The Damned eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 118 pages of information about The Damned.

The Damned eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 118 pages of information about The Damned.

Closing my book, I let them run.  For, with this chance reflection came the discovery that I could not see her clearly—­could not feel her soul, her personality.  Her face, her small pale eyes, her dress and body and walk, all these stood before me like a photograph; but her Self evaded me.  She seemed not there, lifeless, empty, a shadow—­nothing.  The picture was disagreeable, and I put it by.  Instantly she melted out, as though light thought had conjured up a phantom that had no real existence.  And at that very moment, singularly enough, my eye caught sight of her moving past the window, going silently along the gravel path.  I watched her, a sudden new sensation gripping me.  “There goes a prisoner,” my thought instantly ran, “one who wishes to escape, but cannot.”

What brought the outlandish notion, heaven only knows.  The house was of her own choice, she was twice an heiress, and the world lay open at her feet.  Yet she stayed—­unhappy, frightened, caught.  All this flashed over me, and made a sharp impression even before I had time to dismiss it as absurd.  But a moment later explanation offered itself, though it seemed as far-fetched as the original impression.  My mind, being logical, was obliged to provide something, apparently.  For Mrs. Franklyn, while dressed to go out, with thick walking-boots, a pointed stick, and a motor-cap tied on with a veil as for the windy lanes, was obviously content to go no farther than the little garden paths.  The costume was a sham and a pretence.  It was this, and her lithe, quick movements that suggested a caged creature—­a creature tamed by fear and cruelty that cloaked themselves in kindness—­pacing up and down, unable to realize why it got no farther, but always met the same bars in exactly the same place.  The mind in her was barred.

I watched her go along the paths and down the steps from one terrace to another, until the laurels hid her altogether; and into this mere imagining of a moment came a hint of something slightly disagreeable, for which my mind, search as it would, found no explanation at all.  I remembered then certain other little things.  They dropped into the picture of their own accord.  In a mind not deliberately hunting for clues, pieces of a puzzle sometimes come together in this way, bringing revelation, so that for a second there flashed across me, vanishing instantly again before I could consider it, a large, distressing thought.  I can only describe vaguely as a Shadow.

Dark and ugly, oppressive certainly it might be described, with something torn and dreadful about the edges that suggested pain and strife and terror.  The interior of a prison with two rows of occupied condemned cells, seen years ago in New York, sprang to memory after it—­ the connection between the two impossible to surmise even.  But the “certain other little things” mentioned above were these:  that Mrs. Franklyn, in last night’s dinner talk, had always referred to “this house,” but

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Damned from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.