the swirling of the waters displaced by our keel. The good doctor
slept on the cabin sofa opposite my berth, and once or twice rose in
the night hours to attend to my wants. On the following morning I had
completely recovered, and news to this effect having been bruited
throughout the ship, various uninvited visitors came to inspect the
castaway in Dr Wayne's cabin. At my urgent entreaty I was spared a
good many of these intrusions, but my kind protector could not well
exclude the baboon-faced captain, whose empurpled visage framed in
masses of ochre hair thrust itself more than once through the doorway
and inquired in rasping accents after my welfare. The bibulous ship's
surgeon too invaded my retreat, and expressed a desire to astonish my
stomach with special concoctions of his own mixing. Good Dr Wayne did
all that was possible to save me from these well-meaning persons, and
finally he closed the cabin door on the pretence of my exhaustion. Left
thus in peace, my companion began to address me seriously in regard to
certain matters. I had so far refrained from giving the name I bore on
earth, and was firmly resolved not to betray it, nor could any attempt
draw the required information from me. Acknowledging his failure, the
Doctor with a sigh of resignation desisted to apply, at the same time
begging me to mention some name, a fictitious one if I were so minded,
for the benefit of the authorities on landing. The suggestion seemed
reasonable enough, and after some further parley I agreed to accept
temporarily the absurd name of Theodore King, concerning which Dr Wayne
made some jocose observations. In the name then of Theodore King, man
rescued at sea in latitude 38° by longitude 18° or thereabouts, was my
official report endorsed, and in this nominal disguise I was eventually
disembarked at Liverpool stage.
But for the all-pervading sensation caused by the recent declaration
of war and the many ramifying minor excitements of the moment, I much
doubt whether this ingenious attempt at self-concealment would have
succeeded so easily. But for this crucial event I might easily have
become a centre of inquisitive interest that would have caused great
inconvenience and delay; as it so fell, however, everybody on board the
_Orissa_ was far too engrossed with the supreme agitation of the moment
to pay much attention to the eccentric, not to say insane, individual
who had been picked up from a collapsed aeroplane off the coast of
Portugal.
With special insistence and appeal and with arguments whose soundness
I was forced to admit, I had even allowed Dr Wayne to clip my
super-abundant locks, and had likewise consented to clothe myself in a
tolerable suit of blue serge, which he had begged from a good-natured
passenger of unusual height. Thus clad and groomed, I managed to
leave the boat in company with my careful protector without exciting
overmuch curiosity either from my fellow-travellers of the _Orissa_ or
from the crowd on the landing-stage. After a certain amount of staring
and a good many inquiries, which Dr Wayne skilfully parried, I found
myself in a cab loaded with the Doctor's luggage jolting through the
squalid streets of Liverpool on our way to a hotel. Here we spent a few
hours in a private room, surrounded by masses of newspapers which my
companion set to study with intense eagerness.
And here I shall digress a little in order to confront a real
difficulty of understanding which must have already struck the reader.
How evolved it that a complete stranger like Dr Charles Wayne allowed
himself to be so burdened with such an incubus as myself? That is a
query, I admit, which none save Dr Wayne is competent to answer, but I
suspect even he can hardly solve the difficulty satisfactorily. When he
comes to read these pages in due course, he may conceivably be able to
say, "It was this," or "It was that, which not only aroused my interest
in this mysterious being but also impelled me to serve and obey him
henceforward." Yet even then I think he will fail to analyse truthfully
the different motives which induced him thus to surrender his own
freedom of action and to place himself without a murmur at my disposal.
It may have been my piteous condition of solitude; it may have been my
almost unearthly beauty of form and face; it may have been my uncanny
misfortune out in mid-ocean; it may have been my quiet arrogance and
originality of demeanour; it may have been his professional curiosity
in a prospective patient;--it may have been one, or some, or all, or
none of these things which contributed to his subservience. I cannot
tell, and I feel Dr Wayne may be no wiser in the matter than myself.
