CHAPTERIX
Mr. petreapproached the door in Harley Street with some little fear in his heart.
It was the first time he had broken the wall of his isolation with any human being. It had been a human being, humble, poor and loyal; to be trusted, if any one could be. But the doctor was another matter. Mr. Petre—he knew not why, some impression perhaps received in the old days of which he knew nothing and which yet remained with him—Mr. Petre distrusted all professions, all corporations; for he feared that their members would always be more loyal to their Guild than to the private citizen with whom they dealt. He stopped in the street a moment to count the twenty-one fivers in their envelope (a risk, but he had not learnt the precautions of the rich), and found them accurate. He went up to the door, rang, and was admitted by an impressive mute.
He was shown into a room where he had to wait for some time, after the ritual of medicine, and in which his spirits sank lower and lower as he turned over the pages of a dead weekly. When he was at last admitted into the Presence what he saw did nothing to raise his spirits.
Not that there were any instruments of torture furnishing the Great Specialist’s inner room, not even one of those chairs with strange joints which threaten abominable things; no, it was the spirit of the room, consonant to the figure which inhabited it and had made it. For the walls were covered with a dark brown composition embossed to imitate leather, and too thickly covered with some varnish. In the fire-place was an imitation fire of imitation logs, through which no gas flames murmured now. On the walls were four large steel engravings, all after Landseer; upon the mantelpiece one large clock, of stone, funereal black and with the ghastly white face of operated men.
At the table, whereon were ranged four or five books of reference and, exactly ordered, blank paper, a pen, ink and a blotter, sat the Great Specialist himself. He did not rise at Mr. Petre’s entrance, but very courteously motioned him to a chair, on which that financier sat down uncertainly, awaiting inquisition. The Great Specialist looked at him for a moment, and he at the Great Specialist. He felt sure that the Great Specialist was searching the very inwards of his soul, while as for himself, he could not even search, but only very generally receive the most external, the most superficial impression of that eminent man before him. Yet of the two names—had the Scientist but known it—that of John K. Petre was more renowned than that of Henry Brail; for it meant more money.
It was a very long face, which would have been weak about the mouth had not many years of posing to many clients, most of them wealthy, given it a sort of lugubrious restraint. The eyes were fatigued, the scanty hair was gray, and when the voice spoke it was sepulchral.
“Mr. ...?” began the voice, and then checked itself, remembering the special conditions of that consultation. The face smiled inwardly and strangely at the recollection thereof. The hand attached to its owner’s arm scratched down headings on the corner of the foolscap with a rasping pen.
“I must ask you,” continued the Master of Hidden Things, “a few questions, if you please.” Mr. Petre bowed his head. “In the first place....”
“The reason I have come,” interrupted the Unknown nervously....
The Great Specialist put up a dried, open hand, like a policeman stopping traffic, and said, rather more loudly than before:
“I must beg you, my dear sir! I must beg you! Pray, leave yourself in my hands. I must ask you these preliminary questions before we go any further.” The hand dropped, and the voice continued: “Your father’s age, or age at death?” The pen was prepared to scratch, and the tired eyes looked inquisitively upwards into Mr. Petre’s face.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Mr. Petre, with more boldness than he thought himself possessed of.
“Did you—do you—not know your father?” asked the more startled voice.
“Not from Adam,” said Mr. Petre composedly.
So nearly as such beings can express surprise the Great Specialist expressed surprise in a sudden movement of the brows. His pen was scratching. It scratched “Special circumstances affecting case. Bastardy.” Its driver then superfluously inquired:
Specialist wroteThe Great Specialist wrote:—“Special circumstances: A Bastard.”
The Great Specialist wrote:—“Special circumstances: A Bastard.”
“May I take down that, that particular aspect of the case?”
“Yes, certainly,” said the patient, almost cheerfully.
“Then I take it,” continued the scientist slowly, “if you do not even know your father’s name, it is no good my asking the date of his death, nor the cause of it? Nor, I suppose, whether he had any nervous trouble, to your knowledge?”
“Not the least use,” said Mr. Petre with increasing firmness.
“In fact, you have no idea of your ancestry—your hereditary history—upon that side?”
“None,” said Mr. Petre.
The Great Specialist coughed gently but firmly to himself, sighed, took up the pen again, and began again with the same upward inquisitive look.
“Mother’s name?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Petre.
This time the Great Specialist betrayed real emotion. He was not quite sure that he was being respectfully treated; besides which, his Method was drifting into danger. He put down the pen, leaned back in his chair, joined his finger tips, and gazed at Mr. Petre for a minute or two in the fashion of a schoolmaster who has sympathy with an erring boy, but fears he may be too young to understand the full gravity of his fault.
“Am I to understand,” said the Inquisitor, still keeping his hands together and not yet reaching out for his pen, “that you knownothingofeitherof your parents?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” said Mr. Petre, looking up at the ceiling. He was a little piqued at the first interruption he had suffered, and he was determined to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth—and even the whole truth when he should be allowed to volunteer it.
The Inquisitor leaned forward.
“Now, my dear sir, be good enough to fix your attention upon me.”
Mr. Petre looked at his enemy in mild, benevolent fashion.
“You know nothing whatever of your ancestry upon either side?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Petre.
“Were you a foundling, sir?” said the Specialist sharply.
“Not that I know of,” replied his guest. “The fact is that I have come to see you because....”
The large, dried hand went up again.
“One moment. We must get things clear to begin with. In these cases of nervous trouble—I am speaking frankly—it is essential to put things in the right order to the patient, or the whole consultation fails of its purpose.”
Mr. Petre nodded, and accepted. He saw that he was not believed.
“Now, sir,” continued the Specialist, “since I must accept what you say” (it was pretty clear that he did not), “I can only ask you questions which are within your own knowledge. Have you (you will excuse my direct question?) have you, to your knowledge, any taint?”
“Any what?” said Mr. Petre anxiously.
“Taint—alcoholic, for instance?”
Mr. Petre thought for a moment, and answered, “No. At any rate, I should doubt it.”
“What are your habits in the matter of—ah!—wine?”
“Claret for lunch, usually, or beer. Beer or claret at my dinner. Liqueur with my coffee....”
“Not so fast, please, not so fast! Yes, coffee.... How much?”
