CHAPTER I

“FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS”

Thus, gradually, belief was restored to Stuart, and faith in the vision, and the vision itself. And then came a quickening pride in the thought of Peter, battling through to the same issue; Peter, erect and balanced, with that half-smile of scorn upon her lips; more his mate than ever now, since with equal strength and without bitterness, they could each stand alone, walk alone, guarding strange memories.

Twenty-four hours of squally weather tempted him to put out to sea in his racing yacht. Blown half across the Channel, he met with terrific resistance beating back through a flying scud of wind and spray, all reefs in, and rail deep under water. Nor did he for one second think of relinquishing his hold upon life, nor of adjuring the ocean, in approved fashion, to let him seek oblivion in its coolness.

Reaching home, he slept, and did not dream. Slept sound and hard. The next night he again saw the lovers wandering amid that renewed tranquillity which succeeds tempest. Though the sight of them still stirred him to pain, the taint of envy had departed; and he smiled, as, passing, he caught the inevitable question whispered:

“And when did you first begin to love me, Letty?”

Stuart reflected with amused contempt that the answer could not fail to be: “I think I must have loved you always, dear heart....” He wondered what would happen if he followed the impulse to warn them whither they were straying in their blindness, tell them the use of the shears--then laughed, imagining the reception his harangue would receive: the male muttering: “Some crazy loon!” and drawing closer the girl, who would murmur, her lips against his neck: “He doesn’t _know_, does he, dearest?”

But though the notion called forth a healthy self-ridicule in the man who didn’t know, a throb within him of common humanity, which he had hitherto believed dormant, was queerly uneasy for all the sightless lovers of all the world, stumbling on towards disillusion. He felt like a diver who from drowning depths had rescued a pearl, brought it up in his hand--“And was looking about for the swine,” finished Stuart’s sense of humour, also reawakened.

Nevertheless, the uneasiness dogged him, and the impatience. The philosophy of the shears was now indisputably his; not from the far-off speculations of a dreamer, but by claim of pain and payment. He had animated theory with blood-sacrifice, so that theory had become a live thing, a truth which he had no right to retain, which must be flung to the world. After that, let the world take it or leave it, as they willed; his part would be done. They would probably leave it.... And again he burnt with a fiery impatience somehow to pierce that thick denseness of spirit overlying mankind like a pall; so that nine-tenths have lost grip of their own lives, and the remaining tenth have too firm a grip on other people’s; and most are unseeingly miserable, but some benumbed in happiness; and all without wings.

Stuart did not feel any vocation for the platform nor the pulpit; neither had he any desire to throw his theories on to paper and thus propagate them among the unenlightened. It struck him that what he needed was a disciple; some young enthusiast who, believing in him devoutly and to the extent of imitation in all things, would also zealously spread his creed by eloquent tongue and by diligent pen. All prophets had their disciples; a disciple was a necessary adjunct to the master. Stuart was inclined to think himself modest in only seeking one fervent youth to squat at his feet. Most of the old Greek philosophers had founded a whole school. Perhaps that would follow in time. Meanwhile, let him but find some intelligent lad, tumultuously unhappy, restless and miserable and knowing not what he craved, and it ought to be a matter of ease to convert him to the Hairpin Vision, the Essential Renunciation, the Necessity of Conflict, and the Art of Ceasing to Suck the Orange before the Orange Runs Dry of Juice.

--From the shadow-side of the hulk against which Stuart leant, enumerating his ethics to the stars, a long-drawn-out sigh quivered through the air; then a low and satisfied grunt; both sounds expressive of the mood in man, when, having reached a fatuity of content too great for words, he has to resort to animal noises in which to relieve his feelings. Stuart strolled round, and stood gazing down at a reclining figure upon the sand, figure which he recognized as one-half of the lovers who had so often shattered his evening calm.

“Where’s Letty?”

“Hullo!” in languorous slumberous surprise. Then, raising a thatch of ruffled auburn hair and an exceedingly flushed face, the young man enquired: “I say, have you got a match on you? I was just thinking there was nothing on earth left for me to want, when I discovered that I couldn’t light up.”

Stuart looked disgusted: was this a thing for a fellow’s star to send a fellow, in answer to fellow’s wish for a disciple? this creature who had nothing left on earth to desire except a match. In silence he proffered his box; it was not worth while to withhold it.

“Letty’s mother had a sick headache to-night,” gurgled Sebastian Levi, in answer to the query first spoken. He was not so richly communicative as a rule; but to-night he was rather beyond himself with a father’s consent just won to his engagement, and several glasses of wine tossed down in celebration thereof; followed by one ecstatic embrace of his betrothed, a rush at fifty miles an hour through the warm sea-scented air, and much solitary starlight imbibed from the dim flat shores of the Haven. So, from drowsy oblivion of his fellow-man, he became suddenly eager and willing to talk:

“We’ve often run out here before, Letty and I. It’s quiet. And it’s only twenty minutes by car. I say, how did you know about Letty? I suppose you must have seen us.”

