I
It was nearly sixteen o’clock on the same day, the last day of the year,
that Mabel went into the little church that stood in the street beneath
her house.
The dark was falling softly layer on layer; across the roofs to westward
burned the smouldering fire of the winter sunset, and the interior was
full of the dying light. She had slept a little in her chair that
afternoon, and had awakened with that strange cleansed sense of spirit
and mind that sometimes follows such sleep. She wondered later how she
could have slept at such a time, and above all, how it was that she had
perceived nothing of that cloud of fear and fury that even now was
falling over town and country alike. She remembered afterwards an
unusual busy-ness on the broad tracks beneath her as she had looked out
on them from her windows, and an unusual calling of horns and whistles;
but she thought nothing of it, and passed down an hour later for a
meditation in the church.
She had grown to love the quiet place, and came in often like this to
steady her thoughts and concentrate them on the significance that lay
beneath the surface of life--the huge principles upon which all lived,
and which so plainly were the true realities. Indeed, such devotion was
becoming almost recognised among certain classes of people. Addresses
were delivered now and then; little books were being published as guides
to the interior life, curiously resembling the old Catholic books on
mental prayer.
She went to-day to her usual seat, sat down, folded her hands, looked
for a minute or two upon the old stone sanctuary, the white image and
the darkening window. Then she closed her eyes and began to think,
according to the method she followed.
First she concentrated her attention on herself, detaching it from all
that was merely external and transitory, withdrawing it inwards ...
inwards, until she found that secret spark which, beneath all frailties
and activities, made her a substantial member of the divine race of
humankind.
This then was the first step.
The second consisted in an act of the intellect, followed by one of the
imagination. All men possessed that spark, she considered.... Then she
sent out her powers, sweeping with the eyes of her mind the seething
world, seeing beneath the light and dark of the two hemispheres, the
countless millions of mankind--children coming into the world, old men
leaving it, the mature rejoicing in it and their own strength. Back
through the ages she looked, through those centuries of crime and
blindness, as the race rose through savagery and superstition to a
knowledge of themselves; on through the ages yet to come, as generation
followed generation to some climax whose perfection, she told herself,
she could not fully comprehend because she was not of it. Yet, she told
herself again, that climax had already been born; the birthpangs were
over; for had not He come who was the heir of time?...
Then by a third and vivid act she realised the unity of all, the central
fire of which each spark was but a radiation--that vast passionless
divine being, realising Himself up through these centuries, one yet
many, Him whom men had called God, now no longer unknown, but recognised
as the transcendent total of themselves--Him who now, with the coming of
the new Saviour, had stirred and awakened and shown Himself as One.
And there she stayed, contemplating the vision of her mind, detaching
now this virtue, now that for particular assimilation, dwelling on her
deficiencies, seeing in the whole the fulfilment of all aspirations, the
sum of all for which men had hoped--that Spirit of Peace, so long
hindered yet generated too perpetually by the passions of the world,
forced into outline and being by the energy of individual lives,
realising itself in pulse after pulse, dominant at last, serene,
manifest, and triumphant. There she stayed, losing the sense of
individuality, merging it by a long sustained effort of the will,
drinking, as she thought, long breaths of the spirit of life and
love....
Some sound, she supposed afterwards, disturbed her, and she opened her
eyes; and there before her lay the quiet pavement, glimmering through
the dusk, the step of the sanctuary, the rostrum on the right, and the
peaceful space of darkening air above the white Mother-figure and
against the tracery of the old window. It was here that men had
worshipped Jesus, that blood-stained Man of Sorrow, who had borne, even
on His own confession, not peace but a sword. Yet they had knelt, those
blind and hopeless Christians.... Ah! the pathos of it all, the
despairing acceptance of any creed that would account for sorrow, the
wild worship of any God who had claimed to bear it!
And again came the sound, striking across her peace, though as yet she
did not understand why.
It was nearer now; and she turned in astonishment to look down the dusky
nave.
It was from without that the sound had come, that strange murmur, that
rose and fell again as she listened.
She stood up, her heart quickening a little--only once before had she
heard such a sound, once before, in a square, where men raged about a
point beneath a platform....
She stepped swiftly out of her seat, passed down the aisle, drew back
the curtains beneath the west window, lifted the latch and stepped out.
* * * * *
The street, from where she looked over the railings that barred the
entrance to the church, seemed unusually empty and dark. To right and
left stretched the houses, overhead the darkening sky was flushed with
rose; but it seemed as if the public lights had been forgotten. There
was not a living being to be seen.
