The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magician, by Somerset Maugham

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Title: The Magician

Author: Somerset Maugham

Release Date: December 4, 2004 [EBook #14257]

Language: English

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                              The Magician

                       A NOVEL By SOMERSET MAUGHAM

                TOGETHER WITH A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY

                                  1908




A FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY


In 1897, after spending five years at St Thomas's Hospital I passed the
examinations which enabled me to practise medicine. While still a medical
student I had published a novel called _Liza of Lambeth_ which caused a
mild sensation, and on the strength of that I rashly decided to abandon
doctoring and earn my living as a writer; so, as soon as I was
'qualified', I set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in
Seville. I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to
London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat
near Victoria Station. A maid of all work cooked for us and kept the flat
neat and tidy. My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day (and the
flat) to myself and my work. During the next six years I wrote several
novels and a number of plays. Only one of these novels had any success,
but even that failed to make the stir that my first one had made. I could
get no manager to take my plays. At last, in desperation, I sent one,
which I called _A Man of Honour_, to the Stage Society, which gave two
performances, one on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon, of plays
which, unsuitable for the commercial theatre, were considered of
sufficient merit to please an intellectual audience. As every one knows,
it was the Stage Society that produced the early plays of Bernard Shaw.
The committee accepted _A Man of Honour_, and W.L. Courtney, who was a
member of it, thought well enough of my crude play to publish it in _The
Fortnightly Review_, of which he was then editor. It was a feather in my
cap.

Though these efforts of mine brought me very little money, they attracted
not a little attention, and I made friends. I was looked upon as a
promising young writer and, I think I may say it without vanity, was
accepted as a member of the intelligentsia, an honourable condition
which, some years later, when I became a popular writer of light
comedies, I lost; and have never since regained. I was invited to
literary parties and to parties given by women of rank and fashion who
thought it behoved them to patronise the arts. An unattached and fairly
presentable young man is always in demand. I lunched out and dined out.
Since I could not afford to take cabs, when I dined out, in tails and a
white tie, as was then the custom, I went and came back by bus. I was
asked to spend week-ends in the country. They were something of a trial
on account of the tips you had to give to the butler and to the footman
who brought you your morning tea. He unpacked your gladstone bag, and
you were uneasily aware that your well-worn pyjamas and modest toilet
articles had made an unfavourable impression upon him. For all that, I
found life pleasant and I enjoyed myself. There seemed no reason why I
should not go on indefinitely in the same way, bringing out a novel once
a year (which seldom earned more than the small advance the publisher
had given me but which was on the whole respectably reviewed), going to
more and more parties, making more and more friends. It was all very
nice, but I couldn't see that it was leading me anywhere. I was thirty.
I was in a rut. I felt I must get out of it. It did not take me long to
make up my mind. I told the friend with whom I shared the flat that I
wanted to be rid of it and go abroad. He could not keep it by himself,
but we luckily found a middle-aged gentleman who wished to install his
mistress in it, and was prepared to take it off our hands. We sold the
furniture for what it could fetch, and within a month I was on my way to
Paris. I took a room in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank.

A few months before this, I had been fortunate enough to make friends
with a young painter who had a studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere. His
name was Gerald Kelly. He had had an upbringing unusual for a painter,
for he had been to Eton and to Cambridge. He was highly talented,
abundantly loquacious, and immensely enthusiastic. It was he who first
made me acquainted with the Impressionists, whose pictures had recently
been accepted by the Luxembourg. To my shame, I must admit that I could
not make head or tail of them. Without much searching, I found an
apartment on the fifth floor of a house near the Lion de Belfort. It had
two rooms and a kitchen, and cost seven hundred francs a year, which was
then twenty-eight pounds. I bought, second-hand, such furniture and
household utensils as were essential, and the _concierge_ told me of a
woman who would come in for half a day and make my _cafe au lait_ in the
morning and my luncheon at noon. I settled down and set to work on still
another novel. Soon after my arrival, Gerald Kelly took me to a
restaurant called Le Chat Blanc in the Rue d'Odessa, near the Gare
Montparnasse, where a number of artists were in the habit of dining;
and from then on I dined there every night. I have described the place
elsewhere, and in some detail in the novel to which these pages are meant
to serve as a preface, so that I need not here say more about it. As a
rule, the same people came in every night, but now and then others came,
perhaps only once, perhaps two or three times. We were apt to look upon
them as interlopers, and I don't think we made them particularly welcome.
It was thus that I first met Arnold Bennett and Clive Bell. One of these
casual visitors was Aleister Crowley. He was spending the winter in
Paris. I took an immediate dislike to him, but he interested and amused
me. He was a great talker and he talked uncommonly well. In early youth,
I was told, he was extremely handsome, but when I knew him he had put on
weight, and his hair was thinning. He had fine eyes and a way, whether
natural or acquired I do not know, of so focusing them that, when he
looked at you, he seemed to look behind you. He was a fake, but not
entirely a fake. At Cambridge he had won his chess blue and was esteemed
the best whist player of his time. He was a liar and unbecomingly
boastful, but the odd thing was that he had actually done some of the
things he boasted of. As a mountaineer, he had made an ascent of K2 in
the Hindu Kush, the second highest mountain in India, and he made it
without the elaborate equipment, the cylinders of oxygen and so forth,
which render the endeavours of the mountaineers of the present day more
likely to succeed. He did not reach the top, but got nearer to it than
anyone had done before.

Crowley was a voluminous writer of verse, which he published sumptuously
at his own expense. He had a gift for rhyming, and his verse is not
entirely without merit. He had been greatly influenced by Swinburne and
Robert Browning. He was grossly, but not unintelligently, imitative. As
you flip through the pages you may well read a stanza which, if you
came across it in a volume of Swinburne's, you would accept without
question as the work of the master. '_It's rather hard, isn't it, Sir,
to make sense of it?_' If you were shown this line and asked what poet
had written it, I think you would be inclined to say, Robert Browning.
You would be wrong. It was written by Aleister Crowley.

At the time I knew him he was dabbling in Satanism, magic and the occult.
There was just then something of a vogue in Paris for that sort of thing,
occasioned, I surmise, by the interest that was still taken in a book of
Huysmans's, _La Bas_. Crowley told fantastic stories of his experiences,
but it was hard to say whether he was telling the truth or merely pulling
your leg. During that winter I saw him several times, but never after I
left Paris to return to London. Once, long afterwards, I received a
telegram from him which ran as follows: 'Please send twenty-five pounds
at once. Mother of God and I starving. Aleister Crowley.' I did not do
so, and he lived on for many disgraceful years.

I was glad to get back to London. My old friend had by then rooms in Pall
Mall, and I was able to take a bedroom in the same building and use his
sitting-room to work in. _The Magician_ was published in 1908, so I
suppose it was written during the first six months of 1907. I do not
remember how I came to think that Aleister Crowley might serve as the
model for the character whom I called Oliver Haddo; nor, indeed,
how I came to think of writing that particular novel at all. When, a
little while ago, my publisher expressed a wish to reissue it, I felt
that, before consenting to this, I really should read it again. Nearly
fifty years had passed since I had done so, and I had completely
forgotten it. Some authors enjoy reading their old works; some cannot
bear to. Of these I am. When I have corrected the proofs of a book, I
have finished with it for good and all. I am impatient when people insist
on talking to me about it; I am glad if they like it, but do not much
care if they don't. I am no more interested in it than in a worn-out
suit of clothes that I have given away. It was thus with disinclination
that I began to read _The Magician_. It held my interest, as two of my
early novels, which for the same reason I have been obliged to read, did
not. One, indeed, I simply could not get through. Another had to my mind
some good dramatic scenes, but the humour filled me with mortification,
and I should have been ashamed to see it republished. As I read _The
Magician_, I wondered how on earth I could have come by all the material
concerning the black arts which I wrote of. I must have spent days and
days reading in the library of the British Museum. The style is lush and
turgid, not at all the sort of style I approve of now, but perhaps not
unsuited to the subject; and there are a great many more adverbs and
adjectives than I should use today. I fancy I must have been impressed by
the _ecriture artiste_ which the French writers of the time had not yet
entirely abandoned, and unwisely sought to imitate them.

Though Aleister Crowley served, as I have said, as the model for Oliver
Haddo, it is by no means a portrait of him. I made my character more
striking in appearance, more sinister and more ruthless than Crowley ever
was. I gave him magical powers that Crowley, though he claimed them,
certainly never possessed. Crowley, however, recognized himself in the
creature of my invention, for such it was, and wrote a full-page review
of the novel in _Vanity Fair_, which he signed 'Oliver Haddo'. I did not
read it, and wish now that I had. I daresay it was a pretty piece of
vituperation, but probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose.

I do not remember what success, if any, my novel had when it was
published, and I did not bother about it much, for by then a great change
had come into my life. The manager of the Court Theatre, one Otho Stuart,
had brought out a play which failed to please, and he could not
immediately get the cast he wanted for the next play he had in mind to
produce. He had read one of mine, and formed a very poor opinion of
it; but he was in a quandary, and it occurred to him that it might just
serve to keep his theatre open for a few weeks, by the end of which the
actors he wanted for the play he had been obliged to postpone would be at
liberty. He put mine on. It was an immediate success. The result of this
was that in a very little while other managers accepted the plays they
had consistently refused, and I had four running in London at the same
time. I, who for ten years had earned an average of one hundred pounds a
year, found myself earning several hundred pounds a week. I made up my
mind to abandon the writing of novels for the rest of my life. I did not
know that this was something out of my control and that when the urge to
write a novel seized me, I should be able to do nothing but submit. Five
years later, the urge came and, refusing to write any more plays for the
time, I started upon the longest of all my novels. I called it _Of Human
Bondage_.




The Magician




I


Arthur Burdon and Dr Porhoet walked in silence. They had lunched at a
restaurant in the Boulevard Saint Michel, and were sauntering now in the
gardens of the Luxembourg. Dr Porhoet walked with stooping shoulders, his
hands behind him. He beheld the scene with the eyes of the many painters
who have sought by means of the most charming garden in Paris to express
their sense of beauty. The grass was scattered with the fallen leaves,
but their wan decay little served to give a touch of nature to the
artifice of all besides. The trees were neatly surrounded by bushes,
and the bushes by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without
abandonment, as though conscious of the decorative scheme they helped to
form. It was autumn, and some were leafless already. Many of the flowers
were withered. The formal garden reminded one of a light woman, no longer
young, who sought, with faded finery, with powder and paint, to make a
brave show of despair. It had those false, difficult smiles of uneasy
gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt a fascination that the
hurrying years have rendered vain.

Dr Porhoet drew more closely round his fragile body the heavy cloak which
even in summer he could not persuade himself to discard. The best part of
his life had been spent in Egypt, in the practice of medicine, and the
frigid summers of Europe scarcely warmed his blood. His memory flashed
for an instant upon those multi-coloured streets of Alexandria; and then,
like a homing bird, it flew to the green woods and the storm-beaten
coasts of his native Brittany. His brown eyes were veiled with sudden
melancholy.

'Let us wait here for a moment,' he said.

They took two straw-bottomed chairs and sat near the octagonal water
which completes with its fountain of Cupids the enchanting artificiality
of the Luxembourg. The sun shone more kindly now, and the trees which
framed the scene were golden and lovely. A balustrade of stone gracefully
enclosed the space, and the flowers, freshly bedded, were very gay. In
one corner they could see the squat, quaint towers of Saint Sulpice, and
on the other side the uneven roofs of the Boulevard Saint Michel.

The palace was grey and solid. Nurses, some in the white caps of their
native province, others with the satin streamers of the _nounou_, marched
sedately two by two, wheeling perambulators and talking. Brightly dressed
children trundled hoops or whipped a stubborn top. As he watched them, Dr
Porhoet's lips broke into a smile, and it was so tender that his thin
face, sallow from long exposure to subtropical suns, was transfigured.
He no longer struck you merely as an insignificant little man with hollow
cheeks and a thin grey beard; for the weariness of expression which was
habitual to him vanished before the charming sympathy of his smile. His
sunken eyes glittered with a kindly but ironic good-humour. Now passed a
guard in the romantic cloak of a brigand in comic opera and a peaked cap
like that of an _alguacil_. A group of telegraph boys in blue stood round
a painter, who was making a sketch--notwithstanding half-frozen fingers.
Here and there, in baggy corduroys, tight jackets, and wide-brimmed hats,
strolled students who might have stepped from the page of Murger's
immortal romance. But the students now are uneasy with the fear of
ridicule, and more often they walk in bowler hats and the neat coats
of the _boulevardier_.

Dr Porhoet spoke English fluently, with scarcely a trace of foreign
accent, but with an elaboration which suggested that he had learned the
language as much from study of the English classics as from conversation.

'And how is Miss Dauncey?' he asked, turning to his friend.

Arthur Burdon smiled.

'Oh, I expect she's all right. I've not seen her today, but I'm going to
tea at the studio this afternoon, and we want you to dine with us at the
Chien Noir.'

'I shall be much pleased. But do you not wish to be by yourselves?'

'She met me at the station yesterday, and we dined together. We talked
steadily from half past six till midnight.'

'Or, rather, she talked and you listened with the delighted attention of
a happy lover.'