Sometimes I imagine that some faint exhalation of the supernatural
must cling around my person, for it does not seem impossible to me
that after adventures such as mine a delicate psychical fragrance (if
I may so dare to describe that which is in reality indescribable) may
permeate my bodily husk. Such an aroma, though but dimly comprehended,
might admittedly prove of irresistible attraction to that rare
spiritual type of humanity to which I strongly hold Dr Wayne to belong
in spite of his homely exterior. I trust he will pardon the apparent
impertinence of this statement, since it proceeds from the sole being
who has been able to discover and appreciate the inherent sweetness and
strength of his soul within. And for my own part I am often haunted by
the notion, which I have scarcely the temerity to express in writing,
that it was not the mere mundane accident of an accident that led Dr
Wayne to embark on the _Orissa_ where later on he was brought into such
close contact with myself in my hour of need.
VII
We left Liverpool in the late hours of a brilliant August afternoon on
our way to London. Throughout the journey southward I lay back dreamily
in my seat, watching each receding vista and appreciating all with the
dual interest of recollection and novelty. I preferred to recline thus
in silence, and my companion, whose frequent inquisitions of my face
in no wise disturbed me, seemed disinclined to resent my mood. Arrived
at Euston we proceeded to a certain hotel on the Embankment which
perpetuates a historic name and whose latter-day luxury is tempered by
the near presence of a mouldy but modernised chapel, that can still
claim to be a royal appanage. Dr Wayne had at first demurred to my
choice of this particular hostelry, which is decidedly not celebrated
for the moderation of its bills; but as in all else his opposition soon
relaxed before my repeated desire. Accordingly it was I who engaged
what I deemed a convenient and adequate suite of rooms, wherein we
installed ourselves without further ado. My new surroundings in many
ways attracted me, and we had not been an hour in the hotel before I
was ensconced in a corner of the exiguous balcony outside our windows,
lost in contemplation of the noble tawny flood swirling seaward
through lines of sparkling lamps. Before retiring to sleep, however,
I deemed it only fair to allay the evident apprehensions of Dr Wayne
concerning expense. Accordingly I produced and untied my small leather
wallet, emptying its shower of flashing jewels on to a table beneath
a powerful electric lamp. The Doctor, who owned some superficial
acquaintance with the science of metallurgy, was amazed at this sudden
display of concentrated wealth, and henceforward appeared fully
reconciled to our present mode of life.
[I may add here also that in the course of the next few days my friend
carried a portion of these superb gems to a diamond merchant in the
city who was personally known to him. This London dealer, so Dr Wayne
informed me, could not repress his admiration of these glittering
trifles, which, in spite of the unfavourable condition of the market
induced by the war, he was soon able to dispose of, presumably with
a handsome commission for his services. Be that as it may, a sum of
eight hundred pounds was thus realised, and this money I insisted on
Dr Wayne, to his evident reluctance, placing to his credit at his own
bank. "Point d'argent; point de Londres"; at any rate I had solved for
the nonce any question of financial difficulties.]
My impressions of London were so confused in this early stage of the
great European War that I see little gain in attempting to crystallise
my feelings into any sort of description. Indeed, I found it well-nigh
impossible to attune my own thoughts to the popular attitude of the
moment; but then I never ceased to remind myself that of necessity
I was detached from a purely patriotic outlook owing to my long
residence in Meleager with its consequent effects on a plastic mind
that had definitely grown to regard the Earth and all therein as things
left behind for evermore. The excited talk and scandal of the hotel
corridors, the sheaves of redundant telegrams affixed from time to time
on the public screens, the yells of the newsvendors, the headlines of
the popular journals announcing English, French, Russian, Belgian and
Servian victories in endless succession; the _brouhaha_ of the streets
and the gossip of the boudoir, all alike left me cold and phlegmatic.
