Chapter VII: Part 7

Only by means of certain perversions of natural law, of which suicide was one, could man evade rebirth, and even thus only for a time. Sorrow was not a punishment but merely a consequence. Punishment was man-made and had no place in the wider scheme, could have no place in a universe where all things were self-inflicted. Germany symbolised the culmination of materialism, "the triumph of the Bull." To Germany had been attracted all those entities, converging through the ages, whose progress had been retarded by abandonment to materialism. "Caligula and Nero defile the earth to-day, and others even mightier in evil. A Messalina and a Poppae do not survive individually, for such as these are not human in the strictest sense, in that they lack what is called a soul which is a property common to humanity. The parable of the woman of Corinth who seduced Menippus, a disciple of Apollonius, is misunderstood. We have come to regard all mortal bodies as the tenements of immortal souls. This is true of men but is not always true of women. Such women are not strictly mortal: they are feminine animals and their place in the scheme will be discussed later. To speak of their sins is to misuse the word. They are sinless, as the serpent and the upas tree are sinless...."

Paul had discovered that his vast scheme might not be compassed in a single book. _The Gates_ was the first drama of a trilogy. In it he outlined the universal truth of which the churches had lost sight or which they had chosen to obscure. He offered a glimpse of the shrine but laid down no doctrine nor did he seek to impose a new philosophy upon the world. In his second book he proposed to furnish proofs of the claims advanced in the first, and in his third to draw deductions from the foregoing. In this he had made Euclid his model. Upon the necessity for a hierarchy and a mystic ritual he insisted. He maintained that orthodox Christianity had lost its hold upon Europe, touched upon causes and indicated how the world upheaval was directly due to the failing power of the churches. He proposed to remodel religion upon a system earlier than but not antagonistic to that of Christ. His claim that the systems of Hermes, Krishna, Confucius, Moses, Orpheus and Christ were based upon a common primeval truth he supported by an arresting array of historical facts. All of them had taught that man is re-incarnated, and because Western thought had been diverted from this truth and the fallacies of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory substituted for simple Rebirth, Western thought had become chaotic. The figure of the Pope and the maintenance of a celibate priesthood had prolonged the life of the Church of Rome because, in Paul's opinion, these were survivals of that mysticism upon which the remote hierarchies were builded. "No religion in the world's history has held such absolute sway over a people as that of Ancient Egypt; no figure living in the memory of man has such majesty of awe as that of the royal high-priest of Amen Ra...."

* * * * *

On the day that _The Gates_ was published, Yvonne came down late to breakfast, a gossamer study all filmy lace, with the morning sun in her hair. The windows were open, and a hint of spring lent zest to every joy, the loamy fragrance of nascent plant life stealing into the room from the little garden. Tulips decorated the sideboard, for Yvonne loved tulips, and a big bowl of pink roses stood upon the centre of the breakfast table. Paul, glancing up from the pages of the _Daily Telegraph_, became aware of something vaguely familiar yet unexpected in his wife's face. She seemed listless, even slightly pale, and he experienced a sudden pang of an indefinable nature. Looking back over the past two years, he wondered if they had been as significant, as fully crowded with reality, for Yvonne as they had been for him. In Don's manner, when speaking of Yvonne, he had more than once detected a sort of gentle reproof and had wondered why Don, who understood most things, failed to perceive that Yvonne's happiness lay in her husband's work. But, this morning, Paul was thinking more particularly about a remark of Jules Thessaly's. Thessaly had urged him, before commencing his second volume to spend a month in Devon. "You need it, Mario, and your wife needs it more than you do."

Paul did not immediately broach the subject which now became uppermost in his mind, but following some desultory conversation, he said, "I should think Devon would be delightful just now. Suppose we run down for a week or two."

"I should be glad," replied Yvonne. "I should have suggested it earlier, only I knew that you could not finish _The Gates_ away from your library." She spoke in a curiously listless way.

"Could you be ready to go on Thursday, Yvonne?"

"Yes, quite easily."

"I can work upon my notes for the autumn book in Devon better than in London."

"But," began Yvonne, and stopped, staring unseeingly at the roses in the bowl upon the table.

"But what, Yvonne?"

"I was about to propose a complete rest, Paul, but I know it would be useless if the working mood is upon you."

"You realise what it means to me, Yvonne. I should no more be justified in laying down my pen whilst there was more work to do than a soldier would be justified in laying down his sword in the heat of battle. You do not feel that this task which I have taken up has made a gulf between us?"

"It has done so in a sense," replied Yvonne, crumbling a fragment of bread between her fingers. "But I have never been so foolish as to become jealous of your work."

"I might have been in the army and stationed on the other side of the world," said Paul laughing.

"I am not complaining about your work, Paul."

"Yet you are not entirely happy."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. I sometimes feel that you are not."

"I am quite happy," said Yvonne in the listless voice, and presently she went up to her room, Paul looking after her in a troubled way. He was uneasily searching his memory for a clue to the significance of that expression, vaguely familiar but unexpected, which he had noticed in Yvonne's face. He lighted his pipe and went into the study.

