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THE HILL OF DREAMS

by

ARTHUR MACHEN

1907







I


There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.

But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in
fairyland. The holidays were nearly done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out
resolved to lose himself, to discover strange hills and prospects that he
had never seen before. The air was still, breathless, exhausted after
heavy rain, and the clouds looked as if they had been molded of lead. No
breeze blew upon the hill, and down in the well of the valley not a dry
leaf stirred, not a bough shook in all the dark January woods.

About a mile from the rectory he had diverged from the main road by an
opening that promised mystery and adventure. It was an old neglected
lane, little more than a ditch, worn ten feet deep by its winter waters,
and shadowed by great untrimmed hedges, densely woven together. On each
side were turbid streams, and here and there a torrent of water gushed
down the banks, flooding the lane. It was so deep and dark that he could
not get a glimpse of the country through which he was passing, but the
way went down and down to some unconjectured hollow.

Perhaps he walked two miles between the high walls of the lane before its
descent ceased, but he thrilled with the sense of having journeyed very
far, all the long way from the know to the unknown. He had come as it
were into the bottom of a bowl amongst the hills, and black woods shut
out the world. From the road behind him, from the road before him, from
the unseen wells beneath the trees, rivulets of waters swelled and
streamed down towards the center to the brook that crossed the lane. Amid
the dead and wearied silence of the air, beneath leaden and motionless
clouds, it was strange to hear such a tumult of gurgling and rushing
water, and he stood for a while on the quivering footbridge and watched
the rush of dead wood and torn branches and wisps of straw, all hurrying
madly past him, to plunge into the heaped spume, the barmy froth that had
gathered against a fallen tree.

Then he climbed again, and went up between limestone rocks, higher and
higher, till the noise of waters became indistinct, a faint humming of
swarming hives in summer. He walked some distance on level ground, till
there was a break in the banks and a stile on which he could lean and
look out. He found himself, as he had hoped, afar and forlorn; he had
strayed into outland and occult territory. From the eminence of the
lane, skirting the brow of a hill, he looked down into deep valleys and
dingles, and beyond, across the trees, to remoter country, wild bare
hills and dark wooded lands meeting the grey still sky. Immediately
beneath his feet the ground sloped steep down to the valley, a hillside
of close grass patched with dead bracken, and dotted here and there with
stunted thorns, and below there were deep oak woods, all still and
silent, and lonely as if no one ever passed that way. The grass and
bracken and thorns and woods, all were brown and grey beneath the leaden
sky, and as Lucian looked he was amazed, as though he were reading a
wonderful story, the meaning of which was a little greater than his
understanding. Then, like the hero of a fairy-book, he went on and on,
catching now and again glimpses of the amazing country into which he had
penetrated, and perceiving rather than seeing that as the day waned
everything grew more grey and somber. As he advanced he heard the evening
sounds of the farms, the low of the cattle, and the barking of the
sheepdogs; a faint thin noise from far away. It was growing late, and as
the shadows blackened he walked faster, till once more the lane began to
descend, there was a sharp turn, and he found himself, with a good deal
of relief, and a little disappointment, on familiar ground. He had nearly
described a circle, and knew this end of the lane very well; it was not
much more than a mile from home. He walked smartly down the hill; the air
was all glimmering and indistinct, transmuting trees and hedges into
ghostly shapes, and the walls of the White House Farm flickered on the
hillside, as if they were moving towards him. Then a change came. First,
a little breath of wind brushed with a dry whispering sound through the
hedges, the few leaves left on the boughs began to stir, and one or two
danced madly, and as the wind freshened and came up from a new quarter,
the sapless branches above rattled against one another like bones. The
growing breeze seemed to clear the air and lighten it. He was passing the
stile where a path led to old Mrs. Gibbon's desolate little cottage, in
the middle of the fields, at some distance even from the lane, and he saw
the light blue smoke of her chimney rise distinct above the gaunt
greengage trees, against a pale band that was broadening along the
horizon. As he passed the stile with his head bent, and his eyes on the
ground, something white started out from the black shadow of the hedge,
and in the strange twilight, now tinged with a flush from the west, a
figure seemed to swim past him and disappear. For a moment he wondered
who it could be, the light was so flickering and unsteady, so unlike the
real atmosphere of the day, when he recollected it was only Annie Morgan,
old Morgan's daughter at the White House. She was three years older than
he, and it annoyed him to find that though she was only fifteen, there
had been a dreadful increase in her height since the summer holidays. He
had got to the bottom of the hill, and, lifting up his eyes, saw the
strange changes of the sky. The pale band had broadened into a clear vast
space of light, and above, the heavy leaden clouds were breaking apart
and driving across the heaven before the wind. He stopped to watch,
and looked up at the great mound that jutted out from the hills into
mid-valley. It was a natural formation, and always it must have had
something of the form of a fort, but its steepness had been increased by
Roman art, and there were high banks on the summit which Lucian's father
had told him were the _vallum_ of the camp, and a deep ditch had been dug
to the north to sever it from the hillside. On this summit oaks had
grown, queer stunted-looking trees with twisted and contorted trunks, and
writhing branches; and these now stood out black against the lighted sky.
And then the air changed once more; the flush increased, and a spot like
blood appeared in the pond by the gate, and all the clouds were touched
with fiery spots and dapples of flame; here and there it looked as if
awful furnace doors were being opened.

The wind blew wildly, and it came up through the woods with a noise like
a scream, and a great oak by the roadside ground its boughs together with
a dismal grating jar. As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all
upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides
crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of molten brass, and the very
road glittered. He was wonder-struck, almost aghast, before the scarlet
magic of the afterglow. The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames
from heaven were smitten about its walls, and above there was a dark
floating cloud, like fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree
showed as black as midnight against the black of the furnace.

When he got home he heard his mother's voice calling: "Here's Lucian at
last. Mary, Master Lucian has come, you can get the tea ready." He told a
long tale of his adventures, and felt somewhat mortified when his father
seemed perfectly acquainted with the whole course of the lane, and knew
the names of the wild woods through which he had passed in awe.

"You must have gone by the Darren, I suppose"--that was all he said.
"Yes, I noticed the sunset; we shall have some stormy weather. I don't
expect to see many in church tomorrow."

There was buttered toast for tea "because it was holidays." The red
curtains were drawn, and a bright fire was burning, and there was the old
familiar furniture, a little shabby, but charming from association. It
was much pleasanter than the cold and squalid schoolroom; and much better
to be reading _Chambers's Journal_ than learning Euclid; and better to
talk to his father and mother than to be answering such remarks as: "I
say, Taylor, I've torn my trousers; how much do you charge for
mending?" "Lucy, dear, come quick and sew this button on my shirt."

That night the storm woke him, and he groped with his hands amongst the
bedclothes, and sat up, shuddering, not knowing where he was. He had seen
himself, in a dream, within the Roman fort, working some dark horror, and
the furnace doors were opened and a blast of flame from heaven was
smitten upon him.

Lucian went slowly, but not discreditably, up the school, gaining prizes
now and again, and falling in love more and more with useless reading and
unlikely knowledge. He did his elegiacs and iambics well enough, but he
preferred exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He
liked history, but he loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain
deserted by the legions, the rare pavements riven by frost, Celtic magic
still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest,
the rosy marbles stained with rain, and the walls growing grey. The
masters did not encourage these researches; a pure enthusiasm, they felt,
should be for cricket and football, the _dilettanti_ might even play
fives and read Shakespeare without blame, but healthy English boys should
have nothing to do with decadent periods. He was once found guilty of
recommending Villon to a school-fellow named Barnes. Barnes tried to
extract unpleasantness from the text during preparation, and rioted in
his place, owing to his incapacity for the language. The matter was a
serious one; the headmaster had never heard of Villon, and the culprit
gave up the name of his literary admirer without remorse. Hence, sorrow
for Lucian, and complete immunity for the miserable illiterate Barnes,
who resolved to confine his researches to the Old Testament, a book which
the headmaster knew well. As for Lucian, he plodded on, learning his work
decently, and sometimes doing very creditable Latin and Greek prose. His
school-fellows thought him quite mad, and tolerated him, and indeed were
very kind to him in their barbarous manner. He often remembered in after
life acts of generosity and good nature done by wretches like Barnes, who
had no care for old French nor for curious meters, and such recollections
always moved him to emotion. Travelers tell such tales; cast upon cruel
shores amongst savage races, they have found no little kindness and
warmth of hospitality.

He looked forward to the holidays as joyfully as the rest of them. Barnes
and his friend Duscot used to tell him their plans and anticipation; they
were going home to brothers and sisters, and to cricket, more cricket, or
to football, more football, and in the winter there were parties and
jollities of all sorts. In return he would announce his intention of
studying the Hebrew language, or perhaps Provençal, with a walk up a bare
and desolate mountain by way of open-air amusement, and on a rainy day
for choice. Whereupon Barnes would impart to Duscot his confident belief
that old Taylor was quite cracked. It was a queer, funny life that of
school, and so very unlike anything in _Tom Brown_. He once saw the
headmaster patting the head of the bishop's little boy, while he called
him "my little man," and smiled hideously. He told the tale grotesquely
in the lower fifth room the same day, and earned much applause, but
forfeited all liking directly by proposing a voluntary course of
scholastic logic. One barbarian threw him to the ground and another
jumped on him, but it was done very pleasantly. There were, indeed, some
few of a worse class in the school, solemn sycophants, prigs perfected
from tender years, who thought life already "serious," and yet, as the
headmaster said, were "joyous, manly young fellows." Some of these
dressed for dinner at home, and talked of dances when they came back in
January. But this virulent sort was comparatively infrequent, and
achieved great success in after life. Taking his school days as a whole,
he always spoke up for the system, and years afterward he described
with enthusiasm the strong beer at a roadside tavern, some way out of the
town. But he always maintained that the taste for tobacco, acquired in
early life, was the great life, was the great note of the English Public
School.

Three years after Lucian's discovery of the narrow lane and the vision of
the flaming fort, the August holidays brought him home at a time of great
heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather, when some
Provençal spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and
the grasshoppers chirp loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of
rosemary, and white walls of the old farmhouses blaze in the sunlight
as if they stood in Arles or Avignon or famed Tarascon by Rhone.

Lucian's father was late at the station, and consequently Lucian bought
the _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ which he saw on the
bookstall. When his father did drive up, Lucian noticed that the old trap
had had a new coat of dark paint, and that the pony looked advanced in
years.

"I was afraid that I should be late, Lucian," said his father, "though I
made old Polly go like anything. I was just going to tell George to put
her into the trap when young Philip Harris came to me in a terrible
state. He said his father fell down 'all of a sudden like' in the middle
of the field, and they couldn't make him speak, and would I please to
come and see him. So I had to go, though I couldn't do anything for the
poor fellow. They had sent for Dr. Burrows, and I am afraid he will find
it a bad case of sunstroke. The old people say they never remember such a
heat before."

The pony jogged steadily along the burning turnpike road, taking revenge
for the hurrying on the way to the station. The hedges were white with
the limestone dust, and the vapor of heat palpitated over the fields.
Lucian showed his _Confessions_ to his father, and began to talk of the
beautiful bits he had already found. Mr. Taylor knew the book well--had
read it many years before. Indeed he was almost as difficult to surprise
as that character in Daudet, who had one formula for all the chances of
life, and when he saw the drowned Academician dragged out of the river,
merely observed "_J'ai vu tout ça._" Mr. Taylor the parson, as his
parishioners called him, had read the fine books and loved the hills
and woods, and now knew no more of pleasant or sensational surprises.
Indeed the living was much depreciated in value, and his own private
means were reduced almost to vanishing point, and under such
circumstances the great style loses many of its finer savors. He was very
fond of Lucian, and cheered by his return, but in the evening he would be
a sad man again, with his head resting on one hand, and eyes reproaching
sorry fortune.

Nobody called out "Here's your master with Master Lucian; you can get tea
ready," when the pony jogged up to the front door. His mother had been
dead a year, and a cousin kept house. She was a respectable person called
Deacon, of middle age, and ordinary standards; and, consequently, there
was cold mutton on the table. There was a cake, but nothing of flour,
baked in ovens, would rise at Miss Deacon's evocation. Still, the meal
was laid in the beloved "parlor," with the view of hills and valleys and
climbing woods from the open window, and the old furniture was still
pleasant to see, and the old books in the shelves had many memories. One
of the most respected of the armchairs had become weak in the castors and
had to be artfully propped up, but Lucian found it very comfortable after
the hard forms. When tea was over he went out and strolled in the garden
and orchards, and looked over the stile down into the brake, where
foxgloves and bracken and broom mingled with the hazel undergrowth, where
he knew of secret glades and untracked recesses, deep in the woven green,
the cabinets for many years of his lonely meditations. Every path about
his home, every field and hedgerow had dear and friendly memories for
him; and the odor of the meadowsweet was better than the incense steaming
in the sunshine. He loitered, and hung over the stile till the far-off
woods began to turn purple, till the white mists were wreathing in the
valley.

Day after day, through all that August, morning and evening were wrapped
in haze; day after day the earth shimmered in the heat, and the air was
strange, unfamiliar. As he wandered in the lanes and sauntered by the
cool sweet verge of the woods, he saw and felt that nothing was common or
accustomed, for the sunlight transfigured the meadows and changed all the
form of the earth. Under the violent Provençal sun, the elms and beeches
looked exotic trees, and in the early morning, when the mists were thick,
the hills had put on an unearthly shape.

The one adventure of the holidays was the visit to the Roman fort, to
that fantastic hill about whose steep bastions and haggard oaks he had
seen the flames of sunset writhing nearly three years before. Ever since
that Saturday evening in January, the lonely valley had been a desirable
place to him; he had watched the green battlements in summer and winter
weather, had seen the heaped mounds rising dimly amidst the drifting
rain, had marked the violent height swim up from the ice-white mists of
summer evenings, had watched the fairy bulwarks glimmer and vanish in
hovering April twilight. In the hedge of the lane there was a gate on
which he used to lean and look down south to where the hill surged up so
suddenly, its summit defined on summer evenings not only by the rounded
ramparts but by the ring of dense green foliage that marked the circle
of oak trees. Higher up the lane, on the way he had come that Saturday
afternoon, one could see the white walls of Morgan's farm on the
hillside to the north, and on the south there was the stile with the
view of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage smoke; but down in the hollow, looking
over the gate, there was no hint of human work, except those green and
antique battlements, on which the oaks stood in circle, guarding the
inner wood.

The ring of the fort drew him with stronger fascination during that hot
August weather. Standing, or as his headmaster would have said, "mooning"
by the gate, and looking into that enclosed and secret valley, it seemed
to his fancy as if there were a halo about the hill, an aureole that
played like flame around it. One afternoon as he gazed from his station
by the gate the sheer sides and the swelling bulwarks were more than ever
things of enchantment; the green oak ring stood out against the sky as
still and bright as in a picture, and Lucian, in spite of his respect for
the law of trespass, slid over the gate. The farmers and their men were
busy on the uplands with the harvest, and the adventure was irresistible.
At first he stole along by the brook in the shadow of the alders, where
the grass and the flowers of wet meadows grew richly; but as he drew
nearer to the fort, and its height now rose sheer above him, he left all
shelter, and began desperately to mount. There was not a breath of wind;
the sunlight shone down on the bare hillside; the loud chirp of the
grasshoppers was the only sound. It was a steep ascent and grew steeper
as the valley sank away. He turned for a moment, and looked down towards
the stream which now seemed to wind remote between the alders; above the
valley there were small dark figures moving in the cornfield, and now and
again there came the faint echo of a high-pitched voice singing through
the air as on a wire. He was wet with heat; the sweat streamed off his
face, and he could feel it trickling all over his body. But above him the
green bastions rose defiant, and the dark ring of oaks promised coolness.
He pressed on, and higher, and at last began to crawl up the _vallum_, on
hands and knees, grasping the turf and here and there the roots that had
burst through the red earth. And then he lay, panting with deep breaths,
on the summit.

Within the fort it was all dusky and cool and hollow; it was as if one
stood at the bottom of a great cup. Within, the wall seemed higher than
without, and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There
were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different
from the common nettles in the lanes, and Lucian, letting his hand touch
a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch there
was an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old, crooked
and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms; beech and oak and
hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed that each
seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He began to fight his way
through the ugly growth, stumbling and getting hard knocks from the
rebound of twisted boughs. His foot struck once or twice against
something harder than wood, and looking down he saw stones white with the
leprosy of age, but still showing the work of the axe. And farther, the
roots of the stunted trees gripped the foot-high relics of a wall; and a
round heap of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt
poisonous. The earth was black and unctuous, and bubbling under the feet,
left no track behind. From it, in the darkest places where the shadow was
thickest, swelled the growth of an abominable fungus, making the still
air sick with its corrupt odor, and he shuddered as he felt the horrible
thing pulped beneath his feet. Then there was a gleam of sunlight, and as
he thrust the last boughs apart, he stumbled into the open space in the
heart of the camp. It was a lawn of sweet close turf in the center of the
matted brake, of clean firm earth from which no shameful growth sprouted,
and near the middle of the glade was a stump of a felled yew-tree, left
untrimmed by the woodman. Lucian thought it must have been made for a
seat; a crooked bough through which a little sap still ran was a support
for the back, and he sat down and rested after his toil. It was not
really so comfortable a seat as one of the school forms, but the
satisfaction was to find anything at all that would serve for a chair. He
sat there, still panting after the climb and his struggle through the
dank and jungle-like thicket, and he felt as if he were growing hotter
and hotter; the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the
tingling fire seemed to spread all over his body.

Suddenly, he knew that he was alone. Not merely solitary; that he had
often been amongst the woods and deep in the lanes; but now it was a
wholly different and a very strange sensation. He thought of the valley
winding far below him, all its fields by the brook green and peaceful and
still, without path or track. Then he had climbed the abrupt surge of the
hill, and passing the green and swelling battlements, the ring of oaks,
and the matted thicket, had come to the central space. And behind there
were, he knew, many desolate fields, wild as common, untrodden,
unvisited. He was utterly alone. He still grew hotter as he sat on the
stump, and at last lay down at full length on the soft grass, and more at
his ease felt the waves of heat pass over his body.

And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined,
delicious things, indulging a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air
seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled
and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the
great mounds, within the ring of oaks, deep in the heart of the matted
thicket. Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with
the laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly misshapen
trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, not one was free,
but all were interlaced and grew one about another; and just above
ground, where the cankered stems joined the protuberant roots, there were
forms that imitated the human shape, and faces and twining limbs that
amazed him. Green mosses were hair, and tresses were stark in grey
lichen; a twisted root swelled into a limb; in the hollows of the rotted
bark he saw the masks of men. His eyes were fixed and fascinated by the
simulacra of the wood, and could not see his hands, and so at last, and
suddenly, it seemed, he lay in the sunlight, beautiful with his olive
skin, dark haired, dark eyed, the gleaming bodily vision of a strayed
faun.

Quick flames now quivered in the substance of his nerves, hints of
mysteries, secrets of life passed trembling through his brain, unknown
desires stung him. As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the
sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between the
bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadow of the brake made an
odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque postures of stem and
root began to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him heaved and
sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell asleep, and lay still on
the grass, in the midst of the thicket.

He found out afterwards that he must have slept for nearly an hour. The
shadows had changed when he awoke; his senses came to him with a sudden
shock, and he sat up and stared at his bare limbs in stupid amazement. He
huddled on his clothes and laced his boots, wondering what folly had
beset him. Then, while he stood indecisive, hesitating, his brain a whirl
of puzzled thought, his body trembling, his hands shaking; as with
electric heat, sudden remembrance possessed him. A flaming blush shone
red on his cheeks, and glowed and thrilled through his limbs. As he
awoke, a brief and slight breeze had stirred in a nook of the matted
boughs, and there was a glinting that might have been the flash of sudden
sunlight across shadow, and the branches rustled and murmured for a
moment, perhaps at the wind's passage.

He stretched out his hands, and cried to his visitant to return; he
entreated the dark eyes that had shone over him, and the scarlet lips
that had kissed him. And then panic fear rushed into his heart, and he
ran blindly, dashing through the wood. He climbed the _vallum_, and
looked out, crouching, lest anybody should see him. Only the shadows were
changed, and a breath of cooler air mounted from the brook; the fields
were still and peaceful, the black figures moved, far away, amidst the
corn, and the faint echo of the high-pitched voices sang thin and distant
on the evening wind. Across the stream, in the cleft on the hill,
opposite to the fort, the blue wood smoke stole up a spiral pillar from
the chimney of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage. He began to run full tilt down
the steep surge of the hill, and never stopped till he was over the gate
and in the lane again. As he looked back, down the valley to the south,
and saw the violent ascent, the green swelling bulwarks, and the dark
ring of oaks; the sunlight seemed to play about the fort with an aureole
of flame.

"Where on earth have you been all this time, Lucian?" said his cousin
when he got home. "Why, you look quite ill. It is really madness of you
to go walking in such weather as this. I wonder you haven't got a
sunstroke. And the tea must be nearly cold. I couldn't keep your father
waiting, you know."

He muttered something about being rather tired, and sat down to his tea.
It was not cold, for the "cozy" had been put over the pot, but it was
black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was
unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great
consolation that he had only been asleep and dreaming queer, nightmarish
dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and thought the
loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and possibly the nettle
sting, which still tingled most abominably, must have been the only
factors in his farrago of impossible recollections. He remembered that
when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with thick folds of
his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good length, and put it in his
pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was almost interested when he came
in from his evening stroll about the garden and saw the specimen.

"Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?" he said. "You haven't
been to Caermaen, have you?"

"No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common."

"Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know what it
is?"

"No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles."

"Yes; it's a Roman nettle--_arctic pilulifera_. It's a rare plant.
Burrows says it's to be found at Caermaen, but I was never able to come
across it. I must add it to the _flora_ of the parish."

Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a _flora_ accompanied by a _hortus
siccus_, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put
the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the
maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.

Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening in
the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the fort.
But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it seemed all
delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in the
afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar's wife, had "commanded" his presence
at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven, ruddy of face,
was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He "deplored" all
extreme party convictions, and thought the great needs of our beloved
Church were conciliation, moderation, and above all "amolgamation"--so he
pronounced the word. Mrs. Dixon was tall, imposing, splendid, well fitted
for the Episcopal order, with gifts that would have shone at the palace.
There were daughters, who studied German Literature, and thought Miss
Frances Ridley Havergal wrote poetry, but Lucian had no fear of them; he
dreaded the boys. Everybody said they were such fine, manly fellows, such
gentlemanly boys, with such a good manner, sure to get on in the world.
Lucian had said "Bother!" in a very violent manner when the gracious
invitation was conveyed to him, but there was no getting out of it. Miss
Deacon did her best to make him look smart; his ties were all so
disgraceful that she had to supply the want with a narrow ribbon of a
sky-blue tint; and she brushed him so long and so violently that he quite
understood why a horse sometimes bites and sometimes kicks the groom. He
set out between two and three in a gloomy frame of mind; he knew too well
what spending the afternoon with honest manly boys meant. He found the
reality more lurid than his anticipation. The boys were in the field, and
the first remark he heard when he got in sight of the group was:

"Hullo, Lucian, how much for the tie?" "Fine tie," another, a stranger,
observed. "You bagged it from the kitten, didn't you?"

Then they made up a game of cricket, and he was put in first. He was
l.b.w. in his second over, so they all said, and had to field for the
rest of the afternoon. Arthur Dixon, who was about his own age,
forgetting all the laws of hospitality, told him he was a beastly muff
when he missed a catch, rather a difficult catch. He missed several
catches, and it seemed as if he were always panting after balls, which,
as Edward Dixon said, any fool, even a baby, could have stopped. At last
the game broke up, solely from Lucian's lack of skill, as everybody
declared. Edward Dixon, who was thirteen, and had a swollen red face and
a projecting eye, wanted to fight him for spoiling the game, and the
others agreed that he funked the fight in a rather dirty manner. The
strange boy, who was called De Carti, and was understood to be faintly
related to Lord De Carti of M'Carthytown, said openly that the fellows at
his place wouldn't stand such a sneak for five minutes. So the afternoon
passed off very pleasantly indeed, till it was time to go into the
vicarage for weak tea, homemade cake, and unripe plums. He got away at
last. As he went out at the gate, he heard De Carti's final observation:

"We like to dress well at our place. His governor must be beastly poor to
let him go about like that. D'y' see his trousers are all ragged at heel?
Is old Taylor a gentleman?"

It had been a very gentlemanly afternoon, but there was a certain relief
when the vicarage was far behind, and the evening smoke of the little
town, once the glorious capital of Siluria, hung haze-like over the
ragged roofs and mingled with the river mist. He looked down from the
height of the road on the huddled houses, saw the points of light start
out suddenly from the cottages on the hillside beyond, and gazed at the
long lovely valley fading in the twilight, till the darkness came and all
that remained was the somber ridge of the forest. The way was pleasant
through the solemn scented lane, with glimpses of dim country, the vague
mystery of night overshadowing the woods and meadows. A warm wind blew
gusts of odor from the meadowsweet by the brook, now and then bee and
beetle span homeward through the air, booming a deep note as from a great
organ far away, and from the verge of the wood came the "who-oo, who-oo,
who-oo" of the owls, a wild strange sound that mingled with the whirr and
rattle of the night-jar, deep in the bracken. The moon swam up through
the films of misty cloud, and hung, a golden glorious lantern, in
mid-air; and, set in the dusky hedge, the little green fires of the
glowworms appeared. He sauntered slowly up the lane, drinking in the
religion of the scene, and thinking the country by night as mystic and
wonderful as a dimly-lit cathedral. He had quite forgotten the "manly
young fellows" and their sports, and only wished as the land began to
shimmer and gleam in the moonlight that he knew by some medium of words
or color how to represent the loveliness about his way.

"Had a pleasant evening, Lucian?" said his father when he came in.

"Yes, I had a nice walk home. Oh, in the afternoon we played cricket. I
didn't care for it much. There was a boy named De Carti there; he is
staying with the Dixons. Mrs. Dixon whispered to me when we were going in
to tea, 'He's a second cousin of Lord De Carti's,' and she looked quite
grave as if she were in church."

The parson grinned grimly and lit his old pipe.

"Baron De Carti's great-grandfather was a Dublin attorney," he remarked.
"Which his name was Jeremiah M'Carthy. His prejudiced fellow-citizens
called him the Unjust Steward, also the Bloody Attorney, and I believe
that 'to hell with M'Carthy' was quite a popular cry about the time of
the Union."

Mr. Taylor was a man of very wide and irregular reading and a tenacious
memory; he often used to wonder why he had not risen in the Church. He
had once told Mr. Dixon a singular and _drolatique_ anecdote concerning
the bishop's college days, and he never discovered why the prelate did
not bow according to his custom when the name of Taylor was called at the
next visitation. Some people said the reason was lighted candles, but
that was impossible, as the Reverend and Honorable Smallwood Stafford,
Lord Beamys's son, who had a cure of souls in the cathedral city, was
well known to burn no end of candles, and with him the bishop was on the
best of terms. Indeed the bishop often stayed at Coplesey (pronounced
"Copsey") Hall, Lord Beamys's place in the west.

Lucian had mentioned the name of De Carti with intention, and had perhaps
exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon's respectful manner. He knew such
incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these subjects from
a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes made the strangest
remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of treating serious things
was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to
increase their isolation. People said they would often have liked to
asked Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties, and other cheap
entertainments, if only he had not been such an _extreme_ man and so
_queer_. Indeed, a year before, Mr. Taylor had gone to a garden-party at
the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun of the bishop's recent
address on missions to the Portuguese, that the Gervases and Dixons and
all who heard him were quite shocked and annoyed. And, as Mrs. Meyrick of
Lanyravon observed, his black coat was perfectly _green_ with age; so on
the whole the Gervases did not like to invite Mr. Taylor again. As for
the son, nobody cared to have him; Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her
husband, really asked him out of charity.

"I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home," she remarked, "so I
thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way. But he is
such an _unsatisfactory_ boy, he would only have one slice of that nice
plain cake, and I couldn't get him to take more than two plums. They were
really quite ripe too, and boys are usually so fond of fruit."

Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own company,
and make the best he could of the ripe peaches on the south wall of the
rectory garden. There was a certain corner where the heat of that hot
August seemed concentrated, reverberated from one wall to the other, and
here he liked to linger of mornings, when the mists were still thick in
the valleys, "mooning," meditating, extending his walk from the quince to
the medlar and back again, beside the moldering walls of mellowed brick.
He was full of a certain wonder and awe, not unmixed with a swell of
strange exultation, and wished more and more to be alone, to think over
that wonderful afternoon within the fort. In spite of himself the
impression was fading; he could not understand that feeling of mad panic
terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside;
yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluctance of
the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after his awakening the
sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had
suffered some profoundest degradation. He saw before him a vision of two
forms; a faun with tingling and prickling flesh lay expectant in the
sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a miserable shamed boy,
standing with trembling body and shaking, unsteady hands. It was all
confused, a procession of blurred images, now of rapture and ecstasy,
and now of terror and shame, floating in a light that was altogether
phantasmal and unreal. He dared not approach the fort again; he lingered
in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it, but a mile away, and
separated by the wild land and a strip of wood from the towering
battlements. Here he was looking over a gate one day, doubtful and
wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him, and glancing round
quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White House.

"Good afternoon, Master Lucian," he began. "Mr. Taylor pretty well, I
suppose? I be goin' to the house a minute; the men in the fields are
wantin' some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider, Master
Lucian? It's very good, sir, indeed."

Lucian did not want any cider, but he thought it would please old Morgan
if he took some, so he said he should like to taste the cider very much
indeed. Morgan was a sturdy, thick-set old man of the ancient stock; a
stiff churchman, who breakfasted regularly on fat broth and Caerphilly
cheese in the fashion of his ancestors; hot, spiced elder wine was for
winter nights, and gin for festal seasons. The farm had always been the
freehold of the family, and when Lucian, in the wake of the yeoman,
passed through the deep porch by the oaken door, down into the long dark
kitchen, he felt as though the seventeenth century still lingered on. One
mullioned window, set deep in the sloping wall, gave all the light there
was through quarries of thick glass in which there were whorls and
circles, so that the lapping rose-branch and the garden and the fields
beyond were distorted to the sight. Two heavy beams, oaken but
whitewashed, ran across the ceiling; a little glow of fire sparkled in
the great fireplace, and a curl of blue smoke fled up the cavern of the
chimney. Here was the genuine chimney-corner of our fathers; there were
seats on each side of the fireplace where one could sit snug and
sheltered on December nights, warm and merry in the blazing light, and
listen to the battle of the storm, and hear the flame spit and hiss at
the falling snowflakes. At the back of the fire were great blackened
tiles with raised initials and a date.--I.M., 1684.

"Sit down, Master Lucian, sit down, sir," said Morgan.

"Annie," he called through one of the numerous doors, "here's Master
Lucian, the parson, would like a drop of cider. Fetch a jug, will you,
directly?"

"Very well, father," came the voice from the dairy and presently the girl
entered, wiping the jug she held. In his boyish way Lucian had been a
good deal disturbed by Annie Morgan; he could see her on Sundays from his
seat in church, and her skin, curiously pale, her lips that seemed as
though they were stained with some brilliant pigment, her black hair, and
the quivering black eyes, gave him odd fancies which he had hardly shaped
to himself. Annie had grown into a woman in three years, and he was still
a boy. She came into the kitchen, curtsying and smiling.

"Good-day, Master Lucian, and how is Mr. Taylor, sir?"

"Pretty well, thank you. I hope you are well."

"Nicely, sir, thank you. How nice your voice do sound in church, Master
Lucian, to be sure. I was telling father about it last Sunday."

Lucian grinned and felt uncomfortable, and the girl set down the jug on
the round table and brought a glass from the dresser. She bent close over
him as she poured out the green oily cider, fragrant of the orchard; her
hand touched his shoulder for a moment, and she said, "I beg your pardon,
sir," very prettily. He looked up eagerly at her face; the black eyes, a
little oval in shape, were shining, and the lips smiled. Annie wore a
plain dress of some black stuff, open at the throat; her skin was
beautiful. For a moment the ghost of a fancy hovered unsubstantial in his
mind; and then Annie curtsied as she handed him the cider, and replied to
his thanks with, "And welcome kindly, sir."

The drink was really good; not thin, nor sweet, but round and full and
generous, with a fine yellow flame twinkling through the green when one
held it up to the light. It was like a stray sunbeam hovering on the
grass in a deep orchard, and he swallowed the glassful with relish, and
had some more, warmly commending it. Mr. Morgan was touched.

"I see you do know a good thing, sir," he said. "Is, indeed, now, it's
good stuff, though it's my own makin'. My old grandfather he planted the
trees in the time of the wars, and he was a very good judge of an apple
in his day and generation. And a famous grafter he was, to be sure. You
will never see no swelling in the trees he grafted at all whatever. Now
there's James Morris, Penyrhaul, he's a famous grafter, too, and yet them
Redstreaks he grafted for me five year ago, they be all swollen-like
below the graft already. Would you like to taste a Blemmin pippin, now,
Master Lucian? there be a few left in the loft, I believe."

Lucian said he should like an apple very much, and the farmer went out by
another door, and Annie stayed in the kitchen talking. She said Mrs.
Trevor, her married sister, was coming to them soon to spend a few days.

"She's got such a beautiful baby," said Annie, "and he's quite
sensible-like already, though he's only nine months old. Mary would like
to see you, sir, if you would be so kind as to step in; that is, if it's
not troubling you at all, Master Lucian. I suppose you must be getting a
fine scholar now, sir?"

"I am doing pretty well, thank you," said the boy. "I was first in my
form last term."

"Fancy! To think of that! D'you hear, father, what a scholar Master
Lucian be getting?"

"He be a rare grammarian, I'm sure," said the farmer. "You do take after
your father, sir; I always do say that nobody have got such a good
deliverance in the pulpit."

Lucian did not find the Blenheim Orange as good as the cider, but he ate
it with all the appearance of relish, and put another, with thanks, in
his pocket. He thanked the farmer again when he got up to go; and Annie
curtsied and smiled, and wished him good-day, and welcome, kindly.

Lucian heard her saying to her father as he went out what a nice-mannered
young gentleman he was getting, to be sure; and he went on his way,
thinking that Annie was really very pretty, and speculating as to whether
he would have the courage to kiss her, if they met in a dark lane. He was
quite sure she would only laugh, and say, "Oh, Master Lucian!"

For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and
hot; but the bridge of time, gradually lengthening, made those dreadful
and delicious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they all
passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in amazement,
not knowing why this used to be a symbol of terror or that of joy. At the
end of each term he would come home and find his father a little more
despondent, and harder to cheer even for a moment; and the wall paper and
the furniture grew more and more dingy and shabby. The two cats, loved
and ancient beasts, that he remembered when he was quite a little boy,
before he went to school, died miserably, one after the other. Old Polly,
the pony, at last fell down in the stable from the weakness of old age,
and had to be killed there; the battered old trap ran no longer along the
well-remembered lanes. There was long meadow grass on the lawn, and the
trained fruit trees on the wall had got quite out of hand. At last, when
Lucian was seventeen, his father was obliged to take him from school; he
could no longer afford the fees. This was the sorry ending of many hopes,
and dreams of a double-first, a fellowship, distinction and glory that
the poor parson had long entertained for his son, and the two moped
together, in the shabby room, one on each side of the sulky fire,
thinking of dead days and finished plans, and seeing a grey future in the
years that advanced towards them. At one time there seemed some chance of
a distant relative coming forward to Lucian's assistance; and indeed it
was quite settled that he should go up to London with certain definite
aims. Mr. Taylor told the good news to his acquaintances--his coat was
too green now for any pretence of friendship; and Lucian himself spoke of
his plans to Burrows the doctor and Mr. Dixon, and one or two others.
Then the whole scheme fell through, and the parson and his son suffered
much sympathy. People, of course, had to say they were sorry, but in
reality the news was received with high spirits, with the joy with which
one sees a stone, as it rolls down a steep place, give yet another
bounding leap towards the pool beneath. Mrs. Dixon heard the pleasant
tidings from Mrs. Colley, who came in to talk about the Mothers' Meeting
and the Band of Hope. Mrs. Dixon was nursing little Athelwig, or some
such name, at the time, and made many affecting observations on the
general righteousness with which the world was governed. Indeed, poor
Lucian's disappointment seemed distinctly to increase her faith in the
Divine Order, as if it had been some example in Butler's _Analogy_.