“Oh! A cup.”
“I mean” (more severely), “how much claret, how much liqueur?”
Mr. Petre considered.
“Say a bottle. Liqueur, oh, well a glass.”
The pen scribbled away furiously.
“For how long?” asked the writer.
“Since April 3rd, just after noon.”
“And before that...?”
“The reason I can’t tell you,” began the victim, “is....”
“Imustbeg you to let me act in my own way, sir,” broke in Sir Henry almost angrily. “If you refuse me essential information, the consequences will not be on my head....” He paused. “Since you refuse to inform me on this point—and I must tell you I am used to such difficulties—I will leave it,” and he wrote down, “Probable case of chronic alcoholism. Consumption daily in last five months at least one liter at 12%, one deciliter at 35%; probably more.”
“Can you tell me,” said the Specialist, breaking new ground and preparing again to write, “whether at any stage you have used drugs—even as long ago as five or ten years?”
“I am afraid I can’t,” said Mr. Petre.
The Medical Genius restrained his temper, determined—he was a conscientious man—to do his best by the impossible fellow, and started anew.
“I must now,” he continued, putting on a look of much greater importance than he had yet assumed, and settling himself up in his chair, “I must now, my dear sir, put to you a very intimate question indeed; it is one which we always have to ask at this stage of our inquiries.” (Mr. Petre marveled what that stage exactly was. But he was wise enough to remain silent.) “Do you dream?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Petre cheerfully. He was all right now; this was plain sailing. The pen began writing busily.
“For instance,” murmured the Sepulchral voice, the face still bent over the paper, “last night?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Petre. “Most nights. Last night certainly. Yes, most nights.”
The pen was now working furiously.
“Now, if you please,” said the Specialist, his mind working with such energy that his face looked almost bright for a moment, “now, if you please, the details, if you remember them.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Petre. “I dreamed I went to Liverpool Street and took a ticket for New York; the man who gave me the ticket through the little hole turned out to be a peacock, but I didn’t think it at all odd. After that I found myself trying to read a book, but I didn’t understand the letters, so I put it down and found myself dropping into a sort of confusion. That was my dream, as far as I can remember it.”
The pace at which Sir Henry’s pen had raced was worthy of an expert in shorthand. He had the whole thing down, and was aglow with excitement and interest.
“Ah!—Now—” he said, “this is really important! Here we have a clew. Such illusions as you may be suffering from....”
“But,” interrupted Mr. Petre, “I am not....” Up went the hand again. “I say, as you may be suffering from,” went on Sir Henry, “we shall, I think, be able to explain. But we cannot resolve the complex until you shall tell me quite frankly to what vivid experience of childhood—no doubt of averyprivate nature; but you must tell me all—you most naturally return in your innermost thoughts.”
“To none,” said Mr. Petre, in a voice that was almost a shout, for the delay was exasperating him, and he refused to be put off any further though the hand was up again at “Line blocked.” “I remembernothingof my childhood. I remembernothingof my manhood. I remember nothingbeforelast Easter—to be accurate, last Easter Monday. That’s why I came to see you!”
The Great Specialist turned upon him a face of stone.
“Why did you not say that before, sir? It would have saved us both a great deal of trouble.”
“Because you wouldn’t let me.”
“Come, come,” said the doctor, “we must have no discussion.” The pen came down upon the paper again and wrote a line. “I take it, then, that you require my aid in a case of Amnemonesis.”
“No doubt,” said Mr. Petre. “No doubt. Well, yes, if that’s the name. My memory failed completely and suddenly about noon on April 3rd, 1953—this year. I remember nothing of myself before that moment.” He had got it all in by rapid speaking.
“Pray don’t interrupt me,” said the Great Specialist, in the tone of a governess, only a little more pettishly. “It is a case of loss of memory, or rather, let us call it loss of identity.” He twisted his head sideways and murmured to himself: “What Pfungst has named ‘loss of the time-space continuum in its subjective aspect.’” Then he got his head into the normal position again and murmured in a still lower tone, which Mr. Petre could only just catch: “Paranoia penipsissimisma, some people call it.” He added a little louder, looking up at Mr. Petre and presenting the title with a touch of affection, “Also called Bantam’s Complex, from Bantam, Sir George Bantam.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Petre, slightly interested, but with too much gnawing at his heart to be really gripped by the thing.
“It is more generally known as the Seventh Sub-Complex, after Boileau’s category. It is universally so known upon the Continent—ah, yes,” then he began scribbling again. “This is the address you want,” said the Master of Modern Science, jumping up suddenly from his chair. He handed it as a superior officer might hand an order to a subordinate.
“Could I.... Can I see him now?”
“Now? At once?” answered the Specialist, frowning.
“Well,” said Mr. Petre, “I have reasons.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the other courteously. “You are all like that. I will see.” He pressed a buzzer with his foot, and told the man who came in to ring up Sir William Bland, and ask him whether he could see an urgent case on the part of Sir Henry Brail, a case of M.3. The man bowed as to Royalty, and reappeared saying that Sir William Bland happened to have just one half hour free, at that moment, from four-forty-five to five-fifteen. Mr. Petre looked at his watch. He had five minutes. He asked where it was. Strangely enough, this new address was also in Harley Street, and some odd connection beneath the level of the waking mind gave the new millionaire a mood of happiness at the thought that he had time to walk and save a taxi fare.
Then followed an awkward moment. Mr. Petre shyly pulled out the envelope. Sir Henry was far too precise and honorable for that.
“No! No! My dear sir,” he said. “I won’t dream of it. A misapprehension. My own fault indeed, but still, a misapprehension. I had the idea that you suffered from, I mean that we were to deal with—ah!—Illusions. Yes, Illusions. I don’t pretend to go out of my province. Indeed, I prefer not to deal with any cases not covered by Purall’s formula.... One moment.” He came rapidly up to his visitor and pushed back the lid of the right eye. “No,” he said, “not a case for me in any way.”
“No illusions!” he muttered to himself as he turned back. “No illusions under the Bergheim test.”
Mr. Petre rubbed the replaced eyelid and made one more protest in favor of due payment; but his advisor was determined. Mr. Petre thanked him warmly, though confused, and was off. The impressive mute showed him out, and in a couple of minutes he was ringing at another door half a dozen houses down the street.
