by Philip Child
“It must be enough. You and I mustn’t fall in love.”
Dan said anxiously: “I’m a clumsy fool, I’m afraid. It was just, thinking how lovely you look … and that we’ve only got two days more. Never mind it, Beatrice. We’ll talk about it tomorrow if you’d rather.… Let’s kiss just once more.”
She said “No!” passionately.
He went home charmed and uplifted, thinking what mysterious creatures women were. Full of unlooked-for reticence.
“I am in love with her, and I’ve got to go back to France.… Needn’t think of that yet.” He went through the dark streets, and the people who passed by him might as well have been ghosts; he did not see them. The sigh of London tortured by thousands of hidden passions passed unheeded. Wraiths fluttering past the subaltern on leave who was strolling slowly, hesitated, touched his sleeve, and breathed a question. He did not hear. He was dreaming of Beatrice.
III
Next morning there was a letter waiting for him.
Dear Dan,
I think we had better not meet again after all. I really mean it. You and I like each other too much without liking each other enough. I want to be honest with you, Dan. You see, you want just the things from a woman that I haven’t got to give. I don’t love you and I couldn’t. I just like you awfully; but I might like someone else just as much — that way. I wouldn’t be a sheet anchor. I’d just be a broken reed. You deserve better than that from a woman. I have been really in love once and I know.
It isn’t that I don’t want to see you. The truth is, you’re making me irresponsible, and I don’t want to think just of myself. I won’t be at home tomorrow or the next day and you don’t know where my hospital is. Really, it is better that way, Dan dear.
After reading this letter for the first time, Dan was panic-stricken . Then he became angry. Then he felt that, unless he found her, he was lost.
He set off to discover from the authorities whether a certain VAD could be found. She was his sister, he said, and he had had bad news from home. At last he discovered her hospital and sent a telegram.
I have just had bad news, need your help. Meet me at four at the Crimson Dragon Tea Room, Oxford Street.
He spent the rest of the morning pulling strings to get a special licence for Daniel Thatcher to marry Beatrice Elton without publishing banns. Then he went to the hotel clerk and said:
“Have you a really nice room — A suite, rather. A large room with a sitting room attached — and so on.”
“Well, sir, we haven’t much room at present.”
The clerk had a silver disablement medal on his lapel.
Dan said casually: “You see, my wife is arriving from Scotland this evening.… Do be a good chap!”
The ghost of a smile appeared and disappeared on the clerk’s official countenance. “Well, in that case. Yes, perhaps it can be managed.”
“Thanks. Decent of you.”
“Would you like dinner or supper in your room?”
“Why not? Yes, by all means.”
Dan ordered flowers to be sent to the hotel.… What other things might a woman want?
At four he went to the Crimson Dragon Tea Room. Beatrice entered almost at once, saw him, and came swiftly to him with her hand outstretched.
“Who is it, Dan? Is it your mother?” She put her other hand on his wrist.
“Tea first, Beatrice. Then I’ll tell you.”
They had tea and tried to talk about things that did not matter. Then she said:
“Now, Dan, tell me about it.”
“About what?”
“Dan!”
“About the bad news? It was the note I got from you. I had to see you again.”
Her eyes hardened and she studied him over the rim of her teacup with a pucker between her brows. Then she put down the cup and stood up.
“Will you please pay my bill, Dan! You had no right to do that.”
“Please, sit down, Beatrice, and don’t be angry.… You haven’t been fair, either. You had no right to drop things like that. You know very well there was something special between us. You said so yourself.”
“You want to marry me, Dan. Is that it?”
“You know that, Beatrice.… I’ve arranged everything. You are to come to the Strand Palace tonight as my wife. It’s quite simple.”
Her mouth drooped and she looked away from him.
“It is simple, Beatrice.”
She looked at him again and shook her head slowly. “You see, Dan, I’m still in love with Matt.”
