B-Berry and I Look Back

by Dornford Yates

  “He did, indeed, and Cheiro begged to be excused. But the King was insistent. In the end Cheiro begged him to be very careful indeed when he was sixty-eight. Now on the sixth of March, 1910, the King left London for Biarritz. It was a Sunday evening. Whether His Majesty travelled by special train or the Royal coach was attached to the ordinary boat-train, I do not know: but, as he was crossing the platform, his quick eye caught sight of Cheiro, who had come to the station, I think to see somebody off. So Cheiro was summoned. ‘Well, Cheiro,’ said the King, ‘here I am, in spite of my sixty-eight years.’ Cheiro smiled. ‘I’m only too thankful, sir, to see your Majesty looking so very well.’ ‘I may prove you right yet,’ said the King. ‘That, sir, I decline to believe’. The King chatted with him for a minute of other things… Two months later, to the day, His Majesty died, aged sixty-eight years and six months.

  “I don’t think that sad story has ever been told before.”

  “It was so terrible,” said Daphne. “We were at White Ladies at the time. We heard he was ill on the Thursday and left for Cholmondeley Street on the following day. You went straight to the Club, to get the latest news. After a while you rang up, to say you were dining there. And you came back soon after midnight, to say he was dead.”

  Berry nodded.

  “It was a bad day for England. So long as he lived, Germany dared not make war. The Kaiser feared his great personality. If he’d lived six years longer, the Kaiser would have been out. His own people were sick of the tiresome mountebank. He had erected a lot of statues of his ancestors, real and imaginary, in the Tiergarten of Berlin. Three months before war broke out, every one was defaced. I saw the King’s funeral cortège pass up St James’s Street. It was a flawless, summer’s day. Eight Kings rode behind the gun-carriage – it may have been nine. Not in ranks – they all went by in a bevy, a truly historical sight. And Caesar, his wire-haired terrier, was led by a Highlander directly in front of them. The cortège was headed, of course, by the Earl Marshal, the father of the present Duke. He had a truly mediaeval beard and he looked like something out of the picture-books. And now we must get back to Cheiro.”

  “One minute,” said Jill. “You saw Queen Victoria’s funeral?”

  “Yes,” said Berry, “I did. That was in January – a cold, grey, very gloomy day, with a promise of snow. I remember King Edward riding behind the gun-carriage, with the Kaiser on his right and the Prince of Wales on his left. It was not a brilliant sight, for all the troops were cloaked or were wearing their great coats; but it was most impressive.”

  “Was the King wearing his cloak?”

  “I think so. I can’t be sure. But, if he was, it was open. I remember his scarlet tunic very well – and how he diminished the Kaiser, riding beside. For all his airs, the latter looked as if he was playing a part, as, of course, he was. But the King was the real thing. It’s the only time I ever saw him on horseback: but he looked magnificent.”

  “Wasn’t there some trouble with the horses drawing the gun-carriage?”

  “Yes. But that was at Windsor. The second gun-carriage had been waiting for the train to arrive, and the horses were cold. When all was ready the signal was given for the cortège to start. At once all sorts of orders rang out. Now the leaders of the gun-carriage waited for their particular order, ‘Walk march’: but the wheelers heard the other orders and, impatient because they were cold, acted on them. And the weight was too great for two horses, and so the traces snapped. There were no spare traces, and a very steep hill to come. Prince Louis of Battenburg at once suggested that the naval guard of honour should take the horses’ place. But there were no ropes. However, they managed with what was left of the traces. But they had three sailors on each wheel, in case the traces snapped.”

  “What a most unfortunate show,” said Jonah.

  “Yes, it was. For the troops ahead went on, not knowing that anything was wrong. They were very soon stopped, of course. There was a delay of about ten minutes. Everyone was very sorry for the Gunners, who were mortified to death. And now we simply must get back to Cheiro.

  “It was Madame de — who introduced me to Cheiro. She dabbled in palmistry and expressed some interest in my hand. So she wrote to Cheiro and asked him to see me when I was next in Town. She had known Cheiro for years, and he certainly had a great regard for her. I rather imagine she had helped him, when he was still unknown. And this was what she told me of how he came to start. I’ve only her word for it, but I believe it to be true.