Sir William Bland received him in a room extremely different from that in which he had just suffered. It was the room in which a man might live rather than work. There was a very large photograph of a Royalty in a sloping silver frame upon the table, autographed. There was a novel lying half-open. There was a bad portrait upon one wall, and a good, very small, Corot on the wall opposite; no other pictures at all. A small room, cozy, domestic; just the thing for the nerves.
William BlandThe second and more jovial Great Specialist, Sir William Bland.
The second and more jovial Great Specialist, Sir William Bland.
Sir William Bland greeted Mr. Petre as a lifelong friend, and this the reader will find the more remarkable if he remembers that nothing had been said of who Mr. Petre was or what Mr. Petre was worth. Sir William Bland was well suited to such a rôle. He had a round, kind face, in which only the eyes were insincere; hardly any eyebrows; simple steel spectacles, and a fine bald dome, with a fringe of hair.
He took his colleague’s note and read it, smiling as cheerfully over it as though it were a packet of mild fun. Then he gave tongue, surveying the newcomer with ease and happiness.
“Loss of memory? My dear sir? Loss of memory? That is what you say it is. Eh? Ah, yes; loss of memory. I have” (he glanced at the note), “I have the date here. Oh! Yes! April 3rd.... H’m.... Yes.Easier, my dear sir, easier if I could know something of—well” (resignedly), “I understand that the conditions are absolute.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre.
“I would respect any confidence religiously—you know that?”
“Indeed, yes,” said Mr. Petre, touched, “but ... sincerely ... I must keep my rule. It was not lightly made.”
“Very well, sir, very well!” sighed Sir William Bland.
He asked a few common questions on diet and habit, all easily answered and all normally.
Then the great business was seriously approached.
“I must ask you,” said the Magician, “to do one or two things if you please. In the first place” (he opened a drawer in a little table and pulled out a little book), “would you mind looking through this, page by page, and telling me if anything in it strikes even the slightest echo within you?”
Mr. Petre took the book. It was a polyglot New Testament. There was the French, which seemed to him pretty dull. He glanced at a few words in Italian which he recognized, and one or two German words with which he was familiar. The rest meant nothing to him, except that he could distinguish the Spanish as Spanish and no more, and he noted the odd script of the eastern versions. He laid it down again.
“No, Sir William, it recalls nothing,” he said.
“The sacred words,” said Sir William Bland earnestly (Mr. Petre had been dealing with the Genealogy in St. Matthew), “recall nothing of childhood? No tender associations?” There was infinite pathos in his voice, and he went so far as to lay a sympathetic hand upon his patient’s arm.
“No, sir, no,” said Mr. Petre, a little abruptly for him. “The fact is, I must tell you plainly. Loss of Memory is a weak term. At a certain recent date” (here he remembered that he had divulged it, and his terror returned), “I lost all sense of what I had been, where I had been, who I was. I retained my habit of mind, and all my knowledge of general things in life, but not one personal association.... It is very distressing,” he added.
“Yes, indeed, my dear sir,” said Sir William, drawing the nose-end of his eyebrows up in an agony of kindness. “But it will comfort you to hear that nowadays we nearlyalways—I may sayalways—manage, sooner or later”—he was spinning out his words as he fumbled again in the drawer of the little table, and brought out yet another book—it was in German, of course, but its peculiarity was an appendix in which were brightly-colored pictures after the German fashion, all of them attaching to childish tales; and the colors especially were German.
“Now, my dear sir,” said Sir William, pulling his chair a little nearer to his victim, “pray glance at this—the more casually the better—and see whether a stab of memory....”
Mr. Petre saw on the front page some words in German script and then, in our type, the word “Perrault.” He made nothing of that. He opened the book.
Mr. Petre rapidly turned over the score of pages. There was a huntsman in a red hat with a feather in it, a very large muzzle-loading gun under his arm, holding a dead fox up by the tail, while his companion blew a horn; there was a lion with a human-looking face holding up his paw to a young man with gooseberry eyes who was pulling a thorn out; there was an old gentleman in a gray tunic pointing towards a star, his gaze followed by a young gentleman in a blue tunic whose face was fatuous beyond the dreams of avarice; there was a fairy with a star-tipped wand touching a grand coach and six for the benefit of a pasty-faced wench, over-dressed and with flaxen, plaited hair; there was another Gretchen asleep on a bed, cobwebbed, and with sleeping guards around her, and a Junker not much her senior, prepared to press a Junker’s salute upon her lips, and so on. It meant nothing to Mr. Petre—nothing at all.
“None of these simple nursery tales,” said the Specialist, wagging his head slightly from side to side with an infinite compassion, and gazing steadily upon the sufferer. Mr. Petre shut the ridiculous book smartly.
“It’s no good answering questions. What am I to do?”
To his surprise, he was begged very courteously to take off his coat and waistcoat, tie, shirt and vest; which done, instruments were used upon him, of measurements and of percussion, and he was touched by wires, which his host had drawn like thin serpents from a corner, and which oddly registered mysteries upon dials. He was struck four or five times: harder than he liked. An ugly piece of machinery was clamped upon his arm below the elbow; he was made to sit down and cross his legs, and he was unpleasantly cut with the edge of the hand below the knee, with the result that his foot kicked upwards. In fact, all manner of things were done to him, which, in an ignorant age, would have made him suspect a charlatan. But we live in better times.
When he was allowed to dress himself and become human again (for it is human to be clothed) he was aware that the Master was pacing his little round body up and down the room, with his hands crossed behind his back, and was reciting to himself cabalistic sounds; words of no meaning to the profane. Then he stopped suddenly, looked Mr. Petre in the face, and said:
“My dear sir, yours is a very curious case. A very strange case! You have told me nothing of yourself—because as my colleague has warned me, you will not give any details of yourself since ... since ... since the sad....”
“No,” interrupted Mr. Petre doggedly, “that is the strict condition of my presence here to-day. Upon terms,” he added, though it hurt him to allude so coarsely to the fee, “which I think you know.”
“Precisely,” answered Sir William, “precisely ... yes ... quite. Ah.... You remember everything, well, since that unfortunate ... since the date on which....”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre shortly.
“Quitenormally, my dear sir?Quitenormally?”
