Sturge Maynard rose from the
fireside and looked out on the blackish yellow blinding fog that swathed
“Prosaist of mysteries,” thought Sturge, “trafficker in
devious imaginations, if one could find only the thinnest fact to support the
cumbrous web that is here woven! But the fog is less thick
than the uncertainty in which these thoughts were content to move.”
In a passage of unusual but bizarre interest the German
mystic maintained that the principle of brilliancy attended with a ceaseless
activity the motions of thought, which in their physical aspect are flashes of
a pure, a lurid or a murky light. It was, he said, a common
experience with seers in intense moments of rapid cerebration to see their
heads, often their whole surroundings besieged by a brilliant atmosphere
coruscating with violet lightnings. Even while he wondered
at these extravagances, it flashed across Sturge's memory that he himself in
his childhood had been in the habit of seeing precisely such violet
coruscations about his head and had indulged his childish fancy with them until
maturer years brought wonder, distrust and the rapid waning of the phenomenon.
Was there then some justification of experience for the
fancies of the German? With an impulse he tried vainly to
resist, he fixed his eye piercingly on the fog outside the window, and waited. At the moment he was aware of a curious motion in his head, a
crowding of himself and all his faculties to the eye; then came the sight of
violet flashes in the fog and a growing excitement in his nerves watched by a
brain that was curiously, abnormally calm. A whole world of
miraculous vision, of marvellous sound, of ancient and future experience was
surely pressing upon him, surging against some barrier that opposed
intercourse. Astonished and interested, but not otherwise
disturbed his reason attempted to give itself some account of what was
happening. The better to help the effort, he fixed his eye
again on the fog for repetition or disproof of what he had seen. There
were no further violet flashes, but something surely was hinting, forming,
manifesting in the grey swathe outside. It became bright, it
became round, it became distinct. Was it a face or a globe? With a disappointed revulsion of feeling he saw himself face to
face with nothing more romantic than a clock. He smiled and
turned to compare with that strong visualised clock his own substantial,
unmystic, workaday companion on the mantelpiece. His body
grew tense with a shock of surprise. There indeed was the
clock, his ebony-faced, gold-lettered recorder of hours, balanced lightly on a
conventional Father Time in the centre and two winged goddesses at the edge;
the hands, he noted, were closing upon the twelve and the five, and there would
soon ring out the sound of the hour. But, by its side, what
was this phantasmal and unwonted companion, fixed, distinct, aping reality,
ebony-faced also, but silver-lettered, solidly pedestalled, not lightly
balanced, pointing to the hour eight with the same closeness as the real clock
pointed to the hour five? He had time to notice that the
four of this timepiece was not lettered in the ordinary Roman numerals, but
with the four vertical and parallel strokes; then the apparition disappeared.
An optical hallucination! Probably,
the mental image intensely visualised of some familiar timepiece in a friendly
sitting room. Indeed, was it not more than familiar? Surely, he knew it,—had seen it, clearly, insistently,—that
ebony face, that silver-lettering, that strong ornamented pedestal, even that
figure four! But where was it, when was it? Some
curious bar in his memory baffled his mind wandering vainly for the lost
details.
Suddenly the clock, his own clock, struck five. He counted mechanically the familiar sounds, sharp, clear,
attended with a metallic reverberation. And then, before the
ear could withdraw itself from its object, another clock began, not sharp, not
clear, not metallic but with a soft, harmonious chime and a musical jangling at
the end. And the number of the strokes was eight!
Sturge sat down at the table and opened his book at
random. If this were a hallucination, it was a carefully
arranged and well-executed hallucination. Was someone
playing hypnotic tricks with his brain? Was he hypnotising
himself? His eye fell on the page and met not mediaeval
Latin, but ancient Greek, though un-Homeric hexameters. Very
clear was the lettering, very plain the significance.
Aiei gar theoi
ahanatoi peri gaian alontai
Thneton di
anthropon epi domata prosbainousi
Kruptoi tousde
tis au prosderketai ommasi kruptous?
