The Hill of Dreams ..............................................................................................................................................1

But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in fairyland. The holidays were nearly

done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out resolved to lose himself, to discover strange hills and prospects that he

had never seen before. The air was still, breathless, exhausted after heavy rain, and the clouds looked as if

they had been moulded of lead. No breeze blew upon the hill, and down in the well of the valley not a dry

About a mile from the rectory he had diverged from the main road by an opening that promised mystery and

adventure. It was an old neglected lane, little more than a ditch, worn ten feet deep by its winter waters, and

shadowed by great untrimmed hedges, densely woven together. On each side were turbid streams, and here

and there a torrent of water gushed down the banks, flooding the lane. It was so deep and dark that he could

not get a glimpse of the country through which he was passing, but the way went down and down to some

Perhaps he walked two miles between the high walls of the lane before its descent ceased, but he thrilled with

the sense of having journeyed very far, all the long way from the know to the unknown. He had come as it

were into the bottom of a bowl amongst the hills, and black woods shut out the world. From the road behind

him, from the road before him, from the unseen wells beneath the trees, rivulets of waters swelled and

streamed down towards the centre to the brook that crossed the lane. Amid the dead and wearied silence of

the air, beneath leaden and motionless clouds, it was strange to hear such a tumult of gurgling and rushing

water, and he stood for a while on the quivering footbridge and watched the rush of dead wood and torn

branches and wisps of straw, all hurrying madly past him, to plunge into the heaped spume, the barmy froth

Then he climbed again, and went up between limestone rocks, higher and higher, till the noise of waters

became indistinct, a faint humming of swarming hives in summer. He walked some distance on level ground,

till there was a break in the banks and a stile on which he could lean and look out. He found himself, as he

had hoped, afar and forlorn; he had strayed into outland and occult territory. From the eminence of the lane,

skirting the brow if a hill, he looked down into deep valleys and dingles, and beyond, across the trees, to

remoter country, wild bare hills and dark wooded lands meeting the grey still sky. Immediately beneath his

feet the ground sloped steep down to the valley, a hillside of close grass patched with dead bracken, and

dotted here and there with stunted thorns, and below there were deep oakwoods, all still and silent, and lonely

as if no one ever passed that way. The grass and bracken and thorns and woods, all were brown and grey

beneath the leaden sky; and as Lucian looked he was amazed, as though he were reading a wonderful story,

the meaning of which was a little greater than his understanding. Then, like the hero of a fairybook, he went

on and on, catching now and again glimpses of the amazing country into which he had penetrated, and

perceiving rather than seeing that as the day waned everything grew more grey and sombre. As he advanced

he heard the evening sounds of the farms, the low of the cattle, and the barking of the sheepdogs; a faint thin

noise from far away. It was growing late, and as the shadows blackened he walked faster, till once more the

lane began to descend, there was a sharp turn, and he found himself, with a good deal of relief, and a little

disappointment, on familiar ground. He had nearly described a circle, and knew this end of the lane very well;

it was not much more than a mile from home. He walked smartly down the hill; the air was all glimmering

and indistinct, transmuting trees and hedges into ghostly shapes, and the walls of the White House Farm

flickered on the hillside, as if they were moving towards him. Then a change came. First, a little breath of

wind brushed with a dry whispering sound through the hedges, the few leaves left on the boughs began to stir,

and one or two danced madly, and as the wind freshened and came up from a new quarter, the sapless

branches above rattled against one another like bones. The growing breeze seemed to clear the air and lighten

it. He was passing the stile where a path led to old Mrs. Gibbon's desolate little cottage, in the middle of the

fields, at some distance even from the lane, and he saw the light blue smoke of her chimney rise distinct

above the gaunt greengage trees, against a pale band that was broadening along the horizon. As he passed the

stile with his head bent, and his eyes on the ground, something white started out from the black shadow of the

hedge, and in the strange twilight, now tinged with a flush from the west, a figure seemed to swim past him

and disappear. For a moment he wondered who it could be, the light was so flickering and unsteady, so unlike

the real atmosphere of the day, when he recollected it was only Annie Morgan, old Morgan's daughter at the

White House. She was three years older than he, and it annoyed him to find that though she was only fifteen,

there had been a dreadful increase in her height since the summer holidays. He had got to the bottom of the

hill, and, lifting up his eyes, saw the strange changes of the sky. The pale band had broadened into a clear

vast space of light, and above, the heavy leaden clouds were breaking apart and driving across the heaven

before the wind. He stopped to watch, and looked up at the great mound that jutted out from the hills into

midvalley. It was a natural formation, and always it must have had something of the form of a fort, but its

steepness had been increased by Roman art, and there were high banks on the summit which Lucian's father

had told him were the vallum of the camp, and a deep ditch had been dug to the north to sever it from the

hillside. On this summit oaks had grown, queer stuntedlooking trees with twisted and contorted trunks, and

writhing branches; and these now stood out black against the lighted sky. And then the air changed once

more; the flush increased, and a spot like blood appeared in the pond by the gate, and all the clouds were

touched with fiery spots and dapples of flame; here and there it looked as if awful furnace doors were being

The wind blew wildly, and it came up through the woods with a noise like a scream, and a great oak by the

roadside ground its boughs together with a dismal grating jar. As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all

upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of

molten brass, and the very road glittered. He was wonderstruck, almost aghast, before the scarlet magic of

the afterglow. The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames from heaven were smitten about its walls,

and above there was a dark floating cloud, like fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree showed as

When he got home he heard his mother's voice calling: "Here's Lucian at last. Mary, Master Lucian has come,

you can get the tea ready." He told a long tale of his adventures, and felt somewhat mortified when his father

seemed perfectly acquainted with the whole course of the lane, and knew the names of the wild woods

"You must have gone by the Darren, I suppose"that was all he said. "Yes, I noticed the sunset; we shall

There was buttered toast for tea "because it was holidays." The red curtains were drawn, and a bright fire was

burning, and there was the old familiar furniture, a little shabby, but charming from association. It was much

pleasanter than the cold and squalid schoolroom; and much better to be reading Chambers's Journal than

learning Euclid; and better to talk to his father and mother than to be answering such remarks as: "I say,

Taylor, I've torn my trousers; how much to do you charge for mending?" "Lucy, dear, come quick and sew

That night the storm woke him, and he groped with his hands amongst the bedclothes, and sat up, shuddering,

not knowing where he was. He had seen himself, in a dream, within the Roman fort, working some dark

horror, and the furnace doors were opened and a blast of flame from heaven was smitten upon him.

Lucian went slowly, but not discreditably, up the school, gaining prizes now and again, and falling in love

more and more with useless reading and unlikely knowledge. He did his elegiacs and iambics well enough,

but he preferred exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He like history, but he loved to

meditate on a land laid waste, Britain deserted by the legions, the rare pavements riven by frost, Celtic magic

still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest, the rosy marbles stained with rain, and

the walls growing grey. The masters did not encourage these researches; a pure enthusiasm, they felt, should

be for cricket and football, the dilettanti might even play fives and read Shakespeare without blame, but

healthy English boys should have nothing to do with decadent periods. He was once found guilty of

recommending Villon to a schoolfellow named Barnes. Barnes tried to extract unpleasantness from the text

during preparation, and rioted in his place, owing to his incapacity for the language. The matter was a serious

one; the headmaster had never heard of Villon, and the culprit gave up the name of his literary admirer

without remorse. Hence, sorrow for Lucian, and complete immunity for the miserable illiterate Barnes, who

resolved to confine his researches to the Old Testament, a book which the headmaster knew well. As for

Lucian, he plodded on, learning his work decently, and sometimes doing very creditable Latin and Greek

prose. His schoolfellows thought him quite mad, and tolerated him, and indeed were very kind to him in

their barbarous manner. He often remembered in after life acts of generosity and good nature done by

wretches like Barnes, who had no care for old French nor for curious metres, and such recollections always

moved him to emotion. Travellers tell such tales; cast upon cruel shores amongst savage races, they have

He looked forward to the holidays as joyfully as the rest of them. Barnes and his friend Duscot used to tell

him their plans and anticipation; they were going home to brothers and sisters, and to cricket, more cricket, or

to football, more football, and in the winter there were parties and jollities of all sorts. In return he would

announce his intention of studying the Hebrew language, or perhaps Proven�al, with a walk up a bare and

desolate mountain by way of openair amusement, and on a rainy day for choice. Whereupon Barnes would

impart to Duscot his confident belief that old Taylor was quite cracked. It was a queer, funny life that of

school, and so very unlike anything in Tom Brown. He once saw the headmaster patting the head of the

bishop's little boy, while he called him "my little man," and smiled hideously. He told the tale grotesquely in

the lower fifth room the same day, and earned much applause, but forfeited all liking directly by proposing a

voluntary course of scholastic logic. One barbarian threw him to the ground and another jumped on him, but

it was done very pleasantly. There were, indeed, some few of a worse class in the school, solemn sycophants,

prigs perfected from tender years, who thought life already "serious," and yet, as the headmaster said, were

"joyous, manly young fellows." Some of these dressed for dinner at home, and talked of dances when they

came back in January. But this virulent sort was comparatively infrequent, and achieved great success in after

life. Taking his school days as a whole, he always spoke up for the system, and years afterward he described

with enthusiasm the strong beer at a roadside tavern, some way out of the town. But he always maintained

that the taste for tobacco, acquired in early life, was the great life, was the great note of the English Public

Three years after Lucian's discovery of the narrow lane and the vision of the flaming fort, the August

holidays brought him home at a time of great heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather,

when some Proven�al spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and the grasshoppers chirp

loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of rosemary, and white walls of the old farmhouses blaze in the sunlight

Lucian's father was late at the station, and consequently Lucian bought the Confessions of an English Opium

Eater which he saw on the bookstall. When his father did drive up, Lucian noticed that the old trap had had a

"I was afraid that I should be late, Lucian," said his father, "though I made old Polly go like anything. I was

just going to tell George to put her into the trap when young Philip Harris came to me in a terrible state. He

said his father fell down 'all of a sudden like' in the middle of the field, and they couldn't make him speak,

and would I please to come and see him. So I had to go, though I couldn't do anything for the poor fellow.

They had sent for Dr. Burrows, and I am afraid he will find it a bad case of sunstroke. The old people say

The pony jogged steadily along the burning turnpike road, taking revenge for the hurrying on the way to the

station. The hedges were white with the limestone dust, and the vapour of heat palpitated over the fields.

Lucian showed his Confessions to his father, and began to talk of the beautiful bits he had already found. Mr.

Taylor knew the book wellhad read it many years before. Indeed he was almost as difficult to surprise as

that character in Daudet, who had one formula for all the chances of life, and when he saw the drowned

Academician dragged out of the river, merely observed "J'ai vu tout �a." Mr. Taylor the parson, as his

parishioners called him, had read the fine books and loved the hills and woods, and now knew no more of

pleasant or sensational surprises. Indeed the living was much depreciated in value, and his own private means

were reduced almost to vanishing point, and under such circumstances the great style loses many of its finer

savours. He was very fond of Lucian, and cheered by his return, but in the evening he would be a sad man

Nobody called out "Here's your master with Master Lucian; you can get tea ready," when the pony jogged up

to the front door. His mother had been dead a year, and a cousin kept house. She was a respectable person

called Deacon, of middle age, and ordinary standards; and, consequently, there was cold mutton on the table.

There was a cake, but nothing of flour, baked in ovens, would rise at Miss Deacon's evocation. Still, the meal

was laid in the beloved "parlour," with the view of hills and valleys and climbing woods from the open

window, and the old furniture was still pleasant to see, and the old books in the shelves had many memories.

One of the most respected of the armchairs had become weak in the castors and had to be artfully propped up,

but Lucian found it very comfortable after the hard forms. When tea was over he went out and strolled in the

garden and orchards, and looked over the stile down into the brake, where foxgloves and bracken and broom

mingled with the hazel undergrowth, where he knew of secret glades and untracked recesses, deep in the

woven green, the cabinets for many years of his lonely meditations. Every path about his home, every field

and hedgerow had dear and friendly memories for him; and the odour of the meadowsweet was better than

the incense steaming in the sunshine. He loitered, and hung over the stile till the faroff woods began to turn

Day after day, through all that August, morning and evening were wrapped in haze; day after day the earth

shimmered in the heat, and the air was strange, unfamiliar. As he wandered in the lanes and sauntered by the

cool sweet verge of the woods, he saw and felt that nothing was common or accustomed, for the sunlight

transfigured the meadows and changed all the form of the earth. Under the violent Proven�al sun, the elms

and beeches looked exotic trees, and in the early morning, when the mists were thick, the hills had put on an

The one adventure of the holidays was the visit to the Roman fort, to that fantastic hill about whose steep

bastions and haggard oaks he had seen the flames of sunset writhing nearly three years before. Ever since that

Saturday evening in January, the lonely valley had been a desirable place to him; he had watched the green

battlements in summer and winter weather, had seen the heaped mounds rising dimly amidst the drifting rain,

had marked the violent height swim up from the icewhite bulwarks glimmer and vanish in hovering April

twilight. In the hedge of the lane there was a gate on which he used to lean and look down south to where the

hill surged up so suddenly, its summit defined on summer evenings not only by the rounded ramparts but by

the ring of dense green foliage that marked the circle of oak trees. Higher up the lane, on the way he had

come that Saturday afternoon, one could see the white walls of Morgan's farm on the hillside to the north, and

on the south there was the stile with the view of old Mrs Gibbon's cottage smoke; but down in the hollow,

looking over the gate, there was no hint of human work, except those green and antique battlements, on

The ring of the fort drew him with stronger fascination during that hot August weather. Standing, or as his

headmaster would have said, "mooning" by the gate, and looking into that enclosed and secret valley, it

seemed to his fancy as if there were a halo about the hill, an aureole that played like flame around it. One

afternoon as he gazed from his station by the gate the sheer sides and the swelling bulwarks were more than

ever things of enchantment; the green oak ring stood out against the sky as still and bright as in a picture, and

Lucian, in spite of his respect for the law of trespass, slid over the gate. The farmers and their men were busy

on the uplands with the harvest, and the adventure was irresistible. At first he stole along by the brook in the

shadow of the alders, where the grass and the flowers of wet meadows grew richly; but as he drew nearer to

the fort, and its height now rose sheer above him, he left all shelter, and began desperately to mount. There

was not a breath of wind; the sunlight shone down on the bare hillside; the loud chirp of the grasshoppers was

the only sound. It was a steep ascent and grew steeper as the valley sank away. He turned for a moment, and

looked down towards the stream which now seemed to wind remote between the alders; above the valley

there were small dark figures moving in the cornfield, and now and again there came the faint echo of a

highpitched voice singing through the air as on a wire. He was wet with heat; the sweat streamed off his

face, and he could feel it trickling all over his body. But above him the green bastions rose defiant, and the

dark ring of oaks promised coolness. He pressed on, and higher, and at last began to crawl up the vallum, on

hands and knees, grasping the turf and here and there the roots that had burst through the red earth. And then

Within the fort it was all dusky and cool and hollow; it was as if one stood at the bottom of a great cup.

Within, the wall seemed higher than without, and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There

were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different from the common nettles in the lanes,

and Lucian, letting his hand touch a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch there was

an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old, crooked and withered by the winds into awkward

and ugly forms; beech and oak and hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed that each

seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He began to fight his way through the ugly growth, stumbling

and getting hard knocks from the rebound of twisted boughs. His foot struck once or twice against something

harder than wood, and looking down he saw stones white with the leprosy of age, but still showing the work

of the axe. And farther, the roots of the stunted trees gripped the foothigh relics of a wall; and a round heap

of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt poisonous. The earth was black and unctuous, and

bubbling under the feet, left no track behind. From it, in the darkest places where the shadow was thickest,

swelled the growth of an abominable fungus, making the still air sick with its corrupt odour, and he

shuddered as he felt the horrible thing pulped beneath his feet. Then there was a gleam of sunlight, and as he

thrust the last boughs apart, he stumbled into the open space in the heart of the camp. It was a lawn of sweet

close turf in the centre of the matted brake, of clean firm earth from which no shameful growth sprouted, and

near the middle of the glade was a stump of a felled yewtree, left untrimmed by the woodman. Lucian

thought it must have been made for a seat; a crooked bough through which a little sap still ran was a support

for the back, and he sat down and rested after his toil. It was not really so comfortable a seat as one of the

school forms, but the satisfaction was to find anything at all that would serve for a chair. He sat there, still

panting after the climb and his struggle through the dank and junglelike thicket, and he felt as if he were

growing hotter and hotter; the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the tingling fire seemed to spread

Suddenly, he knew that he was alone. Not merely solitary; that he had often been amongst the woods and

deep in the lanes; but now it was a wholly different and a very strange sensation. He thought of the valley

winding far below him, all its fields by the brook green and peaceful and still, without path or track. Then he

had climbed the abrupt surge of the hill, and passing the green and swelling battlements, the ring of oaks, and

the matted thicket, had come to the central space. And behind there were, he knew, many desolate fields, wild

as common, untrodden, unvisited. He was utterly alone. He still grew hotter as he sat on the stump, and at last

lay down at full length on the soft grass, and more at his ease felt the waves of heat pass over his body.

And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over halfimagined, delicious things, indulging a virgin

mind in its wanderings. The hot air seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled

and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the great mounds, within the ring of oaks,

deep in the heart of the matted thicket. Slowly and timidly he began to untie his boots, fumbling with the

laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly misshapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch

was straight, not one was free, but all were interlaced and grew one about another; and just above ground,

where the cankered stems joined the protuberant roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, and

faces and twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were hair, and tresses were stark in grey lichen; a

twisted root swelled into a limb; in the hollows of the rotted bark he saw the masks of men. His eyes were

fixed and fascinated by the simulacra of the wood, and could not see his hands, and so at last, and suddenly, it

seemed, he lay in the sunlight, beautiful with his olive skin, dark haired, dark eyed, the gleaming bodily

Quick flames now quivered in the substance of his nerves, hints of mysteries, secrets of life passed trembling

through his brain, unknown desires stung him. As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the sunshine

seemed really to become green, and the contrast between the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black

shadow of the brake made an odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque postures of stem and root began

to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him heaved and sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell

He found out afterwards that he must have slept for nearly an hour. The shadows had changed when he

awoke; his senses came to him with a sudden shock, and he sat up and stared at his bare limbs in stupid

amazement. He huddled on his clothes and laced his boots, wondering what folly had beset him. Then, while

he stood indecisive, hesitating, his brain a whirl of puzzled thought, his body trembling, his hands shaking; as

with electric heat, sudden remembrance possessed him. A flaming blush shone red on his cheeks, and glowed

and thrilled through his limbs. As he awoke, a brief and slight breeze had stirred in a nook of the matted

boughs, and there was a glinting that might have been the flash of sudden sunlight across shadow, and the

He stretched out his hands, and cried to his visitant to return; he entreated the dark eyes that had shone over

him, and the scarlet lips that had kissed him. And then panic fear rushed into his heart, and he ran blindly,

dashing rhrough the wood. He climbed the vallum, and looked out, crouching, lest anybody should see him.

Only the shadows were changed, and a breath of cooler air mounted from the brook; the fields were still and

peaceful, the black figures moved, far away, amidst the corn, and the faint echo of the highpitched voices

sang thin and distant on the evening wind. Across the stream, in the cleft on the hill, opposite to the fort, the

blue wood smoke stole up a spiral pillar from the chimney of old Mrs Gibbon's cottage. He began to run full

tilt down the steep surge of the hill, and never stopped till he was over the gate and in the lane again. As he

looked back, down the valley to the south, and saw the violent ascent, the green swelling bulwarks, and the

dark ring of oaks; the sunlight seemed to play about the fort with an aureole of flame.

"Where on earth have you been all this time, Lucian?" said his cousin when he got home. "Why, you look

quite ill. It is really madness of you to go walking in such weather as this. I wonder you haven't got a

sunstroke. And the tea must be nearly cold. I couldn't keep your father waiting, you know."

He muttered something about being rather tired, and sat down to his tea. It was not cold, for the "cosy" had

been put over the pot, but it was black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was

unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great consolation that he had only been asleep

and dreaming queer, nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and thought the

loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most

abominably, must have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recollections. He remembered that

when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with thick folds of his handkerchief, and having twisted off a

good length, and put it in his pocket to show his father. Mr Taylor was almost interested when he came in

"Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?" he said. "You haven't been to Caermaen, have you?"

"Yes; it's a Roman nettlearctic pilulifera. It's a rare plant. Burrows says it's to be found at Caermaen, but I

Mr Taylor had begun to compile a flora accompanied by a hortus siccus, but both stayed on high shelves

dusty and fragmentary. He put the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the maid

Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening in the morning was, in a measure, a

renewal of the awakening in the fort. But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it seemed all

delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in the afternoon, for Mrs Dixon, the vicar's

wife, had "commanded" his presence at tea. Mr Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven, ruddy of face,

was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He "deplored" all extreme party convictions, and

thought he great needs of our beloved Church were conciliation, moderation, and above all

"amolgamation"so he pronounced the word. Mrs Dixon was tall, imposing, splendid, well fitted for the

episcopal order, with gifts that would have shone at the palace. There were daughters, who studied German

Literature, and thought Miss Frances Ridley Havergal wrote poetry, but Lucian had no fear of them; he

dreaded the boys. Everybody said they were such fine, manly fellows, such gentlemanly boys, with such a

good manner, sure to get on in the world. Lucian had said "Bother!" in a very violent manner when the

gracious invitation was conveyed to him, but there was no getting out of it. Miss Deacon did her best to make

him look smart; his ties were all so disgraceful that she had to supply the want with a narrow ribbon of a

skyblue tint; and she brushed him so long and so violently that he quite understood why a horse sometimes

bites and sometimes kicks the groom. He set out between two and three in a gloomy frame of mind; he knew

too well what spending the afternoon with honest manly boys meant. He found the reality more lurid than his

anticipation. The boys were in the field, and the first remark he heard when he got in sight of the group was:

"Hullo, Lucian, how much for the tie?" "Fine tie," another, a stranger, observed. "You bagged it from the

Then they made up a game of cricket, and he was put in first. He was l.b.w. in his second over, so they all

said, and had to field for the rest of the afternoon. Arthur Dixon, who was about his own age, forgetting all

the laws of hospitallity, told him he was a beastly muff when he missed a catch, rather a difficult catch. He

missed several catches, and it seemed as if he were always panting after balls, which, as Edward Dixon said,

any fool, even a baby, could have stopped. At last he game broke up, solely from Lucian's lack of skill, as

everybody declared. Edward Dixon, who was thirteen, and had a swollen red face and a projecting eye,

wanted to fight him for spoiling the game, and the others agreed that he funked the fight in a rather dirty

manner. The strange boy, who was called De Carti, and was understood to be faintly related to Lord De Carti

of M'Carthytown, said openly that the fellows at his place wouldn't stand such a sneak for five minutes. So

the afternoon passed off very pleasantly indeed, till it was time to go into the vicarage for weak tea,

homemade cake, and unripe plums. He got away at last. As he went out at the gate, he heard De Carti's final

"We like to dress well at our place. His governor must be beastly poor to let him go about like that. D'y' see

It had been a very gentlemanly afternoon, but there was a certain relief when the vicarage was far behind, and

the evening smoke of the little town, once the glorious capital of Siluria, hung hazelike over the ragged

roofs and mingled with the river mist. He looked down from the height of the road on the huddled houses,

saw the points of light start out suddenly from the cottages on the hillside beyond, and gazed at the long

lovely valley fading in the twilight, till the darkness came and all that remained was the sombre ridge of the

forest. The way was pleasant through the solemn scented lane, with glimpses of dim country, the vague

mystery of night overshadowing the woods and meadows. A warm wind blew gusts of odour from the

meadowsweet by the brook, now and then bee and beetle span homeward through the air, booming a deep

note as from a great organ far away, and from the verge of the wood came the "whooo, whooo, whooo"

of the owls, a wild strange sound that mingled with the whirr and rattle of the nightjar, deep in the bracken.

The moon swam up through the films of misty cloud, and hung, a golden glorious lantern, in midair; and,

set in the dusky hedge, the little green fires of the glowworms appeared. He sauntered slowly up the lane,

drinking in the religion of the scene, and thinking the country by night as mystic and wonderful as a

dimplylit cathedral. He had quite forgotten the "manly young fellows" and their sports, and only wished as

the land began to shimmer and gleam in the moonlight that he knew by some medium of words or colour how

"Yes, I had a nice walk home. Oh, in the afternoon we played cricket. I didn't care for it much. There was a

boy named De Carti there; he is staying with the Dixons. Mrs Dixon whispered to me when we were going in

to tea, 'He's a second cousin of Lord De Carti's,' and she looked quite grave as if she were in church."

"Baron De Carti's greatgrandfather was a Dublin attorney," he remarked. "Which his name was Jeremiah

M'Carthy. His prejudiced fellowcitizens called him the Unjust Steward, also the Bloody Attorney, and I

believe that 'to hell with M'Carthy' was quite a popular cry about the time of the Union."

Mr Taylor was a man of very wide and irregular reading and a tenacious memory; he often used to wonder

why he had not risen in the Church. He had once told Mr Dixon a singular and drolatique anecdote

concerning the bishop's college days, and he never discovered why the prelate did not bow according to his

custom when the name of Taylor was called at the next visitation. Some people said the reason was lighted

candles, but that was impossible, as the Reverend and Honourable Smallwood Stafford, Lord Beamys's son,

who had a cure of souls in the cathedral city, was well known to burn no end of candles, and with him the

bishop was on the best of terms. Indeed the bishop often stayed at Coplesey (pronounced "Copsey") Hall,

Lucian had mentioned the name of De Carti with intention, and had perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs Dixon's

respectful manner. He knew such incidents cheered his father, who could never look at these subjects from a

proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This

irreverent way of treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to

increase their isolation. People said they would often have liked to asked Mr Taylor to gardenparties, and

teaparties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been such an extreme man and so queer.

Indeed, a year before, Mr Taylor had gone to a gardenparty at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun

of the bishop's recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that the Gervases and Dixons and all who heard

him were quite shocked and annoyed. And, as Mrs Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat was

perfectly green with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like to invite Mr Taylor again. As for the son,

nobody cared to have him; Mrs Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of charity.

"I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home," she remarked, "so I thought he would enjoy a good

wholesome tea for once in a way. But he is such an unsatisfactory boy, he would only have once slice of that

nice plain cake, and I couldn't get him to take more than two plums. They were really quite ripe too, and boys

Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own company, and make the best he could of the

ripe peaches on the south wall of the rectory garden. There was a certain corner where the heat of that hot

August seemed concentrated, reverberated from one wall to the other, and here he liked to linger of mornings,

when the mists were still thick in the valleys, "mooning," meditating, extending his walk from the quince to

the medlar and back again, beside the mouldering walls of mellowed brick. He was full of a certain wonder

and awe, not unmixed with a swell of strange exultation, and wished more and more to be alone, to think over

that wonderful afternoon within the fort. In spite of himself the impression was fading; he could not

understand that feeling of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside;

yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluctance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few

seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had suffered

some profoundest degradation. He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tingling and prickling

flesh lay expectant in the sunlight, and there was also the likeness of a miserable shamed boy, standing with

trembling body and shaking, unsteady hands. It was all confused, a procession of blurred images, now of

rapture and ecstasy, and now of terror and shame, floating in a light that was altogether phantasmal and

unreal. He dared not approach the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it, but a

mile away, and separated by the wild land and a strip of wood from the towering battlements. Here he was

looking over a gate one day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him, and glancing

"Good afternoon, Master Lucian," he began. "Mr Taylor pretty well, I suppose? I be goin' to the house a

minute; the men in the fields are wantin' some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider, Master

Lucian did not want any cider, but he thought it would please old Morgan if he took some, so he said he

should like to taste the cider very much indeed. Morgan was a sturdy, thickset old man of the ancient stock;

a stiff churchman, who breakfasted regularly on fat broth and Caerphilly cheese in the fashion of his

ancestors; hot, spiced elder wine was for winter nights, and gin for festal seasons. The farm had always been

the freehold of the family, and when Lucian, in the wake of the yeoman, passed through the deep porch by

the oaken door, down into the long dark kitchen, he felt as though the seventeenth century still lingered on.

One mullioned window, set deep in the sloping wall, gave all the light there was through quarries of thick

glass in which there were whorls and circles, so that the lapping rosebranch and the garden and the fields

beyond were distorted to the sight. Two heavy beams, oaken but whitewashed, ran across the ceiling; a little

glow of fire sparkled in the great fireplace, and a curl of blue smoke fled up the cavern of the chimney. Here

was the genuine chimneycorner of our fathers; there were seats on each side of the fireplace where one

could sit snug and sheltered on December nights, warm and merry in the blazing light, and listen to the battle

of the storm, and hear the flame spit and hiss at the falling snowflakes. At the back of the fire were great

"Annie," he called through one of the numerous doors, "here's Master Lucian, the parson, would like a drop

"Very well, father," came the voice from the dairy and presently the girl entered, wiping the jug she held. In

his boyish way Lucian had been a good deal disturbed by Annie Morgan; he could see her on Sundays from

his seat in church, and her skin, curiously pale, her lips that seemed as though they were stained with some

brilliant pigment, her black hair, and the quivering black eyes, gave him odd fancies which he had hardly

shaped to himself. Annie had grown into a woman in three years, and he was still a boy. She came into the

"Nicely, sir, thank you. How nice your voice do sound in church, Master Lucian, to be sure. I was telling

Lucian grinned and felt uncomfortable, and the girl set down the jug on the round table and brought a glass

from the dresser. She bent close over him as she poured out the green oily cider, fragrant of the orchard; her

hand touched his shoulder for a moment, and she said, "I beg your pardon, sir," very prettily. He looked up

eagerly at her face; the black eyes, a little oval in shape, were shining, and the lips smiled. Annie wore a plain

dress of some black stuff, open at the throat; her skin was beautiful. For a moment the ghost of a fancy

hovered unsubstantial in his mind; and then Annie curtsied as she handed him the cider, and replied to his

The drink was really good; not thin, nor sweet, but round and full and generous, with a fine yellow flame

twinkling through the green when one held it up to the light. It was like a stray sunbeam hovering on the

grass in a deep orchard, and he swallowed the glassful with relish, and had some more, warmly commending

"I see you do know a good thing, sir," he said. "Iss, indeed, now, it's good stuff, though it's my own makin'.

My old grandfather he planted the trees in the time of the wars, and he was a very good judge of an apple in

his day and generation. And a famous grafter he was, to be sure. You will never see no swelling in the trees

he grafted at all whatever. Now there's James Morris, Penyrhaul, he's a famous grafter, too, and yet them

Redstreaks he grafted for me five year ago, they be all swollenlike below the graft already. Would you like

to taste a Blemmin pippin, now, Master Lucian? there be a few left in the loft, I believe."

Lucian said he should like an apple very much, and the farmer went out by another door, and Annie stayed in

the kitchen talking. She said Mrs Trevor, her married sister, was coming to them soon to spend a few days.

"She's got such a beautiful baby," said Annie, "and he's quite sensiblelike already, though he's only nine

months old. Mary would like to see you, sir, if you would be so kind as to step in; that is, if it's not troubling

you at all, Master Lucian. I suppose you must be getting a fine scholar now, sir?"

"I am doing pretty well, thank you," said the boy. "I was first in my form last term."

"Fancy! To think of that! D'you hear, father, what a scholar Master Lucian be getting?"

"He be a rare grammarian, I'm sure," said the farmer. "You do take after your father, sir; I always do say that

Lucian did not find the Blenheim Orange as good as the cider, but he ate it with all the appearance of relish,

and put another, with thanks, in his pocket. He thanked the farmer again when he got up to go; and Annie

Lucian heard her saying to her father as he went out what a nicemannered young gentleman he was getting,

to be sure; and he went on his way, thinking that Annie was really very pretty, and speculating as to whether

he would have the courage to kiss her, if they met in a dark lane. He was quite sure she would only laugh, and

For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and hot; but the bridge of time, gradually

lengthening, made those dreadful and delicious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they all

passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in amazement, not knowing why this used to be a

symbol of terror or that of joy. At the end of each term he would come home and find his father a little more

despondent, and harder to cheer even for a moment; and the wall paper and the furniture grew more and more

dingy and shabby. The two cats, loved and ancient beasts, that he remembered when he was quite a little boy,

before he went to school, died miserably, one after the other. Old Polly, the pony, at last fell down in the

stable from the weakness of old age, and had to be killed there; the battered old trap ran no longer along the

wellremembered lanes. There was long meadow grass on the lawn, and the trained fruit trees on the wall

had got quite out of hand. At last, when Lucian was seventeen, his father was obliged to take him from

school; he could no longer afford the fees. This was the sorry ending of many hopes, and dreams of a

doublefirst, a fellowship, distinction and glory that the poor parson had long entertained for his son, and the

two moped together, in the shabby room, one on each side of the sulky fire, thinking of dead days and

finished plans, and seeing a grey future in the years that advanced towards them. At one time there seemed

some chance of a distant relative coming forward to Lucian's assistance; and indeed it was quite settled that

he should go up to London with certain definite aims. Mr Taylor told the good news to his

acquaintanceshis coat was too green now for any pretence of friendship; and Lucian himself spoke of his

plans to Burrows the doctor and Mr Dixon, and one or two others. Then the whole scheme fell through, and

the parson and his son suffered much sympathy. People, of course, had to say they were sorry, but in reality

the news was received with high spirits, with the joy with which one sees a stone, as it rolls down a steep

place, give yet another bounding leap towards the pool beneath. Mrs Dixon heard the pleasant tidings from

Mrs Colley, who came in to talk about the Mothers' Meeting and the Band of Hope. Mrs Dixon was nursing

little �thelwig, or some such name, at the time, and made many affecting observations on the general

righteousness with which the world was governed. Indeed, poor Lucian's disappointment seemed distinctly to

increase her faith in the Divine Order, as if it had been some example in Butler's Analogy.

