A couple of days after this the weather suddenly broke, and for the
unclouded and azure skies they had a day of low, weeping heavens, with
an air of dead and stifling dampness. Never for a moment through the
hours of daylight did the sullen downpour relax; the trees stood with
listless, drooping branches, from which under the drenching rain a few
early autumn leaves kept falling, though the time of the fall of the
leaf was not yet. In the garden beds the plants had given up all
attempts to look gay or to stand up, and bent drearily enough beneath
the rain that scattered their petals and dragged their foliage in the
muddy earth. The birds, too, were silent; only the hiss of the rain was
heard, and towards afternoon the voice of the river grew a little
louder. Merivale, however, was undeterred and quite undepressed by these
almost amphibious conditions, and, as usual, went off after breakfast
for one of those long rambles of his in the forest, leaving Philip
alone. There was no hint of unfriendliness taken in this; indeed, Philip
had exacted a promise from his host on the evening of arrival that his
normal course of life should be undisturbed.
That first little token that he had given two days before that his heart
was not dead had more than once repeated itself since then, and he was
perhaps faintly conscious of some change in himself. He was not, so far
as he knew, less unhappy, but that frightful hardness was beginning to
break down, the surface of its ice was damped with thawed water, his
hatred of all the world, his deep resentment at the scheme of things--if
any scheme underlay the wantonness of what had happened--was less
pronounced. It might, indeed, be only that he was utterly broken, that
his spirit of rebellion could no longer raise its banner of revolt, yet
he did not feel as if he had surrendered, he did not in the least fold
his hands and wait mutely for whatever the Powers that be might choose
to do with him. He was conscious, indeed, of the opposite, of a certain
sense of dawning willpower; and though his life, so to speak, lay
shattered round him, he knew that subconsciously somehow he was
beginning to regard the pieces with some slight curiosity that was new
to him, wondering if this bit would fit on to that. In a way he had
plunged into business again with that feverish rush which had taken him
through August with some such idea; his immediate salvation, at any
rate, he had believed to lie in concentrated occupation; yet there had
been nothing constructive about that; it was a palliative measure, to
relieve pain, rather than a course that would go to the root of the
disease. Also, such as it was, it had failed, his health had given way:
he could for the present take no more of that opiate.
In another respect also it had failed, for to-day by the mid-day post
there had come for him communications of the greatest importance from
the City, information which was valuable, provided only he acted on it
without delay. There was no difficulty about it, the question had no
complications; he himself had only to send off instructions which ten
minutes' thought could easily frame. Yet he sat with paper and pens in
front of him, doing nothing, for he had asked himself a very simple
question instead. "Is it all worth while?" was what he said to himself.
And apparently it was not.
Now, if this had happened a month ago, it would have been equivalent to
a surrender; it would have been a confession that he was beaten. But now
the whole nature of his doubt was changed. Work, it is true, had done
something for him; it had got him through a month in which he was
incapable of anything else, it had got him, in fact, to the point which
was indicated two days ago by his little anxiety about Merivale. And had
he known it, that was much the most important things that had happened
to him for weeks. Something within him had instinctively claimed kinship
again with mankind.
How hollow and objectless to-day seemed the results of the last month!
"Home's August," as it was already ruefully known on the Stock Exchange,
had plentifully enriched Home, but though the gold had poured in like a
fountain, yet, mixed with it, indissolubly knitted into the success,
had come a leanness. What did it all amount to? And lean above all was
his paltry triumph over Evelyn, who, as he had since ascertained, had
sold out Metiekull when things were at their very worst, only to realise
that if he had left it alone, he would have made a handsome profit. But
what then? What good did that pin-prick of a vengeance do? What
gratification had it brought to Philip's most revengeful and hating
mood? The wedding-tour had been cut short: Evelyn and Madge had come
back to London, but that to-day gave him not the smallest feeling of
satisfaction in that, however feebly, he had hit back at them. It was
all so useless: the futility and childishness of his revenge made him
feel sick. If he had a similar chance to-day, he would not have stirred
a finger.
