The chairman spoke. “There are two courses open to us should a man obtain the secrets of a degree he is not entitled to. Either we can administer the oath of the degree to him, or—we can silence him. Are you willing that the oath should be administered to our brother here present ?”
One by one, as he glanced at them, the men shook their heads. “Then,” said the chairman, “we have no option but to proceed with the other course.”
He did not put the vote to the meeting, it was doubtful if he could have got the men to vote, for it was a sentence of death they were passing, and though their minds were made up, to give that deciding nod was not easy, and the motion would have passed without opposition if the voice of the old man with the long white beard had not broken the silence.
“Though we are not willing to admit this man to the degrees he has desecrated, is there no other course than—to invoke the Dark Ray ?”
“What other course would you suggest ?” replied the chairman.
“Can we not bind him with an oath, and bid him depart ?”
“What have the brethren to say upon the matter ?” said the chairman, looking round at the assembled men again.
There was a long silence, no one caring to take the responsibility of voicing the thought that was in the minds of all of them ; the man they were trying stood tense as a bow-string, his nostrils twitching like an animal's and his eyes, now opaque as marble, now pools of blackness.
At length the journalist broke the silence. “Daren't risk it. Can't trust him,” he said, and the rest breathed a sigh of relief that they had been spared the voicing of the verdict.
“Is that your opinion ?” asked the chairman, again referring to the assembled men, who, each in his way, by a nod or a half-spoken word, assented ; save only the patriarch, and his voice once more broke upon the assembly.
“We have long known this man for what he is,” he said. “A man dedicated to the services of evil, following the Left Hand Path, a black occultist ; and yesterday, had I been asked, I should have voted as you have done. But can we say that this man is wholly given over to evil, to separateness ? Remember, you are condemning him upon a voluntary confession ; unless he had spoken, we should never have known, and he has elected to sacrifice himself rather than that an innocent person should suffer. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that he should lay down his life for his friend.’”
“A man in love will do anything,” said the journalist, and Lucas started as if hot metal had touched him. The words, or the sneer with which they were spoken, seemed to galvanize him into activity ; for a moment he stood there, as if poised for flight, and then his hand went to his hip pocket, and the assembly found themselves looking down the barrel of a revolver.
“If you want me, you can come and fetch me,” he snarled. “Strafing is a game that two can play at.” And he backed slowly towards the door, glaring at them along the shining barrel of the revolver.
“You can put up your weapon, Mr. Lucas,” said the chairman coldly. “We shall not use physical force.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LUCAS SLAMMED THE DOOR BEHIND HIM AND turned the key. The lodge-room was remote from the house and the Ashlotts’ abode in the basement. Some delay must occur before the brethren could effect egress. He dashed down the long tiled passage to the office, snatched the papers out of his private safe, and raced upstairs to his bedroom. Here he caught up just such personal belongings as might readily be thrust into a haversack ; then he rushed downstairs again.
A thundering upon the door at the end of the tiled passage showed that he was only just in time, and catching up a handful of letters that had fallen from the letter-box upon the hall mat, he passed out of the old house in the Bloomsbury square where his life had been lived and his life-work had been done. A new order of existence opened before him ; what it held for him was unknown, and never had any man more completely burnt his boats behind him.
Soon he was speeding down the road by which he had taken Veronica between moonset and sunrise of that eventful day, the road which he had already traversed a second time between sunrise and noon ; the excitement of the happenings buoyed him up and he felt no fatigue, but as he drew clear of the London traffic into the open country roads and had time for thought, a realization of his position dawned upon him. He was out of a job to begin with, and had very little prospect of getting one, being without references. He grinned to himself at a vision of the brethren's faces if they were asked for a reference and requested to state the reasons for dismissal. He was not penniless ; he had a small sum in the bank, but, as he remarked to himself, it would not last the two of them very long ; Veronica had nothing but what she stood up in, and he very little more. They could probably ‘squat ’ indefinitely in the general's fishing box, and he might be able to make some use of his pen, but it was a precarious living at best.
