CHAPTER V
MARKS TALKS
I WAS indeed taken aback, and I think my mouth opened as I stared at her.
"Oh, don't let's talk about the horrid things! Let's enjoy this beautiful place," she said with a touch of petulance.
I pulled myself together and said, "Very well."
We wandered on through the park, but we were a long while recovering our earlier mood of untroubled delight. Pamela could not pass a thicket; she must go through it. As the dusk deepened they grew more and more doubtful, mysterious places. That night I acquired, stealing quietly through them with her, a new sense of the mystery of woods.
She grew weary after two hours or more wandering, and at last slipped her arm through mine and leaned heavily on it. She laughed at herself for her feebleness.
"I wasn't like this when I was a child in the country," she said. "In the summer I was on my feet all day, wandering through the woods."
When we came out of the park we rested on the terrace for a while, looking down on the moonlit reaches of the Thames. The rest made easier for her the walk to the station.
I had now and again been wondering at her saying about devils, and in the train I said: "Where did you learn about devils? You spoke as if you knew all about them."
"I learnt from some of my uncle's books—very interesting books about sorcery and magic. But I mustn't talk about them," she said.
She reached the Walden road very weary; we made no bones about going down it together at that late hour. We stopped to say good-night about ten yards from No. 19.
"Oh, I am deliciously tired. I shall sleep to-night," said Pamela.
"I seem to be hungry," I said.
"I'm hungry, too."
"Then come in and have some cake with me. There is a nice cake."
She hesitated a moment; then she said wistfully: "I should like to very much, and I don't see why I shouldn't. Most people are asleep at this hour, and I should think that the proprieties are, too."
"Not a doubt of it," I said. "But if they were not, I do not see what you and I have to do with the proprieties. We're too out of the world, too lonely."
"No, we have nothing to do with them," she said, smiling.
We found that her uncle's blinds were drawn, and she stole unseen into No. 20. She sat in my easy chair in a pleasant, blinking languor, and we ate cake and drank lemon squash.
At the end of it she said, "That's the nicest meal I've had for years."
"Doesn't your uncle feed you properly?" I said anxiously.
"Dry brown bread, porridge, eggs and vegetables are his diet. He has to keep it to that—on account of his work," she said. "But I have tea and butter with my bread and sometimes jam."
"That's no good for a growing girl," I said.
"It's quite nice food. I like it. I hate meat," she said.
Presently she rose and said that she could not keep awake any longer. She took with her "The Plea of Pan." I stood at my door and heard her slip noiselessly into No. 19. Then I listened in my hall. I should hear through the wall the sound of voices, if her uncle discovered her late return. I heard nothing.
The next afternoon I came out of my office into a steady down-pour of rain. I should get no talk with Pamela that evening. Quite disconsolate, I betook myself to the region of the books-shops and after some search found a book treating of the mysteries, Pumber's "The Mysteries of The Ancients." It was a solid, likely-looking volume, and after my dinner I settled down to read it with great expectation of interest and enlightenment. In the shortest possible time I discovered that Mr. Pumber was a writer of an astonishing dullness. It seemed to me that the Mysteries should be a stimulating theme; I was soon forced to believe that Mr. Pumber could have written about boiled batter pudding with equal illumination. The book was thoughtfully and lavishly illustrated with such pictures as the embroidery round the hem of the robe of a priest of Isis.
I struggled painfully on through it, though at the end of seventy pages I found myself afflicted with the impression that the Dionysia were very like a perambulatory church service of the most tiresome kind. The impression was the more annoying because I felt that it was quite wrong. However, I learned one useful fact from my dullard which should be of service to me in my watch of No. 19; the Mysteries were for the most part celebrated at the new or full moon. If there were any connection between them and the practices of Woodfell, I must be especially watchful at those seasons. There was no mention of the bull-roarer, but Pumber declared that the mystica vannus Iacchi was a winnowing-fan. His assertion convinced me that Gibson's theory that it was the bull-roarer was the right one.
When I reached Hertford Park the next evening it was plain that the garden would be too damp to sit in. I went therefore to the nearest ironmonger's shop and bought a strong pair of clippers. After dinner I went out into the garden and strolled up and down it whistling "Barbara Allen," one of the songs Pamela sang over her work. Presently I heard the door of the dining-room of No. 19 open and a light footstep on its garden path. I stopped whistling and Pamela took up the tune, humming it softly.
