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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Be off with the old love e'er you're on with the new.
'HOW many people are there in the waiting room, Bates?' enquired Taverner of the butler at the end of a long day in the Harley Street consulting room.
'Two, sir,' answered that functionary. 'A lady and a gentleman.'
'Ah,' said Taverner. 'Well show the lady in.'
'I think they came together, sir.'
'Then show the gentleman in. A man never brings his wife on these expeditions,' he added to me. 'She comes with a friend; but a man will let his wife bring him, he being the weaker sex and in need of protection where his nerves are concerned.'
They arrived together, however, in spite of Taverner's instructions, and the butler announced them as Colonel and Mrs. Eustace. He was a tall, fine looking man, much bronzed by tropical suns, and she was one of those women who make one proud of one's race, slender, graceful, with the controlled fire of a thoroughbred, the fruit of many generations of refining shelter and worthy pride. They made a fine pair, such as the society papers love to picture, and they both looked perfectly healthy.
It was the wife who opened the ball.
'We, that is, my husband, wants to consult you, Dr. Taverner, about a matter which has disturbed us lately—a recurring nightmare.'
Taverner bowed. The husband never spoke. I gathered that he had been dragged here against his will.
'I always know when it's commencing,' Mrs. Eustace continued, 'because he begins to mutter in his sleep; then he speaks louder and louder, and finally he leaps up, rushes across the room, and crashes into the furniture before I can do anything to stop him; and then wakes up in a dreadful state, don't you, Tony?' she demanded, turning to the silent man at her side.
Meeting with no response from him, she again took up the burden of her story.
'As soon as I realized that the nightmare was recurring regularly I took to rousing him at the first sign of disturbance, and this proved fairly effective, for it prevented the rush across the room, but we neither of us dared go to sleep again till daylight. In fact, to be frank with you doctor, I seem to be catching it.'
'You also have the nightmare?' asked Taverner.
'No, not the actual nightmare, but an indefinable sense of dread, as if some dangerous enemy were threatening.'
'What does your husband say when he talks in his sleep?'
'Ah, that I cannot tell you, for he speaks in one of the native dialects. I suppose I ought to learn it, ought I not, Tony? For we shall be going to India next trooping season.'
'It will not be necessary,' replied her husband, 'for we shall not be returning to that district.' His pleasant, cultured voice was in keeping with his appearance; he was a type of the administrator of empire who is fast dying out. Such men will not submit themselves to a native democracy.
Taverner fired a question at him suddenly.
'What do you dream about?' he demanded, looking him straight in the eyes. One felt the barriers go up in an instant, but he answered with the control that breeding teaches. 'The usual sort of thing, bogeys, you know; want to run and can't. I ought to have left all such things behind in the nursery.'
I am no psychic, but I knew that he was lying, and that he had no intention of confiding anything to anybody. He had come to Taverner in order to quiet his wife, not because he desired help. He had probably got his own ideas as to the nature of his affliction, and they were such that he did not care to voice them.
Taverner turned to the wife again. 'You say that the nightmare communicates itself to you? May I ask you to detail the nature of your sensations?'
Mrs. Eustace looked at her husband and hesitated. 'My husband thinks I am very imaginative,' she said.
'Never mind,' said Taverner, 'tell me your imagination.'
'I am wide awake, of course, after—after the disturbance, and sometimes I imagine I have seen a native woman in dark blue draperies with gold sequins dangling on her forehead and many bracelets on her arms, and she seems very excited and distressed and to be trying to talk to my husband, and then when I interfere and rouse him, she tries to push me away. It is after I rouse him that I have the sense of malignancy, as if someone were trying to injure me if they could only manage it.'
'I am afraid,' said Colonel Eustace, 'that I have thoroughly alarmed my wife.'
We turned and looked at him in involuntary surprise; his voice had entirely changed its timbre. The self-control of his breed could hold the muscles of the face steady, but could not prevent that tensing of the whole frame under stress which sent the pitch of his voice up half an octave and gave a metallic edge to its tones.
'I suppose,' he continued, as if anxious to distract our attention, 'that you will prescribe open air and exercise; in fact that is just my own idea, and we have been thinking of going to the Kent coast for golf, so I dare say that the sooner we get off the better. There is no use in hanging about in London without a reason.'
