Читать книгу The Dancing Floor - John Buchan - Страница 9

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He seemed to be waiting for me to speak, waiting shyly and tensely like a child expecting the judgment of an elder. But I found it hard to know what to say.

"That is a very wonderful story!" I ventured at last. "I am honoured that you should have chosen me to tell it to. Perhaps it will be a relief to you to know that some one else understands what you are going through.... I don't suppose you want sympathy, but I would like to congratulate you on your fortitude."

"I don't need sympathy—or congratulation. But I want help—the help of your brain and your experience.... You see, in seven years some tremendous experience is coming to me, and I want—I'd like—to know what it is."

"I wonder if a good doctor wouldn't be the best person to consult."

"No, no," he cried almost angrily. "I tell you there's nothing pathological about it—not now that I'm a man. I don't want it exorcised as if it were an evil spell. I think—now—that I'd break my heart if it all vanished into moonshine.... I believe in it as I believe in God, and I'm ready to face whatever is coming. But I want to be forewarned and forearmed, if possible, for it's going to be a big thing. If I only knew something about what was coming—even the smallest something!"

Those were the days before psycho-analysis had become fashionable, but even then we had psychologists, and in my bewilderment I tried that tack.

"Might not it all spring from some fright—some strange experience at any rate—which you had as a baby? Such things often make an abiding impression."

He smiled. "You're still thinking it is pathological. Fright would account for recurring nightmares, but surely not for a thing so rational as this—a fixed day every year, the same room, the time limit. It would not explain the thing moving on a room last year when I had no dream."

"I suppose not," I admitted. "Have you looked up your family history? I have heard stories of inherited obsessions and premonitions—what they call a 'weird' in Scotland."

"I thought of that, but there's nothing—nothing. There are no Milburne records much beyond my grandfather, and by all accounts they were the most prosaic kind of business men. My mother's family—well, there's plenty of records there, and I've waded through most of the muniment room at Appleby. But there's no hint of anything mysterious in the Douglas-Ernotts. They were a time-serving lot, who knew how the cat was going to jump, but they kept out of crime and shunned anything imaginative like the plague. I shouldn't think one of them had ever an ambition which couldn't be put in terms of office or money, or a regret except that he had missed a chance of getting at the public purse. True-blue Whigs, all of them."

"Then I'm hanged if I know what to say. But, now you've told me, I want you to remember that you can always count on me. I may not be able to help, but I'm there whenever you want me. Perhaps—you never know—the thing will reveal itself more clearly in the next seven years and come within the scope of my help. I've taken a tremendous liking to you, my dear chap, and we're going to be friends."

He held out his hand.

"That's kind of you.... Shall I tell you what I think myself? I was taught to believe that everything in our lives is foreordained by God. No caprice of our own can alter the eternal plan. Now, why shouldn't some inkling of this plan be given us now and then—not knowledge, but just an inkling that we may be ready? My dream may be a heavenly warning, a divine foreshadowing—a privilege, not a cross. It is a reminder that I must be waiting with girt loins and a lit lamp when the call comes. That's the way I look on it, and it makes me happy."

I said nothing, for I did not share his Calvinism, but I felt that suddenly that library had become rather a solemn place. I had listened to the vow of the young Hannibal at the altar.