Grey Face/Chapter 12

ASMINE was so far a true product of her generation as to be ashamed of fear. One gathers that Victorian young ladies lived altogether more sheltered lives; because they were so unfamiliar with the ways of men they feared them as we all fear the unknown. The cave-man and the sheikh-man of modern literature are interesting to feminine readers in the same way that the Spanish Armada is of interest to boys; as a fascinating danger never likely to be met with. Bats Jasmine was regretfully compelled to fear—and spiders; ghosts, she considered herself entitled to fear, whilst never expecting to meet one. But a man! She would be untrue to herself, to her traditions, if she consented to fear a man. Some such theories or reflections passed with lightning quickness through her brain now as she confronted Trepniak standing out there upon the lawn.

He was strange, mysterious, of unknown origin; the source of his wealth was an insoluble problem. But he was only a man, after all. Her heart, which had seemed to forget its functions for a while, began now to beat again with unusual rapidity, but her brain, momentarily numbed, was restored to its natural coolness.

Trepniak wore evening dress, with the French cape and sombrero which she knew. He removed the sombrero now, and bowed in the extravagant fashion which was his. This characteristic mannerism quite restored her courage.

"My dear Miss Hope," he said—and she noted with peculiar disfavour his guttural voice and faint accent—"I fear I must have startled you."

That it had been physically impossible for him to see her was a fact which did not occur to Jasmine. Many women, even clever women, share with the ostrich the curious belief that if they cannot see a person that person cannot see them; hence those familiar indiscretions which have created a race of "Peeping Toms." The reverse also holds good. Since Trepniak was clearly visible to Jasmine, the fact of his perceiving her in a place where there was no light whatever did not strike her as phenomenal. She replied quite naturally, advancing to meet him:

"Yes, M. de Trepniak, you did, rather."

"I am sorry," he said, and stood aside to allow her to come out upon the lawn. "Allow me to explain."

She drew her coat tightly about her, and, her courage fully restored, stood there looking at him.

"I learned this morning," he continued, "that you were staying here, and as I was returning from Brighton, I ventured to make a call, forgetting that London hours are not country hours. I did not know my way very well, and, blundering in the direction of the house"

"You saw me coming to meet you?" Jasmine interrupted: "I quite understand. You have left your car in the lane?"

"Yes, and had evidently taken the wrong path to the front door."

"You have certainly strayed," said Jasmine, laughingly. "But if you came to see me, here I am—a very lonely little country mouse."

Trepniak smiled. He had not replaced his hat, and the effect of the brilliant moonlight upon the close, tight curls which covered his head awoke some sort of memory in the girl's mind. She was unable to identify this memory, but actually it was that of a bust of Nero which she had seen in the Vatican.

"A mouse, yes," he agreed; "for the mouse is a misunderstood creature, very dainty and elusive. But lonely? I find it very hard to believe that you could ever be lonely. Upon a desert island, perhaps. In any place where there are men, except in a community of the blind—no, I cannot believe."

She did not entirely approve of his reference to a community of the blind. It was an admission of physical attraction, and Jasmine's theories were wholly anti-sensual. For a man to praise her hair, her eyes, her arms, her ankles, was fatal, an unforgivable indiscretion. Women who valued such flatteries were only fit to be toys, and the days of the harêm were past. It was because Douglas Carey had never allowed the physical man once to appear in his wooing that she had been attracted to him. Yet, it was because she knew, subconsciously, that the physical man was merely hidden but not absent that she loved him.

"You are wrong," she replied slowly, as side by side they began to cross the lawn. "I am really lonely."

"I agree," said Trepniak. "For understanding, but not for companionship."

"Every woman is lonely in that way," Jasmine retorted; "but here I am lonely in every way. You are the first human being who has come to see me."

"Like attracts like," he replied. "If there is a goddess of loneliness she has drawn us together."

"What!" Jasmine exclaimed. "You, lonely? Why, you know everybody."

He nodded several times, swinging his hat as he walked.

"And, consequently," he returned, "know nobody."

A bat circled overhead, and, swooping, descended near to them for a moment. Jasmine shrank instinctively, and:

"You are afraid of bats?" Trepniak asked.

Jasmine drew her coat more closely about her, glancing upward fearfully.

"Yes," she said. "It's silly, but I am."

