MS

 

"My dear boy," said Taverner mildly, "I have got to undercut the governess or I shouldn't get the job."

 

"Do you think the job is worth having at that price?" I growled, for I hate to see a man like Taverner imposed upon.

 

"Hard to say," he replied. "They have driven a square peg into a round hole with such determination that they have split the peg, but to what extent we cannot tell until we have got it out of the hole. But what are your impressions of our new patient? First impressions are generally the truest. What reaction does she awake in you? Those are the best indications in a psychological case."

 

"She seems to have given life up as a bad job," I replied. "She's an unlovely object, and yet she is not repellent. I don't so much pity her as sympathize with her, there is a difference you know. I can't put it clearer than that."

 

"You have put it very clearly indeed," said Taverner. "The distinction between pity and sympathy is the touchstone in this case; we pity that which we ourselves are not, but we sympathize when, but for the grace of God, there goes you or I. You feel kinship for that soul because, whatever the husk of her may have been reduced to, she is `one of us,' marred in the making."

 

"And marred with a heavy hand," I added. "I should think it would have been a case of the S.P.C.C., if they had been poor people."

 

"You are wrong," said Taverner. "It is a case for the S.P.C.A." With which cryptic remark he left me.

 

The next day the new patient, who answered to the in- appropriate name of Diana, appeared. She looked about fifteen, but as a matter of fact was nearer eighteen. Gaunt, slovenly, ungainly, and morose, she had all the furtive ineptitude of a dog that has been ruined by harsh treatment. She was certainly not an addition to the social amenities of the place, and I should not have been surprised if Taverner had segregated her, but he did not seem disposed to, neither did he place her under any supervision, but gave her complete freedom. Unaccustomed to this lack of restraint, she did not seem to know how to employ herself, and slunk about as if at any moment outraged powers might exact retribution for some misdeed.

 

There was a good deal of comment upon the way our new patient was neglected, and she was certainly not a credit to the establishment, but I began to see what Taverner was driving at. Left entirely to her own devices the girl was beginning to find her level. If she wanted food, she had to prowl into the dining-room somewhere about the time it was being served; when her hands became uncomfortably sticky, she washed them, as the towels bore evidence, for we could not always observe any difference in the hands. And in addition to all this she was thinking and watching all that went on about her.

 

"She will wake up presently," said Taverner, "and then we shall see how the primitive wild animal will adapt itself to civilized society."

 

We were summoned one day by the outraged matron and went along to Diana's den; one could hardly call it a room after she had occupied it for twenty-four hours. As we went down the corridor a strong smell of burning assailed our nostrils, and when we arrived we found the young lady in question sitting cross-legged on the hearth rug wrapped in the bedspread, a bonfire of the whole of her personal belongings smouldering in the fireplace.

 

"Why have you burnt your clothes?" enquired Taverner, as if this interesting and harmless eccentricity were a daily occurrence.

 

"I don't like them."

 

"What is wrong with them?"

 

"They are not `me'."

 

"Come along to the recreation room and dig among the theatrical costumes and see if you can find something you like."

 

We set off for the recreation room, Diana, swathed in her bedspread, pattering behind Taverner's tall form, and the disgusted matron bringing up the rear of the ridiculous procession. I had no mind to play nursery maid to Miss Diana, so I left them to their own devices and went along the corridor to see a man we had there of the name of Tennant. His was a dreary existence, for, although a charming man when in his normal state, he had made several attempts at suicide, and had been placed with us by his family as a voluntary patient as an alternative to certification and an asylum. He could not be called mad in the ordinary sense of the word, but as one of those curious cases of tedium vitae, the desire for life had failed him. What tragedy lay hidden we did not know, for Taverner, unlike the psychoanalysts, never asked questions; he had his own way of finding out what he wanted to know and despised all such clumsy machinery.

 

To my surprise I found Tennant turning over a pile of music. I elicited by my questioning that he not only had a great love of music, but had studied seriously with a view to making a profession of it. This was news to us, for his family had given no hint of this when they placed him with us, merely leading us to believe that his means were sufficient for existence, but not for any fullness of life, and that he had passively resigned himself to his lot, sinking into a melancholy in consequence.

 

I told Taverner of this when we were having our usual after-dinner chat in the office, half gossip, half report, which took place nightly while we smoked our cigars. "So," he said, and rose forthwith and went up to Tennant's room, fetched him down, set him at the piano, and bade him play. Tennant, who, started off with a push, went on like an automaton till the impulse died down, played fluently, but without the slightest feeling. I have little sense of music, but this hurdy-gurdy rendering distressed even me. Several of the other patients present in the drawing room made their escape.

 

At the end of the piece he made no attempt to start another, but sat motionless for a while; Taverner, likewise, sat silent, watching him to see what he would do next, as his custom was with his patients. Tennant slowly twisted round the revolving stool till he sat with his back to the keyboard and his face to us, with his hands hanging limply between his knees, gazing intently at the toes of his shoes. He was a prematurely aged man of thirty-five or thirty-six. His hair iron-grey, his face deeply lined. The brow was low but broad, the mouth full and curving, the eyes set well apart were very bright on the few occasions when the lids were raised sufficiently to let one see them but the ears were the thing that attracted my attention. I had not noticed them before, for when he came to us his hair was rather long, but Matron had fallen upon him with a pair of automatic hair clippers and given him such a shearing that everything now stood revealed, and I saw that the convolutions of the ear were so arranged that they formed a little peak at the apex, that put me in mind of Hawthorne's story of the Marble Fawn and his little tufted ears.

 

While I was making this inventory Tennant had slowly raised his eyes to ours, and I saw that they were strangely luminous and animal, gleaming green in the shaded lamp, as a dog's will at night.

 

"I have got a violin in my room," he said in a toneless voice.

 

It was the first sign of initiative he had shown, and I went off forthwith to fetch his instrument down. Taverner gave him the note on the piano, but he brushed it aside and tuned his fiddle according to his own liking, to some pitch known only to himself. When he first began to play, it sounded horribly flat, but after a few moments we became accustomed to the strange intervals, and, for me at any rate, they began to exercise an extraordinary fascination.

 

They exercised a fascination for someone else also, for out of a dark corner where she had tucked herself away unobserved by us, Diana came creeping; for a moment I hardly realized who it was, for a profound change had been wrought in her since the morning. Out of the garments available for her in our theatrical wardrobe she had chosen a little green tunic we had had for Puck when we did A Midsummer Night's Dream. Someone (I found out afterwards it was Taverner) had `Bobbed' her hair; long green stockings showed under the tagged edge of the tunic and revealed the lean and angular lines of her limbs. Some freak of imagination carried my mind back to my school days, and as I sat listening to the strange wailing of the violin, in which the voices of seagulls and moor-birds and all creatures of barren and windy spaces seemed to be crying and calling to each other, I seemed to see myself coming in from hare and hounds, glowing with the beat of wind and rain, to tub and change in the steam and babel of the dressing-rooms. For a moment, under the magic of that music, the sense of power and prestige was mine again, for I had been a great man in my school, though of the rank and file in my profession. Once again I was Captain of the Games, running my eye over the new boys in the hope of finding something promising, and then in a flash I found the linking idea that had taken my mind back to those dead and gone days--the sprawling limbs in the long green stockings were those of a runner. The lay-on of the muscles, the length of the bones, all denoted speed and spring. She might not be a hopeful sight for a matchmaking mamma, but she would have rejoiced the heart of a captain of the games.

 

Matron appeared at the door like an avenging Nemesis; the hour for lights-out was long overpast, but in our absorption in the music we had forgotten it. She looked at me reproachfully; we were usually allies in upholding discipline, but tonight I felt like a rebellious urchin, and wanted to join Tennant and Diana and the other unmanageables in some outrageous escapade against law and order.

 

The interruption broke the spell. For a moment Diana's eyes flashed, and I thought we were going to be treated to one of the exhibitions of temper we had heard about but not yet seen. They faded, however, to their usual fish-like neutrality, and the gawky female hobbledehoy shambled off at the bidding of authority.

 

Tennant, however, turned at bay for a minute, recalled from some upland pasture of the spirit where he had found freedom, and much inclined to resent the disturbance. My hand on his arm, and a word of authority in his ear, however, soon restored him to normal, and he too trudged off in the wake of the matron.

 

"Damn that woman," said Taverner as he secured the windows, "she is no use for this work."

 

I stepped outside to fasten the shutters, but paused arrested on the threshold.

 

"By Jove, Taverner," I exclaimed. "Smell this!"

 

He joined me on the terrace and together we inhaled the odour of a garden in blossom. Frost lay white upon the grass, and the bleak March wind cut keenly, but the air was full of the odour of flowers, with an undercurrent of sun-warmed pinewoods. Something stirred in the shadow of the creepers, and a huge hare shot past us with a scurry of gravel and gained the shelter of the shrubbery.

 

"Good gracious," I exclaimed. "Whatever brought him here?"

 

"Ah, what indeed?" said Taverner. "We should know some rather important things if we knew that."

 

I had hardly reached my room when I was summoned by a loud knocking at the door. I opened it to find one of the patients clad only in his pyjamas.

 

"There is something wrong in Tennant's room," he said. "I think he is trying to hang himself."

 

He was right. Tennant, suspended by the cord of his dressing-gown, swung from the cornice pole. We cut him down, and after some hard work at artificial respiration, got him round, and even Taverner was convinced that constant supervision was the only way of dealing with him. Next day he let me send for a male nurse, but the train that brought him also took away the matron, a much-injured woman, not altogether soothed by the generous cheque and excellent testimonial Taverner had bestowed upon her when he dismissed her without either cause or notice.

 

Such incidents do not cause a three days wonder in a mental home, and we settled down to our routine next morning. Nevertheless I could not get out of my mind the gull-like wailing of the violin and the strange odour of flowers. They seemed to go together, and in some subtle way they had unsettled and disturbed me. Though spring had not shown itself, a spring restlessness was upon me. Unable to endure the closeness of the office, I set wide open the French windows, letting the bitter wind blow over me as I wrestled with the correspondence that had to be got off by the afternoon post.

 

It was thus Taverner found me, and he surveyed me curiously.

 

"So you heard it too?" he asked.

 

"Heard what?" I answered impatiently, for my temper was on edge for some unknown reason.

 

"The call of Pan," said my colleague, as he shut out the whirlwind.

 

"I am going out," I announced, gathering up the last of the mail. Taverner nodded without comment, for which I was grateful.

 

What freak possessed me I do not know, but finding Diana curled up on a sofa in the lounge, I called to her as I would to a dog: "Come on, Diana, come for a run," and like a dog she rose and followed me. Forgetting that though a child in mind, she had reached years of womanhood, forgetting that she had neither coat, hat, nor boots, and for the matter of that, neither had I, I took her with me through the dripping shrubbery to the garden gate.

 

The sandy road in which the pillar box stood ended in the heather of the moor. Diana advanced tentatively to the edge of the turf and then stood looking back at me. It was so exactly like a dog asking to be taken for a run that I gave myself up to the illusion. "Come on, Diana," I shouted, "Let's have a scamper."

