by Sax Rohmer
“Yes,” said Flamby, all humility again.
Paul stood up, taking his hat from the floor and beginning to button his Burberry. “I am coming to see you at the school one day soon, but if ever there is anything you want to tell me or if ever I can be of the slightest use to you, telephone to me, Flamby. Don’t regard me as a bogey-man.” Flamby had stood up, too, and now Paul held her by the shoulders looking at her charming downcast face. “We are friends, are we not, little Flamby?”
Flamby glanced up swiftly. “Yes,” she said. “Thank you for thinking about me.”
XII
The rain-swept deserted streets made a curious appeal to Paul that night — an appeal to something in his mood that was feverish and unquiet, that first had stirred in response to an apparently chance remark of Thessaly’s and that had sent him out to seek Flamby in despite of the weather and the late hour. He did not strive to analyse it, but rather sought to quench it, unknown, and his joy in the steady downpour was a reflection of this sub-conscious state. Self-distrust, vague and indefinite, touched him unaccountably. He considered the intellectual uproar (for it was nothing less) which he had occasioned by the publication of his two papers — comprising as they did selections from the first part of his book. The attitude of the Church alone indicated how shrewdly he had struck. He had bred no mere nine days’ wonder but had sowed a seed which, steadily propagating, already had assumed tall sapling form and had unfolded nascent branches. The bookstalls were beginning to display both anonymous pamphlets and brochures by well-known divines; not all of them directly attacking Mario nor openly defending dogma, but all of them, covertly or overtly, being aimed at him and his works. He had been inundated with correspondence from the two hemispheres; he had been persecuted by callers of many nationalities; a strange grey-haired woman with the inspired eyes of a Sita who had addressed him as Master and acclaimed him one long expected, and a party of little brown men, turbaned and urbane, from India, who spoke of the Vishnu-Purana, hailing him as a brother, and whose presence had conjured up pictures of the forests of Hindustan. A dignified Chinaman, too, armed with letters of introduction, had presented him with a wonderful book painted upon ivory of the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. But most singular visitor of all was a sort of monk, having a black, matted beard and carrying a staff, who had gained access to the study, Paul never learned by what means, and who had thundered out an incomprehensible warning against “unveiling the shrine,” had denounced what he had termed “the poison of Fabre d’Olivet” and had departed mysteriously as he had come.
There had been something really terrifying in the personality of this last visitor, power of some kind, and Paul, whose third paper, La Force, was in the press, seemed often to hear those strange words ringing in his ears, and he hesitated even now to widen the chasm which already he had opened and which yawned threateningly between the old faith and the new wisdom which yet was a wisdom more ancient than the world. He was but a common man, born of woman; no Krishna conceived of a Virgin Devâki, nor even a Pythagoras initiate of Memphis and heir of Zoroaster; and this night he distrusted his genius. What if he should beckon men, like a vaporous will-o’-the-wisp, out into a morass of error wherein their souls should perish? His power he might doubt no longer; a thousand denunciations, a million acclamations, had borne witness to it. And he had barely begun to speak. Truly the world awaited him and already he bent beneath the burden of a world’s desire.
* * * * * *
Few pedestrians were abroad and no cabs were to be seen. Every motor-bus appeared to be full inside, with many passengers standing, and even a heroic minority hidden beneath gleaming umbrellas on top. Paul had found the interiors of these vehicles to possess an odour of imperfectly washed humanity, and he avoided the roof, unless a front seat were available, because of the existence of that type of roof-traveller who converts himself into a human fountain by expectorating playfully at selected intervals. Theatre audiences were on their several ways home, and as Paul passed by the entrance to a Tube station he found a considerable crowd seeking to force its way in, a motley crowd representative of every stratum of society from Whitechapel to Mayfair. Women wearing opera cloaks and shod in fragile dress-shoes stood shivering upon the gleaming pavement beside Jewesses from the East-End. Fur-collared coats were pressed against wet working raiments, white gloved hands rested upon greasy shoulders. Officers jostled privates, sailors vied with soldiers in the scrum before the entrance to the microbic land of tunnels. War is a potent demagogue.
