But for the all-pervading sensation caused by the recent declaration of war and the many ramifying minor excitements of the moment, I much doubt whether this ingenious attempt at self-concealment would have succeeded so easily. But for this crucial event I might easily have become a centre of inquisitive interest that would have caused great inconvenience and delay; as it so fell, however, everybody on board the Orissa was far too engrossed with the supreme agitation of the moment to pay much attention to the eccentric, not to say insane, individual who had been picked up from a collapsed aeroplane off the coast of Portugal.
With special insistence and appeal and with arguments whose soundness I was forced to admit, I had even allowed Dr Wayne to clip my super-abundant locks, and had likewise consented to clothe myself in a tolerable suit of blue serge, which he had begged from a good-natured passenger of unusual height. Thus clad and groomed, I managed to leave the boat in company with my careful protector without exciting overmuch curiosity either from my fellow-travellers of the Orissa or from the crowd on the landing-stage. After a certain amount of staring and a good many inquiries, which Dr Wayne skilfully parried, I found myself in a cab loaded with the Doctor's luggage jolting through the squalid streets of Liverpool on our way to a hotel. Here we spent a few hours in a private room, surrounded by masses of newspapers which my companion set to study with intense eagerness.
And here I shall digress a little in order to confront a real difficulty of understanding which must have already struck the reader. How evolved it that a complete stranger like Dr Charles Wayne allowed himself to be so burdened with such an incubus as myself? That is a query, I admit, which none save Dr Wayne is competent to answer, but I suspect even he can hardly solve the difficulty satisfactorily. When he comes to read these pages in due course, he may conceivably be able to say, "It was this," or "It was that, which not only aroused my interest in this mysterious being but also impelled me to serve and obey him henceforward." Yet even then I think he will fail to analyse truthfully the different motives which induced him thus to surrender his own freedom of action and to place himself without a murmur at my disposal. It may have been my piteous condition of solitude; it may have been my almost unearthly beauty of form and face; it may have been my uncanny misfortune out in mid-ocean; it may have been my quiet arrogance and originality of demeanour; it may have been his professional curiosity in a prospective patient;—it may have been one, or some, or all, or none of these things which contributed to his subservience. I cannot tell, and I feel Dr Wayne may be no wiser in the matter than myself. Sometimes I imagine that some faint exhalation of the supernatural must cling around my person, for it does not seem impossible to me that after adventures such as mine a delicate psychical fragrance (if I may so dare to describe that which is in reality indescribable) may permeate my bodily husk. Such an aroma, though but dimly comprehended, might admittedly prove of irresistible attraction to that rare spiritual type of humanity to which I strongly hold Dr Wayne to belong in spite of his homely exterior. I trust he will pardon the apparent impertinence of this statement, since it proceeds from the sole being who has been able to discover and appreciate the inherent sweetness and strength of his soul within. And for my own part I am often haunted by the notion, which I have scarcely the temerity to express in writing, that it was not the mere mundane accident of an accident that led Dr Wayne to embark on the Orissa where later on he was brought into such close contact with myself in my hour of need.
VII
We left Liverpool in the late hours of a brilliant August afternoon on our way to London. Throughout the journey southward I lay back dreamily in my seat, watching each receding vista and appreciating all with the dual interest of recollection and novelty. I preferred to recline thus in silence, and my companion, whose frequent inquisitions of my face in no wise disturbed me, seemed disinclined to resent my mood. Arrived at Euston we proceeded to a certain hotel on the Embankment which perpetuates a historic name and whose latter-day luxury is tempered by the near presence of a mouldy but modernised chapel, that can still claim to be a royal appanage. Dr Wayne had at first demurred to my choice of this particular hostelry, which is decidedly not celebrated for the moderation of its bills; but as in all else his opposition soon relaxed before my repeated desire. Accordingly it was I who engaged what I deemed a convenient and adequate suite of rooms, wherein we installed ourselves without further ado. My new surroundings in many ways attracted me, and we had not been an hour in the hotel before I was ensconced in a corner of the exiguous balcony outside our windows, lost in contemplation of the noble tawny flood swirling seaward through lines of sparkling lamps. Before retiring to sleep, however, I deemed it only fair to allay the evident apprehensions of Dr Wayne concerning expense. Accordingly I produced and untied my small leather wallet, emptying its shower of flashing jewels on to a table beneath a powerful electric lamp. The Doctor, who owned some superficial acquaintance with the science of metallurgy, was amazed at this sudden display of concentrated wealth, and henceforward appeared fully reconciled to our present mode of life.
[I may add here also that in the course of the next few days my friend carried a portion of these superb gems to a diamond merchant in the city who was personally known to him. This London dealer, so Dr Wayne informed me, could not repress his admiration of these glittering trifles, which, in spite of the unfavourable condition of the market induced by the war, he was soon able to dispose of, presumably with a handsome commission for his services. Be that as it may, a sum of eight hundred pounds was thus realised, and this money I insisted on Dr Wayne, to his evident reluctance, placing to his credit at his own bank. "Point d'argent; point de Londres"; at any rate I had solved for the nonce any question of financial difficulties.]
