NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Page 9

  ‘Well, take him down to your place and shove him out in the sun—if you’ve got a pretty sister set her to flirt with him and shake him into an ordinary healthy youngster again,’ grunted the old man. ‘The boy’s brilliant, brilliant, but he’s going to pieces for some reason, and I won’t have my best pupil spoilt. You’re the plodding sort, Otway—oh, you’ll do very well, very well indeed, but Floris could do very great things if he would. . . . Take him away.’

  Reproaching myself for not having thought of it before, I took Floris down with me for a week to my people in Hampshire. They were charmed with him, his funny little shy manner was disarming, though his clothes were more wildly untidy than ever, and my mother is generally scrupulously particular about that sort of thing; I caught her mending a hole in Floris’s flannel coat the second day—my stately mother darning a disreputable grey jacket, with a houseful of maids at her service!—so that shows you the sort of effect he had on women.

  As for my very pretty sister Molly, she fell violently in love with him, and grew exasperated almost to frenzy at his complete unconsciousness and failure to perceive a state of mind that would have sent any other of her many adorers at once into the seventh heaven. We golfed, though he was an execrably bad player, ran about in the car, and, since he didn’t play bridge, I generally left him to Molly to amuse after dinner—a task in which she generally succeeded to a heart-breaking extent, since three evenings with her dark eyes were usually enough to send any normal young man into a seriously lovelorn condition. Not so Floris, to her great chagrin—he liked her, liked to sit or, rather, lie, a long, limp figure, hands in the pockets of his dinner-jacket, listening to her as she played or sang, his great eyes staring into the fire. But as she angrily told me later, she soon stopped that, knowing, as a pretty woman instantly knows, that all the joy she gave him with her music might just as well have been provided by a gramophone. He wanted to think, and music was a good accompaniment. As usual with spoilt women, seeing he did not even advance half-way, she did, and received a snub—though again, so gently done, and so unconscious a snub, that even in her feminine chagrin she yet could not be angry with him.

  For the first time Molly failed to make a hit, and it ruffled her considerably! I asked for details, and she replied impatiently, ‘Oh, he’s not stiff and nervous, there’d be more hope if he were, but he’s just always nice and sweet and casually polite, so much so, that it’s obvious I might as well have a beard like Great-Aunt Jane! And I’ve been flirting with him more shamelessly than ever I did . . . you know I have.’

  ‘I do,’ I said, with a suppressed grin—for, indeed, Molly’s infatuation had been more than noticeable. She hurried on, punctuating her speech with injured sniffs.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t rise a scrap, and really I got quite cross. I absolutely determined he should kiss me the day before he left, so I got him here after lunch, and I know I’m looking nice in this new frock—and I just meant to make him. We talked, you know what a funny inconsequent way of talking at random about all sorts of little things he has: and I looked at him.’

  I knew Molly’s way of looking, and its usual effect. I nodded to fill the gap, and she went on:

  ‘And just as I really thought he was going to melt at last, he looked at me very straight, and said in a sort of reflective voice, “Yes. I should rather like to kiss you in some ways—but after all, you’re not the Soldan’s Daughter!” Now what do you make of that?’

  My jaw dropped for a moment, then I laughed.

  ‘Oh, now I understand! But what a fool—can’t the man let dead things sleep? Look here, it’s only a kink of Floris’s, and I’m hoping it’ll wear off—as a matter of fact, I brought him down here to see whether your charms would outweigh the Soldan’s Daughter’s.’

  Molly stamped.

  ‘Who is the woman, anyway?’ she demanded jealously.

  ‘There isn’t any, as far as I know,’ I answered impatiently; ‘all I know is that Floris cherishes in his rooms an ivory figure called the “Soldan’s Daughter”, that’s evidently the last memory of some woman or other. He keeps flowers beside it and all that sort of thing. Pure sentiment, and must wear off in time—but if it’s proof against you, Moll, he must still have it pretty badly. What happened then?’

