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Title: Shadows of Ecstasy
Author: Williams, Charles [Charles Walter Stansby]
   (1886-1945)
Date of first publication: 1933
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Victor Gollancz, 1933
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 5 February 2017
Date last updated: 5 February 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1399

This ebook was produced by Delphine Lettau, Stephen Hutcheson,
Mark Akrigg & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






                           SHADOWS OF ECSTASY


                                   by
                            CHARLES WILLIAMS


                                 LONDON
                          VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD
                   14 Henrietta Street Covent Garden
                                  1933

                     _Printed in Great Britain by_
             The Camelot Press Ltd., London and Southampton
              _on paper supplied by_ Spalding & Hodge Ltd.
        _and bound by_ The Leighton-Straker Bookbinding Co. Ltd.




                                CONTENTS


  _Chapter_ I. Encountering Darkness                          _p._      7
  II. Suicide while of Unsound Mind                                    25
  III. The Proclamation of the High Executive                          42
  IV. The Majesty of the King                                          57
  V. The Neophyte of Death                                             86
  VI. The Mass at Lambeth                                             112
  VII. The Opening of Schism                                          136
  VIII. Passing through the Midst of Them                             157
  IX. The Riot and the Raid                                           173
  X. London after the Raid                                            203
  XI. The House by the Sea                                            213
  XII. The Jewels of Messias                                          238
  XIII. The Meeting of the Adepts                                     256
  XIV. Sea-change                                                     278




                               CHAPTER I
                         ENCOUNTERING DARKNESS


Roger Ingram's peroration broke over the silent dining hall: 'He and
such as he are one with the great conquerors, the great scientists, the
great poets; they have all of them cried of the unknown:

      _I will encounter darkness as a bride
  And hug it in mine arms._'

He sat down amid applause, directed not to him but to the subject of his
speech. It was at a dinner given by the Geographical Faculty of the
University of London to a distinguished explorer just back from South
America. The explorer's health had been proposed by the Dean of the
Faculty, and the Professor of Tropical Geography had been intended to
second it. Unfortunately the Professor had gone down with influenza that
very day, and Roger had been hastily made to take his place. The other
geographical professors, though vocationally more suitable, were both
learned and low-voiced, as also were their public addresses. The Dean
had refused to subject his distinguished guests, including the explorer,
to their instructive whispers. Roger might not be a geographer, but he
could make a better speech, and he belonged to the University if to a
different faculty, being Professor of Applied Literature. This was a new
Chair, endowed beneficently by a rich Canadian who desired at once to
benefit the Mother Country and to recall her from the by-ways of pure
art to the highroad of art as related to action. Roger had been invited
from a post in a Northern University to fill the Chair, largely on the
strength of his last book, which was called _Persuasive Serpents:
studies in English Criticism_, and had been read with admiration by
twenty-seven persons and with complete misunderstanding by four hundred
and eighty-two. Its theme, briefly, was that most English critics had at
all times been wholly and entirely wrong in their methods and aims, and
that criticism was an almost undiscovered art, being a final austere
harmony produced by the purification of literature from everything
alien, which must still exist in the subjects of most prose and poetry.
However, the salary of the Chair of Applied Literature had decided him
to give an example of it in his own person, and he had accepted.

He lent an ear, when the toast had been drunk, to his wife's 'Beautiful,
Roger: he loved it', and to Sir Bernard Travers' murmured '_Hug?_'

'I know,' he said; 'you wouldn't hug it. You'd ask it to a light but
good dinner and send it away all pale and comfortable. I was good,
wasn't I, Isabel? A little purple, but pleasing purple. Pleasing purple
for pleased people--that's me after dinner.' He composed himself to
listen.

The explorer, returning thanks, was not indisposed to accept literally
the compliments which had been offered him. He touched on ordinary
lives, on the conditions of ordinary lives, on the ordinary office
clerk, and on the difference between such a man and himself. He painted
a picture of South America in black and scarlet; Roger remarked to his
wife in a whisper that crude scarlet was the worst colour to put beside
rich purple. He enlarged on the heroism of his companions with an
underlying suggestion that it was largely maintained by his own. He made
a joke at the expense of Roger's quotation, saying that he would never
apply 'for a divorce or even a judicial separation from the bride Mr.
Ingram has found me.' Roger gnashed his teeth and smiled back politely,
muttering 'He isn't worth Macaulay and I gave him Shakespeare.' He
would, in short, have been a bore, had he not been himself.

At last he sat down. Sir Bernard, politely applauding, said: 'Roger, why
are the English no good at oratory?'

'Because--to do the fool justice--they prefer to explore,' Roger said.
'You can't be a poet and an orator too: it needs a different kind of
consciousness.'

Sir Bernard left off applauding; he said: 'Roger, why are the English so
good at oratory?'

'No,' Roger said, 'anything in reason, but not that. They aren't, you
know.'

'Need that prevent you finding a reason why they are?' Sir Bernard
asked.

'Certainly not,' Roger answered, 'but it'd prevent you believing it. I
wish I were making all the speeches to-night; I'm going to be bored.
Isabel, shall we go?'

'Rather not,' Isabel said. 'They're going to propose the health of the
guests. I'm a guest. Mr. Nigel Considine will reply. Who's Mr. Nigel
Considine?'

'A rich man, that's all I know,' said her husband. 'He gave a collection
of African images to the anthropological school, and endowed a
lectureship on--what was it?--on _Ritual Transmutations of Energy_. As a
matter of fact, I fancy there was some trouble about it, because he
wanted one man in it and the University wanted another. They didn't know
anything about his man.'

'And what did they know of their own?' Sir Bernard put in.

'They knew he'd been at Birmingham or Leeds or somewhere--all quite
proper,' Roger answered, 'and had written a book on the marriage rites
of the indigenous Caribs or some such people. He wasn't married himself,
and he'd never been a Carib--at least not so far as was known.
Considine's man was a native of Africa, so the Dean was afraid he might
start ritually transmuting energy in the lecture-room.'

'Was Mr. Considine annoyed?' Isabel asked.

'Apparently not, as he's here to-night,' Roger answered. 'Unless he's
going to get his own back now. But I never met him, and never got nearer
to him than his collection of images.' His voice became more serious,
'They were frightfully impressive.'

'The adjective being emphatic or colloquial?' Sir Bernard asked, and was
interrupted by the health of the guests. He was a little startled to
find that he himself was still considered important enough to be
mentioned by name in the speech that proposed it. He had, in fact, been
a distinguished figure in the medical world of his day: he had written a
book on the digestive organs which had become a classic, in spite of the
ironic humour with which he always spoke of it. He had attended the
stomachs of High Personages, and had retired from active life only the
year before, after accepting a knighthood with an equally serious irony.

Mr. Nigel Considine, on behalf of the guests, thanked their hosts. The
chief of those guests, the guest of honour, of honour in actual truth,
had already spoken. The intellectual value of the journey which they had
celebrated was certainly very high, and very valuable to the scientific
knowledge of the world which was so rapidly growing. 'Yet,' the full
voice went on, 'yet, if I hesitated at all at the view which the most
prominent guest to-night took of his own fine achievement'--Roger's eyes
flashed up and down again--'it would have been over one implication which
he seemed to make. He set before us the wonder and terror of those
remote parts of the world which he has been instrumental in helping to
map out. Birds and beasts, trees and flowers, all kinds of non-human
life, he admirably described. But the human life he appeared to regard
as negligible. There is, it seems, nothing for us of Europe to learn
from them, except perhaps how to starve on a few roots or to weave
boughs into a shelter. It may be so. But I think we should not be too
certain of it. He spoke of some of these peoples as being like children;
he will pardon me if I dreamed of an old man wandering among children.
For the children are growing, and the old man is dying. We who are here
to-night are here as the servants and the guests of a great University,
a University of knowledge, scholarship, and intellect. You do well to be
proud of it. But I have wondered whether there may not be colleges and
faculties of other experiences than yours, and whether even now in the
far corners of other continents powers not yours are being brought to
fruition. I have myself been something of a traveller, and every time I
return to England I wonder whether the games of those children do not
hold a more intense life than the talk of your learned men--a more
intense passion for discovery, a greater power of exploration, new
raptures, unknown paths of glorious knowledge; whether you may not yet
sit at the feet of the natives of the Amazon or the Zambesi: whether the
fakirs, the herdsmen, the witch-doctors may not enter the kingdom of man
before you. But, however this may be, it is not----' He turned gracefully
to renewed thanks and compliments, and sat down.

'Dotty,' said Roger, 'but unusual. The transmutation of energy must have
been biting him pretty badly. I suppose all that was a get-back.'

'It sounded awfully thrilling,' Isabel said. 'What did he mean?'

'My good child, how should I know?' her husband asked plaintively. 'The
witch-doctors may. Fancy a witch-doctor entering the kingdom of man
before Sir Bernard! Rude of him. Sir Bernard, what did you think of it?'

Sir Bernard turned thoughtful eyes on Roger. 'I can't remember,' he
said, 'where I've seen your Mr. Considine before.'

'Perhaps you haven't,' Roger answered, 'in which case you naturally
wouldn't remember.'

'O but I have,' Sir Bernard said positively. 'I have; just lately. I
remember the way he curved his fingers. I can't think where.'

'An unknown path of glorious knowledge,' Isabel murmured. 'The Dean of
Geography looks quite annoyed.'

'He's thinking of the other things that are being brought to fruition,'
Roger said, 'all about South America. And of the old man who is dying.
D'you think Considine meant any one special? or just as a whole?'

'I don't think it was very nice of him,' Isabel said. 'People might take
it the wrong way.'

'Well, if you know how to take it the right way...' her husband
protested. 'I suppose he meant something? O heavens, they're beginning
again.'

They were, but also they were approaching the end. The dinner hovered
over the point at which empty chairs begin to appear, and people
misjudge their moment and tiptoe out at the beginning of a speech, and
others reckon the chances of catching their distant friends before they
are gone. At this point every dinner contends with destiny, and if it is
fortunate concludes in a rapid and ecstatic climax; if it is unfortunate
it drags out a lingering death, and enters afterwards a shuddering
oblivion. This dinner was fortunate. The National Anthem implored Deity
on behalf of royalty, and dismissed many incredulous of both. Sir
Bernard accompanied Isabel from the room. Ingram, buttonholed by a
colleague or two, was delayed till most of those present had gone, and
when he reached the cloakroom counter, he found it, but for himself,
deserted. He was waiting a little impatiently for his things when a
voice behind him spoke. 'And with what passion, Mr. Ingram,' it said,
'do you yourself encounter darkness?'

Roger turned and saw Nigel Considine. They had been some distance apart
at the dinner, and on the same side of the same table, so that
Considine's personality had not been in play except through his rather
obscure words. Now, as they stood so near, Roger was surprised to find
himself taken aback by the other's face and bearing. He was not as a
rule easily impressed by those he met; he had far too good an opinion of
himself. But here... He saw a man of apparently about fifty, tall,
well-proportioned, clean-shaven, with a good forehead and a good chin.
But it was neither forehead nor chin that held Ingram; it was the eyes.
He thought of the word 'smouldering,' and almost as quickly cursed
himself for thinking of it; it was such a hateful word, only it was the
most accurate. Something, repressed and controlled but vivid, was living
in them; they corresponded, in their flickering intensity, to a voice
that vibrated with some similar controlled ardour. The word 'darkness'
as it was uttered called to him as it did in the lines he had quoted; he
felt as if he were looking at the thing itself. He began to speak,
stammered on a syllable, and at last said helplessly: 'I? darkness?'

'You spoke of it familiarly,' the other said. 'You used her language.'

Roger pulled himself together; he answered with a slight hostility. 'If
you mean my one Shakespearean quotation----'

'Isn't that just darkness making itself known?' Considine asked. 'Or do
you use apposite quotation merely as a social convenience?'

Roger felt ridiculously helpless, as if a believer accustomed to
infidels were suddenly confronted by a fanatic of his own creed. But the
implied sneer stung him, and he said sharply, 'I don't quote.'

'I believe that--because of your voice,' the other answered. 'You must
forgive me if I was offensive; could I help wondering if you really made
that rapturous cry your own?'

He allowed the attendant to help him on with his coat as he spoke.
Roger's own things lay neglected on the counter, and the other attendant
waited by them. Roger himself was absurdly conscious of the presence of
those two auditors. He had often talked highly in similar circumstances
before, not theatrically certainly but with a sardonic consciousness
that the subservient listeners probably thought him a little mad, with
the slight enjoyment of being too much for them, with an equally slight
but equally definite and continuous despair that words which meant so
much to him meant so little to others. But Considine was speaking
perfectly naturally, only always with that sounding depth of
significance in his voice.

'I'm glad you liked it,' Roger said foolishly.

Considine said nothing at all to this, and Roger became instantly
conscious of the fatuity of the words. 'Rapturous cry'... 'glad you
liked it.' Ass! 'No, really,' he said very hastily, 'I mean... I did
really mean it. I mean I do like poetry. Good God!' he thought to
himself, 'if my classes could hear me now.'

Hatted and gloved, Considine turned to him. 'You are a little afraid of
it, I think,' he said. 'Or else you have spoken your beliefs very
little.'

'Nobody cares about it,' Roger said, 'and I mock at myself, God forgive
me, because there's nothing else to do.'

They were moving together out of the cloakroom.

'There's much else to do,' Considine answered, 'and I think you believe
that; I think you dare encounter darkness.'

He raised his hand in salutation. Isabel was ready waiting with Sir
Bernard, but before he joined them Roger stood still watching Considine
going towards the door, and when at last he came to them he was still
troubled.

'Darling, what's the matter?' Isabel said. 'You're looking very gloomy.'

'Mr. Considine's been talking of the fakirs,' Sir Bernard said, 'and
Roger's wondering if he's one.'

Roger regarded them for a moment and then made an effort to recover
himself. 'I don't mind telling you', he answered, 'that Mr. Considine
has played me entirely off my own stage in my own play, and I didn't
think there was a man living who could do that.'

'Elucidate,' Sir Bernard said.

'I shan't elucidate,' Ingram answered. 'I don't see why I should be the
only fellow to encounter darkness. D'you want a taxi, Sir Bernard?'

Sir Bernard did, and after having parted from the Ingrams and entered
it, he lay back and tried once more to remember where he had seen
Considine. It was quite recently, and yet he had a vague feeling that it
wasn't recently. An idea of yesterday and an idea of many years ago
conflicted in his mind--a man with his hand a little lifted, almost as if
it contained and controlled power, a hand of energy in rest. Perhaps, he
thought, it was the theme of the speeches which had misled him; they had
been listening to talk about distant places, and perhaps his mind had
transferred that distance to time. It must have been yesterday or he
wouldn't remember so clearly. It couldn't have been long ago or
Considine, who was obviously younger than his own sixty odd years, would
have changed. His gesture mightn't have changed, all the same--well, it
didn't matter. As he got out at his Kensington house he reflected that
it would come back, of course; sooner or later the pattern of his
knowledge would bring that little detail to his mind. The intellect
hardly ever failed one eventually, if one fulfilled the conditions it
imposed. But it did perhaps rather ignore the immediate necessities of
ordinary life; in its own pure life it overlooked the 'now and here' of
one's daily wishes. Still, his own was very good to him; with a happy
gratitude to it he came into the library, where he found his son reading
letters.

'Hullo, Philip!' he said. 'Had a good evening? How's Rosamond?'

'Very fit, thanks,' Philip answered. 'Did you have a good time?'

Sir Bernard nodded, and sat down leisurely. 'Roger told us how he liked
poetry,' he said, 'and the explorer told us how he liked himself, and
Mr. Nigel Considine told us how he disliked the University.'

'Not in so many words?' Philip asked.

'Contrapuntal,' Sir Bernard said. 'When you've heard as many speeches as
I have, you'll find that's the only interest in them: the intermingling
of the theme proposed and the theme actual.'

'I can never make out whether Roger's serious,' Philip said. 'He seems
to be getting at one the whole time. Rosamond feels it too.'

Sir Bernard thought it very likely. Rosamond Murchison was Isabel's
sister and Roger's sister-in-law, but only in law. Rosamond privately
felt that Roger was conceited and not quite nice; Roger, less privately,
felt that Rosamond was stuck-up and not quite intelligent. When, as at
present, she was staying with the Ingrams in Hampstead, it was only by
Isabel's embracing sympathy that tolerable relations were maintained.
Sir Bernard almost wished that Philip could have got engaged to someone
else. He was very fond of his son, and he was afraid that the
approaching marriage would make, at the times when he visited them, an
atmosphere in which, but for brief intervals, he would find it
impossible to breathe. Philip's mind by itself was at present earnest
and persevering, if a trifle slow. But Philip's mind surrounded and
closed in by Rosamond's promised, so far as he could see, to become
merely static. He looked over at his son.

'Roger's serious enough,' he said. 'But he still expects to get direct
results instead of indirect. He never realizes that the real result of
anything is always round the corner.'

'What corner?' Philip asked.

'The universal corner', Sir Bernard said, 'around which we are always on
the point of turning--into a street where there are all the numbers
except that of the house we're looking for. Good heavens, I'm becoming
philosophical. That's the result of University dinners.'

'I don't think I quite follow you,' Philip said.

'It doesn't at all matter,' Sir Bernard answered. 'I only meant that I
should like you to believe that Roger's quite serious, and a little
unhappy.'

'Unhappy!' Philip exclaimed. 'Roger!'

'Certainly unhappy,' Sir Bernard said. 'He's fanatic enough to believe
passionately and not sufficiently fanatical to believe that other people
ought to believe. Naturally also, being young, he thinks his own belief
is the only real way of salvation, though he'd deny that if you asked
him. So he's in a continual unsuccessful emotional conflict, and
therefore he's unhappy.'

'But I don't understand,' Philip said. 'Roger never goes to church. What
does he believe in?'

'Poetry,' Sir Bernard answered, and 'O--poetry!' Philip exclaimed; 'I
thought you meant something religious. I don't see why poetry should
make him unhappy.'

'Try living in a world where everyone says to you, quite insincerely, "O
isn't Miss Murchison _charming_!"' his father said drily. 'Or
alternatively, "I can't think what you see in her." And then----'

He was interrupted by the entrance of a third person.

'Hullo, Ian,' he broke off; 'how's the Archbishop?'

Ian Caithness was the vicar of a Yorkshire parish and Philip's
godfather. He was a tall man of about Sir Bernard's age and looked like
an ascetic priest, which was more by good luck than by merit, for he
practised no extreme austerities. But he took life seriously, and (as
often happens) attributed his temperament to his religion. He was
therefore not entirely comfortable with other people of different
temperaments who did the same thing, and a lifelong friendship with Sir
Bernard had probably survived because the other remained delicately
poised in a philosophy outside the Church. As a Christian Sir Bernard
would have probably irritated his friend intolerably; he soothed him as
a--it was difficult to say what; Sir Bernard occasionally alluded to
himself as a neo-Christian, 'meaning,' he said, 'like most neos, one who
takes the advantages without the disadvantages. As Neo-Platonist,
neo-Thomist, and neolithic too, for all I know.' On the rare occasions
when Caithness came to London he always stopped in Kensington; on the
still rarer when Sir Bernard went to Yorkshire he always went to church.

'Rather bothered,' Caithness said in answer to his friend's greeting.
'The Government papers are making capital out of the massacres of the
missions, and demanding expeditions.'

'What massacres?' Philip asked in surprise. 'Being down in Dorset for a
couple of weeks has cut away the papers.'

'There've been a number of simultaneous native risings in the interior
of Africa,' Caithness answered absently, 'and so far as we can hear the
Christian missionaries have been killed. The Archbishop's very anxious
that the Government shan't use that as a reason for military
operations.'

'Why ever not?' Philip said staring.

Caithness made an abrupt gesture with his hand. 'Because it is their
duty, their honour, to die, if necessary,' he said; 'it is a condition
of their calling. Because the martyrs of the Church must not be avenged
by secular arms.'

'A very unusual view for the Church to take,' Sir Bernard murmured.
'Normally.... It's a curious business altogether. I was told this
afternoon that the Khedive has left Cairo for a British warship. Roger's
anthropological idols getting active, I suppose.'

'The pressure on Egypt must be pretty bad, then,' Caithness said. 'Well,
that isn't our business. We can't, of course, object to any steps the
Government think it wise to take in their own interests, so long as they
don't use the missions as a reason. The Archbishop has intimated to the
Societies who sent them out that no material ought to be given to the
papers--photographs or what not.'

'Photographs!' Sir Bernard exclaimed suddenly. 'It was--of course, it
was. My mind would have done it, Ian, but thank you for helping it.' He
got up and went across the room to a drawer in the lower part of one of
the bookcases, whence he returned carrying a number of old yellowish
photographic prints. Out of these as he turned them over he selected
one, and sat down again.

'Of course,' he said. 'I was looking through these a day or two ago:
that was what fidgeted me all the time Considine was telling us about
old men and children. And if that isn't Considine... he's got his
fingers curved in exactly the same way that he had to-night.'

Philip moved round and looked over his father's shoulder. The photograph
showed two men, one of about seventy, the other some twenty years or so
younger, sitting in basket chairs on a lawn with the corner of a
verandah showing behind them. The clothes were late Victorian; the whole
picture was Victorianly idyllic. Philip saw nothing surprising about it.

'Which is your Mr. Considine?' he asked.

'The one on the right,' Sir Bernard answered. 'It's an exact likeness.
When he was speaking tonight he had his head up and his fingers out and
coiled just like that. And he wasn't a day older.'

'Who's the other man?' Philip asked.

'The other man', Sir Bernard answered, leaning back in his chair and
looking thoughtfully at the photograph, 'is my grandfather. My
grandfather died in 1886.'

'Um!' said Philip. 'Then of course it can't be your Mr. Considine. He
looks about fifty there, which would make him over a hundred now. His
father, I suppose.'

'It's the most unusual likeness I ever saw, if it's his father, or his
grandfather, or his great-uncle, or his first, second, third or fourth
cousin,' Sir Bernard protested.

'But it must be,' Philip said. 'You don't suggest that this _is_
Considine, do you?'

'The probabilities against it are heavy,' his father allowed. 'But
aren't the probabilities against two men looking so much alike also
heavy?'

Philip smiled. 'But where one thing's impossible the other must be
true,' he said.

'And which is impossible?' Sir Bernard asked perversely.

'O come,' Philip protested. 'If the other figure here is your
grandfather this photograph must have been taken before 1886. So it's
impossible--or very, very unlikely that the other man is still alive, and
he certainly wouldn't be speaking at a dinner. Is it likely? Do you know
who took the photograph, by the way?'

'I took it myself,' the other said. 'With my own little camera. Given me
on my twelfth birthday. By my grandfather. I was staying with him for
the summer.'

'You don't remember who this other man was?'

Sir Bernard shook his head. 'I remember being very pleased with the
camera. And I remember that various people stayed at the house. And I
photographed every one I could. But what he called himself then I
couldn't say.'

'But if it was Considine then he'd be a hundred or more by now! Did he
look it?'

'If he looked it,' said Sir Bernard, 'I shouldn't be staring at this
photograph. No, Philip, you're right of course. But it's unusual.'

'It must have been,' Philip agreed.

'Though if a man's nerves and stomach were sound,' his father went on,
'and if he kept himself fit, and had no accidents--on my word, _mightn't_
he look fifty when he was really a hundred? Perhaps he's found the
elixir of life in the swamps of the Zambesi.'

Philip felt the conversation was becoming absurd. 'If you take it that
it's his father and that there's a strong family likeness, I don't see
that there's any difficulty,' he said.

'I know,' Sir Bernard answered. 'But I want there to be a difficulty. So
I want that photograph to be a photograph of him and not of his wife's
maiden aunt or whatever you suggested. You needn't look superior. It's
exactly the way most people come to believe in religion. And if most
people think like that, there must be something in it, Cogitatio populi,
cogitatio Dei----, and so forth. O well, I shall go to bed. Perhaps I
shall meet Mr. Considine again one day and be able to ask him.
Good-night, Philip, good-night, Ian. Wake me if the Africans come.'




                               CHAPTER II
                     SUICIDE WHILE OF UNSOUND MIND


Philip was down the next morning before his father or his godfather,
urged by a very strong anxiety to see the papers. Trouble in Africa, as
it happened, was possibly going to affect not merely high national and
political affairs but his own personal arrangements. Africa, of course,
was a large place, and the Christian missions had been established, he
had gathered, somewhere in the centre; he wasn't much disturbed over
them. But what his father had called 'the pressure on Egypt' was another
matter. Philip's own job was engineering, and he had not long before
come to an arrangement with a business company known as 'The North
African Rivers Development Syndicate,' by which he was to go out to
whatever North African Rivers were to be developed as assistant
constructing engineer. His chief, a man named Munro, was already out
there, somewhere in Nigeria, and in a couple of months Philip was to
join him. Meanwhile he was putting in some time at the London offices of
the Syndicate, which was run by two brothers named Stuyvesant. But
though these were the official heads it was generally understood in the
City that the real force behind the company was a much richer man, a
certain Simon Rosenberg, who, among his interests in railways and
periodicals and fisheries and dye-works, in South African diamonds and
Persian oils and Chinese silks, in textiles and cereals and
patent-medicines, rubber and coffee and wool, among all these had cast a
careless eye on African rivers. In that side of the business Philip
wasn't very interested. Sir Bernard had satisfied himself that the
company was as sound as could reasonably be expected, and a year's
work--or perhaps even two years--would give Philip a start in his
profession. Then he would, all being well, come home and marry Rosamond,
and see what jobs were going at home. Munro was a fairly big man and if
Munro gave him a good word....

It was consequently something of a shock to him, when he opened the
paper, to find two huge headlines competing. On the left a three-column
space announced 'Multi-millionaire Found Dead; Rosenberg Shot';
'Terrible Discovery in Rich Man's Library.' On the right a similar space
was filled with: 'Africans Still Advancing'; 'Hordes in Nile Valley';
'Rumours of Trouble in South Africa'; 'French Defeat in Tangier.' Philip
goggled at the thick type, and instinctively tried to read both accounts
at once. He was still immersed when Caithness came in, just preceding
Sir Bernard.

'I say,' Philip cried to them, 'Rosenberg's shot himself.'

'Rosenberg!' Sir Bernard exclaimed. 'Whatever for?'

'It doesn't say,' Philip answered. 'He was found in the study of his
house late last night by the butler, who thought he heard a noise and
went to see.'

'And found he had,' Sir Bernard said. 'Nasty for the butler.' He picked
up his own paper, and opened it so that he and Caithness could look at
it together. But the priest's eyes went first to the columns of African
news, and after his first glance Sir Bernard's followed them. They read
the brief obscure telegrams, the explanatory comments, the geographical
addenda. It seemed that something very unusual was happening in Africa.
To begin with, all communication with the interior had completely
ceased. Telegraphs had ceased to function, railways had been cut, roads
had been blocked. By such roads as had not been blocked there were
emerging against all the outer districts hostile bodies of natives, some
so small as to be less than a raid, some so large as to mean an
invasion, and at that, wherever they appeared, a victorious invasion.
The Egyptian army, which had for some weeks been moving leisurely south
in order to suppress trouble in the south-east, was now retiring in
considerable disorder and even more considerable haste. The French had
'suffered a set-back'; the Spaniards had fallen back towards the coast.
Communications with Kenya, with Nigeria, with Abyssinia, with Zanzibar,
had ceased. Raids had taken place on the English territories in the
South. Air-investigation was being undertaken. The Powers were in touch
and were taking necessary steps.

'But what', Caithness said, 'has happened to the air-investigation of
the last month?'

'It hasn't come back,' Sir Bernard answered. 'I was talking to a man in
the War Office the other night, and he told me that they've sent out
aeroplanes by the score, and hardly any have returned. Some have, I
suppose, but what they reported is being kept dark. Philip, I think the
African Rivers look like being in too much spate for your engineering.'

'But what about Rosenberg?' Philip asked. 'Do you suppose that's what
made him kill himself?'

'Did he kill himself?' Sir Bernard said, turning to the other columns.
'"Butler hears shot... letter for the Coroner... police satisfied.
Financial comment on page 10"; yes, well, we can wait till after
breakfast for that. Curious, I wonder what decided him. Let's just see
whether the Archbishop said anything.'

It appeared that the previous day had been agitated in both Houses. In
the Commons the Prime Minister had announced that forces were being
dispatched immediately to punish the various tribes guilty of the
abominable massacres at the mission stations. Asked by half a dozen
members of the Opposition at once whether he could promise that these
expeditions should not develop into costly Imperialistic wars, and
whether the action taken was by request of the ecclesiastical
authorities, the Prime Minister said that the Archbishop had naturally
deprecated further bloodshed but that he and other ecclesiastical
authorities had recognized the right of the State to protect its
citizens. Asked whether he would undertake that no further territory
would be seized, he said that no annexations would be made except by
mandate from the League of Nations. Asked whether other Governments were
taking action, he said that the House should have all information as
soon as he received it.

This had been in the afternoon. In the evening the Archbishop had asked
the Lord Chancellor for permission to make a statement, and had then
said that--in consultation with such other Bishops as happened to be in
London--he had written at once that morning to the Prime Minister,
definitely stating that the ecclesiastical authorities were entirely
opposed to the dispatch of punitive expeditions, and begging that none
should be sent. The Bishops were of opinion that no secular action
should be taken to avenge the martyrdom of the slaughtered missionaries
and converts, and wished to dissociate themselves from any such action.
A noble and indignant peer--a lately returned Governor-General--asked the
Archbishop whether he realized that natives understood nothing but
force, and whether he meant that war and the use of force was a sin;
whether in short the Archbishop were disloyal or merely stupid. The
Archbishop had referred the noble peer to the theologians for
discussions and determinations of the use of force. The use of force was
an act which was neither good nor evil in itself; the use of force in
circumstances like the present appeared to himself and his colleagues a
breach of Christian principles. Another peer demanded whether, if the
Government were to dispatch punitive expeditions, the Archbishop would
seriously accuse them of acting in an unchristian manner? The Archbishop
said that the noble peer would remember that Christianity assumed a
readiness for martyrdom as a mere preliminary to any serious work, and
that he was sure no noble lord who happened to hear him and was a
Christian would be unwilling to suffer tortures and death without
wishing a moment's pain to his enemies. He apologised to the House for
reminding them of what might be called the first steps in a religion of
which many of his hearers were distinguished professors. The House rose
at nine minutes past seven.

'Dear me,' said Sir Bernard, putting down his paper.

Philip looked up from his own with a faint but perplexed smile. 'Is this
you, sir?' he said to Caithness.

'No', Caithness answered, 'I don't think so. It seems pretty obvious,
after all.'

'I had no idea the Archbishop was so venomous,' Sir Bernard said: 'I
think he certainly must believe in God. Mythology always heightens the
style.'

Caithness said, rather sombrely, 'Of course the Prime Minister will win
in the end.'

'I should think it most likely,' Sir Bernard said. 'What was it Gibbon
said--"all religions are equally useful to the statesman"!--Still, you've
done your best. What do you want to do to-day?'

'I may as well go back to Yorkshire,' Caithness answered doubtfully.
'I've been all the use I can be.'

'O nonsense,' Sir Bernard said. 'Stay a little, Ian; we see precious
little of you anyhow. Stay till the African army lands at Dover, and
then we'll all go to Yorkshire together--you and I, and Philip and
Rosamond, and Roger and Isabel.'

Philip winced. His father's remark struck him as merely being in bad
taste. It was too remote even to be a joke. He said coldly 'I suppose
I'd better go to the office?'

'I think you should,' Sir Bernard assented. 'You'll be perfectly
useless, of course. If it's a case of Africa for the Africans, they'll
want to develop their own rivers, and as the Syndicate depended on
Rosenberg it may not be able to develop itself. But you can find out the
immediate prospects. The inquest will be to-morrow. What about coming to
the inquest?'

'Why, are you going?' Philip asked.

'Certainly I am going,' Sir Bernard answered. 'I met Rosenberg quite a
number of times, and I've always wondered about him. His wife died a
couple of years ago, and I fancy he's been going to pieces ever since.
No, Ian, _not_ because of monogamy; no, Philip, _not_ because of love.
I'm sorry; I apologize to both of you, but it wasn't. It was because
he'd developed a mania for making, for her, the most wonderful
collection of jewels in the world. He had them too--marvellous! Tiaras
and bracelets and necklaces and pendants and earrings and so on. I met
_her_ occasionally--not so often as him, but sometimes, and she looked
not merely like the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars, but like the
other eleven million that Joseph didn't know about. She was a
magnificent creature, tall and rather large and dark, and she carried
them off magnificently. In fact, she was a creation in terms of
jewellery, the New Jerusalem turned upside down so that the foundations
showed. And then she died.'

'Couldn't he have still gone on collecting jewels?' Caithness asked
scornfully.

'Apparently not,' Sir Bernard said mildly. 'He saw them _on_ her, you
see; they existed in relation to her. And when she died they fell
apart--he couldn't find a centre for them. They were useless, and so he
was useless. At least I suspect that's what happened. You didn't see
her, so you won't understand.'

Caithness gave a short laugh. 'A noble aim,' he said.

'Well, it was his,' Sir Bernard remonstrated, still mildly. 'And really,
Ian, if it comes to comparisons, I don't know that it was worse than
collecting poems, like Roger, or events, like me. I might say, or souls
like you, because you do collect souls for the Church just as Rosenberg
collected jewels for his wife, don't you?'

'The Church doesn't die,' Caithness said.

'I know, I know,' Sir Bernard answered. 'But that only means you're more
fortunate than Rosenberg in preferring a hypothesis to a person. At
least, perhaps you are: it's difficult to say. I've a good mind to ask
Roger to come to the inquest too.'

'It seems rather gruesome,' Philip said, hesitating.

'O my dear boy,' Sir Bernard protested, 'don't let's be adjectival.
Here's a rich man shot himself because of a difficulty with life. Is it
really gruesome to want to know what that difficulty is and how much
like the rest of our difficulties it was? But at your age you daren't
trust your own motives, and you're probably right. At mine one has to
trust them or one couldn't enjoy them, and there's not much opportunity
to do anything else.'

Persuaded either by such maxims or from motives of equal potency both
Philip and Roger did actually accompany Sir Bernard the next day, though
Caithness refused. The court was certainly crowded but they managed,
through some diplomatic work by Sir Bernard, to get in. The coroner, a
short hairy official, dealt with everyone in the same sympathetic
manner.

The evidence was brief and explicit. The butler who had found the body
and summoned the police was called. His master (he said) had had one
visitor that evening, a Mr. Considine (Sir Bernard looked at Roger, who
sat up sharply). After Mr. Considine's departure, about twelve, his
master had called him in to witness his signature to a document, and had
then dismissed him. It had been about a quarter of an hour later when he
had thought he heard the sound of a shot in the study. He had gone
there... and so on through the difficult time that followed. The
police described their arrival, their examination. Doctors described the
nature of the wound. Mr. Considine was called.

Sir Bernard lay back in his seat and studied the witness, mentally
comparing him to the photograph. It was absurd that they should be so
much alike, he thought, when they must, of course, be different. He
gazed at him with an inexplicable curiosity that seemed strangely to
become even more vivid when by chance Considine's eyes, passing over the
court, as he moved to the witness-box, met his. Roger was leaning
eagerly forward, and a glance of recognition went between him and
Considine. Philip felt and showed no particular interest.

Considine explained the reason for his visit. He had been on his way
home after a dinner and had passed the deceased's house; on an impulse
he had determined to call, chiefly because he had been for some
time... disturbed... about his state of mind. Deceased had, as
people said, 'lost hold'; he had no hope and no desire. He had lost
interest alike in his business and in his amusements.

'Can you suggest what caused this breakdown?' the coroner interrupted.
'His health--the doctor has told us--was quite good?'

'His health was good,' Considine answered, 'but his health had no
purpose, or rather that purpose had been destroyed. He had made for
himself an image, and that image had been removed. His wife while she
lived had been the centre of that image; the jewels in which he clothed
her completed it. She died; he had no children, and he had not enough
energy to discover some other woman whom he could display in a like
manner. He had externalized in that adorned figure all his power and
possession; it was his visible power, his acknowledged possession. The
jewels themselves, magnificent as they were, were not sufficient. Also I
think there returned on him something of a childish fear; he was
terrified of the destruction that haunts life.'

'You tried to cheer him up?' the coroner said.

Considine paused for a moment. 'I tried,' he said slowly, 'to persuade
him to live by his own power rather than by what could be at best only
properties of it. I tried to persuade him to live from the depth of his
wound rather than to pine away in the pain of it; to make the extent of
his desolation the extent of his kingdom. But I failed.'

'I see--yes,' said the coroner vaguely. 'You thought he needed bringing
out of himself?'

Considine considered again, a longer pause. 'I thought he needed to find
himself,' he said at last, 'and all of which himself was capable. But I
could not work on him.'

'Quite, quite,' said the coroner. 'I'm sure the sympathy of the Court is
with you, Mr. Considine, in your regrets that your efforts were
unavailing. I've no doubt that you did all that you could, but there it
is--if a man won't or can't bestir himself, mere talk won't help him.
Thank you, Mr. Considine.'

'Good heavens!' Sir Bernard said to Roger in a smothered voice, '"mere
talk"! Mere----'

The letter for the coroner was now produced, but carried things little
further. It stated simply that Simon Rosenberg took all responsibility
for the act of suicide, to which he had been driven by the full
realization of the entire worthlessness of human existence. 'We may, I
think,' the coroner interrupted himself to say, 'mark that sentence as
evidence of a very abnormal state of mind.' Unconscious of the lowering
glare which Roger turned on him, he went on: 'There is enclosed with
this brief letter another document which purports to be the deceased's
last will and testament. I have had the opportunity of submitting it to
the deceased's solicitors, Messrs. Patton & Fotheringay, and in order
that you may have all the evidence possible on deceased's state of mind
before you I shall now read it.'

He proceeded to do so. It began normally enough, followed up this
opening with a few legacies to servants, clerks, and acquaintances, and
then in one magnificent clause left the whole of the rest of the estate,
real and personal, shares, jewels, houses, lands, and everything else
from the smallest saltcellar in the farthest shooting-lodge to the
largest folio in the London library, to two second cousins, Ezekiel and
Nehemiah Rosenberg, defined with all necessary exactitude as the
grandchildren of the deceased's grandfather's younger brother Jacob
Rosenberg.

'And I do this,' the strange document ran on, 'because they have
followed in the way of our fathers, and kept the Law of the Lord God of
Israel, and because though I do not know whether there is any such God
to be invoked or any such way to be trodden, yet I know that everything
else is despair. If this wealth belongs to their God let him take it,
and if not let them do what they choose and let it die.' Nigel Considine
and the Grand Rabbi were named as executors, with a hope that though
they had not been consulted they would not refuse to act.

There was a prolonged silence in court. Roger Ingram thought of several
verses in Deuteronomy, a line or two of Milton, and a poem of Mangan's.
Sir Bernard wished he knew Nehemiah and Ezekiel Rosenberg. Philip
thought it was a very peculiar way of making a will. The coroner
proceeded to explain to the jury the difference between felo-de-se and
suicide while of unsound mind, with a definite leaning towards the
second, of which (he suggested) 'despair--to use the word chosen by the
deceased--was, anyhow when carried to such an abnormal extent as the
letter and will together seem to indicate, perhaps in no small measure a
proof.' The jury, after a merely formal consultation, in the rather
uncertain voice of their foreman agreed. The court rose.

On the steps outside, Sir Bernard and Roger instinctively delayed a
little and were rewarded by seeing Considine come out. He was listening
to a round-faced man who was probably either Mr. Patton or Mr.
Fotheringay, but in a moment he noticed Roger, waved to him, and
presently, parting from his companion, came across.

'So, Mr. Ingram,' he said, as he shook hands, 'I didn't expect to see
you here.'

'No,' Roger answered; 'as a matter of fact I came with----' he completed
an explanation with an introduction.

'But, of course I know Sir Bernard's name,' Considine said. 'Isn't it he
who explained the stomach?'

'Temporarily only,' Sir Bernard answered.

Considine shrugged. 'While man needs stomachs,' he said, 'which may not
be for so very much longer. A very ramshackle affair at present, don't
you think?'

'In default of a better', Sir Bernard protested, 'what would you have us
do?'

'But are we in default of a better?' Considine asked. 'Surely we're not
like that poor wretch Rosenberg who couldn't live by his imagination,
but died starved, for all his stomach and his mind.'

'So far', Sir Bernard said, 'both the stomach and the mind seem normally
necessary to man.'

'O so far!' Considine answered, 'and normally! But it's the farther and
the abnormal to which we must look. When men are in love, when they are
in the midst of creating, when they are in a religious flame, what do
they need then either with the stomach or the mind?'

'Those', Sir Bernard said, 'are abnormal states from which they return.'

'More's the pity,' Roger said suddenly. 'It's true, you know. In the
real states of exaltation one doesn't seem to need food.'

'So,' said Considine, smiling at him. 'The poets have taught you
something, Mr. Ingram.'

'_But_ one returns,' Sir Bernard protested plaintively, 'and then one
does need food. And reason,' he added, almost as an afterthought.

Considine was looking at Roger. 'Will _you_ say that one must?' he asked
in a lower voice; and 'O how the devil do I know?' Roger said
impatiently. 'I say that one does, but I daren't say that one must. And
it's folly either way.'

'Don't believe it,' Considine answered, his voice low and vibrating.
'There's more to it than that.'

The words left a silence behind them for a moment, as if they were a
summons. Roger kicked the pavement. Philip waited patiently. Presently
Sir Bernard said, 'Do you know the legatees by any chance, Mr.
Considine?'

