The Door to Saturn Page 14

  “Come, thou shalt see her.” Selim felt the jealous fury, but not the savage irony, that underlay the words. He was full of unpleasant premonitions, most of which concerned himself rather than Zoraida. He knew that he could not look for mercy from this austere and terrible old man; and the probabilities before him were such as to preclude more than a passing thought of what might have befallen, or would befall, Zoraida. Selim was something of an egoist; and he would hardly have claimed (except for the ear of Zoraida) that he was deeply in love. His self-solicitude, under the circumstances, was perhaps to be expected, even if not wholly to be admired.

  Abdur Ali had covered Selim with the pistol. The young man realized uncomfortably that he himself was unarmed, except for his yataghan. Even as he was remembering this, two more figures came forward from amid the lilac-shadows. They were the eunuchs, Cassim and Mustafa, who guarded Abdur Ali’s harem, and whom the lovers had believed friendly to their intrigue. Each of the giant blacks was armed with a drawn scimitar. Mustafa stationed himself at Selim’s right hand and Cassim at his left. He could see the whites of their eyes as they watched him with impassable vigilance.

  “Now,” said Abdur Ali, “you are about to enjoy the singular privilege of being admitted to my harem. This privilege, I believe, you have arrogated to yourself on certain former occasions, and without my knowledge. Tonight I shall grant it myself; though I doubt if there are many who would follow my example. Come: Zoraida is waiting for you, and you must not disappoint her, nor delay any longer. You are later than usual at the rendezvous, as I happen to know.”

  With the blacks beside him, with Abdur Ali and the levelled pistol in his rear, Selim traversed the dim garden and entered the courtyard of the jewel-merchant’s house. It was like a journey in some evil dream; and nothing appeared wholly real to the young man. Even when he stood in the harem interior, by the soft light of Saracenic lamps of wrought brass, and saw the familiar divans with their deep-hued cushions and coverings, the rare Turkoman and Persian rugs, the taborets of Indian ebony freaked with precious metals and mother-of-pearl, he could not dispel his feeling of strange dubiety.

  In his terror and bewilderment, amid the rich furnishings and somber splendor of the room, he did not see Zoraida for a moment. Abdur Ali perceived his confusion and pointed to one of the couches.

  “Hast thou no greeting for Zoraida?” The low tone was indescribably sardonic and ferocious.

  Zoraida, wearing the scanty harem costume of bright silks in which she was wont to receive her lover, was lying on the sullen crimson fabrics of the divan. She was very still, and seemed to be asleep. Her face was whiter than usual, though she had always been a little pale; and the soft, child-like features, with their hint of luxurious roundness, wore a vaguely troubled expression, with a touch of bitterness about the mouth. Selim approached her; but she did not stir.

  “Speak to her,” snarled the old man. His eyes burned like two spots of slowly eating fire in the brown and crumpled parchment of his face.

  Selim was unable to utter a word. He had begun to surmise the truth; and the situation overwhelmed him with a horrible despair.

  “What? Thou hast no greeting for one who loved thee so dearly and so unwisely?” The words were like the dripping of some corrosive acid.

  “What hast thou done to her?” said Selim after awhile. He could not look at Zoraida any longer; nor could he lift his eyes to meet those of Abdur Ali.

  “What have I done? I have dealt with her very gently, all things considered. As thou seest, I have not marred in any wise the perfection of her beauty—there is no wound, and not even the mark of a blow, on her white body. I did not play the butcher and slay her with the sword, as others would have done. Was I not more than generous…to leave her thus…for thee? Her lips and bosom are still warm—though doubtless you will not find them so responsive as usual.”

  Selim was not a coward, as men go; yet he gave an involuntary shudder.

  “But… thou hast not told me.”

  “It was a rare and precious poison, which slays immediately and with little pain. A drop of it would have been enough—or even so much as still remains upon her lips. She drank it of her own choice. I was merciful to her… as I shall be to thee.”

  “I am at thy disposal,” said Selim with all the hardihood he could muster. “Of course, it would be useless to deny anything.”

