The Friendship of Mortals

by Audrey Driscoll

  Chapter 14

  Within a surprisingly short time, Dr. Herbert West, reconstructive surgeon, was established in the Arkham medical community. He had privileges at St. Mary’s Hospital and the Boston General. He was on several important committees. He taught at Miskatonic University’s Medical School. His days as a persecuted student and Allan Halsey’s enemy seemed infinitely distant, the misdemeanours of his student years quite forgotten. A number of factors had converged to ensure his success – his war record, the regard of Dr. Welburn Bright, recently retired but still influential, and liberal applications of cash in the right places. Not least of all were West’s capacity for sustained effort and his ability to be charming when he wanted to.

  As he had predicted, cases requiring his particular talents came from everywhere. He had referrals from all over the United States and Canada, even a few from Europe. He worked out of the same offices on Boundary Street in which his original practice had been, except that the plate on the door now said Herbert West, M.D. Consultant Surgeon.

  I did not see him as often as I had before the War. He was very busy. So, for that matter, was I. Peter Runcible had finally found his way into a coveted place in Miskatonic’s administration, and I had been appointed Principal Cataloguer and Department Head. My new responsibilities took considerably more of my time and energy. Unlike the old days, when my work had demanded no more of myself than I could spare from my doings with West, I now found myself focussed on my profession nearly to the exclusion of other things.

  West and I usually met for a meal or a drink every few weeks. I think I was the only person with whom he could talk freely about certain things. Because of our past collaboration he had reason to trust my discretion, and since I was in no way involved in his professional life, he could use me as a confidant and sounding-board, up to a point at least.

  Shortly after his return, in a burst of extravagance, West acquired a new car. No product of the American automobile industry, it seemed, was good enough for Dr. West. Instead, he imported from France, at great expense, a Hispano-Suiza H6B.

  “It has a top speed of eighty-five miles per hour,” he explained. “Excessive, perhaps, but now that I have to go to Boston so often it makes sense to have an efficient vehicle. I hate to be a slave to the railroad timetable. Besides, speed is exhilarating. Some of the officers I knew in France held races on occasion – purely for amusement, you understand. Those country lanes north of Etaples were perfect for it – narrow, lots of corners, peasants and flocks of sheep on the move, Army vehicles, cyclists – it was a veritable obstacle course and a real test of skill. I resolved to get a fast machine as soon as I could.”

  Soon after he took delivery of the Hispano, West invited me to come for a ‘spin’ to Kingsport. At first I was impressed by the luxury of the vehicle compared to my Ford, and indeed was exhilarated by the speed with which we left Arkham behind. Then West said, “All right, now we can open her up,” and accelerated sharply. We roared down the Arkham-Kingsport road at a truly alarming speed. West, oblivious of my terror, talked with enthusiasm of cylinders and crankshafts and power-to-weight ratios, all the while shifting gears and steering with an ease that made me envious. I was glad we met no other traffic as we accelerated out of curves and crested hills in a way that made me think we were about to become airborne. I found myself wondering how many unfortunate sheep, peasants and cyclists he had run over in France.

  Very soon after we left Arkham, we swept down the last hill and into Kingsport, slowing and stopping with a flourish in front of the Town Hall. West looked at his watch and turned to me, eyes shining. “Not bad,” he said. “She runs beautifully, don’t you think? How would you like to drive us back?” When I didn’t reply, he looked at me more closely. “You’re quite pale, Charles!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realize you’re susceptible to car sickness. You should have told me. Look, the best cure for it is to drive. It’s quite simple, and much more fun than that Ford of yours, I guarantee it.”

  Once I stopped shaking, I acquiesced to his suggestion, recognizing it as a solution to my unadmitted terror. The car was indeed a pleasure to drive, but we returned to Arkham at a much slower speed, rather to its owner’s disappointment.

  West’s Hispano may not have been the only one in Massachusetts at that time, but it was certainly the only one in Arkham. I suspected it cost him a small fortune each year to keep it in good running condition, but he obviously thought it a worthwhile expenditure, perhaps because he knew that citizens of the town never failed to be impressed at the sight of Dr. West in his fancy French car, racing down the Aylesbury Pike or the highway to Boston.

