recorded by William Coon, December 2006. Phantom by Arnold Bennett 1. The heart of the five towns, that undulating patch of England covered with mean streets and dominated by tall smoking chimneys, whence are derived your cups and saucers and plates, some of your coal and a portion of your iron, is Handbridge, a borough larger and busier than its four sisters, and even more grimy and commonplace than they. And the heart of Handbridge is probably the offices of the Five Towns Banking Company, where the last trace of magic and romance is beaten out of human existence, and the meaning of life is expressed in balances, deposits, percentages, and overdrafts, especially overdrafts. In a fine suite of rooms on the first floor of the bank building resides Mr. Lionel Woolley, the manager, with his wife May, and their children. Yet Mr. Woolley was once brought into contact with the things which cannot be defined and assessed, once he stood face to face with some strange, visible resultant of those secret forces that lie beyond the human ken. And moreover the adventure affected the whole of his domestic life. The wonder and the pathos of the story lie in the fact that nature, prodigal though she is known to be, should have wasted the rare and beautiful visitation on just Mr. Woolley. Mr. Woolley was bathed in romance of the most singular kind, and the precious fluid ran off him like water off a duck's back. Two. Ten years ago, on a Thursday afternoon in July, Lionel Woolley, as he walked up through the new park at Bursley to his celibate rooms in Park Terrace, was making addition sums out of various items connected with the institution of marriage. Bursley is next door to Hanbridge, and Lionel happened to be the cashier of the Bursley branch of the bank. He had in mind two possible wives, each of whom possessed advantages which appealed to him, and he was unable to decide between them by any mathematical process. Suddenly, from a glazed shelter near the empty bandstand, there emerged in front of him one of the delectable creatures who had excited his fancy. Mae Lawton was twenty-eight, an orphan, and a schoolmistress. She too had celibate rooms in Park Terrace, and it was owing to this coincidence that Lionel had made her acquaintance six months previously. She was not pretty, but she was tall, straight, well-dressed, well-educated, and not lacking in experience, and she had a little money of her own. Well, Mr. Woolley, she said easily, stopping for him as she raised her sunshade. How satisfied you look! It's the sight of you, he replied, without a moment's hesitation. He had a fine, assured way with women. He need not of envy to cure it accustomed to sewing meetings. And Mae Lawton belonged to the type of girl whose demeanor always challenges the masculine in a man. Gazing at her, Lionel was swiftly conscious of several things. The pecancy of her snub nose, the brightness of her smile at once defiant and wistful, the lingering softness of her gloved hand, and the extraordinary charm of her sunshade which matched her dress and formed a sort of canopy and frame for that intelligent, tantalizing face. He remembered that of late he and she had grown very intimate, and it came upon him with a shock as though he had just opened a telegram which said so, that Mae, and not the other girl, was his destined mate. And he thought of her fortune, tiny but nevertheless useful, and how clever she was, and how inexplicably different from the rest of her sex, and how she would adorn his house and set him off and help him in his career. He heard himself saying negligently to friends, my wife speaks French like a native. Of course my wife has traveled a great deal. My wife has thoroughly studied the management of children. Now my wife does understand the art of dress. I put my wife's bit of money into so-and-so. In short, Lionel was as near-being in love as his character permitted. And while he walked by Mae's side past the bowling greens at the summit of the hill, she, lightly quizzing the raw newness of the park and its appurtenances, he wondered, he honestly wondered, that he could ever have hesitated between Mae Lawton and the other. Her superiority was too obvious. There was a woman of the world. She. In a flash he knew that he would propose to her that very afternoon. And when he had suggested a stroll towards Morthorn, and she had deliciously agreed, he was conscious of a tumultuous uplifting and splendid carelessness of spirits. Imagine me bringing it to a climax today, he reflected, profoundly pleased with himself. Ah well, it will be settled once for all. He admired his own decision. He was quite struck by it. I shall call her Mae before I leave her, he thought, gazing at her, and discovering how well the name suited her with its significances of alertness, geniality, and half-mocking coiness. So school is closed, he said, and added humorously. Broken up is the technical term, I believe. Yes, she answered, and I had walked out into the park to meditate seriously upon the question of my holiday. She caught his eye in a net of bright glances, and romance was in the air. They had crossed a couple of smoke-soiled fields, and struck into the old handbridge road just below the abandoned toll-house with its broad eaves. And whither do your meditations point, he demanded playfully. My meditations point to Switzerland, she said. I have friends in Lausanne. The reference to foreign climbs impressed him. Would that I could go to Switzerland, too, he exclaimed, and privately. Now for it! I'm about to begin. Why? she questioned with elaborate simplicity. At the moment, as they were passing the toll-house, the other girl appeared surprisingly from round the corner of the toll-house, where the lane from Toft End joins the high-road. This second creature was smaller than Miss Lawton, less assertive, less intelligent, perhaps, but much more beautiful. Everyone halted, and everyone blushed. May! the interrupter at length stammered. May! responded Miss Lawton lamely. Another girl was named May, too. May Dean. The child of the well-known Majolica manufacturer, who lived with his sons and daughters in a solitary and ancient house at Toft End. Lionel Woolley said nothing until they had all shaken hands. His famous way with women seemed to have deserted him. And then he actually stated that he had forgotten an appointment and must depart. He had gone before the girls could move. When they were alone, the two Mays fronted each other, confused, hostile, almost homicidal. I hope I didn't spoil a tet-a-tet, said May Dean, stiffly and sharply, in a manner quite foreign to her soft and yielding nature. The schoolmistress, abandoning herself to an inexplicable but overwhelming impulse, took breath for a proud lie. No, she answered. But if you had come three minutes earlier... She smiled calmly. Oh! murmured May Dean after a pause. Three That evening May Dean returned home at half-past nine. She had been with her two brothers to a lawn-tennis party at Hillport, and she told her father, who was reading the Staffordshire signal in his accustomed solitude, that the boys were staying later for cards, but that she had declined to stay because she felt tired. She kissed the old widower good night and said that she should go to bed at once. But before retiring she visited the housekeeper in the kitchen in order to