Arthur Burdon had just arrived in Paris. He was a surgeon on the staff of
St Luke's, and had come ostensibly to study the methods of the French
operators; but his real object was certainly to see Margaret Dauncey. He
was furnished with introductions from London surgeons of repute, and had
already spent a morning at the Hotel Dieu, where the operator, warned
that his visitor was a bold and skilful surgeon, whose reputation in
England was already considerable, had sought to dazzle him by feats that
savoured almost of legerdemain. Though the hint of charlatanry in the
Frenchman's methods had not escaped Arthur Burdon's shrewd eyes, the
audacious sureness of his hand had excited his enthusiasm. During
luncheon he talked of nothing else, and Dr Porhoet, drawing upon his
memory, recounted the more extraordinary operations that he had witnessed
in Egypt.

He had known Arthur Burdon ever since he was born, and indeed had missed
being present at his birth only because the Khedive Ismail had summoned
him unexpectedly to Cairo. But the Levantine merchant who was Arthur's
father had been his most intimate friend, and it was with singular
pleasure that Dr Porhoet saw the young man, on his advice, enter his
own profession and achieve a distinction which himself had never won.

Though too much interested in the characters of the persons whom chance
threw in his path to have much ambition on his own behalf, it pleased him
to see it in others. He observed with satisfaction the pride which Arthur
took in his calling and the determination, backed by his confidence and
talent, to become a master of his art. Dr Porhoet knew that a diversity
of interests, though it adds charm to a man's personality, tends to
weaken him. To excel one's fellows it is needful to be circumscribed.
He did not regret, therefore, that Arthur in many ways was narrow.
Letters and the arts meant little to him. Nor would he trouble himself
with the graceful trivialities which make a man a good talker. In mixed
company he was content to listen silently to others, and only something
very definite to say could tempt him to join in the general conversation.
He worked very hard, operating, dissecting, or lecturing at his hospital,
and took pains to read every word, not only in English, but in French and
German, which was published concerning his profession. Whenever he could
snatch a free day he spent it on the golf-links of Sunningdale, for he
was an eager and a fine player.

But at the operating-table Arthur was different. He was no longer the
awkward man of social intercourse, who was sufficiently conscious of his
limitations not to talk of what he did not understand, and sincere enough
not to express admiration for what he did not like. Then, on the other
hand, a singular exhilaration filled him; he was conscious of his power,
and he rejoiced in it. No unforeseen accident was able to confuse him.
He seemed to have a positive instinct for operating, and his hand and
his brain worked in a manner that appeared almost automatic. He never
hesitated, and he had no fear of failure. His success had been no less
than his courage, and it was plain that soon his reputation with the
public would equal that which he had already won with the profession.

Dr Porhoet had been making listless patterns with his stick upon the
gravel, and now, with that charming smile of his, turned to Arthur.

'I never cease to be astonished at the unexpectedness of human nature,'
he remarked. 'It is really very surprising that a man like you should
fall so deeply in love with a girl like Margaret Dauncey.'

Arthur made no reply, and Dr Porhoet, fearing that his words might
offend, hastened to explain.

'You know as well as I do that I think her a very charming young person.
She has beauty and grace and sympathy. But your characters are more
different than chalk and cheese. Notwithstanding your birth in the East
and your boyhood spent amid the very scenes of the Thousand and One
Nights, you are the most matter-of-fact creature I have ever come
across.'

'I see no harm in your saying insular,' smiled Arthur. 'I confess that I
have no imagination and no sense of humour. I am a plain, practical man,
but I can see to the end of my nose with extreme clearness. Fortunately
it is rather a long one.'

'One of my cherished ideas is that it is impossible to love without
imagination.'

Again Arthur Burdon made no reply, but a curious look came into his
eyes as he gazed in front of him. It was the look which might fill the
passionate eyes of a mystic when he saw in ecstasy the Divine Lady of
his constant prayers.

'But Miss Dauncey has none of that narrowness of outlook which, if you
forgive my saying so, is perhaps the secret of your strength. She has a
delightful enthusiasm for every form of art. Beauty really means as much
to her as bread and butter to the more soberly-minded. And she takes a
passionate interest in the variety of life.'

'It is right that Margaret should care for beauty, since there is beauty
in every inch of her,' answered Arthur.

He was too reticent to proceed to any analysis of his feelings; but
he knew that he had cared for her first on account of the physical
perfection which contrasted so astonishingly with the countless
deformities in the study of which his life was spent. But one phrase
escaped him almost against his will.

'The first time I saw her I felt as though a new world had opened to my
ken.'

The divine music of Keats's lines rang through Arthur's remark, and to
the Frenchman's mind gave his passion a romantic note that foreboded
future tragedy. He sought to dispel the cloud which his fancy had cast
upon the most satisfactory of love affairs.

'You are very lucky, my friend. Miss Margaret admires you as much as you
adore her. She is never tired of listening to my prosy stories of your
childhood in Alexandria, and I'm quite sure that she will make you the
most admirable of wives.'

'You can't be more sure than I am,' laughed Arthur.

He looked upon himself as a happy man. He loved Margaret with all his
heart, and he was confident in her great affection for him. It was
impossible that anything should arise to disturb the pleasant life
which they had planned together. His love cast a glamour upon his
work, and his work, by contrast, made love the more entrancing.

'We're going to fix the date of our marriage now,' he said. 'I'm buying
furniture already.'

'I think only English people could have behaved so oddly as you, in
postponing your marriage without reason for two mortal years.'

'You see, Margaret was ten when I first saw her, and only seventeen when
I asked her to marry me. She thought she had reason to be grateful to me
and would have married me there and then. But I knew she hankered after
these two years in Paris, and I didn't feel it was fair to bind her to me
till she had seen at least something of the world. And she seemed hardly
ready for marriage, she was growing still.'

'Did I not say that you were a matter-of-fact young man?' smiled Dr
Porhoet.

'And it's not as if there had been any doubt about our knowing our minds.
We both cared, and we had a long time before us. We could afford to
wait.'

At that moment a man strolled past them, a big stout fellow, showily
dressed in a check suit; and he gravely took off his hat to Dr Porhoet.
The doctor smiled and returned the salute.

'Who is your fat friend?' asked Arthur.

'That is a compatriot of yours. His name is Oliver Haddo.'

'Art-student?' inquired Arthur, with the scornful tone he used when
referring to those whose walk in life was not so practical as his own.

'Not exactly. I met him a little while ago by chance. When I was getting
together the material for my little book on the old alchemists I read a
great deal at the library of the Arsenal, which, you may have heard, is
singularly rich in all works dealing with the occult sciences.'

Burden's face assumed an expression of amused disdain. He could not
understand why Dr Porhoet occupied his leisure with studies so
profitless. He had read his book, recently published, on the more
famous of the alchemists; and, though forced to admire the profound
knowledge upon which it was based, he could not forgive the waste of
time which his friend might have expended more usefully on topics of
pressing moment.

'Not many people study in that library,' pursued the doctor, 'and I
soon knew by sight those who were frequently there. I saw this gentleman
every day. He was immersed in strange old books when I arrived early in
the morning, and he was reading them still when I left, exhausted.
Sometimes it happened that he had the volumes I asked for, and I
discovered that he was studying the same subjects as myself. His
appearance was extraordinary, but scarcely sympathetic; so, though I
fancied that he gave me opportunities to address him, I did not avail
myself of them. One day, however, curiously enough, I was looking up
some point upon which it seemed impossible to find authorities. The
librarian could not help me, and I had given up the search, when this
person brought me the very book I needed. I surmised that the librarian
had told him of my difficulty. I was very grateful to the stranger. We
left together that afternoon, and our kindred studies gave us a common
topic of conversation. I found that his reading was extraordinarily wide,
and he was able to give me information about works which I had never
even heard of. He had the advantage over me that he could apparently
read, Hebrew as well as Arabic, and he had studied the Kabbalah in the
original.'

'And much good it did him, I have no doubt,' said Arthur. 'And what is he
by profession?'

Dr Porhoet gave a deprecating smile.

'My dear fellow, I hardly like to tell you. I tremble in every limb at
the thought of your unmitigated scorn.'

'Well?'

'You know, Paris is full of queer people. It is the chosen home of every
kind of eccentricity. It sounds incredible in this year of grace, but my
friend Oliver Haddo claims to be a magician. I think he is quite
serious.'

'Silly ass!' answered Arthur with emphasis.




2


Margaret Dauncey shared a flat near the Boulevard du Montparnasse with
Susie Boyd; and it was to meet her that Arthur had arranged to come to
tea that afternoon. The young women waited for him in the studio. The
kettle was boiling on the stove; cups and _petits fours_ stood in
readiness on a model stand. Susie looked forward to the meeting with
interest. She had heard a good deal of the young man, and knew that the
connexion between him and Margaret was not lacking in romance. For years
Susie had led the monotonous life of a mistress in a school for young
ladies, and had resigned herself to its dreariness for the rest of her
life, when a legacy from a distant relation gave her sufficient income
to live modestly upon her means. When Margaret, who had been her pupil,
came, soon after this, to announce her intention of spending a couple
of years in Paris to study art, Susie willingly agreed to accompany
her. Since then she had worked industriously at Colarossi's Academy,
by no means under the delusion that she had talent, but merely to
amuse herself. She refused to surrender the pleasing notion that her
environment was slightly wicked. After the toil of many years it relieved
her to be earnest in nothing; and she found infinite satisfaction in
watching the lives of those around her.

She had a great affection for Margaret, and though her own stock of
enthusiasms was run low, she could enjoy thoroughly Margaret's young
enchantment in all that was exquisite. She was a plain woman; but there
was no envy in her, and she took the keenest pleasure in Margaret's
comeliness. It was almost with maternal pride that she watched each year
add a new grace to that exceeding beauty. But her common sense was sound,
and she took care by good-natured banter to temper the praises which
extravagant admirers at the drawing-class lavished upon the handsome girl
both for her looks and for her talent. She was proud to think that she
would hand over to Arthur Burdon a woman whose character she had helped
to form, and whose loveliness she had cultivated with a delicate care.

Susie knew, partly from fragments of letters which Margaret read to her,
partly from her conversation, how passionately he adored his bride; and
it pleased her to see that Margaret loved him in return with a grateful
devotion. The story of this visit to Paris touched her imagination.
Margaret was the daughter of a country barrister, with whom Arthur had
been in the habit of staying; and when he died, many years after his
wife, Arthur found himself the girl's guardian and executor. He sent her
to school; saw that she had everything she could possibly want; and when,
at seventeen, she told him of her wish to go to Paris and learn drawing,
he at once consented. But though he never sought to assume authority over
her, he suggested that she should not live alone, and it was on this
account that she went to Susie. The preparations for the journey were
scarcely made when Margaret discovered by chance that her father had died
penniless and she had lived ever since at Arthur's entire expense. When
she went to see him with tears in her eyes, and told him what she knew,
Arthur was so embarrassed that it was quite absurd.

'But why did you do it?' she asked him. 'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I didn't think it fair to put you under any obligation to me, and I
wanted you to feel quite free.'

She cried. She couldn't help it.

'Don't be so silly,' he laughed. 'You own me nothing at all. I've done
very little for you, and what I have done has given me a great deal of
pleasure.'

'I don't know how I can ever repay you.'

'Oh, don't say that,' he cried. 'It makes it so much harder for me to say
what I want to.'

She looked at him quickly and reddened. Her deep blue eyes were veiled
with tears.

'Don't you know that I'd do anything in the world for you?' she cried.

'I don't want you to be grateful to me, because I was hoping--I might ask
you to marry me some day.'

Margaret laughed charmingly as she held out her hands.

'You must know that I've been wanting you to do that ever since I was
ten.'

She was quite willing to give up her idea of Paris and be married without
delay, but Arthur pressed her not to change her plans. At first Margaret
vowed it was impossible to go, for she knew now that she had no money,
and she could not let her lover pay.

'But what does it matter?' he said. 'It'll give me such pleasure to go
on with the small allowance I've been making you. After all, I'm pretty
well-to-do. My father left me a moderate income, and I'm making a good
deal already by operating.'

'Yes, but it's different now. I didn't know before. I thought I
was spending my own money.'

'If I died tomorrow, every penny I have would be yours. We shall be
married in two years, and we've known one another much too long to
change our minds. I think that our lives are quite irrevocably united.'

Margaret wished very much to spend this time in Paris, and Arthur had
made up his mind that in fairness to her they could not marry till she
was nineteen. She consulted Susie Boyd, whose common sense prevented her
from paying much heed to romantic notions of false delicacy.

'My dear, you'd take his money without scruple if you'd signed your
names in a church vestry, and as there's not the least doubt that you'll
marry, I don't see why you shouldn't now. Besides, you've got nothing
whatever to live on, and you're equally unfitted to be a governess or a
typewriter. So it's Hobson's choice, and you'd better put your exquisite
sentiments in your pocket.'

Miss Boyd, by one accident after another, had never seen Arthur, but
she had heard so much that she looked upon him already as an old friend.
She admired him for his talent and strength of character as much as for
his loving tenderness to Margaret. She had seen portraits of him, but
Margaret said he did not photograph well. She had asked if he was
good-looking.

'No, I don't think he is,' answered Margaret, 'but he's very paintable.'

'That is an answer which has the advantage of sounding well and meaning
nothing,' smiled Susie.

