by Sax Rohmer
Indeed, at a modern railway station, as of old at the city gates, the fatuity of human aspirations may be studied advantageously. Soldiers were there, at Victoria, hundreds of them, lined up on a distant platform, and they symbolised the spirit of an age which exalts Mechanism to the pinnacle of a deity and which offers itself as a sacrifice upon his iron altars.
The train arrived in due course; cameras and note-books appeared; and people inquired “Is it Sir Douglas Haig they are expecting?” But presently the initiated spread the news that it was Paul Mario who returned from the Western front, and because his reputation was greater than that of Gabrielle D’Annunzio or Charlie Chaplin, everyone sought to obtain a glimpse of him.
He wore a heavy fur-lined coat and his eyes were dark with excitement. Surrounded by the other members of the party, like an emperor by his suite, Paul’s was the outstanding personality among them all. There was a distinguished French general to bow, courtly, over Yvonne’s hand, and a Labour Member to quote Cicero. But it was to Paul that the reporters sought to penetrate and upon Paul that the cameras were focussed. Bassett, who did not believe in thwarting the demands of popularity, induced him to say a few words.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have no impressions to impart. My mind is numbed. I had never hitherto appreciated the genius of Philip Gibbs....”
In the car Paul talked exclusively to Jules Thessaly, who had accompanied him upon his tour. Yvonne was silent. When first he had seen her awaiting him upon the platform his eyes had lighted up in that ardent way which she loved, and he had pressed her hands very hard in greeting. But thereafter he had become absorbed again in his giant dreams, and now as they sped through the London streets homeward, he bent forward, one hand resting upon Thessaly’s knee, wrapped up in the companionship of his memories.
“That chateau, Thessaly, holds a secret which if it could be divulged to the world would revolutionise theology.”
“Of what chateau do you speak?” asked Bassett.
“On my way to the French front I was entertained for a night at a wonderful old chateau. The devouring war had passed it by, and it stood like a dignified grand seigneur looking sorrowfully over the countryside. In order to understand how the sight of the place affected me you must know that as a boy I was several times visited by a certain dream. I last dreamed this dream during the time that I was at Oxford but I have never forgotten it. I used to find myself in a spacious salon, its appointments and fashion those of Louis Treize, with ghostly moonlight pouring in at lofty church-like windows and painting distorted shadowgraphs of heraldic devices upon the floor. My costume was that of a Cavalier and I held a long sword in my hand. I was conscious of pain and great weakness. Creeping stealthily from recess to recess, window to window, I would approach the double doors at the end of the salon. There I would pause, my heart throbbing fiercely, and press my ear to the gaily painted panels. A murmur of conversation would seem to proceed from the room beyond, but forced onward by some urgent necessity, the nature of which I could never recall upon awakening, I would suddenly throw the doors widely open and hurl myself into a small ante-room. A fire of logs blazed in the open hearth, and some six or eight musketeers lounged about the place, hats, baldrics, swords and cloaks lying discarded upon tables, chairs and where not. All sprang to their feet as I entered, and one, a huge red fellow, snatched up his sword and stood before a low door on the right of the room which I sought to approach. We crossed blades ... and with their metallic clash sounding in my ears I invariably awoke. I have spoken of this to you, Yvonne?”
Paul glanced rapidly at Yvonne but proceeded immediately without waiting for a reply. “As Thessaly and I were conducted to our rooms on the night of which I am speaking, I found myself traversing the salon of my dreams!”
“Most extraordinary,” muttered Bassett. “Nothing about the aspect of the other rooms of the chateau had struck you as familiar?”
“Nothing; except that I was glad to be there. I cannot make clear to you the almost sorrowful veneration with which I entered the gate. It was like that of a wayward son who returns, broken, to the home upon which he has brought sorrow, to find himself welcomed by his first confessor, old, feeble, lonely, but filled with sweet compassion. I ascribed this emotion to the atmosphere of a stately home abandoned by its owners. But the salon revealed the truth to me. Heavy plush curtains were drawn across the windows, but the flames of three candles in a silver candelabra carried by the servant created just such a half-light as I remembered. I paused, questioning the accuracy of my recollections, but it was all real, unmistakable. We passed through the doorway at the end of the salon — and there was my guardroom! A modern stove had taken the place of the old open hearth, and the furniture was totally different, but I knew the room. The servant crossed before me to a door which I could not recall having noticed in my dream. As he opened it I looked to the right; and where the other door had been before which I had many times crossed swords with the red musketeer I saw a blank wall.”
“It was no more than a very remarkable coincidence after all?” said Bassett.
“On the contrary. I called to the man, a bent old fellow, his face furrowed with age and heavy with care. ‘Have you been long in the service of the family?’ I asked him. His eyes glistened tearfully. ‘Forty-five years, monsieur,’ he answered. ‘Then perhaps you can tell me if there was ever a door opening on the right, yonder, beside that armchair?’
“He stared at me, Bassett, like a man dismayed, and his hand trembled so that spots of grease were shaken from the candles on to the floor. ‘How can you know of the Duc’s door?’ he whispered, watching me all the time as if fascinated. ‘How can you know of the Duc’s door, monsieur?’ His fear, his consternation, were so evident, that I recognised the necessity of reassuring him in order to learn more. Therefore, ‘I have heard of it, or seen it depicted, somewhere in England,’ I replied; ‘but the story associated with it escapes my memory.’
“He began to look less frightened as I spoke, and finally, having several times moistened his dry lips, he replied. ‘It has been walled up for more than two hundred years. It opened upon a staircase leading to the State apartments.’ ‘And why was it closed, my friend?’ I asked. The old man shrugged his angular shoulders and moved on out of the room. ‘That I cannot say, monsieur,’ he answered: ‘but in the reign of Louis XIII, Henri, second Duc de Montmorency, by whose father this chateau was built, escaped one night from the apartment in which he had been imprisoned under sentence of death, and attempted to force his way into the presence of the King, then lying in the chateau. At the foot of those stairs the Duc was mortally wounded by Guitry, Captain of the Bodyguard....’”
* * * * * *
During lunch the conversation rarely became general. Bassett talked to Yvonne, bestowing upon her an elderly admiration which was not lacking in a poetry of its own, and Paul exchanged memories with Thessaly. His mental excitement was tremendous, and contagious, but of the three who listened to him Thessaly alone seemed to respond sympathetically. Bassett had never pretended to understand his distinguished client. He was always covertly watching Paul, his fat face wrinkled with perplexity, as though one day he hoped for a revelation by light of which he might grasp the clue to a personality that eluded him entirely.
“That boasted civilisation,” said Paul— “the German Kultur — has thrown us back to the earliest savagery of which we hold record. All that education has done for us is to hold the savage in check for a time. He is still there. Spiritually humanity’s record is one of retrogression.”
Luncheon over, Paul accompanied Thessaly and Bassett to the latticed gate in the high monastic wall which concealed his house from the road. They walked away together and he stood for a time gazing after them, then returned and went to his study. Yvonne, who had watched him from the dining-room window, heard the study door close. She sat quite still looking across the table at a chair which Paul had occupied, her fair hair a crown about her brow as the wintry sunlight shone
in upon it. Chelsea sometimes may seem as quiet as a lonely riverside village, and at the moment which followed the sound of the closing door it seemed to have become so to Yvonne. Only that muted droning which arises from the vast hive of London told of four millions of workers moving intimately about her. The house was perfectly still. Odin, Paul’s wolf-hound, tugged at his chain in the garden and whined quaveringly. He had heard Paul arrive and was disappointed because his master had forgotten to pay him a visit. He was angry, too, because he also had heard the deep voice of Jules Thessaly; and Odin did not like Jules Thessaly.