"Aren't Mr. Taylor's views very _extreme?_" she said to her husband the
same evening.

"I am afraid they are," he replied. "I was quite _grieved_ at the last
Diocesan Conference at the way in which he spoke. The dear old bishop had
given an address on Auricular Confession; he was _forced_ to do so, you
know, after what had happened, and I must say that I never felt prouder
of our beloved Church."

Mr. Dixon told all the Homeric story of the conference, reciting the
achievements of the champions, "deploring" this and applauding that. It
seemed that Mr. Taylor had had the audacity to quote authorities which
the bishop could not very well repudiate, though they were directly
opposed to the "safe" Episcopal pronouncement.

Mrs. Dixon of course was grieved; it was "sad" to think of a clergyman
behaving so shamefully.

"But you know, dear," she proceeded, "I have been thinking about that
unfortunate Taylor boy and his disappointments, and after what you've
just told me, I am sure it's some kind of judgment on them both. Has Mr.
Taylor forgotten the vows he took at his ordination? But don't you think,
dear, I am right, and that he has been punished: 'The sins of the
fathers'?"

Somehow or other Lucian divined the atmosphere of threatenings and
judgments, and shrank more and more from the small society of the
countryside. For his part, when he was not "mooning" in the beloved
fields and woods of happy memory, he shut himself up with books, reading
whatever could be found on the shelves, and amassing a store of
incongruous and obsolete knowledge. Long did he linger with the men of
the seventeenth century; delaying the gay sunlit streets with Pepys, and
listening to the charmed sound of the Restoration Revel; roaming by
peaceful streams with Izaak Walton, and the great Catholic divines;
enchanted with the portrait of Herbert the loving ascetic; awed by the
mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cavalier poets sang their gallant
songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incantation
of a verse. And in the old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he
found the good and beautiful English life, a time full of grace and
dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he
had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the
stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth,
he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and
symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the
Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of
alchemists--all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with
the hills and hanging woods, the brooks and lonely waterpools; books, the
thoughts of books, the stirrings of imagination, all fused into one
phantasy by the magic of the outland country. He held himself aloof from
the walls of the fort; he was content to see the heaped mounds, the
violent height with faerie bulwarks, from the gate in the lane, and to
leave all within the ring of oaks in the mystery of his boyhood's vision.
He professed to laugh at himself and at his fancies of that hot August
afternoon, when sleep came to him within the thicket, but in his heart of
hearts there was something that never faded--something that glowed like
the red glint of a gypsy's fire seen from afar across the hills and mists
of the night, and known to be burning in a wild land. Sometimes, when he
was sunken in his books, the flame of delight shot up, and showed him a
whole province and continent of his nature, all shining and aglow; and in
the midst of the exultation and triumph he would draw back, a little
afraid. He had become ascetic in his studious and melancholy isolation,
and the vision of such ecstasies frightened him. He began to write a
little; at first very tentatively and feebly, and then with more
confidence. He showed some of his verses to his father, who told him with
a sigh that he had once hoped to write--in the old days at Oxford, he
added.

"They are very nicely done," said the parson; "but I'm afraid you won't
find anybody to print them, my boy."

So he pottered on; reading everything, imitating what struck his fancy,
attempting the effect of the classic meters in English verse, trying his
hand at a masque, a Restoration comedy, forming impossible plans for
books which rarely got beyond half a dozen lines on a sheet of paper;
beset with splendid fancies which refused to abide before the pen. But
the vain joy of conception was not altogether vain, for it gave him some
armor about his heart.

The months went by, monotonous, and sometimes blotted with despair. He
wrote and planned and filled the waste-paper basket with hopeless
efforts. Now and then he sent verses or prose articles to magazines, in
pathetic ignorance of the trade. He felt the immense difficulty of the
career of literature without clearly understanding it; the battle was
happily in a mist, so that the host of the enemy, terribly arrayed, was
to some extent hidden. Yet there was enough of difficulty to appall; from
following the intricate course of little nameless brooks, from hushed
twilight woods, from the vision of the mountains, and the breath of the
great wind, passing from deep to deep, he would come home filled with
thoughts and emotions, mystic fancies which he yearned to translate into
the written word. And the result of the effort seemed always to be
bathos! Wooden sentences, a portentous stilted style, obscurity, and
awkwardness clogged the pen; it seemed impossible to win the great secret
of language; the stars glittered only in the darkness, and vanished away
in clearer light. The periods of despair were often long and heavy, the
victories very few and trifling; night after night he sat writing after
his father had knocked out his last pipe, filling a page with difficulty
in an hour, and usually forced to thrust the stuff away in despair, and
go unhappily to bed, conscious that after all his labor he had done
nothing. And these were moments when the accustomed vision of the land
alarmed him, and the wild domed hills and darkling woods seemed symbols
of some terrible secret in the inner life of that stranger--himself.
Sometimes when he was deep in his books and papers, sometimes on a lonely
walk, sometimes amidst the tiresome chatter of Caermaen "society," he
would thrill with a sudden sense of awful hidden things, and there ran
that quivering flame through his nerves that brought back the
recollection of the matted thicket, and that earlier appearance of the
bare black boughs enwrapped with flames. Indeed, though he avoided the
solitary lane, and the sight of the sheer height, with its ring of oaks
and molded mounds, the image of it grew more intense as the symbol of
certain hints and suggestions. The exultant and insurgent flesh seemed to
have its temple and castle within those olden walls, and he longed with
all his heart to escape, to set himself free in the wilderness of London,
and to be secure amidst the murmur of modern streets.




II


Lucian was growing really anxious about his manuscript. He had gained
enough experience at twenty-three to know that editors and publishers
must not be hurried; but his book had been lying at Messrs Beit's
office for more than three months. For six weeks he had not dared to
expect an answer, but afterwards life had become agonizing. Every
morning, at post-time, the poor wretch nearly choked with anxiety to know
whether his sentence had arrived, and the rest of the day was racked with
alternate pangs of hope and despair. Now and then he was almost assured
of success; conning over these painful and eager pages in memory, he
found parts that were admirable, while again, his inexperience reproached
him, and he feared he had written a raw and awkward book, wholly unfit
for print. Then he would compare what he remembered of it with notable
magazine articles and books praised by reviewers, and fancy that after
all there might be good points in the thing; he could not help liking the
first chapter for instance. Perhaps the letter might come tomorrow. So it
went on; week after week of sick torture made more exquisite by such
gleams of hope; it was as if he were stretched in anguish on the rack,
and the pain relaxed and kind words spoken now and again by the
tormentors, and then once more the grinding pang and burning agony. At
last he could bear suspense no longer, and he wrote to Messrs Beit,
inquiring in a humble manner whether the manuscript had arrived in
safety. The firm replied in a very polite letter, expressing regret that
their reader had been suffering from a cold in the head, and had
therefore been unable to send in his report. A final decision was
promised in a week's time, and the letter ended with apologies for the
delay and a hope that he had suffered no inconvenience. Of course the
"final decision" did not come at the end of the week, but the book was
returned at the end of three weeks, with a circular thanking the author
for his kindness in submitting the manuscript, and regretting that the
firm did not see their way to producing it. He felt relieved; the
operation that he had dreaded and deprecated for so long was at last
over, and he would no longer grow sick of mornings when the letters were
brought in. He took his parcel to the sunny corner of the garden, where
the old wooden seat stood sheltered from the biting March winds. Messrs
Beit had put in with the circular one of their short lists, a neat
booklet, headed: _Messrs Beit & Co.'s Recent Publications_.

He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to
read: "_A Bad Un to Beat:_ a Novel of Sporting Life, by the Honorable
Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede, author of _Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack, The
Sportleigh Stables_, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries." The _Press_,
it seemed, pronounced this to be a "charming book. Mrs. Runnymede has wit
and humor enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen ordinary sporting novels."
"Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a past-mistress in the art of
novel writing," said the _Review_; while Miranda, of _Smart Society_,
positively bubbled with enthusiasm. "You must forgive me, Aminta," wrote
this young person, "if I have not sent the description I promised of
Madame Lulu's new creations and others of that ilk. I must a tale unfold;
Tom came in yesterday and began to rave about the Honorable Mrs.
Scudamore Runnymede's last novel, _A Bad Un to Beat_. He says all the
Smart Set are talking of it, and it seems the police have to regulate the
crowd at Mudie's. You know I read everything Mrs. Runnymede writes, so I
set out Miggs directly to beg, borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I
burnt the midnight oil before I laid it down. Now, mind you get it, you
will find it so awfully _chic_." Nearly all the novelists on Messrs
Beit's list were ladies, their works all ran to three volumes, and all of
them pleased the _Press_, the _Review_, and Miranda of _Smart Society_.
One of these books, _Millicent's Marriage_, by Sarah Pocklington Sanders,
was pronounced fit to lie on the school-room table, on the drawing-room
bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our
daughters. "This," the reviewer went on, "is high praise, especially in
these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamor of self-styled
'artists.' We would warn the young men who prate so persistently of style
and literature, construction and prose harmonies, that we believe the
English reading public will have none of them. Harmless amusement, a
gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and
manly life of the hunting field, pictures of innocent and healthy English
girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us; these are the topics that
will always find a welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred
against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous stylist."

He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish;
he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for
the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face,
spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender
heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs Beit had quoted;
and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was
style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and
the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy
if he cared to trouble himself with such things. Lucian leant back and
roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tom-cat who had succeeded to
the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his sunny corner, with
a face like the reviewer's, innocent and round and whiskered. At last he
turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen sheets of manuscript,
and began to read in a rather desponding spirit; it was pretty obvious,
he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath the standard of
publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the making; it was a
pious attempt to translate into English prose the form and mystery of the
domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red swollen
brook swirling through leafless woods. Day-dreams and toil at nights had
gone into the eager pages, he had labored hard to do his very best,
writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and over
again, grudging no patience, no trouble if only it might be pretty good;
good enough to print and sell to a reading public which had become
critical. He glanced through the manuscript in his hand, and to his
astonishment, he could not help thinking that in its measure it was
decent work. After three months his prose seemed fresh and strange as if
it had been wrought by another man, and in spite of himself he found
charming things, and impressions that were not commonplace. He knew how
weak it all was compared with his own conceptions; he had seen an
enchanted city, awful, glorious, with flame smitten about its
battlements, like the cities of the Sangraal, and he had molded his copy
in such poor clay as came to his hand; yet, in spite of the gulf that
yawned between the idea and the work, he knew as he read that the thing
accomplished was very far from a failure. He put back the leaves
carefully, and glanced again at Messrs Beit's list. It had escaped his
notice that _A Bad Un to Beat_ was in its third three-volume edition. It
was a great thing, at all events, to know in what direction to aim, if he
wished to succeed. If he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win
the approval of the coy and retiring Miranda of _Smart Society_; that
modest maiden might in his praise interrupt her task of disinterested
advertisement, her philanthropic counsels to "go to Jumper's, and mind
you ask for Mr. C. Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue paper with
the yellow spots at ten shillings the piece." He put down the pamphlet,
and laughed again at the books and the reviewers: so that he might not
weep. This then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and
farce, after all, was but an ill-played tragedy.

The rejected manuscript was hidden away, and his father quoted Horace's
maxim as to the benefit of keeping literary works for some time "in the
wood." There was nothing to grumble at, though Lucian was inclined to
think the duration of the reader's catarrh a little exaggerated. But this
was a trifle; he did not arrogate to himself the position of a small
commercial traveler, who expects prompt civility as a matter of course,
and not at all as a favor. He simply forgot his old book, and resolved
that he would make a better one if he could. With the hot fit of
resolution, the determination not to be snuffed out by one refusal upon
him, he began to beat about in his mind for some new scheme. At first it
seemed that he had hit upon a promising subject; he began to plot out
chapters and scribble hints for the curious story that had entered his
mind, arranging his circumstances and noting the effects to be produced
with all the enthusiasm of the artist. But after the first breath the
aspect of the work changed; page after page was tossed aside as hopeless,
the beautiful sentences he had dreamed of refused to be written, and his
puppets remained stiff and wooden, devoid of life or motion. Then all the
old despairs came back, the agonies of the artificer who strives and
perseveres in vain; the scheme that seemed of amorous fire turned to cold
hard ice in his hands. He let the pen drop from his fingers, and wondered
how he could have ever dreamed of writing books. Again, the thought
occurred that he might do something if he could only get away, and join
the sad procession in the murmuring London streets, far from the shadow
of those awful hills. But it was quite impossible; the relative who had
once promised assistance was appealed to, and wrote expressing his regret
that Lucian had turned out a "loafer," wasting his time in scribbling,
instead of trying to earn his living. Lucian felt rather hurt at this
letter, but the parson only grinned grimly as usual. He was thinking of
how he signed a check many years before, in the days of his prosperity,
and the check was payable to this didactic relative, then in but a poor
way, and of a thankful turn of mind.

The old rejected manuscript had almost passed out of his recollection. It
was recalled oddly enough. He was looking over the _Reader_, and enjoying
the admirable literary criticisms, some three months after the return of
his book, when his eye was attracted by a quoted passage in one of the
notices. The thought and style both wakened memory, the cadences were
familiar and beloved. He read through the review from the beginning; it
was a very favorable one, and pronounced the volume an immense advance on
Mr. Ritson's previous work. "Here, undoubtedly, the author has discovered
a vein of pure metal," the reviewer added, "and we predict that he will
go far." Lucian had not yet reached his father's stage, he was unable to
grin in the manner of that irreverent parson. The passage selected for
high praise was taken almost word for word from the manuscript now
resting in his room, the work that had not reached the high standard of
Messrs Beit & Co., who, curiously enough, were the publishers of the book
reviewed in the _Reader_. He had a few shillings in his possession, and
wrote at once to a bookseller in London for a copy of _The Chorus in
Green_, as the author had oddly named the book. He wrote on June 21st and
thought he might fairly expect to receive the interesting volume by the
24th; but the postman, true to his tradition, brought nothing for him,
and in the afternoon he resolved to walk down to Caermaen, in case it
might have come by a second post; or it might have been mislaid at the
office; they forgot parcels sometimes, especially when the bag was heavy
and the weather hot. This 24th was a sultry and oppressive day; a grey
veil of cloud obscured the sky, and a vaporous mist hung heavily over the
land, and fumed up from the valleys. But at five o'clock, when he
started, the clouds began to break, and the sunlight suddenly streamed
down through the misty air, making ways and channels of rich glory, and
bright islands in the gloom. It was a pleasant and shining evening when,
passing by devious back streets to avoid the barbarians (as he very
rudely called the respectable inhabitants of the town), he reached the
post-office; which was also the general shop.

"Yes, Mr. Taylor, there is something for you, sir," said the man.
"Williams the postman forgot to take it up this morning," and he handed
over the packet. Lucian took it under his arm and went slowly through the
ragged winding lanes till he came into the country. He got over the first
stile on the road, and sitting down in the shelter of a hedge, cut the
strings and opened the parcel. _The Chorus in Green_ was got up in what
reviewers call a dainty manner: a bronze-green cloth, well-cut gold
lettering, wide margins and black "old-face" type, all witnessed to the
good taste of Messrs Beit & Co. He cut the pages hastily and began to
read. He soon found that he had wronged Mr. Ritson--that old literary
hand had by no means stolen his book wholesale, as he had expected. There
were about two hundred pages in the pretty little volume, and of these
about ninety were Lucian's, dovetailed into a rather different scheme
with skill that was nothing short of exquisite. And Mr. Ritson's own work
was often very good; spoilt here and there for some tastes by the
"cataloguing" method, a somewhat materialistic way of taking an inventory
of the holy country things; but, for that very reason, contrasting to a
great advantage with Lucian's hints and dreams and note of haunting. And
here and there Mr. Ritson had made little alterations in the style of the
passages he had conveyed, and most of these alterations were amendments,
as Lucian was obliged to confess, though he would have liked to argue one
or two points with his collaborator and corrector. He lit his pipe and
leant back comfortably in the hedge, thinking things over, weighing very
coolly his experience of humanity, his contact with the "society" of the
countryside, the affair of the _The Chorus in Green_, and even some
little incidents that had struck him as he was walking through the
streets of Caermaen that evening. At the post-office, when he was
inquiring for his parcel, he had heard two old women grumbling in the
street; it seemed, so far as he could make out, that both had been
disappointed in much the same way. One was a Roman Catholic, hardened,
and beyond the reach of conversion; she had been advised to ask alms of
the priests, "who are always creeping and crawling about." The other old
sinner was a Dissenter, and, "Mr. Dixon has quite enough to do to relieve
good Church people."

Mrs. Dixon, assisted by Henrietta, was, it seemed, the lady high almoner,
who dispensed these charities. As she said to Mrs. Colley, they would end
by keeping all the beggars in the county, and they really couldn't afford
it. A large family was an expensive thing, and the girls _must_ have new
frocks. "Mr. Dixon is always telling me and the girls that we must not
_demoralize_ the people by indiscriminate charity." Lucian had heard of
these sage counsels, and through it them as he listened to the bitter
complaints of the gaunt, hungry old women. In the back street by which he
passed out of the town he saw a large "healthy" boy kicking a sick cat;
the poor creature had just strength enough to crawl under an outhouse
door; probably to die in torments. He did not find much satisfaction in
thrashing the boy, but he did it with hearty good will. Further on, at
the corner where the turnpike used to be, was a big notice, announcing a
meeting at the school-room in aid of the missions to the Portuguese.
"Under the Patronage of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese," was the imposing
headline; the Reverend Merivale Dixon, vicar of Caermaen, was to be in
the chair, supported by Stanley Gervase, Esq., J.P., and by many of the
clergy and gentry of the neighborhood. Senhor Diabo, "formerly a Romanist
priest, now an evangelist in Lisbon," would address the meeting. "Funds
are urgently needed to carry on this good work," concluded the notice. So
he lay well back in the shade of the hedge, and thought whether some sort
of an article could not be made by vindicating the terrible Yahoos; one
might point out that they were in many respects a simple and
unsophisticated race, whose faults were the result of their enslaved
position, while such virtues as they had were all their own. They might
be compared, he thought, much to their advantage, with more complex
civilizations. There was no hint of anything like the Beit system of
publishing in existence amongst them; the great Yahoo nation would surely
never feed and encourage a scabby Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness
from the horse-community, and the witty dean, in all his minuteness, had
said nothing of "safe" Yahoos. On reflection, however, he did not feel
quite secure of this part of his defense; he remembered that the leading
brutes had favorites, who were employed in certain simple domestic
offices about their masters, and it seemed doubtful whether the
contemplated vindication would not break down on this point. He smiled
queerly to himself as he thought of these comparisons, but his heart
burned with a dull fury. Throwing back his unhappy memory, he recalled
all the contempt and scorn he had suffered; as a boy he had heard the
masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn other
than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence
of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his
poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some
miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence
and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his
ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers
and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! This putrid filth,
molded into human shape, made only to fawn on the rich and beslaver them,
thinking no foulness too foul if it were done in honor of those in power
and authority; and no refined cruelty of contempt too cruel if it were
contempt of the poor and humble and oppressed; it was to this obscene and
ghastly throng that he was something to be pointed at. And these men and
women spoke of sacred things, and knelt before the awful altar of God,
before the altar of tremendous fire, surrounded as they professed by
Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven; and in their very
church they had one aisle for the rich and another for the poor. And the
species was not peculiar to Caermaen; the rich business men in London
and the successful brother author were probably amusing themselves at the
expense of the poor struggling creature they had injured and wounded;
just as the "healthy" boy had burst into a great laugh when the miserable
sick cat cried out in bitter agony, and trailed its limbs slowly, as it
crept away to die. Lucian looked into his own life and his own will; he
saw that in spite of his follies, and his want of success, he had not
been consciously malignant, he had never deliberately aided in
oppression, or looked on it with enjoyment and approval, and he felt that
when he lay dead beneath the earth, eaten by swarming worms, he would be
in a purer company than now, when he lived amongst human creatures. And
he was to call this loathsome beast, all sting and filth, brother! "I had
rather call the devils my brothers," he said in his heart, "I would fare
better in hell." Blood was in his eyes, and as he looked up the sky
seemed of blood, and the earth burned with fire.

The sun was sinking low on the mountain when he set out on the way again.
Burrows, the doctor, coming home in his trap, met him a little lower on
the road, and gave him a friendly good-night.

"A long way round on this road, isn't it?" said the doctor. "As you have
come so far, why don't you try the short cut across the fields? You will
find it easily enough; second stile on the left hand, and then go
straight ahead."

He thanked Dr. Burrows and said he would try the short cut, and Burrows
span on homeward. He was a gruff and honest bachelor, and often felt very
sorry for the lad, and wished he could help him. As he drove on, it
suddenly occurred to him that Lucian had an awful look on his face, and
he was sorry he had not asked him to jump in, and to come to supper. A
hearty slice of beef, with strong ale, whisky and soda afterwards, a good
pipe, and certain Rabelaisian tales which the doctor had treasured for
many years, would have done the poor fellow a lot of good, he was
certain. He half turned round on his seat, and looked to see if Lucian
were still in sight, but he had passed the corner, and the doctor drove
on, shivering a little; the mists were beginning to rise from the wet
banks of the river.

Lucian trailed slowly along the road, keeping a look out for the stile
the doctor had mentioned. It would be a little of an adventure, he
thought, to find his way by an unknown track; he knew the direction in
which his home lay, and he imagined he would not have much difficulty in
crossing from one stile to another. The path led him up a steep bare
field, and when he was at the top, the town and the valley winding up to
the north stretched before him. The river was stilled at the flood, and
the yellow water, reflecting the sunset, glowed in its deep pools like
dull brass. These burning pools, the level meadows fringed with
shuddering reeds, the long dark sweep of the forest on the hill, were all
clear and distinct, yet the light seemed to have clothed them with a new
garment, even as voices from the streets of Caermaen sounded strangely,
mounting up thin with the smoke. There beneath him lay the huddled
cluster of Caermaen, the ragged and uneven roofs that marked the winding
and sordid streets, here and there a pointed gable rising above its
meaner fellows; beyond he recognized the piled mounds that marked the
circle of the amphitheatre, and the dark edge of trees that grew where
the Roman wall whitened and waxed old beneath the frosts and rains of
eighteen hundred years. Thin and strange, mingled together, the voices
came up to him on the hill; it was as if an outland race inhabited the
ruined city and talked in a strange language of strange and terrible
things. The sun had slid down the sky, and hung quivering over the huge
dark dome of the mountain like a burnt sacrifice, and then suddenly
vanished. In the afterglow the clouds began to writhe and turn scarlet,
and shone so strangely reflected in the pools of the snake-like river,
that one would have said the still waters stirred, the fleeting and
changing of the clouds seeming to quicken the stream, as if it bubbled
and sent up gouts of blood. But already about the town the darkness was
forming; fast, fast the shadows crept upon it from the forest, and from
all sides banks and wreaths of curling mist were gathering, as if a
ghostly leaguer were being built up against the city, and the strange
race who lived in its streets. Suddenly there burst out from the
stillness the clear and piercing music of the _réveillé_, calling,
recalling, iterated, reiterated, and ending with one long high fierce
shrill note with which the steep hills rang. Perhaps a boy in the school
band was practicing on his bugle, but for Lucian it was magic. For him it
was the note of the Roman trumpet, _tuba mirum spargens sonum_, filling
all the hollow valley with its command, reverberated in dark places in
the far forest, and resonant in the old graveyards without the walls. In
his imagination he saw the earthen gates of the tombs broken open, and
the serried legion swarming to the eagles. Century by century they passed
by; they rose, dripping, from the river bed, they rose from the level,
their armor shone in the quiet orchard, they gathered in ranks and
companies from the cemetery, and as the trumpet sounded, the hill fort
above the town gave up its dead. By hundreds and thousands the ghostly
battle surged about the standard, behind the quaking mist, ready to march
against the moldering walls they had built so many years before.

He turned sharply; it was growing very dark, and he was afraid of missing
his way. At first the path led him by the verge of a wood; there was a
noise of rustling and murmuring from the trees as if they were taking
evil counsel together. A high hedge shut out the sight of the darkening
valley, and he stumbled on mechanically, without taking much note of the
turnings of the track, and when he came out from the wood shadow to the
open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered and uncertain. A
dark wild twilight country lay before him, confused dim shapes of trees
near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the further hills and
woods were dimmer, and all the air was very still. Suddenly the darkness
about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot up on the mountain, and for a
moment the little world of the woodside and the steep hill shone in a
pale light, and he thought he saw his path beaten out in the turf before
him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of fire, and it led him on
down the ragged slope, his feet striking against ridges of ground, and
falling from beneath him at a sudden dip. The bramble bushes shot out
long prickly vines, amongst which he was entangled, and lower he was held
back by wet bubbling earth. He had descended into a dark and shady
valley, beset and tapestried with gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises
were the only sounds, strange, unutterable mutterings, dismal,
inarticulate. He pushed on in what he hoped was the right direction,
stumbling from stile to gate, peering through mist and shadow, and still
vainly seeking for any known landmark. Presently another sound broke upon
the grim air, the murmur of water poured over stones, gurgling against
the old misshapen roots of trees, and running clear in a deep channel. He
passed into the chill breath of the brook, and almost fancied he heard
two voices speaking in its murmur; there seemed a ceaseless utterance of
words, an endless argument. With a mood of horror pressing on him, he
listened to the noise of waters, and the wild fancy seized him that he
was not deceived, that two unknown beings stood together there in the
darkness and tried the balances of his life, and spoke his doom. The hour
in the matted thicket rushed over the great bridge of years to his
thought; he had sinned against the earth, and the earth trembled and
shook for vengeance. He stayed still for a moment, quivering with fear,
and at last went on blindly, no longer caring for the path, if only he
might escape from the toils of that dismal shuddering hollow. As he
plunged through the hedges the bristling thorns tore his face and hands;
he fell amongst stinging-nettles and was pricked as he beat out his way
amidst the gorse. He raced headlong, his head over his shoulder, through
a windy wood, bare of undergrowth; there lay about the ground moldering
stumps, the relics of trees that had thundered to their fall, crashing
and tearing to earth, long ago; and from these remains there flowed out a
pale thin radiance, filling the spaces of the sounding wood with a dream
of light. He had lost all count of the track; he felt he had fled for
hours, climbing and descending, and yet not advancing; it was as if he
stood still and the shadows of the land went by, in a vision. But at last
a hedge, high and straggling, rose before him, and as he broke through
it, his feet slipped, and he fell headlong down a steep bank into a lane.
He lay still, half-stunned, for a moment, and then rising unsteadily, he
looked desperately into the darkness before him, uncertain and
bewildered. In front it was black as a midnight cellar, and he turned
about, and saw a glint in the distance, as if a candle were flickering in
a farm-house window. He began to walk with trembling feet towards the
light, when suddenly something pale started out from the shadows before
him, and seemed to swim and float down the air. He was going down hill,
and he hastened onwards, and he could see the bars of a stile framed
dimly against the sky, and the figure still advanced with that gliding
motion. Then, as the road declined to the valley, the landmark he had
been seeking appeared. To his right there surged up in the darkness the
darker summit of the Roman fort, and the streaming fire of the great full
moon glowed through the bars of the wizard oaks, and made a halo shine
about the hill. He was now quite close to the white appearance, and saw
that it was only a woman walking swiftly down the lane; the floating
movement was an effect due to the somber air and the moon's glamour. At
the gate, where he had spent so many hours gazing at the fort, they
walked foot to foot, and he saw it was Annie Morgan.

"Good evening, Master Lucian," said the girl, "it's very dark, sir,
indeed."

"Good evening, Annie," he answered, calling her by her name for the first
time, and he saw that she smiled with pleasure. "You are out late, aren't
you?"

"Yes, sir; but I've been taking a bit of supper to old Mrs. Gibbon. She's
been very poorly the last few days, and there's nobody to do anything for
her."

Then there were really people who helped one another; kindness and pity
were not mere myths, fictions of "society," as useful as Doe and Roe, and
as non-existent. The thought struck Lucian with a shock; the evening's
passion and delirium, the wild walk and physical fatigue had almost
shattered him in body and mind. He was "degenerate," _decadent_, and the
rough rains and blustering winds of life, which a stronger man would have
laughed at and enjoyed, were to him "hail-storms and fire-showers." After
all, Messrs Beit, the publishers, were only sharp men of business, and
these terrible Dixons and Gervases and Colleys merely the ordinary
limited clergy and gentry of a quiet country town; sturdier sense would
have dismissed Dixon as an old humbug, Stanley Gervase, Esquire, J.P., as
a "bit of a bounder," and the ladies as "rather a shoddy lot." But he was
walking slowly now in painful silence, his heavy, lagging feet striking
against the loose stones. He was not thinking of the girl beside him;
only something seemed to swell and grow and swell within his heart; it
was all the torture of his days, weary hopes and weary disappointment,
scorn rankling and throbbing, and the thought "I had rather call the
devils my brothers and live with them in hell." He choked and gasped for
breath, and felt involuntary muscles working in his face, and the
impulses of a madman stirring him; he himself was in truth the
realization of the vision of Caermaen that night, a city with moldering
walls beset by the ghostly legion. Life and the world and the laws of the
sunlight had passed away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead
began. The Celt assailed him, becoming from the weird wood he called the
world, and his far-off ancestors, the "little people," crept out of their
caves, muttering charms and incantations in hissing inhuman speech; he
was beleaguered by desires that had slept in his race for ages.

"I am afraid you are very tired, Master Lucian. Would you like me to give
you my hand over this rough bit?"

He had stumbled against a great round stone and had nearly fallen. The
woman's hand sought his in the darkness; as he felt the touch of the soft
warm flesh he moaned, and a pang shot through his arm to his heart. He
looked up and found he had only walked a few paces since Annie had
spoken; he had thought they had wandered for hours together. The moon was
just mounting above the oaks, and the halo round the dark hill
brightened. He stopped short, and keeping his hold of Annie's hand,
looked into her face. A hazy glory of moonlight shone around them and lit
up their eyes. He had not greatly altered since his boyhood; his face was
pale olive in color, thin and oval; marks of pain had gathered about the
eyes, and his black hair was already stricken with grey. But the eager,
curious gaze still remained, and what he saw before him lit up his
sadness with a new fire. She stopped too, and did not offer to draw away,
but looked back with all her heart. They were alike in many ways; her
skin was also of that olive color, but her face was sweet as a beautiful
summer night, and her black eyes showed no dimness, and the smile on the
scarlet lips was like a flame when it brightens a dark and lonely land.

"You are sorely tired, Master Lucian, let us sit down here by the gate."

It was Lucian who spoke next: "My dear, my dear." And their lips were
together again, and their arms locked together, each holding the other
fast. And then the poor lad let his head sink down on his sweetheart's
breast, and burst into a passion of weeping. The tears streamed down his
face, and he shook with sobbing, in the happiest moment that he had ever
lived. The woman bent over him and tried to comfort him, but his tears
were his consolation and his triumph. Annie was whispering to him, her
hand laid on his heart; she was whispering beautiful, wonderful words,
that soothed him as a song. He did not know what they meant.

"Annie, dear, dear Annie, what are you saying to me? I have never heard
such beautiful words. Tell me, Annie, what do they mean?"

She laughed, and said it was only nonsense that the nurses sang to the
children.

"No, no, you are not to call me Master Lucian any more," he said, when
they parted, "you must call me Lucian; and I, I worship you, my dear
Annie."

He fell down before her, embracing her knees, and adored, and she allowed
him, and confirmed his worship. He followed slowly after her, passing the
path which led to her home with a longing glance. Nobody saw any
difference in Lucian when he reached the rectory. He came in with his
usual dreamy indifference, and told how he had lost his way by trying the
short cut. He said he had met Dr. Burrows on the road, and that he had
recommended the path by the fields. Then, as dully as if he had been
reading some story out of a newspaper, he gave his father the outlines of
the Beit case, producing the pretty little book called _The Chorus in
Green_. The parson listened in amazement.

"You mean to tell me that _you_ wrote this book?" he said. He was quite
roused.

"No; not all of it. Look; that bit is mine, and that; and the beginning
of this chapter. Nearly the whole of the third chapter is by me."

He closed the book without interest, and indeed he felt astonished at his
father's excitement. The incident seemed to him unimportant.

"And you say that eighty or ninety pages of this book are yours, and
these scoundrels have stolen your work?"

"Well, I suppose they have. I'll fetch the manuscript, if you would like
to look at it."

The manuscript was duly produced, wrapped in brown paper, with Messrs
Beit's address label on it, and the post-office dated stamps.

"And the other book has been out a month." The parson, forgetting the
sacerdotal office, and his good habit of grinning, swore at Messrs Beit
and Mr. Ritson, calling them damned thieves, and then began to read the
manuscript, and to compare it with the printed book.

"Why, it's splendid work. My poor fellow," he said after a while, "I had
no notion you could write so well. I used to think of such things in the
old days at Oxford; 'old Bill,' the tutor, used to praise my essays, but
I never wrote anything like this. And this infernal ruffian of a Ritson
has taken all your best things and mixed them up with his own rot to make
it go down. Of course you'll expose the gang?"

Lucian was mildly amused; he couldn't enter into his father's feelings at
all. He sat smoking in one of the old easy chairs, taking the rare relish
of a hot grog with his pipe, and gazing out of his dreamy eyes at the
violent old parson. He was pleased that his father liked his book,
because he knew him to be a deep and sober scholar and a cool judge of
good letters; but he laughed to himself when he saw the magic of print.
The parson had expressed no wish to read the manuscript when it came back
in disgrace; he had merely grinned, said something about boomerangs, and
quoted Horace with relish. Whereas now, before the book in its neat case,
lettered with another man's name, his approbation of the writing and his
disapproval of the "scoundrels," as he called them, were loudly
expressed, and, though a good smoker, he blew and puffed vehemently at
his pipe.

"You'll expose the rascals, of course, won't you?" he said again.

"Oh no, I think not. It really doesn't matter much, does it? After all,
there are some very weak things in the book; doesn't it strike you as
'young?' I have been thinking of another plan, but I haven't done much
with it lately. But I believe I've got hold of a really good idea this
time, and if I can manage to see the heart of it I hope to turn out a
manuscript worth stealing. But it's so hard to get at the core of an
idea--the heart, as I call it," he went on after a pause. "It's like
having a box you can't open, though you know there's something wonderful
inside. But I do believe I've a fine thing in my hands, and I mean to try
my best to work it."

Lucian talked with enthusiasm now, but his father, on his side, could not
share these ardors. It was his part to be astonished at excitement over a
book that was not even begun, the mere ghost of a book flitting elusive
in the world of unborn masterpieces and failures. He had loved good
letters, but he shared unconsciously in the general belief that literary
attempt is always pitiful, though he did not subscribe to the other half
of the popular faith--that literary success is a matter of very little
importance. He thought well of books, but only of printed books; in
manuscripts he put no faith, and the _paulo-post-futurum_ tense he could
not in any manner conjugate. He returned once more to the topic of
palpable interest.