"An instinct," Trepniak declared, "and perhaps a wise one; for some of the instincts of women which appear foolish are fundamental and protective. Science would do well to study them. Oh, I mean this. Let me explain. The bat is harmless in itself, but there is a form of parasite peculiar to bats which, if transferred to the human body, produces unpleasant consequences."

"Really!" Jasmine exclaimed. "I had never heard this before."

"No?" Trepniak smiled again. "One of Nature's mysteries which Science has so far overlooked. Miss Hope."

The strangeness of the situation now suddenly presented itself to Jasmine. She chose to ignore the formalities, but she could not fail to recognize that this midnight promenade with Trepniak, even to the most broad-minded, must present all the features of a secret rendezvous. She stood still, somewhere near the centre of the lawns, facing her companion.

"How strange," she said, musingly, "that you should have come here to-night."

"To me it does not seem strange," Trepniak replied. "I am attracted to you naturally—so naturally. Let me tell you; but if I bore you, stop me. You see, all my early life was devoted to science, to hard work. I was a slave to my studies. Half of me remained unexpressed. When success came, and such wealth as I had never anticipated, the result was extravagance, perhaps. That other half of me did not unfold—it burst open. Life is so short, and although I was still a comparatively young man, there was so much to be crammed into what of life remained to me. My nature changed. I despised my old pursuits. It seemed to me that I had wasted many precious years; and finding myself, shall I say a millionaire—believe me, it is not an exaggeration—all the dreams, many of them forgotten, which had been mine and which I think must be every man's, suddenly demanded realization, now that realization became possible."

Jasmine remained silent, and Trepniak continued:

"My way of life, my home, are extravagant. Yes, deliberately so, perhaps childishly so. But only because repression strengthens the thing which is repressed. Every man dreams of power—of the pride of possession, of astonishing, of exceeding his fellows. I, to whom even the attempt to do so had been denied, suddenly found in my hands a power like that lever of which Archimedes dreamed. If I seem sometimes mad, forgive me. I am trying to burn up in one short human life all the madness that was born in me. Many men would seek to do the same if they had the opportunity. And I am drawn to you, Miss Hope, because you are groping for expression, which, if you could achieve it, would be wonderful. I know this—I feel it. There is here a kinship, although you may not have recognized it as I have done. There would be joy for you as there is for me in commanding the sun to shine—in knowing that the command must be obeyed; in willing the tempest—and seeing it leap up. Power—the knowledge of possessing it for good or for evil! There is much of the feminine in me, perhaps, but to you, who are all woman, what would it mean, such a power? What could it accomplish? What could it not accomplish?"

Jasmine, watching him, listening to him, was carried away by the sheer force of the speaker. That provocative memory taunted her. It was something pagan—an emperor, a god, who spoke, who stood before her in the moonlight—real, yet unreal.

Vaguely, she was afraid of him again, as she had been when first she had seen him at the end of the mound tunnel. It was a strange fear and not entirely of the man. It was rather of what he embodied, what he stood for. The part of her that was Scottish awoke automatically, as the bristles of the porcupine arise at the approach of danger. Trepniak was looking, not at her, but upward to the moon; and his strange, pallid face, the pose of his powerful body, provoked her, yet the protective instinct was stronger. She wondered in what degree his words, his attitude now, were a pose, in what degree they were sincere, and:

"M. de Trepniak," she said.

He lowered his gaze immediately, looking at her, and even as he did so she regretted the urgency of her words. His eyes, which she had always noted as strange, now, in the light of the moon, looked almost inhuman. But:

"I am sorry," she continued firmly. "I must go back. As you said, London hours are not country hours. Oh, I know you don't mind, and I am so glad to have seen you."

Fear, real fear, was mounting in her heart. Where, a few moments ago, the thought of discovery had shocked her, now she would have welcomed the sound of her aunt's cold voice, of any one's voice, of the bark of a dog. She dragged her glance from his, and turned, retracing her steps.

"Please forgive me," she said. "It was silly of me to come out. But I feel dreadfully cold. Won't you come down to-morrow and lunch with us?"

Trepniak turned and walked beside her.

"It is good of you," he replied in a low voice. "I am grateful. Yet I fear I cannot accept. My day is full. But, believe me, this little talk has made me very happy. Which way do we go?"

Without glancing aside:

"Just as far as the gate there," Jasmine explained; "then you continue along the drive to your car, and I turn to the right."

