Latest / The Magician / The Magician

Transcript

The Magician · The Magician

• 0:01
  Introductory section of The Magician. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
• 0:07
  are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 0:12
  LibriVox dot org. The Magician by Somerset Maum a fragment of autobiography. In
• 0:20
  eighteen ninety seven, after spending five years at Saint Thomas's Hospital, I passed
• 0:26
  the examination which enabled me to practice medicine. While still a medical student,
• 0:31
  I had published a novel called Liza of Lambeth, which caused a mild sensation,
• 0:36
  and on the strength of that I rashly decided to abandon doctoring and earn
• 0:41
  my living as a writer. So as soon as I was qualified, I
• 0:45
  set out for Spain and spent the best part of a year in Seville.
• 0:49
  I amused myself hugely and wrote a bad novel. Then I returned to London
• 0:54
  and with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat
• 0:58
  near Victoria Station. A maid of all were cooked for us and kept the
• 1:02
  flat neat and tidy. My friend was at the bar, and so I
• 1:06
  had the day and the flat to myself and my work. During the next
• 1:11
  six years I wrote several novels and a number of plays. Only one of
• 1:15
  these novels had any success, but even that failed to make the stir that
• 1:19
  my first one had made. I could get no manager to take my plays.
• 1:25
  At last, in desperation, I sent one, which I called a
• 1:27
  man of honor, to the Stage Society, which gave two performances, one
• 1:33
  on Sunday night, another on Monday afternoon. Of plays which unsuitable for the
• 1:38
  commercial theater, were considered a sufficient merit to please an intellectual audience. As
• 1:44
  everyone knows, it was the Stage Society that produced the early plays of Bernard
• 1:48
  Shaw. The committee accepted a man of honor, and W. L.
• 1:53
  Courtney, who was a member of it, thought well enough of my crude
• 1:56
  play to publish it in the Fortnightly Review, of which he was then editor.
• 2:00
  It was a feather in my cap. Though these efforts of mine brought
• 2:05
  me very little money, they attracted not a little attention, and I made
• 2:08
  friends. I was looked upon as a promising young writer, and I think
• 2:13
  I may say it without vanity, was accepted as a member of the intelligentsia,
• 2:17
  an honorable condition which some years later, when I became a popular writer
• 2:23
  of light comedies I lost and have never since regained. I was invited to
• 2:28
  literary parties, and to parties given by women of rank and fashion, who
• 2:31
  thought it behooved them to patronize the arts. An unattached and fairly presentable young
• 2:38
  man as always in demand. I lunched out and dined out, since I
• 2:43
  could not afford to take cabs. When I dined out in tales and a
• 2:46
  white tie, as was then the custom, I went and came back by
• 2:52
  bus. I was asked to spend week ends in the country. They were
• 2:55
  something of a trial on account of the tips you had to give to the
• 2:59
  butter and to the footman who brought you your morning tea. He unpacked your
• 3:04
  gladstone bag, and you were uneasily aware that your well worn pajamas and modest
• 3:08
  toilet articles had made an unfavorable impression upon him. For all that I found
• 3:15
  life pleasant and I enjoyed myself, there seemed no reason why I should not
• 3:20
  go on indefinitely in the same way, bringing out a novel once a year,
• 3:24
  which seldom earned more than the small advance the publisher had given me,
• 3:29
  but which was on the whole respectably reviewed, Going to more and more parties,
• 3:35
  making more and more friends. It was all very nice, but I
• 3:38
  couldn't see that it was leading me anywhere. I was thirty. I was
• 3:44
  in a rut. I felt I must get out of it. It did
• 3:46
  not take me long to make up my mind. I told the friend with
• 3:51
  whom I shared the flat that I wanted to be rid of it and go
• 3:53
  abroad. He could not keep it by himself, and we luckily found a
• 3:58
  middle aged gentleman who wished to install his mistress in it, and was prepared
• 4:02
  to take it off our hands. We sold the furniture for what it could
• 4:06
  fetch, and within a month I was on my way to Paris. I
• 4:11
  took a room in a cheap hotel on the Left Bank. A few months
• 4:15
  before this, I had been fortunate enough to make friends with a young painter
• 4:19
  who had a studio in the Rue campand Premiere. His name was Gerald Kelly.
• 4:26
  He had had an upbringing unusual for a painter, for he had been
• 4:30
  to Eton and to Cambridge. He was highly talented, abundantly loquacious, and
• 4:35
  immensely enthusiastic. It was he who first made me acquainted with the impressionists,
• 4:41
  whose pictures had recently been accepted by the Luxembourg. To my shame, I
• 4:46
  must admit that I could not make head or tail of them. Without much
• 4:49
  searching, I found an apartment on the fifth floor of a house near the
• 4:54
  Leon de Belfort. It had two rooms and a kitchen and cost seven hundred
• 5:00
  ranks a year, which was then twenty eight pounds. I bought second hand
• 5:04
  such furniture and household utensils as were essential, and the concierge told me of
• 5:10
  a woman who would come in for half a day and make my cafe or
• 5:14
  lay in the morning and my luncheon at noon. I settled down and set
• 5:17
  to work on still another novel. Soon after my arrival, Gerald Kelly took
• 5:23
  me to a restaurant called Le Cha Blanc in the Rue Dordessa, near the
• 5:28
  Garment Parnasse, where a number of artists were in the habit of dining,
• 5:32
  and from then on I dined there every night. I have described the place
• 5:36
  elsewhere, and in some detail in the novel to which these pages are meant
• 5:42
  to serve as preface, so that I need not here say more about it.
• 5:46
  As a rule, the same people came in every night, but now
• 5:50
  and then others came, perhaps only once, perhaps two or three times.
• 5:55
  We were apt to look upon them as interlopers, and I don't think we
• 5:59
  made them particular gularly welcome. It was thus that I first met Arnold Bennett
• 6:03
  and Clive Bell. One of these casual visitors was Aleister Crowley. He was
• 6:10
  spending the winter in Paris. I took an immediate dislike to him, but
• 6:14
  he interested and amused me. He was a great talker, and he talked
• 6:18
  uncommonly well. In early youth, I was told he was extremely handsome,
• 6:24
  but when I knew him he had put on weight and his hair was thinning.
• 6:28
  He had fine eyes, and away, whether natural or acquired, I
• 6:31
  do not know of so focusing them that when he looked at you, he
• 6:35
  seemed to look behind you. He was a fake, but not entirely a
• 6:42
  fake. At Cambridge he had won his chest blue and was esteemed the best
• 6:46
  whist player of his time. He was a liar and unbecomingly boastful. But
• 6:51
  the odd thing was that he had actually done some of the things he boasted
• 6:56
  of. As a mountaineer, he had made an assents of K two in
• 7:00
  the Hindu Kush, the second highest mountain in India, and he made it
• 7:05
  without the elaborate equipment, the cylinders of oxygen and so forth, which rendered
• 7:11
  the endeavors of the mountaineers of the present day more likely to succeed. He
• 7:15
  did not reach the top, but got nearer to it than any one had
• 7:19
  done before. Crowley was a voluminous writer of verse, which he published sumptuously
• 7:26
  at his own expense. He had a gift for rhyming, and his verses
• 7:30
  not entirely without merit. He had been greatly influenced by Swinburne and Robert Browning.
• 7:36
  He was grossly, but not unintelligently imitative. As you flipped through the
• 7:42
  pages, you may well read a stanza which, if you came across it
• 7:46
  in a volume of Swinburne's, you would accept without question as the work of
• 7:49
  the master. It's rather hard, isn't it, sir, to make sense
• 7:54
  of it. If you were shown this line and asked what poet had written
• 7:59
  it, I think you would be inclined to say Robert Browning. You would
• 8:03
  be wrong. It was written by Aleister Crowley. At the time I knew
• 8:07
  him, he was dabbling in Satanism, magic and the occult. There was
• 8:13
  just then something of a vogue in Paris for that sort of thing occasioned,
• 8:16
  I surmise by the interest that was still taken in a book of Huysman's la
• 8:20
  Bas Crowley told fantastic stories of his experiences, but it was hard to say
• 8:26
  whether he was telling the truth or merely pulling your leg. During that winter
• 8:31
  I saw him several times, but never after I left Paris to return to
• 8:35
  London. Once long afterwards, I received a telegram from him which ran as
• 8:41
  follows, please send twenty five pounds at once, Mother of God and ies
• 8:46
  starving Alister Crowley. I did not do so, and he lived on for
• 8:52
  many disgraceful years. I was glad to get back to London. My old
• 8:58
  friend had by the rooms in Pellmell, and I was able to take a
• 9:01
  bedroom in the same building and use his sitting room to work in. The
• 9:05
  Magician was published in nineteen hundred and eight, so I suppose it was written
• 9:11
  during the first six months of nineteen hundred and seven. I do not remember
• 9:16
  how I came to think that Aleister Crowley might serve as the model for the
• 9:20
  character whom I called Oliver Haddo, nor indeed how I came to think of
• 9:24
  writing that particular novel at all. When a little while ago my publisher expressed
• 9:28
  a wish to reissue it. I felt that before consenting to this, I
• 9:33
  really should read it again. Nearly fifty years had passed since I had done
• 9:39
  so, and I had completely forgotten it. Some authors enjoy reading their old
• 9:45
  works, Some cannot bear to of these. I am when I have corrected
• 9:50
  the proofs of a book, I have finished with it for good and all.
• 9:54
  I am impatient when people insist on talking to me about it. I
• 9:58
  am glad if they like it, but do not much care if they don't.
• 10:01
  I am no more interested in it than in a worn out suit of
• 10:05
  clothes that I have given away. It was thus with disinclination that I began
• 10:09
  to read The Magician. It held my interest as two of my early novels,
• 10:15
  which for the same reason I have been obliged to read, did not
• 10:20
  one. Indeed, I simply could not get through. Another had to my
• 10:24
  mind some good dramatic scenes, but the humor filled me with mortification, and
• 10:28
  I should have been ashamed to see it republished. As I read The Magician,
• 10:33
  I wondered how on earth I could have come by all the material concerning
• 10:37
  the Black Arts which I wrote of, I must have spent days and days
• 10:43
  reading in the library of the British Museum. The style is lush and turgid,
• 10:48
  not at all the sort of style I approve of now, but perhaps
• 10:52
  not unsuited to the subject. And there are a great many more adverbs and
• 10:56
  adjectives than I should use to day. I fancy I must have been impressed
• 11:01
  by the equiture artiste, which the French writers of the time had not yet
• 11:07
  entirely abandoned, and unwisely sought to imitate them. Though Aleister Crowley served,
• 11:13
  as I have said, as the model for Oliver Haddo, it is by
• 11:16
  no means a portrait of him. I made my character more striking in appearance,
• 11:22
  more sinister, and more ruthless than Crowley, ever was. I gave
• 11:26
  him magical powers that Crowley, though he claimed them, certainly never possessed.
• 11:31
  Crowley, however, recognized himself in the creature of my invention, for such
• 11:35
  it was, and wrote a full page review of the novel in Vanity Fair,
• 11:41
  which he signed Oliver Haddo. I did not read it, and wish
• 11:46
  now that I had. I dare say it was a pretty piece of vituperation,
• 11:50
  but probably, like his poems, intolerably verbose. I do not remember
• 11:56
  what success it any my novel had when it was published, and I did
• 12:01
  not bother much about it, for by then a great change had come into
• 12:05
  my life. The manager of the Court theater, one Otho Stuart, had
• 12:09
  brought out a play which failed to please, and he could not immediately get
• 12:15
  the cast he wanted for the next play he had in mind to produce.
• 12:18
  He had read one of mine and formed a very poor opinion of it.
• 12:22
  But he was in a quandary, and it occurred to him that it might
• 12:26
  just serve to keep his theater open for a few weeks, by the end
• 12:31
  of which the actors he wanted for the play he had been obliged to postpone
• 12:35
  would be at liberty. He put mine on It was an immediate success.
• 12:41
  The result of this was that in a very little while other managers accepted the
• 12:46
  plays they had consistently refused, and I had four running in London. At
• 12:50
  the same time, I, who for ten years had earned an average of
• 12:54
  one hundred pounds a year, found myself earning several hundred pounds a week.
• 13:01
  I made up my mind to abandon the writing of novels for the rest of
• 13:03
  my life. I did not know that this was something out of my control,
• 13:09
  and that when the urge to write a novel seized me, I should
• 13:13
  be able to do nothing but submit. Five years later the urge came,
• 13:18
  and, refusing to write any more plays for the time, I started upon
• 13:22
  the longest of my novels. I called it of Human Bondage. End of
• 13:28
  introductory section, Chapter one of The Magician by Somerset mom This LibriVox recording is
• 13:41
  in the public domain. Arthur Burdon and doctor Pourette walked in silence. They
• 13:48
  had lunched at a restaurant in the Boulevard Saint Michel, and were sauntering now
• 13:52
  in the gardens of the Luxembourg. Doctor Pourette walked with stooping shoulders, his
• 13:58
  hands behind him. He beheld the scene with the eyes of the many painters
• 14:03
  who have sought by means of the most charming garden in Paris to express their
• 14:07
  sense of beauty. The grass was scattered with the fallen leaves, but their
• 14:13
  wan decay little served to give a touch of nature to the artifice. Of
• 14:16
  all. Besides, the trees were neatly surrounded by bushes, and the bushes
• 14:22
  by trim beds of flowers. But the trees grew without abandonment, as though
• 14:28
  conscious of the decorative scheme. They helped to form twas autumn, and some
• 14:33
  were leafless already many of the flowers were withered. The formal garden reminded one
• 14:39
  of a light women, no longer young, who sought with faded finery,
• 14:43
  with powder and paint, to make a brave show of despair. It had
• 14:48
  those false, difficult smiles of uneasy gaiety, and the pitiful graces which attempt
• 14:54
  a fascination that the hurrying years have rendered vain. Doctor Porette drew more closely
• 15:01
  round his fragile body, the heavy cloak which even in summer he could not
• 15:05
  persuade himself to discard. The best part of his life had been spent in
• 15:11
  Egypt in the practice of medicine, and the frigid summers of Europe scarcely warmed
• 15:16
  his blood. His memory flashed for an instant upon those multi colored streets of
• 15:20
  Alexandria, and then like a homing bird, it flew to the green woods,
• 15:26
  and the storm beaten coasts of his native Brittany. His brown eyes were
• 15:31
  veiled with sudden melancholy. Let us wait here for a moment, he said.
• 15:39
  They took two straw bottom chairs and sat near the octagonal water, which
• 15:43
  completes with its fountain of cupids, the enchanting artificiality of the Luxembourg. The
• 15:48
  sun shone more kindly now, and the trees which framed the scene were golden
• 15:52
  and lovely. A balustrade of stone gracefully enclosed the space, and the flowers,
• 16:00
  freshly bedded, were very gay. In one corner they could see the
• 16:03
  squat quaint towers of sansel Peace, and on the other side the uneven roofs
• 16:10
  of the Boulevard Saint Michel. The palace was gray and solid. Nurses,
• 16:15
  some in the white caps of their native province, others with the satin streamers
• 16:19
  of the Nunu, marched sedately two by two, wheeling perambulators and talking.
• 16:26
  Brightly dressed children trundled hoops or whip to stubborn top. As he watched them,
• 16:30
  Doctor Perette's lips broke into a smile, and it was so tender that
• 16:36
  his thin face, sallow from long exposure to subtropical suns was transfigured. He
• 16:42
  no longer struck you merely as an insignificant little man with hollow cheeks and a
• 16:45
  thin gray beard, for the weariness of expression, which was habitual to him
• 16:51
  vanished before the charming sympathy of his smile. His sunken eyes glittered with a
• 16:56
  kindly but ironic good humor now passed a guard in the romantic cloak of a
• 17:02
  brigand in comic opera, and a peaked cap like that of an alguossl.
• 17:07
  A group of telegraph boys in blue stood round a painter who was making a
• 17:11
  sketch, notwithstanding half frozen fingers. Here and there, in baggy corduroys,
• 17:17
  tight jackets, and wide brimmed hats strolled students who might have stepped from the
• 17:22
  page of Murder's Immortal Romance. But the students now are uneasy with the fear
• 17:26
  of ridicule, and more often they walk in bowler hats and the neat coats
• 17:30
  of the boulevarde air. Doctor Poette spoke English fluently, with scarcely a trace
• 17:37
  of foreign accent, but with an elaboration which suggested that he had learned the
• 17:41
  language as much from study of the English classics as from conversation. And how
• 17:47
  is miss Dancy, he asked. Turning to his friend, Arthur Burden smiled,
• 17:52
  Oh, I expect she's all right. I have not seen her to
• 17:55
  day, but I'm going to tea at the studio this afternoon, and we
• 18:00
  want you to dine with us at the Charon Noir. I shall be much
• 18:03
  pleased, but do you not wish to be by yourselves? She met me
• 18:07
  at the station yesterday and we dined together. We talked steadily from half past
• 18:12
  six till midnight, or rather she talked and you listened with the delightful attention
• 18:19
  of a happy lover. Arthur Burden had just arrived in Paris. He was
• 18:25
  a surgeon on the staff of Saint Luke's and did come ostensibly to study the
• 18:30
  methods of the French operators, but his real object was certainly to see Margaret
• 18:33
  Donsey. He was furnished with introductions from London surgeons of repute, and had
• 18:40
  already spent a morning at the Hotel Deer, where the operator warned that his
• 18:45
  visitor was a bold and skillful surgeon whose reputation in England was already considerable.
• 18:51
  Had sought to dazzle him by feats that savored almost of leger domain. Though
• 18:56
  the hint of charlottanry in the Frenchman's method had not escaped Arthur Burdon's shrewd eyes,
• 19:03
  the audacious sureness of his hand had excited his enthusiasm. During luncheon,
• 19:07
  he talked of nothing else, and doctor Pourrett, drawing upon his memory,
• 19:12
  recounted the more extraordinary operations that he had witnessed in Egypt. He had known
• 19:18
  Arthur Burdon ever since he was born, and indeed had missed being present at
• 19:22
  his birth only because the Kedy of Ismael had summoned him unexpectedly to Cairo.
• 19:29
  But the Levantine merchant, who was Arthur's father, had been his most intimate
• 19:33
  friend, and it was with singular pleasure that doctor Porett saw the young man,
• 19:38
  on his advice, enter his own profession and achieve a distinction which himself
• 19:45
  had never won. Though too much interested in the characters of the persons whom
• 19:52
  chance threw in his path to have much ambition on his own behalf, it
• 19:56
  pleased him to see it in others. He observed with satisfa the pride which
• 20:00
  Arthur took in his calling and the determination, backed by his confidence and talent,
• 20:06
  to become a master of his art. Doctor Perett knew that a diversity
• 20:11
  of interests, though it adds charm to a band's personality, tends to weaken
• 20:15
  him. To excel one's fellows, it is needful to be circumscribed. He
• 20:21
  did not regret, therefore, that Arthur, in many ways was narrow.
• 20:26
  Letters in the arts meant little to him, nor would he trouble himself with
• 20:30
  the graceful trivialities which make a man a good talker in mixed company. He
• 20:34
  was content to listen silently to others, and only something very definite to say
• 20:41
  could tempt him to join in the general conversation. He worked very hard operating,
• 20:45
  dissecting or lecturing at his hospital, and took pains to read every word
• 20:52
  not only in English, but in French and German, which was published concerning
• 20:56
  his profession. Whenever he could snatch a free day, he spent it on
• 21:00
  the golf links of Sunningdale, for he was an eager and a fine player.
• 21:06
  But at the operating table Arthur was different. He was no longer the
• 21:11
  outkward man of social intercourse who was sufficiently conscious of his limitations not to talk
• 21:17
  of what he did not understand, and sincere enough not to express admiration for
• 21:22
  what he did not like. Then, on the other hand, a singular
• 21:26
  exhilaration filled him. He was conscious of his power, and he rejoiced in
• 21:30
  it. No unforeseen accident was able to confuse him. He seemed to have
• 21:34
  a positive instinct for operating, and his hand and his brain worked in a
• 21:40
  manner that appeared almost automatic. He never hesitated, and he had no fear
• 21:45
  of failure. His success had been no less than his courage, and it
• 21:49
  was plain that soon his reputation with the public would equal that which he had
• 21:55
  already won with the profession. Doctor Porette had been making listless patterns with his
• 22:00
  stick upon the gravel, and now, with that charming smile of his turned
• 22:04
  to Arthur. I never cease to be astonished at the unexpectedness of human nature.
• 22:11
  He remarked, it is really very surprising that a man like you should
• 22:17
  fall so deeply in love with a girl like Margaret Dancey. Arthur made no
• 22:22
  reply, and doctor Porette, fearing that his words might offend, hastened to
• 22:26
  explain, you know, as well as I do that I think her a
• 22:30
  very charming young person. She has beauty and grace and sympathy. But your
• 22:37
  characters are more different than chalk and cheese. Notwithstanding your birth in the East,
• 22:42
  and your boy had spent amid the very scenes of the thousand and one
• 22:47
  Nights, you are the most matter of fact creature I have ever come across.
• 22:52
  I see no harm in your saying, Insuler smiled, Arthur, I
• 22:57
  confess that I have no imagination and no sense of humor. I am a
• 23:02
  plain, practical man, but I can see to the end of my nose
• 23:06
  with extreme clearness. Fortunately it is rather a long one. One of my
• 23:11
  cherished ideas is that it is impossible to love without imagination. Again, Arthur
• 23:18
  Burdon made no reply, but a curious look came into his eyes as he
• 23:22
  gazed in front of him. It was the look which might feel the passionate
• 23:26
  eyes of a mystic when he saw in ecstasy the divine lady of his constant
• 23:32
  prayers. But miss Dancy has none of that narrowness of outlook, which,
• 23:37
  if you forgive my saying so, is perhaps the secret of your strength.
• 23:42
  She has a delightful enthusiasm for every form of art. Beauty really means as
• 23:48
  much to her as bread and butter to the more soberly minded, and she
• 23:52
  takes a passionate interest in the variety of life. It is right that Margaret
• 23:57
  should care for beauty, since there is beauty in every inch of her,
• 24:03
  answered Arthur. He was too reticent to proceed to any analysis of his feelings,
• 24:08
  but he knew that he had cared for her first on account of the
• 24:12
  physical perfection which contrasted so astonishingly with the countless deformities in the study of which
• 24:19
  his life was spent. But one phrase escaped him, almost against his will.
• 24:26
  The first time I saw her, I felt as though a new world
• 24:29
  had opened to my can The divine music of Keats's lines rang through Arthur's remark,
• 24:36
  and to the Frenchman's mind, gave his passion a romantic note that foreboded
• 24:41
  future tragedy. He sought to dispel the cloud which his fancy had cast upon
• 24:45
  the most satisfactory of love affairs. You are very lucky, my friend.
• 24:52
  Miss Margaret admires you as much as you adore her. She is never tired
• 24:56
  of listening to my prosy stories of your child in Alexandria. And I am
• 25:02
  quite sure that she will make you the most admirable of wives. You can't
• 25:07
  be more sure than I am, laughed Arthur. He looked upon himself as
• 25:11
  a happy man. He loved Margaret with all his heart, and he was
• 25:15
  confident in her great affection for him. It was impossible that anything should arise
• 25:21
  to disturb the pleasant life which they had planned together. His love cast a
• 25:26
  glamor upon his work, and his work, by contrast, made love the
• 25:30
  more entrancing. We're going to fix the date of our marriage now, he
• 25:34
  said, I am buying furniture already. I think only English people could have
• 25:41
  behaved so oddly as you in postponing your marriage with rather reason for two mortal
• 25:45
  years. You see, Margaret was ten when I first saw her, and
• 25:52
  only seventeen when I asked her to marry me. She thought she had reason
• 25:56
  to be grateful to me and would have married me there and then. But
• 25:59
  I knew she hankered after these two years in Paris, and I didn't feel
• 26:03
  it was fair to bind her to me till she had seen at least something
• 26:07
  of the world, and she seemed hardly ready for marriage. She was growing
• 26:12
  still, did I not say you are a matter of fact, young man,
• 26:18
  smiled Doctor Pourret. And it's not as if there had been any doubt
• 26:22
  about our knowing our minds. We both cared, and we had a long
• 26:26
  time before us we could afford to wait. At that moment, a man
• 26:32
  strolled past them, a big stout fellow, showily dressed in a check suit,
• 26:37
  and he gravely took off his hat to Doctor Pouritt. The doctor smiled
• 26:41
  and returned the salute. Who is your fat friend, asked Arthur. There's
• 26:47
  a compatriot of yours. His name is Oliver Haddow Art student, inquired Arthur,
• 26:55
  with the scornful tone he used when referring to those whose walk in life
• 26:57
  was not so practically, not exactly, I met him a little while ago,
• 27:03
  by chance, when I was getting together the material for my little book
• 27:07
  on the old Alchemists. I read a great deal at the library of the
• 27:11
  Arsenal, which you may have heard, is singularly rich in all works dealing
• 27:17
  with the occult sciences. Burdon's face assumed an expression of amused disdain. He
• 27:23
  could not understand why doctor Pourette occupied his leisure with studies so profitless He had
• 27:30
  read his book recently published on the more famous of the alchemists, and though
• 27:34
  forced to admire the profound knowledge upon which it was based, he could not
• 27:40
  forgive the waste of time which his friend might have expended more usefully on topics
• 27:45
  of pressing moment. Not many people study in that library, pursued the doctor,
• 27:52
  and I soon knew by sight those who were frequently there. I saw
• 27:57
  this gentleman every day. He was immersed in strange old books when I arrived
• 28:03
  early in the morning, and he was reading him still when I left,
• 28:06
  exhausted. Sometimes it happened that he had the volumes I asked for, and
• 28:11
  I discovered that he was studying the same subjects as myself. His appearance was
• 28:18
  extraordinary, but scarcely sympathetic, so though I fancied that he gave me opportunities
• 28:23
  to address him, I did not avail myself of them. One day,
• 28:27
  however, curiously enough, I was looking up some point upon which it seemed
• 28:33
  impossible to find authorities. The librarian could not help me, and I had
• 28:38
  given up the search. When this person brought me the very book I needed.
• 28:44
  I surmised that the librarian had told him of my difficulty. I was
• 28:48
  very grateful to the stranger. We left together that afternoon, and our kindred
• 28:53
  studies gave us a common topic of conversation. I found that his reading was
• 29:00
  raordinarily wide, and he was able to give me information about works which I
• 29:04
  had never even heard of. He had the advantage over me that he could
• 29:11
  apparently read Hebrew as well as Arabic, and he had studied the Kabbalah in
• 29:15
  the original. How much good it did him, I have no doubt,
• 29:21
  said Arthur. And what is he by profession? Doctor Poorrette gave a deprecating
• 29:26
  smile. Oh, my dear fellow, I highly like to tell you,
• 29:30
  I tremble in every limb at the thought of your unmitigated scorn. Well,
• 29:37
  you know, Paris is full of queer people. It is the chosen home
• 29:41
  of every kind of eccentricity. He sounds incredible in this year of grace.
• 29:48
  But my friend Oliver Haddo claims to be a magician. I think he is
• 29:53
  quite serious, silly ass, answered Arthur with emphasis end of chapter one,
• 30:07
  Chapter two of The Magician by Somerset Maum. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 30:15
  public domain. Margaret Dancy shared a flat near the Boulevard de Montparnasse with Susie
• 30:21
  Boyd, and it was to meet her that Arthur had arranged to come to
• 30:25
  tea that afternoon. The young women waited for him in the studio. The
• 30:29
  kettle was boiling on the stove, cups and pettifour stood in readiness on a
• 30:33
  model stand. Susie looked forward to the meeting with interest. She had heard
• 30:37
  a good deal of the young man and knew that the connection between him and
• 30:41
  Margaret was not lacking in romance. For years, Susie had led the monotonous
• 30:47
  life of a mistress in a school for young ladies, and had resigned herself
• 30:51
  to its dreariness for the rest of her life, when a legacy from a
• 30:55
  distant relation gave her sufficient income to live modestly upon her means. When Margaret,
• 31:00
  who had been her pupil, came soon after this to announce her intentions
• 31:04
  spending a couple of years in Paris to study art, Susy willingly agreed to
• 31:10
  accompany her. Since then, she had worked industriously at Colossi's academy by no
• 31:17
  means, under the delusion that she had talent, but merely to amuse herself.
• 31:21
  She refused to surrender the pleasing notion that her environment was slightly wicked.
• 31:26
  After the toil of many years had relieved her to be earnest in nothing,
• 31:30
  and she found infinite satisfaction in watching the lives of those around her. She
• 31:37
  had a great affection for Margaret, and though her own stock of enthusiasms was
• 31:41
  run low, she could enjoy thoroughly Margaret's young enchantment in all that was exquisite.
• 31:48
  She was a plain woman, but there was no envy in her,
• 31:52
  and she took the keenest pleasure in Margaret's comeliness. It was almost with maternal
• 31:56
  pride that she watched each year at a new grace to that exceeding beauty.
• 32:01
  But her common sense was sound, and she took care, by good natured
• 32:07
  banter to temper the praises which extravagant admirers at the drawing class lavished upon the
• 32:12
  handsome girl, both for her looks and for her talent. She was proud
• 32:16
  to think that she would hand over to Arthur Burden, a woman whose character
• 32:21
  she had helped to form, and whose loveliness she had cultivated with a delicate
• 32:25
  care Susy knew, partly from fragments of letters which Margaret read to her,
• 32:31
  partly from her conversation, how passionately he adored his bride, and it pleased
• 32:37
  her to see that Margaret loved him in return with a grateful devotion. The
• 32:43
  story of this visit to Paris touched her imagination. Margaret was the daughter of
• 32:47
  a country barrister with whom Arthur had been in the habit of staying, and
• 32:52
  when he died many years after his wife, Arthur found himself the girl's guardian
• 32:57
  and executor. He sent her to school, saw that she had everything she
• 33:01
  could possibly want, and when, at seventeen she told him of her wish
• 33:06
  to go to Paris and learn drawing, he at once consented. But though
• 33:10
  he never sought to assume authority over her, he suggested that she should not
• 33:15
  live alone, and it was on this account that she went to Susie.
• 33:21
  The preparations for the journey were scarcely made when Margaret discovered by chance that her
• 33:25
  father had died penniless, and she had lived ever since at Arthur's entire expense.
• 33:31
  When she went to see him with tears in her eyes and told him
• 33:35
  what she knew Arthur was so embarrassed that it was quite absurd. But why
• 33:40
  did you do it? She asked him. Why didn't you tell me?
• 33:45
  I didn't think it fair to put you under any obligation to me, and
• 33:49
  I wanted you to feel quite free, she cried, She couldn't help it.
• 33:54
  Don't be silly, he laughed. He who owe me nothing at all.
• 33:59
  I've done very long little for you, and what I have done has
• 34:00
  given me a great deal of pleasure. I don't know how I can ever
• 34:05
  repel you. Oh, don't say that, he cried. It makes it
• 34:09
  so much harder for me to say what I want to. She looked at
• 34:13
  him quickly and reddened. Her deep blue eyes were veiled with tears. Don't
• 34:19
  you know that I'd do anything in the world for you, she cried.
• 34:23
  I don't want you to be grateful to me, because I was hoping I
• 34:29
  might ask you to marry me some day. Margaret laughed charmingly as she held
• 34:35
  out her hands. You must know that I've been wanting you to do that
• 34:37
  ever since I was ten. She was quite willing to give up her idea
• 34:43
  of Paris and be married without delay, but Arthur pressed her not to change
• 34:46
  her plans. At first, Margaret vowed it was impossible to go for she
• 34:52
  knew now that she had no money and she could not let her lover pay.
• 34:58
  But what does it matter, he said, It'll give me such pleasure
• 35:01
  to go on with the small allowance I've been making you. After all,
• 35:06
  I'm pretty well to do. My father left me a moderate income, and
• 35:09
  I'm making a good deal already by operating. Yes, but it's different now.
• 35:15
  I didn't know before. I thought I was spending my own money.
• 35:19
  If I died tomorrow, every penny I have would be yours. We shall
• 35:23
  be married in two years, and we've known one another much too long to
• 35:27
  change our minds. I think that our lives are quite irrevocably united. Margaret
• 35:34
  wished very much to spend his time in Paris, and Arthur had made up
• 35:37
  his mind that, in fairness to her, they could not marry till she
• 35:40
  was nineteen. She consulted Susy Boyd, whose common sense prevented her from paying
• 35:46
  much heed to romantic notions of false delicacy. My dear, you'd take his
• 35:53
  money without scruple if you'd signed your names in a church vestry and as there's
• 35:59
  not the doubt that you'll marry. I don't see why you shouldn't now.
• 36:04
  Besides, you've got nothing whatever to live on, and you're equally unfitted to
• 36:07
  be a governess or a typewriter. So it's Hobson's choice, and you'd better
• 36:12
  put your exquisite sentiments in your pocket. Miss Boyd, by one accident after
• 36:16
  another, had never seen Arthur, but she had heard so much that she
• 36:21
  looked upon him already as an old friend. She admired him for his talent
• 36:24
  and strength of character, as much as for his loving tenderness to Margaret.
• 36:30
  She had seen portraits of him, but Margaret said he did not photograph well.
• 36:35
  She had asked if he was good looking. No, I don't think
• 36:38
  he is, answered Margaret. But he's very paintable. That is an answer
• 36:45
  which has the advantage of sounding well and meaning nothing. Smiled Susy. She'd
• 36:51
  believed privately that Margaret's passion for the arts was a not unamiable pose which would
• 36:57
  disappear when she was happily married to I have half a dozen children was in
• 37:00
  her mind, much more important than to paint pictures. Margaret's gift was by
• 37:06
  no means despicable, But Susie was not convinced that callous masters would have been
• 37:12
  so enthusiastic if Margaret had been as plain and old as herself. Miss Boyd
• 37:17
  was thirty, Her busy life had not caused the years to pause easily,
• 37:22
  and she looked older. But she was one of those plain women whose plainness
• 37:27
  does not matter. A gallant Frenchman had to her face called her a bell
• 37:31
  allaid, and far from denying the justness of his observation, she had been
• 37:37
  almost flattered. Her mouth was large, and she had little, round,
• 37:42
  bright eyes. Her skin was colorless and much disfigured by freckles. Her nose
• 37:46
  was long and thin, but her face was so kindly her vivacity so attractive,
• 37:52
  that no one after ten minutes thought of her ugliness. You noticed then
• 37:57
  that her hair, though sprinkled with white, was pretty, and that her
• 38:00
  figure was exceedingly neat. She had good hands, very white and admirably formed,
• 38:06
  which she waved continually in the fervor of her gesticulation. Now that her
• 38:10
  means were adequate, she took great pains with her dress and her clothes,
• 38:15
  though they cost much more than she could afford, were always beautiful. Her
• 38:20
  taste was so great, her tacts so sure, that she was able to
• 38:22
  make the most of herself. She was determined that if people called her ugly,
• 38:27
  they should be forced, in the same breath to confess that she was
• 38:30
  perfectly gowned. Susie's talent for dress was remarkable, and it was due to
• 38:37
  her influence that Margaret was arrayed always in the latest mode. The girl's taste
• 38:42
  inclined to be artistic, and her sense of color was apt to run away
• 38:46
  with her discretion. Except for the display of SUSY's firmness, she would scarcely
• 38:52
  have resisted her desire to wear nondescript garments of violent hue. But the older
• 38:58
  woman expressed herself with decision, My dear, you won't draw any the worse
• 39:02
  for wearing a well made corset, and to surround your body with bands of
• 39:07
  gray flannel will certainly not increase your talent. But the fashion is so hideous,
• 39:14
  smiled Margaret Fiddlesticks. The fashion is always beautiful. Last year it was
• 39:20
  beautiful to wear a hat like a pork pie tipped over your nose, and
• 39:23
  next year, for all we know, it will be beautiful to wear a
• 39:25
  bonnet like a sitzpath on the back of your head. Art has nothing to
• 39:30
  do with a smart frock, and whether a high heeled pointed shoe commends itself
• 39:35
  or not to the painters in the quarter, it's the only thing in which
• 39:38
  a woman's foot looks really nice. Susie Boyd bowed that she would not live
• 39:44
  with Margaret at all unless she let her see to the buying of things.
• 39:49
  And when you're married, for heaven's sake, asked me to stay with you
• 39:52
  four times a year so that I can see after your clothes. You'll never
• 39:57
  keep a husband's affection if you trust to your own judgment. Miss Boyd's reward
• 40:00
  had come the night before, when Margaret, coming home from dinner with Arthur,
• 40:05
  had repeated an observation of his how beautifully you're dressed. He had said,
• 40:12
  I was rather afraid you'd be wearing art surges. Of course you didn't
• 40:17
  tell him that. I insisted on buying every stitch you've got on, cried
• 40:22
  Susy. Yes I did, answered Margaret. Simply. I told him I
• 40:27
  had no taste at all, but that you were responsible for everything. That
• 40:32
  was the least you could do, answered Miss Boyd. But her heart went
• 40:37
  out to Margaret, for the trivial incident showed once more how frank the girl
• 40:42
  was. She knew quite well that few of her friends, though many took
• 40:45
  advantage of her matchless taste, would have made such an admission to the lover,
• 40:50
  who congratulated them on the success of their costume. There was a knock
• 40:54
  at the door, and Arthur came in. This is the fairy Prince,
• 40:59
  said Margaret, bringing him to her friend. I'm glad to see you in
• 41:02
  order to thank you for all you've done for Margaret. He smiled, taking
• 41:07
  the proffered hand. Susie remarked that he looked upon her with friendliness, but
• 41:12
  with a certain vacancy, as though too much engrossed in his beloved really to
• 41:16
  notice any one else. And she wondered how to make conversation with a man
• 41:21
  who was so manifestly absorbed. While Margaret busied herself with the preparations for Tea,
• 41:28
  his eyes followed her movements with a doglike touching devotion. They traveled from
• 41:32
  her smiling mouth to her deft hands. It seemed that he had never seen
• 41:37
  anything so ravishing as the way in which she bent over the kettle. Margaret
• 41:42
  felt that he was looking at her and turned around. Their eyes met,
• 41:45
  and they stood for an appreciable time gazing at one another silently. Don't be
• 41:51
  a pair perfect idiot, cried Susie Gaily. I'm dying for my tea.
• 41:57
  The lovers laughed and reddened. It struck Art that he should say something polite.
• 42:02
  I hope you'll show me your sketches afterwards, Miss Boyd. Margaret says,
• 42:07
  they're awfully good. You really needn't think it in the least necessary to
• 42:10
  show any interest in me, she replied, blontly. She draws the most
• 42:15
  delightful caricatures, said Margaret. I'll bring you a horror of yourself, which
• 42:21
  she'll do the moment you leave us. Don't be so spiteful, Margaret.
• 42:27
  Miss Boyd could not help thinking all the same that Arthur Burden would caricature very
• 42:31
  well. Margaret was right when she said that he was not handsome, but
• 42:37
  his clean shaven face was full of interest too, so passionate an observer of
• 42:40
  her kind. The lovers were silent, and Susy had the conversation to herself.
• 42:47
  She chattered without pause and had the satisfaction presently of capturing their attention.
• 42:52
  Arthur seemed to become aware of her presence and laughed heartily at her burlesque account
• 42:58
  of their fellow students at Cholorothes. Meanwhile, Susie examined him. He was
• 43:04
  very tall and very thin. His frame had a yorkshireman's solidity, and his
• 43:09
  bones were massive. He missed being ungainly only through the serenity of his self
• 43:14
  reliance. He had high cheek bones and a long, lean face. His
• 43:20
  nose and mouth were large, and his skin was sallow. But there were
• 43:23
  two characteristics which fascinated her, an imposing strength of purpose and a singular capacity
• 43:30
  for suffering. This was a man who knew his mind and was determined to
• 43:35
  achieve his desire. It refreshed her vastly after the extreme weakness of the young
• 43:40
  painters with whom of late she had mostly consorted. But those quick, dark
• 43:45
  eyes were able to express an anguish that was hardly tolerable, and the mobile
• 43:51
  mouth had a nervous intensity which suggested that he might easily suffer the very agonies
• 43:55
  of woe. Tea was ready, and Arthur stood up to receive his cup.
• 44:02
  Sit down, said Margaret, I'll bring you everything you want, and
• 44:07
  I know exactly how much sugar to put in. It pleases me to wait
• 44:10
  on you. With the grace that marked all her movements, she walked across
• 44:15
  the studio, the filled cup in one hand and the plate of cakes in
• 44:17
  the other. To Susy, it seemed that he was overwhelmed with gratitude by
• 44:22
  Margaret's condescension. His eyes were soft with indescribable tenderness as he took the sweetmeat
• 44:30
  she gave him. Margaret smiled with happy pride. For all her good nature,
• 44:35
  Susy could not prevent the pang that wrung her heart, For she too
• 44:38
  was capable of love. There was in her a wealth of passionate affection that
• 44:44
  none had sought to find. None had ever whispered in her ears, the
• 44:47
  charming nonsense that she read in books. She recognized that she had no beauty
• 44:52
  to help her, but once she had at least the charm of vivacious youth
• 44:58
  that was gone now, and the freedom to go into the world had come
• 45:01
  too late. Yet her instinct told her that she was made to be a
• 45:06
  decent man's wife and the mother of children. She stopped in the middle of
• 45:09
  her bright chatter, fearing to trust her voice, but Arthur and Margaret were
• 45:15
  too much occupied to notice that she had ceased to speak. They sat side
• 45:20
  by side and enjoyed the happiness of one another's company. What a fool I
• 45:25
  am, thought Susy. She had learnt long ago that common sense, intelligence,
• 45:30
  good nature, and strength of character were unimportant in comparison with a pretty
• 45:36
  face. She shrugged her shoulders. I don't know if you young things realize
• 45:42
  that it's going late. If you want us to dine at the n Noir,
• 45:45
  you must leave us now so that we may make ourselves tidy. Very
• 45:50
  well, said Arthur, getting up. I'll go back to my hotel and
• 45:53
  have a wash. We'll meet at half past seven. When Margaret had closed
• 45:59
  the door on him, she turned to her friend. Well what do you
• 46:02
  think, she asked, smiling. You can't expect me to form a definite
• 46:07
  opinion of a man whom I've seen for so short a time. Nonsense,
• 46:10
  said Margaret. Susy hesitated for a moment. I think he has an extraordinarily
• 46:17
  good face, she said, at last, gravely. I've never seen a
• 46:22
  man whose honesty of purpose was so transparent. Susie Boyd was so lazy that
• 46:28
  she could never be induced to occupy herself with household matters. And while Margaret
• 46:32
  put the tea things away, she began to draw the caricature which every new
• 46:37
  face suggested to her. She made a little sketch of Arthur abnormally lanky,
• 46:43
  with a colossal nose, with the wings and the bow and arrow of the
• 46:46
  god of Love. But it was not half done before she thought it silly.
• 46:52
  She tore it up with impatience. When Margaret came back, she turned
• 46:55
  round and looked at her. Steadily, well, said the girl, smiling
• 47:00
  under the scrutiny. She stood in the middle of the lofty studio, Half
• 47:06
  finished canvases leaned with their faces against the wall. Pieces of stuff were hung
• 47:10
  here and there, in photographs of well known pictures. She had fallen unconsciously
• 47:16
  into a wonderful pose, and her beauty gave her, notwithstanding her youth,
• 47:22
  a rare dignity. Susy smiled mockingly. You look like a great goddess in
• 47:28
  a Paris frock. She said, What have you to say to me?
• 47:32
  Asked Margaret, divining from the searching look that something was in her friend's mind.
• 47:38
  Susy stood up and went to her. You know, before i'd seen
• 47:43
  him, I hoped with all my heart that he'd make you happy. Notwithstanding
• 47:47
  all you'd told me of him, I was afraid. I knew he was
• 47:51
  much older than you. He was the first man you'd ever known. I
• 47:54
  could scarcely bear to entrust you to him in case you were miserable. I
• 48:00
  think you need have any fear. But now I hope with all my heart
• 48:05
  that you'll make him happy. It's not you I'm frightened for now, but
• 48:09
  him. Margaret did not answer. She could not understand what Susy meant.
• 48:17
  I've never seen any one with such a capacity for wretchedness as that man has.
• 48:22
  I don't think you can conceive how desperately he might suffer. Be very
• 48:28
  careful, Margaret, and be very good to him, for you have the
• 48:32
  power to make him more unhappy than any human being should be. Oh but
• 48:38
  I want him to be happy, cried Margaret vehemently. You know that I
• 48:44
  owe everything to him. I'll do all I could to make him happy,
• 48:49
  even if I have to sacrifice myself. But I can't sacri my myself because
• 48:53
  I love him so much that all I do is pure delight. Her eyes
• 48:58
  filled with tears, and her voice broke. Susie with a little laugh that
• 49:02
  was half hysterical, kissed her, My dear, Heaven's sake, don't cry.
• 49:08
  You know I can't bear people who weep. And if he sees your
• 49:12
  eyes red, he'll never forgive me. End of chapter two, Chapter three
• 49:24
  of The Magician by Somerset Momp. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 49:34
  The she Noir, where Susie, Boyd and Margaret generally dined, was
• 49:38
  the most charming restaurant in the quarter. Downstairs was a public room where all
• 49:44
  and sundry devoured their food, for the little place had a reputation for good
• 49:47
  cooking combined with cheapness, and the patron, a retired horse dealer who had
• 49:52
  taken to vigiling in order to build up a business for his son, was
• 49:57
  a cheery soul whose loud voiced friendliness attracted custom. But on the first floor
• 50:04
  was a narrow room with three tables arranged in a horseshoe, which was reserved
• 50:08
  for a small party of English or American painters and a few frenchmen with their
• 50:14
  wives. At least they were so nearly wives, and their manner had such
• 50:17
  a matrimonial respectability that Susie, when first she and Margaret were introduced into this
• 50:23
  society, judged it would be vulgar to turn up her nose. She held
• 50:29
  that it was prudish to insist upon the conventions of notting Hill in the Boulevard
• 50:34
  de Montparnasse. The young women who had thrown in their lives with these painters
• 50:38
  were modest in demeanor and quiet in dress. They were model housewives who had
• 50:44
  preserved their self respect notwithstanding a difficult position, and did not look upon their
• 50:49
  relation with less seriousness because they had not muttered a few words before Monsieur le
• 50:54
  Maire. The room was full when Arthur Burden entered, but Margaret had kept
• 51:00
  him an empty seat between herself and miss Boyd. Every one was speaking at
• 51:05
  once in French at the top of his voice, and a furious argument was
• 51:09
  proceeding on the merit of the later impressionists. Arthur sat down and was hurriedly
• 51:15
  introduced to a lanky youth who sat on the other side of Margaret. He
• 51:20
  was very tall, very thin, very fair. He wore a very high
• 51:23
  collar and very long hair, and held himself like an exhausted lily. He
• 51:29
  always reminds me of an Aubrey Beardsley that's been dreadfully smudged, said Susy in
• 51:35
  an undertone. He's a nice, kind creature, but his name is Jackson.
• 51:40
  He has virtue and industry. I haven't seen any of his work,
• 51:44
  but he has absolutely no talent. Ah, how do you know if you've
• 51:49
  not seen his pictures? Asked Arthur. Oh, it's one of our conventions
• 51:53
  here that nobody has talent, laughed Susy. Who we suffer one another personally,
• 52:00
  but we have no illusions about the value of our neighbor's work. Tell
• 52:04
  me who everyone is. Well, look at that little bald man in the
• 52:08
  corner. That is Warren. Arthur looked at the man, she pointed out.
• 52:14
  He was a small person with a pate of shining as a billiard ball,
• 52:17
  and a pointed beard. He had protruding, brilliant eyes. Hesn't he
• 52:22
  had too much to drink? Asked Arthur, frigidly, much, answered Susy
• 52:29
  promptly. But he's always in that condition, and the further he gets from
• 52:32
  sobriety, the more charming he is. He's the only man in this room
• 52:37
  of whom you'll never hear a word of evil. The strange thing is that
• 52:42
  he's very nearly a great painter. He has the most fascinating sense of color
• 52:47
  in the world, and the more intoxicated he is, the more delicate and
• 52:52
  beautiful is his painting. Sometimes, after more than the usual number of aperthief
• 52:58
  he will sit down in a cafe to do a sketch, with his hand
• 53:01
  so shaky that he can hardly hold a brush. He has to wait for
• 53:06
  a favorable moment, and then he makes a jab at the panel. And
• 53:09
  the immoral thing is that each of these little jabs is lovely. Is the
• 53:15
  most delightful interpreter of Paris I know. And when you've seen his sketches,
• 53:20
  he hissed one hundreds of unimaginable grace and feeling and distinction. You can never
• 53:27
  see Paris the same way again. The little maid, who looked busily after
• 53:31
  the varied wants of the customers, stood in front of them to receive Arthur's
• 53:36
  order. She was a hard visaged creature of mature age, but she looked
• 53:40
  neat in her black dress and white cap, and she had a motherly way
• 53:45
  of attending to these people with a capacious smile. Of her large mouth,
• 53:49
  which was full of charm. I don't mind what I eat, said Arthur.
• 53:53
  Let Margaret order my dinner for me. It would have been just as
• 53:59
  good if I had order, laughed Susy. They began a lively discussion with
• 54:04
  Murray as to the merits of the various dishes, and it was only interrupted
• 54:07
  by Warren's hilarious expostulations. Mari, I precipitate myself at your feet and beg
• 54:16
  you to bring me a poor laries. Give me one moment, monsieur,
• 54:22
  said the maid. Do not pay any attention to Zadjapleman. His morals are
• 54:28
  detestable, and the only seeks to lead you from the narrow path of virtue.
• 54:34
  Arthur protested that, on the contrary, the passion of hunger occupied at
• 54:37
  the moment his heart to the exclusion of all others. Maurie, you'll no
• 54:43
  longer love me, cried Warren. There was a time when you did not
• 54:47
  look so coldly upon me. When I ordered a bottle of white wine.
• 54:53
  The rest of the party took up his complaint, and all besought her and
• 54:58
  not to show too hard a heart to the bald and rubicant painter. Missus
• 55:04
  jevouin monsieur Warren. She cried, laughing, jeuvo ametou too. She ran
• 55:12
  downstairs amid the shouts of men and women to give her orders. The other
• 55:17
  day, the che noir was the scene of a tragedy, said Susie.
• 55:21
  Marie broke off relations with her lover, who is a waiter at l'avenue's,
• 55:25
  and would have no reconciliation. He waited till he had a free evening,
• 55:30
  and then came to the room downstairs and ordered dinner. Of course, she
• 55:35
  was obliged to wait on him, and as she brought him each dish,
• 55:37
  he expostulated with her, and they mingled their tears, and she wept in
• 55:44
  floods interrupted a youth with neatly brushed hair and fat nose. She wept all
• 55:50
  over our food, and we ate it salt with tears. We besought her
• 55:54
  not to yield. Except for our encouragement, she would have gone back to
• 55:59
  him, and he beats her. Murray appeared again with no signs. Now
• 56:04
  that so short a while ago Romance had played a game with her and brought
• 56:07
  the dishes that had been ordered. Susie seized once more. Upon Arthur burden's
• 56:13
  attention. Now, please look at the man who's sitting next mister Warren.
• 56:19
  Arthur saw a tall, dark fellow with strongly marked features, untidy hair,
• 56:23
  and a ragged black mustache. That is mister O'Brien, who is an example
• 56:29
  of the fact that strength of will and an earnest purpose cannot make a painter.
• 56:35
  He's a failure and he knows it, and the bitterness has warped his
• 56:37
  soul. If you listen to him, you'll hear every painter of eminence come
• 56:42
  under his slash. He can forgive nobody who successful, and he never acknowledges
• 56:47
  merit in any one till he's safely dead and buried. He must be a
• 56:52
  cheerful companion, answered Arthur. And who is the stoutled lady by his side
• 56:59
  with the flaunt hat. That is the mother of Madame Rouge, the little
• 57:04
  pale faced woman sitting next to her. She is the mistress of Rouge,
• 57:08
  who does all the illustrations for lasmal. At first, it rather tickled me
• 57:14
  that the old lady should call him mon Gendre my son in law, and
• 57:17
  take the irregular union of her daughter with such a noble unconcern for propriety,
• 57:23
  but now it seems quite natural. The mother of Madame Rouge had the remains
• 57:29
  of beauty, and she sat bolt upright, picking the leg of a chicken
• 57:32
  with a dignified gesture. Arthur looked away quickly, for catching his eye,
• 57:37
  she gave him an amorous glance. Rouge had more the appearance of a prosperous
• 57:42
  tradesman that of an artist. But he carried on with O'Brien, whose French
• 57:46
  was perfect an argument on the merits of Suzann. To one he was a
• 57:52
  great master, and to the other an impudent charlatan. Each hotly repeated his
• 57:58
  opinion, as though the mere fact of saying the same thing several times made
• 58:01
  it more convincing. Next to me is Madame Meyer proceeded Susy. She was
• 58:07
  a governess in Poland, but she was much too pretty to remain one,
• 58:12
  and now she lives with the landscape painter, who is by her side.
• 58:16
  Arthur's eyes followed her words and rested on a clean shaven man with a large
• 58:21
  quantity of gray, curling hair. He had a handsome face of deliberately esthetic
• 58:25
  type, and was very elegantly dressed. His manner and his conversation had the
• 58:31
  flamboyance of the Romantic thirties. He talked in flowing periods with an air of
• 58:37
  finality, and what he said was no less just than obvious. The gay
• 58:43
  little lady who shared his fortune to listened to his wisdom with an admiration that
• 58:46
  plainly flattered him. Miss Boyd had described everyone to Arthur except young Raggles,
• 58:52
  who painted still life with a certain amount of skill, and Clayson, the
• 58:57
  American sculpture. Raggs stood for rank and fashion at the chn Noir. He
• 59:04
  was very smartly dressed in a horsey way, and he walked with bow legs,
• 59:07
  as though he spent most of his time in the saddle. He alone
• 59:12
  used scented pomade upon his neat, smooth hair. His chief distinction was a
• 59:17
  greatcoat he wore with a scarlet lining. And Warren, whose memory for names
• 59:22
  was defective, could only recall him by that peculiarity. But it was understood
• 59:28
  that he knew duchesses in fashionable streets and occasionally dined with them in solemn splendor.
• 59:34
  Clayson had a vinest nose and a tedious habit of saying brilliant things with
• 59:39
  his twinkling eyes, red cheeks, and fair pointed beard. He looked exactly
• 59:44
  like a Franz Hall's, but he was dressed like the caricature of a Frenchman
• 59:49
  in a comic paper. He spoke English with a Parisian accent. Miss Boyd
• 59:54
  was beginning to tear him gaily limb from limb when the door was flung op
• 1:00:00
  and a large person entered. He threw off his cloak with a dramatic gesture,
• 1:00:05
  Maurie, disembarrass me of this coat of frieze. Hang my some row
• 1:00:12
  upon a convenient peg. He spoke execrable French, but there was a grandiloquence
• 1:00:17
  about his vocabulary, which set everyone laughing. Here is somebody I don't know,
• 1:00:22
  said Susie. Um but I do, at least by sight, answered
• 1:00:28
  Burdon. He leaned over to Doctor Porette, who was sitting opposite, quietly
• 1:00:31
  eating his dinner and enjoying the nonsense which everyone talked. Is that not your
• 1:00:37
  magician, I'll ever hurdle, said doctor Poorrette, with a little mad of
• 1:00:44
  amusement. The new arrival stood at the end of the room with all eyes
• 1:00:47
  upon him. He threw himself into an attitude of command, and remained for
• 1:00:52
  a moment perfectly still. You look as if you've opposing haddle, said Warren.
