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Title: The Secret Glory

Author: Arthur Machen

Release date: March 20, 2011 [eBook #35637]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET GLORY ***




Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                          The Secret Glory

                          By Arthur Machen


    New York
    Alfred A Knopf
    Mcmxxii

    COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
    ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

    _Published August, 1922_


    _Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._
    _Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y._
    _Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y._


    MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

    TO
    VINCENT STARRETT




Note


_One of the schoolmasters in "The Secret Glory" has views on the subject
of football similar to those entertained by a well-known schoolmaster
whose Biography appeared many years ago. That is the only link between
the villain of invention and the good man of real life._




PREFACE


_Some years ago I met my old master, Sir Frank Benson--he was Mr. F. R.
Benson then--and he asked me in his friendly way what I had been doing
lately._

_"I am just finishing a book," I replied, "a book that everybody will
hate."_

_"As usual," said the Don Quixote of our English stage--if I knew any
nobler title to bestow upon him, I would, bestow it--"as usual; running
your head against a stone wall!"_

_Well, I don't know about "as usual"; there may be something to be said
for the personal criticism or there may not; but it has struck me that
Sir Frank's remark is a very good description of "The Secret Glory," the
book I had in mind as I talked to him. It is emphatically the history of
an unfortunate fellow who ran his head against stone walls from the
beginning to the end. He could think nothing and do nothing after the
common fashion of the world; even when he "went wrong," he did so in a
highly unusual and eccentric manner. It will be for the reader to
determine whether he were a saint who had lost his way in the centuries
or merely an undeveloped lunatic; I hold no passionate view on either
side. In every age, there are people great and small for whom the times
are out of joint, for whom everything is, somehow, wrong and askew.
Consider Hamlet; an amiable man and an intelligent man. But what a mess
he made of it! Fortunately, my hero--or idiot, which you will--was not
called upon to intermeddle with affairs of State, and so only brought
himself to grief: if it were grief; for the least chink of the door
should be kept open, I am inclined to hold, for the other point of view.
I have just been rereading Kipling's "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," the
tale of the Brahmin Prime Minister of the Native State in India, who saw
all the world and the glory of it, in the West as well as in the East,
and suddenly abjured all to become a hermit in the wood. Was he mad, or
was he supremely wise? It is just a matter of opinion._

_The origin and genesis of "The Secret Glory" were odd enough. Once on a
time, I read the life of a famous schoolmaster, one of the most notable
schoolmasters of these later days. I believe he was an excellent man in
every way; but, somehow, that "Life" got on my nerves. I thought that
the School Songs--for which, amongst other things, this master was
famous--were drivel; I thought his views about football, regarded, not
as a good game, but as the discipline and guide of life, were rot, and
poisonous rot at that. In a word, the "Life" of this excellent man got
my back up._

_Very good. The year after, schoolmasters and football had ceased to
engage my attention. I was deeply interested in a curious and minute
investigation of the wonderful legend of the Holy Grail; or rather, in
one aspect of that extraordinary complex. My researches led me to the
connection of the Grail Legend with the vanished Celtic Church which
held the field in Britain in the fifth and sixth and seventh centuries;
I undertook an extraordinary and fascinating journey into a misty and
uncertain region of Christian history. I must not say more here,
lest--as Nurse says to the troublesome and persistent child--I "begin
all over again"; but, indeed, it was a voyage on perilous seas, a
journey to faery lands forlorn--and I would declare, by the way, my
conviction that if there had been no Celtic Church, Keats could never
have written those lines of tremendous evocation and incantation._

_Again; very good. The year after, it came upon me to write a book. And
I hit upon an original plan; or so I thought. I took my dislike of the
good schoolmaster's "Life," I took my knowledge of Celtic mysteries--and
combined my information._

_Original, this plan! It was all thought of years before I was born. Do
you remember the critic of the "Eatanswill Gazette"? He had to review
for that admirable journal a work on Chinese Metaphysics. Mr. Pott tells
the story of the article._

_"He read up for the subject, at my desire, in the Encyclopædia
Britannica ... he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China
under the letter C, and combined his information!"_




The Secret Glory




I


A heavy cloud passed swiftly away before the wind that came with the
night, and far in a clear sky the evening star shone with pure
brightness, a gleaming world set high above the dark earth and the black
shadows in the lane. In the ending of October a great storm had blown
from the west, and it was through the bare boughs of a twisted oak that
Ambrose Meyrick saw the silver light of the star. As the last faint
flash died in the sky he leaned against a gate and gazed upward; and
then his eyes fell on the dull and weary undulations of the land, the
vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow bounded by a dim horizon,
dreary as a prison wall. He remembered with a start how late it must be;
he should have been back an hour before, and he was still in the open
country, a mile away at least from the outskirts of Lupton. He turned
from the star and began to walk as quickly as he could along the lane
through the puddles and the sticky clay, soaked with three weeks' heavy
rain.

He saw at last the faint lamps of the nearest streets where the
shoemakers lived and he tramped hurriedly through this wretched
quarter, past its penny shops, its raw public-house, its rawer chapel,
with twelve foundation-stones on which are written the names of the
twelve leading Congregationalists of Lupton, past the squalling children
whose mothers were raiding and harrying them to bed. Then came the Free
Library, an admirable instance, as the _Lupton Mercury_ declared, of the
adaptation of Gothic to modern requirements. From a sort of tower of
this building a great arm shot out and hung a round clock-face over the
street, and Meyrick experienced another shock when he saw that it was
even later than he had feared. He had to get to the other side of the
town, and it was past seven already! He began to run, wondering what his
fate would be at his uncle's hands, and he went by "our grand old parish
church" (completely "restored" in the early 'forties), past the remains
of the market-cross, converted most successfully, according to local
opinion, into a drinking fountain for dogs and cattle, dodging his way
among the late shoppers and the early loafers who lounged to and fro
along the High Street.

He shuddered as he rang the bell at the Old Grange. He tried to put a
bold face on it when the servant opened the door, and he would have gone
straight down the hall into the schoolroom, but the girl stopped him.

"Master said you're to go to the study at once, Master Meyrick, as soon
as ever you come in."

She was looking strangely at him, and the boy grew sick with dread. He
was a "funk" through and through, and was frightened out of his wits
about twelve times a day every day of his life. His uncle had said a few
years before: "Lupton will make a man of you," and Lupton was doing its
best. The face of the miserable wretch whitened and grew wet; there was
a choking sensation in his throat, and he felt very cold. Nelly Foran,
the maid, still looked at him with strange, eager eyes, then whispered
suddenly:

"You must go directly, Master Meyrick, Master heard the bell, I know;
but I'll make it up to you."

Ambrose understood nothing except the approach of doom. He drew a long
breath and knocked at the study door, and entered on his uncle's
command.

It was an extremely comfortable room. The red curtains were drawn close,
shutting out the dreary night, and there was a great fire of coal that
bubbled unctuously and shot out great jets of flame--in the schoolroom
they used coke. The carpet was soft to the feet, and the chairs promised
softness to the body, and the walls were well furnished with books.
There were Thackeray, Dickens, Lord Lytton, uniform in red morocco,
gilt extra; the Cambridge Bible for Students in many volumes, Stanley's
_Life of Arnold_, Coplestone's _Prælectiones Academicæ_, commentaries,
dictionaries, first editions of Tennyson, school and college prizes in
calf, and, of course, a great brigade of Latin and Greek classics. Three
of the wonderful and terrible pictures of Piranesi hung in the room;
these Mr.

Horbury admired more for the subject-matter than for the treatment, in
which he found, as he said, a certain lack of the _aurea
mediocritas_--almost, indeed, a touch of morbidity. The gas was turned
low, for the High Usher was writing at his desk, and a shaded lamp cast
a bright circle of light on a mass of papers.

He turned round as Ambrose Meyrick came in. He had a high, bald
forehead, and his fresh-coloured face was edged with reddish
"mutton-chop" whiskers. There was a dangerous glint in his grey-green
eyes, and his opening sentence was unpromising.

"Now, Ambrose, you must understand quite definitely that this sort of
thing is not going to be tolerated any longer."

Perhaps it would not have fared quite so badly with the unhappy lad if
only his uncle had not lunched with the Head. There was a concatenation
accordingly, every link in which had helped to make Ambrose Meyrick's
position hopeless. In the first place there was boiled mutton for
luncheon, and this was a dish hateful to Mr. Horbury's palate. Secondly,
the wine was sherry. Of this Mr. Horbury was very fond, but
unfortunately the Head's sherry, though making a specious appeal to the
taste, was in reality far from good and teemed with those fiery and
irritating spirits which make the liver to burn and rage. Then Chesson
had practically found fault with his chief assistant's work. He had not,
of course, told him in so many words that he was unable to teach; he had
merely remarked:

"I don't know whether you've noticed it, Horbury, but it struck me the
other day that there was a certain lack of grip about those fellows of
yours in the fifth. Some of them struck me as _muddlers_, if you know
what I mean: there was a sort of _vagueness_, for example, about their
construing in that chorus. Have you remarked anything of the kind
yourself?"

And then, again, the Head had gone on:

"And, by the way, Horbury, I don't quite know what to make of your
nephew, Meyrick. He was your wife's nephew, wasn't he? Yes. Well, I
hardly know whether I can explain what I feel about the boy; but I can't
help saying that there is something wrong about him. His work strikes
me as good enough--in fact, quite above the form average--but, to use
the musical term, he seems to be in the wrong key. Of course, it may be
my fancy; but the lad reminds me of those very objectionable persons who
are said to have a joke up their sleeve. I doubt whether he is taking
the Lupton stamp; and when he gets up in the school I shall be afraid of
his influence on the other boys."

Here, again, the master detected a note of blame; and by the time he
reached the Old Grange he was in an evil humour. He hardly knew which he
found the more offensive--Chesson's dish or his discourse. He was a
dainty man in his feeding, and the thought of the great fat gigot
pouring out a thin red stream from the gaping wound dealt to it by the
Head mingled with his resentment of the indirect scolding which he
considered that he had received, and on the fire just kindled every drop
of that corrosive sherry was oil. He drank his tea in black silence, his
rage growing fiercer for want of vent, and it is doubtful whether in his
inmost heart he was altogether displeased when report was made at six
o'clock that Meyrick had not come in. He saw a prospect--more than a
prospect--of satisfactory relief.

Some philosophers have affirmed that lunatic doctors (or mental
specialists) grow in time to a certain resemblance to their patients,
or, in more direct language, become half mad themselves. There seems a
good deal to be said for the position; indeed, it is probably a more
noxious madness to swear a man into perpetual imprisonment in the
company of maniacs and imbeciles because he sings in his bath and will
wear a purple dressing-gown at dinner than to fancy oneself Emperor of
China. However this may be, it is very certain that in many cases the
schoolmaster is nothing more or less than a bloated schoolboy: the
beasts are, radically, the same, but morbid conditions have increased
the venom of the former's sting. Indeed, it is not uncommon for
well-wishers to the great Public School System to praise their favourite
masters in terms which admit, nay, glory in, this identity. Read the
memorial tributes to departed Heads in a well-known and most respectable
Church paper. "To the last he was a big boy at heart," writes Canon
Diver of his friend, that illiterate old sycophant who brought up the
numbers of the school to such a pitch by means of his conciliator policy
to Jews, Turks, heretics and infidels that there was nothing for it but
to make him a bishop. "I always thought he seemed more at home in the
playing fields than in the sixth-form room.... He had all the English
boy's healthy horror of anything approaching pose or eccentricity....
He could be a severe disciplinarian when severity seemed necessary, but
everybody in the school knew that a well-placed 'boundary,' a difficult
catch or a goal well won or well averted would atone for all but the
most serious offences." There are many other points of resemblance
between the average master and the average boy: each, for example, is
intensely cruel, and experiences a quite abnormal joy in the infliction
of pain. The baser boy tortures those animals which are not _méchants_.
Tales have been told (they are hushed up by all true friends of the
"System") of wonderful and exquisite orgies in lonely hollows of the
moors, in obscure and hidden thickets: tales of a boy or two, a lizard
or a toad, and the slow simmering heat of a bonfire. But these are the
exceptional pleasures of the _virtuosi_; for the average lad there is
plenty of fun to be got out of his feebler fellows, of whom there are
generally a few even in the healthiest community. After all, the weakest
must go to the wall, and if the bones of the weakest are ground in the
process, that is their fault. When some miserable little wretch, after a
year or two of prolonged and exquisite torture of body and mind, seeks
the last escape of suicide, one knows how the Old Boys will come
forward, how gallantly they will declare that the days at the "dear old
school" were the happiest in their lives; how "the Doctor" was their
father and the Sixth their nursing-mother; how the delights of the
Mahomedans' fabled Paradise are but grey and weary sport compared with
the joys of the happy fag, whose heart, as the inspired bard of Harrow
tells us, will thrill in future years at the thought of the Hill. They
write from all quarters, these brave Old Boys: from the hard-won
Deanery, result of many years of indefatigable attack on the fundamental
doctrines of the Christian faith; from the comfortable villa, the reward
of commercial activity and acuteness on the Stock Exchange; from the
courts and from the camps; from all the high seats of the successful;
and common to them all is the convincing argument of praise. And we all
agree, and say there is nothing like our great Public Schools, and
perhaps the only dissentient voices are those of the father and mother
who bury the body of a little child about whose neck is the black sign
of the rope. But let them be comforted: the boy was no good at games,
though his torments were not bad sport while he lasted.

Mr. Horbury was an old Luptonian; he was, in the words of Canon Diver,
but "a big boy at heart," and so he gave orders that Meyrick was to be
sent in the study directly he came in, and he looked at the clock on the
desk before him with satisfaction and yet with impatience. A hungry man
may long for his delayed dinner almost with a sense of fury, and yet at
the back of his mind he cannot help being consoled by the thought of how
wonderfully he will enjoy the soup when it appears at last. When seven
struck, Mr. Horbury moistened his lips slightly. He got up and felt
cautiously behind one of the bookshelves. The object was there, and he
sat down again. He listened; there were footfalls on the drive. Ah!
there was the expected ring. There was a brief interval, and then a
knock. The fire was glowing with red flashes, and the wretched toad was
secured.

"Now, Ambrose, you must understand quite definitely that this sort of
thing isn't going to be tolerated any longer. This is the third time
during this term that you have been late for lockup. You know the rules:
six o'clock at latest. It is now twenty minutes past seven. What excuse
have you to make? What have you been doing with yourself? Have you been
in the Fields?"

"No, Sir."

"Why not? You must have seen the Resolution of the Sixth on the
notice-board of the High School? You know what it promised any boy who
shirked rocker? 'A good sound thrashing with tuds before the First
Thirty.' I am afraid you will have a very bad time of it on Monday,
after Graham has sent up your name to the Room."

There was a pause. Mr. Horbury looked quietly and lengthily at the boy,
who stood white and sick before him. He was a rather sallow, ugly lad of
fifteen. There was something of intelligence in his expression, and it
was this glance that Chesson, the Headmaster, had resented. His heart
beat against his breast, his breath came in gasps and the sweat of
terror poured down his body. The master gazed at him, and at last spoke
again.

"But what have you been doing? Where have you been all this time?"

"If you please, Sir, I walked over to Selden Abbey."

"To Selden Abbey? Why, it's at least six miles away! What on earth did
you want to go to Selden Abbey for? Are you fond of old stones?"

"If you please, Sir, I wanted to see the Norman arches. There is a
picture of them in _Parker's Glossary_."

"Oh, I see! You are a budding antiquarian, are you, Ambrose, with an
interest in Norman arches--eh? I suppose we are to look forward to the
time when your researches will have made Lupton famous? Perhaps you
would like to lecture to the school on St. Paul's Cathedral? Pray, what
are your views as to the age of Stonehenge?"

The wit was heavy enough, but the speaker's position gave a bitter sting
to his lash. Mr. Horbury saw that every cut had told, and, without
prejudice to more immediate and acuter pleasures, he resolved that such
biting satire must have a larger audience. Indeed, it was a long time
before Ambrose Meyrick heard the last of those wretched Norman arches.
The method was absurdly easy. "Openings" presented themselves every day.
For example, if the boy made a mistake in construing, the retort was
obvious:

"Thank you, Meyrick, for your most original ideas on the force of the
aorist. Perhaps if you studied your Greek Grammar a little more and your
favourite _Glossary of Architecture_ a little less, it would be the
better. Write out 'Aorist means indefinite' five hundred times."

Or, again, perhaps the Classic Orders were referred to. Mr. Horbury
would begin to instruct the form as to the difference between Ionic and
Doric. The form listened with poor imitation of interest. Suddenly the
master would break off:

"I beg your pardon. I was forgetting that we have a great architectural
authority amongst us. Be so kind as to instruct us, Meyrick. What does
Parker say? Or perhaps you have excogitated some theories of your own? I
know you have an original mind, from the extraordinary quantities of
your last copy of verse. By the way, I must ask you to write out 'The
_e_ in _venio_ is short' five hundred times. I am sorry to interfere
with your more important architectural studies, but I am afraid there is
no help for it."

And so on; while the form howled with amusement.

But Mr. Horbury kept these gems for future and public use. For the
moment he had more exciting work on hand. He burst out suddenly:

"The fact is, Ambrose Meyrick, you're a miserable little humbug! You
haven't the honesty to say, fair and square, that you funked rocker and
went loafing about the country, looking for any mischief you could lay
your hands on. Instead of that you make up this cock-and-bull story of
Selden Abbey and Norman arches--as if any boy in his senses ever knew or
cared twopence about such things! I hope you haven't been spending the
afternoon in some low public-house? There, don't speak! I don't want to
hear any more lies. But, whatever you have been doing, you have broken
the rules, and you must be taught that the rules have to be kept. Stand
still!"

Mr. Horbury went to the bookshelf and drew out the object. He stood at a
little distance behind Meyrick and opened proceedings with a savage cut
at his right arm, well above the elbow. Then it was the turn of the left
arm, and the master felt the cane bite so pleasantly into the flesh that
he distributed some dozen cuts between the two arms. Then he turned his
attention to the lad's thighs and finished up in the orthodox manner,
Meyrick bending over a chair.

The boy's whole body was one mass of burning, stinging torture; and,
though he had not uttered a sound during the process, the tears were
streaming down his cheeks. It was not the bodily anguish, though that
was extreme enough, so much as a far-off recollection. He was quite a
little boy, and his father, dead long since, was showing him the western
doorway of a grey church on a high hill and carefully instructing him in
the difference between "billetty" and "chevronny."

"It's no good snivelling, you know, Ambrose. I daresay you think me
severe, but, though you won't believe me now, the day will come when you
will thank me from your heart for what I have just done. Let this day be
a turning-point in your life. Now go to your work."


II

It was strange, but Meyrick never came in the after days and thanked his
uncle for that sharp dose of physical and mental pain. Even when he was
a man he dreamed of Mr. Horbury and woke up in a cold sweat, and then
would fall asleep again with a great sigh of relief and gladness as he
realised that he was no longer in the power of that "infernal old
swine," "that filthy, canting, cruel brute," as he roughly called his
old master.

The fact was, as some old Luptonians remarked, the two had never
understood one another. With the majority of the boys the High Usher
passed for a popular master enough. He had been a distinguished athlete
in his time, and up to his last days at the school was a football
enthusiast. Indeed, he organised a variety of the Lupton game which met
with immense popularity till the Head was reluctantly compelled to stop
it; some said because he always liked to drop bitter into Horbury's cup
when possible; others--and with more probability on their
side--maintained that it was in consequence of a report received from
the school doctor to the effect that this new species of football was
rapidly setting up an old species of heart disease in the weaker
players.

However that might be, there could be no doubt as to Horbury's intense
and deep-rooted devotion to the school. His father had been a Luptonian
before him. He himself had gone from the school to the University, and
within a year or two of taking his degree he had returned to Lupton to
serve it as a master. It was the general opinion in Public School
circles that the High Usher had counted for as much as Chesson, the
Headmaster, if not for more, in the immense advance in prestige and
popularity that the school had made; and everybody thought that when
Chesson received the episcopal order Horbury's succession was a
certainty. Unfortunately, however, there were wheels within wheels, and
a total stranger was appointed, a man who knew nothing of the famous
Lupton traditions, who (it was whispered) had been heard to say that
"this athletic business" was getting a bit overdone. Mr. Horbury's
friends were furious, and Horbury himself, it was supposed, was bitterly
disappointed. He retreated to one of the few decent canonries which have
survived the wave of agricultural depression; but those who knew him
best doubted whether his ecclesiastical duties were an adequate
consolation for the loss of that coveted Headmastership of Lupton.

To quote the memoir which appeared in the _Guardian_ soon after his
death, over some well-known initials:

"His friends were shocked when they saw him at the Residence. He seemed
no longer the same man, he had aged more in six months, as some of them
expressed themselves, than in the dozen years before. The old joyous
Horbury, full of mirth, an apt master of word-play and logic-fence, was
somehow 'dimmed,' to use the happy phrase of a former colleague, the
Dean of Dorchester. Old Boys who remembered the sparkle of his wit, the
zest which he threw into everything, making the most ordinary form-work
better fun than the games at other schools, as one of them observed,
missed something indefinable from the man whom they had loved so long
and so well. One of them, who had perhaps penetrated as closely as any
into the _arcana_ of Horbury's friendship (a privilege which he will
ever esteem as one of the greatest blessings of his life), tried to
rouse him with an extravagant rumour which was then going the round of
the popular Press, to the effect that considerable modifications were
about to be introduced into the compulsory system of games at X., one of
the greatest of our great Public Schools. Horbury flushed; the old light
came into his eyes; his friend was reminded of the ancient war-horse who
hears once more the inspiring notes of the trumpet. 'I can't believe
it,' he said, and there was a tremor in his voice. 'They wouldn't dare.
Not even Y. (the Headmaster of X.) would do such a scoundrelly thing as
that. I _won't_ believe it.' But the flush soon faded and his apathy
returned. 'After all,' he said, 'I shouldn't wonder if it were so. Our
day is past, I suppose, and for all I know they may be construing the
Breviary and playing dominoes at X. in a few years' time.'

"I am afraid that those last years at Wareham were far from happy. He
felt, I think, out of tune with his surroundings, and, _pace_ the
readers of the _Guardian_, I doubt whether he was ever quite at home in
his stall. He confessed to one of his old associates that he doubted the
wisdom of the whole Cathedral system. 'What,' he said, in his old
characteristic manner, 'would St. Peter say if he could enter this
building and see that gorgeous window in which he is represented with
mitre, cope and keys?' And I do not think that he was ever quite
reconciled to the daily recitation of the Liturgy, accompanied as it is
in such establishments by elaborate music and all the pomp of the
surpliced choir. 'Rome and water, Rome and water!' he has been heard to
mutter under his breath as the procession swept up the nave, and before
he died I think that he had the satisfaction of feeling that many in
high places were coming round to his views.

"But to the very last he never forgot Lupton. A year or two before he
died he wrote the great school song, 'Follow, follow, follow!' He was
pleased, I know, when it appeared in the _Luptonian_, and a famous Old
Boy informs me that he will never forget Horbury's delight when he was
told that the song was already a great favourite in 'Chantry.' To many
of your readers the words will be familiar; but I cannot resist quoting
the first verse:

    "I am getting old and grey and the hills seem far away,
      And I cannot hear the horn that once proclaimed the morn
        When we sallied forth upon the chase together;
      For the years are gone--alack!--when we hastened on the track,
      And the huntsman's whip went crack! as a signal to our pack
        Riding in the sunshine and fair weather.
          And yet across the ground
          I seem to hear a sound,
        A sound that comes up floating from the hollow;
          And its note is very clear
          As it echoes in my ear,
        And the words are: 'Lupton, follow, follow, follow!'

    _Chorus._

        "Lupton, follow away!
      The darkness lies behind us, and before us is the day.
        Follow, follow the sun,
        The whole world's to be won,
      So, Lupton, follow, follow, follow, follow away!

"An old pupil sang this verse to him on his death-bed, and I think,
perhaps, that some at least of the readers of the _Guardian_ will allow
that George Horbury died 'fortified,' in the truest sense, 'with the
rites of the Church'--the Church of a Great Aspiration."

Such was the impression that Mr. Horbury had evidently made upon some of
his oldest friends; but Meyrick was, to the last, an infidel. He read
the verses in the _Guardian_ (he would never subscribe to the
_Luptonian_) and jeered savagely at the whole sentiment of the memoir,
and at the poetry, too.

"Isn't it incredible?" he would say. "Let's allow that the main purpose
of the great Public Schools is to breed brave average boobies by means
of rocker, sticker and mucker and the rest of it. Still, they do
acknowledge that they have a sort of _parergon_--the teaching of two
great literatures, two literatures that have moulded the whole of
Western thought for more than two thousand years. And they pay an animal
like this to teach these literatures--a swine that has not enough
literature of any kind in him to save the soul of a louse! Look at those
verses! Why, a decent fourth form boy would be ashamed to put his name
to them!"

He was foolish to talk in this fashion. People merely said that it was
evident he was one of the failures of the great Public School system;
and the song was much admired in the right circles. A very well-turned
_idem Latine_ appeared in the _Guardian_ shortly after the publication
of the memoir, and the initials at the foot of the version were
recognised as those of a literary dean.

And on that autumn evening, far away in the 'seventies, Meyrick, the
boy, left Mr. Horbury's study in a white fury of grief and pain and
rage. He would have murdered his master without the faintest
compunction, nay, with huge delight. Psychologically, his frame of mind
was quite interesting, though he was only a schoolboy who had just had a
sound thrashing for breaking rules.

For the fact, of course, was that Horbury, the irritating influence of
the Head's conversation and sherry apart, was by no means a bad fellow.
He was for the moment savagely cruel, but then, most men are apt to be
savagely cruel when they suffer from an inflamed liver and offensive
superiors, more especially when there is an inferior, warranted
defenceless, in their power. But, in the main, Horbury was a very decent
specimen of his class--English schoolmaster--and Meyrick would never
allow that. In all his reasoning about schools and schoolmasters there
was a fatal flaw--he blamed both for not being what they never pretended
to be. To use a figure that would have appealed to him, it was if one
quarrelled with a plain, old-fashioned meeting-house because it was not
in the least like Lincoln Cathedral. A chimney may not be a decorative
object, but then it does not profess to be a spire or a pinnacle far in
the spiritual city.

But Meyrick was always scolding meeting-houses because they were not
cathedrals. He has been heard to rave for hours against useful,
unpretentious chimney-pots because they bore no resemblance to celestial
spires. Somehow or other, possibly by inheritance, possibly by the
influence of his father's companionship, he had unconsciously acquired a
theory of life which bore no relation whatever to the facts of it. The
theory was manifest in his later years; but it must have been
stubbornly, if vaguely, present in him all through his boyhood. Take,
for instance, his comment on poor Canon Horbury's verses. He judged
those, as we have seen, by the rules of the fine art of literature, and
found them rubbish. Yet any old Luptonian would have told him that to
hear the whole six hundred boys join in the chorus, "Lupton, follow
away!" was one of the great experiences of life; from which it appears
that the song, whatever its demerits from a literary point of view,
fully satisfied the purpose for which is was written. In other words, it
was an excellent chimney, but Meyrick still persisted in his easy and
futile task of proving that it was not a bit like a spire. Then, again,
one finds a fallacy of still huger extent in that major premiss of his:
that the great Public Schools purpose to themselves as a secondary and
minor object the imparting of the spirit and beauty of the Greek and
Latin literatures. Now, it is very possible that at some distant period
in the past this was an object, or even, perhaps, _the_ object of the
institutions in question. The Humanists, it may be conjectured, thought
of school and University as places where Latin and Greek were to be
learned, and to be learned with the object of enjoying the great thought
and the great style of an antique world. One sees the spirit of this in
Rabelais, for example. The Classics are a wonderful adventure; to learn
to understand them is to be a spiritual Columbus, a discoverer of new
seas and unknown continents, a drinker of new-old wine in a new-old
land. To the student of those days a mysterious drowned Atlantis again
rose splendid from the waves of the great deep. It was these things that
Meyrick (unconsciously, doubtless) expected to find in his school life;
it was for the absence of these things that he continued to scold the
system in his later years; wherein, like Jim in _Huckleberry Finn_, he
missed the point by a thousand miles.

The Latin and Greek of modern instruction are, of course, most curious
and interesting survivals; no longer taught with any view of enabling
students to enjoy and understand either the thought or beauty of the
originals; taught rather in such a manner as to nauseate the learner for
the rest of his days with the very notion of these lessons. Still, the
study of the Classics survives, a curious and elaborate ritual, from
which all sense and spirit have departed. One has only to recollect the
form master's lessons in the _Odyssey_ or the _Bacchæ_, and then to view
modern Free-masons celebrating the Mystic Death and Resurrection of
Hiram Abiff; the analogy is complete, for neither the master nor the
Masons have the remotest notion of what they are doing. Both persevere
in strange and mysterious actions from inveterate conservatism.

Meyrick was a lover of antiquity and a special lover of survivals, but
he could never see that the round of Greek syntax, and Latin prose, of
Elegiacs and verbs in [Greek: mi], with the mystery of the Oratio
obliqua and the Optative, was one of the most strange and picturesque
survivals of modern life. It is to be noted, by the way, that the very
meaning of the word "scholar" has been radically changed. Thus a
well-known authority points out that "Melancholy" Burton had no
"scholarship" in the real sense of the word; he merely used his vast
knowledge of ancient and modern literature to make one of the most
entertaining and curious books that the world possesses. True
"scholarship," in the modern sense, is to be sought for not in the
Jacobean translators of the Bible, but in the Victorian revisers. The
former made the greatest of English books out of their Hebrew and Greek
originals; but the latter understood the force of the aorist. It is
curious to reflect that "scholar" once meant a man of literary taste and
knowledge.

Meyrick never mastered these distinctions, or, if he did so in later
years, he never confessed to his enlightment, but went on railing at the
meeting-house, which, he still maintained, _did_ pretend to be a
cathedral. He has been heard to wonder why a certain Dean, who had
pointed out the vast improvements that had been effected by the
Revisers, did not employ a few young art students from Kensington to
correct the infamous drawing of the fourteenth-century glass in his
cathedral. He was incorrigible; he was always incorrigible, and thus, in
his boyhood, on the dark November evening, he meditated the murder of
his good master and uncle--for at least a quarter of an hour.

His father, he remembered, had always spoken of Gothic architecture as
the most wonderful and beautiful thing in the world: a thing to be
studied and loved and reverenced. His father had never so much as
mentioned rocker, much less had he preached it as the one way by which
an English boy must be saved. Hence, Ambrose maintained inwardly that
his visit to Selden Abbey was deserving of reward rather than
punishment, and he resented bitterly, the savage injustice (as he
thought it) of his caning.


III

Yet Mr. Horbury had been right in one matter, if not in all. That
evening was a turning-point in Meyrick's life. He had felt the utmost
rage of the enemy, as it were, and he determined that he would be a funk
no longer. He would not degenerate into the state of little Phipps, who
had been bullied and "rockered" and beaten into such a deplorable
condition that he fainted dead away while the Headmaster was operating
on him for "systematic and deliberate lying." Phipps not only fainted,
but, being fundamentally sensible, as Dr. Johnson expressed it, showed a
strong disinclination to return to consciousness and the precious balms
of the "dear old Head." Chesson was rather frightened, and the school
doctor, who had his living to get, said, somewhat dryly, that he thought
the lad had better go home for a week or two.

So Phipps went home in a state which made his mother cry bitterly and
his father wonder whether the Public School system was not over-praised.
But the old family doctor went about raging and swearing at the
"scoundrels" who had reduced a child of twelve to a nervous wreck, with
"neurasthenia cerebralis" well on its way. But Dr. Walford had got his
education in some trumpery little academy, and did not understand or
value the _ethos_ of the great Public Schools.

Now, Ambrose Meyrick had marked the career of wretched Phipps with
concern and pity. The miserable little creature had been brought by
careful handling from masters and boys to such a pitch of neurotic
perfection that it was only necessary to tap him smartly on the back or
on the arm, and he would instantly burst into tears. Whenever anyone
asked him the simplest question he suspected a cruel trap of some sort,
and lied and equivocated and shuffled with a pitiable lack of skill.
Though he was pitched by the heels into mucker about three times a week,
that he might acquire the useful art of natation, he still seemed to
grow dirtier and dirtier. His school books were torn to bits, his
exercises made into darts; he had impositions for losing books and
canings for not doing his work, and he lied and cried all the more.

Meyrick had never got to this depth. He was a sturdy boy, and Phipps had
always been a weakly little animal; but, as he walked from the study to
the schoolroom after his thrashing, he felt that he had been in some
danger of descending on that sad way. He finally resolved that he would
never tread it, and so he walked past the baize-lined doors into the
room where the other boys were at work on prep, with an air of unconcern
which was not in the least assumed.

Mr. Horbury was a man of considerable private means and did not care to
be bothered with the troubles and responsibilities of a big House. But
there was room and to spare in the Old Grange, so he took three boys
besides his nephew. These three were waiting with a grin of
anticipation, since the nature of Meyrick's interview with "old Horbury"
was not dubious. But Ambrose strolled in with a "Hallo, you fellows!"
and sat down in his place as if nothing had happened. This was
intolerable.

"I say, Meyrick," began Pelly, a beefy boy with a red face, "you _have_
been blubbing! Feel like writing home about it? Oh! I forgot. This is
your home, isn't it? How many cuts? I didn't hear you howl."

The boy took no notice. He was getting out his books as if no one had
spoken.

"Can't you answer?" went on the beefy one. "How many cuts, you young
sneak?"

"Go to hell!"

The whole three stared aghast for a moment; they thought Meyrick must
have gone mad. Only one, Bates the observant, began to chuckle quietly
to himself, for he did not like Pelly. He who was always beefy became
beefier; his eyes bulged out with fury.

"I'll give it you," he said and made for Ambrose, who was turning over
the leaves of the Latin dictionary. Ambrose did not wait for the
assault; he rose also and met Pelly half-way with a furious blow, well
planted on the nose. Pelly took a back somersault and fell with a crash
to the floor, where he lay for a moment half stunned. He rose staggering
and looked about him with a pathetic, bewildered air; for, indeed, a
great part of his little world had crumbled about his ears. He stood in
the middle of the room, wondering what it meant, whether it was true
indeed that Meyrick was no longer of any use for a little quiet fun. A
horrible and incredible transmutation had, apparently, been effected in
the funk of old. Pelly gazed wildly about him as he tried to staunch the
blood that poured over his mouth.

"Foul blow!" ventured Rawson, a lean lad who liked to twist the arms of
very little boys till they shrieked for mercy. The full inwardness of
the incident had not penetrated to his brain; he saw without believing,
in the manner of the materialist who denies the marvellous even when it
is before his eyes.

"Foul blow, young Meyrick!"

The quiet student had gone back to his place and was again handling his
dictionary. It was a hard, compact volume, rebound in strong boards, and
the edge of these boards caught the unfortunate Rawson full across the
eyes with extraordinary force. He put his face in his hands and
blubbered quietly and dismally, rocking to and fro in his seat, hardly
hearing the fluent stream of curses with which the quiet student
inquired whether the blow he had just had was good enough for him.

Meyrick picked up his dictionary with a volley of remarks which would
have done credit to an old-fashioned stage-manager at the last dress
rehearsal before production.

"Hark at him," said Pelly feebly, almost reverently. "Hark at him." But
poor Rawson, rocking to and fro, his head between his hands, went on
blubbering softly and spoke no word.

Meyrick had never been an unobservant lad; he had simply made a
discovery that evening that in Rome certain Roman customs must be
adopted. The wise Bates went on doing his copy of Latin verse, chuckling
gently to himself. Bates was a cynic. He despised all the customs and
manners of the place most heartily and took the most curious care to
observe them. He might have been the inventor and patentee of rocker, if
one judged him by the fervour with which he played it. He entered his
name for every possible event at the sports, and jumped the jumps and
threw the hammer and ran the races as if his life depended on it. Once
Mr. Horbury had accidentally over-head Bates saying something about "the
honour of the House" which went to his heart. As for cricket, Bates
played as if his sole ambition was to become a first-class professional.
And he chuckled as he did his Latin verses, which he wrote (to the awe
of other boys) "as if he were writing a letter"--that is, without making
a rough copy. For Bates had got the "hang" of the whole system from
rocker to Latin verse, and his copies were much admired. He grinned that
evening, partly at the transmutation of Meyrick and partly at the line
he was jotting down:

    "_Mira loquor, coelo resonans vox funditur alto._"

In after life he jotted down a couple of novels which sold, as the
journalists said, "like hot cakes." Meyrick went to see him soon after
the first novel had gone into its thirtieth thousand, and Bates was
reading "appreciations" and fingering a cheque and chuckling.

"Mira loquor, populo, resonans, _cheque_ funditur alto," he said. "I
know what schoolmasters and boys and the public want, and I take care
they get it--_sale espèce de sacrés cochons de N. de D._!"

The rest of prep. went off quite quietly. Pelly was slowly recovering
from the shock that he had received and began to meditate revenge.
Meyrick had got him unawares, he reflected. It was merely an accident,
and he resolved to challenge Meyrick to fight and give him back the
worst licking he had ever had in his life. He was beefy, but a bold
fellow. Rawson, who was really a cruel coward and a sneak, had made up
his mind that he wanted no more, and from time to time cast meek and
propitiatory glances in Meyrick's direction.