She had put her hand on the latch of the gate, to open it and go out,
when a sudden patter of footsteps made her hesitate; and the next
instant a child appeared panting, breathless and terrified, running with
her hands before her.
“They’re coming, they’re coming,” sobbed the child, seeing the face
looking at her. Then she clung to the bars, staring over her shoulder.
Mabel lifted the latch in an instant; the child sprang in, ran to the
door and beat against it, then turning, seized her dress and cowered
against her. Mabel shut the gate.
“There, there,” she said. “Who is it? Who are coming?”
But the child hid her face, drawing at the kindly skirts; and the next
moment came the roar of voices and the trampling of footsteps.
* * * * *
It was not more than a few seconds before the heralds of that grim
procession came past. First came a flying squadron of children,
laughing, terrified, fascinated, screaming, turning their heads as they
ran, with a dog or two yelping among them, and a few women drifting
sideways along the pavements. A face of a man, Mabel saw as she glanced
in terror upwards, had appeared at the windows opposite, pale and
eager--some invalid no doubt dragging himself to see. One group--a
well-dressed man in grey, a couple of women carrying babies, a
solemn-faced boy--halted immediately before her on the other side of the
railings, all talking, none listening, and these too turned their faces
to the road on the left, up which every instant the clamour and
trampling grew. Yet she could not ask. Her lips moved; but no sound came
from them. She was one incarnate apprehension. Across her intense fixity
moved pictures of no importance of Oliver as he had been at breakfast,
of her own bedroom with its softened paper, of the dark sanctuary and
the white figure on which she had looked just now.
They were coming thicker now; a troop of young men with their arms
linked swayed into sight, all talking or crying aloud, none
listening--all across the roadway, and behind them surged the crowd,
like a wave in a stone-fenced channel, male scarcely distinguishable
from female in that pack of faces, and under that sky that grew darker
every instant. Except for the noise, which Mabel now hardly noticed, so
thick and incessant it was, so complete her concentration in the sense
of sight--except for that, it might have been, from its suddenness and
overwhelming force, some mob of phantoms trooping on a sudden out of
some vista of the spiritual world visible across an open space, and
about to vanish again in obscurity. That empty street was full now on
this side and that so far as she could see; the young men were
gone--running or walking she hardly knew--round the corner to the right,
and the entire space was one stream of heads and faces, pressing so
fiercely that the group at the railings were detached like weeds and
drifted too, sideways, clutching at the bars, and swept away too and
vanished. And all the while the child tugged and tore at her skirts.
Certain things began to appear now above the heads of the crowd--objects
she could not distinguish in the failing light--poles, and fantastic
shapes, fragments of stuff resembling banners, moving as if alive,
turning from side to side, borne from beneath.
Faces, distorted with passion, looked at her from time to time as the
moving show went past, open mouths cried at her; but she hardly saw
them. She was watching those strange emblems, straining her eyes through
the dusk, striving to distinguish the battered broken shapes,
half-guessing, yet afraid to guess.
Then, on a sudden, from the hidden lamps beneath the eaves, light leaped
into being--that strong, sweet, familiar light, generated by the great
engines underground that, in the passion of that catastrophic day, all
men had forgotten; and in a moment all changed from a mob of phantoms
and shapes into a pitiless reality of life and death.
Before her moved a great rood, with a figure upon it, of which one arm
hung from the nailed hand, swinging as it went; an embroidery streamed
behind with the swiftness of the motion.
And next after it came the naked body of a child, impaled, white and
ruddy, the head fallen upon the breast, and the arms, too, dangling and
turning.
And next the figure of a man, hanging by the neck, dressed, it seemed,
in a kind of black gown and cape, with its black-capped head twisting
from the twisting rope.
II
The same night Oliver Brand came home about an hour before midnight.
For himself, what he had heard and seen that day was still too vivid and
too imminent for him to judge of it coolly. He had seen, from his
windows in Whitehall, Parliament Square filled with a mob the like of
which had not been known in England since the days of Christianity--a
mob full of a fury that could scarcely draw its origin except from
sources beyond the reach of sense. Thrice during the hours that followed
the publication of the Catholic plot and the outbreak of mob-law he had
communicated with the Prime Minister asking whether nothing could be
done to allay the tumult; and on both occasions he had received the
doubtful answer that what could be done would be done, that force was
inadmissible at present; but that the police were doing all that was
possible.
