“there was, at least, a peril once. And yet, how do I know even that,
for I have only been told so; and the tellers themselves were only told
so by this Unseen Power; and suppose it has made a mistake or has some
private ends to serve! Oh! it is terrible, and there is no end to
it.” And he shook the crockery in the spasms which followed the first
awakenings of these religious doubts. “Where, then, am I to go,” he
cried, “for knowledge of the truth? For even books would seem dependent
on the good opinion of this Unseen Power, and would not reach my eyes
unless they were well spoken of by it.”
And the more he thought the more it seemed to him that nothing could
help him but to look into the eyes of this Unseen Power, so that he
might see for himself whether it was the Angel of Truth or some Demon
jumping on the earth. No sooner had this conviction entered his brain
than he perceived how in carrying out such an enterprise he would not
only be setting his own mind at rest, and re-establishing or abolishing
his faith, but would be doing the greatest service which he could render
to his country and to all public men. “Thus,” he thought, “shall I
cannonize my tourney, and serve Aurora, who is the dawn of truth and
beauty in the world. I am not yet worthy, however, of this adventure,
which will, indeed, be far more arduous and distressing to accomplish
than any which I have yet undertaken. What can I do to brighten and
equip my mind and divest it of all those prejudices in which it may
unconsciously have become steeped? If I could leave the earth a short
space and commune with the clouds it might be best. I will go to Hendon
and see if someone will take me up for a consideration; for on earth I
can no longer be sure of anything.”
And having rounded off his purpose with this lofty design, he went back
to bed with his head lighter than a puff-ball.
XVII ADDRESSES THE CLOUDS
On the morning following his resurrection Mr. Lavender set out very
early for the celebrated flying ground without speaking of his intention
to anyone. At the bottom of the hill he found to his annoyance that
Blink had divined his purpose and was following. This, which compelled
him to walk, greatly delayed his arrival. But chance now favoured him,
for he found he was expected, and at once conducted to a machine which
was about to rise. A taciturn young man, with a long jaw, and wings on
his breast, was standing there gazing at it with an introspective eye.
“Ready, sir?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Lavender, enveloped to the eyes in a garment of fur
and leather. “Will you kindly hold my dog?” he added, stroking Blink
with the feeling that he was parting for ever with all that was most
dear to him.
An attendant having taken hold of her by the collar, Mr. Lavender was
heaved into the machine, where the young airman was already seated in
front of him.
“Shall I feel sick?” asked Mr. Lavender.
“Probably,” said the young airman.
“That will not deter me, for the less material I become the better it
will be.”
The young airman turned his head, and Mr. Lavender caught the surprised
yellow of his eye.
“Hold on,” said the airman, “I'm going to touch her off.”
Mr. Lavender held on, and the machine moved but at this moment
Blink, uttering a dismal howl, leapt forward, and, breaking from the
attendant's grasp, landed in the machine against Mr. Lavender's chest.
“Stop! stop he cried!” my dog.
“Stuff her down,” said the unmoved airman, “between your legs. She's not
the first to go up and won't be the last to come down.”
Mr. Lavender stuffed her down as best he could. “If we are to be
killed,” he thought, “it will be together. Blink!” The faithful
creature, who bitterly regretted her position now that the motion had
begun, looked up with a darkened eye at Mr. Lavender, who was stopping
his ears against the horrible noises which had now begun. He too, had
become aware of the pit of his stomach; but this sensation soon passed
away in the excitement he felt at getting away from the earth, for they
were already at the height of a house, and rising rapidly.
“It is not at all like a little bird,” he thought, “but rather resembles
a slow train on the surface of the sea, or a horse on a switchback
merry-go-round. I feel, however, that my spirit will soon be free, for
the earth is becoming like a board whereon a game is played by an unseen
hand, and I am leaving it.” And craning his head out a little too far he
felt his chin knock against his spine. Drawing it in with difficulty he
concentrated his attention upon that purification of his spirit which
was the object of his journey.
“I am now,” he thought, “in the transcendent ether. It should give me
an amazing power of expression such as only the greatest writers and
orators attain; and, divorced as I am rapidly becoming from all sordid
reality, truth will appear to me like one of those stars towards which I
am undoubtedly flying though I cannot as yet see it.”
