Читать книгу Flames - Robert Hichens - Страница 14

Julian was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate to show him into the doctor's very private room—a room dedicated to ease, and to the cultivation of a busy man's hobbies. No patient ever told the sad secrets of his body here. Here were no medical books, no appliances for the writing of prescriptions, no hints of the profession of the owner. Several pots of growing roses gravely shadowed forth the doctor's fondness for flowers. A grand piano mutely spoke of his love for music. Many of the books which lay about were novels; one, soberly dressed in a vellum binding, being Ouida's "Dog of Flanders." All the photographs which studded the silent chamber with a reflection of life were photographs of children, except one. That was Valentine's. The hearth, on which a fire flashed, was wide and had two mighty occupants, Rupert and Mab, the doctor's mastiffs, who took their evening ease, pillowing their huge heads upon each other's heaving bodies. The ticking clock on the mantelpiece was an imitation of the Devil Clock of Master Zacharius. There were no newspapers in the room. That fact alone made it original. A large cage of sleeping canaries was covered with a cloth. The room was long and rather narrow, the only door being at one end. On the walls hung many pictures, some of them gifts from the artists. Some foils lay on an ottoman in a far corner. The doctor fenced admirably, and believed in the exercise as a tonic to the muscles and a splendid drill-sergeant to the eyes.

As Julian came into the room, which was lit only by wax candles, he could not help comparing it with the room he had just left, in which the body of Marr lay. The atmosphere of a house is a strange thing, and almost as definite to the mind as is an appearance to the eye. A sensitive nature takes it in like a breath of fetid or of fresh air. The atmosphere of the European Hotel had been sinister and dreary, as of a building consecrated to hidden deeds, and inhabited mainly by wandering sinners. This home of a great doctor was open-hearted and receptive, frank and refined. The sleeping dogs, heaving gently in fawn-coloured beatitude, set upon it the best hall-mark. It was a house—judging at least by this room—for happy rest. Yet it was the abode of incessant work, as the great world knew well. This sanctum alone was the shrine of lotos-eating. The doctor sometimes laughingly boasted that he had never insulted it by even so much as writing a post-card within its four walls.

Julian stroked the dogs, who woke to wink upon him majestically, and sat down. Lawler quietly departed, and he was left alone. When he first entered the house he had been disappointed at the departure of Valentine. Now he felt rather glad to have the doctor to himself for a quiet half-hour. A conversation of two people is, under certain circumstances, more complete than a conversation of three, however delightful the third may chance to be. Julian placed Valentine before all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, to-night he was glad that Valentine had gone home to bed. It seems sometimes as if affection contributes to the making of a man self-conscious. Julian had a vague notion that the presence of his greatest friend to-night might render him self-conscious. He scarcely knew why. Then he looked at the mastiffs, and wondered at the extraordinary difference between men and the companion animals whom they love and who love them. What man, however natural, however independent and serene, could emulate the majestic and deliberate abandon of a big dog courted and caressed by a blazing fire and a soft rug? Man has not the dignity of soul to be so grandly natural. Yet his very pert self-consciousness, the fringed petticoats of affectation which he wears, give him the kennel, the collar, the muzzle, the whip, weapons of power to bring the dog to subjection. And Julian, as he watched Rupert and Mab wrapped in large lethargic dreams, found himself pitying them, as civilized man vaguely pities all other inhabitants of the round world. Poor old things! Sombre agitations were not theirs. They had nothing to aim at or to fight against. No devils and angels played at football with their souls. Their liaisons were clear, uncomplicated by the violent mental drum-taps that set the passions marching so often at a quickstep in the wrong direction. And Julian knelt down on the hearth-rug and laid his strong young hands on their broad heads. Slowly they opened their veiled eyes and blinked. One, Rupert, struck a strict tail feebly upon the carpet in token of acquiescence and gratified goodwill. Mab heaved herself over until she rested more completely upon her side, and allowed an enormous sigh to rumble through her monotonously. Julian enjoyed that sigh. It made him for the moment an optimist, as a happy child makes a dreary old man shivering on the edge of death an optimist. Dogs are blessed things. That was his thought. And just then the door at the end of the room opened quietly, and Doctor Levillier came in, with a cloak on and his crush-hat in his hand.

"I am glad to see you, Addison," he said.

The dogs shook themselves up onto their legs and laid their heads against his knees.

"Lawler, please bring my gruel."

"Yes, sir."

"Addison, will you have brandy or whisky?"

"Whisky, please, doctor."

Lawler took his master's cloak and hat, and the doctor came up to the fire.

"So Valentine has gone home to bed?" he said.

"Yes."

"He's all right, I hope?"