 

I raced down the path towards her, and with a bound she was off and away over the heather. Away we went as hard as we could go over the soaked black ground into the rolling mists. I was only just able to keep the figure ahead in sight, for she ran like a deer, leaping what I had to plough through.

 

We went straight across the level plain that had once been the bed of a lake, heading for the Devil's Jumps. Long after I was struggling for my second wind the bounding figure ahead held its pace, and I did not catch up with her until rising ground gave me the advantage. In the little pinewood on its crest she slipped on the twisted roots and came down, rolling over and over like a puppy. I tripped over the waving green legs and came down too, so heavily, however, that I winded myself.

 

We sat up gasping, and looked at each other, and then with one accord burst out laughing. It was the first time I had ever heard Diana laugh. Her eyes were as green as a cat's, and she showed a double row of very sharp white teeth and a pretty pink tongue. It was not human, but it was very fascinating.

 

We picked ourselves up and trotted home over the heather, and sneaked in at the scullery door while the maids were at tea. I felt rather uncomfortable about the whole business, and sincerely hoped no one had seen my escapade and that Diana would not speak of it.

 

Speech was not a habit of hers, however, but she was rich in the language of unconscious gesture and speedily announced to the petty world of the nursing home that there was an understanding between us. Her eyes gleamed green on my appearance, and she showed her sharp white teeth and little pink tongue. If she had a tail, she would have wagged it. I found all this rather disconcerting.

 

Next day, when Taverner and I went down to the post for a breath of fresh air, we found Diana at our heels.

 

"Your little pet dog, I see," said Taverner, and I mumbled something about transference of libido and fixations.

 

Taverner laughed. "My dear boy," he said, "she is not sufficiently human to fall in love with you, so don't worry."

 

At the end of the road Diana repeated her tactics of the previous day.

 

"What does she want?" demanded Taverner. I felt myself going an uncomfortable scarlet, and Taverner looked at me curiously.

 

"She wants me to run with her," I said, thinking that the truth was the only possible explanation and that Taverner would understand it.

 

He did. But his reply was more disconcerting than his question.

 

"Well, why not?" he said. "Go on, run with her, very good for both of you."

 

I hesitated, but he would take no denial, and compelled by his will I lumbered off. But Diana saw the difference. Deep had called unto deep the previous day, but now I was one of the Philistines, and she would not run with me. Instead, she trotted in a circle and looked at me with troubled eyes, her pink tongue hidden behind drooping lips. My heart was filled with a furious hatred of Taverner and myself and all created things, and vaulting the fence, I bolted down the shrubbery and took refuge in my own room, from which I did not descend till dinner.

 

At that meal Diana gazed at me with her odd green eyes that almost seem to say: "Now you know what I have felt like all these years," and I telepathed back, "I do. Damn everybody."

 

Taverner tactfully refrained from referring to the matter, for which I was devoutly thankful. A week went by and I thought it was forgotten, when suddenly he broke silence.

 

"I cannot get Diana to run by herself," he said. I squirmed, but wouldn't answer.

 

He went to the window and drew up the blind. A full moon shone into the room, clashing horribly with the electric light.

 

"It is the night of the Vernal Equinox," said Taverner, a propos of nothing.

 

"Rhodes," he said. "I am going to try a very dangerous experiment, If I fail, there will be trouble, and if I succeed there will be a row, so put your coat on and come with me."

 

In the drawing-room we found Diana, oblivious of the good ladies knitting jumpers round the fire, curled up on a window seat with her nose pressed to the pane. Taverner opened the window, and she slipped out as noiselessly as a cat; we threw our legs over the sill and followed her.

 

She waited in the shadow of the house as if afraid to advance. The years of discipline had left their mark upon her, and like a caged-bird when the door is left open, she desired freedom, but had forgotten how to fly. Taverner wrapped around her a heavy tweed cape he was carrying, and putting her between us, we set out for the moors. We went by the same route that our wild flight had followed, to the pine wood that rose on its low crest out of the level of the ancient sea bed.

 

The Scotch firs, with their sparse tufted crests, were too scanty to make a darkness, but threw grotesque goblin shadows on the needle-carpeted ground. In a hollow of the moor a stream made water-noises away out of sight.

 

Taverner took the cloak from Diana's shoulders and pushed her out into the moonlight. She hesitated, and then fled timidly back to us, but Taverner, glancing at his watch pushed her out again. I was reminded of that wonderful story of jungle life in which the cubs are brought to the Council Rock so that the wolves of the pack may know and recognize them. Diana was being handed over to her own people.

 

We waited, while the full moon sailed across the heavens in a halo of golden cloud, Taverner glancing at his watch from time to time. The wind had dropped and in the stillness the stream sounded very loud, but though I neither saw nor heard anything, I knew that something was coming towards us through the shadow of the wood. I found myself trembling in every limb, not from fear, but excitement. Something was passing us, something big and massive, and in its train many lesser things of the same nature. Every nerve in my body began to sing, and without my volition, my foot took a step forward. But Taverner's hand on my arm restrained me.

 

"This is not for you, Rhodes," he said. "You have too much mentality to find your mating here."

 

Reluctantly I let him check me. The mad fit passed, and as my eyes cleared again I saw the girl in the moonlight, and knew that she too had felt Their coming.

 

She turned towards Them, half in fear, half in fascination.

 

They lured her, but she dared not respond. Then I felt that they had surrounded her, and that she could not escape, and then I saw her surrender. She stretched out her hands towards Them, and I was sure that invisible hands clasped hers; then she raised them towards the sky, and the moon seemed to shine straight between the cupped palms into her breast; then she lowered them towards the earth, and dropping on her knee, pressed them to the ground, and sinking lower, pressed her whole body to the earth till her form hollowed the light soil to receive it.

 

For a while she lay quiet, and then suddenly she sprang up, and flinging out her hands like one diving, was off like an arrow in the wind.

 

"Quick, after her!" cried Taverner, starting me off with a blow on the shoulder, and like a flash I too was speeding down the heather paths.

 

But oh, the difference from our last run. Though Diana still ran like a deer, my limbs were of lead. Life seemed without savour, as if there would never again be any zest in it. Only my sense of duty kept my labouring limbs at work, and presently even that proved ineffective. I dropped further and further behind, no second wind came to ease my labouring lungs, and the figure ahead, bounding on feet of the wind, was lost among the heather.

 

I dropped to the ground gasping, run off my feet in the first burst. As I lay helpless in the heather, my heart pounding in my throat, I seemed to see a great streaming procession like an undisciplined army, passing across the sky. Ragged banners flapped and waved, wild, discordant, but maddening music broke here and there from the motley rout. Furry snouts on human faces, clawed paws on human limbs, green, vine-like hair falling over flashing eyes that gleamed as green, and here and there, half-frightened but half-fascinated human faces, some hanging back though lured along, others giving themselves up to the flight in a wild abandonment of glamour.

 

I awoke to find Taverner bending over me.

 

"Thank God," he said, "your eyes are still human."

 

No Diana appeared next day, and whether Taverner was anxious or not, he would not reveal.

 

"She will come back to be fed," was all he would vouchsafe.

 

The following day there was still no sign of her, and I was becoming very uneasy, for the nights were bitter though the days were warm, when, as we sat by the office fire after "lights out," a faint scratching was heard at the window. Taverner immediately rose and opened it, and in slipped Diana, and sank in a heap on the hearth at my feet. But it was not me she turned to, as in my embarrassment I had expected, but the fire. Taverner and I meant nothing to her.

 

Taverner returned to his chair, and in silence we watched her. Puck's tunic, soaked and tagged and stained out of all recognition, seemed the only possible clothing for the strange, wild, unhuman figure at our feet. Presently she sat up and ran her hands through matted hair, now steaming in the heat, and seeing me through the thatch, showed white teeth and pink tongue in her strange elfin smile, and with a quick birdlike movement, rubbed her head against my knee. After which token of recognition she returned to her enjoyment of the fire.

 

Taverner rose and quietly left the room. I hardly dared to breathe lest I should break the spell that kept our visitor quiet, and she should do something embarrassing or uncanny; but I need not have troubled. I meant no more to her than the rest of the furniture.

 

Taverner returned with a laden tray, and Diana's eyes gleamed. She looked much more human eating with a knife and fork. I had expected her to tear her food with her teeth, but ingrained habit remained.

 

"Diana," said Taverner, after the completion of her meal.

 

She smiled.

 

"Aren't you going to say thank you?"

 

She smiled again, and with her quick, birdlike movement, rubbed her head against his knee as she had done against mine, but she did not speak. He stretched out his hand, and began to smooth and stroke the tangled mass of her hair. She snuggled down at his feet, enjoying the caress and the warmth, and presently there arose a low crooning of contentment, very like the purr of a cat.

 

"We have done it this time!" said Taverner. After a while, however, Diana seemed to wake up. Her animal needs being satisfied, the human part of her began to reassert itself.

 

She twisted round, and resting her elbow on Taverner's knee looked up into his face.

 

"I came back because I was hungry," she said. Taverner smiled and continued to smooth her hair. "But I shall go away again," she added with a touch of defiance.

 

"You shall come and go as you please," said Taverner. "There will be food when you want it and the doors will never be locked."

 

This seemed to please her, and she became more com- municative, evidently wishing to share with us the experience through which she had passed and to receive our wonder and sympathy. That was the human side of her.

 

"I saw Them," she said.

 

"We felt Them," said Taverner. "But we did not see Them."

 

"No," replied Diana. "You would not. But then you see They are my people. I have always belonged to Them but I did not know it, and now They have found me. I shall go back," she repeated again with conviction.

 

"Were you cold?" asked Taverner.

 

"No, only hungry," she replied.

 

Taverner had her belongings removed to a room on the. ground floor, whose window, opening on to the shrubbery, permitted her to come and go freely and unobserved.' She never slept there, however, but came each night after "lights out" to the office window. We admitted her, fed her, and after basking for a while in the warmth of the hearth, she slipped out again into the night. Weather made no difference to her; out into the wildest gale she went unflinchingly and returned unharmed. Sometimes she would talk to us in her clipped childish sentences, trying to convey to us something of what she saw, but for the most part she kept silence.

 

At the next full moon, however, she returned bursting with information. They had had a wonderful dance, in which she had been allowed to take part. (We knew now why the kitchen-maid, returning from her evening out, had had hysterics all the way up the drive, and wound up with something very like a fit in the servants' hall.) They had been so wonderful that she simply had to tell us all about it, and in speaking of Them in her limited vocabulary she used a phrase that another seer of vision had used: They were the Lordly Ones. More she could not tell us; words failed her, and she made strange play with her hands as if moulding a figure in invisible clay. With quick intuition Taverner gave her pencil and paper, and with lightning rapidity there appeared before us the nude figure of a winged being, drawn with amazing vigour and perfect accuracy.