  ‘Well, I stared,’ Molly said; ‘then, I must say I was cross, and flounced away to the other end of the seat! I said “whoever she is, if you’re so fond of her why didn’t you bring her down to amuse you here, since I don’t succeed?” I’d lost my temper, you see. Well, he looked at me quickly in a sort of shocked way, and said quite seriously, “Oh, you must know I couldn’t do that. She’s used to travelling in quite a different sort of way, it would have been impossible. I can’t do much for her anyway, but at least she has peace, and flowers—and—well, I don’t count for much, of course. . . .” I thought he was talking nonsense to tease me, and was furious, so I told him to go, as I was cross with him, and it had given me a headache. I didn’t mean him to, of course, but he seemed quite glad to, and offered to send Ann down with aspirin. Aspirin! He’s mad, but the utterly maddening part of it is, I can’t be angry with him; he’s somehow so dreadfully loveable!’

  Molly’s pride was stung though, and she avoided Floris till he went, and then accorded him but a cold handshake. I’m bound to admit, though, that this did not seem to worry him at all, and it seemed with almost a sigh of relief that he turned his head Londonwards.

  He was very silent as we drove through the wet streets towards Bloomsbury, and inserted our keys in the lock of the tall dark house. It was about eleven at night, and most of the windows blank, unlighted. Floris glanced up at his, and my eye followed his. A faint gleam shone in his room, it seemed, and I fervently hoped the landlady had been considerate enough to light my fire too—these early autumn evenings were chill—but she spoilt Floris as far as she did anybody, and I was not hopeful.

  Silently we mounted the stairs, creaking in our wet shoes, till we turned on to the last flight but two. I sniffed suddenly as we reached the last step—Floris was a little behind me.

  ‘Floris, the old girl’s been absolutely spoiling you—if she hasn’t actually put flowers in your room! I can smell them distinctly! Now she’s never . . .’

  I paused, arrested by Floris’s face, upturned to me in the thin shaft of moonlight that fell through the dusty skylight. At my words he had paused suddenly—the drift of faint, very faint, flower-like scent had caught him too, and on the instant his face broke into a sudden smile of utterly, dazedly, surprised joy, so entirely sweet and transfiguring that I paused, startled. His great eyes widened and grew ineffably bright, and his hand, suddenly shaking, closed on mine.

  Vaguely he waved towards the room door, and his voice fell into an ecstatic whisper.

  ‘Otway—Otway. She’s there—I know it! Oh, you don’t understand, old man. . . . Forgive me—I can’t wait—I must go to her. You know, you’d feel the same. . . . Good night.’

  As I stared, he broke from me, and sped down the dark passage, and I heard his door close softly behind him. Rather resentful, I suddenly made up my mind, and tiptoed down the passage, determined to follow him in, but paused on the threshold. Floris’s voice murmuring, murmuring, fell upon my astonished ear, and relinquishing for the moment all but curiosity, I bent down and peered through the large old-fashioned keyhole. Floris had his back towards me, and he was kneeling before the table, his outstretched hands clasped before the tiny ivory shape that glimmered through the half-darkness of the room. I could not hear what he said, but his voice was thick and sweet and husky with adoration, as he poured out his soul at the feet of the Soldan’s Daughter, grave and queenly on her ivory throne. For seconds I stood there, frankly utterly puzzled. Obviously whoever gave this thing to poor old Floris must have held him in an extraordinary way for it still to be so strong, for I had known him more or less, if not at first well, for at least a year, and I was morally certain that no woman had come into his life at all during that t
ime.

  The murmuring, ecstatic voice crooned on, the pale reddish light glimmered, and the scent of the heavy sweet flowers, strange rather and heady, hung on the air, distinct though faint. I stood there ruminating, doubtful what to do. But I did nothing—I retreated. Just then I felt, small but quite decided, a feeling that it would be better not to stay—not that I was frightened in any way, of course, but I somehow felt I should be better in my own room; anyway, I went away quickly, and I’ll admit honestly that I wasn’t sorry when the door was shut, and glad there was some whisky left in the bottle. . . .

  Well—that was the beginning of the definitely ‘queer’ part of this story, and yet, you know, it’s so infernally elusive, the whole thing, that at times I wonder whether there really was anything queer at all, or whether it wasn’t just imagination, helped by Floris’s odd personality and funny ways. I don’t know—there was a funny little incident a few days afterwards, too, that gave me a sort of jar.

