The Magician (Maugham)/Chapter VII
Chapter VII
ON the morning of the day upon which they had asked him to tea Oliver Haddo left at Margaret’s door vast masses of chrysanthemums. There were so many that the austere studio was changed in aspect. It gained an ephemeral brightness that Margaret, notwithstanding pieces of silk hung here and there on the walls, had never been able to give it. When Arthur arrived he was dismayed that the thought had not occurred to him.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “You must think me very inconsiderate.”
Margaret smiled and held his hand.
“I think I like you because you don’t trouble about the common little attentions of lovers.”
“Margaret’s a wise girl,” smiled Susie. “She knows that when a man sends flowers it is a sign that he has admired more women than one.”
“I don’t suppose that these were sent particularly to me.”
Arthur Burdon sat down and observed with pleasure the cheerful fire. The drawn curtains and the lamps gave the place a nice cosiness, and there was the peculiar air of romance which is always in a studio. There is a sense of freedom about it that disposes the mind to diverting speculations. In such an atmosphere it is possible to be serious without pompousness and flippant without inanity.
In the few days of their acquaintance Arthur and Susie had arrived at terms of pleasant familiarity. Susie, from her superior standpoint of an unmarried woman no longer young, used him with the good-natured banter which she affected. To her he was a foolish young thing in love, and she marvelled that even the cleverest man in that condition could behave like a perfect idiot. But Margaret knew that, if her friend chaffed him, it was because she completely approved of him. As their intimacy increased Susie learnt to appreciate his solid character. She admired his capacity in dealing with matters that were in his province, and the simplicity with which he left alone those of which he was ignorant. There was no pose in him. She was touched also by an ingenuous candour which gave a persuasive charm to his abruptness. And, though she set a plain woman’s value on good looks, his appearance, rough hewn like a statue in porphyry, pleased her singularly. It was an index of his character. The look of him gave you the whole man, strong yet gentle, honest and simple, neither very imaginative nor very brilliant, but immensely reliable and trustworthy to the bottom of his soul. He was seated now with Margaret’s terrier on his knees, stroking its ears, and Susie, looking at him, wondered with a little pang why no man like that had ever cared for her. It was evident that he would make a perfect companion, and his love, once won, was of the sort that did not alter.
Dr. Porhoët came in and sat down with the modest quietness which was one of his charms. He was not a great talker and loved most to listen in silence to the chatter of young people. The dog jumped down from Arthur’s knee, went up to the doctor, and rubbed itself in friendly fashion against his legs. They began to talk in the soft light and had forgotten almost that another guest was expected. Margaret hoped fervently that he would not come. She had never looked more lovely than on this afternoon, and she busied herself with the preparations for tea with a housewifely grace that added a peculiar delicacy to her comeliness. The dignity which encompassed the perfection of her beauty was delightfully softened, so that you were reminded of those sweet domestic saints who lighten here and there the passionate records of the Golden Book.
“C’est tellement intime ici,” smiled Dr. Porhoët, breaking into French in the impossibility of expressing in English the exact feeling which that scene gave him.
It might have been a picture by some master of genre. It seemed hardly by chance that the colours arranged themselves in such agreeable tones, or that the lines of the wall and the seated persons achieved such a graceful decoration. The atmosphere was extraordinarily peaceful.