"Aren't Mr. Taylor's views very extreme?" she said to her husband the same evening.

"I am afraid they are," he replied. "I was quite grieved at the last Diocesan Conference at the way in which he

spoke. The dear old bishop had given an address on Auricular Confession; he was forced to do so, you know,

after what had happened, and I must say that I never felt prouder of our beloved Church."

Mr Dixon told all the Homeric story of the conference, reciting the achievements of the champions,

"deploring" this and applauding that. It seemed that Mr Taylor had had the audacity to quote authorities

which the bishop could not very well repudiate, though they were directly opposed to the "safe" episcopal

Mrs Dixon of course was grieved; it was "sad" to think of a clergyman behaving so shamefully.

"But you know, dear," she proceeded, "I have been thinking about that unfortunate Taylor boy and his

disappointments, and after what you've just told me, I am sure it's some kind of judgment on them both. Has

Mr Taylor forgotten the vows he took at his ordination? But don't you think, dear, I am right, and that he has

Somehow or other Lucian divined the atmosphere of threatenings and judgments, and shrank more and more

from the small society of the countryside. For his part, when he was not "mooning" in the beloved fields and

woods of happy memory, he shut himself up with books, reading whatever could be fond on the shelves, and

amassing a store of incongruous and obsolete knowledge. Long did he linger with the men of the seventeenth

century; delaying the gay sunlit streets with Pepys, and listening to the charmed sound of the Restoration

Revel; roaming by peaceful streams with Izaak Walton, and the great Catholic divines; enchanted with the

portrait of Herber the loving ascetic; awed by the mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cavalier poets sang

their gallant songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incantation of a verse. And in the

old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he found the good and beautiful English life, a time full of grace

and dignity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to

be his province; in his disgust at the stupid usual questions, "Will it pay?" "What good is it?" and so forth, he

would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint

of more terrible things; the Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Vaughan, dreams of

alchemistsall these were his delight. Such were his companions, with the hills and hanging woods, the

brooks and lonely waterpools; books, the thoughts of books, the stirrings of imagination, all fused into one

phantasy by the magic of the outland country. He held himself aloof from the walls of the fort; he was content

to see the heaped mounds, the violent height with faery bulwarks, from the gate in the lane, and to leave all

within the ring of oaks in the mystery of his boyhood's vision. He professed to laugh at himself and at his

fancies of that hot August afternoon, when sleep came to him within the thicket, but in his heart of hearts

there was something that never fadedsomething that glowed like the red glint of a gypsy's fire seen from

afar across the hills and mists of the night, and known to be burning in a wild land. Sometimes, when he was

sunken in his books, the flame of delight shot up, and showed him a whole province and continent of his

nature, all shining and aglow; and in the midst of the exultation and triumph he would draw back, a little

afraid. He had become ascetic in his studious and melancholy isolation, and the vision of such ecstasies

frightened him. He began to write a little; at first very tentatively and feebly, and then with more confidence.

He showed some of his verses to his father, who told him with a sigh that he had once hoped to writein the

"They are very nicely done," said the parson; "but I'm afraid you won't find anybody to print them, my boy."

So he pottered on; reading everything, imitating what struck his fancy, attempting the effect of the classic

metres in English verse, trying his hand at a masque, a Restoration comedy, forming impossible plans for

books which rarely got beyond half a dozen lines on a sheet of paper; beset with splendid fancies which

refused to abide before the pen. But the vain joy of conception was not altogether vain, for it gave him some

The months went by, monotonous, and sometimes blotted with despair. He wrote and planned and filled the

wastepaper basket with hopeless efforts. Now and then he sent verses or prose articles to magazines, in

pathetic ignorance of the trade. He felt the immense difficulty of the career of literature without clearly

understanding it; the battle was happily in a mist, so that the host of the enemy, terribly arrayed, was to some

extent hidden. Yet there was enough of difficulty to appal; from following the intricate course of little

nameless brooks, from hushed twilight woods, from the vision of the mountains, and the breath of the great

wind, passing from deep to deep, he would come home filled with thoughts and emotions, mystic fancies

which he yearned to translate into the written word. And the result of the effort seemed always to be bathos!

Wooden sentences, a portentous stilted style, obscurity, and awkwardness clogged the pen; it seemed

impossible to win the great secret of language; the stars glittered only in the darkness, and vanished away in

clearer light. The periods of despair were often long and heavy, the victories very few and trifling; night after

night he sat writing after his father had knocked out his last pipe, filling a page with difficulty in an hour, and

usually forced to thrust the stuff away in despair, and go unhappily to bed, conscious that after all his labour

he had done nothing. And these were moments when the accustomed vision of the land alarmed him, and the

wild domed hills and darkling woods seemed symbols of some terrible secret in the inner life of that

strangerhimself. Sometimes when he was deep in his books and papers, sometimes on a lonely walk,

sometimes amidst the tiresome chatter of Caermaen "society," he would thrill with a sudden sense of awful

hidden things, and there ran that quivering flame through his nerves that brought back the recollection of the

matted thicket, and that earlier appearance of the bare black boughs enwrapped with flames. Indeed, though

he avoided the solitary lane, and the sight of the sheer height, with its ring of oaks and moulded mounds, the

image of it grew more intense as the symbol of certain hints and suggestions. The exultant and insurgent flesh

seemed to have its temple and castle within those olden walls, and he longed with all his heart to escape, to

set himself free in the wilderness of London, and to be secure amidst the murmur of modern streets.

LUCIAN was growing really anxious about his manuscript. He had gained enough experience at

twentythree to know that editors and publishers must not be hurried; but his book had been lying at Messrs

Beit's office for more than three months. For six weeks he had not dared to expect an answer, but afterwards

life had become agonising. Every morning, at posttime, the poor wretch nearly choked with anxiety to know

whether his sentence had arrived, ant eh rest of the day was racked with alternate pangs of hope and despair.

Now and then he was almost assured of success; conning over these painful and eager pages in memory, he

found parts that were admirable, while again, his inexperience reproached him, and he feared he had written a

raw and awkward book, wholly unfit for print. Then he would compare what he remembered of it with

notable magazine articles and books praised by reviewers, and fancy that after all there might be good points

in the thing; he could not help liking the first chapter for instance. Perhaps the letter might come tomorrow.

So it went on; week after week of sick torture made more exquisite by such gleams of hope; it was as if he

were stretched in anguish on the rack, and the pain relaxed and kind words spoken now and again by the

tormentors, and then once more the grinding pang and burning agony. At last he could bear suspense no

longer, and he wrote to Messrs Beit, inquiring in a humble manner whether the manuscript had arrived in

safety. The firm replied in a very polite letter, expressing regret that their reader had been suffering from a

cold in the head, and had therefore been unable to send in his report. A final decision was promised in a

week's time, and the letter ended with apologies for the delay and a hope that he had suffered no

inconvenience. Of course the "final decision: did not come at the end of the week, but the book was returned

at the end of three weeks, with a circular thanking the author for his kindness in submitting the manuscript,

and regretting that the firm did not see their way to producing it. He felt relieved; the operation that he had

dreaded and deprecated for so long was at last over, and he would no longer grow sick of mornings when the

letters were brought in. He took his parcel to the sunny corner of the garden, where the old wooden seat stood

sheltered from the biting March winds. Messrs Beit had put in with the circular on of their short lists, a neat

He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to read: "A Bad Un to Beat: a Novel of

Sporting Life, by the Honourable Mrs Scudamore Runnymede, author of Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack,

The Sportleigh Stables, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries." The Press, it seemed, pronounced this to be a

"charming book. Mrs Runnymede has wit and humour enough to furnish forth halfadozen ordinary

sporting novels." "Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a pastmistress in the art of novel writing," said the

Review; while Miranda, of Smart Society, positively bubbled with enthusiasm. "You must forgive me,

Aminta," wrote this young person, "if I have not sent the description I promised of Madame Lulu's new

creations and others of that ilk. I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave about the

Honourable Mrs Scudamore Runnymede's last novel, A Bad Un to Beat. He says all the Smart Set are talking

of it, and it seems the police have to regulate the crowd at Mudie's. You know I read everything Mrs

Runnymede writes, so I set out Miggs directly to beg, borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I burnt the

midnight oil before I laid it down. Now, mind you get it, you will find it so awfully chic." Nearly all the

novelists on Messrs Beit's list were ladies, their works all ran to three volumes, and all of them pleased the

Press, the Review, and Miranda of Smart Society. One of these books, Millicent's Marriage, by Sarah

Pocklington Sanders, was pronounced fit to lie on the schoolroom table, on the drawingroom bookshelf, or

beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our daughters. "This," the reviewer went on, "is high praise,

especially in these days when we are deafened by the loudvoiced clamour of selfstyled 'artists.' We would

warn the young men who prate so persistently of style and literature, construction and prose harmonies, that

we believe the English reading public will have none of them. Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of

domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and manly life of the hunting field, pictures of innocent

and healthy English girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us; these are the topics that will always find a

welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous

He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish; he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a

determination to strike a blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face,

spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender heart, seemed to shine through the

words which Messrs Beit had quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was

style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too

could handle the weapons of the enemy if he cared to trouble himself with such things. Lucian leant back and

roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tomcat who had succeeded to the poor dead beasts looked up

reproachfully from his sunny corner, with a face like the reviewer's, innocent and round and whiskered. At

last he turned to his parcel and drew out some halfdozen sheets of manuscript, and began to read in a rather

desponding spirit; it was pretty obvious, he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath the standard of

publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the making; it was a pious attempt to translate into

English prose the form and mystery of the domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red

swollen brook swirling through leafless woods. Daydreams and toil at nights had gone into the eager pages,

he had laboured hard to do his very best, writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and

over again, grudging no patience, no trouble if only it might be pretty good; good enough to print and sell to a

reading public which had become critical. He glanced through the manuscript in his hand, and to his

astonishment, he could not help thinking that in its measure it was decent work. After three months his prose

seemed fresh and strange as if it had been wrought by another man, and in spite of himself he found charming

things, and impressions that were not commonplace. He knew how weak it all was compared with his own

conceptions; he had seen an enchanted city, awful, glorious, with flame smitten about its battlements, like the

cities of the Sangraal, and he had moulded his copy in such poor clay as came to his hand; yet, in spite of the

gulf that yawned between the idea and the work, he knew as he read that the thing accomplished was very far

from a failure. He put back the leaves carefully, and glanced again at Messrs Beit's list. It had escaped his

notice that A Bad Un to Beat was in its third threevolume edition. It was a great thing, at all events, to know

in what direction to aim, if he wished to succeed. If he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win the

approval of the coy and retiring Miranda of Smart Society; that modest maiden might in his praise interrupt

her task of disinterested advertisement, her philanthropic counsels to "go to Jumper's, and mind you ask for

Mr C. Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue paper with the yellow spots at ten shillings the piece." He

put down the pamphlet, and laughed again at the books and the reviewers: so that he might not weep. This

then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after all, was but an illplayed tragedy.

The rejected manuscript was hidden away, and his father quoted Horace's maxim as to the benefit of keeping

literary works for some time "in the wood." There was nothing to grumble at, though Lucian was inclined to

think the duration of the reader's catarrh a little exaggerated. But this was a trifle; he did not arrogate to

himself the position of a small commercial traveller, who expects prompt civility as a matter of course, and

not at all as a favour. He simply forgot his old book, and resolved that he would make a better one if he

could. With the hot fit of resolution, the determination not to be snuffed out by one refusal upon him, he

began to beat about in his mind for some new scheme. At first it seemed that he had hit upon a promising

subject; he began to plot out chapters and scribble hints for the curious story that had entered his mind,

arranging his circumstances and noting the effects to be produced with all the enthusiasm of the artist. But

after the first breath the aspect of the work changed; page after page was tossed aside as hopeless, the

beautiful sentences he had dreamed of refused to be written, and his puppets remained stiff and wooden,

devoid of life or motion. Then all the old despairs came back, the agonies of the artificer who strives and

perseveres in vain; the scheme that seemed of amorous fire turned to cold hard ice in his hands. He let the pen

drop from his fingers, and wondered how he could have ever dreamed of writing books. Again, the thought

occurred that he might do something if he could only get away, and join the sad procession in the murmuring

London streets, far from the shadow of those awful hills. But it was quite impossible; the relative who had

once promised assistance was appealed to, and wrote expressing his regret that Lucian had turned out a

"loafer," wasting his time in scribbling, instead of trying to earn his living. Lucian felt rather hurt at this

letter, but the parson only grinned grimly as usual. He was thinking of how he signed a cheque many years

before, in the days of his prosperity, and the cheque was payable to this didactic relative, then in but a poor

The old rejected manuscript had almost passed out of his recollection. It was recalled oddly enough. He was

looking over the Reader, and enjoying the admirable literary criticisms, some three months after the return of

his book, when his eye was attracted by a quoted passage in one of the notices. The thought and style both

wakened memory, the cadences were familiar and beloved. He read through the review from the beginning; it

was a very favourable one, and pronounced the volume an immense advance on Mr Ritson's previous work.

"Here, undoubtedly, the author has discovered a vein of pure metal," the reviewer added, "and we predict that

he will go far." Lucian had not yet reached his father's stage, he was unable to grin in the manner of that

irreverent parson. The passage selected for high praise was taken almost word for word from the manuscript

now resting in his room, the work that had not reached the high standard of Messrs Beit Co., who, curiously

enough, were the publishers of the book reviewed in the Reader. He had a few shillings in his possession, and

wrote at once to a bookseller in London for a copy of The Chorus in Green, as the author had oddly named

the book. He wrote on June 21st, and thought he might fairly expect to receive the interesting volume by the

24th; but the postman, true to his tradition, brought nothing for him, and in the afternoon he resolved to walk

down to Caermaen, in case it might have come by a second post; or it might have been mislaid at the office;

they forgot parcels sometimes, especially when the bag was heavy and the weather hot. This 24th was a sultry

and oppressive day; a grey veil of cloud obscured the sky, and a vaporous mist hung heavily over the land,

and fumed up from the valleys. But at five o'clock, when he started, the clouds began to break, and the

sunlight suddenly streamed down through the misty air, making ways and channels of rich glory, and bright

islands in the gloom. If was a pleasant and shining evening when, passing by devious back streets to avoid

the barbarians (as he very rudely called the respectable inhabitants of the town), he reached the postoffice;

"Yes, Mr Taylor, there is something for you, sir," said the man. "Williams the postman forgot to take it up

this morning," and he handed over the packet. Lucian took it under his arm and went slowly through the

ragged winding lanes till he came into the country. He got over the first stile on the road, and sitting down in

the shelter of a hedge, cut the strings and opened the parcel. The Chorus in Green was got up in what

reviewers call a dainty manner: a bronzegreen cloth, wellcut gold lettering, wide margins and black

"oldface" type, all witnessed to the good taste of Messrs Beit Co. He cut the pages hastily and began to read.

He soon found that he had wronged Mr Ritsonthat old literary hand had by no means stolen his book

wholesale, as he had expected. There were about two hundred pages in the pretty little volume, and of these

about ninety were Lucian's, dovetailed into a rather different scheme with skill that was nothing short of

exquisite. And Mr Ritson's own work was often very good; spoilt here and there for some tastes by the

"cataloguing" method, a somewhat materialistic way of taking an inventory of the holy country things; but,

for that very reason, contrasting to a great advantage with Lucian's hints and dreams and note of haunting.

And here and there Mr Ritson had made little alterations in the style of the passages he had conveyed, and

most of these alterations were amendments, as Lucian was obliged to confess, though he would have liked to

argue one or two points with his collaborator and corrector. He lit his pipe and leant back comfortably in the

hedge, thinking things over, weighing very coolly his experience of humanity, his contact with the "society"

of the countryside, the affair of the The Chorus in Green, and even some little incidents that had struck him as

he was walking through the streets of Caermaen that evening. At the postoffice, when he was inquiring for

his parcel, he had heard two old women grumbling in the street; it seemed, so far as he could make out, that

both had been disappointed in much the same way. One was a Roman Catholic, hardened, and beyond the

reach of conversion; she had been advised to ask alms of the priests, "who are always creeping and crawling

about." The other old sinner was a Dissenter, and, "Mr Dixon has quite enough to do to relieve good Church

people." Mrs Dixon, assisted by Henrietta, was, it seemed, the lady high almoner, who dispensed these

charities. As she said to Mrs Colley, they would end by keeping all the beggars in the county, and they really

couldn't afford it. A large family was an expensive thing, and the girls must have new frocks. "Mr Dixon is

always telling me and the girls that we must not demoralise the people by indiscriminate charity." Lucian had

heard of these sage counsels, and through it them as he listened to the bitter complaints of the gaunt, hungry

old women. In the back street by which he passed out of the town he saw a large "healthy" boy kicking a sick

cat; the poor creature had just strength enough to crawl under an outhouse door; probably to tie in torments.

He did not find much satisfaction in thrashing the boy, but he did it with hearty good will. Further on, at the

corner where the turnpike used to be, was a big notice, announcing a meeting at the schoolroom in aid of the

missions to the Portuguese. "Under the Patronage of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese," was the imposing

headline; the Reverend Merivale Dixon, vicar of Caermaen, was to be in the chair, supported by Stanley

Gervase, Esq., J.P., and by many of the clergy and gentry of the neighbourhood. Senhor Diabo, "formerly a

Romanist priest, now an evangelist in Lisbon," would address the meeting. "Funds are urgently needed to

carry on this good work," concluded the notice. So he lay well back in the shade of the hedge, and thought

whether some sort of an article could not be made by vindicating the terrible Yahoos; one might point out

that they were in many respects a simple and unsophisticated race, whose faults were the result of their

enslaved position, while such virtues as they had were all their own. They might be compared, he thought,

much to their advantage, with more complex civilisations. There was no hint of anything like the Beit system

of publishing in existence amongst them; the great Yahoo nation would surely never feed and encourage a

scabby Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness from the horsecommunity, and the witty dean, in all his

minuteness, had said nothing of "safe" Yahoos. On reflection, however, he did not feel quite secure of this

part of his defence; he remembered that the leading brutes had favourites, who were employed in certain

simple domestic offices about their masters, and it seemed doubtful whether the contemplated vindication

would not break down on this point. He smiled queerly to himself as he thought of these comparisons, but his

heart burned with a dully fury. Throwing back his unhappy memory, he recalled all the contempt and scorn

he had suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn

other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people

about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some

miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went

by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers

and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! This putrid filth, moulded into human shape, made

only to fawn on the rich and beslaver them, thinking no foulness too foul if it were done in honour of those in

power and authority; and no refined cruelty of contempt too cruel if it were contempt of the poor and humble

and oppressed; it was to this obscene and ghastly throng that he was something to be pointed at. And these

men and women spoke of sacred things, and knelt before the awful altar of God, before the altar of

tremendous fire, surrounded as they professed by Angles and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven;

and in their very church they had one aisle for the rich and another for the poor. And the species was not

peculiar to Caermaen; the rich business men in London and the successful brother author were probably

amusing themselves at the expense of the poor struggling creature they had injured and wounded; just as the

"healthy" boy had burst into a great laugh when the miserable sick cat cried out in bitter agony, and trailed its

limbs slowly, as it crept away to die. Lucian looked into his own life and his own will; he saw that in spite of

his follies, and his want of success, he had not been consciously malignant, he had never deliberately aided in

oppression, or looked on it with enjoyment and approval, and he felt that when he lay dead beneath the earth,

eaten by swarming worms, he would be in a purer company than now, when he lived amongst human

creatures. And he was to call this loathesome beast, all sting and filth, brother! "I had rather call the devils my

brothers," he said in his heart, "I would fare better in hell." Blood was in his eyes, and as he looked up the sky

The sun was sinking low on the mountain when he set out on the way again. Burrows, the doctor, coming

home in his trap, met him a little lower on the road, and gave him a friendly goodnight.

"A long way round on this road, isn't it?" said the doctor. "As you have come so far, why don't you try the

short cut across the fields? You will find it easily enough; second stile on the left hand, and then go straight

He thanked Dr Burrows and said he would try the short cut, and Burrows span on homeward. He was a gruff

and honest bachelor, and often felt very sorry for the lad, and wished he could help him. As he drove on, it

suddenly occurred to him that Lucian had an awful look on his face, and he was sorry he had not asked him to

jump in, and to come to supper. A hearty slice of beef, with strong ale, whisky and soda afterwards, a good

pipe, and certain Rabelaisian tales which the doctor had treasured for many years, would have done the poor

fellow a lot of good, he was certain. He half turned round on his seat, and looked to see if Lucian were still in

sight, but he had passed the corner, and the doctor drove on, shivering a little; the mists were beginning to

Lucian trailed slowly along the road, keeping a look out for the stile the doctor had mentioned. It would be a

little of an adventure, he thought, to find his way by an unknown track; he knew the direction in which his

home lay, and he imagined he would not have much difficulty in crossing from one stile to another. The path

led him up a steep bare field, and when he was at the top, the town and the valley winding up to the north

stretched before him. The river was stilled at the flood, and the yellow water, reflecting the sunset, glowed in

its deep pools like dull brass. These burning pools, the level meadows fringed with shuddering reeds, the long

dark sweep of the forest on the hill,, were all clear and distinct, yet the light seemed to have clothed them

with a new garment, even as voices from the streets of Caermaen sounded strangely, mounting up thin with

the smoke. There beneath him lay the huddled cluster of Caermaen, the ragged and uneven roofs that marked

the winding and sordid streets, here and there a pointed gable rising above its meaner fellows; beyond he

recognised the piled mounds that marked the circle of the amphitheatre, and the dark edge of trees that grew

where the Roman wall whitened and waxed old beneath the frosts and rains of eighteen hundred years. Thin

and strange, mingled together, the voices came up to him on the hill; it was as if an outland race inhabited the

ruined city and talked in a strange language of strange and terrible things. The sun had slid down the sky, and

hung quivering over the huge dark dome of the mountain like a burnt sacrifice, and then suddenly vanished.

In the afterglow the clouds began to writhe and turn scarlet, and shone so strangely reflected in the pools of

the snakelike river, that one would have said the still waters stirred, the fleeting and changing of the clouds

seeming to quicken the stream, as if it bubbled and sent up gouts of blood. But already about he town the

darkness was forming; fast, fast the shadows crept upon it from the forest, and from all sides banks and

wreaths of curling mist were gathering, as if a ghostly leaguer were being built up against the city, and the

strange race who lived in its streets. Suddenly there burst out fro the stillness the clear an piercing music of

the r�veill�, calling, recalling, iterated, reiterated, and ending with one long high fierce shrill note with which

the steep hills rang. Perhaps a boy in the school band was practising on his bugle, but for Lucian it was

magic. For him it was the note of the Roman trumpet, tuba mirum spargens sonum, filling all the hollow

valley with its command, reverberated in dark places in the far forest, and resonant in the old graveyards

without the walls. In his imagination he saw the earthen gates of the tombs broken open, and the serried

legion swarming to the eagles. Century by century they passed by; they rose, dripping, from the river bed,

they rose from the level, their armour shone in the quiet orchard, they gathered in ranks and companies from

the cemetery, and as the trumpet sounded, the hill fort above the town gave up its dead. By hundreds and

thousands the ghostly battle surged about the standard, behind the quaking mist, ready to march against the

He turned sharply; it was growing very dark, and he was afraid of missing his way. At first the path led him

by the verge of a wood; there was a noise of rustling and murmuring from the trees as if they were taking evil

counsel together. A high hedge shut out the sight of the darkening valley, and he stumbled on mechanically,

without taking much note of the turnings of the track, and when he came out from the wood shadow to the

open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered and uncertain. A dark wild twilight country lay before

him, confused dim shapes of trees near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the further hills and woods

were dimmer, and all the air was very still. Suddenly the darkness about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot

up on the mountain, and for a moment the little world of the woodside and the steep hill shone in a pale light,

and he thought he saw his path beaten out in the turf before him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of

fire, and it led him on down the ragged slope, his feet striking against ridges of ground, and falling from

beneath him at a sudden dip. The bramble bushes shot out long prickly vines, amongst which he was

entangled, and lower he was held back by wet bubbling earth. He had descended into a dark and shady valley,

beset and tapestried with gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises were the only sounds, strange, unutterable

mutterings, dismal, inarticulate. He pushed on in what he hoped was the right direction, stumbling from stile

to gate, peering through mist and shadow, and still vainly seeking for any known landmark. Presently another

sound broke upon the grim air, the murmur of water poured over stones, gurgling against the old misshapen

roots of trees, and running clear in a deep channel. He passed into the chill breath of the brook, and almost

fancied he heard two voices speaking in its murmur; there seemed a ceaseless utterance of words, an endless

argument. With a mood of horror pressing on him, he listened to the noise of waters, and the wild fancy

seized him that he was not deceived, that two unknown beings stood together there in the darkness and tried

the balances of his life, and spoke his doom. The hour in the matted thicket rushed over the great bridge of

years to his thought; he had sinned against the earth, and the earth trembled and shook for vengeance. He

stayed still for a moment, quivering with fear, and at last went on blindly, no longer caring for the path, if

only he might escape from the toils of that dismal shuddering hollow. As he plunged through the hedges the

bristling thorns tore his face and hands; he fell amongst stingingnettles and was pricked as he beat out his

way amidst the gorse. He raced headlong, his head over his shoulder, through a windy wood, bare of

undergrowth; there lay about the ground mouldering stumps, the relics of trees that had thundered to their

fall, crashing and tearing to earth, long ago; and from these remains there flowed out a pale thin radiance,

filling the spaces of the sounding wood with a dream of light. He had lost all count of the track; he felt he had

fled for hours, climbing and descending, and yet not advancing; it was as if he stood still and the shadows of

the land went by, in a vision. But at last a hedge, high and straggling, rose before him, and as he broke

through it, his feet slipped, and he fell headlong down a steep bank into a lane. He lay still, halfstunned, for

a moment, and then rising unsteadily, he looked desperately into the darkness before him, uncertain and

bewildered. In front it was black as a midnight cellar, and he turned about, and saw a glint in the distance, as

if a candle were flickering in a farmhouse window. He began to walk with trembling feet towards the light,

when suddenly something pale started out from the shadows before him, and seemed to swim and float down

the air. He was going down hill, and he hastened onwards, and he could see the bars of a stile framed dimly

against the sky, and the figure still advanced with that gliding motion. Then, as the road declined to the

valley, the landmark he had been seeking appeared. To his right there surged up in the darkness the darker

summit of the Roman fort, and the streaming fire of the great full moon glowed through the bars of the

wizard oaks, and made a halo shine about the hill. He was now quite close to the white appearance, and saw

that it was only a woman walking swiftly down the lane; the floating movement was an effect due to the

sombre air and the moon's glamour. At the gate, where he had spent so many hours gazing at the fort, they

"Good evening, Annie," he answered, calling her by her name for the first time, and he saw that she smiled

"Yes, sir; but I've been taking a bit of supper to old Mrs Gibbon. She's been very poorly the last few days, and

Then there were really people who helped one another; kindness and pity were not mere myths, fictions of

"society," as useful as Doe and Roe, and as nonexistent. The thought struck Lucian with a shock; the

evening's passion and delirium, the wild walk and physical fatigue had almost shattered him in body and

mind. He was "degenerate," decadent, and the rough rains and blustering winds of life, which a stronger man

would have laughed at and enjoyed, were to him "hailstorms and fireshowers." After all, Messrs Beit, the

publishers, were only sharp men of business, and these terrible Dixons and Gervases and Colleys merely the

ordinary limited clergy and gentry of a quiet country town; sturdier sense would have dismissed Dixon as an

old humbug, Stanley Gervase, Esquire, J.P., as a "bit of a bounder," and the ladies as "rather a shoddy lot."

But he was walking slowly now in painful silence, his heavy, lagging feet striking against the loose stones.

He was not thinking of the girl beside him; only something seemed to swell and grow and swell within his

heart; it was all the torture of his days, weary hopes and weary disappointment, scorn rankling and throbbing,

and the thought "I had rather call the devils my brothers and live with them in hell." He choked and gasped

for breath, and felt involuntary muscles working in his face, and the impulses of a madman stirring him; he

himself was in truth the realisation of the vision of Caermaen that night, a city with mouldering walls beset

by the ghostly legion. Life and the world and the laws of the sunlight had passed away, and the resurrection

and kingdom of the dead began. The Celt assailed him, becoming from the weird wood he called the world,

and his faroff ancestors, the "little people," crept out of their caves, muttering charms and incantations in

hissing inhuman speech; he was beleaguered by desires that had slept in his race for ages.

"I am afraid you are very tired, Master Lucian. Would you like me to give you my hand over this rough bit?"

He had stumbled against a great round stone and had nearly fallen. The woman's hand sought his in the

darkness; as he felt the touch of the soft warm flesh he moaned, and a pang shot through his arm to his heart.

He looked up and found he had only walked a few paces since Annie had spoken; he had thought they had

wandered for hours together. The moon was just mounting above the oaks, and the halo round the dark hill

brightened. He stopped short, and keeping his hold of Annie's hand, looked into her face. A hazy glory of

moonlight shone around them and lit up their eyes. He had not greatly altered since his boyhood; his face was

pale olive in colour, thin and oval; marks of pain had gathered about the eyes, and his black hair was already

stricken with grey. But the eager, curious gaze still remained, and what he saw before him lit up his sadness

with a new fire. She stopped too, and did not offer to draw away, but looked back with all her heart. They

were alike in many ways; her skin was also of that olive colour, but her face was sweet as a beautiful summer

night, and her black eyes showed no dimness, and the smile on the scarlet lips was like a flame when it

It was Lucian who spoke next: "My dear, my dear." And their lips were together again, and their arms locked

together, each holding the other fast. And then the poor lad let his head sink down on his sweethearts' breast,

and burst into a passion of weeping. The tears streamed down his face, and he shook with sobbing, in the

happiest moment that he had ever lived. The woman bent over him and tried to comfort him, but his tears

were his consolation and his triumph. Annie was whispering to him, her hand laid on his heart; she was

whispering beautiful, wonderful words, that soothed him as a song. He did not know what they meant.

"Annie, dear, dear Annie, what are you saying to me? I have never heard such beautiful words. Tell me,

She laughed, and said it was only nonsense that the nurses sang to the children.

"No, no, you are not to call me Master Lucian any more," he said, when they parted, "you must call me

He fell down before her, embracing her knees, and adored, and she allowed him, and confirmed his worship.

He followed slowly after her, passing the path which led to her home with a longing glance. Nobody saw any

difference in Lucian when he reached the rectory. He came in with his usual dreamy indifference, and told

how he had lost his way by trying the short cut. He said he had met Dr Burrows on the road, and that he had

recommended the path by the fields. Then, as dully as if he had been reading some story out of a newspaper,

he gave his father the outlines of the Beit case, producing the pretty little book called The Chorus in Green.

"No; not all of it. Look; that bit is mine, and that; and the beginning of this chapter. Nearly the whole of the

He closed the book without interest, and indeed he felt astonished at his father's excitement. The incident

"And you say that eighty or ninety pages of this book are yours, and these scoundrels have stolen your

"Well, I suppose they have. I'll fetch the manuscript, if you would like to look at it."

The manuscript was duly produced, wrapped in brown paper, with Messrs Beit's address label on it, and the

"And the other book has been out a month." The parson, forgetting the sacerdotal office, and his good habit

of grinning, swore at Messrs Beit and Mr Ritson, calling them damned thieves, and then began to read the

"Why, it's splendid work. My poor fellow," he said after a while, "I had no notion you could write so well. I

used to think of such things in the old days at Oxford; 'old Bill,' the tutor, used to praise my essays, but I

never wrote anything like this. And this infernal ruffian of a Ritson has taken all your best things and mixed

Lucian was mildly amused; he couldn't enter into his father's feelings at all. He sat smoking in one of the old

easy chairs, taking the rare relish of a hot grog with his pipe, and gazing out of his dreamy eyes at the violent

old parson. He was pleased that his father liked his book, because he knew him to be a deep and sober scholar

and a cool judge of good letters; but he laughed to himself when he saw the magic of print. The parson had

expressed no wish to read the manuscript when it came back in disgrace; he had merely grinned, said

something about boomerangs, and quoted Horace with relish. Whereas now, before the book in its neat case,

lettered with another man's name, his approbation of the writing and his disapproval of the "scoundrels," as

he called them, were loudly expressed, and, though a good smoker, he blew and puffed vehemently at his

"Oh no, I think not. It really doesn't matter much, does it? After all, there are some very weak things it the

book; doesn't it strike you as 'young?' I have been thinking of another plan, but I haven't done much with it

lately. But I believe I've got hold of a really good idea this time, and if I can manage to see the heart of it I

hope to turn out a manuscript worth stealing. But it's so hard to get at the core of an ideathe heart, as I call

it," he went on after a pause. "It's like having a box you can't open, though you know there's something

wonderful inside. But I do believe I've a fine thing in my hands, and I mean to try my best to work it."