Considine's eyes glowed. 'Now there,' he said, 'if you like irony you
have it. Yes, I know them--at least I know of them. I knew the family
very well once. They are strict Jews, living in London because they are
too poor to return to Jerusalem. They live in London and they abominate
the Gentiles of London. They are fanatically--insanely, you would
say--devoted to the tradition of Israel. They live, almost without food,
Sir Bernard, studying the Law and nourished by the Law. They are the
children of a second birth indeed, and they exist in the other life to
which they were born. What do you think they will do with Simon
Rosenberg's fortune and Simon Rosenberg's jewels?'

'They could, I suppose, refuse it,' Sir Bernard said.

'Couldn't they use it to improve conditions in Palestine?' Philip asked,
willing to appear interested.

Considine looked at Roger, who said, 'I don't know the tradition of
Israel. Are jewels and fortunes any use to it?'

'Or will they think so?' Considine answered. 'I do not know. But it was
a Jew who saw the foundations of the Holy City splendid with a beauty
for which the names of jewels were the only comparison. We think of
jewels chiefly as wealth, but I doubt if the John of the Apocalypse did,
and I doubt if the Rosenbergs will. Perhaps he saw them as mirrors and
shells of original colour. However, I suppose, as one of the executors,
it will be my business to find out soon.'

'It's extraordinarily interesting,' Sir Bernard said. 'Do, my dear Mr.
Considine, let us know. Come and dine with me one day. I've something
else I want to ask you.'

On the point of making his farewells Considine paused.

'Something you want to ask _me_?' he said.

'A mere nothing,' Sir Bernard answered. 'I should like to know what
relation you are to a photograph of you that I took fifty years ago.'

Roger stared. Philip moved uneasily; his father did put things in the
most ridiculous way.

'A photograph of me,' Considine repeated softly, 'that you took fifty
years ago...?'

'I do beg your pardon,' Sir Bernard said. 'But that's what it looks
like, though (unless you've improved the stomach out of all knowledge)
it probably isn't. I wouldn't have bothered you if other subjects for
discussion--jewels, digestion, and the tradition of Israel--hadn't cropped
up. But unless you take that unfortunate coroner's view of "mere talk",
do be kind and come.'

Considine smiled brilliantly. 'I do a little,' he said, 'but I allow it
is a purification, a ritual and actual purification of the energies. I'm
rather uncertain how much longer I shall be in England for the present,
but if it's at all possible... Will you write or telephone or
something in a day or two? My address is 29, Rutherford Gardens,
Hampstead.'

'Hallo,' Roger said, 'we're up that way. My embalming workshop's there,'
he added sardonically.

Sir Bernard turned his head, a little surprised. Roger caught his eyes
and nodded towards Considine.

'_He_ knows,' he said. 'I embalm poetry there--with the most popular and
best-smelling unguents and so on, but I embalm it all right. I then
exhibit the embalmed body to visitors at so much a head. They like it
much better than the live thing, and I live by it, so I suppose it's all
right. No doubt the embalmers of Pharaoh were pleasant enough creatures.
They weren't called to any nonsense of following a pillar of fire
between the piled waters of the Nile.'

'It's burning in you now,' Considine said, 'and you are on the threshold
of a doorway that the Angel of Death went in--not yours.'

'If I could believe it----' Roger said. 'Ask me to dine too, Sir Bernard.
I want to ask Mr. Considine questions about _Paradise Regained_.'




                              CHAPTER III
                 THE PROCLAMATION OF THE HIGH EXECUTIVE


By the time that Philip arrived home that evening the wildest rumours
about Africa were being spread. At the office things had been during the
last few days as bad as he had feared they might be, and he had been as
useless as Sir Bernard had expected. Nothing had been heard from or of
Munro for some weeks. Rosenberg's suicide and, even more distressingly,
his will, had startled and bothered the Stuyvesants to an indescribable
degree. The motive power behind them, the object of motion in front, had
both disappeared in blood; and no-one had the least idea what would
happen. The Rosenberg legatees had been traced by mid-day; they were
living in small upper rooms in Houndsditch, served by an old woman of
their race. Extraordinary efforts had been made to procure interviews
with them; unsuccessfully, since they merely refused to speak. There
were, certainly, in the afternoon papers, sketches of them, but that was
hardly the same thing. Even Governments were by way of being interested;
high personages gazed at the reproductions dubiously. The two brothers
looked as if they might be incapable of realizing the responsibilities
of their present position. Two old, bearded, and violent faces stared
out at England from journalistic pages. England stared back at them, and
for the most part, quite reasonably, abandoned its interest. The Chief
Rabbi also refused to be interviewed. Mr. Considine was interviewed,
very unsatisfactorily, since he in effect refused to foreshadow,
forestall, or foretell anybody's intention. Philip read certainly that
Mr. Considine had said that he was sure that there was no need for any
public anxiety, that good sense (a quality which the Jews, he was
reported to have declared, possessed to a marked degree) would
distinguish the actions of the Rosenberg brothers, and that in the
present critical times all minor racial prejudices must be set aside. By
which Philip understood him to mean that racial prejudice in regard to
Africa must swallow up the rest, as the serpent of Moses swallowed the
others. He didn't feel quite convinced that Considine who on the steps
of the coroner's court had exclaimed to Roger that a pillar of fire was
burning in him had said all that. In the other columns of the papers
racial prejudice was getting a firm hold.

There were articles by anthropologists, with diagrams of negro heads;
articles by explorers, with photographs of kraals; articles by
statisticians, with columns of figures; articles by historians, with
reproductions of paintings of Vasco da Gama, Thotmes III, Chaka, and
others; articles by bishops and famous preachers on missions, with
photographs of Christian negroes, converted and clothed; articles by
politicians on the balance of power in Africa with maps curiously
tinted; articles by military experts on possible strategy, with maps
lined and blobbed. There were letters from peace champions and war
invalids. There were, in short, all the signs of the interest which the
public was believed to feel. Philip at last abandoned them and fell back
on consideration.

Except for that one remark on the pillar of fire, and the mysterious
allusion to the foundations of the New Jerusalem, he hadn't noticed
anything special in Considine's conversation, but those two did rather
stand out. If Considine had not obviously been a... well, a
gentleman, Philip would have suspected him of belonging to the Salvation
Army. Of course, he had been talking to Roger, and Roger's own language
was apt to be unbalanced. There were moments when Philip, what with his
father and Roger, and even his godfather, with his refusal to allow
martyrs to be avenged, felt that he was surrounded by eccentrics. He
thought with relief and delight of Rosamond; Rosamond wasn't eccentric.
She was so right, so peaceful, so beautifully the thing. She was a kind
of centre, and all the others vibrated in peculiar poses on the
circumference. She herself had no circumference, Philip thought,
ignorant of how closely he was striving after St. Augustine's
definition: 'God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere and His
circumference nowhere.' She was small and dainty and she moved, as it
were, in little pounces. And yet she was so strong; it was as if
strength pretended to be weak. No, it wasn't that, for after all, she
did need protection--his protection; she was strong enough to need no
other and weak enough to need his. Philip took that decision quite
seriously; in the economy of the universe he was not perhaps finally
wrong. For he was very innocent in love, and the awful paradoxes which
exist in that high passion and are an outrage to rational argument were
natural to him rather because of his innocence than because of his
egotism. That innocence might turn to egotism; that candid belief of his
heart be hardened by his pride and turned from a simplicity to a
stupidity. But at the moment he was very much in love, and in love he
had not yet reached an age capable of sin. He was still a child of the
new birth; maturity of intellect as of morals was far distant.

Such a childhood he owed partly, surprised as he would have been to hear
it, to his father. The placid irony of Sir Bernard's contemplation of
life distilled itself over the wisdom of this world equally with that of
every other. Dante was to him no more ridiculous than Voltaire;
disillusion was as much an illusion as illusion itself. A thing that
seemed had at least the truth of its seeming. Sir Bernard's mind refused
to allow it more but it also refused to allow it less. It was for each
man to determine how urgent the truth of each seeming was. Philip had
not been discouraged from accepting the seemings of his own world, of
school, University, and business; but he had been subtly encouraged to
give free play to his own individual phenomena. A thing might not be
true because it appeared so to him, but it was no less likely to be true
because everyone else denied it. The eyes of Rosamond might or might not
hold the secret origin of day and night, but if they apparently did then
they apparently did, and it would be silly to deny it and equally silly
not to relish it. Sir Bernard had never said this in so many words. But
the atmosphere which he created was one in which such spiritual truths
could thrive unhindered, and their growth depended upon their own
instinctive strength.

Serenely unconscious of what he owed, Philip felt his own serious growth
wiser than that cool air of gracious scepticism. He thought his passion
was hidden from it as from the sun, when in fact it throve in it as in
the soft rains. He said nothing of Rosamond's eyes--which certainly were
not, to Sir Bernard, anything remarkable--to his father, and supposed
that the unformulated gospel they taught him was also a secret. He said
nothing of them to anyone indeed, not having, nor caring to have, that
tendency towards talk which marked his future brother-in-law. Roger, out
of sheer interest, had given him every opportunity, and was rather
disappointed that not one was taken. 'I'm sure I talked enough about
you,' he complained to Isabel.

'You're more interested in metaphysics,' she said. 'Philip's just a
believer; you're a theologian.'

'I've a more complex matter to study,' he said. 'If I were a poet I
would make the Matter of Isabel equal to the Matter of France and the
Matter of Britain.'

'My honour wars with my credulity,' she answered. 'I'm not really more
interesting than Rosamond but I like to think I am.'

'I don't think Sir Bernard approves of Rosamond,' Roger said
meditatively. 'Why not, do you suppose? Can he really not think her good
enough? Does he secretly adore Philip? My son, my son, and all that?'

Isabel was silent for a minute; then she said: 'I'm awfully tempted to
tell you, Roger, but perhaps I won't. I do think I know what he feels,
but it'd be rather hard on Rosamond to talk of it, wouldn't it?'

'Devil!' said Roger. 'You'd see your husband die of an insatiable
curiosity rather than sully your integrity by giving him a crust of
fact. You're as bad as the other Isabella--the one in _Measure for
Measure_; you're avaricious of chastity. I don't want to be nice; I want
to be malign and malevolent--and omniscient. Very well; have it your own
way. I shall now go and lecture on Pure Women in Literature, with
sub-sardonic allusions to you, Shakespeare's Isabella, and Mr.
Richardson's Pamela. And I shall be back, in a bad temper, to tea.'

It was to tea on the same day that, when he did return, he found Philip
had invited himself, having abandoned the distracted office for an hour
with Rosamond. Isabel had come in from an afternoon's walk, and when
they all met in the drawing-room it was she who said: 'Roger, you're
looking very serious. What's the matter, darling? Didn't they remember
who Pamela was, or did they think she was nice, or what?'

Ingram stretched himself in an armchair. 'Have any of you', he asked,
'seen an evening paper?'

'Not since two o'clock,' Philip said. 'Is there something important?'

'That', Roger answered, 'depends on what you think important. There's an
African proclamation.'

'What!' Philip was so surprised that his eyes left Rosamond's hair to
rest on the newspaper that Roger was holding. 'Is there really? What
does it say?'

'It says that the Socratic method is done for,' Roger said seriously. A
small frown appeared on Rosamond's face and went away again. Philip,
without frowning, conveyed the impression of a frown and said: 'Do be
serious. It's important to me to know. What _does_ it say?'

'It says exactly what I've told you,' Roger said, more sardonically. 'It
says you think too much, Philip, and it says your father is just the
last kind of mistake. It's no use blaming me. I didn't write it. I'm not
even sure that I know what it means.'

Isabel, taking a sandwich, said: 'Read it, Roger. The Socratic method
doesn't really help one to choose a frock. I know because I tried it
once. I said, "Must not a colour which suits me, and a cut that I
admire, be desirable? It would seem so, Socrates." And yet it wasn't. Do
read it.'

Philip, having thus been defrauded of his protest, waited in the silence
of injured decency to hear more. Rosamond looked at him sympathetically.
Roger dropped two of his papers, opened the third, and read.

'Alleged Statement by African Leaders. Document received by Foreign
Office and Press. Where is the High Executive? African Aims Reported to
be Disclosed. By the mid-day post a document was received at the offices
of all the London newspapers which is, with all reserves in regard to
its authenticity, given below. The editors of the London papers have
been in communication with the Foreign Office, and learn that a
precisely similar document has been received there. Not only so, but the
Foreign Offices and the Press of other European countries have also been
communicated with in the same way. In Paris and Madrid this alleged
manifesto has already been published, and the British Government, after
consultation with the editors, has raised no objection to its
publication here. If it is genuine--a question which is being
investigated--it pretends to offer some kind of explanation of the late
remarkable events in Africa. The manifesto, or proclamation, as it might
be called, is as follows:

  '"In the name of the things that have been and are to be, willed and
  fated, in the name of the gods many and one, the Allied Supremacies of
  Africa, acting by the will and speaking by the voice of the High
  Executive, desire to communicate to the rest of the world the doctrine
  and purpose of the cause in which they are engaged. They announce
  their immediate purpose to be the freeing of the African continent
  from the government and occupation of the white race; their farther
  purpose to be the restoration to mankind of powers which have been
  forgotten or neglected, and their direction to ends which have
  hitherto been unproclaimed. They announce their profound belief that,
  as to the European peoples in the past, so to themselves in the future
  the conscious leadership of mankind belongs. It is not an imposed but
  an emerging leadership, superior to its disciples as to its enemies
  because of the conscious potentialities which exist in it. The
  potentialities of that superiority do not attempt to deny the
  capacities of Europe in their own proper achievements. The High
  Executive of the African Allies desires, in its first public summons
  to the creative powers of the world, to honour the immortal finalities
  of the past. It salutes the intellect, the philosophies, the science,
  the innumerable patterns of Europe. But it asserts that the great age
  of intellect is done, nor was the intellect ever that power which its
  disciples have been encouraged to believe. The prophets of Africa, who
  are not found only among its own peoples but include many of other
  races both in the past and in the present--the prophets of Africa have
  seen that mankind must advance in the future by paths which the white
  peoples have neglected and to ends which they have not understood.
  Assured that at this time the whole process of change in mankind,
  generally known as evolution, is at a higher crisis than any since
  mankind first emerged from among the great beasts and knew himself;
  assured that by an equal emergence from intellectual preoccupations,
  the adepts of the new way have it in their power to lead, and all
  mankind has it in its power to follow, not certainly by the old habits
  of reason but by profounder experiments of passion, to the conquest of
  death in the renewed ecstasy of vivid experience; assured of these
  things the Allied Supremacies appeal to the whole world for belief and
  discipleship and devotion."'

Roger paused and looked up. Rosamond, again frowning a little, was
eating cake. Philip was listening with his mouth open and his eyes
staring. Isabel was attending with a serious and serene care. Roger
grinned at her and resumed.

  '"The peoples of Africa appear before the world in arms, in order to
  claim from the sovereign authorities of Europe that freedom which is
  their due and their necessity on the one hand; on the other their
  privilege and opportunity. They will and they are fated to achieve
  that freedom. But their arms are of defence and not of aggression.
  They are willing to concede all possible time and convenience to the
  Powers of Europe. They no more desire to waste their energies and
  those of their opponents on war than on any other lower exterior
  imitation of heroic interior conquest. They are not anxious that the
  discipleship of the European imagination should be made more difficult
  by the mundane stupidities of dispute and battle. But the
  administration of Africa by the white race is now a thing of the
  past--to be remembered only as intellectual sovereignty will be
  remembered, a necessary moment that was willed and was fated and has
  ceased.

  '"To those among the peoples of Europe who know that their lives have
  origin and nourishment in the great moments of the exalted
  imagination, the High Executive offers salute and
  recognition"'--Roger's voice began to linger over the words--'"to all
  who owe their devotion to music, to poetry, to painting and sculpture,
  to the servants of every more than rational energy; greater than those
  and more numerous, to all who at this present moment exist in the
  exchanged or unexchanged adoration of love, it calls more especially.
  There, perhaps more surely and swiftly than in any other state of
  being outside the transmuting Way, can the labour of exploration be
  begun; there is the knowledge, the capacity, the herald apprehension
  of victory. These visionaries are already initiate; they know in
  themselves the prophecy of the conquest of death. To all such the High
  Executive appeals, with ardour and conviction. Believe, imagine, live.
  Know exaltation and feed on it; in the strength of such food man shall
  enter into his kingdom.

  '"The High Executive permits itself to offer to the Christian Churches
  its congratulations on the courage and devotion of those their
  servants who have sustained death by martyrdom. Convinced as it is
  that the Churches have, almost from the beginning, been misled by an
  erring principle, it nevertheless honours those martyrs as sublime if
  misguided instances of that imagination which it is its purpose to
  make known to mankind and which the rites and dogmas of the Christian
  religion dimly proclaim. It is assured by its belief in man and by the
  exalted courage of those martyrs that they would have desired no other
  end, and it takes full responsibility for having advised its august
  sovereigns that they could bestow on Christian missionaries no more
  perfect gift.

  '"The High Executive will be prepared to send representatives at any
  time to any place fixed by the Powers of Europe or by any of them; or
  to enter into negotiations in any other way that the Powers may
  desire. It will assume the fixing of such time and place or the
  opening of such negotiations to be a guarantee of safe-conduct for its
  representatives, and it will be prepared to suspend as soon as
  possible the military, naval, and aerial operations upon which it is
  engaged.

  '"Given in London, by direction of the High Executive, in the First
  Year of the Second Evolution of Man."'

Roger stopped. Almost before his voice had ceased, Rosamond said:
'Philip, darling, you haven't eaten anything. Have a cake?' Philip for
once took no notice. Roger said: 'About a thousand words--a little more.
Allowing for recapitulations in its extremely rhetorical style--the High
Executive hasn't studied the best models--say, seven-fifty. Either pure
waste or the most important seven-fifty words I've ever read.'

'I haven't got the hang of it,' Philip said in bewilderment. 'What does
it mean?'

'It--what did it say?--it calls to you more especially, Philip,' Roger
went on. 'It salutes you, because you have the vision of the conquest of
death in the exchanged adoration of love. It expects you to do something
about it all at once.' His eyes lingered on Isabel, and then became
abstracted. He sighed once and got to his feet. 'I'll have some more
tea,' he said. 'The cup that cheers but not inebriates after words that
inebriate but do not cheer.'

Isabel, pouring out the tea, said: 'Don't they cheer you, dearest?'

'Not one bit,' Roger answered. He leaned gloomily against the
mantelpiece, and after a pause said suddenly, 'Well, Rosamond, and what
do you make of it?'

Rosamond answered coldly, 'I wasn't listening. I don't think it's very
nice, and really, Roger, I don't see why you need have read it.'

'The High Executive of the African peoples asked me to,' Roger said
perversely. 'What don't you like about it--giving up intellect or having
the vision of the conquest of death?'

'I think you're simply silly, Roger,' Rosamond exclaimed and stood up.
'And if it was written by a lot of... a lot of Africans, that makes
it more disgusting than ever. I don't think it ought to have been
printed.'

Isabel spoke before Roger, sadistically watching Rosamond, could reply.
'Do you think it's authentic, Roger?' she asked.

'My dear, how can I guess?' her husband answered, more placably; then he
shifted his position, and added: 'It's authentic enough in one way;
there is something more.'

Isabel smiled at him. 'But need we think we didn't know it already?' she
asked softly. 'It isn't very new, is it?'

He was looking across the room at the high bookcase.

'If they came alive,' he murmured, 'if they are alive--all shut up in
their cases, all nicely shelved--shelved--shelved. We put them in their
places in our minds, don't we? If they got out of their book-cases--not
the pretty little frontispieces but the things beyond the frontispieces,
not the charming lines of type but the things the type means. Dare you
look for them, Isabel?' As he still stared at the bookcase his voice
altered into the deeper sound of a subdued chant.

  '_He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
  Was moving towards the shore_

  '_Hid in its vacant interlunar cave_

  '_And thus the Filial Godhead answering spake._'

Rosamond said sharply. 'Do be quiet, Roger. You know I hate your
quoting.'

'Quoting!' Roger said, 'quoting!' and stopped in despair. He looked at
Philip as if asking him whether he couldn't do something.

Philip didn't see the look; he was meditating. But the silence affected
him at last; he raised his eyes, and was on the point of speaking when
Rosamond interrupted, slipping her hand through his arm. 'Don't talk
about it any more, darling,' she said; 'it's too horrid. Look, shall I
come as far as the Tube with you?'

He stirred--rather heavily, Roger thought--but as their eyes met he smiled
back at her, and only Isabel's hand prevented her husband from again
quoting the High Executive on the exchanged adoration of love. It was
therefore with a slight but unusual formality that farewells were
spoken, and Philip departed for the station.

Roger remained propped against the mantelpiece, but he said, viciously,
'She "wasn't listening"!'

Isabel looked at him a little anxiously. 'Don't listen too carefully,
darling,' she said. 'It's not just cowardice--to refuse to hear some
sounds.'

He pulled himself upright. 'I must go and work,' he said. 'I must
exquisitely water the wine so that it may be tolerable for weak heads.'
By the door he paused. 'Do you remember your Yeats?' he asked.

  '_What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?_

I wonder. Also I wonder where exactly Bethlehem is, and what are the
prodigies of the birth.'




                               CHAPTER IV
                        THE MAJESTY OF THE KING


In the Tube Philip read the proclamation of the High Executive over
again, and, to the best of his ability, considered it. He was uneasily
conscious that Rosamond would have disapproved of this, and he couldn't
help feeling that it was only by an oversight that she hadn't asked him
to please her by leaving it alone. However, she hadn't, so he was
morally free. There stirred vaguely in his mind the subtler question of
whether he were free by a strict or by an easy interpretation of morals:
did exact justice, did a proper honour, demand that he should follow her
choice or insist on his own? But the question never got as far as
definition; he was aware of a difficulty turning over in its
sleep,--slouching towards Bethlehem but not reaching it--and almost
deliberately refrained from realizing it. Because he did want to know,
more accurately, what this alleged declaration had said about love.
Unlike Roger and, fortunately for him, like Rosamond, he had no
particular use for the masters of verse. He was therefore ignorant of
the cloud of testimony that had been borne to the importance and
significance of the passion that was growing in him. He had certainly
heard of Dante and Beatrice, of Tristram and Iseult, of Lancelot and
Guinevere, but there he stopped. He had hardly heard, he had certainly
never brooded over, that strange identification of Beatrice with
Theology and of Theology with Beatrice by which one great poet has
justified centuries of else doubtful minds. But by that secular
dispensation of mercy which has moved in the blood of myriads of lovers,
he had felt what he did not know and experienced what he could not
formularize. And the words which he now read did not so much startle his
innocent devotion by their eccentricity as dimly disturb him with a
sense of their justice. He had had no use at all for the African peoples
except in so far as they gave him an opportunity to follow his European
habits in providing Rosamond with a home and a car and anything else she
wanted. The prospect of the great age of intellect being done, also left
him unmoved; he hadn't realized that any special great age of intellect
had existed--except for a vague idea that a period of past history known
as the Middle Ages was considerably less intelligent than the present,
and that there had been a brief time when Athens, and a rather longer
time when Rome, was very intellectual. But when all that seemed to him
meaningless had been removed, there still remained the fact that never
before, never anywhere, had any words, printed or spoken, come nearer to
telling him what he really felt about Rosamond than this paragraph which
purported to come from the centre of Africa, and from dark-skinned
chiefs pouring up against the guns and rifles of England. He knew it was
silly, but he knew it said 'adoration,' 'vision,' 'apprehension of
victory,' 'conquest of death.' He knew it was silly, but he knew also
that he had felt through Rosamond, brief and little understood,
something which was indeed apprehension of victory and conquest of
death.

When he got home he found his godfather alone, and, rather against his
own intention, found himself approaching the subject. Caithness had seen
the proclamation and was inclined to be a little scornful of it: which
may partly have been due to the unrecognized fact that, while Roger and
Philip had both found their interior passions divined and applauded,
Caithness had had his referred to merely as 'a misguided principle.' He
doubted the authenticity, and went on to add: 'Rather bombastic, don't
you think? I don't pretend to know what it means.'

Philip said, 'Roger seemed quite impressed by it.'

'O Roger!' the priest said good-humouredly. 'I called it bombast but I
expect he'd call it poetry. I don't mean that it hasn't a kind of thrill
in it, but thrills aren't the only thing--certainly they're not safe
things to live by.'

Philip thought this over, and decided that he agreed with it. Only his
sensations about Rosamond were not--no, they were not _thrills_: and he
wasn't at all clear that they weren't things to live by. He said,
shamelessly involving Roger: 'He made fun of me about it--he seemed to
think that part of it was meant for me. The paragraph about--O well, some
paragraph or other.'

Caithness looked down at the paper. 'This about the exaltation of love,
I expect,' he said, with a rather charming smile. 'Roger would be all in
favour of that; the poets are. But perhaps they're more used to living
on the hilltops than the rest of us.'

'You don't think it's true then?' Philip asked, with a slight and
irrational feeling of disappointment. Irrational, because he hadn't
actually expected Caithness to agree with a gospel, if it was a gospel,
out of Africa. Sir Bernard had once remarked that Caithness limited
himself to the Near East in the matter of gospels, 'the near East
modified by the much nearer West.'

But over the direct question Caithness hesitated. 'I wouldn't care to
say it wasn't true,' he said, 'but all truth is not expedient. It's no
use making people expect too much.'

'No,' Philip said, 'suppose it isn't.' Was he expecting too much? was
he, in fact, expecting anything at all? Or could whatever he expected or
whatever happened alter the terribly important fact of the shape of
Rosamond's ear? He also looked again at the paper, and words leapt to
his eyes. 'Believe, imagine, live. Know exaltation and feed on it----'

'You don't then', he said, unwontedly stirred, 'really think one ought
to believe in it too much?'

'Why yes, my dear boy,' the priest answered. 'Only these things are so
often deceptive; they change or they become familiar. One can't trust
one's own vision too far; that's where religion comes in.'

Sir Bernard would no doubt have pointed out, what did not occur to
either of the others, that this merely meant that Caithness was
substituting his own hobby for Philip's. But he wasn't there, and so,
vaguely depressed, especially as he couldn't feel that Rosamond's ear
would ever change, the young man turned the conversation, and shut away
the appeal of the High Executive for the time being in whatever
corresponded in his mind to Roger Ingram's bookshelves.

The African trouble, however, displayed, during the next few days, no
possibility of being shut away. The steps which the Powers, on the
unanimous testimony of their spokesmen, were harmoniously taking
produced no effect against the rebels (as the enemy was habitually
called). It became clear that the 'hordes' consisted, in fact, of highly
disciplined and well-supplied armies. In the north of Africa the
territory held by the European forces grew daily smaller; all Egypt,
except Cairo, was lost; the French were pressed back to the coast of
Tangier; the Spaniards were hustled out of Morocco. The Dominion of
South Africa was sending out expeditions, of which no news
returned--certainly there had not been much time, but there was no news
at all, or none that was published. In England an official censorship
was attempted, but failed owing to the speedy growth of a party which
demanded 'Africa for the Africans.' Normally the massacre of the
Christian missionaries would have been fatal to such a demand, but the
recalcitrant attitude of the Archbishop hampered the more violent
patriots. Rumours got about of the appearance of hostile aeroplanes over
the Mediterranean and the coastline of Southern Europe. Negroes in
London and other large towns were mobbed in the streets. Roger reported
to Isabel that not only negroes but comparatively harmless Indians had
disappeared from his classes. It was evident that the Government would
be driven to some measure of internment.

It was so driven, more quickly than had been expected, when the news
came of the sinking of a transport crowded with Indian troops which were
being rushed to South Africa. That the African armies should be able to
operate destructively by sea as well as by land was a shock even to
instructed opinion, and, among the uninstructed, crowds began to parade
the streets, booing and cheering and chasing any dark-skinned stranger
who showed himself. Even one or two Southern Italians had, for a few
minutes, an uneasy time. The crowds were of course dissolved by the
police, but they came together again like drops of water till the
evening's amusement was done and they reluctantly went home.

The reaction of all these events on the money market was considerable,
and it was not eased by the uncertainty which still existed on the
situation of the late Mr. Rosenberg's affairs. Nothing definite was
known, since the Chief Rabbi and Mr. Considine persisted in their
silence, as did the two legatees. But an uneasy feeling manifested
itself, both in the streets around the brothers' house and in the wider
circles of finance. It could not be said that anything unusual was going
on, for nothing at all seemed to be going on. But the stillness was
alarming. No-one could believe that the two aged and devoted students of
Kabbalistic doctrine were fit persons to control the vast interests of
the Rosenberg estate. But no-one could prevent their doing whatever they
liked with it. Nehemiah and Ezekiel came out to the synagogue and went
home again, and went nowhere else, though well-dressed strangers in cars
descended on Houndsditch, and were engaged with them over long periods.
In Houndsditch itself strange tales of the jewels began to spread,
following vivid accounts of them in the papers. The thrill of the jewels
and the thrill of the Africans contended; hungry eyes followed the Jews
as hostile eyes followed such rare negroes as could still be seen in the
East End. A sullen excitement began to work around them, a breathless
and vulgar imitation of the exalted imagination which the High Executive
had declared to be the true path to desirable knowledge.

A more natural excitement, though perhaps equally crude from the point
of view of the High Executive and that other High Executive represented
among others by the Archbishops, affected innumerable suburban homes
when the selling began. Gradually but steadily the prices of shares in
the Rosenberg concerns began to fall. It was said that someone knew
something and was standing from under. A shiver of panic touched
finance, allied to that other panic which had already touched the
extreme villages of Southern Europe. Nervous voices made inquiries over
telephones in England as nervous eyes watched aeroplanes over the
Mediterranean. From each background of silence a thin mist of fear crept
out and was blown over many minds. Something shook civilization, as it
had been shaken a hundred times before, but that something loomed now in
half-fancied forms of alien powers, of negroes flying through the air
and Jews withdrawing their gold. Day by day the tremors quickened.
Neglected expositors of the Apocalypse in Tonbridge or Cheltenham, old
ladies, retired military men, and an eccentric clergyman or two, began
to say boldly that it was the end of the world. At Birmingham a man ran
naked through the streets crying that he saw fire from heaven, and
leaping on to the railway lines was killed by an express train before
the police could catch him. 'Second Adventist goes mad at Birmingham,'
said the evening papers. The Churches found that growing crowds attended
them. The Government unofficially suggested to the Archbishops that they
should discourage people coming to church. The Archbishops issued a
Pastoral Letter from which they naturally could not exclude some of
their irritation with the Government; and of which therefore the first
part, which was addressed to the new converts, tended towards a scornful
and minatory tone. This, if anything, made matters worse, the converts
naturally arguing that if the Church could afford to use that voice the
Church must feel itself very safe indeed; and this feeling was
strengthened by the second part which was addressed to the faithful in
language that in normal times would have been ordinary enough. 'And you,
little children, love one another,' it began and continued on the same
theme, ending with another quotation, 'My peace I give unto you; not as
the world giveth give I unto you.' The idea that these incantations
contained a magical safety found more and more believers; and Sir
Bernard congratulated Caithness on a greater spread of the Faith in ten
days than in ten years previously. On a world already thus agitated fell
the second communication of the High Executive. This, after the earlier
formal invocation of' things willed and fated,' 'gods many and one,'
went on in something of a high style of distress to lament that the
Powers of Europe had not thought well even to answer the earlier
message, much less apparently to prepare themselves for any
negotiations. They had instead, by all means at their command, increased
their armies and strengthened the war. 'Some check', the message went
on, 'the African armies have administered to this gathering defiance,
but the High Executive has felt compelled to advise its august
Sovereigns that mere measures of defence will no longer be sufficient.
If the Powers of Europe are determined to force war upon Africa, then
Africa will be compelled to open war upon Europe. The gospel which is
the birthright of the African peoples and which they offer as a message
of hope even to the degraded and outworn nations of the white race
carries no maxim which they are unwilling to practise. With a profound
but unrecognised truth the Christians of Europe have declared that the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. This maxim Africa knows,
understands, obeys. In the high mysteries of birth and death, not only
physical generation or physical destruction, but those spiritual
experiences of which these are but types, Africa has learnt the secret
duties of man. Her peoples offer themselves in exaltation to the bed of
death as to the bed of love. With an ecstasy born of their ecstasy, with
a communication to its children of that which they first communicated to
it, the High Executive summons them to what is at present the final
devotion of conscious being. They and it are alike indifferent to the
result; if the armies of Europe destroy them they will but find in death
a greater thing than their conquerors know. But the armies of Europe
will not destroy them, for the Second Evolution of man has begun. Their
leaders and prophets, and the High Executive which is their voice and
act, address themselves no longer to the children of intellect and
science and learning. They turn to their own peoples. Daughters and Sons
of Africa, you are called to the everlasting sacrifice. Victim or priest
at that altar, it matters not whether you inflict or endure the pang.
Come, for the cycles are accomplished and the knowledge that was of old
returns. Come, for this is the hour of death that alternates for ever
with the hour of love. Come, for without the knowledge of both the
knowledge of one shall fail. Come, ye blessed, inherit the things laid
up for you from the foundations of the world.'

On the evening of the day when this invocation appeared, the crowds in
the streets were thicker than ever. The first death was reported in a
special edition of the papers; a negro had been literally hunted over
Hampstead Heath and afterwards (not quite intentionally, it was
thought), killed. Sir Bernard rang up Isabel.

'Nothing,' he said, when she answered, 'except that you once said that
Hampstead was the negro quarter of London, and I thought I'd like to
know whether there was any trouble up there.'

'Not to say _trouble_,' Isabel said. 'There was a little friction at the
gate, and we've got a coloured gentleman in the house at present.'

'Have you indeed?' Sir Bernard exclaimed. 'Was it you or Roger who
brought him in?'

'Both of us,' Isabel explained. 'We heard a noise in the street and we
looked out, and there was a negro--at least, he was a black man; a
negro's something technical, isn't it?--against our gate, and the most
unpleasant lot of whites you ever saw all round him, cursing. Roger went
out and talked to them, but that was no good. He said something about
behaving like Englishmen, and I suppose they did; at least they began to
throw stones and hit out with their sticks. So Roger got him through the
gate, and I got them through the front door, and here he is.'

'You're not hurt, Isabel?' Sir Bernard said sharply. 'What about the
crowd?'

'O they threw things at the house and smashed a window, and presently
the police came and they went away,' Isabel answered. 'No, thank you,
I'm perfectly all right. I'm just going to make coffee. Come and have
some.'

'Where's your visitor?' Sir Bernard asked.

'Talking African love songs and tribal poetry with Roger in his room,'
Isabel said. 'They agree wonderfully on everything but the effect of the
adverb. Roger's evolving a theory that adverbs have no place in great
poetry--I don't understand why.'

'I should like to hear him,' Sir Bernard said. 'Thanks, Isabel; I'll
come up if I may.'

'Do,' said Isabel, 'and I'll postpone the coffee for half-an-hour. Till
then.'

For once Sir Bernard took a taxi; as a general rule he avoided them,
preferring the more actively contemplative life of buses and tubes, and
preferring also never to be in anything like a hurry. When he arrived he
found Philip and Rosamond, who had been dining out, sitting side by side
on the kitchen table, watching Isabel make the coffee.

'Come in here, Sir Bernard, won't you?' she said when she had let him
in, 'and you shall see the refugee soon. He's in the only room with a
fire, and as Rosamond is terrified to death of him we have to linger in
the kitchen to keep comfortably warm. "October nights are chill," as
someone said. No, don't tell me.'

'Isabel,' her sister protested, 'I'm not terrified of him, but I don't
think it's quite nice of him to stop here. Why doesn't he go home?'

'With mobs prowling round the garden gate?' Isabel asked. 'And Roger
still making noises to show the union of accent and quantity? My dear
Rosamond, when you're married you won't want Philip's friends to go home
until he's thoroughly tired out. Otherwise he'll barge into your room at
midnight and go on with the conversation with you. And as you're asleep
to begin with, and as you don't know what the conversation was about,
and as you don't know whether he wants you to agree or disagree though
you'd do either for peace, you'll find it very difficult to be nice to
him. I have never', Isabel went on, pouring milk into a saucepan,
'really quarrelled with Roger....'

'Isabel!' Sir Bernard murmured.

'Not really,' Isabel persisted, 'except once, and that was when he woke
me up by calling out to me very late one night, "Isabel, what is there
in verse which is the equivalent of the principle of the arch?" I really
was angry then, but he only kept murmuring lines of poetry and trying to
see if they were like an arch. All that because a friend of his who had
been to dinner had gone away at half-past eleven instead of half-past
one. Always remember, Rosamond my child, that a man needs you to get
away from.'

'You mean needs to get away from me, don't you?' Rosamond asked, looking
possessively at Philip.

'No,' Isabel said, 'Sir Bernard, the milk's boiling... thank you so
much. No, Rosamond, I don't. I mean exactly what I said. A man must have
you----'

'I wish you wouldn't keep saying "a man," Isabel,' Philip remonstrated.

'Very well--give me a spoon, Philip--Philip then must have you there in
order to be able to get away. If you weren't there he wouldn't be able
to get away.'

Rosamond looked uninterested. Philip reflected what a curious thing it
was that so many people he knew should want to chatter like this. His
father did it, Ingram did it, Isabel did it. Sometimes he understood it,
sometimes he didn't. But he never understood it as now, suddenly, he
understood Rosamond's arm when she leant forward to pass a plate to her
sister: somehow that arm always made him think of the Downs against the
sky. There was a line, a curved beauty, a thing that spoke to both mind
and heart; a thing that was there for ever. And Rosamond? Rosamond was
like them, she was there for ever. It occurred to him that, if she was,
then her occasional slowness when he was trying to explain something was
there for ever. Well, after all, Rosamond was only human; she couldn't
be absolutely perfect. And then as she stretched out her arm again he
cried out that she was perfect, she was more than perfect; the movement
of her arm was something frightfully important, and now it was gone. He
had seen the verge of a great conclusion of mortal things and then it
had vanished. Over that white curve he had looked into incredible space;
abysses of intelligence lay beyond it. And in a moment all that lay
beyond it was the bright kitchen, and Sir Bernard standing up to go into
the other room. He jumped to his feet and with a movement almost of
terror took the loaded coffee tray from Isabel.

'Quietly,' Isabel said as they came to the door of the nondescript room
where the Ingrams habitually, alone or with their intimates, passed
their time. 'Quietly; let's hear what the rescued captive and his
saviour are talking about.'

She opened the door gently, and Ingram's voice came out to them. 'O
rhythm!' he was saying, 'rhythm is the cheap pseudo-metaphysical slang
of our day. At least it was; it's dying now. Everyone explained
everything by talking about rhythm. It's a curious thing that people who
will sneer at a man for doing nothing all his life but making words
sound lovely and full of meaning will be quite happy over life so long
as they can explain it in words that are almost meaningless. I sometimes
think the nearest we can get to meaning is to feel as if there was
meaning.'

'Yet at least rhythm's distinctly felt,' said another voice, a rich
strange voice; 'so far they attempt to discover a knowledge of the
whole.'

'O so far!' Ingram said, and jumped off the table on which he was
sitting as Isabel pushed the door right open and came into the room.
After a table had been found for the tray, introductions took place; at
least Ingram began to say, 'O Rosamond'--he stopped suddenly; 'By God,'
he said, 'I don't know your name.'

The stranger, a tall magnificent young creature, darkly bronze, bowed to
Rosamond: 'My name is Inkamasi,' he said. 'At least,' he added, a trifle
scornfully, Sir Bernard thought, 'that is the simplest form of it.'

'Quite,' Roger said brightly. 'Miss Murchison, Mr. Travers--hallo, Sir
Bernard, I didn't know you were here--Sir Bernard Travers, the
Belly-King.'

It was a name with which his intimates had teased Sir Bernard in the
days of his practice. Philip frowned, forgetting that though the
black--if you could strictly call him black--was to him an entirely new
and not very desirable acquaintance, the occurrences of the last two
hours had put him on terms of intimacy with the Ingrams. Rosamond,
rather nervously, kept close to his side. Roger sat down again on top of
his large knee-hole writing-table, and took the coffee Philip handed
him.

'We were talking----' he began.

'Yes, darling, we heard you,' Isabel said. 'Don't trouble to repeat it
just at once. And I hope that doesn't sound too rude,' she added to the
stranger, 'only when Roger's got more than two people to listen to him
he always begins to lecture.'

'I ought to have gone long ago,' the other said. 'But your husband kept
me, talking of poetry and song and the principles of being.'

'But', Isabel said, 'must you go yet? I mean, will it be wise?' She
looked at Roger.

'O quite,' the African said. 'The police will have cleared the streets,
and I don't live far away.'

Roger looked at the clock. 'Twenty to ten,' he said, 'better wait a
little. I didn't quite get the hang of what you were saying about Homer.
I'll walk round with you presently. Sir Bernard'll be interested in
Homer; he had a line from him on the title-page of his book, opposite
the peculiarly loathsome diagram that formed the frontispiece.'

'I didn't even know you'd looked so far into it,' Sir Bernard said.

'I generally give the title-page a fair chance,' Roger said. 'One can't
always judge books merely by the cover. It's a book on the stomach,' he
explained to Inkamasi, 'with nine full-page photographs and about fifty
more illustrations, each more abominable than the others. When it was
published Sir Bernard gave copies to all his friends, because he knew
they wouldn't read it and wanted to hear them explaining why. Brave men
cut him afterwards.'

'I should like to see it,' the African voice said. 'I did a little
medical work before I took up law.'

