by John Buchan
I was struck, I remember, by the enduring physical characteristics of his race. Most of his ancestors were dark men with long faces, and that odd delicacy about mouth and chin which one sees in the busts of Julius Caesar. Not a strong stock, perhaps, but a fine one. Goodeve himself, with his straight brows, had a more masterful air than the pictures, but when I looked at him again I thought I saw the same slight over-refinement, something too mobile in the lips, too anxious in the eyes. “Tremulous, impressional,” Emerson says that the hero must be, and these were the qualities of the old Goodeves which leaped at once from their portraits. Many had been heroes—notably the Sir Robert who fell at Naseby and the Sir Geoffrey who died with Moore at Corunna—but it was a heroism for death rather than for life. I wondered how the race had managed to survive so long.
Oddly enough it was their deaths that seemed chiefly to interest Goodeve. He had all the details of them—this one had died in his bed at sixty-three, that in the hunting field at forty, another in a drinking bout in the early twenties. They appeared for the most part to have been a short-lived race and tragically fated . . .
By and by this mortuary tale began to irritate me. I preferred to think of the cuirassed, periwigged or cravated gentlemen, the hooped and flounced ladies, as in the vigour of life in which the artist had drawn them. And then I saw that in Goodeve’s face which set me wondering. On his own account he was trying to puzzle out some urgent thing—urgent for himself. He was digging into his family history and interrogating the painted faces on his walls to find an answer to some vital problem of his own.
What it might be I could not guess, but it disquieted me, and I lent an inattentive ear to his catalogue. And then I suddenly got enlightenment.
We had left the gallery and were making our way to the library through a chain of little drawing rooms. All had been lit up, and all were full of pictures, mostly Italian, collected by various Goodeves during the Grand Tour. They were cheerful rooms, papered not panelled, with a pleasant Victorian complacency about them. But in the last the walls were dark oak, and above the fireplace was a picture which arrested me. Goodeve seemed to wish to hurry me on, but when he saw my interest he too halted.
It was a Spanish piece, painted I should think by someone who had come under El Greco’s influence, and had also studied the Dutch school. I am no authority on art, but if it be its purpose to make an instant and profound impression on a beholder, then this was a masterpiece. It represented a hall in some great house, paved with black and white marble. There was a big fire burning in an antique fireplace, and the walls blazed with candles. But the hangings were a curious dusky crimson, so that in spite of the brilliant lighting the place was sombre, suggesting more a church than a dwelling. The upper walls and the corners were in deep shadow. On the floor some ten couples were dancing, an ordered dance in which there was no gaiety, and the dancers’ faces were all set and white. Other people were sitting round the walls, rigidly composed as if they were curbing some strong passion. At the great doors at the far end men-at-arms stood on guard, so that none should pass. On every face, in every movement was fear—fear, and an awful expectation of something which was outside in the night. You felt that at any moment the composure might crack, that the faces would become contorted with terror and the air filled with shrieks.
The picture was lettered “La Peste,” but I did not need the words to tell me the subject. It was a house in a city where the plague was raging. These people were trying to forget the horror. They had secluded themselves in a palace, set guards at the door, and tried to shut out the world. But they had failed, for the spectre rubbed shoulders with each. They might already have the poison in their blood, and in an hour be blue and swollen. One heard the rumble of the dead-cart on the outer cobbles making a dreadful bass to the fiddles.
I have never received a stronger impression from any picture. I think I must have cried out, for Goodeve came close to me.
“My God, what a thing!” I said. “The man who painted that was a devil!”
“He understood the meaning of fear,” was the answer.
“Not honest human fear,” I said. “That is the panic of hell.”
Goodeve shook his head.
“Only fear. Everybody there has still a hope that they may escape. They are still only fearful and anxious. Panic will come when the first yellow pustules show on the skin. For panic you must have a certainty.”
