There is beyond question, in human nature, such a thing as an inherited consciousness of God, and this consciousness, if inherited through many generations, may defy apparent reason, all progress of vaunted civilisations, and even, it may be suggested, the actual challenge of death itself.
This consciousness of God had been quite simply the foundation of Mr. Warlock's history. In the middle of the eighteenth century it expressed itself in the formula of John Wesley's revival; the John Wesley of that day preached up and down the length and breadth of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and being a fighter, a preacher and a simple-minded human being at one and the same time, received a large following and died full of years and honours.
It was somewhere about 1830 that this John's grandson, James Warlock, Martin's grandfather, broke from the main body and led his little flock on to the wide spaces of Salisbury Plain. James Warlock, unlike his father and grandfather, was a little sickly man with a narrow chest, no limbs to speak of and a sharp pale face. Martin had a faded daguerreotype of him set against the background of the old Wiltshire kitchen, his black clothes hung upon him like a disguise, his eyes burning even upon that faded picture with the fire of his spirit. For James Warlock was a mystic, a visionary, a prophet. He walked and talked with God; in no jesting spirit it was said that he knew God's plans and could turn the world into a blazing coal so soon as he pleased. It was because he knew with certainty that God would, in person, soon, descend upon the earth that he separated from the main body and led his little band down into Wiltshire. Here on the broad gleaming Plain they prepared for God's coming. Named now the Kingscote Brethren after their new abode, they built a Chapel, sat down and waited. Then in 1840 the prophet declared that the Coming was not yet, that it would be in the next generation, but that their preparations must not be relaxed. He himself prepared by taking to himself a wife, a calm untroubled countrywoman of the place, that she might give him a son whom he might prepare, in due course, for his great destiny. John, father of Martin, was born, a large-limbed, smiling infant, with the tranquillity of his mother as well as something of the mysticism of his father.
Upon him, as upon his ancestors, this consciousness of God had most absolutely descended. Never for a moment did he question the facts that his father told to him. He grew into a giant of health and strength, and those who, in those old days, saw them tell that it was a strange picture to watch the little wizened man, walking with odd emotional gestures, with little hops and leaps and swinging of the arms beside the firm long stride of the young man towering above him.
When young John was twenty-three years of age his father was found dead under a tree upon a summer's evening. His expression was of a man challenging some new and startling discovery; he had found perhaps new visions to confront his gaze. They buried him in Kingscote and his son reigned in his stead.
But they were approaching new and modern times. These old days, of simple faith and superstition were passing never to return. There were new elements in the Kingscote company of souls and these elements demanded freer play both of thought and action. They argued that, as to them alone out of all the world the time and manner of God's coming was known, they should influence with their activities some wider sphere than this Wiltshire village.
John Warlock clung with all his strength to the old world that he knew, the world that gave him leisure and quiet for contemplation. He had no wish to bring in converts, to stir England into a frenzy of terror and anticipation. God gave him no command to spread his beliefs; even his father, fanatic though he had been, had cherished his own small company of saints as souls to whom these things, hidden deliberately from the outside world, had especially been entrusted.
So long as he could he resisted; then when he was about forty, somewhere around 1880, the Kingscote Brethren moved to London. In this year, 1907, John Warlock was sixty-seven and the Kingscote Brethren had had their Chapel in Solomon's Place, behind Garrick Street, for twenty-seven years. In 1880 John Warlock had married Amelia, daughter of Francis Stephens, merchant. In 1881 a daughter, Amy, was born to them; in 1883, Martin; they had no other children. Martin was at the time of Maggie's arrival in London twenty-four years of age.
Upon a certain fine evening, a fortnight after Martin Warlock's first meeting with Maggie, he arrived at the door of his house in Garrick Street, and having forgotten his latch-key, was compelled to ring the old screaming bell that had long survived its respectable reputable days. The Warlocks had lived during the last ten years in an upper part above a curiosity shop four doors from the Garrick Club in Garrick Street. There was a house-door that abutted on to the shop-door and, passing through it, you stumbled along a little dark passage like a rabbit warren, up some crooked stairs, and found yourself in the Warlock country without ever troubling Mr. Spencer, the stout, hearty, but inartistic owner of the curiosity shop.
On the present occasion, after pulling the bell, Martin stared down the street as though somewhere in the dim golden light of its farthest recesses he would find an answer to a question that he was asking. The broad sturdy strength of his body, the easy good-temper of his expression spoke of a life lived physically rather than mentally. And yet this was only half true. Martin Warlock should at this time have been a quite normal young man with normal desires, normal passions, normal instincts. Such he would undoubtedly have been had he not had his early environment of egotism, mystery and clap-trap—had he, also, not developed through his childhood and youth his passionate devotion to his father. The religious ceremonies of his young days had made him self-conscious and introspective and, although during his years abroad he had felt on many occasions that he was completely freed from his early bondage, scenes, thoughts and longings would recur and remind him that he was celebrating his liberty too soon. The licences that to most men in their first youth are incidental and easily forgotten engraved themselves upon Martin's reluctant soul because of that religious sense that had been driven in upon him at the very hour of his birth. He could not sin and forget. He sinned and was remorseful, was impatient at his remorse, sinned again to rid himself of it and was more remorseful still. The main impulse of his life at this time was his self-distrust. He fancied that by returning home he might regain confidence. He longed to rid himself of the conviction that he was "set aside" by some fate or other, call it God or not as you please. He thought that he hurt all those whom he loved when his only longing was to do them good. He used suddenly to leave his friends because he thought that he was doing them harm. It was as though he heard some Power saying to him: "I marked you out for my own in the beginning and you can't escape me. You may struggle as you like. Until you surrender everything shall turn to dust in your hands." He came back to England determined to assert his independence.
