Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (277 page)

It is not, of course, to be imagined that the Prince had caused what could be called a sensation in London Society. He would not have been so exactly right if he had done anything so vulgar. But he was undoubtedly there, as you might say, on the horizon. Any one would be glad to have him, and if he did not perform any monkey tricks or preach sermons so much the better, because there were already such a lot of things to be got through. When, indeed, at Lady Aldington’s, some one had recounted exploits of this stranger who had been let loose by Eugene upon the town, various voices at the dinner-table exclaimed in various keys of want of interest, various ejaculations, running up from “How quaint!” to “How ripping it would be to be able to do things like that!”

It was only Mrs. Courtneidge Roberts with her dreamy, flushed, and rather dishevelled beauty who exclaimed —

“It’s all true. Every word of it! He’s a God!”

Mrs. Courtneidge Roberts was so usually accepted as making the most outrageous remarks that no one very much noted what she said. But no one doubted her when she said it was all true. Why should not the man have changed hearts, read thoughts, made music sound? It was not anybody’s business to prevent him, and somebody must have the power to do these things, or how would the world get along? The Bishop of Lewes — who had been Bishop of Banbury for six months — and was sitting there at the right hand of Lady Aldington, a dear old man, said that indeed, in India, he had seen things of the sort that were quite inexplicable. And weren’t there the Krakroffs at the Esmeralda, and a score of others?

Mrs. Lympere, however, who stayed after the dinner, was over to talk with Lady Aldington — for they were drawn together by sorrows, however different in kind, and had been intimate for years — Mrs. Lympere, talking till far into the night with the fair, clear-featured, and impassive wife of the Dictator, discussed for more than an hour if it were possible for a man to change the hearts of other men. And she ended in —

“If he only could! Oh, if he only could!”

And Lady Aldington, looking straight and expressionlessly before her, said —

“Yes; but it’s only God who could do that”; and she added —

“God has too good a time of it, Kitty, to care for the likes of you and me.”

CHAPTER II
I

IT was indeed this midnight conversation of Mrs. Milne with his wife that caused Lord Aldington to slap Arthur Bracondale jovially but with weight upon the shoulder.

“You’ve brought us the very man,” he said. “How did you do it? He knows more about these things than any one in the world, Lady Aldington tells me,” and he added to the boy —

“Bring his Highness up at once! At once! Quick, like the snuff of a candle!” And his words and manner indicated at once his kindness to the little fellow, and his immense and almost filial attachment to the crystal-clear intellect of his wife. For Lady Aldington had said to him that morning —

“If this man could only change your heart, Ernest; if he could only make you a little less rash. You know you can’t live long at this rate.”

He had been afraid to slap
her
on the shoulder, though no action of his could have better expressed his satisfaction with her.

“Yes, your Ladyship,” he had said, with a jovial flourish of his hat, “it won’t be long before you have me to wheel about in a perambulator.” For thus did this ruler of men jest in the face of the fear that mastered alike him and his impassive wife! It would not be long before she wheeled him about in a perambulator!

“Anyhow, Hirmony,” he had said, “I’ve sworn over your crossed wrists that I would not take on any new ventures. And I won’t.” And underlying Lord Aldington’s delight in the opportunity that he hoped for of having a real specialist in telepathy to advise him whether or no it would be a safe thing to run the Krakroffs as his silly-season boom, there lay the huge hope that this man — who was said to possess such odd powers — might not prove to be a supernatural physician. For somewhere, he thought, in the momentary flashes of introspection that he had time to give to things outside the Thames Embankment — somewhere, undoubtedly, there must exist a man who could change hearts. And if he could change hearts, why not the more fragile veins and tentacles of the human frame? Had not the power to inspire faith and the power to heal gone always together? For always, when he was at his most triumphant, at his most buoyant — at that moment when he stood more or less genially laughing as on the morning when he had had interviewing him and as it were at his beck and call the secretaries of two members of the Cabinet — he had lurking at the back of his mind and changing his most loud horse-laugh to a sudden quiver, he had that black thought — the fragile veins, the tiny tentacles of his brain that one day — in the very next second perhaps — would give way. And then — the perambulator! What was the good of his promising his wife to refrain from new ventures? How dare he! They were killing him perhaps, but could he afford to have a single unoccupied moment and let thought creep in? No, he must go on. And in his self-pitying mind, nurtured on cheap fiction and fortified with the classical lore of a good grammar school, he considered himself to be a tragic figure. He was envied, he was maligned — but could any of his defamers know him as he was? Would not they, he asked himself, see him as a sort of Midas, a being running furiously before a remorseless Nemesis, and, as he ran, turning furiously all that he touched to gold?

He uttered loudly and with a huge cordiality, “Now come! Come right in! You are the first person below a sovereign prince that has been admitted to this room whilst we were debating about the paper.”

He imagined that this statement — which was not true — was of a sort to win to his favour any man in the world.

“And how do you know” — he got his answer—”that my station is below that of a sovereign prince?”

There was about all the men in the room — and Arthur Bracondale caught it from them — an air of standing very well back on the heel, of being very long in the leg — except Mr. Krakroff, who was physically unable to have that air — of being braced up one against the other. And this new prince — this changer of hearts — had almost more than this family likeness. For he bore himself as if he were so conscious he was able to throw off any figurative attack that he did not even need to keep an eye upon any one. He walked straight up to Arthur Bracondale, the school teacher following in his shadow — he was put down in the room as an equerry — and said —

“You desired me to come. What can I aid you in?”