Lucas was not an introspective man ; if he had been, he might have noticed that his resources would last just twice as long for one as for two ; he dared not use Veronica again, and there was no reason why he should not cut loose from her ; one is not obliged to employ a secretary one does not require ; all the same it never occurred to him to abandon her. For the first time in his life the man's strange nature had formed a tie ; he had not yet had time to reason things out, but a flash of self-revelation had come to him at the words of the journalist, “A man in love will do anything.” Was he in love with Veronica ? He hardly even asked himself the question ; he only knew that with the instinct of a homing pigeon, he was going back to her as fast as his machine would take him. She was the only creature with whom he was in touch in the midst of an alien and hostile world ; bereft of Veronica he would be utterly alone, and to Veronica he clung desperately.
The mileage he had travelled began to tell upon him, and it was a very weary man who looked down from the crest of the hills upon the valley of Beckering, spread out in the afternoon sun. By the time he reached the rough cart track along the river bank it was all he could do to hold the cycle steady, and when he dismounted at the front door of the old house he had some ado to stand. Knowing it to be useless to ring the bell, he made his way round through the shrubbery to the lawn upon which the one inhabitable room in the place looked out, and Veronica, sitting over her tea, looked up to see a man come with uncertain steps across the grass and knock upon the French window for admission. She sprang up and opened to him, and he crossed the threshold without a word and dropped into a chair beside the table. She asked no questions, she never did ; he was a remote, unaccountable being upon whom she had no claims, but her woman's instinct made her give him a cup of tea and watch with satisfaction while he drank it. His face and clothes were covered with a mask of dust, and he looked more than ever like the statue of some fallen Egyptian king in a forgotten tomb that the sands of the desert have overcome.
There was a curiously changed ‘ feel ’ about him ; he no longer conveyed a sense of power and aloofness ; the mysterious force he always seemed to emanate was gone, he was simply a very tired man, and in some subtle way he had drawn very much closer to her. He drank, but would not eat ; and when the third cup of tea had passed his dust-grimed lips he rose stiffly to his feet, and laid a hand upon Veronica's shoulder.
“I'm going to sleep, little woman ; I'm absolutely done in. Watch by me. Don't leave me alone.” And he flung himself, dust and all, upon a broad leather sofa that stood at the side of the hearth.
He gave her no reason why she should watch beside him while he slept, he would have found it difficult to have formulated one to himself, but he felt the greatest aversion from being left alone ; whether it was that a lingering fear of the Dark Ray and its attack shadowed his mind, or whether, having for the first time discovered the meaning of companionship, he indulged himself in it as the newly-rich indulge in luxury, he could not have said.
Veronica watched the golden afternoon light fade to dusk, and then a shuffling in the passage announced the advent of the old caretaker with supper. When
she saw Lucas asleep on the sofa, she mumbled something unintelligible and went to fetch a second plate ; she seemed quite to have accepted their presence in the house for which she was responsible.
Roused by her movements, Lucas woke up, and arose to go and wash off the dust. As he shed his motoring overalls, he felt something bulky in the pocket, and drew out the bundle of letters he had picked up as he left the house. Two were for the Ashlotts, the rest for the Fraternity, but one was addressed to him personally. The Ashlotts’ letters he tore up and flung in the hearth, he dared not risk sending them on, his safety lay largely in the ignorance of the brethren as to his whereabouts, for it is very difficult to focus an occult force unless one has some idea as to at least the point of the compass to which it: is to be directed. The letters for the Fraternity he glanced through out of pure curiosity ; their writers would have to wait for an answer ; then he opened the letter addressed to himself. It was brief and to the point, and without any preamble, informed him that General Sawberry had passed peacefully away at his Woking home early the previous morning, and that he himself was the principal legatee. Lucas let out a long whistle that almost ended in a war whoop. What astonishing luck, and just when he needed it, too. If the rest of his luck were as good as this, he would pull through all right. He put the letter in his pocket and went down to supper, patting Veronica on the back in the most: friendly fashion as he took his seat at the table. He chatted to her over the meal, and she made her usual polite little monosyllabic replies, but he promised himself that he would soon teach her to wake up and become a live human being, and he looked forward to the task as he might have looked forward to the solution of some abstruse mathematical problem or a defect in the motor-cycle's machinery ; Lucas was not quite human himself yet, though he had made progress in that direction.