"But about this dirty trick these fellows have played on you. You won't
sit quietly and bear it, surely? It's only a question of writing to the
papers."

"They wouldn't put the letter in. And if they did, I should only get
laughed at. Some time ago a man wrote to the _Reader_, complaining of his
play being stolen. He said that he had sent a little one-act comedy to
Burleigh, the great dramatist, asking for his advice. Burleigh gave his
advice and took the idea for his own very successful play. So the man
said, and I daresay it was true enough. But the victim got nothing by his
complaint. 'A pretty state of things,' everybody said. 'Here's a Mr.
Tomson, that no one has ever heard of, bothers Burleigh with his rubbish,
and then accuses him of petty larceny. Is it likely that a man of
Burleigh's position, a playwright who can make his five thousand a year
easily, would borrow from an unknown Tomson?' I should think it very
likely, indeed," Lucian went on, chuckling, "but that was their verdict.
No; I don't think I'll write to the papers."

"Well, well, my boy, I suppose you know your own business best. I think
you are mistaken, but you must do as you like."

"It's all so unimportant," said Lucian, and he really thought so. He had
sweeter things to dream of, and desired no communion of feeling with that
madman who had left Caermaen some few hours before. He felt he had made a
fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity of which he had
been guilty, such boiling hatred was not only wicked, but absurd. A man
could do no good who put himself into a position of such violent
antagonism against his fellow-creatures; so Lucian rebuked his heart,
saying that he was old enough to know better. But he remembered that he
had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret ecstasy that he
treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite even for thought
till he was quite alone; and then there was that scheme for a new book
that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have arisen
into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started
on a false tack, he had taken the wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the
thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page
turned upside down; and he saw those characters he had vainly sought
suddenly disambushed, and a splendid inevitable sequence of events
unrolled before him.

It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed
itself as a living thing, stirring and mysterious, and warm as life
itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in reality
he was full of amazement at his own son, and now and again he slipped sly
furtive glances towards the tranquil young man in the arm-chair by the
empty hearth. In the first place, Mr. Taylor was genuinely impressed by
what he had read of Lucian's work; he had so long been accustomed to look
upon all effort as futile that success amazed him. In the abstract, of
course, he was prepared to admit that some people did write well and got
published and made money, just as other persons successfully backed an
outsider at heavy odds; but it had seemed as improbable that Lucian
should show even the beginnings of achievement in one direction as in the
other. Then the boy evidently cared so little about it; he did not appear
to be proud of being worth robbing, nor was he angry with the robbers.

He sat back luxuriously in the disreputable old chair, drawing long slow
wreaths of smoke, tasting his whisky from time to time, evidently well at
ease with himself. The father saw him smile, and it suddenly dawned upon
him that his son was very handsome; he had such kind gentle eyes and a
kind mouth, and his pale cheeks were flushed like a girl's. Mr. Taylor
felt moved. What a harmless young fellow Lucian had been; no doubt a
little queer and different from others, but wholly inoffensive and
patient under disappointment. And Miss Deacon, her contribution to the
evening's discussion had been characteristic; she had remarked, firstly,
that writing was a very unsettling occupation, and secondly, that it was
extremely foolish to entrust one's property to people of whom one knew
nothing. Father and son had smiled together at these observations, which
were probably true enough. Mr. Taylor at last left Lucian along; he shook
hands with a good deal of respect, and said, almost deferentially:

"You mustn't work too hard, old fellow. I wouldn't stay up too late, if I
were you, after that long walk. You must have gone miles out of your
way."

"I'm not tired now, though. I feel as if I could write my new book on the
spot"; and the young man laughed a gay sweet laugh that struck the father
as a new note in his son's life.

He sat still a moment after his father had left the room. He cherished
his chief treasure of thought in its secret place; he would not enjoy it
yet. He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote or tried to write,
and began taking pens and paper from the drawer. There was a great pile
of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side, and signifying many
hours of desperate scribbling, of heart-searching and rack of his brain;
an array of poor, eager lines written by a waning fire with waning hope;
all useless and abandoned. He took up the sheets cheerfully, and began in
delicious idleness to look over these fruitless efforts. A page caught
his attention; he remembered how he wrote it while a November storm was
dashing against the panes; and there was another, with a queer blot in
one corner; he had got up from his chair and looked out, and all the
earth was white fairyland, and the snowflakes whirled round and round in
the wind. Then he saw the chapter begun of a night in March: a great gale
blew that night and rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard.
He had heard the trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the
wind, and across the heaven a white moon fled awfully before the
streaming clouds. And all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet,
and past unhappiness was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of
toil were holy. He turned over half a dozen leaves and began to sketch
out the outlines of the new book on the unused pages; running out a
skeleton plan on one page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on
others. He wrote rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving phrases grew
under his pen; a particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire;
he gave his hand free course, and saw the written work glowing; and
action and all the heat of existence quickened and beat on the wet page.
Happy fancies took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back
in his chair he felt the stir and rush of the story as if it had been
some portion of his own life. He read over what he had done with a
renewed pleasure in the nimble and flowing workmanship, and as he put the
little pile of manuscript tenderly in the drawer he paused to enjoy the
anticipation of tomorrow's labor.

And then--but the rest of the night was given to tender and delicious
things, and when he went up to bed a scarlet dawn was streaming from the
east.




III


For days Lucian lay in a swoon of pleasure, smiling when he was
addressed, sauntering happily in the sunlight, hugging recollection warm
to his heart. Annie had told him that she was going on a visit to her
married sister, and said, with a caress, that he must be patient. He
protested against her absence, but she fondled him, whispering her charms
in his ear till he gave in and then they said good-bye, Lucian adoring on
his knees. The parting was as strange as the meeting, and that night when
he laid his work aside, and let himself sink deep into the joys of
memory, all the encounter seemed as wonderful and impossible as magic.

"And you really don't mean to do anything about those rascals?" said his
father.

"Rascals? Which rascals? Oh, you mean Beit. I had forgotten all about it.
No; I don't think I shall trouble. They're not worth powder and shot."

And he returned to his dream, pacing slowly from the medlar to the quince
and back again. It seemed trivial to be interrupted by such questions; he
had not even time to think of the book he had recommenced so eagerly,
much less of this labor of long ago. He recollected without interest that
it cost him many pains, that it was pretty good here and there, and that
it had been stolen, and it seemed that there was nothing more to be said
on the matter. He wished to think of the darkness in the lane, of the
kind voice that spoke to him, of the kind hand that sought his own, as he
stumbled on the rough way. So far, it was wonderful. Since he had left
school and lost the company of the worthy barbarians who had befriended
him there, he had almost lost the sense of kinship with humanity; he had
come to dread the human form as men dread the hood of the cobra. To
Lucian a man or a woman meant something that stung, that spoke words that
rankled, and poisoned his life with scorn. At first such malignity
shocked him: he would ponder over words and glances and wonder if he were
not mistaken, and he still sought now and then for sympathy. The poor boy
had romantic ideas about women; he believed they were merciful and
pitiful, very kind to the unlucky and helpless. Men perhaps had to be
different; after all, the duty of a man was to get on in the world, or,
in plain language, to make money, to be successful; to cheat rather than
to be cheated, but always to be successful; and he could understand that
one who fell below this high standard must expect to be severely judged
by his fellows. For example, there was young Bennett, Miss Spurry's
nephew. Lucian had met him once or twice when he was spending his
holidays with Miss Spurry, and the two young fellows compared literary
notes together. Bennett showed some beautiful things he had written, over
which Lucian had grown both sad and enthusiastic. It was such exquisite
magic verse, and so much better than anything he ever hoped to write,
that there was a touch of anguish in his congratulations. But when
Bennett, after many vain prayers to his aunt, threw up a safe position in
the bank, and betook himself to a London garret, Lucian was not surprised
at the general verdict.

Mr. Dixon, as a clergyman, viewed the question from a high standpoint and
found it all deplorable, but the general opinion was that Bennett was a
hopeless young lunatic. Old Mr. Gervase went purple when his name was
mentioned, and the young Dixons sneered very merrily over the adventure.

"I always thought he was a beastly young ass," said Edward Dixon, "but I
didn't think he'd chuck away his chances like that. Said he couldn't
stand a bank! I hope he'll be able to stand bread and water. That's all
those littery fellows get, I believe, except Tennyson and Mark Twain and
those sort of people."

Lucian of course sympathized with the unfortunate Bennett, but such
judgments were after all only natural. The young man might have stayed in
the bank and succeeded to his aunt's thousand a year, and everybody would
have called him a very nice young fellow--"clever, too." But he had
deliberately chosen, as Edward Dixon had said, to chuck his chances away
for the sake of literature; piety and a sense of the main chance had
alike pointed the way to a delicate course of wheedling, to a little
harmless practicing on Miss Spurry's infirmities, to frequent compliances
of a soothing nature, and the "young ass" had been blind to the direction
of one and the other. It seemed almost right that the vicar should
moralize, that Edward Dixon should sneer, and that Mr. Gervase should
grow purple with contempt. Men, Lucian thought, were like judges, who may
pity the criminal in their hearts, but are forced to vindicate the
outraged majesty of the law by a severe sentence. He felt the same
considerations applied to his own case; he knew that his father should
have had more money, that his clothes should be newer and of a better
cut, that he should have gone to the university and made good friends. If
such had been his fortune he could have looked his fellow-men proudly in
the face, upright and unashamed. Having put on the whole armor of a
first-rate West End tailor, with money in his purse, having taken anxious
thought for the morrow, and having some useful friends and good
prospects; in such a case he might have held his head high in a
gentlemanly and Christian community. As it was he had usually avoided the
reproachful glance of his fellows, feeling that he deserved their
condemnation. But he had cherished for a long time his romantic
sentimentalities about women; literary conventions borrowed from the
minor poets and pseudo-medievalists, or so he thought afterwards. But,
fresh from school, wearied a little with the perpetual society of
barbarian though worthy boys, he had in his soul a charming image of
womanhood, before which he worshipped with mingled passion and devotion.
It was a nude figure, perhaps, but the shining arms were to be wound
about the neck of a vanquished knight; there was rest for the head of a
wounded lover; the hands were stretched forth to do works of pity, and
the smiling lips were to murmur not love alone, but consolation in
defeat. Here was the refuge for a broken heart; here the scorn of men
would but make tenderness increase; here was all pity and all charity
with loving-kindness. It was a delightful picture, conceived in the "come
rest on this bosom," and "a ministering angel thou" manner, with touches
of allurement that made devotion all the sweeter. He soon found that he
had idealized a little; in the affair of young Bennett, while the men
were contemptuous the women were virulent. He had been rather fond of
Agatha Gervase, and she, so other ladies said, had "set her cap" at him.
Now, when he rebelled, and lost the goodwill of his aunt, dear Miss
Spurry, Agatha insulted him with all conceivable rapidity. "After all,
Mr. Bennett," she said, "you will be nothing better than a beggar; now,
will you? You mustn't think me cruel, but I can't help speaking the
truth. _Write books!_" Her expression filled up the incomplete sentence;
she waggled with indignant emotion. These passages came to Lucian's ears,
and indeed the Gervases boasted of "how well poor Agatha had behaved."

"Never mind, Gathy," old Gervase had observed. "If the impudent
young puppy comes here again, we'll see what Thomas can do with the
horse-whip."

"Poor dear child," Mrs. Gervase added in telling the tale, "and she was
so fond of him too. But of course it couldn't go on after his shameful
behavior."

But Lucian was troubled; he sought vainly for the ideal womanly, the
tender note of "come rest on this bosom." Ministering angels, he felt
convinced, do not rub red pepper and sulfuric acid into the wounds of
suffering mortals.

Then there was the case of Mr. Vaughan, a squire in the neighborhood, at
whose board all the aristocracy of Caermaen had feasted for years. Mr.
Vaughan had a first-rate cook, and his cellar was rare, and he was
never so happy as when he shared his good things with his friends. His
mother kept his house, and they delighted all the girls with frequent
dances, while the men sighed over the amazing champagne. Investments
proved disastrous, and Mr. Vaughan had to sell the grey manor-house by
the river. He and his mother took a little modern stucco villa in
Caermaen, wishing to be near their dear friends. But the men were "very
sorry; rough on you, Vaughan. Always thought those Patagonians were
risky, but you wouldn't hear of it. Hope we shall see you before very
long; you and Mrs. Vaughan must come to tea some day after Christmas."

"Of course we are all very sorry for them," said Henrietta Dixon. "No, we
haven't called on Mrs. Vaughan yet. They have no regular servant, you
know; only a woman in the morning. I hear old mother Vaughan, as Edward
will call her, does nearly everything. And their house is absurdly small;
it's little more than a cottage. One really can't call it a gentleman's
house."

Then Mr. Vaughan, his heart in the dust, went to the Gervases and tried to
borrow five pounds of Mr. Gervase. He had to be ordered out of the house,
and, as Edith Gervase said, it was all very painful; "he went out in such
a funny way," she added, "just like the dog when he's had a whipping. Of
course it's sad, even if it is all his own fault, as everybody says, but
he looked so ridiculous as he was going down the steps that I couldn't
help laughing." Mr. Vaughan heard the ringing, youthful laughter as he
crossed the lawn.

Young girls like Henrietta Dixon and Edith Gervase naturally viewed the
Vaughans' comical position with all the high spirits of their age, but
the elder ladies could not look at matters in this frivolous light.

"Hush, dear, hush," said Mrs. Gervase, "it's all too shocking to be a
laughing matter. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Dixon? The sinful
extravagance that went on at Pentre always _frightened_ me. You remember
that ball they gave last year? Mr. Gervase assured me that the champagne
must have cost _at least_ a hundred and fifty shillings the dozen."

"It's dreadful, isn't it," said Mrs. Dixon, "when one thinks of how many
poor people there are who would be thankful for a crust of bread?"

"Yes, Mrs. Dixon," Agatha joined in, "and you know how absurdly the
Vaughans spoilt the cottagers. Oh, it was really wicked; one would think
Mr. Vaughan wished to make them above their station. Edith and I went for
a walk one day nearly as far as Pentre, and we begged a glass of water of
old Mrs. Jones who lives in that pretty cottage near the brook. She began
praising the Vaughans in the most fulsome manner, and showed us some
flannel things they had given her at Christmas. I assure you, my dear
Mrs. Dixon, the flannel was the very best quality; no lady could wish for
better. It couldn't have cost less than half-a-crown a yard."

"I know, my dear, I know. Mr. Dixon always said it couldn't last. How
often I have heard him say that the Vaughans were pauperizing all the
common people about Pentre, and putting every one else in a most
unpleasant position. Even from a worldly point of view it was very poor
taste on their part. So different from the _true_ charity that Paul
speaks of."

"I only wish they had given away nothing worse than flannel," said Miss
Colley, a young lady of very strict views. "But I assure you there was a
perfect orgy, I can call it nothing else, every Christmas. Great joints
of prime beef, and barrels of strong beer, and snuff and tobacco
distributed wholesale; as if the poor wanted to be encouraged in their
disgusting habits. It was really impossible to go through the village for
weeks after; the whole place was poisoned with the fumes of horrid
tobacco pipes."

"Well, we see how that sort of thing ends," said Mrs. Dixon, summing up
judicially. "We had intended to call, but I really think it would be
impossible after what Mrs. Gervase has told us. The idea of Mr. Vaughan
trying to sponge on poor Mr. Gervase in that shabby way! I think meanness
of that kind is so hateful."

It was the practical side of all this that astonished Lucian. He saw that
in reality there was no high-flown quixotism in a woman's nature; the
smooth arms, made he had thought for caressing, seemed muscular; the
hands meant for the doing of works of pity in his system, appeared
dexterous in the giving of "stingers," as Barnes might say, and the
smiling lips could sneer with great ease. Nor was he more fortunate in
his personal experiences. As has been told, Mrs. Dixon spoke of him in
connection with "judgments," and the younger ladies did not exactly
cultivate his acquaintance. Theoretically they "adored" books and thought
poetry "too sweet," but in practice they preferred talking about mares
and fox-terriers and their neighbors.

They were nice girls enough, very like other young ladies in other
country towns, content with the teaching of their parents, reading the
Bible every morning in their bedrooms, and sitting every Sunday in church
amongst the well-dressed "sheep" on the right hand. It was not their
fault if they failed to satisfy the ideal of an enthusiastic dreamy boy,
and indeed, they would have thought his feigned woman immodest, absurdly
sentimental, a fright ("never wears stays, my dear") and _horrid_.

At first he was a good deal grieved at the loss of that charming tender
woman, the work of his brain. When the Miss Dixons went haughtily by with
a scornful waggle, when the Miss Gervases passed in the wagonette
laughing as the mud splashed him, the poor fellow would look up with a
face of grief that must have been very comic; "like a dying duck," as
Edith Gervase said. Edith was really very pretty, and he would have liked
to talk to her, even about fox-terriers, if she would have listened. One
afternoon at the Dixons' he really forced himself upon her, and with all
the obtuseness of an enthusiastic boy tried to discuss the _Lotus Eaters_
of Tennyson. It was too absurd. Captain Kempton was making signals to
Edith all the time, and Lieutenant Gatwick had gone off in disgust, and
he had promised to bring her a puppy "by Vick out of Wasp." At last the
poor girl could bear it no longer:

"Yes, it's very sweet," she said at last. "When did you say you were
going to London, Mr. Taylor?"

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody,
and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, "just like
the dog when he's had a whipping," to use Edith's own expression. Two or
three lessons of this description produced their due effect; and when he
saw a male Dixon or Gervase approaching him he bit his lip and summoned
up his courage. But when he descried a "ministering angel" he made haste
and hid behind a hedge or took to the woods. In course of time the desire
to escape became an instinct, to be followed as a matter of course; in
the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old ideals were
almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the _bête
humaine_, like the adder, would in all probability sting, and he
therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special
resentment. The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned
fang, and it was well to leave them both alone. Then had come that sudden
fury of rage against all humanity, as he went out of Caermaen carrying
the book that had been stolen from him by the enterprising Beit. He
shuddered as he though of how nearly he had approached the verge of
madness, when his eyes filled with blood and the earth seemed to burn
with fire. He remembered how he had looked up to the horizon and the sky
was blotched with scarlet; and the earth was deep red, with red woods
and red fields. There was something of horror in the memory, and in the
vision of that wild night walk through dim country, when every shadow
seemed a symbol of some terrible impending doom. The murmur of the brook,
the wind shrilling through the wood, the pale light flowing from the
moldered trunks, and the picture of his own figure fleeing and fleeting
through the shades; all these seemed unhappy things that told a story in
fatal hieroglyphics. And then the life and laws of the sunlight had
passed away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead began. Though
his limbs were weary, he had felt his muscles grow strong as steel; a
woman, one of the hated race, was beside him in the darkness, and the
wild beast woke within him, ravening for blood and brutal lust; all the
raging desires of the dim race from which he came assailed his heart. The
ghosts issued out from the weird wood and from the caves in the hills,
besieging him, as he had imagined the spiritual legion besieging
Caermaen, beckoning him to a hideous battle and a victory that he had
never imagined in his wildest dreams. And then out of the darkness the
kind voice spoke again, and the kind hand was stretched out to draw him
up from the pit. It was sweet to think of that which he had found at
last; the boy's picture incarnate, all the passion and compassion of his
longing, all the pity and love and consolation. She, that beautiful
passionate woman offering up her beauty in sacrifice to him, she was
worthy indeed of his worship. He remembered how his tears had fallen upon
her breast, and how tenderly she had soothed him, whispering those
wonderful unknown words that sang to his heart. And she had made herself
defenseless before him, caressing and fondling the body that had been so
despised. He exulted in the happy thought that he had knelt down on the
ground before her, and had embraced her knees and worshipped. The woman's
body had become his religion; he lay awake at night looking into the
darkness with hungry eyes; wishing for a miracle, that the appearance of
the so-desired form might be shaped before him. And when he was alone in
quiet places in the wood, he fell down again on his knees, and even on
his face, stretching out vain hands in the air, as if they would feel her
flesh. His father noticed in those days that the inner pocket of his coat
was stuffed with papers; he would see Lucian walking up and down in a
secret shady place at the bottom of the orchard, reading from his sheaf
of manuscript, replacing the leaves, and again drawing them out. He would
walk a few quick steps, and pause as if enraptured, gazing in the air as
if he looked through the shadows of the world into some sphere of glory,
feigned by his thought. Mr. Taylor was almost alarmed at the sight; he
concluded of course that Lucian was writing a book. In the first place,
there seemed something immodest in seeing the operation performed under
one's eyes; it was as if the "make-up" of a beautiful actress were done
on the stage, in full audience; as if one saw the rounded calves fixed
in position, the fleshings drawn on, the voluptuous outlines of the
figure produced by means purely mechanical, blushes mantling from the
paint-pot, and the golden tresses well secured by the wigmaker. Books,
Mr. Taylor thought, should swim into one's ken mysteriously; they should
appear all printed and bound, without apparent genesis; just as children
are suddenly told that they have a little sister, found by mamma in the
garden. But Lucian was not only engaged in composition; he was plainly
rapturous, enthusiastic; Mr. Taylor saw him throw up his hands, and bow
his head with strange gesture. The parson began to fear that his son
was like some of those mad Frenchmen of whom he had read, young fellows
who had a sort of fury of literature, and gave their whole lives to it,
spending days over a page, and years over a book, pursuing art as
Englishmen pursue money, building up a romance as if it were a business.
Now Mr. Taylor held firmly by the "walking-stick" theory; he believed
that a man of letters should have a real profession, some solid
employment in life. "Get something to do," he would have liked to say,
"and then you can write as much as you please. Look at Scott, look at
Dickens and Trollope." And then there was the social point of view; it
might be right, or it might be wrong, but there could be no doubt that
the literary man, as such, was not thought much of in English society.
Mr. Taylor knew his Thackeray, and he remembered that old Major
Pendennis, society personified, did not exactly boast of his nephew's
occupation. Even Warrington was rather ashamed to own his connection with
journalism, and Pendennis himself laughed openly at his novel-writing as
an agreeable way of making money, a useful appendage to the cultivation
of dukes, his true business in life. This was the plain English view, and
Mr. Taylor was no doubt right enough in thinking it good, practical
common sense. Therefore when he saw Lucian loitering and sauntering,
musing amorously over his manuscript, exhibiting manifest signs of that
fine fury which Britons have ever found absurd, he felt grieved at heart,
and more than ever sorry that he had not been able to send the boy to
Oxford.

"B.N.C. would have knocked all this nonsense out of him," he thought. "He
would have taken a double First like my poor father and made something of
a figure in the world. However, it can't be helped." The poor man sighed,
and lit his pipe, and walked in another part of the garden.

But he was mistaken in his diagnosis of the symptoms. The book that
Lucian had begun lay unheeded in the drawer; it was a secret work that he
was engaged on, and the manuscripts that he took out of that inner pocket
never left him day or night. He slept with them next to his heart, and he
would kiss them when he was quite alone, and pay them such devotion as he
would have paid to her whom they symbolized. He wrote on these leaves a
wonderful ritual of praise and devotion; it was the liturgy of his
religion. Again and again he copied and recopied this madness of a lover;
dallying all days over the choice of a word, searching for more exquisite
phrases. No common words, no such phrases as he might use in a tale would
suffice; the sentences of worship must stir and be quickened, they must
glow and burn, and be decked out as with rare work of jewelry. Every part
of that holy and beautiful body must be adored; he sought for terms of
extravagant praise, he bent his soul and mind low before her, licking the
dust under her feet, abased and yet rejoicing as a Templar before the
image of Baphomet. He exulted more especially in the knowledge that there
was nothing of the conventional or common in his ecstasy; he was not the
fervent, adoring lover of Tennyson's poems, who loves with passion and
yet with a proud respect, with the love always of a gentleman for a lady.
Annie was not a lady; the Morgans had farmed their land for hundreds of
years; they were what Miss Gervase and Miss Colley and the rest of them
called common people. Tennyson's noble gentleman thought of their ladies
with something of reticence; they imagined them dressed in flowing and
courtly robes, walking with slow dignity; they dreamed of them as always
stately, the future mistresses of their houses, mothers of their heirs.
Such lovers bowed, but not too low, remembering their own honor, before
those who were to be equal companions and friends as well as wives. It
was not such conceptions as these that he embodied in the amazing emblems
of his ritual; he was not, he told himself, a young officer, "something
in the city," or a rising barrister engaged to a Miss Dixon or a Miss
Gervase. He had not thought of looking out for a nice little house in a
good residential suburb where they would have pleasant society; there
were to be no consultations about wall-papers, or jocose whispers from
friends as to the necessity of having a room that would do for a nursery.
No glad young thing had leant on his arm while they chose the suite in
white enamel, and china for "our bedroom," the modest salesman doing
his best to spare their blushes. When Edith Gervase married she would get
mamma to look out for two really good servants, "as we must begin
quietly," and mamma would make sure that the drains and everything
were right. Then her "girl friends" would come on a certain solemn day to
see all her "lovely things." "Two dozen of everything!" "Look, Ethel, did
you ever see such ducky frills?" "And that insertion, isn't it quite too
sweet?" "My dear Edith, you are a lucky girl." "All the underlinen
specially made by Madame Lulu!" "What delicious things!" "I hope he knows
what a prize he is winning." "Oh! do look at those lovely ribbon-bows!"
"You darling, how happy you must be." "Real Valenciennes!" Then a whisper
in the lady's ear, and her reply, "Oh, don't, Nelly!" So they would chirp
over their treasures, as in Rabelais they chirped over their cups; and
every thing would be done in due order till the wedding-day, when mamma,
who had strained her sinews and the commandments to bring the match
about, would weep and look indignantly at the unhappy bridegroom. "I
_hope_ you'll be kind to her, Robert." Then in a rapid whisper to the
bride: "Mind, you _insist_ on Wyman's flushing the drains when you come
back; servants are so careless and dirty too. Don't let him go about by
himself in Paris. Men are so _queer_, one never knows. You _have_ got the
pills?" And aloud, after these _secreta_, "God bless you, my dear;
good-bye! _cluck_, _cluck_, good-bye!"

There were stranger things written in the manuscript pages that Lucian
cherished, sentences that burnt and glowed like "coals of fire which hath
a most vehement flame." There were phrases that stung and tingled as he
wrote them, and sonorous words poured out in ecstasy and rapture, as in
some of the old litanies. He hugged the thought that a great part of what
he had invented was in the true sense of the word occult: page after page
might have been read aloud to the uninitiated without betraying the inner
meaning. He dreamed night and day over these symbols, he copied and
recopied the manuscript nine times before he wrote it out fairly in a
little book which he made himself of a skin of creamy vellum. In his
mania for acquirements that should be entirely useless he had gained some
skill in illumination, or limning as he preferred to call it, always
choosing the obscurer word as the obscurer arts. First he set himself to
the severe practice of the text; he spent many hours and days of toil in
struggling to fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and
rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand.
He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving
and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and
flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke
both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some
medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts;
and not till he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more
entrancing labor of the capitals and borders and ornaments. He mused long
over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and
trained his hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there
was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted splendor all about the
page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time,
and his father thought he would have done much better in trying to
improve his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly and illegible.
Indeed, there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some
specimens of his skill to an "artistic firm" in London; a verse of the
"Maud," curiously emblazoned, and a Latin hymn with the notes pricked on a
red stave. The firm wrote civilly, telling him that his work, though
good, was not what they wanted, and enclosing an illuminated text. "We
have great demand for this sort of thing," they concluded, "and if you
care to attempt something in this style we should be pleased to look
at it." The said text was "Thou, God, seest me." The letter was of a
degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a
"churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours
were varied. The initial was pale gold, the _h_ pink, the _o_ black, the
_u_ blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest
containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the female
bird.

"What a pretty text," said Miss Deacon. "I should like to nail it up in
my room. Why don't you try to do something like that, Lucian? You might
make something by it."

"I sent them these," said Lucian, "but they don't like them much."

"My dear boy! I should think not! Like them! What were you thinking of to
draw those queer stiff flowers all round the border? Roses? They don't
look like roses at all events. Where do you get such ideas from?"

"But the design is appropriate; look at the words."

"My dear Lucian, I can't read the words; it's such a queer old-fashioned
writing. Look how plain that text is; one can see what it's about. And
this other one; I can't make it out at all."

"It's a Latin hymn."

"A Latin hymn? Is it a Protestant hymn? I may be old-fashioned, but
_Hymns Ancient and Modern_ is quite good enough for me. This is the
music, I suppose? But, my dear boy, there are only four lines, and who
ever heard of notes shaped like that: you have made some square and some
diamond-shape? Why didn't you look in your poor mother's old music? It's
in the ottoman in the drawing-room. I could have shown you how to make
the notes; there are crotchets, you know, and quavers."

Miss Deacon laid down the illuminated _Urbs Beata_ in despair; she felt
convinced that her cousin was "next door to an idiot."

And he went out into the garden and raged behind a hedge. He broke two
flower-pots and hit an apple-tree very hard with his stick, and then,
feeling more calm, wondered what was the use in trying to do anything.
He would not have put the thought into words, but in his heart he was
aggrieved that his cousin liked the pigeons and the text, and did not
like his emblematical roses and the Latin hymn. He knew he had taken
great pains over the work, and that it was well done, and being still a
young man he expected praise. He found that in this hard world there was
a lack of appreciation; a critical spirit seemed abroad. If he could have
been scientifically observed as he writhed and smarted under the
strictures of "the old fool," as he rudely called his cousin, the
spectacle would have been extremely diverting. Little boys sometimes
enjoy a very similar entertainment; either with their tiny fingers or
with mamma's nail scissors they gradually deprive a fly of its wings and
legs. The odd gyrations and queer thin buzzings of the creature as it
spins comically round and round never fail to provide a fund of harmless
amusement. Lucian, indeed, fancied himself a very ill-used individual;
but he should have tried to imitate the nervous organization of the
flies, which, as mamma says, "can't really feel."

But now, as he prepared the vellum leaves, he remembered his art with
joy; he had not labored to do beautiful work in vain. He read over his
manuscript once more, and thought of the designing of the pages. He made
sketches on furtive sheets of paper, and hunted up books in his father's
library for suggestions. There were books about architecture, and
medieval iron work, and brasses which contributed hints for adornment;
and not content with mere pictures he sought in the woods and hedges,
scanning the strange forms of trees, and the poisonous growth of great
water-plants, and the parasite twining of honeysuckle and briony. In one
of these rambles he discovered a red earth which he made into a pigment,
and he found in the unctuous juice of a certain fern an ingredient which
he thought made his black ink still more glossy. His book was written all
in symbols, and in the same spirit of symbolism he decorated it, causing
wonderful foliage to creep about the text, and showing the blossom of
certain mystical flowers, with emblems of strange creatures, caught and
bound in rose thickets. All was dedicated to love and a lover's madness,
and there were songs in it which haunted him with their lilt and refrain.
When the book was finished it replaced the loose leaves as his constant
companion by day and night. Three times a day he repeated his ritual to
himself, seeking out the loneliest places in the woods, or going up to
his room; and from the fixed intentness and rapture of his gaze, the
father thought him still severely employed in the questionable process of
composition. At night he contrived to wake for his strange courtship; and
he had a peculiar ceremony when he got up in the dark and lit his candle.
From a steep and wild hillside, not far from the house, he had cut from
time to time five large boughs of spiked and prickly gorse. He had
brought them into the house, one by one, and had hidden them in the big
box that stood beside his bed. Often he woke up weeping and murmuring
to himself the words of one of his songs, and then when he had lit the
candle, he would draw out the gorse-boughs, and place them on the floor,
and taking off his nightgown, gently lay himself down on the bed of
thorns and spines. Lying on his face, with the candle and the book before
him, he would softly and tenderly repeat the praises of his dear, dear
Annie, and as he turned over page after page, and saw the raised gold of
the majuscules glow and flame in the candle-light, he pressed the thorns
into his flesh. At such moments he tasted in all its acute savor the joy
of physical pain; and after two or three experiences of such delights he
altered his book, making a curious sign in vermilion on the margin of the
passages where he was to inflict on himself this sweet torture. Never
did he fail to wake at the appointed hour, a strong effort of will broke
through all the heaviness of sleep, and he would rise up, joyful though
weeping, and reverently set his thorny bed upon the floor, offering his
pain with his praise. When he had whispered the last word, and had risen
from the ground, his body would be all freckled with drops of blood; he
used to view the marks with pride. Here and there a spine would be left
deep in the flesh, and he would pull these out roughly, tearing through
the skin. On some nights when he had pressed with more fervor on the
thorns his thighs would stream with blood, red beads standing out on the
flesh, and trickling down to his feet. He had some difficulty in washing
away the bloodstains so as not to leave any traces to attract the
attention of the servant; and after a time he returned no more to his bed
when his duty had been accomplished. For a coverlet he had a dark rug, a
good deal worn, and in this he would wrap his naked bleeding body, and
lie down on the hard floor, well content to add an aching rest to the
account of his pleasures. He was covered with scars, and those that
healed during the day were torn open afresh at night; the pale olive skin
was red with the angry marks of blood, and the graceful form of the young
man appeared like the body of a tortured martyr. He grew thinner and
thinner every day, for he ate but little; the skin was stretched on the
bones of his face, and the black eyes burnt in dark purple hollows. His
relations noticed that he was not looking well.

"Now, Lucian, it's perfect madness of you to go on like this," said Miss
Deacon, one morning at breakfast. "Look how your hand shakes; some people
would say that you have been taking brandy. And all that you want is a
little medicine, and yet you won't be advised. You know it's not my
fault; I have asked you to try Dr. Jelly's Cooling Powders again and
again."

He remembered the forcible exhibition of the powders when he was a boy,
and felt thankful that those days were over. He only grinned at his
cousin and swallowed a great cup of strong tea to steady his nerves,
which were shaky enough. Mrs. Dixon saw him one day in Caermaen; it was
very hot, and he had been walking rather fast. The scars on his body
burnt and tingled, and he tottered as he raised his hat to the vicar's
wife. She decided without further investigation that he must have been
drinking in public-houses.

"It seems a mercy that poor Mrs. Taylor was taken," she said to her
husband. "She has certainly been spared a great deal. That wretched young
man passed me this afternoon; he was quite intoxicated."

"How very said," said Mr. Dixon. "A little port, my dear?"

"Thank you, Merivale, I will have another glass of sherry. Dr. Burrows is
always scolding me and saying I _must_ take something to keep up my
energy, and this sherry is so weak."

The Dixons were not teetotalers. They regretted it deeply, and blamed the
doctor, who "insisted on some stimulant." However, there was some
consolation in trying to convert the parish to total abstinence, or, as
they curiously called it, temperance. Old women were warned of the sin of
taking a glass of beer for supper; aged laborers were urged to try
Cork-ho, the new temperance drink; an uncouth beverage, styled coffee,
was dispensed at the reading-room. Mr. Dixon preached an eloquent
"temperance" sermon, soon after the above conversation, taking as his
text: _Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees_. In his discourse he showed
that fermented liquor and leaven had much in common, that beer was at the
present day "put away" during Passover by the strict Jews; and in a
moving peroration he urged his dear brethren, "and more especially those
amongst us who are poor in this world's goods," to beware indeed of that
evil leaven which was sapping the manhood of our nation. Mrs. Dixon cried
after church:

"Oh, Merivale, what a beautiful sermon! How earnest you were. I hope it
will do good."

Mr. Dixon swallowed his port with great decorum, but his wife fuddled
herself every evening with cheap sherry. She was quite unaware of the
fact, and sometimes wondered in a dim way why she always had to scold the
children after dinner. And so strange things sometimes happened in the
nursery, and now and then the children looked queerly at one another
after a red-faced woman had gone out, panting.

Lucian knew nothing of his accuser's trials, but he was not long in
hearing of his own intoxication. The next time he went down to Caermaen
he was hailed by the doctor.