'You forget, dear,' said his wife, 'that I have to open the exhibition of native art on Saturday.'
'Oh yes, of course,' he answered hastily, 'must stop over Saturday, go down on Monday.'
There was a pause. The interview seemed to have come to a dead end. Mrs. Eustace looked appealing from her husband to Taverner and back again, but the one could not, and the other would not assist her. I felt that she had hoped great things of a visit to Taverner, and that, disappointed, she had no other card to play against the fate that was enveloping her. I also thought that her eyes had in them a look of apprehension.
Taverner broke the silence at last.
'If Colonel Eustace ever cares to consult me,' he said, 'I shall be very glad to assist him, because I think I could be of service to him.'
Our unwilling patient sat up at this home thrust and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Taverner, turning to the wife, continued.
'And if Mrs. Eustace should ever be in need of my assistance, it is equally at her disposal.'
'I trust there is little likelihood of that,' said her husband, rising. 'She is in excellent health.'
And Bates opening the door in response to Taverner's ring, we bowed them out.
'An unsatisfactory blighter,' I remarked as the door closed behind them.
'Not ready yet,' said Taverner. 'He has a few things to learn in the course of his evolution, and unless I am much mistaken, he will be learning them very shortly. Then we may hear from him again. Never make the mistake of confusing unripe fruit with bad fruit.'
WE heard of them again, and sooner than even Taverner
expected, when a couple of days later I threw across to him an
evening paper which contained the announcement that Mrs. Eustace,
owing to her sudden indisposition, would not be opening the
exhibition of Indian Art at the Aston Galleries as announced, but
that the task would be performed by some other social
luminary.
'Of course it may be the flu,' I said.
'Or the colic,' said Taverner.
'Or even housemaid's knee,' he added, for he was not communicative to sceptics.
THE next move did not come as soon as I expected, who was
looking for Colonel Eustace every time the bell rang, but in the
end he appeared, and it was obvious to the most casual glance
that he had been through a good deal in the interval.
The way he lay back in his chair showed that he was at the end of his tether, mental and physical, and Taverner relieved him of the effort of opening the conversation.
'How did you come to hear of me?' he asked. 'I always thought my light was adequately bushelled from all except those of the same way of thinking as myself.'
'My wife heard of you,' was the reply. 'She is interested in—in your line of work.'
'Ah, she is a student of the occult?'
'I shouldn't call her a student of it,' said Eustace, wriggling at the word occult. 'She dabbles in it, and goes to lectures on Eastern mysticism that are no more like the real thing than—than the cat's like a tiger,' he added with a sudden rush of emotion, pointing to the housekeeper's tabby that happened to be patronizing our hearth rug. 'I wish to God she'd let it alone,' he added wearily.
'I take it,' said Taverner quietly, 'that you are not a believer in the subject.'
'If you had asked me that question a week ago,' said Eustace, 'I should have answered, no, but today—I don't know what to say. But I can tell you one thing,' he cried, the banked fires blazing forth again, 'if occultism isn't true, if you haven't got the powers you're credited with, then it's all up with Evelyn.'
'I take it,' said Taverner quietly, gathering up the control of the interview with voice and manner, 'that something is affecting your wife which you guess to be of occult origin though you do not understand its method of working?'
'I understand its method of working all right,' said our visitor grimly, 'though I had never believed such tales.'
'Will you give me particulars?' said Taverner, 'and then I shall be able to form an opinion.'
'I may as well tell you the whole story,' said Colonel Eustace, 'for I don't suppose, as a man of the world, you will attach the importance to it that my wife might if she got to hear of it. Not that there is not perfect confidence between us, but women don't understand these matters, and it's no use trying to make 'em.
'You may remember that my wife, at our last interview, spoke of dreaming about a native woman and hearing an Indian dialect spoken? I think, from her description, that what she saw was a vision of a woman I kept for some time when I was stationed on the Border, and who made a good deal of fuss when I sent her away, as they sometimes do. I have often heard that if a man enters into—Dr—relations with a native woman, they have an uncanny knack of laying hold of your soul by their heathen jiggery-spookery. I never believed it, laughed at it, in fact, when I saw another fellow bothered in the same way, but, my God, it's true. That woman has haunted my dreams ever since she died, and since I married Evelyn she has turned into an avenging devil.'
'What condition is your wife in at the present moment?' enquired Taverner.