After supper, smoking a pipe, and covertly watching Veronica as she read, he again congratulated himself upon his good fortune. He was master of this house, queer old ramshackle place though it was ; and Veronica—a very little would make Veronica quite charming, and it would be a fascinating experiment to watch her unfold. He asked nothing better than to be left alone in the possession of his newly acquired resources to develop the novel experience that had come into his life.
If only the Fraternity would let him alone ! Perhaps if he disappeared completely from their ken they would forget all about him in time, or at any rate get over their rage. He did not wish to think about that Dark Ray and its effects, they were not a pleasant subject of meditation, He remembered the German-American who had preferred to plunge into Niagara Gorge rather than face exposure to the force of that ray. If it had not been for Veronica, he himself would have followed some such course ; but there was Veronica, with this new experience just beginning, something that he had never known before, and whose sweets he was tasting for the first time—there was Veronica with the lamplight throwing into relief the soft curves of chin and throat, and who held his attention and interest in a queer, subtle fashion. He longed to win some sort of response from her, just such another smile as she had given him upon his departure for London ; and he sat there, watching her in that dim-lit, tobacco-clouded room, planning how he might bring that smile to her lips again. The dog-like, cowed Veronica was of no use to him, he wanted a Veronica who would come of her own free will, and, above all, would smile.
He could not forget that smile ; it was the first time any woman had shown him that side of her nature ; the first time, indeed, that he had ever sought to call it forth, for those smiles are not bestowed upon cynical, cold-blooded men, such as he had trained himself to be. But fundamentally Lucas was neither cynical nor cold-blooded, he was a hot-blooded man with quick emotions and strong enthusiasms, but he had been trained in a tradition that did not fully understand human nature, by men who believed that the race can best be served by those who have no tie or bond of affection, forgetting that it is only by loving an individual that we can learn to love the race. A man who has loved greatly can transfer his love from the unit to the mass, and it is just such men as these, of frustrated affections, who have best served the cause of humanity ; but a man who has never loved does not know how to love, because he has never learnt in the only possible school, the school of experience.
And now Lucas was getting his training. As he had surmised, he and Veronica had followed the Way of Initiation together for many lives until he had quitted the Path, and then their ways had divided ; but now, with her re-entry upon the scene of his life, the old influence was reasserting itself and he was being slowly drawn back towards the Path. There had come a point in his evolution—in the course his soul was pursuing through eternity—where a side-track turned off that led across country, as it were, to the path of the Right-hand Way. It is known to occultists that periodically there are these cross-paths that lead from the Right-hand Path to the Left, from the Way of Light to the Way of Darkness, and vice versa ; those upon the Path of Light, the Right Hand Path, as it is called, are periodically tempted to turn off by this perilous short-cut to power which ends upon the Path of Darkness ; and those upon the Left Hand Path are equally given a recurring opportunity to cross-cut, as it were, on to the Path of Light. But at what cost to themselves ! for ‘ the road winds uphill all the way, yea, to the very end.’ Those who have dedicated themselves to evil are subject to temptation just as are those who have dedicated themselves to good ; and as the pleasures of the senses call back the children of light, so the children of darkness become affrighted by their solitude, the fruit of the separateness which is the law of their service; and if, in their loneliness, they form a tie with one who is upon the Right Hand Path, they must either draw that one over to their own dark allegiance, or they themselves will be drawn into the light. Lucas, that day upon the roadway, had failed to draw Veronica over to the way of darkness, her early training, the strongest thing in the world, had proved too strong even for him, despite the hold he had gained over her, for it is very seldom that those who, in early childhood have been grounded in even the most perfunctory and elementary of religious teaching that calls upon a certain Name can never be drawn completely under the power of the Dark Masters. The country curate who dabs some lukewarm water upon the little form in his arms sets a seal that takes a very great deal of breaking, as all those who deal in the hidden side of things are well aware. Lucas, with all his intellect: and training, had failed to subvert the influence of a simple old country woman who had taught a little child her first prayers. Let theologians argue as they will concerning the vicarious atonement, the fact remains that there is a Name and a Sign that are efficacious when that dark undertow sets in that drags a soul down to the horrors that are not human.
