Just then Archie spoke in an odd muffled voice.
"I'm going very deep," he said. "But, Martin, you've made me so happy all day. You've hardly left me at all. You're getting to be part of me, aren't you? Let's talk about Helena. I say, she is a devil, isn't she?"
Jessie had not known that anything could be so horrible as the smiling face that the apparition bent on him.
"But you've ceased hating her," it said. "You love her, don't you?Always cling to love!"
"I know, I adore her. I believe she loves me too." He laughed and licked his lips and his voice sank, so that Jessie could catch no word of what he said. But he spoke for a long time, laughing occasionally, and making horrible little movements with his arms as if he clasped something. Now and then he would perhaps ask a question, for in the same inaudible manner the apparition answered him, laughing sometimes in response. Once or twice in that devilish colloquy she caught a word or two of hideous and carnal import, and her sickened love nearly withered within her. But because love is immortal, and cannot perish though all the blasts of hell rage against it, it still stood firm, though scorched and beaten upon. If she let it die, she felt that she would be no better than that visible incarnation of evil that smiled and bent over Archie.
Presently that devilish whispering ceased, and she saw that the apparition was beginning to lose its clearness of outline. Slowly it began to disintegrate into the weavings of mist out of which it came, and Archie said, "Good-bye, Martin, but not for long." Some of these streamers seemed to disperse in the air, others, like an eddying water-spout, seemed to draw back into that focus of light which lay over Archie's breast. Then that too began to fade, and in the stillness and quiet she again heard the creaking of his shirt as he lay back in his chair with closed eyes. Then the struggles and moanings, the writhings of his arms began again, and again subsided, and he lay quite still. Outside the night-wind stirred and dropped.
Then Archie spoke in a tired, husky voice.
"Hullo, Jessie," he said, "it's all over. By Jove, it was ripping. But I went awfully deep. I can remember nothing after Martin came. What did he say?"
Jessie got up.
"I heard hardly anything," she said. "He spoke in whispers, and so did you."
"Did you see him?" asked Archie.
"Yes, quite clearly. But I think I'll go to bed now. You look very tired."
He had got up and turned on the electric light, and stood by the door rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, I am tired," he said, "but I'm divinely happy. Tell me to-morrow whatever you can remember. Good-night, Jess. You are a good sort."
He detained her hand for a moment.
"We're cousins, Jess," he said, "and you're an awfully good friend.Won't you give me a kiss?"
For one second she shrank from him in nameless horror. The next she put it all from her, for her shrinking, no angel of the Lord, but a weak, cowardly impulse, stood full in the path of love, and while it was there she could not reach Archie.
"Why, of course," she said, kissing him. "Good-night, Archie; sleep well."
She went to her room, and turned on all the lights. She felt as if she had been assisting at some unclean orgy, she felt tainted and defiled by the very presence of that white evil thing that had stood close to her, and whispered and laughed with Archie. As yet she had but looked on it; what lay in front of her was to grapple with it and tear it out of the tabernacle which it had begun to inhabit. As far as she could understand the situation, it was not wholly in possession as yet, for part of it, when it materialized, seemed to form itself in the air, and part only to ooze out of its victim. Through what adventures and combats her way should take her she could form no conception, but what she had gained to-night, which was worth a hundred times the sickness and horror of her soul, was the certain knowledge that some spirit of discarnate evil was making its home in her beloved. It had usurped the guise of Martin, it masqueraded as Martin, Archie thought it was Martin. She remembered how, just a week ago, he had told her that he was like an empty house, denuded of the spirit that dwelt there, a living corpse by which he asked her to sit sometimes. At the time that had seemed to her just the figure by which he expressed the desolation of his heart; now it revealed itself as a true and literal statement. And there had begun to enter into him, as tenant of the uninhabited rooms, the horror that she had seen.
Jessie fell on her knees by her bedside, and opened her heart to the Infinite Love. It was through Its aid alone that she would be able to accomplish the rescue for which she was willing to give her life and soul.
Archie was walking back to the house in Grosvenor Square from Oakland Crescent, on the afternoon of Helena's wedding. Owing to the acute suspense of the European situation, the plans of the newly married couple had been changed, and, instead of setting off at once in the yacht for a month in the Norwegian fjords, they had gone to a house of Lord Harlow's in Surrey to await developments in the crisis or some kind of settlement. It was still uncertain whether England would be drawn into the war, though opinion generally regarded that as inevitable, and in this case no doubt Lord Harlow, an ex-Guardsman, would rejoin his regiment. Archie's mother, after the departure of the bridal couple, had also left town for Lacebury, taking with her Jessie and Colonel Vautier for a few days' visit; but Archie had decided to stop another night in London.
There had been the usual crowds and chatterings and excitement, the front pew kept for a princess, the signing of names in the vestry, the red carpets and wedding-marches, and the whole ceremony had filled Archie with the greatest amusement. But the subsequent proceedings had not amused him so much, and Helena's departure, looking prettier than ever, with her husband, had annoyed and exasperated him. He did not like to think of them together, and, though only a couple of nights ago he and Martin had found good cause for whispers and laughter over this, it was not so diverting when it actually occurred as it had promised to be. Part of that midnight seance which he could not at first remember had found its way into his conscious mind, and he knew that had been talked about, and had ascertained, with considerable relief, that Jessie had not been able to hear it. But now there was a savage bitterness in his mind about it; Helena seemed to have played him false again. She ought to have refused to marry the Bradshaw at the last moment, and it was an ineffectual balm to know she did not care for him. Perhaps, as Jessie had once said (though withdrawing it afterwards), she cared for nobody, but now Archie believed that she cared for him. It maddened him to think that she was the Bradshaw's "ABC," and in those circumstances he had judged it better to remain in town for the night, and distract his mind and soothe his longings with the amusement and aids to forgetfulness which London was so ready to offer to a young man who was looking for adventures.
