You must not suppose that we ate in silence. I do not report our conversation because it is of slight interest. Just—”Another slice of turkey, my dear Doctor; allow me to give you the liver-wing.” And—”Sir John, let me press you to a little more of this excellent Timbale de Macaroni; and may I refill your glass. Oh, you’ve done it yourself.” You know the sort of thing; the polite exchanges of men who are busy with their food.
But at last the table was empty, except for bones and wreckage. I sat back, satisfied yet in no way uncomfortable, and reached for a toothpick. It was a Victorian table, and so there were toothpicks of the finest sort—real quill toothpicks such as one rarely sees in these weakly fastidious days. I was ready to put into effect the plan I had been hatching.
In the bad old days, before the academic life claimed me, I was, you must know, a journalist. And here I found myself in a situation of which no journalist would dare even to dream. Across the table from me sat one whose unique knowledge of our country’s past was incalculably enhanced by his extraordinary privilege of possessing access to our country’s future! Here was one who could tell me what would be the outcome of the present disquiet in Quebec. And then how I should be courted in Ottawa! Would I demand the Order of Canada—the Companionship, not the mere medal—before I deigned to reveal what I knew? And how I should lord it over Maurice Careless! But I at once put this unworthy thought from me. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I wound myself up to put my leading question.
But, poor creature of the twentieth century that I am, I was mistaken about the nature of our meal.
“Ready for the second course, I think, eh Doctor?” said Sir John, and waved his hand. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye—the Biblical phrase popped into my mind—the table was completely re-set, and before us was spread a profusion of partridges, wild duck, lobster salad, galantines, plum pudding, jelly, pink blancmange, Charlotte Russe, Italian Cream, a Bavarian Cream, a Genoa Cream, plates of pastries of every variety—apple puffs, bouchées, cornucopias, croquenbouche, flans, strawberry tartlets, maids-of-honour, stuffed monkeys, prune flory, tortelli—it was bewildering. And there were ice creams in the Victorian manner—vast temples of frozen, coloured, flavoured cornstarch—and there were plum cakes and that now forgotten delicacy called Pyramids.
And fruit! Great towers of fruit, mounting from foundations of apples, through oranges and nectarines to capitals of berries and currants, upon each of which was perched the elegantly explosive figure of a pineapple.
You see, I had forgotten that a proper Victorian dinner had a second course of this nature, so that one might have some relaxation after the serious eating was over.
But Sir John seemed disappointed. “What!” he cried; “no gooseberry fool? And I had been so much looking forward to it!” He proceeded to drown his sorrow in sherry.
I had no fault to find. I began again, eating methodically of every dish, and accepting second helpings of Charlotte Russe and plum cake. During this course I drank champagne only. It was that wonderful Victorian champagne, somewhat sweeter than is now fashionable, and with a caressing, rather than an aggressive, carbonization. I hope I did not drink greedily, but in Sir John’s company it was not easy to tell.
I do not mean to give you the impression that Sir John was the worse for his wine. He was completely self-possessed, but I could not help being aware that he had consumed nine bottles of sherry without any assistance from me, and that he showed no sign of stopping. I knew—once again I was in the debt of Professor Careless for this information—that it was sherry he had favoured for those Herculean bouts of solitary drinking that are part of his legend. I was concerned, and I suppose my concern showed. Before I could begin my interrogation, might not my companion lose the power of coherent speech? I sipped my champagne and nibbled abstractedly at a stuffed monkey wondering what to do. Suddenly Sir John turned to me.
“Have a weed?” he said, I accepted an excellent cigar from the box he pushed toward me.
“And a b. and s. to top off with?” he continued. Once again I murmured my acquiescence, and he prepared a brandy and soda for me at the sideboard. But for himself he kept right on with the sherry.
“Now, Doctor,” said Sir John, “I can see that you have something on your mind. Out with it.”