  “As a young Irishman, Cheiro had just enough to live on, but nothing to spare. Then he was left a respectable legacy. This he decided to blow on seeing the world. So he wandered across the Continent, where he met Madame de — , and presently fetched up at Cairo, to stay at Shepheards Hotel. One night he was invited to dine at the Mohammed Ali Club… After dinner he was so indiscreet as to play. Now the members of the Mohammed Ali Club were immensely rich and the play was immensely high. It follows that at two in the morning Cheiro returned to Shepheards, broke to the world. He hadn’t even the money to pay the hotel what he owed.

  “Later that morning he saw the Manager. As may be believed, the latter took his news very ill. After all, the young man had been living extremely well. But Cheiro asked him politely to hear him out. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Ideas,’ said the Manager, bluntly, ‘won’t pay your bill.’ ‘I think this one will,’ said Cheiro.

  “Well, he’d always had a flair for palmistry: so he suggested to the Manager that he should be furnished with a table and a chair and a screen, that these should stand in the lounge and that he should practise his art for the patrons of the hotel – at, let us say, one hundred piastres a time.

  “After a little persuasion, the Manager agreed to let him try…

  “He had to have a name, so he called himself Cheiro. And very soon he was doing extremely well. And there he stayed until he’d paid what he owed and amassed enough money to get him to England and keep him for two or three months. And then, despite the Manager’s entreaties, he took his leave. And on his return, he set up as a soothsayer in London.

  “Before very long he had a big clientèle, and I don’t have to tell you that he published several books.

  “I found him very modest about his undoubted gift. He always insisted that he was no more than a student. ‘I’m only groping,’ he’d say. ‘One day, more capable men than I will open astrology up. And then – well, the impression of every child’s hand will be registered at his birth.’ He laughed. ‘For once, I’m playing the prophet – and that’s all wrong. Never forget that I am not a prophet: I’m an interpreter. Your destiny is written in your horoscope and the palm of your hand: and I try to read what is written. Sometimes the writing is very sharp and clear: at other times it’s blurred, and then I can only tell you what I believe it says.’

  “That was fair enough,” said Jonah.

  “I think so,” said Berry. “Cheiro was very honest. His gift was, of course, amazing. He told me about my past and he never put a foot wrong. And what he said of my future has always come to pass. I’ll only mention two things. He told me that seven was my good number, and eight my bad. When he’d said that, he smiled at the look on my face. ‘You can’t swallow that,’ he said. ‘But you will in a little while. Your good days are the seventh, sixteenth and twenty-fifth of each month: your bad days are the eighth, the seventeenth and the twenty-sixth. Bear that strictly in mind, and you’ll find I’m right.’”

  “When you came back,” said Daphne, “and told me that, I begged you to forget it, for I said such a thing was absurd.” She sighed. “In less than six months, I’d come to dread those bad days, for if anything ever goes wrong, it’s always on one of those dates.”

  “It’s painfully true,” said Berry. “And so I always take what petty precautions I can. I don’t let these rule my life, but on those days, for instance, I’m more than usually careful, if I’m to cross a street. I won’t write an important letter on one of those days. But I can’t
help receiving one. And, as sure as Fate, if bad news is on the wing, it fetches up on the eighth or on one of the other two.

  “Well, that’s the first of the things I was going to mention. This is the second…

  “I think it was on the last occasion on which we met that, under pressure, Cheiro admitted that something which was anything but pleasant was going to happen to me when I was fifty-five. (I was then, I think, forty-six.) ‘I’m bound to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I don’t like it at all.’ ‘My death?’ I said. ‘It might be. I can’t be sure. It’s a very unfortunate conjunction’ – I think that’s the word he used. He wouldn’t have told me, of course, if he hadn’t known me well. But he knew that I wasn’t the sort who’d brood on a matter like that. I never told Daphne, of course, or anyone else. But I was perfectly sure that some time during that year my life would come to an end.