And Lord Aldington, who was always perfectly willing, except when it did not serve his turn, to take a second place, allowed Arthur Bracondale to answer —

“There is a remarkable séance taking place here. Lord Aldington wanted your advice about it. Thanks for coming.” And he added, “Awfully!”

Lord Sandgate, looking at their two profiles, suddenly as it were scored Arthur Bracondale to his co-proprietor. The young man was all right! He had had the power to bring this man here. He had functioned; he had done something. But he passed his distrust on to the stranger; somebody he
had
to distrust, and he made up his mind that he would disagree with whatever this Circassian advised. Lord Sandgate, indeed, had never got over his own getting on to the paper. Aldington had collared
him
too; had, as it were, stuffed his pockets with shares and stuck him there. And he could not — though he had given up mistrusting Aldington — do anything but consider his partner mad. As for this new fellow — he
must
be a Circassian; he was too well bred, too well groomed, and had an air of being too handsome to be anything else.

Lord Aldington was saying —

“We are all interested, here...” when Mrs. Lympere cried out —

“Oh, Prince, do come and sit by me. We met at Mrs. Durham’s, and I’ve something I want to ask you so much,” and she moved slightly a chair at her side.

The Prince moved to it, and having pointed to the incurious Lady Sandgate in lieu of introduction, Mrs. Lympere was beginning —

“They say...”

But Lord Aldington broke in with his powerful organ —

“My dear Gertrude, be a little considerate; you can talk to him as much as you like, afterwards. But just consider; the paper’s got to be printed some time to-night, and we want his advice. Just give
us
a chance.”

“I am in your hands,” the stranger said.

“It’s like this,” the great man explained. “This Mr. Krakroff is performing certain experiments before us. If they satisfy us — I’ll say if they satisfy
you
— that they are worthy of receiving public attention, well, they’ll get all the weight the paper’s got to draw it to them.”

“And his young friend...” Lord Sandgate said, pointing past the school teacher at the bank clerk.

“Of course, of course!” Lord Aldington said. “Bracondale will have the job of describing them.”

“You utter these words, I perceive,” the Prince said, “as an inducement to me to favour this project, which it is obvious that all of you desire to see put into execution. But that is hardly necessary, for you should know that what you deem worthy of interest, that your public will attend to with avidity.”

“That is hardly the point,” Lord Aldington said.

“Surely it is the point,” he got his answer; “but let it in no wise interfere with the performance of these experiments, which have an interest for me and are so agreeable to yourselves....”

Lord Aldington looked around at his guests and then at Krakroff.

“What will you do?” he said. “And remember that you have an expert in telepathy to deal with now.”

Krakroff considered for a moment, and then, pressing his elbows to his side, threw out both his white and fat hands in the attitude of a waiter offering any item of the menu to his guests.

“I am in ze hands of ze comp’ny,” he said, and his dark glance travelled from Lady Sandgate to Arthur Bracondale. After the silence usual to a company confronted by such an offer, Lady Sandgate said nonchalantly —

“Why not ask him to do over again exactly what he did before? Our new friends will know then just where we are.”

Krakroff appeared again to consider, his black eyes upon the carpet. When he raised them it was to say—”Yes, that will do vair well, vair well. Only in addeetion...” And he proceeded in a half-comprehensible jargon to say that he would so arrange it that one of the two gentlemen should perform the operation that Lord Sandgate before had performed, without being told of what it was that he should do — and he cast a swift but very tentative glance at the Prince beside Mrs. Lympere.

Mrs. Lympere exclaimed —

“Oh yes! Oh yes! Prince, will you do it?”

“Madam,” the Prince said, “it should be apparent to you that that would ill accord with the fitness of things. For either I must subordinate my will to that of this person, which is unthinkable, or I must cause his operation to fail, which I do not desire, since he appears to be a brave man.”

The face of Krakroff brightened imperceptibly, as indeed did those of the others, who felt that the Prince had come with dignity out of the ordeal.

“Then the ozzer gentleman!” Krakroff appealed to Alfred Milne: “Come, sir. Do a thing!
Anything!
” Alfred Milne moved a pace forward into the room; his face was dull, his eyes heavy. He came towards the Prince, raised one hand, and faltered. The others regarded him with open lips; a look of concern was on Krakroffs pale features. But suddenly it cleared, and, no eyes being upon him, he smiled a quick smile of insolent satisfaction.

Alfred Milne had turned upon his heel; he surveyed the mantelpiece and took from beneath the frame of the Romney the yellow matchbox.

An “Ah!” of relief came from all the assembly.

And when, having counted the matches into his palm, he replaced it on the mantelpiece, triumphant voice broke from Mr. Putz, whilst Bracondale pressed the bell-push.

“The significance — the wonderful significance of what we have all observed,” he said, “must be evident to the meanest intelligence! Here in the one room we have one soul-spouse; in another room, Mr. Krakroff does not even know where, is seated the soul-sister; it may be six rooms away, it may be below his feet; yet unerringly she tells what is passing in his mind. What can we consider this to be short of the miraculous? And I am ready, Lord Aldington, to make this offer....”

He cleared his throat; his huskiness was about to leave him. But at the centre door appeared again the tired man with the reddish hair.

“Madame Krakroff says: ‘Mantelpiece; matchbox; seventeen matches, one broken.’”

“A miracle!” Mr. Putz’s voice dominated the assembly. “A glimpse into the unknown. That’s what I call it.”

Lord Sandgate uttered in his dry and suspicious tones—”I think if Mr. Putz and the other gentleman would withdraw we might debate the subject Mr. Putz’s impressions could be recorded in an interview if we decide in his favour.”