The Captives

CHAPTER X

THE PROPHET

The year 1907 had four more days of life: it crept to its grave through a web and tangle of fog. It was not one of the regular yellow devils who come and eat up London, first this part, and then that, then disgorge a little, choking it all up only to snap at it and swallow it down all bewildered a quarter of an hour after. This was a cobweb fog spun, as it might be, by some malignant central spider hidden darkly in his lair. The vapouring-like filmy threads twisted and twined their way all over London, and for four days and nights the town was a city of ghosts. Buildings loomed dimly behind their masks of silver tissue, streets seemed unsubstantial, pavements had no foundation, streams of water appeared to hang glittering in mid-air, men and horses would suddenly plunge into grey abysses and vanish from sight, church-bells would ring peals high up in air, and there would be, it seemed, no steeple there for them to ring from. As the sun behind the fog rose and set so the mist would catch gold and red and purple into the vapours, strange gleams of brass and silver as though behind its web armies flaunting their colours were marching through the sky; down on the very earth itself horses staggered and stumbled on the thin coating of greasy mud that covered everything; men opened their doors to look out on to the world, and instantly into the passages there floated such strange forms and shadows in misty shape that it seemed as though the rooms were suddenly invaded by a flock of spirits.

Sometimes for half an hour the fog lifted and bright blue sky gleamed like a miraculous lake suddenly discovered in the heart of the boundless waste, then vanished again. Suddenly, with a whisk of the immortal broom, the web was torn, the spider slain, the world clear once more—but, in the obscurity and dusk, 1907 had seen his chance and vanished.

Warlock, long before this, had lost consciousness of external sights and sounds. He could not have told any one when it was that the two worlds had parted company. For many many years he had been conscious of both existences, but during his youth and middle-age they had seemed to mingle and go along together. He had believed in both equally and had been a citizen of both. Then gradually, as time passed, he had seemed to have less and less hold upon the actual physical world. He saw it suddenly with darkened vision; his wife and daughter, and indeed all human beings, except in so far as they were souls to be saved for the Lord, became less and less realities. Only Martin was flesh and blood, to be loved and longed for and feared for just as he had always been. All the physical properties of life—clothes, food, household possessions, money—became of less and less importance to him. Had Amy not watched over him he would have been many days without any food at all, and one day he come into the living-room at breakfast-time clothed in a towel. All this had come upon him with vastly increased power during the last months. In Chapel, and whenever he had work to do in connection with the Chapel, he was clear-headed and practical, but in things to do with this world he was now worse than a child.

He was conscious of this increasing difficulty to deal with both worlds. It was because one world—the world of God—was opening out before him so widely and with so varied and thrilling a beauty that there was less and less time to be spared for the drab realities of physical things.

All his life he had been preparing, and then suddenly the call had come. Shortly after Martin's return he had known in Chapel, one evening, that God was approaching. It had happened that that day, owing to his absorption in his work, he had eaten nothing, and there had come to him, whilst praying to the congregation, a sensation of faintness so strong that for a moment he thought he would fall from his seat. Then it had passed, to give way to a strange, thrilling sense of expectancy. It was as though a servant had opened the door and had announced: "My master is coming, sir—" He had felt, indeed, as though he had been lifted up, in the sheet of Paul the Apostle, to meet his God. There had been the most wonderful sense of elevation, a clearing of light, a gentler freshness in the air, a sudden sinking to remoteness of human voices and mundane sounds. From that moment in the Chapel life had been changed for him. He never seemed to come down again from that mysterious elevation. Human voices sounded far away from him; he could be urged, only with the greatest difficulty, to take his food, and he frequently did not recognise members of his own congregation when they came to see him. He waited now, waited, waited, for this visitation that was approaching him. He could have no doubts of it.

Then one night he woke from a deep sleep. He was conscious that his room was filled with a smoky light; in his heart was such an ecstasy that he would have thought that the joy would kill him.

Something spoke to him, telling him to prepare, that he had been chosen, and that further signs would come to him. He fell on his knees beside the bed and remained there in a trance until daylight. He had heard the voice of God, he had seen His light, he had been chosen as His servant. Some weeks later a second visitation came to him, similar to the first, but telling him that at the last hour of the present year God would come in His own person to save the world, and that he must make this known to a few chosen spirits that they might prepare ...

The whole brotherhood then was at length justified; they alone, out of all men in the world, had believed in the Second Coming of the Lord, and so God had chosen them. He had no doubt at all about his visions at this time. They seemed to him as real and sure as the daily traffic of the streets and the monotonous progress of the clock.

