The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (29 page)

"I don't want to get well," came the voice from the depth of
the pillows.

"But, dear--for my sake--you said you still loved me."

"I don't want to get well, but I suppose I must, just as she
ought to have gone on living, although she did not want to
because of Him."

"Whom?"

"The soul that was to have come, the soul who will come
now, The Reconciler."

There was a pause. Then she spoke again, and her voice
seemed to gain strength with each sentence.

"It will be very difficult, Tony."

"We'll manage somehow, dear, as long as we have each
other."

"It will be more difficult than you think."

----------

Mrs. Eustace recovered rapidly, and her husband's joy knew
no bounds. He attributed it all to Taverner, though as a matter of
fact, Taverner had been nothing but an onlooker as the strange
drama of life and death worked itself out. As such a man will,
who lives upon the surface of things and prides himself upon his
matter-of-factness, Eustace soon forgot the inner aspect of the
whole affair. His wife had had sleepy sickness, and thank God,
was over it, therefore he rejoiced, and had much to rejoice in.

For firstly, promotion had come his way, and from the command
of a regiment, he had passed to one of the most important
administrative posts over the heads of many seniors. Likewise,
by the unexpected death of a cousin, he had become heir
presumptive to a great name. And thirdly, to crown his joy, it
was apparent that the name would not end with him.

We went to dinner with them on the eve of their sailing.
Eustace was in the seventh heaven, with telegrams of con-
gratulations arriving all through the meal. The face of his wife
had never lost its look of remoteness and stillness, which she
had brought back from her sojourn on other planes, but there
was no joy in her eyes, save pleasure at his pleasure, and a rather
sad smile, as of one who watched a beloved child set its heart
upon a bauble.

We heard no more of them till chance gossip gave us news.

"Have you heard about the Eustaces," said a man at my club.
"General Eustace, he is now. Their child, it's as black as a coal.
Everybody wonders what he is going to do about it. It would
probably have meant his resignation if he had not had such
terrific influence with all that seditionist crowd that no one else
can manage. Can't understand his being such a success with
them, not much tact, and less understanding. Still they seem to
hit it off. Pity about her, isn't it? An awfully nice woman. Sort
of stained glass window saint. Can't understand it at all."

Some years later the Eustaces appeared on the scene again.
He was now a baronet, having succeeded to his cousin's title,
and he was likewise something very lofty in the Government of
India, but he was also a changed man. His hair was as white as
snow, and his face preternaturally aged with its deep lines and
sunken eyes. Strangely enough, Lady Eustace, as she was now,
had changed least of all, save that she was etherealized till she
no longer seemed to be of this earth. I gathered that she led a
very retired life, taking no part in the social activities that
usually fall to the lot of a woman in her position.

With them was a child of five, with jet black hair, dark olive
skin, slender limbs, and a pair of eyes as blue as the sea. They
were the strangest eyes I have ever seen in the face of a child,
for they had the depth of the sea as well as its blueness, these
eyes of the West in the face of the East. I wondered what the
soul would see, that looked at its native East through Western
eyes.

Eustace drew me aside; he seemed to need to unbosom his
soul to someone who knew the story. Pointing to the child with
its mother, he said.

"You can guess what that meant to us, in our position, eh?"

"I wouldn't mind for myself," he continued, "but it's so hard
for her. A crucifixion," he added.

I heard the mother's voice speaking to Taverner.

"You see it too?" she was saying softly. "Isn't it wonderful?
What have I, I of all women, done to deserve such a thing?"

Then turning to the child she said: "Do you know who this
gentleman is, darling?"

"Yes," said the child. "He is also One of Us, as I told you."

"Queer little cuss," said the father patting his son's head.
"Have you found another of your friends?"

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

The Sea Lure

"Do you know anything about stigmata?" said my vis-a-vis.

It was a very unexpected question to have shot at one under
the circumstances. I had been unable to evade an invitation to
spend the evening with an old fellow-student who since the war
had held the uninspiring post of medical officer at a poor law
institution, a post for which I should say he was admirably fitted,
and I now found myself facing him across a not very elegant
supper table in his quarters in a great fortress of dingy red brick
which looked out for miles over the grey wastes of sordidness
which are South London.

I was so taken by surprise that he had to repeat his question
before I answered it.

"Do you know anything about stigmata? Hysterical
stigmata?" he said again.

"I have seen simulated tumours," I said, "they are fairly
common, but I have never seen actual flesh wounds, such as the
saints were supposed to have had."

