Mr. Petre approached the door in Harley Street with some little fear
in his heart.
It was the first time he had broken the wall of his isolation with
any human being. It had been a human being, humble, poor and loyal;
to be trusted, if any one could be. But the doctor was another
matter. Mr. Petre--he knew not why, some impression perhaps received
in the old days of which he knew nothing and which yet remained with
him--Mr. Petre distrusted all professions, all corporations; for he
feared that their members would always be more loyal to their Guild
than to the private citizen with whom they dealt. He stopped in the
street a moment to count the twenty-one fivers in their envelope (a
risk, but he had not learnt the precautions of the rich), and found
them accurate. He went up to the door, rang, and was admitted by an
impressive mute.
He was shown into a room where he had to wait for some time, after
the ritual of medicine, and in which his spirits sank lower and
lower as he turned over the pages of a dead weekly. When he was at
last admitted into the Presence what he saw did nothing to raise his
spirits.
Not that there were any instruments of torture furnishing the Great
Specialist’s inner room, not even one of those chairs with strange
joints which threaten abominable things; no, it was the spirit of the
room, consonant to the figure which inhabited it and had made it.
For the walls were covered with a dark brown composition embossed
to imitate leather, and too thickly covered with some varnish. In
the fire-place was an imitation fire of imitation logs, through
which no gas flames murmured now. On the walls were four large steel
engravings, all after Landseer; upon the mantelpiece one large clock,
of stone, funereal black and with the ghastly white face of operated
men.
At the table, whereon were ranged four or five books of reference
and, exactly ordered, blank paper, a pen, ink and a blotter, sat the
Great Specialist himself. He did not rise at Mr. Petre’s entrance,
but very courteously motioned him to a chair, on which that financier
sat down uncertainly, awaiting inquisition. The Great Specialist
looked at him for a moment, and he at the Great Specialist. He felt
sure that the Great Specialist was searching the very inwards of his
soul, while as for himself, he could not even search, but only very
generally receive the most external, the most superficial impression
of that eminent man before him. Yet of the two names--had the
Scientist but known it--that of John K. Petre was more renowned than
that of Henry Brail; for it meant more money.
It was a very long face, which would have been weak about the mouth
had not many years of posing to many clients, most of them wealthy,
given it a sort of lugubrious restraint. The eyes were fatigued, the
scanty hair was gray, and when the voice spoke it was sepulchral.
“Mr. ...?” began the voice, and then checked itself, remembering the
special conditions of that consultation. The face smiled inwardly
and strangely at the recollection thereof. The hand attached to its
owner’s arm scratched down headings on the corner of the foolscap
with a rasping pen.
“I must ask you,” continued the Master of Hidden Things, “a few
questions, if you please.” Mr. Petre bowed his head. “In the first
place....”
“The reason I have come,” interrupted the Unknown nervously....
The Great Specialist put up a dried, open hand, like a policeman
stopping traffic, and said, rather more loudly than before:
“I must beg you, my dear sir! I must beg you! Pray, leave yourself in
my hands. I must ask you these preliminary questions before we go any
further.” The hand dropped, and the voice continued: “Your father’s
age, or age at death?” The pen was prepared to scratch, and the tired
eyes looked inquisitively upwards into Mr. Petre’s face.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Mr. Petre, with more boldness
than he thought himself possessed of.
“Did you--do you--not know your father?” asked the more startled
voice.
“Not from Adam,” said Mr. Petre composedly.
So nearly as such beings can express surprise the Great Specialist
expressed surprise in a sudden movement of the brows. His pen was
scratching. It scratched “Special circumstances affecting case.
Bastardy.” Its driver then superfluously inquired:
[Illustration: _The Great Specialist wrote:--“Special circumstances:
A Bastard.”_]
“May I take down that, that particular aspect of the case?”
“Yes, certainly,” said the patient, almost cheerfully.
“Then I take it,” continued the scientist slowly, “if you do not
even know your father’s name, it is no good my asking the date of
his death, nor the cause of it? Nor, I suppose, whether he had any
nervous trouble, to your knowledge?”
“Not the least use,” said Mr. Petre with increasing firmness.
“In fact, you have no idea of your ancestry--your hereditary
history--upon that side?”
“None,” said Mr. Petre.
The Great Specialist coughed gently but firmly to himself, sighed,
took up the pen again, and began again with the same upward
inquisitive look.
“Mother’s name?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Petre.
This time the Great Specialist betrayed real emotion. He was not
quite sure that he was being respectfully treated; besides which, his
Method was drifting into danger. He put down the pen, leaned back
in his chair, joined his finger tips, and gazed at Mr. Petre for a
minute or two in the fashion of a schoolmaster who has sympathy with
an erring boy, but fears he may be too young to understand the full
gravity of his fault.
“Am I to understand,” said the Inquisitor, still keeping his hands
together and not yet reaching out for his pen, “that you know
_nothing_ of _either_ of your parents?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” said Mr. Petre, looking up at the ceiling. He
was a little piqued at the first interruption he had suffered, and he
was determined to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth--and even
the whole truth when he should be allowed to volunteer it.
The Inquisitor leaned forward.
“Now, my dear sir, be good enough to fix your attention upon me.”
Mr. Petre looked at his enemy in mild, benevolent fashion.
“You know nothing whatever of your ancestry upon either side?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Petre.
“Were you a foundling, sir?” said the Specialist sharply.
“Not that I know of,” replied his guest. “The fact is that I have
come to see you because....”
The large, dried hand went up again.
“One moment. We must get things clear to begin with. In these cases
of nervous trouble--I am speaking frankly--it is essential to put
things in the right order to the patient, or the whole consultation
fails of its purpose.”
Mr. Petre nodded, and accepted. He saw that he was not believed.
“Now, sir,” continued the Specialist, “since I must accept what you
say” (it was pretty clear that he did not), “I can only ask you
questions which are within your own knowledge. Have you (you will
excuse my direct question?) have you, to your knowledge, any taint?”
“Any what?” said Mr. Petre anxiously.
“Taint--alcoholic, for instance?”
Mr. Petre thought for a moment, and answered, “No. At any rate, I
should doubt it.”
“What are your habits in the matter of--ah!--wine?”
“Claret for lunch, usually, or beer. Beer or claret at my dinner.
Liqueur with my coffee....”
“Not so fast, please, not so fast! Yes, coffee.... How much?”
“Oh! A cup.”
“I mean” (more severely), “how much claret, how much liqueur?”