"Yes. Indeed, doctor, I thought him looking more fit than usual to-day, more alive than I have often seen him."

"I noticed that last night, when he revived from his trance. It struck me very forcibly, very forcibly indeed. But you—" and the doctor's eyes were on Julian's face—"look older than your age to-night, my boy."

He sat down and lit a cigar. The mastiffs coiled themselves at his feet

rapturously. They sighed, and he sighed too, quietly in satisfaction.

He loved the one hour before midnight, the hour of perfect rest for him.

Putting his feet on Rupert's back, he went on:

"Last night's events upset you seriously, I see, young and strong though you are. But the most muscular men are more often the prey of their nervous systems than most people are aware. Spend a few quiet days. Fence in the morning. Ride—out in the country, not in the Park. Get off your horse now and then, tie him up at a lych-gate and sit in a village church. Listen to the amateur organist practising 'Abide with me,' and the 'Old Hundredth,' on the Leiblich Gedacht and the Dulciana, with the bourdon on the pedals. There's nothing like that for making life seem a slow stepper instead of a racer. And take Valentine with you. I should like to sit with him in a church at twilight, when the rooks were going home, and the organ was droning. Ah, well, but I must not think of holidays."

"Doctor, I like your prescription. Yes; I am feeling a bit out of sorts to-night. Last night, you see—and then to-day."

"Surely, Addison, surely you haven't been sitting—but no, forgive me.

I've got your promise. Well, what is it?"

Julian replied quickly:

"That man I told you about, Marr, is dead."

Doctor Levillier looked decidedly startled. Julian's frequent allusions to Marr and evident strange interest in the man, had impressed him as it had impressed Valentine. However, he only said:

"Heart disease?"

"I don't know. There is going to be an inquest."

"When did he die?"

"Last night, or rather at four in the morning; just as Valentine came out of his trance, it must have been. Don't you remember the clock striking?"

"Certainly, I do. But why do you connect the two circumstances?"

"Doctor, how can you tell that I do?"

"By your expression, the tone of your voice."

"You are right. Somehow I can't help connecting them. I told Valentine so to-night. He has been with me to see Marr's body."

"You have just come from that deathbed now?"

"Yes."

Julian sketched rapidly the events of the European Hotel, but he left to the last the immense impression made upon him by the expression of the dead man.

"He looked so happy, so good, that at first I could not recognize him," he said. "His face, dead, was the most absolutely direct contradiction possible of his face, alive. He was not the same man."

"The man was gone, you see, Addison."

"Yes. But, then, what was it which remained to work this change in the body?"

"Death gives a strange calm. The relaxing of sinews, the droop of limbs and features, the absolute absence of motion, of breathing, work up an impression."

"But there was something more here—more than peace. There was a—well, a strong happiness and a goodness. And Marr had always struck me as an atrociously bad lot. I think I told you."

The doctor sat musing. Lawler came in with the tray, on which was a small basin of gruel and soda-water bottles, a decanter of whisky, and a tall tumbler. Julian mixed himself a drink, and the doctor, still meditatively, took the basin of gruel onto his knees. As he sipped it, he looked a strange, little, serious ascetic, sitting there in the light from the wax candles, his shining boots planted gently on the broad back of the slumbering mastiff, his light eyes fixed on the fire. He did not speak again until he was half way through his gruel. Then he said:

"And you know absolutely nothing of Marr's past history?"

"No; nothing."

"I gather from all you have told me that it would be worthy of study. If I knew it I might understand the startling change from the aspect of evil to the aspect of good at death. I believe the man must have been far less evil than you thought him, for dead faces express something that was always latent, if not known, in the departed natures. Ignorantly, you possibly attributed to Marr a nature far more horrible than he ever really possessed."

But Julian answered:

"I feel absolutely convinced that at the time I knew him he was one of the greatest rips, one of the most merciless men in London. I never felt about any man as I did about him! And he impressed others in the same way."

"I wish I had seen him," Doctor Levillier said.

An idea, suggested by Julian's last remark, suddenly struck him.

"He conveyed a strong impression of evil, you say?"

"Yes."

"How? In what way, exactly?"

Julian hesitated.

"It's difficult to say," he answered. "Awfully difficult to put such a thing into words. He interested me. I felt that he had a great power of intellect, or of will, or something. But in every way he suggested a bad, a damnably bad, character. A woman said to me once about him that it was like an emanation."

"Ah!"

The doctor finished his gruel and put down the basin on the table beside him.

"By the way, where did Marr live? Anywhere in my direction? Would he, for instance, go home from Piccadilly, or the theatres, by Regent Street?"

"I don't know at all where he lived."

"Have you ever seen him with animals—with dogs, for instance?"

"No."