Something in his tone made me turn my eyes from the picture to his face. He had become like all his ancestors; the firm modern moulding had slackened into something puzzled and uncertain, as of a man groping in a dim world. And in his eyes and around his lips was the grey shadow of a creeping dread.
My mind flew back to Flambard. I knew now that on that June morning Goodeve had received some fateful message. I thought I could guess what the message had been.
Chapter 2
We drifted to the library, and dropped into chairs on each side of the hearth. It was a chilly night, so the fire had been kept high, and the room was so arranged that the light was concentrated around where we sat, and the rest left in shadow. So I had a good view of Goodeve’s face against a dusky background. He had lit a pipe, and was staring at the logs, his whole body relaxed like a tired man’s. But I caught him casting furtive glances in my direction. He wanted to tell me something; perhaps he saw that I had guessed, and wanted me to ask a question, but I felt oddly embarrassed and waited.
He spoke first.
“Moe is dead,” he said simply, and I nodded.
“It is a pity,” he went on. “I should have liked another talk with him. Did you understand his theories?”
I shook my head.
“No more did I,” he said. “I don’t think I ever could. I have been reading Paston and Crevalli and all round the subject, but I can’t get the hang of it. My mind hasn’t been trained that way.”
“Nor mine,” I replied. “Nor, as far as I can gather, that of anybody living. Moe seems to have got into a world of his own where no one could keep up with him.”
“It’s a pity,” he said again. “If one could have followed his reasoning and been able to judge for one’s self its value, it would have made a difference . . . perhaps.”
“I ought to tell you,” I said, “that I’ve been making enquiries, and I find that our best people are not inclined to take Moe as gospel.”
“So I gather. But I’m not sure that that helps. Even if his theories were all wrong, the fact would still remain that he could draw back the curtain a little. It may have been an illusion, of course, but we can’t tell . . . yet.”
He stared into the fire, and then said very gently, “You see—I got a glimpse inside.”
“I know,” I said.
“Yes,” he went on, “and I believe you have guessed what I saw.”
I nodded.
“Let me tell you everything. It’s a comfort to me to be able to tell you . . . You’re the only man I could ever confide in . . . You were there yourself and saw enough to take it seriously . . . I read, for about a quarter of a second, my own obituary. One takes in a good deal in a flash of time if the mind is expectant. It was a paragraph about two inches long far down on the right-hand side of the Times page opposite the leaders—the usual summary of what is given at length in the proper obituary pages. It regretted to announce the death of Sir Robert Goodeve, Baronet, of Goodeve, MP for the Marton division of Dorset. There was no doubt about the man it meant . . . Then it said something about a growing political reputation and a maiden speech which would not be soon forgotten. I have the exact words written down.”
“Nothing more?”
“No . . . yes. There was another dead man in the paragraph, a Colonel Dugald Chatto, of Glasgow . . . That was all.”
Goodeve knocked out his pipe and got to his feet. He stretched himself, as if his legs had cramped, and I remember thinking how fine a figure of
a man he was as he stood tensely in the firelight. He was staring away from me into a dim corner of the room. He seemed to be endeavouring by a bodily effort to shake himself free of a burden.
I tried to help.
“I’m in the confidence of only one of the others,” I said. “Reggie Daker. He read the announcement of his departure for Yucatan on a scientific expedition. Reggie knows nothing about science and hates foreign parts, and he declares that nothing will make him budge from England. He says that forewarned is forearmed, and that he is going to see that The Times next June is put in the cart. He has already forgotten all about the thing . . . There seems to me to be some sense in that point of view. If you know what’s coming you can take steps to avoid it . . . For example, supposing you had given up your parliamentary candidature, you could have made The Times wrong on that point, so why shouldn’t you be able to make it wrong on others?”
He turned and bent his strong dark brows on me.
“I thought of that. I can’t quite explain why, but it seemed to me scarcely to be playing the game. Rather like funking. No. I’m not going to alter my plan of life out of fear. That would be giving in like a coward.”