  The jewel-dealer’s face became a mask of malignity, like that of some avenging fiend.

  “You need not confess—I know everything—I knew it even from the first. My trip to Aleppo was only a blind so that I could make sure. I was here in Damascus, watching, when you thought me leagues and leagues away. It is not for you to affirm or deny your guilt—your place is only to obey and do my will. My eunuchs know their master, and they will slice thee limb from limb and member from member if I give the word.”

  Selim looked at the two Negroes. They returned his gaze with impassive eyes that were utterly devoid of all interest, either friendly or unfriendly. The light ran without a quiver along their gleaming muscles and upon their glittering swords.

  “What is thy will?”

  “Merely that you should prove yourself a good and faithful lover to Zoraida. In bringing you here tonight, I have performed an act of the most remarkable abnegation, as you must know. Other husbands would have slain you like a jackal when you entered the garden… However, I am capable of still further abnegation.”

  “But, I do not understand. What would you have me do?”

  “I have already told you… Zoraida was untrue to me for your sake; but it is in my mind that you shall never be false to her, as one of your brood is certain to be sooner or later, if you are permitted to go hence alive.”

  “Dost thou mean to kill me?”

  “I have no intention of slaying thee myself. Thy death will come from another source.”

  Selim looked again at the armed eunuchs.

  “No, it will not be that—unless you prefer it.”

  “In Allah’s name, what dost thou mean, then?” The tawny brown of Selim’s face had turned ashen with the horror of suspense.

  “Thy death will be one which any true lover would envy,” said Abdur Ali.

  Selim was powerless to ask another question. His nerves were beginning to crumble under the ordeal. The dead woman on the couch, the malevolent old man with his baleful half-hints and his obvious implacability, the muscular Negroes who would hew a man into collops at their master’s word—all were enough to break down the courage of hardier men than he.

  He became aware that Abdur Ali was speaking once more.

  “I have brought thee to thy mistress. But it would seem that thou art not a very ardent lover. Have you nothing to say to her? Surely there is much to be said, under the circumstances?”

  “In the name of the Prophet, cease thy mockery.”

  Abdur Ali did not seem to hear the tortured cry.

  “It is true, of course, that she could not reply even if thou shouldst speak to her. But her lips are as fair as ever—even if they are growing a little cold with thy unlover-like delay. Hast thou no kiss to lay upon them, in memory of all the other kisses they have taken—and given ?”

  Selim was again speechless.

  “Come—you are not very demonstrative, for one who was so amorous only yesternight.”

  “But… you said there was a poison which—”

  “Yes, and I told thee the truth. Even the touch of thy lips to hers, where a trace of the poison lingers, will be enough to cause thy death.” There was an awful gloating in Abdur Ali’s voice.

  Selim shivered and looked again at Zoraida. Aside from her utter stillness and pallor, and the faintly bitter expression about the mouth, she differed in no apparent wise from the woman who had lain so often in his arms. Yet the very knowledge that she was dead was enough to make her seem unspeakably strange and even repulsive to Selim. It was hard to associate this still, marmoreal being with the affectionate mistress who had always wel
comed him with eager smiles and caresses.

  “Truly, you are a fortunate young man,” said Abdur Ali. “She loved you to the end… and you will die from her last kiss. Few men are so lucky.”

  “Is there no other way?” Selim’s question was little louder than a whisper.

  “There is none. And you delay too long.” Abdur Ali made a sign to the Negroes, who stepped closer to Selim, lifting their swords in the lamplight.

  “Unless thou dost my bidding, thy hands will be sliced off at the wrists, to begin with,” the jeweler went on. “The next blows will sever a small portion of each forearm. Then a little temporary attention will be given to other parts of your body, before returning to the arms. And I leave the rest to your conjecture. I am sure thou wilt prefer the other death, which will be quick and almost painless, apart from its other advantages.”

  Selim stooped above the couch where Zoraida lay. Terror—the abject terror of death—was his one emotion. He had wholly forgotten his love for Zoraida, had forgotten her kisses and endearments. He feared the strange, pale woman before him as much as he had once desired her.