After a moment Dan said shakenly: “Isn’t it pretty hopeless just remembering that always? You’ve got to go on living, you know.”
Her lip curled satirically: “Living? Yes, I suppose so. On my own terms, though.” Then her look softened and she gave him a queer smile he could not understand. “There is something between us, Dan. I feel that, too. I’m so fond of you, and if only I could give you your heart’s desire.… I’m empty, Dan. You want a whole heart. I haven’t it to give.”
“I’ll risk it, if you will.”
Her voice became agitated: “Why are you so — so — You make me feel so torn to bits! … Listen, my dear. When you were in love with Cynthia, did you let yourself go absolutely? Did you, in your own mind, give everything you had to give?”
“No,” said Dan thoughtfully, “I didn’t. I didn’t need her as I do you.”
“And I needed Matt. He could have had all of me. Everything.… I wish we had!” she added passionately.
It hurt him amazingly to hear her say that. Not jealousy exactly; he loved her too much for that — but not being able, however much he loved her, to give her the happiness of first love completed.
“So you see, Dan, I couldn’t give myself like that again. When Matt was killed he took me — all that with him.… And even if I could I’d be afraid to. It hurts too much when — if —” She stood up blindly, turning her head from him.
“There’s just one question I must ask, Beatrice. Don’t you want to be loved?”
“Yes … you blind — fool !”
Dan exclaimed, bewildered, “I can’t understand you a bit!”
“I know.… Sorry I called you a fool. You’re sweet.… I’m restless, Dan. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s do something!”
They left the tea room and found themselves in a thick fog. Looking down you could not even see the sidewalk, and Beatrice stumbled off the edge of it and clutched his arm.
“This must be what they call a pea souper. It’s the first I’ve seen.”
He could not discern Beatrice’s expression, but he could feel that her mood had altered abruptly. She snatched at an adventure.
“Isn’t it fun! … Dan, let’s get lost. We’ll walk a lot and turn corners. Then, when we’ve got thoroughly mixed up, we’ll go into the first house and find out where we are.”
“Right you are! Why don’t other people have ideas like that? Only, hang on to my arm. I want us to be lost together. I wonder what sort of a place we’ll turn up in.”
They walked for an hour and soon lost all sense of direction. People with things to do, in a hurry and irritated by the fog, bumped into them and were surprised by laughter from two phantoms — a man and a girl, evidently. It is not in that spirit that one takes life in a big city!
“Fifty steps more, then we’ll turn to the right and see where we are. If it’s a church, you’ll have to marry me.” Her clasp on his arm tightened and her fingers curled into it.
They turned to the right and bumped into an iron railing. Dan felt along it until they came to a gate. They went in and up a flight of steps and, presently, touched a doorknob.
“There’s a knocker, Dan. And — wait — here’s a brass plate with something written on it. Can you read it?”
Dan felt the letters on the plate with his finger tips and read aloud slowly: “T-E-T-I . Teti Psychologist and Spiritual Life Reader. … Here’s an adventure for you! Fate might have sent us to a greengrocer or an undertaker, but out of all London, she sent us here.”
“Shall we knock?”
“No, wait. Obviously, it’s our destiny to get our fortunes told. We will pretend we are lovers. That won’t be difficult for me to do. We are lovers and we want to know whether we ought to get married before I go to France. Our families don’t approve of hasty war marriages. We’re gullible and superstitious and we want to get the advice of the stars.… Come on, Beatrice.”
“I don’t know, it might be bad luck; laughing at something serious, you know.”
“What harm can it do? You are superstitious. If an adventure like this pops up, you have to seize it.”
The knocker felt like a man’s face surmounted by some sort of headdress from which projected the out-thrust head of a serpent. Dan let it fall and knocked at the gate of destiny with an Egyptian uraeus.
The door opened, showing a hall dimly lit with gas. An impeccable butler confronted them. “That means at least three guineas,” thought Dan.
“Good afternoon. We should like to see Mr. Teti.”
