The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (32 page)

Two days passed in this way, with no word from Taverner,
till on our return from our morning walk, we found that a slip of
paper had been pushed under the door of our cavern. It was the
ordinary post office intimation to say that a telegram had been
brought in our absence, and now awaited me at the post office.
Not sorry for a break in our routine, though a little uneasy about
my patient, I immediately set off on the three mile walk to the
town to get my telegram. I went up the perilous path cut out of
the face of the rock, and then along the cliff road, for though it
was possible to walk into town on the sands, the tide was
coming in, and it was doubtful if I would be able to round the
headland before the undercliff was awash; at any rate my host
thought it was too risky for a stranger to attempt.

As I went up over the turf of the headland, a thrill ran
through me like wine to a starving man. The air was full of
dancing golden motes; the turf, the rock, the sea, were alive with
a vast life and I could feel their slow breathing. And I thought of
the man I had left in the dwelling in the cliff face, the man who
had come so far in his quest of the larger life, but who dared not
take the final step.

At the post office of that desolate and forsaken water-
ing-place I duly received my telegram.

"Am sending stigmata case. She
arrives 4:15. Arrange lodgings and
meet her. Taverner."

I gave a whistle that brought the postmaster and his entire
staff to the front counter, and taking counsel with them, I
obtained certain addresses whither I repaired, and finally
succeeded in arranging suitable accommodation. What the
upshot would be I could not imagine, but at any rate it was out
of my hands now.

At the appointed time I presented myself at the station and
soon picked out my protegee from the scanty handful of arrivals.
She looked very tired with the journey; frail, forlorn, and
shabby. What with the fume of the engine and the frowst of the
cab, there was no smell of the sea to revive her, and I could
hardly get a word out of her during the drive to the lodgings, but
as she disembarked from the crazy vehicle, a rush of salt-laden
wind struck her in the face, and below us, in the dusk, we heard
the crash-rush of the waves on the pebbles. The effect was
magical. The girl flung up her head like a startled horse, and
vitality seemed to flow into her, and when I presented her to her
landlady, there was little to indicate the convalescent I had
represented her to be.

When I returned to the rock-hewn eyrie of my host, his
courtesy forbade him to question me as to the cause of my long
absence, and indeed, I doubt if he felt any interest, for he seemed
to have sunk into himself so completely that his grip on life was
gone. I could hardly rouse him sufficiently to make him take the
evening paper I had brought from the town; it lay on his knee
unread while he gazed into the driftwood fire with unseeing
eyes.

The following day the tide had not receded sufficiently for a
morning walk, so it was not till the afternoon that we went for
our constitutional. We had left it rather late, and on our way
back in the early winter twilight we had to ford several gathering
pools. We swung along over the sand barefoot, boots slung over
our shoulders and trousers rolled to the knee, for it was one of
those mild days that often come in January--when out on the
edge of the incoming surf we saw a figure.

"Good Lord!" said my companion. "Who in the world is the
fool out there? He will be cut off by the tide and won't be able
to get out of the bay by now. He will have to come up by the
cliff path. I had better warn him." And he let out a halloo.

But the wind was blowing towards us, and the figure, out
there in the noise of the surf, did not hear. My companion went
striding over the sand towards the solitary wader, but I, who had
somewhat better eyes than he had, did not elect to accompany
him, for I had seen long hair blown out like seaweed and the
flying folds of a skirt.

I saw him walk into the ankle-deep water that creamed over
the flat sands, forerunner of the advancing line of breakers. He
called again to the wader, who turned but did not come towards
him, but instead held out her hand with a strange welcoming
gesture. Slowly, as if fascinated by that summoning hand, he
advanced into the water, till he was within touch of her. The first
of the advancing waves smote her knees and ran past her in
yeasty foam. The next smote her hip; the tide was rising fast
with the wind behind it. A shower of over-carried spray hit him
in the face. Still the girl would not move, and the waves were
mounting up perilously behind her. It was not until he caught the
outstretched hand that she yielded and let him draw her ashore.

They came towards me over the sand, still hand in hand, for
they had forgotten to loosen their fingers, and I saw that the life
had come back to his face and that his eyes sparkled with the
brilliancy of fire. I drew back into the shadow of a rock, and
oblivious of me, they passed up the steep path to the cliff
dwelling. A glow of firelight shone as he opened the door to
admit her, and I saw her wet hair streaming over her shoulders
like seaweed and his profile was like the rock-cut statue of a
Roman emperor.

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

The Power House

I had been dragged at Taverner's chariot-wheels all down
Charing Cross Road in quest of some tome that caused the
merchants of that district to eye us askance. Finally he gave up
the quest in despair, and as a reward for my patience, promised
me tea in a cafe the walls whereof were decorated with
particularly choice devils. My fleshly soul yearned for a brand of
oyster cocktail which may be obtained at the corner of
Tottenham Court Road, but Taverner, who was fond of tea as an
old maid, had so evidently set his heart on the devil-shop that I
sacrificed my well-being to his desires.