'Well, it's buried under Rabelais, Swift, and _Ulysses_ at the moment,'
Ingram grinned at Sir Bernard, 'but I'll get it out for you before you
come again. "Lend it you I will for half a hundred years." But not give
it. I retain it to keep me humble.'

'I think I'll go now,' Inkamasi said, putting down his cup. 'Thank you,
Mrs. Ingram, for being so kind.'

'O well, if you will,' said Roger. 'Coming, Philip?'

'Yes, rather,' Philip answered, with a momentary private hope that he
wouldn't have to help defend this black man against even an unpleasant
white.

'Philip,' Rosamond whispered to him, with a soft pounce, 'don't go. I
don't like him.'

'Must,' he whispered back. 'Shan't be long, dearest.'

'We'll all go,' Sir Bernard said. 'The streets aren't too quiet. I'm not
at all sure, Mr. Inkamasi, that you wouldn't be wise to take advantage
of the Government's offer to remove friendly aliens. If you're living
alone----'

The African dilated where he stood. 'I will go alone,' he said. 'They
will not attack me twice.'

'No, of course not,' Roger said. 'Never attack the same man twice is a
well-known rule of mobs. Nonsense, man, no one knows who's about. I
think you ought to stop here; you can, you know. We told you that
before.'

'Do,' Isabel put in.

Inkamasi seemed to hesitate, then he said rather vaguely, 'No, I'm
sorry, I must go. There are reasons....'

'Are they really vicious, Roger?' Sir Bernard asked.

'Nasty little things,' Roger answered. 'The usual kind. I believe they'd
have bolted before if Inkamasi and I had rushed them. He nearly
scattered them by himself but there were just enough to feel safe.'

'I know them,' the African said disdainfully. 'There are others like
them in my country--they would run from a lion.'

'As bad as that, are they?' Roger asked gravely. 'Good heavens, many's
the time I've chased a lion or two down Haverstock Hill by just shouting
at them. Like you were doing when we came out. By the way, what were you
shouting?'

The African drew himself up and his magnificent form seemed to expand
before the young man's eyes. He cried out: 'They asked me my name and I
told them. I am Inkamasi of the Zulus, I am the chief of the sons of
Chaka, I am the master of the impis, I am Inkamasi the chieftain and the
king.'

There was a dead silence; and then suddenly Roger, almost as if some
challenge in the other's voice had stirred him to motion and speech,
answered in the voice he had for verse. He threw up his right arm; he
cried out 'Bayate!'; he held the Zulu rigid by the unexpected salute.
And then someone else moved, and Roger dropped his arm and grinned and
said: 'Rider Haggard. But it's true, isn't it?'

'It is true,' the king said. 'It is the royal salute that you give,
though I've only heard it once or twice in my life before. But I thought
in England you'd forgotten royalty.'

'Well, in a kind of way we have,' Roger said. 'And then again in a kind
of way we haven't. And anyhow I didn't know you really kept it in
Africa.'

'There are those among you who would like us to forget,' the Zulu
answered. 'But it isn't easy to forget Chaka. Have you forgotten Csar?'

He seemed to expect no answer; he turned again to Isabel, but this time
with a greater air. 'Good-night, Mrs. Ingram,' he said. 'Your husband
will be back soon. They shan't come far. Good-night, Miss Murchison. Sir
Bernard, will you tell me one thing I have always meant to look up about
the stomach?'

Isabel came back from the front door to Rosamond with a bewildered air.
'Tell me,' she said, 'are those three taking care of him or is he taking
care of them?'

'I think it's perfectly horrible,' Rosamond said. 'How could you let him
come into the house, Isabel?--everything smells of him. The king, indeed!
It's almost profane.'

Isabel raised her eyebrows. 'What, calling himself a king?' she asked.

'It was the way he talked, looking like a god,' Rosamond said, almost
hysterically. 'I hate him to look like that.'

Isabel looked at the coffee cups. 'Shall I clear them away?' she said,
'or shall I leave them for Muriel? Roger won't call her Muriel, he says
it makes him feel unclean. So awkward, because he always has to go and
find her if he happens to want anything. He can't just call out "Hi!"
Don't worry, Rosamond, I don't suppose you'll see him again.'

'I hate him,' Rosamond repeated. 'Why didn't he stop in Africa?' She
walked to the window. 'Isabel, they won't come here, will they?'

Isabel looked at the fire, herself a little shaken. In spite of her
mockery of her sister she knew quite well what Rosamond had meant by
calling Inkamasi 'profane.' It was a wild protest against the sudden
intrusion of a new energy, the making violently real of a thing that had
become less than a word. For a few moments royalty--a dark alien
royalty--had appeared in the room, imposed upon all of them by the mere
intensity of the Zulu chieftain's own strength and conviction. By virtue
of that wide reading which both she and her husband loved, she had felt
a shadow of it at times; in the superb lines of Marlowe or Shakespeare,
in the rolling titles heard on ceremonial occasions at Church or in
local celebrations: 'the King's Most Excellent Majesty,' 'His Majesty
the King-Emperor,' 'The Government of His Britannic Majesty.' But on
Rosamond unprepared by such imaginative experience the sudden
consciousness of this energy and richness--believing so greatly in itself
and operating so near her--had come with a shock of dismay. Besides, when
all had been said, they were all on edge with the African news, and to
have an African in your own rooms overwhelming you with himself--No, she
didn't like it, Rosamond was right.

  _The single bliss and sole felicity,
  The sweet fruition of an earthly crown._

The divine lines came riding back into her memory. 'It isn't', Roger had
said once at one of his 'popular' lectures, 'what poetry says, it is
what poetry is.' These lines described kingship, but that wasn't their
strength. They invoked kingship, they grew by their very sound into
something of the same enormous royalty which the Zulu had for a moment
worn; they were the safe possession in themselves of that sense of
single bliss and sole felicity which they affected to describe. In them
it was apart from her, to be enjoyed and endured only as she chose, it
was hers. But if it went abroad, moving in the world not at her decision
or the decision of those like her, but in its own right and power, the
energy which was royalty and poetry dominating and using her by means of
hands and voices and eyes....

Rosamond came back from the window to the fire, and Isabel remembered
that she hadn't replied to her sister's question. She said: 'No, they
won't come here.'

Rosamond answered: 'You won't see him again?'

'Who--the king?' Isabel asked. 'I don't suppose so.'

'I don't think you ought to,' Rosamond said. 'It's not very patriotic,
is it? Why ever did you let Roger bring him in?'

Isabel stiffened a little. 'My dear girl,' she answered, 'I don't "let"
Roger. If there's any letting done,' she went on, relaxing, 'he does it.
But I don't think he quite knows it.'

Rosamond's face suggested that Philip would be 'let' or not, fairly
often. Isabel added: 'Would you rather we'd "let" the crowd get at him?'

'Yes,' her sister answered. 'You don't know how I hate him. He's...
abominable.'

'Don't be silly, Rosamond,' Isabel said. 'You let things upset you so,
though you do seem such a sedate little creature. I don't suppose you'll
see him again, and if you do what difference does it make?'

Rosamond moved uneasily. 'Why isn't Philip stronger?' she said. 'He
needn't have gone to-night.'

Isabel broke into a laugh. 'You want Philip to be the world's strong man
led by a woman's hair,' she said. 'You can't have it, darling. Philip's
no caveman.'

'I don't want a cave-man,' Rosamond cried out. 'I hate him anyhow. He
looks like Roger does when he quotes that beastly poetry. It isn't
decent. It's like those horrible people on the Heath.'

'What on earth do you mean? What horrible people?' Isabel asked, really
bewildered.

'Disgusting beasts,' Rosamond went on. 'You know what I mean--all those
brutes lying about at night. They make everything so... so
_loathsome_. Why can't people be nice and behave properly?'

'And not quote poetry or be kings of the Zulus,' Isabel murmured. 'You
do hate a good many things, don't you? You're not going to marry Philip,
I hope, because you hate him rather less than the other young men you
know? I don't think he'd be entirely satisfied with that.'

'Philip!' Rosamond uttered, in a tone so unlike her usual deceitfully
soft voice that Isabel looked at her in alarm. There had been in that
one word scorn and hate and fear, almost as if Philip rather than the
Zulu stood for everything that Rosamond most detested, as if she were
aware now for the first time that the world was not simply Rosamond
Murchison's oyster, that indeed it was a great deal more like an
octopus, the tentacles of which she had seen waving at a distance in the
night. The king--Philip--poetry--people on the Heath--African
proclamations--certainly there was a huge something whose form lay hidden
in the darkness and the distance without; something Rosamond had always
avoided, unless occasionally.... Isabel remembered how her small
sister, who had always carried herself as if she pretended to disdain
chocolates, had once secretly and greedily devoured a whole boxful. It
had been an unpleasant episode, made worse by an ignored but definite
attempt on Rosamond's part to make Isabel herself the culprit; only
appalling physical results had made innocence certain. Rosamond perhaps
hated an octopus that lay not merely without. Isabel, bending her brows
at the fire, and trying to be lucid and loving at once, was not
altogether sorry when Rosamond said suddenly: 'I'm tired: I'm going to
bed. Say good-night to Philip for me,' and vanished.

Roger, meanwhile, was walking with the others towards the house where
Inkamasi lived, at one end of the line of four, with Philip at the
other, and Sir Bernard and the Zulu discussing stomachs in between. It
occurred to Ingram with a slight feeling of shame, as he heard the older
man explaining and assenting, that although in the past Sir Bernard had
always been able and willing to discuss literature, he himself had never
been either able or willing to discuss stomachs. He had liked and
admired the specialist, but he had assumed as a matter of course that
his own specialization was a more public, even a more important, thing.
To justify himself he allowed the suggestion to arise that Sir Bernard
had been perhaps a little too easy-going, too disinclined to press his
own interests. After all, it was in a different way a note of his son's
character also. Philip was a nice creature, but he never imposed
himself; he was graver and more solemn than his father but equally swept
on the current of conversation. That Sir Bernard had now for many years
been able unnoticed to direct any conversation to any end he wished, but
that all ends seemed to him equally interesting, naturally did not occur
to the younger specialist. Ingram was himself so devoted to his own
subject and neglectful of others that he inevitably assumed a similar
devotion and neglect in his friends, and explained their behaviour on
this hypothesis. As he glanced sidelong at the disputants therefore he
saw in Sir Bernard an example of a man a little ill-treated by society,
and made up his mind to read the famous book at the first opportunity.
Nor could he refrain, as his eye caught the Zulu's face in the light of
a lamp, from reflecting upon how differently this stranger had dominated
their emotions. The sudden crisis had tricked him into what was almost
an absurdity. But in fact, he reflected, the sudden crisis was not
separate from Inkamasi; it _was_ Inkamasi. It was a human force that had
overthrown him. His emotions, caught unguarded by his self-attentive
mind, had moved him, and his emotions themselves had been moved by a
stronger emotion issuing from the stranger. Rhythm had followed rhythm.
'God damn and blast rhythm!' he thought angrily, 'I will not use their
malodorous slang.' But the word had started his associations; half a
dozen lines leapt into his mind flushed with war and royalty, from 'My
nightingale, We have beat them to their beds,' down to 'stunned of
heaven or stricken pale Before the face of the King.' Perhaps there was
something in rhythm after all; perhaps Milton meant something profounder
than was usually thought by saying that the great poet should himself be
a poem; perhaps----

'Don't you think so, Roger?' Sir Bernard asked.

Ingram came back with a shock. 'I beg your pardon,' he said, 'I wasn't
listening. Don't I think what?'

'Don't you think that the king had better not go on living alone?'

'Are you alone in the house?' Ingram asked the Zulu.

'I am the only sub-tenant,' Inkamasi said gravely. 'There is a
landlady.'

'Then of course you mustn't,' Ingram said. 'Is this it?' They had
stopped outside a house in one of the smaller apartment-letting roads
bordering the Heath. 'You could be attacked and done in here quite
nicely--from back and front. You'd better come and stop with us as I told
you.'

Inkamasi shook his head. 'That is very kind of you, Mr. Ingram,' he
answered, 'but I couldn't expose Mrs. Ingram to any unpleasantness.'

'Nonsense,' said Roger. 'She won't----'

Sir Bernard laid a hand on his arm. 'A moment, Roger,' he said. 'I speak
as a snob, but so did Saint Paul on occasion, I seem to remember, and I
also am an Apostle. Or at least I know the Home Secretary. Now in two or
three days the Government will be driven to arrest and intern all the
Africans in London. No, of course, it won't want to, but it won't be
able to let them be done to death one by one. I suggest it will be much
more to the point if the king is staying with me, because my word will
probably be taken for him. And he can walk in the garden and study
digestion theoretically and practically.'

'You mean they'll let him alone there?' Roger said. 'Yes, I suppose
that's true. Well, we'd better look for a taxi then.'

'Stop a minute, Mr. Ingram,' the Zulu said. 'Sir Bernard, this is
extraordinarily kind of you. But it would make it a little difficult for
me perhaps, if I may say so. If I came to stay with you, I should be
committed to neutrality, if not to friendship. And supposing I wanted to
help my people?'

A car came softly along the street towards them. Sir Bernard said
dubiously, 'It would necessitate, I suppose, an implied parole. But
would you be worse off? You can't do much for them now; and if you're
attacked and killed----'

He paused; behind them the car also stopped. Roger, glancing over his
shoulder as he heard the king say, 'I mustn't pledge myself; I mustn't
be bound,' saw Nigel Considine spring out. He gave a quick exclamation
and his companions also looked round.

'Why, Mr. Ingram,' Considine said, and saluted Sir Bernard and Philip,
'this is a happy meeting. I didn't know you were friends of my friend.'

'Through the introduction of a London crowd,' Roger answered. 'So we
just strolled home with him.'

'I was afraid of that,' Considine answered, 'so I've come to carry him
off.' He smiled at Inkamasi, and Philip wondered why he and his father
and Roger should suddenly seem so small standing around those two other
figures. Sir Bernard said, 'I was just suggesting that the king should
stay with me.' But the African and Considine were gazing at each other,
and neither of them answered.

'I must be free,' Inkamasi said suddenly. 'I must do what I choose.'

'You shall be free; you shall do what you choose,' the other answered.
'But you will come with me now, and presently I will set you free.' He
broke suddenly into a stream of unrecognizable syllables which the
others supposed were Zulu, and still he held Inkamasi's eyes with his
own, and the African stammered and began to speak and ceased, and the
urgent commanding voice flowed on. Inkamasi put out his hand suddenly
towards Sir Bernard, who was next him, and took his arm. He cried out
suddenly in English, 'But I do not wish-- I do not choose----' then his
whole figure sagged and his hand drew itself away. Considine said
something to him even more sharply; he moved forward, and slowly, almost
as if moving in his sleep, got into the car. Considine, following him,
paused by the door and turned.

'Sir Bernard,' he said, 'in a very few days I shall be leaving England.
But I've written to you to-day to ask if you will dine with me
to-morrow. I apologize for the short notice. If you would--and perhaps
these gentlemen too? Let's discuss verse once more, Mr. Ingram, before I
go.'

'Must you go?' Roger, to his surprise, heard himself saying.

'All that's mine remains,' Considine said, 'even if embalmed or
diluted----' he smiled, and there was victory in his face. He looked back
at Sir Bernard, who said only, 'Thank you very much!'

'At eight to-morrow then,' Considine said. 'Good-night.' He leapt into
the car and at once it slid away. The three stood staring after it. At
last--

'Well,' Sir Bernard said, 'I do want to ask him about the photograph.
And lots of people talk rather big. But if Mr. Considine can bully a
Zulu prince who could bully us...'

'I don't see anything in him particularly,' Philip said. 'But I was
surprised the king let himself be persuaded.'

Sir Bernard began to walk away. '"Persuaded," Philip? Do you think
"persuaded" was the word?' he said.

'I don't think the king wanted to go,' Philip said. 'But of course I
don't know what Considine said in Zulu, if it was Zulu.'

'Nor do I,' said Sir Bernard. 'But I know what I should say in that
tone. I should say, "Come on, you fool! It's me telling you." When I was
in practice I kept that voice for telling American millionaires to eat
less. There are moments when I wonder whether I really like Mr.
Considine.'




                               CHAPTER V
                         THE NEOPHYTE OF DEATH


The five of them were sitting at a round table--Considine at the head,
Sir Bernard on his right, Roger on his left, Inkamasi next Roger, and
Philip between the king and Sir Bernard. They were served by two men
who, Sir Bernard remarked at once, were evidently not of the usual
servant type. They were much more like young men of his own class, but
they were adept at their work; only they waited with an air of
condescension and if they had occasion to speak they never said 'sir'
except indeed to Considine and the king. Considine's own manner towards
them was that of an equal who accepts by right some special service;
there existed between them a grave courtesy. Occasionally, while the
dinner proceeded, one of these gentlemen in waiting would go to the door
in answer to a discreet knock, receive a message, return to whisper it
in Considine's ear, and take back a softly murmured answer. But such
secret interruptions did not interfere with the general conversation,
which turned at first upon the Rosenberg crisis.

'You have talked to the legatees?' Sir Bernard said.

'Why, yes,' Considine smiled, 'and they have taken a stand which might
have been foreseen, which I did foresee. The solicitor and I--you
remember Mr. Patton?--met them and the Chief Rabbi, and showed them the
will. We had to go to them; they would not come to us. When I saw them I
did not wonder at it. Their whole minds were given to other things. They
are concerned--as how should they not be?--with one chief matter, the
rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.'

'Are they though?' Roger said. 'And what will they do with the money?'

'What do you think?' Considine said. 'What do _you_ think, Sir Bernard?
Remember that they are fanatical in their vision and desire.'

'Take it,' Sir Bernard answered, 'and spend all that comes from it in
Jerusalem.'

'Refuse it,' Philip said, as Considine lifted friendly eyebrows at him
before looking at Roger, who considered, his head on one side.

'I don't know them, of course,' he said, 'but you encourage me to hope
that the others are wrong. Take it--refuse it--something else. Take it and
not take it.... I know--take it and withdraw it, sell everything and
keep the result.'

'Exactly,' Considine answered. 'They insist on selling out all the
Rosenberg properties, and what they have from that--however large or
small--they will spend on building the Temple again.'

'But the loss----?' Sir Bernard exclaimed. 'It will take years, won't it?'

'They are too old to spend years in patience,' Considine said. 'They
will have it done immediately, for fear they should die before the work
is begun.'

'But can't you stop them?' Philip said.

'Believing what I do believe,' Considine answered, 'why should I stop
them? It is a great act of creation; they prepare for Messias.'

'And the jewels?' Roger asked. 'Are they to be sold too?'

'No,' Considine said; 'those they will take as they are, "an oblation to
the Holy of Holies, a recompense for iniquity and for that one of their
house who has touched the unclean thing." I repeat their words.'

'If they ever get them to Jerusalem----' Roger suggested.

'That may be part of the executor's business,' Considine answered. 'I
shall do my best for them while I've the time.'

'It'll cause a good deal of disturbance,' Sir Bernard said thoughtfully.
'Rosenberg was interested in a great deal, wasn't he?'

'A great deal,' Considine agreed, adding with a faint smile, 'Perhaps it
was a little unfortunate that Patton, intending the best, pointed out
that Rosenberg had religious interests which would be upset by such an
action. He instanced a concern called the Anglo-Catholic Church and Home
Adornment Society, which manufactured crucifixes and pictures of saints.
Somehow Rosenberg was mixed up in it. It didn't placate them.'

'Patton, I suppose,' Sir Bernard said, 'felt that all religions meant
the same?'

'I was sorry for him,' Considine said, again smiling faintly. 'Even the
Chief Rabbi could hardly quieten them. Yes, Sir Bernard. I don't say
that Patton's wrong, but there remains the question of what religion all
the religions mean.'

'Perhaps that's what the African proclamations are trying to tell us,'
Roger said. 'Do you believe in them, Mr. Considine?'

'In what sense--believe?' Considine asked.

'D'you think they're authentic?' Roger elaborated. 'And if authentic,
d'you think they mean anything?'

'Yes and yes,' Considine answered. 'I see no reason why they shouldn't
be authentic--and if they are then I think they mean something definite.
It is a gospel, perhaps a crusade, which is approaching.'

'Jolly for us,' Roger said. He shifted his eyes to Inkamasi, and said,
'And what do you think?' thanking his gods that the other was next to
him and that vocatives of address could therefore be avoided. How did
one speak to a Zulu king?

Inkamasi looked up heavily. The last twenty-four hours, Sir Bernard
thought, seemed to have dulled the young African. His eyes went to
Considine, who said, 'Yes; let the king tell us if he thinks this gospel
has meaning.'

Why did Considine, he wondered, speak so, with such high gravity in his
voice? He waited with interest for Inkamasi's answer but when it came it
took them but little farther. He answered the question, but no more.
'Yes, I think it has a meaning,' he said, and his eyes fell again to his
plate.

Sir Bernard looked back at Considine, who was (he noticed) eating very
little, a few fragments of each course, a few sips of wine, and that
with an air rather of courtesy than of interest or desire. He was
behaving as a gracious host should, but what host was this who was
waited on by gentlemen, who spoke of gospels and crusades, who seemed to
dominate from his seat the visitors he permitted to speak freely? Sir
Bernard said: 'It's a little cheap, isn't it? "The conquest of death"?'

'You don't desire the conquest of death?' Considine asked.

'I find a difficulty in understanding it here,' Sir Bernard said.

'Why?' Considine asked again.

Sir Bernard hesitated, and Roger broke in swiftly, 'Because we've never
heard of it happening, and because we've never noticed that reading
poetry and being in love led to anything that looked like the conquest
of death. At least, I can't think of any other reason. What does it
_mean_?'

'There are two things it might mean,' Considine said, 'living for ever
or dying and living again. And will you'--he leaned a little
forward--'will _you_ tell me, Mr. Ingram, that you haven't felt one or
both of these when you deal with great verse?'

Philip saw Roger's face change. He was looking steadily at Considine,
and he continued to look for more than a minute before he answered. In
that time the sardonic and almost bitter humour which often showed in
him, as if he were weary of fighting that stupidity against which 'the
gods themselves contend in vain', and as if he despised himself both for
strife and weariness--that half-angry mockery vanished, and it was with a
sudden passionate sincerity that he said, 'No, no; you're right. One
dies and lives in it, but I can't tell how.'

'Only because you haven't looked that way,' Considine said, with an
illuminating smile. 'You handle the stuff of the experiment, the stuff
which the poets made, but they made it out of what is common to us all,
and there are things which they, even they, never knew. And as for love,
is there any one of us, since we are men and have loved, who doesn't
know that there is within the first moments of that divine delight some
actuality of the conquest of death?'

Half by chance, his eyes rested on Philip, who, as if called by that
commanding gaze from his habitual shyness and dislike of speech,
stammered out: 'Yes, but what is there to do? It's like that, but what
can I do?'

'You can know your joy and direct it,' Considine answered. 'When your
manhood's aflame with love you will burn down with it the barriers that
separate us from immortality. You waste yourselves, all of you, looking
outwards; you give yourselves to the world. But the business of man is
to assume the world into himself. He shall draw strength from everything
that he may govern everything. But can you do this by doubting and
dividing and contemplating? by intellect and official science? It is
greater labour that you need.'

'Govern?' Sir Bernard put in, 'what do you mean by governing the world?
Ruling it, like Csar?'

'Csar', Considine answered, 'knew of it. I am sure he did. This man who
had so many lovers, who could bear all hardships and use all comfort,
who was not athlete or lover or general or statesman or writer, but only
those because he was Csar, who founded not a dynasty but a
civilization, whose children we are, who dreamed of travelling to the
sources of the Nile and sailed out to the strange island whither the
Gallic boatmen rowed the souls of the dead, who was lord of all minds
and natures, didn't he dream of the sources of other waters and set sail
living for a land where the spirits of other men are but helplessly
driven? Rule the world? he _was_ the world; he mastered it; the power
that is in it burned in him and he knew it, he was one with it.'

'Csar died,' Sir Bernard said.

'He was killed, he was destroyed, but he was not beaten and he did not
die,' Considine answered. 'Why does a man die but because he has not
driven strength into the imagination of himself as living?'

Sir Bernard put his hand in the pocket of his dinner jacket, but he
paused before withdrawing it, as the subdued but powerful voice swept
on. 'Csar had the secret then, and if Antony had had it too Europe
might have been a place of lordlier knowledge to-day. For he could have
destroyed Octavian and he and the Queen of Egypt in their love could
have presented the capacities of love on a high stage before the
nations. But they wasted themselves and each other on the lesser
delights. And what failed at Alexandria was unknown in Juda. Ah, if
Christ had known love, what a rich and bounteous Church he could have
founded! He almost conquered death in his own way, but he was slain like
Csar before he quite achieved. So Christianity has looked for the
resurrection in another world, not here. The Middle Ages wondered at
visions of the truth--alchemy, sorcery, fountains of youth, these are
part of the dream. The Renascence knew the splendour but lost the
meaning, and it was tempted by learning and scholarship, and ravaged by
Calvin and Ignatius with their systems, and it withered into the
eighteenth century. They did well to call that the Augustan age, for
Csar had fallen and Christ was but a celestial consolation. But the
time is come very near now.'

Roger said, 'But how? but how?'

Considine answered, 'By the transmutation of your energies, evoked by
poetry or love or any manner of ecstasy, into the power of a greater
ecstasy.'

The photograph in Sir Bernard's hand dropped on to the table; leaning
forward, he said, his eyes bright with a great curiosity, 'But do you
tell us that you have done it?'

'I have done one thing,' Considine said. 'I think I shall do the other
when I have made a place for it on earth. I live, except for accident,
as I choose and as long as I choose. It is two hundred years since I was
born, and how near am I to-night to any kind of natural death?'

He did not exult over them or seem to speak boastfully. He leaned back
in his chair, and with an exalted certitude his eyes held them
motionless, while his voice put to them that serene inquiry. Clear and
triumphant, he smiled at them, and his gentlemen stood beside him, and
his wine, hardly touched, glowed in its glass, as his own spirit seemed
to glow in the purged and consummate flesh that held it. Philip
remembered Rosamond's thrice-significant body, and yet this body was
more significant even than Rosamond's for here there arose no lovely and
mournful mist of unformulated desire. And Roger's mind, but
half-consciously, sought to recall some great verbal wonder that should
serve to express this wonder, and failed. Sir Bernard's scepticism,
forbidding incredulity, left him to savour the full possession of an
unrivalled and exquisite experience. Only the Zulu king sat with his
head on his hand and showed no knowledge of the talk that proclaimed
immortality present in the shape of a man.

The minutes seemed to pass as the others gazed, yet they did not seem
minutes, for time was lost. Nearer than ever before in their lives to a
sense of abandoned discipleship, the two young men trembled before one
who might be their predestined lord. It was Sir Bernard's voice that
broke the stillness.

'And this other thing?' he said. 'What else is there you foresee?'

Considine smiled once more. 'This is only a part,' he said. 'Because I
live, men shall live also. But they shall do greater works than I, or
perhaps I shall do them--I do not know. To live on--that is well. To live
on by the power not of food and drink but of the imagination itself
recalling into itself all the powers of desire--that is well too. But to
die and live again--that remains to be done, and will be done. The spirit
of a man shall go out from his body and return into his body and
revivify it. It may be done any day; perhaps one of you shall do it.
There have been some who tried it, and though they have failed and are
dead we know they were pioneers of man's certain empire. It is what your
Christ announced--it is the formula of man divinitized--"a little while
and I am not with you, and again a little while and I am with you." He
was the herald of the first conqueror of death.'

There came at the door one of those discreet knocks, and a
gentleman-in-waiting went lightly and returned to murmur a message.
Considine listened and looked at his guests; then he added, ending what
he had been saying, 'and I will show you the intention that shall, one
day, succeed.'

He murmured a few words to his servant who returned to the door and went
out. Considine looked round the table and rose. 'Let's go into the other
room for our coffee and perhaps you'll be indulgent to me,' he said. 'I
generally have music played after dinner--can you listen for a few
minutes without being bored?'

They murmured assurances, and stood up, following him as he moved from
the room and on to another door which a servant opened for them. It was
a long high room into which they came (to judge from the proportions
visible), but a part of it was cut off by hanging curtains of an
extraordinarily deep blue, a blue so deep that though it had not the
blaze it had the richness of sapphire. Sir Bernard exclaimed when he saw
it, and Considine said to him, 'You see my travels also have not been in
vain.'

'Where did you find this, then?' Sir Bernard said. 'It beats the best
stained glass I've ever seen.'

'It was woven for me once,' Considine answered, 'in a village where they
see colour as well as St. John saw it in his vision. Sit down here,
won't you?'

There were a group of comfortable chairs at the end of the room farthest
from the curtains, and to these the visitors were, half-ceremonially,
ushered. The gentleman in attendance offered cigars and cigarettes to
all but Considine; when they were settled, he went over to the curtains
and at a nod from his master drew them a little back. Beyond, through
the opening, they could glimpse similar panelled walls to those between
which they sat. Sir Bernard could see at the farther end of the room a
group of figures, a cello, and violins. The gentleman in waiting,
standing in the opening, made a sign with his hand, withdrew to the
door, and remained standing there. The music began.

Both the Travers loved music; it was indeed--besides events--Sir Bernard's
only emotional indulgence, and he was therefore more on his guard
against it than perhaps even his alert intelligence altogether realized.
Philip was not far advanced in its obedience; he, in a despised but
correct phrase, 'knew what he liked,' and was humbly and properly aware
that 'he didn't know much about it.' He prepared to listen, and for the
first few minutes was engaged in trying to recognize some of the phrases
that floated to him. He seemed to have heard them before, but he
couldn't place them; they were followed by other sounds which he knew he
couldn't place. It was, he supposed, 'modern music'; there was at
intervals something very like a discord. But as he listened he began to
lose touch with it, and to think more and more of Rosamond. There was
nothing surprising in this; he very often did think of Rosamond, with or
without music. But he was thinking of her in harmony with the music. A
rush and ripple of sound went through him and in his brain it was not so
much sound as Rosamond's visible form, the quivering line of her
exquisite side; and the violins swept up more quickly and her round full
neck grew up in that beautiful dream and her chin became visible, and
they slowed and sighed, and there between her welcoming arms and her
breasts was a something of fullness and satisfaction which invited him,
but not to her. For the music that so created her form in his
imagination at the same time swept his imagination round and round her
form, but its cry drove him from her. She seemed to be there; almost she
moved her hands to him, the music moulded itself into her palms, but the
force of it kept him from them. More clearly than ever before in his
waking thoughts he saw the naked physical beauty that was Rosamond and
would have drawn her to his heart, but that, darkly and deeply as never
before, the energy of music which was in that beauty invited and adjured
him to attend to itself alone. His blood flowed, his breath came
heavily, in the growing intoxication of love, but the harmony that
caused it summoned him back from its image to its power. He felt himself
flowing away from Rosamond, with no less but with greater passion than
he had seemed to flow towards it. His passion had reached a point of
trembling stillness before, and had closed then, perhaps in a kiss or an
uncertain caress, perhaps in a separation and a departure. But now it
found no such sweet conclusion, and still as the sources of his strength
were opened up, and the currents of masculinity released, still he, or
whatever in that music was he, seemed to control and compel them into
subterranean torrents towards hidden necessities within him. Flux and
reflux existed at once, but he could not name the end to which the
reflux turned. It should be dispelled into some purpose, but what? but
what? He seemed to cry out, and he heard an answer; he heard Considine
saying, 'It is two hundred years since I was born, and how near am I to
any kind of death?' That might well be; this strength within him might
well carry him on through two hundred years; time was only its measure,
not its limit; its condition, not its control. 'Feed; feed and live,' he
heard a voice crying, and then the voice was itself but music, and the
music receded, and he heard it mighty at a distance, and then less
mighty but nearer, and at last, trembling all over, he realized how he
was sitting, shaken and troubled, in a chair by the fireside, and how
beyond the curtains the sound of the violins trembled also and died
away. He looked round and met Roger's eyes, and knew that in them also
recognition was beginning slowly to return.

Roger never much cared for music, but he had not been sorry when it was
proposed to him; imposed upon him, he was inclined to think, would have
been a better term, since quite apart from politeness no-one would have
dared object to Considine's obvious intention. At least, Sir Bernard
might; Sir Bernard could do most things, but Roger was quite clear that
neither Philip nor himself would. But he didn't object, even mentally;
he rather welcomed the suggestion, since he, not caring for music, would
have a little while to order his confused ideas. Considine's
conversation--especially with this two-century climax--had got rather
beyond them. Besides, he wanted to try and see what he meant by agreeing
to the statement that all great art seemed to hold contemporaneous death
and new life. He settled himself, glanced indolently towards the distant
musicians, and looked for a line to experiment on. It ought to be a good
line; he picked out, 'And thus the Filial Godhead answering spake.' The
music, he was aware, had begun. Very well then: now----The simple
analysis, the union of opposites which so often existed in verse, was
clear enough. There was the opposition of the Latin 'Filial' and the
English 'God,' and of the ideas expressed in those words--Filial,
implying subordination and obedience; Godhead--authority, finality.
Something similar was true also of 'answering' and 'spake.' That was
elementary--but about death... the music was getting in his way;
bother the music--the words were becoming a kind of guide to it, not to
his thoughts. His thoughts showed him the lovely and delicate
manipulation of... of what? Words; the association of words: 'the
Filial'--a twist and cry of the violins broke sharply on him--'Godhead.'
'Filial'--he was filial to something; filial--the subordination of himself
in the presence of something, of godhead, the godhead this triumphant
sound was speeding through his consciousness; filial--the smooth vowels
and labials, the word that was he sliding so easily in and through the
energy of the whole line, an energy that broke out in the explosive
consonants of 'Godhead.' Filial--that was to die, to be drawn down by
this music into reconciliation with something that answering spake. But
it was he that answering spake--answering, answering, answering, what but
that which spake? 'Spake, spake,' the notes sang out; not saying 'spake'
but sounding it; they were speaking. It--the word, the sound, was itself
speaking; 'spake' was only an echo of what it said. 'The Filial Godhead
answering spake'--and Roger Ingram was being left behind, even the Roger
Ingram that loved the line, for the line was driving him down to answer
it by dying and living, to be nothing but a filial godhead. Milton was
but a name for a particular form of this immortal energy; the line was
but an opportunity for knowing the everlasting delight, the ecstasy of
all those elements that combined in its passionate joy, knowing it by
being part of it. His intellect had shown him the marvellous glories of
the line, but as he passed into it and between its glories his intellect
revealed itself but as one of the elements. A moral duty swept him on.
This energy was to be possessed, to possess him, and then--then he would
have time to find yet greater powers even than that. Power, power--'the
Power so-called Through sad incompetence of human speech'; even the
great poets were but sad incompetence; nothing but the transmutation of
even the energy they gave could be an answer to the energy they took
from some source beyond them. He hung, poised, unconscious of himself,
repeating words silently and very slowly, opening himself to them: 'sad
incompetence of human speech'--'thus the Filial Godhead answering spake.'
And the violins descanted on it, and slowly died away; and as slowly he
came to himself and looked up to meet Philip's welcoming and inquiring
eyes.

The music ceased. Considine stood up and came over to his guests. 'Did
you care for it?' he asked.

No-one found it possible to answer immediately; at last Sir Bernard,
with a sudden movement, came to his feet. He looked at Considine, and
against the other's majestic form his smaller figure seemed to gather
itself together. He looked, and said, in a voice not without a note of
victory, 'Well, I kept my head.'

'You are proud of that?' Considine asked disdainfully. Sir Bernard
shrugged. 'It fulfils its function,' he said. 'I like to take my music
like a gentleman. What was it?'

'It was made by one of my friends,' Considine said. 'He had overcome all
things except music, but that lured him to spend his power and he died.
We feed on what he did that we may do more than he.'

'But----' Roger began, arrested by something in these words, 'but do you
mean--is it a waste to make music?'

'Mustn't it be?' the other asked. 'If you want more than sound it's a
waste to spend power making sound, as it's a waste to spend on the
beloved what's meant to discover more than the beloved.'

'But this means the death of everything!' Roger exclaimed.

'And if so?' Considine asked. 'Yet it isn't so. It's possible to make
out of the mere superfluity of power greater things than men now spend
all their power on. The dropping flames of that fire are greater than
all your pyres of splendour. And when death itself is but passion of
ecstasy, we will make music such as you couldn't bear to hear, and we
will be the fathers of the children who shall hear it. Listen to the
prophecy.'

He turned and nodded to the gentleman in waiting, who had after the
music ceased again drawn the curtains, and now went out of the room.
Considine left his guests together and returned to a small table near
the curtains. The only light in the room came from a tall standard near
him, so that Sir Bernard and the others were clustered in the shadows
and not clearly to be seen.

Roger glanced at the African, sitting by him almost as if asleep, and
then looked back again at Considine. He stood there, an ordinary
gentleman in an ordinary dinner-jacket, but the black of the clothes and
the tie, the white of the front and the cuffs, gathered into a kind of
solemn insignia. Roger saw him, against the immense and universal
sapphire of the draperies behind him, a figure in hieratic dress,
motionless, expectant, attentive, having power to give or to withhold,
as if an Emperor of Byzantium awaited between the East and the West the
approach of petitions he only could fulfil. His hands were by his sides,
his head was a little thrown back, his eyes were withdrawn as if he
meditated, and behind him the vast azure hung as if it were a cloak some
attendant had but that moment removed and still held spread out before
he folded it. Modern, contemporary--antique, mythical--neither of these
were the truth. He stood as something more than either, being both and
more than both. It was Man that stood there, man conscious of himself
and of his powers, man powerful and victorious, bold and serene, a
culmination and a prophecy. Time and space hung behind him, his
background and his possession, themselves no more separate but woven in
a single vision, the colour of the living background to that living
domination. 'Death itself but passion of ectasy'--death itself might well
have been lying at those feet clad in black, shining and pointed gear,
as in delicate armour, at the direction of the hands which fell from
between the stiff, shining and sacerdotal cuffs. The ritual of a
generation was changed into a universal ritual; so for Philip Rosamond
had turned her dresses into significance; so always and in all places
have the gods when they walked among men changed into their own
permanent sacramental habits the accidental raiment of the day.

Phrases of the talk rushed back into Roger's mind--other phrases of the
proclamation of the High Executive--'moments of the exalted imagination':
here and now was such a moment, here and now that imagination made
itself visible before him and overwhelmed him with its epiphany.

The door opened. Considine turned his head. The gentleman in waiting
stood aside and said in a low clear voice, 'Colonel Mottreux and Herr
Nielsen.' Two men came into the room. The first was a tall, lean, rather
hatchet-faced man, not unlike Roger himself, but with fiercer and more
hungry eyes, as Roger's might have been had all the real placability
which his love of Isabel and his service of poetry gave him been
withdrawn. He looked like a soldier but an ambitious soldier who doubts
his future; only as he bowed abruptly to Considine he showed a not
merely military subordination; his eyes fell and did not for a moment
recover. There came after him a different figure--a man German-built,
sunburnt and weather-beaten, but still young, or young anyhow he seemed
to those who watched, though in the new spiritual air they breathed they
were aware that youth and age might have other meanings than usual in
terms of time. He bowed much more deeply than Mottreux, and once well in
the room he halted while the other went forward.

'My dear Mottreux,' Considine said, not moving, but smiling and holding
out his hand. Colonel Mottreux pressed it lightly, almost deferentially;
his eyes went to the guests.

'These gentlemen have been dining with me,' Considine said. 'I've wished
them to remain a little. We'll talk of your other business later,
Mottreux. Let Herr Nielsen tell me his purpose first.'

Mottreux stood aside and motioned to Nielsen who came forward and halted
two or three steps away.

Considine stretched out his hand, and the other bowed over it,
genuflecting a little at the same time as if he were in a royal or
sacerdotal presence. But he came erect again and faced his suzerain with
an air almost as august as his own. His face was ardent with a profound
resolution; to say that 'his soul was in his eyes' was no description
but a definition. They burned with a purpose and Considine's looked back
at them as if he received that purpose and confirmed it.

'Why have you come to me?' he asked, gently, and as if it were a ritual
rather than a necessary interrogation.

'I have come to beg for the permission,' the other said.

'The permission is in yourself,' Considine answered. 'I only hear it,
but that it's right that I should do. Are you a child of the Mysteries?'

'Since you showed them to me,' Nielsen said.

'That was fifty years ago,' Considine answered, and the watchers in the
shadow thrilled and trembled as they heard the calm voice, and that
which, equally calm, replied, 'I've followed them since.'

'Tell me a little,' Considine said, and the other considering, answered,
'I have endured love and transmuted it. I have found, when I was young,
that the sensual desires of man can be changed into strength of
imagination and a physical burden become the bearer of the burden. I
have transmuted masculine sex into human life. I am one of the masters
of love. And I've done this with all things--whatever I have loved or
hated, I have poured the strength of every love and hate into my own
life and what is behind my life, and now I need love and hate no more.'

He paused, and Considine said, shooting one swift glance towards his
guests: 'Is this a greater or lesser thing than hate or love?'

'Sir, it's strength and health beyond describing,' Nielsen said. 'But
it's now that I long to go farther.'

Considine turned and faced him full, asking 'What will you do now?'

'I will go down to death and come again living,' the other said.

Considine's eyes searched him long in silence: then he said slowly, 'You
may not come again.'

'Then let me die in that moment,' the other cried out. 'That's nothing;
it doesn't matter; if I fail, I fail. But it's not by dreaming of
failure that the master of death shall come. Haven't you told us that
this shall be? and it's in my heart now to raise my body from death. I'm
not like you; I'm not necessary in this moment to the freeing of men;
let me set free the fire that's in us; let me go to break down the
barriers of death.'