Mr. Petre considered.
“Say a bottle. Liqueur, oh, well a glass.”
The pen scribbled away furiously.
“For how long?” asked the writer.
“Since April 3rd, just after noon.”
“And before that...?”
“The reason I can’t tell you,” began the victim, “is....”
“I _must_ beg you to let me act in my own way, sir,” broke in Sir
Henry almost angrily. “If you refuse me essential information, the
consequences will not be on my head....” He paused. “Since you refuse
to inform me on this point--and I must tell you I am used to such
difficulties--I will leave it,” and he wrote down, “Probable case of
chronic alcoholism. Consumption daily in last five months at least
one liter at 12%, one deciliter at 35%; probably more.”
“Can you tell me,” said the Specialist, breaking new ground and
preparing again to write, “whether at any stage you have used
drugs--even as long ago as five or ten years?”
“I am afraid I can’t,” said Mr. Petre.
The Medical Genius restrained his temper, determined--he was a
conscientious man--to do his best by the impossible fellow, and
started anew.
“I must now,” he continued, putting on a look of much greater
importance than he had yet assumed, and settling himself up in his
chair, “I must now, my dear sir, put to you a very intimate question
indeed; it is one which we always have to ask at this stage of our
inquiries.” (Mr. Petre marveled what that stage exactly was. But he
was wise enough to remain silent.) “_Do you dream?_”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Petre cheerfully. He was all right now; this was
plain sailing. The pen began writing busily.
“For instance,” murmured the Sepulchral voice, the face still bent
over the paper, “last night?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Petre. “Most nights. Last night certainly. Yes,
most nights.”
The pen was now working furiously.
“Now, if you please,” said the Specialist, his mind working with
such energy that his face looked almost bright for a moment, “now, if
you please, the details, if you remember them.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Petre. “I dreamed I went to Liverpool Street
and took a ticket for New York; the man who gave me the ticket
through the little hole turned out to be a peacock, but I didn’t
think it at all odd. After that I found myself trying to read a book,
but I didn’t understand the letters, so I put it down and found
myself dropping into a sort of confusion. That was my dream, as far
as I can remember it.”
The pace at which Sir Henry’s pen had raced was worthy of an expert
in shorthand. He had the whole thing down, and was aglow with
excitement and interest.
“Ah!--Now--” he said, “this is really important! Here we have a clew.
Such illusions as you may be suffering from....”
“But,” interrupted Mr. Petre, “I am not....” Up went the hand again.
“I say, as you may be suffering from,” went on Sir Henry, “we shall,
I think, be able to explain. But we cannot resolve the complex
until you shall tell me quite frankly to what vivid experience of
childhood--no doubt of a _very_ private nature; but you must tell me
all--you most naturally return in your innermost thoughts.”
“To none,” said Mr. Petre, in a voice that was almost a shout, for
the delay was exasperating him, and he refused to be put off any
further though the hand was up again at “Line blocked.” “I remember
_nothing_ of my childhood. I remember _nothing_ of my manhood. I
remember nothing _before_ last Easter--to be accurate, last Easter
Monday. That’s why I came to see you!”
The Great Specialist turned upon him a face of stone.
“Why did you not say that before, sir? It would have saved us both a
great deal of trouble.”
“Because you wouldn’t let me.”
“Come, come,” said the doctor, “we must have no discussion.” The pen
came down upon the paper again and wrote a line. “I take it, then,
that you require my aid in a case of Amnemonesis.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Petre. “No doubt. Well, yes, if that’s the name.
My memory failed completely and suddenly about noon on April 3rd,
1953--this year. I remember nothing of myself before that moment.” He
had got it all in by rapid speaking.
“Pray don’t interrupt me,” said the Great Specialist, in the tone
of a governess, only a little more pettishly. “It is a case of loss
of memory, or rather, let us call it loss of identity.” He twisted
his head sideways and murmured to himself: “What Pfungst has named
‘loss of the time-space continuum in its subjective aspect.’” Then
he got his head into the normal position again and murmured in a
still lower tone, which Mr. Petre could only just catch: “_Paranoia
penipsissimisma_, some people call it.” He added a little louder,
looking up at Mr. Petre and presenting the title with a touch of
affection, “Also called Bantam’s Complex, from Bantam, Sir George
Bantam.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Petre, slightly interested, but with too much
gnawing at his heart to be really gripped by the thing.
“It is more generally known as the Seventh Sub-Complex, after
Boileau’s category. It is universally so known upon the Continent--ah,
yes,” then he began scribbling again. “This is the address you
want,” said the Master of Modern Science, jumping up suddenly from
his chair. He handed it as a superior officer might hand an order
to a subordinate.
“Could I.... Can I see him now?”
“Now? At once?” answered the Specialist, frowning.
“Well,” said Mr. Petre, “I have reasons.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the other courteously. “You are all like that.
I will see.” He pressed a buzzer with his foot, and told the man who
came in to ring up Sir William Bland, and ask him whether he could
see an urgent case on the part of Sir Henry Brail, a case of M.3.
The man bowed as to Royalty, and reappeared saying that Sir William
Bland happened to have just one half hour free, at that moment, from
four-forty-five to five-fifteen. Mr. Petre looked at his watch. He
had five minutes. He asked where it was. Strangely enough, this new
address was also in Harley Street, and some odd connection beneath
the level of the waking mind gave the new millionaire a mood of
happiness at the thought that he had time to walk and save a taxi
fare.
Then followed an awkward moment. Mr. Petre shyly pulled out the
envelope. Sir Henry was far too precise and honorable for that.
“No! No! My dear sir,” he said. “I won’t dream of it. A misapprehension.
My own fault indeed, but still, a misapprehension. I had the idea
that you suffered from, I mean that we were to deal with--ah!--
_Illusions_. Yes, Illusions. I don’t pretend to go out of my
province. Indeed, I prefer not to deal with any cases not covered
by Purall’s formula.... One moment.” He came rapidly up to his
visitor and pushed back the lid of the right eye. “No,” he said, “not
a case for me in any way.”
“No illusions!” he muttered to himself as he turned back. “No
illusions under the Bergheim test.”
Mr. Petre rubbed the replaced eyelid and made one more protest in
favor of due payment; but his advisor was determined. Mr. Petre
thanked him warmly, though confused, and was off. The impressive mute
showed him out, and in a couple of minutes he was ringing at another
door half a dozen houses down the street.
