Free The Secrets of Dr. Taverner by Dion Fortune

of their meeting; consequently as time drew near, they converged upon me, and it was my privilege to steer them to harbour."
     
    "But what about Miss Tyndall and her delusions?" I inquired.
     
    "It looked to you like a commonplace case of old maid's insanity, didn't it?" said Taverner. "But the girl's self-possession and absence of fear led me to suspect something more; she was so very definite and impersonal in her attitude towards her delusions. So I arranged for her to come down to Hindhead and let me try whether or not I could see what she saw.
     
    "What we saw you yourself know; it was Black shaken out of his body by the shock of the accident and drawn to her by the intensity of his longing, not at all an uncommon phenomenon; I have often seen it."
     
    "How did you manage to get Black to re-enter his body, provided he had ever been out of it?"
     
    "When Elaine touched his body, the soul of Black realized that it could meet her in the flesh, and so sought to re-enter its own body, but the vitality was so low it could not manage it. If the girl had not held him in her arms as she did, he would have died, but he lived on her vitality till he was able to build up his own."
     
    "I can see the psychological end of it," I said, "but how do you account for the chances that brought them together? Why should Miss Tyndall have become restless and made for the Portsmouth road, timing her arrival to fit in with Black's passing?"
     
    Taverner looked up at the stars that were just beginning to show in the darkening sky.
     
    "Ask Them," he said. "The ancients knew what they were about when they cast horoscopes."
     
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    The Soul that would Not be Born
     
     
     
    Contrary to his usual custom, Taverner did not insist on seeing his patient alone, for the sufficient reason that no information could be extracted from her. It was to the mother, a Mrs. Cailey, we turned for the case history, and she, poor anxious woman, gave us such scanty details as an onlooker might observe; but of the viewpoint and feelings of the patient we learnt nothing, for there was nothing to learn.
     
    She sat before us in the big leather armchair; her body was a tenement for the soul of a princess, but it was, alas, untenanted. The fine dark eyes, utterly expressionless, looked into space while we discussed her as if she had been an inanimate object, which practically she was.
     
    "She was never like ordinary children," said the mother. "When they put her in my arms after she was born she looked up at me with the most extraordinary expression in her eyes; they were not a baby's eyes at all, Doctor, they were the eyes of a woman, and an experienced woman too. She didn't cry, she never made a sound, but she looked as if she had all the troubles of the world upon her shoulders. That baby's face was a tragedy; perhaps she knew what was coming."
     
    "Perhaps she did," said Taverner.
     
    "In a few hours, however," continued the mother, "she looked quite like an ordinary baby, but from that time to this she has never changed, except in her body."
     
    We looked at the girl in the chair, and she gazed back at us with the unblinking stolidity of a very young infant.
     
    "We have taken her to everybody we could hear of, but
     
    they all say the same--that it is a hopeless case of mental deficiency; but when we heard of you, we thought you might say something different. We knew that your methods were not like those of most doctors. It does seem strange that it should be impossible to do anything for her. We passed some children playing in the street as we came here in the car--bonny, bright little things, but in such rags and dirt. Why is it that those, whose mothers can do so little for them, should be so splendid, and Mona, for whom we would do anything, should be--as she is?"
     
    The poor woman's eyes filled with tears, and neither Taverner nor I could reply.
     
    "I will take her down to my nursing home and keep her