It was. Indeed, Mr. Hirsch, coming back to the Keep half an hour afterwards, was quite pale, and called for a whisky-and-soda before he could explain to Dr. Ramsay the extraordinary coincidence of Major Massingham's body being brought in for burial to Camshaven, where those of his poor wife and child already awaited him as it were. But he, Mr. Hirsch, had seen the captain of the transport, and everything was quite simple--terribly simple. Major Massingham had come on board at Bombay ill, but had not, however, let his people know of his illness, as he expected the voyage to set him up. He had unfortunately taken a chill off Gibraltar: pneumonia had set in, and in his delirium he had constantly talked of his wife and child, and begged not to be buried at sea. The latter idea had been quite an obsession with him; almost the last words he spoke being "Not at sea--not at sea!" That had been two hours before the ship struck, and when they discovered there was no danger, it had seemed another curious coincidence to ensure poor Massingham's wish. But the whole affair was ...
Here Mr. Hirsch became quite unintelligible in his admixture of English and German.
"It is certainly--curious," assented Dr. Ramsay thoughtfully; "very curious. But it is just as well he should come home dead--the news would have broken him. By the way, I don't want Lord Blackborough disturbed. There is a nasty splinter that will give trouble; and he was in such pain, I ordered a sleeping-draught. Indeed----" Here he smiled. "I am thinking of a sleep myself till dinner time."
"I also," yawned Mr. Hirsch. "Mein Gott! Tragedy is fatiguing off the stage as well as on it, and this poor Major Massingham ... _Himmel! es ist un-be-greiflich-auf-erlegbar!_" And he went off to his room, looking a perfect wreck, aged by ten years; for deep down below the hard shell which grubbing for gold requires, his heart was soft. And these things were uncomfortable--they were not in the bond--they belonged to a spiritual life in which he had no part.
They weighed heavily on Ted Cruttenden also, for he had the Englishman's innate antagonism to anything which hints at the unknown, anything which might suggest a wider outlook than the one he already possesses. But the hundred pounds he had adventured, following Mr.
Hirsch's lead, weighed on him still more heavily. Why had he been so impulsive? At the most he could gain three hundred; and what would Mr.
Hirsch say if it were to come out? Not that it mattered, since he was not likely to see much more of Mr. Hirsch, for he must go back to Blackborough next morning. So, after a time, he also sought his room and a rest.
Dr. Ramsay, however, was deprived of his; for, looking in while passing to see how Lord Blackborough fared, he found him not only wide awake, but greatly excited by the news which a servant had brought him.
"Curse the fool!" said Peter Ramsay vexedly. "I made sure you would be asleep. Yes! it is extremely curious, but----"
"What does it mean, doctor--that's what I want to know," burst in Ned.
"What is it, this strange something which every now and again seems to show us a solemn, shrouded face, and then disappears in mocking, devilish laughter--in charlatans' tricks?"
Dr. Ramsay shook his head. "If I could tell you that, Lord Blackborough, I--well! For one thing, I should be the richest man in the world. All we doctors can say is that there is something--something which can be explained away if one chooses to explain it away. But the explanation isn't scientific. It is easy to say a man is mad because he believes himself to be the Emperor of China, but what about the question, 'Why does a man think he is the Emperor of China when he is mad?' We have got to answer that, and show what it is which induces delusions and hysteria, and why hypnotic sleep causes certain specific alterations in the body corporate, as it does. But we've only just woke up to the fact that we stand on the verge of some great discovery; we've only just begun to question the nerve centres, and see the incalculable power of suggestion. Now take this case of your cousin's," he continued eagerly. "Whatever it may or may not be, it is certain that I suggested to her first that she was mentally unstable; second, that she might be able to project herself ... then Lady Wrexham slips in with her crystal-gazing suggestion--and--and the thing is done."
"There is something else," said Ned slowly, almost reluctantly, "which might--we were talking of old Betty Cam in the morning--she and I--and I told her it wasn't safe for her to be always watching the sea--I warned her--in joke of course--of her hereditary----" Here he broke off impatiently. "But it is of no use talking--the thing is frankly--impossible."
"Hardly that," remarked Dr. Ramsay dryly. "We have to learn, apparently, that many things are possible--at times."
Ned looked at him curiously. "One wouldn't credit you with such beliefs, Ramsay," he said.
"I don't credit them myself," replied the doctor shortly. "Personally I wish these phenomena didn't exist. They complicate the equation of life tremendously. But they are there. It is no use dismissing them as hysterical manifestations. That only alters the title of the problem, and we have to refer to the phenomena again under the heading 'What is hysteria?'"
"Of one thing I am certain," remarked Ned suddenly, with conviction: "it was not Helen altogether, as she is now, whom I left in Betty Cam's chair last night. I have been going over the whole incident in my mind, and I am conscious of having had a sense all through that there was something unkenned, something not quite real----"
"The question is," put in Dr. Ramsay, "how much she will remember when she wakes, and that cannot be very long now, for she was much more normal when I went in to see her last, two hours ago. I shall look in again as I go upstairs."
"I hope she will remember nothing," said Ned quickly.
Peter Ramsay shook his head. "It may be everything; you cannot possibly tell----" he broke off as a knock was heard at the door, and a voice said, "May I come in?" "My God!" he continued, "there she is!"
It was indeed Helen who, entering as he held open the door, passed swiftly to her cousin's side.