Sir William Bland received him in a room extremely different from
that in which he had just suffered. It was the room in which a man
might live rather than work. There was a very large photograph of a
Royalty in a sloping silver frame upon the table, autographed. There
was a novel lying half-open. There was a bad portrait upon one wall,
and a good, very small, Corot on the wall opposite; no other pictures
at all. A small room, cozy, domestic; just the thing for the nerves.
[Illustration: _The second and more jovial Great Specialist, Sir
William Bland._]
Sir William Bland greeted Mr. Petre as a lifelong friend, and this
the reader will find the more remarkable if he remembers that nothing
had been said of who Mr. Petre was or what Mr. Petre was worth. Sir
William Bland was well suited to such a rôle. He had a round, kind
face, in which only the eyes were insincere; hardly any eyebrows;
simple steel spectacles, and a fine bald dome, with a fringe of hair.
He took his colleague’s note and read it, smiling as cheerfully over
it as though it were a packet of mild fun. Then he gave tongue,
surveying the newcomer with ease and happiness.
“Loss of memory? My dear sir? Loss of memory? That is what you say it
is. Eh? Ah, yes; loss of memory. I have” (he glanced at the note), “I
have the date here. Oh! Yes! April 3rd.... H’m.... Yes. _Easier_, my
dear sir, easier if I could know something of--well” (resignedly), “I
understand that the conditions are absolute.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre.
“I would respect any confidence religiously--you know that?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Mr. Petre, touched, “but ... sincerely ... I must
keep my rule. It was not lightly made.”
“Very well, sir, very well!” sighed Sir William Bland.
He asked a few common questions on diet and habit, all easily
answered and all normally.
Then the great business was seriously approached.
“I must ask you,” said the Magician, “to do one or two things if you
please. In the first place” (he opened a drawer in a little table
and pulled out a little book), “would you mind looking through this,
page by page, and telling me if anything in it strikes even the
slightest echo within you?”
Mr. Petre took the book. It was a polyglot New Testament. There was
the French, which seemed to him pretty dull. He glanced at a few
words in Italian which he recognized, and one or two German words
with which he was familiar. The rest meant nothing to him, except
that he could distinguish the Spanish as Spanish and no more, and he
noted the odd script of the eastern versions. He laid it down again.
“No, Sir William, it recalls nothing,” he said.
“The sacred words,” said Sir William Bland earnestly (Mr. Petre had
been dealing with the Genealogy in St. Matthew), “recall nothing of
childhood? No tender associations?” There was infinite pathos in
his voice, and he went so far as to lay a sympathetic hand upon his
patient’s arm.
“No, sir, no,” said Mr. Petre, a little abruptly for him. “The fact
is, I must tell you plainly. Loss of Memory is a weak term. At a
certain recent date” (here he remembered that he had divulged it,
and his terror returned), “I lost all sense of what I had been,
where I had been, who I was. I retained my habit of mind, and
all my knowledge of general things in life, but not one personal
association.... It is very distressing,” he added.
“Yes, indeed, my dear sir,” said Sir William, drawing the nose-end of
his eyebrows up in an agony of kindness. “But it will comfort you to
hear that nowadays we nearly _always_--I may say _always_--manage,
sooner or later”--he was spinning out his words as he fumbled again
in the drawer of the little table, and brought out yet another
book--it was in German, of course, but its peculiarity was an
appendix in which were brightly-colored pictures after the German
fashion, all of them attaching to childish tales; and the colors
especially were German.
“Now, my dear sir,” said Sir William, pulling his chair a little
nearer to his victim, “pray glance at this--the more casually the
better--and see whether a stab of memory....”
Mr. Petre saw on the front page some words in German script and then,
in our type, the word “Perrault.” He made nothing of that. He opened
the book.
Mr. Petre rapidly turned over the score of pages. There was
a huntsman in a red hat with a feather in it, a very large
muzzle-loading gun under his arm, holding a dead fox up by the
tail, while his companion blew a horn; there was a lion with a
human-looking face holding up his paw to a young man with gooseberry
eyes who was pulling a thorn out; there was an old gentleman in a
gray tunic pointing towards a star, his gaze followed by a young
gentleman in a blue tunic whose face was fatuous beyond the dreams of
avarice; there was a fairy with a star-tipped wand touching a grand
coach and six for the benefit of a pasty-faced wench, over-dressed
and with flaxen, plaited hair; there was another Gretchen asleep on
a bed, cobwebbed, and with sleeping guards around her, and a Junker
not much her senior, prepared to press a Junker’s salute upon her
lips, and so on. It meant nothing to Mr. Petre--nothing at all.
“None of these simple nursery tales,” said the Specialist, wagging
his head slightly from side to side with an infinite compassion, and
gazing steadily upon the sufferer. Mr. Petre shut the ridiculous book
smartly.
“It’s no good answering questions. What am I to do?”
To his surprise, he was begged very courteously to take off his coat
and waistcoat, tie, shirt and vest; which done, instruments were used
upon him, of measurements and of percussion, and he was touched by
wires, which his host had drawn like thin serpents from a corner,
and which oddly registered mysteries upon dials. He was struck four
or five times: harder than he liked. An ugly piece of machinery was
clamped upon his arm below the elbow; he was made to sit down and
cross his legs, and he was unpleasantly cut with the edge of the hand
below the knee, with the result that his foot kicked upwards. In
fact, all manner of things were done to him, which, in an ignorant
age, would have made him suspect a charlatan. But we live in better
times.
When he was allowed to dress himself and become human again (for
it is human to be clothed) he was aware that the Master was pacing
his little round body up and down the room, with his hands crossed
behind his back, and was reciting to himself cabalistic sounds; words
of no meaning to the profane. Then he stopped suddenly, looked Mr.
Petre in the face, and said:
“My dear sir, yours is a very curious case. A very strange case! You
have told me nothing of yourself--because as my colleague has warned
me, you will not give any details of yourself since ... since ...
since the sad....”
“No,” interrupted Mr. Petre doggedly, “that is the strict condition
of my presence here to-day. Upon terms,” he added, though it hurt him
to allude so coarsely to the fee, “which I think you know.”
“Precisely,” answered Sir William, “precisely ... yes ... quite.
Ah.... You remember everything, well, since that unfortunate ...
since the date on which....”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre shortly.
“_Quite_ normally, my dear sir? _Quite_ normally?”
“I suppose normally,” said Mr. Petre. “I seem to remember as well as
anybody else.”