* * * * * *
A quantity of personal correspondence had accumulated, and Paul proceeded to inspect it. A letter addressed in Don’s familiar sprawling hand demanded precedence, and Paul noted with excitement that it bore a Derbyshire postmark. It was dated from the house of one of Don’s innumerable cousins, a house of a type for which the Peak district is notable, a manor of ghostly repute. This cheerful homestead was apparently constructed in or adjoining an ancient burial ground, was in fact a converted monastery, and Don dealt in characteristically whimsical fashion with its unpleasant peculiarities.
“One can scarcely expect a house constructed in a graveyard,” he wrote, “to be otherwise than a haunted house. It is a house especially built for a ghost; it is not a house to which a ghost has come; it is a ghost around whom a house has been built. Erratic manifestations are to be looked for from a hitherto free and unfettered spectre who discovers himself to be confined in a residence possibly uncongenial to his taste and to have thrust upon him the society of a family with whose habits and ideals he has nothing in common....”
Finally, Don inquired how the affairs of Flamby were proceeding, and something very like a pang of remorse troubled Paul. The open letter lying before him, he fell into a reverie, arraigning himself before the tribunal of his own conscience. Had his attitude toward Flamby changed? It had done so. What was the nature of the change? His keen personal interest had given place to one impersonal, although sincere in its way. What was the explanation of this? He had enshrined her, set her upon a fairy pedestal, only to learn that she was humanly frail. Had this discovery hurt him? Intensely. How and why? It had shattered his belief in his omniscience. Yes, that was the unpalatable truth, brought to light at last. Frailty in woman he looked for, and because he knew it to be an offshoot of that Eternal Feminine which is a root-principle of the universe, he condoned. But in Flamby he had seemed to recognise a rare spirit, one loftily above the common traits of her sex, a fit companion for Yvonne; and had been in error. For long after the finding of those shameful photographs he had failed to recover confidence in himself, and had doubted his fitness to speak as a master who could be blinded by the guile of a girl.
It was, then, offended amour propre which had prompted him to hand over to Nevin, his solicitor, this sacred charge entrusted to him by Don? It was. Now he scourged himself remorselessly. If only because her fault was chargeable on one of his own kin he should have striven with might and main to help Flamby. The fact that she was daughter of the man who had saved Don’s life at peril of his own redoubled the sanctity of the charge. And how had he acquitted himself of his stewardship? Pitifully. A hot flush rose to his brow, and he hesitated to open a letter from Nevin which also awaited his attention. But he forced himself to the task and read that which completed his humility. Mrs. Duveen had died of heart-failure two months before, whilst Paul had been abroad, and Flamby was an orphan.
“Captain Courtier, who is at present home on leave, has favoured us with direct instructions in the matter,” Nevin continued, “and has placed a generous credit at our disposal for the purpose of securing suitable apartments for Miss Duveen, and for meeting the cost of her immediate maintenance and fees, together with other incidental disbursements. We have also secured authority to watch her interests in regard to any pension or gratuity to which she may be entitled as a minor and orphan of a non-commissioned officer killed in action....”
In the drawing-room, Yvonne very softly was playing a setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s exquisite verses, To One in Paradise, and such is the magic of music wedded to poetry that it opened a door in Paul’s heart and afforded him a glimpse of his inner self. He had neglected poor little Flamby, and his sensitive mind refused to contemplate her loneliness now that her last friend had been taken from her.
“Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine — A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine....”
Paul rose and quietly entered the drawing-room. Yvonne looked up as he opened the door, and he saw that her eyes were dim. He knelt on a corner of the music-chair and clasped his arms tightly about her shoulders, pressing her cheek against his. As she ceased playing and turned her head he kissed her ardently, holding her fast and watching her with those yearning eyes whose gaze can make a woman’s heart beat faster. She leaned back against him, sighing.
“Do you know that that is the first time you have kissed me since you returned?” she asked.
“Yvonne, forgive me. Don’t misunderstand. You never doubt me, do you?”
“Sometimes — I don’t seem to matter to you so much as I did.”
