Devil's Tor (36 page)

"Is this history?"

"Yes, it is history. There was the Dark Age after the downfall of Rome; but there was also the Dark Age dating from the destruction of this palace of Knossos. … It should have been as splendid, and as horrible, as the combustion of dead suns in collision, with the slow, tortured emergence from their gases and elements of another luminary, more fiercely glorious than either of the old. It should have been, I suppose, as brimful of human brutality, cruelty, shocking anguish and hellishness of every kind, as all the succeeding centuries—twice as many—lumped, until the coming of that second Dark Age introducing mediæval Europe. And yet both have been periods of regeneration. From the earlier shaped itself the Greek and Roman world; from the later, our modern group of Western nations."

He went on:

"Perhaps,
pace
the public optimists of the newspaper press, still one more Dark Age is nearly due. I don't know what you are in politics or outlook. It does seem to me that mankind is once again becoming brown and monkey-like, childish, malicious, chattering, and unspiritual, after having twice been raised to a height by the invading hordes of yellow-haired giants from the north. The Goths, Vandals, Franks, Saxons, were one such flood, the Achæns and Dorians another. Achilles was as yellow haired and blue-eyed as Hengist. I myself am dark, so have no bias in dwelling on this extraordinary ennobling quality in savages outwardly merely bloody-minded and greedy. … And it goes deeper. For it is usual to speak of the vigour of those northern invaders—as if the men they displaced were effete. The subdued peoples, in a number of cases at least, were entirely vigorous in the arts and sciences, in practical constructional work, in law-making, and civic pursuits generally; only they were unwarlike. And still, but for those successive bands of furious blue-eyed potential lords, and kings, and feudal landowners, the temples of Greece and the Gothic cathedrals could never have arisen. A spiritual germ was under all that horror of throat-cutting and ravishing.

"No otherwise, Mr. Saltfleet, may our modern culture, surpassing though we think it, stand in invisible need of impregnation by yet new yellow-haired barbarians, could they anywhere be found. Strange fresh churches to the All-High, not inferior in sublimity to those of the grand classical and Gothic religious architects, would certainly spring up. … There might be losses too." He sighed. … "In Knossos here, for example, it was little that men were killed a few years before their natural term by the shipborne Achaeans from the mainland, that wives and daughters were carried shrieking off to shame and slavery, or that the palace was left to be licked to its bones, by the monstrous flames; but that an ancient faith of very singular beauty and truth should be so thoroughly extirpated, that in its peculiar home and sanctuary nearly the sole explicit record of its existence should be represented by this scrap of paper in my pocket—that is the tragedy!"

"I think you are a poet, Mr. Arsinal."

"No, no! ... For a poet wills to feel, while my feelings are painful and extorted. I am an overstrained and not strong man. I have undertaken the ploughing of a field perhaps past my strength. … I seek a primaeval Golden Age, that possibly has never been. It begins to appear that
always
have existed these persons of mundane mind and communal tendencies in charge of the affairs of the day. It discourages me. … I have not wished to believe that this ancient earth has always been governed by the unimaginative-sane of the human race, knowing just what they wanted, wanting nothing impossible of attainment, steadily going forward to get it, constructing indifferently aqueducts, castles, pots, glass beads, dresses, edicts, with the greatest talent and energy... true instinctives, impelled by much the same processes as ants, bees and spiders. I have wished to believe that the vulgar noon was preceded by a wild dawn. … Further, I have wished to think that the inherited memory of that dawn afflicts the souls of more of us than outward signs suggest. I have wished to think that it may be responsible for much so-called
failure.

"But I don't feel myself competent to decide who in this world is a failure, and who a success. I will even say that the validity of such a classifying of the moral judgment is inadmissible, since, religiously speaking, a man can neither succeed nor fail; he can, I suppose, only approach to or recede from the Godhead. But that must mean that the values of the world are wrong. We are like domestic fowls, picking up crumbs amid, glorious scenery. In that sense, the fowl that picks up the largest number of crumbs may be called the most successful.