"Been drinking again today?"

"No," said Lucian in a puzzled voice. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, well, if you haven't, that's all right, as you'll be able to take a
drop with me. Come along in?"

Over the whisky and pipes Lucian heard of the evil rumors affecting his
character.

"Mrs. Dixon assured me you were staggering from one side of the street to
the other. You quite frightened her, she said. Then she asked me if I
recommended her to take one or two ounces of spirit at bedtime for the
palpitation; and of course I told her two would be better. I have my
living to make here, you know. And upon my word, I think she wants it;
she's always gurgling inside like waterworks. I wonder how old Dixon can
stand it."

"I like 'ounces of spirit,'" said Lucian. "That's taking it medicinally,
I suppose. I've often heard of ladies who have to 'take it medicinally';
and that's how it's done?"

"That's it. 'Dr Burrows won't _listen_ to me': 'I tell him how I dislike
the taste of spirits, but he says they are absolutely _necessary_ for my
constitution': 'my medical man _insists_ on something at bedtime'; that's
the style."

Lucian laughed gently; all these people had become indifferent to him; he
could no longer feel savage indignation at their little hypocrisies and
malignancies. Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and futility
had become like the thin shrill angry note of a gnat on a summer evening;
he had his own thoughts and his own life, and he passed on without
heeding.

"You come down to Caermaen pretty often, don't you?" said the doctor.
"I've seen you two or three times in the last fortnight."

"Yes, I enjoy the walk."

"Well, look me up whenever you like, you know. I am often in just at this
time, and a chat with a human being isn't bad, now and then. It's a
change for me; I'm often afraid I shall lose my patients."

The doctor had the weakness of these terrible puns, dragged headlong into
the conversation. He sometimes exhibited them before Mrs. Gervase, who
would smile in a faint and dignified manner, and say:

"Ah, I see. Very amusing indeed. We had an old coachmen once who was very
clever, I believe, at that sort of thing, but Mr. Gervase was obliged to
send him away, the laughter of the other domestics was so very
boisterous."

Lucian laughed, not boisterously, but good-humouredly, at the doctor's
joke. He liked Burrows, feeling that he was a man and not an automatic
gabbling machine.

"You look a little pulled down," said the doctor, when Lucian rose to go.
"No, you don't want my medicine. Plenty of beef and beer will do you more
good than drugs. I daresay it's the hot weather that has thinned you a
bit. Oh, you'll be all right again in a month."

As Lucian strolled out of the town on his way home, he passed a small
crowd of urchins assembled at the corner of an orchard. They were
enjoying themselves immensely. The "healthy" boy, the same whom he had
seen some weeks ago operating on a cat, seemed to have recognized his
selfishness in keeping his amusements to himself. He had found a poor
lost puppy, a little creature with bright pitiful eyes, almost human in
their fond, friendly gaze. It was not a well-bred little dog; it was
certainly not that famous puppy "by Vick out of Wasp"; it had rough hair
and a foolish long tail which it wagged beseechingly, at once deprecating
severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to
gentle treatment; it would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap,
fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a
moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle
and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was
quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting. Each one had a
plan of his own which he brought before the leader, a stout and sturdy
youth.

"Drown him! What be you thinkin' of, mun?" he was saying. "'Tain't no
sport at all. You shut your mouth, gwaes. Be you goin' to ask your mother
for the boiling-water? Is, Bob Williams, I do know all that: but where
be you a-going to get the fire from? Be quiet, mun, can't you? Thomas
Trevor, be this dog yourn or mine? Now, look you, if you don't all of you
shut your bloody mouths, I'll take the dog 'ome and keep him. There now!"

He was a born leader of men. A singular depression and lowness of spirit
showed itself on the boys' faces. They recognized that the threat might
very possibly be executed, and their countenances were at once composed
to humble attention. The puppy was still cowering on the ground in the
midst of them: one or two tried to relieve the tension of their feelings
by kicking him in the belly with their hobnail boots. It cried out with
the pain and writhed a little, but the poor little beast did not attempt
to bite or even snarl. It looked up with those beseeching friendly eyes
at its persecutors, and fawned on them again, and tried to wag its tail
and be merry, pretending to play with a straw on the road, hoping perhaps
to win a little favor in that way.

The leader saw the moment for his master-stroke. He slowly drew a piece
of rope from his pocket.

"What do you say to that, mun? Now, Thomas Trevor! We'll hang him over
that there bough. Will that suit you, Bobby Williams?"

There was a great shriek of approval and delight. All was again bustle
and animation. "I'll tie it round his neck?" "Get out, mun, you don't
know how it be done." "Is, I do, Charley." "Now, let me, gwaes, now
do let me." "You be sure he won't bite?" "He hain't mad, be he?" "Suppose
we were to tie up his mouth first?"

The puppy still fawned and curried favor, and wagged that sorry tail, and
lay down crouching on one side on the ground, sad and sorry in his heart,
but still with a little gleam of hope; for now and again he tried to
play, and put up his face, praying with those fond, friendly eyes. And
then at last his gambols and poor efforts for mercy ceased, and he lifted
up his wretched voice in one long dismal whine of despair. But he licked
the hand of the boy that tied the noose.

He was slowly and gently swung into the air as Lucian went by unheeded;
he struggled, and his legs twisted and writhed. The "healthy" boy pulled
the rope, and his friends danced and shouted with glee. As Lucian turned
the corner, the poor dangling body was swinging to and fro, the puppy was
dying, but he still kicked a little.

Lucian went on his way hastily, and shuddering with disgust. The young of
the human creature were really too horrible; they defiled the earth, and
made existence unpleasant, as the pulpy growth of a noxious and obscene
fungus spoils an agreeable walk. The sight of those malignant little
animals with mouths that uttered cruelty and filthy, with hands dexterous
in torture, and feet swift to run all evil errands, had given him a shock
and broken up the world of strange thoughts in which he had been
dwelling. Yet it was no good being angry with them: it was their nature
to be very loathsome. Only he wished they would go about their hideous
amusements in their own back gardens where nobody could see them at work;
it was too bad that he should be interrupted and offended in a quiet
country road. He tried to put the incident out of his mind, as if the
whole thing had been a disagreeable story, and the visions amongst which
he wished to move were beginning to return, when he was again rudely
disturbed. A little girl, a pretty child of eight or nine, was coming
along the lane to meet him. She was crying bitterly and looking to left
and right, and calling out some word all the time.

"Jack, Jack, Jack! Little Jackie! Jack!"

Then she burst into tears afresh, and peered into the hedge, and tried to
peep through a gate into a field.

"Jackie, Jackie, Jackie!"

She came up to Lucian, sobbing as if her heart would break, and dropped
him an old-fashioned curtsy.

"Oh, please sir, have you seen my little Jackie?"

"What do you mean?" said Lucian. "What is it you've
lost?"

"A little dog, please sir. A little terrier dog with white hair. Father
gave me him a month ago, and said I might keep him. Someone did leave the
garden gate open this afternoon, and he must 'a got away, sir, and I was
so fond of him sir, he was so playful and loving, and I be afraid he be
lost."

She began to call again, without waiting for an answer.

"Jack, Jack, Jack!"

"I'm afraid some boys have got your little dog," said Lucian. "They've
killed him. You'd better go back home."

He went on, walking as fast as he could in his endeavor to get beyond the
noise of the child's crying. It distressed him, and he wished to think of
other things. He stamped his foot angrily on the ground as he recalled
the annoyances of the afternoon, and longed for some hermitage on the
mountains, far above the stench and the sound of humanity.

A little farther, and he came to Croeswen, where the road branched off to
right and left. There was a triangular plot of grass between the two
roads; there the cross had once stood, "the goodly and famous roode" of
the old local chronicle. The words echoed in Lucian's ears as he went by
on the right hand. "There were five steps that did go up to the first
pace, and seven steps to the second pace, all of clene hewn ashler. And
all above it was most curiously and gloriously wrought with thorowgh
carved work; in the highest place was the Holy Roode with Christ upon the
Cross having Marie on the one syde and John on the other. And
below were six splendent and glisteringe archaungels that bore up the
roode, and beneath them in their stories were the most fair and noble
images of the xii Apostles and of divers other Saints and Martirs. And
in the lowest storie there was a marvelous imagerie of divers Beasts,
such as oxen and horses and swine, and little dogs and peacocks, all done
in the finest and most curious wise, so that they all seemed as they were
caught in a Wood of Thorns, the which is their torment of this life. And
here once in the year was a marvelous solemn service, when the parson of
Caermaen came out with the singers and all the people, singing the psalm
_Benedicite omnia opera_ as they passed along the road in their
procession. And when they stood at the roode the priest did there his
service, making certain prayers for the beasts, and then he went up to
the first pace and preached a sermon to the people, shewing them that as
our lord Jhu dyed upon the Tree of his deare mercy for us, so we too owe
mercy to the beasts his Creatures, for that they are all his poor lieges
and silly servants. And that like as the Holy Aungells do their suit to
him on high, and the Blessed xii Apostles and the Martirs, and all the
Blissful Saints served him aforetime on earth and now praise him in
heaven, so also do the beasts serve him, though they be in torment of
life and below men. For their spirit goeth downward, as Holy Writ
teacheth us."

It was a quaint old record, a curious relic of what the modern
inhabitants of Caermaen called the Dark Ages. A few of the stones that
had formed the base of the cross still remained in position, grey with
age, blotched with black lichen and green moss. The remainder of the
famous rood had been used to mend the roads, to build pigsties and
domestic offices; it had turned Protestant, in fact. Indeed, if it had
remained, the parson of Caermaen would have had no time for the service;
the coffee-stall, the Portuguese Missions, the Society for the Conversion
of the Jews, and important social duties took up all his leisure.
Besides, he thought the whole ceremony unscriptural.

Lucian passed on his way, wondering at the strange contrasts of the
Middle Ages. How was it that people who could devise so beautiful a
service believed in witchcraft, demoniacal possession and obsession, in
the incubus and succubus, and in the Sabbath an in many other horrible
absurdities? It seemed astonishing that anybody could even pretend to
credit such monstrous tales, but there could be no doubt that the dread
of old women who rode on broomsticks and liked black cats was once a very
genuine terror.

A cold wind blew up from the river at sunset, and the scars on his body
began to burn and tingle. The pain recalled his ritual to him, and he
began to recite it as he walked along. He had cut a branch of thorn
from the hedge and placed it next to his skin, pressing the spikes into
the flesh with his hand till the warm blood ran down. He felt it was an
exquisite and sweet observance for her sake; and then he thought of the
secret golden palace he was building for her, the rare and wonderful city
rising in his imagination. As the solemn night began to close about the
earth, and the last glimmer of the sun faded from the hills, he gave
himself anew to the woman, his body and his mind, all that he was, and
all that he had.




IV


In the course of the week Lucian again visited Caermaen. He wished to
view the amphitheatre more precisely, to note the exact position of the
ancient walls, to gaze up the valley from certain points within the
town, to imprint minutely and clearly on his mind the surge of the hills
about the city, and the dark tapestry of the hanging woods. And he
lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had been
stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors, in the
glowing gold of drinking cups, the curious beads of fused and colored
glass, the carved amber-work, the scent-flagons that still retained the
memory of unctuous odors, the necklaces, brooches, hair-pins of gold and
silver, and other intimate objects which had once belonged to Roman
ladies. One of the glass flagons, buried in damp earth for many hundred
years, had gathered in its dark grave all the splendors of the light, and
now shone like an opal with a moonlight glamour and gleams of gold and
pale sunset green, and imperial purple. Then there were the wine jars of
red earthenware, the memorial stones from graves, and the heads of broken
gods, with fragments of occult things used in the secret rites of
Mithras. Lucian read on the labels where all these objects were found: in
the churchyard, beneath the turf of the meadow, and in the old cemetery
near the forest; and whenever it was possible he would make his way to
the spot of discovery, and imagine the long darkness that had hidden gold
and stone and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the
scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure
in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His
continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants,
who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements.
They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down
three times a week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable.
And Lucian on his side was at first a good deal put out by occasional
encounters with members of the Gervase or Dixon or Colley tribes; he had
often to stop and exchange a few conventional expressions, and such
meetings, casual as they were, annoyed and distracted him. He was no
longer infuriated or wounded by sneers of contempt or by the cackling
laughter of the young people when they passed him on the road (his hat
was a shocking one and his untidiness terrible), but such incidents were
unpleasant just as the smell of a drain was unpleasant, and threw the
strange mechanism of his thoughts out of fear for the time. Then he had
been disgusted by the affair of the boys and the little dog; the
loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books of
modern occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described. The
adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from his
brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and
pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform
some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings were constantly
annoying him and getting in his way, was it not possible to annihilate
the race, or at all events to reduce them to wholly insignificant forms?
A certain process suggested itself to his mind, a work partly mental and
partly physical, and after two or three experiments he found to his
astonishment and delight that it was successful. Here, he thought, he had
discovered one of the secrets of true magic; this was the key to the
symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth,
change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant
shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the
enemy, but by transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by
going up higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier
crag. The stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the
wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and
converse with his fellow-creatures, to listen to their poor pretences and
inanities, was no more inconvenienced than when he had to climb an
awkward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant
manifestations of humanity; after all they no longer concerned him. Men
intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current of their thoughts
to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web, so why
should he be perturbed by the misery of a puppy in the hands of village
boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tortures; lying helpless and bound
in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the claws of
the horrible monster fastened on it; but its dying agonies had never
vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys should
offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog more than
he pitied the fly. The talk of the men and women might be wearisome and
inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an alchemist at the
moment of success, a general in the hour of victory, or a financier with
a gigantic scheme of swindling well on the market being annoyed by the
buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very terrible brute with a
hideous mouth and hairy tiger-like claws when seen through the
microscope; but Lucian had taken away the microscope from his eyes. He
could now walk the streets of Caermaen confident and secure, without any
dread of interruption, for at a moment's notice the transformation could
be effected. Once Dr. Burrows caught him and made him promise to attend
a bazaar that was to be held in aid of the Hungarian Protestants; Lucian
assented the more willingly as he wished to pay a visit to certain
curious mounds on a hill a little way out of the town, and he calculated
on slinking off from the bazaar early in the afternoon. Lord Beamys was
visiting Sir Vivian Ponsonby, a local magnate, and had kindly promised
to drive over and declare the bazaar open. It was a solemn moment when
the carriage drew up and the great man alighted. He was rather an
evil-looking old nobleman, but the clergy and gentry, their wives and
sons and daughters welcomed him with great and unctuous joy.
Conversations were broken off in mid-sentence, slow people gaped, not
realizing why their friends had so suddenly left them, the Meyricks came
up hot and perspiring in fear lest they should be too late, Miss Colley,
a yellow virgin of austere regard, smiled largely, Mrs. Dixon beckoned
wildly with her parasol to the "girls" who were idly strolling in a
distant part of the field, and the archdeacon ran at full speed. The air
grew dark with bows, and resonant with the genial laugh of the
archdeacon, the cackle of the younger ladies, and the shrill parrot-like
voices of the matrons; those smiled who had never smiled before, and on
some maiden faces there hovered that look of adoring ecstasy with which
the old maidens graced their angels. Then, when all the due rites had
been performed, the company turned and began to walk towards the booths
of their small Vanity Fair. Lord Beamys led the way with Mrs. Gervase,
Mrs. Dixon followed with Sir Vivian Ponsonby, and the multitudes that
followed cried, saying, "What a dear old man!"--"Isn't it _kind_ of
him to come all this way?"--"What a sweet expression, isn't it?"--"I
think he's an old love"--"One of the good old sort"--"Real English
nobleman"--"Oh most correct, I assure you; if a girl gets into trouble,
notice to quit at once"--"Always stands by the Church"--"Twenty livings
in his gift"--"Voted for the Public Worship Regulation Act"--"Ten
thousand acres strictly preserved." The old lord was leering pleasantly
and muttering to himself: "Some fine gals here. Like the looks of that
filly with the pink hat. Ought to see more of her. She'd give Lotty
points."

The pomp swept slowly across the grass: the archdeacon had got hold of
Mr. Dixon, and they were discussing the misdeeds of some clergyman in the
rural deanery.

"I can scarce credit it," said Mr. Dixon.

"Oh, I assure you, there can be no doubt. We have witnesses. There can be
no question that there was a procession at Llanfihangel on the Sunday
before Easter; the choir and minister went round the church, carrying
palm branches in their hands."

"Very shocking."

"It has distressed the bishop. Martin is a hard-working man enough, and
all that, but those sort of things can't be tolerated. The bishop told me
that he had set his face against processions."

"Quite right: the bishop is perfectly right. Processions are
unscriptural."

"It's the thin end of the wedge, you know, Dixon."

"Exactly. I have always resisted anything of the kind here."

"Right. _Principiis obsta_, you know. Martin is so _imprudent_.
There's a _way_ of doing things."

The "scriptural" procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls
were reached, and gathered round the nobleman as he declared the bazaar
open.

Lucian was sitting on a garden-seat, a little distance off, looking
dreamily before him. And all that he saw was a swarm of flies clustering
and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the grass. The
spectacle in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts, and soon
after the opening of the bazaar he went quietly away, walking across the
fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to inspect.

All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighborhood had a peculiar
object; he was gradually leveling to the dust the squalid kraals of
modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria. All
this mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and himself; for
her the wonderful villas, the shady courts, the magic of tessellated
pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their intricate and
glowing patterns. Lucian wandered all day through the shining streets,
taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the dense and gloomy ilex
trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of the fountains. Sometimes
he would look out of a window and watch the crowd and color of the
market-place, and now and again a ship came up the river bringing
exquisite silks and the merchandise of unknown lands in the Far East. He
had made a curious and accurate map of the town he proposed to inhabit,
in which every villa was set down and named. He drew his lines to scale
with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the plan till he was able to
find his way from house to house on the darkest summer night. On the
southern slopes about the town there were vineyards, always under a
glowing sun, and sometimes he ventured to the furthest ridge of the
forest, where the wild people still lingered, that he might catch the
golden gleam of the city far away, as the light quivered and scintillated
on the glittering tiles. And there were gardens outside the city gates
where strange and brilliant flowers grew, filling the hot air with their
odor, and scenting the breeze that blew along the streets. The dull
modern life was far away, and people who saw him at this period wondered
what was amiss; the abstraction of his glance was obvious, even to eyes
not over-sharp. But men and women had lost all their power of annoyance
and vexation; they could no longer even interrupt his thought for a
moment. He could listen to Mr. Dixon with apparent attention, while he
was in reality enraptured by the entreating music of the double flute,
played by a girl in the garden of Avallaunius, for that was the name he
had taken. Mr. Dixon was innocently discoursing archeology, giving a
brief _résumé_ of the view expressed by Mr. Wyndham at the last meeting
of the antiquarian society.

"There can be no doubt that the temple of Diana stood there in pagan
times," he concluded, and Lucian assented to the opinion, and asked a few
questions which seemed pertinent enough. But all the time the flute notes
were sounding in his ears, and the ilex threw a purple shadow on the
white pavement before his villa. A boy came forward from the garden; he
had been walking amongst the vines and plucking the ripe grapes, and the
juice had trickled down over his breast. Standing beside the girl,
unashamed in the sunlight, he began to sing one of Sappho's love songs.
His voice was as full and rich as a woman's, but purged of all emotion;
he was an instrument of music in the flesh. Lucian looked at him
steadily; the white perfect body shone against the roses and the blue of
the sky, clear and gleaming as marble in the glare of the sun. The
words he sang burned and flamed with passion, and he was as unconscious
of their meaning as the twin pipes of the flute. And the girl was
smiling. The vicar shook hands and went on, well pleased with his remarks
on the temple of Diana, and also with Lucian's polite interest.

"He is by no means wanting in intelligence," he said to his family. "A
little curious in manner, perhaps, but not stupid."

"Oh, papa," said Henrietta, "don't you think he is rather silly? He can't
talk about anything--anything interesting, I mean. And he pretends to
know a lot about books, but I heard him say the other day he had never
read _The Prince of the House of David_ or _Ben-Hur_. Fancy!"

The vicar had not interrupted Lucian. The sun still beat upon the roses,
and a little breeze bore the scent of them to his nostrils together with
the smell of grapes and vine-leaves. He had become curious in sensation,
and as he leant back upon the cushions covered with glistening yellow
silk, he was trying to analyze a strange ingredient in the perfume of
the air. He had penetrated far beyond the crude distinctions of modern
times, beyond the rough: "there's a smell of roses," "there must be
sweetbriar somewhere." Modern perceptions of odor were, he knew, far
below those of the savage in delicacy. The degraded black fellow of
Australia could distinguish odors in a way that made the consumer of
"damper" stare in amazement, but the savage's sensations were all
strictly utilitarian. To Lucian as he sat in the cool porch, his feet on
the marble, the air came laden with scents as subtly and wonderfully
interwoven and contrasted as the harmonica of a great master. The
stained marble of the pavement gave a cool reminiscence of the Italian
mountain, the blood-red roses palpitating in the sunlight sent out an
odor mystical as passion itself, and there was the hint of inebriation
in the perfume of the trellised vines. Besides these, the girl's desire
and the unripe innocence of the boy were as distinct as benzoin and
myrrh, both delicious and exquisite, and exhaled as freely as the scent
of the roses. But there was another element that puzzled him, an
aromatic suggestion of the forest. He understood it at last; it was the
vapor of the great red pines that grew beyond the garden; their spicy
needles were burning in the sun, and the smell was as fragrant as the
fume of incense blown from far. The soft entreaty of the flute and the
swelling rapture of the boy's voice beat on the air together, and Lucian
wondered whether there were in the nature of things any true distinction
between the impressions of sound and scent and color. The violent blue
of the sky, the song, and the odours seemed rather varied symbols of one
mystery than distinct entities. He could almost imagine that the boy's
innocence was indeed a perfume, and that the palpitating roses had
become a sonorous chant.

In the curious silence which followed the last notes, when the boy and
girl had passed under the purple ilex shadow, he fell into a reverie. The
fancy that sensations are symbols and not realities hovered in his mind,
and led him to speculate as to whether they could not actually be
transmuted one into another. It was possible, he thought, that a whole
continent of knowledge had been undiscovered; the energies of men having
been expended in unimportant and foolish directions. Modern ingenuity had
been employed on such trifles as locomotive engines, electric cables, and
cantilever bridges; on elaborate devices for bringing uninteresting
people nearer together; the ancients had been almost as foolish, because
they had mistaken the symbol for the thing signified. It was not the
material banquet which really mattered, but the thought of it; it was
almost as futile to eat and take emetics and eat again as to invent
telephones and high-pressure boilers. As for some other ancient methods
of enjoying life, one might as well set oneself to improve calico
printing at once.

"Only in the garden of Avallaunius," said Lucian to himself, "is the true
and exquisite science to be found."

He could imagine a man who was able to live in one sense while he
pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, hearing,
or seeing should be translated into odor; who at the desired kiss should
be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to whom music should be the
perfume of a rose-garden at dawn.

When, now and again, he voluntarily resumed the experience of common
life, it was that he might return with greater delight to the garden in
the city of refuge. In the actual world the talk was of Nonconformists,
the lodger franchise, and the Stock Exchange; people were constantly
reading newspapers, drinking Australian Burgundy, and doing other things
equally absurd. They either looked shocked when the fine art of pleasure
was mentioned, or confused it with going to musical comedies, drinking
bad whisky, and keeping late hours in disreputable and vulgar company. He
found to his amusement that the profligate were by many degrees duller
than the pious, but that the most tedious of all were the persons who
preached promiscuity, and called their system of "pigging" the "New
Morality."

He went back to the city lovingly, because it was built and adorned for
his love. As the metaphysicians insist on the consciousness of the ego as
the implied basis of all thought, so he knew that it was she in whom he
had found himself, and through whom and for whom all the true life
existed. He felt that Annie had taught him the rare magic which had
created the garden of Avallaunius. It was for her that he sought strange
secrets and tried to penetrate the mysteries of sensation, for he could
only give her wonderful thoughts and a wonderful life, and a poor body
stained with the scars of his worship.

It was with this object, that of making the offering of himself a worthy
one, that he continually searched for new and exquisite experiences. He
made lovers come before him and confess their secrets; he pried
into the inmost mysteries of innocence and shame, noting how passion and
reluctance strive together for the mastery. In the amphitheatre he
sometimes witnessed strange entertainments in which such tales as
_Daphnis and Chloe_ and _The Golden Ass_ were performed before him. These
shows were always given at nighttime; a circle of torch-bearers
surrounded the stage in the center, and above, all the tiers of seats
were dark. He would look up at the soft blue of the summer sky, and at
the vast dim mountain hovering like a cloud in the west, and then at the
scene illumined by a flaring light, and contrasted with violent shadows.
The subdued mutter of conversation in a strange language rising from
bench after bench, swift hissing whispers of explanation, now and then a
shout or a cry as the interest deepened, the restless tossing of the
people as the end drew near, an arm lifted, a cloak thrown back, the
sudden blaze of a torch lighting up purple or white or the gleam of
gold in the black serried ranks; these were impressions that seemed
always amazing. And above, the dusky light of the stars, around, the
sweet-scented meadows, and the twinkle of lamps from the still city, the
cry of the sentries about the walls, the wash of the tide filling the
river, and the salt savor of the sea. With such a scenic ornament he saw
the tale of Apuleius represented, heard the names of Fotis and Byrrhaena
and Lucius proclaimed, and the deep intonation of such sentences as _Ecce
Veneris hortator et armiger Liber advenit ultro_. The tale went on
through all its marvelous adventures, and Lucian left the amphitheatre
and walked beside the river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of
voices and the singing Latin, and note how the rumor of the stage mingled
with the murmur of the shuddering reeds and the cool lapping of the tide.
Then came the farewell of the cantor, the thunder of applause, the crash
of cymbals, the calling of the flutes, and the surge of the wind in the
great dark wood.

At other times it was his chief pleasure to spend a whole day in a
vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond the bridge. A grey stone seat
had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and here he often sat without
motion or gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river swept round
the town in a half circle; he could see the swirl of the yellow water,
its eddies and miniature whirlpools, as the tide poured up from the
south. And beyond the river the strong circuit of the walls, and within,
the city glittered like a charming piece of mosaic. He freed himself from
the obtuse modern view of towns as places where human beings live and
make money and rejoice or suffer, for from the standpoint of the moment
such facts were wholly impertinent. He knew perfectly well that for his
present purpose the tawny sheen and shimmer of the tide was the only fact
of importance about the river, and so he regarded the city as a curious
work in jewelry. Its radiant marble porticoes, the white walls of the
villas, a dome of burning copper, the flash and scintillation of tiled
roofs, the quiet red of brickwork, dark groves of ilex, and cypress, and
laurel, glowing rose-gardens, and here and there the silver of a
fountain, seemed arranged and contrasted with a wonderful art, and the
town appeared a delicious ornament, every cube of color owing its place
to the thought and inspiration of the artificer. Lucian, as he gazed from
his arbour amongst the trellised vines, lost none of the subtle pleasures
of the sight; noting every _nuance_ of color, he let his eyes dwell for a
moment on the scarlet flash of poppies, and then on a glazed roof which
in the glance of the sun seemed to spout white fire. A square of vines
was like some rare green stone; the grapes were massed so richly amongst
the vivid leaves, that even from far off there was a sense of irregular
flecks and stains of purple running through the green. The laurel garths
were like cool jade; the gardens, where red, yellow, blue and white
gleamed together in a mist of heat, had the radiance of opal; the river
was a band of dull gold. On every side, as if to enhance the preciousness
of the city, the woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky was violet,
specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. It reminded him
of a beautiful bowl in his villa; the ground was of that same brilliant
blue, and the artist had fused into the work, when it was hot, particles
of pure white glass.

For Lucian this was a spectacle that enchanted many hours; leaning on one
hand, he would gaze at the city glowing in the sunlight till the purple
shadows grew down the slopes and the long melodious trumpet sounded for
the evening watch. Then, as he strolled beneath the trellises, he would
see all the radiant facets glimmering out, and the city faded into haze,
a white wall shining here and there, and the gardens veiled in a dim glow
of color. On such an evening he would go home with the sense that he had
truly lived a day, having received for many hours the most acute
impressions of beautiful color.

Often he spent the night in the cool court of his villa, lying amidst
soft cushions heaped upon the marble bench. A lamp stood on the table at
his elbow, its light making the water in the cistern twinkle. There was
no sound in the court except the soft continual plashing of the fountain.
Throughout these still hours he would meditate, and he became more than
ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own
sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the
beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some years before he had read many of the
wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had suspected
that something other than the turning of lead into gold was intended.
This impression was deepened when he looked into _Lumen de Lumine_
by Vaughan, the brother of the Silurist, and he had long puzzled himself
in the endeavor to find a reasonable interpretation of the hermetic
mystery, and of the red powder, "glistening and glorious in the sun." And
the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as he lay quiet in
the court of Avallaunius. He knew that he himself had solved the riddle,
that he held in his hand the powder of projection, the philosopher's
stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the gold of exquisite
impressions. He understood now something of the alchemical symbolism; the
crucible and the furnace, the "Green Dragon," and the "Son Blessed of the
Fire" had, he saw, a peculiar meaning. He understood, too, why the
uninitiated were warned of the terror and danger through which they must
pass; and the vehemence with which the adepts disclaimed all desire for
material riches no longer struck him as singular. The wise man does not
endure the torture of the furnace in order that he may be able to compete
with operators in pork and company promoters; neither a steam yacht, nor
a grouse-moor, nor three liveried footmen would add at all to his
gratifications. Again Lucian said to himself:

"Only in the court of Avallaunius is the true science of the exquisite to
be found."

He saw the true gold into which the beggarly matter of existence may be
transmuted by spagyric art; a succession of delicious moments, all the
rare flavors of life concentrated, purged of their lees, and preserved
in a beautiful vessel. The moonlight fell green on the fountain and on
the curious pavements, and in the long sweet silence of the night he lay
still and felt that thought itself was an acute pleasure, to be expressed
perhaps in terms of odor or color by the true artist.

And he gave himself other and even stranger gratifications. Outside the
city walls, between the baths and the amphitheatre, was a tavern, a place
where wonderful people met to drink wonderful wine. There he saw priests
of Mithras and Isis and of more occult rites from the East, men who wore
robes of bright colours, and grotesque ornaments, symbolizing secret
things. They spoke amongst themselves in a rich jargon of colored words,
full of hidden meanings and the sense of matters unintelligible to the
uninitiated, alluding to what was concealed beneath roses, and calling
each other by strange names. And there were actors who gave the shows in
the amphitheatre, officers of the legion who had served in wild places,
singers, and dancing girls, and heroes of strange adventure.

The walls of the tavern were covered with pictures painted in violent
hues; blues and reds and greens jarring against one another and lighting
up the gloom of the place. The stone benches were always crowded, the
sunlight came in through the door in a long bright beam, casting a
dancing shadow of vine leaves on the further wall. There a painter had
made a joyous figure of the young Bacchus driving the leopards before him
with his ivy-staff, and the quivering shadow seemed a part of the
picture. The room was cool and dark and cavernous, but the scent and heat
of the summer gushed in through the open door. There was ever a full
sound, with noise and vehemence, there, and the rolling music of the
Latin tongue never ceased.

"The wine of the siege, the wine that we saved," cried one.

"Look for the jar marked _Faunus_; you will be glad."

"Bring me the wine of the Owl's Face."

"Let us have the wine of Saturn's Bridge."

The boys who served brought the wine in dull red jars that struck a
charming note against their white robes. They poured out the violet and
purple and golden wine with calm sweet faces as if they were assisting in
the mysteries, without any sign that they heard the strange words that
flashed from side to side. The cups were all of glass; some were of deep
green, of the color of the sea near the land, flawed and specked with the
bubbles of the furnace. Others were of brilliant scarlet, streaked with
irregular bands of white, and having the appearance of white globules in
the molded stem. There were cups of dark glowing blue, deeper and more
shining than the blue of the sky, and running through the substance of
the glass were veins of rich gamboge yellow, twining from the brim to the
foot. Some cups were of a troubled and clotted red, with alternating
blotches of dark and light, some were variegated with white and yellow
stains, some wore a film of rainbow colours, some glittered, shot with
gold threads through the clear crystal, some were as if sapphires hung
suspended in running water, some sparkled with the glint of stars, some
were black and golden like tortoiseshell.

A strange feature was the constant and fluttering motion of hands and
arms. Gesture made a constant commentary on speech; white fingers, whiter
arms, and sleeves of all colours, hovered restlessly, appeared and
disappeared with an effect of threads crossing and re-crossing on the
loom. And the odor of the place was both curious and memorable; something
of the damp cold breath of the cave meeting the hot blast of summer,
the strangely mingled aromas of rare wines as they fell plashing and
ringing into the cups, the drugged vapor of the East that the priests of
Mithras and Isis bore from their steaming temples; these were always
strong and dominant. And the women were scented, sometimes with unctuous
and overpowering perfumes, and to the artist the experiences of those
present were hinted in subtle and delicate _nuances_ of odor.

They drank their wine and caressed all day in the tavern. The women threw
their round white arms about their lover's necks, they intoxicated them
with the scent of their hair, the priests muttered their fantastic
jargon of Theurgy. And through the sonorous clash of voices there always
seemed the ring of the cry:

"Look for the jar marked _Faunus_; you will be glad."

Outside, the vine tendrils shook on the white walls glaring in the
sunshine; the breeze swept up from the yellow river, pungent with the
salt sea savor.

These tavern scenes were often the subject of Lucian's meditation as he
sat amongst the cushions on the marble seat. The rich sound of the voices
impressed him above all things, and he saw that words have a far higher
reason than the utilitarian office of imparting a man's thought. The
common notion that language and linked words are important only as a
means of expression he found a little ridiculous; as if electricity
were to be studied solely with the view of "wiring" to people, and all
its other properties left unexplored, neglected. Language, he understood,
was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its possession of
words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely
arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps
more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than
the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of
the sensuous art of literature; it was the secret of suggestion, the art
of causing delicious sensation by the use of words. In a way, therefore,
literature was independent of thought; the mere English listener, if he
had an ear attuned, could recognize the beauty of a splendid Latin
phrase.

Here was the explanation of the magic of _Lycidas_. From the standpoint
of the formal understanding it was an affected lament over some wholly
uninteresting and unimportant Mr. King; it was full of nonsense about
"shepherds" and "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the
introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river gods
was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of
greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too apparent.
And _Lycidas_ was probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in
existence; because every word and phrase and line were sonorous, ringing
and echoing with music.

"Literature," he re-enunciated in his mind, "is the sensuous art of
causing exquisite impressions by means of words."

And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was
often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the
sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were the
indefinable inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the
mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find
unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the
world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the
immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is
conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise
from the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with
the sensuous delight. The world so disclosed is rather the world of
dreams, rather the world in which children sometimes live, instantly
appearing, and instantly vanishing away, a world beyond all expression or
analysis, neither of the intellect nor of the senses. He called these
fancies of his "Meditations of a Tavern," and was amused to think that a
theory of letters should have risen from the eloquent noise that rang all
day about the violet and golden wine.