 

No attempt had ever been made to teach Diana to draw in all the course of her arduous upbringing --it was considered sufficient if she achieved the decencies without aspiring to accomplishments --neither had she had the opportunity of studying anatomy, yet here was a figure rendered with marvellous draftsmanship and the minute accuracy of detail that is only possible in a study from life.

 

Diana's interest and delight was as great as ours. Here was indeed a discovery, a way of expression for her cramped and stifled soul, and in half an hour the office was strewn with drawings --a whirling snow spirit who seemed to be treading water; a tree-soul, like a gnarled human torso emerging from the trunk of a tree and blending with its branches; fairies, demons, and quaint and engaging animal studies followed each other in bewildering succession. Finally quite worn out with the tension and excitement of it, Diana consented to go to bed for the first time since that strange night of the Vernal Equinox.

 

Her need of a supply of paper kept Diana at the house, and her need of an audience made her seek human relationships. The artist creates not only for the pleasure of creation, but also for the pleasure of admiration, and Diana, though she might go to the woods, must needs return to her kind to display her spoils.

 

With her new-found harmony had come the correlation of mind and body; the long limbs no longer sprawled, but had the grace of a deer's. She was as friendly as a puppy where before she had been morose. But alas, her readiness of response exposed her to some painful knocks in the world of warped lives which is a mental home. For a moment she was crushed, and we feared that she might become again that which she had been, but she discovered that a means of retaliation as well as of expression lay in her pencil, and the discovery saved her. She drew portraits of her persecutors, stark naked (for she never drew clothes), with the anatomical detail and accuracy of all her studies, with their usual expression on their faces, but with the expression of their secret souls in every line of their bodies. These portraits appeared in conspicuous places as if by magic, and their effect can be more easily imagined than described.

 

Diana had found her place in the march of life. She was no longer the outcast, uncouth and unfriendly. Her spontaneous elfin gaiety, which she had brought back from the woods, was a charm in itself; the mouse-coloured hair had taken on a gloss and gleam of gold, the sallow complexion was nut-brown and rose-red, but her springing swaying movement, her amazing vitality, were her chief distinctions.

 

For she was extraordinarily vital; she drew her life from the sun and the wind and the earth, and as long as she was allowed to keep in touch with them, she glowed with an inner light, an incandescence of the spirit that blazed but did not consume. She was the most vital thing I have ever seen. The hair of her head was so charged with electricity that it stood out in a light cloud-like aureole. The blood glowed under her skin, and if her hand touched you, sharp magnetic tinglings ran through the bare flesh.

 

And this strange vitality was not limited to herself, but infected everybody in her immediate neighbourhood, and they reacted to it according to temperament; some would go and sit near her as by a fire; others went nearly demented. To me she was lyrical, the wine of life; she went to my head like some intoxicating drug, I got drunk on her and saw the visions of an opium dream; without a word spoken, she lured me from my work, from my duties, from all that was human and civilized, to follow her out on the moor and commune with the beings whose orbit she seemed to have entered upon that fatal night of the Equinox.

 

I saw that Taverner was worried; he said no word of re- proach, but silently picked up the threads I dropped; I also knew that he had cancelled certain engagements and remained at home. I was untrustworthy, and he dared not leave things to me. I loathed myself, but I could no more pull myself together than the drug-taker far gone in morphia.

 

A form of clairvoyance was growing fast upon me, not the piercing psychic perceptions of Taverner, who saw straight into the inner soul of men and things, but a power to perceive the subtler aspects of matter; I could distinctly see the magnetic field which surrounds every living thing, and could watch the changes in its state; presently I began to be aware of the coming and going of those unseen presences which were the gods that Diana worshipped. A strong wind, hot sun, or the bare uncultivated earth, seemed to bring them very near me, and I felt the great life of the trees. These things fed my soul and strengthened me as the touch of earth always strengthens any child of the Earth-mother.

 

The days were lengthening towards the longest day; it would soon be three months since Diana returned to her own place, and I began to wonder how much longer Taverner would keep our now entirely cured patient, but he gave no sign. I began to feel, however, that Diana was now no longer a patient, but that I had become one, and that I was being closely watched in anticipation of a crisis that was imminent. Some abscess of the soul had to come to a head before it could be lanced, and Taverner was awaiting the process.

 

The idea was slowly growing in my mind that I might marry Diana; marriage did not express the relationship I wished to establish, but I could see no other course open to me; I did not wish to possess her, I only wanted our present relationship to continue, and that I should be free to come and go with her without running the gauntlet of censorius eyes. Taverner, I felt, knew this and fought it, and I could not see why. I could understand his objection to my compromising Diana, but I did not see why he should oppose my marriage to her. My brain, however, was in abeyance in these days, my thoughts were a series of pictures fading into each other like a phantasmagoria, and they told me afterwards that my speech had reverted to the simplicities of early childhood.

 

But still Taverner waited, biding his time.

 

The crisis came suddenly. As the sun was setting upon the evening of the longest day Diana appeared upon the steps of the office window and beckoned me out. She appeared extraordinarily beautiful, with the burning sky, behind her; the bright fluffed hair caught the level light and shone like an aureole as she stood with her strangely eloquent hands beckoning me out into the gathering dusk. I knew that there was in prospect such a race across the, heather as had never yet been, and at the end of it I should meet the Powers she worshipped face to face, and that from that meeting my body might return to the house, but my soul would never enter the habitations of men again. It would remain out there in the open, with Diana and her people. I knew all this, and with the inner vision could see the gathering of the clans that was even now taking place.

 

Diana's hands called to me, and as if drawn by a spell, I rose slowly from my desk. Diana, thing of air, was calling me out to run with her. But I was not a thing of air, I was a man of flesh and blood, and in a flash of revelation I saw Diana as a beautiful woman and I knew that she was not the woman for me; to part of my nature she called, but she did not call to the whole of me, and I knew that the best in me would remain unmated and uncompanioned if I were to join Diana.

 

It did Diana no harm to return to Nature, because she was not capable of greater things, but there was more in me than the instincts, and I might not so return without loss to my higher self. The room was lined with books, the door leading into the laboratory stood open and the characteristic smell of the blended drugs came to me. "Smells are surer than sights or sounds to make your heartstrings crack." Had the wind been the other way, had the smell of the pines blown in at the open window, I think I should have gone with Diana, but it was the odour of the labora- tory that came to me, and with it the memory of all that I had hoped to make of my life, and I dropped back into my chair and buried my face in my arms.

 

When I raised my head again the last light of the sunset had gone, and so had Diana.

 

That night my sleep was heavy and dreamless, which was a great relief, for of late it had been troubled by strange, almost physical impressions, the phantasies of the day becoming the realities of the darkness; but with my rejection of Diana a spell seemed to break, and when I awoke in the morning it was to a normality to which I had been a stranger for many a day. My grip on the organization of the home had come back to me, and I felt as one who had been in exile in a foreign country and has at length returned to his native land.

 

Diana I did not see for several days for she had again taken to the heather, and rumours of raids upon gardens and fowl houses by a particularly ingenious and elusive gypsy explained why she did not even return to be fed.

 

My conscience pricking me for my recent lapse, I took upon myself the somewhat arduous task of taking Tennant out for walks, for since his attempt at suicide we had not dared to let him go about alone. It was a dreary business, for Tennant never spoke unless he was addressed, and then only employed the unavoidable minimum of speech. He had certainly made no progress during the months he had been at the nursing home, and I was surprised that Taverner had kept him so long, for he usually declined to keep any case which he considered hopeless. I therefore concluded that he had hopes for Tennant, though in what direction they lay he did not confide to me.

 

We swung over the heather paths in the direction of Frensham, and I suddenly realized to my annoyance, that we were following Diana's favourite trail to the little fir-wood of magic and ill omen. I would willingly have avoided it if I could, for I did not wish to be reminded of certain incidents which I felt it was better for my peace of mind that I should forget, but there was no alternative unless we waded for a mile or two through knee-deep heather. In the light shadow of the trees we paused, Tennant gazing up the long shafts of the trunks into the dark tufted crests that looked like islands in the sky.

 

"Wendy's house in the tree tops!" I heard him say to', himself, oblivious of my presence, and I guessed that his weary soul would love to sleep for ever in the rocking cradle of the branches. The sun drew all the incense from the firs, and the sky had that intense Italian blue that is often seen over these great wastes; a warm wind blew softly over the heather, bringing the sound of innumerable bees and faraway sheep; we flung ourselves down on the sun-warmed earth, and even Tennant, for once, seemed happy. As for me, every breath I drew of that warm radiant air brought peace and healing to my spirit.

 

Tennant propped against a tree, hat off, shirt open, and head thrown back against the rough red bark, sat gazing into the blue distance and whistling softly between his teeth. I lay flat on my back among the pine needles, and I think I went to sleep. At any rate I never heard the approach of Diana, nor was aware of her presence until I raised my head. She lay at Tennant's feet gazing into his face with the unblinking steadiness of an animal, and he was whistling as softly as before, but with an exquisite, flute-like tone, those strange cadences of his that had been the origin of all my trouble. I thought of the older Greek world of centaurs and Titans, who ranged and ruled before Zeus and his court made heaven human. Tennant was not even primitive, he was pre-Adamic. As for Diana, she was no daughter of Eve, but of the Dark Lilith who preceded her, and I realized that those two were of the same world and belonged to each other. A twinge of the old wound shot through me at this realization, and also a twinge of envy, for theirs was a happier lot than our civilized bondage, but I lay quiet, watching their idyll.

 

The shadows of the firs lay far out over the heather before I roused Tennant for our return to earth, and as we came back through the golden evening light, Diana came with us.

 

When I told Taverner of this incident, over our usual after-dinner smoking, half report, half gossip, I saw that it was no surprise to him.

 

"I hoped that would happen," he said. "It is the only possible solution to the case that I can think of, but what will her family say?"

 

"I think they will say, `Praise the Lord,' and economize over her trousseau," I replied, and my prophecy proved correct.

 

It was the queerest wedding I ever saw. The parson, thoroughly uncomfortable, but afraid to refuse to perform the ceremony; the upholstered mother and her friends trying hard to do the thing properly; the bridegroom's relatives, whose attempt to get him certified at the eleventh hour had been baulked by Taverner, furiously watching ten thousand pounds of trust moneys passing out of their keeping; a bride who looked like a newly-caught wild thing, and who would have bolted out of the church if Taverner had not shown her very clearly that he was prepared for such a manoeuvre and would not permit it; and a bridegroom who was far away in some heaven of his own, and upon whose face was a glory that never shone on land or sea.

 

The departure of the happy couple upon their honeymoon was a sight for the gods, whom I am convinced were present. All the wedding guests in their wedding garments were drawn up about the front door, when out came Diana in her Puck's tunic and bolted like a rabbit down the drive; at a more sober pace followed her spouse leading a donkey upon who back was packed a tent and from whose flanks dangled cooking pots.

 

Surrounded by the broadcloth of the men and the silks of the women, and against the background of the clipped laurels of the shrubbery they looked incongruous, daft, degenerate, everything their relatives said they were, but the minute they had passed the gate and set foot upon the black soil of the moor, there was a change. Great Presences came to meet them, and whether they perceived Them or not, a silence fell upon the wedding party.