He gazed now at the placidity of Garrick Street with the intensity of some challenging "Stand and Deliver!" All that the street had to give for the moment was a bishop and an actor mounting the steps of the Garrick Club, an old lady with a black bonnet and a milk-jug, a young man in a hurry and a failure selling bootlaces. None of them could be expected to offer reassurance to Martin—none of these noticed him—but an intelligent observer, had such a stranger to Garrick Street been present, might have found that gaze of interest. Martin's physical solidity could not entirely veil the worried uncertain glance that flashed for a moment and then, with a little reassuring sigh, was gone.
The door opened, a girl looked for a moment into the street, he passed inside. Having stumbled up the dark stairs, pushed back their private entrance, hung up his coat in the little hall, with a deliberate effort he shook off the suspicions that had, during the last moments, troubled him and prepared to meet his mother and sister.
Because he had a happy, easy and affectionate temperament absence always gilded his friends with gifts and qualities that their presence only too often denied. His years abroad had given him a picture of his mother and sister that the few weeks of his return had already dimmed and obscured. His mother's weekly letters had, during ten long years, built up an image of her as the dearest old lady in the world. He had always, since a child, seen her in a detached way—his deep and permanent relations had been with his father—but those letters, of which he had now a deep and carefully cherished pile, gave him a most charming picture of her. They had not been clever nor deep nor indeed very interesting, but they had been affectionate and tender with all the gentleness of the figure that he remembered sitting in its lace cap beside the fire.
After three weeks of home life he was compelled to confess that he did not in the least understand his mother. His intuitions about people were not in fact of a very penetrating character.
His mother appeared to all her world as a "sweet old lady," but even Martin could already perceive that was not in the least what she really was. He had seen her old hands tremble with suppressed temper on the very day after his arrival; he had seen her old lips white with anger because the maid had brought her the wrong shawl. Old ladies must of course have their fancies, but his mother had some fixed and fierce purpose in her life that was quite beyond his powers of penetration. It might of course have something to do with her attachment to his father. Attached Martin could see that she was, but at the same time completely and eternally outside her husband's spiritual life. That might have been perhaps in the first place by her own desire—she did not want "to be bothered with all that nonsense." But certainly all these years with him had worked upon her: she was not perhaps so sure now that it was all "nonsense." She wanted, it might be, a closer alliance with him, which she could not have because she had once rejected the chance of it. Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going on in the house that he did not fathom. Amy, his sister, knew. There was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as he could see—he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on dislike and fear of himself.
How fantastic these theories of fire and passion must seem, he amused himself by considering, to any one who knew his mother only from the outside. She was sitting to-day as always in her little pink and white chintz drawing-room, a bright fire burning and a canary singing in a cage beside the window. The rest of the house was ugly and strangely uninhabited as though the Warlocks had merely pitched their tents for a night and were moving forward to-morrow, but this little room, close, smelling of musk and sweet biscuits (a silver box with lemon-shaped biscuits in it stood on a little table near the old lady), with its pretty pink curtains, its canary, and its heavy and softly closing door, was like a place enclosed, dedicated to the world, and ruled by a remorseless spirit of comfort.
Mrs. Warlock was only sixty years of age, but she had, a number of years ago, declared herself an invalid, and now never, unless she drove on a very fine afternoon, left the house. Whether she were truly an invalid nobody knew; she presented certainly a most healthy appearance with her shell-pink cheeks, her snow-white hair, her firm bosom rising and falling with such gentle regularity beneath the tight and shining black silk that covered it, her clear bright eyes like shining glass. She always sat in a deep arm-chair covered with the chintz of the curtains and filled with plump pillows of pink silk. A white filmy shawl was spread over her knees, at her throat was a little bright coquettish blue bow that added, amazingly, to the innocent charm of her old age. On her white hair, crinkled and arranged as though it were some ornament, not quite a wig but still apart from the rest of her body, she wore a lace cap. She was fond of knitting; she made warm woollen comforters and underclothing for the children of the poor. She was immensely fond of conversation, being of an inquisitive nature. But above all was she fond of eating. This covetousness of food had grown on her as her years had increased. The thought of foods of various kinds filled many hours of her day, and the desire for pleasant things to eat was the motive of many of her most deliberate actions. She cherished warmly and secretly this little lust of hers. None of the family was aware of the grip that the desire had upon her nor of the speed with which the desire was growing. She did not ask directly for the things that she liked, but manoeuvred with little plots and intrigues to obtain them. The cook in the Warlock household had neither art nor science at her disposal, but as it happened old Mrs. Warlock lusted after very simple things. She loved rice-pudding; her heart beat fast in her breast when she thought of the brown crinkly skin of the rich warm milk of a true rice-pudding; also she loved hot buttered toast, very buttery so that it soaked your fingers; also beef-steak pudding with gravy rich and dark and its white covering thick and heavy; she also loved hot and sweet tea and the little cakes that Amy sometimes bought, red and yellow and pink, held in white paper—also plum-pudding, which, alas! only came at Christmastime and wedding-cake, which scarcely ever came at all.
