Devil's Tor

by David Lindsay

  "An old-time monk would rather have fastened on one of the saints, or the blessed Virgin herself."

  "But mistakenly, so clearly increate was this Being."

  There was another long silence, after which Saltfleet commented:

  "The pedestal was sublime, if only you have found an adequate statue to erect on it. You can hardly soberly be proposing in these sceptical days to refound a dead female worship. Jeanne d'Arc had a realm to deliver, but realms are no longer delivered so, even if England needed your patriotic services. Without desiring to play the cynic, Mr. Arsinal, I can't see that the adding of a few more tomes to the world's learned library is any such illustrious matter, to demand a special visitation by heaven itself."

  "Actually you are right, and my work is a blind work. I don't know where it will lead to. Only, I have written no tomes, and am not contemplating the writing of any. … However, there is still this point. For a man who is neither prophet, nor reformer, nor deliverer, it may be a sufficiently worthy labour to rescue from the defiling dust a divine shape of antiquity, though it be not of marble or bronze. In this simple service may rest an importance that none of us alive is to comprehend."

  "It may be so, and I wish you the active protection and furtherance of your Goddess in the pursuit. But after Knossos—?"

  "My movements will largely depend. For the moment I am essaying what my friends here consider a hopeless task, namely, the deciphering of the Minoan clay-tablet inscriptions without the aid of a bilingual writing. I must not call them uninventive, and yet that is what it may amount to. Still, there is a sort of instinct in these things—one has it, and another has it not. I wish to fancy that I am approaching the solution. How long are you staying, Mr. Saltfleet?"

  The other gave a shrug.

  "I don't know."

  "Unless you have engagements, I would have liked you to stop on for a couple of days longer, by which time I might have had something to report."

  "I'm agreeable."

  "Please say not a word to anyone about my hope of a speedy success. The world is very interested in these inscriptions, the first interpreting of them will create an enormous excitement in the right quarters, and even popularly; but I am not yet sure that I shall attach my name to that first interpreting."

  "You mean, you will suppress your discovery?"

  "At first I wish only to retain in my power the doing so if I please."

  "Very well. You may rely on my silence."

  Arsinal smiled, which queerly beautified his face.

  "Your call to Crete was perhaps to me, Mr. Saltfleet. I have already the suggestion to make to you that possibly there may be a joint expedition before us, in another region of the earth altogether. This you may choose to regard as an impertinence, yet I trust you won't. I have in distant contemplation... a hunt—not of animals ... in Tibet. You know Tibet?"

  "In part."

  "It may not come to anything. If it did, it would not be for a year at least. So it is early days to broach the subject of expenses, for instance; but they would of course fall to me. Then you will proceed to inquire where your advantage lies in the proposition, and sincerely, I can't satisfy you. Nor may I appeal to your generosity or sporting spirit, since we are barely acquainted—"

  "An archaeological hunt?" asked Saltfleet bluntly.

  "Yes. … I am not requiring a decision here and now, but only a slight indication of how such a proposal would strike you when the time draws nearer. I will be quite frank. I am no very attractive companion for any man, but, on the other hand, I have few cranks and am comparatively easy to get on with. I know how to respect the moods of other people, I can hold my tongue on occasion, and my temper is fairly equable."

  Saltfleet studied his cigar. "If I were free when you wanted me, I don't know that I should have any objection."

  "Thank you!"

  "I ask no details, though the connection between Crete and Tibet is rather obscure. Also, any part of the globe I can see at any time for myself, while the question of expenses doesn't enter into it at all. I should put up my share. So it reduces itself to the pleasure of the companionship. Without offence be it said, there are one or two things about you I rather like, Mr Arsinal. You have long aims, and a full measure of individualism, with very excellent information on a number of first class topics, I should say; and above all, the aristocratic temper, that detests publicity. I don't think I should be at all bored by a month or so of your society. Nor do I suppose that you would be bored by any society. You appear to possess the shutting-out capacity in supremeness."

  "I believe that we should not bore each other," said Arsinal smilingly.

