XII

Let 'em be happy, and rest so contented,

They pay the tribute of their hearts and knees.

_Thiery and Theodoret_.

After passing some of his cultures through the filter, he injected

subcutaneously the filtrate, composed of dead organisms and their

toxins, into Lionel's arms and into his own. Taking one of the

black-faced monkeys, which they had brought with them for the purpose,

he shaved and cleansed a part of its neck, and injected a weak culture

into the space prepared, after exposing the culture to a heat slightly

below the heat necessary to kill the organisms. Into another monkey he

injected a culture, weakened by a slight addition of carbolic. He had

no great hope that the measure which he was preparing would be of use;

he meant to try them all. "If I had had more time," he thought

bitterly, "I might have succeeded." He had lost so much time in

getting the culture to grow. As he sealed up the punctures with

collodion, he said to himself that he had tried Lionel's cure, and that

now he was free to try his own personal theories. He would kill some

animal naturally immune, such as a wildebeest or a koodoo, and obtain

serum from it direct, in as cleanly a manner as he could. Lionel had

said that such a serum, so collected, would be useless and probably

septic; but who cared for possible blood-poisoning when the alternative

was certain death? Personally he would prefer a death by glanders to

this drowsy dying. If he could disable an antelope, he might be able

to obtain the blood by formal antiseptic methods in sterilised pots.

It would be worth trying. He had taken serum from a horse in England.

He knew the process. Unfortunately the heart of Africa is not like

England, nor is a kicking, horned, wild beast, tearing the earth to

tatters in the death-agony, like a staid and glossy horse neatly

arranged to be tapped. "Besides," he thought, "the beast may be

suffering from all manner of diseases, or it may hold germs in

toleration which the blood of man could not tolerate. And how was he

to go hunting with an equipment of sterile pots and pipes on his back?"

He liked the notion too well to be frightened by the difficulties. It

offered the possibility of success; it gave him hope, and it kept his

mind busily engaged. Even if he saw no wild game, the hunt would be a

change to him. He was a moderately good rifle-shot. The foil was the

only weapon at which he was really clever. As he looked to his rifle,

he felt contempt for the unreality of his life in London. It had been

a life presupposing an immense external artificiality. How little a

thing upset it! How helpless he was when it had been upset. And what

would happen to England when something upset London, and scattered its

constituent poisons broadcast? He went out to the hunt.

The wind blew steadily from the direction of the forest. There was no

chance of doing anything from that side. He could never approach game

downwind. He would have to cross the river. He had never tried to

cross the river. He did not even know if it were possible. The

thought of the crocodiles and the mere sight of the swirling flood had

kept him from examining the river. He had not been near it since he

had sought with Lionel for the atoxyl bottles. What it looked like

upstream he did not know. He went upstream to look for a ford.

At a little distance beyond the hill he came upon something which made

him pause. The earth there had been torn into tracks by the waters of

a recent thunder-storm. The cleanness of the cuttings reminded Roger

of the little bog-bursts which he had seen in Ireland after excessive

rains. In one of the tracks the rushing water had swept bare the

paving of an ancient road, leaving it clear to the sky for about twenty

yards. The road was of a hard even surface, like the flooring of a

Zimbabwe. To the touch the surface was that of a very good cycling

road in the best condition. The ruts of carts were faintly marked upon

it in dents. The road seemed to have been made of hewn stones, covered

over and bound with the powdered pounded granite used for the floors of

the ruins. It was five of Roger's paces in breadth. The edges were

channelled with gutters. Beyond the gutters were borders of small hewn

blocks neatly arranged, so that the growths near the road might not

spread over it. Judging by the direction of the uncovered part, the

road entered the Zimbabwe through a gate in the west wall. In the

other direction, away from the Zimbabwe, it led slantingly towards the

river, keeping to the top of a ridge (possibly artificial), so as to

avoid a low-lying tract still boggy from the flood. The river made a

sharp bend at the point where the road impinged upon it. Below the

bend the lie of the bank had an odd look, which recalled human

endeavour even now, after the lapse of so many centuries. Greatly

excited, Roger hurried up to look at the place.

