He walked beside me at the usual stumping trudge which carried him as fast as my own swift stride. A walking-stick was clenched under his arm like an officer’s baton, he wore a curly-brimmed topper on the back of his head, his chin was held high and an exuberant smile showed he now cared nothing for the glances of other pedestrians. With a pang of envy I said, “You look happy, Baxter.”
“Yes, McCandless! I now enjoy more flattering company than you ever provided — a fine, fine woman, McCandless, who owes her life to these fingers of mine — these skeely, skeely fingers!”6
He wagged them in the air before him as if playing a keyboard. I was jealous. I said, “What did you cure her of?”
“Death.”
“You mean that you saved her from death.”
“Partly, yes, but the greatest part is a skilfully manipulated resurrection.”
“You don’t make sense, Baxter.”
“Then come and meet her — I would welcome a second opinion. Physically she is perfect but her mind is still forming, yes, her mind has wonderful discoveries to make. She knows only what she learned in the last ten weeks, but you will find her more interesting than Mopsy and Flopsy put together.”
“So your patient is amnesic?”
“That is what I tell people but don’t you believe me! Judge for yourself.”
And the only other words he said before we reached Park Circus were, that his patient was called Bell, short for Bella, and lived in a great clutter because he wanted her to enjoy seeing, hearing and handling as many things as possible.
As Baxter unlocked his front door I thought I heard a piano playing The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond so loud and fast that the tune was wildly cheerful. He led me into a drawing-room where I saw the music being made by a woman seated at a pianola. Her back was toward us. Curly black hair hid her body to the waist, her legs pumped the treadles turning the cylinder with a vigour that showed she enjoyed exercise as much as music. She flapped her arms sideways like a seagull’s wings, regardless of the beat. She was so engrossed that she did not notice us. I had time to study the room.
It had tall windows overlooking the Circus, a bright fire under a marble mantelpiece. The big dogs lay somnolent on a hearth-rug, their chins cushioned on each other’s flanks. Three cats sat as far apart as possible on the backs of the highest chairs, each pretending not to see the rest but all twitching if one of them moved. Through an open double door I saw a room overlooking the back garden, and by the fire in this room a placid elderly lady sat knitting, a small boy played with toy bricks at her feet, two rabbits sipped milk from a saucer. Baxter murmured that the lady was his housekeeper, the boy her grandson. One rabbit was pure black, the other pure white, but I decided to draw no fantastic conclusion from this. What made the place strange was a multitude of things on the carpets, tables, sideboards and seats: a tripod upholding a telescope, a lantern-slide projector aimed at a standing screen, celestial and terrestrial globes each a yard in diameter, a half-put-together jigsaw puzzle showing the British Islands, a fully furnished doll’s house with the front open exposing everybody from a thin maidservant in the attic bedroom to a fat cook rolling pastry in the basement kitchen, a toy farm with hundreds of accurately carved and painted animals, a brilliant flock of real stuffed humming-birds wired to a silver stand shaped like a bush with leaves and fruit of coloured glass, a xylophone, harp, kettledrums, an erect human skeleton and glass jars holding pickled limbs and bodily organs. These specimens probably came from old Sir Colin’s collection, but their brown morbidity was contradicted by surrounding vases of daffodils, pots of hyacinths and a great crystal bowl in which tiny, jewel-like tropical fish darted and large golden ones glided. Many books were propped open at vivid illustrations. I noticed a Madonna and Child, Burns Stooping to a Field Mouse, The Fighting Téméraire Towed to Her Last Berth and Kobolds Discovering the Skeleton of Ichthyosaurus in a Cavern under the Harz Mountains.7
The music stopped. The woman stood and faced us, stepping unsteadily forward then pausing as if to keep balance. Her tall, beautiful, full-bodied figure seemed between twenty and thirty years, her facial expression looked far, far less. She gazed with the wide-open eyes and mouth which suggest alarm in an adult but in her suggested pure alert delight with an expectation of more. She wore a black velvet gown with narrow lace collar and cuffs. She spoke carefully, with a north of England accent, and each syllable was as sweet and distinct as if piped on a flute: “Hell low God win, hell low new man.”
Then she flung both arms out straight toward me and kept them there.
“Give only one hand to new men, Bell,” said Baxter kindly. She dropped her left hand to her side without otherwise moving or altering her bright expectant smile. Nobody had looked at me like that before. I grew confused as the offered hand was too high for me to shake in the conventional way. I surprised myself by stepping forward, rising on tiptoe, taking Bell’s fingers in mine and kissing them. She gasped and a moment later slowly withdrew her hand and looked at it, rubbing the fingers gently with her thumb as if testing something my lips had left there. She also cast several astonished but happy little glances at my fascinated face, while Baxter beamed proudly on both of us like a clergyman introducing two children at a Sunday-school picnic. He said, “This is Mr. McCandless, Bell.”
“Hell low Miss terr Candle,” she said, “new wee man with carrot tea red hair, inter rested face, blue neck tie, crump pled coat waist coat trou sirs made of brown. Cord. Dew. Ray?”
“Corduroy my dear,” said Baxter, smiling as joyfully on her as she on me.
“Cord dew roy, a ribbed fab brick wove ven from cot ton Miss terr Make Candle.”
“Mac Cand less, dear Bell.”
“But dear Bell has no candle so dear Bell is candle-less too, God win. Please be Bell’s new Candle you new wee candle maker.”
“You reason beautifully, Bell,” said Baxter, “but have still to learn that most names are not reasonable. O Mrs. Dinwiddie! Take Bell and your grandson down to the kitchen and give them lemonade and a doughnut sprinkled with sugar. McCandless and I will be in the study.”
As we climbed the stairs Baxter said eagerly, “So what do you think of our Bella?”
“A bad case of brain damage, Baxter. Only idiots and infants talk like that, are capable of such radiant happiness, such frank glee and friendship on meeting someone new. It is dreadful to see these things in a lovely young woman. She only looked thoughtful once, when your housekeeper led her away from me — from us, I meant to say.”
“You noticed that? But it is a sign of maturity. You are wrong about the brain damage. Her mental powers are growing at enormous speed. Six months ago she had the brain of a baby.”
“What reduced her to that state?”
“Nothing reduced her to it, she has risen from it. It was a perfectly healthy little brain.”
His voice must have had hypnotic qualities for I suddenly knew what he meant and believed him. I stood still and clutched the banister feeling very sick. I heard my voice stammer a question about where he got the other bits.
“That is what I want to tell you, McCandless!” he cried, putting an arm round my shoulder and lifting me easily up the stairs with him. “You are the only one in the world I can talk to about this.”
As my feet left the carpet I thought I was in the grip of a monster and started kicking. I also tried to yell but he put a hand over my mouth, carried me to a bathroom, held my head under a cold shower, carried me to his study, placed me on a sofa and gave me a towel. I grew calmer while using it, but nearly panicked again when he handed me a tumbler of grey slime. He said it was concocted from fruit and vegetables, that it strengthened the nerves, muscles and blood without over-stimulating them, that he drank nothing else. I refused it, so he hunted in cupboards under a lot of glass-fronted bookcases until he found a decanter of port nobody had tasted since his father died. As I sipped the dark ruby syrup I suddenly felt that Baxter, his household, Miss Bell, yes and me, and Glasgow, and rural Galloway, and all Scotland were equally unlikely and absurd. I started laughing. Mistaking my hysteria for a return to common sense he gave a sigh of relief that sounded like a steam whistle in the room next door. I winced. He produced cotton wool from a drawer. I plugged my ears with it. He told me the following story.