Dr Trelawney leapt nimbly aside. He was not hit. The car came to a standstill in the middle of the road. General Conyers opened the door and jumped out with all his habitual energy of movement. At first it might have been thought that he intended to call Dr Trelawney to order for obstructing the highway in this manner, strike him, kill him even, like a dog. Some tremendous altercation seemed about to take place. In due course, violence was shown to be far from the General’s intention, although for a second or two, while he and Dr Trelawney stood facing each other, anything appeared possible. The same vivid contrast might have been expected, graphically speaking, as when the Military Policeman had ridden through Dr Trelawney’s flock, like a hornet flying slowly through a swarm of moths. On the contrary, this pair, so far from being brought into vivid physical and moral opposition, had the air of being linked together quite strongly by some element possessed in common. The General’s long, light ulster and helmet-like deerstalker, Dr Trelawney’s white draperies and sandals, equally suggested temple ceremonial. The two of them might have met on that high place deliberately for public celebration of some rite or sacrifice. At first neither said a word. That seemed an age. At last Dr Trelawney took the initiative. Raising his right arm slightly, he spoke in a low clear voice, almost in the accents of one whose very perfect enunciation indicates that English is not his native tongue.
‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True.’
Then a very surprising thing happened. General Conyers gave an almost imperceptible nod, at the same time removing his hands from the pockets of his ulster.
‘The Vision of Visions,’ he said, ‘heals the Blindness of Sight.’
By that time most of Dr Trelawney’s disciples had caught up with their master. They now clustered in the background, whispering together and staring at the car. Through its windscreen, Mrs Conyers gazed back at them a little nervously, perhaps again fearing that some elaborate practical joke was being staged for her benefit. From the gate my parents watched the scene without approval.
‘Well, Trelawney,’ said the General, ‘I heard you had come to live in this part of the world, but I never thought we should have the luck to run across each other in this way.’
‘If you journey towards the Great Gate, you encounter the same wayfarers on the road.’
‘True enough, Trelawney, true enough.’
‘You are approaching the Sublime Threshold.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘You should make good your promise to spend a rhythmical month under instruction, General. We have a vacancy in the house. There is no time like the present. You would be subjected to none but probationary exercises at first. Disciplines of the Adept would not be expected of you in the early days.’
‘Look here, Trelawney,’ said General Conyers, ‘I’m a busy man at the moment. Besides, I have a strong conviction I should not commit myself too deeply for the rest of the year. Just one of those feelings you have in your bones. I want to be absolutely mobile at the moment.’
‘Such instincts should be obeyed. I have heard others say the same recently. The portents are unfavourable. There is no doubt of that.’
‘I will write to you one of these days. Nothing I’d like to see more than you and your people at work.’
‘At Play, General. Truth is Play.’
‘Give me a change of routine. Sort of thing I’m always meaning to do. Got very interested in such things in India. Bodhisattvas and such like, Mahasatipatthana and all that reflection. However, we shall have to wait. Sure I’m right to wait. Too much business on hand, anyway.’
‘Business?’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘I think you need meditation, General, more than business. You must free the mind from external influences. You must pursue Oneness – the Larger Life.’
‘Sure you’re right about that too,’ said the General. ‘Absolutely certain you are right. All the same, something tells me to let Oneness wait for the time being. That doesn’t mean I am not going to think Oneness over. Not in the least.’
‘Think it over, you must, General. We know we are right. But first you must gain Spiritual Mastery of the Body.’
How long this unusual conversation would have continued in front of the Stonehurst gate, if interruption had not taken place, is hard to say. It was brought to a close by a new arrival, wearing a straw hat and flannel suit, who pushed his way unceremoniously between a group of longhaired boys in short Grecian tunics, who were eyeing the car as if they would very much like to open the bonnet. This person had a small fair moustache. He carried a rolled umbrella and Gladstone bag. The strangeness of Dr Trelawney’s disciples clearly made no impression on him. He looked neither to the right nor to the left. The beings round him might just as well have been a herd of cows come to a stop in their amblings along the road. Instead of regarding them, he made straight for my parents, who at once offered signs of recognition. Here was Uncle Giles.
‘Hope you did not mind my inviting myself at such short notice,’ he said, as soon as he had greeted my mother. ‘I wanted to have a word with him about the Trust.’
‘You know we are always delighted to see you, Giles,’ she said, probably even believing that true at the moment of speaking, because she always felt warmly towards hopeless characters like Uncle Giles when they were in difficulties. ‘We live so far away from everything and everybody nowadays that it is quite an exception for you to have found Aylmer and Bertha Conyers lunching with us. They were driving away in their motor when—’
She pointed to the road, unable to put into words what was taking place.
‘I see Aylmer standing there,’ said Uncle Giles, who still found nothing at all unusual in the presence or costume of the Trelawney community. ‘I must have a word with him before he leaves. Got a bit of news that might interest him. He is always very keen on what is happening on the Continent. Interest you, too, I expect. I had quite a good journey here. Was lucky enough to catch the carrier. Took me almost to the foot of the hill. Bit of a climb, but here I am.’
