I MEET NORA CAZENOVE
“Having carried what may be termed your technical exposition so far,
why do you stop short at the really important issue?” I asked.
“Oh, come now!” he cried with ready raillery, “when a patient describes
his symptoms to a doctor he does not pass to the next stage and name
his disease.”
Amidst present perplexities and the confusion of quickly gathering
memories of earlier years, there was one distinctive characteristic of
Karl’s Mahatmalike faculty which stood out prominently. The exercise of
his sixth sense never affected his gay personality. If he showed anger
or concern it was wholly vicarious, a sympathetic sentiment inspired
by certain facts which influenced the lives of others. Once, indeed,
to my knowing, if not more frequently, he had obtained a reflex or
sub-conscious knowledge of Maggie Hutchinson’s emotions. But even in
this instance my theory apparently held good. Alas for romance and
the first shaft of love! Five years ago he was not only ready, after
a pang or two, to fall in with her decree of banishment, but to-day
I was to meet his fiancée in a young woman of the market type! This
contradictory, self-effacing attitude was, of course, brought out more
pronouncedly than ever by the haphazard views he expressed on the
chance, or, it might be, the certainty, of his own early death. To see
Karl, the personification of manly strength and good health, sitting
in my room, and hear him coolly endorsing his father’s heart-broken
statement as to his approaching dissolution, was the most absurdly
exasperating experience ever vouchsafed to me.
I know quite well that men and women of high degree--and by that I mean
the true aristocracy of man, not the base metal so often stamped with
misleading titles--will face unavoidable death with a sedateness, even
a sober humor, which is the topmost rung of the long ladder climbed
by human progress. A shipwreck, a battle, a lost cause--these are
tangible things and excuse all. “This is the most glorious day of my
life,” said the crippled Girondist, Sillery, when sentenced to death.
“What, Valazé,” said Brissot to another, who fell in seeming faintness,
“are you losing your courage?” “No, I am dying,” was the reply; Valazé
had plunged a dagger into his heart. A British officer, about to be
crucified by Chinese, was offered an easier death if he would admit
that China was greater than England. His enemies knew some French but
no English. His French was that of the provincial grammar school of
other days, but he cried boldly: “La Hongleterre est la première nation
de la monde!” They understood him, not being Frenchmen, and an enraged
mandarin gave the signal for his instant execution. Well, you take off
your hat to the memory of the brave, and you hope that, in similar
straits, you would carry yourself with equal dignity.
But I do not think the man breathes who could gage Karl’s dispassionate
mood in that hour. I admit that I was utterly befogged. I went into
my bedroom to change my clothing. The door was open, and I heard Karl
rise, approach the window, obviously with no more serious intent than
a glance into the street, and begin to whistle. That might be the
stoicism of despair. But the whistling changed to humming, and from
humming he verted to singing:
For she was the Belle of New York,
The subject of all the town talk.
She made the whole Bowery
Fragrant and flowery
When she went out for a walk....
This was too much. I stuck my enraged head round the corner of the
door. He stopped his lilting.
“By Jove!” he said, “you must be a lightning change artist.”
“Karl!” I cried indignantly, “for goodness’ sake jump into a hansom,
go to your father, and tell him to dismiss from his mind the stupid
nightmare with which you have managed to imbue him.”
“You have evidently missed the exact point of some of my remarks,” he
retorted pleasantly. “I told you, among other things, that I wrestled
with the problem of candor versus concealment some time ago.”
“But you cannot be in earnest. Either you are mad or I am.”
“Both, my dear fellow. Believe me, temporary insanity is largely on
the increase. The average man cannot withstand the strain. I fancy you
will find there is a quaint analogy between the number of maniacs per
mille and the number of editions published each day by the evening
newspapers. When the jaded intellect is called on, every few minutes,
to watch three race meetings, six county cricket matches, and probably
a test match, the war--there is always a war--the German Emperor, the
yacht race, the latest scandal, the latest play--”
Pshaw! I let up, as Hooper would have said, and determined to drift
with the tide into the realm of queer happenings. The change in my
costume rendered the hotel’s restaurant approachable. Eat to-day I
must, no matter who died to-morrow. Karl agreed to keep me company
while I tackled the homeliest _plat_ which a £3,000 per annum chef
would condescend to cook, and thus, unwittingly, was I advanced a stage
in my inquiry.
