Part 53 (2/2)
There was genuine desolation in her voice. He believed that she really regretted _his_ departure and not the loss of the pleasures he had been giving her. His blood grew hot once more--for a single moment--and he was about to embrace her, for they were alone in the room.
And then listlessness fell upon him before he had time to put his wish into action. His poisoned mind was vibrating too quickly. An impulse was born, only to be strangled in the brain before the nerves could telegraph it to the muscles. His whole machinery was loose and out of control, the engines running erratically and not in tune. They could not do their work upon the fuel with which he fed them.
He shuddered. His heart was a coffer of ashes and within it, most evil paramours, dwelt the quenchless flame and the worm that dieth not.
... They went through other ghostly halls, thronged by a silent company which never moved nor spake. They came to the entrance of that astounding mausoleum of wickedness, The Chamber of Horrors.
There they saw, as in a faint light under the sea, the legion of the lost, the horrible men and women who had gone to swell the red quadrilles of h.e.l.l.
In long rows, sitting or standing, with blood-stained knives and hangmen's ropes in front of them, in their shameful resurrection they inhabited this place of gloom and death.
Here, was a man in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, busy at work in a homely kitchen lit by a single candle. Alone at midnight and with sweat upon his face he was breaking up the floor; making a deep hole in which to put something covered with a spotted shroud which lay in a bedroom above.
There, was the ”most extraordinary relic in the world,” the knife of the guillotine that decapitated Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and twenty thousand human beings besides.
The strange precision of portraiture, the somewhat ghastly art which had moulded these evil faces was startlingly evident in its effect upon the soul.
When a _great_ novelist or poet creates an evil personality it shocks and terrifies us, but it is never wholly evil. We know of the monster's antecedents and environment. However stern we may be in our att.i.tude towards the crime, sweet charity and deep understanding of the motives of human action often give us glimmerings which enable us to pity a lamentable human being who is a brother of ours whatever he may have done.
But here? No. All was sordid and horrible.
Gilbert and Rita saw rows upon rows of faces which differed in every way one from the other and were yet dreadfully alike.
For these great sinister dolls, so unreal and so real, had all a likeness. The smirk of cruelty and cunning seemed to lie upon the waxen masks. Colder than life, far colder than death, they gave forth emanations which struck the very heart with woe and desolation.
To many visitors the Chamber of Horrors is all its name signifies. But it is a place of pleasure nevertheless. The skin creeps but the sensation is pleasant. It provides a thrill like a switchback railway.
But it is not a place that artists and imaginative people can enter and easily forget. It epitomises the wages of sin. It ought to be a great educational force. Young criminals should be taken there between stern guardians, to learn by concrete evidence which would appeal to them as no books or sermons could ever do, the Nemesis that waits upon unrepentant ways.
The man and the girl who had just entered were both in a state of nervous tension. They were physically exhausted, one by fierce indulgence in poison, the other by three weeks of light and feverish pleasure.
And more than this.
Each, in several degree, knew that they were doing wrong, that they had progressed far down the primrose path led by the false flute-players.
”I couldn't have conceived it was so, so unnerving, Gilbert,” Rita said, shrinking close to him.
”It is pretty beastly,” Lothian answered. ”It's simply a dictionary of crime though, that's all--rather too well ill.u.s.trated.”
”I don't want to know of these horrors. One sees them in the papers, but it means little or nothing. How dreadful life is though, under the surface!”
Gilbert felt a sudden pang of pity for her, so young and fair, so frightened now.--Ah! _he_ knew well how dreadful life was--under the surface!
For a moment, in that tomb-like place a vision came to him, sunlit and splendid, calm and beautiful.
He saw his life as it might be--as doubtless G.o.d meant it to be, a favoured, fortunate and happy life, for G.o.d does not, in His inscrutable wisdom chastise all men. Well-to-do, brilliant of mind, with trained capacity to exact every drop of n.o.ble joy from life; blessed with a sweet and beautiful woman to watch over him and complement him; did ever a man have a fairer prospect, a luckier chance?
His h.e.l.l was so real. Heaven was so near. He had but to say, ”I will not,” and the sun would rise again upon his life. To the end he would walk dignified, famous, happy, loving and deeply-loved--if only he could say those words.
A turn of the hand would banish the Fiend Alcohol for ever and ever!
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