V
In my unpracticed, disorderly way—in the hurry of my desire to get back to Susan—I have again overstepped myself and must, after all, pause to make certain necessary matters plain. There is nothing else for it. I have, on reflection, dropped too many threads—the thread of my own vision, the thread of those first two or three pages scrawled by Susan before her hand had fully responded to Doctor Askew's control; other weakly fluttering, loose-ended threads! My respect for the great narrative writers is increasing enormously, as I bungle onward. "Order is heaven's first law," and I wish to heaven it might also more instinctively be mine!
Just after the coroner's departure Maltby left us, but before he left I insisted upon a brief talk with him in Lucette's presence. I was in no mood for tact.
"Maltby," I said, "I can't stop now for anything but the plain statement that you've been a bad friend—to Susan and me. As for you, Lucette, it's perfectly clear now that Susan believes you responsible for spreading a slanderous lie about her. Between you, directly or indirectly, you've managed to get it believed down here that Susan has been my mistress and was forced to leave New Haven because the scandal had grown notorious. That's why Susan came here, determined to see you, Lucette; that's why Gertrude received her. Gertrude was never underhanded, never a sneak. My guess is, that she suspected you of slandering Susan, but wasn't sure; and then Susan's unexpected call on you——"
Lucette flared out at this, interrupting me. "I'm not particularly interested in your guesswork, Ambrose Hunt! We've had a good deal of it, already. Besides, I've a raging headache, and I'm too utterly heartsick even to resent your insults. But I'll say this: I've very strong reasons for thinking that what you call a lying slander is a fact. Mr. Phar can tell you why—if he cares to."
With that, she walked out of the room, and I did not see her again until we met in New Haven at Gertrude's funeral, on which occasion, with nicely calculated publicity, she was pleased to cut me dead.
When she had gone I turned on Maltby.
"Well?" I demanded.
Maltby, I saw, was something more than ill-at-ease.
"Now see here, Boz," he began, "can't we talk this over without quarreling? It's so stupid, I mean—between men of the world." I waited, without responding. "I'll be frank with you," he mumbled at me. "Fact is, old man, that night—the night Phil Farmer said Susan wanted to see you—was waiting for you in your study—remember? You promised to rejoin me shortly and talk things out. . . . But you didn't come back. Naturally, I've always supposed since then——"
"You have a scoundrelly imagination!" I exclaimed.
His face, green-pale from loss of sleep, slowly mottled with purplish stains.
"Years of friendship," he stumbled, thick-voiced, through broken phrases. "Wouldn't take that from any one else. . . . Not yourself. . . . Question of viewpoint, really. . . . I'd be the last to blame either of you, if—— However——"
"Maltby," I said, "you're what I never thought you—a common or garden cad. That's my deliberate opinion. I've nothing more to say to you."
For an instant I supposed he was going to strike me. It is one of the major disappointments of my life that he did not. My fingers ached for his throat.
Later, with the undertaker efficiently in charge of all practical arrangements, and while Susan still hid from us behind her mysterious veil, I talked things out with Doctor Askew, giving him the whole story of Susan as clearly and unreservedly as I could. My purpose in doing so was two-fold. I felt that he must know as much as possible about Susan before she woke again to what we call reality. What I feared was that this shock—which had so profoundly and so peculiarly affected her—might, even after the long and lengthening trance had passed, leave some mark upon her spirit, perhaps even some permanent cloud upon her brain. I had read enough of these matters to know that my fear was not groundless, and I could see that Doctor Askew welcomed my information—felt as keenly as I did that he might later be called upon to interpret and deal with some perplexing borderland condition of the mind. It was as well at least to be prepared. That was my major purpose. But connected with it was another, more self-regarding. My own vision, my psychic reel, greatly disturbed me. It was not orthodox. It could not be explained, for example, as something swiftly fabricated from covert memories by my unconscious mind, and forced then sharply into consciousness by some freak of circumstance, some psychic perturbation or strain.
My vision of the accident itself—of the manner of its occurrence—might conceivably have been such a fabrication, subconsciously elaborated from the facts given me by Conlon; not so my vision of its setting. I had seen in vivid detail the interior of a room which I had never entered and had never heard described; and every detail thus seen was minutely accurate, for I had since examined the room and had found nothing in it unfamiliar, nothing that did not correspond with what my mind's eye had already noted and remembered. Take merely one instance—the pattern and color scheme of the Chinese rug beside the chaise-longue. As an amateur in such matters I could easily, in advance of physically looking at it, have catalogued that rug and have estimated its value to a collector. How then to account for this astounding clairvoyance? I could not account for it without widening my whole conception of what was psychically possible. Seated with Doctor Askew in the room where Susan lay withdrawn from us, from our normal world of limited concrete perceptions, I was oppressed as never before by the immensity and deluding vagueness of the unknown. What were we, we men and women? Eternal forces, or creatures of an hour? An echo, from days long past returned to me, Phil's quiet, firm voice demanding—of Maltby, wasn't it? Yes, yes, of course—demanding of Maltby: "What is the world, may I ask? And what is Susan?"
Doctor Askew cross-questioned me closely as we sat there, a little off from Susan, our eyes seldom leaving her face. "You must have patience," he kept assuring me in the midst of his questioning. "It will be much better for her to come out of this thing tranquilly, by herself. We're not really wasting time." When his cross-questioning was over he sat silent for a long time, biting at his upper lip, tapping one foot—almost irritably, I thought—on the parquet floor.