The Specialist looked at his watch; a sudden light broke over that
face which masked so well the profound intelligence within. “It is
clearly a case,” he chirruped, “for Sir Christopher Cayley.”
But Mr. Petre had had enough. Whether his new-found wealth had bred
in him a new-found assurance, or whether he had reached the limit of
what humanity can bear, he kept his own counsel and said: “Well, Sir
William, I am sorry you can do nothing for me.”
“It is not that; it is not that,” said the little man eagerly. “It
is that really, my dear sir, Sir Christopher is the _one_ man in all
England--I think I may say in all _Europe_....”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, “yes.” He had already taken up his hat and his
stick.
“Now shall I advise Sir Christopher? Shall I advise him now? Shall I
write a note?”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Petre. “I will consider it. If you will allow
me, I will communicate with you again.” But alas! for the integrity
of a good man; he had firmly determined never to touch the Faculty
again till agony should drive him. He was fed up--to the back teeth.
Slowly he produced the envelope with his eyes nervously diverted from
the round face before him. There was no awkwardness. But there was on
Mr. Petre’s side a pleased surprise at the simplicity of the passage.
“Thank you a thousand times,” he said.... “You have already done me a
world of good, believe me ... but the truth is, if I were to give you
my name....”
A suppressed smile upon the lips of the expert barely betrayed his
emotions. He had known that kind of thing before, and he never
irritated that mood. He would have lost money by irritating that
mood. But in the other cases he had always known in time, and before
the event, who the Mysterious Stranger (though he might call himself
the Grand Mogul) really was. In the other cases an agonized relative
had informed him before the visit, had poured the true tale into his
ear, warning him of a brother or a father’s sensitiveness and shame.
To-day he was nonplussed.
Everything about this last patient betrayed precision; but who he was
he could not for the life of him have told you. Even the very slight
American accent had worn away.... Sir William did regret one thing.
He _would_ have asked to know who the funny fellow thought he was.
He kept a book with screaming things of the sort. But it couldn’t be
helped. Perhaps he’d find out later. As Mr. Petre walked off, filled
with despair, down the street towards Oxford Street, Sir William
at a little discreet distance from the light watched him from the
bow-window; then he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, rang the
bell, and sent for the next case: the Dowager who was the head of
the list in that great room without, where already two or three were
attempting to beguile the time with _Life_ and even _Punch_. She had
come with her keeper, but he saw her alone. She was quite harmless.
Mr. Petre, bearing that inward burden of his, despairing, hopeless
of rediscovering a knowledge without which life was not life, still
paced southward, choosing the squares and the less occupied streets,
until he found himself upon the top of St. James’s Hill. There he
halted a moment at the corner of Piccadilly gazing down towards the
Palace; the Clubs, the old brick towers, the Guardsmen on sentry-go
at the door, the crowd of cars, even the London sky under a fresh
autumnal breeze--all was as familiar to him as familiar could be. All
was part of some home furniture in his mind; but of the home itself,
nothing. A complete blank. The soul had lost its habitation.
* * * * *
Mr. Petre went out from this last of his ordeals profoundly
depressed. By all our standards he was greatly to be envied. He was
untroubled by any great responsibility. He had drunk the water of
Lethe; he was in health, he was rich.
Yet that intimate thing within us which demands immortality, and
which we call Ourselves, was incomplete, and he was a maimed man.
Not all the high respect with which he could now be surrounded at
will was other than a nightmare to him. He was gnawed by the loss of
that mysterious past; by the lack in him of that momentum of things
lived under one mind, coördinating all that human, continuous, soul
whereby indeed we suffer, but also are. He passionately desired--more
than ever he now desired--now that he must face exile--to know
himself.
His hands were clasped behind his back, his gold-headed cane within
them; his eyes were bent upon the pavement in a reverie; he wondered
and wondered, and he was tragically ill at ease. He had lost his
bearings. He was more wretched in his loneliness than the poorest of
the millions in the vast surge of life about him.
As he thus slowly paced St. James’s Street, down towards the Palace,
under the long evening light, half forgetting the roar of the traffic
around him, he suddenly heard, just as he passed White’s Club, a
voice very familiar; and looking up with a start, he saw a face more
familiar still. It was a hearty face, the face of a man of his own
age, but bronzed and gay, the face of a man who had advanced up the
hill at a vigorous stride, and had now suddenly halted with his arms
extended and had cried:
“Peter Blagden!”
“That’s my name!” said Mr. Petre, as suddenly. To which he added,
“Buffy Thompson!” Within his mind what had been a dead wall of mist
began to roll and form into clouds; and now dim shapes appeared,
which were already almost memories.
“Peter Blagden!” shouted the new-comer; and slapped him on the
shoulder and put an arm in his and led him sharply round the corner
into St. James’s Place.
“When did you get back?”
As naturally as if his misfortune had never happened, Mr. Petre said:
“She was due at Portsmouth on April the 3rd, I think. My memory is
not very good, Buffy. But I’m pretty sure she made good time. I am
pretty sure it was the 3rd that I landed.”
“April the _third_! Good Lord, man! That’s half a year ago. Why
didn’t you let me know?” said Buffy.
They crossed St. James’s Street together.
“I was ill,” said Mr. Petre, looking oddly askance and a little
ashamed.
[Illustration: _Joyous recognition of Buffy Thomas._]
“Well,” said the honest friend, “that’s all over, anyhow. Come along
in with me. You’ll want your rooms again.”
He stopped in front of a door in the little side street and put in
the key.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, hesitating more oddly still, “these are my
rooms all right.”
The rolling mists in his mind had formed now definitely into clouds
with shapes to them, and gaps in between through which appeared
things more and more definite. He had a sudden sharp vision of a
red-brick cloister and of the same voice shouting to him from a
window, and it was mixed up in his mind with the name of a place,
but he could not catch that name. Cayridge? Clayridge? He had
simultaneously a little picture presented to his mind of green Downs
beyond a valley, and he was thinking of horses; and again the wreaths
of the mist blotted all that out, and he was side by side with this
same man on a public platform listening to his friend orating badly.
He mechanically pulled out his watch as he had done on that distant
day on that platform. Political speeches bored him.
Mr. Petre put his watch back and looked pathetically into Buffy’s
face.
“Thompson,” he said slowly, “Thompson, you’re a good fellow.”
“Are you ill?” said Thompson, holding him as if he were afraid he
would fall.
“No, not exactly,” said Mr. Petre. “I _have_ been ill. Take me in.”
