The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (27 page)

Recalled

"Be off with the old love e'er you're on with the new."

"How many people are there in the waiting room, Bates?"
enquired Taverner of the butler at the end of a long day in the
Harley Street consulting room.

"Two, sir," answered that functionary. "A lady and a
gentleman."

"Ah," said Taverner. "Well show the lady in."

"I think they came together, sir."

"Then show the gentleman in. A man never brings his wife
on these expeditions," he added to me. "She comes with a
friend; but a man will let his wife bring him, he being the weaker
sex and in need of protection where his nerves are concerned."

They arrived together, however, in spite of Taverner's
instructions, and the butler announced them as Colonel and Mrs.
Eustace. He was a tall, fine looking man, much bronzed by
tropical suns, and she was one of those women who make one
proud of one's race, slender, graceful, with the controlled fire of
a thoroughbred, the fruit of many generations of refining shelter
and worthy pride. They made a fine pair, such as the society
papers love to picture, and they both looked perfectly healthy.

It was the wife who opened the ball.

"We, that is, my husband, wants to consult you, Dr.
Taverner, about a matter which has disturbed us lately--a
recurring nightmare."

Taverner bowed. The husband never spoke. I gathered that he
had been dragged here against his will.

"I always know when it's coming," Mrs. Eustace continued,
"because he begins to mutter in his sleep; then he speaks louder
and louder, and finally he leaps up, rushes across the room, and
crashes into the furniture before I can do anything to stop him;
and then wakes up in a dreadful state, don't you, Tony?" she
demanded, turning to the silent man at her side.

Meeting with no response from him, she again took up the
burden of her story.

"As soon as I realized that the nightmare was recurring
regularly I took to rousing him at the first sign of disturbance,
and this proved fairly effective, for it prevented the rush across
the room, but we neither of us dared go to sleep again till
daylight. In fact, to be frank with you doctor, I seem to be
catching it."

"You also have the nightmare?" asked Taverner. "No, not the
actual nightmare, but an indefinable sense of dread, as if some
dangerous enemy were threatening."

"What does your husband say when he talks in his sleep?"

"Ah, that I cannot tell you, for he speaks in one of the native
dialects. I suppose I ought to learn it, ought I not, Tony? For we
shall be going to India next trooping season."

"It will not be necessary," replied her husband, "for we shall
not be returning to that district." His pleasant, cultured voice
was in keeping with his appearance; he was a type of the
administrator of empire who is fast dying out. Such men will not
submit themselves to a native democracy.

Taverner fired a question at him suddenly. "What do you
dream about?" he demanded, looking him straight in the eyes.
One felt the barriers go up in an instant, but he answered with
the control that breeding teaches. "The usual sort of thing,
bogeys, you know; want to run and can't. I ought to have left all
such things behind in the nursery."

I am no psychic, but I knew that he was lying, and that he had
no intention of confiding anything to anybody. He had come to
Taverner in order to quiet his wife, not because he desired help.
He had probably got his own ideas as to the nature of his
affliction, and they were such that he did not care to voice them.

Taverner turned to the wife again. "You say that the
nightmare communicates itself to you? May I ask you to detail
the nature of your sensations?"

Mrs. Eustace looked at her husband and hesitated. "My
husband thinks I am very imaginative," she said.

"Never mind," said Taverner, "tell me your imagination"

"I am wide awake, of course, after--after the disturbance--
and sometimes I imagine I have seen a native woman in dark
blue draperies with gold sequins dangling on her forehead and
many bracelets on her arms, and she seems very excited and
distressed and to be trying to talk to my husband, and then when
I interfere and rouse him, she tries to push me away. It is after I
rouse him that I have the sense of malignancy, as if someone
were trying to injure me if they could only manage it."

"I am afraid," said Colonel Eustace, "that I have thoroughly
alarmed my wife."

We turned and looked at him in involuntary surprise; his
voice had entirely changed its timbre. The self-control of his
breed could hold the muscles of the face steady, but could not
prevent that tensing of the whole frame under stress which sent
the pitch of his voice up half an octave and gave a metallic edge
to its tones.

"I suppose," he continued, as if anxious to distract our
attention, "that you will prescribe open air and exercise; in fact
that is just my own idea, and we have been thinking of going to
the Kent coast for golf, so I dare say that the sooner we get off
the better. There is no use in hanging about in London without a
reason."

"You forget, dear," said his wife, "that I have to open the
exhibition of native art on Saturday."

"Oh yes, of course," he answered hastily, "must stop over
Saturday, go down on Monday."