 

In ten seconds the moor took them, man, girl, and" donkey fading into its grey-browns in the most amazing fashion, as if they had simply ceased to exist. They had gone to their own place, and their own place had made them welcome. A civilization with which they had nothing to do would never again have the power to torture and imprison them for being different. In dead silence the wedding party went in to eat its wedding breakfast and no one remembered to give any toasts.

 

We heard no more of the wayfarers until the following spring, when there came a tap upon the office window after lights out," which instantly put me in mind of Diana. It was not she, however, but her husband. Taverner was absent, but in response to a brief request I accompanied my summoner. We had not far to go; the little brown tent was pitched almost under the lea of our wood, and I saw in an instant why I had been summoned, though there was little need to summon me, for the Nature-gods can look after their own, it is only we superior beings who have to be dragged into the world by the scruff of our necks; the gates of life swung upon easy hinges, and in a few minutes a little granddaughter of Pan lay in my hands, a little, new-made perfection, save for the tufted ears. I wondered what new breed of mortals had been introduced into our troubled old world to disturb its civilization.

 

"Oh, Taverner," I thought, "what will the future hold you responsible for? Will it rank you with the man who introduced rabbits into Australia. . . or with Prometheus?"

 

 

*************************************

 

The Subletting of the Mansion

 

 

 

"Build thou more stately mansions, O my soul--"

 

The post bag of the nursing home was always sent to the village when the gardeners departed at six, so if any belated letter-writer desired to communicate with the outer world at a later hour, he had to walk to the pillar box at the cross roads with his own missives. As I had little time for my private letter-writing during the day, the dusk usually saw me with a cigar and a handful of letters taking my after-dinner stroll in that direction.

 

It was not my custom to encourage the patients to accompany me on these strolls, for I felt that I did my duty towards them during working hours, and so was entitled to my leisure, but Winnington was not quite in the position of an ordinary patient, for he was a personal friend of Taverner's, and also, I gathered, a member of one of the lesser degrees of that great fraternity of whose work I had had some curious glimpses; and so the fascination which this fraternity always had for me, although I have never aspired to its membership, together with the amusing and bizarre personality of the man, made me meet half way his attempt to turn our professional relationship into a personal one.

 

Therefore it was that he fell into step with me down the long path that ran through the shrubbery to the little gate, at the far end of the nursing home garden, which gave upon the cross roads where the pillar box stood.

 

Having posted our letters, we were lounging back across the road when the sound of a motor horn made us start aside, for a car swung round the corner almost on top of us. Within it I caught a glimpse of a man and woman, and on top was a considerable quantity of luggage.

 

The car turned in at the gate of a large house whose front drive ran out at the cross roads, and I remarked to my companion that I supposed Mr. Hirschmann, the owner of the house, had got over his internment and come back to live there again, for the house had stood empty, though furnished, since a trustful country had decided that its confidence might be abused, and that the wily Teuton would bear watching.

 

Meeting Taverner on the terrace as we returned to the house, I told him that Hirschmann was back again, but he shook his head.

 

"That was not the Hirschmanns you saw," he said, "but the people they have let the house to. Bellamy, I think their name is, they have taken the place furnished; either one or other of them is an invalid, I believe."

 

A week later I was again strolling down to the pillar box when Taverner joined me, and smoking vigorously to discourage the midges, we wandered down to the cross roads together. As we reached the pillar box a faint creak attracted our attention, and looking round, we saw that the large iron gates barring the entrance to Hirschmann's drive had been pushed ajar and a woman was slipping softly through the narrow opening they afforded. She was obviously coming to the post, but seeing us, hesitated; we stood back, making way for her, and she slipped across the intervening gravel on tiptoe, posted her letter, half bowed to us in acknowledgement of our courtesy, and vanished silently as she had come.

 

"There is a tragedy being worked out in that house," re- marked Taverner.

 

I was all interest, as I always am, at any manifestation of my chief's psychic powers, but he merely laughed.

 

"Not clairvoyance this time, Rhodes, but merely common sense. If a woman's face is younger than her figure, then she is happily married; if the reverse, then she is working out a tragedy."

 

"I did not see her face," I said, "but her figure was that of a young woman."

 

"I saw her face," said Taverner, "and it was that of an old one."

 

His strictures upon her were not entirely justified, however, for a few nights later Winnington and I saw her go to the post again, and although her face was heavily lined and colourless, it was a very striking one, and the mass of auburn hair that surrounded it seemed all the richer for its pallor. I am afraid I stared at her somewhat hard, trying to see the signs from which Taverner had deduced her history. She slipped out through the scarcely opened gate, moving swiftly but stealthily, as one accustomed to need concealment, gave us a sidelong glance under long dark lashes, and retreated as she had come.

 

It was the complete immobility of the man at my side which drew my attention to him. He stood rooted to the ground, staring up the shadowed drive where she had disappeared as if he would send his very soul to illuminate the darkness. I touched his arm. He turned to speak, but caught his breath, and the words were lost in the bubbling cough that means haemorrhage. He threw one arm round my shoulders to support himself, for he was a taller man than I, and I held him while he coughed up the scarlet arterial blood which told its own story.

 

I got him back to the house and put him to bed, for he was very shaky after his attack, and reported what had happened to Taverner.

 

"I don't think he is going to last long," I said.

 

My colleague looked surprised. "There is a lot of life in him," he said.

 

"There is not much left of his lungs," I answered, "and you cannot run a car without an engine."

 

Winnington was not laid up long, however, and the first day we let him out of bed he proposed to go to the post with me. I demurred, for it was some little distance there and back, but he took me by the arm and said: "Look here, Rhodes, I've got to go."

 

I asked the reason for so much urgency. He hesitated, and then he burst out, "I want to see that woman again."

 

"That's Mrs. Bellamy," I said. "You had better let her alone; she is not good for you. There are plenty of nice girls on the premises you can flirt with if you want to. Let the married women alone; the husbands only come round and kick up a row, and it is bad for the nursing home's reputation."

 

But Winnington was not to be headed off.

 

"I don't care whose wife she is; she's the woman I--I-- never thought I should see," he finished lamely. "Hang it all, man, I am not going to speak to her or make an ass of myself, I only want to have a look at her. Any way, I don't count, I have pretty nearly finished with this sinful flesh, what's left of it."

 

He swayed before me in the dusk; tall, gaunt as a skeleton, with a colour in his cheeks we should have rejoiced to see in any other patient's, but which was a danger signal in his.

 

I knew he would go, whether I consented or not, so I judged it best we should go together; and thereafter it became an established thing that we should walk to the cross roads at post time whether there were letters or not. Sometimes we saw Mrs. Bellamy slip silently out to the post, and sometimes we did not. If we missed her for more than two days, Winnington was in a fever, and when for five consecutive days she did not appear, he excited himself into another haemorrhage and we put him to bed, too weak to protest.

 

It was while telling Taverner of this latest development that the telephone bell rang. I, being nearest the instrument, picked it up and took the message.

 

"Is that Dr. Taverner?" said a woman's voice.

 

"This is Dr. Taverner's nursing home," I replied.

 

"It is Mrs. Bellamy of Headington House who is speaking. I should be grateful if Dr. Taverner would come and see my husband; he has been taken suddenly ill."

 

I turned to give the message to Taverner, but he had left the room. A sudden impulse seized me.

 

"Dr. Taverner is not here at the moment," I said; "but I will come over if you like. I am his assistant; my name is Rhodes, Dr. Rhodes."

 

"I should be very grateful," replied the voice. "Can you come soon? I am anxious!"

 

I picked up my cap and went down the path I had so often followed with Winnington. Poor chap, he would not stroll with me again for some time, if ever. At the cross roads I paused for a moment, marvelling that the invisible barrier of convention was at last lowered and that I was free to go up the drive and speak with the woman I had so often watched in Winnington's company. I pushed the heavy gates ajar just as she had done, walked up the deeply shaded avenue, and rang the bell.

 

I was shown into a sort of morning room where Mrs. Bellamy came to me almost immediately.

 

"I want to explain matters to you before you see my husband" she said. "The housekeeper is helping me with him, and I do not want her to know; you see the trouble--I am afraid--is drugs."

 

So Taverner had been right as usual, she was working out a tragedy.

 

"He has been in a stupor all day, and I am afraid he has taken an overdose; he has done so before, and I know the symptoms. I felt that I could not get through the night without sending for someone."

 

She took me to see the patient and I examined him. His pulse was feeble, breathing difficult, and colour bad, but a man who is as inured to the drug as he seemed to be is very hard to kill, more's the pity. I told her what measures to take; said I did not anticipate any danger, but she could phone me again if a change took place.

 

As she wished me goodbye she smiled, and said: "I know you quite well by sight, Dr. Rhodes; I have often seen you at the pillar box."

 

"It is my usual evening walk," I replied. "I always take the letters that have missed the post bag."

 

I was in two minds about telling Winnington of my interview, wondering whether the excitement into which it would throw him or his continued suspense would be the lesser of the two evils, and finally decided in favour of the former. I went up to his room when I got back, and plunged into the matter without preamble.

 

"Winnington," I said, "I have seen your divinity."

 

He was all agog in a minute, and I told him of my interview, suppressing only the nature of the illness, which I was in honour bound not to reveal. This, however, was the point he particularly wished to know, although he knew that I naturally could not tell him. Finding me obdurate, he suddenly raised himself in bed, seized my hand, and laid it to his forehead.

 

"No, you don't!" I cried, snatching it away, for I had by now seen enough of Taverner's methods to know how thought-reading was done, but I had not been quick enough, and Winnington sank back on the pillowless bed chuckling.

 

"Drugs!" he said, and breathless from his effort, could say no more; but the triumph in his eyes told me that he had learnt something which he considered of vital importance.

 

I went round next morning to see Bellamy again. He was conscious, regarded me with sulky suspicion, and would have none of me, and I saw that my acquaintance with his household was likely to end as it had begun, at the pillar box.

 

An evening or two later Mrs. Bellamy and I met again at the cross roads. She answered my greeting with a smile, evidently well enough pleased to have some one to speak to beside her boorish husband, for they seemed to know no one in the district.

 

She commented on my solitary state. "What has become of the tall man who used to come with you to the post?" she enquired.

 

I told her of poor Winnington's condition. Then she said a curious thing for one who was a comparative stranger to me, and a complete stranger to Winnington.

 

"Is he likely to die?" she asked, looking me straight in the face with a peculiar expression in her eyes.

 

Surprised by her question, I blurted out the truth.

 

"I thought so," she said. "I am Scotch, and we have second sight in our family, and last night I saw his wraith."

 

"You saw his wraith?" I exclaimed mystified.

 

She nodded her auburn head. "Just as clearly as I see you," she replied. "In fact he was so distinct that I thought he must have been another doctor from the nursing home whom you had sent over in your stead to see how my husband was getting on.