• 1:01:00
  He couldn't help doing that if he tried, laughed Clayson. Oliver Haddow
• 1:01:06
  slowly turned his glance to the painter. I grieve to see, O most
• 1:01:12
  excellent Warren, that the ripe juice of the apperteef has glazed your sparkling eye.
• 1:01:19
  Do you mean to say on drunk, sir? In one gross but
• 1:01:23
  expressive word, drunk? The painter grotesquely flung himself back in his chair,
• 1:01:30
  as though he had been struck a blow, and Haddo looked steadily at Clayson.
• 1:01:35
  How often have I explained to you, O Clayson, that your deplorable
• 1:01:40
  lack of education precludes you from the brilliancy to which you aspire? For an
• 1:01:46
  instant Oliver Haddowe resumed his effective pose, and susy smiling, looked at him.
• 1:01:52
  He was a man of great size, two or three inches more than
• 1:01:57
  six feet high, but the most notable thing about him was his vast obesity.
• 1:02:02
  His paunch was of imposing dimensions, his face was large and fleshy.
• 1:02:08
  He had thrown himself into the arrogant attitude of Velesquez's portrait of del Borro in
• 1:02:14
  the Museum of Berlin, and his countenance bore of set purpose the same contemptuous
• 1:02:20
  smile. He advanced and shook hands with Doctor Porette. Hey, brother,
• 1:02:24
  wizard, I greet in you, If not a master, at least a
• 1:02:30
  student not unworthy my esteem. Susie was convulsed with laughter at his pompousness,
• 1:02:37
  and he turned to her with the utmost gravity. Madam, your laughter is
• 1:02:43
  more soft in mine ears than the singing of Bobo in a Persian garden.
• 1:02:50
  Doctor Porette interposed with introductions. The magician bowed solemnly as he was, in
• 1:02:54
  turn made known to Susie, Boyd and Margaret and Arthur Burden. He held
• 1:03:00
  out his hand to the grim Irish painter. Well, my, oh Brian,
• 1:03:06
  have you been mixing as usual the waters of bitterness with the thin claret
• 1:03:10
  of Bordeaux. Why don't you sit down and eat your dinner? Returned the
• 1:03:15
  other gruffly. Ah, my dear fellow, I wish I could drive the
• 1:03:21
  tact into this head of yours. That rudeness is not synonymous with wit.
• 1:03:27
  I should not have lived in vain. If I teach you in time to
• 1:03:30
  realize that the rapier of irony is more effective an instrument than the bludgeon of
• 1:03:37
  insolence. O'Brien reddened with anger, but could not at once find a retort,
• 1:03:43
  and Haddo passed on to that faded, harmless youth who sat next to
• 1:03:47
  Margaret. Do my eyes deceive me? Or is this the jagson whose name,
• 1:03:54
  in its inanity is so appropriate to the bearer. I am eager to
• 1:04:00
  know if you still devote upon the ungrateful arts, talents which were more profitably
• 1:04:05
  employed upon Haberdashary. The unlucky creature, thus brutally attacked, blushed feebly without
• 1:04:13
  answering, and Hadda went on to the frenchman Meyer, as more worthy of
• 1:04:16
  his mocking. Here, I'm afraid my entrance interrupted you in a discourse.
• 1:04:23
  Was it the celebrated harangue on the greatness of Michelangelo? Or was it the
• 1:04:28
  searching analysis of the art of Wagner? We were just going, said Meyer,
• 1:04:34
  getting up with a frown. I am desolated to lose the pearls of
• 1:04:40
  wisdom that habitual evolved from your cultivated lips, returned Hadow as he politely withdrew
• 1:04:46
  Madame Meyer's chair. He sat down with a smile. I saw the place
• 1:04:53
  was crowded, and when Napoleonic instinct decided, I could only make room by
• 1:04:58
  insulting somebody. It is cause for congratulation that my gibes, which raggles a
• 1:05:04
  foolish youth mistakes for wit, have caused the disappearance of a person who lives
• 1:05:10
  in open sin, thereby vacating two seats and allowing me to eat a humble
• 1:05:16
  meal with ample room for me elbows. Marie brought him the bill fare,
• 1:05:23
  and he looked at it gravely. I will have a vanilla ice, O,
• 1:05:29
  well beloved, and a wing of tender chicken, a fried soul,
• 1:05:34
  and some excellent pea soup piance en portage or soul, one chicken and an
• 1:05:42
  ice. But why should you serve them in that order rather than in the
• 1:05:46
  order I gave you. Marie and the two frenchwomen who were still in the
• 1:05:51
  room broke into exclamations at this extravagance, but Oliver Hadda waved his fat hand.
• 1:05:58
  I shall start with the ice, o, Marie, to cool the
• 1:06:01
  passion with which your eyes inflame me. And then without hesitation, I will
• 1:06:08
  devour the wing of a chicken in order to sustain myself. Against your smile,
• 1:06:14
  I shall then proceed to a fresh soul, and with the pea soup,
• 1:06:19
  I will finish a not unsustaining meal. Having succeeded in capturing the attention
• 1:06:27
  of everyone in the room, Oliver Hado proceeded to eat these dishes in the
• 1:06:30
  order he had named. Margaret and Burden watched him with scornful eyes, but
• 1:06:35
  Susie, who was not revolted by the vanity which sought to attract notice,
• 1:06:41
  looked at him curiously. He was clearly not old, though his corpulence added
• 1:06:45
  to his apparent age. His features were good, his ears small, and
• 1:06:50
  his nose delicately shaped. He had big teeth, but they were white,
• 1:06:55
  and even his mouth was large, with heavy moist lips. He had the
• 1:07:00
  neck of a bullock. His dark curling hair had retreated from the forehead and
• 1:07:05
  temples in such a way as to give his clean shaven face a disconcerting nudity.
• 1:07:12
  The baldness of his crown was vaguely like a tonsure. He had the
• 1:07:16
  look of a very wicked, sensual priest. Margaret, stealing a glance at
• 1:07:21
  him as he ate on a sudden violently shuddered. He affected her with an
• 1:07:27
  uncontrollable dislike. He lifted his eyes slowly, and she looked away, blushing,
• 1:07:32
  as though she had been taken in some indiscretion. These eyes were the
• 1:07:36
  most curious thing about him. They were not large, but an exceedingly pale
• 1:07:43
  blue, and they looked at you in a way that was singularly embarrassing.
• 1:07:47
  At first, Susy could not discover in what precisely their peculiarity lay. But
• 1:07:53
  in a moment she found out. The eyes of most persons converge when they
• 1:07:58
  look at you, but Oliver had, naturally, or by a habit he
• 1:08:01
  had acquired for effect, remained parallel. It gave the impression that he looked
• 1:08:08
  straight through you and saw the wall beyond. It was uncanny. But another
• 1:08:14
  strange thing about him was the impossibility of telling whether he was serious. There
• 1:08:18
  was a mockery in that queer glance, a sardonic smile upon the mouth,
• 1:08:24
  which made you hesitate how to take his outrageous utterances. It was irritating to
• 1:08:30
  be uncertain whether while you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying
• 1:08:32
  an elaborate joke at your expense. His presence cast an unusual chill upon the
• 1:08:39
  party. The French members got up and left. Warren reeled out with O'Brien,
• 1:08:44
  whose uncouth sarcasms were no match for Haddo's bitter jibes. Raggles put on
• 1:08:49
  his coat with the scarlet lining and went out with the tall Jagson, who
• 1:08:54
  smarted still under Haddoe's insolence. The American sculptor paid his bill silently. When
• 1:09:00
  he was at the door, Haddo stopped him. You have modeled lions at
• 1:09:05
  the Gardon de Plant, my dear Clayson. Have you ever haunted them on
• 1:09:10
  their native plains? No? I haven't. Clayson did not know why Haddow
• 1:09:16
  asked the question, but he bristled with incipient wrath. Then you have not
• 1:09:21
  seen the jackal gnawing at a dead antelope scamper away in terror. When the
• 1:09:28
  King of Beasts stock down to make his meal, Clayson slammed the door behind
• 1:09:33
  him. Haddow was left with Margaret and Arthur Burdon, doctor Proret, and
• 1:09:39
  Susie. He smiled quietly. By the way, are you a lion hunter?
• 1:09:44
  Asked Susy flippantly. He turned on her his straight, uncanny glance.
• 1:09:49
  I have no equal with big Game. I have shot more lions than any
• 1:09:55
  man alive. I think Jules Gerrard, whom the French of the nineteenth century
• 1:10:00
  called Latour de Leon, may have been fit to compare with me. But
• 1:10:06
  I can call to mind no other. This statement, made with the greatest
• 1:10:12
  calm, caused a moment of silence. Margaret stared at him with amazement.
• 1:10:16
  You suffer from no false modesty, said Arthur Burdon. False modesty is a
• 1:10:21
  sign of ill breeding, from which my birth amply protects me. Doctor Perette
• 1:10:28
  looked up with a smile of irony. I wish mister Haddo would take this
• 1:10:32
  opportunity to disclose to us the mystery of his birth and family. I have
• 1:10:39
  a suspicion that, like the immortal Cagliostro, he was born of unknown but
• 1:10:44
  mobile parents and educated secretly in eastern palaces. In my origin, I am
• 1:10:51
  more to be compared with Denis Za care with Ramond Lullay. My ancestor,
• 1:10:59
  George, had came to Scotland in the suite of Anne of Denmark, and
• 1:11:03
  when James the first her consort, ascended the English throne. He was granted
• 1:11:09
  the estate in Staffordshire, which I still possess. My family has formed alliances
• 1:11:16
  with the most noble blood of England, and the Merristons, the parlor Bees,
• 1:11:21
  the Hollingtons have been proud to give their daughters to my house. Those
• 1:11:28
  are facts which can be verified in works of reference, said Arthur dryly.
• 1:11:32
  They can, said Oliver, as the eastern palaces in which your youth was
• 1:11:39
  spent, and the black slaves who waited on you, and the bearded sheikhs
• 1:11:43
  who imparted to you secret knowledge, cried doctor Pourred. I was educated in
• 1:11:49
  Eton, and I left Oxford in eighteen ninety six. Would you mind telling
• 1:11:55
  me what college you were, said Arthur. I was at the house,
• 1:12:00
  then you must have been there with Frank Hurrel, now assistant physician at Saint
• 1:12:04
  Luke's Hospital. He was one of my most intimate friends. I'll write and
• 1:12:11
  ask him about you. I am dying to know what you did with all
• 1:12:15
  the lions you slaughtered, said Susie Boyd. The man's effrontery did not exasperate
• 1:12:20
  her as it obviously exasperated Margaret and Arthur. He amused her, and she
• 1:12:27
  was anxious to make him talk. They decorate the floors of skin, which
• 1:12:32
  is the name of my place in Staffordshire. He paused for a moment to
• 1:12:36
  light a cigar. I am the only man alive who has killed three lions
• 1:12:42
  with three successive shots. I should have thought you could have demolished him by
• 1:12:47
  the effects of your oratory, said Arthur. Oliver leaned back and placed his
• 1:12:53
  two large hands on the table. Burkhart, a German with whom I was
• 1:12:59
  shooting, was down with fever and could not stir from his bed. I
• 1:13:02
  was awaken'd one night by the uneasiness of my oxen, and I heard the
• 1:13:06
  roaring of lions close at hand. I took my carbine and came out of
• 1:13:12
  my tent. There was only the meager light of the moon. I walked
• 1:13:16
  alone, for I knew natives could be of no use to me. Presently
• 1:13:21
  I came upon the carcass of an antelope, half consumed, and I made
• 1:13:27
  up my mind to wait for the return of the lions. I hid myself
• 1:13:30
  among the bouldest twenty paces from the prey. All about me was the immensity
• 1:13:36
  of Africa and the silence. I waited, motionless, hour after hour till
• 1:13:47
  the dawn was nearly at hand. At last three lions appeared over a rock
• 1:13:56
  I had noticed the day before spore of a lion and two females. May
• 1:14:01
  I ask how you could distinguish the sex, asked Arthur incredulously. The prints
• 1:14:08
  of the lion's forefeet are disproportionately larger than those of the hind feet. The
• 1:14:13
  fore feet and hind feet of the lioness are nearly the same size. Pray
• 1:14:17
  go on, said SUSI. They came into view, and in the dim
• 1:14:24
  light, as they stood chest on, they appeared as huge as the strange
• 1:14:28
  beasts of the Arabian tales. I aimed at the lioness, which stood nearest
• 1:14:32
  to me, and fired without a sound, like a bullock felled. At
• 1:14:36
  one blow, she dropped. The lion gave vent to a sonorous roar.
• 1:14:41
  Hastily, I slipped another cartridge in my rifle. Then I became conscious that
• 1:14:45
  he had seen me. He lowered his head, and his crest was erect,
• 1:14:50
  His lifted tail was twitching, his lips were drawn back from the red
• 1:14:55
  gums, and I saw his great white fangs. Living fire flashed from his
• 1:15:01
  eyes, and he growled incessantly. Then He advanced a few steps, his
• 1:15:06
  head held low and his eyes were fixed on mine with a look of rage.
• 1:15:13
  Suddenly he jerked up his tail, and when a lion does this,
• 1:15:15
  he charges. I got a quick sight on his chest and fired. He
• 1:15:20
  reared up on his hind legs, roaring loudly and clawing at the air,
• 1:15:25
  and fell back dead. One lioness remained, and through the smoke, I
• 1:15:30
  saw her spring to her feet and rushed toward me. Escape was impossible,
• 1:15:34
  for behind me were high boulders that I could not climb. She came on
• 1:15:39
  with hoarse, coughing grunts, and with desperate courage, I fired my remaining
• 1:15:44
  barrel. I missed her clean. I took one step backwards in the hope
• 1:15:48
  of getting a cartridge into my rifle, and fell scarcely two lents in front
• 1:15:54
  of the furious beast. She missed me. I owed my safety to that
• 1:15:59
  fall, and then suddenly I found that she had collapsed. I had hit
• 1:16:03
  her, after all. My bullet went clean through her heart, but the
• 1:16:08
  spring had carried her forwards. When I scrambled to my feet, I found
• 1:16:12
  that she was dying. I walked back to my camp and ate a capital
• 1:16:17
  breakfast. Oliver Haddo's story was received with astonished silence. No one could assert
• 1:16:26
  that it was untrue, but he told it with a grandiloquence that carried no
• 1:16:30
  conviction. Arthur would have wagered a considerable sum that there was no word of
• 1:16:33
  truth in it. He had never met a person of this kind before,
• 1:16:38
  and could not understand what pleasure there might be in the elaborate invention of improbable
• 1:16:43
  adventures. You are evidently very brave, he said. To follow a wounded
• 1:16:48
  lion into thick cover is probably the most dangerous proceeding in the world, said
• 1:16:55
  Haddo, calmly. It calls for the utmost coolness and for iron nerve.
• 1:17:01
  The answer had an odd effect on Arthur. He gave Haddo a rapid glance
• 1:17:06
  and was seized suddenly with uncontrollable laughter. He leaned back in his chair and
• 1:17:12
  roared. His hilarity affected the others, and they broke into peal upon peal
• 1:17:15
  of laughter. Oliver watched them gravely. He seemed neither disconcerted nor surprised.
• 1:17:23
  When Arthur recovered himself, he found had o singular eyes fixed upon him.
• 1:17:29
  Your laughter reminds me of the crackling of thorns under a pot, he said.
• 1:17:34
  Haddo looked round at the others. Though his gaze preserved its fixity,
• 1:17:39
  his lips broke into a queer, sardonic smile. It must be played even
• 1:17:45
  to the feeblest intelligence, that a man can only command the elementary spirits if
• 1:17:49
  he is without fear. A capricious mind can never rule the sylphs, nor
• 1:17:56
  a fickle disposition the undines. Arthur stared at him with amazement. He did
• 1:18:02
  not know what on earth the man was talking about. Haddo paid no heed.
• 1:18:06
  But if the adept is active, pliant, and strong, the whole
• 1:18:12
  world will be at his command. He will pass through the storm and no
• 1:18:15
  rain shall fall upon his head. The wind will not displace a single fold
• 1:18:21
  of his garment. He will go through fire and not be burned. Doctor
• 1:18:28
  Pourette ventured upon an explanation of these cryptic utterances. These ladies are unacquainted with
• 1:18:35
  the mysterious things of whom you speak, suer Ami. They should know that
• 1:18:41
  during the Middle Ages, imagination peopled the four elements with intelligences normally unseen,
• 1:18:47
  some of which were friendly to man and others hostile. They were thought to
• 1:18:53
  be powerful and conscious of their power, though at the same time they were
• 1:18:57
  profoundly aware that they possessed no soul. Their life depended upon the continuance of
• 1:19:03
  some natural object, and hence for them there could be no immortality. They
• 1:19:09
  must return eventually to the abyss of unending night, and the darkness of death
• 1:19:14
  afflicted them always. But it was thought that in the same manner, as
• 1:19:18
  Man, by his union with God, had won a spark of divinity,
• 1:19:24
  so might the Sylphs, Gnomes, n Deans, and salamanders, by an
• 1:19:29
  alliance with Man, partake of his immortality. And many of their women,
• 1:19:34
  whose beauty was more than human, gained a human soul by loving one of
• 1:19:40
  the race of men. But the reverse occurred also, and often a love
• 1:19:45
  sick youth lost his immortality because he left the haunts of his kind to dwell
• 1:19:50
  with the fair, soulless denescence of the running streams or of the forest airs.
• 1:19:58
  And I didn't know that you spoke grettively, said Arthur to Oliver Haddo.
• 1:20:02
  The other shrugged his shoulders. What else is the world in a figure?
• 1:20:09
  Life itself is but a symbol. You must be a wise man.
• 1:20:13
  If you can tell us what is reality, and you begin to talk of
• 1:20:17
  magic and mysticism, I confess that I am out of my depth. Yet
• 1:20:23
  magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible
• 1:20:29
  effects. Will Love and imagination are magic powers, and everyone possesses, and
• 1:20:36
  whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic
• 1:20:42
  has but one dogma, namely that the scene is the measure of the unseen.
• 1:20:48
  Will you tell us what the powers are that the Adept possesses. They
• 1:20:54
  are enumerated in a Hebrew manuscript of the sixteenth century, which is in my
• 1:21:00
  possession. The privileges of him who holds in his right hand the keys of
• 1:21:04
  Solomon and in his left the branch of the blossoming almond are twenty one.
• 1:21:11
  He beholds God face to face without dying, and converses intimately with the seven
• 1:21:16
  Genii who command the celestial army. He is superior to every affliction and to
• 1:21:24
  every fear. He reigns with all Heaven and is served by all Hell.
• 1:21:30
  He holds the secret of the resurrection of the dead and the key of immortality.
• 1:21:38
  If you possess even those who have evidently the most varied attainments, said
• 1:21:43
  Arthur. Ironically, everyone can make game of the unknown, retorted Hadow,
• 1:21:49
  with a shrug of his massive shoulders. Arthur did not answer. He looked
• 1:21:55
  at Hado curiously. He asked himself whether he believed seriously these posterous things,
• 1:22:00
  or whether he was amusing himself in an elephantine way at their expense. His
• 1:22:06
  manner was earnest, but there was an odd expression about the mouth, a
• 1:22:11
  hard twinkle of the eyes, which seemed to belie it. Susie was vastly
• 1:22:15
  entertained. It diverted her enormously to hear occult matters discussed with apparent gravity in
• 1:22:21
  this prosaic tavern. Doctor Porette broke the silence Arago, after whom has been
• 1:22:29
  named a neighboring Boulevard de clodes A. That doubt was a proof of modesty,
• 1:22:35
  which has rarely interfered with the progress of science. But one cannot say
• 1:22:40
  the same of incredulity. And he that uses the word impossible outside of pure
• 1:22:45
  mathematics is lacking imprudence. It should be remembered that Lactantius proclaimed belief in the
• 1:22:53
  existence of antipodes Inane and Saint Augustine of Hippo added that in any case,
• 1:23:00
  there could be no question of inhabited lands. That sounds as if you were
• 1:23:04
  not quite skeptical. Dear doctor, said Miss Boyd. In my youth I
• 1:23:10
  believed nothing, for science had taught me to distrust even the evidence of my
• 1:23:15
  five senses. He replied with a shrug of the shoulders. But I have
• 1:23:19
  seen many things in the East which are inexplicable by the known process of science.
• 1:23:26
  Mister Haddle has given you one definition of magic, and I will give
• 1:23:30
  you another. It may be described merely as the intelligent utilization of forces which
• 1:23:35
  are unknown, contempt or misunderstood of the vulgar. The young man who settles
• 1:23:42
  in the East sneers at the ideas of magic which surround him. But I
• 1:23:46
  know not what there is in the atmosphere that SAPs this unbelief. When he
• 1:23:53
  has sojourn for some years among Oriental Ciggy comes insensibly to share the opinion of
• 1:23:59
  Milly's and men that perhaps there is something in it. After all, Arthur
• 1:24:04
  Burden made a gesture of impatience. I cannot imagine that, however much I
• 1:24:10
  lived in Eastern countries. I could believe anything that had the whole weight of
• 1:24:14
  science against it. If there were a word of truth in anything, Haddo
• 1:24:17
  says, we should be unable to form any reasonable theory of the universe.
• 1:24:23
  For a scientific man, you argue with singular fatuity, said Haddo icily,
• 1:24:30
  and his manner had an offensiveness which was intensely irritating. You should be aware
• 1:24:35
  that science, dealing only with the general, leaves out of consideration the individual
• 1:24:41
  cases that contradict the enormous majority. Occasionally the heart is on the right side
• 1:24:46
  of the body, but you would not, on that account ever put your
• 1:24:50
  stethoscope in any other than the usual spot. It is possible that under certain
• 1:24:56
  conditions the law of gravity does not apply. Yet you will conduct your life
• 1:25:00
  under the conviction that it does so invariably. Now, there are some of
• 1:25:06
  us who choose to deal only with these exceptions to the common run. The
• 1:25:12
  dull man who plays at Monte Carlo puts his money on the colors, and
• 1:25:15
  generally black or red turns up. But now and then zero appears and he
• 1:25:21
  loses. But we who have backed zero all the time, when many times
• 1:25:29
  our stake here and there you will find men whose imagination raises them about the
• 1:25:35
  humdrum of mankind. They are willing to lose their all if only they have
• 1:25:42
  chance of a great prize. Is it nothing not only to know the future,
• 1:25:46
  as did the profits of old, but by making it to force the
• 1:25:50
  very gates of the unknown. Suddenly the bantering gravity with which he spoke fell
• 1:25:57
  away from him, A singular light came into his eyes, and his voice
• 1:26:00
  was hoarse. Now at last they saw that he was serious. What should
• 1:26:08
  you know of that lust for great secrets which consumes me to the bottom of
• 1:26:14
  my soul. Anyhow, I'm perfectly delighted to meet a magician, cried Susy
• 1:26:19
  gaily. Ah call me not that, he said, with a flourish of
• 1:26:25
  his fat hands, regaining immediately his portentous flippancy. I would be rather known
• 1:26:30
  as the brother of the shadow. And I should have thought you could be
• 1:26:38
  only a very distant relation of anything so unsubstantial, said Arthur with a laugh.
• 1:26:44
  Oliver's face turned red with furious anger. His strange blue eyes grew cold
• 1:26:48
  with hatred, and he thrust out his scarlet lips till he had the ruthless
• 1:26:54
  expression of a nero. The gibe at his obesity, had caught him on
• 1:26:59
  the roar. Susie feared that he would make so insulting a reply that a
• 1:27:02
  quarrel must ensue. Well, really, if we want to go to the
• 1:27:06
  fair, we must start, she said quickly, And Marie is dying to
• 1:27:11
  be rid of us. They got up and plattered down the stairs into the
• 1:27:15
  street. End of chapter three, Chapter four of The Magician by Somerset,
• 1:27:33
  ma'am. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. They came down to
• 1:27:42
  the busy, narrow street which led into the Boulevard de Montparnasse. Electric trams
• 1:27:47
  passed through it with harsh rigging of bells, and people surged along the pavements.
• 1:27:53
  The fair to which they were going was held at the Leon de Bellefort,
• 1:27:57
  not more than a mile away, and Arthur hailed a cab. Susie
• 1:28:01
  told the driver where they wanted to be set down. She noticed that Haddo,
• 1:28:05
  who was waiting for them to start, put his hand on the horse's
• 1:28:09
  neck. Of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it began to tremble.
• 1:28:14
  The trembling passed through the body and down its limbs, till it shook
• 1:28:17
  from head to foot as though it had the staggers. The coachman jumped off
• 1:28:21
  his box and held the wretched creature's head. Margaret and Susie got out.
• 1:28:27
  Twas a horribly painful sight. The horse seemed not to suffer from actual pain,
• 1:28:31
  but from an extraordinary fear. Though she knew not why, an idea
• 1:28:36
  came to Susie. Take your hand away, mister Haddo, she said sharply.
• 1:28:43
  He smiled and did as she bade him. At the same moment,
• 1:28:45
  the trembling began to decrease, and in a moment the poor old cab horse
• 1:28:49
  was in its usual state. It seemed a little frightened still, but otherwise
• 1:28:55
  recovered. I wonder what the deuce was the matter with it, said Arthur
• 1:29:00
  her Oliver Haddo looked at him with the blue eyes that seemed to see right
• 1:29:03
  through people, and then, lifting his hat, walked away. Susy suddenly
• 1:29:09
  turned to doctor Porette. Do you think he could have made the horse do
• 1:29:13
  that? It came immediately he put his hand on its neck, and it
• 1:29:15
  stopped as soon as he took it away. Nonsense, said Arthur. It
• 1:29:20
  occurred to me that he was playing some trick, said doctor Porette gravely.
• 1:29:27
  An odd thing happened once when he came to see me. I have two
• 1:29:30
  Persian cats, which are the most properly conducted of all their tribe. They
• 1:29:35
  spend their days in front of my fire, meditating on the problems of metaphysics.
• 1:29:41
  But as soon as he came in, they started up, and their
• 1:29:44
  first stood right on end. Then they began to run madlier round and round
• 1:29:48
  the room, as though the victims of uncontrollable terror. I opened the door,
• 1:29:54
  and they bolted out. I have never been able to understand exactly what
• 1:29:58
  took place. Margaret shuddered. I've never met a man who filled me with
• 1:30:02
  such loathing, she said. I don't know what there is about him that
• 1:30:08
  frightens me. Even now I feel his eyes fixed strangely upon me. I
• 1:30:15
  hope I shall never see him again. Arthur gave a little laugh and pressed
• 1:30:19
  her hand. She would not let his go, and he felt that she
• 1:30:23
  was trembling. Personally, He had no doubt about the matter. He would
• 1:30:27
  have no trifling with credibility either. Haddo believed things that none but a lunatic
• 1:30:32
  could, or else he was a Charlatan who sought to attract attention by his
• 1:30:36
  extravagances. In any case, he was contemptible. It was certain at all
• 1:30:43
  events that neither he nor any one else could work miracles. Now tell you
• 1:30:47
  what I'll do, said Arthur. If he really knows Frank Hurrell, I'll
• 1:30:51
  find out all about him. I'll drop a note to Herrell to night and
• 1:30:55
  ask him to tell me anything he can. I wish you would, answered
• 1:31:00
  Susy, because he interests me enormously. There's no place like Paris for meeting
• 1:31:04
  queer folk. Sooner or later you run across persons who believe in everything.
• 1:31:10
  There's no form of religion, there's no eccentricity or enormity that hasn't its votaries.
• 1:31:15
  Just think what a privilege it is to come upon a man in the
• 1:31:18
  twentieth century who honestly believes in the occult. Since I have been occupied with
• 1:31:27
  these mothers, I have come across strange people, said doctor Pohet quietly.
• 1:31:31
  But I agree with Miss Boyd that Oliver Haddo is the most extraordinary. For
• 1:31:38
  one thing, it is impossible to know how much he really believes what he
• 1:31:41
  says. Is he an impostor or a madman. Does he deceive himself?
• 1:31:46
  Or is he laughing up his sleeve at the folly of those who take him
• 1:31:50
  seriously? I cannot tell. All I know is that he has traveled widely
• 1:31:57
  and is acquainted with many pongs, has a minute knowledge of alchemical literature,
• 1:32:02
  as there is no book I have heard of dealing with the black arts,
• 1:32:06
  which he does not seem to know. Doctor Fourette shook his head slowly.
• 1:32:13
  I should not care to dogmatize about this man. I know I shall outrage
• 1:32:17
  the feelings of my friend Arthur, but I am bound to confess it would
• 1:32:21
  not surprise me to learn that he possessed powers by which he was able to
• 1:32:27
  do things seemingly miraculous. Arthur was prevented from answering by their arrival at the
• 1:32:33
  Leon de Bellefort. The fair was in full swing, the noise was deafening.
• 1:32:40
  Steam bands thundered out the popular tunes of the moment, and to their
• 1:32:44
  din merry. Grounds were turning at the door of Booth's men, vociferously importune
• 1:32:50
  the passer by to enter. From the shooting saloons came a continual spatter of
• 1:32:56
  toy rifles linking up these sounds, with his voices of the serried crowd that
• 1:33:00
  surged along the central avenue, and the shuffle of their myriad feet. The
• 1:33:05
  night was lured with the settling torches, which flamed with a dull, unceasing
• 1:33:11
  roar. It was a curious sight, half gay, half swordid. The
• 1:33:15
  throng seemed bent with a kind of savagery upon amusement, as though resentful of
• 1:33:20
  the weary round of daily labor, it sought by a desperate effort to be
• 1:33:25
  merry. The English party, with doctor Borett, mildly ironic, had scarcely
• 1:33:31
  entered before they were joined by Oliver Haddow. He was indifferent to the plain
• 1:33:36
  fact that they did not want his company. He attracted attention for his appearance
• 1:33:42
  and his manner were remarkable, and Susie noticed that he was pleased to see
• 1:33:46
  people point him out to one another. He wore a Spanish cloak, the
• 1:33:50
  Kappa, and he flung the red and green velvet of its lining gaudily over
• 1:33:56
  his shoulder. He had a large soft hat. His height was great,
• 1:34:00
  though less noticeable on account of his obesity, and he towered over the puny
• 1:34:05
  multitude. They looked idly at the various shows, resisting the melodramas, the
• 1:34:11
  circuses, the exhibitions of eccentricity, which loudly clamored for their custom. Presently,
• 1:34:16
  they came to a man who was cutting silhouettes in black paper, and
• 1:34:20
  Haddo insisted on posing for him. A little crowd collected and did not spare
• 1:34:26
  their jokes. At his singular appearance, he threw himself into his favorite attitude
• 1:34:30
  of proud command. Margaret wished to take the opportunity of leaving him, but
• 1:34:35
  miss Boyd insisted on staying. He's the most ridiculous creature I've ever seen in
• 1:34:42
  my life, she whispered. I wouldn't let him out of my sight for
• 1:34:45
  worlds. When the silhouette was done, he presented it with a low bow
• 1:34:50
  to Margaret. I implore your acceptance of the only portrait now in existence of
• 1:34:58
  Oliver Haddo. He said, thank you, She answered frigidly she was unwilling
• 1:35:03
  to take it, but had not the presence of mind put him off by
• 1:35:08
  a jest, and would not be frankly rude. As though certain she set
• 1:35:13
  much store on it. He placed it carefully in an envelope. They walked
• 1:35:16
  on and suddenly came to a canvas booth, on which was an Eastern name.
• 1:35:21
  Roughly painted on sail cloth was a picture of an Arab charming snakes,
• 1:35:26
  and above were certain words in Arabic. At the entrance, a native sat
• 1:35:30
  cross legged, listlessly beating a drum. When he saw them stop, he
• 1:35:34
  addressed them in bad French. Does not this remind you of the turbid nile,
• 1:35:42
  doctor poet, said Haddo. Let us go in and see what the
• 1:35:45
  fellow has to show. Doctor Porett stepped forward and addressed the charmer, who
• 1:35:50
  brightened on hearing the language of his own country. He is an Egyptian from
• 1:35:57
  Usuit, said the doctor. I buy tickets for you all, said Haddow.
• 1:36:02
  He held up the flap that gave access to the booth, and Susie
• 1:36:05
  went in. Margaret and Arthur Burden, somewhat against their will, were obliged
• 1:36:11
  to follow. The native closed the opening behind them. They found themselves in
• 1:36:15
  a dirty little tent ill lit by two smoking lamps. A dozen stools were
• 1:36:20
  placed in circle on the bare ground. In one corner sat a Fala woman,
• 1:36:25
  motionless in ample robes of dingy black. Her face was hidden by a
• 1:36:30
  long veil, which was held in place by a queer ornament of brass in
• 1:36:33
  the middle of her forehead. Between the eyes. These alone were visible,
• 1:36:39
  large and somber, and the lashes were darkened with coal. Her fingers were
• 1:36:45
  brightly stained with henna. She moved slightly as the visitors entered, and the
• 1:36:48
  man gave her his drum. She began to rub it with her hands curiously,
• 1:36:54
  and made a droning sound which was odd and mysterious. There was a
• 1:36:59
  pieculiar odor in the place, so that doctor Porette was for a moment transported
• 1:37:03
  to the evil smelling streets of Cairo. It was an acrid mixture of incense
• 1:37:10
  of atar of roses, with every imaginable putrescence. It choked the two women,
• 1:37:15
  and Susie asked for a cigarette. The native grinned when he heard the
• 1:37:19
  English tongue. He showed a row of sparkling and the beautiful teeth. O
• 1:37:25
  my name Mohammad, he said, A me shaw sarfrans doo serbar lord the
• 1:37:30
  catanar wait and see serprans vari pissonas he was dressed in a long blue gabardine
• 1:37:39
  more suited to the sunny banks of the Nile than to a fair in Paris,
• 1:37:43
  and its color could hardly be seen for dirt. On his head was
• 1:37:46
  the national tarbush. A rug lay at one side of the tent, and
• 1:37:50
  from under it he took a goatskin sack. He placed it on the ground
• 1:37:55
  in the middle of the circle formed by the seats, and crouched down on
• 1:37:58
  his haunches. Margaret shuddered, for the uneven surface of the sack moved strangely.
• 1:38:04
  He opened the mouth of it. The woman in the corner listlessly droned
• 1:38:09
  away on the drum and occasionally uttered a barbaric cry with a leer and a
• 1:38:14
  flash of his bright teeth. The Arab thrust his hand into the sack and
• 1:38:17
  rummaged as a man would rummage in a sack of corn. He drew out
• 1:38:21
  a long, writhing snake. He placed it on the ground, and for
• 1:38:26
  a moment waited. Then he passed his hand over it. It became immediately
• 1:38:30
  as rigid as a bar of iron, except that the eyes, the cruel
• 1:38:34
  eyes, were open. Still, there might have been no life in it.
• 1:38:40
  Lurk said Hado, that is the miracle which Moses did before Pharaoh.
• 1:38:46
  Then the Arab took a reed instrument, not unlike the pipe which pan in
• 1:38:50
  the hills of Grease played to the dryads, and he piped a weird,
• 1:38:55
  monotonous tune. The stiffness broke away from the snake suddenly, and it lifted
• 1:39:00
  its head and raised its long body till it stood almost on the tip of
• 1:39:03
  its tail, and it swayed slowly to and fro Oliver Hadow seemed extraordinarily fascinated.
• 1:39:13
  He leaned forward with eager face, and his unnatural eyes were fixed on
• 1:39:16
  the charmer with an indescribable expression. Margaret drew back in terror. You need
• 1:39:23
  not be frightened, said Arthur. These people only work with animals whose fangs
• 1:39:28
  have been extracted. Oliver Hadow looked at him before answering. He seemed to
• 1:39:32
  consider each time what sort of man this was to whom he spoke. A
• 1:39:38
  man is only a snake charmer, because without recourse to medicine, he is
• 1:39:44
  proof against the fangs of the most venomous serpents. Do think so, said
• 1:39:48
  Arthur. I saw the most noted charmer of Madras die two hours after he
• 1:39:55
  had been bitten by a cobra, said Haddo. I had heard many tales
• 1:40:00
  of his prowess, and one evening asked a friend to take me to him.
• 1:40:04
  He was out when we arrived, but we waited, and, presently,
• 1:40:08
  accompanied by some friends, he came. We told him what we wanted.
• 1:40:13
  He had been at a marriage feast and was drunk. But he sent
• 1:40:17
  for his snakes, and forthwith showed us marbles which this man has never heard
• 1:40:21
  of. At last, he took a great cobra from his sack and began
• 1:40:27
  to handle it. Suddenly it darted at his chin and bit him. It
• 1:40:30
  made two marks like pin points. The juggler started back. I am a
• 1:40:36
  dead man, he said. Those about him would have killed the cobra,
• 1:40:41
  but he prevented them. Let the creature live, he said, it may
• 1:40:45
  be of service to others of my trade. To me, it can be
• 1:40:48
  of no other use. Nothing can save me. His friends and the jugglers
• 1:40:56
  his fellows, gathered round him and placed him in a chair. In two
• 1:41:00
  hours he was dead. In his drunkenness, he had forgotten a portion of
• 1:41:04
  the spell which protected him, and so he died. You have a marvelous
• 1:41:13
  collection of tall stories, said Arthur. I'm afraid I should want better proof
• 1:41:16
  that these particular snakes are poisonous. Oliver turned to the charmer and spoke to
• 1:41:23
  him in Arabic than he answered, Arthur, the man has a horned viper.
• 1:41:28
  Cerastes is the name under which you, gentlemen of science, knew it,
• 1:41:32
  and it is the most deadly of all Egyptian snakes. It is commonly
• 1:41:38
  known as Cleopatra's asp, for that is the serpent which was brought in a
• 1:41:43
  basket of figs to the paramour of Caesar in order that she might not endure
• 1:41:47
  the triumph of Augustus. What are you going to do, asked Susy.
• 1:41:54
  He smiled but did not answer. He stepped forward to the center of the
• 1:41:58
  tent and fell on his knees. He uttered Arabic words, which doctor poor
• 1:42:01
  Head translated to the others. Oh viper, I adjure you by the great
• 1:42:08
  God, who is all powerful, to come forth. You are by a
• 1:42:12
  snake, and God is greater than all snakes. Obey my call and come.
• 1:42:17
  A tremor went through the goatskin bag, and in a moment a head
• 1:42:20
  was protruded, A liathed body wriggled out. It was a snake of light
• 1:42:27
  gray color, and over each eye was a horn. It lay slightly curled.
• 1:42:32
  Do you recognize it, said Oliver in a low voice to the doctor.
• 1:42:38
  I do. The charmer sat motionless, and the woman in the dim
• 1:42:42
  background seized her weird rubbing of the drum. Haddo seized the snake and opened
• 1:42:46
  its mouth. Immediately it fastened on his hand, and the reptile teeth went
• 1:42:51
  deep into his flesh. Arthur watched him for signs of pain, but he
• 1:42:56
  did not WinCE. The writhing snake dangled from his hand. He repeated a
• 1:43:00
  sentence in Arabic, and with the peculiar suddenness of a drop of water falling
• 1:43:04
  from a roof, the snake fell to the ground. The blood flowed freely.
• 1:43:11
  Haddo spat upon the bleeding place three times, muttering words they could not
• 1:43:15
  hear, and three times he rubbed the wound with his fingers. The bleeding
• 1:43:19
  stopped. He stretched out his hand for Arthur to look at it. Latually.
• 1:43:25
  Is what a surgeon would call healing by first intention, he said.
• 1:43:30
  Burden was astonished, but he was irritated too, and would not allow that
• 1:43:35
  there was anything strange in the cessation of the flowing blood. You haven't yet
• 1:43:40
  shown that the snake was poisonous. I have not finished yet, smiled Hadow.
• 1:43:45
  He spoke again to the Egyptian, who gave an order to his wife.
• 1:43:49
  Without a word, she rose to her feet, and from a box
• 1:43:53
  took a white rabbit. She lifted it up by the ears, and it
• 1:43:56
  struggled with its four quaint legs. Hado put it in front of the horned
• 1:44:00
  viper. Before anyone could have moved, the snake darted forward, and like
• 1:44:03
  a flash of lightning, struck the rabbit. The wretched little beast gave a
• 1:44:08
  slight scream, A shudder went through it, and it fell dead. Margaret
• 1:44:14
  sprang up with a cry, Oh, how cruel, how hatefully cruel?
• 1:44:19
  Are you convinced? Now, asked Taddo coolly. The two women hurried to
• 1:44:26
  the doorway. They were frightened and disgusted. Oliver Haddow was left alone with
• 1:44:30
  the snake Charmer end of Chapter four, Chapter five of The Magician by Somerset
• 1:44:45
  Mam. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Doctor Perett had asked
• 1:44:50
  Arthur to bring Margaret and miss Boy to see him on Sunday at his apartment
• 1:44:55
  in the Iel Saint Louis and the lovers arranged to spend an hour on their
• 1:44:59
  way the Louverum. Susy invited to accompany them, preferred independence and her own
• 1:45:04
  reflections. To avoid the crowd which throngs the picture galleries on holidays, they
• 1:45:10
  went to that part of the museum where ancient sculpture is kept. It was
• 1:45:15
  comparatively empty, and the long halls had the singular restfulness of places where works
• 1:45:20
  of art are gathered together. Margaret was filled with a genuine emotion, and
• 1:45:27
  though she could not analyze it as Susie, who loved to dissect her state
• 1:45:30
  of mind, would have done, it strangely exhilarated her. Her heart was
• 1:45:34
  uplifted from the sordidness of earth, and she had a sensation of freedom which
• 1:45:40
  was as delightful as it was indescribable. Arthur had never troubled himself with art
• 1:45:45
  till Margaret's enthusiasm taught him that there was a side of life he did not
• 1:45:48
  realize. Though beauty meant little to his practical nature, he sought, in
• 1:45:54
  his great love of Margaret, to appreciate the works which excited her to such
• 1:45:58
  charming ecstasy. He walked by her side with docility, and listened, not
• 1:46:02
  without deference to her outbursts. He admired the correctness of Greek anatomy, and
• 1:46:09
  there was one statue of an athlete which attracted his prolonged attention, because the
• 1:46:14
  muscles were indicated with the precision of a plate and a surgical text book.
• 1:46:18
  When Margaret talked of the Greek's divine repose and of their blitheness, he thought
• 1:46:23
  it very clever because she said it, but in a man it would have
• 1:46:27
  aroused his impatience. Yet there was one piece, the charming statue known as
• 1:46:32
  lad Dian de Gabille, which moved him differently, and to this presently he
• 1:46:38
  insisted on going with a laugh. Margaret remonstrated, but secretly she was not
• 1:46:43
  displeased. She was aware that his passion for this figure was due not to
• 1:46:46
  its intrinsic beauty, but to a likeness he had discovered in it to herself.
• 1:46:53
  It stood in that fair, wide gallery, whereas the mocking fawn,
• 1:46:57
  with his inhuman savor of fellowship with the earth which is divine, and the
• 1:47:00
  sightless Homer the Goddess, had not the arrogance of the huntress who loved Endibion,
• 1:47:06
  nor the majesty of the cold Mistress of the skies. She was in
• 1:47:11
  the likeness of a young girl, and with collected gestures fastened her cloak.
• 1:47:15
  There was nothing divine in her save a sweet, strange spirit of virginity.
• 1:47:20
  A lover in ancient Greece who offered sacrifice before this fair image might forget easily
• 1:47:26
  that it was a goddess to whom he knelt and see only an earthly maid,
• 1:47:30
  fresh with youth and chastity and loveliness. In Arthur's eyes, Margaret had
• 1:47:35
  all the exquisite grace of the statue and the same unconscious composure, and in
• 1:47:41
  her also breathed the spring odors of ineffable purity. Her features were chiseled with
• 1:47:47
  the clear and divine perfection of this Greek girl's. Her ears were as delicate
• 1:47:53
  and as finely wrought. The color of her skin was so tender that it
• 1:47:57
  reminded you vaguely of all beautiful, soft faith, the radiance of the sunset
• 1:48:01
  and the darkness of the night, the heart of roses, and the depth
• 1:48:05
  of running water. The Goddess's hand was raised to her right shoulder, and
• 1:48:11
  Margaret's hand was as small as dainty and as white to be so foolish,
• 1:48:18
  said she. As Arthur looked silently at the statue, He turned his eyes
• 1:48:23
  slowly, and they rested upon her. She saw that they were veiled with
• 1:48:28
  tears. What on earth the matter? I wish you weren't so beautiful,
• 1:48:33
  he answered, awkwardly, as though he could scarcely bring himself to say such
• 1:48:39
  foolish things. I am so afraid that something will happen to prevent us from
• 1:48:43
  being happy. It seems too much to expect that I should enjoy such extraordinarily
• 1:48:48
  good luck. She had the imagination to see that it meant much for the
• 1:48:54
  practical man so to express himself. Love of her drew him out of his
• 1:48:58
  character, and though he could not resist, he resented the effect it had
• 1:49:01
  on him. She found nothing to reply, but she took his hand.
• 1:49:09
  Everything has gone pretty well to me so far, he said, speaking almost
• 1:49:13
  to himself. Whenever I've really wanted anything, I've managed to get it.
• 1:49:17
  I don't see why things should go against me now. He was trying to
• 1:49:23
  reassure himself against an instinctive suspicion of the malice of circumstances. But he shook
• 1:49:29
  himself and straightened his back. I'm stupid to be so morbid as that,
• 1:49:34
  he muttered. Margaret laughed. They walked out of the gallery and turned to
• 1:49:39
  the quay. By crossing the bridge and following the river, they must come
• 1:49:43
  eventually to doctor Pourette's house. Meanwhile, Susie wandered down the Boulevard Saint Michel,
• 1:49:48
  alert with the Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest
• 1:49:53
  to her heart. Lell Saint Louis, to her mind, offered a synthesis
• 1:49:57
  of the French spirit, and it pleased her far more than the Garish boulevards
• 1:50:01
  in which the English as a rule seek for the country's fascination. Its position
• 1:50:06
  on an island in the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets,
• 1:50:11
  with their array of dainty comestibles, had the look of streets in a
• 1:50:15
  provincial town. They had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy, and they
• 1:50:19
  were very RESTful. The names of the streets recalled the monarchy that passed away
• 1:50:25
  in bloodshed, and in poudru Derrie, the very plane trees had a greater
• 1:50:30
  sobriety than elsewhere, as though conscious they stood in a Paris, where progress
• 1:50:36
  was not In front was the turbid sane, and below the twin towers of
• 1:50:42
  Notre Dame Stuzzi could have kissed the hard paving stones of the quay. Her
• 1:50:47
  good natured Plaine face lit up as she realized the delight of the scene upon
• 1:50:53
  which her eyes rested, and it was with a little pang, her mind
• 1:50:57
  aglow with characters and events from history and from fiction, that she turned away
• 1:51:01
  to enter doctor Porette's house. She was pleased that the approach did not clash
• 1:51:06
  with her fantasies. She mounted a broad staircase, dark but roomy, and
• 1:51:12
  at the command of the concierge rang a tinkling bell. At one of the
• 1:51:15
  doorways that faced her. Doctor Pourette opened it in person. Ar third,
• 1:51:21
  Mademoiselle. Already here, he said, as he led her in. They
• 1:51:27
  went through a prim French dining room with much woodwork and heavy scarlet hangings,
• 1:51:31
  to the library. This was a large room, but the bookcases that lined
• 1:51:36
  the walls and a large writing table heaped up with books much diminished its size.
• 1:51:42
  There were books everywhere. They were stacked on the floor and piled on
• 1:51:46
  every chair. There was hardly space to move. Susie gave a cry of
• 1:51:51
  delight. Now you mustn't talk to me. I want to look at all
• 1:51:55
  your books. You could not please me more, said doctor Poet. But
• 1:52:00
  I am afraid they will disappoint you. There are many sorts, but I
• 1:52:04
  fear there are few that will interest an English young lady. He looked about
• 1:52:10
  his writing table till he found a packet of cigarettes. He gravely offered one
• 1:52:14
  to each of his guests. Suzie was enchanted with the strange, musty smell
• 1:52:18
  of the old books, and she took a first glance at them. In
• 1:52:21
  general, for the most part, they were in paper bindings, some of
• 1:52:26
  them neat enough, but more with broken backs and dingy edges. They were
• 1:52:30
  set along the shelves in serried rows, untidily, without method or plan.
• 1:52:35
  There were many older ones also in bindings of calf and pigskin, treasure from
• 1:52:41
  half the book shops in Europe. And there were huge folios like Prussian grenadiers
• 1:52:46
  and tiny elzevirs, which had been read by patrician ladies in Venice. Just
• 1:52:54
  as Arthur was a different man in the operating theater, doctor Porette was changed
• 1:52:59
  among his books, though he preserved the amiable serenity which made him always so
• 1:53:03
  attractive. He had there a diverting brusqueness of demeanor which contrasted quaintly with his
• 1:53:10
  usual charm. I a were telling these young people when you came in of
• 1:53:14
  an ancient Koran, which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom
• 1:53:18
  I operated upon for cataract. He showed her a beautifully written Arabic work with
• 1:53:24
  wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. You know that it is almost impossible for
• 1:53:30
  an infidel to acquire the Holy Book, and this is a particularly rare copy,
• 1:53:35
  for it was written by kaite Bay, the greatest of the Mameluke sultans.
• 1:53:42
  He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle rose leaves.
• 1:53:46
  And have you much literature on the occult sciences? Asked Susy. Doctor
• 1:53:51
  Porette smiled. I venture to think that no private library contained so complete a
• 1:53:57
  collection, But I dare not show to you in the presence of our friend
• 1:54:00
  Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic
• 1:54:06
  smile would betray him. SUSI went to the shelves, to which he vaguely
• 1:54:11
  waved and looked with peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes
• 1:54:15
  along the names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown
• 1:54:19
  region of Romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey
• 1:54:25
  into a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where one unearthly shapes
• 1:54:31
  pressed upon her way. I thought once of writing a life of that fantastic
• 1:54:36
  and grandiloquent creature, Philippus Surelius Theophrastus Parcellus Bombast van Hohnheim, said doctor Porett,
• 1:54:46
  and I have collected many of his books. He took down a slim
• 1:54:50
  volume in Duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth century, with queer plates on which
• 1:54:56
  were all manner of cabbalistic signs. The pages had a peculiar musty odor.
• 1:55:01
  They were stained with iron mold. Here is one of the most interesting works
• 1:55:06
  concerning the Black art. It is the grimoire of Honorius, and is the
• 1:55:12
  principal textbook of all those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.
• 1:55:17
  Then he pointed out the Hexameron of Torquemada, and the Tableau de la constance
• 1:55:23
  de de mon by Delancre. He drew his finger down the leather back of
• 1:55:29
  del Rio's Disquisiones of Magicai, and set upright the pseudo Monarchia Demododorum of weiras
• 1:55:39
  his eyes rested for an instant on Obert's Acta at Scriptomagica, and he blew
• 1:55:45
  the dust carefully off the most famous, the most infamous of them all,
• 1:55:48
  Sprengers Malius Maleficorum. Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the
• 1:55:58
  Clavicula Salamony, and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical
• 1:56:03
  copy which belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques Casanova.
• 1:56:11
  You will see that the owner's name has been cut out, but enough remains
• 1:56:15
  to indicate the bottom of the letters, and these correspond exactly with the signature
• 1:56:19
  of Casanova, which I have found that the bibliote Canacionale. He relates in
• 1:56:26
  his memoirs that the copy of this book was seized among his effects when he
• 1:56:30
  was arrested in Venice for traffic in the Black Arts, and it was there
• 1:56:34
  on one of my journeys from Alexandria, that I picked it up. He
• 1:56:39
  replaced the precious work, and his eye fell on a stout volume bound in
• 1:56:43
  vellum. I had almost forgotten the most wonderful, the most mysterious, of
• 1:56:47
  all the books that treat of occult science. You have heard of the Kabbalah,
• 1:56:53
  but I doubt if it is more than a name to you. I
• 1:56:58
  know nothing about it at all, laughed Susy, except that it is O
• 1:57:01
  very romantic and extraordinary and ridiculous. This ten is its history. Moses,
• 1:57:10
  who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into the
• 1:57:14
  Kabbalah in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during
• 1:57:18
  his wanderings in the wilderness. Here he not only devoted the leisure hours of
• 1:57:24
  forty years to this mysterious science, but received lessons in it from an obliging
• 1:57:29
  angel. By aid of it, he was able to solve the difficulties which
• 1:57:33
  arose during his management of the Israelites. Notwithstanding the pilgrimages, wars, and
• 1:57:40
  miseries of that most unruly nation. He covertly laid down the principles of the
• 1:57:45
  doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy.
• 1:57:50
  Moses also initiated the seventy elders into these secrets, and they in turn
• 1:57:57
  transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of
• 1:58:01
  tradition, David and Solomon were the most deeply learned in the Kabbalah. No
• 1:58:08
  one, however, dared to write it down till Shimyon Benjoki, who lived
• 1:58:14
  in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and after his death the Rabbi
• 1:58:18
  Elizar his son, and the Rabbi Abba his secretary, collected his manuscripts,
• 1:58:25
  and from them composed a celebrated treatise called Tzor. And how much do you
• 1:58:31
  believe of this marvelous story, asked Arthur Burdon. Not a word, answered
• 1:58:38
  Doctor Porette with a smile. Criticism have shown that Zohar is of modern origin,
• 1:58:44
  with singular effrontery. It cites an author who is known to have lived
• 1:58:47
  during the eleventh century, mentions the Crusades, and records events which occurred in
• 1:58:53
  the year of Our Lord twelve sixty four. It was some time before twelve
• 1:58:59
  ninety one that copies of Zohar began to be circulated by a Spanish Jew named
• 1:59:03
  Moses de Leon, who claimed to possess an autograph manuscript by the reputed author
• 1:59:11
  Shimion Benjoki. But when Moses de Leon was gathered to the bosom of his
• 1:59:17
  father Abraham, a healthy Hebrew Joseph dey of Ilah promised describes widow, who
• 1:59:25
  had been left destitute, that his son should marry her daughter, to whom
• 1:59:29
  he would pay a handsome bowery if she would give him the original manuscript from
• 1:59:33
  which the copies were made. But the widow, one can imagine, with
• 1:59:39
  what gnashing of teeth, was obliged to confess that she had no such manuscript,
• 1:59:45
  for Moses de Leon had composed Zohar out of his own head and written
• 1:59:48
  it with his own right hand. Arthur got up to stretch his legs.
• 1:59:54
  He gave a laugh. I never know how much you really believe in all
• 1:59:59
  these things things you tell us. You speak with such gravity that we are
• 2:00:02
  all taken in, and then it turns out that you've been laughing at us.
• 2:00:08
  Oh, my dear friend, I never know myself how much I believe,
• 2:00:13
  returned doctor Pooritt. I wonder if it is for the same reason that
• 2:00:17
  mister Haddo puzzled us so much, said Susie. Ah, there you have
• 2:00:23
  a case that is really interesting, replied the doctor. I assure you that,
• 2:00:28
  though I know him fairly intimately, I have never been able to make
• 2:00:31
  up my mind whether he is an elaborate, practical joker, or whether he
• 2:00:35
  is really convinced he has the wonderful powers to which he lays claim. We
• 2:00:42
  certainly saw things last night that were not quite normal, said Susie. Why
• 2:00:47
  had that serpent no effect on him though it was able to kill the rabbit
• 2:00:51
  instantaneously? And how are you going to explain the violent trembling of that horse,
• 2:00:57
  mister Burden. I can't explain it, answered Arthur irritably. But I'm
• 2:01:02
  not inclined to attribute to the supernatural everything that I can't immediately understand. I
• 2:01:09
  don't know what there is about him that excites in me a sort of horror,
• 2:01:13
  said Margaret. I've never taken such a sudden dislike to any one.
