CHAPTER XXXIII
WHAT CAME OF LOOKING THROUGH A LATTICE
He began in accents which halted not a little. By degrees his voicegrew firmer. Words came from him with greater fluency.
'I am not yet forty. So when I tell you that twenty years ago I was amere youth I am stating what is a sufficiently obvious truth. It istwenty years ago since the events of which I am going to speaktranspired.
'I lost both my parents when I was quite a lad, and by their death Iwas left in a position in which I was, to an unusual extent in one soyoung, my own master. I was ever of a rambling turn of mind, and when,at the mature age of eighteen, I left school, I decided that I shouldlearn more from travel than from sojourn at a university. So, sincethere was no one to say me nay, instead of going either to Oxford orCambridge, I went abroad. After a few months I found myself inEgypt,--I was down with fever at Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. I hadcaught it by drinking polluted water during an excursion with someBedouins to Palmyra.
'When the fever had left me I went out one night into the town insearch of amusement. I went, unaccompanied, into the native quarter,not a wise thing to do, especially at night, but at eighteen one is notalways wise, and I was weary of the monotony of the sick-room, andeager for something which had in it a spice of adventure, I foundmyself in a street which I have reason to believe is no longerexisting. It had a French name, and was called the Rue de Rabagas,--Isaw the name on the corner as I turned into it, and it has left animpress on the tablets of my memory which is never likely to beobliterated.
'It was a narrow street, and, of course, a dirty one, ill-lit, and,apparently, at the moment of my appearance, deserted. I had gone,perhaps, half-way down its tortuous length, blundering more than onceinto the kennel, wondering what fantastic whim had brought me into suchunsavoury quarters, and what would happen to me if, as seemed extremelypossible, I lost my way. On a sudden my ears were saluted by soundswhich proceeded from a house which I was passing,--sounds of music andof singing.
'I paused. I stood awhile to listen.
'There was an open window on my right, which was screened by latticedblinds. From the room which was behind these blinds the sounds werecoming. Someone was singing, accompanied by an instrument resembling aguitar,--singing uncommonly well.'
Mr Lessingham stopped. A stream of recollection seemed to come floodingover him. A dreamy look came into his eyes.
'I remember it all as clearly as if it were yesterday. How it all comesback,--the dirty street, the evil smells, the imperfect light, thegirl's voice filling all at once the air. It was a girl's voice,--full,and round, and sweet; an organ seldom met with, especially in such aplace as that. She sang a little chansonnette, which, just then, halfEurope was humming,--it occurred in an opera which they were acting atone of the Boulevard theatres,--"La P'tite Voyageuse." The effect,coming so unexpectedly, was startling. I stood and heard her to an end.
'Inspired by I know not what impulse of curiosity, when the song wasfinished, I moved one of the lattice blinds a little aside, so as toenable me to get a glimpse of the singer. I found myself looking intowhat seemed to be a sort of cafe,--one of those places which are foundall over the Continent, in which women sing in order to attract custom.There was a low platform at one end of the room, and on it were seatedthree women. One of them had evidently just been accompanying her ownsong,--she still had an instrument of music in her hands, and wasstriking a few idle notes. The other two had been acting as audience.They were attired in the fantastic apparel which the women who arefound in such places generally wear. An old woman was sitting knittingin a corner, whom I took to be the inevitable patronne. With theexception of these four the place was empty.
'They must have heard me touch the lattice, or seen it moving, for nosooner did I glance within than the three pairs of eyes on the platformwere raised and fixed on mine. The old woman in the corner alone showedno consciousness of my neighbourhood. We eyed one another in silencefor a second or two. Then the girl with the harp,--the instrument shewas manipulating proved to be fashioned more like a harp than aguitar--called out to me,
'"Entrez, monsieur!--Soye le bienvenu!"
'I was a little tired. Rather curious as to whereabouts I was,--theplace struck me, even at that first momentary glimpse, as hardly in theordinary line of that kind of thing. And not unwilling to listen to arepetition of the former song, or to another sung by the same singer.
'"On condition," I replied, "that you sing me another song."
'"Ah, monsieur, with the greatest pleasure in the world I will sing youtwenty."
