MELEAGER A FANTASY

BY H.M. VAUGHAN

F.S.A.

"Wilt thou know how farre the Starres work upon us?"

Anatomy of Melancholy (Part I., sect. ii., sub-sect. iv.)

LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI

First Published 1916

PROLOGUE

(By the Editor of the Original MS., the late Edward Cayley, F.S.A.)

In giving the following narrative to the Press, I feel, as its editor, I am bound to write a short preface of apology or explanation to such of the public as care to read these pages. But I shall be as brief as possible.

The manuscript, which is here produced in printed form, came into my personal possession through the kindness of Sir W—— Y——, the eminent traveller and mountaineer, who chanced upon it under the following circumstances. Whilst engaged in some work of exploration in the Andes, at the height of 12,000 feet or thereabouts above sea-level, he and his party had to traverse a dry stony ravine. On their passage upward one of the attendant guides chanced to espy amongst the loose stones and rubble a plain white metal cylinder sealed at both ends. Except for a conspicuous dent, evidently the result of a heavy fall, the cylinder itself appeared uninjured, and it was immediately brought by the finder to Sir W——, as the leader of the party. Sir W—— stopped for a moment to examine this strange treasure-trove, and, though much pressed for time, was able to loosen the cover and to[Pg 8] ascertain that the cylinder contained a large scroll of fine vellum closely covered with minute writing. In the fading light, Sir W——,

who had many matters of professional importance to think of, gave only a cursory glance at the manuscript itself, which he fancied must be connected with some of the ancient inhabitants of Peru. Without examining the parchment closely, he thereupon packed away the cylinder in his baggage and made no further effort to elucidate its nature until his return to Lima. My friend was here considerably astonished to find that the MS. which had so strangely fallen into his hands was written, not in some antique or unknown language and characters, but in neat though exceedingly small English script, with the sole exception of one short sentence in Latin—added apparently by another hand and in a different ink—in which the Latin writer begged the finder of the cylinder to take the enclosed scroll of vellum to the nearest English or American consulate. But for this Latin request, which was inserted at the beginning of the manuscript in a most prominent manner, the whole was written in fair nervous English, which it became easy to

decipher, so soon as the reader had grown accustomed to the crabbedness of the writing, that had evidently been produced by an exiguity of space.

By one of those curious but happy chances which sometimes occur in life, Sir W—— was still more astonished to discover that the name of the author[Pg 9] was not only familiar to him, but that he actually had once owned a slight acquaintance with him. More than this, Sir W——, who is one of my dearest and oldest friends, knew that I had been intimate with the writer of this parchment, who (as he thought) had been dead for some years. Sir W—— therefore, though greatly puzzled by the whole inscrutable occurrence, very wisely made no further mention of his discovery, but on his return to England brought the manuscript direct to me at my room in the British Museum. After a long discussion between us, Sir W—— voluntarily made over all arrangements in the matter of publishing or suppressing the contents of the scroll to myself, and indeed, so to speak, washed his hands of all further responsibility in the matter, which had apparently somewhat affected his nerves or his spirits. I have only to add, with regard to the

original owner of the MS., that Sir W——, when at Lima, showed the metal case to various persons employed at the museum there, and that all these experts unanimously declared that this object itself could never have been produced by any of the aboriginal inhabitants of Peru; whilst the metal, a species of platinum, was, so far as they were aware, unknown on our planet. And this verdict of the officials at Lima is, I believe, perfectly correct.

As to the authenticity of the MS., I may at once state that the account contained therein coincides in every particular with the evidence that was[Pg 10] produced at the time of its alleged author's mysterious disappearance. I have had for many years an intimate acquaintance, amounting to a cordial friendship, with the writer, A—— B——. I do not necessarily concur with all that he states later on as to his exceptional mental gifts; nor do I consider his close self-analysis as altogether a correct one. Still, I think his own views on his attainments, his natural genius, his complete failure, and his outlook on life are sincere. Though highly nervous and sensitive by nature, and a prey to constant fits of depression, neither I nor any of his friends, would ever have suspected him of a tendency to suicide. We were indeed, all of us, fully as surprised as we were grieved to learn through the newspapers of November ——, 19—, the details of what we most assuredly at that date considered to have been his own deliberate

act of self-destruction. For there can be no question but that A—— B—— had made beforehand plans for his contemplated disappearance; the letter of instruction he wrote to his brother, the careful packing of his valuables at his lodgings, and the sudden payment on the morning that he was last seen of certain outstanding bills clearly point to this surmise. We are however now confronted since the strange discovery of the manuscript with two theories as to his end; did A—— B—— really perish on the beach at Dover; or did he evanish from his own world of men in order to start a new life under new conditions? His[Pg 11] clothing, we know, was found lying on the bare ground carefully held down by stones and boulders, and in his pockets were some money and a few personal trifles of value. Nevertheless, it is just possible he may have changed into some other garb, and thus disguised have made his escape whither none could trace him. This second theory is however highly improbable, seeing that his age was over forty, his

