Masques & Phases. Robert Baldwin Ross

Masques & Phases - Robert Baldwin Ross


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      ‘The Sibyl was scarcely so extortionate when she offered the Tarquin literary wares that no subsequent research with which I am acquainted has proved to be spurious. And you, Mr. Carrel, offer me forgeries—merely forgeries.’

      Fear expressed itself in clumsy satire. He was thoroughly alarmed. He began rapidly to review his own antecedents, and to scrape his memory for discreditable incidents. He could think of nothing he need feel ashamed of, nothing the world might not thoroughly investigate. There were mean actions, but many generous ones to balance in the scale.

      His knowledge of life was really slight, as his intimacy with Archæology (so he told himself) was profound. One foolish incident, a midsummer madness, before he went to Oxford, was all he had to blush for. This, he frequently confessed, not without certain pride, to his wife, the daughter of a respectable man of letters from Massachusetts. He firmly and privately believed an omission in a catalogue a far greater sin than a breach of the Decalogue. But ethics are of little consequence where conduct is above reproach. When buying antiquities he would come across odd people from time to time, but never any one who openly avowed himself a blackmailer and a forger. The novel experience was embarrassing and unpleasant, but there was really little to fear. In all the delight of a clear conscience, since Carrel vouchsafed no reply to his sardonic Sibylline allusion, he said:

      ‘You have advanced no reason why I should hand you to-day or to-morrow these modest sums you demand.’

      ‘Then I will tell you,’ said Carrel, standing up suddenly. ‘I fabricated the poems of Sappho—yes, the manuscript from which you are reaping so much credit’—he took up the newspaper—‘from the morning press. When I take to art criticism, as you kindly suggested a dishonest man might do, it will be of a livelier description than any to which you are usually accustomed. Vain dupe, you think yourself impeccable. Infallible ass, there is hardly a museum in Europe where my manuscripts are not carefully preserved for the greatest and rarest treasures by senile curators, too ignorant to know their errors or too vain to acknowledge them. I fancied you clever; until now I do not know that I ever caught you out, though you may have bought many of my wares for all I know. I find you, however, like the rest—dull, pedantic, and Pecksniffian. At Cambridge we were not taught pretty manners, but we knew enough not to give fellowships to pretentious charlatans like yourself.’

      The room swam round Professor Lachsyrma, and the mummy behind the door grinned. The plaster casts and the statues seemed to wave their mutilated limbs with the joy of demoniacal possession. Dead things were startled into life. Sick giddiness permeated his brain. It was some horrible nightmare. Yet his soul’s tempest was entirely subjective; outwardly his demeanour suffered no change. His tormentor noted with astonishment and admiration his apparent self-control. There was merely a slight falter in his speech.

      ‘What proofs have you? A blackmailer must have some token—something on which to base a ridiculous libel.’

      ‘A few minutes ago I handed you a spurious papyrus, which you tell me you recognise. In the same lot of rubbish, purporting to come from the Fayyûm, were the alleged poems of Sappho. You swallowed the bait which has waited for you so long, and, if it is any consolation to you, I will admit that in the opinion of the profession, to continue my piscatorial simile, I have landed the largest salmon.’

      ‘I am deeply sensible of the compliment, but I must point out to you, my friend, that your coming to tell me that a papyrus I happen to have purchased from one of your shady friends is counterfeit, does not necessarily prove it to be so.’

      The Professor realised that he must act cautiously, and consider his position quietly. Each word must be charged with suppressed meaning. His eyes wandered over the room, resting now and again on the majestic, impassive smile of the mummy. It seemed to restore his nerve. He found himself unconsciously looking towards it over Carrel’s head each time he spoke. While the blackmailer, seated once more, gazed up to his face with a defiant, insolent stare, swinging his chair backwards and forwards, unconcerned at the length of the interview, apparently careless of its issue. The Professor brooded on the terrible chagrin, the wounded vanity of discovering himself the victim of an obviously long-contrived hoax. At his asking for a proof, Carrel laughed.

      ‘You are sceptical at last,’ he sneered. ‘I have the missing portions of the papyrus here with me. You can have them for a song. I was afraid to leave the roll too complete, lest I should invite detection. It would be a pity to let them go to some other museum. Berlin is longing for a new acquisition.’

      Then he produced from his bag damning evidence of the truth of his story—deftly confected sheets of papyrus, brown with the months it had taken to fabricate them, and cracked with forger’s inks and acids—ghastly replicas of the former purchase. Nervously the Professor replaced the green cardboard shade over the lamp, as though the glare affected his eyes.

      ‘But how do you know I have not discovered the forgery already?’ he said, craftily. Carrel started. ‘And see what I am sending to the press this evening,’ he added.

      Walking to the end of the table, he picked up a sheet of paper where there was writing, and another object which Carrel could not see in the gloom, so quickly and adroitly was the action accomplished.

      ‘Shall I read it to you, or will you read it yourself?’

      He advanced again towards the lamp, held the paper in the light, and beckoned to Carrel, who leant over the table to see what was written. Then Professor Lachsyrma plunged a long Greek knife into his back. A toreador could hardly have done it more skilfully; the bull was pinned through the heart, and expired instantaneously.

      * * * * *

      Now he paced the room in deep thought. For the first time he found himself an actor in modern life, which hitherto for him meant digging among excavations, or making romantic restoration for jaded connoisseurs, of some faultless work of art described by Pausanias and hidden for centuries beneath the rubbish of modern Greece. The entire absence of horror appalled him. Even the dignity of tragedy was not there. He was wrestling with hideous melodrama, often described to him by patrons of Thespian art at transpontine theatres. The vulgarity—the anachronism—made him shudder. Having till now ignored the issue of the present, he began to be sceptical about the virtues of antiquity. Antiquity, his only religion, his god, whose mangled incompleteness endeared it to him, was crumbling away. He wondered if there were friends with whom he might share his ugly secret. There was young Fairleigh, who was always so modern, and actually read modern books. He might have coped with the blackmailer alive, but hardly with his corpse. You cannot run round and ask neighbours for coffins, false beards, and rope in the delightful convention of the Arabian Nights, because you have grazed modern life at a sharp angle, without exciting suspicion or running the risk of positive refusal. There was his wife, to whom he confided everything; but she was a lady from Massachusetts, and her father was European correspondent to many American papers of the highest repute. How could their pure ears be soiled with so sordid a confidence? Poor Irene! she was to have an ‘At Home’ the following afternoon. It would have to be postponed. Professor Lachsyrma fell to thinking of such trivial matters, contemptible in their unimportance, as we do at the terrible moments of our lives. He wondered if they would wait dinner for him. He often remained at his club—the Serapeum—to finish a discussion with some erudite antagonist. His absence would therefore cause no alarm. He consulted the little American clock; it had stopped. How like America! The only recorded instance, he would explain to Irene, of an export from that country being required—the commodity proved inadequate. No, that would make Irene cry. … The folly of hopeless, futile thoughts jingled on. Suddenly he heard the cry of a belated newsvendor, howling some British victory, some horrible scandal in Paris. Scandal, exposure, publicity—there was the horror. He could almost hear the journalists stropping their pens. If his thoughts drifted towards any potential expiation demanded by officialism, he put them aside. A social débâcle was more fearful and vivid than the dock and its inevitable consequence. … Presently his eyes rested again on the mummy case. A brilliant inspiration! Here, at all events, was a temporary hiding-place for the corpse of the blackmailer. If it was putting new wine into old bottles, circumstances surely justified a violation of the proverb.


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