“I suppose normally,” said Mr. Petre. “I seem to remember as well as anybody else.”
The Specialist looked at his watch; a sudden light broke over that face which masked so well the profound intelligence within. “It is clearly a case,” he chirruped, “for Sir Christopher Cayley.”
But Mr. Petre had had enough. Whether his new-found wealth had bred in him a new-found assurance, or whether he had reached the limit of what humanity can bear,he kept his own counsel and said: “Well, Sir William, I am sorry you can do nothing for me.”
“It is not that; it is not that,” said the little man eagerly. “It is that really, my dear sir, Sir Christopher is theoneman in all England—I think I may say in allEurope....”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, “yes.” He had already taken up his hat and his stick.
“Now shall I advise Sir Christopher? Shall I advise him now? Shall I write a note?”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Petre. “I will consider it. If you will allow me, I will communicate with you again.” But alas! for the integrity of a good man; he had firmly determined never to touch the Faculty again till agony should drive him. He was fed up—to the back teeth.
Slowly he produced the envelope with his eyes nervously diverted from the round face before him. There was no awkwardness. But there was on Mr. Petre’s side a pleased surprise at the simplicity of the passage. “Thank you a thousand times,” he said.... “You have already done me a world of good, believe me ... but the truth is, if I were to give you my name....”
A suppressed smile upon the lips of the expert barely betrayed his emotions. He had known that kind of thing before, and he never irritated that mood. He would have lost money by irritating that mood. But in the other cases he had always known in time, and before the event, who the Mysterious Stranger (though he might call himself the Grand Mogul) really was. In the other cases an agonized relative had informed him before the visit, had poured the true tale into his ear, warning him of a brother or a father’s sensitiveness and shame. To-day he was nonplussed.
Everything about this last patient betrayed precision; but who he was he could not for the life of him have told you. Even the very slight American accent had worn away.... Sir William did regret one thing. Hewouldhave asked to know who the funny fellow thought he was. He kept a book with screaming things of the sort. But it couldn’t be helped. Perhaps he’d find out later. As Mr. Petre walked off, filled with despair, down the street towards Oxford Street, Sir William at a little discreet distance from the light watched him from the bow-window; then he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, rang the bell, and sent for the next case: the Dowager who was the head of the list in that great room without, where already two or three were attempting to beguile the time withLifeand evenPunch. She had come with her keeper, but he saw her alone. She was quite harmless.
Mr. Petre, bearing that inward burden of his, despairing, hopeless of rediscovering a knowledge without which life was not life, still paced southward, choosing the squares and the less occupied streets, until he found himself upon the top of St. James’s Hill. There he halted a moment at the corner of Piccadilly gazing down towards the Palace; the Clubs, the old brick towers, the Guardsmen on sentry-go at the door, the crowd of cars, even the London sky under a fresh autumnal breeze—all was as familiar to him as familiar could be. All was part of some home furniture in his mind; but of the home itself, nothing. A complete blank. The soul had lost its habitation.
Mr. Petre went out from this last of his ordeals profoundly depressed. By all our standards he was greatly to be envied. He was untroubled by any great responsibility. He had drunk the water of Lethe; he was in health, he was rich.
Yet that intimate thing within us which demands immortality, and which we call Ourselves, was incomplete, and he was a maimed man.
Not all the high respect with which he could now be surrounded at will was other than a nightmare to him. He was gnawed by the loss of that mysterious past; by the lack in him of that momentum of things lived under one mind, coördinating all that human, continuous, soul whereby indeed we suffer, but also are. He passionately desired—more than ever he now desired—now that he must face exile—to know himself.
His hands were clasped behind his back, his gold-headed cane within them; his eyes were bent upon the pavement in a reverie; he wondered and wondered, and he was tragically ill at ease. He had lost his bearings. He was more wretched in his loneliness than the poorest of the millions in the vast surge of life about him.
As he thus slowly paced St. James’s Street, down towards the Palace, under the long evening light, half forgetting the roar of the traffic around him, he suddenly heard, just as he passed White’s Club, a voice very familiar; and looking up with a start, he saw a face more familiar still. It was a hearty face, the face of a man of his own age, but bronzed and gay, the face of a man who had advanced up the hill at a vigorous stride, and had now suddenly halted with his arms extended and had cried:
“Peter Blagden!”
“That’s my name!” said Mr. Petre, as suddenly. To which he added, “Buffy Thompson!” Within his mind what had been a dead wall of mist began to roll and form into clouds; and now dim shapes appeared, which were already almost memories.
“Peter Blagden!” shouted the new-comer; and slapped him on the shoulder and put an arm in his and led him sharply round the corner into St. James’s Place.
“When did you get back?”
As naturally as if his misfortune had never happened, Mr. Petre said:
“She was due at Portsmouth on April the 3rd, I think. My memory is not very good, Buffy. But I’m pretty sure she made good time. I am pretty sure it was the 3rd that I landed.”
“April thethird! Good Lord, man! That’s half a year ago. Why didn’t you let me know?” said Buffy.
They crossed St. James’s Street together.
“I was ill,” said Mr. Petre, looking oddly askance and a little ashamed.
Joyous recognitionJoyous recognition of Buffy Thomas.
Joyous recognition of Buffy Thomas.
“Well,” said the honest friend, “that’s all over, anyhow. Come along in with me. You’ll want your rooms again.”
He stopped in front of a door in the little side street and put in the key.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, hesitating more oddly still, “these are my rooms all right.”
The rolling mists in his mind had formed now definitely into clouds with shapes to them, and gaps in between through which appeared things more and more definite. He had a sudden sharp vision of a red-brick cloister and of the same voice shouting to him from a window, and it was mixed up in his mind with the name of a place, but he could not catch that name. Cayridge? Clayridge? He had simultaneously a little picture presented to his mind of green Downs beyond a valley, and he was thinking of horses; and again the wreaths of the mist blotted all that out, and he was side by side with this same man on a public platform listening to his friend orating badly. He mechanically pulled out his watch as he had done on that distant day on that platform. Political speeches bored him.
Mr. Petre put his watch back and looked pathetically into Buffy’s face.
“Thompson,” he said slowly, “Thompson, you’re a good fellow.”
“Are you ill?” said Thompson, holding him as if he were afraid he would fall.
