A few moments later he heard his aunt’s footsteps descending the linoleum-covered stairs leading to the basement. After the deaths of aunt Rose and uncle James, she had redecorated the ground-floor rooms and let them, and now confined herself entirely to the basement.
Bartels rose quickly out of his chair, crossed the room, and replaced the book between the dictionaries. Perhaps it was this action, this quick, furtive movement, which first brought him face to face with the reality behind his thoughts.
But as he hastily picked up the evening paper again, and pretended to be reading it, his mind was still protesting against the evidence of his actions.
Now aunt Emily came into the drawing room and gave one of her glad cries of welcome. She welcomed him in exactly the same way as on all such occasions. She raised her hands in pretended surprise, managed to infuse a delighted look into her eyes and, implanting a wet kiss on both his cheeks, said:
“My! My! My! If it isn’t Phil? Well! Well! Well!”
Her good-natured oval face was wreathed in smiles. She gazed at him with every semblance of rapt attention. He knew that in two or three minutes she would be indulging in confidential remarks about the movements up or down of the stock exchange, for she prided herself on being a keen businesswoman, and the shortcomings of whoever at that particular moment happened to be occupying the top parts of the house.
But this time there was another topic. It was Chan, the Chinaman.
When Bartels asked her what the strange smell in the house was, she gave one of her mysterious little smiles. He knew those little smiles. They indicated that she was about to impart a confidential titbit of information. She said nothing for the moment, however.
For a while she sat by the fire, smiling mysteriously, and washing her hands with invisible soap. At length she said:
“Now if I tell you, you mustn’t laugh. Chan wouldn’t like that. I know what you are, you naughty boy.”
“I won’t laugh,” Bartels said, and thought: Why did I get up so quickly and put the book back? Why?
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
She leant forward and gazed into his face.
“A wonderful thing has happened,” she said. “I am being helped!”
“Helped? Who by?”
“By Chan.”
“Who’s he?”
“Chan is a mandarin. He is a very, very important mandarin who was a high official at the Emperor’s Court in Peking. He tells me that the Emperor did nothing, nothing at all, without his advice. He had to sit all day long at the Emperor’s right hand and advise him on all the legal and financial matters which the Emperor had to decide.”
Bartels looked at her in surprise. He said:
“But how old is he? They haven’t had an emperor in China for ages.”
Aunt Emily smiled tolerantly at him, as though he were naturally too inexperienced to understand these things. She said:
“Chan has been
“You mean he is a spook, or something?”
“He is my guardian spirit, dear. Oh! What a wonderful man he is! He is just the man I wanted, a legal and financial expert; just think of that, dear! I have had the most wonderful help from him. If I told you some of the things he has said, they would surprise you. You would really never believe it all!”
Bartels nodded. He knew it was no good arguing on this subject. He stared at her through his old-fashioned spectacles, and said:
“How did he get in touch with you?”
“It happened in the most wonderful way,” she said in a low voice. “It was little short of a miracle! I was at the greengrocer’s ordering some vegetables when I saw quite an ordinary little woman standing by me looking at me in rather a strange way.”
Bartels said: “Had you seen her before?”
“Never. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Well, you know, she was staring at me in such a strange way that at first I thought she was rather rude. Then, just as I was leaving the shop, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned round and there she was again, and she said, ‘Excuse me, I’m afraid you must think me awfully rude, but I believe I can help you.’ I said, ‘Really, in what way?’ ”
“So she led me to one side and said she had noticed I was carrying the
“She said her name was Mrs Brewer, and that if I would care to come that afternoon for a cup of tea she would get in touch with her Guide-a monk who was on earth in the fifteenth century, oh, such a wonderful man! — and she was sure I would be helped.”
“So you went along?”
“So I went along. And Chan came through, too, dear. He said that from now onwards it was his work to help and advise me.”
“And has he?” Bartels asked.
“Has he indeed!” She clasped her hands together in the way she had when she was enjoying, or had just related, a joke of such richness as to be almost unbearable.
Bartels gathered that the long-deceased Oriental, while not binding himself to give detailed stock exchange tips, would point out that the market was rising or falling, that it was time for courage or caution, and that although his protegee might have her times of bitter trial, she would always win through in the end; because he would be by her side, talking through his good friend Mrs Brewer.
Hence the smell in the house, which was caused by joss sticks, and was aunt Emily’s way of showing her appreciation. She said Chan liked them, and she was luckily able to buy them from Mrs Brewer.
“Does she charge anything when you go there?”
Aunt Emily looked at him with an expression of joy and wonder on her gentle, placid face.
“Nothing! Nothing at all! She says that it is her mission in this world to help others to help themselves. She says she feels it would be wrong to accept money for this sort of thing. Mind you, I usually slip a few shillings into her hand when I go, just to help to pay for the tea, and she is more than satisfied. In fact, at first she didn’t want to take it. I had to press it on her.”
Aunt Emily suddenly clasped her hands together again ecstatically.
“Oh, how silly I am! I haven’t told you the most wonderful part! Chan says-just fancy! — that I should look carefully into the financial affairs, in boyhood, of poor uncle Basil!
“He says I must pay particular attention to the will left by his grandfather. He says everything is not all that it seems to be! Fancy! Do you know, dear, I have always had a funny sort of feeling-mind you, I’m not as psychic as poor aunt Rose was-but I have always had a funny sort of feeling that old uncle Basil should have inherited far more money than he did when his mother died.”
“You don’t mean you are starting a case, too?”
But she was not to be drawn. She just smiled mysteriously, and said: “Ah-ha! Wait and see! Perhaps you’ll be surprised one day. Your old auntie Emily may surprise everybody yet!”
Bartels heard her voice droning on, and suddenly and ferociously wondered why he bothered to come to see her.
There was no emotional contact between the two of them, and never had been since the time when, a lonely and bewildered boy, he had first gone to live in the house.
They had treated him kindly enough, with the vague, detached benevolence of people who were eternally preoccupied with their own affairs. But that was all, and the emotions had coiled up tighter and tighter inside him, and even Beatrice had not held the key to the spring.
But you couldn’t just not come anymore, even though she was old and eccentric; indeed, you had to come just because she was that; so you went on calling once a fortnight, and you listened to her drooling on and on. You