This vice, of which she was almost triumphantly conscious as though it were a proof of her enduring vitality, she clutched eagerly to herself. She did not wish that any human being should perceive it. Of her husband she was not afraid—it would never possibly occur to him that food was of importance to any one; Amy might discover what she pleased, she was in strong alliance with her mother and would never betray her.
Her fear was of Martin. She feared very deeply his influence upon her husband. During Martin's absence she and Amy had managed very successfully to have the house as they wished it; John Warlock, the master, had been too deeply occupied with the affairs of the soul to be concerned also with the affairs of the body.
She had, she believed, exercised an increasing influence over him. She had always loved him with a fierce and selfish love, but now, when he was nearly seventy, and to both of them only a few years of earthly ambition could remain, she desired, with all the urgent ferocity of a human being through whose fingers the last sands of his opportunity are slipping, to seize and hold and have him entirely hers. He had always eluded her; although he had once certainly loved her with, at any rate, a semblance of earthly passion, his spiritual life had always come between them, holding him from her, helping him to escape when he pleased, tantalising, sometimes maddening too. She was certainly now not so ready to dismiss that spiritual life as once she had been. She was herself an old heathen; for herself she believed in nothing but her earthly appetites and desires, but for him and for others there might be something in it, ... and perhaps some day some dreadful thing would occur ... a chariot of Fire descend upon the Chapel and some sort of a fierce and hostile God deliver judgment; she only hoped that she would be dead before then.
Meanwhile she and Amy had, undoubtedly, during these last years, increased their influence over him. He was not aware of it, but as he was growing now older and weaker—he had had trouble with his heart—he inevitably depended more upon them. The old lady began to count upon her triumph. Then came Martin's return.
She had forgotten Martin. It is true that she had written to him every week during his long absence, but her letters had been all part of the "dear old lady" habit which was put on by her just as an actress prepares herself, nightly, for a character in which she knows she is the greatest possible success. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Smith ... No, we've not heard from Martin now for three weeks. Careless boy! I always write myself every week so that he may have at any rate one little word from home ..."
She had never felt that she had any real share in his life; he had always belonged to his father; nor was she a woman who cared about children. Martin had long ago become to her simply an opportunity for further decoration. Since his return it had been quite another affair. In one moment she had seen her power over her husband shrivel and disappear. Martin was home again. Martin must be here, Martin must be there; Martin must see this, Martin must do this. She had seen before in earlier days the force of her husband's passion when it was roused. There was something now in his reception of their son that terrified her. She had at once perceived that Amy was as deeply moved as she. The girl, plain, awkward, silent, morose, had always adored her father, but she had never known how to approach him. She was not clever, she had not been able to enter into his life although she would have done anything that he desired of her. What she had suffered during those early years when, as a little ugly girl, she had watched her brother, accepted, received into the Brotherhood, praised for his wisdom, his intimacy with God, his marvellous saintly promise, praised for these things when she had known all his weaknesses, how he had slipped away to a music-hall when he was only fourteen and smoked and drank there, how he had laughed at Mr. Thurston's dropping of his "h's" or at Miss Avies' prayer meetings! No one ever knew what in those years she had thought of her brother. Then, after Martin had flung it all away and escaped abroad, she had begun, slowly, painfully, but with dogged persistence, to make herself indispensable to her father; Martin she had put out of her mind. He would never return, or, at least, the interval of his departure should have been severe enough to separate him for ever from his father ...
In a moment's glance, in a clasp of the hand, in a flash of the eye, she had seen that love leap up in her father's heart as strong as ever it had been. Every day of Martin's residence in the house had added fire to that love. She was a good woman; she struggled hard to beat down her jealousy. She prayed. She lay for hours at night struggling with her sins. If Martin had been worthy, if he had shown love in return, but, from the bottom of her soul, as the days increased she despised him—despised him for his light heart, his care of worldly things, his utter lack of comprehension of their father, his scorn, even now but badly concealed, of all the sanctities that she had in reverence.
Therefore she drew near to her mother and the two of them watched and waited ...
His mother was knitting. She lifted to him her pink wrinkled face and, her spectacles balanced on the end of her nose, smiled the smile of the dearest old lady in the world.
"Well, dear, and have you had a pleasant day?"
"All right, mother, thank you. Funny thing; met a man in the street, hadn't seen for five years. Saw him last in Rio—Funny thing. Well, we lunched together. Not a bad fellow—Seen a thing or two, he has."
