THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS (90 page)

‘Doesn’t Thackeray say somewhere that to win the approval of a butler is the highest test of good breeding?’ I asked.

‘I don’t remember that,’ answered the squire, ‘though I think he says that to look like a butler is the safest thing for a political leader, as it always suggests respectability. All the same, I came to trust Wilson’s judgement, and it often stood me in good stead as a young man. But it is strange we should have got upon the subject tonight, for the only time I ever came near a quarrel with him was about his opinion of my friend the spiritualist, whose story I told you yesterday. The old butler took a strong dislike to him during his first visit here, and after he left we had quite a little scene. Wilson literally begged me not to make an intimate of him, and I remember getting annoyed with the old man and telling him sharply to mind his own business. He took th~ rebuke like a lamb and begged my pardon for venturing to speak in such a way to me. “But you can’t tell, Mr Philip,” he added, “what it means to me to see a man like that among your friends.” ’

‘I meant to ask you what became of the spiritualist,’ said Father Bertrand, ‘but it slipped my memory. Was the incident you told us the only thing of the kind, or did you come across any other examples of his faculty ? ’

‘Well,’ answered the squire, with a little hesitation, ‘perhaps you’ll laugh at me, but old Wilson’s opinion impressed me more than I cared to admit to him, and not long afterwards some facts came to my knowledge which went a long way to confirm it. In consequence I let our intimacy cool, and soon afterwards the man left England altogether and I only met him once again, quite by accident, many years later.’ He paused for a moment, and then continued. ‘If you like I will tell you what happened on that occasion. The whole affair was over in a few hours, but while it lasted it was so startling that I have often thanked God since that I followed Wilson’s advice and did not allow our former intimacy to develop.

‘The incident I told you last night must have occurred about the year 1858, and the man passed out of my life within a year or so after that. Still, I never saw the Cellini fountain without it bringing him back to my mind, and I often wondered idly what had happened to him. I never heard a word about him, however, and in time I came to think he must be dead.

‘More than twenty years later I was supplying at a mission on the outskirts of a large manufacturing town in the North. The place was not more than two or three miles from the heart of the city, but it was practically in the country, and the only exceptional feature about my work was the fact that I had to visit a large lunatic asylum which stood within the parish. The building had originally been the mansion of a county family, but they had died out, and when the property came into the market it was bought by the Corporation, and the mansion itself had been added to and adapted to serve its new purpose. There were a few Catholics among the inmates, and I found that one of the doctors was a Catholic too, so we soon became very good friends. One afternoon, as I was leaving the asylum, he asked me to go and have tea in his rooms. These were in a wing of the original building, where I had never been before, and his windows looked out on an old formal garden.

‘“Why,” I exclaimed, “I thought I had seen all the grounds, but this part is quite new to me.”

‘“Yes, it would be,” he replied. “You see, we have to keep the more serious cases separate from the others, and this part of the grounds is in their enclosure. If you like we will go round the old garden after tea; there probably won’t be more than one or two patients in it, and it will be all right if I go with you.”

‘To tell the truth I was always a little uneasy when I went among the patients, even the harmless ones, but my glimpse of the garden made me long to see it all; so I accepted the offer, and when tea was over we walked down on to the terrace beneath. The place had been laid out with great skill in the eighteenth century, and the paved walks with their old stone parapets and vases made an exquisite setting to the beds of bright flowers, relieved here and there by yew trees, clipped into fantastic shapes. There was not a soul about, and I quite forgot my uneasiness until we passed through an opening in a tall hedge at the bottom of the slope and came out on to a lawn beyond. At one end of this was a little pool, and my heart gave a great thump as I looked at it, for kneeling by the side, so that his profile was turned towards us, was a man whose face was perfectly familiar. It was my former friend the spiritualist, and, except that his shoulders were bent and his hair absolutely white, his appearance had scarcely changed in all the years, so that I recognized him in an instant. But it was not the surprise of meeting him thus unexpectedly which made me catch my breath and held me speechless. What sent the blood back to my heart, and then made it surge to the brain in a great wave of pity, was his occupation; for carefully, with earnest gaze and rapt attention, he knelt there building castles in the mud! The doctor must have noticed that I was upset, for he took my arm, as if to lead me back again, when I stopped him.