Eagerly, with the confident resolution of a child, he told his news to the leaders of the Chapel, Thurston, Miss Avies, and one or two others. Then a special meeting of the Inside Saints was called and, in the simplest language, he described exactly what had occurred. He did not at first perceive the effect that his news had. Then, dimly, through the mist of his prayers and ecstasies, he realised that his message had created confusion. There was in the first place the question as to whether the whole congregation should be told. He found that he could not decide about this, and when he left the judgment to Thurston, Thurston told him that, in his opinion, "the less that they knew about it the better." It was then that the first suspicion came to him as to whether some of the Saints "doubted." He questioned Thurston as to the effect of this message upon the Saints. Thurston explained to him that "many of them had been very troubled. They had not expected It to come so soon." Thurston explained that they were, after all, only poor human clay like the rest of mankind, and to prepare for a Second Coming in general, something that might descend upon the world, say, in a hundred years' time, was very different from a Judgment that might be expected, definitely, in about three weeks. One or two of them, in fact, had left the Chapel. Others begged for some clearer direction: "Give it them a bit more clearly, Master. Tell 'em a few facts what the Lord God looked like and 'ow He spoke and in what kind of way He was coming. Supposing He wasn't to come after all ..."

It was then that the trouble that had been smouldering for so long between Thurston and the Master burst into flame. For half an hour the Master lost his temper like an ordinary human being. Thurston said very little but listened with a quiet and sarcastic smile. Then he went away. Warlock was left in a torment of doubt and misery. That night he was in his room, until the dawn, on his knees, wrestling with God. He accused himself because, during these latter months, he had removed himself from human contact with his congregation. He had been so intent upon God that he had forgotten his flock. Now he hardly knew how to approach them. The thought of a personal interview with the Miss Cardinals, or Miss Pyncheon, or Mr. Smith filled him with a strange shy terror. He seemed to have nothing more to say to them, and he blamed himself bitterly because he had been intent upon his own salvation rather than theirs.

Thurston's words sent him groping back through the details of the visions. And there were no details. For himself there had been enough in the light, the ecstasy, the contact, but these others who had not themselves felt this, nor seen its glory, demanded more.

He began then, in an agony of distress, to question himself as to whether he had not dreamt his visions. He wrestled with God, beseeching Him to come again and give him a clearer message. Night after night passed and he waited for some further vision, but nothing was granted him. Then he thought that perhaps he himself was now cursed for leaving God. God had come to him and revealed Himself to him in unmistakable signs, and yet he was doubting Him and demanding further help.

As the weeks passed he perceived more and more clearly that there was every kind of division and trouble in the Chapel. Many members left and wrote to him telling him why they had done so. In his own household he felt that Amy no longer gave him any confidence. She attended to him more carefully than before, watched over him as though he were a baby, but made no allusion to the services or the Chapel or any meeting. He seemed, as the weeks passed, to be lonelier and lonelier, and he looked upon this as punishment for his own earlier selfishness. He was pulled then two ways. On the one hand it seemed to him that he would only hear God's full message if he withdrew further and further from the world, on the other he felt that he was letting his followers slip away from him now at the very moment when he should be closest to them, advising, helping, encouraging. This divided impulse was a torture, and as the weeks went on he ate less and less and slept scarcely at all. He had been for a long time past in delicate health owing to the weakness of his heart, and now he began to look strange indeed, with his bright gaunt face with its prominent cheek-bones, his eyes straining to see beyond his actual vision, his flowing white beard. His doctor, a cheerful, commonplace little man, a member of the Chapel, although not a Saint, tried to do his best with him, but his visits only led to scenes of irritation, and Warlock obeyed none of his commands. After a visit on the afternoon of Christmas Eve he took Amy aside:

"Look here," he said, "unless you keep a stricter eye on your father than you have been doing he'll be leaving you altogether."

She looked up at him with that odd dark impassivity that seemed to remove her so deliberately from her fellow-beings.

"It's very well to talk like that," she said. "But how is any one to have any control over him? He listens to nothing that we say, and if we insist he's in a frenzy of irritation."

"Can your mother do nothing?" the doctor asked.

"Mother?" Amy smiled. "No, mother can do nothing."

"Well," said the doctor, "any sudden shock will kill him—I warn you."

When the fog came down upon the city Warlock was already in too thick a fog of his own to perceive it.

