Before he moved east again, however, closer to the great Asian mountains that were his eternal loadstone, a mental phenomenon overtook him that was like nothing he had ever experienced, and still it was more singular than alarming. It was a warm evening at the end of May, and he was smoking an after-dinner cigar on the outside balcony of his hotel, in company with a few groups of other people, yet very much alone, when suddenly without cause the name CRETE flashed through his head, just as distinctly as though his mouth had uttered it. Then he asked himself, hardly understanding his own question, how it would be if he took a look at Crete, seeing that he had never been there, that it was said to be very interesting, and that it was quite easy to reach from this particular capital? The suggestion was already a desire to be on the island. What had started the name and the impulse, he never knew; he had not been hearing or reading anything about the place. He decided within the minute that nothing stood in the way of packing his traps and being off to Candia by the first available transport.
Afterwards he fancied that the decision was scarcely come to when a great rushing shadow swept across his eyes, too suddenly and swiftly to grasp, and yet the impression remained with him that it had been a woman's shape—or rather, a shape suggestive of the female, since it had been so vast, dark, and instantly swallowed up, that it never could have had time to look like an actual woman's.
The half-vision puzzled, yet failed to disquiet him. His health was excellent, his eyesight normal, and his nerves even robust. He had always conceded that the universe was a very queer place, full of unlighted holes and corners; so that this might quite well be a new wonder. As the invitation to Crete and the following hallucination had been so nearly simultaneous, evidently they were to be connected—in which case it extremely resembled a supernatural summons to the island. The notion pleased him.
After finishing his cigar quietly, he rose to get his hat, then stepped forth from the hotel for a car to Piraeus.
A trading schooner, the ultimate expression of dirt and unsailorly disorder, was to leave for Crete, via the Islands, at eight next morning. He was directed to the Levantine master at a neighbouring tavern by a knot of the Dago crew, found him there, an alcoholic-looking ruffian, having a countenance as craven and abject as cunning, and, plying him with a few drinks, finally succeeded in obtaining a passage in his disreputable tub for something less than the first-class fare for the distance in any liner. The cheat he ignored by virtue of his grown antipathy to the fashionable hotel life of those elaborate steamships. He preferred travelling en prince with human scum to associating on enforced level terms with the dragged-up western mob having money in pocket.
Landed at Candia, after a surfeit of oily diet and discomfort of the sea, he soon learnt that all the talk there was of Knossos and the antique marvels of the island still daily being unearthed. Already Crete was a little Egypt, it seemed; only hitherto it had been insufficiently advertised. Money was wanted. Next day he went to Knossos, which was but a few miles inland, and there met Arsinal.
There had been no rushing towards one another of attuned natures, but the development of an intimacy had been rather slower than might have been expected in so friendly, isolated and purposeful a camp, by reason of the two circumstances that Saltfleet himself was always as a haughty cliff overseeing the flats of the human race, and that Arsinal, a reserved, unassuming, yet oddly noticeable man, was too engrossed by his work and musings to pay at the beginning any special attention to the big tourist of curiosity taking a view of their hive. But Saltfleet, making Candia his headquarters, after the second day amongst those ant-like toilers, had begun to mark out his quarry. The rest appeared so universally interested in their treasure-hunt, as though they had been boy scouts playing with the utmost seriousness a game of make-believe—always cheerful, industrious, welcoming with an equal welcome whatsoever might turn up—whereas Arsinal, by contrast, came to strike him as being upon the spot for a specific purpose, distinct from the long ideal of those others of recovering piecemeal in order to reconstruct a buried civilisation. That they were skilled, patient, persistent beings, knowing their trade, Saltfleet was prepared to acknowledge. Arsinal, however, had that different mien of one not burrowing at large, but meditatively watching and waiting for the emergence of some expected particular thing; which necessarily invested him for his silent witness with the moral advantage always, if irrationally, associated with the pursuit of personal aims.