But all this emptiness, and the intolerable depression that still
enveloped him, was, somehow, of different character to what it had been
before. It was all bad and hopeless enough, but his eyes, so to speak,
had begun to veer round; they were no longer drearily fixed on the
storms and wreckage of the past, but were beginning, however,
ineffectually as yet, to peer into the mists of the future. It was
exactly this which was indicative of the change that had come, and the
indication was as significant as the slow shifting of a weather-cock
that tells that the blackening east wind is over, and a kindlier air is
breathing, one that perhaps in due time shall call up from the roots
below the earth the sap that shall again burst out in mist and spray of
young green leaf, and put into the heart of the birds that mating-time
has come again. And that first hint of change, though lisped about while
yet the darkness before dawn was most black, is better than all the gold
that had poured in through the hours of the night.
Not all day nor when night fell did the rain cease, but the air was very
warm, and the two dined out as usual in the verandah. The candles burned
steadily in the windless air, casting squares of uncertain light on to
the thick curtain of the night which was hung round them. Merivale, it
appeared, had passed a day of high festival even for him; the rain of
which the thirsty earth was drinking so deeply suited him no less.
"Ah, there is no mood of Nature," he cried, "which I do not love. This
hot, soaking rain falling windlessly, which other people find so
depressing, is so wonderful. The earth lies beneath it, drinking like a
child at its mother's breast. The trees stand with drooping leaves,
relaxing themselves, making no effort, just drinking, recuperating. The
moths and winged things creep close into crevices in their bark--I saw a
dozen such to-day--or cling to the underside of the leaves, where they
are dry and cool. Everything is sleeping to-day, and to watch the earth
sleep is like watching a child sleep: however lovely and winsome it is
when it is awake, yet its sleep is even more beautiful. There is not a
wrinkle on its face: it is as young as love, and with closed eyes and
mouth half-open it rests."
Philip was looking at him with a sort of dumb envy, which at length
found voice.
"I would give all I have for just one day of your life," he said,
pushing back his plate and putting his elbows on the table, a
characteristic movement when he wanted to talk, as Merivale knew.
"Ah, my dear fellow," he cried, "it is something very substantial gained
already, if you wish that. To want to be happy is a very sensible step
towards it."
"It is true that a fortnight ago I don't think I even wanted to be
happy," said Philip.
"I know. But you have made the first step. Also, I can say it now, you
look very much better than when you came."
"I am not more happy," said Philip.
"No, but you conceive it distantly possible that one day you may be.
That has only just begun to occur to you."
Philip established his elbows more firmly yet.
"You are a living miracle, Tom!" he said. "I believe you are happier
than any man on this earth has ever been, since, at any rate, man began
to grow complicated and want things. You want nothing, I suppose, do
you? And is it that which has made you a boy again, while wanting and
not getting, and being robbed of what was mine, has made an old man of
me?"
Tom smiled, showing his white even teeth.
"Ah, I want," he said, "I want passionately, but I feel sure I shall get
what I want. It is the old story, I have told it you before: what I want
is the full realisation of the oneness of all life, and of the joy that
pervades everything."
"What would I not give to realise one millionth-part of that?" said
Philip.
He paused a moment and then broke out suddenly.
"Ah, it is the very intensity and completeness with which I loved her
that makes it all so bitter," he said. "A little love would only have
meant a little bitterness. But my love was not little, and so also is
not my bitterness. And afterwards, I did the best thing I could think
of. I worked, using work as a drug. As you know, I took too much of that
drug, and nearly broke down in consequence. And, oddly enough, now, so
far from finding myself a slave to it, the thought of it is rather
distasteful than otherwise. I might have made quite a lot of money
to-day, if I had only taken the trouble to write a telegram, which would
have been done in ten minutes and have cost me ten shillings. But I
thought: 'Is it worth while?' And when one thinks that, it is certainly
not worth while: only things that are quite indubitably worth while are
worth while at all. And then I thought over what I had done to Evelyn,
and that seemed not worth while either. I should not do it again if I
had the chance."
"What was that?" asked Merivale.
Philip told him in a few words the history of Metiekull.
"It was designed to hurt Madge, too," he said, "which again doesn't seem
worth while. I don't care whether she is hurt or not. And I thought I
was so strong, so unbending."
He paused a moment, but the need of confiding, of laying his heart open,
was strong upon him. It had long been dammed up, now the flood-water had
at last begun to make a breach in the banks.