He was sure now of nothing. It seemed as though all the spirits of the other world now were taunting him, but he felt that this was the work of the Devil, who wished to destroy his faith before the Great Day arrived. He thought now that the Devil was closely pursuing him, and he seemed to hear first his taunting whisper and then the voice of God encouraging him: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

He had lost now almost all consciousness of what he really expected to happen when the Day arrived, but he was dimly aware that if nothing happened at all his whole influence with his people would be gone. Nevertheless this did not trouble him very greatly; the congregation of the Chapel seemed now dimly remote. The only human being who was not remote was Martin; his love for his son had not been touched by his other struggles, it had been even intensified. But the love had grown a terror, ever increasing, lest Martin should leave him. He seemed to hear dimly, beyond the wall of the mysterious world into whose regions he was ever more deeply passing, sentences, vague, without human agency, accusing Martin of sins and infidelities and riotous living. Sometimes he was tempted to go further into this and challenge Martin's accusers, but fear held him back. Martin had been a good son since his return to England, yes, he had, and he had forsaken his evil ways and was going to be with his father now until the end, his last refuge against loneliness. Every one else had left him or was leaving him, but Martin was there. Martin hadn't deceived him, Martin was a good boy ... a good boy ... and then, as it seemed to him, with Martin's hand in his own he would pass off into his world of strange dreams and desperate prayer and hours of waiting, listening, straining for a voice ...

During that last night before New Year's Eve an hour came to him when he seemed to be left utterly alone. Exhausted, faint, dizzy with want of sleep and food, he knelt before his bed; his room seemed to be filled with devils, taunting him, tempting him, bewildering and blinding him. He rose suddenly in a frenzy, striking out, rushing about his room, crying ... then at last, exhausted, creeping back to his bed, falling down upon it and sinking into a long dreamless sleep.

They found him sleeping when they came to call him and they left him. He did not wake until the early afternoon; his brain seemed clear and his body so weak that it was with the greatest difficulty that he washed and put on some clothes.

The room was dark with the fog; lamps in the street below glimmered uncertainly, and voices and the traffic of the street were muffled. He opened his door and, looking out, heard in the room below Martin's voice raised excitedly. Slowly he went down to meet him.

Martin also had reached, on that last day of the year, the very end of his tether. During the last ten days he had been fighting against every weakness to which his character was susceptible. With the New Year he felt that everything would be well; he could draw a new breath then, find work somewhere away from London, have Maggie perhaps with him, and drive a way out of all the tangle of his perplexities. But even then he did not dare to face the future thoroughly. Would his father let him go? Was he, after all his struggles, to give way and ruin Maggie's position and future? Could he be sure, if he look her away with him, that then he would keep straight, and that his old temptations of women and drink and general restlessness would be conquered? Perhaps. There had never been a surer proof that his love for Maggie was a real and unselfish love than his hesitation on that wretched day when he seemed utterly deserted by mankind, when Maggie seemed the only friend he had in the world.

Everything was just out of reach, and some perverse destiny prevented him from realising any desire that had a spark of honesty and decency in it. It was not wonderful that in the midst of his loneliness and unhappiness he should have been tempted back to the old paths again, men, women, places that for more than three months now he had been struggling to abandon.

All that day he struggled with temptation. He had not seen Maggie for a week, and during the last three days he had not heard from her, the adventurous Jane having defied the aunts and left.

At luncheon he asked about his father, whom he had not seen for two days.

"Father had a very bad night. He's asleep now."

"There's something on to-night, isn't there?" he asked.

"There's a service," Amy answered shortly.

"Father oughtn't to go," he went on. "I suppose your friend Thurston can manage."

Amy looked at him. "Father's got to go. It's very important."

"Oh, of course, if you want to kill father with all your beastly services—" he broke in furiously.

"It won't be—" Amy began, and then, as though she did not trust herself to continue, got up and left the room.

"Mother," he said, "why on earth don't you do something?"

"I, dear?" she looked at him placidly. "In what way?"

"They're killing father between them with all these services and the rest of the nonsense."

"Your father doesn't listen to anything I say, dear."

"He ought to go away for a long rest."

"Well, dear, perhaps he will soon. You know I have nothing to do with the Chapel. That was settled years ago. I wouldn't interfere for a great deal."

Martin turned fiercely upon her saying:

"Mother, don't you care?"

"Care, dear?"

"Yes, about father—his living and getting well again and being happy as he used to be. What's happened to this place?"

She looked at him in the strangest way. He suddenly felt that he'd never seen her before.

