Section 6

“What on earth’s the matter?”
“T wish you weren’t so beautiful,” he answered, awkwardly, as though he could scarcely bring him- self to say such foolish things. “I’m so afraid that something will happen to prevent us from being happy. It seems too much to expect that I should enjoy such extraordinarily good luck.”
She had the imagination to see that it meant much for the practical man so to express himself. Love of her drew him out of his character, and, though he could not resist, he resented the effect it
had on him. She found nothing to reply, but she took his hand.
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“Everything has gone pretty well with me so far,” he said, speaking almost to himself. ‘ When- ever I’ve really wanted anything, I’ve managed to get it. I don’t see why things should go against me now.”
He was trying to reassure himself against an instinctive suspicion of the malice of circumstances. But he shook himself and straightened his back.
“It’s stupid to be so morbid like that,” he mut- tered.
Margaret laughed. They walked out of the gal- lery and turned to the quay. By crossing the bridge and following the river, they must come eventually to Dr. Porhoét’s house.
Meanwhile Susie wandered down the Boulevard Saint Michel, alert with the Sunday crowd, to that part of Paris which was dearest to her heart. L’Ile Saint Louis to her mind offered a synthesis of the French spirit, and it pleased her far more than the garish boulevards in which the English as a rule seek for the country’s fascination. Its position on an island in the Seine gave it a compact charm. The narrow streets, with their array of dainty com- estibles, had the look of streets in a provincial town. They had a quaintness which appealed to the fancy, and they were very restful. The names of the streets recalled the monarchy that passed away in bloodshed, and in poudre de riz. The very plane- trees had a greater sobriety than elsewhere, as
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though conscious they stood in a Paris where prog- ress was not. In front was the turbid Seine, and below, the twin towers of Notre-Dame. Susie could have kissed the hard paving stones of the quay. Her good-natured, plain face lit up as she realised the delight of the scene upon which her eyes rested ; and it was with a little pang, her mind aglow with characters and events from history, and from fiction, that she turned away to enter Dr. Porhoét’s house.
She was pleased that the approach did not clash with her fantasies. She mounted a broad stair- case, dark but roomy, and at the command of the concierge, rang a tinkling bell at one of the door- ways that faced her. Dr. Porhoét opened in per- son.
“ Arthur and Mademoiselle are already here,” he said, as he led her in.
They went through a prim French dining-room, with much woodwork and heavy scarlet hangings, to the library. This was a large room, but the bookcases that lined the walls, and a large writing- table heaped up with books, much diminished its size. There were books everywhere. They were stacked on the floor and piled on every chair. There was hardly space to move. Susie gave a cry of delight.
“Now you mustn’t talk to me. I want to look at all your books.”
“You could not please mé more,” said Dr. Por-
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hoét, “but I am afraid they will disappoint you. They are of many sorts, but I fear there are few that will interest an English young lady.”
He looked about his writing-table till he found a packet of cigarettes. He gravely offered one to each of his guests. Susie was enchanted with that strange musty smell of old books, and she took a - first glance at them in general. For the most part they were in paper bindings, some of them neat enough, but more with broken backs and dingy edges; they were set along the shelves in serried tows, untidily, without method or plan. There were many older ones also in bindings of calf and pigskin, treasure from half the bookshops in Eu- rope; and there were huge folios like Prussian grenadiers; and tiny Elzevirs, which had been read by patrician ladies in Venice. Just as Arthur was a different man in the operating theatre, Dr. Por- hoét was changed among his books. Though he preserved the amiable serenity which made him al- ways so attractive, he had there a diverting brusque- ness of demeanour, which contrasted quaintly with his usual calm.
“T was telling these young people, when you came in, of an ancient Koran which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I operated upon for cataract.” He showed her a beautifully-writ- ten Arabic work, with wonderful capitals and head- lines in gold. “ You know that it is almost impos- sible for an infidel to acquire the holy book, and this
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is a particularly rare copy, for it was written by Kait Bey, the greatest of the Mameluke Sultans.”
He handled the delicate pages as a lover of flowers would handle rose-leaves.
“And have you much literature on the occult sciences?” asked Susie.
Dr. Porhoét smiled.
“T venture to think that no private library con- tains so complete a collection, but I dare not show it to you in the presence of our friend Arthur. He is too polite to accuse me of foolishness, but his sarcastic smile would betray him.”
Susie went to the shelves to which he vaguely waved, and looked with a peculiar excitement at the mysterious array. She ran her eyes along the names. It seemed to her that she was entering upon an unknown region of romance. She felt like an adventurous princess who rode on her palfrey into
a forest of great bare trees and mystic silences, where wan, unearthly shapes pressed upon her way.