"I love her still," he said, "and I loved her all the time when I would
have done anything to hurt her. I wonder if you understand that. It is
true at all events. I would like, or rather I would have liked, to hurt
her and go on hurting till she writhed with pain, and all the time I
should have been longing to kiss her tears away. But now I don't want to
hurt her any more. It does not seem worth while. And besides, I can't
hurt her; only one person in the world can really hurt her, because she
loves him. I am an object of indifference to her, and therefore I have
no power to hurt her. My God, by what diabolical trick is it that only
those we love have the power to hurt us? That was a cruel trick God
played on us when he made us so. It is infamous!"
His hands, which were supporting his head, trembled, and for the first
time his eyes grew soft with unshed tears. Never until this moment had
he felt the slightest desire to weep; now the tears were ready to come.
But he repressed them and went on.
"My house is in ruins," he said, "and perhaps I have been looking at the
ruins too long. It has done no good in any case: looking at them has
brought me no nearer to laying the first stone again. I have just the
sense left to see that. One has to build, to begin again, not count over
the destruction that has been wrought. Yet my house was so beautiful,
the house that was already built, and waited only for one to enter."
Again he paused, for his voice trembled, too.
"But as there is no such futile fool as the pathetic fool," said he, "I
will not go on about that. I want, and I want you to help me in this, to
look the other way, forward. I think you have vitality enough, or call
it what you will, to resuscitate a man who is all but drowned, over
whose head the billows have gone. There is something infectious about
you, I think; you somehow shine on one, and I feel as if I was
sickening, so to speak, by being with you, for the disease of life.
Work, anyhow, did me no good; it only ended in my breaking down. But
mere idling here has done something for me. I feel as if I could
acquiesce in continuing idle here, whereas before the thought of
continuing to do either anything or nothing was intolerable. I could but
just get through the present dreadful moment. Through all these weeks
the next moment, the next hour, the next day, might easily have proved
to be impossible. For, look here--you know I am not melodramatic!"
He took from his pocket a little surgical lancet, and stroked the side
of his throat with his thumb.
"I tried to get prussic acid," he said, "but I suppose I asked for it
badly, and they did not believe some foolish tale about a dog which I
wanted to put out of the way. So I bought this. One little incision--I
took the trouble to learn the right place, for it is dreadfully foolish
to make a mess, over and above the mess that must be made, about such
simple things. I don't really know why I have not used it before; I can
only say it was not from cowardice. But now I want it no longer; I am
beginning to be able to look forward. So it goes."
With a jerk of his wrist he flung it among the shrubs to the right of
the lawn, where it fell with a little splutter of applause, as it were,
from the leaves, as if they, too, were glad to assist in the disposal
and forgetting of it.
But Merivale looked neither shocked nor surprised; it was as if but a
very commonplace thing had been told him.
"Yes, my dear chap," he said, "of course I don't put it down to
cowardice, the fact, I mean, that you did not use that abominable little
knife. Why, if you were a coward, you would have done so. Of course it
must have been much easier for you to die than to live all this time.
But I'm glad you weren't a coward, Philip. I don't think a coward can be
much good for anything. A man who won't meet what is in front of him,
and prefers to run away somewhere, he doesn't know where, is a poor sort
of being. Of course, we all have our fears; life is full of terror. All
we can do is to say we are not afraid, and to behave as if we were not.
And since you have thrown that knife away, I may say that I think
suicide is one of the most abject species of cowardice. Of course you
were not yourself when you contemplated it, however vaguely. Now that
you are a little better, you throw the thing away."
His tone was so extremely matter-of-fact that its very normalness
arrested Philip. As he had said, it was perfectly true that nothing was
further from his thoughts than melodrama, and the interest he felt in
Tom's attitude, as thus revealed, towards life and death and fear was a
fresh sign, and he himself felt it to be such, of his reawakening
interests. Hitherto it had not, however remotely, concerned him as to
what anyone else might think of it all.
"You talk of fears," he said; "what do you know of them? Surely you, at
any rate, are free from fear. Oh, talk, Tom, interest me in anything;
talk about yourself, or birds, or beasts. You have given me so much:
give me more. Give me the foundation of my new house, since it is
you--yes, you, you dear fellow--who have made me turn my back upon the
ruins. I have got to begin again; I have nothing to begin with. I am
bankrupt. I beg you to give me a bit of that which you have so
abundantly."