She believed privately that Margaret's passion for the arts was a not
unamiable pose which would disappear when she was happily married. To
have half a dozen children was in her mind much more important than to
paint pictures. Margaret's gift was by no means despicable, but Susie
was not convinced that callous masters would have been so enthusiastic
if Margaret had been as plain and old as herself.

Miss Boyd was thirty. Her busy life had not caused the years to pass
easily, and she looked older. But she was one of those plain women whose
plainness does not matter. A gallant Frenchman had to her face called her
a _belle laide_, and, far from denying the justness of his observation,
she had been almost flattered. Her mouth was large, and she had little
round bright eyes. Her skin was colourless and much disfigured by
freckles. Her nose was long and thin. But her face was so kindly, her
vivacity so attractive, that no one after ten minutes thought of her
ugliness. You noticed then that her hair, though sprinkled with white,
was pretty, and that her figure was exceedingly neat. She had good hands,
very white and admirably formed, which she waved continually in the
fervour of her gesticulation. Now that her means were adequate she took
great pains with her dress, and her clothes, though they cost much more
than she could afford, were always beautiful. Her taste was so great,
her tact so sure, that she was able to make the most of herself. She
was determined that if people called her ugly they should be forced
in the same breath to confess that she was perfectly gowned. Susie's
talent for dress was remarkable, and it was due to her influence that
Margaret was arrayed always in the latest mode. The girl's taste inclined
to be artistic, and her sense of colour was apt to run away with her
discretion. Except for the display of Susie's firmness, she would
scarcely have resisted her desire to wear nondescript garments of
violent hue. But the older woman expressed herself with decision.

'My dear, you won't draw any the worse for wearing a well-made corset,
and to surround your body with bands of grey flannel will certainly not
increase your talent.'

'But the fashion is so hideous,' smiled Margaret.

'Fiddlesticks! The fashion is always beautiful. Last year it was
beautiful to wear a hat like a pork-pie tipped over your nose; and
next year, for all I know, it will be beautiful to wear a bonnet like
a sitz-bath at the back of your head. Art has nothing to do with a smart
frock, and whether a high-heeled pointed shoe commends itself or not to
the painters in the quarter, it's the only thing in which a woman's foot
looks really nice.'

Susie Boyd vowed that she would not live with Margaret at all unless she
let her see to the buying of her things.

'And when you're married, for heaven's sake ask me to stay with you four
times a year, so that I can see after your clothes. You'll never keep
your husband's affection if you trust to your own judgment.'

Miss Boyd's reward had come the night before, when Margaret, coming home
from dinner with Arthur, had repeated an observation of his.

'How beautifully you're dressed!' he had said. 'I was rather afraid you'd
be wearing art-serges.'

'Of course you didn't tell him that I insisted on buying every stitch
you'd got on,' cried Susie.

'Yes, I did,' answered Margaret simply. 'I told him I had no taste at
all, but that you were responsible for everything.'

'That was the least you could do,' answered Miss Boyd.

But her heart went out to Margaret, for the trivial incident showed once
more how frank the girl was. She knew quite well that few of her friends,
though many took advantage of her matchless taste, would have made such
an admission to the lover who congratulated them on the success of their
costume.

There was a knock at the door, and Arthur came in.

'This is the fairy prince,' said Margaret, bringing him to her friend.

'I'm glad to see you in order to thank you for all you've done for
Margaret,' he smiled, taking the proffered hand.

Susie remarked that he looked upon her with friendliness, but with a
certain vacancy, as though too much engrossed in his beloved really to
notice anyone else; and she wondered how to make conversation with a man
who was so manifestly absorbed. While Margaret busied herself with the
preparations for tea, his eyes followed her movements with a doglike,
touching devotion. They travelled from her smiling mouth to her deft
hands. It seemed that he had never seen anything so ravishing as the way
in which she bent over the kettle. Margaret felt that he was looking at
her, and turned round. Their eyes met, and they stood for an appreciable
time gazing at one another silently.

'Don't be a pair of perfect idiots,' cried Susie gaily. 'I'm dying for my
tea.'

The lovers laughed and reddened. It struck Arthur that he should say
something polite.

'I hope you'll show me your sketches afterwards, Miss Boyd. Margaret says
they're awfully good.'

'You really needn't think it in the least necessary to show any interest
in me,' she replied bluntly.

'She draws the most delightful caricatures,' said Margaret. 'I'll bring
you a horror of yourself, which she'll do the moment you leave us.'

'Don't be so spiteful, Margaret.'

Miss Boyd could not help thinking all the same that Arthur Burdon would
caricature very well. Margaret was right when she said that he was not
handsome, but his clean-shaven face was full of interest to so passionate
an observer of her kind. The lovers were silent, and Susie had the
conversation to herself. She chattered without pause and had the
satisfaction presently of capturing their attention. Arthur seemed to
become aware of her presence, and laughed heartily at her burlesque
account of their fellow-students at Colarossi's. Meanwhile Susie examined
him. He was very tall and very thin. His frame had a Yorkshireman's
solidity, and his bones were massive. He missed being ungainly only
through the serenity of his self-reliance. He had high cheek-bones and
a long, lean face. His nose and mouth were large, and his skin was
sallow. But there were two characteristics which fascinated her, an
imposing strength of purpose and a singular capacity for suffering. This
was a man who knew his mind and was determined to achieve his desire; it
refreshed her vastly after the extreme weakness of the young painters
with whom of late she had mostly consorted. But those quick dark eyes
were able to express an anguish that was hardly tolerable, and the mobile
mouth had a nervous intensity which suggested that he might easily suffer
the very agonies of woe.

Tea was ready, and Arthur stood up to receive his cup.

'Sit down,' said Margaret. 'I'll bring you everything you want, and I
know exactly how much sugar to put in. It pleases me to wait on you.'

With the grace that marked all her movements she walked cross the studio,
the filled cup in one hand and the plate of cakes in the other. To Susie
it seemed that he was overwhelmed with gratitude by Margaret's
condescension. His eyes were soft with indescribable tenderness as he
took the sweetmeats she gave him. Margaret smiled with happy pride. For
all her good-nature, Susie could not prevent the pang that wrung her
heart; for she too was capable of love. There was in her a wealth of
passionate affection that none had sought to find. None had ever
whispered in her ears the charming nonsense that she read in books. She
recognised that she had no beauty to help her, but once she had at least
the charm of vivacious youth. That was gone now, and the freedom to go
into the world had come too late; yet her instinct told her that she was
made to be a decent man's wife and the mother of children. She stopped
in the middle of her bright chatter, fearing to trust her voice, but
Margaret and Arthur were too much occupied to notice that she had ceased
to speak. They sat side by side and enjoyed the happiness of one
another's company.

'What a fool I am!' thought Susie.

She had learnt long ago that common sense, intelligence, good-nature, and
strength of character were unimportant in comparison with a pretty face.
She shrugged her shoulders.

'I don't know if you young things realise that it's growing late. If you
want us to dine at the Chien Noir, you must leave us now, so that we can
make ourselves tidy.'

'Very well,' said Arthur, getting up. 'I'll go back to my hotel and have
a wash. We'll meet at half-past seven.'

When Margaret had closed the door on him, she turned to her friend.

'Well, what do you think?' she asked, smiling.

'You can't expect me to form a definite opinion of a man whom I've seen
for so short a time.'

'Nonsense!' said Margaret.

Susie hesitated for a moment.

'I think he has an extraordinarily good face,' she said at last
gravely. 'I've never seen a man whose honesty of purpose was so
transparent.'

Susie Boyd was so lazy that she could never be induced to occupy herself
with household matters and, while Margaret put the tea things away, she
began to draw the caricature which every new face suggested to her. She
made a little sketch of Arthur, abnormally lanky, with a colossal nose,
with the wings and the bow and arrow of the God of Love, but it was not
half done before she thought it silly. She tore it up with impatience.
When Margaret came back, she turned round and looked at her steadily.

'Well?' said the girl, smiling under the scrutiny.

She stood in the middle of the lofty studio. Half-finished canvases
leaned with their faces against the wall; pieces of stuff were hung
here and there, and photographs of well-known pictures. She had fallen
unconsciously into a wonderful pose, and her beauty gave her,
notwithstanding her youth, a rare dignity. Susie smiled mockingly.

'You look like a Greek goddess in a Paris frock,' she said.

'What have you to say to me?' asked Margaret, divining from the searching
look that something was in her friend's mind.

Susie stood up and went to her.

'You know, before I'd seen him I hoped with all my heart that he'd make
you happy. Notwithstanding all you'd told me of him, I was afraid. I
knew he was much older than you. He was the first man you'd ever known.
I could scarcely bear to entrust you to him in case you were miserable.'

'I don't think you need have any fear.'

'But now I hope with all my heart that you'll make him happy. It's not
you I'm frightened for now, but him.'

Margaret did not answer; she could not understand what Susie meant.

'I've never seen anyone with such a capacity for wretchedness as that man
has. I don't think you can conceive how desperately he might suffer. Be
very careful, Margaret, and be very good to him, for you have the power
to make him more unhappy than any human being should be.'

'Oh, but I want him to be happy,' cried Margaret vehemently. 'You know
that I owe everything to him. I'd do all I could to make him happy, even
if I had to sacrifice myself. But I can't sacrifice myself, because I
love him so much that all I do is pure delight.'

Her eyes filled with tears and her voice broke. Susie, with a little
laugh that was half hysterical, kissed her.

'My dear, for heaven's sake don't cry! You know I can't bear people who
weep, and if he sees your eyes red, he'll never forgive me.'




3


The Chien Noir, where Susie Boyd and Margaret generally dined, was the
most charming restaurant in the quarter. Downstairs was a public room,
where all and sundry devoured their food, for the little place had a
reputation for good cooking combined with cheapness; and the _patron_,
a retired horse-dealer who had taken to victualling in order to build up
a business for his son, was a cheery soul whose loud-voiced friendliness
attracted custom. But on the first floor was a narrow room, with three
tables arranged in a horse-shoe, which was reserved for a small party of
English or American painters and a few Frenchmen with their wives. At
least, they were so nearly wives, and their manner had such a matrimonial
respectability, that Susie, when first she and Margaret were introduced
into this society, judged it would be vulgar to turn up her nose. She
held that it was prudish to insist upon the conventions of Notting Hill
in the Boulevard de Montparnasse. The young women who had thrown in their
lives with these painters were modest in demeanour and quiet in dress.
They were model housewives, who had preserved their self-respect
notwithstanding a difficult position, and did not look upon their
relation with less seriousness because they had not muttered a few
words before _Monsieur le Maire_.

The room was full when Arthur Burdon entered, but Margaret had kept him
an empty seat between herself and Miss Boyd. Everyone was speaking at
once, in French, at the top of his voice, and a furious argument was
proceeding on the merit of the later Impressionists. Arthur sat down, and
was hurriedly introduced to a lanky youth, who sat on the other side of
Margaret. He was very tall, very thin, very fair. He wore a very high
collar and very long hair, and held himself like an exhausted lily.

'He always reminds me of an Aubrey Beardsley that's been dreadfully
smudged,' said Susie in an undertone. 'He's a nice, kind creature, but
his name is Jagson. He has virtue and industry. I haven't seen any of his
work, but he has absolutely _no_ talent.'

'How do you know, if you've not seen his pictures?' asked Arthur.

'Oh, it's one of our conventions here that nobody has talent,' laughed
Susie. 'We suffer one another personally, but we have no illusions about
the value of our neighbour's work.'

'Tell me who everyone is.'

'Well, look at that little bald man in the corner. That is Warren.'

Arthur looked at the man she pointed out. He was a small person, with
a pate as shining as a billiard-ball, and a pointed beard. He had
protruding, brilliant eyes.

'Hasn't he had too much to drink?' asked Arthur frigidly.

'Much,' answered Susie promptly, 'but he's always in that condition, and
the further he gets from sobriety the more charming he is. He's the only
man in this room of whom you'll never hear a word of evil. The strange
thing is that he's very nearly a great painter. He has the most
fascinating sense of colour in the world, and the more intoxicated he is,
the more delicate and beautiful is his painting. Sometimes, after more
than the usual number of _aperitifs_, he will sit down in a cafe to do a
sketch, with his hand so shaky that he can hardly hold a brush; he has to
wait for a favourable moment, and then he makes a jab at the panel. And
the immoral thing is that each of these little jabs is lovely. He's the
most delightful interpreter of Paris I know, and when you've seen his
sketches--he's done hundreds, of unimaginable grace and feeling and
distinction--you can never see Paris in the same way again.'

The little maid who looked busily after the varied wants of the customers
stood in front of them to receive Arthur's order. She was a hard-visaged
creature of mature age, but she looked neat in her black dress and white
cap; and she had a motherly way of attending to these people, with a
capacious smile of her large mouth which was full of charm.

'I don't mind what I eat,' said Arthur. 'Let Margaret order my dinner for
me.'

'It would have been just as good if I had ordered it,' laughed Susie.

They began a lively discussion with Marie as to the merits of the various
dishes, and it was only interrupted by Warren's hilarious expostulations.

'Marie, I precipitate myself at your feet, and beg you to bring me a
_poule au riz_.'

'Oh, but give me one moment, _monsieur_,' said the maid.