Paul already was at work upon the second phase of his huge task. He was seeking to prove that the arts had taken the place of the inspired prophets and sibyls of old, that they were not reflections of the soul of a nation but were expressions of the creative Will--the _Od_ of Baron Reichenbach--and were in fact not effects but causes. Not only did he claim this for the avowed philosophers, but also, in some degree, for every writer, composer, painter or sculptor. In Russian literature he perceived a foreshadowing of the doom of Tzardom and imminent catastrophe. In the literature of France and England he sought to divine the future. The fervent imperialism of Kipling stirred his emotions, but left him spiritually cold. Patriotism was the mother of self-sacrifice, but also of murder, and Paul distrusted all forces which made for intolerance. The delicate word-painting of Pierre Loti, with its typically French genius for exalting the trivial, Paul studied carefully. He found it to resemble the art of those patient, impassive Japanese craftsmen who draw and colour some exquisite trifling design, a bird, a palm tree, and then cut the picture in half in order to fit it into a panel of some quaint little lacquered cabinet as full of unexpected cupboards and drawers as the Cretan Labyrinth was full of turnings. He studied the books of the living as Egypt's priests were wont to study _The Book of the Dead_, pondering upon Arnold Bennett, who could produce atmosphere without the use of colour, and H. G. Wells who thought aloud. In the hectic genius of D'Annunzio he sought in vain the spirit of Italy. He perceived in those glowing pages the hand of a man possessed, and should have been prepared to find his MSS. written in penmanship other than his own, like those of Madame Blavatsky's _Isis Unveiled_.

"It all means something, Don," he said one day. "We have been granted an insight to the psychology of the German people, which has enabled us to trace the thread running through their literature, art and music. Oscar Wilde, who wrote, with a style dipped in ambergris, was truly a manifestation of the German spirit which began to invade us subtly at about that time. His scented prose could not conceal this spirit from the perception of Richard Strauss. Strauss recognised it and welcomed it with the music of _nebels_, _kinnors_ and _tabors_, as the misguided children of Israel welcomed the golden calf. Nietzche's 'Thou goest among women?--Take thy whip' we see now to be no mere personal expression but the voice of the soul of Germany, a black thread interwoven in their creative art. There is a similar thread, but perhaps of silver, interwoven in our own and in the French art. Where does it begin and whither does it lead?"

* * * * *

Yet those days throughout which Paul laboured unceasingly for the greatest cause of humanity were lotus days for many. London was raided and rationed; London swore softly, demanded a change of government, turned up its coat collar and stumped doggedly along much as usual. Men fought and women prayed, whilst Paul worked night and day to bring some ray of hope to the hearts of those in whom faith was dead. The black thread crept like an ebon stain into the woof of the carpet. The image of the Bull was set up in many a grove hitherto undefiled, and Paul worked the more feverishly because it was one of the inscrutable cosmic laws that the black should sometimes triumph over the white.

Paul's intimacy with Jules Thessaly had grown closer than he realised. Thessaly was become indispensable to him. Paul, had he essayed the task, must have found it all but impossible to disentangle his own ideas, or those due to direct inspiration, from the ideas of Thessaly or those based upon inquiries traceable to the astonishing data furnished by his collection. Item by item he had revealed its treasures to the man who alone had power to wield them as levers to move the world. Remote but splendid creeds, mere hazy memories of mankind, were reconstructed upon these foundations. The Izamal temples of Yucatan were looted of their secrets--the secrets of a great Red Race, mighty in knowledge and power, which had sought to look upon the face of God before the Great Pyramid was fashioned, whose fleets had ruled the vanished seas known to us as the Sahara and North Africa, whose golden capital had looked proudly out upon an empire mightier than Rome--an empire which the Atlantic Ocean had swallowed up. The story of this cataclysm which had engulfed Atlantis, brought to new lands by a few survivors, had bequeathed to men the legend of the Deluge. The riddle of The Sphinx, most ancient religious symbol in the known world, was resolved; for Paul saw it to represent man emerging from the animal and already aspiring to the spiritual state.

War, pestilence and vast geographical upheavals alike were manifestations of spiritual conflict physically reflected. Some of the German philosophers had perceived this dimly, but as one born in blindness fails to comprehend light, their vision was no more than hereditary memory of another pit of doom which had engulfed them. Those who spoke of casting down the spirit of Prussian militarism used metaphor veiling a truth profound as that which underlies the Holy Trinity, and which is symbolised by the Sphinx. As vultures swooped to carrion, as harlots flocked to Babylon, so had the unredeemed souls of the universe descended upon Germany....

Thus his concept of evil was universal, and to those who sought to fix "responsibility" for the war upon this one or that he raised a protesting hand. No man made the Deluge.

By subtle means, insidious as the breath of nard, corruption of primeval sin was spread from race to race. By like means it must be combated, Truth must be disguised if it should penetrate to enemy darkness. A naked truth is rarely acceptable, or, as Don expressed it, "Truth does not strip well." Paul discussed this aspect of the matter with Don and Thessaly one day. "We are all children," he said. "If it were not for such picturesque people as Henry VIII and Charles II we should forget our history for lack of landmarks. Carefully selected words are the writer's landmarks, and in remembering them one remembers the passage which they decorated. I can conjure up at will the entire philosophy of Buddha as epitomised in the _Light of Asia_ by contemplation of such a landmark; Arnold's expression for a sheep, 'woolly mother.' There are other words and phrases which the art of their users in the same way has magically endowed: 'Totem' is one of these. It is for me a Pharos instantly opening up the fairway to a great man's philosophy. 'Damascus,' too, has such properties, and the phrase 'cherry blossom in Japan' bears me upon a magical carpet to a certain street in Yokohama and there unveils to me all the secrets of Japanese mysticism."