• 2:01:17
  She was too reticent to say all she felt, but she had been strangely
• 2:01:21
  affected last night by the recollection of Haddow's words and of his acts. She
• 2:01:27
  had awakened more than once from a nightmare in which he has soon fantastic and
• 2:01:30
  ghastly shapes. His mocking voice rang in her ears, and she seemed still
• 2:01:35
  to see that vast bulk and the savage, sensual face. It was like
• 2:01:41
  a spirit of evil in her path, and she was curiously alarmed. Only
• 2:01:45
  her reliance on Arthur's common sense prevented her from giving way to ridiculous terrors.
• 2:01:51
  I've written to Frank Hurl and asked him to tell me all he knows about
• 2:01:56
  him, said Arthur. I should get an answer very soon. I wish
• 2:02:00
  we'd never come across him, cried Margaret vehemently. I feel that he will
• 2:02:06
  bring us misfortune. You, all of you absurdly prejudiced, answered Susy gaily.
• 2:02:14
  He interests me enormously, and I mean to ask him to tea at
• 2:02:17
  the studio. I'm sure I shall be delighted to come. Margaret cried out,
• 2:02:24
  for she recognized Oliver Haddow's deep bantering tones, and she turned round quickly.
• 2:02:29
  They were all so taken aback that for a moment no one spoke.
• 2:02:32
  They were gathered round the window and had not heard him come in. They
• 2:02:36
  wondered guiltily how long he had been there, and how much he had heard.
• 2:02:42
  How on earth did you get here, cried Susy, lightly recovering herself.
• 2:02:46
  First, no well bred sorcerer is so dead to the finer feelings as
• 2:02:51
  to enter a room by the door, he answered, with his puzzling smile.
• 2:02:57
  You were standing round the window, and I thought it would startle you
• 2:03:00
  if I chose that mode of ingress, so I descended with incredible skill down
• 2:03:06
  the chimney. I see a little soot on your left elbow, returned Susy.
• 2:03:12
  I hope you weren't at all burned. Not at all, thanks,
• 2:03:16
  he answered, gravely, brushing his coat. And what a way you came.
• 2:03:21
  You are very welcome, said doctor Poorrett, genially, holding out his
• 2:03:26
  hand. But Arthur impatiently turned to his host. I wish I knew what
• 2:03:31
  made you engage upon these studies, he said. I should have thought your
• 2:03:35
  medical profession protected you from any tenderness towards superstition. Doctor Poret shrugged his shoulders.
• 2:03:44
  I have always been interested in the oddities of mankind. At one time
• 2:03:48
  I read a good deal of philosophy and a good deal of science, and
• 2:03:53
  I learned in that way that nothing was certain some people, by the pursuit
• 2:03:59
  of science, are impressed with the dignity of man. But I was only
• 2:04:02
  made conscious of his insignificance. The greatest questions of all have been thrashed out
• 2:04:09
  since he acquired the beginnings of civilization, and he is as far from a
• 2:04:13
  solution as ever. Man can know nothing, for his senses are his only
• 2:04:17
  means of knowledge, and they can give no certainty. There is only one
• 2:04:23
  subject upon which the individual can speak with authority, and that is his own
• 2:04:28
  mind. But even here he is surrounded with darkness. I believe that we
• 2:04:33
  shall always be ignorant of the matters which it most behooves us to know,
• 2:04:39
  and therefore I cannot occupy myself with them. I prefer to set them all
• 2:04:44
  aside. And since knowledge is unattainable, to occupy myself only with folly.
• 2:04:50
  It is a point of view I do not sympathize with, said Arthur,
• 2:04:55
  and yet I cannot be sure that it is all folly pursu the Frenchman reflectively.
• 2:05:01
  He looked at Arthur with a certain ironic gravity. Do you believe that
• 2:05:05
  I should lie to you when I promised to speak the truth? Certainly not
• 2:05:12
  I should like to tell you of an experience that I once had in Alexandria.
• 2:05:16
  So far as I can see, it can be explained by none of
• 2:05:19
  the principles known to science. I ask you only to believe that I am
• 2:05:25
  not consciously deceiving you. He spoke with a seriousness which gave authority to his
• 2:05:30
  words. It was plain even to Arthur that he narrated the event exactly as
• 2:05:36
  it occurred. I had heard frequently of a certain sheikh who was able,
• 2:05:42
  by means of a magic mirror to show the inquirer persons who were absent or
• 2:05:47
  dead, and a native friend of mine had often begged me to see him.
• 2:05:53
  I had never thought it worth while, But that last time came when
• 2:05:56
  I was greatly troubled in my mind. My poor mother was an old woman,
• 2:06:01
  a widow, and I had received no news of her for many weeks.
• 2:06:06
  Though I wrote repeatedly, no answer reached me. I was very anxious
• 2:06:12
  and very unhappy. I thought no harm could come if I sent for the
• 2:06:16
  sorcerer, and perhaps, after all, he had the power which was attributed
• 2:06:20
  to him. My friend, who was interpreter to the French consulate, brought
• 2:06:26
  him to me one evening He was a fine man, tall and stout,
• 2:06:30
  of a fair complexion, but with a dark brown beard. He was shabbily
• 2:06:35
  dressed, and, being a descendant of a prophet, wore a green turban.
• 2:06:41
  In his conversation, he was affable and unaffected. I asked him what
• 2:06:45
  persons could see in the magic mirror, and he said they were a boy
• 2:06:50
  not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, and a
• 2:06:56
  pregnant woman. In order to make sure that there was collusion, I despatched
• 2:07:00
  my servant to an intimate friend and asked him to send me his son.
• 2:07:05
  While we waited, I prepared, by the magician's direction, frankencense and coriander
• 2:07:12
  seed, and a chafing dish with live charcoal. Meanwhile, he wrote forms
• 2:07:16
  of invocation on six strips of paper. When the boy arrived, the sorcerer
• 2:07:23
  threw incense and one of the paper strips into the chafing dish. Then took
• 2:07:28
  the boy's right hand and drew a square and certain mystical marks on the palm.
• 2:07:33
  In the center of the square, he poured a little ink. This
• 2:07:38
  formed the magic mirror. He desired the boy to look steadily into it without
• 2:07:44
  raising his head. The fumes of the incense filled the room with smoke.
• 2:07:50
  The sorcerer muttered Arabic words indistinctly, and this he continued to do all the
• 2:07:57
  time, except when he asked the boy a question. Do you see anything
• 2:08:01
  in the ink? He said no, the boy answered, but a minute
• 2:08:07
  later he began to tremble and seemed very much frightened. I see a man
• 2:08:13
  sweeping the ground, he said. When he has done sweeping, tell me,
• 2:08:18
  said the sheik. He has done, said the boy. The saucerer
• 2:08:22
  turned to me and asked who it was that I wished the boy should see.
• 2:08:28
  I desire to see the widow Jean Marree poet. The magician put the
• 2:08:33
  second and third of the small strips of paper into the chafing dish, and
• 2:08:39
  fresh Fankinson's was added. The fumes were painful to my eyes. The boy
• 2:08:45
  began to speak. I see an old woman lying on a bed. She
• 2:08:50
  has a black dress, and on her head is a little white cap.
• 2:08:54
  She has a wrinkled face and her eyes are closed. There is a band
• 2:09:00
  eyed round her chin. The bed is in a sort of hole in the
• 2:09:03
  wall, and there are shutters to it. The boy was describing a Breton
• 2:09:09
  bed, and the white cap was the quoth that my mother wore. And
• 2:09:13
  if she lay there in her black dress with a band about her chin,
• 2:09:18
  I knew that it could mean but one thing. What else does he see?
• 2:09:22
  I asked the sorcerer. He repeated my question, and presently the boy
• 2:09:28
  spoke again. I see four men come in with a long box, and
• 2:09:33
  there are women crying. They all wear little white caps and black dresses.
• 2:09:39
  And I see a man in a white surplice with a large cross in his
• 2:09:43
  hands, and a little boy in a long red gown, and the men
• 2:09:48
  take off their hats, and now every one is kneeling down. I will
• 2:09:52
  hear no more, I said, it is enough. I knew that my
• 2:09:58
  mother was dead. In a little while I received a letter from the priest
• 2:10:03
  of the village in which she lived. They had buried her on the very
• 2:10:09
  day upon which the boy had seen this sight in the mirror of ink.
• 2:10:15
  Doctor poor Hat passed his hand across his eyes, and for a little while
• 2:10:18
  there was silence. What have you to say to that, asked Oliver Haddow.
• 2:10:24
  At last nothing answered. Arthur Haddo looked at him for a minute,
• 2:10:30
  with those queer eyes of his which seemed to stare at the wall behind.
• 2:10:33
  Have you ever heard of Elephas Levy, he inquired. He is the most
• 2:10:41
  celebrated occultist of recent years. He is thought to have known more of the
• 2:10:46
  mysteries than any adept since the divine Paracelsus I met him, once, interrupted
• 2:10:52
  doctor Pohette. You never saw a man who looked less like a magician.
• 2:10:56
  His face beamed with good nature, and for a long, great beard which
• 2:11:01
  covered nearly the whole of its breast, he was of a short and very
• 2:11:05
  corpulent figure. The practice of black arts evidently disposes to obesity, said Arthur
• 2:11:13
  Icily. Susie noticed that this time Oliver Hado made no sign that the taunt
• 2:11:18
  moved him. His unwinking, straight eyes remained upon Arthur without expression. Levi's
• 2:11:26
  real name was Alfonse Louis Constin, but he adapted that under which he is
• 2:11:31
  generally known for reasons at a plane to the romantic mind. His father was
• 2:11:37
  a boot maker. He was destined for the priesthood, but fell in love
• 2:11:41
  with a damsel fair and married her. The union was unhappy. A fate
• 2:11:48
  befell him, which has been the lot of greater men. Than he and
• 2:11:52
  his wife presently abandoned the marital roof with her lover. To console himsel,
• 2:12:00
  he began to make serious researches in the occult, and in due course published
• 2:12:05
  a vast number of mystical works dealing with magic in all its branches. I'm
• 2:12:11
  sure mister Haddow was going to tell us something very interesting about him, said
• 2:12:16
  Susie. I wished merely to give you his account of how he raised the
• 2:12:20
  spirit of Apollonius of Tyana in London. Susi settled herself more comfortably in her
• 2:12:26
  chair and lit a cigarette. He went there in the spring of eighteen fifty
• 2:12:31
  six to escape from internal disquietude and to devote himself without distraction, to his
• 2:12:39
  studies. He had letters of introduction to various persons of distinction who concerned themselves
• 2:12:46
  with the supernatural, but finding them trivial and indifferent, he immersed himself in
• 2:12:52
  the study of the supreme Kabbalah. One day, on returning to his hotel,
• 2:13:00
  he found a note in his room. It contained half a card transversely
• 2:13:05
  divided, on which he at once recognized the character of Solomon's seal, and
• 2:13:13
  a tiny slip of paper on which was written in pencil. The other half
• 2:13:18
  of this card will be given you at three o'clock to morrow in front of
• 2:13:22
  Westminster Abbey next day. Drawing to the appointed spot with his portion of the
• 2:13:30
  card in his hand, he found a baronial equipage waiting for him. A
• 2:13:35
  footman approached, and, making a sign to him, opened the carriage door.
• 2:13:41
  Within was a lady in black satin, whose face was concealed by a
• 2:13:46
  thick veil. She motioned him to his seat beside her, and at the
• 2:13:52
  same time displayed the other part of the card he had received. The door
• 2:13:58
  was shut and the carriage rolled away. When the lady raised her veil,
• 2:14:05
  lef us Levy saw that she was of mature age, and between her gray
• 2:14:11
  eyebrows were bright black eyes of preternatural fixity. Susie Boyd clapped her hands with
• 2:14:20
  delight. I think it's delicious, and I'm sure if you word of it,
• 2:14:24
  it's true, she cried. I'm enchanted with the mysterious meeting at Westminster
• 2:14:28
  Abbey in the mid Victorian era. Oh can't you see the elderly lady in
• 2:14:33
  a huge crinoline and a black poke bonnet, and the wizard in a ridiculous
• 2:14:37
  hattle bottled green frock coat and flowing tie of black silk. Ella first remarks
• 2:14:43
  that the lady spoke French with a marked English accent, pursued Haddo imperturbably.
• 2:14:50
  She addressed him as follows, Sir, I am aware that the law of
• 2:14:54
  secrecy is rigorous among my adepts, and I know that you have been asked
• 2:15:00
  for phenomena, but have declined to gratify a frivolous curiosity. It is possible
• 2:15:07
  that you do not possess the necessary materials. I can show you a complete
• 2:15:13
  magical cabinet, but I must require of you first the most inviolable silence.
• 2:15:20
  If you do not guarantee this on your honor, I will give the order
• 2:15:26
  for you to be driven home. Oliver Haddow told his story not ineffectively,
• 2:15:33
  but with a comic gravity that prevented one from knowing exactly how to take it.
• 2:15:37
  Having given the required promise, eliphas Levy was shown a collection of vestments
• 2:15:43
  and of magical instruments. The lady lent him certain books of which he was
• 2:15:46
  in need, and at last, as a result of many conversations, determined
• 2:15:52
  him to attempt at her house the experience of a complete evocation. He prepared
• 2:16:01
  himself for twenty one days, scrupulously observing the rules laid down by the ritual.
• 2:16:09
  At length everything was ready. It was proposed to call forth the phantom
• 2:16:16
  of the divine Napollonius, and to question it upon two matters, one of
• 2:16:20
  which concerned Eliphus Levy, and the other the lady of the Crinoline. She
• 2:16:28
  had at first counted on assisting at the avocation with a trustworthy person, but
• 2:16:33
  at the last moment her friend drew back, and as the triad or unity
• 2:16:39
  is rigorously prescribed in magical rights, Eliphas was left alone. The cabinet prepared
• 2:16:48
  for the experiment was situated in a turret. Four concave mirrors were hung within
• 2:16:54
  it, and there was an altar of white marble surrounded by a chain of
• 2:17:01
  magnetic iron. All it was engraved the sign of the pentagram, and this
• 2:17:07
  symbol was drawn on the new white sheepskin, which was stretched beneath. A
• 2:17:13
  copper brazier stood on the altar, which charcoal of alder and of laurel wood,
• 2:17:20
  and in front a second brazier was placed upon a tripod. Eliphas Levi
• 2:17:26
  was clothed in a white robe, longer and more ample than the surplice of
• 2:17:31
  a priest, and he wore upon his head a chaplet of ver vane leaves,
• 2:17:37
  entwined about a golden chain. In one hand he held a new sword,
• 2:17:46
  and in the other the ritual. Susie's passion for caricature at once asserted
• 2:17:52
  herself, and she laughed as she saw in fancy the portly little frenchman with
• 2:17:56
  his round red face, thus wonderfully at aired. He set alight the two
• 2:18:01
  fires with the prepared materials, and began, at first in a low voice,
• 2:18:07
  but rising by degrees the invocations of the ritual. The flames invested every
• 2:18:15
  object with a wavering light. Presently they went out. He set more twigs
• 2:18:20
  and perfumes on the brazier, and when the flame started up once more,
• 2:18:26
  he saw distinctly before the altar a human figure larger than life, which dissolved
• 2:18:35
  and disappeared. He began the invocations again and placed himself in a circle which
• 2:18:43
  he had already traced between the altar and the tripod. Then the depth of
• 2:18:48
  the mirror, which was in front of him grew brighter by degrees and a
• 2:18:52
  pale form arose, and it seemed gradually to approach. He closed his eyes
• 2:19:00
  and called three times upon Apollonius. When he opened them, a man stood
• 2:19:07
  before him, wholly enveloped in a winding sheet which seemed more gray than black.
• 2:19:13
  His form was lean, melancholy, and beardless. Eliphos felt an intense
• 2:19:18
  cold, and when he sought to ask his questions, found it impossible to
• 2:19:24
  speak. Thereupon, he placed his hand on the pentagram and directed the point
• 2:19:30
  of his sword toward the figure, adjuring it mentally by that sign, not
• 2:19:35
  to terrify, but to obey him. The form suddenly grew indistinct, and
• 2:19:43
  soon it strangely vanish'd. He commanded it to return, and then felt as
• 2:19:48
  it were an air pass by him, and something having touched the hand which
• 2:19:54
  held the sword, his arm was immediately benumbed as far as the shoulder.
• 2:20:00
  He supposed that the weapon displeased the spirit, and set it down within the
• 2:20:05
  circle. The human figure at once reappeared, but Eliphus experienced such a sudden
• 2:20:11
  exhaustion in all his limbs that he was obliged to sit down. He fell
• 2:20:18
  into a deep coma and dreamed strange streams, But of these, when he
• 2:20:24
  recover'd, only a vague memory remained to him. His arm continued for several
• 2:20:31
  days to be numb and painful. The figure had not spoken, but it
• 2:20:37
  seemed to Elephus Levy that the questions were answered in his own mind, for
• 2:20:41
  to each an inner voice replied with one grim word dead. Your friend seems
• 2:20:50
  to have had as little fear of spooks as you have of lions, said
• 2:20:54
  Berdan. To my thinking, it is plain that all these preparations in the
• 2:21:00
  fumes, the mirrors, the pentagrams must have the greatest effect on the imagination.
• 2:21:05
  My only surprise is that your magician saw no more. Eliphas Levy talked
• 2:21:11
  to me himself of this evocation, said doctor Porett. He told me that
• 2:21:16
  its influence on him was very great. He was no longer the same man,
• 2:21:20
  for it seemed to him that something from the world beyond had passed into
• 2:21:24
  his soul. I am astonished that you should never have tried such an interesting
• 2:21:30
  speriment yourself, said Arthur to Oliver Haddow. I have answered the other calmly.
• 2:21:37
  My father lost his power of speech shortly before he died, and it
• 2:21:41
  was plain that he sought with all his might to tell me something. A
• 2:21:46
  year after his death, I called up his phantom from the grave so that
• 2:21:50
  I might learn what I took to be a dying wish. The circumstances of
• 2:21:54
  the apparition are so similar to those I have just told you that it would
• 2:21:58
  only bore you if I repeated them. The only difference was that my father
• 2:22:03
  actually spoke. What did he say, asked Susy. He said, solemnly,
• 2:22:13
  by Ashanti's they are bound to go up. I did as he told
• 2:22:18
  me, But my father was always unlucky in speculation, and they went down
• 2:22:22
  steadily. I sold out at considerable loss, and concluded that in the world
• 2:22:28
  beyond they are as ignorant of the tendency of the stock exchange as we are
• 2:22:33
  in this vale of sorrow. Susie could not help laughing, but Arthur shrugged
• 2:22:39
  his shoulders impatiently. It disturbed his spectacle mind, never to be certain if
• 2:22:43
  Haddo was serious, or if, as now he was plainly making game of
• 2:22:48
  them. End of Chapter five, Chapter six of The Magician by Somerset ma'am.
• 2:23:07
  This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Two days later, Arthur
• 2:23:15
  received Frank Hurrell's answer to his letter. It was characteristic of Frank that he
• 2:23:18
  should take such pains to reply at length to the inquiry, and it was
• 2:23:24
  clear that he had lost none of his old interest in odd personalities. He
• 2:23:28
  analyzed Oliver Haddow's character with the patience of a scientific man studying a new species
• 2:23:33
  in which he is passionately concerned. My dear Burden, it is singular that
• 2:23:41
  you should write just now to ask what I know of Oliver Haddow, since
• 2:23:43
  by chance I met the other night at dinner at Queen Anne's Gate, a
• 2:23:46
  man who had much to tell me of him. I am curious to know
• 2:23:52
  why he excites your interest, For I am sure his peculiarities make him repugnant
• 2:23:56
  to a person of your robust common sense. I can with difficulty imagine two
• 2:24:01
  men less capable of getting on together. Though I have not seen Haddo now
• 2:24:07
  for years, I can tell you, in one way and another a good
• 2:24:09
  deal about him. He heard when he described me as his intimate friend.
• 2:24:15
  It is true that at one time I saw much of him, but I
• 2:24:18
  never ceased cordially to dislike him. He came up to Oxford from Eton with
• 2:24:22
  a reputation for athletics and eccentricity, but you know that there is nothing that
• 2:24:28
  arouses the ill will of boys more than the latter, and he achieved an
• 2:24:33
  unpopularity which was remarkable. It turned out that he played football admirably, and
• 2:24:39
  except for his rather scornful indolence, he might easily have got his blue.
• 2:24:43
  He sneered at the popular enthusiasm for games, and which used to say that
• 2:24:48
  cricket was all very well for boys, but not fit for the past time
• 2:24:52
  of men. He was then eighteen. He talked grandiloquently of big game shooting
• 2:24:58
  and of mountain climbing as sports which demanded courage and self reliance. He seemed
• 2:25:03
  indeed to like football, but he played it with a brutal savagery which the
• 2:25:07
  other persons concerned naturally resented. It became current opinion in other pursuits that he
• 2:25:13
  did not play the game. He did nothing that was manifestly unfair, but
• 2:25:18
  was capable of taking advantages which most people would have thought mean. And he
• 2:25:24
  made defeat more hard to bear because he exulted over the vanquished with the coarse
• 2:25:28
  banter that youths find so difficult to endure. What you would hardly believe is
• 2:25:35
  that when he first came up he was a person of great physical attractions.
• 2:25:39
  He has now grown fat, but in those days was extremely handsome. He
• 2:25:43
  reminded one of those colossal statues of Apollo, in which the goddess represented with
• 2:25:48
  a feminine roundness and delicacy. He was very tall and had a magnificent figure.
• 2:25:54
  It was so well formed for his age that one might have foretold his
• 2:25:58
  precious corpulence. He held himself with a dashing erectness. Many called it an
• 2:26:03
  insolent swagger. His features were regular and fine. He had a great quantity
• 2:26:09
  of curling hair, which was worn long with a sort of poetic grace.
• 2:26:15
  I am told that now he is very bald, and I can imagine that
• 2:26:18
  this must be a great blow to him, for he was always exceedingly vain.
• 2:26:22
  I remember a peculiarity of his eyes, which could scarcely have been natural.
• 2:26:28
  But how it was acquired I do not know. The eyes of most
• 2:26:31
  people converge upon the object at which they look, but his remained parallel,
• 2:26:35
  yet gave them a singular expression, as though he were scrutinizing the inmost thought
• 2:26:41
  of the person with whom he talked. He was notorious also for the extravagance
• 2:26:46
  of his costume, But unlike the esthetes of that day, who clothed themselves
• 2:26:50
  with artistic carelessness, he had a taste for outrageous colors, sometimes by a
• 2:26:56
  queer freak. He dressed himself at umsees moments with excessive formality. He is
• 2:27:03
  the only undergraduate I have ever seen walk down the High in a tall hat
• 2:27:07
  and a closely buttoned frock coat. I have told you he was very unpopular,
• 2:27:11
  but it was not an unpopularity of the sort which ignores a man and
• 2:27:16
  leaves him chiefly to his own society. Haddo knew everybody and was to be
• 2:27:20
  found in the most unlikely places. Though people disliked him, they showed a
• 2:27:26
  curious pleasure in his company, and he was probably entertained more than any man
• 2:27:30
  in Oxford. I never saw him, but he was surrounded by a little
• 2:27:33
  crowd who abused him behind his back, but could not resist his fascination.
• 2:27:39
  I have often tried to analyze this, for I felt it as much as
• 2:27:43
  any one, and though I honestly could not bear him, I could never
• 2:27:48
  resist going to see him whenever opportunity arose. I suppose he offered the charm
• 2:27:52
  of the unexpected to that mass of undergraduates, who, for all their matter
• 2:27:56
  of fact breeziness, are curiously alive to the romantic. It was impossible to
• 2:28:03
  tell what he would do or say next, and you were kept perpetually on
• 2:28:07
  the alert. He was certainly not witty, but he had a coarse humor
• 2:28:11
  which excited the rather gross sense of the ludicrous possessed by the young. He
• 2:28:16
  had a gift of caricature which was really diverting, and an imperturbable assurance.
• 2:28:22
  He had also an ingenious talent for profanity, and his inventiveness in this particular
• 2:28:28
  was a power among youths whose imagination stopped at the commoner sorts of bad language.
• 2:28:35
  I have heard him preach a sermon or of the most blasphemous sort,
• 2:28:39
  in the very accents of the late Dean of christ Church, which outraged and
• 2:28:43
  at the same time irresistibly amused everyone who heard it. He had a more
• 2:28:48
  varied knowledge than the greater part of undergraduates, and having at the same time
• 2:28:54
  a retentive memory and considerable quickness, he was able to assume an attitude of
• 2:28:58
  omniscience, which was as impressive as it was irritating. I have never heard
• 2:29:05
  him confess that he had not read a book. Often when I tried to
• 2:29:09
  catch him, he confounded me by quoting the identical words of a passage in
• 2:29:13
  some work, which I could have sworn he had never set eyes on.
• 2:29:18
  I dare say it was due only to some juggling, like the conjurrous slight
• 2:29:22
  of hand that apparently let you choose a card, but in fact forces one
• 2:29:26
  on you. And he brought the conversation round cleverly to a point till when
• 2:29:31
  it was obvious I should mention a definite book. He talked very well,
• 2:29:35
  with an entertaining flow of rather pompous language, which made the amusing things he
• 2:29:41
  said particularly funny. His passion for euphuism contrasted strikingly with the simple speech of
• 2:29:48
  those with whom he consorted. It certainly added the authority to what he said.
• 2:29:54
  He was proud of his family, and never hesitated to tell the curious
• 2:29:58
  of his distinguished descent. Unless he has much altered. You will already have
• 2:30:03
  heard of his relationship with various noble houses. He is, in fact nearly
• 2:30:07
  connected with persons of importance, and his ancestry is no less distinguished than he
• 2:30:13
  asserts. His father is dead, and he owns a place in Staffordshire which
• 2:30:18
  is almost historic. I have seen photographs of it, and it is certainly
• 2:30:22
  very fine. His forebears have been noted in the history of England since the
• 2:30:26
  days of the courtier who accompanied Anne of Denmark to Scotland. And if he
• 2:30:31
  is proud of his stock, it is not without cause. So he passed
• 2:30:37
  his time at Oxford cordially disliked, at the same time respected and mistrusted.
• 2:30:43
  He had the reputation of a liar and a rogue, but it could not
• 2:30:46
  be denied that he had considerable influence over others. He amused, angered,
• 2:30:52
  irritated and interested every one with whom he came in contact. There was always
• 2:30:58
  something mysterious about him, and he loved to wrap himself in a romantic impenetrability.
• 2:31:03
  Though he knew so many people, no one knew him, and to
• 2:31:07
  the end he remained a stranger in our midst. A legend grew up round
• 2:31:13
  him, which he fostered sedulously, and it was reported that he had secret
• 2:31:18
  vices which could only be whispered with. Bated breath. He was said to
• 2:31:22
  intoxicate himself with Oriental drugs and to haunt the violest Opium dens in the east
• 2:31:28
  of London. He kept the greatest surprise for the last, since, though
• 2:31:33
  he was never seen to work, he managed, to the universal surprise,
• 2:31:37
  to get a first He went down, and, to the best of my
• 2:31:41
  belief, was never seen in Oxford again. I have heard vaguely that he
• 2:31:46
  was traveling over the world, and when I met in town now and then
• 2:31:50
  some of the fellows who had known him at the varsity, weird rumors reached
• 2:31:54
  me. One told me that he was tramping across America, earning his living
• 2:31:58
  as he went. Another asserted that he had been seen in a monastery in
• 2:32:03
  India. A third assured me that he had married a ballet girl in Milan,
• 2:32:09
  and some one else was positive that he had taken to drink. One
• 2:32:15
  opinion, however, was common to all my informants, and this was that
• 2:32:18
  he did something out of the common. It was clear that he was not
• 2:32:22
  the man to settle down to the tame life of the country gentleman, which
• 2:32:26
  his position and fortune indicated. At last I met him one day in Piccadilly
• 2:32:31
  and we dined together at the Savoy. I hardly recognized him, for he
• 2:32:35
  was become enormously stout, and his hair had already grown thin. Though he
• 2:32:41
  could not have been more than twenty five, he looked considerably older. I
• 2:32:46
  tried to find out what he had been up to, but with the air
• 2:32:48
  of mystery he affect, he would go into no details. He gave me
• 2:32:54
  to understand that he had sojourned in lands where the white man had never been
• 2:32:58
  before, and had learnt esoteric secrets which overthrew the foundations of modern science.
• 2:33:07
  It seemed to me that he had coarsened in mind as well as in appearance.
• 2:33:11
  I do not know if it was due to my own development since the
• 2:33:15
  old days at Oxford and to my greater knowledge of the world. But he
• 2:33:18
  did not seem to me so brilliant as I remembered. His facile banter was
• 2:33:24
  rather stupid. In fact, he bored me. The pose, which had
• 2:33:30
  seemed amusing in a lad fresh from eat, and now was intolerable, and
• 2:33:35
  I was glad to leave him. It was characteristic that, after asking me
• 2:33:39
  to dinner, he left me in a lordly way to pay the bill.
• 2:33:45
  Then I heard nothing of him till the other day, when our friend Mislay
• 2:33:48
  asked me to meet at dinner the German explorer Burkhardt. I dare say you
• 2:33:52
  remember that Burkhardt brought out a book a little while ago on his adventures in
• 2:33:56
  Central Asia. I knew that Oliver Haddow was his companion in that journey,
• 2:34:01
  and had meant to read it on this account, but having been excessively busy,
• 2:34:05
  had omitted to do so. I took the opportunity to ask the German
• 2:34:09
  about our common acquaintance, and we had a long talk. Burchart had met
• 2:34:13
  him by chance at Mombasa in East Africa, where he was arranging an expedition
• 2:34:18
  after a big game, and they agreed to go together. He told me
• 2:34:24
  that Haddow was a marvelous shot and a hunter of exceptional ability. Burchart had
• 2:34:30
  been rather suspicious of a man who boasted so much of his attainments, but
• 2:34:33
  was obliged soon to confess that he boasted of nothing unjustly. Haddow has had
• 2:34:39
  an extraordinary experience, the truth of which Burkhart can vouch for. He went
• 2:34:46
  out alone one night on the trail of three lions and killed them all before
• 2:34:50
  morning, with one shot each. I know nothing of these things, but
• 2:34:54
  from the way in which Burkhart spoke, I judge it must be a unique
• 2:34:58
  occurrence. But characteristically enough, no one was more conscious than Haddow of the
• 2:35:03
  singularity of his feet, and he made life almost insufferable for his fellow traveler.
• 2:35:09
  In consequence, Burchard assures me that Haddow is really remarkable in pursuit of
• 2:35:15
  big game. He has a sort of instinct which leads him to the most
• 2:35:18
  unlikely places, and a wonderful feeling for country, whereby he can cut across
• 2:35:24
  and head off animals whose spore he has noticed. His courage is very great.
• 2:35:30
  To follow a wounded lion into thick cover is the most dangerous proceeding in
• 2:35:35
  the world and demands the utmost coolness. The animal invariably sees the sportsman before
• 2:35:41
  he sees it, and in most cases charges, But Haddo never hesitated on
• 2:35:46
  these occasions, and Burkhardt could only express entire admiration for his pluck. It
• 2:35:52
  appears that he is not what is called a good sportsman. He kills wantonly
• 2:35:58
  when there can be no possible excuse for the mere pleasure of it, and
• 2:36:03
  to Burkhardt's indignation, frequently shot beasts whose skins and horns they did not even
• 2:36:07
  trouble to take. When antelope were so far off that it was impossible to
• 2:36:13
  kill them, and the approach of night made it useless to follow, he
• 2:36:16
  would often shoot and leave a wretched, wounded beast to die by inches.
• 2:36:22
  His selfishness was extreme, and he never shared any information with his friend that
• 2:36:26
  might rob him of an uninterrupted pursuit of game. But notwithstanding all this,
• 2:36:31
  Burkhart had so high an opinion of Haddow's general capacity and of his resourcefulness,
• 2:36:37
  that, when he was arranging his journey in Asia, he asked him to
• 2:36:41
  come. Also. Haddo consented, and it appears that Burkhardt's book gives further
• 2:36:46
  proof, if it is needed, of the man's extraordinary qualities. The German
• 2:36:50
  confessed that on more than one occasion he owed his life to Haddow's rare power
• 2:36:56
  of seizing opportunities. But they quarreled at last through Haddo's overbearing treatment of the
• 2:37:01
  natives. Burkhart had vaguely suspected him of cruelty, but at length it was
• 2:37:07
  clear that he used them in a manner which could not be defended. Finally
• 2:37:11
  had a desperate quarrel with one of the camp servants, as a result of
• 2:37:15
  which the man was shot dead. Haddo swore that he fired in self defense,
• 2:37:20
  but his action caused a general desertion, and the travelers found themselves in
• 2:37:24
  a very dangerous predicament. Burkhart thought that Haddow was clearly to blame, and
• 2:37:30
  refused to have anything more to do with him. They separated. Burkhart returned
• 2:37:35
  to England, and Haddo, pursued by the friends of the murdered man,
• 2:37:39
  had great difficulty in escaping with his life. Nothing has been heard of him
• 2:37:43
  since till I got your letter. Altogether an extraordinary man, I confess that
• 2:37:50
  I can make nothing of him. I shall never be surprised to hear anything
• 2:37:54
  in connection with him. I recommend you to avoid him like the plague,
• 2:38:00
  and be no one's friend. As an acquaintance. He is treacherous and insincere.
• 2:38:05
  As an enemy, I can well imagine that he would be as merciless
• 2:38:09
  as he is unscrupulous. An immensely long letter, good bye, my son.
• 2:38:16
  I hope that your studies in French methods of surgery will have added to
• 2:38:20
  your wisdom. Your industry edifies me, and I am sure that you will
• 2:38:26
  eventually be a baronet and the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and
• 2:38:31
  you shall relieve royal persons of their vermiform appendix yours Ever, Frank Hurrell Arthur,
• 2:38:39
  having read this letter twice, put it in an envelope and left it
• 2:38:43
  without comment for Miss Boyd. Her answer came within a couple of hours.
• 2:38:48
  I've asked him to tea on Wednesday, and I can't put him off.
• 2:38:52
  You must come and help us, but please be as polite to him as
• 2:38:56
  if, like most of us, he had only taken mental liberty with the
• 2:39:00
  Ten Commandments. End of chapter six, Chapter seven of The Magician by Somerset
• 2:39:13
  mom This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. On the morning of the
• 2:39:20
  day upon which they had asked him to tea, Oliver Haddo left at Margaret's
• 2:39:26
  door vast masses of chrysanthemums. There were so many that the austere studio was
• 2:39:33
  changed in aspect. It gained an ephemeral brightness that Margaret, notwithstanding pieces of
• 2:39:39
  silk hung here and there on the walls, had never been able to give
• 2:39:43
  it. When Arthur arrived, it was dismayed that the thought had not occurred
• 2:39:46
  to him. I'm so sorry, he said, you must think me very
• 2:39:52
  inconsiderate. Margaret smiled and held his hand. I think I like you because
• 2:39:58
  you don't trouble about common little attentions of lovers. Margaret's a wise girl,
• 2:40:05
  smiled Susie. She knows that when a man sends flowers to sosign that he
• 2:40:09
  has admired more women than one. I don't suppose that these were sent particularly
• 2:40:16
  to me. Arthur Burden sat down, observed with pleasure the cheerful fire,
• 2:40:22
  the drawn curtains, and the lamps gave the place a nice coziness, and
• 2:40:26
  there was the peculiar air of romance which is always in a studio. There
• 2:40:31
  is a sense of freedom about it that disposes the mind diverting speculations. In
• 2:40:37
  such an atmosphere, it is possible to be serious without pompousness, and flippant
• 2:40:41
  without inanity. In the few days of their acquaintance, Arthur and Susie had
• 2:40:48
  arrived at terms of pleasant familiarity. Susie, from her superior standpoint of an
• 2:40:52
  unmarried woman no longer young, used him with the good natured banter which she
• 2:40:58
  affected to her her he was a foolish young thing in love, and she
• 2:41:03
  marveled that even the cleverest man in that condition could behave like a perfect idiot.
• 2:41:07
  But Margaret knew that if her friend chafed him, it was because she
• 2:41:11
  completely approved of him. As their intimacy increased, sus he learnt to appreciate
• 2:41:16
  his solid character. She admired his capacity in dealing with matters that were in
• 2:41:22
  his province, and the simplicity with which he left alone those of which he
• 2:41:26
  was ignorant. There was no pose in him. She was touched also by
• 2:41:31
  an ingenuous candor, which gave a persuasive charm to his abruptness. And though
• 2:41:37
  she set a plain woman's value on good looks, his appearance, rough hewn
• 2:41:41
  like a statue in porfiry, pleased her singularly. It was an index of
• 2:41:46
  his character. The look of him gave you of the whole man strongly,
• 2:41:52
  a gentle, honest and simple, neither very imaginative nor very brilliant, but
• 2:41:58
  immensely reliable and trustful, worthy to the bottom of his soul. He was
• 2:42:03
  seated now with Margaret's terrier on his knees, stroking its ears, and Susie,
• 2:42:07
  looking at him, wondered with a little pang, why no man like
• 2:42:11
  that had ever cared for her. Twas evident that he would make a perfect
• 2:42:16
  companion, and his love, once won, was of the sort that did
• 2:42:20
  not alter. Doctor Poorhette came in and sat down with the modest quietness,
• 2:42:26
  which was one of his charms. He was not a great talker, and
• 2:42:31
  loved most to listen in silence to the chatter of young people. The dog
• 2:42:35
  jumped down from Arthur's knee, went up to the doctor and rubbed itself in
• 2:42:39
  friendly fashion against his legs. They began to talk in the soft light,
• 2:42:43
  and had forgotten almost that another guest was expected. Margaret hoped fervently that he
• 2:42:50
  would not come. She had never looked more lovely than on this afternoon,
• 2:42:54
  and she busied herself with the preparations for Tea with a housewifely grace that added
• 2:42:58
  a peculiar delicacy to her comeliness. The dignity which encompassed the perfection of her
• 2:43:05
  beauty was delightfully softened, so that you were reminded of those sweet domestic saints
• 2:43:11
  which lighten here and there the passionate records of the Golden Book. Saint de
• 2:43:16
  l mon Aunt Timi Si smiled, Doctor Pourette breaking into French, and the
• 2:43:22
  impossibility of expressing in English the exact feeling which that scene gave him. It
• 2:43:28
  might have been a picture by some master of genre. It seemed hardly by
• 2:43:33
  chance that the colors arranged themselves in such agreeable tones, or that the lines
• 2:43:37
  of the wall and the seated persons achieved such a graceful decoration. The atmosphere
• 2:43:43
  was extraordinarily peaceful. There was a knock at the door, and Arthur got
• 2:43:48
  up to open The terrier followed at his heels. Oliver Haddow entered. Susie
• 2:43:54
  watched to see what the dog would do, and was by this time not
• 2:43:56
  surprised to see a change come over it. With its tail between its legs,
• 2:44:01
  the friendly little beast slunk along the wall to the furthermost corner. It
• 2:44:05
  turned a suspicious, frightened eye upon Haddow, and then hid its head.
• 2:44:11
  The visitor, intent upon his greetings, had not noticed even that there was
• 2:44:15
  an animal in the room. He accepted with a simple courtesy they hardly expected
• 2:44:20
  from him. The young woman's thanks for his flowers. His behavior surprised them.
• 2:44:26
  He put aside his poses. He seemed genuinely to admire the cozy little
• 2:44:31
  studio. He asked Margaret to show him her sketches and looked at them with
• 2:44:35
  unassumed interest. His observations were pointed and showed a certain knowledge of what he
• 2:44:39
  spoke about. He described himself as an amateur, that object of a painter's
• 2:44:46
  derision, the man who knows what he likes. But his criticism, though
• 2:44:50
  generous, showed that he was no fool. The two women were impressed.
• 2:44:54
  Putting the sketches aside, he began to talk of the many places he had
• 2:44:58
  seen. It was evident that he sought to please. Susy began to understand
• 2:45:05
  how it was that, notwithstanding his affectations, he had acquired so great an
• 2:45:09
  influence over the undergraduates of Oxford. There was a romance and laughter in his
• 2:45:15
  conversation, and though, as Frank Hurrell had said, lacking in wit,
• 2:45:18
  he made up for it with a diverting pleasantry that might very well have passed
• 2:45:22
  for humor. But Susie, though amused, felt that this was not the
• 2:45:28
  purpose for which she had asked him to come. Doctor Poreett had lent her
• 2:45:33
  his entertaining work on the Old Alchemists, and this gave her a chance to
• 2:45:37
  bring their conversation to matters on which Haddow was expert. She had read the
• 2:45:43
  book with delight, and her mind all aflame with those strange histories, wherein
• 2:45:48
  fact and fancy were so wonderfully mingled. She was eager to know more.
• 2:45:54
  The long toil in which so many had engaged, always to lose their fortunes,
• 2:45:58
  often to suffer resecution and torture interested her no less than the accounts,
• 2:46:03
  almost authenticated, of those who had succeeded in their extraordinary quest. She turned
• 2:46:09
  to doctor Porette. You are a bold man to assert that now and then
• 2:46:15
  the old Alchemist actually did make gold, She said, I have not gone
• 2:46:20
  quite so far as that he smiled. I as certain merely if evidence were
• 2:46:26
  as conclusive or offered for any other historical event, it would be credited beyond
• 2:46:31
  doubt. We can disbelieve these circumstantial details only by coming to the conclusion beforehand
• 2:46:39
  that it is impossible they should be true. I wish you would write that
• 2:46:43
  life of Paracelsus, which you suggest in your preface. Doctor Porette, smiling,
• 2:46:48
  shook his head. I don't think I shall ever do that now,
• 2:46:52
  he said. Yet he is the most interesting of all the alchemists, for
• 2:46:58
  he offers the fascinating problem of an immensely complex character. It is impossible to
• 2:47:05
  know to what extent he was a charlatan, and to what a man of
• 2:47:09
  serious science sus He glanced at Oliver Haddo, who sat in silence, his
• 2:47:15
  heavy face in shadow, his eyes fixed steadily on the speaker. The immobility
• 2:47:20
  of that vast bulk was peculiar. His name is not so ridiculous as later
• 2:47:26
  associations have made it seem. Proceeded the doctor, for he belonged to the
• 2:47:31
  celebrated family of bombast and they were called Hohenheim from their ancient residence, which
• 2:47:39
  was a castle near Stuttgart in Wrettemburg. The most interesting part of his life
• 2:47:45
  is that which the absence of documents makes it impossible accurately to describe. He
• 2:47:50
  traveled in Germany, Italy, France, to the Netherlands, in Denmark,
• 2:47:56
  Sweden and Russia. He went even to India. He was taken prisoner by
• 2:48:01
  the Tartars and brought to the Great Khan whose son he afterwards accompanied to Constantinople.
• 2:48:09
  The mind must be dull, indeed, that is not thrilled by the
• 2:48:11
  thought of this wandering genius traversing the lands of the earth at the most eventful
• 2:48:18
  date of the world's history. It was at Constantinople. According to a certain
• 2:48:24
  Orian vellus printed at Rosach in the sixteenth century, he received the Philosopher's Stone
• 2:48:31
  from Solomon Trismosinus. This person possessed also the universal Panacea, and it is
• 2:48:41
  asserted that he was seen alive by a French traveler at the end of the
• 2:48:45
  seventeenth century. Paracelsus then passed through the countries that bordered the Danube, and
• 2:48:52
  so reached Italy, where he served as a surgeon in the Imperial Army.
• 2:48:56
  I see no reason why he should not have been at the Battle of Bavia.
• 2:49:01
  He collected information from physicians, surgeons and alchemists, from executioners, barbers,
• 2:49:09
  shepherds, Jews, gypsies, midwives, and fortune tellers, from high
• 2:49:15
  and wold, from Learner and Boulger. In the sketch I have given of
• 2:49:18
  his career in that volume you hold, I have copied out a few words
• 2:49:24
  of his upon the acquirement of knowledge which affect me with a singular emotion.
• 2:49:30
  Doctor Porrett took his book from Miss Boyd and opened it thoughtfully. He read
• 2:49:35
  out the fine passage from the preface of the Paragranum. I went in search
• 2:49:41
  of my art offer an incurring danger of life. I have not been ashamed
• 2:49:46
  to learn that which seemed useful to me, even from vagabonds, hangmen and
• 2:49:52
  barbers. We know that a lover will go far to meet the woman he
• 2:49:56
  adores. How much more or will the lover of wisdom be tempted to go
• 2:50:01
  in search of his divine mistress? He turned the page to find few more
• 2:50:07
  lines further on. They should look for knowledge where we may expect to find
• 2:50:13
  it, And why should a man be despised who goes in search of it?
• 2:50:18
  Those who remain at home may grow richer and live more comfortably than those
• 2:50:22
  who wander. But I desire neither to live comfortably nor to grow rich.
• 2:50:30
  Bry Job, those are fine words, said Arthur, rising to his feet.
• 2:50:35
  Their brave simplicity moved him as no rhetoric could have done, and they
• 2:50:39
  made him more eager still to devote his own life to the difficult acquisition of
• 2:50:43
  knowledge. Doctor Poret gave him his ironic smile. Yet the man who could
• 2:50:50
  write that was in many ways a mere buffoon who praised his wares with the
• 2:50:56
  vulgar glimness of a quack. He was vain and ostentatious, intemperate and boastful.
• 2:51:03
  Listen after me, or have Sena, Galen, Ressies and Montignana after
• 2:51:13
  me? Not I after you, your men of Paris, Montpellier, Mysen
• 2:51:18
  and Colonne, all you that come from the countries along the Danube and the
• 2:51:22
  Rhine, and you that come from the islands of the sea. It is
• 2:51:28
  not for me to follow you, because mine is the lordship. That time
• 2:51:33
  will come when none of you shall remain in his dark corner, who will
• 2:51:37
  not be an object of contempt to the world, Because I shall be the
• 2:51:43
  king and the monarchy will be mine. Doctor Pourret closed the book. Did
• 2:51:52
  you ever hear such gibberish in your life? Yet he did a bold thing.
• 2:51:56
  He wrote in German instead of in Latin, and so by weakening the
• 2:52:01
  old belief in authority, brought about the beginning of free thought in science.
• 2:52:05
  He continued to travel from place to place, followed by a crowd of disciples,
• 2:52:09
  sometimes attracted to a wealthy city by hope of gain, sometimes journeying to
• 2:52:16
  a petticourt at the invitation of a prince. His folly and the malice of
• 2:52:20
  his rivals prevented him from remaining anywhere for long. He wrought many wonderful cures.
• 2:52:28
  The physicians of Nuremberg denounced him as a quack, a charlatan, and
• 2:52:31
  an impostor. To refute them, he asked the city council to put under
• 2:52:35
  his care patients that had been pronounced incurable. They sent him several cases of
• 2:52:43
  elephantiasis, and he cured them. Testimonial to that effect may still be found
• 2:52:48
  in the archives of Nuremberg. He died as the result of a tavern brawl
• 2:52:54
  and was buried at Salzburg. Tradition says his astral body, having already during
• 2:53:01
  physical existence, become self conscious, he is now a living adept, residing
• 2:53:07
  with others of his sort in a certain place in Asia. From there he
• 2:53:11
  still influences the minds of his followers, and at times even appears to them
• 2:53:16
  invisible and tangible substance. But look here, said Arthur, didn't Paracelsus like
• 2:53:24
  most of those old fellows in the course of his researchers make any practical discoveries,
• 2:53:28
  I prefer those which were not practical, confessed the doctor with a smile.
• 2:53:35
  Consider, for example, the Tincture Physicorum, which neither Pope nor emperor
• 2:53:41
  could buy with all his wealth. It was one of the greatest alchemical mysteries,
• 2:53:48
  and beau mentioned under the name of the Red Lion in many occult works,
• 2:53:52
  was actually known to few before Paracelsus, except Hermes Trismegistus and Albertus Magnus.
• 2:54:01
  Its preparation was extremely difficult, for the presence was needed of two perfectly
• 2:54:07
  harmonious persons whose skill was equal. It was said to be a red ethereal
• 2:54:13
  fluid. The least wonderful of its many properties was its power to transmute all
• 2:54:20
  inferior metals into gold. There is an old church in the south of Bavaria
• 2:54:26
  where the tinctury is said to be still buried in the ground. In the
• 2:54:31
  year sixteen ninety eight, some of it penetrated through the soil, and the
• 2:54:35
  phenomenon was witnessed by many people, who believed it to be a miracle.
• 2:54:41
  The church, which was thereupon erected, is still a well known place for
• 2:54:45
  pilgrimage. Paracelsus concludes his directions for its manufacture with the words, but if
• 2:54:52
  this be incomprehensible to you, remember that only he who desires with his whole
• 2:54:58
  heart will find kind and to him only who knocks vehemently shall the door be
• 2:55:05
  opened. I shall never try to make it smiled Arthur. Then there was
• 2:55:11
  the electra Magicum, of which the wires made mirrors, wherein they were able
• 2:55:16
  to see not only the events of the past and of the present, but
• 2:55:18
  the doings of men in daytime and that night they might see anything that had
• 2:55:24
  been written or spoken, and the person who said it, and the causes
• 2:55:30
  that made him say it. But I like best the primum End's Melissy.
• 2:55:35
  An elaborate prescription is given for its manufacture. It was a remedy to prolonged
• 2:55:41
  life, and not only Paracelsus but his predecessors Galen Arnold of Villeneuve and Raymond
• 2:55:48
  Loolly had labored studiously to discover it. Will it make me eighteen again?
• 2:55:56
  Cried Susy. It is guaranteed to do so, answered doctor pored Gravely le
• 2:56:05
  Cebren, a physician, to Louis Cator's gives an account of certain experiments witnessed
• 2:56:11
  by himself. It appears that one of his friends prepared the remedy, and
• 2:56:15
  his curiosity would not let him rest until he had seen with his own eyes
• 2:56:18
  the effect of it. That is the true scientific attitude, laughed Arthur.
• 2:56:26
  He took every morning at sunrise a glass of white wine tinctured with dis preparation,
• 2:56:31
  and after using it for fourteen days, his nails began to fall out,
• 2:56:37
  without however, causing him any pain. His courage failed him at this
• 2:56:41
  point, and he gave the same dose to an old female servant. She
• 2:56:46
  regained at least one of the characteristics of youth, much to her astonishment,
• 2:56:52
  for she did not know that she had been taking a medicine, and,
• 2:56:56
  becoming frightened, refused to continue the experiment, entered and took some grain,
• 2:57:01
  soaked it in the tincture, and gave it to an aged hen. On
• 2:57:05
  the sixth day, the bird began to lose its feathers and kept on losing
• 2:57:11
  them till it was naked as a newborn babe. But before two weeks had
• 2:57:15
  passed, other feathers grew, and these were more beautifully colored than any that
• 2:57:20
  fortunate hen had possessed in her youth. Her comb stood up, and she
• 2:57:26
  began to lay eggs. Arthur laughed heartily. I confess nigh like that story
• 2:57:33
  much better than the others. The primum end's melisi at least offers a less
• 2:57:39
  perile benefit and most magical secrets. Do you call the search for gold puerile?
• 2:57:46
  Asked Hatto, who had been sitting for a long time in complete silence.
• 2:57:52
  I venture to call it swordid. You are very superior, because I
• 2:57:56
  think the aims of mystical personsbly gross or trivial. To my plain mind.
• 2:58:03
  It is a name to raise dead in order to hear from their phantom lips
• 2:58:07
  nothing but commonplaces. And I really cannot see that the alchemist who spent his
• 2:58:11
  life in the attempted manufacture of gold was a more respectable object than the outside
• 2:58:18
  jobber of modern civilization. But if he sought for gold, it was for
• 2:58:22
  the power it gave him, and it was power he aimed at when he
• 2:58:26
  brooded night and day over dim secrets. Power was the subject of all his
• 2:58:33
  dreams, but not a paltry limited dominion over this or that, power over
• 2:58:39
  the whole world. Power over all created things, power over the very elements,
• 2:58:46
  power over God himself. His lust was so vast that he could not
• 2:58:52
  rest till the stars and their courses were obedient to his will. For once
• 2:58:58
  had he lost his any manner. It was plain now that his words intoxicated
• 2:59:03
  him, and his face assumed anew, a strange expression, a peculiar arrogance
• 2:59:09
  flashed in his shining eyes. And what else is it that men seek in
• 2:59:15
  life? But power? If they want money, it is but for the
• 2:59:18
  power that attends it. And it is power again that they strive for.
• 2:59:22
  In all the knowledge they acquire. Fools and sots aim at happiness, but
• 2:59:28
  men name only at power. The magus, the sorcerer. The alchemists are
• 2:59:33
  seized with fascination of the unknown, and they desire a greatness that is inaccessible
• 2:59:41
  to mankind. They think by the science they study so patiently, But endurance
• 2:59:48
  and strength, by force of will and by imagination, for these are the
• 2:59:52
  great weapons of the magician, they may achieve at last a power with which
• 2:59:58
  they can face the God of Heaven himself. Oliver Haddo lifted his huge bulk
• 3:00:05
  from the low chair in which he had been sitting. He began to walk
• 3:00:09
  up and down the studio. It was curious to see this heavy man,
• 3:00:11
  whose seriousness was always problematical, caught up by a curious excitement. You have
• 3:00:18
  been talking of Paracelsus, he said, there is one of his experiments which
• 3:00:24
  the doctor has withheld from you. You will find it neither mean nor mercenary,
• 3:00:30
  but it is very terrible. I do not know whether the account of
• 3:00:35
  it is true, but it would be of extraordinary interest to test it for
• 3:00:39
  oneself. He looked round at the four persons who watched him intently. There
• 3:00:45
  was a singular agitation in his manner, as though the thing of which he
• 3:00:48
  spoke was very near his heart. The old alchemists believed in the possibility of
• 3:00:56
  spontaneous generation. By the combination of psych powers and of strange essences. They
• 3:01:01
  claimed to have created forms in which life became manifest. Of these, the
• 3:01:07
  most marvelous were those strange beings male and female, which were called hormoculae.
• 3:01:16
  The old philosophers doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts positively that
• 3:01:24
  it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrel
• 3:01:28
  at London Bridge, a little book in German. It was dirty and thombed.
• 3:01:33
  Many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves
• 3:01:39
  together. It was called De Sphinx and was edited by a certain doctor Emil
• 3:01:45
  Bersetney. It contained the most extraordinary account I have ever read of certain spirits
• 3:01:52
  generated by Johan Ferdinand, Count von Kufstein in the Tyrol in seventeen seventy five.
