In the course of the week Lucian again visited Caermaen. He wished to
view the amphitheatre more precisely, to note the exact position of the
ancient walls, to gaze up the valley from certain points within the
town, to imprint minutely and clearly on his mind the surge of the
hills about the city, and the dark tapestry of the hanging woods. And
he lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had
been stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors,
in the glowing gold of drinking cups, the curious beads of fused and
coloured glass, the carved amber-work, the scent-flagons that still
retained the memory of unctuous odours, the necklaces, brooches,
hair-pins of gold and silver, and other intimate objects which had once
belonged to Roman ladies. One of the glass flagons, buried in damp
earth for many hundred years, had gathered in its dark grave all the
splendors of the light, and now shone like an opal with a moonlight
glamour and gleams of gold and pale sunset green, and imperial purple.
Then there were the wine jars of red earthenware, the memorial stones
from graves, and the heads of broken gods, with fragments of occult
things used in the secret rites of Mithras. Lucian read on the labels
where all these objects were found: in the churchyard, beneath the turf
of the meadow, and in the old cemetery near the forest; and whenever it
was possible he would make his way to the spot of discovery, and
imagine the long darkness that had hidden gold and stone and amber. All
these investigations were necessary for the scheme he had in view, so
he became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted
streets and in the meadows by the river. His continual visits to
Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their
windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a
loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down three times a
week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable. And Lucian on
his side was at first a good deal put out by occasional encounters with
members of the Gervase or Dixon or Colley tribes; he had often to stop
and exchange a few conventional expressions, and such meetings, casual
as they were, annoyed and distracted him. He was no longer infuriated
or wounded by sneers of contempt or by the cackling laughter of the
young people when they passed him on the road (his hat was a shocking
one and his untidiness terrible), but such incidents were unpleasant
just as the smell of a drain was unpleasant, and threw the strange
mechanism of his thoughts out of fear for the time. Then he had been
disgusted by the affair of the boys and the little dog; the
loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books
of modern occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described.
The adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness
from his brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world
around him and pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he
could not perform some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings
were constantly annoying him and getting in his way, was it not
possible to annihilate the race, or at all events to reduce them to
wholly insignificant forms? A certain process suggested itself to his
mind, a work partly mental and partly physical, and after two or three
experiments he found to his astonishment and delight that it was
successful. Here, he thought, he had discovered one of the secrets of
true magic; this was the key to the symbolic transmutations of the
Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth, change those who were
obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant shapes, not as in the
letter of the old stories, by transforming the enemy, but by
transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by going up
higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier crag. The
stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the wise man
on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and converse
with his fellow-creatures, to listen to their poor pretences and
inanities, was no more inconvenienced than when he had to climb an
awkward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant
manifestations of humanity; after all they no longer concerned him. Men
intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current of their
thoughts to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider’s web,
so why should he be perturbed by the misery of a puppy in the hands of
village boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tortures; lying helpless
and bound in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the
claws of the horrible monster fastened on it; but its dying agonies had
never vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys
should offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog
more than he pitied the fly. The talk of the men and women might be
wearisome and inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an
alchemist at the moment of success, a general in the hour of victory,
or a financier with a gigantic scheme of swindling well on the market
being annoyed by the buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very
terrible brute with a hideous mouth and hairy tiger-like claws when
seen through the microscope; but Lucian had taken away the microscope
from his eyes. He could now walk the streets of Caermaen confident and
secure, without any dread of interruption, for at a moment’s notice the
transformation could be effected. Once Dr. Burrows caught him and made
him promise to attend a bazaar that was to be held in aid of the
Hungarian Protestants; Lucian assented the more willingly as he wished
to pay a visit to certain curious mounds on a hill a little way out of
the town, and he calculated on slinking off from the bazaar early in
the afternoon. Lord Beamys was visiting Sir Vivian Ponsonby, a local
magnate, and had kindly promised to drive over and declare the bazaar
open. It was a solemn moment when the carriage drew up and the great
man alighted. He was rather an evil-looking old nobleman, but the
clergy and gentry, their wives and sons and daughters welcomed him with
great and unctuous joy. Conversations were broken off in mid-sentence,
slow people gaped, not realizing why their friends had so suddenly left
them, the Meyricks came up hot and perspiring in fear lest they should
be too late, Miss Colley, a yellow virgin of austere regard, smiled
largely, Mrs. Dixon beckoned wildly with her parasol to the “girls” who
were idly strolling in a distant part of the field, and the archdeacon
ran at full speed. The air grew dark with bows, and resonant with the
genial laugh of the archdeacon, the cackle of the younger ladies, and
the shrill parrot-like voices of the matrons; those smiled who had
never smiled before, and on some maiden faces there hovered that look
of adoring ecstasy with which the old maidens graced their angels.
