The Secrets of Dr. Taverner (38 page)

Taverner raised his voice. "I have been called in," he said,
"by Lady Cullan, who desired my advice as to your health,
which had been causing her anxiety. I am of the opinion that you
are of an unusual heredity, and this has made it difficult for you
to adapt yourself to human society." (I saw that Taverner was
picking his words carefully, and that they meant one thing to the
man on the bed, and another to the Countess and her other son.)

"I am also of the opinion," Taverner went on, "that I could
help you to make that adaptation because I understand
your--heredity."

"In what way does his heredity differ from mine?" demanded
the Honourable John, looking puzzled and suspicious.

"In every way," said Taverner. A peal of elfin laughter from
the bed showed that at least one person knew what Taverner
meant.

Taverner turned his back on the others and spoke to the man
on the bed. "Will you come with me?" he said.

"Certainly," replied Lord Cullan, "but I should like to put
some clothes on first."

At which hint we withdrew.

We seated ourselves in the broad window-seat of the oriel at
the end of the passage, whence we could watch the door of Lord
Cullan's room and so prevent our patient from giving us the slip.
My medical training would have told me not to leave him alone
at all, but apparently Taverner was quite certain he would not
cut his throat and the rest of the family did not care if he did.

We had hardly seated ourselves before the Honourable John
returned again to the question of the certification of his brother.

"I wish you would let us have that certificate now, Doctor,"
he said. "There are a number of matters in connection with the
estate that urgently need attention."

Taverner shook his head. "Things cannot be done in this
hasty fashion," he replied. "I must have your brother under my
observation for a time before I can say whether he should be
certified or not."

The three of them gazed at him, speechless with horror. This
was an unexpected turn for affairs to take. The certification of a
well-to-do eccentric is painfully easy if he remains in the bosom
of his family, but it would be impossible to snaffle Marius out
from under Taverner's nose if he once went to the
nursing-home; he might remain there indefinitely, still retaining
control of his affairs, effectually preventing his family from
laying their hands on the cash, and he even might--awful
thought--recover!

The Honourable John's mind worked more quickly than his
mother's. She still seemed to have some vague idea that
Taverner was safely in love with her; he saw plainly that they
had been `had,' and that Taverner not only had no intention of
being their tool, but was prepared to stand by the unfortunate
wretch against whom they were scheming, and see fair play. He
lost no time in acting on his convictions.

"Well, Doctor," he said with the bullying insolence that lies
so near the polished surface of men of this type, "we have heard
your opinion, and we don't think very much of it, and should
certainly not be guided by it. I told you all along, Mother, that
we ought to have a first-class opinion on Marius and not depend
on these local practitioners. We will not detain you any longer,
Doctor," and he rose to show that the interview was at an end.

But Taverner sat like a hen, smiling sweetly.

"I have not expressed any opinion about yourself, Mr. Ingles,
which is the only one you are entitled to ask me for; though if I
had, I could quite understand your showing me the door in this
somewhat brusque fashion. It is Lord Cullan who has done me
the honour to place himself in my hands, and it is from him, and
from no one else, that I shall take my dismissal, whether as his
medical adviser or as a visitor to his house."

During the altercation the bedroom door had opened and
Lord Cullan came up behind us, moving silently over the thick
carpet. He had brushed his rough dark hair straight back from his
forehead, revealing the fact that it grew in a peak, and this made
him look even more elfin than the tangled black mat had done.
Taverner's strictures on his family were evidently much to his
taste, and his wide mouth, with its strangely unhuman thin red
lips, was curled up on one side and down the other in a smile of
puckish merriment. Lob-lie-by-the-fire, I christened him then,
and the name has stuck to him ever since in that queer friendship
into which we ultimately drifted.

He came up between Taverner and myself as we stood there,
and threw his arms across our shoulders in a strange, un-English
gesture expressive of affection. It seemed rather as if he took us
under his protection than placed himself under ours, and it was
in that light that our relationship has always stood, so
defenceless on the physical plane, so potent in the realms of the
Unseen, did Marius, Earl of Cullan, always show himself to be.

"Come!" he cried. "Let us get out of this house of evil; it is
full of cruelty. It is a prison. These people are not real; they are
unclean masks; there is nothing behind them. When the wind
blows through them it sounds like words, but they cannot speak
real words, for they are unensouled. Come, let us go away and
forget them, for they are only bad dreams. But you" (touching
Taverner) "have a soul; and he" (his hand fell upon my
shoulder) "has also got a soul, though he doesn't know it. But I
will give his soul to him, and make him know that it is his own,
and then he will live, even as you and I live. Come, let us go! Let
us go!"