  "But as to how you are to get me when wanted—I rarely have addresses. So much we shall have to leave to luck. I am oftener east of the Caspian than elsewhere, and that is nearly all I can tell you."

  After a short, unimportant rounding-off talk, they had separated for the night. But a couple of afternoons later Arsinal had stopped his new friend as he strolled idly across the great Central Court of the palace.

  "It has come with a suddenness I hardly expected when I last spoke to you," he announced, with eyes that could not conceal their unwonted sparkle. "You are still interested, I take it?"

  "Yes."

  Saltfleet understood at once that he had gained the clue to the Minoan inscriptions. He had also the savoir-faire to grasp that their present stand in the burning sunlight of the open excavations was as unsuitable as could be for the divulgence of a professional secret of such importance, though no other ear might be within a score of yards. He added quietly, therefore:

  "Where shall we talk?"

  "It is scarcely a conspiracy—it is merely a withholding. Yet these confabulations in public may give rise to ... a suspicion of the fact. So I suggest the same spot as before, at the same time, this evening. It will not interfere with arrangements?"

  "No, it will do very well."

  "A clay was very kindly lent to me for study. It is marked with the double axes, that have been generally supposed to be a symbol of the Goddess—which is why I fixed upon this particular tablet, of many. It may turn out to be the only significant one of them all. I need not ask if you have spoken to anybody?"

  "I passed you my word."

  "I know. I merely wish to say that the interdict still holds. This clay happens to have a very strong message—but for the right person alone. To broadcast it would be something extremely like desecration. Sooner or later, of course, the inscriptions will be independently read; but I am anxious that this one shall never be read. Perhaps I shall take an opportunity to destroy it."

  Saltfleet took a single glance at the speaker's eyes, and saw the strange light in them. He nodded.

  "I am glad you have the spirit. Anything which is to deprive the crowd will always be approved by me."

  "It is how I have understood you from the first."

  "Since the world has thrown overboard its religious employments, it has far too much time on its hands. Again, since aristocratic sentiment is dead, it makes a very undignified use of that time. This cheap mania for nervous thrills, which is the same thing as the excitement of bodily danger, without the mortal risk—it is what has come to take the place of the fear of God and the scorn of amazement. You can't cure the propensity at this stage of civilisation, you can only help to disappoint it on occasion. … I myself am not of the public, though in it. But if you prefer to make no exception even in my case, I beg you not to consider yourself bound by your request to me to stay on. Perhaps I should have done so anyway, and the time I have spent here has by no means been wasted."

  "That I am glad of. But no, I do wish to make an exception of you. My opinion of you is already formed, Mr. Saltfleet, and you are different from the rest. … So I may rely on seeing you up above, this evening?"

  "I will be there."

  Again, then, they had parted.

  Chapter XVI

  THE MEETING

  Saltfleet's interest in Arsinal ha
d deepened as a result of that second short conference. It put him in a new light, that disclosed a hitherto unsuspected moral rigidness. His preparedness to smother, if necessary, one of the world's learned monuments in obedience to a higher law which would be vilified by all, entailing as it did a deliberate breach of trust and a violation of common honesty, seemed to throw the purely intellectual side of his character into stronger relief; and yet this intellectual side alone surely represented a tremendous nature.

  Again the friendly chief of operations had consented to expand upon the subject of his wholly distinguished, if somewhat unwanted, volunteer helper, whose expertness in their common trade, indeed, might be just a shade too remote, too self-centred—claustral, perhaps, was the word—to render him of that use to them which his presence there had almost given them the right to expect. Without much pressure, he completed a rapid sketch of Arsinal's precise place in the realm of working archaeology.

  He was skilled in the remains of the three or four Stone Ages, possessed an enviable knowledge of the pre-classical antiquities of the Near East, had (he believed) investigated as far afield as the Euphrates, India and Ceylon, was a leading authority on the ever-mysterious Etruscan culture, appeared to have dipped pretty deeply into Philology (implying, of course, an adequate acquaintance with a host of ancient and current linguistic formations and vocabularies), had handled and measured doubtless many hundreds of crania in his time—for what all that was worth... and, to state it briefly, should be all the more efficient in his own peculiar métier of exhuming, by reason of his multifariousness, for which not every spade-worker had leisure.

