The easterly wind blew strong and shattering, bleak and dreary, against
the windows of the bedchamber at the back of the house. The complaint
of the cedar tree, as the branches sawed upon one another, was
long-drawn and loud. These sounds reached Iglesias in the sitting-room,
where he sat, alone and unoccupied, before the fire. For more than a
week now he had been confined to the house. He had set the door of
communication between the two rooms open, so as to gain a greater sense
of space and that he might take a little exercise by walking the whole
length of them. The cry of the wind and the moan of the sawing branches
was very comfortless, yet he made no effort to shut it out. To begin
with, he was so weak that it was too much trouble to move. To go on
with, the melancholy sounds were not ill-suited to his present humour.
For a great depression was upon him, a weariness of spirit which might
be felt. Out of doors London shivered, houses and sky and the expanse
of Trimmer's Green, with its leafless trees and iron railings, livid, a
greyness upon them as of fear. Dominic had no quarrel with this either.
Indeed it gave him a certain bitter satisfaction, as offering a not
inharmonious setting to his own thought.
Though not robust he was tough and wiry, so that illness of such a
nature as to necessitate his remaining within doors was a new and
trying experience. Crossing Hammersmith Bridge on the 'bustop ten days
previously, the chill of the river had struck through him. Yet this, in
all reasonable probability, would merely have resulted in passing
physical discomfort, but for the moral and spiritual hurt immediately
preceding it. How far the mind has power to cure the body is still an
open question. But that the mind can actively predispose the body to
sickness is indubitable. To realise and analyse, in their several
bearings, the causes and consequences of that same moral hurt Iglesias'
pride and loyalty alike refused. In respect of them he set his jaw and
sternly averted his eyes. Yet, though the will may be steady to resist
and to abstain, the tides of feeling ebb and flow, contemptuous of
control as those of some unquiet sea. They defy volition, notably in
illness when vitality is low. Refuse as he might to go behind the fact,
it remained indisputable that the Lady of the Windswept Dust had given
him his dismissal. Out of his daily life a joy had gone, a constant
object of thought and interest. Out of his heart a living presence had
gone, leaving a void more harsh than death. And all this had happened
in a connection peculiarly painful and distasteful to him; so that it
was as though a foul miasma had arisen, and, drifting across the face
of his fair friendship, distorted its proportions, rendering all his
memories of it suspect. Further, in this discrediting of friendship his
hope of the discovery of that language of the soul which can alone
effect a true adjustment between the exterior and interior life had
suffered violent eclipse. He had been thrown back into the prison-house
of the obvious and the material. The world had lost its poetry, had
grown narrow, sordid, dim, and gross. His own life had grown more than
ever barren of opportunity and inept. In short, Dominic Iglesias had
lost sight of the far horizon which is touched by the glory of the
Uncreated Light; and, so doing, dwelt in outer darkness once again,
infinitely desolate.
On the afternoon in question he had reached the nadir of disillusion
and distrust. He leaned back in the red-covered chair, his shapely
hands lying, palms downward, along the two arms of it, his vision of
the room and its familiar contents blurred by unshed tears. It was an
hour of supreme discouragement.
"Nothing is left," he said, half aloud, "nothing. The future is as
blank as the present. If this is to grow old, then indeed those whom
the gods love have need enough to die young."
For a space he listened to the shattering wind as it cried in the
window-sashes, to the branches of the cedar sawing upon one another and
moaning as in self-inflicted pain. Newsboys were calling early
specials. The coarse cockney voices, strangled by the easterly blast,
met and crossed one another, died away in a side street, to emerge
again and again encounter. Such words as were distinguishable seemed of
sinister import, agitating to the imagination. Then de Courcy Smyth's
shuffling footsteps crossed the floor of the room overhead. The
wire-wove mattress of his bed creaked as he sat on the edge of it,
kicking off his slippers and putting on walking boots, as might be
gathered from floppings followed by an equally nerveless but heavier
tread. A door opened, closed, and the footsteps descended the stairs.
On the landing without they paused for an appreciable time; but, to Mr.
Iglesias's great relief, deciding against attempt of entry, continued
their cheerless progress down to the hall below. Yet, just now Iglesias
could have found it in his heart to envy the man, notwithstanding his
unsavouriness of attitude and aspect. For in him ambition still
stirred. He had still definite work to do, and the hope of eventual
fame to support him during the doing of it; had the triumph of the
theatre, the applause of an audience in the white heat of enthusiasm to
dream of and strive after.
"But, for me, nothing," Iglesias repeated, "whether vital as of those
far-away southern battle-fields, or fictitious and close at hand as of
the stage. Not even the sting of poverty to whet appetite and give an
edge to bodily hunger. Nothing, either of fear or of hope. The measure
of my obscurity is the measure of my immunity from change of fortune,
bad or good. I am worthless even as food for powder. Danger herself
will have none of me, and passes me by."