His voice again half-failed him, but he recovered it in a moment.
"We were talking about fear," he said; "what have you got to fear? You
don't depend on men and women; you don't love. There is nothing in the
world to be afraid of except love. I have found that out. Yet people
seek it, the fools. They call it by sweet names: they say it is love
that makes life worth living. My God, I should be so content if I had
never known what it was. Damn her! I could have lived exactly like
you--no, that is not true; I could never have been even remotely happy
without loving her, just as, if I had never loved her, I should never
have known what misery was. But you among your birds and beasts and
trees, what on earth have you to fear? You won't fall in love with a
beach-tree and find that it elopes with an elm. Tell me about your
bloodless Paradise, and how the serpent, which is fear, can enter into
it."
Tom Merivale had grown rather grave during this sudden outburst. Nothing
in the world, so he believed, had power to ruffle his temper: only it
was difficult to explain to such a child as Philip had shown himself to
be. But before the pause was on his side the other spoke again.
"I am sorry," he said, "but it was a sort of baffled ignorance that
spoke. I don't understand you; and for that reason I had no business to
call your happiness, which is maddeningly real to me, a bloodless
Paradise. But, for God's sake, show me anything approaching Paradise, at
the door of which there is not an angel with a sword, not flaming, but
cold and convincing. And where, above all, is your fear? How can fear
exist for you? What is there to be afraid of unless you love and can be
betrayed?"
Philip's servant came out from the house, bringing a tray with glasses
and bottles. He paused by his master a moment.
"What time will you be called, sir?" he asked.
"Usual time; you can go to bed."
The pause lasted till the man had entered the house again. Then Merivale
spoke.
"I fear all I have not learned," he said. "I fear the revelation of what
people suffer, of what you have suffered, of what Christ suffered. I
fear that all suffering, in its degree, is atonement. I don't believe
it, mind you, but I am afraid it may be true, and that somehow I shall
have to believe it. I am not a Christian, and so I put it that a man
who was as infinitely above the rest of mankind as Shakespeare is above
the child which is idiotic from its birth and has never felt the warmth
of the slightest spark of reason, found it necessary to die, and
believed that his death atoned for the sins of the whole world. Ah, if I
only believed that he was right, how instinctively I should believe that
he was God. No one but God could have thought of that."
He paused a moment.
"But I am beginning to think that I shall not die without believing it,"
he said. "I don't think that even the death of the body could come to
this body of mine unless I became convinced of the necessity for
suffering and for death. Why am I beginning to think that? I can't
possibly say; there is never any reason for one's believing anything,
except the conviction that it must be so. Evelyn, I remember, once
talked to me about it. At that time I was satisfied with my own
reasoning; now I am not. I said to him then that my _métier_ was the
realisation of joy. Well, at present I know nothing that invalidates
that belief. But I see clearly now the possibility that he was right, in
which case it is possible that my fears, about which you asked, are
right also. Mind, I am not afraid in any case. I would sooner see all
the sorrows of the world, and realise them, as far as I am able, than
turn aside. But my fear is that I may be called upon to realise them. I
shall not like it, but if that is to be, I can assure you that I shall
not attempt to turn back. Not one step of the way which I have gone
along would I retrace. I will meet them all, I will realise them all.
And, in my own language, that means that I shall see Pan, the god of all
Nature, of the suffering and sorrow of Nature as well as the illimitable
life and joy of her. And to tell you the truth, I think it quite
probable that I may have to do so."
The rain had stopped, and a sudden sough of the wind in the bushes
sounded as if some animal had strayed there. Twigs creaked as if broken;
small branches swayed. Also, so it seemed to Philip, the wind brought
with it some faint, indefinable aroma, evoked no doubt by this rain from
some shrub in the garden. But for all his horticultural knowledge, he
could not give a name to it; it was pungent, of an animal flavour to the
nostrils, and reminded him, with the instantaneous evoking of memory
which scent possesses above all the other senses, of a _châlet_ in
which he had once taken refuge from a sudden mountain storm in some Alp
above Zermatt. Tom, too, just then threw back his head, and seemed to
sniff for a moment in the air. But he made no comment, and continued--
"Yes, it was Evelyn who suggested that to me," he said. "His idea, I
think, was that somehow and somewhere the balance is struck, that if one
is overloaded with joy, some compensating pain has got to be put in
before one is complete. It may come in a moment, so I conjecture, or one
may have to suffer the agony of months and years, but of this I am sure,
that the balance is in favour of joy. If I have to suffer, my suffering
will be quite certainly less than the joy I have had. If the sorrows of
death come upon me, they will weigh--I am certain of this--less than the
ecstasies of life that have been mine. But, dear God, I have a long bill
to settle."