Mrs. Warlock counted her stitches. "Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen ... How nice for you, dear. What was his name?"
"Thompson ... I say," Martin suddenly raised his head as though he heard something, "where's Amy?"
"Changing. She's been paying a call on the Miss Cardinals. Thought it would be polite because of the new niece.—Six, seven, eight and nine..."
"What did she think of her?"
"Of whom, dear?"
"Of the niece."
"Oh, I don't think she liked her very much. She said that she was plain and silent—and looked cross, Amy thought."
"Oh yes, Amy would." His face, as was his way when he was vexed, flushed very slowly, the deeper red rising through the red-brown until, ceasing in the middle of his forehead, it left a white line beneath his hair. "She isn't cross a bit."
"I don't know, dear. It isn't my opinion. I only tell you what Amy said. People here don't seem to like her. Mrs. Smith was telling me yesterday that she's so difficult to talk to and seems to know nothing about anything, poor girl."
"Mrs. Smith!" He swung his body on his hips indignantly. "A lot she knows about anything! I hate that woman and her chattering daughter."
"Well, dear, I don't know, I'm sure; Mrs. Smith always seems to me very kind."
He looked at her as though he had suddenly remembered something.
"I say—is it true what Amy says, that I woke you up this morning when I went out by banging my door?"
"I'm sure you didn't.—Amy shouldn't say such things. And if you did what does it matter? I sleep so badly that half an hour more or less makes very little difference."
"Well, she says so—" He went on, dropping his voice: "I say, mother, what's the matter with Amy? Why's she so sick with me? I haven't done anything to offend her, have I?"
"Of course not. What a silly boy you are, Martin! Nine, ten, eleven ... There! that's enough for this evening. I'll finish it in another day. You mustn't mind Amy, Martin. She isn't always very well."
The door opened and Amy came in. She was a tall gaunt woman who looked a great deal older than her brother. She did not make the best of herself, brushing her thin black hair straight back from her bony forehead. She had a habit of half closing her eyes when she peered at some one as though she could not see. She should, long ago, have worn spectacles, but from some strange half-conscious vanity had always refused to do so. Every year her sight grew worse. She was wearing now a dress of black silk, very badly made, cut to display her long skinny neck and bony shoulders. She wore her clothes as though she struggled between a disdain for such vanities and a desire to appear attractive. Her manner of twisting her eyelids and wrinkling her nose gave her a peevish expression, but, behind that, there was a hint of pathos, a half-seen glimpse of a soul that desired friendship and affection. She was very tall and there was something masculine in the long angularity of her limbs. She offered a strange contrast to the broad and ruddy Martin. There was, however, something in the eyes of each—some sudden surprised almost visionary flash that came and went that showed them to be the children of the same father. To Mrs. Warlock they bore no resemblance whatever. Amy stopped when she saw her brother as though she had not expected him to be there.
"Well, Martin," she said—then came forward and sat in a chair opposite her mother.
"Mr. Thurston's coming to suppar," she said.
Martin frowned. "Oh, hang it, what for?" he cried.
"He's taking me to Miss Aries' Bible meeting," Amy answered coldly. "What a baby you are about people, Martin. I should have thought all your living abroad so much would have made you understanding. But you're like the rest. You must have every one cut to the same pattern."
Martin looked up for a moment as though he would answer angrily; then he controlled himself and said, laughing: "I suppose I have my prejudices like every one else. I daresay Thurston's a very good sort of fellow, but we don't like one another, and there's an end of it, Everybody can't like everybody, Amy—why, even you don't like every one."
"No, I don't," she answered shortly.
She looked for an instant at her mother. Martin caught the glance that passed between them, and suddenly the discomfort of which he had been aware as he stood, half an hour before, in the street, returned to him with redoubled force. What was the matter with everybody? What had he done?
"Well, I'll go and change," he said.
"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, dear," said his mother.
"I'll be in time all right," he said.
At the door he almost ran into Mr. Thurston. This gentleman had been described, on some earlier occasion, by an unfriendly observer as "the Suburban Savonarola." He was tall and extremely thin with a bony pointed face that was in some lights grey and in others white. He had the excited staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty, was plastered over his head in black shining streaks. He wore a rather faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie. He had a habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers. He had a very pronounced cockney accent when he was excited, at other times he struggled against this with some success.
He passed from brooding silences into sudden bursts of declamation with such abruptness that strangers thought him very eloquent. When he was excited the colour ran into his nose as though he had been drinking, and often his ears were red. His history was simple. The son of a small draper in Streatham, he had at an early age joined himself to an American Revivalist called Harper. When after some six years of successful enterprise Mr. Harper had been imprisoned for forgery, young William Thurston had attached himself to a Christian Science Chapel in Hoxton. Then, somewhere about 1897, he had met Miss Avies at a Revivalist Meeting in the Albert Hall and, fascinated by her ardent spirit, transferred his services to the Kingscote Brethren.
