SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC
"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ...
I see your soul."--JOHN MASEFIELD, "The Tragedy of Nan."
I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it
disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an
invitation to supper.
"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me
alone," I heard him murmuring.
At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down
by myself, and think--think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion
of thinking.
"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the
direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose,
I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at
dinner."
"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a
minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a
powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many
years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of
what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of
six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little
grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the
need.
"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.
"Originally. I don't need it often, but I'm rather unsettled
to-night."
He had been restless throughout the play, and the hand that paid for
the powders had trembled more than was necessary.
"You were all right at dinner," I said.
"That was some time ago," he answered.
"Everything went off admirably; there's been nothing to worry you."
"Reaction," he muttered abruptly, as we mounted the steps of the Club.
Supper was a gloomy meal, as we ate in silence and had the whole huge
dining-room to ourselves. I ought not to complain or be surprised, as
silence was the Seraph's normal state, and my mind was far too full of
other things to discuss the ordinary banalities of the day. With the
arrival of the cigars, however, I began to feel unsociable, and told
him to talk to me.
"What about?" he asked.
"Anything."
"There's only one thing you're thinking about at the moment."
"Oh?"
"You're thinking of the past three months generally, and the past
three hours in particular."
"That doesn't carry me very far," I said.
He switched off the table lights and lay back in his chair with legs
crossed.
"Don't you think it strange and--unsettling? Three months ago life
was rounded and complete; you were all-sufficient to yourself. One day
was just like another, till the morning when you woke up and felt
lonely--lonely and wasted, gradually growing old. Till three, four
hours ago you tried to define your new hunger.... Now you've forgotten
it, now you're wondering why you can't drive out of your mind the
vision of a girl you've not seen for twenty years. Shall I go on?
You've just had a new thought; you were thinking I was impertinent,
that I oughtn't to talk like this, that you ought to be angry.... Then
you decided you couldn't be, because I was right." He paused, and then
exclaimed quickly, "Now, now there's another new thought! You're not
going to be angry, you know it's true, you're interested, you want to
find out how I know it's true, but you want to seem sceptical so as to
save your face." He hesitated a second time, and added quietly, "Now
you've made up your mind, you're going to say nothing, you think
that's non-committal, you're going to wait in the hope that I shall
tell you how I know."
I made no answer, and he sat silent for a while, tracing his initials
with the end of a match in the little mound of cigar ash on his plate.
"I can't tell you how I know," he said at last. "But it was true,
wasn't it?"
"Suppose it was?"
His shoulders gave a slight shrug.
"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to see if I was right."
I turned up the table lamp again so that I could see his face.
"Just as a matter of personal interest," I said, "do you suggest that
I always show the world what I'm thinking about?"
"Not the world."
"You?"
"As a rule. Not more than other people."
"Can you tell what everybody's thinking of?"
"I can with a good many men."
"Not women?"
He shook his head.
"They often don't know themselves. They think in fits and
starts--jerkily; it's hard to follow them."
"How do you do it?"
"I don't know. You must watch people's eyes; then you'll find the
expression is always changing, never the same for two minutes in
succession--you just _see_."
"I'm hanged if I do."
"Your eyes must be quick. Look here, you're walking along in evening
dress, and I throw a lump of mud on to your shirt front. In a fraction
of a second you hit me over the head with your cane. That's all, isn't
it? But you know it isn't all; there are a dozen mental processes
between the mud-throwing and the head-hitting. You're horror-stricken
at the mess I've made of your shirt, you wonder if you'll have time to
go back and change into a clean one, and if so, how late you'll be.
You're annoyed that any one should throw mud at you, you're
flabbergasted that _I_ should be the person. You're impotently angry.
Gradually a desire for revenge overcomes every other feeling; you're
going to hurt me. A little thought springs up, and you wonder whether
I shall summon you for assault; you decide to risk it Another little
thought--will you hit me on the body or the head? You decide the head
because it'll hurt more. Still another thought--how hard to hit? You
don't want to kill me and you don't want to make me blind. You decide
to be on the safe side and hit rather gently. Then--then at last
you're ready with the cane. Is that right?"
I thought it over very carefully.
"I suppose so. But no one can see those thoughts succeeding each
other. There isn't time."
The Seraph shook his head in polite contradiction.
"The same sort of thing was said when instantaneous photography was
introduced. You got pictures of horses galloping, and people solemnly
assured you it was physically impossible for horses' legs to get into
such attitudes."
"How do you account for it?" I asked.
"Don't know. Eyes different from other people's, I suppose."
I could see he preferred to discuss the power in the abstract rather
than in relation to himself, but my curiosity was piqued.
"Anything else?" I asked.
He listened for a moment; the Club was sunk in profound silence. Then
I heard him imitating a familiar deep voice: "Oh--er--porter, taxi,
please."