At half-past nine they all went into their dining-room for bread and
cheese and beer. At a quarter to ten Mr. Horbury appeared in cap and
gown and read a chapter from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with one
or two singularly maundering and unhappy prayers. He stopped the boys as
they were going up to their rooms.

"What's this, Pelly?" he said. "Your nose is all swollen. It's been
bleeding, too, I see. What have you been doing to yourself? And you,
Rawson, how do you account for your eyes being black? What's the meaning
of all this?"

"Please, Sir, there was a very stiff bully down at rocker this
afternoon, and Rawson and I got tokered badly."

"Were you in the bully, Bates?"

"No, Sir; I've been outside since the beginning of the term. But all the
fellows were playing up tremendously, and I saw Rawson and Pelly had
been touched when we were changing."

"Ah! I see. I'm very glad to find the House plays up so well. As for
you, Bates, I hear you're the best outside for your age that we've ever
had. Good night."

The three said "Thank you, Sir," as if their dearest wish had been
gratified, and the master could have sworn that Bates flushed with
pleasure at his word of praise. But the fact was that Bates had
"suggested" the flush by a cunning arrangement of his features.

The boys vanished and Mr. Horbury returned to his desk. He was editing a
selection called "English Literature for Lower Forms." He began to read
from the slips that he had prepared:

    "_So all day long the noise of battle roll'd
    Among the mountains by the winter sea;
    Until King Arthur's table, man by man,
    Had fallen in Lyonnesse----_"

He stopped and set a figure by the last word, and then, on a blank slip,
with a corresponding letter, he repeated the figure and wrote the note:

     Lyonnesse--the Sicilly Isles.

Then he took a third slip and wrote the question:

     Give the ancient name of the Sicilly Isles.

These serious labours employed him till twelve o'clock. He put the
materials of his book away as the clock struck, and solemnly mixed
himself his nightly glass of whisky and soda--in the daytime he never
touched spirits--and bit the one cigar which he smoked in the
twenty-four hours. The stings of the Head's sherry and of his
conversation no longer burned within him; time and work and the bite of
the cane in Meyrick's flesh had soothed his soul, and he set himself to
dream, leaning back in his arm-chair, watching the cheerful fire.

He was thinking of what he would do when he succeeded to the
Headmastership. Already there were rumours that Chesson had refused the
Bishopric of St. Dubric's in order that he might be free to accept
Dorchester, which, in the nature of things, must soon be vacant. Horbury
had no doubt that the Headmastership would be his; he had influential
friends who assured him that the trustees would not hesitate for an
instant. Then he would show the world what an English Public School
could be made. In five years, he calculated, he would double the
numbers. He saw the coming importance of the modern side, and especially
of science. Personally, he detested "stinks," but he knew what an effect
he would produce with a great laboratory fitted with the very best
appliances and directed by a highly qualified master. Then, again, an
elaborate gymnasium must be built; there must be an engineer's shop,
too, and a carpenter's as well. And people were beginning to complain
that a Public School Education was of no use in the City. There must be
a business master, an expert from the Stock Exchange who would see that
this reproach was removed. Then he considered that a large number of the
boys belonged to the land-owning class. Why should a country gentleman
be at the mercy of his agent, forced for lack of technical knowledge to
accept statements which he could not check? It was clear that the
management of land and great estates must have its part in the scheme;
and, again, the best-known of the Crammers must be bought on his own
terms, so that the boys who wished to get into the Army or the Civil
Service would be practically compelled to come to Lupton. Already
he saw paragraphs in the _Guardian_ and _The Times_--in all the
papers--paragraphs which mentioned the fact that ninety-five per cent of
the successful candidates for the Indian Civil Service had received
their education at the foundation of "stout old Martin Rolle."
Meanwhile, in all this flood of novelty, the old traditions should be
maintained with more vigour than ever. The classics should be taught as
they never had been taught. Every one of the masters on this side should
be in the highest honours and, if possible, he would get famous men for
the work--they should not merely be good, but also notorious scholars.
Gee, the famous explorer in Crete, who had made an enormous mark in
regions widely removed from the scholastic world by his wonderful book,
_Dædalus; or, The Secret of the Labyrinth_, must come to Lupton at any
price; and Maynard, who had discovered some most important Greek
manuscripts in Egypt, he must have a form, too. Then there was Rendell,
who had done so well with his _Thucydides_, and Davies, author of _The
Olive of Athene_, a daring but most brilliant book which promised to
upset the whole established theory of mythology--he would have such a
staff as no school had ever dreamed of. "We shall have no difficulty
about paying them," thought Horbury; "our numbers will go up by leaps
and bounds, and the fees shall be five hundred pounds a year--and such
terms will do us more good than anything."

He went into minute detail. He must take expert advice as to the
advisability of the school farming on its own account, and so supplying
the boys with meat, milk, bread, butter and vegetables at first cost. He
believed it could be done; he would get a Scotch farmer from the
Lowlands and make him superintendent at a handsome salary and with a
share in the profits. There would be the splendid advertisement of "the
whole dietary of the school supplied from the School Farms, under the
supervision of Mr. David Anderson, formerly of Haddanneuk, the largest
tenancy in the Duke of Ayr's estates." The food would be better and
cheaper, too; but there would be no luxury. The "Spartan" card was
always worth playing; one must strike the note of plain living in a
luxurious age; there must be no losing of the old Public School
severity. On the other hand, the boy's hands should be free to go into
their own pockets; there should be no restraint here. If a boy chose to
bring in _Dindonneau aux truffes_ or _Pieds de mouton à la Ste
Menehould_ to help out his tea, that was his look-out. Why should not
the school grant a concession to some big London firm, who would pay
handsomely for the privilege of supplying the hungry lads with every
kind of expensive dainty? The sum could be justly made a large one, as
any competing shop could be promptly put out of bounds with reason or
without it. On one side, _confiserie_; at the other counter,
_charcuterie_; enormous prices could be charged to the wealthy boys of
whom the school would be composed. Yet, on the other hand, the
distinguished visitor--judge, bishop, peer or what not--would lunch at
the Headmaster's house and eat the boys' dinner and go away saying it
was quite the plainest and very many times the best meal he had ever
tasted. There would be well-hung saddle of mutton, roasted and not
baked; floury potatoes and cauliflower; apple pudding with real English
cheese, with an excellent glass of the school beer, an honest and
delicious beverage made of malt and hops in the well-found school
brewery. Horbury knew enough of modern eating and drinking to understand
that such a meal would be a choice rarity to nine rich people out of
ten; and yet it was "Spartan," utterly devoid of luxury and ostentation.

Again, he passed from detail and minutiæ into great Napoleonic regions.
A thousand boys at £500 a year; that would be an income for the school
of five hundred thousand pounds! The profits would be gigantic, immense.
After paying large, even extravagant, prices to the staff, after all
building expenses had been deducted, he hardly dared to think how vast a
sum would accrue year by year to the Trustees. The vision began to
assume such magnificence that it became oppressive; it put on the
splendours and delights of the hashish dream, which are too great and
too piercing for mortal hearts to bear. And yet it was no mirage; there
was not a step that could not be demonstrated, shown to be based on
hard; matter-of-fact business considerations. He tried to keep back his
growing excitement, to argue with himself that he was dealing in
visions, but the facts were too obstinate. He saw that it would be his
part to work the same miracle in the scholastic world as the great
American storekeepers had operated in the world of retail trade. The
principle was precisely the same: instead of a hundred small shops
making comparatively modest and humdrum profits you had the vast
emporium doing business on the gigantic scale with vastly diminished
expenses and vastly increased rewards.

Here again was a hint. He had thought of America, and he knew that here
was an inexhaustible gold mine, that no other scholastic prospector had
even dreamed of. The rich American was notoriously hungry for everything
that was English, from frock-coats to pedigrees. He had never thought of
sending his son to an English Public School because he considered the
system hopelessly behind the times. But the new translated Lupton would
be to other Public Schools as a New York hotel of the latest fashion is
to a village beer-shop. And yet the young millionaire would grow up in
the company of the sons of the English gentlemen, imbibing the unique
culture of English life, while at the same time he enjoyed all the
advantages of modern ideas, modern science and modern business training.
Land was still comparatively cheap at Lupton; the school must buy it
quietly, indirectly, by degrees, and then pile after pile of vast
buildings rose before his eyes. He saw the sons of the rich drawn from
all the ends of the world to the Great School, there to learn the secret
of the Anglo-Saxons.

Chesson was mistaken in that idea of his, which he thought daring and
original, of establishing a distinct Jewish House where the food should
be "Kosher." The rich Jew who desired to send his son to an English
Public School was, in nine cases out of ten, anxious to do so precisely
because he wanted to sink his son's connection with Jewry in oblivion.
He had heard Chesson talk of "our Christian duty to the seed of Israel"
in this connection. The man was clearly a fool. No, the more Jews the
better, but no Jewish House. And no Puseyism either: broad, earnest
religious teaching, with a leaning to moderate Anglicanism, should be
the faith of Lupton. As to this Chesson was, certainly, sound enough. He
had always made a firm stand against ecclesiasticism in any form.
Horbury knew the average English parent of the wealthier classes
thoroughly; he knew that, though he generally called himself a
Churchman, he was quite content to have his sons prepared for
confirmation by a confessed Agnostic. Certainly this liberty must not be
narrowed when Lupton became cosmopolitan. "We will retain all the
dignified associations which belong to the Established Church," he said
to himself, "and at the same time we shall be utterly free from the
taint of over-emphasising dogmatic teaching." He had a sudden brilliant
idea. Everybody in Church circles was saying that the English bishops
were terribly overworked, that it was impossible for the most strenuous
men with the best intentions to supervise effectually the huge dioceses
that had descended from the sparsely populated England of the Middle
Ages. Everywhere there was a demand for suffragans and more suffragans.
In the last week's _Guardian_ there were three letters on the subject,
one from a clergyman in their own diocese. The Bishop had been attacked
by some rabid ritualistic person, who had pointed out that nine out of
every ten parishes had not so much as seen the colour of his hood ever
since his appointment ten years before. The Archdeacon of Melby had
replied in a capital letter, scathing and yet humorous. Horbury turned
to the paper on the table beside his chair and looked up the letter.
"In the first place," wrote the Archdeacon, "your correspondent does not
seem to have realised that the _ethoes_ of the Diocese of Melby is not
identical with that of sacerdotalism. The sturdy folk of the Midlands
have not yet, I am thankful to say, forgotten the lessons of our great
Reformation. They have no wish to see a revival of the purely mechanical
religion of the Middle Ages--of the system of a sacrificing priesthood
and of sacraments efficacious _ex opere operato_. Hence they do not
regard the episcopate quite in the same light as your correspondent
'Senex,' who, it seems to me, looks upon a bishop as a sort of
Christianised 'medicine-man,' endowed with certain mysterious
thaumaturgic powers which have descended to him by an (imaginary)
spiritual succession. This was not the view of Hooker, nor, I venture to
say, has it ever been the view of the really representative divines of
the Established Church of England.

"Still," the Archdeacon went on, "it must be admitted that the present
diocese of Melby is unwieldy and, it may be fairly said, unworkable."

Then there followed the humorous anecdote of Sir Boyle Roche and the
Bird, and finally the Archdeacon emitted the prayer that God in His own
good time would put it into the hearts of our rulers in Church and
State to give their good Bishop an episcopal curate.

Horbury got up from his chair and paced up and down the study; his
excitement was so great that he could keep quiet no longer. His cigar
had gone out long ago, and he had barely sipped the whisky and soda. His
eyes glittered with excitement. Circumstances seemed positively to be
playing into his hands; the dice of the world were being loaded in his
favour. He was like Bel Ami at his wedding. He almost began to believe
in Providence.

For he was sure it could be managed. Here was a general feeling that no
one man could do the work of the diocese. There must be a suffragan, and
Lupton must give the new Bishop his title. No other town was possible.
Dunham had certainly been a see in the eighth century, but it was now
little more than a village and a village served by a miserable little
branch line; whereas Lupton was on the great main track of the Midland
system, with easy connections to every part of the country. The
Archdeacon, who was also a peer, would undoubtedly become the first
Bishop of Lupton, and he should be the titular chaplain of the Great
School! "Chaplain! The Right Reverend Lord Selwyn, Lord Bishop of
Lupton." Horbury gasped; it was too magnificent, too splendid. He knew
Lord Selwyn quite well and had no doubt as to his acceptance. He was a
poor man, and there would be no difficulty whatever in establishing a
_modus_. The Archdeacon was just the man for the place. He was no
pedantic theologian, but a broad, liberal-minded man of the world.
Horbury remembered, almost with ecstasy, that he had lectured all over
the United States with immense success. The American Press had been
enthusiastic, and the First Congregational Church of Chicago had
implored Selwyn to accept its call, preach what he liked and pocket an
honorarium of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. And, on the other
hand, what could the most orthodox desire safer than a chaplain who was
not only a bishop, but a peer of the realm? Wonderful! Here were the
three birds--Liberalism, Orthodoxy and Reverence for the House of
Lords--caught safe and secure in this one net.

The games? They should be maintained in all their glory, rather on an
infinitely more splendid scale. Cricket and sticker (the Lupton hockey),
rackets and fives, should be all encouraged; and more, Lupton should be
the only school to possess a tennis court. The noble _jeu de paume_, the
game of kings, the most aristocratic of all sports, should have a worthy
home at Lupton. They would train champions; they would have both French
and English markers skilled in the latest developments of the _chemin
de fer_ service. "Better than half a yard, I think," said Horbury to
himself; "they will have to do their best to beat that."

But he placed most reliance on rocker. This was the Lupton football, a
variant as distinctive in its way as the Eton Wall Game. People have
thought that the name is a sort of portmanteau word, a combination of
Rugger and Soccer; but in reality the title was derived from the field
where the game used to be played in old days by the townsfolk. As in
many other places, football at Lupton had been originally an excuse for
a faction-fight between two parishes in the town--St. Michael's and St.
Paul's-in-the-Fields. Every year, on Shrove Tuesday, the townsfolk,
young and old, had proceeded to the Town Field and had fought out their
differences with considerable violence. The field was broken land: a
deep, sluggish stream crossed one angle of it, and in the middle there
were quarries and jagged limestone rocks. Hence football was called in
the town "playing rocks," for, indeed, it was considered an excellent
point of play to hurl a man over the edge of the quarry on to the rocks
beneath, and so late as 1830 a certain Jonas Simpson of St. Michael's
had had his spine broken in this way. However, as a boy from St. Paul's
was drowned in the Wand the same day, the game was always reckoned a
draw. It was from the peculiarities of this old English sport that the
school had constructed its game. The Town Field had, of course, long
been stolen from the townsfolk and built over; but the boys had,
curiously enough, perpetuated the tradition of its peculiarities in a
kind of football ritual. For, besides the two goals, one part of the
field was marked by a line of low white posts: these indicated the
course of a non-existent Wand brook, and in the line of these posts it
was lawful to catch an opponent by the throat and choke him till he
turned black in the face--the best substitute for drowning that the
revisers of the game could imagine. Again: about the centre of the field
two taller posts indicated the position of the quarries, and between
these you might be hit or kicked full in the stomach without the
smallest ground of complaint: the stroke being a milder version of the
old fall on the rocks.

There were many other like amenities in rocker; and Horbury maintained
it was by far the manliest variant of the game. For this pleasing sport
he now designed a world-wide fame. Rocker should be played wherever the
English flag floated: east and west, north and south; from Hong Kong to
British Columbia; in Canada and New Zealand there should be the
_Temenoi_ of this great rite; and the traveller seeing the mystic
enclosure--the two goals, the line of little posts marking "brooks" and
the two poles indicating "quarries"--should know English soil as surely
as by the Union Jack. The technical terms of rocker should become a part
of the great Anglo-Saxon inheritance; the whole world should hear of
"bully-downs" and "tokering," of "outsides" and "rammers." It would
require working, but it was to be done: articles in the magazines and in
the Press; perhaps a story of school life, a new _Tom Brown_ must be
written. The Midlands and the North must be shown that there was money
in it, and the rest would be easy.

One thing troubled Horbury. His mind was full of the new and splendid
buildings that were to be erected, but he was aware that antiquity still
counted for something, and unfortunately Lupton could show very little
that was really antique. Forty years before, Stanley, the first
reforming Headmaster, had pulled down the old High School. There were
prints of it: it was a half-timbered, fifteenth-century building, with a
wavering roof-line and an overhanging upper story; there were dim,
leaded windows and a grey arched porch--an ugly old barn, Stanley called
it. Scott was called in and built the present High School, a splendid
hall in red brick: French thirteenth-century, with Venetian detail; it
was much admired. But Horbury was sorry that the old school had been
destroyed; he saw for the first time that it might have been made a
valuable attraction. Then again, Dowsing, who succeeded Stanley, had
knocked the cloisters all to bits; there was only one side of the
quadrangle left, and this had been boarded up and used as a gardeners'
shed. Horbury did not know what to say of the destruction of the Cross
that used to stand in the centre of the quad. No doubt Dowsing was right
in thinking it superstitious; still, it might have been left as a
curiosity and shown to visitors, just as the instruments of bygone
cruelty--the rack and the Iron Maid--are preserved and exhibited to
wondering sightseers. There was no real danger of any superstitious
adoration of the Cross; it was, as a matter of fact, as harmless as the
axe and block at the Tower of London; Dowsing had ruined what might have
been an important asset in the exploitation of the school.

Still, perhaps the loss was not altogether irreparable. High School was
gone and could not be recovered; but the cloisters might be restored and
the Cross, too. Horbury knew that the monument in front of Charing Cross
Railway Station was considered by many to be a genuine antique: why not
get a good man to build them a Cross? Not like the old one, of course;
that "Fair Roode with our Deare Ladie Saint Marie and Saint John," and,
below, the stories of the blissful Saints and Angels--that would never
do. But a vague, Gothic erection, with plenty of kings and queens,
imaginary benefactors of the school, and a small cast-iron cross at the
top: that could give no offence to anybody, and might pass with nine
people out of ten as a genuine remnant of the Middle Ages. It could be
made of soft stone and allowed to weather for a few years; then a coat
of invisible anti-corrosive fluid would preserve carvings and imagery
that would already appear venerable in decay. There was no need to make
any precise statements: parents and the public might be allowed to draw
their own conclusions.

Horbury was neglecting nothing. He was building up a great scheme in his
mind, and to him it seemed that every detail was worth attending to,
while at the same time he did not lose sight of the whole effect. He
believed in finish: there must be no rough edges. It seemed to him that
a school legend must be invented. The real history was not quite what he
wanted, though it might work in with a more decorative account of
Lupton's origins. One might use the _Textus Receptus_ of Martin Rolle's
Foundation--the bequest of land _c._ 1430 to build and maintain a school
where a hundred boys should be taught grammar, and ten poor scholars and
six priests should pray for the Founder's soul. This was well enough,
but one might hint that Martin Rolle really refounded and re-endowed a
school of Saxon origin, probably established by King Alfred himself in
Luppa's Tun. Then, again, who could show that Shakespeare had not
visited Lupton? His famous schoolboy, "creeping like snail unwillingly
to school," might very possibly have been observed by the poet as he
strolled by the banks of the Wand. Many famous men might have received
their education at Lupton; it would not be difficult to make a plausible
list of such. It must be done carefully and cautiously, with such
phrases as "it has always been a tradition at Lupton that Sir Walter
Raleigh received part of his education at the school"; or, again, "an
earlier generation of Luptonians remembered the initials 'W. S. S. on
A.' cut deeply in the mantel of old High School, now, unfortunately,
demolished." Antiquarians would laugh? Possibly; but who cared about
antiquarians? For the average man "Charing" was derived from "_chère
reine_," and he loved to have it so, and Horbury intended to appeal to
the average man. Though he was a schoolmaster he was no recluse, and he
had marked the ways of the world from his quiet study in Lupton; hence
he understood the immense value of a grain of quackery in all schemes
which are meant to appeal to mortals. It was a deadly mistake to
suppose that anything which was all quackery would be a success--a
permanent success, at all events; it was a deadlier mistake still to
suppose that anything quite devoid of quackery could pay handsomely. The
average English palate would shudder at the flavour of _aioli_, but it
would be charmed by the insertion of that _petit point d'ail_ which
turned mere goodness into triumph and laurelled perfection. And there
was no need to mention the word "garlic" before the guests. Lupton was
not going to be all garlic: it was to be infinitely the best scholastic
dish that had ever been served--the ingredients should be unsurpassed
and unsurpassable. But--King Alfred's foundation of a school at Luppa's
Tun, and that "W. S. S. on A." cut deeply on the mantel of the vanished
High School--these and legends like unto them, these would be the last
touch, _le petit point d'ail_.

It was a great scheme, wonderful and glorious; and the most amazing
thing about it was that it was certain to be realised. There was not a
flaw from start to finish. The Trustees were certain to appoint him--he
had that from a sure quarter--and it was but a question of a year or
two, perhaps only of a month or two, before all this great and golden
vision should be converted into hard and tangible fact. He drank off his
glass of whisky and soda; it had become flat and brackish, but to him
it was nectar, since it was flavoured with ecstasy.

He frowned suddenly as he went upstairs to his room. An unpleasant
recollection had intruded for a moment on his amazing fantasy; but he
dismissed the thought as soon as it arose. That was all over, there
could be no possibility of trouble from that direction; and so, his mind
filled with images, he fell asleep and saw Lupton as the centre of the
whole world, like Jerusalem in the ancient maps.

A student of the deep things of mysticism has detected a curious element
of comedy in the management of human concerns; and there certainly seems
a touch of humour in the fact that on this very night, while Horbury was
building the splendid Lupton of the future, the palace of his thought
and his life was shattered for ever into bitter dust and nothingness.
But so it was. The Dread Arrest had been solemnly recognised, and that
wretched canonry at Wareham was irrevocably pronounced for doom.
Fantastic were the elements of forces that had gone to the ordering of
this great sentence: raw corn spirit in the guise of sherry, the
impertinence (or what seemed such) of an elderly clergyman, a boiled leg
of mutton, a troublesome and disobedient boy, and--another person.




II


I

He was standing in a wild, bare country. Something about it seemed
vaguely familiar: the land rose and fell in dull and weary undulations,
in a vast circle of dun ploughland and grey meadow, bounded by a dim
horizon without promise or hope, dreary as a prison wall. The infinite
melancholy of an autumn evening brooded heavily over all the world, and
the sky was hidden by livid clouds.

It all brought back to him some far-off memory, and yet he knew that he
gazed on that sad plain for the first time. There was a deep and heavy
silence over all; a silence unbroken by so much as the fluttering of a
leaf. The trees seemed of a strange shape, and strange were the stunted
thorns dotted about the broken field in which he stood. A little path at
his feet, bordered by the thorn bushes, wandered away to the left into
the dim twilight; it had about it some indefinable air of mystery, as if
it must lead one down into a mystic region where all earthly things are
forgotten and lost for ever.

He sat down beneath the bare, twisted boughs of a great tree and watched
the dreary land grow darker and yet darker; he wondered,
half-consciously, where he was and how he had come to that place,
remembering, faintly, tales of like adventure. A man passed by a
familiar wall one day, and opening a door before unnoticed, found
himself in a new world of unsurmised and marvellous experiences. Another
man shot an arrow farther than any of his friends and became the husband
of the fairy. Yet--this was not fairyland; these were rather the sad
fields and unhappy graves of the underworld than the abode of endless
pleasures and undying delights. And yet in all that he saw there was the
promise of great wonder.

Only one thing was clear to him. He knew that he was Ambrose, that he
had been driven from great and unspeakable joys into miserable exile and
banishment. He had come from a far, far place by a hidden way, and
darkness had closed about him, and bitter drink and deadly meat were
given him, and all gladness was hidden from him. This was all he could
remember; and now he was astray, he knew not how or why, in this wild,
sad land, and the night descended dark upon him.

Suddenly there was, as it were, a cry far away in the shadowy silence,
and the thorn bushes began to rustle before a shrilling wind that rose
as the night came down. At this summons the heavy clouds broke up and
dispersed, fleeting across the sky, and the pure heaven appeared with
the last rose flush of the sunset dying from it, and there shone the
silver light of the evening star. Ambrose's heart was drawn up to this
light as he gazed: he saw that the star grew greater and greater; it
advanced towards him through the air; its beams pierced to his soul as
if they were the sound of a silver trumpet. An ocean of white splendour
flowed over him: he dwelt within the star.

It was but for a moment; he was still sitting beneath the tree of the
twisted branches. But the sky was now clear and filled with a great
peace; the wind had fallen and a more happy light shone on the great
plain. Ambrose was thirsty, and then he saw that beside the tree there
was a well, half hidden by the arching roots that rose above it. The
water was still and shining, as though it were a mirror of black marble,
and marking the brim was a great stone on which were cut the letters:

     "FONS VITAE IMMORTALIS."

He rose and, bending over the well, put down his lips to drink, and his
soul and body were filled as with a flood of joy. Now he knew that all
his days of exile he had borne with pain and grief a heavy, weary body.
There had been dolours in every limb and achings in every bone; his feet
had dragged upon the ground, slowly, wearily, as the feet of those who
go in chains. But dim, broken spectres, miserable shapes and crooked
images of the world had his eyes seen; for they were eyes bleared with
sickness, darkened by the approach of death. Now, indeed, he clearly
beheld the shining vision of things immortal. He drank great draughts of
the dark, glittering water, drinking, it seemed, the light of the
reflected stars; and he was filled with life. Every sinew, every muscle,
every particle of the deadly flesh shuddered and quickened in the
communion of that well-water. The nerves and veins rejoiced together;
all his being leapt with gladness, and as one finger touched another, as
he still bent over the well, a spasm of exquisite pleasure quivered and
thrilled through his body. His heart throbbed with bliss that was
unendurable; sense and intellect and soul and spirit were, as it were,
sublimed into one white flame of delight. And all the while it was known
to him that these were but the least of the least of the pleasures of
the kingdom, but the overrunnings and base tricklings of the great
supernal cup. He saw, without amazement, that, though the sun had set,
the sky now began to flush and redden as if with the northern light. It
was no longer the evening, no longer the time of the procession of the
dusky night. The darkness doubtless had passed away in mortal hours
while for an infinite moment he tasted immortal drink; and perhaps one
drop of that water was endless life. But now it was the preparation for
the day. He heard the words:

    "_Dies venit, dies Tua
    In qua reflorent omnia._"

They were uttered within his heart, and he saw that all was being made
ready for a great festival. Over everything there was a hush of
expectation; and as he gazed he knew that he was no longer in that weary
land of dun ploughland and grey meadow, of the wild, bare trees and
strange stunted thorn bushes. He was on a hillside, lying on the verge
of a great wood; beneath, in the valley, a brook sang faintly under the
leaves of the silvery willows; and beyond, far in the east, a vast wall
of rounded mountain rose serene towards the sky. All about him was the
green world of the leaves: odours of the summer night, deep in the
mystic heart of the wood, odours of many flowers, and the cool breath
rising from the singing stream mingled in his nostrils. The world
whitened to the dawn, and then, as the light grew clear, the rose
clouds blossomed in the sky and, answering, the earth seemed to glitter
with rose-red sparks and glints of flame. All the east became as a
garden of roses, red flowers of living light shone over the mountain,
and as the beams of the sun lit up the circle of the earth a bird's song
began from a tree within the wood. Then were heard the modulations of a
final and exultant ecstasy, the chant of liberation, a magistral _In
Exitu_; there was the melody of rejoicing trills, of unwearied, glad
reiterations of choirs ever aspiring, prophesying the coming of the
great feast, singing the eternal antiphon.

As the song aspired into the heights, so there aspired suddenly before
him the walls and pinnacles of a great church set upon a high hill. It
was far off, and yet as though it were close at hand he saw all the
delicate and wonderful imagery cut in its stones. The great door in the
west was a miracle: every flower and leaf, every reed and fern, were
clustered in the work of the capitals, and in the round arch above
moulding within moulding showed all the beasts that God has made. He saw
the rose-window, a maze of fretted tracery, the high lancets of the fair
hall, the marvellous buttresses, set like angels about this holy house,
whose pinnacles were as a place of many springing trees. And high above
the vast, far-lifted vault of the roof rose up the spire, golden in the
light. The bells were ringing for the feast; he heard from within the
walls the roll and swell and triumph of the organ:

    _O pius o bonus o placidus sonus hymnus eorum._

He knew not how he had taken his place in this great procession, how,
surrounded by ministrants in white, he too bore his part in endless
litanies. He knew not through what strange land they passed in their
fervent, admirable order, following their banners and their symbols that
glanced on high before them. But that land stood ever, it seemed, in a
clear, still air, crowned with golden sunlight; and so there were those
who bore great torches of wax, strangely and beautifully adorned with
golden and vermilion ornaments. The delicate flame of these tapers
burned steadily in the still sunlight, and the glittering silver censers
as they rose and fell tossed a pale cloud into the air. They delayed,
now and again, by wayside shrines, giving thanks for unutterable
compassions, and, advancing anew, the blessed company surged onward,
moving to its unknown goal in the far blue mountains that rose beyond
the plain. There were faces and shapes of awful beauty about him; he saw
those in whose eyes were the undying lamps of heaven, about whose heads
the golden hair was as an aureole; and there were they that above the
girded vesture of white wore dyed garments, and as they advanced around
their feet there was the likeness of dim flames.

The great white array had vanished and he was alone. He was tracking a
secret path that wound in and out through the thickets of a great
forest. By solitary pools of still water, by great oaks, worlds of green
leaves, by fountains and streams of water, by the bubbling, mossy
sources of the brooks he followed this hidden way, now climbing and now
descending, but still mounting upward, still passing, as he knew,
farther and farther from all the habitations of men. Through the green
boughs now he saw the shining sea-water; he saw the land of the old
saints, all the divisions of the land that men had given to them for
God; he saw their churches, and it seemed as if he could hear, very
faintly, the noise of the ringing of their holy bells. Then, at last,
when he had crossed the Old Road, and had gone by the Lightning-struck
Land and the Fisherman's Well, he found, between the forest and the
mountain, a very ancient and little chapel; and now he heard the bell of
the saint ringing clearly and so sweetly that it was as it were the
singing of the angels. Within it was very dark and there was silence. He
knelt and saw scarcely that the chapel was divided into two parts by a
screen that rose up to the round roof. There was a glinting of shapes
as if golden figures were painted on this screen, and through the
joinings of its beams there streamed out thin needles of white splendour
as if within there was a light greater than that of the sun at noonday.
And the flesh began to tremble, for all the place was filled with the
odours of Paradise, and he heard the ringing of the Holy Bell and the
voices of the choir that out-sang the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon, crying
and proclaiming:

     "_Glory and praise to the Conqueror of Death: to the Fountain
     of Life Unending._"

Nine times they sang this anthem, and then the whole place was filled
with blinding light. For a door in the screen had been opened, and there
came forth an old man, all in shining white, on whose head was a gold
crown. Before him went one who rang the bell; on each side there were
young men with torches; and in his hands he bore the _Mystery of
Mysteries_ wrapped about in veils of gold and of all colours, so that it
might not be discerned; and so he passed before the screen, and the
light of heaven burst forth from that which he held. Then he entered in
again by a door that was on the other side, and the Holy Things were
hidden.

And Ambrose heard from within an awful voice and the words:

     _Woe and great sorrow are on him, for he hath looked unworthily
     into the Tremendous Mysteries, and on the Secret Glory which is
     hidden from the Holy Angels._


II

"Poetry is the only possible way of saying anything that is worth saying
at all." This was an axiom that, in later years, Ambrose Meyrick's
friends were forced to hear at frequent intervals. He would go on to say
that he used the term poetry in its most liberal sense, including in it
all mystic or symbolic prose, all painting and statuary that was worthy
to be called art, all great architecture, and all true music. He meant,
it is to be presumed, that the mysteries can only be conveyed by
symbols; unfortunately, however, he did not always make it quite clear
that this was the proposition that he intended to utter, and thus
offence was sometimes given--as, for example, to the scientific
gentleman who had been brought to Meyrick's rooms and went away early,
wondering audibly and sarcastically whether "your clever friend" wanted
to metrify biology and set Euclid to Bach's Organ Fugues.

However, the Great Axiom (as he called it) was the justification that
he put forward in defence of the notes on which the previous section is
based.

"Of course," he would say, "the symbolism is inadequate; but that is the
defect of speech of any kind when you have once ventured beyond the
multiplication table and the jargon of the Stock Exchange. Inadequacy of
expression is merely a minor part of the great tragedy of humanity. Only
an ass thinks that he has succeeded in uttering the perfect content of
his thought without either excess or defect."

"Then, again," he might go on, "the symbolism would very likely be
misleading to a great many people; but what is one to do? I believe many
good people find Turner mad and Dickens tiresome. And if the great
sometimes fail, what hope is there for the little? We cannot all
be--well--popular novelists of the day."

Of course, the notes in question were made many years after the event
they commemorate; they were the man's translation of all the wonderful
and inexpressible emotions of the boy; and, as Meyrick puts it, many
"words" (or symbols) are used in them which were unknown to the lad of
fifteen.

"Nevertheless," he said, "they are the best words that I can find."

As has been said, the Old Grange was a large, roomy house; a space
could easily have been found for half a dozen more boys if the High
Usher had cared to be bothered with them. As it was, it was a favour to
be at Horbury's, and there was usually some personal reason for
admission. Pelly, for example, was the son of an old friend; Bates was a
distant cousin; and Rawson's father was the master of a small Grammar
School in the north with which certain ancestral Horburys were somehow
connected. The Old Grange was a fine large Caroline house; it had a
grave front of red brick, mellowed with age, tier upon tier of tall,
narrow windows, flush with the walls, and a high-pitched, red-tiled
roof. Above the front door was a rich and curious wooden pent-house,
deeply carven; and within there was plenty of excellent panelling, and
some good mantelpieces, added, it would seem, somewhere about the Adam
period. Horbury had seen its solid and comfortable merits and had bought
the freehold years before at a great bargain. The school was increasing
rapidly even in those days, and he knew that before long more houses
would be required. If he left Lupton he would be able to let the Old
Grange easily--he might almost put it up for auction--and the rent would
represent a return of fifty per cent on his investment. Many of the
rooms were large; of a size out of all proportion to the boys' needs,
and at a very trifling expense partitions might be made and the nine or
ten available rooms be subdivided into studies for twenty or even
twenty-five boys. Nature had gifted the High Usher with a careful,
provident mind in all things, both great and small; and it is but fair
to add that on his leaving Lupton for Wareham he found his anticipations
more than justified. To this day Charles Horbury, his nephew, a high
Government official, draws a comfortable income from his uncle's most
prudent investment, and the house easily holds its twenty-five boys.
Rainy, who took the place from Horbury, was an ingenious fellow and hit
upon a capital plan for avoiding the expense of making new windows for
some of the subdivided studies. After thoughtful consideration he caused
the wooden partitions which were put up to stop short of the ceiling by
four inches, and by this device the study with a window lighted the
study that had none; and, as Rainy explained to some of the parents, a
diffused light was really better for the eyes than a direct one.

In the old days, when Ambrose Meyrick was being made a man of, the four
boys "rattled," as it were, in the big house. They were scattered about
in odd corners, remote from each other, and it seemed from everybody
else. Meyrick's room was the most isolated of any, but it was also the
most comfortable in winter, since it was over the kitchen, to the
extreme left of the house. This part, which was hidden from the road by
the boughs of a great cedar, was an after-thought, a Georgian addition
in grey brick, and rose only to two stories, and in the one furnished
room out of the three or four over the kitchen and offices slept
Ambrose. He wished his days could be as quiet and retired as his nights.
He loved the shadows that were about his bed even on the brightest
mornings in summer; for the cedar boughs were dense, and ivy had been
allowed to creep about the panes of the window; so the light entered dim
and green, filtered through the dark boughs and the ivy tendrils.

Here, then, after the hour of ten each night, he dwelt secure. Now and
again Mr. Horbury would pay nocturnal surprise visits to see that all
lights were out; but, happily, the stairs at the end of the passage,
being old and badly fitted, gave out a succession of cracks like pistol
shots if the softest foot was set on them. It was simple, therefore, on
hearing the first of these reports, to extinguish the candle in the
small secret lantern (held warily so that no gleam of light should
appear from under the door) and to conceal the lantern under the
bed-clothes. One wetted one's finger and pinched at the flame, so there
was no smell of the expiring snuff, and the lantern slide was carefully
drawn to guard against the possibility of suspicious grease-marks on the
linen. It was perfect; and old Horbury's visits, which were rare enough,
had no terrors for Ambrose.

So that night, while the venom of the cane still rankled in his body,
though it had ceased to disturb his mind, instead of going to bed at
once, according to the regulations, he sat for a while on his box
seeking a clue in a maze of odd fancies and conceits. He took off his
clothes and wrapped his aching body in the rug from the bed, and
presently, blowing out the official paraffin lamp, he lit his candle,
ready at the first warning creak on the stairs to douse the glim and
leap between the sheets.

Odd enough were his first cogitations. He was thinking how very sorry he
was to have hit Pelly that savage blow and to have endangered Rawson's
eyesight by the hard boards of the dictionary! This was eccentric, for
he had endured from those two young Apaches every extremity of
unpleasantness for upwards of a couple of years. Pelly was not by any
means an evil lad: he was stupid and beefy within and without, and the
great Public School system was transmuting him, in the proper course and
by the proper steps, into one of those Brave Average Boobies whom
Meyrick used to rail against afterwards. Pelly, in all probability (his
fortunes have not been traced), went into the Army and led the milder
and more serious subalterns the devil's own life. In India he "lay
doggo" with great success against some hill tribe armed with
seventeenth-century muskets and rather barbarous knives; he seems to
have been present at that "Conference of the Powers" described so
brightly by Mr. Kipling. Promoted to a captaincy, he fought with
conspicuous bravery in South Africa, winning the Victoria Cross for his
rescue of a wounded private at the instant risk of his own life, and he
finally led his troop into a snare set by an old farmer; a rabbit of
average intelligence would have smelt and evaded it.

