The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (11 page)

I often used to watch Mona Cailey after she was installed at
the Hindhead nursing home. In spite of its masklike
expressionlessness, her face had character. The clearly cut
features, firm mouth, and fine eyes were fitting abode for a soul
of no ordinary calibre--only that soul was not present.

It was Taverner's expectation that the other actors in the
drama would appear upon the scene before very long, brought to
the girl's vicinity by those strange currents that are for ever on
the move beneath the surface of life. As each new patient arrived
at the nursing home, I used to watch Mona Cailey narrowly,
wondering whether the newcomer would demand of her the
payment of the ancient debt that held her bound.

Spring passed into summer and nothing happened. Other
cases distracted my attention, and I had almost forgotten the girl
and her problems when Taverner reminded me of them.

"It is time we began to watch Miss Cailey," he said. "I have
been working out her horoscope, and a conjunction of planets is
taking place towards the end of the month which would provide
an opportunity for the working out

of her fate--if we can get her to take it."

"Supposing she does not take it?"

"Then she will not be long in going out, for she will have
failed to achieve the purpose of this incarnation."

"And supposing she takes it?"

"Then she will suffer, but she will be free, and she will soon
rise again to the heights she had previously gained."

"She is hardly likely to belong to a royal house in this life," I
said.

"She was more than royal; she was an Initiate," replied
Taverner, and from the way he said the word I knew he spoke of
a royalty that is not of this earth.

Our words were suddenly interrupted by a cry from one of
the upper rooms. It was a shriek of utter terror such as a soul
might give that had looked into chaos and seen forbidden
horrors; it was the cry of a child in nightmare, only--and this
added to its ghastliness--it came from the throat of a man.

We rushed upstairs; we had no need to ask whence that cry
came; there was only one case that could have uttered it--a poor
fellow suffering from shell-shock whom we were keeping in bed
for a rest.

We found him standing in the middle of the floor, shaking
from head to foot. At sight of us he rushed across and flung
himself into Taverner's arms. It was the pathetic action of a
frightened child, but carried out by the tall figure in striped
pyjamas, it was extraordinarily distressing to witness.

Taverner soothed him as gently as a mother, and got him
back to bed, sitting by him until he quieted down.

"I do not think we will keep him in bed any longer," said my
colleague after we had left the room. "The inactivity is making
him brood, and he is living over again the scenes of the
trenches."

Accordingly, Howson appeared among the patients next day
for the first time since his arrival, and seemed to benefit by the
change.

ours, until my colleague put his hand on my shoulder one
evening as the two were crossing the lawn towards the house.

"Who is that with Mona Cailey?" he asked.

"Howson, of course," I replied, surprised at the obviousness
of such a question.

"So we call him now," said Taverner, watching the pair
closely, "but I think there was a time when he answered to the
name of Giovanni Sigmundi."

"You mean--?" I exclaimed.

"Exactly," said Taverner. "The wheel has come round the
full circle. When he was dying by torture in the hands of those to
whom she betrayed him, he called for her in his agony. Needless
to say, she did not come. Now that he is in agony again, some
strange law of mental habit carried the call for help along the old
channels, and she has answered it. She has begun to repay her
debt. If all goes well, we may see that soul come right back into
its body, and it will not be a small soul that comes into the flesh
if that happens."

I had thought that we were going to witness a romance of
reunited lovers, but I was soon made aware that it was more
likely to be a tragedy for one at least of them.

Next day Howson's fiancee arrived to visit him. I took her
out to the secluded part of the garden where he spent his time,
and there saw enacted a most pathetic little tragicomedy. As
usual, Howson was at Mona Cailey's side, smoking his
interminable cigarettes. At sight of his fiancee he sprang to his
feet; Mona Cailey also rose. In the eyes of the newcomer there
were fear and distrust, perhaps occasioned by her unfamiliarity
with mental cases, which are always distressing at first sight, but
in the eyes of our defective there was a look which I can only
describe as contempt. There was one flash of the astute
ruthlessness of the fifteenth century Italian, and I guessed who
the newcomer was.

Howson, forgetful of the other girl's presence, advanced

eagerly to meet his fiancee and kissed her, and I thought for a
moment we were going to be treated to one of those nasty
outbursts of spitefulness of which defectives are capable, when a
sudden change came over Mona Cailey, and I saw that
marvellous thing, a soul enter and take possession of its body.

Intelligence slowly dawned in the misty eyes as she watched
the scene being enacted before her. For a moment the issue hung
in the balance; would she rush forward and tear them apart, or
would she stand aside? Behind the oblivious lovers I poised
myself for a spring, ready to catch her if necessary. For ages we
waited thus while the unpracticed brain moved reluctantly in its
unaccustomed effort.