He had now risen to a position of great importance in the Chapel; it was known that he disagreed profoundly with his leader on some vital questions, and it was thought that he might at a later date definitely secede and conduct a party of his own.
Certainly he had exceptional energies and gifts of exhortation and invective not to be despised. Martin politely wished him "Good evening" and escaped to his room.
As he changed his clothes he tried to translate into definite facts his vague discomfort. One, he hated that swine Thurston. Two, Amy was vexed with him (What strange impossible creatures women were!). Third—and by far the most important of them all—his father wanted to talk to him. He knew very well that this talk had been preparing for him ever since his return from abroad. He dreaded it. Oh! he dreaded it most horribly!
He loved his father but with a love that had in it elements of fear, timidity, every possible sort of awkwardness. Moreover he was helpless. Ever since that first day when as a tiny child of four or five he had awakened to behold that figure, enormous in a long night-shirt, summoning God in the middle of the night with a candle flickering fantastic shadows on to the wall behind them, Martin had been weak as putty in his father's hands. Against other men he could stand up; against that strange company of fears, affections, superstitions, shadowy terrors, dim expectations that his father presented to him he could do nothing.
Well—that conversation had to come some time. He must show that he was a man now, moulded by the world with his own beliefs, purposes, resolves. But if he did not love him, how much easier it would be!
When he went downstairs he found the old man in the little pink drawing-room—he looked tired and worn. Martin remembered with alarm the things that he had heard recently about his father's heart. He glanced up and the older man's hand fastened on his shoulder; they stood there side by side. After a few minutes they all went in to supper.
Mr. Thurston's nose was flushed with the success of the mission from which he had just returned. He had been one of a number whose aim it had been during the preceding week to bring light and happiness into the lives of the inhabitants of Putney. They had been obviously appreciated, as the collection for the week had amounted to between seventy and eighty pounds. A proper share of this fine result Mr. Thurston naturally appropriated to his own efforts. His long tapering fingers were not so clean as they might have been, but this did not prevent him from waving them in the air and pointing them at imaginary Putney citizens whom he evoked in support of his statements.
"We 'ad a reelly thumpin' meeting on Thursday—Town Hall—One for the women in the small 'all hand one for the men in the Main Hall. Almost no opposition you might say, and when it came to the Hymn singing it fairly took the roof off. A lot of 'em stopped afterwards—one lad of eighteen or so is coming over to us 'ere. Butcher's apprentice. Says 'e's felt the Lord pressing him a long way back but the flesh held him. Might work him up into a very useful lad with the Lord's help. Thank you, Mrs. Warlock, I will try a bit more of that cold beef if you don't mind. Pretty place, Putney. Ever been there, Mr. Warlock? Ah, you should go—"
Amy Warlock listened with the greatest interest; otherwise, it must be confessed, Mr. Thurston's audience was somewhat inattentive. Mr. Warlock's mind was obviously elsewhere; he passed his hand through his beard, his eyes staring at the table-cloth. Mr. Thurston, noticing this, tried another topic.
"What 'ave you heard, Mrs. Warlock, about the new Miss Cardinal? I 'aven't seen her yet myself."
Mrs. Warlock, who had just given herself a little piece of beef, some potato and some spinach, and was arranging these delicacies with the greatest care upon her plate, just smiled without raising her eyes. Amy answered—
"I've seen her. I was there this afternoon. I can't say that I found her very interesting. Plain-ugly in fact. She never opened her mouth all the afternoon. Caroline Smith tells me that she knows nothing at all, seen nothing, been nowhere. Bad-tempered I should think."
"Dear, dear," said Mr. Thurston with a gratified sigh, "is it so reelly?"
Martin looked across at his sister indignantly. "Trust one woman about another," he said. "Just because she doesn't chatter like a magpie you concluded she's got nothing to say. It's even conceivable that she found you dull, Amy."
Amy looked at him with a strange penetrating glance that in some undefined way increased his irritation. "It's quite possible," she said quietly. "But I don't think even you, Martin, can call her handsome. As to her intelligence, she never gave me a chance of judging."
"I've been there several times," said Martin hotly. "I like her immensely." He felt as soon as he had spoken that it had been a foolish thing to say. He saw Mr. Thurston smile. In the pause that followed he felt as though he had with a gesture of the hand flung a stone into a pool of chatter and scandal whose ripples might spread far beyond his control. At that moment he hated his sister.
"I didn't know you knew her so well, dear," said his mother.
"I don't know her," he said, "I've only seen her three times. But she ought to be given her chance. It can't be much fun for her coming here where she knows no one—after her father suddenly dying. I believe she was all alone with him."
He had expected his father to defend her. He remembered that he had apparently liked her. But his father said nothing. There was an awkward and uncomfortable pause. After supper Mr. Thurston rubbed his hands, helped Amy Warlock into her cloak, said to the company in general:
"Good night. Should be a very full meeting to-night ... Well, well ... Thank you for your kindness, Mrs. Warlock, I'm sure."
The door was closed, Mrs. Warlock retired into her bedroom; the house was left to Martin and his father.
