They return at evening A book of ghost stories
Hall, where he had had first revealed to him those many and delicate
refinements of life which only great wealth, allied with traditional
taste, can secure. Why had it been so? He had eventually asked Philip.
“Because,” he replied, “you have a first-class brain, I have a second
or third. I have always had things made too easy for me. You have had
most things made too hard. _Ergo_, you have a first-class character.
I haven’t. I feel a sense of respectful shame towards you, my dear
Teddie, which alone would keep me trotting at your heels. I feel I
can rely on you as on no one else. You are at once my superior and my
complement. Anyway, it has happened, why worry? Analysing such things
often spoils them, it’s like over-rehearsing.”
And then the War--and even the Defence of Civilisation entailed subtle
social distinctions.
Philip was given a commission in a regiment of cavalry (with the best
will in the world Bellamy never quite understood the privileged rôle of
the horse in the higher ranks of English society); he himself enlisted
in a line regiment, and rose through his innate common sense and his
unflagging capacity for finishing a job to the rank of Major, D.S.O.
and bar, and a brace of wound-stripes. Philip went to Mesopotamia and
was eventually invalided out through the medium of a gas-shell. His
right lung seriously affected, he spent from 1917-1924 on a farm in
Arizona.
They had written to each other occasionally--the hurried, flippant,
shadow-of-death letters of the time, but somehow their friendship had
dimmed and faded and become more than a little pre-War by the end of
it, so that Bellamy was not more than mildly disappointed when he heard
casually that Philip was back in England, yet had had but the most
casual, damp letter from him.
But there had been all the old cordiality and affection in his voice
over the telephone--and something more--not so pleasant to hear.
At the appointed hour he arrived in St. James’s Street, and a moment
later Philip came up to him.
“Now, Teddie,” he said, “I know what you’re thinking, I know I’ve been
a fool and the rottenest sort of type to have acted as I have, but
there is a kind of explanation.”
Bellamy surrendered at once to that absurd sense of delight at being in
Philip’s company, and his small resentment was rent and scattered. None
the less he regarded him with a veiled intentness. He was looking tired
and old--forcing himself--there was something seriously the matter.
“My very dear Philip,” he said, “you don’t need to explain things to
me. To think it is eight years since we met!”
“First of all let’s order something,” said Philip. “You have what you
like, I don’t want much, except a drink.” Whereupon he selected a
reasonable collation for Bellamy and a dressed crab and asparagus for
himself. But he drank two Martinis in ten seconds, and these were not
the first--Bellamy knew--that he had ordered since 5.30 (there _was_
something wrong).
For a little while the conversation was uneasily, stalely reminiscent.
Suddenly Philip blurted out, “I can’t keep it in any longer. You’re the
only really reliable, unswerving friend I’ve ever had. You will help
me, won’t you?”
“My dear Philip,” said Bellamy, touched, “I always have and always will
be ready to do anything you want me to do and at any time--you know
that.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell you my story. First of all, have you ever heard
of a man called Oscar Clinton?”
“I seem to remember the name. It is somehow connected in my mind with
the nineties, raptures and roses, absinthe and poses; and the _other_
Oscar. I believe his name cropped up in a case I was in. I have an
impression he’s a wrong ’un.”
“That’s the man,” said Philip. “He stayed with me for three months at
Franton.”
“Oh,” said Bellamy sharply, “how was that?”
“Well, Teddie, anything the matter with one’s lungs affects one’s
mind--not always for the worse, however. I know that’s true, and it
affected mine. Arizona is a moon-dim region, very lovely in its way and
stark and old, but I had to leave it. You know I was always a sceptic,
rather a wooden one, as I remember; well, that ancient, lonely land set
my lung-polluted mind working. I used to stare and stare into the sky.
One is brought right up against the vast enigmas of time and space and
eternity when one lung is doing the work of two, and none too well at
that.”
Edward realised under what extreme tension Philip had been living, but
felt that he could establish a certain control over him. He felt more
in command of the situation and resolved to keep that command.
“Well,” continued Philip, filling up his glass, “when I got back to
England I was so frantically nervous that I could hardly speak or
think. I felt insane, unclean--mentally. I felt I was going mad, and
could not bear to be seen by anyone who had known me--that is why I was
such a fool as not to come to you. You have your revenge! I can’t tell
you, Teddie, how depression roared through me! I made up my mind to
die, but I had a wild desire to know to what sort of place I should go.
And then I met Clinton. I had rushed up to London one day just to get
the inane anodyne of noise and people, and I suppose I was more or less
tight, for I walked into a club of sorts called the ‘Chorazin’ in Soho.
The door-keeper tried to turn me out, but I pushed him aside, and then
someone came up and led me to a table. It was Clinton.
“Now there is no doubt he has great hypnotic power. He began to
talk, and I at once felt calmer and started to tell him all about
myself. I talked wildly for an hour, and he was so deft and delicate
in his handling of me that I felt I could not leave him. He has a
marvellous insight into abnormal mental--psychic--whatever you like to
call them--states. Some time I’ll describe what he looks like--he’s
certainly like no one else in the world.