With that he raised his hands and let them drop despairingly along the
arms of the chair again, while the unbidden tears overflowed. For a
minute or more he remained thus, weeping silently with bowed head.
Then, a movement of self-contempt taking him, he regained his calm, sat
upright, brushing away the tears.
And it was as though, in thus regaining a clearer physical vision, he
regained a clearer mental vision likewise. Purpose asserted itself as
against mere blind acquiescence. Iglesias looked up, demanding as of
right some measure of consolation, some object promising help. So
doing, his eyes sought a certain carven oak panel set in an ebony
frame. From his earliest childhood he remembered it, for it had hung in
his mother's bedchamber; and in those far-away years, while she still
had sufficient force to disregard opposition and make an open practice
of prayer, she had kneeled before it when engaged in her devotions.
Waking at night--when as a baby-child, during his father's long
absences, he slept in her room--Dominic had often seen the delicate
kneeling figure, wrapped in some loose-flowing garment, the hands
outstretched in supplication. Even then, in the first push of conscious
intelligence, the carven picture had spoken to him as something
masterful, for all its rigidity and sadness, and very strong to help.
It had given him a sense of protection and security, so that his little
soul was satisfied; and he could go to sleep again in peace, sure that
his mother was in safe keeping while--as he said--she "talked to it."
In the long interval which had elapsed since then he had lost touch
with the spirit of it, though preserving it as among the most cherished
of his family relics. His appreciation of it had become aesthetic
rather than religious. But now, as it hung on the dimly white wall
above his writing-table on the window side of the fireplace, the dreary
London afternoon light took the surface of it, bringing all the details
of the scene into prominence. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the old power
declared itself. The picture came alive as to the intention and meaning
of it. It spoke to him once again, and that with no uncertain voice.
Three tall narrow crosses uplifted against a cloudless sky. Below, a
multitude of men, women, and horses, carved in varying degrees of
relief. Some starting into bold definiteness, some barely indicated and
as though imprisoned in the thickness of the wood; but all grave,
energetic, and, whether inspired by compassion or by mockery, fierce.
These grouped around a great web of linen--upheld by some of them at
the four corners, hammock-wise, high at the head, low at the
foot--wherein lay the corpse of a man in the very flower of his age, of
heroic proportions, spare yet muscular, long and finely angular of
limb, the articulations notably slender, the head borne proudly though
bent, the features severely beautiful, the whole virile, indomitable
even in the physical abjection of death.
In this Spanish presentment of the closing act of the Divine Tragedy
the sensuous pagan element, which mars too many otherwise admirable
works of religious art, was absent. Its appeal was to the intellect
rather than to the emotions, inculcating effort rather than inviting
any sentimental passion of pity. Its message was that of conquest, of
iron self-mastery and self-restraint. This was bracing and
courage-begetting even when viewed from the exclusively artistic
standpoint. But now not merely the presentment of the event held
Iglesias' attention, but the event presented, the thing in itself. His
heart and intelligence grasped the meaning of it, not only as a matter
of supreme historic interest in view of its astonishing influence upon
human development during the last two thousand years; but as an
ever-present reality, as an exposition of the Absolute, of that which
everlastingly has been, and everlastingly will be, and hence of
incalculable and immediate importance to himself. It spoke to him of no
vague and general truth; but of a truth intimate and individual, coming
to him as the call to enter upon a personal inheritance. Of obedience
to the dictates of natural religion, and faithful practice of the
pieties of it, Dominic Iglesias had, all his life, been a remarkable if
unconscious exponent. But this awakening of the spirit to the
actualities of supernatural religion, this crossing of that dark
immensity of space which appears to interpose between Almighty God and
the mind of man, was new to him. He had sought a language of the soul
which might effect an adjustment between the exterior and interior
life. Here, in the Word made Flesh, with reverent amazement he found
it. He had sought it through the instrumentality of the things of time
and sense; and they, though full with promise, had proved illusory. He
had fixed his hope on relation to the creature. But here, all the
while, close beside him, waiting till the scales should fall from his
eyes and he should see and understand, had stood the Creator. Fair,
very fair--while it lasted--was human friendship. But here, had he but
strength and daring to meet it, was a friendship infinitely fairer,
immutable, eternal--namely, the friendship of Almighty God.
The easterly wind still cried in the window-sashes, harsh and
shattering. The branches of the exiled cedar tree sawed upon one
another, uttering their long-drawn complaint. The voices of the
newsboys, hoarse and raucous, shouting their sinister message, still
came and went. The livid light of the winter afternoon grew more dreary
as it sank into, and was absorbed by, the deepening dusk. But to
Dominic Iglesias these things had ceased to matter. Dazzled, enchanted,
confounded, alike by the magnitude and the simplicity of his discovery,
he remained gazing at the carven panel; gazing through and beyond it to
that of which it was the medium and symbol, gazing, clear-eyed and
fearlessly, away to the far horizon radiant with the surpassing glory
of the Uncreated Light.