 

"I was sitting beside the bed with the lamp turned low, when a movement caught my notice, and I looked up to see your friend standing between me and the light. I was about to speak to him when I noticed the extraordinary expression of his face, so extraordinary that I stared at him and could find no word to say, for he seemed to be absolutely gloating over me--or my husband--I could not tell which.

 

"He was standing up straight, not his usual stoop." (`So you have been watching him tool' I thought.) "And his face wore a look of absolute triumph, as if he had at last won something for which he had waited and worked for a very long time, and he said to me quite slowly and distinctly: `It will be my turn next.' I was just about to answer him and ask what he meant by his extraordinary behaviour, when I suddenly found that I could see the lamp through him, and before I had recovered from my surprise he had vanished. I took it to mean that my husband would live, but that he himself was dying."

 

I told her that from my knowledge of the two cases her interpretation was likely to prove a true one, and we stood for some minutes telling ghosts stories before she returned through the iron gates.

 

Winnington was slowly pulling round from his attack, though as yet unable to leave his bed. His attitude concerning Mrs. Bellamy had undergone a curious change; he still asked me each day if I had seen her at the pillar box and what she had had to say for herself, but he showed no regret that he was not well enough to accompany me thither and make her acquaintance; instead, his attitude seemed to convey that he and she were partners in some secret in which I had no share.

 

Although he was over the worst, his last attack had so pulled him down that his disease had got the upper hand, and I saw that it was unlikely that he would ever get out of bed again, so I indulged his foible in regard to Mrs. Bellamy, feeling sure that no harm could come of it. Her visits to the pillar box, what she said, and what I said were duly reported for the benefit of the sick man, whose eyes twinkled with a secret amusement while I talked. As far as I could make out, for he did not give me his confidence, he was biding his time till Bellamy took another overdose, and I should have felt considerable anxiety as to what he intended to do then had I not known that he was physically incapable of crossing the room without assistance. Little harm could come, therefore, from letting him daydream, so I did not seek to fling cold water on his fantasies.

 

One night I was aroused by a tap at my door and found the night nurse standing there. She asked me to come with her to Winnington's room, for she had found him unconscious, and his condition gave her anxiety. I went with her, and as she had said, he was in a state of coma, pulse imperceptible, breathing almost nonexistent; for a moment I was puzzled at the turn his illness had taken, but as I stood looking down at him, I heard the faint click in the throat followed by the long sibilant sigh that I had so often heard when Taverner was leaving his body for one of those strange psychic expeditions of his, and I guessed that Win- nington was at the same game, for I knew that he had belonged to Taverner's fraternity and had doubtless learnt many of its arts.

 

I sent the nurse away and settled myself to wait beside our patient as I had often waited beside Taverner; not a little anxious, for my colleague was away on his holiday, and I had the responsibility of the nursing home on my shoulders; not that that would have troubled me in the ordinary way, but occult matters are beyond my ken, and I knew that Taverner always considered that these psychic expeditions were not altogether unaccompanied by risk.

 

I had not a long vigil, however; after about twenty minutes I saw the trance condition pass into natural sleep, and having made sure that the heart had taken up its beat again and that all was well, I left my patient without rousing him and went back to bed.

 

Next morning, as Winnington did not refer to the incident, I did not either, but his ill-concealed elation showed that something had transpired upon that midnight journey which had pleased him mightily.

 

That evening when I went to the pillar box I found Mrs. Bellamy there waiting for me. She began without preamble:

 

"Dr. Rhodes, did your tall friend die during the night?"

 

"No," I said, looking at her sharply. "In fact he is much better this morning."

 

"I am glad of that," she said, "for I saw his wraith again last night, and wondered if anything had happened to him."

 

"What time did you see him?" I enquired, a sudden suspicion coming into my mind.

 

"I don't know," she replied; "I did not look at the clock, but it was some time after midnight; I was wakened by something touching my cheek very softly, and thought the cat must have got into the room and jumped on the bed; I roused myself, intending to put it out of the room, when I saw something shadowy between me and the window; it moved to the foot of the bed, and I felt a slight weight on my feet, more than that of a cat, about what one would expect from a good-sized terrier, and then I distinctly saw your friend sitting on the foot of the bed, watching me. As I looked at him, he faded and disappeared, and I could not be sure that I had not imagined him out of the folds of the eiderdown, which was thrown back over the footboard, so I thought I would ask you whether there was--anything to account for what I saw."

 

"Winnington is not dead," I said. And not wishing to be questioned any further in the matter, wished her good night somewhat abruptly and was turning away when she called me back.

 

"Dr. Rhodes," she said, "my husband has been in that heavy stupor all day; do you think that anything ought to be done?"

 

"I will come and have a look at him if you like," I answered. She thanked me, but said she did not want to call me in unless it were essential, for her husband so bitterly resented any interference.

 

"Have you got a butler or valet in the house, or is your husband alone with you and the women servants?" I enquired, for it seemed to me that a man who took drugs to the extent that Bellamy did was not the safest, let alone the pleasantest company for three or four women.

 

Mrs. Bellamy divined my thought and smiled sadly. "I am used to it," she said. "I have always coped with him single-handed."

 

"How long has he been taking drugs?" I asked.

 

"Ever since our marriage," she replied. "But how long before that I cannot tell you."

 

I did not like to press her any further, for her face told me of the tragedy of that existence, so I contented myself with saying:

 

"I hope you will let me know if you need help at any time. Dr. Taverner and I do not practise in this district, but we would gladly do what we could in an emergency."

 

As I went down the shrubbery path I thought over what she had told me. Taking into consideration that Winnington had been in a trance condition between two and two-thirty, I felt certain that what she had seen was no phantasy of her imagination. I was much puzzled how to act. It seemed to me that Winnington was playing a dangerous game, dangerous to himself, and to the unsuspecting woman on whom he was practising, yet if I spoke to him on the matter, he would either laugh at me or tell me to mind my own business, and if I warned her, she would regard me as a lunatic. By refusing to admit their existence, the world gives a very long start to those who practice the occult arts.

 

I decided to leave matters alone until Taverner came back, and therefore avoided deep waters when I paid my evening visits to Winnington. As usual he enquired for news of Mrs. Bellamy, and I told him that I had seen her, and casually mentioned that her husband was bad again. In an instant I saw that I had made a mistake and given Winnington information that he ought not to have had, but I could not unsay my words, and took my leave of him with an uneasy feeling that he was up to something that I could not fathom. Very greatly did I wish for Taverner's experience to take the responsibility off my shoulders, but he was away in Scotland, and I had no reasonable grounds for disturbing his well-earned holiday.

 

About an hour later, as I had finished my rounds and was thinking of bed, the telephone bell rang. I answered, and heard Mrs. Bellamy's voice at the end of the line.

 

"I wish you would come round, Dr. Rhodes," she said, "I am very uneasy."

 

In a few minutes I was with her, and we stood together looking at the unconscious man on the bed. He was a powerfully built fellow of some thirty-five years of age, and before the drug had undermined him, must have been a fine-looking man. His condition appeared to be the same as before, and I asked Mrs. Bellamy what it was that had rendered her so anxious, for I had gathered from the tone of her voice over the phone that she was frightened.

 

She beat about the bush for a minute or two, and then the truth came out.

 

"I am afraid my nerve is going," she said. "But there seems to be something or somebody in the room, and it was more than I could stand alone; I simply had to send for you. Will you forgive me for being so foolish and troubling you at this hour of the night?"

 

I quite understood her feelings, for the strain of coping with a drug maniac in that lonely place with no friends to help her--a strain which I gathered, had gone on for years--was enough to wear down anyone's courage.

 

"Don't think about that," I said. "I'm only too glad to be able to give you any help I can; I quite understand your difficulties."

 

So, although her husband's condition gave no cause for anxiety, I settled down to watch with her for a little while, and do what I could to ease the strain of the intolerable burden.

 

We had not been sitting quietly in the dim light for very long before I was aware of a curious feeling. Just as she had said, we were not alone in the room. She saw my glance questing into the corners, and smiled.

 

"You feel it too?" she said. "Do you see anything?"

 

"No," I answered, "I am not psychic, I wish I were; but I tell you who will see it, if there is anything to be seen, and that is my dog; he followed me here, and is curled up in the porch if he has not gone home. With your permission I will fetch him up and see what he makes of it,"

 

I ran down stairs and found the big Airedale, whose task it was to guard the nursing home, patiently waiting on the mat. Taking him into the bedroom, I introduced him to Mrs. Bellamy, whom he received with favour, and then, leaving him to his own devices, sat quietly watching what he would do. First he went over to the bed and sniffed at the unconscious man, then he wandered round the room as a dog will in a strange place, and finally he settled down at our feet in front of the fire. Whatever it was that had disturbed our equanimity he regarded as unworthy of notice.

 

He slept peacefully till Mrs. Bellamy, who had brewed tea, produced a box of biscuits, and then he woke up and demanded his share; first he came to me, and received a contribution, and then he walked quietly up to an empty arm chair and stood gazing at it in anxious expectancy. We stared at him in amazement. The dog, serenely confident of his reception, pawed the chair to attract its attention. Mrs. Bellamy and I looked at each other.

 

"I had always heard," she said, "that it was only cats who liked ghosts, and that dogs were afraid of them."

 

"So had I," I answered. "But Jack seems to be on friendly terms with this one."

 

And then the explanation flashed into my mind. If the invisible presence were Winnington, whom Mrs. Bellamy had already seen twice in that very room, then the dog's behaviour was accounted for, for Winnington and he were close friends, and the presence which to us was so uncanny, would, to him, be friendly and familiar.

 

I rose to my feet. "If you don't mind," I said, "I will just go round to the nursing home and attend to one or two things, and then we will see this affair through together."

 

I raced back through the shrubberies to the nursing home, mounted the stairs three at a time, and burst into Winnington's bedroom. As I expected, he was in deep trance.

 

"Oh you devil!" I said to the unconscious form on the bed, "what games are you up to now? I wish to Heaven that Taverner were back to deal with you."

 

I hastened back to Mrs. Bellamy, and to my surprise, as I re-entered her room I heard voices, and there was Bellamy, fully conscious, and sitting up in bed and drinking tea. He looked dazed, and was shivering with cold, but had apparently thrown off all effects of his drug. I was nonplussed, for I had counted on slipping away before he had recovered consciousness, for I had in mind his last reception of me which had been anything but cordial, but it was impossible to draw back.

 

"I am glad to see you are better, Mr. Bellamy," I said. "We have been rather anxious about you."

 

"Don't you worry about me, Rhodes," was the reply. "Go back to bed, old chap; I'll be as right as a trivet as soon as I get warm."

 

I withdrew; there was no further excuse for my presence, and back I went to the nursing home again to have another look at Winnington. He was still in a state of coma, so I settled down to watch beside him, but hour after hour went by while I dozed in my chair, and finally the grey light of dawn came and found his condition still unchanged. I had never known Taverner to be out of his body for such a length of time, and Winnington's condi- tion worried me considerably. He might be all right; on the other hand, he might not; I did not know enough about these trances to be sure, and I could not fetch Taverner back from his holiday on a wild goose chase.

