Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/58

46 don’t know. … It seemed to me like trifling somehow. Anyhow I have never gone since.

“All the same there came into my head a curious jingling thyme I had heard them repeat once or twice, because they said somebody called Plato or Plautus or something had used it. It would bring back the dead, so they used to say, if you recited it alonc at midnight, and accompanied it with certain gestures. The words are nothing but gibberish, a jumbled sort of … No, I'mnot going to repeat them. … Let me go on.

“Before I had realised what I was doing, without stopping to think, I uttered the words aloud, moving my arms so as to follow the ritual. Scarcely were the syllables out of my mouth—it closes with the name and the clock was striking twelve as I spoke it—scarcely, 1 say, were the words out of my mouth when—God ! the pang comes yet when I think of it !—I heard the latch-key going into the hall door, and the door slowly opening—I was alone in the flat, and—oh ! I can never tell you! I felt dreadful !—I didn't know how to undo the thing, and yet I knew it was wrong—wicked—I never for a moment thought.—Perhaps it had been my longing so much.—The hall door opened.—The chain wasn’t up—I heard a step,—a cough—oh ! the usual sounds he used to make when he came in.—What would he be like ?—What … what… ?

“Then the door of the room opened, and there he stood, swinging himself backwards and forwards, half toes, half heels, in a way he had, and replacing his jingling keys in his trouser-pocket—I could only stare at him speechless, and gasp—till suddenly he stretched out his hand and pointed at me with a … a sort of snarl.

“‘Good heavens, Jane !’—the words sounded so commonplace that every trace of the unearthly was dissipated at the first syllable.—‘Good heavens, Jane! Go and change that frock !—How often have I told you what a fright you look in mauve—A mill-girl on a holiday !—Come ! Get along and change it !’

“It seems silly, I daresay, and all that, but, do you know, no sooner did I hear him growling and grumbling and finding fault with colours he had a dozen times at least admired