The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (28 page)

"Would you care for me to see your wife?" said Taverner. "It
is difficult for me to advise you unless I do so."

"I have the car at the door to take you to her, if you will be
good enough to come."

"There is one thing I must ask of you, however, before I
undertake the case," said Taverner, "and that is, if, when you
have heard my advice, you decide to follow it, you will go
through to the end. There is nothing more disastrous than to start
upon an occult undertaking and then back out of it."

"Unless you can do something, there is nothing that can be
done," said Eustace brokenly, and we followed him out to the
car.

I had thought Mrs. Eustace a beautiful woman when I had
seen her in the formal clothes of our civilization, but lying
relaxed in her white draperies on her white bed, she was more
like my boyhood's idea of an angel than anything I have ever
seen in picture or statuary. I could understand why her husband
adored her.

I did not need the stethoscope to tell me that life was at low
ebb. No pulse was perceptible in the wrist, and it was only an
occasional faint stir of the laces on her bosom that showed she
still breathed. There was little doubt she would not last the
night; in fact she might go at any moment.

Taverner sent the nurse out of the room, and placed Eustace
and myself at the far end. Then he seated himself beside the bed
and gazed intently into the face of the unconscious woman, and I
knew by his concentration that his mind was seeking to make
contact with her soul wherever it might be. I saw him lay his
hand on her breast, and guessed that he was calling her back into
her body, and as I watched, I saw the inspirations deepen and
become regular and the waxen passivity pass from the face.

Then she spoke, and at the sound of her voice it was all I
could do to keep her husband from rushing across to her then
and there.

"I am asked to tell you," came the slow, faltering words, "that
the money was returned, even if it never reached you."

Eustace gave a groan, and dropped his head in his hands. "I
am also asked to tell you," went on the faltering voice, "that it
would have been a son."

Taverner lifted his hand from her breast and the breathing
slowed down again and the face resumed its deathly fixation.

"Can you make anything of that?" he asked of Estate.

"Yes," replied the man, raising his face from his hands. "It
exactly confirms what I thought. It is that devil Huneefa; this is
her revenge."

Taverner led us from the room.

"I want full particulars," he said. "I cannot deal with the case
unless I have them."

Eustace looked uncomfortable. "I will tell you anything I
can," he said at length. "What is it you want to know? The
whole thing would make a long story."

"What was the origin of your affair with this Indian girl?
Was she a professional courtezan or did you buy her from her
parents?"

"Neither. She did a bolt and I looked after her."

"A love affair?"

"You can call it that if you like, though I don't care to
remember it since--since I have learnt what love can be."

"What was the cause of your parting?"

"Well, er, you see, there was a child coming, and I couldn't
stand that. Huneefa was well enough in her way, but a Eurasian
brat was more than I could endure. I suppose those affairs
usually end that way."

"So you sent her back to her people?"

"I couldn't very well do that, they would probably have
killed her, but I gave her a good sum of money, enough to set her
up in life; they don't need much to make them happy, life is
pretty simple out there."

"So you gave her sufficient capital to set up on her own as a
courtezan?"

"Well, er--yes, I expect that was what she would have done
with it."

"There was not much else she could do with it, I should
imagine."

"They don't think much of that out there."

"Some castes do," said Taverner quietly. "But she sent the
money back to you," he continued after a pause. "What became
of her after that?"

"I believe the servants said something about suicide."

"So she did not accept the alternative you offered?"

"No --er --she didn't. It's an unpleasant incident and best
forgotten. I don't suppose I came out of it altogether blameless,"
muttered Eustace, getting up and walking about the room.

"At any rate," he continued with the air of a man who has
pulled himself together, "what are we going to do about it?
Huneefa apparently knew more of--er--occultism than I
credited her with, and you too from all accounts, have also got a
knowledge of the matter. It is East against West; who's going to
win?"

"I think," said Taverner in that quiet voice of his, "that
Huneefa is going to win because she has right on her side."

"But, hang it all, a native girl--they don't think anything of
that out there."

"Apparently she did."

"Some of the castes are a bit straight-laced in their way, but
she would have got on all right. I gave her plenty to keep her
going till after the child was done with," he continued, squaring
his shoulders. "Why doesn't she go for me and let Evelyn alone?
Evelyn never did her any harm. I could stand it as long as she
only pestered me, but this--this is a different matter."

The appearance of the nurse interrupted our colloquy.