Then, when all the due rites had been performed, the company turned and
began to walk towards the booths of their small Vanity Fair. Lord
Beamys led the way with Mrs. Gervase, Mrs. Dixon followed with Sir
Vivian Ponsonby, and the multitudes that followed cried, saying, “What
a dear old man!”—“Isn’t it _kind_ of him to come all this way?”—“What a
sweet expression, isn’t it?”—“I think he’s an old love”—“One of the
good old sort”—“Real English nobleman”—“Oh most correct, I assure you;
if a girl gets into trouble, notice to quit at once”—“Always stands by
the Church”—“Twenty livings in his gift”—“Voted for the Public Worship
Regulation Act”—“Ten thousand acres strictly preserved.” The old lord
was leering pleasantly and muttering to himself: “Some fine gals here.
Like the looks of that filly with the pink hat. Ought to see more of
her. She’d give Lotty points.”
The pomp swept slowly across the grass: the archdeacon had got hold of
Mr. Dixon, and they were discussing the misdeeds of some clergyman in
the rural deanery.
“I can scarce credit it,” said Mr. Dixon.
“Oh, I assure you, there can be no doubt. We have witnesses. There can
be no question that there was a procession at Llanfihangel on the
Sunday before Easter; the choir and minister went round the church,
carrying palm branches in their hands.”
“Very shocking.”
“It has distressed the bishop. Martin is a hard-working man enough, and
all that, but those sort of things can’t be tolerated. The bishop told
me that he had set his face against processions.”
“Quite right: the bishop is perfectly right. Processions are
unscriptural.”
“It’s the thin end of the wedge, you know, Dixon.”
“Exactly. I have always resisted anything of the kind here.”
“Right. _Principiis obsta_, you know. Martin is so _imprudent_.
There’s a _way_ of doing things.”
The “scriptural” procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls
were reached, and gathered round the nobleman as he declared the bazaar
open.
Lucian was sitting on a garden-seat, a little distance off, looking
dreamily before him. And all that he saw was a swarm of flies
clustering and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the
grass. The spectacle in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts,
and soon after the opening of the bazaar he went quietly away, walking
across the fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to
inspect.
All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighborhood had a
peculiar object; he was gradually leveling to the dust the squalid
kraals of modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of
Siluria. All this mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and
himself; for her the wonderful villas, the shady courts, the magic of
tessellated pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their
intricate and glowing patterns. Lucian wandered all day through the
shining streets, taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the
dense and gloomy ilex trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of
the fountains. Sometimes he would look out of a window and watch the
crowd and colour of the market-place, and now and again a ship came up
the river bringing exquisite silks and the merchandise of unknown lands
in the Far East. He had made a curious and accurate map of the town he
proposed to inhabit, in which every villa was set down and named. He
drew his lines to scale with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the
plan till he was able to find his way from house to house on the
darkest summer night. On the southern slopes about the town there were
vineyards, always under a glowing sun, and sometimes he ventured to the
furthest ridge of the forest, where the wild people still lingered,
that he might catch the golden gleam of the city far away, as the light
quivered and scintillated on the glittering tiles. And there were
gardens outside the city gates where strange and brilliant flowers
grew, filling the hot air with their odour, and scenting the breeze
that blew along the streets. The dull modern life was far away, and
people who saw him at this period wondered what was amiss; the
abstraction of his glance was obvious, even to eyes not over-sharp. But
men and women had lost all their power of annoyance and vexation; they
could no longer even interrupt his thought for a moment. He could
listen to Mr. Dixon with apparent attention, while he was in reality
enraptured by the entreating music of the double flute, played by a
girl in the garden of Avallaunius, for that was the name he had taken.
Mr. Dixon was innocently discoursing archeology, giving a brief
_résumé_ of the view expressed by Mr. Wyndham at the last meeting of
the antiquarian society.
