THE HARLEY STREET EPISODE
Julian was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate
to show him into the doctor's very private room,--a room dedicated to
ease, and to the cultivation of a busy man's hobbies. No patient ever
told the sad secrets of his body here. Here were no medical books, no
appliances for the writing of prescriptions, no hints of the profession
of the owner. Several pots of growing roses gravely shadowed forth the
doctor's fondness for flowers. A grand piano mutely spoke of his love
for music. Many of the books which lay about were novels; one, soberly
dressed in a vellum binding, being Ouida's "Dog of Flanders." All the
photographs which studded the silent chamber with a reflection of life
were photographs of children, except one. That was Valentine's. The
hearth, on which a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants,
Rupert and Mab, the doctor's mastiffs, who took their evening ease,
pillowing their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking
clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of Master
Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That fact alone made it
original. A large cage of sleeping canaries was covered with a cloth. The
room was long and rather narrow, the only door being at one end. On the
walls hung many pictures, some of them gifts from the artists. Some
foils lay on an ottoman in a far corner. The doctor fenced admirably,
and believed in the exercise as a tonic to the muscles and a splendid
drill-sergeant to the eyes.
As Julian came into the room, which was lit only by wax candles, he could
not help comparing it with the room he had just left, in which the body
of Marr lay. The atmosphere of a house is a strange thing, and almost as
definite to the mind as is an appearance to the eye. A sensitive nature
takes it in like a breath of fetid or of fresh air. The atmosphere of the
European Hotel had been sinister and dreary, as of a building consecrated
to hidden deeds, and inhabited mainly by wandering sinners. This home of
a great doctor was open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The
sleeping dogs, heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the
best hall-mark. It was a house--judging at least by this room--for happy
rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world knew
well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos-eating. The doctor
sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it by even so
much as writing a post-card within its four walls.
Julian stroked the dogs, who woke to wink upon him majestically,
and sat down. Lawler quietly departed, and he was left alone. When
he first entered the house he had been disappointed at the departure
of Valentine. Now he felt rather glad to have the doctor to himself
for a quiet half-hour. A conversation of two people is, under certain
circumstances, more complete than a conversation of three, however
delightful the third may chance to be. Julian placed Valentine before
all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to-night he was glad that
Valentine had gone home to bed. It seems sometimes as if affection
contributes to the making of a man self-conscious. Julian had a
vague notion that the presence of his greatest friend to-night might
render him self-conscious. He scarcely knew why. Then he looked at the
mastiffs, and wondered at the extraordinary difference between men and
the companion animals whom they love and who love them. What man,
however natural, however independent and serene, could emulate the
majestic and deliberate _abandon_ of a big dog courted and caressed
by a blazing fire and a soft rug? Man has not the dignity of soul to
be so grandly natural. Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed
petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the
collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to
subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large
lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely
pities all other inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things! Sombre
agitations were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight
against. No devils and angels played at football with their souls. Their
_liaisons_ were clear, uncomplicated by the violent mental drum-taps that
set the passions marching so often at a quickstep in the wrong direction.
And Julian knelt down on the hearth-rug and laid his strong young hands
on their broad heads. Slowly they opened their veiled eyes and blinked.
One, Rupert, struck a strict tail feebly upon the carpet in token of
acquiescence and gratified goodwill. Mab heaved herself over until she
rested more completely upon her side, and allowed an enormous sigh to
rumble through her monotonously. Julian enjoyed that sigh. It made him
for the moment an optimist, as a happy child makes a dreary old man
shivering on the edge of death an optimist. Dogs are blessed things.
That was his thought. And just then the door at the end of the room
opened quietly, and Doctor Levillier came in, with a cloak on and his
crush-hat in his hand.
"I am glad to see you, Addison," he said.
The dogs shook themselves up onto their legs and laid their heads against
his knees.
"Lawler, please bring my gruel."
"Yes, sir."
"Addison, will you have brandy or whisky?"
"Whisky, please, doctor."
Lawler took his master's cloak and hat, and the doctor came up to the
fire.
"So Valentine has gone home to bed?" he said.
"Yes."
"He's all right, I hope?"
"Yes. Indeed, doctor, I thought him looking more fit than usual to-day,
more alive than I have often seen him."
"I noticed that last night, when he revived from his trance. It struck me
very forcibly, very forcibly indeed. But you--" and the doctor's eyes
were on Julian's face--"look older than your age to-night, my boy."
He sat down and lit a cigar. The mastiffs coiled themselves at his feet
rapturously. They sighed, and he sighed too, quietly in satisfaction.
He loved the one hour before midnight, the hour of perfect rest for him.
Putting his feet on Rupert's back, he went on:
"Last night's events upset you seriously, I see, young and strong though
you are. But the most muscular men are more often the prey of their
nervous systems than most people are aware. Spend a few quiet days. Fence
in the morning. Ride--out in the country, not in the Park. Get off your
horse now and then, tie him up at a lych-gate and sit in a village
church. Listen to the amateur organist practising 'Abide with me,' and
the 'Old Hundredth,' on the Leiblich Gedacht and the Dulciana, with the
bourdon on the pedals. There's nothing like that for making life seem a
slow stepper instead of a racer. And take Valentine with you. I should
like to sit with him in a church at twilight, when the rooks were going
home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of
holidays."
"Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes; I am feeling a bit out of sorts
to-night. Last night, you see--and then to-day."
"Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting--but no, forgive me.
I've got your promise. Well, what is it?"
Julian replied quickly:
"That man I told you about, Marr, is dead."
Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent allusions
to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had impressed him as it
had impressed Valentine. However, he only said:
"Heart disease?"
"I don't know. There is going to be an inquest."
"When did he die?"
"Last night, or rather at four in the morning; just as Valentine came out
of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the clock striking?"