  “Well, we all know it wasn’t my death that Cheiro saw. But when I was fifty-five, we had to leave Gracedieu, our justly beloved home… I may be forgiven for adding that the fall of France occurred on the seventeenth day of the month.”

  There was a little silence.

  Then Jonah lifted his voice.

  “Wasn’t he known as Count Hamon in private life?”

  “Yes. Of the Holy Roman Empire. But he was most unassuming. The last time I saw him was not long before he left for California. Before we parted, he wrote down his future address and gave it to me. ‘You might feel you wanted to write.’”

  “How very nice of him,” said Jill.

  “Yes, it was very nice. When we shook hands, he held my hand very tight. ‘I think you know,’ I said, ‘that we shan’t meet again.’ ‘I don’t think we shall,’ he said. ‘But you will go over seas.’ ‘Ah, but you’re going for good.’ ‘So will you,’ said Cheiro, ‘one of these days.’”

  “Amazing,” said Daphne.

  “Yes, he had the gift. And it wasn’t second sight – like that of Deborah Crane. He could read the report of the stars which control our destiny.”

  “What secrets he must have learned.”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Berry. “When he was in his prime, before the first war, half Society must have repaired to his house. They talk about old Sir George Lewis, and all the secrets he knew. But Cheiro’s knowledge was of another sort. Of those who consulted him, when he knew the date of their birth and had studied the palm of their hand, he knew their very nature and much of what they had done and of what they were going to do. He knew that this wife was unfaithful and that man a murderer born. He saw that X would succeed and that Y would fall by the way: that this lady of high degree would suffer a violent death: that this highly respectable peer would be sent to jail. I don’t suggest that he was infallible; sometimes, as in my case, the writing he was reading was blurred and he could not be sure of its burden: and then he said as much. What do you say of him, Boy?”

  “I agree with all you’ve said. To my mind, Cheiro was unique.”

  “Darling,” said Jill, “you know what he said to you.”

  “He said a lot, my sweet, and it all came true.”

  Jill looked round.

  “Boy only went to him once. It was when he was at the Bar. He’d written a short story or two in his spare time: but the Bar was his profession and all that he cared about. And Cheiro told him his name would be known all over the world.”

  “Astounding,” said Daphne.

  “It’s a fact,” said I. “When I protested, Cheiro only smiled. ‘There’s no doubt about it,’ he said. ‘I know I’m right.’”

  “Did he know that you wrote?”

  “No. I never told him. It never occurred to me to tell him. He knew I was at the Bar. I couldn’t understand it at all, for I couldn’t believe I should enter politics. That I should ever write for my living never even entered my head.”

  “And no one has taken Cheiro’s place?”

  “No one,” said Berry. “But Cheiro was a product of the golden age. So were Winston Churchill and Frederic Henry Royce. And Forbes Robertson and Kipling and Cromer and Cecil Rhodes.” He sighed. “I’m glad to have seen it, you know. Mark you, I’m not comparing Cheiro with giants like those. He didn’t approach them. But, in his way, he was a distinguished man; and I’m not in the least surprised that neither the chromium-plated age nor the plastic age has produced his like.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Daphne.

  Berry leaned forward.

  “You’ll never look it, but be your age, my love. The state of things in half the world today is more absurd than anything Gilbert wrote.” He shrugged his shoulders. “And please remember the adage – ‘Whom God wishes to destroy, he first sends mad.’”

  Jonah looked at me.

  “Capital punishment,” he said.

  I smiled.

  “I don’t think I’m qualified to express an opinion on that.”

  “Allow me to say,” said Berry, “that capital punishment is one of the very few things upon which you are qualified to speak. I’ll tell you why. First, for two full years you had a close acquaintance with crime. You were able to observe the demeanour of several murderers and of very many felons, charged with offences less grave. Yet the law has not been your profession for forty years. During those years you have almost certainly lost any bias you may have had: yet you have always retained the legal mind. Secondly, all your life you have studied human nature as have very few men.”