"I don't like it," he said finally, in his abrupt way. "I don't like it because I believe you're telling the truth. If I could only persuade myself that you are either lying or at least drawing a long bow"—he gave a little disgusted snort of laughter—"it would be a great relief to me!"
"Why?"
"Why? Because you're upsetting my scientific convictions. My mind was all tidied up, everything nicely in order, and now you come raging through it with this ridiculous tale of a sudden hallucinating vision—of seeing things that you'd never seen, never heard described—whose very existence you were completely unaware of! Damn it! I'd give almost anything to think you a cheerful liar—or self-deceived! But I can't."
"Still, you must have met with similar cases?"
"Never, as it happens, with one that I couldn't explain away to my own satisfaction. That's what irritates me now. I can't explain you away, Mr. Hunt. I believe you had that experience just as you describe it. Well, then, if you had—what follows?" He pulled for a moment or two at a stubby end of red mustache.
"What does?" I suggested.
"One of three things," he replied, "all equally impossible. Either your vision—to call it that—was first recorded in the mind of another living person and transferred thence to yours—or it was not. If it wasn't, then it came direct from God or the devil and was purely miraculous! With your kind permission, we'll rule that out. But if it was first recorded in the mind of another living person, then we're forced to accept telepathy—complete thought transference from a distance—accept it as a fact. I never have so accepted it, and hate like hell to do it now! And even if I could bring myself to accept it, my troubles have only begun. From whose mind was this exact vision of the accident to Mrs. Hunt transferred to yours? So far as I can see, the detailed facts of it could have been registered in the minds of only two persons—Miss Blake and your wife. Isn't that so?"
I agreed.
"All right. See where that leaves us! At the time you received this vision, Miss Blake is lying here in a deep trance, unconscious; and your wife is dead. Which of these incredible sources of information do you prefer? It's a matter of indifference to me. Either way my entire reasoned conception of the universe topples in ruins!"
"But surely," I protested, "it might have come to me from Miss Blake, as you suggest, without our having to descend to a belief in spirit communication? Let's rule that out, too!"
"As you please," smiled Doctor Askew, pretty grimly. "If you find it easier to believe your vision came from Miss Blake, do so by all means! Personally, I've no choice. I can accept the one explanation quite as readily as the other. Which means, that as a thinking being I can accept neither! Both are—absurd. So I can go no further—unless by a sheer act of faith. I'm baffled, you see—in my own field; completely baffled. That's what it comes to. And I find it all devilishly annoying and inconvenient. Don't you?"
I did not reply. For a time I mused, drearily enough, turning many comfortless things over in my mind. Then I drew from my pocket the three sheets scribbled by Susan's hand, before it had responded to Doctor Askew's insistent suggestions.
"Doctor," I asked, handing him the scribbled pages, "in view of all I've told you, doesn't what Miss Blake has written here strike you as significant? You see," I added, while he glanced through them, "how strongly her repressed feelings are in revolt against me—against the tyranny of my love for her. Doesn't it seem improbable, then, to say the least of it, that my vision could have come from that direction?"
He was reading the pages through again, more slowly. "Jimmy?" he queried to himself. "Oh, yes—Jimmy's the boy you spoke of. I see—I see." He looked up, and I did my best to smile.
"That's a bitter dose of truth for me, doctor; but thank God it came in this way—came in time!"
Except for the punctuation, which I have roughly supplied, the three pages read as follows:
"A net. No means of escape from it. To escape—somehow. Jimmy—— Only wretchedness for Ambo—for us both. How can he care! Insufferably self-satisfied; childishly blind. I won't—I won't—not after this. No escape from it—my net. But the inner net—Ambo's—binding him, too. Some way out. A dead hand killing things. My own father. How he killed and killed—always—more than he knew. Blind. Never felt that before as part of me—of me. Wrong way round though—it enfolds—smothers. I'm tangled there—part of it—forever and ever. Setebos—God of my father—Setebos knows. Oh, how could I dream myself free of it like others—how could I! A net—all a net—no breaking it. Poor Ambo—and his love too—a net. It shan't hold me. I'll gnaw through—mouselike. I must. Fatal for Ambo now if it holds me. Fatal—Setebos—Jimmy will——"
"Hum," said Doctor Askew quietly.
"That doesn't help me much," I complained.
"No," he responded; "but I can't see that all this has any bearing on the possible source of your vision."
"I only thought that perhaps this revelation of a repressed inner revolt against me——"
"Yes, I see. But there's no reasoning about the unthinkable. I've already said I can make nothing of your vision—nothing I'm yet prepared to believe." He handed the three sheets back to me with these words: "But I'm afraid your interpretation of this thing is correct. It's a little puzzling in spots—curious, eh, the references to Setebos?—still, if I were you, Mr. Hunt, I should quietly withdraw from a lost cause. It'll mean less trouble all round in the end." He shook his head impatiently. "These sexual muddles—it's better to see 'em out frankly! They're always the devil, anyway! What silly mechanisms we are—how Nature makes puppet-fools of us! That lovely child there—she admires you and wants to love you, because you love her. Why shouldn't she? What could be a happier arrangement—now? You've had your share of marital misfortune, I should say. But Nature doesn't give a damn for happy arrangements! God knows what she's after, I don't! But just at present she seems to be loading the dice for Jimmy—for Jimmy, who perhaps isn't even interested in the game! Well, such—for our misery or amusement—is life! And my cigarettes are gone. . . . How about yours——?"