Lucian talked with enthusiasm now, but his father, on his side, could not share these ardours. It was his part

to be astonished at excitement over a book that was not even begun, the mere ghost of a book flitting elusive

in the world of unborn masterpieces and failures. He had loved good letters, but he shared unconsciously in

the general belief that literary attempt is always pitiful, though he did not subscribe to the other half of the

popular faiththat literary success is a matter of very little importance. He though well of books, but only of

printed books; in manuscripts he put no faith, and the paulopostfuturum tense he could not in any manner

"But about this dirty trick these fellows have played on you. You won't sit quietly and bear it, surely? It's only

"They wouldn't put the letter in. And if they did, I should only get laughed at. Some time ago a man wrote to

the Reader, complaining of his play being stolen. He said that he had sent a little oneact comedy to

Burleigh, the great dramatist, asking for his advice. Burleigh gave his advice and took the idea for his own

very successful play. So the man said, and I daresay it was true enough. But the victim got nothing by his

complaint. 'A pretty state of things,' everybody said. 'Here's a Mr Tomson, that no one has ever heard of,

bothers Burleigh with his rubbish, and then accuses him of petty larceny. Is it likely that a man of Burleigh's

position, a playwright who can make his five thousand a year easily, would borrow from an unknown

Tomson?' I should think it very likely, indeed," Lucian went on, chuckling, "but that was their verdict. No; I

"Well, well, my boy, I suppose you know your own business best. I think you are mistaken, but you must do

"It's all so unimportant," said Lucian, and he really thought so. He had sweeter things to dream of, and

desired no communion of feeling with that madman who had left Caermaen some few hours before. He felt

he had made a fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity of which he had been guilty; such

boiling hatred was not only wicked, but absurd. A man could do no good who put himself into a position of

such violent antagonism against his fellowcreatures; so Lucian rebuked his heart, saying that he was old

enough to know better. But he remembered that he had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret ecstasy

that he treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite even for thought till he was quite alone; and

then there was that scheme for a new book that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have

arisen into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started on a false tack, he had taken the

wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page

turned upside down; and he saw those characters he had vainly sought suddenly disambushed, and a splendid

It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed itself as a living thing, stirring and

mysterious, and warm as life itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in reality he was

full of amazement at his own son, and now and again he slipped sly furtive glances towards the tranquil

young man in the armchair by the empty hearth. In the first place, Mr Taylor was genuinely impressed by

what he had read of Lucian's work; he had so long been accustomed to look upon all effort as futile that

success amazed him. In the abstract, of course, he was prepared to admit that some people did write well and

got published and made money, just as other persons successfully backed an outsider at heavy odds; but it

had seemed as improbable that Lucian should show even the beginnings of achievement in one direction as in

the other. Then the boy evidently cared so little about it; he did not appear to be proud of being worth

He sat back luxuriously in the disreputable old chair, drawing long slow wreaths of smoke, tasting his whisky

from time to time, evidently well at ease with himself. The father saw him smile, and it suddenly dawned

upon him that his son was very handsome; he had such kind gentle eyes and a kind mouth, and his pale

cheeks were flushed like a girl's. Mr Taylor felt moved. What a harmless young fellow Lucian had been; no

doubt a little queer and different from others, but wholly inoffensive and patient under disappointment. And

Miss Deacon, her contribution to the evening's discussion had been characteristic; she had remarked, firstly,

that writing was a very unsettling occupation, and secondly, that it was extremely foolish to entrust one's

property to people of whom one knew nothing. Father and son had smiled together at these observations,

which were probably true enough. Mr Taylor at last left Lucian along; he shook hands with a good deal of

"You mustn't work too hard, old fellow. I wouldn't stay up too late, if I were you, after that long walk. You

"I'm not tired now, though. I feel as if I could write my new book on the spot"; and the young man laughed a

He sat still a moment after his father had left the room. He cherished his chief treasure of thought in its secret

place; he would not enjoy it yet. He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote or tried to write, and began

taking pens and paper from the drawer. There was a great pile of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side,

and signifying many hours of desperate scribbling, of heartsearching and rack of his brain; an array of poor,

eager lines written by a waning fire with waning hope; all useless and abandoned. He took up the sheets

cheerfully, and began in delicious idleness to look over these fruitless efforts. A page caught his attention; he

remembered how he wrote it while a November storm was dashing against the panes; and there was another,

with a queer blot in one corner; he had got up from his chair and looked out, and all the earth was white

fairyland, and the snowflakes whirled round and round in the wind. Then he saw the chapter begun of a night

in March: a great gale blew that night and rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard. He had heard

the trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the wind, and across the heaven a white moon fled

awfully before the streaming clouds. And all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet, and past

unhappiness was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of toil were holy. He turned over half a dozen

leaves and began to sketch out the outlines o the new book on the unused pages; running out a skeleton plan

on one page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on others. He wrote rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving

phrases grew under his pen; a particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire; he gave his hand free

course, and saw the written work glowing; and action and all the heat of existence quickened and beat on the

wet page. Happy fancies took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back in his chair he felt the

stir and rush of the story as if it had been some portion of his own life. He read over what he had done with a

renewed pleasure in the nimble and flowing workmanship, and as he put the little pile of manuscript tenderly

And then but the rest of the night was given to tender and delicious things, and when he went up to bed

FOR DAYS Lucian lay in a swoon of pleasure, smiling when he was addressed, sauntering happily in the

sunlight, hugging recollection warm to his heart. Annie had told him that she was going on a visit to her

married sister, and said, with a caress, that he must be patient. He protested against her absence, but she

fondled him, whispering her charms in his ear till he gave in and then they said goodbye, Lucian adoring on

his knees. The parting was as strange as the meeting, and that night when he laid his work aside, and let

himself sink deep into the joys of memory, all the encounter seemed as wonderful and impossible as magic.

"And you really don't mean to do anything about those rascals?" said his father.

"Rascals? Which rascals? Oh, you mean Beit. I had forgotten all about it. No; I don't think I shall trouble.

And he returned to his dream, pacing slowly from the medlar to the quince and back again. It seemed trivial

to be interrupted by such questions; he had not even time to think of the book he had recommenced so

eagerly, much less of this labour of long ago. He recollected without interest that it cost him many pains, that

it was pretty good here and there, and that it had been stolen, and it seemed that there was nothing more to be

said on the matter. He wished to think of the darkness in the lane, of the kind voice that spoke to him, of the

kind hand that sought his own, as he stumbled on the rough way. So far, it was wonderful. Since he had left

school and lost the company of the worthy barbarians who had befriended him there, he had almost lost the

sense of kinship with humanity; he had come to dread the human form as mean dread the hood of the cobra.

To Lucian a man or a woman meant something that stung, that spoke words that rankled, and poisoned his

life with scorn. At first such malignity shocked him: he would ponder over words and glances and wonder if

he were not mistaken, and he still sought now an then for sympathy. The poor boy had romantic ideas about

women; he believed they were merciful and pitiful, very kind to the unlucky and helpless. Men perhaps had

to be different; after all, the duty of a man was to get on in the world, or, in plain language, to make money,

to be successful; to cheat rather than to be cheated, but always to be successful; and he could understand that

one who fell below this high standard must expect to be severely judged by his fellows. For example, there

was young Bennett, Miss Spurry's nephew. Lucian had met him once or twice when he was spending his

holidays with Miss Spurry, and the two young fellows compared literary notes together. Bennett showed

some beautiful things he had written, over which Lucian had grown both sad and enthusiastic. It was such

exquisite magic verse, and so much better than anything he ever hoped to write, that there was a touch of

anguish in his congratulations. But when Bennett, after many vain prayers to his aunt, threw up a safe

position in the bank, and betook himself to a London garret, Lucian was not surprised at the general verdict.

Mr Dixon, as a clergyman, viewed the question from a high standpoint and found it all deplorable, but the

general opinion was that Bennett was a hopeless young lunatic. Old Mr Gervase went purple when his name

"I always thought he was a beastly young ass," said Edward Dixon, "but I didn't think he'd chuck away his

chances like that. Said he couldn't stand a bank! I hope he'll be able to stand bread and water. That's all those

littery fellows get, I believe, except Tennyson and Mark Twain and those sort of people."

Lucian of course sympathised with the unfortunate Bennett, but such judgments were after all only natural.

The young man might have stayed in the bank and succeeded to his aunt's thousand a year, and everybody

would have called him a very nice young fellow"clever, too." But he had deliberately chosen, as Edward

Dixon had said, to chuck his chances away for the sake of literature; piety and a sense of the main chance had

alike pointed the way to a delicate course of wheedling, to a little harmless practising on Miss Spurry's

infirmities, to frequent compliances of a soothing nature, and the "young ass" had been blind to the direction

of one and the other. It seemed almost right that the vicar should moralise, that Edward Dixon should sneer,

and that Mr Gervase should grow purple with contempt. Men, Lucian thought, were like judges, who may

pity the criminal in their hearts, but are forced to vindicate the outraged majesty of the law by a severe

sentence. He felt the same considerations applied to his own case; he knew that his father should have had

more money, that his clothes should be newer and of a better cut, that he should lhave gone to the university

and made good friends. If such had been his fortune he could have looked his fellowmen proudly in the

face, upright and unashamed. Having put on the whole armour of a firstrate West End tailor, with money in

his purse, having taken anxious thought for the morrow, and having some useful friends and good prospects;

in such a case he might have held his head high in a gentlemanly and Christian community. As it was he had

usually avoided the reproachful glance of his fellows, feeling that he deserved their condemnation. But he

had cherished for a long time his romantic sentimentalities about women; literary conventions borrowed from

the minor poets and pseudomedi�valists, or so he thought afterwards. But, fresh from school, wearied a

little with the perpetual society of barbarian though worthy boys, he had in his soul a charming image of

womanhood, before which he worshipped with mingled passion and devotion. It was a nude figure, perhaps,

but the shining arms were to be wound about the neck of a vanquished knight; there was rest for the head of a

wounded lover; the hands were stretched forth to do works of pity, and the smiling lips were to murmur not

love alone, but consolation in defeat. Here was the refuge for a broken heart; here the scorn of men would but

make tenderness increase; here was all pity and all charity with lovingkindness. It was a delightful picture,

conceived in the "come rest on this bosom," and "a ministering angel thou" manner, with touches of

allurement that made devotion all the sweeter. He soon found that he had idealised a little; in the affair of

young Bennett, while the men were contemptuous the women were virulent. He had been rather fond of

Agatha Gervase, and she, so other ladies said, had "set her cap" at him. Now, when he rebelled, and lost the

goodwill of his aunt, dear Miss Spurry, Agatha insulted him with all conceivable rapidity. "After all, Mr

Bennett," she said, "you will be nothing better than a beggar; now, will you? You mustn't think me cruel, but

I can't help speaking the truth. Write books!" Her expression filled up the incomplete sentence; she waggled

with indignant emotion. These passages came to Lucian's ears, and indeed the Gervases boasted of "how well

"Never mind, Gathy," old Gervase had observed. "If the impudent young puppy comes here again, we'll see

"Poor dear child," Mrs Gervase added in telling the tale, "and she was so fond of him too. But of course it

But Lucian was troubled; he sought vainly for the ideal womanly, the tender note of "come rest on this

bosom." Ministering angels, he felt convinced, do not rub red pepper and sulphuric acid into the wounds of

Then there was the case of Mr Vaughan, a squire in the neighbourhood, at whose board all the aristocracy of

Caermaen had feasted for years. Mr Vaughan had a firstrate cook, and his cellar was rare, and he was never

so happy as when he shared his good things with his friends. His mother kept his house, and they delighted

all the girls with frequent dances, while the men sighed over the amazing champagne. Investments proved

disastrous, and Mr Vaughan had to cell the grey manorhouse by the river. He and his mother took a little

modern stucco villa in Caermaen, wishing to be near their dear friends. But the men were "very sorry; rough

on you, Vaughan. Always thought those Patagonians were risky, but you wouldn't hear of it. Hope we shall

see you before very long; you and Mrs Vaughan must come to tea some day after Christmas."

"Of course we are all very sorry for them," said Henrietta Dixon. "No, we haven't called on Mrs Vaughan yet.

They have no regular servant, you know; only a woman in the morning. I hear old mother Vaughan, as

Edward will call her, does nearly everything. And their house is absurdly small; it's little more than a cottage.

Then Mr Vaughn, his heart in the dust, went to the Gervases and tried to borrow five pounds of Mr Gervase.

He had to be ordered out of the house, and, as Edith Gervase said, it was all very painful; "he went out in

such a funny way," she added, "just like the dog when he's had a whipping. Of course it's sadm even if it is all

his own fault, as everybody says, but he looked so ridiculous as he was going down the steps that I couldn't

help laughing." Mr Vaughan heard the ringing, youthful laughter as he crossed the lawn.

Young girls like Henrietta Dixon and Edith Gervase naturally viewed the Vaughans' comical position with all

the high spirits of their age, but the elder ladies could not look at matters in this frivolous light.

"Hush, dear, hush," said Mrs Gervase, "it's all too shocking to be a laughing matter. Don't you agree with me,

Mrs Dixon? The sinful extravagance that went on at Pentre always frightened me. You remember that ball

they gave last year? Mr Gervase assured me that the champagne must have cost at least a hundred and fifty

"It's dreadful, isn't it," said Mrs Dixon, "when one thinks of how many poor people there are who would be

"Yes, Mrs Dixon," Agatha joined in, "and you know how absurdly the Vaughans spoilt the cottagers. Oh, it

was really wicked; one would think Mr Vaughan wished to make them above their station. Edith and I went

for a walk one day nearly as far as Pentre, and we begged a glass of water of old Mrs Jones who lives in that

pretty cottage near the brook. She began praising the Vaughans in the most fulsome manner, and showed us

some flannel things they had given her at Christmas. I assure you, my dear Mrs Dixon, the flannel was the

very best quality; no lady could wish for better. It couldn't have cost less than halfacrown a yard."

"I know, my dear, I know. Mr Dixon always said it couldn't last. How often I have heard him say that the

Vaughans were pauperising all the common people about Pentre, and putting every one else in a most

unpleasant position. Even from a worldly point of view it was very poor taste on their part. So different from

"I only wish they had given away nothing worse than flannel," said Miss Colley, a young lady of very strict

views. "But I assure you there was a perfect orgy, I can call it nothing else, every Christmas. Great joints of

prime beef, and barrels of strong beer, and snuff and tobacco distributed wholesale; as if the poor wanted to

be encouraged in their disgusting habits. It was really impossible to go through the village for weeks after; the

"Well, we see how that sort of thing ends," said Mrs Dixon, summing up judicially. "We had intended to call,

but I really think it would be impossible after what Mrs Gervase has told us. The idea of Mr Vaughan trying

to sponge on poor Mr Gervase in that shabby way! I think meanness of that kind is so hateful."

It was the practical side of all this that astonished Lucian. He saw that in reality there was no highflown

quixotism in a woman's nature; the smooth arms, made he had thought for caressing, seemed muscular; the

hands meant for the doing of works of pity in his system, appeared dexterous in the giving of "stingers," as

Barnes might say, and the smiling lips could sneer with great ease. Nor was he more fortunate in his personal

experiences. As has been told, Mrs Dixon spoke of him in connection with "judgments," and the younger

ladies did not exactly cultivate his acquaintance. Theoretically they "adored" books and thought poetry "too

sweet," but in practice they preferred talking about mares and foxterriers and their neighbours.

They were nice girls enough, very like other young ladies in other country towns, content with the teaching of

their parents, reading the Bible every morning in their bedrooms, and sitting every Sunday in church amongst

the welldressed "sheep" on the right hand. It was not their fault if they failed to satisfy the ideal of an

enthusiastic dreamy boy, and indeed, they would have thought his feigned woman immodest, absurdly

At first he was a good deal grieved at the loss of that charming tender woman, the work of his brain. When

the Miss Dixons went haughtily by with a scornful waggle, when the Miss Gervases passed in the wagonette

laughing as the mud splashed him, the poor fellow would look up with a facie of grief that must have been

very comic; "like a dying duck," as Edith Gervase said. Edith was really very pretty, and he would have liked

to talk to her, even about foxterriers, if she would have listened. One afternoon at the Dixons' he really

forced himself upon her, and with all the obtuseness of an enthusiastic boy tried to discuss the Lotus Eaters of

Tennyson. It was too absurd. Captain Kempton was making signals to Edith all the time, and Lieutenant

Gatwick had gone off in disgust, and he had promised to bring her a puppy "by Vick out of Wasp." At last the

"Yes, it's very sweet," she said at last. "When did you say you were going to London, Mr Taylor?"

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody, and the shot told. He gave her a

piteous look and slunk off, "just like the dog when he's had a whipping," to use Edith's own expression. Two

or three lessons of this description produced their due effect; and when he saw a male Dixon or Gervase

approaching him he bit his lip and summoned up his courage. But when he descried a "ministering angel" he

made haste and hid behind a hedge or took to the woods. In course of time the desire to escape became an

instinct, to be followed as a matter of course; in the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old

ideals were almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the b�te humaine, like the adder, would

in all probability sting, and he therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special resentment.

The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned fang, and it was well to leave them both alone.

Then had come that sudden fury of rage against all humanity, as he went out of Caermaen carrying the book

that had been stolen from him by the enterprising Beit. He shuddered as he though of how nearly he had

approached the verge of madness, when his eyes filled with blood and the earth seemed to burn with fire. He

remembered how he had looked up to the horizon and the sky was blotched with scarlet; and the earth was

deep red, with red woods and red fields. There was something of horror in the memory, and in the vision of

that wild night walk through dim country, when every shadow seemed a symbol of some terrible impending

doom. The murmur of the brook, the wind shrilling through the wood, the pale light flowing from the

mouldered trunks, and the picture of his own figure fleeing and fleeting through the shades; all these seemed

unhappy things that told a story in fatal hieroglyphics. And then the life and laws of the sunlight had passed

away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead began. Though his limbs were weary, he had felt his

muscles grow strong as steel; a woman, one of the hated race, was beside him in the darkness, and the wild

beast woke within him, ravening for blood and brutal lust; all the raging desires of the dim race from which

he came assailed his heart. The ghosts issued out from the weird wood and from the caves in the hills,

besieging him, as he had imagined the spiritual legion besieging Caermaen, beckoning him to a hideous battle

and a victory that he had never imagined in his wildest dreams. And then out of the darkness the kind voice

spoke again, and the kind hand was stretched out to draw him up from the pit. It was sweet to think of that

which he had found at last; the boy's picture incarnate, all the passion and compassion of his longing, all the

pity and love and consolation. She, that beautiful passionate woman offering up her beauty in sacrifice to

him, she was worthy indeed of his worship. He remembered how his tears had fallen upon her breast, and

how tenderly she had soothed him, whispering those wonderful unknown words that sang to his heart. And

she had made herself defenceless before him, caressing and fondling the body that had been so despised. He

exulted in the happy thought that he had knelt down on the ground before her, and had embraced her knees

and worshipped. The woman's body had become his religion; he lay awake at night looking into the darkness

with hungry eyes, wishing for a miracle, that the appearance of the sodesired form might be shaped before

him. And when he was alone in quiet places in the wood, he fell down again on his knees, and even on his

face, stretching out vain hands in the air, as if they would feel her flesh. His father noticed in those days that

the inner pocket of his coat was stuffed with papers; he would see Lucian walking up and down in a secret

shady place at the bottom of the orchard, reading from his sheaf of manuscript, replacing the leaves, and

again drawing them out. He would walk a few quick steps, and pause as if enraptured, gazing in the air as if

he looked through the shadows of the world into some sphere of glory, feigned by his thought. Mr Taylor was

almost alarmed at the sight; he concluded of course that Lucian was writing a book. In the first place, there

seemed something immodest in seeing the operation performed under one's eyes; it was as if the "makeup"

of a beautiful actress were done on the stage, in full audience; as if one saw the rounded calves fixed in

position, the fleshings drawn on, the voluptuous outlines of the figure produced by means purely mechanical,

blushes mantling from the paintpot, and the golden tresses well secured by the wigmaker. Books, Mr Taylor

thought, should swim into one's ken mysteriously; they should appear all printed and bound, without apparent

genesis; just as children are suddenly told that they have a little sister, found by mamma in the garden. But

Lucian was not only engaged in composition; he was plainly rapturous, enthusiastic; Mr Taylor saw him

throw up his hands, and bow his head with strange gesture. The parson began to fear that his son was like

some of those mad Frenchmen of whom he had read, young fellows who had a sort of fury of literature, and

gave their whole lives to it, spending days over a page, and years over a book, pursuing art as Englishmen

pursue money, building up a romance as if it were a business. Now Mr Taylor held firmly by the

"walkingstick" theory; he believed that a man of letters should have a real profession, some solid

employment in life. "Get something to do," he would have liked to say, "and then you can write as much as

you please. Look at Scott, look at Dickens and Trollope." And then there was the social point of view; it

might be right, or it might be wrong, but there could be no doubt that the literary man, as such, was not

thought much of in English society. Mr Taylor knew his Thackeray, and he remembered that old Major

Pendennis, society personified, did not exactly boast of his nephew's occupation. Even Warrington was rather

ashamed to own his connection with journalism, and Pendennis himself laughed openly at his novelwriting

as an agreeable way of making money, a useful appendage to the cultivation of dukes, his true business in

life. This was the plain English view, and Mr Taylor was no doubt right enough in thinking it good, practical

common sense. Therefore when he saw Lucian loitering and sauntering, musing amorously over his

manuscript, exhibiting manifest signs that he fine fury which Britons have ever found absurd, he felt grieved

at heart, and more than ever sorry that he had not been able to send the boy to Oxford.

"B.N.C. would have knocked all this nonsense out of him," he thought. "He would have taken a double First

like my poor father and made something of a figure in the world. However, it can't be helped." The poor man

But he was mistaken in his diagnosis of the symptoms. The book that Lucian had begun lay unheeded in the

drawer; it was a secret work that he was engaged on, and the manuscripts that he took out of that inner pocket

never left him day or night. He slept with them next to his heart, and he would kiss them when he was quite

alone, and pay them such devotion as he would have paid to her whom they symbolised. He wrote on these

leaves a wonderful ritual of praise and devotion; it was the liturgy of his religion. Again and again he copied

and recopied this madness of a lover; dallying all days over the choice of a word, searching for more

exquisite phrases. No common words, no such phrases as he might use in a tale would suffice; the sentences

of worship must stir and be quickened, they must glow and burn, and be decked out as with rare work of

jewellery. Every part of that holy and beautiful body must be adored; he sought for terms of extravagant

praise, he bent his soul and mind low before her, licking the dust under her feet, abased and yet rejoicing as a

Templar bfore the image of Baphomet. He exulted more especially in the knowledge that there was nothing

of the conventional or common in his ecstasy; he was not the fervent, adoring lover of Tennyson's poems,

who loves with passion and yet with a proud respect, with the love always of a gentleman for a lady. Annie

was not a lady; the Morgans had farmed their land for hundreds of years; they were what Miss Gervase and

Miss Colley and the rest of them called common people. Tennyson's noble gentleman thought of their ladies

with something of reticence; they imagined them dressed in flowing and courtly robes, walking with slow

dignity; they dreamed of them as always stately, the future mistresses of their houses, mothers of their heirs.

Such lovers bowed, but not too low, remembering their own honour, before those who were to be equal

companions and friends as well as wives. It was not such conceptions as these that he embodied in the

amazing emblems of his ritual; he was not, he told himself, a young officer, "something in the city," or a

rising barrister engaged to a Miss Dixon or a Miss Gervase. He had not thought of looking out for a nice little

house in a good residential suburb where they would have pleasant society; there were to be no consultations

about wallpapers, or jocose whispers from friends as to the necessity of having a room that would do for a

nursery. No glad young thing had leant on his arm while they chose the suite in white enamel, and china for

"our bedroom," the modest salesman doing his best to spare their blushes. When Edith Gervase married she

would get mamma to look out for two really good servants, "as we must begin quietly," and mamma would

make sure that the drains and everything were right. Then her "girl friends" would come on a certain solemn

day to see all her "lovely things." "Two dozen of everything!" "Look, Ethel, did you ever see such ducky

frills?" "And that insertion, isn't it quite too sweet?" "My dear Edith, you are a lucky girl." "All the underlinen

specially made by Madame Lulu!" "What delicious things!" "I hope he knows what a prize he is winning."

"Oh! do look at those lovely ribbonbows!" "You darling, how happy you must be." "Real Valenciennes!"

Then a whisper in the lady's ear, and her reply, "Oh, don't, Nelly!" So they would chirp over their treasures,

as in Rabelais they chirped over their cups; and every thing would be done in due order till the weddingday,

when mamma, who had strained her sinews and the commandments to bring the match about, would weep

and look indignantly at the unhappy bridegroom. "I hope you'll be kind to her, Robert." Then in a rapid

whisper to the bride: "Mind, you insist on Wyman's flushing the drains when you come back; servants are so

careless and dirty too. Don't let him go about by himself in Paris. Men are so queer; one never knows. You

have got the pills?" And aloud, after these secreta, "God bless you, my dear; goodbye! cluck, cluck,

There were stranger things written in the manuscript pages that Lucian cherished, sentences that burnt and

glowed like "coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame." There were phrases that stung and tingled as

he wrote them, and sonorous words poured out in ecstasy and rapture, as in some of the old litanies. He

hugged the thoiught that a great part of what he had invented was in the true sense of the word occult: page

after page might have been read aloud to the uninitiated without betraying the inner meaning. He dreamed

night and day over these symbols, he copied and recopied the manuscript nine times before he wrote it out

fairly in a little book which he made himself of a skin of creamy vellum. In his mania for acquirements that

should be entirely useless he had gained some skill in illumination, or limning as he preferred to call it,

always choosing the obscurer word as the obscurer arts. First he set himself to the sever practice of the text;

he spent many hours and days of toil in struggling to fashion the serried colukmns of black letter, writing and

rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a

monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of

the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke both broad and even. Then he made experiments in

inks, searching for some medium that would rival the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts; and not till

he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more entrancing labour of the capitals and borders and

ornaments. He mused long over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and trained his

hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted

splendour all about the page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time, and his father

thought he would have done much better in trying to improve his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly

and illegible. Indeed, there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some specimens of his

skill to an "artistic firm" in London; a verse of the "Maud," curiously emblazoned, and a Latin hymn with the

notes priced on a red stave. The firm wrote civilly, telling him that his work, though good, was not what they

wanted, and enclosing an illuminated text. "We have great demand for this sort of thing," they concluded,

"and if you care to attempt something in this style we should be pleased to look at it." The said text was

"Thou, God, seest me." The letter was of a degraded form, bearing much the same relation to the true

character as a "churchwarden gothic" building does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The

initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a

bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the female bird.

"What a pretty text," said Miss Deacon. "I should like to nail it up in my room. Why don't you try to do

"My dear boy! I should think not! Like them! What were you thinking of to draw those queer stiff flowers all

round the border? Roses? They don't look like roses at all events. Where do you get such ideas from?"

"My dear Lucian, I can't read the words; it's such a queer oldfashioned writing. Look how plain that text is;

"A Latin hymn? Is it a Protestant hymn? I may be oldfashioned, but Hymns Ancient and Modern is quite

good enough for me. This is the music, I suppose? But, my dear boy, there are only four lines, and who ever

heard of notes shaped like that: you have made some square and some diamondshape? Why didn't you look

in your poor mother's old music? It's in the ottoman in the drawingroom. I could have shown you how to

Miss Deacon laid down the illuminated Urbs Beata in despair; she felt convinced that her cousin was "next

And he went out into the garden and raged behind a hedge. He broke two flowerpots and hit an appletree

very hard with his stick, and then, feeling more calm, wondered what was the use in trying to do anything. He

would not have put the thought into words, but in his heart he was aggrieved that his cousin liked the pigeons

and the text, and did not like his emblematical roses and the Latin hymn. He knew he had taken great pains

over the work, and that it was well done, and being still a young man he expected praise. He found that in this

hard world there was a lack of appreciation; a critical spirit seemed abroad. If he could have been

scientifically observed as he writhed and smarted under the strictures of "the old fool," as he rudely called his

cousin, the spectacle would have been extremely diverting. Little boys sometimes enjoy a very similar

entertainment; either with their tiny fingers or with mamma's nail scissors they gradually deprive a fly of its

wings and legs. The odd gyrations and queer thin buzzings of the creature as it spins comically round and

round never fail to provide a fund of harmless amusement. Lucian, indeed, fancied himself a very illused

individual; but he should have tried to imitate the nervous organisation of the flies, which, as mamma says,

But now, as he prepared the vellum leaves, he remembered his art with joy; he had not laboured to do

beautiful work in vain. He read over his manuscript once more, and thought of the designing of the pages. He

made sketches on furtive sheets of paper, and hunted up books in his father's library for suggestions. There

were books about architecture, and medi�val iron work, and brasses which contributed hints for adornment;

and not content with mere pictures he sought in the woods and hedges, scanning the strange forms of trees,

and the poisonous growth of great waterplants, and the parasite twining of honeysuckle and briony. In one

of these rambles he discovered a red earth which he made into a pigment, and he found in the unctuous juice

of a certain fern an ingredient which he thought made his black ink still more glossy. His book was written all

in symbols, and in the same spirit of symbolism he decorated it, causing wonderful foliage to creep about the

text, and showing the blossom of certain mystical flowers, with emblems of strange creatures, caught and

bound in rose thickets. All was dedicated to love and a lover's madness, and there were songs in it which

haunted him with their lilt and refrain. When the book was finished it replaced the loose leaves as his

constant companion by day and night. Three times a day he repeated his ritual to himself, seeking out the

loneliest places in the woods, or going up to his room; and from the fixed intentness and rapture of his gaze,

the father thought him still severely employed in the questionable process of composition. At night he

contrived to wake for his strange courtship; and he had a peculiar ceremony when he got up in the dark and lit

his candle. From a steep and wild hillside, not far form the house, he had cut from time to time five large

boughs of spiked and prickly gorse. He had brought them into the house, one by one, and had hidden them in

the big box that stood beside his bed. Often he woke up weeping and murmuring to himself the words of one

of his songs, and then when he had lit the candle, he would draw out the gorseboughs, and place them on the

floor, and taking off his nightgown, gently lay himself down on the bed of thorns and spines. Lying on his

face, with the candle and the book before him, he would softly and tenderly repeat the praises of his dear,

dear Annie, and as he turned over page after page, and saw the raised gold of the majuscules glow and flame

in the candlelight, he pressed the thorns into his flesh. At such moments he tasted in all its acute savour the

joy of physical pain; and after two or three experiences of such delights he altered his book, making a curious

did he fail to wake at the appointed hour, a strong effort of will broke through all the heaviness of sleep, and

he would rise up, joyful though weeping, and reverently set his thorny bed upon the floor, offering his pain

with his praise. When he had whispered the last word, and had risen from the ground, his body would be all

freckled with drops of blood; he used to view the marks with pride. Here and there a spine would be left deep

in the flesh, and he would pull these out roughly, tearing through the skin. On some nights when he had

pressed with more fervour on the thorns his thighs would stream with blood, red beads standing out on the

flesh, and trickling down to his feet. He had some difficulty in washing away the bloodstains so as not to

leave any traces to attract the attention of the servant; and after a time he returned no more to his bed when

his duty had been accomplished. For a coverlet he had a dark rug, a good deal worn, and in this he would

wrap his naked bleeding body, and lie down on the hard floor, well content to add an aching rest to the

account of his pleasures. He was covered with scars, and those that healed during the day were torn open

afresh at night; the pale olive skin was red with the angry marks of blood, and the graceful form of the young

man appeared like the body of a tortured martyr. He grew thinner and thinner every day, for he ate but little;

the skin was stretched on the bones of his face, and the black eyes burnt in dark purple hollows. His relations

"Now, Lucian, it's perfect madness of you to go on like this," said Miss Deacon, one morning at breakfast.

"Look how your hand shakes; some people would say that you have been taking brandy. And all that you

want is a little medicine, and yet you won't be advised. You know it's not my fault; I have asked you to try Dr

He remembered the forcible exhibition of the powders when he was a boy, and felt thankful that those days

were over. He only grinned at his cousin and swallowed a great cup of strong tea to steady his nerves, which

were shaky enough. Mrs Dixon saw him one day in Caermaen; it was very hot, and he had been walking

rather fast. The scars on his body burnt and tingled, and he tottered as he raised his hat to the vicar's wife. She

decided without further investigation that he must have been drinking in publichouses.

"It seems a mercy that poor Mrs Taylor was taken," she said to her husband. "She has certainly been spared a

great deal. That wretched young man passed me this afternoon; he was quite intoxicated."

"Thank you, Merivale, I will have another glass of sherry. Dr Burrows is always scolding me and saying I

The Dixons were not teetotallers. They regretted it deeply, and blamed the doctor, who "insisted on some

stimulant." However, there was some consolation in trying to convert the parish to total abstinence, or, as

they curiously called it, temperance. Old women were warned of the sin of taking a glass of beer for supper;

aged labourers were urged to try Corkho, the new temperance drink; an uncouth beverage, styled coffee,

was dispensed at the readingroom. Mr Dixon preached an eloquent "temperance" sermon, soon after the

above conversation, taking as his text: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. In his discourse he showed that

fermented liquor and leaven had much in common, that beer was at the present day "put away" during

Passover by the strict Jews; and in a moving peroration he urged his dear brethren, "and more especially

those amongst us who are poor in this world's goods," to beware indeed of that evil leaven which was sapping

"Oh, Merivale, what a beautiful sermon! How earnest you were. I hope it will do good."

Mr Dixon swallowed his port with great decorum, but his wife fuddled herself every evening with cheap

sherry. She was quite unaware of the fact, and sometimes wondered in a dim way why she always had to

scold the children after dinner. And so strange things sometimes happened in the nursery, and now and then

the children looked queerly at one another after a redfaced woman had gone out, panting.

Lucian knew nothing of his accuser's trials, but he was not long in hearing of his own intoxication. The next

"Oh, well, if you haven't, that's all right, as you'll be able to take a drop with me. Come along in?"

Over the whisky and pipes Lucian heard of the evil rumours affecting his character.