“Come this way, please.”
They followed him down the hall into a large room full of strange objects. A grate held red embers and gave the room its only light. Coloured casts of Egyptian bas-relief hung on the walls. A great figure that looked as if it had been carved in diorite sat, hands on knees, at one end of the room, more still than Buddha. The face was serene and noble, the lips parted lightly in an aloof smile. “Atmosphere,” thought Dan, “at least five guineas.”
“Have you an appointment with Teti, sir?”
“No. But we thought —”
“Perhaps we ought not to bother Mr. Teti,” said Beatrice eagerly. “We thought —”
“Excuse me, Miss. If the savant felt that anyone in real need had been turned away, it would grieve him and interfere with his strange gift.… What is it you wish to know?”
Dan recited their story glibly and the butler condescended to nod sympathetically. “Under the circumstances, I think I may venture to disturb him.” He moved out of the room ponderously.
Beatrice whispered: “I don’t like it, Dan. This place makes me feel creepy.”
“Rot, Beatrice. Don’t be taken in by the hocus-pocus . The chap must have quite a technique to earn this.” Dan waved toward the diorite statue. “Must be worth listening to.”
The savant stepped into the dull glow from the embers. He wore none of the usual trappings of charlatans — no embroidered gown, no jewelled turban — yet he was far from a conventional figure. A white shirt with a Byronic collar opened beneath a massive but finely cut face. A white beard, carefully trimmed, might have been that of King Khafre himself; Mr. Teti’s face, too, was as serene as that of the ancient Egyptian, and the expression of his eyes —
“The savant is no fool,” thought Dan. “He’s clever enough, really, to like people; they feel it instantly.”
Once again Dan reeled off his story. Mr. Teti beamed at them benevolently. “What you tell me, my dear young people, may be quite true. To me you could say anything — anything , true or false, and most likely I should believe you. But the powers who speak through me see with the all-seeing eye of Osiris — they will read the true thoughts in your hearts — or in your liver, as the Egyptians put it.” Mr. Teti allowed himself a smile. “I shall be glad on your behalf to prepare myself for spiritual messages.… Now you sit here and I shall sit over there. Do you like music?”
“Yes, but —”
“Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, then, but very softly, very softly. Unless the mood, your mood, is right, I can do nothing. The Sixth is the symphony of love and of death. They go together, always together, always. Love, and behind it, lending it meaning, always the fear of ultimate extinction — as in your hearts you very well know.… You see, I am at least wise.”
Mr. Teti, sitting in the shadows of King Khafre, was visible only as an indistinct figure, a second Khafre. Music softly throbbed and wailed, sang of love and of love’s briefness.
A flute-like voice, tremulous but clear as the sound of ripples lapping on a beach, hovered over the statue of the Egyptian pharaoh.
“Hear the voice of King Unis. Death loose thy bandages. They are not bandages, they are the locks of Nephthys weeping over the body of her dead brother.… Behold, I have set my face toward the doors of the sky, to that tall sycamore east of the sky whereon the gods sit. Behold, I am come to the Lily-Lake and ‘Look-Behind ’ the ferryman waits with his face turned from me in his boat of rushes. Whence hast thou come? He bringeth not his boat to me.…”
Beatrice murmured: “He means death, doesn’t he?”
“That’s cribbed from the pyramid texts, I think,” Dan whispered back. He gathered that a certain soul was at the door of the sky, wanting to get himself ferried across a sort of lake at the bourne of eternity, but in vain. Dan listened, spellbound, sceptical, but in another way, held by the power of a hypnotic voice and the just weighting of vowels and consonants by a born rhapsodist. Beatrice’s hand crept into his. The flute-like voice flowed on, setting aflight again phrases from a far age.… The barque of the millions of years.… None cometh from thence that he may tell us how they fare. Encourage thy heart to forget it, making it pleasant for thee to follow thy desire while thou livest. … Phrases spoken thousands of years ago, telling of man’s everlasting revolt against death.
