THE STRANGE VISITATION
THE
STRANGE VISITATION
BY
MARIE CORELLI
AUTHOR OF “THE LIFE EVERLASTING” “THELMA” “HOLY
ORDERS” “THE SORROWS OF SATAN” ETC. ETC.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
THE
STRANGE VISITATION
A wild night, with a gale of wind, a wind that scratched and tore
and howled at doors and windows like an angry cat spitting and
spluttering--its miauling voice now rising, now sinking--at one moment
savage, at another querulous, but always incessant of complaint,
with a threatening under snarl of restless rage in its tone. A wild
night!--full of storm and quarrel, with occasional dashes of cold rain
sweeping down on the shrieking blast like gusts of angry tears--a noisy
night in which the elements were at open war with themselves, making
no secret of their hostile intentions--and yet it was the one night of
all nights in the year when “peace and goodwill” were the suggested
influences of the time. For it was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve! What a
wonderful anniversary it is, if we would but pause in our reckless and
senseless rush onward to the grave, just to think quietly about it for
a moment! Long, long ago--yet but a short while since--if we count by
the world’s great epochs of civilisation wherein a little two thousand
years are but a moment--a host of Angels descended from heaven and sang
a joyous hymn of general amnesty to mankind on the first Christmas
Eve that ever was--and according to the noble poesy of high-thinking,
God-revering John Milton:
“No war or battle’s sound
Was heard the world around,
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The unhookèd chariot stood
Unstain’d with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
“And peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whisp’ring new joys to the mild oceàn,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmèd wave!”
One wonders if--in those far-off days of angel-singing--there was
such a thing as a millionaire? Not a merely “rich” man;--not a “Wise
Man of the East,” who, possessing knowledge and insight as well as
wealth, hastened to bring his gold with frankincense and myrrh, and
to lay these reverently in the humble manger which served as cradle
to a Child, whose vast power was destined to conquer and subdue
all the mightiest kings of the earth:--but an actual money-gorged,
banknote-stuffed ruler of some octopus-like “Trade,” whose tentacles
clutched and held everything within its reach--some owner of huge
factories where human creatures “sweated” their lives out to fill his
pockets, and died in their hundreds,--perchance their thousands--in
order that he, like some monstrous bloated leech, should swell to the
point of bursting on the blood he sucked from their throbbing arteries!
Was there such an one existing in the miracle days when the “Glory to
God in the Highest!” rang from star to star, from point to point of the
myriad constellations, like a great wave of melody breaking against
illimitable and endless shores? Surely not!--else there would have
been some break in the music!--some ugly jar in the divine chorus! For
instance, if there had at that time been living a multi-millionaire
at all resembling the one whose strange experiences are now about to
be related, the angels would have fled in dismay and weeping from the
spectacle of a soul so warped from good, so destitute of sympathy, so
drained and dry of every drop of the milk of human kindness, and so
utterly at variance with the “peace and goodwill” of which they sang!
Yet no one will deny that a multi-millionaire is a great man. What
multi-millionaire was ever considered otherwise? It was the glorious
environment of multi-millionaire-ism that made Josiah McNason
great--and Josiah McNason was a very great man indeed. Quite apart
from his connection with you and me, dear reader, as the immediate
subject of this story, he was great in business, great in success,
great in wealth, great in power, and more than great in his own
opinion. Small wonder that he thought much of himself, seeing that
thousands of people thought so much of him. Thousands of people had
him on their minds, and lay awake at nights, uneasily wondering
what might be his next financial “deal.” For on his little finger
he balanced mighty “combines.” At his nod “companies” collapsed
like card-houses, or rose up again with the aerial brilliancy of
“castles in Spain,”--the pulse of Trade beat fast or slow as suited
his humour,--speculators on ’Change whispered his name in accents of
mingled hope and terror,--aye, even kings were known not to be averse
to receiving Josiah in private audience, though they might, and did,
deny the privilege to such others of their subjects whose plea was
one of merit more than cash. The fact stood out very patently to both
royalty and commons alike, that Josiah McNason was a man to be reckoned
with,--a man to be studied and considered,--a man whose moods must be
tolerated, and whose irritations must be soothed,--a man to be coaxed
and coddled,--a man to whom the highest personages in the land might
safely--(and even advantageously)--send presents of grouse and salmon
in their seasons,--a man whom it was considered politic not to offend.
But why? Why all this trouble and anxiety from Majesty itself down
to toiling bank-clerks, with respect to the fits and vagaries of one
puny biped, neither handsome to look at, nor pleasant to speak with,
but merely, taken as nature made him, an irascible, cut-and-dry pigmy
of a man, not worth either a curse or a blessing, to judge by his
outward appearance? Oh well! Merely because, by speaking him fair and
flatteringly, it might be easier to borrow money of him! Everyone with
even a small surplus quantity of this world’s goods, knows the taste of
that diplomatic bread-and-honey which is always cautiously administered
by one dear friend to some other whose pockets are to be tested. Josiah
got such bread-and-honey all day long. Someone was always feeding or
trying to feed him with it. His appetite however was fastidious, and
he seldom swallowed the cloying bait. Even when he did gulp down a
large wedge of it with a distrustful smile, it did not have the effect
intended. Instead of softening his financial digestion and rendering
him pliable, it appeared to make him harder and tougher in mental
fibre. The gleam in his cold expressionless eye bored through the
soul of the would-be-borrower of cash like a gimlet, and divined his
intention before the said borrower could so much as mumble out--“Could
you--would you, Mr. McNason--make me a trifling advance?--offer good
security--great convenience to me just now!”--trailing the sentence
away into indistinguishable fragments as Josiah snapped his thin pale
lips on the “No!” which, with sharp snarling sound, hopelessly closed
the discussion.