The mention of Evelyn had roused black blood again.
"He too will have a bill to pay," said Philip.
Merivale took this quite impersonally.
"Yes, Evelyn is extraordinarily happy," he said. "I have scarcely ever
known him otherwise. If he is right about me, he will have to be right
about himself. Poor chap! What a good thing it is that neither you nor I
have to be his judges, or have to apportion to him the dose of misery
which will suit him. How could one tell when a man has had enough to
make him whole, complete?"
He got up quickly and looked out into the night.
"Ah, we have all got to be made perfect," he cried. "I take it that no
man in his senses can have any doubt of that. The thing which is you,
that essential, vital flame, has got now or at some future time to burn
its best. I have to do the same; we shall all be strung up to perfection
either through joy, or, perhaps, if we are approaching it from the other
side, through some blinding pain. We all have to attempt to approach
perfection to the best of our abilities. Our abilities may make a
mistake; very likely they do. But I, when I attempt to approach the best
of me through the pleasant ways of joy and simplicity, I would not go
back one step to save myself from the pangs that may follow. I am very
likely blind, but, as far as I know, I do my best. Perhaps--who knows,
since my life has been an extraordinarily useless one, as the world
counts 'use,' the world may be right, and I shall have to embark on a
career of work in an office. But I don't think that is likely."
Again he paused a moment, taking a deep breath of the night air into his
lungs. Then he turned round.
"You told me not to pity you," he said, "and I tacitly agreed not to,
and fully intended not to. But the time has come when my pity cannot
hurt you. For I pity you from the same plane as that on which I perhaps
some day may be glad of your pity. You have suffered, and you are
suffering. Well, I pity you, as God pities you, supposing that suffering
does happen to be necessary. I would not spare you one pang of it, if
this is so, but I just put out my hand to you, saying that I am there,
and watching and worshipping, I may say, for if suffering is necessary
it is certainly sacred. I don't know that it is necessary; but if it is,
there am I, if that will do you any good, and there also are all those
who have suffered, watching you with the pity that cannot help healing a
little, and the sympathy that lightens. But if I were convinced, even
for the winking of an eye, and to save a woodlouse from the absence of
its dinner, that suffering must be, I should accept it all, and take not
only my share of it, but the share of anybody else who would be so good
as to shoulder me with it, for it is impossible to have enough or too
much of anything that is right. At present I have not seen--so as to
know--the necessity of it, though I have long known that all Nature
groans under it. Everything preys on something else--you prey on the
animals you eat, and the folk you make fools of on the Stock Exchange.
And Evelyn preys on you. Yes, yes. And I--I try to prey on nobody, but
perhaps this law of preying will some day be brought home to me. My joy,
which so weighs down the scale, may have its compensating burden of
suffering given to it. And whatever blackness of horror awaits me, I
won't turn back. My way of approach is this: to others there is the
rough-and-tumble of the world, to others the ascetic life. But I believe
that joy and life are the predominant factors; that is why I have chosen
them, it has been my business to get acquainted anyhow with them. But
what I absolutely refuse is the horrible mean, where one makes no
ventures, and but paddles on the shore of the eternal sea. Let the
breakers leave me high and dry and smashed on the shingle, or let me
steer through them and see the unimagined islands of myth and fable. But
I will not just pull my shoes and stockings off, and shriek when the
water comes up to my knee. Something, whatever it is, must infallibly be
so much better than nothing."
He walked up and down the verandah once or twice with his long, smooth
step, moving with that peculiar grace and ease which denotes great
physical strength. He had forgotten about Philip, and Philip for the
first time had forgotten about Philip too.
