A Rival from the Grave Read online

  “H’m,” I returned the document, “this looks as if he really wanted you to marry your cousin, even though—”

  “And see here, sir,” Dennis interrupted, “here’s an envelope we found in Father’s papers.”

  Sealed with red wax, the packet of heavy, opaque parchment was addressed:

  “To my children, Dennis and Arabella Tantavul, to be opened by them upon the occasion of the birth of their first child.”

  De Grandin’s small blue eyes were snapping with the flickering light they showed when he was interested. “Monsieur Dennis,” he took the thick envelope from the caller, “Dr. Trowbridge has told me something of your father’s death-bed scene. There is a mystery about this business. My suggestion is you read the message now—”

  “No, sir. I won’t do that. My father didn’t love me—sometimes I think he hated me—but I never disobeyed a wish that he expressed, and I don’t feel at liberty to do so now. It would be like breaking faith with the dead. But”—he smiled a trifle shame-facedly—“Father’s lawyer Mr. Bainbridge is out of town on business, and it will be his duty to probate the will. In the meantime I’d feel better if the will and this envelope were in other hands than mine. So we came to Dr. Trowbridge to ask him to take charge of them till Mr. Bainbridge gets back, meanwhile—”

  “Yes, Monsieur, meanwhile?” de Grandin prompted as the young man paused.

  “You know human nature, Doctor,” Dennis turned to me; “no one can see farther into hidden meanings than the man who sees humanity with its mask off, the way a doctor does. D’ye think Father might have been delirious when he warned me not to marry Arabella, or—” His voice trailed off, but his troubled eyes were eloquent.

  “H’m,” I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, “I can’t see any reason for hesitating, Dennis. That bequest of all your father’s property in the event you marry Arabella seems to indicate his true feelings.” I tried to make my words convincing, but the memory of old Tantavul’s dying words dinned in my ears. There had been something gloating in his voice as he told the picture that his son and niece would marry.

  De Grandin caught the hint of hesitation in my tone. “Monsieur,” he asked Dennis, “will not you tell us of the antecedents of your father’s warning? Dr. Trowbridge is perhaps too near to see the situation clearly. Me, I have no knowledge of your father or your family. You and Mademoiselle are strangely like. The will describes her as having lived with you since childhood. Will you kindly tell us how it came about?”

  The Tantavuls were, as he said, strangely similar. Anyone might easily have taken them for twins. Like as two plaster portraits from the same mold were their small straight noses, sensitive mouths, curling pale-gold hair.

  Now, once more hand in hand, they sat before us on the sofa, and as Dennis spoke I saw the frightened, haunted look creep back into their eyes.

  “Do you remember us as children, Doctor?” he asked me.

  “Yes, it must have been some twenty years ago they called me out to see you youngsters. You’d just moved into the old Stephens house, and there was a deal of gossip about the strange gentleman from the West with his two small children and Chinese cook, who greeted all the neighbors’ overtures with churlish rebuffs and never spoke to anyone.”

  “What did you think of us, sir?”

  “H’m; I thought you and your sister—as I thought her then—had as fine a case of measles as I’d ever seen.”

  “How old were we then, do you remember?”

  “Oh, you were something like three; the little girl was half your age, I’d guess.”

  “Do you recall the next time you saw us?”

  “Yes, you were somewhat older then; eight or ten, I’d say. That time it was the mumps. You were queer, quiet little shavers. I remember asking if you thought you’d like a pickle, and you said, ‘No, thank you, sir, it hurts.’”

  “It did, too, sir. Every day Father made us eat one; stood over us with a whip till we’d chewed the last morsel.”

  “What?”

  The young folks nodded solemnly as Dennis answered, “Yes, sir; every day. He said he wanted to check up on the progress we were making.”

  For a moment he was silent, then: “Dr. Trowbridge, if anyone treated you with studied cruelty all your life—if you’d never had a kind word or gracious act from that person in all your memory, then suddenly that person offered you a favour—made it possible for you to gratify your dearest wish, and threatened to penalize you if you failed to do so, wouldn’t you be suspicious? Wouldn’t you suspect some sort of dreadful practical joke?”