"I quite see your point," Don replied. "In the same way I have never ceased to regret that I was not born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The possession of such a euphonious birthplace would have coloured all my life."

"But like the Scotsman you would have revered your home from a distance," said Thessaly. "I agree with you that it would have been an ideal birthplace if you had left it at so tender an age that you failed to recall its physical peculiarities. It is the same with women. In order that one should retain nothing but fairy memories of a woman--memories of some poetic name, of the perfume of roses, of beauty glimpsed through gossamer--it is important that one should not have lived with her. Herein lies the lasting glamour of the woman we have never possessed."

II

The world had been discussing Paul Mario's New Gospel as enunciated in _The Gates_ for three weeks or more. On a bright morning when sunbeams filtered through the dust which partially curtained the windows of Guilder's, and painted golden squares and rectangles upon the floor, Flamby stood where the light touched her elfin hair into torch-like flame, removing a very smart studio smock preparatory to departing to Regali's for lunch. There was no one else in the small painting-room, except a wondrous-hued parrakeet upon a perch, from which he contemplated his portrait in oils, head knowingly tilted to one side, with solemn disapproval for Flamby had painted his bill too red and he knew it, apparently.

"Bad," he remarked. "Damn bad."

He belonged to Crozier, the artist famed for "sun-soaked flesh," and Crozier's pupils were all too familiar with this formula. It was so often upon Crozier's lips that Lorenzo the Magnificent (the parrakeet) had acquired it perfectly.

"Quite right, Lorenzo," said Flamby, throwing her smock on to a stool. "It's blasted bad."

"Damn bad," corrected Lorenzo. "No guts."

"I don't agree with you there, Lorenzo. It's your nose that I hate."

"No sun!" screamed Lorenzo, excitedly. "The bloodsome thing never saw the sun!"

"Oh, please behave, Lorenzo, or I shall not share my sugar ration with you any more."

"Sugar?" inquired Lorenzo, head on one side again.

Flamby held up a lump of sugar upon her small pink palm, and a silence of contentment immediately descended upon Lorenzo, only broken by the sound of munching. Flamby was just going out to wash the paint from her hands, for she always contrived to get nearly as much upon her fingers as upon the canvas, when a cheery voice cried: "Ha! caught you. Thought I might be too late."

She turned, and there in the doorway stood Don. Less than three months had elapsed since his last leave and Flamby was intensely surprised to see him. She came forward with outstretched hands. "Oh, Don," she cried. "How lovely! However did you manage it?"

An exquisite blush stained her cheeks, and her eyes lighted up happily. Glad surprises made her blush, and she was very sincerely glad as well as surprised to see Don. She had not even heard him approach. She had been wondering what Devonshire was like, for Paul was in Devonshire. Now as Don took both her hands and smiled in the old joyous way she thought that he looked ill, almost cadaverous, in spite of the tan which clung to his skin.

"Craft, Flamby, guile and the subtlety of the serpent. The best men get the worst leave."

"I don't believe it," said Flamby, watching him in sudden anxiety. "You have been ill. Oh, don't think you can pretend to _me_; I can see you have."

"Bad," remarked Lorenzo in cordial agreement. He had finished the sugar. "Damn bad."

"What!" cried Don--"have you got old Crozier's Lorenzo down here? Hullo! let us see how you have 'percepted' him." He crossed to the easel, surveying Flamby's painting critically. "Does Hammett still talk about 'percepting the subject' and 'emerging the high-lights' and 'profunding the shadows'?"

"He does. You're mean not to tell me."

"What do you want me to tell you, Flamby?--that the drawing is magnificent and the painting brilliant except for the treatment of the bill, which is _too_ brilliant." He turned and met her reproachful gaze. "Perhaps I _am_ mean, Flamby, to frighten you by not replying to your question, but really I am quite fit. I have had a touch of trench-fever or something, not enough to result in being sent home to hospital, and have now got a few days' sick-leave to pull round after a course of weak gruel."

"That's very unusual, isn't it?"

"What, Flamby?"

"To get home leave after treatment at a base hospital? I mean they might as well have sent you home in the first place."

Don stared at her long and seriously. "Flamby," he said, "you have been flirting with junior subalterns. No one above the rank of a second-lieutenant ever knew so much about King's Regulations."

"Own up, then."

Don continued the serious stare. "Flamby," he said, "your father would have been proud of you. You are a very clever girl. If art fails there is always the Bar. I am not advising you to take to drink; I refer to the law. Listen, Flamby, I was wrong to try to deceive you as well as the others. Besides, it is not necessary. You are unusual. I stopped a stray piece of shrapnel a fortnight after I went back and was sent to a hospital in Burton-on-Trent. The M.O.'s have a positive genius for sending men to spots remote from their homes and kindreds--appalling sentence. In this case it was a blessing in disguise. By some muddle or another my name was omitted from the casualty list, or rather it was printed as 'Norton,' and never corrected publicly. I accepted the kindness of the gods. Imagine my relief. I had pictured sisters and cousins and the dear old Aunt dragging themselves to Burton-on-Trent--and I am the only beer drinker in the family. I know you won't betray my gruesome secret, Flamby."

