Flames. Robert Hichens

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СКАЧАТЬ Watch Rip carefully when he is not with Cresswell. Look after his health.

       Notice if he seems natural and happy. Does he eat as usual?"

      "Rather. He did to-day."

      "And he seems contented with you?"

      "Quite."

      "Well, all I can say is, that Rip doesn't seem to possess a dog nature.

       He is uncanny."

      "Uncanny," Julian said, seizing on the word. "But everything has become uncanny within the last few days. Upon my word, when I look back into the past of, say, a fortnight ago, I ask myself whether I am a fool, or dreaming, or whether my health is going to the deuce. London seems different. I look on things strangely. I fancy, I imagine—"

      He broke off. Then he said:

      "By Jove, doctor, if half the men I know at White's could see into my mind they would think me fitted for a lunatic asylum."

      "It doesn't matter to you what half the men, or the whole of the men at White's think, so long as you keep a cool head and a good heart. But it is as you say. You and Valentine have run, as a train runs into the Black Country, into an unwholesome atmosphere. In a day or two probably your lungs, which have drawn it in, will expel it again."

      He smiled rather whimsically. Then he said:

      "You know, Addison, men talk of their strength, and are inclined to call women nervous creatures, but the nerves play tricks among male muscles. Yes, you want the foils, the bicycle, the droning organ, and the village church. I advise you to go out of town for a week. Forget Marr, a queer fish evidently, with possibly a power of mesmerism. And don't ask Valentine to go away with you."

      The last remark surprised Julian.

      "But why not?" he asked.

      "Merely because he is intimately connected with the events that have turned you out of your usual, your right course. I see that your mind is moving in a rather narrow circle, which contains, besides yourself, two people only, Marr and Cresswell."

      "Darkness and light. Yes, it's true. How rotten of me," Julian exclaimed, like a schoolboy. "I'm like a squirrel in a cage, going round and round. That's just it. Valentine and Marr are in that cursed circle of our sittings, and so I insanely connect them with one another. I actually began to think to-night that Marr died, poor fellow, because—well—"

      "Yes."

      "Oh, it's too ridiculous, that his death had something to do with our last sitting. Supposing, as you say, he had a hypnotic power of any kind. Could—could its exercise cause injury to his health?"

      But the doctor ignored the question in his quiet and yet very complete and self-possessed manner.

      "Marr and Cresswell never met," he said. "It is folly to connect them together. It is, as you said," and he laughed, "rotten of you. Go away to-morrow."

      "I will, you autocratic doctor. What fee do I owe you?"

      "Your friendship, my boy."

      Dr. Levillier sat lower in his chair, and they smoked in silence, both of them revelling in the warm peace and the ease of this night-hour. Since he had come into the Harley Street house Julian had been much happier. His perturbation had gradually evaporated until now scarcely a vestige of it remained. The little doctor's talk, above all the sight of his calm, thoughtful face and the aspect of his calm, satisfied room, gave the coup de grâce to the uneasiness of a spurious and ill-omened excitement. When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction, sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end. And the grey ashes dropped away of their own accord, and Julian's mind shed its grey ashes too and glowed serenely. The dogs expanded their warm bodies on the hearth, and his nature expanded in a vague, wide-stretching generosity of mute evening emotion.

      "How comfortable this is, doctor," he murmured at last.

      "Yes. It's a good hour," the doctor replied, letting the words go slowly from his lips. "I wish I could give to all the poor creatures in this city just one good hour."

      They smoked their cigars out.

      "I ought to go," Julian said lazily.

      "No. Have one more. I know it is dangerous to prolong a pleasure. It loses its savour. But I think, Addison, to-night, you and I can get no harm from the experiment."

      He handed Julian the cigar-box.

      "We won't stir up the dogs for another half-hour," he added, looking at their happiness with a shining satisfaction. "Here are the matches. Light up."

      Julian obeyed, and they began the delightful era of the second cigar, and sank a little deeper down, surely, into serenity and peace. Occasional coals dropping into the fender with a hot tick, tick, chirrupped a lullaby to the four happy companions. And the men learnt a fine silence from the fine silence of the dogs.

      Half way through the second cigar Rupert shifted under his master's patent-leather boots and raised his huge head. His eyes blinked out of their sleep, then ceased to blink and became attentive. Then his ears, which had been lying down on each side of his head in the suavest attitude which such features of a dog can assume, lifted themselves up and pointed grimly forward as he listened to something. His flaccid legs contracted under him, and the muscles of his back quivered. Mab, less readily alert, quickly caught the infection of his attention, rolled over out of her sideways position and couched beside him. The movement of the dogs was not congenial to the doctor. Rupert's curious back, alert under his feet, communicated an immediate sense of disquiet to the very centre of his being. He said to Julian:

      "The acuteness of animal senses has its drawbacks. These dogs must have heard some sound in the street that is entirely inaudible to us. Well, Rupert, what is it? Lie down again and go to sleep."

      Stooping forward he put his hand on the dog's neck, and gave him a push, expecting him to yield readily, and tumble over onto the warm rug to sleep once more. But Rupert resisted his hand, and instead, got up, and stood at attention. Mab immediately followed his example.

      "What are they after, doctor?" said Julian.

      As he spoke a bell rang in the house.

      "Nemesis for prolonging the pleasure," Levillier said. "A summons to a patient, no doubt."

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