I called to her in a voice but little higher than a whisper to come down right to the end of the garden. I heard her brushing through the shrubs; and when she was right at the end, close to me on the opposite side of the hedge, I began to cut away the top of it above the paling. She was pleased indeed with my device.
I cut away the hedge till I could see her, in a green bower as it were, through a thin screen of leaves on the further side of the hedge. I left that screen, so that did Woodfell chance to examine the hedge, he would not be likely to see that it had been thinned. Then we talked at our ease, for we were so near to one another that we needed no clicking whirr of a sewing-machine to drown our voices.
She told me that she had read "The Plea of Pan," and had found it, as I had promised, a delightful book.
"But the writer does not lay nearly stress enough on the terrible side of Pan—not nearly enough. He was a dreadful god—he was really. You should see the statue of him I see—I have seen—at least, you shouldn't," she said.
I noticed her slip into the present tense, and I said, "Where can I see it?"
"You can't," she said quickly. "It's kept hidden—in a secret place. Only a very few people see it."
I did not need to ask if it were at No. 19; I was sure of it. I only said, "That's a pity; I should like to see it very much."
We talked for some time about Pan. She seemed to take a great interest in him. I gathered that he inspired into her an equal dread and fascination. She talked oddly enough about him, as if he were a very present, existing creature of chiefly malefic activities. It should have sounded odd indeed to hear an English girl talk of that ancient god in this strain; but in her I did not find it very surprising. Then there came a heavy shower and drove us into our houses.
A spell of wet weather followed. On one evening I took her into town to dinner, and it was very pleasant. I found the other evenings very dull. But as I sat at my window reading, I saw some of Woodfell's friends. The first of them was a rich man. When one has devoted oneself to the law for some years in London, one can tell a rich man at sight. I can, at any rate. I do not know how I can tell that a man is rich—his clothes of course have nothing to do with it—there is something in his air. And this was a very rich man, a big, fat, sullen-looking, under-hung, heavily-jowled fellow of the domineering kind. Plainly he ate too much and drank too much, and gluttony and drunkenness were not the only deadly sins in which he indulged himself. He looked indeed noxious. If Woodfell numbered many fellows of that kidney among his visitors, I could well understand that Marks was uneasy at Pamela's living at No. 19.
Woodfell opened the door to him, and it seemed to me that there was more than a suspicion of contempt in the hoarse, jeering tone in which he said: "Hullo. Here you are—punctual to the minute."
I did not catch what the rich man answered as he went into the house. I heard him leave it two hours later after dark, and he went briskly down the street with his hands in his pockets, whistling, very like a school-boy released from school.
On the next evening I took Pamela to dine in town. On the night after two visitors came to No. 19 together. One was a clean-shaven man, who looked like a battered Apollo; the other was a middle-sized man, wearing a pointed beard, who walked with a mincing gait and spoke in a high, affected voice. They looked well-to-do, and were dressed by good tailors. I put them down as dilettanti of sorts, gentlemen of leisure with an inclination to the arts. But I did not like them; I thought them unsavory. It might have been pure fancy. I was, naturally, disposed to regard with suspicion visitors to No. 19.
Two evenings later I was not at all surprised to see Marks pass my window, enter the garden-gate of No. 19, and knock at its door. He knocked and rang three times, but no one opened the door to him. Woodfell was plainly out, and Pamela was forbidden to go to the door when anyone knocked after seven o'clock at night. I could understand the prohibition if many of Woodfell's friends were of the type of the first three I had seen.
At last Marks came slowly down the garden and out of the gate, frowning. As he was passing I leaned out of my window and invited him to come in. His face cheered at the sight of me; he accepted the invitation, and I brought him into my study and set him in my easy chair.
I mixed him a whisky and soda. He took from his pocket a giant briar, a gallant pipe, loaded it with a quarter of an ounce of a very black tobacco, and we fell to talking very pleasantly of the New Bohemians, literature and the arts. The mention of Gibson's name reminded me of the bull-roarer, and I said, "By the way, touching his theory about the mystica vannus Iacchi, Pumber in his 'Mysteries of The Ancients' says that it was a winnowing-fan."