He flung out his hands and caught Considine's; he poured upon his lord
the throbbing triumph of his belief and his desire. Considine's voice,
fuller and richer than any of the hearers had known it, answered him:
'The will and the right are yours, not mine. I'm here only to purge, not
to forbid. There must be those who make the effort and some may never
come again, but one at any moment shall. Go, if you will; master
corruption and the grave; make mortal imagination more than immortal;
die and live.'

Nielsen dropped on a knee, but his face was turned upwards to
Considine's who, stooping, laid his hands on the other's shoulders.
Behind the two exalted figures the deep blue of the curtains seemed to
be troubled as if distance itself were shaken with the cry and the
command. The splendour of colour quivered with the neighbourhood of the
ecstasy of man imagining the truth of his being, and creating colour by
the mere movements of his imagination. The two were alone, alone in a
profound depth of azure distance, so greatly did their passion
communicate itself to the things that had been made out of like passion.
The woven colour and the woven music had been made at some similar depth
of devotion, and all that mingled intensity swept through and filled the
room, so that the imaginations of Roger and Philip felt and moved in it,
and Philip, panting almost with terror, felt the music he had heard and
the colour he saw and the figures before him gather and lose themselves
in one piercing consciousness of Rosamond, which yet was not Rosamond
but that of which Rosamond was a shape and a name; and Roger felt
phrases, words, half-lines, pressing on him, and yet not words or lines
but that which they defined and conveyed--and before them Considine cried
again to the ardent postulant of transmuted energy: 'Die then, die,
exult and live.'

Only the Zulu king lay back as if asleep in his chair, and in his Sir
Bernard, freed from the temptation of music, watched and savoured and
keenly enjoyed every moment of the incredibly multitudinous and changing
fantasy which was mankind. He wouldn't deny that he was looking at a man
two hundred years old telling a man of, say, seventy to die and live
again; it might be--it was unusual but it might be. He couldn't imagine
himself wanting to die and live, because that (it seemed to him) would
be to spoil the whole point of death. The worst of death was that it was
the kind of experience it was very difficult to appreciate in the
detached mood of the spectator, let alone the connoisseur. But he had
done his best in his own case by rehearsing to himself--and occasionally
to Philip--all the ironies which the approach of death often releases on
a man. 'I may babble obscenities or make a pious confession to
Caithness,' he had said. 'Or I may just lie about and cry for days. One
never knows. Try and enjoy it for me, Philip, if I'm past it. I should
like to feel that somebody did, and death so often undoes all one's own
hypotheses, even the hypothesis that one isn't important.' But he feared
that Philip wouldn't find it easy to enjoy.

He thought of this for a moment as he watched Nielsen rising slowly to
his feet; he thought of it as he looked at the benediction which
Considine's face shed on the new adventurer. They were still speaking to
each other but he couldn't hear what was being said; he saw Mottreux
come forward, and then he saw the Colonel and Nielsen bowing and going
to the door. He drew a deep breath and lay back in his chair, but he was
immediately distracted by Philip who said in a low voice, 'I can't stand
any more of this; I'm going.'

On the other side Roger also moved. 'It's true,' he said. 'He's right.'

Sir Bernard, a little startled, looked at him. Was Roger becoming a
convert to this new gospel? He said, 'You believe in him?'

'No,' Roger said, 'but I believe he knows what poetry is, and I've never
met a man before who did.'

Before Sir Bernard could answer Considine came over to them, and
instinctively, in fear or hostility or homage, they all rose. 'You see,'
he said, 'there are those who will try the experiment.'

'Must I really believe', Sir Bernard said, 'that that friend of yours is
going to commit suicide with the idea of animating his body all over
again?'

'Exactly that,' Considine said.

Sir Bernard sighed a little. 'It _is_ a religion,' he said. 'And I hoped
that man was becoming sane. I think I should dislike you, Mr. Considine,
if dislike were ever really worth while.'

'And I should have despised you once, Sir Bernard,' Considine answered,
'but not now. Before you die you shall know that the world is being made
anew.'

He had hardly spoken when they heard without, as if it echoed,
applauded, and proclaimed his words, a sound distant indeed but
recognizable, though for a moment they doubted. It was the noise of guns
firing. Faint and certain it reached them. Philip and Roger jumped, and
even Sir Bernard turned his head towards the window. Considine, watching
them, smiled. 'Can it be the African planes?' he asked ironically. 'Has
intellect failed to guard its capital?'

A shout or two came up to them from without, the noise of running feet,
a whistle, several cars passing at great speed. Sir Bernard looked back
at Considine. 'Are you bombing London then?' he asked politely.

'I,' Considine laughed at him. 'Am I the High Executive? Ask the Jews
who believe in Messias, or Mr. Ingram who believes in poetry, or your
son who (I think) believes in love, or the king who believes in
kingship, ask them what power threatens London to-night. And ask them if
they think glory can be defeated by gunpowder.'

'I should think it might, if glory is making use of petrol,' Sir Bernard
said. 'I'm sorry that in the circumstances perhaps we'd better go. If
your friend's blown to bits by a bomb he'll find it a trifle difficult
to revivify his body, won't he?'

'The Christian Church for a considerable time believed it could be
done,' Considine said. 'But I forget that you're not even a Christian.'

Roger broke in. 'My God!' he said, harshly, '_are_ you bombing London?'

Considine changed in an instant from mockery to seriousness. 'Be at
ease,' he said. 'Mrs. Ingram's perfectly safe--except indeed from the
mobs whom alone your wise brains have left to be the degraded servants
of ecstasy. The only deaths to-night will be sacrifices of devotion.'

Sir Bernard walked towards the door; a white and bewildered Philip went
along with him. Roger lingered a moment.

'I don't know whether I hate or adore you,' he said, 'and I don't know
whether you're mad or I. But----'

'But either way,' Considine interrupted, 'there is more in verse than
talk about similes and metres, and you know it. Hark, hark, there is
triumph speaking to man.'

The guns sounded again and Roger ran after his friends.




                               CHAPTER VI
                          THE MASS AT LAMBETH


Before Sir Bernard and Philip reached Colindale Square, peace had again
filled the night. The raid, if raid it had been, seemed to have been
driven off, although the house, when they reached it, was awake and
vocal. Caithness was waiting for them in the library, anxious but not
perturbed. He knew nothing more than they did, the guns had been
sounding, at intervals and at a distance, for something under an hour,
then they had ceased. The police had been hastily instructed to spread
the news that all was clear, and (in less loud tones) that no damage
whatever had been done. Materially this might be true, but not mentally.
The agitation which shook London was as much worse than that which the
German raids had caused as the fear of negro barbarism was more
fundamental than that of the Prussian. London hid and trembled; the
jungles were threatening it and the horrors that dwelled in them. It was
but for a few minutes--less than an hour--but it had happened. The morning
would perhaps increase the fear when it was uttered; for the moment
darkness and separation made it private.

Caithness listened with profound attention to the account Sir Bernard
gave him. But he showed a distant tendency to discuss it in language
which, though hostile, was far too like Considine's to please his friend
or re-assure Philip. He seemed to find most difficulty in accepting the
possibility of Considine's age--which, as Sir Bernard pointed out, was
due to the fact that he disapproved of Considine's ideas. 'If you
thought he was a saint--your kind of saint--you'd think it might be a
miracle,' he complained. 'You will fall back on the supernatural to
explain the unusual. But that doesn't matter: the real problem is
whether he's the High Executive.'

'You say he talked as if he was,' Caithness said.

'Yes, but this magniloquent kind of rhetoric can never be trusted,' Sir
Bernard said. 'He might be merely mad. And if he is there's no sense in
talking to the Prime Minister about him. Even if I do he won't be there,
of course.'

'The man I'm thinking about', Caithness said, 'is the Zulu. You told me
last night he said he was a Christian.'

'In a parenthesis, while we were talking stomach,' Sir Bernard said. 'To
explain the strength of his digestion, no doubt.'

'And to-night,' Caithness went on, unheeding the last remark, 'to-night
he was different?'

'My dear Ian, you haven't begun to understand Mr. Considine,' Sir
Bernard answered. 'Every one was different. Roger went off plunged in a
reverie, which is very unlike Roger. And----' he glanced at his son and
changed the sentence--'and I was quite incapable of connected thought.
And the king--as everybody calls him, so let's--the king was comatose.'

Caithness began walking up and down the room. 'I don't like it,' he
said. 'I don't like the sound of any of it. And especially I don't like
a Christian to be under this man's influence or in his power. If he can
affect you----'

'What on earth harm----' Sir Bernard began, and was interrupted by the
priest.

'He evidently thinks he's got hold of some infernal power,' Caithness
went on, 'and if--if by the wildest possibility he were mixed up with
this African delirium--are we to leave one of the Faith exposed to his
control? He's done it harm enough already. God knows what he may be
doing to him. He may have hypnotized him into obedience.'

'Literally', Sir Bernard asked, 'or metaphorically?'

'What does it matter which?' Caithness threw back. 'D'you suppose one's
worse than the other? Are we to have a Christian spiritually martyred
here among us?'

'Certainly not,' Sir Bernard said. 'St. Iago, and charge, Spain! Where?'

But Caithness took no notice; he stood still and silent for a minute,
and Sir Bernard observed, with interest, that he was praying. Caithness,
he reflected, had always been a little inclined to call up his own
spiritual reserves under such a quite honest pretence of invoking
direction, though he was always rather careful to keep the command in
his own hands: Sir Bernard couldn't remember that God had ever been
known to disagree with Ian, anyhow in ecclesiastical affairs. It was
therefore with a sense of gratified accuracy that he heard the priest
say, 'Well, I'm going up there.'

'What, now?' he asked curiously.

'Certainly,' Caithness answered. 'And if this Zulu is still there I
shall insist on seeing him.'

'And supposing Mr. Considine refuses?' Sir Bernard asked.

Caithness looked at him abstractedly. 'O I don't think he'll refuse,' he
said. 'He either won't care to or he won't dare to. Will you come and
show me the house?'

'Anything for a quiet life,' his friend answered. 'Even to conducting a
Christian lion to a Zulu victim. What a world! And Rosenberg found it
uninteresting. But I dare say he didn't know many Christians. I warn
you, Ian,' he went on as they left the room, 'that if Considine's there
I shall pretend I don't know you, and that I've come back for a
cigarette case presented to me by grateful patients. Because if he isn't
the High Executive----'

'And if he is?' Caithness asked. 'If he _is_?'

'That', Sir Bernard said, 'is my only hope of an excuse for driving you.
O no, no taxis, thank you. If I have to help abduct a king, let me do it
in my own car, so as to have a right to put up a gold plate: "In this
car His Majesty the King of the Zulus once fled from the conquest of
death." Why don't you like the conquest of death, Ian?'

'That's all been done,' Caithness said, and Sir Bernard, as they came to
the garage, gave a little moan. 'Not in Considine's sense it hasn't,' he
said. 'You're just confused. O well--but I think _you'd_ probably like
Considine if you could ever get to know him. Get in, and we'll try.'

It was a little after midnight when they ran through Hampstead. Sir
Bernard stopped the car at the corner of the road, and the two of them
walked up it. There were more windows lit up than was usual, owing to
the raid, but Considine's house was in darkness. They went up the steps
and Caithness rang. In a few minutes he rang again, and again.

'He's probably directing the raid,' Sir Bernard said. 'Or flying up to
meet the planes. Levitation, I think they call it; some of your saints
used to do it. Similar to the odour of sanctity.'

Caithness said: 'We shall have to find a window.'

Sir Bernard sighed happily. 'What a night we're having!' he said,
following his friend. 'No, Ian, not that one: it's too near the road.
Somewhere away at the back. One takes off one's coat, I believe, and
presses it against the glass before striking a sharp blow in the centre.
We ought really to have treacle and brown paper. You wouldn't care to
wait while I went and knocked up the nearest grocer for some golden
syrup? We could use the rest of the tin as an excuse for calling. I
wonder if at his age Considine can eat golden syrup without getting
himself all sticky? That'd almost be worth living for.'

But since at the back of the house there was at least one window a
little open there was no need to resort to these more uncertain methods.
The two gentlemen pushed it up, very quietly, and entered. Sir Bernard,
scrambling in, thought to himself, '"I will encounter darkness as a
bride," I hope she likes me.' Within all was silent. They found their
way cautiously along, and emerged at last in the hall, where Sir Bernard
assumed direction. Either the house was for the time empty or everyone
was asleep. The second alternative was so unlikely that they permitted
themselves to assume the first.

They did not however relax their caution until they came at last to the
room where they had heard the music and seen Nielsen, and left the king
in his sleep and Considine in his triumph. Sir Bernard felt that they
were not treading so delicately but that one heard them; he seemed to
see Considine standing far off, his head a little turned, listening to
them, and he wondered if there would be some sudden interference in some
unknown manner. But though the suspense endured it did not increase, and
in the light of the room they saw Inkamasi still sitting in his chair.

Caithness went quietly across the room towards the Zulu, Sir Bernard
paused by the door, listening for footsteps, and watching what went on.
The priest kneeled down by the chair, and, after studying the African's
face for a few minutes, said in a low voice of energy, 'Inkamasi, what
are you doing here?'

The Zulu stirred under that intense regard and intense voice and
answered, 'Inkamasi waits for him who caused sleep.'

Sir Bernard jerked suddenly, for the voice was more like Considine's own
than the Zulu's, yet fainter than either, as if from a distance the
master of substitution interposed between the priest and the sleeper.
Caithness said, 'Do you sleep by your own will?'

'I watch by the will of him that rules me,' the other answered
monotonously. 'Inkamasi is hidden within me. It's I yet not I that
sleep.'

'In the name of the Maker of Inkamasi,' Caithness said with superb and
deep confidence, 'in the Name of the Eternal and Everlasting, in the
Name of Immanuel, I bid you awake.'

'I do not know them,' the sleeper answered, 'and I keep their sound from
Inkamasi lest he hear.'

'By the virtue in created life, by the union of Man with God, by the
Mother of God in the world and in the soul, I command you to wake,'
Caithness said.

'I do not know them, and I keep their sound from Inkamasi lest he hear,'
the sleeper answered.

'In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be silent and
go out of him,' Caithness exclaimed, making the sign of the cross over
the Zulu. 'Inkamasi, Inkamasi, by the faith you hold, by the baptism and
the Body of Christ, I bid you wake.'

The sleeper did not answer but he did not move. As if some closed powers
hung, poised and equal, over or within him he lay silent. Sir Bernard
remembered how, but a little before, he had seen Considine standing in
front of the azure profundity of the curtain, which still hung there, as
in the depth of space, and it seemed to him as if from the spectral
image of that figure and from the kneeling priest two separate currents
of command impinged upon the king and in the moment of meeting
neutralized their strength. The central heart of the Zulu beat beyond
those conflicting and equal intensities, in oblivion of the outer world
yet perhaps in liberty. He waited to see what more Caithness could do.
But though the priest concentrated his will and intention, though he
tried once or twice to speak, the stillness was prolonged. He had
silenced the speaker in Inkamasi, but the very effort held him also
silent. He strove to impose his determination upon the Zulu, but he
could not pass beyond the gate which he had succeeded in reaching; he
could not call the other back through it. He knelt praying by the chair
and the minutes went by.

Sir Bernard thought, 'We can't possibly stop here. We don't know where
Considine's gone, we don't know whether he's coming back, and I should
hate him to have to worry the exalted imagination with such a detail as
what to do with us. He might want us for some new experiment in the
conquest of death. I wonder whether----' He peered out through the door;
nothing was happening. He turned back into the room. 'If Ian and
Considine are locked in a spiritual chest-to-chest wrestle,' he thought,
'perhaps it's time for a mere intellectualist to have a word. A timid
tentative word.'

He went across the room and round the back of the chair. His eyes met
the priest, and by the force of old friendship communicated something of
his purpose. Caithness, still silent and intent, moved his hands from
where they rested on the Zulu's shoulders. Sir Bernard put his hand very
gently under an arm, and as gently lifted it forward. It yielded easily
to his pressure and when that pressure was removed dropped back again.
Fearful of speaking lest some rash word should bring down the balance
against him, Sir Bernard went lightly to the front of the chair, and
picked up the Zulu's hands. He drew them gently, gently forward and
upward, he pulled them towards him till the arms were extended, he
pulled with the least little extra firmness, and easily as the hands
moved the body moved also. The king rose to his feet, following that
physical direction, and Sir Bernard took a step backward towards the
door. Inkamasi followed him. Caithness, still caught in spiritual
combat, also rose, but he made no movement to assist; he left that
visible action to his ally. Sir Bernard, taking another step backward,
waited till the Zulu was in movement, then he slipped to one side and,
still holding the left hand in his own left, put his right fingers on
Inkamasi's back. He pressed gently; as if automatically the Zulu moved
on. Slowly they passed to the door, Sir Bernard on one side, Caithness
on the other. They went in front of that hanging curtain of blue, and
for a moment Sir Bernard could have believed that they were drawing
Inkamasi out of its influence and depth, could have wondered whether
indeed he were doing well thus to interfere on behalf of one magic
against another. 'What doest thou here, Gehazi?' he said to himself. 'Do
I really want to save a jungle-king for Ian's passion? One religion or
another, it's all the same--"She comes, she comes, the sable throne
behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old." I suspect I'm just getting a
little of my own back on Considine. Never mind; it's too late to change
now. Round the corner--so.'

They moved on, that curious mingling of intention directing the passive
African, through the still house, down the steps, to the waiting car.
Still in silence, Sir Bernard made the other two get in at the back and
himself returned to the driving-wheel. Once more they ran through
London, and in the cold October night brought the sleeper to Colindale
Square. There at last, once in the library, Sir Bernard turned to
Caithness. 'And now what?' he said. 'Because I can't personally conduct
this Christian of yours about the world for the rest of my life. And I
don't, just at the moment, see what you propose to do.'

'I know what I shall do,' Caithness said. 'Do you notice he moves more
of his own will since we brought him out of the house?'

'I wouldn't quite say that,' Sir Bernard said, 'but he needs less
direction. It is a kind of hypnotism, I suppose.'

'It's like a locking up of the outer faculties in his master's will,'
Caithness said. 'But the others are there, only they can't hear us. They
may hear a greater than us. To-morrow a voice shall call to him that no
tyrant shall silence.'

'Meaning----' Sir Bernard said. 'My dear Ian, you've no idea of how like
Mr. Considine's conversation yours is.'

'To-morrow', Caithness said, 'I will offer the soul and mind of this man
to our Lord in the operation of the Mass. The Archbishop will let us use
the chapel at Lambeth.'

'And you think that will help him?' Sir Bernard asked with interest.

'Subject always to the will of God,' Caithness answered.

'O quite,' Sir Bernard assented. 'The will of God, of course. Heads I
win, tails you lose. However---- And now do you think we dare go to bed?'

'I shan't myself,' Caithness said. 'I'll watch by him to-night. But you
go on.'

Sir Bernard looked dubious. 'I don't think I should feel quite
comfortable,' he said. 'Suppose the High Executive suggested to him a
little exalted imagination of freedom, I don't know that you could stop
him. I think, Ian, we'll both settle down with him. I really don't feel
capable of undressing a Zulu king; we haven't the stuff to do the _grand
coucher_ properly. Why is royalty so impressive?'

'It's the concentration of political energy in a person,' Caithness said
thoughtfully, 'the making visible of hierarchic freedom, a presented
moment of obedience and rule.'

'I think I prefer the Republic,' Sir Bernard said; 'it's the more
abstract dream. But I'm too tired to discuss it. Let's settle as well as
we can. Will you have the divan?'

Neither of them slept much--indeed Caithness remained wakeful in his
chair, except when for change of comfort he walked up and down a little.
Sir Bernard, having slipped away for a few minutes to change, locked the
door, took the key with him, and stretched himself on the divan, but
only to feel himself revolving the events of the evening. Once his mind
was relaxed it became conscious that it was more distressed than it had
known. The impact of these high, strange, and violent ideas, the
circumstances of colour, music, and ceremonial with which they had been
accompanied, the dim suggestion of vivid personalities accepting and
serving them and ringing around Considine's own exalted figure, the
dimmer but not negligible possibility that here in London moved the
mysterious High Executive of the African declarations, the great
intention of Nielsen's voice, the threat and anger of the guns answering
some threat hurled from the hidden places of the negro nations, the
obedience of Inkamasi to some distant control, the passion of Ian
Caithness--all these things shook his sedate and happily ironical brain.
This was an irony which his habits found it difficult to bear, for it
struck at the root of his own irony. And one nearer thing troubled him
yet more closely. There had been five of them at dinner that night, and
three of them had gone together, and of those three how many had come
away? Roger and Philip had gone with him, but it was not the same Roger
that had parted from him afterwards, and Philip was labouring under some
unaccustomed burden. He felt obscurely alone--his own house, his own
friends, were grown alien to him; nowhere in all the world was there one
intimate with whom he could mock at the monstrous apparitions that
loomed on the outskirts of his mind, closing round the slender spires
and delicate gardens in which of late its chosen civilization had moved.
Not so much the facts, though they were grotesque enough, but the manner
of the facts, disturbed him--the triumph, the fanaticism, the shadows of
ecstasy. Other memories forced themselves on him--an insane political
hot-gospeller in Hyde Park, Caithness vestmented in an ecclesiastical
ceremony, the antique faces of the Jews in the crude reproductions of
the papers, a look in Philip's eyes as he watched Rosamond, the silly
raucous voices of the crowd in the streets: where was detachment, where
was contemplation there? Amidst all the gracious achievements of the
mind what wild rites of self-immolation were again to be practised? The
rich blue of those curtains was marvellous in its beauty, but in what
depth of rapturous experience had it been woven? and was that rapture,
with all that must accompany it of danger and terror, indeed desirable
for man? Someone had cried out somewhere lately--'I will encounter
darkness as a bride'--'She comes... the sable throne behold'... to
encounter that as a bride; the words meant to him something far beyond
his nature. Darkness was to be exiled, not embraced; and when, as in the
hour of death, it could no longer be exiled, it should be received with
a proud and courteous if constrained hostility. It was Roger who had
cried: Roger who loved some mysterious energy that he himself had never
found, or finding had mistrusted and banished. He looked from his couch
on the shaded room, the dark face of the African chieftain, the pacing
figure of the priest of crucifixion; he listened to find if he should
again hear the sound of the guns that warned him of a crusade which had
spies and devotees in the city where he lay, in the friends by whom he
was surrounded, nay, in the very spirit which moved in his obscure self.

Nevertheless, he rose early the next morning with a mind still
determined to enjoy its stand against enemies within and without, and
gravely put his telephone at Ian's disposal in order that the priest
might speak to Lambeth. It seemed to Sir Bernard very unlikely that the
Archbishop would be up, but either he was or he was caused to be. After
a prolonged conversation Caithness came back to say merely that all had
been arranged. Philip, who apparently had also had very little sleep,
offered to drive, more for the sake of doing something, his father
suspected, than because he was very clear what was supposed to be
happening. But it was a perfectly good idea, Sir Bernard thought; he
himself had done all, and rather more than all, that could be thought
reasonable, and if Caithness's Deity were going to fight Nigel Considine
for the soul of the Zulu king, he would himself maintain towards such
fantastic spiritual warfare a beautiful neutrality. He liked Inkamasi as
an individual; he sympathized with him as an African; he was prepared to
be interested in him as a king. But he was certainly not prepared to
help decide whether he should turn out a fervent Christian or a
submissive Considinian; the powers concerned could settle that between
them. He saw the others off, and returned first to have breakfast and
then to ring up Roger and urge on him the advisability of removing
himself, Isabel and Rosamond to Colindale Square--in case of further
air-raids. Roger made some objection about correspondence, but a long
discussion conducted between Sir Bernard at one end and sometimes Roger,
sometimes Isabel, sometimes both of them at the other, and sometimes
merely between themselves, ended in their accepting his offer. 'I had
thought of leaving London,' Sir Bernard said, 'but if we decide to go,
we can all go together. It'll be kinder to Philip for you to come here,
and I have the finest sort of cellar if it's needed.'

Meanwhile, Philip at the steering-wheel was trying to order his own
distracted mind. He certainly hadn't had much sleep; the evening had
shaken him far too much. That curious music, so closely allied to
Rosamond yet ever avoiding her, calling and driving him to look for
something that seemed to hide in her yet had to be found for its own
sake not for hers, that music would by itself have prevented sleep. And
when to it was added the obscure talk of Considine's--and talk that meant
something. The moment of vision in Isabel's kitchen, when Rosamond's arm
had lain like a bar of firmamental power across the whole created
universe, dividing and reconciling at once, had stirred in him something
more than masculinity, and whatever had been stirred had recognized its
own kingdom in Considine's voice when he had spoken of the divine
delight which foretells and communicates the conquest of death. Philip
was not much concerned with the conquest of death as such in the future,
but he was vitally concerned with its immediate presence. He became
dimly aware that though Rosamond would die the thing he had seen in
Rosamond not merely could not die but had nothing whatever to do with
death. Even if it passed--though of course it couldn't pass--but even if
it did pass, still its passing had got nothing whatever to do with it.
Its presence, he toiled laboriously at an undefined thought, had got
nothing to do with its absence. Was it so very surprising then that men
could determine not to die? He rather wondered whether he could manage
to discuss this with Rosamond, only she was always impatient of his slow
mind, and he wouldn't be able to find words for it. Also, probably, she
wouldn't care about it; she'd feel it was disagreeable and a trifle
obscene, and perhaps she was right. She and Considine wouldn't get on
very well; only then--far off a single unmistakable note sounded and
ceased--only then which of them.... Shocked, as such lovers are, by
the implied disloyalty, when first some alien fate separates itself from
the hitherto universal fate which is the beloved, he put it hastily out
of his mind. He had not understood, in his confusion, the accusation
which his father had flung at Considine, and Sir Bernard considerately
had not pressed it on him. The High Executive was something to do with
negroes, and Considine was a man in London with whom he had dined. The
conquest of death itself would have been an easier matter to Philip than
the union of those two thoughts in a single idea. But the two
experiences ran closely parallel in his troubled heart.

At Lambeth he followed the others, Caithness gently guiding the Zulu by
a hand on his arm. Philip, without exactly professing and calling
himself a Christian, had a general idea that he disagreed with the
people who disagreed with Christianity. His father's own disagreement
slightly accentuated this, because in the usual reflux of the
generations he tended to assume that his father's mind was insufficient.
And anyhow any mere mental and argumentative disagreement was past
bothering him at the moment. He couldn't possibly have sat in the car
while the others went wherever they were going; and if the king had
really been put to sleep, he thought the king ought to be wakened. But
even the relation of Considine with the king did not cause him to
suspect whose determination had challenged England in the strange and
piercing notes of the Allied Suzerainties of Africa. So he went on.

One of the Archbishop's chaplains met them and brought them to the
private chapel. Caithness led Inkamasi to the rails of the sanctuary and
there caused him to kneel, kneeling himself by his side. Philip slipped
behind a chair. The Archbishop, vested in the ordinary chasuble, and the
chaplain, acting as server, made their entrance. Murmured sentences were
exchanged and the Archbishop went up to the altar.

Philip had long ago lost touch with the ritual of the Mysteries, and the
opening prayers brought back to him only a confused memory of
uninteresting moments in boyhood and youth. The Archbishop, with, a
swift intense movement, wheeled towards the kneeling four and began the
Commandments. Caithness turned his gaze on to Inkamasi, and seemed to
concentrate it, as the celebrant uttered, almost as if in an incantation
and with his look also fixed on the Zulu, 'Thou shalt have none other
gods but me.' The chaplain answered softly, and the beating series of
directions went on. The Archbishop turned again to the altar, murmured a
longer prayer, another, and came to the Epistle.

Of the Epistle and Gospel Philip, unused to the phrasing and tone,
understood very little. A phrase here and there struck him. 'Greater is
he that is in you than he that is in the world.' 'This sickness is not
unto death.' 'I am the resurrection and the life.' 'Lazarus, come
forth.' He was aware of a rising tide of passion, swelled suddenly as
the Archbishop broke into the Creed by the strong voice of Caithness.
The tones of the three priests mingled and achieved the Profession, and
ceased; and for some minutes Philip again heard only the single voice of
the celebrant, with an occasional murmur from the chaplain.
Nevertheless, as he knelt listening, the Rite ordered his mind. He
forgot to try and reconcile; he was moved by reconciliation. There rose
in him a feeling kindred to that with which sometimes he had waited for
Rosamond--entire expectation yet mingled with complete repose and
certainty. The face of Caithness, when he saw it, had lost its earlier
concentration and was filled instead with a profound conviction, a
content so deep that he involuntarily looked at the Zulu to see what, if
anything, had caused it. But no difference showed in Inkamasi, who
still, motionless, glassy-eyed, and lethargic, knelt at the rail, his
hands hanging over it. The Archbishop's face visible at moments as he
turned and returned, knelt and rose, spread out or closed his hands, was
more sombre than that of the other priests, but it was no more strongly
moved. Philip had once seen his father the moment before a successful
but very dangerous operation, and the look of the celebrant reminded him
of Sir Bernard then: it was the look of a man conscious of the gravity
of the work before him but conscious also of an entire capacity to deal
with it. But was this also then a work of cutting and setting right and
binding? was it as possible, if less usual, to restore a man's will as
to restore his stomach? The Archbishop seemed to be no more agitated
than any clergyman delivering a sermon; only as he stood now in the
Prayer of Consecration, he suddenly, after the words 'in the same night
that _He_ was betrayed,' paused and repeated them on a more exalted
note. 'In the same night that He was betrayed....' Philip felt
himself looking into a different world; a world he had glimpsed once
before over the outstretched arm that had been more significant to him
than any other experience in his life. To take his part in it, if indeed
it really existed, was beyond him; yet he felt that if something was in
fact being done there to aid a man he ought to be taking his part in it.
He understood the work no more than he understood why Rosamond should be
and mean so much. But if the king were really hypnotized.... He began
to make a wordless effort towards prayer, half absurd though he felt his
effort to be. On the instant it took him; a sudden warmth leapt within
him; his being rested stable upon a rocky basis, and the movements
before him became natural and right. He understood them no more than
before, but he was assured that they answered to the imperious control
that held him. That control was gone again in a moment; he found himself
staring only at the ordinary men whom he knew; his mind was undirected,
his heart was unwarmed, as before. But as at Hampstead there had opened
spaces and distance beyond all dreams, so now there had shown glimpse of
a certainty beyond all pledges and promises, a fixity which any after
hesitation was powerless to deny. He became conscious of an immense
stillness around him; the Archbishop was on his knees before the altar,
and the others motionless in their places. The Archbishop's voice
sounded: 'Almighty and Everlasting God, who alone art the life of all
thy creatures and hast made them able to know how in thy eternity they
glorify thee, unite them in thy prevailing will, and increase in them
that freedom which only is able to bring them to the bondage of thy
perfect service, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' The chaplain and
Caithness answered 'Amen.'

'Almighty God,' the Archbishop said again, 'make us to know thee through
thy Love who hath redeemed us, and bestoweth through the operations of
the Church militant upon earth grace and aid upon all that are in
adversity. Establish in us, and especially at this time upon our brother
here present, a perfect knowledge of thee, overcome all errors and
tyrannies, and as thou only art holy, so be thou only the Lord, through
Jesus Christ our Saviour.'

Before the 'Amen' had ceased, he rose, genuflected, turned, and came
down the steps of the altar to Inkamasi. He set his hands on the Zulu's
head, paused, and went on: 'By the power of Immanuel who only is perfect
Man, by his power committed unto us, we recall all powers in thee to
their natural obedience, making whole all things that are sick, and
destroying all things that are contrary to his will. Awake, thou that
sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. In
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.'

As his voice sounded through the chapel Philip saw the hands of the king
come together, saw them fold themselves, saw his head move, heard him
sigh. Caithness moved an arm behind him, but it was not needed. Inkamasi
glanced round swiftly, and as he did so the Archbishop as swiftly went
back to the altar, genuflected, and returned, bearing the Sacred Gifts.
He communicated them to Caithness first, and then, as if in the ritual
of his office, to the king; only again his voice lingered on and
intensified the formula of two thousand years, the formula by which
Christendom has defined, commanded and assisted the resurrection of man
in God. As naturally as in any other service of his life, the king
received the Mystery; afterwards he moved as if to rise, but Caithness
with a smile touched him on the shoulder and made a quiet signal of
restraint, and he desisted. They remained in their places till the Rite
was done. The Archbishop and the chaplain passed out, and in due time
the others also rose and made their way to the door.

The chaplain met them there; he and Caithness exchanged a few murmured
sentences, and then the three went back to the car.

There Caithness said: 'I'll drive this time; you two get in together.'
Inkamasi hesitated a moment but he obeyed, and the priest added hastily
to Philip. 'He knows you; better tell him everything he wants to hear----'

'Yes, but look here,' Philip began, a little startled. 'I'm not clear
what----'

'No, but never mind,' Caithness said, rather more like the vicar for the
moment than the godfather or even the priest, 'you're able to explain
what's happened, aren't you? He's met you and he hasn't met me--that's
why you'll do it better. In you get.'

In accordingly Philip got. But he didn't quite see how to open the
conversation. Did one just say engagingly, 'You must be surprised to
find yourself here?' or apologetically, 'I hope you don't mind our
having carried you away?' Or could one risk saying, with an air of
relief, 'That was a near thing?' And then supposing he said, 'What?' or
'How?' What had it been near to? and how? Philip began to wish that his
father was in the car. But before he had found the exact words, the
African turned to him and said, 'Will you tell me, Mr. Travers, what has
been happening?'

Philip tried to, and thought he failed badly. But apparently enough
became clear to satisfy Inkamasi, who listened intently, and then said,
'You've done me a greater service than I quite know, I think. It's very
good of you.'

'Not at all,' said Philip. 'My father didn't like leaving you there.
Perhaps we ought to apologize... but...'

'No,' Inkamasi said, 'no, I don't think you ought to apologize. If
you've made my life clear to me, that doesn't seem a thing to apologize
for.' He stared in front of him. 'But that we shall see,' he added, and
relapsed into silence.

Philip, looking at him, thought that he wasn't looking very friendly,
and that he was looking rather African, in fact rather--savage. Savage
was a word which might here, in fact, have a stronger meaning than it
generally had. Inkamasi's head was thrust forward, his jaw was set; his
hand moved, slowly and relentlessly, along his leg to his knee, as if
with purpose, and not a pleasant purpose. 'I hope he _isn't_ annoyed
with us,' Philip thought. 'My father must have meant it for the best.'
But before they reached Kensington the king relaxed; only there was
still about him something high and strange, something apart and
reserved, something almost (but quite impersonally) exalted--in short,
something like a chieftain who knows that he is a chieftain and is
instinctively living up to his knowledge. When they reached Colindale
Square, Philip, being on the near side, got out first, and half-held the
car door for the stranger. Inkamasi got out and smiled his thanks. But
he didn't utter them, and Philip was suddenly aware that he had expected
him to. As it was, Inkamasi seemed to have relegated him to the position
of an upper servant, yet without being discourteous. Sir Bernard met
them in the hall.




                              CHAPTER VII
                         THE OPENING OF SCHISM


That evening after dinner they were all in the library. Sir Bernard was
sitting on the right of the fireplace, with Caithness next to him;
opposite him was Isabel, with Rosamond between her and Philip. Roger lay
in a chair next to the priest, and pushed a little back from the circle.
In the centre, between Roger and Philip, opposite the fire, was the
African. Roger looked at him, looked at the rest, and muttered to
Caithness: '"On him each courtier's eye was bent, to him each lady's
look was lent, and Hampstead's refugee was Colindale Square's king."' He
looked at Rosamond: 'She doesn't look happy, does she?' he said. 'Why
doesn't she go and plan food for her first dinner-party or practise
giving the housemaid notice?' He became aware that Sir Bernard was
speaking and stopped.

'... evidence,' Sir Bernard was saying. 'It's a silly word in the
circumstances, but it's the only one we've got. Is there enough evidence
to persuade the authorities--or us either for that matter--that Nigel
Considine has anything to do with the High Executive? I've drawn up a
statement of what happened last night, and I think I'll read it to you;
and if I've forgotten anything or the king can tell us any more----'

They sat silent, and he began. Actually, except for the two women, they
all knew the substance of it before, but they were very willing to hear
it again compacted after this little lapse of time.

Everything was there--the photograph, the music, the other visitors, the
guns, the king's sleep--and against that background ran the summaries of
Considine's monologues, conversation, and claim. As they listened that
river of broad pretension flowed faster and deeper at their feet; they
stood on its brink and wondered. Was the source indeed two hundred years
off in the past? was it flowing towards an ocean of infinite experience
till now undiscovered, unimagined--undiscovered because unimagined?
Across that river their disturbed fancies saw the African forests, and
shapes--both white and black--emerging and disappearing, and from among
those high palms and falling creepers, that curtain of green profusion,
came the sound of strings and the roar of guns. The dark face of
Inkamasi, whatever he himself might be, grew terrible to them, not
merely because of his negro kindred but because of the terrifying
exaltation which so darkly hinted at itself in the words they heard, and
when suddenly the delicate voice that was reading ceased, it was of
Inkamasi's figure that they were all chiefly aware, whether they looked
towards it as Caithness did or away from it into the fire at which
Rosamond Murchison stared.

Sir Bernard put down his paper, and looked for a cigarette. For once,
among all his friends, no-one forestalled him. He found one, lit it, and
sat back, reluctant to spoil his story with any bathos of comment. In a
minute Inkamasi moved.

'I've thanked you already, Sir Bernard,' he said, and suddenly Isabel
felt Rosamond's arm quiver, as it lay in her own, 'and I'll thank you
once more. You and Mr. Caithness have done a great thing for me. You've
set me free from a power that has been about me since I was a boy.'

Roger turned his head. 'You mean Considine!' he asked.

'I mean Considine,' the African answered. 'Something I can tell you
perhaps that you don't know. It's true--what he says. He is a hundred--two
hundred years old--I do not know how old. He was known to my grandfather
as the Deathless, and to his grandfather again, and others before that.
He has been a power among the chieftains and the witch-doctors, but not
always to their liking. For many of them had become conjurers, debased
things, frogs sitting in the swamp, losing knowledge as you of the West
have lost knowledge, and these he defeated and sometimes killed, till
from the Niger to the Zambesi the rest feared and obeyed him. Sometimes
he went away for long periods--then, I suppose, he was in Europe or
elsewhere--but he always returned, and his return went before him into
the villages and then those who had sold their magic for gifts were very
greatly afraid.'

Sir Bernard with the slightest disdain said as the other paused: 'Magic!
Did Mr. Considine draw circles with a thigh-bone and make love-philtres
from banana-trees?'

Inkamasi smiled back at him. 'Is there any certain reason why a
love-philtre couldn't be made from a banana? But he wasn't concerned
with that kind of magic. He desired a greater mastery, and that I think
he found. Most men waste their energies, even at their best they waste
them, on fantastic dreams and worthless actions. Above all they waste
this power which you call love but we have called lordship. It is said
among some of us that the high Spring is the time of lordship. This
power and lordship Considine and his schools have sought to use. They
have sought to restore its strength to the royal imagination from which
in the beginning it came. Mysteriously, yet by methods which they say
are open to all, they have learnt to arouse and restrain and direct the
exaltation of love to such purposes as they choose. They have learnt by
the contemplation of beauty in man or woman to fill themselves with a
wonderful and delighted excitement, and to turn that excitement to
deliberate ends. But the first of these ends is life, that other ends
may be reached in turn. Whether any before Considine has done this
thing, I do not know; but I believe that he has done it. He has so
filled the uttermost reaches of his being with the imagination and
consciousness of life that his body, renewed so from time to time, when
it is unusually weary, let us say, is impervious to time and decay and
sickness. Accident might destroy him. But this mastery and
transformation of love and sex is but a beginning. Have you not asked
yourselves what is the death which spreads through creation, so that all
things live by the death of others? Men and animals, we live by
destruction. But these diverse schools have asked themselves whether
indeed this is the whole secret, or whether it is so far but a
substitution--a lesser thing taking the place of a greater. If man can
descend into death, may he not find that what awaits him is an
incredible ecstasy of descent and return? Considine is seeking to find
that way. To be the food on which one feeds, to be free from any
accident of death, to know the ecstasy of being at once priest and
victim--all these ends are in his search.'

He paused considering, and Caithness said: 'Do you speak of this from
your own knowledge?'

The king answered: 'Not of my own experience, for my father turned from
the ways of his father, and brought me up in the Faith and sent me to
England to learn the ways of the mind. Nor would he let me be initiated
into the ways of the assemblies, though my grandfather and the other
wise men of his generation belonged to them. But when I was only a child
the Deathless One came and persuaded my father--I cannot guess with what
words--and I was given into his hands. He bound my will and my thought
lest a day should come when he should need me. I think he bound all the
sons of the kings of Africa. So he would sometimes talk when I was
there, because he held me so that I could not speak without leave.'

'But you came to England,' Sir Bernard said.

'Yes,' the king said, 'only he knew where I was and what I was doing,
and when the time had come he called me and I came.'

'What do you think he really wants?' Roger said abruptly,--'Why is he
making war?'

'I think he wants what he says,' the king answered, 'the freedom of
Africa. I don't think he minds about destroying or even defeating
Europe, he only needs a continent where the schools may flourish, and
the gospel of ecstasy be born.'

'The defeat of Europe on that scale', Sir Bernard said, 'sounds rather
like a moment of unusually exalted and not specially reliable
imagination.'