Mr. Warlock's room was hideous. It opened, somewhat ironically, out of Mrs. Warlock's pink drawing-room. A huge and exceedingly ugly American roll-top desk took up much of the room. There were bookshelves into which books had been piled. Commentaries on the Bible, volumes of sermons, pamphlets, tattered copies of old religious magazines. A bare carpet displayed holes and rents. The fireplace was grim with dirty pieces of paper and untidy shavings. In the midst of this disorder there hung over the mantelpiece, against the faded grey wall-paper, a fine copy of Raphael's "Transfiguration." Mr. Warlock lighted a candle and the flame flickered with changing colours upon the picture's surface. It had been given to John Warlock many years before by an old lady who heard him preach and had been, for a week, converted, but on his demand that she should give her wealth to the poor and fling aside her passion for Musical Comedy, left him with indignation. The picture had remained; it hung there now crooked on its cord.
John Warlock was unconscious of the dust and disorder that surrounded him. His own passion for personal cleanliness sprang from the early days with his father, to whom bodily cleanliness had been part of a fanatical mysticism. Partly also by reason of that early training, sloth, drunkenness, immorality, had no power over him. And of the whole actual world that surrounded him he was very little conscious except that he hated towns and longed always for air and space.
So that the windows were open one room was to him as another.
He had often, during his work with the members of his community, been conscious of his ignorance of the impulses and powers that went up to make the ordinary sensual physical life of the normal man. His own troubles, trials, failures were so utterly of another kind that in this other world his imagination refused to aid him. This had often deeply distressed him and made him timid and shy in his dealings with men and women. It was this, more than anything else, that held him back from the ambition to proselytise. How could he go forth and challenge men's souls when he could not understand nor feel their difficulties? More and more as his years advanced had he retired into himself, into his own mystical world of communion with a God who drew ever nearer and nearer to him. He humbled himself before men; he did not believe himself better than they because he had not yielded to their temptations; but he could not help them; his tongue was tied; he was a man cut off from his fellows and he knew it.
He had never felt so impatient of his impotence as he did to-night. For ten years he had been waiting for this interview with his son, and now that it was come he was timid and afraid as though he had been opposed by a stranger. He had always known that Martin would return. It had been his one worldly ambition and prayer to have him at his side again. When he had thought and dreamt of the time that was coming, he had thought that it would be simple enough to win the boy back to the old allegiance and faith to which he had once been bound. Meanwhile the boy had grown into a man; here was a new Martin deep in experiences, desires, ambitions of which his father could have no perception. Even in the moment that he was aware of the possibility of losing his son he was aware also of the deep almost fanatical resolve to keep him, to hold him at all costs.
This was to be the test of his whole earthly life. He seemed, as he sat there, looking across at his boy, to challenge God Himself to take him from him. It was as though he said:
"This reward at least I have a right to ask. I demand it ..."
Martin, on his side, was conscious of a profound discomfort. He had, increasingly as the years had passed, wished to take life easily and pleasantly. Suddenly now another world rose up before him. Yes, another world. He was not fool enough to dismiss it simply because it did not resemble his own. Moreover it had been once his, and this was increasingly borne in upon him. But it all seemed to him now incredibly old, childish and even fantastic, as though here, in the middle of London, he had suddenly stepped into a little wood with a witch, a cottage and a boiling cauldron. Such things could not frighten, of course—he was no longer a child—and yet because he had once been frightened some impression of alarm and dismay hovered over him.
During all his normal years abroad he had forgotten the power of superstition, of dreams and omens; he knew now, as he faced his father, that the power was real enough.
They talked for a little while of ordinary things; the candle flame jumped and fell, the shavings rustled strangely in the fireplace, the "Transfiguration" swung a little on its cord, the colour still lingering at its heart as the rest of the room moved restlessly under the ebb and flow of black shadows. Then the candle suddenly blew out.
"A lamp will be better," said Mr. Warlock.
He left the room and Martin sat there, in the darkness, haunted by he knew not what anticipations. The light was brought, they drew closer together, sitting in the little glossy pool, the room pitch dark around them.
"Well, Martin," at last Mr. Warlock said, "I want to hear so many things. Our first time together alone."
"There isn't very much," Martin tried to speak naturally and carelessly. "I wrote about most things in my letters. Pretty rotten letters I'm afraid." He laughed.
"And now—what do you intend to do now?"
"Oh, I don't know—Look around for a bit."
There was another long pause. Then Mr. Warlock began again. "When I ask about your life, my boy, I don't mean where you've lived, how you've earned your living—I do know all that—you've been very good about writing. But your real life, what you've been thinking about things, how you feel about everything ..."
"Well, father—I don't know. One hadn't much time for thinking, you know. No one did much thinking in Rio. When I was in the Bermudas there was a fellow ..."
"Yes, but tell me about yourself."
Then, with a desperate effort, he broke out:
"Father, you'll be badly disappointed in me. I've been feeling it coming all the time. I can't help it. I'm just like any one else. I want to have a good time. One's only young once. I'm awfully sorry. I want to please you in any way I can, but—but—it's all gone—all that early part. It's simply one's childhood that's finished with."
