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Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton
by
`I knew that if I leaned forward and thrust my hand between those brass rails, to clutch his foot, I should clutch–nothing. He wasn’t tangible. He was realistic. He wasn’t real. He was opaque. He wasn’t solid.
`Odd as it may seem to you, these certainties took the edge off my horror. During that walk with Lady Rodfitten, I had been appalled by the doubt that haunted me. But now the very confirmation of that doubt gave me a sort of courage: I could cope better with anything to- night than with actual Braxton. And the measure of the relief I felt is that I sat down again on my chair.
`More than once there came to me a wild hope that the thing might be an optical delusion, after all. Then would I shut my eyes tightly, shaking my head sharply; but, when I looked again, there the presence was, of course. It–he–not actual Braxton but, roughly speaking, Braxton–had come to stay. I was conscious of intense fatigue, taut and alert though every particle of me was; so that I became, in the course of that ghastly night, conscious of a great envy also. For some time before the dawn came in through the window, Braxton’s eyes had been closed; little by little now his head drooped sideways, then fell on his forearm and rested there. He was asleep.
`Cut off from sleep, I had a great longing for smoke. I had cigarettes on me, I had matches on me. But I didn’t dare to strike a match. The sound might have waked Braxton up. In slumber he was less terrible, though perhaps more odious. I wasn’t so much afraid now as indignant. “It’s intolerable,” I sat saying to myself, “utterly intolerable!”
`I had to bear it, nevertheless. I was aware that I had, in some degree, brought it on myself. If I hadn’t interfered and lied, actual Braxton would have been here at Keeb, and I at this moment sleeping soundly. But this was no excuse for Braxton. Braxton didn’t know what I had done. He was merely envious of me. And–wanly I puzzled it out in the dawn–by very force of the envy, hatred, and malice in him he had projected hither into my presence this simulacrum of himself. I had known that he would be thinking of me. I had known that the thought of me at Keeb Hall would be of the last bitterness to his most sacred feelings. But–I had reckoned without the passionate force and intensity of the man’s nature.
`If by this same strength and intensity he had merely projected himself as an invisible guest under the Duchess’ roof–if his feat had been wholly, as perhaps it was in part, a feat of mere wistfulness and longing–then I should have felt really sorry for him; and my conscience would have soundly rated me in his behalf. But no; if the wretched creature HAD been invisible to me, I shouldn’t have thought of Braxt
on at all–except with gladness that he wasn’t here. That he was visible to me, and to me alone, wasn’t any sign of proper remorse within me. It was but the gauge of his incredible ill-will.
`Well, it seemed to me that he was avenged–with a vengeance. There I sat, hot-browed from sleeplessness, cold in the feet, stiff in the legs, cowed and indignant all through–sat there in the broadening daylight, and in that new evening suit of mine with the Braxtonised shirtfront and waistcoat that by day were more than ever loathsome. Literature’s Ambassador at Keeb…. I rose gingerly from my chair, and caught sight of my face, of my Braxtonised cheek, in the mirror. I heard the twittering of birds in distant trees. I saw through my window the elaborate landscape of the Duke’s grounds, all soft in the grey bloom of early morning. I think I was nearer to tears than I had ever been since I was a child. But the weakness passed. I turned towards the personage on my bed, and, summoning all such power as was in me, WILLED him to be gone. My effort was not without result–an inadequate result. Braxton turned in his sleep.