Mark Aldridge - The Passing of Mr Quinn

He walked to the door and flung it open. For all that he was holding it under control, his rage was staggering.

‘Get out,’ he said thickly. ‘D’you hear? Get out! Or, by the Lord Harry, there’ll be a case of horsewhipping for the villagers to gossip again. And please have the decency to leave my wife alone in future. And don’t come near my house again—understand.’

Alec Portal stared at him hard.

Not since his schoolboy days had he felt such an overwhelming, primitive impulse to punish another human being. He would dearly have liked to have wiped the disdain from that gross face with a thudding left. But in the end he shrugged and gathered up his ulster and cap. He was in an impossible position, and the only thing he could do was to leave with dignity.

Bestowing a formal little bow upon Eleanor, who sat with eyes cast down, shamed, he strode past the malevolent figure of Professor Appleby at the door and went from the house.

But as he opened the front door, he heard the sound of a stifled sob, and he looked back, startled, questioning. She was in there with that brute, crying. Should he go back? Should he kill the husband?

His heart was filled with a cold, murderous rage. He took a grip of himself, and was astonished. What was the matter with him? Was he himself tonight?

He closed the door, and strode away into the gathering dusk, pulling his coat collar up and his broad-visored cap down. He was almost afraid of himself, afraid of his own thoughts and desires. Something primitive and lawless had woke to life in Doctor Alec Portal, who had always thought himself so cold.

He walked quickly, trying to shake off his thoughts. One thing was obvious. He must never go near the house that contained Professor Appleby’s wife again. Passion and love had been awakened in his deep strong nature at last. And it was love for another man’s wife!

Even now he fought against a wild impulse to turn back. All his chivalry urged him to protect her from that brute. But with a resolute gritting of his teeth he strode on.

His eyes were bleak as they penetrated the gathering dusk.

‘Heavens,’ he muttered; ‘it’s a funny old world!’

Doctor Alec Portal had scarce closed the front door behind him when Professor Appleby returned to the drawing-room. Outwardly he was calm and collected. His gleaming monocle was screwed in his right eye, and he tried to restrain the twitching of his lips.

Eleanor, his wife, was still sitting on the settee, racked by a tempest of half-stifled sobs.

He watched her from the doorway with a sneering smile.

Her beauty no longer moved him. Indeed, beauty in all living things impelled in him an awful, mad lust to destroy. That was the kink in this brilliant scientist’s brain. He had been known to sit for hours plucking the petals from one choice bloom after another. As a boy, one of his absorbing hobbies had been the collection of butterflies and birds’ eggs, and he had plundered nests ruthlessly and taken a peculiar delight in the destruction of Nature’s most beautiful creatures.

Thus it was with his wooing of Eleanor.

From the first, her beauty and peculiar charm had exercised a fatal fascination for him. He desired her as he had wanted the butterfly when a boy—to pin down and destroy. He had never been the lover. And on the very day of their marriage had come frightful disillusion for Eleanor Appleby.

She had married not a man, but a fiend who was capable of exercising the most cunning and subtle forms of cruelty.

Whether it was from knowledge of the law’s remorselessness, or his own desire to play with his victim, Professor Appleby had adopted a gradual process of destruction. His constant spying on her, his taunts, his subtle and hideous little cruelties, all were tearing at Eleanor Appleby’s nerves. Visibly she had lost her fragrant charm, and was listless, apathetic, like a drooping flower. But even she had not known how near she was to nervous exhaustion until recently, and then in a panic she had sent for Doctor Alec Portal.

Professor Appleby threw back his head in a mirthless, almost silent laugh.

He felt queerly elated—pleased. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and the result of it was that he felt as a man does who has tossed off a bumper of champagne to which he is unaccustomed. When he let himself go there were compensations to this queer kink in his brain. He knew he was not normal, but it was a very pleasant state.

He commenced to lash her with his tongue.

‘So this is what you do!’ he said in that thin, precise tone with which he addressed a medical board. ‘You, whom I thought were a faithful wife—you to whom I have given the best in me. To think that you are a light-o’-love, Eleanor …’

He had chosen the words with devilish cunning. She started as though fire had touched her, and looked up.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said with his thin, mirthless smile. ‘I heard it, even in my room. He was urging you to go away—to leave me—’

With a faint moan she put up her hand as if to stay the cruel words. But he stepped forward and dashed it aside, glowering down at her.

‘Say something,’ he commanded with brutal violence. ‘What is that man to you?’

She was trembling violently.

‘I—I—you don’t understand—’

She got no further. His white hands went out, gripping her neck and shoulder. Against all her resistance she was swung gently, powerfully this way and that. There was a softness in that great strength, but she knew it could shake the life out of her, crush her with but little effort.

‘Listen,’ he said evenly and grimly. ‘The rest of the world lies outside this house. The house is mine, and so is everything in it,’ he added. For a fraction of a moment he stared at her, and in his glittering eyes she read what his words but thinly disguised.

She was shuddering violently at that look of sheer, animal gloating—it made her sick with terror.

He had changed now. And the metamorphosis in him was more frightening than any she had ever known. For he became the ardent wooer.

She almost cried out when he stretched out his arms. Then he caught her to him, and she was crushed against him in a savage embrace that nearly suffocated her. Again and again she tried to cry out, to push him away from her. But his lips were seeking hers.

His arms were around her, and the touch of her soft, girlish form suddenly seemed to set him afire with the desire for possession.

‘You witch!’ he said hoarsely. ‘You can’t get away from me now. You’re mine—mine, d’you hear?’

Sick with terror she nearly fainted. A low cry broke from her lips.

‘Oh, please … please … have mercy … If you have any chivalry in you have pity on me.’

But he only laughed at her.

‘Little wife; there’s something I want. You’re going to give it to me, or else—’ He stopped, but the words had purred out of his mouth with a cold terrific deliberation that frightened her more than anything that had yet happened.

White-faced, ashen, she stood against the wall, staring at him. Professor Appleby was lighting a cigarette coolly and deliberately.

‘Go to your room,’ he said. And then after a significant pause. ‘You understand?’

She gasped. And then all at once with a low cry of anguish she turned and darted from the room like a startled fawn.

After she had gone Professor Appleby laughed—his soft, mirthless laugh, and inhaled deeply of his cigarette. He sat down at the piano and played Rubinstein’s Melody in F softly, and with the touch of a master. An animal cruelty glowed from his eyes. He felt somehow that tonight the crisis would be reached. He had goaded his wife to the last pitch of desperation; a little more and her taut nerves would snap.