A VISIT TO BRYANSTON SQUARE
Unwillingly enough, I set out with our guest to consult my Uncle
Theodore. Assuredly it was a scheme in which common sense, in the
general acceptation of that elusive quality, had no part. Yet, however
preposterous the proceeding, it was an act of common humanity to take
even an extravagant measure for the relief of such an acute suffering.
It was impossible not to pity the unhappy creature. Her eyes were wild
and her appearance had been transformed into that of a hunted animal.
On the way up to town we were fortunate enough to secure a carriage to
ourselves. Throughout the journey my companion hardly addressed a word
to me, but she continued to betray many tokens of mental anguish. The
train was punctual, and by a few minutes after four o'clock we were in
Bryanston Square.
It is only once in a lustrum that I visit my Uncle Theodore. He is
rich, a bachelor, and in the family is regarded as an incorrigible
crank. The champion of lost causes, a poet, a radical, a practitioner
of the occult, a scorner of convention, and a robust hater of many
things, including all that relates to the merely expedient, the
utilitarian and the material, he is looked upon as a dangerous heretic
who might be more esteemed if he belonged to a less eminently
responsible clan.
Howbeit, I confess that I never visit my Uncle Theodore without feeling
constrained to pay a kind of involuntary homage to his personality. He
has a way with him; there is a something about him which is the
absolute negation of the commonplace. He is tall and extraordinarily
frail, with a picturesque mop of orange-coloured hair, and a pair of
large round eyes of remarkable luminosity, which seem like twin moons
of liquid light.
It was our good fortune to find this bravo at home and in receipt of my
telegram. I left my companion in another room while I went forth and
bearded the lion in his den. Dressed in a velvet jacket, a red tie and
a pair of beaded Oriental slippers he was in the act of composition,
and was writing very slowly with a feathered quill upon a sheet of
unruled foolscap.
"I am writing a letter to the time-serving rag that disgraces us," he
said with a kind of languid vehemence, "and the time-serving rag won't
print it, but I shall keep a copy and publish it in a pamphlet at the
price of three-pence."
"Then put me down for four copies," said I. "You know I always regard
you as one of the few living masters of the King's English."
"The King's English! The King, my boy, has no English. He has less
English than the average self-respecting costermonger."
"The well of English undefiled, then."
"That is better. You are perfectly right. It is my firm conviction
that my prose is quite equal to my poetry, and yet these dunces persist
in saying that we poets can't write prose. Swinburne couldn't, it's
true, and with tears in my eyes I used to beseech him to give up
trying. But he was an obstinate little fellow. Milton couldn't,
either. But Goethe now, Goethe could write prose as well as I can
myself, and so could Wordsworth if he had liked, and so could Shelley.
As for that yokel from Stratford-on-Avon, if there is anybody who dares
to say he couldn't write prose, I should like to have the pleasure of
contradicting him."
"I think," said I, "you will be among the prose-writers after your
death. If I survive you, I shall hope to prepare a collected edition
of the letters you have had rejected by the newspapers."
"That's a bargain, my boy. I will select them for you. It will be a
nice little legacy to leave to posterity. A hundred years hence they
will speak of me as the British Lucian who opened the stinking
casements of a putrid age and let in God's honest sunlight. What a
time we live in, and what a poisonous crew inhabits it! Why, do you
know, my boy, we have less real freedom in this country than they have
in Illyria."
The totally unexpected mention of the blessed word Illyria startled me
considerably. That sinister kingdom was evidently in the air.
"You are right, Theodore," said I. "'The stinking casements of a
putrid age'--that is a phrase I shall remember when next I am at the
point of asphyxiation upon the green benches of the Mother of
Parliaments."
"What a football-kicking, boat-tugging, gymnasium-bred crew they must
be to stand such an atmosphere day after day, night after night! I
shouldn't have thought that a really _polite_ man could have existed in
it for three days. I wonder what Edmund Burke thinks of the place when
he enters it now."
A rough working knowledge of the subject with which I had to cope
rendered it imperative that I should make a determined effort to lay
hold of his head before he took charge of me altogether.
"Theodore," said I, "I am not here to yield to the delight of your
conversation, much as I yearn to do so. I have brought a lady with me
who desires to consult you about the stars."
He seemed to laugh a deep, hollow laugh out of the depths of himself,
much as an ogre might be expected to do.
"Vain superstition!" he guffawed, as he stretched out his long tenuous
hands. "O ye upper-middle-class British Pharisees, that ye should
condescend! Who is this weak vessel that would consult the stars?
Not, I trow and trust, a daughter of the late Sir John Stubberfield,
Bart.?"
"The late Sir John Stubberfield, Bart." was a symbol erected
permanently in his mind, with which he toyed when he was moved to
exercise his fancy at the expense of his countrymen.
"Not a daughter of Sir John," I assured him. "An even more potent
personage."
