Randalls Round (11 page)

“Well – good luck,” he said. Amory smiled, an odd smile of confidence, pity, and triumph. The door closed softly behind him.

For a few minutes there was silence. Then Grindley whispered:

“He can’t
really
believe there’s a God like that?”

No one answered; then Vernon, speaking for the first time that evening, muttered:

“Some evil deserves – anything.”

He rose heavily and went out. A little later Grindley caught Reece’s eye: the little curate laid down his book, and without a word the odd pair left the room together. Massingham and Ladislaw sat on and on in silence, Massingham smoking sombrely, Ladislaw nervously touching up the fire. At last the Scotsman dropped the poker with a clatter.

“Massingham,” he said in a queer strained voice, “I can’t bear this. What do you imagine is going on in there?”

Massingham stirred.

“God only knows!” he said. Then he added suddenly:

“I’m going to listen. Don’t you come, Mac. I’d rather you didn’t.”

He went out, and Ladislaw heard his steps mounting the stairs, going along the corridor, fading into silence. In the smoking room the fire sank lower and the ashes fell softly.

In a few minutes Massingham returned, paler and looking a little apprehensive.

“Well?” asked Ladislaw.

“There’s – something awful going on in there,” said Massingham jerkily. “I don’t know what. I heard Amory’s voice – and hard breathing, and a kind of ghastly muffled moaning noise-”

Ladislaw sprang up.

“Moaning? Amory?”

Massingham shook his head.

“Amory’s voice was steady enough,” he said “lt was like steel – ice – I don’t know…
He
wasn’t the – thing – that moaned.”

Ladislaw shuddered.

“Could you hear what he said?”

“Not entirely,” Said Masgingham reluctantly. He wiped his forehead, and Ladislaw saw that his hand shook.

The two men stared into each other’s eyes.

“There was a smell like scorching,” added Massingham suddenly, “and a horrible sound, like something cracking very slowly – or crushing, p’r’aps.”

Again they stood in silence, straining their ears.

“Oh, for God’s sake, let’s go and stop it!” cried Ladislaw abruptly; and both men turned on an impulse and ran up the shallow wooden stairs.

At the top they came face to face with Amory himself. He stood staring blindly before him, his skin stretched and white over the bones of his face, his eyes wide and blank and horrified.

“Amory! Thank God you’re here!” cried Massingham.

Amory stared on silently. Then suddenly he spoke.

“The tears ran down over my hands”,
he said in an odd, strained voice. He held his hands, thin and dry and rigid, a little before him. Massingham and Ladislaw looked at them instinctively. Then Ladislaw touched Amory gently on the shoulder.

“Come away, man,” he said in his soft Highland voice.

The lids blinked rapidly once over Amory’s blank staring eyes. Otherwise he did not move. Ladislaw slipped his hand through the rigid arm. Together he and Massingham got Amory down the stairs.

The clock struck three as they passed through the hall, and the sound seemed to rouse Amory from his stupor of horror. He passed a hand rapidly over his face, and then looked in an odd bewildered way at the concerned faces of his two friends. He shuddered a little.

“Massingham-” he said in a troubled voice.

“Yes, Amory, all right, old chap,” said Massingham.

“Massingham oh, Massingham, the tears ran down over my hands. I went on, and the tears ran down over my hands.”

They sat with him till day came, a watery yellow rim between the wet earth and the weeping sky. They could hear the little sound as he passed his tongue over his dry lips.

The next day was Sunday. When Massingham’s guests first came, there had been some talk of Amory’s preaching in the village church to relieve the vicar, an old man in feeble health; but Massingham hardly liked to broach the subject to a man so utterly broken as Amory. But it seemed that he himself had not forgotten. He appeared at the breakfast-table, exhausted and livid, but composed; and at the end of the meal – through which he sat, silent and nervous, looking like a man who has passed through an agony – he spoke.

“What time is the service, Massingham?”

“Eleven. But, I say, Amory, you’re not fit to preach.”

“I know. I’m utterly unfit. But I must preach today, if I never enter a pulpit again.”

“But, Amory, you’re ill – done in. You ought to rest.”

“Rest!”
said Amory, raising his head for the first time; and at the look in his tortured eyes Massingham dropped his own.

It was an odd sermon, prefaced not by a single text, but by a reading from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians – that famous passage that deals with charity. And Amory spoke in a voice strained to the point of quivering of the guilt of those who condemn their brothers. His usual beautiful style was gone. His sentences were harsh, abrupt, and broken. There was one strange passage, which he delivered as if under appalling physical stress, his white-knuckled hands clutching the pulpit, sweat beading his brow and lips.

“Years ago,” he said, “men tried to convert their opponents by torture. They showed them the human version of hell. They ground their bones, scorched their flesh, tore their eyes.” (Here he turned ashy white to the lips.) “The tears of their victims wetted their hands, and they lifted those hands, wet with tears and blood, to God, the merciful God, to ask His blessing and His help. We torture souls in the same Name. We condemn them to a lingering death of torture by despair. I have tortured a soul to death – crushed it, broken-”

He stopped, gasped audibly, opened his mouth once or twice, and then added abruptly, “Be merciful. You don’t know – you can’t judge other souls. Have mercy, always.” He paused again, and then, in the astonished silence of the country church, abruptly left the pulpit.