“It isn’t very easy to put into words,” said I. “Here am I, just as Canada’s centennial year is drawing to a close, sitting alone with the great architect of our Confederation. Naturally my mind is full of questions; the problem is, which should come first?”
“Ah, the centennial year,” said Sir John. “Well, in my time, you know, we didn’t have this habit of chopping history up into century-lengths. It’s always the centennial of something.”
“But not the centennial of Canada,” said I. “You cannot pretend to be indifferent to the growth of the country you yourself brought into being.”
“Not indifferent at all,” said he. “I’ve put myself to no end of inconvenience during the past year, dodging all over the continent—a mari usque ad mare—to look at this, that and the other thing.”
I could not control myself; the inevitable question burst from my lips. “Did you see Expo?” I cried.
“I certainly did,” said he, laughing heartily, “and I took special trouble to be there at the end when they were adding up the bill. The deficit was roughly eight times the total budget of this Dominion for the year 1867. You call that a great exposition? Why, my dear Doctor, the only Great Exposition that made any sense at all was the Great Exposition of 1851. It was the only world’s fair in history that produced a profit. And why was that? Because it was dominated by that great financier and shrewd man of business Albert the Prince Consort. If you had had any sense you would have put your confounded Expo under the guidance of the Duke of Edinburgh; no prince would have dared to bilk and rook the country as your politicians did, for he would have known that it might cost him his head. Expo!—” And then Sir John used some genial indecencies which I shall not repeat.
“But Sir John,” I protested, “this is a democratic age.”
“Democracy, sir, has its limitations, like all political theories,” said he, and I remembered that I was talking, after all, to a great Conservative and a titled Canadian. But now, if ever, was the time to come to the point.
“We have hopes that our mighty effort may reflect itself in the future development of our country,” said I. “Because you have been so kind as to make yourself palpable to me I am going to ask a very serious question. Sir John, may I enquire what you see in store for Canada, the land which you brought into being, the land which reveres your memory, the land in which your ashes lie and your mighty example is still an inspiration? May I ask what the second century of our Confederation will bring?”
“You may ask, sir,” said Sir John; “but it won’t signify, you know. I see, Doctor, that I must give you a peep into the nature of the realm of which I am now a part. It is a world of peace, and every man’s idea of peace is his own. Consider the life I led: it was one long vexation. It was an obstacle race in which my rivals were people like that tendentious, obstructive ass Brown, that rancorous, dissident ruffian Cartier, even such muttonheaded fellows as Tupper and Mowat. It was a world in which I would be interrupted in the task of writing a flattering letter to an uncomprehending Queen in order to choke off some Member of Parliament who wanted one of his constituents appointed to the post of a lighthouse-keeper. It was a life in which my every generous motive was construed as political artfulness, and my frailties were inflated into examples to scare the children of the Grits. It was, doctor, the life of a yellow dog. Now—what would peace be to such a man as I was? Freedom, Doctor; freedom from such cares as those; freedom to observe the comedy and tragedy of life without having to take a hand in it. Freedom to do as I please without regard for consequences.”
During this long speech Sir John had finished the final bottle of his dozen of sherry. Those which he had drunk before had all fl
oated, each as it was emptied, to the sideboard, where they now stood in a cluster. He picked up the twelfth bottle, and whirled it round his head like an Indian club, closing one eye to take more careful aim.
“You ask about the future of Canada, my dear sir?” he shouted. “Understandably you want to tell the world what I know it to be. But you can’t, my dear Doctor, because I haven’t taken the trouble to look. And the reason for that, my dear sir, is that I DO NOT GIVE A DAMN!”
And as he uttered these fearful words the Father of My Country hurled that last sherry bottle at the eleven on the sideboard. There was a tremendous smash, the gaslight went out, and I lost consciousness.
How much later it was I cannot tell, but when I was myself again I was walking around the quad, somewhat dazed but strangely elated. For, although I had been baulked in my wish to learn something of the future in this world, had I not been admitted to a precious, soothing, heartlifting secret about the next? To be a Canadian, yet not to have to give a damn—was it not glorious!