'Do not pay any attention to that gentleman. His morals are detestable,
and he only seeks to lead you from the narrow path of virtue.'

Arthur protested that on the contrary the passion of hunger occupied at
that moment his heart to the exclusion of all others.

'Marie, you no longer love me,' cried Warren. 'There was a time when you
did not look so coldly upon me when I ordered a bottle of white wine.'

The rest of the party took up his complaint, and all besought her not to
show too hard a heart to the bald and rubicund painter.

'_Mais si, je vous aime, Monsieur Warren,_' she cried, laughing, '_Je
vous aime tous, tous._'

She ran downstairs, amid the shouts of men and women, to give her orders.

'The other day the Chien Noir was the scene of a tragedy,' said Susie.
'Marie broke off relations with her lover, who is a waiter at Lavenue's,
and would have no reconciliation. He waited till he had a free evening,
and then came to the room downstairs and ordered dinner. Of course, she
was obliged to wait on him, and as she brought him each dish he
expostulated with her, and they mingled their tears.'

'She wept in floods,' interrupted a youth with neatly brushed hair and
fat nose. 'She wept all over our food, and we ate it salt with tears. We
besought her not to yield; except for our encouragement she would have
gone back to him; and he beats her.'

Marie appeared again, with no signs now that so short a while ago romance
had played a game with her, and brought the dishes that had been ordered.
Susie seized once more upon Arthur Burdon's attention.

'Now please look at the man who is sitting next to Mr Warren.'

Arthur saw a tall, dark fellow with strongly-marked features, untidy
hair, and a ragged black moustache.

'That is Mr O'Brien, who is an example of the fact that strength of will
and an earnest purpose cannot make a painter. He's a failure, and he
knows it, and the bitterness has warped his soul. If you listen to him,
you'll hear every painter of eminence come under his lash. He can forgive
nobody who's successful, and he never acknowledges merit in anyone till
he's safely dead and buried.'

'He must be a cheerful companion,' answered Arthur. 'And who is the stout
old lady by his side, with the flaunting hat?'

'That is the mother of Madame Rouge, the little palefaced woman sitting
next to her. She is the mistress of Rouge, who does all the illustrations
for _La Semaine_. At first it rather tickled me that the old lady should
call him _mon gendre_, my son-in-law, and take the irregular union of her
daughter with such a noble unconcern for propriety; but now it seems
quite natural.'

The mother of Madame Rouge had the remains of beauty, and she sat bolt
upright, picking the leg of a chicken with a dignified gesture. Arthur
looked away quickly, for, catching his eye, she gave him an amorous
glance. Rouge had more the appearance of a prosperous tradesman than of
an artist; but he carried on with O'Brien, whose French was perfect, an
argument on the merits of Cezanne. To one he was a great master and to
the other an impudent charlatan. Each hotly repeated his opinion, as
though the mere fact of saying the same thing several times made it more
convincing.

'Next to me is Madame Meyer,' proceeded Susie. 'She was a governess in
Poland, but she was much too pretty to remain one, and now she lives with
the landscape painter who is by her side.'

Arthur's eyes followed her words and rested on a cleanshaven man with a
large quantity of grey, curling hair. He had a handsome face of a
deliberately aesthetic type and was very elegantly dressed. His manner
and his conversation had the flamboyance of the romantic thirties. He
talked in flowing periods with an air of finality, and what he said was
no less just than obvious. The gay little lady who shared his fortunes
listened to his wisdom with an admiration that plainly flattered him.

Miss Boyd had described everyone to Arthur except young Raggles, who
painted still life with a certain amount of skill, and Clayson, the
American sculptor. Raggles stood for rank and fashion at the Chien
Noir. He was very smartly dressed in a horsey way, and he walked with
bowlegs, as though he spent most of his time in the saddle. He alone
used scented pomade upon his neat smooth hair. His chief distinction
was a greatcoat he wore, with a scarlet lining; and Warren, whose memory
for names was defective, could only recall him by that peculiarity. But
it was understood that he knew duchesses in fashionable streets, and
occasionally dined with them in solemn splendour.

Clayson had a vinous nose and a tedious habit of saying brilliant things.
With his twinkling eyes, red cheeks, and fair, pointed beard, he looked
exactly like a Franz Hals; but he was dressed like the caricature of a
Frenchman in a comic paper. He spoke English with a Parisian accent.

Miss Boyd was beginning to tear him gaily limb from limb, when the door
was flung open, and a large person entered. He threw off his cloak with a
dramatic gesture.

'Marie, disembarrass me of this coat of frieze. Hang my sombrero upon a
convenient peg.'

He spoke execrable French, but there was a grandiloquence about his
vocabulary which set everyone laughing.

'Here is somebody I don't know,' said Susie.

'But I do, at least, by sight,' answered Burdon. He leaned over to Dr
Porhoet who was sitting opposite, quietly eating his dinner and enjoying
the nonsense which everyone talked. 'Is not that your magician?'

'Oliver Haddo,' said Dr Porhoet, with a little nod of amusement.

The new arrival stood at the end of the room with all eyes upon him. He
threw himself into an attitude of command and remained for a moment
perfectly still.

'You look as if you were posing, Haddo,' said Warren huskily.

'He couldn't help doing that if he tried,' laughed Clayson.

Oliver Haddo slowly turned his glance to the painter.

'I grieve to see, O most excellent Warren, that the ripe juice of the
_aperitif_ has glazed your sparkling eye.'

'Do you mean to say I'm drunk, sir?'

'In one gross, but expressive, word, drunk.'

The painter grotesquely flung himself back in his chair as though he had
been struck a blow, and Haddo looked steadily at Clayson.

'How often have I explained to you, O Clayson, that your deplorable lack
of education precludes you from the brilliancy to which you aspire?'

For an instant Oliver Haddo resumed his effective pose; and Susie,
smiling, looked at him. He was a man of great size, two or three
inches more than six feet high; but the most noticeable thing about
him was a vast obesity. His paunch was of imposing dimensions. His face
was large and fleshy. He had thrown himself into the arrogant attitude
of Velasquez's portrait of Del Borro in the Museum of Berlin; and his
countenance bore of set purpose the same contemptuous smile. He advanced
and shook hands with Dr Porhoet.

'Hail, brother wizard! I greet in you, if not a master, at least a
student not unworthy my esteem.'

Susie was convulsed with laughter at his pompousness, and he turned to
her with the utmost gravity.

'Madam, your laughter is more soft in mine ears than the singing of
Bulbul in a Persian garden.'

Dr Porhoet interposed with introductions. The magician bowed solemnly as
he was in turn made known to Susie Boyd, and Margaret, and Arthur Burdon.
He held out his hand to the grim Irish painter.

'Well, my O'Brien, have you been mixing as usual the waters of bitterness
with the thin claret of Bordeaux?'

'Why don't you sit down and eat your dinner?' returned the other,
gruffly.

'Ah, my dear fellow, I wish I could drive the fact into this head of
yours that rudeness is not synonymous with wit. I shall not have lived in
vain if I teach you in time to realize that the rapier of irony is more
effective an instrument than the bludgeon of insolence.'

O'Brien reddened with anger, but could not at once find a retort, and
Haddo passed on to that faded, harmless youth who sat next to Margaret.

'Do my eyes deceive me, or is this the Jagson whose name in its inanity
is so appropriate to the bearer? I am eager to know if you still devote
upon the ungrateful arts talents which were more profitably employed upon
haberdashery.'

The unlucky creature, thus brutally attacked, blushed feebly without
answering, and Haddo went on to the Frenchman, Meyer as more worthy of
his mocking.

'I'm afraid my entrance interrupted you in a discourse. Was it the
celebrated harangue on the greatness of Michelangelo, or was it the
searching analysis of the art of Wagner?'

'We were just going,' said Meyer, getting up with a frown.

'I am desolated to lose the pearls of wisdom that habitually fall from
your cultivated lips,' returned Haddo, as he politely withdrew Madame
Meyer's chair.

He sat down with a smile.

'I saw the place was crowded, and with Napoleonic instinct decided
that I could only make room by insulting somebody. It is cause for
congratulation that my gibes, which Raggles, a foolish youth, mistakes
for wit, have caused the disappearance of a person who lives in open sin;
thereby vacating two seats, and allowing me to eat a humble meal with
ample room for my elbows.'

Marie brought him the bill of fare, and he looked at it gravely.

'I will have a vanilla ice, O well-beloved, and a wing of a tender
chicken, a fried sole, and some excellent pea-soup.'

'_Bien, un potage, une sole,_ one chicken, and an ice.'

'But why should you serve them in that order rather than in the order I
gave you?'

Marie and the two Frenchwomen who were still in the room broke into
exclamations at this extravagance, but Oliver Haddo waved his fat hand.

'I shall start with the ice, O Marie, to cool the passion with which
your eyes inflame me, and then without hesitation I will devour the wing
of a chicken in order to sustain myself against your smile. I shall then
proceed to a fresh sole, and with the pea-soup I will finish a not
unsustaining meal.'

Having succeeded in capturing the attention of everyone in the room,
Oliver Haddo proceeded to eat these dishes in the order he had named.
Margaret and Burdon watched him with scornful eyes, but Susie, who was
not revolted by the vanity which sought to attract notice, looked at him
curiously. He was clearly not old, though his corpulence added to his
apparent age. His features were good, his ears small, and his nose
delicately shaped. He had big teeth, but they were white and even. His
mouth was large, with heavy moist lips. He had the neck of a bullock. His
dark, curling hair had retreated from the forehead and temples in such a
way as to give his clean-shaven face a disconcerting nudity. The baldness
of his crown was vaguely like a tonsure. He had the look of a very
wicked, sensual priest. Margaret, stealing a glance at him as he ate,
on a sudden violently shuddered; he affected her with an uncontrollable
dislike. He lifted his eyes slowly, and she looked away, blushing as
though she had been taken in some indiscretion. These eyes were the most
curious thing about him. They were not large, but an exceedingly pale
blue, and they looked at you in a way that was singularly embarrassing.
At first Susie could not discover in what precisely their peculiarity
lay, but in a moment she found out: the eyes of most persons converge
when they look at you, but Oliver Haddo's, naturally or by a habit he
had acquired for effect, remained parallel. It gave the impression that
he looked straight through you and saw the wall beyond. It was uncanny.
But another strange thing about him was the impossibility of telling
whether he was serious. There was a mockery in that queer glance, a
sardonic smile upon the mouth, which made you hesitate how to take his
outrageous utterances. It was irritating to be uncertain whether, while
you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying an elaborate joke at
your expense.

His presence cast an unusual chill upon the party. The French members
got up and left. Warren reeled out with O'Brien, whose uncouth sarcasms
were no match for Haddo's bitter gibes. Raggles put on his coat with the
scarlet lining and went out with the tall Jagson, who smarted still under
Haddo's insolence. The American sculptor paid his bill silently. When
he was at the door, Haddo stopped him.

'You have modelled lions at the Jardin des Plantes, my dear Clayson. Have
you ever hunted them on their native plains?'

'No, I haven't.'

Clayson did not know why Haddo asked the question, but he bristled with
incipient wrath.

'Then you have not seen the jackal, gnawing at a dead antelope, scamper
away in terror when the King of Beasts stalked down to make his meal.'

Clayson slammed the door behind him. Haddo was left with Margaret, and
Arthur Burdon, Dr Porhoet, and Susie. He smiled quietly.

'By the way, are _you_ a lion-hunter?' asked Susie flippantly.

He turned on her his straight uncanny glance.

'I have no equal with big game. I have shot more lions than any man
alive. I think Jules Gerard, whom the French of the nineteenth century
called _Le Tueur de Lions_, may have been fit to compare with me, but I
can call to mind no other.'

This statement, made with the greatest calm, caused a moment of silence.
Margaret stared at him with amazement.

'You suffer from no false modesty,' said Arthur Burdon.

'False modesty is a sign of ill-breeding, from which my birth amply
protects me.'

Dr Porhoet looked up with a smile of irony.

'I wish Mr Haddo would take this opportunity to disclose to us the
mystery of his birth and family. I have a suspicion that, like the
immortal Cagliostro, he was born of unknown but noble parents, and
educated secretly in Eastern palaces.'

'In my origin I am more to be compared with Denis Zachaire or with
Raymond Lully. My ancestor, George Haddo, came to Scotland in the suite
of Anne of Denmark, and when James I, her consort, ascended the English
throne, he was granted the estates in Staffordshire which I still
possess. My family has formed alliances with the most noble blood of
England, and the Merestons, the Parnabys, the Hollingtons, have been
proud to give their daughters to my house.'

'Those are facts which can be verified in works of reference,' said
Arthur dryly.

'They can,' said Oliver.

'And the Eastern palaces in which your youth was spent, and the black
slaves who waited on you, and the bearded sheikhs who imparted to you
secret knowledge?' cried Dr Porhoet.

'I was educated at Eton, and I left Oxford in 1896.'

'Would you mind telling me at what college you were?' said Arthur.

'I was at the House.'

'Then you must have been there with Frank Hurrell.'

'Now assistant physician at St Luke's Hospital. He was one of my most
intimate friends.'

'I'll write and ask him about you.'

'I'm dying to know what you did with all the lions you slaughtered,' said
Susie Boyd.

The man's effrontery did not exasperate her as it obviously exasperated
Margaret and Arthur. He amused her, and she was anxious to make him talk.