New Oxford Street ceases to be respectable to the east of
Charing Cross Road, and becomes shabby-genteel and dubious
until the plain commerciality of Holborn restores it to
self-respect. The side turnings are narrow and lead to Bohemia;
delicatessen shops and emporiums of haberdashery of an
amazing brilliance and instability loom in their narrow canyons;
strange faces look from the windows of their cliff-like facades. It
is all un-English, sordid, and vaguely sinister. The crust over the
underworld is thin here.

On an island in the midst of that roaring torrent of traffic we
were compelled to halt. A bare-headed, sleek-haired woman
jammed a marketing basket into the small of my back, and the
yard of bread protruding from it prodded Taverner, under whose
elbow peered out the pallid sharp-featured face of a little
"matcher" whose bunch of patterns was clutched in a small red
fist as if life itself depended on them. Past us roared the tide of
commercial London, and through that tide there darted another
flotsam of the traffic, to be cast up as if by a breaker upon our
island. My mind instantly reverted to my schoolbook pictures of
Richard III, the same ferrety, yet intellectual face, low stature,
and slightly hunched back which served to barrel out the chest
into an enormously powerful though ungainly structure. The
greyness of the skin told of chronic ill-health, or an
unwholesome life in the foul and sunless air of which the
denizens of that district are so fond. The eyes were a pale grey,
and of a brightness and beadiness usually associated with black
eyes of the boot-button type. The mouth, large and thin-lipped,
looked cruel, the mouth of the cold sensualist, who has
sensations but no emotions.

The face caught my attention even in that brief glance, for it
was a face of power, but his subsequent behaviour fixed all
details in my mind, for no sooner had he raised his eyes to meet
Taverner's than his expression changed from that of an alert
jackdaw to a cornered cat. He emitted a sound that was almost
like a hiss, and darted straight back into the stream of traffic
from which he had emerged.

A yell, a crash, and a shriek of brakes showed that the
expected had happened, and at our very feet the man lay
insensible, blood pouring from a cut in his head where it had hit
the curb. Almost before the car that struck him had backed away,
Taverner and I were bending over him; I examining his head,
and Taverner, to my intense surprise, examining his pockets. He
withdrew a shabby and bulging notebook from the breast pocket,
glanced hastily through it, seemed to register mental notes in
that miraculous memory of his, and returned it whence he had
taken it, and by the time the white-faced chauffeur was beside
us, had resumed his most professional manner and was rendering
first aid in the orthodox fashion. A policeman's helmet loomed
through the traffic, and Taverner twitched my sleeve, and we, in
our turn, made a bolt through the congested mass of vehicles,
and with better luck than the ferret-faced man, reached the
pavement in safety, and slipped down a side street that led to
Taverner's abode of the devils, leaving it to those who enjoy
such things to superintend the embarkation of the casualty in its
ambulance.

"That is an amazing piece of luck," said Taverner. "Do you
know who that was? It was Josephus. He is supposed to be in
Tunisia, even Paris had got too hot for him, and here he is, back
in London, and looking prosperous too, so he must be in
mischief, and I've got his address."

I could not join in Taverner's enthusiasm over the discovery
of Josephus, as I had not the pleasure of that worthy's
acquaintance, and Taverner was soon engaged in revelry over
hot buttered toast and much too interested in the symbolism of
the devils careering round the frieze to attend to anything so
mundane; meanwhile I endeavoured to twine my legs around the
rungs of the little tile-topped table designed for the
accommodation of the undernourished breed that feeds at such
places. Taverner disposed of his long legs by stretching them
across the gangway, and between us I am afraid we took up
much more than our fair share of the exiguous accommodation.

Luckily we had the place practically to ourselves, for the tea
hour was overpast, and there was no one to note the intrusion of
the Philistines upon this West Central Bohemia save a man and
woman lingering over the remains of their meal at a
neighbouring table, and they were much too absorbed in their
conversation to pay any attention to anything save their own
affairs.

Or rather, to be strictly accurate, the man was absorbed, for
the woman seemed to be listening wearily, with an air of uneasy
detachment, as if seeking an opportunity to put an end to the
interview and make her escape from the importunity of her
companion. I could see her face across the dimly lit room, its
expressionless calm in strange contrast to the tenseness of the
man who spoke to her; the large grey eyes, set in the pallor of an
oval face, seemed to be gazing at some far horizon, oblivious of
the narrow Bloomsbury streets.

Oblivious, that was the word to characterize her. She was
oblivious of her companion, his viewpoint, his needs; her eyes
were upon some vision in which he could not share and had no
part.