Veronica found herself brought face to face with a new set of values in life ; the body, the world, held cheap and made to serve an end of which no hint had hitherto reached her ; indeed, Lucas did not even speak of “the body,” but of “a body,” and the world was regarded as a world of effects, with but little power to set up causes on its own account. What happened there was to Lucas an aftermath, the real struggle, the real event, had taken place upon a subtler plane ; Veronica found the concept presented to her of great forces, governed by great laws, that operated behind the multiplex happenings of our haphazard existence ; the aim of Lucas's life she learnt, was to discover the nature of these laws and so control their forces by balancing one against the other that the power of his will, infinitesimal though it was by comparison, should be able to turn the scale.
Now Veronica, though she neither talked nor reasoned, was not a fool, and her perception pierced quickly and surely to the heart of any matter that came under her consideration. She soon perceived that, while Lucas talked much of the occult powers and the means of their attainment:, he gave no hint as to the use he meant to make of them when once attained, and she set herself to work, in her quiet little way, to find out what his ultimate aim might be, and she speedily discovered that he had not got one ; he was playing with these powers as a child might play with a Meccano outfit, making little models that would hoist little weights, all designed upon the best engineering principles, but with never a thought of the greater purposes of life to which these principles might be applied ; the model bridge would never be translated into reality unless Lucas himself happened to want to cross a river. He studied the Secret Science, the Science of Kings, as it is called, for the delight of seeing the parts fit together and the mystery explained ; and that great study, which is as much a religion as a science, was no more to him than a jigsaw puzzle. All this Veronica, the simple, discovered while Lucas talked himself out upon that summer day.
Lucas, absorbed in his narrative, never heeded his listener's attitude, till, pausing to search for a word, he found himself being surveyed with a quaint detachment by the little person at the other end of the log, and experienced an unpleasant feeling that in some way or other he had been making a fool of himself, just as a student who had read a popular treatise on astronomy might feel on finding he had been trying to improve the mind of the Astronomer Royal. Anxious to ascertain her attitude, he shot a question at her, for the first time that morning.
“Well ? What do you make of it all ?”
Veronica nodded her head sagely. “I think I see what you mean ; there are things that cause other things to happen, and you want to know what they are so that you can get at them.”
“That's about it,” said Lucas. “The control of causation, if you want to be precise.”
“But what are you going to do with them when you have got hold of them ?”
“You can do anything you like with them, you could get anything you wanted.”
“But one doesn't want such an awful lot, unless of course, one wants to swank ; but you don't do that, Mr. Lucas.”
“No, I don't swank,” said Lucas, laughing. “That, at any rate, is not one of my numerous shortcomings. But come now, wouldn't you like to have great resources at your disposal ?”
“I'd like a certain amount,” said cautious Veronica, “But not too much ; it would take such a lot of looking after. Besides, supposing you were balancing the forces and one of them slipped ?”
“That is just exactly what has happened,” muttered Lucas to himself, and fell silent for several minutes. Then he threw off his dark mood and spoke again. “What would you do with the resources of the world if you had them ?”
“I should get some frocks and books and pictures, and a dog ; oh yes, I should certainly get a dog.”
“But that would not exhaust the resources of the world ; what would you do with the rest ?”
Veronica thought a moment. “I couldn't eat all the bread in the world, but I could see that the people who needed it got some, and that the greedy people did not gobble too much, which is what they do at present. Why did you never think of doing that, Mr. Lucas ?”
“Oh, I don't know. What has it got to do with me ?”
“But could you be happy, knowing that someone else was starving ?”
“Good Lord, yes ; that is their look-out. People have got to stand on their own feet ; you would never get anywhere if you always waited for the stragglers. You have got to prune if you want to get choice fruit, you know ; you can't save the lives of all the poor little apples and still have any fruit fit for dessert. Civilization is built upon sacrifice, and if I have any choice in the matter, and I think that I have, I propose to be one of the civilized, not one of the sacrificed.”
This was logic hard to answer, and Veronica did not attempt the task. She merely shook her head and said : “All the same, I don't believe you really like it:, Mr. Lucas ; you are always after something, and as soon as you get it you want the next thing. It is like the Mad Hatter's tea party,—jam yesterday, and jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day, I like to enjoy myself as I go along.”
