He let himself in and let himself out with the assurance of calm proprietorship15; and accident so far favoured him that, if a fat Avenue “officer” had happened on occasion to see him entering at eleven-thirty, he had never yet, to the best of his belief, been noticed as emerging at two. He walked there on the crisp November nights, arrived regularly at the evening’s end; it was as easy to do this after dining out as to take his way to a club or to his hotel. When he left his club, if he hadn’t been dining out, it was ostensibly to go to his hotel; and when he left his hotel, if he had spent a part of the evening there, it was ostensibly to go to his club. Everything was easy in fine; everything conspired16 and promoted: there was truly even in the strain of his experience something that glossed17 over, something that salved and simplified, all the rest of consciousness. He circulated, talked, renewed, loosely and pleasantly, old relations—met indeed, so far as he could, new expectations and seemed to make out on the whole that in spite of the career, of such different contacts, which he had spoken of to Miss Staverton as ministering so little, for those who might have watched it, to edification, he was positively18 rather liked than not. He was a dim secondary social success—and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere19 surface sound, this murmur20 of their welcome, this popping of their corks—just as his gestures of response were the extravagant21 shadows, emphatic22 in proportion as they meant little, of some game of ombres chinoises. He projected himself all day, in thought, straight over the bristling23 line of hard unconscious heads and into the other, the real, the waiting life; the life that, as soon as he had heard behind him the click of his great house-door, began for him, on the jolly corner, as beguilingly24 as the slow opening bars of some rich music follows the tap of the conductor’s wand.
He always caught the first effect of the steel point of his stick on the old marble of the hall pavement, large black-and-white squares that he remembered as the admiration25 of his childhood and that had then made in him, as he now saw, for the growth of an early conception of style. This effect was the dim reverberating26 tinkle27 as of some far-off bell hung who should say where?—in the depths of the house, of the past, of that mystical other world that might have flourished for him had he not, for weal or woe28, abandoned it. On this impression he did ever the same thing; he put his stick noiselessly away in a corner—feeling the place once more in the likeness29 of some great glass bowl, all precious concave crystal, set delicately humming by the play of a moist finger round its edge. The concave crystal held, as it were, this mystical other world, and the indescribably fine murmur of its rim30 was the sigh there, the scarce audible pathetic wail31 to his strained ear, of all the old baffled forsworn possibilities. What he did therefore by this appeal of his hushed presence was to wake them into such measure of ghostly life as they might still enjoy. They were shy, all but unappeasably shy, but they weren’t really sinister33; at least they weren’t as he had hitherto felt them—before they had taken the Form he so yearned34 to make them take, the Form he at moments saw himself in the light of fairly hunting on tiptoe, the points of his evening shoes, from room to room and from storey to storey.
That was the essence of his vision—which was all rank folly35, if one would, while he was out of the house and otherwise occupied, but which took on the last verisimilitude as soon as he was placed and posted. He knew what he meant and what he wanted; it was as clear as the figure on a cheque presented in demand for cash. His alter ego36 “walked”—that was the note of his image of him, while his image of his motive37 for his own odd pastime was the desire to waylay38 him and meet him. He roamed, slowly, warily39, but all restlessly, he himself did—Mrs. Muldoon had been right, absolutely, with her figure of their “craping”; and the presence he watched for would roam restlessly too. But it would be as cautious and as shifty; the conviction of its probable, in fact its already quite sensible, quite audible evasion40 of pursuit grew for him from night to night, laying on him finally a rigour to which nothing in his life had been comparable. It had been the theory of many superficially-judging persons, he knew, that he was wasting that life in a surrender to sensations, but he had tasted of no pleasure so fine as his actual tension, had been introduced to no sport that demanded at once the patience and the nerve of this stalking of a creature more subtle, yet at bay perhaps more formidable, than any beast of the forest. The terms, the comparisons, the very practices of the chase positively came again into play; there were even moments when passages of his occasional experience as a sportsman, stirred memories, from his younger time, of moor41 and mountain and desert, revived for him—and to the increase of his keenness—by the tremendous force of analogy. He found himself at moments—once he had placed his single light on some mantel-shelf or in some recess—stepping back into shelter or shade, effacing42 himself behind a door or in an embrasure, as he had sought of old the vantage of rock and tree; he found himself holding his breath and living in the joy of the instant, the supreme43 suspense44 created by big game alone.