But there was none of the boisterousness of defiance in his voice. He spoke heavily, as if putting into words an inevitable but rather hopeless resolution.
“Look here, Goodeve,” I said. “You and I are rational men of the world and we can’t allow ourselves to be the sport of whimsies. There are two ways of looking at this Flambard business. It may have been pure illusion caused by the hypnotic powers of a tremendous personality like Moe, with no substance of reality behind it. It may have been only a kind of dream. If you dreamed you were being buried in Westminster Abbey next week you wouldn’t pay the slightest attention.”
“That is a possible view,” he said. But I could see that it was not the view he took himself. Moe’s influence upon him had been so profound, that, though he could not justify his faith on scientific grounds, he was a convinced believer.
I had a sudden idea.
“Listen to me. I can prove that it is illusion. Moe told us that our minds could get a larger field of observation, which would include part of the future. Yes, but the observing thing was still our mind, and that presupposes a living man. Therefore for a man to see the report of his death is a contradiction in terms.”
He turned his unquiet eyes on me.
“Curious that you should say that, for I raised the very point with Moe. His answer was that the body of the observer might be dead, but that the mind did not die . . . I was bound to admit his argument, for, you see, I, too, believe in the immortality of the soul.”
There was such complete conviction in his tone that I had to give up my point, though I was not convinced, even on Goodeve’s hypothesis.
“Very well. The other view is that, by some unknown legerdemain, you actually saw what will be printed in The Times on the next tenth of June. But it may be a hoax or some journalistic blunder. False news of a man’s death has often been published. You remember Billy Devereux seven years ago. Reggie Daker isn’t going to Yucatan, and there’s no more reason why you should be dead.”
He smiled, and his voice was a little more cheerful. “I would point out,” he said, “that there is a considerable difference between the cases. Going to Yucatan is a voluntary act which, requires the actor’s co-operation, while dying is usually an involuntary affair.”
“Never mind,” I cried. “We are bound to believe in free will up to a point. It’s the condition on which life is conducted. What you must try to do is to banish the whole thing from your mind. Defy that damned oracle. You’ve begun right by getting into Parliament. Go on and make the best maiden speech of the day. Fate will always yield if you stand up to it.”
“Thank you, Leithen,” he said. “I think that is sound advice. I’m ashamed to have let you see that the thing worried me. Nobody else in the world has the slightest notion . . . But you’re an understanding fellow. If you’re willing, you can be a wonderful standby to me, for I’m a lonely bird and apt to brood . . . I’ve another comfort, for there’s that second man in the same case. I told you that I read the name of Colonel Dugald Chatto. I’ve made enquiries about him. He’s a Glasgow wine merchant, who was a keen Territorial, and commanded a battalion in the war. Man about forty-seven, the hard, spare, scratch-man-at-golf type that never was ill in its life. Health is important, for The Times would have said ‘killed,’ if it had been death by accident. I’ve noticed that that’s its custom.”
“There’s nothing much wrong with your health,” I put in.
“No. I’m pretty fit.”
Again he stretched his arms, as if pushing an incubus away from him. He looked down at me with an embarrassed smile. But the next moment his eyes were abstracted and back in the shadowy corners.
Chapter 3
Goodeve took his seat in the House, and then for a fortnight sat stolidly on the back Opposition benches. Everybody was curious about him, and our younger people were prepared to take him to their hearts. They elected him straight off a member of a group of left-wing Tories, who dined together once a week and showed signs of becoming a Fourth Party. But he seemed to be shy of company. He never went near the smoking room, he never wrote letters in the library, one never saw him gossiping in the lobbies. He was polite and friendly, but as aloof as the planet Mars. There he sat among the shadows of the back benches, listening attentively to the debates, with a queer secret smile on his face. One might have thought that he was contemptuous of it all, but for his interested eyes. He was watching closely how the game was played, but at the same time a big part of his mind was sojourning in another country.