As regarded the despatch of the volors to Rome, he had assented by
silence, as had the rest of the Council. That was, Snowford had said, a
judicial punitive act, regrettable but necessary. Peace, in this
instance, could not be secured except on terms of war--or rather, since
war was obsolete--by the sternness of justice. These Catholics had shown
themselves the avowed enemies of society; very well, then society must
defend itself, at least this once. Man was still human. And Oliver had
listened and said nothing.
As he passed in one of the Government volors over London on his way
home, he had caught more than one glimpse of what was proceeding beneath
him. The streets were as bright as day, shadowless and clear in the
white light, and every roadway was a crawling serpent. From beneath rose
up a steady roar of voices, soft and woolly, punctuated by cries. From
here and there ascended the smoke of burning; and once, as he flitted
over one of the great squares to the south of Battersea, he had seen as
it were a scattered squadron of ants running as if in fear or
pursuit.... He knew what was happening.... Well, after all, man was not
yet perfectly civilised.
He did not like to think of what awaited him at home. Once, about five
hours earlier, he had listened to his wife’s voice through the
telephone, and what he had heard had nearly caused him to leave all and
go to her. Yet he was scarcely prepared for what he found.
As he came into the sitting-room, there was no sound, except that
far-away hum from the seething streets below. The room seemed strangely
dark and cold; the only light that entered was through one of the
windows from which the curtains were withdrawn, and, silhouetted against
the luminous sky beyond, was the upright figure of a woman, looking and
listening....
He pressed the knob of the electric light; and Mabel turned slowly
towards him. She was in her day-dress, with a cloak thrown over her
shoulders, and her face was almost as that of a stranger. It was
perfectly colourless, her lips were compressed and her eyes full of an
emotion which he could not interpret. It might equally have been anger,
terror or misery.
She stood there in the steady light, motionless, looking at him.
For a moment he did not trust himself to speak. He passed across to the
window, closed it and drew the curtains. Then he took that rigid figure
gently by the arm.
“Mabel,” he said, “Mabel.”
She submitted to be drawn towards the sofa, but there was no response to
his touch. He sat down and looked up at her with a kind of despairing
apprehension.
“My dear, I am tired out,” he said.
Still she looked at him. There was in her pose that rigidity that actors
simulate; yet he knew it for the real thing. He had seen that silence
once or twice before in the presence of a horror--once at any rate, at
the sight of a splash of blood on her shoe.
“Well, my darling, sit down, at least,” he said.
She obeyed him mechanically--sat, and still stared at him. In the
silence once more that soft roar rose and died from the invisible world
of tumult outside the windows. Within here all was quiet. He knew
perfectly that two things strove within her, her loyalty to her faith
and her hatred of those crimes in the name of justice. As he looked on
her he saw that these two were at death grips, that hatred was
prevailing, and that she herself was little more than a passive
battlefield. Then, as with a long-drawn howl of a wolf, there surged and
sank the voices of the mob a mile away, the tension broke.... She threw
herself forward towards him, he caught her by the wrists, and so she
rested, clasped in his arms, her face and bosom on his knees, and her
whole body torn by emotion.
For a full minute neither spoke. Oliver understood well enough, yet at
present he had no words. He only drew her a little closer to himself,
kissed her hair two or three times, and settled himself to hold her. He
began to rehearse what he must say presently.
Then she raised her flushed face for an instant, looked at him
passionately, dropped her head again and began to sob out broken words.
He could only catch a sentence here and there, yet he knew what she was
saying....
It was the ruin of all her hopes, she sobbed, the end of her religion.
Let her die, die and have done with it! It was all gone, gone, swept
away in this murderous passion of the people of her faith ... they were
no better than Christians, after all, as fierce as the men on whom they
avenged themselves, as dark as though the Saviour, Julian, had never
come; it was all lost ... War and Passion and Murder had returned to the
body from which she had thought them gone forever.... The burning
churches, the hunted Catholics, the raging of the streets on which she
had looked that day, the bodies of the child and the priest carried on
poles, the burning churches and convents. ... All streamed out,
incoherent, broken by sobs, details of horror, lamentations, reproaches,
interpreted by the writhing of her head and hands upon his knees. The
collapse was complete.
He put his hands again beneath her arms and raised her. He was worn out
by his work, yet he knew he must quiet her. This was more serious than
any previous crisis. Yet he knew her power of recovery.
“Sit down, my darling,” he said. “There ... give me your hands. Now
listen to me.”
