The Ghost - Arnold Bennett (top 10 books to read .TXT) 📗

highly emotional temperament.

"Why don't you leave me, Mr. Foster?" she cried passionately, and there were sobs in her voice. "Why don't you leave me, and never see me again?"

"Leave you?" I said softly. "Why?"

"Because I am cursed. Throughout my life I have been cursed; and the curse clings, and it falls on those who come near me."

She gave way to hysterical tears; her head bent till it was almost on her knees. I went to her, and gently raised it, and put a cushion at the back of the chair. She grew calmer.

"If you are cursed, I will be cursed," I said, gazing straight at her, and then I sat down again.

The sobbing gradually ceased. She dried her eyes.

"He is dead," she said shortly.

I made no response; I had none to make.

"You do not say anything," she murmured.

"I am sorry. Sir Cyril was the right sort."

"He was my father," she said.

"Your father!" I repeated. No revelation could have more profoundly astonished me.

"Yes," she firmly repeated.

We both paused.

"I thought you had lost both parents," I said at length, rather lamely.

"Till lately I thought so too. Listen. I will tell you the tale of all my life. Not until to-night have I been able to put it together, and fill in the blanks."

And this is what she told me:

"My father was travelling through Europe. He had money, and of course he met with adventures. One of his adventures was my mother. She lived among the vines near Avignon, in Southern France; her uncle was a small grape-grower. She belonged absolutely to the people, but she was extremely beautiful. I'm not exaggerating; she was. She was one of those women that believe everything, and my father fell in love with her. He married her properly at Avignon. They travelled together through France and Italy, and then to Belgium. Then, in something less than a year, I was born. She gave herself up to me entirely. She was not clever; she had no social talents and no ambitions. No, she certainly had not much brain; but to balance that she had a heart—so large that it completely enveloped my father and me.

"After three years he had had enough of my mother. He got restive. He was ambitious. He wanted to shine in London, where he was known, and where his family had made traditions in the theatrical world. But he felt that my mother wouldn't—wouldn't be suitable for London. Fancy the absurdity of a man trying to make a name in London when hampered by a wife who was practically of the peasant class! He simply left her. Oh, it was no common case of desertion. He used his influence over my mother to make her consent. She did consent. It broke her heart, but hers was the sort of love that suffers, so she let him go. He arranged to allow her a reasonable income.

"I can just remember a man who must have been my father. I was three years old when he left us. Till then we had lived in a large house in an old city. Can't you guess what house that was? Of course you can. Yes, it was the house at Bruges where Alresca died. We gave up that house, my mother and I, and went to live in Italy. Then my father sold the house to Alresca. I only knew that to-day. You may guess my childish recollections of Bruges aren't very distinct. It was part of the understanding that my mother should change her name, and at Pisa she was known as Madame Montigny. That was the only surname of hers that I ever knew.

"As I grew older, my mother told me fairy-tales to account for the absence of my father. She died when I was sixteen, and before she died she told me the truth. She begged me to promise to go to him, and said that I should be happy with him. But I would not promise. I was sixteen then, and very proud. What my mother had told me made me hate and despise my father. I left my dead mother's side hating him; I had a loathing for him which words couldn't express. She had omitted to tell me his real name; I never asked her, and I was glad not to know it. In speaking of him, of course she always said 'your father', 'your father', and she died before she got quite to the end of her story. I buried my mother, and then I was determined to disappear. My father might search, but he should never find me. The thought that he would search and search, and be unhappy for the rest of his life because he couldn't find me, gave me a kind of joy. So I left Pisa, and I took with me nothing but the few hundred lire which my mother had by her, and the toy dagger—my father's gift—which she had always worn in her hair.

"I knew that I had a voice. Everyone said that, and my mother had had it trained up to a certain point. I knew that I could make a reputation. I adopted the name of Rosetta Rosa, and I set to work. Others have suffered worse things than I suffered. I made my way. Sir Cyril Smart, the great English impresario, heard me at Genoa, and offered me an engagement in London. Then my fortune was made. You know that story—everyone knows it.

"Why did I not guess at once that he was my father? I cannot tell. And not having guessed it at once, why should I ever have guessed it? I cannot tell. The suspicion stole over me gradually. Let me say that I always was conscious of a peculiar feeling towards Sir Cyril Smart, partly antagonistic, yet not wholly so—a feeling I could never understand. Then suddenly I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Sir Cyril was my father, and in the same moment he knew that I was his daughter. You were there; you saw us in the portico of the reception-rooms at that London hotel. I caught him staring at the dagger in my hair just as if he was staring at a snake—I had not worn it for some time—and the knowledge of his identity swept over me like a—like a big wave. I hated him more than ever.

"That night, it seems, he followed us in his carriage to Alresca's flat. When I came out of the flat he was waiting. He spoke. I won't tell you what he said, and I won't tell you what I said. But I was very curt and very cruel." Her voice trembled. "I got into my carriage. My God! how cruel I was! To-night he—my father—has told me that he tried to kill himself with my mother's dagger, there on the pavement. I had driven him to suicide."

She stopped. "Do you blame me?" she murmured.

"I do not blame you," I said. "But he is dead, and death ends all things."

"You are right," she said. "And he loved me at the last. I know that. And he saved my life—you and he. He has atoned—atoned for his conduct to my poor mother. He died with my kiss on his lips."

And now the tears came into my eyes.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, and the pathos of her ringing tones was intolerable to me. "You may well weep for me." Then with abrupt change she laughed. "Don't you agree that I am cursed? Am I not cursed? Say it! say it!"

"I will not say it," I answered. "Why should you be cursed? What do you mean?"

"I do not know what I mean, but I know what I feel. Look back at my life. My mother died, deserted. My father has died, killed by a mad woman. My dear friend Alresca died—who knows how? Clarenceux—he too died."

"Stay!" I almost shouted, springing up, and the suddenness of my excitement intimidated her. "How do you know that Lord Clarenceux is dead?"

I stood before her, trembling with apprehension for the effect of the disclosure I was about to make. She was puzzled and alarmed by the violent change in me, but she controlled herself.

"How do I know?" she repeated with strange mildness.

"Yes, how do you know? Did you see him die?"

I had a wild desire to glance over my shoulder at the portrait.

"No, my friend. But I saw him after he was dead. He died suddenly in Vienna. Don't let us talk about that."

"Aha!" I laughed incredulously, and then, swiftly driven forward by an overpowering impulse, I dropped on my knees and seized her hands with a convulsive grasp. "Rosa! Rosa!"—my voice nearly broke—"you must know that I love you. Say that you love me—that you would love me whether Clarenceux were dead or alive."

An infinite tenderness shone in her face. She put out her hand, and to calm me stroked my hair.

"Carl!" she whispered.

It was enough. I got up. I did not kiss her.

A servant entered, and said that some one from the theatre had called to see mademoiselle on urgent business. Excusing herself, Rosa went out. I held open the door for her, and closed it slowly with a sigh of incredible relief. Then I turned back into the room. I was content to be alone for a little while.

Great God! The chair which Rosa had but that instant left was not empty. Occupying it was a figure—the figure of the man whose portrait hung on the wall—the figure of the man who had haunted me ever since I met Rosa—the figure of Lord Clarenceux, whom Rosa had seen dead.

At last, oh, powers of hell, I knew you! The inmost mystery stood clear. In one blinding flash of comprehension I felt the fullness of my calamity. This man that I had seen was not a man, but a malign and jealous spirit—using his spectral influences to crush the mortals bold enough to love the woman whom he had loved on earth. The death of Alresca, the unaccountable appearances in the cathedral, in the train, on the steamer—everything was explained. And before that coldly sneering, triumphant face, which bore the look of life, and which I yet knew to be impalpable, I shook with the terrified ague of a culprit.

A minute or a thousand years might have passed. Then Rosa returned. In an instant the apparition had vanished. But by her pallid, drawn face and her gray lips I knew that she had seen it. Truly she was cursed, and I with her!

CHAPTER XVII THE MENACE

From the moment of my avowal to Rosa it seemed that the evil spirit of the dead Lord Clarenceux had assumed an ineffable dominion over me. I cannot properly describe it; I cannot describe it all. I may only say that I felt I had suddenly become the subject of a tyrant who would punish me if I persisted in any course of conduct to which he objected. I knew what fear was—the most terrible of all fears—the fear of that which we cannot understand. The inmost and central throne of my soul was commanded by this implacable ghost, this ghost which did not speak, but which conveyed its ideas by means of a single glance, a single sneer.

It was strange that I should be aware at once what was required of me, and the reasons for these requirements. Till that night I had never guessed the nature of the thing which for so many weeks had been warning me; I had not even guessed that I was being warned; I had taken for a man that which was not a man. Yet now, in an instant of time, all was clear down to the smallest details. From the primal hour when a liking for