He wasn’t afraid (though putting himself the question as he believed gentlemen on Bengal tiger-shoots or in close quarters with the great bear of the Rockies had been known to confess to having put it); and this indeed—since here at least he might be frank!—because of the impression, so intimate and so strange, that he himself produced as yet a dread45, produced certainly a strain, beyond the liveliest he was likely to feel. They fell for him into categories, they fairly became familiar, the signs, for his own perception, of the alarm his presence and his vigilance created; though leaving him always to remark, portentously48, on his probably having formed a relation, his probably enjoying a consciousness, unique in the experience of man. People enough, first and last, had been in terror of apparitions49, but who had ever before so turned the tables and become himself, in the apparitional51 world, an incalculable terror? He might have found this sublime52 had he quite dared to think of it; but he didn’t too much insist, truly, on that side of his privilege. With habit and repetition he gained to an extraordinary degree the power to penetrate53 the dusk of distances and the darkness of corners, to resolve back into their innocence54 the treacheries of uncertain light, the evil-looking forms taken in the gloom by mere shadows, by accidents of the air, by shifting effects of perspective; putting down his dim luminary55 he could still wander on without it, pass into other rooms and, only knowing it was there behind him in case of need, see his way about, visually project for his purpose a comparative clearness. It made him feel, this acquired faculty56, like some monstrous57 stealthy cat; he wondered if he would have glared at these moments with large shining yellow eyes, and what it mightn’t verily be, for the poor hard-pressed alter ego, to be confronted with such a type.
He liked however the open shutters58; he opened everywhere those Mrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, so that she shouldn’t notice: he liked—oh this he did like, and above all in the upper rooms!—the sense of the hard silver of the autumn stars through the window-panes, and scarcely less the flare59 of the street-lamps below, the white electric lustre60 which it would have taken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease certainly for the countenance61, coldly general and impersonal62, that all the while and in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him. He had support of course mostly in the rooms at the wide front and the prolonged side; it failed him considerably63 in the central shades and the parts at the back. But if he sometimes, on his rounds, was glad of his optical reach, so none the less often the rear of the house affected64 him as the very jungle of his prey65. The place was there more subdivided66; a large “extension” in particular, where small rooms for servants had been multiplied, abounded67 in nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramifications68 especially of an ample back staircase over which he leaned, many a time, to look far down—not deterred69 from his gravity even while aware that he might, for a spectator, have figured some solemn simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact he might himself make that ironic70 rapprochement; but within the walls, and in spite of the clear windows, his consistency71 was proof against the cynical72 light of New York.
It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated73 consciousness of his victim to become a real test for him; since he had quite put it to himself from the first that, oh distinctly! he could “cultivate” his whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation—which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions, attestations of his general postulate75, that couldn’t have broken upon him at once. This was the case more specifically with a phenomenon at last quite frequent for him in the upper rooms, the recognition—absolutely unmistakeable, and by a turn dating from a particular hour, his resumption of his campaign after a diplomatic drop, a calculated absence of three nights—of his being definitely followed, tracked at a distance carefully taken and to the express end that he should the less confidently, less arrogantly76, appear to himself merely to pursue. It worried, it finally quite broke him up, for it proved, of all the conceivable impressions, the one least suited to his book. He was kept in sight while remaining himself—as regards the essence of his position—sightless, and his only recourse then was in abrupt77 turns, rapid recoveries of ground. He wheeled about, retracing78 his steps, as if he might so catch in his face at least the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeed true that his fully dislocalised thought of these manoeuvres recalled to him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce80, buffeted81 and tricked from behind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left intact the influence of the conditions themselves each time he was re-exposed to them, so that in fact this association, had he suffered it to become constant, would on a certain side have but ministered to his intenser gravity. He had made, as I have said, to create on the premises82 the baseless sense of a reprieve83, his three absences; and the result of the third was to confirm the after-effect of the second.
On his return that night—the night succeeding his last intermission—he stood in the hall and looked up the staircase with a certainty more intimate than any he had yet known. “He’s there, at the top, and waiting—not, as in general, falling back for disappearance84. He’s holding his ground, and it’s the first time—which is a proof, isn’t it? that something has happened for him.” So Brydon argued with his hand on the banister and his foot on the lowest stair; in which position he felt as never before the air chilled by his logic85. He himself turned cold in it, for he seemed of a sudden to know what now was involved. “Harder pressed?—yes, he takes it in, with its thus making clear to him that I’ve come, as they say, ‘to stay.’ He finally doesn’t like and can’t bear it, in the sense, I mean, that his wrath86, his menaced interest, now balances with his dread. I’ve hunted him till he has ‘turned’; that, up there, is what has happened—he’s the fanged87 or the antlered animal brought at last to bay.” There came to him, as I say—but determined88 by an influence beyond my notation89!—the acuteness of this certainty; under which however the next moment he had broken into a sweat that he would as little have consented to attribute to fear as he would have dared immediately to act upon it for enterprise. It marked none the less a prodigious91 thrill, a thrill that represented sudden dismay, no doubt, but also represented, and with the selfsame throb92, the strangest, the most joyous93, possibly the next minute almost the proudest, duplication of consciousness.