“T thought once of writing a life of that fantas- tic and grandiloquent creature, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast von Hohenheim,” said Dr. Porhoét, “and I have collected many of his books.”
He took down a slim volume in duodecimo, printed in the seventeenth century, with queer plates, on which were all manner of cabalistic signs. The
pages had a peculiar, musty odour. They were stained with iron-mould. Lao
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“ Heré is one of the most interesting works con- cerning the black art. It is the Grimoire of Hono- rius, and is the principal text-book of all those who deal in the darkest ways of the science.”
Then he pointed out the Hexameron of Torque- mada and the Tableau de I’Inconstance des Démons, by Delancre; he drew his finger down the leather back of Delrio’s Disquisitiones Magice and set up- right the Pseudomonarchia Demonorum of Wierus; his eyes rested for an instant on Hauber’s Acta et Scripta Magica, and he blew the dust carefully off the most famous, the most infamous, of them all, Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficorum.
“Here is one of my greatest treasures. It is the Clavicula Salomonis; and I have much reason to believe that it is the identical copy which belonged to the greatest adventurer of the eighteenth century, Jacques Casanova. You will see that the owner’s name has been cut out, but enough remains to indi- cate the bottom of the letters; and these correspond exactly with the signature of Casanova which I have found at the Bibliothéque Nationale. He re- lates in his memoirs that a copy of this book was seized among his effects when he was arrested in Venice for traffic in the black arts; and it was there, on one of my journeys from Alexandria, that I picked it up.”
He replaced the precious work, and his eye fell on a stout volume bound in vellum.
“T had almost forgotten the most wonderful,
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the most mysterious, of all the books that treat of occult science. You have heard of the Kabbalah, but I doubt if it is more than a name to you.”
“T know nothing about it at all,” laughed Susie, “except that it’s all very romantic and extraordi- nary and ridiculous.”
“This, then, is its history. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initi- ated into the Kabbalah in the land of his birth; but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness. Here he not only devoted the leisure hours of forty years to this mysterious science, but received lessons in it from an obliging angel. By aid of it he was able to solve the diff- culties which arose during his management of the Israelites, notwithstanding the pilgrimages, wars, and miseries of that must unruly nation. He cov-° ertly laid down the principles of the doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses also initiated the Seventy Elders into these secrets, and they in turn transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were the most deeply learned in the Kab- balah. No one, however, dared to write it down till Schimeon ben Jochai, who lived in the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and after his death the Rabbi Eleazar, his son, and the Rabbi Abba, his secretary, collected his manuscripts and from them composed the celebrated treatise called Zohar.”
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“And how much do you believe of this marvel- lous story?” asked Arthur Burdon.
“Not a word,” answered Dr. Porhoét, with a smile. “ Criticism has shown that Zohar is of mod- ern origin. (With singular effrontery it cites an author who is known to have lived during the eleventh century, mentions the crusades, and records events which occurred in the year of our Lord, 1264. It was some time before 1291 that copies of Zohar began to be circulated by a Spanish Jew named Moses de Leon, who claimed to possess an auto- graph manuscript by the reputed author Schimeon ben Jochai. But when Moses de Leon was gathered to the bosom of his father Abraham, a wealthy He- brew, Joseph de Avila, promised the scribe’s widow, who had been left destitute, that his son should marry her daughter, to whom he would pay a hand- some dowry, if she would give him the original manuscript from which these copies were made. But the widow (one can imagine with what gnash- ing of teeth) was obliged to confess that she had no such manuscript, for Moses de Leon had com- posed Zohar out of his own head, and written it with his own right hand.”
Arthur got up to stretch his legs. He gave a laugh.
“T never know how much you really believe of all these things you tell us. You speak with such gravity that we are all taken in, and then it turns out that you’ve been laughing at us.”
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“My dear friend, I never know myself how much I believe,” returned Dr. Porhoét.
“T wonder if it is for the same reason that Mr. Haddo puzzles us so much,” said Susie.
“ Ah, there you have a case that is really inter- esting,” replied the doctor. “I assure you that, though I know him fairly intimately, I have never been able to make up my mind whether he is an elaborate practical joker, or whether he is really convinced that he has the wonderful powers to which he lays claim.”
“We certainly saw things last night that were not quite normal,” said Susie. ‘‘ Why had that serpent no effect on him though it was able to kill the rabbit instantaneously? And how are you go- ing to explain the violent trembling of that horse, Mr. Burdon?”
“T can’t explain it,” answered Arthur, irritably, “but I’m not inclined to attribute to the super-' natural everything that I can’t immediately under- stand.”
“T don’t know what there is about him that ex- cites in me a sort of horror,” said Margaret. “ I’ve never taken such a sudden dislike to anyone.”