* * * * *
He made really an admirable defence, for it was what he had been
repeating to himself all day. Men were not yet perfect, he said; there
ran in their veins the blood of men who for twenty centuries had been
Christians.... There must be no despair; faith in man was of the very
essence of religion, faith in man’s best self, in what he would become,
not in what at present he actually was. They were at the beginning of
the new religion, not in its maturity; there must be sourness in the
young fruit. ... Consider, too, the provocation! Remember the appalling
crime that these Catholics had contemplated; they had set themselves to
strike the new Faith in its very heart....
“My darling,” he said, “men are not changed in an instant. What if those
Christians had succeeded!... I condemn it all as strongly as you. I saw
a couple of newspapers this afternoon that are as wicked as anything
that the Christians have ever done. They exulted in all these crimes. It
will throw the movement back ten years.... Do you think that there are
not thousands like yourself who hate and detest this violence?... But
what does faith mean, except that we know that mercy will prevail?
Faith, patience and hope--these are our weapons.”
He spoke with passionate conviction, his eyes fixed on hers, in a fierce
endeavour to give her his own confidence, and to reassure the remnants
of his own doubtfulness. It was true that he too hated what she hated,
yet he saw things that she did not.... Well, well, he told himself, he
must remember that she was a woman.
The look of frantic horror passed slowly out of her eyes, giving way to
acute misery as he talked, and as his personality once more began to
dominate her own. But it was not yet over.
“But the volors,” she cried, “the volors! That is deliberate; that is
not the work of the mob.”
“My darling, it is no more deliberate than the other. We are all human,
we are all immature. Yes, the Council permitted it, ... permitted it,
remember. The German Government, too, had to yield. We must tame nature
slowly, we must not break it.”
He talked again for a few minutes, repeating his arguments, soothing,
reassuring, encouraging; and he saw that he was beginning to prevail.
But she returned to one of his words.
“Permitted it! And you permitted it.”
“Dear; I said nothing, either for it or against. I tell you that if we
had forbidden it there would have been yet more murder, and the people
would have lost their rulers. We were passive, since we could do
nothing.”
“Ah! but it would have been better to die.... Oh, Oliver, let me die at
least! I cannot bear it.”
By her hands which he still held he drew her nearer yet to himself.
“Sweetheart,” he said gravely, “cannot you trust me a little? If I could
tell you all that passed to-day, you would understand. But trust me that
I am not heartless. And what of Julian Felsenburgh?”
For a moment he saw hesitation in her eyes; her loyalty to him and her
loathing of all that had happened strove within her. Then once again
loyalty prevailed, the name of Felsenburgh weighed down the balance, and
trust came back with a flood of tears.
“Oh, Oliver,” she said, “I know I trust you. But I am so weak, and all
is so terrible. And He so strong and merciful. And will He be with us
to-morrow?”
* * * * *
It struck midnight from the clock-tower a mile away as they yet sat and
talked. She was still tremulous from the struggle; but she looked at him
smiling, still holding his hands. He saw that the reaction was upon her
in full force at last.
“The New Year, my husband,” she said, and rose as she said it, drawing
him after her.
“I wish you a happy New Year,” she said. “Oh help me, Oliver.”
She kissed him, and drew back, still holding his hands, looking at him
with bright tearful eyes.
“Oliver,” she cried again, “I must tell you this.... Do you know what I
thought before you came?”
He shook his head, staring at her greedily. How sweet she was! He felt
her grip tighten on his hands.
“I thought I could not bear it,” she whispered--“that I must end it
all--ah! you know what I mean.”
His heart flinched as he heard her; and he drew her closer again to
himself.
“It is all over! it is all over,” she cried. “Ah! do not look like that!
I could not tell you if it was not.”’
As their lips met again there came the vibration of an electric bell
from the next room, and Oliver, knowing what it meant, felt even in that
instant a tremor shake his heart. He loosed her hands, and still smiled
at her.
“The bell!” she said, with a flash of apprehension.
“But it is all well between us again?”
Her face steadied itself into loyalty and confidence.
“It is all well,” she said; and again the impatient bell tingled. “Go,
Oliver; I will wait here.”
A minute later he was back again, with a strange look on his white face,
and his lips compressed. He came straight up to her, taking her once
more by the hands, and looking steadily into her steady eyes. In the
hearts of both of them resolve and faith were holding down the emotion
that was not yet dead. He drew a long breath.
“Yes,” he said in an even voice, “it is over.”
Her lips moved; and that deadly paleness lay on her cheeks. He gripped
her firmly.
“Listen,” he said. “You must face it. It is over. Rome is gone. Now we
must build something better.”
She threw herself sobbing into his arms.