Blink, who between his legs had hitherto been unconscious of their
departure from the earth, now squirmed irresistibly up till her forepaws
were on her master's chest, and gazed lugubriously at the fearful
prospect. Mr. Lavender clasped her convulsively. They were by now
rapidly nearing a flock of heavenly sheep, which as they approached
became ever more gigantic till they were transformed into monstrous
snow-fleeces intersected by wide drifts of blue.
“Can it be that we are to adventure above them?” thought Mr. Lavender.
“I hope not, for they seem to me fearful.” His alarm was soon appeased,
for the machine began to take a level course a thousand feet, perhaps,
below the clouds, whence little wraiths wandering out now and again
dimmed Mr. Lavender's vision and moistened his brow.
Blink having retired again between her master's legs, a sense of
security and exaltation was succeeding to the natural trepidation of Mr.
Lavender's mood. “I am now,” he thought, “lifted above all petty plots
and passions on the wings of the morning. Soon will great thoughts begin
to jostle in my head, and I shall see the truth of all things made clear
at last.”
But the thoughts did not jostle, a curious lethargy began stealing over
him instead, so that his head fell back, and his mouth fell open. This
might have endured until he returned to earth had not the airman stopped
the engines so that they drifted ruminantly in space below the clouds.
With the cessation of the noise Mr. Lavender's brain regained its
activity, and he was enchanted to hear the voice of his pilot saying:
“How are you getting on, sir?”
“As regards the sensation,” Mr. Lavender replied, “it is marvellous, for
after the first minute or two, during which the unwonted motion causes
a certain inconvenience, one grasps at once the exhilaration and joy of
this great adventure. To be in motion towards the spheres, and see the
earth laid out like a chess-board below you; to feel the lithe creature
beneath your body responding so freely to every call of its gallant
young pilot; to be filled with the scream of the engines, as of an eagle
at sport; to know that at the least aberration of the intrepid airman
we should be dashed into a million pieces; all this is largely
to experience an experience so unforgettable that one will
never—er—er—forget it.”
“Gosh!” said the young airman.
“Yes,” pursued Mr. Lavender, who was now unconsciously reading himself
in his morning's paper, “one can only compare the emotion to that which
the disembodied spirit might feel passing straight from earth to heaven.
We saw at a great depth below us on a narrow white riband of road two
crawling black specks, and knew that they were human beings, the same
and no more than we had been before we left that great common place
called Earth.”
“Gum!” said the young airman, as Lavender paused, “you're getting it
fine, sir! Where will it appear?”
“Those great fleecy beings the clouds,” went on Mr. Lavender, without
taking on the interruption, “seemed to await our coming in the morning
glory of their piled-up snows; and we, with the rarefied air in our
lungs, felt that we must shout to them.” And so carried away was Mr.
Lavender by his own style that he really did begin to address the
clouds: “Ghosts of the sky, who creep cold about this wide blue air, we
small adventuring mortals great-hearted salute you. Humbly proud of our
daring have we come to sport with you and the winds of Ouranos, and, in
the rapturous corridors between you, play hide-and seek, avoiding your
glorious moisture with the dips and curves and skimming of our swallow
flights—we, the little unconquerable Spirits of the Squirth!”
The surprise which Mr. Lavender felt at having uttered so peculiar
a word, in the middle of such a flow of poetry reduced him to sudden
silence.
“Golly!” said the airman with sudden alarm in his voice. “Hold tight!”
And they began to shoot towards earth faster than they had risen. They
came down, by what seemed a miracle to Mr. Lavender, who was still
contemplative, precisely where they had gone up. A little group was
collected there, and as they stepped out a voice said, “I beg your
pardon,” in a tone so dry that it pierced even the fogged condition
in which Mr. Lavender alighted. The gentleman who spoke had a dark
moustache and thick white hair, and, except that he wore a monocle, and
was perhaps three inches taller, bore a striking resemblance to himself.
“Thank you,” he replied, “certainly.”
“No,” said the gentleman, “not at all—on the contrary, Who the hell are
you?”