She was too reticent to say all she felt, but she had been strangely affected last night by the recol- lection of Haddo’s words and of his acts. She had awaken more than once from a nightmare in which he assumed fantastic and ghastly shapes. His mocking voice rang in her ears, and she seemed still
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to see that vast bulk and the savage, sensual face. It was like a spirit of evil in her path, and she was curiously alarmed. Only her reliance on Arthur’s common-sense prevented her from giving way to ridiculous terrors.
“Tve written to Frank Hurrell and asked him to tell me all he knows about him,” said Arthur. “T should get an answer very soon.”
“TI wish we’d never come across him,” cried Mar- garet vehemently. “I feel that he will bring us misfortune.”
“You're all of you absurdly prejudiced,” an- swered Susie gaily. ‘ He interests me enormously, and I mean to ask him to tea at the studio.”
“T’m sure I shall be delighted to come.”
Margaret cried out, for she recognised Oliver Haddo’s deep bantering tones; and she turned round quickly. They were all so taken aback that for a moment no one spoke. They were gathered round the window and had not heard him come in, They wondered guiltily how long he had been there and how much he had heard.
“ How on earth did you get here?” cried Susie lightly, recovering herself first.
“No well-bred sorcerer is so dead to the finer feelings as to enter a room by the door,” he an- swered, with his puzzling smile. ‘ You were stand- ing round the window, and I thought it would startle you if I chose that mode of ingress, so I descended with incredible skill down the chimney.’
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“T sée a little soot on your left elbow,” returned Susie. “I hope you weren’t at all burned.”
“ Not at all, thanks,” he answered, gravely brush- ing his coat.
“In whatever way you came you are very wel- come,” said Dr. Porhoét, genially holding out his hand.
But Arthur impatiently turned to his host.
“T wish I knew what made you engage upon these studies,” he said. “I should have thought your medical profession protected you from any tenderness towards superstition.”
Dr. Porhoét shrugged his shoulders,
“T have always been interested in the oddities of mankind. At one time I read a good deal of philos- ophy and a good deal of science, and I learned in that way that nothing was certain. Some people, by the pursuit of science, are impressed with the dignity of man, but [ was only made conscious of his insignificance. The greatest questions of all have been threshed out since he acquired the begin- nings of civilisation and he is as far from a solution as ever. Man can know nothing, for his senses are his only means of knowledge, and they can give no certainty. There is only one subject upon which the individual can speak with authority, and that is his own mind, but even here he is surrounded with darkness. I believe that we shall always be ignorant of the matters which it most behoves us to know, and therefore I cannot occupy myself with
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them. I prefer to set them all aside, and, since knowledge is unattainable, to occupy myself only with folly.”
“Tt is a point of view I do not sympathise with,” said Arthur.
“Yet I cannot be sure that it is all folly,” pur- sued the Frenchman reflectively. He looked at Arthur with a certain ironic gravity. ‘Do you be- lieve that I should lie to you when I promised to speak the truth?”
“ Certainly not.”
“T should like to tell you of an experience that I once had in Alexandria. So far as I can see it can be explained by none of the principles known to science. I ask you only to believe that I am not consciously deceiving you.”
He spoke with a seriousness which gave author- ity to his words. It was plain, even to Arthur, that he narrated the event exactly as it occurred.
“T had heard frequently of a certain sheikh who was able by means of a magic mirror to show the inquirer persons who were absent or dead, and a native friend of mine had often begged me to see him. I had never thought it worth while, but at last a time came when I was greatly troubled in my mind. My poor mother was an old woman, a widow, and I had received no news of her for many weeks. Though I wrote repeatedly, no answer reached me. I was very anxious and very unhappy. I thought no harm could come if I sent for the
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sorcerer, and perhaps after all he had the power, which was attributed to him. My friend, who was interpreter to the French Consulate, brought him to me one evening. He was a fine man, tall and stout, of a fair complexion, but with a dark brown beard. He was shabbily dressed, and, being a descendant of the Prophet, wore a green turban. In his con- versation he was affable and unaffected. I asked him what persons could see in the magic mirror, and he said they were a boy not arrived at puberty, a virgin, a black female slave, and a pregnant woman. In order to make sure that there was no collusion, I despatched my servant to an intimate friend and asked him to send me his son. While we waited I prepared by the magician’s direction frankincense and coriander-seed, and a chafing-dish with live charcoal. Meanwhile he wrote forms of invocation on six strips of paper. When the boy arrived, the sorcerer threw incense and one of the paper strips into the chafing-dish, then took the boy’s right hand and drew a square and certain mystical marks on the palm. In the centre of the square he poured a little ink. This formed the magic mir- ror. He desired the boy to look steadily into it without raising his head. The fumes of the incense filled the room with smoke, The sorcerer muttered Arabic words, indistinctly, and this he continued to do all the time except when he asked the boy a question.