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

mirror. If so, poor old Ron was jolly well in for it, seated in the chair, and holding the 'cello. His already over-excited brain found itself caught between them. The fitful firelight and the large mirror supplied excellent mediums for the visualisation of the subjective picture. Of course, we do not yet know what Ronnie saw. I trust we never shall. It is to be hoped he has forgotten it. Had you and I seen nothing, we should unquestionably have dismissed the whole thing as merely a delirious nightmare of Ronnie's unhinged brain.

"But the undoubted fact remains that we each saw, reflected in that mirror, objects which were not at that moment in the room. In fact we saw the _past_ reflected, rather than the _present_. My psychic authority considers that both our impressions came to us through Ronnie's mind, and were already fading, owing to the fact that he had become unconscious. I, coming in later than you, merely saw the Florentine chair in position. All else in my view of the reflection appertained to the actual present, into which the long-ago past was then rapidly merging. But you, coming in a few moments sooner, and being far more _en rapport_ with the spirit of the scene, saw the tall man in a red cloak--whom you call the Avenger--strangling the girl. By the way, why do you call him the Avenger?"

"Because," said Helen, slowly, "there was murder in the cruel face of the woman, and there was a dagger in her hand. She had struck her blow before he appeared upon the scene. I know this, because it was the flare of his crimson cloak, as he rushed in, which first caught my eye, in the firelight, and made me look into the mirror at all. Before that I was intent on Ronnie. The Avenger seized the woman from behind; I saw his brown hands on the whiteness of her throat. Grief and horror were on his face, as he looked over her shoulder, and past the chair, at the prostrate heap upon the floor."

"Which heap," said Dick, trying to speak lightly, "was our poor Ronnie."

"No," said Helen, gazing straight before her into the fire, "the heap upon the floor was _not_ Ronnie."

"But--I am positive!--I saw it myself! I saw you kneeling beside it. I helped to sort it, afterwards. The actual heap on the floor was the broken chair, Ronnie mixed up with it; and, on top of both, that unholy Infant, whose precocious receptivity is responsible for the entire business. I exonerate the Florentine chair; I exonerate poor Ronnie. I shall always maintain that that confounded 'cello worked the whole show, out of its own unaided tummy!"

But Helen did not laugh. She did not even smile. "The heap on the floor was not Ronnie," she repeated firmly, "nor was I kneeling beside it. The Italian chair had not fallen over. Not a single thing appertaining to the present, was reflected in the picture as I first saw it. Dick, there was a conclusion to my vision of which I have never told you."

"Oh, lor!" said Dick. "When I guaranteed the psychic chap that I was putting him in full possession of every detail!"

"I am sorry, Dick. But until this moment I have never felt able to tell you. I cannot do so now, unless you are nice."

"I _am_ nice," said Dick, "_very_ nice! Tell me quick."

"Well, as I knelt transfixed, watching--the heap on the floor moved and arose. It was a slight dark man, with a white face, and a mass of tumbled black hair. He lifted from off his breast as he got up, a violoncello. He did not look at the woman, nor at the man in the crimson cloak; he stood staring, as if petrified with grief and dismay, at his 'cello. Following his eyes, I saw a dark jagged stab, piercing its right breast, just above the _f_ hole. The anguish on the 'cellist's face, was terrible to see. Then--oh, Dick, I don't know how to tell you!"

"Go on, Helen," he said, gently.

"Then he turned from the 'cello, and looked at _me_; and, Dick, it was the soul of Ronnie--_my_ Ronnie--in deepest trouble over his Infant of Prague, which looked at me through those deep sad eyes. I cannot explain to you how I knew it! He was totally unlike my big fair Ronnie, but--it was the soul of Ronnie, in great distress, looking at _me_! The moment I realised this, I seemed set free from the past. The 'cellist, the woman, the Avenger, all vanished instantly. I saw myself reflected, I saw you, I saw the studio; I saw Ronnie on the floor. I turned to him at once, lifted the 'cello from his breast, and drew his head into my lap."

"Was there a jagged hole--"

"No, not a scratch. The stab belonged to a century ago. But, listen Dick! Several days later, when I had a moment in which to remember Ronnie's poor Infant of Prague, I examined it in a good light, and found the place where the hole made by that dagger had been skilfully mended."

"Lor!" said Dr. Dick. "We're getting on! Don't you think you and I and the Infant might put our heads together, and write a psychic book! But now--seriously. Do you really believe Ronnie was once a slim, pale person, with a shock of black hair? And if he and his Infant lived together in past ages, where were you and I? Are we altogether out of it? Or are you the lady with the dagger, and I the noble party in the flaming cloak?"

