It was underground.
In that dank cavern down below Belgrave Square the walls were
dripping. But what was that to the magician? It was secrecy that he
needed, not dryness. There he pondered upon the trend of events,
shaped destinies and concocted magical brews.
For the last few years the serenity of his ponderings had been
disturbed by the noise of the motor-bus; while to his keen ears there
came the earthquake-rumble, far off, of the train in the tube, going
down Sloane Street; and when he heard of the world above his head was
not to its credit.
He decided one evening over his evil pipe, down there in his dank
chamber, that London had lived long enough, had abused its
opportunities, had gone too far, in fine, with its civilisation. And
so he decided to wreck it.
Therefore he beckoned up his acolyte from the weedy end of the cavern,
and, "Bring me," he said, "the heart of the toad that dwelleth in
Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany." The acolyte slipped away by
the hidden door, leaving that grim old man with his frightful pipe,
and whither he went who knows but the gipsy people, or by what path he
returned; but within a year he stood in the cavern again, slipping
secretly in by the trap while the old man smoked, and he brought with
him a little fleshy thing that rotted in a casket of pure gold.
"What is it?" the old man croaked.
"It is," said the acolyte, "the heart of the toad that dwelt once
in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany."
The old man's crooked fingers closed on it, and he blessed the acolyte
with his rasping voice and claw-like hand uplifted; the motor-bus
rumbled above on its endless journey; far off the train shook Sloane
Street.
"Come," said the old magician, "it is time." And there and then they
left the weedy cavern, the acolyte carrying cauldron, gold poker and
all things needful, and went abroad in the light. And very wonderful
the old man looked in his silks.
Their goal was the outskirts of London; the old man strode in front
and the acolyte ran behind him, and there was something magical in the
old man's stride alone, without his wonderful dress, the cauldron and
wand, the hurrying acolyte and the small gold poker.
Little boys jeered till they caught the old man's eye. So there went
on through London this strange procession of two, too swift for any to
follow. Things seemed worse up there than they did in the cavern, and
the further they got on their way towards London's outskirts the worse
London got. "It is time," said the old man, "surely."
And so they came at last to London's edge and a small hill watching it
with a mournful look. It was so mean that the acolyte longed for the
cavern, dank though it was and full of terrible sayings that the old
man said when he slept.
They climbed the hill and put the cauldron down, and put there in the
necessary things, and lit a fire of herbs that no chemist will sell
nor decent gardener grow, and stirred the cauldron with the golden
poker. The magician retired a little apart and muttered, then he
strode back to the cauldron and, all being ready, suddenly opened the
casket and let the fleshy thing fall in to boil.
Then he made spells, then he flung up his arms; the fumes from the
cauldron entering in at his mind he said raging things that he had not
known before and runes that were dreadful (the acolyte screamed);
there he cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from zenith to the abyss,
motor-bus, factory, shop, parliament, people. "Let them all perish,"
he said, "and London pass away, tram lines and bricks and pavement,
the usurpers too long of the fields, let them all pass away and the
wild hares come back, blackberry and briar-rose."
"Let it pass," he said, "pass now, pass utterly."
In the momentary silence the old man coughed, then waited with eager
eyes; and the long long hum of London hummed as it always has since
first the reed-huts were set up by the river, changing its note at
times but always humming, louder now than it was in years gone by, but
humming night and day though its voice be cracked with age; so it
hummed on.
And the old man turned him round to his trembling acolyte and terribly
said as he sank into the earth: "YOU HAVE NOT BROUGHT ME THE HEART
OF THE TOAD THAT DWELLETH IN ARABIA NOR BY THE MOUNTAINS OF BETHANY!"