discuss certain household matters. Jim's early breakfast, the proper method of washing Herbert's new flannels, Herbert would be very angry if they were shrunk, and the dog biscuits for Carlo. After his questions settled, she went to her room, drew the blind, lighted some candles, and sat down near the window. She was twenty-two, and she had about her that strange and charming, none-like mystery which often comes to a woman who lives alone and unguessed at among male relatives. Her room was her bower. No one, save the servants and herself, ever entered it. Jim and Bertie might glance carelessly through the open door and passing along the corridor. But had they chanced in idle curiosity to enter, the room would have struck them as unfamiliar, and they might perhaps have exclaimed with momentary interest, so this is May's room. And some hint that May was more than a daughter and sister, a woman, withdrawn, secret, disturbing, living her own inner life side by side with the household life, might have penetrated their obtuse paternal and fraternal masculinity. Her beautiful face, the nose and mouth were perfect, and at either extremity of the upper lip grew a soft down. Her dark hair, her quiet voice, and her gentle acquiescence, diversified by occasional outbursts of sarcasm, appealed to them and won them. But they accepted her as something of course, as something which went without saying. They adored her, and did not know that they adored her. May took off her hat, stuck the pins into it again, and threw it on the bed, whose white and green counterpane hung down nearly to the floor on either side. Then she lay back in the chair and, pulling away the blind, glanced through the window. The moon, rather dim behind the furnace lights of red cow ironworks, was rising over morthorn. She dropped the blind with a wearied gesture, and turned within the room, examining its contents as if she had not seen them before. The wardrobe, the chest of drawers which was also a dressing table, the wash stand, the dwarf bookcase with its store of Edna Lyles, Elizabeth Gascals, Thackeries, Charlotte Youngs, Charlotte Brontes, a Thomas Hardy or so, and some old school books. She looked at the pictures, including a sampler worked by a deceased aunt, at the loud ticking Swiss clock on the mantelpiece, at the higgledy-piggledy photographs there, at the new X-minster carpet, the piece of linoleum in front of the wash stand, and the bad joining of the wallpaper to the left of the door. She missed none of the details which she knew so well, with such long monotonous intimacy, and sighed. Then she got up from the chair, and, opening a small drawer in the chest of drawers, put her hand familiarly to the back and drew forth a photograph. She carried the photograph to the light of the candles on the mantelpiece, and gazed at it attentively, puckering her brows. It was a portrait of Lionel Woolly. Heaven knows by what subterfuge or lucky accident she had obtained it, for Lionel certainly had not given it to her. She loved Lionel. She had loved him for five years with a love silent, blind, intense, irrational, and too elemental to be concealed. Everyone knew of May's passion. Many women admired her taste. A few were shocked and puzzled by it. All the men of her acquaintance either pitied or despised her for it. Her father said nothing. Her brothers were less cautious, and summed up their opinion of Lionel in the curt, scornful assertion that he showed a tendency to cheat at tennis. But May would never hear ill of him. He was a god to her, and she could not hide her worship. For more than a year, until lately, she had been almost sure of him, and then came a faint, vague rumour concerning Lionel and May Lawton, a rumour which she had refused to take seriously. The encounter of that afternoon and Miss Lawton's triumphant remark had dazed her. For seven hours she had existed in a kind of semi-conscious delirium in which she could perceive nothing but the fatal fact emerging more clearly every moment from the welter of her thoughts that she had lost Lionel. Lionel had proposed to May Lawton, had been accepted, just before she surprised them together, and Lionel, with a man's excusable cowardice, had left his betrothed to announce the engagement. She tore up the photograph, put the fragments in the grate, and set a light to them. Her father's step sounded on the stairs. He hesitated and knocked sharply at her door. What's burning, May? It's all right, Father, she answered calmly. I'm only burning some papers in the fire grate. Well, see you don't burn the house down. He passed on. Then she found a sheet of note-paper and wrote on it in pencil, using the mantelpiece for a desk. Dear home, good night, good-bye. She cogitated and wrote further. Forgive me, May. She put the message in an envelope and wrote on the envelope, Jim, and placed it prominently in front of the clock. But after she had looked at it for a minute she wrote, Father, above Jim, and then Herbert, below. There were noises in the hall. The boys had returned earlier than she expected. As they went along the corridor and caught a glimpse of her light under the door, Jim cried gaily, Now then, out with that light, a little thing like you ought to be asleep hours since. She listened for the bang of their door, and then, very hurriedly, she removed her pink frock and put on an old black one, which was rather tight in the waist. She donned her hat, securing it carefully with both pins, extinguished the candles, and crept quietly downstairs, and so by the back door into the garden. Carlo, the retriever, came halfway out of his kennel and greeted her in the moonlight with a yawn. She petted his head and ran stealthily up the garden, through the gate, and up the waste-green land, toward the crown of the hill. Four. The top of Taft End is the highest land in the five towns, and from it may be clearly seen all the lurid evidences of manufacture which sweep across the borders of the sky on north, east, west, and south. North eastwards lie the Moorlands, and far off manifold the metropolis of the Moorlands, as it is called. On this night the furnaces of red cow ironworks in the hollow to the east were in full blast, their fluctuating yellow light illuminated clearly the grass of the fields above Dean's house, and the regular roar of their breathing reached that solitary spot like the distant rumour of some Leviathan beast angrily fuming. Further away to the southwest, the cauldron-bar ironworks reproduced the same phenomena, and round the whole horizon near and far, except to the northeast, the lesser fires of labour slept and flickered and glinted in their mists of smoke, burning ceaselessly as they burned every night and every day at all seasons of all years. The town of Bursley slept in the deep valley to the west, and vast handbridge and the shallower depression to the south, like two sleepers accustomed to rest quietly amid great disturbances. The beacons of their town halls and churches kept watch, and the whole scene was dominated by the placidity of the moon, which had now risen clear of the red-cow-furnace clouds and was passing upwards through tracks of stars. Into this scene, climbing up from the direction of Manifold, came Lionel Woolley, nearly at midnight, having walked some eighteen miles in a vain effort to re-establish his