Mr. Petre had forgotten all about the Temple, all about Trefusis, all
about Charlie Terrard.
South England came flooding into his mind, and an irresistible desire
for sleep.
The key clicked in the lock, the door pushed open, and showed a
narrow hall of rooms he knew. There was the funny old engraving--a
hundred years old at least--of Mostyn Steeplechase, and there,
projecting on its bracket so that the narrow hall was made too narrow
by it, stuck out at a place that made it positively dangerous, was
the bust of Lord Brougham. It was all part of the furniture of his
mind. So was the used carpet upon the stair. So was the curtain
upon the landing. So was the very smell of the musty house and the
outline of the dreary gas bracket which had been fitted with electric
light. So was the dusty yellow fringe of stuff which hid the glare
of the light from the eye. It was Home. It was his surroundings, the
clothing of his soul. He would sleep.
“You want your rooms again?” said Thompson again, heartily.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, stopping on the landing and leaning his hand
upon the banister and bending his face downward again.
“Good Lord, man!” said his friend, “you’re not puffed by half a dozen
stairs!”
“No,” said Mr. Petre. “No.” He groped with his hands as a man does in
darkness, but it was a gesture of the mind, not of the body.
Thompson, looking at him queerly for a moment, (but most concernedly,
for he loved the man), threw open the door of the room and they both
went in. Mr. Petre gave a cry.
Here, came in a flood, all that had supported his being. Here were
books, each one he knew; here was the familiar dull aspect of the
house opposite, here was the faded looking-glass, and, thrust into
it, cards, every one of the names on which he could tell. Here was
the chair; and in a rack opposite the looking-glass half a dozen
pipes, to one of which he stretched out his hand mechanically. He
took it and blew into its stem and was delighted to find it clear. He
felt in his pocket for a pouch, and found none. There was no doubt
at all that he was at home. He sat down in his own chair, and sighed
like a man who has come in full of a good weariness from riding
outside upon the Downs. His mind was inhabiting an island, already
clear, well lit, the boundaries of which were expanding upon every
side.
Yes, these were his rooms. These were his books, his pictures, new
and choice, or ugly, old, familiar and inherited; there was the door
of the little frowsty bedroom; but he missed something, and then
suddenly said to Buffy:
“What about Billy--what about the dog?”
“Your man took him out,” said Buffy.
Mr. Petre added, as though it were a most solemn thing: “I bought
that dog as a puppy at Henley. You remember? You were with me. When
was that?” he said sharply.
“Three years ago last June,” said Thompson, looking at him curiously
again. “You ought to remember that better than I do.”
“I ought,” said Mr. Petre humbly. “I ought, Buffy,” he added, “I
think I ought to sleep.”
“You look as though you’d been up; but, damn it! it isn’t seven yet,”
said Thompson, “and I’ve any amount of things to ask you. Are you
tired?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, “I think I ought to sleep.”
“Get a nap,” said Buffy, stretching himself, “and I’ll wait here for
you and read. Go in and get a nap and then we can go out and dine
together somewhere. I’m dying to hear all about it.”
“About what?” said Mr. Petre, his mind troubled again, and a
drowsiness falling upon him.
“Why, your travels, of course,” said Thompson.
“Buffy,” said poor Mr. Petre again, “let me sleep. I must sleep. I
won’t dine. Let me sleep. Only,” here he clasped Thompson’s hand
suddenly at the wrist with a gesture so absurdly exaggerated that
his friend grew afraid, “only promise me you will come back at eight
to-morrow morning, and no matter how soundly I am sleeping, promise
to wake me and be with me and befriend me, Thompson. Tell my man that
I am sleeping, and tell him--yes, tell him that I know where the bell
is and that I may ring, and that if I ring he is to come at once,
no matter what the hour is. It rings in his room, you know. I may
need him. I may need him, Thompson,” he said, his voice falling to a
dangerous whisper. “I remember him perfectly well. My man. Wait here
till he comes in. Tell him I must sleep on.”
“That’s all right,” said Thompson heartily. “I’ll see to everything.
Go in and sleep.”
He was intrigued and bewildered, but he had plenty of sense, and he
saw what was needed.
“You never had the telephone. It’s one of my grievances. I’ll send a
messenger round to Chesterfield Gardens and tell them I can’t come.”
“Chesterfield Gardens,” said Mr. Petre suddenly; and then his
troubled soul walled up again and he said, “Yes, Chesterfield
Gardens. What houses?” Thus he mumbled to himself. There was some
connection in his mind with these words, “Chesterfield Gardens,”
which he could carry on no longer. He stumbled into the little
bedroom as though he were drunk. Thompson helped him off with his
clothes and into his night-shirt, saw him into bed, turned out the
light, and sat anxiously in the next room until a steady snoring from
within told him that the man slept as he needed to sleep.
Buffy Thompson knocked out the ashes of his pipe very gently, so as
not to awaken that strange invalid--if invalid he were--filled it
again, lit it, and smoked, staring at the floor with his head upon
his hands.
It could not be drugs. There was nothing of that sort about Blagden
at all. It certainly was not drink--drink never took a man that way.
There was the sound of a door opening and shutting downstairs, and
a man came in with a little dog upon a leash. Thompson went out and
hushed.
“Mr. Blagden’s come back,” he said. “But he’s exceedingly tired, and
he must sleep. He’s sleeping now in his room. He wants you to take
the dog upstairs with you, and he’ll ring if he wants you at all
during the night. Don’t go out, Martin. Stay in and be ready for him
if he wants you--at any hour. I don’t know what has happened. I am a
little frightened about him.”
“I had no warning, sir,” said Martin.
“No, neither had I,” answered Thompson. “I tell you I don’t know
what’s happened. Anyhow, he must sleep. If you want me, go round next
door and ring up the Bolton. I shall take a room there to-night.”
“It’s all very sudden, sir,” said Martin.
“It is,” said Thompson. “But we can do nothing till the morning.”
Buffy went back, pushed the door gently open. The sleeper was still
sleeping with that light snoring; his slumber was deep. He could
dimly see, by the reflected light from the room without, that he had
not moved. It seemed he would so sleep for hours.
Thompson went out on tiptoe down the stairs and into the street,
marveling at the things that happen in this world.
* * * * *
Mr. Petre--I mean Mr. Blagden--slept and slept. He slept fourteen
hours; and when he woke the revolution within him was accomplished.
Mr. Blagden, no longer Mr. Petre, had returned to this world.
