He rushed on, but the streets were still ever narrower and loftier; oh, the deadly fear that was on him, the desire to find escape to the broad, bright streets again, and flee this horrible thing!

But he could not--it was not to be--not broader but ever narrower were the foul alleys that he hurried through. Would he never come out to the light? Was he altogether cut off? Would he reach some blind alley and be at the mercy of the pursuing crowd?

At last the streets were so narrow that the houses altogether joined. He found himself no longer on the stone pavements, but going through the crazy houses themselves. He pa.s.sed along old wooden corridors that shook and crumbled beneath his tread, while below were black depths of rushing water--open sewers whose filth was alive with fearful reptiles; then along great galleries, and through rooms; door after door, yet no escape for the phantom-pursued wretch. And the rooms were of all characters, but all deserted and all terrible to the fancy. Now he was in a garret with noisome walls, with their dirty paper torn, waving in a cold wind, and hideous vermin crawling over it; now in a magnificent boudoir with sofas of purple pile and great mirrors, and a thousand nicknacks glittering with diamonds, a chamber heavy with voluptuous odours, fit nest for some loveliest, young Hetaira or Cleopatra's self, but always with some unspeakable loathsome thing in it; then into cellars, foul charnel-houses strewed with bones--bones of men that a voice within him told had been former victims of the horror, even as he should be--and so on and on and on before the nameless terror, fleeing from the unseen women that were ever noiselessly following.

At last he felt a breath of fresh air on his cheek. O, G.o.d, was it escape at last?

No! No! He was at the end of an alley, but it terminated on the foul mud of a river bank, a broad, dark river--no escape, and the crowd behind neared--neared--they had surrounded him--seized him....

Once more the precious crystals calmed the overwrought brain for awhile.

The mouth of a pit--a pit of endless depths of suffocating darkness, and this darkness and the suffocating poisonous density of the air of it increased with the depth.

A pit of indefinite breadth, it might be a hundred miles or a hundred yards or of no breadth at all, for it was in a realm beyond the limits of s.p.a.ce.

In the middle of the pit--that is at an equal distance from the edges, and on a level with them--the wretch was poised.

He breathed labouriously--a difficult painful expiration, an agonising inspiration; and as he breathed out the air he sank--sank into the darkness of the pit--down into the suffocating darkness, into horror and death.

Then he gasped for life; drank the difficult thick air and rose again to the surface; with each expiration sinking, with each inspiration rising to the lighter air of the surface.

There was present to him all the agony of the drowning with a horror such as no death can give. But when he rose, he was not able to stay above the pit long; for he could not hold his breath--after a few minutes he was forced to breathe out--breathe out and sink down--down into that unutterable horror.

And the whole mouth of the pit was domed with a gigantic dome of millions of human heads, grinning, laughing, jeering at the wretch; mocking him that he could not stay on the surface but must breathe out and sink again--the heads of beautiful, bad women, some that he recognised as erst the companions of his orgies, the hideous heads too of satyr-like old men, that shook with palsy as they grinned with l.u.s.t, in which he seemed to recognize his own distorted likeness; and heads of horrible things not describable in the language of the sane world.

So up and down he rose and fell between the grinning faces and the suffocating darkness, each time weaker, more unable to fight upwards to life, each time sinking deeper, staying longer in the stifling depths.

Once more the hand that ministered unseen, placed the gla.s.s to his chattering teeth; the crystals again did their blessed work, and his delirious fancy changed. He was in an old ivy-grown parsonage in a pleasant, western village among hills and apple-orchards; a child once more in his old home. He wandered up the valley, by the crystal trout-streams, between the heathery hills; a child so glad, so pure, and he wept bitterly for the very delight of the flowers and all the beauty of the land, wept, though so simple and innocent; with a foreboding of future sin and misery and vain, vain, regrets.

Then the clouds darkened and gathered, and a girl walked towards him by the river bank, a beautiful girl with golden hair and purple eyes, with a great sorrow in her young face--and she pa.s.sed, seeing him not, turning not aside, though he stretched out his hands in pa.s.sionate yearning and pleading--but he could not step one step towards her, nor could he cry out to her to stay, though he knew that she alone could save him.

Then another woman followed, beautiful also, but with the eyes of a snake; and she saw him and looked into him till his heart chilled and his veins tingled, but with a terrible fascination. To look at her, to love her was death; but he would look and love notwithstanding, and die with a laugh of joy on his lips.

"This is the poor wretch, Mary. He is asleep now. Do you think you can recognize who it is?"

It was Susan who spoke; she and Mary were standing alone by the bed-side of the unconscious Hudson.

Mary scanned his features closely--a look of pity on her face; but in reply to the other's question, shook her head--she did not know him.

"Yet from what he said this morning he evidently knows you," went on Susan.

"I cannot remember the face--and yet there is something in it"--Mary said, doubtfully, as she paused to consider again the altered features.

"I think I know what he is," interrupted Susan. "I made out from his ravings that he was a barrister."