Eita ti
daimonion ti kenon kai okhema tis oide?
For the gods immortal wander always over the earth and
come unguessed to the dwellings of mortals; but rare is the eye that can look
on them and rarer the mind that can distinguish the disguise from the deity.
Hypnotism again! for he knew that the original
lucubrations of the old mystic, subtle in substance, but in expression rough,
deviated, tedious, amorphous, persecuted from the beginning to the end in
crabbed Latin, and flowered nowhere into Greek, nowhere into poetry. There was yet more of the hexameter, he noticed, and he read
on.
Kruptoi kai
brotoi andres en augais heliou eisin
Ou pote tegmat
'apothasa kruptoi de thanountai
Kai su Pelops
pote ton son et'endon daimon epeides
And men too live disguised in the
sunlight and never from their birth to their death shalt thou see the mask
uplifted. Nay, thou thyself, O Pelops, hast thou seen even
once the daemon within thee?
There the hexameters ceased and the next moment the
physical page reappeared with its native lettering. But
sweet, harmonious, clear in his hearing jangled once more the chimes of the
phantom hour. And again the number of strokes was eight.
Sturge Maynard rose and waited for some more definite
sign. For he divined now that some extraordinary mental
state, some unforgettable experience was upon him. His
expectation was not deceived. Once more the chimes rang out,
but this time it seemed to him as if a woman's voice were crying to him
passionately under cover of that perfectly familiar melody. But
were the two phantasmal sounds memories of this English land and birth or was
it out of some past existence they challenged him, insisting and appealing,
inviting him to remember some poignant hour of a form he had worn and
discarded, a name he had answered to and forgotten. Whatever
it was, it was near to him, it touched potently his heart-strings. And then immediately following the eighth stroke, there came as
if far off, an unmistakable explosion of sound, the report of a modern
revolver.
Sturge Maynard left the fireplace and the room,
descended the stairs, put on his hat and overcoat, and moved towards the door
of his house. He had no clear idea where he would go or what
he must do, but whatever it might be it had to be done. Then
it occurred to him that he had forgotten his revolver which was lying in the
drawer of his wardrobe. He went up, possessed himself of the
weapon, loaded it, put it in his right-hand side-pocket, assured himself that
the pocket carried his two latchkeys, once more descended the stairs and walked
out into one of the densest of
He moved through a world that seemed to have no
existence except
in memory. There was no speed of traffic. Only
an occasional cartman hoarsely announced from time to time the cautious
progress of his vehicle. Sturge could not see anything before
or around him,—except when he neared the curb and a lamp post strove to beam
out on him shadowily or on the other side a spectral fragment of wall brushed
his coat-sleeve. But he was certain of the pavement under
his feet, and he felt he could make no false turn. A surer
guide than his senses and memory led him.
He crossed the road, entered the gates of
He pursued his walk in a familiar direction. As he went, it flashed across his memory that she had forbidden
him to visit her today. There was some living reminiscence
of her past life coming to her, someone she did not care for Sturge to meet,
she had said with her usual frank carelessness; he must not come. He
had not questioned. Since he first knew her, he had never
questioned, and the past of Renée Beauregard was a void even for the man to
whom she had surrendered everything. There was room in that
void for unusual incidents, supreme perils. He remembered
now that her parting clasp had been almost convulsive in its strength and
intensity, her speech vibrant with some unexplained emotion. He
had been aware of it, without observing it, being preoccupied with his passion.
Whatever part of his mind had noted it, had confined its
possible cause within the limits of the usual, as men are in the habit of
doing, ignoring the unusual until it seizes and surprises them.
