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That Paul had established a platform strong enough to support the tower of a new gospel became evident. His second book of Revelations, The Key, was awaited eagerly by the whole of the civilised world. In determined opposition to the wishes of Bassett, unmoved by an offer from an American newspaper which would have created a record serial price, Paul had declined to print any part of The Key in a periodical. With the publication of The Gates, which but heralded a wider intent, he had become the central figure of the world. Politically he was regarded as a revolutionary so dangerous that he merited the highest respect, and the tactful attitude of the Roman Church was adopted by those temporal rulers who recognised in Paul Mario one who had almost grasped a power above the power of kings.
“In Galileo’s days,” said Thessaly on one occasion, “a man who proclaimed unpalatable truths was loaded with chains and hurled into a dungeon. Nowadays we load him with honours and raise him to the peerage, an even more effectual method of gagging him. Try to avoid the House of Peers, Mario. Your presence would disturb the orthodox slumbers of the bishops.”
On the eve of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of Don’s last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long deliberation. “I have had a sort of brain-wave,” wrote Don in his whimsical fashion, “or rush of intellect to the brow. I suppose you recognise that you are now the outstanding figure of the War and consequently of the world? Such a figure always arises out of a great upheaval, as history shows. His presence is necessary to the readjustment of shattered things, I suppose—and he duly arrives. I take you to stand, Paul, for spiritual survival. You are the chosen retort of the White to the challenge of the Black, but I wonder if you have perceived the real inwardness of your own explanation of the War?
“You show it to be an upcrop of that primitive Evil which legend has embodied in the person of Lucifer. Has it occurred to you that the insidious process of corruption which you have followed step by step through the art, the music, the literature, the religion and the sociology of Germany may have been directed by someone? If you are the mouthpiece of the White, who is the mouthpiece of the Black? It is difficult to visualise such a personality, of course. We cannot imagine Pythagoras in his bath or even Shakespeare having his hair cut, and if What’s-his-name revisited earth to-morrow I don’t suppose anybody would know him. I often find it hard to realise that you, the old Paul with the foul briar pipe and the threadbare Norfolk, really wrote The Gates, not to mention Francesca. But you did, and I have been wondering if the Other Fellow—the Field-Marshal of the Powers of Darkness—is equally disappointing to look at—I mean, without halos, or, in his case, blue fire. In short, I have been wondering if, meeting him, one would recognise him? I have tried to imagine a sort of sinister Whisperer standing at the elbows of Germany’s philosophers, scientists, artists and men of letters; one who was paving the way for a war that should lay religion in ashes. And now, Paul, forgive me if I seem to rave, but conditions here are not conducive to the production of really good literature—I wonder if you will divine where this line of reflection led me? The Whisperer, upon the ruins of the old creeds, would try to uprear a new creed—his own. You would be his obstacle. Would he attack you openly, or would he remain—the Whisperer? To adopt the delightful mediaeval language of the Salvation Army, watch for the Devil at your elbow.... I wish I could get home, if only for a day, not because I funk the crash which is coming at any moment now but because I should like to see The Key before, it goes to press....”
Paul read this strange letter many times. “The Whisperer... would try to uprear a new creed—his own.” Paul glanced at a bulky typescript which lay upon the table near his hand. The Key was complete and he had intended to deliver it in person to Bassett later the same morning. Strange doubts and wild surmises began to beat upon his brain and he shrank within himself, contemplative and somewhat fearful. A consciousness of great age crept over him like a shadow. He seemed to have known all things and to have wearied of all things, to have experienced everything and to have found everything to be nothing. Long, long ago he had striven as he was striving now to plant an orchard in the desert of life that men might find rest and refreshment on their journey through pathless time. Long, long ago he had doubted and feared—and failed. In some dim grove of the past he had revealed the secret of eternal rebirth to white-robed philosophers; in some vague sorrow that reached out of the ages and touched his heart he seemed to recognise that death had been his reward, and that he had welcomed death as a friend.
So completely did this mood absorb him that he started nervously to find Jules Thessaly standing beside his chair. Thessaly had walked in from the garden and he carried a flat-crowned black felt hat in his hand.
“If I have intruded upon a rich vein of reflection forgive me.”
Paul turned and looked at the strong massive figure outlined against the bright panel of the open window. The influence of that mood of age lingered; he felt lonely and apprehensive. He noticed a number of empty flower vases about the room. Yvonne used to keep them always freshly filled. He wondered when she had ceased to do so and why. “You have rescued me from a mood that was almost suicidal, Thessaly. A horrible recognition of the futility of striving oppresses me this morning. I seem to be awaiting a blow which I know myself powerless to avert. If we were at your place I should prescribe a double ‘Fra Diavolo’ but, failing this, I think something with a fizz in it must suffice. Will you give the treatment a trial?”
