Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [104]
“Laura”—he spoke my name as if suddenly uncertain of its meaning—“how did you know my thought?”
“I did not,” I said, “or not knowingly.”
As best I could, I retraced my steps for him, but he continued to stare at me with that stricken intensity until I trailed off, at a loss to understand how such a familiar verse could trouble him so profoundly. Gradually he recovered himself and began to look at me in his accustomed way; and then he took my hand, something he did not commonly do except at meeting and parting. His hand was very cold, despite the heat of the fire, and instinctively I sought to cover it with both of mine. But still the prohibition that had nurtured our friendship kept me from speaking.
“Those lines of Shelley’s,” he resumed, after a long pause, “how often have I read them over or heard them spoken, and yet never until tonight . . . I saw”—pointing with his other hand into the heart of the fire—“the dome shatter and re-form into—a thing of darkness. And then you spoke, of all verses, that one. ‘Face to Face’ is the title of a manuscript I once read—in part. A tale, I must call it, though it was not like any tale I have ever read; indeed it was not like anything I have ever read. It was, in its effect upon the reader, the exact reverse, the most sinister inversion”—he shivered slightly, and I noticed that the seared place below his cheekbone looked paler than usual—“of that perfect poem we were discussing just now. And it was written by the woman I once dreamed of marrying.”
I had not meant to release his hand, but found that I had done so. In the shadows opposite, the bishop slept on.
“You must first understand,” said Maurice, as if answering some objection on my part, “in what extremity she was driven to—manifest it. Her mother and mine were close friends; in a manner of speaking we grew up together. Her letters were extraordinarily vivid. She was nineteen, and I twenty-one, when they came to live in London, and from then on I saw her frequently, until all was changed by the sudden death of her father, whose passing left them in a precarious position. My own father did what he could, but his means were very limited. I felt I could not . . . at any rate I did not . . . suffice to say,” he continued somewhat hurriedly, “that my friend came to the notice of Sir Lewis Wainwright, a wealthy man some thirty years older than herself. He had, I think, had some business dealing with her late father; it was certainly within his power to secure not only her future but that of her mother and her two younger sisters. I did not—perhaps could not—believe that she ever loved him. From the first he struck me as cold, indeed evil in the very emanations of his being; I felt in him that capacity to wither and shrivel with a glance, to inspire the shrinking that flesh instinctively feels from sharpened steel, or serpents. To the casual eye, no doubt, he was simply a tall, distinguished gentleman still in the prime of life, immaculately and fastidiously dressed, perfectly courteous in manner; yet how she could have been so deceived . . . it was like watching a sleepwalker moving slowly towards the brink of a precipice and finding oneself unable to move or cry out. My consciousness of my own position kept me silent, and even made me doubt what in my heart of hearts I could not doubt; and besides, what could I have said? A poor student who could barely meet the cost of his own subsistence? Yet I should have spoken—”
Though he had kept his voice low, the last words escaped him as a cry of anguish. I glanced uneasily towards the bishop, but our oblivious companion did not stir.
“Maurice,” I ventured, when he did not immediately continue, “you have sketched this malignant suitor all too vividly, and yet I have no picture of your—your friend: you have not so much as mentioned her name.”
“Her name was Claire,” he said slowly, as if struggling with some inhibition on his own side.