August 21, 2025 • 46 mins
Immerse yourself in the enchanting tales of Bernard Capes, crafted to captivate your imagination as you cozy up by the fireplace during the long, chilly days of winter. Let A. Gramour guide you through this collection of stories that promise to entertain and warm your spirit.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section eleven of At a Winter's Fire. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
This recording by Philip Aldred in Nottingham, UK. At a
(00:26):
Winter's Fire by Bernard Capes and Eddy on the Floor,
Part three. Ill and shaken, and for the time little
in love with life, yet fearing death as I had
never dreaded it before. I spent the rest of that
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horrible night huddled between my crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth,
fearing to think wild, only to be far away, to
be housed in some green and inner saint hamlet, where
I might forget the madness and the terror. In learning
to walk the unvexed paths of placid souls I had
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not fairly knocked under. Until alone with my new dread
familiar that unction I could lay to my heart. At
least I had done the manly part by the stricken warder,
whom I had attended to his own home in a
row of little tenements that stood south of the prison walls.
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I had replied to all inquiries with some dignity and spirit,
attributing my ruffled condition to an assault on the part
of Johnson, when he was already under the shadow of
his seizure. I had directed his removal and grudged him
no professional attention that it was in my power to bestow.
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But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system
broke up like a trodden ant hill, leaving me conscious
of nothing but aimless, scurrying terror and the black swarm
of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason would
give under the strain. Yet I had more to endure
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and to triumph over. Near morning I fell into a
troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed
an accent on every word of ill omen I had
ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my
body rested, my brain was an open chamber for any
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toad of ugliness that listed to sit or squat in.
Suddenly I woke to the fact that there was a
knocking at my door, that there had been for some time.
I cried, come in, finding a weak restrative in the
mere sound of my own human voice, then, remembering the
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key was turned, bade the visitor wait until I could
come to him. Scrambling, feeling dazed and white livered out
of bed, I opened the door and met one of
the warders on the threshold. The man looked scared, and
his lips, I noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion.
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Can you come at once, sir? He said, there's something
wrong with the governor wrong. What's the matter with him? Why?
He looked down, rubbed an imaginary protuberance smooth with his foot,
and glanced up at me again with a quick furtive expression.
He's got his face set in the grate inn of
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forty seven, and danged if a man jack of us
can get him to move or speak. I turned away,
feeling sick. I hurry pulled on my coat and trousers
and went off with my summoner. Reason was all absorbed
in the wildest fantasy of apprehension. Who found him? I
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muttered as we sped on. Volkin's seen him go down
the corridor about half after eight, sir, and see him
give a start like when he noticed the trap open.
It's never been so before in my time. Johnson must
have done it last night before he were took. Yes, yes,
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the man said. The governor went to shut it, it seemed,
and to draw his face towards the bars. In so doing,
then he seed him a looking through, as he thought,
But naturally it warn't known of his business, and he
went off about his work. But when he come an
eye again fifteen minutes later, there were the governor in
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the same position, and he got scared over it and
called out one or two of us. Why didn't one
or two of you ask the major if anything was wrong?
Bless you, we did, and no answer, and we pulled
incompatible with discipline. But but what he's stuck stuck? Youll
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see for yourself, sir. That's all I ask. I did.
A moment later, a little group was collected about the
door of Cell forty seven, and the members of it
spoke together in whispers as if they were frightened men.
One young fellow with a face white in patches as
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if it had been flowered, slid from them as I
approached and accosted me tremulously. Don't go an eye, sir,
there's something wrong about the place. I pulled myself together
forcibly beating down the excitement reawakened by the associations of
the spot in the discomfiture of others nerves. I found
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my own restoration. Don't be an ass, I said, in
a determined voice. There's nothing here that can't be explained.
Make way for me, please. They parted and let me through,
And as I saw him, he stood spruce frock coated,
dapper as he always was, with his face pressed against
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and into the grill, and either hand raised and clenched
tightly round the bars of the trap. His posture was
as of one caught and striving frantically to release himself.
Yet the narrowness of the interval between the rails precluded
so extravagant an idea. He stood quite motionless, taught and
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on the strain, as it were, and nothing of his
face was visible but the back ridges of his jawbones
showing white through a bush of red whiskers. Major shrike.
I rapped out, and, allowing myself no hesitation, reached forth
my hand and grasped his shoulder. The body vibrated under
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my touch, but he neither answered nor made sign of
hearing me. Then I pulled at him forcibly and ever
with increasing strength. His fingers held like steel braces. He
seemed glued to the trap like theseus to the rock hastily.
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I peered round to see if I could get glimpse
of his face. I noticed enough to send me back
with a little stagger. Has none of you got the
key to this door? I asked, reviewing the scared faces
around me, that which my own was no less troubled.
I feel sure only the governor, sir, said the warder
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who had fetched me. There's not a man but him,
mosters that ever seen this opened. He was wrong there.
I could have told him, but held my tongue for
obvious reasons. I want it opened, will one if you
feel in his pockets? Not a soul stirred even had
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not sense of discipline precluded that of a certain inhuman atmosphere,
made fearful creatures of them all, then said I I
must do it myself. I turned once more to the
stiff strung figure, had actually put hand on it, when
an exclamation from Volkin's arrested me. There's a key there, sir,
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he said, sticking out yonder between his feet. Sure enough
there was Johnson's, no doubt, that had been shot from
its socket by the clapping of the door, and afterwards
kicked aside by the warder in his convulsive struggles. I stooped,
only too thankful for the respite, and drew it forth.
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I had seen it but once before, yet I recognized
it at a glance. Now, I confess my heart felt
ill as I slipped the key in the wards, and
a sickness of resentment at the tyranny of fate in
making me its helpless minister surged up in my veins.
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Once with my fingers on the iron loop, I paused
and ventured a fearful side glance at the figure, whose
crooked elbow almost touched my face, and then strung to
the high pitch of inevitability, I shot the lock, pushed
at the door, and in the act made a back
leap into the corridor. Scarcely in doing so did I
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look for the totter and collapse outwards of the rigid form.
I had expected to see it fall away, face down
into the cell, as its supports were from it. Yet
it was, I swear, as if something from within had
relaxed its grip and given the dreadful man a swinging
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push outwards. As the door opened, it went on its
back with a dusty slap on the stone flags and
from all its spectators, me included, came a sudden, drawn sound,
like wind in a keyhole. What can I say, or
how describe it? A dead thing it was, but the
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face barred with livid scars where the grating rails had
crossed it. The rest seemed to have been worked and
kneaded into a mere, featureless plate of yellow and expressionless flesh.
And it was this I had seen in the glass.