  No, he could not be physically strong, but then, even for a delicate man, there were always ways and means of conserving one's health and economising one's vigour. Social engagements and town pleasures were answerable for a large wastage of energy in too many folk who should be sticking to their jobs. Then the law of accretion was very kind—the habit of amassing scientific facts induced the facility. So there was much that was admirable, but no miracle, in the position which this young man of forty-one or two had made for himself. The position was definite, though so far he might have no honours. For that matter, what sensible person cared two straws about honours or Degrees? As for his ultimate ambition or ambitions, that appeared to be very much his own secret. It was quite on the cards that he held a monumental work up his sleeve—if so, it would certainly find its professional public. Married? He fancied not. Married men, in this branch of science, usually had their wives hovering somewhere on the horizon. …

  But it was less the mass of exact knowledge thus patiently accumulated that humbled Saltfleet in mind, than the sublime doggedness with which Arsinal had inch by inch attacked and mastered that half-a-world of wisdom, merely in order to reach his mystical goal at last. Such an enterprise surpassed almost anything he had ever heard of in the way of special preparation. Without sympathy from a living soul, moreover, he could bear the deadweight of this secret aim in silence, while continuing more finely human and simple than other savants having nothing but straight careers to occupy them. His avoidance of the distinctions that should have come his way was probably symptomatic. He would naturally refuse even this kind of payment for labours that had never been undertaken from a social motive.

  Accordingly, Saltfleet sought his rendezvous with curiously anticipative feelings, and began to see it taking shape that no more surprising experience on the island than this communion with a most exceptional man was destined to follow his occult seizure in Athens. He thought of that oddly precipitate offer of a joint trip to Tibet, and was now more anxious to learn its object. But of the message of the Minoan inscription he thought less. It was the man's grip and resolution that interested him; his superstition seemed even slightly insane. The disinterring of a far-back and forgotten female worship gave him no thrill, and it was still inconceivable what Arsinal proposed to do with his restored Goddess, when she should be in the full panoply of her coloured robes, observances, and metaphysics, in the modern upper world. The doing was more respectable than the to-be-done. There was a sort of effeminacy in the obsession, too, for a man. And still this softness, by adding one more plane to his strange variety of nature, did but increase the fascination of the whole problem. …

  Arsinal was waiting for him. His manner was as nearly impatient as perhaps it ever could be, and salutes had barely been exchanged before he dived into the deep of his business.

  "Here I have written down the English of my clay-writing," he announced, displaying a sheet of paper. "It is considerably paraphrased, since the Minoan construction is unwieldy; but I have forced nothing, and, I hope, have omitted nothing of the essential sense. … I will preface the reading of it by a single word of explanation, Mr. Saltfleet. I told you that this tablet is marked with the symbolic double axes of the Mother. Well then, I theorise that the double axe, or Labrus (from which, incidentally, no doubt has come the name, Labyrinth), besides inviting the Goddess and warning off profaneness, may be the conventional representation of the fractured halves of the stone you are to hear of. Meteoric stones, as a matter of fact, unworked to any use, have sometimes been found in association with rude figurines of the Mother. The connection is real, and therefore I opine that the double axe as well may be a sign of the descent from heaven. Should it prove not to be so, it will not matter, and yet I am hoping that my instinct has not misled me in this thing. … Now let us start. Perhaps my writing will be more legible to myself—"

  Accordingly, after the shortest pause for voice-clearing, Arsinal went on to read aloud from his paper, while the other, pulling thoughtfully at a newly-lighted cigar, listened in silent erectness.

