And then abruptly he seemed to put the book aside. His manner changed.
He lifted himself from the cushions and spoke in a strained voice.
"Look here, George," he said hurriedly, jumping from point to point, "let"s be getting on. I may be having to turn you out soon; this may be no place for you. Where had we got to? Where I tore that book. You were asking me when I first felt sure of all this. Well, it wasn"t just the book, it was what happened inside me as well. Something gave way. I was afraid. I"m afraid now. You"ve known me a long time, George; known scandalous things about me, I"m afraid. But a man can live a pretty queer sort of life and yet manage to keep something safe from harm all the time. It"s that that I"m hanging on to now. You see, I"ve never had any habits or customs. I"ve never been the millionth man--the fellow who repeats what they"ve all said before him. Every morning of my life I"ve tried to look at the universe as if I"d never seen it before--as if it had never been seen by anybody before. Dashed risky way of living....
But I managed to keep something clean inside me ... thank G.o.d ... need it ... badly ... no time to go into all that now...."
He muttered unintelligibly. He was not actually looking at his watch, and yet he gave the impression of having his eye on the pa.s.sage of time.
Suddenly he went on with a new spurt.
"Don"t interrupt, please. I may have made a miscalculation. You see, when I drop off to sleep.... About that book. I started it at breakfast, sent Mrs Hyems away, and never moved from my chair till I"d finished it in the afternoon. Then, when I ripped it in two, I seemed to rip something in myself with it. I can"t describe it any other way.
Something in me seemed to open and take me right back. Before breakfast that morning I was what they call "settling down in life." I"d written _Esau_ since the _Ape_, and had lots of things planned. I"d even got a bit old-maidish about all this"--he indicated his tidy walls.
"Then--piff! All that stage of my development seemed to go like smoke.
No, no pain; no physical feeling of any kind except that sudden rush of bodily strength. I just tore myself in two as I"d torn the book, and I ran to my gla.s.s--the gla.s.s I"d shaved in only a few hours ago."
"And you saw----?" the words broke breathlessly from me.
Slowly he shook his head. "Nothing--that time. _I hadn"t been to sleep, you see. A sleep"s got to come in between._ That"s why you mustn"t be here if I go to sleep.... No, it was the next morning I saw it."
Faintly I asked him what it was he had seen the next morning.
But before he could reply there had come a sudden wicked glitter into his grey-blue eyes. His hand had once more gone to his upturned coat collar. And he chuckled--chuckled.
"Not _this_, if that"s what you mean," he said with a jerk of his head.
"That was my last adventure; the one I"m telling you about now was two before that." Then his chuckle dying away again, "You notice your face when you shave, don"t you?--the texture of your skin and so on? Well, that was what I saw: just a few years younger, a few years softer, a few years smoother. The corners of your eyebrows here; you know how the brow gets thin at the sides and those sprouts of long hair begin to come?
Well, they"d gone. And I was scared at my strength coming back like that.... I say, get me a drink, will you? No, no, blast it--not that stuff--plain water."
I got him the water. He gulped it down. His fingertips were still feeling his eyebrows. Then with another spurt:
"What"s the time now? Never mind--but I keep a diary now, you see. Have to. Memory isn"t to be trusted in a matter of this kind. And speaking of memory, it"ll be h.e.l.l"s delight if that goes. You see, this isn"t 1920 for me; it"s 1910, and I shan"t have written _The Hands of Esau_ for another three years yet. Or you can call it both 1920 and 1910 if you like. Bit mixing, isn"t it? It"s demoniac. I call it----" he called it something rather too violent for me to set down, and I have omitted one or two other strong expressions that had begun to creep into his speech.
"And just one other thing before I shove you out," he positively raced on. "I said I should die at sixteen. If it comes to the worst I hope to G.o.d I shall; none of your scarlet second childhoods for me! But how the Erebus and Terror do I know when sixteen will come?... I say, where are you sleeping to-night? Perhaps you"d better---- Have some whisky. If only we had that d.a.m.ned datum point! Do have some whisky. Have the---- lot. Are those curtains drawn? Take my key and lock me in and give it to Mrs Hyems downstairs. Where"s that diary of mine?"
Then all in a moment he was on his feet. Without ceremony he had thrust my hat into my hands. Comparatively gently, seeing what his strength was, he was hustling me towards the door.
"Sorry, old man"--the words came thickly--"thanks awfully--I expect I shall be all right--don"t bother about me.... But I shall have to move sooner or later--looks so dashed queer one man coming in and another going out--too comic if they arrested me on a charge of making away with myself.... See you soon--yourself out--quick, if you don"t mind--go, go!"
The next moment I was out on his landing. He had almost carried me out.
I heard the locking of his door, but after that, though I listened, nothing.
V
Presently it occurred to me that there was nothing to be gained by waiting. It did not seem to be an occasion for calling for help, and if there was something he did not wish me to see it was hardly a friend"s part to stand there listening for it. Slowly I descended past the closed offices of the cinema and variety agents and let myself out into the street. Involuntarily my eyes went up to his window, but no light showed there, and I remembered that I had drawn his curtains myself. Among a knot of people who waited for omnibuses I stood on the kerb, lost in thought.
It was after eleven o"clock, and Haslemere was now out of the question.
I could have got a bed at my Club, but I vaguely felt that there might be something rather more to the purpose to do than that. For some minutes I couldn"t for the life of me think what it was. Four o"clock of that afternoon seemed an age ago.... Then I remembered. Madge Aird might at least be able to throw a little light on the Daphne Ba.s.sett aspect of the affair. She had said she would be at home that evening, and I can always have a bed at the Airds" for the asking.
I mounted a bus, descended at my Club, telephoned to Alec Aird, seized a bag I kept ready packed in town, and by half-past eleven was on my way to Empress Gate.