“There can be no doubt that the temple of Diana stood there in pagan
times,” he concluded, and Lucian assented to the opinion, and asked a
few questions which seemed pertinent enough. But all the time the flute
notes were sounding in his ears, and the ilex threw a purple shadow on
the white pavement before his villa. A boy came forward from the
garden; he had been walking amongst the vines and plucking the ripe
grapes, and the juice had trickled down over his breast. Standing
beside the girl, unashamed in the sunlight, he began to sing one of
Sappho’s love songs. His voice was as full and rich as a woman’s, but
purged of all emotion; he was an instrument of music in the flesh.
Lucian looked at him steadily; the white perfect body shone against the
roses and the blue of the sky, clear and gleaming as marble in the
glare of the sun. The words he sang burned and flamed with passion, and
he was as unconscious of their meaning as the twin pipes of the flute.
And the girl was smiling. The vicar shook hands and went on, well
pleased with his remarks on the temple of Diana, and also with Lucian’s
polite interest.
“He is by no means wanting in intelligence,” he said to his family. “A
little curious in manner, perhaps, but not stupid.”
“Oh, papa,” said Henrietta, “don’t you think he is rather silly? He
can’t talk about anything—anything interesting, I mean. And he pretends
to know a lot about books, but I heard him say the other day he had
never read _The Prince of the House of David_ or _Ben-Hur_. Fancy!”
The vicar had not interrupted Lucian. The sun still beat upon the
roses, and a little breeze bore the scent of them to his nostrils
together with the smell of grapes and vine-leaves. He had become
curious in sensation, and as he leant back upon the cushions covered
with glistening yellow silk, he was trying to analyze a strange
ingredient in the perfume of the air. He had penetrated far beyond the
crude distinctions of modern times, beyond the rough: “there’s a smell
of roses,” “there must be sweetbriar somewhere.” Modern perceptions of
odour were, he knew, far below those of the savage in delicacy. The
degraded black fellow of Australia could distinguish odours in a way
that made the consumer of “damper” stare in amazement, but the savage’s
sensations were all strictly utilitarian. To Lucian as he sat in the
cool porch, his feet on the marble, the air came laden with scents as
subtly and wonderfully interwoven and contrasted as the harmonica of a
great master. The stained marble of the pavement gave a cool
reminiscence of the Italian mountain, the blood-red roses palpitating
in the sunlight sent out an odour mystical as passion itself, and there
was the hint of inebriation in the perfume of the trellised vines.
Besides these, the girl’s desire and the unripe innocence of the boy
were as distinct as benzoin and myrrh, both delicious and exquisite,
and exhaled as freely as the scent of the roses. But there was another
element that puzzled him, an aromatic suggestion of the forest. He
understood it at last; it was the vapor of the great red pines that
grew beyond the garden; their spicy needles were burning in the sun,
and the smell was as fragrant as the fume of incense blown from far.
The soft entreaty of the flute and the swelling rapture of the boy’s
voice beat on the air together, and Lucian wondered whether there were
in the nature of things any true distinction between the impressions of
sound and scent and colour. The violent blue of the sky, the song, and
the odours seemed rather varied symbols of one mystery than distinct
entities. He could almost imagine that the boy’s innocence was indeed a
perfume, and that the palpitating roses had become a sonorous chant.
In the curious silence which followed the last notes, when the boy and
girl had passed under the purple ilex shadow, he fell into a reverie.
The fancy that sensations are symbols and not realities hovered in his
mind, and led him to speculate as to whether they could not actually be
transmuted one into another. It was possible, he thought, that a whole
continent of knowledge had been undiscovered; the energies of men
having been expended in unimportant and foolish directions. Modern
ingenuity had been employed on such trifles as locomotive engines,
electric cables, and cantilever bridges; on elabourate devices for
bringing uninteresting people nearer together; the ancients had been
almost as foolish, because they had mistaken the symbol for the thing
signified. It was not the material banquet which really mattered, but
the thought of it; it was almost as futile to eat and take emetics and
eat again as to invent telephones and high-pressure boilers. As for
some other ancient methods of enjoying life, one might as well set
oneself to improve calico printing at once.
“Only in the garden of Avallaunius,” said Lucian to himself, “is the
true and exquisite science to be found.”
He could imagine a man who was able to live in one sense while he
pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste,
hearing, or seeing should be translated into odour; who at the desired
kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to whom music
should be the perfume of a rose-garden at dawn.
