He was thinking of the Trojan elders — the moment they set eyes on the Fair Helen they knew that the war was justified. Yes, Dowson was absolutely right. It was perfectly logical that a man who counted recent admirals and foreign secretaries among his long line of forebears should revert, in matters of taste, to the earth from which he had sprung.
This Miss Higgins was your typical English country lass, with bulging muscles, the ripe bloom of an apricot on her cheeks and the stereotypical blonde hair that is the especial pride of the Anglo-Saxon race. Her glance was as amiably expressionless as the face of one of the larger domestic animals, and nothing Tyrconnel said was met by the least glimmer of understanding or produced the slightest spark of interest.
They rose soon afterwards, and left. As they crossed London Bridge Tyrconnel filled his friend in on his future plans. The idea of a weekly magazine delighted Dowson, and he promised to be extremely diligent and write a poem for every second number, or at least every third. Moreover, he knew Johnson’s address. They piled into a two-wheeled cab and set off, with the coachman’s white top hat lighting up the London night from the dizzy heights of his seat behind them.
They found Johnson at home. He was sitting at his desk, in his dressing gown. Its subtle resemblance to a monk’s cowl was tactfully offset by its sheer elegance, as if to deprecate any such suggestion.
“I’m sorry I can’t offer you port or cigars, but I don’t keep that sort of thing in the house. But I came by an excellent Devonshire cider the other day.”
The cider was decidedly of the first rank. Johnson did not have any himself. He seemed rather to look on it with disdain.
Meanwhile Tyrconnel was explaining his plans to him, this time in rather more colourful terms. They were standing on the threshold of a new literary movement. The time had come to bring the Symbolist cause to public attention, and only they, the Esotericists, could do this.
Johnson listened with an expression of profound understanding. When Tyrconnel finished, he placed his hands together on his chest and began an even longer exposition.
“My young friends,” he declared—inter a great many alia—“you always concern yourself with the mere Form. But the problem is, what is really important? Naturally I am not thinking here of the fashionable problems of the day — housing conditions in the slums, the origin of species, the still-unclear role of woman and other such trumped-up issues. What we need is a return to the time-honoured questions. Our real concern in the journal must be that great conundrum, never yet properly addressed in the West, the Conflict of Universals. We must give a fresh hearing to the Realists, who established that general propositions do exist in reality, and equally to the Nominalists who regard them as just so many words, flatus vocis—pure wind — as they so delicately put it. We must pave the way for a New Scholasticism.”
There was much more in this vein. It got deeper and cleverer as he went on. But by now his two companions were utterly lost. They had not the slightest idea what to think about Abelard, or why the conclusions of St Thomas Aquinas were so definitive, or where the otherwise so immensely gifted Duns Scotus had gone astray, or indeed why the system proposed by Grosseteste was untenable in the light of the fiendishly clever attacks on his thinking by William of Ockham.
Johnson rose, and took a few steps towards the doorway.
“And then, of course, there’s St Anselm of Canterbury…”
At that precise moment he collapsed and lay stretched out motionless on the floor.
Filled with unspeakable terror, Tyrconnel and Dowson dashed over to him. As they leant over him, they caught a strong whiff of brandy. He was completely drunk.
*
The Kabbalistic cards lay in the drawer of the writing desk, each in its individual leather case. Tyrconnel had been given them by his friend Russell, who wrote under the pseudonym A E. He was considered a leading expert on all things occult, and his crystal-clear verses remain splendidly impenetrable to this day. But Tyrconnel left the cards where they were. He didn’t even glance at them. He had come to regard his mysticism as no more than the sort of passing phase in his development he should put behind him, now that he had discovered his true self. Even so, to ensure that the time he had spent on it had not been wasted — though a dreamer he was also extremely ambitious — he composed a deeply symbolic narrative poem for the journal about the hardships faced by an Irish sea monster called Manannán. The only bit really dear to his heart was the creature’s name — Manannán.
A day or two later there was a knock at his door. It was the famous seer and mystic Mary Spottiswoode, one of the glories of Russell’s little circle. And there she was, fluttering down the vestibule as if on wings, with the air of someone about to swoon. She looked particularly winsome that morning, with her feathered hat, enormous boa and parasol.
“She looks like some kind of bird,” Tyrconnel thought to himself (no doubt with a goose in mind).
“The cards,” she whispered. Her face was interestingly pale, with the desolate world-weariness of someone who is forever losing things.
“Let me get you some water,” Tyrconnel suggested.
“Do you still have those cards?”
“Of course I do.”
“Quick, quick…”
And she sank into the depths of an armchair.
“Which one?”
“Give me the fifteenth, now, quickly. The one with the Greek letter Tau and the picture of a little bull… I mislaid it… it went missing from my pack, I’ve no idea how.”
“What do you need it for?” he asked. He knitted his brow earnestly, in keeping with the occasion. But he had no idea what any of this was about.
“Oh,” the Mystic Goose replied, blushing deeply. “How can I explain? It’s not important, really. I just wanted a word with my late husband, about his will. There’s a question about some of his bank deposits.”
“Mary, you’re not telling me the truth,” Tyrconnel hazarded.
“How do you know? But why do I ask? You know everything. All the same… don’t be too sure of yourself.”
“My dear Mary, once a person such as myself has ascended to the lunar plane, he takes no further interest in the vanities of the world… a calm and comforting melancholy fills his soul, and a profound sense of love.” (If only I knew what this is all about! he thought.)
“I knew you wouldn’t take advantage of my situation. I’m a poor, defenceless woman. That is why I came to you. But tell me… last night, from thirteen minutes past one onwards… were you perhaps looking at the card with the Tau and the little bull?”
“I was, indeed,” he exclaimed. (One way or another, he just possibly might have been.)
“And… oh, my God… what did you see?”
“What did I see?” A host of possibilities raced through his brain: a swan, an apple tree, a lighthouse… But then a rather different inspiration came to him.
“Oh, Mary,” he murmured, taking care to choke briefly. “What did
I see, Mary? It was you, you…” “I knew it!” the Mystic Goose spluttered. The curve of her neck was lovely and white. “And I saw you! — the whole night long. The workings of Fate…”
And she burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, Mary. We would struggle against this in vain. At any rate, perhaps you should take off your hat. A swan sang in my soul all night, a wild swan from the reed beds of Coole, pure white… and how white your face is… do take off that boa… there we are. And I watched them, chasing each another across the face of the moon, with a ceaseless rhythmic motion, back and forth, back and forth — the lines of fate. How lovely your hand is! There are moments in life that rise up before us like a beacon of light in an ocean of mystery. Permit me to unbutton your blouse, Mary. You weren’t wearing one last night.”