Dr Trelawney smiled, showing teeth as yellow and irregular as the stains on his beard. He was, I thought, a tremendously Edwardian figure: an Edwardian figure of fun, one might say. All the same, I remembered that a girl had thrown herself from a Welsh mountain-top on his account. Such things were to be considered in estimating his capacity. His smile was one of the worst things about him. I saw that Duport must be on closer terms with the Doctor than he had pretended. I had certainly not grasped the fact that they already knew each other well enough to have exchanged reasons for residing at the Bellevue. Indeed, Duport, while he had been drinking at the Royal, seemed almost deliberately to have obscured their comparative intimacy. There was nothing very surprising about their confiding in one another. Total strangers in bars and railway carriages will unfold the story of their lives at the least opportunity. It was probably true to say that the hotel contained no more suitable couple to make friends. The details about his married life which Duport had imparted to me showed that he was a more complicated, more introspective character than I had ever guessed. His connexion with Jean was now less mysterious to me. No doubt Jimmy Stripling’s esoteric goings-on had familiarised Duport, more or less, with people of Dr Trelawney’s sort. In any case, Dr Trelawney was probably pretty good at worming information out of other residents. Even during the time we had been sitting in the room I had become increasingly aware of his pervasive, quasi-hypnotic powers, possessed to a greater or lesser degree by all persons — not necessarily connected with occultism — who form little cults devoted primarily to veneration of themselves. This awareness was not because I felt myself in danger of falling under Dr Trelawney’s dominion, though it conveyed an instinctive warning to be on one’s guard. Perhaps the feeling was no more than a grown-up version of childish fantasies about him, perhaps a tribute to his will. I was not certain. Duport, on the other hand, appeared perfectly at ease. He sat in a broken-down armchair facing the bed, his hands in his pockets. I explained about my early associations with Albert, about Uncle Giles’s funeral.
‘I used to talk with your uncle,’ said Dr Trelawney.
‘What did you think of him?’
‘A thwarted spirit, a restless soul wandering the vast surfaces of the earth.’
‘He never found a job he liked.’
‘Men do not gather grapes from off a thorn.’
‘He told you about himself?’
‘It was not necessary. Every man bears on his forehead the story of his days, an open volume to the initiate.’
‘From that volume, you knew him well?’
‘Who can be said to know well? All men are mysteries.’
‘There was no mystery about your uncle’s grousing,’ said Duport. ‘The only thing he was cheerful about was saying there would not be a war. What do you think, Dr Trelawney?’
‘What will be, must be.’
‘Which means war, in my opinion,’ said Duport.
‘The sword of Mithras, who each year immolates the sacred bull, will ere long now flash from its scabbard.’
‘You’ve said it.’
‘The slayer of Osiris once again demands his grievous tribute of blood. The Angel of Death will ride the storm.’
‘Could this situation have been avoided?’ I asked.
‘The god, Mars, approaches the earth to lay waste. Moreover, the future is ever the consequence of the past.’
‘And we ought to have knocked Hider out when he first started making trouble?’
I remembered Ted Jeavons had held that view.
‘The Four Horsemen are at the gate. The Kaiser went to war for shame of his withered arm. Hitler will go to war because at official receptions the tails of his evening coat sweep the floor like a clown’s.’
‘Seems an inadequate reason,’ said Duport.
‘Such things are a paradox to the uninstructed — to the adept they are clear as morning light.’
‘I must be one of the uninstructed,’ said Duport.
‘You are not alone in that.’
‘Just one of the crowd?’
‘Reason is given to all men, but all men do not know how to use it. Liberty is offered to each one of us, but few learn to be free. Such gifts are, in any case, a right to be earned, not a privilege for the shiftless.’
‘How do you recommend earning it?’ asked Duport, stretching out his long legs in front of him, slumping down into the depths of the armchair. ‘I’ve got to rebuild my business connexions. I could do with a few hints.’
‘The education of the will is the end of human life.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know.’
‘But can you always apply the will?’ said Duport. ‘Could I have renewed my severed credits by the will?’
‘I am concerned with the absolute.’
‘So am I. An absolute balance at the bank.’
‘You speak of material trifles. The great Eliphas Levi, whose precepts I quote to you, said that one who is afraid of fire will never command salamanders.’
‘I don’t need to command salamanders. I want to shake the metal market.’
‘To know, to dare, to will, to keep silence, those are the things required.’
‘And what’s the bonus for these surplus profits?’
‘You have spoken your modest needs.’
‘But what else can the magicians offer?’
‘To be for ever rich, for ever young, never to die.’
‘Do they, indeed?’
‘Such was in every age the dream of the alchemist.’
‘Not a bad programme — let’s have the blue-prints.’
‘To attain these things, as I have said, you must emancipate the will from servitude, instruct it in the art of domination.’
‘You should meet a mutual friend of ours called Widmerpool,’ said Duport. ‘He would agree with you. He’s very keen on domination. Don’t you think so, Jenkins? Anyway, Dr Trelawney, what action do you recommend to make a start?’
‘Power does not surrender itself. Like a woman, it must be seized.’
Duport jerked his head in my direction.
‘I offered him a woman in the bar of the Royal this evening,’ he said, ‘but he declined. He wouldn’t seize one. I must admit Fred never has much on hand.’
‘Cohabitation with antipathetic beings is torment,’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘Has that never struck you, my dear friend?’
‘Time and again,’ said Duport, laughing loudly. ‘Perfect hell. I’ve done quite a bit of it in my day. Would you like to hear some of my experiences?’
‘Why should we wish to ruminate on your most secret orgies?’ said Dr Trelawney. ‘What profit for us to muse on your nights in the lupanar, your diabolical couplings with the brides of debauch, more culpable than those phantasms of the incubi that rack the dreams of young girls, or the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?’
Duport shook with laughter. I saw that one of Dr Trelawney’s weapons was flattery, though flattery of no trite kind, in fact the best of all flattery, the sort disguised as disagreement or rebuke.
‘So you don’t want a sketch of my love life in its less successful moments?’ said Duport.
Dr Trelawney shook his head.
‘There have been some good moments too,’ said Duport. ‘Don’t get me wrong.’
‘He alone can truly possess the pleasures of love,’ said Dr Trelawney, ‘who has gloriously vanquished the love of pleasure.’
‘Is that your technique?’
‘If you would possess, do not give.’
‘I’ve known plenty of girls who thought that, my wife among them.’
‘Continual caressing begets satiety.’
‘She thought that too. You should meet. However, if what you said about a war coming is true — and it’s what I think myself — why bother? We shall soon be as dead as Jenkins’s uncle.’