by Dion Fortune
That afternoon I had occasion to visit my dentist for the annual overhaul by which even such strange mortals as I render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Turning over the ancient illustrated papers in his waiting-room I suddenly saw, looking out at me from among the society beauties and sporting loungers, a face of a very different type.
He had obviously had his hair cut for the occasion of the photograph, but except for that, he was the same, even to his reefer jacket and softcollared shirt, as he had been when I flashed my electric torch in his eyes and turned him from my door, and in the letterpress I read his history.
He had involved himself in a controversy with some antivivisectionists—he looked a controversial individual—and they had all ended up in the law-courts for libelling each other. The decision had gone in his favour, for both the claim and the counter-claim, but the judge had bidden him mend his manners.
As I had thought, he was a very eminent person, a doctor with an international reputation. He looked rather a brute, I thought, but I remember seeing another expression in his eyes when startled out of his self-possession. He had looked more like a lost and wandering soul then than a famous scientist; but perhaps the two are not incompatible, nor so far apart as we are led to believe by their pontifical utterances.
I considered the sidelight thrown on his temperament by the fact that a man in his position had turned aside to quarrel vituperatively with people who were not worth powder and shot, and guessed that repressions were being worked off at their expense. The damages he had received for being libelled he had given to his hospital; as a matter of fact, he had in all probability not suffered the slightest damage, but his opponents, being humanitarians, had been particularly ruthless in their onslaughts, and an exasperated jury had made them pay for their lapse from good sense and good manners. The whole business was an abuse of the process of the courts in any case, and the judge had said as much.
So that, I thought, looking at the bull-dog head that glowered back at me from the glossy page—so that is the man to whom I have got to represent Isis!
There was more biography than dentistry done when my turn came to occupy the chair. I mentioned to my dentist that I had recognised, in one of his illustrated papers, the portrait of a man I had nearly run over in the Grosvenor Road, and the floodgates of reminiscence were opened. It was even as I had thought.
Dr. Rupert Annesley Malcolm, M.D., DSc., F.R.C.P., to give him his principal distinctions—he had many others, foreign and honourary—was a man of enormous scientific prestige and complete social non-existence. His irritable temper, his brusque manners, his mean lodgings—were traditional among generations of medical students. His extreme generosity, his absolute integrity and selflessness, his enormous capacity for work and his courage in tackling abuses and pricking bubble reputations had a smaller audience among men of his own calibre—my dentist spoke of him with respect but without enthusiasm. Of his private history he knew nothing save that he was the son of a Presbyterian minister; that his wife was an invalid residing at the seaside; that he was reputed to make a colossal income and spend it all on research—he certainly did not spend it on himself. My informant doubted the colossal income, although Dr. Malcolm had had some very eminent patients, for he was notoriously indifferent to money, and money is not made by those who are indifferent to it. Anyway it was probable that he had an income more than adequate to his solitary way of life.
Such were the bulletins to date. After the session was concluded I supplemented them from the Medical Directory and found how very eminent Dr. Malcolm really was, and wondered still more what the crazy idiot was doing, chasing me along the Embankment. It was the very last sort of adventure in which a man in his position ought to have involved himself. If he must, he should, for his own sake, do it a trifle more discreetly—and then, from the very indiscretion of his doings I realised that he was not in the habit of doing that sort of thing.
I rang up the telephone number given in the directory and made an appointment for 6.30 that afternoon. I insisted that it was urgent, for it seemed to me that if my psychic perceptions were correct, the sooner Malcolm and I met and had things out, the better. His secretary was reluctant, but I showed her no mercy, and a few minutes before 6.30 that evening I found myself in the typical waiting-room that one sees in one of those houses in the doctors’ district that are let out in penny numbers to a crowd of consultants—the furniture heavy, handsome, without individuality and inadequately dusted; the inevitable centre table strewn with dog-eared illustrations—just such another room down to the last detail as I had sat in a couple of hours earlier.
There was another patient ahead of me when I arrived—Dr. Malcolm was evidently running late—a miserable, misshapen little boy, his legs in irons, accompanied by an over-anxious mother, far more nervous than he was. We began to talk. I gathered that she abominated the great Dr. Malcolm, but for some unknown reason her small son didn't seem to mind him. I counted this as a point in favour of the man I was about to confront; a child's instinct in these things is very sure and penetrating, and if the boy were not frightened of his rough mannerisms, they were probably no more than mannerisms. Presently my companions were summoned, and the boy slipped off his chair and stumbled towards the door with his uneven gait quite eagerly—the great Dr. Malcolm had no terrors for him.
I waited, and I waited. My companions had been far from prosperouslooking, and big fees were unlikely to be forthcoming from them, but they were not stinted for time. The dusk was gathering in that gloomy room, so I could no longer distract my mind with the papers, and the atmosphere of the place began to get hold of me. It seemed as if it were thickly populated by apprehensive ghosts. I began to get quite nervous myself, and when at last my turn came I had to take hold of my courage with both hands.