Lucas, at the crisis in the Lodge, had been tempted, just as a saint is tempted, and he had failed in his dark; allegiance because he had formed a tie, he had forgone the fruits of his painfully acquired knowledge for the sake of little Veronica ; he had known enough to safeguard himself perfectly, but when the test came, his heart failed him, he could not take advantage of his own foresight, and he fell, just as the saint falls, the victim of a forbidden love. True, it was a selfish love, thinking only of its own gratification and not at all of the well-being of its object ; true, his loyalty to Veronica had been prompted by a dread of losing her rather than any concern for her welfare, but still, it was love, a germinating seed, if not the perfect flower.
CHAFTER THIRTEEN
NEXT MORNING LUCAS, ACCOMPANIED BY Veronica, set out to explore his Ht tie estate. With the exception of the lawn in front of the house, the rest of the grounds consisted of shrubbery and woodland, both much overcrowded and neglected. Straggling laurels grew up like small trees, and oaks, herded together in ragged negligence, lost all their native dignity and contrived to produce a sinister twilight in the underworld of their groves. Nature, left to her own devices, is never morbid, but when man takes possession of a place and then relinquishes it, the impression of something evil or mournful is invariably conveyed. Lucas
had no intention of reconstructing this domain, but it pleased him to explore its resources. The Woking house was, he knew, a much pleasanter and more accessible abode, and thither he would remove himself and his belongings (Veronica included under the latter heading) as soon as the formalities of his possession were completed.
Only the cart track lay between the grounds and the river, and as the boundary was marked by a single strand of slack and rusting wire, the division was more a legal fiction than an actual fact. Many trees had fallen and lay slowly rotting, and upon one of these trunks the wanderers seated themselves, gazing through a green twilight on to the shadowed river, for here the bed deepened and the banks narrowed, and the current ran through a gorge of overhanging trees. Occasionally a vole plopped into the water ; occasionally a kingfisher shot like a streak of blue down the narrow path of sunlight in the river's centre, and Lucas discoursed to Veronica upon life in general, and his own in particular.
Veronica, though she was no talker (which in Lucas's eyes was not a drawback) was an admirable listener, for she had a quick and receptive mind, able to grasp the significance of new ideas ; and with wise little nods of her head she considered and stored away for future reference the concepts of men and things that were being presented to her. For the first time she heard the doctrine of the immortality of the soul brought to its logical conclusion as Lucas talked glibly of past lives and their influence upon the present, treating these subjects with an easy familiarity which showed that they were part of the habitual content of his consciousness ; he did not reason about life after death, because, as he expressed it, he “Was accustomed to dying, though he had never quite got used to being born ; birth was always rather a shock.” To him, death was on a par with emigration, a serious undertaking for a poor man, but merely an interesting and exciting adventure for the man rich in knowledge. Premature death, however, he objected to strongly, not because he feared to die, but because of the time it took to train a new body for service ; there was the intolerable tedium of infancy, childhood and youth to be gone through again before fair value had been received from the coveted maturity.
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