• 3:02:00
  Sources from which this account is taken consist of Masonic manuscripts, but more
• 3:02:05
  especially of a diary kept by a certain James Camerer, who acted in the
• 3:02:11
  capacity of butler and famulus to the Count. The evidence is ten times stronger
• 3:02:18
  than any upon which men believe the articles of their religion. If it related
• 3:02:22
  to less wonderful subjects, you would not hesitate to believe implicitly every word you
• 3:02:28
  read. There were ten homunculae James Camera calls them prophesying spirits, kept in
• 3:02:37
  strong bottles such as are used to preserve fruit, and these were filled with
• 3:02:43
  water. They were made in five weeks by the Count bon Couchstein and an
• 3:02:48
  Italian mystic and Rassicrucian, the Abbe Gialloni. The battles were closed with a
• 3:02:54
  magic seal. The spirits were about a span law, and the count was
• 3:03:01
  anxious that they should grow. They were therefore buried under two cart loads of
• 3:03:05
  manure, and the pile daily sprinkled with a certain liquor, prepared with great
• 3:03:11
  trouble by the adepts. The pile, after such sprinklings, began to ferment
• 3:03:16
  and steam, as if heated by a subterranean fire. When the bottles were
• 3:03:22
  removed, it was found that the spirits had grown to about a span and
• 3:03:26
  a half each. The male homunculi were come into possession of heavy beards,
• 3:03:33
  and the nails of the fingers had grown. In two of the bottles,
• 3:03:37
  there was nothing to be seen save clear water. But when the abbe knocked
• 3:03:43
  thrice at the seal, upon the mouth, uttering at the same time certain
• 3:03:48
  Hebrew words, the water turned the mysterious color, and the spirits showed their
• 3:03:54
  faces, very small at first, but growing inside till they attained that of
• 3:04:01
  a human countenance, and this countenance was horrible and fiendish. Haddo spoke in
• 3:04:11
  a low voice that was hardly steady, and it was plain that he was
• 3:04:15
  much moved. It appeared as if his story affected him so that he could
• 3:04:18
  scarcely preserve his composure, he went on. These beings were fed every three
• 3:04:26
  days by the Count with a rose colored substance, which was kept in a
• 3:04:30
  silver box. Once a week, the bottles were emptied and filled again with
• 3:04:33
  pure rain water. The change had to be made rapidly, because while the
• 3:04:39
  homunculi were exposed to the air, they closed their eyes and seemed to grow
• 3:04:43
  weak and unconscious, as though they were about to die. But with the
• 3:04:50
  spirits that were invisible at certain intervals, blood was poured into the water and
• 3:04:56
  it disappeared at once inexplicably, without coloring or true troubling it. By some
• 3:05:01
  accident, one of the bottles fell when lay had was broken, the homunculus
• 3:05:05
  within died after a few painful respirations in spite of all efforts to save him,
• 3:05:11
  and the body was buried in the garden. An attempt to generate another,
• 3:05:18
  made by the Count without the assistance of the abbe who had left,
• 3:05:22
  failed. It produced only a small thing like a leech, which had little
• 3:05:30
  vitality, and soon died. Hado ceased speaking, and Arthur looked at him
• 3:05:35
  with amazement, but taking for granted that the thing is possible. What on
• 3:05:41
  earth is the use of manufacturing these strange beasts? He exclaimed, use cried
• 3:05:48
  Haddo passionately. What do you think would be man's sensations when he had solved
• 3:05:54
  the great mystery of existence, when he saw living before him the substance which
• 3:05:58
  was dead. These homunculi were seen by historical persons, by Count Max Limberg,
• 3:06:05
  by Count Franz Joseph won Pun, and by many others. I have
• 3:06:09
  no doubt that they were actually generated. But with our modern appliances, with
• 3:06:18
  our greater skill, what might it not be possible to do now? If
• 3:06:26
  we had the courage? There are chemists toiling away in the laboratories to create
• 3:06:31
  the primitive protoplasm from matter which is dead, the organic from the inorganic.
• 3:06:39
  I have studied their experiments. I know all that they know. Why shouldn't
• 3:06:46
  one work on a larger scale, joining to the knowledge of the old dead
• 3:06:50
  depths the scientific discovery of the moderns. I don't know what would be the
• 3:06:56
  result. It might be very strange and very wonderful. Sometimes my mind is
• 3:07:03
  verily haunted by the desire to see a lifeless substance move under my spells,
• 3:07:11
  by the desire to be as God. He gave a low, weird laugh,
• 3:07:18
  half cruel, half voluptuous. It made Margaret shudder with sudden fright.
• 3:07:22
  He had thrown himself down in the chair, and he sat in complete shadow.
• 3:07:28
  By a singular effect. His eyes appeared blood red, and they stared
• 3:07:31
  into space strangely parallel, with an intensity that was terrifying. Arthur started a
• 3:07:37
  little and gave him a searching glance. The laugh and that uncanny glance,
• 3:07:41
  the unaccountable emotion were extraordinarily significant. The whole thing was explained if Oliver Haddow
• 3:07:50
  was mad. There was an uncomfortable silence. Haddow's words were out of tune
• 3:07:58
  with the rest of the converse sation. Doctor Poette had spoken of magical things
• 3:08:03
  with a skeptical irony that gave a certain humor to the subject, and Susy
• 3:08:07
  was resolutely flippant. But Hado's vehemence put these incredulous people out of countenance.
• 3:08:15
  Doctor Poette caught up to go. He shook hands with Susy and with Margaret.
• 3:08:20
  Arthur opened the door for him. The kindly scholar looked round for Margaret's
• 3:08:24
  terrier. I must bid my farewells to your little dog. He had been
• 3:08:30
  so quiet that they had forgotten his presence. Come here, Coppa, said
• 3:08:35
  Margaret. Dog slowly slunk up to them, and, with a terrified expression,
• 3:08:39
  crouched at Margaret's feet. What on earth the matter with you, she
• 3:08:45
  asked, He's frightened of me. Ha ha ha ha, said Hado,
• 3:08:50
  with that harsh laugh of his, which gave such an unpleasant impression montisence.
• 3:08:56
  Doctor Porette bent down, stroked the dog's back and shook its paw. Margaret
• 3:09:01
  lifted it up and set it on a table. Now be good, she
• 3:09:05
  said, with lifted finger. Doctor Porette, with a smile, went out,
• 3:09:09
  and Arthur shut the door behind him. Suddenly, as though evil had
• 3:09:15
  entered into it, the terrier sprang at Oliver Haddow and fixed its teeth in
• 3:09:18
  his hand. Haddow uttered a cry, and, shaking it off, gave
• 3:09:22
  it a savage kick. The dog rolled over with a loud bark that was
• 3:09:24
  almost a scream of pain, and lay there for a moment as if it
• 3:09:28
  were desperately hurt. Margaret cried out with horror and indignation. A fierce rage
• 3:09:35
  of a sudden seized Arthur, so that he scarcely knew what he was about.
• 3:09:39
  The wretched brutes suffering. Margaret's terror, his own instinctive hatred of the
• 3:09:43
  man were joined together in frenzied passion. You brute, he muttered. He
• 3:09:48
  hit Haddow in the face with his clenched fist. The man collapsed bulkally to
• 3:09:52
  the floor, and Arthur, furiously, seizing his collar, began to kick
• 3:09:56
  him with all his might. He shook him as a dog would shake a
• 3:10:00
  rat, and then violently flung him down. For some reason, Haddo made
• 3:10:03
  no resistance. He remained where he fell in utter helplessness. Arthur turned to
• 3:10:09
  Margaret. She was holding the poor hurt dog in her hands, crying over
• 3:10:13
  it and trying to comfort it in its pain. Very gently, he examined
• 3:10:18
  it to see if Haddo's brutal kick had broken a bone. They sat down
• 3:10:22
  beside the fire. Susie, to steady her nerves, lit a cigarette.
• 3:10:28
  She was horribly acutely conscious of that man who lay in a mass on the
• 3:10:31
  floor behind them. She wondered what he would do, She wondered why he
• 3:10:37
  did not go, and she was ashamed of his humiliation. Then her heart
• 3:10:43
  stood still, for she realized that he was raising himself to his feet slowly,
• 3:10:48
  with the difficulty of a very fat person. He leaned against the wall
• 3:10:52
  and stared at them. He remained there, quite motionless. His stillness got
• 3:10:58
  on her nerves, and she would have screamed as she felt him look at
• 3:11:01
  them, look with those unnatural eyes, whose expression now she dared not even
• 3:11:07
  imagine. At last, she could no longer resist the temptation to turn round
• 3:11:13
  just enough to see him. Haddo's eyes were fixed upon Margaret so intently that
• 3:11:18
  he did not see he was himself observed, his face distorted by passion.
• 3:11:24
  Was horrible to look upon. That vast mass of flesh had a malignancy that
• 3:11:30
  was inhuman, and it was terrible to see the satanic hatred which hideously deformed
• 3:11:35
  it. But it changed. The redness gave way to a ghastly pallor.
• 3:11:41
  The revengeful scowl disappeared, and a torpid smile spread over the features of smile
• 3:11:48
  that was even more terrifying than the frown of malice. What did it mean?
• 3:11:54
  Susy could have cried out, but her tongue cleaved to her throat.
• 3:11:58
  The smile passed away, and the face became once more impassive. It seemed
• 3:12:05
  that Margaret and Arthur realized at last the power of those inhuman eyes, and
• 3:12:11
  they became quite still. The dog ceased its sobbing. The silence was so
• 3:12:16
  great that each one heard the beating of his heart. It was intolerable.
• 3:12:24
  Then Oliver Haddo moved. He came forward slowly. I want to ask you
• 3:12:33
  to forgive me for what I did, he said. The pain of the
• 3:12:39
  dog's bite was so keen that I lost my temper. I deeply regret that
• 3:12:45
  I picked it. Mister Burden was very right to thrash me. I feel
• 3:12:50
  that I deserved no less. He spoke in a low voice, but with
• 3:12:56
  great distinctness. Susy was astounded and abject. To you was the last thing
• 3:13:01
  she expected. He paused for Margaret's answer, but she could not bear to
• 3:13:07
  look at him. When he spoke, her words were scarcely audible. She
• 3:13:11
  did not know why his request to be forgiven made him seem more detestable.
• 3:13:18
  I think if you don't mind, you had better go away. Haddo bowed
• 3:13:24
  slightly. He looked at Burdon. I wish to tell you that I bear
• 3:13:31
  no malice for what you did. I recognize the justice of your anger.
• 3:13:37
  Arthur did not answer at all. Haddo hesitated a moment while his eyes rested
• 3:13:43
  on them quietly. To Susy, it seemed that they flickered with the shadow
• 3:13:46
  of a smile. She watched him with bewildered astonishment. He reached for his
• 3:13:52
  hat, bowed again, and went end of chapter seven, Chapter eight of
• 3:14:09
  The Magician by Somerset Maum. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 3:14:18
  Susy could not persuade herself that Hadow's regret was sincere. The humility of it
• 3:14:24
  aroused her suspicion. She could not get out of her mind the ugly,
• 3:14:28
  slyness of that smile which succeeded on his face, the first passionate look of
• 3:14:31
  deadly hatred. Her fancy suggested various dark means whereby Oliver Haddo might take vengeance
• 3:14:39
  on his enemy, and she was at pains to warn Arthur, but he
• 3:14:43
  only laughed. The man's a funk, he said. Do you think if
• 3:14:48
  he'd had anything in him at all, he would have let me kick him
• 3:14:50
  around thout trying to defend himself. Haddo's cowardice increased the disgust with which Arthur
• 3:14:58
  regarded him. He was a a mused by Susie's trepidation. What on earth
• 3:15:03
  do you suppose he can do? He can't drop a brick bat on my
• 3:15:07
  head. If he shoots me, he'll get his head cut off, and
• 3:15:09
  it won't be such an asses to risk that. Margaret was glad that the
• 3:15:13
  incident had relieved them of Oliver's society. She met him in the street a
• 3:15:18
  couple of days later, and since he took off his hat in the French
• 3:15:22
  fashion without waiting for her to acknowledge him, she was able to make her
• 3:15:26
  cut more appointed, she began to discuss with Arthur the date of their marriage.
• 3:15:33
  It seemed to her that she had got out of Paris all it could
• 3:15:35
  give her, and she wished to begin a new life. Her love for
• 3:15:39
  Arthur appeared on a sudden, more urgent, and she was filled with delight
• 3:15:43
  at the thought of the happiness she would give him. A day or two
• 3:15:48
  later, Susie received a telegram at ran as follows, please meet me at
• 3:15:52
  the Gard de Noor two forty Nancy Clerk. It was an old friend who
• 3:15:58
  was apparently arriving in Paris. That afternoon. A photograph of her with a
• 3:16:03
  bold signature stood on the chimney piece, and Susie gave it an inquisitive glance.
• 3:16:09
  She had not seen Nancy for so long that it surprise her to receive
• 3:16:11
  the urgent message. What a bore it is, she said, I suppose
• 3:16:18
  I must go. They meant to have tea on the other side of the
• 3:16:22
  river, but the journey to the station was so long that it would not
• 3:16:24
  be worth Susie's while to come back in the interval, and they arranged therefore
• 3:16:28
  to meet at the house to which they were invited. Susie started a little
• 3:16:33
  before two. Margaret had her class that afternoon and set out two or three
• 3:16:37
  minutes later. As she walked through the courtyard, she started nervously for Oliver
• 3:16:43
  Haddow passed slowly by. He did not seem to see her. Suddenly he
• 3:16:48
  stopped, put his hand to his heart, and fell heavily to the ground.
• 3:16:52
  The concierge, the only person at hand, ran forward with a cry.
• 3:16:56
  She knelt down, and, looking round with terror, caught sight of
• 3:17:00
  Margaret. Oh, Mademoiselle vine Vite, She cried. Margaret was obliged to
• 3:17:05
  go her heart beat horribly. She looked down at Oliver, and he seemed
• 3:17:09
  dead. She forgot that she loathed him. Instinctively, she knelt down by
• 3:17:15
  his side and loosened his collar. He opened his eyes. An expression of
• 3:17:20
  terrible anguish came into his face. O Love of God, take me in
• 3:17:26
  for one moment, he sobbed. I shall die in the street. Her
• 3:17:33
  heart was moved toward him. He could not go into the poky den,
• 3:17:37
  evil smelling and airless of the concierge. But with her help, Margaret raised
• 3:17:43
  him to his feet, and together they brought him to the studio. He
• 3:17:46
  sank painfully into a chair. Shall I fetch you some water? Asked Margaret,
• 3:17:52
  can you get her pastille out of my pocket? His followed a white
• 3:18:01
  tabloid, which she took out of the case attached to his watch chain.
• 3:18:05
  I'm very sorry to cause you this trouble, he gasped. I suffer from
• 3:18:13
  but a disease of the heart, and sometimes I am very near death.
• 3:18:20
  I'm glad that I was able to help you, she said. He seemed
• 3:18:24
  able to breathe more easily. She left him to himself for a while,
• 3:18:28
  so that he might regain his strength. She took up a book and began
• 3:18:33
  to read presently without moving from his chair. He spoke, you must hate
• 3:18:37
  me for intruding on you. His voice was stronger, and her pity waned.
• 3:18:43
  As he seemed to recover. She answered with freezing indifference. I couldn't
• 3:18:50
  do less for you than I did. I would have brought a dog into
• 3:18:54
  my room if it seemed hurt. I see that you wish me to go.
• 3:19:00
  He got up and moved toward the door, but he staggered, and,
• 3:19:03
  with a groan, tumbled to his knees. Margaret sprang forward to help
• 3:19:07
  him. She reproached herself bitterly for those scornful words. The man had barely
• 3:19:11
  escaped death, and she was merciless. Oh please, so stay as long
• 3:19:16
  as you like, she cried, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt
• 3:19:20
  you. He dragged himself with difficulty back to the chair, and she,
• 3:19:26
  conscience stricken, stood over him helplessly. She poured out a glass of water,
• 3:19:31
  but he motioned it away, as though he would not be beholden to
• 3:19:33
  her. Even for that is there nothing I can do for you at all,
• 3:19:39
  she exclaimed, painfully, luhing, except allow me to sit in this
• 3:19:46
  chair, He gasped. I hope you will remain us as long as you
• 3:19:52
  choose. He did not reply. She sat down again and pretended to read
• 3:19:58
  in a little while he began to speak. His voice reached her, as
• 3:20:01
  if from a long way off. Will you never forgive me for what I
• 3:20:07
  did the other day? She answered, without looking at him, her back
• 3:20:11
  still turned. Can it matter to you if I forgive you or not?
• 3:20:16
  You have not pity? I told you then how sorry I was that a
• 3:20:22
  sudden, uncontrollable pain drove me to do a thing which immediately I bitterly regretted.
• 3:20:28
  Don't you think it must have been hard for me, under the actual
• 3:20:33
  circumstances to confess my fault. I wish you not to speak of it.
• 3:20:39
  I don't want to think of that horrible scene. If you knew how lonely
• 3:20:45
  I was and how unhappy, you would have a little mercy. His voice
• 3:20:52
  was strangely moved. She could not doubt now that he was sincere. You
• 3:20:58
  think, mere, charlatan, because I aim at things that are unknown to
• 3:21:03
  you. You won't try to understand. You won't give me any credit for
• 3:21:09
  striving with all my soul to a very great end. If she made no
• 3:21:16
  reply, and for a time there was silence, His voice was different.
• 3:21:20
  Now, I'm curiously seductive. You look upon me with disgust and scorn.
• 3:21:28
  You almost persuaded yourself to let me die in the street, rather than stretch
• 3:21:33
  out to me a help in hand. And if you hadn't been merciful,
• 3:21:39
  then almost against your will, I should have died. It can make no
• 3:21:48
  difference to you how I regard you, she whispered. She did not know
• 3:21:54
  why his soft, low tones mysteriously wrung her heart strings. Her pulse began
• 3:22:00
  beat more quickly. It makes all the difference in the world. It is
• 3:22:05
  horrible to think of your contempt. I feel your goodness and your purity.
• 3:22:13
  I can hardly bear my whole unworthiness. You turn your eyes away from me,
• 3:22:20
  as though I were unclean. She turned her chair a little and looked
• 3:22:26
  at him. She was astonished at the change in his appearance. His hideous
• 3:22:30
  obesity seemed no longer repellent, for his eyes wore a new expression. They
• 3:22:35
  were incredibly tender now, and they were moist with tears. His mouth was
• 3:22:41
  tortured by a passionate distress. Margaret had never seen so much unhappiness on a
• 3:22:46
  man's face, and an overwhelming remorse seized her. I don't want to be
• 3:22:52
  unkind to you, she said, I will go. That is how I
• 3:23:00
  can best repay you for what you have done. The words were so bitter,
• 3:23:05
  so humiliated, that the color rose to her cheeks. I ask you
• 3:23:09
  to stay, but let us talk of other things for a moment. He
• 3:23:15
  kept silence. He seemed no longer to see Margaret, and she watched him
• 3:23:18
  thoughtfully. His eyes rested on a print of large a condo which hung on
• 3:23:22
  the wall. Suddenly he began to speak. He recited the honeyed words with
• 3:23:28
  which Walter Pater expressed his admiration for that consummate picture. Hers is the head
• 3:23:33
  upon which all the ends of the world are come, and the eyelids are
• 3:23:39
  a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh.
• 3:23:45
  The deposit little cell by cell of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite
• 3:23:52
  passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or
• 3:23:58
  beautiful women of antiquequity. And how would they be troubled by this beauty into
• 3:24:03
  which the soul, with all its maladies, has passed. All the thoughts
• 3:24:09
  and experience of the world have etched and molded there in that which they have
• 3:24:15
  a power to refine and make express of the outward form. The animalism of
• 3:24:20
  Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages with its
• 3:24:26
  spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins
• 3:24:33
  of the Borgias. His voice, poignant and musical, blended with the suave
• 3:24:39
  music of the words, so that Margaret felt she had never before known their
• 3:24:43
  divine significance. She was intoxicated with their beauty. She wished him to continue,
• 3:24:50
  but had not the strength to speak. As if he guessed her thought.
• 3:24:54
  He went on, and now his voice had a richness in it,
• 3:24:58
  as of an organ heard of are off. It was like an overwhelming fragrance,
• 3:25:03
  and she could hardly bear it. She is older than the rocks among
• 3:25:09
  which she sits, Like the vampire. She has been dead many times,
• 3:25:13
  and learned the secrets of the grave, and has been a diver in deep
• 3:25:18
  seas, and keeps her fallen day about her, and traffic for strange evils
• 3:25:26
  with Eastern merchants and as leader was the mother of Helen of Troy, and
• 3:25:33
  as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary. And all this has been to
• 3:25:37
  her but as the sound of liars and flutes, and lives only in the
• 3:25:43
  delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments and tinged the eyelids and the
• 3:25:50
  hands. Oliver Haddow began then speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling with his
• 3:25:56
  own fantasies, the perfect words that say, which so wonderful was his memory
• 3:26:01
  he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the likeness between
• 3:26:07
  Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving hair, and Bacchus,
• 3:26:11
  with his ambiguous smile seen through his eyes the sea shore, and the
• 3:26:16
  Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damask chapel in a Spanish nunnery,
• 3:26:24
  and over the landscapes brooded a warm spirit of evil that was very troubling.
• 3:26:28
  He loved the mysterious pictures in which the painter had sought to express something beyond
• 3:26:33
  the limits of painting, something of unsatisfied desire and of longing for unhuman passions.
• 3:26:41
  Oliver Haddo found this quality in unlikely places, and his words gave a
• 3:26:48
  new meaning to paintings that Margaret had passed thoughtlessly by. There was the portrait
• 3:26:52
  of a statuary by Bronzino in the long gallery of the Louver. The features
• 3:26:58
  were rather large, the face rather broad, The expression was somber, almost
• 3:27:03
  surly in the repose of the painted canvas, and the eyes were brown almond
• 3:27:09
  shaped like those of an oriental. The red lips were exquisitely modeled, and
• 3:27:13
  the sensuality was curiously disturbing. The dark chestnut hair cut short, curled over
• 3:27:20
  the head with an infinite grace. The skin was like ivory, softened with
• 3:27:24
  a delicate carmine. There was in that beautiful countenance more than beauty, For
• 3:27:31
  what most fascinated the observer was a supreme and disdainful indifference to the passion of
• 3:27:37
  others. It was a vicious face, except that beauty could never be quite
• 3:27:43
  vicious. It was a cruel face, except that indolence could never be quite
• 3:27:48
  cruel. It was a face that haunted you, and yet your admiration was
• 3:27:54
  alloyed with an unreasoning terror. The hands were nervous and adroit, with long,
• 3:28:00
  fashioning fingers, and you felt that at their touch the clay almost molded
• 3:28:05
  itself into gracious forms. With Haddow's subtle words, the character of that man
• 3:28:11
  rose before her, cruel yet indifferent, indolent and passionate, cold yet sensual,
• 3:28:18
  unnatural secrets dwelt in his mind, and mysterious crimes, and a lust
• 3:28:24
  for the knowledge that was arcane. Oliver Haddow was attracted by all that was
• 3:28:28
  unusual, deformed, and monstrous, by the pictures that represented the hideousness of
• 3:28:33
  man, or that reminded you of his mortality. He summoned before Margaret the
• 3:28:39
  whole array of Ribera's ghoulish dwarfs, with their cunning smile, the insane light
• 3:28:45
  of their eyes, and their malice. He dwelt with a horrible fascination upon
• 3:28:50
  their malformations, the humped backs, the club feet, the hydrocephalic heads.
• 3:28:56
  He described the picture by valds Leal in a certain place at Seville, which
• 3:29:01
  represents a priest at the altar, and the altar is sumptuous with guilt and
• 3:29:05
  florid carving. He wears a magnificent cope and a surplice of exquisite lace,
• 3:29:13
  but he wears them as though their weight was more than he could bear.
• 3:29:16
  And in the meager, trembling hands, and in the white ashen face,
• 3:29:20
  in the dark hallowness of the eyes, there is a bodily corruption that is
• 3:29:24
  terrifying. He seems to hold together with difficulty the bonds of the flesh,
• 3:29:31
  but with no eager yearning of the soul to burst its prison, only with
• 3:29:35
  despair. It is as if the Lord Almighty had forsaken him, and the
• 3:29:39
  high heavens were empty of their solace. All the beauty of life appears forgotten,
• 3:29:46
  and there is nothing in the world but decay, A ghastly putrefication has
• 3:29:50
  attacked already the living man, the worms of the grave, the piteous horror
• 3:29:56
  of mortality, and the darkness before him. Or for an nought but fear,
• 3:30:01
  the odd dark night is seen, and a turbulent sea, the dark
• 3:30:07
  night of the soul of which the mystics write, and the troublous sea of
• 3:30:11
  life, whereon there is no refuge for the weary and the sick at heart.
• 3:30:20
  Then, as if in pursuance of a definite plan, he analyzed with
• 3:30:24
  a searching, vehement intensity, the curious talent of the modern Frenchman Gustave Moreaux.
• 3:30:31
  Margaret had lately visited the Luxembourg, and his pictures were fresh in her
• 3:30:35
  memory. She had found in them little save a decorative arrangement, marred by
• 3:30:39
  faulty drawing. But Oliver Haddo gave them at once a new esoteric import.
• 3:30:46
  Those effects as of a Florentine jewel, the clustered colors emerald and ruby,
• 3:30:50
  the deep blue of sapphires, the atmosphere of scented chambers, the mystic persons
• 3:30:56
  who seem ever about secret religious rites, combining in his cunning phrases to create,
• 3:31:01
  as it were, a pattern on her soul of morbid and mysterious intricacy.
• 3:31:07
  Those pictures were filled with a strange sense of sin, and the mind
• 3:31:11
  that contemplated them was burdened with the decadence of Rome and with the passionate vice
• 3:31:16
  of the Renaissance. And it was tortured too by all the introspection of this
• 3:31:22
  later day. Margaret listened rather breathlessly, with the excitement of an explorer before
• 3:31:28
  whom it spread the plain of an undiscovered continent. The painter she knew spoke
• 3:31:33
  of their art technically, and this imaginative appreciation was new to her. She
• 3:31:37
  was horribly fascinated by the personality that imbued these elaborate sentences. Haddo's eyes were
• 3:31:45
  fixed upon hers, and she responded to his words like a delicate instrument made
• 3:31:50
  for recording the beatings of the heart. She felt an extraordinary languor. At
• 3:31:56
  last, he stopped. Margaret neither moved nor spoke. She might have been
• 3:32:01
  under a spell. It seemed to her that she had no power in her
• 3:32:07
  limbs. I want to do something for you in return for what you have
• 3:32:15
  done for me, he said. He stood up and went to the piano.
• 3:32:20
  Sit in this chair, he said. She did not dream of disobeying.
• 3:32:26
  He began to play. Margaret was hardly surprised that he played marvelously,
• 3:32:31
  Yet it was almost incredible that those fat, large hands should have such a
• 3:32:35
  tenderness of touch. His fingers caressed the notes with a peculiar suavity, and
• 3:32:41
  he drew out of the piano affetched, which she had scarcely thought possible.
• 3:32:46
  He seemed to put into the notes a troubling, ambiguous passion, and the
• 3:32:50
  instrument had the tremulous emotion of a human being. It was strange and terrifying.
• 3:32:58
  She was vaguely familiar with the music to which she listened, but there
• 3:33:01
  was in it under his fingers an exotic savor that made it harmonious. With
• 3:33:05
  all that he had said that afternoon. His memory was indeed astonishing. He
• 3:33:11
  had an infinite tact to know the feeling that occupied Margaret's heart, and what
• 3:33:16
  he chose seemed to be exactly that which, at the moment she imperatively needed.
• 3:33:22
  Then he began to play things she did not know. It was music
• 3:33:26
  the like of which she had never heard, barbaric, with a plaintive weirdness
• 3:33:33
  that brought to her fancy, the moonlit nights of desert places with palm trees
• 3:33:37
  mute in the windless air, and tawny distances she seemed to know, tortuous
• 3:33:45
  narrow streets, white houses of silence with strange moon shadows and the glow of
• 3:33:50
  yellow light within, and the tinkling of uncouth instruments, and the acrid sense
• 3:33:56
  of Eastern perfumes. It was like a procession passing through her mind of persons
• 3:34:03
  who were not human yet existed mysteriously with a life of vampires. Mona,
• 3:34:09
  Lisa, and John the Baptist Bacchus and the mother of Mary went with enigmatic
• 3:34:18
  motions. But the daughter of Herodius raised her hands as though engag'd for ever
• 3:34:24
  in a mystic right to invoke outlandish gods. Her face was very pale,
• 3:34:30
  and her dark eyes were sleepless. The jewels of her girdle gleamed with somber
• 3:34:35
  fires, and her dress was of colors that have long been lost. The
• 3:34:41
  smile in which was all the sorrow of the world and all its wickedness,
• 3:34:45
  beheld the wan head of the saint, And with a voice that was cold,
• 3:34:50
  with the coldness of death, she murmured the words of the poet,
• 3:34:56
  I am amorous of thy body, Yo, Cannan, Thy body is white
• 3:35:03
  like the lilies of the field that the more hath never mol'd. Thy body
• 3:35:09
  is white like the snows that lie on the mountains of Judea and come down
• 3:35:16
  into the valleys. The roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are
• 3:35:22
  not so white as thy body. Neither the roses in the garden of the
• 3:35:28
  Queen of Arabia, the garden of Spices of the Queen of Arabia, nor
• 3:35:33
  the feet of the dawn. When the light on the leaves nor the breast
• 3:35:39
  of the moon. When she lies on the breast of the sea. There
• 3:35:43
  is nothing in the world so white as thy body. Suffer me to touch
• 3:35:52
  thy body. Oliver heado ceas'd to play. Neither of them stirred. At
• 3:36:01
  last, Margaret sought by an effort to regain her self control. I shall
• 3:36:05
  begin to think that you really are her magician, she said lightly. I
• 3:36:11
  could show you strange things if you cared to see them. He answered again,
• 3:36:18
  raising his eyes to her, I don't think you will ever get me
• 3:36:22
  to believe in occult philosophy, she laughed. Yet it reigned in Persia with
• 3:36:28
  the mage eye. It endowed India with wonderful traditions. It civilized Greece to
• 3:36:35
  the sounds of Orpheus's liar. He stood before Margaret, towering over her in
• 3:36:41
  his huge bulk, and there was a singular fascination in his gaze. It
• 3:36:46
  seemed that he spoke only to conceal from her that he was putting forth now
• 3:36:50
  all the power that was in him. It concealed the first principles of science
• 3:36:56
  and the calculations of pythagona Us. It established empires by its oracles and at
• 3:37:03
  its voice tyrants grew pale upon their thrones. It governed the minds of some
• 3:37:09
  by curiosity, and others it ruled by fear. His voice grew very low,
• 3:37:18
  and it was so seductive that Margaret's brain reeled. The sound of it
• 3:37:24
  was overpowering, like too sweet a fragrance. I tell you that for this
• 3:37:30
  art nothing is impossible. It commands the elements, and knows the language of
• 3:37:35
  the stars, and directs the planets in their courses. The moon, at
• 3:37:41
  its bidding falls blood red from the sky. The dead rise up and form
• 3:37:48
  into ominous words, the night wind that moans through their skulls. Heaven and
• 3:37:54
  hell are its province, and all forms lovely and hideous, and love and
• 3:38:01
  hate with circes waned. It can change men into beasts of the field,
• 3:38:07
  and to them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in
• 3:38:13
  the right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It
• 3:38:18
  confers wealth by the transmutation of metals, and immortality by its quintessence. Margaret
• 3:38:28
  could not hear what he said. A gradual lethargy seized her under his baleful
• 3:38:35
  glance, and she had not even the strength to wish to free herself.
• 3:38:39
  She seemed bound to him already by hidden chains. If you have powers,
• 3:38:45
  show them, she whispered, hardly conscious that she spoke. Suddenly he released
• 3:38:52
  the enormous tension with which he held her, Like a man who has exerted
• 3:38:56
  all his strength to some end, the victory one he loose, and his
• 3:39:00
  muscles with a faint sigh of exhaustion. Margaret did not speak, but she
• 3:39:05
  knew that something horrible was about to happen. Her heart beat like a prisoned
• 3:39:11
  bird with helpless flutterings. But it seemed too late now to draw back her
• 3:39:16
  words. By a mystic influence, had settled something beyond possibility of recall.
• 3:39:22
  On the stove was a small bowl of polished brass, in which water was
• 3:39:26
  kept in order to give a certain moisture to the air. Oliver Haddo put
• 3:39:31
  his hand in his pocket and drew out a little silver box. He tapped
• 3:39:35
  it with a smile, as a man taps a snuff box, and it
• 3:39:39
  opened. He took an infinitesimal quantity of a blue powder that it contained,
• 3:39:45
  and threw it on the water in the brass bowl. Immediately, a bright
• 3:39:48
  flame sprang up and Margaret gave a cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her
• 3:39:52
  quickly and motioned her to remain still. She saw that the water was on
• 3:39:58
  fire. It was burning as bridge as hotly as if it were common gas,
• 3:40:03
  and it burned with the same dry, hoarse roar. Suddenly it was
• 3:40:07
  extinguished. She leaned forward and saw that the bowl was empty. The water
• 3:40:13
  had been consumed as though it were straw, and not a drop remained.
• 3:40:18
  She passed her hand absently across her forehead. But water cannot burn, she
• 3:40:26
  muttered to herself. It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he
• 3:40:30
  smiled strangely. Will you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than this
• 3:40:35
  blue powder? And I have enough to burn up all the water in Paris?
• 3:40:41
  No dreamt that water might burn like chaff. He paused, seeming to
• 3:40:48
  forget her presence. He looked thoughtfully at the little silver box. But it
• 3:40:52
  can be made only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense, and with exceeding
• 3:40:58
  labor. It is so volatile as you cannot keep it for three days.
• 3:41:05
  I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenuity I might make it more stable.
• 3:41:09
  I might so modify it that, like radium, it lost no strength
• 3:41:15
  as it burned. And then I should possess the greatest secret that has ever
• 3:41:20
  been in the mind of man, For there would be no end of it.
• 3:41:24
  It would continue to burn while there was a drop of water on the
• 3:41:28
  earth, and the whole world would be consumed. But it would be a
• 3:41:33
  frightful thing to have in one's hands, for once it were cast upon the
• 3:41:37
  waters, the doom of all that existed would be sealed beyond repeal. He
• 3:41:46
  took a long breath, and his eyes glittered with a devilish ardor his voice
• 3:41:50
  was hoarse with overwhelming emotion. Sometimes I am haunted by the wild desire to
• 3:41:56
  have seen the great and final scene when the erect vehcable. Flames poured down
• 3:42:01
  the river, hurrying along the streams of the earth, searching out the moisture
• 3:42:07
  in all growing things, tearing it even from the eternal rocks. When the
• 3:42:11
  flames poured down like the rushing of the wind, and all that lived fled
• 3:42:16
  from before them, till they came to the sea, and the sea itself
• 3:42:20
  was consumed in vehement fire. Margaret shuddered, but she did not think the
• 3:42:28
  man was mad, she had ceased to judge him. He took one more
• 3:42:31
  particle of that atrocious powder and put it in the bowl again. He thrust
• 3:42:35
  his hand into his pocket and brought out a handful of some crumbling substance that
• 3:42:39
  might have been dried leaves. Leaves of different sorts, broken and powdery.
• 3:42:46
  There was a trace of moisture in them. Still for A low flame sprang
• 3:42:50
  up immediately at the bottom of the dish, and a thick vapor filled the
• 3:42:54
  room. It had a singular and pungent odor that Margaret did not know.
• 3:42:58
  It was difficult to breathe, and she coughed. She wanted to beg Oliver
• 3:43:03
  to stop, but could not. He took the bowl in his hands and
• 3:43:07
  brought it to her. Look, he commanded. She bent forward, and
• 3:43:11
  at the bottom saw a blue fire of a peculiar solidity, as though it
• 3:43:16
  consisted of molten metal. It was not still, but writhed strangely, like
• 3:43:22
  serpents of fire tortured by their own unearthly ardor breathe very deeply. She did
• 3:43:30
  as he told her. A sudden trembling came over her, and darkness fell
• 3:43:33
  across her eyes. She tried to cry out but could utter no sound.
• 3:43:39
  Her brain reeled. It seemed to her that Haddo bade her cover her face.
• 3:43:43
  She gasped for breath, and it was as if the earth spun under
• 3:43:48
  her feet. She appeared to travel at an immeasurable speed. She made a
• 3:43:52
  slight movement, and Haddo told her not to look around. An immense terror
• 3:43:56
  seized her. She did not know with she was born. And still they
• 3:44:01
  went quickly, quickly, and the hurricane itself would have lagged behind them.
• 3:44:05
  At last, their motion ceased, and Oliver was holding her arm. Don't
• 3:44:11
  be afraid, he said, open your eyes and stand up. The night
• 3:44:18
  had fallen, but it was not the comfortable night that soothed the troubled minds
• 3:44:22
  of mortal men. It was a night that agitated the soul mysteriously, so
• 3:44:28
  that each nerve in the body tingled. There was a lurid darkness which displayed
• 3:44:33
  and yet distorted the objects that surrounded them. No moon shone in the sky,
• 3:44:37
  but small stars appeared to dance on the heather, vague night fires,
• 3:44:41
  like spirits of the damned. They stood in a vast and troubled waste,
• 3:44:46
  with huge stony boulders and leafless trees, rugged and gnarled, like tortured souls
• 3:44:52
  in pain. It was as if there had been a devastating storm, and
• 3:44:58
  the country reposed. After the flo good of rain, and the tempestuous wind
• 3:45:01
  and the lightning, All things about them appeared dumbly to suffer, like a
• 3:45:07
  man racked by torments who has not the strength even to realize that his agony
• 3:45:11
  has ceased. Margaret heard the flight of monstrous birds, and they seemed to
• 3:45:16
  whisper strange things on their passage. Oliver took her hand. He led her
• 3:45:22
  steadily to a crossroad, and she did not know if they walked amid rocks
• 3:45:28
  or tombs. She heard the sound of a trumpet, and from all parts,
• 3:45:31
  strangely appearing where before was nothing, a turbulent assembly surged around her.
• 3:45:37
  That vast empty space was suddenly filled by shadowy forms, and they swept along
• 3:45:43
  like the waves of the sea, crowding upon one another's heels. And it
• 3:45:48
  seemed that all the mighty dead appeared before her, And she saw grim tyrants
• 3:45:54
  and painted courtesans, and Roman emperors in their purple, and sultans of the
• 3:45:58
  east, all those fierce evil women of olden time, passed by her side,
• 3:46:05
  and now it was Mona Lisa, and now the subtle daughter of Herodius.
• 3:46:11
  And Jezebel looked out upon her from beneath her painted brows, and Cleopetra
• 3:46:16
  turn'd away a wan lewd face, and she saw the insatiable mouth and the
• 3:46:24
  wanton eyes of Messalina, and Fustine was haggard with the eternal fires of lust.
• 3:46:31
  She saw cardinals in their scarlet, and warriors in their steel, gay
• 3:46:35
  gentlemen in periwigs, and ladies in powder and patch, and on a sudden,
• 3:46:41
  like leaves by the wind. All these were driven before the silent throngs
• 3:46:45
  of the oppressed, and they were innumerable as the sands of the sea.
• 3:46:50
  Their thin faces were earthly with want and cavernous from disease, and their eyes
• 3:46:58
  were dull with despair. They passed in their chattered motley, some in the
• 3:47:03
  fantastic rags of the beggars of all beg Duer, and some in the gray
• 3:47:09
  ceraclaus of Lenine. Many wore the blouses and the caps of the rabble in
• 3:47:13
  France, and many the dingy, smoke grimed weeds of English poor. And
• 3:47:20
  they surged onward like a riotous crowd in narrow streets, flying in terror before
• 3:47:26
  the mounted troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in
• 3:47:31
  strange confusion. Then all again was void, and Margaret's gaze was riveted upon
• 3:47:37
  a great, ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone in ghastly
• 3:47:43
  desolation, And though a dead thing, it seemed to suffer a more than
• 3:47:46
  human pain. The lightning had torn it asunder, but the wind of centuries
• 3:47:52
  had sought in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured branches, bare
• 3:47:58
  of any twig, were like titan's arms, convulsed with intolerable anguish, And
• 3:48:05
  in a moment she grew sick with fear. For a change came into the
• 3:48:09
  tree, and the tremulousness of life was in it. The rough bark was
• 3:48:13
  changed into brutish flesh, and the twisted branches into human arms. It became
• 3:48:22
  a monstrous, goat legged thing, more vast than the creatures of nightmare.
• 3:48:26
  She saw the horns and the long beard, the great hairy legs with their
• 3:48:31
  hoofs, and the man's rapacious hands. The face was horrible with lust and
• 3:48:37
  cruelty, and yet it was divine it was pan playing on his pipes,
• 3:48:43
  and the lecherous eyes caressed her with hideous tenderness. But even while she looked,
• 3:48:48
  as the mist of early day rising discloses a fair country, the animal
• 3:48:54
  part of that ghoulish creature seemed to fall away, and she saw lovely youth,
• 3:49:00
  titanic but sublime, leaning against a massive rock. He was more beautiful
• 3:49:05
  than the Adam of Michelangelo, who wakes into life at the call of the
• 3:49:09
  Almighty, And like him, freshly created, he had the adorable languor of
• 3:49:16
  one who feels still in his limbs, the soft rain on the loose brown
• 3:49:20
  earth. Naked and full of majesty, he lay the outcasts of the morning,
• 3:49:26
  and she dared not look upon his face, for she knew it was
• 3:49:31
  impossible to bear the undying pain that darkened it with ruthless shadows. Impelled by
• 3:49:37
  a great curiosity, she sought to come nearer, But the vast figure seemed
• 3:49:41
  strangely to dissolve into a cloud, and immediately she felt herself again surrounded by
• 3:49:46
  a hurrying throng. Then came all legendary, monstrous and foul beasts of a
• 3:49:54
  madman's fancy in the darkness. She saw enormous toads with paws pressed to their
• 3:49:58
  flo and huge limping scarabs, shelled creatures the like of which she had never
• 3:50:05
  seen, and noisome brutes with horny scales, and round crabs, eyes,
• 3:50:11
  uncouth primeval things, and winged serpents and creeping animals begotten of the slime.
• 3:50:18
  She heard shrill cries and peals of laughter, and the terrifying rattle of men
• 3:50:22
  at the point of death. Haggard women, disheveled in lewd carried wine,
• 3:50:28
  and when they spilt it, there were stains like the stains of blood.
• 3:50:33
  And it seemed to Margaret that a fire burned in her veins, and her
• 3:50:37
  soul fled from her body. But a new soul came in its place,
• 3:50:41
  and suddenly she knew all that was obscene. She took part in some festival
• 3:50:48
  of hideous lust, and the wickedness of the world was patent to her eyes.
• 3:50:52
  She saw things so vile that she screamed in terror, and she heard
• 3:50:58
  Oliver laugh in derision by her side. It was a seed of indescribable horror,
• 3:51:03
  and she put her hands to her eyes so that she might not see.
• 3:51:09
  She felt Oliver haddle take her hands. She would not let him drag
• 3:51:11
  them away. Then she heard him speak, you need not be afraid.
• 3:51:18
  His voice was quite natural once more, and she realized with a start that
• 3:51:22
  she was sitting quietly in the studio. She looked around her with frightened eyes.
• 3:51:28
  Everything was exactly as it had been. The early night of autumn had
• 3:51:33
  fallen, and the only light in the room came from the fire. There
• 3:51:39
  was still that vague, acrid scent of the substance which Haddo had burned.
• 3:51:45
  Shall I light the candles, he said. He struck a match and lit
• 3:51:50
  those which were on the piano. They threw a strange light. Then Margaret
• 3:51:54
  suddenly remembered all that she had seen, and she remembered that Haddo had stood
• 3:51:58
  by her side. Shame seized her, intolerable shame, so that the color
• 3:52:05
  rising to her cheeks seemed actually to burn them. She hid her face in
• 3:52:09
  her hands and burst into tears. Coy, she said, for God's sake,
• 3:52:16
  go. He looked at her for a moment, and the smile came
• 3:52:20
  to his lips, which Susie had seen after his tussle with Arthur, when
• 3:52:24
  last he was in the studio. When you want me, you will find
• 3:52:28
  me in the Rue de Vogeroe, number two O nine, he said,
• 3:52:35
  knock at the second door on the left, on the third floor. She
• 3:52:39
  did not answer. She could only think of her appalling shame. I'll write
• 3:52:46
  it down for you in case you forget. He scribbled the address on a
• 3:52:50
  sheet of paper that he found on the table. Margaret took no notice,
• 3:52:54
  but sobbed as though her heart would break. Suddenly, looking up with a
• 3:52:58
  start, she saw that he was gone. She had not heard him open
• 3:53:03
  the door or close it. She sank down on her knees and prayed desperately,
• 3:53:07
  as though some terrible danger threatened her. But when she heard SUSY's key
• 3:53:13
  in the door, Margaret sprang to her feet. She stood with her back
• 3:53:16
  to the fireplace, her hands behind her, in the attitude of a prisoner
• 3:53:20
  protesting his innocence. Susy was too much annoyed to observe this agitation. Why
• 3:53:26
  on earth didn't you come to tea, she asked. I couldn't make out
• 3:53:31
  what had become of you. I had a dreadful headache, answered Margaret.
• 3:53:35
  Trying to control herself, Susy flung herself down wearily in a chair. Margaret
• 3:53:41
  forced herself to speak hidden Nancy, anything particular to say to you, she
• 3:53:48
  asked. She never turned up, answered Susy irritably. I can't understand it.
• 3:53:54
  I waited till the train came in, but there was no sign of
• 3:53:56
  her. Then I thought she might have hit upon that I'm by chance and
• 3:54:01
  was not coming from England. So I walked about the station for half an
• 3:54:03
  hour. She went to the chimney piece on which had been left the telegram
• 3:54:09
  that summoned her to the Gard de Noor and read it again. She gave
• 3:54:13
  a little cry of surprise. How stupid of me, I never noticed the
• 3:54:16
  postmark. It was sent from the ruly tray. This was less than ten
• 3:54:22
  minutes walk from the studio. Susy looked at the message with perplexity. I
• 3:54:28
  wonder if some one has been playing a silly, practical joke on me,
• 3:54:31
  She shrugged her shoulders. But it's too foolish. If I were a suspicious
• 3:54:37
  woman, she smiled, I should think you had sent it yourself to get
• 3:54:41
  me out of the way. The idea flashed through Margaret that Oliver Haddo was
• 3:54:46
  the author of it. He might easily have seen Nancy's name on the photograph
• 3:54:52
  during his first visit to the studio. She had no time to think before
• 3:54:56
  she answered lightly. If I wanted to get rid of you, I should
• 3:54:58
  have no hesitation in saying so. I suppose no one has been here,
• 3:55:03
  asked Susy. No one. The lie slipped from Margaret's lips before she had
• 3:55:09
  made up her mind to tell it. Her heart gave a great beat against
• 3:55:13
  her chest. She felt herself redden Susy got up to light a cigarette.
• 3:55:18
  She wished to rest her nerves. The box was on the table, and
• 3:55:22
  as she helped herself, her eyes fell carelessly on the address that Haddo had
• 3:55:26
  left. She picked it up and read it aloud. Who on earth lives
• 3:55:31
  there? She asked, I don't know at all, answered Margaret. She
• 3:55:37
  braced herself for further questions, but Susy, without interest, put down the
• 3:55:41
  sheet of paper and struck a match. Margaret was ashamed. Her nature was
• 3:55:46
  singularly truthful, and it troubled her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest
• 3:55:52
  friend. Something stronger than herself seemed to impel her. She would have given
• 3:55:56
  much to confess her two falsehoods, but had not the courage. She could
• 3:56:01
  not bear that SUSY's implicit trust in her straightforwardness should be destroyed, and the
• 3:56:07
  admission that Oliver Haddow had been there would entail a further acknowledgment of the nameless
• 3:56:13
  horror she had witnessed. Susy would think her mad. There was a knock
• 3:56:18
  at the door, and Margaret, her nerves shattered by all that she had
• 3:56:22
  endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror. She feared that Haddow had
• 3:56:26
  returned, but it was Arthur Burden. She greeted him with a passionate relief
• 3:56:31
  that was unusual, for she was, by nature a woman of great self
• 3:56:33
  possession. She felt excessively weak, physically exhausted, as though she had gone
• 3:56:39
  on a long journey, and her mind was highly wrought. Margaret remembered that
• 3:56:46
  her state had been the same on her first arrival in Paris, when,
• 3:56:48
  in her eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its marvels, she had hearried
• 3:56:54
  till her bones ached from one celebrated monument to another. They began to speak
• 3:57:00
  trivial things. Margaret tried to join calmly in the conversation, but her voice
• 3:57:03
  sounded unnatural, and she fancied that more than once. Arthur gave her a
• 3:57:09
  curious look. At length, she could control herself no longer and bust into
• 3:57:13
  a sudden flood of tears. In a moment uncomprehending but affectionate, he caught
• 3:57:20
  her in his arms. He asked tenderly, what was the matter, He
• 3:57:24
  sought to comfort her. She wept ungovernably, clinging to him for protection.
• 3:57:31
  Oh it's nothing, she gasped. I don't know what's the matter with me.
• 3:57:37
  I'm only nervous and frightened. Arthur had an idea that women were often
• 3:57:43
  afflicted with what he described by the old fashioned name of vapors, and was
• 3:57:48
  not disposed to pay much attention to this vehement distress. He soothed her as
• 3:57:52
  he would have done a child. Oh take care of me, Arthur,
• 3:57:58
  I am so afraid that some treadful thing will happen to me. I want
• 3:58:01
  all your strength, promised that you'll never forsake me. He laughed as he
• 3:58:07
  kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile. Why can't we be
• 3:58:13
  married at once, she asked, I don't want to wait any longer.
• 3:58:18
  I shan't feel safe until I'm actually your wife, he reasoned with her very
• 3:58:24
  gently. After all, they were to be married in a few weeks.
• 3:58:28
  They could not easily hasten matters, for the house was not yet ready,
• 3:58:31
  and she needed time to get her clothes. The date had been fixed by
• 3:58:35
  her. She listened sullenly to his words. Their wisdom was plain, and
• 3:58:39
  she did not see how she could possibly insist. Even if she told him
• 3:58:45
  all that had passed, he would not believe her. He would think she
• 3:58:48
  was suffering from some trick of her morbid fancy. If anything happens to me,
• 3:58:54
  she answered, with the dark, anguished eyes of a hunted beast,
• 3:59:00
  you will be to blame. I promise you that nothing will happen. End
• 3:59:07
  of chapter eight, Chapter nine of The Magician by Somerset Maam. This LibriVox
• 3:59:22
  recording is in the public domain. Margaret's night was disturbed, and next day
• 3:59:31
  she was unable to go about her work with her usual tranquility. She tried
• 3:59:35
  to reason herself into a natural explanation of the events that had happened. The
• 3:59:41
  telegram that Susy had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddow's part, and
• 3:59:46
  suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the studio.
• 3:59:52
  Once there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby to exercise
• 3:59:56
  his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the creation of his
• 4:00:01
  own labidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade herself that in playing a
• 4:00:09
  vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful advantage of her pity,
• 4:00:13
  she could not look upon him with anger. Her contempt for him, her
• 4:00:16
  utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that aroused in her horror and dismay.
• 4:00:24
  She could not get the man out of her thoughts. All that he
• 4:00:26
  had said, all that she had seen, seemed as though it possessed a
• 4:00:31
  power of material growth unaccountably to absorb her. It was as if a rank
• 4:00:37
  weed were planted in her heart and slid long, poisonous tentacles down every artery,
• 4:00:43
  so that each part of her body was enmeshed. Work could not distract
• 4:00:48
  her, conversation, exercise, art left her listless, and between her and
• 4:00:54
  all the actions of life stood the flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo.
• 4:01:01
  She was terrified of him now as never before, but curiously had no longer
• 4:01:05
  the physical repulsion which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although she repeated to
• 4:01:11
  herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could scarcely resist an
• 4:01:16
  overwhelming desire to go to him. Her will had been taken from her,
• 4:01:22
  and she was an automaton. She struggled like a bird in the fowler's net,
• 4:01:26
  with useless beating of the wings. But at the bottom of her heart
• 4:01:30
  she was dimly conscious that she did not want to resist. If he had
• 4:01:35
  given her that address, it was because he knew she would use it.
• 4:01:39
  She did not know why she wanted to go to him. She had nothing
• 4:01:41
  to say to him. She knew only that it was necessary to go.
• 4:01:46
  But a few days before she had seen the phedre of Racine, and she
• 4:01:50
  felt on a sudden all the torments that wrung the heart of that unhappy queen.
• 4:01:54
  She too, struggled aimlessly to escape from the poison that the immortal God
• 4:02:00
  Odds poured in her veins. She asked herself frantically whether a spell had been
• 4:02:03
  cast over her. For now she was willing to believe that Haddo's power was
• 4:02:07
  all embracing. Margaret knew that if she yielded to the horrible temptation, nothing
• 4:02:13
  could save her from destruction. She would have cried for help to Arthur or
• 4:02:18
  to Susie. But something she knew not what, prevented her. At length,
• 4:02:24
  Driven almost to distraction, she thought that doctor Poorgette might do something for
• 4:02:28
  her. He at least would understand her misery. There seemed not a moment
• 4:02:33
  to lose, and she hastened to his house. They told her he was
• 4:02:37
  out. Her heart sank, for it seemed that her last hope was gone.
• 4:02:43
  She was like a person drowning who clings to a rock, and the
• 4:02:46
  waves dash against him and beat upon his bleeding hands with a malice all too
• 4:02:52
  human, as if to tear them from their refuge. Instead of going to
• 4:02:56
  the sketch class, which was held at six and evening, she hurried to
• 4:03:01
  the address that Oliver Haddle had given her. She went along the crowded street
• 4:03:05
  stealthily, as though afraid that some one would see her, And her heart
• 4:03:09
  was in a turmoil. She desired with all her might not to go,
• 4:03:15
  and sought vehemently to prevent herself, and yet with all she went. She
• 4:03:18
  ran up the stairs and knocked at the door. She remembered his directions distinctly.
• 4:03:24
  In a moment, Oliver Haddow stood before her. He did not seem
• 4:03:28
  astonished that she was there. As she stood on the landing, it occurred
• 4:03:31
  to her suddenly that she had no reason to offer for her visit. But
• 4:03:35
  his words saved her from any need for explanation. I've been waiting for you,
• 4:03:43
  he said. Haddo led her into a sitting room. He had an
• 4:03:46
  apartment in a messan moiblais and heavy hangings. The solid furniture of that sort
• 4:03:54
  of house in Paris was unexpected in connection with him. The surroundings were so
• 4:04:00
  commonplace that they seemed to emphasize his singularity. There was a peculiar lack of
• 4:04:05
  comfort, which suggested that he was indifferent to material things. The room was
• 4:04:09
  large, but so encumbered that it gave a cramped impression. Haddo dwelt there
• 4:04:15
  as if he were apart from any habitation that might be his. He moved
• 4:04:20
  cautiously among the heavy furniture, and his great obesity was somehow more remarkable.
• 4:04:26
  There was the acrid perfume, which Margaret remembered a few days before in her
• 4:04:30
  vision of an eastern city. Asking her to sit down, he began to
• 4:04:35
  talk as if they were old acquaintances between whom nothing of moment had occurred.