"Let us seek for more exquisite things," said Lucian to himself. He could
almost imagine the magic transmutation of the senses accomplished, the
strong sunlight was an odor in his nostrils; it poured down on the white
marble and the palpitating roses like a flood. The sky was a glorious
blue, making the heart joyous, and the eyes could rest in the dark green
leaves and purple shadow of the ilex. The earth seemed to burn and leap
beneath the sun, he fancied he could see the vine tendrils stir and
quiver in the heat, and the faint fume of the scorching pine needles was
blown across the gleaming garden to the seat beneath the porch. Wine
was before him in a cup of carved amber; a wine of the color of a dark
rose, with a glint as of a star or of a jet of flame deep beneath the
brim; and the cup was twined about with a delicate wreath of ivy. He was
often loath to turn away from the still contemplation of such things,
from the mere joy of the violent sun, and the responsive earth. He loved
his garden and the view of the tessellated city from the vineyard on the
hill, the strange clamor of the tavern, and white Fotis appearing on the
torch-lit stage. And there were shops in the town in which he delighted,
the shops of the perfume makers, and jewelers, and dealers in curious
ware. He loved to see all things made for ladies' use, to touch the
gossamer silks that were to touch their bodies, to finger the beads of
amber and the gold chains which would stir above their hearts, to handle
the carved hairpins and brooches, to smell odors which were already
dedicated to love.

But though these were sweet and delicious gratifications, he knew that
there were more exquisite things of which he might be a spectator. He had
seen the folly of regarding fine literature from the standpoint of the
logical intellect, and he now began to question the wisdom of looking at
life as if it were a moral representation. Literature, he knew, could not
exist without some meaning, and considerations of right and wrong were to
a certain extent inseparable from the conception of life, but to insist
on ethics as the chief interest of the human pageant was surely absurd.
One might as well read _Lycidas_ for the sake of its denunciation of
"our corrupted Clergy," or Homer for "manners and customs." An artist
entranced by a beautiful landscape did not greatly concern himself with
the geological formation of the hills, nor did the lover of a wild sea
inquire as to the chemical analysis of the water. Lucian saw a colored
and complex life displayed before him, and he sat enraptured at the
spectacle, not concerned to know whether actions were good or bad, but
content if they were curious.

In this spirit he made a singular study of corruption. Beneath his feet,
as he sat in the garden porch, was a block of marble through which there
ran a scarlet stain. It began with a faint line, thin as a hair, and grew
as it advanced, sending out offshoots to right and left, and broadening
to a pool of brilliant red. There were strange lives into which he looked
that were like the block of marble; women with grave sweet faces told him
the astounding tale of their adventures, and how, they said, they had met
the faun when they were little children. They told him how they had
played and watched by the vines and the fountains, and dallied with the
nymphs, and gazed at images reflected in the water pools, till the
authentic face appeared from the wood. He heard others tell how they had
loved the satyrs for many years before they knew their race; and there
were strange stories of those who had longed to speak but knew not the
word of the enigma, and searched in all strange paths and ways before
they found it.

He heard the history of the woman who fell in love with her slave-boy,
and tempted him for three years in vain. He heard the tale from the
woman's full red lips, and watched her face, full of the ineffable
sadness of lust, as she described her curious stratagems in mellow
phrases. She was drinking a sweet yellow wine from a gold cup as she
spoke, and the odor in her hair and the aroma of the precious wine seemed
to mingle with the soft strange words that flowed like an unguent from
a carven jar. She told how she bought the boy in the market of an Asian
city, and had him carried to her house in the grove of fig-trees. "Then,"
she went on, "he was led into my presence as I sat between the columns of
my court. A blue veil was spread above to shut out the heat of the sun,
and rather twilight than light shone on the painted walls, and the
wonderful colours of the pavement, and the images of Love and the Mother
of Love. The men who brought the boy gave him over to my girls, who
undressed him before me, one drawing gently away his robe, another
stroking his brown and flowing hair, another praising the whiteness of
his limbs, and another caressing him, and speaking loving words in his
hear. But the boy looked sullenly at them all, striking away their hands,
and pouting with his lovely and splendid lips, and I saw a blush, like
the rosy veil of dawn, reddening his body and his cheeks. Then I made
them bathe him, and anoint him with scented oils from head to foot, till
his limbs shone and glistened with the gentle and mellow glow of an ivory
statue. Then I said: 'You are bashful, because you shine alone amongst us
all; see, we too will be your fellows.' The girls began first of all,
fondling and kissing one another, and doing for each other the offices of
waiting-maids. They drew out the pins and loosened the bands of their
hair, and I never knew before that they were so lovely. The soft and
shining tresses flowed down, rippling like sea-waves; some had hair
golden and radiant as this wine in my cup, the faces of others appeared
amidst the blackness of ebony; there were locks that seemed of burnished
and scintillating copper, some glowed with hair of tawny splendor, and
others were crowned with the brightness of the sardonyx. Then, laughing,
and without the appearance of shame, they unfastened the brooches and
bands which sustained their robes, and so allowed silk and linen to flow
swiftly to the stained floor, so that one would have said there was a
sudden apparition of the fairest nymphs. With many festive and jocose
words they began to incite each other to mirth, praising the beauties
that shone on every side, and calling the boy by a girl's name, they
invited him to be their playmate. But he refused, shaking his head, and
still standing dumb-founded and abashed, as if he saw a forbidden and
terrible spectacle. Then I ordered the women to undo my hair and my
clothes, making them caress me with the tenderness of the fondest lover,
but without avail, for the foolish boy still scowled and pouted out his
lips, stained with an imperial and glorious scarlet."

She poured out more of the topaz-colored wine in her cup, and Lucian saw
it glitter as it rose to the brim and mirrored the gleam of the lamps.
The tale went on, recounting a hundred strange devices. The woman told
how she had tempted the boy by idleness and ease, giving him long hours
of sleep, and allowing him to recline all day on soft cushions, that
swelled about him, enclosing his body. She tried the experiment of
curious odors: causing him to smell always about him the oil of roses,
and burning in his presence rare gums from the East. He was allured by
soft dresses, being clothed in silks that caressed the skin with the
sense of a fondling touch. Three times a day they spread before him a
delicious banquet, full of savor and odor and color; three times a day
they endeavored to intoxicate him with delicate wine.

"And so," the lady continued, "I spared nothing to catch him in the
glistening nets of love; taking only sour and contemptuous glances in
return. And at last in an incredible shape I won the victory, and then,
having gained a green crown, fighting in agony against his green and
crude immaturity, I devoted him to the theatre, where he amused the
people by the splendor of his death."

On another evening he heard the history of the man who dwelt alone,
refusing all allurements, and was at last discovered to be the lover of a
black statue. And there were tales of strange cruelties, of men taken by
mountain robbers, and curiously maimed and disfigured, so that when they
escaped and returned to the town, they were thought to be monsters and
killed at their own doors. Lucian left no dark or secret nook of life
unvisited; he sat down, as he said, at the banquet, resolved to taste all
the savors, and to leave no flagon unvisited.

His relations grew seriously alarmed about him at this period. While he
heard with some inner ear the suave and eloquent phrases of singular
tales, and watched the lamp-light in amber and purple wine, his father
saw a lean pale boy, with black eyes that burnt in hollows, and sad and
sunken cheeks.

"You ought to try and eat more, Lucian," said the parson; "and why don't
you have some beer?"

He was looking feebly at the roast mutton and sipping a little water; but
he would not have eaten or drunk with more relish if the choicest meat
and drink had been before him.

His bones seemed, as Miss Deacon said, to be growing through his skin; he
had all the appearance of an ascetic whose body has been reduced to
misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see him could
not help saying to one another: "How ill and wretched that Lucian Taylor
looks!" They were of course quite unaware of the joy and luxury in which
his real life was spent, and some of them began to pity him, and to speak
to him kindly.

It was too late for that. The friendly words had as much lost their
meaning as the words of contempt. Edward Dixon hailed him cheerfully in
the street one day:

"Come in to my den, won't you, old fellow?" he said. "You won't see the
pater. I've managed to bag a bottle of his old port. I know you smoke
like a furnace, and I've got some ripping cigars. You will come, won't
you! I can tell you the pater's booze is first rate."

He gently declined and went on. Kindness and unkindness, pity and
contempt had become for him mere phrases; he could not have distinguished
one from the other. Hebrew and Chinese, Hungarian and Pushtu would be
pretty much alike to an agricultural laborer; if he cared to listen he
might detect some general differences in sound, but all four tongues
would be equally devoid of significance.

To Lucian, entranced in the garden of Avallaunius, it seemed very strange
that he had once been so ignorant of all the exquisite meanings of life.
Now, beneath the violet sky, looking through the brilliant trellis of the
vines, he saw the picture; before, he had gazed in sad astonishment at
the squalid rag which was wrapped about it.




V


And he was at last in the city of the unending murmuring streets, a part
of the stirring shadow, of the amber-lighted gloom.

It seemed a long time since he had knelt before his sweetheart in the
lane, the moon-fire streaming upon them from the dark circle of the
fort, the air and the light and his soul full of haunting, the touch of
the unimaginable thrilling his heart; and now he sat in a terrible
"bed-sitting-room" in a western suburb, confronted by a heap and litter
of papers on the desk of a battered old bureau.

He had put his breakfast-tray out on the landing, and was thinking of the
morning's work, and of some very dubious pages that he had blackened the
night before. But when he had lit his disreputable briar, he remembered
there was an unopened letter waiting for him on the table; he had
recognized the vague, staggering script of Miss Deacon, his cousin. There
was not much news; his father was "just the same as usual," there had
been a good deal of rain, the farmers expected to make a lot of cider,
and so forth. But at the close of the letter Miss Deacon became useful
for reproof and admonition.

"I was at Caermaen on Tuesday," she said, "and called on the Gervases and
the Dixons. Mr. Gervase smiled when I told him you were a literary man,
living in London, and said he was afraid you wouldn't find it a very
practical career. Mrs. Gervase was very proud of Henry's success; he
passed fifth for some examination, and will begin with nearly four
hundred a year. I don't wonder the Gervases are delighted. Then I went
to the Dixons, and had tea. Mrs. Dixon wanted to know if you had
published anything yet, and I said I thought not. She showed me a book
everybody is talking about, called the _Dog and the Doctor_. She says
it's selling by thousands, and that one can't take up a paper without
seeing the author's name. She told me to tell you that you ought to try
to write something like it. Then Mr. Dixon came in from the study, and
your name was mentioned again. He said he was afraid you had made rather
a mistake in trying to take up literature as if it were a profession, and
seemed to think that a place in a house of business would be more
_suitable_ and more practical. He pointed out that you had not had the
advantages of a university training, and said that you would find men who
had made good friends, and had the _tone_ of the university, would be
before you at every step. He said Edward was doing very well at Oxford.
He writes to them that he knows several noblemen, and that young Philip
Bullingham (son of Sir John Bullingham) is his most intimate friend; of
course this is _very_ satisfactory for the Dixons. I am afraid, my dear
Lucian, you have rather overrated your powers. Wouldn't it be better,
even now, to look out for some _real work_ to do, instead of wasting your
time over those silly old books? I know quite well how the Gervases and
the Dixons feel; they think idleness so injurious for a young man, and
likely to lead to _bad habits_. You know, my dear Lucian, I am only
writing like this because of my affection for you, so I am sure, my dear
boy, you won't be offended."

Lucian pigeon-holed the letter solemnly in the receptacle lettered
"Barbarians." He felt that he ought to ask himself some serious
questions: "Why haven't I passed fifth? why isn't Philip (son of Sir
John) my most intimate friend? why am I an idler, liable to fall into bad
habits?" but he was eager to get to his work, a curious and intricate
piece of analysis. So the battered bureau, the litter of papers, and the
thick fume of his pipe, engulfed him and absorbed him for the rest of
the morning. Outside were the dim October mists, the dreary and languid
life of a side street, and beyond, on the main road, the hum and jangle
of the gliding trains. But he heard none of the uneasy noises of the
quarter, not even the shriek of the garden gates nor the yelp of the
butcher on his round, for delight in his great task made him unconscious
of the world outside.

He had come by curious paths to this calm hermitage between Shepherd's
Bush and Acton Vale. The golden weeks of the summer passed on in their
enchanted procession, and Annie had not returned, neither had she
written. Lucian, on his side, sat apart, wondering why his longing for
her were not sharper. As he though of his raptures he would smile faintly
to himself, and wonder whether he had not lost the world and Annie with
it. In the garden of Avallaunius his sense of external things had grown
dim and indistinct; the actual, material life seemed every day to become
a show, a fleeting of shadows across a great white light. At last the
news came that Annie Morgan had been married from her sister's house to a
young farmer, to whom it appeared, she had been long engaged, and Lucian
was ashamed to find himself only conscious of amusement, mingled with
gratitude. She had been the key that opened the shut palace, and he was
now secure on the throne of ivory and gold. A few days after he had heard
the news he repeated the adventure of his boyhood; for the second time he
scaled the steep hillside, and penetrated the matted brake. He expected
violent disillusion, but his feeling was rather astonishment at the
activity of boyish imagination. There was no terror nor amazement now in
the green bulwarks, and the stunted undergrowth did not seem in any way
extraordinary. Yet he did not laugh at the memory of his sensations, he
was not angry at the cheat. Certainly it had been all illusion, all the
heats and chills of boyhood, its thoughts of terror were without
significance. But he recognized that the illusions of the child only
differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief
in fairies and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness
were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was ugly as well as
inept. It was better, he knew, and wiser, to wish for a fairy coach than
to cherish longings for a well-appointed brougham and liveried servants.

He turned his back on the green walls and the dark oaks without any
feeling of regret or resentment. After a little while he began to think
of his adventures with pleasure; the ladder by which he had mounted had
disappeared, but he was safe on the height. By the chance fancy of a
beautiful girl he had been redeemed from a world of misery and torture,
the world of external things into which he had come a stranger, by which
he had been tormented. He looked back at a kind of vision of himself seen
as he was a year before, a pitiable creature burning and twisting on the
hot coals of the pit, crying lamentably to the laughing bystanders for
but one drop of cold water wherewith to cool his tongue. He confessed to
himself, with some contempt, that he had been a social being, depending
for his happiness on the goodwill of others; he had tried hard to write,
chiefly, it was true, from love of the art, but a little from a social
motive. He had imagined that a written book and the praise of responsible
journals would ensure him the respect of the county people. It was a
quaint idea, and he saw the lamentable fallacies naked; in the first
place, a painstaking artist in words was not respected by the
respectable; secondly, books should not be written with the object of
gaining the goodwill of the landed and commercial interests; thirdly and
chiefly, no man should in any way depend on another.

From this utter darkness, from danger of madness, the ever dear and sweet
Annie had rescued him. Very beautifully and fitly, as Lucian thought, she
had done her work without any desire to benefit him, she had simply
willed to gratify her own passion, and in doing this had handed to him
the priceless secret. And he, on his side, had reversed the process;
merely to make himself a splendid offering for the acceptance of his
sweetheart, he had cast aside the vain world, and had found the truth,
which now remained with him, precious and enduring.

And since the news of the marriage he found that his worship of her had
by no means vanished; rather in his heart was the eternal treasure of a
happy love, untarnished and spotless; it would be like a mirror of gold
without alloy, bright and lustrous for ever. For Lucian, it was no defect
in the woman that she was desirous and faithless; he had not conceived an
affection for certain moral or intellectual accidents, but for the very
woman. Guided by the self-evident axiom that humanity is to be judged by
literature, and not literature by humanity, he detected the analogy
between _Lycidas_ and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the
nauseous cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober
critic might say that the man who could generalize Herbert and Laud,
Donne and Herrick, Sanderson and Juxon, Hammond and Lancelot Andrewes
into "our corrupted Clergy" must be either an imbecile or a scoundrel, or
probably both. The judgment would be perfectly true, but as a criticism
of _Lycidas_ it would be a piece of folly. In the case of the woman one
could imagine the attitude of the conventional lover; of the chevalier
who, with his tongue in his cheek, "reverences and respects" all women,
and coming home early in the morning writes a leading article on St
English Girl. Lucian, on the other hand, felt profoundly grateful to the
delicious Annie, because she had at precisely the right moment
voluntarily removed her image from his way. He confessed to himself that,
latterly, he had a little dreaded her return as an interruption; he had
shivered at the thought that their relations would become what was so
terribly called an "intrigue" or "affair." There would be all the
threadbare and common stratagems, the vulgarity of secret assignations,
and an atmosphere suggesting the period of Mr. Thomas Moore and Lord
Byron and "segars." Lucian had been afraid of all this; he had feared lest
love itself should destroy love.

He considered that now, freed from the torment of the body, leaving
untasted the green water that makes thirst more burning, he was perfectly
initiated in the true knowledge of the splendid and glorious love. There
seemed to him a monstrous paradox in the assertion that there could be no
true love without a corporal presence of the beloved; even the popular
sayings of "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," and "familiarity breeds
contempt," witnessed to the contrary. He thought, sighing, and with
compassion, of the manner in which men are continually led astray by the
cheat of the senses. In order that the unborn might still be added to the
born, nature had inspired men with the wild delusion that the bodily
companionship of the lover and the beloved was desirable above all
things, and so, by the false show of pleasure, the human race was chained
to vanity, and doomed to an eternal thirst for the non-existent.

Again and again he gave thanks for his own escape; he had been set free
from a life of vice and sin and folly, from all the dangers and illusions
that are most dreaded by the wise. He laughed as he remembered what would
be the common view of the situation. An ordinary lover would suffer all
the sting of sorrow and contempt; there would be grief for a lost
mistress, and rage at her faithlessness, and hate in the heart; one
foolish passion driving on another, and driving the man to ruin. For what
would be commonly called the real woman he now cared nothing; if he had
heard that she had died in her farm in Utter Gwent, he would have
experienced only a passing sorrow, such as he might feel at the death of
any one he had once known. But he did not think of the young farmer's
wife as the real Annie; he did not think of the frost-bitten leaves in
winter as the real rose. Indeed, the life of many reminded him of the
flowers; perhaps more especially of those flowers which to all appearance
are for many years but dull and dusty clumps of green, and suddenly, in
one night, burst into the flame of blossom, and fill all the misty lawns
with odor; till the morning. It was in that night that the flower lived,
not through the long unprofitable years; and, in like manner, many human
lives, he thought, were born in the evening and dead before the coming of
day. But he had preserved the precious flower in all its glory, not
suffering it to wither in the hard light, but keeping it in a secret
place, where it could never be destroyed. Truly now, and for the first
time, he possessed Annie, as a man possesses the gold which he has dug
from the rock and purged of its baseness.

He was musing over these things when a piece of news, very strange and
unexpected, arrived at the rectory. A distant, almost a mythical
relative, known from childhood as "Cousin Edward in the Isle of Wight,"
had died, and by some strange freak had left Lucian two thousand pounds.
It was a pleasure to give his father five hundred pounds, and the rector
on his side forgot for a couple of days to lean his head on his hand.
From the rest of the capital, which was well invested, Lucian found he
would derive something between sixty and seventy pounds a year, and his
old desires for literature and a refuge in the murmuring streets returned
to him. He longed to be free from the incantations that surrounded him in
the country, to work and live in a new atmosphere; and so, with many
good wishes from his father, he came to the retreat in the waste places
of London.

He was in high spirits when he found the square, clean room, horribly
furnished, in the by-street that branched from the main road, and
advanced in an unlovely sweep to the mud pits and the desolation that
was neither town nor country. On every side monotonous grey streets, each
house the replica of its neighbor, to the east an unexplored wilderness,
north and west and south the brickfields and market-gardens, everywhere
the ruins of the country, the tracks where sweet lanes had been,
gangrened stumps of trees, the relics of hedges, here and there an oak
stripped of its bark, white and haggard and leprous, like a corpse. And
the air seemed always grey, and the smoke from the brickfields was grey.

At first he scarcely realized the quarter into which chance had led him.
His only thought was of the great adventure of letters in which he
proposed to engage, and his first glance round his "bed-sitting-room"
showed him that there was no piece of furniture suitable for his purpose.
The table, like the rest of the suite, was of bird's-eye maple; but the
maker seemed to have penetrated the druidic secret of the rocking-stone,
the thing was in a state of unstable equilibrium perpetually. For some
days he wandered through the streets, inspecting the second-hand
furniture shops, and at last, in a forlorn byway, found an old Japanese
bureau, dishonored and forlorn, standing amongst rusty bedsteads, sorry
china, and all the refuse of homes dead and desolate. The bureau pleased
him in spite of its grime and grease and dirt. Inlaid mother-of-pearl,
the gleam of lacquer dragons in red gold, and hints of curious design
shone through the film of neglect and ill-usage, and when the woman of
the shop showed him the drawers and well and pigeon-holes, he saw that
it would be an apt instrument for his studies.

The bureau was carried to his room and replaced the "bird's-eye" table
under the gas-jet. As Lucian arranged what papers he had accumulated: the
sketches of hopeless experiments, shreds and tatters of stories begun
but never completed, outlines of plots, two or three notebooks scribbled
through and through with impressions of the abandoned hills, he felt a
thrill of exaltation at the prospect of work to be accomplished, of a
new world all open before him.

He set out on the adventure with a fury of enthusiasm; his last thought
at night when all the maze of streets was empty and silent was of the
problem, and his dreams ran on phrases, and when he awoke in the morning
he was eager to get back to his desk. He immersed himself in a minute,
almost a microscopic analysis of fine literature. It was no longer
enough, as in the old days, to feel the charm and incantation of a line
or a word; he wished to penetrate the secret, to understand something of
the wonderful suggestion, all apart from the sense, that seemed to him
the _differentia_ of literature, as distinguished from the long follies
of "character-drawing," "psychological analysis," and all the stuff that
went to make the three-volume novel of commerce.

He found himself curiously strengthened by the change from the hills to
the streets. There could be no doubt, he thought, that living a lonely
life, interested only in himself and his own thoughts, he had become in a
measure inhuman. The form of external things, black depths in woods,
pools in lonely places, those still valleys curtained by hills on every
side, sounding always with the ripple of their brooks, had become to him
an influence like that of a drug, giving a certain peculiar color and
outline to his thoughts. And from early boyhood there had been another
strange flavor in his life, the dream of the old Roman world, those
curious impressions that he had gathered from the white walls of
Caermaen, and from the looming bastions of the fort. It was in reality
the subconscious fancies of many years that had rebuilt the golden city,
and had shown him the vine-trellis and the marbles and the sunlight in
the garden of Avallaunius. And the rapture of love had made it all so
vivid and warm with life, that even now, when he let his pen drop, the
rich noise of the tavern and the chant of the theatre sounded above the
murmur of the streets. Looking back, it was as much a part of his life as
his schooldays, and the tessellated pavements were as real as the square
of faded carpet beneath his feet.

But he felt that he had escaped. He could now survey those splendid and
lovely visions from without, as if he read of opium dreams, and he no
longer dreaded a weird suggestion that had once beset him, that his very
soul was being molded into the hills, and passing into the black mirror
of still waterpools. He had taken refuge in the streets, in the harbor of
a modern suburb, from the vague, dreaded magic that had charmed his
life. Whenever he felt inclined to listen to the old wood-whisper or to
the singing of the fauns he bent more earnestly to his work, turning a
deaf ear to the incantations.

In the curious labor of the bureau he found refreshment that was
continually renewed. He experienced again, and with a far more violent
impulse, the enthusiasm that had attended the writing of his book a year
or two before, and so, perhaps, passed from one drug to another. It was,
indeed, with something of rapture that he imagined the great procession
of years all to be devoted to the intimate analysis of words, to the
construction of the sentence, as if it were a piece of jewelry or mosaic.

Sometimes, in the pauses of the work, he would pace up and down his cell,
looking out of the window now and again and gazing for an instant into
the melancholy street. As the year advanced the days grew more and more
misty, and he found himself the inhabitant of a little island wreathed
about with the waves of a white and solemn sea. In the afternoon the fog
would grow denser, shutting out not only sight but sound; the shriek of
the garden gates, the jangling of the tram-bell echoed as if from a far
way. Then there were days of heavy incessant rain; he could see a grey
drifting sky and the drops plashing in the street, and the houses all
dripping and saddened with wet.

He cured himself of one great aversion. He was no longer nauseated at the
sight of a story begun and left unfinished. Formerly, even when an idea
rose in his mind bright and wonderful, he had always approached the paper
with a feeling of sickness and dislike, remembering all the hopeless
beginnings he had made. But now he understood that to begin a romance was
almost a separate and special art, a thing apart from the story, to be
practiced with sedulous care. Whenever an opening scene occurred to him
he noted it roughly in a book, and he devoted many long winter evenings
to the elaboration of these beginnings. Sometimes the first impression
would yield only a paragraph or a sentence, and once or twice but a
splendid and sonorous word, which seemed to Lucian all dim and rich
with unsurmised adventure. But often he was able to write three or four
vivid pages, studying above all things the hint and significance of the
words and actions, striving to work into the lines the atmosphere of
expectation and promise, and the murmur of wonderful events to come.

In this one department of his task the labor seemed almost endless. He
would finish a few pages and then rewrite them, using the same incident
and nearly the same words, but altering that indefinite something which
is scarcely so much style as manner, or atmosphere. He was astonished at
the enormous change that was thus effected, and often, though he himself
had done the work, he could scarcely describe in words how it was done.
But it was clear that in this art of manner, or suggestion, lay all the
chief secrets of literature, that by it all the great miracles were
performed. Clearly it was not style, for style in itself was
untranslatable, but it was that high theurgic magic that made the English
_Don Quixote_, roughly traduced by some Jervas, perhaps the best of all
English books. And it was the same element that made the journey of
Roderick Random to London, so ostensibly a narrative of coarse jokes
and common experiences and burlesque manners, told in no very choice
diction, essentially a wonderful vision of the eighteenth century,
carrying to one's very nostrils the aroma of the Great North Road,
iron-bound under black frost, darkened beneath shuddering woods, haunted
by highwaymen, with an adventure waiting beyond every turn, and great old
echoing inns in the midst of lonely winter lands.

It was this magic that Lucian sought for his opening chapters; he tried
to find that quality that gives to words something beyond their sound and
beyond their meaning, that in the first lines of a book should whisper
things unintelligible but all significant. Often he worked for many hours
without success, and the grim wet dawn once found him still searching for
hieroglyphic sentences, for words mystical, symbolic. On the shelves, in
the upper part of his bureau, he had placed the books which, however
various as to matter, seemed to have a part in this curious quality of
suggestion, and in that sphere which might almost be called supernatural.
To these books he often had recourse, when further effort appeared
altogether hopeless, and certain pages in Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe
had the power of holding him in a trance of delight, subject to emotions
and impressions which he knew to transcend altogether the realm of the
formal understanding. Such lines as:

    Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
  And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
    With forms that no man can discover
  For the dews that drip all over;

had for Lucian more than the potency of a drug, lulling him into a
splendid waking-sleep, every word being a supreme incantation. And it was
not only his mind that was charmed by such passages, for he felt at
the same time a strange and delicious bodily languor that held him
motionless, without the desire or power to stir from his seat. And there
were certain phrases in _Kubla Khan_ that had such a magic that he would
sometimes wake up, as it were, to the consciousness that he had been
lying on the bed or sitting in the chair by the bureau, repeating a
single line over and over again for two or three hours. Yet he knew
perfectly well that he had not been really asleep; a little effort
recalled a constant impression of the wall-paper, with its pink flowers
on a buff ground, and of the muslin-curtained window, letting in the grey
winter light. He had been some seven months in London when this odd
experience first occurred to him. The day opened dreary and cold and
clear, with a gusty and restless wind whirling round the corner of the
street, and lifting the dead leaves and scraps of paper that littered the
roadway into eddying mounting circles, as if a storm of black rain were
to come. Lucian had sat late the night before, and rose in the morning
feeling weary and listless and heavy-headed. While he dressed, his legs
dragged him as with weights, and he staggered and nearly fell in bending
down to the mat outside for his tea-tray. He lit the spirit lamp on the
hearth with shaking, unsteady hands, and could scarcely pour out the tea
when it was ready. A delicate cup of tea was one of his few luxuries; he
was fond of the strange flavor of the green leaf, and this morning he
drank the straw-colored liquid eagerly, hoping it would disperse the
cloud of languor. He tried his best to coerce himself into the sense of
vigor and enjoyment with which he usually began the day, walking briskly
up and down and arranging his papers in order. But he could not free
himself from depression; even as he opened the dear bureau a wave of
melancholy came upon him, and he began to ask himself whether he were not
pursuing a vain dream, searching for treasures that had no existence. He
drew out his cousin's letter and read it again, sadly enough. After all
there was a good deal of truth in what she said; he had "overrated" his
powers, he had no friends, no real education. He began to count up the
months since he had come to London; he had received his two thousand
pounds in March, and in May he had said good-bye to the woods and to the
dear and friendly paths. May, June, July, August, September, October,
November, and half of December had gone by; and what had he to show?
Nothing but the experiment, the attempt, futile scribblings which had no
end nor shining purpose. There was nothing in his desk that he could
produce as evidence of his capacity, no fragment even of accomplishment.
It was a thought of intense bitterness, but it seemed as if the
barbarians were in the right--a place in a house of business would have
been more suitable. He leaned his head on his desk overwhelmed with the
severity of his own judgment. He tried to comfort himself again by the
thought of all the hours of happy enthusiasm he had spent amongst his
papers, working for a great idea with infinite patience. He recalled to
mind something that he had always tried to keep in the background of his
hopes, the foundation-stone of his life, which he had hidden out of
sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might one day write a
valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his
incapacity too deeply, but yet this longing was the foundation of all his
painful and patient effort. This he had proposed in secret to himself,
that if he labored without ceasing, without tiring, he might produce
something which would at all events be art, which would stand wholly
apart from the objects shaped like books, printed with printers' ink, and
called by the name of books that he had read. Giotto, he knew, was a
painter, and the man who imitated walnut-wood on the deal doors opposite
was a painter, and he had wished to be a very humble pupil in the class
of the former. It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite
things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible; he
had vowed he would be the dunce of Cervantes's school rather than top-boy
in the academy of _A Bad Un to Beat_ and _Millicent's Marriage_. And with
this purpose he had devoted himself to laborious and joyous years, so
that however mean his capacity, the pains should not be wanting. He tried
now to rouse himself from a growing misery by the recollection of this
high aim, but it all seemed hopeless vanity. He looked out into the grey
street, and it stood a symbol of his life, chill and dreary and grey and
vexed with a horrible wind. There were the dull inhabitants of the
quarter going about their common business; a man was crying "mackerel" in
a doleful voice, slowly passing up the street, and staring into the
white-curtained "parlors," searching for the face of a purchaser behind
the India-rubber plants, stuffed birds, and piles of gaudy gilt books
that adorned the windows. One of the blistered doors over the way banged,
and a woman came scurrying out on some errand, and the garden gate
shrieked two melancholy notes as she opened it and let it swing back
after her. The little patches called gardens were mostly untilled,
uncared for, squares of slimy moss, dotted with clumps of coarse ugly
grass, but here and there were the blackened and rotting remains of
sunflowers and marigolds. And beyond, he knew, stretched the labyrinth
of streets more or less squalid, but all grey and dull, and behind were
the mud pits and the steaming heaps of yellowish bricks, and to the north
was a great wide cold waste, treeless, desolate, swept by bitter wind.
It was all like his own life, he said again to himself, a maze of
unprofitable dreariness and desolation, and his mind grew as black and
hopeless as the winter sky. The morning went thus dismally till twelve
o'clock, and he put on his hat and great-coat. He always went out for an
hour every day between twelve and one; the exercise was a necessity, and
the landlady made his bed in the interval. The wind blew the smoke from
the chimneys into his face as he shut the door, and with the acrid smoke
came the prevailing odor of the street, a blend of cabbage-water and
burnt bones and the faint sickly vapor from the brickfields. Lucian
walked mechanically for the hour, going eastward, along the main road.
The wind pierced him, and the dust was blinding, and the dreariness of
the street increased his misery. The row of common shops, full of common
things, the blatant public-houses, the Independent chapel, a horrible
stucco parody of a Greek temple with a façade of hideous columns that was
a nightmare, villas like smug Pharisees, shops again, a church in cheap
Gothic, an old garden blasted and riven by the builder, these were the
pictures of the way. When he got home again he flung himself on the bed,
and lay there stupidly till sheer hunger roused him. He ate a hunch of
bread and drank some water, and began to pace up and down the room,
wondering whether there were no escape from despair. Writing seemed quite
impossible, and hardly knowing what he did he opened his bureau and took
out a book from the shelves. As his eyes fell on the page the air grew
dark and heavy as night, and the wind wailed suddenly, loudly, terribly.

"By woman wailing for her Demon lover." The words were on his lips when
he raised his eyes again. A broad band of pale clear light was shining
into the room, and when he looked out of the window he saw the road all
brightened by glittering pools of water, and as the last drops of the
rain-storm starred these mirrors the sun sank into the wrack. Lucian
gazed about him, perplexed, till his eyes fell on the clock above his
empty hearth. He had been sitting, motionless, for nearly two hours
without any sense of the passage of time, and without ceasing he had
murmured those words as he dreamed an endless wonderful story. He
experienced somewhat the sensations of Coleridge himself; strange,
amazing, ineffable things seemed to have been presented to him, not in
the form of the idea, but actually and materially, but he was less
fortunate than Coleridge in that he could not, even vaguely, image to
himself what he had seen. Yet when he searched his mind he knew that the
consciousness of the room in which he sat had never left him; he had seen
the thick darkness gather, and had heard the whirl of rain hissing
through the air. Windows had been shut down with a crash, he had noted
the pattering footsteps of people running to shelter, the landlady's
voice crying to some one to look at the rain coming in under the door. It
was like peering into some old bituminous picture, one could see at last
that the mere blackness resolved itself into the likeness of trees and
rocks and travelers. And against this background of his room, and the
storm, and the noises of the street, his vision stood out illuminated,
he felt he had descended to the very depths, into the caverns that are
hollowed beneath the soul. He tried vainly to record the history of his
impressions; the symbols remained in his memory, but the meaning was all
conjecture.

The next morning, when he awoke, he could scarcely understand or realize
the bitter depression of the preceding day. He found it had all vanished
away and had been succeeded by an intense exaltation. Afterwards, when at
rare intervals he experienced the same strange possession of the
consciousness, he found this to be the invariable result, the hour of
vision was always succeeded by a feeling of delight, by sensations of
brightened and intensified powers. On that bright December day after the
storm he rose joyously, and set about the labor of the bureau with the
assurance of success, almost with the hope of formidable difficulties
to be overcome. He had long busied himself with those curious researches
which Poe had indicated in the _Philosophy of Composition_, and many
hours had been spent in analyzing the singular effects which may be
produced by the sound and resonance of words. But he had been struck by
the thought that in the finest literature there were more subtle tones
than the loud and insistent music of "never more," and he endeavored to
find the secret of those pages and sentences which spoke, less directly,
and less obviously, to the soul rather than to the ear, being filled with
a certain grave melody and the sensation of singing voices. It was
admirable, no doubt, to write phrases that showed at a glance their
designed rhythm, and rang with sonorous words, but he dreamed of a prose
in which the music should be less explicit, of names rather than notes.
He was astonished that morning at his own fortune and facility; he
succeeded in covering a page of ruled paper wholly to his satisfaction,
and the sentences, when he read them out, appeared to suggest a weird
elusive chanting, exquisite but almost imperceptible, like the echo of
the plainsong reverberated from the vault of a monastic church.