"Mrs Dixon assured me you were staggering from one side of the street to the other. You quite frightened her,

she said. Then she asked me if I recommended her to take one or two ounces of spirit at bedtime for the

palpitation; and of course I told her two would be better. I have my living to make here, you know. And upon

my word, I think she wants it; she's always gurgling inside like waterworks. I wonder how old Dixon can

"I like 'ounces of spirit,'" said Lucian. "That's taking it medicinally, I suppose. I've often heard of ladies who

"That's it. 'Dr Burrows won't listen to me': 'I tell him how I dislike the taste of spirits, but he says they are

absolutely necessary for my constitution': 'my medical man insists on something at bedtime'; that's the style."

Lucian laughed gently; all these people had become indifferent to him; he could no longer feel savage

indignation at their little hypocrisies and malignancies. Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and

futility had become like the thin shrill angry note of a gnat on a summer evening; he had his own thoughts

"You come down to Caermaen pretty often, don't you?" said the doctor. "I've seen you two or three times in

"Well, look me up whenever you like, you know. I am often in just at this time, and a chat with a human

being isn't bad, now and then. It's a change for me; I'm often afraid I shall lose my patients."

The doctor had the weakness of these terrible puns, dragged headlong into the conversation. He sometimes

exhibited them before Mrs Gervase, who would smile in a faint and dignified manner, and say:

"Ah, I see. Very amusing indeed. We had an old coachmen once who was very clever, I believe, at that sort

of thing, but Mr Gervase was obliged to send him away, the laughter of the other domestics was so very

Lucian laughed, not boisterously, but goodhumouredly, at the doctor's joke. He liked Burrows, feeling that

"You look a little pulled down," said the doctor, when Lucian rose to go. "No, you don't want my medicine.

Plenty of beef and beer will do you more good than drugs. I daresay it's the hot weather that has thinned you

As Lucian strolled out of the town on his way home, he passed a small crowd of urchins assembled at the

corner of an orchard. They were enjoying themselves immensely. The "healthy" boy, the same whom he had

seen some weeks ago operating on a cat, seemed to have recognised his selfishness in keeping his

amusements to himself. He had found a poor lost puppy, a little creature with bright pitiful eyes, almost

human in their fond, friendly gaze. It was not a wellbred little dog; it was certainly not that famous puppy

"by Vick out of Wasp"; it had rough hair and a foolish long tail which it wagged beseechingly, at once

deprecating severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment; it

would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and

cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys

were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting.

Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before the leader, a stout and sturdy youth.

"Drown him! What be you thinkin' of, mum?" he was saying. "'Tain't no sport at all. You shut your mouth,

gwaes. Be you goin' to ask your mother for the boilingwater? Iss, Bob Williams, I do know all that: but

where be you agoing to get the fire from? Be quiet, mun, can't you? Thomas Trevor, be this dog yourn or

mine? Now, look you, if you don't all of you shut your bloody mouths, I'll take the dog 'ome and keep him.

He was a born leader of men. A singular depression and lowness of spirit showed itself on the boys' faces.

They recognised that the threat might very possibly be executed, and their countenances were at once

composed to humble attention. The puppy was still cowering on the ground in the midst of them: one or two

tried to relieve the tension of their feelings by kicking him in the belly with their hobnail boots. It cried out

with the pain and writhed a little, but the poor little beast did not attempt to bite or even snarl. It looked up

with those beseeching friendly eyes at its persecutors, and fawned on them again, and tried to wag its tail and

be merry, pretending to play with a straw on the road, hoping perhaps to win a little favour in that way.

The leader saw the moment for his masterstroke. He slowly drew a piece of rope from his pocket.

"What do you say to that, mun? Now, Thomas Trevor! We'll hang him over that there bough. Will that suit

There was a great shriek of approval and delight. All was again bustle and animation. "I'll tie it round his

neck?" "Get out, mun, you don't know how it be done." "Iss, I do, Charley." "Now, let me, gwaes, now do let

me." "You be sure he won't bite?" "He hain't mad, be he?" "Suppose we were to tie up his mouth first?"

The puppy still fawned and curried favour, and wagged that sorry tail, and lay down crouching on one side on

the ground, sad and sorry in his heart, but still with a little gleam of hope; for now and again he tried to play,

and put up his face, praying with those fond, friendly eyes. And then at last his gambols and poor efforts for

mercy ceased, and he lifted up his wretched voice in one long dismal whine of despair. But he licked the hand

He was slowly and gently swung into the air as Lucian went by unheeded; he struggled, and his legs twisted

and writhed. The "healthy" boy pulled the rope, and his friends danced and shouted with glee. As Lucian

turned the corner, the poor dangling body was swinging to and fro, the puppy was dying, but he still kicked a

Lucian went on his way hastily, and shuddering with disgust. The young of the human creature were really

too horrible; they defiled the earth, and made existence unpleasant, as the pulpy growth of a noxious and

obscene fungus spoils an agreeable walk. The sight of those malignant little animals with mouths that uttered

cruelty and filthy, with hands dexterous in torture, and feet swift to run all evil errands, had given him a

shock and broken up the world of strange thoughts in which he had been dwelling. Yet it was no good being

angry with them: it was their nature to be very loathsome. Only he wished they would go about their hideous

amusements in their own back gardens where nobody could see them at work; it was too bad that he should

be interrupted and offended in a quiet country road. He tried to put the incident out of his mind, as if the

whole thing had been a disagreeable story, and the visions amongst which he wished to move were beginning

to return, when he was again rudely disturbed. A little girl, a pretty child of eight or nine, was coming along

the lane to meet him. She was crying bitterly and looking to left and right, and calling out some word all the

Then she burst into tears afresh, and peered into the hedge, and tried to peep through a gate into a field.

She came up to Lucian, sobbing as if her heart would break, and dropped him an oldfashioned curtsy.

"A little dog, please sir. A little terrier dog with white hair. Father gave me him a month ago, and said I might

keep him. Someone did leave the garden gate open this afternoon, and he must 'a got away, sir, and I was so

"I'm afraid some boys have got your little dog," said Lucian. "They've killed him. You'd better go back

He went on, walking as fast as he could in his endeavour to get beyond the noise of the child's crying. It

distressed him, and he wished to think of other things. He stamped his foot angrily on the ground as he

recalled the annoyances of the afternoon, and longed for some hermitage on the mountains, far above the

A little farther, and he came to Croeswen, where the road branched off to right and left. There was a

triangular plot of grass between the two roads; there the cross had once stood, "the goodly and famous roode"

of the old local chronicle. The words echoed in Lucian's ears as he went by on the right hand. "There were

five steps that did go up to the first pace, and seven steps to the second pace, all of clene hewn ashler. And all

above it was most curiously and gloriously wrought with thorowgh carved work; in the highest place was the

Holy Roode with Christ upon the Cross having Marie on the one syde and John on the other. And below were

six splendent and glisteringe archaungels tha bore up the roode, and beneath them in their stories were the

most fair and noble ymages of the xij Apostles and of divers other Saints and Martirs. And in the lowest

storie there was a marvellous ymagerie of divers Beasts, such as oxen and horses and swine, and little dogs

and peacocks, all done in the finest and most curious wise, so that they all seemed as they were caught in a

Wood of Thorns, the which is their torment of this life. And here once in the year was a marvellous solemn

service, when the parson of Caermaen came out with the singers and all the people, singing the psalm

Benedicite omnia opera as they passed along the road in their procession. And when they stood at the roode

the priest did there his service, making certain prayers for the beasts, and then he went up to the first pace and

preached a sermon to the people, shewing them that as our lord Jhu dyed upon the Tree of his deare mercy for

us, so we too owe mercy to the beasts his Creatures, for that they are all his poor lieges and silly servants.

And that like as the Holy Aungells do atheir suit to him on high, and the Blessed xij Apostles and the Martirs,

and all the Blissful Saints served him aforetime on earth and now praise him in heaven, so also do the beasts

serve him, though they be in torment of life and below men. For their spirit goeth downward, as Holy Writ

It was a quaint old record, a curious relic of what the modern inhabitants of Caermaen called the Dark Ages.

A few of the stones that had formed the base of the cross still remained in position, grey with age, blotched

with black lichen and green moss. The remainder of the ramous rood had been used to mend the roads, to

built pigsties and domestic offices; it had turned Protestant, in fact. Indeed, if it had remained, the parson of

Caermaen would have had no time for the service; the coffeestall, the Portuguese Missions, the Society for

the Conversion of the Jews, and important social duties took up all his leisure. Besides, he thought the whole

Lucian passed on his way, wondering at the strange contrasts of the Middle Ages. How was it that people

who could devise so beautiful a service believed in witchcraft, demoniacal possession and obsession, in the

incubus and succubus, and in the Sabbath an in many other horrible absurdities? It seemed astonishing that

anybody could even pretend to credit such monstrous tales, but there could be no doubt that the dread of old

women who rode on broomsticks and liked black cats was once a very genuine terror.

A cold wind blew up from the river at sunset, and the scars on his body began to burn and tingle. The pain

recalled his ritual to him, and he began to recite it as he walked along. He had cut a branch of thorn from the

hedge and placed it next to his skin, pressing the spikes into the flesh with his hand till the warm blood ran

down. He felt it was an exquisite and sweet observance for her sake; and then he thought of the secret golden

palace he was building for her, the rare and wonderful city rising in his imagination. As the solemn night

began to close about the earth, and the last glimmer of the sun faded from the hills, he gave himself anew to

IN THE COURSE of the week Lucian again visited Caermaen. He wished to view the amphitheatre more

precisely, to note the exact position of the ancient walls, to gaze up the valley from certain points within the

town, to imprint minutely and clearly on his mind the surge of the hills about the city, and the dark tapestry of

the hanging woods. And he lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had been

stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors, in the glowing gold of drinking cups, the

curious beads of fused and coloured glass, the carved amberwork, the scentflagons that still retained the

memory of unctuous odours, the necklaces, brooches, hairpins of gold and silver, and other intimate objects

which had once belonged to Roman ladies. One of the glass flagons, buried in damp earth for many hundred

years, had gathered in its dark grave all the splendours of the light, and now shone like an opal with a

moonlight glamour and gleams of gold and pale sunset green, and imperial purple. Then there were the wine

jars of red earthenware, the memorial stones from graves, and the heads of broken gods, with fragments of

occult things used in the secret rites of Mithras. Lucian read on the labels where all these objects were found:

in the churchyard, beneath the turf of the meadow, and in the old cemetery near the forest; and whenever it

was possible he would make his way to the spot of discovery, and imagine the long darkness that had hidden

gold and stone and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the scheme he had in view, so he

became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river.

His continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their windows at the

sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming

down three times a week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable. And Lucian on his side was at

first a good deal put out by occasional encounters with members of the Gervase or Dixon or Colley tribes; he

had often to stop and exchange a few conventional expressions, and such meetings, casual as they were,

annoyed and distracted him. He was no longer infuriated or wounded by sneers of contempt or by the

cackling laughter of the young people when they passed him on the road (his hat was a shocking one and his

untidiness terrible), but such incidents were unpleasant just as the smell of a drain was unpleasant, and threw

the strange mechanism of his thoughts out of fear for the time. Then he had been disgusted by the affair of the

boys and the little dog; the loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books of modern

occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described. The adept, it was alleged, could transfer the

sense of consciousness from his brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the world around him and pass

into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform some such operation for his own benefit.

Human beings were constantly annoying him and getting in his way; was it not possible to annihilate the

race, or at all events to reduce them to wholly insignificant forms? A certain process suggested itself to his

mind, a work partly mental and partly physical, and after two or three experiments he found to his

astonishment and delight that it was successful. Here, he thought, he had discovered one of the secrets of true

magic; this was the key to the symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth, change

those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories,

by transforming the enemy, but by transforming himself. The magician puts men below him by going up

higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier crag. The stones on the road and such petty

obstacles do not trouble the wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian, when obliged to stop and converse

with his fellowcreatures, to listen to their poor pretences and inanities, was no more inconvenienced than

when he had to climb an awkward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant manifestations of

humanity; after all they no longer concerned him. Men intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current

of their thoughts to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web, so why should he be perturbed

by the misery of a puppy in the hands of village boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tortures; lying helpless

and bound in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the claws of the horrible monster fastened

on it; but its dying agonies had never vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys should

offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog more than he pitied the fly. The talk of the

men and women might be wearisome and inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an alchemist at

the moment of success, a general in the hour of victory, or a financier with a gigantic scheme of swindling

well on the market being annoyed by the buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very terrible brute with a

hideous mouth and hairy tigerlike claws when seen through the microscope; but Lucian had taken away the

microscope from his eyes. He could now walk the streets of Caermaen confident and secure, without any

dread of interruption, for at a moment's notice the transformation could be effected. Once Dr Burrows caught

him and made him promise to attend a bazaar that was to be held in aid of the Hungarian Protestants; Lucian

assented the more willingly as he wished to pay a visit to certain curious mounds on a hill a little way out of

the town, and he calculated on slinking off from the bazaar early in the afternoon. Lord Beamys was visiting

Sir Vivian Ponsonby, a local magnate, and had kindly promised to drive over and declare the bazaar open. It

was a solemn moment when the carriage drew up and the great man alighted. He was rather an evillooking

old nobleman, but the clergy and gentry, their wives and sons and daughters welcomed him with great and

unctuous joy. Conversations were broken off in midsentence, slow people gaped, not realising why their

friends had so suddenly left them, the Meyricks came up hot and perspiring in fear lest they should be too

late, Miss Colley, a yellow virgin of austere regard, smiled largely, Mrs Dixon beckoned wildly with her

parasol to the "girls" who were idly strolling in a distant part of the field, and the archdeacon ran at full speed.

The air grew dark with bows, and resonant with the genial laugh of the archdeacon, the cackle of the younger

ladies, and the shrill parrotlike voices of the matrons; those smiled who had never smiled before, and on

some maiden faces there hovered that look of adoring ecstasy with which the old maidens graced their angels.

Then, when all the due rites had been performed, the company turned and began to walk towards the booths

of their small Vanity Fair. Lord Beamys led the way with Mrs Gervase, Mrs Dixon followed with Sir Vivian

Ponsonby, and the multitudes that followed cried, saying, "What a dear old man!""Isn't it kind of him to

come all this way?""What a sweet expression, isn't it?""I think he's an old love""One of the good old

sort""Real English nobleman""Oh most correct, I assure you; if a girl gets into trouble, notice to quit at

once""Always stands by the Church""Twenty livings in his gift""Voted for the Public Worship

Regulation Act""Ten thousand acres strictly preserved." The old lord was leering pleasantly and muttering

to himself: "Some fine gals here. Like the looks of that filly with the pink hat. Ought to see more of her. She'd

The pomp swept slowly across the grass: the archdeacon had got hold of Mr Dixon, and they were discussing

"Oh, I assure you, there can be no doubt. We have witnesses. There can be no question that there was a

procession at Llanfihangel on the Sunday before Easter; the choir and minister went round the church,

"It has distressed the bishop. Martin is a hardworking man enough, and all that, but those sort of things can't

"Right. Principiis obsta, you know. Martin is so imprudent. There's a way of doing things."

The "scriptural" procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls were reached, and gathered round

Lucian was sitting on a gardenseat, a little distance off, looking dreamily before him. And all that he saw

was a swarm of flies clustering and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the grass. The spectacle

in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts, and soon after the opening of the bazaar he went quietly

away, walking across the fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to inspect.

All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighbourhood had a peculiar object; he was gradually levelling

to the dust the squalid kraals of modern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria. All this

mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and himself; for her the wonderful villas, the shady courts,

the magic of tessellated pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their intricate and glowing patterns.

Lucian wandered all day through the shining streets, taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the

dense and gloomy ilex trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of the fountains. Sometimes he would look

out of a window and watch the crowd and colour of the marketplace, and now and again a ship came up the

river bringing exquisite silks and the merchandise of unknown lands in the Far East. He had made a curious

and accurate map of the town he proposed to inhabit, in which every villa was set down and named. He drew

his lines to scale with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the plan till he was able to find his way from

house to house on the darkest summer night. On the southern slopes about the town there were vineyards,

always under a glowing sun, and sometimes he ventured to the furthest ridge of the forest, where the wild

people still lingered, that he might catch the golden gleam of the city far away, as the light quivered and

scintillated on the glittering tiles. And there were gardens outside the city gates where strange and brilliant

flowers grew, filling the hot air with their odour, and scenting the breeze that blew along the streets. The dull

modern life was far away, and people who saw him at this period wondered what was amiss; the abstraction

of his glance was obvious, even to eyes not oversharp. But men and women had lost all their power of

annoyance and vexation; they could no longer even interrupt his thought for a moment. He could listen to Mr

Dixon with apparent attention, while he was in reality enraptured by the entreating music of the double flute,

played by a girl in the garden of Avallaunius, for that was the name he had taken. Mr Dixon was innocently

discoursing arch�ology, giving a brief r�sum� of the view expressed by Mr Wyndham at the last meeting of

"There can be no doubt that the temple of Diana stood there in pagan times," he concluded, and Lucian

assented to the opinion, and asked a few questions which seemed pertinent enough. But all the time the flute

notes were sounding in his ears, and the ilex threw a purple shadow on the white pavement before his villa. A

boy came forward from the garden; he had been walking amongst the vines and plucking the ripe grapes, and

the juice had trickled down over his breast. Standing beside the girl, unashamed in the sunlight, he began to

sing one of Sappho's love songs. His voice was as full and rich as a woman's, but purged of all emotion; he

was an instrument of music in the flesh. Lucian looked at him steadily; the white perfect body shone against

the roses and the blue of the sky, clear and gleaming as marble in the glare of the sun. The words he sang

burned and flamed with passion, and he was as unconscious of their meaning as the twin pipes of the flute.

And the girl was smiling. The vicar shook hands and went on, well pleased with his remarks on the temple of

"He is by no means wanting in intelligence," he said to his family. "A little curious in manner, perhaps, but

"Oh, papa," said Henrietta, "don't you think he is rather silly? He can't talk about anythinganything

interesting, I mean. And he pretends to know a lot about books, but I heard him say the other day he had

The vicar had not interrupted Lucian. The sun still beat upon the roses, and a little breeze bore the scent of

them to his nostrils together with the smell of grapes and vineleaves. He had become curious in sensation,

and as he leant back upon the cushions covered with glistening yellow silk, he was trying to analyse a strange

ingredient in the perfume of the air. He had penetrated far beyond the crude distinctions of modern times,

beyond the rough: "there's a smell of roses," "there must be sweetbriar somewhere." Modern perceptions of

odour were, he knew, far below those of the savage in delicacy. The degraded black fellow of Australia could

distinguish odours in a way that made the consumer of "damper" stare in amazement, but the savage's

sensations were all strictly utilitarian. To Lucian as he sat in the cool porch, his feet on the marble, the air

came laden with scents as subtly and wonderfully interwoven and contrasted as the harmonica of a great

master. The stained marble of the pavement gave a cool reminiscence of the Italian mountain, the bloodred

roses palpitating in the sunlight sent out an odour mystical as passion itself, and there was the hint of

inebriation in the perfume of the trellised vines. Besides these, the girl's desire and the unripe innocence of

the boy were as distinct as benzoin and myrrh, both delicious and exquisite, and exhaled as freely as the scent

of the roses. But there was another element that puzzled him, an aromatic suggestion of the forest. He

understood it at last; it was the vapour of the great red pines that grew beyond the garden; their spicy needles

were burning in the sun, and the smell was as fragrant as the fume of incense blown from far. The soft

entreaty of the flute and the swelling rapture of the boy's voice beat on the air together, and Lucian wondered

whether there were in the nature of things any true distinction between the impressions of sound and scent

and colour. The violent blue of the sky, the one mystery than distinct entities. He could almost imagine that

the boy's innocence was indeed a perfume, and that the palpitating roses had become a sonorous chant.

In the curious silence which followed the last notes, when the boy and girl had passed under the purple ilex

shadow, he fell into a reverie. The fancy that sensations are symbols and not realities hovered in his mind,

and led him to speculate as to whether they could not actually be transmuted one into another. It was possible,

he thought, that a whole continent of knowledge had been undiscovered; the energies of men having been

expended in unimportant and foolish directions. Modern ingenuity had been employed on such trifles as

locomotive engines, electric cables, and cantilever bridges; on elaborate devices for bringing uninteresting

people nearer together; the ancients had been almost as foolish, because they had mistaken the symbol for the

thing signified. It was not the material banquet which really mattered, but the thought of it; it was almost as

futile to eat and take emetics and eat again as to invent telephones and highpressure boilers. As for some

other ancient methods of enjoying life, one might as well set oneself to improve calico printing at once.

"Only in the garden of Avallaunius," said Lucian to himself, "is the true and exquisite science to be found."

He could imagine a man who was able to live in one sense while he pleased; to whom, for example, every

impression of touch, taste, hearing, or seeing should be translated into odour; who at the desired kiss should

be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to whom music should be the perfume of a rosegarden at dawn.

When, now and again, he voluntarily resumed the experience of common life, it was that he might return with

greater delight to the garden in the city of refuge. In the actual world the talk was of Nonconformists, the

lodger franchise, and the Stock Exchange; people were constantly reading newspapers, drinking Australian

Burgundy, and doing other things equally absurd. They either looked shocked when the fine art of pleasure

was mentioned, or confused it with going to musical comedies, drinking bad whisky, and keeping late hours

in disreputable and vulgar company. He found to his amusement that the profligate were by many degrees

duller than the pious, but that the most tedious of all were the persons who preached promiscuity, and called

He went back to the city lovingly, because it was built and adorned for his love. As the metaphysicians insist

on the consciousness of the ego as the implied basis of all thought, so he knew that it was she in whom he had

found himself, and through whom and for whomall the true life existed. He felt that Annie had taught him the

rare magic which had created the garden of Avallaunius. It was for her that he sought strange secrets and tried

to penetrate the mysteries of sensation, for he coul donly give her wonderful thoughts and a wonderful life,

It was with this object, that of making the offering of himself a worthy one, that he continually searched for

new and exquisite experiences. He made lovers come before him and confess their secrets; he pried into the

inmost mysteries of innocence and shame, noting how passion and reluctance strive together for the mastery.

In the amphitheatre he sometimes witnessed strange entertainments in which such tales as Daphnis and Chloe

and The Golden Ass were performed before him. These shows were always given at nighttime; a circle of

torchbearers surrounded the stage in the centre, and above, all the tiers of seats were dark. He would look up

at the soft blue of the summer sky, and at the vast dim mountain hovering like a cloud in the west, and then at

the scene illumined by a flaring light, and contrasted with violent shadows. The subdued mutter of

conversation in a strange language rising from bench after bench, swift hissing whispers of explanation, now

and then a shout or a cry as the interest deepened, the restless tossing of the people as the end drew near, an

arm lifted, a cloak thrown back, the sudden blaze of a torch lighting up purple or white or the gleam of gold

in the black serried ranks; these were impressions that seemed always amazing. And above, the dusky light of

the stars, around, the sweetscented meadows, and the twinkle of lamps from the still city, the cry of the

sentries about the walls, the wash of the tide filling the river, and the salt savour of the sea. With such a

scenic ornament he saw the tale of Apuleius represented, heard the names of Fotis and Byrrhaena and Lucius

proclaimed, and the deep intonation of such sentences as Ecce Veneris hortator et armiger Liber advenit ultro.

The tale went on through all its marvellous adventures, and Lucian left the amphitheatre and walked beside

the river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of voices and the singing Latin, and note how the rumour

of the stage mingled with the murmur of the shuddering reeds and the cool lapping of the tide. Then came the

farewell of the cantor, the thunder of applause, the crash of cymbals, the calling of the flutes, and the surge of

At other times it was his chief pleasure to spend a whole day in a vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond

the bridge. A grey stone seat had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and her ehe often sat without motion or

gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river swept round the town in a half circle; he could see the

swirl of the yellow water, its eddies and miniature whirlpools, as the tide poured up from the south. And

beyond the river the strong circuit of the walls, and within, the city glittered like a charming piece of mosaic.

He freed himself from the obtuse modern view of towns as places where human beings live and make money

and rejoice or suffer, for from the standpoint of the moment such facts were wholly impertinent. He knew

perfectly well that for his present purpose the tawny sheen and shimmer of the tide was the only fact of

importance about the river, and so he regarded the city as a curious work in jewellery. Its radiant marble

porticoes, the white walls of the villas, a dome of burning copper, the flash and scintillation of tiled roofs, the

quiet red of brickwork, dark groves of ilex, and cypress, and laurel, glowing rosegardens, and here and there

the silver of a fountain, seemed arranged and contrasted with a wonderful art, and the town appeared a

delicious ornament, every cube of colour owing its place to the thought and inspiration of the artificer.

Lucian, as he gazed from his arbour amongst the trellised vines, lost none of the subtle pleasures of the sight;

noting every nuance of colour, he let his eyes dwell for a moment on the scarlet flash of poppies, and then on

a glazed roof which in the glance of the sun seemed to spout white fire. A square of vines was like some rare

green stone; the grapes were massed so richly amongst the vivid leaves, that even from far off there was a

sense of irregular flecks and stains of purple running through the green. The laurel garths were like cool jade;

the gardens, where red, yellow, blue and white gleamed together in a mist of heat, had the radiance of opal;

the river was a band of dull gold. On every side, as if to enhance the preciousness of the city, the woods hung

dark on the hills; above, the sky was violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. It

reminded him of a beautiful bowl in his villa; the ground was of that same brilliant blue, and the artist had

For Lucian this was a spectacle that enchanted many hours; leaning on one hand, he would gaze at the city

glowing in the sunlight till the purple shadows grew down the slopes and the long melodious trumpet

sounded for the evening watch. Then, as he strolled beneath the trellises, he would see all the radiant facets

glimmering out, and the city faded into haze, a white wall shining here and there, and the gardens veiled in a

dim glow of colour. On such an evening he would go home with the sense that he had truly lived a day,

Often he spent the night in the cool court of his villa, lying amidst soft cushions heaped upon the marble

bench. A lamp stood on the table at his elbow, its light making the water in the cistern twinkle. There was no

sound in the court except the soft continual plashing of the fountain. Throughout these still hours he would

meditate, and he became more than ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own

sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some

years before he had read many of the wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had

suspected that something other than the turning of lead into gold was intended. This impression was

deepened when he looked into Lumen de Lumine by Vaughan, the brother of the Silurist, and he had long

puzzled himself in the endeavour to find a reasonable interpretation of the hermetic mystery, and of the red

powder, "glistening and glorious in the sun." And the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as he lay

He knew that he himself had solved the riddle, that he held in his hand the powder of projection, the

philosopher's stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the gold of exquisite impressions. He understood

now something of the alchemical symbolism; the crucible and the furnace, the "Green Dragon," and the "Son

Blessed of the Fire" had, he saw, a peculiar meaning. He understood, too, why the uninitiated were warned of

the terror and danger through which they must pass; and the vehemence with which the adepts disclaimed all

desire for material riches no longer struck him as singular. The wise man does not endure the torture of the

furnace in order that he may be able to compete with operators in pork and company promoters; neither a

steam yacht, nor a grousemoor, nor three liveried footmen would add at all to his gratifications. Again

"Only in the court of Avallaunius is the true science of the exquisite to be found."

He saw the true gold into which the beggarly matter of existence may be transmuted by spagyric art; a

succession of delicious moments, all the rare flavours of life concentrated, purged of their lees, and

pareserved in a beautiful vessel. The moonlight fell green on the fountain and on the curious pavements, and

in the long sweet silence of the night he lay still and felt that thought itself was an acute pleasure, to be

And he gave himself other and even stranger gratifications. Outside the city walls, between the baths and the

amphitheatre, was a tavern, a place where wonderful people met to drink wonderful wine. There he saw

priests of Mithras and Isis and of more occult rites from the East, men who wore robes of bright colours, and

grotesque ornaments, symbolising secret things. They spoke amongst themselves in a rich jargon of coloured

words, full of hidden meanings and the sense of matters unintelligible to the uninitiated, alluding to what was

concealed beneath roses, and calling each other by strange names. And there were actors who gave the shows

in the amphitheatre, officers of the legion who had served in wild places, singers, and dancing girls, and

The walls of the tavern were covered with pictures painted in violent hues; blues and reds and greens jarring

against one another and lighting up the gloom of the place. The stone benches were always crowded, the

sunlight came in through the door in a long bright beam, casting a dancing shadow of vine leaves on the

further wall. There a painter had made a joyous figure of the young Bacchus driving the leopards before him

with his ivystaff, and the quivering shadow seemed a part of the picture. The room was cool and dark and

cavernous, but the scent and heat of the summer gushed in through the open door. There was ever a full

sound, with noise and vehemence, there, and the rolling music of the Latin tongue never ceased.

The boys who served brought the wine in dull red jars that struck a charming note against their white robes.

They poured out the violet and purple and golden wine with calm sweet faces as if they were assisting in the

mysteries, without any sign that they heard the strange words that flashed from side to side. The cups were all

of glass; some were of deep green, of the colour of the sea near the land, flawed and specked with the bubbles

of the furnace. Others were of brilliant scarlet, streaked with irregular bands of white, and having the

appearance of white globules in the moulded stem. There were cups of dark glowing blue, deeper and more

shining than the blue of the sky, and running through the substance of the glass were veins of rich gamboge

yellow, twining from the brim to the foot. Some cups were of a troubled and clotted red, with alternating

blotches of dark and light, some were variegated with white and yellow stains, some wore a film of rainbow

colours, some glittered, shot with gold threads through the clear crystal, some were as if sapphires hung

suspended in running water, some sparkled with the glint of stars, some were black and golden like

A strange feature was the constant and fluttering motion of hands and arms. Gesture made a constant

commentary on speech; white fingers, whiter arms, and sleeves of all colours, hovered restlessly, appeared

and disappeared with an effect of threads crossing and recrossing on the loom. And the odour of the place

was both curious and memorable; something of the damp cold breath of the cave meeting the hot blast of

summer, the strangely mingled aromas of rare wines as they fell plashing and ringing into the cups, the

drugged vapour of the East that the priests of Mithras and Isis bore from their steaming temples; these were

always strong and dominant. And the women were scented, sometimes with unctuous and overpowering

perfumes, and to the artist the experiences of those present were hinted in subtle and delicate nuances of

They drank their wine and caressed all day in the tavern. The women threw their round white arms about

their lover's necks, they intoxicated them with the scent of their hair, the priests muttered their fantastic

jargon of Theurgy. And through the sonorous clash of voices there always seemed the ring of the cry:

Outside, the vine tendrils shook on the white walls glaring in the sunshine; the breeze swept up from the

These tavern scenes were often the subject of Lucian's meditation as he sat amongst the cushions on the

marble seat. The rich sound of the voices impressed him above all things, and he saw that words have a far

higher reason than the utilitarian office of imparting a man's thought. The common notion that language and

linked words are important only as a means of expression he found a little ridiculous; as if electricity were to

be studied solely with the view of "wiring" to people, and all its other properties left unexplored, neglected.

Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, byk its possession of words

resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and

indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than

the impressions excited by music itself. Here lay hidden the secret of the sensuous art of literature; it was the

secret of suggestion, the art of causing delicious sensation by the use of words. In a way, therefore, literature

was independent of thought; the mere English listener, if he had an ear attuned, could recognise the beauty of

Here was the explanation of the magic of Lycidas. From the standpoint of the formal understanding it was an

affected lament over some wholly uninteresting and unimportant Mr King; it was full of nonsense about

"shepherds" and "flocks" and "muses" and such stale stock of poetry; the introduction of St Peter on a stage

thronged with nymphs and river gods was blasphemous, absurd, and, in the worst taste; there were touches of

greasy Puritanism, the twan gof the conventicle was only too apparent. And Lycidas was probably the most

perfect piece of pure literature in existence; because every word and phrase and line were sonorous, ringing

"Literature," he reenunciated in his mind, "is the sensuous art of causing exquisite impressions by means of

And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was often a hindrance, a troublesome

though inseparable accident, besides the sensation, always a pleasure and a delight, besides these there were

the indefinable inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his

experiments is sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as

the world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads

wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from

the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight. The world so

disclosed is rather the world of dreams, rather the world in which children sometimes live, instantly

appearing, and instantly vanishing away, a world beyond all expression or analysis, neither of the intellect nor

of the senses. He called these fancies of his "Meditations of a Tavern," and was amused to think that a theory

of letters should have risen from the eloquent noise that rang all day about the violet and golden wine.

"Let us seek for more exquisite things," said Lucian to himself. He could almost imagine the magic

transmutation of the senses accomplished, the strong sunlight was an odour in his nostrils; it poured down in

the white marble and the palpitating roses like a flood. The sky was a glorious blue, making the heart joyous,

and the eyes could rest in the dark green leaves and purple shadow of the ilex. The earth seemed to burn and

leap beneath the sun, he fancied he could see the vine tendrils stir and quiver in the heat, and the faint fume of

the scorching pine needles was blown across the gleaming garden to the seat beneath the porch. Wine was

before him in a cup of carved amber; a wine of the colour of a dark rose, with a glint as of a star or of a jet of

flame deep beneath the brim; and the cup was twined about with a delicate wreath of ivy. He was often loath

to turn away from the still contemplation of such things, from the mere joy of the violent sun, and the

responsive earth. He loved his garden and the view of the tessellated city from the vineyard on the hill, the

strange clamour of the tavern, and white Fotis appearing on the torchlit stage. And there were shops in the

town in which he delighted, the shops of the perfume makers, and jewellers, and dealers in curious ware. He

loved to see all things made for ladies' use, to touch the gossamer silks that were to touch their bodies, to

finger the beads of amber and the gold chains which would stir above their hearts, to handle the carved

But though these were sweet and delicious gratifications, he knew that there were more exquisite things of

which he might be a spectator. He had seen the folly of regarding fine literature from the standpoint of the

logical intellect, and he now began to question the wisdom of looking at life as if it were a moral

representation. Literature, he knew, could not exist without some meaning, and considerations of right and

wrong were to a certain extent inseparable from the conception of life, but to insist on ethics as the chief

interest of the human pageant was surely absurd. One might as well read Lycidas for the sake of its

denunciation of "our corrupted Clergy," or Homer for "manners and customs." An artist entranced by a

beautiful landscape did not greatly concern himself with the geological formation of the hills, nor did the

lover of a wild sea inquire as to the chemical analysis of the water. Lucian saw a coloured and complex life

displayed before him, and he sat enraptured at the spectacle, not concerned to know whether actions were

In this spirit he made a singular study of corruption. Beneath his feet, as he sat in the garden porch, was a

block of marble through which there ran a scarlet stain. It began with a faint line, thin as a hair, and grew as it

advanced, sending out offshoots to right and left, and broadening to a pool of brilliant red. There were strange

lives into which he looked that were like the block of marble; women with grave sweet faces told him the

astounding tale of their adventures, and how, they said, they had met the faun when they were little children.

