CHAPTER VIII

Greif's first sensation was that of astonishment, almost amounting to stupefaction. Rex could have desired no more striking fulfilment of a prediction than chance had vouchsafed to him in the present instance.

For he admitted to himself that fortune had favoured him, even though the arrival of the news within twenty-four hours was not in his belief a mere coincidence. The telegram might have come at any other moment and might have found Greif in any other place. As for Greif, he saw at a glance how impossible it was that Rex should have foreseen the incident, or planned the circ.u.mstances in which it occurred. He could not have known that Greif was coming that evening, unless he knew everything, and moreover the despatch was fresh from the office, and twenty minutes had not elapsed between the time of its reception over the wires and of its delivery into Greif's hands.

If the occurrence was strange, its effect upon the young man was at least equally unforeseen. Greif had always despised persons who professed to dabble in the supernatural, and had laughed to scorn all the so-called manifestations of spiritualism, mesmerism, and super-rational force. When he had heard that the great astronomer Zollner had written a book to explain the performances of Slade, the medium, by means of a mathematical theory of a fourth dimension in s.p.a.ce, Greif had believed that the scientist was raving mad. Up to the moment when the telegram had arrived, he had been convinced that Rex was a cheat, who had accidentally learned certain facts connected with the Greifensteins and was attempting to play the magician by making an adroit use of what he knew. When brought suddenly face to face with a phenomenon he could not explain, Greif's reason ceased altogether to perform its functions. The news he had just received was startling, but the bewilderment caused by its arrival at that precise juncture made even Rieseneck's return seem insignificant, in comparison with Rex's power to foretell the announcement of it.

'I do not understand,' said Greif, staring at his companion.

'Nor I, beyond a certain point,' replied the elder man, looking up from his paper.

'How could you know?'

'I did not, until a few minutes before I told you. Of course you thought I did. It is very natural.'

'It could hardly have been a coincidence,' said Greif, almost to himself.

'Hardly.' Rex smiled.

'And yet,' continued Greif, 'I do not see any way of explaining it all.'

'I could show you, but it would need several years to do so.'

'It is not a personal gift?'

'No, it is a science.'

'Of what kind?'

'It is that part of astronomy in which the public does not believe. Do you understand?'

'Astrology?' inquired Greif with a rather foolish and yet incredulous smile. 'I thought that was considered to be nothing but mediaeval ignorance.'

'It is considered so. Whether it is really nothing better than a superst.i.tion you have had an opportunity of judging.'

'But how can you reconcile it with serious science?'

'The vortex reconciles everything--even men who are on the point of quarrelling, when the circ.u.mstances are favourable.'

'But if all this is true, there is no reason why you should not know everything--'

'Not everything. There are cases when it is clear from the first that a question cannot be answered. With better tools, a man might do much more. But one may foretell much, if one will take the trouble. Will you hear more of what I have discovered about you?'

Greif hesitated. His strongly rational bent of mind suggested to him that after all there might be some trickery in the prediction so lately fulfilled, though he was unable to detect it. But if Rex foretold the future Greif felt that he must be influenced, and perhaps made very unhappy by the prophecy, which might in the end prove utterly false.

It would be more prudent, he thought, to wait and lay a trap for the pretended astrologer, by asking him at another time to answer a different question, of which it should be certain that he had no previous knowledge. The conclusion was quite in accordance with Greif's prudent nature, which instinctively distrusted the evidence of its senses beyond a certain point, and desired to prepare its experiments with true German scepticism, leaving nothing to chance and fortifying the conclusion by the purification of the means.

'Thank you,' he said at last. 'I will not hear any more at present.'

'Which means that you will ask me an unforeseen question one of these days to test my strength,' observed Rex with a smile.

Greif laughed rather nervously, for the remark expressed exactly what was pa.s.sing in his mind.

'I confess, I meant to do so. How did you know what I was thinking?'

'By experience. Are not the nine-tenths of every human being precisely like the nine-tenths of the next? The difficulties of life are connected with that tenth which is not alike in any two.'

'Your experience must have been very great.'

'It has been just great enough to teach me to recognise the point at which no experience is of any use whatever.'

'And what is that point?'

'Generally the sweetest in life, and the most dangerous.'

'You speak in riddles, Herr Rex.'

'One man's life is another man's riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth guessing at all.'

'I believe you are a man-hater,' said Greif.

'Why should I be? The world gives me all I ask of it, and if that is not much the fault lies in my scanty imagination. The world is a flower-garden. If you like the flowers, pluck them. Happiness consists in knowing what we want, or in imagining that we want something. To take it is an easy matter.'

'Then everybody ought to be happy.'

'Everybody might be--if everybody would take the consequences. That is the stumbling-block--the lack of an ounce of determination and a drachm of courage.'

'Paradoxes!' exclaimed Greif. 'Life is a more serious matter--'

'Than death? Certainly.' Rex laughed.

'I did not say that,' returned Greif gravely. 'Death is the most serious of all earthly matters. No one can laugh at it.'

'Then I am alone in the world. I laugh at it. Serious? Why, it is the affair of a moment compared with a lifetime of enjoyment!'

'And what may come afterwards does not disturb you?'

'Why should it? Is there any sense in being made miserable by the concoctions of other people's hysterical imagination?'

Greif was silent. He was young enough and simple enough to be shocked by Rex's indifference and unbelief, and yet the man exercised an influence over him which he felt and did not resent. Phrases which would have sounded shallow in the mouth of a Korps student, discussing the immortality of the soul over his twentieth measure of beer, produced a very different impression when they fell from the lips of the sober astronomer with the strange eyes. Greif felt uncomfortable, and yet he knew that he would certainly seek the society of Rex again at no distant date. At present all his ideas were unsettled, and after a moment's silence he rose to go.

'Do not forget your telegram,' said Rex, handing it to him.

'Shall you go to the philosophy lecture to-morrow?' asked Greif as he reached the door.

'Perhaps.'

Rex insisted on showing his guest down the stairs to the outer door, a civility which was almost necessary, considering the darkness of the descent. As Greif went down the narrow street, Rex stood on the threshold, shading the light with his hand and listening to the decreasing echo of the footsteps in the distance. Then he re-entered the house and climbed to his lodging.

'So much for astrology!' he exclaimed, as he sat down opposite the empty chair which Greif had lately occupied. For a long time he did not move, but remained in his place, with half-closed eyes, apparently ruminating upon the past conversation. When he rose at last, he had reached the conclusion that his coming to Schwarzburg was a step upon which he might congratulate himself.