I knew that I must, from the very outset, dominate the interview or it would be a great deal worse than useless; ground once lost could never be recovered in such a matter. I had to lay hold of Malcolm's imagination and touch the very springs of his being. It sounds like charlatanry, but actually it was psychic surgery. If I had done such things to gratify my own vanity or serve any selfish ends, it would have been abominable; but I did it because there was nothing else that could effectually help this man, just as, without any sense of the conventions I would have thrown my arms round him if I had seen him stepping backward into danger.
The attendant nurse opened a heavy mahogany door and showed me into a large and handsome room, scantily and impersonally furnished. At a flat-topped desk under the glaring centre light stood my red-haired friend, looking very tired and very cross. He stared at me, thunderstruck, and I saw at once that he recognised me. I took my courage in both hands, invoked Isis, and advanced to the attack.
My reception was far from encouraging. The man was both angry and agitated, but I had to get past that, and ignoring his conscious reactions, I spoke to his subconscious, evoking what I knew must be there; and as I knew there would be, there was a response. He resisted it and fought it, but I was too sure of my ground, too experienced in handling human beings, to be put off my stroke; I got my fingers on to the vital spots in that man's soul and I put on the pressure. It was like a surgeon breaking down a stiff joint, and there are no anæsthetics in psychology. Such things do not bear talking about. It is a terrible thing to see a man's soul naked.
When the reaction was over, I took Malcolm home with me. I do not know what would have happened to him if I hadn't. I think he would have got himself run over at the first crossing, so completely had he gone to pieces.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was an odd drive across London with the man who had so often pursued me on the Embankment sitting quietly beside me, his slouch hat pulled over his eyes, and his hands folded over the instrument case that rested on his knees. Not a word passed his lips for the entire trip. He just sat there looking like an Epstein sculpture. I was not sorry to turn off the bridge approach into the quiet streets, for the concentrat
ion necessary for driving in traffic was not easy in the circumstances.
I wondered with what mixed emotions he would approach my door. As I held it open for him to follow me our eyes met for the first time.
“I have been here before, you know,” he said curtly.
I admired him for that. It could not have been easy to say.
“I know,” I said. “I wish I had recognised you.”
“Recognised me?” he checked on the threshold, like a jibbing horse. “Who are you mistaking me for?”
“Nobody,” I said. “Won't you come inside? There is a great deal to tell of my side of the story.”
That brought him in. Curiosity is not an exclusively feminine prerogative. For a moment I had thought he had been going to take refuge in flight.
He deposited his hat on the nearest chair, but, I suppose from habit, retained possession of his instrument case. He stared round my big room wonderingly. There was at times, when caught off his guard, something oddly childlike about him; apart from that, he impressed one as a man who had never had any youth.
Then he met my eyes again, and coloured to the roots of his hair.
“You have been here before also,” I said, thinking these things had better be voiced.
He bowed his head. “Yes,” he said. “I have.”
I judged from that that he was quite a good psychic, better than I had realised—perhaps better than he had realised also. It must be a startling experience suddenly to discover that one's secret dream-life is an actuality.
I put him into my big chair, and he dropped into it like a very weary man. I offered him a sherry, which he declined. I suggested a cup of tea, which he accepted gratefully. After he had had it, he looked much more reconciled to life.
“Why aren't you a surgeon?” I said to him, more for something to say than for anything else.
He smiled, if it could be called a smile, that slight, grim curl of the lip.
“I ought to have been a surgeon,” he said, “l should have liked it.”
“Then—why aren't you?”
He sat silent for a moment. “I have a horror of blood,” he said at length. “No good going in for surgery with a trait like that.”
“How did you manage to become a doctor at all?”
“Put up with it. But it wouldn't have done to risk operating.”
Silence fell again. I refilled his cup. The silence continued so long that when he finally broke it I could not think for a moment what he was referring to.
“You are the first person to whom I have ever told that,” he said.
Then silence fell once more, and I let it rest unbroken, feeling that, in his queer way, he was travelling far and fast.
Again he broke it. “What made you ask me why I wasn't a surgeon?” he asked.
“Your hands,” said I.
He inspected them; examining the finger-tips one by one; viewing with evident distaste the tobacco-stains that marred the otherwise wellkept nails. I rose, and took from the wall a small engraving of Durer's “Praying Hands” and gave it to him to look at.
“Hands are wonderful things,” I said.
“Yes—I know,” he said “I depend on mine a lot. More than on my eyes, really.”
He considered the picture carefully.
“I like that picture,” he said. “Could I get one like it?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him he could have it; instead I told him he could get a copy at any picture shop.
He rose abruptly.
“I've taken up enough of your time,” he said. “I must be going.”
He seemed to have forgotten the promised revelations that had tempted him in; or perhaps he wished to avoid them. I knew better than to press him to stop.
“Would you like me to drive you back?” I asked.
“No, I'll walk.”