But London proved disappointing: it did not seem to be thinking of its amusements at all. Archie called to see a friend who last week had shown himself an eager and admirable companion, but, found him to-day disinclined for another night of similar diversion, for he could neither think nor talk about anything else than the imminence of war. Archie felt himself quite incapable of taking any active interest in that; it weighted nothing in the balance compared with the stern duty of seeking enjoyment and forgetting about Helena. What if England did go to war with Germany? Certainly he hoped she would not; she had made no more than a friendly understanding with her Allies—indeed they were not even Allies, they were but well-disposed nations—but, even if she did, what then? There was an English fleet, was there not, which cost an immense amount of money to render invincible; but it was invincible. Why, then, should he bother about it, since he was not a sailor? It was further supposed that Germany had an invincible army; and there you were! And if England had no army at all to speak of, it was quite clear she could no more fight Germany on land than Germany could fight her by sea. So what on earth prevented a little dinner at a restaurant and an hour at a music-hall and a little supper somewhere and anything that turned up? Something always turned up, and was usually amusing for an hour or two. But his friend thought otherwise, and kept diving out into the street to get some fresh edition of an evening paper hot from the press and crammed with fresh inventions, and Archie left this insane patriot in disgust at his excitement over so detached an affair as a European war. He tried a second friend with no better success; there was a certain excuse for him, as he was a subaltern in the Guards. But for the first friend there was none, as he was only in an office in the city.
There were still four or five hours to get through before it would be reasonable to think about dinner, after which, even if he started alone, the hours would take care of themselves very pleasantly; but he had to fill the interval somehow. There were some proofs of his book waiting for him at home, and, hoping to get interested in this first-born public child of his brain, he sat down with a view to correcting them. But he found himself reading the pages as if there was nothing intelligible printed on them. True, if he forced himself to attend, he could see that grammatical sentences succeeded each other; but they conveyed no further impression. There was a lot about the sea, but why on earth had he taken the trouble to write it? He could remember writing it; he could call up an image of himself sitting in the garden at Silorno, eagerly writing, conscientiously erasing, walking up and down in the attempt to frame a phrase that should exactly reproduce some mood of his mind. But what had inspired those strivings and despairs and exultations?
Here was the record of them, and it seemed now to be about nothing. "The rain in the night had washed the white soil into the rim of the sea, and it was clouded like absinthe." He could well remember the search for, and the finding of that particular simile. He and Harry had been into Genoa a week before, and, out of curiosity, had ordered absinthe at a cafe. The drink,quadrink, was mildly unpleasant, resembling aniseed, but it had been worth while having it, merely to have got that perfectly fitting simile. The effect, too, had been rather remarkable; it produced a sort of heady lightness and sense of well-being; colours seemed strangely vivid and intensified, and…
Archie got up from his meaningless proofs. It was absinthe that would help him to fill up those dull hours till dinner-time, and he remembered having seen in some little French restaurant in Soho the stuff he wanted. Very likely you could get it anywhere, but he wanted it from that particular place, for there had come in one evening, when he dined there, a most melancholy-looking person who had ordered it and sat and sipped. Somehow the man's face had made an impression on him, so unhappy was it. He remembered also his face half an hour afterwards, when he began his dinner, and no serener, more contented countenance could have been imagined… So he must have his absinthe from that restaurant; clearly they had a very good brand of it there.
As he drove out alone that evening to dine, he heard the newsvenders shouting out the English ultimatum to Germany, and saw the placards in the streets. The shouting sounded wonderfully musical, and below the roar of the street traffic was a muffled harmony as of pealing bells. The drab colours of London were shot with prismatic hues; never had the streets appeared so beautiful. There was even beauty in the fact of the outbreak of war, for England was going to war for the sake of liberty, which was a fine, a noble adventure. And how lovely the English girls and boys were, who crowded the pavements! They were like beds of exquisite flowers. For himself, he was going back to dine at the French restaurant in Soho, for that would be in the nature of supporting our new Allies. Afterwards there were the streets and the music-halls, and all the mysteries of the short summer night. Then dawn would break, rose-coloured dawn, with her finger on her lips, and sweet, silent mouth, a little ashamed of her sister, night, but sympathetic at heart. Dawn was always a little prudish, a little Quakerish.
* * * * *
The days of a divine August went by, and the line of German invasion swept forward like a tide that knows no ebb over all Belgium and North-East France. The British Expeditionary Force started, and was swept back like the flotsam on the seashore. The call came for the raising of an army, and east and west, north and south, the recruiting offices were like choked waterways, and still the flood of men, in whose hearts the fact of England had awoke, poured in. Hospitals were gorged with the returning wounded; women by the hundred and by the thousand volunteered as nurses, and went to hospitals to be trained. The whole of comfortable England, intent hitherto on its sports, its leisure, its general superiority to the rest of the world, suddenly became aware that an immense and vital danger threatened it. A chorus of objurgation arose from the brazen-throated press, each organ striving to shout the loudest, at the unpreparedness of the country, and much valuable energy was spent in headlines and recriminations. There was a shortage of guns, a shortage of ammunition, a shortage of everything which constitutes the sinews of war. The only thing of which there was not a shortage was of those who threw aside all other considerations, such as income and secure living and life itself, and gave themselves to assist, in what manner they could, the cause for which England had gone to war.
To Archie this all seemed a very hysterical and uncomfortable attack of nerves. In several ways it affected him personally, for William, than whom there was no more reliable servant, was among the first to leave his well-paid situation and present himself at a recruiting office. Archie hated that: there would be the nuisance of getting a new servant, who did not know where precisely he ought to put Archie's tooth-powder, and how to arrange his clothes. William had announced the fact too, in the suddenest of manners; he brought it out as he brought in Archie's morning tea.
"And if you can spare me at once, my lord," he said, "I had better go onSaturday."
Archie felt peculiarly devilish that morning; it rained, and the absinthe that should have arrived last night had not come.
"I think it's very inconsiderate of you, William," he said. "But I suppose you expect to get on well, and draw higher pay than you get here. So I shall have to raise your wages. All right; I'll give you a pound a month more, and don't let me hear any more about it."
He knew perfectly well that this was not William's reason, but it amused him to suggest it. He wanted to see how William would take it. The fact that he knew that the man was devoted to him made the point.
William busied himself with razors and tooth-brushes, replying nothing.
"Can't you hear what I say?" asked Archie, pouring himself out his tea.
William faced round.