Isolated standard lamps whose blackened tops gave them an odd appearance of wearing skull caps, broke the gloom of the rain mist at wide intervals. All shops were shut, apparently. One or two cafés preserved a ghostly life within their depths, but their sombre illuminations were suggestive of the Rat Mort. Musicians from theatre orchestras hurried in the direction of the friendly Tube, instrument cases in hand, and one or two hardy members of the Overseas forces defied the elements and lounged about on corners as though this were a summer’s evening in Melbourne. Policemen sheltered in dark porches. Paul walked on, his hands thrust into his coat pockets and the brim of his hat pulled down. He experienced no discomfort and was quite contented with the prospect of walking the remainder of the way home; he determined, however, to light his pipe and in order to do so he stepped into the recess formed by a shop door, found his pouch and having loaded his briar was about to strike a match when he saw a taxi-cab apparently disengaged and approaching slowly. He stepped out from his shelter, calling to the man, and collided heavily with a girl wearing a conspicuous white raincoat and carrying an umbrella.
She slipped and staggered, but Paul caught her in time to save her from a fall upon the muddy pavement. “I am sincerely sorry,” he said with real solicitude. “I know I must have hurt you.”
“Not in the least,” she replied in a low tone which might have passed for that of culture with a less inspired observer than Paul. A faint light from the head lamp of the cab which had drawn up beside the pavement, touched her face. She was young and would have been pretty if the bloom of her cheeks and the redness of her lips had not been due to careful make-up; for her features were good and, as Paul recognised, experiencing a sensation of chill at his heart, not unlike those of his wife. If he could have imagined a debauched Yvonne, she would have looked like this waif of the night who now stood bending beneath the shelter of her wet umbrella upon which the rain pattered, ruefully rubbing a slim silken-clad ankle.
“I can only offer one reparation,” Paul persisted. “You must allow me to drive you home.”
The cabman coughed dryly, reaching around to open the door. “It’s a rotten night, sir,” he said, “and I’m short of petrol. Make it a double fare.”
“Really,” declared the girl with that exaggerated drawling accent, “I can manage quite well.”
“Please don’t argue,” said Paul, smiling and assisting her into the cab. “Tell me where you want to go.”
She gave an address near Torrington Square and Paul got in beside her. “Now,” he said as the cab moved off, “I want to talk to you. You must not be angry with me but just listen! In the first place I know I collided with you roughly and I am sorry, but you deliberately got in my way and I did not hurt your ankle at all!”
“What do you mean?” she cried, the accent more overdone than ever. “I thought you were a gentleman!”
“Perhaps you were wrong. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to recognise a gentleman. But we can all recognise the truth and I want you to admit that I have told you the truth.”
“Did you get me in here to start the Bible-banging business?” inquired the girl, her factitious refinement deserting her. “Because if you did I’m getting out.”
“You are going to do nothing of the kind,” said Paul, patting her white-gloved hand. “You are going to tell me all about yourself and I am going to show you your mistakes and see if some of them cannot be put right.”
“You’re nothing to do with the Sal
vation Army, are you?” she asked sarcastically. But already she was half enslaved by the voice and manner of Paul. “Do you think I don’t know my mistakes? Do you think preaching can do me any good? Are you one of those fools who think all women like me only live the way we do because we can’t see where it will end? I know! I know! And I don’t care! See that? The sooner the better!” Her sudden violence was that of rebellion against something akin to fear which this strange picturesque-looking man threatened to inspire in her — and it formed no part of her poor philosophy to fear men.
Paul took her hand and held it firmly. “Little chance acquaintance,” he said, “was there never anyone in the world whom you loved? — never anyone who was good to you?” She turned aside from him, making no reply. “If ever there was such a one tell me.”
The cab had already reached the Square, and now the man pulled up before a large apartment-house, and the girl withdrew her hand and rose. “It’s no good,” she said. “It’s no good. I think you mean to be kind, but you’re wasting your time. Good night.”
“I have not finished,” replied Paul, opening the door for her. “I am coming to see where you live before I say good night.”
