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 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, 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.