"Pumber!" said Marks in a sudden, sonorous roar. "Have you been reading that half-baked charlatan? How dare he say anything? I cannot agree with the fellow! If he says that the mystica vannus was a winnowing-fan, it was most certainly nothing of the kind."
"I certainly never read a duller writer," I said. "But your discussion with Gibson made me wish to read something about the mysteries. I saw the Pumber book in a bookseller's shop and bought it. It is certainly not illuminating."
"A monstrous work," said Marks.
"What is a good book on the Mysteries, then?"
"There is no good book on the Mysteries," said Marks. "There are plenty of books by crack-brained charlatans and German professors. I don't know which are the worse. The charlatan pretends to find some crack-brained significance in the Mysteries; the German professor gives you a multitude of facts and finds no significance at all. Of course there is a Kreisler, but he has the sun-god bee in his bonnet. No, there is no good book on the Mysteries. Gibson says that they are the same, or very nearly the same as the mysteries which savages still celebrate all the world over. But he is too full of the spirit of vegetation, the Culture God. But he does not pretend to be an authority."
"What, do you think, is the significance of the Mysteries?" I said.
"I don't know. I have never worked at the ancient Mysteries. Perhaps I shall know—some day."
"Does anyone know?"
"Probably not. Your neighbor here, Woodfell, could tell you more about them than anyone alive probably. But Woodfell does not impart knowledge—he gathers it. Of one thing there is little doubt: there were inner mysteries besides the great public ceremonials like the Dionysia and the Eleusinian. To these the ordinary initiate was not admitted, only the chosen. And those, I take it, were not only men of a certain spirit, but also they passed through a very severe training during their time of probation. Those are the mysteries worth knowing."
"And Woodfell knows them?"
"I do not know," said Marks.
We were silent awhile, and as he puffed at his pipe, the serene content, which the name of Pumber had vanished, settled down again on his face.
Presently I said: "Isn't it dangerous to tamper with these things —with the occult?"
"Really to tamper with them seems to be one of the most dangerous things in the world—for those who have not passed through the training."
"Is that why you don't like the idea of Miss Woodfell's living at No. 19?" I said.
Marks rose and crossed the room to my book-shelves. "I never said so," he said uneasily.
"Well, to be quite frank with you, I take an interest in Miss Woodfell, and I don't like to think of her being in danger," I said. "What is the danger in these matters?"
Marks looked at me gravely, hesitating; then he said slowly: "Well, you see, the master is supposed to gain control, by a process or series of processes, of certain powers—some of them malefic, some beneficent. To gain, and still more to keep, that control he needs an enormous personal force." He paused, and then he added, "I'm only giving you the theory of the thing."
"Of course," I said.
"Well, if accident, or age, or self-indulgence weakens his personal force, he has, as it were, let them loose and can no longer keep them in hand."
He paused again; then added, frowning, as if speaking to himself, "Of course the powers don't matter so much, but if he gets at the principalities—"
He was silent, and I waited a minute or two for him to say more, but he stayed brooding.
Then I said: "And these powers? I take it that they are personalities—beings of a sort."
"I didn't say that," said Marks quickly.
"But they might be—they might be creatures of the Abyss," I said quietly.
He gave me a quick, searching, uneasy look, as if he wondered how much I knew. He opened his mouth in act to speak, shut it again, then drank some whisky and soda.
"Surely all this brings us to magic," I said.
"They used to call it magic. And magic was an attempt to get at the heart of things. But the sorcerers strayed—those about whom we know. But the mage has always existed—certainly in the east, probably in Europe."
"And Woodfell is a mage," said I.
"Woodfell is a student—a great student," said Marks.
I did not want to press a guest unduly, and after he had been silent awhile I turned the talk on to writers on the occult. I had gathered from his talk at the New Bohemians that he was an authority on them. Presently he had quite lost his air of constraint, and was holding forth, with vigorous scorn, on the attraction of the occult for half-baked writers. He advised me, if I could get it, to read a book called "The Horned Shepherd," for from its hundred pages I could learn more about the Mysteries and their significance than from the ponderous volumes of any eleven German professors.
"But of course you won't be able to learn to do things from it," be said.
"Heaven forbid! I don't want to learn to do things of that kind," said I, thinking of the beast in the garden.