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There was an interval following the experience above narrated, during
which a certain personnelity that had once been mine was
effaced or suspended, and I seemed a passive creature, innocent
of the least desire of independence. It was not that
I was actually ill or actually insane. A merciful providence
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set my finer wits slumbering, that was all, leaving me
a sufficiency of the grosser faculties that were necessary to
the right ordering of my behavior. I kept to my room,
it is true, and even lay a good deal in bed.
But this was more to satisfy the busy scruples of
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a locum tenens, a practitioner of the neighborhood, who came
daily to prison to officiate in my absence than to
cause it a complaint that, in its inactivity was purely negative.
I could review what had happened with a calmness as
profound as if I had read it in a book.
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I could have wished to continue my duties, indeed, had
the power of insistence remained to me. But the sane
Americus was acute, where I had gone blunt and bad
me to the RESTful course. He was right. I was
mentally stunned, and had I not slept off my lethargy,
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I should have gone mad. In an hour. Leapt at
a bound, probably from inertia to flaming lunacy. I remembered everything,
but through a fluffy atmosphere, so to speak. It was
as if I looked on by gone pictures through ground
glass that softened the ugly outlines. Sometimes I referred to
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these to my substitute, who was wise to answer me
according to my mood, for the truth left me unruffled,
whereas an obvious evasion of it would have distressed me. Hammond,
I said one day, I have never yet asked you,
how did I give my evidence at the inquest like
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a doctor and a sane man. That's good, But it
was a difficult course to steer. You conducted the post mortem.
Did any peculiarity in the dead man's face strike you?
Nothing but this, that the excessive contraction of the bicepital
muscles had brought the features into such forcible contact with
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the bars as to cause bruising and actual abrasion. He
must have been dead some time when you found him,
and nothing else You noticed, nothing else in his face,
a sort of obliteration of what makes one human? I mean,
oh dear, no, nothing but the painful constriction that any
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ordinary fatal attack of angina pectoris. There's a rum breach
of the promise case in the papers to day. You
should read it. It'll make you laugh. I had no
more inclination to laugh than to sigh, but accepted the
change of subject with an equanimity now habitual to me.
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One morning I sat up in bed and knew that
consciousness was wide awake in me once more. I had slept,
and now rose, refreshed but trembling, looking back, all in
a flutter of new responsibility. Along the misty path by
way of which I had recently loitered, I shook with
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some awful thankfulness at the sight of the pitfalls. I
had skirted and escaped of the demons. My witlessness had baffled.
The joy of life was in my heart again, but
chastened and made pitiful by experience. Hammond noticed the change
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in me directly. He entered and congratulated me upon it
go slow at first, old man, he said, you've fairly
sloughed the old skin. But give that sun time to
toten the new one. Walk in it at present, and
be content. I was in great measure, and I followed
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his advice. I got leave of absence and ran down
for a month in the country, to a certain house
we knew of where kindly ministrations to my convalescence was
only one of the many blisses to be put to
an account of rosy days. Then did my love awake
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most like a lily flower, and as the lovely queen
of heaven? So John she in her bower, army army.
When was it a year ago or two thirds of
a lifetime? Alas age with stealing steps hath clawed me
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with his crouch, And will the use root in my heart?
I wondered. I was well, sane, recovered, when one morning,
towards the end of my visit. I received a letter
from Hammond, enclosing a packet addressed to me and jealously
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sealed and fastened. My friend's communication ran as follows. There
died here yesterday afternoon, a warder Johnson, He who had
that apoplectic seizure you will remember the night before poor
Shrike's exit. I attended him to the end, and being
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alone with him an hour before the finish, he took
the enclosed from under his pillow, and a solemn oath
from me that I would forward it direct to you,
sealed as you will find it, and permit no other
soul to examine or even touch it. I equip myself
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of the charge, but my dear fellow, with an uneasy
sense of the responsibility I incur in thus possibly suggesting
to you a retrospective events which you had much best
consigned to the limbo of the not unexplicable, but not
worth trying to explain. It was patent from what I
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had gathered that you were in an overstrung and excitable
condition at that time, and that your temporary collapse was
purely nervous in its character. It seems there was some
nonsense abroad in the prison about a certain cell, and
that there were fools who thought fit to associate Johnson's
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attack and the other's death with the opening of that
cell's door. I have given the new governor a tip,
and he has stopped all that. We have examined the
cell in company and found it, as one might suppose,
a very ordinary chamber. The two men died perfectly natural deaths,
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and there is the last to be said on the subject.
I mention it only from the fear that enclosed may
contain some allusion to the rubbish, a perusal of which
might check the wholesome convalescence of your thoughts. If you
take my advice, you will throw the packet into the fire, unread.
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At least if you do examine it, postpone the duty
till you feel yourself absolutely impervious to any mental trickery,
and bear in mind that you are a worthy member
of a particularly matter of fact and unemotional profession. I
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smiled at the last clause, for I was now in
a condition to feel a rather warm shame over my
erst weakneed collapse before a sheet and an illuminated turnip.
I took the packet to my bedroom, shut the door,
and sat myself down by the open window. The garden
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lay below me, and the dewy meadows beyond. In the one,
bees were busy ruffling the ruddy gillyflowers and april stocks.
In the other, the hedge twigs were all frosted with
mary buds, as if spring had brushed them with the
fleece of her wings. In passing, I fetched a sigh
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of content as I broke the seal of the packet
and brought out the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden, a
little sardonic laugh was clipped to silence. It came from
groom or made no doubt. Yet it thrilled me with
an odd feeling of uncanniness, and I shivered slightly. Bah,
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I said to myself determinedly, there is a shrewd nip
in the wind for all the show of sunlight. And
I rose, pulled down the window and resumed my seat. Then,
in the closed room that had become deathly quiet by contrast,
I opened and read the dead Man's letter. Sir, I
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hope you will read what I here put down. I
lay it on you as a solemn injunction, for I
am a dying man, and I know it and to
who is my death due and the govern as death,
if not you, for your prying and curiosity, as surely
as if you had drove a knife through our hearts.
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Therefore I say read this and take my burden from me,
for it has been a burden, and now it is
right that you that interfered should have it on your
own mortal shoulders. The Major is dead and I am dying.
And in the first of my fit it went on
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in my head like symbols that the trap was left open,
and that if he passed, he would look in and
it would get him. For he knew not fear, neither
would he submit to bullying by God or devil. Now
I will tell you the truth, and Heaven quit you
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of your responsibility in our destruction. There wasn't another man
to me like the govern in all the countries of
the world. Once he brought me to life, after doctors
had given me up for dead. But he willed it,
and I lived, and ever afterwards I loved him as
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a dog loves its master. That was in the Punjab,
and I came home to England with him and was
his servant when he got his appointment to the jail
here I tell you he was a proud and fierce man,
but under control and tender to those he favored. And
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I will tell you also a strange thing about him.