  “So, how are you liking Arkham?” I asked, after we had garaged the car and were settled in West’s sitting room. “After the War and everything I guess you find it rather dull.”

  “Arkham is never dull,” he said with a smile. “Not to me.” Under the professional polish and the trace of the exotic he retained from his overseas experiences, I thought I could see the old Herbert West undimmed. If there was a suggestion of hardness about the grey eyes, a little less sweetness in his smile, who could wonder, considering the things he must have seen? He rarely spoke of the War, never reminisced in the way that seems inevitable among those who have been ‘over there.’ Almost all traces of Major Herbert F. West had indeed vanished. He had even shaved off his moustache.

  The silent Andre was now firmly ensconced as West’s manservant. As he served us coffee I observed him curiously. He spoke so rarely I still knew very little about him. He always seemed entirely concentrated on the task at hand. The expression in his dark eyes was one of quietness rather than servility but his devotion to West was obvious. Almost I envied my friend this gem of a servant, even as I continued to wonder about him. There was an oddness about Andre that I could not fathom.

  “By the way, Herbert,” I said when Andre had returned to the kitchen, “I didn’t realize you number knife-throwing among your talents. A friend of mine wrote me quite a lively account about meeting you in Paris.”

  He looked a little embarrassed. “One’s foolish moments always come back to haunt one, it seems. Knife-throwing… When I was at the Med. School there was quite a fashion for it. I suppose it was a sort of bravado associated with all those edged instruments we handled. I became rather good at it. For some reason, there in Paris… Well, the reason was probably absinthe. I admit I could develop quite a taste for that stuff. Just as well it’s illegal to import it. But who was that fellow I gave my message to?”

  I did not resist the diversion. Absinthe. So that was the reason for the craziness Linton had seen, I thought. Alma had mentioned it as well in one of her letters. Aloud I explained that Linton was a colleague who had worked closely with me on the Quarrington Collection. This reminded me of something. “How well did you know Professor Quarrington?” I asked.

  “You are very curious tonight, Charles,” he observed, frowning a little. “I took some classes from him. He used his students pretty indiscriminately to test those outlandish theories of his. I have to grant that he at least tried to use the scientific method. I was one of his subjects for a while. He had a notion about a person’s eyes being indicative of the presence of some force or other – had a bee in his bonnet about forces, old Q. did. Anyway, he took photographs of everyone in the class, close-ups, and cut them down, keeping only the parts that showed the eyes. I suppose mine are in there somewhere.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “Those eye pictures were one of the things that made cataloguing his collection such an interesting experience. You should come and see it someday. We’re going to have a dedication ceremony for the Quarrington Room next week. After that it will be open to all.”

  “I think I’ll postpone the pleasure, Charles. To be quite frank, I have uneasy memories about Quarrington. You’ll laugh, but it was exceedingly uncomfortable, being an experimental subject. I was part of his prediction study. The idea was that he would develop a profile of each of us, according to hi
s peculiar criteria. Our part was to tell him what happened to us as we went through our lives, by writing to him at least once a year.

  “I have to admit I found the whole thing bothered me more than I would have expected. He asked very detailed questions about rather private things, and for once I neither embellished nor omitted. Afterward I regretted that. I should have told him some real thumpers and observed what he made of them. But I suppose I was rather impressed with the scope of the enterprise and flattered to be one of the chosen. Don’t forget, I was only about twenty at the time. In the end I felt I had literally given away a part of myself, and I didn’t like that. So I stopped communicating with him.”

  “Well,” I said, “the Professor seems to have retained his interest in you.” I told him about the letter I had received.

  “He wrote to you, did he?” asked West. “So you knew him?”

  “I met him at that University Open House, the same week I met your father. Just before O’Brien. Quarrington insisted on seeing the Necronomicon. When I showed it to him he said some strange things, but I put them down to eccentricity. I didn’t expect that he would remember me. But he seemed to realize that I knew you.”