'In a stupor. The doctors talk about sleepy sickness but—' with a grim laugh. 'I know better. I saw her go into the condition, and I know what it is. I tell you I heard those two women talking together, Huneefa in the broken English I taught her, as plainly as I hear you, and from that time, 10 days ago, Evelyn has never recovered full consciousness and her strength is slowly ebbing away. They told me today that they did not expect her to last through the night,' he added, his voice breaking, and putting up his hand to hide his twitching lips.
'Would you care for me to see your wife?' said Taverner. 'It is difficult for me to advise you unless I do so.'
'I have the car at the door to take you to her, if you will be good enough to come.'
'There is one thing I must ask of you, however, before I undertake the case,' said Taverner, 'and that is, if, when you have heard my advice, you decide to follow it, you will go through to the end. There is nothing more disastrous than to start upon an occult undertaking and then back out of it.'
'Unless you can do something, there is nothing that can be done,' said Eustace brokenly, and we followed him out to the car.
I had thought Mrs. Eustace a beautiful woman when I had seen her in the formal clothes of our civilization, but lying relaxed in her white draperies on her white bed, she was more like my boyhood's idea of an angel than anything I have ever seen in picture or statuary. I could understand why her husband adored her.
I did not need the stethoscope to tell me that life was at low ebb. No pulse was perceptible in the wrist, and it was only an occasional faint stir of the laces on her bosom that showed she still breathed. There was little doubt she would not last the night; in fact she might go at any moment.
Taverner sent the nurse out of the room, and placed Eustace and myself at the far end. Then he seated himself beside the bed and gazed intently into the face of the unconscious woman, and I knew by his concentration that his mind was seeking to make contact with her soul wherever it might be. I saw him lay his hand on her breast, and guessed that he was calling her back into her body, and as I watched, I saw the inspirations deepen and become regular and the waxen passivity pass from the face.
Then she spoke, and at the sound of her voice it was all I could do to keep her husband from rushing across to her then and there.
'I am asked to tell you,' came the slow, faltering words, 'that the money was returned, even if it never reached you.'
Eustace gave a groan, and dropped his head in his hands. 'I am also asked to tell you,' went on the faltering voice, 'that it would have been a son.'
Taverner lifted his hand from her breast and the breathing slowed down again and the face resumed its deathly fixation.
'Can you make anything of that?' he asked of Eustace.
'Yes,' replied the man, raising his face from his hands. 'It exactly confirms what I thought, it is that devil Huneefa, this is her revenge.'
Taverner led us from the room.
'I want full particulars,' he said. 'I cannot deal with the case unless I have them.'
Eustace looked uncomfortable. 'I will tell you anything I can,' he said at length. 'What is it you want to know? The whole thing would make a long story.'
'What was the origin of your affair with this Indian girl? Was she a professional courtezan or did you buy her from her parents?'
'Neither. She did a bolt and I looked after her.'
'A love affair?'
'You can call it that if you like, though I don't care to remember it since—since I have learnt what love can be.'
'What was the cause of your parting?'
'Well, Dr, you see, there was a child coming, and I couldn't stand that. Huneefa was well enough in her way, but a Eurasian brat was more than I could endure. I suppose those affairs usually end that way.'
'So you sent her back to her people?'
'I couldn't very well do that, they would probably have killed her, but I gave her a good sum of money, enough to set her up in life; they don't need much to make them happy, life is pretty simple out there.'
'So you gave her sufficient capital to set up on her own as a courtezan?'
'Well, Dr—yes, I expect that was what she would have done with it.'
'There was not much else she could do with it, I should imagine.'
'They don't think much of that out there.'
'Some castes do,' said Taverner quietly. 'But she sent the money back to you,' he continued after a pause. 'What became of her after that?'
'I believe the servants said something about suicide.'
'So she did not accept the alternative you offered?'
'No—Dr—she didn't. It's an unpleasant incident and best forgotten. I don't suppose I came out of it altogether blameless,' muttered Eustace, getting up and walking about the room.
'At any rate,' he continued with the air of a man who has pulled himself together, 'what are we going to do about it? Huneefa apparently knew more of—Dr—occultism than I credited her with, and you too from all accounts, have also got a knowledge of the matter. It is East against West; who's going to win?'