Though he was a soldier and an officer, and strict
in discipline, as made men fear and admire him, his heart,
at bottom was all for books and literature and such
like gentle crafts. I had his confidence as a man
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gives his confidence to his dog. And before me sometimes
he unbent, as he never would before others. In this
way I learned the bitter sorrow of his life. He
had once hoped to be a poet, acknowledged as such
before the world. He was by nature an idealist, as
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they call it. And God knows what it meant to
him to come out of the woods, so to speak,
and sweat in the dust of cities. But he did it,
for his will was of tempered steel. He buried his
dreams in the clouds and came down to earth greatly resolved,
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but with one undying hate. It is not good to
hate as he could, and worse to be hated by
such as him. And I will tell you the story
and what it led to. It was when he was
a subaltern that he made up his mind to the plunge.
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For years he had placed all his hopes and confidence
in a book of verses he had wrote and added
to and improved during the time. A little encouragement, a
little word of praise, was all he looked for. And
then he was ready to buckle to again profiting by
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advice and do better. He put all the love and
beauty of his heart into that book, and at last,
after doubt and anguish and much diffidence, he published it
and gave it to the world. Sir. It felt what
they call stillborn from the press. It was like a
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green leaf fluttering down in a dead wood to a
proud and hopeful man, bubbling with music. The pain of
neglect when he come to to realize it was terrible.
But nothing was said, and there was nothing to say.
In silence. He had to endure and suffer. But one day,
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during maneuvers, there came to the camp a gray faced man,
a newspaper correspondent, and young shrike knocked up a friendship
with him. Now how it come about, I cannot tell,
but so it did that this skip kennel wormed the
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lad's sorrow out of him and his confidence, swore he'd
been damnedly used, and that when he got back he'd
crack up the book himself in his own paper. He
was a fool for his pains, and a serpent in
his cruelty. The notice came out as promised, and my god,
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the author was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end.
Even confidences he had given to the creature was twisted
to his ridicule, and his very appearance joked over and
the mascot wind of it and made a rare story
for the dog days. He bore it like a soldier,
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and that he became heart and liver for the moment.
But he put something to the account of the gray
faced man and locked it up in his breast. He
come across him again years afterwards in India and told
him very politely that he hadn't forgotten him, and didn't
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intend to, but he was an eye losing sight of him.
There was forever in a day, for the creature took
cholera or what looked like it, and rubbed shoulders with
death and the devil before he pulled through. And he
come across him again over and that was the last
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of him. As you shall see presently. Once after I
knew the major he was captain. Then I was a
brush in his coat, and he stood a long while
before the glass. Then he twisted upon me with a
smile on his mouth, and he says, the dog was right, Johnson,
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This isn't the face of a poet. I was a
presumptuous ass and borne to cast up figures with a
pen behind me. Ear captain, I says, if you were skinned,
you'd look like any other man without his The quality
of a soul isn't expressed by a coat, well, he answers,
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My soul's pretty clean, swept, I think, save for one
bluebeard chamber in it that's been kept locked ever so
many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, he says.
Then the grin comes on his mouth again. I'll open
it one day, he says, And look there's something in
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it about comparing me to a dancing dervish with the
wind in my petticuts. Perhaps I'll get the chance to
set someone else dancing by and by he did and
took it, and the Bluebeard chamber come to be opened
in this very jail. It was when the system was
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lined fallow, so to speak that the prison was deserted.
Nobody was there but him and me and the echoes
from the empty courts. The contract for restorvation hadn't been signed,
and for months and more than a year we lay idle,
nothing being done. Near the beginning of this period, one
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day comes, from the third time of the major's seeing him,
the grave faced man let bygones be by gones. He says,
I was a good friend to you, though you didn't
know it, and now I expect you're in the way
to thank me, I am, said the major. Of course,
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he answered, where would be your fame and reputation as
one of the leading prison reformers of the day if
you had kept on in that rhyming nonsense. Have you
come for my thanks, says the governor. I've come, says
the gray faced man, to examine and report upon your
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system for your paper, possibly, but to satisfy myself of
its efficacy. In the first instance, you aren't commissioned, then no,
I come on my own responsibility, without consultation with any one,
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absolutely without I haven't even a wife to advise me,
he says, with a yellow grin. What once passed for
cholera had set the bile on his skin like paint,
and he had caught a manner of coffin behind his hand,
like a toast master. I know, said the Major, looking
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him straight in the face, that what you say about
me and my affairs is sure to be actuated by
conscientious motives. Ah, he answers, you're sore about that review?
Still I see not at all, said the Major, And
in proof, I invite you to be my guest for
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the night, and tomorrow i'll show you over the prison
and explain my system. And the creature cried done, and
they set to and discussed jail matters in great earnestness.
I couldn't guess the governor's intentionnscience, but somehow his manner
troubled me. And yet I can remember only one point
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of his talk. He were always dead against making public
show of his birds. They're there for reformation, not ignominy,
he'd say. Prisons in the old days were often with
the asylum and the workhouse made the holiday showplaces of towns.
I've heard of one Justice of the Peace up north, who,
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to save himself trouble, used to sign a lot of
blank orders for leave to view, so that applicants needn't
bother him when they wanted to go over. They've changed
all that, and the Governor were instrumental in that change.
It's against my rule, he said that night, to exhibit
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to a stranger without a government permit. But seeing the
place is empty, and for old remembrance sake, I'll make
an exception in your favor. You shall learn all I
can show you of the inside of a prison. Now
this was natural enough, but I was uneasy. He treated
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his guests royally, so much that when we assembled the
next morning for the inspection, the gray faced man was
shaky as a wet dog, but the Major were all
set prim and dry, like the soldier he was. We
went straight away down the corridor B and at Znilve
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forty seven we stopped. We will begin our inspection here,
said the Governor. Johnson opened the door. I had the
keys of the row fitted in the right one and
pushed open the door after you, said the Major, and
the creature walked in, and he shut the door on him.
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I think he smelt a a at once, for he
began beating on the wood and calling out to us.
But the Major only turned round to me with his
face like a stone. Take that key from the bunch,
he said, and give it to me. I obeyed, all
in a tremble, and he took it and put it
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in his pocket. My god, Major, I whispered, what are
you going to do with him? Silence, sir, he said,
how dare you question your superior officer? And the noise
inside grew louder. The governor he listened to it a
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moment like music. Then he unbolted and flung open the trap,
and the creature's face came at it like a wild beast. Sir,
said the Major to it. You can't better understand my
system than by experiencing it. What an article for your
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paper you could write already, almost as pungent to one
as that in which you ruined the hopes and prospects
of a young Cockney poet. The man mouthed at the bars,
he was half mad. I think in that one minute.