  “So be it,” said I. “One moment… No, I’m sorry. I can’t remember something. Never mind. I once had a very good text-book on Criminal Law; and I remember that it had a chapter on Punishment. I also remember that it set out the four objects of punishment. Unfortunately, I can only remember three of them. Here they are…

  “First, to deter the potential criminal. Secondly, to inflict upon the offender a just penalty for his crime. Thirdly, to assuage the feelings of the person or persons injured by the crime.”

  “Very interesting,” said Berry. “And if you ventured to declare that last object in public today, you would be branded as a barbarian.”

  “I know. Such hypocrisy is the vogue. To desire that the brute who saw fit to murder your wife or child should receive his deserts is a natural, healthy emotion, of which no man need be ashamed. It is, of course, a priest’s duty to remind the bereaved that they must try to forgive him: but it ill becomes the odd layman to denounce as improper an outlook which many a priest would find it hard to condemn.

  “But that is all by the way.

  “Arguments for and against the rope bring us straight to the old, old question – Which of the two do you propose to consider, the community or the convict? Boil it down and skim off the emotional scum, and it’s just as simple as that. If you are to consider the community, then, for every reason, the man should be hanged.

  “Before I go any further, perhaps I should say just this. In such a matter, statistics prove nothing at all. They are completely valueless, and as such not evidence.

  “Hanging is an immense deterrent: of that, to my mind, there is no question at all. And I think I know the outlook of the criminal class rather better than the most fervent abolitionists. Those who insist that hanging is barbarous, seem to ignore the barbarity committed by felons every day – murder, attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, aggravated assault and the rest. If these crimes are to be discouraged, then not only should hanging be retained, but flogging should be commonly awarded. ‘Barbarous’ again, of course. But I am thinking of the community. And I say here and now that if murderers were regularly hanged and flogging was awarded for all other brutal crimes, in six months’ time the crimes of violence would have fallen by eighty per cent. Of that, I am as certain as that I’m sitting here.

  “Finally, the question of mistake. It is, of course, perfectly clear that, once a man has been hanged, you cannot restore him to life: so that, if a mistake has been made, it is irreparable. On this point let me say, first, that I have yet to learn that in the last sixty years any innocent man has bee
n hanged. And that, secondly, bearing in mind the value of hanging as a deterrent, it is better that one innocent man should suffer that shameful death than that scores of innocent people should lose their lives at the hands of brutes who have no gallows to fear.

  “Now, if some people were to hear what I’ve said, they would load me with abuse, quote from Holy Writ and support with a cloud of clichés their horror and indignation. My withers would be unwrung. To such, I would suggest that they apply to Scotland Yard for permission to inspect the photographs, now usually taken, of the unhappy subject of murder before their poor clay is removed. That might divert a little of the sympathy which they lavish upon a convict, who is unfit to live, to his innocent victim and the family so brutally bereft. They might even compare in their minds the quick, clean end on the scaffold with the agony of the death struggles to which their hero has subjected his prey.

  Certain politicians still flaunt that catch-penny jewel of jargon, ‘To make the world safe for democracy’ – incidentally, I do hope they’re pleased with the results they have so far achieved: but if we were to flog and hang, we should at least make England safe for honest men.”

  “Insanity,” said Jonah.

  “Ah,” said I. “More than two-thirds of the murderers found insane are no more insane than you or I. They plead insanity in the hope of avoiding the gallows.”

  “And the remedy for that?”

  “Is very simple. First, can anyone suggest that a homicidal maniac is fit to live? Well, the obvious answer is ‘No’. But if he is truly insane, then it is unfair to stigmatize him with the rope. So a modified sentence of death should be passed and he should be painlessly destroyed in some other way. Secondly, make the plea of insanity equivalent to a plea of guilty. You wouldn’t get many pleas of insanity then: and quite a lot of felons would come to their proper end.”

  “Allow me,” said Berry, “to felicitate you upon every word that you’ve said. Many people would call you outspoken and worse than that. The truth is that all you have said is hard, common sense. But few today have the courage to face the facts.”