“Then I'll show you the short cut,” I said.
We went down the little street on to the wharf.
“Not far, if you could fly,” I said.
“Is that my place opposite?” he exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt. “Good God!”
I wondered why the occasion called for such strong language. I thought I would find out.
“Do you ever walk up and down your room at night?” said I.
“Yes,” said he, then—”Do you ever wear white dresses?”
He gave me a curious, side-long look, like a nervous horse, and without waiting for my reply, walked to the edge of the unfenced wharf and stood looking down at the water.
I joined him.
Without looking up, he spoke.
“If I hadn't been a swimmer, there are times when I should have gone in there. I shan't do it now, though,” he added.
Then he turned to me with the abruptness which I had begun to see was habitual.
“Well, are you going to show me the way home?”
“Yes,” I said. “I'll show you the way home—if you have the nerve to take it.”
“What d'you mean?” he asked sharply.
“You'll know one of these days,” said I.
I walked ahead, and he followed me—he couldn't very well do anything else—and I led him down a narrow alley between walls to a flight of worn steps that led up to the bridge approach.
“I don't call that so very terrible,” he said, as I bid him farewell, under the flickering gas-lamp.
“I wasn't referring to that,” said I.
He stood hesitating, as if disinclined to move off.
“Shall I see you again?” he asked curtly.
“That is as you wish,” said I. “You will always be welcome.”
“Thanks,” said he, and raising his hat, turned on his heel and went off.
I started to make my way back down the dingy alley. I had not gone very far when I heard footsteps rapidly overtaking me. My first impulse was to quicken my pace and reach the road, for it was not a place in which to risk an encounter with unpleasantness.
“Miss Morgan, I want to ask you something,” said a voice behind me, rather breathless, rather more breathless, I thought, than should have been occasioned by a walking-pace over so short a distance.
I turned. Unmistakable, even in the gloom, were those square-set shoulders and that bull-dog neck.
“My friend,” said I, “what is it you want with me?” I spoke as gently as I could, for I knew he was nerving himself for an ordeal.
“Look here, do you mind—my day-dreaming? I can't altogether help it, you know. But if you say so, I will try.”
“I thought you couldn't help it,” said I.
“Of course I can if I make up my mind.”
“At what price?”
He was silent.
“I do not mind in the least,” said I. “It hurts no one, and I think it helps you.”
“I don't like doing it, now I know you,” he said.
“These things come from something much deeper than the surface,” said I. Don't inhibit the visions. Watch them, and see what they do. You understand the theory of psychoanalysis?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then never mind if the symbolism has organised around me, I shall understand perfectly.”
“The—Freudian transference?” said he.
“Yes,” said I, thinking that that was the best thing I could say. Reassured, he turned on his heel and took himself off.
I walked slowly back to the wharf and stood there till I saw the light go on in the window across the water. Then a shadow blocked the lighted square, and I knew that Malcolm was leaning out of his window. I was glad I had on my black mackintosh cape. I waited a little, to let him tire of his vigil and draw the blind, for I thought it possible he might be able to see me as I walked down the short, well-lit street, and I did not particularly want him to know that I had kept watch on the wharf. But he showed an inexhaustible patience, and in the end he wore me down. I went back and let myself in to the warm, scented room in which I lived and moved and had my being. Then, and not til
l then, did it occur to me that Malcolm had been waiting to see the lights go on in my big window.
I wondered what thoughts had occupied his whirling mind. That it was whirling, I was perfectly certain. I judged from his whole demeanour that he was a man who had nothing whatever to do with women save as patients, not that, grim granite image though he was, he would have been unattractive to women, for the curious sense of dynamism about the man would have been very attractive to many of them; but he was altogether too brusque and forbidding for anything in the way of an affair ever to have got a start.
I wondered whether he would consider his relationship with me in the light of an “affair,” and make up his mind to shun it, as I felt sure he would if he saw it in that light. I had done my best to give it the air of a psychological experiment, as it really was; but of course that was only the half of it. I had had no chance to tell him anything of the other half, and he might not unjustifiably conclude that it was an “affair” and take fright.
However, there was nothing that I could do. He was in the hands of the Great One, and so, for the matter of that, was I. I only hoped that he would be all right; that he would not get himself tangled up with the conventions, but would follow his inner urge and steer a straight course. I had practically given him a “dare” when I had told him I would show him the way if he had the nerve to take it, and that might put him on his mettle; or it might make him shy off still further; or, from sheer social ineptitude he might have entirely missed the point. I could only wait and see.
For about a month nothing happened, and I began to wonder whether Malcolm had judged that I was too dangerous to know and had imposed on himself a self-denying ordinance or whether, having met me, he found that the reality did not come up to expectations and had gone off to pastures new. I was puzzled to know what to do. That he was the sacrificial priest and the man chosen for the work I had not the slightest doubt; that in his higher self he knew this I was perfectly certain. But should I be justified in putting any traction on his subconscious mind in order to draw him to me?