"But during these last years," he went on, "I have consciously and
deliberately turned my back on pain, because it is hideous, because it
is a foe to joy, and because I have not and do not now realise its
necessity. All I can say is, with Oliver Cromwell, it is just possible I
may be mistaken, and in that case I am sure I shall have to--ah, no, be
allowed to--learn my mistake. A child crying seems to me a dreadful
thing, a beggar by the wayside with a broken tobacco-pipe, and not a
penny to get another, the shriek of the rabbit when the stoat's teeth
fasten in its throat; they are all dreadful, and enemies to joy. But I
am no longer convinced, as I used to be, that pain is unnecessary; I am
beginning, as I said, to hold an open mind on the subject, and only say
that I believe I can realise myself best and bring myself best into
harmony with Nature, with the whole design, by avoiding it. Yet for me
also pain and suffering may be necessary. If so, let them come; I am
quite ready. I only hope that it will be soon over, that it will be so
frightful that I can't stand it. I should prefer that, some blinding,
dreadful flash of revelation, to any slow, remorseless grinding of the
truth into me. That, however, is not in my hands."
Philip's mind had gone back again on to himself.
"But how can it possibly be any good that those two should have behaved
like this to me?" he cried, speaking directly for the first time. "What
monstrous image do you make of the controller of the world and all our
destinies, if it is by his will that this is done to me which turns all
that may have been good in me into hatred and bitterness? Is that the
lesson that I am meant to learn--that those whom one loves best are
one's bitterest foes, and will hurt one most?"
Tom stopped in his walk and sat down on the edge of the table by Philip.
"My dear fellow," he said, "Oliver Cromwell will help us again. Is it
not just possible that you too are mistaken when you assume that your
trouble was sent you _in order that_ your love might be turned into
hate? That it should have happened so may (just possibly again) be in
some measure your fault. Could you not have done otherwise, and done
better? I don't want to preach, you know."
Philip sat silent, but his face hardened again.
"If I could have done better, it would not have been I," he said. "It
would have been altogether another man."
Tom got down off the table.
"Ah, you repudiate moral responsibility for your own acts," he said.
"Not exactly that. I say that there may be circumstances under which
one's will is crumpled up like a piece of waste paper, and one's powers
of resistance are paralysed. Don't you believe that?"
Merivale shook his head.
"No, I don't believe that the power of choice is ever taken away from
one while one remains sane," he said. "The moment one cannot choose, the
doors of Bedlam are opened."
Philip got up.
"They are still ajar for me," he said. "But they were more widely open
when I came here. For pity's sake, Tom, go on helping me. It is only
you, I think, who can get them closed for me."
He paused a moment, looking out into the still blackness of the garden,
and again something stirred and creaked in the bushes, and the drowsy
wind was tainted with some sharp smell. He turned to Tom--
"I wonder if all that you have been saying is a fairy tale," he said,
"and whether I have been taking it literally, so that I imagine that
things which are only, and can only be, allegorical and mythical are
true."
"You mean the Pan-pipes, for instance, which I heard for the first time
at Pangbourne, and which I hear so often now?" asked Merivale.
"Yes, that among other things. Pan himself, too. I begin to think of Pan
as a real being, the incarnation of all the terror and fear and sorrow
of the world. The crying child you spoke of is part of Pan, the shriek
of the rabbit is part of him. All these things, as you say, you have
turned your back on. What if they should all be shown you suddenly, they
and the huge significance and universality of them?"
Merivale looked quite grave; anyhow it was no fairy story to him,
whatever it might be to others.
"Yes, that is all possible," he said, "and that will mean that I shall
see Pan. What a wonderful mode of expression that is of the Greeks. For
Pan means 'everything,' and to see everything would be clearly more than
one could stand. And so to see Pan means death."
Once again the strange, pungent odour was noticeable.
"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" asked Philip suddenly.
"Oh, in the hammock," said Tom. "I hardly ever sleep in the house."
Then a more definite, though utterly fantastic, fear seized Philip.
"No, sleep in the house to-night," he said, feeling that his fear was
too childish to be allowed utterance.
At that Merivale laughed; there was no need for Philip to utter his
thought, for he knew perfectly well what it was.
"I know what you mean," he said, "but do you think that if Pan is going
to visit me he will only come into the garden, and not into the house?