Let me out, he screamed, this is a hideous joke.
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Let me out when you are quite quiet, deathly quiet,
said the Major. You shall come out, not before, and
he shut the trap in its face very softly. Come
Johnson March, she said, and took the lead, and we
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walked out of the prism. I was like to faint,
but I daren't disobey, And the man's screeching followed us
all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut
the first great door on it. It may have gone
on for hours alone in that awful emptiness. The creature
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was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart, and
from that hour till his death five months later, he
rotted and maddened in this dreadful tomb. There was more,
but I pushed a ghastly confession from me at this point,
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in uncontrollable loathing and terror, was it possible? Possible that
injured vanity could so falsify its victims every tradition of decency? Oh,
I muttered, what a disease is ambition? Who takes one
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step towards it puts his foot on alcirat. It was
minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption
of the task. But at last I took it up
again with a groan. I don't think at first I
realized a full mischief the governor intended to do. At least,
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I hope he only meant to give the man a
good fright and then let him go. I might have
known better. How could he ever release him without ruining himself.
The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There
was a strange new look of triumph in his face,
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and in his hand he held a heavy hunting crop.
I pray to God he acted in madness, but my
duty and obedience was to him. There is sport towards Johnson.
He said, my dervish has got to dance. I followed
him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door,
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but the place was silent as the grave. But from
the cell, when we reached it came a low whimpering sound.
The governor slipped the trap and looked through. All right,
he said, and put the key in the door and
flung it open. He was sitting crouched on the ground,
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and he looked up at us, vacant like his face
were all fallen down as it were, and his mouth
never ceased to shake and whisper. The Major shut the
door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved
to the creature with his whip up. He cried, up,
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you dervish, and dance for us, and he brought the
thong with a smack across his shoulders. The creature leapt
under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry,
and the major whipped him till he danced all round
the cell. He drove him, lashing and cutting, and again
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and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on
the floor, whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give
an account of this. Some day I shall have to
whip my master with a red hot serpent round the
blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it
with agony, because here my love and my obedience was
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to him. When it was finished, he bade me put
down food and drink that I had brought with me,
and come away with him. And we went, leaving him
rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him
alone in the empty prison until we should come again
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at the same time tomorrow. So day by day this
went on, and the dancing three or four times a week,
until at last the wind could be left behind, for
the man would scream and begin to dance at the
mere turning of the key in the lock. And he
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danced for four months, but not the fifth nobody official
came near us. All this time the prison stood lonely
as a deserted ruin, where dark things have been done. Once,
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with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he
would account for the inmate of forty seven if he
was suddenly called upon by authority to open the cell.
And he answered, smiling, I should say it was my
mad brother. By his own account. He showed me a
(39:52):
brother's love. You know, it would be thought a liberty.
But the authorities, I think, would stretch a point for me.
But if I got sufficient notice, I could clear out
the cell. I asked him how, with my eyes rather
than my lips, and he answered me only with a look.
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And all this time he was outside the prison, living
the life of a good man, helping the needy, ministering
to the poor. He even entertained occasionally, and had more
than one noisy party in his house. But the fifth
month the creature danced no more. He was dumb, a
(40:39):
silent animal, then, with matted hair and beard, and when
one entered, he would only look up at one pitifully,
as if to say, my long punishment is nearly ended.
How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him?
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I know not, but none ever was Perhaps he was
one of the wandering gentry that nobody ever knows where
they are next. He was unmarried and had apparently not
told of his intended journey to a soul. And at
(41:20):
the last he died in the night. We found him
lying stiff and stark in the morning, and scratched with
a piece of black crust on a stone of the wall.
These strange words and eddy on the floor, just that,
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nothing else. Then the governor came and looked down and
was silent. Suddenly he caught me by the shoulder, Johnson.
He cried, if it was to do again, I would
do it. I repent of nothing. But he has paid
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the penalty, and we are quits. May he rest in peace? Amen,
I said low, Yet I knew our turn must come
for this. We buried him in quicklime under the wall
where the murderers lie, and I made the cell trim
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and rubbed out the writing, and the governor locked it
up and took away the key. But he locked in
more than he bargained for. For months the place was
left to itself, and neither of us went an eye
forty seven. Then one day the workman was to be
(42:53):
put in, and the major he took me round with
him for a last examination of the place before they come.
He hesitated a bit outside a particular cell, but at
last he drove in the key and kicked open the door.
My god, he says, he's still dancing. My heart was thumping.
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I tell you, as I looked over his shoulder. What
did we see? What you well understand, sir, But for
all it was no more than that we knew, as
well as if it was shouted in our ears that
it was him dancing. It went round the walls and
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drew towards us. And as it stole near, I screamed
out and eddy on the floor and seized and dragged
the major out and clapped the door behind us. Oh,
I said, in another moment, it would have had us.
He looked at me gloomily. Johnson, He said, I am
(44:09):
not to be frighted or coerced. He may dance, but
he shall dance alone. Get the screwdriver and some screws,
and fasten up this trap. No one from this time
looks into this cell. I did as he bid me, sweating,
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and I swear all the time I wrought I dreaded
a hand that would come through the trap and clutch
mine on one pretext or other. From that day till
the night you meddled with it, he kept that cell
as close shut as a tomb, and he went his
ways discarding the past from that time forth. Now and again,
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an oversensitive prisoner in the next ell would complain of
feeling uncomfortable. If possible, he would be removed to another.
If not, he was damned for his fancies. And so
it might be going on to now if you hadn't
pride and interfered. I don't blame you at this moment, sir.
(45:21):
Likely you were an instrument in the hand of providence.
Only as the instrument you must now take the burden
of the truth on your own shoulders. I'm a dying man,
but I cannot die till I have confessed. Perhaps you
may find it in your heart someday to give up
(45:43):
a prayer for me, but it must be for the
major as well, your obedient servant, J. Johnson, What comment
of my own can I end to this wild narrative? Professionally,
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and apart from personal experiences, I should rule it to
the composition of an epileptic that a noted journalist, nameless
as he was, and is to me, however nomadic inhabit
could disappear from Humanken and his fellow's rest content. To
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leave him unaccounted for seems a tax upon credulity so
stupendous that I cannot seriously endorse the statement. Yet also
there is that little matter of my personal experience, end
(46:47):
of Section eleven.