He discreetly interrogated the entirely courteous and affable acting-director of operations, and from him learnt that the individual of his notice was regarded quite as a free-lance, with liberty of coming and going, as of taking as much or as little hand in the excavations as he pleased, subject, of course, to the usual reticences outside. Such privileges could not decently be withheld. He was one of the big men of archæology; with the standard that belonged to that rank. He was there (he fancied) for a particular detail of information, which, however, remained his own secret. There was no question of his being an unauthorised reporter for the Press or the societies. So far as the acting-director knew, Arsinal had never written a public paragraph, or read a paper, in his life. Personally he was not very well acquainted with the man. Saltfleet gathered that his informant's attitude was one of slightly peevish toleration.
He came to speech with Arsinal himself for the first time on the third evening after his arrival. The active disinterring of the past had sufficiently interested him to make him decide to stay on so long. His mountaineering name was his passport to the acting chief, who, indeed, seemed to feel a pleasure in explaining things to him. Arsinal, on the evening in question, was standing in the dusk, contemplating the now obscured valley at the foot of Knossos, from the height above the latter; and there the visitor to the camp had chanced to mount to him, certainly with no expectation or wish of encountering him. But naturally words must pass. After the first involuntary movements of rather vexed surprise on both their parts—for the evening was very fair and apt for solitude—they had perforce to exchange nods, whereupon a spell of stiff silence ensued; when Arsinal, still under reluctance, and with that strange absent half-yearning look that made him frequently seem either a saint or an innocent, inquired:
"You are really entering into all this?"
"In a very qualified way, and with a pretty complete ignorance!" returned Saltfleet, smiling. "The excellent Professor has done what he can to put matters in a nutshell for me, but I fear I am still quite hazy about his famous three divisions, and three sub-divisions of each, of Minoan history. The scheme is rather too incredibly mathematical for my practical knowledge of how human affairs go. … And then, to accept his word for these nine periods, I am exceedingly at sea concerning the contemporary outside world for each. You assume fourteen hundred years for the whole Minoan empire. That gives you a century and a half for each period. During the entire time, Crete must have run up against Egypt, Babylon, Troy, Athens, Israel, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, the Philistines. Now, to me it is all a welter. I have no dates. … I mean this. To comprehend the globe at any given age, we first have to regard its skeleton, its broad outline, the nations preeminent, their political aims and interactions. Without all that, we cannot descend to individuals. Well, it is precisely all that, that your chief is very vague about. His nine periods seem to be based on the exceedingly precarious evidence of pots and vases. A future expert may arise to declare that on the contrary such-and-such is the case. So that, altogether, it is too theoretical for a plain person such as I."
Arsinal smiled in turn.
"An archaeologist goes forward on his hands and knees, you must realise. The history is being pieced together too, though slowly." He gestured with a hand towards the nearly invisible palace beneath. "And it is always the glory of these people that they are enthusiastic to spend themselves for the most doubtful chance of any important step forward at all. Here, in Crete, for instance, probably the whole of the historical record was delivered to parchment or wax, which would hav
e been destroyed by fire at the great final downfall of the empire, at the hands of barbarous northern invaders. What record does survive, in the form of inscriptions on clay, is believed to consist merely of civic inventories, etc. The inscriptions are not yet read; but should that prove to be so, put yourself in our position, Mr. Saltfleet."
"Pardon me, but I fancy you aren't quite in the same gallery!"
"How do you mean?"
"You have impressed me as being a trifle less keen than the others here, that is all."
"Perhaps less generally keen."
Saltfleet's eye fixed him through the dusk.
"More expectant, at a venture."
"Of what?"
"My dear man, how do I know? ... Presumably, of some-thing being unearthed which is to confirm some notion of yours."
"But so are they all expectant. Expectancy is the soul and life of the working archaeologist."
"If you will have it so, it is no business of mine," said Saltfleet.
