IV

A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me

that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance,

because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three

times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on

which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the

spirit set free. I found that the steps, which were simple enough,

resembled certain antique Greek dances, and having been a good dancer

in my youth and the master of many curious Gaelic steps, I soon had

them in my memory. He then robed me and himself in a costume which

suggested by its shape both Greece and Egypt, but by its crimson

colour a more passionate life than theirs; and having put into my

hands a little chainless censer of bronze, wrought into the likeness

of a rose, by some modern craftsman, he told me to open a small door

opposite to the door by which I had entered. I put my hand to the

handle, but the moment I did so the fumes of the incense, helped

perhaps by his mysterious glamour, made me fall again into a dream,

in which I seemed to be a mask, lying on the counter of a little

Eastern shop. Many persons, with eyes so bright and still that I knew

them for more than human, came in and tried me on their faces, but at

last flung me into a corner with a little laughter; but all this

passed in a moment, for when I awoke my hand was still upon the

handle. I opened the door, and found myself in a marvellous passage,

along whose sides were many divinities wrought in a mosaic, not less

beautiful than the mosaic in the Baptistery at Ravenna, but of a less

severe beauty; the predominant colour of each divinity, which was

surely a symbolic colour, being repeated in the lamps that hung from

the ceiling, a curiously-scented lamp before every divinity. I passed

on, marvelling exceedingly how these enthusiasts could have created

all this beauty in so remote a place, and half persuaded to believe

in a material alchemy, by the sight of so much hidden wealth; the

censer filling the air, as I passed, with smoke of ever-changing

colour.

I stopped before a door, on whose bronze panels were wrought great

waves in whose shadow were faint suggestions of terrible faces. Those

beyond it seemed to have heard our steps, for a voice cried: 'Is the

work of the Incorruptible Fire at an end?' and immediately Michael

Robartes answered: 'The perfect gold has come from the

_athanor_.' The door swung open, and we were in a great circular

room, and among men and women who were dancing slowly in crimson

robes. Upon the ceiling was an immense rose wrought in mosaic; and

about the walls, also in mosaic, was a battle of gods and angels, the

gods glimmering like rubies and sapphires, and the angels of the one

greyness, because, as Michael Robartes whispered, they had renounced

their divinity, and turned from the unfolding of their separate

hearts, out of love for a God of humility and sorrow. Pillars

supported the roof and made a kind of circular cloister, each pillar

being a column of confused shapes, divinities, it seemed, of the

wind, who rose as in a whirling dance of more than human vehemence,

and playing upon pipes and cymbals; and from among these shapes were

thrust out hands, and in these hands were censers. I was bid place my

censer also in a hand and take my place and dance, and as I turned

from the pillars towards the dancers, I saw that the floor was of a

green stone, and that a pale Christ on a pale cross was wrought in

the midst. I asked Robartes the meaning of this, and was told that

they desired 'To trouble His unity with their multitudinous feet.'

The dance wound in and out, tracing upon the floor the shapes of

petals that copied the petals in the rose overhead, and to the sound

of hidden instruments which were perhaps of an antique pattern, for I

have never heard the like; and every moment the dance was more

passionate, until all the winds of the world seemed to have awakened

under our feet. After a little I had grown weary, and stood under a

pillar watching the coming and going of those flame-like figures;

until gradually I sank into a half-dream, from which I was awakened

by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no longer the look

of mosaic, falling slowly through the incense-heavy air, and, as

they fell, shaping into the likeness of living beings of an

extraordinary beauty. Still faint and cloud-like, they began to

dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape, so

that I was able to distinguish beautiful Grecian faces and august

Egyptian faces, and now and again to name a divinity by the staff in

his hand or by a bird fluttering over his head; and soon every mortal

foot danced by the white foot of an immortal; and in the troubled

eyes that looked into untroubled shadowy eyes, I saw the brightness

of uttermost desire as though they had found at length, after

unreckonable wandering, the lost love of their youth. Sometimes, but

only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a Rosa veiled

face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a

dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an

understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it was

Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman

from the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or

looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a

spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune

with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love

through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if

ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable

desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these

things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the

dance! there is none that can be spared out of the dance; into the

dance! into the dance! that the gods may make them bodies out of the

substance of our hearts'; and before I could answer, a mysterious

wave of passion, that seemed like the soul of the dance moving within

our souls, Alchemica took hold of me, and I was swept, neither

consenting nor refusing, into the midst. I was dancing with an immortal

august woman, who had black lilies in her hair, and her dreamy gesture

seemed laden with a wisdom more profound than the darkness that is

between star and star, and with a love like the love that breathed upon

the waters; and as we danced on and on, the incense drifted over us

and round us, covering us away as in the heart of the world, and ages

seemed to pass, and tempests to awake and perish in the folds of our

robes and in her heavy hair.

Suddenly I remembered that her eyelids had never quivered, and that

her lilies had not dropped a black petal, or shaken from their

places, and understood with a great horror that I danced with one who

was more or less than human, and who was drinking up my soul as an ox

drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me.

V

I awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw that I

was lying on a roughly painted floor, and that on the ceiling, which

was at no great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on

the walls half-finished paintings. The pillars and the censers had

gone; and near me a score of sleepers lay wrapped in disordered

robes, their upturned faces looking to my imagination like hollow

masks; and a chill dawn was shining down upon them from a long window

I had not noticed before; and outside the sea roared. I saw Michael

Robartes lying at a little distance and beside him an overset bowl of

wrought bronze which looked as though it had once held incense. As I

sat thus, I heard a sudden tumult of angry men and women's voices mix

with the roaring of the sea; and leaping to my feet, I went quickly

to Michael Robartes, and tried to shake him out of his sleep. I then

seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift him, but he fell

backwards, and sighed faintly; and the voices became louder and

angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon the door, which

opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending wood, and

I knew it had begun to give, and I ran to the door of the room. I

pushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boards

clattered under my feet, and found in the passage another door which

led into an empty kitchen; and as I passed through the door I heard

two crashes in quick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet

and the shouts that the door which opened on to the pier had fallen

inwards. I ran from the kitchen and out into a small yard, and from

this down some steps which descended the seaward and sloping side of

the pier, and from the steps clambered along the water's edge, with

the angry voices ringing in my ears. This part of the pier had been

but lately refaced with blocks of granite, so that it was almost

clear of seaweed; but when I came to the old part, I found it so

slippery with green weed that I had to climb up on to the roadway. I

looked towards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, where the fishermen

and the women were still shouting, but somewhat more faintly, and saw

that there was no one about the door or upon the pier; but as I

looked, a little crowd hurried out of the door and began gathering

large stones from where they were heaped up in readiness for the next

time a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks

of granite. While I stood watching the crowd, an old man, who was, I

think, the voteen, pointed to me, and screamed out something, and the

crowd whitened, for all the faces had turned towards me. I ran, and

it was well for me that pullers of the oar are poorer men with their

feet than with their arms and their bodies; and yet while I ran I

scarcely heard the following feet or the angry voices, for many

voices of exultation and lamentation, which were forgotten as a dream

is forgotten the moment they were heard, seemed to be ringing in the

air over my head.

There are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of

exultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has

but half lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about

to claim a perfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and

when I hear, or seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say:

'He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects

with subtlety and flattering our hearts with beauty, and we have no

trust but in Thee'; and then the war that rages within me at other

times is still, and I am at peace.