  “He took a special interest in me, for some reason. At one time I thought he meant to make me his acolyte and successor, which was flattering, but hardly the sort of thing I wanted to do. But he told me about the Necronomicon. And about you, too.”

  “Me? But that’s impossible. That was early in 1911, less than a year after I came to Arkham. He didn’t know me then.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know him then, but he knew about you. When he told me about the book, he said I would have to deal with you in order to see it. ‘There’s more to that young librarian than meets the eye,’ he said. ‘You could do worse than ask him if you ever need someone to help you with one of your projects.’ I had told him a little of my ideas, you see, and how I would go about testing them.”

  “So you did seek me out. I thought you just turned up at that concert, and asked me to have supper with you as an afterthought.”

  “It was more of a before-thought,” he said. “I had already considered approaching you. It just happened a little sooner than I had planned.”

  “So Quarrington had a hand in all this, it seems,” I mused. “Our collaboration, that is. And everything that followed…”

  “Now you sound just like him,” West said, sounding a little irritated. “It may be that he was trying to set up a – now what did he call it? Oh, I remember – a ‘resonant link.’ Quarrington thought that bringing certain individuals together could have great consequences, greater than one might expect from their separate characteristics. Don’t ask me to explain it. But maybe that’s what he was trying to do.”

  “And do you think it worked?” I asked. His seriousness was uncharacteristic and I wanted to tease him a little. “Do you think we caused something to resonate by our association?”

  “Well yes, I think we did,” he said, smiling. “Don’t you?”

  Alma Halsey stayed in Europe for nearly two years after the War ended. In addition to writing a book about her war experiences (eventually published as An American Girl at War), she had undertaken to deliver a series of articles to the Boston Post about the situation in Europe from the American woman’s perspective. She found this to be such a rewarding occupation that she had extended her stay as long as possible.

  I was content for things to remain in a state of limbo as far as Alma and I were concerned. Within myself I did not feel that our affair was entirely over, but neither did I cherish any hopes, or, for that matter, intentions. And emancipated Alma, I knew, travelling all over Europe, interviewing everyone from peasant women to heads of state, would not feel herself under any obligation to me.

  I had to admit that my continued state of bachelorhood did not seem to be in any way a failure or hardship. I had interesting work, a few congenial friends, and female companionship of various sorts when I wanted it. There did not seem to be any reason to pursue matrimony. And I, unlike West, was not myself the object of pursuit.

  With his recent professional success, the glamour of his war record and the good looks that only improved with time, West was once more eagerly sought after by the ladies of Arkham society. But he was no more susceptible to them now than before.

  I was within hearing on one occasion when an articulate, educated and attractive young woman tried to hold a conversation with the elusive Dr. West. It was at some University function involving tea and cakes and sherry. West hated occasions of this sort at the best of times, and attended only if he had to.

  Young Lady: Oh, Dr. West, what do you think of this new idea of eugenics? Mr. Leonard Darwin in England says that marriage should be regulated so only the fittest have children. And Mr. Charles Davenport here in the United States agrees with him.

  West: Really? I’m not aware of these gentlemen’s opinions.

  Young Lady: Yes indeed. I think it’s a fine idea. People who are healthy and intelligent have a duty to get married and produce more healthy and intelligent Americans. Or some other country will beat us, especially with all those immigrants they’re letting in now.

  West: Well, I’m sure you’ll do your bit to keep America sound, Miss ___.

  Young Lady: Thank you, Dr. West. But I was thinking of you. As one of our most respected citizens, you have a duty –

  West: Oh, I realize that. I can certainly introduce you to a number of my promising younger colleagues. Now you must excuse me. There’s someone I must speak to, and it appears he is about to leave.

  A little later, West came over to me, saying, “I am definitely going to stop attending these nonsensical receptions. Next thing you know I’ll be hauled away bodily by a tribe of marriage-starved females and torn to shreds as they fight over me. What is it, do you know?”

  “It’s a natural impulse, Herbert. We bachelors are out of step, especially you. The ladies must think it’s altogether unfair of you to turn yourself out so well, to be so… ornamental is one word I’ve heard, and then brush them off. You’re like a bird in courting plumage who doesn’t want to court. You should assume some deformity when you go out in society – crossed eyes, or a limp like mine. Or at least wear something wrinkled and ill-fitting.”