She tried not to hurry, yet hastened her steps, and, the gate reached—for now she simply dared not face the tunnel under the mound—she turned for a moment and held out her hand.

"Good-night," she said. "I am so glad to have seen you."

The desire to look into the pale face was almost irresistible; yet she resisted, turned, and crying again, "Good-night!" ran fleetly through the kitchen garden, never hesitating, never faltering, turned again to the right, without even glancing in the direction of the rock garden where the tunnel opened, and raced to the kitchen door. She threw it open, forgetful of disturbances, and, safely inside, thrust the bolts home and leaned against the door, breathless, her heart beating almost painfully.

For a while she was too greatly overcome to proceed. The source of this ungovernable fear, which had mercilessly unseated that self-possession upon which she prided herself. Jasmine could not have defined. She was in such a state of terror as hitherto she had known only in nightmares. But at last she summoned her proud spirit from wherever it shrank in hiding and proceeded quickly to her room.

She wanted to leap into bed and pull the clothes over her head, as she had often done in childhood. Yet she hesitated, standing very still just inside the door, and listening. She was trying to detect the sound of the car which Trepniak said he had left in the lane. The Herculean pulse of Trepniak's Farman should have been audible for miles in the stillness of the countryside. But she could detect no sound except the beating of her own heart.

It occurred to her that from the window of a neighbouring room she would be able to see the headlights of any car that might stand in the lane. Without giving herself time to change her mind or to compromise with her fear of the dark passage intervening, she set out, entered the room she had in mind, and crossed to the window.

To her surprise, for it overlooked the porch and therefore was very accessible from the drive below, it was wide open. Jasmine leaned upon the ledge, looking across a narrow strip of lawn to where a bank of rhododendrons intervened between the grounds and the lane beyond.

There was no car there, no glimmer of a light, nor could she detect any sound. But, as she watched, she saw something—something that rose from the undergrowth like a grey mist, gradually taking shape, and floating across the grass in her direction. Blackly the shadow of the house lay here; yet she could see this mist swiftly crossing the lawn and growing more and more attenuated, stretching upward and farther upward. At the top it spread out, mushroom fashion, was growing dense, taking definite shape.

Suddenly, when it was no more than five or six yards from her, she discerned the outline of a face which seemed to float within the smoky greyness—a dead face, except for the eyes, which glowed with a sullen fire.

A wisp of the vapour, as if caught in a breath of air, was blown in the direction of the window. She felt it touch her forehead—coldly, clammily. The swift, appalling horror of the thing literally paralyzed her. She tried to scream but could utter no sound. Then, as the deathly grey face rose almost level with the window, her knees collapsed beneath her and she sank down.

Her ankle was twisted under her, and the physical pain curiously aroused physical resistance. She must close the window—at all costs she must close the window. She clutched desperately at the ledge, dragging herself up. Then she became motionless again—staring straight before her at a clump of trees crowning a mound and beyond them to where the moon hung very low in a cloudless sky.

A bat flew rapidly by. She moved her head, looking down at the Japanese box of ivory and mother-o'-pearl which she clutched tightly in her right hand. She seemed to hear the wild beating of her heart, but no other sound was audible. She was crouching on the window seat of her own room, a light dressing gown over her night robe, and her bare feet—one of which, by reason of her unnatural attitude, was paining her acutely—thrust into fur-trimmed bedroom slippers!

She tenderly moved the tortured foot, sinking down limply upon the cushions and trying to think where and when she had taken off her shoes and stockings and her motor coat. It was the motor coat which gave her the first clue to a solution of the mystery. She remembered that it was home in Half-Moon Street. She had not brought it with her to Low Ketley!

It took some time for the truth wholly to dawn, but at last comprehension came. She had never left her room—she had never left her place at the window. Unaccountably she had fallen asleep here, at exactly what moment she found it impossible to determine. But her midnight walk, her meeting with Trepniak, her sudden fear and panic return, lastly, the horror of the floating grey face—all had been a dream, a hallucination—she scarcely knew how to define it. But, mercifully, it had been unreal.

A bat must have touched her as she sat by the window. She shuddered at the thought, yet the incident had served the purpose; aided by the pain in her twisted foot, it had recalled her from that evil land of mirage into which she had slipped.

Already the details of her strange illusion were becoming difficult to recall. One prevailed—the one she would most gladly have chosen to forget: the horror of a deathly grey face floating mistily over the grass.