"And it can't come back?" his father said quietly.
"Never!" Martin's voice was almost a cry as though he were defying something.
"We are very weak against God's will," his father said, still quietly as though it were not he that was speaking but some voice in the shadow behind him. "You are not your own master, Martin."
"I am my own master," Martin answered passionately. "I have been my own master for ten years. I've not done anything very fine with my life, I know. I'm just like any one else—but I've found my feet. I can look after myself against anybody and I'm independent—of every one and of everything."
His father drew a little closer to him.
"Of course," he said, "I was not so foolish as to expect that you would come back to us just as you left us. I know that you must have your own life—and be free—so much as any of us are free at all ..." Then after a little pause. "What are your plans? What are you going to do?"
"Well," answered Martin, hesitating, "I haven't exactly settled, you know. I might take a small share in some business, go into the City. Then at other times I feel I shouldn't like being cooped up in a town after the life I've led. Sometimes, this last month, I've felt I couldn't breathe. It was though, are you, all the chimneys were going to tumble in. When you're out on a field you know where you are, don't you? So I've thought it would be nice to have a little farm somewhere in the South, Devonshire or Glebeshire ... And then I'd marry of course, a girl who'd like that kind of life and wouldn't find it dull. There'd be plenty of work—a healthy life for children right away from these towns ... That's my sort of idea, father, but of course one doesn't know ..."
Martin trailed off into inconsequent words. It was as though his father were waiting for him to commit himself and would then suddenly leap upon him with "There! Now, you've betrayed yourself. I've caught you—" and he had simply nothing to betray, nothing to conceal.
But anything was better than these pauses during which the threats and anticipations piled up and up, making a monstrous figure out of exactly nothing at all.
It was not enough to tell himself that between every father and son there were restraints and hesitations, a division cleft by the remembrance of the time when one had commanded and the other obeyed. There were other elements here—for one the element of an old affection that had once been at the very root of the boy's soul and was now in the strangest way creeping back to him, as an old familiar, but forgotten form might creep out of the dark and sit at his feet and clasp his knees.
"Well," said John Warlock. "That's very pleasant. You must feel very grateful to your aunt Rachel, Martin; she's given you the opportunity of doing what you like with your life. She spoke to me about it before she died."
"She spoke to you about it?"
"Yes. She told me that she did it because she wanted to bring you back to me. She knew of my love for you. We often talked of you together. She was a faithful servant of God. She believed that God meant to bring you, through her, back into His arms."
"I might not have come," Martin said with a sudden anger that surprised himself. "She made no conditions. I might have gone on with my life there abroad. I am free to lead my own life where and how I please."
"Quite free." His father answered gently. "But she knew that you would come. Of course you are your own master, Martin—"
"No, but it must be quite clear," Martin cried, the excitement rising in him as he spoke. He leaned forward almost touching his father's chair. "I'm not bound to any one by this money. It was awfully jolly of Aunt Rachel. I'll never forget her—but I'm free. I haven't got to say that I believe things when I don't, or that I think things that she thought just because she did ... I don't want to hurt you, father, but you know that it must have seemed to me pretty odd coming back after all these years and finding you, all in the same place, doing the same things, believing in the same things—just like years ago. I've seen the world a bit, I can tell you—Russia, China, Japan, America, North and South, India. You believe as far as you can see. What are you to think when, in every country that you come to, you see people believing in different things? They can't all be right, you know."
His father said nothing.
"But each thinks he's right—and each hates the other. Then, when I came back and saw a fellow like that man Thurston preaching and laying down the law, well, it seemed odd enough that any one could be taken in by it. I hope I don't hurt you, father ... only that's what you want, isn't it ... to have it out quite plainly? ..."
His father, still very gently and hesitating as though he found it difficult to catch the words that he wished (his voice had still the remoteness of some one speaking, who was far from them both), said:
"You'll think it odd, Martin, when you know how often I have to preach and speak in public, that I should find it hard to talk—but I never, with any man alone, could find words easily. I know so little. It is God's punishment for some selfish nervousness and shyness in me, that even now when I am an old man I cannot speak as one man to another. There was once, I remember, a young man who had heard me preach and was moved by my words and begged to see me in private. He came one evening; he was tempted to commit a terrible sin. He depended upon me to save him and I could say nothing. I struggled, I prayed, but it was incredible to me that any man could be tempted to such a thing. I spoke only conventional words that meant nothing. He went away from me, and his lost soul is now upon me and will always be ... but, Martin, what I would say beyond everything is—do not let us separate. Be free as you must be free, as you should be free—but stay with me—remain with me. I am an old man; I have longed for you as I think no other father can ever have longed for his son. They tell me that I cannot live many more years. God chooses His time. Be with me, Martin, for a little while even though I may seem old to you and foolish. Perhaps things will come back to you that you have long forgotten. You were once pledged and it was a vow that is not easily removed—but it is enough for the present if you will be with me a little, give me some of your time—give the old days a chance to come back." He laid his hand upon his son's.