And to have eaten the Charlottetown banquet in such company! A smile rose to my lips, and with it the ghost of a hiccup.
When Satan Goes Home for Christmas
One of the Fellows of this College—a distinguished scholar whose name is familiar to all of you—said to me a few weeks ago: “Well, I suppose we are going to have another of your ghost stories at the Gaudy.”
My ear is sensitive, and it seemed to me that his remark contained less of eager enquiry than of resigned acceptance. I asked him at once what it was he disliked about my ghost stories.
“The ghosts,” he said, bluntly. “We’ve heard about your meetings with the shades of Queen Victoria, and George V and George VI, and Sir John A. Macdonald; it is as if nobody was fit to haunt you who had not first gained a distinguished place in history. It’s ectoplasmic elitism of the most disgusting kind.”
I could have told him that these ghosts were not inventions; I did not seek them—they sought me. But it is useless to argue with jealous people who, if they are haunted at all, are clearly haunted by ghosts drawn from the lower ranks of the Civil Service. But I determined that I would show him. I did not expect a real ghost this year; after all, five in a row is surely enough even for the most-haunted College in the University. I knew I should have to invent a ghost; it would be a simple matter to invent a ghost who would be acceptable to listeners with strong egalitarian views.
I did so. It is an excellent story—what used to be called in an earlier day “a ripping yarn”—and quite original. It is about a Junior Fellow of this College called Frank Einstein, a brilliant young biologist who discovers the secret of life in an old alchemical manuscript, and manufactures a living creature out of scraps he steals from the dissection lab in the new Medical Building. He fits it together secretly in his bedroom. But because he cannot give his creation a soul, it is a Monster, and kills the Bursar and the Librarian and finally deflowers and then eats Frank’s girlfriend, a graduate student called Mary Shelley. It is a lively narrative, and I had looked forward to reading it—especially the soliloquies of the Monster—but last night—
Last night we held our College Christmas Dance, and there was no sleep till morn, as is entirely proper when Youth and Pleasure meet to chase the glowing Hours with flying-feet. It was about one o’clock, and I had been to look at the dancing in the Round Room, where the flying Hours were being chased in a circle, which is after all what you would expect in a Round Room. I then went downstairs to the Chapel; it seemed unlikely that any couples would be sitting out there, and I would gain ten minutes of blessed quietness. But the Chapel was not empty.
The man who was standing at the altar, gazing so intently at the reredos, was not odd in any way, and yet I felt at once that he was extraordinary in every way. He seemed to be middle-aged, and yet he was not an academic; you can always date an academic by the cut of his dress suit, which he buys before he is thirty and uses very sparingly for the next forty-five years. But this man’s tail-coat might have been made yesterday, though its cut was conservative. His hair was rather long, and curly, but it was most elegantly arranged. His bearing was distinguished. I am somewhat too old to describe a man’s face as beautiful without self-consciousness, yet he was undeniably beautiful—beautiful but of an icy hauteur. I recognized the type at once; obviously a visiting lecturer from some Mid-Western American University.
“It is a handsome piece of work, isn’t it?” said I, referring to our reredos.
He did not look at me. “Quite interesting, as these family portraits go,” he murmured. I concluded that he must be deaf.
“It is Russian, seventeenth century, what is called a travelling iconostasis,” I said, raising my voice.
“A pity there is no picture of Father here. Still, not bad of its kind,” said he, still ignoring me.
“I take it you are a visitor to our Department of Fine Art,” I shouted.
He turned then and looked at me. It was a look in which pity and contempt vied for supremacy. I was taken aback, for I have not been looked at in that way since my final oral examination, now some thirty years ago.
“You do not know me?” said he.
This nettled me. I am not very good at names, but I am first-rate at faces. I knew that I had never seen him before. And yet—there was something familiar about him.