He thought that such happy mornings well repaid him for the anguish of
depression which he sometimes had to suffer, and for the strange
experience of "possession" recurring at rare intervals, and usually after
many weeks of severe diet. His income, he found, amounted to sixty-five
pounds a year, and he lived for weeks at a time on fifteen shillings a
week. During these austere periods his only food was bread, at the rate
of a loaf a day; but he drank huge draughts of green tea, and smoked a
black tobacco, which seemed to him a more potent mother of thought than
any drug from the scented East. "I hope you go to some nice place for
dinner," wrote his cousin; "there used to be some excellent eating-houses
in London where one could get a good cut from the joint, _with plenty of
gravy_, and a boiled potato, for a shilling. Aunt Mary writes that you
should try Mr. Jones's in Water Street, Islington, whose father came from
near Caermaen, and was always most comfortable in her day. I daresay the
walk there would do you good. It is such a pity you smoke that horrid
tobacco. I had a letter from Mrs. Dolly (Jane Diggs, who married your
cousin John Dolly) the other day, and she said they would have been
delighted to take you for only twenty-five shillings a week for the sake
of the family if you had not been a smoker. She told me to ask you if you
had ever seen a horse or a dog smoking tobacco. They are such nice,
comfortable people, and the children would have been company for you.
Johnnie, who used to be such a dear little fellow, has just gone into an
office in the City, and seems to have excellent prospects. How I wish, my
dear Lucian, that you could do something in the same way. Don't forget
Mr. Jones's in Water Street, and you might mention your name to him."

Lucian never troubled Mr. Jones; but these letters of his cousin's always
refreshed him by the force of contrast. He tried to imagine himself a
part of the Dolly family, going dutifully every morning to the City on
the bus, and returning in the evening for high tea. He could conceive the
fine odor of hot roast beef hanging about the decorous house on Sunday
afternoons, papa asleep in the dining-room, mamma lying down, and the
children quite good and happy with their "Sundays books." In the evening,
after supper, one read the _Quiver_ till bedtime. Such pictures as these
were to Lucian a comfort and a help, a remedy against despair. Often when
he felt overwhelmed by the difficulty of the work he had undertaken, he
thought of the alternative career, and was strengthened.

He returned again and again to that desire of a prose which should sound
faintly, not so much with an audible music, but with the memory and echo
of it. In the night, when the last tram had gone jangling by, and he had
looked out and seen the street all wrapped about in heavy folds of the
mist, he conducted some of his most delicate experiments. In that white
and solitary midnight of the suburban street he experienced the curious
sense of being on a tower, remote and apart and high above all the
troubles of the earth. The gas lamp, which was nearly opposite, shone in
a pale halo of light, and the houses themselves were merely indistinct
marks and shadows amidst that palpable whiteness, shutting out the world
and its noises. The knowledge of the swarming life that was so still,
though it surrounded him, made the silence seem deeper than that of the
mountains before the dawn; it was as if he alone stirred and looked out
amidst a host sleeping at his feet. The fog came in by the open window in
freezing puffs, and as Lucian watched he noticed that it shook and
wavered like the sea, tossing up wreaths and drifts across the pale halo
of the lamp, and, these vanishing, others succeeded. It was as if the
mist passed by from the river to the north, as if it still passed by in
the silence.

He would shut his window gently, and sit down in his lighted room with
all the consciousness of the white advancing shroud upon him. It was then
that he found himself in the mood for curious labors, and able to
handle with some touch of confidence the more exquisite instruments of
the craft. He sought for that magic by which all the glory and glamour of
mystic chivalry were made to shine through the burlesque and gross
adventures of Don Quixote, by which Hawthorne had lit his infernal
Sabbath fires, and fashioned a burning aureole about the village tragedy
of the _Scarlet Letter_. In Hawthorne the story and the suggestion,
though quite distinct and of different worlds, were rather parallel than
opposed to one another; but Cervantes had done a stranger thing. One read
of Don Quixote, beaten, dirty, and ridiculous, mistaking windmills for
giants, sheep for an army; but the impression was of the enchanted
forest, of Avalon, of the San Graal, "far in the spiritual city." And
Rabelais showed him, beneath the letter, the Tourainian sun shining on
the hot rock above Chinon, on the maze of narrow, climbing streets, on
the high-pitched, gabled roofs, on the grey-blue _tourelles_, pricking
upward from the fantastic labyrinth of walls. He heard the sound of
sonorous plain-song from the monastic choir, of gross exuberant gaiety
from the rich vineyards; he listened to the eternal mystic mirth of those
that halted in the purple shadow of the _sorbier_ by the white, steep
road. The gracious and ornate _châteaux_ on the Loire and the Vienne rose
fair and shining to confront the incredible secrets of vast, dim,
far-lifted Gothic naves, that seemed ready to take the great deep, and
float away from the mist and dust of earthly streets to anchor in the
haven of the clear city that hath foundations. The rank tale of the
_garderobe_, of the farm-kitchen, mingled with the reasoned, endless
legend of the schools, with luminous Platonic argument; the old pomp of
the Middle Ages put on the robe of a fresh life. There was a smell of
wine and of incense, of June meadows and of ancient books, and through it
all he hearkened, intent, to the exultation of chiming bells ringing for
a new feast in a new land. He would cover pages with the analysis of
these marvels, tracking the suggestion concealed beneath the words, and
yet glowing like the golden threads in a robe of samite, or like that
device of the old binders by which a vivid picture appeared on the shut
edges of a book. He tried to imitate this art, to summon even the faint
shadow of the great effect, rewriting a page of Hawthorne, experimenting
and changing an epithet here and there, noting how sometimes the
alteration of a trifling word would plunge a whole scene into darkness,
as if one of those blood-red fires had instantly been extinguished.
Sometimes, for severe practice, he attempted to construct short tales
in the manner of this or that master. He sighed over these desperate
attempts, over the clattering pieces of mechanism which would not even
simulate life; but he urged himself to an infinite perseverance. Through
the white hours he worked on amidst the heap and litter of papers; books
and manuscripts overflowed from the bureau to the floor; and if he looked
out he saw the mist still pass by, still passing from the river to the
north.

It was not till the winter was well advanced that he began at all to
explore the region in which he lived. Soon after his arrival in the grey
street he had taken one or two vague walks, hardly noticing where he went
or what he saw; but for all the summer he had shut himself in his room,
beholding nothing but the form and color of words. For his morning walk
he almost invariably chose the one direction, going along the Uxbridge
Road towards Notting Hill, and returning by the same monotonous
thoroughfare. Now, however, when the new year was beginning its dull
days, he began to diverge occasionally to right and left, sometimes
eating his luncheon in odd corners, in the bulging parlors of
eighteenth-century taverns, that still fronted the surging sea of modern
streets, or perhaps in brand new "publics" on the broken borders of the
brickfields, smelling of the clay from which they had swollen. He found
waste by-places behind railway embankments where he could smoke his pipe
sheltered from the wind; sometimes there was a wooden fence by an old
pear-orchard where he sat and gazed at the wet desolation of the
market-gardens, munching a few currant biscuits by way of dinner. As he
went farther afield a sense of immensity slowly grew upon him; it was as
if, from the little island of his room, that one friendly place, he
pushed out into the grey unknown, into a city that for him was
uninhabited as the desert.

He came back to his cell after these purposeless wanderings always with a
sense of relief, with the thought of taking refuge from grey. As he lit
the gas and opened the desk of his bureau and saw the pile of papers
awaiting him, it was as if he had passed from the black skies and the
stinging wind and the dull maze of the suburb into all the warmth and
sunlight and violent color of the south.




VI


It was in this winter after his coming to the grey street that Lucian
first experienced the pains of desolation. He had all his life known the
delights of solitude, and had acquired that habit of mind which makes a
man find rich company on the bare hillside and leads him into the heart
of the wood to meditate by the dark waterpools. But now in the blank
interval when he was forced to shut up his desk, the sense of loneliness
overwhelmed him and filled him with unutterable melancholy. On such days
he carried about with him an unceasing gnawing torment in his breast; the
anguish of the empty page awaiting him in his bureau, and the knowledge
that it was worse than useless to attempt the work. He had fallen into
the habit of always using this phrase "the work" to denote the adventure
of literature; it had grown in his mind to all the austere and grave
significance of "the great work" on the lips of the alchemists; it
included every trifling and laborious page and the vague magnificent
fancies that sometimes hovered below him. All else had become mere
by-play, unimportant, trivial; the work was the end, and the means and
the food of his life--it raised him up in the morning to renew the
struggle, it was the symbol which charmed him as he lay down at night.
All through the hours of toil at the bureau he was enchanted, and when he
went out and explored the unknown coasts, the one thought allured him,
and was the colored glass between his eyes and the world. Then as he drew
nearer home his steps would quicken, and the more weary and grey the
walk, the more he rejoiced as he thought of his hermitage and of the
curious difficulties that awaited him there. But when, suddenly and
without warning, the faculty disappeared, when his mind seemed a hopeless
waste from which nothing could arise, then he became subject to
a misery so piteous that the barbarians themselves would have been sorry
for him. He had known some foretaste of these bitter and inexpressible
griefs in the old country days, but then he had immediately taken refuge
in the hills, he had rushed to the dark woods as to an anodyne, letting
his heart drink in all the wonder and magic of the wild land. Now in
these days of January, in the suburban street, there was no such refuge.

He had been working steadily for some weeks, well enough satisfied on the
whole with the daily progress, glad to awake in the morning, and to read
over what he had written on the night before. The new year opened with
faint and heavy weather and a breathless silence in the air, but in a few
days the great frost set in. Soon the streets began to suggest the
appearance of a beleaguered city, the silence that had preceded the
frost deepened, and the mist hung over the earth like a dense white
smoke. Night after night the cold increased, and people seemed unwilling
to go abroad, till even the main thoroughfares were empty and deserted,
as if the inhabitants were lying close in hiding. It was at this dismal
time that Lucian found himself reduced to impotence. There was a sudden
break in his thought, and when he wrote on valiantly, hoping against
hope, he only grew more aghast on the discovery of the imbecilities he
had committed to paper. He ground his teeth together and persevered, sick
at heart, feeling as if all the world were fallen from under his feet,
driving his pen on mechanically, till he was overwhelmed. He saw the
stuff he had done without veil or possible concealment, a lamentable and
wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his
boyhood. He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the
infernal art of a leader-writer, filling his wind bags and mincing words
as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the _Daily Post_.
There seemed all the matter of an insufferable tragedy in these thoughts;
that his patient and enduring toil was in vain, that practice went for
nothing, and that he had wasted the labor of Milton to accomplish the
tenth-rate. Unhappily he could not "give in"; the longing, the fury for
the work burnt within him like a burning fire; he lifted up his eyes in
despair.

It was then, while he knew that no one could help him, that he languished
for help, and then, though he was aware that no comfort was possible, he
fervently wished to be comforted. The only friend he had was his father,
and he knew that his father would not even understand his distress. For
him, always, the printed book was the beginning and end of literature;
the agony of the maker, his despair and sickness, were as accursed as the
pains of labor. He was ready to read and admire the work of the great
Smith, but he did not wish to hear of the period when the great Smith had
writhed and twisted like a scotched worm, only hoping to be put out of
his misery, to go mad or die, to escape somehow from the bitter pains.
And Lucian knew no one else. Now and then he read in the paper the fame
of the great _littérateurs_; the Gypsies were entertaining the Prince of
Wales, the Jolly Beggars were dining with the Lord Mayor, the Old Mumpers
were mingling amicably and gorgeously with the leading members of the
Stock Exchange. He was so unfortunate as to know none of these gentlemen,
but it hardly seemed likely that they could have done much for him in any
case. Indeed, in his heart, he was certain that help and comfort from
without were in the nature of things utterly impossible, his ruin and
grief were within, and only his own assistance could avail. He tried to
reassure himself, to believe that his torments were a proof of his
vocation, that the facility of the novelist who stood six years deep in
contracts to produce romances was a thing wholly undesirable, but all the
while he longed for but a drop of that inexhaustible fluency which he
professed to despise.

He drove himself out from that dreary contemplation of the white paper
and the idle pen. He went into the frozen and deserted streets, hoping
that he might pluck the burning coal from his heart, but the fire was
not quenched. As he walked furiously along the grim iron roads he fancied
that those persons who passed him cheerfully on their way to friends and
friendly hearths shrank from him into the mists as they went by. Lucian
imagined that the fire of his torment and anguish must in some way glow
visibly about him; he moved, perhaps, in a nimbus that proclaimed the
blackness and the flames within. He knew, of course, that in misery he
had grown delirious, that the well-coated, smooth-hatted personages who
loomed out of the fog upon him were in reality shuddering only with
cold, but in spite of common sense he still conceived that he saw on
their faces an evident horror and disgust, and something of the
repugnance that one feels at the sight of a venomous snake, half-killed,
trailing its bleeding vileness out of sight. By design Lucian tried to
make for remote and desolate places, and yet when he had succeeded in
touching on the open country, and knew that the icy shadow hovering
through the mist was a field, he longed for some sound and murmur of
life, and turned again to roads where pale lamps were glimmering, and the
dancing flame of firelight shone across the frozen shrubs. And the sight
of these homely fires, the thought of affection and consolation waiting
by them, stung him the more sharply perhaps because of the contrast with
his own chills and weariness and helpless sickness, and chiefly because
he knew that he had long closed an everlasting door between his heart and
such felicities. If those within had come out and had called him by his
name to enter and be comforted, it would have been quite unavailing,
since between them and him there was a great gulf fixed. Perhaps for the
first time he realized that he had lost the art of humanity for ever. He
had thought when he closed his ears to the wood whisper and changed the
fauns' singing for the murmur of the streets, the black pools for the
shadows and amber light of London, that he had put off the old life, and
had turned his soul to healthy activities, but the truth was that he had
merely exchanged one drug for another. He could not be human, and he
wondered whether there were some drop of the fairy blood in his body that
made him foreign and a stranger in the world.

He did not surrender to desolation without repeated struggles. He strove
to allure himself to his desk by the promise of some easy task; he would
not attempt invention, but he had memoranda and rough jottings of ideas
in his note-books, and he would merely amplify the suggestions ready to
his hand. But it was hopeless, again and again it was hopeless. As he
read over his notes, trusting that he would find some hint that might
light up the dead fires, and kindle again that pure flame of enthusiasm,
he found how desperately his fortune had fallen. He could see no light,
no color in the lines he had scribbled with eager trembling fingers; he
remembered how splendid all these things had been when he wrote them
down, but now they were meaningless, faded into grey. The few words he
had dashed on to the paper, enraptured at the thought of the happy hours
they promised, had become mere jargon, and when he understood the idea it
seemed foolish, dull, unoriginal. He discovered something at last that
appeared to have a grain of promise, and determined to do his best to put
it into shape, but the first paragraph appalled him; it might have been
written by an unintelligent schoolboy. He tore the paper in pieces, and
shut and locked his desk, heavy despair sinking like lead into his heart.
For the rest of that day he lay motionless on the bed, smoking pipe after
pipe in the hope of stupefying himself with tobacco fumes. The air in the
room became blue and thick with smoke; it was bitterly cold, and he
wrapped himself up in his great-coat and drew the counterpane over him.
The night came on and the window darkened, and at last he fell asleep.

He renewed the effort at intervals, only to plunge deeper into misery. He
felt the approaches of madness, and knew that his only hope was to walk
till he was physically exhausted, so that he might come home almost
fainting with fatigue, but ready to fall asleep the moment he got into
bed. He passed the mornings in a kind of torpor, endeavoring to avoid
thought, to occupy his mind with the pattern of the paper, with the
advertisements at the end of a book, with the curious greyness of the
light that glimmered through the mist into his room, with the muffled
voices that rumbled now and then from the street. He tried to make out
the design that had once colored the faded carpet on the floor, and
wondered about the dead artist in Japan, the adorner of his bureau. He
speculated as to what his thoughts had been as he inserted the rainbow
mother-of-pearl and made that great flight of shining birds, dipping
their wings as they rose from the reeds, or how he had conceived the
lacquer dragons in red gold, and the fantastic houses in the garden of
peach-trees. But sooner or later the oppression of his grief returned,
the loud shriek and clang of the garden-gate, the warning bell of some
passing bicyclist steering through the fog, the noise of his pipe falling
to the floor, would suddenly awaken him to the sense of misery. He knew
that it was time to go out; he could not bear to sit still and suffer.
Sometimes she cut a slice of bread and put it in his pocket, sometimes he
trusted to the chance of finding a public-house, where he could have a
sandwich and a glass of beer. He turned always from the main streets and
lost himself in the intricate suburban byways, willing to be engulfed in
the infinite whiteness of the mist.

The roads had stiffened into iron ridges, the fences and trees were
glittering with frost crystals, everything was of strange and altered
aspect. Lucian walked on and on through the maze, now in a circle of
shadowy villas, awful as the buried streets of Herculaneum, now in lanes
dipping onto open country, that led him past great elm-trees whose white
boughs were all still, and past the bitter lonely fields where the mist
seemed to fade away into grey darkness. As he wandered along these
unfamiliar and ghastly paths he became the more convinced of his utter
remoteness from all humanity, he allowed that grotesque suggestion of
there being something visibly amiss in his outward appearance to grow
upon him, and often he looked with a horrible expectation into the faces
of those who passed by, afraid lest his own senses gave him false
intelligence, and that he had really assumed some frightful and revolting
shape. It was curious that, partly by his own fault, and largely, no
doubt, through the operation of mere coincidence, he was once or twice
strongly confirmed in this fantastic delusion. He came one day into
a lonely and unfrequented byway, a country lane falling into ruin, but
still fringed with elms that had formed an avenue leading to the old
manor-house. It was now the road of communication between two far
outlying suburbs, and on these winter nights lay as black, dreary, and
desolate as a mountain track. Soon after the frost began, a gentleman had
been set upon in this lane as he picked his way between the corner where
the bus had set him down, and his home where the fire was blazing, and
his wife watched the clock. He was stumbling uncertainly through the
gloom, growing a little nervous because the walk seemed so long, and
peering anxiously for the lamp at the end of his street, when the two
footpads rushed at him out of the fog. One caught him from behind, the
other struck him with a heavy bludgeon, and as he lay senseless they
robbed him of his watch and money, and vanished across the fields. The
next morning all the suburb rang with the story; the unfortunate merchant
had been grievously hurt, and wives watched their husbands go out in the
morning with sickening apprehension, not knowing what might happen at
night. Lucian of course was ignorant of all these rumors, and struck into
the gloomy by-road without caring where he was or whither the way would
lead him.

He had been driven out that day as with whips, another hopeless attempt
to return to the work had agonised him, and existence seemed an
intolerable pain. As he entered the deeper gloom, where the fog hung
heavily, he began, half consciously, to gesticulate; he felt convulsed
with torment and shame, and it was a sorry relief to clench his nails
into his palm and strike the air as he stumbled heavily along, bruising
his feet against the frozen ruts and ridges. His impotence was hideous,
he said to himself, and he cursed himself and his life, breaking out into
a loud oath, and stamping on the ground. Suddenly he was shocked at a
scream of terror, it seemed in his very ear, and looking up he saw for a
moment a woman gazing at him out of the mist, her features distorted and
stiff with fear. A momentary convulsion twitched her arms into the ugly
mimicry of a beckoning gesture, and she turned and ran for dear life,
howling like a beast.

Lucian stood still in the road while the woman's cries grew faint and
died away. His heart was chilled within him as the significance of this
strange incident became clear. He remembered nothing of his violent
gestures; he had not known at the time that he had sworn out loud, or
that he was grinding his teeth with impotent rage. He only thought of
that ringing scream, of the horrible fear on the white face that had
looked upon him, of the woman's headlong flight from his presence. He
stood trembling and shuddering, and in a little while he was feeling his
face, searching for some loathsome mark, for the stigmata of evil
branding his forehead. He staggered homewards like a drunken man, and
when he came into the Uxbridge Road some children saw him and called
after him as he swayed and caught at the lamp-post. When he got to his
room he sat down at first in the dark. He did not dare to light the gas.
Everything in the room was indistinct, but he shut his eyes as he passed
the dressing-table, and sat in a corner, his face turned to the wall. And
when at last he gathered courage and the flame leapt hissing from the
jet, he crept piteously towards the glass, and ducked his head, crouching
miserably, and struggling with his terrors before he could look at his
own image.

To the best of his power he tried to deliver himself from these more
grotesque fantasies; he assured himself that there was nothing terrific
in his countenance but sadness, that his face was like the face of other
men. Yet he could not forget that reflection he had seen in the woman's
eyes, how the surest mirrors had shown him a horrible dread, her soul
itself quailing and shuddering at an awful sight. Her scream rang and
rang in his ears; she had fled away from him as if he offered some fate
darker than death.

He looked again and again into the glass, tortured by a hideous
uncertainty. His senses told him there was nothing amiss, yet he had had
a proof, and yet, as he peered most earnestly, there was, it seemed,
something strange and not altogether usual in the expression of the eyes.
Perhaps it might be the unsteady flare of the gas, or perhaps a flaw in
the cheap looking-glass, that gave some slight distortion to the image.
He walked briskly up and down the room and tried to gaze steadily,
indifferently, into his own face. He would not allow himself to be
misguided by a word. When he had pronounced himself incapable of
humanity, he had only meant that he could not enjoy the simple things of
common life. A man was not necessarily monstrous, merely because he did
not appreciate high tea, a quiet chat about the neighbors, and a happy
noisy evening with the children. But with what message, then, did he
appear charged that the woman's mouth grew so stark? Her hands had jerked
up as if they had been pulled with frantic wires; she seemed for the
instant like a horrible puppet. Her scream was a thing from the nocturnal
Sabbath.

He lit a candle and held it close up to the glass so that his own face
glared white at him, and the reflection of the room became an indistinct
darkness. He saw nothing but the candle flame and his own shining eyes,
and surely they were not as the eyes of common men. As he put down the
light, a sudden suggestion entered his mind, and he drew a quick breath,
amazed at the thought. He hardly knew whether to rejoice or to shudder.
For the thought he conceived was this: that he had mistaken all the
circumstances of the adventure, and had perhaps repulsed a sister who
would have welcomed him to the Sabbath.

He lay awake all night, turning from one dreary and frightful thought to
the other, scarcely dozing for a few hours when the dawn came. He tried
for a moment to argue with himself when he got up; knowing that his true
life was locked up in the bureau, he made a desperate attempt to drive
the phantoms and hideous shapes from his mind. He was assured that his
salvation was in the work, and he drew the key from his pocket, and made
as if he would have opened the desk. But the nausea, the remembrances of
repeated and utter failure, were too powerful. For many days he hung
about the Manor Lane, half dreading, half desiring another meeting, and
he swore he would not again mistake the cry of rapture, nor repulse the
arms extended in a frenzy of delight. In those days he dreamed of some
dark place where they might celebrate and make the marriage of the
Sabbath, with such rites as he had dared to imagine.

It was perhaps only the shock of a letter from his father that rescued
him from these evident approaches to madness. Mr. Taylor wrote how they
had missed him at Christmas, how the farmers had inquired after him, of
the homely familiar things that recalled his boyhood, his mother's voice,
the friendly fireside, and the good old fashions that had nurtured him.
He remembered that he had once been a boy, loving the cake and puddings
and the radiant holly, and all the seventeenth-century mirth that
lingered on in the ancient farmhouses. And there came to him the more
holy memory of Mass on Christmas morning. How sweet the dark and frosty
earth had smelt as he walked beside his mother down the winding lane, and
from the stile near the church they had seen the world glimmering to the
dawn, and the wandering lanthorns advancing across the fields. Then he
had come into the church and seen it shining with candles and holly, and
his father in pure vestments of white linen sang the longing music of the
liturgy at the altar, and the people answered him, till the sun rose with
the grave notes of the Paternoster, and a red beam stole through the
chancel window.

The worst horror left him as he recalled the memory of these dear and
holy things. He cast away the frightful fancy that the scream he had
heard was a shriek of joy, that the arms, rigidly jerked out, invited him
to an embrace. Indeed, the thought that he had longed for such an obscene
illusion, that he had gloated over the recollection of that stark mouth,
filled him with disgust. He resolved that his senses were deceived, that
he had neither seen nor heard, but had for a moment externalized his own
slumbering and morbid dreams. It was perhaps necessary that he should be
wretched, that his efforts should be discouraged, but he would not yield
utterly to madness.

Yet when he went abroad with such good resolutions, it was hard to
resist an influence that seemed to come from without and within. He did
not know it, but people were everywhere talking of the great frost, of
the fog that lay heavy on London, making the streets dark and terrible,
of strange birds that came fluttering about the windows in the silent
squares. The Thames rolled out duskily, bearing down the jarring
ice-blocks, and as one looked on the black water from the bridges it was
like a river in a northern tale. To Lucian it all seemed mythical, of the
same substance as his own fantastic thoughts. He rarely saw a newspaper,
and did not follow from day to day the systematic readings of the
thermometer, the reports of ice-fairs, of coaches driven across the river
at Hampton, of the skating on the fens; and hence the iron roads, the
beleaguered silence and the heavy folds of mist appeared as amazing as a
picture, significant, appalling. He could not look out and see a common
suburban street foggy and dull, nor think of the inhabitants as at work
or sitting cheerfully eating nuts about their fires; he saw a vision of a
grey road vanishing, of dim houses all empty and deserted, and the
silence seemed eternal. And when he went out and passed through street
after street, all void, by the vague shapes of houses that appeared for a
moment and were then instantly swallowed up, it seemed to him as if he
had strayed into a city that had suffered some inconceivable doom, that
he alone wandered where myriads had once dwelt. It was a town as great as
Babylon, terrible as Rome, marvelous as Lost Atlantis, set in the midst
of a white wilderness surrounded by waste places. It was impossible to
escape from it; if he skulked between hedges, and crept away beyond the
frozen pools, presently the serried stony lines confronted him like an
army, and far and far they swept away into the night, as some fabled wall
that guards an empire in the vast dim East. Or in that distorting medium
of the mist, changing all things, he imagined that he trod an infinite
desolate plain, abandoned from ages, but circled and encircled with
dolmen and menhir that loomed out at him, gigantic, terrible. All London
was one grey temple of an awful rite, ring within ring of wizard stones
circled about some central place, every circle was an initiation, every
initiation eternal loss. Or perhaps he was astray for ever in a land of
grey rocks. He had seen the light of home, the flicker of the fire on the
walls; close at hand, it seemed, was the open door, and he had heard dear
voices calling to him across the gloom, but he had just missed the path.
The lamps vanished, the voices sounded thin and died away, and yet he
knew that those within were waiting, that they could not bear to close
the door, but waited, calling his name, while he had missed the way, and
wandered in the pathless desert of the grey rocks. Fantastic, hideous,
they beset him wherever he turned, piled up into strange shapes, pricked
with sharp peaks, assuming the appearance of goblin towers, swelling into
a vague dome like a fairy rath, huge and terrible. And as one dream faded
into another, so these last fancies were perhaps the most tormenting and
persistent; the rocky avenues became the camp and fortalice of some
half-human, malignant race who swarmed in hiding, ready to bear him away
into the heart of their horrible hills. It was awful to think that all
his goings were surrounded, that in the darkness he was watched and
surveyed, that every step but led him deeper and deeper into the
labyrinth.

When, of an evening, he was secure in his room, the blind drawn down and
the gas flaring, he made vigorous efforts toward sanity. It was not of
his free will that he allowed terror to overmaster him, and he desired
nothing better than a placid and harmless life, full of work and clear
thinking. He knew that he deluded himself with imagination, that he had
been walking through London suburbs and not through Pandemonium, and that
if he could but unlock his bureau all those ugly forms would be resolved
into the mist. But it was hard to say if he consoled himself effectually
with such reflections, for the return to common sense meant also the
return to the sharp pangs of defeat. It recalled him to the bitter theme
of his own inefficiency, to the thought that he only desired one thing
of life, and that this was denied him. He was willing to endure the
austerities of a monk in a severe cloister, to suffer cold, to be hungry,
to be lonely and friendless, to forbear all the consolation of friendly
speech, and to be glad of all these things, if only he might be allowed
to illuminate the manuscript in quietness. It seemed a hideous
insufferable cruelty, that he should so fervently desire that which he
could never gain.

He was led back to the old conclusion; he had lost the sense of humanity,
he was wretched because he was an alien and a stranger amongst citizens.
It seemed probable that the enthusiasm of literature, as he understood
it, the fervent desire for the fine art, had in it something of the
inhuman, and dissevered the enthusiast from his fellow-creatures. It was
possible that the barbarian suspected as much, that by some slow
process of rumination he had arrived at his fixed and inveterate
impression, by no means a clear reasoned conviction; the average
Philistine, if pressed for the reasons of his dislike, would either
become inarticulate, ejaculating "faugh" and "pah" like an old-fashioned
Scots Magazine, or else he would give some imaginary and absurd reason,
alleging that all "littery men" were poor, that composers never cut their
hair, that painters were rarely public-school men, that sculptors
couldn't ride straight to hounds to save their lives, but clearly these
imbecilities were mere afterthoughts; the average man hated the artist
from a deep instinctive dread of all that was strange, uncanny, alien to
his nature; he gibbered, uttered his harsh, semi-bestial "faugh," and
dismissed Keats to his gallipots from much the same motives as usually
impelled the black savages to dismiss the white man on an even longer
journey.

Lucian was not especially interested in this hatred of the barbarian for
the maker, except from this point, that it confirmed him in his belief
that the love of art dissociated the man from the race. One touch of art
made the whole world alien, but surely miseries of the civilized man cast
amongst savages were not so much caused by dread of their ferocity as by
the terror of his own thoughts; he would perhaps in his last despair
leave his retreat and go forth to perish at their hands, so that he might
at least die in company, and hear the sound of speech before death. And
Lucian felt most keenly that in his case there was a double curse; he was
as isolated as Keats, and as inarticulate as his reviewers. The
consolation of the work had failed him, and he was suspended in the void
between two worlds.

It was no doubt the composite effect of his failures, his loneliness of
soul, and solitude of life, that had made him invest those common streets
with such grim and persistent terrors. He had perhaps yielded to a
temptation without knowing that he had been tempted, and, in the manner
of De Quincey, had chosen the subtle in exchange for the more tangible
pains. Unconsciously, but still of free will, he had preferred the
splendor and the gloom of a malignant vision before his corporal pains,
before the hard reality of his own impotence. It was better to dwell in
vague melancholy, to stray in the forsaken streets of a city doomed from
ages, to wander amidst forlorn and desperate rocks than to awake to a
gnawing and ignoble torment, to confess that a house of business would
have been more suitable and more practical, that he had promised what he
could never perform. Even as he struggled to beat back the phantasmagoria
of the mist, and resolved that he would no longer make all the streets a
stage of apparitions, he hardly realized what he had done, or that the
ghosts he had called might depart and return again.

He continued his long walks, always with the object of producing a
physical weariness and exhaustion that would enable him to sleep of
nights. But even when he saw the foggy and deserted avenues in their
proper shape, and allowed his eyes to catch the pale glimmer of the
lamps, and the dancing flame of the firelight, he could not rid himself
of the impression that he stood afar off, that between those hearths and
himself there was a great gulf fixed. As he paced down the footpath he
could often see plainly across the frozen shrubs into the homely and
cheerful rooms. Sometimes, late in the evening, he caught a passing
glimpse of the family at tea, father, mother, and children laughing and
talking together, well pleased with each other's company. Sometimes a
wife or a child was standing by the garden gate peering anxiously through
the fog, and the sight of it all, all the little details, the hideous but
comfortable armchairs turned ready to the fire, maroon-red curtains being
drawn close to shut out the ugly night, the sudden blaze and illumination
as the fire was poked up so that it might be cheerful for father; these
trivial and common things were acutely significant. They brought back to
him the image of a dead boy--himself. They recalled the shabby old
"parlor" in the country, with its shabby old furniture and fading carpet,
and renewed a whole atmosphere of affection and homely comfort. His
mother would walk to the end of the drive and look out for him when he
was late (wandering then about the dark woodlands); on winter evenings
she would make the fire blaze, and have his slippers warming by the
hearth, and there was probably buttered toast "as a treat." He dwelt on
all these insignificant petty circumstances, on the genial glow and light
after the muddy winter lanes, on the relish of the buttered toast and the
smell of the hot tea, on the two old cats curled fast asleep before the
fender, and made them instruments of exquisite pain and regret. Each of
these strange houses that he passed was identified in his mind with his
own vanished home; all was prepared and ready as in the old days, but he
was shut out, judged and condemned to wander in the frozen mist, with
weary feet, anguished and forlorn, and they that would pass from within
to help him could not, neither could he pass to them. Again, for the
hundredth time, he came back to the sentence: he could not gain the art
of letters and he had lost the art of humanity. He saw the vanity of all
his thoughts; he was an ascetic caring nothing for warmth and
cheerfulness and the small comforts of life, and yet he allowed his mind
to dwell on such things. If one of those passers-by, who walked briskly,
eager for home, should have pitied him by some miracle and asked him
to come in, it would have been worse than useless, yet he longed for
pleasures that he could not have enjoyed. It was as if he were come to a
place of torment, where they who could not drink longed for water, where
they who could feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold. He was
oppressed by the grim conceit that he himself still slept within the
matted thicket, imprisoned by the green bastions of the Roman fort. He
had never come out, but a changeling had gone down the hill, and now
stirred about the earth.

Beset by such ingenious terrors, it was not wonderful that outward events
and common incidents should abet his fancies. He had succeeded one day in
escaping from the mesh of the streets, and fell on a rough and narrow
lane that stole into a little valley. For the moment he was in a somewhat
happier mood; the afternoon sun glowed through the rolling mist, and
the air grew clearer. He saw quiet and peaceful fields, and a wood
descending in a gentle slope from an old farmstead of warm red brick. The
farmer was driving the slow cattle home from the hill, and his loud
halloo to his dog came across the land a cheerful mellow note. From
another side a cart was approaching the clustered barns, hesitating,
pausing while the great horses rested, and then starting again into lazy
motion. In the well of the valley a wandering line of bushes showed where
a brook crept in and out amongst the meadows, and, as Lucian stood,
lingering, on the bridge, a soft and idle breath ruffled through the
boughs of a great elm. He felt soothed, as by calm music, and wondered
whether it would not be better for him to live in some such quiet place,
within reach of the streets and yet remote from them. It seemed a refuge
for still thoughts; he could imagine himself sitting at rest beneath the
black yew tree in the farm garden, at the close of a summer day. He had
almost determined that he would knock at the door and ask if they would
take him as a lodger, when he saw a child running towards him down the
lane. It was a little girl, with bright curls tossing about her head,
and, as she came on, the sunlight glowed upon her, illuminating her
brick-red frock and the yellow king-cups in her hat. She had run with her
eyes on the ground, chirping and laughing to herself, and did not see
Lucian till she was quite near him. She started and glanced into his eyes
for a moment, and began to cry; he stretched out his hand, and she ran
from him screaming, frightened no doubt by what was to her a sudden and
strange apparition. He turned back towards London, and the mist folded
him in its thick darkness, for on that evening it was tinged with black.
It was only by the intensest strain of resolution that he did not yield
utterly to the poisonous anodyne which was always at hand. It had been a
difficult struggle to escape from the mesh of the hills, from the music
of the fauns, and even now he was drawn by the memory of these old
allurements. But he felt that here, in his loneliness, he was in greater
danger, and beset by a blacker magic. Horrible fancies rushed wantonly
into his mind; he was not only ready to believe that something in his
soul sent a shudder through all that was simple and innocent, but he came
trembling home one Saturday night, believing, or half-believing, that
he was in communion with evil. He had passed through the clamorous and
blatant crowd of the "high street," where, as one climbed the hill, the
shops seemed all aflame, and the black night air glowed with the flaring
gas-jets and the naphtha-lamps, hissing and wavering before the February
wind. Voices, raucous, clamant, abominable, were belched out of the
blazing public-houses as the doors swung to and fro, and above these
doors were hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent blast
of air, so that they might have been infernal thuribles, censing the
people. Some man was calling his wares in one long continuous shriek
that never stopped or paused, and, as a respond, a deeper, louder voice
roared to him from across the road. An Italian whirled the handle of his
piano-organ in a fury, and a ring of imps danced mad figures around him,
danced and flung up their legs till the rags dropped from some of them,
and they still danced on. A flare of naphtha, burning with a rushing
noise, threw a light on one point of the circle, and Lucian watched a
lank girl of fifteen as she came round and round to the flash. She was
quite drunk, and had kicked her petticoats away, and the crowd howled
laughter and applause at her. Her black hair poured down and leapt on her
scarlet bodice; she sprang and leapt round the ring, laughing in Bacchic
frenzy, and led the orgy to triumph. People were crossing to and fro,
jostling against each other, swarming about certain shops and stalls in a
dense dark mass that quivered and sent out feelers as if it were one
writhing organism. A little farther a group of young men, arm in arm,
were marching down the roadway chanting some music-hall verse in full
chorus, so that it sounded like plainsong. An impossible hubbub, a hum of
voices angry as swarming bees, the squeals of five or six girls who ran
in and out, and dived up dark passages and darted back into the crowd;
all these mingled together till his ears quivered. A young fellow was
playing the concertina, and he touched the keys with such slow fingers
that the tune wailed solemn into a dirge; but there was nothing so
strange as the burst of sound that swelled out when the public-house
doors were opened.