“Well, the upshot was that he came down to Franton next day and stayed
on. Now, I know that his motives were entirely mercenary, but none the
less he saved me from suicide, and to a great extent gave back peace to
my mind.
“Never could I have imagined such an irresistible and brilliant
talker. Whatever he may be, he’s also a poet, a profound philosopher
and amazingly versatile and erudite. Also, when he likes, his charm
of manner carries one away. At least, in my case it did--for a
time--though he borrowed £20 or more a week from me.
“And then one day my butler came to me, and with the hushed gusto
appropriate to such revelations murmured that two of the maids were
in the family way and that another had told him an hysterical little
tale--floating in floods of tears--about how Clinton had made several
attempts to force his way into her bedroom.
“Well, Teddie, that sort of thing is that sort of thing, but I felt
such a performance couldn’t possibly be justified, that taking
advantage of a trio of rustics in his host’s house was a dastardly and
unforgivable outrage.
“Other people’s morals are chiefly their own affair, but I had a
personal responsibility towards these buxom victims--well, you can
realise just how I felt.
“I had to speak about it to Clinton, and did so that night. No one
ever saw him abashed. He smiled at me in a superior and patronising
way, and said he quite understood that I was almost bound to hold such
feudal and socially primitive views, suggesting, of course, that my
chief concern in the matter was that he had infringed my _droit de
seigneur_ in these cases. As for him, he considered it was his duty to
disseminate his unique genius as widely as possible, and that it should
be considered the highest privilege for anyone to bear his child. He
had to his knowledge seventy-four offspring alive, and probably many
more--the more the better for the future of humanity. But, of course,
he understood and promised for the future--bowing to my rights and my
prejudices--to allow me to plough my own pink and white pastures--and
much more to the same effect.
“Though still under his domination, I felt there was more lust than
logic in these specious professions, so I made an excuse and went up
to London the next day. As I left the house I picked up my letters,
which I read in the car on the way up. One was a three-page catalogue
raisonné from my tailor. Not being as dressy as all that, it seemed
unexpectedly grandiose, so I paid him a visit. Well, Clinton had forged
a letter from me authorising him to order clothes at my expense, and a
lavish outfit had been provided.
“It then occurred to me to go to my bank to discover precisely how much
I had lent Clinton during the last three months. It was £420. All
these discoveries--telescoping--caused me to review my relationship
with Clinton. Suddenly I felt it had better end. I might be mediæval,
intellectually costive, and the possessor of much scandalously unearned
increment, but I could not believe that the pursuit and contemplation
of esoteric mysteries necessarily implied the lowest possible standards
of private decency. In other words, I was recovering.
“I still felt that Clinton was the most remarkable person I had ever
met. I do to this day--but I felt I was unequal to squaring such magic
circles.
“I told him so when I got back. He was quite charming, gentle,
understanding, commiserating, and he left the next morning, after
pronouncing some incantation whilst touching my forehead. I missed him
very much. I believe he’s the devil, but he’s that sort of person.
“Once I had assured the prospective mothers of his children that they
would not be sacked and that their destined contributions to the
population would be a charge upon me--there is a codicil to my will to
this effect--they brightened up considerably, and rather too frequently
snatches of the Froth-Blowers’ Anthem cruised down to me as they went
about their duties. In fact, I had a discreditable impression that
the Immaculate Third would have shown less lachrymose integrity had
the consequences of surrender been revealed _ante factum_. Eventually
a brace of male infants came to contribute their falsettos to the
dirge--for whose appearance the locals have respectfully given me the
credit. These brats have searching, malign eyes, and when they reach
the age of puberty I should not be surprised if the birth statistics
for East Surrey began to show a remarkable--even a magical--rise.
“Oh, how good it is to talk to you, Teddie, and get it all off my
chest! I feel almost light-hearted, as though my poor old brain had
been curetted. I feel I can face and fight it now.
“Well, for the next month I drowsed and read and drowsed and read until
I felt two-lunged again. And several times I almost wrote to you, but
I felt such lethargy and yet such a certainty of getting quite well
again that I put everything off. I was content to lie back and let that
blessed healing process work its quiet kindly way with me.
“And then one day I got a letter from a friend of mine, Melrose, who
was at the House when we were up. He is the Secretary of ‘Ye Ancient
Mysteries,’ a dining club I joined before the War. It meets once a
month and discusses famous mysteries of the past--the _Mary Celeste_,
the ‘McLachlan Case,’ and so on--with a flippant yet scholarly zeal;
but that doesn’t matter. Well, Melrose said that Clinton wanted to
become a member, and had stressed the fact that he was a friend of
mine. Melrose was a little upset, as he had heard vague rumours about
Clinton. Did I think he was likely to be an acceptable member of the
club?
“Well, what was I to say? On the one side of the medal were the facts
that he had used my house as his stud-farm, that he had forged my
name and sponged on me shamelessly. On the reverse was the fact that
he was a genius and knew more about Ancient Mysteries than the rest