For Rawson one is sorry, but one cannot, in conscience, say much that is
good, though he has been praised for his tact. He became domestic
chaplain to the Bishop of Dorchester, whose daughter Emily he married.

But in those old days there was very little to choose between them, from
Meyrick's point of view. Each had displayed a quite devilish ingenuity
in the art of annoyance, in the whole cycle of jeers and sneers and
"scores," as known to the schoolboy, and they were just proceeding to
more active measures. Meyrick had borne it all meekly; he had returned
kindly and sometimes quaint answers to the unceasing stream of remarks
that were meant to wound his feelings, to make him look a fool before
any boys that happened to be about. He had only countered with a mild:
"What do you do that for, Pelly?" when the brave one smacked his head.
"Because I hate sneaks and funks," Pelly had replied and Meyrick said no
more. Rawson took a smaller size in victims when it was a question of
physical torments; but he had invented a most offensive tale about
Meyrick and had told it all over the school, where it was universally
believed. In a word, the two had done their utmost to reduce him to a
state of utter misery; and now he was sorry that he had punched the nose
of one and bombarded the other with a dictionary!

The fact was that his forebearance had not been all cowardice; it is,
indeed, doubtful whether he was in the real sense a coward at all. He
went in fear, it is true, all his days, but what he feared was not the
insult, but the intention, the malignancy of which the insult, or the
blow, was the outward sign. The fear of a mad bull is quite distinct
from the horror with which most people look upon a viper; it was the
latter feeling which made Meyrick's life a burden to him. And again
there was a more curious shade of feeling; and that was the intense
hatred that he felt to the mere thought of "scoring" off an antagonist,
of beating down the enemy. He was a much sharper lad than either Rawson
or Pelly; he could have retorted again and again with crushing effect,
but he held his tongue, for all such victories were detestable to him.
And this odd sentiment governed all his actions and feelings; he
disliked "going up" in form, he disliked winning a game, not through any
acquired virtue, but by inherent nature. Poe would have understood
Meyrick's feelings; but then the author of _The Imp of the Perverse_
penetrated so deeply into the inmost secrets of humanity that
Anglo-Saxon criticism has agreed in denouncing him as a wholly "inhuman"
writer.

With Meyrick this mode of feeling had grown stronger by provocation; the
more he was injured, the more he shrank from the thought of returning
the injury. In a great measure the sentiment remained with him in later
life. He would sally forth from his den in quest of fresh air on top of
an omnibus and stroll peacefully back again rather than struggle for
victory with the furious crowd. It was not so much that he disliked the
physical contest: he was afraid of getting a seat! Quite naturally, he
said that people who "pushed," in the metaphorical sense, always
reminded him of the hungry little pigs fighting for the largest share of
the wash; but he seemed to think that, whereas this course of action was
natural in the little pigs, it was profoundly unnatural in the little
men. But in his early boyhood he had carried this secret doctrine of his
to its utmost limits; he had assumed, as it were, the rôle of the
coward and the funk; he had, without any conscious religious motive
certainly, but in obedience to an inward command, endeavoured to play
the part of a Primitive Christian, of a religious, in a great Public
School! _Ama nesciri et pro nihilo æstimari._ The maxim was certainly in
his heart, though he had never heard it; but perhaps if he had searched
the whole world over he could not have found a more impossible field for
its exercise than this seminary, where the broad, liberal principles of
Christianity were taught in a way that satisfied the Press, the public
and the parents.

And he sat in his room and grieved over the fashion in which he had
broken this discipline. Still, something had to be done: he was
compelled to stay in this place, and he did not wish to be reduced to
the imbecility of wretched little Phipps who had become at last more
like a whimpering kitten with the mange than a human being. One had not
the right to allow oneself to be made an idiot, so the principle had to
be infringed--but externally only, never internally! Of that he was
firmly resolved; and he felt secure in his recollection that there had
been no anger in his heart. He resented the presence of Pelly and
Rawson, certainly, but in the manner with which some people resent the
presence of a cat, a mouse, or a black-beetle, as disagreeable objects
which can't help being disagreeable objects. But his bashing of Pelly
and his smashing of Rawson, his remarks (gathered from careful
observation by the banks of the Lupton and Birmingham Canal); all this
had been but the means to an end, the securing of peace and quiet for
the future. He would not be murdered by this infernal Public School
system either, after the fashion of Phipps--which was melancholy, or
after the fashion of the rest--which was more melancholy still, since it
is easier to recover from nervous breakdown than from suffusion of cant
through the entire system, mental and spiritual. Utterly from his
heart he abjured and renounced all the horrible shibboleths of the
school, its sham enthusiasm, its "ethos," its "tone," its "loyal
co-operation--masters and boys working together for the good of the
whole school"--all its ridiculous fetish conventions and absurd
observances, the joint contrivances of young fools and old knaves. But
his resistance should be secret and not open, for a while; there should
be no more "bashing" than was absolutely necessary.

And one thing he resolved upon--he would make all he could out of the
place; he would work like a tiger and get all the Latin and Greek and
French obtainable, in spite of the teaching and its imbecile pedantry.
The school work must be done, so that trouble might be avoided, but
here at night in his room he would really learn the languages they
pottered over in form, wasting half their time in writing sham
Ciceronian prose which would have made Cicero sick, and verse evil
enough to cause Virgil to vomit. Then there was French, taught chiefly
out of pompous eighteenth-century fooleries, with lists of irregular
verbs to learn and Babylonish nonsense about the past participle, and
many other rotten formulas and rules, giving to the whole tongue the air
of a tiresome puzzle which had been dug up out of a prehistoric grave.
This was not the French that he wanted; still, he could write out
irregular verbs by day and learn the language at night. He wondered
whether unhappy French boys had to learn English out of the _Rambler_,
Blair's _Sermons_ and Young's _Night Thoughts_. For he had some sort of
smattering of English literature which a Public School boy has no
business to possess. So he went on with this mental tirade of his: one
is not over-wise at fifteen. It is true enough, perhaps, that the French
of the average English schoolboy is something fit to move only pity and
terror; it may be true also that nobody except Deans and schoolmasters
seems to bring away even the formulas and sacred teachings (such as the
Optative mystery and the Doctrine of Dum) of the two great literatures.
There is, doubtless, a good deal to be said on the subject of the Public
Schoolman's knowledge of the history and literature of his own country;
an infinite deal of comic stuff might be got out of his views and
acquirements in the great science of theology--still let us say,
_Floreat_!

Meyrick turned from his review of the wisdom of his elders and
instructors to more intimate concerns. There were a few cuts of that
vigorous cane which still stung and hurt most abominably, for skill or
fortune had guided Mr. Horbury's hand so that he had been enabled here
and there to get home twice in the same place, and there was one
particular weal on the left arm where the flesh, purple and discoloured,
had swelled up and seemed on the point of bursting. It was no longer
with rage, but with a kind of rapture, that he felt the pain and
smarting; he looked upon the ugly marks of the High Usher's evil humours
as though they had been a robe of splendour. For he knew nothing of that
bad sherry, nothing of the Head's conversation; he knew that when Pelly
had come in quite as late it had only been a question of a hundred
lines, and so he persisted in regarding himself as a martyr in the cause
of those famous "Norman arches," which was the cause of that dear dead
enthusiast, his father, who loved Gothic architecture and all other
beautiful "unpractical" things with an undying passion. As soon as
Ambrose could walk he had begun his pilgrimages to hidden mystic
shrines; his father had led him over the wild lands to places known
perhaps only to himself, and there, by the ruined stones, by the smooth
hillock, had told the tale of the old vanished time, the time of the
"old saints."


III

It was for this blessed and wonderful learning, he said to himself, that
he had been beaten, that his body had been scored with red and purple
stripes. He remembered his father's oft-repeated exclamation, "cythrawl
Sais!" He understood that the phrase damned not Englishmen _qua_
Englishmen, but Anglo-Saxonism--the power of the creed that builds
Manchester, that "does business," that invents popular dissent,
representative government, adulteration, suburbs, and the Public School
system. It was, according to his father, the creed of "the Prince of
this world," the creed that made for comfort, success, a good balance at
the bank, the praise of men, the sensible and tangible victory and
achievement; and he bade his little boy, who heard everything and
understood next to nothing, fly from it, hate it and fight against it as
he would fight against the devil--"and," he would add, "it _is_ the
only devil you are ever likely to come across."

And the little Ambrose had understood not much of all this, and if he
had been asked--even at fifteen--what it all meant, he would probably
have said that it was a great issue between Norman mouldings and Mr.
Horbury, an Armageddon of Selden Abbey _versus_ rocker. Indeed, it is
doubtful whether old Nicholas Meyrick would have been very much clearer,
for he forgot everything that might be said on the other side. He forgot
that Anglo-Saxonism (save in the United States of America) makes
generally for equal laws; that civil riot ("Labour" movements, of
course, excepted) is more a Celtic than a Saxon vice; that the penalty
of burning alive is unknown amongst Anglo-Saxons, unless the provocation
be extreme; that Englishmen have substituted "Indentured Labour" for the
old-world horrors of slavery; that English justice smites the guilty
rich equally with the guilty poor; that men are no longer poisoned with
swift and secret drugs, though somewhat unwholesome food may still be
sold very occasionally. Indeed, the old Meyrick once told his rector
that he considered a brothel a house of sanctity compared with a modern
factory, and he was beginning to relate some interesting tales
concerning the Three Gracious Courtesans of the Isle of Britain when the
rector fled in horror--he came from Sydenham. And all this was a nice
preparation for Lupton.

A wonderful joy, an ecstasy of bliss, swelled in Ambrose's heart as he
assured himself that he was a witness, though a mean one, for the old
faith, for the faith of secret and beautiful and hidden mysteries as
opposed to the faith of rocker and sticker and mucker, and "the thought
of the school as an inspiring motive in life"--the text on which the
Head had preached the Sunday before. He bared his arms and kissed the
purple swollen flesh and prayed that it might ever be so, that in body
and mind and spirit he might ever be beaten and reviled and made
ridiculous for the sacred things, that he might ever be on the side of
the despised and the unsuccessful, that his life might ever be in the
shadow--in the shadow of the mysteries.

He thought of the place in which he was, of the hideous school, the
hideous town, the weary waves of the dun Midland scenery bounded by the
dim, hopeless horizon; and his soul revisited the faery hills and woods
and valleys of the West. He remembered how, long ago, his father had
roused him early from sleep in the hush and wonder of a summer morning.
The whole world was still and windless; all the magic odours of the
night rose from the earth, and as they crossed the lawn the silence was
broken by the enchanted song of a bird rising from a thorn tree by the
gate. A high white vapour veiled the sky, and they only knew that the
sun had risen by the brightening of this veil, by the silvering of the
woods and the meadows and the water in the rejoicing brook. They crossed
the road, and crossed the brook in the field beneath, by the old
foot-bridge tremulous with age, and began to climb the steep hillside
that one could see from the windows, and, the ridge of the hill once
surmounted, the little boy found himself in an unknown land: he looked
into deep, silent valleys, watered by trickling streams; he saw still
woods in that dreamlike morning air; he saw winding paths that climbed
into yet remoter regions. His father led him onward till they came to a
lonely height--they had walked scarcely two miles, but to Ambrose it
seemed a journey into another world--and showed him certain irregular
markings in the turf.

And Nicholas Meyrick murmured:

    "The cell of Iltyd is by the seashore,
    The ninth wave washes its altar,
    There is a fair shrine in the land of Morgan.

    "The cell of Dewi is in the City of the Legions,
    Nine altars owe obedience to it,
    Sovereign is the choir that sings about it.

    "The cell of Cybi is the treasure of Gwent,
    Nine hills are its perpetual guardians,
    Nine songs befit the memory of the saint."

"See," he said, "there are the Nine Hills." He pointed them out to the
boy, telling him the tale of the saint and his holy bell, which they
said had sailed across the sea from Syon and had entered the Severn, and
had entered the Usk, and had entered the Soar, and had entered the
Canthwr; and so one day the saint, as he walked beside the little brook
that almost encompassed the hill in its winding course, saw the bell
"that was made of metal that no man might comprehend," floating under
the alders, and crying:

    "_Sant, sant, sant,
    I sail from Syon
    To Cybi Sant!_"

"And so sweet was the sound of that bell," Ambrose's father went on,
"that they said it was as the joy of angels _ym Mharadwys_, and that it
must have come not from the earthly, but from the heavenly and glorious
Syon."

And there they stood in the white morning, on the uneven ground that
marked the place where once the Saint rang to the sacrifice, where the
quickening words were uttered after the order of the Old Mass of the
Britons.

"And then came the Yellow Hag of Pestilence, that destroyed the bodies
of the Cymri; then the Red Hag of Rome, that caused their souls to
stray; last is come the Black Hag of Geneva, that sends body and soul
quick to hell. No honour have the saints any more."

Then they turned home again, and all the way Ambrose thought he heard
the bell as it sailed the great deeps from Syon, crying aloud: "Sant,
Sant, Sant!" And the sound seemed to echo from the glassy water of the
little brook, as it swirled and rippled over the shining stones circling
round those lonely hills.

So they made strange pilgrimages over the beloved land, going farther
and farther afield as the boy grew older. They visited deep wells in the
heart of the woods, where a few broken stones, perhaps, were the last
remains of the hermitage. "Ffynnon Ilar Bysgootwr--the well of
Saint Ilar the Fisherman," Nicholas Meyrick would explain, and then
would follow the story of Ilar; how no man knew whence he came or who
his parents were. He was found, a little child, on a stone in a river in
Armorica, by King Alan, and rescued by him. And ever after they
discovered on the stone in the river where the child had lain every day
a great and shining fish lying, and on this fish Ilar was nourished.
And so he came with a great company of the saints to Britain, and
wandered over all the land.

"So at last Ilar Sant came to this wood, which people now call St.
Hilary's wood because they have forgotten all about Ilar. And he was
weary with his wandering, and the day was very hot; so he stayed by this
well and began to drink. And there on that great stone he saw the
shining fish, and so he rested, and built an altar and a church of
willow boughs, and offered the sacrifice not only for the quick and the
dead, but for all the wild beasts of the woods and the streams.

"And when this blessed Ilar rang his holy bell and began to offer, there
came not only the Prince and his servants, but all the creatures of the
wood. There, under the hazel boughs, you might see the hare, which flies
so swiftly from men, come gently and fall down, weeping greatly on
account of the Passion of the Son of Mary. And, beside the hare, the
weasel and the pole-cat would lament grievously in the manner of
penitent sinners; and wolves and lambs together adored the saint's
hierurgy; and men have beheld tears streaming from the eyes of venomous
serpents when Ilar Agios uttered 'Curiluson' with a loud voice--since
the serpent is not ignorant that by its wickedness sorrow came to the
whole world. And when, in the time of the holy ministry, it is necessary
that frequent Alleluyas should be chanted and vociferated, the saint
wondered what should be done, for as yet none in that place was skilled
in the art of song. Then was a great miracle, since from all the boughs
of the wood, from every bush and from every green tree, there resounded
Alleluyas in enchanting and prolonged harmony; never did the Bishop of
Rome listen to so sweet a singing in his church as was heard in this
wood. For the nightingale and thrush and blackbird and blackcap, and all
their companions, are gathered together and sing praises to the Lord,
chanting distinct notes and yet concluding in a melody of most ravishing
sweetness; such was the mass of the Fisherman. Nor was this all, for one
day as the saint prayed beside the well he became aware that a bee
circled round and round his head, uttering loud buzzing sounds, but not
endeavouring to sting him. To be short; the bee went before Ilar, and
led him to a hollow tree not far off, and straightway a swarm of bees
issued forth, leaving a vast store of wax behind them. This was their
oblation to the Most High, for from their wax Ilar Sant made goodly
candles to burn at the Offering; and from that time the bee is holy,
because his wax makes light to shine upon the Gifts."

This was part of the story that Ambrose's father read to him; and they
went again to see the Holy Well. He looked at the few broken and uneven
stones that were left to distinguish it from common wells; and there in
the deep green wood, in the summer afternoon, under the woven boughs, he
seemed to hear the strange sound of the saint's bell, to see the
woodland creatures hurrying through the undergrowth that they might be
present at the Offering. The weasel beat his little breast for his sins;
the big tears fell down the gentle face of the hare; the adders wept in
the dust; and all the chorus of the birds sang: "Alleluya, Alleluya,
Alleluya!"

Once they drove a long way from the Wern, going towards the west, till
they came to the Great Mountain, as the people called it. After they had
turned from the high road they went down a narrow lane, and this led
them with many windings to a lower ridge of the mountain, where the
horse and trap were put up at a solitary tavern. Then they began to toil
upward on foot, crossing many glistening and rejoicing streams that
rushed out cold from the limestone rock, mounting up and up, through the
wet land where the rare orchis grew amongst the rushes, through hazel
brakes, through fields that grew wilder as they still went higher, and
the great wind came down from the high dome above them. They turned, and
all the shining land was unrolled before them; the white houses were
bright in the sunlight, and there, far away, was the yellow sea and the
two islands, and the coasts beyond.

Nicholas Meyrick pointed out a tuft of trees on a hill a long way off
and told his son that the Wern was hidden beyond it; and then they began
to climb once more, till they came at last to the line where the fields
and hedges ended, and above there was only the wild mountain land. And
on this verge stood an old farmhouse with strong walls, set into the
rock, sheltered a little from the winds by a line of twisted beeches.
The walls of the house were gleaming white, and by the porch there was a
shrub covered with bright yellow flowers. Mr. Meyrick beat upon the oak
door, painted black and studded with heavy nails. An old man, dressed
like a farmer, opened it, and Ambrose noticed that his father spoke to
him with something of reverence in his voice, as if he were some very
great person. They sat down in a long room, but dimly lighted by the
thick greenish glass in the quarried window, and presently the old
farmer set a great jug of beer before them. They both drank heartily
enough, and Mr. Meyrick said:

"Aren't you about the last to brew your own beer, Mr. Cradock?"

"Iss; I be the last of all. They do all like the muck the brewer sends
better than _cwrw dda_."

"The whole world likes muck better than good drink, now."

"You be right, Sir. Old days and old ways of our fathers, they be gone
for ever. There was a blasted preacher down at the chapel a week or two
ago, saying--so they do tell me--that they would all be damned to hell
unless they took to ginger-beer directly. Iss indeed now; and I heard
that he should say that a man could do a better day's work on that
rot-belly stuff than on good beer. Wass you ever hear of such a liarr as
that?"

The old man was furious at the thought of these infamies and follies;
his esses hissed through his teeth and his r's rolled out with fierce
emphasis. Mr. Meyrick nodded his approval of this indignation.

"We have what we deserve," he said. "False preachers, bad drink, the
talk of fools all the day long--even on the mountain. What is it like,
do you think, in London?"

There fell a silence in the long, dark room. They could hear the sound
of the wind in the beech trees, and Ambrose saw how the boughs were
tossed to and fro, and he thought of what it must be like in winter
nights, here, high upon the Great Mountain, when the storms swept up
from the sea, or descended from the wilds of the north; when the shafts
of rain were like the onset of an army, and the winds screamed about the
walls.

"May we see It?" said Mr. Meyrick suddenly.

"I did think you had come for that. There be very few now that
remember."

He went out, and returned carrying a bunch of keys. Then he opened a
door in the room and warned "the young master" to take care of the
steps. Ambrose, indeed, could scarcely see the way. His father led him
down a short flight of uneven stone steps, and they were in a room which
seemed at first quite dark, for the only light came from a narrow window
high up in the wall, and across the glass there were heavy iron bars.

Cradock lit two tall candles of yellow wax that stood in brass
candlesticks on a table; and, as the flame grew clear, Ambrose saw that
he was opening a sort of aumbry constructed in the thickness of the
wall. The door was a great slab of solid oak, three or four inches
thick--as one could see when it was opened--and from the dark place
within the farmer took an iron box and set it carefully upon the floor,
Mr. Meyrick helping him. They were strong men, but they staggered under
the weight of the chest; the iron seemed as thick as the door of the
cupboard from which it was taken, and the heavy, antique lock yielded,
with a grating scream, to the key. Inside it there was another box of
some reddish metal, which, again, held a case of wood black with age;
and from this, with reverent hands, the farmer drew out a veiled and
splendid cup and set it on the table between the two candles. It was a
bowl-like vessel of the most wonderful workmanship, standing on a short
stem. All the hues of the world were mingled on it, all the jewels of
the regions seemed to shine from it; and the stem and foot were
encrusted with work in enamel, of strange and magical colours that shone
and dimmed with alternating radiance, that glowed with red fires and
pale glories, with the blue of the far sky, the green of the faery seas,
and the argent gleam of the evening star. But before Ambrose had gazed
more than a moment he heard the old man say, in pure Welsh, not in
broken English, in a resonant and chanting voice:

"Let us fall down and adore the marvellous and venerable work of the
Lord God Almighty."

To which his father responded:

"Agyos, Agyos, Agyos. Mighty and glorious is the Lord God Almighty, in
all His works and wonderful operations. Curiluson, Curiluson,
Curiluson."

They knelt down, Cradock in the midst, before the cup, and Ambrose and
his father on either hand. The holy vessel gleamed before the boy's
eyes, and he saw clearly its wonder and its beauty. All its surface was
a marvel of the most delicate intertwining lines in gold and silver, in
copper and in bronze, in all manner of metals and alloys; and these
interlacing patterns in their brightness, in the strangeness of their
imagery and ornament, seemed to enthral his eyes and capture them, as it
were, in a maze of enchantment; and not only the eyes; for the very
spirit was rapt and garnered into that far bright world whence the holy
magic of the cup proceeded. Among the precious stones which were set
into the wonder was a great crystal, shining with the pure light of the
moon; about the rim of it there was the appearance of faint and feathery
clouds, but in the centre it was a white splendour; and as Ambrose gazed
he thought that from the heart of this jewel there streamed continually
a shower of glittering stars, dazzling his eyes with their incessant
motion and brightness. His body thrilled with a sudden ineffable
rapture, his breath came and went in quick pantings; bliss possessed him
utterly as the three crowned forms passed in their golden order. Then
the interwoven sorcery of the vessel became a ringing wood of golden,
and bronze, and silver trees; from every side resounded the clear
summons of the holy bells and the exultant song of the faery birds; he
no longer heard the low-chanting voices of Cradock and his father as
they replied to one another in the forms of some antique liturgy. Then
he stood by a wild seashore; it was a dark night, and there was a
shrilling wind that sang about the peaks of the sharp rock, answering to
the deep voices of the heaving sea. A white moon, of fourteen days old,
appeared for a moment in the rift between two vast black clouds, and the
shaft of light showed all the savage desolation of the shore--cliffs
that rose up into mountains, into crenellated heights that were
incredible, whose bases were scourged by the torrents of hissing foam
that were driven against them from the hollow-sounding sea. Then, on the
highest of those awful heights, Ambrose became aware of walls and
spires, of towers and battlements that must have touched the stars; and,
in the midst of this great castle, there surged up the aspiring vault of
a vast church, and all its windows were ablaze with a light so white and
glorious that it was as if every pane were a diamond. And he heard the
voices of a praising host, or the clamour of golden trumpets and the
unceasing choir of the angels. And he knew that this place was the
Sovereign Perpetual Choir, Cor-arbennic, into whose secret the deadly
flesh may scarcely enter. But in the vision he lay breathless, on the
floor before the gleaming wall of the sanctuary, while the shadows of
the hierurgy were enacted; and it seemed to him that, for a moment of
time, he saw in unendurable light the Mystery of Mysteries pass veiled
before him, and the Image of the Slain and Risen.

For a brief while this dream was broken. He heard his father singing
softly:

"Gogoniant y Tâd ac y Mab ac yr Yspryd Glân."

And the old man answered:

"Agya Trias eleeson ymas."

Then again his spirit was lost in the bright depths of the crystal, and
he saw the ships of the saints, without oar or sail, afloat on the faery
sea, seeking the Glassy Isle. All the whole company of the Blessed
Saints of the Isle of Britain sailed on the adventure; dawn and sunset,
night and morning, their illuminated faces never wavered; and Ambrose
thought that at last they saw bright shores in the dying light of a red
sun, and there came to their nostrils the scent of the deep apple-garths
in Avalon, and odours of Paradise.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he finally returned to the presence of earthly things he was
standing by his father; while Cradock reverently wrapped the cup in the
gleaming veils which covered it, saying as he did so, in Welsh:

"Remain in peace, O holy and divine cup of the Lord. Henceforth I know
not whether I shall return to thee or not; but may the Lord vouchsafe
me to see thee in the Church of the Firstborn which is in Heaven, on the
Altar of the Sacrifice which is from age unto ages."

Ambrose went up the steps and out into the sunshine on the mountain side
with the bewilderment of strange dreams, as a coloured mist, about him.
He saw the old white walls, the yellow blossoms by the porch; above, the
wild, high mountain wall; and, below, all the dear land of Gwent, happy
in the summer air, all its woods and fields, its rolling hills and its
salt verge, rich in a golden peace. Beside him the cold water swelled
from the earth and trickled from the grey rock, and high in the air an
exultant lark was singing. The mountain breeze was full of life and
gladness, and the rustling and tossing of the woods, the glint and
glimmer of the leaves beneath, made one think that the trees, with every
creature, were merry on that day. And in that dark cell beneath many
locks, beneath wood and iron, concealed in golden, glittering veils, lay
hidden that glorious and awful cup, glass of wonderful vision, portal
and entrance of the Spiritual Place.

His father explained to him something of that which he had seen. He told
him that the vessel was the Holy Cup of Teilo sant, which he was said to
have received from the Lord in the state of Paradise, and that when
Teilo said Mass, using that Chalice, the choir of angels was present
visibly; that it was a cup of wonders and mysteries, the bestower of
visions and heavenly graces.

"But whatever you do," he said, "do not speak to anyone of what you have
seen to-day, because if you do the mystery will be laughed at and
blasphemed. Do you know that your uncle and aunt at Lupton would say
that we were all mad together? That is because they are fools, and in
these days most people are fools, and malignant fools too, as you will
find out for yourself before you are much older. So always remember that
you must hide the secrets that you have seen; and if you do not do so
you will be sorry."

Mr. Meyrick told his son why old Cradock was to be treated with
respect--indeed, with reverence.

"He is just what he looks," he said, "an old farmer with a small
freehold up here on the mountain side; and, as you heard, his English is
no better than that of any other farmer in this country. And, compared
with Cradock, the Duke of Norfolk is a man of yesterday. He is of the
tribe of Teilo the Saint; he is the last, in direct descent, of the
hereditary keepers of the holy cup; and his race has guarded that
blessed relic for thirteen hundred years. Remember, again, that to-day,
on this mountain, you have seen great marvels which you must keep in
silence."

Poor Ambrose! He suffered afterwards for his forgetfulness of his
father's injunction. Soon after he went to Lupton one of the boys was
astonishing his friends with a brilliant account of the Crown jewels,
which he had viewed during the Christmas holidays. Everybody was deeply
impressed, and young Meyrick, anxious to be agreeable in his turn, began
to tell about the wonderful cup that he had once seen in an old
farmhouse. Perhaps his manner was not convincing, for the boys shrieked
with laughter over his description. A monitor who was passing asked to
hear the joke, and, having been told the tale, clouted Ambrose over the
head for an infernal young liar. This was a good lesson, and it served
Ambrose in good stead when one of the masters having, somehow or other,
heard the story, congratulated him in the most approved scholastic
manner before the whole form on his wonderful imaginative gifts.

"I see the budding novelist in you, Meyrick," said this sly master.
"Besant and Rice will be nowhere when you once begin. I suppose you are
studying character just at present? Let us down gently, won't you? [To
the delighted form.] We must be careful, mustn't we, how we behave? 'A
chiel's amang us takin' notes,'" etc. etc.

But Meyrick held his tongue. He did not tell his form master that he was
a beast, a fool and a coward, since he had found out that the truth,
like many precious things, must often be concealed from the profane. A
late vengeance overtook that foolish master. Long years after, he was
dining at a popular London restaurant, and all through dinner he had
delighted the ladies of his party by the artful mixture of brutal
insolence and vulgar chaff with which he had treated one of the waiters,
a humble-looking little Italian. The master was in the highest spirits
at the success of his persiflage; his voice rose louder and louder, and
his offensiveness became almost supernaturally acute. And then he
received a heavy earthen casserole, six quails, a few small onions and a
quantity of savoury but boiling juices full in the face. The waiter was
a Neapolitan.

The hours of the night passed on, as Ambrose sat in his bedroom at the
Old Grange, recalling many wonderful memories, dreaming his dreams of
the mysteries, of the land of Gwent and the land of vision, just as his
uncle, but a few yards away in another room of the house, was at the
same time rapt into the world of imagination, seeing the new Lupton
descending like a bride from the heaven of headmasters. But Ambrose
thought of the Great Mountain, of the secret valleys, of the sanctuaries
and hallows of the saints, of the rich carven work of lonely churches
hidden amongst the hills and woods. There came into his mind the
fragment of an old poem which he loved:

    "In the darkness of old age let not my memory fail,
    Let me not forget to celebrate the beloved land of Gwent.
    If they imprison me in a deep place, in a house of pestilence,
    Still shall I be free, when I remember the sunshine upon Mynydd
       Maen.
    There have I listened to the singing of the lark, my soul has
      ascended with the song of the little bird;
    The great white clouds were the ships of my spirit, sailing to the
      haven of the Almighty.
    Equally to be held in honour is the site of the Great Mountain,
    Adorned with the gushing of many waters--
    Sweet is the shade of its hazel thickets,
    There a treasure is preserved, which I will not celebrate,
    It is glorious, and deeply concealed.
    If Teilo should return, if happiness were restored to the Cymri,
    Dewi and Dyfrig should serve his Mass; then a great marvel would
      be made visible.
    O blessed and miraculous work, then should my bliss be as the bliss
      of angels;
    I had rather behold this Offering than kiss the twin lips of dark
      Gwenllian.
    Dear my land of Gwent, _O quam dilecta tabernacula_!
    Thy rivers are like precious golden streams of Paradise,
    Thy hills are as the Mount Syon--
    Better a grave on Twyn Barlwm than a throne in the palace of the
      Saxons at Caer-Ludd."

And then, by the face of contrast, he thought of the first verse of the
great school song, "Rocker," one of the earliest of the many poems which
his uncle had consecrated to the praise of the dear old school:

        "Once on a time, in the books that bore me,
        I read that in olden days before me
        Lupton town had a wonderful game,
        It was a game with a noble story
        (Lupton town was then in its glory,
        Kings and Bishops had brought it fame).
        It was a game that you all must know,
        And 'rocker' they called it, long ago.

    _Chorus._

        "Look out for 'brooks,' or you're sure to drown,
        Look out for 'quarries,' or else you're down--
        That was the way
        'Rocker' to play--
        Once on a day
        That was the way,
        Once on a day,
    That was the way that they used to play in Lupton town."

Thinking of the two songs, he put out his light and, wearied, fell into
a deep sleep.


IV

The British schoolboy, considered in a genial light by those who have
made him their special study, has not been found to be either observant
or imaginative. Or, rather, it would be well to say that his powers of
observation, having been highly specialised within a certain limited
tract of thought and experience (bounded mainly by cricket and
football), are but faint without these bounds; while it is one of the
chiefest works of the System to kill, destroy, smash and bring to
nothing any powers of imagination he may have originally possessed. For
if this were not done thoroughly, neither a Conservative nor a Liberal
administration would be possible, the House of Commons itself would
cease to exist, the Episcopus (var. Anglicanus) would go the way of the
Great Bustard; a "muddling through somehow" (which must have been _the_
brightest jewel in the British crown, wrung from King John by the
barons) would become a lost art. And, since all these consequences would
be clearly intolerable, the great Public Schools have perfected a very
thorough system of destroying the imaginative toxin, and few cases of
failure have been so far reported.

Still, there are facts which not even the densest dullards, the most
complete boobies, can help seeing; and a good many of the boys found
themselves wondering "what was the matter with Meyrick" when they saw
him at Chapel on the Sunday morning. The news of his astounding
violences both of act and word on the night before had not yet
circulated generally. Bates was attending to that department, but hadn't
had time to do much so far; and the replies of Pelly and Rawson to
enquiries after black eyes and a potato-like nose were surly and
misleading. Afterwards, when the tale was told, when Bates, having
enlarged the incidents to folk-lore size, showed Pelly lying in a pool
of his own blood, Rawson screaming as with the torments of the lost and
Meyrick rolling out oaths--all original and all terrible--for the space
of a quarter of an hour, then indeed the school was satisfied; it was no
wonder if Meyrick did look a bit queer after the achievement of such an
adventure. The funk of aforetime had found courage; the air of rapture
was easily understood. It is probable that if, in the nature of things,
it had been possible for an English schoolboy to meet St. Francis of
Assisi, the boy would have concluded that the saint must have just made
200 not out in first-class cricket.

But Ambrose walked in a strange light; he had been admitted into worlds
undreamed of, and from the first brightness of the sun, when he awoke in
the morning in his room at the Grange, it was the material world about
him, the walls of stone and brick, the solid earth, the sky itself, and
the people who talked and moved and seemed alive--these were things of
vision, unsubstantial shapes, odd and broken illusions of the mind. At
half-past seven old Toby, the man-of-all-work at the old Grange banged
at his door and let his clean boots fall with a crash on the boards
after the usual fashion. He awoke, sat up in bed, staring about him. But
what was this? The four walls covered with a foolish speckled paper,
pale blue and pale brown, the white ceiling, the bare boards with the
strip of carpet by the bedside: he knew nothing of all this. He was not
horrified, because he knew that it was all non-existent, some plastic
fantasy that happened to be presented for the moment to his brain. Even
the big black wooden chest that held his books (_Parker_, despised by
Horbury, among them) failed to appeal to him with any sense of reality;
and the bird's-eye washstand and chest of drawers, the white water-jug
with the blue band, were all frankly phantasmal. It reminded him of a
trick he had sometimes played: one chose one's position carefully, shut
an eye and, behold, a mean shed could be made to obscure the view of a
mountain! So these walls and appurtenances made an illusory sort of
intrusion into the true vision on which he gazed. That yellow washstand
rising out of the shining wells of the undying, the speckled walls in
the place of the great mysteries, a chest of drawers in the magic garden
of roses--it had the air of a queer joke, and he laughed aloud to
himself as he realized that he alone knew, that everybody else would
say, "That is a white jug with a blue band," while he, and he only, saw
the marvel and glory of the holy cup with its glowing metals, its
interlacing myriad lines, its wonderful images, and its hues of the
mountain and the stars, of the green wood and the faery sea where, in a
sure haven, anchor the ships that are bound for Avalon.

For he had a certain faith that he had found the earthly presentation
and sacrament of the Eternal Heavenly Mystery.

He smiled again, with the quaint smile of an angel in an old Italian
picture, as he realized more fully the strangeness of the whole position
and the odd humours which would relieve to play a wonderful game of
make-believe; the speckled walls, for instance, were not really there,
but he was to behave just as if they were solid realities. He would
presently rise and go through an odd pantomine of washing and dressing,
putting on brilliant boots, and going down to various mumbo-jumbo
ceremonies called breakfast, chapel and dinner, in the company of
appearances to whom he would accord all the honours due to veritable
beings. And this delicious phantasmagoria would go on and on day after
day, he alone having the secret; and what a delight it would be to "play
up" at rocker! It seemed to him that the solid-seeming earth, the dear
old school and rocker itself had all been made to minister to the
acuteness of his pleasure; they were the darkness that made the light
visible, the matter through which form was manifested. For the moment he
enclosed in the most secret place of his soul the true world into which
he had been guided; and as he dressed he hummed the favourite school
song, "Never mind!"

      "If the umpire calls 'out' at your poor second over,
    If none of your hits ever turns out a 'rover,'
    If you fumble your fives and 'go rot' over sticker,
    If every hound is a little bit quicker;
    If you can't tackle rocker at all, not at all,
    And kick at the moon when you try for the ball,
      Never mind, never mind, never mind--if you fall,
    Dick falls before rising, Tom's short ere he's tall,
      Never mind!
    Don't be one of the weakest who go to the wall:
      Never mind!"

Ambrose could not understand how Columbus could have blundered so
grossly. Somehow or other he should have contrived to rid himself of his
crew; he should have returned alone, with a dismal tale of failure, and
passed the rest of his days as that sad and sorry charlatan who had
misled the world with his mad whimsies of a continent beyond the waters
of the Atlantic. If he had been given wisdom to do this, how great--how
wonderful would his joys have been! They would have pointed at him as he
paced the streets in his shabby cloak; the boys would have sung songs
about him and his madness; the great people would have laughed
contemptuously as he went by. And he would have seen in his heart all
that vast far world of the west, the rich islands barred by roaring
surf, a whole hemisphere of strange regions and strange people; he would
have known that he alone possessed the secret of it. But, after all,
Ambrose knew that his was a greater joy even than this; for the world
that he had discovered was not far across the seas, but within him.

