by Sax Rohmer
“Thanks, no. But I will smoke.” From his coat pocket Paul took out a briar pipe and the well-worn pouch. “In a month, Thessaly, The Key will be in the printer’s hands. I found myself thinking of Pandora this morning. There are few really virtuous women and truth is a draught almost as heady I should imagine as Fra Diavolo.”
“My dear Mario, you must admit that virtue is the least picturesque of the vices. When aggressive it becomes a positive disfigurement. The ‘on guard’ position, though useful in bayonet-fighting, leaves the æsthete cold. You would not have us treat our women as the Moslems do?”
“Women can rarely distinguish the boundary between freedom and license. Honestly I should like to revise the position of woman in Europe and America before I entrusted The Key to her keeping. Unmarried, she has quite enough freedom, married she has too much.”
“Therefore she conceals her age and dyes her hair.”
“Showing that she is not invulnerable to flattery.”
“No woman is, and flattery may be likened to the artillery preparation which precedes a serious advance. But, my dear Mario, to deprive a woman of admiration is to deprive a fish of water. In London when a woman ceases to interest other men she ceases to interest her husband, unless he is not as other men. In Stambûl on the contrary the odalisque who bathes in rival glances finally bathes in the Bosphorus with her charming head in a sack. Fortunately we are at war with Turkey.”
“Have you considered, Thessaly, what appalling sins must have been committed by the present generation of women in some past phase of existence?”
“There are instances in which the sins belong to the present phase. But I agree with you that the women are suffering more than the men. Therefore their past errors must have been greater. They are being taught the value of love, Mario. In their next incarnation they will remember. They will be reborn beneath a new star — your star. Something perturbs you. You are harassed by doubts and hunted by misgivings. I have secured permission to toil up hundreds of stairs in order that I may emulate the priests of Bel and look out upon the roofs of Babylon. This spectacle will cheer you. Join me, my friend, and I will show you the heart of the world.”
IX
“Look,” said Jules Thessaly, “below you stretches the Capital of the greatest empire man has ever known.”
They stood in the topmost gallery of the campanile looking down upon a miniature London. The viridescent ribbon of the Thames bound bridge to bridge running thematically through a symphony of grey and green and gold. A consciousness of power leapt high within Paul. Only the sun was above him, the sun and the suave immensity of space. How insignificant an episode was a human life, how futile and inept; a tiny note in a monstrous score. Below in the teeming streets moved a million such points, each one but a single note in this vast orchestration, a bird note, faint, inaudible ‘mid the music of the spheres. Yet each to each was the centre of the Universe; all symbolised the triumph to the false Self-centre as opposed to the true God-centre. Men lived for the day because they doubted the morrow. Palaces and hovels, churches and theatres, all were products of this feverish striving of the ants to plumb the well of truth and scale the mountain of wisdom; to drain at a draught the gourd of life which the gods had filled in the world’s morning. Thessaly began to speak again, standing at Paul’s elbow, and his deep rich voice carried power and authority.
“Look at London and you look at an epitome of humanity. The best that man can do, and the worst, lie there beneath you. In that squat, grey, irregular mound which from earth level we recognise to be the Houses of Parliament, men are making laws. The laws which they are making are the laws of necessity — the necessity of slaying Prussians. Many of the larger buildings in the neighbourhood are occupied by temporary civil servants engaged in promulgating those laws. Thus by the passing of an Act having twenty clauses, twenty thousand clerks are created and five more hotels sequestered for their accommodation. No laws which do not bear directly or indirectly upon the slaying of Prussians have been made in recent years. This is sometimes called government, but used to be known as self-preservation when men dressed in yellow ochre and carried stone clubs.
