The Upas Tree by Florence Louisa Barclay (thriller novels to read .txt) 📕

a devil of a time! There's a smug chap in a bowler hat who is supposed to be my valet. When I went to bed last night, I found I had a decent room enough, opening out of the sitting-room. I was obviously expected to turn in there, asking no questions; so I turned in. But the valet person slept in a room communicating with mine. The latch and the lock of the door between, had been tampered with. The door wouldn't shut, so I had to sleep all night with that fellow able to look in upon me at any moment. After I had been in bed a little while, I remembered something I had left in the sitting-room and wanted. I got up quietly to fetch it. That door was locked, on the sitting-room side!"

"Poor old boy! We'll soon put all that right. You see you were pretty bad, while you _were_ bad; and all kinds of precautions were necessary. We felt sure of a complete recovery, and I always predicted that it would be sudden. But it is bound to take a little while to get all your surroundings readjusted. Why not go home at once? Pack up and go back to Hollymead this afternoon, and have a real jolly Christmas there--you, and Helen, and the kid."

"The kid?" queried Ronnie, perplexed. "What kid? Oh, you mean my 'cello--the Infant of Prague."

Dick, meanwhile, had bitten his tongue severely.

"Yes, the jolly old Infant of Prague, of course. Is it 'he,' 'she,' or 'it'? I forget."

"It," replied Ronnie, gravely. "In the peace of its presence one forgets all wearying 'he and she' problems. Yes, I want most awfully to get back to my 'cello. I want to make sure it is not broken; and I want to make sure it is no dream, that I can play. But--I don't want to go, unless I can go alone. Can't you prescribe complete solitude, as being absolutely essential for me? Dick, I'm wretched! I don't care where I go; but I want to get away by myself."

"Why, old man?"

"Because my wife still considers me insane."

"Nonsense, Ron! And don't talk of being insane. You were never that. Some subtle malarial poison, we shall never know what, got into your blood, affected your brain, and you've had a bad time--a very bad time--of being completely off your balance; the violent stage being followed by loss of memory, and for a time, though mercifully you knew nothing about it, complete loss of sight. But these things returned, one by one; and, as soon as you were ready for it, you awoke to consciousness, memory, and reason. There is no possible fear of the return of any of the symptoms, unless you come again in contact with the poison; hardly likely, as it attacked you in Central Africa. Of course, as I say, we shall never know precisely what the poison was."

Then Ronnie spoke, suddenly. "It was the Upas tree," he said. "I camped near it. My nightmares began that night. I never felt well, from that hour."

"Rubbish!" said Dr. Dick. "More likely a poisonous swamp. The Upas tree is a myth."

"Not at all," insisted Ronnie. "It is a horrid reality. I had seen the one in Kew Gardens. I recognised it directly, yet I camped in its shadow. Dick, do you know what the Upas stands for?"

"What?"

"Selfishness! It stands for any one who is utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish."

"Oh, buck up old man!" cried Dick. "We are all selfish--every mother's son of us! Perhaps that's why! Most men's mothers spoil them, and their wives continue the process. But you will be selfish with a vengeance, if you don't buck up and give that splendid wife of yours a good time now. She has been through--such a lot. Ronnie, you will never quite realise--well, _I_ never knew such a woman, excepting, perhaps, Mrs. Dalmain; and of course she has not your wife's beauty. I haven't the smallest intention of ever coming under the yoke myself. But I assure you, old chap, if you had pegged out, as you once or twice seemed likely to do, I should have had a jolly good try as to whether I couldn't chip in, by-and-by."

"Confound you!" said Ronnie. But he laughed, and felt better.

* * * * *


Dr. Dick saw Helen alone.

"Well," he said, "so we've pulled him through. Ronnie's all right now. No more need for watching and planning, and guarding; in fact, the less he realises the precautions which were necessary, the better. I shall take Truscott back to town with me. He seems to have done awfully well. I suppose you have no complaints. Why don't you hire a car and run straight back home with Ronnie this afternoon. Think what a jolly Christmas you might have. Show him the boy as a Christmas present! I believe he is keen to be at home; and the less you thwart him now, the better. Don't suggest it until I am gone; but send a wire home at once to say you are probably returning this afternoon. Then your people will make all needed preparations for the festive day; turkeys and holly, and all that sort of thing; have fires lighted everywhere, and all in readiness. My old sweetheart, Mrs. Blake, will put on cherry-coloured ribbons, and black satin, and be in the hall to receive you! You had better mention, in the wire, that I am not coming; then she won't waste her time hanging mistletoe in likely corners."

Helen wrote the telegram, rang, and gave it to a page.