"Yes, Master Archie," he said. "I heard. But I knew you didn't mean that. You know how I've served you and worked for you all these years. You would scorn to think that of me, I should say."
Archie had noticed the "Master Archie" instead of "my lord"; both William and Blessington often forgot that he was "my lord," and it always used to please him that to the sense of love he was still a young boy. And, in spite of his irritation and peevish morning temper, it touched some part of him that still loved below the corruption that was spreading over him like some jungle-growing lichen. But he had to force his way through that to reply.
"You must do as you think right, William," he said.
William had finished the arrangements of his dressing, and stood for a moment by his bedside with Archie's evening clothes bundled on to his arm.
"Yes, Master Archie," he said. "And you'll be joining up too before long, won't you? I should dearly love to be your soldier-servant, sir, if you could manage it."
All Archie's ill-humour returned at that unfortunate suggestion.
"Perhaps you had better not be impertinent," he said. "That'll do."
William's face fell.
"I had no thought of impertinence, my lord," he said. "I only thought—"
"I told you that would do," said Archie.
* * * * *
Three days afterwards William left. He came to say good-bye to Archie, who did not look up from the paper he was reading. Archie was suffering inconvenience from his departure, and this was the best way of making William feel it. But when the door had shut again, and William was gone, he felt a sudden horror of the thing that seemed to be himself, and he ran out, and called William back. All these days he had not had a word or kindly gesture for him…
"Good-bye, William," he said. "I wish you all good luck. I've treated you like a beast these last days, and I'm awfully sorry. You're the best fellow a man could have, and you must try to forget the horrid way I've behaved."
William stood with his hand in Archie's for a moment.
"You're always my Master Archie, sir," he said.
* * * * *
Well, there was an end of William: before he had got back to his paper again Archie wondered what had possessed him to throw a kind word to a dog like that, who had left him at three days' notice to join this ridiculous military conspiracy. William did not care how much he inconvenienced Archie, who had always treated him more like a subordinate friend than a servant. He had helped William in a hundred ways: had given him old clothes, had constantly asked after his mother, had left his letters about for William to read if he chose. It seemed rank treachery…
Others were treacherous too; his mother, for instance, was immediately going up to town, to take charge of the house in Grosvenor Square, which was to be turned into a hospital for wounded officers. She was to become a sort of housekeeper, so Archie figured it, and merely superintend domestic arrangements. She would have nothing to do with the nursing and the surgery, which had a certain fascination… He could picture a sort of pleasure in seeing a man's leg cut off, or in standing by while doctors pulled bandages off festering wounds. To feel well and strong while others were suffering had an intelligible interest: to witness decay and corruption and pain was a point that appealed to him now. But Lady Tintagel was going to do nothing of the sort: she was just going to be a housekeeper. It was very selfish of her; Archie would certainly want, from time to time, to go up to town and spend a night or two there, and now he would have to go to a hotel or a club, instead of profiting by the spacious privacy of his father's house. Charity begins at home; and his mother had started charity on most extraneous lines. Jessie had followed this lead, "the lead of so-called trumps," as Archie framed a private phrase. She would start by being not even a housekeeper, but a sort of kitchen-maid at the same hospital. She had an insane desire to work, to do something that cost her something, instead of engaging a kitchen-maid, and paying her wages to go to some hospital or other. There was a craze for "personal service," instead of getting other people to do work for you, if you felt work had to be done. People wanted to "do their bit," to employ an odious expression which was beginning to obtain currency. The nation was going to be mobilized; hand and heart had to serve some vague national idea. Occasionally, as on the night when war was declared, Archie saw an aesthetic beauty in the notion of upholding rights and liberties; but he had not then reckoned with the fact that personal inconvenience might result from that quixotic revolution. Quixotism was fine in theory, but it was a dream, not to be encouraged in waking hours, when far more important and realizable commodities, like whisky and absinthe, engaged the true attention.
But, whoever else was treacherous, his father at least was loyal, and showed no sign of becoming a butler or a footman, to correspond with his wife and Jessie. Occasionally some grave report concerning the German advance through Belgium used to reach his brain, and he would walk up and down his room in the evening with a martial tread, and a glance at a sword that hung above his writing-table, and wish he was younger and able to "have a go" at those invading locusts. But invariably this mood, which was always short, was succeeded by another, not bellicose but domestic.
"This damned war is going to break up home-life in England," he would say, "and I've no doubt that was what the Germans aimed at. And they're succeeding too. Look at this house: there's you mother going to leave us, and there's Helena's husband expecting every day to be sent to France, and there's Jessie leaving her father to wash up dishes. What's going to become of our English homes if that goes on?—for, mark you, they are the root of our national life. It's digging up the trees' roots to break up English homes. You and I, Archie, are the only ones who are staunch to our homes. Pass me that bottle, will you?"
"May I help myself on the way?" said Archie.
"Yes, of course, my dear boy. I say, it was a funny state of things when you and I used to have our evening drinks alone, instead of enjoying them and chatting over them together. Your man, William, too, he's gone and enlisted, hasn't he? The old bulwarks of England are going fast: the homes are being broken up, and the very servants come and go as they choose. An establishment was an establishment in the old days: it all stood and fell together, if you see what I mean. But I wish I was young enough to have a go at the Boches."
"I'm thinking of going," Archie would say, merely in order to enjoy his father's reply.
"Well, in my opinion, you'll be doing a very wrong thing, then," said Lord Tintagel. "I hope you won't seriously think of that. I tell you your duty is here, with your poor old father. When I'm gone you may do what you please, and I daresay you won't have very long to wait. But, while I'm here, I hope you'll remember that they say in church 'Honour thy father and thy mother.' You can't go behind the commandments, or the psalms, whichever it is."