It had been the port of the Zimbabwe. The bank had been cut away, so

as to form a kind of dock. The stumps of the piles were still in the

mud in places. They were strong, well-burnt wooden piles, such as are

used for jetties everywhere. By the feel of the ground on the jetty

top there was paved-work not far below it. A dig or two with a knife

blade shewed that this was the case. The bank was paved like the road.

Looking back towards the ruin, Roger could mark the track of the road

running up to the wall. Even where it was overgrown he could tell its

whereabouts by the comparative lightness of the colour of the grass

upon it. Beyond the ruin, running almost straight to the south-east,

he noticed a similar ribbon of light grass, marking another road. So

this was a port, this Zimbabwe, a port at the terminus of a road. The

road might lead direct to Ophir, whence Solomon obtained his ivory and

apes and peacocks. Probably there were gold mines near at hand. This

place, so quiet now, had once seen a gold-rush. The wharf there had

been thronged by jostlers hurrying to the fields. The basin of

ill-smelling red mud had once been full of ships. And what ships?

What people? And when? "A brachycephalic people of clever

gold-workers of unknown antiquity."

Just above the "port" the river was extremely narrow. Sticking out of

the water in the narrow part were masses of masonry, which may at one

time have served as the piers of a bridge. They were so close together

that Roger crossed the river by them without difficulty. On the other

side, as he had expected, the mark of the road was ruled in a dim line

in the direction of the forest. The country was rougher on that side.

The line of the road was marked less plainly.

Late that afternoon, after an exhausting stalk, he got two shots at

what he took to be a koodoo[*] cow. He went forward out of heart,

believing that both had missed. Bright blood on the grass shewed him

that he had hit her. A little further on he found the cow down, with

her hindquarters paralysed. She struggled to get up to face him, poor

brute; but she was too hard hit; she was dying. When she had struggled

a little, he was able to close with her, avoiding the great horns. He

was even able to prepare the throat in some measure for the operation.

Lastly, avoiding a final struggle, he contrived to sterilise his hands

with a solution from one of the pots slung about him. The sight of his

hands even after this made him despair of getting an uncontaminated

serum. But there was no help for it. He took out the knife, made the

incision in the throat, and inserted the sterilised tube.

[*] It was probably an oryx.

When he turned with his booty to go home, he noticed a little fawn

which stood on a knoll above him, looking at him. She stood quite

still, so shaded off against the grasses that only a lucky eye could

distinguish her. She was waiting, perhaps, for him to go away, so that

she might call her mother. She made no effort to run from him.

Something in her appearance made him think that she was ill. The

carriage of her head seemed queer. Her coat had a look of staring. He

wished then, that he had brought his glasses, so that he might examine

her narrowly. Moving round a little, he made sure that her coat was in

poor condition. He judged that she might have been mauled by a beast

of prey.

He was just about to move on when a thought occurred to him. What if

the young of the wild game should not be immune? What if the bite of

the infected tsetse should set up a mild form of nagana in them from

which they recover? What if that mild sickness should confer a

subsequent immunity on the inflicted individual? Surely the result

would be obvious. "Vaccination" with the blood of the afflicted calf

or fawn would set up a mild attack of the disease in man, and, perhaps,

give him subsequent immunity from more virulent infection. The

ailments of wild animals are few. What if this fawn should be

suffering from a mild attack of the disease? He crept a little nearer

to her, bending low down to see if he could see the swellings on the

legs and belly which mark the disease in quadrupeds. He could not be

sure of them. He could only be sure that the coat was staring, and

that the nose and eyes were watery. He whistled gently to the little

creature, hoping that she would be too young to be frightened of him.

She stared at him with wide eyes, trembling slightly, flexing her ears.

He whistled to her again. She called plaintively to her dam. She

lowered her little head, ready to attack, pawing the ground like a

warrior. Roger fired. Afterwards he felt as though he had killed a

girl.

