2
Roger Vaile did more for Jeremy than provide him with food and lodging. He was also at the pains of finding out the wisest man he knew to answer Jeremy’s questions and resolve his doubts. After a lengthy meal of huge and crudely spiced dishes they returned to Roger’s own room, an apartment a little larger than that in which Jeremy had found himself, but not much less bare; and there they discovered, sitting on the bed and waiting for them, an elderly priest in a long black soutane, with a golden crucifix at his breast.
He rose as they entered, and surveyed Jeremy with intense curiosity. Jeremy returned the stare, but rather less intently. This, he found with little interest, was like any priest of any age. He was clean shaven and almost bald, with pouched and drooping cheeks, and a chin that multiplied and returned to unity as he talked and moved his head. But above these signs of age were two large and childlike blue eyes which shone on Jeremy with something like greed in their eagerness.
“This is the man,” Roger said briefly to the priest, and to Jeremy he said: “This is my Uncle, Father Henry Dean. He is writing the chronicle of the Speakers, and he knows more about the old times than any other man alive.”
The priest took Jeremy’s hand in a soft clasp without relaxing his eager stare. “There are few men alive who are older than I am,” he murmured, “but you are one of them, if my nephew has told me the truth. Yes—more than a century older.”
“I don’t feel it,” Jeremy answered aimlessly.
“No? No. That is miraculous. Ah, yes, I believe your story. I know well that the world is full of marvels. Who should know that better than I who have spent so many years searching the wonderful past? And there were greater marvels in those days than now. Young man——” he stopped and chuckled with a touch of senility. “Young man, you will be nearly two centuries old.”
Jeremy nodded without speaking.
“Yes, yes,” the old man went on, “so many strange things happened in those days that we have no call to be amazed at you. Why, there used to be a machine in those times that the doctors used to look right through men’s bodies.”
Jeremy started slightly. “You mean the Röntgen Rays?” he said.
“A wonderful light,” said the old man eagerly, “you know it, you have seen it?”
“Why, yes,” Jeremy turned to Roger. “You know that vacuum-tube I showed you——” But the old man was continuing his catalogue of wonders.
“Men used to cross to America in less than a week. Yes—and some even flew over in aeroplanes in a day.”
“Uncle, uncle,” Roger remonstrated gently, “you mustn’t tell fairy tales to a man who has been to fairyland. He knows what the truth is.”
“But that is true,” Jeremy roused himself to say; “it was done several times—not regularly, but often.” Roger bestowed on him a glance of covert doubt, and the priest leant forward in tremulous gratitude.
“I knew it, I knew it!” he cried. “Roger, like all the world to-day you are too ignorant. You do not know——”
But Jeremy interrupted again. “But have you aeroplanes now?” he asked. “Can you fly?”
“Not for many years now,” the old man sighed, “Roger has never seen a man flying. I did when I was very young.” He drew a deep breath and regarded Jeremy almost with reverence. “You lived in a wonderful time,” he said. “Why, you were alive in the time of the great artists, when that was made.” He turned, and indicated with a devout finger a little marble statue which stood on the mantelpiece behind him. Jeremy followed his gesture, and noticed for the first time that the room was not entirely without decoration. The statue to which his gaze was directed represented the body of a man from the waist upwards. The anatomy of the body was entirely distorted, the ribs stood out like ridgers, and one arm, which was raised over the head, was a good third longer than the other.
“Yes,” Jeremy said, surveying it with interest, “perhaps I did. That is what we used to call Futurist art.”
“They were masters then,” said the priest with a deep expulsion of his breath. Jeremy’s eyes wandered round the room and fell on a picture, plainly a lithograph of the war-period, which, when he had regarded it long enough, resolved itself into a crane lifting a great gun into a railway wagon. But it was drawn in fierce straight lines and savage angles, with shadows like wedges, making a bewildering pattern which for a moment defeated him. He dropped his eyes from it, and again looked round the room. This time his gaze fell on the bed, which was wooden and obviously new. The flat head of it was covered with rude carving such as might have been executed by a child armed for the first time with a gouge and a mallet. It had none of the vigor and rhythm that commonly goes with primitive workmanship. The design was glaringly stupid and senseless.
“We are poor workmen to-day,” said the priest, following and interpreting his glance.
Roger, who had stood by, silent but a little impatient, now intervened. “These are old family things,” he explained, “that I brought with me from home. They are very rare. But the bed is new, and I think it very pretty. I had it made only a few months ago.” He motioned his guests into chairs, and produced a large earthenware pot which he offered to Jeremy. Jeremy removed the lid, and saw, somewhat to his surprise, that it contained a dark, finely cut tobacco.
“It’s Connemara,” he said laconically. The old priest shook a long finger at him.
“Ah, Roger, Roger!” he chided. “When will you learn to be thrifty? Cannot you smoke the tobacco of your own country? Winchcombe is good enough for me,” he added to Jeremy, bringing a linen bag and a cherrywood pipe out of the folds of his robe.
“I’ve no pipe,” said Jeremy, fumbling mechanically in his pockets. Roger, without speaking, went to a chest, and produced two new, short clay pipes, one of which he handed to Jeremy, while he kept the other himself. All three were silent for a moment while they filled and lighted from a taper; and the familiar operation, the familiar pause, afflicted Jeremy with an acute memory of earlier days. Then while his palate was still savoring the first breath of the strong, cool Irish tobacco in the new pipe, the priest began again his rambling spoken reveries.
“Tell me,” he demanded suddenly, “did you live in the time of the first Speaker?”
Jeremy, hampered by a grievous lack of historical knowledge, tried to explain that the Speaker was a functionary dating from centuries before his time. The old man jumped in his chair with childlike enthusiasm.
“Yes, yes!” he cried. “This generation has almost forgotten how he came by his name. But I meant the great-grandfather of our Speaker, the first to rule England. You know he was the only strong man when the troubles began. Do you remember him? Surely you must remember him?” Jeremy shook his head, considering. He did not even recall what had been the name of the Speaker when he fell asleep. But his mind caught at a word the priest had used.
“The troubles?” he repeated.
“Yes,” the priest answered, a little taken aback, throwing a glance at Roger. “Don’t you know? The wars, the fighting....”
“The war ...” Jeremy began. He knew a great deal about what had been called by his generation, quite simply, The War.
But Roger interposed. “My uncle means the civil wars. Surely it was in the middle of the troubles that your trance began?”