But these sessions in Lord Tintagel's room of an evening, with the liquid in the decanter sinking steadily like a well in time of drought, were becoming rather tedious to Archie. Since his discovery of absinthe they had even become rather gross, and he congratulated himself on having seen the sordidness of mere swilling. That sort of thing was only fit for coarse, rough tastes; it seemed to him to lack all delicacy and aesthetic value, and he often left his father, who congratulated him on his abstemiousness after no more than a friendly glass of good fellowship, and went upstairs to his room to enjoy subtler and more refined sensations. Indeed, his chief interest in that half-hour or so in his father's room was derived from the sight of his father's heavy potations, the struggle of his maundering thoughts to emerge into language, much as a tilted half-moon struggles to pierce the flying clouds on some tempestuous night. The sight of his father's deterioration and gradual wreck somehow fascinated him; there was decay and corruption there, and those no longer aroused in him that horror with which in dream he had observed the emergence of the writhing worms from the white statue of Helena. Such things were no longer disgusting and repulsive: they claimed kinship with something in his soul that was very potent. Once Martin had alluded to that vision as a warning, and he had not taken that warning, in consequence of which he had passed an utterly miserable month after Helena's rejection of him. Now values had altogether changed: decay no longer revolted him. But, with a hypocrisy that had become characteristic of him, he told himself that the sight of his father's nightly intoxication was a lesson to himself. He must observe that degrading spectacle, and learn from it what the result of too much whisky was. And then he retired to his bedroom to think it over as he sipped the clouded aroma of his absinthe.
Jessie came down for another week-end before she took her kitchen-maid situation, and brought the news that a fresh draft of Lord Harlow's regiment was ordered to the front, and that he would leave for France within the next day or two.
Archie felt a wild desire to laugh, to skip, to show his intense appreciation of these tidings. But he remembered that Jessie was not his confidante to that extent, and checked his exuberant inclination.
"Poor Helena!" he said, with an accent of great sincerity. "She must be broken-hearted. Why, they've only been married a fortnight, if as much."
It was excellently said, and Jessie felt she would have shown herself an infidel, with regard to the general decency of the human race, if she had not accepted those words with the sincerity with which they surely must have been uttered. She resolutely put away from her all those misgivings that had assailed her when first she knew of Archie's changed attitude towards her sister.
"You have been a brick about Helena," she said. "I want to tell you that. Your forgiveness of the way she treated you seems to me beyond all praise."
"Oh, nonsense," said he lightly. "Besides, it was so dreadfully uncomfortable being always angry and miserable. Martin showed me that. But about Helena: how is she bearing it?"
It was now Jessie's turn to be obliged to cloak her meaning.
"Very calmly and bravely," she said.
"She would," said Archie enthusiastically. "One always felt there was a steel will behind all Helena's gentleness. What will she do, do you think? Would she perhaps like to come down here? There isn't much to offer her, but then London in August doesn't offer much either."
Suddenly all Jessie's mistrust stirred and erected itself. She could not believe that this scheme, which would throw Helena and Archie completely together, could be made with the apparent innocence with which it was put forward. How was it possible that Archie, who so few weeks ago was in such depths of misery and bitterness, could honourably suggest so dangerous a plan? It could not be Archie who suggested it: it came from that smiling white presence which she had seen in his room not many nights ago. And it was just that which she could not say to him.
"It's nice of you to think of that," she said.
"Not a bit: it would be nice for me, not nice of me. And besides," he added, with an amazing cynicism, "it would be my way of 'doing my bit,' which everybody is talking about, if I could make things cheerfuller for pretty women like poor Helena, whose husband has gone out to fight."
The moment he had said it he was sorry. But for the moment he had forgotten he was speaking to Jessie: the sentence had come out of his mouth as if he was but talking to himself. Also it introduced the suggestion of his own forbearance to enlist.
There was a rather awkward silence, and he felt irritated with Jessie for not changing the subject which he had so incautiously brought forward. But that was like her. She had no tact in such matters, refusing to be insincere, when insincerity was so simple a matter. His irritation grew on him, and at the same time he wanted to know what Jessie thought of his remaining inertly here, while all his contemporaries were enlisting. Why he wanted to know he did not define: the motive perhaps belonged to the time when Jessie had been so good a friend, and perhaps he knew that she was so still.
"Or do you think that I ought to behave like William, and serve my country?" he asked.
Jessie sat with eyes downcast for a moment. Then she raised them and looked him in the face, with all her affection and sincerity alight in them.
"Do you really want to know what I think, Archie?" she asked.
"Certainly I do."
"Well, I can't understand your not doing it," she said. "At the same time, I think it is a matter about which you must decide for yourself."
The sincerity of his manner equalled hers. He never spoke with more apparent frankness.
"Shall I tell you why I don't?" he said. "It's this. Do you remember one night our finding that my father was breaking the contract he made with me about drinking? Do you remember how sordid and horrible the discovery was?"
Jessie remembered quite well how Archie had laughed at it.
"I remember the evening," she said.
"Well, we've renewed our contract," said he, "and I'm the only person in the world who can keep my father to it. If I left him he would drink himself to death. Where, then, do you think my duty lies, Jessie? Isn't it clearly for me to save my father? Can there be a more obvious duty than that? Do you think I have a very delightful life down here, all alone with him? Wouldn't it be vastly easier for me to join my friends and go out alongside of them? I know my conduct lays me open to misconception, but I must be thick-skinned over that. But I hope you won't misjudge me. Besides, my father has said that he forbids me to go. Of course I could leave him; he doesn't lock me up. But I can't see how I should be right in leaving him. I'm the one anchor he has left."
He paused a moment, thinking over, with that stupendous swiftness of brain that was the result of Martin's inspiration, all he had said, and remembered his light cynicism with regard to his "bit."
"I know I rather shocked you just now," he said, "when I spoke of its being 'my bit' to console pretty women whose husbands had gone out. But sometimes one has to be flippant to conceal one's real thoughts on a serious subject, for I did not foresee then that we should talk it out. So there's the end of that jest."
So that had been a jest, not to be taken seriously. But it was a grimmer affair for Jessie not to be able to take seriously Archie's seriousness. For a moment the frankness of his manner had convinced her, but very soon her conviction collapsed like a house of cards as he went on speaking. The horribleness of the discovery of his father's drinking, for instance, when what she remembered was Archie's laughter! If he could say that, what credence could possibly be placed in the picture he had drawn of himself as his father's last hope? Or what in the image of himself as one who must silently bear cruel misconception? She could believe none of it…
Yet it was not the Archie whom she loved with all the sweetness and strength of her nature who spoke, but the Thing that was possessing him and filling his soul from the reservoir of some immense abyss of pure evil. She felt sure she did not misjudge him; true and infinitely tragic was her comprehension.