“He has been dodging94, retreating, hiding, but now, worked up to anger, he’ll fight!”—this intense impression made a single mouthful, as it were, of terror and applause. But what was wondrous95 was that the applause, for the felt fact, was so eager, since, if it was his other self he was running to earth, this ineffable96 identity was thus in the last resort not unworthy of him. It bristled99 there—somewhere near at hand, however unseen still—as the hunted thing, even as the trodden worm of the adage100 must at last bristle98; and Brydon at this instant tasted probably of a sensation more complex than had ever before found itself consistent with sanity101. It was as if it would have shamed him that a character so associated with his own should triumphantly102 succeed in just skulking104, should to the end not risk the open; so that the drop of this danger was, on the spot, a great lift of the whole situation. Yet with another rare shift of the same subtlety105 he was already trying to measure by how much more he himself might now be in peril106 of fear; so rejoicing that he could, in another form, actively107 inspire that fear, and simultaneously108 quaking for the form in which he might passively know it.
The apprehension109 of knowing it must after a little have grown in him, and the strangest moment of his adventure perhaps, the most memorable110 or really most interesting, afterwards, of his crisis, was the lapse111 of certain instants of concentrated conscious combat, the sense of a need to hold on to something, even after the manner of a man slipping and slipping on some awful incline; the vivid impulse, above all, to move, to act, to charge, somehow and upon something—to show himself, in a word, that he wasn’t afraid. The state of “holding on” was thus the state to which he was momentarily reduced; if there had been anything, in the great vacancy112, to seize, he would presently have been aware of having clutched it as he might under a shock at home have clutched the nearest chair-back. He had been surprised at any rate—of this he was aware—into something unprecedented113 since his original appropriation114 of the place; he had closed his eyes, held them tight, for a long minute, as with that instinct of dismay and that terror of vision. When he opened them the room, the other contiguous rooms, extraordinarily115, seemed lighter—so light, almost, that at first he took the change for day. He stood firm, however that might be, just where he had paused; his resistance had helped him—it was as if there were something he had tided over. He knew after a little what this was—it had been in the imminent116 danger of flight. He had stiffened117 his will against going; without this he would have made for the stairs, and it seemed to him that, still with his eyes closed, he would have descended119 them, would have known how, straight and swiftly, to the bottom.
Well, as he had held out, here he was—still at the top, among the more intricate upper rooms and with the gauntlet of the others, of all the rest of the house, still to run when it should be his time to go. He would go at his time—only at his time: didn’t he go every night very much at the same hour? He took out his watch—there was light for that: it was scarcely a quarter past one, and he had never withdrawn120 so soon. He reached his lodgings122 for the most part at two—with his walk of a quarter of an hour. He would wait for the last quarter—he wouldn’t stir till then; and he kept his watch there with his eyes on it, reflecting while he held it that this deliberate wait, a wait with an effort, which he recognised, would serve perfectly for the attestation74 he desired to make. It would prove his courage—unless indeed the latter might most be proved by his budging123 at last from his place. What he mainly felt now was that, since he hadn’t originally scuttled124, he had his dignities—which had never in his life seemed so many—all to preserve and to carry aloft. This was before him in truth as a physical image, an image almost worthy97 of an age of greater romance. That remark indeed glimmered125 for him only to glow the next instant with a finer light; since what age of romance, after all, could have matched either the state of his mind or, “objectively,” as they said, the wonder of his situation? The only difference would have been that, brandishing126 his dignities over his head as in a parchment scroll127, he might then—that is in the heroic time—have proceeded downstairs with a drawn121 sword in his other grasp.
At present, really, the light he had set down on the mantel of the next room would have to figure his sword; which utensil128, in the course of a minute, he had taken the requisite129 number of steps to possess himself of. The door between the rooms was open, and from the second another door opened to a third. These rooms, as he remembered, gave all three upon a common corridor as well, but there was a fourth, beyond them, without issue save through the preceding. To have moved, to have heard his step again, was appreciably130 a help; though even in recognising this he lingered once more a little by the chimney-piece on which his light had rested. When he next moved, just hesitating where to turn, he found himself considering a circumstance that, after his first and comparatively vague apprehension of it, produced in him the start that often attends some pang131 of recollection, the violent shock of having ceased happily to forget. He had come into sight of the door in which the brief chain of communication ended and which he now surveyed from the nearer threshold, the one not directly facing it. Placed at some distance to the left of this point, it would have admitted him to the last room of the four, the room without other approach or egress132, had it not, to his intimate conviction, been closed since his former visitation, the matter probably of a quarter of an hour before. He stared with all his eyes at the wonder of the fact, arrested again where he stood and again holding his breath while he sounded his sense. Surely it had been subsequently closed—that is it had been on his previous passage indubitably open!
