The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories Page 13

  It was about this time that they both became members of the Psychical Research Society, and their attention could not but be struck by the wonderful phenomena resulting from the practice of automatic writing. If you had a psychical gift in this direction—and it was now the settled conviction of both Henry Andrews and his wife that they had—all apparently that had to be done was to hold a pencil over a writing-pad conveniently placed, abstract your mind from the hand that held the pencil, and sit there to see what happened. The theory was that some controlling spirit might take possession of the pencil and dictate messages from the other world, which the pencil would record. Eager study of the psychical journals warned them that patient practice might be necessary before any results were arrived at, the reason being that the control must get used to the novel instrument of communication; and warning was given that they must not be discouraged if for a long time nothing was recorded on the paper except meaningless lines. But it appeared that most people, if they would only be patient enough, would be rewarded by symptoms of the presence of a control before very long, and when once a beginning was made, progress was apt to be very rapid. It was recommended also that practice should be regular, and, if possible, should take place at the same time every day.

  The idea fired Mrs. Andrews at once.

  “Upon my word, dear Henry,” she said, “I think it is very well worth trying, for the crystal is yielding no results at all. Psychical gifts are possessed by everybody in some degree, so this very interesting article says, and if ours do not lie in the direction of crystal-gazing, it makes it all the more probable that we shall achieve something in automatic writing. And as for a regular time for practising it, what could be more pleasant than to sit out in the garden after tea, when you have come in from your golf, and enjoy these warm evenings, with the feeling that we are occupying ourselves, instead of sitting idle, as we are apt to do?”

  Henry distinctly approved of the suggestion. He was often a little fatigued after his golf, though he was going to live till ninety, and the prospect of sitting quietly in a chair in the garden, instead of feeling that he ought to be weeding, was quite a pleasant one.

  “Then shall we each sit with paper and pencil, dear?” he asked.

  Mrs. Andrews referred to the essay that gave elementary instruction.

  “Certainly,” she said. “We will try that first. They say that two hands holding the pencil often produce extraordinary results, but we will begin, as they suggest, singly. I declare that my hand feels quite fidgety already, as if the control was just waiting for the means of communication to be prepared.”

  Everything in Mrs. Andrews’s house was in apple-pie order, and it took her no time at all to find two writing-pads and a couple of sharpened pencils. With these she rejoined her husband on the paved walk, where they had had tea, outside the drawing-room, and, with pencil in hand, fixed her eye firmly on the top of the mulberry tree at the edge of the lawn, and waited. He, with left hand free for his cigarette, did the same, but his mind kept going back to the boiled rabbit he had dreamed of after crystal-gazing, which still seemed to him a very unusual occurrence, for, to the best of his recollection, he had never dreamed of boiled rabbit before.

  Within a few days’ time very promising developments had taken place. Almost immediately Mrs. Andrews had begun to trace angled lines on the paper, which, if they did not suggest anything else particular, were remarkably like the temperature chart of a very feverish patient. Her hand, seemingly without volition on her part, made energetic dashes and dabs all over the paper, and she felt a very odd tingling sensation in her fingers, which could scarcely be put down to anything else than the presence of the control.

  Her husband, scarcely less fortunate, also began to trace queer patterns of irregular curves on his sheet, which looked very much as if they were words. But though they were like words, they were not any known words, whichever way up you attempted to read them, though, as Mrs. Andrews said, they might easily be Russian or Chinese, which would account for their being wholly meaningless to the English eye. Sheets of possible Russian were thus poured out by Mr. Andrews, and whole hospital records of fever charts on the part of his wife, but neither at present came within measurable distance of intelligibility. The control seemed incapable of making itself understood. Then on a memorable day Mr. Andrews’s pencil evinced an irresistible desire to write figures, and after inscribing “one, two, one, two,” a great many times, wrote quite distinctly 4958, and gave a great dash as if it had said its last word.

  “And what 4958 indicates, my dear,” said he, passing it over to Mrs. Andrews, “I think we must leave to the control to determine.”

  She looked at it a moment in silence; then, a great thought splendidly striking her, she rose in some excitement.

