We rode slowly into the glen in the mulberry gloaming. Our transport
waggons were half an hour behind, so we had time to explore. Lawson
dismounted and plucked handfuls of flowers from the water meadows. He
was singing to himself all the time--an old French catch about Cadet
Rousselle and his Trois maisons.
"Who owns it?" I asked.
"My firm, as like as not. We have miles of land about here. But
whoever the man is, he has got to sell. Here I build my tabernacle,
old man. Here, and nowhere else!"
In the very centre of the glen, in a loop of the stream, was one copse
which even in that half light struck me as different from the others.
It was of tall, slim, fairy-like trees, the kind of wood the monks
painted in old missals. No, I rejected the thought. It was no
Christian wood. It was not a copse, but a "grove,"--one such as
Artemis may have flitted through in the moonlight. It was small, forty
or fifty yards in diameter, and there was a dark something at the heart
of it which for a second I thought was a house.
We turned between the slender trees, and--was it fancy?--an odd tremor
went through me. I felt as if I were penetrating the temenos of some
strange and lovely divinity, the goddess of this pleasant vale. There
was a spell in the air, it seemed, and an odd dead silence.
Suddenly my horse started at a flutter of light wings. A flock of
doves rose from the branches, and I saw the burnished green of their
plumes against the opal sky. Lawson did not seem to notice them. I
saw his keen eyes staring at the centre of the grove and what stood
there.
It was a little conical tower, ancient and lichened, but, so far as I
could judge, quite flawless. You know the famous Conical Temple at
Zimbabwe, of which prints are in every guidebook. This was of the same
type, but a thousandfold more perfect. It stood about thirty feet
high, of solid masonry, without door or window or cranny, as shapely as
when it first came from the hands of the old builders. Again I had the
sense of breaking in on a sanctuary. What right had I, a common vulgar
modern, to be looking at this fair thing, among these delicate trees,
which some white goddess had once taken for her shrine?
Lawson broke in on my absorption. "Let's get out of this," he said
hoarsely and he took my horse's bridle (he had left his own beast at
the edge) and led him back to the open. But I noticed that his eyes
were always turning back and that his hand trembled.
"That settles it," I said after supper. "What do you want with your
mediaeval Venetians and your Chinese pots now? You will have the
finest antique in the world in your garden--a temple as old as time,
and in a land which they say has no history. You had the right
inspiration this time."
I think I have said that Lawson had hungry eyes. In his enthusiasm
they used to glow and brighten; but now, as he sat looking down at the
olive shades of the glen, they seemed ravenous in their fire. He had
hardly spoken a word since we left the wood.
"Where can I read about these things?" he asked, and I gave him the
names of books. Then, an hour later, he asked me who were the
builders. I told him the little I knew about Phoenician and Sabaen
wanderings, and the ritual of Sidon and Tyre. He repeated some names
to himself and went soon to bed.
As I turned in, I had one last look over the glen, which lay ivory and
black in the moon. I seemed to hear a faint echo of wings, and to see
over the little grove a cloud of light visitants. "The Doves of
Ashtaroth have come back," I said to myself. "It is a good omen.
They accept the new tenant." But as I fell asleep I had a sudden
thought that I was saying something rather terrible.