"It is entirely for you to decide, Archie," she said. "I think I fully appreciate the worth of your reasons."
Indeed, she knew not what else to say, though the bitter doubleness of her words cut her to the heart. But, if she could help Archie at all, she must at all costs retain such confidence as he gave her, must not give him the chance of quarrelling with her.
To her great relief, he seemed to accept the literal value of her words, and took her arm. And this time she felt in her soul that there was sincerity in his speech.
"You are a good friend, Jessie," he said. "Don't give me up, will you?"
"I couldn't," she said quietly.
* * * * *
They were strolling together by the edge of the lake in the hour of sunset, and Jessie, though sick at heart and tortured by the weight of her forebodings, and the tempest of fire and blood which had burst on Europe, yet tried to open her heart to the sweet spell of the tranquil evening. Somewhere behind the cloud of evil which had so suddenly taken shape in that host of barbarians who already had overrun Belgium, and which, no less, was invading the spirit of the boy she loved with the uttermost fibre of her being, there shone the eternal serenity of Omnipotent Mercy. But He dealt through human means; it was through those who had left love and home and ease behind them to perish in France that that torrent would be stayed, and through her, though in ways she could not conjecture, would come the delivery of her beloved. And in the rose-flecked sky, the leafy towers of the elms, the bosom of the lake, that Power also dwelt, no less than in the hearts that yearned for its presence and its manifestation. As in a glass darkly she beheld its reflection, which nothing could ever shatter. Of that she must never lose sight, nor cease to keep her inward eye fixed on the gleam, which some day would signal to her.
About a week later Archie was spending a delectable morning at the bathing-place. Never had there been so superb an imitation of Italian weather in England as this year, and day after day went by in unclouded brightness and strong, fresh heat. In those delightful conditions it had been perfectly easy for him to take his mind completely away from the war, and the misconceptions which he was possibly suffering under. He gave every morning but the briefest glance to the paper, for there was a tiresome uniformity about the news, and a monotonous regularity about the daily map, which marked the progress of the German line across North-East France. He gave hardly more thought to Helena, who seemed to think it more appropriate to stay in London with her father, just for the present, but had written the most characteristic of letters, saying how sweet Archie's sympathy was to her, and how acute her anxiety concerning her husband. Certainly at the moment this was the right attitude to take, and Archie really did not much care whether she was here with him or not, for he had found his way into the Paradise that forms the portico of the palace where the absinthe-drinker dwells, and not yet had he penetrated into the halls of Hell that lie beyond.
His pleasure in the fact of being alive, in the colours of morning and evening, in the touch of cool waters, in the whispering of wind among the firs, were quickened to an inconceivable degree; it was impossible to want anything except the privilege of enjoying this amazing thrill of existence. And with it there had returned to him the need of expressing himself in writing; a new aspect of the world had been revealed to him, and without struggle, but with an even-flowing pen he set himself to record it, in veiled phrases and descriptions through which, as in chinks of light seen at the edges of drawn blinds, there came hints and suggestions of the fresh world that had dawned on him. Where before it was the clear stainlessness of the sea, the purifying breath of great winds that had been his theme, now instead the satyr crouched in the bushes, the snake lay coiled in the heather. It was from the slime and mud and from among blind crawling things that the water-lily sprang, and where before the enchantment of life moved him, he felt now only the call of putrefaction and decay. The lethal side of the created world had become exquisite in his eyes, and the beauty of it was derived from its everlasting corruption, not from the eternal upspringing of life. Lust, not love, was the force that kept it young, and renewed it so that the harvest of its decay should never ceased to be reaped. His mind had become a mirror that distorted into grotesque and evil shapes every image of beauty that was reflected in it, and rejoiced in them; it seemed to him that all nature, as well as all human motive, was based upon this exquisite secret that he had discovered. But it would never do to state it with what he considered the bald realism of those ludicrous sea-pieces he had written at Silorno; he must wrap his message up in a sort of mystic subtlety so that only those who had implanted in them the true instinct should be able to fill their souls with the perfume of his flowers. Others might guess and wonder and be puzzled, and perhaps see so far as to put down his book with disgust that was still half incredulous; but only the initiated would be able to grasp wholly the message that lurked in his hints and allusions. His style, underneath this new inspiration, had developed into an instrument of marvellous beauty, and often, when he had written a page or two, he would read it out aloud to himself, in wonder at that exquisite diction, and all the time he felt that he was reading aloud to Martin, and that Martin had dictated to him.
He was employed thus on this particular morning down at the bathing-place. He had already had a long swim, and, without dressing, lay down on the short turf and got out his writing-pad, when his new servant, who had taken William's place, came down with a telegram for him. He was a very good-looking boy, quick in movement and swift to smile, and already Archie wondered how he could have regretted the departure of plain middle-aged William. Only last evening Archie, idly glancing through a field-glass, had seen the boy far off in the meadow beyond the lake in company with an extremely pretty housemaid whom he had often noticed about the passages. The two had sat there some time talking, and then Archie saw the boy look quickly round, and kiss her. He liked that immensely; that was the way youth should behave. He almost hoped that it was Thomas who had taken from his table one of those new ten-shilling notes that he had missed. He mustn't do it too often, for that would be a bore; but Archie liked to think the boy had taken it, and perhaps converted it into a decoration for the pretty housemaid. Anyhow, Thomas, with his handsome face and his kissings in the meadow, and his possible pilferings, was an attractive boy, and clearly developing along the right lines.
The boy hesitated a moment, seeing Archie dripping and naked.
"I beg your pardon, my lord," he said, "but there came a telegram for you, and I thought I had better bring it down."
"Certainly, but why beg my pardon?" said Archie. "Don't be prudish. I daresay you've got arms and legs as well as me, haven't you?"
Thomas grinned with that odd shy look that Archie had noticed before.
"Yes, my lord," he said.
"Then what is there to be ashamed of?"
Archie opened the telegram and read it, and suddenly bit his lip to prevent his laughing.
"Is there an answer, my lord?" asked the boy. "I brought a form down in case."