  “Make haste.” The voice of Abdur Ali was steely as the lifted scimitars.

  Selim bent over and kissed Zoraida on the mouth. Her lips were not entirely cold, but there was a queer, bitter taste. Of course, it must the poison. The thought was hardly formulated when a searing agony seemed to run through all his veins. He could no longer see Zoraida, in the blinding flames that appeared before him and filled the room like ever-widening suns; and he did not know that he had fallen forward on the couch across her body. Then the flames began to shrink with an awful swiftness, and went out in a swirl of soft gloom. Selim felt that he was sinking into a great gulf, and that someone (whose name he could not remember) was sinking beside him. Then, all at once, he was alone… and was losing even the sense of solitude… till there was nothing anywhere but darkness and oblivion.

  THE FACE BY THE RIVER

  It was after the commission of the deed, and during his nation-wide flight from its legal consequences, that Edgar Sylen began to develop an aversion for rivers, and a dread of women’s faces. It had never occurred to him before that so many rivers resembled the Sacramento; nor had he imagined that anything sinister could attach itself to the leaning willows and alders along their banks. Now, wherever he went, by some macabre coincidence he was always coming at afterglow of a sullen sunset to the edge of tree-fringed running waters, from which he would recoil with guilty fright and repulsion. Also, he saw resemblances to the dead woman everywhere, in the girls that he passed on the streets of unfamiliar towns and cities. He had never thought, even before he began to see her with the altered vision of enamorment, that Elise belonged to a frequently encountered type. But now, with observational powers that were morbidly sharpened in this one regard, he found that her short oval face with its pallor untouched by rouge, her high, faintly pencilled brows above eyes of deep violet-grey, her full, petulant mouth, or her slender but well-curved figure, were seemingly to be met on every pavement and in every train, street-car, shop, restaurant and hotel.

  Sylen was not aware of any consuming remorse for his act, in the usual sense of the word. But certainly he had reason to regret it as a piece of overwhelming and irremediable folly, into which he had been driven by the goading of some devilish fatality. Elise had been his stenographer: the propinquity of business association had drawn them into a more intimate relationship; and he had loved her for awhile, till she became too exacting, too exorbitant in her demands. He was not brutal or cold-blooded, he had never dreamed of killing her at any time; and even when he had tired of her, and even in that last walk at twilight by the river, when she had threatened with bitter, hysterical reproaches to tell his wife of their affair, he had not really wanted to harm the girl. His feeling had been a mixture of alarm at the menace to his domestic security, and a sudden, mad desire to still the intolerable, shrewish clamor of her tedious voice. He hardly knew that he had gripped her by the throat, that he was choking her with ferocious fingers. Such an action was totally foreign to his own conception of himself; and when he realized what he was doing, he had loosed her and pushed her away from him. All he could see at that moment was her frightened face, her throat with the visible marks of his fingers—white as an apparition in the dusk, and appallingly distinct in every detail. He had forgotten that they were so close to the river’s edge, had forgotten that the water was very deep below the bank at that particular place. These things he had remembered when he heard the splash of her fall; and he had also remembered, with a numb sense of terror, that neither he nor Elise could swim. Perhaps she had lost consciousness when she fell: for she had sunk immediately, and had not risen to the surface again. The whole scene was dim and confused in Sylen’s mind, apart from that final glimpse of her face on the shore. His flight from California was vague to him also; and his first clear memory was that of a newspaper he had seen the next morning in a neighboring state, with pictures of Elise and himself above a lurid conjectural description of the crime. The horror of those headlines, in which he seemed to meet the accusing eyes of a vast multitude of people, was branded ineffaceably upon his brain. Henceforth it was a perpetual miracle to him that he could manage to evade arrest. Like most criminals, he felt that the world was pre-occupied with himself and his crime; and did not realize its manifold oblivion, its absorption in multiform pursuits and interests.