"What do you attribute them to?" asked my companion.

"Autosuggestion," I replied. "Imagination so vivid that it
actually affects the tissues of the body."

"I have got a case in one of my wards that I should like to
show you," he said. "A most curious case. I think it is hysterical
stigmata; I cannot account for it any other way. A girl was
brought in here a couple of days ago suffering from a gunshot
wound in the shoulder. She came here to have the bullet
removed, but would give no account as to how she came by the
injury. We admitted her, but couldn't see any bullet, which was
rather puzzling. She was in a condition of semi-stupor, which we
naturally attributed to loss of blood, and so we kept her here. Of
course there is nothing odd in all that, save our failure to locate
the bullet, but then such things happen even with the best
apparatus, and ours is a long way from being that. But here is the
queer part of the case. I was sitting quietly up here last night
between eleven and twelve when I heard a shriek; of course
there is nothing odd about that either, in this district. But in a
minute or two they rang up on the house telephone to say that I
was wanted in the wards, and I went down to find this girl with
another bullet wound. No one had heard a shot fired, all the
windows were intact, there was a nurse not ten feet from her.
When we X-rayed her we again failed to find the bullet, yet
there was a clean hole drilled in her shoulder, and, oddest of all,
it never bled a drop. What do you make of it?"

"If you are certain there is no external agency at work, then
the only hypothesis is an internal one. Is she an hysterical type?"

"Distinctly. Looks as if she came out of one of Burne Jones's
pictures. Moreover, she has been in a sort of stupor each night
for an hour or more at a time. It was while in this state that she
developed the second wound. Would you care to come down and
have a look at her? I should like to have your opinion. I know
you have gone in for psychoanalysis and all sorts of things that
are beyond my ken."

I accompanied him to the wards, and there we found in one
of the rough infirmary beds a girl who, lying on the coarse
pillow, with closed eyes and parted lips, looked exactly like the
Beata Beatrix of Rossetti's vision, save that honey-coloured hair
flowed over the pillow like seaweed. When she opened her eyes
at our presence, they were green as sea-water seen from a rock.

All was quiet in the ward, for infirmary patients are settled
for the night at an early hour, and my friend signed to the nurse
to put screens round the bed that we might examine our case
without disturbing them. It was as he had said, two obvious
bullet wounds, one more recent than the other, and from their
position and proximity, I judged that they have been inflicted
with intention to disable, but not to kill. In fact she had been
very neatly "winged" by an expert marksman. It was only the
circumstances of the second shot that gave the case any interest
except a criminal one.

I sat down on a chair at the bedside, and began to talk to her,
seeking to win her confidence. She gazed back at me dreamily
with her strange sea-green eyes and answered my questions
readily enough. She seemed curiously detached, curiously
indifferent to our opinion of her; as if she lived in a faraway
world of her own, about which she was quite willing to talk to
any one who was interested.

"Do you dream much?" I said, making the usual opening.

This seemed to touch a subject of interest.

"Oh, yes," she replied, "I dream a tremendous lot. I always
have dreamt, ever since I can remember. I think my dreams are
the realest part of my life--and the best part," she added with a
smile, "so why shouldn't I?"

"Your dreams seem to have led you into danger recently," I
answered, drawing a bow at a venture.

She looked at me sharply, as if to see how much I knew, and
then said thoughtfully:

"Yes, I mustn't go there again. But I expect I shall, all the
same," she added with an elfish smile.

"Can you go where you choose in your dreams?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she replied, and was about to say more, when
she caught sight of my companion's bewildered face and the
words died on her lips. I saw that she was what Taverner would
have called "One of Us," and my interest was roused. I pitied the
refined, artistic-looking girl in these sordid surroundings, her
great shining eyes looking out like those of a caged creature
behind bars, and I said:

"What is your work?"

"Shop girl," she replied; a smile curling the corners of her
lips. "Drapery, to be precise." Her words and manner were so at
variance with her description of herself, that I was still further
intrigued.

"Where are you going when you come out of here?" I en-
quired.

She looked wearily out into distance, the little smile still
hovering about her mouth.

"Back into my dreams, I expect," she replied. "I don't
suppose I shall find anywhere else to go."

I knew well Taverner's generosity with necessitous cases,
especially if they were of "his own kind," and I felt sure that he
would be interested both in the personality of the girl and in her
peculiar injuries, and I said:

"How would you like to go down to a convalescent home at
Hindhead when you leave here?"

She gazed at me in silence for a moment with her strange
gleaming eyes.