CHAPTER VII
I
It was nearly sixteen o'clock on the same day, the last day of the year,that Mabel went into the little church that stood in the street beneathher house.
The dark was falling softly layer on layer; across the roofs to westwardburned the smouldering fire of the winter sunset, and the interior wasfull of the dying light. She had slept a little in her chair thatafternoon, and had awakened with that strange cleansed sense of spiritand mind that sometimes follows such sleep. She wondered later how shecould have slept at such a time, and above all, how it was that she hadperceived nothing of that cloud of fear and fury that even now wasfalling over town and country alike. She remembered afterwards anunusual busy-ness on the broad tracks beneath her as she had looked outon them from her windows, and an unusual calling of horns and whistles;but she thought nothing of it, and passed down an hour later for ameditation in the church.
She had grown to love the quiet place, and came in often like this tosteady her thoughts and concentrate them on the significance that laybeneath the surface of life--the huge principles upon which all lived,and which so plainly were the true realities. Indeed, such devotion wasbecoming almost recognised among certain classes of people. Addresseswere delivered now and then; little books were being published as guidesto the interior life, curiously resembling the old Catholic books onmental prayer.
She went to-day to her usual seat, sat down, folded her hands, lookedfor a minute or two upon the old stone sanctuary, the white image andthe darkening window. Then she closed her eyes and began to think,according to the method she followed.
First she concentrated her attention on herself, detaching it from allthat was merely external and transitory, withdrawing it inwards ...inwards, until she found that secret spark which, beneath all frailtiesand activities, made her a substantial member of the divine race ofhumankind.
This then was the first step.
The second consisted in an act of the intellect, followed by one of theimagination. All men possessed that spark, she considered.... Then shesent out her powers, sweeping with the eyes of her mind the seethingworld, seeing beneath the light and dark of the two hemispheres, thecountless millions of mankind--children coming into the world, old menleaving it, the mature rejoicing in it and their own strength. Backthrough the ages she looked, through those centuries of crime andblindness, as the race rose through savagery and superstition to aknowledge of themselves; on through the ages yet to come, as generationfollowed generation to some climax whose perfection, she told herself,she could not fully comprehend because she was not of it. Yet, she toldherself again, that climax had already been born; the birthpangs wereover; for had not He come who was the heir of time?...
Then by a third and vivid act she realised the unity of all, the centralfire of which each spark was but a radiation--that vast passionlessdivine being, realising Himself up through these centuries, one yetmany, Him whom men had called God, now no longer unknown, but recognisedas the transcendent total of themselves--Him who now, with the coming ofthe new Saviour, had stirred and awakened and shown Himself as One.
And there she stayed, contemplating the vision of her mind, detachingnow this virtue, now that for particular assimilation, dwelling on herdeficiencies, seeing in the whole the fulfilment of all aspirations, thesum of all for which men had hoped--that Spirit of Peace, so longhindered yet generated too perpetually by the passions of the world,forced into outline and being by the energy of individual lives,realising itself in pulse after pulse, dominant at last, serene,manifest, and triumphant. There she stayed, losing the sense ofindividuality, merging it by a long sustained effort of the will,drinking, as she thought, long breaths of the spirit of life andlove....
Some sound, she supposed afterwards, disturbed her, and she opened hereyes; and there before her lay the quiet pavement, glimmering throughthe dusk, the step of the sanctuary, the rostrum on the right, and thepeaceful space of darkening air above the white Mother-figure andagainst the tracery of the old window. It was here that men hadworshipped Jesus, that blood-stained Man of Sorrow, who had borne, evenon His own confession, not peace but a sword. Yet they had knelt, thoseblind and hopeless Christians.... Ah! the pathos of it all, thedespairing acceptance of any creed that would account for sorrow, thewild worship of any God who had claimed to bear it!
And again came the sound, striking across her peace, though as yet shedid not understand why.
It was nearer now; and she turned in astonishment to look down the duskynave.
It was from without that the sound had come, that strange murmur, thatrose and fell again as she listened.
She stood up, her heart quickening a little--only once before had sheheard such a sound, once before, in a square, where men raged about apoint beneath a platform....
She stepped swiftly out of her seat, passed down the aisle, drew backthe curtains beneath the west window, lifted the latch and stepped out.
* * * * *
The street, from where she looked over the railings that barred theentrance to the church, seemed unusually empty and dark. To right andleft stretched the houses, overhead the darkening sky was flushed withrose; but it seemed as if the public lights had been forgotten. Therewas not a living being to be seen.
She had put her hand on the latch of the gate, to open it and go out,when a sudden patter of footsteps made her hesitate; and the nextinstant a child appeared panting, breathless and terrified, running withher hands before her.
"They're coming, they're coming," sobbed the child, seeing the facelooking at her. Then she clung to the bars, staring over her shoulder.
Mabel lifted the latch in an instant; the child sprang in, ran to thedoor and beat against it, then turning, seized her dress and coweredagainst her. Mabel shut the gate.
"There, there," she said. "Who is it? Who are coming?"
But the child hid her face, drawing at the kindly skirts; and the nextmoment came the roar of voices and the trampling of footsteps.
* * * * *
It was not more than a few seconds before the heralds of that grimprocession came past. First came a flying squadron of children,laughing, terrified, fascinated, screaming, turning their heads as theyran, with a dog or two yelping among them, and a few women driftingsideways along the pavements. A face of a man, Mabel saw as she glancedin terror upwards, had appeared at the windows opposite, pale andeager--some invalid no doubt dragging himself to see. One group--awell-dressed man in grey, a couple of women carrying babies, asolemn-faced boy--halted immediately before her on the other side of therailings, all talking, none listening, and these too turned their facesto the road on the left, up which every instant the clamour andtrampling grew. Yet she could not ask. Her lips moved; but no sound camefrom them. She was one incarnate apprehension. Across her intense fixitymoved pictures of no importance of Oliver as he had been at breakfast,of her own bedroom with its softened paper, of the dark sanctuary andthe white figure on which she had looked just now.
They were coming thicker now; a troop of young men with their armslinked swayed into sight, all talking or crying aloud, nonelistening--all across the roadway, and behind them surged the crowd,like a wave in a stone-fenced channel, male scarcely distinguishablefrom female in that pack of faces, and under that sky that grew darkerevery instant. Except for the noise, which Mabel now hardly noticed, sothick and incessant it was, so complete her concentration in the senseof sight--except for that, it might have been, from its suddenness andoverwhelming force, some mob of phantoms trooping on a sudden out ofsome vista of the spiritual world visible across an open space, andabout to vanish again in obscurity. That empty street was full now onthis side and that so far as she could see; the young men weregone--running or walking she hardly knew--round the corner to the right,and the entire space was one stream of heads and faces, pressing sofiercely that the group at the railings were detached like weeds anddrifted too, sideways, clutching at the bars, and swept away too andvanished. And all the while the child tugge
d and tore at her skirts.
Certain things began to appear now above the heads of the crowd--objectsshe could not distinguish in the failing light--poles, and fantasticshapes, fragments of stuff resembling banners, moving as if alive,turning from side to side, borne from beneath.
Faces, distorted with passion, looked at her from time to time as themoving show went past, open mouths cried at her; but she hardly sawthem. She was watching those strange emblems, straining her eyes throughthe dusk, striving to distinguish the battered broken shapes,half-guessing, yet afraid to guess.
Then, on a sudden, from the hidden lamps beneath the eaves, light leapedinto being--that strong, sweet, familiar light, generated by the greatengines underground that, in the passion of that catastrophic day, allmen had forgotten; and in a moment all changed from a mob of phantomsand shapes into a pitiless reality of life and death.
Before her moved a great rood, with a figure upon it, of which one armhung from the nailed hand, swinging as it went; an embroidery streamedbehind with the swiftness of the motion.
And next after it came the naked body of a child, impaled, white andruddy, the head fallen upon the breast, and the arms, too, dangling andturning.
And next the figure of a man, hanging by the neck, dressed, it seemed,in a kind of black gown and cape, with its black-capped head twistingfrom the twisting rope.