The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (22 page)

The days were lengthening towards the longest day; it would
soon be three months since Diana returned to her own place, and
I began to wonder how much longer Taverner would keep our
now entirely cured patient, but he gave no sign. I began to feel,
however, that Diana was now no longer a patient, but that I had
become one, and that I was being closely watched in anticipation
of a crisis that was imminent. Some abscess of the soul had to
come to a head before it could be lanced, and Taverner was
awaiting the process.

The idea was slowly growing in my mind that I might marry
Diana; marriage did not express the relationship I wished to
establish, but I could see no other course open to me; I did not
wish to possess her, I only wanted our present relationship to
continue, and that I should be free to come and go with her
without running the gauntlet of censorius eyes. Taverner, I felt,
knew this and fought it, and I could not see why. I could
understand his objection to my compromising Diana, but I did
not see why he should oppose my marriage to her. My brain,
however, was in abeyance in these days, my thoughts were a
series of pictures fading into each other like a phantasmagoria,
and they told me afterwards that my speech had reverted to the
simplicities of early childhood.

But still Taverner waited, biding his time.

The crisis came suddenly. As the sun was setting upon the
evening of the longest day Diana appeared upon the steps of the
office window and beckoned me out. She appeared
extraordinarily beautiful, with the burning sky, behind her; the
bright fluffed hair caught the level light and shone like an
aureole as she stood with her strangely eloquent hands
beckoning me out into the gathering dusk. I knew that there was
in prospect such a race across the, heather as had never yet been,
and at the end of it I should meet the Powers she worshipped
face to face, and that from that meeting my body might return to
the house, but my soul would never enter the habitations of men
again. It would remain out there in the open, with Diana and her
people. I knew all this, and with the inner vision could see the
gathering of the clans that was even now taking place.

Diana's hands called to me, and as if drawn by a spell, I rose
slowly from my desk. Diana, thing of air, was calling me out to
run with her. But I was not a thing of air, I was a man of flesh
and blood, and in a flash of revelation I saw Diana as a beautiful
woman and I knew that she was not the woman for me; to part of
my nature she called, but she did not call to the whole of me, and
I knew that the best in me would remain unmated and
uncompanioned if I were to join Diana.

It did Diana no harm to return to Nature, because she was not
capable of greater things, but there was more in me than the
instincts, and I might not so return without loss to my higher
self. The room was lined with books, the door leading into the
laboratory stood open and the characteristic smell of the blended
drugs came to me. "Smells are surer than sights or sounds to
make your heartstrings crack." Had the wind been the other way,
had the smell of the pines blown in at the open window, I think I
should have gone with Diana, but it was the odour of the labora-
tory that came to me, and with it the memory of all that I had
hoped to make of my life, and I dropped back into my chair and
buried my face in my arms.

When I raised my head again the last light of the sunset had
gone, and so had Diana.

That night my sleep was heavy and dreamless, which was a
great relief, for of late it had been troubled by strange, almost
physical impressions, the phantasies of the day becoming the
realities of the darkness; but with my rejection of Diana a spell
seemed to break, and when I awoke in the morning it was to a
normality to which I had been a stranger for many a day. My
grip on the organization of the home had come back to me, and I
felt as one who had been in exile in a foreign country and has at
length returned to his native land.

Diana I did not see for several days for she had again taken to
the heather, and rumours of raids upon gardens and fowl houses
by a particularly ingenious and elusive gypsy explained why she
did not even return to be fed.

My conscience pricking me for my recent lapse, I took upon
myself the somewhat arduous task of taking Tennant out for
walks, for since his attempt at suicide we had not dared to let
him go about alone. It was a dreary business, for Tennant never
spoke unless he was addressed, and then only employed the
unavoidable minimum of speech. He had certainly made no
progress during the months he had been at the nursing home, and
I was surprised that Taverner had kept him so long, for he
usually declined to keep any case which he considered hopeless.
I therefore concluded that he had hopes for Tennant, though in
what direction they lay he did not confide to me.

We swung over the heather paths in the direction of
Frensham, and I suddenly realized to my annoyance, that we
were following Diana's favourite trail to the little fir-wood of
magic and ill omen. I would willingly have avoided it if I could,
for I did not wish to be reminded of certain incidents which I felt
it was better for my peace of mind that I should forget, but there
was no alternative unless we waded for a mile or two through
knee-deep heather. In the light shadow of the trees we paused,
Tennant gazing up the long shafts of the trunks into the dark
tufted crests that looked like islands in the sky.

"Wendy's house in the tree tops!" I heard him say to',
himself, oblivious of my presence, and I guessed that his weary
soul would love to sleep for ever in the rocking cradle of the
branches. The sun drew all the incense from the firs, and the sky
had that intense Italian blue that is often seen over these great
wastes; a warm wind blew softly over the heather, bringing the
sound of innumerable bees and faraway sheep; we flung
ourselves down on the sun-warmed earth, and even Tennant, for
once, seemed happy. As for me, every breath I drew of that
warm radiant air brought peace and healing to my spirit.