"Poor Ned!" she said, her face, on which showed the marks of recent tears, full of a grateful, affectionate solicitude. "How foolish it has been of me to leave you to bear the brunt of it all; but I am all right now, and shall manage. He ought to be in bed, oughtn't he?" she continued, her eyes narrowing a little as they met Peter Ramsay's, her whole expression showing for an instant a half-puzzled pain, as if she sought for some memory of past trouble. "I am sure you think so--don't you?"
"I think so very much indeed, Mrs. Tressilian," he replied. "Your cousin's arm----"
"Poor arm!" she interrupted softly, "that was broken before I came down--I was asleep, I suppose, when they called me--it seems so strange that I could have slept, and I seem to have forgotten everything except the awful suspense; then the awful night on the point--but--but you couldn't have saved him, Ned. It was the stairs--if only they had been fireproof!--for he knew every turn. I--I have been down to see him, Ned, and he looks so peaceful--so content.
You see he had done all he could--all a Pentreath should have done--so--so it is best. And now, dear, you really must go to bed. I can manage nicely. I will send to meet the Massinghams--poor souls!--how terribly sad, and how inexplicable it all is!"
Inexplicable indeed! They looked at each other silently.
She evidently knew all that they knew, but of what they did not know she also knew nothing. The interval between the time when she had passed upstairs to her room, joking and laughing with the others, and her first sight of the halo of fire had simply lapsed into a great suspense.
It was as well, Dr. Ramsay admitted to himself, and yet he felt annoyed. For, looking at Helen Tressilian's face, he recognised that his chance--and the chance of science was over.
In all probability that would be her one solitary intrusion into the unknown dimension which whetted his curiosity so much. She was normal now; she might conceivably marry some deserving idiot, and settle down to half a dozen children. She might even become a nurse!
All things were possible to the calm self-possession with which she insisted on rest for them both. So, in an evil temper, he followed her advice.
Meanwhile Ted Cruttenden, after wandering about aimlessly, uncertain whether to bless or curse himself for his morning's work, had also sought rest, and was asleep dreaming of Aura. Aura, as he had seen her in her blue linen smock and sandals, Aura as he could picture her in pink satin and diamonds. Which was the most beautiful, the most beautified? He scarcely knew. When he felt inclined to bless himself, it was because he could picture her in the latter; when curses came it was because he regretted the former.
So to him in troubled slumber, came a knock at the door.
"Come in," he called drowsily; then sat up with beating heart on the edge of his bed, feeling for his slippers with his feet. He did not know that the dapper little figure at the door was to him Mephistopheles, that he was about to sell his soul to the devil; but he was vaguely conscious of an approaching crisis in his life.
"_Soh!_ my young friend, you have bought Sea View shares! Why?"
The room was growing dark. There was a wide interval of shadowy light from the windows between the young man as, having found mental and bodily foothold, he stood coatless, defiant, as if prepared to fight Fate, and Mr. Hirsch decently robed for dinner, and with, as ever, the large white flower of a blameless life in his button-hole. Through the open window the mellow pipe of a blackbird, full of the glad song of wood and dale, forced its way insistently. The memory of it lingered with Ted always. In after years that joyous invitation to the wilds always seemed to sound in his ears whenever a question of choice arose.
Now, though he heard it, he was too busy to heed it.
"Why?" he echoed. "I bought them, sir--because I--I believed in you ... there you have it in a nutshell."
"And why did you believe in me?"
Ted, having recovered his confidence, gave a short laugh. "Upon my soul, I don't know. I did it--that's all."
"Then you had no private intimation--you had not overheard anything--you--it was _unvertraute gut_--no more?"
"You gave me a lead over yourself, you know," replied Ted argumentatively. "You said Jenkin must have time--and the rest followed--I couldn't help knowing the cipher, could I?"
A faint chuckle came from the gloom by the door. "_Soh!_ you have prains! Mr. Cruttenden, I ought to be angry, I ought to tell you many things, but I have searched long for one to believe in me. I need him.
Let this be--you have won three hundred pounds. I give you this per year as my clerk. You accept?"
It was all over in a moment. The blackbird ceased his song, and as Ted Cruttenden hurriedly dressed for dinner his head was in a whirl. This was a chance indeed. By Christmas he might stand on more equal ground.
And after Christmas? His fancy ran riot in pink satin and diamonds.
But, when he left with Mr. Hirsch next morning, the latter was in a towering bad temper. Lord Blackborough was a fool. He had refused to listen to reason, and Mrs. Tressilian was no better. They had both of them declined to be mixed up any further with the hotel, and would not even let him buy them out. The insurance had no doubt been made in accordance with business principles, but----
"He will divest himself of every farthing in two years if he goes on being so _verdammlich gerecht_. Yes! I give him two years to be a pauper," said poor Mr. Hirsch, and then his eyes positively filled with tears as he considered how all his efforts to secure a competency for Helen had failed.
CHAPTER VIII
It was early autumn, and Aura was standing in the garden, looking more like a Botticelli angel than ever, for her face was mutinous, the very curls about her temples and ears all crisped and gold-edged as she defied even the sunlight.
She was engaged in an argument with Martha, who, in Mr. Sylvanus Smith's brief yearly absences on the work of the Socialistic Congress, still attempted an authority which she had once held undisputed.
"Well, I wouldn't, not if it was ever so," asserted the worthy woman, her face aflame with righteous indignation. "Mr. Meredith, the rector, he know his part, an' being unbaptized there won't be no funeral, so what's the use of flowers?"