Dimly visible in a recess of the black-oak bureau was Kali, G.o.ddess of Desire, and near her, in a narrow cupboard, the light impinged upon a white, smooth piece of stone which was attached to a wooden frame. It was the emblem of Venus Urania from the oldest temple in Cyprus. These priceless relics were all lent by Thessaly, as were an imperfect statuette in wood, fossilised with age and probably of Moabite origin, representing Ashtaroth, daughter of Sin, and a wonderfully preserved ivory figure, half woman and half fish, of Derceto of Ascalon. The sacred courtesans of the past and the Kitty Chesters of the present (mused Paul) all were expressions of that mystic principle, IEVE, upon which the universe turns as a compa.s.s upon its needle, and which, reproduced in our gross bodies, has led to the creation of the Groves of Paphos. That sublime Desire which should lead us to the great Unity and final fulfilment, would seem through all the ages to have driven men ever further from it. Would a day never dawn when all that uncontrolled Force should be contained and directed harmoniously, when the pure Isis of the Egyptian mysteries should cast down the tainted Isis whose lascivious rites were celebrated in Pompeii? Scarcely perceptible was the progress of mankind. In every woman was born a spark of Bacchic fire, which leapt up sweetly at the summons of love or crimson, shameful, at the beck of l.u.s.t. There were certain conditions peculiarly favourable to its evil development; loneliness, according to Kitty Chester, a loneliness beyond man's understanding....

Paul aroused himself from a reverie and remembered that he had been thinking of Flamby with a strange and lingering tenderness. The clock on the mantelpiece recorded the hour of two a.m., and he turned out the lights in the study and made his way upstairs. He had told Eustace not to wait up for him, and the house was in darkness. Before Yvonne's room Paul stopped, and gently opened the door. A faint sound of regular breathing, and the scent of jasmine came to him. He closed the door as quietly as he had opened it, and proceeded to the next, which was that of his own room.

When he retired he threw open the heavy curtains draped before the windows, and saw that the weather had cleared. White clouds were racing past the face of the moon. He fell asleep almost immediately, and the moon pursuing her mystic journey, presently shone fully in upon the sleeper. Unwittingly Paul was performing one of the rites of the old Adonis worshippers in sleeping with the moonlight upon his face, and thus sleeping he was visited by a strange dream....

Drunk with the wine of life, he ran through a grove of scented pines, flanked by thickets of giant azaleas and taunting one onward and upward to where faint silver outlines traced upon the azure sky lured to distant peaks. Etherealised shapes of haunting beauty surrounded him, and sometimes they seemed to merge into the verdure and sometimes it was a cloud of blossom that gave up an airy form as a lily gives of its sweetness, now bearing a white nymph, now an Apollo-limbed youth, sun kissed and G.o.dlike. Gay hued, four footed creatures mingled with the flying shapes, and all pressed onward; things sleek and eager hastening through the grove, swiftly pa.s.sing, hoof and pad; leaping girls and laughing youths; amid sentient flowers and trees whose life was joy.

Earth's magic sap pulsed through them all and being was an orgy of worship--worship of a bountiful Mother, of Earth in her golden youth....

He pa.s.sed thence to the banks of Egypt's Nile, and heard the lamentations of priests and wailing of women as a black ox, flower bedecked and wearing a collar encrusted with gems, was drowned in the turgid stream. Time and s.p.a.ce ceased to exist for him. Through the murk of cavernous pa.s.sages he paced, pausing before a pit in which reposed a sarcophagus of huge dimensions; and when the dim company and he had paid tribute to that which lay there, all ascended to a temple, lofty and awesome, its dizzy roof upheld by aisles of monstrous granite. To an accompaniment of sorrowful chanting, the doors of the altar were opened, and within upon the shrine rested a square-hewn statue. Jewelled lamps glowed and censers smoked before the image of the bull, Apis.