There was a knock at the door, and Arthur got up to open. The terrier followed at his heels. Oliver Haddo entered. Susie watched to see what the dog would do and was by this time not surprised to see a change come over it. With its tail between its legs the friendly little beast slunk along the wall to the furthermost corner. It turned a suspicious, frightened eye upon Haddo and then hid its head. The visitor, intent upon his greetings, had not noticed even that there was an animal in the room. He accepted with a simple courtesy they hardly expected from him the young woman’s thanks for his flowers. His behaviour surprised them. He put aside his poses. He seemed genuinely to admire the cosy little studio. He asked Margaret to show him her sketches and looked at them with unassumed interest. His observations were pointed and showed a certain knowledge of what he spoke about. He described himself as an amateur, that object of a painter’s derision: the man “who knows what he likes,” but his criticism, though generous, showed that he was no fool. The two women were impressed. Putting the sketches aside, he began to talk, for once not of himself, but gaily and quite naturally, of the many places he had seen. It was evident that he sought to please. Susie began to understand how it was that, notwithstanding his affectations, he had acquired so great an influence over the undergraduates of Oxford. There was romance and laughter in his conversation; and though, as Frank Hurrell had said, lacking in wit, he made up for it with a diverting pleasantry that might very well have passed for humour. But Susie, though amused, felt that this was not the purpose for which she had asked him to come. Dr. Porhoët had lent her his entertaining work on the old alchemists, and this gave her a chance to bring their conversation to matters on which Haddo was expert. She had read the book with delight; and, her mind all aflame with those strange histories wherein fact and fancy were so wonderfully mingled, she was eager to know more. The long toil in which so many had engaged, always to lose their fortunes, often to suffer persecution and torture, interested her no less than the accounts, almost authenticated, of those who had succeeded in their extraordinary quest.
She turned to Dr. Porhoët.
“You are a bold man to assert that now and then the old alchemists actually did make gold,” she said.
“I have not gone quite so far as that,” he smiled. “I assert merely that, if evidence as conclusive were offered of any other historical event, it would be credited beyond doubt. We can disbelieve these circumstantial details only by coming to the conclusion beforehand that it is impossible they should be true.”
“I wish you would write that life of Paracelsus which you suggest in your preface.”
Dr. Porhoët, smiling, shook his head.
“I don’t think I shall ever do that now,” he said, thoughtfully. “Yet he is the most interesting of all the alchemists, for he offers the fascinating problem of an immensely complex character. It is impossible to know to what extent he was a charlatan and to what a man of serious science.”
Susie glanced at Oliver Haddo, who sat in silence, his heavy face in shadow, his eyes fixed steadily on the speaker. The immobility of that vast bulk was peculiar.
“His name is not so ridiculous as later associations have made it seem,” proceeded the doctor, “for he belonged to the celebrated family of Bombast, and they were called Hohenheim after their ancient residence, which was a castle near Stuttgart in Würtemberg. The most interesting part of his life is that which the absence of documents makes it impossible accurately to describe. He travelled in Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, in Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. He went even to India. He was taken prisoner by the Tartars and brought to the Great Khan, whose son he afterwards accompanied to Constantinople. The mind must be dull, indeed, that is not thrilled by the thought of this wandering genius traversing the lands of the earth at the most eventful date of the world’s history. It was at Constantinople that, according to a certain aureum vellus printed at Rorschach in the sixteenth century, he received the philosopher’s stone from Solomon Trismosinus. This person possessed also the Universal Panacea, and it is asserted that he was seen still alive by a French traveller at the end of the seventeenth century. Paracelsus then passed through the countries that border the Danube, and so reached Italy, where he served as a surgeon in the imperial army. I see no reason why he should not have been present at the battle of Pavia. He collected information from physicians, surgeons, and alchemists; from executioners, barbers, shepherds, Jews, gipsies, midwives, and fortune-tellers; from high and low; from learned and vulgar. In the sketch I have given of his career in that volume you hold, I have copied out a few words of his upon the acquirement of knowledge which affect me with a singular emotion.”
Dr. Porhoët took his book from Miss Boyd and opened it thoughtfully. He read out the fine passage from the preface of the Paragranum:
“I went in search of my art, often incurring danger of life. I have not been ashamed to learn that which seemed useful to me even from vagabonds, hangmen, and barbers. We know that a lover will go far to meet the woman he adores; how much more will the lover of Wisdom be tempted to go in search of his divine mistress.”