• 4:04:39
  At last, she took her courage in both hands. Why did you make
• 4:04:43
  me come here, she asked? Suddenly, you'll give me credit now for
• 4:04:48
  very marvelous powers, he smiled. You knew I should come. I know
• 4:04:56
  what have I done to you that you should make me so unhappy. I
• 4:05:00
  want you to leave me alone. I shall not prevent you from going out
• 4:05:03
  if you choose to go, No harm has come to you. The door
• 4:05:09
  is open. Her heart beat quickly, painfully, almost, and she remained
• 4:05:13
  silent. She knew that she did not want to go. There was something
• 4:05:18
  that drew her strangely to him, and she was ceasing to resist. A
• 4:05:24
  strange feeling began to take hold of her, creeping stealthily through her limbs,
• 4:05:28
  and she was terrified, but unaccountably elated. He began to talk with that
• 4:05:33
  low voice of his that thrilled her with a curious magic. He spoke not
• 4:05:39
  of pictures now, nor of books, but of life, he told her,
• 4:05:43
  of strange Eastern places where no infidel had been, and her sensitive fancy
• 4:05:48
  was aflame with the honeyed fervor of his phrase. He spoke of the dawn
• 4:05:52
  upon sleeping desolate cities, and the moonlit nights of the desert, of the
• 4:05:58
  sunsets, with their splendor, of the crowded streets. At noon, the
• 4:06:01
  beauty of the East rose before her. He told her of many colored webs,
• 4:06:07
  and of silken carpets, the glittering steel of armor demascened, and of
• 4:06:11
  barbaric, priceless gems. The splendor of the East blinded her eyes. He
• 4:06:18
  spoke of frankincense and mirror and aloes, of heavy perfumes, of the scent
• 4:06:22
  merchants and drowsy odors of the Syrian gardens. The fragrance of the East filled
• 4:06:28
  her nostrils, and all these things were transformed by the power of his words,
• 4:06:35
  till life itself seemed offered to her, a life of infinite vivacity,
• 4:06:39
  a life of freedom, a life of supernatural knowledge. It seemed to her
• 4:06:45
  that a comparison was drawn for her attention between the narrow round which awaited her
• 4:06:50
  as Arthur's wife, and this fair, full existence She shuddered to think of
• 4:06:56
  the dull house in Harley Street and the insignificant of its humdrum duties. But
• 4:07:01
  it was possible for her also to enjoy the wonder of the world. Her
• 4:07:07
  soul yearned for a beauty that the commonalty of men did not know, and
• 4:07:13
  what devil suggested a warp as it were, in the woof of Oliver's speech,
• 4:07:18
  that her exquisite loveliness gave her the right to devote herself to the great
• 4:07:22
  art of living, she felt a sudden desire for perilous adventures, as though
• 4:07:28
  fire passed through her. She sprang to her feet and stood with panting bosom,
• 4:07:33
  her flashing eyes bright with the multi colored pictures that his magic presented.
• 4:07:39
  Oliver Haddo stood too, and they faced one another. Then, on a
• 4:07:45
  sudden she knew what the passion was that consumed her. With a quick movement,
• 4:07:50
  his eyes more than ever strangely staring, he took her in his arms,
• 4:07:54
  and he kissed her lips. She surrendered herself to him luptuously, her
• 4:08:01
  whole body burned with the ecstasy of his embrace. I think I love you,
• 4:08:07
  she said hoarsely. She looked at him. She did not feel ashamed.
• 4:08:13
  Now you must roll, he said. He opened the door, and
• 4:08:16
  without another word, she went. She walked through the streets as if nothing
• 4:08:20
  at all had happened. She felt neither remorse nor revulsion. Then, Margaret
• 4:08:26
  felt every day that uncontrollable desire to go to him, and though she tried
• 4:08:33
  to persuade herself not to yield, she knew that her effort was only a
• 4:08:37
  pretense. She did not want anything to prevent her when it seemed that some
• 4:08:41
  accident would do so, she could scarcely control her irritation. There was always
• 4:08:48
  that violent hunger of the soul which called her to him, and the only
• 4:08:52
  happy hours she had were those spent in his company. Day after day.
• 4:08:56
  She felt that complete ecstasy when he took her in his huge arms and kissed
• 4:09:01
  her with his heavy, sensual lips. But the ecstasy was extraordinarily mingled with
• 4:09:07
  loathing, and her physical attraction was allied with physical abhorrence. Yet when he
• 4:09:15
  looked at her with those pale blue eyes and threw into his voice those troubling
• 4:09:18
  accents, she forgot everything. He spoke of unhallowed things. Sometimes, as
• 4:09:24
  it were, he lifted a corner of the veil, and she caught a
• 4:09:28
  glimpse of terrible secrets. She understood how men had bartered their souls for infinite
• 4:09:35
  knowledge. She seemed to stand upon a pinnacle of the temple, and spiritual
• 4:09:39
  kingdoms of darkness, principalities of the unknown were spread before her eyes to lure
• 4:09:46
  her to destruction. But of Haddo himself she learned nothing. She did not
• 4:09:50
  know if he loved her. She did not know if he had ever loved.
• 4:09:56
  He appeared to stand apart from human kind. Margaret discovered by chance that
• 4:10:01
  his mother lived, but he would not speak of her. Some day you
• 4:10:05
  shall see her, he said, when very soon. Meanwhile, her life
• 4:10:11
  proceeded with all outward regularity. She found it easy to deceive her friends,
• 4:10:16
  because it occurred to neither that her frequent absence was not due to the plausible
• 4:10:22
  reasons she gave. The lies, which at first seemed intolerable, now tripped
• 4:10:26
  glibly off her tongue. But though they were so natural, she was seized,
• 4:10:31
  often with a panic of fear lest they should be discovered, and sometimes
• 4:10:35
  suffering agonies of remorse. She would lie in bed at night and think with
• 4:10:39
  utter shame of the way she was using Arthur, but things had gone too
• 4:10:45
  far now and she must let them take their course. She scarcely knew why
• 4:10:50
  her feelings toward him had so completely changed. Oliver Haddo had scarcely mentioned his
• 4:10:56
  name, and yet had poisoned her mind. The comparison and between the two
• 4:11:00
  was to Arthur's disadvantage. She thought him a little dull now, and his
• 4:11:05
  commonplace way of looking at life contrasted with Haddow's fascinating boldness. She reproached Arthur
• 4:11:11
  in her heart because he had never understood what was in her. He narrowed
• 4:11:16
  her mind, and gradually she began to hate him because her debt of gratitude
• 4:11:22
  was so great. It seemed unfair that he should have done so much for
• 4:11:26
  her. He forced her to marry him by his beneficence, Yet Margaret continued
• 4:11:33
  to discuss with him the arrangement of their house in Harley Street. It had
• 4:11:37
  been her wish to furnish the drawing room in the style of lewis Ka's,
• 4:11:43
  and together they made long excursions to buy chairs or old pieces of silk with
• 4:11:48
  which to cover them. Everything should be perfect in its kind. The date
• 4:11:52
  of their marriage was fixed, and all the details were settled, Arthur was
• 4:11:58
  ridiculously happy. Margaret made no sign she did not think of the future,
• 4:12:03
  and she spoke of it only to ward off suspicion. She was inwardly convinced
• 4:12:09
  now that the marriage would never take place. But what was to prevent it
• 4:12:13
  she did not know. She watched Susy and Arthur cunningly, But though she
• 4:12:18
  watched in order to conceal her own secret, it was another's that she discovered.
• 4:12:24
  Suddenly, Margaret became aware that Susy was deeply in love with Arthur Burden.
• 4:12:30
  The discovery was so astounding that at first it seemed absurd. You've never
• 4:12:35
  done that caricature of Arthur for me that you promised, she said. Suddenly,
• 4:12:43
  I've tried, but he doesn't lend himself to it, laughed Susy,
• 4:12:48
  with that long nose in the gaunt figure. I should have thought you could
• 4:12:52
  make something screamingly funny. How oddly you talk of him somehow I can only
• 4:12:58
  see his beautiful kind eyes. Isn't his tender mouth? I would as soon
• 4:13:01
  do a caricature of him as write a parody on a poem I loved.
• 4:13:07
  Margaret took the portfolio in which Susy kept her sketches. She caught the look
• 4:13:11
  of alarm that crossed her friend's face, but Susy had not the courage to
• 4:13:16
  prevent her from looking. She turned the drawings carelessly and presently came to a
• 4:13:20
  sheet upon which, in a more or less finished state, were half a
• 4:13:24
  dozen heads of Arthur. Pretending not to see it, she went on to
• 4:13:28
  the end. When she closed the portfolio, Susy gave a sigh of relief.
• 4:13:33
  I wish you worked harder, said Margaret, as she put the sketches
• 4:13:39
  down. I wonder you don't do a head of Arthur as you can't do
• 4:13:43
  a caricature, My dear, you mustn't expect every one to take such an
• 4:13:48
  overpowering interest in that young man as you do. The answer added a last
• 4:13:52
  certainty to Margaret's suspicion. She told herself bitterly that Susy was no less a
• 4:13:58
  liar than she. Next day, when the other was out, Margaret looked
• 4:14:01
  through the portfolio once more, but the sketches of Arthur had disappeared. She
• 4:14:07
  was seized on a sudden with anger because Susy dared to love the man who
• 4:14:11
  loved her. The web in which Oliver haddo and meshed her was woven with
• 4:14:16
  skillful intricacy. He took each part of her character separately and fortified with consummate
• 4:14:22
  art his influence over her. There was something satanic in his deliberation, yet
• 4:14:28
  an actual time, it was almost incredible that he could have changed the old
• 4:14:31
  abhorrence with which she regarded him into that hungry passion. Margaret could not now
• 4:14:39
  realize her life apart from his. At length, he thought the time was
• 4:14:43
  ripe for the final step. It may interest you to know that I am
• 4:14:46
  leaving Paris on Thursday, he said casually one afternoon. She started to her
• 4:14:52
  feet and stared at him with bewildered eyes. But what is to become of
• 4:14:58
  me? You will marry the excellent mister Burden. You know I cannot leave
• 4:15:03
  without you. How can you be so cruel? Then? The only alternative
• 4:15:07
  is that you should accompany me. Her blood ran cold, and her heart
• 4:15:13
  seemed pressed in an iron vice. What do you mean there is no need
• 4:15:18
  to be agitated. I am making you an eminently desirable offer of marriage.
• 4:15:24
  She sank helplessly into her chair Because she had refused to think of the future.
• 4:15:30
  It had never struck her that the time must come when it would be
• 4:15:33
  necessary to leave Haddo or to throw in her lot with his Definitely, she
• 4:15:39
  was seized with revulsion. Margaret realized that though an odious attraction bound her to
• 4:15:43
  the man, she loathed and feared him. The scales fell from her eyes.
• 4:15:48
  She remembered on a sudden Arthur's great love and all that he had done
• 4:15:52
  for her sake. She hated herself like a bird at its last gasp.
• 4:15:58
  Beating frantically against the bars of the cage, Margaret made a desperate effort to
• 4:16:03
  regain her freedom. She sprang up, let me go from here. I
• 4:16:07
  wish i'd never seen you. I don't know what you've done to me.
• 4:16:11
  All by all means, if you choose, he answered. He opened the
• 4:16:15
  door so that she might see. He used no compulsion and stood lazily at
• 4:16:19
  the threshold, with a hateful smile on his face. There was something terrible
• 4:16:25
  in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended from his chin and concealed his
• 4:16:30
  neck. His cheeks were huge, and the lack of beard added to the
• 4:16:34
  hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret stopped as she passed him, horribly repelled,
• 4:16:41
  yet horribly fascinated. She had an immense desire that he should take her
• 4:16:45
  again in his arms and press her lips with that red, voluptuous mouth.
• 4:16:51
  It was as though fiends of hell were taking revenge upon her loveliness by inspiring
• 4:16:56
  in her a passion for this monstrous creature. She trembled with the intensity of
• 4:17:00
  her desire. His eyes were cruel and hard, ull, he said.
• 4:17:08
  She bent her head and fled from before him. To get home. She
• 4:17:12
  passed through the gardens of the Luxembourg, but her legs failed her, and
• 4:17:17
  in exhaustion, she sank upon a bench. The day was sultry. She
• 4:17:22
  tried to colerct herself. Margaret knew well the part in which she sat,
• 4:17:26
  for in the enthusiastic days that seemed so long gone by, she was accustomed
• 4:17:30
  to come there for the sake of a certain tree upon which her eyes now
• 4:17:36
  rested. It had all the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves
• 4:17:41
  were slender and fragile, half gold with autumn, half green, but so
• 4:17:45
  tenuous that the dark branches made a pattern of subtle beauty against the sky.
• 4:17:51
  The hand of a draftsman could not have fashioned it with a more excellent skill.
• 4:17:56
  But now Margaret could take no pleasure in its grace. She felt a
• 4:18:02
  heart rending pang to think that thenceforward the consummate things of art would have no
• 4:18:07
  meaning for her. She had seen Arthur the evening before, and remembered with
• 4:18:11
  an agony of shame, the lives to which she had been forced in order
• 4:18:15
  to explain why she could not see him till late that day. He had
• 4:18:19
  proposed that they should go to Versailles, and was bitterly disappointed when she told
• 4:18:25
  him they could not, as usual on Sundays, spend the whole day together.
• 4:18:30
  He accepted her excuse that she had to visit a sick friend. It
• 4:18:34
  would not have been so intolerable if he had suspected her of deceit, and
• 4:18:38
  his reproaches would have hardened her heart. It was his entire confidence which was
• 4:18:45
  so difficult to bear. Huh, I could only make a clean breast of
• 4:18:49
  it all, she cried. The bell of Saincelpice was ringing for vespers.
• 4:18:56
  Margaret walked slowly to the church and sat down in the seats reserved in the
• 4:19:00
  transept for the needy. She hoped that the music she must hear there would
• 4:19:06
  rest her soul, and perhaps she might be able to pray of late she
• 4:19:11
  had not dared. There was a pleasant darkness in the place, and its
• 4:19:15
  large simplicity was soothing in her exhaustion. She watched listlessly the people go to
• 4:19:22
  and fro. Behind her was a priest in the confessional. A little peasant
• 4:19:29
  girl in a Breton quiff, perhaps a maid servant lately come from her native
• 4:19:33
  village to the great capital, passed in and knelt down. Margaret could hear
• 4:19:38
  her muttered words, and at intervals the deep voice of the priest. In
• 4:19:44
  three minutes, she tripped neatly away. She looked so fresh in her plain
• 4:19:48
  black dress, so healthy and innocent, that Margaret could not restrain a sob
• 4:19:52
  of envy. The child had so little to confess, a few puny errors
• 4:19:59
  which must excite a smile on the lips of the gentle priest, and her
• 4:20:03
  candid spirit was like snow. Margaret would have given anything to kneel down and
• 4:20:08
  whisper in those passionless ears all that she had suffered. But the priest's faith
• 4:20:15
  and hers were not the same. They spoke a different tone not of the
• 4:20:21
  lips only, but of the soul, and he would not listen to the
• 4:20:23
  words of a heretic. A long procession of seminarists came in from the College,
• 4:20:30
  which is under the shadow of the Great Church, two by two,
• 4:20:33
  in black cassocks and short white surplices. Many were tauntured already, some were
• 4:20:40
  quite young. Margaret watched their faces, wondering if they were tormented by such
• 4:20:45
  agony. She but they had a living faith to sustain them. And if
• 4:20:51
  some, as was plain, were narrow and obtuse, they had at least
• 4:20:55
  a fixed rule which prevented them from swerving into treacherous byways. One or two
• 4:21:00
  had an wan esthetic look, such as the saints may have had when the
• 4:21:06
  terror of life was known to them only in the imaginings of the cloister.
• 4:21:11
  The canons of the church followed in their more gorgeous vestments, and finally the
• 4:21:15
  officiating clergy. The music was beautiful. There was about it a staid,
• 4:21:22
  sad dignity, and it seemed to Margaret fit thus to adore God. But
• 4:21:27
  it did not move her. She could not understand the words that the priests
• 4:21:33
  chanted, their gestures, their movements to and fro were strange to her.
• 4:21:37
  For her, that stately service had no meaning, And with a great cry
• 4:21:42
  in her heart, she said that God had forsaken her. She was alone
• 4:21:48
  in an alien land. Evil was all about her, and in those ceremonies
• 4:21:53
  she could find no comfort. What could she expect when the God of her
• 4:21:59
  father's left her to her fate so that she might not weep in front of
• 4:22:03
  all those people, Margaret, with downturned face, walked to the door.
• 4:22:07
  She felt utterly lost as she walked along the interminable street that led to her
• 4:22:14
  own house. She was shaken with sobs. God has forsaken me, she
• 4:22:21
  repeated, God has porsaken me. Next day, her eyes red with weeping,
• 4:22:27
  she dragged herself to Haddow's door. When he opened it, she went
• 4:22:32
  in without a word. She sat down, and he watched her in silence.
• 4:22:38
  I am willing to marry you whenever you choose, she said. At
• 4:22:42
  last, I have made all the necessary arrangements. You have spoken to me
• 4:22:48
  of your mother. Will you take me to her? At once? The
• 4:22:53
  shadow of a smile crossed his lips. If you wish it had otold her
• 4:23:00
  that they could be married. Before the consul early enough on the Thursday morning
• 4:23:03
  to catch train for England. She left everything in his hands. I'm desperately
• 4:23:11
  unhappy, she said dully. Oliver laid his hands upon her shoulders and looked
• 4:23:15
  into her eyes. Go home and you will forget your tears. I command
• 4:23:22
  you to be happy. Then it seemed that the bitter struggle between the good
• 4:23:29
  and the evil in her was done, and the evil had conquered. She
• 4:23:33
  felt, on a sudden curiously elated. It seemed no longer to matter that
• 4:23:38
  she deceived her faithful friends. She gave a bitter laugh as she thought how
• 4:23:44
  easy it was to hoodwink them. Wednesday happened to be Arthurs's birthday, and
• 4:23:51
  he asked her to dine with him alone. We'll do ourselves proud and hang
• 4:23:55
  the expense, he said. They had arranged to eat at a fashionable rest
• 4:24:00
  front on the other side of the river, and soon after seven he fetched
• 4:24:03
  her. Margaret was dressed with exceeding care. She stood in the middle of
• 4:24:07
  the room, waiting for Arthur's arrival, and surveyed herself in the glass.
• 4:24:11
  Susy thought she had never been more beautiful. I think you've grown more pleasing
• 4:24:17
  to look upon than you ever were, She said, I don't know what
• 4:24:21
  it is has come over you of late, but there's a depth in your
• 4:24:25
  eye that is quite new. It gives you an odd mysteriousness, which is
• 4:24:30
  very attractive. Knowing SUSY's love for Arthur, she wondered whether her friend was
• 4:24:34
  not heart broken as she compared her own plainness with the radiant beauty that was
• 4:24:40
  before her. Arthur came in and Margaret did not move. He stopped at
• 4:24:45
  the door to look at her. Their eyes met his heart beat quickly,
• 4:24:49
  and yet he was seized with awe. His good fortune was too great to
• 4:24:55
  bear. When he thought that this priceless treasure was his, he could have
• 4:25:00
  knelt down and worshiped, as though a goddess of old grease stood before him.
• 4:25:04
  And to him also, her eyes had changed, They had acquired a
• 4:25:08
  burning passion which disturbed and yet enchanted him. It seemed that the lovely girl
• 4:25:15
  was changed already into a lovely woman. An enigmatic smile came to her lips.
• 4:25:22
  Are you pleased? She asked. Arthur came forward, and Margaret put
• 4:25:27
  her hands on his shoulders. You have sent on, he said. He
• 4:25:33
  was surprised, for she had never used it before. It was a faint,
• 4:25:37
  almost acrid perfume that he did not know. It reminded him vaguely of
• 4:25:41
  those odors which he remembered in his childhood in the East. It was remote
• 4:25:45
  and strange. It gave Margaret a new and troubling charm. There had ever
• 4:25:51
  been something cold in her statuesque beauty, but this touch, somehow curiously emphasized
• 4:25:57
  her sex. Arthur's lips twitched, and his gaunt face grew pale with passion.
• 4:26:03
  His emotion was so great that it was nearly pain. He was puzzled,
• 4:26:08
  for her eyes expressed things that he had never seen in them before.
• 4:26:14
  Why don't you kiss me? She said, She did not see susy,
• 4:26:18
  but knew that. A quick look of anguish crossed her face. Margaret drew
• 4:26:22
  Arthur toward her. His hands began to tremble. He had never ventured to
• 4:26:26
  express the passion that consumed him, and when he kissed her, it was
• 4:26:30
  with a restraint that was almost brotherly. Now their lips met, forgetting that
• 4:26:37
  any one else was in the room, he flung his arms round Margaret.
• 4:26:41
  She had never kissed him in that way before, and the rapture was intolerable.
• 4:26:48
  Her lips were like living fire. He could not take his own away.
• 4:26:52
  He forgot everything. All his strength, all his self control, deserted
• 4:26:57
  him. It crossed his mind and that at this moment he would willingly die.
• 4:27:03
  But the delight of it was so great that he could scarcely withhold a
• 4:27:07
  cry of agony. At length. SUSY's voice reminded him of the world.
• 4:27:12
  You'd better go out to dinner instead of behaving like a pair of complete idiots.
• 4:27:18
  She tried to make her tone as flippant as the words, but her
• 4:27:21
  voice was cut by a pang of agony. With a little laugh, Margaret
• 4:27:26
  withdrew from Arthur's embrace and lightly looked at her friend. SUSY's brave smile died
• 4:27:32
  away if she caught this glance, for there was in it a malicious hatred
• 4:27:36
  that startled her. It was so unexpected that she was terrified. What had
• 4:27:41
  she done? She was afraid, dreadfully afraid that Margaret had guessed her secret.
• 4:27:48
  Arthur stood as if his senses had left him, quivering still with the
• 4:27:52
  extreme of passion. Susy says, we must go, smiled Margaret. He
• 4:28:00
  could not speak, He could not regain the conventional manner of polite society.
• 4:28:06
  Very pale, like a man suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, he went
• 4:28:10
  out at Margaret's side. They walked along the passage, though the door was
• 4:28:15
  closed behind them and they were out of earshot. Margaret seemed notwithstanding to hear
• 4:28:19
  SUSY's passionate sobbing. It gave her a horrible delight. The tavern to which
• 4:28:27
  they went was on the Boulevard des Italienne, and at this date the most
• 4:28:32
  frequented in Paris. It was crowded, but Arthur had reserved a table in
• 4:28:36
  the middle of the room. Her radiant loveliness made people stare at Margaret as
• 4:28:41
  she passed, and her consciousness of the admiration she excited increased her beauty.
• 4:28:47
  She was satisfied that amid that throng of the best dressed women in the world,
• 4:28:51
  she had cause to envy no one. The gaiety was charming. Shaded
• 4:28:56
  lights gave an opulent coziness to the scene, and there were flowers everywhere.
• 4:29:02
  Innumerable mirrors reflected women of the world, admirably gowned, and actresses of renown
• 4:29:07
  and fashionable courtesans. The noise was very great, A Hungarian band played in
• 4:29:15
  the distant corner, but the music was drowned by the loud talking of excited
• 4:29:19
  men and the boisterous laughter of women. It was plain that people had come
• 4:29:23
  to spend their money with a lavish hand. The vivacious crowd was given over
• 4:29:27
  with all its heart to the pleasure of the fleeting moment. Everyone had put
• 4:29:32
  aside grave thoughts and sorrow. Margaret had never been in better spirits. The
• 4:29:38
  champagne went quickly to her head, and she talked all manner of charming nonsense.
• 4:29:45
  Arthur was enchanted. He was very proud, very pleased, and very
• 4:29:49
  happy. They talked of all the things they would do when they were married.
• 4:29:55
  They talked of the places they must go, of their home, and
• 4:29:57
  of the beautiful things with which they would fill it. Margaret's animation was extraordinary.
• 4:30:03
  Arthur was amused at her delight, with the brightness of the place,
• 4:30:07
  with the good things they ate, and with the wine. Her laughter was
• 4:30:11
  like a rippling brook. Everything tended to take him out of his usual reserve.
• 4:30:17
  Life was very pleasing at that moment, and he felt singularly joyful.
• 4:30:22
  Let us drink to the happiness of our life. He said, they touched
• 4:30:26
  glasses. He could not take his eyes away from her. You're simply wonderful
• 4:30:33
  to night, he said. I'm almost afraid of my good fortune. What
• 4:30:38
  is there to be afraid of? She cried, I should like to lose
• 4:30:44
  something I valued in order to propitiate the fates. I am too happy now.
• 4:30:48
  Everything goes too well with me. She gave a soft, low laugh
• 4:30:53
  and stretched out her hand on the table. No sculptor could have modeled its
• 4:30:59
  exquisite delay. She wore only one ring, a large emerald, which Arthur
• 4:31:03
  had given her on their engagement. He could not resist taking her hand.
• 4:31:08
  Would you like to go on anywhere? He said, when they had finished
• 4:31:12
  dinner and were drinking their coffee. Now let us stay here. I must
• 4:31:18
  go to bed early, as I have a tiring day before me tomorrow.
• 4:31:22
  What are you going to do, he asked, Nothing of any importance,
• 4:31:26
  She laughed. Presently. The diners began to go in little groups, and
• 4:31:32
  Margaret suggested that they should saunter toward the madeleine. The night was fine,
• 4:31:37
  but rather cold, and the broad avenue was crowded. Margaret watched the people.
• 4:31:41
  It was no less amusing than a play in a little while. They
• 4:31:45
  took a cab and drove through the streets silent already. That led to the
• 4:31:48
  quarter of the Montparnasse. They sat in silence, and Margaret nestled close to
• 4:31:55
  Arthur. He put his arm round her waist in the shut cab. That
• 4:32:00
  faint oriental odor rose again to his nostrils, and his head reeled as it
• 4:32:03
  had before dinner. You've made me very happy, Margaret, he whispered.
• 4:32:11
  I feel that, however long I live, I shall never have a happier
• 4:32:15
  day than this. Do you love me very much? She asked lightly.
• 4:32:21
  He did not answer, but took her face in his hands and kissed her
• 4:32:25
  passionately. They arrived at Margaret's house, and she tripped up to the door.
• 4:32:30
  She held out her hand to him, smiling good night. It's dreadful
• 4:32:34
  to think that I must spend a dozen hours without seeing you. When may
• 4:32:40
  I come? Not in the morning, because I shall be too busy.
• 4:32:45
  Come at twelve. She remembered that her train started exactly at that hour.
• 4:32:51
  The door was opened, and with a little wave of a hand, she
• 4:32:55
  disappeared. End of chapter nine, Chapter ten of The Magician by Somerset.
• 4:33:12
  Ma'am this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Susy stared without comprehension at
• 4:33:22
  the note that announced Margaret's marriage. It was a petty BLUs sent from the
• 4:33:26
  garden door, and ran as follows. When you receive this, I shall
• 4:33:30
  be on my way to London. I was married to Oliver Haddo this morning.
• 4:33:36
  I love him as I never loved Arthur. I have acted in this
• 4:33:40
  manner because I thought I had gone too far with Arthur to make an explanation
• 4:33:45
  possible. Please tell him Margaret. Susy was filled with dismay. She did
• 4:33:52
  not know what to do nor what to think. There was a knock at
• 4:33:56
  the door, and she knew it must be Arthur, for he was expected
• 4:33:59
  at midday. She decided quickly that it was impossible to break the news to
• 4:34:03
  him then and there. It was needful first to find out all matter of
• 4:34:07
  things, and besides it was incredible making up her mind. She opened the
• 4:34:12
  door. Oh, I'm sorry, Margaret isn't here, she said. A
• 4:34:18
  friend of hers's eel and sent for her. Suddenly, not a bore,
• 4:34:22
  answered Arthur, missus Bloomfield, as usual. I suppose, oh you know
• 4:34:29
  she's been ill. Margaret has spent nearly every afternoon with her for some days.
• 4:34:34
  Susy did not answer. This was the first she had heard of missus
• 4:34:40
  Bloomfield's illness, and twas news that Margaret was in the habit of visiting her.
• 4:34:45
  But her chief object at this moment was to get rid of Arthur,
• 4:34:48
  who coul't you come back at five o'clock? She said? But look here,
• 4:34:52
  why shouldn't we lunch together? You and I? A I'm very sorry,
• 4:34:57
  but I'm expecting some one in no. All, right, then I'll
• 4:35:02
  come back at five. He nodded and went out. Susy read the brief
• 4:35:07
  note once more and asked herself if it could possibly be true. The callousness
• 4:35:12
  of it was appalling. She went to Margaret's room and saw that everything was
• 4:35:18
  in its place. It did not look as if the owner had gone on
• 4:35:21
  a journey, But then she noticed that a number of letters had been destroyed.
• 4:35:26
  She opened a drawer and found that Margaret's trinkets were gone. An idea
• 4:35:30
  struck her. Margaret had bought lately a number of clothes, and these she
• 4:35:34
  had insisted should be sent to her dressmaker, saying that it was needless to
• 4:35:38
  cumber their little apartment with them. They could stay there till she returned to
• 4:35:42
  England a few weeks later for her marriage, and it would be simpler to
• 4:35:47
  despatch them all from one place. Susy went out at the door. It
• 4:35:52
  occurred to her to ask the concierge if she knew where Margaret had gone this
• 4:35:56
  morning. But then Man Mademoiselle answered, the old woman. I heard her
• 4:36:03
  tell the coachman to go to the British consulate. The last doubt was leaving
• 4:36:08
  Susy. She went to the dressmaker, and there discovered that, by Margaret's
• 4:36:14
  order, the boxes containing her things had gone on the previous day to the
• 4:36:17
  luggage office of the gardener. I hope you didn't let them go to your
• 4:36:22
  bill was paid, said Susy lightly, as though in jest. The dressmaker
• 4:36:26
  laughed, Bubbles paid for everything two or three days ago. With indignation,
• 4:36:33
  Susy realized that Margaret had not only taken the trousseau bought for her marriage with
• 4:36:38
  Arthur, but since she was herself penniless, had paid for it with the
• 4:36:42
  money which he had generously given her. Susy drove then to missus Bloomfield,
• 4:36:48
  who at once reproached her for not coming to see her. I'm sorry,
• 4:36:52
  but I've been exceedingly busy, and I knew that Margaret was looking after you.
• 4:36:56
  I've seen Margaret for three weeks, said the invalid, haven't you?
• 4:37:03
  I thought she dropped in quite often. Susy spoke as though the matter were
• 4:37:07
  of no importance. She asked herself, now where Margaret could have spent those
• 4:37:11
  afternoons. By a great effort, she forced herself to speak of casual things
• 4:37:17
  with the garrulous old lady long enough to make her visit seem natural. On
• 4:37:21
  leaving her, she went to the consulate, and her last doubt was dissipated.
• 4:37:27
  Then nothing remained but to go home and wait for Arthur. Her first
• 4:37:33
  impulse had been to see doctor Porhette and ask for his advice, But even
• 4:37:37
  if he offered to come back with her to the studio, his presence would
• 4:37:40
  be useless. She must see Arthur by himself. Her heart was wrung as
• 4:37:45
  she thought of the man's agony when he knew the truth. She had confessed
• 4:37:49
  to herself long before that she loved him passionately, and it seemed intolerable that
• 4:37:56
  she, of all persons, must bear him this great blow. She sat
• 4:38:02
  in the studio counting the minutes, and thought with a bitter smile that his
• 4:38:06
  eagerness to see Margaret would make him punctual. She had eaten nothing since the
• 4:38:11
  petti de journey of the morning, and she was faint with hunger, but
• 4:38:15
  she had not the heart to make herself tea. At last he came.
• 4:38:21
  He entered joyfully and looked round. Is Margaret not here yet? He asked,
• 4:38:26
  with surprise, won't you sit down? He did not notice that her
• 4:38:32
  voice was strange, nor that she kept her eyes averted. How lazy you
• 4:38:37
  are, he cried, You haven't got the tea. Mister Burden, I
• 4:38:42
  have something to say to you. It will cause you very great pain.
• 4:38:48
  He observed now the hoarseness of her tone. He sprang to his feet,
• 4:38:52
  and a thousand fancies flashed across his brain. Something horrible had happened to Margaret.
• 4:38:59
  She was ill. His terror was so great that he could not speak.
• 4:39:03
  He put out his hands as does a blind man. Susy had to
• 4:39:06
  make an effort to go on, but she could not. Her voice was
• 4:39:10
  choked, and she began to cry. Arthur trembled as though he were seized
• 4:39:15
  with aigi. She gave him the letter, What does it mean? He
• 4:39:22
  looked at her vacantly. Then she told him all that she had done that
• 4:39:26
  day, and the places to which she had been. When you thought she
• 4:39:32
  was spending everr afternoon with Missus Bloomfield, she was with that man. She
• 4:39:37
  made all the arrangements with the utmost care. It was quite premeditated. Arthur
• 4:39:45
  sat down and leaned his head on his hand. He turned his back to
• 4:39:49
  her so that she should not see his face. They remained in perfect silence,
• 4:39:55
  and it was so terrible that Susy began to cry quietly. She knew
• 4:40:00
  that the man she loved was suffering an agony greater than the agony of death,
• 4:40:04
  and she could not help him. Rage flared up in her heart,
• 4:40:10
  and hatred for Margaret. Oh it's infamous, she cried. Suddenly, she's
• 4:40:15
  lied to you. She's been odiously deceitful. She must be vile and heartless,
• 4:40:21
  she must be rotten to the very soul. He turned round sharply,
• 4:40:26
  and his voice was hard. I forbid you to say anything against her.
• 4:40:30
  Susy gave a little gasp. He had never spoken to her before. In
• 4:40:34
  anger, she flashed out bitterly. Can you still love her when she's shown
• 4:40:41
  herself capable of such vile treachery For nearly a month, this man must have
• 4:40:45
  been making love to her, and she's listened to all we said of him.
• 4:40:49
  She's pretended to hate the sight of him. I've seen her cut him
• 4:40:52
  in the street. She's gone on with all the preparations for your marriage.
• 4:40:56
  She must have lived in a world of lies, and you never suspected anything
• 4:41:00
  because you had an unalterable belief in her love and truthfulness. She owes everything
• 4:41:06
  to you For four years, she's lived on your charity. She was only
• 4:41:11
  able to be here because you gave her money to carry out a foolish whim
• 4:41:15
  and the very clothes on her back were paid for by you. I can't
• 4:41:21
  help it if she didn't love me, he cried desperately. Oh cut no,
• 4:41:25
  just as well as I do that she pretended to love you. Oh,
• 4:41:27
  she's behaved shamefully. There can be no excuse for her. He looked
• 4:41:33
  at Susie with haggard and miserable eyes. Ah, how can you be so
• 4:41:37
  cruel? For God's sake, don't make it harder. There was an indescribable
• 4:41:44
  agony in his voice, and as if his own words of pain overcame the
• 4:41:48
  last barrier his self control. He broke down. He hid his face in
• 4:41:53
  his hands and sobbed. Susie was horribly conscious, stricken. Oh, I'm
• 4:42:00
  so sorry, she said. I didn't mean to say such hateful things.
• 4:42:04
  I didn't mean to be unkind. I ought to have remembered how passionately you
• 4:42:10
  love her. It was very painful to see the effort he made to regain
• 4:42:15
  his self command. Susie suffered as much as he did. Her impulse was
• 4:42:19
  to throw herself on her knees and kiss his hands and comfort him, but
• 4:42:25
  she knew that he was interested in her only because she was Margaret's friend.
• 4:42:30
  At last, he got up, and, taking his pipe from his pocket,
• 4:42:33
  filled it silently. She was terrified at the look on his face.
• 4:42:37
  The first time she had ever seen him. Susy wondered at the possibility of
• 4:42:41
  self torture, which was in that rough hewn countenance, But she had never
• 4:42:47
  dreamed that it could express such unutterable suffering. Its lines were suddenly changed,
• 4:42:56
  and it was terrible to look upon. I can't believe it's true, he
• 4:43:03
  muttered, I can't believe it. There was a knock at the door,
• 4:43:08
  and Arthur gave a startled cry, perhaps she's come back. He opened it
• 4:43:15
  hurriedly, his face suddenly lit up by expectation. But it was doctor Poett.
• 4:43:19
  How do you do, said the Frenchman. What is happening? He
• 4:43:25
  looked round and caught the dismay that was on the faces of Arthur and Susy.
• 4:43:30
  Where is miss Margaret? I thought you must be giving a party.
• 4:43:33
  There was something in his manner that made Susy ask why I received a telegram
• 4:43:38
  from mister Haddo this morning. He took it from his pocket and handed it
• 4:43:42
  to Susy. She read it and passed it to Arthur. It said,
• 4:43:48
  come to the studio at five high Jinks Oliver Haddow. Margaret was married to
• 4:43:56
  mister Haddo this morning, said Arthur quietly. I understand they have gone to
• 4:44:02
  England. Susy quickly told the doctor the few facts they knew. He was
• 4:44:07
  as surprised as distressed as they But what is the excoplanation of it all?
• 4:44:14
  He asked. Arthur shrugged his shoulders wearily. She cared for hadd her more
• 4:44:19
  than she cared for me. I suppose it is natural enough that she should
• 4:44:25
  go away in this fashion, rather than offer explanations. I suppose she wanted
• 4:44:30
  to save herself a scene she thought might be rather painful. When did you
• 4:44:36
  see her last? We spent yesterday evening together, and she did not show
• 4:44:41
  in any way that she contemplated such a step. Arthur shook his head.
• 4:44:47
  You had no quarrel. We've never quarreled. She was in the best of
• 4:44:52
  spirits. I've never seen her more gay. She talked the whole time of
• 4:44:57
  our house in London, and of the place we must visit when we were
• 4:45:00
  married. Another contraction of pain passed over his face as he remembered that she
• 4:45:07
  had been more affectionate than she had ever been before. The fire of her
• 4:45:11
  kisses still burnt upon his lips. He had spent a night of almost sleepless
• 4:45:17
  ecstasy because he had been certain for the first time that the passion which consumed
• 4:45:22
  him burt in her heart too. Words were dragged out of him against his
• 4:45:26
  will. Uh, I I'm sure she loved me. Meanwhile, Susie's eyes
• 4:45:34
  were fixed on Haddow's cruel telegram. She seemed to hear his mocking laughter.
• 4:45:41
  Margaret loathed Oliver Haddo with a hatred that was almost unnatural. It was a
• 4:45:47
  physical repulsion, like that which people sometimes have for certain animals. What can
• 4:45:52
  have happened to change it into so great a love that it has made her
• 4:45:56
  capable of such villainous acts. He mustn't be unfair to him, said Arthur.
• 4:46:02
  He put our backs up, and we were probably unjust. He has
• 4:46:06
  done some very remarkable things in his day, and it's no fool. It's
• 4:46:11
  possible that some people wouldn't mind the eccentricities which irritated us. He's certainly a
• 4:46:17
  very good family, and he's rich in many ways. It's an excellent match
• 4:46:21
  for Margaret. He was trying with all his might to find excuses for her.
• 4:46:27
  It would not make her treaching so intolerable if he could persuade himself that
• 4:46:32
  Haddo had qualities which might explain her infatuation. But as his enemy stood before
• 4:46:37
  his fancy, monstrously obese, vulgar, and overbearing, a shudder passed through
• 4:46:42
  him. The thought of Margaret in that man's arms tortured him as though his
• 4:46:48
  flesh were torn with iron hooks. Perhaps it's not true. Perhaps she'll return,
• 4:46:55
  he cried, Would you take her back if she came to you?
• 4:46:59
  Asked Tusey, do you think anything she can do has the power to make
• 4:47:03
  me love her less? There must be reasons for which we know nothing,
• 4:47:07
  that caused her to do all she has done. I dare say it was
• 4:47:11
  inevitable from the beginning. Doctor Porette got up and walked across the room.
• 4:47:17
  If a woman had done me such an injuries that I wanted to take some
• 4:47:21
  horrible vengeance, I think I could devise nothing more subtly cruel than to let
• 4:47:26
  her be married to Oliver Haddall. Ah, poor thing, poor thing,
• 4:47:33
  cried Arthur. If I could only suppose she would be happy, the future
• 4:47:38
  terrifies me. I wonder if she knew that HEADO sent that telegram, said
• 4:47:44
  Susy, No, what can it matter? She turned on Arthur gravely.
• 4:47:51
  Do you remember that day in this studio when he kicked Margaret's dog and you
• 4:47:55
  threshed him well? Afterwards, when he thought no one saw him, I
• 4:48:00
  happened to catch a sight of his face. I never saw in my life
• 4:48:04
  such malignant hatred. It was the face of a fiend of wickedness and when
• 4:48:11
  he tried to excuse himself, there was a cruel gleam in his eyes which
• 4:48:15
  terrified me. I warned you, I told you that he had made up
• 4:48:18
  his mind to revenge himself. But you laughed at me, and then he
• 4:48:23
  seemed to go out of our lives, and I thought no more about it.
• 4:48:30
  I wonder why he sent doctor Poyette here to day. He must have
• 4:48:33
  known that the doctor would hear of his humiliation, and he must have wished
• 4:48:37
  that he should be present at his triumph. I think that very moment he
• 4:48:44
  made up his mind to be even with you, and he devised this odious
• 4:48:48
  scheme. How could he know that it was possible to carry out such a
• 4:48:52
  horrible thing, said Arthur. I am under if miss Boyd is right,
• 4:48:59
  murmured doctor. After all, if you come to think of it, he
• 4:49:03
  must have thought that he couldn't hurt you more. The whole thing is fiendish.
• 4:49:07
  It took away from you all your happiness. He must have known that
• 4:49:11
  you wanted nothing in the world more than to make Margaret your wife. Antheus
• 4:49:17
  not only prevented that, but he has married her himself, and he can
• 4:49:22
  only have done it by poisoning her mind by wharping her very character. Her
• 4:49:26
  soul must be horribly besmirched. He must have entirely changed her personality. I
• 4:49:33
  feel that, cried Arthur. If Margaret had broken her word to me,
• 4:49:38
  If she's gone to him so callously, it's because it's not the Margaret I
• 4:49:44
  know. Some devil must have taken possession of her body. You use a
• 4:49:48
  figure of speech. I wonder if it can possibly be a reality. Arthur
• 4:49:53
  and doctor Poorreette looked at Susy with astonishment. I can't believe that Margare could
• 4:50:00
  have done such a thing, she went on. The more I think of
• 4:50:03
  it, the more incredible it seems. I have known Margaret for years,
• 4:50:08
  and she was incapable of deceit. She was very kind hearted, She was
• 4:50:14
  honest and truthful. In the first moment of horror, I was only indignant,
• 4:50:19
  But I don't want to think too badly of her. There is only
• 4:50:22
  one way to excuse her, and that is by supposing she acted under some
• 4:50:26
  strange compulsion. Arthur clenched his hands. I'm not sure if that doesn't make
• 4:50:34
  it more awful than before. If he's married her not because it cares,
• 4:50:40
  but in order to hurt me what life will she lead with him? We
• 4:50:45
  know how heartless he is, how vindictive, how horribly cruel. Doctor Poyett
• 4:50:51
  knows more about these things than we do, said Susy. Is it possible
• 4:50:55
  that Haddell can have cast some spell upon her that would make her unable to
• 4:50:59
  rest his will? Is it possible that he can have got such an influence
• 4:51:03
  over her that her whole character was changed? How can I tell? Cried
• 4:51:08
  the doctor helplessly. I have heard that such things may happen. I have
• 4:51:12
  read of them, but I have no proof in these matters. All is
• 4:51:18
  obscurity. The adepts in magic make strange claims. Arthur is a man of
• 4:51:25
  science, and he knows what the limits of hypnotism are. We know that
• 4:51:30
  Haddo had powers that other men have not, answered Susy. Perhaps there was
• 4:51:34
  enough truth in his extravagant pretensions to enable him to do something that we can
• 4:51:38
  hardly imagine. Arthur passed his hands wearily over his face. I am so
• 4:51:47
  broken, so confused, that I cannot think sanely. At this moment,
• 4:51:52
  everything seems possible. My faith in all the truth that have supported me is
• 4:51:57
  tottering. For a while, they remained silent. Arthur's eyes rested on the
• 4:52:03
  chair in which Margaret had so often sat. An unfinished canvas still stood upon
• 4:52:08
  the easel. It was doctor Porette who spoke at last. But even if
• 4:52:14
  there was some truth in miss Boyd's supposition, I don't see how it can
• 4:52:18
  help you. You cannot do anything. You have no remedy, legal or
• 4:52:23
  otherwise. Margaret is apparently a free agent, and she has married this man.
• 4:52:30
  It is plain that many people will think she has done much better in
• 4:52:34
  marrying a country gentleman than in marrying a young surgeon. Her letter is perfectly
• 4:52:41
  lucid. There is no trace of compulsion. To all intents and purposes.
• 4:52:48
  She has married him of her own free will, and there is nothing to
• 4:52:52
  show that she desires to be released from him, or from the passion which
• 4:52:56
  we may suppose enslaves her. He said was obviously true, and no reply
• 4:53:03
  was possible. The only thing is to grin and bear it, said Arthur,
• 4:53:08
  rising, Where are you going? Said Susy. I think I want
• 4:53:14
  to get away from Paris. Here everything will remind me of what I have
• 4:53:18
  lost. I must get back to my work. He had regained command of
• 4:53:23
  over himself, and except for the hopeless woe of his face, which he
• 4:53:27
  could not prevent from being visible, he was as calm as ever. He
• 4:53:32
  held out his hand to Susy. I can only hope that you'll forget,
• 4:53:37
  she said. I don't wish to forget, he answered, shaking his head.
• 4:53:45
  It's possible that you will hear from Margaret. She'll want the things that
• 4:53:48
  she has left here, and I dare say will write to you. I
• 4:53:52
  should like you to tell her that I bear her no ill will for anything
• 4:53:56
  she has done, and I will venture to reproach her. I don't know
• 4:54:03
  if I shall be able to do anything for her, but I wish her
• 4:54:06
  to know that in any case and always, I will do everything that she
• 4:54:10
  wants. If she writes to me, I will see that she is told,
• 4:54:15
  answered Susy gravely, and now good bye. You can't go to London
• 4:54:23
  till to morrow. Shan't I see you in the morning. I think,
• 4:54:29
  if you don't mind, I won't come here again. The sight of all
• 4:54:33
  this rather disturbs me again. A contraction of pain passed across his eyes,
• 4:54:38
  and Susy saw that he was using a superhuman effort to preserve the appearance of
• 4:54:44
  composure. She hesitated a moment. Shall I never see you again? She
• 4:54:51
  said, I should be sorry to lose sight of you entirely. I should
• 4:54:56
  be sorry too, he answered I. I have learned how good and kind
• 4:55:00
  you are, and I shall never forget that you are Margaret's friend. When
• 4:55:06
  you come to London, I hope that you will let me know. He
• 4:55:10
  went out. Doctor Poette, his hands behind his back, began to walk
• 4:55:15
  up and down the room. At last he turned to Susie. There is
• 4:55:21
  one thing that puzzles me, he said, why did he marry her?
• 4:55:27
  He heard what Arthur said, answered Chousie bitterly. Whatever happened, he would
• 4:55:33
  have taken her back. The other man knew that he could only bind her
• 4:55:37
  to him securely by going through the ceremonies of marriage. Doctor Porette shrugged his
• 4:55:44
  shoulders, and presently he left her. When Susie was alone, she began
• 4:55:48
  to weep broken heartedly, not for herself, but because Arthur suffered an agony
• 4:55:53
  that was hardly endurable. End of chapter ten, Chapter eleven of The Magician
• 4:56:07
  by Somerset Mam. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Arthur went
• 4:56:15
  back to London. Next day, Susie felt it impossible any longer to stay
• 4:56:19
  in the deserted studio, and accepted a friend's invitation to spend the winter in
• 4:56:23
  Italy. The good doctor Porette remained in Paris with his books and his occult
• 4:56:29
  studies. Susie traveled slowly through Tuscany and Umbria. Margaret had not written to
• 4:56:34
  her, and Susie, on leaving Paris, had sent her friend's belongings to
• 4:56:38
  an address from which she knew they would eventually be forwarded. She could not
• 4:56:44
  bring herself to write in answer to a note announcing her change of plans.
• 4:56:48
  Arthur wrote briefly that he had much work to do and was delivering a new
• 4:56:52
  course of lectures at Saint Luke's. He had lately been appointed visiting surgeon to
• 4:56:57
  another hospital, and his private practice was increasing. He did not mention Margaret.
• 4:57:03
  His letter was abrupt, formal, and constrained. Susy, reading it
• 4:57:08
  for the tenth time, could make little of it. She saw that he
• 4:57:11
  wrote only from civility, without interest, and there was nothing to indicate his
• 4:57:15
  state of mind. Susie and her companion had made up their minds to pass
• 4:57:21
  some weeks in Rome, and here, to her astonishment, Susie had news
• 4:57:26
  of Haddo and his wife. It appeared that they had spent some time there,
• 4:57:30
  and the little English circle was talking still of their eccentricities. They traveled
• 4:57:36
  in some state with a courier and a suite of servants. They had taken
• 4:57:40
  a carriage and were in the habit of driving every afternoon on the piinzial Haddo
• 4:57:45
  had excited attention by the extravagance of his costume, and Margaret by her beauty.
• 4:57:51
  She was to be seen in her box at the opera every night,
• 4:57:53
  and her diamonds were the envy of all beholders. Though people had laughed a
• 4:57:59
  good deal at Hemadow's pretentiousness and had been exasperated by his arrogance, they could
• 4:58:03
  not fail to be impressed by his obvious wealth. But finally the pair had
• 4:58:07
  disappeared suddenly, without saying a word to anybody. A good many bills remained
• 4:58:12
  unpaid, but these, Susie learned, had been settled. Later it was
• 4:58:18
  reported that they were now in Monte Carlo. Did they seem happy? Susie
• 4:58:23
  asked the gossiping friend who gave her this scanty information. I think so.
• 4:58:30
  After all, missus Haddow has almost everything that a woman can want, riches,
• 4:58:34
  beauty, nice clothes, jewels. She would be very unreasonable not to
• 4:58:40
  be happy. Susie had meant to pass the later spring on the riviera,
• 4:58:45
  but when she heard that the Haddows were there, she hesitated. She did
• 4:58:48
  not want to run the risk of seeing them, and yet she had a
• 4:58:52
  keen desire to find out exactly how things were going. Curiosity and distaste struggled
• 4:58:59
  in her mind, but curiosity won, and she persuaded her friend to go
• 4:59:03
  to Monte Carlo instead of to Bellieu. At first, Susie did not see
• 4:59:08
  Thehadows, but rumor was already much occupied with them, and she had only
• 4:59:14
  to keep her ears open. In that strange place where all that is extravagant
• 4:59:18
  and evil, all that is morbid, insane and fantastic, is gathered together,
• 4:59:23
  the Haddows were in fit company. They were notorious for their assiduity at
• 4:59:29
  the tables, and for their luck for the dinners and suppers they gave at
• 4:59:33
  places frequented by the very opulent, and for their eccentric appearance. It was
• 4:59:37
  a complex picture that Susie put together from the scraps of information she collected.
• 4:59:44
  After two or three days, she saw them at the tables, but they
• 4:59:47
  were so absorbed in their game that she felt quite safe from discovery. Margaret
• 4:59:52
  was playing, but Haddo stood behind her and directed her movements. Their faces
• 4:59:56
  were extraordinarily intent. Sus fixed her attention on Margaret, for in what she
• 5:00:03
  had heard of her, she had been quite unable to recognize the girl who
• 5:00:06
  had been her friend. And what struck her most now was that there was
• 5:00:11
  in Margaret's expression a singular likeness to Haddow's. Notwithstanding her exquisite beauty, she
• 5:00:18
  had a curiously vicious look, which suggested that somehow she saw literally with Oliver's
• 5:00:23
  eyes. They had won great sums that evening, and many persons watched them.
• 5:00:30
  It appeared that they played always in this fashion, Margaret putting on the
• 5:00:33
  stakes and Haddow telling her what to do and when to stop. Susie heard
• 5:00:38
  two frenchmen talking of them. She listened with all her ears. She flushed
• 5:00:44
  as she heard one of them make an observation about Margaret, which was more
• 5:00:48
  than coarse. The other laughed, it is incredible, he said, I
• 5:00:55
  assure you, it's true. They have been married six months, and she
• 5:01:00
  is still only his wife in name. The superstitious through all the ages have
• 5:01:04
  believed in the power of virginity, and the Church has made the use of
• 5:01:10
  the idea for its own ends. The man uses her simply as a muscot.
• 5:01:15
  The men laughed, and their conversation proceeded so grossly that Susie's cheeks burned.
• 5:01:22
  But what she had heard made her look at Margaret more closely. Still,
• 5:01:26
  she was radiant. Susie could not deny that something had come to her
• 5:01:30
  that gave a new, enigmatic savor to her beauty. She was dressed more
• 5:01:36
  gorgeously than Susie's fastidious taste would have permitted, and her diamonds, splendid in
• 5:01:41
  themselves, were too magnificent for the occasion. At last, sweeping up the
• 5:01:45
  money, Haddo touched her on the shoulder, and she rose behind her is
• 5:01:49
  standing a painted woman of notorious disreputability. Susie was astonished to see Margaret's smile
• 5:01:56
  and nod as she passed her. Juzzy learnt that the Haddos had a suite
• 5:02:00
  of rooms at the most expensive of the hotels. They lived in. A
• 5:02:04
  whirl of gaiety. They knew few English, except those whose reputations were damaged,
• 5:02:11
  but seemed to prefer the society of those foreigners whose wealth and eccentricities made
• 5:02:15
  them the cynosure of that little world. Afterwards, she often saw them in
• 5:02:19
  company of Russian grand dukes and their mistresses, of South American women with prodigious
• 5:02:26
  diamonds, of noble gamblers, and great ladies of doubtful fame, of strange
• 5:02:32
  men, overdressed and scented. Rumor was increasingly busy with them. Margaret moved
• 5:02:37
  among all those queer people with a cold mysteriousness that excited the curiosity of the
• 5:02:42
  sated idlers. The suggestion which Susie overheard was repeated more circumstantially. But to
• 5:02:49
  this was joined presently the report of orgies that were enacted in the darkened sitting
• 5:02:55
  room of the hotel, when all that was noble and vicious in Monte Carlo
• 5:03:00
  was present. Oliver's eccentric imagination invented whimsical festivities. He had a passion for
• 5:03:07
  disguise, and he gave a fancy dress party, of which fabulous stories were
• 5:03:11
  told. He sought to revive the mystical ceremonies of old religions, and it
• 5:03:18
  was reported that horrible rites had been performed in the garden of the villa under
• 5:03:22
  the shining moon, in imitation of those he had seen in eastern places.
• 5:03:27
  It was said that Haddo had magical powers of extraordinary character, and the tired
• 5:03:33
  imagination of those pleasure seekers was tickled by his talk of black art. Some
• 5:03:37
  even asserted that the blasphemous ceremonies of the Black Mass had been celebrated in the
• 5:03:44
  house of a Polish prince. People babbled of Satanism and of necromancy. Haddo
• 5:03:51
  was thought to be immersed in occult studies for the performance of a magical operation,
• 5:03:56
  and some said that he was occupied with the magnum Opus, the greatest
• 5:04:00
  and most fantastic of alchemical experiments. Gradually these stories were narrowed down to the
• 5:04:07
  monstrous assertion that he was attempting to create living beings. He had explained at
• 5:04:12
  length to somebody that magical receipts existed for the manufacturer of homunculie. Haddo was
• 5:04:22
  known generally by the name he was pleased to give himself the Brother of the
• 5:04:26
  Shadow, but most people used it in derision, for it contrasted absurdly with
• 5:04:32
  his astonishing bulk. They were amused or outraged by his vanity, but they
• 5:04:37
  could not help talking about him, and Susie knew well enough by now that
• 5:04:41
  nothing pleased him more. His exploits as a lion hunter were well known,
• 5:04:47
  and it was reported that human blood was on his hands. It was soon
• 5:04:52
  discovered that he had a queer power over animals, so that in his presence
• 5:04:56
  they were seized with unaccountable terror. Succeeded in surrounding himself with an atmosphere of
• 5:05:02
  the fabulous, and nothing that was told of him was too extravagant for belief.