There was general interest in his maiden speech, and it was expected that it would come soon. You see, what was agitating the country at the moment was Geraldine’s new crusade, and Goodeve had fought his election on that, and had indeed proved himself as good an exponent of the new Imperialism as his leader. Some of his sentences had already passed into the stock stuff of the press and the platform. He got the usual well-meant advice from the old hands. Members who did not know him would take him aside, and advise him to get the atmosphere of the place before he spoke. “It won’t do,” they told him, “to go off at half-cock. You’ve come here with a good deal of prestige, and you mustn’t throw it away.” Others thought that he should begin modestly and not wait for a full-dress occasion with red carpets down. “Slip into the debate quietly some dinner hour,” they counselled, “and try out your voice. The great thing is to get the ice broken. You’ll have plenty of chances later for the bigger thing.” Goodeve’s smiling reticence, you see, made many people think that he would be nervous. I asked him about his plans, and he shook his head. “Haven’t got any, I shall take my chance when it comes. I’m in no hurry.” And then he added what I did not like. “It’s a long time till the tenth of June.”
I asked our whips, and was told that he had never spoken to them about the best moment to lift up his voice. They seemed to find him an enigma. John Fortingall, who ran the dining group I have mentioned, confessed himself puzzled. “I thought we had got an absolute winner,” he declared, “but now I’m not so sure. There’s no doubt about the brains, and they tell me he can put the stuff across. Everybody who knows him says he’s a good fellow too. But all I can say is, he’s a darned bad mixer. He looks at you as if you were his oldest friend, and then shoves you gently away as if you were going to pinch his tie-pin. Too frosty a lad for my taste.”
Goodeve told nobody about his plans, and he succeeded most successfully in surprising the House. He chose the most critical debate of the early session, which took place less than three weeks after he entered Parliament. It was a resolution of no confidence moved by Geraldine, and was meant to be a demonstration in force against the government, and also a defiance to the stand-patters on our own side.
There was no hope of success, for Wald
emar and the Liberals would vote against it, and we could not count on polling our full strength, but it was believed that it might drive a wedge into Labour and have considerable effect in the country. Goodeve must have had some private arrangement with the speaker, but he said nothing to his frontbench. The leader of the Opposition was as much taken by surprise as anybody.
Geraldine moved the resolution in one of the best speeches I ever heard from him—conciliatory and persuasive, extraordinarily interesting, and salted with his engaging humour. He deliberately kept the key low, and attempted none of the flights of eloquence which had marked his campaign in the North. Mayot replied—the prime minister was to wind up the debate—and Mayot also was good. His line was the sagacious enthusiast, welcoming Geraldine’s ideals, approving his general purpose, but damping down his ardours with wholesome common sense—the kind of speech which never fails of appeal to Englishmen. Then came Waldemar in a different mood. It was a first-class debating performance, and he searched out the joints in Geraldine’s harness and probed them cunningly. He was giving no quarter, and there was vitriol on his sword’s point. He concluded with a really fine defence of the traditional high-road of policy, and a warning against showy bypaths, superbly delivered and couched in pure, resounding, 18th-century prose. When he sat down there was nearly a minute of that whole-hearted applause which the House gives, irrespective of party, to a fine parliamentary achievement.
Then Goodeve was called, and not, as was expected, the ex-foreign secretary. He had a wonderful audience, for the House was packed, and keyed up, too, by Waldemar, but it was the kind of audience which should have made the knees of a novice give under him. There had been three speeches by old parliamentary hands, each excellent of its kind, and any maiden effort must be an anticlimax. But Goodeve seemed to be unconscious of the peril. He was sitting at the corner of the second bench above the gangway, and had been taking notes unconcernedly while the others were speaking. He had a few slips of paper in his hand, and that hand did not shake. He looked around his audience, and his eye was composed. He began to speak, and his voice was full and steady . . .