“No, not exactly,” said Mr. Petre. “Ihavebeen ill. Take me in.”
Mr. Petre had forgotten all about the Temple, all about Trefusis, all about Charlie Terrard.
South England came flooding into his mind, and an irresistible desire for sleep.
The key clicked in the lock, the door pushed open, and showed a narrow hall of rooms he knew. There was the funny old engraving—a hundred years old at least—of Mostyn Steeplechase, and there, projecting on its bracket so that the narrow hall was made too narrow by it, stuck out at a place that made it positively dangerous, was the bust of Lord Brougham. It was all part of the furniture of his mind. So was the used carpet upon the stair. So was the curtain upon the landing. So was the very smell of the musty house and the outline of the dreary gas bracket which had been fitted with electric light. So was the dusty yellow fringe of stuff which hid the glare of the light from the eye. It was Home. It was his surroundings, the clothing of his soul. He would sleep.
“You want your rooms again?” said Thompson again, heartily.
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, stopping on the landing and leaning his hand upon the banister and bending his face downward again.
“Good Lord, man!” said his friend, “you’re not puffed by half a dozen stairs!”
“No,” said Mr. Petre. “No.” He groped with his hands as a man does in darkness, but it was a gesture of the mind, not of the body.
Thompson, looking at him queerly for a moment, (but most concernedly, for he loved the man), threw open the door of the room and they both went in. Mr. Petre gave a cry.
Here, came in a flood, all that had supported his being. Here were books, each one he knew; here was the familiar dull aspect of the house opposite, here was the faded looking-glass, and, thrust into it, cards, every one of the names on which he could tell. Here was the chair; and in a rack opposite the looking-glass half a dozen pipes, to one of which he stretched out his hand mechanically. He took it and blew into its stem and was delighted to find it clear. He felt in his pocket for a pouch, and found none. There was no doubt at all that he was at home. He sat down in his own chair, and sighed like a man who has come in full of a good weariness from riding outside upon the Downs. His mind was inhabiting an island, already clear, well lit, the boundaries of which were expanding upon every side.
Yes, these were his rooms. These were his books, his pictures, new and choice, or ugly, old, familiar and inherited; there was the door of the little frowsty bedroom; but he missed something, and then suddenly said to Buffy:
“What about Billy—what about the dog?”
“Your man took him out,” said Buffy.
Mr. Petre added, as though it were a most solemn thing: “I bought that dog as a puppy at Henley. You remember? You were with me. When was that?” he said sharply.
“Three years ago last June,” said Thompson, looking at him curiously again. “You ought to remember that better than I do.”
“I ought,” said Mr. Petre humbly. “I ought, Buffy,” he added, “I think I ought to sleep.”
“You look as though you’d been up; but, damn it! it isn’t seven yet,” said Thompson, “and I’ve any amount of things to ask you. Are you tired?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, “I think I ought to sleep.”
“Get a nap,” said Buffy, stretching himself, “and I’ll wait here for you and read. Go in and get a nap and then we can go out and dine together somewhere. I’m dying to hear all about it.”
“About what?” said Mr. Petre, his mind troubled again, and a drowsiness falling upon him.
“Why, your travels, of course,” said Thompson.
“Buffy,” said poor Mr. Petre again, “let me sleep. I must sleep. I won’t dine. Let me sleep. Only,” here he clasped Thompson’s hand suddenly at the wrist with a gesture so absurdly exaggerated that his friend grew afraid, “only promise me you will come back at eight to-morrow morning, and no matter how soundly I am sleeping, promise to wake me and be with me and befriend me, Thompson. Tell my man that I am sleeping, and tell him—yes, tell him that I know where the bell is and that I may ring, and that if I ring he is to come at once, no matter what the hour is. It rings in his room, you know. I may need him. I may need him, Thompson,” he said, his voice falling to a dangerous whisper. “I remember him perfectly well. My man. Wait here till he comes in. Tell him I must sleep on.”
“That’s all right,” said Thompson heartily. “I’ll see to everything. Go in and sleep.”
He was intrigued and bewildered, but he had plenty of sense, and he saw what was needed.
“You never had the telephone. It’s one of my grievances. I’ll send a messenger round to Chesterfield Gardens and tell them I can’t come.”
“Chesterfield Gardens,” said Mr. Petre suddenly; and then his troubled soul walled up again and he said, “Yes, Chesterfield Gardens. What houses?” Thus he mumbled to himself. There was some connection in his mind with these words, “Chesterfield Gardens,” which he could carry on no longer. He stumbled into the little bedroom as though he were drunk. Thompson helped him off with his clothes and into his night-shirt, saw him into bed, turned out the light, and sat anxiously in the next room until a steady snoring from within told him that the man slept as he needed to sleep.
Buffy Thompson knocked out the ashes of his pipe very gently, so as not to awaken that strange invalid—if invalid he were—filled it again, lit it, and smoked, staring at the floor with his head upon his hands.
It could not be drugs. There was nothing of that sort about Blagden at all. It certainly was not drink—drink never took a man that way. There was the sound of a door opening and shutting downstairs, and a man came in with a little dog upon a leash. Thompson went out and hushed.
“Mr. Blagden’s come back,” he said. “But he’s exceedingly tired, and he must sleep. He’s sleeping now in his room. He wants you to take the dog upstairs with you, and he’ll ring if he wants you at all during the night. Don’t go out, Martin. Stay in and be ready for him if he wants you—at any hour. I don’t know what has happened. I am a little frightened about him.”
“I had no warning, sir,” said Martin.
“No, neither had I,” answered Thompson. “I tell you I don’t know what’s happened. Anyhow, he must sleep. If you want me, go round next door and ring up the Bolton. I shall take a room there to-night.”
“It’s all very sudden, sir,” said Martin.
“It is,” said Thompson. “But we can do nothing till the morning.”
Buffy went back, pushed the door gently open. The sleeper was still sleeping with that light snoring; his slumber was deep. He could dimly see, by the reflected light from the room without, that he had not moved. It seemed he would so sleep for hours.
Thompson went out on tiptoe down the stairs and into the street, marveling at the things that happen in this world.
Mr. Petre—I mean Mr. Blagden—slept and slept. He slept fourteen hours; and when he woke the revolution within him was accomplished. Mr. Blagden, no longer Mr. Petre, had returned to this world.