'They decorate the floors of Skene, which is the name of my place in
Staffordshire.' He paused for a moment to light a cigar. 'I am the only
man alive who has killed three lions with three successive shots.'

'I should have thought you could have demolished them by the effects of
your oratory,' said Arthur.

Oliver leaned back and placed his two large hands on the table.

'Burkhardt, a German with whom I was shooting, was down with fever and
could not stir from his bed. I was awakened one night by the uneasiness
of my oxen, and I heard the roaring of lions close at hand. I took my
carbine and came out of my tent. There was only the meagre light of the
moon. I walked alone, for I knew natives could be of no use to me.
Presently I came upon the carcass of an antelope, half-consumed, and I
made up my mind to wait for the return of the lions. I hid myself among
the boulders twenty paces from the prey. All about me was the immensity
of Africa and the silence. I waited, motionless, hour after hour, till
the dawn was nearly at hand. At last three lions appeared over a rock.
I had noticed, the day before, spoor of a lion and two females.'

'May I ask how you could distinguish the sex?' asked Arthur,
incredulously.

'The prints of a lion's fore feet are disproportionately larger than
those of the hind feet. The fore feet and hind feet of the lioness are
nearly the same size.'

'Pray go on,' said Susie.

'They came into full view, and in the dim light, as they stood chest on,
they appeared as huge as the strange beasts of the Arabian tales. I aimed
at the lioness which stood nearest to me and fired. Without a sound, like
a bullock felled at one blow, she dropped. The lion gave vent to a
sonorous roar. Hastily I slipped another cartridge in my rifle. Then I
became conscious that he had seen me. He lowered his head, and his crest
was erect. His lifted tail was twitching, his lips were drawn back from
the red gums, and I saw his great white fangs. Living fire flashed from
his eyes, and he growled incessantly. Then he advanced a few steps, his
head held low; and his eyes were fixed on mine with a look of rage.
Suddenly he jerked up his tail, and when a lion does this he charges. I
got a quick sight on his chest and fired. He reared up on his hind legs,
roaring loudly and clawing at the air, and fell back dead. One lioness
remained, and through the smoke I saw her spring to her feet and rush
towards me. Escape was impossible, for behind me were high boulders that
I could not climb. She came on with hoarse, coughing grunts, and with
desperate courage I fired my remaining barrel. I missed her clean. I took
one step backwards in the hope of getting a cartridge into my rifle, and
fell, scarcely two lengths in front of the furious beast. She missed me.
I owed my safety to that fall. And then suddenly I found that she had
collapsed. I had hit her after all. My bullet went clean through her
heart, but the spring had carried her forwards. When I scrambled to my
feet I found that she was dying. I walked back to my camp and ate a
capital breakfast.'

Oliver Haddo's story was received with astonished silence. No one could
assert that it was untrue, but he told it with a grandiloquence that
carried no conviction. Arthur would have wagered a considerable sum that
there was no word of truth in it. He had never met a person of this kind
before, and could not understand what pleasure there might be in the
elaborate invention of improbable adventures.

'You are evidently very brave,' he said.

'To follow a wounded lion into thick cover is probably the most dangerous
proceeding in the world,' said Haddo calmly. 'It calls for the utmost
coolness and for iron nerve.'

The answer had an odd effect on Arthur. He gave Haddo a rapid glance, and
was seized suddenly with uncontrollable laughter. He leaned back in his
chair and roared. His hilarity affected the others, and they broke into
peal upon peal of laughter. Oliver watched them gravely. He seemed
neither disconcerted nor surprised. When Arthur recovered himself, he
found Haddo's singular eyes fixed on him.

'Your laughter reminds me of the crackling of thorns under a pot,' he
said.

Haddo looked round at the others. Though his gaze preserved its fixity,
his lips broke into a queer, sardonic smile.

'It must be plain even to the feeblest intelligence that a man can only
command the elementary spirits if he is without fear. A capricious mind
can never rule the sylphs, nor a fickle disposition the undines.'

Arthur stared at him with amazement. He did not know what on earth the
man was talking about. Haddo paid no heed.

'But if the adept is active, pliant, and strong, the whole world will be
at his command. He will pass through the storm and no rain shall fall
upon his head. The wind will not displace a single fold of his garment.
He will go through fire and not be burned.'

Dr Porhoet ventured upon an explanation of these cryptic utterances.

'These ladies are unacquainted with the mysterious beings of whom you
speak, _cher ami_. They should know that during the Middle Ages
imagination peopled the four elements with intelligences, normally
unseen, some of which were friendly to man and others hostile. They were
thought to be powerful and conscious of their power, though at the same
time they were profoundly aware that they possessed no soul. Their life
depended upon the continuance of some natural object, and hence for them
there could be no immortality. They must return eventually to the abyss
of unending night, and the darkness of death afflicted them always. But
it was thought that in the same manner as man by his union with God had
won a spark of divinity, so might the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and
salamanders by an alliance with man partake of his immortality. And many
of their women, whose beauty was more than human, gained a human soul by
loving one of the race of men. But the reverse occurred also, and often a
love-sick youth lost his immortality because he left the haunts of his
kind to dwell with the fair, soulless denizens of the running streams or
of the forest airs.'

'I didn't know that you spoke figuratively,' said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

'What else is the world than a figure? Life itself is but a symbol. You
must be a wise man if you can tell us what is reality.'

'When you begin to talk of magic and mysticism I confess that I am out of
my depth.'

'Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible
means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic
powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to
their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that
the seen is the measure of the unseen.'

'Will you tell us what the powers are that the adept possesses?'

'They are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century,
which is in my possession. The privileges of him who holds in his right
hand the Keys of Solomon and in his left the Branch of the Blossoming
Almond are twenty-one. He beholds God face to face without dying, and
converses intimately with the Seven Genii who command the celestial army.
He is superior to every affliction and to every fear. He reigns with all
heaven and is served by all hell. He holds the secret of the resurrection
of the dead, and the key of immortality.'

'If you possess even these you have evidently the most varied
attainments,' said Arthur ironically.

'Everyone can make game of the unknown,' retorted Haddo, with a shrug of
his massive shoulders.

Arthur did not answer. He looked at Haddo curiously. He asked himself
whether he believed seriously these preposterous things, or whether he
was amusing himself in an elephantine way at their expense. His mariner
was earnest, but there was an odd expression about the mouth, a hard
twinkle of the eyes, which seemed to belie it. Susie was vastly
entertained. It diverted her enormously to hear occult matters discussed
with apparent gravity in this prosaic tavern. Dr Porhoet broke the
silence.

'Arago, after whom has been named a neighbouring boulevard, declared that
doubt was a proof of modesty, which has rarely interfered with the
progress of science. But one cannot say the same of incredulity, and he
that uses the word impossible outside of pure mathematics is lacking in
prudence. It should be remembered that Lactantius proclaimed belief in
the existence of antipodes inane, and Saint Augustine of Hippo added that
in any case there could be no question of inhabited lands.'

'That sounds as if you were not quite sceptical, dear doctor,' said Miss
Boyd.

'In my youth I believed nothing, for science had taught me to distrust
even the evidence of my five senses,' he replied, with a shrug of
the shoulders. 'But I have seen many things in the East which are
inexplicable by the known processes of science. Mr Haddo has given
you one definition of magic, and I will give you another. It may be
described merely as the intelligent utilization of forces which are
unknown, contemned, or misunderstood of the vulgar. The young man who
settles in the East sneers at the ideas of magic which surround him,
but I know not what there is in the atmosphere that saps his unbelief.
When he has sojourned for some years among Orientals, he comes insensibly
to share the opinion of many sensible men that perhaps there is something
in it after all.'

Arthur Burdon made a gesture of impatience.

'I cannot imagine that, however much I lived in Eastern countries, I
could believe anything that had the whole weight of science against it.
If there were a word of truth in anything Haddo says, we should be unable
to form any reasonable theory of the universe.'

'For a scientific man you argue with singular fatuity,' said Haddo icily,
and his manner had an offensiveness which was intensely irritating. 'You
should be aware that science, dealing only with the general, leaves out
of consideration the individual cases that contradict the enormous
majority. Occasionally the heart is on the right side of the body, but
you would not on that account ever put your stethoscope in any other
than the usual spot. It is possible that under certain conditions the
law of gravity does not apply, yet you will conduct your life under the
conviction that it does so invariably. Now, there are some of us who
choose to deal only with these exceptions to the common run. The dull man
who plays at Monte Carlo puts his money on the colours, and generally
black or red turns up; but now and then zero appears, and he loses. But
we, who have backed zero all the time, win many times our stake. Here and
there you will find men whose imagination raises them above the humdrum
of mankind. They are willing to lose their all if only they have chance
of a great prize. Is it nothing not only to know the future, as did the
prophets of old, but by making it to force the very gates of the
unknown?'

Suddenly the bantering gravity with which he spoke fell away from him. A
singular light came into his eyes, and his voice was hoarse. Now at last
they saw that he was serious.

'What should you know of that lust for great secrets which consumes me to
the bottom of my soul!'

'Anyhow, I'm perfectly delighted to meet a magician,' cried Susie gaily.

'Ah, call me not that,' he said, with a flourish of his fat hands,
regaining immediately his portentous flippancy. 'I would be known rather
as the Brother of the Shadow.'

'I should have thought you could be only a very distant relation of
anything so unsubstantial,' said Arthur, with a laugh.

Oliver's face turned red with furious anger. His strange blue eyes grew
cold with hatred, and he thrust out his scarlet lips till he had the
ruthless expression of a Nero. The gibe at his obesity had caught him on
the raw. Susie feared that he would make so insulting a reply that a
quarrel must ensure.

'Well, really, if we want to go to the fair we must start,' she said
quickly. 'And Marie is dying to be rid of us.'

They got up, and clattered down the stairs into the street.




4


They came down to the busy, narrow street which led into the Boulevard du
Montparnasse. Electric trams passed through it with harsh ringing of
bells, and people surged along the pavements.

The fair to which they were going was held at the Lion de Belfort, not
more than a mile away, and Arthur hailed a cab. Susie told the driver
where they wanted to be set down. She noticed that Haddo, who was waiting
for them to start, put his hand on the horse's neck. On a sudden, for no
apparent reason, it began to tremble. The trembling passed through the
body and down its limbs till it shook from head to foot as though it had
the staggers. The coachman jumped off his box and held the wretched
creature's head. Margaret and Susie got out. It was a horribly painful
sight. The horse seemed not to suffer from actual pain, but from an
extraordinary fear. Though she knew not why, an idea came to Susie.

'Take your hand away, Mr Haddo,' she said sharply.

He smiled, and did as she bade him. At the same moment the trembling
began to decrease, and in a moment the poor old cab-horse was in its
usual state. It seemed a little frightened still, but otherwise
recovered.

'I wonder what the deuce was the matter with it,' said Arthur.

Oliver Haddo looked at him with the blue eyes that seemed to see right
through people, and then, lifting his hat, walked away. Susie turned
suddenly to Dr Porhoet.

'Do you think he could have made the horse do that? It came immediately
he put his hand on its neck, and it stopped as soon as he took it away.'

'Nonsense!' said Arthur.

'It occurred to me that he was playing some trick,' said Dr Porhoet
gravely. 'An odd thing happened once when he came to see me. I have two
Persian cats, which are the most properly conducted of all their tribe.
They spend their days in front of my fire, meditating on the problems of
metaphysics. But as soon as he came in they started up, and their fur
stood right on end. Then they began to run madly round and round the
room, as though the victims of uncontrollable terror. I opened the door,
and they bolted out. I have never been able to understand exactly what
took place.'

Margaret shuddered.

'I've never met a man who filled me with such loathing,' she said. 'I
don't know what there is about him that frightens me. Even now I feel his
eyes fixed strangely upon me. I hope I shall never see him again.'

Arthur gave a little laugh and pressed her hand. She would not let his
go, and he felt that she was trembling. Personally, he had no doubt about
the matter. He would have no trifling with credibility. Either Haddo
believed things that none but a lunatic could, or else he was a charlatan
who sought to attract attention by his extravagances. In any case he was
contemptible. It was certain, at all events, that neither he nor anyone
else could work miracles.

'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Arthur. 'If he really knows Frank
Hurrell I'll find out all about him. I'll drop a note to Hurrell tonight
and ask him to tell me anything he can.'

'I wish you would,' answered Susie, 'because he interests me enormously.
There's no place like Paris for meeting queer folk. Sooner or later you
run across persons who believe in everything. There's no form of
religion, there's no eccentricity or enormity, that hasn't its votaries.
Just think what a privilege it is to come upon a man in the twentieth
century who honestly believes in the occult.'

'Since I have been occupied with these matters, I have come across
strange people,' said Dr Porhoet quietly, 'but I agree with Miss Boyd
that Oliver Haddo is the most extraordinary. For one thing, it is
impossible to know how much he really believes what he says. Is he an
impostor or a madman? Does he deceive himself, or is he laughing up his
sleeve at the folly of those who take him seriously? I cannot tell. All
I know is that he has travelled widely and is acquainted with many
tongues. He has a minute knowledge of alchemical literature, and there
is no book I have heard of, dealing with the black arts, which he does
not seem to know.' Dr Porhoet shook his head slowly. 'I should not care
to dogmatize about this man. I know I shall outrage the feelings of my
friend Arthur, but I am bound to confess it would not surprise me to
learn that he possessed powers by which he was able to do things
seemingly miraculous.'