"Certainly, I do. But why do you connect the two circumstances?"
"Doctor, how can you tell that I do?"
"By your expression, the tone of your voice."
"You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told Valentine
so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."
"You have just come from that deathbed now?"
"Yes."
Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left
to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of
the dead man.
"He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him,"
he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction
possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."
"The man was gone, you see, Addison."
"Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the
body?"
"Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs
and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an
impression."
"But there was something more here,--more than peace. There was a--well,
a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an
atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."
The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a
small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky,
and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor,
still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he
sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting
there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted
gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes
fixed on the fire. He did not speak again until he was half way through
his gruel. Then he said:
"And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history?"
"No; nothing."
"I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of study. If
I knew it I might understand the startling change from the aspect of evil
to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man must have been far less
evil than you thought him, for dead faces express something that was
always latent, if not known, in the departed natures. Ignorantly, you
possibly attributed to Marr a nature far more horrible than he ever
really possessed."
But Julian answered:
"I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was one of
the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. I never felt
about any man as I did about him! And he impressed others in the same
way."
"I wish I had seen him," Doctor Levillier said.
An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him.
"He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say?"
"Yes."
"How? In what way, exactly?"
Julian hesitated.
"It's difficult to say," he answered. "Awfully difficult to put such a
thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great power of
intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he suggested a bad,
a damnably bad, character. A woman said to me once about him that it was
like an emanation."
"Ah!"
The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table beside
him.
"By the way, where did Marr live? Anywhere in my direction? Would he, for
instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by Regent Street?"
"I don't know at all where he lived."
"Have you ever seen him with animals,--with dogs, for instance?"
"No."
"If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have avoided him."
"Well, but dogs avoid perfection too."
"Hardly, Addison."
"But Rip and Valentine!"
The remark struck the doctor; that was obvious. He pushed his right foot
slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking up the dog's
loose skin in heavy folds.
"Yes," he said; "Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do you mean
to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine to-day?"
"This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had touched him,
I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put him out of the room."
"H'm!"
"Isn't it unaccountable?"
"I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If Rupert and
Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it would strike at my
heart more fiercely than the deed of any man could."
He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back.
"The cheap satirist," he said, "is forever comparing the fickleness
of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that.
I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many men
whom I could, and would, implicitly trust."
"There is one, doctor, whom we both know."
"Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. And yet his
own dog flies at him."
Doctor Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly
that he could not dismiss it from his mind.
"There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said; "yet with
all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I cannot divine it.
Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cresswell. Look after his health.
Notice if he seems natural and happy. Does he eat as usual?"
"Rather. He did to-day."
"And he seems contented with you?"
"Quite."
"Well, all I can say is, that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog nature.
He is uncanny."
"Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. "But everything has become
uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into
the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool,
or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems
different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, I imagine--"
He broke off. Then he said:
"By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my
mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum."
"It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at
White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it
is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black
Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your
lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again."
He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said:
"You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to
call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male
muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and
the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget
Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And
don't ask Valentine to go away with you."
The last remark surprised Julian.
"But why not?" he asked.
"Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have
turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind
is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself,
two people only, Marr and Cresswell."
"Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed,
like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round.
That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our
sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually
began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because--well--"
"Yes."
"Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our
last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind.
Could--could its exercise cause injury to his health?"
But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete
and self-possessed manner.
"Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them
together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away
to-morrow."
"I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?"
"Your friendship, my boy."
Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair, and they smoked in silence, both
of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night-hour.
Since he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had been much
happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated until now scarcely
a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight
of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room,
gave the _coup de grâce_ to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened
excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the
power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among
all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at
the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's
ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and
comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of
their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of
large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their
fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The
delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction,
sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell
with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them
slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on
presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and
of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence
now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence
rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily
as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end. And the grey
ashes dropped away of their own accord, and Julian's mind shed its grey
ashes too and glowed serenely. The dogs expanded their warm bodies on the
hearth, and his nature expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity
of mute evening emotion.
"How comfortable this is, doctor," he murmured at last.
"Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go slowly
from his lips. "I wish I could give to all the poor creatures in this
city just one good hour."
They smoked their cigars out.
"I ought to go," Julian said lazily.
"No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a pleasure. It
loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night, you and I can get no
harm from the experiment."
He handed Julian the cigar-box.
"We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, looking at
their happiness with a shining satisfaction. "Here are the matches. Light
up."
Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second cigar,
and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace.
Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick,
chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt
a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.
Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's
patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out
of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his
ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest
attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up
and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs
contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less
readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over
out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the
dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under
his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre
of his being. He said to Julian:
"The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have
heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well,
Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."
Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him a push,
expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to
sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and
stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.
"What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.
As he spoke a bell rang in the house.
"Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a
patient, no doubt."
As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward and
barked. He remained beside the door, waiting, while Mab barked too,
nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of Lawler,
who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the stairs from
the servants' part of the house. It passed them on its errand to the
front door, but during its passage the excitement of the two dogs
rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously and to bristle.
"I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without
anxiety.
As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch go and
the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the dogs were
now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage intentness,
showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if sentinels
on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in the hall, but
more than Lawler's. Evidently the man was returning towards the room
accompanied by somebody from the street. The doctor was keenly observing
the mastiffs, and just as Lawler's hand struck upon the handle of the
door to turn it, he suddenly called out sharply:
"Lawler, you are not to open the door!"
And as he called, the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and caught
their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to get away, but
he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient Lawler was heard on the
hither side of the door, saying:
"I beg your pardon, sir."
The doctor said hastily to Julian:
"These dogs will tear the person who has just come into the house to
pieces if we don't take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison."
Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination under
his grasp.
"Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. "Does he wish to see
me?"
"If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back for Mr.
Addison."
Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.