• 5:05:07
  But unpleasant stories were circulated also, and someone related that he had been
• 5:05:11
  turned out of a club in Vienna for cheating at cards. He played many
• 5:05:17
  games, but here as at Oxford, it was found that he was an
• 5:05:19
  unscrupulous opponent, and those old rumors followed him that he took strange drugs.
• 5:05:26
  He was supposed to have odious vices, and people whispered to one another of
• 5:05:32
  scandals that had been with difficulties suppressed. No one quite understood on what terms
• 5:05:37
  he was with his wife, and it was vaguely asserted that he was at
• 5:05:41
  times brutally cruel to her. Susie's heart sank when she heard this, but
• 5:05:47
  on the few occasions upon which she caught sight of Margaret, she seemed in
• 5:05:51
  the highest spirits. One story inexpressibly shocked her. After lunching at some restaurant,
• 5:05:57
  Haddo gave a bad Lewis a mine the money with which he paid the
• 5:06:00
  bill, and there was a disgraceful altercation with the waiter. He refused to
• 5:06:07
  change the coin till a policeman was brought in. His guests were furious,
• 5:06:11
  and several took the first opportunity to cut him dead. One of those present
• 5:06:15
  narrated the scene to Susie, and she was told that Margaret laughed unconcernedly with
• 5:06:21
  her neighbor while the sordid quarrel was proceeding. The man's blood was as good
• 5:06:26
  as his fortune was substantial, but it seemed to please him to behave like
• 5:06:30
  an adventurer. The incident was soon common property, and gradually the Haddos found
• 5:06:36
  themselves cold shouldered. The persons with whom they most consorted had reputations too delicate
• 5:06:41
  to stand the glare of publicity which shone upon all who were connected with him,
• 5:06:47
  and the suggestion of police had thrown a shudder down many a spine.
• 5:06:52
  What had happened in Rome happened here again. They suddenly disappeared. Susy had
• 5:07:00
  not been in London for some time, and as the spring advanced, she
• 5:07:03
  remembered that her friends would be glad to see her. It would be charming
• 5:07:08
  to spend a few weeks. There were then adequate income for its pleasures had
• 5:07:12
  hitherto been closed to her, and she looked forward to her visit as if
• 5:07:17
  it were to a foreign city. But though she would not confess it to
• 5:07:21
  herself, her desire to see Arthur was the strongest of her motives. Time
• 5:07:26
  and absence had deadened a little the intensity of her feelings, and she could
• 5:07:30
  afford to acknowledge that she regarded him with a very great affection. She knew
• 5:07:36
  that he would never care for her, but she was content to be his
• 5:07:40
  friend. She could think of him without pain. Susy stayed in Paris for
• 5:07:45
  three weeks to buy some of the clothes, which she asserted were now her
• 5:07:48
  only pleasure in life, and then went to London. She wrote to Arthur
• 5:07:55
  and he invited her at once to lunch with him at a restaurant. She
• 5:07:59
  was vexed, for she felt they could have spoken more freely in his own
• 5:08:02
  house. But as soon as she saw him, she realized that he had
• 5:08:06
  chosen their meeting place deliberately. The crowd of people that surrounded them, the
• 5:08:11
  gaiety, the playing of the band, prevented any intimacy of conversation. They
• 5:08:15
  were forced to talk of commonplaces. Susy was positively terrified at the change that
• 5:08:21
  had taken place in him. He looked ten years older, He had lost
• 5:08:25
  flesh, and his hair was sprinkled with white. His face was extraordinarily drawn,
• 5:08:30
  and his eyes were weary from lack of sleep. But what most struck
• 5:08:36
  her was the change in his expression. The look of pain which he had
• 5:08:40
  seen on his face that last evening in the studio, was now become settled,
• 5:08:45
  so that it altered the lines of his countenance. It was harrowing to
• 5:08:49
  look at him. He was more silent than ever, and when he spoke,
• 5:08:53
  it was in a strange, low voice that seemed to come from a
• 5:08:57
  long way off. To be with him made Susy curiously uneasy, for there
• 5:09:03
  was a strenuousness in him, which deprived his manner of all repose. One
• 5:09:08
  of the things that had pleased her in him formally was the tranquility, which
• 5:09:12
  gave one the impression that here was a man who could be relied on in
• 5:09:17
  difficulties. At first she could not understand exactly what had happened, but in
• 5:09:22
  a moment saw that he was making an unceasing effort at self control. He
• 5:09:29
  was never free from suffering, and he was constantly on the alert to prevent
• 5:09:33
  any one from seeing it. The strain gave him a peculiar restlessness, but
• 5:09:38
  he was gentler than he had ever been before. He seemed genuinely glad to
• 5:09:44
  see her, and asked about her travels with interest. Susy led him to
• 5:09:48
  talk of himself, and he spoke willingly enough of his daily round. He
• 5:09:52
  was earning a good deal of money, and his professional reputation was making steady
• 5:09:57
  progress. He worked hard god besides his duties at the two hospitals with which
• 5:10:03
  he was now connected, his teaching and his private practice. He had read
• 5:10:07
  of late one or two papers before scientific bodies, and was editing a large
• 5:10:12
  work on surgery. How on earth can you find time to do so much,
• 5:10:18
  asked Susy, I can do when less sleep than I used? He
• 5:10:23
  answered, it almost doubles my working day. He stopped abruptly and looked down.
• 5:10:30
  His remark had given, accidentally some hint at the inner life which he
• 5:10:34
  was striving to conceal. Susy knew that her suspicion was well founded. She
• 5:10:41
  thought of the long hours he lay awake, trying in vain to drive from
• 5:10:45
  his mind the agony that tortured him, and the short intervals of troubled sleep.
• 5:10:49
  She knew that he delayed as long as possible the fatal moment of going
• 5:10:53
  to bed, and welcomed the first light of day, which gave him an
• 5:10:56
  excuse for getting up, And because he knew that he had divulged the truth,
• 5:11:02
  he was embarrassed. They sat in awkward silence. To Susie, the
• 5:11:08
  tragic figure in front of her was singularly impressive. Amid that light hearted throng
• 5:11:14
  all about them, happy persons were enjoying the good things of life, talking,
• 5:11:18
  laughing and making merry. She wondered what refinement of self torture had driven
• 5:11:22
  him to choose that place to come to. He must hate it when they
• 5:11:29
  finished luncheon. Susie took her courage in both hands. Would you come back
• 5:11:33
  to my rooms for half an hour? We can't talk here. He made
• 5:11:38
  an instinctive motion of withdrawal, as though he sought to escape. He did
• 5:11:42
  not answer immediately, and she insisted, you have nothing to do for an
• 5:11:48
  hour, and there are many things I want to speak to you about.
• 5:11:53
  The only way to be strong is never to surrender to one's weakness, he
• 5:11:59
  said, almost in a whisper, as though ashamed talk so intimately. Then
• 5:12:03
  you won't come. No, it was not necessary to specify the matter which
• 5:12:10
  it was proposed to discuss. Arthur knew perfectly that Susy wished to talk of
• 5:12:15
  Margaret, and he was too straightforward to pretend otherwise. Susy paused for one
• 5:12:19
  moment. I was never able to give Margaret your message. She did not
• 5:12:26
  write to me. A certain wildness came into his eyes, as if the
• 5:12:30
  effort he made was almost too much for him. I saw her in Monte
• 5:12:34
  Carlo, said Susy. I thought you might like to hear about her.
• 5:12:40
  I don't see that it can do any good, he answered. Susy made
• 5:12:45
  a little hopeless gesture. She was beaten. Shall I go, she said?
• 5:12:52
  You are not angry with me, he asked, I know you mean
• 5:12:56
  to be kind. I'm that very grateful to you. I shall never be
• 5:13:02
  angry with you. She smiled. Arthur paid the bill, and they threaded
• 5:13:07
  their way among the tables. At the door, she held out her hand.
• 5:13:11
  I think you do wrong in shutting yourself away from all human comradeship,
• 5:13:15
  she said, with that good humored smile of hers. You must know that
• 5:13:19
  you will only grow absurdly morbid. Ah, I go out a great deal,
• 5:13:26
  he answered, patiently, as though he reasoned with a child. I
• 5:13:30
  make a point of offering myself distractions from my work. I go to the
• 5:13:33
  opera two or three times a week. I thought you didn't care for music.
• 5:13:38
  I don't think I did, he answered. But I find it rests
• 5:13:44
  me. He spoke, with a weariness that was appalling. Susy had never
• 5:13:49
  beheld so plainly the torment of a soul in pain. Won't you let me
• 5:13:55
  come to the opera with you one night? She asked? Or does it
• 5:13:59
  bore you to see me? Now? I should like it to pu all
• 5:14:03
  things, he smiled, quite brightly. You're like a wonderful tonic. May
• 5:14:07
  they're giving Tristan on Thursday. Shall we go together? I should enjoy it
• 5:14:11
  enormously. She shook hands with him and jumped into a cab. Humph,
• 5:14:18
  poor thing, she murmured, poor thing, What can I do for him?
• 5:14:26
  She clenched her hands when she thought of Margaret. It was monstrous that
• 5:14:30
  she should have caused such havoc in that good strong man. Oh, I
• 5:14:34
  hope she'll suffer for it, she whispered, vindictively. I hope she'll suffer
• 5:14:40
  all the agony that he has suffered. Susie dressed herself for Covent Garden as
• 5:14:47
  only she could do. Her gown pleased her exceedingly, not only because it
• 5:14:51
  was admirably made, but because it had cost far more than she could afford.
• 5:14:56
  To dress well was her only extravagance. It was of teffer to silk
• 5:15:00
  in that exquisite green, which the learned in such matters call eau de nille,
• 5:15:06
  and its beauty was enhanced by the old lace, which had formed not
• 5:15:08
  the least treasured part of her inheritance. In her hair, she wore an
• 5:15:14
  ornament of Spanish paste of exquisite workmanship, and round her neck, a chain
• 5:15:18
  which had once adorned that of a madonna in an Andalusian church. Her individuality
• 5:15:23
  made even her plainness attractive. She smiled at herself in the glass, ruefully
• 5:15:29
  because Arthur would never notice that she was perfectly dressed. When she tripped down
• 5:15:33
  the stairs and across the pavement to the cab with which he fetched her,
• 5:15:37
  Susie held up her skirt with a grace. She flattered herself was quite Parisian.
• 5:15:44
  As they drove along, she flirted a little with her Spanish fan and
• 5:15:47
  stole a glance at herself in the glass. Her gloves were so long,
• 5:15:51
  and so new, and so expensive that she was really indifferent to Arthur's inattention.
• 5:15:59
  Her joyous temps and expanded like a spring flower. When she found herself
• 5:16:03
  in the opera house, she put up her glasses and examined the women as
• 5:16:07
  they came into the boxes of the grand tyr. Arthur pointed out a number
• 5:16:11
  of persons whose names were familiar to her, but she felt the effort he
• 5:16:15
  was making to be amiable. The weariness of his mouth. That evening was
• 5:16:19
  more noticeable because of the careless throng, But when the music began, he
• 5:16:25
  seemed to forget that any eye was upon him. He relaxed the constant tension
• 5:16:30
  in which he held himself, and Susy, watching him surreptitiously, saw the
• 5:16:33
  emotions chase one another across his face. It was now very mobile. The
• 5:16:40
  passionate sounds ate into his soul, mingling with his own love and his own
• 5:16:44
  sorrow, till he was taken out of himself, and sometimes he panted strangely.
• 5:16:49
  Through the interval, he remained absorbed in his emotion. He sat as
• 5:16:55
  quietly as before, and did not speak a word. Susie understood why Arthur,
• 5:17:00
  notwithstanding his old indifference, now showed such eager appreciation of music. It
• 5:17:06
  eased the pain he suffered by transferring it to an ideal world, and his
• 5:17:10
  own grievous sorrow made the music so real that it gave him an enjoyment of
• 5:17:15
  extraordinary vehemence. When it was all over, and Isoulda had given her last
• 5:17:22
  wail of sorrow, Arthur was so exhausted that he could hardly stir. But
• 5:17:27
  they went out with the crowd, and while they were waiting in the vestibule
• 5:17:32
  for space to move in, a common friend came up to them. This
• 5:17:34
  was Arbuthnot, an eye specialist whom Susie had met on the Riviera, and
• 5:17:41
  who she presently discovered was a colleague of Arthur's at Saint Luke's. He was
• 5:17:45
  a prosperous bachelor, with gray hair and a red contented face. Well to
• 5:17:49
  do, for his practice was large and lavish with his money. He had
• 5:17:53
  taken Susie out to luncheon once or twice in Monte Carlo, for he liked
• 5:17:57
  women pretty or playe and she attracted him by her good humor. He rushed
• 5:18:03
  up to them now and wrung their hands. He spoke in a jovial voice,
• 5:18:08
  the very people I wanted to see. Why haven't you been to see
• 5:18:11
  me, you wicked woman. I'm sure your eyes are in deplorable condition.
• 5:18:17
  Do you think I would let a bold bad man like you stare into them
• 5:18:21
  with an upfoum scope, robbed Susie. Now look here, I want you
• 5:18:26
  both to do me a great favor. I'm giving a supper party at the
• 5:18:30
  Savoy, and two of my people have suddenly failed me. The table is
• 5:18:34
  ordered for eight, and you must come and take their places. I'm afraid
• 5:18:40
  I must get home, said Arthur. I have a deuce of a lot
• 5:18:42
  of work to do your nonsense, answered Armuthnot you work much too hard,
• 5:18:48
  and a little relaxation will do you good. He turned Susie. I know
• 5:18:53
  you like curiosities in human nature. I'm having a man and his wife who
• 5:18:59
  are positively thrill less, so queer, and a lovely actress and an awesuly
• 5:19:03
  jolly American girl. I should love to come, said Susie, with an
• 5:19:08
  appealing look at Arthur, if only to show you how much more amusing I
• 5:19:14
  am than lovely actresses. Arthur, forcing himself to smile, accepted the invitation.
• 5:19:21
  The specialists patted him cheerily on the back, and they agreed to meet
• 5:19:23
  at the Savoy. It's hotly good of you to come, said Susie as
• 5:19:29
  they drove along. Do you know I've never been there in my life,
• 5:19:32
  and I'm palpitating with excitement. What a selfish brute I was to refuse,
• 5:19:37
  he answered. When Susy came out of the dressing room, she found Arthur
• 5:19:44
  waiting for her. She was in the best of spirits. Now you must
• 5:19:48
  say you like my frock. I've seen six women turn green with envy at
• 5:19:52
  the sight of it. They think I must be French, and they're sure
• 5:19:56
  I'm not respectable. Evidently a great compliment. He smiled. At that moment,
• 5:20:03
  Arbuthnot came up to them in his eager way and seized their arms.
• 5:20:07
  You come along, we're waiting for you. I'll just introduce you all round,
• 5:20:11
  and then we'll go in to supper. They walked down the steps into
• 5:20:15
  the foyer, and he led them to a group of people. They found
• 5:20:19
  themselves face to face with Oliver Haddowe and Margaret Yea, mister Arthur Burden,
• 5:20:26
  missus Haddow. Mister Burdon is a colleague who mind at Saint Luke's. He
• 5:20:30
  will cut out your appendix in a shorter time than any man alive. Arbuthnot
• 5:20:34
  rattled on. He did not notice that Arthur had grown ghastly pale, and
• 5:20:40
  that Margaret was blank with consternation. Haddo, his heavy face wreathed with smile,
• 5:20:45
  stepped forward heartily. He seemed thoroughly to enjoy the situation. Mister Burden
• 5:20:52
  is an old friend of ours, he said. In fact, it was
• 5:20:56
  he who introduced me to my wife, and miss boy and I have discussed
• 5:21:00
  art and the immortality of the soul with the gravity new to such topics.
• 5:21:07
  He held out his hand and Susy took it. She had a horror of
• 5:21:11
  scenes, and though this encounter was as unexpected as it was disagreeable, she
• 5:21:15
  felt it needful to behave Naturally, she shook hands with Margaret Red. Disappointing,
• 5:21:22
  cried their host. I was hoping to give me his boy something quite
• 5:21:26
  new in the way of magicians and bold. She knows all about him.
• 5:21:32
  If she did, I'm quite sure she wouldn't speak to me, said Oliver
• 5:21:36
  with a bantering smile. They went into the supper room. Oh, how
• 5:21:41
  shall we sit, said arbuthnot glancing round the table. Oliver looked at Arthur,
• 5:21:47
  and his eyes twinkled. You must really let my wife and mister Burdon
• 5:21:52
  be together. They haven't seen one another for so long that I'm sure they
• 5:21:56
  have no end of things to talk about, he chuckled to himself. And
• 5:22:03
  pray give me miss boyd Desol that she can abuse me to her heart's content.
• 5:22:08
  This arrangement thoroughly suited the gay specialist, for he was able to put
• 5:22:12
  the beautiful actress on one side of him and the charming American on the other.
• 5:22:17
  He rubbed his hands. I feel it were great. Have a delightful
• 5:22:21
  supper. Oliver laughed boisterously. He took, as was his habit, the
• 5:22:26
  whole conversation upon himself, and Susy was obliged to confess that he was at
• 5:22:32
  his best. There was a grotesque drollery about him that was very diverting,
• 5:22:37
  and it was almost impossible to resist him. He ate and drank with tremendous
• 5:22:41
  appetite. Susy thanked her stars at that moment that she was a woman who
• 5:22:47
  knew, by long practice how to conceal her feelings for Arthur. Overcome with
• 5:22:52
  dismay at the meeting, sat in stony silence, but she talked gaily.
• 5:22:56
  She chaffed Oliver as though he were an old friend, and laughed vivaciously.
• 5:23:02
  She noticed, meanwhile, that Haddo, more extravagantly dressed than usual, had
• 5:23:07
  managed to get an odd fantasy into his evening clothes. He wore knee breeches,
• 5:23:11
  which in itself was enough to excite attention, but his frilled shirt,
• 5:23:17
  his velvet collar, and oddly cut satin waistcoat gave him the appearance of a
• 5:23:21
  comic Frenchman. Now that she was able to examine him more closely. She
• 5:23:26
  saw that in the last six months he had grown much balder, and the
• 5:23:30
  shiny whiteness of his naked crown contrasted oddly with the redness of his face.
• 5:23:34
  He was stouter, too, and the fat hung in heavy folds under his
• 5:23:40
  chin. His paunch was preposterous. The vivacity of his movements made his huge
• 5:23:45
  corpulence subtly alarming. He was growing, indeed strangely terrible in appearance. His
• 5:23:52
  eyes still had that fixed parallel look, but there was in them now at
• 5:23:56
  times a ferocious gleam. Margaret's was as beautiful as ever, but Susie noticed
• 5:24:03
  that his influence was apparent in her dress, for there could be no doubt
• 5:24:07
  that it had crossed the line of individuality and had degenerated into the eccentric.
• 5:24:12
  Her gown was much too gorgeous. It told against the classical character of her
• 5:24:18
  beauty. Susy shuddered a little, for it reminded her of a courtisans.
• 5:24:26
  Margaret talked and laughed as much as her husband, but Susy could not tell
• 5:24:30
  whether this animation was affected or due to an utter callousness. Her voice seemed
• 5:24:36
  natural enough yet it was inconceivable that she should be so light hearted. Perhaps
• 5:24:41
  she was trying to show that she was happy. The supper proceeded, and
• 5:24:45
  the lights, the surrounding gaiety the champagne made everyone more lively. Their host
• 5:24:51
  was in uproarious spirits. He told a story or two it which every one
• 5:24:55
  laughed. Oliver Haddo had an amusing anecdote, Handy. It was a little
• 5:25:00
  risky, but it was so funnily narrated that everyone roared, but Arthur,
• 5:25:03
  who remained in perfect silence. Margaret had been drinking glass after glass of wine,
• 5:25:11
  and no sooner had her husband finished than she capped his story with another.
• 5:25:15
  But whereas his was wittily immoral, hers was simply gross. At first,
• 5:25:22
  the other women could not understand to what she was tending, but when
• 5:25:26
  they saw they looked down awkwardly at their plates. Arbuthnot Haddo, and the
• 5:25:30
  other man who were there laughed very heartily, but Arthur flushed to the roots
• 5:25:36
  of his hair. He felt horribly uncomfortable. He was ashamed. He dared
• 5:25:42
  not look at Margaret. It was inconceivable that from her exquisite mouth such indecency
• 5:25:48
  should issue. Margaret apparently quite unconscious of the effect she had produced, went
• 5:25:53
  on talking and laughing. Soon the lights were put out and Arthur's agony was
• 5:26:00
  ended. He wanted to rush away, to hide his face, to forget
• 5:26:03
  the sight of her and her gaiety. Above all, to forget that story.
• 5:26:07
  It was horrible, horrible. She shook hands with him quite lightly.
• 5:26:11
  You must come and see us one day. We've got rooms at the Carlton.
• 5:26:17
  He bowed and did not answer. Susy had gone to the dressing room
• 5:26:22
  to get her cloak. She stood at the door when Margaret came out.
• 5:26:26
  Can we drop you anywhere? Asked Margaret. You must come and see us
• 5:26:30
  when you have nothing better to do. Susy threw back her head. Arthur
• 5:26:37
  was standing just in front of them, looking down at the ground in complete
• 5:26:40
  abstraction. Do you see him, she said, in a low voice,
• 5:26:45
  quivering with indignation. That is what you have made him. He looked up
• 5:26:52
  at that moment and turned upon them his sunken, tormented eyes. They saw
• 5:26:56
  his wan pallid face with its look of hopeless war. Do you know that
• 5:27:02
  he's killing himself on your account? He can't sleep at night. He suffered
• 5:27:07
  the tortures of the damned No, I hope you'll suffer as he's suffered.
• 5:27:14
  I wonder that you blame me, said Margaret. You ought to be rather
• 5:27:18
  grateful. Why were? You're not going to deny that you've loved him passionately
• 5:27:23
  from the first day you saw him. Do you think I didn't see that
• 5:27:27
  you cared for him in Paris? You care for him now more than ever.
• 5:27:33
  Susy felt suddenly sick at heart. She had never dreamt that her secret
• 5:27:38
  was discovered. Margaret gave her a bitter little laugh and walked past her.
• 5:27:45
  End of chapter eleven Chapter twelve of The Magician by Somerset ma'am. This LibriVox
• 5:28:03
  recording is in the public domain. Arthur Burden spent two or three days in
• 5:28:11
  a state of utter uncertainty, but at last the idea he had in mind
• 5:28:15
  grew so compelling as to overcome all objections. He went to the Carlton and
• 5:28:21
  asked for Margaret. He had learnt from the porter that Haddow was gone out,
• 5:28:25
  and so counted on finding her alone. A simple device enabled him to
• 5:28:29
  avoid sending up his name. When he was shown into her private room,
• 5:28:33
  Margaret was sitting down. She neither read nor worked you told me I might
• 5:28:38
  call upon you, said Arthur. She stood up without answering, and turned
• 5:28:44
  deathly pale. May I sit down, he asked. She bowed her head
• 5:28:49
  for a moment. They looked at one another in silence. Arthur suddenly forgot
• 5:28:53
  all he had prepared to say. His intrusion seemed intolerable. Why have you
• 5:28:59
  come, she said hoarsely. They both felt that it was useless to attempt
• 5:29:03
  the conventionality of society. It was impossible to deal with the polite commonplaces that
• 5:29:08
  ease an awkward situation. And I thought that I might be able to help
• 5:29:14
  you, he answered gravely. I want no help. I'm perfectly happy.
• 5:29:19
  I have nothing to say to you. She spoke hurriedly, with a certain
• 5:29:23
  nervousness, and her eyes were fixed anxiously on the door, as though she
• 5:29:27
  feared that some one would come in. And I feel that we have much
• 5:29:30
  to say to one another, he insisted. If it is inconvenient for us
• 5:29:34
  to talk here, will you not come and see me it? No,
• 5:29:38
  she cried suddenly, as if the words were dragged out of her. Do
• 5:29:44
  you think anything could be hidden from him? Arthur glanced at her. He
• 5:29:48
  was horrified by the terror that was in her eyes in the full light of
• 5:29:52
  day. A change was plain in her expression. Her face was strangely drawn
• 5:29:57
  and pinched, and there was in it a constant lookers of a person cowed.
• 5:30:03
  Arthur turned away. I want you to know that I do not blame
• 5:30:07
  you in the least for anything you did. No action of yours can ever
• 5:30:11
  lessen my affection for you. Why did you come here? Why do you
• 5:30:15
  torture me by saying such things? She burst on a sudden into a flood
• 5:30:21
  of tears, and walked excitedly up and down the room. If you wanted
• 5:30:27
  me to be punished for the pain I've caused you, you can triumph now,
• 5:30:33
  Susy said. She hoped I'd suffer all the agony that I've made you.
• 5:30:37
  Supper she only knew. Margaret gave a hysterical laugh. She flung herself
• 5:30:45
  on her knees by Arthur's side and seized his hands. Did you think I
• 5:30:49
  didn't see my heart bled when I looked at you, A poor one face
• 5:30:56
  and your tortured eyes. Oh you've changed. I could never believed that a
• 5:31:03
  man could change so much in a few months. And it's eye who have
• 5:31:07
  cost it all. Oh, or fer Arth, you must forgive me,
• 5:31:15
  and you must pity me. But there's nothing to forgive, darling, he
• 5:31:21
  cried. She looked at him steadily. Her eyes were now shining with a
• 5:31:26
  hard brightness. You say that, but you don't really think it. And
• 5:31:30
  yet if you only knew, all that I have endured is on your account.
• 5:31:37
  She made a great effort to be calm. What do you mean,
• 5:31:41
  said Arthur. He never loved me, He would never have thought of me
• 5:31:47
  if he hadn't wanted to wound you in what you treasured most. He hated
• 5:31:52
  you and dismade me what I am so that you might suffer. It isn't
• 5:31:56
  I who did all this, but a devil within me. It isn't I
• 5:32:00
  who lied to you and left you and caused you all this unhappiness. She
• 5:32:06
  rose to her feet and sighed deeply. Once I thought he was dying,
• 5:32:12
  and I helped him. I took him into the studio and gave him water,
• 5:32:18
  and he gained some dreadful power over me, so that I've been like
• 5:32:22
  wax in his hands, whom my will has disappeared, And I have to
• 5:32:29
  do his bidding. And if I try to resist, her face twisted with
• 5:32:36
  pain and fear. I've found out everything since. I know that on that
• 5:32:41
  day, when he seemed to be at the point of death, he was
• 5:32:45
  merely playing a trick on me, and he got Susie out of the way
• 5:32:48
  by sending a telegram from a girl whose name he had seen on a photograph.
• 5:32:53
  I have heard him roar with laughter at his cleverness. She stopped suddenly,
• 5:32:59
  and a look of rightful agony crossed her face. And that this very
• 5:33:03
  minute, for all I know, it may be by his influence that I
• 5:33:06
  say this to you, so that he may cause you still greater suffering by
• 5:33:11
  allowing me to tell you that he never cared for me. You know now
• 5:33:15
  that my life is hell, and his vengeance is complete vengeance for what.
• 5:33:23
  Don't you remember that you hit him once and kicked him unmercifully. I know
• 5:33:29
  him well now. He could have killed you, but he hated you too
• 5:33:33
  much. It pleased him a thousand times more to devise this torture for you
• 5:33:40
  and me. Margaret's agitation was terrible to behold. This was the first time
• 5:33:47
  that she had ever spoken to a soul. Of all these things, and
• 5:33:51
  now the long restraints had burst as burst the waters of a dam. Arthur
• 5:33:56
  sought to calm her. Your ill and overwrought, must try to compose yourself,
• 5:34:02
  after all, had who is a human being like the rest of us.
• 5:34:07
  Yes, you always laughed at his claims. You wouldn't listen to the
• 5:34:11
  things he said. But I know, Oh, I can't explain it.
• 5:34:17
  I daresay common sense and probability are all against it. But I've seen things
• 5:34:22
  with my own eyes that pass all comprehension. I tell you, here's the
• 5:34:30
  powers of the most awful kind. The first day, when I was alone
• 5:34:34
  with him, he seemed to take me to some kind of sabbath. I
• 5:34:40
  don't know what it was, but I saw horrors, pile horrors that rankled
• 5:34:45
  for ever after, like poisoned my mind. And when we went up to
• 5:34:49
  his house in Staffordshire, I've recognized the scene. I have recognized the arid
• 5:34:56
  rocks and the trees, and the lie of the land. I knew I'd
• 5:35:00
  been there before on that fatal afternoon. Oh, oh, you must believe
• 5:35:06
  me. Some time, I think I shall go mad with the terror of
• 5:35:08
  it all. Arthur did not speak. Her words caused a ghastly suspicion to
• 5:35:15
  flash through his mind, and he could hardly contain himself. He thought that
• 5:35:21
  some dreadful shock had turned her brain. She buried her face in her hands.
• 5:35:26
  Look here, he said. You must come away at once. You
• 5:35:30
  can't continue to live with him. You must never go back to Scaine.
• 5:35:34
  I can't leave him her bound together inseparably. But it's monstrous. There can
• 5:35:41
  be nothing to keep you to him. Come back to Susy. She'll be
• 5:35:45
  very kind to you. She'll help you to forget all you've endured. It's
• 5:35:49
  no use. You can do nothing for me. Why not, because notwithstanding
• 5:35:59
  I'll love him with all my soul, Margaret, I hate him. He
• 5:36:04
  fills me with repulsion, and yet I do not know what there is in
• 5:36:10
  my blood that draws me to him against my will, my flesh. Her
• 5:36:14
  eyes held for him. Arthur looked away in embarrassment. He could not help
• 5:36:19
  a slight instinctive movement of withdrawal. Do I disgust you? She said?
• 5:36:26
  He flushed slightly, but scarcely knew how to answer. He made a vague
• 5:36:32
  gesture of denial. If you only knew, she said, there was something
• 5:36:38
  so extraordinary in her tone that he gave her a quick glance of surprise.
• 5:36:44
  He saw that her cheeks were flaming. Her bosom was panting, as though
• 5:36:47
  she were again on the point of breaking into a passion of tears. For
• 5:36:51
  God's sake, don't look at me, she cried. She turned away and
• 5:36:56
  hid her face. The words she uttered were in a shame unnatural voice.
• 5:37:03
  You'd been at Monte Carlo, you'd have heard them say. God knows how
• 5:37:07
  they knew it. It was only through me he had his luck at the
• 5:37:12
  tables. He's contented himself with filling my soul with vice. I have no
• 5:37:21
  purity in me. I'm sullied through and through. He has made me into
• 5:37:26
  a sink of iniquity, and I loathe myself. I cannot look at myself
• 5:37:34
  without a shudder of disgust. A cold sweat came over Arthur, and he
• 5:37:40
  grew more pale than ever. He realized now he was in the presence of
• 5:37:44
  a mystery that he could not unrabble. She went on feverishly. The other
• 5:37:48
  night at supper, I told a story, and I saw you WinCE with
• 5:37:52
  shame. It wasn't I that told it. The impulse came from him,
• 5:37:59
  and I knew it was vile, and yet I told it with gusto.
• 5:38:03
  I enjoyed the telling of it. I enjoyed the pain I gave you in
• 5:38:07
  the dismay of those women. There seemed to be two persons in me and
• 5:38:14
  my real self and the old one that you knew it love is growing weaker
• 5:38:19
  day by day. Soon she will be dead entirely, and there will remain
• 5:38:26
  only the wanton soul in the virgin body. Arthur tried to gather his wits
• 5:38:33
  together. He felt it an occasion on which it was essential to hold on
• 5:38:37
  to the normal view of things. But for God's sake, leave him what
• 5:38:44
  you've told me, Give you ever ground for divorce. It's all monstrous.
• 5:38:48
  The man must be so mad that you ought to be put in a lunatic
• 5:38:51
  asylum. You can do nothing for me, she said. But if he
• 5:38:56
  doesn't love you, want ues he want you for. I don't know,
• 5:39:00
  but I'm beginning to suspect. She looked at Arthur steadily. She was now
• 5:39:07
  quite calm. I think he wishes to use me for a magical operation.
• 5:39:14
  I don't know if he's mad or not, but I think he means to
• 5:39:17
  try some horrible experiment, and I am needful for its success. That is
• 5:39:23
  my safeguard. You're a safeguard. He won't kill me because he needs me
• 5:39:30
  for that. Perhaps in the process I shall regain my freedom. Arthur was
• 5:39:36
  shocked at the callousness with which she spoke. He went up to her and
• 5:39:40
  put his hands on her shoulders. Look him. You must pull yourself together,
• 5:39:45
  Margaret. This is insane. If you don't take care, your mind
• 5:39:48
  will give way altogether. You must come with me now. When you're out
• 5:39:52
  of his hands, you'll soon regain your calmness of mind. You need never
• 5:39:56
  see him again. If you're afraid, you shall be hidden from him,
• 5:40:00
  and lawyers can arrange everything between you. I daren't, but I promise you
• 5:40:07
  that you can come to no harm. Be reasonable. We're in London now,
• 5:40:11
  surrounded by people on every side. How do you think he can touch
• 5:40:15
  you while we drive through the crowded streets. Now'll take you straight to Susie
• 5:40:18
  In a week. You'll laugh at the idle fears you had. How do
• 5:40:23
  you know that he is not in the room at this moment? Listening to
• 5:40:27
  all you say? The question was so sudden, so unexpected, that Arthur
• 5:40:32
  was startled. He looked round quickly. You must be mad. You see
• 5:40:37
  that the room is empty. I tell you that you don't know what powers
• 5:40:41
  he has. Have you ever heard those old legends with which nurses used to
• 5:40:47
  frighten our childhood, of men who could turn themselves into wolves, and who
• 5:40:52
  scarred the country at night? She looked at him with staring eyes, sometimes
• 5:40:59
  when he's coming, and its skin in the morning, with bloodshot eyes,
• 5:41:03
  exhausted with fatigue, and strangely discomposed. I have imagined that he too.
• 5:41:08
  She stopped and threw back her head. You're right, Arthur, I think
• 5:41:15
  I shall go mad. He watched her helplessly. He did not know what
• 5:41:19
  to do. Margaret went on, her voice quivering with anguish. When we
• 5:41:25
  were married, I reminded him that he'd promised to take me to his mother.
• 5:41:30
  He would never speak of her, but I felt I must see her.
• 5:41:34
  And one day suddenly told me to get ready for a journey. And
• 5:41:38
  we went a long way to a place I did not know, and we
• 5:41:41
  drove into the country. We seemed to go miles and miles, and we
• 5:41:45
  reached at last a large house surrounded by a high wall, and the windows
• 5:41:52
  were happily barred. We were shown into a great empty room. It was
• 5:41:57
  dismal and cold, like the waiting room at a station. A man came
• 5:42:02
  into us, a tall man in a frock coat and gold spectacles. He
• 5:42:07
  was introduced to me as doctor Taylor, and then suddenly I understood. Margaret
• 5:42:14
  spoke in hurried gasps, and her eyes were staring wide, as though she
• 5:42:18
  saw still the scene, which at the time had seemed the crowning horror of
• 5:42:22
  her experience. I knew it was an asylum, and Oliver hadn't told me
• 5:42:29
  a word. He took us up a broad flight of stairs through a large
• 5:42:33
  dormitory. Oh if you only knew what I saw there. I was so
• 5:42:38
  horribly frightened. I've never been in such a place before. To a cell,
• 5:42:45
  and the walls and the floor were padded. Margaret passed her hand across
• 5:42:51
  her forehead to chase away the recollection of that awful sight. Oh I see
• 5:42:56
  it still, I can never get it out of my mind, she remembered
• 5:43:02
  with a morbid vividness, the vast, misshapen mass which she had seen,
• 5:43:07
  heaped strangely in one corner. There was a slight movement in it. As
• 5:43:11
  they entered, and she perceived that it was a human being. It was
• 5:43:15
  a woman dressed in shapeless brown flannel, a woman of great stature and of
• 5:43:19
  a revolting, excessive corpulence. She turned upon them a huge, impassive face,
• 5:43:26
  and its unwrinkled smoothness gave it an appearance of aborted childishness. The hair
• 5:43:32
  was disheveled, gray and scanty. But what most terrified Margaret was that she
• 5:43:37
  saw in this creature an appalling likeness to Oliver. He told me it was
• 5:43:45
  his mother, and she'd been there for five and twenty years. Arthur could
• 5:43:51
  hardly bear the terror that was in Margaret's eyes. He did not know what
• 5:43:56
  to say to her. In a little while, she began to speak again,
• 5:43:59
  in a low voice, and rapidly, as though to herself, and
• 5:44:03
  she wrung her hands. Oh, you don't know what I've endured. He
• 5:44:07
  used to spend long periods away from me, and I remained alone its skein
• 5:44:11
  from morning till night, alone with my abjent fear. Sometimes it seemed that
• 5:44:17
  he was seized with a devouring lust for the gutter, and he would go
• 5:44:22
  to Liverpool and Manchester and throw himself among the very dregs of the people.
• 5:44:26
  He used to pass long days drinking in filthy pothouses, while the bout lasted.
• 5:44:33
  Nothing was due to pray for him. He loved the company of all
• 5:44:37
  that was criminal and low. He used to smoke opium in fetid denzil.
• 5:44:42
  You have no conception of his passion to degrade himself. And at last he
• 5:44:48
  would come back dirty with torn clothes, begrimed, sudden still with his long
• 5:44:55
  debauch, and his mouth was hot with the kisses of the bi all women
• 5:45:00
  of the box. Huh, he is so cruel and the fit action that
• 5:45:06
  I think he has a fiendish pleasure in the sight of suffering. It was
• 5:45:11
  more than Arthur could stand. His mind was made up to try a bold
• 5:45:15
  course. He saw on the table a whiskey bottle and glasses. He poured
• 5:45:19
  some neat spirit into a tumbler and gave it to Margaret. Drink this,
• 5:45:23
  he said, what is it? Never mind, drink it at once.
• 5:45:29
  Obediently she put it to her lips. He stood over her as she emptied
• 5:45:32
  the glass. Sudden glow filled her. Now come with me, He took
• 5:45:37
  her arm and led her down the stairs. He passed through the hall quickly.
• 5:45:41
  There was a cab just drawn up at the door, and he told
• 5:45:45
  her to get in. One or two persons stared at seeing a woman come
• 5:45:48
  out of that hotel in a tea gown and without a hat. He directed
• 5:45:52
  the driver to the house in which Susi lived and looked round at Margaret.
• 5:45:56
  She had fainted immediately she got into the cab. When they arrived, he
• 5:46:00
  carried Margaret upstairs and laid her on a sofa. He told Susy what had
• 5:46:04
  happened and what he wanted of her. The dear woman forgot everything except that
• 5:46:10
  Margaret was very ill, and promised willingly to do all she wished. For
• 5:46:18
  a week, Margaret could not be moved. Arthur hired a little cottage in
• 5:46:22
  Hampshire, opposite the Isle of Wight, hoping that amid the most charming,
• 5:46:26
  RESTful scenery in England, she would quickly regain her strength, and as soon
• 5:46:32
  as it was possible, Susy took her down. But she was much altered.
• 5:46:37
  Her gaiety had disappeared, and with it her determination. Although her illness
• 5:46:41
  had been neither long nor serious, she seemed as exhausted physically and mentally as
• 5:46:48
  if she had been for months. At the point of death. She took
• 5:46:52
  no interest in her surroundings, and was indifferent to the shady lanes through which
• 5:46:56
  they drove, and to the gracious trees and the meadows. Her old passion
• 5:47:02
  for beauty was gone, and she cared neither for the flowers which filled their
• 5:47:06
  little garden or for the birds that sang continually. But at last it seemed
• 5:47:11
  necessary to discuss the future. Margaret acquiesced in all that was suggested to her,
• 5:47:17
  and agreed willingly that the needful steps should be taken to procure her release
• 5:47:22
  from Oliver Haddow. He made apparently no effort to trace her, and nothing
• 5:47:26
  had been heard of him. He did not know where Margaret was, but
• 5:47:30
  he might have guessed that Arthur was responsible for her flight, and Arthur was
• 5:47:36
  easily to be found. It made Susy vaguely uneasy that there was no sign
• 5:47:41
  of his existence. She wished that Arthur were not kept by his work in
• 5:47:45
  London. At last, a suit for divorce was instituted. Two days after
• 5:47:52
  this, when Arthur was in his consulting room, Haddo's card was brought in
• 5:47:56
  to him. Arthur's jaw set more firmly Michel the gentleman in he ordered.
• 5:48:03
  When Haddo entered, Arthur, standing with his back to the fireplace, motioned
• 5:48:08
  him to sit down. What can I do for you, he asked coldly.
• 5:48:15
  I have not come to avail myself of your surgical skill, my dear
• 5:48:18
  Burden, smiled Haddow, as he fell ponderously into an armchair. And so
• 5:48:25
  I imagined your perspicacity amazes me. I surmise that it is to you I
• 5:48:32
  owe this amusing citation which was served on me yesterday. I allowed you to
• 5:48:38
  come in so that I might tell you I will have no communication with you
• 5:48:42
  except through my solicitors. My dear fellow, why do you treat me with
• 5:48:48
  such discourtesy. It is true that you have deprived me of the wife of
• 5:48:53
  my bosom, but you might at least so far respect my marital rights as
• 5:48:59
  to use me civilly. My patience is not as good as it was,
• 5:49:03
  answered Arthur, I venture to remind you that once before I lost my temper
• 5:49:08
  with you, and the result you must have found unpleasant. I should have
• 5:49:14
  thought you regretted an incident by now O, burdun answered Haddell, and entirely
• 5:49:21
  unabashed. My time is very short, said Arthur. Then I will get
• 5:49:26
  to my business without delay. I thought it might interest you to know that
• 5:49:30
  I propose to bring a counter petition against my wife, and that I shall
• 5:49:36
  make you correspondent. You infamous blackard, cried Arthur furiously. You know as
• 5:49:44
  well as I do that your wife is above suspicion. I know that she
• 5:49:48
  left my hotel in your company and has been living since under your protection.
• 5:49:55
  Arthur grew livid with rage. He could hardly restrain himself from knocking the man
• 5:49:59
  down. He gave a short laugh. Ha ha ha, you can do
• 5:50:03
  what you like. I'm really not frightened. The innocent are so very incautious.
• 5:50:11
  I assure you that I can make a good enough story to ruin your
• 5:50:15
  career and force you to resign your appointments at the various hospitals you honor with
• 5:50:21
  your attention. You forget that the case will not be tried in open court,
• 5:50:26
  said Arthur. Hado looked at him steadily. He did not answer for
• 5:50:30
  a moment. You are quite right, he said at last, with a
• 5:50:36
  little smile. I had forgotten that. Then I need not detain you longer.
• 5:50:44
  Oliver Haddo got up. He passed his hand reflectively over his huge face.
• 5:50:48
  Arthur watched him with scornful eyes. He touched a bell, and the
• 5:50:52
  servant at once appeared show this gentleman out. Not in the least disconcerted,
• 5:50:59
  Hado strode calmly to the door. Arthur gave a sigh of relief, for
• 5:51:04
  he concluded that Haddow would not show fight. His solicitor indeed, had already
• 5:51:08
  assured him that Oliver would not venture to defend the case. Margaret seemed gradually
• 5:51:14
  to take more interest in the proceedings, and she was full of eagerness to
• 5:51:18
  be set free. She did not shrink from the unpleasant ordeal of a trial.
• 5:51:22
  She could talk of Haddow with composure. Her friends were able to persuade
• 5:51:26
  themselves that in a little while she would be her old self again, for
• 5:51:30
  she was growing stronger and more cheerful. Her charming laughter rang through the little
• 5:51:36
  house, as it had been used to do in the Paris studio. The
• 5:51:40
  case was to come on at the end of July, before the long vacation,
• 5:51:44
  and Susy had agreed to take Margaret abroad as soon as it was done.
• 5:51:48
  But Presently, a change came over her. As the day of the
• 5:51:52
  trial drew nearer, Margaret became excited and disturbed. Her gaiety deserted her,
• 5:51:57
  and she fell into a long mood silences. To some extent, this was
• 5:52:03
  comprehensible, for she would have to disclose to callous ears the most intimate details
• 5:52:07
  of her married life. But at last her nervousness grew so marked that Susy
• 5:52:12
  could no longer ascribe it to natural causes. She thought it necessary to write
• 5:52:18
  to Arthur about it. My dear Arthur, I don't know what to make
• 5:52:23
  of Margaret, and I wish you would come down and see her. The
• 5:52:26
  good humor which I have noticed in her of late, has given way to
• 5:52:30
  curious irritability. She is so restless that she cannot keep still for a moment.
• 5:52:36
  Even when she is sitting down, Her body moves in a manner that
• 5:52:38
  is almost convulsive. I am beginning to think that the strain from which she
• 5:52:42
  suffered is bringing on some nervous disease, and I am really alarmed. She
• 5:52:48
  walks about the house in a peculiarly aimless manner, up and down the stairs,
• 5:52:53
  in and out of the garden. She has grown suddenly much more silent,
• 5:52:59
  and the look has come back to her eyes which they had when first
• 5:53:03
  we brought her down here. When I beg her to tell me what is
• 5:53:06
  troubling her, she says, I am afraid that something is going to happen.
• 5:53:11
  She will not or cannot explain what she means. The last few weeks
• 5:53:15
  have set my own nerves on age, so that I do not know how
• 5:53:18
  much of what I observe is real and how much is due to my fancy.
• 5:53:23
  But I wish you would come and put a little courage into me.
• 5:53:26
  The oddness of it all is making me uneasy, and I am seized with
• 5:53:30
  preposterous terrors. I don't know what there is in Haddow that inspires me with
• 5:53:36
  this unaccountable dread. He is always present to my thoughts. I seem to
• 5:53:41
  see his dreadful eyes and his cold, sensual smile. I wake up at
• 5:53:45
  night, my heart beating furiously with the consciousness that something quite awful has happened.
• 5:53:52
  Oh, I wish the trial were over and that we were happy in
• 5:53:56
  Germany. Yours ever, Susan Boyd. Susy took a certain pride in her
• 5:54:03
  common sense, and it was humiliating to find that her nerves could be so
• 5:54:07
  distraught. She was worried and unhappy. It had not been easy to take
• 5:54:11
  Margaret back to her bosom, as if nothing had happened. Susy was human,
• 5:54:15
  and though she did ten times more than could be expected of her,
• 5:54:19
  she could not resist a feeling of irritation that Arthur sacrificed her so calmly.
• 5:54:25
  He had no room for other thoughts, and it seemed quite natural to him
• 5:54:30
  that she should devote herself entirely to Margaret's welfare. Susie walked somewhere along the
• 5:54:36
  road to post this letter, and then went to her room. It was
• 5:54:40
  a wonderful night, starry and calm, and the silence was like balm to
• 5:54:42
  her troubles. She sat at the window for a long time, and at
• 5:54:47
  last, feeling more tranquil, went to bed. She slept more soundly than
• 5:54:51
  she had done for many days. When she awoke, the sun was streaming
• 5:54:55
  into her room, and she gave a deep sigh of delight. She could
• 5:54:59
  see trees from her bed and blue sky. All her troubles seemed easy to
• 5:55:03
  bear when the world was so beautiful, and she was ready to laugh at
• 5:55:07
  the fears that had so affected her. She got up, put on a
• 5:55:11
  dressing gown and went to Margaret's room. It was empty, the bed had
• 5:55:18
  not been slept in. On the pillow was a note It's no good.
• 5:55:23
  I can't help myself. I've gone back to him. Don't trouble about me
• 5:55:29
  any more. It's quite hopeless and useless. M. Susy gave a little
• 5:55:34
  gasp. Her first thought was for Arthur, and she uttered a wail of
• 5:55:38
  sorrow, because he must be cast again into the agony of desolation once more.
• 5:55:45
  She had to break the dreadful news. She dressed hurried lyon ate some
• 5:55:48
  breakfast. There was no train till nearly eleven, and she had to bear
• 5:55:52
  her impatience as best she could. At last, it was time to start,
• 5:55:56
  and she put on her gloves. At that moment the door was opened
• 5:56:00
  and Arthur came in. She gave a cry of terror and turned pale.
• 5:56:04
  I was just coming to London seal, she faltered, How did you find
• 5:56:08
  out? Nehado sent me a box of chocolate turley this morning, with a
• 5:56:14
  card on which was written, I think the odd trick is mine. This
• 5:56:19
  cruel vindictiveness joined with a schoolboy. Love of taunting the vanquished foe was very
• 5:56:26
  characteristic. Susy gave Arthur Burden the note which she had found in Margaret's room.
• 5:56:32
  He read it and then thought for a long time. And I'm afraid
• 5:56:37
  she is right, he said. At length, it seems quite hopeless.
• 5:56:44
  The man has some power over her which we can't counteract. Susy wondered whether
• 5:56:48
  his strong skepticism was failing. At last, she could not withstand her own
• 5:56:53
  feeling that there was something preternatural about the hold that Oliver had over Margaret.
• 5:56:59
  She had no shadow of a doubt that he was able to effect his wife,
• 5:57:02
  even at a distance, and was convinced now that the restlessness of the
• 5:57:06
  last few days was due to this mysterious power. He had been at work
• 5:57:11
  in some strange way, and Margaret had been aware of it. At length,
• 5:57:15
  she could not resist, and had gone to him instinctively. Her will
• 5:57:18
  was as little concerned as when a chip of steel flies to a magnet.
• 5:57:23
  I cannot find it in my heart now to blame her for anything she has
• 5:57:26
  done, said Susy. I think she is the victim of a most lamentable
• 5:57:32
  fate. I can't help it. I must believe that he was able to
• 5:57:37
  cast a spell on her, and to that is due all that has happened.
• 5:57:41
  I have only pity for her great misfortunes. Has it occurred to you
• 5:57:47
  what will happen when she is back in Haddow's hands? Cried Arthur. You
• 5:57:51
  know as well as I do, how revengeful he is, and how hatefully
• 5:57:56
  cruel. My heart bleeds when I think of the tortures, physical tortures which
• 5:58:00
  she may suffer. He walked up and down in desperation. And yet there's
• 5:58:06
  nothing whatever that one can do. One can't go to the police and say
• 5:58:10
  that a man has cast a magic spell on his wife. Then you believe
• 5:58:15
  it too, said Susy. I don't know what I believe now, he
• 5:58:18
  cried. After all, we can't do anything if she chooses to go back
• 5:58:22
  to her husband. She's apparently her own mistress. He wrung his hands,
• 5:58:27
  and I'm imprisoned in London. I can't leave it for a day. I
• 5:58:32
  ought not to be here now, and I must get back in a couple
• 5:58:34
  of hours. I can do nothing, and yet I'm convinced that Margaret is
• 5:58:40
  utterly wretched. Susy paused, for a minute or two, she wondered how
• 5:58:45
  he would accept the suggestion that was in her mind. Do you know it
• 5:58:52
  seems to me that common methods are useless. The only chance is to fight
• 5:58:56
  him with his own weapons. Would you mind if I went over to Paris
• 5:59:00
  to consult doctor Porette. You know that he is learned in every branch of
• 5:59:04
  the occult, and perhaps he might help us. But Arthur pulled himself together.
• 5:59:11
  It's absurd. We mustn't give way to superstition. Haddell is merely a
• 5:59:17
  scoundrel and a charlatan. He's worked on our nerves as he's worked on poor
• 5:59:22
  Margaret's. It's impossible to suppose that he has any powers greater than the common
• 5:59:26
  run of mankind, even after all you've seen with your own eyes. If
• 5:59:33
  my eyes show me what all my training assures me, is impossible, and
• 5:59:37
  I can only conclude that my eyes deceive me. Well, I shall run
• 5:59:42
  over to Paris. End of chapter twelve, Chapter thirteen of The Magician by
• 6:00:00
  Somerset Maum. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Some weeks later,
• 6:00:08
  doctor Pourhete was sitting among his books in the quiet low room that overlooked
• 6:00:12
  the Seine. He had given himself over to a pleasing melancholy. The heat
• 6:00:18
  beat down upon the noisy streets of Paris, and the din of the great
• 6:00:22
  city penetrated even to his fastness. In the Il Saint Louis. He remembered
• 6:00:27
  the cloud laden sky of the country where he was born, and the southwest
• 6:00:33
  wind that blew with a salt freshness. The long streets of Breast, present
• 6:00:37
  to his fancy, always in a drizzle of rain, with the lights of
• 6:00:41
  cafes reflected on the wet pavements, had a familiar charm even in foul weather.
• 6:00:47
  The sailor men who trudged along them gave one a curious sense of comfort.
• 6:00:52
  There was delight in the smell of the sea, and in the freedom
• 6:00:55
  of the great Atlantic. And then he thought of the green lanes, and
• 6:01:00
  of the waste places with their scented heather, the fair broad roads that led
• 6:01:04
  from one old sweet town to another, of the pardons and their gentle,
• 6:01:10
  sad crowds. Doctor Porett gave a sigh. It is good to be borne
• 6:01:15
  in the land of Brittany. He smiled, but his bond showed Susie in
• 6:01:22
  and he rose with a smile to greet her. She had been in Paris
• 6:01:26
  for some time, and they had seen much of one another. He basked
• 6:01:29
  in the gentle sympathy with which she interested herself, in all the abstruse quaint
• 6:01:33
  matters on which he spent his time, and divining her love for Arthur.
• 6:01:38
  He admired the courage with which she effaced herself. They had got into the
• 6:01:42
  habit of eating many of their meals together in a quiet house opposite the Clooney
• 6:01:48
  called Lorraine Blanche, and here they had talked of so many things that their
• 6:01:52
  acquaintance was grown into a charming friendship. I am ashamed to come here so
• 6:01:59
  often, said Susie as she entered matild Is, beginning to look at me
• 6:02:03
  with a suspicious eye. It is very good of you to entertain a tiresome
• 6:02:08
  old man, he smiled as he held her hand. But I should have
• 6:02:12
  been disappointed if you had forgotten your promise to come this afternoon, for I
• 6:02:18
  have much to tell you. Tell me at once, she said, sitting
• 6:02:22
  down. I have discovered an m s at the library of the Arsenal this
• 6:02:29
  morning that no one knew anything about. He said this with an air of
• 6:02:33
  triumph, as though the achievement were of national importance. Susy had a tenderness
• 6:02:38
  for his innocent mania, and though she knew the work in question was occult
• 6:02:44
  and incomprehensible, congratulated him heartily. It is the original version of a book
• 6:02:49
  by Paracelsus. I have not read it yet, for the writing is most
• 6:02:55
  difficult to decipher. But one point caught my eye on turning over the pages.
• 6:03:00
  That is the gruesome fact that Paracelsus fed the homunculi he manufactured on human
• 6:03:06
  blood. One wonders how he came by it. Susy gave a little start,
• 6:03:11
  which doctor Poret noticed. What is the matter with you? Nothing,
• 6:03:15
  she said quickly. He looked at her for a moment, then proceeded with
• 6:03:19
  the subject that strangely fascinated him. You must let me take you one day
• 6:03:23
  to the library of the Arsenal. There is no richer collection in the world
• 6:03:29
  of books dealing with the accul sciences. And of course you know that it
• 6:03:33
  was at the Arsenal that the tribunal sat unders the suggestive name of Chambre Ardan
• 6:03:40
  to deal with cases of sorcery and magic. I didn't smiled, Susy,
• 6:03:47
  I always think that these manuscripts and queer old books, which are the pride
• 6:03:51
  of our library, served in many an old trial. There are volumes there
• 6:03:56
  of innocent appearance that have hanged wretched men and and others to the stake.