He turned to my father.
‘How are you?’
Uncle Giles spoke as if he were surprised not to find my father in hospital, indeed, in his coffin.
‘Pretty well, Giles,’ said my father, with a certain rasp in his voice, ‘pretty well. How has the world been wagging with you, Giles?’
That was a phrase my father tended to use when he was not best pleased; in any case his tone graded low as a welcoming manner.
‘I wanted to have a talk about business matters,’ said Uncle Giles, not at all put out by this reception. ‘Mexican Eagles, among other things. Also the Limpopo Development Scheme. There has been rather a crisis in my own affairs. I’d like to ask your opinion. I value it. By the way, did I mention I heard a serious piece of news in Aldershot?’
‘What on earth were you doing in Aldershot?’ asked my father, speaking without alleviating the irony of his tone.
He must have seen that he was in for a bad time with his brother.
‘Had to meet a fellow there. Soldiered together years ago. Knowledgeable chap. I’ll just go across now and have a brief word with Aylmer Conyers.’
Uncle Giles had set down his Gladstone bag by the gate With characteristic inability to carry through any plan of campaign, he was deflected from reaching the General by the sight of Mrs Conyers sitting in the car. She still looked rather nervous. Uncle Giles stopped and began talking to her. By this time General Conyers himself must have noticed Uncle Giles’s arrival. He brought to an end his conversation with Dr Trelawney.
‘Well, Trelawney,’ he said, ‘I mustn’t keep you any longer. You will be wanting to lead your people on. Mustn’t take up all your day.’
‘On the contrary, General, the day-with its antithesis, night – is but an artificial apportionment of what we artlessly call Time.’
‘Nevertheless, Trelawney, Time has value, even if artificially apportioned.’
‘Then I shall expect to hear from you, General, when you w
ish to free yourself from bonds of Time and Space.’
‘You will, Trelawney, you will. Off you go now – at the double.’
Dr Trelawney drew himself up.
‘The Essence of the All is the Godhead of the True.’
The General replied with a jerk of his head.
‘The Vision of Visions heals the Blindness of Sight.’
The words were scarcely finished before Dr Trelawney had again begun to hasten along the road, his flock trailing after him. A moment or two later, they were among the trees that concealed Gullick’s cottage, where the road became a track. Then the last of them, a very small, pathetic child with a huge head, was finally lost to sight. No doubt they had reached the Common, were pursuing Oneness through the heather. Oneness perhaps also engaged the attention of General Conyers himself, because, deep in thought, he turned towards the car. He stood there for a second or two, staring at the bonnet. Uncle Giles terminated his conversation with Mrs Conyers.
‘I was admiring your new motor-car, General,’ he said. ‘Hope it is not bringing you as much trouble as most of them seem to cause their owners.’
Now that Dr Trelawney was out of the way, my parents moved towards the car themselves, perhaps partly to keep an eye on Uncle Giles in his relations with the General, still lost in reflection.
‘Thought I’d better not introduce you,’ said General Conyers, straightening himself as they came up to him. ‘One never knows how people may feel about a fellow like Trelawney – especially if he lives in the neighbourhood. Not everybody cares for him. You hear some funny stories. I find him interesting myself. Nasty habits, some people say. Can’t believe a word he says, of course. We met him years ago with a fellow I used to know in the Buffs who’d taken up yoga.’
The General lifted the starting-handle from the floor of the car.
‘Are you an expert in these machines, Giles?’ he asked.
He used the tone of one speaking to a child, not at all the manner of an equal in which he had addressed me earlier in the day. Knowing all about Uncle Giles, he was clearly determined not to allow himself to be irritated by him.
‘Never driven one in my life,’ said Uncle Giles. ‘Not too keen on ’em. Always in accidents. Some royalty in a motorcar have been involved in a nasty affair today. Heard the news in Aldershot. Fellow I went to see was told on the telephone. Amazing, isn’t it, hearing so soon. They’ve just assassinated an Austrian archduke down in Bosnia. Did it today. Only happened a few hours ago.’
Uncle Giles muttered, almost whispered these facts, speaking as if he were talking to himself, not at all in the voice of a man announcing to the world in general the close of an epoch; the outbreak of Armageddon; the birth of a new, uneasy age. He did not look in the least like the harbinger of the Furies.
‘Franz-Ferdinand?’ asked General Conyers sharply.
‘And his morganatic wife. Shot ’em both.’
‘When did you say this happened?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘And they’re both dead?’
‘Both of them.’
‘There will be trouble about this,’ said the General.
He inserted the starting-handle and gave several terrific turns.
‘Bad trouble,’ he said. ‘They’ll have to postpone tomorrow night’s State Ball. Not a doubt of it. This was a Servian, I suppose.’
‘They think so.’
‘Was he an anarchist?’ asked Mrs Conyers.
‘One of those fellows,’ said Uncle Giles.