They told him how they had played and watched by the vines and the fountains, and dallied with the nymphs,

and gazed at images reflected in the water pools, till the authentic face appeared from the wood. He heard

others tell how they had loved the satyrs for many years before they knew their race; and there were strange

stories of those who had longed to speak but knew not the word of the enigma, and searched in all strange

He heard the history of the woman who fell in love with her slaveboy, and tempted him for three years in

vain. He heard the tale from the woman's full red lips, and watched her face, full of the ineffable sadness of

lust, as she described her curious stratagems in mellow phrases. She was drinking a sweet yellow wine from a

gold cup as she spoke, and the odour in her hair and the aroma of the precious wine seemed to mingle with

the soft strange words that flowed like an unguent from a carven jar. She told how she bought the boy in the

market of an Asian city, and had him carried to her house in the grove of figtrees. "Then," she went on, "he

was led into my presence as I sat between the columns of my court. A blue veil was spread above to shut out

the heat of the sun, and rather twilight than light shone on the painted walls, and the wonderful colours of the

pavement, and the images of Love and the Mother of Love. The men who brought the boy gave him over to

my girls, who undressed him before me, one drawing gently away his robe, another stroking his brown and

flowing hair, another praising the whiteness of his limbs, and another caressing him, and speaking loving

words in his hear. But the boy looked sullenly at them all, striking away their hands, and pouting with his

lovely and splendid lips, and I saw a blush, like the rosy veil of dawn, reddening his body and his cheeks.

Then I made them bathe him, and anoint him with scented oils from head to foot, till his limbs shone and

glistened with the gentle and mellow glow of an ivory statue. Then I said: 'You are bashful, because you

shine alone amongst us all; see, we too will be your fellows.' The girls began first of all, fondling and kissing

one another, and doing for each other the offices of waitingmaids. They drew out the pins and loosened the

bands of their hair, and I never knew before that they were so lovely. The soft and shining tresses flowed

down, rippling like seawaves; some had hair golden and radiant as this wine in my cup, the faces of others

appeared amidst the blackness of ebony; there were locks that seemed of burnished and scintillating copper,

some glowed with hair of tawny splendour, and others were crowned with the brightness of the sardonyx.

Then, laughing, and without the appearance of shame, they unfastened the brooches and bands which

sustained their robes, and so allowed silk and linen to flow swiftly to the stained floor, so that one would have

said there was a sudden apparition of the fairest nymphs. With many festive and jocose words they began to

incite each other to mirth, praising the beauties that shone on every side, and calling the boy by a girl's name,

they invited him to be their playmate. But he refused, shaking his head, and still standing dumbfounded and

abashed, as if he saw a forbidden and terrible spectacle. Then I ordered the women to undo my hair and my

clothes, making them caress me with the tenderness of the fondest lover, but without avail, for the foolish boy

still scowled and pouted out his lips, stained with an imperial and glorious scarlet."

She poured out more of the topazcoloured wine in her cup, and Lucian saw it glitter as it rose to the brim

and mirrored the gleam of the lamps. The tale went on, recounting a hundred strange devices. The woman

told how she had tempted the boy by idleness and ease, giving him long hours of sleep, and allowing him to

recline all day on soft cushions, that swelled about him, enclosing his body. She tried the experiment of

curious odours: causing him to smell always about him the oil of roses, and burning in his presence rare gums

from the East. He was allured by soft dresses, being clothed in silks that caressed the skin with the sense of a

fondling touch. Three times a day they spread before him a delicious banquet, full of savour and odour and

colour; three times a day they endeavoured to intoxicate him with delicate wine.

"And so," the lady continued, "I spared nothing to catch him in the glistening nets of love; taking only sour

and contemptuous glances in return. And at last in an incredible shape I won the victory, and then, having

gained a green crown, fighting in agony against his green and crude immaturity, I devoted him to the theatre,

On another evening he heard the history of the man who dwelt alone, refusing all allurements, and was at last

discovered to be the lover of a black statue. And there were tales of strange cruelties, of men taken by

mountain robbers, and curiously maimed and disfigured, so that when they escaped and returned to the town,

they were thought to be monsters and killed at their own doors. Lucian left no dark or secret nook of life

unvisited; he sat down, as he said, at the banquet, resolved to taste all the savours, and to leave no flagon

His relations grew seriously alarmed about him at this period. While he heard with some inner ear the suave

and eloquent phrases of singular tales, and watched the lamplight in amber and purple wine, his father saw a

lean pale boy, with black eyes that burnt in hollows, and sad and sunken cheeks.

"You ought to try and eat more, Lucian," said the parson; "and why don't you have some beer?"

He was looking feebly at the roast mutton and sipping a little water; but he would not have eaten or drunk

His bones seemed, as Miss Deacon said, to be growing through his skin; he had all the appearance of an

ascetic whose body has been reduced to misery by long and grievous penance. People who chanced to see

him could not help saying to one another: "How ill and wretched that Lucian Taylor looks!" They were of

course quite unaware of the joy and luxury in which his real life was spent, and some of them began to pity

It was too late for that. The friendly words had as much lost their meaning as the words of contempt. Edward

"Come in to my den, won't you, old fellow?" he said. "You won't see the pater. I've managed to bag a bottle

of his old port. I know you smoke like a furnace, and I've got some ripping cigars. You will come, won't you!

He gently declined and went on. Kindness and unkindness, pity and contempt had become for him mere

phrases; he could not have distinguished one from the other. Hebrew and Chinese, Hungarian and Pushtu

would be pretty much alike to an agricultural labourer; if he cared to listen he might detect some general

differences in sound, but all four tongues would be equally devoid of significance.

To Lucian, entranced in the garden of Avallaunius, it seemed very strange that he had once been so ignorant

of all the exquisite meanings of life. Now, beneath the violet sky, looking through the brilliant trellis of the

vines, he saw the picture; before, he had gazed in sad astonishment at the squalid rag which was wrapped

AND HE was at last in the city of the unending murmuring streets, a part of the stirring shadow, of the

It seemed a long time since he had knelt before his sweetheart in the lane, the moonfire streaming upon

them from the dark circle of the fort, the air and the light and his soul full of haunting, the touch of the

unimaginable thrilling his heart; and now he sat in a terrible "bedsittingroom" in a western suburb,

He had put his breakfasttray out on the landing, and was thinking of the morning's work, and of some very

dubious pages that he had blackened the night before. But when he had lit his disreputable briar, he

remembered there was an unopened letter waiting for him on the table; he had recognised the vague,

staggering script of Miss Deacon, his cousin. There was not much news; his father was "just the same as

usual," there had been a good deal of rain, the farmers expected to make a lot of eider, and so forth. But at the

"I was at Caermaen on Tuesday," she said, "and called on the Gervases and the Dixons. Mr Gervase smiled

when I told him you were a literary man, living in London, and said he was afraid you wouldn't find it a very

practical career. Mrs Gervase was very proud of Henry's success; he passed fifth for some examination, and

will begin with nearly four hundred a year. I don't wonder the Gervases are delighted. Then I went to the

Dixons, and had tea. Mrs Dixon wanted to know if you had published anything yet, and I said I thought not.

She showed me a book everybody is talking about, called the Dog and the Doctor. She says it's selling by

thousands, and that one can't take up a paper without seeing the author's name. She told me to tell you that

you ought to try to write something like it. Then Mr Dixon came in from the study, and your name was

mentioned again. He said he was afraid you had made rather a mistake in trying to take up literature as if it

were a profession, and seemed to think that a place in a house of business would be more suitable and more

practical. He pointed out that you had not had the advantages of a university training, and said that you would

find men who had made good friends, and had the tone of the university, would be before you at every step.

He said Edward was doing very well at Oxford. He writes to them that he knows several noblemen, and that

young Philip Bullingham (son of Sir John Bullingham) is his most intimate friend; of course this is very

satisfactory for the Dixons. I am afraid, my dear Lucian, you have rather overrated your powers. Wouldn't it

be better, even now, to look out for some real work to do, instead of wasting your time over those silly old

books? I know quite well how the Gervases and the Dixons feel; they think idleness so injurious for a young

man, and likely to lead to bad habits. You know, my dear Lucian, I am only writing like this because of my

Lucian pigeonholed the letter solemnly in the receptacle lettered "Barbarians." He felt that he ought to ask

himself some serious questions: "Why haven't I passed fifth? why isn't Philip (son of Sir John) my most

intimate friend? why am I an idler, liable to fall into bad habits?" but he was eager to get to his work, a

curious and intricate piece of analysis. So the battered bureau, the litter of papers, and the thick fume of his

pipe, engulfed him and absorbed him for the rest of the morning. Outside were the dim October mists, the

dreary and languid life of a side street, and beyond, on the main road, the hum and jangle of the gliding trains.

But he heard none of the uneasy noises of the quarter, not even the shriek of the garden gates nor the yelp of

the butcher on his round, for delight in his great task made him unconscious of the world outside.

He had come by curious paths to this calm hermitage between Shepherd's Bush and Acton Vale. The golden

weeks of the summer passed on in their enchanted procession, and Annie had not returned, neither had she

written. Lucian, on his side, sat apart, wondering why his longing for her were not shaper. As he though of

his raptures he would smile faintly to himself, and wonder whether he had not lost the world and Annie with

it. In the garden of Avallaunius his sense of external things had grown dim and indistinct; the actual, material

life seemed every day to become a show, a fleeting of shadows across a great white light. At last the news

came that Annie Morgan had been married from her sister's house to a young farmer, to whom it appeared,

she had been long engaged, and Lucian was ashamed to find himself only conscious of amusement, mingled

with gratitude. She had been the key that opened the shut palace, and he was now secure on the throne of

ivory and gold. A few days after he had heard the news he repeated the adventure of his boyhood; for the

second time he scaled the steep hillside, and penetrated the matted brake. He expected violent disillusion, but

his feeling was rather astonishment at the activity of boyish imagination. There was no terror nor amazement

now in the green bulwarks, and the stunted undergrowth did not seem in any way extraordinary. Yet hid did

not laugh at the memory of his sensations, he was not angry at the cheat. Certainly it had been all illusion, all

the heats and chills of boyhood, its thoughts of terror were without significance. But he recognised that the

illusions of the child only differed from those of the man in that they were more picturesque; belief in fairies

and belief in the Stock Exchange as bestowers of happiness were equally vain, but the latter form of faith was

ugly as well as inept. It was better, he knew, and wiser, to wish for a fairy coach than to cherish longings for a

He turned his back on the green walls and the dark oaks without any feeling of regret or resentment. After a

little while he began to think of his adventures with pleasure; the ladder by which he had mounted had

disappeared, but he was safe on the height. By the chance fancy of a beautiful girl he had been redeemed

from a world of misery and torture, the world of external things into which he had come a stranger by which

he had been tormented. He looked back at a kind of vision of himself seen as he was a year before, a pitiable

creature burning and twisting on the hot coals of the pit, crying lamentably to the laughing bystanders for but

one drop of cold water wherewith to cool his tongue. He confessed to himself, with some contempt, that he

had been a social being, depending for his happiness on the goodwill of others; he had tried hard to write,

chiefly, it was true, from love of the art, but a little from a social motive. He had imagined that a written book

and the praise of responsible journals would ensure him the respect of the county people. It was a quaint idea,

and he saw the lamentable fallacies naked; in the first place, a painstaking artist in words was not respected

by the respectable; secondly, books should not be written with the object of gaining the goodwill of the

landed and commercial interests; thirdly and chiefly, no man should in any way depend on another.

From this utter darkness, from danger of madness, the ever dear and sweet Annie had rescued him. Very

beautifully and fitly, as Lucian thought, she had done her work without any desire to benefit him, she had

simply willed to gratify her own passion, and in doing this had handed to him the priceless secret. And he, on

his side, had reversed the process; merely to make himself a splendid offering for the acceptance of his

sweetheart, he had cast aside the vain world, and had found the truth, which now remained with him, precious

And since the news of the marriage he found that his worship of her had by no means vanished; rather in his

heart was the eternal treasure of a happy love, untarnished and spotless; it would be like a mirror of gold

without alloy, bright and lustrous for ever. For Lucian, it was no defect in the woman that she was desirous

and faithless; he had not conceived an affection for certain moral or intellectual accidents, but for the very

woman. Guided by the selfevident axiom that humanity is to be judged by literature, and not literature by

humanity, he detected the analogy between Lycidas and Annie. Only the dullard would object to the nauseous

cant of the one, or to the indiscretions of the other. A sober critic might say that the man who could generalise

Herbert and Laud, Donne and Herrick, Sanderson and Juxon, Hammond and Lancelot Andrewes into "our

corrupted Clergy" must be either an imbecile or a scoundrel, or probably both. The judgment would be

perfectly true, but as a criticism of Lycidas it would be a piece of folly. In the case of the woman one could

imagine the attitude of the conventional lover; of the chevalier who, with his tongue in his cheek, "reverences

and respects" all women, and coming home early in the morning writes a leading article on St English Girl.

Lucian, on the other hand, felt profoundly grateful to the delicious Annie, because she had at precisely the

right moment voluntarily removed her image from his way. He confessed to himself that, latterly, he had a

little dreaded her return as an interruption; he had shivered at the thought that their relations would become

what was so terribly called an "intrigue" or "affair." There would be all the threadbare and common

stratagems, the vulgarity of secret assignations, and an atmosphere suggesting the period of Mr Thomas

Moore and Lord Byron an "segars." Lucian had been afraid of all this; he had feared lest love itself should

He considered that now, freed from the torment of the body, leaving untasted the green water that makes

thirst more burning, he was perfectly initiated in the true knowledge of the splendid and glorious love. There

seemed to him a monstrous paradox in the assertion that there could be no true love without a corporal

presence of the beloved; even the popular sayings of "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," and "familiarity

breeds contempt," witnessed to the contrary. He thought, sighing, and with compassion, of the manner in

which men are continually led astray by the cheat of the senses. In order that the unborn might still be added

to the born, nature had inspired men with the wild delusion that the bodily companionship of the lover and

the beloved was desirable above all things, and so, by the false show of pleasure, the human race was chained

Again and again he gave thanks for his own escape; he had been set free from a life of vice and sin and folly,

from all the dangers and illusions that are most dreaded by the wise. He laughed as he remembered what

would be the common view of the situation. An ordinary lover would suffer all the sting of sorrow and

contempt; there would be grief for a lost mistress, and rage at her faithlessness, and hate in the heart; one

foolish passion driving on another, and driving the man to ruin. For what would be commonly called the real

woman he now cared nothing; if he had heard that she had died in her farm in Utter Gwent, he would have

experienced only a passing sorrow, such as he might feel at the death of any one he had once known. But he

did not think of the young farmer's wife as the real Annie; he did not think of the frostbitten leaves in winter

as the real rose. Indeed, the life of many reminded him of the flowers; perhaps more especially of those

flowers which to all appearance are for many years but dull and dusty clumps of green, and suddenly, in one

night, burst into the flame of blossom, and fill all the misty lawns with odour; till the morning. It was in that

night that the flower lived, not through the long unprofitable years; and, in like manner, many human lives,

he thought, were born in the evening and dead before the coming of day. But he had preserved the precious

flower in all its glory, not suffering it to wither in the hard light, but keeping it in a secret place, where it

could never be destroyed. Truly now, and for the first time, he possessed Annie, as a man possesses the gold

He was musing over these things when a piece of news, very strange and unexpected, arrived at the rectory.

A distant, almost a mythical relative, known from childhood as "Cousin Edward in the Isle of Wight," had

died, and by some strange freak had left Lucian two thousand pounds. It was a pleasure to give his father five

hundred pounds, and the rector on his side forgot for a couple of days to lean his head on his hand. From the

rest of the capital, which was well invested, Lucian found he would derive something between sixty and

seventy pounds a year, and hid old desires for literature and a refuge in the murmuring streets returned to

him. He longed to be free from the incantations that surrounded him in the country, to work and live in a new

atmosphere; and so, with many good wishes from his father, he came to the retreat in the waste places of

He was in high spirits when he found the square, clean room, horribly furnished, in the bystreet that

branched form the main road, and advanced in an unlovely sweep to the mud pits and the desolation that was

neither town nor country. On every side monotonous grey streets, each house the replica of its neighbour, to

the east an unexplored wilderness, north and west and south the brickfields and marketgardens, everywhere

the ruins of the country, the tracks where sweet lanes had been, gangrened stumps of trees, the relics of

hedges, here and there an oak stripped of its bark, white and haggard and leprous, like a corpse. And the air

At first he scarcely realised the quarter into which chance had led him. His only thought was of the great

adventure of letters in which he proposed to engage, and his first glance round his "bedsittingroom"

showed him that there was no piece of furniture suitable for his purpose. The table, like the rest of the suite,

was of bird'seye maple; but the maker seemed to have penetrated the druidic secret of the rockingstone, the

thing was in a state of unstable equilibrium perpetually. For some days he wandered through the streets,

inspecting the secondhand furniture shops, and at last, in a forlorn byway, found an old Japanese bureau,

dishonoured and forlorn, standing amongst rusty bedsteads, sorry china, and all the refuse of homes dead and

desolate. The bureau pleased him in spite of its grime and grease and dirt. Inlaid motherofpearl, the gleam

of lacquer dragons in red gold, and hits of curious design shone through the film of neglect and illusage, and

when the woman of the shop showed him the drawers and well and pigeonholes, he saw that it would be an

The bureau was carried to his room and replaced the "bird'seye" table under the gasjet. As Lucian arranged

what papers he had accumulated: the sketches of hopeless experiments, shreds and tatters of stories begun but

never completed, outlines of plots, two or three notebooks scribbled through and through with impressions of

the abandoned hills, he felt a thrill of exaltation at the prospect of work to be accomplished, of a new world

He set out on the adventure with a fury of enthusiasm; his last thought at night when all the maze of streets

was empty and silent was of the problem, and his dreams ran on phrases, and when he awoke in the morning

he was eager to get back to his desk. He immersed himself in a minute, almost a microscopic analysis of fine

literature. It was no longer enough, as in the old days, to feel the charm and incantation of a line or a word; he

wished to penetrate the secret, to understand something of the wonderful suggestion, all apart from the sense,

that seemed to him the differentia of literature, as distinguished from the long follies of "characterdrawing,"

"psychological analysis," and all the stuff that went to make the threevolume novel of commerce.

He found himself curiously strengthened by the change from the hills to the streets. There could be no doubt,

he thought, that living a lonely life, interested only in himself and his own thoughts, he had become in a

measure inhuman. The form of external things, black depths in woods, pools in lonely places, those still

valleys curtained by hills on every side, sounding always with the ripple of their brooks, had become to him

an influence like that of a drug, giving a certain peculiar colour and outline to his thoughts. And from early

boyhood there had been another strange flavour in his life, the dream of the old Roman world, those curious

impressions that he had gathered from the white walls of Caermaen, and from the looming bastions of the

fort. It was in reality the subconscious fancies of many years that had rebuilt the golden city, and had shown

him the vinetrellis and the marbles and the sunlight in the garden of Avallaunius. And the rapture of love

had made it all so vivid and warm with life, that even now, when he let his pen drop, the rich noise of the

tavern and the chant of the theatre sounded above the murmur of the streets. Looking back, it was as much a

part of his life as his schooldays, and the tessellated pavements were as real as the square of faded carpet

But he felt that he had escaped. He could now survey those splendid and lovely visions from without, as if he

read of opium dreams, and he no longer dreaded a weird suggestion that had once beset him, that his very

soul was being moulded into the hills, and passing into the black mirror of still waterpools. He had taken

refuge in the streets, in the harbour of a modern suburb, from the vague, dreaded magic that had charmed his

life. Whenever he felt inclined to listen to the old woodwhisper or to the singing of the fauns he bent more

In the curious labour of the bureau he found refreshment that was continually renewed. He experienced again,

and with a far more violent impulse, the enthusiasm that had attended the writing of his book a year or two

before, and so, perhaps, passed from one drug to another. It was, indeed, with something of rapture that he

imagined the great procession of years all to be devoted to the intimate analysis of words, to the construction

Sometimes, in the pauses of the work, he would pace up and down his cell, looking out of the window now

and again and gazing for an instant into the melancholy street. As the year advanced the days grew more and

more misty, and he found himself the inhabitant of a little island wreathed about with the waves of a white

and solemn sea. In the afternoon the fog would grow denser, shutting out not only sight but sound; the shriek

of the garden gates, the jangling of the trambell echoed as if from a far way. Then there were days of heavy

incessant rain; he could see a grey drifting sky and the drops plashing in the street, and the houses all dripping

He cured himself of one great aversion. He was no longer nauseated at the sight of a story begun and left

unfinished. Formerly, even when an idea rose in his mind bright and wonderful, he had always approached

the paper with a feeling of sickness and dislike, remembering all the hopeless beginnings he had made. But

now he understood that to begin a romance was almost a separate and special art, a thing apart from the story,

to be practised with sedulous care. Whenever an opening scene occurred to him he noted it roughly in a book,

and he devoted many long winter evenings to the elaboration of these beginnings. Sometimes the first

impression would yield only a paragraph or a sentence, and once or twice but a splendid and sonorous word,

which seemed to Lucian all dim and rich with unsurmised adventure. But often he was able to write three or

four vivid pages, studying above all things the hint and significance of the words and actions, striving to work

into the lines the atmosphere of expectation and promise, and the murmur of wonderful events to come.

In this one department of his task the labour seemed almost endless. He would finish a few pages and then

rewrite them, using the same incident and nearly the same words, but altering that indefinite something which

is scarcely so much style as manner, or atmosphere. He was astonished at the enormous change that was thus

effected, and often, though he himself had done the work, he could scarcely describe in words how it was

done. But it was clear that in this art of manner, or suggestion, lay all the chief secrets of literature, that by it

all the great miracles were performed. Clearly it was not style, for style in itself was untranslatable, but it was

that high theurgic magic that made the English Don Quixote, roughly traduced by some Jervas, perhaps the

best of all English books. And it was the same element that made the journey of Roderick Random to

London, so ostensibly a narrative of coarse jokes and common experiences and burlesque manners, told in no

very choice diction, essentially a wonderful vision of the eighteenth century, carrying to one's very nostrils

the aroma of the Great North Road, ironbound under black frost, darkened beneath shuddering woods,

haunted by highwaymen, with an adventure waiting beyond every turn, and great old echoing inns in the

It was this magic that Lucian sought for his opening chapters; he tried to find that quality that gives to words

something beyond their sound and beyond their meaning, that in the first lines of a book should whisper

things unintelligible but all significant. Often he worked for many hours without success, and the grim wet

dawn once found him still searching for hieroglyphic sentences, for words mystical, symbolic. On the

shelves, in the upper part of his bureau, he had placed the books which, however various as to matter, seemed

to have a part in this curious quality of suggestion, and in that sphere which might almost be called

supernatural. To these books he often had recourse, when further effort appeared altogether hopeless, and

certain pages in Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe had the power of holding him in a trance of delight, subject to

emotions and impressions which he knew to transcend altogether the realm of the formal understanding. Such

had for Lucian more than the potency of a drug, lulling him into a splendid wakingsleep, every word being a

supreme incantation. And it was not only his mind that was charmed by such passages, for he felt at the same

time a strange and delicious bodily languor that held him motionless, without the desire or power to stir from

his seat. And there were certain phrases in Kubla Khan that had such a magic that he would sometimes wake

up, as it were, to the consciousness that he had been lying on the bed or sitting in the chair by the bureau,

repeating a single line over and over again for two or three hours. Yet he knew perfectly well that he had not

been really asleep; a little effort recalled a constant impression of the wallpaper, with its pink flowers on a

buff ground, and of the muslincurtained window, letting in the grey winter light. He had been some seven

months in London when this odd experience first occurred to him. The day opened dreary and cold and clear,

with a gusty and restless wind whirling round the corner of the street, and lifting the dead leaves and scraps of

paper that littered the roadway into eddying mounting circles, as if a storm of black rain were to come.

Lucian had sat late the night before, and rose in the morning feeling weary and listless and heavyheaded.

While he dressed, his legs dragged him as with weights, and he staggered and nearly fell in bending down to

the mat outside for his teatray. He lit the spirit lamp on the hearth with shaking, unsteady hands, and could

scarcely pour out the tea when it was ready. A delicate cup of tea was one of his few luxuries; he was fond of

the strange flavour of the green leaf, and this morning he drank the strawcoloured liquid eagerly, hoping it

would disperse the cloud of languor. He tried his best to coerce himself into the sense of vigour and

enjoyment with which he usually began the day, walking briskly up and down and arranging his papers in

order. But he could not free himself from depression; even as he opened the dear bureau a wave of

melancholy came upon him, and he began to ask himself whether he were not pursuing a vain dream,

searching for treasures that had no existence. He drew out his cousin's letter and read it again, sadly enough.

After all there was a good deal of truth in what she said; he had "overrated" his powers, he had no friends, no

real education. He began to count up the months since he had come to London; he had received his two

thousand pounds in March, and in May he had said goodbye to the woods and to the dear and friendly paths.

May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and half of December had gone by; and what had

he to show? Nothing but the experiment, the attempt, futile scribblings which had no end nor shining

purpose. There was nothing in his desk that he could produce as evidence of his capacity, no fragment even

of accomplishment. It was a thought of intense bitterness, but it seemed as if the barbarians were in the

righta place in a house of business would have been more suitable. He leaned his head on his desk

overwhelmed with the severity of his own judgment. He tried to comfort himself again by the thought of all

the hours of happy enthusiasm he had spent amongst his papers, working for a great idea with infinite

patience. He recalled to mind something that he had always tried to keep in the background of his hopes, the

foundationstone of his life, which he had hidden out of sight. Deep in his heart was the hope that he might

one day write a valiant book; he scarcely dared to entertain the aspiration, he felt his incapacity too deeply,

but yet this longing was the foundation of all his painful and patient effort. This he had proposed in secret to

himself, that if he laboured without ceasing, without tiring, he might produce something which would at all

events be art, which would stand wholly apart from the objects shaped like books, printed with printers' ink,

and called by the name of books that he had read. Giotto, he knew, was a painter, and the man who imitated

walnutwood on the deal doors opposite was a painter, and he had wished to be a very humble pupil in the

class of the former. It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the

department of the utterly contemptible; he had vowed he would be the dunce of Cervantes's school rather

than topboy in the academy of A Bad Un to Beat and Millicent's Marriage. And with this purpose he had

devoted himself to laborious and joyous years, so that however mean his capacity, the pains should not be

wanting. He tried now to rouse himself from a growing misery by the recollection of this high aim, but it all

seemed hopeless vanity. He looked out into the grey street, and it stood a symbol of his life, chill and dreary

and grey and vexed with a horrible wind. There were the dull inhabitants of the quarter going about their

common business; a man was crying "mackerel" in a doleful voice, slowly passing up the street, and staring

into the whitecurtained "parlours," searching for the face of a purchaser behind the indiarubble plants,

stuffed birds, and piles of gaudy gilt books that adorned the windows. One of the blistered doors over the way

banged, and a woman came scurrying out on some errand, and the garden gate shrieked two melancholy notes

as she opened it and let it swing back after her. The little patches called gardens were mostly untilled, uncared

for, squares of slimy moss, dotted with clumps of coarse ugly grass, but here and there were the blackened

and rotting remains of sunflowers and marigolds. And beyond, he knew, stretched the labyrinth of streets

more or less squalid, but all grey and dull, and behind were the mud pits and the steaming heaps of yellowish

bricks, and to the north was a great wide cold waste, treeless, desolate, swept by bitter wind. It was all like his

own life, he said again to himself, a maze of unprofitable dreariness and desolation, and his mind grew as

black and hopeless as the winter sky. The morning went thus dismally till twelve o'clock, and he put on his

hat and greatcoat. He always went out for an hour every day between twelve and one; the exercise was a

necessity, and the landlady made his bed in the interval. The wind blew the smoke from the chimneys into his

face as he shut the door, and with the acrid smoke came the prevailing odour of the street, a blend of

cabbagewater and burnt bones and the faint sickly vapour from the brickfields. Lucian walked mechanically

for the hour, going eastward, along the main road. The wind pierced him, and the dust was blinding, and the

dreariness of the street increased his misery. The row of common shops, full of common things, the blatant

publichouses, the Independent chapel, a horrible stucco parody of a Greek temple with a fa�ade of hideous

columns that was a nightmare, villas like smug Pharisees, shops again, a church in cheap Gothic, an old

garden blasted and riven by the builder, these were the pictures of the way. When he got home again he flung

himself on the bed, and lay there stupidly till sheer hunger roused him. He ate a hunch of bread and drank

some water, and began to pace up and down the room, wondering whether there were no escape from despair.

Writing seemed quite impossible, and hardly knowing what he did he opened his bureau and took out a book

from the shelves. As his eyes fell on the page the air grew dark and heavy as night, and the wind wailed

"By woman wailing for her Demon lover." The words were on his lips when he raised his eyes again. A

broad band of pale clear light was shining into the room, and when he looked out of the window he saw the

road all brightened by glittering pools of water, and as the last drops of the rainstorm starred these mirrors

the sun sank into the wrack. Lucian gazed about him, perplexed, till his eyes fell on the clock above his

empty hearth. He had been sitting, motionless, for nearly two hours without any sense of the passage of time,

and without ceasing he had murmured those words as he dreamed an endless wonderful story. He

experienced somewhat the sensations of Coleridge himself; strange, amazing, ineffable things seemed to have

been presented to him, not in the form of the idea, but actually and materially, but he was less fortunate than

Coleridge in that he could not, even vaguely, image to himself what he had seen. Yet when he searched his

mind he knew that the consciousness of the room in which he sat had never left him; he had seen the thick

darkness gather, and had heard the whirl of rain hissing through the air. Windows had been shut down with a

crash, he had noted the pattering footsteps of people running to shelter, the landlady's voice crying to some

one to look at the rain coming in under the door. It was like peering into some old bituminous picture, one

could see at last that the mere blackness resolved itself into the likeness of trees and rocks and travellers. And

against this background of his room, and the storm, and the noises of the street, his vision stood out

illuminated, he felt he had descended to the very depths, into the caverns that are hollowed beneath the soul.

He tried vainly to record the history of his impressions; the symbols remained in his memory, but the

The next morning, when he awoke, he could scarcely understand or realise the bitter depression of the

preceding day. He found it had all vanished away and had been succeeded by an intense exaltation.

Afterwards, when at rare intervals he experienced the same strange possession of the consciousness, he found

this to be the invariable result, the hour of vision was always succeeded by a feeling of delight, by sensations

of brightened and intensified powers. On that bright December day after the storm he rose joyously, and set

about the labour of the bureau with the assurance of success, almost with the hope of formidable difficulties

to be overcome. He had long busied himself with those curious researches which Poe had indicated in the

Philosophy of Composition, and many hours had been spent in analysing the singular effects which may be

produced by the sound and resonance of words. But he had been struck by the thought that in the finest

literature there were more subtle tones than the loud and insistent music of "never more," and he endeavoured

to find the secret of those pages and sentences which spoke, less directly, and less obviously, to the soul

rather than to the ear, being filled with a certain grave melody and the sensation of singing voices. It was

admirable, no doubt, to write phrases that showed at a glance their designed rhythm, and rang with sonorous

words, but he dreamed of a prose in which the music should be less explicit, of neumes rather than notes. He

was astonished that morning at his own fortune and facility; he succeeded in covering a page of ruled paper

wholly to his satisfaction, and the sentences, when he read them out, appeared to suggest a weird elusive

chanting, exquisite but almost imperceptible, like the echo of the plainsong reverberated from the vault of a

He thought that such happy mornings well repaid him for the anguish of depression which he sometimes had

to suffer, and for the strange experience of "possession" recurring at rare intervals, and usually after many

weeks of severe diet. His income, he found, amounted to sixtyfive pounds a year, and he lived for weeks at

a time on fifteen shillings a week. During these austere periods his only food was bread, at the rate of a loaf a

day; but he drank huge draughts of green tea, and smoked a black tobacco, which seemed to him a more

potent mother of thought than any drug from the scented East. "I hope you go to some nice place for dinner,"

wrote his cousin; "there used to be some excellent eatinghouses in London where one could get a good cut

from the joint, with plenty of gravy, and a boiled potato, for a shilling. Aunt Mary writes that you should try

Mr Jones's in Water Street, Islington, whose father came from near Caermaen, and was always most

comfortable in her day. I daresay the walk there would do you good. It is such a pity you smoke that horrid

tobacco. I had a letter from Mrs Dolly (Jane Diggs, who married your cousin John Dolly) the other day, and

she said they would have been delighted to take you for only twentyfive shillings a week for the sake of the

family if you had not been a smoker. She told me to ask you if you had ever seen a horse or a dog smoking

tobacco. They are such nice, comfortable people, and the children would have been company for you.