'She was almost, if not quite, as good as her word. She entertained mewith song after song. I may safely say that I have seldom if ever heardmelody more enchanting. All languages seemed to be the same to her. Shesang in French and Italian, German and English,--in tongues with whichI was unfamiliar. It was in these Eastern harmonies that she was mostsuccessful. They were indescribably weird and thrilling, and shedelivered them with a verve and sweetness which was amazing. I sat atone of the little tables with which the room was dotted, listeningentranced.
'Time passed more rapidly than I supposed. While she sang I sipped theliquor with which the old woman had supplied me. So enthralled was I bythe display of the girl's astonishing gifts that I did not notice whatit was I was drinking. Looking back I can only surmise that it was somepoisonous concoction of the creature's own. That one small glass had onme the strangest effect. I was still weak from the fever which I hadonly just succeeded in shaking off, and that, no doubt, had somethingto do with the result. But, as I continued to sit, I was conscious thatI was sinking into a lethargic condition, against which I was incapableof struggling.
'After a while the original performer ceased her efforts, and, hercompanions taking her place, she came and joined me at the littletable. Looking at my watch I was surprised to perceive the lateness ofthe hour. I rose to leave. She caught me by the wrist.
'"Do not go," she said;--she spoke English of a sort, and with thequeerest accent. "All is well with you. Rest awhile."
'You will smile,--I should smile, perhaps, were I the listener insteadof you, but it is the simple truth that her touch had on me what I canonly describe as a magnetic influence. As her fingers closed upon mywrist, I felt as powerless in her grasp as if she held me with bands ofsteel. What seemed an invitation was virtually a command. I had to staywhether I would or wouldn't. She called for more liquor, and at whatagain was really her command I drank of it. I do not think that aftershe touched my wrist I uttered a word. She did all the talking. And,while she talked, she kept her eyes fixed on my face. Those eyes ofhers! They were a devil's. I can positively affirm that they had on mea diabolical effect. They robbed me of my consciousness, of my power ofvolition, of my capacity to think,--they made me as wax in her hands.My last recollection of that fatal night is of her sitting in front ofme, bending over the table, stroking my wrist with her extendedfingers, staring at me with her awful eyes. After that, a curtain seemsto descend. There comes a period of oblivion.'
Mr Lessingham ceased. His manner was calm and self-contained enough;but, in spite of that I could see that the mere recollection of thethings which he told me moved his nature to its foundations. There waseloquence in the drawn lines about his mouth, and in the strainedexpression of his eyes.
So far his tale was sufficiently commonplace. Places such as the onewhich he described abound in the Cairo of to-day; and many are theEnglishmen who have entered them to their exceeding bitter cost. Withthat keen intuition which has done him yeoman's service in thepolitical arena, Mr Lessingham at once perceived the direction mythoughts were taking.
'You have heard this tale before?--No doubt. And often. The traps aremany, and the fools and the unwary are not a few. The singularity of myexperience is still to come. You must forgive me if I seem to stumblein the telling. I am anxious to present my case as baldly, and with aslittle appearance of exaggeration as possible. I say with as littleappearance, for some appearance of exaggeration
I fear is unavoidable.My case is so unique, and so out of the common run of our every-dayexperience, that the plainest possible statement must smack of thesensational.
'As, I fancy, you have guessed, when understanding returned to me, Ifound myself in an apartment with which I was unfamiliar. I was lying,undressed, on a heap of rugs in a corner of a low-pitched room whichwas furnished in a fashion which, when I grasped the details, filled mewith amazement. By my side knelt the Woman of the Songs. Leaning over,she wooed my mouth with kisses. I cannot describe to you the sense ofhorror and of loathing with which the contact of her lips oppressed me.There was about her something so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believeeven then I could have destroyed her with as little sense of moralturpitude as if she had been some noxious insect.
'"Where am I?" I exclaimed.
'"You are with the children of Isis," she replied. What she meant I didnot know, and do not to this hour. "You are in the hands of the greatgoddess,--of the mother of men."
'"How did I come here?"
'"By the loving kindness of the great mother."
'I do not, of course, pretend to give you the exact text of her words,but they were to that effect.
'Half raising myself on the heap of rugs, I gazed about me,--and wasastounded at what I saw.