Inkamasi leant forward with a quick fierce movement.

'Take care,' he said, almost angrily, and his eyes burned at them, 'take
care you don't underrate him or despise him. Ever since he determined to
do this he has made his preparations--he has chosen and trained his men
and armed them. He has wealth--are aeroplanes and submarines, yes and
guns, so difficult to buy and have shipped in parts as provisions or
cotton or iron rails or Bibles or machinery to appointed harbours? Then
there was the War--who had time to bother about the interior of Africa
during the War?----'

'One way and another', Sir Bernard protested, 'there are a large number
of Europeans in the interior of Africa, watching it and doing things to
it.'

'Yes,' Inkamasi answered, 'and how many of your Europeans themselves are
in it? How much of the white Administration belongs to the Mysteries?
Has no conqueror ever been civilized by the nation he ruled? A white
general may lead the attack on London yet; the Devotees themselves are
often white.'

'The what?' Sir Bernard asked.

'The Devotees,' the Zulu answered. 'It's a high circle of those who
having achieved much choose to render their lives wholly into the will
of the Deathless One that he may use them as he pleases. Didn't you see
that of the aeronauts in last night's raid the few who lived after they
came down shot themselves before they could be taken? They were of the
Devotees. Most of them', he added, 'are women.'

An abrupt movement swept the circle. 'Women!' Caithness exclaimed. 'Does
he depend on the devotion of women?'

'And look here,' Philip said rather desperately, 'do you mean to say
that the white officers could be mixed up in the African armies?'

'As to the women,' Sir Bernard said, 'the early Church, if I remember
rightly, depended largely on women.'

'And as to the white officers,' Roger said abruptly, 'Mr. Caithness will
applaud a similar precedent of Jew and Gentile.'

Caithness took no notice, except by a nod. He said: 'This sleep--is it
hypnotic?'

Inkamasi made a movement with his hands. 'Call it so if you like,' he
answered, 'but I think rather that hypnotism is a reflection of it. He
is able to establish a control on all the consciousness, except the
secret centre of a man's being and the mere exterior apprehensions of
the world. He can suspend thought and will--until he or a greater than he
restores it.'

'Well,' Sir Bernard said, 'the immediate point is--have I enough
reasonable (if you can call it reasonable) stuff to send to the Home
Secretary or the Public Prosecutor or the Elder Brethren of the
Trinity?--who sound the kind of people that ought to be looking after the
Deathless One. What do you say, Isabel?'

Isabel was looking at Roger and did not for a moment answer. Then she
said, 'I think so--yes. Whether they'll believe it....'

'I once put the Prime Minister's stomach right,' Sir Bernard said
thoughtfully. 'Perhaps I'd better go to him. What d'you think?' he added
to Inkamasi.

'If you can seize Considine,' the king said,--'I say, if you _can_--it
will not be easy. For the greatest energy is in him, he and he alone is
the centre of all the schools; it is he who holds power, either by the
initiation or by the sleep, over the royalties of Africa; he is the
union of their armies; without him the energies of the adepts will be
divided, the generals will quarrel, the armies will fight. I tell you
this, because you have saved me twice, and because I do not think
mankind can be saved without intellect and without God.'

'It must be almost the first time in the history of the world that those
powers have been united,' said Sir Bernard. 'But what of you?'

The king looked at the floor. 'I indeed can do nothing,' he said, 'for I
cannot get to my people: I do not know where they are fighting. And I do
not want to help Considine, though I long for Africa to be free. I am
neither of one side nor of the other, neither of Europe nor Africa. I am
an outcast and an exile.'

'You are the citizen of another country,' the priest said, 'that is, a
heavenly.'

'Also, I am the king,' Inkamasi exclaimed, 'and there shall be no peace
between this man and me. He laid his power upon me when I was a child,
he has made me his puppet since, and for that I will kill him, though my
spirit goes down with his into hell.'

'It was not for this that Christ redeemed you,' Caithness cried to him.

'I am the king,' Inkamasi said, 'and I will put my foot upon his mouth;
I, Inkamasi, the king.'

Rosamond gave a little choked cry. Philip leant forward quickly and put
his hand on hers, but she pulled it away. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I
just felt... it's all _right_, Philip.'

Sir Bernard got up, an eye on his prospective daughter-in-law. 'Well, if
you are all agreed----'

Roger pushed his chair back a trifle, and said, more sharply than
before, 'It won't stop you, but--no, we're not.'

There was a dead silence. Roger was looking at his wife; the others
looked at him. Philip buried his head in his hands. Sir Bernard began to
speak when Caithness broke in: 'What d'you mean, Roger? Surely there
can't be two opinions about letting the authorities know about this
charlatan?'

'It may be your duty,' Roger said, 'I'm pretty certain it isn't mine.
You haven't met him.'

'Sir Bernard has and Sir Bernard agrees,' Caithness answered.

'Sir Bernard and I don't believe in the same things,' Roger said. 'I
can't stop him but I won't have anything to do with it.'

Philip got up--for him violently. 'Roger,' he cried out, 'what are you
talking about? Are you on this man's side?'

'Yes, I am,' Roger said. 'At least I can't go against him. He knows
there's something in it, and which of you all does that?'

'I know it very well,' Inkamasi said, sitting rigid. 'And I will kill
him because of it.'

'You've a right to do as you please,' Roger answered, 'but I haven't.
I've no right except to follow what I know when I find it.' He looked
over at his wife. 'Aren't I right?' he exclaimed to her.

Isabel also stood up, and met his eyes full. 'Yes, darling,' she said
simply.

'Roger,' Sir Bernard said dulcetly, 'is it Mr. Considine's feeling about
poetry that affects you so much? Because the unfortunate white race has
not been entirely silent. Was Dante a Bantu or Shakespeare a Hottentot?
A few of us read it still.'

'O read it!' Roger said contemptuously. 'God knows I don't want to live
for ever, but I tell you this fellow _knows_. So do I--a little bit, and
I believe it's important. More important than anything else on earth.
And I won't help you to shut it up in a refrigerator when I ought to be
helping to keep it alive.'

'Can't you leave that to God?' Caithness flung out.

'No', said Roger, 'I damn well can't, when he's left it to me. I know
your argument--it's all been done, death has been conquered, and so as
nothing ever dies somewhere else we needn't worry about it's dying here.
Well, thank you very much, but I do. What are you worrying about? I know
I can't stop you, but I won't have a hand in it.'

'I see', Sir Bernard said, 'that the white administration in Africa may
easily have been absorbed. I'm sorry, Roger.'

'Don't be,' Roger said. 'It's not a thing to be sorry about.' He swept
suddenly round. 'What about it, Philip?' he cried. 'Are you with them?'

Philip, trying to keep his footing, said, 'Don't be a fool, Roger, we
can't not fight the Africans.'

'We can "not fight" them perfectly well,' Roger said, and it seemed to
Isabel that his tall insolent figure dominated all the room except for
the carven and royal darkness of the seated Zulu, 'and you know it. Love
and poetry are powers, and these people--will you deny it too?'

'Really, Roger,' Sir Bernard put in, 'must you dichotomize in this
appalling way? It's so barbarian; it went out with the Victorians. If
you feel you're betraying the _Ode to the Nightingale_ or something by
agreeing to my call on the Prime Minister, must you insist that your
emotions are universal? Keep them private, my dear boy, or they'll be
merely provincial; and the provincial is the ruin of the public and the
private at once.'

He knew he was talking at random, but the whole room was filled with
uncertainty and defiance and distress. A man had come out into the open
from behind the fronds and leaves and it was Roger. A trumpet had
answered the horns and drums that were crying to the world from the
jungle of man's being; and the trumpet was Roger's voice. Was Africa
then within? was all the war, were the armies and munitions and the
transports but the shadow of the repression by which man held down their
more natural energies? but images of the strong refusal which Europe had
laid on capacities it had so long ruled that it had nearly forgotten
their independent life? But things forgotten could rise; and old things
did not always die. Poland--Ireland--Judah--man. Roger knew something; the
voice that had discussed and lectured and gibed and repeated verse now
cried its sworn loyalty: a schism was opening in civilization. Sir
Bernard looked at Isabel, but she said nothing. She leaned on the
mantelpiece and looked into the fire, and her face was very still. Roger
relaxed slightly; he liked Sir Bernard, and they had often gently mocked
each other. He said, 'Yes, I know I can't do anything. I think I'll say
good-night and get back to Hampstead. Coming, Isabel?'

She turned her head towards him. 'It'll be very awkward, dearest,' she
said. 'The milkman's been told not to call, and what shall we do for
breakfast?' She spoke quite seriously, but her lips smiled; only a
deeper seriousness and sadness grew in her eyes, and his own were sad as
they encountered hers. She stood upright, as if to move, and yet
lingered a little on that silent interchange.

'I know, I know,' Roger said, answering her smile, 'it'll be most
inconvenient, but can I stop here?' He looked round at them all and
flung out his hands. 'O you're charming, you're lovely, all of you, but
how much do you care what the great ones are doing? And in these
centuries you've nearly killed it, with your appreciations and your
fastidious judgements, and your lives of this man and your studies in
that. What do you know about "huge and mighty forms that do not live
Like living men"? Power, power, it's dying in you, and you don't hunger
to feel it live. What's Milton, what's Shakespeare, to you?'

'If this is just a literary discussion--' Caithness began.

'What d'you mean--just a literary discussion?' Roger said, his temper
leaping. 'D'you call Islam a mere theological distinction? Can't you
understand any other gospel than your own damned dogmas?'

'Roger, Roger,' Sir Bernard murmured.

'I beg your pardon,' Roger said, 'and yours too, Sir Bernard. But I
can't stay here to-night. I know it seems silly, but I can't.' He looked
back at his wife. 'But I shall be all right, darling,' he said, 'if
you'd rather stop. I can even go and buy a bottle of milk!'

Isabel smiled at him. 'I think I'll come to-night,' she said. 'To-night
anyhow.' She looked down at her sister. 'Rosamond, you might as well
stop here, mightn't you?'

Rosamond looked up with a jerk. 'Stop,' she exclaimed. 'What, are you
going back? O I can't, I can't. I'll come.'

They all stared at her. 'I wasn't just listening,' she went on hastily.
'I was thinking of something else. Are you going at once, Isabel? I'll
get my things.' She was on her feet, when Philip's hand took hold of her
arm. She jerked it away. 'Let me alone,' she cried out. 'Aren't you
going with them?'

Philip, in spite of his opposition to Roger, hadn't been at all certain;
or rather, he was extremely troubled about being certain. He couldn't
begin to imagine himself on the side of Considine and the Africans, but
he had a curiously empty feeling somewhere when he thought of denying
them. It was all so muddled, and he had hitherto thought that moral
divisions, though painful, were clear: such as not cheating, and not
telling lies except for urgent reasons, and being on your country's
side, and being polite to your inferiors, and in short playing the game.
But this game was quite unlike any other he'd ever played; what with the
piercing music that called him still, and the song Considine's talk of
love sent through his blood, and the urgent appeal to him to do what he
so much wanted to do, to exult and live. But of course when Rosamond put
it like that--no, he wasn't. He was going to be on the side of his
country and his duty and his fiance. He said so.

She said: 'I thought not,' almost snapping at him. 'Then leave me alone.
I thought you wouldn't.'

The king at this moment stood up. He had been silent, concerned with his
own thought of vengeance, while the breach between Roger and the rest
had widened, and now he thrust himself up in the midst of them, an ally
and yet a hostility, a dark whirlwind of confusion in their thoughts and
in their midst. He came to his feet, and Rosamond, as if by the force of
his rising, seemed flung against her sister. She clung to Isabel, and
Isabel said, speaking of ordinary things in her own extraordinarily
lovely voice: 'Very well, darling, we'll all go. Perhaps Sir Bernard
will give us a loaf of bread.'

Sir Bernard, almost disliking Rosamond--he hadn't wanted her there at
all, but she'd insisted on coming, and without being rude to Philip he
could hardly refuse--said: 'Also the jug of wine, if it's any good. The
Sahara will no doubt presently serve for Paradise. Ian, will you come
with me as far as Downing Street?'

The breach widened indeed, but he was more aware of it than Roger, and
as he became aware of it he refused and bridged it in his mind. He had
been very nearly irritated, and irritation inflamed all the exquisite
contemplative mind: he turned the cool spray of medicinal irony on
himself till he was able to smile at Roger and say, 'Well, if you will
go--But let me in at the death, won't you? While gospels exist, let's
enjoy them as best we can. Good-night.'

A little later he and Caithness, having telephoned for an appointment,
came to Downing Street, where, parting from the priest, he was after
some slight delay carried in to see Raymond Suydler himself; which
attention and privilege he owed to the Prime Minister's gratitude for a
restored stomach.

It was a long time since Sir Bernard had seen him; his attention to his
stomach had been paid during the Prime Minister's first administration,
and this was his second. He was a man who had made not merely an
opportunity but a political triumph out of the very loss of public
belief in politics which afflicted the country. He had carried realism
to its extreme, declaring publicly that the best any statesman could do
was to guess at the solution of his various problems, and that his
guesses had a habit of being right. In private he dropped only the last
half of this statement, which left him fifty per cent of sincerity, and
thus gave him an almost absurd advantage over most of his colleagues and
opponents. It had taken some time certainly for his own party to
reconcile themselves to the enormous placards 'Guess with Suydler' which
at the General Election outflamed the more argumentative shows of the
other side. But the country, half mocking, half understanding, had
laughed and followed, in that mingling of utter despair and wild faith
which conceals itself behind the sedate appearance of the English.
Chance, no doubt, had helped him by giving him an occasional opportunity
of lowering taxation at home and increasing prestige abroad, but his
denial of reason had done more. It was not cynicism; it was, and it was
felt to be, truth, as Suydler saw it, and as most of the country did. In
any state of things, the facts--all the facts--were unknown; circumstances
were continually changing; instability and uncertainty were the only
assured things. What was the use of rational discussion or fixed
principles or far-sighted demonstrations? 'Guess--guess with Suydler.' He
was reported to have said that the English had only had one inspired
fool as Prime Minister--Pitt; and two intelligent men--Melbourne and
Disraeli, who were hampered by believing, one in a class, the other in a
race. 'I would rather guess with Pitt, if you'll guess with me.'

Sir Bernard remembered all this as he shook hands, and observed with a
slight shock Suydler's large, ungainly form. The one cartoon which had
really succeeded against him had been called 'The Guessing Gorilla,' and
Sir Bernard recollected with pleasure that it was not his own obsession
with Africa which had remarked the likeness. The ugly face, the long
hanging arms, the curled fingers, the lumbering step, had a strange
likeness to a great ape plunging about the room. He shook hands, and his
visitor was quite glad not to feel those huge arms clutching him. There
was, he thought, altogether too much Africa about, and he almost
wondered for a moment whether indeed Suydler were preferable to
Considine.... But he reminded himself that it wasn't personalities
but abstract states of existence with which he was concerned, and he
took the chair the Prime Minister offered. The huge bulk swelled before
him, loomed over him, was talking... talking.... Sir Bernard felt
a great weariness come over him. The excitement, the incredibilities, of
the last twenty-four hours had worn him out. And what was the good of
trying to defend the intellect in this place of the death of the
intellect? Witch-doctors were invading Europe, and he had gone running
to an ape for help....

'--absurd talk about possible reasons,' the Prime Minister was saying.
'The whole thing's an example of the failure of organized thought.
No-one can find out the root of the trouble.'

'I wonder you ask them,' Sir Bernard said.

'I don't; they tell me,' Suydler answered. 'There was a man yesterday--an
ex-Governor--was talking to me. I had a kind of bet with myself how many
synonyms he'd use for guess--I think it was about twenty-four. We may
assume--not improbable--very likely--may it not be--reasonable
assumption--working hypothesis--possible surmise--news suggests--my opinion
is--better theory--never a plain straightforward guess. Never used the
word once.'

'It's not a favourite, except with children; they love it,' Sir Bernard
said. 'Perhaps', he added, struck by a sudden thought, 'that's why
they're nearer the kingdom of heaven. They're more sincere. However, I
came here to say that I'm not certain that I didn't dine yesterday with
the High Executive. I mean--I guess I did.'

'That's fair, anyhow,' Suydler answered. 'Who did you guess he was?
And--not that I mind, but as a concession to the Permanent Officials--why
did you guess him?'

Sir Bernard held out his papers. 'It's all there,' he said.

Suydler put out an enormous hand--its shadow on the carpet stretched out,
black and even more enormous--and took them. 'How tidy you are,' he said,
grinning, 'but you always were, weren't you? Your operations were always
miracles of conciseness. If you've extracted the truth now, that'll be
another miracle. Excuse me while I look at them.'

He didn't take long over it; then he chuckled, put them down, and leaned
back. 'And you've got this Zulu king of yours?' he asked. 'Ready to
testify and identify and all that?'

'Certainly,' Sir Bernard said.

Suydler linked his fingers and stretched his arms out. 'Well,' he said,
'if you like--though I've met Considine a few times--but if you like to
make a pattern with him in, I'm not sure that I won't go with you. It'll
look awfully well.... "Government discover High Executive." Why, as
of minor interest, didn't you come before?'

'Because, until I'd got the king's opinion--guess, if you like, I
couldn't,' Sir Bernard explained. 'And he went off into a real stupor
the minute he reached Kensington--as if he had to get his own faculties
into order.'

'Two hundred years--' Suydler said. 'But what a price to pay! No women,
no fun, no excitements. All, if I've got it right, squeezed back into
yourself.' He pressed a bell. 'It isn't fair to let him go on
suppressing himself and misleading others, is it?'--"A long life and a
dull one"--that's the end of all you theorists.'

Sir Bernard stood up. 'Well,' he said, 'if you think I'm right I'll
go.--'

A secretary came in, but Suydler kept him waiting. 'Right!' he said,
'no, I don't think you're right. I think your mind and his may have--what
shall I say?--coincided by chance. But there's no such thing as "right."
It's all a question of preferring a particular momentary pattern of
phenomena. There's nothing more anywhere. How can there be? At this
moment the past doesn't exist, the future doesn't exist, and we know
nothing much about the present!'

Avoiding any immediate discussion of the nature of existence, Sir
Bernard got away. Walking down Downing Street he considered the
Minister. 'Considine and he both look into the abyss,' he thought, 'but
Considine sees it beating with passion, and Suydler sees nothing. A
chaos or a void? Black men, or men who are no longer white?' He saw the
intellect and logical reason of man no longer as a sedate and necessary
thing, but rather a narrow silver bridge passing over an immense depth,
around the high guarded entrance of which thronged clouds of angry and
malign presences. Often mistaking the causes and often misjudging the
effects of all mortal sequences, this capacity of knowing cause and
effect presented itself nevertheless to him as the last stability of
man. Always approaching truth, it could never, he knew, _be_ truth, for
nothing can be truth till it has become one with its object, and such
union it was not given to the intellect to achieve without losing its
own nature. But in its divine and abstract reflection of the world, its
passionless mirror of the holy law that governed the world, not in
experiments or ecstasies or guesses, the supreme perfection of mortality
moved. He saluted it as its child and servant, and dedicated himself
again to it, for what remained to him of life, praying it to turn the
light of its awful integrity upon him, and to preserve him from
self-deception and greediness and infidelity and fear. 'If A is the same
as B' he said, 'and B is the same as C, then A is the same as C. Other
things may be true; for all I know, they may be different at the same
time; but this at least is true. And Considine will have to hypnotize me
myself before I deny it. Suydler is wrong--a guess may be true once and
twice and a thousand times, for man has known abstraction, and no
gorilla of a politician can take it away from him.'




                              CHAPTER VIII
                   PASSING THROUGH THE MIDST OF THEM


There followed a few days of uneasy quiet. The news from Africa was
vague, but more cheerfully vague. It was generally understood that
organized naval measures were being taken to overcome the submarine
forces of the enemy, which had succeeded in making the African coasts so
dangerous and had proceeded so far afield that until such measures had
been concerted and carried out the landing of fresh troops had become
impossible. It was even rumoured that attacks had been made on certain
European harbours, but if this were so the Governments concerned saw to
it that no hint was allowed to appear in the Press. Energetic operations
had been planned; the more energetic movements of the enemy seemed to
have ceased, though the clearance of white troops from North Africa
appeared to be proceeding slowly but systematically.

The financial panic had also been stayed to some extent by Government
action. For the Prime Minister had announced that, as the simplest means
of meeting the emergency, the Administration had decided to make loans
to the federated control of any particular industry which was seriously
affected. Conditions of application, examination, payment and repayment
were to be settled by a Commission set up for the purpose; the immediate
affair was to steady the markets, and dazed directors of innumerable
companies found themselves offered millions in order to buy up shares in
their own concerns. Unfederated companies rushed to federate; all
newspapers, for example, found themselves part of one large business,
controlled by a common Board which immediately borrowed or was offered a
subsidy of some millions, with which it repurchased the shares which
Solomon and Ezekiel Rosenberg were throwing before the world. It looked
therefore as if these devoted believers would secure their money as well
as their jewels; and the coming of Messias or the building of the Temple
be prepared for by the English in a general increase of taxation. Sir
Bernard, as he contemplated the world, foresaw a possibility that the
whole business, military and financial, would gradually expire, having
ruined a great number of small shareholders, increased the financial
strength of the larger, cost a great deal in armaments, and probably
massacred a host of Africans in circumstances of more or less equal
fighting.

'I had some expectation,' he said to Caithness as they turned into the
Square, after an early afternoon walk, 'of becoming a travelling doctor
in my old age--probably with a donkey cart; and going from village to
village, curing indigestion and collecting sixpences. You know the kind
of thing--"Travers's Pills make Stomachs Tractable"--"Dainty Digestions
Decently Doctored." You might have joined me, and we would have put
stomachs and souls right together. "Stomachs on the right; souls on the
left: Advice free: only real cures paid for." But I should have
stipulated for no miracles.'

'Then you'd have wanted an unfair advantage,' Caithness said. 'I should
have to send quite a number of my patients to you; lots of them think
it's their conscience when actually it's their stomach.'

'Still on your theory the soul's wrong anyhow,' Sir Bernard pointed out.

'Quite,' Caithness answered. 'But they have to understand that, not
merely moan over their pains. However, the question isn't likely to
arise. Things do seem to be a bit quieter now.'

The exertions of the Government and (presumably) of the police did not,
however, succeed in tracing either Nigel Considine or his friends.
Justified by several different kinds of warrants, an examination of the
Hampstead house was carried out but with no results. Whatever staff of
whatever servants had occupied it had disappeared as completely as its
master. Inkamasi was examined and re-examined, but though his story was
given in fuller detail, the details did not much help. It was clear that
the High Executive had done no more than preserve him in case he should
be wanted; the Zulus themselves, who were apparently taking an active
part in the war, were (so far as news could be obtained) under the
headship of another of their race, a cousin of Inkamasi's, less directly
but still closely connected with the great chieftain and hero, Chaka.
The king was allowed to remain in seclusion at Sir Bernard's house,
where he spent his days reading, brooding, and talking sometimes to his
host and to Caithness. Philip rather avoided him.

Philip indeed had his own troubles. Apart from the complete wreck of his
purposes which the war had brought about, apart from the agitations
which his new experiences had introduced into his inner mind, he
suddenly found himself on the most extraordinarily difficult terms with
Rosamond. She refused to come near Colindale Square, she occasionally
even refused to see him when he went to Hampstead, and when she did see
him she was in a nervous and irritable mood which was quite unlike the
normal Rosamond. Philip's own meditations on the relations between love
and Rosamond were thwarted and upset by the discovery that Rosamond, to
all intents and purposes, wasn't there for love to have relations with.
She had always kept love in its proper place, and had never displayed
any particular interest in its more corporeal manifestations, suggesting
by her manner that such things were a trifle silly. If he tried to
explain something of the marvel which she seemed to him, she had
listened placidly and with good humour, but without much gratification
and with no kind of exaltation at all. His own exaltation, however, had
not been exactly forbidden to thrive--until now. But now she would not
have it; she shrank from and repelled it. She wouldn't be touched; she
wouldn't be approached. Isabel told him that her sister was sleeping
badly. But what Isabel didn't tell him was the dubious and unhappy cause
of that broken sleep.

Roger, coming in early one evening, found his wife alone. He kissed her
and flung himself down, and a silence gathered them up. Presently Isabel
stirred: 'Well, darling?' she said, 'what do you think about it all?'

Roger said nothing at first, then he uttered, 'I've done what I can.
I've thrown over a course on the probable sources of the minor comedies
of the early nineteenth century, and where Mrs. Inchbald found her
plots--Mrs. Inchbald--I ask you, Isabel! Where did Mrs. Hemans get
hers?--and I've talked to them for all I'm worth on the Filial Godhead
and mighty forms and encountering darkness and Macbeth. I can't do
more--that way. I don't know enough: I'm a baby in it, after all.'

Isabel said quietly, 'You want to know more?'

Roger answered, 'I want--yes, I--the thing that's me wants to know, not
like wanting apple-tart with or without custard, but like wanting
breath. There's air outside the windows, and I shall smash them to get
it or I shall die. There--you asked me.'

She came and stood by him, and he took her hand. 'You don't feel it like
that?' he said.

'No, not like that,' she answered. 'But perhaps I can't. I've been
thinking, Roger darling, and I've wondered whether perhaps women don't
have to do it anyhow. I mean--perhaps it's nothing very new, this power
your Mr. Considine talks of--perhaps women have always known it, and
that's why they've never made great art. Perhaps they _have_ turned
everything into themselves. Perhaps they must.'

He looked up at her, brooding. 'I know,' he said, 'you live and we talk
about it.'

'No,' Isabel said, sitting down by him in front of the fire, 'no,
dearest, not only that. We only live on what you give us--imaginatively,
I mean; you have to find the greater powers. You have to be the hunters
and fishers and fighters when all's said and done. So perhaps you ought
to go and hunt now. But we turn it more easily into ourselves than you
do--for bad and good alike. And we generally do it very badly--but then
you've given us so little to do it with.'

'I don't believe it,' Roger said. 'I don't believe in all this sex
differentiation. And yet----'

'And yet,' she said, 'it doesn't matter now. We needn't waste our time
on talking abstractions. What do you want to do, sweetheart?'

'I don't know what I can do,' he said. 'I talk about smashing windows,
but that's rather silly. I want to find this power and master it and
find what there is to be discovered. I want to live where _they_ live.'

'They?' she asked.

'Considine and Michael Angelo and Epstein and Beethoven,' he answered.
'I can feel a bit of what they do, I want to feel more. I've been trying
to--don't laugh. All the way home I've been saying things to myself, and
trying to see what's the thing to _do_. There's the feeling every
element in them first--not just seeing the words, but finding out how one
belongs to the words, how one's own self answers to all the different
words, like criss-crossing currents. And then there's turning all that
deeper into one's own self, into one's desire--and that's so hard because
one hasn't a desire, except general comfort!'

'O Roger dear, that's not true! You have,' Isabel said.

Roger hesitated--'Well, perhaps!' he allowed. 'Anyhow I kept losing hold
and just feeling all vague and dithery, so I tried to turn one thrill on
to another line--d'you see?--and I do think it might work. But it'll need
a lot of doing, and I'm not sure----' he relapsed into silence, and then
said abruptly, 'Has Philip been along?'

His wife was about to answer when Rosamond came into the room, and the
conversation returned hastily to ordinary things. She wasn't looking at
all well, Roger thought, and she was getting positively hysterical these
days. Curious that she should be Isabel's sister. But of course Isabel
was unusual. He reflected gloomily, while the women chatted, that on
Considine's showing he probably wouldn't have been married to Isabel--the
energy of love would have gone another way, would have been transmuted
or something. Lots of people must have had to do it in their time; lots
of people must have been disappointed in love and then--Yes, but most of
them just blew along till the worst was over. To use the worst, to use
the worst and the best for something that was, as far as ordinary
knowledge went, different from both. The abolition of death--the conquest
of death.

The unnameable Muriel appeared in the room. She said, 'Two gentlemen to
see you, sir. They didn't give their names. But one of them sent
this--'She passed over a slip of card bearing a word or two--'"How goes
it? N.C."'

Roger jumped forward. 'Here,' he exclaimed, 'where are they? Bring
them--all right. I will.' He was out of the room and into the tiny hall.
There he saw Considine and Mottreux.

'Good God!' he said. 'Come in. I thought you----'

Considine shook hands with a smile. It occurred to Roger that that swift
smile was always very near showing with Considine. It danced on the
surface of a deeper rapture, as if, to the world, that was all that
could be made of something within the world.

'We came', he said, 'Mottreux and I, to fill an hour. Do we interrupt?'

'No,' Roger said. 'Come in.' He turned to Isabel. 'May I present my
wife?' he said. 'You've never met Mr. Considine, have you, Isabel? And
Colonel Mottreux.' His eyes fell on Rosamond. 'Miss Murchison--Mr.
Considine, Colonel Mottreux.'

As he found them seats he cursed Rosamond. Who wanted her there? Well,
she'd have to lump it. He stood back, and let his look rest on
Considine. Then he said, 'But I thought Sir Bernard----'

'Certainly Sir Bernard,' Considine answered. 'But I don't think Sir
Bernard or Mr. Suydler either are likely to interfere with me. It isn't
from them that my dangers now will ever come--except by literal accident.
So, since I was about, and since to-night I shall be busy, and shall
leave London--I came to see you.'

'Are you going to Africa?' Roger said before he could stop himself.

'I have come to ask you whether--if I go--you also will come,' Considine
said.

Roger was picking up a box of cigarettes from the table; he put it down
again and his face went pale. 'I?' he said.

'I know that you believe,' Considine said, 'and I offer you the
possibility.'

Roger, with a heroic effort, avoided looking at Isabel. He said in a
calm silly voice, 'It's awfully kind of you, of course, but I don't see
how I can. Not this side of Christmas.'

Isabel said, 'I think you might. It'll be death if you don't.'

He looked up at her, and she added, 'It'll be death to you, darling, and
then there'll be nothing left for me. If you go, there may. And I can
do--what we were talking about.'

'But I can't decide all on the moment,' Roger protested to Considine,
though he still looked at Isabel.

'You have decided,' Considine said. 'But of course you may not do it.'

'And have I decided,' Roger said sardonically, 'to live for a hundred
years and try all sorts of experiments with my unhappy body?'

'"I will encounter darkness as a bride,"' Considine murmured. 'Yes.'

It was true, and Roger knew it. Chance might thwart him, as (so he
understood) it might thwart Considine himself, but the decision was in
his blood and bones. He would have to follow this man--as once, he had
read, other men had thrown aside their work and their friends to follow
another voice. When explosions happened you were just blown. Isabel
would be all right as far as money went--and till he had entered into
this mystery he could never now serve Isabel rightly. Those other men
had followed a voice that went crying how it was not come to send peace
but a sword--the peace of the sword perhaps, the reconciliation in a
greater state of being which----

He pulled a chair forward. 'Tell me about it,' he said. He was vaguely
aware, as he did so, that Rosamond had slipped from the room, and was
grateful. The four of them were left. Roger picked up the cigarettes
again and offered them to Isabel who took one, and to Considine and
Mottreux who refused. He himself hesitated.

'I don't', he said, 'see any reason why I shouldn't smoke, and yet when
I'm really concerned I don't. Except by habit.'

'It absorbs energy,' Considine said. 'When it's a dominant habit it
absorbs less energy than the refusal demands, so naturally it has its
way. But when it's not quite inevitable you're conscious of the energy
wasted--of a divided concentration--and you hesitate!'

'Is that why you don't smoke?' Roger asked.

'I don't smoke just as I don't eat--since you ask me,' Considine said,
the smile breaking out again, 'because it doesn't amuse me. Any more
than golfing or dancing or reading the newspaper. Certain things drop
away as one becomes maturer.'

'And eating's one of them?' Roger asked, putting down the cigarettes.

'It's necessary to an extent still,' Considine answered. 'I suppose a
certain minimum of food may be necessary, until--afterwards. Then perhaps
not. But it's nothing like as necessary as one thinks. There are so many
better things to feed on. Shall I quote your Messias again?--"I have meat
to eat that ye know not of."'

Isabel said, more suddenly than was her habit, 'It was to do the will of
Him that sent him.'

'What else?' Considine answered. 'What else could it be?'

'But you don't claim to be doing that will?' Isabel said. 'You're not in
obedience, are you?'

'I am in obedience to all laws I have not yet mastered,' he answered. 'I
am in danger of death--until I have mastered it--and therefore in
obedience to it, and a little to food and sleep.'

'But you said that danger--' Roger began.

'I said that danger will not come from my enemies,' Considine answered;
'isn't there any other? There are laws that are very deep, and one of
them may be that every gospel has a denial within it and every Church a
treachery. You--whom I invite to join me--you yourself may be a danger. It
isn't for me to fear you because of that chance.'

Roger leant forward. 'That's it,' he cried out, 'there's nothing that
may not betray.'

Isabel said softly, 'Can't Mr. Considine transform treachery too?'

'I can guard against it at least,' Considine answered; 'I can read man's
minds, under conditions, but the conditions may fail, and then--could
Christ do more?'

Isabel answered still softly, 'Mightn't the missionaries you killed have
joined with something which was greater than you because it had known
defeat? Have _you_ known defeat?'

'No,' Considine said and stood up. 'I've mastered myself from the
beginning and all things that I've needed are mine. Why should man know
defeat? You teach him to look and expect and wait for it; you teach him
to obey and submit; you heal his hurts and soothe his diseases. But I
will show him that in his hurts as in his happiness he is greatly and
intensely lord; he lives by them. He shall delight in feeling, and his
feeling shall be blood within his blood and body in his body; it shall
burn through him till all that old business of yes-and-no has fallen
away from him, and then his diseases will have vanished for they are
nothing but the shadow of his wanting this and the other, and when he is
those things that he desires, where are the shadows of them? Do I starve
without food who do not need food? Do I pine for love who do not need
love? Do I doubt victory who am victory? There is but one chance of
defeat, and that is that death may strike me before I have dared it in
its own place. But even that cannot face me; by ambush or treachery it
might take me, but I will neither expect it nor allow for it. It is a
habit man yields to, no more; and I will be lord of that customary thing
as I am of all, and draw power and delight from it as I do from all. Who
follows?'

Isabel, as if from a depth of meditation, answered: 'But those that die
may be lordlier than you: they are obedient to defeat. Can you live
truly till you have been quite defeated? You talk of living by your
hurts, but perhaps you avoid the utter hurt that's destruction.'

He smiled down at her. 'Why, have it as you will,' he said. 'But it
isn't such submission and destruction that man desires.'

There was a little silence; then he said again, speaking to Roger: 'What
then will you do?'

Roger looked down at the floor, and only when a much longer silence had
gone by did he say, 'Yes; I'll come. You're right--I'd decided already,
and I won't go back.'

'Then', Considine said, 'to-night you will be at Bernard Travers's
house, for I shall come there. And don't fear for your wife, whatever
happens. I will not destroy London to-night.'

Roger looked up again sharply. 'But----' he began.

There were voices in the hall; Muriel's, Rosamond's, others'. Roger got
up, looking over his shoulder, and turned. Isabel and Mottreux also
rose: only Considine stood motionless. The door opened and Rosamond came
in. Behind her were uniforms--a police inspector followed, and another,
and two or three men. The inspector said: 'Mr. Ingram?'

'What's this about?' Roger asked staring.

'We've had information that there's a man here whom we want,' the
inspector said, looking round, and letting his eyes rest on Considine.
'Mr. Nigel Considine?' he asked.

Considine did not speak or move.

'I've a warrant here for your arrest,' the inspector said, 'on a charge
of high treason and conspiracy to murder.' He showed a paper and stepped
across the room. Mottreux said something, and the inspector glanced at
him. But he halted a pace or two away from Considine, it might be to
give his men time to come up, it might be from hesitation in the sudden
oppression that began to fill the room, as if invisible waters flowed
through it. The air weighed on them, stifling them with its rich
presence; the inspector put a finger to his collar as he poised
watchfully. Rosamond sank heavily on to a chair; Roger drew deep
breaths, sighing as he did sometimes in his passion after repeating
mighty verses aloud. The air spoke; in the voice of Nigel Considine the
element of life, echoing from all around, said: 'Whom?'

The inspector struggled forward; it needed labour, so heavily was he
oppressed by the depths into which the air had opened. He took a step
and staggered as he did so. The eyes fixed on him saw him rock and
steady himself; he said, holding himself upright, 'Nigel Considine, I----'

'I am Nigel Considine,' his great opponent answered, and also moved
forward, and the quiver that went through them all answered the laughter
in the voice. The inspector reeled again, half-falling sideways, and as
he recovered footing a sudden hand went out towards him--whether it
touched him or not they could not tell--and he stumbled backward once
more. The wind swept into their faces, and on it a ringing laughter
came, and in its midst Considine went on towards the door, with Mottreux
by him, sending towards Roger one imperious glance from eyes bright with
joy. The uniforms thronged and shifted and were in confusion, and wind
swirled in the room as if strength were released through it, and Roger,
half-dazed, ran forward and saw the two visitors already in the hall.
The inspector came heavily and blindly back; he called out; his men
moved uncertainly after Considine who paused, turned, and paused again.

'I am Nigel Considine,' he cried out. 'Who takes me?'

He flung out his arms as if in derisive submission, and took a step or
two towards them. They recoiled; there was renewed confusion, men
pressing back and pressing forward, men exclaiming and commanding.
Someone slipped and crashed against the doorpost, someone else, thrust
backward, tripped over a foot; there was falling and stumbling, and
through it Roger saw the wide-armed figure offering itself in laughing
scorn. Then, with a motion as if he gathered up the air and cast it
against them, so that they blinked and thrust and shielded their eyes,
he turned from that struggling mass of fallen and pushing bodies, and
went to the front-door. A panting Muriel leaned against it; he laughed
at her and signed, and hastily she drew away, opening it, and he and
Mottreux went through.

Roger gazed after him. 'I have lived,' he sighed. 'I have seen the gods.
Phoebus, Phoebus, Python-destroyer, hear and save.'




                               CHAPTER IX
                         THE RIOT AND THE RAID


Philip jumped on to a bus--any bus--the first he saw. He had been walking
for ever so long, and he must sit down. But also he must be moving; he
couldn't be shut in. Things were worse than he had ever imagined they
could be; indeed he couldn't quite imagine what exactly they now were.
The Hampstead flat was in a state of acute distress and turmoil; he had
arrived that evening innocently enough, to find half a dozen policemen
all arguing with Roger, who was glowering at Rosamond, who was crying
hysterically in Isabel's arms, who was keeping, not without difficulty,
a grave sympathy with all of them. He had naturally hurried to Rosamond,
but not with the best effects; the sight of him had seemed to distract
her more than ever. Out of the arguments and exclamations he had at last
gathered--and more clearly after the police had at last grimly
withdrawn--that Considine had been there, and that Rosamond, after she
had realized who it really was, had gone through a short period of
conflict with herself on the right thing to do. She said it had been
conflict, and that only her duty... whereas Roger, in a few words,
implied that she had been delighted at the chance, and that duty--except
to herself--was a thing of which she was entirely unconscious and
incapable. Anyhow, after a very short period she had rung up the
police-station and explained to the authorities there what was
happening. Why the police hadn't arrested Considine Philip couldn't
understand. Isabel was concerned with her sister, and Roger wasn't very
clear in his account. Somebody had gone through the midst of somebody
else; somebody had been like Pythian Apollo. But he couldn't bother
about all that; he was too anxious about Rosamond. Had he been
challenged, he would have had to admit that for a guest to try and have
another visitor arrested in the host's drawing-room was not
perhaps... though for Roger to call it treachery was absurd. If
anything, it was public spirit. He knew nothing--Rosamond had seen to
that--of such an orgy as the episode of the chocolates which Isabel so
clearly and reluctantly remembered; he knew nothing of a greedy gobbling
child, breaking suddenly away from its ordinary snobbish pretences,
giving way to the thrust of its secret longings and vainly trying to
conceal from others' eyes the force of its desires. She had cheated
herself so long, consciously in childhood, with that strange combination
of perfect innocence and deliberate sin which makes childhood so
blameless and so guilty at one and the same moment; less consciously in
youth, as innocence faded and the necessity of imposing some kind of
image of herself on the world grew stronger, till now in her first
womanhood she had forgotten the cheat, until her outraged flesh rebelled
and clamoured from its starvation for food. And even now she would not
admit it; she would neither fight it nor flee from it nor yield to it
nor compromise with it. She could hardly even deny that it was there,
for there was no place for it in her mind. She, she of all people, could
never be capable of abominably longing to be near the dark prince of
Africa; she couldn't thrill to the trumpets of conversion nor glow to
the fires of ecstasy. Nor could she hate herself for refusing them. But
she could and inevitably did hate the things that resembled
them--Considine's person and Roger's verse and Philip, all of Philip, for
Philip to her agonized sense was at once a detestable parody of what she
wanted and a present reminder of what she longed to forget. And now,
like all men and all women who are not masters of life, she swayed to
and fro in her intention and even in her desire. At Kensington she had
shrunk away from Inkamasi and fled from him; at Hampstead she thought of
him and secretly longed for him. Power was in her and she was terrified
of it. She had been self-possessed, but all herself was in the
possessing and nothing in the possessed; self-controlled, but she had
had only a void to control. And now that nothing and that void were
moved with fire and darkness; the shadow of ecstasy lay over her life,
and denying the possibility of ecstasy she fled through its shadow as
far as its edge, and halted irresolute, and was drawn back by a
fascination she loved and hated. She was alive and she hated life; not
with a free feeling of judgement but with servile fear. She hated life,
and therefore she would hide in Hampstead; she lived, and therefore she
would return to Kensington. But neither in Hampstead nor Kensington, in
Europe nor Africa, in her vision of her unsubservient self, nor of her
monstrous master, was there any place for Philip, much less a Philip
aware of the exaltation of love.