Flamby's eyes were so misty that she averted her face. "Oh, Don," she said unsteadily, "and I wrote to you only three days ago and thought you were safe."

Don unbuttoned the left breast-pocket of his tunic and flourished a letter triumphantly. "Young Conroy has been forwarding all my mail," he explained, "and I have addressed my letters from nowhere in particular and sent them to him to be posted! Now, what about the guile and subtlety of the serpent! Let us take counsel with the great Severus Regali. I am allowed a little clear soup and an omelette, now."

* * * * *

Don and Flamby arrived late at Regali's and were compelled to wait for a time in the little inner room. There were many familiar faces around the tables. Chauvin was there with Madame Rilette, the human geranium, and Hammett; Wildrake, editor of the _Quartre d'Arts_ revue and the Baronne G., Paris's smartest and most up-to-date lady novelist. The Baronne had been married four times. Her latest hobby was libel actions. Archibald Forester, renowned as an explorer of the psychic borderland, and wearing green tabs and a crown upon his shoulder-strap, discussed matters Alpine with an Italian artillery officer. On the whole the atmosphere was distinctly Savage that day. Flamby accepted a cigarette from Don and sat for awhile, pensive. With a jade-green velvet tam-o'-shanter to set off the coppery high-lights of her hair she was a picture worthy of the admiration which was discernible in Don's eyes. Presently she said, "I found you out a long time ago."

"Found me out?"

"Yes, found you out. I don't know to this day how much I really receive from the War Office, because Mr. Nevin won't tell me. He just muddles me up with a lot of figures----"

"You have seen him, then?"

"Of course I have seen him. But one thing I do know. I owe you over a hundred pounds, and I am going to pay it!"

"But, Flamby," said Don, a startled expression appearing upon his face, "you don't owe it to me at all. You are wrong."

Flamby studied him carefully for awhile. "I am going to send it to Mr. Nevin--I have told him so--and he can settle the matter." She laid her hand on Don's sleeve. "Don't think me silly, or an ungrateful little beast," she said, "but I can't talk about it any more; it makes me want to cry. Did you know that Chauvin got me a commission from the War Office propaganda people to do pictures of horses and mules and things?"

"Yes," replied Don, guiltily. But to his great relief Flamby did not accuse him of being concerned in the matter.

"I felt a rotten little slacker," explained Flamby; "I wrote and told you so. Did you get the letter?"

"Of course. Surely I replied?"

"I don't remember if you did, but I told Chauvin and he recommended my work to them and they said I could do twelve drawings. They accepted the first three I did, but rejected the fourth, which both Hammett and Chauvin thought the best."

"Probably it was. That was why they rejected it. But about this money----"

"Please," pleaded Flamby.

Don looked into her eyes and was silenced. He suppressed a sigh. "Have you seen Paul lately?" he asked.

"No. He is away. His book frightens me."

"Frightens you," said Don, staring curiously. "In what way?"

"I don't know that I can explain. I feel afraid for _him_."

"For Paul?"

"Yes."

"Because he has seen the truth?"

Flamby hesitated. "It must be awful for a doctor who has specialised in some dreadful disease to find----"

"That he suffers from it? This is a common thing with specialists." Don spoke almost heedlessly, but had no sooner spoken than he became aware of the peculiar significance of his words. He sat staring silently at Flamby. Before he had time for further speech Regali attended in person to announce that places were vacant at one of the tables. This table Don and Flamby shared with a lady wearing her hair dressed in imitation of a yellow dahlia, and with a prominent colourist who was devoting his life to dissipating the popular delusion about trees being green. He was gradually educating the world to comprehend that trees were not green but blue. He had a very long nose and ate French mustard with his macaroni. The conversation became cubical and coloured.

"I maintain," said the colourist, who was fiercely cynical, as might have been anticipated of one who consumed such large quantities of mustard, "that humanity is akin to the worm. The myth of Psyche and the idea that we possess souls arose simply out of the contemplation of colour by some primitive sensitive. Very delicately coloured young girls were responsible for the legend, but humanity in the bulk is colourless and therefore soulless. Large public gatherings fill me with intense personal disgust. From Nelson's point of view, a popular demonstration in Trafalgar Square must unpleasantly resemble a box of bait."

"Clearly you have never loved," said Don. "One day some misguided woman may marry you. You will awaken to the discovery that she is different from common humanity."

"Nearly every man considers his own wife to be different from other women--until the third or fourth, day of the honeymoon."

He was incorrigible; French mustard had embittered his life. "Some men are even more gross than women," he declared thoughtfully. "Cubically they are stronger, but their colouring is less delicate."

His yellow-haired companion watched him with limpid faithful brown eyes, hanging upon his words as upon the pronouncements of a Cumaean oracle. Having concluded his luncheon with a piece of cheese liberally coated in mustard he rose, shaking his head sadly.

"Don't shake your head like that," Don implored him. "I can hear your brains rattling."

But smileless, the cynic departed, and Flamby looked after him without regret. "If he painted as much as he talked," she said, "he would have to hire a railway station to show his pictures."

"Yes, or the offices of the Food Controller. His conversation is intensely interesting, but it doesn't mean anything. I have always suspected him of keeping coal in his bath."