"Why d'you do that?" I asked, not quite certain of his meaning.
"Don't you know whose voice that was supposed to be?"
"It was Arthur Roden's," I said.
He nodded. "Just leaving the Club."
I jumped up and ran into the hall.
"Is Sir Arthur Roden in the Club?" I asked the porter.
"Just left this moment, sir," he answered.
I came back and sat down opposite the Seraph.
"I want to hear more about this," I said. "I'm beginning to get
interested."
He shook his head.
"Why not?" I persisted.
"I don't like talking about it. I don't understand it, there's a lot
more that I haven't told you about. I only----"
"Well?"
"I only told you this much because you didn't like to see me taking
drugs. I wanted to show you my nerves were rather--abnormal."
"As if I didn't know that! Why don't you do something for them?"
"Such as?"
"Occupy your mind more."
"My mind's about as fully occupied as it will stand," he answered as
we left the dining-room and went in search of our coats.
As I was staying at the Savoy and he was living in Adelphi Terrace,
our homeward roads were the same. We started in silence, and before we
had gone five yards I knew the grey-white powder would be called in
aid that night. He was in a state of acute nervous excitement; the arm
that linked itself in mine trembled appreciably through two
thicknesses of coat, and I could feel him pressing against my side
like a frightened woman. Once he begged me not to repeat our recent
conversation.
As we entered the Strand, the sight of the theatres gave me a fresh
train of thought.
"You ought to write a book, Seraph," I said with the easy abruptness
one employs in advancing these general propositions.
"What about?"
"Anything. Novel, play, psychological study. Look here, my young
friend, psychology in literature is the power of knowing what's going
on in people's minds, and being able to communicate that knowledge to
paper. How many writers possess the power? If you look at the rot that
gets published, the rot that gets produced at the theatres, my
question answers itself. At the present day there aren't six
psychologists above the mediocre in all England; barring Henry James
there's been no great psychologist since Dostoievski. And this power
that other people attain by years of heart-breaking labour and
observation, comes to you--by some freak of nature--ready made. You
could write a good book, Seraph; why don't you?"
"I might try."
"I know what that means."
"I don't think you do," he answered. "I pay a lot of attention to your
advice."
"Thank you," I said with an ironical bow.
"I do. Five years ago, in Morocco, you gave me the same advice."
"I'm still waiting to see the result."
"You've seen it."
"What do you mean?"
"You told me to write a book, I wrote it. You've read it."
"In my sleep?"
"I hope not."
"Name, please? I've never so much as seen the outside of it."
"I didn't write in my own name."
"Name of book and pseudonym?" I persisted.
His lips opened, and then shut in silence.
"I shan't tell you," he murmured after a pause.
"It won't go any further," I promised.
"I don't want even you to know."
"Seraph, we've got no secrets. At least I hope not."
We had come alongside the entrance to the Savoy, but neither of us
thought of turning in.
"Name, please?" I repeated after we had walked in silence to the
Wellington Street crossing and were waiting for a stream of traffic
to pass on towards Waterloo Bridge.
"'The Marriage of Gretchen,'" he answered.
"'The History of David Copperfield,'" I suggested.
"You see, you won't believe me," he complained.
"Try something a little less well--known: get hold of a book that's
been published anonymously."
"'Gretchen' was published over a _nom de plume_."
"By 'Gordon Tremayne,'" I said, "whoever he may be."
"You don't know him?"
"Do you? No, I remember as we drove down to the theatre you said you
didn't."
"I said I'd never met him," he corrected me.
"A mere quibble," I protested.
"It's an important distinction. Do you know anybody who _has_ met
him?"
I turned half round to give him the benefit of what was intended for a
smile of incredulity. He met my gaze unfalteringly. Suddenly it was
borne in upon me that he was speaking the truth.
"Will you kindly explain the whole mystery?" I begged.
"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he
answered in parenthesis.
He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had
reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the
fantastic tangle was straightened out.
Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in
Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of
"Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name
through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with
the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the
same way: even the _Heir-at-Law_ I had just witnessed came to a
similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without
criticism or suggestion from the author.
I could see no reason for a _nom de plume_ in the case of "Gretchen"
or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was
different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the
second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out
of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert
and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but
the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering
termination, had taken place a few months--a few weeks, I might
say--before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I
was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke
through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to
have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth
century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all
time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon
Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona
Macleod.'"
"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence.
"You think after what's passed...."
"It's getting farther away each day, Seraph," I suggested gently as he
hesitated.
"I know. 'Tisn't that--altogether. It's the future."
"What's going to happen?"
"If 'Gordon Tremayne' knew that," he answered, "you wouldn't find him
writing plays."
