THE FRANTIC MASTER

BY

DOUGLAS PULLEYNE

AUTHOR OF "SPRING SORREL"

"And in particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, 'How do you feel about love, Sophocles? Are you still capable of it?' To which he replied, 'Hush, if you please; to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.'" The Republic of Plato.

CHAPMAN AND HALL LD.

LONDON : MCMXXVII

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The incident, in essentials true, of the soldiers in the railway carriage, overheard by "Cyprian," is the seed from which this book grew. To explain his attitude, it is, therefore, included with acknowledgments to that Editor of the "PIONEER" who first recorded it for me. "Shoan and the Mermaid" is also true, as an example of a tale told to the Nicobarese by a traveller, and retold by them, and may be found in Sir Richard Temple's Census Report, preserved to the best of my belief in the Offices of the Chief Commissioner in the Andamans.

I make no apologies to my old friends, Scarecrow, Friend-of-England and others for describing them under their own names, feeling sure that they would expect no evil magic to come of it. To the workers of the Mission at Car Nicobar, one of whom it is well-known spent twelve years in the islands translating the Prayer Book into Nicobarese, I would say that little Jellybrand is only the portrait of a type I have met—of which is the Kingdom of Heaven, and which neither looks for nor will find recognition on earth for much simple heroism.

A somewhat delightful brother of mine may be inclined to suspect a portrait in "Peter." Let me assure him that I have known many Peters.

Printed in Great Britain by Burleigh Ltd., at THE BURLEIGH PRESS, Bristol

WRITTEN FOR A SOLDIER, A DOCTOR AND A SCIENTIST

YOU THREE,

This fulfilled promise, possibly, by now, nearly forgotten by you, will find the four of us in different countries, or even different continents; but find you it will, to recall to your minds a memory of five long weeks, during which we formed a perfect square; when, alike under the Colombo palms or the hot rocks of Aden, among the lights of Port Said or in the shadow of Gibraltar, the discussion, ever and again, would veer round to that which the fool hath said in his heart.

People on this earth evolve and alter; it is to you, as I knew you then, that this is addressed. Try to put back the clock and think as you thought then.

I have still in your neat hand-writing, "C"—I wonder whether your prescriptions are as clear to read?—the account of your conversion to that Spiritualistic Theosophy which used to make "L.B." impatient. I inserted the page in the first book I wrote for you all, but which, to the agent's surprise, I suddenly withdrew, doubting lest I was still too near the Three of you and those endless conversations to have made my characters impersonal enough and, also, doubting the fairness of putting into cold print anything which had been given me in the special circumstances of our friendship.

So Cyprian and Ferlie come late on the scene to show you by their problem much that I have left unsaid (even to you, "L.B.") during the star-spangled nights in tropical waters and, afterwards, in the grey streets of Westminster and those greyer and darker streets elsewhere, down which the Other Half live and the Men in Black go to and fro.

Let me say now, since it was hardly permitted for me to tell you then, that what you did was one of the bravest things I have ever known a man do. This, in case you have, in retrospection, doubted and regretted the impulse as abnormal or unbalanced.

Some travellers across my horizon last winter recognized your photograph, and I gathered from them that you are now on the way to be reckoned among the Senior and the Great.

To you, "C," I have always wished to confess, in acknowledgment of your wisdom as physician and psychologist, that your warning nearly came true and, two years ago, I thought a great deal about it, and you, in hospital.

And of you, "L.L.": I have often wondered whether you found your Golden Girl according to Le Gallienne? Well, I owe much to the passing of our ships: hence this dedication.

I have only the one wish for you all Three, but particularly will "L.B." understand it: it is, that to the end of the voyage you may be able to trust the Pilot you have chosen.

Under a signature only part familiar to you,

Yours, H. E. DOUGLAS-PULLEYNE

THE FRANTIC MASTER

CHAPTER I

When a man has been turned down by the Only Girl (although she isn't, and never was) and, subsequently, finds her present in the same batch of dinner-guests as himself, it is hardly to be expected that he will prove the life and soul of the party.

But, thought Mrs. Carmichael, vexed with herself for a blundering hostess who ought to have known, and still more vexed with Cyprian Sterne for not having waited until after the 17th to try his luck with Muriel, there was no need for him to gloom at his soup as if he were gauging its depths for a suicidal dive and there was no need for him to have waved aside the champagne. Champagne was clearly indicated on the occasion, medicinally, if not (as she felt inclined to insist, herself, despite appearances) in felicitation.