  “Henry, it is as plain as plain,” she said. “I am forty-nine; you are fifty-eight. Our ages are thus wonderfully conjoined. It certainly means that we must act together. Come and hold my pencil with me.”

  “Well, that is very curious,” said Henry, and did as he was told.

  At this point their experiments entered the second phase, and the pencil thus jointly held at once developed an intelligible activity. Instead of mere fever charts and numerals, it began to produce whole sentences which were true to the point of being positive truisms. Before they went to dinner that night, they were told, in a large, sprawling hand, that “Wisdom is more than wealth,” and that “Fearlessness is best,” and that “Hate blinds the eyes of Love.” The very next day more unimpeachable sentiments were poured forth, and at the end was written, “From Pocky.”

  Pocky, then, was clearly the control; he became to Mr. and Mrs. Andrews an established personality with a mind stored with moral generalities. Very often some practical application could be made of his dicta, as, for instance, when Mr. Andrews was hesitating as to whether to invest quite a considerable sum of money in a rather speculative venture. But, recollecting that Pocky had said that “Wisdom is better than wealth,” he very prudently refrained, and had the satisfaction of seeing the speculative concern come a most tremendous smash very soon after. But it required a good deal of ingenuity to fit Pocky’s utterances into the affairs of daily life, and Mr. Andrews was getting a little tired of these generalities, when the curtain went up on the third phase.

  This was coincident with the outbreak of the German war, when nothing else was present in the minds of husband and wife, and Pocky suddenly became patriotic and truculent. For a whole evening he wrote, “Kill them. Treacherous Germans. Avenge the scrap of paper,” and very soon after, just when England generally was beginning to be excited over the rumour that hosts of Russians were passing through the country to the French battle-front, he made a further revelation of himself.

  “The hosts of Russia are with you,” he wrote, “Cossacks from the Steppes, troops of the Great White Tsar. Hundreds and thousands, Russia to England, England to France. The Allies triumph. From Pocksky.” The pencil gave a great dash and flew from the fingers that held it.

  It was all most clearly written, and in a voice that trembled with excitement, Mrs. Andrews read it out.

  “There, my dear,” she said, “I don’t think we need have any further doubt about the Russians. And look how it is signed—not Pocky any longer, but Pocksky. That is a Russian name, if ever there was one!”

  “Pocksky—so it is,” said Mr. Andrews, putting on his spectacles. “Well, that is most wonderful. And to think that in those early days, when my pencil used to write things we couldn’t read, you suggested it might be Russian!”

  “I feel no doubt that it was,” said Mrs. Andrews firmly. “I wish now that we had kept them, and my writing, too, which you used to call the fever charts. I dare say some poor fellow in hospital had temperatures like that.”

  Mr. Andrews did not feel so sure of this.

  “That sounds a little far-fetched, dear,” he said, “though I quite agree with you about the possibility of its being Pocksky who wrote through me. I won
der who he was? Some great general, probably.”

  You can easily imagine the excitement that pervaded Oakley in the weeks that followed, when every day brought some fresh butler or railway porter into the public press, who had told somebody who had told the author of the letter in question that he had seen bearded soldiers stepping out of trains with blinds drawn down, and shaking the snow off their boots. It mattered nothing that the whole romance was officially denied; indeed, it only made Mrs. Andrews very indignant at the suppression of war news.

  “The War Office may say what it likes,” she exclaimed, “and, indeed, it seems to make it its business to deny what we all know to be true. I think I must learn a few words of Russian, in case I meet any soldier with a beard—‘God Save the Tsar!’ or something of the kind. I shall send for a Russian grammar. Now, let us see what Pocksky has to tell us to-night.”

  That no further confirmation of Pocksky’s announcements on this subject ever came to light was scarcely noticed by the automatic writers, for Pocksky was bursting with other news. He rather terrified his interpreters, when there was nervousness about possible Zeppelin raids, by saying: “Fires from the wicked ones in the clouds. Fourteen, twelve, fourteen, cellar best,” since this could hardly mean anything but that a raid was to be expected on the fourteenth of December; and Mr. and Mrs. Andrews—and, indeed, a large number of their friends—spent the evening in their cellars, coming out again when it was definitely after midnight. But the relief at finding that no harm had been done speedily obliterated the feeling that Pocksky had misled them, and when, on Christmas Eve, he said, “Spirit of Peace descends,” though certain people thought he meant that the War would soon be over, the truce on the Western Front for Christmas Day was more generally believed to bear out this remarkable prophecy.