Johnnie, who used to be such a dear little fellow, has just gone into an office in the City, and seems to have

excellent prospects. How I wish, my dear Lucian, that you could do something in the same way. Don't forget

Lucian never troubled Mr Jones; but these letters of his cousin's always refreshed him by the force of

contrast. He tried to imagine himself a part of the Dolly family, going dutifully every morning to the City on

the bus, and returning in the evening for high tea. He could conceive the fine odour of hot roast beef hanging

about the decorous house on Sunday afternoons, papa asleep in the diningroom, mamma lying down, and

the children quite good and happy with their "Sundays books." In the evening, after supper, one read the

Quiver till bedtime. Such pictures as these were to Lucian a comfort and a help, a remedy against despair.

Often when he felt overwhelmed by the difficulty of the work he had undertaken, he thought of the

He returned again and again to that desire of a prose which should sound faintly, not so much with an audible

music, but with the memory and echo of it. In the night, when the last tram had gone jangling by, and he had

looked out and seen the street all wrapped about in heavy folds of the mist, he conducted some of his most

delicate experiments. In that white and solitary midnight of the suburban street he experienced the curious

sense of being on a tower, remote and apart and high above all the troubles of the earth. The gas lamp, which

was nearly opposite, shone in a pale halo of light, and the houses themselves were merely indistinct marks

and shadows amidst that palpable whiteness, shutting out the world and its noises. The knowledge of the

swarming life that was so still, though it surrounded him, made the silence seem deeper than that of the

mountains before the dawn; it was as if he alone stirred and looked out amidst a host sleeping at his feet. The

fog came in by the open window in freezing puffs, and as Lucian watched he noticed that it shook and

wavered like the sea, tossing up wreaths and drifts across the pale halo of the lamp, and, these vanishing,

others succeeded. It was as if the mist passed by from the river to the north, as if it still passed by in the

He would shut his window gently, and sit down in his lighted room with all the consciousness of the white

advancing shroud upon him. It was then that he found himself in the mood for curious labours, and able to

handle with some touch of confidence the more exquisite instruments of the craft. He sought for that magic

by which all the glory and glamour of mystic chivalry were made to shine through the burlesque and gross

adventures of Don Quixote, by which Hawthorne had lit his infernal Sabbath fires, and fashioned a burning

aureole about the village tragedy of the Scarlet Letter. In Hawthorne the story and the suggestion, though

quite distinct and of different worlds, were rather parallel than opposed to one another; but Cervantes had

done a stranger thing. One read of Don Quixote, beaten, dirty, and ridiculous, mistaking windmills for giants,

sheep for an army; but the impression was of the enchanted forest, of Avalon, of the San Graal, "far in the

spiritual city." And Rabelais showed him, beneath the letter, the Tourainian sun shining on the hot rock above

Chinon, on the maze of narrow, climbing streets, on the highpitched, gabled roofs, on the greyblue

tourelles, pricking upward from the fantastic labyrinth of walls. He heard the sound of sonorous plainsong

from the monastic choir, of gross exuberant gaiety from the rich vineyards; he listened to the eternal mystic

mirth of those that halted in the purple shadow of the sorbier by the white, steep road. The gracious and

ornate ch�teaux on the Loire and the Vienne rose fair and shining to confront the incredible secrets of vast,

dim, farlifted Gothic naves, that seemed ready to take the great deep, and float away from the mist and dust

of earthly streets to anchor in the haven of the clear city that hath foundations. The rank tale of the garderobe,

of the farmkitchen, mingled with the reasoned, endless legend of the schools, with luminous Platonic

argument; the old pomp of the Middle Ages put on the robe of a fresh life. There was a smell of wine and of

incense, of June meadows and of ancient books, and through it all he hearkened, intent, to the exultation of

chiming bells ringing for a new feast in a new land. He would cover pages with the analysis of these marvels,

tracking the suggestion concealed beneath the words, and yet glowing like the golden threads in a robe of

samite, or like that device of the old binders by which a vivid picture appeared on the shut edges of a book.

He tried to imitate this art, to summon even the faint shadow of the great effect, rewriting a page of

Hawthorne, experimenting and changing an epithet here and there, noting how sometimes the alteration of a

trifling word would plunge a whole scene into darkness, as if one of those bloodred fires had instantly been

extinguished. Sometimes, for severe practice, he attempted to construct short tales in the manner of this or

that master. He sighed over these desperate attempts, over the clattering pieces of mechanism which would

not even simulate life; but he urged himself to an infinite perseverance. Through the white hours he worked

on amidst the heap and litter of papers; books and manuscripts overflowed from the bureau to the floor; and if

he looked out he saw the mist still pass by, still passing from the river to the north.

It was not till the winter was well advanced that he began at all to explore the region in which he lived. Soon

after his arrival in the grey street he had taken one or two vague walks, hardly noticing where he went or

what he saw; but for all the summer he had shut himself in his room, beholding nothing but the form and

colour of words. For his morning walk he almost invariably chose the one direction, going along the

Uxbridge Road towards Notting Hill, and returning by the same monotonous thoroughfare. Now, however,

when the new year was beginning its dull days, he began to diverge occasionally to right and left, sometimes

eating his luncheon in odd corners, in the bulging parlours of eighteenthcentury taverns, that still fronted the

surging sea of modern streets, or perhaps in brand new "publics" on the broken borders of the brickfields,

smelling of the clay from which they had swollen. He found waste byplaces behind railway embankments

where he could smoke his pipe sheltered from the wind; sometimes there was a wooden fence by an old

pearorchard where he sat and gazed at the wet desolation of the marketgardens, munching a few currant

biscuits by way of dinner. As he went farther afield a sense of immensity slowly grew upon him; it was as if,

from the little island of his room, that one friendly place, he pushed out into the grey unknown, into a city

He came back to his cell after these purposeless wanderings always with a sense of relief, with the thought of

taking refuge from grey. As he lit the gas and opened the desk of his bureau and saw the pile of papers

awaiting him, it was as if he had passed from the black skies and the stinging wind and the dull maze of the

IT WAS in this winter after his coming to the grey street that Lucian first experienced the pains of desolation.

He had all his life known the delights of solitude, and had acquired that habit of mind which makes a man

find rich company on the bare hillside and leads him into the heart of the wood to meditate by the dark

waterpools. But now in the blank interval when he was forced to shut up his desk, the sense of loneliness

overwhelmed him and filled him with unutterable melancholy. On such days he carried about with him an

unceasing gnawing torment in his breast; the anguish of the empty page awaiting him in his bureau, and the

knowledge that it was worse than useless to attempt the work. He had fallen into the habit of always using

this phrase "the work" to denote the adventure of literature; it had grown in his mind to all the austere and

grave significance of "the great work" on the lips of the alchemists; it included every trifling and laborious

page and the vague magnificent fancies that sometimes hovered below him. All else had become mere

byplay, unimportant, trivial; the work was the end, and the means and the food of his lifeit raised him up

in the morning to renew the struggle, it was the symbol which charmed him as he lay down at night. All

through the hours of toil at the bureau he was enchanted, and when he went out and explored the unknown

coasts, the one thought allured him, and was the coloured glass between his eyes and the world. Then as he

drew nearer home his steps would quicken, and the more weary and grey the walk, the more he rejoiced as he

thought of his hermitage and of the curious difficulties that awaited him there. But when, suddenly and

without warning, the faculty disappeared, when his mind seemed a hopeless waste from which nothing could

arise, then he became subject to a misery so piteous that the barbarians themselves would have been sorry for

him. He had known some foretaste of these bitter and inexpressible griefs in the old country days, but then he

had immediately taken refuge in the hills, he had rushed to the dark woods as to an anodyne, letting his heart

drink in all the wonder and magic of the wild land. Now in these days of January, in the suburban street, there

He had been working steadily for some weeks, well enough satisfied on the whole with the daily progress,

glad to awake in the morning, and to read over what he had written on the night before. The new year opened

with faint and heavy weather and a breathless silence in the air, but in a few days the great frost set in. Soon

the streets began to suggest the appearance of a beleaguered city, the silence that had preceded the frost

deepened, and the mist hung over the earth like a dense white smoke. Night after night the cold increased,

and people seemed unwilling to go abroad, till even the main thoroughfares were empty and deserted, as if

the inhabitants were lying close in hiding. It was at this dismal time that Lucian found himself reduced to

impotence. There was a sudden break in his thought, and when he wrote on valiantly, hoping against hope, he

only grew more aghast on the discovery of the imbecilities he had committed to paper. He ground his teeth

together and persevered, sick at heart, feeling as if all the world were fallen from under his feet, driving his

pen on mechanically, till he was overwhelmed. He saw the stuff he had done without veil or possible

concealment, a lamentable and wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his boyhood.

He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the infernal art of a leaderwriter, filling his wind

bags and mincing words as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the Daily Post. There seemed all

the matter of an insufferable tragedy in these thoughts; that his patient and enduring toil was in vain, that

practice went for nothing, and that he had wasted the labour of Milton to accomplish the tenthrate.

Unhappily he could not "give in"; the longing, the fury for the work burnt within him like a burning fire; he

It was then, while he knew that no one could help him, that he languished for help, and then, though he was

aware that no comfort was possible, he fervently wished to be comforted. The only friend he had was his

father, and he knew that his father would not even understand his distress. For him, always, the printed book

was the beginning and end of literature; the agony of the maker, his despair and sickness, were as accursed as

the pains of labour. He was ready to read and admire the work of the great Smith, but he did not wish to hear

of the period when the great Smith had writhed and twisted like a scotched worm, only hoping to be put out

of his misery, to go mad or die, to escape somehow from the bitter pains. And Lucian knew no one else. Now

and then he read in the paper the fame of the great litt�rateurs; the Gypsies were entertaining the Prince of

Wales, the Jolly Beggars were dining with the Lord Mayor, the Old Mumpers were mingling amicably and

gorgeously with the leading members of the Stock Exchange. He was so unfortunate as to know none of these

gentlemen, but it hardly seemed likely that they could have done much for him in any case. Indeed, in his

heart, he was certain that help and comfort from without were in the nature of things utterly impossible, his

ruin and grief were within, and only his own assistance could avail. He tried to reassure himself, to believe

that his torments were a proof of his vocation, that the facility of the novelist who stood six years deep in

contracts to produce romances was a thing wholly undesirable, but all the while he longed for but a drop of

He drove himself out from that dreary contemplation of the white paper and the idle pen. He went into the

frozen and deserted streets, hoping that he might pluck the burning coal from his heart, but the fire was not

quenched. As he walked furiously along the grim iron roads he fancied that those persons who passed him

cheerfully on their way to friends and friendly hearths shrank from him into the mists as they went by. Lucian

imagined that the fire of his torment and anguish must in some way glow visibly about him; he moved,

perhaps, in a nimbus that proclaimed the blackness and the flames within. He knew, of course, that in misery

he had grown delirious, that the wellcoated, smoothhatted personages who loomed out of the fog upon him

were in reality shuddering only with cold, but in spite of common sense he still conceived that he saw on

their faces an evident horror and disgust, and something of the repugnance that one feels at the sight of a

venomous snake, halfkilled, trailing its bleeding vileness out of sight. By design Lucian tried to make for

remote and desolate places, and yet when he had succeeded in touching on the open country, and knew that

the icy shadow hovering through the mist was a field, he longed for some sound and murmur of life, and

turned again to roads where pale lamps were glimmering, and the dancing flame of firelight shone across the

frozen shrubs. And the sight of these homely fires, the thought of affection and consolation waiting by them,

stung him the more sharply perhaps because of the contrast with his own chills and weariness and helpless

sickness, and chiefly because he knew that he had long closed an everlasting door between his heart and such

felicities. If those within had come out and had called him by his name to enter and be comforted, it would

have been quite unavailing, since between them and him there was a great gulf fixed. Perhaps for the first

time he realized that he had lost the art of humanity for ever. He had thought when he closed his ears to the

wood whisper and changed the fauns' singing for the murmur of the streets, the black pools for the shadows

and amber light of London, that he had put off the old life, and had turned his soul to healthy activities, but

the truth was that he had merely exchanged one drug for another. He could not be human, and he wondered

whether there were some drop of the fairy blood in his body that made him foreign and a stranger in the

He did not surrender to desolation without repeated struggles. He strove to allure himself to his desk by the

promise of some easy task; he would not attempt invention, but he had memoranda and rough jottings of

ideas in his notebooks, and he would merely amplify the suggestions ready to his hand. But it was hopeless,

again and again it was hopeless. As he read over his notes, trusting that he would find some hint that might

light up the dead fires, and kindle again that pure flame of enthusiasm, he found how desperately his fortune

had fallen. He could see no light, no colour in the lines he had scribbled with eager trembling fingers; he

remembered how splendid all these things had been when he wrote them down, but now they were

meaningless, faded into grey. The few words he had dashed on to the paper, enraptured at the thought of the

happy hours they promised, had become mere jargon, and when he understood the idea it seemed foolish,

dull, unoriginal. He discovered something at last that appeared to have a grain of promise, and determined to

do his best to put it into shape, but the first paragraph appalled him; it might have been written by an

unintelligent schoolboy. He tore the paper in pieces, and shut and locked his desk, heavy despair sinking like

lead into his heart. For the rest of that day he lay motionless on the bed, smoking pipe after pipe in the hope

of stupefying himself with tobacco fumes. The air in the room became blue and thick with smoke; it was

bitterly cold, and he wrapped himself up in his greatcoat and drew the counterpane over him. The night

He renewed the effort at intervals, only to plunge deeper into misery. He felt the approaches of madness, and

knew that his only hope was to walk till he was physically exhausted, so that he might come home almost

fainting with fatigue, but ready to fall asleep the moment he got into bed. He passed the mornings in a kind of

torpor, endeavouring to avoid thought, to occupy his mind with the pattern of the paper, with the

advertisements at the end of a book, with the curious greyness of the light that glimmered through the mist

into his room, with the muffled voices that rumbled now and then from the street. He tried to make out the

design that had once coloured the faded carpet on the floor, and wondered about the dead artist in Japan, the

adorner of his bureau. He speculated as to what his thoughts had been as he inserted the rainbow

motherofpearl and made that great flight of shining birds, dipping their wings as they rose from the reeds,

or how he had conceived the lacquer dragons in red gold, and the fantastic houses in the garden of

peachtrees. But sooner or later the oppression of his grief returned, the loud shriek and clang of the

gardengate, the warning bell of some passing bicyclist steering through the fog, the noise of his pipe falling

to the floor, would suddenly awaken him to the sense of misery. He knew that it was time to go out; he could

not bear to sit still and suffer. Sometimeshe cut a slice of bread and put it in his pocket, sometimes he trusted

to the chance of finding a publichouse, where he could have a sandwich and a glass of beer. He turned

always from the main streets and lost himself in the intricate suburban byways, willing to be engulfed in the

The roads had stiffened into iron ridges, the fences and trees were glittering with frost crystals, everything

was of strange and altered aspect. Lucian walked on and on through the maze, now in a circle of shadowy

villas, awful as the buried streets of Herculaneum, now in lanes dipping onto open country, that led him past

great elmtrees whose white boughs were all still, and past the bitter lonely fields where the mist seemed to

fade away into grey darkness. As he wandered along these unfamiliar and ghastly paths he became the more

convinced of his utter remoteness from all humanity, he allowed that grotesque suggestion of there being

something visibly amiss in his outward appearance to grow upon him, and often he looked with a horrible

expectation into the faces of those who passed by, afraid lest his own senses gave him false intelligence, and

that he had really assumed some frightful and revolting shape. It was curious that, partly by his own fault, and

largely, no doubt, through the operation of mere coincidence, he was once or twice strongly confirmed in this

fantastic delusion. He came one day into a lonely and unfrequented byway, a country lane falling into ruin,

but still fringed with elms that had formed an avenue leading to the old manorhouse. It was now the road of

communication between two far outlying suburbs, and on these winter nights lay as black, dreary, and

desolate as a mountain track. Soon after the frost began, a gentleman had been set upon in this lane as he

picked his way between the corner where the bus had set him down, and his home where the fire was blazing,

and his wife watched the clock. He was stumbling uncertainly through the gloom, growing a little nervous

because the walk seemed so long, and peering anxiously for the lamp at the end of his street, when the two

footpads rushed at him out of the fog. One caught him from behind, the other struck him with a heavy

bludgeon, and as he lay senseless they robbed him of his watch and money, and vanished across the fields.

The next morning all the suburb rang with the story; the unfortunate merchant had been grievously hurt, and

wives watched their husbands go out in the morning with sickening apprehension, not knowing what might

happen at night. Lucian of course was ignorant of all these rumours, and struck into the gloomy byroad

He had been driven out that day as with whips, another hopeless attempt to return to the work had agonised

him, and existence seemed an intolerable pain. As he entered the deeper gloom, where the fog hung heavily,

he began, half consciously, to gesticulate; he felt convulsed with torment and shame, and it was a sorry relief

to clench his nails into his palm and strike the air as he stumbled heavily along, bruising his feet against the

frozen ruts and ridges. His impotence was hideous, he said to himself, and he cursed himself and his life,

breaking out into a loud oath, and stamping on the ground. Suddenly he was shocked at a scream of terror, it

seemed in his very ear, and looking up he saw for a moment a woman gazing at him out of the mist, her

features distorted and stiff with fear. A momentary convulsion twitched her arms into the ugly mimicry of a

Lucian stood still in the road while the woman's cries grew faint and died away. His heart was chilled within

him as the significance of this strange incident became clear. He remembered nothing of his violent gestures;

he had not known at the time that he had sworn out loud, or that he was grinding his teeth with impotent rage.

He only thought of that ringing scream, of the horrible fear on the white face that had looked upon him, of the

woman's headlong flight from his presence. He stood trembling and shuddering, and in a little while he was

feeling his face, searching for some loathsome mark, for the stigmata of evil branding his forehead. He

staggered homewards like a drunken man, and when he came into the Uxbridge Road some children saw him

and called after him as he swayed and caught at the lamppost. When he got to his room he sat down at first

in the dark. He did not dare to light the gas. Everything in the room was indistinct, but he shut his eyes as he

passed the dressingtable, and sat in a corner, his face turned to the wall. And when at last he gathered

courage and the flame leapt hissing from the jet, he crept piteously towards the glass, and ducked his head,

crouching miserably, and struggling with his terrors before he could look at his own image.

To the best of his power he tried to deliver himself from these more grotesque fantasies; he assured himself

that there was nothing terrific in his countenance but sadness, that his face was like the face of other men. Yet

he could not forget that reflection he had seen in the woman's eyes, how the surest mirrors had shown him a

horrible dread, her soul itself quailing and shuddering at an awful sight. Her scream rang and rang in his ears;

He looked again and again into the glass, tortured by a hideous uncertainty. His senses told him there was

nothing amiss, yet he had had a proof, and yet, as he peered most earnestly, there was, it seemed, something

strange and not altogether usual in the expression of the eyes. Perhaps it might be the unsteady flare of the

gas, or perhaps a flaw in the cheap lookingglass, that gave some slight distortion to the image. He walked

briskly up and down the room and tried to gaze steadily, indifferently, into his own face. He would not allow

himself to be misguided by a word. When he had pronounced himself incapable of humanity, he had only

meant that he could not enjoy the simple things of common life. A man was not necessarily monstrous,

merely because he did not appreciate high tea, a quiet chat about the neighbours, and a happy noisy evening

with the children. But with what message, then, did he appear charged that the woman's mouth grew so stark?

Her hands had jerked up as if they had been pulled with frantic wires; she seemed for the instant like a

He lit a candle and held it close up to the glass so that his own face glared white at him, and the reflection of

the room became an indistinct darkness. He saw nothing but the candle flame and his own shining eyes, and

surely they were not as the eyes of common men. As he put down the light, a sudden suggestion entered his

mind, and he drew a quick breath, amazed at the thought. He hardly knew whether to rejoice or to shudder.

For the thought he conceived was this: that he had mistaken all the circumstances of the adventure, and had

He lay awake all night, turning from one dreary and frightful thought to the other, scarcely dozing for a few

hours when the dawn came. He tried for a moment to argue with himself when he got up; knowing that his

true life was locked up in the bureau, he made a desperate attempt to drive the phantoms and hideous shapes

from his mind. He was assured that his salvation was in the work, and he drew the key from his pocket, and

made as if he would have opened the desk. But the nausea, the remembrances of repeated and utter failure,

were too powerful. For many days he hung about the Manor Lane, half dreading, half desiring another

meeting, and he swore he would not again mistake the cry of rapture, nor repulse the arms extended in a

frenzy of delight. In those days he dreamed of some dark place where they might celebrate and make the

It was perhaps only the shock of a letter from his father that rescued him from these evident approaches to

madness. Mr Taylor wrote how they had missed him at Christmas, how the farmers had inquired after him, of

the homely familiar things that recalled his boyhood, his mother's voice, the friendly fireside, and the good

old fashions that had nurtured him. He remembered that he had once been a boy, loving the cake and

puddings and the radiant holly, and all the seventeenthcentury mirth that lingered on in the ancient

farmhouses. And there came to him the more holy memory of Mass on Christmas morning. How sweet the

dark and frosty earth had smelt as he walked beside his mother down the winding lane, and from the stile near

the church they had seen the world glimmering to the dawn, and the wandering lanthorns advancing across

the fields. Then he had come into the church and seen it shining with candles and holly, and his father in pure

vestments of white linen sang the longing music of the liturgy at the altar, and the people answered him, till

the sun rose with the grave notes of the Paternoster, and a red beam stole through the chancel window.

The worst horror left him as he recalled the memory of these dear and holy things. He cast away the frightful

fancy that the scream he had heard was a shriek of joy, that the arms, rigidly jerked out, invited him to an

embrace. Indeed, the thought that he had longed for such an obscene illusion, that he had gloated over the

recollection of that stark mouth, filled him with disgust. He resolved that his senses were deceived, that he

had neither seen nor heard, but had for a moment externalised his own slumbering and morbid dreams. It was

perhaps necessary that he should be wretched, that his efforts should be discouraged, but he would not yield

Yet when he went abroad with such good resolutions, it was hard to resist an influence that seemed to come

from without and within. He did not know it, but people were everywhere talking of the great frost, of the fog

that lay heavy on London, making the streets dark and terrible, of strange birds that came fluttering about the

windows in the silent squares. The Thames rolled out duskily, bearing down the jarring iceblocks, and as

one looked on the black water from the bridges it was like a river in a northern tale. To Lucian it all seemed

mythical, of the same substance as his own fantastic thoughts. He rarely saw a newspaper, and did not follow

from day to day the systematic readings of the thermometer, the reports of icefairs, of coaches driven across

the river at Hampton, of the skating on the fens; and hence the iron roads, the beleaguered silence and the

heavy folds of mist appeared as amazing as a picture, significant, appalling. He could not look out and see a

common suburban street foggy and dull, nor think of the inhabitants as at work or sitting cheerfully eating

nuts about their fires; he saw a vision of a grey road vanishing, of dim houses all empty and deserted, and the

silence seemed eternal. And when he went out and passed through street after street, all void, by the vague

shapes of houses that appeared for a moment and were then instantly swallowed up, it seemed to him as if he

had strayed into a city that had suffered some inconceivable doom, that he alone wandered where myriads

had once dwelt. It was a town as great as Babylon, terrible as Rome, marvellous as Lost Atlantis, set in the

midst of a white wilderness surrounded by waste places. It was impossible to escape from it; if he skulked

between hedges, and crept away beyond the frozen pools, presently the serried stony lines confronted him

like an army, and far and far they swept away into the night, as some fabled wall that guards an empire in the

vast dim East. Or in that distorting medium of the mist, changing all things, he imagined that he trod an

infinite desolate plain, abandoned from ages, but circled and encircled with dolmen and menhir that loomed

out at him, gigantic, terrible. All London was one grey temple of an awful rite, ring within ring of wizard

stones circled about some central place, every circle was an initiation, every initiation eternal loss. Or perhaps

he was astray for ever in a land of grey rocks. He had seen the light of home, the flicker of the fire on the

walls; close at hand, it seemed, was the open door, and he had heard dear voices calling to him across the

gloom, but he had just missed the path. The lamps vanished, the voices sounded thin and died away, and yet

he knew that those within were waiting, that they could not bear to close the door, but waited, calling his

name, while he had missed the way, and wandered in the pathless desert of the grey rocks. Fantastic, hideous,

they beset him wherever he turned, piled up into strange shapes, pricked with sharp peaks, assuming the

appearance of goblin towers, swelling into a vague dome like a fairy rath, huge and terrible. And as one

dream faded into another, so these last fancies were perhaps the most tormenting and persistent; the rocky

avenues became the camp and fortalice of some halfhuman, malignant race who swarmed in hiding, ready

to bear him away into the heart of their horrible hills. It was awful to think that all his goings were

surrounded, that in the darkness he was watched and surveyed, that every step but led him deeper and deeper

When, of an evening, he was secure in his room, the blind drawn down and the gas flaring, he made vigorous

efforts toward sanity. It was not of his free will that he allowed terror to overmaster him, and he desired

nothing better than a placid and harmless life, full of work and clear thinking. He knew that he deluded

himself with imagination, that he had been walking through London suburbs and not through Pandemonium,

and that if he could but unlock his bureau all those ugly forms would be resolved into the mist. But it was

hard to say if he consoled himself effectually with such reflections, for the return to common sense meant

also the return to the sharp pangs of defeat. It recalled him to the bitter theme of his own inefficiency, to the

thought that he only desired one thing of life, and that this was denied him. He was willing to endure the

austerities of a monk in a severe cloister, to suffer cold, to be hungry, to be lonely and friendless, to forbear

all the consolation of friendly speech, and to be glad of all these things, if only he might be allowed to

illuminate the manuscript in quietness. It seemed a hideous insufferable cruelty, that he should so fervently

He was led back to the old conclusion; he had lost the sense of humanity, he was wretched because he was an

alien and a stranger amongst citizens. It seemed probable that the enthusiasm of literature, as he understood

it, the fervent desire for the fine art, had in it something of the inhuman, and dissevered the enthusiast from

his fellowcreatures. It was possible that the barbarian suspected as much, that by some slow process of

rumination he had arrived at his fixed and inveterate impression, by no means a clear reasoned conviction;

the average Philistine, if pressed for the reasons of his dislike, would either become inarticulate, ejaculating

"faugh" and "pah" like an oldfashioned Scots Magazine, or else he would give some imaginary and absurd

reason, alleging that all "littery men" were poor, that composers never cut their hair, that painters were rarely

publicschool men, that sculptors couldn't ride straight to hounds to save their lives, but clearly these

imbecilities were mere afterthoughts; the average man hated the artist from a deep instinctive dread of all that

was strange, uncanny, alien to his nature; he gibbered, uttered his harsh, semibestial "faugh," and dismissed

Keats to his gallipots from much the same motives as usually impelled the black savages to dismiss the white

Lucian was not especially interested in this hatred of the barbarian for the maker, except from this point, that

it confirmed him in his belief that the love of art dissociated the man from the race. One touch of art made the

whole world alien, but surely miseries of the civilised man cast amongst savages were not so much caused by

dread of their ferocity as by the terror of his own thoughts; he would perhaps in his last despair leave his

retreat and go forth to perish at their hands, so that he might at least die in company, and hear the sound of

speech before death. And Lucian felt most keenly that in his case there was a double curse; he was as isolated

as Keats, and as inarticulate as his reviewers. The consolation of the work had failed him, and he was

It was no doubt the composite effect of his failures, his loneliness of soul, and solitude of life, that had made

him invest those common streets with such grim and persistent terrors. He had perhaps yielded to a

temptation without knowing that he had been tempted, and, in the manner of De Quincey, had chosen the

subtle in exchange for the more tangible pains. Unconsciously, but still of free will, he had preferred the

splendour and the gloom of a malignant vision before his corporal pains, before the hard reality of his own

impotence. It was better to dwell in vague melancholy, to stray in the forsaken streets of a city doomed from

ages, to wander amidst forlorn and desperate rocks than to awake to a gnawing and ignoble torment, to

confess that a house of business would have been more suitable and more practical, that he had promised

what he could never perform. Even as he struggled to beat back the phantasmagoria of the mist, and resolved

that he would no longer make all the streets a stage of apparitions, he hardly realised what he had done, or

He continued his long walks, always with the object of producing a physical weariness and exhaustion that

would enable him to sleep of nights. But even when he saw the foggy and deserted avenues in their proper

shape, and allowed his eyes to catch the pale glimmer of the lamps, and the dancing flame of the firelight, he

could not rid himself of the impression that he stood afar off, that between those hearths and himself there

was a great gulf fixed. As he paced down the footpath he could often see plainly across the frozen shrubs into

the homely and cheerful rooms. Sometimes, late in the evening, he caught a passing glimpse of the family at

tea, father, mother, and children laughing and talking together, well pleased with each other's company.

Sometimes a wife or a child was standing by the garden gate peering anxiously through the fog, and the sight

of it all, all the little details, the hideous but comfortable armchairs turned ready to the fire, maroonred

curtains being drawn close to shut out the ugly night, the sudden blaze and illumination as the fire was poked

up so that it might be cheerful for father; these trivial and common things were acutely significant. They

brought back to him the image of a dead boyhimself. They recalled the shabby old "parlour" in the

country, with its shabby old furniture and fading carpet, and renewed a whole atmosphere of affection and

homely comfort. His mother would walk to the end of the drive and look out for him when he was late

(wandering then about the dark woodlands); on winter evenings she would make the fire blaze, and have his

slippers warming by the hearth, and there was probably buttered toast "as a treat." He dwelt on all these

insignificant petty circumstances, on the genial glow and light after the muddy winter lanes, on the relish of

the buttered toast and the smell of the hot tea, on the two old cats curled fast asleep before the fender, and

made them instruments of exquisite pain and regret. Each of these strange houses that he passed was

identified in his mind with his own vanished home; all was prepared and ready as in the old days, but he was

shut out, judged and condemned to wander in the frozen mist, with weary feet, anguished and forlorn, and

they that would pass from within to help him could not, neither could he pass to them. Again, for the

hundredth time, he came back to the sentence: he could not gain the art of letters and he had lost the art of

humanity. He saw the vanity of all his thoughts; he was an ascetic caring nothing for warmth and

cheerfulness and the small comforts of life, and yet he allowed his mind to dwell on such things. If one of

those passersby, who walked briskly, eager for home, should have pitied him by some miracle and asked

him to come in, it would have been worse than useless, yet he longed for pleasures that he could not have

enjoyed. It was as if he were come to a place of torment, where they who could not drink longed for water,

where they who could feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold. He was oppressed by the grim conceit

that he himself still slept within the matted thicket, imprisoned by the green bastions of the Roman fort. He

had never come out, but a changeling had gone down the hill, and now stirred about the earth.