The sistrums called him to a shrine of Isis, where _kyphi_ was burning, and priestesses, fair royal virgins, made lotus offerings to the mother of light; but magic of old Nileland might not withhold him from the Rites of Ceres when the _Hymn to Demeter_ arose within those wonder halls of Ictinus. He saw the blood of a white kid flow upon the altar of Diana at Ephesus and with his own hands laid poppy and dittany at the pearly feet of the Huntress. The _Lament for Adonis_ wooed him to the Temple of the Moon, the _Hymn to Ra_ won him back to Egypt's G.o.d of G.o.ds. He lighted _Tsan Ihang_, sweet perfume of Tibet, before Gautama Buddha in Canton's Temple of Five Hundred Ginns and kissed the sacred covering of the Kaaba at Mecca.

Consciousness intruding upon sub-consciousness, the mind calling upon the spirit, he found himself questing a likeness, a memory, a furtive thought; and partly it took shape, so that it seemed to him that Apis, Isis, Orpheus and the Buddha had a common resemblance to some person living and human, known to him; whose voice he had heard, and heard again leading the Orphic hymn, chanting the Buddhist prayers and bewailing the pa.s.sing of Adonis. A man it was his memory sought, and alike in granite statue and golden idol he had detected him; in the silver note of the sistrum, in the deeps of the _Hymn to Ra_....

All blended into one insistent entreaty, voices, music, perfumes, calling upon him to return, but he forced his way through a pa.s.sage, stifling, low and laden with the breath of remote mortality like those in the depths of Egypt's pyramids. He came forth into a vast cathedral and stood before the high altar. As the acolyte swung the thurible and incense floated upward to the Cross, he, too, arose seraphic and alighted upon the very top of the dome. Below him stretched a maze of tortuous streets, thronged with men and women of a thousand ages and of all the races of mankind. Minaret, paG.o.da, dome, propylon, arch, portico jutted up from the labyrinth like tares amid a cornfield. Then a mist crept darkly down and drew its mantle over them all. A golden crescent projected above the haze, but it was swallowed up; a slender spire for long remained but finally was lost. He looked down at the basilica upon which he stood. It had vanished. He raised his eyes, and the mist was gone, but an empty world lay where a teeming world had been; a desert wherein no living thing stirred. A voice, a familiar voice, spoke, and the words were familiar, too. They melted into the sweet melancholy of the _Lament for Adonis_, and he awoke, dazzled, half blinded by the brilliancy of the moonlight.

PART THIRD

THE KEY

I

Paul's book, _The Gates_, was published in the spring. Answering, as it did, if not completely, the question upon the solution of which the course of so many human lives depended, it was received as great works were received in the Arcadian days of Victorian literature. It silenced Paul's contemporaries as thunder silences a human orchestra. Only two critics retained sufficient composure to be flippant. No living man commanded so vast an audience as Paul Mario, and now his voice spoke in a new tone. To some it came as a balm, to some it brought disquiet; in each and everyone it wrought a change of outlook. Following a period of strife wherein all save brute force seemed to have perished, it vindicated the claims of him who said that the pen was mightier than the sword. Copies found their way to Berlin but were confiscated by the police. A Vienna firm printed an edition and their premises were raided by the authorities. To the meanest intelligence it was apparent that one had arisen who had something new to say--or something so old that the world had forgotten it. By means of sacrificing half of his usual royalty Paul had contrived that _The Gates_ should be published at a price which placed it within reach of popular purchase. What profits still accrued to him, and these were considerable, he devoted to inst.i.tutes for the wounded and to the maintenance of Hatton Towers as an officers' convalescent home.

Because he did not seek to depict a modern battlefield, knowing that Shakespeare himself must have waxed trite upon such a theme, the h.e.l.l-pit of Flanders and the agony of France were draped behind his drama like a curtain. No man had come so near to the truth in naked words. His silence was the silence of genius. The tears of the world flowed through his work, yet no weeping woman was depicted. The word of Christ and the message of Mohammed alike were respected and upheld, but priest and _imam_ conspired to denounce him. Rebirth in the flesh he offered as a subst.i.tute for heaven and h.e.l.l. Love and reunion were synonymous. Not for ages unimaginable could man hope to gain that final state which is variously known as Heaven, Paradise and Nirvana; only by the doing of such evil as rarely lies within human compa.s.s could he be judged worthy of that extinction which is h.e.l.l. No soul could sink thus low whilst another mourned it; and was there a man so vile that no woman loved him? Whilst there was love there could be no h.e.l.l, for in h.e.l.l there was no reunion. Pestilence and war on earth corresponded with undivinable upheavals on another planet. "Ere a man's body has grown cold on earth he has stirred again in the womb of his mother."