temperament on the whole normal, and his health indifferent; so that I merely mention it here to show that the suggestion has not escaped my own inquiring mind. The conclusion however which both the police and his relatives held was that A—— B—— had in some fit of frenzy or despair plunged naked into the sea, wherein he had been speedily drowned; for it was a cold stormy night. It is true the actual body was never recovered, but professional and amateur alike were agreed on the point of suicide whilst of unsound mind. That the manuscript is a literary jest perpetrated in the name of A—— B—— is also most unlikely, for though he was an author of some talent and repute, his mere name certainly had not the glamour requisite to draw special attention to any posthumous publication. At the risk therefore of being considered credulous, or even crazy, I have come to the deliberate decision that the whole marvellous story as set forth on the parchment is essentially true; and that the events described therein are not

the figments of any imagination, sane or insane. If[Pg 12] this is the case (which I do not for one moment doubt), then we possess an inestimable account of a planet other than our own. On the other hand, were it a fraud of an elaborate nature, as has been suggested, we have simply a treatise dealing with a Utopia in the stars, just one of those sterile semi-descriptive, semi-political effusions that the speculative human mind has produced from time to time. The record of Meleager and of its unique Secret, of which the author claims to know the existence but not the working details, is either a matter of surpassing interest, or else it is but a literary trifle, a jejune compound of material borrowed from Plato, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, James Harington, Dean Swift, Samuel Butler, H.G. Wells, and Heaven only knows how many other inventors in a similar vein, both ancient and modern, English and foreign. Once more I repeat my full belief in the writer's veracity and in the substantial truth of all his many adventures. As I write this, I

have lying on my desk before me that same strange metal cylinder, and that exquisitely prepared roll of vellum; and whenever I take these objects in my hands I really feel that I am fingering a message in a tangible form from a friend and fellow-mortal who has passed hence to another planet.

I have only to add that in editing the MS. I have deemed it expedient to omit here and there a few passages which might perhaps tend to prejudice[Pg 13] the reader against A—— B—— himself; the fact being patent to me that the author, after some years of residence in another and a wholly diverse moral and physical atmosphere, has somehow imbibed notions and theories that may clash with some of the recognised conventions and standards of this our world, which was also once his own. These omissions do not however mar the general trend of the narrative; and if any authorised persons may conceive a serious desire to peruse these excerpts, I shall willingly acquaint them with what is missing from the text.

[Pg 15]

[Pg 17]

PART ONE

I

I begin my manuscript in the palace of the Child of the Sun in a distant world, thus relieving a mind that is apt to grow weary of mere splendour and adulation by imagining the possibility of communicating on some future day with those who were not so long ago my fellow-men and fellow-mortals on the planet I have left, never to return. Though brightness and beauty are around me in my new abode, yet a constant longing for the drab unattainable past grips me with a feverish eagerness, so that I find some small solace in placing on record from time to time my impressions of a place and a people whose existence I had never suspected until a few hours before I was hurried, a humble subject out of the Earth, to dwell as ruler of an alien sphere. Whether or no I shall ever gain the opportunity of committing this message to its desired goal I know not; but at the present moment it suits my fancy and soothes my unquiet brain to believe in the ultimate feasibility of such an event. So I shall open by relating with the utmost brevity the earlier and earthly, and therefore less interesting,

portion of my career.

I had already passed by some few years the age of forty, at which landmark of life, so Count Alfieri discovered long ago, man ceases to cherish illusions,[Pg 18] and seeks to look back upon the irredeemable past with feelings of self-satisfaction or of regret, as his case may be. My own reflections after passing this Rubicon of time were anything but agreeable, when I paused to consider the years that had slipped by between my period of youth and that of middle age, and had to confess that all my early ambitions had petered out in nothingness. I had signally failed in all things; I had plainly proved myself

"too weak to put my shoulder to the wheel Which Fortune offers all to push or leave."

And yet, despite my laziness, my lack of initiative, my sacrifices to dull Convention, my timidity and my vacillation, I could not help harbouring a dull dim fury of resentment against Fate itself. I realised that I was the owner of high and original genius, yet this had omitted to imprint its proper mark in the world; and further, I argued that it was not wholly through my own fault that my latent virtues had never developed. The finest and most useful piece of machinery remains valueless and inert unless there be a skilled workman to set its mechanism in motion, to oil its cogs, and generally to supervise its action. So in my own case, the mental mechanism was all there ready to perform and needing but the touch of a sympathetic human hand to inspire its dormant possibilities. Some of the foremost characters in history have owed their fame and their success to the judicious but unappreciated[Pg 19] help of persons of an inferior calibre, whose very names are often unknown to posterity; then why could not I have been permitted the service of some exterior force, some understanding

coadjutor, to awaken the gigantic strength that was slumbering in myself?