He returned to "Portobe" weighted down with jars, which he emptied

carefully into sterilised pans. The result made "Portobe" look like a

cannibal's dairy. An examination of the blood shewed that both animals

had harboured trypanosomes in large numbers. When the blood had

coagulated, he decanted the serum into sterilised bottles, to which he

added minute quantities of antiseptic. That operation gave him his

serum. He had now to test it for bacteria and for toxins. He added a

portion from each bottle to various culture-mediums in test-tubes. He

added these test portions to all his media, to glycerine-agar and

glucose as well as to those better suited to the growth of trypanosomes.

He set them aside to incubate.

If there were bacteria in the sera they would increase and multiply on

the delightful food of the media. When Roger came to examine the

media, he came expecting to find them swarming with bacteria of all

known kinds. He was naturally vain of the success of his hunting; but

he knew that crude surgery out in the open is not so wholesome a method

of obtaining serum as might be. Still, a close examination shewed him

that the cultures had not developed bacteria. He was pleased at this;

but his pleasure was dashed by the thought that it was rather too good

to be true. He might have muddled the experiment by adding too much

disinfectant to the sera while bottling, by using cultures which had in

some way lost their attractiveness, or by some failure in the

preparation of the slides. After going through his examination the

second time, he decided to proceed. He injected large doses of the

sera into two monkeys.

Again he was successful. The monkeys shewed no symptoms of poisoning.

The sera, whatever they might be, were evidently harmless to the

"homologous" animal. But the success made Roger even more doubtful of

himself. It made him actually anxious, lest in adding disinfectant to

the sera, he should have destroyed the protective forces in them, as

well as the micro-organisms at which he had aimed. He delayed no

longer. He injected Lionel with a large dose of the serum from the

grown animal; he injected himself with the serum from the fawn. Going

down to the village, he made a minute examination of those who were the

least ill. Choosing out those who shewed no outward signs of the

congenital or acquired forms of blood-poisoning, he injected them with

sera, thinking that if they recovered he would use their sera for other

cases. For his own part, he felt better already. The excitement of

hope was on him. He had risen above his body.

For the next few days his life was a fever of hope, broken with hours

of despair. One of his patients died suddenly the day after the

injection. Lionel seemed no better. Another patient seemed markedly

worse. He repeated the doses, and passed a miserable morning watching

Lionel. The evening temperature shewed a marked decrease. An

examination of the throat glands shewed that the trypanosomes had

become less waggish. They were bunching into clumps, "agglutinising,"

with slow, irregular movements. That seemed to him to be the first

hopeful sign. On studying his books he could not be sure that it

really was a good sign. One book seemed to say that agglutination made

the germs more virulent; another that it paralysed them. He could see

for himself that they had ceased to multiply by splitting

longitudinally. And from that he argued that their vitality had been

weakened.

The next day Lionel was better; but the native patients were all worse.

They were alarmingly worse. They shewed symptoms which were not in the

books. They swelled slightly, as though the skin had been inflated.

The flesh seemed bladdery and inelastic at the same time. The pigment

of the skin became paler; the patients became an ashy grey colour. The

blood of one of these sufferers killed a guinea-pig in three hours.

After a short period of evident suffering they died, one after the

other, apparently of the exhaustion following on high fever. Roger, in

a dreadful state of mental anguish, stayed with them till they were

dead, trying remedy after remedy. He felt that he had killed them all.

He felt that their blood was on his hands. He felt that all those

people might still have been alive had he not tried his wretched

nostrum on them. There was no doubt that the sera had caused their

deaths. Those who had had no serum injections were no worse than they

had been. He wondered how long it would be before these symptoms of

swelling and high fever appeared in himself and Lionel. He went back

to "Portobe" expecting to find Lionel in high fever, going the road to

Marumba.

He found Lionel weakly walking about outside the tent, conscious, but

not yet able to talk intelligibly. He had not expected to see Lionel

walk again. The sight made him forget the deaths down in the village.