 

The day wore itself away, and when night found Winnington still in the same state I decided that the time had come for some action to be taken, and went to the dispensary to get the strychnine, intending to give him an injection of that and see if it would do any good.

 

The minute I opened the dispensary door I knew there was someone there, but when I switched on the light the room stood empty before me. All the same, a presence positively jostled my elbow as I searched among the shelves for what I required, and I felt its breath on my neck as I bent over the instrument drawer for the hypodermic syringe.

 

"Oh Lord!" I said aloud. "I wish Taverner would come back and look after his own spooks. Here, you, whoever you are, go on, clear out, go home; we don't want you here!" And hastily gathering up my impedimenta, I beat a retreat and left it in possession of the dispensary.

 

My evil genius prompted me to look over my shoulder as I went down the passage, and there, behind me, was a spindle-shaped drift of grey mist some seven feet high. I am ashamed to admit it, but I ran. I am not easily scared by anything I can see, but these half-seen things that drift to us out of another existence, whose presence one can detect but not locate, fill me with cold horror.

 

I slammed and locked Winnington's door behind me and paused to recover my breath; but even as I did so, I saw a pool of mist gathering on the floor, and there was the creature, oozing through the crack under the door and reforming itself in the shadow of the wardrobe.

 

What would I not have given for Taverner's presence as I stood there, helplessly watching it, syringe in hand, sweating like a frightened horse. Then illumination suddenly burst upon me; what a fool I was, of course it was Winnington coming back to his body!

 

"Oh Lord!" I said. "What a fright you gave me! For goodness sake get back into your body and stop there, and we'll let bygones be bygones."

 

But it did not heed my adjuration; it seemed as if it were the hypodermic syringe that attracted it, and instead of returning to its physical vehicle, it hung round me.

 

"Oh," I said. "So it is the strychnine you are after? Well then, get back into your body and you shall have some. Look, I am going to give your body an injection. Get back inside it if you want any strychnine."

 

The grey wraith hung for a moment over the unconscious form on the bed, and then, to my unspeakable relief, slowly merged into it, and I felt the heart take up its beat and breathing recommence.

 

I went to my room dead beat, for I had had no sleep and much anxiety during the past forty-eight hours, so I left a note on my mat to say that I was not to be disturbed in the morning; I felt I had fairly earned my rest, I had pulled two tricky cases through, and put my small knowledge of occultism to a satisfactory test.

 

But in spite of my instructions I was not left undisturbed. At seven o'clock the matron routed me out.

 

"I wish you would come and look at Mr. Winnington, Doctor; I think he has gone out of his mind."

 

I wearily put on my clothes and dipped my heavy head in the basin and went to inspect Winnington. Instead of his usual cheery smile, he greeted me a malign scowl.

 

"I should be very glad," he said, "if you would kindly tell me where I am."

 

"You are in your own room, old chap," I said. "You have had a bad turn, but are all right again now."

 

"Indeed," he said. "This is the first I have heard of it. And who may you be?"

 

"I'm Rhodes," I replied. "Don't you know me?"

 

"I know you right enough. You are Dr. Taverner's understrapper at that nursing home place. I suppose my kind friends have put me here to get me out of the way. Well, I can tell you this, they can't make me stop here. Where are my clothes? I want to get up."

 

"Your clothes are wherever you put them," I replied. "We have not taken them away; but as for getting up, you are not fit to do so. We have no wish to keep you here against your will, and if you want to be moved we will arrange it for you, but you will have to have an ambulance, you have been pretty bad you know." It was my intention to play for time till this sick mood should have passed, but he saw through my manoeuvre.

 

"Ambulance be damned," he said. "I will go on my own feet." And forthwith he sat up in bed and swung his legs over the edge. But even this effort was too much for him, and he would have slid to the floor if I had not caught him. I called the nurse, and we put him to bed, incapable of giving any further trouble for the moment.

 

I was rather surprised at this ebullition as coming from Winnington, who had always shown himself a very sweet-tempered, gentle personality, though liable to fits of depression, which, however, were hardly to be wondered at in his condition. He had not much to make him cheerful, poor chap, and but for Taverner's intervention he would probably have ended his days in an infirmary.

 

When I went down to the pillar box that evening, there was Mrs. Bellamy, and to my surprise, her husband was with her. She greeted me with constraint, watching her husband to see how he would take it, but his greeting lacked nothing in the way of cordiality; one would have thought that I was an old friend of the family. He thanked me for my care of him, and for my kindness to his wife, whom, he said, he was afraid had been going through rather a bad time lately.

 

"I am going to take her away for a change, however, a second honeymoon, you know; but when we get back I want to see something of you, and also of Dr. Taverner. I am very anxious to keep in touch with Taverner."

 

I thanked him, marvelling at his change of mood, and only hoping for his wife's sake that it would last; but drug takers are broken reeds to lean upon and I feared that she would have to drain her cup to the dregs.

 

When I got back to the nursing home I was amazed to find Taverner there.

 

"Why, what in the world has brought you back from your holiday?" I demanded.

 

"You did," he replied. "You kept on telepathing S.O.S. messages, so I thought I had better come and see what was the matter."

 

"I am most awfully sorry," 1 said. "We had a little difficulty, but got over it all right."

 

"What happened?" he enquired, watching me closely, and I felt myself getting red like a guilty schoolboy, for I did not particularly want to tell him of Mrs. Bellamy and Winnington's infatuation for her.

 

"I fancy that Winnington tried your stunt of going subconscious," I said at length. "He went very deep, and was away a long time, and I got rather worried. You see, I don't understand these things properly. And then, as he was coming back, I saw him, and took him for a ghost, and got the wind up."

 

"You saw him?" exclaimed Taverner. "How did you manage to do that? You are not clairvoyant."

 

"I saw a grey, spindle-shaped drift of mist, the same as we saw the time Black, the airman, nearly died."

 

"You saw that?" said Taverner in surprise. "Do you mean to say that Winnington took the etheric double out? How long was he subconscious?"

 

"About twenty-four hours."

 

"Good God!" cried Taverner. "The man's probably dead!"

 

"He's nothing of the sort," I replied. "He is alive and kicking. Kicking vigorously, in fact." I added, remembering the scene of the morning.

 

"I cannot conceive," said Taverner, "how the etheric double, the vehicle of the life forces, could be withdrawn for so long a time without the disintegration of the physical form commencing. Where was he, and what was he up to? Perhaps, however, he was immediately over the bed, and merely withdrew from his physical body to escape its discomfort"

 

"He was in the dispensary when I first saw him," I answered, devoutly hoping that Taverner would not need any further information as to Winnington's whereabouts. "He followed me back to his room and I coaxed him into his body."

 

Taverner gave me a queer look. "I suppose you took the preliminary precaution of making sure that it was Winnington you had got hold of?"

 

"Good Lord, Taverner, is there a possibility--?"

 

"Come upstairs and let us have a look at him. I can soon tell you."

 

Winnington was lying in a room lit only by a night-light, and though he turned his head at our entrance, did not speak. Taverner went over to the bed and switched on the reading lamp standing on the bedside table. Winnington flinched at the sudden brightness, and growled something, but Taverner threw the light full into his eyes, watching them closely, and to my surprise, the pupils did not contract.

 

"I was afraid so," said Taverner.

 

"Is anything wrong?" I enquired anxiously. "He seems all right."

 

"Everything is wrong, my dear boy," answered Taverner. "I am sure you did the best you knew, but you did not know enough. Unless you thoroughly understand these things it is best to leave them to nature."

 

"But--but--he is alive," I exclaimed, bewildered.

 

"It is alive," corrected Taverner. "That is not Winnington, you know."

 

"Then who in the world is it? It looks like it to me."

 

"That we must try and find out. Who are you?" he continued, raising his voice and addressing the man on the bed.

 

"You know damn well," came the husky whisper.

 

"I am afraid I don't," answered Taverner. "I must ask you to tell me."

 

"Why, W--," I began, but Taverner clapped his hand over my mouth.

 

"Be quiet, you fool, you have done enough damage, never let it know the real name."

 

Then, turning back to the sick man again, he repeated his question.

 

"John Bellamy," came the sulky answer.

 

Taverner nodded and drew me out of the room.

 

"Bellamy?" he asked. "That is the name of the man who took the Hirschmanns' house. Has Winnington had anything to do with him?"

 

"Look here, Taverner," I said, "I will tell you something I had not meant to let you know. Winnington has got a fixation on Bellamy's wife, and apparently he has brooded over it, and phantasied over it, till in his unconscious imagination he has substituted himself for Bellamy."

 

"That may quite well be, it may be an ordinary case of mental trouble; we will investigate that end of the stick by and by; but, for the present, why has Bellamy substituted himself for Winnington?"

 

"A wish-fulfilment," I replied. "Winnington is in love with Bellamy's wife; he wishes he were Bellamy in order to possess her, therefore his delirium expresses the subconscious wish as an actuality, the usual Freudian mechanism, you know--the dream as the wish-fulfilment."

 

"I dare say," answered Taverner. "The Freudians explain a lot of things they don't understand. But what about Bellamy, is he in a trance condition?"

 

"He is apparently quite all right, or he was, about half an hour ago. I saw him when he came down to the post with his wife. He was quite all right, and uncommon civil, in fact."

 

"I dare say," said Taverner drily. "You and Winnington always were chums. Now look here, Rhodes, you are not being frank with me. I must get to the bottom of this business. Now tell me all about it."

 

So I told him. Narrated in cold blood, it sounded the flimsiest phantasy. When I had finished, Taverner laughed.

 

"You have done it this time, Rhodes," he said. "And you who are so straight-laced, of all people!" and he laughed again.

 

"What is your explanation of the matter?" I enquired, somewhat nettled by his laughter. "I can quite understand Winnington's soul, or whatever may be the technical name for it, getting out of its body and turning up in Mrs. Bellamy's room, we have had several cases of that sort of thing; and I can quite understand Winnington's Freudian wish-fulfillment, it is the most understandable thing of the whole business; the only thing that is not clear to me is the change in character of the two men; Bellamy is certainly improved, for the moment, at any rate; and Winnington is in a very bad temper and slightly delirious."

 

"And therein lies the crux of the whole problem. What do you suppose has happened to those two men?"

 

"I haven't a notion," I answered.

 

"But I have," said Taverner. "Narcotics, if you take enough of them, have the effect of putting you out of your body, but the margin is a narrow one between enough and too much, and if you take the latter, you go out and don't come back. Winnington found out, through you, Bellamy's weakness, and, being able to leave his body at will as a trained Initiate can, watched his chance when Bellamy was out of his body in a pipe dream, and then slipped in, obsessed him, in fact, leaving Bellamy to wander houseless. Bellamy, craving for his drug, and cut off from the physical means of gratification, scents from afar the stock we have in the dispensary, and goes there; and when he sees you with a hypodermic syringe--for an ensouled etheric can see quite well--he instinctively follows you, and you, meddling in matters of which you know nothing, put him into Winnington's body."