Then the girl turned away slowly. Over the grass she moved,
silently, unnoticed by the other two, seeking the shelter of the
shrubberies as a wounded animal seeks cover, but her
movements were no longer those of unguided limbs; she moved
as a woman moves who has walked before kings, but as a
woman stricken to the heart.

I followed her as she passed under the trees and put my hand
on her arm, instinctively speaking words of comfort, although I
expected no response. She turned on me dark eyes full of unshed
tears and luminous with a terrible knowledge.

"It has to be," she said distinctly, perfectly, the first words
she had ever uttered. Then she withdrew her arm from my hand
and went on alone.

During the days that followed we watched the soul swing in
and out of the body. Sometimes we had the mindless imbecile,
and sometimes we had one of those women who have made
history. Save that her means of communication developed
slowly, she was often in full possession of her faculties. And
what faculties they were! I had read of the wonderful women of
the Renaissance--now I saw one.

Then, sometimes, when the pain of her position became too
great to be borne, the soul would slip out for a while and rest in
some strange Elysian fields we know not of,

leaving to us again the care of the mindless body. But each
time it came back refreshed. Whom it had talked with, what help
had been given, we never knew; but each time it faced the agony
of reincarnation and took up its burden with renewed courage
and knowledge.

The dim, newly-awakened mind understood Howson through
and through; each twist and turn of him, conscious and
subconscious, she could follow, and of course she was the most
perfect nurse he could have had. The panic-stricken mind was
never allowed to thrash about in outer darkness and the horror of
death. Instinctively she sensed the approach of nightmare forms,
and putting out her hand, pulled the wandering soul back into
safety.

Thus protected from the wear and tear of his terrible storms,
Howson's mind began to heal. Day by day the time drew nearer
when he would be fit to leave the nursing home and marry the
woman he was engaged to, and day by day, by her instinctive
skill and watchful care, Mona Cailey quickened the approach of
that time.

I have said that he would leave and marry the woman he was
engaged to--not the woman he loved--for at that time had
Mona Cailey chosen to lift one finger she could have brought the
old memories into consciousness and drawn Howson to herself;
and that she was fully aware of this, I who watched her, am
convinced. An ignorant woman could not have steered round the
pitfalls as skilfully as she did.

The night before he was to leave she had a bad relapse into
her old condition. Hour after hour Taverner and I sat beside her
while she scarcely seemed to breathe, so completely was the
soul withdrawn from the body.

"She is shut up in her own subconsciousness, moving among
the memories of the past," Taverner whispered to me, as slight
twitchings ran through the motionless form on the bed.

Then a change took place.

"Ah," said Taverner, "she is out now!"

Slowly the long white hand was raised--the hand that I had
watched change from a limp thing of disgust to firmness and
strength, and a sequence of knocks was given upon the wall at
the bedside that would have skinned the knuckles of an ordinary
hand.

"She is claiming entrance to her Lodge," whispered
Taverner. "She will give the Word as soon as the knocks are
acknowledged."

From somewhere up near the ceiling the sequence of knocks
was repeated, and then Taverner placed his hand across the
girl's mouth. Through the guarding fingers came some muffled
sound I could not make out.

"She will get what she has gone to seek," said Taverner. "It is
a high Degree to which she is claiming admission."

What transpired during the workings of that strange Lodge
which meets out of the body I had no means of knowing. I could
see that Taverner, however, with his telepathic faculties, was
able to follow the ritual, for he joined in the responses and
salutes.

As the uncanny ceremony drew to its close we saw the soul
that was known to us as Mona Cailey withdraw from the
company of its brethren and, plane by plane, return to normal
consciousness. On her face was that look of peace which I had
never before seen in the living, and only on the faces of such of
the dead as went straight out into the Light.

"She has gathered strength for her ordeal," said Taverner,
"and it will indeed be an ordeal, for Howson's fiancee is
fetching him in her car."

"Will it be wise to let Miss Cailey be present?" I asked. "She
must go through with it," said Taverner. "It is better to break
than to miss an opportunity."

He was a man who never spared his patients when there was
a question of fate to be worked out. He thought less of death
than most people think of emigration; in fact, he seemed to
regard it in exactly that light.

"Once you have had some memory glimpse, however dim, of
your own past, you are certain of your future; therefore you
cease to fear life. Supposing I make a mess of an experiment
today, I clear up the mess, go to bed, sleep, and then, in the
morning when I am rested, I start again. You do the same with
your lives when once you are sure of reincarnation. It is only the
man who does not realize as a personal fact the immortality of
the soul who talks of a ruined life and opportunities gone never
to return."