“I have occasionally noticed an indistinguishable blur or two,” replied Stuart, sitting down upon a black and moss-grown spar, and lighting his own cigarette. “The blur being to-day shrunken to half its size, I subtracted one from two, and asked you where she was. And thus the mystery is explained.”

“That’s a pity. Mishtries should never be explained. Who would have the veil lifted from the immortal mishtry of love? Or would I seek now to know intimately why the gods are so good to me, in giving me my heart’s desire, and all my other desires, and a match for my cigarette into the bargain? Unquestioningly I accept their--benign--partiality----” Sebastian lingered slowly and carefully over the last words, and, safely completed, stretched grateful arms towards the heavens. Then, looking at these same arms rather amazedly, as if in doubt as to what they were doing in that eccentric position, let them drop again. “I love you, Letty!” he murmured to some vision of his radiant imaginings; then brought his gaze earthwards, back to Stuart: “Thanks for the match,” pleasantly.

Stuart shrugged his shoulders: “Lacking the match, there might have been some hope for you; as it is,” he turned away, “--good night.”

“Don’t go,” pleaded Sebastian, unruffled by the other’s abrupt censure. “It was only my nonsense just now; I was working off steam. But I can talk quite soberly if you’ll stop to hear me.”

“You’re not in a fit state to talk at all. You’re thick; plastered with honey and treacle. Your grin is seraphic; your rhapsodies are fatuous. You don’t even resent my abominable rudeness. Why don’t you?”

“Why should I? I like you tremendously. And of course I’m s’raphic. ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest but in his motion like an angel sings still choiring to the young-eyed cherubims!’ That’s what my father was to-night--a young-eyed cherubim. So was her father. So was Letty. She’s accepted me. Her father has accepted me. My father has accepted her. Everybody has accepted everybody, and everybody has gulped down an enormous amount of champagne. Hence Mrs. Johnson’s headache. But I’m glad Letty couldn’t come out to-night--I’ve had too much--I couldn’t stand any more--I’m dizzy. When I say I couldn’t stand any more, I mean it meta--meta----” Sebastian lost the thread of his discourse, repeated solemnly “meta----” ... and then re-found it in a different but equally satisfactory direction: “I met her on the hill between Boscombe and Bournemouth. Our fathers had been neighbours years ago, and fell into each other’s arms. So there’s no family opposition; we needn’t wait interminably for the wedding. My father,--he’s Levi, the big Universal Stores in Holborn--you know--he’s taking me into partnership with a tremendous screw. Which will leave me plenty of time for writing----”

“Writing?”

“I’m a poet,” modestly.

“And what thin trickle of curds-and-whey verse do you imagine can be born in leisure hours, while in unctuous enjoyment of a tremendous screw?”

“Better verse than if I were a starving rhymester, peddling my sweated wares, with chilblains on all my toes. I don’t believe in the uses of adversity?”

“No?”

--“And to-morrow,” spouted Sebastian, unheeding the ironic syllable, “to-morrow I buy her the most wonderful ermine in all the regions of snow, to wrap round her throat when I whirl her by night to this desolate shore. That’s poetry, isn’t it?--when I whirl her by night to this desolate shore!--Lord, man! her throat is softer and whiter than foam ... when she lifts her head to the moonlight--when she lifts her head to look at me--she’s such a little wee thing--then the curve of it makes me delirious ... as perfect as the curve of that wave--look! before it breaks. Her throat----”

“Would you mind,” broke in Stuart very politely, “not talking about throats?”

The lad glanced at him--then quickly away. “I’m sorry,” he jerked out.

“And as for what you are pleased to consider the partiality of the gods towards you,” continued Stuart, goaded to an inexplicable heat of anger; “let me tell you that you merely figure as their sport. I can’t conceive of a greater sign of disfavour than to be thus loaded with gifts. In time you will come to regard the love which has been yours so easily, as a matter of course, as something which has always been there. The wealth that you have gained without effort, will cause you presently to fold fat podgy hands over your smug waistcoat, too richly embroidered for good taste, and give thanks that you are not as other men----”

“You’re wrong there,” interrupted Sebastian, even his placidity giving way beneath this unforeseen attack; “I mean to do a lot of good with my money----”