"Well done. Yes, there is an answer."
Archie hesitated a moment before directing the form to Helena. Then he wrote:
"Deepest sympathy with the terrible news. Command me in all ways. Your devoted Archie."
"Send that at once, will you?" he said.
When the boy had gone Archie read the telegram again, which was from Jessie, and told him that Lord Harlow had been killed at the front. Then he smothered his face in his bent elbow, and lay shaking with laughter.
On a September morning, some fortnight later, Archie was waiting in the drawing-room at Oakland Crescent for Helena's entry. He had seen her twice since her husband's death, and it struck him now that she always kept him waiting when she asked him to come and see her, and ascribed to that the very probable motive that she expected thereby to increase his eagerness for her coming. Certainly he wanted her to come, because he was much interested and amused in the conventional little comedy she was playing, and he looked forward to the third act, on which the curtain would presently ring up. In the interval he sat very serenely smiling to himself, and tickling the end of his nose with three white feathers that he had received in the street to-day. That always diverted him extremely; a rude young woman would come up (she was invariably square and plain, and had a knobby face like a chest of drawers) and say, "Aren't you ashimed not to be serving your country? You're a coward, you are," and then she would give him a white feather. He had quite a collection of them now; there were nine already which he carefully kept in his stud-box, and these three all in one day were a splendid haul.
He had, to occupy his mind very pleasantly, the remembrance of his previous interviews with Helena, which formed the two existing acts of the comedy. In the first she had come in, looking deliciously pretty in her deep mourning, and, with her head a little on one side, had held out both her hands to him. They had stood with hands clasped for quite a long time, and then Archie kissed her because he was rather tired of holding her hands, and because he enjoyed kissing anything so pretty. That had caused a break, and they sat down side by side, and Helena made some queer movements in her throat, which seemed to Archie to be designed to convey the impression that she was repressing her emotion. But they did not quite fulfil their design; they looked rather as if they were due to the desire to pump up rather than keep down. Then Helena gave a long sigh.
"Oh, Archie," she said, "I am utterly broken-hearted. It was so sudden, so terribly sudden. I shall never get over it. Think! We had been married only a fortnight, and next day I got a letter from him, after I knew he was dead. Such a sweet little letter, so cheerful and so loving."
Archie expected something of this sort: its conventionality, its utter insincerity, amused him enormously. And, wanting more of it, he said just the proper sort of thing to encourage her to give it him.
"Oh, my dear," he said, "but how you will love and cherish that letter!I don't suppose you were once out of his thoughts all the time he was inFrance."
She shook her head.
"I am sure of it," she said. "Ah, what a privilege to have been loved as I was loved by such a noble, manly heart. I must always think of that, mustn't I?"
Archie took her hand again. The touch of those soft, cool fingers gave him pleasure; so, too, did the answering pressure of them.
"Yes, indeed," he said. "And you must remember, too, that it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
She repeated the quotation in a dreamy meditative voice.
"Yes, that is so true: it does me good to think of that," she said. "And I mustn't think of him as dead really. He is just as living as ever he was. He was so fond of you too. We often spoke of you. And his quaint, quiet humour!…"
That was the general note of the first act: it had been short, for the conversation suitable to it was necessarily limited. The second showed a great advance in scope and variety of topics. Also thetempowas quite changed: instead of its beinglargo, it was at leastandante con moto.
This time, after again keeping him waiting, she had entered with a smile.
"What a comfort you are, Archie!" she said. "I have been looking forward to seeing you again. Somehow you understand me, which nobody else does. I feel all the time that neither darling Jessie, whenever I see her, which isn't often, for she is so busy, nor daddy quite understand me. I mean to be brave, and not lose courage, not lose gaiety even, and I think—I think that they both misjudge me. They expect me to be utterly broken. So I was at first, as you know so well, but I tried to take to heart what you said, and force myself not to despair. I feel I oughtn't to do that: I must take the burden of life up again with a smile."
Her hand lay open on her knee; as she said this, she turned it over towards him, making an invitation that seemed unconscious. He slipped his long brown fingers into that rosy palm. She was astonishingly like a girl he met a night or two ago.
"I must get over this awful feeling of loneliness," she said, "and you are helping me so deliciously to do so. Daddy is busy all day; I scarcely see him. Jessie is busy also. I think she enjoys washing up knives and forks and plates for soldiers, though of course that doesn't make it any less sweet of her to do it. But, anyhow, she hasn't got much time for me. I wish—no, I suppose it's wrong to wish that."
"Well, confess, then," said Archie, smiling at her.
"Yes, dear father-confessor, though I ought to say boy-confessor, for you look so young! Well, I'll confess to you. I—I'm sure you won't be shocked with me. I wish Jessie cared for me a little more. She is my sister, after all. But I daresay it's my fault. I haven't got the key to her heart. And, with Jessie and daddy so full of other affairs, I do feel lonely. But when you are here I don't. I don't know what I should have done without you, Archie. I think I might have killed myself."
This was glorious. Archie gave a splendid shudder.
"Don't talk like that," he said, in a tone of affectionate command. "You don't know how it hurts."
"Ah, I'm sorry. It was selfish of me. Do you forgive me?"
"You know I do," said he.
She had brought into the room with her a long envelope, and rather absently she took out from it an enclosure of papers.
"I got this to-day from the lawyers," she said. "It's about my darling's will, I think. I wonder if you would help me to understand it, I am so stupid at figures."
She slid a little closer to him, leaning her hand on his shoulder and looking over him as he read. The document required, as a matter of fact, very little exercise of intelligence. The house in Surrey where they had spent the week of the honeymoon was hers; and so was a very decent income of L15,000 a year, left to her without any condition whatever for her life; it was hers absolutely. The disposition of the rest of his fortune depended on whether she had a child. The details of that were not given: his lawyer only informed her what was hers.
She hid her face on the hand that rested on Archie's shoulder.
"Oh, Archie, I can never go back to that house," she said, "at least not for a long time. It would be tearing open the old wound again."
"Yes, I understand that," said he, with another pressure of his fingers. And, thinking of the L15,000 a year without conditions, he had a wild temptation to console her further by quoting—
"Let us grieve not, only findStrength in what remains behind."
