The Horror Megapack. Robert E. HowardЧитать онлайн книгу.
know not how long I had been asleep when I was awakened from a profound slumber by one of those indescribable sensations of mortal peril which seem to sweep over the soul, and with as it were the thrill of its passage call louder than a trumpet, Awake ! arouse ! your life hangs by a hair! That this strange physical warning is in all cases the result of a magnetic phenomenon I have not the slightest doubt. To prove it, steal softly, ever so softly, to the bedside of a sleeper, and, although no noise betrays your presence, the slumberer will almost invariably awaken, aroused by a magnetic perception of your proximity. How much more powerfully must the stealthy approach of one who harbors sinister designs affect the slumbering victim! An antagonistic magnetism hovers near; the whole of the subtile currents that course through the electrical machine known as man are shocked with a powerful repulsion, and the sentinel mind whose guard has just been relieved, and which is slumbering in its quarters, suddenly hears the rappel beaten and leaps to arms.
In the midst of my deep sleep I sprang with a sudden bound upright, with every faculty alert. By one of those unaccountable mysteries of our being, I realized, before my eyes could be by any possibility alive to external objects, the presence of a great horror. Simultaneously with this conviction, or following it so quickly as to be almost twin with it, I beheld the vivid flash of a knife, and felt an acute pain in my shoulder. The next instant all was plain, as if the scene, instead of passing in a half-illuminated bedroom, had occurred in the full sunlight of the orient. My wife was standing by my bedside, her hands firmly pinioned in mine, while on the white coverlet lay a sharp table-knife red with the blood which was pouring from a deep wound in my shoulder. I had escaped death by a miracle. Another instant and the long blade would have been driven through my heart.
I never was so perfectly self-possessed as on that terrible occasion. I forced Minnie to sit on the bed, while I looked calmly into her face. She returned my gaze with a sort of serene defiance.
“Minnie,” I said, “I loved you dearly. Why did you do this?”
“I was weary of you,” she answered, in a cold, even voice—a voice so level that it seemed to be spoken on ruled lines—“that is my reason.”
Great heavens! I was not prepared for this sanguinary calm. I had looked for perhaps sonic indication of somnambulism; I had vaguely hoped even for the incoherence or vehemence of speech which would have betokened a sudden insanity—anything, everything but this awful avowal of a deliberate design to murder a man who loved her better than the life she sought! Still I clung to hope. I could not believe that this gentle, refined creature could deliberately quit my side at midnight, possess herself of the very knife which had been used at the table, across which I lavished a thousand fond attentions, and remorselessly endeavor to stab me to the heart. It must be the act of one insane, or laboring under some momentary hallucination. I determined to test her further. I adopted a tone of vehement reproach, hoping, if insanity was smouldering in her brain, to fan the embers to such a flame as would leave no doubt on my mind. I would rather she should be mad than feel that she hated me.
“Woman!” I thundered fiercely, “you must have the mind of a fiend to repay my love in this manner. Beware of my vengeance. Your punishment shall be terrible.”
“Punish me,” she answered; and oh! how serene and distant her voice sounded!—“punish me how and when you will. It will not matter much.” The tones were calm, assured, and fearless. The manner perfectly coherent. A terrible suspicion shot across my mind.
“Have I a rival?” I asked; “is it a guilty love that has prompted you to plan my death? If so, I am sorry you did not kill me.”
“I do not know any other man whom I love. I cannot tell why it is that I do not love you. You are very kind and considerate, but your presence wearies me. I sometimes see vaguely, as in a dream, my ideal of a husband, but he has no existence save in my soul, and I suppose I shall never meet him.”
“Minnie, you are mad!” I cried, despairingly.
“Am I?” she answered, with a faint, sad smile slowly overspreading her pale face, like the dawn breaking imperceptibly over a cold gray lake. “Well, you can think so if you will. It is all one to me.”
I never beheld such apathy—such stoical indifference. Had she exhibited fierce rage, disappointment at her failure, a mad thirst for my life-blood, I should have preferred it to this awful stagnation of sensibility, this frozen stillness of the heart. I felt all my nature harden suddenly toward her. It seemed to me as if my face became fixed and stern as a bronze head.
“You are an inexplicable monster,” I said, in tones that startled myself, they were so cold and metallic “and I shall not try to decipher you. I will use every endeavor to ascertain, however, whether it is some species of insanity that has this afflicted you, or whether you are ruled by the most vicious soul that ever inhabited a human body. You shall return to my house tomorrow, when I will place you under the charge of Doctor Melony. You will live in the strictest seclusion. I need not tell you that, after what has happened, you must henceforth be a stranger to your daughter. Hands crimsoned with her father’s blood are not those that I would see caressing her.”
“Very well. It is all one to me where I am, or how I live.”
“Go to bed.”
She went, calmly as a well-taught child, coolly turning over the pillow on which was sprinkled the blood from the wound in my shoulder, so as to present the under side for her beautiful, guilty head to repose on; gently removed the murderous knife, which was still lying on the coverlet, and placed it on a little table by the side of the bed, and then without a word calmly composed herself to sleep.
It was inexplicable. I stanched my wound and sat down to think.
What was the meaning of it all? I had visited many lunatic asylums, and had, as one of the various items in my course of study, read much on the phenomena of insanity, which had always been exceedingly interesting to me for this reason: I thought it might be that only through the aberrated intellect can we approach the secrets of the normal mind. The castle, fortified and garrisoned at every angle and loophole, guards its interior mysteries; it is only when the fortress crumbles that we can force our way inside, and detect the secret of its masonry, its form, and the theory of its construction.
But in all my researches I had never met with any symptoms of a diseased mind similar to these my wife exhibited. There was a uniform coherence that completely puzzled me. Her answers to my questions were complete and determinate—that is, they left no room for what is called “cross-examination.” No man ever spent such a night of utter despair as I did, watching in that dimly lit chamber until dawn, while she, my would-be murderess, lay plunged in so profound and calm a slumber that she might have been a wearied angel rather than a self-possessed demon. The mystery of her guilt was maddening; and I sat hour after hour in my easy-chair, seeking in vain for a clew, until the dawn, spectral and gray, arose over the city. Then I packed up all our luggage, and wandered restlessly over the house until the usual hour for rising had struck.
On returning to my room I found my wife just completing her toilet. To my consternation and horror she flung herself into my arms as I entered.
“O Gerald!” she cried, “I have been so frightened. What has brought all this blood on the pillow and the sheets? Where have you been? When I awoke and missed you and discovered these stains, I knew not what to think. Are you hurt? What is the matter?”
I stared at her. There was not a trace of conscious guilt in her countenance. It was the most consummate acting. Its very perfection made me the more relentless.
“There is no necessity for this hypocrisy,” I said; “it will not alter my resolve. We depart for home to-day. Our luggage is packed, the bills are all paid. Speak to me, I pray you, as little as possible.”
“What is it? Am I dreaming? O Gerald, my darling! what have I done, or what has come over you?” She almost shrieked these queries.
“You know as well as I do, you fair-faced monster. You tried to murder me last night, when I was asleep. There’s your mark on my shoulder. A loving signature, is it not?”
I bared my shoulder