“Does this give you a clue?” said the stranger, and in an instant he was transformed. A scarlet, tight-fitting costume, and a voluminous red cloak appeared where the fashionable dress-suit had been, and the murmur of the discotheque upstairs seemed suddenly to be changed to some familiar bars of—who was it—yes, Gounod.
“Of course I know you now,” I cried; “you are the new director of the Opera School. How good of you to come in fancy dress.”
“No!” he shouted, impatiently, and once again he was transformed. This time he wore a rough, hairy costume, the feet of which were like hooves; great ram’s horns sprang from his brow, and at the back, where the seat of his trousers had been, there was now an ugly face from the mouth of which a long red tongue lolled obscenely.
“Of course,” I shouted, and laughed foolishly, for I was becoming somewhat unnerved; “you must be one of the actors from the medieval play group, the Poculi Ludique Societas. What a good disguise!”
“Disguise!” he roared, and his voice was like a lion’s. At the same moment the pendulous tongue of that nether face blew a loud raspberry—the very trumpet-call of derision. “Wretched child of an age of unbelief, what is to be done with you?” And suddenly, to my intense dismay, there was—right before me in the Chapel—a red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. The noises made by those seven heads were very hard on the nerves, and the delicate scent of the beautiful man’s cologne had given place to a stench of brimstone that made me gasp. I leapt backward, tumbled over a chair and crashed to the ground.
“O the Devil!” I exclaimed, and suddenly the dragon was gone and the beautiful man stood before me. “Well, you’ve got it at last,” said he, and helped me to rise.
I did not stay on my feet for an instant. I know when I am outclassed; I dropped immediately to my knees. “Great Lord,” I said, and as my voice did not seem to be trembling enough naturally I added a shade more tremolo to it by art, “Great Lord, what is your will?”
“My will is that you stand up and forget all that medieval mummery,” said the Devil—for now it was as plain as could be who the visitor was. “You wretched mortals insist on treating me as if I had not moved forward since the sixteenth century; but living outside time as I do, I am always thoroughly up-to-date.”
“All right,” said I, getting to my feet, “what can I do for you? An excellent supper is being served in the Upper Library, or if you would fancy a damned soul or two, I can easily give you a College list, with helpful markings in the margin.”
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” said he; “what a cheap Devil you must think me. I don’t want any of your Junior Fellows,
or any of your colleagues, either; I leave such journeyman’s work as they are to my staff.”
A thought of really horrible dimension—of blasting vanity—swept through me. Trying to keep pride out of my voice, I whispered, “Then you have come for me?”
The Devil laughed—it was a silvery snicker, if you can imagine such a thing—and poked me playfully in the ribs. “Get along with you, and stop fishing for compliments,” said he.
It was that poke in the ribs that reassured me. I had always been told the Devil has a common streak in him, and now he had shown it I was not so afraid. “Well,” said I, “I am sure that you have not come here for nothing; if you don’t want souls—even so desirable a spiritual property as my own soul—what can I offer you?”
“Nothing but a really good look at this handsome reredos,” he replied. “Doubtless you will find this strange, but at this time of year, when so much Christmas celebration is going on, I feel a little wistful. I hear so many people saying that they are going home for Christmas. Do you know, Master, I should very much like to go home for Christmas.”
I was too tactful to offer any comment.
“But of course I shan’t be asked,” he said, and a look of exquisite melancholy transformed the beautiful, proud face into the saddest sight that I have ever beheld.
When I was a boy there was still a large public for a novel by Marie Corelli called The Sorrows of Satan, but even she never guessed that not being asked home for Christmas was one of them.
I was in a quandary. Against overpowering and insensate Evil I could have thrown myself, and been consumed in defence of the College. But against sentimentalism I did not know what to do. This was a time for the uttermost in tact.
“Do they have a pretty lively time at your old home, when Christmas rolls round?” I asked, thinking that this colloquial tone might disarm him.
High Spirits: A Collection of Ghost Stories Page 6