But he refrained: though, apparently, there was no limit to Helena's insincerity, there might be some in her acceptance of the insincerity of others.
"Oh, you do understand me so well," she said. "And, Archie, I want to ask a horribly selfish thing of you, but I can't help it. I am all alone now, except for you. You won't go out to the war, will you? I don't think I could bear it if you did."
It was quite easy for him to promise that, but an allusion to the misconception he might incur made his acquiescence sound difficult and noble.
Since then, up to the day when he was now expecting her entry for the third act, he had thought over the whole situation with the imaginative vision which absinthe inspired. He had not the slightest doubt in his mind that Helena, according to her capacity for loving, was in love with him, and that she thought he was still in love with her. But, when he considered it all, he found he had no longer the slightest intention of marrying her, even though she had L15,000 a year for life without conditions attached. Plenty of money was no doubt a preventive of discomfort in this life, and he felt it was fine of him not to be attracted by so ignoble a bait. But no amount of money would really compensate for the inseparable companionship of Helena, with her foolishness, her apparent inability to understand that her insincerities, so far from being convincing and beautiful, were no more than the most puerile and transparent counterfeits. Certainly she aroused the ardour of his senses, but how long would that last? And, even while it lasted, how could it compare with his ardour for his absinthe-coloured dreams, and the ecstasy of his communion with the spirit that had made its home in him? She would interrupt all that; and, as a companion, she could not compare with his father. She would always be wanting to be caressed and made much of and admired and taken care of. It would soon become most horribly tedious.
There was a further reason against marrying her, which was as potent as any. He would forfeit his revenge on her, if he did that. Once, dim ages ago, it seemed, and on another plane of existence, he had loved her, and she, knowing it, had fed his devotion with smiles and glances, and at the end had chosen him whose body now decayed in some graveyard of North France, already probably desecrated by the on-swarming Germans. Now it was Archie's turn; already, he was sure, she expected to marry him, and she would learn that he had not the least intention of doing so. That delightful situation might easily be arrived at in the third act for which he was waiting now.
This time she came with flowers in her hand, and presently, as they sat side by side on the sofa talking, she put one into his button-hole. Instantly he interrupted himself in what he was saying and kissed it.
She gave him that long glance which he had once thought meant so much. It had not meant much then, from her point of view, but it meant a good deal more now. But to Archie it had passed from being a gleam of wonder to a farthing dip.
"Oh, you foolish boy!" she said.
He almost thought he heard Martin laugh.
"I don't see anything foolish about it," he said. "At least, if it's foolish, I've always been foolish."
Her lips moved, though not to speak: they just gathered themselves together, and a little tremor went down the arm that rested against his. He was perfectly certain of both those signals, and next moment he had folded her to him, and she lay less than unresisting in his arms.
Then she gently thrust him from her.
"Ah, how wrong of me," she said, "and yet perhaps it's not wrong. The dear Bradshaw would always want me to be happy. Perhaps he even thought of this when he left me so free. For this time, Archie, I shan't come to you empty-handed. But, of course, we mustn't think of all that for many months yet."
Archie, flushed and merry-eyed, looked at her with boyish surprise.
"Think of what?" he said.
"Ah, you force me to say it, do you? Of our marriage."
He was adorable in her eyes just then; she could hardly realize that so few months ago she had definitely put him from her. His warm, smooth face, his crisp, curling hair, the youthful roughness and ardour of his embrace, inflamed and ravished her.
He looked at her still inquiringly a moment, then threw back his head and laughed.
"Oh, you're delicious!" he said. "But marriage? What do you mean? A cousinly kiss, a little sympathy, a few dear little surrenders of each of us to the other: that's all I intended. Well, I must be off. Good-bye!"
Next moment, still choking with laughter, he was downstairs and out into the street. He could not resist looking up at the window, and waving a gay hand towards it. Something within him, that seemed the very essence of his being, shouted and sang with glee.
* * * * *
The house in Grosvenor Square, where his mother had become housekeeper and Jessie kitchen-maid, had at present in it only a few wounded officers from France, and during these two or three days in town Archie could still occupy his own bedroom, while his servant slept in the dressing-room adjoining. He was out very late that night, for the completeness of his revenge on Helena ran like a feeding fire through his veins, and both nourished and burned him.
Dawn had already broken when he let himself in, and went very quietly upstairs, not intending to go to bed till he had had an interview with Martin. All night he had felt as if Martin was bursting to come forth again; he was already intensely present, even though Archie had not yet sunk his conscious self and opened the door of mystic communication. That controlling spirit foamed and simmered within him; he could all but break open the door himself, and project himself without invitation. He was still just confined, but only just; it seemed that at any minute he might assert himself. But Archie, with the gourmand instinct that delays an actual fulfilment, teasing itself, while it knows the fulfilment is assured, lingered over his undressing, and planned to make himself cool and comfortable in his pyjamas, before he abandoned the fortress of his normal self. He brushed his teeth, he sponged face and neck with cold water, he arranged his chair in the window, and put on the table by his bed the moonstone stud on which he would focus his eyes, and stretched himself long and luxuriously till he heard his shoulder joints crack. Martin seemed in a great hurry to come to-night, but Martin must just wait till he was ready. And then, all of a sudden, he heard a tremendous noise of rapping. He knew that Martin had come, and an awful terror seized his soul, for Martin had come without being called.
At that precise moment his servant next door started up, wide awake, with some loud sound in his ears that seemed to come from Archie's bedroom. He tapped at his door, but, getting no answer, went in. He found Archie lying on the floor, curled up together, like some twisted root of a tree, foaming at the mouth. He ran downstairs to get help, and brought up one of the nurses who was on duty. She instantly telephoned for a doctor, and woke Lady Tintagel.
* * * * *
All that day Archie lay in this strange seizure, apparently quite unconscious. Sometimes a paroxysm would take hold of him, and he lay with staring eyes and teeth that ground against each other, and limbs that curled into fantastic shapes. In the intervals he remained still, stiff and rigid, his eyes for the most part shut, breathing quickly, as if he had been running. Then once again the panic and the agony would grip him, and with eyes wide with terror and foaming mouth he struggled and fought against the Thing that mastered him. But each paroxysm left him weaker, and it was clear that he would not be able to stand many more of these attacks. Yet no one could wish them prolonged; it would but be merciful if the end came soon, and spared him further suffering.