But he had paid a price. That blow he had received was not without
its effects and sequel. He suffered some torpor of the spirit as
does the body after long maintenance of an unnatural attitude. His
brain was fatigued and for the moment indifferent.
He had slept all those hours profoundly. Upon waking and seeing
those accustomed walls he was back, for a few seconds, in the days,
two years gone and more, before he had left for America. He looked
mechanically for clothes in the old mahogany tall-boys and found
another man’s. As he did so his situation came back to him at once.
Buffy Thompson had his rooms. He rang for Martin.
“Martin, have you any clothes of mine or did you store them?”
“I’ve got the gray suit, sir, and some ties and linen. The rest’s in
the cottage at Harrington.”
“All right, Martin; bring me that.”
He dressed slowly, laying aside the garments of Mr. Petre and glad
to find that two years had made him neither more nor less unwieldy.
He approved the tie; he always wore the same kind. He approved the
collar. He put watch and chain and keys and change and papers into
the old regular pockets. It was a resurrection of the flesh.
Then he went into the sitting-room--they were but two, these modest
ancient rooms of his on the second floor, with Martin and a boxroom
up above. He sat at his desk by the window and pondered. It was
half-past nine o’clock.
He sat at his desk recovering rapidly, moment by rising moment, from
such weakness as a man feels after a long illness; but his mind was
clear. All his boyhood, all his manhood, were before him as they are
with you and me; the normal memory, here vivid, there imperfect,
with the full personality and past of the man. He saw it all in its
perspective and in its frame, and with his restoration came decision
and will.
That life he had now before him had not been very eventful, it was
nowhere tragic; it had its disturbances and its troubles; it had its
few moments of petty glories and one short episode of passion.
The shock which had brought it back to him when he had come suddenly
upon that friend of his youth did not exaggerate anything. It only
restored. It shook him back into himself and their long acquaintance:
the life of school together, and of college; the rooms above the
Cloisters in Cambridge, the winter days in which he had gone down to
Devizes to stay with them, and their hunting together.
He remembered his father’s death and how he had left his mother
the use of Harrington, living himself between it and town. His
determination, which had so grieved her, not to marry after his
disappointment. He remembered those regular journeys up and down;
the station in the country town of Patcham near at hand; the beloved
accent of his own people on the platform, the beloved West-country
talk of the Patchamites. The four miles’ drive home. He remembered
his mother’s stroke, her decline, her death, and his own grief. He
remembered (an odd detail which brought a tired smile to his lips)
that bad investment in Mexicans, or to be perfectly frank with
himself, that bad speculation.
He remembered how Charlie Cable had unloaded upon him, and how he
had trusted him because Charlie had just got into the Cabinet and
was somewhat of a hero in his eyes. He remembered the letting of
Harrington and his furnishing for himself the cottage outside the
North Lodge and how he regretted leaving the place. He remembered the
conversation with Wilkins, the family lawyer: he remembered their
office, the long talks on affairs: all futile. He was himself again.
He remembered the taking of these very rooms twenty years ago and
more--not so long after the Great War. He remembered his habitation
of them during the two weeks of the Levantine Crisis in ’39, when
they were threatened with air raids, and had an oddly vivid memory
of walking back from the office in which he had volunteered to
work, half a mile away in Whitehall, during the first warning.
He remembered how strange he had thought it was that he was not
frightened--at his age. He was frightened enough a little later.
He remembered the occasion of his journey to the States twenty-eight
months ago, the strange climate of New York, his days in Chicago, his
disappointment at the condition of that land-venture of his; his
renewed anxieties. He even remembered his amusement at the difference
between what he had thought the land would be like and what it really
was. The astonishing American landscape. He vividly remembered the
return, the abomination of the crossing on the great liner, the
bad company, the bad food. Then came, like the shutter of a camera
coming sharp down on his mind, the darkness that followed: the dead
blank--the gap, in a train.
And yet he could oddly contrast his present knowledge of what he
had been and was with those few months in which every surrounding
experience was so strange, ugly, tortured, and the whole of his
life before the accident cut away as though it had never been:
his associates share-shufflers, and for society a glimpse of the
abominable smart.
There was a duality in his vision of these last few months that made
him shudder as though his present memory, revived and sane, was
living side by side with that vile period in which he was himself and
yet not himself. But the mood did not last long. There was too much
comedy to relieve it.
He traveled along each episode. He saw step by step the prodigious
increase of fortune, and in spite of his weakness he could have
laughed aloud. He, the permanently embarrassed, had had a dream of
millions, evil millions. He could sit still no longer at the desk.
He stood up and steadied himself by the mantelpiece, and did laugh
slightly at last. As he did so, the recent reality of stocks and
deals and sales which had stood apart in his mind as an ended,
exceptional episode returned as an enormity: he was _now_, he was
_still_, an immensely wealthy man.
He began to realize it. He, standing there in that cozy, shabby room
which was part of himself; he, Peter Blagden of Harrington, a poor
gentleman, insufficiently provided, embarrassed--had an immense lump
of money; over three million pounds.
What it would mean to him; what he would do with his opportunities;
whether indeed he desired to do anything with them (he did not
think he did, unless it were to travel--anywhere except across the
Atlantic) troubled him little. What he chuckled over was the high
comedy of this immense fortune in his hands. He looked round the
little dusty room, the dear little familiar room of twenty years, all
telling of his modest (and declining, encumbered) country gentleman’s
income, of his lineage, of his affections, most of them now with the
dead; he remembered the Bank Parlor and he laughed again, aloud.
He had for a moment the boyish impulse to do something really
amusing--to go out there and then, that morning, pick up a telephone
and give some critical order which should shake a wobbling market. He
might sell half a million Moulters, and wreck them; Lord! What fun!
He held his head back to laugh once more, but his weakness came upon
him again and he sank down into his chair.
Martin knocked at the door; his visage recalled to Mr. Blagden an
imperative precaution.
“Martin,” he said, “my name is Blagden--Peter Blagden. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir--of course, sir.” Nor did Martin flinch. He was of country
training and had feudal knowledge that gentlemen were free to be
quite unaccountable if they chose.
“Does our landlord know that I’m back?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, Martin, don’t tell him. I’ll slip out when he’s away
and, Martin, _don’t tell any one_: not for a day or two. I’ll tell
you when you may, quite soon.”
“Yes, sir. Very good. Will you have your breakfast now, sir,” he
said, “or will you wait till Mr. Thompson comes?”
“Is Thompson coming?” asked Mr. Petre, gratefully.
“Yes, sir,” said Martin. “He told me he would be here at ten, and
it’s striking now.”
“Then I will wait for Mr. Thompson,” said Mr. Blagden--who was also
Mr. Petre when the thought of the Bank came back to him and brought
up that smile again--“I will wait for Mr. Thompson, and we will
breakfast together, Martin. What is there for breakfast?” he added
sharply.
“I got kippers,” said Martin, in a voice which years had rendered
part of his master’s life. “I had to use my judgment, sir, and you
were always fond of kippers.”
“I was,” said Mr. Blagden, in deeper and more religious tones than
he had yet used; and he added, “I was and am again. Indeed, I was
fond of them in between, and I ought to have remembered why. But I
didn’t, Martin, I didn’t.”
“No, sir,” said that excellent man, amenable to the absurdities of
his lord.
“I should have known it all the time, Martin,” said Mr. Blagden.
“It’s curious I didn’t know anything all the time.”
“Yes, sir,” said Martin.
* * * * *
Buffy Thompson came in; tall, bustling, his hair in all its native
fuzz and his eyes dancing. He began a torrent of questions. But
Blagden stopped him with a question that made him gape.
“You haven’t told any one that I’m back?”
“No.... No one--but why the Hell you....”
“Well: _don’t tell any one_. Martin’s got those orders. I’ve the very
best reasons. It won’t last long. But it’s _absolutely essential_.
Have you got that?”
Buffy Thompson was unused to the American phrase.
“Got what?” he asked.
“I mean, will you promise?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then we’ll talk.”
Over the breakfast-table Peter Blagden told the hardly believable
tale, and Buffy Thompson believed.
“I’m going to put it boldly into the one stock that won’t turn a
hair,” he ended; “I’m going to buy New Bearer Loan.” He turned up the
last page of the morning paper Martin had brought--the accustomed
one, the _Messenger_. “99--8½ ... about 3 months to mature. There’ll
be an odd 40,000 pounds or so.” Buffy Thompson was awed at such
nonchalance--it was uncanny. “I’ll transfer it to current account in
the bank at Patcham--in my own name.” He suddenly got up. “I can’t
wait, Buffy, I’m on wires. You won’t mind helping me in a little
business matter?”
“No,” said Buffy, “all in reason.”
“Oh! It’ll be all in reason, never fear. Now take your hat and stick
and come with me.”
They drove to that Branch Bank which should be famous in the annals
of Banking. Together they passed the swing doors. Together they stood
as Mr. Blagden--Mr. Petre, I mean--addressed Moonface with a firm
courtesy. Together they were conducted through the carpeted corridor,
past the three engravings, together they entered the Sacred Cell.
Mr. Petre introduced, “My dear sir, this is my friend Mr. Palling
Thompson.” They all bowed. No flies were on Mr. Petre that morning.
He knew his own mind at last.
“By all means, Mr. Petre, by all means. Ah! And for the purpose...?”
“One moment.” Mr. Petre pulled out a small vellum-bound book from his
pocket. “Yes ... £3,273,764 6s. 2d. There are no checks outstanding.
I am about to draw £264 6s. 2d. That leaves £3,273,500.”
The obvious truth needed no reply.
“Now, my dear sir,” Mr. Petre went on with calm decision, “the
New National Bearer Bonds are at 98½ this morning? They were that
yesterday.”
The Manager rang and asked for the sheet. It came flimsy and large;
he put on his spectacles too slowly and confirmed. Yes. 98⅜, ½.
“In what denominations can they be bought?”
The Manager smiled.
“Well, my dear sir--surely it is immaterial?--Some are high--for
convenience of transport or what not--it’s a great innovation.
Really! If you’d told any one even twenty years ago....”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mr. Petre, “what’s the highest denomination?”
“Well, really, £10,000, I think.”
“I should like to see one,” said Mr. Petre, “if you have one in the
place.”
The Manager rang and the glorious thing appeared--presented in a
Morrison folder.
Mr. Petre took it out and handled it with curiosity and interest.
It was printed on one of those new metal sheets which they make the
notes of nowadays, and which, they tell us, will replace all paper in
the long run; thin, stronger, even lighter; 500 to the inch--almost
like the India paper of the old late nineteenth-century books, only
not quite so flimsy.
It wasn’t ugly--for an official thing; about eighteen inches by
twenty-four and all the little coupons very neat.
Mr. Petre held it up to the light and got absorbed in the grain and
the Royal Arms. Then he remembered his business and put it down again.
Mr. Petre asked for a sheet of note-paper and murmured as he wrote
thereon: “Please buy me 320 £10,000 nominal National Bearer Bonds at
current price, this date. The balance of my account pay in to the
account of Mr. Peter Blagden, of Harrington, in the Empire Bank,
Patcham Branch,” and he signed boldly “John K. Petre.”
He looked up and spoke: “I want those bills put....” he began. “No!
I’ll add it in writing.”
He murmured again: “P.S.--Please put the securities so purchased into
a secure receptacle and keep them against my coming”--“What’s to-day?
Tuesday. I’ll come on Friday”--“against my coming on Friday next, the
22nd, at 11 a.m., when I shall take them with me.--J. K. P.” “There!”
he added in the tone of a man who has paid a small bill promptly, and
with a pleasant smile he handed it to the Man of Affairs.
That Manager was dumb. The blow had fallen. The golden dream was
over. But it had to come. It might have come at any moment in all
those weeks. The Formidable Eccentric ever acted in some such
lightning fashion. Doubtless (or, at any rate, pray Heaven) he would
return. He had been most courteously treated. He should retain a
good memory of their continued courtesy.
“By all means, Mr. Petre, by all means.” The Manager swallowed twice.
“At eleven on Friday.”
There was no more to be said. There was nothing more to be done.
* * * * *
“Buffy,” said Mr. Blagden, when they were in the street, and the odd
£264 6s. 2d. safe in pocket, “Don’t you want to come on with me? I’ve
only got two things more to do--one in the Temple. Then we’ll lunch.”
“All right,” said Buffy.
Mrs. Malton was scrubbing when they entered. She staggered up to her
weary feet, bobbed and apologized.
“Mrs. Malton,” said her employer abruptly, “you are a good woman. Now
listen to me,” as she would have protested, “I’m leaving. I’m paying
my rent now. At the office. This morning.” Mrs. Malton’s eyes filled
with tears. “The van will come for this furniture to-morrow. Be
here to see that it is loaded. It’s going down to Dorset. No, don’t
interrupt. Here is five pounds. Are you married?”
Mrs. Malton said that she was a widow. He asked her if she had
children. There were two living: one in the Army, and the other
married down Hackney way.
“Mrs. Malton, if you are well advised you will arrange your affairs
at home, and take the train from Waterloo Station to a place called
Patcham. If you are well advised you will take the train to-day week
at ten in the morning, and at Patcham you shall be met; and there you
shall be shown my house and certain duties attached to it. And if it
suits you, you can stay.”
Mrs. Malton made no terms. Nor did it occur to her that virtue could
be rewarded in this world. For in her station of life reward is
unknown, as is in higher stations virtue. She simply thought that
God, in Whom she believed (for she had been brought up in a very
old-fashioned way on the lonely edge of an Essex march) had sent Mr.
Petre with a gift, and in her philosophy that was not reward but good
luck.
Her employer turned to go, and then suddenly remembered.
“Mrs. Malton, when you get to Patcham, you must not ask for me as
Mr. Petre. You must ask for me as Mr. Blagden. I am Mr. Blagden now.
Good-by.”
Mrs. Malton, returning to her task, mused on the common madness of
the wealthy, and humbly thanked Heaven for her good fortune.
Peter Blagden took Thompson with him as he settled for the rent, gave
the order for the moving of the furniture, and the address, went back
to his rooms; sent Martin down to meet the furniture at Harrington,
bade him be back on Thursday without fail, and then disappeared into
that happy inn of his, with Thompson attendant. By ten of the Friday
he was back in London; by eleven precisely, after a heavy struggle
with his nerves, he was at the door of the Bank, in a good roomy
motor, hired from Rimington’s over the river.
A box of steel, burnished, about two feet and a half by two, lined
with some dull bronze metal, and having a curious set of three
fastenings of a sort he had never seen before, was awaiting him.
There was a swing handle at either end. A man could lift it easily
enough. The printed securities it contained, each batch just like the
last, were handed out with the reverent care which a superstitious
age might have shown to the body of a saint; they were in three thin
flat bundles of 100 each, tied and docketed; and twenty over.
The solemn process of verifying the printed numbers by tens was
to begin when Mr. Petre--in a last eccentricity at which, for all
his thought of the future, the Banker could hardly refrain from
protesting--had them all put back.
“I’ll take it as read,” he said. “All I want to understand is these
locks.”
The simple, the ingenious mechanism was explained, and when cordial
farewells had somewhat raised the hearts of the mourners who were
to remain thus widowed, a menial bore the box away in train of the
millionaire, the last poor corpse of an immortal episode, and put it
into the roomy motor at its master’s feet. So went a little more--a
trifle of one or two odd one hundred thousands more--than three
million pounds through Guildford to Alton, where they lunched late
and took the air.
At Alton Mr. Petre bought a good strong sack and corded it about
the box. At Winchester he stopped for the night, paid off the car,
and dined well with Thompson. As for the sacking parcel, it went
up to his room with his luggage. Next morning Mr. Petre hired a
standing rotor cab himself in the street, standing by it to see that
none should speak to its chauffeur. His luggage was put within and
without, and he and Buffy, whom he had asked to pay the bill, drove
to Lymington. The taxi was paid off with its return fare, and Mr.
Petre had the satisfaction of seeing it go off without comment or
converse.
He and his companion lunched. After lunch Thompson went out, saying
that all might hear, “I’m sure I can get something,” and sure enough,
in an hour he was back with a little old-fashioned trap, still
surviving, and a venerable horse, his purchases, for they designed
to tour the forest. They put their few things aboard and the small
sacking case which held some camping kit and off they went; so slowly
that the children jeered at them as the old horse wheezed along.
The Forest was divine with Autumn; they drove on alone, exploring
its views. One night Mr. Petre took out those bonds and made a nice
brown-paper parcel of them, leaving the metal box empty. But he took
it carefully along. They turned the old horse’s head westward toward
the Dorset border.
They took it easy. They made their twelve or fourteen miles in a
day, all leisurely, nor in a direct line. On the fifth day, from
a hill-top, they saw before them in its vale the happy roofs of
Harrington, its belfry, the sober gray of Blagden’s House beyond the
trees, and slowly their voyage ended at the cottage by the North
Lodge.
The heavy camping kit was lifted in. Then the rest. The ramshackle
old trap put away in a barn behind a farm cart. They would not need
it for some time. It had only been for the forest, said Mr. Blagden.
The old horse found a good stable and the much-enduring man his home.
He was released. He had given the slip to that incredible world of
shuffling and of falsehood and of cozening, of vain gambling and
snatching and open robbery which pretends, in our toppling moment, to
govern mankind. So long as the State was secure he was secure; he had
his money out at usury, but to one debtor only, the Government of his
country; better investment he could not find. He was washed of all
the slime of evil acquaintance as he was rid of all that terror and
perplexity and agony of nothingness which had poisoned the spring and
summer of ’53.
But the gigantic sum in the locked cupboard of his bedroom above less
affected him than the doubling of his insufficient revenue two years
before would have done. He desired nothing but his old friends, his
home and the peaceful passage of age, and these were now secure.
It did not take him ten days to put the simple trials of his earlier
life to rights. The small sums--to him now small--very large to the
recipients, which were needed to give him an immediate occupation of
the old place, to give the mortgagees compensation for his haste, he
had sacrificed, as he would have sacrificed a sixpence. And only the
clerks in the Patcham Branch of the Empire Bank knew about it. Mr.
Blagden, of Harrington Hall, had done famously in America. He had
made a deal with the great John K. Petre, and netted close on £50,000.
As for the American land, Mr. Blagden had cabled to London that power
was following by mail to let it go. His agent there could sell or let
’em foreclose, just as he willed. He was indifferent; he only desired
to hear no more of it. He had visited the old place and strolled
round its gardens, pleased with everything, except to note this or
that slight disorder, this or that slight mark of an alien presence
now vanished. He had recalled in a flood the years of his childhood
and of his early manhood. He had made friends of every chair and
table and picture and book. He was bathed in content.
He retained his rooms in St. James’s Place. He was used to them, they
suited him, he wanted no more. Here was a good end to life. What
would he do with the inordinate excess? He should put it somewhere
apart from him so that he should not be troubled by the violence of
men, or even by their needs beyond reason.
He was bathed in content; and mighty peace had spread her wings again
over a world new blessed.