He took it full in the face that something had happened between—that he couldn’t have noticed before (by which he meant on his original tour of all the rooms that evening) that such a barrier had exceptionally presented itself. He had indeed since that moment undergone an agitation133 so extraordinary that it might have muddled134 for him any earlier view; and he tried to convince himself that he might perhaps then have gone into the room and, inadvertently, automatically, on coming out, have drawn the door after him. The difficulty was that this exactly was what he never did; it was against his whole policy, as he might have said, the essence of which was to keep vistas clear. He had them from the first, as he was well aware, quite on the brain: the strange apparition50, at the far end of one of them, of his baffled “prey” (which had become by so sharp an irony135 so little the term now to apply!) was the form of success his imagination had most cherished, projecting into it always a refinement136 of beauty. He had known fifty times the start of perception that had afterwards dropped; had fifty times gasped137 to himself. “There!” under some fond brief hallucination. The house, as the case stood, admirably lent itself; he might wonder at the taste, the native architecture of the particular time, which could rejoice so in the multiplication139 of doors—the opposite extreme to the modern, the actual almost complete proscription140 of them; but it had fairly contributed to provoke this obsession of the presence encountered telescopically, as he might say, focused and studied in diminishing perspective and as by a rest for the elbow.
It was with these considerations that his present attention was charged—they perfectly availed to make what he saw portentous46. He couldn’t, by any lapse, have blocked that aperture141; and if he hadn’t, if it was unthinkable, why what else was clear but that there had been another agent? Another agent?—he had been catching142, as he felt, a moment back, the very breath of him; but when had he been so close as in this simple, this logical, this completely personal act? It was so logical, that is, that one might have taken it for personal; yet for what did Brydon take it, he asked himself, while, softly panting, he felt his eyes almost leave their sockets143. Ah this time at last they were, the two, the opposed projections145 of him, in presence; and this time, as much as one would, the question of danger loomed146. With it rose, as not before, the question of courage—for what he knew the blank face of the door to say to him was “Show us how much you have!” It stared, it glared back at him with that challenge; it put to him the two alternatives: should he just push it open or not? Oh to have this consciousness was to think—and to think, Brydon knew, as he stood there, was, with the lapsing147 moments, not to have acted! Not to have acted—that was the misery148 and the pang—was even still not to act; was in fact all to feel the thing in another, in a new and terrible way. How long did he pause and how long did he debate? There was presently nothing to measure it; for his vibration149 had already changed—as just by the effect of its intensity150. Shut up there, at bay, defiant151, and with the prodigy152 of the thing palpably proveably done, thus giving notice like some stark153 signboard—under that accession of accent the situation itself had turned; and Brydon at last remarkably154 made up his mind on what it had turned to.
It had turned altogether to a different admonition; to a supreme hint, for him, of the value of Discretion! This slowly dawned, no doubt—for it could take its time; so perfectly, on his threshold, had he been stayed, so little as yet had he either advanced or retreated. It was the strangest of all things that now when, by his taking ten steps and applying his hand to a latch155, or even his shoulder and his knee, if necessary, to a panel, all the hunger of his prime need might have been met, his high curiosity crowned, his unrest assuaged—it was amazing, but it was also exquisite156 and rare, that insistence157 should have, at a touch, quite dropped from him. Discretion—he jumped at that; and yet not, verily, at such a pitch, because it saved his nerves or his skin, but because, much more valuably, it saved the situation. When I say he “jumped” at it I feel the consonance of this term with the fact that—at the end indeed of I know not how long—he did move again, he crossed straight to the door. He wouldn’t touch it—it seemed now that he might if he would: he would only just wait there a little, to show, to prove, that he wouldn’t. He had thus another station, close to the thin partition by which revelation was denied him; but with his eyes bent158 and his hands held off in a mere intensity of stillness. He listened as if there had been something to hear, but this attitude, while it lasted, was his own communication. “If you won’t then—good: I spare you and I give up. You affect me as by the appeal positively for pity: you convince me that for reasons rigid159 and sublime—what do I know?—we both of us should have suffered. I respect them then, and, though moved and privileged as, I believe, it has never been given to man, I retire, I renounce—never, on my honour, to try again. So rest for ever—and let me!”