The sudden touch of the dry, hot, trembling skin filled Martin's heart with the strangest confusion of affection, embarrassment and some familiar pathos. In just that way ten years before he had felt his father's hand and had thought: "How old he's getting! ... How I shall miss him! ... I hope nothing happens to him!" In the very balance of his father's sentences and the deliberate choice of words there had been something old-fashioned and remote from all the life and scramble of Martin's recent years. Now he took his father's hand in his own strong grasp and said gruffly:
"That's all right, father ... I'm not going while you want me ... You and I ... always ... it's just the same now."
But even as he spoke he felt as though he were giving some pledge that was to involve him in far more than he could see before him. Then, with a happy sense that the sentimental part of the conversation was over, he began to talk about all kinds of things. He let himself go and even, after a while, began to feel the whole thing really jolly and pleasant. His father wanted waking up. He had been here so long, with all these awful frumps, brooding over one idea, never getting away from this Religion.
Martin began to imagine himself very cleverly leading his father into a normal natural life, taking him to see things, making him laugh; it would do his health a world of good.
Then, quite suddenly, the old man said:
"And what do you remember, Martin, of the old days here, the days when you were quite small, when we lived in Mason Street?"
What did Martin remember? He remembered a good deal. He was surprised when he began to think ... "Did he remember ..." his father suggested a scene, a day—yes, he remembered that. His father continued, as though it had been for his own pleasure.
The scenes, the hours returned with a vividness and actuality that thronged the room.
He could see Mason Street with its grocer's shop at the corner, its Baths and Public Library, the sudden little black dips into the areas as the houses followed one another, the lamp-post opposite their window that had always excited him because it leaned inwards a little as though it would presently tumble. He remembered the fat short cook with the pink cotton dress who wheezed and blew so when she had to climb the stairs. He remembered the rooms that would seem bare enough to him now, he supposed, but were then filled with exciting possibilities—a little round brown table, his mother's work-box with mother-of-pearl shells upon the cover, a stuffed bird with bright blue feathers under a glass case, a screen with coloured pictures of battles and horses and elephants casted upon it. He remembered the exact sound that the tinkling bell made when it summoned them to meals, he remembered the especial smell of beef and carpet that was the dining-room, he remembered a little door of coloured glass on the first landing, a cupboard that had in it sugar and apples, a room full of old books piled high all about the floor upon the dry and dusty boards ... a thousand other things came crowding around him.
Then, as his father's voice continued, out from the background there came his own figure, a small, pale, excited boy in short trousers.
He was immensely excited—that was the principal thing. It was evening, the house seemed to swim in candlelight and smoke through which things could be seen only dimly.
Something wonderful was about to happen to him. He was in a state of glory, very close to God, so close that he could almost see Him sitting with His long white beard in the middle of a cloud, watching Martin with interest and affection. He was pleased with Martin and Martin was pleased with himself. At the same time as his pleasure he was aware that the stuff of his new black trousers tickled his knees and that he was hungry.
He saw his small sister Amy for a moment and expressed quite effectively by a smile and nod of the head his immeasurable superiority to her ...
They, he and his father, drove in a cab to the Chapel. Of what followed then he was now less aware. He remembered that he was in a small room with two men, that they all took off their clothes (he remembered that one man, very stout and red, looked funny without his clothes), that they put on long white night-shirts, that his was too long for him and that he tripped over it, that they all three walked down the centre of the Chapel, which was filled with eyes, mouths and boots, and that he was very conscious of his toe-nails, which had never been exposed in public before, that they came to a round stone place filled with water and into this after the two men he was dipped, that he didn't scream from the coldness, of the water although he wanted to, that he was wrapped in a blanket and finally carried home in an ecstasy of triumph.
What happiness followed! The vitality of it swept down upon him now, so that he seemed never to have lived since then. He was the chosen of God and every one knew it. What a little prig and yet how simple it had all been, without any consciousness of insincerity or acting on his part. God had chosen him and there he was, for ever and ever safe and happy.
It was not only that he was assured that when the moment arrived he would have, in Heaven, a "good time"—it was that he was greatly exalted, so that he gave his twopence a week pocket-money to his school-fellows, never pulled Amy's hair, never teased his mother's canary. He had been aware, young though he was, of another life. He prayed and prayed, he went to an endless succession of services and meetings. There was Mr. Bates, one of the leading brethren then, who loved him and spoilt him ... above all, through and beyond it all, there was his father, who adored him and whom he adored.
That adoration—of God, of his father, of life itself! Was it possible that a small boy, normal and ordinary enough in other ways, could feel so intensely such passions?
The dark room was crowding him with figures and scenes. A whole world that he had thought dead and withered was beating—urgently, insistently, upon his consciousness.
In another instant he did not know what surrender, what acknowledgement he might have made. It seemed to him that nothing in life was worth while save to receive again, in some fashion, that vitality that he had once known.
The door was flung open; a stream of light struck the dark; the shadows, memories, fled, helter-skelter, like crackling smoke into the air.
Amy stood in the doorway, blinking at him, scowling. He knew, for some undefined reason, that he could not meet his father's eyes. He jumped up and walked to the window.
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