'I think,' said Taverner in that quiet voice of his, 'that Huneefa is going to win because she has right on her side.'
'But, hang it all, a native girl—they don't think anything of that out there.'
'Apparently she did.'
'Some of the castes are a bit straight-laced in their way, but she would have got on all right. I gave her plenty to keep her going till after the child was done with,' he continued, squaring his shoulders. 'Why doesn't she go for me and let Evelyn alone? Evelyn never did her any harm. I could stand it as long as she only pestered me, but this—this is a different matter.'
The appearance of the nurse interrupted our colloquy.
'Mrs. Eustace has recovered consciousness,' she said. 'I think you had better come.'
We went to the sick room, and my professional eye told me that this was the last flicker of a dying flame.
Mrs. Eustace recognized her husband as he knelt beside her, but I do not think that Taverner and I meant anything to her.
She looked at him with a strange expression in her face, as if she had never seen him before.
'I did not think you were like that,' she said.
He seemed perplexed by her words and not to know what answer to make to them, and then she broke the silence again.
'Oh Tony,' she said, 'she was only 15.'
Then we grasped the reference.
'Never mind, Dearest,' whispered the man at her side. 'Forget all that. What you have to do now is to get well and strong, and then we will talk it all over when you are better.'
'I am not going to get better,' came the quiet voice from the bed.
'Oh, yes dear, you are. Isn't she, doctor?' appealing to Taverner.
Taverner weighed his words before answering. 'It is just possible,' he said at length.
'I do not wish to get better,' said the voice from the bed. 'Everything is so—so different to what I expected. I did not think you were like that, Tony. But I suppose all men are the same.'
'You mustn't take it so to heart, dear,' said the man at her side brokenly. 'Everybody does it out there. They have to. It's the climate. Nobody thinks anything of it.'
'I do,' said the voice that came from so far off. 'And so would all other women if they knew. Men are wise not to tell. Women wouldn't stand it.'
'But it wasn't one of our women, dear.'
'But it was a woman, and I am a woman, and it seems to hurt me because it hurts womanhood. I can't put it plainly, but I feel it, I feel it as a hurt to all that is best in me.'
'What are you to do with men out on frontiers?' said the man desperately. 'It is the penalty of Empire.'
'It is the curse of Empire,' came the far-away voice. 'No wonder they hate us. I always wondered why it is that we can never, never make friends of them. It is because we outrage their womankind. There are some things that are never forgiven.'
'Oh, don't say that, Evelyn,' said the man brokenly.
'I am not saying it to you, Tony,' she answered. 'I love you, just as I have always loved you, but you do not understand this thing; that is the trouble. I do not blame you for taking her, but I blame you, and bitterly, for throwing her aside.'
'Good Lord,' said Eustace appealingly to the supporting males, 'what is one to do with a woman?'
'And she does not blame you,' continued the voice, 'for taking her, or for throwing her aside. She loved you and she understood. In fact she never expected anything else, she tells me. It is herself that she blames, and she has not been angry with you, but has been imploring you to help her out, to undo the wrong that has been done.'
'What is it she wants? I'll do anything on earth if she will let you alone.'
'She says—' the voice seemed a very long way off, like a trunk call on a telephone, 'that the soul that was to have come into life through you and her was a very lofty soul indeed, a Mahatma, she called him. What is a Mahatma?'
'One of those people who stir up trouble. Never mind about him. Go on. What does she want me to do?'
'She says that, because of her attainments in the past, she was chosen to give him birth, and because he had to reconcile East and West, East and West had to be reconciled in him. Also, he had to come through a great love. I am glad it was a great love, Tony. That seems to sanctify it and to make it better somehow.'
Eustace turned appalled eyes upon us.
'And because it was a great privilege, it had to be bought by a great sacrifice; she had to give up the love before she brought him to birth. I suppose that is always the way. She says they offered her a choice, she might have the love of a man of her own people, a home, and happiness; or she might have the love of a Western man for a short time, in order that the great Reconciler might come into life, and she chose the latter. She knew what it would mean when she entered on it, she said, but she found it harder than she thought. It was because you sent her so much money that she killed herself, for she knew your conscience would be at ease after that, and she did not wish you to be at ease.'
'God knows, I'm not,' groaned the man. 'She is having her revenge all right. What more does she want, the little devil?'