• 6:04:02
  You would not believe how many persons of fortune, rank and intelligence, during
• 6:04:06
  the great reign of Louis Cathors immersed themselves in these satanic undertakings. Susie did
• 6:04:14
  not answer. She could not now deal with these matters in an indifferent spirit.
• 6:04:18
  Everything she heard might have some bearing on the circumstances which she had discussed
• 6:04:23
  with doctor Poet. Times out of number. She had never been able to
• 6:04:29
  pin him down to an affirmation of faith. Certain strange things had manifestly happened,
• 6:04:33
  but what the explanation of them was no man could say. He offered
• 6:04:38
  analogies from his well stored memory. He gave her books to read till she
• 6:04:42
  was saturated with occult science. At one moment she was inclined to throw them
• 6:04:48
  all aside impatiently, and at another was ready to believe that everything was possible.
• 6:04:55
  Doctor Poritz stood up and stretched out a meditative finger. He spoke in
• 6:04:59
  that agree academic manner, which at the beginning of their acquaintance had always entertained
• 6:05:03
  Susy because it contrasted so absurdly with his fantastic utterances. It was a strange
• 6:05:11
  dream that these wizards cherished. They sought to make themselves beloved of those they
• 6:05:15
  cared for, and to revenge themselves on those they hated. But above all
• 6:05:21
  they sought to become greater than the common run of men, and to wield
• 6:05:25
  the power of the gods. They hesitated at nothing to gain their ends.
• 6:05:30
  But nature, with difficulty, allows her secrets to be wrested from her.
• 6:05:34
  In vain they lit their furnaces, and in vain they studied their crabbed books,
• 6:05:38
  called up the dead, and conjured ghastly spirits. Their reward was disappointment
• 6:05:45
  and wretchedness, poverty, the scorn of men, torture, imprisonment, and
• 6:05:49
  shameful death. And yet perhaps after all, there may be some particle of
• 6:05:56
  truth hidden away in those dark places. You never go further than the cautious,
• 6:06:02
  perhaps, said Susie. You never give me any definite opinion in these
• 6:06:07
  matters. It is discreet to have no definite opinion. He smiled, with
• 6:06:11
  a shrug of his shoulders. If for a wise man studies the science of
• 6:06:17
  the occult, his duty is not to laugh at everything, but to seek
• 6:06:21
  patiently, slowly, perseveringly, the truth that may be concealed in the night
• 6:06:27
  of these illusions. The words were hardly spoken when Matilde the Ancient Bond opened
• 6:06:34
  the door to let a visitor in. It was Arthur Burden. Susie gave
• 6:06:40
  a cry of surprise, for she had received a brief note from him two
• 6:06:42
  days before, and he had said nothing of crossing the channel. I am
• 6:06:48
  glad to find you both here, said Arthur, as he shook hands with
• 6:06:51
  him. Has anything happened, cried Susie. His manner was curiously distressing,
• 6:06:56
  and there was a nervousness about his movements that were very unexpected and so restrained
• 6:07:02
  a person. I've seen Margaret again, he said. Well, he seemed
• 6:07:07
  unable to go on, and yet both knew that he had something important to
• 6:07:11
  tell them. He looked at them vacantly, as though all he had to
• 6:07:15
  say was suddenly gone out of his mind. I have come straight here,
• 6:07:19
  he said, in a dull, bewildered fashion. I went to your hotel.
• 6:07:25
  Susie in the hope of finding you. But when they told me you
• 6:07:29
  were out, I felt certain you would be here. You'll see one out
• 6:07:33
  to share anee, said doctor Porgette, looking at him. Will you let
• 6:07:37
  the matilde make you a cup of coffee? I should like something, he
• 6:07:41
  answered, with a look of utter weariness. Sit still for a minute or
• 6:07:45
  two, and you shall tell us what you want to when you are a
• 6:07:48
  little rested. Doctor Porett had not seen Arthur since that afternoon in the previous
• 6:07:53
  year, when in answer to Hadow's telegram he had gone to the studio and
• 6:07:57
  the Rue compan Fremier. He watched him anxiously while Arthur drank his coffee.
• 6:08:03
  The change in him was extraordinary. There was a cadaverous exhaustion about his face,
• 6:08:08
  and his eyes were sunken in their sockets. But what alarm the good
• 6:08:12
  doctor most was that Arthur's personality seemed thoroughly thrown out of gear. All that
• 6:08:18
  he had endured doing those nine months had robbed him of the strength of purpose,
• 6:08:22
  the matter of fat sureness which had distinguished him. He was now unbalanced
• 6:08:27
  and neurotic. Arthur did not speak, with his eyes fixed moodily on the
• 6:08:33
  ground he wondered how much he could bring himself to tell them. It revolted
• 6:08:37
  him to disclose his inmost thoughts. Yet he was come to the end of
• 6:08:41
  his tether and needed the doctor's advice. He found himself obliged to deal with
• 6:08:47
  circumstances that might have existed in a world of nightmare, and he was driven
• 6:08:52
  at last to take advantage of his friend's peculiar knowledge. Returning to London after
• 6:08:57
  Margaret's flight, Arthur Burned had thrown himself again into the work which for so
• 6:09:03
  long had been his only solace. It had lost its savor, but he
• 6:09:07
  would not take this into account, and he slaved away mechanically by perpetual toil,
• 6:09:11
  seeking to deaden his anguish. But as the time passed, he was
• 6:09:15
  seized on a sudden with a curious feeling of foreboding which he could in no
• 6:09:21
  way resist. It grew in strength till it had all the power of an
• 6:09:25
  obsession, and he could not reason himself out of it. He was sure
• 6:09:29
  that a great danger threatened Margaret. He could not tell what it was,
• 6:09:33
  nor why the fear of it was so persistent, but the idea was there
• 6:09:37
  always night and day. It haunted him like a shadow and pursued him like
• 6:09:41
  remorse. His anxiety increased continually, and the vagueness of his terror made it
• 6:09:47
  more tormenting. He felt quite certain that Margaret was in imminent peril, but
• 6:09:52
  he did not know how to help her. Arthur supposed that Haddo had taken
• 6:09:56
  her back to Skain, but even if he went there, he had no
• 6:10:00
  chance of seeing her. What made it more difficult still was that his chief
• 6:10:04
  at Saint Luke's was away, and he was obliged to be in London in
• 6:10:07
  case he should be suddenly called upon to do some operation. But he could
• 6:10:12
  think of nothing else. He felt it urgently needful to see Margaret. Night
• 6:10:18
  after night, he dreamed that she was at the point of death, and
• 6:10:22
  heavy fetters prevented him from stretching out a hand to help her. At last,
• 6:10:26
  he could stand it no more. He told a brother surgeon that private
• 6:10:30
  business forced him to leave London and put the work into his hands. With
• 6:10:34
  no plan in his head, merely urged by an obscure impulse, he set
• 6:10:38
  out for the village of Venning, which was about three miles from Scaine.
• 6:10:45
  It was a tiny place with one public house, serving as an hotel to
• 6:10:48
  the rare travelers who found it needful to stop there, and Arthur felt that
• 6:10:53
  some explanation of his presence was necessary. Having seen at the station an advertisement
• 6:10:59
  of a large farm to let, he told the inquisitive landlady that he had
• 6:11:03
  come to see it. He arrived late at night. Nothing could be done
• 6:11:07
  then, so he occupied the time by trying to find out something about the
• 6:11:11
  headows. Oliver was the local magnate, and his wealth would have made him
• 6:11:18
  an easy topic of conversation even without his eccentricity. The landlady roundly called him
• 6:11:23
  insane, and as an instance of his queerness, told Arthur, to his
• 6:11:27
  great dismay, that Haddow would have no servants to sleep in the house after
• 6:11:33
  dinner. Every one was sent away to the various cottages in the park,
• 6:11:37
  and he remained alone with his wife. It was an awful thought that Margaret
• 6:11:41
  might be in the hands of a raving madman, with not a soul to
• 6:11:45
  protect her. But if he learnt no more than this of solid fact,
• 6:11:49
  Arthur heard much that was significant to his amazement. The old fear of the
• 6:11:55
  wizard had grown up again in that lonely place, and the garrulous. A
• 6:12:00
  woman gravely told him of Haddow's evil influence on the crops and cattle of farmers
• 6:12:04
  who had roused his anger. He had had an altercation with his bailiff,
• 6:12:11
  and the man had died within a year. A small freeholder in the neighborhood
• 6:12:15
  had refused to sell the land which would have rounded off the estate of Skain,
• 6:12:19
  and a disease had attacked every animal on his farm, so that he
• 6:12:23
  was ruined. Arthur was impressed because though she reported these rumors with mock skepticism
• 6:12:30
  as the stories of ignorant yokels and old women, the innkeeper had evidently a
• 6:12:37
  terrified belief in their truth. No one could deny that Haddo had got possession
• 6:12:41
  of the land he wanted for When it was put up to auction, no
• 6:12:45
  one would bid against him, and he bought it for a song as soon
• 6:12:51
  as he could do so. Naturally, Arthur asked after Margaret. The woman
• 6:12:56
  shrugged her shoulders. No one knew anything about her. She never came out
• 6:13:00
  of the park gates, but sometimes you could see her wandering about inside by
• 6:13:04
  herself. She saw no one. Haddo had long since quarreled with the surrounding
• 6:13:11
  gentry. And though one old lady, the mother of a neighboring landowner,
• 6:13:15
  had called when Margaret first came, she had not been admitted, and the
• 6:13:19
  visit was never returned. She'll come to know good, poor lady, said
• 6:13:25
  the hostess of the inn, And I do say she's a perfect picture to
• 6:13:30
  look at. Arthur went to his room. He longed for the day to
• 6:13:34
  come. There was no certain means of seeing Margaret. It was useless to
• 6:13:38
  go to the park gates, since even the tradesmen were obliged to leave their
• 6:13:42
  goods at the lodge. But it appeared that she walked alone morning and afternoon,
• 6:13:48
  and it might be possible to see her. Then he decided to climb
• 6:13:52
  into the park and wait till he came upon her in some spot where they
• 6:13:55
  were not likely to be observed. Next day, the great heat of the
• 6:14:00
  last week was gone, and the melancholy sky was dark with lowering clouds.
• 6:14:04
  Arthur inquired for the road which led to Scain, and set out to walk
• 6:14:08
  the three miles which separated him from it. The country was gray and barren.
• 6:14:15
  There was a broad waste of heath with gigantic boulders, strewn as though
• 6:14:18
  in prehistoric times titans had waged there a mighty battle. Here and there were
• 6:14:25
  trees, but they seemed hardly to withstand the fierce winds of winter. They
• 6:14:30
  were old and bowed before the storm. One of them attracted his attention.
• 6:14:34
  It had been struck by lightning and was riven asunder leafless, But the maimed
• 6:14:38
  branches were curiously set on the trunk, so that they gave it the appearance
• 6:14:44
  of the human being writhing in the torture of infernal agony. The wind whistled
• 6:14:49
  strangely. Arthur's heart sank as he walked on. He had never seen a
• 6:14:55
  country so desolate. He came to the park gate at last, and stood
• 6:15:00
  for some time in front of them. At the end of a long avenue.
• 6:15:03
  Among the trees, he could see part of a splendid house. He
• 6:15:07
  walked along the wooden palisade that surrounded the park suddenly came to a spot where
• 6:15:12
  a board had been broken down. He looked up and down the road.
• 6:15:18
  No one was in sight. He climbed up the low steep bank, wrenched
• 6:15:22
  down a piece more of the fence, and slipped in. He found himself
• 6:15:26
  in a dense wood. There was no sign of a path, and he
• 6:15:30
  advanced cautiously. The bracken was so thick and high that it easily concealed him.
• 6:15:37
  Dead. Owners had plainly spent much care upon the place, for here
• 6:15:41
  a load. In the neighborhood were trees in abundance. But of late it
• 6:15:45
  had been utterly neglected. It had run so wild that there were no traces
• 6:15:49
  now of its early formal arrangement, and it was so hard to make one's
• 6:15:53
  way. The vegetation was so thick that it might almost have been some remnant
• 6:15:59
  of primeval forest. But at last he came to a grassy path and walked
• 6:16:03
  along it slowly. He stopped on a sudden for he heard a sound,
• 6:16:08
  but it was only a pheasant that flew heavily through the low trees. He
• 6:16:12
  wondered what he should do if he came face to face with Oliver. The
• 6:16:17
  innkeeper had assured him that the squire seldom came out, but spent his days
• 6:16:21
  locked in the great attics at the top of the house. Smoke came from
• 6:16:25
  the chimneys of them even in the hottest days of summer, and weird tales
• 6:16:30
  were told of the devilries there committed. Arthur went on, hoping in the
• 6:16:36
  end to catch sight of Margaret, but he saw no one. In that
• 6:16:40
  gray, chilly day, the woods, notwithstanding their greenery, were desolate and
• 6:16:45
  sad. A somber mystery seemed to hang over them. At last, he
• 6:16:49
  came to a stone bench at a cross way among the trees, and since
• 6:16:55
  it was the only resting place he had seen, it struck him that Margaret
• 6:16:57
  might come there to sit down. He hid himself in the bracken. He
• 6:17:03
  had forgotten his watch and did not know how the time passed. He seemed
• 6:17:07
  to be there for hours, but at length his heart gave a great beat
• 6:17:12
  against his ribs. For all at once, so silently that he had not
• 6:17:15
  heard her approach. Margaret came into view. She sat on the stone bench
• 6:17:22
  for a moment. He dared not move in case the sound frightened her.
• 6:17:26
  He could not tell how to make his presence known, but it was necessary
• 6:17:30
  to do something to attract her attention, and he could only hope that she
• 6:17:34
  would not cry out Margaret, He called softly. She did not move,
• 6:17:41
  and he repeated her name more loudly, but still she made no sign that
• 6:17:47
  she heard he came forward and stood in front of her. Margaret, she
• 6:17:52
  looked at him quietly. It might have been some one she had never set
• 6:17:56
  eyes on, and yet from her composure she might have expected him to be
• 6:18:00
  standing there, Margaret, don't you know me? What do you want?
• 6:18:07
  She answered placidly. He was so taken aback that he did not know what
• 6:18:12
  to say. She kept gazing at him steadfastly. On a sudden her calmness
• 6:18:18
  vanished, and she sprang to her feet. Is it you, really,
• 6:18:22
  she cried, terribly agitated. I thought it was only a shape that mimick
• 6:18:26
  you, Margaret, What do you mean? What has come over you?
• 6:18:30
  She stretched out her hand and touched him. I'm flesh and blood, all
• 6:18:34
  right, he said, trying to smile. She shut her eyes for a
• 6:18:38
  moment, as though in an effort to collect herself. I've had hallucinations lately,
• 6:18:45
  she muttered. I thought it was some trick played upon me. Suddenly
• 6:18:49
  she shook herself. But what are you doing here? You must go?
• 6:18:55
  How did you come? Oh? Oh, why don't you leave me alone?
• 6:19:00
  I've been haunted by a feeling that something horrible was going to happen to
• 6:19:03
  you. I was obliged to come. For God's sake. Go. You
• 6:19:08
  can do me no good if he finds out you've been here. She stopped,
• 6:19:15
  and her eyes were dilated with terror. Arthur seized her hands. Margaret,
• 6:19:19
  I can't go. I can't leave you like this for Heaven's sake.
• 6:19:23
  Tell me what is the matter? I am so dreadfully frightened. He was
• 6:19:27
  aghast at the difference wrought in her during the two months since he had seen
• 6:19:32
  her last. Her color was gone, and her face had the grayness of
• 6:19:36
  the dead. There were strange lines on her forehead, and her eyes had
• 6:19:40
  an unnatural glitter. Her youth had suddenly left her. She looked as if
• 6:19:45
  she were struck down by mortal illness. What is the matter with you,
• 6:19:51
  he asked nothing. She looked about her anxiously. Oh why don't you go?
• 6:19:57
  How can you be a cruel I must do something for you, he
• 6:20:02
  insisted. She shook her head. It's too late. Nothing can help me
• 6:20:07
  now. She paused, and when she spoke again, it was with a
• 6:20:11
  voice so ghastly that it might have come from the lips of a corpse.
• 6:20:17
  I found out at last what he's going to do with me? He wants
• 6:20:22
  me for his great experiment, and the time is growing shorter. What do
• 6:20:29
  you mean by saying he wants you? He wants my life? Arthur gave
• 6:20:34
  a cry of dismay, but she put up her hand. It's no use
• 6:20:40
  resisting. It can't do what he could. I think I shall be glad
• 6:20:44
  when the moment comes. I shall at least cease to suffer. But you
• 6:20:49
  must be mad. I don't know. I know that he is. But
• 6:20:55
  if your life is in danger, come away. For God's sake. After
• 6:20:57
  all, you're free. He can't stop you. I should have to go
• 6:21:02
  back to him, so I did last time, she answered, shaking her
• 6:21:06
  head. I thought I was free then, but gradually I knew that he
• 6:21:11
  was calling me. I tried to resist, but I couldn't. I simply
• 6:21:18
  had to go to him. But it's awful to think that you are alone
• 6:21:22
  with a man who is practically raving mad. I'm safe for to day,
• 6:21:29
  she said quietly. Eh, it can only be done in the very hot
• 6:21:33
  weather. If there's no more this year, I shall live until next summer.
• 6:21:38
  Oh, Margaret, for God's sake, don't talk like that. I
• 6:21:42
  love you. I want to have you with me always won't you come away
• 6:21:47
  with me and let me take care of you. I promise you that no
• 6:21:49
  harm shall come to you. You you don't love me any more. You're
• 6:21:55
  only sorry for me. Now it's not true. Oh yes it is.
• 6:22:00
  I saw it when we were in the country. Oh, I don't blame
• 6:22:03
  you. I'm a different woman from the one you loved. I'm not the
• 6:22:08
  Margaret you knew. Now. I can never care for any one but you.
• 6:22:14
  She put her hand on his arm. If you've love to me,
• 6:22:18
  I implore you to go. You don't know what she exposed me to.
• 6:22:23
  And when I'm dead, you must marry Susy. She loves you with all
• 6:22:29
  her heart and she deserves your love. Margaret, don't go, come with
• 6:22:34
  me and take care. He will never forgive you for what you did.
• 6:22:41
  If he can, he will kill you. She started violently, as though
• 6:22:47
  she heard a sound. Her face was convulse with sudden fear. For God's
• 6:22:49
  sake, go. She turned from him quickly, and before he could prevent
• 6:22:55
  her, had vanished. With heavy heart. He plunged again into the bracken.
• 6:23:02
  When Arthur had given his friend some account of this meeting, he stopped
• 6:23:04
  and looked at doctor Porette. The doctor went thoughtfully to his bookcase. What
• 6:23:10
  is it you want me to tell you, he asked, And I think
• 6:23:14
  the man is mad, said Arthur. I found out at what asylum his
• 6:23:18
  mother was, and by good luck, was able to see the superintendent on
• 6:23:22
  my way through London. He told me that he had grave doubts about Haddo
• 6:23:26
  sanity, but it was impossible at present to take any steps. I came
• 6:23:32
  straight here because I wanted your advice. Granting that the man is out of
• 6:23:37
  his mind, is it possible that he may be trying some experiment that entails
• 6:23:41
  a sacrifice of human life. Nothing is more probable, said doctor Porette gravely.
• 6:23:48
  Susy shuddered. She remembered the rumor that had reached her ears in Monte
• 6:23:53
  Carlo. They said there that he was attempting to make living creatures by a
• 6:23:57
  magical operation. She glanced at the doctor, but spoke to Arthur. Just
• 6:24:03
  before you came in. Our friend was talking of that book of Paracelsus,
• 6:24:07
  in which he speaks of feeding the monsters he has made on human blood.
• 6:24:11
  Arthur gave a horrified cry. The most significant thing to my mind is that
• 6:24:17
  fact about Margaret which we are certain of, said Doctor Porette. All works
• 6:24:22
  that deal with the black arts? Are you nane of us upon the supreme
• 6:24:25
  efficacy of the virginal condition? But what is to be done? Asked Arthur
• 6:24:30
  in desperation. We can't leave her in the hands of a raving madman.
• 6:24:36
  He turned on a sudden deathly white. All we know she may be dead.
• 6:24:41
  Now have you heard of Gill d'aray, asked Doctor Porette, continuing his
• 6:24:48
  reflections. That is the classic instance of human sacrifice. I know the country
• 6:24:55
  in which he lived, and the peasants to this day. There my passat
• 6:24:57
  might in the neighborhood of a ruined castle, which was the scene of his
• 6:25:02
  horrible crimes. It's awful to know that this dreadful danger hangs over her,
• 6:25:07
  and to be able to do nothing. We can only wait, said doctor
• 6:25:11
  Borette. And if we wait too long, we may be faced by a
• 6:25:15
  terrible catastrophe. Fortunately we live in a civilized age. Haddell has a great
• 6:25:22
  care of his neck. I hope we are frightened undully. It seemed to
• 6:25:29
  Susy that the chief thing was to distract Arthur, and she turned over in
• 6:25:32
  her minds some means of directing his attention to other matters. I was thinking
• 6:25:37
  of going down to shop for two days with Missus Bloomfield. She said,
• 6:25:41
  won't you come with me? It is the most lovely cathedral in the world,
• 6:25:45
  and I think you will find it RESTful to wander about it for a
• 6:25:48
  little while. You can do no good here or in London. Perhaps when
• 6:25:52
  you are calm, you will be able to think of something practical. Doctor
• 6:25:57
  Poyet saw what her plan was and joined his entreaties to hers that Arthur should
• 6:26:02
  spend a day or two in a place that had no associations for him.
• 6:26:07
  Arthur was too exhausted to argue, and from sheer weariness consented. Next day,
• 6:26:12
  Susi took him to Chard. Missus Bloomfield was no trouble to them,
• 6:26:17
  and Susie induced him to linger for a week in that pleasant, quiet town.
• 6:26:22
  They passed many hours in the stately cathedral, and they wandered about the
• 6:26:26
  surrounding country. Arthur was obliged to confess that the change had done him good,
• 6:26:32
  and a certain apathy succeeded the agitation from which he had suffered so long.
• 6:26:37
  Finally, Susi persuaded him to spend three or four weeks in Brittany with
• 6:26:41
  doctor Porette, who was proposing to revisit the scenes of his childhood. They
• 6:26:45
  returned to Paris, when Arthur left her at the station, promising to meet
• 6:26:49
  her again in an hour at the restaurant where they were going to dine with
• 6:26:53
  doctor Pourette. He thanked her for all she had done. I was in
• 6:26:59
  an absurdly hysterical condition, he said, holding her hand. You've been quite
• 6:27:03
  angelic. I knew that nothing could be done, and yet I was tormented
• 6:27:08
  with the desire to do something. Now I've got myself in hand once more,
• 6:27:14
  I think my common sense was deserting me, and I was on the
• 6:27:18
  point of believing in the farrago of nonsense which they call magic. After all,
• 6:27:23
  it's absurd to think that Hattie was going to do any harm to Margaret.
• 6:27:27
  As soon as I get back to London, I'll see my lawyers and
• 6:27:30
  I dare say something can be done. If he's really mad, we'll have
• 6:27:36
  to put him under restraint and Margaret will be free. I shall never forget
• 6:27:41
  your kindness. Susy smiled and shrugged her shoulders. She was convinced that he
• 6:27:47
  would forget everything if Margaret came back to him, But she tid herself for
• 6:27:52
  the bitterness of the thought. She loved him, and she was glad to
• 6:27:56
  be able to do anything for him. She returned to the hotel to ranged
• 6:28:00
  her frock and walked slowly to the chn Noir. It always exhilarated her to
• 6:28:03
  come back to Paris, and she looked with happy, affectionate eyes at the
• 6:28:07
  plane trees, the yellow trams that rumbled along incessantly, and the lounging people.
• 6:28:14
  When she arrived, Doctor Poored was waiting, and his delight at seeing
• 6:28:18
  her again was flattering and pleasant. They talked of Arthur. They wondered why
• 6:28:23
  he was late. In a moment, it came in they saw at once
• 6:28:27
  that something quite extraordinary had taken place. Thank god, I've found you at
• 6:28:32
  last, he cried. His face was moving strangely. They had never seen
• 6:28:37
  him so discomposed. I've been around to your hotel, but I just missed
• 6:28:41
  you. Why did you insist on my going away? What on earth the
• 6:28:45
  matter? Cried Susy. Something awful has happened to Margaret. Susy started to
• 6:28:51
  her feet with a sudden cry of dismay. How do you know, she
• 6:28:55
  asked quickly. He looked at them for a moment and flushed. He kept
• 6:28:59
  his eyes upon them, as though actually to force his listeners into believing what
• 6:29:03
  he was about to say. I feel it, he answered, hoarsely.
• 6:29:07
  What do you mean? It came upon me quite suddenly. I can't explain
• 6:29:11
  why or how. I only know that something has happened. He began to
• 6:29:15
  walk up and down, pray to an agitation that was frightful to behold.
• 6:29:19
  Susie and Doctor word stared at him helplessly. They tried to think of something
• 6:29:23
  to say that would calm him. Surely, if anything has occurred, we
• 6:29:29
  should have been informed. He turned to Susie angrily. How do you suppose
• 6:29:33
  we could know anything? She was quite helpless. She was imprisoned like a
• 6:29:37
  rat in a trap. But my dear friend, you mustn't give way in
• 6:29:41
  this fashion, said the doctor. What would do you say of a patient
• 6:29:45
  who came to you with such a story? Arthur answered the question with a
• 6:29:48
  shrug of the shoulders. I should say he was absurdly hysterical. Well,
• 6:29:55
  I can't help it. The feeling's there. If you try all night You'll
• 6:29:59
  never be able to argue me out of it. I feel it in every
• 6:30:02
  bone of my body. I couldn't be more certain if I saw Margaret lying
• 6:30:06
  dead in front of me. Susy saw that it was indeed useless to reason
• 6:30:10
  with him. The only course was to accept his conviction and make the best
• 6:30:15
  of us. What do you want us to do, she asked, I
• 6:30:18
  want you both to come to England with me at once. If we start
• 6:30:21
  now, we can catch the evening train. Susy did not answer, but
• 6:30:25
  she got up. She touched the doctor on the arm. Please come,
• 6:30:29
  she whispered. He nodded and untucked the napkin he had already arranged over his
• 6:30:33
  waistcoat. I've got a cab at the door, said Arthur. And what
• 6:30:38
  about clothes for miss Susy said the doctor. Oh we can't wait for that,
• 6:30:44
  cried Arthur. For God's sake, come quickly. Susy knew that there
• 6:30:48
  was plenty of time to fetch a few necessary things before the train started out,
• 6:30:52
  but Arthur's impatience was too great to be withstood. What doesn't matter,
• 6:30:56
  she said, I can get hold I want in England. He hurried them
• 6:31:00
  to the door and told the cabman to drive to the station as quickly as
• 6:31:03
  ever he could, for heaven's sake. Calm down a little, said Susy.
• 6:31:10
  You'll be no good to any one in that state. I feel certain
• 6:31:12
  we're too late. Nonsense. I'm convinced you'll find Margaret safe and sound.
• 6:31:18
  He did not answer. He gave a sigh of relief as they drove into
• 6:31:22
  the court yard of the station. End of chapter thirteen, Chapter fourteen of
• 6:31:41
  The Magician by Somerset Maum. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 6:31:48
  Susy never forgot the horror of that journey to England. They arrived in London
• 6:31:53
  early in the morning, and without stopping, drove to Euston For three or
• 6:31:57
  four days. They had been unusual heat, and even at that hour,
• 6:32:02
  the streets were sultry and airless. The train north was crowded, and it
• 6:32:06
  seemed impossible to get a breath of air. Her head ached, but she
• 6:32:10
  was obliged to keep a cheerful demeanor in the effort to allay Arthur's increasing anxiety.
• 6:32:15
  Doctor Porrett sat in front of her after the sleepless night. His eyes
• 6:32:21
  were heavy and his face deeply lined. He was exhausted. At length,
• 6:32:26
  after much tiresome changing, they reached Venning. She had expected a greater coolness
• 6:32:30
  in that northern country, but there was a hot blight over the place,
• 6:32:36
  and as they walked to the inn from the little station, they could hardly
• 6:32:38
  drag their limbs along. Arthur had telegraphed from London that they must have rooms
• 6:32:45
  ready, and the landlady expected him. She recognized Arthur. He passionately desired
• 6:32:51
  to ask whether anything had happened since he went away, but forced himself to
• 6:32:55
  be silent for a while. He greeted her with cheerfulness. Well, missus
• 6:33:00
  Smithers, what has been going on since I left you? He cried.
• 6:33:04
  Of course you wouldn't have heard, sir, she answered gravely. He began
• 6:33:10
  to tremble, but with an almost superhuman effort, controlled his voice. As
• 6:33:15
  the squire hanged himself, he asked lightly, no, sir, by the
• 6:33:21
  poor lady's dead. He did not answer. He seemed turned to stone.
• 6:33:26
  He stared with ghastly eyes. Poor thing, said Susy, forcing herself to
• 6:33:33
  speak. Was it very sudden? The woman turned to Susie, glad to
• 6:33:38
  have some one with whom to discuss the event, She took no notice of
• 6:33:42
  Arthur's agony. Yes one, no one expected it. She died quite sudden,
• 6:33:48
  like she was only buried this morning. What did she die of?
• 6:33:53
  Asked Susy. Her eyes on Arthur. She feared that he would faint.
• 6:33:59
  She wanted a normal to get him away, but didn't know how to manage
• 6:34:02
  it. I say it was art disease, answered the landlady. Poor thing.
• 6:34:07
  It's an happy release for her. Won't you get us some tea?
• 6:34:12
  Missus Smithers were very tired and we should like something immediately. Oh yes,
• 6:34:18
  miss I'll get it at once. Good woman bustled away. Susy quickly locked
• 6:34:23
  the door. She seized Arthur's arm. Arthur, Arthur, she expected him
• 6:34:30
  to break down. She looked with agony at doctor Poorhette, who stood helplessly
• 6:34:33
  by. You couldn't have done anything if you'd been here. You heard what
• 6:34:38
  that woman said. If Margaret died of heart disease, your suspicions are quite
• 6:34:44
  without ground. He shook her away, almost violently. For God's sake,
• 6:34:49
  speitless, cried Susy. His silence terrified her more than would have done any
• 6:34:55
  outburst of grief. Doctor Poorette went up to him gently, and try to
• 6:35:00
  be brave, my friend, You will not suffer as much if you allow
• 6:35:04
  yourself a little weakness. For Heaven's sake, leave me alone, said Arthur
• 6:35:10
  hoarsely. They drew back and watched him silently. Susy heard their hostess come
• 6:35:15
  along to the sitting room with tea, and she unlocked the door. The
• 6:35:18
  landlady brought in the things. She was on the point of leaving them when
• 6:35:22
  Arthur stopped her. Now, how do you know that missus Haddo died of
• 6:35:26
  heart disease? He asked Suddenly. His voice was hard and stern. He
• 6:35:32
  spoke with a peculiar abruptness that made the poor woman look at him in amazement.
• 6:35:37
  Doctor Richardson tell me so. Had he been attending her, Yes,
• 6:35:41
  sir, mister Hadow had called him in several times to see his lady.
• 6:35:48
  Where does doctor Richardson live? Why, sir, he lives at the White
• 6:35:52
  House near the station. She could not make out why Arthur asked these questions.
• 6:35:59
  Did mister Haddo go to the funeral? Oh, yes, sir,
• 6:36:03
  I'm never seen any one so upset. That'll do. You can go,
• 6:36:08
  Susy poured out the tea and handed the cup to Arthur. To her surprise,
• 6:36:12
  he drank the tea and ate some bread and butter. She could not
• 6:36:15
  understand him. The expression of strain and the restlessness which had been so painful
• 6:36:22
  were both gone from his face, and it was set now to a look
• 6:36:25
  of grim determination. At last, he spoke to them, I'm going to
• 6:36:30
  see this doctor. Margaret's heart was as sound as mine. What are you
• 6:36:36
  going to do do? He turned on her with a peculiar fierceness. I'm
• 6:36:41
  going to put a rope around that man's neck, and if the law won't
• 6:36:44
  help me, by God, I'll kill him myself. Ma'am on demive was
• 6:36:48
  a fool, cried doctor Poorette. Springing up, Arthur put out his hand
• 6:36:52
  angrily, as though to keep him back. The frown on his face grew
• 6:36:56
  darker. You must leave me alone, Good Heavens, the time has gone
• 6:37:02
  by for tears and lamentation. After all I've gone through for months. I
• 6:37:07
  can't weep because Margaret is dead. My heart is dried up. But I
• 6:37:11
  know that she didn't die naturally, and I'll never rest so long as that
• 6:37:15
  fellow lives. He stretched out his hands, and with clenched jaws, prayed
• 6:37:19
  that one day he might hold the man's neck between them and see his face
• 6:37:23
  turn livid and purple as he died. And I am going to this fool
• 6:37:27
  of a doctor, and then I shall go to Skaine. You must let
• 6:37:32
  us come with you, said Susy. You need not be frightened, he
• 6:37:36
  answered, I shall not take any steps of my own till I find the
• 6:37:40
  law is powerless. I want to come with you all the same now as
• 6:37:44
  you like. Susy went out in ordered a trap to be got ready,
• 6:37:49
  but since Arthur would not wait, she arranged that it should be sent for
• 6:37:53
  them to the doctor's door. They went there at once on foot. Doctor
• 6:37:59
  Richardson was little man of five and fifty, with a fair beard that was
• 6:38:03
  now nearly white, and prominent blue eyes. He spoke with a broad Staffordshire
• 6:38:07
  accent. There was in him something of the farmer, something of the well
• 6:38:11
  to do tradesman, and at the first glance his intelligence did not impress one.
• 6:38:18
  Arthur was shown with his two friends into the consulting room, and after
• 6:38:22
  a short interval, the doctor came in. He was dressed in flannels and
• 6:38:25
  had an old fashioned racket in his hand. I'm sorry to her kept your
• 6:38:30
  waiting while Missus Richardson has got a few lady friends to tea and I was
• 6:38:33
  just in the middle of a set. His effusiveness jarred upon Arthur, whose
• 6:38:38
  manner, by contrast, became more than usually abrupt. I have just learnt
• 6:38:44
  of the death of missus Haddow, and I was her guardian and her eldest
• 6:38:47
  friend. I came to you in the hope that you would be able to
• 6:38:49
  tell me something about it. Doctor Richardson gave him at once the suspicious glance
• 6:38:55
  of a stupid man. I don't know why you've come to me instead of
• 6:38:59
  to her husband. He will be able to tell you all that you wish
• 6:39:03
  to know. I came to you as a fellow practitioner, answered Arthur.
• 6:39:07
  I am at Saint Luke's hospital. He pointed to his card, which doctor
• 6:39:11
  Richardson still held. And my friend is doctor Porhette, whose name will be
• 6:39:17
  familiar to you with respect to his studies in Malta fever. I think I
• 6:39:21
  read an article hers in the b m J, said the country doctor.
• 6:39:26
  His manner assumed a singular hostility. He had no sympathy with London specialists,
• 6:39:33
  whose attitude towards the general practitioner he resented. He was pleased to sneer at
• 6:39:37
  their pretensions to omniscience, and quite willing to pit himself against them. What
• 6:39:42
  can I do for you, mister Burdon, I should be very much obliged
• 6:39:48
  if you would tell me, as exactly as possible how missus Hado died.
• 6:39:53
  That was a very simple case of endocarditis. May I ask how long before
• 6:40:00
  death you were called in? The doctor hesitated, He riddened a little.
• 6:40:04
  I'm not inclined to be cross examined, he burst out, suddenly, making
• 6:40:08
  up his mind to be angry as a surgeon, I daresay your knowledge of
• 6:40:12
  cardiac di cazares is neither extensive nor peculiar. But this was a very simple
• 6:40:18
  case and everything was done that was possible. I don't think there's anything I
• 6:40:23
  can tell you. Arthur took no notice of the outburst. How many times
• 6:40:29
  did you see her? Really, sir, I don't understand your attitude.
• 6:40:33
  I can't see that you have any right to question me. Did you have
• 6:40:37
  a post mortem? Certainly not in the first place. There was no need,
• 6:40:41
  as the cause of death was perfectly clear. And secondly, you must
• 6:40:45
  know as well as I do, that the relatives are very averse to anything
• 6:40:48
  of that sort. You gentlemen in Harley Street don't understand the conditions of private
• 6:40:55
  practice. We have a time to do post mortems to gratify by a needless
• 6:41:00
  curiosity. Arthur was silent for a moment. The little man was evidently convinced
• 6:41:07
  that there was nothing odd about Margaret's death. But his foolishness was as great
• 6:41:11
  as his obstinacy. It was clear that several motives would induce him to put
• 6:41:17
  every obstacle in Arthur's way, and chief of these was the harm it would
• 6:41:22
  do to him if it were discovered that he had given a certificate of death
• 6:41:25
  carelessly. He would naturally do anything to avoid social scandal. Still, Arthur
• 6:41:32
  was obliged to speak. I think i'd better tell you, frankly, that
• 6:41:34
  I'm not satisfied, Doctor Richardson. I can't persuade myself that this lady's death
• 6:41:41
  was due to natural causes. Stuff and nonsense, cried the other angrily.
• 6:41:47
  I've been in practice for hard A Parthur five years, and I'm willing to
• 6:41:51
  state my profectional reputation on it. I have reason to think you are mistaken.
• 6:41:56
  And to what do you to ascribe death, pray asked doctor. I
• 6:42:00
  don't know yet. I poured my soul. I think you must be all
• 6:42:04
  your senses, really, sir, your behavior is childish. You tell me
• 6:42:10
  that you are a surgeon of some eminence. I'm surely never told you anything
• 6:42:14
  of the sort. Lady. How you read papers before learned bodies and have
• 6:42:18
  them printed, and you'll come with the silliest story as a stafford or a
• 6:42:22
  peasant who thinks someone has been trying to poison him because he's got a stomach
• 6:42:26
  ache. You may be a very admirable surgeon, but I'll venture to think
• 6:42:30
  I am more capable than you of judging in a case which I attended and
• 6:42:36
  you'll know nothing about. I mean to take the steps necessary to get an
• 6:42:40
  order for exhamation, Doctor Richardson, and I cannot help thinking it will be
• 6:42:44
  worth your while to assist me in every possible way. I shall do nothing
• 6:42:48
  of the kind. I think you're very impertinent, sir. There is no
• 6:42:52
  need for exhumation, and I shall do everything in my power to prevent it.
• 6:42:57
  And I tell you as chairmen of the Border Magistrates. My opinion will
• 6:43:03
  have as great value as any specialists in Harley Street. He flounced to the
• 6:43:07
  door and held it open. Susie and doctor Poett walked out, and Arthur,
• 6:43:12
  looking down thoughtfully, followed on their heels. Doctor Richardson slammed the street
• 6:43:18
  door angrily. Doctor Porett slipped his arm in Arthur's You must be reasonable,
• 6:43:25
  my friend, he said, from his own point of users. Doctor has
• 6:43:29
  all the rights on his side. You have nothing to justify your demands.
• 6:43:33
  It is monstrous to expect that for a vague suspicion you will be able to
• 6:43:37
  get an order for exhumation. Arthur did not answer. The trap was waiting
• 6:43:42
  for them. Why do you want to see Haddo, insisted the doctor.
• 6:43:48
  You will do no more good than you have with doctor Richardson, and I
• 6:43:52
  have made up my mind to see him, answered Arthur shortly. But there
• 6:43:56
  is no need that either of you should accompany me. If you go,
• 6:44:00
  we will come with you, said Susy without a word. Arthur jumped into
• 6:44:04
  the dog cart and Susy took a seat by his side. Doctor Porette,
• 6:44:10
  with a shrug of the shoulders, mounted behind Arthur whipped up the pony,
• 6:44:15
  and at a smart trot, they traversed three miles across the barren heath that
• 6:44:18
  lay between Venning and Skin. When they reached the park gates, the lodge
• 6:44:22
  keeper, as luck would have it, was standing just inside, and she
• 6:44:26
  held one of them open for her little boy to come in. He was
• 6:44:29
  playing in the road and showed no inclination to do so. Arthur jumped down.
• 6:44:33
  I want to see mister Haddo, he said. Mister handleasna in,
• 6:44:37
  she answered roughly. She tried to close the gate, but Arthur quickly put
• 6:44:41
  his foot inside. Nonsense. I have to see him on a matter of
• 6:44:45
  great importance. Mister Hadle's orders are that no one is to be admitted.
• 6:44:49
  I can't help that. I am proposing to come in. All the same.
• 6:44:53
  Susye and doctor Porette came forward. They promised a small boy of shilling
• 6:44:57
  to hold their horse. Well, didn't get out of here, cried the
• 6:45:02
  woman. You're not coming in, whatever you say. She tried to push
• 6:45:06
  the gate to but Arthur's foot prevented her. Paying no heed to her angry
• 6:45:10
  expostulations, he forced his way in. He walked quickly up the drive.
• 6:45:15
  The lodge keeper accompanied him with shrill abuse. The gate was left unguarded,
• 6:45:18
  and the others were able to follow without difficulty. You can go to the
• 6:45:23
  door, but you're want tea, mister Haddle, the woman cried angrily.
• 6:45:27
  You get me sacked for letting you come. Susie saw the house. It
• 6:45:33
  was a fine old building in the Elizabethan style, but much in need of
• 6:45:37
  repair, and it had the desolate look of a place that had been uninhabited.
• 6:45:41
  The garden that surrounded it had been allowed to run wild, and the
• 6:45:45
  avenue up which they walked was green with rank weeds. Here and there a
• 6:45:48
  fallen tree which none had troubled to remove, marked the owner's negligence. Arthur
• 6:45:55
  went to the door and rang a bell. They heard it clang through the
• 6:45:57
  house as though not a sore. There a man came to the door,
• 6:46:03
  and as soon as he opened it, Arthur, expecting to be refused admission,
• 6:46:06
  pushed in. The fellow was as angry as the virago. His wife,
• 6:46:10
  who explained noisily how the three strangers had got into the park. Yu
• 6:46:14
  can see the squire shall get better be off. He's up in the attics,
• 6:46:18
  and no one's allowdable to him. The man tried to push Arthur away.
• 6:46:22
  Be off for your old sin for a police. Don't be a fool,
• 6:46:26
  said Arthur. I mean to find mister Haddow. The housekeeper and his
• 6:46:30
  wife broke out with abuse, to which Arthur listened in silence. Susie and
• 6:46:34
  Doctor Porette stood by anxiously. They did not know what to do. Suddenly
• 6:46:40
  a voice at their elbows made them start, and the two servants were immediately
• 6:46:44
  silent. What can I do for you? Oliver Haddo was standing motionless behind
• 6:46:51
  them. It startled Susy that he should have come upon them so suddenly without
• 6:46:53
  a sound. Doctor Porette, who had not seen him for some time,
• 6:46:57
  was astounded at the chain which had taken place in him. The corpulence which
• 6:47:02
  had been his before, was become now a positive disease. He was enormous.
• 6:47:07
  His chin was a mass of heavy folds, distended with fat, and
• 6:47:12
  his cheeks were puffed up so that his eyes were preternaturally small. He peered
• 6:47:17
  at you from between the swollen lids. All his features had sunk into that
• 6:47:22
  hideous obesity. His ears were horribly bloated, and the lobes were large and
• 6:47:27
  swelled. He had apparently a difficulty in breathing, for his large mouth,
• 6:47:33
  with its scarlet shining lips, was constantly open. He had grown much balder,
• 6:47:38
  and now there was only a crescent of long hair stretching across the back
• 6:47:42
  of his head from ear to ear. There was something terrible about that great
• 6:47:48
  shining scalp. His paunch was huge. He was a very tall man,
• 6:47:52
  and held himself erect so that it protruded like a vast barrel. His hands
• 6:47:59
  were infinitely lay repulsive. They were red and soft and moist. He was
• 6:48:04
  sweating freely, and beads of perspiration stood on his forehead and on his shaven
• 6:48:10
  lip. For a moment, they all looked at one another in silence.
• 6:48:14
  Then Hado turned to his servants, Go, he said, as though frightened
• 6:48:19
  out of their wits, they made for the door, and with a bustling
• 6:48:22
  hurry, flung themselves out. A torpid smile crossed his face as he watched
• 6:48:26
  them go. Then he moved a step nearer his visitors. His manner had
• 6:48:32
  still the insolent urbanity which was customary to him. And now, my friends,
• 6:48:37
  will you tell me how I can be of service? To you now.
• 6:48:41
  I have come about Margaret's death, said Arthur. Haddo, as was
• 6:48:45
  his habit, did not immediately answer. He looked slowly from Arthur to doctor
• 6:48:51
  Porette, and from Doctor Porette to Susy. His eyes rested on her hat,
• 6:48:56
  and she felt uncomfortably that he was inventing some gibe it. I should
• 6:49:02
  have thought this hardly the moment to intrude upon my sorrow, he said.
• 6:49:07
  At last, if you have condolences to awful, I ventured to suggest that
• 6:49:12
  you might conveniently send them by means of the penny post. Arthur frowned.
• 6:49:19
  Why did you not let me know that she was ill? He asked,
• 6:49:23
  Strange as it may seem to you, my worthy friend, it never occurred
• 6:49:29
  to me that my wife's health could be any business of yours. A faint
• 6:49:34
  smile flickered once more on Hadow's lips, but his eyes had still the peculiar
• 6:49:38
  hardness which was so uncanny. Arthur looked at him steadily. I have every
• 6:49:45
  reason to believe that you killed her, he said. Hadow's face did not
• 6:49:48
  for an instant change its expression. And have you communicated your suspicions to the
• 6:49:56
  police, I propose to, and if I am indiscreet, may I inquire
• 6:50:03
  upon what you base them. I saw Margaret three weeks ago, and she
• 6:50:07
  told me that she went in terror of her life. Poor Margaret, she
• 6:50:12
  had always the romantic temperament. I think it was that which first brought us
• 6:50:18
  together. You damn scoundrel, cried Arthur. My dear fellow, pray moderate
• 6:50:26
  your language. This is surely not an occasion when you should give way to
• 6:50:30
  your lamentable taste for abuse. You outrage all Miss Boyd's susceptibilities. He turned
• 6:50:38
  to her with an airy wave of his fat hand. You must forgive me
• 6:50:42
  if I do not offer you the hospitality of scain. But the loss I
• 6:50:48
  have so lately sustained does not permit me to indulge in the levity of entertaining.
• 6:50:56
  He gave her an ironical low bow. Then look once more at Arthur.
• 6:51:00
  If I can be of no further use to you, perhaps you would
• 6:51:06
  leave me to my own reflections. The lodge keeper will give you the exact
• 6:51:11
  address of the village. Constable Arthur did not answer. He stared into vacancy,
• 6:51:18
  as if he were turning over things in his mind. Then he turned
• 6:51:22
  sharply on his heel and walked toward the gate. Susie and Doctor Poette,
• 6:51:26
  taken completely aback, did not know what to do, and Hado's little eyes
• 6:51:30
  twinkled as he watched their discomfiture. I always thought that your friend had deplorable
• 6:51:38
  manners, he murmured. Susie, feeling very ridiculous, flushed, and Doctor
• 6:51:45
  Poette awkwardly took off his hat. As they walked away, they felt haados
• 6:51:51
  mocking gaze fixed upon them, and they were heartily thankful to reach the gate,
• 6:51:56
  they found Arthur waiting for them. I beg your pardon, he said.
• 6:52:00
  I forgot that I was not alone. The three of them drove slowly
• 6:52:04
  back to the inn. What are you going to do now, asked Susy.
• 6:52:11
  For a long time, Arthur made no reply, and Susy thought he
• 6:52:12
  could not have heard her. At last, he broke the silence, and
• 6:52:18
  I see that I can do nothing by ordinary methods. I realize that it
• 6:52:25
  is useless to make a public outcry. There is only my own conviction that
• 6:52:29
  Margaret came to a violent end, and I cannot expect anyone to pay heed
• 6:52:33
  to that. After all, it's just possible that she really died of heart
• 6:52:38
  disease. Arthur gave Susy a long look. He seemed to consider her words
• 6:52:44
  deliberately. Perhaps there are means to decide that conclusively, he replied, at
• 6:52:49
  length, thoughtfully, as though he were talking to himself. What are they?
• 6:52:56
  Arthur did not answer. When they came to the or of the inn,
• 6:53:00
  he stopped, Will you go in? I wish to take a walk
• 6:53:04
  by myself, he said. Susy looked at him anxiously. You are not
• 6:53:08
  going to do anything rash now. I will do nothing till I have made
• 6:53:12
  quite sure that Margaret was foully murdered. He turned on his heel and walked
• 6:53:18
  quickly away. It was late now, and they found a frugal meal waiting
• 6:53:22
  for them in the little sitting room. It seemed no use to delay it
• 6:53:26
  till Arthur came back, and silently, sorrowfully they ate. Afterwards. The
• 6:53:32
  doctor smoked cigarettes while Susy sat at the open window and looked at the stars.
• 6:53:37
  She thought of Margaret, of her beauty and her charming frankness, of
• 6:53:41
  her fall, and of her miserable end, and she began to cry quietly.
• 6:53:48
  She knew enough of the facts now to be aware that the wretched girl
• 6:53:52
  was not to blame for anything that had happened. A cruel fate had fallen
• 6:53:56
  upon her, and she had been as powerless as in the old tales Phedra,
• 6:54:00
  the daughter of Minos or Mira of the beautiful Hair. The hours passed,
• 6:54:07
  and still Arthur did not return. Susy thought now only of him,
• 6:54:11
  and she was frightfully anxious. But at last he came in the night was
• 6:54:18
  far advanced. He put down his hat and sat down. For a long
• 6:54:22
  while. He looked silently at doctor poored. What is it, my friend,
• 6:54:29
  asked the good doctor at length. Do you remember that you told us
• 6:54:33
  once of an experiment you made in Alexandria, he said, after some hesitation,
• 6:54:40
  he spoke, in a curious voice. You told us that you took
• 6:54:45
  a boy, and when he looked in a magic mirror, he saw things
• 6:54:49
  which he could not possibly have known. I remember very well, said the
• 6:54:55
  doctor. I was much inclined to laugh at you at the time. I
• 6:55:00
  was convinced that the boy was a knave who deceived you. Yell us.
• 6:55:07
  Of late, I've thought of that story often. Some hidden recess of my
• 6:55:11
  memory has been opened and I seemed to remember strange things. Was I the
• 6:55:19
  boy who looked in the ink? Yes, said the doctor quietly. Arthur
• 6:55:27
  did not say anything. A profound silence fell upon them, while Susy and
• 6:55:32
  the doctor watched him intently. They wondered what was in his mind. There
• 6:55:37
  is a side of my character which I did not know till lately, Arthur
• 6:55:42
  said. At last, when first it dawned upon me, I fought against
• 6:55:47
  it, and I said to myself that deep down in all of us a
• 6:55:51
  relic from the long past, as the remains of the superstition that blinded our
• 6:55:55
  fathers. And it is needful for the man of science to fire against it
• 6:56:00
  with all his might. And yet it was stronger than I. Perhaps my
• 6:56:07
  birth, my early years in those eastern lands, where every one believes in
• 6:56:11
  the supernatural, affected me, although I did not know it. I began
• 6:56:15
  to remember vague, mysterious things which I never knew had been part of my
• 6:56:22
  knowledge. And at last, one day it seemed that a new window was
• 6:56:26
  opened on to my soul, and I saw with extraordinary clearness the incident which
• 6:56:30
  you had described. I knew suddenly it was part of my own experience.
• 6:56:37
  I saw you take me by the hand and pour the ink on my palm,
• 6:56:41
  and bid me look at it. I felt again the strange glow that
• 6:56:45
  thrilled me, and with an indescribable bitterness, I saw things in the mirror
• 6:56:49
  which were not there before. I saw people whom I had never seen.
• 6:56:56
  I saw them perform certain actions, and some force I knew not obliged me
• 6:57:02
  to speak. And at length everything grew dim and I was as exhausted as
• 6:57:07
  if I had not eaten all day. He went over to the open window
• 6:57:11
  and looked out. Neither of the others spoke. The look on Arthur's face,
• 6:57:18
  curiously outlined by the light of the lamp, was very stern. He
• 6:57:22
  seemed to undergo some mental struggle of extraordinary violence. His breath came quickly.
• 6:57:29
  At last he turned and faced them. He spoke hoarsely quickly, I must
• 6:57:34
  see Margaret again. Hart that you're mad, cried Susy. He went up
• 6:57:41
  to doctor Porette, and, putting his hands on his shoulders, looked fixedly
• 6:57:45
  into his eyes. You have studied this science, you know all that can
• 6:57:49
  be known of it. I want you to show her to me. The
• 6:57:52
  doctor gave an exclamation of alarm, My dear fellow, How can I I
• 6:57:56
  have read many books, but I am never p distant eating I have only
• 6:58:02
  studied these matters for my amusement. Do you believe it can be done?
• 6:58:07
  I don't understand what you want. I want you to bring her to me
• 6:58:11
  so that I may speak with her, so that I may find out the
• 6:58:15
  truth. Do you think I am God that I can raise men from the
• 6:58:18
  dead. Arthur's hands pressed him down in the chair from which he sought to
• 6:58:22
  rise. His fingers were clenched on the old man's shoulders so that he could
• 6:58:26
  hardly bear the pain. You told us once Elephus Levy raised a spirit.
• 6:58:33
  Do you believe that was true? I don't know. I have always kept
• 6:58:37
  an open mind. There was much to be said on both sides. Well,
• 6:58:41
  now you must believe you must do what he did. You must be
• 6:58:45
  mad, Arthur. I want you to come to that spot where I saw
• 6:58:49
  her last. If her spirit can be brought back anywhere, it must be
• 6:58:53
  in that place where she sat and wept. You know, all the ceremonies
• 6:58:59
  and all the words are necessary. But Susy came forward and laid her hand
• 6:59:03
  on his arm. He looked at her with a frown. Arthur, you
• 6:59:07
  know in your heart that nothing can come of it. You are only increasing
• 6:59:11
  your unhappiness. And even if you could bring her from the grave for a
• 6:59:15
  moment, why can you not let her troubled soul rest in peace. If
• 6:59:21
  she died a natural death, we shall have no power over her. But
• 6:59:25
  if her death was violent, perhaps her spirit is earth bound. Still I
• 6:59:30
  tell you I must be certain. I want to see her once more,
• 6:59:33
  and afterwards I shall know what to do. I cannot. I cannot,
• 6:59:37
  said the doctor. Give me the books and I will do it alone.
• 6:59:42
  You you know that I have nothing here. Then you must help me,
• 6:59:47
  said Arthur. After all, why should you mind? For we perform a
• 6:59:52
  certain operation, and if nothing happens, we are no worse off than before.
