Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [8]
Kreiner’s companion was an Indian woman, a Miss Kapoor, very becoming in her national dress. She hadn’t the red mark on her forehead of the Hindu, but on the other hand, her head was uncovered, so she wasn’t Muslim. Perhaps a convert – her English, certainly, was flawless when she bothered to say anything, but she seemed shy. She was smiling politely at an earnest, puffy-haired young man in a brown suit, William somebody or other, who had introduced himself to Chiltern as a poet. He was chattering on at her – probably reciting some of his no doubt ghastly poetry. Kreiner really ought to come to her rescue, but he was sitting like something stuffed. With another inward sigh, Chiltern prepared to do the duty himself, but was spared when Lettice Ainsley swooped down on the two of them. Not, he reflected, that she was a great improvement.
Still – his gaze shifted to the porcelain coal-fireplace where two women sat on a small velvet-covered settee – she was preferable to the formidable Helen Oglesby, a stern-looking matron with an incisive and unforgiving eye who had dragged along her niece, Phylemeda. The latter was a giggly young woman who seemed disappointed in the evening’s offering of eligible male company, though she kept surreptitiously eying the man who sat in the armchair opposite Chiltern – a handsome, if rather arty-looking, fellow with the prosaic name of Dr John Smith. Chiltern hadn’t expected him to have any brains, but he’d turned out to be quite interesting. He was engaged now in assisting their hostess, Mrs Hemming, with the sherry decanter. Chiltern declined another glass with a gesture; the evening was likely to be trying enough without his being full of cheap sherry.
‘So,’ Smith continued when Mrs Hemming moved on to her other guests, ‘you expect this evening to be a fraud?’ His tone wasn’t cynical, merely curious.
‘ “Expect” is perhaps putting it too strongly,’ Chiltern objected. ‘But it is the usual thing.’
‘Yet you’re not a professional debunker.’
‘No. I’m not knowledgeable about sleight-of‐hand. I may believe a mediumistic effect is rubbish, but I can’t prove it. Anyway, it’s none of my business if people want to comfort themselves with nonsense. It’s no worse than religion.’
‘A freethinker,’ smiled Smith.
Chiltern shifted uncomfortably. ‘That sounds a bit grand. A seeker, if you will.’
‘Then you hope to find something that isn’t a fake?’
‘I believe,’ said Chiltern seriously – amazing how easy it was to talk to the man; something about his eyes, a pale dreamy tint Chiltern had never seen in the human eye before – ‘that we’d be fools to say that here, at the end of the nineteenth century, we’ve suddenly worked out everything about the way the world functions. Have you read some of the work in physics coming out of Germany? Or Charcot’s accounts of hypnotism and hysteria? Those open completely new avenues for explorations of the mind.’
‘I’ve studied Charcot.’
‘Then you see. Our smug foundations of certainty are being undermined from every quarter.’
‘And you welcome that? Most people are disturbed at the idea of the destruction of the world they know.’
‘Well,’ Chiltern said shortly, taking a cigarette from a box on the table, ‘it all depends on what that world is, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, of course,’ his companion agreed soberly. ‘You’re an alienist, I believe you said. You must see a great deal of suffering.’
Chiltern glanced at him with respect. Most people who commented on his profession made remarks about how many queer or funny or frightening things he must see, as if the mad, having lost their selves, had lost their ability to feel as well. ‘More than is compatible with a just God,’ he said, lighting the cigarette. He offered the box to Smith, who shook his head. ‘More than should