But he had paid a price. That blow he had received was not without its effects and sequel. He suffered some torpor of the spirit as does the body after long maintenance of an unnatural attitude. His brain was fatigued and for the moment indifferent.
He had slept all those hours profoundly. Upon waking and seeing those accustomed walls he was back, for a few seconds, in the days, two years gone and more, before he had left for America. He looked mechanically for clothes in the old mahogany tall-boys and found another man’s. As he did so his situation came back to him at once. Buffy Thompson had his rooms. He rang for Martin.
“Martin, have you any clothes of mine or did you store them?”
“I’ve got the gray suit, sir, and some ties and linen. The rest’s in the cottage at Harrington.”
“All right, Martin; bring me that.”
He dressed slowly, laying aside the garments of Mr. Petre and glad to find that two years had made him neither more nor less unwieldy. He approved the tie; he always wore the same kind. He approved the collar. He put watch and chain and keys and change and papers into the old regular pockets. It was a resurrection of the flesh.
Then he went into the sitting-room—they were but two, these modest ancient rooms of his on the second floor, with Martin and a boxroom up above. He sat at his desk by the window and pondered. It was half-past nine o’clock.
He sat at his desk recovering rapidly, moment by rising moment, from such weakness as a man feels after a long illness; but his mind was clear. All his boyhood, all his manhood, were before him as they are with you and me; the normal memory, here vivid, there imperfect, with the full personality and past of the man. He saw it all in its perspective and in its frame, and with his restoration came decision and will.
That life he had now before him had not been very eventful, it was nowhere tragic; it had its disturbances and its troubles; it had its few moments of petty glories and one short episode of passion.
The shock which had brought it back to him when he had come suddenly upon that friend of his youth did not exaggerate anything. It only restored. It shook him back into himself and their long acquaintance: the life of school together, and of college; the rooms above the Cloisters in Cambridge, the winter days in which he had gone down to Devizes to stay with them, and their hunting together.
He remembered his father’s death and how he had left his mother the use of Harrington, living himself between it and town. His determination, which had so grieved her, not to marry after his disappointment. He remembered those regular journeys up and down; the station in the country town of Patcham near at hand; the beloved accent of his own people on the platform, the beloved West-country talk of the Patchamites. The four miles’ drive home. He remembered his mother’s stroke, her decline, her death, and his own grief. He remembered (an odd detail which brought a tired smile to his lips) that bad investment in Mexicans, or to be perfectly frank with himself, that bad speculation.
He remembered how Charlie Cable had unloaded upon him, and how he had trusted him because Charlie had just got into the Cabinet and was somewhat of a hero in his eyes. He remembered the letting of Harrington and his furnishing for himself the cottage outside the North Lodge and how he regretted leaving the place. He remembered the conversation with Wilkins, the family lawyer: he remembered their office, the long talks on affairs: all futile. He was himself again.
He remembered the taking of these very rooms twenty years ago and more—not so long after the Great War. He remembered his habitation of them during the two weeks of the Levantine Crisis in ’39, when they were threatened with air raids, and had an oddly vivid memory of walking back from the office in which he had volunteered to work, half a mile away in Whitehall, during the first warning. He remembered how strange he had thought it was that he was not frightened—at his age. He was frightened enough a little later.
He remembered the occasion of his journey to the States twenty-eight months ago, the strange climate of New York, his days in Chicago, his disappointment at the condition of that land-venture of his; his renewed anxieties. He even remembered his amusement at the difference between what he had thought the land would be like and what it really was. The astonishing American landscape. He vividly remembered the return, the abomination of the crossing on the great liner, the bad company, the bad food. Then came, like the shutter of a camera coming sharp down on his mind, the darkness that followed: the dead blank—the gap, in a train.
And yet he could oddly contrast his present knowledge of what he had been and was with those few months in which every surrounding experience was so strange, ugly, tortured, and the whole of his life before the accident cut away as though it had never been: his associates share-shufflers, and for society a glimpse of the abominable smart.
There was a duality in his vision of these last few months that made him shudder as though his present memory, revived and sane, was living side by side with that vile period in which he was himself and yet not himself. But the mood did not last long. There was too much comedy to relieve it.
He traveled along each episode. He saw step by step the prodigious increase of fortune, and in spite of his weakness he could have laughed aloud. He, the permanently embarrassed, had had a dream of millions, evil millions. He could sit still no longer at the desk. He stood up and steadied himself by the mantelpiece, and did laugh slightly at last. As he did so, the recent reality of stocks and deals and sales which had stood apart in his mind as an ended, exceptional episode returned as an enormity: he wasnow, he wasstill, an immensely wealthy man.
He began to realize it. He, standing there in that cozy, shabby room which was part of himself; he, Peter Blagden of Harrington, a poor gentleman, insufficiently provided, embarrassed—had an immense lump of money; over three million pounds.
What it would mean to him; what he would do with his opportunities; whether indeed he desired to do anything with them (he did not think he did, unless it were to travel—anywhere except across the Atlantic) troubled him little. What he chuckled over was the high comedy of this immense fortune in his hands. He looked round the little dusty room, the dear little familiar room of twenty years, all telling of his modest (and declining, encumbered) country gentleman’s income, of his lineage, of his affections, most of them now with the dead; he remembered the Bank Parlor and he laughed again, aloud. He had for a moment the boyish impulse to do something really amusing—to go out there and then, that morning, pick up a telephone and give some critical order which should shake a wobbling market. He might sell half a million Moulters, and wreck them; Lord! What fun! He held his head back to laugh once more, but his weakness came upon him again and he sank down into his chair.
Martin knocked at the door; his visage recalled to Mr. Blagden an imperative precaution.
“Martin,” he said, “my name is Blagden—Peter Blagden. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir—of course, sir.” Nor did Martin flinch. He was of country training and had feudal knowledge that gentlemen were free to be quite unaccountable if they chose.
“Does our landlord know that I’m back?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, Martin, don’t tell him. I’ll slip out when he’s away and, Martin,don’t tell any one: not for a day or two. I’ll tell you when you may, quite soon.”
“Yes, sir. Very good. Will you have your breakfast now, sir,” he said, “or will you wait till Mr. Thompson comes?”