Tennant propped against a tree, hat off, shirt open, and head
thrown back against the rough red bark, sat gazing into the blue
distance and whistling softly between his teeth. I lay flat on my
back among the pine needles, and I think I went to sleep. At any
rate I never heard the approach of Diana, nor was aware of her
presence until I raised my head. She lay at Tennant's feet gazing
into his face with the unblinking steadiness of an animal, and he
was whistling as softly as before, but with an exquisite,
flute-like tone, those strange cadences of his that had been the
origin of all my trouble. I thought of the older Greek world of
centaurs and Titans, who ranged and ruled before Zeus and his
court made heaven human. Tennant was not even primitive, he
was pre-Adamic. As for Diana, she was no daughter of Eve, but
of the Dark Lilith who preceded her, and I realized that those
two were of the same world and belonged to each other. A
twinge of the old wound shot through me at this realization, and
also a twinge of envy, for theirs was a happier lot than our
civilized bondage, but I lay quiet, watching their idyll.

The shadows of the firs lay far out over the heather before I
roused Tennant for our return to earth, and as we came back
through the golden evening light, Diana came with us.

When I told Taverner of this incident, over our usual
after-dinner smoking, half report, half gossip, I saw that it was
no surprise to him.

"I hoped that would happen," he said. "It is the only possible
solution to the case that I can think of, but what will her family
say?"

"I think they will say, `Praise the Lord,' and economize over
her trousseau," I replied, and my prophecy proved correct.

It was the queerest wedding I ever saw. The parson,
thoroughly uncomfortable, but afraid to refuse to perform the
ceremony; the upholstered mother and her friends trying hard to
do the thing properly; the bridegroom's relatives, whose attempt
to get him certified at the eleventh hour had been baulked by
Taverner, furiously watching ten thousand pounds of trust
moneys passing out of their keeping; a bride who looked like a
newly-caught wild thing, and who would have bolted out of the
church if Taverner had not shown her very clearly that he was
prepared for such a manoeuvre and would not permit it; and a
bridegroom who was far away in some heaven of his own, and
upon whose face was a glory that never shone on land or sea.

The departure of the happy couple upon their honeymoon
was a sight for the gods, whom I am convinced were present. All
the wedding guests in their wedding garments were drawn up
about the front door, when out came Diana in her Puck's tunic
and bolted like a rabbit down the drive; at a more sober pace
followed her spouse leading a donkey upon who back was
packed a tent and from whose flanks dangled cooking pots.

Surrounded by the broadcloth of the men and the silks of the
women, and against the background of the clipped laurels of the
shrubbery they looked incongruous, daft, degenerate, everything
their relatives said they were, but the minute they had passed the
gate and set foot upon the black soil of the moor, there was a
change. Great Presences came to meet them, and whether they
perceived Them or not, a silence fell upon the wedding party.

In ten seconds the moor took them, man, girl, and" donkey
fading into its grey-browns in the most amazing fashion, as if
they had simply ceased to exist. They had gone to their own
place, and their own place had made them welcome. A
civilization with which they had nothing to do would never
again have the power to torture and imprison them for being
different. In dead silence the wedding party went in to eat its
wedding breakfast and no one remembered to give any toasts.

We heard no more of the wayfarers until the following
spring, when there came a tap upon the office window after
lights out," which instantly put me in mind of Diana. It was not
she, however, but her husband. Taverner was absent, but in
response to a brief request I accompanied my summoner. We
had not far to go; the little brown tent was pitched almost under
the lea of our wood, and I saw in an instant why I had been
summoned, though there was little need to summon me, for the
Nature-gods can look after their own, it is only we superior
beings who have to be dragged into the world by the scruff of
our necks; the gates of life swung upon easy hinges, and in a few
minutes a little granddaughter of Pan lay in my hands, a little,
new-made perfection, save for the tufted ears. I wondered what
new breed of mortals had been introduced into our troubled old
world to disturb its civilization.

"Oh, Taverner," I thought, "what will the future hold you
responsible for? Will it rank you with the man who introduced
rabbits into Australia. . . or with Prometheus?"

*************************************

The Subletting of the Mansion

"Build thou more stately mansions, O my soul--"

The post bag of the nursing home was always sent to the
village when the gardeners departed at six, so if any belated
letter-writer desired to communicate with the outer world at a
later hour, he had to walk to the pillar box at the cross roads
with his own missives. As I had little time for my private
letter-writing during the day, the dusk usually saw me with a
cigar and a handful of letters taking my after-dinner stroll in that
direction.