  I’d been looking for Floris—wanted to ask him to come and join a party to dance. I thought it would do him good, but he wasn’t there; only, as usual, the small ivory figure alone on the little table, a tuft of anemones her offering that day, red, purple and blue in a green jar. I ran into him in the street about an hour later, just as it was getting dark—he was coming out of Russell Square Underground, coat collar turned up and hands plunged deep in pockets as always. He was striding past into the grey murky drizzle, when I seized his arm, making some jocular remark re his eternal habit of passing one with a blank stare—he turned a vague face to me and smiled his sudden brilliant, wistful smile that was so disarming.

  ‘Otway—Oh! Hullo—didn’t see you!’

  ‘I know,’ I said; ‘well, you’ve missed a jolly show tonight, Floris—tried to get hold of you to make a four with Molly and Grace Tarrant, but had to get Jenks instead.’

  Floris murmured that he was sorry as I went on, laughingly.

  ‘So you’ll have to sit as usual, and entertain the Soldan’s Daughter—seriously, though, it’s not bad taste on your part, old man. She’s a beauty all right—I was granted a special interview this afternoon with the lady. . . .’

  I was going on light-heartedly pulling his leg, but I stopped at that moment gaping—Floris’s great eyes, suddenly widening, glared into mine with a terrible expression of rage and hate and jealousy in their blazing depths. His thin hand, flashing out, fastened on my wrist like a vice as he spoke through his teeth.

  ‘You’ve seen her—seen her? . . . by God, don’t you see that I must kill you now?’

  At the blank consternation in my face, in an instant his own relaxed, and with a sound that was half a laugh, half a quivering sigh, he passed a shaking hand over his forehead, and smiled at me, a shy deprecating little smile.

  ‘Sorry, old man—I can’t explain! I thought—it doesn’t matter what I thought—I ought to have known you were only pulling my leg . . . of course. Sorry . . .’ He faded quickly away into the mist, and still a little ruffled, I went my way, ruminating on the extraordinary little incident, but unable to come to any fresh conclusion about it, except that poor old Floris was in an increasingly bad way re nerves.

  Another time he came to me weeping and dreadfully agitated, clutching me in a way that really frightened me. After a lot of incoherencies I got a little out of him. ‘She’ wouldn’t look at him, and he tried so hard. ‘She’ hated drink, though that brought ‘things’ nearer at first. Now he was afraid opium was losing its power—three nights, and ‘She’ hadn’t come. . . . At first I thought it was a real woman, and indeed still I’m not sure—but it appeared, poor wretch, that really he had the delusion that, given a certain state of sensitiveness, the Soldan’s Daughter—don’t laugh, he was dreadfully serious—herself, the Soldan’s Daughter in grave ivory paleness, narrow eyes and slender gold-tipped hands, would step down from her ivory throne and come to him on her two tiny feet, balanced delicately like a bird about to fly. He talked marvellously sometimes—it was a mixture of opium and imagination, or so I thought then, and sometimes think still, in my saner moments—honestly as if he had seen her, the Soldan’s Daughter. . . . ‘White as ivory she is,’ he would say, ‘and her brows are two painted lines that lie like thin black feathers above her grave eyes. Black velvet is her dense hair, and she walks on her two tiny feet like a gazelle beside a lake. Like the prints of a blue pigeon are the marks of her tiny feet, when she walks in the flaming gardens of the Soldan to gather lotus and red lilies. . . .’

  I thought a lot of it nonsense, though he used to often go on like that. I thought he was writing poetry or a play or something, and I would peg away at my work while he maundered, but this time he wept and went on till I got rather anxious—he kept saying he ‘must try something fresh’, he knew he hadn’t got just the right thing, the one stuff that ‘got him into the right mood. . . .’

  ‘Well,’ I said bluntly, at last, ‘let’s be candid, Floris. You’ve been taking too much dope, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Floris assented gravely, staring at me with his great eyes, set in their hollow sockets, uncannily bright in the dusk. ‘But that’s only till I find the real thing; I tried morphia, after opium, but that’s not just right either. I shall find it, presently—I know. But She wants me to do it myself—She won’t tell me.’