Section eleven of At a Winter's Fire. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
This recording by Philip Aldred in Nottingham, UK. At a
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Winter's Fire by Bernard Capes and Eddy on the Floor,
Part three. Ill and shaken, and for the time little
in love with life, yet fearing death as I had
never dreaded it before. I spent the rest of that
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horrible night huddled between my crumpled sheets, fearing to look forth,
fearing to think wild, only to be far away, to
be housed in some green and inner saint hamlet, where
I might forget the madness and the terror. In learning
to walk the unvexed paths of placid souls I had
(01:12):
not fairly knocked under. Until alone with my new dread
familiar that unction I could lay to my heart. At
least I had done the manly part by the stricken warder,
whom I had attended to his own home in a
row of little tenements that stood south of the prison walls.
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I had replied to all inquiries with some dignity and spirit,
attributing my ruffled condition to an assault on the part
of Johnson, when he was already under the shadow of
his seizure. I had directed his removal and grudged him
no professional attention that it was in my power to bestow.
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But afterwards, locked into my room, my whole nervous system
broke up like a trodden ant hill, leaving me conscious
of nothing but aimless, scurrying terror and the black swarm
of thoughts, so that I verily fancied my reason would
give under the strain. Yet I had more to endure
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and to triumph over. Near morning I fell into a
troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed
an accent on every word of ill omen I had
ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my
body rested, my brain was an open chamber for any
(02:42):
toad of ugliness that listed to sit or squat in.
Suddenly I woke to the fact that there was a
knocking at my door, that there had been for some time.
I cried, come in, finding a weak restrative in the
mere sound of my own human voice, then, remembering the
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key was turned, bade the visitor wait until I could
come to him. Scrambling, feeling dazed and white livered out
of bed, I opened the door and met one of
the warders on the threshold. The man looked scared, and
his lips, I noticed, were set in a somewhat boding fashion.
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Can you come at once, sir? He said, there's something
wrong with the governor wrong. What's the matter with him? Why?
He looked down, rubbed an imaginary protuberance smooth with his foot,
and glanced up at me again with a quick furtive expression.
He's got his face set in the grate inn of
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forty seven, and danged if a man jack of us
can get him to move or speak. I turned away,
feeling sick. I hurry pulled on my coat and trousers
and went off with my summoner. Reason was all absorbed
in the wildest fantasy of apprehension. Who found him? I
(04:13):
muttered as we sped on. Volkin's seen him go down
the corridor about half after eight, sir, and see him
give a start like when he noticed the trap open.
It's never been so before in my time. Johnson must
have done it last night before he were took. Yes, yes,
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the man said. The governor went to shut it, it seemed,
and to draw his face towards the bars. In so doing,
then he seed him a looking through, as he thought,
But naturally it warn't known of his business, and he
went off about his work. But when he come an
eye again fifteen minutes later, there were the governor in
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the same position, and he got scared over it and
called out one or two of us. Why didn't one
or two of you ask the major if anything was wrong?
Bless you, we did, and no answer, and we pulled
incompatible with discipline. But but what he's stuck stuck? Youll
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see for yourself, sir. That's all I ask. I did.
A moment later, a little group was collected about the
door of Cell forty seven, and the members of it
spoke together in whispers as if they were frightened men.
One young fellow with a face white in patches as
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if it had been flowered, slid from them as I
approached and accosted me tremulously. Don't go an eye, sir,
there's something wrong about the place. I pulled myself together
forcibly beating down the excitement reawakened by the associations of
the spot in the discomfiture of others nerves. I found
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my own restoration. Don't be an ass, I said, in
a determined voice. There's nothing here that can't be explained.
Make way for me, please. They parted and let me through,
And as I saw him, he stood spruce frock coated,
dapper as he always was, with his face pressed against
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and into the grill, and either hand raised and clenched
tightly round the bars of the trap. His posture was
as of one caught and striving frantically to release himself.
Yet the narrowness of the interval between the rails precluded
so extravagant an idea. He stood quite motionless, taught and
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on the strain, as it were, and nothing of his
face was visible but the back ridges of his jawbones
showing white through a bush of red whiskers. Major shrike.
I rapped out, and, allowing myself no hesitation, reached forth
my hand and grasped his shoulder. The body vibrated under
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my touch, but he neither answered nor made sign of
hearing me. Then I pulled at him forcibly and ever
with increasing strength. His fingers held like steel braces. He
seemed glued to the trap like theseus to the rock hastily.
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I peered round to see if I could get glimpse
of his face. I noticed enough to send me back
with a little stagger. Has none of you got the
key to this door? I asked, reviewing the scared faces
around me, that which my own was no less troubled.
I feel sure only the governor, sir, said the warder
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who had fetched me. There's not a man but him,
mosters that ever seen this opened. He was wrong there.
I could have told him, but held my tongue for
obvious reasons. I want it opened, will one if you
feel in his pockets? Not a soul stirred even had
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not sense of discipline precluded that of a certain inhuman atmosphere,
made fearful creatures of them all, then said I I
must do it myself. I turned once more to the
stiff strung figure, had actually put hand on it, when
an exclamation from Volkin's arrested me. There's a key there, sir,
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he said, sticking out yonder between his feet. Sure enough
there was Johnson's, no doubt, that had been shot from
its socket by the clapping of the door, and afterwards
kicked aside by the warder in his convulsive struggles. I stooped,
only too thankful for the respite, and drew it forth.
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I had seen it but once before, yet I recognized
it at a glance. Now, I confess my heart felt
ill as I slipped the key in the wards, and
a sickness of resentment at the tyranny of fate in
making me its helpless minister surged up in my veins.
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Once with my fingers on the iron loop, I paused
and ventured a fearful side glance at the figure, whose
crooked elbow almost touched my face, and then strung to
the high pitch of inevitability, I shot the lock, pushed
at the door, and in the act made a back
leap into the corridor. Scarcely in doing so did I
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look for the totter and collapse outwards of the rigid form.
I had expected to see it fall away, face down
into the cell, as its supports were from it. Yet
it was, I swear, as if something from within had
relaxed its grip and given the dreadful man a swinging
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push outwards. As the door opened, it went on its
back with a dusty slap on the stone flags and
from all its spectators, me included, came a sudden, drawn sound,
like wind in a keyhole. What can I say, or
how describe it? A dead thing it was, but the
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face barred with livid scars where the grating rails had
crossed it. The rest seemed to have been worked and
kneaded into a mere, featureless plate of yellow and expressionless flesh.
And it was this I had seen in the glass.
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There was an interval following the experience above narrated, during
which a certain personnelity that had once been mine was
effaced or suspended, and I seemed a passive creature, innocent
of the least desire of independence. It was not that
I was actually ill or actually insane. A merciful providence
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set my finer wits slumbering, that was all, leaving me
a sufficiency of the grosser faculties that were necessary to
the right ordering of my behavior. I kept to my room,
it is true, and even lay a good deal in bed.