But it was not till after, shocked and bewildered by the venom she had
flung at him in that dreadful scene, he had at last gone that she began
to fear that her relations with Kensington might have been severed. And,
not being there, she was determined to get back there. She would run
there and then run away, till the strait-jacket of time and place
imprisoned her as it imprisons in the end all who suffer from a like
madness. It is perhaps why the asylum of material creation was created,
and we sit in our separate cells, strapped and comparatively harmless,
merely foaming a little and twitching our fingers, while the steps and
voices of unknown warders come to us from the infinite corridors. But
Rosamond was only beginning to hurl herself against the walls of her
cell, and the invisible warders had not yet had occasion to take much
notice of her. The jacket waited her; when the paroxysm was done she
would no doubt come to regard it as becoming wear and in the latest
fashion. Whether such a belief is desirable is a question men have not
yet been able to decide.

Since Roger was so cruel to her, so detestably unfair, she would go to
Sir Bernard; there was no other friend in London on whom she could
descend without notice. Sir Bernard would understand her motives; he'd
tried to get that hateful man arrested. Isabel tried her best to prevent
her, saying even that Roger might be going away. But this didn't seem to
placate Rosamond, and at last Isabel said no more. Roger said nothing at
all until Rosamond had left them 'to put some of her things together.'
Isabel said: 'I'm not sure that it's a bad thing: Sir Bernard may be
able to do something. What she needs is a sleeping-draught.'

'What she needs', Roger said, 'is prussic acid.'

Meanwhile Philip had walked, walked millions of miles, it seemed, till
at a sudden last weariness struck him and he got on a bus. The heavens
beyond that firmamental arm had been pouring anger and distraction and
hatred down on him, and he didn't understand it at all. He had been
trying to please Rosamond--which, unlike most people who use similar
phrases, he actually had. He sat on the bus and thought so for a long
time, until he became aware that someone was speaking to him.

The conductor had come up and was standing by him, peering out through
the front of the bus, and saying something. Philip roused himself to
attention, and heard him say: 'There's something up; can't you hear it,
sir?'

Philip listened and looked round. The night was clear and he recognized
in a mass that lay on his left Liverpool Street Station. The bus was
going slowly, for it was interrupted and hampered by a number of people
running down the road in the same direction. There was a sound in the
distance which resolved itself, as he listened, into the noise of
shouting.

'What the devil is up?' he said.

The conductor--a short rather gloomy fellow--gave a sinister smile. 'I
shouldn't wonder but what I could guess,' he said. 'I thought it'd
happen sooner or later. I said it was a silly business, letting it be
known all over the place that they'd millions and millions worth of
jewels in the house. "Jewels to the Jews," I called it, when it got
about. Everything gets about. And if it wasn't jewels--and some say it
wasn't--it was money. Hark at that!'

Another shout, nearer now as the bus moved on, brought Philip to his
feet. 'Is it the Rosenbergs?' he said. 'But they can't have got them
here.'

The bus, as he spoke, turned into Bishopsgate and was brought almost to
a stop by an accumulating crowd. Philip jumped off and allowed himself
to be carried in the steady stream that set towards one of the side
turnings. He caught fragments of talk: 'Say they're going to bribe the
negroes'; 'know all about those bloody niggers'; 'great jewels like
turnips, been buying them for months'; 'lowsy old Jews'; 'Christ
Almighty'; 'bloody Jews.' But what had roused the crowd he wasn't yet at
all clear. His coat buttoned, and his collar turned up, his stick firmly
grasped, he was carried round one corner after another. In the darkness
he was aware of continually changing neighbours, among whom were
certainly some of his own class and standing. He saw a brown lean face
which he thought he recognized; a large fat face with an open mouth from
which issued stridently a continual and monotonous cry of 'Dirty Jews!';
a happy excited face--two or three of them all in a knot together. He was
thrust backwards, sideways; the crowd lurched diversely and pinned him
against some railing. A few feet ahead, it seemed to him, so far as he
could judge in the darkness, that the crowd centred before a particular
gate and house. There the shouting rose loudest, and sticks were rattled
on the railings. He saw the helmets of two policemen within the gate and
before the front door. Another call went up: 'Come out, you bloody
Jews!' 'Come out and bring us the jewels!' 'Come out and we'll show you
what we'll do to the niggers!' He caught fresh fragments of the talk
round him. A woman of sixty near by said with a sensuous shudder to her
neighbour: 'They do say that Jews eat babies.' 'Ah,' said the neighbour,
'foreigners'll do anything,' and in a minute or two passed the
information on in turn. Soon after, someone in front of the house
shouted: 'When did you eat the last baby?' and though a roar of laughter
answered it, it was laughter with a hint of madness. Philip managed to
edge a little farther towards the house, in the garden of which he now
saw two or three hats and caps as well as the helmets. The police,
however, at this made a sudden move, one man was flung sideways into the
next narrow garden where he fell with a crash, another scrambled hastily
the other way, and a third dropped flat on the ground. In the recoil
that followed, Philip achieved the front of the house. 'All right,' he
said hurriedly to the police. 'I'm with you. Let me in.' They took one
comprehensive look at him, decided on the risk, and as the crowd swayed
back he slipped through and turned to face it.

'Who the hell are you?' half a dozen asked him. 'Another baby-eater?'

'Come to get the jewels,' another voice answered. 'Come on, there's only
three of them.' Nevertheless Philip's stick and the truncheons of the
police held the front rank yet a little doubtful.

In the pause a window opened over their heads and a voice said: 'Why are
you here?' A roar of laughter and abuse followed. 'Hand out the jewels!
Come out and meet us! Who's afraid of the niggers? Who's doing a bunk?
Jew! Jew! Jew!'

The voice said coldly: 'Sons of abomination, what have we to do with
you? Defilers of yourselves, who are you to come against the Holy One of
Israel?'

The laughter and abuse grew more violent. ''Ark at him,' said a thin
hungry-looking man near Philip. 'O my Gawd; the 'Oly One of Hisrael!'

'You may destroy the house and all that is within it,' Rosenberg said,
'and you shall be smitten with fire and pestilence and all the plagues
of Egypt. But the jewels, even if they were here, you should not touch
or see, for they are holy to the Lord. They are for the Temple of Zion
and for Messias that shall be revealed.'

''Im and 'is Messias,' said a stout woman. 'I 'opes Messias isn't in a
'urry for them jewels!'

A stone flew through the air, and at the same time a huge fellow pushed
to the gate, where he looked up and spoke: 'Look 'ere,' he said, 'are
you Rosenberg?'

'I am Nehemiah Rosenberg,' the voice said.

'Then you look 'ere. We 'appen to know that you've been in with the
Government and the capitalists to get all this money out of the working
classes and get away with it to the niggers as like as not. And we don't
'old with it. Now we don't want to 'urt you but we don't let a lot of
bloody Sheenies get away with our money to those blasted niggers, not
much we don't. Give us them jewels and I'll see they're put in safe
keeping: I swear I will. And if you don't I'll damn well put a light to
the house myself.'

A roar of applause answered him, though the stout woman, who appeared to
Philip to preserve an attitude of detachment worthy of Sir Bernard, said
generally: 'Ah, I don't 'old with Socialism,' and one of the policemen
added agreeably: 'You keep your mouth shut, Mike Cummings.'

'Thank Gawd,' Mr. Cummings said, 'I never could keep my mouth shut while
honest men are being put on.'

Rosenberg leaned out of the window. 'I tell you,' he said, 'the Lord
shall avenge Himself upon His enemies. In the morning you shall say,
"Would God it were night," and in the evening you shall say, "Would God
it were day"; and His anger shall be with you in your secret
chamber....'

Something flew through the air, struck the wall, and dropped at Philip's
feet; something smashed the glass of the window above him. He clutched
at his stick, and at the same time saw one of the policemen dragged
sideways and clubs and belts appearing around him. He was back against
the front door, and heard it creaking as the rush of the crowd in a
storm of shrieks, curses, and yells came against him. Something hit his
shoulder, a large dirty chin came close to his eyes, and an elbow or a
stick drove into his side. At the same moment the door gave and they all
crashed into the narrow passage together. The first in were past him and
up the stairs; the next few in their haste ignored him; and then it was
all darkness and pandemonium. He heard a loud voice upstairs,
overwhelmed by the louder tumult of the crowd, a sudden silence above,
noticeable in a momentary cessation of the uproar without, and then a
cry: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.' Chaos beyond
anything he had known earlier in the riot broke out again, chaos of
voices, but also now chaos of movement--part of the crowd in the house
trying to get out, part trying to get upstairs, part uncertain and
confused. Shouts of 'the police' were heard from the street, the
pressure round Philip lightened, and he found one of his former allies
next to him again, trying to force a way upstairs. Exclamations of
terror broke out, the crowd thinned, and when at last they entered the
upper room, they were only in time to prevent the demonstrative Mr.
Cummings from slipping away. Him the constable seized, while Philip,
taking in the appearance of the room, with a taut rope stretched across
it and out of the window, ran across to join Ezekiel who, torn and
bleeding, was leaning out of it. He knew before he looked out what he
would find, nor was it till he had helped to pull up the hanging body of
Nehemiah that he found time to wonder why the crowd had so swiftly
destroyed their prey. But as Ezekiel and he undid the cord, and laid and
arranged the body on the table he gathered from Cummings' persistent
babble that nothing of the sort had been intended. The Jews were to be
frightened into betraying the hiding-place of the money or the jewels,
and the rope--meant for one of the packed boxes of luggage that stood by
the wall--had been adjusted with that idea. And then Nehemiah had
struggled, and the rope had slipped, and so 'help me God' no-one was
more surprised than he to hear that the Jew was dead.

'Is it likely I'd mean to kill him? Me that's never hurt a canary! It's
all a mistake....'

'The Lord gave,' Ezekiel said, standing up and looking at the body, 'and
the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'

By this time more police were in the room, some of them with prisoners.
Philip explained his presence to the officer in charge, and when this
was confirmed by the two original constables and he had given his
address it was suggested that he might prefer to make his way home.

But he hesitated as he looked at Ezekiel. 'What about Mr. Rosenberg?
Hadn't he better come with me? I'm sure my father would be glad,' he
said, and was permitted to propose it.

Ezekiel nodded gravely. 'A burden is laid upon me,' he said. 'I shall go
alone to the land of my fathers.'

'If you've got any money or jewels here, Mr. Rosenberg,' the Inspector
said, 'you'd better let us take charge of them.'

'We never had any,' Ezekiel answered; 'they are in safe keeping.' He
turned again to the body, intoned over it a Hebrew prayer, and, while
the last great syllables echoed from the ceiling and walls, indicated to
Philip that he was ready. Two constables were to come with them till
they had found a taxi; the four went silently downstairs, and, as they
came out into the street, heard, remote but unmistakable, the sound of
the guns.

****

In Kensington Sir Bernard and three of his guests were playing
bridge--Caithness, Isabel and Roger. The king, as usual, was shut in his
room. Rosamond was where Isabel had hardly dared to hope Sir Bernard
would succeed in getting her--in bed and asleep. It was a Tuesday
evening, and very often on Tuesday evenings, because Roger was generally
free then, the Ingrams did visit their friend. Sometimes they played--if
Philip or Rosamond or some other visitor would join them; sometimes they
talked; sometimes they went to the theatre. Sometimes they even stopped
the night; Sir Bernard was very fond of them, and between him and them
existed that happy state by which fathers and children who are no
relations may enjoy relationship rarely achieved by fathers and children
who are. Sir Bernard all but understood Roger; Roger all but envied Sir
Bernard. And what they did not understand and envy salted their talk
with agreeable mystery. The evening therefore bore a bearable similarity
to the past. The tact which Sir Bernard and Isabel possessed in common
soothed over the fact of Rosamond's hysteria, and in effect combined in
finding her a bed and putting her there. Once in the house indeed, from
exhaustion or cunning or content or fear, she grew docile, and was
content to be managed. Sir Bernard's forty years of practice had made
him an adept at managing people. Roger had begun, from a sense of
decency, to try to explain why they were there, or why he was there. But
Sir Bernard refused to hear.

'I'm quite sure you don't want to tell me,' he said, 'and being told
things--there's nothing I like better, but a sense of duty destroys the
satisfaction. Like the people who refuse to be loved by a sense of duty.
At my age one's only too grateful to be loved--_loved_, mark you--at all.
Let's pretend nothing ever happened.'

Hampered in this by the fact that the guns began almost immediately,
they nevertheless did make the evening rather like one of their old
enjoyments. It had been announced by Authority, after the last raid,
that, in the event of another, official bulletins of the progress of the
raid would be delivered to the wireless at regular intervals and
announced by that means to the public. Arranged entertainments would, so
far as possible, proceed as usual; and it was hoped that all
listeners-in would follow their ordinary custom, and lessen the chance
of panic, at creating which (as had been discovered in the Great War)
all air-raids over such places as London were directed. If the
experiment were found unsuccessful it would be discontinued after the
trial.

'We shan't want the entertainment,' Sir Bernard said, 'but we may as
well know what's happening, so far as the Government will tell us.'

'I'm not sure of that,' Isabel said. 'Suppose the thing says, "Great
aeroplane dropping fiery bombs directly over Colindale Square."'

'It won't,' Caithness said. 'I'll bet you a dozen pairs of gloves,
Isabel, that if we're all blown to heaven the last thing we hear is: "No
aeroplane has yet reached London; the raid is being effectively
repulsed."'

'Done,' said Isabel.

'An anthropomorphic heaven,' Sir Bernard said, and picked up the cards.

For some time the game and the entertainment proceeded. Then the first
announcement was heard.

'The first Government communiqu has just been received,' the loud
speaker announced. '"Raiders have attempted to approach London from all
sides, but have entirely failed. Four enemy planes have already been
brought down. A number of bombs have been dropped, but all in
uninhabited districts. The O.C. London Air Defence announces that no
losses have been sustained by our forces."'

'I hope they'll use imagination,' Sir Bernard said. 'One or two planes
destroyed on our side would make the bulletins credible.'

'I do wish you wouldn't say "imagination,"' Roger complained. 'It isn't,
you know; only the lowest kind of cunning fancy.'

'I've never been clear that Coleridge was right there,' Caithness said
meditatively. 'Surely it's the same faculty--the adaptation of the world
to an idea of the world.'

'Well, if the O.C. London Air Defence _has_ an idea of the world,' Roger
said, 'you may be right. But is an idea a pattern?'

'O surely!' Caithness interrupted. 'If an idea isn't a pattern what good
is it?'

'If we're playing bridge,' Isabel said forbearingly, 'could you manage
to forget your ideas for a moment? Thank you so much.'

A new voice, after a quarter of an hour, took up the tale. 'Latest
communiqu,' the loud speaker reported. '"Enemy planes continue to be
sighted. It is supposed that in all some eight hundred are engaged in
the raid. None have appeared over London. Five villages have been
destroyed. African troops have been landed from giant airships, and have
occupied the ridge of Hampstead and Richmond Park. Other airships have
appeared on the western side. Posts of Government troops have been
overwhelmed in the north and south."'

'The devil they have!' Roger exclaimed.

There was a short pause, then the loud speaker continued, with another
variation of tone: '"In the name of the things that have been and are to
be, willed and fated, in the name of the gods many and one..."'

Isabel laid down her cards, Caithness jumped to his feet, Roger sat
upright in his chair. Sir Bernard, leaning back in his own, said in a
voice of considerable interest, 'Mr. Considine, I believe.'

'"... the High Executive of the African Sovereigns warns the English
of the folly of defiance. It is reluctant to make a difference in belief
a reason for the destruction of London, and it does not propose, even
under the provocations of the Government, to endanger the city to-night.
But it is compelled to display the ardent and unconquerable forces at
its disposal, and from the centre of the white race it seriously warns
them that the forces now in action shall be multiplied a thousand times
to effect the ends upon which it is determined--the freedom of the black
peoples and the restoration of Africa. It exhibits something of the
strength of its armies and the devotion of its martyrs, and it asserts
firmly that, if a third raid upon London becomes necessary, then London
shall be destroyed. It urges the English to consider carefully what they
are fighting, and if any among them believe that in love and art and
death rather than in logic and science the kingdom of man lies, it
entreats them, not to any transfer of allegiance, for it recognizes in
the folly of patriotism a means of obedience to the same passionate
imagination, but to a demonstration on behalf of peace. In the name of
their own loyalties it appeals to the children of passion and
imagination; in the name of a vaster strength than their own it
threatens the children of pedantry and reason--in this first proclamation
made at London in the first year of the Second Evolution of Man."'

'Then,' Sir Bernard said, 'with more adequate assurance than Drake had,
we can go on with the game.'

But Roger and Caithness were both on their feet. Caithness said, 'I
wouldn't trust him too far.'

Isabel, still looking at her cards, murmured, 'I don't think you need
worry, Mr. Caithness. He told us the same thing this afternoon.'

'You've seen him?' Caithness incredulously exclaimed.

'Yes,' Isabel said. 'In fact, we made a kind of appointment with him.'

'_You_ did?' Caithness said, still more astonished.

'Well--I did for Roger,' Isabel said, and lifted her eyes. 'He'd never
have done it himself. I hope you didn't mind, Sir Bernard?'

'Almost thou persuadest me to be a monogamist,' Sir Bernard said, but
there was unusual tenderness in his voice. 'Here, do you mean? Because,
if so, perhaps that's him.'

It was not; it was Philip and the Jew. They came into the room
accompanied by Inkamasi who had descended from his to discover the
progress of the raid. Philip introduced Ezekiel to Sir Bernard and in a
low voice gave him the brief tale of the evening.

'I'm very glad you're here, Mr. Rosenberg,' Sir Bernard said, in quite a
different tone from his usual placidity. 'I'm your servant in
everything. You'll use us as you will. Ring, Philip.'

But even as Philip's finger touched the bell there was a louder ring in
the hall. Sir Bernard paused and glanced swiftly at Isabel, who sat down
by the card-table. In the minute that it took the feet of the maid to go
to the front door she looked up at Roger and said: 'Be good to me, my
darling, and find out everything you can.' Roger, more shaken than she,
did not answer except by his gaze. There were voices and footsteps; then
the door was thrown wide open and Considine stood in the entrance of the
room. Behind him was Mottreux, and behind him again two or three
others--in whose faces, so far as he could see them, Sir Bernard thought
he recognized the gentlemen who had waited on them during the dinner at
Hampstead. But he had no time to consider; he looked back, where
everyone else was looking, at the High Executive who stood in the
entrance.

'A good meeting,' Considine said, 'but I mustn't wait. Who will come
with me?'

In the immediate silence Roger heard himself say, 'I.'

'The king also,' Considine said.

'Fool,' the Zulu cried. 'You've come to me now, and do you think you'll
get away? You're mine, you're mine.'

He was standing almost on the other side of the room, nine or ten feet
away. But as he ended, he crouched low, and in one terrific movement
leapt--right across the intervening space, sending himself forward and
upward, so that he crashed down on Considine as a thunderbolt might
strike from the sky. His hands were at the other's throat, and before
that descent of angry vengeance even Considine for a moment staggered
and seemed likely to fall. But before he could either fall or recover,
in the second after the onslaught fell, Mottreux sprang forward. The
others saw the revolver in his hand and cried out; their voices were
overwhelmed by the shot. Inkamasi reeled and crashed, his hand to his
thigh where the blood showed. Considine recovered himself and glanced at
his friend.

'Mottreux, Mottreux, is it necessary?' he murmured. 'Am I afraid of his
hands? Well, it's done; let Vereker see to him. It's only a flesh
wound.'

He moved a step aside, so that another of his companions could come
forward and do what he could with Isabel's help and with improvised
bandages for the wounded man. After a few minutes Considine went on:
'Mr. Ingram and the king; Mr. Rosenberg, I have your cousin's jewels,
and others I have bought for you. Come with me; there's no place for you
here.' He cast a glance around. 'Is there any of you beside for whom
that's true?'

'If you take the king you shall take me,' Caithness cried out. 'I demand
that you----'

'Why demand?' Considine's laugh answered him. 'I invite you, I entreat
you, to come. Sir Bernard?'

'No,' Sir Bernard said. 'We've come out of the jungle and I for one am
not going back.'

'The king, Mr. Caithness, Mr. Rosenberg, Mr. Ingram,' Considine said.
'Very well. Mrs. Ingram?'

'No,' Isabel said. 'Africa's near enough here.'

'You are perhaps a wise woman,' Considine said, 'but if you are you
shall be a centre of our wisdom in London, and all the women of England
shall learn from you what it is they do. Your husband shall come back to
you with victory. Good-night then. Good-night, Sir Bernard; I leave you
to the sauces that you prefer to food. Come, my friends; come, my
enemies. Mottreux, you and Vereker shall make the king as comfortable as
you can in the first car. The others will come with me in the second.'

He swept them with him out to the door, to the large cars that waited
for them. Roger, obeying a gesture, got in and sat down with his back to
the engine; Caithness sat by him. Opposite the priest was the Jew.
Considine occupied the other seat. Figures moved about the other car;
from the doorway Isabel and Sir Bernard silently watched. Considine
raised a hand to them, and as the car slid away he said to Roger, 'There
is defeat defeated. But you may be at ease; there is again to-night no
danger to them from my people. And to-morrow, or if not to-morrow then
the day after, the Government will ask for peace.'

'Surely they won't dare,' Roger said. 'And if you're not hurting London,
what _are_ you doing?'

'I'm teaching London to feel,' Considine said, 'to feel terribly. It
will know panic to-night such as it has never known. It will know the
depths which it has never dared to find. Blame its sterile hopelessness
for its suffering.'

'Is that why you bring the African armies here?' Caithness asked.

'Armies?' Considine laughed. 'O I know I caused that tale to be spread.
But those of my people who are here are entering into their greatest
moment, and I give them the sacrifice they desire. Wait; you shall see
them.' He picked up the speaking-tube and said something to the driver.
The car ran swiftly northward, went round by Regent's Park, into St.
John's Wood, and came out at last round Primrose Hill on to Haverstock
Hill somewhere below Belsize Park Station. But a few minutes showed that
this way was impossible. The road was full of people pressing downward,
less thick below the station because of the mob that surged round the
entrance, which no vehicle could get through. Beyond and above it the
Hill was a noisy tumult of refugees, and beyond in the midnight sky was
a red glare, above which again the useless searchlights crossed and
wavered. Hysterical shrieks, curses, the noise of many separate scuffles
came to them. Near them two wheelbarrows laden with bundles had come
into collision, and the owners were fighting wildly in the midst of
their scattered goods. Here and there a woman lay in a dead faint; in
places the white robes and black cloaks of the Dominicans of the Priory
showed as they laboured to create some sort of order. ('No doubt',
Considine murmured to Caithness, 'the Anglican clergy are somewhere
about too. But of course they haven't the same advantage in dress.')
More and more fugitives were hurrying from the side turnings. Even as
the car slowed down, to turn down one of these and escape, two young men
scrambled on to the driver's seat. 'This car is going to take us,' one
said drunkenly; the other hung on to the wheel. Roger glanced at
Considine, who, observant but motionless, was lying back in his corner.
The driver abandoned the wheel, and with what seemed but a light blow
knocked one sprawling into the road; the other let go the wheel to
protect himself, was dexterously flung overboard also, and the car
backed a little way down the Hill. Considine took up the tube again. 'Go
round as far as is necessary,' he said. 'I must come to the top.'

Eventually, after many pauses and very long detours, the thing was done.
They came back from the north on to the Hampstead ridge, and heard
beyond them a noise quite different to anything that had passed before.
'I will have the car opened,' Considine said to the driver. 'Go slowly
till you come near Highgate and then bend away to the stopping-place.'

The glare by now had become much stronger, and Roger saw Considine
suddenly stand up. Almost at the same moment a great cry in a strange
tongue roared out beyond them. A black soldier appeared running and
shouting beside the car, and another, and then, rushing towards them, a
whole group. He heard the steady beating of drums, and a cry resolving
itself into English: 'Deathless! Deathless! Glory to the Deathless One!'
Considine, raising his right hand, made with it, high in the air, a
sudden gesture; the cry beat all round them and ceased and broke out yet
more wildly: 'Glory to the Master of Love! Glory to the Deathless One!'
Negroes ran by the car, rushing up to it, to touch it and fall back
exhausted; they leapt and twisted at it.

He felt a sudden lurch and guessed insanely what the obstacle was they
had passed over. The cries, now in African, now in English, made an arch
of sound: 'Death for the Deathless One!' he heard. 'Glory to the Lord of
Death!' They were passing now between blazing fires each with its own
dance of whirling figures, which broke and hurled themselves at the car,
or flung themselves prostrate in adoration as it rolled by. Opposite him
the figure of Considine seemed to dilate in the red glare; again and
again he made the high mysterious gesture with his right hand; every now
and then he cried out in a great voice and a strange tongue. Roger tore
his eyes away and looked out over the Heath, but beyond the light of the
watch-fires it lay in darkness, a darkness which seemed to him to be
continually resolving itself into these leaping, shrieking figures.
Caithness was leaning back in his corner, his eyes shut, his lips moving
in swift murmured prayer.

Roger looked back as the car suddenly stopped and Considine, signing for
silence, began to speak. What he said Roger could not tell, but as he
ended and the car moved on again a shout greater than any before went
up. He knew instinctively the meaning--it was that whereof the rhythm
leapt into the former English: 'Death for the Deathless.'

But whatever the cries, Death itself began to accompany them on their
passage, for there was heard suddenly a revolver shot, and then another,
and as Roger, supposing for a moment that the English had begun an
attack, looked round him, he saw one of the running foaming figures by
the car stabbing at himself with a bayonet, and saw the madness
spreading to others, saw the steel glinting and crimson-streaked faces
in the light of the fires. Many of the negroes had torn off their
tunics, and some were already naked from head to foot; among whom
appeared here and there a yet wilder form in skins of various kinds and
high plumes of feathers, leading some eddy of the general dance. Close
by him two great negroes caught and held and stabbed at each other with
broad knives and more shots sounded around them. Again and again he felt
a horrid jerk and lurch of the car, and still through it all Considine
stood upright opposite him, and with an exalted but unmoved face
considered the revelry he had bidden to be.

At last this journey along a ridge of blazing watch-fires between two
seas of darkness came to an end. The crowds of negroes began to thin.
Considine threw up both hands, made a downward and outward gesture,
cried out once more, and sat down. The last negro halted, flung himself
on the earth, the car gathered strength, swept on, and after a while
issued at last into the darkness and silence of the open country.

Caithness spoke bitterly, 'Are you letting that horde of negroes loose
on London?' he asked.

'You heard me,' Considine answered. 'You heard me an hour ago. I have
let the English feel panic, panic such as they have not felt since the
Vikings raided their coasts and burned their towns a thousand years ago.
They have been afraid of their feelings, of ecstasy and riot and savage
glee; they have frozen love and hated death. And I have shown them these
things wild and possibly triumphant; and what fear of a thousand armies
will not do, fear of their own passions will. They will ask for peace.
As for my Africans, they ask for death and they shall have death. Most
of them will kill themselves or one another to-night; those who survive
till to-morrow will die before your soldiers. I do not pity them; they
are not the adepts; all that they are capable of I have given them. They
die for the Undying. How many martyrs would the Churches offer me of
such a strain?'

'They die for your schemes,' Caithness said.

'They die for the Master of Death,' Considine answered, 'either for me
or for another. If I do not achieve, another will. Do you think it is an
idle brag to call this year the First of the Second Evolution? It is a
truth the story of your Christ darkly foreshadowed. Him that you
ignorantly worship declare I unto you. Your martyrs in the past have
died, many of them, in such an agony of supreme rapture, and those of
many another faith. But I bring you achievement, I bring you the
fulfilment of desires, the lordship of love and death.'

There was a little silence; then he went on, slowly and almost to
himself: 'It is a long work, and many have waited for it. My father
longed for it and did not see it, though he knew the beginning and
taught it to me. This was the beginning of sex when far away in the ages
the world divided itself, in its primal dark instinct to destroy death
which seemed its doom. And when man came he desired immortality, and
deceived himself with begetting children and with religion and with art.
All these are not ecstasy, but the shadow of ecstasy. Kingship and
dynasties he created and cities and monuments and science, and nothing
satisfied that hungry desire. And then he created love, and knew that
that which existed between a man and a woman was mysterious and
powerful, but what to do with it he has not known. Only a few have
known, Csar and a few others, and they have been struck down. I think
perhaps Chaka knew, for he was of the initiates. I taught him what to do
and how to govern his energies. But he had an irresistible hunger for
cruelty and destruction, and when the time came he was destroyed. For
the true adepts care for nothing but to discover the secrets, and to
enter into communion with ecstasy; and if they shall govern the world,
as they shall, they will do it to make known to all men the things they
themselves know. Fast and vigil they keep for this, as my father taught
me when I was a boy two centuries ago. In trance and in waking they keep
the end before them. I beheld in a trance the making of sex, I went down
to where in history and in the individual being--which are one, as all
the mystics know: inward or backward, it is the same way--to where those
high laboratories lie. And there, in trance or in waking I do not know,
I myself carried out the great experiment, and I laid my imagination
upon all the powers and influences of sex and love and desire. In the
adolescence of my life I did this, and I have thriven upon that strength
ever since. For first I bent it to my own life. I set before myself
three hundred years from that night, and not two hundred have since gone
by. I have gathered from many women all that imagination desired, and I
have changed it to strength and cunning and length of days. I have never
kissed a woman; all that have lived with me have had what lovers they
desired. For a kiss also is but the shadow of ecstasy. Then they taught
me in the lodge of the initiated how, though death might be far, yet it
was certain, and that at death the ghost of man wanders stripped of all
powers that it has gained in a place of shadows, and that there remained
yet to be found the secret of how man could go into that place armed
with passion and high delight and return to this world when and as he
would. He that has mastered love has mastered the world, and he that
masters death is lord of that other. Also as the delights of mere bodily
love are but shadows beside the rich joys of the transforming
imagination, so this itself is nothing compared to the revivifying
intoxication of the passage from life to death and from death to life.
And I set my purpose on this and laboured to achieve it. But, while I
brooded, the feet of Europe came nearer, and the blind intelligence of
Europe looked into the clear light of the lodges and said: "It is dark,
it is dark," and smelt wickedness. And the religion of Europe came, and
the learning of Europe. Then we the adepts knew that, unless we made
Africa free, in a little while Europe would trample over us and we
should be gone; and we resolved that Europe must be stayed.'

He paused and looked out over the fields and hedges between which they
were passing. Then he went on more sharply and swiftly:

'Not that all the Europeans who came to Africa then had closed
themselves to wisdom. Some of the white officers sat in our lodges and
were initiated and entered into trance, and made themselves strong men;
there have always been some who would do this--Mottreux was one; I met
him in Uganda, and there was a French General in Morocco, and in the
south Simon Rosenberg's great uncle. And there were others. All of us
set to work to unite Africa. We knew the lodges already in various parts
of the land, and we drew all these into one. And we spoke with the
chiefs and kings; little by little we brought them into our purpose. The
witch-doctors and sorcerers were ours already, though they were in the
outer circle. They gave us a means of ruling the tribes, and little by
little through many years we proposed to ourselves to show the people of
Africa the doctrines of freedom and sacrifice and ecstasy, and I
determined to strike at Europe by panic and strength.'

Roger said abruptly, 'Yet you seemed to wish that Mottreux hadn't
fired.'

'Why, for myself,' Considine said, 'if men without weapons come against
me I'll meet them without weapons, heart to heart and strength to
strength. But shall I waste years imposing my will on the Governments of
Europe--and spend my energies so? It shall be a shorter business. They
proclaim guns and they shall have guns. But for the adepts---- If I wish
Mottreux had not fired it was for his sake, not mine.'

'Your friends may fire at you one day,' the intolerant voice of the
priest broke in, 'when they want something you can't give them.'

'Pieces of silver, for example,' Considine said, not turning his head.

The night lay about them; they swept on through it. Roger looked out on
the unseen country-side, and remembered the words that had brought about
his own meeting with the conquistador who sat opposite him. 'I will
encounter darkness as a bride'--he was rushing towards that darkness now.
The dark closed them in, but they were speeding towards the core of the
darkness; the words themselves were swallowing them up. All the miracles
of the poets had rent and illumined and charged that night, but the
mingling light and dark which was in all easily accepted verse lay far
behind them now where the wild rapture of the Africans surged above
London. It was as if he had passed from something which was himself to
something which was even more himself. His very physical body was being
carried in towards the energy which created art. Art... the ancient
word so often defiled and made stupid stood for a greatness only
partially explored. His body felt the energy opposite him--an energy
self-restrained, self-shaped. 'And hug it in mine arms----' but if the
arms could not bear it, if the awful blasting power of that darkness
should destroy him as the glory of Zeus destroyed Semele? It was too
late now for choice; he was lost and saved at once. Onward and onward,
away from the ironic contemplations of the children of the wise world
and from the shrieking self-immolating abandonments of the more ignorant
sons of rapture; away from young perplexity and young greed; away from
Isabel. High-set, as the moon now rising, he saw her, knowing in her
daily experiences, her generous heart and her profound womanhood, all
that he must compass sea and land to find. This was the separation that
had been between man and woman from the beginning; this was fated, and
this must be willed. It was the everlasting reconciliation of the
everlasting contradiction--to will what was fated, to choose necessity.
Perfect for one moment in his heart, he knew the choice taken. He willed
necessity. All the poets had done this in their own degree--the very
making of their verse was this, their patience and their labour, their
silence till the utterance they so long desired rose into being within
them. This was the secret of royalty--the solemn anointed figure of
government to whom necessary obedience was willed, and so through all
orders of hierarchical life, secular or religious, vocational in every
kind, trade or profession, ceremonial or actual. Love too was its image,
but love and not the beloved was the necessity; to love, and only to the
beloved as the sacred means, the honourable toil was given.

Something different was in the air; his nostrils felt, far off, the
smell of the sea.




                               CHAPTER X
                         LONDON AFTER THE RAID


The wild figures that danced on the outskirts of London that night were
but few and scattered representations of the more monstrous forms that
filled it within. The serpent skins that clothed some of the leaders of
the dance were poor vestments if compared to the mad dragons of escaping
multitudes. Considine had indeed loosed but few of his meinie on the
hills of the north and the south; he had not cared, it was afterwards
discovered, even to justify the announcements of burning villages and
destroyed troops which he had caused to be broadcast. A few bombs had
been dropped but more for noise and mental horror than to destroy. He
had even reassured London, speaking from its centre. But there were many
whom the reassurance did not solace, and there were many, many more, who
did not hear it for they were already in flight. It was known in the
small streets and the slums of the extremer suburbs that the Africans
had landed, and of those who in those crowded buildings heard the news
there were few who did not rush out to seek safety. The north fled
southwards; the south fled northwards; the west broke away towards the
east. Over the east alone no hostile airfleet manoeuvred and fought the
English planes while its laden airships sank earthward to landing places
prepared long since. Many a house with wide grounds had waited for this
night; flares summoned the enemy and they came. At most they numbered
few enough in comparison with the defenders, and they were not meant for
attack. But on all convenient heights their fires blazed, and sacred
revels were begun which till now had been hidden in the black night of
African swamps. As there the wild animals fled from the drums, the
conches, and the screams, so now the terrified population rushed away to
what it hoped was safety. The slums poured out their people, and not the
slums alone. From many a fine house, lying happily on the outer rim of
London, cars issued bearing huddled women and children, while men, both
young and old, drove them furiously away. A brother coming back home
would bear the news, or a father peering from a window would be aware,
dreadfully near him, of the awful barbarian tumult breaking out, and
household after household sought by their mechanical inventions to
escape from the strange gospel which called to their uncomprehending
minds. Considine's voice had hardly ceased its proclamation when
opposite Charing Cross a laden car from near the Heath crashed into
another similarly laden from the Terrace at Richmond. This was but the
first of many similar catastrophes. London became the enemy of London;
civil war, chaotic and bloody, surged through the streets. Ealing and
Highgate and Streatham, listening to the guns, heard instead the riot
roaring through them, hesitated and feared and shrank, and then, as the
rumours grew louder, and the panic in the streets spread into the
houses, themselves swept out to swell the flood. The spray of the
approaching waves of humanity mingled; the first fugitives passed each
other and soon began to call out, and heard how they fled not towards
safety but towards new danger. And behind those earliest and most
timorous souls came the main hurrying processions. They came up towards
the centre; stations and tubes were choked, and yet tubes and stations
offered no certain refuge from an enemy pursuing on foot. It was not
merely death dropped from the skies that threatened but death hastening
along on earth. Round about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, clambering over
the railings of the parks, trying to rest in Trafalgar Square, surging
over the bridges and even running on and falling from their parapets,
surging also from the thoroughfares of the north, the mob converged on
the central lines of Oxford Street and Holborn and Cheapside, of the
Strand and Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill and Cannon Street. There it
sought to pause, but still the continual presence thrust it from behind,
and now it was driven on not merely to escape death that pursued from
afar but death that threatened close at hand. The mere necessity of
breath oppressed it, the desire of escape not from Africa but from
itself. Ignorant and at odds with itself it swayed and exuded itself,
and was magnetised by some slight movement and rushed after in blind
despair or even blinder hope. A woman with a baby would take a few steps
down a partly deserted turning, and others would follow, and a small
eddy would be set up which a mile away was reflected in another insane
and multitudinous onrush. A young man would pull his girl into an arch
or doorway for rest, and others would see and follow, and a little
tumult would break out in that greater tumult, and the first couple were
fortunate indeed if they both emerged from that tiny crush alive into
the ever-moving surges that poured by them. Yet, terrible as the fear
was, fear was not present alone; desire and loathing and the cruel
darkness of abandoned souls walked in the midst of the crowds and took
their pleasure as they could. Abominable things were done, which none
saw or seeing stopped to prevent. Shrieks went up in hidden corners, and
laughter and sudden silences answered them, silences hardly discernible
in the general roar and themselves filled with the never-ceasing sound
of the guns. How many devotees of Considine's choosing rode through the
air to death that night was never rightly known, but not till the late
November dawn was high did the movement of his planes or the efforts of
the English gunners cease. There was therefore, for the elements of
demented London, no desire of return as there was no chance of return;
within and without the passionate terror hurled them on. Farther and
farther east they poured; not merely the Thames but great reservoirs and
docks and small tributaries of small rivers, swallowed those who were
pushed aside; and there were puddles in the street which were not water
where someone had striven to guard his belongings, and heaps that were a
dreadful hindrance to those who came behind. A pestilence of the spirit
walked in the night and slew its victims as it went.

It hovered in the streets; it rested in churches and such public
buildings as had been readily and benevolently opened. For in the early
hours of the exodus men had supposed that it would, however serious and
tragic, still be quiet and controlled. Certain authorities therefore had
hoped that the buildings in their charge would be of use to exhausted
fugitives. St. Paul's, in a holy goodwill, was so opened. The crowd
entered, increased, filled it, flowed over the rails of the sanctuary,
clambered upon the altars, and within its walls suffered and inflicted
horror. The windows of public-houses, as of eating-houses and gunsmiths,
had been smashed, and bottles of drink obtained, and the strongest men
made use of their strength. On the High Altar a drunken woman smashed a
bottle over the head of a vociferating assailant, and was shot by his
companion before the victim had died. The kingship which Inkamasi so
proudly held had here its apeish rival in savage might or dextrous
cunning; yet that kingship was unstained, as all lovely things are
unstained by their detestable imitations, since beauty cannot be
manifested unless the mind assents. Without that assent, beauty itself
must be tyranny; but with that grave acceptance there is no government
that is not beautiful, for love is not only the fulfilling but the
beginning of the law.

In Kensington all that night Sir Bernard watched, as if on a small rocky
island--one of a scattered archipelago of such islands--a lingering child
of a lost race watched the sea overwhelm his city. After the departure
of Considine with his guests or prisoners--no-one was quite sure which
they were--Sir Bernard had gone back with Isabel and Philip to the
library. He stood there with his back to the fire, surveying the room,
the stains of blood on the carpet and the divan, the empty chairs round
the card-table, and the dropped cards, the general disarray that had
meant companionship and now meant desertion. He looked at Isabel, now
enduring a separation deeper than his own--at least, presumably; everyone
would say it was. Even in that moment he found himself wondering whether
Isabel or he would miss Roger the most; it was so difficult to compare
these things. Isabel had lost her husband; and he had lost--a friend who
lived mostly in Yorkshire, and a younger friend whom he saw perhaps
three or four times a month for an hour or two, and a barbarian chief
whom he'd only known for a few days. O and a Jewish mystic whom he
didn't know at all. They didn't, all of them put together, sound
intimate besides Isabel's loss, and yet... It wasn't _whom_ you lost;
it was _what_ you lost, what centre of what concern or quality of
yourself was torn away, so that your own capacity moved helplessly in
the void. Something very like stability had been torn from under him. He
looked at Isabel again and wondered. Was it merely her youth that made
her seem, in that house of desertion, the least deserted of them all? He
was old; he'd outlived his time; he was living on his memories. There
went through him a rare flash of envy; Isabel hadn't to live on her
memories, Isabel----

Sir Bernard recaptured a sense of proportion. 'No-one who's just in the
throes of seeing Considine go off with a Zulu, a Jew, a clergyman, and
an expert in the poets ought to talk of living on his memories,' he said
to himself. He said to Isabel as tenderly as possible: 'Why did you tell
Roger to go?'