self-satisfaction by a process of reasoning and ingenious excuses. Lionel felt that in the brief episode of the afternoon he had scarcely behaved with dignity. In other words, he was fully and painfully aware that he must have looked a fool, a coward, an ass, a contemptible and pitiful person, in the eyes of at least one girl, if not two. He did not like this. No man would have liked it, and to Lionel the memory of an undignified act was a cute torture. Why had he bitten the girls adieu and departed? Why had he, in fact, run away? What precisely would May Lawton think of him? How could he explain his conduct to her and to himself? And had that worshiping affectionate thing made Dean take a note of his confusion, of the confusion of him who was never confused, who was equal to every occasion and every emergency? These were some of the questions which harried him and declined to be settled. He had walked to manifold and had tea at the row-buck and walked back, and still the questions were harrying. And as he came over the hill by the field-path and described the lone house of the deans in the light of the red-cow furnaces and of the moon, the worship of May Dean seemed suddenly very precious to him, and he could not bear to think that any stupidity of his could have impaired it. Then he saw May Dean walking slowly across the field, close to an abandoned pit-shaft, whose low-protecting circular wall of brick was crumbling to ruin on the side nearest to him. She stopped, appeared to gaze at him intently, turned, and began to approach him. And he too moved by a mysterious impulse which he did not pause to examine, swerved, and quickened his step in order to lessen the distance between them. He did not at first even feel surprised that she should be wandering solitary on the hill at that hour. Presently she stood still, while he continued to move forward. It was as if she drew him, and soon in the pale moonlight and the wavering light of the furnaces he could decipher all the details of her face, and he saw that she was smiling fondly, invitingly, admiringly, lustrously, with the old diminished worship and affection. And he perceived a dark discoloration on her right cheek as though she had suffered a blow, but this mark did not long occupy his mind. He thought suddenly of the strong probability that her father would leave a nice little bit of money to each of his three children. And he thought of her beauty, and of her timid fragility in the tight black dress, and of her immense and unquestioning love for him, which would survive all accidents and mishaps. He seemed to sink luxuriously into this grand passion of hers, which he deemed quite natural and proper, as into a soft featherbed, to live secure in an atmosphere of exhaustless worship, to keep a fount of balm and admiration forever in the house, a bubbling spring of passionate appreciation, which would be continually available to the refreshment of his self-esteem, to be always sure of an obedience blind and willing, a subservience which no tyranny and no harshness and no whim would rouse into revolt, to sit on a throne with so much beauty kneeling at his feet. And the possession of her beauty would be a source of legitimate pride to him. People would often refer to the beautiful Mrs. Woolly. It felt that in sending May Dean to interrupt his highly emotional conversation with May Lawton, Providence had watched over him and done him a good turn. May Lawton had advantages and striking advantages, but he could not be sure of her. The suspicion that if she married him she would marry him for her own ends caused him a secret disquiet, and he feared that one day, perhaps one morning at breakfast, she might take it into her intelligent head to mock him, to exercise upon him her gift of irony, and to intimate to him that if he fancied she was his slave, he was deceived. That she sincerely admired him he never for an instant doubted. But... And moreover, the unfortunate episode of the afternoon might have cooled her ardor to the freezing point. He stood now in front of his worshiper, and the notion crossed his mind that in after years he could say to his friends, I proposed to my wife at midnight under the moon, not many men have done that. Good evening," he ventured to the girl, and he added with bravado. We've met before today, haven't we? She may no reply, but her smile was more affectionate, more inviting than ever. I am glad of this opportunity, very glad," he proceeded. I've been wanting to. You must know, my dear girl, how I feel. She gave a gesture, charming in its sweet humility, as if to say, who am I that I should dare? And then he proposed to her, asked her to share his life, and all that sort of thing, and when he had finished he thought, it's done now anyway. Strange to relate, she offered no immediate reply, but she bent a little towards him with shining, happy eyes. He had an impulse to seize her in his arms and kiss her, but Prudence suggested that he should defer the right. She turned and began to walk slowly and meditatively towards the pit shaft. He followed almost at her side but a foot or so behind, waiting for her to speak. And as he waited, expectant, he looked at her profile and reflected how well the name A suited her, with its significances of shyness and dreamy hope and hidden fire and the modesty of spring. And while he was thus savoring her face, and there were still ten yards from the pit shaft, she suddenly disappeared from his vision, as it were by a conjuring trick. He had a horrible sensation in his spinal column. He was not the man to mistrust the evidence of his senses, and he knew therefore that he had been proposing to a phantom. Five. The next morning, early because of Jim's early breakfast, when May Dean's disappearance became known to the members of the household, Jim had the idea of utilizing Carlo in the search for her. The retriever went straight without a fault to the pit shaft, and May was discovered alive and unscathed, save for a contusion of the face and a sprain in the wrist. Her suicidal plunge had been arrested at only a few feet from the top of the shaft by a cross-stay of timber upon which she lay prone. There was no reason why the affair should be made public, and it was not. It was suppressed into one of those secrets which embed themselves in the histories of families, and after two or three generations blossom into romantic legends of appropriate circumstantial detail. Lionel Woolley spent a woeful night at his rooms. He did not know what to do, and on the following day May Lawton encountered him again, and proved by her demeanor that the episode of the previous afternoon had caused no estrangement. Lionel vacillated. The sway of the school mistress was almost restored, and it would have been restored fully, and he not been preoccupied by a feverish curiosity. The curiosity to know whether or not May Dean was dead. He felt that she must indeed be dead, and he lived through the day expectant of the news of her sudden decease. Towards night his state of mind was such that he was obliged to call at the Deans. May heard him and insisted upon seeing him, more she insisted on seeing him alone in the breakfast-room where she reclined, interestingly white, on the sofa. The father and brothers objected strongly to the interview, but they yielded, afraid that a refusal might