‘“No, no, Doctor,” I whispered, “I’m not frightened; it isn’t that. But the man kneeling there, I used to know him well, I am certain of it.’

‘“Indeed,” he whispered back, “he is the most curious case we have here - quite a mystery, in fact. I must get you to tell me what you know about him.”

‘“Yes, certainly,” I answered, “but I want to speak to him. He may turn and recognize me at any moment, and I do not want him to think I have come to spy upon him.”

‘“You are right,” he replied, “and if you can only gain his confidence it may be of great importance, for he is a case of lost identity, and your old friendship may perhaps revive his memory, and reconnect him with the vanished past.” With this he led me up to where the man was kneeling, but he never turned nor seemed to notice our presence, until the doctor addressed him in a loud voice.

‘“Come now, Lushington,” he said, “I’ve brought an old friend to see you. Look up and see if you don’t recognize him.” Very slowly, as if with an effort, the kneeling figure raised its head and turned towards us; but slow as the movement was, it barely gave me time to recover from my surprise, for the doctor had addressed him by a name that was utterly unlike the one he had formerly borne, and yet here he was answering to it, as if it were his own!

‘“I wonder if you can recognize me after all these years?” I t asked him, when he had gazed at me in silence for some moments I without the smallest sign of recognition.

‘“Recognize yer? No, I’m shot if I do,” he said at length; and I got another surprise, for the words were spoken in a hard, vulgar voice, totally different from the quiet, refined speech of my former friend.

‘“Think again, Lushington,” said the doctor, “for this gentle man is quite right, he used to know you well many years ago.” With a scowl the man turned upon him angrily:

‘“What the blazes do you know about it, you little body-snatcher?” he snarled. “I’ll trouble you to mind your own business. As if you knew anything about me and what I was ‘many I years ago’. I wouldn’t have spoken to you then, and wouldn’t now, but that you’ve got me locked in this infernal prison of yours.”

‘“It must be fully twenty years since last you saw me,” I said gently, for I wanted to calm him down if possible, “and I was a layman then, so my dress has changed as well as my appearance;  but I hoped you might recollect my face.”

‘“I don’t, anyhow,” said he, though with less confidence thought, as if some faint glimmer of memory were returning; “but you says you’re sure you know me, eh? Dick Lushington?”

‘“Quite sure of it,” I answered. “But I must admit one thing. When I knew you, twenty years ago, you were not called Dick Lushington, but ...’ and I spoke the man’s real name, which I had known him by. The effect was instantaneous and almost terrifying. No sooner had the words passed my lips than he leaped to his feet, shaking with passion. His face became livid with rage, he foamed at the mouth, and I thought he was going to have a fit.

‘“Liar, liar, liar!” he shrieked in my face. “How dare you say it? It isn’t true - by Hell, I swear it isn’t! He’s dead, the blackguard that you say I am - I won’t soil my lips by repeating his filthy name - and now you’ll be saying I killed him. You devil, why don’t you say it? It’s a lie, of course, but so’s what you said before - lies, lies, lies everywhere!” and the madman dropped to his knees again and drove his fingers deep into the mud. I noticed now that there was a warder standing behind us, and saw the doctor make a sign to him.

‘“Come away, Father,” he whispered to me, “we must give him time to calm down. The warder will look after him, and he will recover more quickly if we go away;” and taking my arm again he led me back towards the mansion. When we had passed through the hedge and were well out of earshot, the doctor began to speak again.

‘“I’m afraid the experiment was not a great success, Father,” he said. “I’ve never seen Lushington lose his self-control so suddenly, and the worst of it is that his heart is in a terrible state, so an outbreak like this is liable to prove fatal.”

‘“It certainly was a terrible thing to witness,” I answered; “but I’m not so sure we weren’t successful in one respect. You are an expert in these matters and I know nothing about them, but surely the fact is clear now that he still knows his real name although he wishes others to be kept in ignorance of it.”