It was Christmas Eve,--and though this fact has already been stated
before, it cannot for the purposes of the present veracious chronicle
of events be too strongly insisted upon. It was the Eve of the
Angels,--and no devils were supposed to be anywhere about. For, as our
Shakespeare tells us:--
“Ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long,
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time!”
Perhaps the great McNason, if he had not been so occupied with himself
and his own affairs, might have thought of these lines when, on
leaving his head office in the city, he travelled with the swiftness
of the wind through a storm of sleet and snow to his palatial private
abode some twenty miles out of town, rushing along at full speed in
a superb motor-car sumptuously furnished with a rain-proof covering,
rugs, foot-warmers, and all the luxurious paraphernalia wherewith a
multi-millionaire may shield his valuable joints from the cold. For he
professed, did McNason, to have Shakespearean proclivities, and had
been heard to declare publicly that he preferred the Bard of Avon to
the Bible. That was the way he put things,--with all the agreeable
free-and-easy indifference to religion and to other folks religious
sentiments which so frequently embellishes the character of the
multi-millionaire. As a matter of fact he knew nothing about either
the Immortal Plays or Holy Writ. They were sealed books to his limited
comprehension. The divine teachings of Scripture, and the broadly
beneficent and tender philosophy of Shakespeare were alike beyond him.
He understood Ledger Literature in its every branch,--every smallest
point concerning L.S.D. was familiar to him,--and such “quotations”
from books as he could make, were intimately connected with the Stock
Market. But for all romance he had a fine contempt, and for poetry and
poetic sentiment a saturnine derision. More than anything perhaps,
he hated and scorned any idea of things “supernatural.” He attended
church very regularly on Sundays,--oh yes!--that was a particular
item of “conscience and respectability” with him. But as everything
he heard there had to do with “supernatural” matters, it is safe to
presume that he was a hypocrite in going to listen to what he did not
believe. However, in this he was not exceptional,--there are many like
him. “Respectability” may be permitted to play the humbug when it is a
millionaire, and drives to its country seat in a motor-car costing two
thousand guineas, especially on Christmas Eve, which--despite colossal
fortune-makers--remains indissolubly associated in the human mind with
Poverty and a Manger. And it was with all the glow and splendour of
humbug shining lustrously about him that the world-renowned McNason
stepped out of his sumptuous vehicle as it stopped at his own door, and
entered his stately baronial hall, where four powdered and liveried
flunkeys stood waiting deferentially to receive him. Taking scarcely
any notice of these gorgeous personages, who were in his sight no
more than flower-pots, umbrella stands, or other portions of ordinary
household furniture, he addressed himself to a fifth retainer, severely
attired in black, who, by a set of cords and tassels on his left
shoulder and the effective simplicity of his costume as compared with
the liveries of the other menials, implied to all whom it might concern
that he was the commanding officer or major-domo of the royal McNason
household.
“Anybody called, Towler?”
“Yessir. Mr. Pitt.”
“Mr. Pitt? Dear me! I saw him only this morning at the office. What did
he want?”
“I couldn’t say, sir. He is waiting to see you.”
“Waiting? Here--at this hour?”
“Yessir. In the library.”
With a frown of irritation, the great Josiah threw off his sable-lined
overcoat, which was received obsequiously by one of the powdered
lacqueys in attendance, while a second accepted his hat with an air of
grateful and profound humility. Then he walked slowly, deliberately,
not to say in heavy-footed style, along a broad corridor, dimly yet
richly lit by electric light filtering through coloured glass, where
classic marbles were artistically grouped here and there in snowy
contrast with the dark fall of velvet draperies and pyramidal masses
of flowers,--where Venus gazed from under her sleepless lids, with
white eyeballs astare at the ugly little man who passed her without
looking up,--where Mercury, poising on tip-toe with winged heels,
appeared to meditate an immediate flight from the wizened, wrinkled,
moneyed creature below him who was so far and away from any conception
of the god-like--and where Psyche, bending over the butterfly in her
small caressing hands, seemed almost to shudder lest the very breath
of the celebrated millionaire should shrivel the delicate expanding
wings of the Immortal Soul she so tenderly fostered. Preceded by
the black-costumed Towler, who threw open various doors majestically
as he advanced, Josiah entered the library, warm and cheerful with
the red heat and glow of a sparkling log fire. A well-dressed
gentlemanly-looking man who had been sitting near the table turning
over a newspaper, rose as he approached and stood a moment without
speaking, as though in some doubt or hesitation.
“Well, Pitt, what’s the matter? Anything gone wrong since this morning?”
“No, sir. Nothing.”
“Oh! Then what are you here for at such an hour and in such weather,
eh?”
Mr. Pitt hummed and hawed. He was one of McNason’s most trusted
overseers; and at the great factories which daily ground down human
lives into the McNason millions, he had under his management a very
large number of the men employed. The only fault that could be found
with him from a strictly business point of view was, that he had some
vestiges of a heart. These vestiges were troubling him a little just
now.
“There was one thing I forgot to mention to you in my report to-day,”
he began; “I can’t think how it slipped my memory.”
“Neither can I!” and Josiah smiled a hard smile--“Whatever it is, if
_you_ forgot it, it cannot be of much importance!”
Mr. Pitt did not seem to perceive the implied compliment to himself.
“Well, perhaps not,”--he answered slowly,--“still I should blame myself
if I neglected it--I should certainly blame myself----”
Here he broke off and coughed nervously, while McNason, drawing a large
elbow-chair to the fire, sat down and spread out his thin veiny hands
to the blaze in irresponsive silence.
“It’s--it’s about Willie Dove, sir----” he said.
McNason looked up with peering eyes that narrowed at the corners like
those of a snake.
“Willie Dove!” he echoed, slowly. “H’m--h’m--let me see! Who is Willie
Dove?”
“Surely you remember him?” replied Pitt, quickly, with a touch of
warmth in his tone--“Twenty-five years ago he was one of the smartest
travellers in your employ----”
“Was he?” And McNason smiled blandly, but indifferently.
“Why, yes of course he was!” and Mr. Pitt’s voice grew still
warmer with feeling as he spoke--“Surely, Mr. McNason, you can’t
have altogether forgotten him? He made immense business for the
firm,--immense! A wonderfully active and energetic man,--never lost
time or opportunity and brought us no end of valuable custom----”
“Quite right of him!” interpolated McNason,--“He did his duty, no
doubt, and was paid for doing it. Well?”
Mr. Pitt played absently with his watch-chain. He was conscious that a
check had been summarily put on any eloquent dissertation he might have
been disposed to make concerning the past abilities and qualifications
of Willie Dove.
“I thought--I fancied you might perhaps be interested,” he murmured.
“Twenty-five years is a long time, Pitt,” said McNason, slowly,--“a
very long time! It is a quarter of a century. One’s interest in any man
is apt to exhaust itself naturally in such a period.”
Mr. Pitt looked up quickly, and then looked down. There was something
in the hard, furrowed countenance of Josiah that suggested a mental dry
heat or dry cold,--any force in fact, that may be known to absorb or
disperse particles of generous sentiment. Yet Pitt was not a coward,
and though he stood in wholesome awe of the captious moods and whims
of the great millionaire upon whom his own existence and that of his
family depended, he determined not to relinquish the errand on which he
was bound without a struggle.
“Well, sir,” he resumed, in accents rendered firm by a kind of inward
desperation, “whether you are interested or not, I think it my duty to
tell you that Willie Dove,--the man who through his energy, fidelity
and tact, helped to establish the firm, is now lying seriously ill. He
is nearly sixty years old, and having a large family to provide for,
had been unable to put by anything for his own rainy day----”
“He should not have had a large family,”--interpolated McNason,
stretching out his lean ill-shaped legs more comfortably in front of
the fire--“it’s quite his own fault!”
“Perhaps,” proceeded Pitt, with considerable emphasis, “if he had been
less honest and high-principled in his business connection with us, he
might have been more well-to-do in his own affairs. But, as matters
stand, his position is a sad one. He is afflicted with a painful
disease, which, however, can be absolutely cured by an immediate
surgical operation. The doctors assure him that he will be well and
strong enough to live out his full measure of years comfortably and
usefully if he will only submit to their treatment----”
“Well, if he wants to live, why doesn’t he?” inquired McNason, lazily.
“Simply because he can’t afford it,” replied Pitt, bluntly.
The great millionaire took up a poker, and looking critically at the
fire, broke a large gaseous lump of coal into a bright blaze.
“Oh! Well, that settles it,” he said. “Then I suppose he must, as the
common folk say, ‘go home’!”
A sparkle of indignation lightened Mr. Pitt’s quiet grey eyes. But he
restrained his feelings.
“The operation fee would be a hundred guineas,” he went on in a calm
business-like tone--“Good nursing and a change of air would perhaps run
into a hundred more. Say two hundred pounds. That sum would save his
life.”
“I daresay!” And McNason’s thin lips widened into a grin--“But if he
hasn’t got the two hundred, he must accept the inevitable. After all,
when a man is nearly sixty, a few years more or less in the world
doesn’t matter!”
Mr. Pitt looked at his employer steadily.
“Have you any cause of complaint or offence against Dove, sir?”
McNason met his inquiring eyes with his own special gimlet glance,
sharp as the point of a screw.
“None! Not the least in the world! Why should I? I scarcely remember
the man!”
“Well, if you have nothing against him, would you not perhaps be
inclined to help him? The claims of your business are, I know,
enormous, and it is of course easy to forget the names and identities
of the various persons who have all done their little best to build
up the firm,--but Dove’s is really an exceptional case. He was always
liked and respected at the works,--many of the men there know him well
and speak most highly of him, and I can add my own testimony to that of
the others. It seems a pity to let so faithful a servant of the firm
die for want of a little first aid----”
“Did he send you to beg of me?” asked McNason with a kind of vicious
abruptness.
Mr. Pitt’s pale face flushed a little.