induce hysteria and worse things. And when Lionel Woolley came into the room, May, steeped in felicity, related to him the story of her impulsive crime. I was so happy, she said, when I knew that Miss Lawton had deceived me, and before he could inquire what she meant, she continued rapidly, I must have been unconscious, but I felt you were there, and something of me went towards you, and oh, the answer to your question! I heard your question, the real me heard it, but that something could not speak. My question? You asked the question, didn't you? She faltered, sitting up. He hesitated, and then surrendered himself to her immense love and sank into it, and forgot May Lawton. Yes, he said. The answer is yes. Oh, you must have known the answer would be yes. You did know, didn't you? He nodded, grandly. She sighed with delicious and overwhelming joy. In the ecstasy of the achievement of her desire, the girl gave little thought to the psychic aspect of the possibly unique wooing. As reliant on, he refused to dwell on it even in thought, and so that strange, magic, yearning effluence of a soul into a visible projection and shape was ignored, slurred over, and after ten years of domesticity in the bank premises is gradually being forgotten. He is a man of business, and she, with her fading beauty, her ardent, continuous worship of the idol, her half-dozen small children, the eldest of whom is only eight, and the white window curtains to change every week because of the smuts. Do you suppose that she has time or inclination to ponder upon the theory of the subliminal consciousness and kindred mysteries? End of Phantom by Arnold Bennett. He could not stir, a hair of the Baron's miniver. Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin, he roved the castle to seek his kin, and Oat was a piteous thing to see, the dumb ghost follow his enemy, the Baron. Imre achieved the impossible. Without warning for no conceivable motive in his youth at the threshold of his career, he chose to disappear from the world, which is to say the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a day he was alive, well happy, and in great evidence among the billiard-tables at his club. Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place. He had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the administration of the Indian Empire, that empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imre. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town, twelve hundred miles away, but Imre was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imre, from being a man, became a mystery, such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a month, and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imre had unaccountably disappeared, and his bungalow stood empty. After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland of the police saw fit to rent the bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Ugel, an affair which has been described in another place, and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He ate standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shotguns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed masheer rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon rods. These occupied one half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietien, an enormous rampart slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own, and whenever walking abroad she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of her majesty the Queen Empress, she returned to her master and laid information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietien was a familiar spirit and treated her with a great reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking trough, and if anyone came into Strickland's room at night her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till someone came with a light. Strickland owes his life to her when he was on the frontier in search of a local murderer who came in the Grey Dawn to send Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietien caught the man as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth, and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law he was hanged. From that date Tietien wore a collar of rough silver and employed a monogram on her night-blanket, and the blanket was of double-woven cashmere cloth, for she was a delicate dog. Under no circumstances would she be separated from Strickland, and once when he was ill with fever made great trouble for the doctors because she did not know how to help her master and would not allow another creature to attempt aid. McCarnacht, of the Indian Medical Service, beat her over her head with a gun-butt before she could understand that she must give room for those who could give quinine. A short time after Strickland had taken him into his bungalow, my business took me through that station, and naturally the club quarters being full I quartered myself upon Strickland. It was a desirable bungalow, eight roomed and heavily thatched against any chance of leakage from rain. Under the pitch of the roof ran a ceiling cloth which looked just as neat as a white-wash ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built, you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of the thatch harbored all manner of rats, bats, ants, and foul things. Tietjens met me in the veranda with a bay like the boom of the bell of St. Paul's, putting her paws on my shoulder to show she was glad to see me. Strickland had contrived to claw together a sort of meal which he called lunch, and immediately after it was finished went out about his business. I was left alone with Tietjens and my own affairs. The heat of the summer had broken up and turned to the warm damp of the rains. There was no motion in the heated air, but the rain fell like ramrods on the earth and flung up a blue mist when it splashed back. The bamboos and the custard apples, the poinsettias and the mango trees in the garden stood still while the warm water lashed through them and the frogs began to sing among the aloe hedges. A little before the light failed and when the rain was at its worst I sat in the back veranda and heard the water roar from the eaves and scratched myself because I was covered with a thing called prickly heat. Tietjens came out with me and put her head in my lap and was very sorrowful, so I gave her biscuits when tea was ready and I took tea in the back veranda on account of the little coolness found there. The rooms of the house were dark behind me. I could smell Strickland's saddle-ry and the oil on his guns and I had no desire to sit among these things. My own servant came to me in the twilight, the muslin of his clothes clinging tightly to his drenched body and told me that a gentleman had called and wished to see someone. Very much against my will, against the darkness of the rooms I went into the naked drawing-room telling my man to bring the lights. There might or might not have been a caller waiting. It seemed to me that I saw a figure by one of the windows, but when the lights came there was nothing say the spikes of the rain without and the smell of the drinking earth in my nostrils. I explained to my servant that he was no wiser than he ought to be and went back to the veranda to talk to Tietjens. She had gone out into the