“A public man,” said Mr. Lavender, surprised; “at least,” he added
conscientiously, “I am not quite certain.”
“Well,” said the gentleman, “you've jolly well stolen my stunt.”
“Who, then, are you?” asked Mr. Lavender.
“I?” replied the gentleman, evidently intensely surprised that he was
not known; “I—my name——”
But at this moment Mr. Lavender's attention was diverted by the sight of
Blink making for the horizon, and crying out in a loud voice: “My dog!”
he dropped the coat in which he was still enveloped and set off running
after her at full speed, without having taken in the identity of the
gentleman or disclosed his own. Blink, indeed, scenting another flight
in the air, had made straight for the entrance of the enclosure, and
finding a motor cab there with the door open had bolted into it, taking
it for her master's car. Mr. Lavender sprang in after her. At the shake
which this imparted to the cab, the driver, who had been dozing, turned
his head.
“Want to go back, sir?” he said.
“Yes,” replied Mr. Lavender, breathless; “London.”
XVIII SEES TRUTH FACE TO FACE
“I fear,” thought Mr. Lavender, as they sped towards Town, “that I have
inadvertently taken a joy-ride which belonged to that distinguished
person with the eyeglass. No matter, my spirit is now bright for the
adventure I have in hand. If only I knew where I could find the Unseen
Power—but possibly its movements may be recorded in these journals.” And
taking from his pocket his morning papers, which he had not yet had
time to peruse, he buried himself in their contents. He was still deeply
absorbed when the cab stopped and the driver knocked on the window. Mr.
Lavender got out, followed by Blink, and was feeling in his pocket for
the fare when an exclamation broke from the driver:
“Gorblimy! I've brought the wrong baby!”
And before Mr. Lavender had recovered from his surprise, he had whipped
the car round and was speeding back towards the flying ground.
“How awkward!” thought Mr. Lavender, who was extremely nice in money
matters; “what shall I do now?” And he looked around him. There, as it
were by a miracle, was the office of a great journal, whence obviously
his distinguished colleague had set forth to the flying grounds, and to
which he had been returned in error by the faithful driver.
Perceiving in all this the finger of Providence, Mr. Lavender walked in.
Those who have followed his experiences so far will readily understand
how no one could look on Mr. Lavender without perceiving him to be a man
of extreme mark, and no surprise need be felt when he was informed that
the Personage he sought was on the point of visiting Brighton to open a
hospital, and might yet be overtaken at Victoria Station.
With a beating heart he took up the trail in another taxi-cab, and,
arriving at Victoria, purchased tickets for himself and Blink, and
inquired for the Brighton train.
“Hurry up!” replied the official. Mr. Lavender ran, searching the
carriage windows for any indication of his objective. The whistle
had been blown, and he was in despair, when his eye caught the label
“Reserved” on a first-class window, and looking in he saw a single
person evidently of the highest consequence smoking a cigar, surrounded
by papers. Without a moment's hesitation he opened the door, and,
preceded by Blink, leaped in. “This carriage is reserved, sir,” said the
Personage, as the train moved out.
“I know,” said Mr. Lavender, who had fallen on to the edge of the seat
opposite; “and only the urgency of my business would have caused me
to violate the sanctity of your retreat, for, believe me, I have the
instincts if not the habits of a gentleman.”
The Personage, who had made a move of his hand as if to bring the
train to a standstill, abandoning his design, replaced his cigar, and
contemplated Mr. Lavender from above it.
The latter remained silent, returning that remarkable stare, while Blink
withdrew beneath the seat and pressed her chin to the ground, savouring
the sensation of a new motion.
“Yes,” he thought, “those eyes have an almost superhuman force and
cunning. They are the eyes of a spider in the centre of a great web.
They seem to draw me.”
“You are undoubtedly the Unseen Power, sir,” he said suddenly, “and I
have reached the heart of the mystery. From your own lips I shall soon
know whether I am a puppet or a public man.”
The Personage, who by his movements was clearly under the impression
that he had to do with a lunatic, sat forward with his hands on his
knees ready to rise at a moment's notice; he kept his cigar in his
mouth, however, and an enforced smile on the folds of his face.