Beset by such ingenious terrors, it was not wonderful that outward events and common incidents should abet

his fancies. He had succeeded one day in escaping from the mesh of the streets, and fell on a rough and

narrow lane that stole into a little valley. For the moment he was in a somewhat happier mood; the afternoon

sun glowed through the rolling mist, and the air grew clearer. He saw quiet and peaceful fields, and a wood

descending in a gentle slope from an old farmstead of warm red brick. The farmer was driving the slow cattle

home from the hill, and his loud halloo to his dog came across the land a cheerful mellow note. From another

side a cart was approaching the clustered barns, hesitating, pausing while the great horses rested, and then

starting again into lazy motion. In the well of the valley a wandering line of bushes showed where a brook

crept in and out amongst the meadows, and, as Lucian stood, lingering, on the bridge, a soft and idle breath

ruffled through the boughs of a great elm. He felt soothed, as by calm music, and wondered whether it would

not be better for him to live in some such quiet place, within reach of the streets and yet remote from them. It

seemed a refuge for still thoughts; he could imagine himself sitting at rest beneath the black yew tree in the

farm garden, at the close of a summer day. He had almost determined that he would knock at the door and ask

if they would take him as a lodger, when he saw a child running towards him down the lane. It was a little

girl, with bright curls tossing about her head, and, as she came on, the sunlight glowed upon her, illuminating

her brickred frock and the yellow kingcups in her hat. She had run with her eyes on the ground, chirping

and laughing to herself, and did not see Lucian till she was quite near him. She started and glanced into his

eyes for a moment, and began to cry; he stretched out his hand, and she ran from him screaming, frightened

no doubt by what was to her a sudden and strange apparition. He turned back towards London, and the mist

It was only by the intensest strain of resolution that he did not yield utterly to the poisonous anodyne which

was always at hand. It had been a difficult struggle to escape from the mesh of the hills, from the music of the

fauns, and even now he was drawn by the memory of these old allurements. But he felt that here, in his

loneliness, he was in greater danger, and beset by a blacker magic. Horrible fancies rushed wantonly into his

mind; he was not only ready to believe that something in his soul sent a shudder through all that was simple

and innocent, but he came trembling home one Saturday night, believing, or halfbelieving, that he was in

communion with evil. He had passed through the clamorous and blatant crowd of the "high street," where, as

one climbed the hill, the shops seemed all aflame, and the black night air glowed with the flaring gasjets and

the naphthalamps, hissing and wavering before the February wind. Voices, raucous, clamant, abominable,

were belched out of the blazing publichouses as the doors swung to and fro, and above these doors were

hideous brassy lamps, very slowly swinging in a violent blast of air, so that they might have been infernal

thuribles, censing the people. Some man was calling his wares in one long continuous shriek that never

stopped or paused, and, as a respond, a deeper, louder voice roared to him from across the road. An Italian

whirled the handle of his pianoorgan in a fury, and a ring of imps danced mad figures around him, danced

and flung up their legs till the rags dropped from some of them, and they still danced on. A flare of naphtha,

burning with a rushing noise, threw a light on one point of the circle, and Lucian watched a lank girl of

fifteen as she came round and round to the flash. She was quite drunk, and had kicked her petticoats away,

and the crowd howled laughter and applause at her. Her black hair poured down and leapt on her scarlet

bodice; she sprang and leapt round the ring, laughing in Bacchic frenzy, and led the orgy to triumph. People

were crossing to and fro, jostling against each other, swarming about certain shops and stalls in a dense dark

mass that quivered and sent out feelers as if it were one writhing organism. A little farther a group of young

men, arm in arm, were marching down the roadway chanting some musichall verse in full chorus, so that it

sounded like plainsong. An impossible hubbub, a hum of voices angry as swarming bees, the squeals of five

or six girls who ran in and out, and dived up dark passages and darted back into the crowd; all these mingled

together till h is ears quivered. A young fellow was playing the concertina, and he touched the keys with such

slow fingers that the tune wailed solemn into a dirge; but there was nothing so strange as the burst of sound

He walked amongst these people, looked at their faces, and looked at the children amongst them. He had

come out thinking that he would see the English working class, "the bestbehaved and the besttempered

crowd in the world," enjoying the simple pleasure of the Saturday night's shopping. Mother bought the joint

for Sunday's dinner, and perhaps a pair of boots for father; father had an honest glass of beer, and the children

were given bags of sweets, and then all these worthy people went decently home to their wellearned rest. De

Quincey had enjoyed the sight in his day, and had studied the rise and fall of onions and potatoes. Lucian,

indeed, had desired to take these simple emotions as an opiate, to forget the fine fret and fantastic trouble of

his own existence in plain things and the palpable joy of rest after labour. He was only afraid lest he should

be too sharply reproached by the sight of these men who fought bravely year after year against starvation,

who knew nothing of intricate and imagined grief, but only the weariness of relentless labour, of the long

battle for their wives and children. It would be pathetic, he thought, to see them content with so little,

brightened by the expectation of a day's rest and a good dinner, forced, even then, to reckon every penny, and

to make their children laugh with halfpence. Either he would be ashamed before so much content, or else he

would be again touched by the sense of his inhumanity which could take no interest in the common things of

life. But still he went to be at least taken out of himself, to be forced to look at another side of the world, so

He was fascinated by what he saw and heard. He wondered whether De Quincey also had seen the same

spectacle, and had concealed his impressions out of reverence for the average reader. Here there were no

simple joys of honest toilets, but wonderful orgies, that drew out his heart to horrible music. At first the

violence of sound and sight had overwhelmed him; the lights flaring in the night wind, the array of naphtha

lamps, the black shadows, the roar of voices. The dance about the pianoorgan had been the first sign of an

inner meaning, and the face of the dark girl as she came round and round to the flame had been amazing in its

utter furious abandon. And what songs they were singing all around him, and what terrible words rang out,

only to excite peals of laughter. In the publichouses the workmen's wives, the wives of small tradesmen,

decently dressed in black, were drinking their faces to a flaming red, and urging their husbands to drink more.

Beautiful young women, flushed and laughing, put their arms round the men's necks and kissed them, and

then held up the glass to their lips. In the dark corners, at the openings of side streets, the children were

talking together, instructing each other, whispering what they had seen; a boy of fifteen was plying a girl of

twelve with whisky, and presently they crept away. Lucian passed them as they turned to go, and both looked

at him. The boy laughed, and the girl smiled quietly. It was above all in the faces around him that he saw the

most astounding things, the Bacchic fury unveiled and unashamed. To his eyes it seemed as if these revellers

recognised him as a fellow, and smiled up in his face, aware that he was in the secret. Every instinct of

religion, of civilisation even, was swept away; they gazed at one another and at him, absolved of all scruples,

children of the earth and nothing more. Now and then a couple detached themselves from the swarm, and

went away into the darkness, answering the jeers and laughter of their friends as they vanished.

On the edge of the pavement, not far from where he was standing, Lucian noticed a tall and lovely young

woman who seemed to be alone. She was in the full light of a naphtha flame, and her bronze hair and flushed

cheeks shone illuminate as she viewed the orgy. She had dark brown eyes, and a strange look as of an old

picture in her face; and her eyes brightened with an urgent gleam. He saw the revellers nudging each other

and glancing at her, and two or three young men went up and asked her to come for a walk. She shook her

head and said "No thank you" again and again, and seemed as if she were looking for somebody in the crowd.

"I'm expecting a friend," she said at last to a man who proposed a drink and a walk afterwards; and Lucian

wondered what kind of friend would ultimately appear. Suddenly she turned to him as he was about to pass

"I'll go for a walk with you if you like; you just go on, and I'll follow in a minute."

For a moment he looked steadily at her. He saw that the first glance has misled him; her face was not flushed

with drink as he had supposed, but it was radiant with the most exquisite colour, a red flame glowed and died

on her cheek, and seemed to palpitate as she spoke. The head was set on the neck nobly, as in a statue, and

about the ears the bronze hair strayed into little curls. She was msiling and waiting for his answer.

He muttered something about being very sorry, and fled down the hill out of the orgy, from the noise of

roaring voices and the glitter of the great lamps very slowly swinging in the blast of wind. He knew that he

had touched the brink of utter desolation; there was death in the woman's face, and she had indeed summoned

him to the Sabbath. Somehow he had been able to refuse on the instant, but if he had delayed he knew he

would have abandoned himself to her, body and soul. He locked himself in his room and lay trembling on the

bed, wondering if some subtle sympathy had shown the woman her perfect companion. He looked in the

glass, not expecting now to see certain visible and outward signs, but searching for the meaning of that

strange glance that lit up his eyes. He had grown even thinner than before in the last few months, and his

cheeks were wasted with hunger and sorrow, but there were still about his features the suggestion of a curious

classic grace, and the look as of a faun whoo has strayed from the vineyards and olive gardens. He had

broken away, but now he felt the mesh of her net about him, a desire for her that was a madness, as if she

held every nerve in his body and drew him to her, to her mystic world, to the rosebush where every flower

He dreamed all night of the perilous things he had refused, and it was loss to awake in the morning, pain to

return to the world. The frost had broken and the fog had rolled away, and the grey street was filled with a

clear grey light. Again he looked out on the long dull sweep of the monotonous houses, hidden for the past

weeks by a curtain of mist. Heavy rain had fallen in the night, and the garden rails were still dripping, the

roofs still dark with wet, all down the line the dingy white blinds were drawn in the upper windows. Not a

soul walked the street; every one was asleep after the exertions of the night before; even on the main road it

was only at intervals that some straggler paddled by. Presently a woman in a brown ulster shuffled off on

some errand, then a man in shirtsleeves poked out his head, holding the door halfopen, and stared up at a

window opposite. After a few minutes he slunk in again, and three loafers came slouching down the street,

eager for mischief or beastliness of some sort. They chose a house that seemed rather smarter than the rest,

and, irritated by the neat curtains, the little grass plot with its dwarf shrub, one of the ruffians drew out a

piece of chalk and wrote some words on the front door. His friends kept watch for him, and the adventure

achieved, all three bolted, bellowing yahoo laughter. Then a bell began, tang, tang, tang, and here and there

children appeared on their way to Sundayschool, and the chapel "teachers" went by with verjuice eyes and

lips, scowling at the little boy who cried "Piper, piper!" On the main road many respectable people, the men

shining and illfitted, the women hideously bedizened, passed in the direction of the Independent nightmare,

the stuccoed thing with Doric columns, but on the whole life was stagnant. Presently Lucian smelt the horrid

fumes of roast beef and cabbage; the early risers were preparing the oneo'clock meal, but many lay in bed

and put off dinner till three, with the effect of prolonging the cabbage atmosphere into the late afternoon. A

drizzly rain began as the people were coming out of church, and the mothers of little boys in velvet and little

girls in foolishness of every kind were impelled to slap their offspring, and to threaten them with father. Then

the torpor of beef and beer and cabbage settled down on the street; in some houses they snorted and read the

Parish Magazine, in some they snored and read the murders and collected filth of the week; but the only

movement of the afternoon was a second procession of children, now bloated and distended with food, again

answering the summons of tang, tang, tang. On the main road the trams, laden with impossible people, went

humming to and fro, and young men who wore bright blue ties cheerfully hawhawed and smoked penny

cigars. They annoyed the shiny and respectable and verjuicelipped, not by the frightful stench of the cigars,

but because they were cheerful on Sunday. By and by the children, having heard about Moses in the

Bulrushes and Daniel in the Lion's Den, came straggling home in an evil humour. And all the day it was as if

And in the rosegarden every flower was a flame! He thought in symbols, using the Persian imagery of a

dusky court, surrounded by white cloisters, gilded by gates of bronze. The stars came out, the sky glowed a

darker violet, but the cloistered wall, the fantastic tellises in stone, shone whiter. It was like a hedge of

mayblossom, like a lily within a cup of lapislazuli, like seafoam tossed on the heaving sea at dawn.

Always those white cloisters trembled with the lute music, always the garden sang with the clear fountain,

rising and falling in the mysterious dusk. And there was a singing voice stealing through the white lattices

and the bronze gates, a soft voice chanting of the Lover and the Beloved, of the Vineyard, of the Gate and the

Way. Oh! the language was unknown; but the music of the refrain returned again and again, swelling and

trembling through the white nets of the latticed cloisters. And every rose in the dusky air was a flame.

He had seen the life which he expressed by these symbols offered to him, and he had refused it; and he was

alone in the grey street, with its lamps just twinkling through the dreary twilight, the blast of a ribald chorus

sounding from the main road, a doggerel hymn whining from some parlour, to the accompaniement of the

harmonium. He wondered why he had turned away from that woman who knew all secrets, in whose eyes

were all the mysteries. He opened the desk of his bureau, and was confronted by the heap and litter of papers,

lying in confusion as he had left them. He knew that there was the motive of his refusal; he had been

unwilling to abandon all hope of the work. The glory and the torment of his ambition glowed upon him as he

looked at the manuscript; it seemed so pitiful that such a single desire should be thwarted. He was aware that

if he chose to sit down now before the desk he could, in a manner, write easily enoughhe could produce a

tale which would be formally well constructed and certain of favourable reception. And it would not be the

utterly commonplace, entirely hopeless favourite of the circulating library; it would stand in those ranks

where the real thing is skilfully counterfeited, amongst the books which give the reader his orgy of emotions,

and yet contrive to be superior, and "art," in his opinion. Lucian had often observed this species of triumph,

and had noted the acclamation that never failed the clever sham. Romola, for example, had made the great

host of the serious, the portentous, shout for joy, while the real book, The Cloister and the Hearth, was a

He knew that he could write a Romola; but he thought the art of counterfeiting halfcrowns less detestable

than this shabby trick of imitating literature. He had refused definitely to enter the atelier of the gentleman

who pleased his clients by ingeniously simulating the grain of walnut; and though he had seen the old oaken

aumbry kicked out contemptuously into the farmyard, serving perhaps the necessities of hens or pigs, he

would not apprentice himself to the masters of veneer. He paced up and down the room, glancing now and

again at his papers, and wondering if there were not hope for him. A great thing he could never do, but he had

He was stirred again to this fury for the work by the event of the evening before, by all that had passed

through his mind since the melancholy dawn. The lurid picture of that fiery street, the flaming shops and

flaming glances, all its wonders and horrors, lit by the naphtha flares and by the burning souls, had possessed

him; and the noises, the shriek and the whisper, the jangling rattle of the pianoorgan, the longcontinued

scream of the butcher as he dabbled in the blood, the lewd litany of the singers, these seemed to be resolved

into an infernal overture, loud with the expectation of lust and death. And how the spectacle was set in the

cloud of dark night, a phantom play acted on that fiery stage, beneath those hideous brassy lamps, very

slowly swinging in a violent blast. As all the medley of outrageous sights and sounds now fused themselves

within his brain into one clear impression, it seemed that he had indeed witnessed and acted in a drama, that

all the scene had been prepared and vested for him, and that the choric songs he had heard were but preludes

to a greater act. For in that woman was the consummation and catastrophe of it all, and the whole stage

waited for their meeting. He fancied that after this the voices and the lights died away, that the crowd sank

swiftly into the darkness, and that the street was at once denuded of the great lamps and of all its awful scenic

Again, he thought, the same mystery would be represented before him; suddenly on some dark and gloomy

night, as he wandered lonely on a deserted road, the wind hurrying before him, suddenly a turn would bring

him again upon the fiery stage, and the antique drama would be reenacted. He would be drawn to the same

place, to find that woman still standing there; again he would watch the rose radiant and palpitating upon her

cheek, the argent gleam in her brown eyes, the bronze curls gilding the white splendour of her neck. And for

the second time she would freely offer herself. He could hear the wail of the singers swelling to a shriek, and

see the dusky dancers whirling round in a faster frenzy, and the naphtha flares tinged with red, as the woman

and he went away into the dark, into the cloistered court where every flower was a flame, whence he would

His only escape was in the desk; he might find salvation if he could again hide his heart in the heap and litter

of papers, and again be rapt by the cadence of a phrase. He threw open his window and looked out on the dim

world and the glimmering amber lights. He resolved that he would rise early in the morning, and seek once

But there was a strange thing. There was a little bottle on the mantelpiece, a bottle of dark blue glass, and he

IT WAS very dark in the room. He seemed by slow degrees to awake from a long and heavy torpor, from an

utter forgetfulness, and as he raised his eyes he could scarcely discern the pale whiteness of the paper on the

desk before him. He remembered something of a gloomy winter afternoon, of driving rain, of gusty wind: he

He lay back in his chair, wondering whether it were late; his eyes were half closed, and he did not make the

effort and rouse himself. He coulod hear the stormy noise of the wind, and the sound reminded him of the

halfforgotten days. He thought of his boyhood, and the old rectory, and the great elms that surrounded it.

There was something pleasant in the consciousness that he was still half dreaming; he knew he could wake up

whenever he pleased, but for the moment he amused himself by the pretence that he was a little boy again,

tired with his rambles and the keen air of the hills. He remembered how he would sometimes wake up in the

dark at midnight, and listen sleepily for a moment to the rush of the wind straining and crying amongst the

trees, and hear it beat upon the walls, and then he would fall to dreams again, happy in his warm, snug bed.

The wind grew louder, and the windows rattled. He half opened his eyes and shut them again, determined to

cherish that sensation of long ago. He felt tired and heavy with sleep; he imagined that he was exhausted by

some effort; he had, perhaps, been writing furiously without rest. He could not recollect at the instant what

the work had been; it would be delightful to read the pages when he had made up his mind to bestir himself.

Surely that was the noise of boughs, swaying and grinding in the wind. He remembered one night at home

when such a sound had roused him suddenly from a deep sweet sleep. There was a rushing and beating as of

wings upon the air, and a heavy dreary noise, like thunder far away upon the mountain. He had got out of bed

and looked from behind the blind to see what was abroad. He remembered the strange sight he had seen, and

he pretended it would be just the same if he cared to look out now. There were clouds flying awfully from

before the moon, and a pale light that made the familiar land look strange and terrible. The blast of wind

came with a great shriek, and the trees tossed and bowed and quivered; the wood was scourged and horrible,

and the night air was ghastly with a confused tumult, and voices as of a host. A huge black cloud rolled

across the heaven from the west and covered up the moon, and there came a torrent of bitter hissing rain.

It was all a vivid picture to him as he sat in his chair, unwilling to wake. Even as he let his mind stray back to

that night of the past years, the rain beat sharply on the windowpanes, and though there were no trees in the

grey suburban street, he heard distinctly the crash of boughs. He wandered vaguely from thought to thought,

groping indistinctly amongst memories, like a man trying to cross from door to door in a darkened unfamiliar

room. But, no doubt, if he were to look out, by some magic the whole scene would be displayed before him.

He would not see the curve of monotonous twostoried houses, with here and there a white blind, a patch of

light, and shadows appearing and vanishing, not the rain plashing in the muddy road, not the amber of the

gaslamp opposite, but the wild moonlight poured on the dearly loved country; far away the dim circle of the

hills and woods, and beneath him the tossing trees about the lawn, and the wood heaving under the fury of the

He smiled to himself, amidst his lazy meditations, to think how real it seemed, and yet it was all far away, the

scenery of an old play long ended and forgotten. It was strange that after all these years of trouble and work

and change he should be in any sense the same person as that little boy peeping out, half frightened, from the

rectory window. It was as if looking in the glass one should see a stranger, and yet know that the image was a

The memory of the old home recalled his father and mother to him, and he wondered whether his mother

would come if he were to cry out suddenly. One night, on just such a night as this, when a great storm blew

from the mountain, a tree had falled with a crash and a bough had struck the roof, and he awoke in a fright,

calling for his mother. She had come and had comforted him, soothing him to sleep, and now he shut his

eyes, seeing her face shining in the uncertain flickering candle light, as she bent over his bed. He could not

think she had died; the memory was but a part of the evil dreams that had come afterwards.

He said to himself that he had fallen asleep and dreamed sorrow and agony, and he wished to forget all the

things of trouble. He would return to happy days, to the beloved land, to the dear and friendly paths across the

fields. There was the paper, white before him, and when he chose to stir, he would have the pleasure of

reading his work. He could not quite recollect what he had been about, but he was somehow conscious that

the had been successful and had brought some long labour to a worthy ending. Presently he would light the

gas, and enjoy the satisfaction that only the work could give him, but for the time he preferred to linger in the

darkness, and to think of himself as straying from stile to stile through the scented meadows, and listening to

It was winter now, for he heard the rain and the wind, and the swaying of the trees, but in those old days how

sweet the summer had been. The great hawthorn bush in blossom, like a white cloud upon the earth, had

appeared to him in twilight, he had lingered in the enclosed valley to hear the nightingale, a voice swelling

out from the rich gloom, from the trees that grew around the well. The scent of the meadowsweet was blown

to him across the bridge of years, and with it came the dream and the hope and the longing, and the afterglow

red in the sky, and the marvel of the earth. There was a quiet walk that he knew so well; one went up from a

little green byroad, following an unnamed brooklet scarce a foot wide, but yet wandering like a river,

gurgling over its pebbles, with its dwarf bushes shading the pouring water. One went through the meadow

grass, and came to the larch wood that grew from hill to hill across the stream, and shone a brilliant tender

green, and sent vague sweet spires to the flushing sky. Through the wood the path wound, turning and

dipping, and beneath, the brown fallen needles of last year were soft and thick, and the resinous cones gave

out their odour as the warm night advanced, and the shadows darkened. It was quite still; but he stayed, and

the faint song of the brooklet sounded like the echo of a river beyond the mountains. How strange it was to

look into the wood, to see the tall straight stems rising, pillarlike, and then the dusk, uncertain, and then the

blackness. So he came out from the larch wood, from the green cloud and the vague shadow, into the dearest

of all hollows, shut in on one side by the larches and before him by high violent walls of turf, like the slopes

of a fort, with a clear line dark against the twilight sky, and a weird thorn bush that grew large, mysterious, on

And he retraced his wanderings in those deep old lanes that began from the common road and went away

towards the unknown, climbing steep hills, and piercing the woods of shadows, and dipping down into

valleys that seemed virgin, unexplored, secret for the foot of man. He entered such a lane not knowing where

it might bring him, hoping he had found the way to fairyland, to the woods beyond the world, to that vague

territory that haunts all the dreams of a boy. He could not tell where he might be, for the high banks rose

steep, and the great hedges made a green vault above. Marvellous ferns grew rich and thick in the dark red

earth, fastening their roots about the roots of hazel and beech and maple, clustering like the carven capitals of

a cathedral pillar. Down, like a dark shaft, the lane dipped to the well of the hills, and came amongst the

limestone rocks. He climbed the bank at last, and looked out into a country that seemed for a moment the

land he sought, a mysterious realm with unfamiliar hills and valleys and fair plains all golden, and white

And he thought of the steep hillsides where the bracken was like a wood, and of bare places where the west

wind sang over the golden gorse, of still circles in midlake, of the poisonous yewtree in the middle of the

wood, shedding its crimson cups on the dank earth. How he lingered by certain black waterpools hedged on

every side by drooping wychelms and blackstemmed alders, watching the faint waves widening to the

And the whole air and wonder of the ancient forest came back to him. He had found his way to the river

valley, to the long lovely hollow between the hills, and went up and up beneath the leaves in the warm hush

of midsummer, glancing back now and again through the green alleys, to the river winding in mystic esses

beneath, passing hidden glens receiving the streams that rushed down the hillside, icecold from the rock,

passing the immemorial tumulus, the graves where the legionaries waited for the trumpet, the grey

farmhouses sending the blue wreaths of wood smoke into the still air. He went higher and higher, till at last

he entered the long passage of the Roman road, and from this, the ridge and summit of the wood, he saw the

waves of green swell and dip and sink towards the marshy level and the gleaming yellow sea. He looked on

the surging forest, and thought of the strange deserted city mouldering into a petty village on its verge, of its

encircling walls melting into the turf, of vestiges of an older temple which the earth had buried utterly.

It was winter now, for he heard the wail of the wind, and a sudden gust drove the rain against the panes, but

he thought of the bee's song in the clover, of the foxgloves in full blossom, of the wild roses, delicate,

enchanting, swaying on a long stem above the hedge. He had been in strange places, he had known sorrow

and desolation, and had grown grey and weary in the work of letters, but he lived again in the sweetness, in

the clear bright air of early morning, when the sky was blue in June, and the mist rolled like a white sea in the

valley. He laughed when he recollected that he had sometimes fancied himself unhappy in those days; in

those days when he could be glad because the sun shone, because the wind blew fresh on the mountain. On

those bright days he had been glad, looking at the fleeting and passing of the clouds upon the hills, and had

gone up higher to the broad dome of the mountain, feeling that joy went up before him.

He remembered how, a boy, he had dreamed of love of an adorable and ineffable mystery which transcended

all longing and desire. The time had come when all the wonder of the earth seemed to prefigure this alone,

when he found the symbol of the Beloved in hill and wood and stream, and every flower and every dark pool

discoursed a pure ecstasy. It was the longing for longing, the love of love, that had come to him when he

awoke one morning just before the dawn, and for the first time felt the sharp thrill of passion.

He tried in vain to express to himself the exquisite joys of innocent desire. Even now, after troubled years, in

spite of some dark cloud that overshadowed the background of his thought, the sweetness of the boy's

imagined pleasure came like a perfume into his reverie. It was no love of a woman but the desire of

womanhood, the Eros of the unknown, that made the heart tremble. He hardly dreamed that such a love could

ever be satisfied, that the thirst of beauty could be slaked. He shrank from all contact of actuality, not

venturing so much as to imagine the inner place and sanctuary of the mysteries. It was enough for him to

adore in the outer court, to know that within, in the sweet gloom, were the vision and the rapture, the altar and

He remembered, dimly, the passage of many heavy years since that time of hope and passion, but, perhaps,

the vague shadow would pass away, and he could renew the boy's thoghts, the unformed fancies that were

part of the bright day, of the wild roses in the hedgerow. All other things should be laid aside, he would let

them trouble him no more after this winter night. He saw now that from the first he had allowed his

imagination to bewilder him, to create a fantastic world in which he suffered, moulding innocent forms into

terror and dismay. Vividly, he saw again the black circle of oaks, growing in a haggard ring upon the bastions

of the Roman fort. The noise of the storm without grew louder, and he thought how the wind had come up the

valley with the sound of a scream, how a great tree had ground its boughs together, shuddering before the

violent blast. Clear and distinct, as if he were standing now in the lane, he saw the steep slopes surging from

the valley, and the black crown of the oaks set against the flaming sky, against a blaze and glow of light as if

great furnace doors were opened. He saw the fire, as it were, smitten about the bastions, about the heaped

mounds that guarded the fort, and the crooked evil boughs seemed to writhe in the blast of flame that beat

from heaven. Strangely with the sight of the burning fort mingled the impression of a dim white shape

floating up the dusk of the lane towards him, and he saw across the valley of years a girl's face, a momentary

Then there was a memory of another day, of violent summer, of white farmhouse walls blazing in the sun,

and a far call from the reapers in the cornfields. He had climbed the steep slope and penetrated the matted

thicket and lay in the heat, alone on the soft short grass that grew within the fort. There was a cloud of

madness, and confusion of broken dreams that had no meaning or clue but only an indefinable horror and

defilement. He had fallen asleep as he gazed at the knotted fantastic boughs of the stunted brake about him,

and when he woke he was ashamed, and fled away fearing that "they" would pursue him. He did not know

who "they" were, but it seemed as if a woman's face watched him from between the matted boughs, and that

she summoned to her side awful companions who had never grown old through all the ages.

He looked up, it seemed, at a smiling face that bent over him, as he sat in the cool dark kitchen of the old

farmhouse, and wondered why the sweetness of those red lips and the kindness of the eyes mingled with the

nightmare in the fort, with the horrible Sabbath he had imagined as he lay sleeping on the hot soft turf. He

had allowed these disturbed fancies, all this mad wreck of terror and shame that he had gathered in his mind,

to trouble him for too long a time; presently he would light up the room, and leave all the old darkness of his

He could still distinguish, though very vaguely, the pile of papers beside him, and he remembered, now, that

he had finished a long task that afternoon, before he fell asleep. He could not trouble himself to recollect the

exact nature of the work, but he was sure that he had done well; in a few minutes, perhaps, he would strike a

match, and read the title, and amuse himself with his own forgetfulness. But the sight of the papers lying

there in order made him think of his beginnings, of those first unhappy efforts which were so impossible and

so hopeless. He saw himself bending over the table in the old familiar room, desperately scribbling, and then

laying down his pen dismayed at the sad results on the page. It was late at night, his father had been long in

bed, and the house was still. The fire was almost out, with only a dim glow here and there amongst the

cinders, and the room was growing chilly. He rose at last from his work and looked out on a dim earth and a

Night after night he had laboured on, persevering in his effort, even through the cold sickness of despair,

when every line was doomed as it was made. Now, with the consciousness that he knew at least the

conditions of literature, and that many years of thought and practice had given him some sense of language,

he found these early struggles both pathetic and astonishing. He could not understand how he had persevered

so stubbornly, how he had had the heart to begin a fresh page when so many folios of blotted, painful effort

lay torn, derided, impossible in their utter failure. It seemed to him that it must have been a miracle or an

infernal possession, a species of madness, that had driven him on, every day disappointed, and every day

And yet there was a joyous side to the illusion. In these dry days that he lived in, when he had bought, by a

long experience and by countless hours of misery, a knowledge of his limitations, of the vast gulf that

yawned between the conception and the work, it was pleasant to think of a time when all things were

possible, when the most splendid design seemed an affair of a few weeks. Now he had come to a frank

acknowledgment; so far as he was concerned, he judged every book wholly impossible till the last line of it

was written,and he had learnt patience, the art of sighing and putting the fine scheme away in the

pigeonhole of what could never be. But to think of those days! Then one could plot out a book that should

be more curious than Rabelais, and jot down the outlines of a romance to surpass Cervantes, and design

renaissance tragedies and volumes of contes, and comedies of the Restoration; everything was to be done,

He touched the manuscript on the desk, and the feeling of the pages seemed to restore all the papers that had

been torn so long ago. It was the atmosphere of the silent room that returned, the light of the shaded candle

falling on the abandoned leaves. This had been painfully excogitated while the snowstorm whirled aboiut the

lawn and filled the lanes, this was of the summer night, this of the harvest moon rising like a fire from the

tithebarn on the hill. How well he remembered those halfdozen pages of which he had once been so proud;

he had thought out the sentences one evening, while he leaned on the footbridge and watched the brook

swim across the road. Every word smelt of the meadowsweet that grew thick upon the banks; now, as he

recalled the cadence and the phrase that had seemed so charming, he saw again the ferns beneath the vaulted

And in the west the mountains swelled to a great dome, and on the dome was a mound, the memorial of some

forgotten race, that grew dark and large against the red sky, when the sun set. He had lingered below it in the

solitude, amongst the winds, at evening, far away from home; and oh, the labour and the vain efforts to make

the form of it and the awe of it in prose, to write the hush of the vast hill, and the sadness of the world below

sinking into the night, and the mystery, the suggestion of the rounded hillock, huge against the magic sky.

He had tried to sing in words the music that the brook sang, and the sound of the October wind rustling

through the brown bracken on the hill. How many pages he had covered in the effort to show a white winter

world, a sun without warmth in a greyblue sky, all the fields, all the land white and shining, and one high

summit where the dark pines towered, still in the still afternoon, in the pale violet air.

To win the secret of words, to make a phrase that would murmur of summer and the bee, to summon the wind

into a sentence, to conjure the odour of the night into the surge and fall and harmony of a line; this was the

tale of the long evenings, of the candle flame white upon the paper and the eager pen.

He remembered that in some fantastic book he had seen a bar or two of music, and, beneath, the inscription

that here was the musical expression of Westminster Abbey. His boyish effort seemed hardly less ambitious,

and he no longer believed that language could present he melody and the awe and the loveliness of the earth.

He had long known that he, at all events, would have to be content with a far approach, with a few broken

notes that might suggest, perhaps, the magistral everlasting song of the hill and the streams.

But in those far days the impossible was but a part of wonderland that lay before him, of the world beyond

the wood and the mountain. All was to be conquered, all was to be achieved; he had but to make the journey

and he would find the golden world and the golden word, and hear those songs that the sirens sang. He

touched the manuscript; whatever it was, it was the result of painful labour and disappointment, not of the old

flush of hope, but it came of weary days, of correction and recorrection. It might be good in its measure; but

afterwards he would write no more for a time. He would go back again to the happy world of masterpieces, to

Like a dark cloud from the sea came the memory of the attempt he had made, of the poor piteous history that

had once embittered his life. He sighed and said alas, thinking of his folly, of the hours when he was shaken

with futile, miserable rage. Some silly person in London had made his manuscript more saleable and had sold

it without rendering an account of the profits, and for that he had been ready to curse humanity. Black,

horrible, as the memory of a stormy day, the rage of his heart returned to his mind, and he covered his eyes,

endeavouring to darken the picture of terror and hate that shone before him. He tried to drive it all out of his

thought, it vexed him to remember these foolish trifles; the trick of a publisher, the small pomposities and

malignancies of the country folk, the cruelty of a village boy, had inflamed him almost to the pitch of

madness. His heart had burnt with fury, and when he looked up the sky was blotched, and scarlet as if it

Indeed he had almost believed that blood had rained upon him, and cold blood from a sacrifice in heaven; his

face was wet and chill and dripping, and he had passed his hand across his forehead and looked at it. A red

cloud had seemed to swell over the hill, and grow great, and come near to him; he was but an ace removed

It had almost come to that; the drift and the breath of the scarlet cloud had wellnigh touched him. It was

strange that he had been so deeply troubled by such little things, and strange how after all the years he could

still recall the anguish and rage and hate that shook his soul as with a spiritual tempest.

The memory of all that evening was wild and troubled; he resolved that it should vex him no more, that now,

for the last time, he would let himself be tormented by the past. In a few minutes he would rise to a new life,

Curiously, every detail was distinct and clear in his brain. The figure of the doctor driving home, and the

sound of the few words he had spoken came to him in the darkness, through the noise of the storm and the

pattering of the rain. Then he stood upon the ridge of the hill and saw the smoke drifting up from the ragged

roofs of Caermaen, in the evening calm; he listened to the voices mounting thin and clear, in a weird tone, as

He saw the gathering darkness, the mystery of twilight changing the huddled squalid village into an unearthly

city, into some dreadful Atlantis, inhabited by a ruined race. The mist falling fast, the gloom that seemed to

issue from the black depths of the forest, to advance palpably towards the walls, were shaped before him; and

beneath, the river wound, snakelike, about the town, swimming to the flood and glowing in its still pools

like molten brass. And as the water mirrored the afterglow and sent ripples and gouts of blood against the

shuddering reeds, there came suddenly the piercing trumpetcall, the loud reiterated summons that rose and

fell, that called and recalled, echoing through all the valley, crying to the dead as the last note rang. It

summoned the legion from the river and the graves and the battlefield, the host floated up from the sea, the

centuries swarmed about the eagles, the array was set for the last great battle, behind the leaguer of the mist.

He could imagine himself still wandering through the dim unknown, terrible country, gazing affrighted at the

hills and woods that seemed to have put on an unearthly shape, stumbling amongst the briars that caught his

feet. He lost his way in a wild country, and the red light that blazed up from the furnace on the mountains

only showed him a mysterious land, in which he strayed aghast, with the sense of doom weighing upon him.

The dry mutter of the trees, the sound of an unseen brook, made him afraid as if the earth spoke of his sin,

and presently he was fleeing through a desolate shadowy wood, where a pale light flowed from the

And then again the dark summit of the Roman fort, the black sheer height rising above the valley, and the

moonfire streaming around the ring of oaks, glowing about the green bastions that guarded the thicket and the

The room in which he sat appeared the vision, the trouble of the wind and rain without was but illusion, the

noise of the waves in the seashell. Passion and tears and adoration and the glories of the summer night

returned, and the calm sweet face of the woman appeared, and he thrilled at the soft touch of her hand on his

She shone as if she had floated down into the lane from the moon that swam between films of cloud above

the black circle of the oaks. She led him away from all terror and despair and hate, and gave herself to him

with rapture, showing him love, kissing his tears away, pillowing his cheek upon her breast.