'The place in which I was, though the reverse of lofty, was ofconsiderable size,--I could not conceive whereabouts it could be. Thewalls and roof were of bare stone,--as though the whole had been hewedout of the solid rock. It seemed to be some sort of temple, and wasredolent with the most extraordinary odour. An altar stood about thecentre, fashioned out of a single block of stone. On it a fire burnedwith a faint blue flame,--the fumes which rose from it were no doubtchiefly responsible for the prevailing perfumes. Behind it was a hugebronze figure, more than life size. It was in a sitting posture, andrepresented a woman. Although it resembled no portrayal of her I haveseen either before or since, I came afterwards to understand that itwas meant for Isis. On the idol's brow was poised a beetle. That thecreature was alive seemed clear, for, as I looked at it, it opened andshut its wings.
'If the one on the forehead of the goddess was the only live beetlewhich the place contained, it was not the only representation. It wasmodelled in the solid stone of the roof, and depicted in flamingcolours on hangings which here and there were hung against the walls.Wherever the eye turned it rested on a scarab. The effect wasbewildering. It was as though one saw things through the distortedglamour of a nightmare. I asked myself if I were not still dreaming; ifmy appearance of consciousness were not after all a mere delusion; if Ihad really regained my senses.
'And, here, Mr Champnell, I wish to point out, and to emphasise thefact, that I am not prepared to positively affirm what portion of myadventures in that extraordinary, and horrible place, was actuality,and what the product of a feverish imagination. Had I been persuadedthat all I thought I saw, I really did see, I should have opened mylips long ago, let the consequences to myself have been what theymight. But there is the crux. The happenings were of such an incrediblecharacter, and my condition was such an abnormal one,--I was neverreally myself from the first moment to the last--that I have hesitated,and still do hesitate, to assert where, precisely, fiction ended andfact began.
'With some misty notion of testing my actual condition I endeavoured toget off the heap of rugs on which I reclined. As I did so the woman atmy side laid her hand against my chest, lightly. But, had her gentlepressure been the equivalent of a ton of iron, it could not have beenmore effectual. I collapsed, sank back upon the rugs, and lay there,panting for breath, wondering if I had crossed the border line whichdivides madness from sanity.
'"Let me get up!--let me go!" I gasped.
'"Nay," she murmured, "stay with me yet awhile, O my beloved."
'And again she kissed me.'
Once more Mr Lessingham paused. An involuntary shudder went all overhim. In spite of the evidently great effort which he was making toretain his self-control his features were contorted by an anguishedspasm. For some seconds he seemed at a loss to find words to enable himto continue.
When he did go on, his voice was harsh and strained.
'I am altogether incapable of even hinting to you the nauseous natureof that woman's kisses. They filled me with an indescribable repulsion.I look back at them with a feeling of physical, mental, and moralhorror, across an interval of twenty years. The most dreadful part ofit was that I was wholly incapable of offering even the faintestresistance to her caresses. I lay there like a log. She did with me asshe would, and in dumb agony I endured.'
He took his handkerchief from his pocket, and, although the day wascool, with it he wiped the perspiration from his brow.
'To dwell in detail on what occurred during my involuntary sojourn inthat fearful place is beyond my power. I cannot even venture to attemptit. The attempt, were it made, would be futile, and, to me, painfulbeyond measure. I seem to have seen all that happened as in a glassdarkly,--with about it all an element of unreality. As I have alreadyremarked, the things which revealed themselves, dimly, to myperception, seemed too bizarre, too hideous, to be true.
'It was only afterwards, when I was in a position to compare dates,that I was enabled to determine what had been the length of myimprisonment. It appears that I was in that horrible den more than twomonths,--two unspeakable months. And the whole time there were comingsand goings, a phantasmagoric array of eerie figures continually passedto and fro before my hazy eyes. What I judge to have been religiousservices took place; in which the altar, the bronze image, and thebeetle on its brow, figure largely. Not only were they conducted with abewildering confusion of mysterious rites, but, if my memory is in theleast degree trustworthy, they were orgies of nameless horrors. I seemto have seen things take place at them at the mere thought of which thebrain reels and trembles.
'Indeed it is in connection with the cult of the obscene deity to whomthese wretched creatures paid their scandalous vows that my most awfulmemories seem to have been associated. It may have been--I hope it was,a mirage born of my half delirious state, but it seemed to me that theyoffered human sacrifices.'
