Flames - Robert Hichens

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an acute state of anticipation, and it will conjure up for you a veritable panorama of sights, sounds, bodily sensations. But throw it into that state once too often, and the panorama, instead of passing and disappearing, may remain fixed for a time, even forever, before your eyes, your ears, your touch. And that means recurrent or permanent madness. Valentine, I desire you most especially to remember that."

      He uttered the words weightily, with very definite intention. Valentine, who still seemed to be in an unusually lazy or careless mood, laughed easily.

      "I will remember," he said.

      He yawned.

      "My trance has made me sleepy," he added.

      The doctor got up.

      "Yes; bed is the best place for you," he said.

      "And for us all, I suppose," added Julian. "Though I feel as if I could never sleep again."

      The doctor went out into the hall to get his coat, leaving the friends alone for a moment.

      "I am still so excited," Julian went on. "Dear old fellow! How good it is to see you yourself again. I made up my mind that you were dead. This is like a resurrection. Oh, Val, if you had been dead, really!"

      "What would you have done?"

      "Done! I don't know. Gone to the devil, probably."

      "Do you know where to find him?"

      "My dear boy, he is in every London street, to begin with."

      "In Victoria Street, even. I was only laughing."

      "But tell me, what did you feel?"

      "Nothing. As if I slept."

      "And you really heard, saw, nothing?"

      "Nothing."

      "And that hand?"

      Valentine smiled again, and seemed to hesitate. But then he replied, quietly:

      "I told you I could not feel it."

      "I did, until I heard that dreadful cry, and then it was suddenly drawn away from me."

      Doctor Levillier appeared in the doorway with his overcoat on, but Julian did not notice him. Again his excitement was rising. He began to pace up and down the room.

      "My God!" he said, vehemently, "what would Marr say to all this? What does it mean? What can it mean?"

      "Don't let us bother too much about it."

      "Excellent advice," said Levillier, from the doorway.

      Julian stood still.

      "Doctor, I can understand your attitude," he said. "But what an amazing being you are, Val. You are as calm and collected as if you had sat and held converse with spirits all through your life. And yet something has governed you, has temporarily deprived you of life. For you were to all intents and purposes dead while you were in that trance."

      "Death is simply nothing, and nothingness does not excite or terrify one.

       I never felt better than I do at this moment."

      "That's well," said Levillier, cheerfully.

      Julian regarded Valentine's pure, beautiful face with astonishment.

      "And you never looked better."

      "I shall sleep exquisitely to-night, or rather this morning," Valentine said.

      As he spoke he drew away the heavy green curtain that hung across the window. A very pale shaft of light stole in and lit up his white face.

      It was the dawn, and, standing there, he looked like the spirit of the dawn, painted against the dying night in such pale colours, white, blue, and shadowy gold, a wonder of death and of life.

      In the silence Dr. Levillier and Julian gazed at him, and he seemed a mystery to them both, a strange enigma of purity and of unearthliness.

      "Good-bye, Cresswell," Levillier said at last.

      "Good-bye, doctor."

      "Good-bye, Valentine."

      Julian held out his hand to grasp his friend's, but Valentine began looping up the curtain and did not take it. In his gentlest voice he said to Julian:

      "Good-bye, dear Julian, good-bye. The dawn is on our friendship, Julian."

      "Yes, Valentine."

      Valentine added, after a moment of apparent reflection:

      "Take Rip away with you just for to-night. I don't want to be bitten in my sleep."

      And when Julian went away, the little dog eagerly followed him, pressing close to his heels, so close that several times Julian could not avoid kicking him.

      As soon as the flat door had closed on his two friends, Valentine walked down the passage to the drawing-room, which was shrouded in darkness. He entered it without turning on the light, and closed the door behind him. He remained in the room for perhaps a quarter of an hour. At length the door opened again. He emerged out of the blackness. There was a calm smile on his face. Two of his fingers were stained with blood, and to one a fragment of painted canvas adhered.

      When Valentine's man-servant went into the room in the morning and drew up the blinds, he found, to his horror, the picture of "The Merciful Knight" lying upon the floor. The canvas hung from the gold frame in shreds, as if rats had been gnawing it.

       Table of Contents

      THE PICCADILLY EPISODE

      Doctor Levillier and Julian bade each other good-bye on the doorstep. The doctor hailed a hansom, but Julian preferred to walk. He wished to be alone, to feel the cold touch of the air on his face. The dawn was indeed just breaking, ever so wearily. A strong wind came up with it over the housetops, and Victoria Street looked dreary in the faint, dusky, grey light, which grew as slowly in the cloudy sky as hope in a long-starved heart. Julian lived in Mayfair, and he now walked forward slowly towards Grosvenor Place, making a deliberate detour for the sake of exercising his limbs. He was glad to be out under the sky, glad to feel the breeze on his face, and to be free from the horror of that little room in which he had kept so appalling a vigil. The dull lines of the houses stretching away through the foggy perspective were gracious to his eyes. His feet welcomed the hard fibre of the pavement. They had learned in that night almost to shudder at the softness of a thick carpet. And all his senses began to come out of their bondage and to renew their normal sanity. Only now did Julian realize how strenuous that bondage had been, a veritable slavery of the soul. Such a slavery could surely only have been possible within the four walls of a building. An artificial environment must be necessary to such an artificial condition of feeling. For Julian now gradually began to believe that Dr. Levillier was right, and that he had somehow allowed himself to become unnaturally affected and strung up. He could believe this in the air and in the dawn. For he escaped out of prison as he walked, and heard the dirty sparrows begin to twitter as they sank to the brown puddles in the roadway, or soared to the soot that clung round the chimneys which they loved.

      And yet he had been communing with death, had for the first time completely realized the fact and the meaning of death. What a demon of the world it was, sly, bitter, chuckling at its power, the one thing, surely, that has perfect enjoyment of all the things in the scheme of the earth. What a trick it had played on Julian and on Valentine. What a trick! And as this idea struck into Julian's mind he found himself on the pavement by the chemist's shop that is opposite to the underground railway station of Victoria. His eyes fell on the hutch of the boy-messengers, and he beheld through the glass shutter three heads. He crossed the road and tapped on the glass. A young man pulled it up.

      "Want to send a message, sir?"

      "No.

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