“Eastward over the Thames hangs a pall of smoke. It is the smoke of Silvertown. Left, right, and all about are other palls. They are created by the furnaces of works which once were making useful things and beautiful things; paints and enamels and varnishes, pottery and metal ware, toys for sport and instruments of science. To-day they make instruments of death; high explosives to shatter flesh and bone to pulp and powder, deadly gases to sear men’s eyes, to choke out human life. It is called work of national importance, but Christ would have wept to see it. Squatting in Whitehall — look, the setting sun strikes venomous sparks from its windows — is the War Office. Ponder well the name of this imposing pile — the War Office. Nearly two thousand years have elapsed since the last of the Initiates delivered His Sermon on the Mount. See! the city bristles with the spires of His churches; they are as thorns upon a briar-bush. Look north, the spire of a church terminates the prospect; south, it is the same; east and west — spires, spires, spires. And squatting grimly amid a thousand shrines of Jesus Christ is the War Office — the War Office, my friend. Watch how the spears of light strike redly into that canopy of foulness hanging above Kynoch’s Works. A Ministry of Munitions controls all that poisonous activity. Mario, it is the second Crucifixion. The Jews crucified the Body; all the world has conspired to crucify the Spirit.
“The Word has failed. There lies the reading of your day dream, Mario, your dream of the Sheikh of El Wasr. Look how the shadow of the campanile creeps out beneath us, over church and War-Office-Annexe, over life and over death. Religion is a corpse and the world is its morgue. But out of corruption comes forth sweetness. No creature known to man possesses more intense vitality than the dermestes beetle which propagates in the skull of a mummy. From the ashes of the Cross you arise. Christ is dead; long live Christianity. Behold the world at your feet. Courage, my friend, open the Gates and lead mankind into the garden of the gods.”
X
That Paul had established a platform strong enough to support the tower of a new gospel became evident. His second book of Revelations, The Key, was awaited eagerly by the whole of the civilised world. In determined opposition to the wishes of Bassett, unmoved by an offer from an American newspaper which would have created a record serial price, Paul had declined to print any part of The Key in a periodical. With the publication of The Gates, which but heralded a wider intent, he had become the central figure of the world. Politically he was regarded as a revolutionary so dangerous that he merited the highest respect, and the tactful attitude of the Roman Church was adopted by those temporal rulers who recognised in Paul Mario one who had almost grasped a power above the power of kings.
“In Galileo’s days,” said Thessaly on one occasion, “a man who proclaimed unpalatable truths was loaded with chains and hurled into a dungeon. Nowadays we load him with honours and raise him to the peerage, an even more effectual method of gagging him. Try to avoid the House of Peers, Mario. Your presence would disturb the orthodox slumbers of the bishops.”
On the eve of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of Don’s last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long deliberation. “I have had a sort of brain-wave,” wrote Don in his whimsical fashion, “or rush of intellect to the brow. I suppose you recognise that you are now the outstanding figure of the War and consequently of the world? Such a figure always arises out of a great upheaval, as history shows. His presence is necessary to the readjustment of shattered things, I suppose — and he duly arrives. I take you to stand, Paul, for spiritual survival. You are the chosen retort of the White to the challenge of the Black, but I wonder if you have perceived the real inwardness of your own explanation of the War?
“You show it to be an upcrop of that primitive Evil which legend has embodied in the
person of Lucifer. Has it occurred to you that the insidious process of corruption which you have followed step by step through the art, the music, the literature, the religion and the sociology of Germany may have been directed by someone? If you are the mouthpiece of the White, who is the mouthpiece of the Black? It is difficult to visualise such a personality, of course. We cannot imagine Pythagoras in his bath or even Shakespeare having his hair cut, and if What’s-his-name revisited earth to-morrow I don’t suppose anybody would know him. I often find it hard to realise that you, the old Paul with the foul briar pipe and the threadbare Norfolk, really wrote The Gates, not to mention Francesca. But you did, and I have been wondering if the Other Fellow — the Field-Marshal of the Powers of Darkness — is equally disappointing to look at — I mean, without halos, or, in his case, blue fire. In short, I have been wondering if, meeting him, one would recognise him? I have tried to imagine a sort of sinister Whisperer standing at the elbows of Germany’s philosophers, scientists, artists and men of letters; one who was paving the way for a war that should lay religion in ashes. And now, Paul, forgive me if I seem to rave, but conditions here are not conducive to the production of really good literature — I wonder if you will divine where this line of reflection led me? The Whisperer, upon the ruins of the old creeds, would try to uprear a new creed — his own. You would be his obstacle. Would he attack you openly, or would he remain — the Whisperer? To adopt the delightful mediaeval language of the Salvation Army, watch for the Devil at your elbow.... I wish I could get home, if only for a day, not because I funk the crash which is coming at any moment now but because I should like to see The Key before, it goes to press....”
Paul read this strange letter many times. “The Whisperer ... would try to uprear a new creed — his own.” Paul glanced at a bulky typescript which lay upon the table near his hand. The Key was complete and he had intended to deliver it in person to Bassett later the same morning. Strange doubts and wild surmises began to beat upon his brain and he shrank within himself, contemplative and somewhat fearful. A consciousness of great age crept over him like a shadow. He seemed to have known all things and to have wearied of all things, to have experienced everything and to have found everything to be nothing. Long, long ago he had striven as he was striving now to plant an orchard in the desert of life that men might find rest and refreshment on their journey through pathless time. Long, long ago he had doubted and feared — and failed. In some dim grove of the past he had revealed the secret of eternal rebirth to white-robed philosophers; in some vague sorrow that reached out of the ages and touched his heart he seemed to recognise that death had been his reward, and that he had welcomed death as a friend.
So completely did this mood absorb him that he started nervously to find Jules Thessaly standing beside his chair. Thessaly had walked in from the garden and he carried a flat-crowned black felt hat in his hand.
“If I have intruded upon a rich vein of reflection forgive me.”
Paul turned and looked at the strong massive figure outlined against the bright panel of the open window. The influence of that mood of age lingered; he felt lonely and apprehensive. He noticed a number of empty flower vases about the room. Yvonne used to keep them always freshly filled. He wondered when she had ceased to do so and why. “You have rescued me from a mood that was almost suicidal, Thessaly. A horrible recognition of the futility of striving oppresses me this morning. I seem to be awaiting a blow which I know myself powerless to avert. If we were at your place I should prescribe a double ‘Fra Diavolo’ but, failing this, I think something with a fizz in it must suffice. Will you give the treatment a trial?”
“With pleasure. Let it be a stirrup-cup, or, as our northern friends have it, a doch-an-dorroch.”
Paul stood up and stared at Thessaly. “Do I understand you to mean that you are about to set out upon a journey?”
“I am, Mario. Like Eugene Sue’s tedious Jew, I am cursed with a lack of repose. I sail for New York to-morrow or the following day.”
“Shall you be long absent?”
“I cannot say with any certainty. There seems to be nothing further for me to do in England at present. I feel that England has ceased to be the pivot of the world. I am turning my attention to America, not without sparing a side glance for the island kingdom of the Mikado. You know how unobtrusive I am, Mario; I am taking no letter of introduction to President Wilson, nor if I visit Japan shall I trouble official Tokio. Mine is a lazy life, but not an idle one. I am an enthusiastic onlooker.”
Paul gazed at him reproachfully. “You never even warned me of your projected journey, Thessaly. Do you leave all your friends with equally slight regret?”
Thessaly gazed into the peculiar hat, and something in the pose of his head transported Paul to the hills above Lower Charleswood, where, backed by the curtain of a moving storm, he seemed to see Babylon Hall framed in a rainbow which linked the crescent of the hills. “You misjudge me,” replied Thessaly. “What I have said is true, but I go in response to a sudden and unforeseen summons. Death and a frail woman have tricked me, and at one stroke have undone all that I had done. I am compelled to go.”
Paul detected in the deep voice a note of pathos, of defeat. “I am sorry,” he said simply. “I value your friendship.”
“Friendship, Mario, is heaven’s choicest gift. The love of woman is sometimes wonderful, but it always rests upon a physical basis. The love of a friend is the loftiest sentiment of which man is capable. Its only parallel is the unselfish devotion of a dog to his master.”