Towards sunset that day Jessie was sitting by him, with orders to call the nurse next door if he showed signs of the restlessness which preceded the return of a seizure. She knew that, humanly speaking, he was dying, but her faith never faltered that he might still be saved, and that through her and her love salvation might come to him. Medical science was of no avail; it could not combat the spiritual foe that had taken him prisoner. That rescue had to be made through spiritual means, and the two-edged sword by which alone his captor could be vanquished was the bright-shining weapon of love and prayer. It was in her hand now, as she watched and waited.
He lay quite still, breathing quickly and with a shallow inspiration, but there were no signs of the restlessness for which she had to look out. But presently she observed that his eyes were no longer closed, but were open and looking steadily at the brass knob at the foot of his bed on which a sunbeam, entering through a chink at the side of the drawn window-blind made a focus of light. And, all at once, she guessed that he was looking at this with purpose, and her soul, sword in hand, crouched ready to spring. Then from the bed came Archie's voice.
"Martin," it said.
There was a dead silence, and she saw forming in the air a little in front of him a nucleus of mist. It gathered volume from a little jet as of steam that appeared to come from Archie himself. Thicker and thicker it grew; strange lines began to interlace themselves within it, and these took form. The dimness of its outline grew firm and distinct, the shape stood detached and clear, and, bending over Archie with a smile triumphant and cruel, stood the semblance she had seen once before at midnight in Archie's room. He was no longer looking at the knob at the foot of his bed, but with eyes wide open and blank with some nameless terror he gazed at the apparition.
Jessie rose and stood opposite it on the other side of his bed. Her two-edged sword was drawn now, and its bright blade gleamed in the darkness of the evil that flooded the room. And then it seemed that that incarnation of it that stood beside Archie's bed was aware, for it turned and looked her full in the face, bringing to bear on her the utmost of its hellish potency.
For one moment against that awful assault her soul cried out in panic. It had not dreamed that from all the crimes with which the world had withered and bled there could be distilled a tincture so poisonous. And then her love rallied her scattered courage, and she stood firm again. Nothing in the world but love and prayer could prevail, but nothing, if once she could fully realize that, could prevail against them. In her hand, as in the hand of all who are foes to evil, was the irresistible weapon, could she but use its power to the full…
She stood, as she knew, in the face of the deadliest peril by which any living thing, into which the breath of God has passed, can be confronted. There is no soul so strong that evil can cease to be a menace for it, and here, facing her, was the power that had already perverted all that Archie held of goodness and humanity. There it stood, one victim already its helpless prisoner, and it lusted for more. And the wordless struggle, as old as evil itself, began.
She would not give ground. Her soul laid itself open, and let the light invisible shine on it. In this struggle there were no strivings or wrestlings; she had but to stay quiet, and in just that achievement of quietness the struggle lay. Once for a moment all Hell swirled and exulted round her, for her love for Archie let itself contemplate the human and material aspect of him; the next she put all that away from her, and again stood with his soul, so to speak, in her uplifted hands, offering it to God. In the very storm-centre of this evil which shrieked and raged round her, there must be, and there was, a space where the peace that passeth understanding dwelt in serene calm. The storm might shift and envelope her again in its bellowings, but again and yet again she had to regain the centre where no blast of it could penetrate.
How long this lasted she could not tell. Her body was quite conscious of its ordinary perceptions; the blind tapped on the window, and there came from outside the stir of distant traffic. But she did not take her gaze from those awful eyes that sometimes smiled, sometimes blazed with hate. Steadily and firmly she looked at them and through them, for behind them, as behind the cloud, was the sunlight of God.
And then there came a change. It seemed that the power she fought was weakening. Its eyes shifted; they no longer looked undeviatingly at her, but glanced round for a moment, as if they looked for some way of escape. They would come back to her again with fresh assault of smiles or hate, but each time they seemed less potent. More than once they left her face altogether for a while, and were directed on Archie, as if seeking the refuge there that they knew; but, with a wordless command that they were forced to obey, she summoned them back to her again, making the spirit that directed them turn the strength of its fury on her. She gave it no rest, fixing it on herself by the strength of love and prayer.
The eyes began to grow dim; the outline of the form began to waver. The interlacing lines out of which it was woven began to unravel again, and it grew shapeless. But it was not being absorbed into Archie; there were no streams of mist between him and it, as when it had first taken substance. Already through it she could see the wall behind it, and it grew ever fainter and thinner…
There was nothing left of it now, and for the first time since the struggle began, she looked at Archie. He was lying quite still with eyes closed again. And then she saw that by her side was standing another presence. It was identical in form and shape with that which had vanished, and it bent on Archie so amazing a look of love that her soul, spent and sick with struggle, felt itself uplifted and refreshed again. And for one moment it looked at her, and it was as if Archie himself was looking at her. And then it was there no longer. She hardly knew whether her physical eyes had seen it externally, or whether it had been some spirit-vision conveyed to them from within.
There came a sound from next door, and the nurse, who was there ready to be summoned, entered.
"Has he been quite quiet?" she asked, and, without waiting for an answer, she went to the bed. She looked at Archie a moment, then felt his elbows and knees, finding them pliant again instead of being stiff and rigid, and listened to his quiet breathing.
"But there has come an extraordinary change," she said. "The seizure has passed, and yet he's alive."
She beamed at Jessie.
"Well, you are a good nurse," she said. "But I think I'll just fetch the doctor."
She went out of the room, and Archie, who had lain quite motionless with closed eyes, suddenly stirred and looked at the girl.
"Why, Jessie," he said.
She came close to the bed.
"Yes?"
"What's happened?" said he. "I've had some awful nightmare. And then you broke it up. Hasn't Martin been here too?"
"Yes, Archie, I think so," she said.
He lay in silence a moment.
"Have you saved me again, Jessie?" he said. "You did once before at—atSilorno, when the lightning struck the pine."
She could find no answer for him; not a word could she speak.
He held out his hand to her.
"Jessie!…" he said.