  ‘Who on earth do you mean?’ I asked rather irritably, but Floris, as usual, evaded any direct answer, and went on, staring into the fire:

  ‘Oh—you know . . . sometimes opium does it, but just now it won’t work, and I’m getting so worried—last night she came—just about as near as you are and no nearer—she wouldn’t. Just looked at me, and shook her grave head, though I begged and begged. Three nights—and she came no nearer—I see her among the flowers, but no more. Last night she fed the goldfish in the great pond, and her white hands lay on the water like two lilies with the gold seeds for centres . . . her long nails tore a fish’s silver sides and he swam away wounded, while I wept that I might not die and be re-born a silver fish to dart among the green weed-tangles of the Soldan’s fishpond, and eat golden seeds from her scented hands. . . .’

  ‘O Lord!’ I was on the verge of saying, but checked myself, as to scoff at the Soldan’s Daughter was the sure way to shut Floris up, and I didn’t want to do that—thought it was far better for him to get all this out of his system by yarning about it, if he could. He continued in a different vein.

  ‘I say, Otway, do you know anything about haschish? I want to try it.’

  His remark was quite seriously made, though I glanced at him suspiciously at first. I gave a vexed laugh.

  ‘My dear chap! Do you think I’m an authority on dopes? For God’s sake, pull up a bit, Floris! You’re cracked to go on fooling with your health in this way, and simply ruining your prospects. I don’t know anything about drugs, and don’t want to—now for goodness’ sake talk of something more amusing than your eternal Soldan’s Daughter!’

  As usual, Floris promptly retreated into himself, and the subject dropped. As a matter of fact, I had been more scathing than I meant, partly to bolster myself up against a sudden nasty little feeling of cold fright. For a tiny flash I had felt again that odd sense of complete, imperious ‘dismissal’ that had sent me into sudden retreat from the door of Floris’s room a short time ago . . . therefore I bluffed and scoffed loudly, and Floris retired into his shell. I saw little of him for several days after that—it hurts now to think I had made him shy of talking to me about this pathetic delusion, obsession, whatever it was that had him in its grip . . . but I think by now I had definitely relinquished my first idea that there was any real woman, or memory of one, behind the whole queer business. I don’t know what there was, even now—I don’t know what I really believe . . . well!

  One night I got home late—from the street I saw the same faint glimmer of red light in Floris’s room, through the drawn curtains. I went softly up the stairs—no sound nor movement from the dark passage at the end of which was
his door, but the flowery Eastern sort of scent he evidently affected at times was heavy on the air, and there was another; the thick drug-filled smell of something—I had it. Haschish! ‘Better than opium!’ Oh, Lord, my poor friend! I groaned in spirit as I stood there on the stairs, remembering his question, and blamed myself severely that I had, in a flash of impatience, quelled the confidence that might have saved the poor lad sinking deeper and more deeply into this entangling net of strange delusions. . . . Probably he was lying now in a drugged stupor, and it was too late, at least tonight, to do anything. . . . I tiptoed down the short corridor and listened, pausing, at the door. Not a sound, not a murmur—but as I became accustomed to the silence, I did hear something—like someone whispering, whispering very low and persistently, or talking in so low and gentle a key as to be almost inaudible.

  Poor Floris was babbling in his sleep—his voice had altered a little though, probably grown shriller with the drug—with my ear to the keyhole I could hear a little better, and it certainly seemed to me that it was oddly small and thin in quality, almost feminine. I could not see anything clearly, the red light in the room was dulled by shifting clouds of blue smoke, and heavy drifting shadows hung low, obscuring even the little table that was generally clear to be seen through the keyhole. That confounded scent was everywhere, far stronger than the first time I had perceived it; it took one by the throat and nostrils, fiercely sweet and strong, like musk rather, yet more wonderful! Pungent, stealthily powerful it crept to me, flooding my senses in a fog of marvellous enclouding, and for a second I shut my eyes where I stood outside in the cold and the dark, and laid my hand on the lintel and shook with sheer loneliness and longing for the rainbow dreams and visions that rose like a shoal of many-coloured fish, glimmering through the dark waters of my very ordinary, practical mind, and sank again before I had time even to stretch out my hands to them in passing. . . . It passed in a flash, and even as I shivered back into sanity, suddenly another emotion seized me, and that with a dreadful completeness; instantaneously I was frightened! Panic took me, and terrified, shaking, with a frantic hand I hammered wildly at Floris’s locked door, calling to him.