That was the only reference he made to the appalling happenings of that night.

In the afternoon Ladislaw, Massingham and Vernon sat together at one end of the long library. Reece and Grindley, at the far end, talked together; Amory alone was absent.

“I say,” said Massingham a little awkwardly, “don’t you chaps think we’ve gone far enough? I mean, there’s not much point in crocking ourselves over this confounded business, is there? Look at Reece, for instance; we don’t want to push a simple-minded kid like that into this hell-hole. What do you think?”

“Reece won’t hurt,” said Vernon heavily.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Massingham. “He’s more sensitive than you’d think. Look what he’s done for poor old Grindley. What do you say, Mac?”

“No one ought to go near that room,” cried Ladislaw fiercely. “You’re right, Massingham – hell-hole’s the word for it.”

Vernon opened his mouth and closed it without speaking.

“I’m
not going!” said Ladislaw. “It’s my turn tonight, isn’t it? Well, I’ve got pluck enough not to go.”

Vernon looked up at him with an odd questioning glance, and their eyes met.

“You know?” asked Vernon.

Ladislaw nodded. “Enough,” he said. “I’ve seen things – at home. I know what might – anyway, I’m not going.”

He rose and went towards the door; then he turned back.

“What about you, Massingham? Will you be wise in time and chuck it too?”

Massingham flushed a little.

“No, I don’t think I’ll chuck it,” he said slowly. “Oh, I’m in a funk all right! But I can’t exactly ask people here, and make them face – whatever’s in that room – and not go myself, can I?”

Vernon suddenly broke in.

“Massingham – don’t,” he said, laying his hand on the other man’s arm. “We, who’ve been – we’ll understand. And Ladislaw will.”

Massingham looked at him intently.

“I think I must go, Vernon,” he said very quietly. “Besides, if Reece, why not me?”

Vernon got rather red.

“Look here,” he said, “I’ve been, and I know what I’m talking about. Reece will be all right; but you – ! Don’t ask why, Dick, but don’t – don’t go into that damned place.”

Massingham looked gravely at Vernon’s pleading face, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry, Bill,” he said. Vernon stared with a kind of hopeless entreaty into his face, then turned away with a half-groan.

At eleven that night Massingham went to face his ordeal.

Massingham said nothing of his experiences when he joined his friends next day. Like those who had already met Fate in that room of his, he was very pale, and his eyes had that same piteous look – the look of one who has sinned past hope of forgiveness, and yet hopes, however faintly, that his friends may not cast him out. He spoke very little, and not at all of the subject that lay uppermost in all their minds. Only, when dusk was falling, and they all sat together in the long library, he said suddenly, breaking into the conversation with the manner of a man who has been totally abstracted:

“Reece, I want to ask something of you.”

“Yes?” said Reece in his commonplace tone of cheerful willingness.

“Don’t go into that ghastly room tonight.”

The other voices had all died away, as does ordinary talk when the speakers hear the voice of a dying man. But Massingham’s request was like the releasing of a spring – as if they had been waiting for a signal.

Amory spoke first,

“Reece, he’s right,” he said in a very gentle voice. “It’s not necessary, and it’s-” He gulped.

“Yes, Reece,” chimed in Ladislaw, “don’t go. Let me have a companion in my cowardice!” he added, with a half-laugh.

Grindley said nothing, but he looked at the little curate with a glance oddly compounded of confidence and entreaty, admiration and fear.

Reece looked at Vernon.

“What do you think, Vernon?” he asked.

Vernon hesitated: then:

“Go, if you like, I say,” he said. “It’s not as if you were – like the rest of us.”

“Vernon!”
broke in Massingham sharply. He knew that the two were utterly opposed, but really… ! “Don’t listen to him, Reece. Don’t go. I tell you it’s ghastly. No one can imagine it.” He became very pale. “Don’t go,” he urged again.

Reece was still looking steadily into Vernon’s eyes; neither wavered. Then the little curate turned to Massingham.

“I’m sorry, Massingham,” he said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go. All the rest of you have been.”

“Oh, if that’s the way you look at it!” exclaimed Massingham bitterly. Then his voice dropped and sounded weary. “Have it your own way,” he muttered. “I suppose it’s your own look-out. You’ve been warned.” He walked away.

The others glanced at each other. Was it of any use to say any more? Then they gave it up. After all, simple as he was, Reece was not a child.

Still, they all felt horribly uncomfortable when, shortly before eleven, Reece laid down the copy of
Punch
over which he had been chuckling for nearly an hour, and rose.

“Good-night, you chaps,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

Grindley half rose; Reece caught his eye and grinned.

“‘Night,” he said again and, went out.