wet and hardly coax her back to me even with biscuits with sugar-tops. Strickland came home dripping wet just before dinner and the first thing he said was, has anyone called? I explained with apologies that my servant had summoned me into the drawing-room on a false alarm or that some loafer had tried to call on Strickland and thinking better of it had fled after giving his name. Strickland ordered dinner without comment and since it was a real dinner he sat down. At nine o'clock Strickland wanted to go to bed and I was tired too. Tietjens, who had been lying underneath the table, rose up and swung into the least exposed veranda as soon as her master moved to his own room which was next to the stately chamber set apart for Tietjens. If a mere wife had wished to sleep out of doors in that pelting rain it would not have mattered but Tietjens was a dog and therefore the better animal. I looked at Strickland expecting to see him flay her with a whip. He smiled queerly as a man would smile after telling some unpleasant domestic tragedy. She has done this ever since I moved in here said he, let her go. The dog was Strickland's dog so I said nothing but I felt all that Strickland felt in being thus made light of. Tietjens encamped outside my bedroom window and storm after storm came up and landed on the thatch and died away. The lightning spattered the sky as a throne egg spatters a barn door but the light was pale blue not yellow and looking through my split bamboo blinds I could see the great dog standing not sleeping in the veranda the hackles a lift on her back and her feet anchored as tensely as the drawn wire rope of a suspension bridge. In the very short pauses of the thunder I tried to sleep but someone wanted me very urgently. He, whoever he was was trying to call me by name but his voice was no more than a husky whisper. The thunder ceased and Tietjens went into the garden and howled at the low moon. Somebody tried to open my door walked about and about through the house and stood breathing heavily in the verandas and just when I was falling asleep I fancied that I heard a wild hammering and clamoring above my head and I ran around the door. I ran into Strickland's room and asked him whether he was ill and had been calling for me. He was lying on his bed half dressed a pipe in his mouth. I thought you'd come, he said. Have I been walking around the house recently? I explained that he had been tramping in the dining room and the smoking room and two or three other places and he laughed and told me to go back to bed. I went back to bed but through all my mixed dreams I was sure I was doing someone an injustice in not attending to his wants. What those wants were I could not tell but a fluttering, whispering, bolt fumbling, lurking loitering someone was reproaching me for my slackness and half awake I heard the howling of Tietjens in the garden and the threshing of the rain. I lived in that house for two days. Strickland went to his office daily leaving me alone for eight rotten hours with Tietjens for my only companion. As long as the full light lasted I was comfortable and so was Tietjens but in the twilight she and I moved into the back veranda and cuddled each other for company. We were alone in the house but nonetheless it was much too fully occupied by a tenant with whom I did not wish to interfere. I never saw him but I could see the curtains between the rooms quivering where he had just passed through. I could hear the chairs creaking as the bamboos sprung under a weight that had just quitted them and I could feel when I went to get a book from the dining room that somebody was waiting in the shadows of the front veranda till I should have gone away. Tietjens made the twilight more interesting by glaring into the darkened rooms with every hair erect and following the motions of something that I could not see. She never entered the rooms but her eyes moved interestingly that was quite sufficient. This servant came to trim the lamps and make all light and habitable would she come in with me and spend her time sitting on her haunches watching an invisible extra man as he moved about behind my shoulder. Dogs are cheerful companions. I explained to Strickland gently as might be that I would go over to the club and find for myself quarters there. I admired his hospitality was pleased with his guns and rods but I did not much care for his house and his atmosphere. He heard me out to the end and then smiled very weirdly but without contempt for he is a man who understands things. Stay on, he said, and see what this thing means. All you have talked about I have known since I took the bungalow. Stay on and wait. Tietjens has left me. Are you going too? I had seen him through one little affair connected with a heathen idol and I had no desire to help him through further experiences. He was a man to whom unpleasantness has arrived as do dinners to ordinary people. Therefore I explained more clearly than ever that I liked him immensely and would be happy to see him in the daytime but that I did not care to sleep under his roof. This was after dinner when Tietjens has gone out to lie in the veranda. Upon my soul I don't wonder said Strickland with his eyes on the ceiling cloth. The tales of two brown snakes were hanging between the cloth and the cornice of the wall. They threw long shadows in the lamplight. If you are afraid of snakes, of course, said Strickland, I hate and fear snakes because if you look into the eyes of any snake you will see that it knows all and more of the mystery of man's fall and that it feels all the contempt that the devil felt when Adam was evicted from Eden. Besides which its bite is generally fatal and it twists up trouser legs. You ought to get your thatch overhauled, I said. Give me a massier rod and we'll poke him down. They'll hide among the roof beams, said Strickland. I can't stand snakes overhead. I'm going up into the roof. If I shake him down stand by with a cleaning rod and break their backs. I was not anxious to assist Strickland in his work but I took the cleaning rod and waited in the dining-room while Strickland brought a gardener's ladder in the veranda and set it against the side of the room. Snake-tails drew themselves up and disappeared. We could hear the dry, rushing scuttle of long bodies running over the baggy ceiling cloth. Strickland took a lamp with him while I tried to make clear to him the danger of hunting roof snakes between a ceiling cloth and a thatch apart from the deterioration of property caused by ripping out ceiling claws. Nonsense, said Strickland. They're sure to hide near the walls by the cloth. The bricks are too cold for him and the heat of the room is just what they like. He put his hand to the corner of the stuff and ripped it from the cornice. It gave with a great sound of tearing and Strickland put his head through the opening into the dark of the angle of the roof beams. I set my teeth and lifted the rod for I had not the least knowledge of what might descend. Hmm! said Strickland and his voice rolled and jumbled in the roof. There's room for another set of rooms up here and by jove someone is occupying him. Snakes, I said from below? No, it's a buffalo. Hand me up the two last joints of a massier rod and I'll prod it. It's lying on the main roof beam. I handed up the rod. What a nest for owls and serpents! No wonder the snakes live here, said Strickland, climbing farther into the roof. I could see his elbow thrusting with the rod. Come out of that, whoever you are. Heads below there! It's falling! I saw the ceiling cloth nearly in the centre of the room bag with a shape that was pressing it downwards and downwards toward the lighted lamp on the table. I snatched the lamp out of danger and stood back. Then the cloth ripped out from the walls, tore, split, swayed and shot down upon the table something that I dared not look at till Strickland had slid down the ladder and was standing by my side. He did not say much being a man of few words, but he picked up the loose end of the table-cloth and threw it over the remnants on the table. It strikes me, he said, putting down the lamp, our friend Imre has come back. Oh, you would, would you? There was a movement under the cloth and a little snake wriggled out to be backbroken by the butt of the massier rod. I was sufficiently sick to make no remarks worth recording. Strickland meditated and helped himself to drinks. The arrangement under the cloth made no more signs of life. Is it Imre, I said? Strickland turned back to the cloth for a moment and looked. It is Imre, he said, and his throat is cut from ear to ear. Then we spoke both together and to ourselves. That's why he whispered about the house. Chechen's in the garden began to bathe furiously. A little later her great nose heaved open the dining room door. She snuffed and was still. The tattered ceiling cloth hung down almost to the level of the table and there was hardly room to move away from the discovery. Chechen's came in and sat down. Her teeth bared under her lip and her forepaws planted. She looked at Strickland. It's a bad business, old lady, said he. Men don't climb up into the roofs and they don't fasten up the ceiling cloth behind them. Let's think it out. Let's think it out somewhere else, I said. Excellent idea. Turn the lamps out, we'll get into my room. I did not turn the lamps out. I went into Strickland's room first and allowed him to make the darkness. Then he followed me and we lit tobacco and thought. Strickland thought. I smoked furiously because I was afraid. Imre is back, said Strickland. The question is, who killed Imre? Don't talk. I have a notion of my own. When I took this bungalow I took over most of Imre's servants. Imre was guileless and inoffensive, wasn't he? I agreed, though the heap under the cloth had looked neither one thing nor the other. If I call in all the servants they will stand fast in a crowd and lie like Aryans. What do you suggest? Call them in one by one, I said. They'll run away and give the news to all their fellows, said Strickland. We must segregate him. Do you suppose your servant knows anything about it? He may, for odd I don't know, but I don't think it's likely. He has only been here two or three days, I answered. What's your notion? I can't quite tell. How the dickens did the man get the wrong side of the ceiling cloth? There was a heavy coughing outside Strickland's bedroom door. This showed that Badohoor Khan, his body-servant, had waked from sleep and wished to put Strickland to bed. Come in, said Strickland. It's a very warm night, isn't it? Bahadur Khan, a great green-turban six-foot Mohammedan, said that it was a very warm night, but that there was more rain pending which, by his honour's favour, would bring relief to the country. It will be so, if God pleases, said Strickland, tugging off his boots. It is in my mind, Bahadur Khan, that I have worked thee remorselessly for many days, ever since that time when thou first came us into my service. What time was that? Has the heaven borne forgotten? It was when Imre Sahib went secretly to Europe without warning given, and I, even I, came into the honoured service of the Protector of the Poor. And Imre Sahib went to Europe? It is so said among those who were his servants. And thou wilt take service with him when he returns? Assuredly, Sahib, he was a good master and cherished his dependence. That is true. I am very tired, but I go buck-shooting tomorrow. Give me the little sharp rifle that I use for black buck. It is in the case, yonder. The man stooped over the case, handed barrels, stock, and forend to Strickland, who fitted all together, yawning, dolefully. Then he reached down to the gun-case, took a solid-drawn cartridge, and slipped it into the breach of the 360 express. And Imre Sahib has gone to Europe secretly. That is very strange, Bahadur Khan. Is it not? What do I know of the ways of the white man heaven-born? Very little, truly, but thou shalt know more and on. It has reached me that Imre Sahib has returned from his so long journeyings, and that even now he lies in the next room waiting his servant. Sahib! The lamp-lights slid along the barrels of the rifle as they leveled themselves at Bahadur Khan's broad breast. Go and look, said Strickland. Take a lamp. Thy master is tired, and he waits thee. Go! The man picked up a lamp and went into the dining-room, Strickland following, and almost pushing him with the muzzle of the rifle. He found the ceiling-cloth, at the writhing snake underfoot, and last a grey glaze settling on his face, at the thing under the table-cloth. Has thou seen? said Strickland after a pause. I have seen. I am clay in the white man's hands. What does the presence do? Hang thee within the month. What else? For killing him? Nay, Sahib, consider. Walking among us his servants, he cast his eyes upon my child, who was four years old. Him he bewitched, and in ten days he died of the fever, my child! What said, Emre Sahib? He said he was a handsome child and patted him on the head, wherefore my child died, wherefore I killed Emre Sahib in the twilight, when he had come back from office and was sleeping, wherefore I dragged him up into the roof-beams and made all fast behind him. The heaven-born knows all things. I am the servant of the heaven-born. Strickland looked at me above the rifle and said in the vernacular, Thou art witness to this saying? He has killed. Bahadur Khan stood ashen-grey in the light of the one lamp. The need for justification came upon him very swiftly. I am trapped, he said, but the offence was that man's. He cast an evil eye upon my child and I killed and hid him, only such as are served by devils. He glared at Tiatyans, couched stolidly before him, only such could know what I did. It was clever, but thou shouldst have lashed him to the beam with a rope. Now thou thyself wilt hang by a rope. Orderly! A drowsy policeman answered Strickland's call. He was followed by another and Tiatyans sat wondrous still. Take him to the police station, said Strickland. There is a case to ward. Do I hang, then, said Bahadur Khan, making no attempt to escape and keeping his eyes on the ground? If the sun shines or the water runs, yes, said Strickland. Bahadur Khan stepped back one long pace, quivered and stood still. The two policemen waited for their orders. Go, said Strickland. Nay, but I go very swiftly, said Bahadur Khan. Look! I am even now a dead man. He lifted his foot and to the little toe there clung the head of the half-killed snake, firm-fixed in the agony of death. I come of land-holding stock, said Bahadur Khan, rocking where he stood. It were a disgrace to me to go to the public scaffold. Therefore