‘Mark my words,’ said General Conyers, ‘this is a disaster. Well, the engine has started. We’d better be off in case it stops again. Good-bye to you both, thank you again enormously. No, no, not another word. I only hope the whole matter settles down all right. Good-bye, Giles. Good-bye, Nicholas. I don’t at all like the news.’
They went off down the hill. We all waved. My mother looked worried.
‘I don’t like the news either,’ she said.
‘Let me carry your bag, Giles,’ said my father. ‘You’ll find things in a bit of a muddle in the house. One of the maids had an hysterical attack this afternoon.
‘I don’t expect it’s too easy to get staff up here,’ said Uncle Giles. ‘Is Bracey still your servant? Albert still cooking for you? You’re lucky to have them both. Hope I see something of them. Very difficult to get yourself properly looked after these days. Several things I want to talk about. Rather an awkward situation. I think you may be able to help.’
The whole party was moving towards the house. Edith, who had been standing in the background, now detached me from the grown-ups. We diverged to the nursery. I suppose my father, in the course of the evening, helped to sort out the awkward situation, because Uncle Giles left the following day. No one yet realised that the Mute with the Bowstring stood at the threshold of the door, that, if they wanted to get anything done in time of peace, they must be quick about it. Already, the sands had almost run out. The doctor, for example, ordered a ‘complete holiday’ for Billson. Inquiries revealed that she had gone to rest in her room that afternoon, where, contemplating her troubles, she had fallen asleep to awaken later in a ‘state’, greatly disturbed, but about which she could otherwise remember little or nothing. No doubt one of those nervous shifts of control had taken place within herself, later to be closely studied, then generally regarded as a sudden display of ‘dottiness’. It was, of course, agreed that she must go. Billson herself was insistent on that point. That decision on both sides was to be expected. Although the story passed immediately into legend, surprisingly little fuss was made about it at the time. A few days later – while the chancelleries of Europe entered into a ferment of activity – Billson, escorted by Edith, quietly travelled to Suffolk, where her family could take care of her for a time. Left alone with my mother during Edith’s absence from home on that occasion, I first heard a fairly full and reliable account of the story, fragments of which had, of course, already reached me in more or less garbled versions, from other sources. A long time passed before all the refinements of the saga were recorded and classified.
I do not know for certain what happened to Billson. Even my mother, with all her instinct for not losing touch with the unfortunate, lost sight of her during the war. More than thirty years later, however, what may have been a clue took shape. When Rosie Manasch – or Rosie Udall, as she had then become – used to hold a kind of salon in her house in Regent’s Park, she often told stories of a ‘daily’ she had employed during or just after the war, a former parlourmaid of the old-fashioned kind, who liked to talk about the people for whom she had worked. By then she was called ‘Doreen’, and said she was nearly seventy.
‘She looked years younger,’ Rosie said, ‘perhaps in her fifties. A man behaved badly to her. I could never make out if he was a butler or a chef. She also had some rather good ghost-stories when she was on form.’
It was all too complicated to explain to Rosie, but this legendary lost love might well have been Albert incorporated – in the way myths are formed – with Billson’s earlier ‘disappointment’. Albert himself, as might be expected, was greatly outraged by Billson’s behaviour that Sunday afternoon, even though he himself had suffered no inconvenience from the immediate circumstances of her ‘breakdown’.
‘I told you that girl would go off her crumpet,’ he said more than once afterwards.
No doubt a series of ‘funny days’ would normally have been induced in Bracey, but, as things turned out, neither he nor Albert had much time to brood over Billson’s surprising conduct. International events took their swift, their ominous, course, Bracey, characteristically, being swept into a world of action, Albert, firm as ever in his fight for the quiet life, merely changing the locality of his cooking-pots. To my mother, Mrs Conyers wrote:
‘… I was so glad Aylmer did not make you meet that very rum friend of his with the beard. He would have been quite capable of introducing you! I do not encourage him to see too much of that person. I think
between you and me there is something very odd about the man. I would rather you did not mention to anyone – unless you know them very well – that Aylmer sometimes talks of staying with him. Nothing would induce me to go! I do not think that Aylmer will ever pay the visit because he feels sure the house will be very uncomfortable. No bathroom! What a dreadful thing this murder in Austria-Hungary is. Aylmer is very much afraid it may lead to war…’
General Conyers was right. Not many weeks later – by that time my father and Bracey had been shipped to France with the Expeditionary Force – squads of recruits began to appear on the Common, their evolutions in the heather performed in scarlet or dark blue, for in those early days of the war there were not enough khaki uniforms to go round. Some wore their own cloth caps over full-dress tunics or marched along in column of fours dressed in subfusc civilian suits, so that once more the colour values of the heath were transformed. These exercises of ‘Kitchener’s Army’ greatly perturbed Albert, although his ‘feet’ precluded any serious suggestion of military service. He used to discuss with Gullick, the gardener, the advisability of offering himself, ‘feet’ or no ‘feet’, in the service of his country.