You are mixing up the fear of Pan with the general sense of insecurity
about sleeping out of doors, which comes from unfamiliarity with that
delightful way of spending the night. And I know another thing you felt;
you heard an odd rustling in the bushes, as I often hear it, and you
smelt a rather queer smell, something rather pungent, and it reminded
you of a goat. Of course Pan used to appear, so the Greek myth said, in
goat form, and your inference was that Pan was in those bushes. But he
is just as much in this verandah, and, for that matter, in Piccadilly,
poor thing! There is quite certainly no getting away from him; I am as
safe here as I should be if I was locked into the strong-room in the
Bank of England. For it is not just to this place or that that he comes,
but to this person or that."
They parted after this, Philip going upstairs to his bedroom, while Tom,
after changing into a sleeping suit, went out with a rug over his arm
into the dusky halls of the night. Sleep, when the time for sleep had
come, visited him as quickly as it visits every healthy animal; and if
it kept aloof, he no more worried about it, or tried to woo it, than he
would take appetising scraps of caviare or olives to make him hungry.
And to-night he lay for some time, not tossing or turning in his
hammock, but with eyes wide open, looking through the tracery of briar
and leaf above him into the sombre darkness of the clouds overhead. So
dark was it that the foliage was only just blacker than the sky, and to
right and left the trees were shapeless blots against it. But all that
mattered was that sky and clouds and trees were all round him, and that
he could sink and merge himself in the spirit and the life with which
they were impregnated. He lay open to it; just as his lungs were filled
with the open air and his body vivified by it, so his soul and spirit
drank in and breathed that open, essential life that ran through all
things, the life that day by day he more fully realised to be One thing,
expressing itself in the myriad forms of tree and beast and man. And
though still that curious rustle and stir went on in the bushes, and
though once he thought he heard the tap as of some hoofed thing upon the
brick path of the pergola, he did not stir, nor did any sense of dismay
or fear come to him. He had followed the path which he believed was his,
striving to make himself one with the eternal harmony of Nature, and if
the revelation of her discords was to come to him, come it would; the
matter was not in his hands. But in whoever's hands it was, he was
content to leave it there.
Philip meantime fared less easily in his bed indoors. The talk this
evening had brought back to him with a terrible vividness all he had
been through, the bitterness and hatred of his own heart all blossomed
poisonously again, now that Merivale had gone, and he was left alone in
the darkness and quiet of the night. That there was some subtle and very
powerful influence which surrounded the Hermit like an atmosphere of his
own he felt fully; in his company he knew how strong a sense of healing
and serenity was abroad, but to-night, at any rate, all his foes, which
he had almost dared to hope were being vanquished and left for dead,
were rising about him again in ghostly battalions. He had, so he dimly
hoped, begun to slay them, but it seemed for the moment that he had been
but smiting at shadows that took no hurt from his blows. For a little
while he had been able to set his face forward, to fancy that he was
beginning really to make way, but now, as he glanced back over his
shoulder, the enemy pursued undiminished after him. Again he felt his
lips were quivering with sheer hatred of those who had so hurt him, and
his hands were clenched in passionate desire to strike. And thus for
hours he tossed and turned, until his window again, as in Jermyn Street,
began to "grow a glimmering square," and the tentative notes of birds to
flute in the bushes, and he was back again in those darkest hours he had
ever known.
Then his bed became intolerable, and he rose from it and walked about
the room, until the huelessness of the earliest dawn began to be touched
with colour. Never since the blow had fallen upon him had he been able
to pray; his bitterness and hatred had come like the figure of Satan
himself between him and prayer.
Philip suddenly paused; another dawn was beginning to break, a dawn yet
remote and far off in the Eastern skies, but a faint, dim streak of
light was there. It was indeed true; it was his own hatred, his own
bitterness, not what others had done to him, which had stood in his way,
and, as Merivale had said, the power of choice was in possession of
every man who was fit to move about the world. He had accepted that when
it was stated to him; he knew it to be true, and thus choice was still
his. He had to choose, and to choose now. Did he want to hate and be
bitter? Did he deliberately, in so far as he could choose, choose that?
So, though no word crossed his lips or was even formed in his brain, he
prayed.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]