He walked amongst these people, looked at their faces, and looked at the
children amongst them. He had come out thinking that he would see the
English working class, "the best-behaved and the best-tempered crowd in
the world," enjoying the simple pleasure of the Saturday night's
shopping. Mother bought the joint for Sunday's dinner, and perhaps a pair
of boots for father; father had an honest glass of beer, and the children
were given bags of sweets, and then all these worthy people went decently
home to their well-earned rest. De Quincey had enjoyed the sight in his
day, and had studied the rise and fall of onions and potatoes. Lucian,
indeed, had desired to take these simple emotions as an opiate, to forget
the fine fret and fantastic trouble of his own existence in plain things
and the palpable joy of rest after labor. He was only afraid lest he
should be too sharply reproached by the sight of these men who fought
bravely year after year against starvation, who knew nothing of intricate
and imagined grief, but only the weariness of relentless labor, of the
long battle for their wives and children. It would be pathetic, he
thought, to see them content with so little, brightened by the
expectation of a day's rest and a good dinner, forced, even then, to
reckon every penny, and to make their children laugh with halfpence.
Either he would be ashamed before so much content, or else he would be
again touched by the sense of his inhumanity which could take no interest
in the common things of life. But still he went to be at least taken out
of himself, to be forced to look at another side of the world, so that he
might perhaps forget a little while his own sorrows.

He was fascinated by what he saw and heard. He wondered whether De
Quincey also had seen the same spectacle, and had concealed his
impressions out of reverence for the average reader. Here there were no
simple joys of honest toilers, but wonderful orgies, that drew out his
heart to horrible music. At first the violence of sound and sight had
overwhelmed him; the lights flaring in the night wind, the array of
naphtha lamps, the black shadows, the roar of voices. The dance about the
piano-organ had been the first sign of an inner meaning, and the face of
the dark girl as she came round and round to the flame had been amazing
in its utter furious abandon. And what songs they were singing all around
him, and what terrible words rang out, only to excite peals of laughter.
In the public-houses the workmen's wives, the wives of small tradesmen,
decently dressed in black, were drinking their faces to a flaming red,
and urging their husbands to drink more. Beautiful young women, flushed
and laughing, put their arms round the men's necks and kissed them,
and then held up the glass to their lips. In the dark corners, at the
openings of side streets, the children were talking together, instructing
each other, whispering what they had seen; a boy of fifteen was plying a
girl of twelve with whisky, and presently they crept away. Lucian passed
them as they turned to go, and both looked at him. The boy laughed, and
the girl smiled quietly. It was above all in the faces around him that he
saw the most astounding things, the Bacchic fury unveiled and unashamed.
To his eyes it seemed as if these revelers recognized him as a fellow,
and smiled up in his face, aware that he was in the secret. Every
instinct of religion, of civilization even, was swept away; they gazed at
one another and at him, absolved of all scruples, children of the earth
and nothing more. Now and then a couple detached themselves from the
swarm, and went away into the darkness, answering the jeers and laughter
of their friends as they vanished.

On the edge of the pavement, not far from where he was standing, Lucian
noticed a tall and lovely young woman who seemed to be alone. She was in
the full light of a naphtha flame, and her bronze hair and flushed cheeks
shone illuminate as she viewed the orgy. She had dark brown eyes, and a
strange look as of an old picture in her face; and her eyes brightened
with an urgent gleam. He saw the revelers nudging each other and glancing
at her, and two or three young men went up and asked her to come for a
walk. She shook her head and said "No thank you" again and again, and
seemed as if she were looking for somebody in the crowd.

"I'm expecting a friend," she said at last to a man who proposed a drink
and a walk afterwards; and Lucian wondered what kind of friend would
ultimately appear. Suddenly she turned to him as he was about to pass on,
and said in a low voice:

"I'll go for a walk with you if you like; you just go on, and I'll follow
in a minute."

For a moment he looked steadily at her. He saw that the first glance has
misled him; her face was not flushed with drink as he had supposed, but
it was radiant with the most exquisite color, a red flame glowed and died
on her cheek, and seemed to palpitate as she spoke. The head was set on
the neck nobly, as in a statue, and about the ears the bronze hair
strayed into little curls. She was smiling and waiting for his answer.

He muttered something about being very sorry, and fled down the hill out
of the orgy, from the noise of roaring voices and the glitter of the
great lamps very slowly swinging in the blast of wind. He knew that he
had touched the brink of utter desolation; there was death in the woman's
face, and she had indeed summoned him to the Sabbath. Somehow he had been
able to refuse on the instant, but if he had delayed he knew he would
have abandoned himself to her, body and soul. He locked himself in his
room and lay trembling on the bed, wondering if some subtle sympathy had
shown the woman her perfect companion. He looked in the glass, not
expecting now to see certain visible and outward signs, but searching for
the meaning of that strange glance that lit up his eyes. He had grown
even thinner than before in the last few months, and his cheeks were
wasted with hunger and sorrow, but there were still about his features
the suggestion of a curious classic grace, and the look as of a faun who
has strayed from the vineyards and olive gardens. He had broken away, but
now he felt the mesh of her net about him, a desire for her that was a
madness, as if she held every nerve in his body and drew him to her, to
her mystic world, to the rosebush where every flower was a flame.

He dreamed all night of the perilous things he had refused, and it was
loss to awake in the morning, pain to return to the world. The frost had
broken and the fog had rolled away, and the grey street was filled with
a clear grey light. Again he looked out on the long dull sweep of the
monotonous houses, hidden for the past weeks by a curtain of mist. Heavy
rain had fallen in the night, and the garden rails were still dripping,
the roofs still dark with wet, all down the line the dingy white blinds
were drawn in the upper windows. Not a soul walked the street; every one
was asleep after the exertions of the night before; even on the main road
it was only at intervals that some straggler paddled by. Presently a
woman in a brown Ulster shuffled off on some errand, then a man in
shirt-sleeves poked out his head, holding the door half-open, and stared
up at a window opposite. After a few minutes he slunk in again, and three
loafers came slouching down the street, eager for mischief or beastliness
of some sort. They chose a house that seemed rather smarter than the
rest, and, irritated by the neat curtains, the little grass plot with its
dwarf shrub, one of the ruffians drew out a piece of chalk and wrote some
words on the front door. His friends kept watch for him, and the
adventure achieved, all three bolted, bellowing yahoo laughter. Then a
bell began, tang, tang, tang, and here and there children appeared on
their way to Sunday-school, and the chapel "teachers" went by with
verjuice eyes and lips, scowling at the little boy who cried "Piper,
piper!" On the main road many respectable people, the men shining and
ill-fitted, the women hideously bedizened, passed in the direction of the
Independent nightmare, the stuccoed thing with Doric columns, but on the
whole life was stagnant. Presently Lucian smelt the horrid fumes of roast
beef and cabbage; the early risers were preparing the one-o'clock meal,
but many lay in bed and put off dinner till three, with the effect of
prolonging the cabbage atmosphere into the late afternoon. A drizzly rain
began as the people were coming out of church, and the mothers of little
boys in velvet and little girls in foolishness of every kind were
impelled to slap their offspring, and to threaten them with father. Then
the torpor of beef and beer and cabbage settled down on the street; in
some houses they snorted and read the Parish Magazine, in some they
snored and read the murders and collected filth of the week; but the only
movement of the afternoon was a second procession of children, now
bloated and distended with food, again answering the summons of
tang, tang, tang. On the main road the trams, laden with impossible
people, went humming to and fro, and young men who wore bright blue ties
cheerfully haw-hawed and smoked penny cigars. They annoyed the shiny and
respectable and verjuice-lipped, not by the frightful stench of the
cigars, but because they were cheerful on Sunday. By and by the children,
having heard about Moses in the Bulrushes and Daniel in the Lion's Den,
came straggling home in an evil humor. And all the day it was as if on a
grey sheet grey shadows flickered, passing by.

And in the rose-garden every flower was a flame! He thought in symbols,
using the Persian imagery of a dusky court, surrounded by white
cloisters, gilded by gates of bronze. The stars came out, the sky glowed
a darker violet, but the cloistered wall, the fantastic trellises in
stone, shone whiter. It was like a hedge of may-blossom, like a lily
within a cup of lapis-lazuli, like sea-foam tossed on the heaving sea at
dawn. Always those white cloisters trembled with the lute music, always
the garden sang with the clear fountain, rising and falling in the
mysterious dusk. And there was a singing voice stealing through the white
lattices and the bronze gates, a soft voice chanting of the Lover and
the Beloved, of the Vineyard, of the Gate and the Way. Oh! the language
was unknown; but the music of the refrain returned again and again,
swelling and trembling through the white nets of the latticed cloisters.
And every rose in the dusky air was a flame.

He had seen the life which he expressed by these symbols offered to him,
and he had refused it; and he was alone in the grey street, with its
lamps just twinkling through the dreary twilight, the blast of a ribald
chorus sounding from the main road, a doggerel hymn whining from some
parlor, to the accompaniment of the harmonium. He wondered why he had
turned away from that woman who knew all secrets, in whose eyes were all
the mysteries. He opened the desk of his bureau, and was confronted by
the heap and litter of papers, lying in confusion as he had left them. He
knew that there was the motive of his refusal; he had been unwilling to
abandon all hope of the work. The glory and the torment of his ambition
glowed upon him as he looked at the manuscript; it seemed so pitiful
that such a single desire should be thwarted. He was aware that if he
chose to sit down now before the desk he could, in a manner, write easily
enough--he could produce a tale which would be formally well constructed
and certain of favorable reception. And it would not be the utterly
commonplace, entirely hopeless favorite of the circulating library; it
would stand in those ranks where the real thing is skillfully
counterfeited, amongst the books which give the reader his orgy of
emotions, and yet contrive to be superior, and "art," in his opinion.
Lucian had often observed this species of triumph, and had noted the
acclamation that never failed the clever sham. _Romola_, for example,
had made the great host of the serious, the portentous, shout for joy,
while the real book, _The Cloister and the Hearth_, was a comparative
failure.

He knew that he could write a _Romola_; but he thought the art of
counterfeiting half-crowns less detestable than this shabby trick of
imitating literature. He had refused definitely to enter the atelier of
the gentleman who pleased his clients by ingeniously simulating the grain
of walnut; and though he had seen the old oaken ambry kicked out
contemptuously into the farmyard, serving perhaps the necessities of hens
or pigs, he would not apprentice himself to the masters of veneer. He
paced up and down the room, glancing now and again at his papers, and
wondering if there were not hope for him. A great thing he could never
do, but he had longed to do a true thing, to imagine sincere and genuine
pages.

He was stirred again to this fury for the work by the event of the
evening before, by all that had passed through his mind since the
melancholy dawn. The lurid picture of that fiery street, the flaming
shops and flaming glances, all its wonders and horrors, lit by the
naphtha flares and by the burning souls, had possessed him; and the
noises, the shriek and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the
piano-organ, the long-continued scream of the butcher as he dabbled in
the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved
into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death.
And how the spectacle was set in the cloud of dark night, a phantom play
acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very
slowly swinging in a violent blast. As all the medley of outrageous
sights and sounds now fused themselves within his brain into one clear
impression, it seemed that he had indeed witnessed and acted in a drama,
that all the scene had been prepared and vested for him, and that
the choric songs he had heard were but preludes to a greater act. For in
that woman was the consummation and catastrophe of it all, and the whole
stage waited for their meeting. He fancied that after this the voices and
the lights died away, that the crowd sank swiftly into the darkness, and
that the street was at once denuded of the great lamps and of all its
awful scenic apparatus.

Again, he thought, the same mystery would be represented before him;
suddenly on some dark and gloomy night, as he wandered lonely on a
deserted road, the wind hurrying before him, suddenly a turn would
bring him again upon the fiery stage, and the antique drama would be
re-enacted. He would be drawn to the same place, to find that woman still
standing there; again he would watch the rose radiant and palpitating
upon her cheek, the argent gleam in her brown eyes, the bronze curls
gilding the white splendor of her neck. And for the second time she
would freely offer herself. He could hear the wail of the singers
swelling to a shriek, and see the dusky dancers whirling round in a
faster frenzy, and the naphtha flares tinged with red, as the woman and
he went away into the dark, into the cloistered court where every flower
was a flame, whence he would never come out.

His only escape was in the desk; he might find salvation if he could
again hide his heart in the heap and litter of papers, and again be rapt
by the cadence of a phrase. He threw open his window and looked out on
the dim world and the glimmering amber lights. He resolved that he would
rise early in the morning, and seek once more for his true life in the
work.

But there was a strange thing. There was a little bottle on the
mantelpiece, a bottle of dark blue glass, and he trembled and shuddered
before it, as if it were a fetish.




VII


It was very dark in the room. He seemed by slow degrees to awake from a
long and heavy torpor, from an utter forgetfulness, and as he raised his
eyes he could scarcely discern the pale whiteness of the paper on the
desk before him. He remembered something of a gloomy winter afternoon, of
driving rain, of gusty wind: he had fallen asleep over his work, no
doubt, and the night had come down.

He lay back in his chair, wondering whether it were late; his eyes were
half closed, and he did not make the effort and rouse himself. He could
hear the stormy noise of the wind, and the sound reminded him of the
half-forgotten days. He thought of his boyhood, and the old rectory, and
the great elms that surrounded it. There was something pleasant in the
consciousness that he was still half dreaming; he knew he could wake
up whenever he pleased, but for the moment he amused himself by the
pretence that he was a little boy again, tired with his rambles and the
keen air of the hills. He remembered how he would sometimes wake
up in the dark at midnight, and listen sleepily for a moment to the rush
of the wind straining and crying amongst the trees, and hear it beat upon
the walls, and then he would fall to dreams again, happy in his warm,
snug bed.

The wind grew louder, and the windows rattled. He half opened his eyes
and shut them again, determined to cherish that sensation of long ago. He
felt tired and heavy with sleep; he imagined that he was exhausted by
some effort; he had, perhaps, been writing furiously without rest. He
could not recollect at the instant what the work had been; it would be
delightful to read the pages when he had made up his mind to bestir
himself.

Surely that was the noise of boughs, swaying and grinding in the wind. He
remembered one night at home when such a sound had roused him suddenly
from a deep sweet sleep. There was a rushing and beating as of wings upon
the air, and a heavy dreary noise, like thunder far away upon the
mountain. He had got out of bed and looked from behind the blind to see
what was abroad. He remembered the strange sight he had seen, and he
pretended it would be just the same if he cared to look out now. There
were clouds flying awfully from before the moon, and a pale light that
made the familiar land look strange and terrible. The blast of wind came
with a great shriek, and the trees tossed and bowed and quivered; the
wood was scourged and horrible, and the night air was ghastly with a
confused tumult, and voices as of a host. A huge black cloud rolled
across the heaven from the west and covered up the moon, and there came a
torrent of bitter hissing rain.

It was all a vivid picture to him as he sat in his chair, unwilling to
wake. Even as he let his mind stray back to that night of the past years,
the rain beat sharply on the window-panes, and though there were no trees
in the grey suburban street, he heard distinctly the crash of boughs. He
wandered vaguely from thought to thought, groping indistinctly amongst
memories, like a man trying to cross from door to door in a darkened
unfamiliar room. But, no doubt, if he were to look out, by some magic the
whole scene would be displayed before him. He would not see the curve of
monotonous two-storied houses, with here and there a white blind, a patch
of light, and shadows appearing and vanishing, not the rain plashing in
the muddy road, not the amber of the gas-lamp opposite, but the wild
moonlight poured on the dearly loved country; far away the dim circle of
the hills and woods, and beneath him the tossing trees about the lawn,
and the wood heaving under the fury of the wind.

He smiled to himself, amidst his lazy meditations, to think how real it
seemed, and yet it was all far away, the scenery of an old play long
ended and forgotten. It was strange that after all these years of trouble
and work and change he should be in any sense the same person as that
little boy peeping out, half frightened, from the rectory window. It was
as if looking in the glass one should see a stranger, and yet know that
the image was a true reflection.

The memory of the old home recalled his father and mother to him, and he
wondered whether his mother would come if he were to cry out suddenly.
One night, on just such a night as this, when a great storm blew from the
mountain, a tree had fallen with a crash and a bough had struck the roof,
and he awoke in a fright, calling for his mother. She had come and had
comforted him, soothing him to sleep, and now he shut his eyes, seeing
her face shining in the uncertain flickering candle light, as she bent
over his bed. He could not think she had died; the memory was but a part
of the evil dreams that had come afterwards.

He said to himself that he had fallen asleep and dreamed sorrow and
agony, and he wished to forget all the things of trouble. He would return
to happy days, to the beloved land, to the dear and friendly paths across
the fields. There was the paper, white before him, and when he chose to
stir, he would have the pleasure of reading his work. He could not quite
recollect what he had been about, but he was somehow conscious that the
had been successful and had brought some long labor to a worthy ending.
Presently he would light the gas, and enjoy the satisfaction that only
the work could give him, but for the time he preferred to linger in the
darkness, and to think of himself as straying from stile to stile through
the scented meadows, and listening to the bright brook that sang to the
alders.

It was winter now, for he heard the rain and the wind, and the swaying of
the trees, but in those old days how sweet the summer had been. The great
hawthorn bush in blossom, like a white cloud upon the earth, had appeared
to him in twilight, he had lingered in the enclosed valley to hear the
nightingale, a voice swelling out from the rich gloom, from the trees
that grew around the well. The scent of the meadowsweet was blown to him
across the bridge of years, and with it came the dream and the hope and
the longing, and the afterglow red in the sky, and the marvel of the
earth. There was a quiet walk that he knew so well; one went up from a
little green byroad, following an unnamed brooklet scarce a foot wide,
but yet wandering like a river, gurgling over its pebbles, with its dwarf
bushes shading the pouring water. One went through the meadow grass, and
came to the larch wood that grew from hill to hill across the stream, and
shone a brilliant tender green, and sent vague sweet spires to the
flushing sky. Through the wood the path wound, turning and dipping, and
beneath, the brown fallen needles of last year were soft and thick, and
the resinous cones gave out their odor as the warm night advanced, and
the shadows darkened. It was quite still; but he stayed, and the faint
song of the brooklet sounded like the echo of a river beyond the
mountains. How strange it was to look into the wood, to see the tall
straight stems rising, pillar-like, and then the dusk, uncertain, and
then the blackness. So he came out from the larch wood, from the green
cloud and the vague shadow, into the dearest of all hollows, shut in on
one side by the larches and before him by high violent walls of turf,
like the slopes of a fort, with a clear line dark against the twilight
sky, and a weird thorn bush that grew large, mysterious, on the summit,
beneath the gleam of the evening star.

And he retraced his wanderings in those deep old lanes that began from
the common road and went away towards the unknown, climbing steep hills,
and piercing the woods of shadows, and dipping down into valleys that
seemed virgin, unexplored, secret for the foot of man. He entered such a
lane not knowing where it might bring him, hoping he had found the way to
fairyland, to the woods beyond the world, to that vague territory that
haunts all the dreams of a boy. He could not tell where he might be, for
the high banks rose steep, and the great hedges made a green vault above.
Marvelous ferns grew rich and thick in the dark red earth, fastening
their roots about the roots of hazel and beech and maple, clustering like
the carven capitals of a cathedral pillar. Down, like a dark shaft, the
lane dipped to the well of the hills, and came amongst the limestone
rocks. He climbed the bank at last, and looked out into a country that
seemed for a moment the land he sought, a mysterious realm with
unfamiliar hills and valleys and fair plains all golden, and white houses
radiant in the sunset light.

And he thought of the steep hillsides where the bracken was like a wood,
and of bare places where the west wind sang over the golden gorse, of
still circles in mid-lake, of the poisonous yew-tree in the middle of
the wood, shedding its crimson cups on the dank earth. How he lingered by
certain black waterpools hedged on every side by drooping wych-elms and
black-stemmed alders, watching the faint waves widening to the banks as a
leaf or a twig dropped from the trees.

And the whole air and wonder of the ancient forest came back to him. He
had found his way to the river valley, to the long lovely hollow between
the hills, and went up and up beneath the leaves in the warm hush of
midsummer, glancing back now and again through the green alleys, to the
river winding in mystic esses beneath, passing hidden glens receiving the
streams that rushed down the hillside, ice-cold from the rock, passing
the immemorial tumulus, the graves where the legionaries waited for the
trumpet, the grey farmhouses sending the blue wreaths of wood smoke into
the still air. He went higher and higher, till at last he entered the
long passage of the Roman road, and from this, the ridge and summit of
the wood, he saw the waves of green swell and dip and sink towards the
marshy level and the gleaming yellow sea. He looked on the surging
forest, and thought of the strange deserted city moldering into a petty
village on its verge, of its encircling walls melting into the turf, of
vestiges of an older temple which the earth had buried utterly.

It was winter now, for he heard the wail of the wind, and a sudden gust
drove the rain against the panes, but he thought of the bee's song in the
clover, of the foxgloves in full blossom, of the wild roses, delicate,
enchanting, swaying on a long stem above the hedge. He had been in
strange places, he had known sorrow and desolation, and had grown grey
and weary in the work of letters, but he lived again in the sweetness, in
the clear bright air of early morning, when the sky was blue in June, and
the mist rolled like a white sea in the valley. He laughed when he
recollected that he had sometimes fancied himself unhappy in those days;
in those days when he could be glad because the sun shone, because the
wind blew fresh on the mountain. On those bright days he had been glad,
looking at the fleeting and passing of the clouds upon the hills, and
had gone up higher to the broad dome of the mountain, feeling that joy
went up before him.

He remembered how, a boy, he had dreamed of love, of an adorable and
ineffable mystery which transcended all longing and desire. The time had
come when all the wonder of the earth seemed to prefigure this alone,
when he found the symbol of the Beloved in hill and wood and stream, and
every flower and every dark pool discoursed a pure ecstasy. It was the
longing for longing, the love of love, that had come to him when he awoke
one morning just before the dawn, and for the first time felt the sharp
thrill of passion.

He tried in vain to express to himself the exquisite joys of innocent
desire. Even now, after troubled years, in spite of some dark cloud that
overshadowed the background of his thought, the sweetness of the boy's
imagined pleasure came like a perfume into his reverie. It was no love of
a woman but the desire of womanhood, the Eros of the unknown, that made
the heart tremble. He hardly dreamed that such a love could ever be
satisfied, that the thirst of beauty could be slaked. He shrank from all
contact of actuality, not venturing so much as to imagine the inner place
and sanctuary of the mysteries. It was enough for him to adore in the
outer court, to know that within, in the sweet gloom, were the vision and
the rapture, the altar and the sacrifice.

He remembered, dimly, the passage of many heavy years since that time of
hope and passion, but, perhaps, the vague shadow would pass away, and he
could renew the boy's thoughts, the unformed fancies that were part of
the bright day, of the wild roses in the hedgerow. All other things
should be laid aside, he would let them trouble him no more after this
winter night. He saw now that from the first he had allowed his
imagination to bewilder him, to create a fantastic world in which he
suffered, molding innocent forms into terror and dismay. Vividly, he saw
again the black circle of oaks, growing in a haggard ring upon the
bastions of the Roman fort. The noise of the storm without grew louder,
and he thought how the wind had come up the valley with the sound of a
scream, how a great tree had ground its boughs together, shuddering
before the violent blast. Clear and distinct, as if he were standing now
in the lane, he saw the steep slopes surging from the valley, and the
black crown of the oaks set against the flaming sky, against a blaze and
glow of light as if great furnace doors were opened. He saw the fire, as
it were, smitten about the bastions, about the heaped mounds that guarded
the fort, and the crooked evil boughs seemed to writhe in the blast of
flame that beat from heaven. Strangely with the sight of the burning
fort mingled the impression of a dim white shape floating up the dusk of
the lane towards him, and he saw across the valley of years a girl's
face, a momentary apparition that shone and vanished away.

Then there was a memory of another day, of violent summer, of white
farmhouse walls blazing in the sun, and a far call from the reapers in
the cornfields. He had climbed the steep slope and penetrated the matted
thicket and lay in the heat, alone on the soft short grass that grew
within the fort. There was a cloud of madness, and confusion of broken
dreams that had no meaning or clue but only an indefinable horror and
defilement. He had fallen asleep as he gazed at the knotted fantastic
boughs of the stunted brake about him, and when he woke he was ashamed,
and fled away fearing that "they" would pursue him. He did not know who
"they" were, but it seemed as if a woman's face watched him from between
the matted boughs, and that she summoned to her side awful companions who
had never grown old through all the ages.

He looked up, it seemed, at a smiling face that bent over him, as he sat
in the cool dark kitchen of the old farmhouse, and wondered why the
sweetness of those red lips and the kindness of the eyes mingled with the
nightmare in the fort, with the horrible Sabbath he had imagined as he
lay sleeping on the hot soft turf. He had allowed these disturbed
fancies, all this mad wreck of terror and shame that he had gathered in
his mind, to trouble him for too long a time; presently he would light up
the room, and leave all the old darkness of his life behind him, and from
henceforth he would walk in the day.

He could still distinguish, though very vaguely, the pile of papers
beside him, and he remembered, now, that he had finished a long task that
afternoon, before he fell asleep. He could not trouble himself to
recollect the exact nature of the work, but he was sure that he had done
well; in a few minutes, perhaps, he would strike a match, and read the
title, and amuse himself with his own forgetfulness. But the sight of the
papers lying there in order made him think of his beginnings, of those
first unhappy efforts which were so impossible and so hopeless. He saw
himself bending over the table in the old familiar room, desperately
scribbling, and then laying down his pen dismayed at the sad results
on the page. It was late at night, his father had been long in bed, and
the house was still. The fire was almost out, with only a dim glow here
and there amongst the cinders, and the room was growing chilly. He rose
at last from his work and looked out on a dim earth and a dark and cloudy
sky.

Night after night he had labored on, persevering in his effort, even
through the cold sickness of despair, when every line was doomed as it
was made. Now, with the consciousness that he knew at least the
conditions of literature, and that many years of thought and practice had
given him some sense of language, he found these early struggles both
pathetic and astonishing. He could not understand how he had
persevered so stubbornly, how he had had the heart to begin a fresh page
when so many folios of blotted, painful effort lay torn, derided,
impossible in their utter failure. It seemed to him that it must have
been a miracle or an infernal possession, a species of madness, that had
driven him on, every day disappointed, and every day hopeful.

And yet there was a joyous side to the illusion. In these dry days that
he lived in, when he had bought, by a long experience and by countless
hours of misery, a knowledge of his limitations, of the vast gulf that
yawned between the conception and the work, it was pleasant to think of a
time when all things were possible, when the most splendid design seemed
an affair of a few weeks. Now he had come to a frank acknowledgment; so
far as he was concerned, he judged every book wholly impossible till the
last line of it was written, and he had learnt patience, the art of
sighing and putting the fine scheme away in the pigeon-hole of what could
never be. But to think of those days! Then one could plot out a book that
should be more curious than Rabelais, and jot down the outlines of a
romance to surpass Cervantes, and design renaissance tragedies and
volumes of _contes_, and comedies of the Restoration; everything was to
be done, and the masterpiece was always the rainbow cup, a little way
before him.

He touched the manuscript on the desk, and the feeling of the pages
seemed to restore all the papers that had been torn so long ago. It was
the atmosphere of the silent room that returned, the light of the shaded
candle falling on the abandoned leaves. This had been painfully
excogitated while the snowstorm whirled about the lawn and filled the
lanes, this was of the summer night, this of the harvest moon rising
like a fire from the tithebarn on the hill. How well he remembered those
half-dozen pages of which he had once been so proud; he had thought out
the sentences one evening, while he leaned on the foot-bridge and watched
the brook swim across the road. Every word smelt of the meadowsweet that
grew thick upon the banks; now, as he recalled the cadence and the phrase
that had seemed so charming, he saw again the ferns beneath the vaulted
roots of the beech, and the green light of the glowworm in the hedge.

And in the west the mountains swelled to a great dome, and on the dome
was a mound, the memorial of some forgotten race, that grew dark and
large against the red sky, when the sun set. He had lingered below it in
the solitude, amongst the winds, at evening, far away from home; and oh,
the labor and the vain efforts to make the form of it and the awe of it
in prose, to write the hush of the vast hill, and the sadness of the
world below sinking into the night, and the mystery, the suggestion of
the rounded hillock, huge against the magic sky.

He had tried to sing in words the music that the brook sang, and the
sound of the October wind rustling through the brown bracken on the hill.
How many pages he had covered in the effort to show a white winter world,
a sun without warmth in a grey-blue sky, all the fields, all the land
white and shining, and one high summit where the dark pines towered,
still in the still afternoon, in the pale violet air.

To win the secret of words, to make a phrase that would murmur of summer
and the bee, to summon the wind into a sentence, to conjure the odor of
the night into the surge and fall and harmony of a line; this was the
tale of the long evenings, of the candle flame white upon the paper and
the eager pen.


He remembered that in some fantastic book he had seen a bar or two of
music, and, beneath, the inscription that here was the musical expression
of Westminster Abbey. His boyish effort seemed hardly less ambitious,
and he no longer believed that language could present the melody and the
awe and the loveliness of the earth. He had long known that he, at all
events, would have to be content with a far approach, with a few broken
notes that might suggest, perhaps, the magistral everlasting song of the
hill and the streams.

But in those far days the impossible was but a part of wonderland that
lay before him, of the world beyond the wood and the mountain. All was to
be conquered, all was to be achieved; he had but to make the journey and
he would find the golden world and the golden word, and hear those songs
that the sirens sang. He touched the manuscript; whatever it was, it was
the result of painful labor and disappointment, not of the old flush of
hope, but it came of weary days, of correction and re-correction. It
might be good in its measure; but afterwards he would write no more for a
time. He would go back again to the happy world of masterpieces, to the
dreams of great and perfect books, written in an ecstasy.

Like a dark cloud from the sea came the memory of the attempt he had
made, of the poor piteous history that had once embittered his life. He
sighed and said alas, thinking of his folly, of the hours when he was
shaken with futile, miserable rage. Some silly person in London had made
his manuscript more saleable and had sold it without rendering an account
of the profits, and for that he had been ready to curse humanity. Black,
horrible, as the memory of a stormy day, the rage of his heart returned
to his mind, and he covered his eyes, endeavoring to darken the picture
of terror and hate that shone before him. He tried to drive it all out of
his thought, it vexed him to remember these foolish trifles; the trick of
a publisher, the small pomposities and malignancies of the country folk,
the cruelty of a village boy, had inflamed him almost to the pitch of
madness. His heart had burnt with fury, and when he looked up the sky was
blotched, and scarlet as if it rained blood.

Indeed he had almost believed that blood had rained upon him, and cold
blood from a sacrifice in heaven; his face was wet and chill and
dripping, and he had passed his hand across his forehead and looked at
it. A red cloud had seemed to swell over the hill, and grow great, and
come near to him; he was but an ace removed from raging madness.

It had almost come to that; the drift and the breath of the scarlet cloud
had well-nigh touched him. It was strange that he had been so deeply
troubled by such little things, and strange how after all the years he
could still recall the anguish and rage and hate that shook his soul as
with a spiritual tempest.

The memory of all that evening was wild and troubled; he resolved that it
should vex him no more, that now, for the last time, he would let himself
be tormented by the past. In a few minutes he would rise to a new life,
and forget all the storms that had gone over him.

Curiously, every detail was distinct and clear in his brain. The figure
of the doctor driving home, and the sound of the few words he had spoken
came to him in the darkness, through the noise of the storm and the
pattering of the rain. Then he stood upon the ridge of the hill and saw
the smoke drifting up from the ragged roofs of Caermaen, in the evening
calm; he listened to the voices mounting thin and clear, in a weird tone,
as if some outland folk were speaking in an unknown tongue of awful
things.

He saw the gathering darkness, the mystery of twilight changing the
huddled squalid village into an unearthly city, into some dreadful
Atlantis, inhabited by a ruined race. The mist falling fast, the gloom
that seemed to issue from the black depths of the forest, to advance
palpably towards the walls, were shaped before him; and beneath, the
river wound, snake-like, about the town, swimming to the flood and
glowing in its still pools like molten brass. And as the water mirrored
the afterglow and sent ripples and gouts of blood against the shuddering
reeds, there came suddenly the piercing trumpet-call, the loud reiterated
summons that rose and fell, that called and recalled, echoing through all
the valley, crying to the dead as the last note rang. It summoned the
legion from the river and the graves and the battlefield, the host
floated up from the sea, the centuries swarmed about the eagles, the
array was set for the last great battle, behind the leaguer of the mist.

He could imagine himself still wandering through the dim unknown,
terrible country, gazing affrighted at the hills and woods that seemed to
have put on an unearthly shape, stumbling amongst the briars that caught
his feet. He lost his way in a wild country, and the red light that
blazed up from the furnace on the mountains only showed him a mysterious
land, in which he strayed aghast, with the sense of doom weighing upon
him. The dry mutter of the trees, the sound of an unseen brook, made him
afraid as if the earth spoke of his sin, and presently he was fleeing
through a desolate shadowy wood, where a pale light flowed from the
moldering stumps, a dream of light that shed a ghostly radiance.

And then again the dark summit of the Roman fort, the black sheer height
rising above the valley, and the moonfire streaming around the ring of
oaks, glowing about the green bastions that guarded the thicket and the
inner place.

The room in which he sat appeared the vision, the trouble of the wind and
rain without was but illusion, the noise of the waves in the seashell.
Passion and tears and adoration and the glories of the summer night
returned, and the calm sweet face of the woman appeared, and he thrilled
at the soft touch of her hand on his flesh.

She shone as if she had floated down into the lane from the moon that
swam between films of cloud above the black circle of the oaks. She led
him away from all terror and despair and hate, and gave herself to him
with rapture, showing him love, kissing his tears away, pillowing his
cheek upon her breast.

His lips dwelt on her lips, his mouth upon the breath of her mouth, her
arms were strained about him, and oh! she charmed him with her voice,
with sweet kind words, as she offered her sacrifice. How her scented
hair fell down, and floated over his eyes, and there was a marvelous fire
called the moon, and her lips were aflame, and her eyes shone like a
light on the hills.

All beautiful womanhood had come to him in the lane. Love had touched him
in the dusk and had flown away, but he had seen the splendor and the
glory, and his eyes had seen the enchanted light.

AVE ATQUE VALE

The old words sounded in his ears like the ending of a chant, and he
heard the music's close. Once only in his weary hapless life, once the
world had passed away, and he had known her, the dear, dear Annie, the
symbol of all mystic womanhood.

