The Master Spirit

by Sir William Magnay

In such manner began the friendship between Paul Gastineau and Geoffrey Herriard.

Now, within the next few days, chance, that had brought Gastineau to this pass, continued a sequel which had a singular and important bearing upon the future of the two men it had thrown together. Gastineau, having been carried to the monastery and tended by the monks, ever ready for such an office of mercy, lay for days in a semi-comatose condition on the borderland between life and death. He was but one of some dozen victims under the care of these good brothers who, simple and practically dead to the world beyond their narrow sphere, took little heed of their patients’ identities; they were to them simply suffering men whose pain called forth their loving service. Presently, to their joy and Herriard’s satisfaction, Gastineau, who had seemed doomed, began to mend. He regained in a surprising degree his mental faculties; the doctor shook his head at any idea of complete recovery; he could never walk again, but, with care till the crisis was well past, he would live. It was wonderful, wonderful, he declared; not one man in a thousand would have survived such an injury, but the vitality of the Señor Inglese was the most marvellous he had ever known; it was a revelation; and, after all, though most of us die when we need not, there are some subjects whom it is absurdly difficult to kill. But then look at him. Did one ever see such unmistakable power in any one as this dark, resolute Englishman manifested? Were all mankind built of that steel-like fibre physicians would be few. But to give him the best chance it would be well to remove him to the air of the mountains, and the sooner it was done the better.

Accordingly, early one morning, the patient, accompanied by Herriard, was driven off on a journey of some half-dozen leagues to the restorative atmosphere the doctor had suggested.

Now it happened that, an hour after their departure, death, as though determined not to be twice baulked, struck his dart at one of the patients who remained at the monastery, an Englishman also, a stockbroker of travelling proclivities whose proposed itinerary had scarcely included the River Styx. During the morning the reporter of the local paper, who had, from the columns of a Madrid “contemporary,” discovered that an Englishman of note was among the wounded (a fact which he had totally failed to get wind of at first hand), bustled up to the monastery with an eye to “copy” and the unusual importance of a series of press telegrams to the capitals of Europe. Only to be told that the Englishman had died that morning. Too disgusted at a lost opportunity to enquire more closely as to the identity of the deceased, he jumped to the conclusion that it was of course the eminent advocate and distinguished member of the British Parliament who was dead, and hurried off in sorrow to his office, formulating his dispatch by the way. So it came to be flashed abroad that Paul Gastineau had, as expected, succumbed to his injuries.

Herriard reading the news some days after was hot on contradicting it, and greatly surprised when Gastineau forbade him to do so.

“Let it be,” he commanded. “It is scarcely a mistake. I am dead. Yes; considering what my life has been, as really dead as many a man who is in his grave. Let it be so, Herriard; give me your word that you will not set the mistake right. I will tell you why presently.”

He was so evidently in earnest, that Herriard could not refuse to pass his word, unaccountable as the request seemed. Yet, perhaps, to him who, being a humble member of the same profession, knew well his companion’s position and character therein, it was just conceivable that this brilliant and ambitious man could not bear to swallow fate’s nauseous dose in public. If we have to make a wry face we need not stand in the market-place to do it.

So it came to pass that the report of Gastineau’s death was never contradicted; he was supposed to have been buried in an obscure Spanish grave; obituary notices appeared in the papers, and the very fact that these were allowed to pass unchallenged practically confirmed their truth. This business of a supposititious death would, however, have been difficult to carry out successfully had it not been helped by the circumstance that Gastineau stood, so far as family ties were concerned, almost alone in the world. There was no near relative to go out to Spain and make enquiries, even as a pious duty. Such distant cousins as he had were poor, for he had raised himself; he had never encouraged any advances they had attempted, and they accepted the news of his death with little more interest than the rest of the world. So when presently it appeared that he had left to his friend Geoffrey Herriard a life interest in his property the relations had scarcely an excuse for a grievance.

But when once the deception had been decided on, the busy, acute brain, as keen as ever, set to work strenuously to perfect all the details of the business. And something more. The hidden light was to burn as brightly as ever behind its screen of lies; the dead hand was to strike as viciously as of old, the stilled voice to sting through other lips. Gastineau studied Herriard and came to the conclusion that he was fitted for the purpose he had in mind. He could have done with a little less honesty, but the scheme in its very character contained an element which would neutralize that. Paul Gastineau was not going to play the dead man in aught save in name. He was still a power. The sword with which he had fought and gained so many encounters had snapped in his hand, but he would do some savage execution yet with the jagged dagger it had become. He was not going to lie still and impotently watch the unchecked triumphs of the rivals and enemies he hated and despised. The sole sharer of his secret was clever, ambitious, sick of waiting for his chance, and, by Heaven, he should have it.

Accordingly he one day considerably startled Herriard by proposing to him a scheme, extraordinary enough, yet of obvious feasibility. It was simply this: That they should return to London secretly, and that he, Gastineau, out of gratitude for the services rendered him, should repay service for service by putting the whole of his great talents at his young friend’s disposal to the furtherance of his career. Herriard, in a word, was to be the mouthpiece of the stricken man’s brain. Gastineau should be the dramatist and stage-manager, Herriard the actor, the manifest form of the invisible spirit.