“Certainly not, Mr. McNason! Willie Dove would never beg of any man. He
merely told me his case and said: ‘Perhaps Mr. McNason would lend me
the money. I would work it all back.’ And to speak the truth, I really
thought--yes, sir, I really thought you would be glad to lend it!--even
to _give_ it! Two hundred pounds is no more to you than two hundred
pence would be to me. But supposing you make it a loan, and have any
doubts as to Dove’s ability or willingness to pay it back, I myself
will be security for him. I would advance him the money if I had it to
spare,--but unfortunately I am rather pressed for cash just now--I also
have a large family----”
McNason smiled a smile resembling the death-grin of the fabulous dragon
of St. George.
“A mistake, Pitt!--quite a mistake! Large families merely make the
world more difficult to live in and money scarcer to get! Money needs
to be kept in close quarters--close, very close quarters! It has a
habit of running away unless it is imprisoned, Pitt! It runs away much
faster than it runs in! Governments know that!--and kings! And when
governments and kings find it slipping through their fingers, they come
to Me!--to me, Josiah McNason!--and I tell you what it is, Pitt, I’ve
enough to do with lending money to Big Persons and taking securities on
Big Things without bothering myself concerning Little Commercials! See?
I lend to Royalties, Titles and Magnificences of all classes and all
nations,--and I’ve done so much lately in this line that I’m short of
money myself just now, Pitt!--ha, ha!--I’m short of money!”
Mr. Pitt stared, and was for a moment speechless. He had often thought
(taking shame to himself for indulging in such a reflection) that Mr.
McNason was certainly a very ugly man, but he had never seen him look
uglier than at the present moment. Such a mouthing, wrinkled mask of a
face as the firelight now flashed upon was surely not often seen among
living humanity. Even the grey-white goatee beard that adorned Josiah’s
sharp chin, wagged up and down with its possessor’s silent mirth in a
fashion which made its expression abnormally atrocious.
“I’m short of money!” repeated the millionaire, rubbing his hands
pleasantly together--“I don’t mind lending this Willie Dove five
pounds, as you say he served the firm well a quarter of a century
ago,--but two hundred! Now, Mr. Pitt, you’re a sensible man,--a man of
business,--and you know that to ask such a sum on loan for a decayed
and diseased commercial traveller is absurd! He would never be able to
‘work it back’ as he says. And as for your being his security, I have
too much respect for you to allow you to put yourself into such an
awkward position. You’d regret it,--you really would, Pitt! Besides,
why not let Dove go to one of the Hospitals and take his chance among
the young students and general cutters-up of bodies, eh? They’d charge
him very little--perhaps nothing--especially if they found his disease
complex enough for good ‘practice’!”
Mr. Pitt gave an unconscious gesture of physical repulsion.
“Mrs. Dove has a nervous horror of her husband’s being separated
from her,”--he said, slowly--“She says that if he is taken away to a
hospital she feels sure he will never come back. Then again, she has
great faith in the doctor who has been attending Dove for the past six
months--and he strongly recommends a private operation.”
“Of course! He wants to put the money into his own pocket,”--said
McNason, calmly--“Well! I can’t be of any assistance in this
business--so if that’s all you came about, you may consider that you
have done your duty, and that the interview is finished. Good-night,
Mr. Pitt!”
But Pitt still hesitated.
“It is Christmas Eve, sir,----” he began, falteringly.
“It is. I have been reminded of that fact several times to-day. What of
it?”
“Nothing, sir, except--except--that it is a time of year when everyone
tries to do some little kindness to his neighbour, and when we all
endeavour to help the poor and sick according to our means,--and--and
when some of us who are getting old may look back on our past lives
and remember the ones we have loved who are no longer here,--when even
you, sir,--you might perhaps think of your only son who is gone,--the
son of the firm, as we used to call him,--Willie Dove carried the child
many times on his shoulder round the works to see the engines in full
swing,--and he was very fond of Willie--and--er--and--as I say, sir,
you might, perhaps, for the dead boy’s sake, do a good turn----”
He paused. The millionaire had half risen from his chair, and was
gripping its cushioned elbows hard with both hands.
“How dare you!” he muttered in choked accents--“How dare you use the
memory of my dead son to urge a beggar’s plea! Why do you presume to
probe an old grief--a cureless sorrow--in an attempt to get money out
of me! Because it is Christmas Eve? Curse Christmas Eve!”
His voice sank to a hiss of rage, and Mr. Pitt, nervously shrinking
within himself, sought for his hat and made towards the door. A
terrific gust of rain just then swept against the windows like a shower
of small stones, accompanied by the shrieking yowl of the wind.
“Christmas Eve!” repeated McNason, fixing his eyes with cold derision
on his abashed overseer--“Peace and goodwill! That sounds like it,
doesn’t it?” And he shook one hand with a mocking gesture towards the
rattling casements. “Hear the storm? Any angels singing in it, do you
think? Any God about? Bah! Christmas is a vulgar superstition born of
barbarous idolatry! It serves nowadays as a mere excuse for the lower
classes to gorge themselves with food, get drunk, and generally make
beasts of themselves! There is no more ‘Peace and goodwill’ in it than
there is in a public-house beer fight! And as for doing kindnesses
to each other, I’ll be bound there’s not a man at my works who isn’t
trying to get a bigger round of beef or a fatter goose for himself
than his neighbour can afford. That’s charity! It begins at home!