He followed her out, directing the man to wait and smiling grimly at the thought of his own counsel to Flamby anent giving the world cause for suspicion.
* * * * * *
The room in which Paul found himself was on the first floor, over looking the square, and was well but conventionally furnished. A fire blazed in the grate, and the draped mantelpiece was decorated with a number of photographs of junior officers, many of them autographed. His companion, who said her name was Kitty Chester, had discarded her raincoat and hat, and now stood before the fire arrayed in a smart plaid skirt and a white silk blouse, cut very low. She had neat ankles and a slim figure, but her hands betrayed the fact that she had done manual work at some time in her career. She was much more haggard than he had been able to discern her to be in the dim light of the cab lamp. Taking a cigarette from a box upon the table she lighted it and leaned back against the mantelpiece.
“Well,” she said, “another blank day;” and obviously she was trying to throw off the spell which Paul had almost succeeded in casting upon her in the cab. “Barred the Empire, barred the Alhambra, and now the old Pav is a thing of the past, too. I never thought I should find myself blowing through the rain all dressed up and nowhere to go.”
Paul watched her silently for a moment. In Kitty Chester he recognised the answer to his doubts, and because that answer was yet incomplete, his genius responded and was revivified. As of old the initiate was tested in order that he might learn the strength of his wisdom, so now a test was offered to the wielder of the sword of truth. Paul did not immediately seek to re-establish control of this wayward spirit, but talked awhile lightly and sympathetically of her life and its trials. Presently: “I suppose you are sometimes hard up?” he said.
“Sometimes!”
“But I can see that you would resent an offer of help.”
“I should. Cut it out.”
“I have no intention of pressing the point. But have you no ambition to lead any different life?”
“My life’s my own. I’ll do what I like with it. I’d have ended it long ago, but I hadn’t got the pluck. Now you know.”
“Yes,” replied Paul— “now I know. Come and sit down here beside me.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. Come and sit down here.”
Kitty Chester met the fixed gaze of his eyes and was lost. With the ghost of a swagger in her gait she crossed to the red plush sofa upon which Paul was seated and lounged upon the end of it, one foot swinging in the air. She had a trick of rubbing the second finger of her left hand as if twisting a ring, and Paul watched her as she repeated the gesture. He rested his hand upon hers.
“Did you love your husband?” he asked.
Kitty Chester stood up slowly. Her right hand, which held the lighted cigarette, went automatically to her breast. She wore a thin gold chain about her neck. She was staring at Paul haggardly.
“You did love him,” he continued. “Is he dead?”
Paul’s solicitude, so obviously real, so wonderfully disinterested and so wholly free from cant, already had kindled something in the girl’s heart which she had believed to be lifeless, and for ever cold. Now, his swift intuition and the grave sympathy in his beautiful voice imposed too great a test upon the weakened self-control of poor Kitty. Without even a warning quiver of the lips she burst into passionate sobs. Dropping weakly down upon the sofa she cried until her whole body shook convulsively. Paul watched her in silence for some time, and then put his arm about her bowed shoulders.
“Tell me,” he said. “I understand.” And punctuated by that bitter weeping the story was told. Kitty had been in the service of a county family and had married a young tradesman of excellent prospects. Two short years of married life and then the War. Her husband was ordered to France. One year of that ceaseless waiting, hoping, fearing, which war imposes upon women, and then an official telegram. Kitty returned to service — and her baby died.
“What had I done,” she cried wildly. “What had I done to deserve it? I’d gone as straight as a girl can go. There was nobody else in the world for me but him. Then my baby was taken, and the parson’s talk about God! What did anything matter after that! Oh, the loneliness. The loneliness! Men don’t know what that loneliness is like — the loneliness of a woman. They have their friends, but nobody wants to be friends with a lonely woman. There are only two ways for her. I tried to kill myself, and I was too big a coward, so I took the easy way and thought I might forget.”
“You thought you might forget. And did you think your husband would ever forget?”
“Oh, my God! don’t say that!”