That, for Brydon, was the deep sense of this last demonstration—solemn, measured, directed, as he felt it to be. He brought it to a close, he turned away; and now verily he knew how deeply he had been stirred. He retraced160 his steps, taking up his candle, burnt, he observed, well-nigh to the socket144, and marking again, lighten it as he would, the distinctness of his footfall; after which, in a moment, he knew himself at the other side of the house. He did here what he had not yet done at these hours—he opened half a casement161, one of those in the front, and let in the air of the night; a thing he would have taken at any time previous for a sharp rupture162 of his spell. His spell was broken now, and it didn’t matter—broken by his concession163 and his surrender, which made it idle henceforth that he should ever come back. The empty street—its other life so marked even by great lamp-lit vacancy—was within call, within touch; he stayed there as to be in it again, high above it though he was still perched; he watched as for some comforting common fact, some vulgar human note, the passage of a scavenger164 or a thief, some night-bird however base. He would have blessed that sign of life; he would have welcomed positively the slow approach of his friend the policeman, whom he had hitherto only sought to avoid, and was not sure that if the patrol had come into sight he mightn’t have felt the impulse to get into relation with it, to hail it, on some pretext165, from his fourth floor.
The pretext that wouldn’t have been too silly or too compromising, the explanation that would have saved his dignity and kept his name, in such a case, out of the papers, was not definite to him: he was so occupied with the thought of recording166 his Discretion—as an effect of the vow167 he had just uttered to his intimate adversary—that the importance of this loomed large and something had overtaken all ironically his sense of proportion. If there had been a ladder applied168 to the front of the house, even one of the vertiginous169 perpendiculars170 employed by painters and roofers and sometimes left standing171 overnight, he would have managed somehow, astride of the window-sill, to compass by outstretched leg and arm that mode of descent. If there had been some such uncanny thing as he had found in his room at hotels, a workable fire-escape in the form of notched172 cable or a canvas shoot, he would have availed himself of it as a proof—well, of his present delicacy173. He nursed that sentiment, as the question stood, a little in vain, and even—at the end of he scarce knew, once more, how long—found it, as by the action on his mind of the failure of response of the outer world, sinking back to vague anguish174. It seemed to him he had waited an age for some stir of the great grim hush32; the life of the town was itself under a spell—so unnaturally175, up and down the whole prospect177 of known and rather ugly objects, the blankness and the silence lasted. Had they ever, he asked himself, the hard-faced houses, which had begun to look livid in the dim dawn, had they ever spoken so little to any need of his spirit? Great builded voids, great crowded stillnesses put on, often, in the heart of cities, for the small hours, a sort of sinister mask, and it was of this large collective negation178 that Brydon presently became conscious—all the more that the break of day was, almost incredibly, now at hand, proving to him what a night he had made of it.
He looked again at his watch, saw what had become of his time-values (he had taken hours for minutes—not, as in other tense situations, minutes for hours) and the strange air of the streets was but the weak, the sullen179 flush of a dawn in which everything was still locked up. His choked appeal from his own open window had been the sole note of life, and he could but break off at last as for a worse despair. Yet while so deeply demoralised he was capable again of an impulse denoting—at least by his present measure—extraordinary resolution; of retracing his steps to the spot where he had turned cold with the extinction180 of his last pulse of doubt as to there being in the place another presence than his own. This required an effort strong enough to sicken him; but he had his reason, which over-mastered for the moment everything else. There was the whole of the rest of the house to traverse, and how should he screw himself to that if the door he had seen closed were at present open? He could hold to the idea that the closing had practically been for him an act of mercy, a chance offered him to descend118, depart, get off the ground and never again profane181 it. This conception held together, it worked; but what it meant for him depended now clearly on the amount of forbearance his recent action, or rather his recent inaction, had engendered182. The image of the “presence” whatever it was, waiting there for him to go—this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short—he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.
He knew—yes, as he had never known anything—that, should he see the door open, it would all too abjectly183 be the end of him. It would mean that the agent of his shame—for his shame was the deep abjection—was once more at large and in general possession; and what glared him thus in the face was the act that this would determine for him. It would send him straight about to the window he had left open, and by that window, be long ladder and dangling184 rope as absent as they would, he saw himself uncontrollably insanely fatally take his way to the street. The hideous185 chance of this he at least could avert12; but he could only avert it by recoiling186 in time from assurance. He had the whole house to deal with, this fact was still there; only he now knew that uncertainty187 alone could start him. He stole back from where he had checked himself—merely to do so was suddenly like safety—and, making blindly for the greater staircase, left gaping188 rooms and sounding passages behind. Here was the top of the stairs, with a fine large dim descent and three spacious189 landings to mark off. His instinct was all for mildness, but his feet were harsh on the floors, and, strangely, when he had in a couple of minutes become aware of this, it counted somehow for help. He couldn’t have spoken, the tone of his voice would have scared him, and the common conceit190 or resource of “whistling in the dark” (whether literally191 or figuratively) have appeared basely vulgar; yet he liked none the less to hear himself go, and when he had reached his first landing—taking it all with no rush, but quite steadily—that stage of success drew from him a gasp138 of relief.