But this was more to satisfy the busy scruples of
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a locum tenens, a practitioner of the neighborhood, who came
daily to prison to officiate in my absence than to
cause it a complaint that, in its inactivity was purely negative.
I could review what had happened with a calmness as
profound as if I had read it in a book.
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I could have wished to continue my duties, indeed, had
the power of insistence remained to me. But the sane
Americus was acute, where I had gone blunt and bad
me to the RESTful course. He was right. I was
mentally stunned, and had I not slept off my lethargy,
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I should have gone mad. In an hour. Leapt at
a bound, probably from inertia to flaming lunacy. I remembered everything,
but through a fluffy atmosphere, so to speak. It was
as if I looked on by gone pictures through ground
glass that softened the ugly outlines. Sometimes I referred to
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these to my substitute, who was wise to answer me
according to my mood, for the truth left me unruffled,
whereas an obvious evasion of it would have distressed me. Hammond,
I said one day, I have never yet asked you,
how did I give my evidence at the inquest like
(13:13):
a doctor and a sane man. That's good, But it
was a difficult course to steer. You conducted the post mortem.
Did any peculiarity in the dead man's face strike you?
Nothing but this, that the excessive contraction of the bicepital
muscles had brought the features into such forcible contact with
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the bars as to cause bruising and actual abrasion. He
must have been dead some time when you found him,
and nothing else You noticed, nothing else in his face,
a sort of obliteration of what makes one human? I mean,
oh dear, no, nothing but the painful constriction that any
(14:00):
ordinary fatal attack of angina pectoris. There's a rum breach
of the promise case in the papers to day. You
should read it. It'll make you laugh. I had no
more inclination to laugh than to sigh, but accepted the
change of subject with an equanimity now habitual to me.
(14:26):
One morning I sat up in bed and knew that
consciousness was wide awake in me once more. I had slept,
and now rose, refreshed but trembling, looking back, all in
a flutter of new responsibility. Along the misty path by
way of which I had recently loitered, I shook with
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some awful thankfulness at the sight of the pitfalls. I
had skirted and escaped of the demons. My witlessness had baffled.
The joy of life was in my heart again, but
chastened and made pitiful by experience. Hammond noticed the change
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in me directly. He entered and congratulated me upon it
go slow at first, old man, he said, you've fairly
sloughed the old skin. But give that sun time to
toten the new one. Walk in it at present, and
be content. I was in great measure, and I followed
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his advice. I got leave of absence and ran down
for a month in the country, to a certain house
we knew of where kindly ministrations to my convalescence was
only one of the many blisses to be put to
an account of rosy days. Then did my love awake
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most like a lily flower, and as the lovely queen
of heaven? So John she in her bower, army army.
When was it a year ago or two thirds of
a lifetime? Alas age with stealing steps hath clawed me
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with his crouch, And will the use root in my heart?
I wondered. I was well, sane, recovered, when one morning,
towards the end of my visit. I received a letter
from Hammond, enclosing a packet addressed to me and jealously
(16:37):
sealed and fastened. My friend's communication ran as follows. There
died here yesterday afternoon, a warder Johnson, He who had
that apoplectic seizure you will remember the night before poor
Shrike's exit. I attended him to the end, and being
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alone with him an hour before the finish, he took
the enclosed from under his pillow, and a solemn oath
from me that I would forward it direct to you,
sealed as you will find it, and permit no other
soul to examine or even touch it. I equip myself
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of the charge, but my dear fellow, with an uneasy
sense of the responsibility I incur in thus possibly suggesting
to you a retrospective events which you had much best
consigned to the limbo of the not unexplicable, but not
worth trying to explain. It was patent from what I
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had gathered that you were in an overstrung and excitable
condition at that time, and that your temporary collapse was
purely nervous in its character. It seems there was some
nonsense abroad in the prison about a certain cell, and
that there were fools who thought fit to associate Johnson's
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attack and the other's death with the opening of that
cell's door. I have given the new governor a tip,
and he has stopped all that. We have examined the
cell in company and found it, as one might suppose,
a very ordinary chamber. The two men died perfectly natural deaths,
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and there is the last to be said on the subject.
I mention it only from the fear that enclosed may
contain some allusion to the rubbish, a perusal of which
might check the wholesome convalescence of your thoughts. If you
take my advice, you will throw the packet into the fire, unread.
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At least if you do examine it, postpone the duty
till you feel yourself absolutely impervious to any mental trickery,
and bear in mind that you are a worthy member
of a particularly matter of fact and unemotional profession. I
(19:12):
smiled at the last clause, for I was now in
a condition to feel a rather warm shame over my
erst weakneed collapse before a sheet and an illuminated turnip.
I took the packet to my bedroom, shut the door,
and sat myself down by the open window. The garden
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lay below me, and the dewy meadows beyond. In the one,
bees were busy ruffling the ruddy gillyflowers and april stocks.
In the other, the hedge twigs were all frosted with
mary buds, as if spring had brushed them with the
fleece of her wings. In passing, I fetched a sigh
(20:00):
of content as I broke the seal of the packet
and brought out the enclosure. Somewhere in the garden, a
little sardonic laugh was clipped to silence. It came from
groom or made no doubt. Yet it thrilled me with
an odd feeling of uncanniness, and I shivered slightly. Bah,
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I said to myself determinedly, there is a shrewd nip
in the wind for all the show of sunlight. And
I rose, pulled down the window and resumed my seat. Then,
in the closed room that had become deathly quiet by contrast,
I opened and read the dead Man's letter. Sir, I
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hope you will read what I here put down. I
lay it on you as a solemn injunction, for I
am a dying man, and I know it and to
who is my death due and the govern as death,
if not you, for your prying and curiosity, as surely
as if you had drove a knife through our hearts.
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Therefore I say read this and take my burden from me,
for it has been a burden, and now it is
right that you that interfered should have it on your
own mortal shoulders. The Major is dead and I am dying.
And in the first of my fit it went on
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in my head like symbols that the trap was left open,
and that if he passed, he would look in and
it would get him. For he knew not fear, neither
would he submit to bullying by God or devil. Now
I will tell you the truth, and Heaven quit you
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of your responsibility in our destruction. There wasn't another man
to me like the govern in all the countries of
the world. Once he brought me to life, after doctors
had given me up for dead. But he willed it,
and I lived, and ever afterwards I loved him as
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a dog loves its master. That was in the Punjab,
and I came home to England with him and was
his servant when he got his appointment to the jail
here I tell you he was a proud and fierce man,
but under control and tender to those he favored. And
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I will tell you also a strange thing about him.