His lips dwelt on her lips, his mouth upon the breath of her mouth, her arms were strained about him, and oh!

she charmed him with her voice, with sweet kind words, as she offered her sacrifice. How her scented hair

fell down, and floated over his eyes, and there was a marvellous fire called the moon, and her lips were

All beautiful womanhood had come to him in the lane. Love had touched him in the dusk and had flown

away, but he had seen the splendour and the glory, and his eyes had seen the enchanted light.

The old words sounded in his ears like the ending of a chant, and he heard the music's close. Once only in his

weary hapless life, once the world had passed away, and he had known her, the dear, dear Annie, the symbol

The heaviness of languor still oppressed him, holding him back amongst these old memories, so that he could

not stir from his place. Oddly, there seemed something unaccustomed about the darkness of the room, as if

the shadows he had summoned had changed the aspect of the walls. He was conscious that on this night he

was not altogether himself; fatigue, and the weariness of sleep, and the waking vision had perplexed him. He

remembered how once or twice when he was a little boy startled by an uneasy dream, and had stared with a

frightened gaze into nothingness, not knowing where he was, all trembling, and breathing quick, till he

touched the rail of his bed, and the familiar outlines of the lookingglass and the chiffonier began to glimmer

out of the gloom. So now he touched the pile of manuscript and the desk at which he had worked so many

hours, and felt reassured, though he smiled at himself, and he felt the old childish dread, the longing to cry

out for some one to bring a candle, and show him that he really was in his own room. He glanced up for an

instant, expecting to see perhaps the glitter of the brass gas jet that was fixed on the wall, just beside his

bureau, but it was too dark, and he could not rouse himself and make the effort that would drive the cloud and

He leant back again, picturing the wet street without, the rain driving like fountain spray about the gas lamp,

the shrilling of the wind on those waste places to the north. It was strange how in the brick and stucco desert

where no trees were, he all the time imagined the noise of tossing boughs, the grinding of the boughs

together. There was a great storm and tumult in this wilderness of London, and for the sound of the rain and

the wind he could not hear the hum and jangle of the trams, and the jar and shriek of the garden gates as they

opened and shut. But he could imagine his street, the rainswept desolate curve of it, as it turned northward,

and beyond the empty suburban roads, the twinkling villa windows, the ruined field, the broken lane, and

then yet another suburb rising, a solitary gaslamp glimmering at a corner, and the plane tree lashing its

It was wonderful to think of. For when these remote roads were ended one dipped down the hill into the open

country, into the dim world beyond the glint of friendly fires. Tonight, how waste they were, these wet

roads, edged with the redbrick houses, with shrubs whipped by the wind against one another, against the

paling and the wall. There the wind swayed the great elms scattered on the sidewalk, the remnants of the old

stately fields, and beneath each tree was a pool of wet, and a torment of raindrops fell with every gust. And

one passed through the red avenues, perhaps by a little settlement of flickering shops, and passed the last

sentinel wavering lamp, and the road became a ragged lane, and the storm screamed from hedge to hedge

across the open fields. And then, beyond, one touched again upon a still remoter avantguard of London, an

He remembered his wanderings amongst these outposts of the town, and thought how desolate all their ways

must be tonight. They were solitary in wet and wind, and only at long intervals some one pattered and

hurried along them, bending his eyes down to escape the drift of rain. Within the villas, behind the

closedrawn curtains, they drew about the fire, and wondered at the violence of the storm, listening for each

great gust as it gathered far away, and rocked the trees, and at last rushed with a huge shock against their

walls as if it were the coming of the sea. He thought of himself walking, as he had often walked, from lamp to

lamp on such a night, treasuring his lonely thoughts, and weighing the hard task awaiting him in his room.

Often in the evening, after a long day's labour, he had thrown down his pen in utter listlessness, feeling that

he could struggle no more with ideas and words, and he had gone out into driving rain and darkness, seeking

the word of the enigma as he tramped on and on beneath these outer battlements of London.

Or on some grey afternoon in March or November he had sickened of the dull monotony and the stagnant life

that he saw from his window, and had taken his design with him to the lonely places, halting now and again

by a gate, and pausing in the shelter of a hedge through which the austere wind shivered, while, perhaps, he

dreamed of Sicily, or of sunlight on the Proven�al olives. Often as he strayed solitary from street to field, and

passed the Syrian fig tree imprisoned in Britain, nailed to an ungenial wall, the solution of the puzzle became

evident, and he laughed and hurried home eager to make the page speak, to note the song he had heard on his

Sometimes he had spent many hours treading this edge and brim of London, now lost amidst the dun fields,

watching the bushes shaken by the wind, and now looking down from a height whence he could see the dim

waves of the town, and a barbaric watger tower rising from a hill, and the snuffcoloured cloud of smoke that

There were certain ways and places that he had cherished; he loved a great old common that stood on high

ground, curtained about with ancient spacious houses of red brick, and their cedarn gardens. And there was

on the road that led to this common a space of ragged uneven ground with a pool and a twisted oak, and here

he had often stayed in autumn and looked across the mist and the valley at the great theatre of the sunset,

where a red cloud like a charging knight shone and conquered a purple dragon shape, and golden lances

Or sometimes, when the unending prospect of trim, monotonous, modern streets had wearied him, he had

found an immense refreshment in the discovery of a forgotten hamlet, left in a hollow, while all new London

pressed and surged on every side, threatening the rest of the red roofs with its vulgar growth. These little

peaceful houses, huddled together beneath the shelter of trees, with their bulging leaded windows and uneven

roofs, somehow brought back to him the sense of the country, and soothed him with the thought of the old

farmhouses, white or grey, the homes of quiet lives, harbours where, perhaps, no tormenting thoughts ever

For he had instinctively determined that there was neither rest nor health in all the arid waste of streets about

him. It seemed as if in those dull rows of dwellings, in the prim new villas, red and white and staring, there

must be a leaven working which transofrmed all to base vulgarity. Beneath the dull sad slates, behind the

blistered doors, love turned to squalid intrigue, mirth to drunken clamour, and the mystery of life became a

common thing; releigion was sought for in the greasy piety and flatulent oratory of the Independent chapel,

the stuccoed nightmare of the Doric columns. Nothing fine, nothing rare, nothing exquisite, it seemed, could

exist in the weltering suburban sea, in the habitations which had risen from the stench and slime of the

brickfields. It was as if the sickening fumes that steamed from the burning bricks had been sublimed into the

shape of houses, and those who lived in these grey places could also claim kinship with the putrid mud.

Hence he had delighted in the few remains of the past that he could find still surviving on the suburb's edge,

in the grave old houses that stood apart from the road, in the mouldering taverns of the eighteenth century, in

the huddled hamlets that had preserved only the glow and the sunlight of all the years that had passed over

them. It appeared to him that vulgarity, and greasiness and squalor had come with a flood, that not only the

good but also the evil in man's heart had been made common and ugly, that a sordid scum was mingled with

all the springs, of death as of life. It would be alike futile to search amongst these mean twostoried houses

for a splendid sinner as for a splendid saint; the very vices of these people smelt of cabbage water and a

And so he had often fled away from the serried maze that encircled him, seeking for the old and worn and

significant as an antiquary looks for the fragments of the Roman temple amidst the modern shops. In some

way the gusts of wind and the beating rain of the night reminded him of an old house that had often attracted

him with a strange indefinable curiosity. He had found it on a grim grey day in March, when he had gone out

under a leadenmoulded sky, cowering from a dry freezing wind that brought with it the gloom and the doom

of far unhappy Siberian plains. More than ever that day the suburb had oppressed him; insignificant,

detestable, repulsive to body and mind, it was the only hell that a vulgar age could conceive or make, an

inferno created not by Dante but by the jerrybuilder. He had gone out to the north, and when he lifted up his

eyes again he found that he had chanced to turn up by one of the little lanes that still strayed across the

broken fields. He had never chosen this path before because the lane at its outlet was so wholly degraded and

offensive, littered with rusty tins and broken crockery, and hedged in with a paling fashioned out of scraps of

wire, rotting timber, and bending wornout rails. But on this day, by happy chance, he had fled from the high

road by the first opening that offered, and he no longer groped his way amongst obscene refuse, sickened by

the bloated bodies of dead dogs, and fetid odours from unclean decay, but the malpassage had become a

peaceful winding lane, with warm shelter beneath its banks from the dismal wind. For a mile he had walked

quietly, and then a turn in the road showed him a little glen or hollow, watered by such a tiny rushing

brooklet as his own woods knew, and beyond, alas, the glaring foreguard of a "new neighbourhood"; raw red

But as he was about to turn back, in the hope of finding some other outlet, his attention was charmed by a

small house that stood back a little from the road on his right hand. There had been a white gate, but the paint

had long faded to grey and black, an the wood crumbled under the touch, and only moss marked out the lines

of the drive. The iron railing round the lawn had fallen, and the poor flowerbeds were choked with grass and

a faded growth of weeds. But here and there a rosebush lingered amidst suckers that had sprung grossly from

the root, and on each side of the hall door were box trees, untrimmed, ragged, but still green. The slate roof

was all stained and livid, blotched with the drippings of a great elm that stood at one corner of the neglected

lawn, and marks of damp and decay were thick on the uneven walls, which had been washed yellow many

years before. There was a porch of trellis work before the door, and Lucian had seen it rock in the wind,

swaying as if every gust must drive it down. There were two windows on the ground floor, one on each side

of the door, and two above, with a blind space where a central window had been blocked up.

This poor and desolate house had fascinated him. Ancient and poor and fallen, disfigured by the slate roof

and the yellow wash that had replaced the old mellow dipping tiles and the warm red walls, and disfigured

again by spots and patches of decay; it seemed as if its happy days were for ever ended. To Lucian it

appealed with a sense of doom and horror; the black streaks that crept upon the walls, and the green drift

upon the roof, appeared not so much the work of foul weather and dripping boughs, as the outward signs of

The stage seemed to him decked for doom, painted with the symbols of tragedy; and he wondered as he

looked whether any one were so unhappy as to live there still. There were torn blinds in the windows, but he

had asked himself who could be so brave as to sit in that room, darkened by the dreary box, and listen of

winter nights to the rain upon the window, and the moaning of wind amongst the tossing boughs that beat

He could not imagine that any chamber in such a house was habitable. Here the dead had lain, through the

white blind the thin light had filtered on the rigid mouth, and still the floor must be wet with tears and still

that great rocking elm echoed the groaning and the sobs of those who watched. No doubt, the damp was

rising, and the odour of the earth filled the house, and made such as entered draw back, foreseeing the hour of

Often the thought of this strange old house had haunted him; he had imagined the empty rooms where a

heavy paper peeled from the walls and hung in dark strips; and he could not believe that a light ever shone

from those windows that stared black and glittering on the neglected lawn. But tonight the wet and the

storm seemed curiously to bring the image of the place before him, and as the wind sounded he thought how

unhappy those must be, if any there were, who sat in the musty chambers by a flickering light, and listened to

And tonight was Saturday night; and there was about that phrase something that muttered of the condemned

cell, of the agony of a doomed man. Ghastly to his eyes was the conception of any one sitting in that room to

the right of the door behind the larger box tree, where the wall was cracked above the window and smeared

He knew how foolish it had been in the first place to trouble his mind with such conceits of a dreary cottage

on the outskirts of London. And it was more foolish now to meditate these things, fantasies, feigned forms,

the issue of a sad mood and a bleak day of spring. For soon, in a few moments, he was to rise to a new life.

He was but reckoning up the account of his past, and when the light came he was to think no more of sorrow

and heaviness, of real or imagined terrors. He had stayed too long in London, and the would once more taste

the breath of the hills, and see the river winding in the long lovely valley; ah! he would go home.

Something like a thrill, the thrill of fear, passed over him as he remembered that there was no home. It was in

the winter, a year and a half after his arrival in town, that he had suffered the loss of his father. He lay for

many days prostrate, overwhelmed with sorrow and with the thought that now indeed he was utterly alone in

the world. Miss Deacon was to live with another cousin in Yorkshire; the old home was at last ended and

done. He felt sorry that he had not written more frequently to his father: there were things in his cousin's

letters that had made his heart sore. "Your poor father was always looking for your letters," she wrote, "they

used to cheer him so much. He nearly broke down when you sent him that money last Christmas; he got it

into his head that you were starving yourself to send it him. He was hoping so much that you would have

come down this Christmas, and kept asking me about the plumpuddings months ago."

It was not only his father that had died, but with him the last strong link was broken, and the past life, the

days of his boyhood, grew faint as a dream. With his father his mother died again, and the long years died,

the time of his innocence, the memory of affection. He was sorry that his letters had gone home so rarely; it

hurt him to imagine his father looking out when the post came in the morning, and forced to be sad because

there was nothing. But he had never thought that his father valued the few lines that he wrote, and indeed it

was often difficult to know what to say. It would have been useless to write of those agonising nights when

the pen seemed an awkward and outlandish instrument, when every effort ended in shameful defeat, or of the

happier hours when at last wonder appeared and the line glowed, crowned and exalted. To poor Mr Taylor

such tales would have seemed but trivial histories of some Oriental game, like an odd story from a land where

men have time for the infinitely little, and can seriously make a science of arranging blossoms in a jar, and

discuss perfumes instead of politics. It would have been useless to write to the rectory of his only interest, and

And then he had been sorry because he could never write again and never see his home. He had wondered

whether he would have gone down to the old place at Christmas, if his father had lived. It was curious how

common things evoked the bitterest griefs, but his father's anxiety that the plumpudding should be good, and

ready for him, had brought the tears into his eyes. He could hear him saying in a nervous voice that attempted

to be cheerful: "I suppose you will be thinking of the Christmas puddings soon, Jane; you remember how

fond Lucian used to be of plumpudding. I hope we shall see him this December." No doubt poor Miss

Deacon paled with rage at the suggestion that she should make Christmas pudding in July; and returned a

sharp answer; but it was pathetic. The wind wailed, and the rain dashed and beat again and again upon the

window. He imagined that all his thoughts of home, of the old rectory amongst the elms, had conjured into

his mind the sound of the storm upon the trees, for, tonight, very clearly he heard the creaking of the

boughs, the noise of boughs moaning and beating and weeping on the walls, and even a pattering of wet, on

wet earth, as if there were a shrub near the window that shook off the raindrops, before the gust.

That thrill, as it were a shudder of fear, passed over him again, and he knew not what had made him afraid.

There were some dark shadow on his mind that saddened him; it seemed as if a vague memory of terrible

days hung like a cloud over his thought, but it was all indefinite, perhaps the last grim and ragged edge of the

melancholy wrack that had swelled over his life and the bygone years. He shivered and tried to rouse himself

and drive away the sense of dread and shame that seemed so real and so awful, and yet he could not grasp it.

But the torpor of sleep, the burden of the work that he had ended a few hours before, still weighed down his

limb and bound his thoughts. He could scarcely believe that he had been busy at his desk a little while ago,

and that just before the winter day closed it and the rain began to fall he had laid down the pen with a sigh of

relief, and had slept in his chair. It was rather as if he had slumbered deeply through a long and weary night,

as if an awful vision of flame and darkness and the worm that dieth not had come to him sleeping. But he

would dwell no more on the darkness; he went back to the early days in London when he had said farewell to

the hills and to the waterpools, and had set to work in this little room in the dingy street.

How he had toiled and laboured at the desk before him! He had put away the old wild hopes of the

masterpiece and executed in a fury of inspiration, wrought out in one white heat of creative joy; it was

enough if by dint of long perseverance and singleness of desire he could at last, in pain and agony and

despair, after failure and disappointment and effort constantly renewed, fashion something of which he need

not be ashamed. He had put himself to school again, and had, with what patience he could command, ground

his teeth into the rudiments, resolved that at last he would test out the heart of the mystery. They were good

nights to remember, these; he was glad to think of the little ugly room, with its silly wallpaper and its

"bird'seye" furniture, lighted up, while he sat at the bureau and wrote on into the cold stillness of the

London morning, when the flickering lamplight and the daystar shone together. It was an interminable labour,

and he had always known it to be as hopeless as alchemy. The gold, the great and glowing masterpiece,

would never shine amongst the dead ashes and smoking efforts of the crucible, but in the course of the life, in

These were the good nights that he could look back on without any fear or shame, when he had been happy

and content on a diet of bread and tea and tobacco, and could hear of some imbecility passing into its

hundredth thousand, and laugh cheerfullyif only that last page had been imagined aright, if the phrases

noted in the still hours rang out their music when he read them in the morning. He remembered the drolleries

and fantasies that the worthy Miss Deacon used to write to him, and how he had grinned at her words of

reproof, admonition, and advice. She had once instigated Dolly fils to pay him a visit, and that young prop of

respectability had talked about the extraordinary running of Bolter at the Scurragh meeting in Ireland; and

then, glancing at Lucian's books, had inquired whether any of them had "warm bits." He had been kind

though patronising, and seemed to have moved freely in the most brilliant society of Stoke Newington. He

had not been able to give any information as to the present condition of Edgar Allan Poe's old school. It

appeared eventually that his report at home had not been a very favourable one, for no invitation to high tea

had followed, as Miss Deacon had hoped. The Dollys knew many nice people, who were well off, and

Lucian's cousin, as she afterwards said, had done her best to introduce him to the beau monde of those

But after the visit of the young Dolly, with what joy he had returned to the treasures which he had concealed

from profane eyes. He had looked out and seen his visitor on board the tram at the street corner, and he

laughed out loud, and locked his door. There had been moments when he was lonely, and wished to hear

again the sound of friendly speech, but, after such an irruption of suburban futility, it was a keen delight, to

feel that he was secure on his tower, that he could absorb himself in his wonderful task as safe and silent as if

But there was one period that he dared not revive; he could no bear to think of those weeks of desolation and

terror in the winter after his coming to London. His mind was sluggish, and he could not quite remember how

many years had passed since that dismal experience; it sounded all an old story, but yet it was still vivid, a

flaming scroll of terror from which he turned his eyes away. One awful scene glowed into his memory, and

he could not shut out the sight of an orgy, of dusky figures whirling in a ring, of lurid naphtha flares blazing

in the darkness, of great glittering lamps, like infernal thuribles, ver slowly swaying in a violent blast of air.

And there was something else, something which he could not remember, but it filled him with terror, but it

slunk in the dark places of his soul, as a wild beast crouches in the depths of a cave.

Again, and without reason, he began to image to himself that old mouldering house in the field. With what a

loud incessant noise the wind must be clamouring about on this fearful night, how the great elm swayed and

cried in the storm, and the rain dashed and pattered on the windows, and dripped on the sodden earth from the

shaking shrubs beside the door. He moved uneasily on his chair, and struggled to put the picture out of his

thoughts; but in spite of himself he saw the stained uneven walls, that ugly blot of mildew above the window,

and perhaps a feeble gleam of light filtered through the blind, and some one, unhappy above all and for ever

lost, sat within the dismal room. Or rather, every window was black, without a glimmer of hope, and he who

was shut in thick darkness heard the wind and the rain, and the noise of the elmtree moaning and beating

For all his effort the impression would not leave him, and as he sat before his desk looking into the vague

darkness he could almost see that chamber which he had so often imagined; the low whitewashed ceiling held

up by a heavy beam, the smears of smoke and long usage, the cracks and fissures of the plaster. Old furniture,

shabby, deplorable, battered, stood about the room; there was a horsehair sofa worn and tottering, and a

dismal paper, patterned in a livid red, blackened and mouldered near the floor, and peeled off and hung in

strips from the dank walls. And there was that odour of decay, of the rank soil steaming, of rotting wood, a

Lucian again shivered with a thrill of dread; he was afraid that he had overworked himself and that he was

suffering from the first symptoms of grave illness. His mind dwelt on confused and terrible recollections, and

with a mad ingenuity gave form and substance to phantoms; and even now he drew a long breath, almost

imagining that the air in his room was heavy and noisome, that it entered his nostrils with some taint of the

crypt. And his body was still languid, and though he made a half motion to rise he could not find enough

energy for the effort, and he sank again into the chair. At all events, he would think no more of that sad house

in the field; he would return to those long struggles with letters, to the happy nights when he had gained

He remembered something of his escape from the desolation and the worse than desolation that had obsessed

him during that first winter in London. He had gone free one bleak morning in February, and after those

dreary terrible weeks the desk and the heap and litter of papers had once more engulfed and absorbed him.

And in the succeeding summer, of a night when he lay awake and listened to the birds, shining images came

wantonly to him. For an hour, while the dawn brightened, he had felt the presence of an age, the resurrection

of the life that the green fields had hidden, and his heart stirred for joy when he knew that the held and

possessed all the loveliness that had so long mouldered. He cold scarcely fall asleep for eager and leaping

thoughts, and as soon as his breakfast was over he went out and bought paper and pens of a certain celestial

stationer in Notting Hill. The street was not changed as he passed to and fro on his errand. The rattling

wagons jostled by at intervals, a rare hansom came spinning down from London, there sounded the same hum

and jangle of the gliding trams. The languid life of the pavement was unaltered; a few people, unclassed,

without salience or possible description, lounged and walked from east to west, and from west to east, or

slowly dropped into the byways to wander in the black waste to the north, or perhaps go astray in the systems

that stretched towards the river. He glanced down these byroads as he passed, and was astonished, as

always, at their mysterious and desert aspect. Some were utterly empty; lines of neat, appalling residences,

trim and garnished as if for occupation, edging the white glaring road; and not a soul was abroad, and not a

sound broke their stillness. It was a picture of the desolation of midnight lighted up, but empty and waste as

the most profound and solemn hours before the day. Other of these byroads, of older settlement, were

furnished with more important houses, standing far back from the pavement, each in a little wood of

greenery, and thus one might look down as through a forest vista, and see a way smooth and guarded with

low walls and yet untrodden, and all a leafy silence. Here and there in some of these echoing roads a figure

seemed laxily advancing in the distance, hesitating and delaying, as if lost in the labyrinth. It was difficult to

say which were the more dismal, these deserted streets that wandered away to right and left, or the great main

thoroughfare with its narcotic and shadowy life. For the latter appeared vast, interminable, grey, and those

who travelled by it were scarcely real, the bodies of the living, but rather the uncertain and misty shapes that

come and go across the desert in an Eastern tale, when men look up from the sand and see a caravan pass

them, all in silence, without a cry or a greeting. So they passed and repassed each other on those pavements,

appearing and vanishing, each intent on his own secret, and wrapped in obscurity. One might have sworn that

not a man saw his neighbour who met him or jostled him, that here every one was a phantom for the other,

though the lines of their paths crossed and recrossed, and their eyes stared like the eyes of live men. When

two went by together, they mumbled and cast distrustful glances behind them as though afraid all the world

was an enemy, and the pattering of feet was like the noise of a shower of rain. Curious appearances and

simulations of life gathered at points in the road, for at intervals the villas ended and shops began in a dismal

row, and looked so hopeless that one wondered who coul dbuy. There were women fluttering uneasily about

the greengrocers, and shabby things in rusty black touched and retouched the red lumps that an unshaven

butcher offered, and already in the corner public there was a confused noise, with a tossing of voices that rose

and fell like a Jewish chant, with the senseless stir of marionettes jerked into an imitation of gaiety. Then, in

crossing a side street that seemed like grey midwinter in stone, he trespassed from one world to another, for

an old decayed house amidst its garden held the opposite corner. The laurels had grown into black skeletons,

patched with green drift, the ilex gloomed over the porch, the deodar had blighted the flowerbeds. Dark

ivies swarmed over an elmtree, and a brown clustering fungus sprang in gross masses on the lawn, showing

where the roots of dead trees mouldered. The blue verandah, the blue balcony over the door, had faced to

grey, and the stucco was blotched with ugly marks of weather, and a dank smell of decay, that vapour of

black rotten earth in old town gardens, hung heavy about the gates. And then a row of musty villas had

pushed out in shops to the pavement, and the things in faded black buzzed and stirred about the limp

It was the same terrible street, whose pavements he had trodden so often, where sunshine seemed but a gaudy

light, where the fume of burning bricks always drifted. On black winter nights he had seen the sparse lights

glimmering through the rain and drawing close together, as the dreary road vanished in long perspective.

Perhaps this was its most appropriate moment, when nothing of its smug villas and skeleton shops remained

but the bright patches of their windows, when the old house amongst its mouldering shrubs was but a dark

cloud, and the streets to the north and south seemed like starry wastes, beyond them the blackness of infinity.

Always in the daylight it had been to him abhorred and abominable, and its grey houses and purlieus had

But on that bright morning neither the dreadful street nor those who moved about it appalled him. He

returned joyously to his den, and reverently laid out the paper on his desk. The world about him was but a

grey shadow hovering on a shining wall; its noises were faint as the rustling of trees in a distant wood. The

lovely and exquisite forms of those who served the Amber Venus were his distinct, clear, and manifest

visions, and for one amongst hem who came to him in a fire of bronze hair his heart stirred with the adoration

of love. She it was who stood forth from all the rest and fell down prostrate before the radiant form in amber,

drawing out her pins in curious gold, he glowing brooches of enamel, and pouring from a silver box all her

treasures of jewels and precious stones, chrysoberyl and sardonyx, opal and diamond, topaz and pearl. And

then she stripped from her body her precious robes and stood before the goddess in the glowing mist of her

hair, praying that to her who had given all and came naked to the shrine, love might be given, and the grace

of Venus. And when at last, after strange adventures, her prayer was granted, then when the sweet light came

from the sea, and her lover turned at dawn to that bronze glory, he saw beside him a little statuette of amber.

And in the shrine, far in Britain where the black rains stained the marble, they found the splendid and

sumptuous statue of the Golden Venus, the last fine robe of silk that the lady had dedicated falling from her

fingers, and the jewels lying at her feet. And her face was like the lady's face when the sun had brightened it

The bronze mist glimmered before Lucian's eyes; he felt as though the soft floating hair touched his forehead

and his lips and his hands. The fume of burning bricks, the reek of cabbage water, never reached his nostrils

that were filled with the perfume of rare unguents, with the breath of the violet sea in Italy. His pleasure was

an inebriation, an ecstasy of joy that destroyed all the vile Hottentot kraals and mud avenues as with one

white lightning flash, and through the hours of that day he sat enthralled, not contriving a story with patient

art, but rapt into another time, and entranced by the urgent gleam in the lady's eyes.

The little tale of The Amber Statuette had at last issued from a humble office in the spring after his father's

death. The author was utterly unknown; the author's Murray was a wholesale stationer and printer in process

of development, so that Lucian was astonished when the book became a moderate success. The reviewers had

been sadly irritated, and even now he recollected with cheerfulness an article in an influential daily paper, an

And then but all the months afterwards seemed doubtful, there were only broken revelations of the

laborious hours renewed, and the white nights when he had seen the moonlight fade and the gaslight grow

He listened. Surely that was the sound of rain falling on sodden ground, the heavy sound of great swollen

drops driven down from wet leaves by the gust of wind, and then again the strain of boughs sang above the

tumult of the air; there was a doleful noise as if the storm shook the masts of a ship. He had only to get up

and look out of the window and he would see the treeless empty street, and the rain starring the puddles under

He tried to think why, in spite of all his resolutions, a dark horror seemed to brood more and more over all his

mind. How often he had sat and worked on just such nights as this, contented if the words were in accord

though the wind might wail, though the air were black with rain. Even about the little book that he had made

there seemed some taint, some shuddering memory that came to him across the gulf of forgetfulness.

Somehow the remembrance of the offering to Venus, of the phrases that he had so lovingly invented, brought

back again the dusky figures that danced in the orgy, beneath the brassy glittering lamps; and again the

naphtha flares showed the way to the sad house in the fields, and the red glare lit up the mildewed walls and

the black hopeless windows. He gasped for breath, he seemed to inhale a heavy air that reeked of decay and

That unknown cloud that had darkened his thoughts grew blacker and engulfed him, despair was heavy upon

him, his heart fainted with a horrible dread. In a moment, it seemed, a veil would be drawn away and certain

He strove to rise from his chair, to cry out, but he could not. Deep, deep the darkness closed upon him, and

the storm sounded far away. The Roman fort surged up, terrific, and he saw the writhing boughs in a ring,

and behind them a glow and heat of fire. There were hideous shapes that swarmed in the thicket of the oaks;

they called and beckoned to him, and rose into the air, into the flame that was smitten from heaven about the

walls. And amongst them was the form of the beloved, but jets of flame issued from her breasts, and beside

her was a horrible old woman, naked; and they, too, summoned him to mount the hill.

He heard Dr Burrows whispering of the strange things that had been found in old Mrs Gibbon's cottage,

obscene figures, and unknown contrivances. She was a witch, he said, and the mistress of witches.

He fought against the nightmare, against the illusion that bewildered him. All his life, he thought, had been an

evil dream, and for the common world he had fashioned an unreal red garment, that burned in his eyes. Truth

and the dream were so mingled that now he could not divide one from the other. He had let Annie drink his

soul beneath the hill, on the night when the moonfire shone, but he had not surely seen her exalted in the

flame, the Queen of the Sabbath. Dimly he remembered Dr Burrows coming to see him in London, but had

Again he found himself in the dusky lane, and Annie floated down to him from the moon above the hill. His

head sank upon her breast again, but, alas, it was aflame. And he looked down, and he saw that his own flesh

There was a heavy weight upon his head, his feet were nailed to the floor, and his arms bound tight beside

him. He seemed to himself to rage and struggle with the strength of a madman; but his hand only stirred and

Again he was astray in the mist; wandering through the waste avenues of a city that had been ruined from

ages. It had been splendid as Rome, terrible as Babylon, and for ever the darkness had covered it, and it lay

desolate for ever in the accursed plain. And far and far the grey passages stretched into the night, into the icy

Ring within ring the awful temple closed around him; unending circles of vast stones, circle within circle, and

every circle less throughout all ages. In the centre was the sanctuary of the infernal rite, and he was borne

thither as in the eddies of a whirlpool, to consummate his ruin, to celebrate the wedding of the Sabbath. He

flung up his arms and beat the air, resisting with all his strength, with muscles that could throw down

mountains; and this time his little finger stirred for an instant, and his foot twitched upon the floor.

Then suddenly a flaring street shone before him. There was darkness round about him, but it flamed with

hissing jets of light and naphtha fires, and great glittering lamps swayed very slowly in a violent blast of air.

A horrible music, and the exultation of discordant voices, swelled in his ears, and he saw an uncertain tossing

crowd of dusky figures that circled and leapt before him. Thee was a noise like the chant of the lost, and then

there appeared in the midst of the orgy, beneath a red flame, the figure of a woman. Her bronze hair and

flushed cheeks were illuminate, and an argent light shone from her eyes, and with a smile that froze his heart

her lips opened to speak to him. The tossing crowd faded away, falling into a gulf of darkness, and then she

drew out from her hair pins of curious gold, and glowing brooches in enamel, and poured out jewels before

him from a silver box, and then she stripped form her body her precious robes, and stood in the glowing mist

of her hair, and held out her arms to him. But he raised his eyes and saw the mould and decay gaining on the

walls of a dismal room, and a gloomy paper was dropping to the rotting floor. A vapour of the grave entered

his nostrils, and he cried out with a loud scream; but there was only an indistinct guttural murmur in his

And presently the woman fled away from him, and he pursued her. She fled away before him through

midnight country, and he followed after her, chasing her from thicket to thicket, from valley to valley. And at

last he captured her and won her with horrible caresses, and they went up to celebrate and make the marriage

of the Sabbath. They were within the matted thicket, and they writhed in the flames, insatiable, for ever. They

were tortured, and tortured one another, in the sight of thousands who gathered thick about them; and their

Without, the storm swelled to the roaring of an awful sea, the wind grew to a shrill long scream, the elmtree

was riven and split with the crash of a thunderclap. To Lucian the tumult and the shock came as a gentle

murmur, as if a brake stirred before a sudden breeze in summer. And then a vast silence overwhelmed him.

A few minutes later there was a shuffling of feet in the passage, and the door was softly opened. A woman

came in, holding a light, and she peered curiously at the figure sitting quite still in the chair before the desk.

The woman was half dressed, and she had let her splendid bronze hair flow down, her cheeks were flushed,

and as she advanced into the shabby room, the lamp she carried cast quaking shadows on the mouldering

paper, patched with marks of rising damp, and hanging in strips from the wet, dripping wall. The blind had

not been drawn, but no light or glimmer of light filtered through the window, for a great straggling box tree

that beat the rain upon the panes shut out even the night. The woman came softly, and as she bent down over

Lucian an argent gleam shone from her brown eyes, and the little curls upon her neck were like golden work

upon marble. She put her hand to his heart, and looked up, and beckoned to some one who was waiting by the

"Come in, Joe," she said. "It's just as I thought it would be: 'Death by misadventure'"; and she held up a little

empty bottle of dark blue glass that was standing on the desk. "He would take it, and I always knew he would

"Didn't I tell you? It was crool to see him. He got it into 'is 'ead he could write a book; he's been at it for the

She spread the neat pile of manuscript broadcast over the desk, and took a sheet at haphazard. It was all

covered with illegible hopeless scribblings; only here and there it was possible to recognise a word.

"It's all like that. He thought it was beautiful. I used to 'ear him jabbering to himself about it, dreadful

nonsense it was he used to talk. I did my best to tongue him out of it, but it wasn't any good."

"Yes, to be sure I have. The doctor told him he would be certain to do for himself, and he was found two or

three times quite silly in the streets. They had to drag him away from a house in Halden Road. He was

carrying on dreadful, shaking at the gaite, and calling out it was 'is 'ome and they wouldn't let him in. I heard

Dr Manning myself tell 'im in this very room that he'd kill 'imself one of these days. Joe! Aren't you ashaimed

of yourself. I declare you're quite rude, and it's almost Sunday too. Bring the light over here, can't you?"

The man took up the blazing paraffin lamp, and set it on the desk, beside the scattered heap of that terrible

manuscript. The flaring light shone through the dead eyes into the dying brain, and there was a glow within,