THE PROPHET
The year 1907 had four more days of life: it crept to its grave through
a web and tangle of fog. It was not one of the regular yellow devils
who come and eat up London, first this part, and then that, then
disgorge a little, choking it all up only to snap at it and swallow it
down all bewildered a quarter of an hour after. This was a cobweb fog
spun, as it might be, by some malignant central spider hidden darkly in
his lair. The vapouring-like filmy threads twisted and twined their way
all over London, and for four days and nights the town was a city of
ghosts. Buildings loomed dimly behind their masks of silver tissue,
streets seemed unsubstantial, pavements had no foundation, streams of
water appeared to hang glittering in mid-air, men and horses would
suddenly plunge into grey abysses and vanish from sight, church-bells
would ring peals high up in air, and there would be, it seemed, no
steeple there for them to ring from. As the sun behind the fog rose and
set so the mist would catch gold and red and purple into the vapours,
strange gleams of brass and silver as though behind its web armies
flaunting their colours were marching through the sky; down on the very
earth itself horses staggered and stumbled on the thin coating of
greasy mud that covered everything; men opened their doors to look out
on to the world, and instantly into the passages there floated such
strange forms and shadows in misty shape that it seemed as though the
rooms were suddenly invaded by a flock of spirits.
Sometimes for half an hour the fog lifted and bright blue sky gleamed
like a miraculous lake suddenly discovered in the heart of the
boundless waste, then vanished again. Suddenly, with a whisk of the
immortal broom, the web was torn, the spider slain, the world clear
once more--but, in the obscurity and dusk, 1907 had seen his chance and
vanished.
Warlock, long before this, had lost consciousness of external sights
and sounds. He could not have told any one when it was that the two
worlds had parted company. For many many years he had been conscious of
both existences, but during his youth and middle-age they had seemed to
mingle and go along together. He had believed in both equally and had
been a citizen of both. Then gradually, as time passed, he had seemed
to have less and less hold upon the actual physical world. He saw it
suddenly with darkened vision; his wife and daughter, and indeed all
human beings, except in so far as they were souls to be saved for the
Lord, became less and less realities. Only Martin was flesh and blood,
to be loved and longed for and feared for just as he had always been.
All the physical properties of life--clothes, food, household
possessions, money--became of less and less importance to him. Had Amy
not watched over him he would have been many days without any food at
all, and one day he come into the living-room at breakfast-time clothed
in a towel. All this had come upon him with vastly increased power
during the last months. In Chapel, and whenever he had work to do in
connection with the Chapel, he was clear-headed and practical, but in
things to do with this world he was now worse than a child.
He was conscious of this increasing difficulty to deal with both
worlds. It was because one world--the world of God--was opening out
before him so widely and with so varied and thrilling a beauty that
there was less and less time to be spared for the drab realities of
physical things.
All his life he had been preparing, and then suddenly the call had
come. Shortly after Martin's return he had known in Chapel, one
evening, that God was approaching. It had happened that that day, owing
to his absorption in his work, he had eaten nothing, and there had come
to him, whilst praying to the congregation, a sensation of faintness so
strong that for a moment he thought he would fall from his seat. Then
it had passed, to give way to a strange, thrilling sense of expectancy.
It was as though a servant had opened the door and had announced: "My
master is coming, sir--" He had felt, indeed, as though he had been
lifted up, in the sheet of Paul the Apostle, to meet his God. There had
been the most wonderful sense of elevation, a clearing of light, a
gentler freshness in the air, a sudden sinking to remoteness of human
voices and mundane sounds. From that moment in the Chapel life had been
changed for him. He never seemed to come down again from that
mysterious elevation. Human voices sounded far away from him; he could
be urged, only with the greatest difficulty, to take his food, and he
frequently did not recognise members of his own congregation when they
came to see him. He waited now, waited, waited, for this visitation
that was approaching him. He could have no doubts of it.
Then one night he woke from a deep sleep. He was conscious that his
room was filled with a smoky light; in his heart was such an ecstasy
that he would have thought that the joy would kill him.
Something spoke to him, telling him to prepare, that he had been
chosen, and that further signs would come to him. He fell on his knees
beside the bed and remained there in a trance until daylight. He had
heard the voice of God, he had seen His light, he had been chosen as
His servant. Some weeks later a second visitation came to him, similar
to the first, but telling him that at the last hour of the present year
God would come in His own person to save the world, and that he must
make this known to a few chosen spirits that they might prepare ...
The whole brotherhood then was at length justified; they alone, out of
all men in the world, had believed in the Second Coming of the Lord,
and so God had chosen them. He had no doubt at all about his visions at
this time. They seemed to him as real and sure as the daily traffic of
the streets and the monotonous progress of the clock.