Only by means of certain perversions of natural law, of which suicide was one, could man evade rebirth, and even thus only for a time. Sorrow was not a punishment but merely a consequence. Punishment was man-made and had no place in the wider scheme, could have no place in a universe where all things were self-inflicted. Germany symbolised the culmination of materialism, "the triumph of the Bull." To Germany had been attracted all those ent.i.ties, converging through the ages, whose progress had been r.e.t.a.r.ded by abandonment to materialism. "Caligula and Nero defile the earth to-day, and others even mightier in evil. A Messalina and a Poppae do not survive individually, for such as these are not human in the strictest sense, in that they lack what is called a soul which is a property common to humanity. The parable of the woman of Corinth who seduced Menippus, a disciple of Apollonius, is misunderstood. We have come to regard all mortal bodies as the tenements of immortal souls.

This is true of men but is not always true of women. Such women are not strictly mortal: they are feminine animals and their place in the scheme will be discussed later. To speak of their sins is to misuse the word.

They are sinless, as the serpent and the upas tree are sinless...."

Paul had discovered that his vast scheme might not be compa.s.sed in a single book. _The Gates_ was the first drama of a trilogy. In it he outlined the universal truth of which the churches had lost sight or which they had chosen to obscure. He offered a glimpse of the shrine but laid down no doctrine nor did he seek to impose a new philosophy upon the world. In his second book he proposed to furnish proofs of the claims advanced in the first, and in his third to draw deductions from the foregoing. In this he had made Euclid his model. Upon the necessity for a hierarchy and a mystic ritual he insisted. He maintained that orthodox Christianity had lost its hold upon Europe, touched upon causes and indicated how the world upheaval was directly due to the failing power of the churches. He proposed to remodel religion upon a system earlier than but not antagonistic to that of Christ. His claim that the systems of Hermes, Krishna, Confucius, Moses, Orpheus and Christ were based upon a common primeval truth he supported by an arresting array of historical facts. All of them had taught that man is re-incarnated, and because Western thought had been diverted from this truth and the fallacies of Heaven, h.e.l.l and Purgatory subst.i.tuted for simple Rebirth, Western thought had become chaotic. The figure of the Pope and the maintenance of a celibate priesthood had prolonged the life of the Church of Rome because, in Paul's opinion, these were survivals of that mysticism upon which the remote hierarchies were builded. "No religion in the world's history has held such absolute sway over a people as that of Ancient Egypt; no figure living in the memory of man has such majesty of awe as that of the royal high-priest of Amen Ra...."

On the day that _The Gates_ was published, Yvonne came down late to breakfast, a gossamer study all filmy lace, with the morning sun in her hair. The windows were open, and a hint of spring lent zest to every joy, the loamy fragrance of nascent plant life stealing into the room from the little garden. Tulips decorated the sideboard, for Yvonne loved tulips, and a big bowl of pink roses stood upon the centre of the breakfast table. Paul, glancing up from the pages of the _Daily Telegraph_, became aware of something vaguely familiar yet unexpected in his wife's face. She seemed listless, even slightly pale, and he experienced a sudden pang of an indefinable nature. Looking back over the past two years, he wondered if they had been as significant, as fully crowded with reality, for Yvonne as they had been for him. In Don's manner, when speaking of Yvonne, he had more than once detected a sort of gentle reproof and had wondered why Don, who understood most things, failed to perceive that Yvonne's happiness lay in her husband's work. But, this morning, Paul was thinking more particularly about a remark of Jules Thessaly's. Thessaly had urged him, before commencing his second volume to spend a month in Devon. "You need it, Mario, and your wife needs it more than you do."