“Is Thompson coming?” asked Mr. Petre, gratefully.
“Yes, sir,” said Martin. “He told me he would be here at ten, and it’s striking now.”
“Then I will wait for Mr. Thompson,” said Mr. Blagden—who was also Mr. Petre when the thought of the Bank came back to him and brought up that smile again—“I will wait for Mr. Thompson, and we will breakfast together, Martin. What is there for breakfast?” he added sharply.
“I got kippers,” said Martin, in a voice which years had rendered part of his master’s life. “I had to use my judgment, sir, and you were always fond of kippers.”
“I was,” said Mr. Blagden, in deeper and more religious tones than he had yet used; and he added, “I was and am again. Indeed, I was fond of them in between, and I ought to have remembered why. But I didn’t, Martin, I didn’t.”
“No, sir,” said that excellent man, amenable to the absurdities of his lord.
“I should have known it all the time, Martin,” said Mr. Blagden. “It’s curious I didn’t know anything all the time.”
“Yes, sir,” said Martin.
Buffy Thompson came in; tall, bustling, his hair in all its native fuzz and his eyes dancing. He began a torrent of questions. But Blagden stopped him with a question that made him gape.
“You haven’t told any one that I’m back?”
“No.... No one—but why the Hell you....”
“Well:don’t tell any one. Martin’s got those orders. I’ve the very best reasons. It won’t last long. But it’sabsolutely essential. Have you got that?”
Buffy Thompson was unused to the American phrase.
“Got what?” he asked.
“I mean, will you promise?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then we’ll talk.”
Over the breakfast-table Peter Blagden told the hardly believable tale, and Buffy Thompson believed.
“I’m going to put it boldly into the one stock that won’t turn a hair,” he ended; “I’m going to buy New Bearer Loan.” He turned up the last page of the morning paper Martin had brought—the accustomed one, theMessenger. “99—8½ ... about 3 months to mature. There’ll be an odd 40,000 pounds or so.” Buffy Thompson was awed at such nonchalance—it was uncanny. “I’ll transfer it to current account in the bank at Patcham—in my own name.” He suddenly got up. “I can’t wait, Buffy, I’m on wires. You won’t mind helping me in a little business matter?”
“No,” said Buffy, “all in reason.”
“Oh! It’ll be all in reason, never fear. Now take your hat and stick and come with me.”
They drove to that Branch Bank which should be famous in the annals of Banking. Together they passed the swing doors. Together they stood as Mr. Blagden—Mr. Petre, I mean—addressed Moonface with a firm courtesy. Together they were conducted through the carpeted corridor, past the three engravings, together they entered the Sacred Cell. Mr. Petre introduced, “My dear sir, this is my friend Mr. Palling Thompson.” They all bowed. No flies were on Mr. Petre that morning. He knew his own mind at last.
“By all means, Mr. Petre, by all means. Ah! And for the purpose...?”
“One moment.” Mr. Petre pulled out a small vellum-bound book from his pocket. “Yes ... £3,273,764 6s. 2d. There are no checks outstanding. I am about to draw £264 6s. 2d. That leaves £3,273,500.”
The obvious truth needed no reply.
“Now, my dear sir,” Mr. Petre went on with calm decision, “the New National Bearer Bonds are at 98½ this morning? They were that yesterday.”
The Manager rang and asked for the sheet. It came flimsy and large; he put on his spectacles too slowly and confirmed. Yes. 98⅜, ½.
“In what denominations can they be bought?”
The Manager smiled.
“Well, my dear sir—surely it is immaterial?—Some are high—for convenience of transport or what not—it’s a great innovation. Really! If you’d told any one even twenty years ago....”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Mr. Petre, “what’s the highest denomination?”
“Well, really, £10,000, I think.”
“I should like to see one,” said Mr. Petre, “if you have one in the place.”
The Manager rang and the glorious thing appeared—presented in a Morrison folder.
Mr. Petre took it out and handled it with curiosity and interest.
It was printed on one of those new metal sheets which they make the notes of nowadays, and which, they tell us, will replace all paper in the long run; thin, stronger, even lighter; 500 to the inch—almost like the India paper of the old late nineteenth-century books, only not quite so flimsy.
It wasn’t ugly—for an official thing; about eighteen inches by twenty-four and all the little coupons very neat.
Mr. Petre held it up to the light and got absorbed in the grain and the Royal Arms. Then he remembered his business and put it down again.
Mr. Petre asked for a sheet of note-paper and murmured as he wrote thereon: “Please buy me 320 £10,000 nominal National Bearer Bonds at current price, this date. The balance of my account pay in to the account of Mr. Peter Blagden, of Harrington, in the Empire Bank, Patcham Branch,” and he signed boldly “John K. Petre.”
He looked up and spoke: “I want those bills put....” he began. “No! I’ll add it in writing.”
He murmured again: “P.S.—Please put the securities so purchased into a secure receptacle and keep them against my coming”—“What’s to-day? Tuesday. I’ll come on Friday”—“against my coming on Friday next, the 22nd, at 11 a.m., when I shall take them with me.—J. K. P.” “There!” he added in the tone of a man who has paid a small bill promptly, and with a pleasant smile he handed it to the Man of Affairs.
That Manager was dumb. The blow had fallen. The golden dream was over. But it had to come. It might have come at any moment in all those weeks. The Formidable Eccentric ever acted in some such lightning fashion. Doubtless (or, at any rate, pray Heaven) he would return. He had been most courteously treated. He should retain a good memory of their continued courtesy.
“By all means, Mr. Petre, by all means.” The Manager swallowed twice. “At eleven on Friday.”
There was no more to be said. There was nothing more to be done.
“Buffy,” said Mr. Blagden, when they were in the street, and the odd £264 6s. 2d. safe in pocket, “Don’t you want to come on with me? I’ve only got two things more to do—one in the Temple. Then we’ll lunch.”
“All right,” said Buffy.
Mrs. Malton was scrubbing when they entered. She staggered up to her weary feet, bobbed and apologized.
“Mrs. Malton,” said her employer abruptly, “you are a good woman. Now listen to me,” as she would have protested, “I’m leaving. I’m paying my rent now. At the office. This morning.” Mrs. Malton’s eyes filled with tears. “The van will come for this furniture to-morrow. Be here to see that it is loaded. It’s going down to Dorset. No, don’t interrupt. Here is five pounds. Are you married?”