We found the palatial apartment tenanted by late diners and early
suppers. A waiter would have whisked us into an inconvenient corner,
but Karl stayed him.
“Where is Jules?” he asked.
“Le voilà, m’sieur,” and the man indicated the bulky form of the head
waiter in the far depths of white and gold.
Karl looked steadily across the little tables with their twos that were
company and their threes that were not. Had he fired at Jules with
an air-gun that ponderous person could not have wheeled round more
readily. Moreover, he came straight to us, his broad face set in a wide
grin.
“Ah, dere you are, M’sieur Karl!” he cried. “I alvays know ven you come
in, is it not?”
“Always,” replied Karl, imperturbably. After compliments, I gave my
order. The manner of Jules’ summoning was hidden from both the head
waiter himself and his satellite.
“Is that what the women mean when they call you ‘The Magnet’?” I
inquired.
He laughed, with that contagious merriment which sends ripples of
content across his hearers’ faces whether they are in his company or
not. But he took care that his answer reached no other ears than mine.
“No,” he said, “the women mean something quite different. At any
ordinary distance I can attract practically any one whom I know. They
come and talk to me, without being aware that I have summoned them. It
is not a very remarkable feat when you realize that we all do something
like that, in any church, or theater, or other place where people are
gathered together. The magnetic effect is doubled, at least, when you
use opera-glasses. Why?”
These red herrings drawn across the trail were useless.
“What _do_ the women mean?” I persisted.
“Ask ’em, my dear fellow. Perhaps they may explain. The dear creatures
adore sensation. I am told that some of them will stick on a switchback
railway until their purses are emptied. A woman’s nervous system is
more refined than a man’s. That is why she likes swinging, or, to be
accurate, being swung. It thrills her.”
Karl, in this bantering mood, was a revelation. Were I not really
very much distressed and concerned by the statements made by him and
his father I should have been somewhat annoyed with him. As it was, I
determined to meet him on his own ground.
“You have evidently become quite a man about town since last I saw
you,” I said.
“How have I earned that questionable distinction in your eyes?”
“On the _post hoc propter hoc_ principle. Your nickname, your
philosophy, your light generalities about the opposite sex, are labels
of the brand.”
“Ah! It has not struck you that both you and the women may be mistaken?”
I looked up quickly. The mocking laugh had gone. The grave, earnest
face of the Karl of five years ago was before me. Nevertheless, his
fencing had stirred within me the spirit of resistance.
“I am prepared to vouch for the fact that one woman knew you well
enough not to be mistaken,” I said.
“May not her knowledge explain her attitude? Of course you are speaking
of Maggie Hutchinson. Do not forget that she shut the door in my face.”
“If it be not treason to the Honorable Nora Cazenove, may I say that
the door might yield to a resolute attack?”
For answer he leaned on the table, intertwined his fingers, and gazed
at me straight in the eyes.
“Never was fortress besieged more patiently,” he said. “It is only
within the past few weeks, that I have received any answer, and that is
why--But surely you will agree with me that the full and explicit story
of my life had better be deferred until a more convenient occasion.”
Now, lest I be accused of romancing, I shall not endeavor to analyze
very closely the most curious and agreeable illusion which held
me during the few seconds needed for the delivery of his protest.
Instead of the crowded restaurant I saw a moonlit lake, with the
terraces of an Italian garden rising in black and white lines of
closely clipped hedges, gravel paths, smooth lawns, and broad stairs
with curving balustrades. On the topmost and widest lawn, where the
grass had the resemblance of a black carpet owing to the shadows
cast by a castellated building in the background, three people were
walking--actually in motion, that is--not in the fixed attitudes of
a picture, but moving. Two were women, one dressed in black and the
other in white, and the moonlight glinting on their robes had an effect
worthy of Gustave Doré, so startling was the contrast, so instantly did
they hold the eye. With them was a man, a tall man; but that was all I
caught of the scene, for my ears were listening to Karl throughout, and
the change in his voice brought back my scattered senses.
And a waiter spoke.
“Your fish, sir. Sole Colbert, sir.”
I think I must have gazed at him blankly, but Karl came to my
assistance.
“Tell the chef we are in a hurry,” he said. “Then there will be no
delay in the kitchen.”
The man quitted us. I stuck a needless fork into the amiable sole.
“Have you been hypnotizing me?” I demanded angrily.