'Because I wanted him to, since he wanted to,' she said. 'More; for I
wanted him to even more than he did, since I hadn't myself to think of
and he had.'

Sir Bernard blinked. 'I see,' he said. 'But--I only ask--isn't it a little
risky... deciding what other people want?'

'Dear Sir Bernard, I wasn't _deciding_,' she said, 'I was wanting. It
isn't quite the same thing. I want it--whatever he wants. I don't want it
unselfishly, or so that he may be happy, or because I ought to, or for
any reason at all. I just want it. And then, since I haven't myself to
think of, I'm not divided or disturbed in wanting, so I _can_ save him
trouble. That's all.'

'O quite, quite,' Sir Bernard said. 'That would be all. And is that what
you call quiet affection?'

Isabel looked a trifle perplexed. 'I don't call it anything,' she said.
'There isn't anything to call it. It's the way things happen, if you
love anyone.'

'Of course,' Sir Bernard said. 'Too much excitement has made me dull
to-night. Of course, it's the way things happen. The whole round world
has noticed it. So you wanted Roger to go?'

Isabel said, a little unhappily: 'When you put it like that it sounds
somehow as if I didn't really, or only because he wanted to. Don't you
see I couldn't want it _because_ of him? He--somehow _he_ wanted it in
me. O I don't know. I'm not as intelligent as you, but I know it was the
one thing I had to have to make me happy.'

Sir Bernard looked at her again, very steadily. 'And does it make you
happy?'

'Utterly,' Isabel said. 'O of course it's dreadfully painful, but--yes,
utterly.'

On that rich and final word they fell into silence. Irony, even loving
irony, could say no more. The mind accepted a fact which was a
contradiction in terms, and knew itself defeated by that triumphant
contradiction. Sir Bernard wished he could have heard Considine and
Isabel arguing--not that Isabel would or could have argued. So far as he
could see, she was saying exactly the opposite of Considine, and yet
they curiously agreed. They were both beyond the places of logic and
compromise, even amused compromise. They were both utterly,
utterly--well, they were both utterly, and that was that. It was no
wonder Isabel didn't want to go to Africa.

It was Philip who presently, wandering restlessly about the house,
brought them news of the number of fugitives who were beginning to hurry
along Kensington High Street. Sir Bernard, hearing, frowned. 'This,' he
said, 'if it's happening everywhere, may mean pure hell before long.
Let's go and look from upstairs.' There was an attic window which
commanded the High Street, and from it they surveyed the increasing
crowd. A few of the fugitives, turning aside, hurried through the square
in which the house stood, but not many; most of them pressed frantically
onwards.

'I'd better make sure the front door's fastened up,' Philip said
suddenly. 'We don't want any of them pushing in.' He added, more
carefully, 'I suppose actually there's no danger.'

'Of course not,' Isabel said. 'Mr. Considine said he wasn't going to
hurt London.'

'I don't really see,' Sir Bernard said, 'how one can be expected to
believe Mr. Considine. You can't refuse your mind and yet have people
accept your word, can you?'

'But surely you do believe him?' Isabel said. 'He _said_ so.'

'I know he said so,' Sir Bernard patiently explained. 'What I'm trying----
O very well. Besides, you're right. I do believe him, but I can't think
why I should. The Second Evolution of Man, I suppose. Considine at the
bottom of a well--and what a well!'

'That man's very tired,' Isabel said, watching a party of five; a woman
carrying one child, a man with two, who had just turned into the square,
and were stopping even in their haste for a necessary minute. 'He
oughtn't to go on--nor ought she. Sir Bernard, don't you think----'

'Yes,' Sir Bernard said. 'I suppose you want to rest, too. Good God, you
do! And feed?'

'Well,' Isabel said, blushing slightly, 'I was thinking, if you'd got
any milk, the children... I could just go and speak to them.'

'Then Philip will go too,' Sir Bernard said. 'Ecstasy has very curious
forms sometimes, especially if it happens to be attacking anyone who
isn't.'

'Isn't what?' asked Isabel. 'I thought you were talking about me.'

Sir Bernard took her arm. 'Come down,' he said. 'Philip, go and open the
door,' and as the young man obeyed, 'Is that true?' he asked.

She turned clear eyes upon him. 'I'm no good at words,' she said, 'and
I'm a fool at knowing things, but when there's something in you that has
its way, and when Roger's doing what he must do, and I too---- O every
fibre of me's aching for him and I could sing for joy all through me.
Isn't that all the ecstasy that I could bear? Come and let's do
something before it breaks my heart to be alive.'




                               CHAPTER XI
                          THE HOUSE BY THE SEA


It was indeed by the sea that the house stood at which the car
eventually arrived. Through the wide porch in front of which it stopped
the light shone from the open door; a light in which expectant figures
moved and waited. Roger got out, stiff and weary, and as he stretched
himself wondered afresh at that strange company of travellers. His
fellows seemed less weary than he; the old Jew's movements were slow but
not difficult, and Caithness, once out, glanced swiftly round him as if
to discover any sign of the king. Oppression lay, Roger thought, on him
alone, perhaps because he alone was yet unused to a deliberate
co-habitation with belief. The past popularity, the long tradition of
religion supported its diverse champions against a present neglect. But
art had never been popular, and its lovers in all ages were few and
solitary. His own belief was as passionate as that of the Jew or the
Christian, but it was more often thwarted and more greatly troubled.

They gathered in a group, waiting for that fourth of their company in
whose train they had been brought there, the incarnate epiphany of
immortal conquest. He delayed to speak to the driver, and as the others
stood they savoured more fully the presence of the ocean. They could
hear the faint sound of it in the darkness; they could smell and feel it
in the air, as if the secret medium of all their journeys sensibly
expressed itself to them. Fresh and everlasting, alien yet alluring,
distant and deep yet delicate and close, it drew them together and
unified them by its subtle existence. Caithness said unnecessarily: 'We
must be close to the shore; that's the waves we hear.' Neither of the
others answered him, and before the words had well died away Considine
came up to them. He invited them with a gesture and they followed. In
the porch Mottreux met them. He saluted his master and said: 'All's
well: we've put the king in his room. He's in a slight fever but
otherwise he's all right.'

Considine nodded. 'The captain's not here yet?' he asked. 'No; I hardly
expected him. To-morrow. My friends will be tired; show them their
rooms.'

'I should like to see the king,' Caithness said, with a sound of
challenge.

Roger saw Considine's smile leap out. 'Take Mr. Caithness to him then,'
he said to Mottreux, and then to the priest: 'But do remember, Mr.
Caithness, that the king, being a Christian, is not yet able to be
negligent of material hurt. You and Sir Bernard insisted on his being
liable to pain; you'll no doubt teach him to endure pain.' He turned to
the others. 'Good-night, Mr. Rosenberg,' he said, 'to-morrow we'll talk
of your journey. Good-night, Ingram; sleep.' His eyes looked into
Roger's and sent through him a doctrine of obedience. He and the ocean
swept the young man up and away into themselves; Roger saluted and
followed the gentleman who waited for him.

They came into a hall which opened round them as if into distances. The
walls were hung or covered with some kind of deep grey from which light
shone, almost as over a landscape. Its furniture was not merely
furniture but natural to it; a chest showed like an antique boulder on a
hillside; a table was a table certainly, but it had grown in its place,
and had not been set there, a chair or two glowed darkly as if shrubs of
glistening leaves reflected the sun. Roger walked after his guide with a
sense of perfect proportion such as no room he had ever entered, however
admirably decorated, had given him; the best had been but arranged art,
pleasant to his judgement, while this was an art which answered his
human nature and contented his blood. It communicated peace. He followed
up a staircase, down a corridor, and was shown into a perfectly ordinary
guest-room, where all necessities awaited him. His companion uttered a
few courteous sentences, smiled, bowed, and left him. Roger went across
to the window, but he could not see outside; the darkness was too deep.
He thought of going back and switching off the light, took a step that
way, and felt all through his body Considine's voice saying: 'Sleep.' To
oppose that government was too much for him; he turned to the
dressing-table.

As he made ready for sleep he thought once more of Isabel. The knowledge
of her moved him, yet differently. He had been apt to wonder what he
could do for her; now indeed he wondered what he could do. There was all
his knowledge, all his concern, but it opened up like a mountain lake
from which as yet no irrigating streams ran to the plains below. The
weight and darkness of this power pressed on him; he himself was the
bank which closed those waters in, yet far away he was also the plain
which needed those waters. They lay silent; they held such mysteries as
verse held, and sometimes the surface of them was troubled by a wind
which rippled it into words. 'The passion and the life whose fountains
are within...,' 'felt in the blood and felt along the heart...'
(what passion along what blood?), 'in embalmd darkness guess each
sweet' (what hint of what discovery?), 'Where the great vision of the
guarded Mount... 'the guarded Mount'... (what vision?), 'fear no
more the heat... fear no more...' (did that song come from within
the vision of the guarded Mount wherein also the passion and the
fountains of life lay?), 'fear no more... merrily, merrily, shall I
live now.' They did not answer each other; they flowed towards each
other and intermingled, and dissolved each into others, meaning in
sound, sound in meaning, and always fresh ripples rose and ran on that
dark surface, away towards the bounded infinity, and in and between them
all was the vast power of which they were but gleaming movement momently
seen. Between them, as into that vast, received and to be strengthened,
he sank to sleep. In the last second of mingling knowledge and dream he
had a vision of a wide desolate plain, across which, coming swiftly
towards him, ran a tall, young, uncouth, and violent figure, holding in
a hand stretched high above his head what, even at that distance which
was yet no distance, was known for a curiously tinted and involuted
shell. It was running at great speed, and crying out as it came, crying
in a great voice, 'A god, yea, many gods,' and the dreamer suddenly
recognized that runner and knew it for the passionate youth of
Wordsworth, coming in his own dream of saving poetry from a world's
destruction, and crying out in his own divine voice across lands and
waters how the shell was poetry and uttered voices, 'voices more than
all the winds, with power'; and the winds awoke in all the quarters of
the vast heavens under which the intense young visionary ran, and roared
down towards him and into the shell he was stretching out towards Roger,
and they reverberated 'power, power,' and the shell sang 'power,' and
the visitant with longer and wilder steps was leaping forward, and then
darkness swept over all, and the vision lost itself in sleep.

He woke the next morning, and lay for some moments wondering whether
Muriel would be bringing the tea in soon, whether perhaps if he opened
his eyes he would find that she had already brought it, and even that
Isabel had already poured it out. As no-one said anything however, he
opened his eyes, and almost immediately realized that his chance of tea
was very small. At least, he rather doubted whether Considine's
household provided early cups of tea, and the doubt was justified. None
appeared. Roger, telling himself that he didn't mind, wondered for a
second whether cups of tea at reasonable times weren't actually more
important than lines of poetry, or at least whether the two were
entirely incompatible. Nobody objected to wine, and if he had to choose
for the rest of his life between wine and tea he had no kind of doubt
where the choice would rest. Poetry and such things could give him all
the wine he wanted, whereas tea was unique, 'a thing of beauty and a joy
for ever.' 'That's right, misquote,' he said to himself crossly, and
repeated the line correctly--'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.' Under
the sudden spell the immediate urgency of tea faded. It was silly to
want tea so much when he had that power attending him. He said it again,
slowly, and, much consoled, got up.

Baths apparently Considine provided; he dressed and, hoping he was doing
the right thing--it was close on nine--went downstairs. In the hall he
found Mottreux, Caithness, and two or three more of Considine's friends,
the young Vereker among them. The hall struck him as being very cold,
perhaps because the front door was wide open, and a rather helpless
November sun was doing the best it could with a morning mist that lay
about the house. He said almost as much to Vereker--Mottreux and
Caithness were conducting a stilted conversation upon, so far as he
could hear, their various visits to America--and Vereker answered that
the door should be shut if he liked.' We don't notice the cold,' he
said.

'Don't you, indeed?' Roger said, feeling that it was like Vereker's
cheek. He was a younger man--he was _apparently_ a younger man. Looks
were nothing to go by; Considine himself was enough to go by, and at
that his momentary irritation passed and he said sincerely: 'Don't you?'

'The body, after all, ought to be able to manage that,' Vereker said,
'to adjust itself, I mean, to whatever temperature it's in and enjoy it;
that's why it's the delicate thing it is.'

Roger said: 'And if you shut the door and turned on a furnace
suddenly--then?'

'Yes, _then_,' Vereker said laughing. 'All this wrapping up and
unwrapping--it's so unnecessary. To do without food, that does take
longer. But it's the same principle. Here's Nigel.'

It was by the single Christian name (or the name which he had recovered
from the misguided habits of the Christian church), Roger found, that
his followers generally referred to him, partly in love, partly in
submission, partly in mere recognition of his own unique quality, though
they carried themselves to him with all the behaviour of respect
possible.

He came in now from the drive with a general word of greeting for his
own people, and particular salutations for Roger and Caithness, to the
former already intimate, to the latter courteous but distant, as if to
some hostile ambassador. After the greetings he said generally: 'We
shall have news to-day. I've felt it already.'

'A premonition?' Caithness asked politely.

'Why do you despise premonitions?' Considine answered. 'Let's go to
breakfast, shall we? Of course,' he went on, as they sat down, 'if you
mean the stupid blur of untrained sensation, that is, as it sounds,
negligible. But if you can feel a country in its air can't you feel its
people too? All last night I heard and felt them, the voices of the
great towns and the small villages, the talk and the doubt and the
terror. Early this morning I felt it all gathering into one, the
solitary thoughts of the peasants and the determination of the
financiers; it swayed one way and another as it came to me, it veered
and shifted as winds do, but it blew against my spirit at last as the
wind on my face, and I smelt the news that went on it. Suydler will give
way.'

'Can you feel a whole nation?' Roger cried.

'Why not?' Considine asked, almost gaily, 'Didn't you feel the crowd
round your gate when you saved the king? can't you, even in darkness,
feel the passion of a crowd? And do you think it isn't possible for me
to feel the purpose of a wider, less certain crowd? I can feel England
as you can feel English verse. And they'll yield; they'll talk of
peace.'

'It's less possible than for you to hear them,' the priest said. 'They
won't yield so easily.' Roger heard the hostility of his voice, and
remembered that to Caithness much more than to him, the figure which sat
at the head of the table, breaking a thin piece of toast, was indeed the
High Executive of Africa, by whose will the Christian missions had been
massacred--priests and converts alike, going down before the rifles of
their enemies. The thought shook him; lost in his own concern with what
Sir Bernard mocked and he adored as the exalted imagination, he had
forgotten of what the executive imagination was capable. It was not only
debonair but ruthless. It had spared London, but rather from convenience
and scorn, from the grace of its superior power, than from any more
tender sentiment. He remembered, without any immediate connexion, that
it was Wordsworth--the Wordsworth of his dream--who had exulted over the
defeat of the English armies--certainly he had called it a truth most
painful to record, but Roger, looking at Considine, excused Wordsworth.
It was, certainly it was, a painful truth, but undeniably a truth, if
any of the whole mad dream were true, that this was no matter of chat
and comfort but of anguish and ecstasy. The quiet house had lulled him,
as the sound of the sea in which men are at that moment drowning, and
drowned men are furnishing food for shellfish, lulls the sleepy
holiday-maker after food. Some other cold than November's touched Roger;
he tried to think, and Wordsworth ran through him again, crying 'Yea,
Carnage is Thy daughter.' Carnage... carnage... the High Executive
was presiding over a changing world, and he who was following that
summons was accepting the blood shed for that change. He was accepting
blood, as all men do by living. But he knew it. He leaned back from the
half-eaten breakfast. Considine was speaking.

'I don't say the English are frightened,' he said, 'they desire what
they think rightness for Africa; also they do not willingly oppose
ideas; also they--or some of them--desire wealth. They are divided, and
Suydler will play for the rich. I can satisfy even the rich; I can buy
them out. The Church fortunately has refused the secular arm.'

'Do you mock at it then?' Caithness demanded, he also having ceased to
eat.

'It's more purely Christian than ever before,' the other answered; 'its
nature is in complete defeat; there and there only it thrives. Your wife
was right, Ingram; that's the choice between defeat and victory. But
I've chosen victory and I have it. Will you eat no more? Then,' he stood
up, 'you shall come with me, Ingram; for I've a visit to make. Mr.
Caithness may go to his penitent if he chooses, or make his meditations
anywhere about the house or the grounds. Presently I'll come to the
king. Vereker, do you relieve the wireless man. Mottreux, will you be
about in case the captain comes?'

They saluted and rose to their feet, as, taking Roger by the arm, he
left the room. They went by corridors and stairs to the left wing of the
house stretched backwards towards the sea, corresponding to another wing
on the right. Between the two ran a verandah, a wide lawn, and a
terrace, from which steps led down to a lower terrace, and so on to the
edge of the cliffs. And as they went the young man felt everywhere
something of that sense of distance which he had experienced in the hall
on the previous night--a distance in which all near things existed in a
peculiar natural order. The house might have been one of those mythical
buildings which in various legends have been lifted from the earth by
music, as Troy rose to Apollo's harping or Pandemonium

      _like an exhalation with the sound
  Of dulcet symphonies_.

There were no pictures, so far as he could see; instead, the walls were
covered with soft hangings, of different colours, but each colour richer
than ever he had seen it before. Here and there these deep tapestries
were worked with shapes, mostly, so far as he could discern, symmetrical
designs, though occasionally a human or non-human figure showed--a man or
a winged monster or even a small complex city thick with houses and
crowds. But Roger could not see them very well and he was not allowed to
pause to examine them. Considine walked on, humming to himself, and
again Roger recollected with a curious shock that this mature easy form,
moving so lightly and gaily beside him, was the High Executive of
African ecstasies. Suddenly he recognized the words into which Considine
had changed his humming and exclaimed, almost stopping--'But that's
Shakespeare!'

  '--_shall I live now
  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough_--

Yes,' Considine answered. 'D'you think Shakespeare didn't know something
of it? Yet you must have lectured on the _Tempest_.'

'If you mean that Shakespeare believed in the Second Evolution of Man--'
Roger rather desperately began.

'He imagined its nature,' Considine answered. 'Think of it--and read
Ariel's songs. Not that you'll understand them yet. Nor do I. Perhaps
no-one will--properly--until after the conquest of death. He is your
greatest poet because none but he has so greatly lived and died and
lived in his verse. "On the bat's back"--that's the purity of being. He
imagined it. But here'--he paused at the door of a room, and his voice
became graver--'is the physical experiment.'

He opened it and they went in. It was a large high room, and there moved
in it continually a little tender breeze, as of spring, though there
were no windows, or, if there were, they were hidden behind the pale
yellow hangings which here also hid the walls. They shook, ever so
faintly, in the movement of the air, and it seemed to Roger for a few
moments as if everywhere great fields of daffodils trembled in that
gentle wind. The vague suggestion passed, and left in its stead a
thought of a universal sun shedding a golden presence through clear air,
and then that again vanished, and he knew they were only wonderfully
wrought hangings, and some beautiful light diffused itself over them. In
the middle of the room there was a low divan, on which lay a motionless
figure. In one corner was a chair on which a man sat, who, as they
paused in the entrance, rose and came over to them. Otherwise the room
was bare.

Roger looked again at the motionless figure on the divan, gazing at it
in a sudden recollection. He knew the face, he had seen it rapt into an
ardent intention, offering itself to death and to the High Executive of
death. He turned sharply to Considine. 'But it's Nielsen,' he said.

Considine nodded, and said to the watcher of the dead, 'There's no
news?'

'None, sir,' the man said. 'He hasn't stirred or breathed.'

'It's seven days,' Considine said absently, and walked across the room
to the couch where the dead man lay. Roger followed him, his heart
beating more quickly than usual. What--what was expected, here and now?

Considine seemed to feel the unspoken question. He said, still looking
at Nielsen: 'We're waiting for the result.'

Roger said: 'You're waiting for him to live?'

'If it may be,' Considine answered. 'He was a strong spirit.' He knelt
down by the couch and looked intently into the dead man's eyes. Roger
waited, growing more troubled every moment with terrible expectation.
This man had intended passionately to succeed in his unpreluded task; he
had meant to live. Could so high and strong a purpose break laws which
only gods and sons of gods had suspended in the past? Lazarus, the tale
ran, had been drawn back from death by supernatural grace, but was it
also--was it only--in the power of natural man by natural laws to conquer
death? Was the old symbolism of the mysteries true in its reversal? was
the supernatural itself but a visionary exhalation of the natural, and
could it hold nothing but what the natural held? As he stood gazing a
shock went through him, for it seemed to him that a quiver passed over
the dead man's face. Considine stiffened where he knelt, and threw out a
hand to beckon the third watcher who ran quietly and silently to the
other side of the couch. He also knelt, and together the two
concentrated themselves on the again unchanging figure. It was
motionless in the self-closed stillness of the dead; pallor had touched
it, and yet a pallor which--and again the smallest quiver seemed to pass
through the dead face. Roger thought to himself, 'It's a trance, it's
epilepsy, it's----' But Considine was there, and he did not believe--even
in that wild rational effort to explain away a thing which hadn't
happened and wouldn't and couldn't happen he did not believe--that
Considine made mistakes of this kind. The man had meant to die;
undoubtedly on that evening in Hampstead he had meant to die. This was
no booby show, no conjurer's trick; it was man at the extreme point of
his powers sending all those powers to the enlargement of his dominion.
The master of the adepts kneeled there, seeking to aid the initiate
through the experiment which he himself, called to a different duty, had
not yet dared, as the Pope aided St. Francis on a more glorious business
than his own. Roger steadied himself; if man could attempt this man
could watch the attempt. This was his first test and he would not fail.
He would open himself to the knowledge, to the experience of the sight,
he would fill himself with it; who could tell but one day he, he
himself, might lie on such a couch to await and compel such a...
resurrection?

It was--it was happening. The eyelids flickered. Considine's gaze was
fixed on them; he was leaning forward as if to catch the first glimpse
of the returning consciousness, to meet and hold it lest it should fail.
A ripple--of darkness or light--seemed to pass down the body; in the
infinitesimal vibration of all its hues none could tell whether it were
darkness or light that shook it. The eyelids flickered again; Roger
caught himself in the midst of a passionate wish that they shouldn't
open; they might hold madness or horror; they might strike him and blast
him with their power or splendour or ungodly terror. Or they might be
gay--gay beyond all dreaming: 'merrily, merrily shall I live...' No;
he couldn't bear such piercing glee--'on a bat's back'--death the bat
ridden and flown by a laughing joy. He couldn't bear it; he looked at
Considine, and for a brief fraction of a second Considine's eyes flashed
at him and away, but in that swift meeting Roger felt command and
nourishment and burning expectation, and in its power he set himself
again to await revelation.

But for awhile it seemed as if all was done. The body was again rigid
and there lay before the straining eyes only the awful barricade of
death. Roger thought suddenly how absurd it was--all this abstraction and
personification; there was no such thing as death, there were only dead
men and dead things. Men tried to make dead men bearable,
comprehensible, friendly, by giving to them a general name. Death as an
imagined person might be terrifying, but he was, so imagined, human. But
Death was nothing of the sort; Death was neither Azrael nor any other
immortal shadowy being--it was only dead men and dead things.
'Insubstantial Death is amorous'--even the poets pretended; no, not
always--'O but to die and go we know not where...' and to come back.

It moved. The hand extended along the couch moved, simultaneously with
what seemed a breath. Roger strangled a cry. The hand jerked again, so
tiny a jerk that only its force made it perceptible. Something was
trying to move that rigid organism, and not quite succeeding. But the
signs of its presence spasmodically showed. The nostrils quivered
slightly; the lips just parted. The fingers twitched.

Considine said: 'Help him then,' and at once the third man leapt into
activity, and others who had silently entered the room behind Roger,
unnoticed by his fascinated attention, ran softly up. He thought
afterwards that some bell must have been rung by the other watcher when
first the body had stirred, and that these had gathered in readiness.
They were about the dead man; they concerned themselves busily with it;
they did this and the other, Roger didn't very well know what, for he
was trying not to hope they would be unsuccessful. All the time
Considine hardly moved, save to put himself in a more convenient
position for the workers; all the time his eyes remained fixed on those
closed eyes, and his will waited for the moment when it could unite
itself with the restored will of the dead.

After so much toil and vigil they failed. What time was spent there
Roger hardly knew. But suddenly he knew a difference in the body about
which they stood or moved. It changed to a more dreadful pallor; a
greyness crept over it. Beyond the knowledge even of the adept it
endured withdrawal; the kingdom so nearly grasped fell away. The
neophyte of death was swallowed up in death; beyond all earlier
semblance, and before their eyes, he died indeed. Considine signed to
the workers to cease; he said to them: 'Look,' and they obeyed. He said
again: 'Look, look as masters. Don't lose a moment; change this into
victory within you. Death here shall be life in you; feel it, imagine
it, draw it into yourselves; as with all experience, so with this. Live
by it; feed on it and live.'

But he himself rose to his feet, and with a sign to Roger to accompany
him went out of the room. In silence they went back to the hall, then
Considine spoke. 'Now you shall rest,' he said. 'It's failed this time,
but we shall succeed yet, and you'll see it or hear of it. Meanwhile, do
what you can to make this sight part of you and to make it part of your
will to immortality and victory. If you want food it's here. Presently
I'll come to you again; we're hardly likely to move to-day. But now I
must go to the king.'

He nodded and moved off, and presently Caithness, sitting in talk by the
king's bed in an upper room, heard the door open, and looking round saw
him in the entrance. The priest stood up abruptly and Inkamasi stirred.

'How is our guest?' Considine asked. 'Have you convinced him how
wasteful vengeance is, Mr. Caithness? and therefore what folly?'

Caithness said, with almost a sneer, 'It's fitting for _you_ to talk of
folly and waste--you who spend the blood of the martyrs for your own
foolishness. Why have you come here?'

'For a better reason than you came to Hampstead not so long ago,'
Considine answered. 'It wasn't a wise night, that, for because of that
the king must choose his future to-day. You should have kept to your
pupils, Mr. Caithness, to the morals you understand and the dogmas that
you don't. But you must leave us now for I must talk to the king.'

Caithness looked at Inkamasi. 'If you want me to stay,' he began but the
other shook his head. 'Go, if you will,' he said; 'it's best that he and
I should understand each other. I'll remember better this time.'

Considine held the door for the priest, closed it, and came to the chair
by the bed. He paused there and smiled down at Inkamasi. 'Have I your
permission to sit down, sir?' he asked, and his voice was moved with
strength such as the king never remembered in all their strange
intercourse.

'Is this another insult?' he asked, restraining anger.

'It isn't anything of an insult,' Considine said, 'and you should know
it. Haven't I made you what you are, and could I insult the thing I've
restored? Therefore I will have an answer--have I your permission to
sit?'

The king made a movement with his hand. 'I think you've only fooled me,'
he answered bitterly, 'but you can play with me as you choose--only I
know it now. Sit or stand, do what you will, I can only watch you and at
bottom defy you.'

Considine sat down and looked with serious and friendly eyes at the man
he called his guest. There was a little silence, then with equal gravity
and friendliness he began to speak.

'Don't think', he said, 'that in speaking to you by royal titles I do
anything out of accord with what I've done in the past. I have always,
so far as I could, done according to the gospel which moves in me and my
friends, the doctrine of transmutation of energy, of the conscious
turning of joy and anguish alike into strength and will, and of that
passionate strength and will into the exploration of all the capacities
of man. Such men as the priest who was with you just now will tell you
to endure or enjoy because this and that is the will of God--at best but
a few of them will tell you to use experience as a way of uniting
yourself with God. In all the generations of Christendom how many have
done that? But I do not turn men to any such remote end; I tell them
that they are themselves gods, if they will, and the ecstasy of that
knowledge is their victory. Your grandfather in his degree believed in
that doctrine though he was an old man when he heard of it and the great
triumphs were not for him. But he knew that if Africa was to be held up
as a torch to the races that sat in cold and darkness it was necessary
that they should be gathered into peace between themselves other than
that which the Northern invaders imposed upon them. Therefore we drew
those of the chiefs who did not believe, or their sons, into the
potential power of the hypnotic sleep; it was so done with the heirs of
all the thrones of Africa. It was never the intention of the High
Executive--of us who execute the power of the fiery imagination among
men--to use that compulsion if those royalties should seem naturally to
accept our purpose. But you remember, sir, that your father and you
desired Europe rather than Africa, and sooner than attempt to turn your
whole nature into a state and process alien to it I proposed to myself
only to keep in touch with you and to use you if necessary to keep the
Zulus who obey you in peace and alliance with the other African races. I
do not conceive that such an action needs defence. My alternative was to
destroy you and to let your cousin who now leads your people, holding
the sceptre of Chaka and passionately devoted to our cause, be the
inheritor of your royalty. But because you in fact were that royalty,
because the tradition of royalty is one of the admirable and passionate
imaginations of mankind, I was unwilling to do this. If necessary I
would bind the king outwardly, but I would neither slay him nor attempt
to govern his mind.'

'I would rather you had slain me', Inkamasi said, 'than held me in such
bondage.'

'The cords have not been strained,' Considine answered. 'Save for those
few days in my own house, and for my knowledge of your ways, you have
been always free. But now, not, I grant, by my will, you are free
indeed. You belong wholly to yourself, and I who am the son of the
interior knowledge of rapture salute the rapture of kingship, the
incarnation of government and order and immortality.'

'You talk vainly,' the king said, 'for my cousin leads my people, and
there is no place for me on earth. Will you remove my cousin and set me
at the head of the Zulus?'

'I will not prevent your return to them,' the other answered again, 'but
I think you know that the rifles of his guard await you. And if not, if
you are greeted again with the royal salute, and your armies follow you,
will you set them for your sake against all the Powers of Africa? For I
do not think you believe in the schools or in the exploration of love
and wonder and death.'

'I am a Christian,' Inkamasi said. 'I believe that love and death are at
the feet of Jesus who is called Christ.'

'Believe what you will,' said Considine. 'You know what we declare to
the initiates of Africa. Will you join us to seek the way by which man
descends living into the grave and returns?'

'I will not seek it,' the other replied. 'It has been opened once and it
is enough. And you--are you sure that man can conquer till he has been
wholly defeated? are you sure that he can find plenitude till he has
known utter despair? You will not let him despair of himself, but it may
be that only in such a complete despair he finds that which cannot
despair and is something other than man.'

'There are many reasons for avoiding the work, and all religions have
excused man,' the other's voice said. 'Despair if you will, and hope
that despair may save you. Entreat the gods; I do not refuse you your
prayer.'

'There's a submission we're slow to understand,' Inkamasi cried out, 'a
place where divinity triumphed--I believe in that.'

'Be it so,' the answer came; 'but tell me then what you will do.'

There was a long pause before the king said: 'I know there is no place
for me upon earth.'

'There is place and enough for Inkamasi,' Considine answered. 'There is
no place in Africa for Inkamasi the king. You best know whether there is
a place in Europe. You know whether your friends downstairs and in
London receive that royalty as I receive it.'

'They have all courtesy and good will, but they have forgotten the
Crown,' Inkamasi said. 'They do not mock me but they do not believe.'

'They are sons without a mother,' Considine went on, 'for they know
neither the Crown nor the Republic. Royalty is a shade and Equality not
yet born. What is the difference between these traditions to me so long
as either is held and is a passion? But most men are empty of both. And
if I must choose I will choose the king and not the State, for the king
is flesh and blood and yet undying, and is a symbol of that we seek.'

'Am I left', Inkamasi asked, 'to find my only servants in my enemies?'

'It seems', Considine answered, 'even so, that I and I only am the
friend of the king.'

'And what will the king's friend offer the king in his superfluousness?'
Inkamasi asked again.

'I have two things only to give,' Considine said; 'let the royalty of
the king choose which he will take from a believer in him. I will offer
a house and servants and money, all that he needs, and he may live
contented with his knowledge of his own inheritance. Or I will give the
king a royal death.'

'There will be none to hamper you then,' Inkamasi said with a sudden
smile.

'There is none to hamper me now,' Considine answered gravely. 'For the
majesty of the king is in my care and on my side, and if the king choose
to live without his majesty, though the choice is his own, he will
choose to live in a dream. I am the keeper of the strength of royalty;
what is outside me is Europe, and that the king knows.'

'Yet I thought Europe would aid me to aid my people,' Inkamasi meditated
aloud--'law and medicine and science.'

'They are good in their place, but the question is whether these things
can take the place of greater,' Gonsidine answered. 'But the choice is
for the king. Only it must be to-day. To-morrow the submarine returns to
Africa, and there are three ways in which the king may go in her. I will
have him taken to his people and set among them, that he may try the
fates between himself and the man who now rules them, and who inherits
royalty if Inkamasi dies. Or I will send him as my friend till peace is
signed and he may live a private man wherever he chooses on the face of
the earth.'

'And the third way?' Inkamasi asked.

'He shall go clothed with royalty and death,' Considine said, 'I will
come when night falls to know the king's mind.'

He stood up and went down on one knee, and then moved backwards to the
door. There in silence he waited a moment, opened it, and went out.

Inkamasi lay through the afternoon considering all that had been said.
The suggestion which had been made to him not only received additional
force from the fact that it had been presented as one among several
possibilities, but drew its chief strength from the tendencies of his
own mind. He knew very well that, of all those by whom he was, or was
likely to be, surrounded, Considine alone had such an intense
appreciation of royalty as he himself had. Nor did his own bitter
dislike blind him to the fact that his first attempt upon the other had
failed, and that to concentrate the rest of his life upon remedying that
failure would be not only undignified but treasonable. The king might
hate, but his duty was to his own kingship first and always. How to save
and serve that must be the first thing in his mind. But for this a life
in England among his new circle of friends seemed useless enough. He had
a sudden vision of himself growing old, harping upon the tradition which
was his, regarded at best as a feeble sentimental survival, at worst as
a mere bore. All his profound romanticism rejected the prospect. But to
live as Considine proposed would be little better. He would be pitied by
himself instead of by others; he would dig his own pit of sentimentality
instead of having it dug for him, but the pit would be as deep and
fatal.

There was a course Considine had not named, to try and forget that he
was the king, to settle down to ordinary work, here or abroad, and
submit himself to the idea of the Government, whatever it might be,
under which he might find himself: accepting his dispossession simply
and sincerely. And this, had there been no alternative, he might have
done. But once that alternative had been suggested the colour of the
thought of it tinged all his attempts to choose. For though the man
Inkamasi might not kill himself--so his creed taught--yet the king had a
duty to his kingship. So far as might be, it must never be surrendered;
and here was a way by which it might be surrendered in a beauty and
greatness equal to its own. Examining himself for the last time,
Inkamasi knew that in turning to Europe he had desired Europe for the
sake of Africa; that he had studied logic and medicine and law for the
sake of the king and his people, and that the king might the better
benefit and govern and be one with his people. He did not care for the
high abstractions of thought; when he talked of them it was when he took
his ease in his private circle and amused himself as other kings had
amused themselves with jest or hunt or song. And now, the child of
unknown things, he set his face to go up to Jerusalem, that the king's
crown might be properly received by the unvestmenting hands of Death.
Peace entered in on him and he lay looking out of the window, watching
the November twilight gather, and uniting within himself, not in such a
twilight but in a more wonderful union of opposites, the day of his own
individual being and the mysterious night of his holy and awful office.




                              CHAPTER XII
                         THE JEWELS OF MESSIAS


For some time after Considine had left him Roger did nothing. He sat on
the verandah and looked out over the grass lawn and the terrace at the
sea which lay beyond. And he thought to himself that never in his life
had he felt so much, so idiotically, like a baby as he did now. Apart
from that recurrent thought he couldn't think. 'It's the shock,' he
said, half-aloud from time to time, but without convincing himself of
anything whatsoever, without indeed particularly wanting to convince
himself.

A movement or two of a dead hand, of the hand of a man whom even
Considine had now abandoned. It had failed, but it had come very near to
succeeding. Roger--product of at least a semi-culture of education and
intellect--sat there and felt that culture and education and intellect
had all vanished together, all but the very simplest intellect. Even his
passion for literature had disappeared; he simply wasn't up to it--he had
no more wish or capacity for Milton or Shakespeare than a small child,
who might laugh if some of the lines were mouthed at him but would be
lost and vacant-eyed if anyone tried to explain them or quoted them
seriously. That dead hand moving had abolished the whole edifice of his
mind; he sat and stared at the sea. In London things had been different;
he had been thrilled and romanticized. In London there was no sea, and
no golden-hung rooms with a couch on which a dead man lay. In London
these things didn't happen. He had heard and believed, but here belief
was abolished; he was confronted with the simple fact. It had to be
accepted, and its acceptance was what reduced him to a state of infancy.

The sea--he couldn't look at the shore from where he sat; only at the
terrace and the sea beyond--the sea was different. He wondered, vaguely,
whether it was Africa, or whether both sea and Africa were names for
something else, a full power, an irresistible mass: irresistible if it
moved, but then it didn't move. Or hadn't. Hadn't was a better word,
because it might. All that mass of waters might gather itself up and
surge forward--surge or creep, swiftly or slowly, anyhow irresistibly.
But he, sitting there, with the memory of that dead hand jerking--as if a
sudden wave had flopped forward out of the sea over the green lawn, and
then retreated again, and the whole vast mass had swung silent and
removed once more. If the mass followed after a while, followed the
wave? He would live in it, he would be changed so as to breathe and bear
it; he would see what other inhabitants peopled it--there might be one
chief thing, a fish of sorts, a swift phosphorescent fish which was
called Considine on earth before the sea came. Or if the sea were merely
a flat plain for something else to slide over, a huge Africa in the
shape he knew from maps sliding over the water--only of course _not_
sliding, but marching, millions on millions of black manikins, so small,
so very small, but so many, marching forward, yet keeping that mapped
shape, and he would be just their size and be marching with them--left,
right; left, right. Whether they were alive or dead he couldn't say; the
fellow who was marching either opposite him or alongside him--it wasn't
clear which--kept quivering and jerking his hand. Hosts of them--Lord of
hosts; he had known the Lord of hosts when he was called Considine, and
rode on a bat's back; these were the bats. Why was he here among this
crowd of bats with negro faces that rose out of that ocean, now
throbbing free from the ties which had so long held it? And all the bats
were singing--'Fathom five, fathom five; rich and strange, rich and
strange.' There they were, all coming on; he himself had called them and
they were coming.

He heard, but did not notice, a step beside him. Then a voice he
half-recognized said: 'Here you are!' It was Caithness's voice, and with
the recognition Roger's trance broke. He shifted, looked round, realized
that he was cold, stood up, stamped once or twice, and said: 'Yes, here
I am. But don't', he added, as his mind came more to itself, 'ask me
where.'

'It's a strange place,' Caithness said. 'He must have many of them,
scattered about. Near London, for the airships to land. How's he kept
himself hidden all these years?'

'I suppose', Roger said flippantly, 'the exalted imagination suggested
it. Shakespeare was a good business man.'

He found a certain relief in talking to the priest, however different
their views of Considine, as an ordinary Christian might find it easier
to talk to an atheist than to a saint. It wouldn't last, but just for a
little it was pleasant and easy.

But Caithness, not having gone so far, was not so desirous of reaction.
He said, looking gloomily at the young man: 'I don't know what you find
in him. Where did he take you?'

Roger looked out to the sea again, and half-unconsciously said, 'There.'
The sea should give up its dead, out of the sea of universal shipwreck
the dead sailors of humanity should rise again, their bodies purified by
the salt of that ocean, running up to a land which perhaps then they
would feel and know for the first time in its full perfection: matter
made purely sensitive to matter, and all the secrets of the passion of
life revealed. Who could tell what wonders waited then, when emotion was
full and strong and sufficient, no longer greedy and grasping, when the
senses could take in colour and essence and respond to all the delicate
vibrations which now their clumsy dullness missed, when deprivation
itself should be an intense means of experiencing both the deprived self
and the thing of which it was deprived, when--O when space and time were
no more hindrances, when (for all one could tell) the body itself might
multiply itself, as certain magicians had been said to do, and truly be
here and there at once, or--'Come then,' he prayed, but did not know to
whom, 'master of life, come quickly.'

'It's cold out here,' he heard Caithness say abruptly, 'let's go in.
Have you seen Rosenberg?'

Roger, as he half-reluctantly turned to follow, thought of the Jew with
a shock. 'No,' he said. 'I'd forgotten him.'

'I wonder what this man means to do with him,' the priest went on.
'Colonel Mottreux has brought the famous jewels.' There was a light
sneer in his voice, and Roger knew that the desire and delight of the
late Simon Rosenberg was utterly incomprehensible to Caithness. Yet it
should not have been so, he thought, for was there after all so much
difference between minds that longed to see their own natures made
manifest, the one in converted and beautiful souls adorned with virtues,
the other in a chosen and beautiful body adorned with jewels? Certainly
Caithness thought it was for the good of the souls, but no doubt
Rosenberg thought that his wife enjoyed wearing the jewels, and very
likely she did. Certainly, also, on Caithness's hypothesis, the souls
were likely to enjoy their kind of beauty for a much longer time than
Mrs. Rosenberg, even if she hadn't died when she did, could possibly
have enjoyed hers. So that Caithness was actually likely to get more
satisfaction out of his externalized desire than Rosenberg. But for that
you must have a supernatural hypothesis, and the fact that a
supernatural hypothesis had quite definite advantages didn't make it
true. The fact that man wanted a thing very much never did make it
true--or the body that lay within would now perhaps be walking in the
house and even coming up to speak to him.... He shuddered
involuntarily, no more in servile than in holy fear, and to escape from
that hovering awe said: 'Have they been given to Rosenberg yet?'