Cyprian always showed himself so ridiculously sensitive. And Muriel looked so ... adamant. Yes, that was the word; hard and bright like a crystal prism you could not see through clearly, however often the attractive suggestion of buried rainbows within might tempt you to hold it close to your eyes. With the closeness even the rainbows became blurred.

"An incarnation of the three B's which constitute the Perfect Woman," said her men-admirers.

Brain, Beauty and Breeding. All by heredity. No wonder she behaved as if she had the right to wealth also, of a standard not to be extracted from the scholarly pockets of Cyprian and his like.

Had he a like? Mrs. Carmichael doubted. She wondered what mislaid edition of Persian verse or Grecian ethics was, even now, spoiling the symmetry of his evening coat. A little bowed, the shoulders, even when he stood upright. The scrutiny of the very blue eyes a little fixed when he addressed you with that air of seeing behind things which betrays the short-sighted. Interesting, the long dreamy face, but hardly handsome. And his acknowledged cleverness did not flash in your face like Muriel's, so that, waiving her awareness of his Double Firsts at Oxford and all that, she had been heard to tick him off as "a dry old stick." Encouraging his transparent admiration the while. Minx!

One had wished he would hurry up and propose and get the inevitable yearnings for a premature grave over and then forget. And now he had completed the first item on that programme—most inconsiderately before the 17th—and the yearnings were upon him and he was ruining his end of the dinner-party.

Muriel sat opposite him and it was comprehensible that he should not want to look at her and, therefore, incomprehensible why he insisted on trying to.

As usual, she was worth looking at. Those very fair women, particularly when dressed in soft watery greens, recalled old legends of sirens who floated gold hair about their insinuating bodies, luring mankind by music and provocative laughter to its destruction despite the warning, eternally present, of white bones on the sand.

A pity that Cyprian's mental vision was as myopic as his physical when it came to those bones.

Mrs. Carmichael could see them quite clearly herself: here, the skull of Major Ames (a nice little man, and of course, that hunting tragedy had proved an accident, although at the time They said...) there, the femur, rather nobbly, of Maurice Waring who had parted, not exactly with his life, to be sure, but certainly with his wife since sighting the siren's shining head. But those two had never got on anyhow, and if, eventually, he managed the divorce ... how much more nearly would he and Muriel prove birds of a feather than she and poor Cyprian with his good old-fashioned conviction that this modern laxity in matrimonial matters was a national menace. Refreshing, to find a man like Cyprian, even though as he was not safely religious one was inclined to wonder, when it came to personal influence, would Muriel...? Mrs. Carmichael's subconscious musings (for consciously she was smiling eager attention to ex-Colonel Maddock's—he was now, by virtue of a dead American wife, by way of being a millionaire, which is far better—account of his last yachting cruise, and praying

Providence for the strength and the strategy to resist suggestions that she and Robin should join him next time) were shattered by the despairing howl of what sounded like a soul in torment. Only, it emanated from regions too nearly at the top of the house to be described as "nether."

"It's that child again," remarked Robin accusingly down the long table, interrupted in an intense discussion with Miss Mabel Clement, the playwright: "I have always said we would suffer for it if you were so weak with her in the beginning."

"To any child born in the East, English nursery-life is impossibly terrifying," and Mrs. Carmichael apologetically sought the support of her guests. "Since Peter went to school she has had to sleep alone. It's all very well for Robin to call me weak but I can't believe it is good for a child's nerves to..."

Another wail crescendoed to the uttermost heights of horror and died away.

"That noise does not improve mine," Robin Carmichael answered dryly: "What is the nurse thinking of?"

"It's her evening out."

And, inwardly, his wife sighed for their return to Burma where servants did not have evenings out, and ... and people were too enslaved to official etiquette to show their feelings at dinner-parties.

A chair grated harshly back, rumpling the rug on the polished parquet floor.

"Let me go up to her for a moment," said Cyprian, "I undertook to visit the nursery when I arrived but was told she had gone to sleep."

Well, if it would take his mind off himself and his stricken face from the vicinity of the Hon. Mrs. Porter, who was beginning to wear a worried look. Mrs. Carmichael knew that Robin would say that it was all wrong, of course, in the morning, but she could hardly let Ferlie howl throughout dinner and, if the parlour-maid went up, Rose would have to hand round the fish single-handed and she was under notice to go, and therefore, under no obligation to behave. In Burma there had always been someone to sit with Ferlie if she woke.

"Tell her to go to sleep at once then," and Ferlie's mother favoured Cyprian with an indulgent smile. His fondness for the child was really too quaint. In the circumstances, pathetic.

The incident might well arouse Muriel's better nature ... but no, not quite.

It would, in all likelihood, encourage her worse one, since she was no character in a book written with a mission behind it. Already her clear eyes were glinting humorously and something she remarked to Captain Wright, in an undertone, had just made that young gentleman, who never at any time required much encouragement to giggle, choke violently into his napkin. Why couldn't Cyprian realize that he didn't in the least want Muriel, but a Womanly Woman of Yesterday?

* * * * * *

Meanwhile, Cyprian, incapable of perceiving his desire for any woman, save one who was the figment of his own imagination, clothed in a blurred semblance to Muriel Vane, mounted the stairs to an airy room with a sloping roof which lent queer profundities to the dancing shadows born of Ferlie's night-light. Found Ferlie sitting up among the pillows with the sheet over her head and the fear of the devil in her soul. Ferlie, at seven, was afraid of darkness, being accidentally buried alive, and wolves. Not lions and tigers: only wolves. This, since she had never seen a wolf; though tigers, looking loose and heavy, had been marched across her horizon more than once by excitedly shouting coolies, when everyone was in holiday camp and Mr. Carmichael had been out shooting. They inspired sympathy rather than respect in that condition, and lions, naturally, slipped into the same category of beasts one's father could, if he so desired, bring home on poles and transform into carpets for the bungalow. Wolves were different. She had a book concerning

their activities in a land called Siberia. They chased people there for miles and miles over stuff like ground-rice pudding, commonly known as "snow," and even ate the sleigh. England, in which she now found herself, might very easily resemble Siberia in this particular: it was cold also, and snow came with cold. The birth of the being-buried-alive fear dated from a conversation overheard between her parents anent the accuracy of the Bible with regard to the reappearance from the grave of one, Lazarus.

Her father was a thoughtful sceptic, but Ferlie did not find him out for many years. Her mother's views were founded on the Book of Common Prayer and the story, "There, but for the Grace of God ..." though she was divided in her mind whether Bunyan had invented the one and Gladstone said the other, or vice versa. Her own father, a bishop, and a busy one, had rather taken her catechism for granted when he confirmed her, on the assumption that a daughter educated in a godly ecclesiastical household and never exposed to the youthful heresies of a boarding-school must necessarily be in a perpetual state of knowledgeable grace. And he had passed on his gaiters as a matter of course before retiring to her elder brother.

Her husband explained away miracles by Euclidean methods which struck terror to her orthodox heart.

"A possible and recorded case of suspended animation," had been his verdict on Lazarus. "Occurs every day. Read Hudson's Psychic Phenomena." Mrs. Carmichael had no intention of doing any such thing.

"There are countless instances of people being buried alive," continued Mr. Carmichael. And, after racking his brains for two, cited them in clear convincing tones. Ferlie had scooped the last grains of melting sugar out of an empty cocoa-cup and thoughtfully left the room. Mrs. Carmichael vaguely hoped that God was not listening to the conversation and then forgot all about it. So did Robin. Ferlie remembered. Always at night in this England, deprived of her patiently crooning Burmese nurse, she remembered. The wigwam of sheets and blankets was to shut out Fear.

She knew the footsteps on the stairs which were coming to the rescue now; though he was not, in his customary accomplished fashion, taking two steps at a time.

"Is that you, Cyprian?"

"Yes, old lady."

"I thought it might be Satan."

"Why Satan?"

She came out of her fastness with a shudder.

"They call him the Prince of Darkness, you know. This is the witching hour when I think he probberly might..."

"Might what?" Vainly he tried to sort the tumbled bed-clothes. Her Viyella night-dress was dripping wet.

"Might take an' bury me in the Tomb," said Ferlie in a hoarse whisper. Cyprian tried to make his laugh aggressively reassuring.

"Who on earth suggested such nonsense to you?"

"It can't be nonsense if it's in the Bible. An' in a book by a man named Hudson. He makes the kitchen soap 'cos Cook told me so when I asked. He must be clever for every person to buy his soap. An' he buried Lazarus."

It was beyond Cyprian's power to disentangle her from this web. The servants must have been frightening the child. It was common knowledge that the best of nurses were often grossly imaginative.

He stroked the russet mop of fluff resting against his shoulder and resorted to practical conversation. Except that it concerned her own private affairs and was therefore connected with Teddy-bears, the duck-pond in the park, the little-girl-next-door, and other important personages of summers six to ten, it was conducted as gravely as though they were of an age.

Cyprian did not really understand anything about talking down to a child's level and that was why Ferlie loved him. She detected the simple sincerity behind his sometimes complicated language and when he used words beyond her ken it was seldom she failed to grasp the drift.

Neither the child nor the man realized that each being sensitive to a fault, they affected one another atmospherically and their true conversation existed in emotions experienced side by side rather than in sentences interchanged. Thus, to-night, her quick intuition arrived at the cause of that veiled look in his eyes.

"Are you going to be married to that Vane girl?" she enquired, betraying instantaneously to Cyprian that there were those who disapproved of his matrimonial projects.

He answered, "No," quietly, after an instant's pause.

"Why not?" asked Ferlie suspiciously. "Nurse says she's a hussy."

"No one should have said such a thing to you."

"It wasn't to me: it was to Rose. Rose used to live in her house, an'..."

"It doesn't matter what either Rose or Nurse says," said Cyprian. "But who told you about my marrying anyone, Ferlie?"

"I think that was just in my head," struggling to remember where the impression had first indented itself upon her responsive brain. "Why aren't you...?"

He saw there was no help for it and replied patiently, "She does not want to marry me; that's all."

"Then she's a dam fool," said Ferlie with complete conviction. He was genuinely shocked.

"You must never say that of anyone, dear, even if you don't like them."

"Dad says it of mostly all peoples, whether he likes them or not."

"That's different."

"How?"

"He's grown-up."

"How can grown-ups...?"

"And he's a man," Cyprian went on, desperately aware that he was not doing very well. "Ladies don't use such words."

Then Ferlie played her trump card. "Miss Vane does," she said coldly.

Cyprian preserved a masterly silence. Good gracious! she was modern enough, of course. Muriel! There was music in her name ... and in her throat when she sang ... and in the delicate hands moving over the keys of the grand piano downstairs; for she always played to them after dinner in the evenings. She had the whitest throat he had ever seen and the most beautiful hands.

"Why do people always want to marry other people?" insisted his companion, alive to mysteries unsolved and femininely peevish in consequence. Cyprian considered this himself before attempting to clear it up.

"I suppose they grow lonely living just for themselves," he said at last.

"I don't believe that there girl would make loneliness feel better," declared Ferlie.

"You don't understand, dear." She cuddled his sleeve, ecstatically sympathetic with that which she did understand, his tone of voice.

"Are you so sorry you can't get married, Cyprian? Why not make Miss Cartwright marry you astead? She'd do it, I daresay, 'f I begged her for my sake. She says she'd do most things for me, only not run upstairs backwards at her timerlife. An' she cooks lovely choclick fudge. Miss Vane can't, I'm sure. You ask her."

"I think you are probably right about that."

"Then we've settled it," much relieved. "I wouldn't go marrying anyone myself 'less they had a hand for fudge. I'll tell Miss Cartwright to-morrow that you want to get married to her this directly immejantly, an' I was to ask her not to say 'No' like Miss Vane."

"Good God!" exclaimed Cyprian rousing himself. "I beg your pardon—I mean—you must never say that, Ferlie. But neither must you say anything to Miss Cartwright. Promise! It's just—you see, this must be a dead secret between you and me, about Miss Vane and all." Happy thought! He might trust Ferlie to the stake with their numerous unique secrets.

"But, Cyprian, why..."

"Dear, my dear," said the man, speaking more to the beauty of her upturned face than to the child, "when you want to marry it is only the one person who counts. The one person with all her faults and weaknesses—because those, too, are part of her. Chocolate fudge (and there are more kinds of that than you know) doesn't come into it with the averagely decent man. You just love the person or you don't. You will understand all about it some day, when you are older."