The house, withal, seemed immense, the scale of space again inordinate192; the open rooms, to no one of which his eyes deflected193, gloomed in their shuttered state like mouths of caverns194; only the high skylight that formed the crown of the deep well created for him a medium in which he could advance, but which might have been, for queerness of colour, some watery195 under-world. He tried to think of something noble, as that his property was really grand, a splendid possession; but this nobleness took the form too of the clear delight with which he was finally to sacrifice it. They might come in now, the builders, the destroyers—they might come as soon as they would. At the end of two flights he had dropped to another zone, and from the middle of the third, with only one more left, he recognised the influence of the lower windows, of half-drawn blinds, of the occasional gleam of street-lamps, of the glazed196 spaces of the vestibule. This was the bottom of the sea, which showed an illumination of its own and which he even saw paved—when at a given moment he drew up to sink a long look over the banisters—with the marble squares of his childhood. By that time indubitably he felt, as he might have said in a commoner cause, better; it had allowed him to stop and draw breath, and the case increased with the sight of the old black-and-white slabs197. But what he most felt was that now surely, with the element of impunity198 pulling him as by hard firm hands, the case was settled for what he might have seen above had he dared that last look. The closed door, blessedly remote now, was still closed—and he had only in short to reach that of the house.
He came down further, he crossed the passage forming the access to the last flight and if here again he stopped an instant it was almost for the sharpness of the thrill of assured escape. It made him shut his eyes—which opened again to the straight slope of the remainder of the stairs. Here was impunity still, but impunity almost excessive; inasmuch as the side-lights and the high fantracery of the entrance were glimmering straight into the hall; an appearance produced, he the next instant saw, by the fact that the vestibule gaped200 wide, that the hinged halves of the inner door had been thrown far back. Out of that again the question sprang at him, making his eyes, as he felt, half-start from his head, as they had done, at the top of the house, before the sign of the other door. If he had left that one open, hadn’t he left this one closed, and wasn’t he now in most immediate90 presence of some inconceivable occult activity? It was as sharp, the question, as a knife in his side, but the answer hung fire still and seemed to lose itself in the vague darkness to which the thin admitted dawn, glimmering archwise over the whole outer door, made a semicircular margin201, a cold silvery nimbus that seemed to play a little as he looked—to shift and expand and contract.
It was as if there had been something within it, protected by indistinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque202 surface behind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of which the key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him even while he stared, affected him as somehow shrouding203 or challenging certitude, so that after faltering204 an instant on his step he let himself go with the sense that here was at last something to meet, to touch, to take, to know—something all unnatural176 and dreadful, but to advance upon which was the condition for him either of liberation or of supreme defeat. The penumbra205, dense206 and dark, was the virtual screen of a figure which stood in it as still as some image erect207 in a niche208 or as some black-vizored sentinel guarding a treasure. Brydon was to know afterwards, was to recall and make out, the particular thing he had believed during the rest of his descent. He saw, in its great grey glimmering margin, the central vagueness diminish, and he felt it to be taking the very form toward which, for so many days, the passion of his curiosity had yearned. It gloomed, it loomed, it was something, it was somebody, the prodigy of a personal presence.
Rigid and conscious, spectral209 yet human, a man of his own substance and stature210 waited there to measure himself with his power to dismay. This only could it be—this only till he recognised, with his advance, that what made the face dim was the pair of raised hands that covered it and in which, so far from being offered in defiance211, it was buried, as for dark deprecation. So Brydon, before him, took him in; with every fact of him now, in the higher light, hard and acute—his planted stillness, his vivid truth, his grizzled bent head and white masking hands, his queer actuality of evening-dress, of dangling double eye-glass, of gleaming silk lappet and white linen212, of pearl button and gold watch-guard and polished shoe. No portrait by a great modern master could have presented him with more intensity, thrust him out of his frame with more art, as if there had been “treatment,” of the consummate213 sort, in his every shade and salience. The revulsion, for our friend, had become, before he knew it, immense—this drop, in the act of apprehension, to the sense of his adversary’s inscrutable manoeuvre79. That meaning at least, while he gaped, it offered him; for he could but gape199 at his other self in this other anguish, gape as a proof that he, standing there for the achieved, the enjoyed, the triumphant103 life, couldn’t be faced in his triumph. Wasn’t the proof in the splendid covering hands, strong and completely spread?—so spread and so intentional214 that, in spite of a special verity215 that surpassed every other, the fact that one of these hands had lost two fingers, which were reduced to stumps216, as if accidentally shot away, the face was effectually guarded and saved.