'No,' Caithness answered. 'I don't fancy Considine's all that anxious to
part with them.'

Roger looked at him in surprise. They had come into the room where they
had breakfasted, from which doors of an exquisitely clear glass led on
to the lawn in front of the house. The priest walked across and looked
out. Roger said, rather coldly: 'That's utterly unnecessary. Do you hate
him so much?'

'I don't hate him,' Caithness said, 'except that he's set himself
against God, like Antichrist which is to come.'

'O don't be silly,' Roger said crossly. 'Antichrist indeed! What on
earth has he done to make you think he'd steal a lot of jewels?'

'What's he done,' the priest said over his shoulder, 'to make _you_
think he wouldn't? Hasn't he put many men to death and stolen the minds
of others? If he wants the jewels he'll take them.'

'But he _won't_ want them,' Roger exclaimed; 'that's the whole point. I
may, or for all I know Mottreux may, but he's no more likely to want
them than you are, to be fair to you,' he added with a half-humorous
admission of Caithness's own integrity.

The door opened, and Mottreux and Rosenberg came into the room. The old
Jew looked at them for a moment and then went across to the other side
of the room and sat down. Mottreux paused by the door, seeming not to
have expected to find the other two there. His dark and hungry eyes
rested on Roger and moving towards him, he said in a low voice, 'I hear
Nielsen has really died.'

The sentence itself seemed fatal; in its note of hopelessness it
conveyed death. Roger, not finding words to answer, nodded. Mottreux
walked slowly over to Rosenberg, to whom he began to talk in a low
voice. Caithness, after a minute or so, went over to join them. Roger
considered doing the same thing and decided not to. He didn't want to
chat, and he couldn't see what, besides mere chat, Mottreux and
Rosenberg could have to say to each other. Mottreux, he remembered, was
supposed to be waiting for the captain, whoever the captain was. His
mind went back to the sea, and he thought suddenly of submarines.
Perhaps that was what Considine had meant by 'moving.' It was all such a
mad mixture, purple rhetoric and precise realism, doctrines of
transmutation and babble about African witch-doctors and airships and
submarines. He wondered what Isabel was doing, and whether perhaps after
all he would have been wiser to stop... but he couldn't, he couldn't;
the thing that for years had torn at his heart and brain had to be
satisfied. He and she had alike to choose necessity. But if his
necessity could have lain with hers.... And Sir Bernard--what would he
have made of this house where servants of impossibilities talked by the
hearth, and he himself waited for the next moment of explication?
Staring at his toes, Roger thought that that was all he did seem to be
doing--waiting. Was he wasting his time? had Considine meant him to be
doing something all this while? He ought to have been working, to have
imagined intensely the...

Considine was in the room. To Roger's preoccupied mind he might have
materialized out of the air, but apparently he hadn't. He said, 'There's
no message yet. Mottreux, I'll dictate the alternative dispositions for
the generals, if you will come. These gentlemen will be able to amuse
themselves a little.' He came over to Roger and looked into his eyes,
then he said, smiling, 'You've been running after your fancies, Ingram;
you've not been driving even their faint power through you. Do you think
it will happen by itself?'

'I know,' Roger said. 'I was thinking so--"They heard and were abashed
and up they sprang."'

'So,' Considine answered. 'Turn on to that all your heart; and then turn
that on to yourself. Don't let yourself grow too tired, but never quite
let go. We'll talk again soon.' He turned.

'Mottreux?'

The other joined him and they went across the hall into another room,
where a case stood on the table. 'There are Rosenberg's jewels,'
Considine said. 'We'll give them to him presently; let's look at them
once.' He took a key from his pocket and opened the case as he spoke,
and then poured upon the table a glowing heap of jewels. They shone and
sparkled; they gleamed and glinted--some set, many unset; stones of every
kind revealing the life of stone, colour revealing the power of colour.
Considine stood and looked at them, and if Roger had been there he might
have thought that the heap of jewels and the human figure reflected each
other, and that intense life leapt and re-leapt between them. The man's
form seemed to hold in itself depths of mysterious tint; so clear and
mysterious was the corporeal presence, disciplined and purged and
nourished through many decades by supreme passion. The deep smile broke
out again as he gazed, exulting in the joy of beauty, absorbing it, and
almost visibly transmuting it into his own dominating awareness of it.
He stretched out his hand and picked up one or two, and a whole diadem
of splendour faded by the unparalleled delicacy of consummated mortality
which held it. He laid them down and laughed softly as he did so,
humming again to himself, '"Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
All this,' he added aloud, 'but one blossom under which we live for a
moment. Yet they are almost worthy Messias.'

But Mottreux leant nearer them, and turned an agonized face towards his
master.

'You are giving them back,' he whispered. 'You won't surely?' His hands
trembled forward towards the heap. 'It's... it's life,' he said
gasping, and fell on his knees by the table.

Considine looking down at him laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Do you feel
them so?' he asked, and felt the answer shudder through the kneeling
man's limbs as he turned his face upwards.

'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 women, they're
more than women: 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 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 purposes 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 could 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 XIII
                       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 schylus, 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 embalmd 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.'

Roger said: 'But why Africa?'

'My father was a surgeon,' the other answered, 'though not a poor man,
and he went on a ship, taking me with him. The ship was wrecked--it
wasn't unusual then--but he and I were saved, and came to shore. I've
told you that my father knew something of the old magical
traditions--things I haven't much concerned myself with; such as are of
value are natural properties of the developing and unstunted nature of
man, and the rest are of no value--but by such tricks he made himself
feared by the sorcerers. We went far into the inland, before he died,
and there I found that things which I'd discovered with pain were taught
to the priestly initiates. But they held them secret and were afraid of
them, and I knew they were for the world when the time should come. And
now it has come.'

'And the end,' Roger cried out in a sudden access of desperation and
hope, 'what is the end?'

The other turned to confront him, but in the darkness Roger, full of
cloudy memories and fiery prophecies, was uncertain what he faced. There
had been in the movement something of Isabel, but it was not Isabel; he
wondered whether it were not rather the lofty head of Milton, doctrinal
yet mysterious, at which he was looking, but the eyes were not Milton's,
for Milton was blind, and these eyes were shining at him in the night.
It was rather--this figure--something that had to do with the sea the
sound of which came to him still, the sea that had come up from its
borders and been talking with him though he had not known it for what it
was. So it was not eyes, it was light under the sea which he saw, and he
was being swept away from human beings into the ocean gulfs and
currents. He struck out as if he were swimming, but that did not ease
the choking in his throat and nostrils nor the clamour in his ears. With
all his power he drove upwards, and it seemed that his head broke out
from the waves and beheld not very far off a shore on which his friends
walked. He saw Sir Bernard looking ironically out over the waters in
which he struggled, looking ironically at him, as if with a smile to see
how the rash fool who had sailed on such a voyage now agonized for one
plank to cling to. He saw Rosamond, her arm in Philip's, bending him
away from the foam, and drawing him safely towards the highroads beyond.
He saw Isabel, and her dress was drenched with spray, her dress and her
hair, and she had stretched one firm arm towards the sea, and stood on
the extreme edge of the land; but her eyes did not see him, and he could
not tread water--he was whirled down again as if into the noise of a
roaring dance, and again he choked and agonized and sprang upward
through a thousand fathoms of water and emerged to see them again, but
small, very small. As he gazed a tiny distant bell rang in his ears and
called him--a bell far, far below: 'ding dong bell, ding dong bell.'
Hark! now he heard it. It was not now those on the shore who neglected
him; it was he who had to leave them on their shore. 'Ding dong bell';
they were ringing for him, a knell and a summons at once. Because there
was no other hope, he obeyed; he forced himself to cease from
struggling, and from feet to lifted hands one direct line he shot
downwards, down, down, to where the dead men lay. The noise in his ears
might have been the shouting of many voices, crowds and armies, about
their lord, or it might have been the sea uttering itself, its voice
heard not in its own words but in a tremendous echo, sovereign for those
who heard it, shaped into words: 'Thus the Filial Godhead answering
spake.' The thunder of the speech crashed through him as he, assenting
to it and to the sea which spoke it, dropped down through the speed of
the depth. It was agony to let himself sink so, to release all that he
loved, to fall through this alien element by which they walked; it was
pain, indescribable... indescribable... what?--not pain but
something else, an exquisiteness of pain which was, now he realized it,
not pain at all but delight. How many there were, far away on that shore
beyond him, who fancied themselves in pain, and, could they know it,
carried all delight in their hearts! Man, through most of his poor
ignorant years, did not truly know what he felt; he was so habituated to
the past that he sighed when he should have laughed and laughed when he
should have sighed. The great passions swept through him unrecognized
till far off he saw the glory of their departure, and cried out, 'That
was I.' But in rare moments he knew, and then what power was his! And,
could a man's body be always impregnated with this salt, as his own was
now, and infiltrated with this sea, he might always know! His experience
would always be new, for newness was the quality of this everlasting and
universal life. He knew delight and named it; unafraid, he summoned it,
and it came. He rejoiced in an ecstasy that controlled itself in great
tidal breaths. He was no longer sinking but walking on the sand at the
great sea's bottom, only the sea was no longer there; he was himself the
sea and he walked in the sun over the yellow sands. 'Come unto these
yellow sands.' He himself--ocean calling to ocean; to other seas that
danced in a flooding splendour. Ecstasy was no more a bewilderment; only
those who had not known it were afraid of it, for it was man's natural
life. In the stormy waters of the surface there was danger and death,
but, for those who would not fly from the depths and the distances,
those very depths and distances were found to be part of their nature.
Every step that he took was delight; he sent out the cry of the released
spirit: 'Merrily, merrily shall I live now.'

Something lay on his forehead, obstructing him, as if it were a hand; he
laboured under it. It pressed on him, or he against it, as if alien
limitation controlled him; he stumbled in his walk because it lay over
his eyes and blinded him. A great fear of blindness, of losing this most
happy life, filled him. He threw up his hands to tear the obstruction
away, and they too were caught and prisoned. He tore them loose; he
flung back his head; he was convulsed with a spasm of agony, and he was
standing in the darkness of a cold night under a wooden roof, and
opposite him was the tall watchful figure of Nigel Considine.

There was a long silence; then Considine said, 'It may be known and
believed, it can't be lived thus. But it can be found and lived. Let us
go in.'

In the hall there were a group of some half-dozen; away from them,
standing together, were Caithness and Rosenberg. Mottreux was moving
about from one place to another. Roger joined his friends. Considine
stood still and gathered their eyes and thoughts to himself; when that
concentration was sufficient he spoke.

'All's ready,' he said, 'and you know your offices. All of us, except
Mottreux, leave to-night. He remains here. But there are two things yet
to be done. Mr. Rosenberg, I present to you the jewels which your cousin
left to you.' Mottreux came forward slowly and gave him the case, which
he offered to the Jew who took it silently. Mottreux fell back a pace or
two so that he stood behind his master. His face was livid, and he
rubbed one hand backward and forward over his forehead. But he stood,
horribly eyeing the Jew, while Considine went on: 'I invite you to come
with me if you choose, and I will see that you reach Jerusalem. There
you may wait in peace the coming of your Messias. If you choose to stay
here, you shall be taken to London to-night or to-morrow to any place
that you name.'

'I will do as you have said,' Rosenberg answered. 'The Lord shall reward
you, and I will rest in Jerusalem.'

'But for us, lords and princes, my companions,' Considine said, and his
tone sank from conversational ease to direction and control, 'before we
take up again the work that is before us, there remains one ceremony to
fulfil. Initiates of love and death, I invite you to a sacrifice of
death, by virtue of that hope and determination which shall make you
masters of death as you are in your degree masters of love. There is in
this house another guest, a child of royalty and an inheritor of one of
the great and passionate imaginations of mankind, Inkamasi the Zulu. He
is not with us, but we are with him. Shadow though it be of the true
ecstasy and fiery life into which we shall enter, it is yet an heritage
worthy of honour. To us has been committed the care of these vast and
antique dreams; it is ours to see, so far as in us lies, that those who
are possessed by them are entertained mightily and dismissed royally.
Love and poetry and royalty are adored as the channels whereby the
passion and imagination of man's heart become revealed to him, and
knowing his own greatness he moves to the final accomplishment, the
ending in his own person of all the accidents of place and time. This
man is not with us, but in an hour when, superseded in Africa and
undesired in Europe, he looks for a throne on which to perish, it must
be we who offer him that throne. By no compulsion and no persuasion the
King Inkamasi turns to the throne we offer and awaits immolation there.
He is driven by the might of his own royalty which demands of him no
lesser conclusion; he is received by us as, beyond his purpose, a meet
and acceptable sacrifice. Put away from you the desires of your hearts,
save the one last desire. I exhort you to come with hands of devotion
and a single heart; who knows but this very night the work may be
accomplished and there may descend upon one of us that ecstasy which
shall drive him into death and in death to resurrection?'

Roger heard and realized what was conveyed by phrase and accent.
Appalled by the understanding he took a half-step forward, but Caithness
was before him. With a supernatural insolence as high as Considine's
own, the priest cried out and confronted his enemy. 'You dare not touch
him,' he said. 'This man is in your care, and his blood is on your head
if you hurt him. God shall require it of you; I charge you to let him
go----'

Considine had paused to let him speak, but now with a gesture he stopped
him, and as the priest panted for words the other's voice set him aside.

'If that time which you and he accept and serve were at your disposal,'
he said, 'I would not prevent your seeking to turn him from his assent.
But it cannot be now. You will not encourage him to seek victory in
death; and the king cannot fail from his royalty. What we do we do
quickly. It is permitted, if you choose, that you shall be with him at
his end; console, direct him as you will. But see that you do not
interfere now with his and our choice, or you shall be taken from him.
The offering which he makes and which we, with vaster purposes, accept
is beyond the humble vision of your creed. He dies for the sake of his
kingship; we experience his death for the sake of making it a part of
our imaginations. Man shall conquer death, not by submitting to it as
you teach, and not by avoiding it in a mere prolongation of life, as
certain wise yet erring masters have taught, though this may be a
necessary step towards conquest, but by entering into and annulling it.'

'Antichrist,' the priest exclaimed, 'is the day of your dominion here?'

'Neither Christ nor Antichrist,' the voice of the other answered him,
'but I bring a gospel of redemption, and the ends of the world hear it:
whom do men say that I, a son of man, am?'

He flung out a hand towards the group of his servants and disciples; he
turned his eyes upon them and they answered, Arab and Egyptian, negro
and white: 'The end of mirage, the palm in the desert,' 'The last of the
Imams, the Shadow of Allah,' 'The lord of sorcerers and kings,' 'The
bearer of keys, the interpreter of tongues,' and, as the mingled voices
ceased, Considine's own answered them:

'I am all these and yet I am no more than any of you, for all of you
shall be as I. That which I have known I have not known of myself. I am
the child of the initiates; their servant and the servant of the mighty
imagination which is in man. Any of you shall conclude his kingdom
before me; purify yourselves, know, exult, and live. I call to you
again, lords of the spirit, postulants of infinity, put away all desire
but to be fulfilled in yourselves. The sacrifice of kingship is for the
single of heart.'

He swept his arms upward and inward in one compelling gesture. 'Come,
see the death of a man. Come you too,' he added to his guests, 'if you
so will. But if not, then remain here until we come for you again, to
accompany the body of the king Inkamasi to the sepulchre in the ocean
which awaits him.'

He went forward and his servants after him. Vereker signed to Caithness
to precede him, and Roger accompanied the priest. Mottreux looked after
them; then he went swiftly to Rosenberg and laid his hand on the casket.

'Do you really mean to go with these to Jerusalem?' he said.

'I am determined,' the old man answered. 'I will make haste to the city
of our God.'

Mottreux turned sharply away; he went after the others.

They were going to the room where that morning Roger had seen the
attempt at revivification, but the last of the disciples did not quite
catch them up. Very softly he went after them; when Vereker had entered
the room he paused by the door, and as softly moved a key from within to
without. Then he pulled the door nearly but not quite shut after him and
waited.

The body of Nielsen had been removed; on the low couch, supported by
cushions, the Zulu lay. Considine genuflected as he entered, and moving
to one side made a sign to Caithness. The priest ran forward, threw
something round his neck, and drew a crucifix from near his heart. He
kneeled by the couch; Inkamasi leaned his head towards him and they
murmured between themselves. Considine, waiting, looked round, and made
a sign to Roger to come to his side. He slipped his arm into the young
man's and said: 'This is a gift of the universe to you; deal wisely with
it. Be strong, exult, and live.'

The two of them were together, a little distance from the head of the
couch; opposite them, at a greater distance from the foot, four others
had gathered. Mottreux was by the door with a clear space between him
and the Zulu. So set, they waited till the speech between the priest and
the king died; while the two yet remained in close and silent prayer
Considine said in a low voice to the others: 'Enlarge in you the
imagination by which man lives; this is perhaps the moment of
fulfilment. The work shall be accomplished to-night without ritual or
ceremony such as we are used to, in your contemplation alone.' He took a
step towards Caithness and touched him on the shoulder, saying: 'Have
you spoken with the king?'

'You're committing wickedness,' the priest exclaimed and ceased, broken
either by his own passion or by the concentration of the other's power.

'Back, then,' Considine gently said, and when Caithness had risen and
moved a step or two away, he in turn knelt by the couch.

'Majesty,' he said, 'are you willing to restore your kingship through us
to that of which it is a shadow?'

'Yes,' Inkamasi said, 'for though I hold you for my own enemies and for
misguided men I think you are the only servants of the kingship that is
more than the king.'

'Majesty,' Considine said again, 'we are the king's servants and his
greatest friends. Farewell.' He touched Inkamasi's hand with his lips
and rising signed to Roger to follow him. The young man went forward,
knelt, and said, 'I'm sorry if this happened through me.'

'Don't be,' Inkamasi said; 'it's better to die here than under the feet
of a London crowd--if there's any difference. Thank you, and good-bye.'

Roger touched his hand with his lips and went back. The rest, one by
one, followed him, ending with Mottreux and Vereker. As Mottreux in turn
moved back towards the door Caithness felt a hand press his arm and
heard a soft whisper, 'Come back and wait by me.' The order reached him
in his anguish; with a hope that even now something might interpose, he
obeyed and slowly withdrew till he also stood by the door.

Meanwhile, his obeisance done, Vereker had brought to Considine a
chalice that had been standing, filled with wine, on a carved table at
the side of the room. His master poured into it the contents of a small
phial; then he took the chalice in his hands, and turned towards the
couch. The silence in the room grew so deep, the absorbed attention of
the watchers so intense, that Roger felt as if the terrific moment must
break in some new astonishing revelation. Regret and sorrow,
bewilderment and antagonism, which had mingled in his heart, were swept
away; an awful harmony began to exist. So, in other far-off lives,
lesser or greater he could not tell, he had waited for Isabel when they
were young and happy, and indeed he had chosen necessity; so he had
submitted his obedience to the authority of Milton or Wordsworth,
waiting for the august plenitude of their poetry to be manifested within
him. Till now he had believed that sense of harmony to be all
they--Isabel or _Paradise Lost_--had to offer, but he had begun to learn
that to pause there was to be too easily content. The harmony itself was
but a prelude to some enrichment of his whole being, which in its turn
must be experienced in every detail--made familiar that new powers might
arise. He gave himself, freely and wholly, to the moment; he was to live
the more completely through the king's death. It was no good being
distressed or ashamed; his business was to live by it, as if necessary
it would be the business of others to live by his death. He gave himself
to the moment, and in the moment to the whole charged imagination of
man. It was no lie; the mind of man--not his mind or Inkamasi's but
man's--was exalted above all the power of things, 'of quality and fabric
more divine,' and yet his own was never nearer or more useful to man's
than when he was most intensely aware of all things in himself. He gave
himself to the moment.

'Drink, Majesty,' Considine said, and gave the chalice into Inkamasi's
hands. The king took it, raised it to his lips, and drank. Even as it
left his lips, his grip relaxed, his face changed, he sank heavily on to
the cushions behind him.

But before the dropped chalice reached the floor, before the sound of
its fall could strike their ears, a violent explosion shattered them.
Roger, fixed in his surrender, saw Considine jerk his arms up and fall
crashing across the litter. Almost before the king's body had sunk
lifeless his destroyer lay slain over him. For they saw, as soon as
their startled senses acted, that two lives, not one, had been taken.
The violence against which Considine had never pretended to be secure,
but which had avoided him so long, had struck him at last. The bullet
had pierced his skull; the blood streamed over the dead Zulu. And
Mottreux dragged Caithness from the room, and shut and locked the door.
He held the priest's arm; he rushed him through the house, making for
the hall. Caithness ran, and listened to hasty orders: 'Go straight to
the car in front of the door... get in... I'll come. Can you
drive?'

'Yes,' he gasped.

'Get in the driver's seat.' They reached the hall; Mottreux looking
frantically round rushed him to the front door, paused less than a
second to see that the priest was actually scrambling into the car,
pushed the door almost shut, lest by chance the other should see him,
and sent another mad glance around the hall.

By so small a chance he was defeated. The old Jew, when he was left
alone with the casket, had, by some trick of the mind, gone back to the
room where he and his companions had spent most of the day. He was
sitting there, lost in his meditations, when Mottreux broke in on him,
and in one wild dash caught the case in one hand. But Rosenberg held to
the trust which the God of his fathers had imposed on him. He was
dragged violently from his chair, but he clung to the sacred treasure;
he heard a voice yelling oaths, but though he was shaken to and fro he
said nothing. His face, as he lifted it, was full of a scorn deeper than
time, the scorn of his God for the spoilers of the holy places. He saw
the distorted face of a greedy Gentile above him, and before the bullet
searched his brain he spat at it once.

But by now the revolvers of the other servants of the Deathless One had
blown the lock of their prison from the door, and the momentary
prisoners had already nearly reached the hall. In a wild confusion and
anger they came; Mottreux heard them, and ran to the glass doors on to
the drive. These were fastened, and he was again delayed. By the time he
had got them opened and was outside, Vereker and the Egyptian were out
by the car. He was seen; he fired once and ran along the wall of the
house. The shot probably saved Caithness's life, for none of the
pursuers were in a state to distinguish between the responsibility of
the fugitives for the crime. But Vereker was unarmed, and the Egyptian
was distracted by Mottreux's appearance. He left the priest to his
companion, and ran after Mottreux, circling widely out so as to command
the corner as he approached it. In the darkness it could only dimly be
seen.

Voices were calling from doors and windows. There were men in the room
where the dead Jew lay. Roger, borne along in the general rush, was
there also. He wondered afterwards why no-one had shot him down out of
hand, and attributed his salvation to the fact that Considine had
treated him familiarly. He tried to order his thoughts, but they only
repeated themselves: 'Considine is dead; is he dead?' Was he dead? or
would he, first again in the great experiment, achieve the work he had
desired? The question beat at his brain as he ran. He saw the body of
the Jew as he came into the room, and paused by it. Without, from the
darkness, there came more shots. Roger pulled himself together; he'd
better look for Caithness. If Considine were dead, the two of them would
be in a very dubious position; he went as far as the glass doors. There
he listened; presently, away round the side of the house, he heard
another shot. He slipped out and along to the car, whose lights shone
steadily as they had done when last he looked at it before he had walked
in the verandah and talked. This was the kind of thing that remained;
the imagination of man was blown out in a moment but the light of his
mechanical invention remained. He cursed deeply, and saw Caithness, who
in a restless uncertainty had got out of the car. Roger walked up to
him, but for a few seconds neither of them spoke.

At last Caithness said: 'What had we better do?'

Roger answered: 'I should think you'd better get away. Inkamasi's dead,
so I don't see much point in your staying.'

Caithness looked round, and tried to see something in the darkness. He
failed, and presently asked, 'What's happened to Mottreux?'

'How the hell do I know?' Roger asked. 'Why did you bolt with him?' A
sudden thought struck him, and he added: 'Did you--by God, did you
arrange for him to shoot?'

'No,' the priest answered, 'but I promised to do what I could for him
if... if he needed it.'

'I see,' Roger said, and walked a few steps away. He couldn't trust
himself to speak. That this dreamer, this master of vision should have
been destroyed by--by a traitor and a clergyman. He walked back abruptly
and said: 'I hope you paid him better than Caiaphas did? Even at
half-crowns it would only come to three pounds fifteen.'

Caithness began quietly, 'Don't be unfair, Ingram----' but Roger pursued
his own thoughts. 'And did you promise him as much for Rosenberg?'

'Rosenberg!' Caithness cried out, startled. 'He can't have killed
Rosenberg?'

'Can't he?' Roger said. 'What do you think he wanted? Go and look;
Rosenberg's dead and the jewels are gone.'

The priest stared at him in something like horror. He had believed
Mottreux to be sincere, and yet now--words overheard between the traitor
and Rosenberg rushed back, the likelihood that so great a personal
desire rather than a conversion of thought should have alienated him,
his turning away at the last moment, the shot heard in the room close at
hand, the old man slain (for he believed Roger at once), the seizure of
the jewels by a covetous hand. Roger saw him flinch and said, with a
touch of pity out of his own distress, 'You didn't know?'

'God help me!' Caithness said. 'I didn't know.' He hadn't known; he
hadn't, if it were blameworthy, been to blame; if he were partly
responsible for Considine's death, it was a noble responsibility, and he
would bear it. Out of evil, God brought forth good. He added, 'Then
there's the less reason to stay.'

Yet they did not move. Behind the house, between it and the sea, in the
darkness, armed men sought one another in hate and fear, abandoning
themselves to a passion which their master would have bidden them use
for the sole purpose of interior enlargement and further victory. Their
strength was turned to greed of treasure or greed of vengeance; the
accident which had struck Considine down had released their too little
mastered frenzies. The two strangers delayed, reluctant alike to go or
stay in the stillness. And, while they delayed, the stillness burst into
tumult. There were shots and voices calling, Mottreux's voice
challenging, a chaos of sound, and breaking out of it and over it a high
terrific shriek.

The shriek terrified them as they stood there; it was a death-call. It
scattered their disputes and their dogmas, for, whether he who uttered
it was slaying or being slain, it was the cry of an intenser death than
that of an ordinary man. One of those experimenting spirits had broken
into that cry; it swept out to them from the passion of a nature beyond
theirs, and its sound pierced them with fear of death, of that greater
life, and of the greater death in that life. The lord of the adepts was
dead, and enmity was abroad among them as the dead Zulu had prophesied
days before. The cry came to Roger as a blast that drove him away. Nigel
Considine was dead; the treachery he had despised had taken him; the
final dereliction had swallowed him. If he returned--but Roger fled from
that return. His nerve broke; he shrank back against the car, and said
to Caithness, 'Let's go; let's go.'

The priest himself, trembling, turned. 'Shall we----' he began, laying his
hand on the car.

'No, for God's sake,' Roger exclaimed. 'Let's leave it all, if we're
leaving it. If it isn't for us, let's get away from it. Come; we'll get
somewhere.'

Caithness silently assented. 'But let's get our coats at least!' he
said. 'They'll be just in there.'

'I'm not going in there again,' Roger said, 'unless Considine himself
calls me.'

'Then I will,' Caithness said. He sprang back into the hall, and in a
couple of minutes returned. 'We shall want them if we're walking all
night,' he said, and so, in a mingling of terror and despair, and hope
and the commonplace, they went down to the gates and out into the
darkness beyond. Once the priest said, 'Mrs. Ingram'll be glad to see
you back.'

'Yes,' Roger answered. 'Isabel...' and said no more.




                              CHAPTER XIV
                               SEA-CHANGE


Some time next morning, after wandering long on foot and finding at last
in an unknown town a small garage where they hired a car that took them
to Winchester, and coming thence by train to London, they reached again
the house in Kensington, from which less than forty-eight hours earlier
they had been swept away. The streets were still full of wanderers,
though it had been known for hours that safety had returned, and the
wild intrusion been destroyed. The mob by then had fallen into a waking
stupor, not unlike the sleep in which Rosamond still lay; it moved
somnambulistically, and the civil authorities, by the use of police and
military, by commandeering transport, by supplying food and drink as
best they could, managed at last to control and direct it. Laden
motor-buses carried the fugitives back towards their houses; taxis,
lorries, and all other possible vehicles were put in service for the
same purpose. Roger and Caithness made a slow way by the Tubes, now
gradually freeing themselves from their invasion, to Colindale Square.
They came to it shivering in the bleak noon--as chilled bathers might
stumble up a stony beach, while behind them a deserted and disconsolate
sea moaned. Sir Bernard came hastily to meet them, deserting for the
time being the medley of fugitives who filled his kitchen and overflowed
into the other rooms, and for whom conveyances had not yet been found.
Roger nodded to him but could not speak; he left explanations to
Caithness. In a moment Isabel came also; to her he turned, and with her
he shut himself away. Once safe he said to her with no accent in his
voice: 'He's dead.'

'Dead!' she exclaimed. 'Roger, my dear!'

He had perhaps never entirely trusted her before, for all their sweet
friendship. But his defences were down, and he lay exposed, terribly
sensitive to her looks and words. She neither sympathized nor condoled;
in the deep practice of her love her heart was struck equally with his.
She suffered his desolation as she had his desire; the trust of his
spiritual necessity with which she had charged herself knew this union
also. He realized at that moment the vast experience of love which she
had undergone, and accepted it. But he only said with a faint smile,
implicitly recognizing her vicarious grief, 'Yet you didn't believe in
him.'

She sat down, wide eyes on his, and ignoring the comment, said in a
hushed voice of awe, 'Tell me. Can he be----?'

He told her as clearly as he could, what had happened. And at the end
she said, 'But, Roger, mightn't he...' She couldn't finish; her own
personal nature fainted before the intensity with which it felt
another's hope.

'I don't know,' he answered. 'If so... It may be, but I daren't think
of it. Isabel, Isabel, to think what killed him!'

At that moment Caithness was talking swiftly to Sir Bernard downstairs.
'So, when I went back for our coats, I saw them,' he said; 'they were
all ready there, all three packets and I brought them with me.' He
pointed at the table on which three thick envelopes lay which he had
extracted from his coat-pocket. 'He must have meant to take them with
him, or else they were directions for the others. They were on a chest
in the hall, waiting till we--till he--came back. Don't you think they
ought to go to the Prime Minister?'

'I hate telling the Prime Minister anything,' Sir Bernard said. 'It's
like feeding a gorilla without a body; he can't digest words. I don't
know which is worse for civilized man, Suydler or Considine.'

'Considine's dead,' Caithness said.

Sir Bernard lifted a packet distastefully. 'I wish I were a Christian,'
he murmured, 'then I should feel I ought to. As it is--I suppose
Considine _is_ dead?'

'Of course he is,' Caithness said impatiently. 'Mottreux shot him; I've
just told you. I'd no notion he wanted the jewels. And even if he
weren't--Considine, I mean--that would only make it more urgent that
Suydler should have the papers. They may be of use or they mayn't. But
he ought to have them.'

'They'll all be in cipher, I should think,' Sir Bernard said, with a
good deal of satisfaction. 'Suydler can have a jolly time guessing it.
But I don't like it, in spite of Mr. Considine's obscene and pernicious
gospel. I don't like giving _any_ gospel to Suydler. Yes, all right, I
suppose I must. Portrait of Gallio presenting the manuscript of the
Evangelists to the Missing Link. You'll have to come too; then you can
tell him all about the house.'

When as a consequence the house by the sea was approached, late the same
day, with great force and much circumspection, the results were a little
disappointing. The body of Inkamasi still lay on its royal couch, but
the body of the master of the adepts had disappeared. No living person
was there; no car in the drive nor submarine in the bay. But behind the
house lay Mottreux, a knife-wound in his throat, and sprawled over him,
a bullet in his chest, the body of a negro, whom Caithness recognized as
one of those that had followed Considine to the king's death. Further
away lay the Egyptian, also shot. Vereker and the Arab were not to be
found.

But the extent of the catastrophe which the traitor had brought upon the
headship of the cause became clear, as the days passed. Considine and
three of the closest members of his personal staff had been destroyed,
and the great movement was checked. There were no more messages from the
High Executive. What tale reached the various headquarters of the
African armies the European Governments never knew. But the labouring
and anxious generals of their forces began to telegraph the most
cheering news. In one or two districts something like panic broke out
among the enemy, a great noise of wailing and disorderly firing and then
flight. In others the negro forces began to retire, and as they were
pressed by the pursuit gave way and were overwhelmed.

The papers Caithness had seized, which after a great deal of trouble
were at least partially decoded--only partially; some of them remained
mysteries even to the most ingenious cipher-expert--contained sufficient
allusions in detail to make the task of the uncovering of Considine's
bases--houses in Europe and headquarters in Africa--a much easier business
than had been feared. An encouraging but slightly vague account appeared
in the Press of how a British patriot, who preferred his Imperial
citizenship to his Zulu birthright, had shot Considine while being
pressed to join him. It was understood that he had deliberately
sacrificed himself in order to help England, and a good deal of quiet
(and not too quiet) pride was felt that it was an English subject, or at
least a Dominion subject, who had acted so. No Senegalese had done as
much, nor the native of any district administered by other European
countries. Such was the spirit produced by the British occupation. A
rather acrimonious correspondence opened between the British Government
and the other Powers on the subject of Considine's own nationality. The
French, Italian, Spanish, and Belgian ambassadors presented Notes which
pointed out that the late Nigel Considine being a British subject the
respective Governments had in equity a claim to be indemnified by his
Britannic Majesty's Government for the expense to which they had been
put. His Britannic Majesty replied through the High Executive of Mr.
Raymond Suydler's Foreign Minister (the Earl of Basingstoke) to the
effect that--there were nine mutually destructive reasons why the claim
should either not be admitted or should be set against still heavier
amounts due to his Britannic Majesty for damage suffered. Mr. Suydler
made a great speech at an Albert Hall Meeting, and was cheered wildly
when he announced that the European Governments had determined to sign
no formal terms of peace with an enemy who had no business to be there
at all, but to hold a conference in Madeira to decide on the future
settlement of Africa, the terms of which would afterwards be submitted
to the League of Nations, thus confirming the passionate belief of the
Powers in democratic control. Mr. Suydler was also loudly applauded in
the course of his witty and brilliant remarks upon the attempt of the
madman who had been responsible for all the trouble to turn his
megalomaniac nonsense into philosophical nonsense. 'Guess: what can you
do but guess? We guessed--_and we guessed right_!' Terrific cheers.

Sir Bernard read it and smiled a little sadly. Philip read it and let it
slip by; he was engaged with a recovered Rosamond and his career. Roger
did not read it. Sir Bernard asked Philip whether, at a pinch, he would
vote for Suydler or Considine. Philip read it, and for almost the first
time in his life startled his father into real admiration by saying that
he should vote for Ian Caithness. But Sir Bernard's mind illumined the
answer with a drier light than Philip's. He wrote of it to the priest:
'I congratulate you, my dear Ian, on your proselyte--you can instruct him
further when you come up to marry him. There's a notion grown up that
since his career'll have to be postponed or reorganized or reborn or
something, it would be only reasonable ('reasonable'! I also have my
martyrdoms) that I should make financial arrangements for him to be
married at once. Rosamond's still recuperating at the cottage in Dorset,
she sent me a pretty note of thanks the other day in which she asked
whether you didn't know the Archbishop fairly well. You'll guess--as
Suydler would say---what she meant. I leave it to you to decide whether
you do--well enough, I mean. If he should be shot by a deacon who wanted
to wear the vestments of the See at a fancy dress ball I fancy Suydler
would be willing to offer you the Archiepiscopal mitre; he's touchingly
grateful to someone, and went so far as to ask me if there was anything
I wanted. I told him I wanted justice and proportion which is the
daughter of justice, knowledge and abstraction which is the daughter of
knowledge. This dreadful tendency to personify and (therefore)
mythologize I attribute to you and the late Mr. Considine, who was an
entire mythology about himself. From Considine to you (excuse me), from
you to Philip, from Philip to Rosamond--behold the history of religion!
The High Executive disappears under the sea, and leaves its brother of
Canterbury to add a touch of richness to my daughter-in-law's wedding.
If I had indulged myself in irony as long as Providence, I should be a
little tired of it by now, but I suppose he has infinite patience with
himself as well as with us. But mightn't he occasionally try a new
note?'

Of Roger Sir Bernard said nothing, though he thought of him as he wrote
'the High Executive disappears under the sea.' For he was aware that
that was all that they knew, and even that they only surmised, and he
thought Roger was intensely aware of it too. But he did not know how
acutely, and Isabel did not tell him.

Nor had she told him of how much younger and older at once Roger had
seemed since his return. She missed in him something of warfare and much
of scorn. If he was arrogant still it was a more airy arrogance than of
old; if he mocked he mocked more tenderly. But she wondered whether in
his heart he--and she also--secretly awaited a return.

Roger himself could not have told her. He shut himself away from the
noisy European victories, from the talk and the congratulations. He took
up his work again, but as he made notes for a special address on _The
Antithetical Couplet from Dryden to Johnson_ he was humbly aware that
this work was part of a greater work. It would be his fault if he so
touched the least detail of the divine art as to leave himself or others
less sensitive to its central passion--his fault, his most grievous
fault, his sad incompetence. But even sad incompetence might recognize
the Power it could hardly name. He would never cease any more to
acknowledge it, to search in it and for it, to believe in it, to wait
for it. Other people had their ways; this was his. What more----

What indeed had chanced? Had the submarine, plunging away from that
house of mingled death and life, carried with it but the dead body of
its lord? and had men somewhere far off, seen that body change beneath
inexorable corruption and committed it to the waters of the sea or to
the African earth? Did it there undergo the final doom of mortality in
slow change, or had some fiercer destruction, the shark or the tiger,
seized on it? He had dreams sometimes of sharks fighting round the
sinking body of Nigel Considine, and sometimes he had other dreams. He
saw the body carried to the submarine, he saw it carried off far into
the ocean, and then, sometimes in the vessel, sometimes out of it, he
saw it change. Sometimes he saw men in a narrow room watching by it,
crying out, hurrying to it, adoring it. But more often--though the dream
itself was not often--he saw it floating alone in the middle of the sea,
far away, far down, and he saw the eyes open and the hands move, and the
whole body stir. Life was rushing back into it; power, spirit,
imagination, whatever name sad incompetence found for it, was
re-animating the willing flesh. He saw it walking in the waters and
heard it calling through them. The creatures of the deep, octopus and
shark, greed and ferocity, fled before it. Behind it, as it came, there
was no more sea; in front of it the waters flowed into it and became the
man who moved in them. Back from the shore they swept, out towards that
advancing humanity, and all their mysteries were swallowed up in his
shining lucidity. This was the vast of experience, currents and tides,
streams and whirlpools, restless waves and fathomless depths, absorbed
by man. The salt that tinctured it, as the salt of Sir Bernard's
amusement tinctured life, was absorbed also. Valuable as that
preservative salt was, in the end it was infinitely less than the
elements of which it was part, and to prefer it to the renewed body
would be to prefer the means to the end, detachment to union. Irony
might sustain the swimmer in the sea; it could not master the sea. A
greater than Sir Bernard did that now, if indeed now, up the African
sand or the English beach, that conqueror returned.

If he returned. If he carried out the experiment of his vision, the
purpose of his labours. If, first among his peers, when all believed him
lost, he thrust himself from the place of shades back into immortal and
transmuted life, if he held death at his disposal, if he knew how the
vivid ecstasy of experience dominated all shapes and forms, all
accidents of time and place. If he came now, humming those last songs
which the greatest of the poets had made from his own vision of Ariel
flying free, smiling at the blindness of extreme pain and the paralysis
of extreme possession, guardian of myths and expositor of power... if
he returned. If now, while the world shouted over the defeat of his
allies and subjects, while it drove its terror back into its own
unmapped jungles, and subdued its fiercer desires to an alien government
of sterile sayings, if now he came once more to threaten and deliver it.
If--ah beyond, beyond belief!--but if he returned....


                                THE END




                          _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_


                           THE GREATER TRUMPS

                                  7/6

"Mr. Williams writes with a belief and an excitement that infect the
reader... his attraction is not so much his plot as his extraordinary
gift for involving the reader in a whirl of magic happenings, making him
implicitly believe every detail. We despise ghost stories nowadays. Mr.
Williams gives us the thrill we delight in, in a way which we can
accept."--CLEMENCE DANE (_Good Housekeeping_)


                         THE PLACE OF THE LION

                                  3/-

"One of the most remarkable novels I have read for a long time. Ecstasy
and dmonic power run through it like tongues of fire; the princes of
heaven are abroad in the world.... If the power of genius is to
mirage spiritual realities, this is a work of genius, and one, too,
which brings the mystery of the supernatural home to the hearts and
minds of ordinary men and women."--HUGH L'A. FAUSSET (_Yorkshire Post_)


                            MANY DIMENSIONS

                                  7/6

"The book is exciting, mysterious, and is profoundly satisfying in its
exploitation of the tragic and ironic possibilities of its theme. It is
illumined by an unwavering flame of moral beauty."--_Spectator_


                             WAR IN HEAVEN

                                  7/6

"This astonishing battle between the incarnate forces of good and
evil.... It has the elements of a great mystery story, of keen
satire, and, above all, of a sweet, sorrowful apprehension of beauty,
horror and death. It is a story of our own times, and yet its subject is
the struggle for the actual Graal. Mr. Williams succeeds in making the
probable likely and the impossible credible. The book is at once an
illustrated missal and a guide-book to Hell."--_Observer_






[End of Shadows of Ecstasy, by Charles Williams]