"Impossible, my boy! A veritable daughter of Sir John stands at the
apex of human endeavour. She is the crown of social, political and
philosophical beatitude. Do you forget that it was a daughter of Sir
John Stubberfield, Bart., who married a Prosser? Do you forget it was
a daughter of Sir John Stubberfield, Bart., who had issue an heir male,
a little Prosser?"
"Peace, peace, my good Theodore. You have a bare half-hour in which to
read the stars in their courses for a fair unknown. And I beg that you
will treat her tenderly, for she is a brave woman and an unhappy."
"Aha!" The Ogre--the name he was known by in the family--sighed a
romantic sympathy. It may seem out of harmony with the terms in which
I have endeavoured to render the personality of this Berserk, but he
had an almost Quixotic development of the sense of chivalry. Nothing
so greatly delighted this champion of lost causes as to succour those
who were in distress.
"Produce the languishing vestal, so that the arts of the necromancer
may sustain her. But stay, my boy; before we go further, may I suggest
that you conform to the conventional practice of confiding the name she
goes by among men?"
"Certainly. Her name is Mrs. Nevil Fitzwaren."
"Aha!" The Ogre swung half round in his writing-chair to confront me.
He seemed like a satyr, and the twin moons that were his eyes began to
magnetise me with their uncanny effulgence. "A woman about thirty, of
foreign extraction?"
"Ye--es."
"Married an English squire about five years ago?"
"How the deuce do you know that?" said I, in amazement.
Again the look of the satyr seemed to transfigure him.
"What, pray, is the use of being a soothsayer without one is permitted
to dabble a little in the black arts?"
"Theodore, my friend," said I, with a somewhat disconcerted laugh, "I
am inclined to think you must be the Devil."
"Perchance, my dear boy, perchance." The Ogre placed the tips of his
fingers together in a way he had. "May it interest you to know that
the Devil is a more potent figure in the public life of our little day
than our German friends allow for. Never despise the Devil, and never
mention him lightly in any company, for he is always looking at you."
The twin moons were enfolding me with a refulgence that in the dim
January twilight was so uncanny that, had I been other than of a fairly
robust materialistic texture, I might have felt a kind of horror.
"It is very interesting that your friend Mrs. Fitzwaren--black hair,
olive complexion, remarkable appearance, a type you can't place--should
come to me like this. The fact is, my dear boy, things are not always
what they seem. Judging by the recent behaviour of one or two rather
important planetary bodies, and of the new body of which our observant
French friends have lately learned to take cognisance, the visit of
your friend Mrs. Nevil Fitzwaren to your cracked Uncle Theodore at his
local habitation in Bryanston Square may have some kind of a bearing on
the destiny of nations. How say you?"
"My dear Theodore," I expostulated, from motives of policy, "my dear
Theodore, you really are, 'pon my word you really are----!"
All the same, it was with a singular complexity of emotion that I went
forth to lead this prophet and soothsayer into the presence of the
Crown Princess of Illyria.
It struck me as I preceded my carpet-slippered relation into the great
bare room that the unhappy lady was looking more distinguished and more
distraught than-ever. Had I had a merely superficial acquaintance with
our family Berserk I must have had qualms as to the mode of his
reception of his visitor. In uncongenial company he could be a
positive Boeotian savage, but, again, if it pleased him, he could
display an ease and a sympathetic charm of bearing which was wholly
delightful to those who had the good fortune to call it forth.
As he came shambling in with his flaming tie, his mop of
orange-coloured hair, his hands in his pockets and his heels half out
of his slippers, would it please him to be the polished and gracious
courtier, or the wild Boeotian savage?
His visitor rose to receive him and a grave bow was exchanged. And for
the first time in my knowledge of her Mrs. Fitz seemed at a loss for
speech. Small wonder was it, for this gaunt, lean presence with the
faun-like smile and the still, full, luminous gaze, seemed to hold the
key to realms of infinite mystery and power.
"If you will come to my room, we can talk," he said, quite gently.
As he was about to lead the way, he half turned and leered at me
ogre-like over his shoulder with his peculiarly significant malice.
"Tell Peacock to give you the _Sporting Times_ and a cigar and a
whisky-and-soda, my dear boy," he said.
"Thanks," said I, "but I am afraid you cannot be allowed more than
twenty minutes for your interview. It is imperative that Mrs.
Fitzwaren should catch the 5.28 from the Grand Central."
"The 5.28 from the Grand Central." He repeated the words as though an
importance was attached to them that they had no reason to claim. Then
he added musingly, "I am not so clear as I should like to be that you
will be wise to catch it. It would be better, I think, if Mrs.
Fitzwaren could arrange to travel to-morrow."
"Impossible, my dear Theodore. Mrs. Fitzwaren is staying with us, and
we must certainly be back to dinner."
The Princess nodded her concurrence.
"Well, well, if you really must. And perhaps I exceed my prerogative."
