The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (31 page)

"It was a most extraordinary, exhilarating experience.
Everything I lacked seemed to be added to me. I was complete,
vital, in circuit with the cosmic forces. In fact, I got everything I
had sought in marriage and failed to find. But, and here's the
rub, the creature that called me was in the water, and it was in
the water that I had to meet her. Round this headland the tides
run like fury, no swimmer could hold his own against them, even
in calm weather; but by night, and in a storm, which is the time
she generally comes, it would be certain death; but she calls me,
and she wills me to go to her, and one of these nights I shall do
so. That is my trouble."

He stopped, but I could see by the working of his face that
there was more to come so I kept silence.

He bent down and took from the side of the hearth an object
which he handed to me. It was a small crucible, and had
evidently been used to melt down silver.

"You will laugh when I tell you what I used that for. To make
silver bullets--silver bullets to shoot with." He hid his face in
his hands. "Oh, my God, I tried to murder her!" The flood-gates
of emotion were open, and I could see his shoulders heave to the
tide of it.

"I could see her as she swam in the moonlight, and as her
shoulder rose to the stroke, I shot her in the round white curve of
it, white as foam against the black water. And she vanished.
Then I thought I had killed the thing I loved. I would have given
heaven and earth to bring her back and to swim out there to her
in the tide-race and drown with her. I was like a madman; I
wandered on the shore for days, I could neither eat nor sleep.
And then she came again, and I knew that it was my life or hers,
and I, being of the earth, clung to the life of form, and I shot her
again. And now I am in torment. I love her, I long for her, I call
to her in the unseen, and when she comes to me, I wait for her
with a rifle."

He came to an abrupt stop and remained rigid, gazing into the
heart of the dying fire, his empty pipe in his hand. I glanced
surreptitiously at my watch, and saw that the hands were
pointing to eleven. His hour was upon him.

He rose, and crossing the room, drew back the draperies at
the far end and revealed a casement window. Flinging it open,
he seated himself on the sill and gazed fixedly into the darkness
without. Moving softly I took my place behind him, where I
could see what was happening outside, and be ready to seize
hold of him if necessary.

For a while we waited; the clouds hurried over the moon
sometimes letting its radiance pour out in a silver flood, but
more often hiding its face and leaving us in the roaring, crashing
darkness of that surf-beaten coast.

It was indeed a "magic casement opening on the foam of
perilous seas in faery lands forlorn." I shall never forget that
vigil. Nothing but heaving waters as far as eye could see, all
flecked with foam in the moonlight where the reefs were hidden
by the flood tide, which swirled below us like a mill-race. My
companion's fine-cut features had the boldness and immobility
of the statue of a Roman emperor, silhouetted against the silver
background of the water.

He never stirred, he might have been carven in stone, till I
saw a quiver run through him and knew that he had found that
for which he waited. I strained my eyes to see what it was that
had caught his attention, and sure enough, right out in the track
of the moonlight, something was swimming. Coming steadily
towards us through the reefs, the white shoulder lifting to the
stroke just as he had described it, nearer, nearer, where no living
soul could have swum in that wild tide-race, still, not thirty
yards from the base of the cliffs, I could descry a woman's form
with the hair streaming out like seaweed.

The man at the window leant right out stretching forth his
arms to the swimmer, and I, fearing that he would overbalance,
put mine gently round him and drew him back into the room. He
seemed oblivious of my presence, and yielded to the pressure as
if asleep, and I lowered him gently to the floor where he lay
motionless in a trance. I stooped to feel his pulse, and as I
counted the slow beats, I heard a sound that made me hold my
breath and listen. It seemed as if the sea had risen and filled the
room, and yet not the material sea, but its ghost; shadowy
impalpable sea-water flowed in waves to the very ceiling, and
the sea-creatures looked in from without.

Then I saw the form of a woman at the window. Shining with
its own luminosity, it was clearly visible in the green gloom that
was like the bottom of the sea. The hair floated out like seaweed,
the shoulders gleamed like marble, the face was that of a Beata
Beatrix awakened from her dream, and the eyes were like
sea-water seen from a rock, and there, sure enough, were the
marks where the silver bullets had wounded her.

We looked into each other's eyes, and I am convinced she
saw me as clearly as I saw her, and that she knew me, for the
same faint smile that I had seen before hovered on her lips. I
spoke as one addressing a sentient creature.

"Do not try to take him in this way," I said, "or you will kill
him. Trust me, I will make things right. I will explain
everything."

She looked at me with those strange sea-green eyes of hers,
as if piercing my very soul; apparently satisfied, she withdrew,
and the shadowy sea-water flowed after till the room was
emptied.

I came to myself to find the quizzical eyes of my host fixed
on me as he sat in his chair smoking his pipe.