Alec himself opened the door to me. He was in his dinner-jacket, but had thrust his feet into a comfortable pair of bedroom slippers and was smoking his everlasting bulldog briar pipe. There were neither hats nor coats on the hall table, and he had the air of having the house to himself.
"Thought it would be you," he said. "Lost your train? Give me your bag--I"m scared to death of asking a servant to do anything after dinner these days. Come up."
"Isn"t Madge in? She said she was going to be at home."
"Oh, Madge calls it being at home if she"s in by midnight. She"s only at the n.o.bles. I don"t think she"s going on anywhere. Listen"--the click of a key had sounded in the hall--"there she is, I expect."
It was Madge. She followed us up into the drawing-room a moment later, gave me a glance that was half surprised and half amused, and proceeded to unscarf herself. Alec was relighting his pipe with the long twisted-paper poker. There was a question in the eye he c.o.c.ked at her.
Alec is fond of home, and lives a good deal of his social life vicariously, sending Madge to represent him and relying on her account of the proceedings when she gets back. This is frequently lively.
"Oh, n.o.body much," she chattered. "The Tank Beverleys and the Hobsons, and Connie Fairham and her escapade, and Jock Diver with Mrs Hatchett.
Washout of an evening; makes home seem quite nice, especially with George here. Do give me a decent peg; they"d nothing but filthy cup."
Then, as Alec busied himself at a tray, she shot another amused glance at me. "Brought the Beautiful Bear, George?"
"I"ve just left him. I want to talk to you."
"Alec," she said promptly, "go to bed. George and I want to talk."
"Dashed if I do without a tune," Alec grumbled. "Play something."
Madge crossed to the music-stool, set her whisky-and-soda on the sliding rest, and began to play.
I waited in an extreme of impatience. The bus-ride to the Club, getting my bag, coming on to Empress Gate, greeting Alec--I suppose these things had occupied me just sufficiently to put away for half an hour the weight that had been placed upon me; but now, as I frowned at Alec Aird"s tiles and cut steel fender, that weight began to reimpose itself.
Anxiously I wondered what might be happening at that very moment in that other room with the drawn curtains, the orderly shelves and the disreputable table.
A man who grew younger instead of older! A man who already was ten years younger than he had been a few months ago! He had been quite right in saying, when I had tried to take him down to Haslemere, that that only meant that I had not yet taken it in. I was as far from being able to take it in as ever. More and more it forced itself on me as menacing, inimical, wild. What sane man could believe it? And yet, if it was not to be believed, why could I not shake it off? Why did it lurk, as it were, in the half-lighted corners of Madge"s drawing-room, allowing me all the time I wished in which to demonstrate it to be nonsense, and then, when I had left not one aspect of it uncriticised and undenied, reunite and face me again exactly as before?
It happened, he said, while he slept; and he had strictly enjoined on me that if I saw him falling asleep I was to walk straight out of the place. "There are some things I won"t ask even a pal to go through."
That meant that during his sleep those tufts of his eyebrows disappeared and that terrifying strength descended on him again. But what happened _before_ then? Was the actual and physical change simultaneous with the inner and mental one, or was it merely a confirmation that came afterwards? _Had_ he changed in every respect but form and feature even as I had talked to him? It frightened me to think that he had; but the more I thought of it the more it looked like it.
For there had taken place a struggle within him that had but increased in intensity as the minutes had pa.s.sed. I remembered the gravity with which he had pondered my suggestion that for the stuff of his novels he had been too directly to heaven, too straight to h.e.l.l. I don"t pretend to know any more about heaven and h.e.l.l than anybody else, but I have the ordinary man"s conception of the difference between good and evil, better and worse, and these principles, it seemed to me, had contended in him. And he had striven to throw the weight of his personal will into the worthier scale. There were things he did not wish to re-do, episodes he did not wish to re-live. He had even wept that he must be dislodged from that rock of his life to which his forty-five years had brought him.... But what had followed? Suddenly a wicked chuckle. Violent expressions had crept into his speech. A glitter had awakened in his eyes, as if, since the thing must be gone through with, devilry and defiance were a more manly part than weeping. "Well, if there"s no help for it, let"s be thorough one way or the other," I could have imagined him grimly saying....
And if this was so, what did it mean but that he _had_ actually grown younger before my very eyes? I was merely shown, invisibly and a little in advance, what the whole world would realise when his sleep had smoothed out a few more wrinkles, given a newer gloss to his hair and an added brightness to his eyes....
And in that case why had I come to see Madge Aird? What could Madge do?
What could anybody do? If the thing was true it was inescapable. He _must_ go back. Not one single stage could be avoided. Beyond these episodes which he dreaded lay others that perhaps he need not dread, and others beyond those, and others beyond those ... until he attained sixteen....
I continued to muse and Madge to play.
At last Alec got contentedly up. He straightened the creases from his dinner-jacket.
"Thanks, old girl," he said. "Well, I"m going to turn in, and you two can sit up and yarn about your royalties if you like. You look after him, Madge, and see he doesn"t get hold of _The Times_ before I do in the morning. Night, George. You know where everything is----"
And, refilling his pipe as he went, he was off. Madge drew up a small table between us, untied the ribbons of her cothurnes, rubbed the creases from her ankles, and worked her toes inside their sheath of silk.
"Well?" she said; and then with a little rapturous gush, "I can"t get the creature"s beauty out of my head! That skin--that hair--and those wonderful books! It isn"t fair. It"s too many gifts for one person. He ought to be nationalised or something--turned over to the public like a park."
"I want you to tell me who Mrs Ba.s.sett is," I said.
She bargained. "It"s a swap, mind. If I tell you about her you tell me about him."