Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

“I don’t know how I got through those next few months,” the quiet voice continued. “He was always watching me with his bright little eyes and his tongue was always ready with some sly remark to show me he was waiting.

“He drank now more than ever. Night after night I had to sit opposite him at the dinner table. And night after night I left him there, still drinking; till hours later I would hear him come stumbling up the bare oak stairs into his bedroom at the far end of the corridor from mine.

“He was always a bad sleeper. He used to dose himself with brandy when he woke, as he usually did, in the early hours of the morning. The result was, of course, that he slept late; and we used to be as quiet as ever we could in the mornings, so as not to wake him.”

Channing could imagine the suspense which gripped that silent household, till the master should descend — white, stupid and venomous — to start another day again. But the impersonal interest of the chief sufferer was abnormal enough to arouse him.

“You were telling me about your baby,” he said. Anything was better than that attitude of mind.

“I lost it,” she said simply. “It was born too soon. I don’t know what happened. I was delirious, I think, at the time. And when I recovered they told me my husband was dead.”

“Your husband—” began Channing; but she had scarcely stopped when she went on again.

“He had gone to bed sodden with drink as usual and had apparently smothered himself in his pillows.”

“Yes,” agreed Channing. “I have known that to happen in other cases.”

She continued as though he never had spoken. “He was found there by his servants in the morning, when they went to tell him about me.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes again. “I think that’s all,” she said quietly. “I had prayed for one or the other to be taken. But of course there was no need for both.”

She dropped her hands in her lap again, and looked straight at Charming. She was as composed and as dignified as when she had first, shaken hands with him.

He began at once to explain to her the value of what she had told him. She asked for help; and it was likely, he told himself, that he was the first human being to whom she had made that appeal.

He interpreted her dream for her, therefore, using all his skill and persuasiveness to make himself convincing.

The rough and painful road she had traveled was surely the life she had described to him, with its hopeless and terrifying prospect such as she herself had visualized at the time. Through that gap in the darkness she had looked upon that future, lighted with the flames that always are associated with the extremes of mental or physical pain.

The symbol of the Cross she saw when she turned her back on those leaping flames needed no interpretation. For it was that symbol which, with its promise of divine help, had encouraged her to continue.

He elaborated this in detail. He told her that, had she not sought so violently to bury it, the memory of that unhappy life of hers long ago would have faded. It was her own refusal to think of it which forced it to seek this back-door entrance to her consciousness, and to emerge in disguise as a dream.

What she had to do now was clear enough. She must dig up from the recesses of her memory every detail, no matter how painful, of those dreadful years; and she must force herself to recall them, not with a stony and impersonal rigidity, but with the natural emotions of a sentient human being. Then only would those memories be at rest, and no longer haunt the confines of her dreams.

She agreed to take his advice. Day after day, at his instructions, she came and laid bare before him the whole of that period of her life. And gradually, as she did so, she recovered, and her increased confidence helped her to persevere.

She still dreamed, it is true, of the same appalling sequence of events; but the occurrence became rarer, and distressed her, in addition, progressively less and less. Finally, after some months of treatment, Channing told her to desist. “What you want now is a holiday,” he said. “You’ve worked hard enough, too, to deserve one.”

It was autumn when they had finished, and a dense fog hung over the West End of London; but to Mrs. Arkwright the day seemed bright and cheerful enough. She looked at him, with her deep eyes free from a trace of strain or sleeplessness; and in her heavy furs, with her splendid figure, she looked, Channing thought, magnificent.

“Yes,” she said, in that rich voice of hers, “I’m free. I know that now. But do you know what I’m going to do to prove it?”

Channing watched her, smiling. These were the rare moments which made his work worth while. He had set a bond-slave free again.

“What are you going to do?” he said.

“I’m going down into Lancashire to open the old house. It will be my first visit since my husband died. I shall spend Christmas there; and my baby will be born there, too. That’s just to prove to you, and myself, that I’m afraid of the past no longer.”