  “I don’t think I quite understand.”

  “Then listen: In all my life I can’t remember ever having seen my father smile, not really smile with friendliness, humour or affection, I mean. My life—and Arabella’s, too—was one long persecution at his hands. I was two years or so old when we came to Harrisonville, I believe, but I still have vague recollections of our Western home, of a house set high on a hill overlooking the ocean, and a wall with climbing vines and purple flowers on it, and a pretty lady who would take me in her arms and cuddle me against her breast and feed me ice cream from a spoon, sometimes. I have a sort of recollection of a little baby sister in that house, too, but these things are so far back in babyhood that possibly they were no more than childish fancies which I built up for myself and which I loved so dearly and so secretly they finally came to have a kind of reality for me.

  “My real memories, the things I can recall with certainty, begin with a hurried train trip through hot, dry, uncomfortable country with my father and a strangely silent Chinese servant and a little girl they told me was my cousin Arabella.

  “Father treated me and Arabella with impartial harshness. We were beaten for the slightest fault, and we had faults a-plenty. If we sat quietly we were accused of sulking and asked why we didn’t go and play. If we played and shouted we were whipped for being noisy little brats.

  “As we weren’t allowed to associate with any of the neighbors’ children we made up our own games. I’d be Geraint and Arabella would be Enid of the dove-white feet, or perhaps I’d be King Arthur in the Castle Perilous, and she’d be the kind Lady of the Lake who gave him back his magic sword. And though we never mentioned it, both of us knew that whatever the adventure was, the false knight or giant I contended with was really my father. But when actual trouble came I wasn’t an heroic figure.

  “I must have been twelve or thirteen when I had my last thrashing. A little brook ran through the lower part of our land, and the former owners had widened it into a lily-pond. The flowers had died out years before, but the outlines of the pool remained, and it was our favourite summer play place. We taught ourselves to swim—not very well, of course, but well enough—and as we had no bathing suits we used to go in in our underwear. When we’d finished swimming we’d lie in the sun until our underthings were dry, then slip into our outer clothing. One afternoon as we were splashing in the water, happy as a pair of baby otters, and nearer to shouting with laughter then we’d ever been before, I think, my father suddenly appeared on the bank.

  “‘Come out o’ there!’ he shouted to me, and there was a kind of sharp, dry hardness in his voice I’d never heard before. ‘So this is how you spend your time?’ he asked as I climbed up the bank. ‘In spite of all I’ve done to keep you decent, you do a thing like this!’

  “‘Why, Father, we were only swimming—’ I began, but he struck me on the mouth.

  “‘Shut up, you little rake!’ he roared. ‘I’ll teach you!’ He cut a willow switch and thrust my head between his knees; then while he held me tight as in a vice he flogged me with the willow till the blood came through my skin and stained my soaking cotton shorts. Then he kicked me back into the pool as a heartless master might a beaten dog.

  “As I said, I wasn’t an heroic figure. It was Arabella who came to my rescue. She helped me up the slippery bank and took me in her arms. ‘Poor Dennie,’ she said. ‘Poor, poor Dennie. It was my fault, Den
nie, dear, for letting you take me into the water!’ Then she kissed me—the first time anyone had kissed me since the pretty lady of my half-remembered dreams. ‘We’ll be married on the very day that Uncle Warburg dies,’ she promised, ‘and I’ll be so sweet and good to you, and you’ll love me so dearly that we’ll both forget these dreadful days.’

  “We thought my father’d gone, but he must have stayed to see what we would say, for as Arabella finished he stepped from behind a rhododendron bush, and for the first time I heard him laugh. ‘You’ll be married, will you?’ he asked. ‘That would be a good joke—the best one of all. All right, go ahead—see what it gets you.’