'It is the Mahatma soul she is troubled about,' came the answer, 'and because of it she cannot rest.'
'What does she want me to do?' asked the man.
'She wants us to take it.'
'But, Good Lord. What does she mean? A half caste? You—Evelyn. A nigger? Oh Heavens, no, nothing doing. I would sooner have you dead than that. Let her take her twice damned Mahatma and go to whatever hell they belong to.'
'No she doesn't mean that, Tony, she means that she wishes us, you and I, to take him.'
'Oh well, if we can find the kid, yes; anything if only you'll get well. I'll send him to Eton and Oxford or Lhassa or Mecca, or anywhere else they have a fancy for, if they will only let you alone.'
'I don't want to get well,' came the voice from the depth of the pillows.
'But, dear—for my sake—you said you still loved me.'
'I don't want to get well, but I suppose I must, just as she ought to have gone on living, although she did not want to because of Him.'
'Whom?'
'The soul that was to have come, the soul who will come now, The Reconciler.'
There was a pause. Then she spoke again, and her voice seemed to gain strength with each sentence.
'It will be very difficult, Tony.'
'We'll manage somehow, dear, as long as we have each other.'
'It will be more difficult than you think.'
MRS. EUSTACE recovered rapidly, and her husband's joy knew no
bounds. He attributed it all to Taverner, though as a matter of
fact, Taverner had been nothing but an onlooker as the strange
drama of life and death worked itself out. As such a man will,
who lives upon the surface of things and prides himself upon his
matter-of-factness, Eustace soon forgot the inner aspect of the
whole affair. His wife had had sleepy sickness, and thank God,
was over it, therefore he rejoiced, and had much to rejoice in.
For firstly, promotion had come his way, and from the command of
a regiment, he had passed to one of the most important
administrative posts over the heads of many seniors. Likewise, by
the unexpected death of a cousin, he had become heir presumptive
to a great name. And thirdly, to crown his joy, it was apparent
that the name would not end with him.
We went to dinner with them on the eve of their sailing. Eustace was in the seventh heaven, with telegrams of congratulations arriving all through the meal. The face of his wife had never lost its look of remoteness and stillness, which she had brought back from her sojourn on other planes, but there was no joy in her eyes, save pleasure at his pleasure, and a rather sad smile, as of one who watched a beloved child set its heart upon a bauble.
WE heard no more of them till chance gossip gave us news.
'Have you heard about the Eustaces,' said a man at my club. 'General Eustace, he is now. Their child, it's as black as a coal. Everybody wonders what he is going to do about it. It would probably have meant his resignation if he had not had such terrific influence with all that seditionist crowd that no one else can manage. Can't understand his being such a success with them, not much tact, and less understanding. Still they seem to hit it off. Pity about her, isn't it? An awfully nice woman. Sort of stained glass window saint. Can't understand it at all.'
SOME years later the Eustaces appeared on the scene again. He
was now a baronet, having succeeded to his cousin's title, and he
was likewise something very lofty in the Government of India, but
he was also a changed man. His hair was as white as snow, and his
face preternaturally aged with its deep lines and sunken eyes.
Strangely enough, Lady Eustace, as she was now, had changed least
of all, save that she was etherealized till she no longer seemed
to be of this earth. I gathered that she led a very retired life,
taking no part in the social activities that usually fall to the
lot of a woman in her position.
With them was a child of five, with jet black hair, dark olive skin, slender limbs, and a pair of eyes as blue as the sea. They were the strangest eyes I have ever seen in the face of a child, for they had the depth of the sea as well as its blueness, these eyes of the West in the face of the East. I wondered what the soul would see, that looked at its native East through Western eyes.
Eustace drew me aside; he seemed to need to unbosom his soul to someone who knew the story. Pointing to the child with its mother, he said.
'You can guess what that meant to us, in our position, eh?'
'I wouldn't mind for myself,' he continued, 'but it's so hard for her. A crucifixion,' he added.
I heard the mother's voice speaking to Taverner.
'You see it too?' she was saying softly. 'Isn't it wonderful? What have I, I of all women, done to deserve such a thing?'
Then turning to the child she said: 'Do you know who this gentleman is, darling?'
'Yes,' said the child. 'He is also One of Us, as I told you.'
'Queer little cuss,' said the father patting his son's head. 'Have you found another of your friends?'
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.