‘“Certainly,” answered the doctor; “but how does that help us, Father?”

‘“First let me tell you what I can about his past life, in the days when I knew him,” I answered, “and then you can say if my idea of his case is a possible one.”

We had reached the house now, and when we were in the doctor’s sitting-room again I told him all I knew. Put shortly it was this. When I first met Lushington - I will use that name, if you don’t mind, as there is no reason for disclosing his identity - he was a young man, well educated, with a comfortable private income of his own, and moving in good society in London, which was only natural, for he came of an excellent family. He was then beginning to dabble in spiritualism, and had been introduced to Home, the famous medium. For my part I tried to dissuade him from this, and always refused to attend any of their seances though he often urged me to, but he ignored my advice and became more and more absorbed in his pursuit, as he found that he himself possessed special gifts as a medium; in fact, Home often urged him to devote his whole life to “the Cause”, as he liked to call it. I also told the doctor the story you heard last night - I mean what happened here, when I brought out the Cellini fountain for him to see - and how, later on, his reputation had become an undesirable one and he had left the country, since when I had heard and seen nothing of him until that afternoon; and then I asked to be told the circumstances which led to his incarceration in the asylum. The doctor hesitated for a little before he answered.

‘“Well, Father,” said he, “you know we are not allowed to let such facts be known outside the staff, but I think you may be considered as one of ourselves. Not that there’s much to tell in any case, for, as I told you, Lushington is our enigma. He was brought here about five years ago by the solicitor of a well- known public man, the head of the family to which he belongs; but even the family lawyer could tell us very little. His residence abroad, which you mentioned just now, must have terminated quite ten years ago, for he had been living in Belfast for five years or so before he came here. For a long time before that he had had no personal dealings with his relatives, but they kept in touch with him through the family solicitors, who used to send him a cheque for his half-year’s income every six months, which cheques he always acknowledged.

“The arrangement suited both sides, for Lushington wished to avoid his family, and I gathered that they returned the feeling, though I did not learn why; but what you say about his career as a medium no doubt supplies the explanation. However, shortly before he came here, instead of the customary formal note acknowledging their cheque, the solicitors received a long letter, full of foul language and abuse, with a deliberate accusation of dishonesty on their part, and a threat of legal proceedings for breach of trust and misappropriation of his money. The charge was manifestly absurd, but as the chief trustee was the public man I have mentioned, he could not run the risk of leaving such a charge unanswered, so one of the firm was sent over to Ireland to see Lushington and investigate the affair.

‘“He arrived in Belfast to find that his man had been arrested the day before on a criminal charge, but on examination he was found to be hopelessly insane. The solicitor obtained full powers to act on behalf of the family, and he was brought here soon afterwards. But now comes the strange part of the affair. As you know, one element in his case is that of lost identity. The man insists that he is Dick Lushington, and either refuses to admit that he ever bore his real name, or else, as today, maintains that the man who bore it is dead. What makes this feature of his case so odd is that, years ago, a man called Dick Lushington really lived in Belfast. He was a notorious bad lot, cunning and unscrupulous, an habitual criminal, in fact, who served numerous terms in gaol, and, when out of it, was leader of the worst gang of ruffians in the city. Finally he committed murder, and, failing to escape, took his own life to avoid being arrested and hanged. But the oddest part of it all is this, that the real Dick Lushington killed himself nearly thirty years ago, long before our patient ever went to Belfast - in fact, while he was still quite young and respectable; yet one of the senior police officials there, who saw the man before he came here, declares that his voice and manner, his tricks of speech and choice of oaths, are identical with those of the notorious criminal Lushington, whose name this poor wretch has adopted, but whom he never can have seen!”

‘“Extraordinary,” I said, “it sounds like a case of possession;” but as I was speaking a knock came at the door and a warder entered.

‘“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, addressing the doctor, “but I came to report about Lushington. After you and the other gentleman left the garden he calmed down, and I got him to come in quietly to his room. When he got there, he threw himself on the bed like one exhausted and began to cry, at the same time talking to himself in his other voice - you know what I mean, sir - like a gentleman. After a bit he called me up and said: