"I maintain," said the colourist, who was fiercely cynical, as might have been anticipated of one who consumed such large quantities of mustard, "that humanity is akin to the worm. The myth of Psyche and the idea that we possess souls arose simply out of the contemplation of colour by some primitive sensitive. Very delicately coloured young girls were responsible for the legend, but humanity in the bulk is colourless and therefore soulless. Large public gatherings fill me with intense personal disgust. From Nelson's point of view, a popular demonstration in Trafalgar Square must unpleasantly resemble a box of bait."
"Clearly you have never loved," said Don. "One day some misguided woman may marry you. Youwill awaken to the discovery that she is different from common humanity."
"Nearly every man considers his own wife to be different from other women—until the third or fourth, day of the honeymoon."
He was incorrigible; French mustard had embittered his life. "Some men are even more gross than women," he declared thoughtfully. "Cubically they are stronger, but their colouring is less delicate."
His yellow-haired companion watched him with limpid faithful brown eyes, hanging upon his words as upon the pronouncements of a Cumaean oracle. Having concluded his luncheon with a piece of cheese liberally coated in mustard he rose, shaking his head sadly.
"Don't shake your head like that," Don implored him. "I can hear your brains rattling."
But smileless, the cynic departed, and Flamby looked after him without regret. "If he painted as much as he talked," she said, "he would have to hire a railway station to show his pictures."
"Yes, or the offices of the Food Controller. His conversation is intensely interesting, but it doesn't mean anything. I have always suspected him of keeping coal in his bath."
Orlando James came in, standing just by the doorway, one hand resting upon his hip whilst he gnawed the nails of the other with his fine white teeth. He wore the colours of a regiment with which he had served for a time, and a silver badge on the right lapel of his tweed jacket. Presently, perceiving Flamby, he advanced to the table at which she was seated with Don. He had all the arrogance of acknowledged superiority. "Hullo, kid," he said, dropping into the chair vacated by the cynical one. "How do, Courtier. You look a bit cheap—been gassed?"
"No," replied Don; "merely a stiff neck due to sleeping with my head above the parapet."
James stared dully, continuing to bite his nails. "When are you going back?"
"As soon as my batman wires me that the weather has improved."
"Have you finished lunch? Let's split a bottle of wine before you go."
"No bottle of wine for me," said Flamby, "unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you'd be ashamed to know me." She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. "Isn't it time we started?" she asked, turning to Don. "Mrs. Chumley will be expecting us."
"Ah!" cried Don gratefully, glancing at his watch. "Of course she will. Where is the waiter?"
"You don't like James, do you?" said Flamby, as the car approached The Hostel.
"No. Vanity in a man is ridiculous, and I always endeavour to avoid ridiculous people. James is a clever painter, but a very stupid fellow. Seeing him to-day reminds me of something I had meant to ask you, Flamby. Just before I last came on leave you wrote at Paul's request to enquire if I considered it wise that you should go about with James and we discussed the point whilst I was home. You remember, no doubt?"
Flamby nodded. Her expression was very pensive. "Then I wrote and asked if you minded my seeing him occasionally for a special purpose, and you wrote back that you had every confidence in my discretion, which pleased me very much. Now I suppose you want to know what the special purpose was?"
"Not unless you wish to tell me, Flamby."
"I do wish to tell you," said Flamby slowly. "That was why I suggested coming here, because I knew all the time of course that Mrs. Chumley was away."
They entered The Hostel, deserted as it usually was at that hour of the day, passing into the courtyard, which already was gay with the flowers of early spring. The window-boxes, too, and vases within open casements splashed patches of colour upon the old-world canvas, the yellow and purple of crocus and daffodil, modest star-blue of forget-me-nots and the varied tints of sweet hyacinth. Flamby's tiny house, which Mrs. Chumley called "the squirrel's nest," was fragrant with roses, for Flamby's taste in flowers was extravagant, and she regularly exhausted the stocks of the local florist. A huge basket of white roses stood upon a side-table, a card attached. Flamby glanced at the card. "James again," she said. "He's some use in the world after all." She composedly filled a jug with water and placed the flowers in it until she should have time to arrange them.
"Is Chauvin expecting you this afternoon?" asked Don.
"No, not to-day. I love Chauvin, but I don't think I shall be able to stay on with him if I am to finish the other eight designs for the War Office people in time. Please light your pipe. Would you like a drink? I've got all sorts of things to drink."
"No, thank you, Flamby. We can go out to tea presently."
"No, let's have tea here. I have some gorgeous cakes I got at Fullers' this morning."
"Right. Better still. I will help."
Flamby tossed her tam-o'-shanter on to a chair, slapped the pockets of Don's tunic in quest of his cigarette-case, found it, took out and lighted a cigarette, and then curled herself up in a corner of the settee, hugging her knees. "Paul thinks I'm fast," she said.
Don, who was lighting his pipe, stared at her so long that the match burned his fingers and dropped into his cap, which lay beside him on the floor.
Flamby's visitors speedily acquired the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest."
"Dulce est desipere," replied Flamby, "but I am not jesting. Oh, that beastly Latin! Do you remember when I quoted Portia to you? It makes me go all goosey to think of some of the awful things I have said to people."
"You have said one thing, Flamby, which I must request you to explain," said Don gravely. "Paul is utterly incapable of harbouring an evil thought about anyone, and equally incapable of misjudging character."
"Ah, I knew you would say that, Don, and it is just that which worries me so."
"I don't understand."
Flamby snuggled her knees up tighter against her round chin and stared wistfully straight before her. A ray from the afternoon sun intruded through the window and touched her wonderful hair into magic flame. "Paul has altered the lives of a lot of people, hasn't he?" she asked.
"He has. I cannot doubt that he will become the centre of a world-wide movement. I received a letter only two days ago from a man who was with us at Oxford, and who entered the Church, assuring me that he had only awaited such a lead to resign his office and seek independently to spread the true doctrine. He is only one of many. I know several Army chaplains who have been troubled with serious doubts for years. They will rally to Paul as the Crusaders rallied to Peter the Hermit."
"I read his book," said Flamby, still staring unseeingly before her, "and something inside myself told me that every word of it was true. I know that I have lived before, everybody knows it, but everybody isn't able to realise it. Dad told me thatre-incarnation was the secret of life once when I asked him who his father was. He said, 'Never mind about that. Damn your ancestors!...' Oh! I didn't mean to say it! But, really he said that. 'It is yourspiritualancestry that counts,' he told me. 'There are plenty of noble blackguards, and it wasn't his parents who made a poet of Keats.' Dad convinced me in a wonderful way. He pointed out that a child born of a fine cultured family and one whose father was a thief and his mother something worse didn't start level at all. One was handicapped before he had the sense to think for himself; 'before he weighed in,' was how dad put it. 'If there is a just God,' he said—'and every man finds out sooner or later that there is, to his joy or to his sorrow—there are no unfair handicaps. It wouldn't be racing. Why should an innocent baby be born with the diseases and deformities of it's parents? Why should some be born blind?' What he called 'the hell-fire and brimstone' theory used to make him sick. He considered that most missionaries ought to be publicly executed, and said that in the Far East where he had lived you could see their work 'like the trail of a tin tabernacle across a blasted heath.' That sounds like swearing, but it's Shakespeare."
"I don't see," said Don, as Flamby became silent, "what this has to so with Paul's misjudgment of you, or your misjudgment of Paul. It simply means that you agree with him. You are such an extraordinarily clever girl, and have had so extraordinary a training, that I cannot pass lightly by anything you say seriously. What has led you to believe that Paul thinks ill of you, and why does it worry you that I think him incapable of such a thing?"
Flamby absently flicked cigarette ash upon the carpet. "According toThe Gates," she said, speaking very slowly and evidently seeking for wordswherewith to express her meaning, "everybody's sorrows and joys and understanding or lack of understanding are exactly in proportion to the use they have made of their opportunities, not just in one life but in other lives before."
Don nodded without speaking.
"A man who had come as near to perfection as is possible in this world would have found his perfect mate, what Paul calls his 'Isis-self.'"
"Embodied, in Paul's case, in Yvonne."
"He would be in no doubt about it, and no more would she. If she was below him he would raise her, if she was above him he might marry, but he would not mistake another woman for the right one. And things that convinced other men would not convince a true initiate. So I am worried about Paul, because if he is not a true initiate, where did he learn the things that are inThe Gates?"
Don's face was very grave. "You have been studying strange books, Flamby. What have you been reading?"
"Heaps of things." Flamby blushed. "I managed to get a Reader's ticket for the British Museum. I am interested, you see. But there are things in Paul's book and other things promised in the next which—oh!—I'm afraid I can't explain——"
"You cannot account for such knowledge in an ordinary mortal, and evidently something has occurred which has led you to regard Paul as less than a god. Tell me about it, Flamby."
Don stood up, and walking across the room looked out of the window into the quadrangle. The story of the Charleswood photographs, which Flamby had related with many a pause and hesitance, had seemed to cast upon the room a shadow—the shadow of a wicked hypocrite. Both were silent for several minutes.
"And you are sure that Paul has seen these photographs?" said Don.
"You must have noticed the change in him yourself."
"I had noticed it, Flamby. I am afraid you are right. I will go down to Devonshire to-night and——"
"You will not!"
Don turned, and Flamby, her face evenly dusky and her eyes very bright, was standing up watching him. "Please don't be angry," she said approaching him, "because I spoke like that. But I could never forgive you if you told him. If he can think such a thing of me I don't care. What have I ever said or done that he shoulddareto think such a thing!"
Don took both her hands and found that she was trembling. She looked aside, biting her lower lip. In vain she sought to control her emotions, knowing that they had finally betrayed her secret to this man in whose steadfast eyes she had long ago read a sorrowful understanding. At that moment she came near to hating Paul, and this, too, Don perceived with the clairvoyance of love. But because he was a very noble gentleman indeed, and at least as worthy of honour as the immortal Bussy d'Amboise, he sought not to advantage himself but to plead the cause of his friend and to lighten the sorrow of Flamby. "Have you tried hard not to care so much?"
Flamby nodded desperately, her eyes wells of tears.
"And it was useless?"
"Oh!" she cried, "I am mad! I hate myself! I hate myself!" She withdrew her hands and leapt on to the settee wildly, pressing her face against the cushions.
Don inhaled a deep breath and stood watching her. He thrust his hands into the pockets of histunic. "Have you considered, Flamby, what a hopeless thing it is."
"Of course, of course! I should loathe and despise any other girl who was such a wicked little fool. Dad would have killed me, and I should have deserved it!"
"Don't blame Paul too much, Flamby."
"I don't. I am glad that he can be so mean," she sobbed. "It helps me not to like him any more!"
"Paul is no ordinary man, Flamby, but neither is he a magician. How could you expect him to know?"
"He never even asked me."
Don, watching her, suddenly recognised that he could trust himself to pursue this conversation no further. "Tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James again," he said.
Flamby looked up quickly, and Don's hands clenched themselves in his pockets when he saw her tear-stained face. "I am afraid," she replied, "to tell you—now."
"Why are you afraid now, Flamby?"
"Because you will think——"
"I shall think nothing unworthy of you, Flamby."
"I went," said Flamby, twisting a little lace handkerchief in her hands, "because I was afraid—for Paul."
"For Paul!"
"You are beginning to wonder already."
"I am beginning to wonder but not to doubt. In what way were you afraid?"
"He is so sure."
"Sure that he has found the truth?"
"Not that, but sure that he is right in making it known."
Don hesitated. He, too, had had his moments of doubt, but he perceived that Flamby's doubts were based upon some matter of which at presenthe knew nothing. "Paul believes quite sincerely that he has been chosen for this task," he said. "He believes his present circumstances, orKarma, to be due to a number of earlier incarnations devoted to the pursuit of knowledge."
"Do you think if that was true he would make so many mistakes about people?" asked Flamby, and her voice had not yet recovered entire steadiness.
"I have told you that he is not a magician, Flamby, but you have still to tell me why you wanted to see Orlando James."
"I don't believe I can tell you, after all." Flamby had twisted the little handkerchief into a rope and was tugging at it desperately.
"Why?"
"Well—I might be wrong, and then I should never forgive myself. It is something you ought to know, but I can see now that I cannot tell you."
Don very deliberately took up his pipe from the table. "Here's an ash-tray," said Flamby in a faint voice. "Shall we go out to tea and see if we can cheer ourselves up a bit?"
"I think we might," replied Don, smiling in almost the old way. "Some place where there is a band."
As a direct result of this conversation, Paul received a letter two days later from Don. It touched whimsically upon many matters, and finally, "I have decided to add Orlando James to my list of undesirable acquaintances," wrote Don. "Don't let this harsh decision influence your own conduct in any way, but if at any time you chance to go walking with him and meet myself, pardon me if I fail to acknowledge either of you."
Paul read this paragraph many times. He received the letter one morning whilst Yvonne was out, she having gone into the neighbouring village, and when she came back he spoke of it to her. "Haveyou seen anything of Orlando James recently?" he asked.
Yvonne turned and began to arrange some fresh flowers in a bowl upon the cottage window-ledge. "No," she replied. "I have seen him rarely since the portrait was finished. Why?"
"I was merely wondering. He seems to be establishing a queer sort of reputation. Thessaly has thrown out hints more than once and Don quite frankly dislikes him."
"What kind of reputation, Paul?"
"Oh, the wrong kind for a portrait painter," replied Paul lightly. "I shall send him a cheque for the picture."
"But he has refused to accept any payment whatever."
"It was very flattering on his part to declare that its exhibition was worth so much to him, and to decline a fee, but nevertheless I shall send him a cheque to-night. Did you remember to go to the Post Office?"
"Yes." Yvonne turned slowly. "Here are the stamps."
"I can see," said Paul, "that either I must return to London or have Edwards come down here and put up somewhere in the neighbourhood. I have more work than I can handle unassisted."
"Let us go back to town, then, if you think it is hindering you to stay here."
"There is no occasion for you to return, Yvonne."
"Yes, but—I don't want to stay, Paul, if you are going. Really, I would rather not." There was something pathetic, almost fearful, in the insistency of her manner, and Paul had a glimpse again of that intangible yet tauntingly familiar phantom in his wife's bearing. A revelation seemed to be imminent, but it eluded him, and the more eagerly he sought to grasp it the further did it recede. "You don'twantto leave me behind, do you?" said Yvonne.
"Want to leave you behind!" cried Paul, standing up and crossing to where she stood by the window. "Yvonne!" He held her close in his arms, but there was no fire in the violet eyes, only a tired, pathetic expression.
The pageant proceeded merrily; these were merry days. And because it was rumoured that men who fought hard also drank hard, the brethren of the blue ribbon at last perceived their opportunity and seized upon it with all the vigour and tenacity which belong to those reared upon a cocoa diet. Denying the divinity of the grape, they concealed their treason against Bacchus beneath a cloak of national necessity, and denied others that which they did not want themselves. They remained personally immune because no one thought of imposing a tax upon temperance-meetings, hot-water bottles and air-raid shelters. "Avoid a man who neither drinks nor smokes," was one of Don's adages. "He has other amusements."
Paul continued his pursuit of the elusive thread interwoven in modern literature, and made several notable discoveries. "Contemplation of the mountainous toils of Balzac and Dumas fills me with a kind of physical terror," he said to Don on one occasion. "It is an odd reflection that they would have achieved immortality just the same if they had contented themselves respectively with the creation of Madame Marnefle and the girl with the golden eyes, D'Artagnan and Chicot. The memory of Dumas is enshrined in his good men, that of Balzac in his bad women. One represents the active Male principle, the Sun, the other the passive Feminine, or the Moon. I have decided that Dumas was the immediate reincarnation of a musketeer, and Balzac of a public prosecutor."
"Pursuing this interesting form of criticism," said Don, "at once so trenchant and so unobjectionable, to what earlier phase should you ascribe the wit of G. K. Chesterton for example?"
"To the personal influence of Dr. Johnson and his contemporaries. H. G. Wells would seem to have had no earthly experiences since he was a priest of Bel, or if he had they were comparatively colourless. Rudyard Kipling knew and loved the spacious times of Elizabeth. How clearly we can trace the Roman exquisite in Walter Pater and thebravoin George Moore. Stevenson was a buccaneer in whom repentance came too late, and who suffered the extreme penalty probably under Charles II. The author ofThe Golden Boughwas conceivably a Chaldean librarian, and from the writings of Anatole France steps forth shadowy a literaryreligieuxof the sixteenth century; but it is when we come to consider such cases as those of Spencer and Darwin that we meet with insurmountable obstacles. Thepatientiotypeprocess of Victor Hugo defies this system of analysis also, as does the glorious humanity of Mark Twain, and although Pinero proclaims himself a wit of the Regency, Bernard Shaw's spiritual pedigree is obscure. Nevertheless, all are weavers of the holy carpet, and our lives are drawn into the loom. All began weaving in the childhood of the world and each has taken up the thread again at his appointed hour."
Paul spent a great part of his time in Jules Thessaly's company. Thessaly had closed his town house, and was living in chambers adjoining Victoria Street. His windows commanded a view of an entrance to Westminster Cathedral, "from whence upward to my profane dwelling," he declared, "arises an odour of sanctity." From Thessaly's flat they set out upon many a strange excursion, one night visiting a private gaming-house whose patrons figured in the pages of Debrett, and, perhaps on thefollowing evening, Thessaly's car would take them to a point in the West India Dock Road, from whence, roughly attired, they would plunge into the Asiatic underworld which lies hidden beneath the names of Three Colt Street and Pennyfields. They visited a foul den in Limehouse where a crook-backed Chinaman sat rocking to and fro before a dilapidated wooden joss in the light of a tin paraffin lamp, listened to the rats squealing under the dirty floor and watched men smoke opium. They patronised "revue" East and West, that concession to the demand of youth long exiled from feminine society which had superseded the legitimate drama. "There are three ingredients essential to the success of such an entertainment," Thessaly pronounced: "fat legs, thin legs, and legs." They witnessed a knuckle-fight in Whitechapel between a sailorman and a Jewish pugilist. The referee was a member of a famous sporting club, and the purse was put up by a young peer on leave from the bloody shambles before Ypres. "Our trans-Tiber evenings," Paul termed these adventures.
He had seized upon a clue to the ills of the world and he pursued it feverishly. "If men realised, as they realise that physical illness follows physical excess, that for every moment of pain unnecessarily inflicted upon any living creature—a horse, a dog, a cage-bird—they must suffer themselves a worse pang, would not the world be a better place?" he asked. "That fighting peer is accounted a fine fellow by his companions, and in an earlier life, when the unshaped destinies of men were being rough-hewn with sword and axe, hewasa fine fellow. But that earlier influence now is checking his development. If he could realise that he will probably be reborn a weakling doomed to suffer the buffets of the physically strong, he would doubtless reconsider his philosophy. He has lost track of himself. Our childish love of animals,which corresponds to a psychic pre-natal phase, is a memory which becomes obscured as the fleshly veil grows denser—which the many neglect, but which the wise man cherishes."
"Heredity plays its part, too," said Thessaly.
"Quite so. It is difficult, sometimes almost impossible, to distinguish between the influences of heredity and those of pre-existence."
"More especially since few of us know our own fathers, and none of us our grandfathers. If our family tree record a line of abstemious forbears, and we mysteriously develop a partiality for neat rum and loose company, we hesitate whether to reproach ourselves for the vices of a previous existence or to disparage the morality of our grandmother."