Arthur was prevented from answering by their arrival at the Lion de
Belfort.

The fair was in full swing. The noise was deafening. Steam bands
thundered out the popular tunes of the moment, and to their din
merry-go-rounds were turning. At the door of booths men vociferously
importuned the passers-by to enter. From the shooting saloons came a
continual spatter of toy rifles. Linking up these sounds, were the voices
of the serried crowd that surged along the central avenue, and the
shuffle of their myriad feet. The night was lurid with acetylene torches,
which flamed with a dull unceasing roar. It was a curious sight, half
gay, half sordid. The throng seemed bent with a kind of savagery upon
amusement, as though, resentful of the weary round of daily labour, it
sought by a desperate effort to be merry.

The English party with Dr Porhoet, mildly ironic, had scarcely entered
before they were joined by Oliver Haddo. He was indifferent to the plain
fact that they did not want his company. He attracted attention, for his
appearance and his manner were remarkable, and Susie noticed that he was
pleased to see people point him out to one another. He wore a Spanish
cloak, the _capa_, and he flung the red and green velvet of its lining
gaudily over his shoulder. He had a large soft hat. His height was great,
though less noticeable on account of his obesity, and he towered over the
puny multitude.

They looked idly at the various shows, resisting the melodramas, the
circuses, the exhibitions of eccentricity, which loudly clamoured for
their custom. Presently they came to a man who was cutting silhouettes in
black paper, and Haddo insisted on posing for him. A little crowd
collected and did not spare their jokes at his singular appearance. He
threw himself into his favourite attitude of proud command. Margaret
wished to take the opportunity of leaving him, but Miss Boyd insisted on
staying.

'He's the most ridiculous creature I've ever seen in my life,' she
whispered. 'I wouldn't let him out of my sight for worlds.'

When the silhouette was done, he presented it with a low bow to Margaret.

'I implore your acceptance of the only portrait now in existence of
Oliver Haddo,' he said.

'Thank you,' she answered frigidly.

She was unwilling to take it, but had not the presence of mind to put
him off by a jest, and would not be frankly rude. As though certain she
set much store on it, he placed it carefully in an envelope. They walked
on and suddenly came to a canvas booth on which was an Eastern name.
Roughly painted on sail-cloth was a picture of an Arab charming snakes,
and above were certain words in Arabic. At the entrance, a native sat
cross-legged, listlessly beating a drum. When he saw them stop, he
addressed them in bad French.

'Does not this remind you of the turbid Nile, Dr Porhoet?' said Haddo.
'Let us go in and see what the fellow has to show.'

Dr Porhoet stepped forward and addressed the charmer, who brightened on
hearing the language of his own country.

'He is an Egyptian from Assiut,' said the doctor.

'I will buy tickets for you all,' said Haddo.

He held up the flap that gave access to the booth, and Susie went in.
Margaret and Arthur Burdon, somewhat against their will, were obliged to
follow. The native closed the opening behind them. They found themselves
in a dirty little tent, ill-lit by two smoking lamps; a dozen stools were
placed in a circle on the bare ground. In one corner sat a fellah woman,
motionless, in ample robes of dingy black. Her face was hidden by a long
veil, which was held in place by a queer ornament of brass in the middle
of the forehead, between the eyes. These alone were visible, large and
sombre, and the lashes were darkened with kohl: her fingers were brightly
stained with henna. She moved slightly as the visitors entered, and the
man gave her his drum. She began to rub it with her hands, curiously, and
made a droning sound, which was odd and mysterious. There was a peculiar
odour in the place, so that Dr Porhoet was for a moment transported to
the evil-smelling streets of Cairo. It was an acrid mixture of incense,
of attar of roses, with every imaginable putrescence. It choked the two
women, and Susie asked for a cigarette. The native grinned when he heard
the English tongue. He showed a row of sparkling and beautiful teeth.

'My name Mohammed,' he said. 'Me show serpents to Sirdar Lord Kitchener.
Wait and see. Serpents very poisonous.'

He was dressed in a long blue gabardine, more suited to the sunny banks
of the Nile than to a fair in Paris, and its colour could hardly be seen
for dirt. On his head was the national tarboosh.

A rug lay at one side of the tent, and from under it he took a goatskin
sack. He placed it on the ground in the middle of the circle formed by
the seats and crouched down on his haunches. Margaret shuddered, for the
uneven surface of the sack moved strangely. He opened the mouth of it.
The woman in the corner listlessly droned away on the drum, and
occasionally uttered a barbaric cry. With a leer and a flash of his
bright teeth, the Arab thrust his hand into the sack and rummaged as a
man would rummage in a sack of corn. He drew out a long, writhing snake.
He placed it on the ground and for a moment waited, then he passed his
hand over it: it became immediately as rigid as a bar of iron. Except
that the eyes, the cruel eyes, were open still, there might have been no
life in it.

'Look,' said Haddo. 'That is the miracle which Moses did before Pharaoh.'

Then the Arab took a reed instrument, not unlike the pipe which Pan
in the hills of Greece played to the dryads, and he piped a weird,
monotonous tune. The stiffness broke away from the snake suddenly, and
it lifted its head and raised its long body till it stood almost on the
tip of its tail, and it swayed slowly to and fro.

Oliver Haddo seemed extraordinarily fascinated. He leaned forward with
eager face, and his unnatural eyes were fixed on the charmer with an
indescribable expression. Margaret drew back in terror.

'You need not be frightened,' said Arthur. 'These people only work with
animals whose fangs have been extracted.'

Oliver Haddo looked at him before answering. He seemed to consider each
time what sort of man this was to whom he spoke.

'A man is only a snake-charmer because, without recourse to medicine, he
is proof against the fangs of the most venomous serpents.'

'Do you think so?' said Arthur.

'I saw the most noted charmer of Madras die two hours after he had been
bitten by a cobra,' said Haddo. I had heard many tales of his prowess,
and one evening asked a friend to take me to him. He was out when we
arrived, but we waited, and presently, accompanied by some friends, he
came. We told him what we wanted. He had been at a marriage-feast and was
drunk. But he sent for his snakes, and forthwith showed us marvels which
this man has never heard of. At last he took a great cobra from his sack
and began to handle it. Suddenly it darted at his chin and bit him. It
made two marks like pin-points. The juggler started back.

'"I am a dead man," he said.

'Those about him would have killed the cobra, but he prevented them.

'"Let the creature live," he said. "It may be of service to others of my
trade. To me it can be of no other use. Nothing can save me."

'His friends and the jugglers, his fellows, gathered round him and placed
him in a chair. In two hours he was dead. In his drunkenness he had
forgotten a portion of the spell which protected him, and so he died.'

'You have a marvellous collection of tall stories,' said Arthur. 'I'm
afraid I should want better proof that these particular snakes are
poisonous.'

Oliver turned to the charmer and spoke to him in Arabic. Then he answered
Arthur.

'The man has a horned viper, _cerastes_ is the name under which you
gentlemen of science know it, and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian
snakes. It is commonly known as Cleopatra's Asp, for that is the serpent
which was brought in a basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order
that she might not endure the triumph of Augustus.'

'What are you going to do?' asked Susie.

He smiled but did not answer. He stepped forward to the centre of the
tent and fell on his knees. He uttered Arabic words, which Dr. Porhoet
translated to the others.

'O viper, I adjure you, by the great God who is all-powerful, to come
forth. You are but a snake, and God is greater than all snakes. Obey my
call and come.'

A tremor went through the goatskin bag, and in a moment a head was
protruded. A lithe body wriggled out. It was a snake of light grey
colour, and over each eye was a horn. It lay slightly curled.

'Do you recognize it?' said Oliver in a low voice to the doctor.

'I do.'

The charmer sat motionless, and the woman in the dim background ceased
her weird rubbing of the drum. Haddo seized the snake and opened its
mouth. Immediately it fastened on his hand, and the reptile teeth went
deep into his flesh. Arthur watched him for signs of pain, but he did not
wince. The writhing snake dangled from his hand. He repeated a sentence
in Arabic, and, with the peculiar suddenness of a drop of water falling
from a roof, the snake fell to the ground. The blood flowed freely. Haddo
spat upon the bleeding place three times, muttering words they could not
hear, and three times he rubbed the wound with his fingers. The bleeding
stopped. He stretched out his hand for Arthur to look at.

'That surely is what a surgeon would call healing by first intention,' he
said.

Burdon was astonished, but he was irritated, too, and would not allow
that there was anything strange in the cessation of the flowing blood.

'You haven't yet shown that the snake was poisonous.'

'I have not finished yet,' smiled Haddo.

He spoke again to the Egyptian, who gave an order to his wife. Without a
word she rose to her feet and from a box took a white rabbit. She lifted
it up by the ears, and it struggled with its four quaint legs. Haddo put
it in front of the horned viper. Before anyone could have moved, the
snake darted forward, and like a flash of lightning struck the rabbit.
The wretched little beast gave a slight scream, a shudder went through
it, and it fell dead.

Margaret sprang up with a cry.

'Oh, how cruel! How hatefully cruel!'

'Are you convinced now?' asked Haddo coolly.

The two women hurried to the doorway. They were frightened and disgusted.
Oliver Haddo was left alone with the snake-charmer.




5


Dr Porhoet had asked Arthur to bring Margaret and Miss Boyd to see him on
Sunday at his apartment in the Ile Saint Louis; and the lovers arranged
to spend an hour on their way at the Louvre. Susie, invited to accompany
them, preferred independence and her own reflections.

To avoid the crowd which throngs the picture galleries on holidays,
they went to that part of the museum where ancient sculpture is kept. It
was comparatively empty, and the long halls had the singular restfulness
of places where works of art are gathered together. Margaret was filled
with a genuine emotion; and though she could not analyse it, as Susie,
who loved to dissect her state of mind, would have done, it strangely
exhilarated her. Her heart was uplifted from the sordidness of earth,
and she had a sensation of freedom which was as delightful as it was
indescribable. Arthur had never troubled himself with art till Margaret's
enthusiasm taught him that there was a side of life he did not realize.
Though beauty meant little to his practical nature, he sought, in his
great love for Margaret, to appreciate the works which excited her to
such charming ecstasy. He walked by her side with docility and listened,
not without deference, to her outbursts. He admired the correctness of
Greek anatomy, and there was one statue of an athlete which attracted
his prolonged attention, because the muscles were indicated with the
precision of a plate in a surgical textbook. When Margaret talked of the
Greeks' divine repose and of their blitheness, he thought it very clever
because she said it; but in a man it would have aroused his impatience.

Yet there was one piece, the charming statue known as _La Diane de
Gabies_, which moved him differently, and to this presently he insisted
on going. With a laugh Margaret remonstrated, but secretly she was not
displeased. She was aware that his passion for this figure was due, not
to its intrinsic beauty, but to a likeness he had discovered in it to
herself.

It stood in that fair wide gallery where is the mocking faun, with his
inhuman savour of fellowship with the earth which is divine, and the
sightless Homer. The goddess had not the arrogance of the huntress who
loved Endymion, nor the majesty of the cold mistress of the skies. She
was in the likeness of a young girl, and with collected gesture fastened
her cloak. There was nothing divine in her save a sweet strange spirit
of virginity. A lover in ancient Greece, who offered sacrifice before
this fair image, might forget easily that it was a goddess to whom he
knelt, and see only an earthly maid fresh with youth and chastity and
loveliness. In Arthur's eyes Margaret had all the exquisite grace of the
statue, and the same unconscious composure; and in her also breathed the
spring odours of ineffable purity. Her features were chiselled with
the clear and divine perfection of this Greek girl's; her ears were as
delicate and as finely wrought. The colour of her skin was so tender that
it reminded you vaguely of all beautiful soft things, the radiance of
sunset and the darkness of the night, the heart of roses and the depth of
running water. The goddess's hand was raised to her right shoulder, and
Margaret's hand was as small, as dainty, and as white.

'Don't be so foolish,' said she, as Arthur looked silently at the statue.

He turned his eyes slowly, and they rested upon her. She saw that they
were veiled with tears.

'What on earth's the matter?'

'I wish you weren't so beautiful,' he answered, awkwardly, as though he
could scarcely bring himself to say such foolish things. 'I'm so afraid
that something will happen to prevent us from being happy. It seems too
much to expect that I should enjoy such extraordinarily good luck.'

She had the imagination to see that it meant much for the practical man
so to express himself. Love of her drew him out of his character, and,
though he could not resist, he resented the effect it had on him. She
found nothing to reply, but she took his hand.

'Everything has gone pretty well with me so far,' he said, speaking
almost to himself. 'Whenever I've really wanted anything, I've managed to
get it. I don't see why things should go against me now.'

He was trying to reassure himself against an instinctive suspicion of the
malice of circumstances. But he shook himself and straightened his back.

'It's stupid to be so morbid as that,' he muttered.

Margaret laughed. They walked out of the gallery and turned to the quay.
By crossing the bridge and following the river, they must come eventually
to Dr. Porhoet's house.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Susie wandered down the Boulevard Saint Michel, alert with the
Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest to her heart. L'Ile
Saint Louis to her mind offered a synthesis of the French spirit, and it
pleased her far more than the garish boulevards in which the English as a
rule seek for the country's fascination. Its position on an island in
the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets, with their array
of dainty comestibles, had the look of streets in a provincial town. They
had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy, and they were very restful.
The names of the streets recalled the monarchy that passed away in
bloodshed, and in _poudre de riz_. The very plane trees had a greater
sobriety than elsewhere, as though conscious they stood in a Paris where
progress was not. In front was the turbid Seine, and below, the twin
towers of Notre Dame. Susie could have kissed the hard paving stones of
the quay. Her good-natured, plain face lit up as she realized the delight
of the scene upon which her eyes rested; and it was with a little pang,
her mind aglow with characters and events from history and from fiction,
that she turned away to enter Dr Porhoet's house.

She was pleased that the approach did not clash with her fantasies. She
mounted a broad staircase, dark but roomy, and, at the command of the
_concierge_, rang a tinkling bell at one of the doorways that faced her.
Dr Porhoet opened in person..

'Arthur and Mademoiselle are already here,' he said, as he led her in.

They went through a prim French dining-room, with much woodwork and heavy
scarlet hangings, to the library. This was a large room, but the
bookcases that lined the walls, and a large writing-table heaped up with
books, much diminished its size. There were books everywhere. They were
stacked on the floor and piled on every chair. There was hardly space to
move. Susie gave a cry of delight.

'Now you mustn't talk to me. I want to look at all your books.'

'You could not please me more,' said Dr Porhoet, 'but I am afraid they
will disappoint you. They are of many sorts, but I fear there are few
that will interest an English young lady.'

He looked about his writing-table till he found a packet of cigarettes.
He gravely offered one to each of his guests. Susie was enchanted with
the strange musty smell of the old books, and she took a first glance at
them in general. For the most part they were in paper bindings, some of
them neat enough, but more with broken backs and dingy edges; they were
set along the shelves in serried rows, untidily, without method or plan.
There were many older ones also in bindings of calf and pigskin, treasure
from half the bookshops in Europe; and there were huge folios like
Prussian grenadiers; and tiny Elzevirs, which had been read by patrician
ladies in Venice. Just as Arthur was a different man in the operating
theatre, Dr Porhoet was changed among his books. Though he preserved the
amiable serenity which made him always so attractive, he had there a
diverting brusqueness of demeanour which contrasted quaintly with his
usual calm.

'I was telling these young people, when you came in, of an ancient Koran
which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I operated upon for
cataract.' He showed her a beautifully-written Arabic work, with
wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. 'You know that it is almost
impossible for an infidel to acquire the holy book, and this is a
particularly rare copy, for it was written by Kait Bey, the greatest of
the Mameluke Sultans.'

He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle
rose-leaves.

'And have you much literature on the occult sciences?' asked Susie.

Dr Porhoet smiled.

'I venture to think that no private library contains so complete a
collection, but I dare not show it to you in the presence of our friend
Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic
smile would betray him.'

Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked with a
peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes along the
names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown region of
romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey
into a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where wan,
unearthly shapes pressed upon her way.

'I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic and grandiloquent
creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von
Hohenheim,' said Dr Porhoet, 'and I have collected many of his books.'

He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth
century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of cabbalistic
signs. The pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were stained with
iron-mould.

'Here is one of the most interesting works concerning the black art.
It is the _Grimoire of Honorius_, and is the principal text-book of all
those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.'

Then he pointed out the _Hexameron_ of Torquemada and the _Tableau de
l'Inconstance des Demons_, by Delancre; he drew his finger down the
leather back of Delrio's _Disquisitiones Magicae_ and set upright the
_Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum_ of Wierus; his eyes rested for an instant on
Hauber's _Acta et Scripta Magica_, and he blew the dust carefully off the
most famous, the most infamous, of them all, Sprenger's _Malleus
Malefikorum_.

'Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the _Clavicula Salomonis_;
and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical copy which
belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques
Casanova. You will see that the owner's name had been cut out, but enough
remains to indicate the bottom of the letters; and these correspond
exactly with the signature of Casanova which I have found at the
Bibliotheque Nationale. He relates in his memoirs that a copy of this
book was seized among his effects when he was arrested in Venice for
traffic in the black arts; and it was there, on one of my journeys from
Alexandria, that I picked it up.'

He replaced the precious work, and his eye fell on a stout volume bound
in vellum.

'I had almost forgotten the most wonderful, the most mysterious, of all
the books that treat of occult science. You have heard of the Kabbalah,
but I doubt if it is more than a name to you.'

'I know nothing about it at all,' laughed Susie, 'except that it's all
very romantic and extraordinary and ridiculous.'

'This, then, is its history. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of
Egypt, was first initiated into the Kabbalah in the land of his birth;
but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness.
Here he not only devoted the leisure hours of forty years to this
mysterious science, but received lessons in it from an obliging angel. By
aid of it he was able to solve the difficulties which arose during his
management of the Israelites, notwithstanding the pilgrimages, wars, and
miseries of that most unruly nation. He covertly laid down the principles
of the doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld
them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the Seventy Elders into these
secrets, and they in turn transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who
formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were the most
deeply learned in the Kabbalah. No one, however, dared to write it down
till Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived in the time of the destruction of
Jerusalem; and after his death the Rabbi Eleazar, his son, and the Rabbi
Abba, his secretary, collected his manuscripts and from them composed the
celebrated treatise called _Zohar_.'

'And how much do you believe of this marvellous story?' asked Arthur
Burdon.

'Not a word,' answered Dr Porhoet, with a smile. 'Criticism has shown
that _Zohar_ is of modern origin. With singular effrontery, it cites an
author who is known to have lived during the eleventh century, mentions
the Crusades, and records events which occurred in the year of Our Lord
1264. It was some time before 1291 that copies of _Zohar_ began to be
circulated by a Spanish Jew named Moses de Leon, who claimed to possess
an autograph manuscript by the reputed author Schimeon ben Jochai. But
when Moses de Leon was gathered to the bosom of his father Abraham, a
wealthy Hebrew, Joseph de Avila, promised the scribe's widow, who had
been left destitute, that his son should marry her daughter, to whom
he would pay a handsome dowry, if she would give him the original
manuscript from which these copies were made. But the widow (one can
imagine with what gnashing of teeth) was obliged to confess that she had
no such manuscript, for Moses de Leon had composed _Zohar_ out of his own
head, and written it with his own right hand.'

Arthur got up to stretch his legs. He gave a laugh.

'I never know how much you really believe of all these things you tell
us. You speak with such gravity that we are all taken in, and then it
turns out that you've been laughing at us.'

'My dear friend, I never know myself how much I believe,' returned Dr
Porhoet.

'I wonder if it is for the same reason that Mr Haddo puzzles us so much,'
said Susie.

'Ah, there you have a case that is really interesting,' replied the
doctor. 'I assure you that, though I know him fairly intimately, I have
never been able to make up my mind whether he is an elaborate practical
joker, or whether he is really convinced he has the wonderful powers to
which he lays claim.'

'We certainly saw things last night that were not quite normal,' said
Susie. 'Why had that serpent no effect on him though it was able to kill
the rabbit instantaneously? And how are you going to explain the violent
trembling of that horse, Mr. Burdon?'

'I can't explain it,' answered Arthur, irritably, 'but I'm not inclined
to attribute to the supernatural everything that I can't immediately
understand.'

'I don't know what there is about him that excites in me a sort of
horror,' said Margaret. 'I've never taken such a sudden dislike to
anyone.'

She was too reticent to say all she felt, but she had been strangely
affected last night by the recollection of Haddo's words and of his acts.
She had awakened more than once from a nightmare in which he assumed
fantastic and ghastly shapes. His mocking voice rang in her ears, and she
seemed still to see that vast bulk and the savage, sensual face. It was
like a spirit of evil in her path, and she was curiously alarmed. Only
her reliance on Arthur's common sense prevented her from giving way to
ridiculous terrors.

'I've written to Frank Hurrell and asked him to tell me all he knows
about him,' said Arthur. 'I should get an answer very soon.'

'I wish we'd never come across him,' cried Margaret vehemently. 'I feel
that he will bring us misfortune.'

'You're all of you absurdly prejudiced,' answered Susie gaily. 'He
interests me enormously, and I mean to ask him to tea at the studio.'

'I'm sure I shall be delighted to come.'

Margaret cried out, for she recognized Oliver Haddo's deep bantering
tones; and she turned round quickly. They were all so taken aback that
for a moment no one spoke. They were gathered round the window and had
not heard him come in. They wondered guiltily how long he had been there
and how much he had heard.

'How on earth did you get here?' cried Susie lightly, recovering herself
first.

'No well-bred sorcerer is so dead to the finer feelings as to enter a
room by the door,' he answered, with his puzzling smile. 'You were
standing round the window, and I thought it would startle you if I chose
that mode of ingress, so I descended with incredible skill down the
chimney.'

'I see a little soot on your left elbow,' returned Susie. 'I hope you
weren't at all burned.'

'Not at all, thanks,' he answered, gravely brushing his coat.

'In whatever way you came, you are very welcome,' said Dr Porhoet,
genially holding out his hand.

But Arthur impatiently turned to his host.

'I wish I knew what made you engage upon these studies,' he said. 'I
should have thought your medical profession protected you from any
tenderness towards superstition.'

Dr Porhoet shrugged his shoulders.

'I have always been interested in the oddities of mankind. At one time
I read a good deal of philosophy and a good deal of science, and I
learned in that way that nothing was certain. Some people, by the pursuit
of science, are impressed with the dignity of man, but I was only made
conscious of his insignificance. The greatest questions of all have been
threshed out since he acquired the beginnings of civilization and he
is as far from a solution as ever. Man can know nothing, for his senses
are his only means of knowledge, and they can give no certainty. There is
only one subject upon which the individual can speak with authority, and
that is his own mind, but even here he is surrounded with darkness. I
believe that we shall always be ignorant of the matters which it most
behoves us to know, and therefore I cannot occupy myself with them. I
prefer to set them all aside, and, since knowledge is unattainable, to
occupy myself only with folly.'

'It is a point of view I do not sympathize with,' said Arthur.

'Yet I cannot be sure that it is all folly,' pursued the Frenchman
reflectively. He looked at Arthur with a certain ironic gravity. 'Do
you believe that I should lie to you when I promised to speak the truth?'

'Certainly not.'

'I should like to tell you of an experience that I once had in
Alexandria. So far as I can see, it can be explained by none of the
principles known to science. I ask you only to believe that I am not
consciously deceiving you.'

He spoke with a seriousness which gave authority to his words. It was
plain, even to Arthur, that he narrated the event exactly as it occurred.

'I had heard frequently of a certain shiekh who was able by means of a
magic mirror to show the inquirer persons who were absent or dead, and a
native friend of mine had often begged me to see him. I had never thought
it worth while, but at last a time came when I was greatly troubled in
my mind. My poor mother was an old woman, a widow, and I had received no
news of her for many weeks. Though I wrote repeatedly, no answer reached
me. I was very anxious and very unhappy. I thought no harm could come if
I sent for the sorcerer, and perhaps after all he had the power which
was attributed to him. My friend, who was interpreter to the French
Consulate, brought him to me one evening. He was a fine man, tall and
stout, of a fair complexion, but with a dark brown beard. He was shabbily
dressed, and, being a descendant of the Prophet, wore a green turban. In
his conversation he was affable and unaffected. I asked him what persons
could see in the magic mirror, and he said they were a boy not arrived at
puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, and a pregnant woman. In order
to make sure that there was no collusion, I despatched my servant to an
intimate friend and asked him to send me his son. While we waited, I
prepared by the magician's direction frankincense and coriander-seed,
and a chafing-dish with live charcoal. Meanwhile, he wrote forms of
invocation on six strips of paper. When the boy arrived, the sorcerer
threw incense and one of the paper strips into the chafing-dish, then
took the boy's right hand and drew a square and certain mystical marks on
the palm. In the centre of the square he poured a little ink. This formed
the magic mirror. He desired the boy to look steadily into it without
raising his head. The fumes of the incense filled the room with smoke.
The sorcerer muttered Arabic words, indistinctly, and this he continued
to do all the time except when he asked the boy a question.

'"Do you see anything in the ink?" he said.

'"No," the boy answered.

'But a minute later, he began to tremble and seemed very much frightened.

'"I see a man sweeping the ground," he said.

'"When he has done sweeping, tell me," said the sheikh.

'"He has done," said the boy.

'The sorcerer turned to me and asked who it was that I wished the boy
should see.

'"I desire to see the widow Jeanne-Marie Porhoet."

'The magician put the second and third of the small strips of paper into
the chafing-dish, and fresh frankincense was added. The fumes were
painful to my eyes. The boy began to speak.

'"I see an old woman lying on a bed. She has a black dress, and on her
head is a little white cap. She has a wrinkled face and her eyes are
closed. There is a band tied round her chin. The bed is in a sort of
hole, in the wall, and there are shutters to it."

The boy was describing a Breton bed, and the white cap was the _coiffe_
that my mother wore. And if she lay there in her black dress, with a band
about her chin, I knew that it could mean but one thing.

'"What else does he see?" I asked the sorcerer.

'He repeated my question, and presently the boy spoke again.