"A barrister!" cried Mary, and she started back and her cheek blanched.

Yes! she knew him now. And was this poor wretch so changed, so degraded, indeed the bright, young man who had first befriended her?

"Oh, Susan, I know who it is now. Poor fellow! poor fellow! I have not seen him for years--Then he was so different, so n.o.ble. Oh! what could have caused this? He was my first friend in the world, when I had no others and was sorely in need of one! Oh! what can I do? what can I do?"

and she wrung her hands with anguish. "Oh, Susan! if I had but known of this."

Susan interrupted her. "If you had but known you might have prevented this. Yes! I dare say."

"What did the doctor say, Susan? Will he recover?"

"The doctor says the case is a bad one; but then the man is young, so there is hope of recovery, unless--unless something happens to complicate the mischief."

So strange was the tone in which the woman uttered these last words, that Mary turned round and looked at her, and felt a great terror creep over her when she perceived the glitter in her eye and the sinister smile about her mouth.

Even a coward will become recklessly brave when possessed by some strong pa.s.sion. Susan was at heart a coward, yet she now did what she well knew was an extremely imprudent thing. She could not control herself; her malice overcame her fear of consequences. She so hated Mary, the girl who she believed had robbed her of two lovers, that she could not resist the dear temptation of torturing her, of watching her agony as she played with her feelings like a cat with a mouse, though she was aware how perilous the amus.e.m.e.nt was. So she went on with a voice that could scarcely conceal her delightful sense of triumphant cruelty.

"Now, Mary, listen carefully to what I am saying--I know who this old lover of yours is. We of the Inner Six know everything. Nothing can escape our vigilance--no treason especially"--and she looked earnestly into the other eyes. "This Mr. Thomas Hudson--you see I know him--has just come into a considerable fortune--poor fool, if he had but known it! His uncle died two days ago. It's a pity you did not know that, is it not, Mary?"

"I don't know what you mean," exclaimed the girl, "and I don't understand how you can speak in so heartless a manner. Has this man ever done you any injury?"

"That is not the question, my dear Mary," said the woman in bland tones.

"Now follow me carefully and don't interrupt. This Mr. Hudson, you see, is now ent.i.tled to a large landed estate. Now Mr. Hudson may marry, may have children, may leave tyrants after him to hold the people's land. We should have to remove those children, should we not, Mary?"

Mary made no reply, so Susan, after a pause, continued: "But, on the other hand, if Mr. Hudson happened to die now, the estate would go to a certain old gentleman who is over seventy. This old gentleman is unmarried, and is hardly likely to beget children if he does marry; so when he dies in his turn, there will be no descendant of his to take the land, and so it will revert to the State--that is, unless he dies before this new Landed Property Act is pa.s.sed, and becomes law--an improbable contingency; as next session of Parliament will certainly settle that--you follow me, don't you, Mary?"

Mary, scarcely knowing what she did, replied with an affirmative motion of the head, but she said nothing.

Susan proceeded: "Now, Mary, this is the question: which will be the better plan, to put this Thomas Hudson out of the way now, and so secure this property to the people by one stroke, or to wait till by-and-bye and then contrive, not without much danger and difficulty, perhaps, to put away his children? I consult you because I look on you as one of the cleverest members of the Sisterhood. Let us have the benefit of your opinion."

The malicious woman never took her glittering eyes off the girl as she said these words, and waited for an answer.

But the girl only trembled, and turned deadly pale, staring at the other with fixed dilated eyes. She could not speak, for she felt a strange numbness creeping over her whole body, gradually intensifying, and paralysing her every sense.

Susan left her in suspense for a minute or so, gloating over the agony of her rival, and then continued in a cold voice, calmer and more deliberate than most women would employ when discussing how a gown was to be made up, or some such equally important matter:

"To me it seems absurd to miss such a glorious chance. What an opportunity, too, of watching the working of Jane's poison! So I have--look here, dear--" She raised one sleeve of the man's shirt, and pointed to a small blue spot, surrounded by a slightly inflamed circle, which stood out in contrast to the white flesh.

Susan then looked up with a smile into the girl's face, but when she perceived the expression on it, she felt frightened at what she had done; for Mary was gazing straight in front of her with a fixed stupid stare, as if not understanding what she heard or saw. Susan dropped the man's arm and ran towards her, just in time to support her as she fell fainting to the ground.

Having now satisfied her malice, the cowardly element of the woman's nature came to the front again. She shook with fear, and cursed her folly at having told this thing to Mary; why, the girl in her hysterical weakness, or in the delirium that might come of this shock, might easily reveal the whole transaction.

She laid Mary down on the floor, and stood staring at her without rendering any a.s.sistance for a few minutes. In her fear, she had lost all her presence of mind. Then somewhat recovering herself, she was about to employ measures to bring the girl back to consciousness, when her eyes happened to fall on the barrister.

One of his eyes was covered by the bandage across his forehead, but the other was open wide, staring fixedly at her out of the pale face, while his swollen lips moved, as if trying to give utterance to words, but unable to do so.