Thus in my case a boyhood full of promise, yet a boyhood ever repressed and misunderstood, ripened into an early manhood of diffidence and irresolution. The golden years glided by unprofitably, until at length they reached the grand climacteric, when I found myself straying in a barren and deserted portion of the plain of life. A mental and physical weariness began to enfold me; the sense of failure at times was certainly keen and cutting as a razor, still I contrived by various devices to blunt its edge. I had indeed obtained some slight distinction in the sphere of literature, so that I was fain to feed my hungry disappointed soul with such crumbs or stale food of gratulation as fell to me from the small circle of those who admired my works, concerning which I myself can honestly say that I neither professed nor felt the smallest pride. A few trifles from my pen may possibly live in the general literature of Britain, mostly in verse, for poetry is often less perishable than prose in such instances as mine. Nevertheless, I

recognised myself as a partial failure in the domain of letters, as I was admittedly a complete failure in the departments of politics, of thought, of influence, of philosophy.

[Pg 20]

Naturally, with such bitter matter for reflection, my equanimity was liable to serious disturbance what time the sharp edge of this haunting sense of a life's bankruptcy pricked my all-too-sensitive skin. At such periods long-drawn fits of depression would invade me. Though at first these would dissolve and would often leave a marked flow of gaiety and hopefulness behind them, yet such attacks grew stronger and more frequent, whilst the subsequent recovery was less ecstatic in its nature. It was during one of these temporary obsessions of brooding care that I encountered the one and only adventure of my life, the adventure indeed that, in one aspect, terminated it, as I shall presently relate. For I have only written thus much concerning my interior state of mind and my physical health to impress on the reader that, apparent failure as I was and void of all worldly success, yet I still possessed the clear inner consciousness of mental powers that far exceeded those of all my more fortunate acquaintances, and were perhaps

equalled amongst very few contemporary persons whatsoever. My call to action came at last; the master hand at the eleventh hour put the rusty machinery of my unique mind in motion; and I have answered to that call, and am now employing for a worthy purpose those superior talents that, not altogether by reason of my own laches, had so long lain idle.

[Pg 21]

One November evening in the year 19—, whilst under the shadow of one of my recurring moods of melancholy, I made my way to the Café Royale in Regent Street, where I sat down and ordered a glass of absinthe. And here I may as well state that I am no drunkard, and that I have never sought to dispel my fits of depression by the aid of the wine-cup. Occasionally, however, I used to drink a glass of absinthe, as an excuse for visiting this foreign tavern, this latter-day Petty France in London, whose alien quality always tended to reduce my misery, for I found relaxation in the gruff Continental voices of the guests, in the sight and scent of the foreign liquors, in the garish Parisian decorations of the long low room, and in the unceasing chink of the dominoes on the marble-topped tables. I had already poured the ice-cold water upon the thin tablet of sugar reposing on the silver sifter that I had placed across the goblet, and was watching the clouded liquor below assume the yellow and green tints of the peridot, when I noticed a stranger enter the doorway, glance quickly round at

the noisy crowd assembled, and then seat himself deliberately in the vacant chair opposite to me. With a languid interest I observed the new-comer, trying to recall his face, which somehow seemed vaguely familiar to me. As this personage is to figure presently as my liberator, my mentor, my particular deus ex machinâ, I may as well describe him here to the best of my ability. He was short, and a little inclined to[Pg 22] stoutness; he was apparently about my own age, and was fashionably but quietly dressed; he was also obviously not an Englishman. His complexion was swarthy, even hinting at some possible admixture of Oriental blood, but his features were small, regular and far from unpleasing. His dark hair and moustache were grizzled; he had intelligent brown eyes and regular teeth; his voice showed an agreeable intonation as he ordered François to bring him some coffee. Having given his order, the stranger looked fixedly at me for a moment, the while stroking his chin with a delicate well-kept hand. Suddenly he addressed me, only to offer me the evening paper which he had brought

with him. I thanked him, and seeing him thus anxious to converse, I made some commonplace remark on the badness of the weather. He replied with alacrity, and by the time the waiter had returned with his coffee the stranger and I were chatting affably. He spoke excellent English, but with an accent that caused me to speculate on his possible nationality. After we had indulged thus in small talk for ten minutes or more, my neighbour, assuming a graceful hesitation of manner, inquired of me whether my name were not A—— B——. Greatly surprised, I assented; whereupon the foreigner, with a well-bred apology for what he called his liberty of attitude towards me, stated that he was a sincere admirer of my books, and then proceeded to allude to them in a manner which showed plainly enough that at least[Pg 23] he had read them. He praised my work warmly, complimented me on the subjects I had chosen for research, on my lucid style and on other points. Now, there are few persons who are not susceptible to praise or flattery, and I am

no exception to the general rule, provided only that the praise (or flattery) be applied with a delicate brush and not with a trowel. The discriminating approval therefore of this distinguished-looking foreigner acted like a sedative to my jarred nerves, so that the cloud of depression hanging over my head began rapidly to disperse. We talked and argued with animation over my books and their themes, with which my unknown companion seemed to possess a most intimate acquaintance. Time raced rapidly during this congenial duologue, the clock above the bar denoting the flight of a full hour before my comrade broached the matter of his own identity, which could scarcely in politeness be withheld much longer. Taking a leather case from his breast-pocket, he produced a visiting card, which he handed to me, explaining to me at the same moment that he was of Italian parentage though born in the Argentine, where he followed the occupation of a merchant in connection with a large English commercial house holding concessions in Peru