Bernard Capes - The Black Reaper - Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes

‘Are you ever tired?’ he whispered curiously.

‘Never. Sometimes I long for weariness as other men desire rest.’

As the stranger spoke, he pulled aside a curtain of stately black velvet, and softly opening a door in a recess, beckoned the young man into the room beyond.

He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with potpourri; in one corner a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinée , by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half-filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur – such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan – one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tessellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.

The door behind him swung gently to: his eyes half-closed in a dreamy surrender of will: the voice of the stranger speaking to him sounded far away as the cry of some lost unhappiness.

‘Welcome!’ it said only.

Amos broke through his trance with a cry.

‘What does it mean – all this? We step out of the fog, and here – I think it is the guest-parlour of Hell!’

‘You flatter me,’ said the stranger, smiling. ‘Its rarest antiquity goes no further back, I think, than the eighth century. The skeleton of the place is Jacobite and comparatively modern.’

‘But you – the shop!’

‘Contains a little of the fruit of my wanderings.’

‘You are a dealer?’

‘A casual collector only. If through a representative I work my accumulations of costly lumber to a profit – say thousands per cent – it is only because utility is the first principle of Art. As to myself, here I but pitch my tent – periodically, and at long intervals.’

‘An unsupervised agent must find it a lucrative post.’

‘Come – there shows a little knowledge of human nature. For the first time I applaud you. But the appointment is conditional on many things. At the moment the berth is vacant. Would you like it?’

‘My (paradoxically) Christian name was bestowed in compliment to a godfather, sir. I am no Jew. I have already enough to know the curse of having more.’

‘I have no idea how you are called. I spoke jestingly, of course; but your answer quenches the flicker of respect I felt for you. As a matter of fact, the other’s successor is not only nominated, but is actually present in this room.’

‘Indeed? You propose to fill the post yourself?’

‘Not by any means. The mere suggestion is an insult to one who can trace his descent backwards at least two thousand years.’

‘Yes, indeed. I meant no disparagement, but—’

‘I tell you, sir,’ interrupted the stranger irritably, ‘my visits are periodic. I could not live in a town. I could not settle anywhere. I must always be moving. A prolonged constitutional – that is my theory of health.’

‘You are always on your feet – at your age—’

‘I am a hundred tonight – But – mark you – I have eaten of the Tree of Life .’

As the stranger uttered these words, he seized Rose by the wrist in a soft, firm grasp. His captive, staring at him amazed, gave out a little involuntary shriek.

‘Hadn’t I better leave? There is something – nameless – I don’t know; but I should never have come in here. Let me go!’

The other, heedless, half-pulled the troubled and bewildered young man across the room, and drew him to within a foot of the curtain closing the alcove.

‘Here,’ he said quietly, ‘is my fellow-traveller of the last nine months, fast, I believe, in sleep – unless your jarring outcry has broken it.’

Rose struggled feebly.

‘Not anything shameful,’ he whimpered – ‘I have a dread of your manifestations.’

For answer, the other put out a hand, and swiftly and silently withdrew the curtain. A deepish recess was revealed, into which the soft glow of the lamp penetrated like moonlight. It fell in the first instance upon a couch littered with pale, uncertain shadows, and upon a crucifix that hung upon the wall within.

In the throb of his emotions, it was something of a relief to Amos to see his companion, releasing his hold of him, clasp his hands and bow his head reverently to this pathetic symbol. The cross on which the Christ hung was of ebony a foot high; the figure itself was chryselephantine and purely exquisite as a work of art.

‘It is early seventeenth century,’ said the stranger suddenly, after a moment of devout silence, seeing the other’s eyes absorbed in contemplation. ‘It is by Duquesnoy.’ (Then, behind the back of his hand) ‘The rogue couldn’t forget his bacchanals even here.’

‘It is a Christ of infidels,’ said Amos, with repugnance. He was adding involuntarily (his savoir faire seemed suddenly to have deserted him) – ‘But fit for an unbelieving—’ when his host took him up with fury—

‘Dog of a Gentile! – if you dare to call me Jew!’

The dismayed start of the young man at this outburst blinded him to its paradoxical absurdity. He fell back with his heart thumping. The eyes of the stranger flickered, but in an instant he had recovered his urbanity.

‘Look!’ he whispered impatiently. ‘The Calvary is not alone in the alcove.’

Mechanically Rose’s glance shifted to the couch; and in that moment shame and apprehension and the sickness of being were precipitated in him as in golden flakes of rapture.

Something, that in the instant of revelation had seemed part only of the soft tinted shadows, resolved itself into a presentment of loveliness so pure, and so pathetic in its innocent self-surrender to the passionate tyranny of his gaze, that the manhood in him was abashed in the very flood of its exaltation. He put a hand to his face before he looked a second time, to discipline his dazzled eyes. They were turned only upon his soul, and found it a reflected glory. Had the vision passed? His eyes, in a panic, leaped for it once more.

Yes, it was there – dreaming upon its silken pillow; a grotesque carved dragon in ivory looking down, from a corner of the fluted couch, upon its supernal beauty – a face that, at a glance, could fill the vague desire of a suffering, lonely heart – spirit informing matter with all the flush and essence of some flower of the lost garden of Eden.

And this expressed in the form of one simple slumbering girl; in its drifted heap of hair, bronze as copper-beech leaves in spring; in the very pulsing of its half-hidden bosom, and in its happy morning lips, like Psyche’s, night-parted by Love and so remaining entranced.

A long light robe, sulphur-coloured, clung to the sleeper from low throat to ankle; bands of narrow nolana-blue ribbon crossed her breast and were brought together in a loose cincture about her waist; her white, smooth feet were sandalled; one arm was curved beneath her lustrous head; the other lay relaxed and drooping. Chrysoberyls, the sea-virgins of stones, sparkled in her hair and lay in the bosom of her gown like dewdrops in an evening primrose.

The gazer turned with a deep sigh, and then a sputter of fury—

‘Why do you show me this? You cruel beast, was not my life barren enough before?’