Orlando James came in, standing just by the doorway, one hand resting upon his hip whilst he gnawed the nails of the other with his fine white teeth. He wore the colours of a regiment with which he had served for a time, and a silver badge on the right lapel of his tweed jacket. Presently, perceiving Flamby, he advanced to the table at which she was seated with Don. He had all the arrogance of acknowledged superiority. "Hullo, kid," he said, dropping into the chair vacated by the cynical one. "How do, Courtier. You look a bit cheap--been gassed?"

"No," replied Don; "merely a stiff neck due to sleeping with my head above the parapet."

James stared dully, continuing to bite his nails. "When are you going back?"

"As soon as my batman wires me that the weather has improved."

"Have you finished lunch? Let's split a bottle of wine before you go."

"No bottle of wine for me," said Flamby, "unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you'd be ashamed to know me." She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. "Isn't it time we started?" she asked, turning to Don. "Mrs. Chumley will be expecting us."

"Ah!" cried Don gratefully, glancing at his watch. "Of course she will. Where is the waiter?"

* * * * *

"You don't like James, do you?" said Flamby, as the car approached The Hostel.

"No. Vanity in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul's request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should go about with James and we discussed the point whilst I was home. You remember, no doubt?"

Flamby nodded. Her expression was very pensive. "Then I wrote and asked if you minded my seeing him occasionally for a special purpose, and you wrote back that you had every confidence in my discretion, which pleased me very much. Now I suppose you want to know what the special purpose was?"

"Not unless you wish to tell me, Flamby."

"I do wish to tell you," said Flamby slowly. "That was why I suggested coming here, because I knew all the time of course that Mrs. Chumley was away."

They entered The Hostel, deserted as it usually was at that hour of the day, passing into the courtyard, which already was gay with the flowers of early spring. The window-boxes, too, and vases within open casements splashed patches of colour upon the old-world canvas, the yellow and purple of crocus and daffodil, modest star-blue of forget-me-nots and the varied tints of sweet hyacinth. Flamby's tiny house, which Mrs. Chumley called "the squirrel's nest," was fragrant with roses, for Flamby's taste in flowers was extravagant, and she regularly exhausted the stocks of the local florist. A huge basket of white roses stood upon a side-table, a card attached. Flamby glanced at the card. "James again," she said. "He's some use in the world after all." She composedly filled a jug with water and placed the flowers in it until she should have time to arrange them.

"Is Chauvin expecting you this afternoon?" asked Don.

"No, not to-day. I love Chauvin, but I don't think I shall be able to stay on with him if I am to finish the other eight designs for the War Office people in time. Please light your pipe. Would you like a drink? I've got all sorts of things to drink."

"No, thank you, Flamby. We can go out to tea presently."

"No, let's have tea here. I have some gorgeous cakes I got at Fullers' this morning."

"Right. Better still. I will help."

Flamby tossed her tam-o'-shanter on to a chair, slapped the pockets of Don's tunic in quest of his cigarette-case, found it, took out and lighted a cigarette, and then curled herself up in a corner of the settee, hugging her knees. "Paul thinks I'm fast," she said.

Don, who was lighting his pipe, stared at her so long that the match burned his fingers and dropped into his cap, which lay beside him on the floor.

Flamby's visitors speedily acquired the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest."

"_Dulce est desipere_," replied Flamby, "but I am not jesting. Oh, that beastly Latin! Do you remember when I quoted Portia to you? It makes me go all goosey to think of some of the awful things I have said to people."

"You have said one thing, Flamby, which I must request you to explain," said Don gravely. "Paul is utterly incapable of harbouring an evil thought about anyone, and equally incapable of misjudging character."

"Ah, I knew you would say that, Don, and it is just that which worries me so."

"I don't understand."

Flamby snuggled her knees up tighter against her round chin and stared wistfully straight before her. A ray from the afternoon sun intruded through the window and touched her wonderful hair into magic flame. "Paul has altered the lives of a lot of people, hasn't he?" she asked.

"He has. I cannot doubt that he will become the centre of a world-wide movement. I received a letter only two days ago from a man who was with us at Oxford, and who entered the Church, assuring me that he had only awaited such a lead to resign his office and seek independently to spread the true doctrine. He is only one of many. I know several Army chaplains who have been troubled with serious doubts for years. They will rally to Paul as the Crusaders rallied to Peter the Hermit."

"I read his book," said Flamby, still staring unseeingly before her, "and something inside myself told me that every word of it was true. I know that I have lived before, everybody knows it, but everybody isn't able to realise it. Dad told me that re-incarnation was the secret of life once when I asked him who his father was. He said, 'Never mind about that. Damn your ancestors!...' Oh! I didn't mean to say it! But, really he said that. 'It is your _spiritual_ ancestry that counts,' he told me. 'There are plenty of noble blackguards, and it wasn't his parents who made a poet of Keats.' Dad convinced me in a wonderful way. He pointed out that a child born of a fine cultured family and one whose father was a thief and his mother something worse didn't start level at all. One was handicapped before he had the sense to think for himself; 'before he weighed in,' was how dad put it. 'If there is a just God,' he said--'and every man finds out sooner or later that there is, to his joy or to his sorrow--there are no unfair handicaps. It wouldn't be racing. Why should an innocent baby be born with the diseases and deformities of it's parents? Why should some be born blind?' What he called 'the hell-fire and brimstone' theory used to make him sick. He considered that most missionaries ought to be publicly executed, and said that in the Far East where he had lived you could see their work 'like the trail of a tin tabernacle across a blasted heath.' That sounds like swearing, but it's Shakespeare."