Eagerly, with the confident resolution of a child, he told his news to
the leaders of the Chapel, Thurston, Miss Avies, and one or two others.
Then a special meeting of the Inside Saints was called and, in the
simplest language, he described exactly what had occurred. He did not
at first perceive the effect that his news had. Then, dimly, through
the mist of his prayers and ecstasies, he realised that his message had
created confusion. There was in the first place the question as to
whether the whole congregation should be told. He found that he could
not decide about this, and when he left the judgment to Thurston,
Thurston told him that, in his opinion, "the less that they knew about
it the better." It was then that the first suspicion came to him as to
whether some of the Saints "doubted." He questioned Thurston as to the
effect of this message upon the Saints. Thurston explained to him that
"many of them had been very troubled. They had not expected It to come
so soon." Thurston explained that they were, after all, only poor human
clay like the rest of mankind, and to prepare for a Second Coming in
general, something that might descend upon the world, say, in a hundred
years' time, was very different from a Judgment that might be expected,
definitely, in about three weeks. One or two of them, in fact, had left
the Chapel. Others begged for some clearer direction: "Give it them a
bit more clearly, Master. Tell 'em a few facts what the Lord God looked
like and 'ow He spoke and in what kind of way He was coming. Supposing
He wasn't to come after all ..."
It was then that the trouble that had been smouldering for so long
between Thurston and the Master burst into flame. For half an hour the
Master lost his temper like an ordinary human being. Thurston said very
little but listened with a quiet and sarcastic smile. Then he went
away. Warlock was left in a torment of doubt and misery. That night he
was in his room, until the dawn, on his knees, wrestling with God. He
accused himself because, during these latter months, he had removed
himself from human contact with his congregation. He had been so intent
upon God that he had forgotten his flock. Now he hardly knew how to
approach them. The thought of a personal interview with the Miss
Cardinals, or Miss Pyncheon, or Mr. Smith filled him with a strange shy
terror. He seemed to have nothing more to say to them, and he blamed
himself bitterly because he had been intent upon his own salvation
rather than theirs.
Thurston's words sent him groping back through the details of the
visions. And there were no details. For himself there had been enough
in the light, the ecstasy, the contact, but these others who had not
themselves felt this, nor seen its glory, demanded more.
He began then, in an agony of distress, to question himself as to
whether he had not dreamt his visions. He wrestled with God, beseeching
Him to come again and give him a clearer message. Night after night
passed and he waited for some further vision, but nothing was granted
him. Then he thought that perhaps he himself was now cursed for leaving
God. God had come to him and revealed Himself to him in unmistakable
signs, and yet he was doubting Him and demanding further help.
As the weeks passed he perceived more and more clearly that there was
every kind of division and trouble in the Chapel. Many members left and
wrote to him telling him why they had done so. In his own household he
felt that Amy no longer gave him any confidence. She attended to him
more carefully than before, watched over him as though he were a baby,
but made no allusion to the services or the Chapel or any meeting. He
seemed, as the weeks passed, to be lonelier and lonelier, and he looked
upon this as punishment for his own earlier selfishness. He was pulled
then two ways. On the one hand it seemed to him that he would only hear
God's full message if he withdrew further and further from the world,
on the other he felt that he was letting his followers slip away from
him now at the very moment when he should be closest to them, advising,
helping, encouraging. This divided impulse was a torture, and as the
weeks went on he ate less and less and slept scarcely at all. He had
been for a long time past in delicate health owing to the weakness of
his heart, and now he began to look strange indeed, with his bright
gaunt face with its prominent cheek-bones, his eyes straining to see
beyond his actual vision, his flowing white beard. His doctor, a
cheerful, commonplace little man, a member of the Chapel, although not
a Saint, tried to do his best with him, but his visits only led to
scenes of irritation, and Warlock obeyed none of his commands. After a
visit on the afternoon of Christmas Eve he took Amy aside:
"Look here," he said, "unless you keep a stricter eye on your father
than you have been doing he'll be leaving you altogether."
She looked up at him with that odd dark impassivity that seemed to
remove her so deliberately from her fellow-beings.
"It's very well to talk like that," she said. "But how is any one to
have any control over him? He listens to nothing that we say, and if we
insist he's in a frenzy of irritation."
"Can your mother do nothing?" the doctor asked.
"Mother?" Amy smiled. "No, mother can do nothing."
"Well," said the doctor, "any sudden shock will kill him--I warn you."
When the fog came down upon the city Warlock was already in too thick a
fog of his own to perceive it.