He turned the page to find a few more lines further on:
“We should look for knowledge where we may expect to find it, and why should a man be despised who goes in search of it? Those who remain at home may grow richer and live more comfortably than those who wander; but I desire neither to live comfortably nor to grow rich.”
“By Jove, those are fine words,” said Arthur, rising to his feet.
Their brave simplicity moved him as no rhetoric could have done, and they made him more eager still to devote his own life to the difficult acquisition of knowledge. Dr. Porhoët gave him his ironic smile.
“Yet the man who could write that was in many ways a mere buffoon, who praised his wares with the vulgar glibness of a quack. He was vain and ostentatious, intemperate and boastful. Listen:
“‘After me, O Avicenna, Galen, Rhases, and Montagnana! After me, not I after you, ye men of Paris, Montpellier, Meissen, and Cologne; all you that come from the countries along the Danube and the Rhine, and you that come from the islands of the sea. It is not for me to follow you because mine is the lordship. The time will come when none of you shall remain in his dark corner who will not be an object of contempt to the world, because I shall be the King, and the Monarchy will be mine.’”
Dr. Porhoët closed the book.
“Did you ever hear such gibberish in your life? Yet he did a bold thing. He wrote in German instead of in Latin, and so, by weakening the old belief in authority, brought about the beginning of free thought in science. He continued to travel from place to place, followed by a crowd of disciples, sometimes attracted to a wealthy city by hope of gain, sometimes journeying to a petty court at the invitation of a prince. His folly and the malice of his rivals prevented him from remaining anywhere for long. He wrought many wonderful cures. The physicians of Nuremberg denounced him as a quack, a charlatan, and an impostor. To refute them he asked the city council to put under his care patients that had been pronounced incurable. They sent him several cases of elephantiasis, and he cured them entirely: testimonials to that effect may still be found in the archives of Nuremberg. He died as the result of a tavern brawl and was buried at Salzburg. Tradition says that, his astral body having already during physical existence become self-conscious, he is now a living adept, residing with others of his sort in a certain place in Asia. From here he still influences the minds of his followers and at times even appears to them in visible and tangible substance.”
“But look here,” said Arthur, “didn’t Paracelsus, like most of these old fellows, in the course of his researches make any practical discoveries?”
“I prefer those which were not practical,” confessed the doctor, with a smile. “Consider for example the Tinctura Physicorum, which neither Pope nor Emperor could buy with all his wealth. It was one of the greatest alchemical mysteries, and, though mentioned under the name of The Red Lion in many occult works, was actually known to few before Paracelsus, except Hermes Trismegistus and Albertus Magnus. Its preparation was extremely difficult, for the presence was needed of two perfectly harmonious persons, whose skill was equal. It was said to be a red ethereal fluid. The least wonderful of its many properties was its power to transmute all inferior metals into gold. There is an old church in the south of Bavaria where the tincture is said to be still buried in the ground. In the year 1698 some of it penetrated through the soil, and the phenomenon was witnessed by many people, who believed it to be a miracle. The church which was thereupon erected is still a well-known place of pilgrimage. Paracelsus concludes his directions for its manufacture with the words: But if this be incomprehensible to you, remember that only he who desires with his whole heart will find, and to him only who knocks vehemently shall the door be opened.”
“I shall never try to make it,” smiled Arthur.
“Then there was the Electrum Magicum, of which the wise made mirrors wherein they were able to see not only the events of the past and of the present, but the doings of men in daytime and at night. They might see anything that had been written or spoken, and the person who said it, and the causes that made him. But I like best the Primum Ens Melissae. An elaborate prescription is given for its manufacture. It was a remedy to prolong life, and not only Paracelsus, but his predecessors Galen, Arnold of Villanova, and Raymond Lulli, had laboured studiously to discover it.”
“Will it make me eighteen again?” cried Susie.