'"I see four men come in with a long box. And there are women crying.
They all wear little white caps and black dresses. And I see a man in a
white surplice, with a large cross in his hands, and a little boy in a
long red gown. And the men take off their hats. And now everyone is
kneeling down."

'"I will hear no more," I said. "It is enough."

'I knew that my mother was dead.

'In a little while, I received a letter from the priest of the village in
which she lived. They had buried her on the very day upon which the boy
had seen this sight in the mirror of ink.'

Dr Porhoet passed his hand across his eyes, and for a little while there
was silence.

'What have you to say to that?' asked Oliver Haddo, at last.

'Nothing,' answered Arthur.

Haddo looked at him for a minute with those queer eyes of his which
seemed to stare at the wall behind.

'Have you ever heard of Eliphas Levi?' he inquired. 'He is the most
celebrated occultist of recent years. He is thought to have known more
of the mysteries than any adept since the divine Paracelsus.'

'I met him once,' interrupted Dr Porhoet. 'You never saw a man who looked
less like a magician. His face beamed with good-nature, and he wore a
long grey beard, which covered nearly the whole of his breast. He was of
a short and very corpulent figure.'

'The practice of black arts evidently disposes to obesity,' said Arthur,
icily.

Susie noticed that this time Oliver Haddo made no sign that the taunt
moved him. His unwinking, straight eyes remained upon Arthur without
expression.

'Levi's real name was Alphonse-Louis Constant, but he adopted that under
which he is generally known for reasons that are plain to the romantic
mind. His father was a bootmaker. He was destined for the priesthood, but
fell in love with a damsel fair and married her. The union was unhappy.
A fate befell him which has been the lot of greater men than he, and his
wife presently abandoned the marital roof with her lover. To console
himself he began to make serious researches in the occult, and in due
course published a vast number of mystical works dealing with magic in
all its branches.'

'I'm sure Mr Haddo was going to tell us something very interesting about
him,' said Susie.

'I wished merely to give you his account of how he raised the spirit of
Apollonius of Tyana in London.'

Susie settled herself more comfortably in her chair and lit a cigarette.

'He went there in the spring of 1856 to escape from internal disquietude
and to devote himself without distraction to his studies. He had letters
of introduction to various persons of distinction who concerned
themselves with the supernatural, but, finding them trivial and
indifferent, he immersed himself in the study of the supreme Kabbalah.
One day, on returning to his hotel, he found a note in his room. It
contained half a card, transversely divided, on which he at once
recognized the character of Solomon's Seal, and a tiny slip of paper on
which was written in pencil: _The other half of this card will be given
you at three o'clock tomorrow in front of Westminster Abbey_. Next day,
going to the appointed spot, with his portion of the card in his hand, he
found a baronial equipage waiting for him. A footman approached, and,
making a sign to him, opened the carriage door. Within was a lady in
black satin, whose face was concealed by a thick veil. She motioned him
to a seat beside her, and at the same time displayed the other part of
the card he had received. The door was shut, and the carriage rolled
away. When the lady raised her veil, Eliphas Levi saw that she was of
mature age; and beneath her grey eyebrows were bright black eyes of
preternatural fixity.'

Susie Boyd clapped her hands with delight.

'I think it's delicious, and I'm sure every word of it is true,' she
cried. 'I'm enchanted with the mysterious meeting at Westminster Abbey
in the Mid-Victorian era. Can't you see the elderly lady in a huge
crinoline and a black poke bonnet, and the wizard in a ridiculous hat,
a bottle-green frock-coat, and a flowing tie of black silk?'

'Eliphas remarks that the lady spoke French with a marked English
accent,' pursued Haddo imperturbably. 'She addressed him as follows:
"Sir, I am aware that the law of secrecy is rigorous among adepts; and I
know that you have been asked for phenomena, but have declined to gratify
a frivolous curiosity. It is possible that you do not possess the
necessary materials. I can show you a complete magical cabinet, but I
must require of you first the most inviolable silence. If you do not
guarantee this on your honour, I will give the order for you to be driven
home."'

Oliver Haddo told his story not ineffectively, but with a comic gravity
that prevented one from knowing exactly how to take it.

'Having given the required promise Eliphas Levi was shown a collection of
vestments and of magical instruments. The lady lent him certain books of
which he was in need; and at last, as a result of many conversations,
determined him to attempt at her house the experience of a complete
evocation. He prepared himself for twenty-one days, scrupulously
observing the rules laid down by the Ritual. At length everything
was ready. It was proposed to call forth the phantom of the divine
Apollonius, and to question it upon two matters, one of which concerned
Eliphas Levi and the other, the lady of the crinoline. She had at first
counted on assisting at the evocation with a trustworthy person, but at
the last moment her friend drew back; and as the triad or unity is
rigorously prescribed in magical rites, Eliphas was left alone. The
cabinet prepared for the experiment was situated in a turret. Four
concave mirrors were hung within it, and there was an altar of white
marble, surrounded by a chain of magnetic iron. On it was engraved
the sign of the Pentagram, and this symbol was drawn on the new, white
sheepskin which was stretched beneath. A copper brazier stood on the
altar, with charcoal of alder and of laurel wood, and in front a second
brazier was placed upon a tripod. Eliphas Levi was clothed in a white
robe, longer and more ample than the surplice of a priest, and he wore
upon his head a chaplet of vervain leaves entwined about a golden chain.
In one hand he held a new sword and in the other the Ritual.'

Susie's passion for caricature at once asserted itself, and she laughed
as she saw in fancy the portly little Frenchman, with his round, red
face, thus wonderfully attired.

'He set alight the two fires with the prepared materials, and began, at
first in a low voice, but rising by degrees, the invocations of the
Ritual. The flames invested every object with a wavering light. Presently
they went out. He set more twigs and perfumes on the brazier, and when
the flame started up once more, he saw distinctly before the altar a
human figure larger than life, which dissolved and disappeared. He began
the invocations again and placed himself in a circle, which he had
already traced between the altar and the tripod. Then the depth of the
mirror which was in front of him grew brighter by degrees, and a pale
form arose, and it seemed gradually to approach. He closed his eyes, and
called three times upon Apollonius. When he opened them, a man stood
before him, wholly enveloped in a winding sheet, which seemed more grey
than black. His form was lean, melancholy, and beardless. Eliphas felt an
intense cold, and when he sought to ask his questions found it impossible
to speak. Thereupon, he placed his hand on the Pentagram, and directed
the point of his sword toward the figure, adjuring it mentally by that
sign not to terrify, but to obey him. The form suddenly grew indistinct
and soon it strangely vanished. He commanded it to return, and then felt,
as it were, an air pass by him; and, something having touched the hand
which held the sword, his arm was immediately benumbed as far as the
shoulder. He supposed that the weapon displeased the spirit, and set it
down within the circle. The human figure at once reappeared, but Eliphas
experienced such a sudden exhaustion in all his limbs that he was obliged
to sit down. He fell into a deep coma, and dreamed strange dreams. But of
these, when he recovered, only a vague memory remained to him. His arm
continued for several days to be numb and painful. The figure had not
spoken, but it seemed to Eliphas Levi that the questions were answered in
his own mind. For to each an inner voice replied with one grim word:
dead.'

'Your friend seems to have had as little fear of spooks as you have
of lions,' said Burdon. 'To my thinking it is plain that all these
preparations, and the perfumes, the mirrors, the pentagrams, must have
the greatest effect on the imagination. My only surprise is that your
magician saw no more.'

'Eliphas Levi talked to me himself of this evocation,' said Dr Porhoet.
'He told me that its influence on him was very great. He was no longer
the same man, for it seemed to him that something from the world beyond
had passed into his soul.'

'I am astonished that you should never have tried such an interesting
experiment yourself,' said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.

'I have,' answered the other calmly. 'My father lost his power of speech
shortly before he died, and it was plain that he sought with all his
might to tell me something. A year after his death, I called up his
phantom from the grave so that I might learn what I took to be a dying
wish. The circumstances of the apparition are so similar to those I have
just told you that it would only bore you if I repeated them. The only
difference was that my father actually spoke.'

'What did he say?' asked Susie.

'He said solemnly: "_Buy Ashantis, they are bound to go up._"

'I did as he told me; but my father was always unlucky in speculation,
and they went down steadily. I sold out at considerable loss, and
concluded that in the world beyond they are as ignorant of the tendency
of the Stock Exchange as we are in this vale of sorrow.'

Susie could not help laughing. But Arthur shrugged his shoulders
impatiently. It disturbed his practical mind never to be certain if
Haddo was serious, or if, as now, he was plainly making game of them.




6


Two days later, Arthur received Frank Hurrell's answer to his letter. It
was characteristic of Frank that he should take such pains to reply at
length to the inquiry, and it was clear that he had lost none of his old
interest in odd personalities. He analysed Oliver Haddo's character with
the patience of a scientific man studying a new species in which he is
passionately concerned.

My dear Burdon:

It is singular that you should write just now to ask what I know of
Oliver Haddo, since by chance I met the other night at dinner at Queen
Anne's Gate a man who had much to tell me of him. I am curious to know
why he excites your interest, for I am sure his peculiarities make him
repugnant to a person of your robust common sense. I can with difficulty
imagine two men less capable of getting on together. Though I have not
seen Haddo now for years, I can tell you, in one way and another, a good
deal about him. He erred when he described me as his intimate friend. It
is true that at one time I saw much of him, but I never ceased cordially
to dislike him. He came up to Oxford from Eton with a reputation for
athletics and eccentricity. But you know that there is nothing that
arouses the ill-will of boys more than the latter, and he achieved an
unpopularity which was remarkable. It turned out that he played football
admirably, and except for his rather scornful indolence he might easily
have got his blue. He sneered at the popular enthusiasm for games, and
was used to say that cricket was all very well for boys but not fit for
the pastime of men. (He was then eighteen!) He talked grandiloquently of
big-game shooting and of mountain climbing as sports which demanded
courage and self-reliance. He seemed, indeed, to like football, but he
played it with a brutal savagery which the other persons concerned
naturally resented. It became current opinion in other pursuits that he
did not play the game. He did nothing that was manifestly unfair, but was
capable of taking advantages which most people would have thought mean;
and he made defeat more hard to bear because he exulted over the
vanquished with the coarse banter that youths find so difficult to
endure.

What you would hardly believe is that, when he first came up, he was a
person of great physical attractions. He is now grown fat, but in those
days was extremely handsome. He reminded one of those colossal statues
of Apollo in which the god is represented with a feminine roundness
and delicacy. He was very tall and had a magnificent figure. It was
so well-formed for his age that one might have foretold his precious
corpulence. He held himself with a dashing erectness. Many called it an
insolent swagger. His features were regular and fine. He had a great
quantity of curling hair, which was worn long, with a sort of poetic
grace: I am told that now he is very bald; and I can imagine that this
must be a great blow to him, for he was always exceedingly vain. I
remember a peculiarity of his eyes, which could scarcely have been
natural, but how it was acquired I do not know. The eyes of most people
converge upon the object at which they look, but his remained parallel.
It gave them a singular expression, as though he were scrutinising the
inmost thought of the person with whom he talked. He was notorious also
for the extravagance of his costume, but, unlike the aesthetes of that
day, who clothed themselves with artistic carelessness, he had a taste
for outrageous colours. Sometimes, by a queer freak, he dressed himself
at unseasonable moments with excessive formality. He is the only
undergraduate I have ever seen walk down the High in a tall hat and a
closely-buttoned frock-coat.

I have told you he was very unpopular, but it was not an unpopularity
of the sort which ignores a man and leaves him chiefly to his own
society. Haddo knew everybody and was to be found in the most unlikely
places. Though people disliked him, they showed a curious pleasure in his
company, and he was probably entertained more than any man in Oxford. I
never saw him but he was surrounded by a little crowd, who abused him
behind his back, but could not resist his fascination.

I often tried to analyse this, for I felt it as much as anyone, and
though I honestly could not bear him, I could never resist going to
see him whenever opportunity arose. I suppose he offered the charm
of the unexpected to that mass of undergraduates who, for all their
matter-of-fact breeziness, are curiously alive to the romantic. It was
impossible to tell what he would do or say next, and you were kept
perpetually on the alert. He was certainly not witty, but he had a coarse
humour which excited the rather gross sense of the ludicrous possessed by
the young. He had a gift for caricature which was really diverting, and
an imperturbable assurance. He had also an ingenious talent for
profanity, and his inventiveness in this particular was a power among
youths whose imaginations stopped at the commoner sorts of bad language.
I have heard him preach a sermon of the most blasphemous sort in the very
accents of the late Dean of Christ Church, which outraged and at the same
time irresistibly amused everyone who heard it. He had a more varied
knowledge than the greater part of undergraduates, and, having at the
same time a retentive memory and considerable quickness, he was able to
assume an attitude of omniscience which was as impressive as it was
irritating. I have never heard him confess that he had not read a book.
Often, when I tried to catch him, he confounded me by quoting the
identical words of a passage in some work which I could have sworn he had
never set eyes on. I daresay it was due only to some juggling, like the
conjuror's sleight of hand that apparently lets you choose a card, but in
fact forces one on you; and he brought the conversation round cleverly to
a point when it was obvious I should mention a definite book. He talked
very well, with an entertaining flow of rather pompous language