Arm-in-arm we walked the length of the Embankment. As I grew to know
the Seraph better, I learnt not to interrupt his long silences. It was
trying for the patience, I admit, but his natural shyness even with
friends was so great that you could see him balancing an idea for
minutes at a time before he found courage to put it into words. I was
always reminded of the way a tortoise projects its head cautiously
from the shell, looks all round, starts, stops, starts again, before
mustering resolution to take a step forward....
"D'you believe in premonitions, Toby?" he asked as we passed
Cleopatra's Needle on our second journey eastward.
"Yes," I answered. I should have said it in any case, to draw him out;
as a matter of fact, I have the greatest difficulty in knowing what I
do or do not believe. On the rare occasions when I do make up my mind
on any point I generally have to reconsider my decision.
"I had a curious premonition lately," he went on. "One of these days
you may see it in the third volume of 'The Child of Misery.'"....
I cannot give the story in his own words, because I was merely a
credulous, polite listener. He believed in his premonition, and the
belief gave a vigour and richness to the recital which I cannot hope
or attempt to reproduce. Here is a prosaic record of the facts. At the
close of the previous winter he had found himself in attendance at a
costume ball, muffled to the eyes in the cerements of an Egyptian
mummy. The dress was too hot for dancing, and he was wandering through
the ball-room inspecting the costumes, when an unreasoning impulse
drove him out into the entrance hall. Even as he went, the impulse
seemed more than a caprice; in his own words, had his feet been
manacled, he would have gone there crawling on his knees.
The hall was almost deserted when he arrived. A tall Crusader in coat
armour stood smoking a cigarette and talking to a Savoyard
peasant-girl. Their conversation was desultory, but the words spoken
by the girl fixed a careless, frank, self-confident voice in his
memory. Then the Crusader was despatched on an errand, and the
peasant-girl strolled up and down the hall.
In a mirror over the fireplace the Seraph watched her movements. She
was slight and of medium height, with small features and fine black
hair falling to the waist in two long plaits. The brown eyes, set far
apart and deep in their sockets, were never still, and the face wore
an expression of restless, rebellious energy.... Once their eyes met,
but the mummy wrappings were discouraging. The girl continued her
walk, and the Seraph returned to his mirror. Whatever his mission, the
Crusader was unduly long away; his partner grew visibly impatient, and
once, for no ostensible reason, the expression reflected in the mirror
changed from impatience to disquiet; the brown eyes lost their fire
and self-confidence, the mouth grew wistful, the whole face lonely and
frightened.
It was this expression that came to haunt the Seraph's dreams. In a
fantastic succession of visions he found himself talking frankly and
intimately with the Savoyard peasant; their conversation was always
interrupted, suddenly and brutally, as though she had been snatched
away. Gradually--like sunlight breaking waterily through a mist--the
outline of her features become visible again, then the eyes wide open
with fear, then the mouth with lips imploringly parted.
The Seraph had quickened his pace till we were striding along at
almost five miles an hour. Opposite the south end of Middle Temple
Lane he dragged his arm abruptly out of mine, planted his elbows on
the parapet of the Embankment, and stared out over the muddy waters,
with knuckles pressed crushingly to either side of his forehead.
"I don't know what to make of it!" he exclaimed. "What does it mean?
Who is she? Why does she keep coming to me like this? I don't know
her, I've caught that one glimpse of her. Yet night after night. And
it's so real, I often don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. I've
never felt so ... so _conscious_ of anybody in my life. I saw her for
those few minutes, but I'm as sure as I'm sure of death that I shall
meet her again----"
"Don't you want to?"
He passed a hand wearily in front of his eyes, and linked an arm once
more in mine.
"I don't know," he answered as we turned slowly back and walked up
Norfolk Street into the Strand. "Yes, if it's just to satisfy
curiosity and find out who she is. But there's something more, there's
some big catastrophe brewing. I'd sooner be out of it. At least ...
she may want help. I don't know. I honestly don't know."
When we got back to the Savoy I invited him up to my room for a drink.
He refused on the score of lateness, though I could see he was
reluctant to be left to his own company.
"Don't think me sceptical," I said, "because I can't interpret your
dreams. And don't think I imagine it's all fancy if I tell you to
change your ideas, change your work, change your surroundings. The
Rodens have invited you down to their place, why don't you come?"
He shivered at the abrupt contact with reality.
"I do hate meeting people," he protested.
"Seraph," I said, "I'm an unworthy vessel, but on your own showing I
shall be submerged in politics if there isn't some one to create a
diversion. Come to oblige me."
He hesitated for several moments, alternately crushing his opera hat
and jerking it out straight.
"All right," he said at last.
"You will be my salvation."
"You deserve it, for what it's worth."
"God forbid!" I cried in modest disclaimer.