Then she turned to Dr. Dick.

"Ronnie is _not_ fully himself, yet," she said.

Dick looked at her keenly. "How so?"

"He professes to remember, and does remember, everything which happened, up to the final crash in the studio. Yet he has made no mention to me of--of our child."

"He is shy about it," suggested Dick. "You speak first."

"I cannot," she replied. "It is for Ronald to do that."

"Ah, you dear women!" moralised the young bachelor. "You remind me of Nebuchadnezzar--no, I mean Naaman. You bravely ford the rushing waters of your Abanas and your Pharpars, and then you buck-jump at the little river Jordan!"

"My dear Dick, I am becoming accustomed to the extraordinary inaptness of your scriptural allusions. But this is hardly a _small_ matter between me and Ronnie. I am ready to make every allowance for his illness and loss of memory; but I don't see how I can start life with him at home, until he manages to remember a thing of such vital import in our wedded life. He may be sane on every other point. I cannot consider him sane on this."

"Shall I tell him?" suggested Dick.

"No, let him remember. He can remember his Infant of Prague; his mind is full of that again. Why should he not be able to remember my baby son?"

"Oh, lor!" sighed Dr. Dick. "Why not put that poser to Ronnie direct, instead of putting it to me? Forgive me for saying so, but you are suffering just now from a reaction, after the terrible strain through which you have passed. And Ronnie is wretched too, because he remembers how you let fly at him that evening, and he thinks you really meant it."

"I did," said Helen. "Of course, had I known how ill he was, poor old boy, I should have been more patient. But I have a little son to consider now, as well as Ronnie. I _did_ think him selfish, and I _do_."

"My dear angel," said Dr. Dick, "we are all selfish, every mother's son of us; and it is you blessed women who make us so."

She looked at him, with softening eyes. "_You_ are not selfish, Dick," she said.

"I am," he answered; "and a long chalk worse than Ronnie. I combine ambition with my selfishness. I jolly well mean to get to the top of the tree, and I don't care how I get there. I down every one who dares stand in my way; or--I use them as stepping-stones. There! Isn't that a worse Upas tree than poor old Ronnie's? Mine is a life untouched by love, or any gentler feelings. All that sort of thing was killed in me when I was quite a little chap. It is the story of a broken halo. Perhaps I'll tell it you some day. Meanwhile, this being Christmas Eve and not Ash Wednesday, I'll make no more confessions. Don't you want to hear the result of my psychic investigations, concerning our mirror experiences?"

"Exceedingly," said Helen. "Have you time to tell me now?"

"Heaps of time. It won't take long. Last night I told the whole story to a man who makes a special study of these matters, and knows more about things psychic than any other man in England. The Brands asked me to dinner and arranged to have him also. After dinner he and I went down alone to the doctor's consulting room, and talked the whole thing out. I was careful to mention no names. You don't want to be credited with a haunted room at the Grange, neither do we want Ronnie's name mixed up with psychical phenomena. Now I will give you this man's opinion and explanation, exactly as he gave it to me. Only, remember, I pass it on as his. I do not necessarily endorse it.

"He holds that inanimate objects, such as beds, walls, cupboards, staircases, have a power of receiving, absorbing and retaining impressions transmitted to them through contact with human minds in extreme conditions of stress and tension. This would especially be the case with intimately personal things, such as musical instruments, or favourite chairs. Old rooms and ancient furniture might retain these impressions for centuries; and, under certain circumstances, transmit them to any mind, with which they came in contact, happening to be strung up to the right key to respond to the psychic impression. He considers that this theory accounts for practically all ghost stories and haunted rooms, passages, and staircases. It reduces all apparitions to the subjective rather than the objective plane; in other words the spirit of a murdered man does not return at certain times to the room in which he was done to death; but his agonised mind, in its last conscious moments, left an impress upon that room which produces a subjective picture of the scene, or part of the scene, upon any mind psychically _en rapport_ with that impress. I confess this idea appeals to me. It accounts for the undoubted fact that certain old rooms are undeniably creepy; also that apparitions, unconnected with actual flesh and blood, have been seen by sane and trustworthy witnesses. It does away with the French word for ghost--_revenant_. There is no such thing as a 'comer-back,' or an 'earth-bound spirit.' Personally, I do not believe in immortality, in the usually accepted sense of the word; but I have always felt that were there such a thing as a disembodied spirit, it would have something better to do than to walk along old corridors, frightening housemaids! But, to come to the point, concerning our own particular experience.

"I carefully told him every detail. He believes that probably the old Florentine chair and the 'cello had been in conjunction before, and had both played their part in the scene which was re-acted in the