  He was stunned by the consequences of the deed, by the break that it entailed with his whole past life, with everything and everyone he had known. His flourishing business, the respectable place he had won in his community, his wife and two children—all were lost beyond recovery through something which, as he had soon persuaded himself, was no more than a fatal accident. The idea of himself as a fugitive from justice, as a vulgar murderer in the eyes of the world, was alien and confusing to the last degree. He retained enough wit, however, to disguise himself with a touch of subtlety, and to double upon his trail in a manner that baffled the police. He bought some second-hand clothing, of the type that would be worn by a laboring-man, and disposed of his neat tailor-made suit by leaving it at night beneath a pile of old lumber. He allowed his beard to grow, and purchased a pair of heavy-rimmed spectacles. These simple measures transformed him from a well-to-do realtor to a socialistic carpenter out of work. In trying to conceal his furtiveness, his perennial fear of observation, he acquired a rough and fierce air that was quite compatible with the role of a discontented workman.

  Sylen was well supplied with money. Even when prolonged security had diminished his fear of arrest, he did not dare to linger in any place. A queer, morbid restlessness impelled him to go on. And always, it seemed to him, there was a willow-bordered river to remind him of the scene of his act; and always there were women who resembled Elise. The mere sight of a stream, or a girl with the fancied likeness, even in one feature or detail of costume, would send him toward the nearest railroad station. He tried not to think of Elise, and sometimes succeeded; but any chance resemblance was too much for his nerves. The damnable frequency of such resemblances became one of his chief worries. He could not account for them as part of the natural order of things.

  Often, with apparitional suddenness and irrelevance, he would remember Elise as he had seen her in that last moment, when her face had emerged from the twilight with such preternatural pallor and vividness. Even when he managed to forget her, there was a sense of some troublous haunting in the background of his mind. He developed also a physical feeling that he was not alone—that an unseen presence accompanied him wherever he went. But at first he did not connect this feeling with Elise, nor did he associate with her the earliest beginnings of the actual visual hallucination from which he eventually came to suffer.

  Sylen was well aware of his growing nervousness, and made desultory efforts to overcome it. He knew, or had been told, that such a condition might lead to insanity. He tried by means of auto-suggestion to dismiss the irrational fea
rs and impressions that dogged him in his wanderings. He felt that he was succeeding to some extent, that his haunting obsessions were growing fainter. Then, simultaneously with this, he began to think that there was something wrong with his eye-sight. He was troubled by a small, blurred image, somewhat to one side in his field of vision—an image that he could not seize or define, and which followed him everywhere, maintaining always the same position. He could even see it when he lay awake in the darkness—as if it were possessed of a pale luminosity. It occurred to him that the glasses he wore were injuring his eyes; and forthwith discarded them; but the unaccountable blurring still persisted. For some reason, other than his natural fear of optical disease, it made him horribly uneasy. But, for the time being, he did not think so often of Elise. Also, he was not quite so afraid of rivers and women as he had formerly been.

  One evening, in a strange city far from the state he had left, Sylen deliberately went for a walk by the shore of a tree-fringed river. He wanted to reassure himself, wanted to feel that he was mastering his old terrors.

  It was still twilight when he neared the water—that deceptive half light which alters the position and proportion of objects in a manner so illusory. All at once, Sylen became aware than the strange blur in his field of vision was now directly before him instead of at one side. Also, the blur had defined itself to a human face, seen as in some diminished perspective, at an interval of vague distance. But the face was unnaturally clear in every feature, and was outlined in luminous pallor against the dark flowing of the stream. It was the face of Elise, even as Edgar Sylen had last seen her…

  Sylen was unable afterward to recollect the circumstances of his flight from the apparition. Any real consciousness of his actions was drowned for awhile by a primordial tide of unreasoning terror. When he came to himself, trembling like an ague patient, he was sitting in the lighted smoker of a moving train. He could not even remember where he was going, till he looked at the ticket which he held in his hand. He no longer saw the face of Elise; but, even as before, there was a blurred image in his field of vision—perhaps not so far to one side as it had been as first.