He shouted with joy. Closer examination made him less joyous. The

skin of Lionel's arm, very dull and inelastic to the touch, was

slightly swollen with something of the bladdery look which he had

noticed in the men now dead. It was as though the body had been

encased in a bladdery substance slightly inflated. He had no heart to

test the symptoms upon the body of another animal. There was death

enough about without that. He sat down over the microscope and

examined his sera again and again. He could find no trace of any

living micro-organisms. The sera seemed to be sterile. But he saw now

that it had some evil effect upon those infected with trypanosomes. He

could not guess the exact chemical nature of the effect. It probably

affected the constituents of the blood in some way. The poison in the

sera seemed to need the presence of trypanosomes to complete its

virulence.

While he worked over the microscope, he noticed that his own flesh was

developing the symptom. He put aside his work when he saw that. He

concluded that Lionel and he were marked for death within twenty-four

hours. Before death (as he had learned in the village) they might look

to suffer much pain. After some hours of suffering they would become

unconscious and delirious. After raving for a while they would die

there in the lonely hut, and presently the ants would march in in

regular ranks to give them cleanly burial. Their bones would lie on

the cots till some thunderstorm swept them under mud. Nobody would

ever hear of them. They would be forgotten. People in England would

wonder what had become of them; they would wonder less as time went on,

and at last they would cease to wonder. Newspapers would allude to him

from time to time in paragraphs two lines long. Then, as his

contemporaries grew older, that would stop, too. He would be

forgotten, utterly, and nobody would know, and nobody would care.

It was dreadful to him to think that nobody would know. He could count

on an hour or two of freedom from pain. Before the pain shut out the

world from him, he would try to leave some record of what they were.

He sat down to write a death-letter. It was useless, of course, and

yet it might, perhaps, by a rare chance, some day, come to the

knowledge of those whom he had known in England. He wondered who would

find the letter, if it were ever found. Some great German scientist

about to banish the disease. Some drunken English gold prospector with

a cockney accent. Some missionary, or sportsman, or commercial

traveller. More likely it would be some roving savage with a snuff-box

in his earlobe, and a stone of copper wire about his limbs. He wrote

out a short letter:

"Lionel Uppingham Huntley Heseltine, Roger Monkhouse Naldrett. Dying

here of blood poisoning, following the use of koodoo serum for

trypanosomiasis. Should this come to the hands of a European, he is

requested to communicate with Dr. Heseltine, 47A Harley Square, Wimpole

Street, W., London, England, and with the British Consul at Shirikanga,

C. F. S."

He added a few words more; but afterwards erased them. He had given

the essentials. There was no need to say more. He translated the

brief message into French, Spanish, and German, and signed the copies.

He placed the document in a tin soap box which he chained to an iron

rod driven into the floor of the hut. When that was done, he felt that

he had taken his farewell to life.

He thought of Ottalie, without hope of any kind. He was daunted by the

thought of her. He could not feel that his soul would ever reach to

her soul, across all those wilds. He was heavy with the growing of the

change upon him. This death of which he had thought so grandly seemed

very stupid now that he was coming to know it. He remembered reproving

a young poet for the remark that death could not possibly be so stupid

as life. It was monstrous to suppose that the young poet could be

right after all. And yet----

He went out hurriedly and released all the laboratory animals:

guinea-pigs, monkeys, and white rats. They should not die of

starvation, poor beasts. They squeaked and gibbered excitedly for a

minute or two, as they moved off to explore. Probably the snakes had

them all within the week.

After some hours of waiting for the agony to begin, Roger fell asleep,

and slept till the next morning. When he woke he sat up and looked

about him, being not quite sure at first that he was still alive. His

pulse was normal, his tongue was normal, his heart was normal. He felt

particularly well. He looked at his flesh. The bladdery look had

relapsed, the skin was normal again. Looking over to Lionel's cot, he

saw that Lionel was not in the hut. Fearing that he had wandered out

to die in a fit of delirium, he went out into the open to look for him.

It was a bright, windy, tropic morning, with a tonic briskness in the

air such as one feels sometimes in England, in April and late

September. One of the released monkeys was fast by the neck again upon

his perch. He was munching a biscuit with his entire vitality. Lionel

sat upon the wall, sunning himself in a blanket. His attitude

suggested both great physical weakness, and entire self-confidence.

"I say, Roger," he began. "It's too bad. You are a juggins! You've

let all our menagerie go. What are we to do for laboratory animals? I

caught McGinty here. Otherwise we'd have been without a single one.

Every cage in the place is wide open. What have you been doing?"

"My God!" said Roger. "He's cured!"

"Cured, sir?" said Lionel. "Why shouldn't I be? There's been nothing

wrong with me except fever. But I'm not joking. I want to know about

these animals. What were you thinking of to let them out?"

"Lionel," said Roger, "for the last five weeks you've been dying of

sleeping sickness. The atoxyl was lost. I believe you threw it away."

"There's the atoxyl," said Lionel, pointing. "In the hole in the wall

there. I put it there yesterday, after dosing those two."

Sure enough, there stood the bottle in the dimness of a hole in the

wall. Roger must have passed it some fifty times.

"I looked for it everywhere," said Roger.

Lionel's eyes narrowed to the sharpness of medical scrutiny. He

examined Roger for some time.

"Let me take your pulse, Lionel," said Roger, staring back.

"My pulse is all right," said Lionel. "Be off and look for

guinea-pigs." The pulse was all right; so was the flesh of the wrist.

"I suppose the next thing you'll want me to believe is that I've still

got sleeping sickness? Well, look at my tongue. Perhaps that will

convince you." Lionel waited for an answer for a moment with

protruding tongue. The tongue was steady. Lionel returned to the

charge. "What have you been playing at with those Weissner serum

pans?" he asked. "Have you been bleeding the monkeys? You seem to

have been having a field-day generally."

"I tell you," said Roger, "that you've been dying of sleeping sickness

for five weeks. Look at your temperature chart. Look at my diary.

After the atoxyl was lost, I tried every mortal thing we had. And

nothing was any good. You were drowsing away to death for days. Don't

you remember?"

"I remember having fever, and you or somebody messing around with a

needle. But, five weeks, man! Five weeks. Come!"

"I tell you, you have. You've been unconscious half the time."

"Well. If I've had sleeping sickness, how comes it that I'm here,

talking to you? You say yourself the atoxyl was lost."

"Lionel," said Roger, "I injected you with a dead culture. After that,

I shot a couple of koodoos (if they were koodoos), a cow and a fawn.

The fawn had nagana or something. I took sera from them, and injected

the sera into both of us. Great big doses in both cases. I injected

the sera into seven poor devils in the village, and they all swelled up

and died. It was awful, Lionel. What makes people swell up?"

"I don't know," said Lionel. "I suppose it might be anthrax. Was

there fever?"

"Intense pain, very high fever, and death apparently from exhaustion.

And you and I swelled up a little; and I made sure yesterday that we

were both going to die too. I wrote letters, and stuck them up on a

bar inside there."

"Oh, so that was what the rod was for? I thought it was something

funny. And now we are both cured?"

"Yes. My God, Lionel, I'm thankful to hear your voice again. You

don't know what it's been."

They shook hands.

"You're a public benefactor," said Lionel. He looked hard at Roger.

"I give you best," he added. "I thought you were a griff. But you've

found a cure, it seems. Eh? Look at him. It's the first time he's

realised it!"

"But," Roger stammered, "I've killed seven with it; that's not what I

call a cure."

"Did you inject the seven with the dead culture first?" Lionel asked.

"No. Only myself and you."

"There you are," said Lionel. "You griffs make the discoveries, and

haven't got the gumption to see them. My good Lord! It's as plain as

measles. You inject the dead culture. That's the first step. That

makes the trypanosomes agglutinise. Very well, then. You inject your

serum when they are agglutinised; not before. When they are

agglutinised, the serum destroys them, after raising queer symptoms.