“It is guaranteed to do so,” answered Dr. Porhoët gravely. “Lesebren, a physician to Louis XIV., gives an account of certain experiments witnessed by himself. It appears that one of his friends prepared the remedy, and his curiosity would not let him rest until he had seen with his own eyes the effect of it.”
“That is the true scientific attitude,” laughed Arthur.
“He took every morning at sunrise a glass of white wine tinctured with this preparation; and after using it for fourteen days his nails began to fall out, without, however, causing him any pain. His courage failed him at this point, and he gave the same dose to an old female servant. She regained at least one of the characteristics of youth, much to her astonishment, for she did not know that she had been taking a medicine; and, becoming frightened, refused to continue. The experimenter then took some grain, soaked it in the tincture, and gave it to an aged hen. On the sixth day that bird began to lose its feathers, and kept on losing them till it was naked as a new-born babe; but before two weeks had passed other feathers grew, and these were more beautifully coloured than any that fortunate hen had possessed in her first youth. Her comb stood up, and she began again to lay eggs.”
Arthur laughed heartily.
“I confess I like that story much better than the others. The Primum Ens Melissae at least offers a less puerile benefit than most magical secrets.”
“Do you call the search for gold puerile?” asked Haddo, who had been sitting for a long time in complete silence.
“I venture to call it sordid.”
“You are very superior.”
“Because I think the aims of mystical persons invariably gross or trivial? To my plain mind it is inane to raise the dead in order to hear from their phantom lips nothing but commonplaces. And I really cannot see that the alchemist who spent his life in the attempted manufacture of gold was a more respectable object than the outside jobber of modern civilisation.”
“But if he sought for gold it was for the power it gave him, and it was power he aimed at when he brooded night and day over dim secrets. Power was the subject of all his dreams, but not a paltry, limited dominion over this or that; power over the whole world, power over all created things, power over the very elements, power over God Himself. His lust was so vast that he could not rest till the stars in their courses were obedient to his will.”
For once Haddo lost his enigmatic manner. It was plain now that his words intoxicated him, and his face assumed a new and singular expression. A peculiar arrogance flashed in his shining eyes.
“And what else is it that men seek in life but power! If they want money it is but for the power that attends it, and it is power again that they strive for in all the knowledge they acquire. Fools and sots aim at happiness, but men aim only at power. The magus, the sorcerer, the alchemist, are seized with the fascination of the unknown; and they desire a greatness that is inaccessible to mankind. They think by the science they study so patiently, by endurance and strength, by force of will and by imagination, for these are the great weapons of the magician, they may achieve at last a power with which they can face the God of Heaven Himself.”
Oliver Haddo lifted his huge bulk from the low chair in which he had been sitting. He began to walk up and down the studio. It was quite strange to see this heavy man, whose seriousness was always problematical, caught up by a curious excitement.
“You’ve been talking of Paracelsus,” he said. “There is one of his experiments which the doctor has withheld from you. You will find it neither mean nor mercenary, but it is very terrible. I do not know whether the account of it is true, but it would be of extraordinary interest to test it for oneself.”
He looked round at the four persons who watched him intently. There was a singular agitation in his manner, as though the thing of which he spoke was very near his heart.