Though he was a soldier and an officer, and strict
in discipline, as made men fear and admire him, his heart,
at bottom was all for books and literature and such
like gentle crafts. I had his confidence as a man
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gives his confidence to his dog. And before me sometimes
he unbent, as he never would before others. In this
way I learned the bitter sorrow of his life. He
had once hoped to be a poet, acknowledged as such
before the world. He was by nature an idealist, as
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they call it. And God knows what it meant to
him to come out of the woods, so to speak,
and sweat in the dust of cities. But he did it,
for his will was of tempered steel. He buried his
dreams in the clouds and came down to earth greatly resolved,
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but with one undying hate. It is not good to
hate as he could, and worse to be hated by
such as him. And I will tell you the story
and what it led to. It was when he was
a subaltern that he made up his mind to the plunge.
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For years he had placed all his hopes and confidence
in a book of verses he had wrote and added
to and improved during the time. A little encouragement, a
little word of praise, was all he looked for. And
then he was ready to buckle to again profiting by
(24:25):
advice and do better. He put all the love and
beauty of his heart into that book, and at last,
after doubt and anguish and much diffidence, he published it
and gave it to the world. Sir. It felt what
they call stillborn from the press. It was like a
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green leaf fluttering down in a dead wood to a
proud and hopeful man, bubbling with music. The pain of
neglect when he come to to realize it was terrible.
But nothing was said, and there was nothing to say.
In silence. He had to endure and suffer. But one day,
(25:13):
during maneuvers, there came to the camp a gray faced man,
a newspaper correspondent, and young shrike knocked up a friendship
with him. Now how it come about, I cannot tell,
but so it did that this skip kennel wormed the
(25:33):
lad's sorrow out of him and his confidence, swore he'd
been damnedly used, and that when he got back he'd
crack up the book himself in his own paper. He
was a fool for his pains, and a serpent in
his cruelty. The notice came out as promised, and my god,
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the author was laughed and mocked at from beginning to end.
Even confidences he had given to the creature was twisted
to his ridicule, and his very appearance joked over and
the mascot wind of it and made a rare story
for the dog days. He bore it like a soldier,
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and that he became heart and liver for the moment.
But he put something to the account of the gray
faced man and locked it up in his breast. He
come across him again years afterwards in India and told
him very politely that he hadn't forgotten him, and didn't
(26:41):
intend to, but he was an eye losing sight of him.
There was forever in a day, for the creature took
cholera or what looked like it, and rubbed shoulders with
death and the devil before he pulled through. And he
come across him again over and that was the last
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of him. As you shall see presently. Once after I
knew the major he was captain. Then I was a
brush in his coat, and he stood a long while
before the glass. Then he twisted upon me with a
smile on his mouth, and he says, the dog was right, Johnson,
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This isn't the face of a poet. I was a
presumptuous ass and borne to cast up figures with a
pen behind me. Ear captain, I says, if you were skinned,
you'd look like any other man without his The quality
of a soul isn't expressed by a coat, well, he answers,
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My soul's pretty clean, swept, I think, save for one
bluebeard chamber in it that's been kept locked ever so
many years. It's nice and dirty by this time, he says.
Then the grin comes on his mouth again. I'll open
it one day, he says, And look there's something in
(28:09):
it about comparing me to a dancing dervish with the
wind in my petticuts. Perhaps I'll get the chance to
set someone else dancing by and by he did and
took it, and the Bluebeard chamber come to be opened
in this very jail. It was when the system was
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lined fallow, so to speak that the prison was deserted.
Nobody was there but him and me and the echoes
from the empty courts. The contract for restorvation hadn't been signed,
and for months and more than a year we lay idle,
nothing being done. Near the beginning of this period, one
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day comes, from the third time of the major's seeing him,
the grave faced man let bygones be by gones. He says,
I was a good friend to you, though you didn't
know it, and now I expect you're in the way
to thank me, I am, said the major. Of course,
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he answered, where would be your fame and reputation as
one of the leading prison reformers of the day if
you had kept on in that rhyming nonsense. Have you
come for my thanks, says the governor. I've come, says
the gray faced man, to examine and report upon your
(29:39):
system for your paper, possibly, but to satisfy myself of
its efficacy. In the first instance, you aren't commissioned, then no,
I come on my own responsibility, without consultation with any one,
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absolutely without I haven't even a wife to advise me,
he says, with a yellow grin. What once passed for
cholera had set the bile on his skin like paint,
and he had caught a manner of coffin behind his hand,
like a toast master. I know, said the Major, looking
(30:22):
him straight in the face, that what you say about
me and my affairs is sure to be actuated by
conscientious motives. Ah, he answers, you're sore about that review?
Still I see not at all, said the Major, And
in proof, I invite you to be my guest for
(30:43):
the night, and tomorrow i'll show you over the prison
and explain my system. And the creature cried done, and
they set to and discussed jail matters in great earnestness.
I couldn't guess the governor's intentionnscience, but somehow his manner
troubled me. And yet I can remember only one point
(31:06):
of his talk. He were always dead against making public
show of his birds. They're there for reformation, not ignominy,
he'd say. Prisons in the old days were often with
the asylum and the workhouse made the holiday showplaces of towns.
I've heard of one Justice of the Peace up north, who,
(31:29):
to save himself trouble, used to sign a lot of
blank orders for leave to view, so that applicants needn't
bother him when they wanted to go over. They've changed
all that, and the Governor were instrumental in that change.
It's against my rule, he said that night, to exhibit
(31:50):
to a stranger without a government permit. But seeing the
place is empty, and for old remembrance sake, I'll make
an exception in your favor. You shall learn all I
can show you of the inside of a prison. Now
this was natural enough, but I was uneasy. He treated
(32:11):
his guests royally, so much that when we assembled the
next morning for the inspection, the gray faced man was
shaky as a wet dog, but the Major were all
set prim and dry, like the soldier he was. We
went straight away down the corridor B and at Znilve
(32:33):
forty seven we stopped. We will begin our inspection here,
said the Governor. Johnson opened the door. I had the
keys of the row fitted in the right one and
pushed open the door after you, said the Major, and
the creature walked in, and he shut the door on him.
(32:58):
I think he smelt a a at once, for he
began beating on the wood and calling out to us.
But the Major only turned round to me with his
face like a stone. Take that key from the bunch,
he said, and give it to me. I obeyed, all
in a tremble, and he took it and put it
(33:20):
in his pocket. My god, Major, I whispered, what are
you going to do with him? Silence, sir, he said,
how dare you question your superior officer? And the noise
inside grew louder. The governor he listened to it a
(33:40):
moment like music. Then he unbolted and flung open the trap,
and the creature's face came at it like a wild beast. Sir,
said the Major to it. You can't better understand my
system than by experiencing it. What an article for your
(34:01):
paper you could write already, almost as pungent to one
as that in which you ruined the hopes and prospects
of a young Cockney poet. The man mouthed at the bars,
he was half mad. I think in that one minute.