When, now and again, he voluntarily resumed the experience of common
life, it was that he might return with greater delight to the garden in
the city of refuge. In the actual world the talk was of Nonconformists,
the lodger franchise, and the Stock Exchange; people were constantly
reading newspapers, drinking Australian Burgundy, and doing other
things equally absurd. They either looked shocked when the fine art of
pleasure was mentioned, or confused it with going to musical comedies,
drinking bad whisky, and keeping late hours in disreputable and vulgar
company. He found to his amusement that the profligate were by many
degrees duller than the pious, but that the most tedious of all were
the persons who preached promiscuity, and called their system of
“pigging” the “New Morality.”
He went back to the city lovingly, because it was built and adorned for
his love. As the metaphysicians insist on the consciousness of the ego
as the implied basis of all thought, so he knew that it was she in whom
he had found himself, and through whom and for whom all the true life
existed. He felt that Annie had taught him the rare magic which had
created the garden of Avallaunius. It was for her that he sought
strange secrets and tried to penetrate the mysteries of sensation, for
he could only give her wonderful thoughts and a wonderful life, and a
poor body stained with the scars of his worship.
It was with this object, that of making the offering of himself a
worthy one, that he continually searched for new and exquisite
experiences. He made lovers come before him and confess their secrets;
he pried into the inmost mysteries of innocence and shame, noting how
passion and reluctance strive together for the mastery. In the
amphitheatre he sometimes witnessed strange entertainments in which
such tales as _Daphnis and Chloe_ and _The Golden Ass_ were performed
before him. These shows were always given at nighttime; a circle of
torch-bearers surrounded the stage in the center, and above, all the
tiers of seats were dark. He would look up at the soft blue of the
summer sky, and at the vast dim mountain hovering like a cloud in the
west, and then at the scene illumined by a flaring light, and
contrasted with violent shadows. The subdued mutter of conversation in
a strange language rising from bench after bench, swift hissing
whispers of explanation, now and then a shout or a cry as the interest
deepened, the restless tossing of the people as the end drew near, an
arm lifted, a cloak thrown back, the sudden blaze of a torch lighting
up purple or white or the gleam of gold in the black serried ranks;
these were impressions that seemed always amazing. And above, the dusky
light of the stars, around, the sweet-scented meadows, and the twinkle
of lamps from the still city, the cry of the sentries about the walls,
the wash of the tide filling the river, and the salt savour of the sea.
With such a scenic ornament he saw the tale of Apuleius represented,
heard the names of Fotis and Byrrhaena and Lucius proclaimed, and the
deep intonation of such sentences as _Ecce Veneris hortator et armiger
Liber advenit ultro_. The tale went on through all its marvelous
adventures, and Lucian left the amphitheatre and walked beside the
river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of voices and the
singing Latin, and note how the rumor of the stage mingled with the
murmur of the shuddering reeds and the cool lapping of the tide. Then
came the farewell of the cantor, the thunder of applause, the crash of
cymbals, the calling of the flutes, and the surge of the wind in the
great dark wood.
At other times it was his chief pleasure to spend a whole day in a
vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond the bridge. A grey stone
seat had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and here he often sat
without motion or gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river
swept round the town in a half circle; he could see the swirl of the
yellow water, its eddies and miniature whirlpools, as the tide poured
up from the south. And beyond the river the strong circuit of the
walls, and within, the city glittered like a charming piece of mosaic.
He freed himself from the obtuse modern view of towns as places where
human beings live and make money and rejoice or suffer, for from the
standpoint of the moment such facts were wholly impertinent. He knew
perfectly well that for his present purpose the tawny sheen and shimmer
of the tide was the only fact of importance about the river, and so he
regarded the city as a curious work in jewelry. Its radiant marble
porticoes, the white walls of the villas, a dome of burning copper, the
flash and scintillation of tiled roofs, the quiet red of brickwork,
dark groves of ilex, and cypress, and laurel, glowing rose-gardens, and
here and there the silver of a fountain, seemed arranged and contrasted
with a wonderful art, and the town appeared a delicious ornament, every
cube of colour owing its place to the thought and inspiration of the
artificer. Lucian, as he gazed from his arbour amongst the trellised
vines, lost none of the subtle pleasures of the sight; noting every
_nuance_ of colour, he let his eyes dwell for a moment on the scarlet
flash of poppies, and then on a glazed roof which in the glance of the
sun seemed to spout white fire. A square of vines was like some rare
green stone; the grapes were massed so richly amongst the vivid leaves,
that even from far off there was a sense of irregular flecks and stains
of purple running through the green. The laurel garths were like cool
jade; the gardens, where red, yellow, blue and white gleamed together
in a mist of heat, had the radiance of opal; the river was a band of
dull gold. On every side, as if to enhance the preciousness of the
city, the woods hung dark on the hills; above, the sky was violet,
specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. It reminded
him of a beautiful bowl in his villa; the ground was of that same
brilliant blue, and the artist had fused into the work, when it was
hot, particles of pure white glass.