She smiled, and a look of quiet peace was in her eyes.

"Dick," she said, "I am not troubled at all about the past. My whole concern is with the present; my earnest looking forward is to the future. And remember, that which set me completely free to think only of the present, was when my Ronnie's soul looked out at me from that strange vision of the past. I cannot say exactly what I believe. But I know my entire responsibility is to the present; my hope and confidence are towards the future. I realise, as I have never realised before, the deep meaning of the words: 'Lord, Thou hast been our Dwelling-place, in all generations.' I am content to leave it at that."

Dick sat silent; sobered, impressed, by a calm confidence of faith, which was new to him.

Then he said: "Good for you, Helen, that you can take it so. Personally, I believe in nothing which I cannot fully explain and understand. 'Faith,' in your sense of the word, has no place in my vocabulary. I was a very small boy when my faith took to itself wings and flew away; and, curiously enough, it was while I was singing lustily, in the village church at Dinglevale: 'As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end, Amen'!"

"It will come back again," said Helen. "Dick, I know it will come back. Some day you will come to me and you will say: 'It has come back.' The thrusting hand and the prying finger are the fashion nowadays, I know. But the grand old faith which will win out in the end, is the faith which stands with clasped hands, in deepest reverence of belief; and, lifting adoring eyes, is not ashamed to say to the revelation of a Risen Christ: 'My Lord and my God!'"

Dick stirred uneasily in his chair.

"We have got off the subject," he said, "and it's about time we looked up Ronnie. But, first of all: how much of all this do you mean to tell Ronnie?"

"Nothing whatever, if I can help it," replied Helen. "So far as I know, I hope, after this morning, never to mention the subject again."

"I think you are wise. And now let me give you a three-fold bit of advice. Smash the mirror; burn the chair; brain the Infant!"

Helen laughed. "No, no, Dick!" she said. "I can do none of those things. I must take tenderest care of Ronnie's Infant. I have had his valuable old chair carefully mended; and I must not let him think I fear the mirror."

"You're a brave woman," said Dick. "Believing what you do, you're a brave woman to live in the house with that mirror. Or, perhaps, it comes of believing so much. A certainty of confidence, which asks no questions, must be to some extent a fortifying thing. By the way, you will remember that the long rigmarole I gave you was not my own explanation, but the expert's? Mine is considerably simpler and shorter. In fact, it can be summed up in three words."

"What is your explanation, Dick?"

"Whisky and soda," said Dr. Dick, bravely. "You mixed it stiffer than you knew. I was dead beat, and had had no food. I have always been a fairly abstemious chap; in my profession we have to be: woe betide the man who isn't. But since I saw that chair standing on its four legs in the mirror, when it was lying broken on the floor in reality, I have not touched a drop of alcohol. There! I make you a present of that for your next temperance meeting. Now let's go out and buck Ronnie up. Remember, he'll feel jolly flat for a bit, with no temperature. Temperature is a thing you miss, when it has become a habit."


CHAPTER XVII


"HE NEVER KNEW!"

Ronnie saw Dick off by the mid-day train.

After the train had begun to move, Dick leaned from the window, and said suddenly: "Ronnie! talk to your wife about her Leipzig letter, and--_the kid_, you know."

Ronnie kept pace with the train long enough to say: "I wish you wouldn't call it the 'kid,' Dick; it is the 'Infant.' And Helen declines to talk of it."

Then he dropped behind, and Dick flung himself into a corner of his compartment, with a face of comic despair. "Merciful heavens," he said, "slay that Infant!"

Meanwhile Ronnie was saying to a porter: "When is the next train for town?"

"One fifty-five, sir."

"Then I have no chance now of catching the three o'clock from town, for Hollymead?"

"Not from town, sir. But there is a way, by changing twice, which gets you across country, and you pick up the three o'clock all right at Huntingford, four ten."

"Are you sure, my man? I was told there was no way across country."

"The one fifty-five is the only train in the day by which you can do it, sir. I happen to know, because I have a sister lives at Hollymead, so I've done it m'self. If trains aren't late, you hit off the three o'clock at Huntingford."

"Thanks," said Ronnie, noting down particulars. Then he walked rapidly back to the hotel.

"I can't stand it," he said. "I shall bolt! With me off her hands, she can go and have a jolly Christmas at the Dalmains. She is always welcome there. I must get away alone and think matters out. I know everything is all wrong, and yet I don't exactly know what has come between us. I only know I am wretched, and so is she. It is still the poison of the Upas. If I knew why she suddenly considered me utterly, preposterously, altogether, selfish, I would do my level best to put it right. But I don't."

He found Helen in the hall, anxiously watching the door. She took up a paper,