"You're the only one that isn't quite sure I'm mad," he answered,
turning away in the direction of Adelphi Terrace.
For the next two days I had little time to spare for the Seraph's
premonitions or Joyce Davenant's conspiracies. My brother sailed from
Tilbury on the Friday, I was due the following day at the Rodens, and
in the interval there were incredibly numerous formalities to be
concluded before Gladys was finally entrusted to my care. The scene of
reconciliation between her father and myself was most affecting. In
the old days when Brian toiled at his briefs and I sauntered away the
careless happy years of my youth, there is little doubt that I was
held out as an example not to be followed. We need not go into the
question which of us made the better bargain with life, but I know my
brother largely supported himself in the early days of struggle by
reflecting that a more than ordinarily hideous retribution was in
store for me. Do I wrong him in fancying he must have suffered
occasional pangs of disappointment?
Perhaps I do; there was really no time for him to be disappointed.
Almost before retribution could be expected to have her slings and
arrows in readiness, my ramblings in the diamond fields of South
Africa had made me richer than he could ever hope to become by playing
the Industrious Apprentice at the English Common Law Bar. More
charitable than the Psalmist--from whom indeed he differs in all
material respects--Brian could not bring himself to believe that any
one who flourished like the green bay tree was fundamentally wicked.
At our meeting he was almost cordial. Any slight reserve may be
attributed to reasonable vexation that he had grown old and scarred in
the battle of life while time with me had apparently stood still.
For all our cordiality, Gladys was not given away without substantial
good advice. He was glad to see me settling down, home again from my
curious ... well, home again from my wanderings; steadying with age. I
was face to face with a great responsibility.... I suppose it was
inevitable, and I did my best to appear patient, but in common
fairness a judge has no more right than a shopwalker to import a trade
manner into private life. The homily to which I was subjected should
have been reserved for the Bench; there it is expected of a judge;
indeed he is paid five thousand a year to live up to the expectation.
When Brian had ended I was turned over to the attention of my
sister-in-law. Like a wise woman she did not attempt competition with
her husband, and I was dismissed with the statement that Gladys would
cause me no trouble, and an inconsistent exhortation that I was not
to let her get into mischief. Finally, in case of illness or other
mishap, I was to telegraph immediately by means of a code contrived
for the occasion. I remember a great many birds figured among the
code-words: "Penguin" meant "She has taken a slight chill, but I have
had the doctor in, and she is in bed with a hot water-bottle";
"Linnet" meant "Scarlatina"; "Bustard" "Appendicitis, operation
successfully performed, going on well." Being neither ornithologist
nor physician, I had no idea there were so many possible diseases, or
even so that there were enough birds to go round. It is perhaps
needless to add that I lost my copy of the code the day after they
sailed, and only discovered it by chance a fortnight ago when Brian
and his wife had been many months restored to their only child, and I
had passed out of the life of all three--presumably for ever.
In case no better opportunity offer, I hasten to put it on record that
my sister-in-law spoke no more than the truth in saying her daughter
would cause me no trouble. I do not wish for a better ward. During the
weeks that I was her foster father, circumstances brought me in
contact with some two or three hundred girls of similar age and
position. They were all a little more emancipated, rational, and
independent than the girls of my boyhood, but of all that I came to
know intimately, Gladys was the least abnormal and most tractable.
I grew to be very fond of her before we parted, and my chief present
regret is that I see so little likelihood of meeting her again. She
was affectionate, obedient, high-spirited--tasting life for the first
time, finding the savour wonderfully sweet on her lips, knowing it
could not last, determined to drain the last drop of enjoyment before
wedlock called her to the responsibilities of the drab, workaday
world. She had none of Joyce Davenant's personality, her reckless
courage and obstinate, fearless devilry; none of Sylvia Roden's
passionate fire, her icy reserve and imperious temper. Side by side
with either, Gladys would seem indeterminate, characterless; but she
was the only one of the three I would have welcomed as a ward in those
thunderous summer days before the storm burst in its fury and scorched
Joyce and Sylvia alike. There were giants in those days, but England
has only limited accommodation for supermen. Had I my time and choice
over again, my handkerchief would still fall on the shoulder of my
happy, careless, laughing, slangy, disrespectful niece.
I accompanied Gladys to Tilbury and saw her parents safely on board
the _Bessarabia_. On our return to Pont Street I found a letter of
instructions to guide us in our forthcoming visit to Hampshire. My
niece had half opened it before she noticed the address.
"It was Phil's writing, so I thought it must be for me," was her
ingenious explanation.
As I completed the opening and began to read the letter, my mind went
abruptly back to some enigmatic words of Seraph's: "Is Phil going to
be there?". I remembered him asking. "Oh then it certainly won't be a
bachelor party."