Paul did not immediately broach the subject which now became uppermost in his mind, but following some desultory conversation, he said, "I should think Devon would be delightful just now. Suppose we run down for a week or two."

"I should be glad," replied Yvonne. "I should have suggested it earlier, only I knew that you could not finish _The Gates_ away from your library." She spoke in a curiously listless way.

"Could you be ready to go on Thursday, Yvonne?"

"Yes, quite easily."

"I can work upon my notes for the autumn book in Devon better than in London."

"But," began Yvonne, and stopped, staring unseeingly at the roses in the bowl upon the table.

"But what, Yvonne?"

"I was about to propose a complete rest, Paul, but I know it would be useless if the working mood is upon you."

"You realise what it means to me, Yvonne. I should no more be justified in laying down my pen whilst there was more work to do than a soldier would be justified in laying down his sword in the heat of battle. You do not feel that this task which I have taken up has made a gulf between us?"

"It has done so in a sense," replied Yvonne, crumbling a fragment of bread between her fingers. "But I have never been so foolish as to become jealous of your work."

"I might have been in the army and stationed on the other side of the world," said Paul laughing.

"I am not complaining about your work, Paul."

"Yet you are not entirely happy."

"What makes you think so?"

"I don't know. I sometimes feel that you are not."

"I am quite happy," said Yvonne in the listless voice, and presently she went up to her room, Paul looking after her in a troubled way. He was uneasily searching his memory for a clue to the significance of that expression, vaguely familiar but unexpected, which he had noticed in Yvonne's face. He lighted his pipe and went into the study.

Paul already was at work upon the second phase of his huge task. He was seeking to prove that the arts had taken the place of the inspired prophets and sibyls of old, that they were not reflections of the soul of a nation but were expressions of the creative Will--the _Od_ of Baron Reichenbach--and were in fact not effects but causes. Not only did he claim this for the avowed philosophers, but also, in some degree, for every writer, composer, painter or sculptor. In Russian literature he perceived a foreshadowing of the doom of Tzardom and imminent catastrophe. In the literature of France and England he sought to divine the future. The fervent imperialism of Kipling stirred his emotions, but left him spiritually cold. Patriotism was the mother of self-sacrifice, but also of murder, and Paul distrusted all forces which made for intolerance. The delicate word-painting of Pierre Loti, with its typically French genius for exalting the trivial, Paul studied carefully. He found it to resemble the art of those patient, impa.s.sive j.a.panese craftsmen who draw and colour some exquisite trifling design, a bird, a palm tree, and then cut the picture in half in order to fit it into a panel of some quaint little lacquered cabinet as full of unexpected cupboards and drawers as the Cretan Labyrinth was full of turnings. He studied the books of the living as Egypt's priests were wont to study _The Book of the Dead_, pondering upon Arnold Bennett, who could produce atmosphere without the use of colour, and H. G. Wells who thought aloud. In the hectic genius of D'Annunzio he sought in vain the spirit of Italy. He perceived in those glowing pages the hand of a man possessed, and should have been prepared to find his MSS. written in penmanship other than his own, like those of Madame Blavatsky's _Isis Unveiled_.

"It all means something, Don," he said one day. "We have been granted an insight to the psychology of the German people, which has enabled us to trace the thread running through their literature, art and music. Oscar Wilde, who wrote, with a style dipped in ambergris, was truly a manifestation of the German spirit which began to invade us subtly at about that time. His scented prose could not conceal this spirit from the perception of Richard Strauss. Strauss recognised it and welcomed it with the music of _nebels_, _kinnors_ and _tabors_, as the misguided children of Israel welcomed the golden calf. Nietzche's 'Thou goest among women?--Take thy whip' we see now to be no mere personal expression but the voice of the soul of Germany, a black thread interwoven in their creative art. There is a similar thread, but perhaps of silver, interwoven in our own and in the French art. Where does it begin and whither does it lead?"