_You_ know that, Mr. Pitt! Ha-ha! You know that--you have a large
family! Christmas is a humbug, like most ‘religious’ festivals”--here
he stretched his thin mouth into that unbecoming slit which suggested
smiling, but was nothing like a smile--“I never keep it--and I do my
best to forget it! Good-night!”
“Good-night, sir,”--and Mr. Pitt, hat in hand, stood for a moment
facing his employer--“I am sorry if I have troubled you--or--or
offended you! I did not mean to do so. I hope you will excuse my
boldness! I made a mistake--I thought you might be pleased to do
something for an old servant of the firm;--I--I--er--Good-night!”
The door opened and closed softly. He was gone.
McNason looked after him with a frown.
“Like his impudence!” he muttered--“Like his damned impudence!
Following me up here all the way from the city and begging me to lend
two hundred pounds to a man I hardly ever saw--except--except once
or twice when my boy was alive. Among the hundreds and hundreds of
travellers for the firm, how the devil should I be expected to remember
Willie Dove!”
He settled himself once more in his elbow-chair, and poked the fire
vigorously till the bright blaze spread a brilliant glow well over
the room, flashing ruddily on the rows of well-bound books, on the
marble busts of poets and historians, on the massive desk strewn with
letters and papers and lit with electric reading-lamps at either
end, and on all the luxurious appurtenances for the study of either
Ledgers or Literature which, in these days of superfluous comfort
and convenience, assist in furnishing the library of a millionaire.
He had dined in town, and there was nothing for him to do except to
read,--write,--or sit and meditate. He was alone,--but that was his
customary condition when in his own house, unless on those occasions
when he chose to invite a select party of persons, often including
Royalty itself, to stay with him as guests, and graze on him, as it
were, like sheep on a particularly fat pasture. But he never asked
people to visit him at all unless for the ulterior purpose of making
use of them in business; and just now he had no important object in
view that could be served by dining or wining anybody. It was an
awkward time of year,--Christmas-time, in fact. It is always an awkward
time for anyone who is incurably selfish. Those who have homes and love
them, go to such homes and stay there with their families,--those who
are callous concerning home-ties and home-affections, have been known
to start for the Riviera (especially that section of it known as Monte
Carlo) with “tourist” tickets or otherwise;--in short, everybody has a
way of doing as they like, or, if not quite as they like, as near to
what they like as they can, at that so-called “festive” season. One
naturally thinks that a multi-millionaire would surely have all the
amusements and gaieties of the world at his command,--but it seemed
that Josiah McNason could find nothing wherewith to amuse himself,
all business being at a standstill for a few days,--while as for
gaiety!--dear me, the very word could barely have been uttered by the
boldest person after one glance at his face! He sat, or rather huddled
himself in the depths of his chair with a kind of dull satisfaction in
his mind to think that in a couple of hours or so he would be going to
bed. There was a damp and chilly feeling in the air; the cry of the
incessant wind was teasing and shrewish--and he drew himself nearer to
the fire, finding comfort in its warmth and dancing flame. He began to
con over certain imposing figures representing the huge sums realized
by his firm during the past half-year,--and, with furrowed brows,--so
harshly wrinkled that his grey eyebrows met across a small chasm of
yellow sunken flesh,--he calculated that his own personal fortune had
accumulated to the colossal height of nearly twelve millions sterling.
He moistened his lips with his tongue, drawing that member between his
teeth with a sharp smacking sound as of satisfactory nut cracking.
“I think,”--he said, half aloud,--“I think the time is ripe for a
Peerage! I can spare--now, let me see!--yes!--I can spare the money!
Twenty thousand pounds to a hospital will almost do it! And perhaps
another twenty thousand in some more private quarter, and,--a little
diplomacy!” He sniggered softly and rubbed his hands. “Lord McNason
will sound well,--very well! If my son had lived----”
Here the heavy frown again made an abyss of his brow. He stared into
the fire with a kind of melancholy sullenness, and began to think.
His thinking was half involuntary, for he was not a man who cared to
dwell on memories of the past or possibilities of the present. Yet,
despite himself, he found his mind wandering through various byways of
reminiscence back to the time when he was young, with all the world
before him,--when, through the crafty instruction of an over-moneyed
American capitalist he had learned by heart that celebrated paraphrase
of a well-known divine text--“‘Do’ others as you would not be ‘done.’”