"Still, I mustn't be uncandid, and I think I understand the sort of distinction you point at. Their hopes are free, mine confined; they want anything, I want something—you mean that? It is not untrue. You know, of course, what Knossos, as the Minoan capital, stands for?"
"I've no clear information."
"For the cult of the Great Mother. … The island was a principal seat of her worship. Well then, as a man whose whole responsible life has been devoted to the preparation for the study of that cult, surely it is most natural that I should occasionally have been drawn hither to learn what is going on in the way of new discoveries? Only, the structure, drains, profane pottery, and so forth, of this palace and its compeers elsewhere on the island, do not happen to be in my line; and that must have been responsible for your perplexity on seeing me frequently stand hungry and idle in the midst of a banquet."
Saltfleet bowed.
"And so the case is explained. It remains only for me to apologise for my inquisitiveness."
"I hope you will not. Indeed, I feel honoured by the notice of so distinguished a—" He hesitated for the word.
"Risker of his neck!" laughed the big man. "However, you seem to be more distinguished than I, and the pleasure and honour are mine. Will you have a cigar?"
Arsinal refused civilly, whereupon the other selected one himself from the opened case, and bit and lighted it. The aromatic smoke rose straight up in the still air. The ever-darkening evening was lovely. Stars were creeping into the sky. Neither speaker was in haste to descend from the utter peace of that eminence.
"Then what induced you to take up your particular study in the first instance, Mr. Arsinal?"
The archaeologist straightened his shoulders, and put back his head wearily. The absence of a hat discovered his partial baldness. Otherwise he was dark-haired, shaven, pale and worn-looking, and every third minute drew himself up from his accustomed stoop with that nervous action of squaring his shoulder-blades. Saltfleet gave him a seniority of a few years over himself; he should be forty or so. He was on the tall side of middle height, thin, obviously delicate, yet gave the impression of having a whole reservoir of moral stamina always at command to supply his deficiencies of physique. It suggested a powerful engine in a frail frame.
It suggested as well, to Saltfleet, a force of will derived from singleness, purity, faith, that should have more in common with the soul of the mediaeval saints and martyrs than with the meaner drive that devotes a modern scientist to his science. It was some kind of spirituality. The pained abstraction of his dark-irised, exhausted eyes seemed to proclaim him as belonging to the small eternal band of lonely thinkers, as incapable of communicating their insights before ripened by the years as of co-operating with fellow-workers in the same field, the cause being identical in both cases—the retreat of a noble sleepless spirit to the inner realities of the intellect, that no companion may enter. … Saltfleet began to be greatly attracted by him. He judged him unmarried.
Arsinal, too, became partly shaken out of his meditations, that had endured beneath the chat, to note more attentively the insistent personality of this large-framed stranger from the outer world. For Saltfleet was not an individual easy to ignore. The direct vigour of honesty at the back of the electric masterfulness and hardness of his address was very effectual in putting those he talked with on their mettle, as being challenged by a nature essentially at war with feebleness, therefore quick to detect it. Defended from any such sense of inferiority by his multitude of intellectual problems always urgent for solution, Arsinal nevertheless had to know the shock of contact like the rest, and was roused accordingly. He had heard the man's interesting exploits referred to in camp, his stature and bearing were compelling, and, if he manifestly could not pretend to even the rudiments of archaeological lore, that coming of his to the island a couple of days since was at least in the nature of a courtesy that affected them all. He could not well refuse to be a host of such a guest. Why, indeed, he should be visiting Knossos, to prowl aimlessly about a work of which he was unfitted to understand the first thing, was a puzzle in mental stimuli.
For quite another reason, he was moved to accept this acquaintance not of his seeking. His programmes generally were very much ahead, and all at once it had occurred to him that, could an agreement be struck, Saltfleet might later be extremely useful to him. He must have practical knowledge of the countries north of the Himalayas, as of the special needs and difficulties of travel in them. His help might save Arsinal a load of trouble if and when his half-purposed journey to Tibet should come off. It might be twelve or eighteen months yet, or never. Other clues in the nearer East were first to be taken up, which might obviate the necessity for this hardest trip of all. And so he repressed the excluding answer almost on his tongue to Saltfleet's last question, to substitute one more amicable, if still reticent.