The music ceased. Mr. Teti stirred and came forth from the shadow, a man, pale and exhausted, but with the venerable air of one who has trenched on mystery. Art is a matter of well-placed reticence, and Mr. Teti was an artist in mystery. He waited for them to speak.
“An impressive performance,” said Dan politely.
“Yes? I should be interested to know what they said.”
“But surely you remember?”
“I? My dear young man, you must think of me as emptied, a mere vessel; for the time being, as empty of life as that statue of King Khafre. They come — these presences, these earthbound presences; they sigh, they whisper now this, now that. I cannot hear them; their message is not for me.”
“Well, they were most poetic. ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ — that sort of thing. They quoted a lot from the pyramid texts, I think, with other stuff mixed in.” (Mr. Teti winced and raised his eyebrows delicately at the word “stuff.”) “The fact is we have an Egyptologist in our battery. The new army is a real university, you know.”
Mr. Teti’s air of confiding benevolence deepened. “Now that is really remarkable! No doubt the very emotions, the authentic human fears which produced those strange and touching hieroglyphs in the pyramids of Pepi and Mernere twenty-six hundred years before Christ, have reproduced themselves — the atmosphere being favourable and somewhat analogous — through my humble mediumship, for your instruction.… However that may be, the message for you, my dear young people, is clear. We live — we die; and who knows what befalls us when we reach the door of heaven. Live then! … And now, sir, the spirits give their wisdom free to those who have the wisdom to listen. But alas, I, their servant, must live. It always distresses me to mention sordid matters. The fee — to you, to two young people caught in the net of universal calamity — is five guineas. I will be frank. I am the vessel of supernatural powers, and though I am by nature extremely avaricious, I dare not, on their account, make more than a mere living from my mediumship.” The beaming altruism in Mr. Teti’s eye — who could doubt its sincerity? — repulsed the crude expression of scepticism. Mr. Teti did understand psychical forces very well, indeed.
IV
They rode home on the top of a bus. “This is our barque of the millions of years, Beatrice,” said Dan with a grin. “That’s
what that fakir called it.”
“It’s a lonely phrase, Dan, isn’t it? It fascinates me. You are in the boat, you cannot get out of it, and you are alone.”
“Well, we are in it together now. But not for a million years. Just a bus ride together and a walk and then good night. Then another day together. Then farewell.”
She caught her breath and shivered.
On the bench behind them sat an old man who had long outlived his family. He watched them with interest: a slim girl in a trim brown tailored suit, obviously a lady; a young fellow in love with her and quite oblivious to the landscape or to other fellow travellers on the bus. Lucky young people! To be in love was the greatest of all happiness. But he remembered dimly that it was often a trouble, too. He had no son to go to war and be killed. For a moment he almost wished he had. One more thing to cut an old man off from the world. Acting on impulse, he leaned forward and touched the youngster in uniform on the shoulder.
“On leave?”
Dan turned sideways and nodded. “One more day.”
“Well, young man and you, mademoiselle — make the most of your time together and don’t worry about the future. Youth is the time! When you’re as old as I am you’ll look back at your young days and wonder why you ever worried about things at all then.”
Dan smiled a little shyly. “There’s always an ‘if’ and a ‘but,’ sir.”
“Slay them! Don’t be a half-man and a half-woman . You can’t get the most out of life if you are always trying to live it by grammatical logic. Mark my words, young people; take each day as it comes.… You’re a nice looking couple.”
They got off the bus at Southampton Row.
“What are you thinking of, Dan?”
“A lot of things. That after seeing you it’s going to be harder to toughen up when I get back. I was thinking of that God-forsaken leave train at Victoria. It goes at 7:40 in the morning, so you have to get up in the dark.… Sorry, Beatrice, wash that out about Victoria. I shouldn’t have minded it a bit if I hadn’t had this time with you.”