Dr Wayne used to read aloud to me daily from half-a-dozen papers, for I
had signally failed to reacquire my long-suspended love of reading; but
I was unable to grasp more than the patent fact that the fate of Paris
was hanging in the balance:--Paris, the city of light and leadership;
Paris the capital of Saint Louis, of Henry of Navarre, of Louis le Roi
Soleil, of Napoleon Buonaparte; Paris, the erstwhile acme of my earthly
ideals. Doubtless it was my own obliquity and rustiness of mind that
caused this lamentable lack of comprehension of the situation as a
whole, and prevented me from viewing it through those same rosy glasses
of insular humour wherewith the bulk of my countrymen were regarding
the trend of passing events on the Continent. I knew myself to be at
best an amphibian, with my body on Earth and my heart in Meleager, yet
capable of a residence in either planet. I felt lost and lonely in this
city of reek and confusion, whose inhabitants probably outnumbered the
whole tale of my own forsaken people. After a week or so I ceased to
find solace in wandering amid streets and churches and galleries, and
spent more hours than ever in musing with my eyes directed towards the
river, the shipping and the steeples that clove the hot blue August
sky. Dr Wayne meanwhile was busied with many matters, such matters as
would presumably engage the attention of a time-expired Indian public
servant; and from my peculiar tincture of indifference I was equally
resigned to his absence or his presence, provided only he did not
desert me, of which contingency I had no fear whatsoever.
With the sudden salvation of Paris at a critical moment and the ensuing
German retreat from the Marne, the cloud of foreboding was partially
lifted from me, without however quickening any fresh growth of interest
within. Yet I listened to Dr Wayne's daily budget of news, and
comported myself with conventional intelligence on the rare occasions
that I found myself brought into contact with the Doctor's friends,
who apparently regarded me as an interesting case, a sort of God's
fool, in Dr Wayne's charge, in which impression I was naturally averse
to undeceive them, for such a view at present suited my comfort and
convenience.
September was now well advanced, and I much doubt if ever I should have
achieved the desire, still less the determination, to leave a place I
felt too languid to dislike but for a critical incident which I was
half-hoping, half-dreading to occur. One afternoon Dr Wayne entered
my room in an excited state and with unwonted heat began to dilate on
a curious adventure he had just experienced in the hotel itself. It
seems that on his return he noticed in the vestibule of the hall two
diminutive swarthy foreigners seated in the middle of a miscellaneous
mass of rugs, shawls, laces, cushions, ornaments of brass and other
objects, all of Oriental appearance, though the Doctor assured me
of obvious British or German manufacture. Dr Wayne, who, as I have
already hinted, was an enthusiastic patriot, became somewhat nettled
on seeing all this trumpery displayed for sale during so serious an
epoch, albeit several expensively dressed women were already hovering
round the men and their wares, like moths attracted to some sugary
compound. The vendors, who had graceful manners and spoke fluent though
broken English, called themselves vaguely "Indians," which statement on
Dr Wayne's searching questions they qualified by remarking they were
loyal subjects of the Indian Empire. The Doctor's rising suspicions
were by no means appeased by this explanation; but on finding that the
hotel servants as well as the hovering females resented his method
of cross-examination, and were inclined to champion these Eastern
peddlers, he ultimately desisted and retreated upstairs to vent his
tale into my ears. I listened to him with that polite aloofness which
has grown to be a second habit of nature with me, at first with faint
attention, but ere long as he proceeded with intense though concealed
agitation. For the detailed description of the pair of merchants in
the hall below promptly convinced me of the accuracy of my first
impression--that these Indian peddlers were no other than envoys from
Meleager who had traced their erring King hither.
I wonder if my reader has ever experienced Fear. And by Fear I do not
mean mere fright, or terror, or alarm, or other mental spasms with
which Fear is so often vulgarly confused. If he reads Mr Kipling's
poems about Mowgli, the little hunter of the jungle, he will obtain
some inkling of that mysterious emotion which is in reality man's
tribute to a relentless destiny.
"Very softly down the glade runs a waiting watching shade,
And the whisper spreads and widens far and near;
And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now--
He is Fear, O little Hunter, he is Fear!
And thy throat is shut and dried, and thy heart against thy side
Hammers: Fear, O little Hunter--this is Fear."
Yes, Fear in one aspect is a physical recognition of the existence
and the approach of the Unknown; and its external symptoms are first
of all an involuntary erection of the hair of the head, a sensation
of intense heat in the scalp and a subsequent exudation of chill
sweat over the body, which last offers some relief to the internal
or psychical lesion caused by Fear. I endured it then, as I suddenly
realised in the midst of Dr Wayne's half-humorous discourse that I
was a fly caught in the web of Fate; a victim rotating on the wheel
of destiny; an atom of humanity that was urgently required for the
completion of some great cosmic design....