 

As Taverner was speaking I realized that we had the true explanation of the phenomena; point by point it fitted in with all I had witnessed.

 

"Is there anything that can be done to put matters right?" I asked, now thoroughly chastened.

 

"There are several things that can be done, but it is a question as to what you would consider to be right." "Surely there can be no doubt upon that point? --get the men sorted back into their proper bodies."

 

"You think that would be right?" said Taverner. "I am not so certain. In that case you would have three unhappy people; in the present case, you have two who are very happy, and one who is very angry, the world on the whole, being richer."

 

"But how about Mrs. Bellamy?" I said. "She is living with a man she is not married to?"

 

"The law would consider her to be married to him," answered Taverner. "Our marriage laws only separate for sins of the body, they do not recognize adultery of the soul; so long as the body has been faithful, they would think no evil. A change of disposition for the worse, whether under the influence of drugs, drink, or insanity, does not constitute grounds for a divorce under our exalted code, therefore a change of personality for the better under a psychic influence does not constitute one either. The mandarins cannot have it both ways."

 

"Any way," I replied, "it does not seem to me moral."

 

"How do you define morality?" said Taverner.

 

"The law of the land--," I began.

 

"In that case a man's admission to Heaven would be decided by Act of Parliament. If you go through a form of marriage with a woman a day before a new marriage law takes effect, you will go to prison, and subsequently to hell, for bigamy; whereas, if you go through the same ceremony with the same woman the day after, you will live in the odour of sanctity and finally go to heaven. No, Rhodes, we will have to seek deeper than that for our standards."

 

"Then," said I, "how would you define immorality?"

 

"As that," said Taverner, "which retards the evolution of the group soul of the society to which one belongs. There are times when lawbreaking is the highest ethical act; we can all think of such occasions in history, the many acts of conformity, both Catholic and Protestant, for example. Martyrs are lawbreakers, and most of them were legally convicted at the time of their execution; it has remained for subsequent ages to canonize them."

 

"But to return to practical politics, Taverner, what are you going to do with Winnington?"

 

"Certify him," said Taverner, "and ship him off to the county asylum as soon as we can get the ambulance."

 

"You must do as you see fit," I replied, "but I am damned if I will put my name on that certificate."

 

"You lack the courage of your convictions, but may I take it that you will not protest?"

 

"How the hell can I? I should only get certified myself."

 

"You must expect your good to be evil spoken of in this wicked world," rejoined my partner, and the discussion was likely to have developed into the first quarrel we had ever had when the door suddenly opened and the nurse stood there.

 

"Doctor," she said, "Mr. Winnington has passed away."

 

"Thank God!" said I.

 

"Good Lord!" said Taverner.

 

We went upstairs and stood beside that which lay upon the bed. Never before had I so clearly realized that the physical form is not the man. Here was a house that had been tenanted by two distinct entities, that had stood vacant for thirty-six hours, and that now was permanently empty. Soon the walls would crumble and the roof fall in. How could I ever have thought that this was my friend? A quarter of a mile away, the soul that had built this habitation was laughing in its sleeve, and somewhere, probably in the dispensary, a furious entity that had recently been imprisoned behind its bars was raging impotently, nosing at the stoppers of the poison bottles for the stimulants it no longer had the stomach to hold. My knees gave under me, and I dropped into a chair, nearer to fainting than I have ever been since my first operation.

 

"Well, that is settled, anyway," I said in a voice that sounded strange in my own ears.

 

"You think so? Now, I consider the trouble is just beginning" said Taverner. "Has it struck you that so long as Bellamy was imprisoned in a body, we knew where he was and could keep him under control? But now he is loose in the unseen world, and will take a considerable amount of catching."

 

"Then you think he will try to interfere with his wife and--and her husband?"

 

"What would you do if you were in his shoes?" said Taverner.

 

"And yet you don't consider the transaction as immoral?"

 

"I do not. It has done no harm to the group spirit, or the social morale, if you prefer the term. On the other hand, Winnington is running an enormous risk. Can he keep Bellamy at bay now he is out of the body? and if he cannot, what will happen? Remember Bellamy's time to die had not come, and therefore he will hang about, an earthbound ghost, like that of a suicide; and if tuberculosis is a disease of the vital forces, as I believe it to be, how long will it be before the infected life that now ensouls it will cause the old trouble to break out in Bellamy's body? And when Bellamy the second is out on the astral plane--dead, as you call it--what will Bellamy the first have to say to him? And what will they do to Mrs. Bellamy between them, making her neighbourhood their battleground?

 

"No, Rhodes, there is no special hell for those who dabble in forbidden things; it would be superfluous."

 

*********************

 

Recalled

 

 

 

"Be off with the old love e'er you're on with the new."

 

"How many people are there in the waiting room, Bates?" enquired Taverner of the butler at the end of a long day in the Harley Street consulting room.

 

"Two, sir," answered that functionary. "A lady and a gentleman."

 

"Ah," said Taverner. "Well show the lady in."

 

"I think they came together, sir."

 

"Then show the gentleman in. A man never brings his wife on these expeditions," he added to me. "She comes with a friend; but a man will let his wife bring him, he being the weaker sex and in need of protection where his nerves are concerned."

 

They arrived together, however, in spite of Taverner's instructions, and the butler announced them as Colonel and Mrs. Eustace. He was a tall, fine looking man, much bronzed by tropical suns, and she was one of those women who make one proud of one's race, slender, graceful, with the controlled fire of a thoroughbred, the fruit of many generations of refining shelter and worthy pride. They made a fine pair, such as the society papers love to picture, and they both looked perfectly healthy.

 

It was the wife who opened the ball.

 

"We, that is, my husband, wants to consult you, Dr. Taverner, about a matter which has disturbed us lately--a recurring nightmare."

 

Taverner bowed. The husband never spoke. I gathered that he had been dragged here against his will.

 

"I always know when it's coming," Mrs. Eustace continued, "because he begins to mutter in his sleep; then he speaks louder and louder, and finally he leaps up, rushes across the room, and crashes into the furniture before I can do anything to stop him; and then wakes up in a dreadful state, don't you, Tony?" she demanded, turning to the silent man at her side.

 

Meeting with no response from him, she again took up the burden of her story.

 

"As soon as I realized that the nightmare was recurring regularly I took to rousing him at the first sign of disturbance, and this proved fairly effective, for it prevented the rush across the room, but we neither of us dared go to sleep again till daylight. In fact, to be frank with you doctor, I seem to be catching it."

 

"You also have the nightmare?" asked Taverner. "No, not the actual nightmare, but an indefinable sense of dread, as if some dangerous enemy were threatening."

 

"What does your husband say when he talks in his sleep?"

 

"Ah, that I cannot tell you, for he speaks in one of the native dialects. I suppose I ought to learn it, ought I not, Tony? For we shall be going to India next trooping season."

 

"It will not be necessary," replied her husband, "for we shall not be returning to that district." His pleasant, cultured voice was in keeping with his appearance; he was a type of the administrator of empire who is fast dying out. Such men will not submit themselves to a native democracy.

 

Taverner fired a question at him suddenly. "What do you dream about?" he demanded, looking him straight in the eyes. One felt the barriers go up in an instant, but he answered with the control that breeding teaches. "The usual sort of thing, bogeys, you know; want to run and can't. I ought to have left all such things behind in the nursery."

 

I am no psychic, but I knew that he was lying, and that he had no intention of confiding anything to anybody. He had come to Taverner in order to quiet his wife, not because he desired help. He had probably got his own ideas as to the nature of his affliction, and they were such that he did not care to voice them.

 

Taverner turned to the wife again. "You say that the nightmare communicates itself to you? May I ask you to detail the nature of your sensations?"

 

Mrs. Eustace looked at her husband and hesitated. "My husband thinks I am very imaginative," she said.

 

"Never mind," said Taverner, "tell me your imagination"

 

"I am wide awake, of course, after--after the disturbance-- and sometimes I imagine I have seen a native woman in dark blue draperies with gold sequins dangling on her forehead and many bracelets on her arms, and she seems very excited and distressed and to be trying to talk to my husband, and then when I interfere and rouse him, she tries to push me away. It is after I rouse him that I have the sense of malignancy, as if someone were trying to injure me if they could only manage it."

 

"I am afraid," said Colonel Eustace, "that I have thoroughly alarmed my wife."

 

We turned and looked at him in involuntary surprise; his voice had entirely changed its timbre. The self-control of his breed could hold the muscles of the face steady, but could not prevent that tensing of the whole frame under stress which sent the pitch of his voice up half an octave and gave a metallic edge to its tones.

 

"I suppose," he continued, as if anxious to distract our attention, "that you will prescribe open air and exercise; in fact that is just my own idea, and we have been thinking of going to the Kent coast for golf, so I dare say that the sooner we get off the better. There is no use in hanging about in London without a reason."

 

"You forget, dear," said his wife, "that I have to open the exhibition of native art on Saturday."

 

"Oh yes, of course," he answered hastily, "must stop over Saturday, go down on Monday."

 

There was a pause. The interview seemed to have come to a dead end. Mrs. Eustace looked appealing from her husband to

 

Taverner and back again, but the one could not, and the other would not assist her. I felt that she had hoped great things of a visit to Taverner, and that, disappointed, she had no other card to play against the fate that was enveloping her. I also thought that her eyes had in them a look of apprehension.

 

Taverner broke the silence at last.

 

"If Colonel Eustace ever cares to consult me," he said, "I shall be very glad to assist him, because I think I could be of service to him."

 

Our unwilling patient sat up at this home thrust and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Taverner, turning to the wife, continued.

 

"And if Mrs. Eustace should ever be in need of my assist- ance, it is equally at her disposal."

 

"I trust there is little likelihood of that," said her husband, rising. "She is in excellent health."

 

And Bates opening the door in response to Taverner's ring, we bowed them out.

 

"An unsatisfactory blighter," I remarked as the door closed behind them.

 

"Not ready yet," said Taverner. "He has a few things to learn in the course of evolution, and unless I am much mistaken, he will be learning them very shortly. Then we may hear from him again. Never make the mistake of confusing unripe fruit with bad fruit."

 

We heard of them again, and sooner than even Taverner expected, when a couple of days later I threw across to him an evening paper which contained the announcement that Mrs. Eustace, owing to her sudden indisposition, would not be opening the exhibition of Indian Art at the Aston Galleries as announced, but that the task would be performed by some other social luminary.

 

"Of course it may be the flu," I said.

 

"Or the colic," said Taverner.

 

"Or even housemaid's knee," he added, for he was not communicative to sceptics.

 

The next move did not come as soon as I expected, who was looking for Colonel Eustace every time the bell rang, but in the end he appeared, and it was obvious to the most casual glance that he had been through a good deal in the interval.

 

The way he lay back in his chair showed that he was at the end of his tether, mental and physical, and Taverner relieved him of the effort of opening the conversation.