• 6:59:56
  On the other hand, if we succeed, for God's sake, help
• 7:00:00
  me. If you have any care for my happiness, do this one thing
• 7:00:04
  for me. He stepped back and looked at the doctor. The Frenchman's eyes
• 7:00:10
  were fixed upon the ground. It's his madness, he muttered. He was
• 7:00:15
  intensely moved by Arthur's appeal. At last, he shrugged his shoulders. Arter
• 7:00:22
  all, if it is but a foolish mummoio, it can do no harm.
• 7:00:26
  You will help me, cried Arthur. If it can give you a
• 7:00:32
  peace, sir, any satisfaction. I'm willing to do what I can,
• 7:00:36
  but I warn you to be prepared for a great disappointment. End of chapter
• 7:00:41
  fourteen. Chapter fifteen of The Magician by Somerset mom. This LibriVox recording is
• 7:00:55
  in the public domain. Arthur wished to set about the vacation then and there,
• 7:01:00
  but doctor Poorhett said it was impossible. They were all exhausted after the
• 7:01:04
  long journey, and it was necessary to get certain things together, without which
• 7:01:08
  nothing could be done. In his heart, he thought that a knight's rest
• 7:01:12
  would bring Arthur to a more reasonable mind. When the light of day shone
• 7:01:17
  upon the earth, he would be ashamed of the desire which ran counter to
• 7:01:21
  all his prepossessions. But Arthur remembered that on the day it would be exactly
• 7:01:26
  a week since Margaret's death, and it seemed to him that then their spells
• 7:01:32
  might have a greater efficacy. When they came down in the morning and greeted
• 7:01:37
  one another, it was plain that none of them had slept. Are you
• 7:01:40
  still of the same purpose as last night, asked doctor poorheat gravely. I
• 7:01:45
  am the doctor, hesitated nervously. It will be necessary if you wish to
• 7:01:51
  follow out the rules of the old nikuamancers too fast through the whole day.
• 7:01:56
  I am ready to do anything. It will be no hard war ship to
• 7:02:00
  me, said Susy, with a little hysterical laugh. I feel I couldn't
• 7:02:04
  eat think if I tried. I think the whole affair is sheer folly,
• 7:02:10
  said doctor poet. You promised me you would try. The day, the
• 7:02:15
  long summer day passed slowly. There was a hard brilliancy in the sky that
• 7:02:19
  reminded the Frenchmen of those Egyptian heavens. When the earth seemed crushed beneath a
• 7:02:25
  bowl of molten fire. Arthur was too restless to remain indoors and left the
• 7:02:30
  others to their own devices. He walked without aim, as fast as he
• 7:02:33
  could go. He felt no weariness. The burning sun beat down upon him,
• 7:02:38
  but he did not know it. The hours passed with lagging feet.
• 7:02:42
  Susy lay on her bed and tried to read. Her nerves were so taut
• 7:02:47
  that when there was a sound in the courtyard of a pail falling on the
• 7:02:51
  cobbles. She cried out in terror. The sun rose, and presently her
• 7:02:56
  window was flooded with quivering rays of gold. It was midday. The day
• 7:03:02
  passed, and it was afternoon. The evening came, but it brought no
• 7:03:07
  freshness. Meanwhile, doctor Poette sat in the little parlor with his head between
• 7:03:11
  his hands, trying, by a great mental effort to bring back to his
• 7:03:15
  memory all that he had read. His heart began to beat more quickly.
• 7:03:21
  Then the night fell, and one by one the stars shone out. There
• 7:03:26
  was no wind, The air was heavy. Susie came downstairs and began to
• 7:03:32
  talk with doctor Poette, but they spoke in a low tone, as if
• 7:03:36
  they were afraid that some one would overhear. They were faint now with want
• 7:03:40
  of food. The hours went one by one, and the striking of a
• 7:03:44
  clock filled them, each time with a mysterious apprehension. The lights in the
• 7:03:48
  village were put out, little by little, and everybody slept. Susie had
• 7:03:53
  lighted the lamp, and they watched beside it. A cold shiver passed through
• 7:03:57
  her. I feel as though some one were lying dead in the room.
• 7:04:03
  She said, why does not Arthur come? They spoke inconsequently, and neither
• 7:04:10
  heeded what the other said. The window was wide open, but the air
• 7:04:14
  was difficult to breathe. And now the silence was so unusual that Susie grew
• 7:04:18
  strangely nervous. She tried to think of the noisy streets in Paris, the
• 7:04:22
  constant roar of traffic, and the shuffling of the crowds toward evening, as
• 7:04:26
  the workpeople returned to their homes. She stood up. There's no air to
• 7:04:30
  night. Look at the trees. Not a leaf is moving. Why does
• 7:04:36
  not Arthur come, repeated the doctor. There's no moon to night. It
• 7:04:41
  will be very dark its skin. He is locked all day. He should
• 7:04:45
  be here by now. Susy felt an extraordinary oppression, and she panted for
• 7:04:51
  breath. At last, they heard a step on the road outside, and
• 7:04:53
  Arthur stood at the window. Are you ready to come, he said,
• 7:04:59
  We've been waiting for you. They joined him, bringing the few things that
• 7:05:03
  doctor Porett had said were necessary, and they walked along the solitary road that
• 7:05:07
  led to Scane. On each side, the heather stretched into the dark night,
• 7:05:12
  and there was a blackness about it that was ominous. There was no
• 7:05:17
  sound save that of their own steps. Dimly under the stars, they saw
• 7:05:22
  the desolation with which they were surrounded. The way seemed very long. They
• 7:05:27
  were utterly exhausted, and they could hardly drag one foot after the other.
• 7:05:33
  You must let me rest for a minute, said Susy. They did not
• 7:05:37
  answer, but stopped, and she sat on a boulder by the wayside.
• 7:05:41
  They stood motionless in front of her, waiting patiently till she was ready.
• 7:05:45
  After a little while, she forced herself to get up. Now I can
• 7:05:49
  go on, she said. Still. They did not speak, but walked
• 7:05:53
  on. They moved like figures in a dream, with a stealthy directness,
• 7:05:57
  as though they acted under the influence of another's will. Suddenly the road stopped,
• 7:06:03
  and they found themselves at the gates of Skaine. Follow me very closely,
• 7:06:07
  said Arthur. He turned on one side, and they followed a paling
• 7:06:12
  Susie could feel that they walked along a narrow path. She could see hardly
• 7:06:17
  two steps in front of her. At last, he stood still. I
• 7:06:22
  came here earlier in the night and made the opening easier to get through.
• 7:06:26
  He turned back a broken piece of railing and slipped in. Susie followed,
• 7:06:30
  and doctor Porette entered after her. I can see nothing, said Susie.
• 7:06:36
  Give me your hand and I will lead you. They walked with difficulty through
• 7:06:40
  the tangled bracken among closely planted trees. They stumbled, and once doctor Porette
• 7:06:45
  fell, it seemed that they went a long way. Susie's heart beat fast
• 7:06:49
  with anxiety. All her weariness was forgotten. Then Arthur stopped and he pointed
• 7:06:56
  in front of him. Through an opening in the trees, they saw the
• 7:06:59
  house. All the windows were dark except those just under the roof, and
• 7:07:03
  from them came bright lights. Those are the attics which he uses as a
• 7:07:08
  laboratory. You see he is working now. There is no one else in
• 7:07:12
  the house. Susie was curiously fascinated by the flaming lights. There was an
• 7:07:18
  awful mystery in those unknown labors, which absorbed Oliver Haddo night after night till
• 7:07:22
  the sun rose. What horrible things were done there, hidden from the eyes
• 7:07:26
  of men by himself. In that vast house, the madmen performed ghastly experiments,
• 7:07:33
  and who could tell what dark secrets he trafficked in. There is no
• 7:07:37
  danger that he will come out, said Arthur. He remains there till break
• 7:07:41
  of day. He took her hand again and led her on back. They
• 7:07:47
  went among the trees, and presently they were on a pathway. They walked
• 7:07:51
  along with greater safety. Are you all right, poor Ette, asked Arthur.
• 7:07:56
  Yes. But the trees grew thicker and the night more somber. Now
• 7:08:02
  the stars were shut out, and they could hardly see in front of them.
• 7:08:04
  Here we are, said Arthur. They stopped and found that there was
• 7:08:10
  in front of them a green space formed by four cross ways. In the
• 7:08:14
  middle, a stone bench gleamed vaguely against the darkness. This is where Margaret
• 7:08:18
  sat when last I saw her. I can see to do nothing here,
• 7:08:25
  said the doctor. They had brought two flat bowls of brass to serve as
• 7:08:29
  censers, and these Arthur gave to doctor Foette. He stood by Susie's side
• 7:08:33
  while the doctor busied himself with his preparations. They saw him move to and
• 7:08:37
  fro. They saw him bend to the ground. Presently, there was a
• 7:08:41
  crackling of wood, and from the brazen boll's red flames shot up. They
• 7:08:47
  did not know what he burnt, but there wore heavy clouds of smoke and
• 7:08:51
  a strong aromatic odor. Filled the air. Now and again the doctor was
• 7:08:55
  sharply silouated against the light. His slight bowed figure was singularly mysterious. When
• 7:09:02
  Susy caught sight of his face, she saw that it was touched with a
• 7:09:06
  strong emotion. The work he was at affected him so that his doubts,
• 7:09:11
  his fears, had vanished. He looked like some old alchemists busied with unnatural
• 7:09:15
  things. Susie's heart began to beat painfully. She was growing desperately frightened,
• 7:09:22
  and stretched out her hands so that she might touch Arthur. Silently, he
• 7:09:26
  put his arm through hers, And now the doctor was tracing strange signs upon
• 7:09:32
  the ground. The flames died down, and only a glow remained, but
• 7:09:36
  he seemed to have no difficulty in seeing what he was about. Susie could
• 7:09:40
  not discern what figures he drew. Then he put more twigs upon the braziers,
• 7:09:45
  and the flames sprang up once more, cutting the darkness sharply, as
• 7:09:48
  with a sword. Now come, he said, But inexplicably, A sudden
• 7:09:55
  terror seized Susy. She felt that the hairs on her head stood up,
• 7:10:00
  and a cold sweat broke out on her body. Her limbs had grown on
• 7:10:03
  an instant, inconceivably heavy, so that she could not move. A panic
• 7:10:07
  such as she had never known came upon her, and except that her legs
• 7:10:11
  would not carry her, she would have fled blindly. She began to tremble.
• 7:10:17
  She tried to speak, but her tongue clave to her throat. I
• 7:10:22
  can't I'm afraid, she muttered hoarsely. You must. Without you, we
• 7:10:27
  can do nothing, said Arthur. She could not reason with herself. She
• 7:10:33
  had forgotten everything except that she was frightened to death. Her heart was beating
• 7:10:37
  so quickly that she almost fainted, and now Arthur held her so firmly that
• 7:10:41
  she winced. Let me come, She whispered. I won't help you.
• 7:10:47
  I'm afraid you must. He said. You must know. I tell you
• 7:10:52
  you must come. I her deadly fear, expressed itself in a passion of
• 7:10:57
  sudden anger. Because you love me and it's the only way to give me
• 7:11:02
  peace. She uttered a low wail of pain, and her terror gave way
• 7:11:06
  to shame. She blushed to the roots of her hair because he too knew
• 7:11:10
  her secret. And then she was seized again with anger, because he had
• 7:11:14
  the cruelty to taunt her with it. She had recovered her courage now,
• 7:11:18
  and she stepped forward. Doctor Pouette told her where to stand. Arthur took
• 7:11:23
  his place in front of her. You must not move till I give you
• 7:11:27
  leave. If you go outside the figure I have drawn, I cannot protect
• 7:11:32
  you. For a moment, Doctor Porette stood in perfect silence. Then he
• 7:11:37
  began to recite strange words in Latin. Susy heard him, but vaguely,
• 7:11:41
  she did not know the sense, and his voice was so low that she
• 7:11:45
  could not have distinguished the words. But his intonation had lost that gentle irony
• 7:11:51
  which was habitual to him, and he spoke with a trembling gravity that was
• 7:11:56
  extraordinarily impressive. Arthur stood immobile as a rock. The flames died away,
• 7:12:02
  and they saw one another only in the glow of the ashes, dimly,
• 7:12:04
  like persons in a vision of death. There was silence. Then the necromancer
• 7:12:11
  spoke again, and now his voice was louder. He seemed to utter weird
• 7:12:17
  invocations, but they were in a tongue that the others knew not. And
• 7:12:21
  while he spoke, the light from the burning cinders on a sudden went out.
• 7:12:26
  It did not die, but was sharply extinguished, as though by invisible
• 7:12:30
  hands. And now the darkness was more somber than that of the blackest night.
• 7:12:34
  The trees that surrounded them were hidden from their eyes, and the whiteness
• 7:12:38
  of the stone bench was seen no longer. They stood but a little way
• 7:12:42
  one from the other, but each might have stood alone. Susy strained her
• 7:12:48
  eyes, but she could see nothing. She looked up quickly. The stars
• 7:12:52
  were gone out, and she could see no further over her head than round
• 7:12:55
  the bout. The darkness was terrifying, and from it Doctor Poiette's voice had
• 7:13:03
  a ghastly effect. It seemed to come wonderfully changed from the void, a
• 7:13:07
  bottomless chaos. Susie clenched her hand so that she might not faint. All
• 7:13:15
  at once, she started for the old man's voice was cut by a sudden
• 7:13:18
  gust of wind. A moment before, the utter silence had been almost intolerable,
• 7:13:22
  and now a storm seemed to have fallen upon them. The trees all
• 7:13:26
  around them rocked in the wind. They heard the branches creak, and they
• 7:13:30
  heard the hissing of the leaves. They were in the midst of a hurricane,
• 7:13:34
  and they felt the earth's sway as it resisted the straining roots of great
• 7:13:40
  trees, which seemed to be dragged up by the force of the furious gale.
• 7:13:45
  Whistling and roaring, the wind stormed all about them, and the doctor,
• 7:13:48
  raising his voice, tried in vain to command it. But the strangest
• 7:13:52
  thing of all was that where they stood there was no sign of the raging
• 7:13:56
  blast. The air immediately about them was as still as it had been before,
• 7:14:03
  and not a hair on SUSY's head was moved. And it was terrible
• 7:14:07
  to hear the tumult, and yet to be in a calm that was almost
• 7:14:11
  unnatural. On a sudden doctor Poet raised his voice, and, with the
• 7:14:17
  sternness that they had never heard in it before, cried out in that unknown
• 7:14:21
  language. Then he called upon Margaret. He called her name three times in
• 7:14:27
  the uproar. Susy could scarcely hear. Terror had seized her again, But
• 7:14:33
  in her confusion she remembered his command, and she dared not move. Mulgaret
• 7:14:42
  mugarts mugers without a pause between. As quickly as a stone falls to the
• 7:14:52
  ground, the din which was all about them ceased. There was no gradual
• 7:14:57
  diminution. At one moment there was a roaring hurricane, and at the next
• 7:15:02
  a silence so complete that it might have been the silence of death. And
• 7:15:07
  then, seeming to come out of nothingness extraordinarily, they heard, with a
• 7:15:12
  curious distinctness, the sound of a woman weeping. Susan's heart stood still.
• 7:15:21
  They heard the sound of a woman weeping, and they recognized the voice of
• 7:15:26
  Margaret. A groan of anguish burst from Arthur's lips, and he was on
• 7:15:32
  the point of starting forward, but quickly doctor Poorrett put out his hand to
• 7:15:34
  prevent him. The sound was heart rending, the sobbing of a woman who
• 7:15:38
  had lost all hope, the sobbing of a woman terrified. If Susy had
• 7:15:45
  been able to stir, she would have put her hands to her ears to
• 7:15:48
  shut out the ghastly agony of it. And in a moment, notwithstanding the
• 7:15:53
  heavy darkness of the starless night, Arthur saw her. She was seated on
• 7:16:00
  the stone bench, as when last he had spoken with her. In her
• 7:16:03
  anguish, she sought not to hide her face. She looked at the ground,
• 7:16:07
  and the tears fell down her cheeks. Her bosom heaved with the pain
• 7:16:11
  of her weeping. Then Arthur knew that all his suspicions were justified. End
• 7:16:21
  of Chapter fifteen, Chapter sixteen of The Magician by Somerset Malm. This LibriVox
• 7:16:33
  recording is in the public domain. Arthur would not leave the little village of
• 7:16:40
  Venning. Neither Susy nor the Doctor could get him to make any decision.
• 7:16:45
  None of them spoke of the night which they had spent in the woods of
• 7:16:48
  Scain, but it colored all their thoughts, and they were not free for
• 7:16:51
  a single moment from the ghastly memory of it. They seemed still to hear
• 7:16:56
  the sound of that passionate weeping. Arthur was moody when he was with them.
• 7:17:00
  He spoke little. He opposed a stubborn resistance to their efforts at diverting
• 7:17:06
  his mind. He spent long hours by himself in the country, and they
• 7:17:10
  had no idea what he did. Susy was terribly anxious. He had lost
• 7:17:15
  his balance so completely that she was prepared for any rashness. She divined that
• 7:17:21
  his hatred of Haddo was no longer within the bounds of reason. The desire
• 7:17:25
  for vengeance filled him entirely, so that he was capable of any violence several
• 7:17:30
  days went by. At last, in concert with doctor Porhette, she determined
• 7:17:36
  to make one more attempt. It was late at night, and they sat
• 7:17:38
  with open windows in the sitting room of the inn. There was a singular
• 7:17:42
  oppressiveness in the air, which suggested that a thunder storm was at hand.
• 7:17:47
  Susy prayed for it, for she ascribed to the peculiar heat of the last
• 7:17:51
  few days much of Arthur's sullen irritability. Arthur, you must tell us what
• 7:17:56
  you are going to do, she said. It is useless to stay here.
• 7:18:00
  We are all so ill and nervous that we cannot consider anything rationally.
• 7:18:04
  We want you to come away with us to morrow. You can go if
• 7:18:08
  you choose, he said, I shall remain till that man is dead.
• 7:18:14
  It is madness to talk like that. You can do nothing. You are
• 7:18:17
  only making yourself worse by staying here. And I have quite made up my
• 7:18:22
  mind. The law can offer you no help. And what else can you
• 7:18:25
  do? She asked, the question, meaning if possible, to get from
• 7:18:29
  him some hint of his intentions. But the grimness of his answer, though
• 7:18:33
  it only confirmed her vague suspicions, startled her. If I can do nothing
• 7:18:37
  else, I shall shoot him like a dog. She could think of nothing
• 7:18:42
  to say, and for a while they remained in silence. Then he got
• 7:18:47
  up. I think I should prefer it if you went, he said,
• 7:18:52
  you can only hamper me. I shall stay here as long as you do.
• 7:18:56
  Why, because if you do anything, I shall be compromised. I
• 7:19:00
  may be arrested. I think the fear of that may restrain you. He
• 7:19:06
  looked at her steadily. She met his eyes with a calmness which showed that
• 7:19:10
  she meant exactly what she said, and he turned uneasily away. A silence
• 7:19:15
  even greater than before fell upon them. They did not move. It was
• 7:19:19
  so still in the room that it might have been empty. The breathlessness of
• 7:19:23
  the air increased so that it was horribly oppressive. Suddenly there was a loud
• 7:19:29
  rattle of thunder, and a flash of lightning tore across the heavy clouds.
• 7:19:33
  Susy thanked Heaven for the storm, which would give presently a wholesome freshness.
• 7:19:38
  She felt excessively ill at ease, and it was a relief to ascribe her
• 7:19:42
  sensation to a state of the atmosphere. Again, the thunder rolled. It
• 7:19:47
  was so loud that it seemed to be immediately above their heads, and the
• 7:19:51
  wind rose suddenly and swept with a long moan through the trees that surrounded the
• 7:19:56
  house. It was a sound so human that it might have come from the
• 7:19:59
  soul all of dead men suffering hopeless torments of regret. The lamp went out
• 7:20:04
  so suddenly that Susie was vaguely frightened. It gave one flicker, and they
• 7:20:08
  were in total darkness. It seemed as though some one had leaned over the
• 7:20:12
  chimney and blown it out. The night was very black, and they could
• 7:20:17
  not see the window which opened onto the country. The darkness was so peculiar
• 7:20:21
  that for a moment no one stirred. Then Susie heard Doctor Porhette slip his
• 7:20:26
  hand across the table to find matches, but it seemed that they were not
• 7:20:30
  there. Again, a loud peal of thunder startled them, but the rain
• 7:20:34
  would not fall. They panted for fresh air. On a sudden Susie's heart
• 7:20:40
  gave a bound, and she sprang up, there's someone in the room.
• 7:20:44
  The words were no sooner out of her mouth than she heard Arthur fling himself
• 7:20:48
  upon the intruder. She knew at once with the certainty of an intuition that
• 7:20:52
  it was Haddow. But how had he come in? What did he want?
• 7:20:56
  She tried to cry out, but no sound came from throat. Doctor
• 7:21:00
  Poritt seemed bound to his chair. He did not move, he made no
• 7:21:04
  sound. She knew that an awful struggle was proceeding. It was a struggle
• 7:21:10
  to the death between two men who hated one another. But the most terrible
• 7:21:14
  part of it was that nothing was heard. They were perfectly noiseless. She
• 7:21:19
  tried to do something, but she could not stir. And Arthur's heart exulted,
• 7:21:23
  for his enemy was in his grasp, under his hands, and he
• 7:21:27
  would not let him go while life was in him. He clenched his teeth
• 7:21:32
  and tightened his straining muscles. Susy heard his labored breathing, but she only
• 7:21:37
  heard the breathing of one man. She wondered in abject terror, what that
• 7:21:41
  could mean. They struggled silently, hand to hand, and Arthur knew that
• 7:21:47
  his strength was greater. He had made up his mind what to do and
• 7:21:49
  directed all his energy to a definite end. His enemy was extraordinarily powerful,
• 7:21:56
  but Arthur appeared to create some strength from the sheer force of his will.
• 7:22:00
  It seemed for hours that they struggled. He could not bear him down.
• 7:22:06
  Suddenly he knew that the other was frightened and sought to escape from him.
• 7:22:10
  Arthur tightened his grasp, for nothing in the world now would he ever loosen
• 7:22:14
  his hold. He took a deep, quick breath, and then put out
• 7:22:17
  all his strength in a tremendous effort. They swayed from side to side.
• 7:22:22
  Arthur felt as if his muscles were being torn from the bones. He could
• 7:22:26
  not continue for more than a moment longer, but the agony that flashed across
• 7:22:30
  his mind at the thought of failure braced him up to a sudden, angry
• 7:22:34
  jerk. All at once had o collapsed, and they fell heavily to the
• 7:22:38
  ground. Arthur was breathing more quickly. Now he thought that if he could
• 7:22:42
  keep on for one instant longer, he would be safe. He threw all
• 7:22:47
  his weight on the form that rolled beneath him, and bore down furiously on
• 7:22:51
  the man's arm. He twisted it sharply with all his might and felt it
• 7:22:55
  give way. He gave a low cry of triumph. The arm was broken,
• 7:23:00
  and now his enemy was seized with panic. He struggled madly. He
• 7:23:03
  wanted only to get away from those long hands that were killing him. They
• 7:23:07
  seemed to be of iron. Arthur seized the huge bullock throat and dug his
• 7:23:12
  fingers into it, and they sunk into the heavy rolls of fat, and
• 7:23:15
  he flung the whole weight of his body into them. He exulted, for
• 7:23:19
  he knew that his enemy was in his power. At last, he was
• 7:23:23
  strangling him, strangling the life out of him. He wanted light so that
• 7:23:27
  he might see the horror of that vast face, and the deadly fear,
• 7:23:32
  and the staring eyes. And still he pressed with those iron hands. And
• 7:23:36
  now the movements were strangely convulsive. His victim rised in the agony of death.
• 7:23:41
  His struggles were desperate, but the avenging hands held him as in a
• 7:23:45
  vice. And then the movements grew spasmodic, and then they grew weaker.
• 7:23:52
  Still the hands pressed upon the gigantic throat, and Arthur forgot everything. He
• 7:23:57
  was mad with rage and fury, and hate and sorrow. He thought of
• 7:24:02
  Margaret's anguish and of her fiendish torture, and he wished the man had ten
• 7:24:07
  lives, so that he might take them one by one, and at last
• 7:24:11
  all was still, and that vast mass of flesh was motionless, and he
• 7:24:17
  knew that his enemy was dead. He loosened his grasp and slipped one hand
• 7:24:22
  over the heart. It would never beat again. The man was stone dead.
• 7:24:30
  Arthur got up and straightened himself. The darkness was intense still, and
• 7:24:36
  he could see nothing. Susy heard him, and at length she was able
• 7:24:40
  to speak. Arthur, what have you done? I've killed him? He
• 7:24:45
  said, hoarsely, Hoo, God, what shall we do? Arthur began
• 7:24:51
  to laugh aloud, hysterically, and in the darkness his hilarity was terrifying.
• 7:24:56
  For God's sake, let us have some light. I found the matches,
• 7:25:00
  said doctor Porette. He seemed to awake suddenly from his long stoopor He struck
• 7:25:07
  one and it would not light. He struck another, and Susy took off
• 7:25:11
  the globe and the chimney as he kindled the wick. Then he held up
• 7:25:14
  the lamp and they saw Arthur looking at them. His face was ghastly.
• 7:25:18
  The sweat ran off his forehead in great beads, and his eyes were bloodshot.
• 7:25:23
  He trembled in every limb. Then doctor Porette, advanced with the lamp
• 7:25:27
  and held it forward. They looked down on the floor for the man who
• 7:25:32
  lay there dead. Susie gave a sudden cry of horror. There was no
• 7:25:37
  one there. Arthur stepped back in terrified surprise. There was no one in
• 7:25:41
  the room, living or dead, but the three friends. The ground sank
• 7:25:47
  under SUSY's feet. She felt horribly ill, and she fainted. When she
• 7:25:51
  awoke, seeming difficultly to emerge from an eternal night. Arthur was holding down
• 7:25:56
  her head. Bend down, he said, bent down. All that had
• 7:26:00
  happened came back to her, and she burst into tears, her self control
• 7:26:04
  deserted her, and clinging to him for protection, she sobbed as though her
• 7:26:08
  heart would break. She was shaking from head to foot. The strangeness of
• 7:26:14
  this last horror had overcome her, and she could have shrieked with fright.
• 7:26:19
  It's all right, he said, you need not be afraid. Who what
• 7:26:23
  does it mean? You must pluck up courage. We're going now to skein.
• 7:26:29
  She sprang to her feet as as to get away from him, her
• 7:26:32
  heart beat wildly. No, I can't, I'm frightened. We must see
• 7:26:37
  what it means. We've no time to lose, or the morning will be
• 7:26:40
  upon us before we get back. Then she sought to prevent him. Oh,
• 7:26:44
  for good's sake, don't go, Arthur. Something awful me await you
• 7:26:48
  there. Don't risk your life. There is no danger. I tell you,
• 7:26:52
  the man is dead if anything happened to you. She stopped, trying
• 7:26:57
  to restrain her sobs. She dared not go on, but he seemed to
• 7:27:02
  know what was in her mind. I will take no risks because of you.
• 7:27:07
  I know that whether I live or die is not a matter of indifference
• 7:27:12
  to you. She looked up and saw that his eyes were fixed upon her.
• 7:27:17
  Gravely, she reddened. A curious feeling came into her heart. I
• 7:27:22
  will go with you wherever you choose, she said, humbly. Come.
• 7:27:26
  Then they stepped out into the night, but now without rain, the storm
• 7:27:32
  had passed away, and the stars were shining. They walked quickly. Arthur
• 7:27:36
  went in front of them, Doctor Poet and Susie followed him side by side,
• 7:27:41
  and they had to hasten their steps in order not to be left behind.
• 7:27:44
  It seemed to them that the horror of the night was past, and
• 7:27:48
  there was a fragrancy in the air, which was wonderfully refreshing. The sky
• 7:27:52
  was beautiful, and at last they came to skin. Arthur led them again
• 7:27:57
  to the opening and the palace, and he took Susan's hand. Presently they
• 7:28:02
  stood in the place from which a few days before they had seen the house.
• 7:28:06
  As then it stood in massive blackness against the night, and as then
• 7:28:11
  the attic windows shone out with brilliant lights. Susy started, for she had
• 7:28:15
  expected that the whole place would be in darkness. There is no danger,
• 7:28:21
  I promise you, said Arthur gently. We are going to find out the
• 7:28:25
  meaning of all this mystery. He began to walk toward the house. Have
• 7:28:30
  you a weapon of some sort? Asked the doctor. Arthur handed him a
• 7:28:34
  revolver. Take this and will reassure you. But you will have no need
• 7:28:40
  of it. I bought it the other day when I had other plans.
• 7:28:45
  Susy gave a little shudder. They reached the drive and walked to the great
• 7:28:49
  portico which adorned the facade of the house. Arthur tried the handle, but
• 7:28:55
  it would not open. Will you wait here, he said, I can
• 7:28:59
  get in through one of the windows, and I will let you in.
• 7:29:02
  He left them They stood quietly there with anxious hearts. They could not guess
• 7:29:07
  what they would see. They were afraid that something would happen to Arthur,
• 7:29:11
  and Susy regretted that she had not insisted on going with him. Suddenly she
• 7:29:17
  remembered that awful moment when the light of the lamp had been thrown. Were
• 7:29:19
  all expected to see a body, and there was nothing. What do you
• 7:29:25
  think it meant? She cried? Suddenly, what is the explanation? Perhaps
• 7:29:30
  we shall see now, answered the doctor. Arthur still lingered, and she
• 7:29:34
  could not imagine what had become of him. All sorts of horrible fancies passed
• 7:29:40
  through her mind, and she dreaded. She knew not what. At last
• 7:29:44
  they heard a footstep inside the house, and the door was opened. I
• 7:29:48
  was convinced that nobody slept here, but I was obliged to make sure.
• 7:29:52
  I had some difficulty in getting in. Susy hesitated to enter. She did
• 7:29:57
  not know what horror is are waited her, and the darkness was terrifying.
• 7:30:03
  I cannot see, she said, And I brought a torch, said Arthur.
• 7:30:07
  He pressed a button and a narrow ray of bright light was cast upon
• 7:30:11
  the floor. Doctor Porett and Susie went in. Arthur carefully closed the door
• 7:30:17
  and flashed the light of his torch all round them. They stood in a
• 7:30:21
  large hall, the floor of which were scattered with the skins of lions that
• 7:30:25
  Haddo, on his celebrated expedition, had killed in Africa. There were perhaps
• 7:30:30
  a dozen, and their number gave a wild barbaric note. A great oak
• 7:30:36
  staircase led to the upper floors. We must go through all the rooms,
• 7:30:41
  said Arthur. He did not expect to find hadow till they came to the
• 7:30:45
  lighted attics, but it seemed needful, nevertheless, to pass right through the
• 7:30:48
  house. On their way. A flash of his torch had shown him that
• 7:30:52
  the walls of the hall were decorated with all manner of armor, ancient swords
• 7:30:57
  of Eastern handiwork, Barbara weapons from Central Africa, strange implements of medieval warfare.
• 7:31:04
  And an idea came to him. He took down a huge battle axe
• 7:31:08
  and swung it in his hand. Now come silently, holding their breath,
• 7:31:15
  as though they feared to wake the dead, they went into the first room.
• 7:31:18
  They saw it difficultly with their scant light, since the thin shaft of
• 7:31:22
  brilliancy, emphasizing acutely the surrounding darkness revealed it only piece by piece. It
• 7:31:30
  was a large room, evidently unused, for the furniture was covered with Holland,
• 7:31:33
  and there was a mustiness about it, which suggested that the windows were
• 7:31:37
  seldom opened. As in many old houses. The rooms led not from a
• 7:31:41
  passage but into one another, and they walked through many till they came back
• 7:31:45
  into the hall. They had all a desolate, uninhabited air. Their somberness
• 7:31:52
  was increased by the oak with which they were paddled. There was paneling in
• 7:31:56
  the hall, too, and on the stairs that led broadly to the top
• 7:32:00
  of the house. As they ascended, Arthur stopped for one moment and passed
• 7:32:04
  his hand over the polished wood. It would burn like tinder, he said.
• 7:32:11
  They went through the rooms on the first floor, and they were as
• 7:32:15
  empty and as cheerless. Presently they came to that which had been Margaret's.
• 7:32:19
  In a bowl were dead flowers. Her brushes were still on the toilet table.
• 7:32:26
  But it was a gloomy chamber with its dark oak, and so comfortless
• 7:32:30
  that Susy shuddered. Arthur stood for a time and looked at it, but
• 7:32:36
  he said nothing. They found themselves again on the stairs, and they went
• 7:32:40
  to the second story. But here they seemed to be at the top of
• 7:32:44
  the house. How does one get up to the attics, said Arthur,
• 7:32:48
  looking about him with surprise. He paused for a while to think. Then
• 7:32:53
  he nodded his head. There must be some steps leading out of one of
• 7:32:56
  the rooms. They went on, and now the ceilings were much lower,
• 7:33:02
  with heavy beams, and there was no furniture at all. The emptiness seemed
• 7:33:07
  to make everything more terrifying. They felt that they were on the threshold of
• 7:33:11
  a great mystery, and Susie's heart began to beat fast. Arthur conducted his
• 7:33:17
  examination with the greatest method. He walked round each room, carefully, looking
• 7:33:22
  for a door that might lead to a staircase, but there was no sign
• 7:33:26
  of one. What will you do if you can't find the way up,
• 7:33:29
  asked Susy. I shall find the way up, he answered. They came
• 7:33:33
  to the staircase once more, and had discovered nothing. They looked at one
• 7:33:37
  another helplessly. That's quite clear there is a way, said Arthur, with
• 7:33:42
  impatience. There must be something in the nature of a hidden door somewhere or
• 7:33:47
  other. He leaned against the balustrade and meditated. The light of his lantern
• 7:33:52
  threw a narrow ray upon the opposite wall. I feel certain it must be
• 7:33:57
  in one of the rooms at the end of the house. That seems the
• 7:34:00
  most natural place to put a means of assent to the attics. They went
• 7:34:06
  back, and again he examined the paneling of a small room that had outside
• 7:34:10
  walls on three sides of it. It was the only room that did not
• 7:34:14
  lead into another. It must be here, he said. Presently. He
• 7:34:19
  gave a little laugh, for he saw that a small door was concealed by
• 7:34:23
  the woodwork. He pressed it where he thought there might be a spring,
• 7:34:26
  and it flew open. Their torch showed them a narrow wooden staircase. They
• 7:34:32
  walked up and found themselves in front of a door. Arthur tried it,
• 7:34:36
  but it was locked. He smiled grimly. Will you get back a little,
• 7:34:41
  he said. He lifted his axe and swung it down upon the latch.
• 7:34:45
  The handle was shattered, but the lock did not yield. He shook
• 7:34:49
  his head as he paused for a moment, and there was a complete silence.
• 7:34:55
  Susy distinctly heard a slight noise. She put her hand on Arthur's to
• 7:35:00
  call his attention to it, and with strained ears, they listened. There
• 7:35:03
  was something alive on the other side of the door. They heard its curious
• 7:35:08
  sound. It was not that of a human voice. It was not the
• 7:35:12
  crying of an animal. It was extraordinary. It was a sort of gibber,
• 7:35:18
  hoarse and rapid, and it filled them with an icy terror because it
• 7:35:22
  was so weird and so unnatural. Come away, Arthur said, Susy,
• 7:35:26
  Come away, there's some living thing in there. He answered, he did
• 7:35:32
  not know why. The sound horrified him. The sweat broke out on his
• 7:35:37
  forehead. Something awful will happen to us, whispered Susy, shaking with uncontrollable
• 7:35:42
  fear. The only thing is to break the door down. The horrid gibbering
• 7:35:48
  was drowned by the noise He made quickly, without pausing, he began to
• 7:35:52
  hack at the oak door with all his might. In rapid succession. His
• 7:35:56
  heavy blows rained down, and the sound echoed through the empty house. There
• 7:36:00
  was a crash, and the door swung back. They had been so long
• 7:36:03
  in almost total darkness that they were blinded for an instant by the dazzling light,
• 7:36:08
  and then instinctively they started back, for as the door opened, a
• 7:36:14
  wave of heat came out upon them, so that they could hardly breathe.
• 7:36:18
  The place was like an oven. They entered. It was lit by enormous
• 7:36:22
  lamps, the light of which was increased by reflectors and warmed by a great
• 7:36:27
  furnace. They could not understand why so intense a heat was necessary. The
• 7:36:33
  narrow windows were closed. Doctor Porette caught sight of a thermometer and was astounded
• 7:36:38
  at the temperature it indicated. The room was used, evidently as a laboratory.
• 7:36:45
  On broad tables were test tubes, basins and baths of white porcelain,
• 7:36:49
  measuring glasses and utensils of all sorts. But the surprising thing was the great
• 7:36:55
  scale upon which everything was. Neither Arthur nor doctor Poette had ever seen such
• 7:37:00
  gigantic measures, nor such large test tubes. There were rows of bottles,
• 7:37:06
  like those in the dispensary of a hospital, each containing great quantities of a
• 7:37:10
  different chemical. The three friends stood in silence. The emptiness of the room
• 7:37:15
  contrasted so oddly with its appearance of being in immediate use that it was uncanny.
• 7:37:22
  Susie felt that he who worked there was in the midst of his labors,
• 7:37:26
  and might return at any moment. He could have only gone for an
• 7:37:30
  instant into another chamber in order to see the progress of some experiment. It
• 7:37:34
  was quite silent. Whatever had made those vague, unearthly noises was hushed by
• 7:37:41
  their approach. The door was closed between this room and the next. Arthur
• 7:37:47
  opened it, and they found themselves in a long, low attic, sealed
• 7:37:51
  with great rafters, as brilliantly lit and as hot as the first. Here,
• 7:37:56
  too were broad tables laden with retorts, instruments for heat eating, huge
• 7:38:00
  test tubes, and all manner of vessels. The furnace that warmed it gave
• 7:38:04
  a steady heat. Arthur's gaze traveled slowly from table to table, and he
• 7:38:11
  wondered what Haddo's experiments had really been. The air was heavy with an extraordinary
• 7:38:15
  odor. It was not musty, like that of the closed rooms through which
• 7:38:21
  they had passed, but singularly pungent, disagreeable, and sickly. He asked
• 7:38:26
  himself what it could spring from. Then his eyes fell upon a huge receptacle
• 7:38:30
  that stood on the table nearest to the furnace. It was covered with a
• 7:38:34
  white cloth. He took it off. The vessel was about four feet high,
• 7:38:41
  round in, shaped somewhat like a washing tub, but it was made
• 7:38:45
  of glass more than an inch thick in it a spherical mass, a little
• 7:38:49
  larger than a football, of a peculiar livid color. The surface was smooth,
• 7:38:56
  but rather coarsely grained, and over it ran a day system of blood
• 7:39:00
  vessels. It reminded the two medical men of those huge tumors which are preserved
• 7:39:07
  in spirit in hospital museums. Susy looked at it with an incomprehensible disgust.
• 7:39:14
  Suddenly she gave a cry, could God, it's moving. Arthur put his
• 7:39:18
  hand on her arm quickly to quiet her, and bent down with irresistible curiosity.
• 7:39:25
  They saw that it was a mass of flesh, unlike that of any
• 7:39:27
  human being, and it pulsated regularly. The movement was quite distinct, up
• 7:39:33
  and down, like the delicate heaving of a woman's breast when she is asleep.
• 7:39:38
  Arthur touched the thing with one finger, and it shrank slightly. It's
• 7:39:44
  quite warm, he said. He turned it over, and it remained in
• 7:39:48
  the position in which he had placed it as if there were neither top nor
• 7:39:52
  bottom to it. But they could see now irregularly, placed on one side,
• 7:39:56
  a few short hairs. They were just like human hairs. Is it
• 7:40:03
  alive? Whispered Susy, struck with horror and amazement. Yes, Arthur seemed
• 7:40:11
  fascinated. He could not take his eyes off the loathesome thing. He watched
• 7:40:17
  it slowly heave with an even motion. What can it mean? He asked.
• 7:40:23
  He looked at Doctor Porette with pale, startled face. A thought was
• 7:40:27
  coming to him, but a thought so unnatural and obscravagant and terrible that he
• 7:40:30
  pushed it from him with a movement of both hands, as though it were
• 7:40:34
  a material thing. Then all three turned round abruptly with a start, for
• 7:40:40
  they heard again the wild gibbering which had first shot their ears. In the
• 7:40:44
  wonder of this revolting object, they had forgotten all the rest. The sound
• 7:40:48
  seemed extraordinarily near, and Susy drew back instinctively, for it appeared to come
• 7:40:53
  from her very side. There's nothing here, said Arthur. It must be
• 7:40:59
  in the next room. Oh, Arthur, let us go, cried Susy.
• 7:41:03
  I am afraid to see what may be in store for us, it
• 7:41:07
  is nothing to us, and what we see may poison our sleep forever.
• 7:41:12
  She looked appealingly at doctor Porette. He was white and anxious. The heat
• 7:41:18
  of the place had made the sweat break out on his forehead. I have
• 7:41:22
  seen enough. I want to see no more, he said. Then you
• 7:41:26
  may go. Both of you, answered Arthur, and I do not wish
• 7:41:30
  to force you to see anything, but I shall go on whatever it is
• 7:41:33
  I wish to find out. But Hedo, supposing he is there waiting,
• 7:41:38
  perhaps you are only walking into a trap that he has set for you.
• 7:41:44
  Now I am convinced that Haddo is dead again. That unintelligible jargon, unhumaned
• 7:41:49
  and shrill fell upon their ears, and Arthur stepped forward. Susy did not
• 7:41:55
  hesitate. She was prepared to follow him anywhere. He opened the door,
• 7:42:00
  and there was a sudden quiet. Whatever made those sounds was there. It
• 7:42:04
  was a larger room than any of the others, and much higher, for
• 7:42:08
  it ran along the whole front of the house. The powerful lamps showed every
• 7:42:12
  corner of it at once, but above the beams of the open ceiling were
• 7:42:17
  dark with shadow, and here the nauseous odor, which had struck them before,
• 7:42:22
  was so overpowering that for a while they could not go in. It
• 7:42:26
  was indescribably foul. Even Arthur thought it would make him sick, and he
• 7:42:32
  looked at the windows to see if it was possible to open them, but
• 7:42:34
  it seemed they were hermetically closed. The extreme warmth made the air more overpowering.
• 7:42:42
  There were four furnaces here, and they were all alight in order to
• 7:42:47
  give out more heat and to burn slowly. The fronts of them were open,
• 7:42:49
  and one could see that they were filled with glowing coke. The room
• 7:42:55
  was furnished no differently from the others, but to the various instruments for kemmil
• 7:43:00
  operations on a large scale were added all manner of electrical appliances. Several books
• 7:43:06
  were lying about, and one had been left open, face downwards, on
• 7:43:08
  the edge of the table. But what immediately attracted their attention was a row
• 7:43:15
  of those large glass vessels, like that which they had seen in the adjoining
• 7:43:18
  room. Each was covered with a white cloth. They hesitated a moment,
• 7:43:25
  for they knew that here they were face to face with the great enigma.
• 7:43:30
  At last, Arthur pulled away the cloth from one. None of them spoke.
• 7:43:36
  They stared with astonished eyes, for here too was a strange mass of
• 7:43:41
  flesh, almost as large as a new born child. But there was in
• 7:43:47
  it the beginnings of something ghastly human. It was shaped vaguely like an infant,
• 7:43:53
  but the legs were joined together so that it looked like a mummy rolled
• 7:43:57
  up in its coverings. There were neither feet nor knees. The trunk was
• 7:44:03
  formless, but there was a curious thickening on each side, as if a
• 7:44:07
  modeler had meant to make a figure with the arms loosely bent, but had
• 7:44:11
  left the work unfinished, so that they were still one with the body.
• 7:44:18
  There was something that resembled a human head, covered with long golden hair,
• 7:44:23
  but it was horrible. It was an uncouth mass, without eyes or nose
• 7:44:30
  or mouth. The color was a kind of sickly pink, and it was
• 7:44:33
  almost transparent. There was a very slight movement in it, rhythmical and slow.
• 7:44:41
  It was living too. Then quickly Arthur removed the covering from all the
• 7:44:48
  other jars but one, and in a flash of the eyes they saw a
• 7:44:52
  bombum nation so awful that Susie had to clench her fists in order not to
• 7:44:56
  scream. There was one monstrous thing which the limbs approached nearly to the human.
• 7:45:03
  It was extraordinarily heaped up, with fat, tiny arms, little bloated
• 7:45:07
  legs, and an absurd squat body, so that it looked like a Chinese
• 7:45:11
  mandarin in porcelain. In another the trunk was almost like that of a human
• 7:45:18
  child, except that it was patched strangely with red and gray. But the
• 7:45:22
  terror of it was that at the neck it branched hideously, and there were
• 7:45:26
  two distinct heads, monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features.
• 7:45:33
  The features were a caricature of humanity, so shameful that one could hardly bear
• 7:45:38
  to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each
• 7:45:42
  head opened slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink,
• 7:45:48
  like the eyes of white rabbits, and they stared for a moment with an
• 7:45:53
  odd, unseeing glance. Then they were shut again. What was curiously terrifying
• 7:46:02
  was that the movements were not quite simultaneous. The eyelids of one head fell
• 7:46:07
  slowly just before those of the other. And in another place was a ghastly
• 7:46:14
  monster in which it seemed that two bodies had been dreadfully entangled with one another.
• 7:46:21
  It was a creature of nightmare, with four arms and four legs,
• 7:46:25
  and this one actually moved where a peculiar motion. It crawled along the bottom
• 7:46:30
  of the great receptacle in which it was kept, toward the three persons who
• 7:46:33
  looked at it. It seemed to wonder what they did. Susi started back
• 7:46:40
  with fright as it raised itself on its four legs and tried to reach up
• 7:46:44
  to them. Susy turned away and hid her face. She could not look
• 7:46:49
  at those ghastly counterfeits of humanity. She was terrified and ashamed. Do you
• 7:46:56
  understand what this means, said doctor Porette to Art in an awed voice.
• 7:47:00
  It means that he has discovered the secret of life. Was it for these
• 7:47:07
  vile monstrosities that Margaret was sacrificed in all her loveliness? The two men looked
• 7:47:14
  at one another with sad, wondering eyes. Don't you remember that he talked
• 7:47:18
  of the manufacture of human beings. It's these misshapen things that he succeeded in
• 7:47:25
  producing, said the doctor. There is one more that we haven't seen,
• 7:47:30
  said Arthur. He pointed to the covering which still hid the largest of the
• 7:47:34
  vases. He had a feeling that it contained the most fearful of all these
• 7:47:40
  monsters. And it was not without an effort that he drew the cloth away.
• 7:47:44
  But no sooner had he done this than something sprang up, so that
• 7:47:48
  instinctively he started back, and it began to gibber in piercing tones. These
• 7:47:52
  were the unearthly sounds they had heard. It was not a voice. It
• 7:47:57
  was a kind of raucous cry, hoarse yet thrill, uneven, like the
• 7:48:03
  barking of a dog, and appalling. The sounds came forth in rapid succession,
• 7:48:07
  angrily, as though the being that uttered them sought to express itself in
• 7:48:11
  furious words. It was mad with passion, and beat against the glass walls
• 7:48:15
  of its prison with clenched fists. For the hands were human hands, and
• 7:48:21
  the body, though much larger, was of the shape of a new born
• 7:48:26
  child. The creature must have stood about four feet high. The head was
• 7:48:30
  horribly misshapen. The skull was enormous, smooth and distended, like that of
• 7:48:36
  a hydro syphalic, and the forehead protruded over the face hideously. The features
• 7:48:41
  were almost unformed, preternaturally small under the great overhanging brow, and they had
• 7:48:48
  an expression of fiendish malignity. The tiny, misshapen countenance writhe with convulsive fury,
• 7:48:56
  and from the mouth poured out a foaming spill. It raised its voice
• 7:49:00
  higher and higher, shrieking senseless gibberish in its rage. Then it began to
• 7:49:07
  hurl its whole body madly against the glass walls, and to beat its head.
• 7:49:11
  It appeared to have a sudden, incomprehensible hatred for the three strangers it
• 7:49:15
  was trying to fly at them. The toothless gums moved spasmodically, and it
• 7:49:21
  threw its face into horrible grimaces. That nameless loathsome abortion was the nearest that
• 7:49:27
  Oliver Haddow had come to the human form. Come away, said Arthur.
• 7:49:33
  We must not look at this. He quickly flung the covering over the jar.
• 7:49:37
  Yes, for God's sake, let us go, said Susy. We
• 7:49:41
  haven't done yet, answered Arthur. We haven't found the author of all this.
• 7:49:48
  He looked at the room in which they were, but there there was
• 7:49:51
  no door except that by which they had entered. Then he uttered a startled
• 7:49:55
  cry, and, stepping forward, fell on his knee on the other side
• 7:49:59
  of the long tables heaped up with instruments hidden so that at first they had
• 7:50:03
  not seen him. Oliver Haddow lay on the floor dead. His blue eyes
• 7:50:08
  were staring wide, and they seemed larger than they had ever been. They
• 7:50:14
  kept still the expression of terror which they had worn in the moment of his
• 7:50:18
  agony, and his heavy face was distorted with a deadly fear. It was
• 7:50:23
  purple and dark, and the eyes were injected with blood. He died of
• 7:50:30
  suffocation, whispered doctor Poyet. Arthur pointed to the neck. There could be
• 7:50:37
  seen on it distinctly the marks of the avengeant fingers that had strangled the life
• 7:50:41
  out of him. It was impossible to hesitate. I told you that I
• 7:50:47
  had killed him, said Arthur. Then he remembered something more. He took
• 7:50:52
  hold of the right arm. He was convinced that it had been broken during
• 7:50:56
  the desperate struggle in the darkness. He felt it carefully and listened. He
• 7:51:00
  heard plainly the two parts of the bone rub against one another. The dead
• 7:51:06
  man's arm was broken, just in the place where he had broken it.
• 7:51:11
  Arthur stood up. He took one last look at his enemy. The vast
• 7:51:17
  mass of flesh lay heaped on the floor in horrible disorder. Now that you
• 7:51:22
  have seen, will you come away, asked Susy, interrupting him. The
• 7:51:27
  words seemed to bring him suddenly to himself. Yes, we must go quickly.
• 7:51:33
  They turned away, and with hurried steps, walked through those bright attics
• 7:51:37
  till they came to the stairs. Now go down and wait for me at
• 7:51:42
  the door, said Arthur, and I will follow you immediately. What are
• 7:51:47
  you going to do, asked Susy, Never mind, do as I tell
• 7:51:52
  you. I have not finished here yet. They went down the great oak
• 7:51:56
  staircase and waited in the hall. They wondered what Arthur was about. Presently
• 7:52:00
  he came running down. Be quick, he cried, we have no time
• 7:52:04
  to lose. What have you done, Arthur? There's no time to tell
• 7:52:08
  you now. He hurried them out and slammed the door behind him. He
• 7:52:11
  took Susan's hand, Now we must run. Come. She did not know
• 7:52:17
  what his haste signified, but her heart beat furiously. He dragged her along.
• 7:52:22
  Doctor Pohette hurried on behind them. Arthur plunged into the wood. He
• 7:52:26
  would not leave them time to breathe you must be quick, he said.
• 7:52:30
  At last, they came to the opening in the fence, and he helped
• 7:52:33
  them to get through. Then he carefully replaced the wooden paling, and,
• 7:52:37
  taking SUSY's arm, began to walk rapidly toward their inn. I'm frightfully tired,
• 7:52:44
  she said. I simply can't go so fast. You must presently.
• 7:52:48
  You can rest as long as you like. They walked very quickly for a
• 7:52:52
  while now, and then Arthur looked back. The night was still quite dark,
• 7:52:57
  and the stars shone out in their myriads. At last he slackened their
• 7:53:03
  pace. Now you can go more slowly, he said. Susy saw the
• 7:53:08
  smiling glance that he gave her. His eyes were full of tenderness. He
• 7:53:14
  put his arm affectionately round her shoulders to support her. And I am afraid
• 7:53:18
  you are quite exhausted, poor thing, he said. I am sorry to
• 7:53:22
  have had to hustle you so much. It doesn't matter at all. She
• 7:53:27
  leaned against him comfortably. With that protecting arm about her, she felt capable
• 7:53:33
  of any fatigue. Doctor Pourette stopped. You must really let me roll myself
• 7:53:38
  a cigarette, he said. You may do whatever you like, answered Arthur.
• 7:53:44
  There was a different ring in his voice now, and it was soft,
• 7:53:47
  with a good humor that they had not heard in it for many months.
• 7:53:51
  He appeared singularly relieved. Susy was happy to forget the terrible past and
• 7:53:56
  give herself over to the happiness that seemed at last in store for her.
• 7:54:00
  They began to saunter slowly on, and now they could take pleasure in the
• 7:54:06
  exquisite night. The air was very suave, odorous with the heather that was
• 7:54:11
  all about them, and there was an enchanting peace in that scene, which
• 7:54:15
  wonderfully soothed their weariness. It was dark still, but they knew the dawn
• 7:54:22
  was at hand, and Susy rejoiced in the approaching day. In the east,
• 7:54:26
  the azure of the night began to thin away into pale amethyst, and
• 7:54:30
  the trees seemed gradually to stand out from the darkness in a ghostly beauty.
• 7:54:37
  Suddenly, birds began to sing all around them in a splendid chorus. From
• 7:54:41
  their feet, a lark sprang up with a rustle of wings, and,
• 7:54:45
  mounting proudly upon the air, chanted lithe cantacles to greet the morning. They
• 7:54:49
  stood upon a little hill. Let us wait here, see the sunrise,
• 7:54:55
  said Susy, Now as you will. They stood, all three them,
• 7:55:00
  and Susie took in deep, joyful breaths of the sweet air of dawn.
• 7:55:04
  The whole land spread at her feet was clothed in the purple dimness that heralds
• 7:55:10
  day, and she exulted in its beauty. But she noticed that Arthur,
• 7:55:15
  unlike herself and Barctor Porette, did not look toward the east. His eyes
• 7:55:21
  were fixed steadily upon the place from which they had come. What did he
• 7:55:26
  look for in the darkness of the west. She turned round, and a
• 7:55:29
  cry broke from her lips. For the shadows there were lurid with a deep
• 7:55:33
  red glow. It looks like a fire, she said. It is skin
• 7:55:40
  is burning like tinder. And as he spoke, it seemed that the roof
• 7:55:45
  fell in, for suddenly, vast flames sprang up, rising high into the
• 7:55:49
  still night air, and they saw that the house they had just left was
• 7:55:52
  blazing furiously. It was a magnificent sight from the distant hill on which they
• 7:55:59
  stood to watch the fire as it soared and sank, as it shot scarlet
• 7:56:03
  tongues along like strange Titanic monsters. As it raged from room to room.
• 7:56:10
  Skin was burning. It was beyond the reach of human help. In a
• 7:56:15
  little while there would be no trace of all those crimes and all those horrors.
• 7:56:21
  Now it was one mass of flame that looked like some primeval furnace where
• 7:56:26
  the gods might work unheard of miracles. Arthur, what have you done,
• 7:56:33
  asked Susy, in a tone that was hardly audible. He did not answer
• 7:56:38
  directly. He put his arm about her shoulder again, so that she was
• 7:56:42
  obliged to turn round. Look, the sun is rising in the east.
• 7:56:52
  A long ray of light climbed up to the sky, and the sun,
• 7:56:56
  yellow and drowned, appeared upon the face of the earth. End of Chapter
• 7:57:03
  sixteen, End of The Magician by Somerset Maum