The heaviness of languor still oppressed him, holding him back amongst
these old memories, so that he could not stir from his place. Oddly,
there seemed something unaccustomed about the darkness of the room, as if
the shadows he had summoned had changed the aspect of the walls. He was
conscious that on this night he was not altogether himself; fatigue, and
the weariness of sleep, and the waking vision had perplexed him. He
remembered how once or twice when he was a little boy startled by an
uneasy dream, and had stared with a frightened gaze into nothingness, not
knowing where he was, all trembling, and breathing quick, till he touched
the rail of his bed, and the familiar outlines of the looking-glass and
the chiffonier began to glimmer out of the gloom. So now he touched the
pile of manuscript and the desk at which he had worked so many hours, and
felt reassured, though he smiled at himself, and he felt the old childish
dread, the longing to cry out for some one to bring a candle, and show
him that he really was in his own room. He glanced up for an instant,
expecting to see perhaps the glitter of the brass gas jet that was fixed
on the wall, just beside his bureau, but it was too dark, and he could
not rouse himself and make the effort that would drive the cloud and the
muttering thoughts away.

He leant back again, picturing the wet street without, the rain driving
like fountain spray about the gas lamp, the shrilling of the wind on
those waste places to the north. It was strange how in the brick and
stucco desert where no trees were, he all the time imagined the noise of
tossing boughs, the grinding of the boughs together. There was a great
storm and tumult in this wilderness of London, and for the sound of the
rain and the wind he could not hear the hum and jangle of the trams,
and the jar and shriek of the garden gates as they opened and shut. But
he could imagine his street, the rain-swept desolate curve of it, as it
turned northward, and beyond the empty suburban roads, the twinkling
villa windows, the ruined field, the broken lane, and then yet another
suburb rising, a solitary gas-lamp glimmering at a corner, and the plane
tree lashing its boughs, and driving great showers against the glass.

It was wonderful to think of. For when these remote roads were ended one
dipped down the hill into the open country, into the dim world beyond the
glint of friendly fires. Tonight, how waste they were, these wet roads,
edged with the red-brick houses, with shrubs whipped by the wind against
one another, against the paling and the wall. There the wind swayed the
great elms scattered on the sidewalk, the remnants of the old stately
fields, and beneath each tree was a pool of wet, and a torment of
raindrops fell with every gust. And one passed through the red avenues,
perhaps by a little settlement of flickering shops, and passed the last
sentinel wavering lamp, and the road became a ragged lane, and the storm
screamed from hedge to hedge across the open fields. And then, beyond,
one touched again upon a still remoter avant-garde of London, an island
amidst the darkness, surrounded by its pale of twinkling, starry lights.

He remembered his wanderings amongst these outposts of the town, and
thought how desolate all their ways must be tonight. They were solitary
in wet and wind, and only at long intervals some one pattered and hurried
along them, bending his eyes down to escape the drift of rain. Within the
villas, behind the close-drawn curtains, they drew about the fire, and
wondered at the violence of the storm, listening for each great gust as
it gathered far away, and rocked the trees, and at last rushed with a
huge shock against their walls as if it were the coming of the sea. He
thought of himself walking, as he had often walked, from lamp to lamp
on such a night, treasuring his lonely thoughts, and weighing the hard
task awaiting him in his room. Often in the evening, after a long day's
labor, he had thrown down his pen in utter listlessness, feeling that he
could struggle no more with ideas and words, and he had gone out into
driving rain and darkness, seeking the word of the enigma as he tramped
on and on beneath these outer battlements of London.

Or on some grey afternoon in March or November he had sickened of the
dull monotony and the stagnant life that he saw from his window, and had
taken his design with him to the lonely places, halting now and again by
a gate, and pausing in the shelter of a hedge through which the austere
wind shivered, while, perhaps, he dreamed of Sicily, or of sunlight on
the Provençal olives. Often as he strayed solitary from street to field,
and passed the Syrian fig tree imprisoned in Britain, nailed to an
ungenial wall, the solution of the puzzle became evident, and he laughed
and hurried home eager to make the page speak, to note the song he had
heard on his way.

Sometimes he had spent many hours treading this edge and brim of
London, now lost amidst the dun fields, watching the bushes shaken by
the wind, and now looking down from a height whence he could see the
dim waves of the town, and a barbaric water tower rising from a hill,
and the snuff-colored cloud of smoke that seemed blown up from the
streets into the sky.

There were certain ways and places that he had cherished; he loved a
great old common that stood on high ground, curtained about with ancient
spacious houses of red brick, and their cedarn gardens. And there was
on the road that led to this common a space of ragged uneven ground with
a pool and a twisted oak, and here he had often stayed in autumn and
looked across the mist and the valley at the great theatre of the sunset,
where a red cloud like a charging knight shone and conquered a purple
dragon shape, and golden lances glittered in a field of faerie green.

Or sometimes, when the unending prospect of trim, monotonous, modern
streets had wearied him, he had found an immense refreshment in the
discovery of a forgotten hamlet, left in a hollow, while all new London
pressed and surged on every side, threatening the rest of the red roofs
with its vulgar growth. These little peaceful houses, huddled together
beneath the shelter of trees, with their bulging leaded windows and
uneven roofs, somehow brought back to him the sense of the country, and
soothed him with the thought of the old farm-houses, white or grey, the
homes of quiet lives, harbors where, perhaps, no tormenting thoughts ever
broke in.

For he had instinctively determined that there was neither rest nor
health in all the arid waste of streets about him. It seemed as if in
those dull rows of dwellings, in the prim new villas, red and white and
staring, there must be a leaven working which transformed all to base
vulgarity. Beneath the dull sad slates, behind the blistered doors, love
turned to squalid intrigue, mirth to drunken clamor, and the mystery of
life became a common thing; religion was sought for in the greasy piety
and flatulent oratory of the Independent chapel, the stuccoed nightmare
of the Doric columns. Nothing fine, nothing rare, nothing exquisite,
it seemed, could exist in the weltering suburban sea, in the habitations
which had risen from the stench and slime of the brickfields. It was as
if the sickening fumes that steamed from the burning bricks had been
sublimed into the shape of houses, and those who lived in these grey
places could also claim kinship with the putrid mud.

Hence he had delighted in the few remains of the past that he could find
still surviving on the suburb's edge, in the grave old houses that stood
apart from the road, in the moldering taverns of the eighteenth century,
in the huddled hamlets that had preserved only the glow and the sunlight
of all the years that had passed over them. It appeared to him that
vulgarity and greasiness and squalor had come with a flood, that not
only the good but also the evil in man's heart had been made common and
ugly, that a sordid scum was mingled with all the springs, of death as of
life. It would be alike futile to search amongst these mean two-storied
houses for a splendid sinner as for a splendid saint; the very vices of
these people smelt of cabbage water and a pothouse vomit.

And so he had often fled away from the serried maze that encircled him,
seeking for the old and worn and significant as an antiquary looks for
the fragments of the Roman temple amidst the modern shops. In some way
the gusts of wind and the beating rain of the night reminded him of an
old house that had often attracted him with a strange indefinable
curiosity. He had found it on a grim grey day in March, when he had gone
out under a leaden-molded sky, cowering from a dry freezing wind that
brought with it the gloom and the doom of far unhappy Siberian plains.
More than ever that day the suburb had oppressed him; insignificant,
detestable, repulsive to body and mind, it was the only hell that a
vulgar age could conceive or make, an inferno created not by Dante but by
the jerry-builder. He had gone out to the north, and when he lifted up
his eyes again he found that he had chanced to turn up by one of the
little lanes that still strayed across the broken fields. He had never
chosen this path before because the lane at its outlet was so wholly
degraded and offensive, littered with rusty tins and broken crockery, and
hedged in with a paling fashioned out of scraps of wire, rotting timber,
and bending worn-out rails. But on this day, by happy chance, he had fled
from the high road by the first opening that offered, and he no longer
groped his way amongst obscene refuse, sickened by the bloated bodies of
dead dogs, and fetid odors from unclean decay, but the malpassage had
become a peaceful winding lane, with warm shelter beneath its banks from
the dismal wind. For a mile he had walked quietly, and then a turn in the
road showed him a little glen or hollow, watered by such a tiny rushing
brooklet as his own woods knew, and beyond, alas, the glaring foreguard
of a "new neighborhood"; raw red villas, semi-detached, and then a row
of lamentable shops.

But as he was about to turn back, in the hope of finding some other
outlet, his attention was charmed by a small house that stood back a
little from the road on his right hand. There had been a white gate, but
the paint had long faded to grey and black, and the wood crumbled under
the touch, and only moss marked out the lines of the drive. The iron
railing round the lawn had fallen, and the poor flower-beds were choked
with grass and a faded growth of weeds. But here and there a rosebush
lingered amidst suckers that had sprung grossly from the root, and on
each side of the hall door were box trees, untrimmed, ragged, but still
green. The slate roof was all stained and livid, blotched with the
drippings of a great elm that stood at one corner of the neglected lawn,
and marks of damp and decay were thick on the uneven walls, which had
been washed yellow many years before. There was a porch of trellis work
before the door, and Lucian had seen it rock in the wind, swaying as if
every gust must drive it down. There were two windows on the ground
floor, one on each side of the door, and two above, with a blind space
where a central window had been blocked up.

This poor and desolate house had fascinated him. Ancient and poor and
fallen, disfigured by the slate roof and the yellow wash that had
replaced the old mellow dipping tiles and the warm red walls, and
disfigured again by spots and patches of decay; it seemed as if its happy
days were for ever ended. To Lucian it appealed with a sense of doom and
horror; the black streaks that crept upon the walls, and the green drift
upon the roof, appeared not so much the work of foul weather and dripping
boughs, as the outward signs of evil working and creeping in the lives
of those within.

The stage seemed to him decked for doom, painted with the symbols of
tragedy; and he wondered as he looked whether any one were so unhappy as
to live there still. There were torn blinds in the windows, but he had
asked himself who could be so brave as to sit in that room, darkened by
the dreary box, and listen of winter nights to the rain upon the window,
and the moaning of wind amongst the tossing boughs that beat against the
roof.

He could not imagine that any chamber in such a house was habitable. Here
the dead had lain, through the white blind the thin light had filtered on
the rigid mouth, and still the floor must be wet with tears and still
that great rocking elm echoed the groaning and the sobs of those who
watched. No doubt, the damp was rising, and the odor of the earth filled
the house, and made such as entered draw back, foreseeing the hour of
death.

Often the thought of this strange old house had haunted him; he had
imagined the empty rooms where a heavy paper peeled from the walls and
hung in dark strips; and he could not believe that a light ever shone
from those windows that stared black and glittering on the neglected
lawn. But tonight the wet and the storm seemed curiously to bring the
image of the place before him, and as the wind sounded he thought how
unhappy those must be, if any there were, who sat in the musty chambers
by a flickering light, and listened to the elm-tree moaning and beating
and weeping on the walls.

And tonight was Saturday night; and there was about that phrase something
that muttered of the condemned cell, of the agony of a doomed man.
Ghastly to his eyes was the conception of any one sitting in that room to
the right of the door behind the larger box tree, where the wall was
cracked above the window and smeared with a black stain in an ugly shape.

He knew how foolish it had been in the first place to trouble his mind
with such conceits of a dreary cottage on the outskirts of London. And it
was more foolish now to meditate these things, fantasies, feigned forms,
the issue of a sad mood and a bleak day of spring. For soon, in a few
moments, he was to rise to a new life. He was but reckoning up the
account of his past, and when the light came he was to think no more of
sorrow and heaviness, of real or imagined terrors. He had stayed too long
in London, and he would once more taste the breath of the hills, and see
the river winding in the long lovely valley; ah! he would go home.

Something like a thrill, the thrill of fear, passed over him as he
remembered that there was no home. It was in the winter, a year and a
half after his arrival in town, that he had suffered the loss of his
father. He lay for many days prostrate, overwhelmed with sorrow and with
the thought that now indeed he was utterly alone in the world. Miss
Deacon was to live with another cousin in Yorkshire; the old home was at
last ended and done. He felt sorry that he had not written more
frequently to his father: there were things in his cousin's letters that
had made his heart sore. "Your poor father was always looking for your
letters," she wrote, "they used to cheer him so much. He nearly broke
down when you sent him that money last Christmas; he got it into his head
that you were starving yourself to send it him. He was hoping so much
that you would have come down this Christmas, and kept asking me about
the plum-puddings months ago."

It was not only his father that had died, but with him the last strong
link was broken, and the past life, the days of his boyhood, grew faint
as a dream. With his father his mother died again, and the long years
died, the time of his innocence, the memory of affection. He was sorry
that his letters had gone home so rarely; it hurt him to imagine his
father looking out when the post came in the morning, and forced to be
sad because there was nothing. But he had never thought that his father
valued the few lines that he wrote, and indeed it was often difficult to
know what to say. It would have been useless to write of those agonizing
nights when the pen seemed an awkward and outlandish instrument, when
every effort ended in shameful defeat, or of the happier hours when at
last wonder appeared and the line glowed, crowned and exalted. To poor
Mr. Taylor such tales would have seemed but trivial histories of some
Oriental game, like an odd story from a land where men have time for the
infinitely little, and can seriously make a science of arranging blossoms
in a jar, and discuss perfumes instead of politics. It would have been
useless to write to the rectory of his only interest, and so he wrote
seldom.

And then he had been sorry because he could never write again and never
see his home. He had wondered whether he would have gone down to the old
place at Christmas, if his father had lived. It was curious how common
things evoked the bitterest griefs, but his father's anxiety that the
plum-pudding should be good, and ready for him, had brought the tears
into his eyes. He could hear him saying in a nervous voice that attempted
to be cheerful: "I suppose you will be thinking of the Christmas puddings
soon, Jane; you remember how fond Lucian used to be of plum-pudding. I
hope we shall see him this December." No doubt poor Miss Deacon paled
with rage at the suggestion that she should make Christmas pudding in
July; and returned a sharp answer; but it was pathetic. The wind wailed,
and the rain dashed and beat again and again upon the window. He imagined
that all his thoughts of home, of the old rectory amongst the elms, had
conjured into his mind the sound of the storm upon the trees, for,
tonight, very clearly he heard the creaking of the boughs, the noise of
boughs moaning and beating and weeping on the walls, and even a pattering
of wet, on wet earth, as if there were a shrub near the window that shook
off the raindrops, before the gust.

That thrill, as it were a shudder of fear, passed over him again, and he
knew not what had made him afraid. There were some dark shadow on his
mind that saddened him; it seemed as if a vague memory of terrible days
hung like a cloud over his thought, but it was all indefinite, perhaps
the last grim and ragged edge of the melancholy wrack that had swelled
over his life and the bygone years. He shivered and tried to rouse
himself and drive away the sense of dread and shame that seemed so real
and so awful, and yet he could not grasp it. But the torpor of sleep, the
burden of the work that he had ended a few hours before, still weighed
down his limb and bound his thoughts. He could scarcely believe that he
had been busy at his desk a little while ago, and that just before the
winter day closed it and the rain began to fall he had laid down the pen
with a sigh of relief, and had slept in his chair. It was rather as if he
had slumbered deeply through a long and weary night, as if an awful
vision of flame and darkness and the worm that dieth not had come to him
sleeping. But he would dwell no more on the darkness; he went
back to the early days in London when he had said farewell to the hills
and to the waterpools, and had set to work in this little room in the
dingy street.

How he had toiled and labored at the desk before him! He had put away
the old wild hopes of the masterpiece conceived and executed in a fury
of inspiration, wrought out in one white heat of creative joy; it was
enough if by dint of long perseverance and singleness of desire he could
at last, in pain and agony and despair, after failure and disappointment
and effort constantly renewed, fashion something of which he need not be
ashamed. He had put himself to school again, and had, with what patience
he could command, ground his teeth into the rudiments, resolved that at
last he would test out the heart of the mystery. They were good nights
to remember, these; he was glad to think of the little ugly room, with
its silly wall-paper and its "bird's-eye" furniture, lighted up, while
he sat at the bureau and wrote on into the cold stillness of the London
morning, when the flickering lamplight and the daystar shone together.
It was an interminable labor, and he had always known it to be as
hopeless as alchemy. The gold, the great and glowing masterpiece, would
never shine amongst the dead ashes and smoking efforts of the crucible,
but in the course of the life, in the interval between the failures, he
might possibly discover curious things.

These were the good nights that he could look back on without any fear or
shame, when he had been happy and content on a diet of bread and tea and
tobacco, and could hear of some imbecility passing into its hundredth
thousand, and laugh cheerfully--if only that last page had been imagined
aright, if the phrases noted in the still hours rang out their music when
he read them in the morning. He remembered the drolleries and fantasies
that the worthy Miss Deacon used to write to him, and how he had grinned
at her words of reproof, admonition, and advice. She had once instigated
Dolly _fils_ to pay him a visit, and that young prop of respectability
had talked about the extraordinary running of Bolter at the Scurragh
meeting in Ireland; and then, glancing at Lucian's books, had inquired
whether any of them had "warm bits." He had been kind though patronizing,
and seemed to have moved freely in the most brilliant society of Stoke
Newington. He had not been able to give any information as to the present
condition of Edgar Allan Poe's old school. It appeared eventually that
his report at home had not been a very favorable one, for no invitation
to high tea had followed, as Miss Deacon had hoped. The Dollys knew many
nice people, who were well off, and Lucian's cousin, as she afterwards
said, had done _her_ best to introduce him to the _beau monde_ of those
northern suburbs.

But after the visit of the young Dolly, with what joy he had returned to
the treasures which he had concealed from profane eyes. He had looked out
and seen his visitor on board the tram at the street corner, and he
laughed out loud, and locked his door. There had been moments when he was
lonely, and wished to hear again the sound of friendly speech, but, after
such an irruption of suburban futility, it was a keen delight, to feel
that he was secure on his tower, that he could absorb himself in his
wonderful task as safe and silent as if he were in mid-desert.

But there was one period that he dared not revive; he could no bear to
think of those weeks of desolation and terror in the winter after his
coming to London. His mind was sluggish, and he could not quite remember
how many years had passed since that dismal experience; it sounded all an
old story, but yet it was still vivid, a flaming scroll of terror from
which he turned his eyes away. One awful scene glowed into his memory,
and he could not shut out the sight of an orgy, of dusky figures whirling
in a ring, of lurid naphtha flares blazing in the darkness, of great
glittering lamps, like infernal thuribles, very slowly swaying in a
violent blast of air. And there was something else, something which he
could not remember, but it filled him with terror, but it slunk in the
dark places of his soul, as a wild beast crouches in the depths of a
cave.

Again, and without reason, he began to image to himself that old
moldering house in the field. With what a loud incessant noise the wind
must be clamoring about on this fearful night, how the great elm swayed
and cried in the storm, and the rain dashed and pattered on the windows,
and dripped on the sodden earth from the shaking shrubs beside the door.
He moved uneasily on his chair, and struggled to put the picture out of
his thoughts; but in spite of himself he saw the stained uneven walls,
that ugly blot of mildew above the window, and perhaps a feeble gleam of
light filtered through the blind, and some one, unhappy above all and for
ever lost, sat within the dismal room. Or rather, every window was black,
without a glimmer of hope, and he who was shut in thick darkness heard
the wind and the rain, and the noise of the elm-tree moaning and beating
and weeping on the walls.

For all his effort the impression would not leave him, and as he sat
before his desk looking into the vague darkness he could almost see that
chamber which he had so often imagined; the low whitewashed ceiling held
up by a heavy beam, the smears of smoke and long usage, the cracks and
fissures of the plaster. Old furniture, shabby, deplorable, battered,
stood about the room; there was a horsehair sofa worn and tottering, and
a dismal paper, patterned in a livid red, blackened and moldered near the
floor, and peeled off and hung in strips from the dank walls. And there
was that odor of decay, of the rank soil steaming, of rotting wood, a
vapor that choked the breath and made the heart full of fear and
heaviness.

Lucian again shivered with a thrill of dread; he was afraid that he had
overworked himself and that he was suffering from the first symptoms of
grave illness. His mind dwelt on confused and terrible recollections, and
with a mad ingenuity gave form and substance to phantoms; and even now he
drew a long breath, almost imagining that the air in his room was heavy
and noisome, that it entered his nostrils with some taint of the crypt.
And his body was still languid, and though he made a half motion to rise
he could not find enough energy for the effort, and he sank again into
the chair. At all events, he would think no more of that sad house in the
field; he would return to those long struggles with letters, to the happy
nights when he had gained victories.

He remembered something of his escape from the desolation and the worse
than desolation that had obsessed him during that first winter in London.
He had gone free one bleak morning in February, and after those dreary
terrible weeks the desk and the heap and litter of papers had once more
engulfed and absorbed him. And in the succeeding summer, of a night when
he lay awake and listened to the birds, shining images came wantonly to
him. For an hour, while the dawn brightened, he had felt the presence of
an age, the resurrection of the life that the green fields had hidden,
and his heart stirred for joy when he knew that he held and possessed
all the loveliness that had so long moldered. He could scarcely fall
asleep for eager and leaping thoughts, and as soon as his breakfast
was over he went out and bought paper and pens of a certain celestial
stationer in Notting Hill. The street was not changed as he passed to and
fro on his errand. The rattling wagons jostled by at intervals, a rare
hansom came spinning down from London, there sounded the same hum and
jangle of the gliding trams. The languid life of the pavement was
unaltered; a few people, un-classed, without salience or possible
description, lounged and walked from east to west, and from west to east,
or slowly dropped into the byways to wander in the black waste to the
north, or perhaps go astray in the systems that stretched towards the
river. He glanced down these by-roads as he passed, and was astonished,
as always, at their mysterious and desert aspect. Some were utterly
empty; lines of neat, appalling residences, trim and garnished as if for
occupation, edging the white glaring road; and not a soul was abroad, and
not a sound broke their stillness. It was a picture of the desolation of
midnight lighted up, but empty and waste as the most profound and solemn
hours before the day. Other of these by-roads, of older settlement, were
furnished with more important houses, standing far back from the
pavement, each in a little wood of greenery, and thus one might look down
as through a forest vista, and see a way smooth and guarded with low
walls and yet untrodden, and all a leafy silence. Here and there in some
of these echoing roads a figure seemed lazily advancing in the distance,
hesitating and delaying, as if lost in the labyrinth. It was difficult to
say which were the more dismal, these deserted streets that wandered away
to right and left, or the great main thoroughfare with its narcotic and
shadowy life. For the latter appeared vast, interminable, grey, and those
who traveled by it were scarcely real, the bodies of the living, but
rather the uncertain and misty shapes that come and go across the desert
in an Eastern tale, when men look up from the sand and see a caravan pass
them, all in silence, without a cry or a greeting. So they passed and
repassed each other on those pavements, appearing and vanishing, each
intent on his own secret, and wrapped in obscurity. One might have sworn
that not a man saw his neighbor who met him or jostled him, that here
every one was a phantom for the other, though the lines of their paths
crossed and recrossed, and their eyes stared like the eyes of live men.
When two went by together, they mumbled and cast distrustful glances
behind them as though afraid all the world was an enemy, and the
pattering of feet was like the noise of a shower of rain. Curious
appearances and simulations of life gathered at points in the road, for
at intervals the villas ended and shops began in a dismal row, and looked
so hopeless that one wondered who could buy. There were women fluttering
uneasily about the greengrocers, and shabby things in rusty black touched
and retouched the red lumps that an unshaven butcher offered, and already
in the corner public there was a confused noise, with a tossing of voices
that rose and fell like a Jewish chant, with the senseless stir of
marionettes jerked into an imitation of gaiety. Then, in crossing a side
street that seemed like grey mid-winter in stone, he trespassed from one
world to another, for an old decayed house amidst its garden held the
opposite corner. The laurels had grown into black skeletons, patched with
green drift, the ilex gloomed over the porch, the deodar had blighted the
flower-beds. Dark ivies swarmed over an elm-tree, and a brown clustering
fungus sprang in gross masses on the lawn, showing where the roots of
dead trees moldered. The blue verandah, the blue balcony over the door,
had faded to grey, and the stucco was blotched with ugly marks of
weather, and a dank smell of decay, that vapor of black rotten earth in
old town gardens, hung heavy about the gates. And then a row of musty
villas had pushed out in shops to the pavement, and the things in faded
black buzzed and stirred about the limp cabbages, and the red lumps of
meat.

It was the same terrible street, whose pavements he had trodden so often,
where sunshine seemed but a gaudy light, where the fume of burning bricks
always drifted. On black winter nights he had seen the sparse lights
glimmering through the rain and drawing close together, as the dreary
road vanished in long perspective. Perhaps this was its most appropriate
moment, when nothing of its smug villas and skeleton shops remained but
the bright patches of their windows, when the old house amongst its
moldering shrubs was but a dark cloud, and the streets to the north and
south seemed like starry wastes, beyond them the blackness of infinity.
Always in the daylight it had been to him abhorred and abominable, and
its grey houses and purlieus had been fungus-like sproutings, an
efflorescence of horrible decay.

But on that bright morning neither the dreadful street nor those who
moved about it appalled him. He returned joyously to his den, and
reverently laid out the paper on his desk. The world about him was but a
grey shadow hovering on a shining wall; its noises were faint as the
rustling of trees in a distant wood. The lovely and exquisite forms of
those who served the Amber Venus were his distinct, clear, and manifest
visions, and for one amongst them who came to him in a fire of bronze
hair his heart stirred with the adoration of love. She it was who stood
forth from all the rest and fell down prostrate before the radiant form
in amber, drawing out her pins in curious gold, her glowing brooches of
enamel, and pouring from a silver box all her treasures of jewels and
precious stones, chrysoberyl and sardonyx, opal and diamond, topaz and
pearl. And then she stripped from her body her precious robes and stood
before the goddess in the glowing mist of her hair, praying that to her
who had given all and came naked to the shrine, love might be given, and
the grace of Venus. And when at last, after strange adventures, her
prayer was granted, then when the sweet light came from the sea, and her
lover turned at dawn to that bronze glory, he saw beside him a little
statuette of amber. And in the shrine, far in Britain where the black
rains stained the marble, they found the splendid and sumptuous statue of
the Golden Venus, the last fine robe of silk that the lady had dedicated
falling from her fingers, and the jewels lying at her feet. And her face
was like the lady's face when the sun had brightened it on that day of
her devotion.

The bronze mist glimmered before Lucian's eyes; he felt as though the
soft floating hair touched his forehead and his lips and his hands. The
fume of burning bricks, the reek of cabbage water, never reached his
nostrils that were filled with the perfume of rare unguents, with the
breath of the violet sea in Italy. His pleasure was an inebriation, an
ecstasy of joy that destroyed all the vile Hottentot kraals and mud
avenues as with one white lightning flash, and through the hours of that
day he sat enthralled, not contriving a story with patient art, but rapt
into another time, and entranced by the urgent gleam in the lady's eyes.

The little tale of _The Amber Statuette_ had at last issued from a humble
office in the spring after his father's death. The author was utterly
unknown; the author's Murray was a wholesale stationer and printer in
process of development, so that Lucian was astonished when the book
became a moderate success. The reviewers had been sadly irritated, and
even now he recollected with cheerfulness an article in an influential
daily paper, an article pleasantly headed: "Where are the disinfectants?"

And then--but all the months afterwards seemed doubtful, there were only
broken revelations of the laborious hours renewed, and the white nights
when he had seen the moonlight fade and the gaslight grow wan at the
approach of dawn.

He listened. Surely that was the sound of rain falling on sodden ground,
the heavy sound of great swollen drops driven down from wet leaves by the
gust of wind, and then again the strain of boughs sang above the tumult
of the air; there was a doleful noise as if the storm shook the masts of
a ship. He had only to get up and look out of the window and he would see
the treeless empty street, and the rain starring the puddles under the
gas-lamp, but he would wait a little while.

He tried to think why, in spite of all his resolutions, a dark horror
seemed to brood more and more over all his mind. How often he had sat and
worked on just such nights as this, contented if the words were in accord
though the wind might wail, though the air were black with rain. Even
about the little book that he had made there seemed some taint, some
shuddering memory that came to him across the gulf of forgetfulness.
Somehow the remembrance of the offering to Venus, of the phrases that he
had so lovingly invented, brought back again the dusky figures that
danced in the orgy, beneath the brassy glittering lamps; and again the
naphtha flares showed the way to the sad house in the fields, and the red
glare lit up the mildewed walls and the black hopeless windows. He gasped
for breath, he seemed to inhale a heavy air that reeked of decay and
rottenness, and the odor of the clay was in his nostrils.

That unknown cloud that had darkened his thoughts grew blacker and
engulfed him, despair was heavy upon him, his heart fainted with a
horrible dread. In a moment, it seemed, a veil would be drawn away and
certain awful things would appear.

He strove to rise from his chair, to cry out, but he could not. Deep,
deep the darkness closed upon him, and the storm sounded far away. The
Roman fort surged up, terrific, and he saw the writhing boughs in a ring,
and behind them a glow and heat of fire. There were hideous shapes that
swarmed in the thicket of the oaks; they called and beckoned to him, and
rose into the air, into the flame that was smitten from heaven about the
walls. And amongst them was the form of the beloved, but jets of flame
issued from her breasts, and beside her was a horrible old woman, naked;
and they, too, summoned him to mount the hill.

He heard Dr. Burrows whispering of the strange things that had been found
in old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage, obscene figures, and unknown contrivances.
She was a witch, he said, and the mistress of witches.

He fought against the nightmare, against the illusion that bewildered
him. All his life, he thought, had been an evil dream, and for the common
world he had fashioned an unreal red garment, that burned in his eyes.
Truth and the dream were so mingled that now he could not divide one from
the other. He had let Annie drink his soul beneath the hill, on the night
when the moonfire shone, but he had not surely seen her exalted in the
flame, the Queen of the Sabbath. Dimly he remembered Dr. Burrows coming
to see him in London, but had he not imagined all the rest?

Again he found himself in the dusky lane, and Annie floated down to him
from the moon above the hill. His head sank upon her breast again, but,
alas, it was aflame. And he looked down, and he saw that his own flesh
was aflame, and he knew that the fire could never be quenched.

There was a heavy weight upon his head, his feet were nailed to the floor,
and his arms bound tight beside him. He seemed to himself to rage and
struggle with the strength of a madman; but his hand only stirred and
quivered a little as it lay upon the desk.

Again he was astray in the mist; wandering through the waste avenues of a
city that had been ruined from ages. It had been splendid as Rome,
terrible as Babylon, and for ever the darkness had covered it, and it lay
desolate for ever in the accursed plain. And far and far the grey
passages stretched into the night, into the icy fields, into the place of
eternal gloom.

Ring within ring the awful temple closed around him; unending circles of
vast stones, circle within circle, and every circle less throughout all
ages. In the center was the sanctuary of the infernal rite, and he was
borne thither as in the eddies of a whirlpool, to consummate his ruin, to
celebrate the wedding of the Sabbath. He flung up his arms and beat the
air, resisting with all his strength, with muscles that could throw down
mountains; and this time his little finger stirred for an instant, and
his foot twitched upon the floor.

Then suddenly a flaring street shone before him. There was darkness round
about him, but it flamed with hissing jets of light and naphtha fires,
and great glittering lamps swayed very slowly in a violent blast of air.
A horrible music, and the exultation of discordant voices, swelled in his
ears, and he saw an uncertain tossing crowd of dusky figures that circled
and leapt before him. There was a noise like the chant of the lost, and
then there appeared in the midst of the orgy, beneath a red flame, the
figure of a woman. Her bronze hair and flushed cheeks were illuminate,
and an argent light shone from her eyes, and with a smile that froze
his heart her lips opened to speak to him. The tossing crowd faded away,
falling into a gulf of darkness, and then she drew out from her hair pins
of curious gold, and glowing brooches in enamel, and poured out jewels
before him from a silver box, and then she stripped from her body her
precious robes, and stood in the glowing mist of her hair, and held out
her arms to him. But he raised his eyes and saw the mould and decay
gaining on the walls of a dismal room, and a gloomy paper was dropping to
the rotting floor. A vapor of the grave entered his nostrils, and he
cried out with a loud scream; but there was only an indistinct guttural
murmur in his throat.

And presently the woman fled away from him, and he pursued her. She fled
away before him through midnight country, and he followed after her,
chasing her from thicket to thicket, from valley to valley. And at last
he captured her and won her with horrible caresses, and they went up to
celebrate and make the marriage of the Sabbath. They were within the
matted thicket, and they writhed in the flames, insatiable, for ever.
They were tortured, and tortured one another, in the sight of thousands
who gathered thick about them; and their desire rose up like a black
smoke.

Without, the storm swelled to the roaring of an awful sea, the wind grew
to a shrill long scream, the elm-tree was riven and split with the crash
of a thunderclap. To Lucian the tumult and the shock came as a gentle
murmur, as if a brake stirred before a sudden breeze in summer. And then
a vast silence overwhelmed him.

A few minutes later there was a shuffling of feet in the passage, and the
door was softly opened. A woman came in, holding a light, and she peered
curiously at the figure sitting quite still in the chair before the desk.
The woman was half dressed, and she had let her splendid bronze hair flow
down, her cheeks were flushed, and as she advanced into the shabby room,
the lamp she carried cast quaking shadows on the moldering paper, patched
with marks of rising damp, and hanging in strips from the wet, dripping
wall. The blind had not been drawn, but no light or glimmer of light
filtered through the window, for a great straggling box tree that beat
the rain upon the panes shut out even the night. The woman came softly,
and as she bent down over Lucian an argent gleam shone from her brown
eyes, and the little curls upon her neck were like golden work upon
marble. She put her hand to his heart, and looked up, and beckoned to
some one who was waiting by the door.

"Come in, Joe," she said. "It's just as I thought it would be: 'Death by
misadventure'"; and she held up a little empty bottle of dark blue glass
that was standing on the desk. "He would take it, and I always knew he
would take a drop too much one of these days."

"What's all those papers that he's got there?"

"Didn't I tell you? It was crool to see him. He got it into 'is 'ead he
could write a book; he's been at it for the last six months. Look 'ere."

She spread the neat pile of manuscript broadcast over the desk, and took
a sheet at haphazard. It was all covered with illegible hopeless
scribblings; only here and there it was possible to recognize a word.

"Why, nobody could read it, if they wanted to."

"It's all like that. He thought it was beautiful. I used to 'ear him
jabbering to himself about it, dreadful nonsense it was he used to talk.
I did my best to tongue him out of it, but it wasn't any good."

"He must have been a bit dotty. He's left you everything."

"Yes."

"You'll have to see about the funeral."

"There'll be the inquest and all that first."

"You've got evidence to show he took the stuff."

"Yes, to be sure I have. The doctor told him he would be certain to do
for himself, and he was found two or three times quite silly in the
streets. They had to drag him away from a house in Halden Road. He was
carrying on dreadful, shaking at the gaite, and calling out it was 'is
'ome and they wouldn't let him in. I heard Dr. Manning myself tell 'im in
this very room that he'd kill 'imself one of these days. Joe! Aren't you
ashamed of yourself. I declare you're quite rude, and it's almost Sunday
too. Bring the light over here, can't you?"

The man took up the blazing paraffin lamp, and set it on the desk, beside
the scattered heap of that terrible manuscript. The flaring light shone
through the dead eyes into the dying brain, and there was a glow within,
as if great furnace doors were opened.


THE END


Other books by Arthur Machen

Novels

  The Hill of Dreams
  The Great Return
  The Terror
  The Secret Glory
  The Green Round
  The Great God Pan
  Kings of Horror
  The Chronicle of Clemendy
  The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light
  The Three Imposters
  The House of Souls
  The Angels of Mons, The Bowmen, and Other Legends of the War
  Fantastic Tales or the Way to Attain
  The Shining Pyramid
  The Glorious Mystery
  Ornaments in Jade
  The Children of the Pool and Other Stories
  The Cosy Room and Other Stories
  Holy Terrors
  Tales of Horror and the Supernatural
  Tales of Horror and the Supernatural Volume Two
  The Strange World of Arthur Machen Black Crusade
  The Novel of the Black Seal and Other Stories
  The Novel of the White Powder and Other Stories