A servant came in with the refreshments which Paul had ordered. Directly she had departed Thessaly began speaking again. “I have lived in Germany, Mario, and in my younger student days — for I am perhaps an older man than you imagine me to be — I have met those philosophers, or some of them, to whom Germany owes a debt of hatred which cannot be repaid even unto the third and fourth generation. I have lived in France, and in many a sunset I have seen the blood that would drench her fairest pastures. I have watched the coming of the storm, and I saw it break upon the rocks of these inviolable islands. I thought that I knew its portent; I thought that I had discerned the inner meaning of the Day. Mario, I was wrong. Humanity has proved too obstinate.”
He spoke with a suppressed vehemence that was startling. “The point of this escapes me,” said Paul, watching him. “For what or for whom has humanity proved too obstinate?”
“For us, Mario — for us. There is many an ancient knot to be untied before man can be free to think unfettered. The myth, Imperialism, alone is an iron barrier to universal brotherhood. Not even in the spectacle of the Germanic peoples pouring out their blood in pursuit of that shadow has the rest of the world perceived a lesson. A colony is like a married son with whose domestic arrangements his father persists in interfering. The jewels in an imperial crown mean nothing even to the wearer of that crown, except additional headache. But attack the blood-stained legend of Imperialism and you attack Patriotism, its ferocious parent. Humanity has grown larger since the wolf suckled Romulus, but no wiser, and strong wine is not for weak intellects.”
He laid his hand upon the typed pages of The Key. “Is our friendship staunch enough to sustain the shock of real candour, Mario?”
Paul was deeply and unaccountably moved by something in Thessaly’s manner. “I trust so,” he replied.
“Then — forgive me — burn The Key. It is not yet too late.”
“Thessaly! You offer me this counsel! Do you realise what it means to me?”
“Some day, Mario, you may comprehend all that it meant to me.”
Paul stared at him truly dumfounded. “What can have happened thus suddenly to divert the current of your life and the tenor of your philosophy?”
“The inevitable, against which we fight in vain.”
“And your advice — that I burn The Key — is given sincerely?”
“It is.”
“I cannot realise that you mean it, Thessaly. I cannot realise that
you are going.”
“I am sorry, Mario. In these troublous days a cloud of misgiving hangs over every parting, since au revoir may mean good-bye. But I must go, following the precept of that wise man who said, ‘Live unobserved, and if that cannot be, slip unobserved from life.’”
* * * * * *
An hour later Paul was about to leave the house when a telegram was brought to him. He experienced great difficulty in grasping its purport. He could not make out from whom it came, and it seemed at first to be without meaning....
“Regret to inform you Captain Donald H. Courtier, — Coy., Irish
Guards, killed in action....”
XI
On the following day a phenomenal storm burst upon London out of a blue sky. Tropical rain beat down into the heated streets and thunder roared in Titan anger. Paul came out of the War Office and stood on the steps for some moments watching a rivulet surging along the edge of the pavement.... “I am sorry, Mario, but it was mercifully swift, and his end was glorious. Ireland has disappointed some of us, but fellows like Courtier and those who went with him make one think....”
Paul walked out into the lashing rain, going in the direction of Charing Cross. He was thinking of another storm which had struck swiftly out of a fair sky, of the aisles of the hills, and of one that he had met there. To-day Jules Thessaly was leaving England. Don was dead. Some who knew Paul and who saw him driving on through the downpour as if fury-ridden or sped by some great urgency, wondered and later remembered. But to him London was empty, and heedless of the curiosity of men and the tumult of the elements he pressed on. Nothing penetrated to his consciousness save the eternal repetition of his own name and the name of his book. Evidences of his influence seemed to leer at him from window and hoarding. A performance of the French symphony, Dawn, was advertised to take place at the Queen’s Hall, and he found one bill announcing an exhibition of pictures by an ultra-modern Belgian — pictures which their painter declared to be “illustrations” of The Gates. And in his pocket were the papers deposited with Nevin to be given to Paul only in the event of Don’s death. Paul had read them, and whilst he longed with a passionate longing to go to Flamby, he knew that to-day he dared not trust himself within sight of the clear grey eyes, of the alluring lips, within touch of the red-brown hair. But he recognised that he must go ultimately, and so he drove on through the storm and right and left of him were traces of his mark upon the world.