Away he went down the long passage, swinging us with him
by the compulsion of his magnetism, chanting "Unclean,
unclean!" in that high, thrilling voice of his that seemed to curse
the house as he went through it.

III

When we got him into the car, however, the reaction set in,
and he was as unnerved as a child that suddenly finds itself
alone on a stage before a great audience. Some unknown power
had flowed through him a moment before, sweeping us all,
friend and foe, along with irresistible force, but now he had lost
his grip on it; it had left him, and he was defenceless, horrified
at his own temerity, and watching us with furtive, anxious eyes
to see what we were going to do to him now that he had betrayed
himself by his outburst.

I thought that he was physically exhausted by the excitement
through which he had passed, and therefore incapable of giving
any trouble; but these queer cases in which Taverner specialized
were very deceptive as to their physical condition; they had
access to unsuspected reserves of strength which enabled them
to rise as if from the dead. I am afraid that I was not watching
our patient as closely as I should have been, for as the car
slowed down to negotiate the park gates, he gave a sudden
spring, leaped clean out of the car, and vanished into a thicket.

Taverner gave a long whistle.

"That is awkward," he said, "but not altogether to be
wondered at. I thought he came a little too quietly to be
altogether wholesome."

I rose up to jump out of the car and go in pursuit of our
fugitive, but Taverner checked me.

"Let him go if he wants to," he said. "We have no power to
coerce him, and are more likely to win his confidence by leaving
him perfectly free to do as he pleases than by trying to persuade
him to do what he has not got a mind to. It will do him no harm
to sleep out in the open in this weather, and I have great faith in
the power of the dinner-gong. Cullan Court is the last place he is
likely to make for, and they will be none the wiser as to his
disappearance if we do not enlighten them.

"But here we are at Shottermill. Let us call in and see Parkes
and hear what he has to say about the case. There are several
points I want to clear up."

Dr. Parkes, the family physician of the Cullans, was one of
the best of our local friends. He knew something of Taverner's
speculations and was more than half inclined to sympathize,
though fear for his practice kept him from identifying himself
too openly with us.

He was an elderly bachelor, and welcomed us to his frugal
lunch of cold mutton and beer. Taverner, who never wasted time
in coming to the point if he had anything to say, opened the
question of the mental condition of Lord Cullan. It was as we
had suspected. For some time past Parkes had stood between
him and certification, and was furious when he learnt that Lady
Cullan had gone behind his back and called in Taverner; but he
was also of the opinion that it would do our patient no harm to
take to the heather. In fact, it was a thing that he frequently did,
even in the winter, when family relations became especially
difficult.

"You are the one man, Taverner," said our host, "who will be
able to do anything in this matter. I have often thought over the
case in the light of your theories, and they render explicable
what would otherwise simply be a very odd coincidence, and
science does not recognize coincidence, but only causation. I
brought Marius into the world, and saw him through his measles
and whooping-cough and all the rest of it, and I daresay I know
him as well as any one does, which is not saying much, and the
more I see of him, the less I understand him and the more he
fascinates me. It is a queer thing--the fascination that lad has for
fogies like myself; you would think we were poles asunder and
would repel each other, but not a bit of it. To get friendly with
Marius is like taking to drink-- once you start, you can't stop."

This interested me, for I had an inkling of the same thing.

"The first time I saw Lord Cullan," I said, "I was very struck
by his likeness to the old parson at Handley village. Is there any
relationship between them?"

"Ah," said the doctor, "there you have put your finger upon a
very curious thing. There is absolutely no connection between
the two families save that the Cullans are the patrons of the
living and inducted the old man into it, and I expect both parties
heartily wish they hadn't. Mr. Hewins hates Marius like poison
and made a great scandal once by refusing him the Sacrament;
but what the relationship between them may be on what
Taverner would call the Inner Planes--well, I might hazard a
guess. Is there such a thing as being the spiritual grandfather of a
person?"

"Generalizations are untrustworthy," said Taverner. "Give
me some facts and I will be able to tell you more."

"Facts?" said Parkes, "there aren't any, save that the lad
grows more like a caricature of Hewins year by year, and those
who know the old story remark on it, yes, and make use of it,
too. Now there is a farmer over at Kettlebury who won't turn the
first furrow of a ploughing unless Marius leads the team--"

"Wait a bit," said Taverner. "Begin at the beginning, and tell
us the old story."

"The old story," replied Parkes, "has nothing whatever to do
with the matter, but here it is, for what it is worth.

"Hewins' wife was a daughter of one of the broom squires. I
suppose you know who they are? Men, often of gypsy
extraction, who have carved a holding out of the moor and hold
it by squatter's right. It is a terribly hard and wild life, and the
men are as hard and wild as the moor; as for the women, the less
said about them the better.