Lucas was enjoying himself vastly. Veronica was beginning to wake up, and it thoroughly amused him to reveal unexpected depths to her and listen to her shrewd little comments. There was more in her than he had expected ; her mind was not empty so much from lack of capacity as from lack of raw material. He imagined that he was doing a very great deal to Veronica ; he little realized how much Veronica was doing to him. He, as well as she, was being presented with a new view point ; he might sweep aside her naïve little assertions, but he could not ignore the fact that, quaintly though they might be expressed, they were singularly relevant, and that she had an uncanny knack of putting her finger on the weak spots in his position. To travel hopefully may be better than to arrive, but Lucas had been made to realize that morning that he was merely on the move, and had no definite goal ; he was a spiritual nomad ; the very separateness of his existence prevented him from availing himself of the forces at his disposal. As Veronica had said, he could not eat all the bread in the world, and therefore, his own mouth being filled, he had no further interest in the matter ; whereas she, having sympathies outside her own ego, could overflow like a brimming pool, and vicariously enjoy many satisfactions. Perhaps there was something to be said for her point of view after all ; he himself had already experienced a keener enjoyment than he had ever known before in getting into sympathetic touch with this child ; it was quite a different sensation to that of power. The manipulation of another being had its charms, of course, but they palled when the novelty wore off ; but when, instead of manipulating, and controlling, one could win another person to respond to one, why, then one was, in one's turn, stimulated, lifted on to a higher level, whence one turned to inspire that person again, and be again lifted. It opened up new vistas, new possibilities of experience, this action and reaction of two, as opposed to the solitary working of the one. But to achieve this interaction, one had to win the other to a willing co-operation, it was not enough to out-manœuvre, to intimidate, one had to win over ; and he set to work to discover the secret of this process just as he had set himself to discover the forbidden knowledge of the Fraternity.
His method was the Socratic method of question and answer. With his conscious mind he would formulate a question, which he put to his subconscious mina, to which his occult training gave him access (for the occultist knows a great deal more about the subconscious mind than the psychologist does), and his subconscious mind, in the light of its wider faculties, would return him an answer. Absorbed in this occupation, time slipped by unnoticed, and it was not until the sun was setting that he returned to Veronica with his plans fully formed. He knew exactly how he meant to work upon her mind, how to rouse her nature so that she should expand from the child into the woman and make that response to him for which he sought. He was already well acquainted with her character—or thought he was—and he knew just how he meant to t
ouch those secret springs that let loose the forces which lie latent in the natures of all of us, even the quietest.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE OLD CARETAKER HAD PREPARED SUPPER and Veronica had seated herself at table when he made his belated entry. The meal was quite a festive occasion ; Lucas absorbed in his new pursuit was in an especially cheerful mood, and Veronica, who was fast losing her fear of him, was quite prepared to respond, with the result that Lucas, who was of the mercurial temperament, forgot all about his carefully laid plans and all he had ever known of psychology, and followed the way of a man with a maid, which, according to the wisest of mankind, can only be likened to the way of a serpent upon a rock or a ship upon the sea.
Some shred of shrewdness that remained revealed to him that it was Veronica who was pulling the strings of his nature, not he of hers ; it was the deep fountains of his being that were unsealed, while she, aloof as only those who are of virgin soul can be aloof, looked on, half frightened, half fascinated, at the forces she had roused, but, being a woman, thoroughly enjoying herself. She was too unawakened for full realization ; she only knew that, whereas he had hitherto treated her as some creature of a lower order of creation that he kept for his own purposes, she was now exalted far above him and he was reaching up to her ; and she, in her girlish mind, debated whether she would reach him a finger or whether she would not, and finally decided she would do so. He had always had a queer kind of fascination for her, and the fascination, in some curious way, was enhanced by the fact that she was afraid of him, so that, before the meal had ended, Veronica was drawn once again to smile upon Lucas.
And the smile completed his undoing. It dawned slowly, like the smile of Monna Lisa, glowed for a moment with a revelation of all that could be in a woman, and then fled suddenly, as if alarmed at its own temerity. Lucas had set out to play a game, but he found himself caught in a current of the greater deeps. So does Nature cheat those who seek to defraud her. Men have thrown away kingdoms for just such a smile, and Lucas threw away his soul ; his only chance of safety in the present crisis lay in allegiance to his Dark Master whose law is separateness ; only thus could he draw upon the force necessary to withstand the attack that was arrayed against him. Here was he, whose first care should have been the black magic necessary for his own protection, forgetful of both attack and defence, unmindful of those transcendent things he had sought and worshipped, become human, all too human.
What cared he for the secret magic of the Egyptians ? He was learning a greater magic than ever the celibate priests knew ; the old ritual of man and woman was being enacted, and, priest and priestess of Nature's own mysteries, they were initiating each other, and he reckoned the world well lost. To see the slow smile begin to dawn in Veronica's eyes before it reached her lips, and to know that it was for him it dawned—there was nothing the Fraternity had to confer that was equal to this. Though he should be able to summon Principalities and Powers to appear upon his threshold, what could they avail to feed the human side of him that had always gone hungry ? Separateness might mean power, but it was in union that happiness lay, and union could only come through love, and now that Lucas had tasted love, he desired nothing else. The good in a bad man can prove his undoing as surely as the bad in a good man.
The moon was up by the time the meal was finished, for meals go slowly under such circumstances. The clear cold radiance shone white upon the lawn save where the shadows of the shrubbery fell black as ink. The summer night in that shut-in valley was almost as warm as the day, and they went out through the French windows on to the terrace. There, as they strolled up and down, Lucas slipped his hand through Veronica's arm ; it rested upon the soft rounded forearm, left bare by the short sleeve, the long, olive-brown student's fingers in sharp contrast to the girl's white skin ; and she, half child, half woman, was well content to let it rest there.