Pelly stared straight before him in savage silence all through
breakfast; he was convinced that mere hazard had guided that crushing
blow, and he was meditating schemes of complete and exemplary
vengeance. He noticed nothing strange about Meyrick, nor would he have
cared if he had seen the images of the fairies in his eyes. Rawson, on
the other hand, was full of genial civility and good fellowship; it was
"old chap" and "old fellow" every other word. But he was far from
unintelligent, and, as he slyly watched Meyrick, he saw that there was
something altogether unaccustomed and incomprehensible. Unknown lights
burned and shone in the eyes, reflections of one knew not what; the
expression was altered in some queer way that he could not understand.
Meyrick had always been a rather ugly, dogged-looking fellow; his black
hair and something that was not usual in the set of his features gave
him an exotic, almost an Oriental appearance; hence a story of Rawson's
to the effect that Meyrick's mother was a nigger woman in poor
circumstances and of indifferent morality had struck the school as
plausible enough.

But now the grimness of the rugged features seemed abolished; the face
shone, as it were, with the light of a flame--but a flame of what fire?
Rawson, who would not have put his observations into such terms, drew
his own conclusions readily enough and imparted them to Pelly after
Chapel.

"Look here, old chap," he said, "did you notice young Meyrick at
breakfast?"

Pelly simply blasted Meyrick and announced his intention of giving him
the worst thrashing he had ever had at an early date.

"Don't you try it on," said Rawson. "I had my eye on him all the time.
He didn't see I was spotting him. He's cracked; he's dangerous. I
shouldn't wonder if he were in a strait waistcoat in the County Lunatic
Asylum in a week's time. My governor had a lot to do with lunatics, and
he always says he can tell by the eyes. I'll swear Meyrick is raging
mad."

"Oh, rot!" said Pelly. "What do you know about it?"

"Well, look out, old chap, and don't say I didn't give you the tip. Of
course, you know a maniac is stronger than three ordinary men? The only
thing is to get them down and crack their ribs. But you want at least
half a dozen men before you can do it."

"Oh, shut up!"

So Rawson said no more, remaining quite sure that he had diagnosed
Ambrose's symptoms correctly. He waited for the catastrophe with a
dreadful joy, wondering whether Meyrick would begin by cutting old
Horbury's throat with his own razor, or whether he would rather steal
into Pelly's room at night and tear him limb from limb, a feat which, as
a madman, he could, of course, accomplish with perfect ease. As a matter
of fact, neither of these events happened. Pelly, a boy of the bulldog
breed, smacked Ambrose's face a day or two later before a huge crowd of
boys, and received in return such a terrific blow under the left ear
that a formal fight in the Tom Brown manner was out of the question.

Pelly reached the ground and stayed there in an unconscious state for
some while; and the other boys determined that it would be as well to
leave Meyrick to himself. He might be cracked but he was undoubtedly a
hard hitter. As for Pelly, like the sensible fellow that he was, he
simply concluded that Meyrick was too good for him. He did not quite
understand it; he dimly suspected the intrusion of some strange forces,
but with such things he had nothing to do. It was a fair knock-out, and
there was an end of it.

Bates had glanced up as Ambrose came into the dining-room on the Sunday
morning. He saw the shining face, the rapturous eyes, and had silently
wondered, recognising the presence of elements which transcended all his
calculations.

Meanwhile the Lupton Sunday went on after its customary fashion. At
eleven o'clock the Chapel was full of boys. There were nearly six
hundred of them there, the big ones in frock-coats, with high, pointed
collars, which made them look like youthful Gladstones. The younger boys
wore broad, turn-down collars and had short, square jackets made
somewhat in the Basque fashion. Young and old had their hair cut close
to the scalp, and this gave them all a brisk but bullety appearance. The
masters, in cassock, gown and hood, occupied the choir stalls. Mr.
Horbury, the High Usher, clothed in a flowing surplice, was taking
Morning Prayer, and the Head occupied a kind of throne by the altar.

The Chapel was not an inspiring building. It was the fourteenth century,
certainly, but the fourteenth century translated by 1840, and, it is to
be feared, sadly betrayed by the translators. The tracery of the windows
was poor and shallow; the mouldings of the piers and arches faulty to a
degree; the chancel was absurdly out of proportion, and the pitch-pine
benches and stalls had a sticky look. There was a stained-glass window
in memory of the Old Luptonians who fell in the Crimea. One wondered
what the Woman of Samaria by the Well had to do either with Lupton or
the Crimea. And the colouring was like that used in very common, cheap
sweets.

The service went with a rush. The prayers, versicles and responses, and
psalms were said, the officiant and the congregation rather pressing
than pausing--often, indeed, coming so swiftly to cues that two or three
words at the end of one verse or two or three at the beginning of the
next would be lost in a confused noise of contending voices. But
_Venite_ and _Te Deum_ and _Benedictus_ were rattled off to frisky
Anglicans with great spirit; sometimes the organ tooted, sometimes it
bleated gently, like a flock of sheep; now one might have sworn that the
music of penny whistles stole on the ear, and again, as the organist
coupled up the full organ, using suddenly all the battery of his stops,
a gas explosion and a Salvation Army band seemed to strive against one
another. A well-known nobleman who had been to Chapel at Lupton was
heard to say, with reference to this experience: "I am no Ritualist,
heaven knows--but I confess I like a hearty service."

But it was, above all, the sermon that has made the Chapel a place of
many memories. The Old Boys say--and one supposes that they are in
earnest--that the tall, dignified figure of the Doctor, standing high
above them all, his scarlet hood making a brilliant splash of colour
against the dingy, bilious paint of the pale green walls, has been an
inspiration to them in all quarters of the globe, in all manner of
difficulties and temptations.

One man writes that in the midst of a complicated and dangerous deal on
the Stock Exchange he remembered a sermon of Dr. Chesson's called in the
printed volume, "Fighting the Good Fight."

"You have a phrase amongst you which I often hear," said the Head. "That
phrase is 'Play the game,' and I wish to say that, though you know it
not; though, it may be, the words are often spoken half in jest; still,
they are but your modern, boyish rendering of the old, stirring message
which I have just read to you.

"Fight the Good Fight.' 'Play the Game.' Remember the words in the storm
and struggle, the anxiety and stress that may be--nay, must be--before
you--etc., etc., etc."

"After the crisis was over," wrote the Stock Exchange man, "I was
thankful that I _had_ remembered those words."

"That voice sounding like a trumpet on the battle-field, bidding us all
remember that Success was the prize of Effort and Endurance----" So
writes a well-known journalist.

"I remembered what the Doctor said to us once about 'running the race,'"
says a young soldier, recounting a narrow escape from a fierce enemy,
"so I stuck to my orders."

Ambrose, on that Sunday morning, sat in his place, relishing acutely all
the savours of the scene, consumed with inward mirth at the thought that
this also professed to be a rite of religion. There was an aimless and
flighty merriment about the chant to the _Te Deum_ that made it
difficult for him to control his laughter; and when he joined in the
hymn "Pleasant are Thy courts above," there was an odd choke in his
voice that made the boy next to him shuffle uneasily.

But the sermon!

It will be found on page 125 of the _Lupton Sermons_. It dealt with the
Parable of the Talents, and showed the boys in what the sin of the man
who concealed his Talent really consisted.

"I daresay," said the Head, "that many of the older amongst you have
wondered what this man's sin really was. You may have read your Greek
Testaments carefully, and then have tried to form in your minds some
analogy to the circumstances of the parable--and it would not surprise
me if you were to tell me that you had failed.

"What manner of man was this? I can imagine your saying one to another.
I shall not be astonished if you confess that, for you at least, the
question seems unanswerable.

"Yes; Unanswerable to you. For you are English boys, the sons of English
gentlemen, to whom the atmosphere of casuistry, of concealment, of
subtlety, is unknown; by whom such an atmosphere would be rejected with
scorn. You come from homes where there is no shadow, no dark corner
which must not be pried into. Your relations and your friends are not of
those who hide their gifts from the light of day. Some of you, perhaps,
have had the privilege of listening to the talk of one or other of the
great statesmen who guide the doctrines of this vast Empire. You will
have observed, I am sure, that in the world of politics there is no vain
simulation of modesty, no feigned reluctance to speak of worthy
achievement. All of you are members of this great community, of which
each one of us is so proud, which we think of as the great inspiration
and motive force of our lives. Here, you will say, there are no Hidden
Talents, for the note of the English Public School (thank God for it!)
is openness, frankness, healthy emulation; each endeavouring to do his
best for the good of all. In our studies and in our games each desires
to excel to carry off the prize. We strive for a corruptible crown,
thinking that this, after all, is the surest discipline for the crown
that is incorruptible. If a man say that he loveth God whom he hath not
seen, and love not his brother whom he hath seen! Let your light _shine_
before men. Be sure that we shall never win Heaven by despising earth.

"Yet that man hid his Talent in a napkin. What does the story mean? What
message has it for us to-day?

"I will tell you.

"Some years ago during our summer holidays I was on a walking tour in a
mountainous district in the north of England. The sky was of a most
brilliant blue, the sun poured, as it were, a gospel of gladness on the
earth. Towards the close of the day I was entering a peaceful and
beautiful valley amongst the hills, when three sullen notes of a bell
came down the breeze towards me. There was a pause. Again the three
strokes, and for a third time this dismal summons struck my ears. I
walked on in the direction of the sound, wondering whence it came and
what it signified; and soon I saw before me a great pile of buildings,
surrounded by a gloomy and lofty wall.

"It was a Roman Catholic monastery. The bell was ringing the Angelus, as
it is called.

"I obtained admittance to this place and spoke to some of the unhappy
monks. I should astonish you if I mentioned the names of some of the
deluded men who had immured themselves in this prison-house. It is
sufficient to say that among them were a soldier who had won distinction
on the battle-field, an artist, a statesman and a physician of no mean
repute.

"Now do you understand? Ah! a day will come--you know, I think, what
that day is called--when these poor men will have to answer the
question: 'Where is the Talent that was given to you?'

"'Where was your sword in the hour of your country's danger?'

"'Where was your picture, your consecration of your art to the service
of morality and humanity, when the doors of the great Exhibition were
thrown open?'

"'Where was your silver eloquence, your voice of persuasion, when the
strife of party was at its fiercest?'

"'Where was your God-given skill in healing when One of Royal Blood lay
fainting on the bed of dire--almost mortal--sickness?'

"And the answer? 'I laid it up in a napkin.' And now, etc., etc."

Then the whole six hundred boys sang "O Paradise! O Paradise!" with a
fervour and sincerity that were irresistible. The organ thundered till
the bad glass shivered and rattled, and the service was over.


V

Almost the last words that Ambrose had heard after his wonderful awaking
were odd enough, though at the time he took little note of them, since
they were uttered amidst passionate embraces, amidst soft kisses on his
poor beaten flesh. Indeed, if these words recurred to him afterwards,
they never made much impression on his mind, though to most people they
would seem of more serious import than much else that was uttered that
night! The sentences ran something like this:

"The cruel, wicked brute! He shall be sorry all his days, and every blow
shall be a grief to him. My dear! I promise you he shall pay for
to-night ten times over. His heart shall ache for it till it stops
beating."

There cannot be much doubt that this promise was kept to the letter. No
one knew how wicked rumours concerning Mr. Horbury got abroad in Lupton,
but from that very day the execution of the sentence began. In the
evening the High Usher, paying a visit to a friend in town, took a short
cut through certain dark, ill-lighted streets, and was suddenly
horrified to hear his name shrieked out, coupled with a most disgusting
accusation. His heart sank down in his breast; his face, he knew, was
bloodless; and then he rushed forward to the malpassage whence the voice
seemed to proceed.

There was nothing there. It was a horrid little alley, leading from one
slum to another, between low walls and waste back-gardens, dismal and
lampless. Horbury ran at top speed to the end of it, but there was
nothing to be done. A few women were gossiping at their doors, a couple
of men slouched past on their way to the beer-shop at the corner--that
was all. He asked one of the women if she had seen anybody running, and
she said no, civilly enough--and yet he fancied that she had leered at
him.

He turned and went back home. He was not in the mood for paying visits.
It was some time before he could compose his mind by assuring himself
that the incident, though unpleasant, was not of the slightest
significance. But from that day the nets were about his feet, and his
fate was sealed.

Personally, he was subjected to no further annoyance, and soon forgot
that unpleasant experience in the back-street. But it seems certain that
from that Sunday onwards a cloud of calumny overshadowed the High Usher
in all his ways. No one said anything definite, but everyone appeared to
be conscious of something unpleasant when Horbury's name was mentioned.
People looked oddly at one another, and the subject was changed.

One of the young masters, speaking to a colleague, did indeed allude
casually to Horbury as Xanthias Phoceus. The other master, a middle-aged
man, raised his eyebrows and shook his head without speaking. It is
understood that these muttered slanders were various in their nature;
but, as has been said, everything was indefinite, intangible as
contagion--and as deadly to the master's worldly health.

That horrible accusation which had been screamed out of the alley was
credited by some; others agreed with the young master; while a few had a
terrible story of an idiot girl in a remote Derbyshire village. And the
persistence of all these fables was strange.

It was four years before Henry Vibart Chesson, D. D., ascended the
throne of St. Guthmund at Dorchester; and all through those four years
the fountain of evil innuendo rose without ceasing. It is doubtful how
far belief in the truth of these scandals was firm and settled, or how
far they were in the main uttered and circulated by ill-natured people
who disliked Horbury, but did not in their hearts believe him guilty of
worse sins than pompousness and arrogance. The latter is the more
probable opinion.

Of course, the deliberations of the Trustees were absolutely secret, and
the report that the Chairman, the Marquis of Dunham, said something
about Cæsar's wife is a report and nothing more. It is evident that the
London press was absolutely in the dark as to the existence of this
strange conspiracy of vengeance, since two of the chief dailies took the
appointment of the High Usher to the Headmastership as a foregone
conclusion, prophesying, indeed, a rule of phenomenal success. And then
Millward, a Winchester man, understood to be rather unsound on some
scholastic matters--"not _quite_ the right man"; "just a _little_ bit of
a Jesuit"--received the appointment, and people did begin to say that
there must be a screw loose somewhere. And Horbury was overwhelmed, and
began to die.

The odd thing was that, save on that Sunday night, he never saw the
enemy; he never suspected that there was an enemy; And as for the
incident of the alley, after a little consideration he treated it with
contempt. It was only some drunken beast in the town who knew him by
sight and wished to be offensive, in the usual fashion of drunken
beasts.

And there was nothing else. Lupton society was much too careful to allow
its suspicions to be known. A libel action meant, anyhow, a hideous
scandal and might have no pleasant results for the libellers. Besides,
no one wanted to offend Horbury, who was suspected of possessing a
revengeful temper; and it had not dawned on the Lupton mind that the
rumours they themselves were circulating would eventually ruin the High
Usher's chances of the Headmastership. Each gossip heard, as it were,
only his own mutter at the moment. He did not realize that when a great
many people are muttering all at once an ugly noise of considerable
volume is being produced.

It is true that a few of the masters were somewhat cold in their manner.
They lacked the social gift of dissimulation, and could not help showing
their want of cordiality. But Horbury, who noticed this, put it down to
envy and disaffection, and resolved that the large powers given him by
the Trustees should not be in vain so far as the masters in question
were concerned.

Indeed, C. L. Wood, who was afterwards Headmaster of Marcester and died
in Egypt a few years ago, had a curious story which in part relates to
the masters in question, and perhaps throws some light on the
extraordinary tale of Horbury's ruin.

Wood was an old Luptonian. He was a mighty athlete in his time, and his
records for the Long Jump and Throwing the Cricket Ball have not been
beaten at Lupton to this day. He had been one of the first boarders
taken at the Old Grange. The early relations between Horbury and himself
had been continued in later life, and Wood was staying with his former
master at the time when the Trustee's decision was announced. It is
supposed, indeed, that Horbury had offered him a kind of unofficial, but
still important, position in the New Model; in fact, Wood confessed over
his port that the idea was that he should be a kind of "Intelligence
Department" to the Head. He did not seem very clear as to the exact
scope of his proposed duties. We may certainly infer, however, that
they would have been of a very confidential nature, for Wood had jotted
down his recollections of that fatal morning somewhat as follows:

"I never saw Horbury in better spirits. Indeed, I remember thinking that
he was younger than ever--younger than he was in the old days when he
was a junior master and I was in the Third. Of course, he was always
energetic; one could not disassociate the two notions of Horbury and
energy, and I used to make him laugh by threatening to include the two
terms in the new edition of my little book, _Latin and English
Synonyms_. It did not matter whether he were taking the Fifth, or
editing Classics for his boys, or playing rocker--one could not help
rejoicing in the vivid and ebullient energy of the man. And perhaps this
is one reason why shirkers and loafers dreaded him, as they certainly
did.

"But during those last few days at Lupton his vitality had struck me as
quite superhuman. As all the world knows, his succession to the
Headmastership was regarded by everyone as assured, and he was,
naturally and properly, full of the great task which he believed was
before him. This is not the place to argue the merits or demerits of the
scheme which had been maturing for many years in his brain.

"A few persons who, I cannot but think, have received very imperfect
information on the subject, have denounced Horbury's views of the modern
Public School as revolutionary. Revolutionary they certainly were, as an
express engine is revolutionary compared to an ox-waggon. But those who
think of the late Canon Horbury as indifferent to the good side of
Public School traditions knew little of the real man. However, were his
plans good or bad, they were certainly of vast scope, and on the first
night of my visit he made me sit up with him till two o'clock while he
expounded his ideas, some of which, as he was good enough to say, he
trusted to me to carry out. He showed me the piles of MS. he had
accumulated: hundreds of pages relating to the multiple departments of
the great organisation which he was to direct, or rather to create;
sheets of serried figures, sheaves of estimates which he had caused to
be made out in readiness for immediate action.

"Nothing was neglected. I remember seeing a note on the desirability of
compiling a 'Lupton Hymn Book' for use in the Chapel, and another on the
question of forming a Botanical Garden, so that the school botany might
be learned from 'the green life,' as he beautifully expressed it, not
from dry letterpress and indifferent woodcuts. Then, I think, on a
corner of the 'Botany Leaf' was a jotting--a mere hasty scrawl, waiting
development and consideration: 'Should we teach Hindustani? Write to
Tucker _re_ the Moulvie Ahmed Khan.'

"I despair of giving the reader any conception of the range and
minuteness of these wonderful memoranda. I remember saying to Horbury
that he seemed to be able to use the microscope and the telescope at the
same time. He laughed joyously, and told me to wait till he was really
at work. 'You will have your share, I promise you,' he added. His high
spirits were extraordinary and infectious. He was an excellent
_raconteur_, and now and again, amidst his talk of the New Lupton which
he was about to translate from the idea into substance, he told some
wonderful stories which I have not the heart to set down here. _Tu ne
quæsieris._ I have often thought of those lines when I remember
Horbury's intense happiness, the nervous energy which made the delay of
a day or two seem almost intolerable. His brain and his fingers tingled,
as it were, to set about the great work before him. He reminded me of a
mighty host, awaiting but the glance of their general to rush forward
with irresistible force.

"There was not a trace of misgiving. Indeed, I should have been utterly
astonished if I had seen anything of the kind. He told me, indeed, that
for some time past he had suspected the existence of a sort of cabal or
clique against him. 'A. and X., B. and Y., M. and N., and, I think, Z.,
are in it,' he said, naming several of the masters. 'They are jealous,
I suppose, and want to make things as difficult as they can. They are
all cowards, though, and I don't believe one of them--except, perhaps,
M.--would fail in obedience, or rather in subservience, when it comes to
the point. But I am going to make short work of the lot.' And he told me
his intention of ridding the school of these disaffected elements. 'The
Trustees will back me up, I know,' he added, 'but we must try to avoid
all unnecessary friction'; and he explained to me a plan he had thought
of for eliminating the masters in question. 'It won't do to have
half-hearted officers on our ship,' was the way in which he put it, and
I cordially agreed with him.

"Possibly he may have underrated the force of the opposition which he
treated so lightly; possibly he altogether misjudged the situation. He
certainly regarded the appointment as already made, and this, of course,
was, or appeared to be, the conviction of all who knew anything of
Lupton and Horbury.

"I shall never forget the day on which the news came. Horbury made a
hearty breakfast, opening letters, jotting down notes, talking of his
plans as the meal proceeded. I left him for a while. I was myself a
good deal excited, and I strolled up and down the beautiful garden at
the Old Grange, wondering whether I should be able to satisfy such a
chief who, the soul of energy himself, would naturally expect a like
quality in his subordinates. I rejoined him in the course of an hour in
the study, where he was as busy as ever--'snowed up,' as he expressed
it, in a vast pile of papers and correspondence.

"He nodded genially and pointed to a chair, and a few minutes later a
servant came in with a letter. She had just found it in the hall, she
explained. I had taken a book and was reading. I noticed nothing till
what I can only call a groan of intense anguish made me look up in
amazement--indeed, in horror--and I was shocked to see my old friend,
his face a ghastly white, his eyes staring into vacancy, and his
expression one of the most terrible--_the_ most terrible--that I have
ever witnessed. I cannot describe that look. There was an agony of grief
and despair, a glance of the wildest amazement, terror, as of an
impending awful death, and with these the fiercest and most burning
anger that I have ever seen on any human face. He held a letter clenched
in his hand. I was afraid to speak or move.

"It was fully five minutes before he regained his self-control, and he
did this with an effort which was in itself dreadful to contemplate--so
severe was the struggle. He explained to me in a voice which faltered
and trembled with the shock that he had received, that he had had very
bad news--that a large sum of money which was absolutely necessary to
the carrying out of his projects had been embezzled by some unscrupulous
person, that he did not know what he should do. He fell back into his
chair; in a few minutes he had become an old man.

"He did not seem upset, or even astonished, when, later in the day, a
telegram announced that he had failed in the aim of his life--that a
stranger was to bear rule in his beloved Lupton. He murmured something
to the effect that it was no matter now. He never held up his head
again."

This note is an extract from _George Horbury: a Memoir_. It was written
by Dr. Wood for the use of a few friends and privately printed in a
small edition of a hundred and fifty copies. The author felt, as he
explains in his brief _Foreword_, that by restricting the sale to those
who either knew Horbury or were especially interested in his work, he
was enabled to dwell somewhat intimately on matters which could hardly
have been treated in a book meant for the general public.

The extract that has been made from this book is interesting on two
points. It shows that Horbury was quite unaware of what had been going
on for four years before Chesson's resignation and that he had entirely
misinterpreted the few and faint omens which had been offered him. He
was preparing to break a sulky sentinel or two when all the ground of
his fortalice was a very network of loaded mines! The other point is
still more curious. It will be seen from Wood's story that the terrific
effect that he describes was produced by a letter, received some hours
before the news of the Trustees' decision arrived by telegram. "Later in
the day" is the phrase in the Memoir; as a matter of fact, the final
deliberation of the Lupton Trustees, held at Marshall's Hotel in
Albemarle Street, began at eleven-thirty and was not over till
one-forty-five. It is not likely that the result could have reached the
Old Grange before two-fifteen; whereas the letter found in the hall must
have been read by Horbury before ten o'clock. The invariable breakfast
hour at the Old Grange was eight o'clock.

C. L. Wood says: "I rejoined him in the course of an hour," and the
letter was brought in "a few minutes later." Afterwards, when the fatal
telegram arrived, the Memoir notes that the unfortunate man was not
"even astonished." It seems to follow almost necessarily from these
facts that Horbury learnt the story of his ruin from the letter, for it
has been ascertained that the High Usher's account of the contents of
the letter was false from beginning to end. Horbury's most excellent and
sagacious investments were all in the impeccable hands of "Witham's"
(Messrs. Witham, Venables, Davenport and Witham), of Raymond Buildings,
Gray's Inn, who do not include embezzlement in their theory and practice
of the law; and, as a matter of fact, the nephew, Charles Horbury, came
into a very handsome fortune on the death of his uncle--eighty thousand
pounds in personality, with the Old Grange and some valuable ground
rents in the new part of Lupton. It is as certain as anything can be
that George Horbury never lost a penny by embezzlement or, indeed, in
any other way.

One may surmise, then, the real contents of that terrible letter. In
general, that is, for it is impossible to conjecture whether the writer
told the whole story; one does not know, for example, whether Meyrick's
name was mentioned or not: whether there was anything which carried the
reader's mind to that dark evening in November when he beat the
white-faced boy with such savage cruelty. But from Dr. Wood's
description of the wretched man's appearance one understands how utterly
unexpected was the crushing blow that had fallen upon him. It was a
lightning flash from the sky at its bluest, and before that sudden and
awful blast his whole life fell into deadly and evil ruin.

"He never held up his head again." He never lived again, one may say,
unless a ceaseless wheel of anguish and anger and bitter and unavailing
and furious regret can be called life. It was not a man, but a shell,
full of gall and fire, that went to Wareham; but probably he was not the
first of the Klippoth to be made a Canon.

As we have no means of knowing exactly what or how much that letter told
him, one is not in a position to say whether he recognised the
singularity--one might almost say, the eccentricity--with which his
punishment was stage-managed. _Nec deus intersit_ certainly; but a
principle may be pushed too far, and a critic might point out that,
putting avenging deities in their machines on one side, it was rather
going to the other extreme to bring about the Great Catastrophe by means
of bad sherry, a trying Headmaster, boiled mutton, a troublesome
schoolboy and a servant-maid. Yet these were the agents employed; and it
seems that we are forced to the conclusion that we do not altogether
understand the management of the universe. The conclusion is a dangerous
one, since we may be led by it, unless great care is exercised, into the
worst errors of the Dark Ages.

There is the question, of course, of the truthfulness or falsity of the
various slanders which had such a tremendous effect. The worst of them
were lies--there can be little doubt of that--and for the rest, it may
be hinted that the allusion of the young master to Xanthias Phoceus was
not very far wide of the mark. Mrs. Horbury had been dead some years,
and it is to be feared that there had been passages between the High
Usher and Nelly Foran which public opinion would have condemned. It
would be difficult to tell the whole story, but the girl's fury of
revenge makes one apt to believe that she was exacting payment not only
for Ambrose's wrongs, but for some grievous injury done to herself.

But before all these things could be brought to their ending, Ambrose
Meyrick had to live in wonders and delights, to be initiated in many
mysteries, to discover the meaning of that voice which seemed to speak
within him, denouncing him because he had pried unworthily into the
Secret which is hidden from the Holy Angels.




III


I

One of Ambrose Meyrick's favourite books was a railway timetable. He
spent many hours in studying these intricate pages of figures, noting
times of arrival and departure on a piece of paper, and following the
turnings and intersections of certain lines on the map. In this way he
had at last arrived at the best and quickest route to his native
country, which he had not seen for five years. His father had died when
he was ten years old.

This result once obtained, the seven-thirty to Birmingham got him in at
nine-thirty-five; the ten-twenty for the west was a capital train, and
he would see the great dome of Mynydd Mawr before one o'clock. His fancy
led him often to a bridge which crossed the railway about a mile out of
Lupton. East and west the metals stretched in a straight line, defying,
it seemed, the wisdom of Euclid. He turned from the east and gazed
westward, and when a red train went by in the right direction he would
lean over the bridge and watch till the last flying carriage had
vanished into the distance. He imagined himself in that train and
thought of the joy of it, if the time ever came--for it seemed long--the
joy in every revolution of the wheels, in every whistle of the engine;
in the rush and in the rhythm of this swift flight from that horrible
school and that horrible place.

Year after year went by and he had not revisited the old land of his
father. He was left alone in the great empty house in charge of the
servants during the holidays--except one summer when Mr. Horbury
despatched him to a cousin of his who lived at Yarmouth.

The second year after his father's death there was a summer of dreadful
heat. Day after day the sky was a glare of fire, and in these abhorred
Midlands, far from the breath of the sea and the mountain breeze, the
ground baked and cracked and stank to heaven. A dun smoke rose from the
earth with the faint, sickening stench of a brick-field, and the
hedgerows swooned in the heat and in the dust. Ambrose's body and soul
were athirst with the desire of the hills and the woods; his heart cried
out within him for the waterpools in the shadow of the forest; and in
his ears continually he heard the cold water pouring and trickling and
dripping from the grey rocks on the great mountain side. And he saw that
awful land which God has no doubt made for manufacturers to prepare
them for their eternal habitation, its weary waves burning under the
glaring sky: the factory chimneys of Lupton vomiting their foul smoke;
the mean red streets, each little hellway with its own stink; the dull
road, choking in its dust. For streams there was the Wand, running like
black oil between black banks, steaming here as boiling poisons were
belched into it from the factory wall; there glittering with iridescent
scum vomited from some other scoundrel's castle. And for the waterpools
of the woods he was free to gaze at the dark green liquor in the tanks
of the Sulphuric Acid factory, but a little way out of town. Lupton was
a very rising place.

His body was faint with the burning heat and the foulness of all about
him, and his soul was sick with loneliness and friendlessness and
unutterable longing. He had already mastered his Bradshaw and had found
out the bridge over the railway; and day after day he leaned over the
parapet and watched the burning metals vanishing into the west, into the
hot, thick haze that hung over all the land. And the trains sped away
towards the haven of his desire, and he wondered if he should ever see
again the dearly loved country or hear the song of the nightingale in
the still white morning, in the circle of the green hills. The thought
of his father, of the old days of happiness, of the grey home in the
still valley, swelled in his heart and he wept bitterly, so utterly
forsaken and wretched seemed his life.

It happened towards the end of that dreadful August that one night he
had tossed all through the hours listening to the chiming bells, only
falling into a fevered doze a little while before they called him. He
woke from ugly and oppressive dreams to utter wretchedness; he crawled
downstairs like an old man and left his breakfast untouched, for he
could eat nothing. The flame of the sun seemed to burn in his brain; the
hot smoke of the air choked him. All his limbs ached. From head to foot
he was a body of suffering. He struggled out and tottered along the road
to the bridge and gazed with dim, hopeless eyes along the path of
desire, into the heavy, burning mist in the far distance. And then his
heart beat quick, and he cried aloud in his amazed delight; for, in the
shimmering glamour of the haze, he saw as in a mirror the vast green
wall of the Great Mountain rise before him--not far, but as if close at
hand. Nay, he stood upon its slope; his feet were in the sweet-smelling
bracken; the hazel thicket was rustling beneath him in the brave wind,
and the shining water poured cold from the stony rock. He heard the
silver note of the lark, shrilling high and glad in the sunlight. He saw
the yellow blossoms tossed by the breeze about the porch of the white
house. He seemed to turn in this vision and before him the dear,
long-remembered land appeared in its great peace and beauty: meadows and
cornfield, hill and valley and deep wood between the mountains and the
far sea. He drew a long breath of that quickening and glorious air, and
knew that life had returned to him. And then he was gazing once more
down the glittering railway into the mist; but strength and hope had
replaced that deadly sickness of a moment before, and light and joy came
back to his eyes.

The vision had doubtless been given to him in his sore and pressing
need. It returned no more; not again did he see the fair height of
Mynydd Mawr rise out of the mist. But from that day the station on the
bridge was daily consecrated. It was his place of refreshment and hope
in many seasons of evil and weariness. From this place he could look
forward to the hour of release and return that must come at last. Here
he could remind himself that the bonds of the flesh had been broken in a
wonderful manner; that he had been set free from the jaws of hell and
death.

Fortunately, few people came that way. It was but a by-road serving a
few farms in the neighbourhood, and on the Sunday afternoon, in
November, the Head's sermon over and dinner eaten, he betook himself to
his tower, free to be alone for a couple of hours, at least.

He stood there, leaning on the wall, his face turned, as ever, to the
west, and, as it were, a great flood of rapture overwhelmed him. He sank
down, deeper, still deeper, into the hidden and marvellous places of
delight. In his country there were stories of the magic people who rose
all gleaming from the pools in lonely woods; who gave more than mortal
bliss to those who loved them; who could tell the secrets of that land
where flame was the most material substance; whose inhabitants dwelt in
palpitating and quivering colours or in the notes of a wonderful melody.
And in the dark of the night all legends had been fulfilled.

It was a strange thing, but Ambrose Meyrick, though he was a public
schoolboy of fifteen, had lived all his days in a rapt innocence. It is
possible that in school, as elsewhere, enlightenment, pleasant or
unpleasant, only comes to those who seek for it--or one may say
certainly that there are those who dwell under the protection of
enchantments, who may go down into the black depths and yet appear
resurgent and shining, without any stain or defilement of the pitch on
their white robes. For these have ears so intent on certain immortal
songs that they cannot hear discordant voices; their eyes are veiled
with a light that shuts out the vision of evil. There are flames about
these feet that extinguish the gross fires of the pit.

It is probable that all through those early years Ambrose's father had
been charming his son's heart, drawing him forth from the gehenna-valley
of this life into which he had fallen, as one draws forth a beast that
has fallen into some deep and dreadful place. Various are the methods
recommended. There is the way of what is called moral teaching, the way
of physiology and the way of a masterly silence; but Mr. Meyrick's was
the strange way of incantation. He had, in a certain manner, drawn the
boy aside from that evil traffic of the valley, from the stench of the
turmoil, from the blows and the black lechery, from the ugly fight in
the poisonous smoke, from all the amazing and hideous folly that
practical men call life, and had set him in that endless procession that
for ever and for ever sings its litanies in the mountains, going from
height to height on its great quest. Ambrose's soul had been caught in
the sweet thickets of the woods; it had been bathed in the pure water of
blessed fountains; it had knelt before the altars of the old saints,
till all the earth was become a sanctuary, all life was a rite and
ceremony, the end of which was the attainment of the mystic
sanctity--the achieving of the Graal. For this--for what else?--were
all things made. It was this that the little bird sang of in the bush,
piping a few feeble, plaintive notes of dusky evenings, as if his tiny
heart were sad that it could utter nothing better than such sorry
praises. This also celebrated the awe of the white morning on the hills,
the breath of the woods at dawn. This was figured in the red ceremony of
sunset, when flames shone over the dome of the great mountain, and roses
blossomed in the far plains of the sky. This was the secret of the dark
places in the heart of the woods. This the mystery of the sunlight on
the height; and every little flower, every delicate fern, and every reed
and rush was entrusted with the hidden declaration of this sacrament.
For this end, final and perfect rites had been given to men to execute;
and these were all the arts, all the far-lifted splendour of the great
cathedral; all rich carven work and all glowing colours; all magical
utterance of word and tones: all these things were the witnesses that
consented in the One Offering, in the high service of the Graal.

To this service also, together with songs and burning torches and dyed
garments and the smoke of the bruised incense, were brought the incense
of the bruised heart, the magic torches of virtue hidden from the world,
the red dalmatics of those whose souls had been martyred, the songs of
triumph and exultation chanted by them that the profane had crushed into
the dust; holy wells and water-stoups were fountains of tears. So must
the Mass be duly celebrated in Cor-arbennic when Cadwaladr returned,
when Teilo Agyos lifted up again the Shining Cup.

Perhaps it was not strange that a boy who had listened to such spells as
these should heed nothing of the foolish evils about him, the nastiness
of silly children who, for want of wits, were "crushing the lilies into
the dunghill." He listened to nothing of their ugly folly; he heard it
not, understood it not, thought as little of it as of their everlasting
chatter about "brooks" and "quarries" and "leg-hits" and "beaks from the
off." And when an unseemly phrase did chance to fall on his ear it was
of no more import or meaning than any or all of the stupid jargon that
went on day after day, mixing itself with the other jargon about the
optative and the past participle, the oratio obliqua and the verbs in
[Greek: mi]. To him this was all one nothingness, and he would not have
dreamed of connecting anything of it with the facts of life, as he
understood life.

Hence it was that for him all that was beautiful and wonderful was a
part of sanctity; all the glory of life was for the service of the
sanctuary, and when one saw a lovely flower it was to be strewn before
the altar, just as the bee was holy because by its wax the Gifts are
illuminated. Where joy and delight and beauty were, there he knew by
sure signs were the parts of the mystery, the glorious apparels of the
heavenly vestments. If anyone had told him that the song of the
nightingale was an unclean thing he would have stared in amazement, as
though one had blasphemed the Sanctus. To him the red roses were as holy
as the garments of the martyrs. The white lilies were pure and shining
virtues; the imagery of the _Song of Songs_ was obvious and perfect and
unassailable, for in this world there was nothing common nor unclean.
And even to him the great gift had been freely given.

So he stood, wrapt in his meditations and in his ecstasy, by the bridge
over the Midland line from Lupton to Birmingham. Behind him were the
abominations of Lupton: the chimneys vomiting black smoke faintly in
honour of the Sabbath; the red lines of the workmen's streets advancing
into the ugly fields; the fuming pottery kilns, the hideous height of
the boot factory. And before him stretched the unspeakable scenery of
the eastern Midlands, which seems made for the habitation of English
Nonconformists--dull, monotonous, squalid, the very hedgerows cropped
and trimmed, the trees looking like rows of Roundheads, the farmhouses
as uninteresting as suburban villas. On a field near at hand a
scientific farmer had recently applied an agreeable mixture consisting
of superphosphate of lime, nitrate of soda and bone meal. The stink was
that of a chemical works or a Texel cheese. Another field was just being
converted into an orchard. There were rows of grim young apple trees
planted at strictly mathematical intervals from one another, and grisly
little graves had been dug between the apple trees for the reception of
gooseberry bushes. Between these rows the farmer hoped to grow potatoes,
so the ground had been thoroughly trenched. It looked sodden and
unpleasant. To the right Ambrose could see how the operations on a
wandering brook were progressing. It had moved in and out in the most
wasteful and absurd manner, and on each bank there had grown a twisted
brake of trees and bushes and rank water plants. There were wonderful
red roses there in summer time. Now all this was being rectified. In the
first place the stream had been cut into a straight channel with raw,
bare banks, and then the rose bushes, the alders, the willows and the
rest were being grubbed up by the roots and so much valuable land was
being redeemed. The old barn which used to be visible on the left of the
line had been pulled down for more than a year. It had dated perhaps
from the seventeenth century. Its roof-tree had dipped and waved in a
pleasant fashion, and the red tiles had the glow of the sun in their
colours, and the half-timbered walls were not lacking in ruinous brace.
It was a dilapidated old shed, and a neat-looking structure with a
corrugated iron roof now stood in its place.