  “That was the last time he ever actually struck me, but from that time on he seemed to go out of his way to invent mental tortures for us. We weren’t allowed to go to school, but he had a tutor, a little rat-faced man named Ericson, come in to give us lessons, and in the evening he’d take the book and make us stand before him and recite. If either of us failed a problem in arithmetic or couldn’t conjugate a French or Latin verb he’d wither us with sarcasm, and always as a finish to his diatribe he’d jeer at us about our wish to be married, and threaten us with something dreadful if we ever did it.

  “So, Dr. Trowbridge, you see why I’m suspicious. It seems almost as if this provision in the will is part of some horrible practical joke my father prepared deliberately—as if he’s waiting to laugh at us from the grave.”

  “I can understand your feelings, boy,” I answered, “but—”

  “‘But’ be damned and roasted on the hottest griddle in hell’s kitchen!” Jules de Grandin interrupted. “The wicked dead one’s funeral is at two tomorrow afternoon, n’est-ce-pas?

  “Très bien. At eight tomorrow evening—or earlier, if it will be convenient—you shall be married. I shall esteem it a favour if you permit that I be best man; Dr. Trowbridge will give the bride away, and we shall have a merry time, by blue! You shall go upon a gorgeous honeymoon and learn how sweet the joys of love can be—sweeter for having been so long denied! And in the meantime we shall keep the papers safely till your lawyer returns.

  “You fear the so unpleasant jest? Mais non, I think the jest is on the other foot, my friends, and the laugh on the other face!”

  WARBURG TANTAVUL WAS NEITHER widely known nor popular, but the solitude in which he had lived had invested him with mystery; now the bars of reticence were down and the walls of isolation broken, upward of a hundred neighbors, mostly women, gathered in the Martin funeral chapel as the services began. The afternoon sun beat softly through the stained-glass windows and glinted on the polished mahogany of the casket. Here and there it touched upon bright spots of color that marked a woman’s hat or a man’s tie. The solemn hush was broken by occasional whispers: “What’d he die of? Did he leave much? Were the two young folks his only heirs?”

  Then the burial office: “Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another . . . for a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday . . . Oh teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom . . .”

  As the final Amen sounded one of Mr. Martin’s frock-coated young men glided forward, paused beside the casket, and made the stereotyped announcement: “Those who wish to say good-bye to Mr. Tantavul may do so at this time.”

  The grisly rite of passing by the bier dragged on. I would have left the place; I had no wish to look upon the man’s dead face and folded hands; but de Grandin took me firmly by the elbow, held me till the final curiosity-impelled female had filed past the body, then steered me quickly toward the casket.

  He paused a moment at the bier, and it seemed to me there was a hint of irony in the smile that touched the corners of his mouth as he leant forward. “Eh bien, my old one; we know a secret, thou and I, n’est-ce-pas?” he asked the silent form before us.

  I swallowed back an exclamation of dismay. Perhaps it was a trick of the uncertain light, perhaps one of those ghastly, inexplicable things which every doctor and embalmer meets with sometimes in his practice—the effect of desiccation from formaldehyde, the pressure of some tissue gas within the body, or something of the sort—at any rate, as Jules de Grandin spoke the corpse’s upper lids drew back the fraction of an inch, revealing slits of yellow eye which seemed to glare at us with mingled hate and fury.

  “Good heavens; come away!” I begged. “It seemed as if he looked at us, de Grandin!”

  “Et puis—and if he did? I damn think I can trade him look for look, my friend. He was clever, that one, I admit it; but do not be mistaken, Jules de Grandin is nobody’s imbecile.”

  THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE in the rectory of St. Chrysostom’s. Robed in stole and surplice, Dr. Bentley glanced benignly from Dennis to Arabella, then to de Grandin and me as he began: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony. . . .” His round and ruddy face grew slightly stern as he admonished, “If any man can show just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.”

  He paused the customary short, dramatic moment, and I thought I saw a hard, grim look spread on de Grandin’s face. Very faint and far off seeming, so faint that we could scarcely hear it, but gaining steadily in strength, there came a high, thin, screaming sound. Curiously, it seemed to me to resemble the long-drawn, wailing shriek of a freight train’s whistle heard miles away upon a still and sultry summer night, weird, wavering and ghastly. Now it seemed to grow in shrillness, though its volume was no greater.