For Lucian this was a spectacle that enchanted many hours; leaning on
one hand, he would gaze at the city glowing in the sunlight till the
purple shadows grew down the slopes and the long melodious trumpet
sounded for the evening watch. Then, as he strolled beneath the
trellises, he would see all the radiant facets glimmering out, and the
city faded into haze, a white wall shining here and there, and the
gardens veiled in a dim glow of colour. On such an evening he would go
home with the sense that he had truly lived a day, having received for
many hours the most acute impressions of beautiful colour.
Often he spent the night in the cool court of his villa, lying amidst
soft cushions heaped upon the marble bench. A lamp stood on the table
at his elbow, its light making the water in the cistern twinkle. There
was no sound in the court except the soft continual plashing of the
fountain. Throughout these still hours he would meditate, and he became
more than ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of
his own sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under
the beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some years before he had read many
of the wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had
suspected that something other than the turning of lead into gold was
intended. This impression was deepened when he looked into _Lumen de
Lumine_ by Vaughan, the brother of the Silurist, and he had long
puzzled himself in the endeavor to find a reasonable interpretation of
the hermetic mystery, and of the red powder, “glistening and glorious
in the sun.” And the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as
he lay quiet in the court of Avallaunius. He knew that he himself had
solved the riddle, that he held in his hand the powder of projection,
the philosopher’s stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the
gold of exquisite impressions. He understood now something of the
alchemical symbolism; the crucible and the furnace, the “Green Dragon,”
and the “Son Blessed of the Fire” had, he saw, a peculiar meaning. He
understood, too, why the uninitiated were warned of the terror and
danger through which they must pass; and the vehemence with which the
adepts disclaimed all desire for material riches no longer struck him
as singular. The wise man does not endure the torture of the furnace in
order that he may be able to compete with operators in pork and company
promoters; neither a steam yacht, nor a grouse-moor, nor three liveried
footmen would add at all to his gratifications. Again Lucian said to
himself:
“Only in the court of Avallaunius is the true science of the exquisite
to be found.”
He saw the true gold into which the beggarly matter of existence may be
transmuted by spagyric art; a succession of delicious moments, all the
rare flavors of life concentrated, purged of their lees, and preserved
in a beautiful vessel. The moonlight fell green on the fountain and on
the curious pavements, and in the long sweet silence of the night he
lay still and felt that thought itself was an acute pleasure, to be
expressed perhaps in terms of odour or colour by the true artist.
And he gave himself other and even stranger gratifications. Outside the
city walls, between the baths and the amphitheatre, was a tavern, a
place where wonderful people met to drink wonderful wine. There he saw
priests of Mithras and Isis and of more occult rites from the East, men
who wore robes of bright colours, and grotesque ornaments, symbolizing
secret things. They spoke amongst themselves in a rich jargon of
coloured words, full of hidden meanings and the sense of matters
unintelligible to the uninitiated, alluding to what was concealed
beneath roses, and calling each other by strange names. And there were
actors who gave the shows in the amphitheatre, officers of the legion
who had served in wild places, singers, and dancing girls, and heroes
of strange adventure.
The walls of the tavern were covered with pictures painted in violent
hues; blues and reds and greens jarring against one another and
lighting up the gloom of the place. The stone benches were always
crowded, the sunlight came in through the door in a long bright beam,
casting a dancing shadow of vine leaves on the further wall. There a
painter had made a joyous figure of the young Bacchus driving the
leopards before him with his ivy-staff, and the quivering shadow seemed
a part of the picture. The room was cool and dark and cavernous, but
the scent and heat of the summer gushed in through the open door. There
was ever a full sound, with noise and vehemence, there, and the rolling
music of the Latin tongue never ceased.
“The wine of the siege, the wine that we saved,” cried one.
“Look for the jar marked _Faunus_; you will be glad.”
“Bring me the wine of the Owl’s Face.”