I take this way. Be it remember that the Sahib's shirts are correctly enumerated with the rope in his wash basin. My child was bewitched and I slew the wizard. Why should you seek to slay me with the rope? My honour is saved and and I die. At the end of an hour he died, as they die who are bitten by the little brown carrete, and the policemen bore him in the thing under the tablecloth to their appointed places. All were needed to make clear the disappearance of Imre. This, said Strickland, very calmly as he climbed into bed, is called the nineteenth century. Did you hear what that man said? I heard, I answered. Imre made a mistake. Simply and solely through not knowing the nature of the Oriental and the coincidence of a little seasonal fever, Bahadur Khan had been with him for four years. I shuddered. My own servant had been with me for exactly that length of time. Into my own room I found my man waiting, impassive as the copperhead on a penny, to pull off my boots. What has befallen Bahadur Khan, said I? He was bitten by a snake and died. The rest the Sahib knows was the answer. And how much of this matter has thou known? As much as might be gathered from one coming in in the twilight to seek satisfaction. Gently, Sahib, let me pull off those boots. I had just settled to the sleep of exhaustion when I heard Strickland shouting from his side of the house. Chechens has come back to her place! And so she had. The great deer-hound was couched stately on her own bedstead, on her own blanket, while in the next room the idle empty ceiling-cloth waggled as it trailed on the table. End of The Return of Imre by Rajud Kipling Recorded in Toronto, Ontario by Muir Fogati October 2006 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Charlene Harris Email SoundChest at yahoo.com Since I died by Elizabeth Stewart Phelps How very still you sit if the shadow of an eyelash stirred upon your cheek if that grey line about your mouth should snap its tension at this quivering end if the pallor of your profile warmed a little if that tiny muscle on your forehead just at the left eyebrow's curve should start and twitch if you would but grow a trifle restless sitting there beneath my steady gaze if you moved a finger of your folded hands if you should turn and look behind your chair or lift your face half lingering and half longing half loving and half loathe to ponder on the annoyed and thwarted cry which the wind is making where I stand between it and yourself against the half closed window ah there you sigh and stir I think you lift your head the little muscle is a captive still the line about your mouth is tense and hard the deepening hollow in your cheek has no warmer tint I see than the great dork column which the moonlight builds against the wall I lean against it I hold out my arms you lift your head and look me in the eye if a shutter crept across your figure if your arms laid out upon the table leapt but once above your head if you named my name if you held your breath with terror or sobbed aloud for love or sprang or cried but you only lift your head and look me in the eye if I dared step near or nearer if it were permitted that I should cross the current of your living breath if it were willed that I should leap the leap of human blood within your veins if I should touch your hands your cheeks your lips if I dropped an arm as lightly as a snowflake round your shoulder the fear which no heart has fathomed the fate which no fancy has faced the riddle which no soul has read steps between your substance and my soul I drop my arms I sink into the heart of the pillared light upon the wall I will not wonder what would happen if my outlines defined upon it to your view I will not think of that which could be if I struck across your still set vision face to face ah me how still she sits with what a fixed and curious stare she looks me in the eye the wind now that I stand no longer between it and yourself comes enviously in it lifts the curtain and whirls about the room it bruises the surface of the great pearl pillar where I lean I am caught within it speech and language struggle over me mute articulations fill the air tears and laughter and the sounding of soft lips and the falling of low cries possess me will she listen will she bend her head will her lips part in recognition is there an alphabet between us or have the winds of night a vocabulary to lift before her holding eyes we sat many times together and talked of this do you remember dear you held my hand tears that I could not see fell on it we sat by the great hall window upstairs where the maple shadow goes to sleep face down across the floor upon a lighted night the old green curtain waved its hands upon us like a mesmerist I thought like a priest you said when we are parted you shall go you said and when I shook my head you smiled you always smiled when you said that but you said it always quite the same I think I hardly understood you then now that I hold your eyes in mine and you see me not now when I stretch my hand and you touch me not now that I cry your name and you hear it not I comprehend you tender one a wisdom not of earth was in your words to live is dying I will die to die is life and you shall live now when the fever turned I thought of this that must have been ah how long ago how long ago I missed the conception of that for which how long stands index yet I perfectly remember that I perfectly understood it to be at three o'clock on a rainy Sunday morning that I died your little watch stood in its case of olive wood upon the table and drops were on the window I noticed both though you did not know it I see the watch now in your pocket I cannot tell if the hands move or only pulsate like a heartthrob to and fro they stand and point mute gold fingers paralyzed and pleading forever at the hour of three at this I wonder when first you said I was sinking fast the words sounded as old and familiar as a nursery tale I heard you in the hall the doctor had just left and you went to mother and took her face in your two arms and laid your hand across her mouth as if it were she who had spoken she cried out and threw up her thin old hands but you stood as still as eternity then I thought again is it she who dies I shall live so often and so anxiously I am shocked of this thing called death now that it is all over between us I cannot understand why it's such a source of distress it bewilders me I am often bewildered here things in the fancies of things possess a relation which as yet is new and strange to me here is a mystery now in truth it seems a simple matter for me to tell you how it has been with me your lips last touched me and your arms held me to the vanishing air oh drawn pale lips nervous dropping arms I told you I would come did ever promise fail I spoke to you come and show me death you said I have come to show you death I could show you the fairest sight and sweetest that ever blessed your eyes why look is it not fair am I terrible do you shrink or shiver would you turn from me or hide your strained expectant face would she does she will she ah how the room widened I could tell you that it grew great and luminous day by day at night the walls throbbed lights of rose ran round them and blew fire and a treasury as of the shadows of little leaves as the walls expanded the air fled but I tried to tell