The singular creature proceeded to lead the way to his study. I was
left to meditate alone for twenty minutes upon this latest expression
of his personality. Never before had I realised so fully that he was
the possessor of gifts the nature of which was as a sealed book to the
common mortal. There had been occasions when we "in the family" had
been tempted to believe that there was a strong infusion of the
charlatan in his pretension to occult knowledge. A prophet is not
without honour save in his own country.
But as I sat this January evening in his house in Bryanston Square, I
realised more fully than I had ever done before that the last word has
yet to be uttered in regard to the things around us. It was as though
all at once my cranky relation in his carpet slippers, his velvet coat
and his red tie had brought me into a more intimate contact with the
Unseen.
Somehow, and for no specific reason that I was able to discover, my
unruly nerves began to tick like a clock. The temperature of the room
was not high, but a perspiration broke out all over me. A full five
minutes I sat in the silence of the gathering darkness not quite
knowing what to do and not caring particularly. It was as though the
enervating atmosphere of my uncle's nearness had taken from me the
power of volition.
It never occurred to me to ring the bell, and yet I had merely to press
the button at my elbow. Nevertheless, when a servant entered with a
lamp it was a real relief.
"Hullo, Peacock!" said I, issuing with a little shiver from my reverie.
Somehow it seemed that that retainer, trusted, elderly, responsible,
looked singularly pale and meagre in the lamp-light.
"Are you very well, Peacock?"
"Thank you, sir, not very." The old servant sighed heavily.
"Why, what's the matter?"
The old fellow proceeded to draw the curtains and then turned to face
me with a kind of nervous defiance.
"Fact is, Mr. Odo," he said, "this place is getting too much for me. I
am afraid I shan't be able to go on much longer. Fact is, Mr.
Odo"--the old man lowered his voice to a whisper of painful
solemnity--"it is contrary to the will of God."
"What is contrary to the will of God?"
"The goings on, sir, of Mr. Theodore. My private opinion is--and I say
to you, Mr. Odo, what I wouldn't say to another"--the voice of the old
fellow grew lower and lower--"that Mr. Theodore is getting to know a
bit more than any man ought to: in fact, sir, more than the Almighty
intended any man should."
"What do you mean, Peacock? You are not growing superstitious in your
old age, are you?"
I strove to speak in a light tone. But in my own ears my voice sounded
curiously high and thin.
"I mean this, sir. The line ought to be drawn somewhere. And Mr.
Theodore doesn't know where to draw it. The people he has here,
sir--it's--well, it's appalling! Clairvoyants, mediums, mahatmas,
Indian fakirs, table-turners, spirit-rappers, and I can't say what.
Communion with spirits is all very well, sir, but it is contrary to the
will of God. The Almighty never intended, sir, that we should pry into
all the secrets of existence."
"How do you know that, Peacock?"
"I know by this, sir." The old fellow tapped the centre of his
forehead solemnly. "The thing that lies behind this."
To my surprise the old servant wrung his hands and burst into tears.
"It can't go on, sir--at least, as far as I am concerned. Either Mr.
Theodore will have to mend his ways or I shall have to leave him. I
have been a long time with Mr. Theodore, and of course I was with his
father before him, and I daresay I am getting old, but do you know what
we have got in the attic, sir?"
"What have you got in the attic, Peacock?"
"An Egyptian mummy, sir. It is several thousand years old, and I am
convinced that a curse is on it. I wouldn't enter that attic, sir, not
me, not for all the wealth of the Rothschilds."
"I was not aware that you were superstitious, Peacock," said I, with a
very ineffectual assumption of the formal tone of the married man, the
father of the family, and the county member.
"It is not superstition, sir, but I know what I know. That mummy has
got to leave this house, or I shall leave it."
"Is that the fiat of the True Believer?"
"I don't fear God the less, sir, because I fear an Egyptian mummy, if
that is what you mean."
"But you are inclined to think there are more things in earth and
heaven than it is well for the average man to be concerned with?"
"I am convinced of that, sir; and if Mr. Theodore doesn't get rid of
that mummy and amend his goings on, I shall be compelled to give
notice."
Stated baldly, the old fellow's words may seem ridiculous. But as he
uttered them his distress was so sincere that it was impossible to deny
him a meed of sympathy.
"Quite right, if you do, Peacock," I agreed. "And you can lay it to
that honest conscience of which you are rightly proud that you have
served the family long and faithfully, and that no one will question
your right to an annuity."
"Oh, that will be all right, sir," said the old retainer; "even if Mr.
Theodore does act contrary to the will of God, nobody can deny that he
is a perfect gentleman."
"Is not that rather a confirmation of the ancient, theory that the
Devil was the first perfect gentleman?"
"I have not thought of that before, sir, but now you mention it, it is
certainly worth thinking about."
Having lent sanction to this profound truth, the old fellow went out of
the room. But I recalled him from the threshold.
"By the way, Peacock, Mr. Theodore told me to ask for the _Sporting
Times_, a cigar and a whisky-and-soda."
"Very good, sir." The old fellow withdrew.
"And thank God for them!" I muttered devoutly to the bare walls.