Beyond all was the grey prison wall of the horizon; but Ambrose no
longer gazed at it with the dim, hopeless eyes of old. He had a Breviary
among his books, and he thought of the words: _Anima mea erepta est
sicut passer de laqueo venantium_, and he knew that in a good season his
body would escape also. The exile would end at last.

He remembered an old tale which his father was fond of telling him--the
story of Eos Amherawdur (the Emperor Nightingale). Very long ago, the
story began, the greatest and the finest court in all the realms of
faery was the court of the Emperor Eos, who was above all the kings of
the Tylwydd Têg, as the Emperor of Rome is head over all the kings of
the earth. So that even Gwyn ap Nudd, whom they now call lord over all
the fair folk of the Isle of Britain, was but the man of Eos, and no
splendour such as his was ever seen in all the regions of enchantment
and faery. Eos had his court in a vast forest, called Wentwood, in the
deepest depths of the green-wood between Caerwent and Caermaen, which is
also called the City of the Legions; though some men say that we should
rather name it the city of the Waterfloods. Here, then, was the Palace
of Eos, built of the finest stones after the Roman manner, and within it
were the most glorious chambers that eye has ever seen, and there was no
end to the number of them, for they could not be counted. For the stones
of the palace being immortal, they were at the pleasure of the Emperor.
If he had willed, all the hosts of the world could stand in his greatest
hall, and, if he had willed, not so much as an ant could enter into it,
since it could not be discerned. But on common days they spread the
Emperor's banquet in nine great halls, each nine times larger than any
that are in the lands of the men of Normandi. And Sir Caw was the
seneschal who marshalled the feast; and if you would count those under
his command--go, count the drops of water that are in the Uske River.
But if you would learn the splendour of this castle it is an easy
matter, for Eos hung the walls of it with Dawn and Sunset. He lit it
with the sun and moon. There was a well in it called Ocean. And nine
churches of twisted boughs were set apart in which Eos might hear Mass;
and when his clerks sang before him all the jewels rose shining out of
the earth, and all the stars bent shining down from heaven, so
enchanting was the melody. Then was great bliss in all the regions of
the fair folk. But Eos was grieved because mortal ears could not hear
nor comprehend the enchantment of their song. What, then, did he do?
Nothing less than this. He divested himself of all his glories and of
his kingdom, and transformed himself into the shape of a little brown
bird, and went flying about the woods, desirous of teaching men the
sweetness of the faery melody. And all the other birds said: "This is a
contemptible stranger." The eagle found him not even worthy to be a
prey; the raven and the magpie called him simpleton; the pheasant asked
where he had got that ugly livery; the lark wondered why he hid himself
in the darkness of the wood; the peacock would not suffer his name to be
uttered. In short never was anyone so despised as was Eos by all the
chorus of the birds. But wise men heard that song from the faery regions
and listened all night beneath the bough, and these were the first who
were bards in the Isle of Britain.

Ambrose had heard the song from the faery regions. He had heard it in
swift whispers at his ear, in sighs upon his breast, in the breath of
kisses on his lips. Never was he numbered amongst the despisers of Eos.


II

Mr. Horbury had suffered from one or two slight twinges of conscience
for a few days after he had operated on his nephew. They were but very
slight pangs, for, after all, it was a case of flagrant and repeated
disobedience to rules, complicated by lying. The High Usher was quite
sincere in scouting the notion of a boy's taking any interest in Norman
architecture, and, as he said to himself, truly enough, if every boy at
Lupton could come and go when and how he pleased, and choose which rules
he would keep and which disobey--why, the school would soon be in a
pretty state. Still, there was a very faint and indistinct murmur in his
mind which suggested that Meyrick had received, in addition to his own
proper thrashing, the thrashings due to the Head, his cook and his wine
merchant. And Horbury was rather sorry, for he desired to be just
according to his definition of justice--unless, indeed justice should be
excessively inconvenient.

But these faint scruples were soon removed--turned, indeed, to
satisfaction by the evident improvement which declared itself in Ambrose
Meyrick's whole tone and demeanour. He no longer did his best to avoid
rocker. He played, and played well and with relish. The boy was
evidently all right at heart: he had only wanted a sharp lesson, and it
was clear that, once a loafer, he was now on his way to be a credit to
the school. And by some of those secret channels which are known to
masters and to masters alone, rather more than a glimmering of the truth
as to Rawson's black eyes and Pelly's disfigured nose was vouchsafed to
Horbury's vision, and he was by no means displeased with his nephew. The
two boys had evidently asked for punishment, and had got it. It served
them right. Of course, if the swearing had been brought to his notice by
official instead of by subterranean and mystic ways, he would have had
to cane Meyrick a second time, since, by the Public School convention,
an oath is a very serious offence--as bad as smoking, or worse; but,
being far from a fool, under the circumstances he made nothing of it.
Then the lad's school work was so very satisfactory. It had always been
good, but it had become wonderfully good. That last Greek prose had
shown real grip of the language. The High Usher was pleased. His sharp
lesson had brought forth excellent results, and he foresaw the day when
he would be proud of having taught a remarkably fine scholar.

With the boys Ambrose was becoming a general favourite. He learned not
only to play rocker, he showed Pelly how he thought that blow under the
ear should be dealt with. They all said he was a good fellow; but they
could not make out why, without apparent reason, he would sometimes
burst out into loud laughter. But he said it was something wrong with
his inside--the doctors couldn't make it out--and this seemed rather
interesting.

In after life he often looked back upon this period when, to all
appearance, Lupton was "making a man" of him, and wondered at its
strangeness. To boys and masters alike he was an absolutely normal
schoolboy, busy with the same interests as the rest of them. There was
certainly something rather queer in his appearance; but, as they said,
generously enough, a fellow couldn't help his looks; and, that curious
glint in the eyes apart, he seemed as good a Luptonian as any in the
whole six hundred. Everybody thought that he had absolutely fallen into
line; that he was absorbing the _ethos_ of the place in the most
admirable fashion, subduing his own individuality, his opinions, his
habits, to the general tone of the community around him--putting off, as
it were, the profane dust of his own spirit and putting on the mental
frock of the brotherhood. This, of course, is one of the aims--rather,
_the_ great aim--of the system: this fashioning of very diverse
characters into one common form, so that each great Public School has
its type, which is easily recognisable in the grown-up man years after
his school days are over. Thus, in far lands, in India and Egypt, in
Canada and New Zealand, one recognises the brisk alertness of the
Etonian, the exquisite politeness of Harrow, the profound seriousness of
Rugby; while the note of Lupton may, perhaps, be called finality. The
Old Luptonian no more thinks of arguing a question than does the Holy
Father, and his conversation is a series of irreformable dogmas, and the
captious person who questions any one article is made to feel himself a
cad and an outsider.

Thus it has been related that two men who had met for the first time at
a certain country house-party were getting on together capitally in the
evening over their whisky and soda and cigars. Each held identical views
of equal violence on some important topic--Home Rule or the Transvaal or
Free Trade--and, as the more masterful of the two asserted that hanging
was too good for Blank (naming a well-known statesman), the other would
reply: "I quite agree with you: hanging is too good for Blank."

"He ought to be burned alive," said the one.

"That's about it: he ought to be burned at the stake," answered the
other.

"Look at the way he treated Dash! He's a coward and a damned scoundrel!"

"Perfectly right. He's a damned cursed scoundrel!"

This was splendid, and each thought the other a charming companion.
Unfortunately, however, the conversation, by some caprice, veered from
the iniquities of Blank and glanced aside to cookery--possibly by the
track of Irish stew, used metaphorically to express the disastrous and
iniquitous policy of the great statesman with regard to Ireland. But, as
it happened, there was not the same coincidence on the question of
cookery as there had been on the question of Blank. The masterful man
said:

"No cookery like English. No other race in the world can cook as we do.
Look at French cookery--a lot of filthy, greasy messes."

Now, instead of assenting briskly and firmly as before the other man
said: "Been much in France? Lived there?"

"Never set foot in the beastly country! Don't like their ways, and don't
care to dine off snails and frogs swimming in oil."

The other man began then to talk of the simple but excellent meals he
had relished in France--the savoury _croûte-au-pot_, the _bouilli_--good
eating when flavoured by a gherkin or two; velvety _épinards au jus_, a
roast partridge, a salad, a bit of Roquefort and a bunch of grapes. But
he had barely mentioned the soup when the masterful one wheeled round
his chair and offered a fine view of his strong, well-knit figure--as
seen from the back. He did not say anything--he simply took up the paper
and went on smoking. The other men stared in amazement: the amateur of
French cookery looked annoyed. But the host--a keen-eyed old fellow with
a white moustache, turned to the enemy of frogs and snails and grease
and said quite simply: "I say, Mulock, I never knew you'd been at
Lupton."

Mulock gazed. The other men held their breath for a moment as the full
force of the situation dawned on them, and then a wild scream of
laughter shrilled from their throats. Yells and roars of mirth resounded
in the room. Their delight was insatiable. It died for a moment for lack
of breath, and then burst out anew in still louder, more uproarious
clamour, till old Sir Henry Rawnsley, who was fat and short, could do
nothing but choke and gasp and crow out a sound something between a
wheeze and a chuckle. Mulock left the room immediately, and the house
the next morning. He made some excuse to his host, but he told enquiring
friends that, personally, he disliked bounders.

The story, true or false, illustrates the common view of the Lupton
stamp.

"We try to teach the boys to know their own minds," said the Headmaster,
and the endeavour seems to have succeeded in most cases. And, as Horbury
noted in an article he once wrote on the Public School system, every boy
was expected to submit himself to the process, to form and reform
himself in accordance with the tone of the school.

"I sometimes compare our work with that of the metal founder," he says
in the article in question. "Just as the metal comes to the foundry
_rudis indigestaque moles_, a rough and formless mass, without the
slightest suggestion of the shape which it must finally assume, so a boy
comes to a great Public School with little or nothing about him to
suggest the young man who, in eight or nine years' time, will say
good-bye to the dear old school, setting his teeth tight, restraining
himself from giving up to the anguish of this last farewell. Nay, I
think that ours is the harder task, for the metal that is sent to the
foundry has, I presume, been freed of its impurities; we have to deal
rather with the ore--a mass which is not only shapeless, but contains
much that is not metal at all, which must be burnt out and cast aside as
useless rubbish. So the boy comes from his home, which may or may not
have possessed valuable formative influences; which we often find has
tended to create a spirit of individualism and assertiveness; which, in
numerous cases, has left the boy under the delusion that he has come
into the world to live his own life and think his own thoughts. This is
the ore that we cast into our furnace. We burn out the dross and
rubbish; we liquefy the stubborn and resisting metal till it can be run
into the mould--the mould being the whole tone and feeling of a great
community. We discourage all excessive individuality; we make it quite
plain to the boy that he has come to Lupton, not to live his life, not
to think his thoughts, but to live _our_ life, to think _our_ thoughts.
Very often, as I think I need scarcely say, the process is a somewhat
unpleasant one, but, sooner or later, the stubbornest metal yields to
the cleansing, renewing, restoring fires of discipline and public
opinion, and the shapeless mass takes on the shape of the Great School.
Only the other day an old pupil came to see me and confessed that, for
the whole of his first year at Lupton, he had been profoundly wretched.
'I was a dreamy young fool,' he said. 'My head was stuffed with all
sorts of queer fancies, and I expect that if I hadn't come to Lupton I
should have turned out an absolute loafer. But I hated it badly that
first year. I loathed rocker--I did, really--and I thought the fellows
were a lot of savages. And then I seemed to go into a kind of cloud. You
see, Sir, I was losing my old self and hadn't got the new self in its
place, and I couldn't make out what was happening. And then, quite
suddenly, it all came out light and clear. I saw the purpose behind it
all--how we were all working together, masters and boys, for the dear
old school; how we were all "members one of another," as the Doctor said
in Chapel; and that I had a part in this great work, too, though I was
only a kid in the Third. It was like a flash of light: one minute I was
only a poor little chap that nobody cared for and who didn't matter to
anybody, and the next I saw that, in a way, I was as important as the
Doctor himself--I was a part of the failure or success of it all. Do you
know what I did, Sir? I had a book I thought a lot of--_Poems and Tales_
of Edgar Allan Poe. It was my poor sister's book; she had died a year
before when she was only seventeen, and she had written my name in it
when she was dying--she knew I was fond of reading it. It was just the
sort of thing I used to like--morbid fancies and queer poems, and I was
always reading it when the fellows would let me alone. But when I saw
what life really was, when the meaning of it all came to me, as I said
just now, I took that book and tore it to bits, and it was like tearing
myself up. But I knew that writing all that stuff hadn't done that
American fellow much good, and I didn't see what good I should get by
reading it. I couldn't make out to myself that it would fit in with the
Doctor's plans of the spirit of the school, or that I should play up at
rocker any better for knowing all about the "Fall of the House of
Usher," or whatever it's called. I knew my poor sister would
understand, so I tore it up, and I've gone straight ahead ever
since--thanks to Lupton.' _Like a refiner's fire._ _I_ remembered the
dreamy, absent-minded child of fifteen years before; I could scarcely
believe that he stood before--keen, alert, practical, living every
moment of his life, a force, a power in the world, certain of successful
achievement."

Such were the influences to which Ambrose Meyrick was being subjected,
and with infinite success, as it seemed to everybody who watched him. He
was regarded as a conspicuous instance of the efficacy of the system--he
had held out so long, refusing to absorb the "tone," presenting an
obstinate surface to the millstones which would, for his own good, have
ground him to powder, not concealing very much his dislike of the place
and of the people in it. And suddenly he had submitted with a good
grace: it was wonderful! The masters are believed to have discussed the
affair amongst themselves, and Horbury, who confessed or boasted that he
had used sharp persuasion, got a good deal of _kudos_ in consequence.


III

A few years ago a little book called _Half-holidays_ attracted some
attention in semi-scholastic, semi-clerical circles. It was anonymous,
and bore the modest motto _Crambe bis cocta_; but those behind the
scenes recognised it as the work of Charles Palmer, who was for many
years a master at Lupton. His acknowledged books include a useful little
work on the Accents and an excellent summary of Roman History from the
Fall of the Republic to Romulus Augustulus. The _Half-holidays_ contains
the following amusing passage; there is not much difficulty in
identifying the N. mentioned in it with Ambrose Meyrick.

"The cleverest dominie sometimes discovers"--the passage begins--"that
he has been living in a fool's paradise, that he has been tricked by a
quiet and persistent subtlety that really strikes one as almost devilish
when one finds it exhibited in the person of an English schoolboy. A
good deal of nonsense, I think, has been written about boys by people
who in reality know very little about them; they have been credited with
complexities of character, with feelings and aspirations and delicacies
of sentiment which are quite foreign to their nature. I can quite
believe in the dead cat trick of Stalky and his friends, but I confess
that the incident of the British Flag leaves me cold and sceptical. Such
refinement of perception is not the way of the boy--certainly not of the
boy as I have known him. He is radically a simple soul, whose feelings
are on the surface; and his deepest laid schemes and manoeuvres hardly
call for the talents of a Sherlock Holmes if they are to be detected and
brought to naught. Of course, a good deal of rubbish has been talked
about the wonderful success of our English plan of leaving the boys to
themselves without the everlasting supervision which is practised in
French schools. As a matter of fact, the English schoolboy is under
constant supervision; where in a French school one wretched usher has to
look after a whole horde of boys, in an English school each boy is
perpetually under the observation of hundreds of his fellows. In
reality, each boy is an unpaid _pion_, a watchdog whose vigilance never
relaxes. He is not aware of this; one need scarcely say that such a
notion is far from his wildest thoughts. He thinks, and very rightly,
doubtless, that he is engaged in maintaining the honour of the school,
in keeping up the observance of the school tradition, in dealing sharply
with slackers and loafers who would bring discredit on the place he
loves so well. He is, no doubt, absolutely right in all this; none the
less, he is doing the master's work unwittingly and admirably. When one
thinks of this, and of the Compulsory System of Games, which ensures
that every boy shall be in a certain place at a certain time, one sees,
I think, that the phrase about our lack of supervision _is_ a phrase
and nothing more. There is no system of supervision known to human wit
that approaches in thoroughness and minuteness the supervision under
which every single boy is kept all through his life at an English Public
School.

"Hence one is really rather surprised when, in spite of all these unpaid
assistants, who are the whole school, one is thoroughly and completely
taken in. I can only remember one such case, and I am still astonished
at the really infernal ability with which the boy in question lived a
double life under the very eyes of the masters and six hundred other
boys. N., as I shall call him, was not in my House, and I can scarcely
say how I came to watch his career with so much interest; but there was
certainly something about him which did interest me a good deal. It may
have been his appearance: he was an odd-looking boy--dark, almost
swarthy, dreamy and absent in manner, and, for the first years of his
school life, a quite typical loafer. Such boys, of course, are not
common in a big school, but there are a few such everywhere. One never
knows whether this kind will write a successful book, or paint a great
picture, or go to the devil--from my observation I am sorry to say that
the last career is the most usual. I need scarcely say that such boys
meet with but little encouragement; it is not the type which the Public
School exists to foster, and the boy who abandons himself to morbid
introspection is soon made to feel pretty emphatically that he is matter
in the wrong place. Of course, one may be crushing genius. If this ever
happened it would be very unfortunate; still, in all communities the
minority must suffer for the good of the majority, and, frankly, I have
always been willing to run the risk. As I have hinted, the particular
sort of boy I have in my mind turns out in nine cases out of ten to be
not a genius, but that much more common type--a blackguard.

"Well, as I say, I was curious about N. I was sorry for him, too; both
his parents were dead, and he was rather in the position of the poor
fellows who have no home life to look forward to when the holidays are
getting near. And his obstinacy astonished me; in most cases the
pressure of public opinion will bring the slackest loafer to a sense of
the error of his ways before his first term is ended; but N. seemed to
hold out against us all with a sort of dreamy resistance that was most
exasperating. I do not think he can have had a very pleasant time. His
general demeanour suggested that of a sage who has been cast on an
island inhabited by a peculiarly repulsive and degraded tribe of
savages, and I need scarcely say that the other boys did their best to
make him realise the extreme absurdity of such behaviour. He was clever
enough at his work, but it was difficult to make him play games, and
impossible to make him play up. He seemed to be looking through us at
something else; and neither the boys nor the masters liked being treated
as unimportant illusions. And then, quite suddenly, N. altered
completely. I believe his housemaster, worn out of all patience, gave
him a severe thrashing; at any rate, the change was instant and
marvellous.

"I remember that a few days before N.'s transformation we had been
discussing the question of the cane at the weekly masters' meeting. I
had confessed myself a very half-hearted believer in the efficacy of the
treatment. I forget the arguments that I used, but I know that I was
strongly inclined to favour the 'Anti-baculist Party,' as the Head
jocosely named it. But a few months later when N.'s housemaster pointed
out N. playing up at football like a young demon, and then with a
twinkle in his eye reminded me of the position I had taken up at the
masters' meeting, there was nothing for it but to own that I had been in
the wrong. The cane had certainly, in this case, proved itself a magic
wand; the sometime loafer had been transformed by it into one of the
healthiest and most energetic fellows in the whole school. It was a
pleasure to watch him at the games, and I remember that his fast
bowling was at once terrific in speed and peculiarly deadly in its
accuracy.

"He kept up this deception, for deception it was, for three or four
years. He was just going up to Oxford, and the whole school was looking
forward to a career which we knew would be quite exceptional in its
brilliance. His scholarship papers astonished the Balliol authorities. I
remember one of the Fellows writing to our Head about them in terms of
the greatest enthusiasm, and we all knew that N.'s bowling would get him
into the University Eleven in his first term. Cricketers have not yet
forgotten a certain performance of his at the Oval, when, as a poetic
journalist observed, wickets fell before him as ripe corn falls before
the sickle. N. disappeared in the middle of term. The whole school was
in a ferment; masters and boys looked at one another with wild faces;
search parties were sent out to scour the country; the police were
communicated with; on every side one heard the strangest surmises as to
what had happened. The affair got into the papers; most people thought
it was a case of breakdown and loss of memory from overwork and mental
strain. Nothing could be heard of N., till, at the end of a fortnight,
his Housemaster came into our room looking, as I thought, puzzled and
frightened.

"'I don't understand,' he said. 'I've had this by the second post. It's
in N.'s handwriting. I can't make head or tail of it. It's some sort of
French, I suppose.'

"He held out a paper closely written in N.'s exquisite, curious script,
which always reminded me vaguely of some Oriental character. The masters
shook their heads as the manuscript went from hand to hand, and one of
them suggested sending for the French master. But, as it happened, I was
something of a student of Old French myself, and I found I could make
out the drift of the document that N. had sent his master.

"It was written in the manner and in the language of Rabelais. It was
quite diabolically clever, and beyond all question the filthiest thing I
have ever read. The writer had really exceeded his master in obscenity,
impossible as that might seem: the purport of it all was a kind of
nightmare vision of the school, the masters and the boys. Everybody and
everything were distorted in the most horrible manner, seen, we might
say, through an abominable glass, and yet every feature was easily
recognisable; it reminded me of Swift's disgusting description of the
Yahoos, over which one may shudder and grow sick, but which one cannot
affect to misunderstand. There was a fantastic episode which I remember
especially. One of us, an ambitious man, who for some reason or other
had become unpopular with a few of his colleagues, was described as
endeavouring to climb the school clock-tower, on the top of which a
certain object was said to be placed. The object was defended, so the
writer affirmed, by 'the Dark Birds of Night,' who resisted the master's
approach in all possible and impossible manners. Even to indicate the
way in which this extraordinary theme was treated would be utterly out
of the question; but I shall never forget the description of the
master's face, turned up towards the object of his quest, as he
painfully climbed the wall. I have never read even in the most filthy
pages of Rabelais, or in the savagest passages of Swift, anything which
approached the revolting cruelty of those few lines. They were
compounded of hell-fire and the Cloaca Maxima.

"I read out and translated a few of the least abominable sentences. I
can hardly say whether the feeling of disgust or that of bewilderment
predominated amongst us. One of my colleagues stopped me and said they
had heard enough; we stared at one another in silence. The astounding
ability, ferocity and obscenity of the whole thing left us quite
dumbfounded, and I remember saying that if a volcano were suddenly to
belch forth volumes of flame and filth in the middle of the playing
fields I should scarcely be more astonished. And all this was the work
of N., whose brilliant abilities in games and in the schools were to
have been worth many thousands a year to X., as one of us put it! This
was the boy that for the last four years we had considered as a great
example of the formative influences of the school! This was the N. who
we thought would have died for the honour of the school, who spoke as if
he could never do enough to repay what X. had done for him! As I say, we
looked at one another with faces of blank amazement and horror. At last
somebody said that N. must have gone mad, and we tried to believe that
it was so, for madness, awful calamity as it is, would be more endurable
than sanity under such circumstances as these. I need scarcely say that
this charitable hypothesis turned out to be quite unfounded: N. was
perfectly sane; he was simply revenging himself for the suppression of
his true feelings for the four last years of his school life. The
'conversion' on which we prided ourselves had been an utter sham; the
whole of his life had been an elaborately organised hypocrisy maintained
with unfailing and unflinching skill term after term and year after
year. One cannot help wondering when one considers the inner life of
this unhappy fellow. Every morning, I suppose, he woke up with curses in
his soul; he smiled at us all and joined in the games with black rage
devouring him. So far as one can say, he was quite sincere in his
concealed opinions at all events. The hatred, loathing and contempt of
the whole system of the place displayed in that extraordinary and
terrible document struck me as quite genuine; and while I was reading it
I could not help thinking of his eager, enthusiastic face as he joined
with a will in the school songs; he seemed to inspire all the boys about
him with something of his own energy and devotion. The apparition was a
shocking one; I felt that for a moment I had caught a glimpse of a
region that was very like hell itself.

"I remember that the French master contributed a characteristic touch of
his own. Of course, the Headmaster had to be told of the matter, and it
was arranged that M. and myself should collaborate in the unpleasant
task of making a translation. M. read the horrible stuff through with an
expression on his face that, to my astonishment, bordered on admiration,
and when he laid down the paper he said:

"'_Eh bien: Maître François est encore en vie, évidemment. C'est le vrai
renouveau de la Renaissance; de la Renaissance en très mauvaise humeur,
si vous voulez, mais de la Renaissance tout-de-même. Si, si; c'est de la
crû véritable, je vous assure. Mais, notre bon N. est un Rabelais qui a
habité une terre affreusement sèche._'

"I really think that to the Frenchman the terrible moral aspect of the
case was either entirely negligible or absolutely non-existent; he
simply looked on N.'s detestable and filthy performance as a little
masterpiece in a particular literary _genre_. Heaven knows! One does not
want to be a Pharisee; but as I saw M. grinning appreciatively over this
dung-heap I could not help feeling that the collapse of France before
Germany offered no insoluble problem to the historian.

"There is little more to be said as to this extraordinary and most
unpleasant affair. It was all hushed up as much as possible. No further
attempts to discover N.'s whereabouts were made. It was some months
before we heard by indirect means that the wretched fellow had abandoned
the Balliol Scholarship and the most brilliant prospects in life to
attach himself to a company of greasy barnstormers--or 'Dramatic
Artists,' as I suppose they would be called nowadays. I believe that his
subsequent career has been of a piece with these beginnings; but of that
I desire to say nothing."

The passage has been quoted merely in evidence of the great success with
which Ambrose Meyrick adapted himself to his environment at Lupton.
Palmer, the writer, who was a very well-meaning though intensely stupid
person, has told the bare facts as he saw them accurately enough; it
need not be said that his inferences and deductions from the facts are
invariably ridiculous. He was a well-educated man; but in his heart of
hearts he thought that Rabelais, _Maria Monk, Gay Life in Paris and La
Terre_ all came to much the same thing.


IV

In an old notebook kept by Ambrose Meyrick in those long-past days there
are some curious entries which throw light on the extraordinary
experiences that befell him during the period which poor Palmer has done
his best to illustrate. The following is interesting:

"I told her she must not come again for a long time. She was astonished
and asked me why--was I not fond of her? I said it was because I was so
fond of her, that I was afraid that if I saw her often I could not live.
I should pass away in delight because our bodies are not meant to live
for long in the middle of white fire. I was lying on my bed and she
stood beside it. I looked up at her. The room was very dark and still. I
could only just see her faintly, though she was so close to me that I
could hear her breathing quite well. I thought of the white flowers that
grew in the dark corners of the old garden at the Wern, by the great
ilex tree. I used to go out on summer nights when the air was still and
all the sky cloudy. One could hear the brook just a little, down beyond
the watery meadow, and all the woods and hills were dim. One could not
see the mountain at all. But I liked to stand by the wall and look into
the darkest place, and in a little time those flowers would seem to grow
out of the shadow. I could just see the white glimmer of them. She
looked like the flowers to me, as I lay on the bed in my dark room.

"Sometimes I dream of wonderful things. It is just at the moment when
one wakes up; one cannot say where one has been or what was so
wonderful, but you know that you have lost everything in waking. For
just that moment you knew everything and understood the stars and the
hills and night and day and the woods and the old songs. They were all
within you, and you were all light. But the light was music, and the
music was violet wine in a great cup of gold, and the wine in the golden
cup was the scent of a June night. I understood all this as she stood
beside my bed in the dark and stretched out her hand and touched me on
the breast.

"I knew a pool in an old, old grey wood a few miles from the Wern. I
called it the grey wood because the trees were ancient oaks that they
say must have grown there for a thousand years, and they have grown bare
and terrible. Most of them are all hollow inside and some have only a
few boughs left, and every year, they say, one leaf less grows on every
bough. In the books they are called the Foresters' Oaks. If you stay
under them you feel as if the old times must have come again. Among
these trees there was a great yew, far older than the oaks, and beneath
it a dark and shadowy pool. I had been for a long walk, nearly to the
sea, and as I came back I passed this place and, looking into the pool,
there was the glint of the stars in the water.

"She knelt by my bed in the dark, and I could just see the glinting of
her eyes as she looked at me--the stars in the shadowy waterpool!

       *       *       *       *       *

"I had never dreamed that there could be anything so wonderful in the
whole world. My father had told me of many beautiful and holy and
glorious things, of all the heavenly mysteries by which those who know
live for ever, all the things which the Doctor and my uncle and the
other silly clergymen in the Chapel ...[1] because they don't really
know anything at all about them, only their names, so they are like dogs
and pigs and asses who have somehow found their way into a beautiful
room, full of precious and delicate treasures. These things my father
told me of long ago, of the Great Mystery of the Offering.

[Footnote 1: A highly Rabelaisian phrase is omitted.]

"And I have learned the wonders of the old venerable saints that once
were marvels in our land, as the Welch poem says, and of all the great
works that shone around their feet as they went upon the mountains and
sought the deserts of ocean. I have seen their marks and writings cut on
the edges of the rocks. I know where Sagramnus lies buried in Wlad
Morgan. And I shall not forget how I saw the Blessed Cup of Teilo Agyos
drawn out from golden veils on Mynydd Mawr, when the stars poured out of
the jewel, and I saw the sea of the saints and the spiritual things in
Cor-arbennic. My father read out to me all the histories of Teilo, Dewi,
and Iltyd, of their marvellous chalices and altars of Paradise from
which they made the books of the Graal afterwards; and all these things
are beautiful to me. But, as the Anointed Bard said: 'With the bodily
lips I receive the drink of mortal vineyards; with spiritual
understanding wine from the garths of the undying. May Mihangel
intercede for me that these may be mingled in one cup; let the door
between body and soul be thrown open. For in that day earth will have
become Paradise, and the secret sayings of the bards shall be verified.'
I always knew what this meant, though my father told me that many people
thought it obscure or, rather, nonsense. But it is just the same really
as another poem by the same Bard, where he says:

    "'My sin was found out, and when the old women on the bridge pointed
       at me I was ashamed;
    I was deeply grieved when the boys shouted rebukes as I went from
       Caer-Newydd.
    How is it that I was not ashamed before the Finger of the Almighty?
    I did not suffer agony at the rebuke of the Most High.
    The fist of Rhys Fawr is more dreadful to me than the hand of God.'

"He means, I think, that our great loss is that we separate what is one
and make it two; and then, having done so, we make the less real into
the more real, as if we thought the glass made to hold wine more
important than the wine it holds. And this is what I had felt, for it
was only twice that I had known wonders in my body, when I saw the Cup
of Teilo sant and when the mountains appeared in vision, and so, as the
Bard says, the door is shut. The life of bodily things is _hard_, just
as the wineglass is hard. We can touch it and feel it and see it always
before us. The wine is drunk and forgotten; it cannot be held. I believe
the air about us is just as substantial as a mountain or a cathedral,
but unless we remind ourselves we think of the air as nothing. It is not
_hard_. But now I was in Paradise, for body and soul were molten in one
fire and went up in one flame. The mortal and the immortal vines were
made one. Through the joy of the body I possessed the joy of the
spirit. And it was so strange to think that all this was through a
woman--through a woman I had seen dozens of times and had thought
nothing of, except that she was pleasant-looking and that the colour of
her hair, like copper, was very beautiful.

"I cannot understand it. I cannot feel that she is really Nelly Foran
who opens the door and waits at table, for she is a miracle. How I
should have wondered once if I had seen a stone by the roadside become a
jewel of fire and glory! But if that were to happen, it would not be so
strange as what happened to me. I cannot see now the black dress and the
servant's cap and apron. I see the wonderful, beautiful body shining
through the darkness of my room, the glimmering of the white flower in
the dark, the stars in the forest pool.

    "'O gift of the everlasting!
    O wonderful and hidden mystery!
    Many secrets have been vouchsafed to me.
    I have been long acquainted with the wisdom of the trees;
    Ash and oak and elm have communicated to me from my boyhood,
    The birch and the hazel and all the trees of the green wood have
       not been dumb.
    There is a caldron rimmed with pearls of whose gifts I am not
       ignorant.
    I will speak little of it; its treasures are known to Bards.
    Many went on the search of Caer-Pedryfan,
    Seven alone returned with Arthur, but my spirit was present.
    Seven are the apple trees in a beautiful orchard.
    I have eaten of their fruit, which is not bestowed on Saxons.
    I am not ignorant of a Head which is glorious and venerable.
    It made perpetual entertainment for the warriors; their joys would
      have been immortal.
    If they had not opened the door of the south, they could have
      feasted for ever,
    Listening to the song of the Fairy Birds of Rhiannon.
    Let not anyone instruct me concerning the Glassy Isle,
    In the garments of the saints who returned from it were rich odours
      of Paradise.
    All this I knew and yet my knowledge was ignorance,
    For one day, as I walked by Caer-rhiu in the principal forest of
      Gwent,
    I saw golden Myfanwy, as she bathed in the brook Tarógi.
    Her hair flowed about her. Arthur's crown had dissolved into a
      shining mist.
    I gazed into her blue eyes as it were into twin heavens.
    All the parts of her body were adornments and miracles.
    O gift of the everlasting!
    O wonderful and hidden mystery!
    When I embraced Myfanwy a moment became immortality!'[2]

[Footnote 2: Translated from the Welsh verses quoted in the notebook.]

"And yet I daresay this 'golden Myfanwy' was what people call 'a common
girl,' and perhaps she did rough, hard work, and nobody thought anything
of her till the Bard found her bathing in the brook of Tarógi. The birds
in the wood said, when they saw the nightingale: 'This is a contemptible
stranger!'

"_June 24._ Since I wrote last in this book the summer has come. This
morning I woke up very early, and even in this horrible place the air
was pure and bright as the sun rose up and the long beams shone on the
cedar outside the window. She came to me by the way they think is locked
and fastened, and, just as the world is white and gold at the dawn, so
was she. A blackbird began to sing beneath the window. I think it came
from far, for it sang to me of morning on the mountain, and the woods
all still, and a little bright brook rushing down the hillside between
dark green alders, and air that must be blown from heaven.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar.
    Dewi and Tegfeth and Cybi preside over that region;
    Sweet is the valley, sweet the sound of its waters.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar;
    Its voice is golden, like the ringing of the saints' bells;
    Sweet is the valley, echoing with melodies.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar;
    Tegfeth in the south won red martyrdom.
    Her song is heard in the perpetual choirs of heaven.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar;
    Dewi in the west had an altar from Paradise.
    He taught the valleys of Britain to resound with Alleluia.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar;
    Cybi in the north was the teacher of Princes.
    Through him Edlogan sings praise to heaven.

    There is a bird that sings in the valley of the Soar
    When shall I hear again the notes of its melody?
    When shall I behold once more Gwladys in that valley?'[3]

[Footnote 3: The following translation of these verses appeared in
_Poems from the Old Bards_, by Taliesin, Bristol, 1812:

    "In Soar's sweet valley, where the sound
    Of holy anthems once was heard
    From many a saint, the hills prolong
    Only the music of the bird.

    In Soar's sweet valley, where the brook
    With many a ripple flows along,
    Delicious prospects meet the eye,
    The ear is charmed with _Phil'mel's_ song.

    In Soar's sweet valley once a Maid,
    Despising worldly prospects gay,
    Resigned her note in earthly choirs
    Which now in Heaven must sound alway.

    In Soar's sweet valley David preached;
    His Gospel accents so beguiled
    The savage Britons, that they turned
    Their fiercest cries to music mild.

    In Soar's sweet valley Cybi taught
    To haughty Prince the Holy Law,
    The way to Heaven he showed, and then
    The subject tribes inspired with awe.

    In Soar's sweet valley still the song
    Of Phil'mel sounds and checks alarms.
    But when shall I once more renew
    Those heavenly hours in Gladys' arms?"

"Taliesin" was the pseudonym of an amiable clergyman, the Reverend Owen
Thomas, for many years curate of Llantrisant. He died in 1820, at the
great age of eighty-four. His original poetry in Welsh was reputed as
far superior to his translations, and he made a very valuable and
curious collection of "Cymric Antiquities," which remains in manuscript
in the keeping of his descendants.]

"When I think of what I know, of the wonders of darkness and the wonders
of dawn, I cannot help believing that I have found something which all
the world has lost. I have heard some of the fellows talking about
women. Their words and their stories are filthy, and nonsense, too. One
would think that if monkeys and pigs could talk about their she-monkeys
and sows, it would be just like that. I might have thought that, being
only boys, they knew nothing about it, and were only making up nasty,
silly tales out of their nasty, silly minds. But I have heard the poor
women in the town screaming and scolding at their men, and the men
swearing back; and when they think they are making love, it is the most
horrible of all.

"And it is not only the boys and the poor people. There are the masters
and their wives. Everybody knows that the Challises and the Redburns
'fight like cats,' as they say, and that the Head's daughter was 'put up
for auction' and bought by the rich manufacturer from Birmingham--a
horrible, fat beast, more than twice her age, with eyes like pig's. They
called it a splendid match.