  “Lord no. That would just bring them rushing over to help me, poor old fuddled thing that I’d be. And up the aisle too, no doubt.”

  “Well, but – why not? Why this antipathy to marriage?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, Charles.”

  “I’m younger than you. And poor. And there’s Alma.”

  “By two years. And you’re not that poor. And if you’re waiting for Alma Halsey to come back and propose to you, forget it. That woman has too much spirit. Which she’s exercising all over Europe, if I can believe what I read in the Post.”

  “Well, you may be right. But just now I’m happy enough with my life. Marriage would be more of a change than I want.”

  “I could say the same thing, exactly. I am rather an odd fish, you know – Dr. Iceberg West and all that. It’s not so far from the truth. I’m not much bothered by thwarted desire. Not while I have my work.”

  This was the most self-revealing statement I had ever heard him make on this matter. I remembered it some weeks later at a dinner party he gave at his home. Such gatherings had replaced the drinking parties he had indulged in before the war. He would invite half a dozen or more congenial companions and provide an excellent meal (ostensibly cooked by Mrs. Fisk, although remembering his fondness for cooking I suspected he collaborated with her). Afterward, we would all gather in the sitting room for drinks and the vigorous debates so well loved by our host. Given the interests of those present, the subjects were often of a scientific or medical nature, but philosophy, art and politics were by no means neglected.

  Like the old drinking parties, these were all-male affairs. Some of the fellows were bachelors like West and myself, but those who were not knew better than to
bring their wives. I thought of my reaction to the not so dissimilar situation when I had been a guest of Hiram West’s. That had struck me as graceless and crude. What was the difference, then? Of course the level of education and culture was higher here, but it was more that the informing spirit was in some way entirely different.

  On this occasion, two or three debates were going on simultaneously. West and John Billington were having a spirited discussion about something, waving their arms and interrupting each other, but in an obviously good-natured way. It occurred to me that I had never seen West in better form. He was articulate, enthusiastic, full of energy. He’s happy, I thought, with a small shock. For the first time since I’ve known him he’s unreservedly happy. So this is the life that suits him. He is doing work that he loves and has made a place for himself in this community. He has made himself. Yes, that was it – West had made himself into what he wanted to be, despite what some would have considered intractable raw material. And if I had in some way contributed to the result, I was content.

  Every year a committee of Miskatonic librarians met to decide how to spend that year’s allotment of funds for the development of the Quarrington Collection. Several years of association with the eccentric professor’s collection had made me think of it as my collection as well. I welcomed every opportunity to add to it and make it a living body of knowledge, however bizarre and unorthodox it might be.

  I was also glad of any chance to rummage about in the bookstores of Boston, antiquarian and merely ‘used’ alike. Especially fascinating was the shop of Humphrey Villard. He had a talent for tracking down the obscure and the rare that was quite astonishing. In 1919, I went to view several works on alchemy that he had assembled for my consideration.

  Villard greeted me with the enthusiasm reserved for a customer who came prepared to buy, with an institutional purse at his disposal. He was a short, rotund man, balding but with a halo of curly grey hair remaining, and a beard. His eyes twinkled at me from behind his spectacles. The books in question were displayed in his office, which occupied a kind of eyrie on a mezzanine floor at the rear of the shop. The main floor was given over to antiquarian or collectors’ books. Beneath, in the cellar, was a welter of used books, a Mecca for students and parsimonious bibliophiles. The place smelled of books, of old leather bindings and of paper gently decaying into its primal elements.

  The works Villard had selected were representative of alchemy from its earliest documented beginnings to the present day. Here were writings of Paracelsus, the Sylva sylvarum of Francis Bacon, the Alchemical Mass of Nicholas Melchior, the De occulta philosophia of Agrippa, George Ripley’s Compound of Alchemy, as well as more recent writings such as the Doctrine and Ritual of Magic by Eliphas Levi. I made my selections quite readily. Villard’s integrity as a dealer made my task easy, for I found he had not over-represented the quality of his offerings. We negotiated a little over prices, but only for form’s sake. Our business concluded, Villard poured each of us what he termed a libation, and proceeded to extract news from my circumscribed niche at Miskatonic. For him no detail was too trivial. He collected bits of information as eagerly as he did books, and used them as a kind of currency with his customers.