“Let us have the wine of Saturn’s Bridge.”
The boys who served brought the wine in dull red jars that struck a
charming note against their white robes. They poured out the violet and
purple and golden wine with calm sweet faces as if they were assisting
in the mysteries, without any sign that they heard the strange words
that flashed from side to side. The cups were all of glass; some were
of deep green, of the colour of the sea near the land, flawed and
specked with the bubbles of the furnace. Others were of brilliant
scarlet, streaked with irregular bands of white, and having the
appearance of white globules in the moulded stem. There were cups of
dark glowing blue, deeper and more shining than the blue of the sky,
and running through the substance of the glass were veins of rich
gamboge yellow, twining from the brim to the foot. Some cups were of a
troubled and clotted red, with alternating blotches of dark and light,
some were variegated with white and yellow stains, some wore a film of
rainbow colours, some glittered, shot with gold threads through the
clear crystal, some were as if sapphires hung suspended in running
water, some sparkled with the glint of stars, some were black and
golden like tortoiseshell.
A strange feature was the constant and fluttering motion of hands and
arms. Gesture made a constant commentary on speech; white fingers,
whiter arms, and sleeves of all colours, hovered restlessly, appeared
and disappeared with an effect of threads crossing and re-crossing on
the loom. And the odour of the place was both curious and memorable;
something of the damp cold breath of the cave meeting the hot blast of
summer, the strangely mingled aromas of rare wines as they fell
plashing and ringing into the cups, the drugged vapor of the East that
the priests of Mithras and Isis bore from their steaming temples; these
were always strong and dominant. And the women were scented, sometimes
with unctuous and overpowering perfumes, and to the artist the
experiences of those present were hinted in subtle and delicate
_nuances_ of odour.
They drank their wine and caressed all day in the tavern. The women
threw their round white arms about their lover’s necks, they
intoxicated them with the scent of their hair, the priests muttered
their fantastic jargon of Theurgy. And through the sonorous clash of
voices there always seemed the ring of the cry:
“Look for the jar marked _Faunus_; you will be glad.”
Outside, the vine tendrils shook on the white walls glaring in the
sunshine; the breeze swept up from the yellow river, pungent with the
salt sea savour.
These tavern scenes were often the subject of Lucian’s meditation as he
sat amongst the cushions on the marble seat. The rich sound of the
voices impressed him above all things, and he saw that words have a far
higher reason than the utilitarian office of imparting a man’s thought.
The common notion that language and linked words are important only as
a means of expression he found a little ridiculous; as if electricity
were to be studied solely with the view of “wiring” to people, and all
its other properties left unexplored, neglected. Language, he
understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, by its
possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity,
when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable
impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain
of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself. Here
lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the
secret of suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use
of words. In a way, therefore, literature was independent of thought;
the mere English listener, if he had an ear attuned, could recognize
the beauty of a splendid Latin phrase.
Here was the explanation of the magic of _Lycidas_. From the standpoint
of the formal understanding it was an affected lament over some wholly
uninteresting and unimportant Mr. King; it was full of nonsense about
“shepherds” and “flocks” and “muses” and such stale stock of poetry;
the introduction of St Peter on a stage thronged with nymphs and river
gods was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were
touches of greasy Puritanism, the twang of the conventicle was only too
apparent. And _Lycidas_ was probably the most perfect piece of pure
literature in existence; because every word and phrase and line were
sonorous, ringing and echoing with music.
“Literature,” he re-enunciated in his mind, “is the sensuous art of
causing exquisite impressions by means of words.”
And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which
was often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident,
besides the sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these
there were the indefinable inexpressible images which all fine
literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his experiments is
sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the
crucible or the receiver, as the world of material things is considered
by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads
wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put
into words, which do not rise from the logical sense, which are rather
parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight. The world so
disclosed is rather the world of dreams, rather the world in which
children sometimes live, instantly appearing, and instantly vanishing
away, a world beyond all expression or analysis, neither of the
intellect nor of the senses. He called these fancies of his
“Meditations of a Tavern,” and was amused to think that a theory of
letters should have risen from the eloquent noise that rang all day
about the violet and golden wine.
“Let us seek for more exquisite things,” said Lucian to himself. He
could almost imagine the magic transmutation of the senses
accomplished, the strong sunlight was an odour in his nostrils; it
poured down on the white marble and the palpitating roses like a flood.
