Part 26 (1/2)

He rushed on, but the streets were still ever narrower and loftier; oh, the deadly fear that was on him, the desire to find escape to the broad, bright streets again, and flee this horrible thing!

But he could not--it was not to be--not broader but ever narrower were the foul alleys that he hurried through. Would he never come out to the light? Was he altogether cut off? Would he reach some blind alley and be at the mercy of the pursuing crowd?

At last the streets were so narrow that the houses altogether joined. He found himself no longer on the stone pavements, but going through the crazy houses themselves. He pa.s.sed along old wooden corridors that shook and crumbled beneath his tread, while below were black depths of rus.h.i.+ng water--open sewers whose filth was alive with fearful reptiles; then along great galleries, and through rooms; door after door, yet no escape for the phantom-pursued wretch. And the rooms were of all characters, but all deserted and all terrible to the fancy. Now he was in a garret with noisome walls, with their dirty paper torn, waving in a cold wind, and hideous vermin crawling over it; now in a magnificent boudoir with sofas of purple pile and great mirrors, and a thousand nicknacks glittering with diamonds, a chamber heavy with voluptuous odours, fit nest for some loveliest, young Hetaira or Cleopatra's self, but always with some unspeakable loathsome thing in it; then into cellars, foul charnel-houses strewed with bones--bones of men that a voice within him told had been former victims of the horror, even as he should be--and so on and on and on before the nameless terror, fleeing from the unseen women that were ever noiselessly following.

At last he felt a breath of fresh air on his cheek. O, G.o.d, was it escape at last?

No! No! He was at the end of an alley, but it terminated on the foul mud of a river bank, a broad, dark river--no escape, and the crowd behind neared--neared--they had surrounded him--seized him....

Once more the precious crystals calmed the overwrought brain for awhile.

The mouth of a pit--a pit of endless depths of suffocating darkness, and this darkness and the suffocating poisonous density of the air of it increased with the depth.

A pit of indefinite breadth, it might be a hundred miles or a hundred yards or of no breadth at all, for it was in a realm beyond the limits of s.p.a.ce.

In the middle of the pit--that is at an equal distance from the edges, and on a level with them--the wretch was poised.

He breathed labouriously--a difficult painful expiration, an agonising inspiration; and as he breathed out the air he sank--sank into the darkness of the pit--down into the suffocating darkness, into horror and death.

Then he gasped for life; drank the difficult thick air and rose again to the surface; with each expiration sinking, with each inspiration rising to the lighter air of the surface.

There was present to him all the agony of the drowning with a horror such as no death can give. But when he rose, he was not able to stay above the pit long; for he could not hold his breath--after a few minutes he was forced to breathe out--breathe out and sink down--down into that unutterable horror.

And the whole mouth of the pit was domed with a gigantic dome of millions of human heads, grinning, laughing, jeering at the wretch; mocking him that he could not stay on the surface but must breathe out and sink again--the heads of beautiful, bad women, some that he recognised as erst the companions of his orgies, the hideous heads too of satyr-like old men, that shook with palsy as they grinned with l.u.s.t, in which he seemed to recognize his own distorted likeness; and heads of horrible things not describable in the language of the sane world.

So up and down he rose and fell between the grinning faces and the suffocating darkness, each time weaker, more unable to fight upwards to life, each time sinking deeper, staying longer in the stifling depths.

Once more the hand that ministered unseen, placed the gla.s.s to his chattering teeth; the crystals again did their blessed work, and his delirious fancy changed. He was in an old ivy-grown parsonage in a pleasant, western village among hills and apple-orchards; a child once more in his old home. He wandered up the valley, by the crystal trout-streams, between the heathery hills; a child so glad, so pure, and he wept bitterly for the very delight of the flowers and all the beauty of the land, wept, though so simple and innocent; with a foreboding of future sin and misery and vain, vain, regrets.

Then the clouds darkened and gathered, and a girl walked towards him by the river bank, a beautiful girl with golden hair and purple eyes, with a great sorrow in her young face--and she pa.s.sed, seeing him not, turning not aside, though he stretched out his hands in pa.s.sionate yearning and pleading--but he could not step one step towards her, nor could he cry out to her to stay, though he knew that she alone could save him.

Then another woman followed, beautiful also, but with the eyes of a snake; and she saw him and looked into him till his heart chilled and his veins tingled, but with a terrible fascination. To look at her, to love her was death; but he would look and love notwithstanding, and die with a laugh of joy on his lips.

”This is the poor wretch, Mary. He is asleep now. Do you think you can recognize who it is?”

It was Susan who spoke; she and Mary were standing alone by the bed-side of the unconscious Hudson.

Mary scanned his features closely--a look of pity on her face; but in reply to the other's question, shook her head--she did not know him.

”Yet from what he said this morning he evidently knows you,” went on Susan.

”I cannot remember the face--and yet there is something in it”--Mary said, doubtfully, as she paused to consider again the altered features.

”I think I know what he is,” interrupted Susan. ”I made out from his ravings that he was a barrister.”

”A barrister!” cried Mary, and she started back and her cheek blanched.