When they are not agglutinised the serum destroys you by the excess of

what causes the queer symptoms. I don't understand those symptoms.

They are so entirely unexpected. Did you examine the blood?"

"One cubic centimetre of the venous blood killed a guinea-pig in three

hours."

"Yes, no doubt. But did you look at the blood microscopically?"

"No," said Roger, ashamed. "I looked at my sera for streptococci."

"You juggins!" said Lionel. "Yet you come out and land on a cure.

Well, well! You're a lucky dog. Let's go in and look at our glands."

Roger noticed that he walked with the totter of one newly risen from a

violent attack of fever.

Four months later, the two men reached Shirikanga in a canoe of their

own making. They were paddled by four survivors from the village. All

the rest were dead, either of sleeping sickness or of the serum.

Lionel had not discovered what it was in the serum which caused the

fatal symptoms. It contained some quality which caused the

streptococci, or pus-forming microbes, to increase; but, as far as he

could discover, this quality was exerted only when the patient's blood

contained virulent trypanosomes, or some other active toxin-producing

micro-organisms in the unagglutinised condition. They cured four of

the villagers. They might have saved more had they been able to begin

the treatment earlier in the disease. They were not dissatisfied with

their success. They "had powler't up and down a bit," like the Jovial

Huntsmen. They had come to some knowledge of each other, and to some

extension of their faculties.

Scientifically, they had done less than they had hoped; but more than

they had expected to do. They had been the first to cure cases with

animal serum. They had been the first to study in any way the effect

of nagana upon the young of wild game, and to prepare (as yet untested)

vaccine from young antelopes, quaggas, and elands. They had discovered

a wash of Paris green and lime which destroyed the tsetse pupas. They

had cleared some three miles of fly belt. They had studied the tsetse.

They had surveyed the whole and excavated a part of the Zimbabwe.

Lastly, they had settled the foundations of friendship between them.

That was, perhaps, the best result of the expedition. They had settled

a friendship likely to last through life. They were confident that

they would do great things together. Shirikanga hove in sight at the

river mouth. Two country barques lay at anchor there, with grimy

awnings over their poops. Ashore, in the blaze of the day, were a few

white-washed huts, from one of which a Union Jack floated. In the

compound of another hut a negro was slowly hoisting the ball of a flag.

He brought it to the truck and broke it out, so that it fluttered free.

It was a red burgee, the letter B of the code.

"Mail day," said Lionel. "We shall be out of here to-night. We shall

be at Banana by Wednesday. That means Antwerp by Wednesday three

weeks. London's not far away."

"Good," said Roger. He was not thinking of London. He was thinking of

a lonely Irish hill, where there were many yellow-hammers. The trees

there stood up like ghosts. Round an old, grey, two-storied house the

bees murmured. He was thinking that perhaps one or two roses might be

in blossom about the house even a month later, when he would stand

there.

He thought of his life in Africa, and of its bearing upon himself. It

had done him good. He was worth more to the world than he had been a

year before. He thought little of his success. It had been fortunate.

It had saved Lionel. When he thought of his earlier life he sighed.

He knew that he would have achieved more than that sorry triumph had he

been trained. His life had been improvised, never organised. Great

things are done only when the improvising mind has a great organisation

behind it.

He thought it all over again when he lay in his bunk in a cabin of the

_Kabinda_, on his way up-coast. He was at peace with the world. Clean

sheets, the European faces, and the civilised meals in the saloon, had

wiped out the memory of the past. Africa was already very dim to him.

The Zimbabwe rose up in his mind like something seen in a dream, a dim,

but rather grand shape. The miseries of the camp were dim. He had

been sad that morning in bidding farewell to the four whose lives he

had saved. Jellybags, Toro, Buckshot, and Pocahontas. He repeated

their names and considered their engaging traits. Jellybags was the

best of them. He had liked Jellybags. Jellybags had wanted to come

with them. He would never see Jellybags again. He didn't care

particularly. The sheets of the bunk were very comfortable. At the

end of a great adventure things are seen in false proportions. Only

the thought that those men had shared his life for a while gave him the

suggestion of a qualm before he put them from his mind.