Strange stories won currency at this time, too. Arising as he had done out of a cataclysm, Paul Mario by many was accepted as the harbinger of a second Coming. His claims were based upon no mere reiteration of ancient theories, but upon a comprehensible system which required no prayer-won faith from its followers, but which logically explained life, death, and those parts of the Word of Jesus Christ which orthodoxy persisted in regarding as "divine mysteries." Paul's concept of God and the Creation was substantially identical with that of Jacob Boehme and the Hermetic Philosophers. He showed the Universe to be the outcome of a Thought. Unexpressed Will desired to find expression, to become manifest. Such was the birth of Desire. Since in the beginning this Will was an Eye which beheld nothing because nothing outside Itself existed, It fashioned a Mirror and therein saw all things in Itself. This Mirror was the Eternal Mother, the Will the Eternal Father. The Eternal Father, beholding Himself and His wonders mirrored in the Eternal Mother, willed that being passive they should become active. Thought becamematerialised, force and space begot Motion and the Universe was. As illustrating the seven qualities through which the Divine energy operated, Paul quoted the following lines:—
"There are seven degrees in the holy sphereThat girdles the outer skies;There are seven hues in the atmosphereOf the Spirit Paradise;And the seven lamps burn bright and clearIn the mind, the heart, and the eyesOf the angel-spirits from every worldThat ever and ever arise.There are seven ages the angels knowIn the courts of the Spirit Heaven:And seven joys through the spirit flowFrom the morn of the heart till even;Seven curtains of light wave to and froWhere the seven great trumpets the angels blow,And the throne of God hath a seven-fold glow,And the angel hosts are seven.And a spiral winds from the worlds to the suns,And every star that shinesIn the path of degrees for ever runs,And the spiral octave climbs;And a seven-fold heaven round every oneIn the spiral order twines.There are seven links from God to man,There are seven links and a threefold span;And seven spheres in the great degreeOf one created immensity.There are seven octaves of spirit loveIn the heart, the mind, and the heavens above:And seven degrees in the frailest thing,Though it hath but a day for its blossoming."
It seemed as though all mysticism had culminated in Paul Mario, and so immense was his influence that the English Church was forced into action. Such heterodox views had been expressed from the pulpit sinceThe Gateshad cast its challenge at the feet of orthodoxy that the bishops unanimously pronounced its teachings to be heretical, and forbade their adoption under divers pains and penalties. A certain brilliant and fashionable preacher resigned his living, and financed by a society established for the purpose, prepared to build a great church upona site adjoining the Strand, to be called the New Temple. A definite schism thereupon was created, and so insistent became the demand for more light, for a personal message, that Paul was urged by a committee, including some of the foremost thinkers of the day, to deliver a series of addresses at the Albert Hall. He had lighted a veritable bonfire, and its flames were spreading to the four points of the compass. Even Islâm, that fanatic rock against which reform dashes itself in vain, was stirred at last, and the Sherîf of Mecca issued afirmânto the mosques within his province authorising an intensive campaign against theKorân Inglîsi—for Paul had embraced the tenets of the Moslem faith within his new Catholic creed.
At one of his clubs, which he visited rarely, he met one evening a bishop famed as a religious educationalist, a large red cleric having bristling eyebrows resembling shrimps and the calculating glance of a judge of good port. This astute man of the world attacked him along peculiar lines. "There must always be a hierarchy, Mr. Mario," he said. "Buddha—if such a personage ever existed—endeavoured to dispense with a priesthood and a ritual, but his followers have been unable to do so. You aver that the Kingdom of God is within ourselves, but if every man were able to find the Kingdom of God within himself he would have no occasion to pay others to find it for him. What would become of the poor churchman?"
"I have not proposed the abolition of the old priesthood," Paul replied. "I have proposed the establishment of a new. Only by appreciation of the fact that Man is the supreme Mystery can man solve the Riddle of the Universe, and what is there of mystery about your tennis-playing curate? The gossiper whom we have seen nibbling buttered scones at five o'clock tea mounts the pulpit and addresses us upon the subject of the Holy Trinity.On this subject naturally he has nothing to tell us, and naturally we are bored. Rather than abolish ritual I would embellish it, calling to my aid all the resources of art and music. I would invest my ritual with awe and majesty, and my priests should be a class apart."
"Such an appeal is not for every man, Mr. Mario. Your New Temple would be designed to inculcate the truth upon minds which have already received it; a thankless task. We seek the good of the greatest number, and you must bring your gods to earth if you would raise your worshippers to heaven. After all, simplicity rather than knowledge is the keynote of happiness."
"You would trick your penitents into paradise?"
"Perhaps I am obtuse, but it seems to me that this isyourdesign, not mine."
"What does the Church offer," said Paul, "that the human mind can grasp? What hope do you extend to the sorrowing widow of a man who has died unrepentant and full of sin? Eternal loss. Is this to be her reward for years of faithful love? If, upon her death-bed, the woman of atrocious life can be bullied into uttering words of penitence she is 'saved.' If she die as she lived, if a shot, a knife, a street accident cut her off in the midst of her sinning, she is 'lost.' A moment of panic wins salvation for the one; a life-time of self-denial counts for nothing in the case of another. If I go out into the street and strike down a bawd—a thing lower than the lowest animal and more noxious—I hang. If I don the King's uniform and accept the orders of an officer, I may slay good men and bad, come who may, and die assured of heaven. It is war. Why is it war? Simply because it is slaughter as opposed to slaying. Our cause, you will say, is just. So is my cause against the pander."
"You are, then, a novel sort of conscientious objector?"
"Not at all. If at the price of my life I could exterminate every living thing that is Prussian I should do it. But I knowwhyI should do it, and why I should be justified. If one troubled with doubts upon such a score were to ask your cloth to resolve them, he would be told that he fought for King and Country, or something equally beside the point. Patriotism, my lord, becomes impossible when we realise that in turn we have inhabited many countries. You were once perhaps an Austrian, and may yet be a Turk."
"The theory of re-incarnation, Mr. Mario, helps to people our lunatic asylums. I was assured recently by a well-known brain specialist that the claimants to the soul of Cleopatra would out-number the Hippodrome 'Beauty Chorus.'"
"You speak of the 'theory' of re-incarnation, yet it was taught by Christ."
"There we arrive at a definite point of divergence, Mr. Mario," said his lordship. "Let us agree to differ, for I perceive that no other form of agreement is possible between us."
"There is something frightfully unsatisfactory about bishops," declared Thessaly, when Paul spoke of this conversation to him. "Many vicars and deans are quite romantic people, but immediately they are presented with a mitre they become uninteresting and often begin to write to theTimes. Besides, no one but Forbes Robertson could hope to look impressive in a mitre. It is most unsuitable headgear for an elderly gentleman."
Don remained in London for several months, performing light duties at the War Office. No one but Paul ever knew how far he had penetrated into the grim valley, how almost miraculous had been his recovery. And not even Paul knew that if Flamby'sheart had been free Don might never have returned to France. In despite of his shattered health he refused the staff appointment which was offered to him and volunteered for active service, unfit though he was to undertake it.
"We don't seem to be able to realise, Paul," he said, "that the possession of an artificial leg and a Victoria Cross does not constitute a staff officer. My only perceptible qualification for the post offered is my crocky condition. The brains of the Army should surely be made up not of long pedigrees and gallant cripples, but of genius fit to cope with that of the German High Command. A cowardly criminal with a capacity for intrigue would probably be a greater acquisition than that of the most gallant officer who ever covered a strategic 'withdrawal.'"
Poor Flamby smiled and jested until the very moment of Don's departure and cried all day afterwards. Then she sat down at the little oak bureau and wrote a long letter declaring that she had quite definitely and irrevocably decided to forget Paul, and that she should have something "very particular" to confide to Don when he returned. Whilst searching for a stamp she chanced upon a photograph of Paul cut from a weekly journal. Very slowly she tore the letter up into tiny pieces and dropped them in a Japanese paper-basket. She went to bed and readThe Gatesuntil she fell asleep, leaving the light burning.
The fear of which she had spoken to Don oppressed her more and more. That Paul had grasped the Absolute Key she could not doubt, but it seemed to Flamby that he had given life to something which had lain dormant, occult, for untold ages, that he had created a thing which already had outgrown his control. In art, literature and music disciples proclaimed themselves. One of France's foremost composers produced a symphony,Dawn, directlyinspired by the gospel of Paul Mario; inThe Gatespainters found fresh subjects for their brushes, and the literature of the world became a mirror reflecting Paul's doctrine. Here was no brilliant spark to dazzle for a moment and die, but a beacon burning ever brighter on which humanity, race by race, fixed a steadfast gaze. Theosophy acclaimed him the new Buddha, and in Judaism a sect arose who saw, in Paul, Isaiah reborn.
But Flamby was afraid. Paul's theory that the arts had taken the place of the sibyls, that man was only an instrument of higher powers which shaped the Universe, dismayed her; for upon seeking to analyse the emotions whichThe Gatesaroused she thought that she could discern the origin of this fear in an unfamiliar note which now and again intruded, a voice unlike the voice of Paul Mario. He was sometimes dominated by an alien influence, perhaps was so dominated throughout save that the control did not throughout reveal its presence. His own work proved his theory to be true. It was a concept of life beyond human ken revealed through the genius of a master mind. Such revelations in the past had only been granted to mystics who had sought them in a life of self-abnegation far from the world. It was no mere reshuffling of the Tarot of the Initiates, but in many respects was a new gospel, and because that which is unknown is thought to be wonderful, in questing the source of Paul's inspiration Flamby constantly found her thoughts to be focussed upon Jules Thessaly.
At this time she had won recognition from the artistic coterie, or mutual admiration society, which stands for English art, although her marked independence of intellect had held her to some extent aloof from their ever-changing "cults." But she had met those painters, illustrators, sculptors, critics, dealers and art editors who "mattered."Practically all of them seemed to know Thessaly; many regarded him as the most influential living patron of art; yet Flamby had never met Thessaly, had never even seen him. She had heard that he possessed a striking personality, she knew that he often lunched at Regali's and sometimes visited the Café Royal. People had said to her, "There goes Jules Thessaly"—and she had turned just too late, always too late. Orlando James had arranged for her to meet him at luncheon one day, and Thessaly had been summoned to Paris on urgent business. At first Flamby had thought little of the matter, but latterly she had thought much. To Don she had refrained from speaking of this, for it seemed to savour of that feminine jealousy which regards with suspicious disfavour any living creature, man, woman or dog, near to a beloved object. But she was convinced that Thessaly deliberately avoided her and she suspected that he influenced Paul unfavourably, although of this latter fact she had practically no evidence.
Similar doubts respecting the motive which might be attributed to her had prevented Flamby from telling Don why she wished to keep in touch with Orlando James. Paul's philosophy was a broad one, and imposed few trammels upon social intercourse between the sexes. He regarded early-Victorian prudery with frank horror, and counted the narrowness of middle-class suburban life as directly traceable to this tainted spring. Don had once declared a suburban Sunday to be "hell's delight.Rock of Ages," he said, "(arrangement for piano) has more to answer for than the entire ritual of the Black Mass." Paul applauded breadth of outlook; nevertheless Flamby doubted if Paul would have approved certain clandestine visits to James's studio. It was Flamby's discovery of the identity of the tall lady, closely veiled, whom she had seen one nightdescending from a cab and hurrying under the arch into the little courtyard of the faun, which first had awakened that indefinite fear whereof she had spoken to Don. On several successive evenings she had invented reasons for remaining late at Chauvin's, and at last had been rewarded by seeing the veiled visitor admitted to James's studio. The light shining out upon her face had revealed the features of Yvonne Mario. Flamby had spied and had counted her espionage justified. Any other woman in like circumstances would have spied also, justified or otherwise. For women in some respects are wiser than men, and he who counts woman supine has viewed his world awry; but the true deeps of a woman's soul may only be stirred by passion. Honour and those other temporal shadows at whose beck men lay down life leave women unstirred. What man of honour would tear open a letter addressed to another, though he suspected it to contain his death-warrant? What woman, in like case, would hesitate to steam it?
High Mass in Westminster Cathedral was about to conclude. The air was heavy with incense, and the organ notes seemed to float upon it buoyantly, rebounding from marble wall and Byzantine pillar to remain indefinitely suspended ere sinking into silence. The voice of the officiating priest fascinated Paul Mario strangely. He found himself following the rhythm but not the meaning of the words. That solitary human voice was the complement of a theme whereof the incense and the monotonous music made up the other parts. Comprehension of words and syllables was unnecessary. Detached, no portion of the ritual had meaning; its portent lay in the whole. The atmosphere which it created was not that of the Mount, but was purely mediaeval,nor had the Roman fashion of the vast interior power to hold one's imagination enchained to the Cross of Calvary. The white robes of the altar servants, broidered vestments of the priests and pallid torches of a hundred candles belonged to the Rome of Caesar Borgia and not to the Rome of Caesar Nero. Into that singular building, impressive in its incompleteness, crept no echo of the catacombs, and the sighing of the reed notes was voluptuous as a lover's whisper, and as far removed from the murmurs of the Christian martyrs. Here were pomp and majesty with all their emotional appeal. Mystery alone was lacking. The robes of Cardinal Pescara lent a final touch of colour to the mediaeval opulence of the scene.
It was to hear the cardinal speak that Paul had come. The occasion was an impressive one, and the great church was sombre with mourning. Men of a famous Irish regiment occupied row after row of seats, and from the galleries above must have looked like a carpet of sand spread across the floor. The sermon had proved to be worthy of the master of rhetoric who had delivered it. The silvern voice of the Cardinal, from the pronouncement of his opening words to the close of his peroration when he stood with outstretched arms and eyes uplifted pitifully in illustration of the Agony of Golgotha, charmed his hearers as of old the lyre of Apollo had power to charm. His genius invested the consolation of the church with a new significance, exalting the majesty of bereavement to a higher sovereignty. His English was faultless, beautified by a soft Italian intonation, and his sense of the dramatic and of the value of sudden silences reminded Paul of Sir Henry Irving, whom he had seen once during his first term at Oxford and had never forgotten. Dramatically it was a flawless performance; intellectually it was masterful. Thatcrucified pitiful figure stood majestic above a weeping multitude dominating them by the sheer genius of oratory. Chord after chord of his human instrument he had touched unerringly, now stirring the blood with exquisite phrases, now steeping the mind in magnetic silence. Paul recognised, and was awe-stricken, that this white-haired ascetic man wielded a power almost as great as his own.
When finally he passed out from the Cathedral, the impression of the Mass had lost much of its hold upon him, but the haunting cadences of that suave Italian voice followed him eerily. Near the open doors a priest, wearing cassock and biretta, stood narrowly scrutinising each face, and as Paul was about to pass he extended his hand, detaining him. "Mr. Paul Mario?" he said.
"I am Paul Mario, yes."
"His Eminence, Cardinal Pescara, begs the favour of a few moments' conversation."
Opening a private door the priest led Paul along a bare, tiled corridor. Paul followed his guide in silence, his brain busy with conjectures respecting how and by whom his presence in the Cathedral had been detected. His appearance was familiar to most people, he was aware, but he had entered unostentatiously among a group of black-clad women, and had thought himself unrecognised. In the mode of making his acquaintance adopted by the Cardinal he perceived the working of that subtle Italian intellect. The unexpected summons whilst yet his mind was under the influence of ceremonial, the direct appeal to the dramatic which never fails with one of artistic temperament; it was well conceived to enslave the imagination of the man who had writtenFrancesca of the Lilies. He was conscious of nervousness, of an indefinable apprehension, and ere he had come to the end of the bare corridor, the poet, deserting the man, had posted halberdiers outside the door which the priest had unlocked and had set a guard over that which they were approaching. His guide became a cowled familiar of the Holy Office, and beyond the second door in an apartment black-draped and sepulchral and lighted by ghostly candles, inquisitors awaited him who, sweetly solicitous for his spiritual well-being, would watch men crush his limbs in iron boots, suspend him by his thumbs from a beam and tear out his tongue with white-hot pincers. Then if spark of life remained in his mutilated body, they would direct, amid murmuredAves, that his eyes be burned from their sockets in order that he might look upon heresy no more. His guide rapped upon the door, opened it and permitted Paul to enter the room, closing the door behind him. He found himself in a small square apartment panelled in dark wood. A long narrow oak table was set against the wall facing the entrance, and upon it were writing materials, a scarlet biretta and a large silver crucifix. On the point of rising from a high-backed chair before this table was a man wearing the red robe of a Cardinal. He turned to greet his visitor and Paul looked into the eyes of Giovanni Pescara. There was a clash definite as that of blade upon blade, then the Cardinal inclined his head with gentle dignity and extended a delicate white hand. A padded armchair stood beside the end of the table.
"I am sincerely indebted to you, Mr. Mario, for granting me this unconventional interview. My invitation must have seemed brusque to the point of the uncouth, but chancing to learn of your presence I took advantage of an opportunity unlikely to repeat itself. I return to Rome to-night."
"Your Eminence's invitation was a command,"replied Paul, and knew the words to be dictated by some former Mario, or by an earlier self in whose eyes a prince of the Church had ranked only second to the King. "I am honoured in obeying it."
Giovanni Pescara, in spite of his frail physique, was a man of imposing presence, the aristocrat proclaiming himself in every gesture, in the poise of his noble head, with its crown of wavy silver hair, in the movements of his fine hands. He had the prominent nose and delicate slightly distended nostrils of his family, but all the subtlety of the man was veiled by his widely opened mild hazel eyes. Seen thus closely, his face, which because of a pure white complexion from a distance looked statuesquely smooth, proved to be covered with a network of tiny lines. It was a wonderful face, and his smile lent it absolute beauty.
"I should have counted my brief visit incomplete, Mr. Mario, if I had not met you. Therefore I pray you hold me excused. In Italy, where your fame is at least as great as it is in England, we are proud to know you one of ourselves. Many generations have come and gone since Paolo Mario settled in the English county of Kent, but the olive of Italy proclaims itself in his descendant. No son of the North could have given to the world the beautiful Tarone calledFrancesca of the Lilies. The fire of the South is in her blood and her voice is the voice of our golden nights. I have read the story in English, and it is magnificent, but Italian is its perfect raiment."
"It is delightful of you to say so," said Paul, subtly flattered by the knowledge of his ancestry exhibited by the Cardinal, but at the same time keenly on the alert. Giovanni Pescara did not study men at the prompting of mere curiosity.
"It is delightful to have been afforded an opportunity to say so. Your love of Tuscany, which isnatural, has sometimes led me to hope that one day you would consent to spend your winters or a part of them amongst us, Mr. Mario. No door in Italy would be closed to you."
"You honour me very highly, and indeed I know something of your Italian hospitality, but there are so many points upon which I find myself at variance with the Church that I should hesitate to accept it under false pretences."
Cardinal Pescara gazed at him mildly. "You find yourself at variance with the Church, Mr. Mario? Frankly, your words surprise me. In which of your works have you expressed these dissensions?"
"Notably inThe Gates."
"In that event I have misunderstood your purpose in writing that fine and unusual book. I do not recall that his Holiness has banned it."
Paul met the questioning glance of the hazel eyes and knew himself foiled. "I must confess that I have not expressly inquired into that matter," he said; "but it was only because I had taken inclusion in the Index for granted."
"But why should you do so, Mr. Mario? Have you advocated the destruction of the Papal power?"
"Emphatically no. An organisation such as that of Rome and resting upon such authority is not lightly destroyed."
"Have you denied the mission of the heir of St. Peter to preach the Word of the Messiah?"
"I have not."
"Have you denied the divinity of Christ or the existence of Almighty God?"
"Certainly not."
"Then why should you expect Rome to place its ban upon your book?"
"I have not questioned the authority of Rome, your Eminence, but I have questioned Rome's employment of that authority."
"As you are entitled to do being not a priest but a layman. We have many Orders within the Church, and upon minor doctrinal points they differ one from another, but their brotherhood is universal and his Holiness looks with equal favour upon them all. Amongst Catholic laymen we have kindly critics, but Rome is ever ready to reply to criticism and never disregards it. If you are conscious of imperfections in the administration of the Church, the Church would welcome your aid in removing them."
The facile skill with which the Cardinal had disarmed him excited Paul's admiration even whilst he found himself disadvantaged by it. "My conception of the life of the spirit differs widely from that of Catholicism," he said, speaking slowly and deliberately. "We stand upon opposite platforms, and our purposes are divided. I regard not one man in a million, however admirable his life, as fit for that perfect state called Heaven and not one in a hundred millions, however evil, as deserving of that utter damnation called Hell. I say that there are intermediate states innumerable. Is Rome open to consider such a claim?"
"To consider it, Mr. Mario? Rome has always taught it. Have we not a Purgatory?"
"For the justified, but what of the sinner?"
"Have we no prayers for the dead? You maintain that no man is fit for Heaven; so does Rome—that no soul is lost whilst one prayer is offered for its redemption. We agree with you. InThe Gatesyou have done no more than to analyse the symbolism of Roman ritual, defining Purgatory as a series of earthly experiences and Heaven as their termination. Have you considered, Mr. Mario, that whatever a man's belief may be, he can do no more than to be true to himself?"
"And is Rome true to Rome, your Eminence?Before the horrors of war the spirit stands aghast, but are the horrors perpetrated by Prussia reconcilable with the teachings of St. Peter? For lesser crimes, thousands burned at the stake during the Pontificate of Innocent VIII; yet Rome to-day hears German prelates calling upon God to exalt the murderer, the ravisher, and is silent. If Rome is untrue to Rome the rock upon which the Church of St. Peter stands may yet be shattered."
Cardinal Pescara twisted the ring upon his finger, regarding Paul with a glance of almost pathetic entreaty. "You hurt me, Mr. Mario," he said. "I do not recall that you have levelled this charge against the Catholic Church in your book. But it seems to me to be rather a criticism of internal administration than of doctrine, after all. If no man be worthy of hell, why should his Holiness abandon sinful Germany? It is for him to decide, since all laws are locked within the bosom of the Pope."
"I would unlock those laws, your Eminence, and set them up before the world in place of empty dogmas. I would have open sanctuaries and open minds. Humanity has outgrown its childhood and demands more reasonable fare than that which sufficed for its needs in the nursery."
"That you honestly suppose this to be so I cannot question; but what you term 'open-mindedness'—implying a state of receptivity—is in fact an utter rejection of all established spiritual truths. The open-minded and the atheistical draw dangerously closer day by day. The only thing of which they are sure is that they are sure of nothing and theircredois 'I do not believe.' Broadly speaking, Mr. Mario, our differences may be said to revolve around one point. Of the construction which you place upon the Word of the Messiah I shall say nothing, but it is your projected second book in which, if I understand your purpose, you propose to lay bare the 'arcana of theinitiates' (the words are your own) which, if it ever be published, will indisputably occasion action by the Holy See. Let me endeavour to bring home to you the fact that I believe you are about to make a dreadful and irrevocable mistake."
The hazel eyes momentarily lost their softness and the Cardinal's expression grew gravely imperious. Paul felt again the shock of this man's powerful will and braced himself for combat.
"I shall always listen to your Eminence with respect."
"Respect, Mr. Mario, is due to any man who is sincere in his efforts to promote the well-being of his fellows, even though his efforts be mistaken. In the symbolism of the Church and even in the form of the Papal crown you have recognised the outward form of an inner truth. You have applauded the ritual of the Mass and the traditions of the Catholic priesthood because they approach so nearly to that mystic ideal which gave potency to the great hierarchies of the past, notably to that of Ancient Egypt. I shall venture to ask you a question. Outside the sacred colleges of the Egyptian priesthood what was known in those days of the truth underlying the symbols, Isis, Osiris and Amen-Râ?"
"Nothing."
"Then why did you admire a system diametrically opposed to that which you would set up?"
"Because it was ideally suited to the age of the Pharaohs. The world has advanced since those days but religion has tried to stand still."
"The world has advanced, and inThe Gateswe hear the tap of the cripple's crutch upon the pavements of our enlightened cities. The world has advanced, Mr. Mario, and is filled with sad-eyed mothers and with widows who have scarcely known wifehood. Where is your evidence that this generation is ready for the 'blinding light of truth'? Youbelieve that you have been given a mission. I do not question your good faith. You believe that throughout a series of earlier physical experiences you have been preparing for this mission. Granting for a moment that this is so, what proof can you offer of your having attained to that state of perfection which you, yourself, lay down as asine quâ nonof mastership? If it should be revealed to you that you have actually lived before, but as a man enthusiastic, ardent and blinded by those passions which are a wall between humanity and the angels, should you not take pause? You have granted the authority of Rome. Wherein does your own reside? Are you sure that for you the veil is wholly lifted? Are you sure that you have no false friends? Are you sure that you comprehend the meaning of your own tenet—'Perfect Love and Fulfilment'? If you have any doubts upon these points, Mr. Mario, hold your hand. It can profit the world nothing to restir the witches' cauldron. Love must always be the mainspring of life and honour its loftiest ideal. Teach men how to live and leave it to Death to reveal the hereafter. Not for the good of mankind do I tremble—God has the world in his charge—but for yourself. We all are granted glimpses of our imperfections, perhaps in the form of twinges of conscience, or dreams, or as you would say in the form of hazy memories inherited from earlier imperfect lives. If these gentle lessons fail, swift blows rain upon us. But we are never permitted to fall into error unchecked. Read well the tablet of your soul and read between the lines. Measure your strength and test your purity ere you dare to attempt to shatter at a blow the structure of the ages. When Lucifer fell from the Divine order, it was lust of knowledge that prompted him to set his own will in opposition to the Almighty. I speak in figures which you will understand. Lucifer became the great Self-Centre asopposed to the greater God-Centre. He is more active amongst us to-day than he has been for many ages. He has numerous servants and handmaidens. Are you sure, Mr. Mario, that you can recognise them when they pass you by? Remember that the Devil is a philosopher. If we may learn anything from the ancient creeds surely it is that the secret of governing humanity is never to tell humanity the truth."
Some days later Flamby was taking tea by appointment in Orlando James's studio. Don had written from France urging her to divulge the nature of her misgivings respecting Paul and their connection with James, and Flamby, greatly daring, had determined to obtain confirmation of the doubts which troubled her. She wore the Liberty dress of grey velvet, and as she bent over an Arab coffee-table and her pretty hands busied themselves amid the old silver of the tea-service, Flamby made a delectable study which Orlando James who watched her found to be exceedingly tantalising. He flicked cigarette ash on to the floor and admired the creamy curve of Flamby's neck as she lowered her head in the act of pouring out tea.
"What a pretty neck you have, kid," he said in his drawling self-confident way.
"Yes," replied Flamby, dropping pieces of sugar into the cups, "it isn't so bad as necks go. But I should have liked it to be white instead of yellow."
"It isn't yellow: it's a delicious sort of old-ivory velvet which I am just itching to paint."
"Then why don't you?" inquired Flamby, composedly settling herself in a nest of cushions on the floor.
"Because you will never pose for me."
"You have never asked me."
"Why I asked you only a few days ago to pose for my next big picture."
Flamby sipped hot tea and looked up at James scornfully. "Do you think I'm daft!" she said. "I am a painter not a model. If you want to paint my portrait I don't mind, but if you've got an idea in your head that I am ever likely to pose for the figure you can get it out as quick as lightning."
James lounged in a long rest-chair, watching her languidly. "You're a funny girl," he said. "I thought I was paying you a compliment, but perhaps it's a sore point. Where's the flaw, kid?"
"The flaw?"
"Yes, what is it—knotty knees? It certainly isn't thick ankles."
Flamby had much ado to preserve composure; momentarily her thoughts became murderous. This was truly a 'sore point,' but mentally comparing Orlando James with Sir Jacques she was compelled to admit that the bold roué was preferable to the masked satyr. She placed her tea cup on a corner of the Arab table and smoothed her skirt placidly.
"Spotty skin," she replied. "Haven't you seen my picture in the newspapers advertising somebody's ointment?"
James stared in the dull manner which characterised his reception of a joke. "Is that funny, Flamby?" he said, "because I don't believe it is true."