He was sure now of nothing. It seemed as though all the spirits of the
other world now were taunting him, but he felt that this was the work
of the Devil, who wished to destroy his faith before the Great Day
arrived. He thought now that the Devil was closely pursuing him, and he
seemed to hear first his taunting whisper and then the voice of God
encouraging him: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
He had lost now almost all consciousness of what he really expected to
happen when the Day arrived, but he was dimly aware that if nothing
happened at all his whole influence with his people would be gone.
Nevertheless this did not trouble him very greatly; the congregation of
the Chapel seemed now dimly remote. The only human being who was not
remote was Martin; his love for his son had not been touched by his
other struggles, it had been even intensified. But the love had grown a
terror, ever increasing, lest Martin should leave him. He seemed to
hear dimly, beyond the wall of the mysterious world into whose regions
he was ever more deeply passing, sentences, vague, without human
agency, accusing Martin of sins and infidelities and riotous living.
Sometimes he was tempted to go further into this and challenge Martin's
accusers, but fear held him back. Martin had been a good son since his
return to England, yes, he had, and he had forsaken his evil ways and
was going to be with his father now until the end, his last refuge
against loneliness. Every one else had left him or was leaving him, but
Martin was there. Martin hadn't deceived him, Martin was a good boy ...
a good boy ... and then, as it seemed to him, with Martin's hand in his
own he would pass off into his world of strange dreams and desperate
prayer and hours of waiting, listening, straining for a voice ...
During that last night before New Year's Eve an hour came to him when
he seemed to be left utterly alone. Exhausted, faint, dizzy with want
of sleep and food, he knelt before his bed; his room seemed to be
filled with devils, taunting him, tempting him, bewildering and
blinding him. He rose suddenly in a frenzy, striking out, rushing about
his room, crying ... then at last, exhausted, creeping back to his bed,
falling down upon it and sinking into a long dreamless sleep.
They found him sleeping when they came to call him and they left him.
He did not wake until the early afternoon; his brain seemed clear and
his body so weak that it was with the greatest difficulty that he
washed and put on some clothes.
The room was dark with the fog; lamps in the street below glimmered
uncertainly, and voices and the traffic of the street were muffled. He
opened his door and, looking out, heard in the room below Martin's
voice raised excitedly. Slowly he went down to meet him.
Martin also had reached, on that last day of the year, the very end of
his tether. During the last ten days he had been fighting against every
weakness to which his character was susceptible. With the New Year he
felt that everything would be well; he could draw a new breath then,
find work somewhere away from London, have Maggie perhaps with him, and
drive a way out of all the tangle of his perplexities. But even then he
did not dare to face the future thoroughly. Would his father let him
go? Was he, after all his struggles, to give way and ruin Maggie's
position and future? Could he be sure, if he look her away with him,
that then he would keep straight, and that his old temptations of women
and drink and general restlessness would be conquered? Perhaps. There
had never been a surer proof that his love for Maggie was a real and
unselfish love than his hesitation on that wretched day when he seemed
utterly deserted by mankind, when Maggie seemed the only friend he had
in the world.
Everything was just out of reach, and some perverse destiny prevented
him from realising any desire that had a spark of honesty and decency
in it. It was not wonderful that in the midst of his loneliness and
unhappiness he should have been tempted back to the old paths again,
men, women, places that for more than three months now he had been
struggling to abandon.
All that day he struggled with temptation. He had not seen Maggie for a
week, and during the last three days he had not heard from her, the
adventurous Jane having defied the aunts and left.
At luncheon he asked about his father, whom he had not seen for two
days.
"Father had a very bad night. He's asleep now."
"There's something on to-night, isn't there?" he asked.
"There's a service," Amy answered shortly.
"Father oughtn't to go," he went on. "I suppose your friend Thurston
can manage."
Amy looked at him. "Father's got to go. It's very important."
"Oh, of course, if you want to kill father with all your beastly
services--" he broke in furiously.
"It won't be--" Amy began, and then, as though she did not trust
herself to continue, got up and left the room.
"Mother," he said, "why on earth don't you do something?"
"I, dear?" she looked at him placidly. "In what way?"
"They're killing father between them with all these services and the
rest of the nonsense."
"Your father doesn't listen to anything I say, dear."
"He ought to go away for a long rest."
"Well, dear, perhaps he will soon. You know I have nothing to do with
the Chapel. That was settled years ago. I wouldn't interfere for a
great deal."
Martin turned fiercely upon her saying:
"Mother, don't you care?"
"Care, dear?"
"Yes, about father--his living and getting well again and being happy
as he used to be. What's happened to this place?"