The sky was a glorious blue, making the heart joyous, and the eyes
could rest in the dark green leaves and purple shadow of the ilex. The
earth seemed to burn and leap beneath the sun, he fancied he could see
the vine tendrils stir and quiver in the heat, and the faint fume of
the scorching pine needles was blown across the gleaming garden to the
seat beneath the porch. Wine was before him in a cup of carved amber; a
wine of the colour of a dark rose, with a glint as of a star or of a
jet of flame deep beneath the brim; and the cup was twined about with a
delicate wreath of ivy. He was often loath to turn away from the still
contemplation of such things, from the mere joy of the violent sun, and
the responsive earth. He loved his garden and the view of the
tessellated city from the vineyard on the hill, the strange clamor of
the tavern, and white Fotis appearing on the torch-lit stage. And there
were shops in the town in which he delighted, the shops of the perfume
makers, and jewelers, and dealers in curious ware. He loved to see all
things made for ladies’ use, to touch the gossamer silks that were to
touch their bodies, to finger the beads of amber and the gold chains
which would stir above their hearts, to handle the carved hairpins and
brooches, to smell odours which were already dedicated to love.
But though these were sweet and delicious gratifications, he knew that
there were more exquisite things of which he might be a spectator. He
had seen the folly of regarding fine literature from the standpoint of
the logical intellect, and he now began to question the wisdom of
looking at life as if it were a moral representation. Literature, he
knew, could not exist without some meaning, and considerations of right
and wrong were to a certain extent inseparable from the conception of
life, but to insist on ethics as the chief interest of the human
pageant was surely absurd. One might as well read _Lycidas_ for the
sake of its denunciation of “our corrupted Clergy,” or Homer for
“manners and customs.” An artist entranced by a beautiful landscape did
not greatly concern himself with the geological formation of the hills,
nor did the lover of a wild sea inquire as to the chemical analysis of
the water. Lucian saw a coloured and complex life displayed before him,
and he sat enraptured at the spectacle, not concerned to know whether
actions were good or bad, but content if they were curious.
In this spirit he made a singular study of corruption. Beneath his
feet, as he sat in the garden porch, was a block of marble through
which there ran a scarlet stain. It began with a faint line, thin as a
hair, and grew as it advanced, sending out offshoots to right and left,
and broadening to a pool of brilliant red. There were strange lives
into which he looked that were like the block of marble; women with
grave sweet faces told him the astounding tale of their adventures, and
how, they said, they had met the faun when they were little children.
They told him how they had played and watched by the vines and the
fountains, and dallied with the nymphs, and gazed at images reflected
in the water pools, till the authentic face appeared from the wood. He
heard others tell how they had loved the satyrs for many years before
they knew their race; and there were strange stories of those who had
longed to speak but knew not the word of the enigma, and searched in
all strange paths and ways before they found it.
He heard the history of the woman who fell in love with her slave-boy,
and tempted him for three years in vain. He heard the tale from the
woman’s full red lips, and watched her face, full of the ineffable
sadness of lust, as she described her curious stratagems in mellow
phrases. She was drinking a sweet yellow wine from a gold cup as she
spoke, and the odour in her hair and the aroma of the precious wine
seemed to mingle with the soft strange words that flowed like an
unguent from a carven jar. She told how she bought the boy in the
market of an Asian city, and had him carried to her house in the grove
of fig-trees. “Then,” she went on, “he was led into my presence as I
sat between the columns of my court. A blue veil was spread above to
shut out the heat of the sun, and rather twilight than light shone on
the painted walls, and the wonderful colours of the pavement, and the
images of Love and the Mother of Love. The men who brought the boy gave
him over to my girls, who undressed him before me, one drawing gently
away his robe, another stroking his brown and flowing hair, another
praising the whiteness of his limbs, and another caressing him, and
speaking loving words in his ear. But the boy looked sullenly at them
all, striking away their hands, and pouting with his lovely and
splendid lips, and I saw a blush, like the rosy veil of dawn, reddening
his body and his cheeks. Then I made them bathe him, and anoint him
with scented oils from head to foot, till his limbs shone and glistened
with the gentle and mellow glow of an ivory statue. Then I said: ‘You
are bashful, because you shine alone amongst us all; see, we too will
be your fellows.’ The girls began first of all, fondling and kissing
one another, and doing for each other the offices of waiting-maids.