you how little pain I knew or feared your haggard face bent over me I could not speak when I would I struggled and you said she suffers dear it was so very little listen till I tell you how that night came on the sun fell and the dew slid down it seemed to me that it slid into my heart but still I felt no pain where the walls pulsed and receded the hills came in where the old bureau stood above the glass I saw a single mountain with a face of fire and purple hair I tried to tell you this but you said she wanders I laughed in my heart at that for it was such a blessed wandering as the night locked the sun below the mountain solemn watching face the gates of space were lifted up before me the everlasting doors of matter swung for me upon their rusty hinges and the king of glories entered in and out all the kingdoms of the earth and the power of them beckoned to me across the mist my failing senses made runes and roses and the brows of Jura and the singing of the Rhine a shaft of red light on the Sphinx's smile and caravans in sandstorms and an icy wind at sea and gold a dream in mines that no man knew and mothers sitting at their doors and valleys singing babes to sleep and women in dank cellars selling souls for bread and the whir of wheels and giant factories and a single prayer somewhere in a den of death I could not find it though I searched and the smoke of battle and broken music and a sense of lilies alone beside a stream at the rising of the sun and at last your face dear all alone I discovered then that the walls and roof of the room had vanished quite the night wind blew in the maple in the yard almost brushed my cheek stars were about me and I thought the rain had stopped yet seemed to hear it up on the seeming of a window which I could not find one thing only hung between me and immensity it was your single awful haggard face I looked my last into your eyes stronger than death they held and claimed my soul I feebly raised my hand to find your own more cruel than the grave your wild grasp chained me then I struggled and you cried out and your face slipped and I stood free I stood upon the floor beside the bed that which had been I lay there at rest but terrible before me your face and I saw you slide upon your knees I laid my hand upon your head you did not stir I spoke to you dear look around a minute but you knelt quite still I walked to and fro about the room and meeting my mother touched her on the elbow she only said she's gone and sobbed aloud I have not gone but she sat sobbing on the walls of the room had settled now and the ceiling stood in its solid place the window was shut but the door stood open suddenly I was restless and I ran I brushed you in hurrying by and hit the little light stand where the tumbler stood I looked to see if it would fall but it only shivered as if a breath of wind had struck it once but I was restless and I ran in the hall I met the doctor this amused me and I stopped to think it over ah, doctor said I you need not trouble yourself to go up I'm quite well tonight you see but he made me no answer he gave me no glance he hung up his hat and laid his hand upon the banister against which I leaned ponderously up it was not until he had nearly reached the landing that it occurred to me still leaning on the banisters that his heavy arm must have swept against and threw me where I stood against the oaken moldings which he grasped I saw his feet fall on the stairs above me but they made no sound which reached my ear you will not disturb me now with your big boots, sir said I, nodding but he disappeared from sight above me and still I heard no sound now the doctor had left the front door unlatched as I touched it it blew open wide and solemnly I passed out and down the steps I could see that it was chilly yet I felt no chill frost was on the grass and in the east a pallid streak like the cheek of one who had watched all night the flowers in the little square plots hung their heads and drew their shoulders up there was a lonely late lily which I broke and gathered to my heart where I breathed upon it and it warmed and looked me kindly in the eye this I remember gave me pleasure I wandered in and out about the garden in the scattering rain my feet left no trace upon the dripping grass and I saw with interest that the garment which I wore gathered no moisture and no cold I sat musing for a while upon the Piazza in the garden chair not caring to go in it was so many months since I had felt able to sit upon the Piazza in the open air by and by I thought I would go in and upstairs to see you once again the curtains were drawn from the parlor windows and I passed and repast looking in all this while the cheek of the east was shining and the air gathering faint heats and lights about me I remembered presently the old arbor at the garden foot where before I was sick we sat so much together and thinking she will be surprised to know that I have been down alone I was restless and I ran again I meant to come back and see you dear once more I saw the lights in the room and I blessed it with all the love of life and death as I bounded by the air was thick with sweetness from the dying flowers the birds woke and the zenith lighted and the leap of health was in my limbs the old arbor held out its soft arms to me but I was restless and I ran the field opened before me and meadows with broad bosoms and a river flashed before me like a cemetery and woods interlocked their hands to stay me but being restless on I ran the house dwindled behind me and the light in my sick room and your shadow on the curtain but yet I was restless and I ran in the twinkling of an eye I fell into a solitary place sand and rocks were in it and a falling wind I paused and knelt upon the sand and mused a little in this place I mused a view and life and death and love and agony but these had departed from me as dim and distant as the fainting wind a sense of solemn expectation filled the air a tremor and a trouble wrapped my soul I must be dead I said aloud I had no sooner spoken than I learned that I was not alone the sun had risen and on a ledge of ancient rock weather-stained in red there had fallen over against me the outline of a presence lifted up against the sky and turning suddenly I saw lawful to utter but utterance has fled lawful to utter but a greater than law restrains me and my blotted from your desolate fixed eyes lips that my mortal lips have pressed can you not quiver when I cry soul that my eternal soul has loved can you stand enveloped in my presence and not spring like a fountain to me would you not know how it has been with me since your perishable eyes beheld my perished face what my eyes have seen or my ears have heard or my heart conceived without you if I have missed or mourned for you if I have watched or longed for you marked your solitary days in sleepless nights and tearless eyes and a monotonous slow echo of my unanswered name would you not know alas would she would she not my soul misgives me with a matchless solitary fear I am called I am beckoned and lose her her face dims and her folded lonely hands fade from my sight time to tell her a guarded thing time to whisper a treasured word a moment to tell her that death is dumb for life is death a moment to tell her end of since I died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps