“Don’t give them back,” he moaned, “don’t shut them up! they’re breath, they’re everything, they’re me! Don’t keep them in a box—unless I keep it! Give them to me! You don’t want them. You don’t care for their life, you’ve got all the life you want. I tell you they’re like woman, they’re more than woman: who ever saw a woman quiver like that? quiver and be so still? I want to grow to them, don’t take them away. I haven’t asked you much, I’ll do anything you want. Tell me someone to kill. I’ll give you his blood for these stones. I’ll give you my blood for them—only let me love them a little, let me hold them while you kill me. O they’ll kill me themselves, they’re so merciless. Can’t you feel them? Can’t you feel them melting into you? Or is it that I’m melting? I … I …” His voice choked with his passion and stopped.
Considine leant over him. “Now, Mottreux, now,” he said, “remember the end of the experiment. Be master of love, be master of death! Change delight that is agony into that agony that is delight. Not for possession, not for yourself, achieve and transmute desire.” Standing behind him he pressed his hands on the other’s shoulders, till Mottreux crouched under the weight. “Not for a dream like the poor wretch who died but for the power and glory of life, for the marriage of death and love, and for the dominion that comes from them. Mottreux, Mottreux! you that live to beauty, die to beauty!”
But Mottreux, as the pressure relaxed, sprang to his feet and leant half over the table with a snarl.
“They are my life,” he said, “who touches them touches me.”
“Remember those who have failed on the threshold of achievement,” Considine answered. “You seek a deeper thing than these stones hold—you seek the mastery of death. Destroy them then, and enter farther into the chambers of death. But if you touch one to keep or to destroy, for greed or desire, or lest others should gain, you are lost, Mottreux. If you possess you are lost.”
“It’s not true,” the tormented creature exclaimed, and went on hurriedly. “Don’t you possess—money and houses and lands? Don’t you say that a man can grow by the ecstasy which the things he possesses give him? a miser by gold, and a lover by woman?”
“If the chance of the world throws things into his hands, let him take them,” Considine answered; “if it tears them from him let him forsake them. It need make no difference to him. As for me, I use what I have for the purpose of the schools. But if it were all caught away to-morrow what change would it cause in me? The man who prefers possession to abandonment is lost. You’ve come far, Mottreux, by experience of hunting and war; you’ve grown and thriven on that rapture. Thrive now on this; all this pain is but your power seeking its proper end.”
“Nielsen sought it and he’s dead,” the other cried out. “It can’t be done; it’s wilder than all dreams. Haven’t others in Uganda and Nigeria tried it and failed?”
“And Jersey and London,” Considine said. “More than you’ll ever know. Will you disbelieve because a million have failed? One shall succeed and others and their children shall have it in their blood. Leave Nielsen; leave all. Leave this.”
He moved to face the other and meeting his eyes held them with so strong a power that Mottreux turned his own eyes away.
But he moaned desperately, “I can’t—not this. Anything else—not this.”
“Are you a fool?” Considine said, “it’s always anything else, and it’s always this. How will you die indeed if you daren’t die now? There’s not a man in all this world who doesn’t have to relinquish; it’s given to us to do it willingly and make our profit from it. Strike and live in the wound.”
“But you won’t give them back?” Mottreux cried. “At least keep them yourself; don’t give them away.”
“Certainly I shall give them,” Considine answered, “for it’s better that they should serve a myth than a man, and if I were to keep them now I should take the kingdom of man away from you——”
As he paused, there was a sharp knock at the door. Considine thrust Mottreux round so that the tormented face was hidden, and cried a word over his shoulder. Vereker came into the room. “Sir, the message is here,” he said.
“I’ll come,” Considine answered, and as Vereker went out he gathered the jewels in his hands and poured them back into the case. Mottreux leaned against the table; he could not speak; he gazed as the traveller whose camel has just fallen might stare after the vanished mirage or as a young boy might when the beloved of his heart gives her sacred hand into another’s charge. Considine locked the case, dropped it back on the table, slipped his hand into Mottreux’s arm, and drew him from the room.
Meanwhile the three guests, centrifugally repulsed by the very ardour which united them, remained for some time in the one room. They were aware, as they sat there, of increased movement in the house; new voices came to them, and the occasional sound of cars arriving or departing. The expectancy of crisis was heightened, and Caithness who was the most open to external impressions, was the first to give way. Ezekiel still sat, lost in meditation on antique words, by the fireplace; brooding over the manner in which the High and Holy One had in the secret story of Joseph or of David, in the hidden sayings of Ruth or Esther, signified the return of Israel to His pardon. Roger, concerned with other texts, sought to bring into his memory of them the emotion awakened by the sight he had endured; he attempted to realize the august periods of time and space which exist in and are measured by the mastery of poetry. Lines came to him from a distance, but it was not exterior distance; it was himself whose leagues lay between himself and their origin, and all that space of self was no longer void but tremulous with unapprehended life. He had always, it seemed, been too close to them; he understood how small his feeble little understanding was. They rose from an abyss—they had always said so—“the mind’s abyss”—“that awful Power rose from the mind’s abyss”—his mind’s abyss—it would lead him into the abyss—it would define the abyss for him—the powers that inhabited it were his powers——O how little, how little, did the most ardent reader know what mysteries lay in “the mystery of words”——
There darkness makes abode, and all the host
Of shadowy things work endless changes; there
As in a mansion like their proper home—
he wondered for a fantastic instant if it were this house which was indeed their home.
But Caithness’s mind was not on such exploration. The nature of his intellect and the necessities of his office had directed his attention always not towards things in themselves but towards things in immediate action. He defined men by morality; it was perhaps inevitable that he should define God in the same way. The most difficult texts for him to explain away had always been those which obscurely hint at the origin of evil itself in the Unnameable, “the lying spirit” of Zedekiah, the dark question of Isaiah—“Shall there be evil in the city and I the Lord have not done it?” He was always trying to avoid Dualism, and falling back on the statement that Omniscience might permit what it did not and could not originate, yet other origin (outside Omniscience) there be none. It is true he always added that it was a mystery, but a safer line was to insist that good and evil were facts, whatever the explanation was. True as this might be, it had the slight disadvantage that he saw everything in terms of his own good and evil, and so imperceptibly to resist evil rather than to follow good became the chief concern of his exhortations. So perhaps the great energies are wasted; so perhaps even evil is not sufficiently resisted. His mind now was full of Inkamasi’s defiance; his own pet miracle seemed to justify him, and he thought of himself in relation to the king as the chief champion of Christendom against Antichrist. It was also a little annoying to be treated as if he were in an elementary stage of his own religion, and a personal rancour unconsciously reinforced the devotion of his soul to its hypothesis.
He went out of the room, intending to go back to the Zulu, and saw that the house was indeed more populated than it had been. He saw several new faces in the hall; there were two
or three officers in a strange dark-green uniform. One man had a face like an Arab; there was another who might be an Italian. He heard a voice say “Feisul Pasha,” and saw a third cross the hall from the front door. He turned abruptly, ran up the stairs, and on the first landing met Mottreux.
The colonel was coming slowly along; his face was pale and wrenched. As he saw Caithness he paused, and the priest instinctively stood still also. So for a few moments they waited, duellists uncertain of what was to come. Mottreux said at last—as if it were not what he meant: “You’re going to the king?”
“And if so?” Caithness asked. Something in Mottreux’s voice puzzled him. It seemed to wish to delay him; it hesitated; he could have believed that it inquired about something which had not been mentioned.
Mottreux said abruptly: “I suppose you think we’re all wrong?”
Caithness very shortly said he did, but the other did not step away. He added: “I suppose you—want us to fail?”
Caithness, again shortly, agreed. Mottreux came close up to him, looked round, began to whisper, and was suddenly taken by a spasmodic shudder. He caught the priest’s arm and then let it go sharply, as if he had touched something hateful. He said in a low voice, “If one could …” and his voice died away.
In the tone of a director of souls Caithness said: “Could?”
“If one could—make peace,” Mottreux whispered. “Would there—would there be room for a man who could make peace?”
He was close up against Caithness, and the priest, feeling his agitation and shaken by it, dropped his voice to an equal whisper, “But how can—we shan’t take his terms.”
Mottreux said, “But without his terms?”
“How can you make peace without him?” Caithness asked.
“He isn’t human,” Mottreux jerked out. “If … if one caught a mad ape.…”
The truth flashed into Caithness’s mind—the possible truth, and the possibility possessed him. In this strange house, amid strange inhabitants, had come the strangest whisper of all, a whisper of antagonism in the very heart of the enemy. His brain ran before him, forgetting everything but this impossible chance. He leaned a little closer yet, and said, “If you can’t cage it——”
Mottreux answered, “You know the Prime Minister?”
“My friend does,” Caithness said.
“If the ape were chained and caged?” Mottreux said. “If he were quite helpless?”
“If one were very sure,” Caithness said, and dared not stop to ask what he meant.
There was an almost breathless stillness, then Mottreux said again, “He’s not human; he’s monstrous. He robs us of everything—of our souls!”
“He robs you of everything, of your souls most of all,” the priest said, not knowing after what mingled mass of colour the other’s spirit panted. Mottreux’s face took on a sudden cunning, as if he plunged that secret deeper into his heart and veiled it there more securely. He said, “If anything should happen——”
“It would be a fortunate thing for the world,” the priest said. “But,” he added, “that’s in the hands of God.”
“Aye—God,” the other answered. “But he behaves like God. If anything happened, would your friend——”
Caithness paused. He thought of Sir Bernard, and ironically with the thought there came the memory of his own visit to London, of his talk with the Archbishop, of his insistence that the Church must not use the secular arm. Yes—but he wasn’t then in this house, so close against this mad dreamer; he hadn’t seen the African horde dancing round the upright figure whom it worshipped, he hadn’t heard of this blasphemy of the conquest of death. Never as an ordinary rule—never but when—never but, for this once, now—never afterwards, for this couldn’t happen twice. And even now it wasn’t he or his friends or the Church; it was the man’s own follower. And the Zulu Christian would be saved from captivity, and Roger from delusion, and men from a lie. Now—just now—if this whisperer so close to him chose.…
“Anyone who saved England,” he said, “anyone who did would be a friend to all men.”
“You’d see that he was safe?” Mottreux urged. “You’d speak to Suydler? you’d keep me secret till it was right to have it known?”
“Of course,” Caithness answered. “You should be with me till all was agreed; it would be easy.…”
There was a voice in the hall below; a door opened and shut. Someone came to the foot of the stairs. Mottreux nodded and stepped away, breathing only “Be ready then. I can’t tell when it may be.” He disappeared down the staircase, and Caithness after a few moments went slowly on to join the king.
Chapter Thirteen
THE MEETING OF THE ADEPTS
It was already dark. The sea was lost, and the drive in front of the house. Roger was alone, for Caithness had not returned from the king, and Rosenberg, though it was but late afternoon, had with a few muttered words gone back to his own room. No-one of the others had come in. Roger had read a little in one or other of the books scattered about—they were mostly what are called the “classics” of various times and languages. They were all in “privately printed” editions, exquisitely done with types he did not recognize and bindings whose colours were strange and beautiful combinations. There was one volume of the fragments of Sappho, another of the Song of Solomon, an Æschylus, a Gallic War, a Macbeth; there were one or two Chinese texts, and one or two which Roger supposed must be African—at least, the characters were altogether strange to him. There was a manuscript book, half filled with delicate mysterious writing, also in strange characters. He had read in some and looked at others; he had tried to search in them for the power which reposed there, and of which those Greek or English or unknown characters were sacramental symbols. And when he ceased and for a while half abandoned the search he was aware that he did not abandon it, as so often before, to return to an outer world of things different from the secret paths he had been following. Sometimes when he had been reading at home he had looked up to feel the rooms, the furniture—tolerable and even pleasant as it all was—in some sense alien to the sacred syllables. His own writing-table, comfortable and useful, blinked rather awkwardly at him when he returned from the visit of Satan to Eden or the nightingale in the embalmèd darkness. But here there was no such difficulty or distinction; all was natural. As a result of that most fortunate combination of mental and visible or audible things, the tiredness which often seized him in those moments was absent. For it was never great things in their own medium which wearied him; they—he had always known and now more than ever knew—were strength and refreshment; it was the change from one medium to another, the passing from their clear darkness to the fog of daily experience. But here there was no need to return; all was one.
He walked to the window, and looked out. But he could see nothing except the lights of a car standing in front of the door; he turned back into the room, and after hesitating for a minute or two went across it and out into the hall. There he saw a group of men, gathered round Considine. They were breaking up even while he glanced; each of them went off as on separate business. Considine stood alone. He stretched himself easily, smiled at Roger, and walked towards him.
“All’s done,” he said. “They’ve communicated from Africa. Your people are in touch with mine. I knew they would begin soon.”
Roger, still struggling with a scepticism in political things which he had abandoned in spiritual, said: “It can’t be possible that …”
“It’s certain,” Considine answered. “Suydler—what can Suydler do against us? He won’t trust himself to flog the English on, nor to cheat the Powers that will want to cheat him. South Africa I will leave for fifty years or so; at the end of that time they’ll be begging to come in. Let’s go outside, shall we?”
They went out on to the verandah, and, as the coldness of the evening took them, veils seemed to fall away from Considine. Roger felt himself in the presence of maturity and power beyond his thought, perhaps something of that
power into which he had been experimentally searching. The man by his side threw off the habitual disguise of years and behaviour which he wore; he moved like a “giant form,” and though his eyes, when they rested on Roger, were friendly, their friendliness was tremendous and wise and, as it might have been, archangelic. He walked lightly, pacing the verandah, and seemed not to depend on the floor to support him; Roger felt clumsy and awkward beside him, earth and a child of earth beside earth purified, infused and transmuted.
Considine said: “We shall go to-night. I’ve got one more thing to do here, and there’s time enough for that.”
“You always seem to have time to spare,” Roger answered.
“Why not?” the other asked. “Every second is an infinity, once you can enter it. But man’s mind sits outside its doors moaning, and leaves his activity to run about the world in a fever of excitement. You will leave that presently.”
“How did you set out on this?” Roger asked diffidently. The impetuous angry Roger of London had disappeared; he walked as a child and as a child referred to his adults.
In the darkness Considine smiled. “This morning,” he said, “a girl jilted a boy, and the boy said, ‘Why do I suffer helplessly? This also is I—all this unutterable pain is I, and I grow everywhere through it into myself.’ I could show you the street where it happened—they haven’t yet pulled it down—where the boy said, ‘If this pain were itself power …” So he imagined it as himself and himself as it, and because it was greater than himself he knew that he also was greater than himself, and as old and as strong as he chose. The girl’s dead long ago; she was a pretty baby.”
“But then?” Roger asked.
“Then—a little later—before noon,” the voice answered, “the boy found another girl and loved her. But as that love spread through him he remembered the vastness of his pain and what had seemed to him possible because of it, and he asked himself whether love were not meant for something more than wantonness and child-bearing and the future that closes in death. He taught himself how this also was to charge his knowledge of what man could be, and he poured physical desire and mental passion into his determination of life. Then he was free.”