They drew out the pins and loosened the bands of their hair, and I
never knew before that they were so lovely. The soft and shining
tresses flowed down, rippling like sea-waves; some had hair golden and
radiant as this wine in my cup, the faces of others appeared amidst the
blackness of ebony; there were locks that seemed of burnished and
scintillating copper, some glowed with hair of tawny splendor, and
others were crowned with the brightness of the sardonyx. Then,
laughing, and without the appearance of shame, they unfastened the
brooches and bands which sustained their robes, and so allowed silk and
linen to flow swiftly to the stained floor, so that one would have said
there was a sudden apparition of the fairest nymphs. With many festive
and jocose words they began to incite each other to mirth, praising the
beauties that shone on every side, and calling the boy by a girl’s
name, they invited him to be their playmate. But he refused, shaking
his head, and still standing dumb-founded and abashed, as if he saw a
forbidden and terrible spectacle. Then I ordered the women to undo my
hair and my clothes, making them caress me with the tenderness of the
fondest lover, but without avail, for the foolish boy still scowled and
pouted out his lips, stained with an imperial and glorious scarlet.”
She poured out more of the topaz-coloured wine in her cup, and Lucian
saw it glitter as it rose to the brim and mirrored the gleam of the
lamps. The tale went on, recounting a hundred strange devices. The
woman told how she had tempted the boy by idleness and ease, giving him
long hours of sleep, and allowing him to recline all day on soft
cushions, that swelled about him, enclosing his body. She tried the
experiment of curious odours: causing him to smell always about him the
oil of roses, and burning in his presence rare gums from the East. He
was allured by soft dresses, being clothed in silks that caressed the
skin with the sense of a fondling touch. Three times a day they spread
before him a delicious banquet, full of savour and odour and colour;
three times a day they endeavored to intoxicate him with delicate wine.
“And so,” the lady continued, “I spared nothing to catch him in the
glistening nets of love; taking only sour and contemptuous glances in
return. And at last in an incredible shape I won the victory, and then,
having gained a green crown, fighting in agony against his green and
crude immaturity, I devoted him to the theatre, where he amused the
people by the splendor of his death.”
On another evening he heard the history of the man who dwelt alone,
refusing all allurements, and was at last discovered to be the lover of
a black statue. And there were tales of strange cruelties, of men taken
by mountain robbers, and curiously maimed and disfigured, so that when
they escaped and returned to the town, they were thought to be monsters
and killed at their own doors. Lucian left no dark or secret nook of
life unvisited; he sat down, as he said, at the banquet, resolved to
taste all the savours, and to leave no flagon unvisited.
His relations grew seriously alarmed about him at this period. While he
heard with some inner ear the suave and eloquent phrases of singular
tales, and watched the lamp-light in amber and purple wine, his father
saw a lean pale boy, with black eyes that burnt in hollows, and sad and
sunken cheeks.
“You ought to try and eat more, Lucian,” said the parson; “and why
don’t you have some beer?”
He was looking feebly at the roast mutton and sipping a little water;
but he would not have eaten or drunk with more relish if the choicest
meat and drink had been before him.
His bones seemed, as Miss Deacon said, to be growing through his skin;
he had all the appearance of an ascetic whose body has been reduced to
misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see him
could not help saying to one another: “How ill and wretched that Lucian
Taylor looks!” They were of course quite unaware of the joy and luxury
in which his real life was spent, and some of them began to pity him,
and to speak to him kindly.
It was too late for that. The friendly words had as much lost their
meaning as the words of contempt. Edward Dixon hailed him cheerfully in
the street one day:
“Come in to my den, won’t you, old fellow?” he said. “You won’t see the
pater. I’ve managed to bag a bottle of his old port. I know you smoke
like a furnace, and I’ve got some ripping cigars. You will come, won’t
you! I can tell you the pater’s booze is first rate.”
He gently declined and went on. Kindness and unkindness, pity and
contempt had become for him mere phrases; he could not have
distinguished one from the other. Hebrew and Chinese, Hungarian and
Pushtu would be pretty much alike to an agricultural labourer; if he
cared to listen he might detect some general differences in sound, but
all four tongues would be equally devoid of significance.
To Lucian, entranced in the garden of Avallaunius, it seemed very
strange that he had once been so ignorant of all the exquisite meanings
of life. Now, beneath the violet sky, looking through the brilliant
trellis of the vines, he saw the picture; before, he had gazed in sad
astonishment at the squalid rag which was wrapped about it.