“What can I do for you, sir?” he said.
“Will you have a cigar?”
“No, thank you,” replied Mr. Lavender, “I must keep the eyes of my
spirit clear, and come to the point. Do you rule this country or do you
not? For it is largely on the answer to this that my future depends.
In telling others what to do am I speaking as my conscience or as your
conscience dictates; and, further, if indeed I am speaking as your
conscience dictates, have you a conscience?”
The Personage, who had evidently made up his mind to humour the
intruder, flipped the ash off his cigar.
“Well, sir, he said, I don't know who the devil you may be, but my
conscience is certainly as good as yours.”
“That,” returned Mr. Lavender with a sigh, “is a great relief, for
whether you rule the country or not, you are undoubtedly the source
from which I, together with the majority of my countrymen, derive our
inspirations. You are the fountainhead at which we draw and drink.
And to know that your waters are pure, unstained by taint of personal
prejudice and the love of power, will fortify us considerably. Am I
to assume, then, that above all passion and pettiness, you are an
impersonal force whose innumerable daily editions reflect nothing but
abstract truth, and are in no way the servants of a preconceived and
personal view of the situation?”
“You want to know too much, don't you think?” said the Personage with a
smile.
“How can that be, sir?” asked Mr. Lavender: “If you are indeed the
invisible king swaying the currents of national life, and turning its
tides at will, it is essential that we should believe in you; and before
we can believe in you must we not know all about you?”
“By Jove, sir,” replied the Personage, “that strikes me as being
contrary to all the rules of religion. I thought faith was the ticket.”
By this answer Mr. Lavender was so impressed that he sat for a moment in
silence, with his eyebrow working up and down.
“Sir,” he said at last, “you have given me a new thought. If you are
right, to disbelieve in you and the acts which you perform, or rather
the editions which you issue, is blasphemy.”
“I should think so,” said the Personage, emitting a long whiff of smoke.
“Hadn't that ever occurred to you before?”
“No,” replied Mr. Lavender, naively, “for I have never yet disbelieved
anything in those journals.”
The Personage coughed heartily.
“I have always regarded them,” went on Mr. Lavender, “as I myself should
wish to be regarded, 'without fear and without reproach.' For that is,
as I understand it, the principle on which a gentleman must live, ever
believing of others what he would wish believed of himself. With the
exception of Germans,” he added hastily.
“Naturally,” returned the Personage. “And I'll defy you to find anything
in them which disagrees with that formula. Everything they print refers
to Germans if not directly then obliquely. Germans are the 'idee fixe',
and without an 'idee fixe', as you know, there's no such thing as
religion. Do you get me?”
“Yes, indeed,” cried Mr. Lavender, enthused, for the whole matter now
seemed to him to fall into coherence, and, what was more, to coincide
with his preconceptions, so that he had no longer any doubts. “You,
sir—the Unseen Power—are but the crystallized embodiment of the national
sentiment in time of war; in serving you, and fulfilling the ideas which
you concrete in your journals, we public men are servants of the general
animus, which in its turn serves the blind and burning instinct of
justice. This is eminently satisfactory to me, who would wish no better
fate than to be a humble lackey in that house.” He had no sooner,
however, spoken those words than Joe Petty's remarks about Public
Opinion came back to him, and he added: “But are you really the general
animus, or are you only the animus of Mayors, that is the question?”
The personage seemed to follow this thought with difficulty. “What's
that?” he said.
Mr. Lavender ran his hands through his hair.
“And turns,” he said, “on what is the unit of national feeling and
intelligence? Is it or is it not a Mayor?”
The Personage smiled. “Well, what do you think?” he said. “Haven't you
ever heard them after dinner? There's no question about it. Make your
mind easy if that's your only trouble.”
Mr. Lavender, greatly cheered by the genial certainty in this answer,
said: “I thank you, sir. I shall go back and refute that common scoffer,
that caster of doubts. I have seen the Truth face, to face, and am
greatly encouraged to further public effort. With many apologies I can
now get out,” he added, as the train stopped at South Croydon. “Blink!”
And, followed by his dog, he stepped from the train.