“Saved,” though, would it be?—Brydon breathed his wonder till the very impunity of his attitude and the very insistence of his eyes produced, as he felt, a sudden stir which showed the next instant as a deeper portent47, while the head raised itself, the betrayal of a braver purpose. The hands, as he looked, began to move, to open; then, as if deciding in a flash, dropped from the face and left it uncovered and presented. Horror, with the sight, had leaped into Brydon’s throat, gasping217 there in a sound he couldn’t utter; for the bared identity was too hideous as his, and his glare was the passion of his protest. The face, that face, Spencer Brydon’s?—he searched it still, but looking away from it in dismay and denial, falling straight from his height of sublimity218. It was unknown, inconceivable, awful, disconnected from any possibility!—He had been “sold,” he inwardly moaned, stalking such game as this: the presence before him was a presence, the horror within him a horror, but the waste of his nights had been only grotesque219 and the success of his adventure an irony. Such an identity fitted his at no point, made its alternative monstrous. A thousand times yes, as it came upon him nearer now, the face was the face of a stranger. It came upon him nearer now, quite as one of those expanding fantastic images projected by the magic lantern of childhood; for the stranger, whoever he might be, evil, odious220, blatant221, vulgar, had advanced as for aggression222, and he knew himself give ground. Then harder pressed still, sick with the force of his shock, and falling back as under the hot breath and the roused passion of a life larger than his own, a rage of personality before which his own collapsed223, he felt the whole vision turn to darkness and his very feet give way. His head went round; he was going; he had gone.
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1
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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obsession
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| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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crepuscular
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| adj.晨曦的；黄昏的；昏暗的 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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10
vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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discretion
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| n.谨慎；随意处理 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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proprietorship
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| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
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conspired
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| 密谋( conspire的过去式和过去分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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17
glossed
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| v.注解( gloss的过去式和过去分词 )；掩饰（错误）；粉饰；把…搪塞过去 | |
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18
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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21
extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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beguilingly
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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26
reverberating
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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27
tinkle
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| vi.叮当作响；n.叮当声 | |
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28
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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29
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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rim
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| n.(圆物的)边，轮缘；边界 | |
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31
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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32
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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33
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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yearned
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| 渴望，切盼，向往( yearn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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36
ego
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| n.自我，自己，自尊 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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38
waylay
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| v.埋伏，伏击 | |
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warily
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| adv.留心地 | |
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40
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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41
moor
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| n.荒野，沼泽；vt.(使)停泊；vi.停泊 | |
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42
effacing
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| 谦逊的 | |
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43
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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44
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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45
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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46
portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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47
portent
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| n.预兆；恶兆；怪事 | |
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48
portentously
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49
apparitions
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| n.特异景象( apparition的名词复数 )；幽灵；鬼；（特异景象等的）出现 | |
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50
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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51
apparitional
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52
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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53
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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54
innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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55
luminary
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| n.名人，天体 | |
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56
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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57
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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58
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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59
flare
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| v.闪耀，闪烁；n.潮红；突发 | |
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60
lustre
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| n.光亮，光泽；荣誉 | |
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61
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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62
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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63
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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64
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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65
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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66
subdivided
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| 再分，细分( subdivide的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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67
abounded
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68
ramifications
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| n.结果，后果( ramification的名词复数 ) | |
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69
deterred
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| v.阻止，制止( deter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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70
ironic
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| adj.讽刺的，有讽刺意味的，出乎意料的 | |
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71
consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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72
cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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73
exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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74
attestation
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| n.证词 | |
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75
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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76
arrogantly
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| adv.傲慢地 | |
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77
abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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78
retracing
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| v.折回( retrace的现在分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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79
manoeuvre
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| n.策略，调动；v.用策略，调动 | |
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80
farce
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| n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹 | |
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81
buffeted
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| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
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82
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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83
reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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84
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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85
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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86
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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87
fanged
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| adj.有尖牙的，有牙根的，有毒牙的 | |
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88
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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89
notation
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| n.记号法，表示法，注释；[计算机]记法 | |
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90
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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91
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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92
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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93
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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94
dodging
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| n.避开，闪过，音调改变v.闪躲( dodge的现在分词 )；回避 | |
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95
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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96
ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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97
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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98
bristle
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| v.（毛发）直立，气势汹汹，发怒；n.硬毛发 | |
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99
bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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100
adage
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| n.格言，古训 | |
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101
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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102
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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103
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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104
skulking
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| v.潜伏，偷偷摸摸地走动，鬼鬼祟祟地活动( skulk的现在分词 ) | |
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105
subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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106
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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107
actively
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| adv.积极地，勤奋地 | |
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108
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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109
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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110
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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111
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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112
vacancy
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| n.（旅馆的）空位，空房，（职务的）空缺 | |
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113
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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114