There was a pause. The interview seemed to have come to a
dead end. Mrs. Eustace looked appealing from her husband to

Taverner and back again, but the one could not, and the other
would not assist her. I felt that she had hoped great things of a
visit to Taverner, and that, disappointed, she had no other card to
play against the fate that was enveloping her. I also thought that
her eyes had in them a look of apprehension.

Taverner broke the silence at last.

"If Colonel Eustace ever cares to consult me," he said, "I
shall be very glad to assist him, because I think I could be of
service to him."

Our unwilling patient sat up at this home thrust and opened
his mouth as if to speak, but Taverner, turning to the wife,
continued.

"And if Mrs. Eustace should ever be in need of my assist-
ance, it is equally at her disposal."

"I trust there is little likelihood of that," said her husband,
rising. "She is in excellent health."

And Bates opening the door in response to Taverner's ring,
we bowed them out.

"An unsatisfactory blighter," I remarked as the door closed
behind them.

"Not ready yet," said Taverner. "He has a few things to learn
in the course of evolution, and unless I am much mistaken, he
will be learning them very shortly. Then we may hear from him
again. Never make the mistake of confusing unripe fruit with
bad fruit."

We heard of them again, and sooner than even Taverner
expected, when a couple of days later I threw across to him an
evening paper which contained the announcement that Mrs.
Eustace, owing to her sudden indisposition, would not be
opening the exhibition of Indian Art at the Aston Galleries as
announced, but that the task would be performed by some other
social luminary.

"Of course it may be the flu," I said.

"Or the colic," said Taverner.

"Or even housemaid's knee," he added, for he was not
communicative to sceptics.

The next move did not come as soon as I expected, who was
looking for Colonel Eustace every time the bell rang, but in the
end he appeared, and it was obvious to the most casual glance
that he had been through a good deal in the interval.

The way he lay back in his chair showed that he was at the
end of his tether, mental and physical, and Taverner relieved him
of the effort of opening the conversation.

"How did you come to hear of me?" he asked. "I always
thought my light was adequately bushelled from all except those
of the same way of thinking as myself."

"My wife heard of you," was the reply. "She is interested
in--in your line of work."

"Ah, she is a student of the occult?"

"I shouldn't call her a student of it," said Eustace, wriggling
at the word occult. "She dabbles in it, and goes to lectures on
Eastern mysticism that are no more like the real thing
than--than the cat's like a tiger," he added with a sudden rush of
emotion, pointing to the housekeeper's tabby that happened to
be patronizing our hearth rug. "I wish to God she'd let it alone,"
he added wearily.

"I take it," said Taverner quietly, "that you are not a believer
in the subject."

"If you had asked me that question a week ago," said
Eustace, "I should have answered, no, but today--I don't know
what to say. But I can tell you one thing," he cried, the banked
fires blazing forth again, "if occultism isn't true, if you haven't
got the powers you're credited with, then it's all up with
Evelyn."

"I take it," said Taverner quietly, gathering up the control of
the interview with voice and manner, "that something is
affecting your wife which you guess to be of occult origin
though you do not understand its method of working?"

"I understand its method of working all right," said our
visitor grimly, "though I had never believed such tales."

"Will you give me particulars?" said Taverner, "and then I
shall be able to form an opinion."

"I may as well tell you the whole story," said Colonel
Eustace, "for I don't suppose, as a man of the world, you will
attach the importance to it that my wife might if she got to hear
of it. Not that there is not perfect confidence between us, but
women don't understand these matters, and it's no use trying to
make `em.

"You may remember that my wife, at our last interview,
spoke of dreaming about a native woman and hearing an Indian
dialect spoken? I think from her description, that what she saw
was a vision of a woman I kept for some time when I was
stationed on the Border, and who made a good deal of fuss when
I sent her away, as they sometimes do. I have often heard that if
a man enters into--er--relations with a native woman, they have
an uncanny knack of laying hold of your soul by their heathen
jiggery-spookery. I never believed it, laughed at it, in fact, when
I saw another fellow bothered in the same way, but, my God, it's
true. That woman has haunted my dreams ever since she died,
and since I married Evelyn she has turned into an avenging
devil."

"What condition is your wife in at the present moment?"
enquired Taverner.

"In a stupor. The doctors talk about sleepy sickness but--"
with a grim laugh. "I know better. I saw her go into the
condition, and I know what it is. I tell you I heard those two
women talking together, Huneefa in the broken English I taught
her, as plainly as I hear you, and from that time, ten days ago,
Evelyn has never recovered full consciousness and her strength
is slowly ebbing away. They told me today that they did not
expect her to last through the night," he added, his voice
breaking, and putting up his hand to hide his twitching lips.