  Villard had followed my adventures with the Quarrington material with interest. From time to time he would try half-seriously to persuade me to part with some particularly desirable item he knew to have been in the old eccentric’s possession. Now he turned to me with a mischievous look on his face. “I hope you haven’t spent all your money,” he said. “Because I have something you won’t be able to pass up. A genuine piece of Quarringtoniana.”

  “Now what could that be?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t know exactly what it is. But it was certainly written by the man himself. I’m familiar with his handwriting. It looks as though it refers to some other body of documents. Here, have a look.”

  He handed me a sheaf of papers. One look told me what it was, and my heart leaped strangely.

  There were several sheets. Written in Augustus Quarrington’s unmistakable circular hand and violet ink was a long list of names in alphabetical order, each with a date and an alphanumeric code. Surely this was the key to the file called ‘Profiles and Predictions!’ It would permit the matching of those documents to actual individuals. Anyone wanting to verify Quarrington’s predictions would find this information invaluable. By itself, however, it was nearly worthless.

  Villard was watching me, a little smile on his face. I said, “Well, it certainly is by Quarrington, as you say. But without whatever it refers to, it’s of limited use.”

  “Exactly. That’s why I saved it for you. I thought it was a safe assumption that ‘whatever it refers to,’ as you so coyly put it, is in your collection.”

  “It’s not my collection, as you know quite well. It belongs to Miskatonic.”

  He waved off the distinction. “You organized it, you catalogued it, you know what’s in it. It’s your collection. Now, are you interested in this item?”

  “How did you happen to acquire it, anyway?”

  “Well, you know I name no names. Let’s just say that it turned up when the Professor’s personal items from his home were dispersed. I gather his heirs were distant relatives. I suppose an ancient bachelor like him wouldn’t have any close family. Anyway, this turned up in an envelope carefully affixed to the bottom of a drawer from Quarrington’s desk. The underside of the drawer, if you follow me. Whoever found it assumed it must be valuable because of the pains taken to hide it, and so brought it to me. What do you think?”

  “I think I would be interested in this item, if only because it’s a document in Quarrington’s own hand. If I can match it up to something already in the collection it may gain in value. How much are you asking?”

  “I could ask how much you’re willing to pay. I suspect it would be quite a lot. I saw how you nearly choked on your drink when you looked at it. Those are names, now, and dates – quite recent dates, too. I’ll bet this is a list of people, students probably, about whom Quarrington gathered data to test one of his wild theories. It’s probably a missing link for you. But I’m a reasonable man. I know this list is useless without the data to which it refers, and that the data is most likely in your Quarrington Room, under lock and key, I hope. And I want you to buy more books from me, Mr. Milburn, so there’s no point in being greedy over this.” He named an entirely reasonable figure, which I paid gladly.

  While one of Villard’s assistants packed my purchases into cartons, Villard turned to me and said, “Alchemy is a fascinating subject. Have you read much about it?”

  “Not systematically,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I was quite interested in it once. Oh, don’t imagine me with crucibles and alembics. I’m too lazy for that, and too clumsy, if you must know. But there’s a mystical side to it. So many things can be viewed in an alchemical sense. It fairly cries out for analogies. And far from being a dead thing of medieval times, it was practiced, both in the practical and spiritual sense, until quite recently. Maybe still is, by some. And it unites pre-Christian thinking with some of the central mysteries of Christianity.”

  I thought about this on the way home. Whether because of my delving into the Quarrington material or for some other reason, I had lately begun to suspect that there were subtle connections between seemingly disparate parts of the world. Sometimes I thought I could hold up two thoughts, as it were, one from the part of my mind that reasoned and analyzed, one from the part that felt and guessed, and see a kind of kinship between them, as though a door had opened between two sealed chambers.

  Chapter 15