"I don't see," said Don, as Flamby became silent, "what this has to so with Paul's misjudgment of you, or your misjudgment of Paul. It simply means that you agree with him. You are such an extraordinarily clever girl, and have had so extraordinary a training, that I cannot pass lightly by anything you say seriously. What has led you to believe that Paul thinks ill of you, and why does it worry you that I think him incapable of such a thing?"

Flamby absently flicked cigarette ash upon the carpet. "According to _The Gates_," she said, speaking very slowly and evidently seeking for words wherewith to express her meaning, "everybody's sorrows and joys and understanding or lack of understanding are exactly in proportion to the use they have made of their opportunities, not just in one life but in other lives before."

Don nodded without speaking.

"A man who had come as near to perfection as is possible in this world would have found his perfect mate, what Paul calls his 'Isis-self.'"

"Embodied, in Paul's case, in Yvonne."

"He would be in no doubt about it, and no more would she. If she was below him he would raise her, if she was above him he might marry, but he would not mistake another woman for the right one. And things that convinced other men would not convince a true initiate. So I am worried about Paul, because if he is not a true initiate, where did he learn the things that are in _The Gates_?"

Don's face was very grave. "You have been studying strange books, Flamby. What have you been reading?"

"Heaps of things." Flamby blushed. "I managed to get a Reader's ticket for the British Museum. I am interested, you see. But there are things in Paul's book and other things promised in the next which--oh!--I'm afraid I can't explain----"

"You cannot account for such knowledge in an ordinary mortal, and evidently something has occurred which has led you to regard Paul as less than a god. Tell me about it, Flamby."

III

Don stood up, and walking across the room looked out of the window into the quadrangle. The story of the Charleswood photographs, which Flamby had related with many a pause and hesitance, had seemed to cast upon the room a shadow--the shadow of a wicked hypocrite. Both were silent for several minutes.

"And you are sure that Paul has seen these photographs?" said Don.

"You must have noticed the change in him yourself."

"I had noticed it, Flamby. I am afraid you are right. I will go down to Devonshire to-night and----"

"You will not!"

Don turned, and Flamby, her face evenly dusky and her eyes very bright, was standing up watching him. "Please don't be angry," she said approaching him, "because I spoke like that. But I could never forgive you if you told him. If he can think such a thing of me I don't care. What have I ever said or done that he should _dare_ to think such a thing!"

Don took both her hands and found that she was trembling. She looked aside, biting her lower lip. In vain she sought to control her emotions, knowing that they had finally betrayed her secret to this man in whose steadfast eyes she had long ago read a sorrowful understanding. At that moment she came near to hating Paul, and this, too, Don perceived with the clairvoyance of love. But because he was a very noble gentleman indeed, and at least as worthy of honour as the immortal Bussy d'Amboise, he sought not to advantage himself but to plead the cause of his friend and to lighten the sorrow of Flamby. "Have you tried hard not to care so much?"

Flamby nodded desperately, her eyes wells of tears.

"And it was useless?"

"Oh!" she cried, "I am mad! I hate myself! I hate myself!" She withdrew her hands and leapt on to the settee wildly, pressing her face against the cushions.

Don inhaled a deep breath and stood watching her. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tunic. "Have you considered, Flamby, what a hopeless thing it is."

"Of course, of course! I should loathe and despise any other girl who was such a wicked little fool. Dad would have killed me, and I should have deserved it!"

"Don't blame Paul too much, Flamby."

"I don't. I am glad that he can be so mean," she sobbed. "It helps me not to like him any more!"

"Paul is no ordinary man, Flamby, but neither is he a magician. How could you expect him to know?"

"He never even asked me."

Don, watching her, suddenly recognised that he could trust himself to pursue this conversation no further. "Tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James again," he said.

Flamby looked up quickly, and Don's hands clenched themselves in his pockets when he saw her tear-stained face. "I am afraid," she replied, "to tell you--now."

"Why are you afraid now, Flamby?"

"Because you will think----"

"I shall think nothing unworthy of you, Flamby."

"I went," said Flamby, twisting a little lace handkerchief in her hands, "because I was afraid--for Paul."

"For Paul!"

"You are beginning to wonder already."

"I am beginning to wonder but not to doubt. In what way were you afraid?"

"He is so sure."

"Sure that he has found the truth?"

"Not that, but sure that he is right in making it known."

Don hesitated. He, too, had had his moments of doubt, but he perceived that Flamby's doubts were based upon some matter of which at present he knew nothing. "Paul believes quite sincerely that he has been chosen for this task," he said. "He believes his present circumstances, or _Karma_, to be due to a number of earlier incarnations devoted to the pursuit of knowledge."

"Do you think if that was true he would make so many mistakes about people?" asked Flamby, and her voice had not yet recovered entire steadiness.

"I have told you that he is not a magician, Flamby, but you have still to tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James."

"I don't believe I can tell you, after all." Flamby had twisted the little handkerchief into a rope and was tugging at it desperately.

"Why?"

"Well--I might be wrong, and then I should never forgive myself. It is something you ought to know, but I can see now that I cannot tell you."

Don very deliberately took up his pipe from the table. "Here's an ash-tray," said Flamby in a faint voice. "Shall we go out to tea and see if we can cheer ourselves up a bit?"