Mrs. Malton said that she was a widow. He asked her if she had children. There were two living: one in the Army, and the other married down Hackney way.
“Mrs. Malton, if you are well advised you will arrange your affairs at home, and take the train from Waterloo Station to a place called Patcham. If you are well advised you will take the train to-day week at ten in the morning, and at Patcham you shall be met; and there you shall be shown my house and certain duties attached to it. And if it suits you, you can stay.”
Mrs. Malton made no terms. Nor did it occur to her that virtue could be rewarded in this world. For in her station of life reward is unknown, as is in higher stations virtue. She simply thought that God, in Whom she believed (for she had been brought up in a very old-fashioned way on the lonely edge of an Essex march) had sent Mr. Petre with a gift, and in her philosophy that was not reward but good luck.
Her employer turned to go, and then suddenly remembered.
“Mrs. Malton, when you get to Patcham, you must not ask for me as Mr. Petre. You must ask for me as Mr. Blagden. I am Mr. Blagden now. Good-by.”
Mrs. Malton, returning to her task, mused on the common madness of the wealthy, and humbly thanked Heaven for her good fortune.
Peter Blagden took Thompson with him as he settled for the rent, gave the order for the moving of the furniture, and the address, went back to his rooms; sent Martin down to meet the furniture at Harrington, bade him be back on Thursday without fail, and then disappeared into that happy inn of his, with Thompson attendant. By ten of the Friday he was back in London; by eleven precisely, after a heavy struggle with his nerves, he was at the door of the Bank, in a good roomy motor, hired from Rimington’s over the river.
A box of steel, burnished, about two feet and a half by two, lined with some dull bronze metal, and having a curious set of three fastenings of a sort he had never seen before, was awaiting him. There was a swing handle at either end. A man could lift it easily enough. The printed securities it contained, each batch just like the last, were handed out with the reverent care which a superstitious age might have shown to the body of a saint; they were in three thin flat bundles of 100 each, tied and docketed; and twenty over.
The solemn process of verifying the printed numbers by tens was to begin when Mr. Petre—in a last eccentricity at which, for all his thought of the future, the Banker could hardly refrain from protesting—had them all put back.
“I’ll take it as read,” he said. “All I want to understand is these locks.”
The simple, the ingenious mechanism was explained, and when cordial farewells had somewhat raised the hearts of the mourners who were to remain thus widowed, a menial bore the box away in train of the millionaire, the last poor corpse of an immortal episode, and put it into the roomy motor at its master’s feet. So went a little more—a trifle of one or two odd one hundred thousands more—than three million pounds through Guildford to Alton, where they lunched late and took the air.
At Alton Mr. Petre bought a good strong sack and corded it about the box. At Winchester he stopped for the night, paid off the car, and dined well with Thompson. As for the sacking parcel, it went up to his room with his luggage. Next morning Mr. Petre hired a standing rotor cab himself in the street, standing by it to see that none should speak to its chauffeur. His luggage was put within and without, and he and Buffy, whom he had asked to pay the bill, drove to Lymington. The taxi was paid off with its return fare, and Mr. Petre had the satisfaction of seeing it go off without comment or converse.
He and his companion lunched. After lunch Thompson went out, saying that all might hear, “I’m sure I can get something,” and sure enough, in an hour he was back with a little old-fashioned trap, still surviving, and a venerable horse, his purchases, for they designed to tour the forest. They put their few things aboard and the small sacking case which held some camping kit and off they went; so slowly that the children jeered at them as the old horse wheezed along.
The Forest was divine with Autumn; they drove on alone, exploring its views. One night Mr. Petre took out those bonds and made a nice brown-paper parcel of them, leaving the metal box empty. But he took it carefully along. They turned the old horse’s head westward toward the Dorset border.
They took it easy. They made their twelve or fourteen miles in a day, all leisurely, nor in a direct line. On the fifth day, from a hill-top, they saw before them in its vale the happy roofs of Harrington, its belfry, the sober gray of Blagden’s House beyond the trees, and slowly their voyage ended at the cottage by the North Lodge.
The heavy camping kit was lifted in. Then the rest. The ramshackle old trap put away in a barn behind a farm cart. They would not need it for some time. It had only been for the forest, said Mr. Blagden. The old horse found a good stable and the much-enduring man his home.
He was released. He had given the slip to that incredible world of shuffling and of falsehood and of cozening, of vain gambling and snatching and open robbery which pretends, in our toppling moment, to govern mankind. So long as the State was secure he was secure; he had his money out at usury, but to one debtor only, the Government of his country; better investment he could not find. He was washed of all the slime of evil acquaintance as he was rid of all that terror and perplexity and agony of nothingness which had poisoned the spring and summer of ’53.
But the gigantic sum in the locked cupboard of his bedroom above less affected him than the doubling of his insufficient revenue two years before would have done. He desired nothing but his old friends, his home and the peaceful passage of age, and these were now secure.
It did not take him ten days to put the simple trials of his earlier life to rights. The small sums—to him now small—very large to the recipients, which were needed to give him an immediate occupation of the old place, to give the mortgagees compensation for his haste, he had sacrificed, as he would have sacrificed a sixpence. And only the clerks in the Patcham Branch of the Empire Bank knew about it. Mr. Blagden, of Harrington Hall, had done famously in America. He had made a deal with the great John K. Petre, and netted close on £50,000.
As for the American land, Mr. Blagden had cabled to London that power was following by mail to let it go. His agent there could sell or let ’em foreclose, just as he willed. He was indifferent; he only desired to hear no more of it. He had visited the old place and strolled round its gardens, pleased with everything, except to note this or that slight disorder, this or that slight mark of an alien presence now vanished. He had recalled in a flood the years of his childhood and of his early manhood. He had made friends of every chair and table and picture and book. He was bathed in content.
He retained his rooms in St. James’s Place. He was used to them, they suited him, he wanted no more. Here was a good end to life. What would he do with the inordinate excess? He should put it somewhere apart from him so that he should not be troubled by the violence of men, or even by their needs beyond reason.
He was bathed in content; and mighty peace had spread her wings again over a world new blessed.