“And what can be more unpardonably priggish than to do anybody good without doing yourself any harm thereby? It’s like Father Xmas; I never believed in the bountiful generosity of Father Xmas; his sacks were too swollen, and his coat too heavily trimmed--like the waistcoat of your future obesity. Oh, yes, you will be a good man, and a generous man, and a prig, and probably an alderman, and certainly Lord Mayor, and perhaps also High Admiral of Spain. And you’ll forget that Letty’s throat was white as foam, and curved like the curve of a wave,--because Letty will be yours, throat and all, whenever you want her. You’ll never know fun, hard perilous fun, because you’ll never seek peril; you’ll say that you have too many responsibilities, as a husband and a citizen and a philanthropist, to expose yourself unnecessarily. You’ll never be splendidly weary with battle, nor yet know the leanness of spirit which comes from desire unfulfilled, nor will you grow breathless with the exhilaration of a race against your own luck. The best things you are bound to miss forever, my fortunate young friend, because the gods have thought them beyond you--and have sent you instead prosperity, domestic happiness, the course of true love running indecently smooth. And therefore it is that I regard you as damned, body and soul, and you regard me as a lunatic----”

“Not at all, confound your insolence!” Sebastian had sprung to his feet during the tirade. From somnolence to loquacity, and thence to truculence, were easy transitions in his present mood; and not once did the absurdity strike him of this sudden quarrel with a total stranger, on the dim moon-washed sands of the Haven: “not a bit of it. I look upon you merely as one of those meddlesome people who have become embittered by poverty and frustration, and can’t see other people happy. The fox, you’ll remember, said the grapes were sour.”

“Your shot is wide of the mark; as it happens, I’ve only just succeeded in quenching my star, which was most obstreperously luminous. And for the Lord’s sake, spare me fable in argument----”

And thereupon, something queer happened ... Sebastian stepped forward, and seized Stuart in a wrestler’s grip, and attempted to throw him down. In and out of a clear patch of moonlight they swayed, in and out of the black shadow of the hulk, silently, like clockwork marionettes. Their build and strength were about equal, but Stuart was the cooler of the twain, and just held his own, wondering the while what was the exact remark of his that had so infuriated his young opponent. To and fro, in and out of the sharp white moonrays--till, by a slippery dexterous movement, Stuart succeeded in flinging aside Sebastian, who stumbled, and fell, and rose again, covered with a glittering powder of sand, and stood uncertain whether or not to renew the bout. And then it would seem that he saw the other’s features clearly, for the first time; for he exclaimed in quite a different tone from what he had yet used:

“Why, it’s Heron of Balliol, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But how----?” Stuart found it disconcerting, having met and insulted a nameless spirit in ghostland, to be suddenly, and by this same spirit, accosted as Heron of Balliol.

“They pointed you out to me last year, when you came up for the Greek plays. You were the big classical man of your time, weren’t you? They still talk about your double first.”

Stuart looked pleased. “Which was your college?”

“Magdalen. I’m only just down. I say, may I run over again one evening for a talk? My name’s Levi, Sebastian Levi. I’m staying at the Boscombe Hotel.”

“Certainly; delighted; perhaps you’ll introduce your fiancée.” And it was a pity that no one was by to twinkle amusement at the well-bred decorum which had descended upon the antagonists.

“That’s my bungalow, the one that looks like an inverted whale.”

“Don’t you find it dull?”

“Passably. I sail a good bit. Care to join me next time the wind’s foul enough?”

“I’ve never done any sailing; but if I shan’t be in the way----”

“Not at all; you shall be passenger.” Carefully ignoring their fantastic behaviour of a few moments back, they strolled together across the shore, and over the sand-dunes, to where the lamps of Sebastian’s two-seater trembled athwart the road.

“Feel equal to taking the wheel? because if not----”

Sebastian laughed rather shamefacedly. “Oh, I’m not as bad as that. Would you mind starting her?” he climbed to his seat.

Stuart swung the crank. “Here, you’d better take my matches; I’m nearer home than you,” he tossed the box into the moving car.

“Thanks awfully. Good night!”

“Good night.”

As he listened to the dwindling hum of the engine, Stuart let his thoughts wander again to the matter of discipleship. He had marked how swiftly the boy’s sleepy content had been stung to passionate retort; he was responsive, then; and evidently not lacking in brains; altogether of the right stuff. Stuart reflected further that it would be a far more creditable job to drag a convert from a bed of roses than from a ditch of nettles.

And Sebastian, crashing homewards along silent unwinding roads, was conscious of a beating excitement, totally unlike his lulled lotus-dream of the past summer nights. Strange phrases had Heron spoken to him ... “I’ve only just succeeded in quenching my star.” “You will never know the best things of all--the gods thought them beyond you.”... Strange phrases--and no one to warn a lover on the danger of having his brain massaged.