He reached the square and the house in which she lived,
opened
the door with one of the latchkeys in his pocket, divested himself of his coat
and hat, and directed his steps to the drawing-room. A girl
of nineteen or twenty rose, calm and pale, fronting the open doorway. The clutch of her hand on the chair, the rigid forward impulse
in her frame were the index of a great emotion and an intense expectation. But her face flushed, the hand and figure relaxed, when she saw
her visitor. Renée Beauregard was a Frenchwoman of the
South, rich in physical endowment, in nervous vitality, in the élan of her
tongue and her spirit. Her exquisitely full limbs, her
buoyant gait, the mobility of her crimson lips, her smiling dark eyes made
great demands on life, on success, on pleasure, on love. But
in the invincibly happy flame of the eyes there was at the moment the shadow of
a tragic disappointment haunting and disfiguring their natural expression. This was plainly a woman with a past,—and a present. And her nature, if not her fate, demanded a future.
“Sturge!” she took a step towards the door. Sturge walked over to the fireplace and took her hand.
“I forgot your prohibition till I was too near to turn
back. And there was the fog; and return was cheerless and
you were here!”
“You should not have forgotten!” she said, but she
smiled, well-pleased at his coming. Then the dark look
reusurped those smiling eyes. “And you must go back. No, not now. In a quarter of an hour. You may stop for quarter of an hour.”
She had glanced at the clock, and his eyes followed
hers. He saw an ebony-faced time-piece, silver-lettered,
solidly-pedestalled, rendering the figure four in parallel strokes, and smiled
at the curious tricks that his memory had played him. It
was five minutes past six.
“I will go to Imogen's,” he said, very deliberately. She looked at him, looked at the clock, then cried
impulsively, leaning towards him, “And you will come at eight and dine with me!
Rachel shall lay the covers for two,” then drew back, as if
repenting her invitation.
Eight! Yes, he would dine with
her—after he had done his work. That seemed to be the
arrangement,—not hers, but whose?
The daemon's perhaps, the god's within or without. They sat talking for a while, and it seemed to him that never
had their talk been so commonplace in form or so vibrant with emotion. At twenty past six he rose, took his farewell and moved out to
the fog; but she followed him to the door, helped him on with his overcoat,
trembling visibly as she did so. And before he went, she
embraced and kissed him once, not vehemently, but with a strong quietude and as
if with some fateful resolution which had at that moment been formed in her
heart, and expressed itself in her caress.
“I shall be back by eight,” he said quietly. He had accepted, but not returned her embrace.
By eight! Yes, and before. But he did not tell her that. He swung
through the fog to his uncle's residence, with a light, clear and careless
mind, but an intense quiet in his heart. He reached the
place, in a very aristocratic neighbourhood, and was invited in by a portly
footman. Sir John was out, at the House, but Miss Imogen
Maynard was at home. The next hour Sturge passed calmly and
lightly enough; for in his sister's everyday attractive personal talk coursing
lightly over the surface of life, amusements and theatres, books, music,
paintings varied with politics and a shade of politely hinted scandal, even his
heart insensibly lost its tension and slipped back into the usual, forgetting
the within in the without.
The next hour and more. It was
Imogen Maynard who rose and said:
“Ten minutes to eight, Sturge. I
must go and dress. You are sure you won't dine?”
Sturge Maynard looked at the clock and his heart stood
still. He bid his sister a hasty adieu, ran down the
stairs, clutched his hat and coat and was out in the fog, donning his overcoat
as he walked. He made sure of the revolver and the
latchkeys, then broke into a run. His great dread was that
he might lose the turning in his haste and arrive after the stroke of the hour.
But it was difficult to miss it, the only open space for
half a mile! And the daemon? was he a spirit of prophecy
only? Did he not visit to save?
He turned into Renée's square and, as he strode to the
house and ascended the steps, the agitation passed from him and it was with an
even pulse and a steady nerve that he turned to the drawing-room door. He had flung aside his hat but not waited to divest himself of
the coat. His hand was in the pocket and the butt of the
revolver was in his hand.