He thought of Ottalie. He saw her more clearly than of old. In the

old days he had seen her through the pink mists of amatory sentiment.

The sentiment was gone. Action had knocked it out of him. He saw her

now as she was. She was more wonderful in the clearer light; more

wonderful than ever; a fine, trained, scrupulous mind, drilled to a

beautiful unerring choice in life. She was near and real to him, so

real that he seemed to be within her mind, following its fearlessness.

He felt that he understood her now. With a rush of emotion he felt

that he could bring what she had been into the life of his time.

In the steamer at Banana was a German scientist bound to Sierra Leone.

He spoke English. He asked the two friends about their achievement.

Lionel told him that they had discovered a serum for the cure of

trypanosomiasis. The German smiled. "Ah," he said. "There is already

sera. The Japanese bacteriologist, what was his name? Shima? Oshima?

Shiga? No, Hiroshiga. He have found a good serum, which makes der

peoples die sometimes. Then there is Mühlbauer who have improved the

serum of Hiroshiga. He have added a little trypanroth or a little

mercury or somedings. Now he have cured everymans. I wonder you have

not seen of Hiroshiga in der newspapers. He have make his experiments

in der spring; and Mühlbauer he is now at Nairobi curing everymans. He

have vaccination camps."

"Well," said Lionel. "We've been beaten on the post. You hear, Roger?

All that we have done has been done."

"You wait," said Roger. "We're only beginning."

Afterwards he was sad that it was ending thus. He would have been

proud to have given a cure to the world. It would have been an

offering to Ottalie. She would have loved to share that honour. He

had plucked that poor little flower for her at the risk of his life.

It was hard to find that it was only a paper flower after all. He

thought of Ottalie as standing at the window of the upper passage

looking out for him. She seemed to him to be something of all

cleanness and fearlessness, waiting for him to lead her into the world,

so that men might serve her.

In Ottalie's old home, a month later, he saw his way. Leslie, Lionel,

and himself sat together in the twilight, talking of her. Roger was

deeply moved by a sense of her presence there. He leaned forward to

them and spoke earnestly, asking them to join hands in building some

memorial to her. "She was like a new spirit coming to the world," he

said. "Like the new spirit. We ought to bring that new spirit into

the world. Let us form a brotherhood of three to do that. We are

three untrained enthusiasts. Let us prepare an organisation for the

enthusiasts who come after us. Let us build up an interest in the new

hygiene and the new science; in all that is cleanly and fearless. We

could start a little school and laboratory together, and run a monthly

paper preaching our tenets. All the ills of modern life come from dirt

and sentiment, and the cowardice which both imply. If we stand

together and attack those ills, year in and year out, we shall get rid

of them. Little by little, if one stands at a street corner, the crowd

gathers."

"Yes," said Leslie. "And you think dirt and sentiment the bad things?

Well, perhaps you're right. They're both due to a want of order in the

mind. What do you think, Lionel?"

"I?" said Lionel. "I say, certainly. We three are living in a most

wonderful time. The world is just coming to see that science is not a

substitute for religion, but religion of a very deep and austere kind.

We are seeing only the beginning of it."

They settled a plan of action together.

Roger went out into the garden, and down the hill, thinking of the

crusade against the weariness and filth of cities. There was an

afterglow upon the hills. It fell with a ruddy glare on the window of

his dream. It thrilled him. The light would fall there long after the

house had fallen. It had lighted Ottalie. It had burned upon the pane

when Ottalie's mother stood there. Nature was enduring; Nature the

imperfect; Nature the enemy, which blighted the rose and spread the

weed. Thinking of the woman who had waited for him there in his

vision, he prayed that her influence in him might help to bring to

earth that promised life, in which man, curbing Nature to his use,

would assert a new law and rule like a king, where now, even in his

strength, he walks sentenced, a prey to all things baser.