She looked at him in the strangest way. He suddenly felt that he'd
never seen her before.
"There are a number of things, Martin, that you don't understand--a
number of things. You are away from us for years, you come back to us
and expect things to be the same."
"You and Amy," he said, "both of you, have kept me out of everything
since I came back. I believe you both hate me!"
She got up slowly from her seat, slowly put her spectacles away in
their case, rubbed her fat little hands together, then suddenly licked
inquisitively one finger as an animal might do. She spoke to him over
her shoulder as she went to the door:
"Oh no, Martin, you speak too strongly."
Left then to his own devices he, at last, wandered out into the foggy
streets. After a while he found himself outside a public-house and,
after a moment's hesitation, he went in. He asked the stout, rubicund
young woman behind the counter for a whisky. She gave him one; he drank
that, and then another.
Afterwards he had several more, leaning over the bar, speaking to no
one, seeing no one, hearing nothing, and scarcely tasting the drink.
When he came out into the street again he knew that he was half
drunk--not so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing. Oh dear, no.
HE could drink any amount without feeling it. Nevertheless he had drunk
so little during these last weeks that even a drop ... How foggy the
streets were ... made it difficult to find your way home. But he was
all right, he could walk straight, he could put his latch-key into the
door at one try, HE was all right.
He was at home again. He didn't stop to hang up his hat and coat but
went straight into the dining-room, leaving the door open behind him.
He saw that the meal was still on the table just as they'd left it. Amy
was there too.
He saw her move back when he came in as though she were afraid to touch
him.
"You're drunk!" she said.
"I'm not. You're a liar, Amy. You've always been a liar all your life."
She tried to pass him, but he stood in the middle of the door.
"No, you don't," he said. "We've got to have this out. What have you
been spreading scandal about me and Maggie Cardinal for?"
"Let me go," she said again.
"Tell me that first. You've always tried to do me harm. Why?"
"Because I hate the sight of you," she answered quickly. "As you've
asked me, you shall have a truthful answer. You've never been anything
but a disgrace to us ever since you were a little boy. You disgraced us
at home and then abroad; now you've come back to disgrace us here
again."
"That's a lie," he repeated. "I've not disgraced anybody."
"Well, it won't be very long before you finish ruining that wretched
girl. The best you can do now is to marry her."
"I can't do that," he said. "I'm married already." She did not answer
that hut stared at him with amazement.
"But never mind that," he went on. "What if I am a bad lot? I don't
know what a bad lot is exactly, but if you mean that I've lived with
women and been drunk, and lost jobs because I didn't do the work, and
been generally on the loose, it's true, of course. But I meant to live
decently when I came home. Yes, I did. You can sneer as much as you
like. Why didn't you help me? You're my sister, aren't you? And now I
don't care what I do. You've all given me up. Well, give me up, and
I'll just go to bits as fast as I can go! If you don't want me there
are others who do, or at any rate the bit of money I've got. You've
kept me from the only decent girl I've ever known, the one I could have
been straight with--"
"Straight with!" Amy broke in. "How were you going to be straight if
you're married already?"
He would have answered her but a sound behind him made him turn. He
wheeled round and saw his father standing almost up against him. He had
only time for a horrified vision of the ghostlike figure, the staring
eyes, the open mouth, the white cheeks. The old man caught his coat.
"Martin, what was that? What did you say? ... No, no ... I can't bear
that now. I can't, I can't."
He turned and made as though he would run up the stairs, catching about
him like a child the shabby old dressing-gown that he was wearing. At
the first step he stumbled, clutching the bannister to save himself.
Martin rushed to him, putting his arms round him, holding him close to
him. "It's all right, father ... It's not true what you heard ... It's
all right."
His father turned, putting his arms round his neck.
Martin half helped, half carried him up to his bedroom. He laid him on
his bed and then, holding his hand, sat by his side all through the
long dim afternoon.
About, five Warlock suddenly revived, sat up, arid with the assistance
of Martin dressed properly, had some tea, and went down to his study.
He sat down in his chair, then suddenly looking up at his son he said:
"Did you and Amy have a quarrel this afternoon?"
"No, father," said Martin.
"That's right. I thought--I thought ... I don't know ... My head's
confused. You've been a good boy, Martin, haven't you? There's no need
for me to worry, is there?"
"None, father," Martin said.
After a while Martin said:
"Father, don't go to Chapel to-night."
Warlock smiled.
"I must go. That's all right ... Nothing to worry about."
For some while he sat there, Martin's hand in his; Martin did not know
whether he were asleep or not.
At about ten he ate and drank. At eleven he started with Amy and
Thurston for the Chapel.