Let me out, he screamed, this is a hideous joke.
(34:22):
Let me out when you are quite quiet, deathly quiet,
said the Major. You shall come out, not before, and
he shut the trap in its face very softly. Come
Johnson March, she said, and took the lead, and we
(34:43):
walked out of the prism. I was like to faint,
but I daren't disobey, And the man's screeching followed us
all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut
the first great door on it. It may have gone
on for hours alone in that awful emptiness. The creature
(35:07):
was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart, and
from that hour till his death five months later, he
rotted and maddened in this dreadful tomb. There was more,
but I pushed a ghastly confession from me at this point,
(35:28):
in uncontrollable loathing and terror, was it possible? Possible that
injured vanity could so falsify its victims every tradition of decency? Oh,
I muttered, what a disease is ambition? Who takes one
(35:49):
step towards it puts his foot on alcirat. It was
minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption
of the task. But at last I took it up
again with a groan. I don't think at first I
realized a full mischief the governor intended to do. At least,
(36:13):
I hope he only meant to give the man a
good fright and then let him go. I might have
known better. How could he ever release him without ruining himself.
The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There
was a strange new look of triumph in his face,
(36:34):
and in his hand he held a heavy hunting crop.
I pray to God he acted in madness, but my
duty and obedience was to him. There is sport towards Johnson.
He said, my dervish has got to dance. I followed
him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door,
(36:57):
but the place was silent as the grave. But from
the cell, when we reached it came a low whimpering sound.
The governor slipped the trap and looked through. All right,
he said, and put the key in the door and
flung it open. He was sitting crouched on the ground,
(37:20):
and he looked up at us, vacant like his face
were all fallen down as it were, and his mouth
never ceased to shake and whisper. The Major shut the
door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved
to the creature with his whip up. He cried, up,
(37:41):
you dervish, and dance for us, and he brought the
thong with a smack across his shoulders. The creature leapt
under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry,
and the major whipped him till he danced all round
the cell. He drove him, lashing and cutting, and again
(38:02):
and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on
the floor, whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give
an account of this. Some day I shall have to
whip my master with a red hot serpent round the
blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it
with agony, because here my love and my obedience was
(38:26):
to him. When it was finished, he bade me put
down food and drink that I had brought with me,
and come away with him. And we went, leaving him
rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him
alone in the empty prison until we should come again
(38:47):
at the same time tomorrow. So day by day this
went on, and the dancing three or four times a week,
until at last the wind could be left behind, for
the man would scream and begin to dance at the
mere turning of the key in the lock. And he
(39:09):
danced for four months, but not the fifth nobody official
came near us. All this time the prison stood lonely
as a deserted ruin, where dark things have been done. Once,
(39:30):
with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he
would account for the inmate of forty seven if he
was suddenly called upon by authority to open the cell.
And he answered, smiling, I should say it was my
mad brother. By his own account. He showed me a
(39:52):
brother's love. You know, it would be thought a liberty.
But the authorities, I think, would stretch a point for me.
But if I got sufficient notice, I could clear out
the cell. I asked him how, with my eyes rather
than my lips, and he answered me only with a look.
(40:16):
And all this time he was outside the prison, living
the life of a good man, helping the needy, ministering
to the poor. He even entertained occasionally, and had more
than one noisy party in his house. But the fifth
month the creature danced no more. He was dumb, a
(40:39):
silent animal, then, with matted hair and beard, and when
one entered, he would only look up at one pitifully,
as if to say, my long punishment is nearly ended.
How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him?
(41:00):
I know not, but none ever was Perhaps he was
one of the wandering gentry that nobody ever knows where
they are next. He was unmarried and had apparently not
told of his intended journey to a soul. And at
(41:20):
the last he died in the night. We found him
lying stiff and stark in the morning, and scratched with
a piece of black crust on a stone of the wall.
These strange words and eddy on the floor, just that,
(41:45):
nothing else. Then the governor came and looked down and
was silent. Suddenly he caught me by the shoulder, Johnson.
He cried, if it was to do again, I would
do it. I repent of nothing. But he has paid
(42:06):
the penalty, and we are quits. May he rest in peace? Amen,
I said low, Yet I knew our turn must come
for this. We buried him in quicklime under the wall
where the murderers lie, and I made the cell trim
(42:30):
and rubbed out the writing, and the governor locked it
up and took away the key. But he locked in
more than he bargained for. For months the place was
left to itself, and neither of us went an eye
forty seven. Then one day the workman was to be
(42:53):
put in, and the major he took me round with
him for a last examination of the place before they come.
He hesitated a bit outside a particular cell, but at
last he drove in the key and kicked open the door.
My god, he says, he's still dancing. My heart was thumping.
(43:19):
I tell you, as I looked over his shoulder. What
did we see? What you well understand, sir, But for
all it was no more than that we knew, as
well as if it was shouted in our ears that
it was him dancing. It went round the walls and
(43:42):
drew towards us. And as it stole near, I screamed
out and eddy on the floor and seized and dragged
the major out and clapped the door behind us. Oh,
I said, in another moment, it would have had us.
He looked at me gloomily. Johnson, He said, I am
(44:09):
not to be frighted or coerced. He may dance, but
he shall dance alone. Get the screwdriver and some screws,
and fasten up this trap. No one from this time
looks into this cell. I did as he bid me, sweating,
(44:31):
and I swear all the time I wrought I dreaded
a hand that would come through the trap and clutch
mine on one pretext or other. From that day till
the night you meddled with it, he kept that cell
as close shut as a tomb, and he went his
ways discarding the past from that time forth. Now and again,
(44:57):
an oversensitive prisoner in the next ell would complain of
feeling uncomfortable. If possible, he would be removed to another.
If not, he was damned for his fancies. And so
it might be going on to now if you hadn't
pride and interfered. I don't blame you at this moment, sir.
(45:21):
Likely you were an instrument in the hand of providence.
Only as the instrument you must now take the burden
of the truth on your own shoulders. I'm a dying man,
but I cannot die till I have confessed. Perhaps you
may find it in your heart someday to give up
(45:43):
a prayer for me, but it must be for the
major as well, your obedient servant, J. Johnson, What comment
of my own can I end to this wild narrative? Professionally,
(46:04):
and apart from personal experiences, I should rule it to
the composition of an epileptic that a noted journalist, nameless
as he was, and is to me, however nomadic inhabit
could disappear from Humanken and his fellow's rest content. To
(46:25):
leave him unaccounted for seems a tax upon credulity so
stupendous that I cannot seriously endorse the statement. Yet also
there is that little matter of my personal experience, end
(46:47):
of Section eleven.
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