  "The scribe, obviously, is some temple-priest of the Goddess. He writes:

  'That which came from the stars, and is full of words of its home. That which unwillingly flees from its bride in the west. That which has ever brought fulfilment and ill-hap to him who has borne it. That which the seer has said shall know no change until that it has united another man and another woman, of whom shall be born a son greater than they, greater than all mankind, who shall be the saviour. It alone of all the temple treasures has known the Mother. But a son of the Hatti, robbing the treasury by stealth and wickedness, carried it into the east, and Psor, a secretary, followed him, and slew him, but it is lost.' "

  Arsinal ceased reading, to refold and put away the sheet. He glanced at Saltfleet interrogatively.

  "I think the purport is fairly plain? No stone is actually mentioned, yet what but a meteorite could have come from above? And 'its bride in the west'—to what can that refer but the removed half of a fractured whole?"

  "A meteorite with mystical properties."

  "Dare we, with our limitations, deny the possibility of such? . … Then, 'a son of the Hatti'—that is, a Hittite. So that our half-stone was taken into Asia Minor, where I have next to seek its traces. All this, you must be told, is not entirely new ground to me. The importance of the inscription, for me, lies in its prophecy, which is a statement more definite than any I have yet, encountered.

  "It is exceedingly queer how this fancy of a stone in connection with the Mother has always played its part. Zeus, in the Cretan legend, would have been swallowed by his father, Kronos—as the preceding five of his brothers and sisters had been swallowed—had not his mother, Rhea, the Great Mother of the ancients, substituted a stone, which was swallowed instead. When he grew up, Zeus recovered the stone from the belly of Kronos, and deposed him from his rank of chief of the gods. The stone was afterwards worshipped, where it stood, near the temple of Delphi. … Again, during the war with Hannibal, the Romans fetched with great pomp from Pessinus, in Galatia, the stone that was called the Mother of the Gods, causing it to be escorted from Ostia to the city by young Scipio, at the head of a body of respectable matrons. … In the Scoto-Irish legend, too, the Cailleach, or Old Wife, the mother of men and demons, changes herself into a grey stone overlooking the waters. In India, the goddess Durga is
represented by a stone, to which animals are sacrificed. … And in the story of Deukalion and Pyrrha, the pair, being divinely commanded to cover their heads and throw the bones of their mother behind them in order to repopulate the earth, after the destructive nine days' flood sent by the wrath of Zeus, interpret the command as meaning the stones of the soil, which accordingly they cast; and from Deukalion's spring up men, and from Pyrrha's, women. …

  "So many quite unrelated variations on an original theme not given, Mr. Saltfleet, do at least establish one significant fact—that this connection between a goddess and a stone, probably meteoric, must date back in conception to exceedingly early times. In the rough rendering I have just given you of my own inscription, the phrase runs: 'It alone of all the temple treasures has known the Mother.' If such a temple treasure originally came from the west, where its 'bride', or equivalent fragment, was, then a Stone Age happening would seem to be indicated, for whether the inscription in question were graved in 2000 or 1500 B.C., the only still earlier western peoples to whom the statement could apply must have been the men of the caves and flint quarries. … And now you will begin to understand better the definite nature of my researches. I am not chasing a dream, but an event of the world. This phenomenal stone of the goddess has truly existed, may be still in existence, and may retain its magic and wonder. I am seeking it."

  "But isn't it remarkable that the story has failed to come through in its purity? A first-rate miracle should surely stick in the memory of the human race."

  "So have an infinite number of the world's truest and mightiest ideas failed to come through. Indeed, a certain coarse sand of robustness appears to be requisite, if an idea, or an ideal, is to come through. The jewels of eternity must be imbedded in a sort of grossness, if they are to live a thousand years on earth. Often and often have I thought that the world's greatest names do not represent the world's greatest achievements. … Because, for instance, the Mother has not survived, that is not to say that during a very extended period she did not set the rule to whole nations of earnest-minded men and women. But then came the fatal day—as always it comes—when spiritually-inferior persons appropriated the externals of culture, and scornfully refused the rest. The statues of the mysterious Queen of Heaven were overturned, and the Olympians came in, in a sunrise of blood."