"If he had been as evil as you suppose, any dog would have avoided him."

"Well, but dogs avoid perfection too."

"Hardly, Addison."

"But Rip and Valentine!"

The remark struck the doctor; that was obvious. He pushed his right foot slowly backwards and forwards on Rupert's back, rucking up the dog's loose skin in heavy folds.

"Yes," he said; "Rip is rather an inexplicable beggar. But do you mean to tell me he hasn't got over his horror of Valentine to-day?"

"This afternoon he was worse than ever. If Valentine had touched him,

I believe he would have gone half mad. I had to put him out of the room."

"H'm!"

"Isn't it unaccountable?"

"I must say that it is. Dogs are such faithful wretches. If Rupert and Mab were to turn against me like that I believe it would strike at my heart more fiercely than the deed of any man could."

He bent down and ran his hand over Rupert's heaving back.

"The cheap satirist," he said, "is forever comparing the fickleness of men with the faithfulness of animals, but I don't mean to do that. I have a great belief in some human natures, and there are many men whom I could, and would, implicitly trust."

"There is one, doctor, whom we both know."

"Cresswell. Yes. I could trust him through thick and thin. And yet his own dog flies at him."

Doctor Levillier returned to that fact, as if it puzzled him so utterly that he could not dismiss it from his mind.

"There must be some curious, subtle reason for that," he said; "yet with

all my intimate and affectionate knowledge of dogs I cannot divine it.

Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cresswell. Look after his health.

Notice if he seems natural and happy. Does he eat as usual?"

"Rather. He did to-day."

"And he seems contented with you?"

"Quite."

"Well, all I can say is, that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog nature.

He is uncanny."

"Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. "But everything has become uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool, or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, I imagine—"

He broke off. Then he said:

"By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum."

"It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again."

He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said:

"You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And don't ask Valentine to go away with you."

The last remark surprised Julian.

"But why not?" he asked.

"Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself, two people only, Marr and Cresswell."

"Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed, like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round. That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because—well—"

"Yes."

"Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could—could its exercise cause injury to his health?"

But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete and self-possessed manner.

"Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away to-morrow."

"I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?"

"Your friendship, my boy."

Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair, and they smoked in silence, both of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night-hour. Since he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had been much happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grâce to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction, sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end. And the grey ashes dropped away of their own accord, and Julian's mind shed its grey ashes too and glowed serenely. The dogs expanded their warm bodies on the hearth, and his nature expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity of mute evening emotion.

"How comfortable this is, doctor," he murmured at last.

"Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go slowly from his lips. "I wish I could give to all the poor creatures in this city just one good hour."

They smoked their cigars out.

"I ought to go," Julian said lazily.

"No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a pleasure. It loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night, you and I can get no harm from the experiment."

He handed Julian the cigar-box.

"We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, looking at their happiness with a shining satisfaction. "Here are the matches. Light up."

Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second cigar, and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace. Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick, chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.

Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre of his being. He said to Julian:

"The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."

Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him a push, expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.

"What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.

As he spoke a bell rang in the house.

"Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a patient, no doubt."

As if in reply to the twitter of the bell, Rupert sprang forward and barked. He remained beside the door, waiting, while Mab barked too, nearer the fire. The bell sounded again, and the footstep of Lawler, who always sat up as late as his master, was heard on the stairs from the servants' part of the house. It passed them on its errand to the front door, but during its passage the excitement of the two dogs rapidly increased. They began to bark furiously and to bristle.

"I never saw them like this before," the doctor said, not without anxiety.

As he spoke Lawler opened the hall door. They heard the latch go and the faint voice of somebody in colloquy with him. For the dogs were now abruptly silent, but displayed the most curious savage intentness, showing their teeth, and standing each by the door as if sentinels on guard. The colloquy ceasing, steps again sounded in the hall, but more than Lawler's. Evidently the man was returning towards the room accompanied by somebody from the street. The doctor was keenly observing the mastiffs, and just as Lawler's hand struck upon the handle of the door to turn it, he suddenly called out sharply:

"Lawler, you are not to open the door!"

And as he called, the doctor ran forward between the two dogs and caught their collars in his two hands. They tugged and leaped to get away, but he held on. The surprised voice of the obedient Lawler was heard on the hither side of the door, saying:

"I beg your pardon, sir."

The doctor said hastily to Julian:

"These dogs will tear the person who has just come into the house to pieces if we don't take care. Catch on to Mab, Addison."

Julian obeyed, and the dog was like live iron with determination under his grasp.

"Some one is with you, Lawler," the doctor said. "Does he wish to see me?"

"If you please, sir, it is Mr. Cresswell, Mr. Valentine come back for Mr.

Addison."

Julian felt himself go suddenly pale.