“You see, the name of God still means something to you,” said Paul gently. “Many a soldier’s wife has become a believer, and you are not the first who has shuddered to believe.” He saw his course clearly, and did not hesitate to pursue it. “The parsons, as you say, talk about God without knowing of What or of Whom they speak, but I am not a parson, and I know of What I speak. Look at me. I have something to ask you.”
She turned her eyes, red with weeping, and was fascinated by Paul’s concentrated gaze.
“Do you ever dream of your husband?” he asked.
“Oh! you’ll drive me mad!” she whispered, trembling violently. “For the first six months after ... I was afraid to close my eyes. I am frightened. I am frightened.”
“You are frightened because he is here, Kitty; but he is here to guard you and not to harm you. He is here because to-night you have done with that life of forgetfulness which is worse than the memories of those you loved. He will always come when you call him, until the very hour that you are ready to join him again. But if you do wrong to the memory of a man who was true to you, even I cannot promise that he will ever hold you in his arms again.”
“But can you promise? — Oh! you seem to know! You seem ... Who are you? Tell me who you are — —”
She stood up and retreated from Paul, the pallor of her face discernible through the tear-streaked make-up. He smiled in his charming fashion, holding out his hands.
“I am one who has studied the secrets of nature,” he replied. “And I promise you that you shall live again as a woman, and be loved by those whom you think you have lost. Look at your locket before you sleep to-night and dream, but do not be afraid. Promise, now, that you will always be faithful in the future. You shall give me the names of your old friends and I shall see if all this great mistake cannot be forgotten.”
XIII
Turning up the lights in his study, Paul seated himself in the great carved chair before his writing-table, and looked for a long time at a set of corrected proofs which lay there. Then, leaning back in the chair he stared about the room at the new and strange ornaments which he had collected in accordance with his system of working amid sympathetic colour
. His meeting with Kitty Chester he accepted as a message of encouragement designed to restore his faith in himself and his mission. That he had accomplished her redemption he did not dare to believe, but at least he had rendered it possible. He readily recognised the symbolical significance of their meeting, and it tinged his reflections and quickened his genius, so that a new light was shed thereby upon some of the darker places of the religious past.
Close to his hand, upon an ebony pedestal, stood a squat stone figure having the head of a man with the face of a bull. It was an idol of incalculable age, from Jules Thessaly’s collection, a relic of prehistoric Greece and the ancient worship of the threefold Hecate. Set in some remote Thracian valley, it had once looked down upon orgies such as few modern minds can imagine, had seen naked Bacchantes surrounded by tamed jungle beasts and having their arms enwreathed with living serpents, flinging themselves prostrate before its altar, and then amid delirious dances calling upon the Bull-faced Bacchus of whom we read in one of the Orphic hymns....
Dimly visible in a recess of the black-oak bureau was Káli, goddess of Desire, and near her, in a narrow cupboard, the light impinged upon a white, smooth piece of stone which was attached to a wooden frame. It was the emblem of Venus Urania from the oldest temple in Cyprus. These priceless relics were all lent by Thessaly, as were an imperfect statuette in wood, fossilised with age and probably of Moabite origin, representing Ashtaroth, daughter of Sin, and a wonderfully preserved ivory figure, half woman and half fish, of Derceto of Ascalon. The sacred courtesans of the past and the Kitty Chesters of the present (mused Paul) all were expressions of that mystic principle, IEVE, upon which the universe turns as a compass upon its needle, and which, reproduced in our gross bodies, has led to the creation of the Groves of Paphos. That sublime Desire which should lead us to the great Unity and final fulfilment, would seem through all the ages to have driven men ever further from it. Would a day never dawn when all that uncontrolled Force should be contained and directed harmoniously, when the pure Isis of the Egyptian mysteries should cast down the tainted Isis whose lascivious rites were celebrated in Pompeii? Scarcely perceptible was the progress of mankind. In every woman was born a spark of Bacchic fire, which leapt up sweetly at the summons of love or crimson, shameful, at the beck of lust. There were certain conditions peculiarly favourable to its evil development; loneliness, according to Kitty Chester, a loneliness beyond man’s understanding....