Never releasing her he moved around so that they were side by side upon the narrow seat. “You matter more than anything in the world,” he said. “You are so near to my heart day and night that I seem to have you always in my arms.” He spoke softly, his lips very close to Yvonne’s; her golden hair brushed his forehead. “You are the music to which I write the words. The memory of your lightest action since the very hour we met I treasure and revere. Without you I am nothing. All I dream and all I hope I dream and hope for you.”
Yvonne ran her white fingers through his hair and looked up into his face. Paul kissed her, laughing happily. “My darling Yvonne,” he whispered, “Do I sometimes forget to make love to you? It is only because I feel that you are so sure of me. Do you know that since I left you I have heard your voice like a prayer at twilight, seen your eyes watching me as I slept and found your hair gleaming in many a golden sunset.”
“Of course I don’t,” cried Yvonne, with mock severity. “How can I possibly know what you are thinking when you are hundreds of miles away! I only know that when you come back you forget to kiss me.”
“I don’t forget, Yvonne. I think of you a thousand times a day, and every thought is a kiss.”
“Then you have only thought of me twice to-day,” said Yvonne, standing up and crossing to a Chesterfield. She seated herself, resting her head upon a black cushion and posing deliberately with the confidence of a pretty woman.
“That is a challenge,” replied Paul, “and I accept it.”
He followed her, but she covered her face with her hands tauntingly, and only resigned her lips after a long struggle. Then they sat silently, very close together, the golden head leaning against the dark one, and ere long Paul’s restless mind was at work again.
“Don is on leave, Yvonne,” he said. “Isn’t that fine?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Yvonne, stifling a sigh. “He called yesterday.”
“He called!” cried Paul, sitting upright excitedly. “You did not tell me.”
“How could I tell you, Paul? I have not seen you alone until now. Don did not know you were away. A letter came from him two days ago — —”
“I know. That was how I learned of his being home.”
“He said he would come this afternoon. Oh — perhaps here he is.”
Yvonne smoothed her skirt and moved to a discreet distance from Paul as a parlourmaid came in. Paul leapt up, eagerly.
“Captain Courtier?” he cried to the girl.
“Yes, sir.”
Paul ran out into the hall. Yvonne rose from the Chesterfield and slowly walked back to the piano. She stood for a while idly turning over the pages of music; then, as her husband did no
t return, she went up to her room. She could hear Paul talking excitedly as she passed the study door.
VI
Don gazed curiously around the large and lofty room. In early Victorian days this apartment had been a drawing-room or salon, wherein crinolined dames and whiskered knights had discoursed exclusively in sparkling epigrams according to certain memoirs in which this salon was frequently mentioned. It had been selected by Paul for a workroom because of its charming outlook upon the secluded little garden with its sundial and irregularly paved paths, and because it was the largest room in the house. Although in a lesser degree than Paul, Don also was responsive to environment, and he found himself endeavouring to analyse the impression made upon his mind by Paul’s study.
He had last seen it during the time that Paul, newly returned from Florence, was passing the proofs of his great tragedy, Francesca of the Lilies. Then it had been the study of a Cardinal of the Middle Ages or of a mediaeval noble devoted to the arts. In what respect did it differ now? The massive table of cedar of Lebanon, figured in ivory and mother o’ pearl with the Rape of Proserpine, the work of a pupil of Benvenuto Cellini, remained, as also did the prie-dieu, enriched with silver daisies, which Michelangelo had designed for Margaret of Navarre. The jewelled crucifix was gone, together with the old chain bible and ebony lectern from the Cistercian Monastery at La Trappe. The curious chalice, too, of porphyry starred with beryl, taken at the sack of Panama, and recovered a century later from an inn at Saragossa, had disappeared from its place; and where illuminated missals and monkish books had formerly lain upon the long window seat were works dealing with the war, associated with its causes or arising out of it: Ambassador Gerard to The Book of Artemas, God the Invisible King and Also Sprach Zarathustra. Even the magnificent Book of Hours bearing the monogram of Diana of Poictiers and bound by Aldo Manuzio, Byzantine fashion, in carved ivory wreathed about with gold filigree and studded with fourteen precious stones, was hidden.