So they strolled and turned, and strolled and turned, talking of life as each had seen it, and Veronica heard for the first time that most illuminating of all things, a man talking of his own life and the experiences that have made him what he is, speaking to the woman he wishes to make understand him, and learning to understand himself in the process. She heard how Lucas had been born outside wedlock, the son of an opera singer and a man who stood high in political circles ; how he had been brought up in the family of a small shopkeeper, and how the family circle had failed to contain him ; a square peg had been driven into a round hole, but the peg was of the tougher fibre, and it was the hole that had split under the pressure. Then came the history of a rebellious, unmanageable lad, who jumped in and out of jobs as the hot southern temperament of his mother flared up within him ; but presently the intellect of his father began to assert itself, and he struggled in night school and Polytechnic classes to supplement the grammar school education that had been prematurely terminated by his irruption into freedom.
At length he found himself as assistant to an old man who kept a second-hand shop ; it was not an antique shop of the inspiring kind, nor yet such an old book shop as scholars go to in search of rare tomes, but was what is euphemistically known as a marine store dealer's, though such emporiums often have nothing whatever to do with the sea ; their title merely informs the elect that they are of the scrap-iron persuasion rather than the rag and bone faith, though, as a matter of fact, they will deal in anything that any stretch of the imagination can conceive to have a marketable value.
Into this abode of unhallowed dust came one day a curious article of commerce. It was a white, or rather Isabella-coloured dust-sheet some three yards square, upon which, by means of the liberal use of marking ink, a circle, four feet in diameter had been drawn ; the interior of the circle was, save for dirty marks, left blank, but around its circumference was a most extraordinary collection of strange hieroglyphs and rude representations of creatures and things. The owner of the shop accepted the thing at its face value ; a dust sheet was a dust sheet to him, and could be used for covering up the stock until such time as a purchaser should covet it, and in such an event, Lucas had better not ask more than seven and six for it, because of the marks, but he wasn't to take less than half a crown because of its extensive acreage.
The active-minded lad, however, was not so easily satisfied ; every time he unfurled the thing at night, he would puzzle over its hieroglyphs, and every time he bundled it up in the morning he would renew his quest. Then, one day when business was slack, he was looking through some of the books that lay about the shop (for the old junk-dealer would attend sales of household effects and buy any lot that went cheap enough, regardless of its nature) and in one of these books he found the clue to the mystery in a rough wood-cut of which the dust sheet was evidently a copy. Wild with excitement, he devoured the letterpress, and learned that the mysterious sheet was a floor-cloth used by a magician when he wished to invoke certain elemental presences ; the operator stood in the centre of the magic circle, and protected by the symbols that surrounded him, called upon the beings of another order of creation to take their stand each on his own sigil depicted upon the corners of the cloth.
When closing-time came the young assistant locked the door from the inside, not the outside, and spreading the magic dust-sheet upon such floor space as he could clear of impedimenta, took his stand in the centre of the circle and read aloud to the shadows the magical formula which the book declared to be suitable to the occasion. Then he waited.
Absolutely nothing happened, and disgusted with the whole proceeding, himself included, he turned out the gas and went home, and so to bed. As he was dozing off to sleep, however, he was aroused to consciousness by the feeling that there was something in the room ; he tried to reach out his hand to strike a light, but found himself powerless to move. He felt a breath in his face, a weight on his chest. Something was at his throat, and still he could not move. Then, with a supreme effort of will he sat up, but found the room empty, even as the shop had been.
Being a lad of sound nerves, he soon settled d
own and went to sleep again, and would have thought no more of his nightmare had it not been that in the morning, when he placed a reluctant foot upon the shabby oilcloth that paved his meagre attic, he perceived that the floor was covered with slimy tracks as if an army of slugs had passed across it. The foul trail led from the window to the bed and back again, and when he examined it, he found that the window frame was covered with the filthy stuff ; the creature that had left the trail had evidently entered by the six-inch aperture left open at the top of the window for ventilation.
For many nights after that the boy slept with his window shut, but the miscellaneous collection of books that had come, along with the floorcloth, from the house of some student of the occult arts, so inflamed his imagination that he could think of nothing else ; his whole soul was gathered up into a one-pointed desire to learn the secret of the mystery to which he had been given a clue. What was it men sought by these mysterious means ? How did they seek it, and who were the seekers ?
As such desires of the single-hearted will, his bore fruit. One evening, as he was spreading the magic dust-sheet over the more precious of the rubbish, he saw a face peering at him through the window, and in a minute or two the owner of the face appeared in the doorway, and an individual of uncouth and hairy appearance demanded the price of the dust-sheet. Lucas named seven and six, as he had been bidden, and without demur the stranger laid down three half-crowns upon the counter. Then he peered curiously at the lad.
“Do you know anything about these things ?” he inquired.
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