"The study of the ancient conception and worship of the Great Mother? The goal has been before me for very many years—since my school days, in fact."
"Surely a quaint ambition for a schoolboy!"
"Need it surprise? For if we could see into the heads of all schoolboys, we should gain many a strange sight. There and nowhere else, Mr. Saltfleet, is the grand mine of all the enthusiasms that presently are to move and transform the sluggish world. Perhaps no more than one in ten thousand may struggle through to maturity, but would not it be lamentable on that account to jeer at and discourage the whole display of fantasy? One might even assert, remembering the pressing need of high imagination in life, that its promotion should be made a principal point of education. More than a few English public schools, I fear, would require to change their methods."
"What gives a boy his twist?"
"In each of us, you know, there is a marriage of inherited characters, with resulting children, in the shape of new characters. And sometimes these new characters may swell smoothly and regularly from the germ; which is the way of genius. But at other times they may lie dormant and unsuspected for quite a number of years, until suddenly released by some fate of outside accident. And that, it has seemed to me, has always been the way of the world's outstanding saints and religious reformers. Paul was an instance."
"Which method has been yours, may I ask?
"The second. … When a lad of sixteen, I experienced a night-vision, which left an ineffaceable stamp on my mind."
"May it be communicated?"
"I have never thought that I could tell anyone."
"Then don't break your rule for me," returned Saltfleet good-naturedly. … "Though, indeed, I am no scoffer at such things. Especially it would be inconsistent in me since a little psychic adventure I had in Athens just before coming here. It fetched me here, in fact. I heard something like a voice, and saw something like a shape—so here I am, awaiting my next instructions!"
Arsinal viewed him keenly.
"Yet one would scarcely connect you with such a habit of superstition."
"Nor is it a habit. Only, the single word, CRETE, came into my head
, as if a command; and was succeeded by a sort of flashing shadow in front of my eyes, that seemed as though it might be a woman's."
"A woman's?"
"Yes. Though, if you can understand the distinction, I caught nothing in the way of skirts or smooth features. It was something big, formless, swift, and yet feminine—nearer than that I can't give it. … And it has been my first case of the kind. But what becomes of our boasted sense and solidity of nature, Mr. Arsinal, when one faint wave from a phantom world can upset all the plans of an otherwise rational man, to send him on a purposeless overseas excursion of a hundred leagues!"
"Unhappily, I don't know you, to be able to judge what such an incident might stand for. Yet there is this singularity about it. For me, Crete is so linked to the ancient cult of the Goddess, that I can but regard it as extraordinary in the extreme that its name, sounding in your ears, should have been accompanied or followed by a womanly phantasm for your eyes. The association truly has hitherto been unknown to you?"
"In my disgraceful ignorance, till coming on this visit I have only thought of the island in connection with such scholastic wearinesses as Minos and Rhadamanthus, Dædalus and Icarus, the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, Theseus and Ariadne. The maiden Ariadne, I will swear, is nowise responsible for the generating of my apparition."
A minute passed, while Arsinal stood uneasy and thoughtful.
"Perhaps I could now relate my own story, Mr. Saltfleet. Perhaps we really are to be acquainted. You won't let it go further, of course... The thing happened to me in the early hours of a winter morning, in bed. I woke up to behold a tall, draped figure, female and angelic, standing by the bedside, looking, not down, but across me. … That conveys nothing of my neccessary sensations. How could I describe her, indeed? She seemed not a created being, but a principle, or essence. … But when I awoke from that awakening—to common life again—I believed that I should know for all my lifetime what a goddess might appear to the sight. … I searched in every suitable book at my command for mention of the grandest female divinities of antiquity. Too quickly I found that the light Greeks were not the people. And so my work took shape."
Devil's Tor Page 26