"Physician, heal thyself!" he said.

I rose stiffly from my seat and subsided into a chair, lighting
a cigarette with numbed fingers. A few whiffs of the soothing
smoke steadied my nerves and enabled me to think.

"Well, doctor," came the voice of my host in gentle raillery,
"what is your diagnosis?"

I paused, for I realized the critical nature of that which I was
about to do.

"If I were to tell you that last night I was at the bedside of
that girl we saw swimming out there, and that she had two
bullet-wounds in her shoulder, what would you say?"

He leant forward, his lips parted, but no sound came from
them.

"If I told you that the bullet-wounds arose spontaneously
without any external agency, and that the doctor considered
them to be hysterical stigmata, how would you explain it?"

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "it sounds like a case of reper-
cussion! I came across several instances of it when I was
studying the Scottish State Papers relating to the witch trials in
the sixteenth century. It was a thing often related of the witches,
that they could project the astral double out of the physical body
and so appear at a distance. I had something of that kind at the
back of my mind when I made the silver bullets. Old
country-folk believe that it is only with silver bullets that you
can shoot a witch. Lead has no effect on them. But you mean to
tell me that you have actually seen--seen in the flesh--the
woman whose astral body it was we saw out there in the water?
Good Lord, doctor, I am indeed out of my depth! I don't believe
I ever thought in my heart that the things I was studying were
real, I thought they were just states of consciousness."

"But aren't states of consciousness real?"

"Yes, of course they are, on their own plane, that is the whole
teaching of occult science. But I always thought they were
entirely subjective, experiences of the imagination. It never
occurred to me that anyone else could share them."

"You--we both--seem to have shared in this girl's dreams,
for she escapes from her dreary reality by imagining herself
swimming in the sea."

"Tell me about her--What is she like? Where did you meet
her?"

"Before I answer that question, will you first tell me your
motive for asking it? Do you want to be rid of her? Because if
so, I can probably persuade her to leave you alone."

"I want to make her acquaintance," came the reluctant reply.
"I was pretty badly bitten once, and haven't spoken to a woman
for years, but this--seems to be different. Yes, I would like to
make her acquaintance. Tell me, who is she? What is she? What
is her name? What are her people like?"

"She is, as you have seen, of very unusual appearance. Many
people would not consider her beautiful, others would rave
about her. She is somewhere in the twenties. Intelligent, refined,
her voice is that of an educated woman. Her name I do not
know, for she was lying in an infirmary bed, and was therefore
just a number. Nor do I know what her people are. I don't fancy
she has any, for I gathered she was entirely destitute. She is a
shop girl by trade--drapery, to be precise."

During this recital my host's face had changed in an in-
definable way. The cheeks had fallen in, the eyes had lost their
brilliancy and become sunken, and a network of lines sprang up
all over the skin. He had suddenly become worn and old, the
burnt-out cinder of a man. I was at a loss to account for this
appalling change till his words gave me the clue.

"I think," he said in a voice that had lost all resonance, "that I
had better let the matter drop. A shop girl, you say? No, it would
be most unsuitable, most unwise. It never does to marry outside
one's own class. I--er--No, we will say no more about the
matter. I must pull myself together. Now that I understand the
condition I am sure I have the willpower to return to the normal.
In fact I feel that you have cured me already. I am sure that I
shall never have a return of my dream, its power over me is
broken. If you will give me your companionship for just a few
more days till I feel that my health is quite reestablished I shall
be all right. But we will not refer to the matter again; I beg of
you, doctor, not to refer to it, for I wish to banish the whole
experience from my mind."

Looking at him as he crouched in his chair, the broken,
devitalized wreck of the man whose fine presence I had admired,
it seemed to me that the remedy was worse than the disease. He
had, by an effort of his trained will, broken the subtle magnetic
rapport that bound him to the girl, and with the breaking of it,
the source of his vitality had gone.

"But look here," I protested, "are you sure that you are doing
the right thing? The girl may be quite all right in herself, even if
she has to work for a living. If she means all this to you, surely
you are throwing away something big."

For answer he rose, and going silently out of the room, closed
the door behind him, and I knew that argument was useless. He
was bound within his limitations and unable to escape out of
them into the freedom which is life. Of the earth, earthy.

I wrote a full account of these transactions to Taverner, and
then settled down to await his instructions as to future
procedure. The situation was somewhat strained. My host
looked like a man whose life had fallen about his ears. Day by
day, almost hour by hour, he seemed to age. He sat in his
rock-hewn room, refusing to move, and it was with the greatest
difficulty that I succeeded in coaxing him out daily for a walk on
the smooth hard sands that stretched for miles when the tide
receded. When the water was up he would not go near it; he
seemed to have a horror of the sea.