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

‘Can it ever be so henceforward? Look again.’

‘Does the devil enter? Something roars in me! Have you no fear that I shall kill you?’

‘None. I cannot die.’

Amos broke into a mocking, fierce laugh. Then, his blood shooting in his veins, he seized the sleeper roughly by her hand.

‘Wake!’ he cried, ‘and end it!’

With a sigh she lifted her head. Drowsiness and startled wonderment struggled in her eyes; but in a moment they caught the vision of the stranger standing aside, and smiled and softened. She held out her long, white arms to him.

‘You have come, dear love,’ she said, in a happy, low voice, ‘and I was not awake to greet you.’

Rose fell on his knees.

‘Oh, God in Heaven!’ he cried, ‘bear witness that this is monstrous and unnatural! Let me die rather than see it.’

The stranger moved forward.

‘Do honour, Adnah, to this our guest; and minister to him of thy pleasure.’

The white arms dropped. The girl’s face was turned, and her eyes, solemn and witch-like, looked into Amos’s. He saw them, their irises golden-brown shot with little spars of blue; and the soul in his own seemed to rush towards them and to recoil, baffled and sobbing.

Could she have understood? He thought he saw a faint smile, a gentle shake of the head, as she slid from the couch and her sandals tapped on the marble floor.

She stooped and took him by the hand.

‘Rise, I pray you,’ she said, ‘and I will be your handmaiden.’

She led him unresisting to a chair, and bade him sweetly to be seated. She took from him his hat and overcoat, and brought him rare wine in a cup of crystal.

‘My lord will drink,’ she murmured, ‘and forget all but the night and Adnah.’

‘You I can never forget,’ said the young man, in a broken voice.

As he drank, half-choking, the girl turned to the other, who still stood apart, silent and watchful.

‘Was this wise?’ she breathed. ‘To summon a witness on this night of all – was this wise, beloved?’

Amos dashed the cup on the floor. The red liquid stained the marble like blood.

‘No, no!’ he shrieked, springing to his feet. ‘Not that! It cannot be!’

In an ecstasy of passion he flung his arms about the girl, and crushed all her warm loveliness against his breast. She remained quite passive – unstartled even. Only she turned her head and whispered: ‘Is this thy will?’

Amos fell back, drooping, as if he had received a blow.

‘Be merciful and kill me,’ he muttered. ‘I – even I can feel at last the nobility of death.’

Then the voice of the stranger broke, lofty and passionless.

‘Tell him what you see in me.’

She answered, low and without pause, like one repeating a cherished lesson—

‘I see – I have seen it for the nine months I have wandered with you – the supreme triumph of the living will. I see that this triumph, of its very essence, could not be unless you had surmounted the tyranny of any, the least, gross desire. I see that it is incompatible with sin; with offence given to oneself or others; that passion cannot live in its serene atmosphere; that it illustrates the enchantment of the flesh by the intellect; that it is happiness for evermore redeemed.’

‘How do you feel this?’

‘I see it reflected in myself – I, the poor visionary you took from the Northern Island. Week by week I have known it sweetening and refining in my nature. None can taste the bliss of happiness that has not you for master – none can teach it save you, whose composure is unshadowed by any terror of death.’

‘And love that is passion, Adnah?’

‘I hear it spoken as in a dream. It is a wicked whisper from far away. You, the lord of time and of tongues, I worship – you, only you, who are my God.’

‘Hush! But the man of Nazareth?’

‘Ah! His name is an echo. What divine egotism taught He?’

Where lately had Amos heard this phrase? His memory of all things real seemed suspended.

‘He was a man, and He died,’ said Adnah simply.

The stranger threw back his head, with an odd expression of triumph; and almost in the same moment abased it to the crucifix on the wall.

Amos stood breathing quickly, his ears drinking in every accent of the low musical voice. Now, as she paused, he moved forward a hurried step, and addressed himself to the shadowy figure by the couch—

‘Who are you, in the name of the Christ you mock and adore in a breath, that has wrought this miracle of high worship in a breathing woman?’

‘I am he that has eaten of the Tree of Life.’

‘Oh, forego your fables! I am not a child.’

‘It could not of its nature perish’ (the voice went on evenly, ignoring the interruption). ‘It breathes its immortal fragrance in no transplanted garden, invisible to sinful eyes, as some suppose. When the curse fell, the angel of the flaming sword bore it to the central desert; and the garden withered, for its soul was withdrawn. Now, in the heart of the waste place that is called Tiah-Bani-Israïl, it waits in its loveliness the coming of the Son of God.’

‘He has come and passed.’

It might have been an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders that twitched the tall figure by the couch. If so, it converted the gesture into a bow of reverence.

‘Is He not to be revealed again in His glory? But there, set as in the crater of a mountain of sand, and inaccessible to mortal footstep, stands unperishing the glory of the earth. And its fragrance is drawn up to heaven, as through a wide chimney; and from its branches hangs the undying fruit, lustrous and opalescent; and in each shining globe the world and its starry system are reflected in miniature, moving westwards; but at night they glow, a cluster of tender moons.’

‘And whence came your power to scale that which is inaccessible?’

‘From Death, that, still denying me immortality, is unable to encompass my destruction.’

The young man burst into a harsh and grating laugh.

‘Here is some inconsistency!’ he cried, ‘By your own showing you were not immortal till you ate of the fruit!’

Could it be that this simple deductive snip cut the thread of coherence? A scowl appeared to contract the lofty brow for an instant. The next, a gay chirrup intervened, like a little spark struck from the cloud.

‘The pounding logic of the steam engine!’ cried the stranger, coming forward at last with an open smile. ‘But we pace in an altitude refined above sensuous comprehension. Perhaps before long you will see and believe. In the meantime let us be men and women enjoying the warm gifts of Fortune!’

IV

Nous pensions comme un songe

Le récit de vos maux;

Nous traitions de mensonge

Tous vos plus grands travaux!

In that one night of an unreality that seemed either an enchanted dream or a wilfully fantastic travesty of conventions, Amos alternated between fits of delirious self-surrender and a rage of resignation, from which now and again he would awake to flourish an angry little bodkin of irony.

Now, at this stage, it appeared a matter for passive acquiescence that he should be one of a trio seated at a bronze table, that might have been recovered from Herculaneum, playing three-handed cribbage with a pack of fifteenth-century cards – limned, perhaps, by some Franceso Bachiacca – and an ivory board inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl. To one side a smaller ‘occasional’ table held the wine, to which the young man resorted at the least invitation from Adnah.

In this connection (of cards), it would fitfully perturb him to find that he who had renounced sin with mortality, had not only a proneness to avail himself of every oversight on the part of his adversaries, but frequently to peg-up more holes than his hand entitled him to. Moreover, at such times, when the culprit’s attention was drawn to this by his guest – at first gently; later, with a little scorn – he justified his action on the assumption that it was an essential interest of all games to attempt abuse of the confidence of one’s antagonist, whose skill in checkmating any movement of this nature was in right ratio with his capacity as a player; and finally he rose, the sole winner of a sum respectable enough to allow him some ingenuous expression of satisfaction.