"Mrs. Eustace has recovered consciousness," she said. "I
think you had better come."

We went to the sick room, and my professional eye told me
that this was the last flicker of a dying flame.

Mrs. Eustace recognized her husband as he knelt beside her,
but I do not think that Taverner and I meant anything to her. She
looked at him with a strange expression in her face, as if she had
never seen him before.

"I did not think you were like that," she said. He seemed
perplexed by her words and not to know what answer to make to
them, and then she broke the silence again.

"Oh Tony," she said, "she was only fifteen."

Then we grasped the reference.

"Never mind, Dearest," whispered the man at her side.
"Forget all that. What you have to do now is to get well and
strong, and then we will talk it all over when you are better."

"I am not going to get better," came the quiet voice from the
bed.

"Oh, yes dear, you are. Isn't she, doctor?" appealing to
Taverner.

Taverner weighed his words before answering. "It is just
possible," he said at length.

"I do not wish to get better," said the voice from the bed.
"Everything is so--so different to what I expected. I did not
think you were like that, Tony. But I suppose all men are the
same."

"You mustn't take it so to heart, dear," said the man at her
side brokenly. "Everybody does it out there. They have to. It's
the climate. Nobody thinks anything of it."

"I do," said the voice that came from so far off. "And so
would all other women if they knew. Men are wise not to tell.
Women wouldn't stand it."

"But it wasn't one of our women, dear."

"But it was a woman, and I am a woman, and it seems to hurt
me because it hurts womanhood. I can't put it plainly, but I feel
it, I feel it as a hurt to all that is best in me."

"What are you to do with men out on frontiers?" said the man
desperately. "It is the penalty of Empire."

"It is the curse of Empire," came the faraway voice. "No
wonder they hate us. I always wondered why it is that we can
never, never make friends of them. It is because we outrage their
womankind. There are some things that are never forgiven."

"Oh, don't say that, Evelyn," said the man brokenly.

"I am not saying it to you, Tony," she answered. "I love you,
just as I have always loved you, but you do not understand this
thing; that is the trouble. I do not blame you for taking her, but I
blame you, and bitterly, for throwing her aside."

"Good Lord," said Eustace appealingly to the supporting
males, "what is one to do with a woman?"

"And she does not blame you" continued the voice, "for
taking her, or for throwing her aside. She loved you and she
understood. In fact she never expected anything else, she tells
me. It is herself that she blames, and she has not been angry with
you, but has been imploring you to help her out, to undo the
wrong that has been done."

"What is it she wants? I'll do anything on earth if she will let
you alone."

"She says--" the voice seemed a very long way off, like a
trunk call on a telephone, "that the soul that was to have come
into life through you and her was a very lofty soul indeed, a
Mahatma, she called him. What is a Mahatma?"

"One of those people who stir up trouble. Never mind about
him. Go on. What does she want me to do?"

"She says that, because of her attainments in the past, she
was chosen to give him birth, and because he had to reconcile
East and West, East and West had to be reconciled in him. Also,
he had to come through a great love. I am glad it was a great
love, Tony. That seems to sanctify it and to make it better
somehow."

Eustace turned appalled eyes upon us.

"And because it was a great privilege, it had to be bought by
a great sacrifice; she had to give up the love before she brought
him to birth. I suppose that is always the way. She says they
offered her a choice--she might have the love of a man of her
own people, a home, and happiness; or she might have the love
of a Western man for a short time, in order that the great
Reconciler might come into life, and she chose the latter. She
knew what it would mean when she entered on it, she said, but
she found it harder than she thought. It was because you sent her
so much money that she killed herself, for she knew your con-
science would be at ease after that, and she did not wish you to
be at ease."

"God knows, I'm not," groaned the man. "She is having her
revenge all right. What more does she want, the little devil?"

"It is the Mahatma soul she is troubled about," came the
answer, "and because of it she cannot rest."

"What does she want me to do?" asked the man.

"She wants us to take it."

"But, Good Lord. What does she mean? A half caste?
You--Evelyn. A nigger? Oh Heavens, no, nothing doing. I
would sooner have you dead than that. Let her take her twice
damned Mahatma and go to whatever hell they belong to."

MS

"No she doesn't mean that, Tony, she means that she wishes
us, you and I, to take him."

"Oh well, if we can find the kid, yes; anything if only you'll
get well. I'll send him to Eton and Oxford or Lhassa or Mecca,
or anywhere else they have a fancy for, if they will only let you
alone."