My impressions of London were so confused in this early stage of the great European War that I see little gain in attempting to crystallise my feelings into any sort of description. Indeed, I found it well-nigh impossible to attune my own thoughts to the popular attitude of the moment; but then I never ceased to remind myself that of necessity I was detached from a purely patriotic outlook owing to my long residence in Meleager with its consequent effects on a plastic mind that had definitely grown to regard the Earth and all therein as things left behind for evermore. The excited talk and scandal of the hotel corridors, the sheaves of redundant telegrams affixed from time to time on the public screens, the yells of the newsvendors, the headlines of the popular journals announcing English, French, Russian, Belgian and Servian victories in endless succession; the brouhaha of the streets and the gossip of the boudoir, all alike left me cold and phlegmatic. Dr Wayne used to read aloud to me daily from half-a-dozen papers, for I had signally failed to reacquire my long-suspended love of reading; but I was unable to grasp more than the patent fact that the fate of Paris was hanging in the balance:—Paris, the city of light and leadership; Paris the capital of Saint Louis, of Henry of Navarre, of Louis le Roi Soleil, of Napoleon Buonaparte; Paris, the erstwhile acme of my earthly ideals. Doubtless it was my own obliquity and rustiness of mind that caused this lamentable lack of comprehension of the situation as a whole, and prevented me from viewing it through those same rosy glasses of insular humour wherewith the bulk of my countrymen were regarding the trend of passing events on the Continent. I knew myself to be at best an amphibian, with my body on Earth and my heart in Meleager, yet capable of a residence in either planet. I felt lost and lonely in this city of reek and confusion, whose inhabitants probably outnumbered the whole tale of my own forsaken people. After a week or so I ceased to find solace in wandering amid streets and churches and galleries, and spent more hours than ever in musing with my eyes directed towards the river, the shipping and the steeples that clove the hot blue August sky. Dr Wayne meanwhile was busied with many matters, such matters as would presumably engage the attention of a time-expired Indian public servant; and from my peculiar tincture of indifference I was equally resigned to his absence or his presence, provided only he did not desert me, of which contingency I had no fear whatsoever.
With the sudden salvation of Paris at a critical moment and the ensuing German retreat from the Marne, the cloud of foreboding was partially lifted from me, without however quickening any fresh growth of interest within. Yet I listened to Dr Wayne's daily budget of news, and comported myself with conventional intelligence on the rare occasions that I found myself brought into contact with the Doctor's friends, who apparently regarded me as an interesting case, a sort of God's fool, in Dr Wayne's charge, in which impression I was naturally averse to undeceive them, for such a view at present suited my comfort and convenience.
September was now well advanced, and I much doubt if ever I should have achieved the desire, still less the determination, to leave a place I felt too languid to dislike but for a critical incident which I was half-hoping, half-dreading to occur. One afternoon Dr Wayne entered my room in an excited state and with unwonted heat began to dilate on a curious adventure he had just experienced in the hotel itself. It seems that on his return he noticed in the vestibule of the hall two diminutive swarthy foreigners seated in the middle of a miscellaneous mass of rugs, shawls, laces, cushions, ornaments of brass and other objects, all of Oriental appearance, though the Doctor assured me of obvious British or German manufacture. Dr Wayne, who, as I have already hinted, was an enthusiastic patriot, became somewhat nettled on seeing all this trumpery displayed for sale during so serious an epoch, albeit several expensively dressed women were already hovering round the men and their wares, like moths attracted to some sugary compound. The vendors, who had graceful manners and spoke fluent though broken English, called themselves vaguely "Indians," which statement on Dr Wayne's searching questions they qualified by remarking they were loyal subjects of the Indian Empire. The Doctor's rising suspicions were by no means appeased by this explanation; but on finding that the hotel servants as well as the hovering females resented his method of cross-examination, and were inclined to champion these Eastern peddlers, he ultimately desisted and retreated upstairs to vent his tale into my ears. I listened to him with that polite aloofness which has grown to be a second habit of nature with me, at first with faint attention, but ere long as he proceeded with intense though concealed agitation. For the detailed description of the pair of merchants in the hall below promptly convinced me of the accuracy of my first impression—that these Indian peddlers were no other than envoys from Meleager who had traced their erring King hither.
I wonder if my reader has ever experienced Fear. And by Fear I do not mean mere fright, or terror, or alarm, or other mental spasms with which Fear is so often vulgarly confused. If he reads Mr Kipling's poems about Mowgli, the little hunter of the jungle, he will obtain some inkling of that mysterious emotion which is in reality man's tribute to a relentless destiny.