 

"How did you come to hear of me?" he asked. "I always thought my light was adequately bushelled from all except those of the same way of thinking as myself."

 

"My wife heard of you," was the reply. "She is interested in--in your line of work."

 

"Ah, she is a student of the occult?"

 

"I shouldn't call her a student of it," said Eustace, wriggling at the word occult. "She dabbles in it, and goes to lectures on Eastern mysticism that are no more like the real thing than--than the cat's like a tiger," he added with a sudden rush of emotion, pointing to the housekeeper's tabby that happened to be patronizing our hearth rug. "I wish to God she'd let it alone," he added wearily.

 

"I take it," said Taverner quietly, "that you are not a believer in the subject."

 

"If you had asked me that question a week ago," said Eustace, "I should have answered, no, but today--I don't know what to say. But I can tell you one thing," he cried, the banked fires blazing forth again, "if occultism isn't true, if you haven't got the powers you're credited with, then it's all up with Evelyn."

 

"I take it," said Taverner quietly, gathering up the control of the interview with voice and manner, "that something is affecting your wife which you guess to be of occult origin though you do not understand its method of working?"

 

"I understand its method of working all right," said our visitor grimly, "though I had never believed such tales."

 

"Will you give me particulars?" said Taverner, "and then I shall be able to form an opinion."

 

"I may as well tell you the whole story," said Colonel Eustace, "for I don't suppose, as a man of the world, you will attach the importance to it that my wife might if she got to hear of it. Not that there is not perfect confidence between us, but women don't understand these matters, and it's no use trying to make `em.

 

"You may remember that my wife, at our last interview, spoke of dreaming about a native woman and hearing an Indian dialect spoken? I think from her description, that what she saw was a vision of a woman I kept for some time when I was stationed on the Border, and who made a good deal of fuss when I sent her away, as they sometimes do. I have often heard that if a man enters into--er--relations with a native woman, they have an uncanny knack of laying hold of your soul by their heathen jiggery-spookery. I never believed it, laughed at it, in fact, when I saw another fellow bothered in the same way, but, my God, it's true. That woman has haunted my dreams ever since she died, and since I married Evelyn she has turned into an avenging devil."

 

"What condition is your wife in at the present moment?" enquired Taverner.

 

"In a stupor. The doctors talk about sleepy sickness but--" with a grim laugh. "I know better. I saw her go into the condition, and I know what it is. I tell you I heard those two women talking together, Huneefa in the broken English I taught her, as plainly as I hear you, and from that time, ten days ago, Evelyn has never recovered full consciousness and her strength is slowly ebbing away. They told me today that they did not expect her to last through the night," he added, his voice breaking, and putting up his hand to hide his twitching lips.

 

"Would you care for me to see your wife?" said Taverner. "It is difficult for me to advise you unless I do so."

 

"I have the car at the door to take you to her, if you will be good enough to come."

 

"There is one thing I must ask of you, however, before I undertake the case," said Taverner, "and that is, if, when you have heard my advice, you decide to follow it, you will go through to the end. There is nothing more disastrous than to start upon an occult undertaking and then back out of it."

 

"Unless you can do something, there is nothing that can be done," said Eustace brokenly, and we followed him out to the car.

 

I had thought Mrs. Eustace a beautiful woman when I had seen her in the formal clothes of our civilization, but lying relaxed in her white draperies on her white bed, she was more like my boyhood's idea of an angel than anything I have ever seen in picture or statuary. I could understand why her husband adored her.

 

I did not need the stethoscope to tell me that life was at low ebb. No pulse was perceptible in the wrist, and it was only an occasional faint stir of the laces on her bosom that showed she still breathed. There was little doubt she would not last the night; in fact she might go at any moment.

 

Taverner sent the nurse out of the room, and placed Eustace and myself at the far end. Then he seated himself beside the bed and gazed intently into the face of the unconscious woman, and I knew by his concentration that his mind was seeking to make contact with her soul wherever it might be. I saw him lay his hand on her breast, and guessed that he was calling her back into her body, and as I watched, I saw the inspirations deepen and become regular and the waxen passivity pass from the face.

 

Then she spoke, and at the sound of her voice it was all I could do to keep her husband from rushing across to her then and there.

 

"I am asked to tell you," came the slow, faltering words, "that the money was returned, even if it never reached you."

 

Eustace gave a groan, and dropped his head in his hands. "I am also asked to tell you," went on the faltering voice, "that it would have been a son."

 

Taverner lifted his hand from her breast and the breathing slowed down again and the face resumed its deathly fixation.

 

"Can you make anything of that?" he asked of Estate.

 

"Yes," replied the man, raising his face from his hands. "It exactly confirms what I thought. It is that devil Huneefa; this is her revenge."

 

Taverner led us from the room.

 

"I want full particulars," he said. "I cannot deal with the case unless I have them."

 

Eustace looked uncomfortable. "I will tell you anything I can," he said at length. "What is it you want to know? The whole thing would make a long story."

 

"What was the origin of your affair with this Indian girl? Was she a professional courtezan or did you buy her from her parents?"

 

"Neither. She did a bolt and I looked after her."

 

"A love affair?"

 

"You can call it that if you like, though I don't care to remember it since--since I have learnt what love can be."

 

"What was the cause of your parting?"

 

"Well, er, you see, there was a child coming, and I couldn't stand that. Huneefa was well enough in her way, but a Eurasian brat was more than I could endure. I suppose those affairs usually end that way."

 

"So you sent her back to her people?"

 

"I couldn't very well do that, they would probably have killed her, but I gave her a good sum of money, enough to set her up in life; they don't need much to make them happy, life is pretty simple out there."

 

"So you gave her sufficient capital to set up on her own as a courtezan?"

 

"Well, er--yes, I expect that was what she would have done with it."

 

"There was not much else she could do with it, I should imagine."

 

"They don't think much of that out there."

 

"Some castes do," said Taverner quietly. "But she sent the money back to you," he continued after a pause. "What became of her after that?"

 

"I believe the servants said something about suicide."

 

"So she did not accept the alternative you offered?"

 

"No --er --she didn't. It's an unpleasant incident and best forgotten. I don't suppose I came out of it altogether blameless," muttered Eustace, getting up and walking about the room.

 

"At any rate," he continued with the air of a man who has pulled himself together, "what are we going to do about it? Huneefa apparently knew more of--er--occultism than I credited her with, and you too from all accounts, have also got a knowledge of the matter. It is East against West; who's going to win?"

 

"I think," said Taverner in that quiet voice of his, "that Huneefa is going to win because she has right on her side."

 

"But, hang it all, a native girl--they don't think anything of that out there."

 

"Apparently she did."

 

"Some of the castes are a bit straight-laced in their way, but she would have got on all right. I gave her plenty to keep her going till after the child was done with," he continued, squaring his shoulders. "Why doesn't she go for me and let Evelyn alone? Evelyn never did her any harm. I could stand it as long as she only pestered me, but this--this is a different matter."

 

The appearance of the nurse interrupted our colloquy.

 

"Mrs. Eustace has recovered consciousness," she said. "I think you had better come."

 

We went to the sick room, and my professional eye told me that this was the last flicker of a dying flame.

 

Mrs. Eustace recognized her husband as he knelt beside her, but I do not think that Taverner and I meant anything to her. She looked at him with a strange expression in her face, as if she had never seen him before.

 

"I did not think you were like that," she said. He seemed perplexed by her words and not to know what answer to make to them, and then she broke the silence again.

 

"Oh Tony," she said, "she was only fifteen."

 

Then we grasped the reference.

 

"Never mind, Dearest," whispered the man at her side. "Forget all that. What you have to do now is to get well and strong, and then we will talk it all over when you are better."

 

"I am not going to get better," came the quiet voice from the bed.

 

"Oh, yes dear, you are. Isn't she, doctor?" appealing to Taverner.

 

Taverner weighed his words before answering. "It is just possible," he said at length.

 

"I do not wish to get better," said the voice from the bed. "Everything is so--so different to what I expected. I did not think you were like that, Tony. But I suppose all men are the same."

 

"You mustn't take it so to heart, dear," said the man at her side brokenly. "Everybody does it out there. They have to. It's the climate. Nobody thinks anything of it."

 

"I do," said the voice that came from so far off. "And so would all other women if they knew. Men are wise not to tell. Women wouldn't stand it."

 

"But it wasn't one of our women, dear."

 

"But it was a woman, and I am a woman, and it seems to hurt me because it hurts womanhood. I can't put it plainly, but I feel it, I feel it as a hurt to all that is best in me."

 

"What are you to do with men out on frontiers?" said the man desperately. "It is the penalty of Empire."

 

"It is the curse of Empire," came the faraway voice. "No wonder they hate us. I always wondered why it is that we can never, never make friends of them. It is because we outrage their womankind. There are some things that are never forgiven."

 

"Oh, don't say that, Evelyn," said the man brokenly.

 

"I am not saying it to you, Tony," she answered. "I love you, just as I have always loved you, but you do not understand this thing; that is the trouble. I do not blame you for taking her, but I blame you, and bitterly, for throwing her aside."

 

"Good Lord," said Eustace appealingly to the supporting males, "what is one to do with a woman?"

 

"And she does not blame you" continued the voice, "for taking her, or for throwing her aside. She loved you and she understood. In fact she never expected anything else, she tells me. It is herself that she blames, and she has not been angry with you, but has been imploring you to help her out, to undo the wrong that has been done."

 

"What is it she wants? I'll do anything on earth if she will let you alone."

 

"She says--" the voice seemed a very long way off, like a trunk call on a telephone, "that the soul that was to have come into life through you and her was a very lofty soul indeed, a Mahatma, she called him. What is a Mahatma?"

 

"One of those people who stir up trouble. Never mind about him. Go on. What does she want me to do?"

 

"She says that, because of her attainments in the past, she was chosen to give him birth, and because he had to reconcile East and West, East and West had to be reconciled in him. Also, he had to come through a great love. I am glad it was a great love, Tony. That seems to sanctify it and to make it better somehow."

 

Eustace turned appalled eyes upon us.

 

"And because it was a great privilege, it had to be bought by a great sacrifice; she had to give up the love before she brought him to birth. I suppose that is always the way. She says they offered her a choice--she might have the love of a man of her own people, a home, and happiness; or she might have the love of a Western man for a short time, in order that the great Reconciler might come into life, and she chose the latter. She knew what it would mean when she entered on it, she said, but she found it harder than she thought. It was because you sent her so much money that she killed herself, for she knew your con- science would be at ease after that, and she did not wish you to be at ease."

 

"God knows, I'm not," groaned the man. "She is having her revenge all right. What more does she want, the little devil?"

 

"It is the Mahatma soul she is troubled about," came the answer, "and because of it she cannot rest."

 

"What does she want me to do?" asked the man.

 

"She wants us to take it."

 

"But, Good Lord. What does she mean? A half caste? You--Evelyn. A nigger? Oh Heavens, no, nothing doing. I would sooner have you dead than that. Let her take her twice damned Mahatma and go to whatever hell they belong to."