"So I began to wonder whether perhaps there are very few people in the
world who know; whether the real secret is lost like the great city that
was drowned in the sea and only seen by one or two. Perhaps it is more
like those shining Isles that the saints sought for, where the deep
apple orchards are, and all the delights of Paradise. But you had to
give up everything and get into a boat without oar or sails if you
wanted to find Avalon or the Glassy Isle. And sometimes the saints
could stand on the rocks and see those Islands far away in the midst of
the sea, and smell the sweet odours and hear the bells ringing for the
feast, when other people could see and hear nothing at all.

"I often think now how strange it would be if it were found out that
nearly everybody is like those who stood on the rocks and could only see
the waves tossing and stretching far away, and the blue sky and the mist
in the distance. I mean, if it turned out that we have all been in the
wrong about everything; that we live in a world of the most wonderful
treasures which we see all about us, but we don't understand, and kick
the jewels into the dirt, and use the chalices for slop-pails and make
the holy vestments into dish-cloths, while we worship a great beast--a
monster, with the head of a monkey, the body of a pig and the hind legs
of a goat, with swarming lice crawling all over it. Suppose that the
people that they speak of now as 'superstitious' and 'half-savages'
should turn out to be in the right, and very wise, while we are all
wrong and great fools! It would be something like the man who lived in
the Bright Palace. The Palace had a hundred and one doors. A hundred of
them opened into gardens of delight, pleasure-houses, beautiful bowers,
wonderful countries, fairy seas, caves of gold and hills of diamonds,
into all the most splendid places. But one door led into a cesspool, and
that was the only door that the man ever opened. It may be that his sons
and his grandsons have been opening that one door ever since, till they
have forgotten that there are any others, so if anyone dares to speak of
the ways to the garden of delight or the hills of gold he is called a
madman, or a very wicked person.

"_July 15._ The other day a very strange thing happened. I had gone for
a short walk out of the town before dinner on the Dunham road and came
as far as the four ways where the roads cross. It is rather pretty for
Lupton just there; there is a plot of grass with a big old elm tree in
the middle of it, and round the tree is a rough sort of seat, where
tramps and such people are often resting. As I came along I heard some
sort of music coming from the direction of the tree; it was like fairies
dancing, and then there were strange solemn notes like the priests'
singing, and a choir answered in a deep, rolling swell of sound, and the
fairies danced again; and I thought somehow of a grey church high on the
cliff above a singing sea, and the Fair People outside dancing on the
close turf, while the service was going on all the while. As I came
nearer I heard the sea waves and the wind and the cry of the seagulls,
and again the high, wonderful chanting, as if the fairies and the rocks
and the waves and the wild birds were all subject to that which was
being done within the church. I wondered what it could be, and then I
saw there was an old ragged man sitting on the seat under the tree,
playing the fiddle all to himself, and rocking from side to side. He
stopped directly he saw me, and said:

"'Ah, now, would your young honour do yourself the pleasure of giving
the poor old fiddler a penny or maybe two: for Lupton is the very hell
of a town altogether, and when I play to dirty rogues the Reel of the
Warriors, they ask for something about Two Obadiahs--the devil's black
curse be on them! And it's but dry work playing to the leaf and the
green sod--the blessing of the holy saints be on your honour now, this
day, and for ever! 'Tis but a scarcity of beer that I have tasted for a
long day, I assure your honour.'

"I had given him a shilling because I thought his music so wonderful. He
looked at me steadily as he finished talking, and his face changed. I
thought he was frightened, he stared so oddly. I asked him if he was
ill.

"'May I be forgiven,' he said, speaking quite gravely, without that
wheedling way he had when he first spoke. 'May I be forgiven for talking
so to one like yourself; for this day I have begged money from one that
is to gain Red Martyrdom; and indeed that is yourself.'

"He took off his old battered hat and crossed himself, and I stared at
him, I was so amazed at what he said. He picked up his fiddle, and
saying 'May you remember me in the time of your glory,' he walked
quickly off, going away from Lupton, and I lost sight of him at the turn
of the road. I suppose he was half crazy, but he played wonderfully."




IV


I

The materials for the history of an odd episode in Ambrose Meyrick's
life are to be found in a sort of collection he made under the title
"Concerning Gaiety." The episode in question dates from about the middle
of his eighteenth year.

"I do not know"--he says--"how it all happened. I had been leading two
eager lives. On the outside I was playing games and going up in the
school with a rush, and in the inside I was being gathered more and more
into the sanctuaries of immortal things. All life was transfigured for
me into a radiant glory, into a quickening and catholic sacrament; and,
the fooleries of the school apart, I had more and more the sense that I
was a participant in a splendid and significant ritual. I think I was
beginning to be a little impatient with the outward signs: I _think_ I
had a feeling that it was a pity that one had to drink wine out of a
cup, a pity that kernels seemed to imply shells. I wanted, in my heart,
to know nothing but the wine itself flowing gloriously from vague,
invisible fountains, to know the things 'that really are' in their
naked beauty, without their various and elaborate draperies. I doubt
whether Ruskin understood the motive of the monk who walked amidst the
mountains with his eyes cast down lest he might see the depths and
heights about him. Ruskin calls this a narrow asceticism; perhaps it was
rather the result of a very subtle aestheticism. The monk's inner vision
might be fixed with such rapture on certain invisible heights and
depths, that he feared lest the sight of their visible counterparts
might disturb his ecstasy. It is probable, I think, that there is a
point where the ascetic principle and the aesthetic become one and the
same. The Indian fakir who distorts his limbs and lies on spikes is at
the one extreme, the men of the Italian Renaissance were at the other.
In each case the true line is distorted and awry, for neither system
attains either sanctity or beauty in the highest. The fakir dwells in
_surfaces_, and the Renaissance artist dwelt in _surfaces_; in neither
case is there the inexpressible radiance of the invisible world shining
through the surfaces. A cup of Cellini's work is no doubt very lovely;
but it is not beautiful in the same way as the old Celtic cups are
beautiful.

"I think I was in some danger of going wrong at the time I am talking
about. I was altogether too impatient of surfaces. Heaven forbid the
notion that I was ever in danger of being in any sense of the word a
Protestant; but perhaps I was rather inclined to the fundamental heresy
on which Protestantism builds its objection to what is called Ritual. I
suppose this heresy is really Manichee; it is a charge of corruption and
evil made against the visible universe, which is affirmed to be not
'very good,' but 'very bad'--or, at all events, too bad to be used as
the vehicle of spiritual truth. It is extraordinary by the way, that the
thinking Protestant does not perceive that this principle damns all
creeds and all Bibles and all teaching quite as effectually as it damns
candles and chasubles--unless, indeed, the Protestant thinks that the
logical understanding is a competent vehicle of Eternal Truth, and that
God can be properly and adequately defined and explained in human
speech. If he thinks _that_, he is an ass. Incense, vestments, candles,
all ceremonies, processions, rites--all these things are miserably
inadequate; but they do not abound in the horrible pitfalls,
misapprehensions, errors which are inseparable from speech of men used
as an expression of the Church. In a savage dance there may be a vast
deal more of the truth than in many of the hymns in our hymn-books.

"After all, as Martinez said, we must even be content with what we have,
whether it be censers or syllogisms, or both. The way of the censer is
certainly the safer, as I have said; I suppose because the ruin of the
external universe is not nearly so deep nor so virulent as the ruin of
men. A flower, a piece of gold, no doubt approach their archetypes--what
they were meant to be--much more nearly than man does; hence their
appeal is purer than the speech or the reasoning of men.

"But in those days at Lupton my head was full of certain sentences which
I had lit upon somewhere or other--I believe they must have been
translations from some Eastern book. I knew about a dozen of these
maxims; all I can remember now are:

    "_If you desire to be inebriated: abstain from wine._"
    "_If you desire beauty: look not on beautiful things._"
    "_If you desire to see: let your eyes be blindfolded._"
    "_If you desire love: refrain from the Beloved._"

"I expect the paradox of these sayings pleased me. One must allow that
if one has the inborn appetite of the somewhat subtle, of the truth not
too crudely and barely expressed, there is no such atmosphere as that of
a Public School for sharpening this appetite to an edge of ravening,
indiscriminate hunger. Think of our friend the Colonel, who is by way of
being a _fin gourmet_; imagine him fixed in a boarding-house where the
meals are a repeating cycle of Irish Stew, Boiled Rabbit, Cold Mutton
and Salt Cod (without oyster or any other sause)! Then let him out and
place him in the Café Anglais. With what a fierce relish would he set
tooth into curious and sought-out dishes! It must be remembered that I
listened every Sunday in every term to one of the Doctor's sermons, and
it is really not strange that I gave an eager ear to the voice of
_Persian Wisdom_--as I think the book was called. At any rate, I kept
Nelly Foran at a distance for nine or ten months, and when I saw a
splendid sunset I averted my eyes. I longed for a love purely spiritual,
for a sunset of vision.

"I caught glimpses, too, I think, of a much more profound _askesis_ than
this. I suppose you have the _askesis_ in its simplest, most
rationalised form in the Case of Bill the Engine-driver--I forget in
what great work of _Theologia Moralis_ I found the instance; perhaps
Bill was really _Quidam_ in the original, and his occupation stated as
that of _Nauarchus_. At all events, Bill is fond of four-ale; but he had
perceived that two pots of this beverage consumed before a professional
journey tended to make him rather sleepy, rather less alert, than he
might be in the execution of his very responsible duties. Hence Bill,
considering this, wisely contents himself with _one_ pot before mounting
on his cab. He has deprived himself of a sensible good in order that an
equally sensible but greater good may be secured--in order that he and
the passengers may run no risks on the journey. Next to this simple
asceticism comes, I suppose, the ordinary discipline of the Church--the
abandonment of sensible goods to secure spiritual ends, the turning away
from the type to the prototype, from the sight of the eyes to the vision
of the soul. For in the true asceticism, whatever its degree, there is
always action to a certain end, to a perceived good. Does the
self-tormenting fakir act from this motive? I don't know; but if he does
not, his discipline is not asceticism at all, but folly, and impious
folly, too. If he mortifies himself merely for the sake of mortifying
himself; then he defiles and blasphemes the Temple. This in parenthesis.

"But, as I say, I had a very dim and distant glimpse of another region
of the _askesis_. Mystics will understand me when I say that there are
moments when the Dark Night of the Soul is seen to be brighter than her
brightest day; there are moments when it is necessary to drive away even
the angels that there may be place for the Highest. One may ascend into
regions so remote from the common concerns of life that it becomes
difficult to procure the help of analogy, even in the terms and
processes of the Arts. But suppose a painter--I need not say that I mean
an artist--who is visited by an idea so wonderful, so super-exalted in
its beauty that he recognises his impotence; he knows that no pigments
and no technique can do anything but grossly parody his vision. Well, he
will show his greatness by _not_ attempting to paint that vision: he
will write on a bare canvass _vidit anima sed non pinxit manus_. And I
am sure that there are many romances which have never been written. It
was a highly paradoxical, even a dangerous philosophy that affirmed God
to be rather _Non-Ens_ than _Ens_; but there are moods in which one
appreciates the thought.

"I think I caught, as I say, a distant vision of that Night which excels
the Day in its splendour. It began with the eyes turned away from the
sunset, with lips that refused kisses. Then there came a command to the
heart to cease from longing for the dear land of Gwent, to cease from
that aching desire that had never died for so many years for the sight
of the old land and those hills and woods of most sweet and anguished
memory. I remember once, when I was a great lout of sixteen, I went to
see the Lupton Fair. I always liked the great booths and caravans and
merry-go-rounds, all a blaze of barbaric green and red and gold, flaming
and glowing in the middle of the trampled, sodden field against a
background of Lupton and wet, grey autumn sky. There were country folk
then who wore smock-frocks and looked like men in them, too. One saw
scores of these brave fellows at the Fair: dull, good Jutes with flaxen
hair that was almost white, and with broad pink faces. I liked to see
them in the white robe and the curious embroidery; they were a note of
wholesomeness, an embassage from the old English village life to our
filthy 'industrial centre.' It was odd to see how they stared about
them; they wondered, I think, at the beastliness of the place, and yet,
poor fellows, they felt bound to admire the evidence of so much money.
Yes, they were of Old England; they savoured of the long, bending, broad
village street, the gable ends, the grave fronts of old mellow bricks,
the thatched roofs here and there, the bulging window of the 'village
shop,' the old church in decorous, somewhat dull perpendicular among the
elms, and, above all, the old tavern--that excellent abode of honest
mirth and honest beer, relic of the time when there were men, and men
who _lived_. Lupton is very far removed from Hardy's land, and yet as I
think of these country-folk in their smock-frocks all the essence of
Hardy is distilled for me; I see the village street all white in snow, a
light gleaming very rarely from an upper window, and presently, amid
ringing bells, one hears the carol-singers begin:

    '_Remember Adam's fall,
    O thou man._'

"And I love to look at the whirl of the merry-go-rounds, at the people
sitting with grave enjoyment on those absurd horses as they circle round
and round till one's eyes were dazed. Drums beat and thundered, strange
horns blew raucous calls from all quarters, and the mechanical music to
which those horses revolved belched and blazed and rattled out its
everlasting monotony, checked now and again by the shriek of the steam
whistle, groaning into silence for a while: then the tune clanged out
once more, and the horses whirled round and round.

"But on this Fair Day of which I am speaking I left the booths and the
golden, gleaming merry-go-rounds for the next field, where horses were
excited to brief madness and short energy. I had scarcely taken up my
stand when a man close by me raised his voice to a genial shout as he
saw a friend a little way off. And he spoke with the beloved accent of
Gwent, with those tones that come to me more ravishing, more enchanting
than all the music in the world. I had not heard them for years of weary
exile! Just a phrase or two of common greeting in those chanting
accents: the Fair passed away, was whirled into nothingness, its
shouting voices, the charging of horses, drum and trumpet, clanging,
metallic music--it rushed down into the abyss. There was the silence
that follows a great peal of thunder; it was early morning and I was
standing in a well-remembered valley, beside the blossoming thorn bush,
looking far away to the wooded hills that kept the East, above the
course of the shining river. I was, I say, a great lout of sixteen, but
the tears flooded my eyes, my heart swelled with its longing.

"Now, it seemed, I was to quell such thoughts as these, to desire no
more the fervent sunlight on the mountain, or the sweet scent of the
dusk about the runnings of the brook. I had been very fond of 'going for
walks'--walks of the imagination. I was afraid, I suppose, that unless
by constant meditation I renewed the shape of the old land in my mind,
its image might become a blurred and fading picture; I should forget
little by little the ways of those deep, winding lanes that took courses
that were almost subterranean over hill and vale, by woodside and
waterside, narrow, cavernous, leaf-vaulted; cool in the greatest heats
of summer. And the wandering paths that crossed the fields, that led one
down into places hidden and remote, into still depths where no one save
myself ever seemed to enter, that sometimes ended with a certain
solemnity at a broken stile in a hedgerow grown into a thicket--within a
plum tree returning to the savage life of the wood, a forest, perhaps,
of blue lupins, and a great wild rose about the ruined walls of a
house--all these ways I must keep in mind as if they were mysteries and
great secrets, as indeed they were. So I strolled in memory through the
Pageant of Gwent: 'lest I should forget the region of the flowers, lest
I should become unmindful of the wells and the floods.'

"But the time came, as I say, when it was represented to me that all
this was an indulgence which, for a season at least, must be
pretermitted. With an effort I voided my soul of memory and desire and
weeping; when the idols of doomed Twyn-Barlwm, and great Mynydd Maen,
and the silver esses of the Usk appeared before me, I cast them out; I
would not meditate white Caerleon shining across the river. I endured, I
think, the severest pains. De Quincey, that admirable artist, that
searcher into secrets and master of mysteries, has described my pains
for me under the figure of the Opium Eater breaking the bonds of his
vice. How often, when the abominations of Lupton, its sham energies, its
sham morals, its sham enthusiasms, all its battalia of cant surged and
beat upon me, have I been sorely tempted to yield, to suffer no more the
press of folly, but to steal away by a secret path I knew, to dwell in a
secure valley where the foolish could never trouble me. Sometimes I
'fell,' as I drank deep then of the magic well-water, and went astray in
the green dells and avenues of the wildwood. Still I struggled to
refrain my heart from these things, to keep my spirit under the severe
discipline of abstention; and with a constant effort I succeeded more
and more.

"But there was a yet deeper depth in this process of _catharsis_. I have
said that sometimes one must expel the angels that God may have room;
and now the strict ordinance was given that I should sever myself from
that great dream of Celtic sanctity that for me had always been _the_
dream, the innermost shrine in which I could take refuge, the house of
sovran medicaments where all the wounds of soul and body were healed.
One does not wish to be harsh; we must admit, I suppose, that moderate,
sensible Anglicanism must have _something_ in it--since the absolute
sham cannot very well continue to exist. Let us say, then, that it is
highly favourable to a respectable and moral life, that it encourages a
temperate and well-regulated spirit of devotion. It was certainly a very
excellent and (according to her lights) devout woman who, in her version
of the _Anima Christi_ altered 'inebriate me' to 'purify me,' and it was
a good cleric who hated the Vulgate reading, _calix meus inebrians_. My
father had always instructed me that we must conform outwardly, and bear
with _Dearly Beloved Brethren_; while we celebrated in our hearts the
Ancient Mass of the Britons, and waited for Cadwaladr to return. I
reverenced his teaching, I still reverence it, and agree that we must
conform; but in my heart I have always doubted whether moderate
Anglicanism be Christianity in any sense, whether it even deserves to be
called a religion at all. I do not doubt, of course, that many truly
religious people have professed it: I speak of the system, and of the
atmosphere which emanates from it. And when the Public School _ethos_ is
added to this--well, the resultant teaching comes pretty much to the
dogma that Heaven and the Head are strict allies. One must not
degenerate into ecclesiastical controversy; I merely want to say that I
never dreamed of looking for religion in our Chapel services. No doubt
the _Te Deum_ was _still the Te Deum_, but the noblest of hymns is
degraded, obscured, defiled, made ridiculous, if you marry it to a tune
that would disgrace a penny gaff. Personally, I think that the airs on
the piano-organs are much more reverend compositions than Anglican
chants, and I am sure that many popular hymn tunes are vastly inferior
in solemnity to _'E Dunno where 'e are_.

"No; the religion that led me and drew me and compelled me was that
wonderful and doubtful mythos of the Celtic Church. It was the
study--nay, more than the study, the enthusiasm--of my father's life;
and as I was literally baptized with water from a Holy Well, so
spiritually the great legend of the Saints and their amazing lives had
tinged all my dearest aspirations, had become to me the glowing vestment
of the Great Mystery. One may sometimes be deeply interested in the
matter of a tale while one is wearied or sickened by the manner of it;
one may have to embrace the bright divinity on the horrid lips of the
serpent of Cos. Or, on the other hand, the manner--the style--may be
admirable, and the matter a mere nothing but a ground for the
embroidery. But for me the Celtic Mythos was the Perfect Thing, the
King's Daughter: _Omnis gloria ejus filiæ Regis ab, intus, in fimbriis
aureis circumamicta varietatibus_. I have learned much more of this
great mystery since those days--I have seen, that is, how entirely, how
absolutely my boyhood's faith was justified; but even then with but
little knowledge I was rapt at the thought of this marvellous
knight-errantry, of this Christianity which was not a moral code, with
some sort of metaphorical Heaven held out as a reward for its due
observance, but a great mystical adventure into the unknown sanctity.
Imagine a Bishop of the Established Church getting into a boat without
oar or sails! Imagine him, if you can, doing anything remotely analagous
to such an action. Conceive the late Archbishop Tait going apart into
the chapel at Lambeth for three days and three nights; then you may
well conceive the people in the opposite bank being dazzled with the
blinding supernatural light poured forth from the chapel windows. Of
course, the end of the Celtic Church was ruin and confusion--but Don
Quixote failed and fell, while Sancho Panza lived a fat, prosperous
peasant. He inherited, I think, a considerable sum from the knight, and
was, no doubt, a good deal looked up to in the village.

"Yes; the Celtic Church was the Company of the Great Errantry, of the
Great Mystery, and, though all the history of it seems but a dim and
shadowy splendour, its burning rose-red lamp yet glows for a few, and
from my earliest childhood I was indoctrinated in the great Rite of
Cor-arbennic. When I was still very young I had been humoured with the
sight of a wonderful Relic of the Saints--never shall I forget that
experience of the holy magic of sanctity. Every little wood, every rock
and fountain, and every running stream of Gwent were hallowed for me by
some mystical and entrancing legend, and the thought of this High
Spiritual City and its Blessed Congregation could, in a moment, exercise
and drive forth from me all the ugly and foolish and gibbering spectres
that made up the life of that ugly and foolish place where I was
imprisoned.

"Now, with a sorrowful farewell, I bade good-bye for a brief time (as I
hoped it would be) to this golden legend; my heart was emptied of its
treasures and its curious shows, and the lights on the altars were put
out, and the images were strictly veiled. Hushed was the chanting in the
Sovereign and Perpetual Choir, hidden were the High Hallows of the
Saints, no more did I follow them to their cells in the wild hills, no
more did I look from the rocks in the west and see them set forth for
Avalon. Alas!

"A great silence seemed to fall upon me, the silence of the depths
beneath the earth. And with the silence there was darkness. Only in a
hidden place there was reserved the one taper--the Light of Conformity,
of a perfect submission, that from the very excess of sorrow and
deprivation drew its secret but quintessential joy. I am reminded, now
that I look back upon this great purgation of the soul, of the story
that I once read of the Arabic Alchemist. He came to the Caliph Haroun
with a strange and extravagant proposal. Haroun sat in all his
splendour, his viziers, his chamberlains, his great officers about him,
in his golden court which displayed all the wonders and superfluities of
the East. He gave judgment; the wicked were punished, the virtuous were
rewarded; God's name was exalted, the Prophet was venerated. There came
before the Commander of the Faithful a poor old man in the poor and
ragged robes of a wandering poet; he was oppressed by the weight of his
years, and his entrance was like the entrance of misery. So wretched was
his appearance that one of the chamberlains, who was well acquainted
with the poets, could not help quoting the well-known verses:

    "'Between the main and a drop of rain the difference seen is
       nothing great.
    The sun so bright and the taper's light are alike and one save
       in pomp and state.
    In the grain of sand and in all the land what may ye arraign as
       disparate?
    A crust of bread and a King's board spread will hunger's lust alike
       abate.
    With the smallest blade or with host arrayed the Ruler may quench
       his gall and hate.
    A stone in a box and a quarry of rocks may be shown to be of an
       equal freight.
    With a sentence bold or with gold untold the lover may hold or
       capture his mate.
    The King and the Bard may alike be debarred from the fold of the
       Lord Compassionate.'"

"The Commander of the Faithful praised God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate, the King of the Day of Judgment, and caused the
chamberlain to be handsomely rewarded. He then enquired of the old man
for what reason he came before him, and the beggar (as, indeed, he
seemed) informed the Caliph that he had for many years prosecuted his
studies in magic, alchemy, astrology and geomancy and all other curious
and surprising arts, in Spain, Grand Cairo, the land of the Moors,
India, China, in various Cities of the Infidels; in fact, in every
quarter of the world where magicians were to be found. In proof of his
proficiency he produced a little box which he carried about him for the
purpose of his geomantic operations and asked anyone who was willing to
stand forth, that he might hear his whole life, past, present and
future. The Caliph ordered one of his officers to submit himself to this
ordeal, and the beggar having made the points in the sand, and having
erected the figure according to the rules of the geomantic art,
immediately informed the officer of all the most hidden transactions in
which he had been engaged, including several matters which this officer
thought had been secrets locked in his own breast. He also foretold his
death in a year's time from a certain herb, and so it fell out, for he
was strangled with a hempen cord by order of the Caliph. In the
meantime, the Commander of the Faithful and all about him were
astonished, and the Beggar Magician was ordered to proceed with his
story. He spoke at great length, and everyone remarked the elegance and
propriety of his diction, which was wanting in no refinement of
classical eloquence. But the sum of his speech was this--that he had
discovered the greatest wonder of the whole world, the name of which he
declared was Asrar, and by this talisman he said that the Caliph might
make himself more renowned than all the kings that had ever reigned on
the earth, not excepting King Solomon, the son of David. This was the
method of the operation which the beggar proposed. The Commander of the
Faithful was to gather together all the wealth of his entire kingdom,
omitting nothing that could possibly be discovered; and while this was
being done the magician said that he would construct a furnace of
peculiar shape in which all these splendours and magnificences and
treasures of the world must be consumed in a certain fire of art,
prepared with wisdom. And at last, he continued, after the operation had
endured many days, the fire being all the while most curiously governed,
there would remain but one drop no larger than a pearl, but glorious as
the sun to the moon and all the starry heavens and the wonders of the
compassionate; and with this drop the Caliph Haroun might heal all the
sorrows of the universe. Both the Commander of the Faithful and all his
viziers and officers were stupefied by this proposal, and most of the
assemblage considered the beggar to be a madman. The Caliph, however,
asked him to return the next day in order that his plans might receive
more mature consideration.

"The beggar prostrated himself and went forth from the hall of audience,
but he returned no more, nor could it be discovered that he had been
seen again by anyone.

"'But one drop no larger than a pearl,' and 'where there is Nothing
there is All.' I have often thought of those sentences in looking back
on that time when, as Chesson said, I was one of those 'light-hearted
and yet sturdy and reliable young fellows to whose hands the honour and
safety of England might one day be committed.' I cast all the treasures
I possessed into the alembic; again and again they were rectified by the
heat of the fire 'most curiously governed'; I saw the 'engendering of
the Crow' black as pitch, the flight of the Dove with Silver Wings, and
at last Sol rose red and glorious, and I fell down and gave thanks to
heaven for this most wonderful gift, the 'Sun blessed of the Fire.' I
had dispossessed myself of all, and I found that I possessed all; I had
thrown away all the money in my purse, and I was richer than I had ever
been; I had died, and I had found a new life in the land of the living.

"It is curious that I should now have to explain the pertinency of all
that I have written to the title of this Note--concerning Gaiety. It
should not be necessary. The chain of thought is almost painfully
obvious. But I am afraid it is necessary.

"Well: I once read an interesting article in the daily paper. It was
written apropos of some Shakespearean celebrations or other, and its
purport was that modern England was ever so much happier than mediæval
or Elizabethian England. It is possible that an acute logician might
find something to say on this thesis; but my interest lay in the
following passages, which I quote:

     "'Merrie England,' with its maypoles and its Whitsun Ales, and
     its Shrove-tide jousts and junketings is dead for us, from the
     religious point of view. The England that has survived is,
     after all, a greater England still. It is Puritan England....
     The spirit has gone. Surely it is useless to revive the form.
     Wherefore should the May Queen be "holy, wise, and fair," if
     not to symbolise the Virgin Mary? And as for Shrove-tide, too,
     what point in jollity without a fast to follow?'

"The article is not over-illuminating, but I think the writer had caught
a glimpse of the truth that there is a deep relation between Mirth and
Sanctity; that no real mirth is possible without the apprehension of the
mysteries as its antecedent. The fast and the feast are complementary
terms. He is right; there is no point in jollity unless there is a fast
or something of the nature of a fast to follow--though, of course, there
is nothing to hinder the most advanced thinker from drinking as much
fusel-oil and raw Russian spirit as he likes. But the result of this
course is not real mirth or jollity; it is perhaps more essentially
dismal than a 'Tea' amongst the Protestant Dissenters. And, on the other
hand, true gaiety is only possible to those who have fasted; and now
perhaps it will be seen that I have been describing the preparations for
a light-hearted festival.

"The cloud passed away from me, the restrictions and inhibitions were
suddenly removed, and I woke up one morning in dancing, bubbling
spirits, every drop of blood in my body racing with new life, my nerves
tingling and thrilling with energy. I laughed as I awoke; I was
conscious that I was to engage in a strange and fantastic adventure,
though I had not the remotest notion of what it was to be."


II

Ambrose Meyrick's adventure was certainly of the fantastic order. His
fame had long been established on a sure footing with his uncle and
with everybody else, and Mr. Horbury had congratulated him with genuine
enthusiasm on his work in the examinations--the Summer term was drawing
to a close. Mr. Horbury was Ambrose's trustee, and he made no difficulty
about signing a really handsome cheque for his nephew's holiday expenses
and outfit. "There," he said "you ought to be able to do pretty well on
that. Where do you think of going?"

Ambrose said that he had thought of North Devon, of tramping over
Exmoor, visiting the Doone country, and perhaps of working down to
Dartmoor.

"You couldn't do better. You ought to try your hand at fishing:
wonderful sport in some of those streams. It mightn't come off at first,
but with your eye and sense of distance you'll soon make a fine angler.
If you _do_ have a turn at the trout, get hold of some local man and
make him give you a wrinkle or two. It's no good getting your flies from
town. Now, when I was fishing in Hampshire----"

Mr. Horbury went on; but the devil of gaiety had already dictated a
wonderful scheme to Ambrose, and that night he informed Nelly Foran that
she must alter her plans; she was to come with him to France instead of
spending a fortnight at Blackpool. He carried out this mad device with
an ingenuity that poor Mr. Palmer would certainly have called
"diabolical." In the first place, there was to be a week in London--for
Nelly must have some clothes; and this week began as an experience of
high delight. It was not devoid of terror, for masters might be abroad,
and Ambrose did not wish to leave Lupton for some time. However, they
neither saw nor were seen. Arriving at St. Pancras, the luggage was left
in the station, and Ambrose, who had studied the map of London, stood
for a while on the pavement outside Scott's great masterpiece of
architecture and considered the situation with grave yet humorous
deliberation. Nelly proved herself admirably worthy of the adventure;
its monstrous audacity appealed to her, and she was in a state of
perpetual subdued laughter for some days after their arrival. Meyrick
looked about him and found that the Euston Road, being squalid and
noisy, offered few attractions; and with sudden resolution he took the
girl by the arm and steered into the heart of Bloomsbury. In this
charmingly central and yet retired quarter they found rooms in a quiet
byway which, oddly enough, looked on a green field; and under the
pleasant style of Mr. and Mr. Lupton they partook of tea while the
luggage was fetched by somebody--probably a husband--who came with a
shock of red, untidy hair from the dark bowels of the basement. They
screamed with mirth over the meal. Mr. Horbury had faults, but he kept
a good table for himself, his boys and his servants; and the exotic,
quaint flavour of the "bread" and "butter" seemed to these two young
idiots exquisitely funny. And the queer, faint, close smell, too, of the
whole house--it rushed out at one when the hall door was opened: it was
heavy, and worth its weight in gold.

"I never know," Ambrose used to say afterwards, "whether to laugh or cry
when I have been away for some time from town, and come back and smell
that wonderful old London aroma. I don't believe it's so strong or so
rare as it used to be; I have been disappointed once or twice in houses
in quite shabby streets. It was _there_, of course, but--well, if it
were a vintage wine I should say it was a second growth of a very poor
year--Margaux, no doubt, but a Margaux of one of those very indifferent
years in the early 'seventies. Or it may be like the smell of
grease-paints; one doesn't notice it after a month or two. But I don't
think it is.

"Still," he would go on, "I value what I can smell of it. It brings back
to me that afternoon, that hot, choking afternoon of ever so many years
ago. It was really tremendously hot--ninety-two degrees, I think I saw
in the paper the next day--and when we got out at St. Pancras the wind
came at one like a furnace blast. There was no sun visible; the sky was
bleary--a sort of sickly, smoky yellow, and the burning wind came in
gusts, and the dust hissed and rattled on the pavement. Do you know what
a low public-house smells like in London on a hot afternoon? Do you know
what London bitter tastes like on such a day--the publican being
evidently careful of his clients' health, and aware of the folly of
drinking cold beverages during a period of extreme heat? I do. Nelly,
poor dear, had warm lemonade, and I had warm beer--warm chemicals, I
mean. But the odour! Why doesn't some scientific man stop wasting his
time over a lot of useless rubbish and discover a way of bottling the
odour of the past?

"Ah! but if he did so, in a phial of rare crystal with a stopper as
secure as the seal of Solimaun ben Daoud would I preserve one most
precious scent, inscribing on the seal, within a perfect pentagram, the
mystic legend 'No. 15, Little Russell Row.'"

The cat had come in with the tea-tray. He was a black cat, not very
large, with a decent roundness of feature, and yet with a suggestion of
sinewy skinniness about him--the Skinniness of the wastrel, not of the
poor starveling. His bright green eyes had, as Ambrose observed, the
wisdom of Egypt; on his tomb should be inscribed "The Justified in
Sekht." He walked solemnly in front of the landlady, his body
describing strange curves, his tail waving in the air, and his ears put
back with an expression of intense cunning. He seemed delighted at "the
let," and when Nelly stroked his back he gave a loud shriek of joy and
made known his willingness to take a little refreshment.

They laughed so heartily over their tea that when the landlady came in
to clear the things away they were still bubbling over with aimless
merriment.

"I likes to see young people 'appy," she said pleasantly, and readily
provided a latchkey in case they cared to come in rather late. She told
them a good deal of her life: she had kept lodgings in Judd Street, near
King's Cross--a nasty, noisy street, she called it--and she seemed to
think the inhabitants a low lot. She had to do with all sorts, some good
some bad, and the business wasn't what it had been in her mother's day.

They sat a little while on the sofa, hand in hand still consumed with
the jest of their being there at all, and imagining grotesque entrances
of Mr. Horbury or Dr. Chesson. Then they went out to wander about the
streets, to see London easily, merrily, without bothering the Monument,
or the British Museum, or Madame Tussaud's--finally, to get something to
eat, they didn't know when or where or how, and they didn't in the
least care! There was one "sight" they were not successful in avoiding:
they had not journeyed far before the great portal of the British Museum
confronted them, grandiose and gloomy. So, by the sober way of Great
Russell Street, they made their way into Tottenham Court Road and,
finally, into Oxford Street. The shops were bright and splendid, the
pavement was crowded with a hurrying multitude, as it seemed to the
country folk, though it was the dullest season of the year. It was a
great impression--decidedly London was a wonderful place. Already
Ambrose felt a curious sense of being at home in it; it was not
beautiful, but it was on the immense scale; it did something more than
vomit stinks into the air, poison into the water and rows of workmen's
houses on the land. They wandered on, and then they had the fancy that
they would like to explore the regions to the south; it was so
impossible, as Ambrose said, to know where they would find themselves
eventually. He carefully lost himself within a few minutes of Oxford
Street. A few turnings to right and then to left; the navigation of
strange alleys soon left them in the most satisfactory condition of
bewilderment; the distinctions of the mariner's compass, its pedantry of
east and west, north and south, were annihilated and had ceased to be;
it was an adventure in a trackless desert, in the Australian bush, but
on safer ground and in an infinitely more entertaining scene. At first
they had passed through dark streets, Georgian and Augustan ways, gloomy
enough, and half deserted; there were grave houses, with many stories of
windows, now reduced to printing offices, to pickle warehouses, to odd
crafts such as those of the metal assayer, the crucible maker, the
engraver of seals, the fabricator of Boule. But how wonderful it was to
see the actual place where those things were done! Ambrose had read of
such arts, but had always thought of them as existing in a vague
void--if some of them even existed at all in those days: but there in
the windows were actual crucibles, strange-looking curvilinear pots of
grey-yellowish ware, the veritable instruments of the Magnum Opus,
inventions of Arabia. He was no longer astonished when a little farther
he saw a harpsichord, which had only been a name to him, a beautiful
looking thing, richly inlaid, with its date--1780--inscribed on a card
above it. It was now utterly wonderland: he could very likely buy armour
round the corner; and he had scarcely formed the thought when a very
fine sixteenth-century suit, richly damascened, rose up before him,
handsomely displayed between two black jacks. These were the
comparatively silent streets; but they turned a corner, and what a
change! All the roadway, not the pavement only, seemed full of a
strolling, chatting, laughing mob of people: the women were bareheaded,
and one heard nothing but the roll of the French "r," torrents of
sonorous sound trolled out with the music of happy song. The papers in
the shops were all French, ensigns on every side proclaimed "Vins Fins,"
"Beaune Supérieur": the tobacconists kept their tobacco in square blue,
yellow and brown packets; "Charcuterie" made a brave and appetising
show. And here was a "Café Restaurant: au château de Chinon." The name
was enough; they could not dine elsewhere, and Ambrose felt that he was
honouring the memory of the great Rabelais.

It was probably not a very good dinner. It was infinitely better than
the Soho dinner of these days, for the Quarter had hardly begun to yield
to the attack of Art, Intellect and the Suburbs which, between them,
have since destroyed the character and unction of many a good cook-shop.
Ambrose only remembered two dishes; the _pieds de porc grillés_ and the
salad. The former he thought both amusing and delicious, and the latter
was strangely and artfully compounded of many herbs, of little vinegar,
of abundant Provençal oil, with the _chapon_, or crust rubbed with
garlic, reposing at the bottom of the bowl after Madame had "tormented"
the ingredients--the salad was a dish from Fairyland. There be no such
salads now in all the land of Soho.