It passed; thank God, It passed; and moreover It left me stronger and
wiser than before. Very likely those honest penetrating grey eyes of
my companion detected my fleeting wave of anguish, but he only kept
an eloquent silence; and when a few minutes later I expressed a wish
to descend and interview these alleged Indian wanderers, he offered
neither comment nor opposition.
On reaching the vestibule I found the two foreign traders conversing
amiably with a youthful frock-coated manager, for the fashionable
ladies had evacuated the hall in pursuit of the tea and the music which
were being provided in a distant chamber. At my approach the Indians
took no farther notice of me than by smiling blandly and by indicating
the various articles spread at their feet. Meanwhile the supercilious
young manager addressed me: "Your friend Dr Wayne seems to think we are
encouraging spies or bad characters here; but so far as I can judge,
these men are only Indian hucksters, and several of our ladies are very
pleased with the bargains they have bought this afternoon. What do you
make of them, sir?"
"I believe," said I slowly, envisaging the two Meleagrian nobles,
envoys to our Earth disguised in the mean garments of Oriental
mountebanks, "from their features and their dress these men hail from
the Nicobar Islands, where I once held an official post."
And in the most natural and condescending manner I could command I
straightway began to question the two smiling pseudo-merchants in
Meleagrian.
"Are you here in order to kill me?"
To which sentence with a grin of pleased recognition and a sweeping
obeisance the elder of the pair replied with downcast eyes:
"Far be such evil thoughts from us! We seek to entreat your Majesty's
return to your sorrowing subjects in Meleager!"
"Aha!" cried I triumphantly in English to the admiring clerk;
"they _are_ Nicobarians!" (I might just as safely have styled them
Baratarians so far as he was concerned!) "I thought I could not be
mistaken."
And thus the serious farce continued to be enacted for some little time
in the presence of an outsider, all blissfully ignorant of the fact
that he was over-hearing a colloquy of prime importance between two
ambassadors of another planet and their run-away king.
I need not add that I was successful in convincing the worthy manager
of the genuine character and zealous loyalty of these two dwellers in
one of the obscure outlying dependencies of our Indian Empire, so that
he was in excellent temper when a sudden summons called him away to the
telephone. His withdrawal enabled us to continue our conversation with
greater ease, my interlocutors imploring me to reconsider my decision
to remain on Earth. Not to prolong this narrative, I shall only add
here that finally I consented to meet these envoys again after an
interval of one month, by which date I hoped to arrive at a definite
decision as to my future course of action. In any event, I pleaded for
a breathing-space wherein to digest all the extraordinary adventures of
the past few months. Finally, though not over-willingly, they consented
to this respite, and then in token of our mutual pact we three
simultaneously in accordance with the Meleagrian practice touched our
breasts with all ten fingers, a gesture that implies a most solemn oath
in cases where the more elaborate ritual is undesirable or difficult to
effect.
My last question was directed to their possible difficulty in tracing
my whereabouts, for having formed no plans I could not therefore inform
them of my movements. But such an objection evidently offered no
difficulties to the Meleagrians who only smiled and straightway began
to proffer me certain of their goods with a noisy plausibility that
formed a perfect imitation of the methods of that humble class whose
functions and personality they had usurped. I at once set to chaffer
with affected eagerness, with the result that a returning queue of
bedizened leaders of fashion, the majority of them with cigarettes in
their mouths, entered the hall in time to observe a tall, fair and
distinguished-looking gentleman (obviously an Englishman) finally
decide to purchase for three guineas a long, soft chuddah shawl which
its vendor was folding and twirling before his eyes with easy grace.
Having secured my shawl with the requisite cash, the second trader now
sidled towards me holding in both his slender brown hands an ornamental
casket which he pressed upon me with many encomiums in quaint broken
English. A mere flicker of light in the tail of his eye afforded me
the necessary hint to accept the box, for which I paid a pound or
so. The Indian then wrapped my bargain with much ceremony in blue
crinkled paper and carefully deposited it in my hands, wherein it lay
heavy as lead. There followed a casual nod on my part, met by elegant
salaams to the wealthy sahib, and the next moment I was ascending the
staircase with my shawl and box, pursued by the inquiring glances of
the astonished ring of ladies.
On gaining my bedroom I cautiously unlocked the casket, which I found
was filled to overflowing with English sovereigns and bank-notes. I did
not happen to need them, but at least I was touched by the agreeable
thought that the donors did not desire their king to suffer the straits
of penury in the coming interval of waiting.
VIII
I found Dr Wayne quite ready to acquiesce in my newly formed decision
to leave London; indeed, I fancy he still owned some qualms concerning
the style and expense of our present abode. The only question that
now remained was whither should we proceed. It was the Doctor and
not myself who ultimately settled this point, for he had set to
search the advertisement columns of his numerous journals, and after
much hesitation had lighted on the notice of a Welsh hotel which on
reflection commended itself also to my choice. The place was named
Glanymôr and was situated on the southern shores of Cardigan Bay at a
convenient distance from a small county town. It doubtless possessed
the double advantage of quiet and remoteness, the two qualities of
locale I especially demanded, so that after some farther discussion
I asked Dr Wayne to make the necessary arrangements for our proposed
sojourn there. In four days' time therefore from the date of the
incident of the Indian peddlers, we were able to leave Paddington
Station on our way towards the spot selected, where I looked to obtain
the peace and solitude essential for me to refresh my jaded brain and
to provoke it to some definite conclusion. I left London without a pang
of regret, but also without any pleasurable enthusiasm for the change
of air and scene I was seeking; so languid and detached was my outlook
towards the future.
After several hours of travelling westward, after noon we reached a
large market town of South Wales where a hired motor car was awaiting
us. It was a glorious day, cool, calm and bright, with the tang of
autumn in the air but the guise of summer still masking the face of
Nature. Ere long we were speeding through a district of tall hazel
hedges and small fields in endless succession, recalling at times an
immense rural chess-board set amidst steep hills of no distinction of
outline but with their grassy flanks relieved in many places by patches
of autumnal gorse, of roseate ling and of murrey bracken. Little rills,
peeping through miniature thickets of delicate lady fern, coursed here
and there down the slopes, and at times we were skirting the bank of
a torrent with golden-brown peat-stained waters circling and curling
around mossy boulders. In many places the hedge banks were still gay
with hawkweeds, scabious and belated foxgloves. Already the charm
of the revisited Earth was beginning to arouse my sluggish spirits,
and the sight of this mountain brook with its suggestions of a happy
childhood that delighted in rambling and fishing began to stir the
clogged and mantled pool of my earthly memory. Here at any rate was
still the Earth, the beloved Earth radiant and unspoiled, the Earth
untainted by the deadly miasma of modern progress which is striving
with too evident success to convert the whole world into grey suburban
uniformity and ugliness. Next we sped through a squalid hamlet compact
of raw stuccoed chapels, of tin-roofed cottages and blatant villas of
shrieking prosperity; and the late burgeoning of my earthy affections
was rudely nipped. Nevertheless, we had soon quitted the ghastly modern
township with its ill-dressed and ill-favoured inhabitants, and started
to descend by a long gentle declivity to a broad bottom, for we were
crossing the lofty watershed between two important Welsh rivers. We
finally reached a wide valley cleft by a noble stream that was now a
deep silent volume of water overhung by woods of oak and larch, and now
a series of broad gushing shallows whose leaping waves broke merrily
over opposing snags and rocks. At intervals we passed prosperous farms,
old-fashioned country houses that seemed haunts of ancient peace,
and stretches of rich pasture that were contiguous with the river's
meanderings. Out of this delectable valley we ascended a sharp rise
and, avoiding a moderate-sized country town, at length we reached an
exposed hill-top which afforded us the prospect of the estuary of
the river we had so lately left behind. Some two miles farther ahead
our goal was attained, after traversing a tract of sand dunes whose
desiccated soil gave sustenance to clumps of glaucous sea-holly and
prickly bushes of the sand-rose that at this season bore large sorbs
of burnished purple. The hotel itself, a gaunt, rambling, recently
erected structure, was perched on the rim of a precipitous range of
cliffs. It was certainly a blot upon the landscape; but its interior
promised solid comfort, whilst the hearty welcome of the landlord,
bereft of his usual tale of summer boarders, made plenteous reparation
for the lack of such luxury as we had bidden adieu to in London.