The engineer shuffled the cards between short, capable fingers. "Ghosts. Yes, I agree; there are such things. Created out of our subconscious selves; mirages of the mind; photographic spiritual projections; hereditary memories. There are always explanations."
Doctor Fenton poked into the bowl of his pipe with a broad thumb. "Did any of you happen to know the English poet, Cecil Grimshaw? No? I'll tell you a story about him if you care to listen. A long story, I warn you. Very curious. Very suggestive. I cannot vouch for the entire truth of it, since I got the tale from many sources—a word here, a chance encounter there, and at last only the puzzling reports of men who saw Grimshaw out in Africa. He wasn't a friend of mine, or I wouldn't tell these things."
Aldobrandini's dark eyes softened. He leaned forward. "Cecil Grimshaw
… We Latins admire his work more than that of any modern
Englishman."
The doctor tipped his head back against the worn red velvet of the lounge. An oil lamp, swinging from the ceiling, seemed to isolate him in a pool of light. Outside, the invisible sea raced astern, hissing slightly beneath the driving impact of the rain.
I first heard of Grimshaw [the doctor began] in my student days in London. He was perhaps five years my senior, just beginning to be famous, not yet infamous, but indiscreet enough to get himself talked about. He had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he called it, I believe…. The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love … Greater men than Grimshaw had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, if you spoke of him at all, or, if you happened to be a prophet, you saw in him the ultimate bomb beneath the Victorian literary edifice. And so he was.
I saw him once at the Alhambra—poetry in a top hat! He wore evening clothes that were a little too elaborate, a white camellia in his buttonhole, and a thick-lensed monocle on a black ribbon. During the entr'acte he stood up and surveyed the house from pit to gallery, as if he wanted to be seen. He was very tall and the ugliest man in England. Imagine the body of a Lincoln, the hands of a woman, the jaw and mouth of Disraeli, an aristocratic nose, unpleasant eyes, and then that shock of yellow hair—hyacinthine—the curly locks of an insane virtuoso or a baby prodigy.
"Who is that?" I demanded.
"Grimshaw. The chap who wrote the book about naughty Helen. La belle
Hélène and the shepherd boy."
I stared. Everyone else stared. The pit stopped shuffling and giggling to gaze at that prodigious monstrosity, and people in the boxes turned their glasses on him. Grimshaw seemed to be enjoying it. He spoke to someone across the aisle and smiled, showing a set of huge white teeth, veritable tombstones.
"Abominable," I said.