  All through the spring Pocksky continued voluble. He would not definitely commit himself over the course that Italy was to take, but, as Mrs. Andrews triumphantly pointed out, Italy would not definitely commit herself either, which just showed how right Pocksky was. He rather went back to the Pocky style over this, and said: “Prudence is better than precipitation; Italy prepares before making decision. Wisdom guides her counsels, and wisdom is ever best. From Pocksky.” Intermittently the forcing of the Dardanelles occupied him.

  Now, here a rather odd point arose. Mr. Andrews at this time had to spend a week in town, and only Mrs. Andrews held the pencil which the intelligence of Pocksky used to express himself with. In all these messages Pocksky spelled the name of the straits “Dardanels,” which, for all I know, may be the Russian form. But two days ago Mrs. Andrews kindly sent me one of his messages, which I was glad to see was most optimistic in tone. She enclosed a note from herself, saying:

  “You will like to see what Pocksky says about the Dardanels. Isn’t he wonderful?”

  So Mrs. Andrews, writing independently of Pocksky, spells Dardanelles the same way as Pocksky does when he controls the pencil. I cannot help wondering if the control is—shall we say?—quite complete. I wonder also how the straits will get themselves spelt when Mr. Andrews returns. It is all rather puzzling.

  THE APE

  Hugh Marsham had spent the day, as a good tourist should, in visiting the temples and the tombs of the kings across the river, and the magic of the hour of sunset flamed over earth and heaven as he crossed the Nile again to Luxor in his felucca. It seemed as if the whole world had been suddenly transferred into the heart of an opal, and burned with a myriad fiery colours. The river itself was of the green that beech trees are clad in at spring-time; the columns of the temple that stood close to its banks glowed as if lit from within by the flame of some perpetual evening sacrifice; the cloudless sky was dusky blue in the east, the blue of turquoise overhead, and melted into aqua-marine above the line of desert where the sun had just sunk. All along the bank which he was fast approaching under the press of the cool wind from the north were crowds of Arabs, padding softly home in the dust from their work, and chattering as sparrows chatter among the bushes in the long English twilights. Even the dust that hovered and hung and was dispersed again by the wind was rainbowed; it caught the hues from the river and the sky and the orange-flaming temple, and those who walked in it were clad in brightness.

  Here in the South no long English twilight lingered, and as he walked up the dusky fragrant tunnel of mimosa that led to the hotel, night thickened, and in the sky a million stars leaped into being, while the soft gathering darkness sponged out the glories of the flaming hour. On the hotel steps the vendors of carpets and Arabian hangings, of incense and filigree work, of suspicious turquoises and more than suspicious scarabs were already packing up their wares, and probably recounting to each other in their shrill incomprehensible gabble the iniquitous bargains they had made with the gullible Americans and English, who so innocently purchased the wares of Manchester. Only in his accustomed corner old Abdul still squatted, for he was of a class above the ordinary vendors, a substantial dealer in antiques, who had a shop in the village, where archæologists resorted, and bought, sub rosa, pieces that eventually found their way into European museums. He was in his shop all day, but evening found him, when serious business hours were over, on the steps of the hotel, where he sold undoubted antiquities to tourists who wanted something genuine.

  The day had been very hot, and Hugh felt himself disposed to linger outside the hotel in this cool dusk, and turn over the tray of scarabs which Abdul Hamid presented to his notice. He was a wrinkled, dried-up husk of a man, loquacious and ingratiating in manner, and welcomed Hugh as an old customer.