"I think we might," replied Don, smiling in almost the old way. "Some place where there is a band."

* * * * *

As a direct result of this conversation, Paul received a letter two days later from Don. It touched whimsically upon many matters, and finally, "I have decided to add Orlando James to my list of undesirable acquaintances," wrote Don. "Don't let this harsh decision influence your own conduct in any way, but if at any time you chance to go walking with him and meet myself, pardon me if I fail to acknowledge either of you."

Paul read this paragraph many times. He received the letter one morning whilst Yvonne was out, she having gone into the neighbouring village, and when she came back he spoke of it to her. "Have you seen anything of Orlando James recently?" he asked.

Yvonne turned and began to arrange some fresh flowers in a bowl upon the cottage window-ledge. "No," she replied. "I have seen him rarely since the portrait was finished. Why?"

"I was merely wondering. He seems to be establishing a queer sort of reputation. Thessaly has thrown out hints more than once and Don quite frankly dislikes him."

"What kind of reputation, Paul?"

"Oh, the wrong kind for a portrait painter," replied Paul lightly. "I shall send him a cheque for the picture."

"But he has refused to accept any payment whatever."

"It was very flattering on his part to declare that its exhibition was worth so much to him, and to decline a fee, but nevertheless I shall send him a cheque to-night. Did you remember to go to the Post Office?"

"Yes." Yvonne turned slowly. "Here are the stamps."

"I can see," said Paul, "that either I must return to London or have Edwards come down here and put up somewhere in the neighbourhood. I have more work than I can handle unassisted."

"Let us go back to town, then, if you think it is hindering you to stay here."

"There is no occasion for you to return, Yvonne."

"Yes, but--I don't want to stay, Paul, if you are going. Really, I would rather not." There was something pathetic, almost fearful, in the insistency of her manner, and Paul had a glimpse again of that intangible yet tauntingly familiar phantom in his wife's bearing. A revelation seemed to be imminent, but it eluded him, and the more eagerly he sought to grasp it the further did it recede. "You don't _want_ to leave me behind, do you?" said Yvonne.

"Want to leave you behind!" cried Paul, standing up and crossing to where she stood by the window. "Yvonne!" He held her close in his arms, but there was no fire in the violet eyes, only a tired, pathetic expression.

IV

The pageant proceeded merrily; these were merry days. And because it was rumoured that men who fought hard also drank hard, the brethren of the blue ribbon at last perceived their opportunity and seized upon it with all the vigour and tenacity which belong to those reared upon a cocoa diet. Denying the divinity of the grape, they concealed their treason against Bacchus beneath a cloak of national necessity, and denied others that which they did not want themselves. They remained personally immune because no one thought of imposing a tax upon temperance-meetings, hot-water bottles and air-raid shelters. "Avoid a man who neither drinks nor smokes," was one of Don's adages. "He has other amusements."

Paul continued his pursuit of the elusive thread interwoven in modern literature, and made several notable discoveries. "Contemplation of the mountainous toils of Balzac and Dumas fills me with a kind of physical terror," he said to Don on one occasion. "It is an odd reflection that they would have achieved immortality just the same if they had contented themselves respectively with the creation of Madame Marnefle and the girl with the golden eyes, D'Artagnan and Chicot. The memory of Dumas is enshrined in his good men, that of Balzac in his bad women. One represents the active Male principle, the Sun, the other the passive Feminine, or the Moon. I have decided that Dumas was the immediate reincarnation of a musketeer, and Balzac of a public prosecutor."

"Pursuing this interesting form of criticism," said Don, "at once so trenchant and so unobjectionable, to what earlier phase should you ascribe the wit of G. K. Chesterton for example?"

"To the personal influence of Dr. Johnson and his contemporaries. H. G. Wells would seem to have had no earthly experiences since he was a priest of Bel, or if he had they were comparatively colourless. Rudyard Kipling knew and loved the spacious times of Elizabeth. How clearly we can trace the Roman exquisite in Walter Pater and the _bravo_ in George Moore. Stevenson was a buccaneer in whom repentance came too late, and who suffered the extreme penalty probably under Charles II. The author of _The Golden Bough_ was conceivably a Chaldean librarian, and from the writings of Anatole France steps forth shadowy a literary _religieux_ of the sixteenth century; but it is when we come to consider such cases as those of Spencer and Darwin that we meet with insurmountable obstacles. The _patientiotype_ process of Victor Hugo defies this system of analysis also, as does the glorious humanity of Mark Twain, and although Pinero proclaims himself a wit of the Regency, Bernard Shaw's spiritual pedigree is obscure. Nevertheless, all are weavers of the holy carpet, and our lives are drawn into the loom. All began weaving in the childhood of the world and each has taken up the thread again at his appointed hour."