"Don't you? Well, it doesn't matter. Do you want any more tea?"
He passed his cup, watching her constantly and wondering why since he had progressed thus far in her favour not all his well-tried devices could advance him a single pace further. He had learned during a long and varied experience that the chief difficulty in these little affairs was that of breaking down the barrier which ordinarily precludes discussion of suchintimately personal matters. Once this was accomplished he had found his art to be a weapon against which woman's vanity was impotent. Unfortunately for his chance of success, Sir Jacques had also been a graduate of this school of artistic libertinage.
"There is something selfish about a girl who keeps her beauty all to herself when it might delight future generations," he said, taking the newly filled cup from Flamby. "Besides, it really is a compliment, kid, to ask you to pose for a big thing likeThe Dreaming Keats. It's going to be my masterpiece."
"Our next picture is always going to be our masterpiece," murmured Flamby wisely, taking an Egyptian cigarette from the Japanese cabinet on the table.
"But I think I can claim to know what I'm talking about, Flamby. It means that I regard you as one of the prettiest girls in London."
"Your vanity is most soothing," said Flamby, curling herself up comfortably amid the poppy-hued cushions and trying to blow rings of smoke.
"Where does the vanity come in?"
"In your delightful presumption. Do you honestly believe, Orlando, that any woman in London would turn amateur model if you asked her?"
"I don't say thatanywoman would do so, but almost any pretty woman would."
"I don't believe it."
"You know who my model was forEunice, don't you?"
"I have heard that Lady Daphne Freyle posed for it and the hair is like hers certainly, but the face of the figure is turned away. Oh!—how funny."
"What is funny?"
"It has just occurred to me that a number of your pictures are like that: the figure is either veiled or half looking away."
"That is necessary when one's models are so well-known."
Flamby hugged her knees tightly and gazed at the speaker as if fascinated. She was endeavouring to readjust her perspective. Vanity in women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, likeghawâziin a Keneh bazaar, in return for the odious distinction of knowing their charms to be "immortalised" by the brush of Orlando James? These were beyond Flamby's powers of comprehension.
"But Lady Daphne is an exception. I am only surprised that she did not want a pose which rendered her immediately recognisable."
"She did," drawled James, "butIdidn't."
"Was she really an ideal model or did you induce her to pose just to please your colossal vanity?"
"My dear Flamby, it is next to impossible to find a flawless model among the professionals. Hammett or anybody will tell you the same. They lack that ideal delicacy, what Crozier calls 'the texture of nobility,' which one finds in a woman of good family. Half the success of my big subjects has been due to my models. This will be recognised when the history of modern art comes to be written. I am held up at the moment, and that is the reason why I am anxious to start onKeats."
"What is holding you up?"
"My model forThe Circassianhas jibbed. Otherwise it would be finished."
"There are disadvantages attaching to your method after all?"
"Yes. I shall avoid married models in future. Husbands are so inartistic."
"You don't want me to believe that some misguided married woman has been posing forThe Circassian?"
"Why misguided? It will be a wonderful picture."
"It is that Eastern thing is it not?—the marble pool and a half veiled figure lying beside it with one hand in the water?"
"Yes, but I've had to shelve it. Did I show you that last sketch for the Keats picture?"
"You did, Orlando; but dismiss the idea that I am going to play Phryne to your Apelles. It won't come off. It may work successfully with daft society women who have got bored with pretending to be nurses and ambulance drivers but you really cannot expect Flamby Duveen to begin competing with the professional models. I could quote something from Ovid that would be quite to the point but you wouldn't understand and I should have to laugh all by myself."
"You are a tantalising little devil," said James, his dull brain seeking vainly a clue to the cause of Flamby's obduracy.
Flamby, meanwhile maturing her plan, made the next move. "Is the Keats picture to be more important thanThe Circassian?" she asked naively.
"Of course," James replied, believing that at last a clue was his. "I have told you that it will be my masterpiece." He had offered an identical assurance to many a hesitant amateur.
"Is your model forThe Circassianreally very pretty?"
"She is; but of a more ordinary type than you, kid. You are simply a nymph in human shape. You will send the critics crazy."
He watched her with scarcely veiled eagerness, and Flamby, placing the end of her cigarette in a silver ash-tray, seemed to be thinking.
"Is she—well-known?"
James recognised familiar symptoms and his hopes leapt high. "If I show you the canvas and you recognise the model will you promise not to tell anybody? I am painting it by a new process. I got the idea from Wiertz. The violet gauze of the veil is only indicated yet."
Flamby nodded, watching him wide-eyed. Her expression was inscrutable. He crossed the big studio and wheeled an easel out from the recess in which it had been concealed. The canvas was draped and having set it in a good light he turned, taking a step forward. "No telling," he said.
"No," replied Flamby, rising from her extemporiseddiwân.
James towered over her slight figure vastly. "Give me a kiss and I will believe you," he said.
Flamby felt a tingling sensation and knew that a flush was rising from her neck to her brow, but with success in view she was loth to abandon her scheme. "Show me first," she said.
"Oh, no. Be a sport, kid. You might do me no end of harm if you blabbed. Give me a kiss and I shall know we are pals." He placed his hand on Flamby's shoulder and she tried not to shrink. The rich colour fled from her cheeks and her oval face assumed that even, dusky hue which was a danger signal, but which Orlando James failed to recognise for one.
"I don't want to kiss you; I want to see the picture."
"And I don't want you to see the picture until you have kissed me," replied James, smiling confidently and clasping his arm around Flamby's shoulders. "Only one tiny kiss and I shall know I can trust you."
He drew her close, and Flamby experienced a thrill of terror because of the strength of his arm and her own helplessness. But she averted her faceand thrust one hand against James's breast, fighting hard to retain composure. He bent over her and thereupon Flamby knew that the truce must end. Her heart began to throb wildly.
"I won't kiss you!" she cried. "Let me go!"
Orlando James looked into her face, now flushed again and found the lure of Flamby's lips to be one beyond his powers of rejection. "Don't get wild, kiddie," he said softly. "You need not be cruel."
"Let me go," repeated Flamby in a low voice.
He held her closer and his face almost touched hers. Whereupon the storm burst. "Are you going to let me go?" said Flamby breathlessly; and even as she spoke James sought to touch her lips. Flamby raised her open hand and struck him hard upon the cheek. "Nowwill you let me go!"
Orlando James laughed loudly. "You lovely little devil," he cried. "I shall kiss you a hundred times for that."
Backward swung Flamby's foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his shin. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had wrought the discomfiture of Fawkes. James threw both arms around her and lifted her bodily, as one lifts a child, smiling into her face. She battled against him, hand and foot, but could strike with slight force because of her helpless position. He crushed her to him and kissed her on the lips. As he did so she remembered the form of her French shoes and raising her right foot she battered madly at his knee with the high wooden heel. One of the blows got home, and uttering a smothered curse James dropped her, but did not release her.