“The old alchemists believed in the possibility of spontaneous generation. By the combination of psychical powers and of strange essences they claim to have created forms in which life became manifest. Of these the most marvellous were those strange beings, male and female, which were called homunculi. The old philosophers doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow at London Bridge a little book in German. It was dirty and thumbed, many of the pages were torn, and the binding scarcely held the leaves together. It was called Die Sphinx and was edited by a certain Dr. Emil Besetzny. It contained the most extraordinary accounts I have ever read of certain spirits generated by JohannFerdinand, Count von Küffstein, in the Tyrol, in 1775. The sources from which these accounts are taken consist of masonic manuscripts, but more especially of a diary kept by a certain James Kammerer, who acted in the capacity of butler and famulus to the Count. The evidence is ten times better than any upon which men believe the articles of their religion. If it related to less wonderful subjects you would not hesitate to believe implicitly every word you read. There were ten homunculi—James Kammerer calls them prophesying spirits—kept in strong bottles, such as are used to preserve fruit, and these were filled with water. They were made in five weeks, by the Count von Küffstein and an Italian mystic and rosicrucian, the Abbé Geloni. The bottles were closed with ox-bladders and with a magic seal. The spirits were about a span long, and the Count was anxious that they should grow. They were therefore buried under two cartloads of manure, and the pile daily sprinkled with a certain liquor prepared with great trouble by the adepts. The pile after such sprinklings began to ferment and steam, as if heated by a subterranean fire. When the bottles were removed, it was found that the spirits had grown to about a span and a half each; the male homunculi were come into possession of heavy beards, and the nails of the fingers had grown. In two of the bottles there was nothing to be seen save clear water, but when the Abbé knocked thrice at the seal upon the mouth, uttering at the same time certain Hebrew words, the water turned a mysterious colour, and the spirits showed their faces, very small at first, but growing in size till they attained that of a human countenance. And this countenance was horrible and fiendish.”
Haddo spoke in a low voice that was hardly steady, and it was plain that he was much moved. It appeared as if his story affected him so that he could scarcely preserve his composure. He went on.
“These beings were fed every three days by the Count with a rose-coloured substance which was kept in a silver box. Once a week the bottles were emptied and filled again with pure rain-water. The change had to be made rapidly because, while the homunculi were exposed to the air, they closed their eyes and seemed to grow weak and unconscious, as though they were about to die. But with the spirits that were invisible, at certain intervals blood was poured into the water; and it disappeared at once, inexplicably, without colouring or troubling it. By some accident one of the bottles fell one day and was broken. The homunculus within died after a few painful respirations in spite of all efforts to save him, and the body was buried in the garden. An attempt to generate another, made by the Count without the assistance of the Abbé, who had left, failed; it produced only a small thing like a leech, which had little vitality and soon died.”
Haddo ceased speaking, and Arthur looked at him with amazement.
“But, taking for granted that the thing is possible, what on earth is the use of manufacturing these strange beasts?” he exclaimed.
“Use!” cried Haddo passionately. “What do you think would be a man’s sensations when he had solved the great mystery of existence, when he saw living before him the substance which was dead? These homunculi were seen by historical persons, by Count Max Lemberg, by Count Franz-Josef von Thun, and by many others. I have no doubt that they were actually generated. But with our modern appliances, with our greater skill, what might it not be possible to do now if we had the courage? There are chemists toiling away in their laboratories to create the primitive protoplasm from matter which is dead, the organic from the inorganic. I have studied their experiments. I know all that they know. Why shouldn’t one work on a larger scale, joining to the knowledge of the old adepts the scientific discovery of the moderns? I don’t know what would be the result. It might be very strange and very wonderful. Sometimes my mind is verily haunted by the desire to see a lifeless substance move under my spells, by the desire to be as God.”
He gave a low weird laugh, half cruel, half voluptuous. It made Margaret shudder with sudden fright. He had thrown himself down in the chair, and he sat in complete shadow. By a singular effect his eyes appeared blood-red, and they stared into space, strangely parallel, with an intensity that was terrifying. Arthur started a little and gave him a searching glance. The laugh and that uncanny glance, the unaccountable emotion, were extraordinarily significant. The whole thing was explained if Oliver Haddo was mad.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Haddo’s words were out of tune with the rest of the conversation. Dr. Porhoët had spoken of magical things with a sceptical irony that gave a certain humour to the subject, and Susie was resolutely flippant. But Haddo’s vehemence put these incredulous people out of countenance. Dr. Porhoët got up to go. He shook hands with Susie and with Margaret. Arthur opened the door for him. The kindly scholar looked round for Margaret’s terrier.
“I must bid my farewells to your little dog.”