“You may call it that if you like,” he said calmly. “You saw Maggie and
her mother.”
“Did I!” I snapped. “And who was the man?”
“I do not know his name. I decline to listen. But I am fairly certain
he is an Italian, of good birth, and he is madly in love with Maggie.”
I thawed. There was a reason for the trick he had played me.
“And she?” I demanded.
“Like me, she thinks that marriage is a duty.”
“There appears to be material for a neurotic novel in the present
situation.”
“Far more. It may supply two tragedies. But why are you harpooning
that unresisting fish?”
Again I resolved to drift. It was clear that Karl meant me to travel
along the road he had already mapped out. So I ate my dinner, and drank
a couple of glasses of wine, and kept asking myself how it was possible
for my young friend to produce so easily a slight but distinct hypnosis
in a veteran like me.
Then I remembered the poker-polarizing of the Mitre Hotel, and I dug my
elbow into his ribs as a hansom carried us westwards.
“By Jove!” I cried, “I have it! Constantine’s death interfered, in
some way, with the private telegnomy line Maggie and you had set up;
but recent events have repaired the breakage. Constantine, living,
supplied the earth contact for your ethereal wires. When he died you
were forcibly separated, practically torn asunder, and his place had to
be filled again before you could resume communication on the same basis
as before.”
“You are not far wrong,” he said dryly. “But you have lived so much
abroad that you forget the propriety due to the British hansom. If you
wave your arms so excitedly, the policeman at the top of St. James’
Street will stop us, and I shall be compelled to magnetize him.”
“Could you?” I inquired irrelevantly.
“Ask the guv’nor what I did to the _douanier_ at the Gare du Nord who
wished to confiscate a pound of the only tobacco the old man can smoke.
I made him chalk a whole ship-load of luggage like an automaton. I
have progressed somewhat since I left Oxford. Were it not for other
less agreeable features, I could get a fair amount of amusement out of
my powers of suggestion. It is not altogether puzzling when you come
to reason it out. Granted that I am a sort of human magnet, I must
obviously be able to control my fellow-men, especially those who are
most susceptible to external influences.”
“When I extricate Maggie and you from your present dilemma I shall
demand your aid for the utter squelching and making everlastingly
ridiculous of some of my dearest enemies,” I said cheerfully.
“Better use me soon,” said he lightly, yet there was a chilling and
somber significance in his words that recalled me to the reality of the
peril of which he spoke so jestingly.
When we reached Lord Sandilands’ town house our cab took rank behind
a score of broughams and other conveyances setting down guests at the
striped canvas alley which shut off the sacred portal of fashion from
the vulgar gaze. _Odi profanum vulgus et arceo_: “I hate the common
rabble and keep it at a distance,” wrote Horace, who must have lived in
the Berkeley Square of Old Rome. What stern barriers are those strips
of canvas and lengths of red carpet.
We passed several gorgeous footmen (it is an old phrase, but the
truth is ever thus) and two detectives, deposited our hats and coats
somewhere, made our way up a flight of broad stairs, and my inquisitive
eyes fell on a very handsome young woman, exquisitely dressed, but a
trifle on the heavy side of the scale to my thinking, whose position,
no less than the equal delight with which she welcomed all comers,
proclaimed that this was the hostess, Nora Cazenove.
The conventional smile flew from her face as painted scenes grow
mawkish in sunlight when she saw Karl. She blushed very prettily, and
her very soul leaped to her eyes.
“I have been looking for you this hour or more,” she cried, and I half
expected her to throw her splendid arms around his neck.
“I would have been here sooner were I not detained by the unexpected
arrival of an old friend. Let me present him.”
She extended her hand to me.
“The older the friend of Karl’s the more pleased I am to see him,” she
said.
“And now that I have met you I can only wonder that any friendship
could have resisted the strain he must have felt during the last hour.”
There we stood, the three of us, two men and a woman, murmuring
nice artificialities, bowing and smirking in the glare of a London
drawing-room, while in an Italian garden, at that hour, three others,
two women and a man, were talking of Heaven knows what topic, which,
nevertheless, was indissolubly bound up with our trivial discourse.
For a fleeting instant I had a glimpse of some strong, imperishable,
intangible bond which held together the hidden things of life. Then I
heard Nora Cazenove’s aristocratic accents.
“Soon I shall be relieved from my present duty. Then you and I must
have a nice long talk.”
So I passed on with the crowd.