Paul spent a great part of his time in Jules Thessaly's company. Thessaly had closed his town house, and was living in chambers adjoining Victoria Street. His windows commanded a view of an entrance to Westminster Cathedral, "from whence upward to my profane dwelling," he declared, "arises an odour of sanctity." From Thessaly's flat they set out upon many a strange excursion, one night visiting a private gaming-house whose patrons figured in the pages of Debrett, and, perhaps on the following evening, Thessaly's car would take them to a point in the West India Dock Road, from whence, roughly attired, they would plunge into the Asiatic underworld which lies hidden beneath the names of Three Colt Street and Pennyfields. They visited a foul den in Limehouse where a crook-backed Chinaman sat rocking to and fro before a dilapidated wooden joss in the light of a tin paraffin lamp, listened to the rats squealing under the dirty floor and watched men smoke opium. They patronised "revue" East and West, that concession to the demand of youth long exiled from feminine society which had superseded the legitimate drama. "There are three ingredients essential to the success of such an entertainment," Thessaly pronounced: "fat legs, thin legs, and legs." They witnessed a knuckle-fight in Whitechapel between a sailorman and a Jewish pugilist. The referee was a member of a famous sporting club, and the purse was put up by a young peer on leave from the bloody shambles before Ypres. "Our trans-Tiber evenings," Paul termed these adventures.

He had seized upon a clue to the ills of the world and he pursued it feverishly. "If men realised, as they realise that physical illness follows physical excess, that for every moment of pain unnecessarily inflicted upon any living creature--a horse, a dog, a cage-bird--they must suffer themselves a worse pang, would not the world be a better place?" he asked. "That fighting peer is accounted a fine fellow by his companions, and in an earlier life, when the unshaped destinies of men were being rough-hewn with sword and axe, he _was_ a fine fellow. But that earlier influence now is checking his development. If he could realise that he will probably be reborn a weakling doomed to suffer the buffets of the physically strong, he would doubtless reconsider his philosophy. He has lost track of himself. Our childish love of animals, which corresponds to a psychic pre-natal phase, is a memory which becomes obscured as the fleshly veil grows denser--which the many neglect, but which the wise man cherishes."

"Heredity plays its part, too," said Thessaly.

"Quite so. It is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to distinguish between the influences of heredity and those of pre-existence."

"More especially since few of us know our own fathers, and none of us our grandfathers. If our family tree record a line of abstemious forbears, and we mysteriously develop a partiality for neat rum and loose company, we hesitate whether to reproach ourselves for the vices of a previous existence or to disparage the morality of our grandmother."

Strange stories won currency at this time, too. Arising as he had done out of a cataclysm, Paul Mario by many was accepted as the harbinger of a second Coming. His claims were based upon no mere reiteration of ancient theories, but upon a comprehensible system which required no prayer-won faith from its followers, but which logically explained life, death, and those parts of the Word of Jesus Christ which orthodoxy persisted in regarding as "divine mysteries." Paul's concept of God and the Creation was substantially identical with that of Jacob Boehme and the Hermetic Philosophers. He showed the Universe to be the outcome of a Thought. Unexpressed Will desired to find expression, to become manifest. Such was the birth of Desire. Since in the beginning this Will was an Eye which beheld nothing because nothing outside Itself existed, It fashioned a Mirror and therein saw all things in Itself. This Mirror was the Eternal Mother, the Will the Eternal Father. The Eternal Father, beholding Himself and His wonders mirrored in the Eternal Mother, willed that being passive they should become active. Thought became materialised, force and space begot Motion and the Universe was. As illustrating the seven qualities through which the Divine energy operated, Paul quoted the following lines:--

"There are seven degrees in the holy sphere
That girdles the outer skies;
There are seven hues in the atmosphere
Of the Spirit Paradise;
And the seven lamps burn bright and clear
In the mind, the heart, and the eyes
Of the angel-spirits from every world
That ever and ever arise.
There are seven ages the angels know
In the courts of the Spirit Heaven:
And seven joys through the spirit flow
From the morn of the heart till even;
Seven curtains of light wave to and fro
Where the seven great trumpets the angels blow,
And the throne of God hath a seven-fold glow,
And the angel hosts are seven.
And a spiral winds from the worlds to the suns,
And every star that shines
In the path of degrees for ever runs,
And the spiral octave climbs;
And a seven-fold heaven round every one
In the spiral order twines.
There are seven links from God to man,
There are seven links and a threefold span;
And seven spheres in the great degree
Of one created immensity.
There are seven octaves of spirit love
In the heart, the mind, and the heavens above:
And seven degrees in the frailest thing,
Though it hath but a day for its blossoming."

It seemed as though all mysticism had culminated in Paul Mario, and so immense was his influence that the English Church was forced into action. Such heterodox views had been expressed from the pulpit since _The Gates_ had cast its challenge at the feet of orthodoxy that the bishops unanimously pronounced its teachings to be heretical, and forbade their adoption under divers pains and penalties. A certain brilliant and fashionable preacher resigned his living, and financed by a society established for the purpose, prepared to build a great church upon a site adjoining the Strand, to be called the New Temple. A definite schism thereupon was created, and so insistent became the demand for more light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of the compass. Even Islam, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the Sherif of Mecca issued a _firman_ to the mosques within his province authorising an intensive campaign against the _Koran Inglisi_--for Paul had embraced the tenets of the Moslem faith within his new Catholic creed.

At one of his clubs, which he visited rarely, he met one evening a bishop famed as a religious educationalist, a large red cleric having bristling eyebrows resembling shrimps and the calculating glance of a judge of good port. This astute man of the world attacked him along peculiar lines. "There must always be a hierarchy, Mr. Mario," he said. "Buddha--if such a personage ever existed--endeavoured to dispense with a priesthood and a ritual, but his followers have been unable to do so. You aver that the Kingdom of God is within ourselves, but if every man were able to find the Kingdom of God within himself he would have no occasion to pay others to find it for him. What would become of the poor churchman?"