He had been so quiet that they had forgotten his presence.
“Come here, Copper,” said Margaret.
The dog slowly slunk up to them, and with a terrified expression crouched at Margaret’s feet.
“What on earth’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“He’s frightened of me,” said Haddo, with that harsh laugh of his, which gave such an unpleasant impression.
“Nonsense!”
Dr. Porhoët bent down, stroked the dog’s back, and shook its paw. Margaret lifted it up and set it on a table.
“Now, be good,” she said, with lifted finger.
Dr. Porhoët with a smile went out, and Arthur shut the door behind him. Suddenly, as though evil had entered into it, the terrier sprang at Oliver Haddo and fixed its teeth in his hand. Haddo uttered a cry, and, shaking it off, gave it a savage kick. The dog rolled over with a loud bark that was almost a scream of pain, and lay still for a moment as if it were desperately hurt. Margaret cried out with horror and indignation. A fierce rage on a sudden seized Arthur so that he scarcely knew what he was about. The wretched brute’s suffering, Margaret’s terror, his own instinctive hatred of the man, were joined together in frenzied passion.
“You brute,” he muttered.
He hit Haddo in the face with his clenched fist. The man collapsed bulkily to the floor, and Arthur, furiously seizing his collar, began to kick him with all his might. He shook him as a dog would shake a rat and then violently flung him down. For some reason Haddo made no resistance. He remained where he fell in utter helplessness. Arthur turned to Margaret. She was holding the poor hurt dog in her hands, crying over it, and trying to comfort it in its pain. Very gently he examined it to see if Haddo’s brutal kick had broken a bone. They sat down beside the fire. Susie, to steady her nerves, lit a cigarette. She was horribly, acutely conscious of that man who lay in a mass on the floor behind them. She wondered what he would do. She wondered why he did not go. And she was ashamed of his humiliation. Then her heart stood still; for she realised that he was raising himself to his feet, slowly, with the difficulty of a very fat person. He leaned against the wall and stared at them. He remained there quite motionless. His stillness got on her nerves, and she could have screamed as she felt him look at them, look with those unnatural eyes, whose expression now she dared not even imagine.
At length she could no longer resist the temptation to turn round just enough to see him. Haddo’s eyes were fixed upon Margaret so intently that he did not see he was himself observed. His face, distorted by passion, was horrible to look upon. That vast mass of flesh had a malignancy that was inhuman, and it was terrible to see the satanic hatred which hideously deformed it. But it changed. The redness gave way to a ghastly pallor. The revengeful scowl disappeared; and a torpid smile spread over the features, a smile that was even more terrifying than the frown of malice. What did it mean? Susie could have cried out, but her tongue cleaved to her throat. The smile passed away, and the face became once more utterly impassive. It seemed that Margaret and Arthur realised at last the power of those inhuman eyes, and they became quite still. The dog ceased its sobbing. The silence was so great that each one heard the beating of his heart. It was intolerable.
Then Oliver Haddo moved. He came forward slowly.
“I want to ask you to forgive me for what I did,” he said. “The pain of the dog’s bite was so keen that I lost my temper. I deeply regret that I kicked it. Mr. Burdon was very right to thrash me. I feel that I deserved no less.”
He spoke in a low voice, but with great distinctness. Susie was astounded. An abject apology was the last thing she expected.
He paused for Margaret’s answer. But she could not bear to look at him. When she spoke, her words were scarcely audible. She did not know why his request to be forgiven made him seem more detestable.
“I think, if you don’t mind, you had better go away.”
Haddo bowed slightly. He looked at Burdon.
“I wish to tell you that I bear no malice for what you did. I recognise the justice of your anger.”
Arthur did not answer at all. Haddo hesitated a moment, while his eyes rested on them quietly. To Susie it seemed that they flickered with the shadow of a smile. She watched him with bewildered astonishment.
He reached for his hat, bowed again, and went.