He saw himself practically adopting this rule of life and conduct
with brilliant results. He traced the beginning of the great inflow
of gold which now encrusted him and rolled him up as it were in a
yellow metallic shroud, a singular and separate creature, apart from
other men. He recalled against his own will an incident in his career
which he would fain have forgotten, when at about thirty-seven years
of age he had won the first affections of a sweet and beautiful girl
of seventeen whom afterwards he had heartlessly jilted, for no fault
of her own, but merely because her father had through sad mischance
suddenly lost his fortune. Then,--his mind persisting in its abnormal
humour of harking back like a hunted hare to old covers,--he reviewed
the circumstances of his loveless marriage with the daughter of a
millionaire who was at that time half as rich again as himself,--and
even now, though she was dead, it was not without a sense of angry
pique and nervous irritation that he remembered her utter callousness
and indifference to his personality,--her light regard for his wealth,
which she scattered recklessly on every sort of foolish extravagance
and dissipation,--and her want of natural care and affection for the
one child which she gave him,--a promising boy on whom he lavished
what infinitesimal vestiges of love still remained in his rapidly
fossilizing moral composition. He thought of all the anxiety and
cost which the education of this, his sole heir, had entailed upon
him,--anxiety which was futile, and cost which was wasted. For Death
cannot be bribed off by bullion. Typhoid fever in its most virulent
form had snatched away the boy when he was barely eleven years old,
and though the piles of gold still continued to accumulate and ever
accumulate with the workings of the great McNason firm, there was no
one to inherit the monster millions that came to birth with every fresh
turn of the business wheel. And with his disappointment, Josiah had
adopted an opposition front towards Deity. The “ways of Providence”
were to him subject for the bitterest acrimony; and though, as has
been said, he went to Church regularly on Sundays, and was, indeed,
exceptionally careful to make a public show of himself as a man
vitally interested in all Church matters, his action in this regard
may be truly represented as having been taken on the foundations of
unbelief and godless mockery. It tickled his particular vein of humour
to think that all the people in the parish where he had his country
seat thought him a really religious man. It had been so easy to get
this reputation! A few subscriptions to the rector’s pet charities;
occasional assistance in taking round the collection-plate on Sundays;
and a solemn demeanour during the sermon, had done it. But beneath
that solemn demeanour what acrid depths of diabolical atheism lurked,
only the diabolical agencies knew! He had worked his way through the
world by a judicious use of the world’s follies, obstinacies and
credulities,--he had over-reached his neighbours by making capital out
of their confidences,--and now, as much as concerned the world’s chief
god, Cash, he was at the top of the tree. True, he was getting on for
seventy, but in these days when “the microbe of old age” is on the
point of being discovered and exterminated, that was nothing. And the
toiling engine of his brain having shunted its way thus far into the
Long-Ago on a side line of its own, now came rushing swiftly back again
into the present brilliant terminus of Wealth and Power which he had so
successfully attained. And again the idea of a Peerage commended itself
to him.
“It could easily be managed--quite easily!” he mused; “And
then--perhaps--I might marry again--and marry well! Some young woman
of aristocratic birth and high connections, who wants money. There are
scores of them to be had for the asking!”
Just then the clock on the mantelpiece struck a sharp ting!-ting!-ting!
Josiah glanced at its enamelled dial and saw that it had chimed the
quarter-past eleven. The fire was burning beautifully bright and
clear,--and the warmth thrown out by the glowing coals was grateful
to his shrunken legs, loosely cased in their too ample trousers. He
decided that he would wait a little while longer before retiring to
rest. Stretching out one hand he touched the button of an electric bell
within his reach. Almost instantaneously his major-domo, the majestic
Towler, appeared.
“Towler!”
“Yessir!”
“I shall want nothing more to-night. You can go to bed.”
“Very good, sir!”
“Wake me at seven to-morrow morning.”
“Yessir! To-morrow’s Christmas Day, sir.”
“Well, what’s that to me?”
“Beg pardon, sir! Thought you might like to sleep a little later, sir.”
Josiah gazed at him grimly.
“Sleep a little later! What do you take me for, eh? D’ye think I’m such
a fool and sluggard as to want to stay in bed longer on Christmas Day
than on any other day? You ought to know me better than that! I have
plenty of work to do just the same, Christmas Day or no Christmas Day,
and I mean to do it!”
“Certainly, sir. Yessir. Seven o’clock, sir!”
“Seven o’clock, sharp!” And McNason’s thin lips closed upon the word
“sharp” like the lid of a spring matchbox.
Thereupon Towler backed deferentially towards the door.
“Good-night, sir. Merry Christmas, sir!”
And with this salutation,--which, offered to a person so distinctly
removed from merriment as was his master, seemed almost a satire,--he
disappeared.
McNason, uttering a sound between a grunt and a curse, poked the fire
again viciously, and flung on two logs from a wood-basket beside
him,--chumpy resinous logs which began to splutter and crackle directly
the heat touched them, and soon started flaring flames up the chimney
with quite a lurid torchlight glow. The storm outside had increased
in fury,--and hailstones were now mingled with the rain which dashed
threateningly against the windows with every wild circling rush of the
wind.
“Glad I’m not going to a Christmas Eve party!” thought Josiah, as he
listened to the hurrying roar of the gale--“A great many young fools
will probably catch their deaths of cold to-night,--a wise dispensation
of Nature for getting rid of surplus population!”
He stretched each end of his mouth as far as it would go,
and showed his crooked yellow teeth to the fire, this effort
being his way of laughing. The clock struck half-past
eleven,--and scarcely had its final chime died away on
the air when another and unexpected sound startled him.
Ring-ting-ting-ting!--ting-ring-ting-ting-ting!--Ring-ting-TING-TING!
“Someone at the telephone!” he said, getting out of his comfortable
chair, and hurrying to that doubtfully useful modern instrument, which,
if once fixed in a private house puts the owner of it at the disposal
of all his friends and business acquaintances who may be inclined to
“call him up” on the most trivial excuses for wasting his time--“Who
wants me at this hour, I wonder!”
He soon had his ear to the receiver, and a small, shrill and quite
unfamiliar voice came sharply across the wire.
“Hello!”
“Hello!” he rejoined.
“Hell-oh! McNason! Are you there?”
“Yes. I’m here. Who are you?”
“That’s telling!” And the shrill piping accents broke into fragments of
falsetto laughter that ran vibratingly into McNason’s ear and gave him
cold shivers down his back--“Are you at home?”
“Of course I am! Going to bed.”
“Oh! Don’t go to bed! Hell-oh! McNason, don’t go to bed! I want you!”
“Want me? What for?”
Again the broken laughter quavered along the wire in uncanny snatches.
“On business! Very important! Government loan! No delay! Great chance
for you! Peerage! Christmas Eve! Don’t go to bed!”
Josiah’s temper rose. He put his mouth to the transmitter and spoke
softly, deliberately and with concentrated viciousness.
“You’re a humbug! You’re some fool playing with the telephone because
it’s Christmas Eve, and you don’t know what else to do with yourself!
Probably you’re drunk! I don’t know you, and I don’t want to know you.
Get off my private wire!”
“Oh!” And then came a curious exclamation that sounded like “Hoo-roo!”
“Don’t say you don’t want to know me! You’ve got to know me! I’m coming
to you now! Be with you directly!”
Josiah began to feel desperate.
“Hello!” he called.
“Hell-oh!” was the prompt response.
“What’s your name?”
“Tell you when I see you! Hand you my card!”
“Hello! Can you hear what I say?”
“As plain as a penny whistle!”
“Well then, whoever you are, please understand that it’s no use your
coming all the way here to see me to-night. It’s too late! This place
is twenty miles from town and there are no trains. The house is shut
up, and I’m going to bed. Your business must wait till to-morrow!”
“To-morrow is Christmas Day!” replied the shrill voice; “To-morrow
will be here in half-an-hour! But I shall be with you before then! My
business won’t wait! It can’t! Don’t worry about getting supper for
me,--I never take any! Ta!”
Utterly mystified, McNason fell back from the telephone affected by
that strange and disagreeable sensation commonly called “nerves.” He
was not, constitutionally, a nervous man,--his mental and moral fibres
were exceptionally tough and sinewy, and though he was distinctly
snarley and irritable on the rare occasions when he could not
altogether get his own way, his temperament was neither “highly strung”
nor over-sensitive. Nevertheless, he was just now conscious of a vague
uneasiness,--the sort of physical discomfort which usually precedes a
severe chill.
“I’ve caught cold in the motor,--that’s what it is,”--he said, with
a slight shudder, “Such a beastly night as this is enough to freeze
a man’s blood! And I’m not so young as I was”--here the ugly frown
deepened on his brow--“not so young--no!--but young enough--young
enough! I’ll get into the blankets as quickly as possible.” He glanced
furtively at the telephone. “Some impudent idiot has been tampering
with my wire, that’s pretty certain! I’ll find out who it is to-morrow!
And I’ll make him pay for his fooling!”
He turned his eyes towards the fire. It was brighter than ever.
Slowly returning to the deep easy chair placed so cosily opposite the
sparkling flames, he sat down again.
“I’ll get myself thoroughly warmed through before going to bed,”--he
decided, spreading out his hands to the red glow--“I’m actually
shivering! There must be snow in the air as well as rain!”
His teeth chattered, and though the blaze from the fire was already
so strong and vivid, he used the poker again to break asunder a
half-consumed lump of coal, which on being split emitted a leaping
tongue of gaseous blue flame.
“That’s better!” he remarked approvingly, half aloud, “That looks
cheerful!”
“So it does!” said a shrill voice at his ear,--the same voice precisely
that had just called to him along his “private wire”--“Quite cheerful!
And Christmassy! As cheerful and Christmassy as yourself, McNason!”
With a violent start Josiah looked sharply round--and looking,
uttered an involuntary cry of terror. On the cushioned arm of his
elbow-chair sat, or rather squatted, an Object--a Creature--a kind
of nondescript semi-human thing such as drunkards might possibly see
in delirious dreams. It was small as regarded its Head, but large as
regarded its Paunch. It had tiny legs, thin as a chicken’s wish-bone.
It had long spidery arms with which it reached down and embraced
its turned-up toes. At a first glance it appeared to have a smooth
doll-like countenance, but with the least movement such a variety of
odd expressions came into play as to make each feature seem a different
face. Its eyes were large, and abnormally brilliant. Its hair, jet
black and very oily, was rolled back from its narrow brows in the
“all-round frame” style of the present-day coiffeur’s art, while on
the top of this inverted nest, or soup plate, it wore a conical red
cap adorned at the extreme point with a glittering fiery tassel. Its
attire--or rather that part of its body which seemed to be clothed--was
red; its attenuated arms and legs were naked, yellow, and extremely
hairy. It was more like an unpleasantly huge spider with a human head
than anything else, and though small enough to curl itself up on the
arm of an easy chair, it was yet large enough to create fear and
repulsion in the mind of even so important and powerful a personage as
a multi-millionaire. Josiah McNason was distinctly afraid of it. And
that he was so, is no discredit to him. He had never seen anything like
it before. And he had no particular wish to see anything like it again.
Yet he could not take his eyes off it. Its eyes were fixed on him
with equal pertinacity. With a mighty effort at rallying his wits he
stealthily sought for the poker,--if he could get hold of that useful
instrument with his right hand, he thought, and give that queer Shape
squatting so close at his left a heavy WHACK!--why then it would surely
break to pieces,--crumble--smash--disappear--!
“Cheerful and Christmassy like yourself, McNason!” repeated the
Creature, at this juncture--“Don’t try hitting me with the poker,
that’s a good fellow! You’ll hurt yourself if you do!--you really
will! A blow on this”--and it touched its protuberant Paunch
significantly--“would send you,--not ME!--into the middle of
Next-World’s week! And you’re not ready for Next-World’s Week yet,
McNason! There are a few little business matters concerning it which
you don’t quite understand! Live and learn, you know! And how _are_
you? You’re looking a bit lantern-jawed,--not very well preserved! I’ve
seen finer men than you at your age!”
A cold perspiration broke out all over Josiah’s body as he found
himself mysteriously compelled to meet the dreadfully glittering round
eyes of the uncanny Object that discoursed with him thus familiarly.
Faintly he managed to stammer forth--
“Who the ---- are you?”
“You were going to say ‘Who the Devil are you’--and why didn’t
you?”--retorted the Creature, rapidly untwisting one hairy arm from
the embrace of one hairy leg and diving into its red body-covering,
from which it produced a small card on which certain letters danced
and flickered like tiny dots of flame--“Who the Devil am I? Here, the
Devil, is my card! Promised you, the Devil, I would hand it to you, and
so, the Devil, I do! Name’s quite easy, you’ll find!”
With shaking fingers McNason gingerly accepted the card held out to him
by the unpleasant looking claw which served his visitor for a hand, and
with great difficulty, owing to the constant jumping up and down of
the inscribed characters, read:
PROFESSOR GOBLIN,
Hell’s United Empire Club.
McNason’s fingers shook more violently than ever, and he hastily
dropped the card, which as it fell, curled up like a firework bag in a
Christmas cracker, emitted a clear blue spark of light, and vanished
into space.
“The title of ‘Professor’ isn’t really mine,”--explained the Creature,
blinking at him with its owl-like orbs--“I took it.”
Sinking back in his chair, Josiah covered his eyes with one hand
and groaned. He must be very ill, he thought!--he must be sickening
for some fatal malady! His brain was going!--and this terrible
visitation--this hallucination of his senses, was the sign and effect
of a mental disorder which had come on suddenly and was rapidly growing
worse! How long--how long would it last!
“Lots of fellows do it,”--observed the Goblin, after a brief pause.
Some compelling influence forced the panic-stricken millionaire to
speak--to reply--in fact to keep up conversation, whether he liked it
or not.
“Lots of fellows do what?” he murmured feebly, still holding one hand
over his eyes.
“Call themselves Professors when they’re not,”--said the Goblin.
Here ensued a moment’s intense stillness. Even the noise of the
storm outside had, for that short interval ceased,--the fire burned
silently,--and not a breath stirred the air. Only the glowing tassel on
“Professor” Goblin’s cap waved to and fro as though moved by an unfelt
wind.
“When I rang you up on the telephone just now,”--resumed the Goblin--
But at this McNason jumped in his chair and uncovered his eyes.
“_You_ rang me up?--you--you--!” he stammered.
“Yes--I! Who did you think it was, eh? Your ‘private wire’? Oh,
Beelzebub! Nothing’s ‘private’ to me! I should ring up the Prime
Minister out of his bed if I happened to want him!”
McNason felt the muscles of his back stiffening in horror.
“You would?--you would----?”
“Certainly! I often use telephones! Capital things! They have to do
with the currents of the air, you know!--and other folks work on
currents of the air besides Humans! Humans aren’t the only people
in the universe! Don’t look so scared, McNason!--I won’t hurt you!
As I remarked before, when I rang you up just now, I wondered what
title I should take to ingratiate myself with you. You like titles,
I know!--you’ve been thinking of a Peerage for yourself--quite right
too! Get all you can, McNason!--get all you can that money will
buy! But as I never deal in Honours now, I couldn’t pass myself off
as a Duke or an Earl. The man that sells these things is more in
your line than mine. And I gave up brewing beer and running ‘party’
newspapers long ago, so I could hardly be a Lord. Besides Lords are
getting so common--frightfully common, McNason! In fact Lords are
becoming Commons! Oh, Beelzebub! Excuse the joke! And as for being a
‘Sir’--oh, hoo-roo, hoo-roo!” And the Goblin, untwisting itself, beat
its large paunch slowly in the fashion of a drum, evoking a dreary
hollow sound which almost made McNason cry--“Only a provincial Mayor
would accept it nowadays! I half thought I’d say I was a Colonel or
a General,--but then you’d have taken me for an American,--and I
wouldn’t be an American Bounder for twenty Next-Worlds! Then I decided
I would be ‘Professor.’ ‘Professor’ struck me as being quite the proper
thing;--nice-sounding, wise and imposing!--and anyone can call himself
a Professor--even a palmist who robs poor silly dupes of money for
telling their fortunes which neither he nor anybody knows! Hoo-roo!
Hoo-roo! What humbugs there are in the world, McNason! _You_ know that!
You’re one!”
“I’m not!” said Josiah, indignantly, aroused to sudden defiance. “How
dare you say I am!”
“How dare I!--How dare I!” crooned the Goblin, clasping its legs again
and rocking itself to and fro--“Oh, Beelzebub! How high and mighty we
are! I dare do anything, McNason! Anything! I’ll skin your soul!”
Josiah gave a smothered cry of terror. Such eyes as were now bent upon
him were like nothing in the world except railway signal lamps with the
light in them very much intensified and enlarged.