appropriation
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| n.拨款，批准支出 | |
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115
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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116
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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117
stiffened
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| 加强的 | |
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118
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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119
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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120
withdrawn
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| vt.收回；使退出；vi.撤退，退出 | |
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121
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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122
lodgings
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| n. 出租的房舍, 寄宿舍 | |
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123
budging
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| v.（使）稍微移动( budge的现在分词 )；（使）改变主意，（使）让步 | |
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124
scuttled
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| v.使船沉没( scuttle的过去式和过去分词 )；快跑，急走 | |
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125
glimmered
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| v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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126
brandishing
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| v.挥舞( brandish的现在分词 )；炫耀 | |
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127
scroll
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| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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128
utensil
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| n.器皿，用具 | |
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129
requisite
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| adj.需要的，必不可少的；n.必需品 | |
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130
appreciably
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| adv.相当大地 | |
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131
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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132
egress
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| n.出去；出口 | |
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133
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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134
muddled
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| adj.混乱的；糊涂的；头脑昏昏然的v.弄乱，弄糟( muddle的过去式)；使糊涂；对付，混日子 | |
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135
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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136
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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137
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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138
gasp
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| n.喘息，气喘；v.喘息；气吁吁他说 | |
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139
multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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140
proscription
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| n.禁止，剥夺权利 | |
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141
aperture
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| n.孔，隙，窄的缺口 | |
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142
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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143
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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144
socket
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| n.窝，穴，孔，插座，插口 | |
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145
projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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146
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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147
lapsing
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| v.退步( lapse的现在分词 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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148
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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149
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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150
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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151
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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152
prodigy
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| n.惊人的事物，奇迹，神童，天才，预兆 | |
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153
stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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154
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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155
latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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156
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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157
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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158
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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159
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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160
retraced
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| v.折回( retrace的过去式和过去分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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161
casement
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| n.竖铰链窗；窗扉 | |
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162
rupture
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| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
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163
concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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164
scavenger
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| n.以腐尸为食的动物，清扫工 | |
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165
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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166
recording
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| n.录音，记录 | |
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167
vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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168
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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169
vertiginous
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| adj.回旋的；引起头晕的 | |
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170
perpendiculars
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| n.垂直的，成直角的( perpendicular的名词复数 )；直立的 | |
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171
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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172
notched
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| a.有凹口的，有缺口的 | |
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173
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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174
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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175
unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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176
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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177
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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178
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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179
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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180
extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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181
profane
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| adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污 | |
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182
engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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183
abjectly
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| 凄惨地； 绝望地； 糟透地； 悲惨地 | |
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184
dangling
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| 悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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185
hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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186
recoiling
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| v.畏缩( recoil的现在分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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187
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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188
gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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189
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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190
conceit
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| n.自负，自高自大 | |
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191
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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192
inordinate
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| adj.无节制的；过度的 | |
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193
deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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194
caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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195
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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196
glazed
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| adj.光滑的，像玻璃的；上过釉的；呆滞无神的v.装玻璃( glaze的过去式)；上釉于，上光；（目光）变得呆滞无神 | |
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197
slabs
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| n.厚板，平板，厚片( slab的名词复数 )；厚胶片 | |
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198
impunity
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| n.(惩罚、损失、伤害等的)免除 | |
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199
gape
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| v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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200
gaped
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| v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的过去式和过去分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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201
margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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202
opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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203
shrouding
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| n.覆盖v.隐瞒( shroud的现在分词 )；保密 | |
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204
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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205
penumbra
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| n.（日蚀）半影部 | |
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206
dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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207
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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208
niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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209
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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210
stature
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| n.（高度）水平，（高度）境界，身高，身材 | |
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211
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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212
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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213
consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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214
intentional
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| adj.故意的，有意（识）的 | |
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215
verity
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| n.真实性 | |
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216
stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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217
gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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218
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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219
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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220
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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221
blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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222
aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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223
collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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