The Personage, who was indeed no other than the private secretary of the
private secretary of It whom Mr. Lavender had designated as the Truth
watched him from the window.
“Well, that WAS a treat, dear papa!” he murmured to himself, emitting a
sigh of smoke after his retreating interlocutor.
XIX IS IN PERIL OF THE STREET
On the Sunday following this interview with the Truth Mr. Lavender, who
ever found the day of rest irksome to his strenuous spirit, left his
house after an early supper. It, had been raining all day, but the
sinking sun had now emerged and struck its level light into the tree
tops from a still cloudy distance. Followed by Blink, he threaded the
puddled waste which lies to the west of the Spaniard's Road, nor was
it long before the wild beauty of the scene infected his spirit, and
he stood still to admire the world spread out. The smoke rack of misted
rain was still drifting above the sunset radiance in an apple-green sky;
and behind Mr. Lavender, as he gazed at those clouds symbolical of the
world's unrest, a group of tall, dark pine-trees, wild and witch-like,
had collected as if in audience of his cosmic mood. He formed a striking
group for a painter, with the west wind flinging back his white hair,
and fluttering his dark moustache along his cheeks, while Blink, a
little in front of him, pointed at the prospect and emitted barks whose
vigour tossed her charming head now to this side now to that.
“How beautiful is this earth!” thought Mr. Lavender, “and how simple to
be good and happy thereon. Yet must we journey ten leagues beyond the
wide world's end to find justice and liberty. There are dark powers
like lions ever in the path. Yes,” he continued, turning round to the
pinetrees, who were creaking slightly in the wind, “hate and oppression,
greed, lust, and ambition! There you stand malevolently regarding me.
Out upon you, dark witches of evil! If I had but an axe I would lay you
lower than the dust.” But the poor pine-trees paid no attention save
to creak a little louder. And so incensed was Mr. Lavender by this
insensibility on the part of those which his own words had made him
perceive were the powers of darkness that he would very likely have
barked his knuckles on them if Blink by her impatience had not induced
him to resume his walk and mount on to the noble rampart of the
Spaniard's Road.
Along this he wandered and down the hill with the countless ghosts
and shadows of his brain, liberating the world in fancy from all the
hindrances which beset the paths of public men, till dark fell, and he
was compelled to turn towards home. Closely attended by the now sobered
Blink he had reached the Tube Station when he perceived in the inky
war-time dusk that a woman was following him. Dimly aware that she was
tall and graceful he hurried to avoid her, but before long could but
note that she was walking parallel and turning her face towards him. Her
gloved hand seemed to make a beckoning movement, and perceiving at once
that he was the object of that predatory instinct which he knew from
the many letters and protests in his journals to be one of the most
distressing features of the War, he would have broken into a run if he
had not been travelling up-hill; being deprived of this means of escape,
his public nature prevailed, and he saw that it was his duty to confront
the woman, and strike a blow at, the national evil stalking beside
him. But he was in a difficulty, for his natural delicacy towards
women seemed to preclude him from treating her as if she were what she
evidently was, while his sense of duty—urged him with equal force to do
so.
A whiff of delicious scent determined him. “Madam,” he said, without
looking in her face, which, indeed, was not visible—so great was the
darkness, “it is useless to pursue one who not only has the greatest
veneration for women but regards you as a public danger at a time when
all the energies of the country should be devoted to the defeat of our
common enemies.”
The woman, uttering a sound like a laugh, edged towards him, and Mr.
Lavender edged away, so that they proceeded up the street crabwise, with
Blink adhering jealously to her master's heels.
“Do you know,” said Mr. Lavender, with all the delicacy in his power,
“how terribly subversive of the national effort it is to employ your
beauty and your grace to snare and slacken the sinews of our glorious
youth? The mystery of a woman's glance in times like these should be
used solely to beckon our heroes on to death in the field. But you,
madam, than whom no one indeed has a more mysterious glance, have turned
it to ends which, in the words of a great public man, profane the temple
of our—our——”
Mr. Lavender stopped, for his delicacy would not allow him even in so
vital a cause to call bodies bodies. The woman here edged so close that
he bolted across her in affright, and began to slant back towards the
opposite side of the street.