"There are a number of things, Martin, that you don't understand—a number of things. You are away from us for years, you come back to us and expect things to be the same."

"You and Amy," he said, "both of you, have kept me out of everything since I came back. I believe you both hate me!"

She got up slowly from her seat, slowly put her spectacles away in their case, rubbed her fat little hands together, then suddenly licked inquisitively one finger as an animal might do. She spoke to him over her shoulder as she went to the door:

"Oh no, Martin, you speak too strongly."

Left then to his own devices he, at last, wandered out into the foggy streets. After a while he found himself outside a public-house and, after a moment's hesitation, he went in. He asked the stout, rubicund young woman behind the counter for a whisky. She gave him one; he drank that, and then another.

Afterwards he had several more, leaning over the bar, speaking to no one, seeing no one, hearing nothing, and scarcely tasting the drink. When he came out into the street again he knew that he was half drunk—not so drunk that he didn't know what he was doing. Oh dear, no. HE could drink any amount without feeling it. Nevertheless he had drunk so little during these last weeks that even a drop ... How foggy the streets were ... made it difficult to find your way home. But he was all right, he could walk straight, he could put his latch-key into the door at one try, HE was all right.

He was at home again. He didn't stop to hang up his hat and coat but went straight into the dining-room, leaving the door open behind him. He saw that the meal was still on the table just as they'd left it. Amy was there too.

He saw her move back when he came in as though she were afraid to touch him.

"You're drunk!" she said.

"I'm not. You're a liar, Amy. You've always been a liar all your life."

She tried to pass him, but he stood in the middle of the door.

"No, you don't," he said. "We've got to have this out. What have you been spreading scandal about me and Maggie Cardinal for?"

"Let me go," she said again.

"Tell me that first. You've always tried to do me harm. Why?"

"Because I hate the sight of you," she answered quickly. "As you've asked me, you shall have a truthful answer. You've never been anything but a disgrace to us ever since you were a little boy. You disgraced us at home and then abroad; now you've come back to disgrace us here again."

"That's a lie," he repeated. "I've not disgraced anybody."

"Well, it won't be very long before you finish ruining that wretched girl. The best you can do now is to marry her."

"I can't do that," he said. "I'm married already." She did not answer that hut stared at him with amazement.

"But never mind that," he went on. "What if I am a bad lot? I don't know what a bad lot is exactly, but if you mean that I've lived with women and been drunk, and lost jobs because I didn't do the work, and been generally on the loose, it's true, of course. But I meant to live decently when I came home. Yes, I did. You can sneer as much as you like. Why didn't you help me? You're my sister, aren't you? And now I don't care what I do. You've all given me up. Well, give me up, and I'll just go to bits as fast as I can go! If you don't want me there are others who do, or at any rate the bit of money I've got. You've kept me from the only decent girl I've ever known, the one I could have been straight with—"

"Straight with!" Amy broke in. "How were you going to be straight if you're married already?"

He would have answered her but a sound behind him made him turn. He wheeled round and saw his father standing almost up against him. He had only time for a horrified vision of the ghostlike figure, the staring eyes, the open mouth, the white cheeks. The old man caught his coat.

"Martin, what was that? What did you say? ... No, no ... I can't bear that now. I can't, I can't."

He turned and made as though he would run up the stairs, catching about him like a child the shabby old dressing-gown that he was wearing. At the first step he stumbled, clutching the bannister to save himself.

Martin rushed to him, putting his arms round him, holding him close to him. "It's all right, father ... It's not true what you heard ... It's all right."

His father turned, putting his arms round his neck.

Martin half helped, half carried him up to his bedroom. He laid him on his bed and then, holding his hand, sat by his side all through the long dim afternoon.

About, five Warlock suddenly revived, sat up, arid with the assistance of Martin dressed properly, had some tea, and went down to his study. He sat down in his chair, then suddenly looking up at his son he said:

"Did you and Amy have a quarrel this afternoon?"

"No, father," said Martin.

"That's right. I thought—I thought ... I don't know ... My head's confused. You've been a good boy, Martin, haven't you? There's no need for me to worry, is there?"

"None, father," Martin said.

After a while Martin said:

"Father, don't go to Chapel to-night."

Warlock smiled.

"I must go. That's all right ... Nothing to worry about."

For some while he sat there, Martin's hand in his; Martin did not know whether he were asleep or not.

At about ten he ate and drank. At eleven he started with Amy and Thurston for the Chapel.