  “See, sir,” he said, “here are two more scroll-scarabs like those you bought from me before the week. You should have these; they are very fine and very cheap, because I do no business this year. Mr. Rankin, you know him? of the British Museum, he give me two pounds each last year for scroll-scarabs not so fine, and to-day I sell them at a pound and a half each. Take them; they are yours. Scroll-scarabs of the twelfth dynasty; if Mr. Rankin were here he pay me two pounds each, and be sorry I not ask more.”

  Hugh laughed.

  “You may sell them to Mr. Rankin then,” he said. “He comes here to-morrow.”

  The old man, utterly unabashed, grinned and shook his head.

  “No; I promised you them for pound and a half,” he said. “I am not cheat-dealer. They are yours—pound and a half. Take them, take them.”

  Hugh resisted this unparalleled offer, and, turning over the contents of the tray, picked out of it and examined carefully a broken fragment of blue glaze, about an inch in height. This represented the head and shoulders of an ape, and the fracture had occurred half-way down the back, so that the lower part of the trunk, the forearms which apparently hung by its sides, and the hind legs were missing. On the back there was an inscription in hieroglyphics, also broken. Presumably the missing piece contained the remainder of the letters. It was modelled with extreme care and minuteness, and the face wore an expression of grotesque malevolence.

  “What’s this broken bit of a monkey?” asked Hugh carelessly.

  Abdul, looking much like a monkey himself, put his eyes close to it.

  “Ah, that’s the rarest thing in Egypt,” he said, “so Mr. Rankin he tell me, if only the monkey not broken. See the back? There it says: ‘He of whom this is, let him call on me thrice’—and then some son of a dog broke it. If the rest was here, I would not take a hundred pounds for it; but now ten years have I kept half-monkey, and never comes half-monkey to it. It is yours, sir, for a pound it is yours. Half-monkey nothing to me; it is fool-monkey only being half-monkey. I let it go—I give it you, and you give me pound.”

  Hugh Marsham felt in one pocket, then in another, with no appearance of hurry or eagerness.

  “There’s your pound,” he said casually.

  Abdul peered at him in the dusk. It was very odd that Hugh did not offer him half what he asked, instead of paying up without bargaining. He regretted extremely that he had not asked more. But the little blue fragmen
t was now in Hugh’s pocket, and the sovereign glistened very pleasantly in his own palm.

  “And what was the rest of the hieroglyphic, do you think?” Hugh asked.

  “Eh, Allah only knows the wickedness and the power of the monkeys,” said Abdul. “Once there were such in Egypt, and in the temple of Mut in Karnak, which the English dug up, you shall see a chamber with just such monkeys sitting round it, four of them, all carved in sandstone. But on them there is no writing; I have looked at them behind and before; they not master-monkeys. Perhaps the monkey promised that whoso called on him thrice, if he were owner of the blue image of which gentleman has the half, would be his master, and that monkey would do his bidding. Who knows? It is of the old wickedness of the world, the old Egyptian blackness.”

  Hugh got up. He had been out in the sun all day, and felt at this moment a little intimate shiver, which warned him that it was wiser to go indoors till the chill of sunset had passed.

  “I expect you’ve tried it on with the half-monkey, haven’t you?” he said.

  Abdul burst out into a toothless cackle of laughter.

  “Yes, effendi,” he said. “I have tried it a hundred times, and nothing happens. Else I would not have sold it you. Half-monkey is no monkey at all. I have tried to make boy with the ink-mirror see something about monkeys, but nothing comes, except the clouds and the man who sweeps. No monkey.”

  Hugh nodded to him.

  “Good-night, you old sorcerer,” he said pleasantly.

  As he walked up the broad flagged passage to his room, carrying the half-monkey in his hand, Hugh felt with a disengaged thumb in his waistcoat pocket for something he had picked up that day in the valley of the tombs of the kings. He had eaten his lunch there, after an inspection of the carved and reeking corridors, and, as he sat idly smoking, had reached out a lazy hand to where this thing had glittered among the pebbles. Now, entering his room, he turned up the electric light, and, standing under it with his back to the window, that opened, door fashion, on to the three steps that led into the hotel garden, he fitted the fragment he had found to the fragment he had just purchased. They joined on to each other with the most absolute accuracy, not a chip was missing. There was the complete ape, and down its back ran the complete legend.