"Let me celebrate, above all, the little red wine," says Ambrose in a
brief dithyrambic note. "Not in any mortal vineyard did its father grape
ripen; it was not nourished by the warmth of the visible sun, nor were
the rains that made it swell common waters from the skies above us. Not
even in the Chinonnais, sacred earth though that be, was the press made
that caused its juices to be poured into the _cuve_, nor was the humming
of its fermentation heard in any of the good cellars of the lower
Touraine. But in that region which Keats celebrates when he sings the
'Mermaid Tavern' was this juice engendered--the vineyard lay low down in
the south, among the starry plains where is the _Terra Turonensis
Celestis_, that unimaginable country which Rabelais beheld in his vision
where mighty Gargantua drinks from inexhaustible vats eternally, where
Pantagruel is athirst for evermore, though he be satisfied continually.
There, in the land of the Crowned Immortal Tosspots was that wine of
ours vintaged, red with the rays of the Dog-star, made magical by the
influence of Venus, fertilised by the happy aspect of Mercury. O rare,
superabundant and most excellent juice, fruit of all fortunate stars, by
thee were we translated, exalted into the fellowship of that Tavern of
which the old poet writes: _Mihi est propositum in Taberna mori!_"

There were few English people in the Château de Chinon--indeed, it is
doubtful whether there was more than one--the ménage Lupton excepted.
This one compatriot happened to be a rather remarkable man--it was
Carrol. He was not in the vanguard of anything; he knew no journalists
and belonged to no clubs; he was not even acquainted in the most distant
manner with a single person who could be called really influential or
successful. He was an obscure literary worker, who published an odd
volume every five or six years: now and then he got notices, when there
was no press of important stuff in the offices, and sometimes a kindly
reviewer predicted that he would come out all right in time, though he
had still much to learn. About a year before he died, an intelligent
reading public was told that one or two things of his were rather good;
then, on his death, it was definitely discovered that the five volumes
of verse occupied absolutely unique ground, that a supreme poet had been
taken from us, a poet who had raised the English language into a fourth
dimension of melody and magic. The intelligent reading public read him
no more than they ever did, but they buy him in edition after edition,
from large quarto to post octavo; they buy him put up into little
decorated boxes; they buy him on Japanese vellum; they buy him
illustrated by six different artists; they discuss no end of articles
about him; they write their names in the Carrol Birthday Book; they set
up the Carrol Calendar in their boudoirs; they have quotations from him
in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral; they sing him in the
famous Carrol Cycle of Song; and, last and best of all, a brilliant
American playwright is talking even now of dramatising him. The Carrol
Club, of course, is ancient history. Its membership is confined to the
ranks of intellect and art; it invites to its dinners foreign princes,
bankers, major-generals and other persons of distinction--all of whom,
of course, are intensely interested in the master's book; and the record
and praise of the Club are in all the papers. It is a pity that Carrol
is dead. He would not have sworn: he would have grinned.

Even then, though he was not glorious, he was observant, and he left a
brief note, a sort of thumb-nail sketch, of his impressions that night
at the Château de Chinon.

"I was sitting in my old corner," he says, "wondering why the devil I
wrote so badly on the whole, and what the devil I was going to do with
the subject that I had tackled. The dinner was not so bad at the old
Château in those days, though now they say the plate-glass is the best
dish in the establishment. I liked the old place; it was dingy and low
down and rather disreputable, I fancy, and the company was miscellaneous
French with a dash of Italian. Nearly all of us knew each other, and
there were regulars who sat in the same seat night after night. I liked
it all. I liked the coarse tablecloths and the black-handled knives and
the lead spoons and the damp, adhesive salt, and the coarse, strong,
black pepper that one helped with a fork handle. Then there was Madame
sitting on high, and I never saw an uglier woman nor a more
good-natured. I was getting through my roast fowl and salad that
evening, when two wonderful people came in, obviously from fairyland! I
saw they had never been in such a place in all their lives before--I
don't believe either of them had set foot in London until that day, and
their wonder and delight and enjoyment of it all were so enormous that I
had another helping of food and an extra half-bottle of wine. I enjoyed
them, too, in their way, but I could see that _their_ fowl and _their_
wine were not a bit the same as mine. _I_ once knew the restaurant they
were really dining at--Grand Café de Paradis--some such name as that. He
was an extraordinary looking chap, quite young, I should fancy, black
hair, dark skin, and such burning eyes! I don't know why, but I felt he
was a bit out of his setting, and I kept thinking how I should like to
see him in a monk's robe. Madame was different. She was a lovely girl
with amazing copper hair; dressed rather badly--of the people, I should
imagine. But what a gaiety she had! I couldn't hear what they were
saying, but one had to smile with sheer joy at the sight of her face--it
positively danced with mirth, and a good musician could have set it to
music, I am sure. There was something a little queer--too pronounced,
perhaps--about the lower part of her face. Perhaps it would have been an
odd tune, but I know I should have liked to hear it!"

Ambrose lit a black Caporal cigarette--he had bought a packet on his
way. He saw an enticing bottle, of rotund form, paying its visits to
some neighbouring tables, and the happy fools made the acquaintance of
Benedictine.

"Oh, yes, it is all very well," Ambrose has been heard to say on being
offered this agreeable and aromatic liqueur, "it's nice enough, I
daresay. But you should have tasted the _real_ stuff. I got it at a
little cafe in Soho some years ago--the Château de Chinon. No, it's no
good going there now, it's quite different. All the walls are
plate-glass and gold; the head waiter is called Maître d'hôtel, and I am
told it's quite the thing, both in southern and northern suburbs, to
make up dinner parties at the Château--everything most correct, evening
dress, fans, opera cloaks, 'Hide-seek' champagne, and stalls afterwards.
One gets a glimpse of Bohemian life that way, and everybody says it's
been such a queer evening, but quite amusing, too. But you can't get the
real Benedictine there now.

"Where can you get it? Ah! I wish I knew. _I_ never come across it. The
bottle looks just the same, but it's quite a different flavour. The
phylloxera may be responsible, of course, but I don't think it is.
Perhaps the bottle that went round the table that night was like the
powder in _Jekyll and Hyde_--its properties were the result of some
strange accident. At all events, they were quite magical."

The two adventurers went forth into the maze of streets and lost
themselves again. Heaven knows where they went, by what ways they
wandered, as with wide-gleaming eyes, arm locked in arm, they gazed on
an enchanted scene which they knew must be London and nothing else--what
else could it be? Indeed, now and again, Ambrose thought he recognized
certain features and monuments and public places of which he had read;
but still! That wine of the Château was, by all mundane reckonings, of
the smallest, and one little glass of Benedictine with coffee could not
disturb the weakest head: yet was it London, after all?

What they saw was, doubtless, the common world of the streets and
squares, the gay ways and the dull, the broad, ringing, lighted roads
and the dark, echoing passages; yet they saw it all as one sees a
mystery play, through a veil. But the veil before their eyes was a
transmuting vision, and its substance was shot as if it were samite,
with wonderful and admirable golden ornaments. In the Eastern Tales,
people find themselves thus suddenly transported into an unknown magical
territory, with cities that are altogether things of marvel and
enchantment, whose walls are pure gold, lighted by the shining of
incomparable jewels; and Ambrose declared later that never till that
evening had he realized the extraordinary and absolute truth to nature
of the _Arabian Nights_. Those who were present on a certain occasion
will not soon forget his rejoinder to "a gentleman in the company" who
said that for truth to nature he went to George Eliot.

"I was speaking of men and women, Sir," was the answer, "not of lice."

The gentleman in question, who was quite an influential man--some
whisper that he was an editor--was naturally very much annoyed.

Still, Ambrose maintained his position. He would even affirm that for
crude realism the Eastern Tales were absolutely unique.

"Of course," he said, "I take realism to mean absolute and essential
truthfulness of description, as opposed to merely conventional
treatment. Zola is a realist, not--as the imbeciles suppose--because he
described--well, rather minutely--many unpleasant sights and sounds and
smells and emotions, but because he was a poet, a seer; because, in
spite of his pseudo-philosophies, his cheap materialisms, he saw the
true heart, the reality of things. Take _La Terre_; do you think it is
'realistic' because it describes minutely, and probably faithfully, the
event of a cow calving? Not in the least; the local vet. who was called
in could probably do all that as well, or better. It is 'realist'
because it goes behind all the brutalities, all the piggeries and
inhumanities, of those frightful people, and shows us the strange, mad,
transcendent passion that lay behind all those things--the wild desire
for the land--a longing that burned, that devoured, that inflamed, that
drove men to hell and death as would a passion for a goddess who might
never be attained. Remember how 'La Beauce' is personified, how the
earth swells and quickens before one, how every clod and morsel of the
soil cries for its service and its sacrifice and its victims--I call
_that_ realism.

"The _Arabian Nights_ is also profoundly realistic, though both the
subject-matter and the method of treatment--the technique--are very
different from the subject-matter and the technique of Zola. Of course,
there may be people who think that if you describe a pigsty well you are
a 'realist,' and if you describe an altar well you are 'romantic.' ... I
do not know that the mental processes of Crétins form a very interesting
subject for discussion."

One may surmise, if one will, that the sudden violence of the change was
a sufficient cause of exaltation. That detestable Lupton left behind; no
town, but a collection of stink and poison factories and slave quarters;
that more detestable school, more ridiculous than the Academy of Lagado;
that most detestable routine, games, lessons and the Doctor's
sermons--the transition was tremendous to the freedom of fabled London,
of the unknown streets and unending multitudes.

Ambrose said he hesitated to talk of that walk, lest he should be
thought an aimless liar. They strolled for hours seeing the most
wonderful things, the most wonderful people; but he declared that the
case was similar to that of the Benedictine--he could never discover
again the regions that he had perambulated. Somewhere, he said, close to
the Château de Chinon there must be a passage which had since been
blocked up. By it was the entrance to Fairyland.

When at last they found Little Russell Row, the black cat was awaiting
them with an expression which was pleased and pious, too; he had
devoured the greater portion of that quarter-pound of dubious butter.
Ambrose smoked black cigarettes in bed till the packet was finished.


III

It was an amazing week they spent in London. For a couple of days Nelly
was busied in getting "things" and "odds and ends," and, to her credit,
she dressed the part most admirably. She abjured all the imperial
purples, the Mediterranean blues, the shrieking lilacs that her class
usually affects, and appeared at last a model of neat gaiety.

In the meantime, while these shopping expeditions were in progress,
while Nelly consulted with those tall, dark-robed, golden-haired and
awful Elegances which preside over the last mysteries of the draper and
milliner, Ambrose sat at home in Little Russell Row and worked out the
outlines of some fantasies that had risen in his mind. It was, in fact,
during these days that he made the notes which were afterwards expanded
into the curious _Defence of Taverns_, a book which is now rare and
sought after by collectors. It is supposed that it was this work that
was in poor Palmer's mind when the earnest man referred with a sort of
gloomy reticence to Meyrick's later career. He had, in all probability,
not read a line of it; but the title was certainly not a very pleasing
one, judged by ordinary scholastic standards. And it must be said that
the critical reception of the book was not exactly encouraging. One
paper wondered candidly why such a book was ever written or printed;
another denounced the author in good, set terms as an enemy of the great
temperance movement; while a third, a Monthly Reviewer, declared that
the work made his blood boil. Yet even the severest moralists should
have seen by the epigraph that the Apes and Owls and Antiques hid
mysteries of some sort, since a writer whose purposes were really evil
and intemperate would never have chosen such a motto as: _Jalalúd-Din
praised the behaviour of the Inebriated and drank water from the well_.
But the reviewers thought that this was unintelligible nonsense, and
merely a small part of the writer's general purpose to annoy.

The rough sketch is contained in the first of the _Note Books_, which
are still unpublished, and perhaps are likely to remain so. Meyrick
jotted down his hints and ideas in the dingy "first floor front" of the
Bloomsbury lodging-house, sitting at the rosewood "Davenport" which, to
the landlady, seemed the last word in beautiful furniture.

The ménage rose late. What a relief it was to be free of the horrible
bells that poisoned one's rest at Lupton, to lie in peace as long as one
liked, smoking a matutinal cigarette or two to the accompaniment of a
cup of tea! Nelly was acquiring the art of the cigarette-smoker by
degrees. She did not like the taste at all at first, but the wild and
daring deviltry of the practice sustained her, and she persevered. And
while they thus wasted the best hours of the day, Ambrose would make to
pass before the bottom of the bed a long procession of the masters, each
uttering his characteristic word of horror and astonishment as he went
by, each whirled away by some invisible power in the middle of a
sentence. Thus would enter Chesson, fully attired in cassock, cap and
gown:

"Meyrick! It is impossible? Are you not aware that such conduct as this
is entirely inconsistent with the tone of a great Public School? Have
the Games ..." But he was gone; his legs were seen vanishing in a
whirlwind which bore him up the chimney.

Then Horbury rose out of the carpet:

"Plain living and clear thinking are the notes of the System. A Spartan
Discipline--Meyrick! Do you call this a Spartan Discipline? Smoking
tobacco and reposing with ..." He shot like an arrow after the Head.

"We discourage luxury by every means in our power. Boy! This is luxury!
Boy, boy! You are like the later Romans, boy! Heliogabalus was
accustomed ..." The chimney consumed Palmer also; and he gave place to
another.

"Roughly speaking, a boy should be always either in school or playing
games. He should never be suffered to be at a loose end. Is this your
idea of playing games? I tell you, Meyrick ..."

The game amused Nelly, more from its accompanying "business" and facial
expression than from any particular comprehension of the dialogue.
Ambrose saw that she could not grasp all the comedy of his situations,
so he invented an Idyll between the Doctor and a notorious and
flamboyant barmaid at the "Bell." The fame of this lady ran great but
not gracious through all Lupton. This proved a huge success; beginning
as a mere episode, it gathered to itself a complicated network of
incidents and adventures, of wild attempts and strange escapes, of
stratagems and ambushes, of disguises and alarms. Indeed, as Ambrose
instructed Nelly with great solemnity, the tale, at first an idyll, the
simple, pastoral story of the loves of the Shepherd Chesson and the
Nymph Bella, was rapidly becoming epical in its character. He talked of
dividing it into twelve books! He enlarged very elaborately the Defeat
of the Suitors. In this the dear old Head, disguised as a bookmaker,
drugged the whisky of the young bloods who were accustomed to throng
about the inner bar of the "Bell." There was quite a long passage
describing the compounding of the patent draught from various herbs, the
enormous cook at the Head's house enacting a kind of Canidia part, and
helping in the concoction of the dose.

"Mrs. Belper," the Doctor would observe, "This is _most_ gratifying. I
had no idea that your knowledge of simples was so extensive. Do I
understand you to affirm that those few leaves which you hold in your
hand will produce marked symptoms?"

"Bless your dear 'art, Doctor Chesson, and if you'll forgive me for
talking so to such a learned gentleman, and so good, I'm sure, but
you'll find there's nothing in the world like it. Often and often have I
'eard my pore old mother that's dead and gone these forty year come
Candlemas ..."

"Mrs. Belper, Mrs. Belper, I am surprised at you! Are you not aware that
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has pronounced the
observance of the festival you so lightly name to be of a highly
superstitious nature? Your deceased mother, you were saying, will have
entered into her reward forty years ago on February the second of next
year? Is not this the case?"

"These forty years came Febbymas, I mean, and a good woman she was, and
never have I seen a larger wart on the nose and her legs bad as bad for
years and years!"

"These details, though, no doubt, of high personal interest, seem hardly
germane to our present undertaking. However, Mrs. Belper, proceed in
your remarks."

"And thank you kindly, Sir, and not forgetting you are a clergyman--but
there! we can't all of us be everything. And my pore mother, as I was
saying, Sir, she said, again and again, that if she'd been like some
folks she'd a made a fortune in golden money from this very yarb I'm
a-showing you, Sir."

"Dear me, Mrs. Belper! You interest me deeply. I have often thought how
wrong it is of us to neglect, as undoubtedly we _do_ neglect, the
bounteous gifts of the kindly earth. Your lamented mother used this
specific with remarkable success?"

"Lord a mercy, Doctor 'Chesson! elephants couldn't a stood against it,
nor yet whales, being as how it's stronger than the strongest gunpowder
that was ever brewed or blasted, and miles better than the nasty
rubbidge you get in them doctors' shops, and a pretty penny they make
you pay for it and no better than calomel, if you ask me, Sir. But be
it the strongest of the strong, I'll take my Gospel oath it's weak to
what my pore mother made, and that anybody in Much Moddle parish would
tell you, for man, woman or child who took one of Mrs. Marjoram's
Mixtures and got over it, remember it, he would, until his dying day.
And my pore old mother, she was that funny--never was a cheerfuller
woman, I do believe, and when Tom Copus, the lame fiddler, he got
married, pore mother! though she could hardly walk, her legs was that
bad, come she would, and if she didn't slip a little of the mixture into
the beer when everybody was looking another way! Pore, dear soul! as she
said herself afterwards, 'mirth becomes marriage,' and so to be sure it
does, and merry they all were that day that didn't touch the beer,
preferring spirits, which pore mother couldn't get at, being locked
up--a nasty, mean trick, I call it, and always will."

"Enough, Mrs. Belper, enough! You have amply satisfied me as to the
potency of the late Mrs. Marjoram's pharmacopoeia. We will, if you have
no objection, Mrs. Belper, make the mixture--to use the words of
Shakespeare--'slab and thick.'"

"And bless your kind 'art, Sir, and a good, kind master you've always
been to me, if you 'aven't got enough 'ere to lay out all the Lupton
town, call me a Dutchwoman, and that I never was, nor pore Belper
neither."

"Certainly not, Mrs. Belper. The Dutch belong to a different branch of
the great Teutonic stock, or, if identity had ever existed, the two
races have long been differentiated. I think, Mrs. Belper, that the most
eminent physicians have recognised the beneficial effects of a gentle
laxative during the treacherous (though delightful) season of spring?"

"Law bless you, Sir, you're right, as you always are, or why, Doctor? As
my pore mother used to say when she made up the mixture: 'Scour 'em out
is the right way about!' And laugh she would as she pounded the stuff up
till I really thought she would 'a busted, and shaking like the best
blancmanges all the while."

"Mrs. Belper, you have removed a weight from my mind. You think, then,
that I shall be freed from all unfair competition while I pay my
addresses to my young friend, Miss Floyer?"

"As free you will be, Doctor Chesson, Sir, as the little birds in the
air; for not one of them young fellers will stand on his feet for days,
and groans and 'owls will be the best word that mortal man will speak,
and bless you they will with their dying breath. So, Sir, you'll 'ave
the sweet young lady, bless her dear 'art, all to yourself, and if it's
twins, don't blame me!"

"Mrs. Belper, your construction, if I may say so, is somewhat proleptic
in its character. Still, I am sure that your meaning is good. Ha! I hear
the bell for afternoon school."

The Doctor's voice happened to be shrill and piercing, with something of
the tone of the tooth-comb and tissue-paper; while the fat cook spoke in
a suety, husky contralto. Ambrose reproduced these peculiarities with
the gift of the born mimic, adding appropriate antic and gesture to
grace the show, and Nelly's appreciation of its humours was intense.

Day by day new incidents and scenes were added. The Head, in the pursuit
of his guilty passion, hid in the coal-cellar of the "Bell," and,
rustling sounds being heard, evaded detection for a while by imitating
the barks of a terrier in chase of a rat. Nelly liked to hear the "Wuff!
wuff! wuff!" which was introduced at this point. She liked also the
final catastrophe, when the odd man of the "Bell" burst into the bar and
said: "Dang my eyes, if it ain't the Doctor! I seed his cap and gown as
he run round and round the coals on all fours, a-growling 'orrible." To
which the landlady rejoined: "Don't tell your silly lies here! How
_could_ he growl, him being a clergyman?" And all the loafers joined in
the chorus: "That's right, Tom; why _do_ you talk such silly lies as
that--him being a clergyman?"

They laughed so loud and so merrily over their morning tea and these
lunacies that the landlady doubted gravely as to their marriage lines.
She cared nothing; they had paid what she asked, money down in advance,
and, as she said: "Young gentlemen _will_ have their fun with the young
ladies--so what's the good of talking?"

Breakfast came at length. They gave the landlady a warning bell some
half-hour in advance, so the odd food was, at all events, not cold.
Afterwards Nelly sallied off on her shopping expeditions, which, as
might have been expected, she enjoyed hugely, and Ambrose stayed alone,
with his pen and ink and a fat notebook which had captured his eye in a
stationer's window.

Under these odd circumstances, then, he laid the foundations of his rare
and precious _Defence of Taverns_, which is now termed by those
fortunate enough to possess copies as a unique and golden treatise.
Though he added a good deal in later years and remodelled and rearranged
freely, there is a certain charm of vigour and freshness about the first
sketch which is quite delightful in its way. Take, for example, the
description of the whole world overwhelmed with sobriety: a deadly
absence of inebriation annulling and destroying all the works and
thoughts of men, the country itself at point to perish of the want of
good liquor and good drinkers. He shows how there is grave cause to
dread that, by reason of this sad neglect of the Dionysiac Mysteries,
humanity is fast falling backward from the great heights to which it had
ascended, and is in imminent danger of returning to the dumb and blind
and helpless condition of the brutes.

"How else," he says, "can one account for the stricken state in which
all the animal world grows and is eternally impotent? To them, strange,
vast and enormous powers and faculties have been given. Consider, for
example, the curious equipments of two odd extremes in this sphere--the
ant and the elephant. The ant, if one may say so, is very near to us. We
have our great centres of industry, our Black Country and our slaves
who, if not born black, become black in our service. And the ants, too,
have their black, enslaved races who do their dirty work for them, and
are, perhaps, congratulated on their privileges as sharing in the
blessings of civilisation--though this may be a refinement. The ant
slaves, I believe, will rally eagerly to the defence of the nest and the
eggs, and they say that the labouring classes are Liberal to the core.
Nay; we grow mushrooms by art, and so they. In some lands, I think, they
make enormous nests which are the nuisance and terror of the country. We
have Manchester and Lupton and Leeds, and many such places--one would
think them altogether civilised.

"The elephant, again, has many gifts which we lack. Note the curious
instinct (or intuition, rather) of danger. The elephant knows, for
example, when a bridge is unsafe, and refuses to pass, where a man would
go on to destruction. One might examine in the same way all the
creatures, and find in them singular capacities.

"Yet--they have no art. They see--but they see not. They hear--and they
hear not. The odour in their nostrils has no sweetness at all. They have
made no report of all the wonders that they knew. Their houses are,
sometimes, as ingenious as a Chemical Works, but never is there any
beauty for beauty's sake.

"It is clear that their state is thus desolate, because of the heavy
pall of sobriety that hangs over them all; and it scarcely seems to have
occurred to our 'Temperance' advocates that when they urge on us the
example and abstinence of the beasts they have advanced the deadliest of
all arguments against their nostrum. The Laughing Jackass is a
teetotaller, doubtless, but no sane man should desire to be a Laughing
Jackass.

"But the history of the men who have attained, who have done the
glorious things of the earth and have become for ever exalted is the
history of the men who have quested the Cup. Dionysius, said the Greeks,
_civilised_ the world; and the Bacchic Mystery was, naturally, the heart
and core of Greek civilisation.

"Note the similitudes of Vine and Vineyard in Old Testament.

"Note the Quest of the San Graal.

"Note Rabelais and _La Dive Bouteille_.

"Place yourself in imagination in a Gothic Cathedral of the thirteenth
century and assist at High Mass. Then go to the nearest Little Bethel,
and look, and listen. Consider the difference in the two buildings, in
those who worship in one and listen and criticise in the other. You have
the difference between the Inebriated and the Sober, displayed in their
works. As Little Bethel is to Tintern, so is Sobriety to Inebriation.

"Modern civilisation has advanced in many ways? Yes. Bethel has a stucco
front. This material was quite unknown to the builders of Tintern Abbey.
Advanced? What is advancement? Freedom from excesses, from
extravagances, from wild enthusiasms? Small Protestant tradesmen are
free from all these things, certainly. But is the joy of Adulteration
to be the last goal, the final Initiation of the Race of Men? _Cælumque
tueri_--to sand the sugar?

"The Flagons of the Song of Songs did not contain ginger-beer.

"But the worst of it is we shall not merely descend to the beasts. We
shall fall very far below the beasts. A black fellow is good, and a
white fellow is good. But the white fellow who 'goes Fantee' does not
become a negro--he becomes something infinitely worse, a horrible mass
of the most putrid corruption.

"If we can clear our minds of the horrible cant of our 'civilisation,'
if we can look at a modern 'industrial centre' with eyes purged of
illusions, we shall have some notion of the awful horror to which we are
descending in our effort to become as the ants and bees--creatures who
know nothing of

     CALIX INEBRIANS.

"I doubt if we can really make this effort. Blacks, Stinks, Desolations,
Poisons, Hell's Nightmare generally have, I suspect, worked themselves
into the very form and mould of our thoughts. We are sober, and perhaps
the Tavern door is shut for ever against us.

"Now and then, perhaps, at rarer and still rarer intervals, a few of us
will hear very faintly the far echoes of the holy madness within the
closed door:

    _"When up the thyrse is raised, and when the sound
    Of sacred orgies flies 'around, around.'_

"Which is the _Sonus Epulantium in Æterno Convivio_.

"But this we shall not be able to discern. Very likely we shall take the
noise of this High Choir for the horrid mirth of Hell. How strange it is
that those who are pledged officially and ceremonially, as it were, to a
Rite of Initiation which figures certainly a Feast, should in all their
thoughts and words and actions be continually blaspheming and denying
all the uses and ends of feastings and festivals.

"This is not the refusal of the _species_ for the sake of enjoying
perfectly the most beautiful and desirable _genus_; it is the renouncing
of species and genus, the pronouncing of Good to be Evil. The Universal
being denied, the Particular is degraded and defiled. What is called
'The Drink Curse' is the natural and inevitable result and sequence of
the 'Protestant Reformation.' If the clear wells and fountains of the
magic wood are buried out of sight, then men (who must have Drink) will
betake them to the Slime Ponds and Poison Pools.

"In the Graal Books there is a curse--an evil enchantment--on the land
of Logres because the mystery of the Holy Vessel is disregarded. The
Knight sees the Dripping Spear and the Shining Cup pass before him, and
says no word. He asks no question as to the end and meaning of this
ceremony. So the land is blasted and barren and songless, and those who
dwell in it are in misery.

"Every day of our lives we see the Graal carried before us in a
wonderful order, and every day we leave the question unasked, the
Mystery despised and neglected. Yet if we could ask that question,
bowing down before these Heavenly and Glorious Splendours and
Hallows--then every man should have the meat and drink that his soul
desired; the hall would be filled with odours of Paradise, with the
light of Immortality.

"In the books the Graal was at last taken away because of men's
unworthiness. So it will be, I suppose. Even now, the Quester's
adventure is a desperate one--few there be that find It.

"Ventilation and sanitation are well enough in their way. But it would
not be very satisfactory to pass the day in a ventilated and sanitated
Hell with nothing to eat or drink. If one is perishing of hunger and
thirst, sanitation seems unimportant enough.

"How wonderful, how glorious it would be if the Kingdom of the Great
Drinkers could be restored! If we could only sweep away all the might
of the Sober Ones--the factory builders, the poison makers, the
politicians, the manufacturers of bad books and bad pictures, together
with Little Bethel and the morality of Mr. Mildmay, the curate (a series
of negative propositions)--then imagine the Great Light of the Great
Inebriation shining on every face, and not any work of man's hands, from
a cathedral to a penknife, without the mark of the Tavern upon it! All
the world a great festival; every well a fountain of strong drink; every
river running with the New Wine; the Sangraal brought back from Sarras,
restored to the awful shrine of Cor-arbennic, the Oracle of the _Dive
Bouteille_ once more freely given, the ruined Vineyard flourishing once
more, girt about by shining, everlasting walls! Then we should hear the
Old Songs again, and they would dance the Old Dances, the happy,
ransomed people, Commensals and Compotators of the Everlasting Tavern."

The whole treatise, of which this extract is a fragment in a rudimentary
and imperfect stage, is, of course, an impassioned appeal for the
restoration of the quickening, exuberant imagination, not merely in art,
but in all the inmost places of life. There is more than this, too. Here
and there one can hear, as it were, the whisper and the hint of deeper
mysteries, visions of a great experiment and a great achievement to
which some men may be called. In his own words: "Within the Tavern there
is an Inner Tavern, but the door of it is visible to few indeed."

In Ambrose's mind in the after years the stout notebook was dear,
perhaps as a substitute for that aroma of the past in a phial which he
has declared so desirable an invention. It stood, not so much for what
was written in it as for the place and the circumstances in which it was
written. It recalled Little Russell Row and Nelly, and the evenings at
the Château de Chinon, where, night by night, they served still
stranger, more delicious meats, and the red wine revealed more clearly
its high celestial origin. One evening was diversified by an odd
encounter.

A middle-aged man, sitting at an adjoining table, was evidently in want
of matches, and Ambrose handed his box with the sympathetic smile which
one smoker gives to another in such cases. The man--he had a black
moustache and a small, pointed beard--thanked him in fluent English with
a French accent, and they began to talk of casual things, veering, by
degrees, in the direction of the arts. The Frenchman smiled at Meyrick's
enthusiasm.

"What a life you have before you!" he said. "Don't you know that the
populace always hates the artist--and kills him if it can? You are an
artist and mystic, too. What a fate!

"Yes; but it is that applause, that _réclame_ that comes after the
artist is dead," he went on, replying to some objection of Ambrose's;
"it is that which is the worst cruelty of all. It is fine for Burns, is
it not, that his stupid compatriots have not ceased to utter follies
about him for the last eighty years? Scotchmen? But they should be
ashamed to speak his name! And Keats, and how many others in my country
and in yours and in all countries? The imbeciles are not content to
calumniate, to persecute, to make wretched the artist in his lifetime.
They follow him with their praise to the grave--the grave that they have
digged! Praise of the populace! Praise of a race of pigs! For, you see,
while they are insulting the dead with their compliments they are at the
same time insulting the living with their abuse."

He dropped into silence; from his expression he seemed to be cursing
"the populace" with oaths too frightful to be uttered. He rose suddenly
and turned to Ambrose.

"Artist--and mystic. Yes. You will probably be crucified. Good
evening ... and a fine martyrdom to you!"

He was gone with a charming smile and a delightful bow to "Madame."
Ambrose looked after him with a puzzled face; his last words had called
up some memory that he could not capture; and then suddenly he
recollected the old, ragged Irish fiddler, the player of strange
fantasies under the tree in the outskirts of Lupton. He thought of his
phrase about "red martyrdom"; it was an odd coincidence.


IV

The phrases kept recurring to his mind after they had gone out, and as
they wandered through the lighted streets with all their strange and
variegated show, with glittering windows and glittering lamps, with the
ebb and flow of faces, the voices and the laughter, the surging crowds
about the theatre doors, the flashing hansoms and the omnibuses
lumbering heavily along to strange regions, such as Turnham Green and
Castlenau, Cricklewood and Stoke Newington--why, they were as unknown as
cities in Cathay!

It was a dim, hot night; all the great city smoked as with a mist, and a
tawny moon rose through films of cloud far in the vista of the east.
Ambrose thought with a sudden recollection that the moon, that world of
splendour, was shining in a farther land, on the coast of the wild
rocks, on the heaving sea, on the faery apple-garths in Avalon, where,
though the apples are always golden, yet the blossoms of enchantment
never fade, but hang for ever against the sky.

They were passing a half-lit street, and these dreams were broken by the
sudden clanging, rattling music of a piano-organ. For a moment they saw
the shadowy figures of the children as they flitted to and fro, dancing
odd measures in the rhythm of the tune. Then they came into a long,
narrow way with a church spire in the distance, and near the church they
passed the "church-shop"--Roman, evidently, from the subjects and the
treatment of the works of art on view. But it was strange! In the middle
of the window was a crude, glaring statue of some saint. He was in
bright red robes, sprinkled with golden stars; the blood rained down
from a wound in his forehead, and with one hand he drew the scarlet
vestment aside and pointed to the dreadful gash above his heart, and
from this, again, the bloody drops fell thick. The colours stared and
shrieked, and yet, through the bad, cheap art there seemed to shine a
rapture that was very near to beauty; the thing expressed was so great
that it had to a certain extent overcome the villainy of the expression.

They wandered vaguely, after their custom. Ambrose was silent; he was
thinking of Avalon and "Red Martyrdom" and the Frenchman's parting
salutation, of the vision in one of the old books, "the Man clothed in
a robe redder and more shining than burning fire, and his feet and his
hands and his face were of a like flame, and five angels in fiery
vesture stood about him, and at the feet of the Man the ground was
covered with a ruddy dew."

They passed under an old church tower that rose white in the moonlight
above them. The air had cleared, the mist had floated away, and now the
sky glowed violet, and the white stones of the classic spirit shone on
high. From it there came suddenly a tumult of glad sound, exultant bells
in ever-changing order, pealing out as if to honour some great victory,
so that the mirth of the street below became but a trivial restless
noise. He thought of some passage that he had read but could not
distinctly remember: a ship was coming back to its haven after a weary
and tempestuous voyage over many dreadful seas, and those on board saw
the tumult in the city as their sails were sighted; heard afar the
shouts of gladness from the rejoicing people; heard the bells from all
the spires and towers break suddenly into triumphant chorus, sounding
high above the washing of the waves.

Ambrose roused himself from his dreams. They had been walking in a
circle and had returned almost to the street of the Château, though,
their knowledge of the district being of an unscientific character,
they were under the impression that they were a mile or so away from
that particular point. As it happened, they had not entered this street
before, and they were charmed at the sudden appearance of stained glass
lighted up from within. The colour was rich and good; there were
flourished scrolls and grotesques in the Renaissance manner, many
emblazoned shields in ruby and gold and azure; and the centre-piece
showed the Court of the Beer King--a jovial and venerable figure
attended by a host of dwarfs and kobolds, all holding on high enormous
mugs of beer. They went in boldly and were glad. It was the famous
"Three Kings" in its golden and unreformed days, but this they knew not.
The room was of moderate size, very low, with great dark beams in the
white ceiling. White were the walls; on the plaster, black-letter texts
with vermilion initials praised the drinker's art, and more kobolds, in
black and red, loomed oddly in unsuspected corners. The lighting,
presumably, was gas, but all that was visible were great antique
lanterns depending from iron hooks, and through their dull green glass
only a dim radiance fell upon the heavy oak tables and the drinkers.
From the middle beam an enormous bouquet of fresh hops hung on high;
there was a subdued murmur of talk, and now and then the clatter of the
lid of a mug, as fresh beer was ordered. In one corner there was
a kind of bar; behind it a couple of grim women--the kobolds
apparently--performed their office; and above, on a sort of rack, hung
mugs and tankards of all sizes and of all fantasies. There were plain
mugs of creamy earthenware, mugs gaudily and oddly painted with
garlanded goats, with hunting scenes, with towering castles, with
flaming posies of flowers. Then some friend of the drunken, some sage
who had pried curiously into the secrets of thirst, had made a series of
wonders in glass, so shining and crystalline that to behold them was as
if one looked into a well, for every glitter of the facets gave promise
of satisfaction. There were the mugs, capacious and very deep, crowned
for the most part not with mere plain lids of common use and make, but
with tall spires in pewter, richly ornamented, evident survivals from
the Middle Ages. Ambrose's eyes glistened; the place was altogether as
he would have designed it. Nelly, too, was glad to sit down, for they
had walked longer than usual. She was refreshed by a glass of some cool
drink with a borage flower and a cherry floating in it, and Ambrose
ordered a mug of beer.

It is not known how many of these _krugs_ he emptied. It was, as has
been noted, a sultry night, and the streets were dusty, and that glass
of Benedictine after dinner rather evokes than dismisses the demon of
thirst. Still, Munich beer is no hot and rebellious drink, so the causes
of what followed must probably be sought for in other springs. Ambrose
took a deep draught, gazed upward to the ceiling, and ordered another
mug of beer for himself and some more of the cool and delicate and
flowery beverage for Nelly. When the drink was set upon the board, he
thus began, without title or preface:

"You must know, Nelly dear," he said, "that the marriage of Panurge,
which fell out in due time (according to the oracle and advice of the
Holy Bottle), was by no means a fortunate one. For, against all the
counsel of Pantagruel and of Friar John, and indeed of all his friends,
Panurge married in a fit of spleen and obstinacy the crooked and
squinting daughter of the little old man who sold green sauce in the Rue
Quincangrogne at Tours--you will see the very place in a few days, and
then you will understand everything. You do not understand that? My
child, that is impiety, since it accuses the Zeitgest, who is certainly
the only god that ever existed, as you will see more fully demonstrated
in Huxley and Spencer and all the leading articles in all the leading
newspapers. _Quod erat demonstrandum._ To be still more precise: You
must know that when I am dead, and a very great man indeed, many
thousands of people will come from all the quarters of the globe--not
forgetting the United States--to Lupton. They will come and stare very
hard at the Old Grange, which will have an inscription about me on the
wall; they will spend hours in High School; they will walk all round
Playing Fields; they will cut little bits off 'brooks' and 'quarries.'
Then they will view the Sulphuric Acid works, the Chemical Manure
factory and the Free Library, and whatever other stink-pots and
cesspools Lupton town may contain; they will finally enjoy the view of
the Midland Railway Goods Station. Then they will say: '_Now_ we
understand him; _now_ one sees how he got all his inspiration in that
lovely old school and the wonderful English country-side.' So you see
that when I show you the Rue Quincangrogne you will perfectly understand
this history. Let us drink; the world shall never be drowned again, so
have no fear.