“With pleasure. Let it be a stirrup-cup, or, as our northern friends have it, a doch-an-dorroch.”
Paul stood up and stared at Thessaly. “Do I understand you to mean that you are about to set out upon a journey?”
“I am, Mario. Like Eugene Sue’s tedious Jew, I am cursed with a lack of repose. I sail for New York to-morrow or the following day.”
“Shall you be long absent?”
“I cannot say with any certainty. There seems to be nothing further for me to do in England at present. I feel that England has ceased to be the pivot of the world. I am turning my attention to America, not without sparing a side glance for the island kingdom of the Mikado. You know how unobtrusive I am, Mario; I am taking no letter of introduction to President Wilson, nor if I visit Japan shall I trouble official Tokio. Mine is a lazy life, but not an idle one. I am an enthusiastic onlooker.”
Paul gazed at him reproachfully. “You never even warned me of your projected journey, Thessaly. Do you leave all your friends with equally slight regret?”
Thessaly gazed into the peculiar hat, and something in the pose of his head transported Paul to the hills above Lower Charleswood, where, backed by the curtain of a moving storm, he seemed to see Babylon Hall framed in a rainbow which linked the crescent of the hills. “You misjudge me,” replied Thessaly. “What I have said is true, but I go in response to a sudden and unforeseen summons. Death and a frail woman have tricked me, and at one stroke have undone all that I had done. I am compelled to go.”
Paul detected in the deep voice a note of pathos, of defeat. “I am sorry,” he said simply. “I value your friendship.”
“Friendship, Mario, is heaven’s choicest gift. The love of woman is sometimes wonderful, but it always rests upon a physical basis. The love of a friend is the loftiest sentiment of which man is capable. Its only parallel is the unselfish devotion of a dog to his master.”
A servant came in with the refreshments which Paul had ordered. Directly she had departed Thessaly began speaking again. “I have lived in Germany, Mario, and in my younger student days—for I am perhaps an older man than you imagine me to be—I have met those philosophers, or some of them, to whom Germany owes a debt of hatred which cannot be repaid even unto the third and fourth generation. I have lived in France, and in many a sunset I have seen the blood that would drench her fairest pastures. I have watched the coming of the storm, and I saw it break upon the rocks of these inviolable islands. I thought that I knew its portent; I thought that I had discerned the inner meaning of the Day. Mario, I was wrong. Humanity has proved too obstinate.”
He spoke with a suppressed vehemence that was startling. “The point of this escapes me,” said Paul, watching him. “For what or for whom has humanity proved too obstinate?”
“For us, Mario—for us. There is many an ancient knot to be untied before man can be free to think unfettered. The myth, Imperialism, alone is an iron barrier to universal brotherhood. Not even in the spectacle of the Germanic peoples pouring out their blood in pursuit of that shadow has the rest of the world perceived a lesson. A colony is like a married son with whose domestic arrangements his father persists in interfering. The jewels in an imperial crown mean nothing even to the wearer of that crown, except additional headache. But attack the blood-stained legend of Imperialism and you attack Patriotism, its ferocious parent. Humanity has grown larger since the wolf suckled Romulus, but no wiser, and strong wine is not for weak intellects.”
He laid his hand upon the typed pages of The Key. “Is our friendship staunch enough to sustain the shock of real candour, Mario?”
Paul was deeply and unaccountably moved by something in Thessaly’s manner. “I trust so,” he replied.
“Then—forgive me—burn The Key. It is not yet too late.”
“Thessaly! You offer me this counsel! Do you realise what it means to me?”
“Some day, Mario, you may comprehend all that it meant to me.”
Paul stared at him truly dumfounded. “What can have happened thus suddenly to divert the current of your life and the tenor of your philosophy?”
“The inevitable, against which we fight in vain.”
“And your advice—that I burn The Key—is given sincerely?”
“It is.”
“I cannot realise that you mean it, Thessaly. I cannot realise that you are going.”
“I am sorry, Mario. In these troublous days a cloud of misgiving hangs over every parting, since au revoir may mean good-bye. But I must go, following the precept of that wise man who said, ‘Live unobserved, and if that cannot be, slip unobserved from life.’”
An hour later Paul was about to leave the house when a telegram was brought to him. He experienced great difficulty in grasping its purport. He could not make out from whom it came, and it seemed at first to be without meaning....
“Regret to inform you Captain Donald H. Courtier,—Coy., Irish Guards, killed in action....”