  I saw a look of haunted fright leap into Arabella’s eyes, saw Dennis’ pale face go paler as the strident whistle sounded shriller and more shrill; then, as it seemed I could endure the stabbing of that needle-sound no longer, it ceased abruptly, giving way to blessed, comforting silence. But through the silence came a burst of chuckling laughter, half breathless, half hysterical, wholly devilish: Huh—hu-u-uh—hu-u-u-uh! the final syllable drawn out until it seemed almost a groan.

  “The wind, Monsieur le Curé; it was nothing but the wind,” de Grandin told the clergyman sharply. “Proceed to marry them, if you will be so kind.”

  “Wind?” Dr. Bentley echoed. “I could have sworn I heard somebody laugh, but—”

  “It is the wind, Monsieur; it plays strange tricks at times,” the little Frenchman insisted, his small blue eyes as hard as frozen iron. “Proceed, if you will be so kind. We wait on you.”

  “Forasmuch as Dennis and Arabella have consented to be joined together in holy wedlock . . . I pronounce them man and wife,” concluded Dr. Bentley, and de Grandin, ever gallant, kissed the bride upon the lips, and before we could restrain him, planted kisses on both Dennis’ cheeks.

  “Cordieu, I thought that we might have the trouble, for a time,” he told me as we left the rectory.

  “What was that awful shrieking noise we heard?” I asked.

  “It was the wind, my friend,” he answered in a hard, flat, toneless voice. “The ten times damned, but wholly ineffectual wind.”

  “SO, THEN, LITTLE SINNER, weep and wail for the burden of mortality you have assumed. Weep, wail, cry and breathe, my small and wrinkled one! Ha, you will not? Pardieu, I say you shall!”

  Gently, but smartly, he spanked the small red infant’s small red posterior with the end of a towel wrung out in hot water, and as the smacking impact sounded the tiny toothless mouth opened and a thin, high, piping squall of protest sounded. “Ah, that is better, mon petit ami,” he chuckled. “One cannot learn too soon that one must do as one is told, not as one wishes, in this world which you have just entered. Look to him, Mademoiselle,” he passed the wriggling, bawling morsel of humanity to the nurse and turned to me as I bent over the table where Arabella lay. “How does the little mother, Friend Trowbridge?” he asked.

  “U’m’mp,” I answered noncommittally. “Bear a hand, here, will you? The perineum’s pretty badly torn—have to do a quick repair job
. . .”

  “But in the morning she will have forgotten all the pain,” laughed de Grandin as Arabella, swathed in blankets, was trundled from the delivery room. “She will gaze upon the little monkey-thing which I just caused to breathe the breath of life and vow it is the loveliest of all God’s lovely creatures. She will hold it at her tender breast and smile on it, she will—Sacré nom d’un rat vert, what is that?”

  From the nursery where, ensconced in wire trays, a score of newborn fragments of humanity slept or squalled, there came a sudden frightened scream—a woman’s cry of terror.

  We raced along the corridor, reached the glass-walled room and thrust the door back, taking care to open it no wider than was necessary, lest a draft disturb the carefully conditioned air of the place.

  Backed against the farther wall, her face gone grey with fright, the nurse in charge was staring at the skylight with terror-widened eyes, and even as we entered she opened her lips to emit another scream.

  “Desist, ma bonne, you are disturbing your small charges!” de Grandin seized the horrified girl’s shoulder and administered a shake. Then: “What is it, Mademoiselle?” he whispered. “Do not be afraid to speak; we shall respect your confidence—but speak softly.”

  “It—it was up there!” she pointed with a shaking finger toward the black square of the skylight. “They’d just brought Baby Tantavul in, and I had laid him in his crib when I thought I heard somebody laughing. Oh”—she shuddered at the recollection—“it was awful! Not really a laugh, but something more like a long-drawn-out hysterical groan. Did you ever hear a child tickled to exhaustion—you know how he moans and gasps for breath, and laughs, all at once? I think the fiends in hell must laugh like that!”