The door was open and, unusual circumstance, veiled by
the Japanese screen. He stood at its edge and looked into
the room which was intensely still, but not untenanted—for on the rug before
the fireplace, at either end of it, stood Renée Beauregard and a man unknown to
Sturge—he looking at her as if waiting for her speech; she calm, pale, resolute
in silence, with the heavy burden of her past in her eyes. The
stranger's back was half turned to Sturge and only part of his profile was
visible, but the Englishman quivered with his hatred even as he looked at him. Was this what he had to do? He took out
the revolver and put his finger on the trigger. Then he
glanced at the clock,—it wanted four minutes to the hour; and at the stranger
again,—in his hand, too, was a revolver and his finger also rested on the
trigger. Sturge Maynard smiled.
Then the man's voice was heard. “It
has to be then, Idalie,” he said, in a thin, terrible, mournful plaint. “You have decided it. Don't bear any
grudge. You know it can't be helped. You
have to die.”
Sturge remembered that Idalie was Renée's second name,
but she had always forbidden him to use it. The thin voice
continued, this time with a note of curious excitement in its plaintiveness.
“And you throw it all on me! What
does it matter how I got you, what I did afterwards? Everything's
allowed to a lover. And I loved you. It's
dangerous to play with love, Idalie. You find it now!”
Sturge looked at the man. Danger
for her there was none, but great danger for this rigid, thin-voiced assassin,
this man whom Sturge Maynard hated with every muscle in his body, with every
cell of his brain. It seemed to him that each limb of him
greatened and vibrated with the energy of the homicide, with the
victorious impulse to slay. There was a fog outside, what a
fog! and he could easily dispose of the body. Really that
was a good arrangement. God did things very cleverly
sometimes. And he laughed in himself at the grimness of his
conceit. Yet somehow he believed it. God's
work, not his. And yet his, too, pre-ordained — since when?
But the doomed voice was going on:
“I give you still a chance, Idalie—always, always a
chance. Will you go with me? You've
been false to me, false with your body, false with your heart. But
I'll forgive. I forgive your desertion, I'll forgive this
too. Come with me, Idalie. And if
not,—Renée Idalie Marviranne, it is going to strike eight, and when the hour
has done striking, I strike. It's God shoots you with this
hand of mine,—the God of Justice, the God of Love. It's
both you have offended. Will you come?”
She shook her head. A deadly pallor
swept over the man. “It's done then,” he cried, “you've
done it. You have got to die.” He
trained the pistol on her and his finger closed on the trigger. Sturge
remained motionless. Nothing could happen before the hour
struck. That was the moment destined, and no one could
outrun Fate by a second. The man went on:
“Don't say it till the clock strikes! There's
time till then. When I shoot you, Rachel will run up and I
will shoot her, I left the door open so that she might hear the sound. Who else in
Very grimly Sturge Maynard smiled. Men
who hated each other might, it seemed, have very similar minds. Perhaps
that was why they clashed. Well, if it was God, He was a
tragic artist too and knew the poetical effectiveness of dramatic irony! Everything this man reckoned on or had arranged for his deed
and his safety had been or would be helpful to his own executioner! And the consciousness then came upon him that this had all
happened before. But not here, not in these English surroundings!
A great blur of green came before his eyes, obscuring the
clock. Then it leaped on him—green grass, green trees,
green-covered rocks, a green sea, and on the sward a man face downward, stabbed
in the back, over him his murderer, the stiletto fresh-stained with blood. A boat rocked on the waters; it had been arranged for the
assassin's escape, and in it there lay a woman, bound. Sturge
knew those strange faces very well and remembered how he had lain dead on that
sward. It was strange to see it all again in this
drawing-room with the fateful modern ebony-faced timepiece seen through the
green of
Then the voice of the woman rang out, cold, strong,
like the clang of iron. “I will not go,” she said, simply. And the hour struck. It struck once, it
struck twice, thrice, four times. And then she lifted her
eyes and saw Sturge Maynard walking forward from the side of the screen. He was a good shot and there was no chance of his bungling it
and killing her. But he would make sure!