Yet those days throughout which Paul laboured unceasingly for the greatest cause of humanity were lotus days for many. London was raided and rationed; London swore softly, demanded a change of government, turned up its coat collar and stumped doggedly along much as usual. Men fought and women prayed, whilst Paul worked night and day to bring some ray of hope to the hearts of those in whom faith was dead. The black thread crept like an ebon stain into the woof of the carpet. The image of the Bull was set up in many a grove hitherto undefiled, and Paul worked the more feverishly because it was one of the inscrutable cosmic laws that the black should sometimes triumph over the white.

Paul's intimacy with Jules Thessaly had grown closer than he realised.

Thessaly was become indispensable to him. Paul, had he essayed the task, must have found it all but impossible to disentangle his own ideas, or those due to direct inspiration, from the ideas of Thessaly or those based upon inquiries traceable to the astonishing data furnished by his collection. Item by item he had revealed its treasures to the man who alone had power to wield them as levers to move the world. Remote but splendid creeds, mere hazy memories of mankind, were reconstructed upon these foundations. The Izamal temples of Yucatan were looted of their secrets--the secrets of a great Red Race, mighty in knowledge and power, which had sought to look upon the face of G.o.d before the Great Pyramid was fashioned, whose fleets had ruled the vanished seas known to us as the Sahara and North Africa, whose golden capital had looked proudly out upon an empire mightier than Rome--an empire which the Atlantic Ocean had swallowed up. The story of this cataclysm which had engulfed Atlantis, brought to new lands by a few survivors, had bequeathed to men the legend of the Deluge. The riddle of The Sphinx, most ancient religious symbol in the known world, was resolved; for Paul saw it to represent man emerging from the animal and already aspiring to the spiritual state.

War, pestilence and vast geographical upheavals alike were manifestations of spiritual conflict physically reflected. Some of the German philosophers had perceived this dimly, but as one born in blindness fails to comprehend light, their vision was no more than hereditary memory of another pit of doom which had engulfed them. Those who spoke of casting down the spirit of Prussian militarism used metaphor veiling a truth profound as that which underlies the Holy Trinity, and which is symbolised by the Sphinx. As vultures swooped to carrion, as harlots flocked to Babylon, so had the unredeemed souls of the universe descended upon Germany....

Thus his concept of evil was universal, and to those who sought to fix "responsibility" for the war upon this one or that he raised a protesting hand. No man made the Deluge.

By subtle means, insidious as the breath of nard, corruption of primeval sin was spread from race to race. By like means it must be combated, Truth must be disguised if it should penetrate to enemy darkness. A naked truth is rarely acceptable, or, as Don expressed it, "Truth does not strip well." Paul discussed this aspect of the matter with Don and Thessaly one day. "We are all children," he said. "If it were not for such picturesque people as Henry VIII and Charles II we should forget our history for lack of landmarks. Carefully selected words are the writer's landmarks, and in remembering them one remembers the pa.s.sage which they decorated. I can conjure up at will the entire philosophy of Buddha as epitomised in the _Light of Asia_ by contemplation of such a landmark; Arnold's expression for a sheep, 'woolly mother.' There are other words and phrases which the art of their users in the same way has magically endowed: 'Totem' is one of these. It is for me a Pharos instantly opening up the fairway to a great man's philosophy.

'Damascus,' too, has such properties, and the phrase 'cherry blossom in j.a.pan' bears me upon a magical carpet to a certain street in Yokohama and there unveils to me all the secrets of j.a.panese mysticism."

"I quite see your point," Don replied. "In the same way I have never ceased to regret that I was not born in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. The possession of such a euphonious birthplace would have coloured all my life."

"But like the Scotsman you would have revered your home from a distance," said Thessaly. "I agree with you that it would have been an ideal birthplace if you had left it at so tender an age that you failed to recall its physical peculiarities. It is the same with women. In order that one should retain nothing but fairy memories of a woman--memories of some poetic name, of the perfume of roses, of beauty glimpsed through gossamer--it is important that one should not have lived with her. Herein lies the lasting glamour of the woman we have never possessed."

II