When Mr Lessingham said this, I pricked up my ears. For reasons of myown, which will immediately transpire, I had been wondering if he wouldmake any reference to a human sacrifice. He noted my display ofinterest,--but misapprehended the cause.
'I see you start, I do not wonder. But I repeat that unless I was thevictim of some extraordinary species of double sight--in which case thewhole business would resolve itself into the fabric of a dream, and Ishould indeed thank God!--I saw, on more than one occasion, a humansacrifice offered on that stone altar, presumably to the grim imagewhich looked down on it. And, unless I err, in each case thesacrificial object was a woman, stripped to the skin, as white as youor I,--and before they burned her they subjected her to every varietyof outrage of which even the minds of demons could conceive. More thanonce since then I have seemed to hear the shrieks of the victimsringing through the air, mingled with the triumphant cries of herfrenzied murderers, and the music of their harps.
'It was the cumulative horrors of such a scene which gave me thestrength, or the courage, or the madness, I know not which it was, toburst the bonds which bound me, and which, even in the bursting, madeof me, even to this hour, a haunted man.
'There had been a sacrifice,--unless, as I have repeatedly observed,the whole was nothing but a dream. A woman--a young and lovelyEnglishwoman, if I could believe the evidence of my own eyes, had beenoutraged, and burnt alive, while I lay there helpless, looking on. Thebusiness was concluded. The ashes of the victim had been consumed bythe participants. The worshippers had departed. I was left alone withthe woman of the songs, who apparently acted as the guardian of thatworse than slaughterhouse. She was, as usual after such an orgie,rather a devil than a human being, drunk with an insensate frenzy,delirious with inhuman longings. As she approached to offer to me herloathed caresses, I was on a sudden conscious of something which I hadnot f
elt before when in her company. It was as though something hadslipped away from me,--some weight which had oppressed me, some bond bywhich I had been bound. I was aroused, all at once, to a sense offreedom; to a knowledge that the blood which coursed through my veinswas after all my own, that I was master of my own honour.
'I can only suppose that through all those weeks she had kept me therein a state of mesmeric stupor. That, taking advantage of the weaknesswhich the fever had left behind, by the exercise of her diabolicalarts, she had not allowed me to pass out of a condition of hypnotictrance. Now, for some reason, the cord was loosed. Possibly herabsorption in her religious duties had caused her to forget to tightenit. Anyhow, as she approached me, she approached a man, and one who,for the first time for many a day, was his own man. She herself seemedwholly unconscious of anything of the kind. As she drew nearer to me,and nearer, she appeared to be entirely oblivious of the fact that Iwas anything but the fibreless, emasculated creature which, up to thatmoment, she had made of me.
'But she knew it when she touched me,--when she stooped to press herlips to mine. At that instant the accumulating rage which had beensmouldering in my breast through all those leaden torturing hours,sprang into flame. Leaping off my couch of rugs, I flung my hands abouther throat,--and then she knew I was awake. Then she strove to tightenthe cord which she had suffered to become unduly loose. Her balefuleyes were fixed on mine. I knew that she was putting out her utmostforce to trick me of my manhood. But I fought with her like onepossessed, and I conquered--in a fashion. I compressed her throat withmy two hands as with an iron vice. I knew that I was struggling formore than life, that the odds were all against me, that I was stakingmy all upon the casting of a die,--I stuck at nothing which could makeme victor.
'Tighter and tighter my pressure grew,--I did not stay to think if Iwas killing her--till on a sudden--'
Mr Lessingham stopped. He stared with fixed, glassy eyes, as if thewhole was being re-enacted in front of him. His voice faltered. Ithought he would break down. But, with an effort, he continued.
'On a sudden, I felt her slipping from between my fingers. Without theslightest warning, in an instant she had vanished, and where, not amoment before, she herself had been, I found myself confronting amonstrous beetle,--a huge, writhing creation of some wild nightmare.
'At first the creature stood as high as I did. But, as I stared at it,in stupefied amazement,--as you may easily imagine,--the thing dwindledwhile I gazed. I did not stop to see how far the process of dwindlingcontinued,--a stark raving madman for the nonce, I fled as if all thefiends in hell were at my heels.'