The woman in her intensity had summoned up a marvellous
self-control, and it did not break now, she neither moved, nor uttered a sound.
But a look came into her eyes poignant in its appeal,
terrible in its suggestion. For it was a cry for life, a
command to murder.
The doomed man was looking at the clock, not at her,
still less at any possible danger behind. He looked up as
the eighth musical jangle died away and Sturge saw his light, steady, cruel
eyes gleaming like those of a beast. He pressed his finger
on the trigger.
"It is finished!" cried the man. And as he spoke, Sturge Maynard fired. The
room rang with the shot, filled with the smoke. When the
smoke cleared, the stranger was seen prostrate on the rug: his head lay at the
feet of the woman he had doomed.
There was a running of steps in the passage and the
maid Rachel entered,—as the man who lay there had foreseen. She
was trembling when she came, but she saw the man on the rug, paused, steadied
herself, and smiled. “We must carry it out at once into the
fog,” she said simply, in French. With simultaneous impulse both she and Sturge
approached the corpse. Then Renée, breaking into excited
motion, ran to Sturge and putting her hand on his shoulder made as if to push
him out of the room.
“I will see to that!” she panted, “Go!”
He turned to her with a smile.
“You must go at once,” she reiterated, “For my sake, do
not be found in this house. Others besides Rachel may have
heard the shot.”
But he took her by the wrists, drew her away from the
fireplace and set her in a chair.
“We lose time, Monsieur,” said Rachel, again.
“It is better to lose time, Rachel,” he said, “we will
give ten minutes to Fate.” And the serving woman nodded and
proceeding to the corpse began to tie up the wound methodically in her apron. The others waited in absolute stillness, Sturge arranging in
his mind the explanation he would give, if any had heard the report and broke
in on them. But silence and fog persisted around the house.
They took up the body. “If anyone
notices, we are carrying a drunken man home,” said Sturge. “Carry
it carefully; there must be no trail of blood.” And so into
the English fog they carried out the man who had come living from foreign
lands, and laid him down in the public road, far from the house and the square
where he had perished. When they returned to the room,
Rachel took up the blood-stained rug and apron, sole witnesses of the thing
that had been done.
“I will destroy these,” she said, “and bring the rug
from Madame's room. And then,” she said, as simply as
before, “Monsieur and Madame will dine.”
Renée shuddered and looked at Sturge.
“I remain here,” he said, “till the body is found. We are linked henceforth indissolubly and for ever, Idalie.” And as he stressed lightly the unwonted name, there was a look
in his eyes she dared not oppose.
That night, when Renée had gone to her room, Sturge,
sitting over the fire, remembered that he had not told her the strange
incident which had brought about one tragedy today and prevented another. When he went into her chamber, she came to him, deeply
agitated, and clasped him with violence.
“Oh, Sturge, Sturge!” she cried, “to think that if you
had not chanced to come, I should be dead now, taken from you, taken from God's
beautiful world!”
Chanced! There is no such thing in
this creation as chance, thought Sturge. But then who had
given him that mystic warning? Who had put the revolver in
his hand? or sent him on a mission of slaughter? Who had
made Imogen rise just in time? Who had fired that shot in
the drawing-room? The God within? The
God without? The Easterns spoke of God in a man. This might well be He. And then there
returned to his memory those fierce emotions, the hatred that had surged in
him, the impulse and delight of slaughter, the song of exultation that his
blood yet sang in his veins, because a man that had lived was dead and could not
return to life again. He remembered, too, the command in
Renée's eyes. God in a man? Was God in
a man a murderer then? In him? and in her?
“It is to enquire too curiously to think so,” he
concluded, “but very strangely indeed has He made His world.”
Then he told her about the German mystic and the chime
of the phantom hour that had brought him to her in the tragic moment of their
destinies. And when he spoke of the daemon within, the
woman understood better than the man.
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Sri Aurobindo: Collected Plays and Short Stories