"Well, the fact remains that Panurge, having married this hideous wench
aforesaid, was excessively unhappy. It was in vain that he argued with
his wife in all known languages and in some that are unknown, for, as
she said, she only knew two languages, the one of Touraine and the other
of the Stick, and this second she taught Panurge _per modum
passionis_--that is by beating him, and this so thoroughly that poor
Pilgarlic was sore from head to foot. He was a worthy little fellow,
but the greatest coward that ever breathed. Believe me, illustrious
drinkers and most precious.... Nelly, never was man so wretched as this
Panurge since Paradise fell from Adam. This is the true doctrine; I
heard it when I was at Eleusis. You enquire what was the matter? Why, in
the first place, this vile wretch whom they all called--so much did they
hate her--La Vie Mortale, or Deadly Life, this vile wretch, I say: what
do you think that she did when the last note of the fiddles had sounded
and the wedding guests had gone off to the 'Three Lampreys' to kill a
certain worm--the which worm is most certainly immortal, since it is not
dead yet! Well, then, what did Madame Panurge? Nothing but this: She
robbed her excellent and devoted husband of all that he had. Doubtless
you remember how, in the old days, Panurge had played ducks and drakes
with the money that Pantagruel had given him, so that he borrowed on his
corn while it was still in the ear, and before it was sown, if we
enquire a little more closely. In truth, the good little man never had a
penny to bless himself withal, for the which cause Pantagruel loved him
all the more dearly. So that when the Dive Bouteille gave its oracle,
and Panurge chose his spouse, Pantagruel showed how preciously he
esteemed a hearty spender by giving him such a treasure that the
goldsmiths who live under the bell of St. Gatien still talk of it before
they dine, because by doing so their mouths water, and these salivary
secretions are of high benefit to the digestion: read on this, Galen. If
you would know how great and glorious this treasure was, you must go to
the Library of the Archevêché at Tours, where they will show you a vast
volume bound in pigskin, the name of which I have forgotten. But this
book is nothing else than the list of all the wonders and glories of
Pantagruel's wedding present to Panurge; it contains surprising things,
I can tell you, for, in good coin of the realm alone, never was gift
that might compare with it; and besides the common money there were
ancient pieces, the very names of which are now incomprehensible, and
incomprehensible they will remain till the coming of the Coqcigrues.
There was, for instance, a great gold Sol, a world in itself, as some
said truly, and I know not how many myriad myriad of Étoiles, all of the
finest silver that was ever minted, and Anges-Gardiens, which the
learned think must have been first coined at Angers, though others will
have it that they were the same as our Angels; and, as for Roses de
Paradis and Couronnes Immortelles, I believe he had as many of them as
ever he would. Beauties and joys he was to keep for pocket-money; small
change is sometimes great gain. And, as I say, no sooner had Panurge
married that accursed daughter of the Rue Quincangrogne than she robbed
him of everything, down to the last brass farthing. The fact is that the
woman was a witch; she was also something else which I leave out for the
present. But, if you will believe me, she cast such a spell upon Panurge
that he thought himself an absolute beggar. Thus he would look at his
Sol d'Or and say: 'What is the use of that? It is only a great bright
lump: I can see it every day.' Then when they said, 'But how about those
Anges-Gardiens?' he would reply, 'Where are they? Have you seen them?
_I_ never see them. Show them to me,' and so with all else; and all the
while that villain of a woman beat, thumped and belaboured him so that
the tears were always in his eyes, and they say you could hear him
howling all over the world. Everybody said that he had made a pretty
mess of it, and would come to a bad end.

"Luckily for him, this ... witch of a wife of his would sometimes doze
off for a few minutes, and then he had a little peace, and he would
wonder what had become of all the gay girls and gracious ladies that he
had known in old times--for he had played the devil with the women in
his day and could have taught Ovid lessons in _arte amoris_. Now, of
course, it was as much as his life was worth to mention the very name
of one of these ladies, and as for any little sly visits, stolen
endearments, hidden embraces, or any small matters of that kind, it was
_good-bye, I shall see you next Nevermas_. Nor was this all, but worse
remains behind; and it is my belief that it is the thought of what I am
going to tell you that makes the wind wail and cry of winter nights, and
the clouds weep, and the sky look black; for in truth it is the greatest
sorrow that ever was since the beginning of the world. I must out with
it quick, or I shall never have done: in plain English, and as true as I
sit here drinking good ale, not one drop or minim or drachm or
pennyweight of drink had Panurge tasted since the day of his wedding! He
had implored mercy, he had told her how he had served Gargantua and
Pantagruel and had got into the habit of drinking in his sleep, and his
wife had merely advised him to go to the devil--she was not going to let
him so much as look at the nasty stuff. '"Touch not, taste not, smell
not," is my motto,' said she. She gave him a blue ribbon, which she said
would make up for it. 'What do you want with Drink?' said she. 'Go and
do business instead, it's much better for you.'

"Sad, then, and sorry enough was the estate of poor Panurge. At last, so
wretched did he become, that he took advantage of one of his wife's
dozes and stole away to the good Pantagruel, and told him the whole
story--and a very bad one it was--so that the tears rolled down
Pantagruel's cheeks from sheer grief, and each teardrop contained
exactly one hundred and eighteen gallons of aqueous fluid, according to
the calculations of the best geometers. The great man saw that the case
was a desperate one, and Heaven knew, he said, whether it could be
mended or not; but certain it was that a business such as this could not
be settled in a hurry, since it was not like a game at shove-ha'penny to
be got over between two gallons of wine. He therefore counselled Panurge
to have patience and bear with his wife for a few thousand years, and in
the meantime they would see what could be done. But, lest his patience
should wear out, he gave him an odd drug or medicine, prepared by the
great artist of the Mountains of Cathay, and this he was to drop into
his wife's glass--for though he might have no drink, she was drunk three
times a day, and she would sleep all the longer, and leave him awhile in
peace. This Panurge very faithfully performed, and got a little rest now
and again, and they say that while that devil of a woman snored and
snorted he was able, by odd chances once or twice, to get hold of a drop
of the right stuff--good old Stingo from the big barrel--which he lapped
up as eagerly as a kitten laps cream. Others there be who declare that
once or twice he got about his sad old tricks, while his ugly wife was
sleeping in the sun; the women on the Maille make no secret of their
opinion that his old mistress, Madame Sophia, was seen stealing in and
out of the house as slyly as you please, and God knows what goes on when
the door is shut. But the Tourainians were always sad gossips, and one
must not believe all that one hears. I leave out the flat
scandal-mongers who are bold enough to declare that he kept one mistress
at Jerusalem, another at Eleusis, another in Egypt and about as many as
are contained in the seraglio of the Grand Turk, scattered up and down
in the towns and villages of Asia; but I do believe there was some
kissing in dark corners, and a curtain hung across one room in the house
could tell odd tales. Nevertheless, La Vie Mortale (a pest on her!) was
more often awake than asleep, and when she was awake Panurge's case was
worse than ever. For, you see, the woman was no piece of a fool, and she
saw sure enough that something was going on. The Stingo in the barrel
was lower than of rights, and more than once she had caught her husband
looking almost happy, at which she beat the house about his ears. Then,
another time, Madame Sophia dropped her ring, and again this sweet lady
came one morning so strongly perfumed that she scented the whole place,
and when La Vie woke up it smelt like a church. There was fine work
then, I promise you; the people heard the bangs and curses and shrieks
and groans as far as Amboise on the one side and Luynes on the other;
and that year the Loire rose ten feet higher than the banks on account
of Panurge's tears. As a punishment, she made him go and be industrial,
and he built ten thousand stink-pot factories with twenty thousand
chimneys, and all the leaves and trees and green grass and flowers in
the world were blackened and died, and all the waters were poisoned so
that there were no perch in the Loire, and salmon fetched forty sols the
pound at Chinon market. As for the men and women, they became yellow
apes and listened to a codger named Calvin, who told them they would all
be damned eternally (except himself and his friends), and they found his
doctrine very comforting, and probable too, since they had the sense to
know that they were more than half damned already. I don't know whether
Panurge's fate was worse on this occasion or on another when his wife
found a book in his writing, full from end to end of poetry; some of it
about the wonderful treasure that Pantagruel had given him, which he was
supposed to have forgotten. Some of it verses to those old
light-o'-loves of his, with a whole epic in praise of his
mistress-in-chief, Sophia. Then, indeed, there was the very deuce to
pay; it was bread and water, stripes and torment, all day long, and La
Vie swore a great oath that if he ever did it again he should be sent to
spend the rest of his life in Manchester, whereupon he fell into a swoon
from horrid fright and lay like a log, so that everybody thought he was
dead.

"All this while the great Pantagruel was not idle. Perceiving how
desperate the matter was, he summoned the Thousand and First Great
OEcumenical Council of all the sages of the wide world, and when the
fathers had come, and had heard High Mass at St. Gatien's, the session
was opened in a pavilion in the meadows by the Loire just under the
Lanterne of Roche Corbon, whence this Council is always styled the great
and holy Council of the Lantern. If you want to know where the place is
you can do so very easily, for there is a choice tavern on the spot
where the pavilion stood, and there you may have _malelotte_ and
_friture_ and amber wine of Vouvray, better than in any tavern in
Touraine. As for the history of the acts of this great Council, it is
still a-writing, and so far only two thousand volumes in elephant folio
have been printed _sub signo Lucernæ cum permissu superiorum_. However,
as it is necessary to be brief, it may be said that the holy fathers of
the Lantern, after having heard the whole case as it was exposed to
them by the great clerks of Pantagruel, having digested all the
arguments, looked into the precedents, applied themselves to the
doctrine, explored the hidden wisdom, consulted the Canons, searched the
Scriptures, divided the dogma, distinguished the distinctions and
answered the questions, resolved with one voice that there was no help
in the world for Panurge, save only this: he must forthwith achieve the
most high, noble and glorious quest of the Sangraal, for no other way
was there under heaven by which he might rid himself of that pestilent
wife of his, La Vie Mortale.

"And on some other occasion," said Ambrose, "you may hear of the last
voyage of Panurge to the Glassy Isle of the Holy Graal, of the
incredible adventures that he achieved, of the dread perils through
which he passed, of the great wonders and marvels and compassions of the
way, of the manner in which he received the title Plentyn y Tonau, which
signifies 'Child of the Waterfloods,' and how at last he gloriously
attained the vision of the Sangraal, and was most happily translated out
of the power of La Vie Mortale."

"And where is he now?" said Nelly, who had found the tale interesting
but obscure.

"It is not precisely known--opinions vary. But there are two odd things:
one is that he is exactly like that man in the red dress whose statue
we saw in the shop window to-night; and the other is that from that day
to this he has never been sober for a single minute.

    "_Calix meus inebrians quam præclarus est!_"


V

Ambrose took a great draught from the mug and emptied it, and forthwith
rapped the lid for a fresh supply. Nelly was somewhat nervous; she was
afraid he might begin to sing, for there were extravagances in the
history of Panurge which seemed to her to be of alcoholic source.
However, he did not sing; he lapsed into silence, gazing at the dark
beams, the hanging hops, the bright array of the tankards and the groups
of drinkers dotted about the room. At a neighbouring table two Germans
were making a hearty meal, chumping the meat and smacking their lips in
a kind of heavy ecstasy. He had but little German, but he caught scraps
of the conversation.

One man said:

"Heavenly swine cutlets!"

And the other answered:

"Glorious eating!"

"Nelly," said Ambrose, "I have a great inspiration!"

She trembled visibly.

"Yes; I have talked so much that I am hungry. We will have some supper."

They looked over the list of strange eatables and, with the waiter's
help, decided on Leberwurst and potato-salad as light and harmless. With
this they ate crescent loaves, sprinkled with caraway seeds: there was
more Munich Lion-Brew and more flowery drink, with black coffee, a
_fine_ and a Maraschino to end all. For Nelly the kobolds began to
perform a grotesque and mystic dance in the shadows, the glass tankards
on the rack glittered strangely, the white walls with the red and black
texts retreated into vast distances, and the bouquet of hops seemed
suspended from a remote star. As for Ambrose, he was certainly not
_ebrius_ according to the Baron's definition; he was hardly _ebriolus_;
but he was sensible, let us say, of a certain quickening of the fancy,
of a more vivid and poignant enjoyment of the whole situation, of the
unutterable gaiety of this mad escape from the conventions of Lupton.

"It was a Thursday night," said Ambrose in the after years, "and we were
thinking of starting for Touraine either the next morning or on Saturday
at latest. It will always be bright in my mind, that picture--the low
room with the oak beams, the glittering tankards, the hops hanging from
the ceiling, and Nelly sitting before me sipping the scented drink from
a green glass. It was the last night of gaiety, and even then gaiety was
mixed with odd patterns--the Frenchman's talk about martyrdom, and the
statue of the saint pointing to the marks of his passion, standing in
that dyed vesture with his rapt, exultant face; and then the song of
final triumph and deliverance that rang out on the chiming bells from
the white spire. I think the contrast of this solemn undertone made my
heart all the lighter; I was in that odd state in which one delights to
know that one is not being understood--so I told poor Nelly 'the story
of Panurge's marriage to La Vie Mortale; I am sure she thought I was
drunk!

"We went home in a hansom, and agreed that we would have just one
cigarette and then go to bed. It was settled that we would catch the
night boat to Dieppe on the next day, and we both laughed with joy at
the thought of the adventure. And then--I don't know how it was--Nelly
began to tell me all about herself. She had never said a word before; I
had never asked her--I never ask anybody about their past lives. What
does it matter? You know a certain class of plot--novelists are rather
fond of using it--in which the hero's happiness is blasted because he
finds out that the life of his wife or his sweetheart has not always
been spotless as the snow. Why should it be spotless as the snow? What
is the hero that he should be dowered with the love of virgins of
Paradise? I call it cant--all that--and I hate it; I hope Angel Clare
was eventually entrapped by a young person from Piccadilly Circus--she
would probably be much too good for him! So, you see, I was hardly
likely to have put any very searching questions to Nelly; we had other
things to talk about.

"But this night I suppose she was a bit excited. It had been a wild and
wonderful week. The transition from that sewage-pot in the Midlands to
the Abbey of Theleme was enough to turn any head; we had laughed till we
had grown dizzy. The worst of that miserable school discipline is is
that it makes one take an insane and quite disproportionate enjoyment in
little things, in the merest trifles which ought really to be accepted
as a matter of course. I assure you that every minute that I spent in
bed after seven o'clock was to me a grain of Paradise, a moment of
delight. Of course, it's ridiculous; let a man get up early or get up
late, as he likes or as he finds best--and say no more about it. But at
that wretched Lupton early rising was part of the infernal blether and
blatter of the place, that made life there like a long dinner in which
every dish has the same sauce. It may be a good sauce enough; but one
is sick of the taste of it. According to our Bonzes there, getting up
early on a winter's day was a high virtue which acquired merit. I
believe I should have liked a hard chair to sit in of my own free will,
if one of our old fools--Palmer--had not always been gabbling about the
horrid luxury of some boys who had arm-chairs in their studies. Unless
you were doing something or other to make yourself very uncomfortable,
he used to say you were like the 'later Romans.' I am sure he believed
that those lunatics who bathe in the Serpentine on Christmas Day would
go straight to heaven!

"And there you are. I would awake at seven o'clock from persistent
habit, and laugh as I realised that I was in Little Russell Row and not
at the Old Grange. Then I would doze off again and wake up at
intervals--eight, nine, ten--and chuckle to myself with ever-increasing
enjoyment. It was just the same with smoking. I don't suppose I should
have touched a cigarette for years if smoking had not been one of the
mortal sins in our Bedlam Decalogue. I don't know whether smoking is bad
for boys or not; I should think not, as I believe the Dutch--who are
sturdy fellows--begin to puff fat cigars at the age of six or
thereabouts; but I do know that those pompous old boobies and blockheads
and leather-skulls have discovered exactly the best way to make a boy
think that a packet of Rosebuds represents the quintessence of frantic
delight.

"Well, you see how it was, how Little Russell Row--the dingy, the
stuffy, the dark retreat of old Bloomsbury--became the abode of
miraculous joys, a bright portion of fairyland. Ah! it was a strong new
wine that we tasted, and it went to our heads, and not much wonder. It
all rose to its height on that Thursday night when we went to the 'Three
Kings' and sat beneath the hop bush, drinking Lion-Brew and flowery
drink as I talked extravagances concerning Panurge. It was time for the
curtain to be rung down on our comedy.

"The one cigarette had become three or four when Nelly began to tell me
her history; the wine and the rejoicing had got into her head also. She
described the first things that she remembered: a little hut among wild
hills and stony fields in the west of Ireland, and the great sea roaring
on the shore but a mile away, and the wind and the rain always driving
from across the waves. She spoke of the place as if she loved it, though
her father and mother were as poor as they could be, and little was
there to eat even in the old cabin. She remembered Mass in the little
chapel, an old, old place hidden way in the most desolate part of the
country, small and dark and bare enough except for the candles on the
altar and a bright statue or two. St. Kieran's cell, they called it, and
it was supposed that the Mass had never ceased to be said there even in
the blackest days of persecution. Quite well she remembered the old
priest and his vestments, and the gestures that he used, and how they
all bowed down when the bell rang; she could imitate his quavering voice
saying the Latin. Her own father, she said, was a learned man in his
way, though it was not the English way. He could not read common print,
or write; he knew nothing about printed books, but he could say a lot of
the old Irish songs and stories by heart, and he had sticks on which he
wrote poems on all sorts of things, cutting notches on the wood in
Oghams, as the priest called them; and he could tell many wonderful
tales of the saints and the people. It was a happy life altogether; they
were as poor as poor could be, and praised God and wanted for nothing.
Then her mother went into a decline and died, and her father never
lifted up his head again, and she was left an orphan when she was nine
years old. The priest had written to an aunt who lived in England, and
so she found herself one black day standing on the platform of the
station in a horrible little manufacturing village in Lancashire;
everything was black--the sky and the earth, and the houses and the
people; and the sound of their rough, harsh voices made her sick. And
the aunt had married an Independent and turned Protestant, so she was
black, too, Nelly thought. She was wretched for a long time, she said.
The aunt was kind enough to her, but the place and the people were so
awful. Mr. Deakin, the husband, said he couldn't encourage Popery in his
house, so she had to go to the meeting-house on Sunday and listen to the
nonsense they called 'religion'--all long sermons with horrible
shrieking hymns. By degrees she forgot her old prayers, and she was
taken to the Dissenters' Sunday School, where they learned texts and
heard about King Solomon's Temple, and Jonadab the son of Rechab, and
Jezebel, and the Judges. They seemed to think a good deal of her at the
school; she had several prizes for Bible knowledge.

"She was sixteen when she first went out to service. She was glad to get
away--nothing could be worse than Farnworth, and it might be better. And
then there were tales to tell! I never have had a clearer light thrown
on the curious and disgusting manners of the lower middle-class in
England--the class that prides itself especially on its respectability,
above all, on what it calls 'Morality'--by which it means the observance
of one particular commandment. You know the class I mean: the brigade of
the shining hat on Sunday, of the neat little villa with a well-kept
plot in front, of the consecrated drawing-room, of the big Bible well in
evidence. It is more often Chapel than Church, this tribe, but it draws
from both sources. It is above all things shiny--not only the Sunday
hat, but the furniture, the linoleum, the hair and the very flesh which
pertain to these people have an unwholesome polish on them; and they
prefer their plants and shrubs to be as glossy as possible--this _gens
lubrica_.

"To these tents poor Nelly went as a slave; she dwelt from henceforth on
the genteel outskirts of more or less prosperous manufacturing towns,
and she soon profoundly regretted the frank grime and hideousness of
Farnworth. A hedgehog is a rough and prickly fellow--better his prickles
than the reptile's poisonous slime. The tales that yet await the
novelist who has courage (what is his name, by the way?), who has the
insight to see behind those Venetian blinds and white curtains, who has
the word that can give him entrance through the polished door by the
encaustic porch! What plots, what pictures, what characters are ready
for his cunning hand, what splendid matter lies unknown, useless, and
indeed offensive, which, in the artist's crucible, would be transmuted
into golden and exquisite perfection. Do you know that I can never
penetrate into the regions where these people dwell without a thrill of
wonder and a great desire that I might be called to execute the
masterpieces I have hinted at? Do you remember how Zola, viewing these
worlds from the train when he visited London, groaned because he had no
English, because he had no key to open the treasure-house before his
eyes? He, of course, who was a great diviner, saw the infinite variety
of romance that was concealed beneath those myriads of snug commonplace
roofs: I wish he could have observed in English and recorded in French.
He was a brave man, his defence of Dreyfus shows that; but, supposing
the capacity, I do not think he was brave enough to tell the London
suburbs the truth about themselves in their own tongue.

"Yes, I walk down these long ways on Sunday afternoons, when they are at
their best. Sometimes, if you choose the right hour, you may look into
one 'breakfast room'--an apartment half sunken in the earth--after
another, and see in each one the table laid for tea, showing the
charming order and uniformity that prevail. Tea in the drawing-room
would be, I suppose, a desecration. I wonder what would happen if some
chance guest were to refuse tea and to ask for a glass of beer, or even
a brandy and soda? I suppose the central lake that lies many hundreds of
feet beneath London would rise up, and the sinful town would be
overwhelmed. Yes: consider these houses well; how demure, how
well-ordered, how shining, as I have said; and then think of what they
conceal.

"Generally speaking, you know, 'morality' (in the English suburban
sense) has been a tolerably equal matter. I shouldn't imagine that those
'later Romans' that poor old Palmer was always bothering about were much
better or worse than the earlier Babylonians; and London as a whole is
very much the same thing in this respect as Pekin as a whole. Modern
Berlin and sixteenth-century Venice might compete on equal terms--save
that Venice, I am sure, was very picturesque, and Berlin, I have no
doubt is very piggy. The fact is, of course (to use a simple analogy),
man, by his nature, is always hungry, and, that being the case, he will
sometimes eat too much dinner and sometimes he will get his dinner in
odd ways, and sometimes he will help himself to more or less unlawful
snacks before breakfast and after supper. There it is, and there is an
end of it. But suppose a society in which the fact of hunger was
officially denied, in which the faintest hint at an empty stomach was
considered the rankest, most abominable indecency, the most detestable
offence against the most sacred religious feelings? Suppose the child
severely reprimanded at the mere mention of bread and butter, whipped
and shut up in a dark room for the offence of reading a recipe for
making plum pudding; suppose, I say, a whole society organised on the
strict official understanding that no decent person ever is or has been
or can be conscious of the physical want of food; that breakfast, lunch,
tea, dinner and supper are orgies only used by the most wicked and
degraded wretches, destined to an awful and eternal doom? In such a
world, I think, you would discover some very striking irregularities in
diet. Facts are known to be stubborn things, but if their very existence
is denied they become ferocious and terrible things. Coventry Patmore
was angry, and with reason, when he heard that even at the Vatican the
statues had received the order of the fig-leaf.

"Nelly went among these Manichees. She had been to the world beyond the
Venetians, the white muslin curtains and the india-rubber plant, and she
told me her report. They talk about the morality of the theatre, these
swine! In the theatre--if there is anything of the kind--it is a case of
a wastrel and a wanton who meet and part on perfectly equal terms,
without deceit or false pretences. It is not a case of master creeping
into a young girl's room at dead of night, with a Bible under his
arm--the said Bible being used with grotesque skill to show that
'master's' wishes must be at once complied with under pain of severe
punishment, not only in this world, but in the world to come. Every
Sunday, you must remember, the girl has seen 'master' perhaps crouching
devoutly in his pew, perhaps in the part of sidesman or even
church-warden, more probably supplementing the gifts of the pastor at
some nightmarish meeting-house. 'Master' offers prayer with wonderful
fervour; he speaks to the Lord as man to man; in the emotional passages
his voice gets husky, and everybody says how good he is. He is a deacon,
a guardian of the poor (gracious title!), a builder and an earnest
supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society: in a word, he is of
the great middle-class, the backbone of England and of the Protestant
Religion. He subscribes to the excellent society which prosecutes
booksellers for selling the Decameron of Boccaccio. He has from ten to
fifteen children, all of whom were found by Mamma in the garden.

"'Mr. King was a horrible man,' said Nelly, describing her first place;
'he had a great greasy pale face with red whiskers, and a shiny bald
head; he was fat, too, and when he smiled it made one feel sick. Soon
after I got the place he came into the kitchen. Missus was away for
three days, and the children were all in bed. He sat down by the hearth
and asked whether I was saved, and did I love the Lord as I ought to,
and if I ever had any bad thoughts about young men? Then he opened the
Bible and read me nasty things from the Old Testament, and asked if I
understood what it meant. I said I didn't know, and he said we must
approach the Lord in prayer so that we might have grace to search the
Scriptures together. I had to kneel down close to him, and he put his
arm round my waist and began to pray, as he called it; and when we got
up he took me on his knee and said he felt to me as if I were his own
daughter.'

"There, that is enough of Mr. King. You can imagine what the poor child
had to go through time after time. On prayer-meeting nights she used to
put the chest of drawers against her bedroom door: there would be
gentle, cautious pushes, and then a soft voice murmuring: 'My child, why
is your heart so bad and stubborn?' I think we can conceive the general
character of 'master' from these examples. 'Missus,' of course, requires
a treatise to herself; her more frequent failings are child-torture,
secret drinking and low amours with oily commercial travellers.

"Yes, it is a hideous world enough, isn't it? And isn't it a pleasant
thought that you and I practically live under the government of these
people? 'Master' is the 'man in the street,' the 'hard-headed,
practical man of the world,' 'the descendant of the sturdy Puritans,'
whose judgment is final on all questions from Poetics to Liturgiology.
We hardly think that this picture will commend itself to the 'man in the
street'--a course of action that is calculated to alienate practical
men. Pleasant, isn't it? _Suburbia locuta est: causa finita est._

"I suppose that, by nature, these people would not be so very much more
depraved than the ordinary African black fellow. Their essential
hideousness comes, I take it, from their essential and most abominable
hypocrisy. You know how they are always prating about Bible
Teaching--the 'simple morality of the Gospel,' and all that nauseous
stuff? And what would be the verdict, in this suburban world, on a man
who took no thought for the morrow, who regulated his life by the
example of the lilies, who scoffed at the idea of saving money? You know
perfectly well that his relations would have him declared a lunatic.
_There_ is the villainy. If you are continually professing an idolatrous
and unctuous devotion to a body of teaching which you are also
persistently and perpetually disregarding and disobeying in its
plainest, most simple, most elementary injunctions, well, you will soon
interest anglers in search of bait.

"Yes, such is the world behind the india-rubber plant into which Nelly
entered. I believe she repelled the advances of 'master' with success.
Her final undoing came from a different quarter, and I am afraid that
drugs, not Biblical cajoleries, were the instruments used. She cried
bitterly when she spoke of this event, but she said, too; 'I will kill
him for it!' It was an ugly story, and a sad one, alas!--the saddest
tale I ever listened to. Think of it: to come from that old cabin on the
wild, bare hills, from the sound of the great sea, from the pure breath
of the waves and the wet salt wind, to the stenches and the poisons of
our 'industrial centres.' She came from parents who had nothing and
possessed all things, to our civilisation which has everything, and lies
on the dung-heap that it has made at the very gates of Heaven--destitute
of all true treasures, full of sores and vermin and corruption. She was
nurtured on the wonderful old legends of the saints and the fairies; she
had listened to the songs that her father made and cut in Oghams; and we
gave her the penny novelette and the works of Madame Chose. She had
knelt before the altar, adoring the most holy sacrifice of the Mass; now
she knelt beside 'master' while he approached the Lord in prayer,
licking his fat white lips. I can imagine no more terrible transition.

"I do not know how or why it happened, but as I listened to Nelly's
tale my eyes were opened to my own work and my own deeds, and I saw for
the first time my wickedness. I should despair of explaining to anyone
how utterly innocent I had been in intention all the while, how far I
was from any deliberate design of guilt. In a sense, I was learned, and
yet, in a sense, I was most ignorant; I had been committing what is,
doubtless a grievous sin, under the impression that I was enjoying the
greatest of all mysteries and graces and blessings--the great natural
sacrament of human life.

"Did I not know I was doing wrong? I knew that if any of the masters
found me with Nelly I should get into sad trouble. Certainly I knew
that. But if any of the masters had caught me smoking a cigarette, or
saying 'damn,' or going into a public-house to get a glass of beer, or
using a crib, or reading Rabelais, I should have got into sad trouble
also. I knew that I was sinning against the 'tone' of the great Public
School; you may imagine how deeply I felt the guilt of such an offence
as that! And, of course, I had heard the boys telling their foolish
indecencies; but somehow their nasty talk and their filthy jokes were
not in any way connected in my mind with my love of Nelly--no more,
indeed, than midnight darkness suggests daylight, or torment symbolises
pleasure. Indeed, there was a hint--a dim intuition--deep down in my
consciousness that all was not well; but I knew of no reason for this; I
held it a morbid dream, the fantasy of an imagination over-exalted,
perhaps; I would not listen to a faint voice that seemed without sense
or argument.

"And now that voice was ringing in my ears with the clear, resonant and
piercing summons of a trumpet; I saw myself arraigned far down beside
the pestilent horde of whom I have just spoken; and, indeed, my sin was
worse than theirs, for I had been bred in light, and they in darkness.
All heedless, without knowledge, without preparation, without receiving
the mystic word, I had stumbled into the shrine, uninitiated I had
passed beyond the veil and gazed upon the hidden mystery, on the secret
glory that is concealed from the holy angels. Woe and great sorrow were
upon me, as if a priest, devoutly offering the sacrifice, were suddenly
to become aware that he was uttering, all inadvertently, hideous and
profane blasphemies, summoning Satan in place of the Holy Spirit. I hid
my face in my hands and cried out in my anguish.

"Do you know that I think Nelly was in a sense relieved when I tried to
tell her of my mistake, as I called it; even though I said, as gently as
I could, that it was all over. She was relieved, because for the first
time she felt quite sure that I was altogether in my senses; I can
understand it. My whole attitude must have struck her as bordering on
insanity, for, of course, from first to last I had never for a moment
taken up the position of the unrepentant but cheerful sinner, who knows
that he is being a sad dog, but means to continue in his naughty way.
She, with her evil experience, had thought the words I had sometimes
uttered not remote from madness. She wondered, she told me, whether one
night I might not suddenly take her throat in my hands and strangle her
in a sudden frenzy. She hardly knew whether she dreaded such a death or
longed for it.

"'You spoke so strangely,' she said; 'and all the while I knew we were
doing wrong, and I wondered.'

"Of course, even after I had explained the matter as well as I could she
was left to a large extent bewildered as to what my state of mind could
have been; still, she saw that I was not mad, and she was relieved, as I
have said.

"I do not know how she was first drawn to me--how it was that she stole
that night to the room where I lay bruised and aching. Pity and desire
and revenge, I suppose, all had their share. She was so sorry, she said,
for me. She could see how lonely I was, how I hated the place and
everybody about it, and she knew that I was not English. I think my
wild Welsh face attracted her, too.

"Alas! that was a sad night, after all our laughter. We had sat on and
on till the dawn began to come in through the drawn blinds. I told her
that we must go to bed, or we should never get up the next day. We went
into the bedroom, and there, sad and grey, the dawn appeared. There was
a heavy sky covered with clouds and a straight, soft rain was pattering
on the leaves of a great plane tree opposite; heavy drops fell into the
pools in the road.

"It was still as on the mountain, filled with infinite sadness, and a
sudden step clattering on the pavement of the square beyond made the
stillness seem all the more profound. I stood by the window and gazed
out at the weeping, dripping tree, the ever-falling rain and the
motionless, leaden clouds--there was no breath of wind--and it was as if
I heard the saddest of all music, tones of anguish and despair and notes
that cried and wept. The theme was given out, itself wet, as it were,
with tears. It was repeated with a sharper cry, a more piteous
supplication; it was re-echoed with a bitter utterance, and tears fell
faster as the raindrops fell plashing from the weeping tree. Inexorable
in its sad reiterations, in its remorseless development, that music
wailed and grew in its lamentation in my own heart; heavy it was, and
without hope; heavy as those still, leaden clouds that hung motionless
in heaven. No relief came to this sorrowing melody--rather a sharper
note of anguish; and then for a moment, as if to embitter bitterness,
sounded a fantastic, laughing air, a measure of jocund pipes and rushing
violins, echoing with the mirth of dancing feet. But it was beaten into
dust by the sentence of despair, by doom that was for ever, by a
sentence pitiless, relentless; and, as a sudden breath shook the wet
boughs of the plane tree and a torrent fell upon the road, so the last
notes of that inner music were to me as a burst of hopeless weeping.

"I turned away from the window and looked at the dingy little room where
we had laughed so well. It was a sad room enough, with its pale blue,
stripy-patterned paper, its rickety old furniture and its feeble
pictures. The only note of gaiety was on the dressing-table, where poor
little Nelly had arranged some toys and trinkets and fantasies that she
had bought for herself in the last few days. There was a silver-handled
brush and a flagon of some scent that I liked, and a little brooch of
olivines that had caught her fancy; and a powder-puff in a pretty gilt
box. The sight of these foolish things cut me to the heart. But Nelly!
She was standing by the bedside, half undressed, and she looked at me
with the most piteous longing. I think that she had really grown fond of
me. I suppose that I shall never forget the sad enchantment of her face,
the flowing of her beautiful coppery hair about it; and the tears were
wet on her cheeks. She half stretched out her bare arms to me and then
let them fall. I had never known all her strange allurement before. I
had refined and symbolised and made her into a sign of joy, and now
before me she shone disarrayed--not a symbol, but a woman, in the new
intelligence that had come to me, and I longed for her. I had just
enough strength and no more."




EPILOGUE


It is unfortunate--or fortunate: that is a matter to be settled by the
taste of the reader--that with this episode of the visit to London all
detailed material for the life of Ambrose Meyrick comes to an end. Odd
scraps of information, stray notes and jottings are all that is
available, and the rest of Meyrick's life must be left in dim and
somewhat legendary outline.

Personally, I think that this failure of documents is to be lamented.
The four preceding chapters have, in the main, dealt with the years of
boyhood, and therefore with a multitude of follies. One is inclined to
wonder, as poor Nelly wondered, whether the lad was quite right in his
head. It is possible that if we had fuller information as to his later
years we might be able to dismiss him as decidedly eccentric, but
well-meaning on the whole.

But, after all, I cannot be confident that he would get off so easily.
Certainly he did not repeat the adventure of Little Russell Row, nor, so
far as I am aware, did he address anyone besides his old schoolmaster
in a Rabelaisian epistle. There are certain acts of lunacy which are
like certain acts of heroism: they are hardly to be achieved twice by
the same men.

But Meyrick continued to do odd things. He became a strolling player
instead of becoming a scholar of Balliol. If he had proceeded to the
University, he would have encountered the formative and salutary
influence of Jowett. He wandered up and down the country for two or
three years with the actors, and writes the following apostrophe to the
memory of his old company.

"I take off my hat when I hear the old music, for I think of the old
friends and the old days; of the theatre in the meadows by the sacred
river, and the swelling song of the nightingales on sweet, spring
nights. There is no doubt that we may safely hold with Plato his
opinion, and safely may we believe that all brave earthly shows are but
broken copies and dim lineaments of immortal things. Therefore, I hope
and trust that I shall again be gathered unto the true Hathaway Company
_quæ sursum est_, which is the purged and exalted image of the lower,
which plays for ever a great mystery in the theatre of the meadows of
asphodel, which wanders by the happy, shining streams, and drinks from
an Eternal Cup in a high and blissful and everlasting Tavern. _Ave,
cara sodalitas, ave semper._"

Thus does he translate into wild speech _crêpe_ hair and grease paints,
dirty dressing-rooms and dirtier lodgings. And when his strolling days
were over he settled down in London, paying occasional visits to his old
home in the west. He wrote three or four books which are curious and
interesting in their way, though they will never be popular. And finally
he went on a strange errand to the East; and from the East there was for
him no returning.

It will be remembered that he speaks of a Celtic cup, which had been
preserved in one family for many hundred years. On the death of the last
"Keeper" this cup was placed in Meyrick's charge. He received it with
the condition that it was to be taken to a certain concealed shrine in
Asia and there deposited in hands that would know how to hide its
glories for ever from the evil world.

He went on this journey into unknown regions, travelling by ragged roads
and mountain passes, by the sandy wilderness and the mighty river. And
he forded his way by the quaking and dubious track that winds in and out
among the dangers and desolations of the _Kevir_--the great salt slough.

He came at last to the place appointed and gave the word and the
treasure to those who know how to wear a mask and to keep well the
things which are committed to them, and then set out on his journey
back. He had reached a point not very far from the gates of West and
halted for a day or two amongst Christians, being tired out with a weary
pilgrimage. But the Turks or the Kurds--it does not matter
which--descended on the place and worked their customary works, and so
Ambrose was taken by them.

One of the native Christians, who had hidden himself from the
miscreants, told afterwards how he saw "the stranger Ambrosian" brought
out, and how they held before him the image of the Crucified that he
might spit upon it and trample it under his feet. But he kissed the icon
with great joy and penitence and devotion. So they bore him to a tree
outside the village and crucified him there.

And after he had hung on the tree some hours, the infidels, enraged, as
it is said, by the shining rapture of his face, killed him with their
spears.

It was in this manner that Ambrose Meyrick gained Red Martyrdom and
achieved the most glorious Quest and Adventure of the Sangraal.


THE END




BOOKS BY ARTHUR MACHEN


    THE HOUSE OF SOULS

    THE SECRET GLORY

    THE HILL OF DREAMS

    FAR OFF THINGS

    THE THREE IMPOSTORS
    (in Preparation)








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