"So, this standpoint of mine being taken as the foundation, Mr. Saltfleet, can you suggest to me a more profitable work—I won't say, a more socially-useful, or a more charitable, work—than the one I am engaged upon, namely, the restoration, if it be possible, of a deity who in many respects already appears holier and milder than anything before Christ—I won't hesitate to add, than Christ himself? For the Mother, I am aware, has by no means always been conceived as such a type of everything that is loveliest in womanhood, but the terror of her power has sometimes predominated in savage intelligences, and she has even been made to be an obscene lover of blood and devourer of children. A creed, however, must be judged by its highest, not its lowest, and what I myself have seen in a vision has taught me for all time how the finest and noblest of mankind may anciently have represented her. I ask again, then. It isn't for me to recast a religion, but even were my quest purely egoistic, should I in your opinion be more importantly employed, for instance, in running a factory or newspaper, or voting after my leader in Parliament?"

"Instead of answering the unanswerable, may I rather put a question of my own?"

"Do so."

"Knossos, I understand you, was destroyed by the wild ancestors, just arrived from the north, of the classical Greeks, who were a blue-eyed and fair-haired race. Its religion of the Mother-Goddess was destroyed with it, though it may have survived elsewhere. But then, how came it that the best of human stocks failed to adopt this best of human worships, so ready to their hand? Or am I inquiring something stupid?"

"A pirate, holding in his hand a sword dripping blood, is scarcely in a condition to be converted to any creed; but afterwards was too late. In Asia the worship of the Mother degenerated rapidly to orgies unworthy of fighting-men, and had it not been so, the Greeks themselves too quickly went to pieces in a climate unsuited to northerners."

"You have a fancy that it may be in Tibet—your stone?

"It is one of half-a-dozen places that I have my eye upon."

"But for the other places you don't need my company?"

Saltfleet subconsciously made of the reply to this query a test. Should Arsinal agree to have him for these unnecessary trips as well, or should he make false excuses for not wanting him, he felt that somehow he would still be disappointed in the man. His conception of his character at the present stage of their acquaintance was that under all circumstances he would pursue the unhesitating straight line to his ends, regardless of opposing claims, whether of friendship, or honour, or social duty. Apart from such a backbone of strength, Saltfleet did not particularly wish to know him. And therefore he found himself hoping for the rebuff, and was more than content with its actual uncompromising emphasis.

"I invited you to Tibet," said Arsinal, "because you know the country, and I don't. But the other visits are to be to districts of the Asiatic Near East with which I am possibly even more intimate than yourself. I have been there often enough, and am acquainted with the language, the people, and the travelling facilities. I am to investigate in the ancient Phrygia, Galatia, Lydia, and Caria. Your society, I tell you at once, Mr. Saltfleet, would be a pleasure, but also a nuisance. When I am upon a clue, I am frequently unapproachable. And so we will leave it at that."

Saltfleet shrugged a shoulder through the darkness, and smiled.

"As you like. You are leaving here immediately, I take it?"

"There is now no more for me to do here, and I shall be off to-morrow."

"Then I too. … But tell me. Your stone—will you recognise it when you see it? Do you know its appearance at all?"

"I am not sufficiently advanced to have met with any description of it; and yet it should contain its own evidences of authenticity. I have no alarms on that account."

"And having found it...?"

"If, as I assume, it is the half of a broken whole, I should next have to seek its fellow."

"In the west?"

"Yes."

"You will need to be immortal, pretty well!" laughed Saltfleet. "Decidedly, I chose an easier job than yours, in climbing mountains!"

"Since you introduce that, may I hazard that you have
not
yet found your true work, Mr. Saltfleet?"

"Indeed!"

"Go on scaling heights, and imbibing purity; but still, you cannot be in the world for that. I have a trick of faces. This is not impertinence? ... You should be a leader of men, rather. Do you know your stock?"

"As well as another. I have a good bit of your admirable northern blood in me, from both sides—though where to lay my hand on an unemployed swarm of yellow-haired savages waiting for direction, I can't quite tell!"

"No, I am not so mad as that," returned Arsinal, with a whimsical smile. "I only mean, it is remarkable how your personality has impressed me in our two or three talks. To no other person have I ever opened myself so freely. I have heard it said that with each two conversing individuals there is a superior and an inferior; but this surely cannot apply to us. I have the reposeful attitude to you as to a beautiful equal."

"We are both rather proud, I judge," had been Saltfleet's comment on that, "so if this coming-together of ours has really been destined, it was perhaps a
sine qua non
it should start from equality. There are only two virtues that I make a point of practising. One is disinterestedness, and the other is magnanimity. They are half-brothers. If you have them too, we may go through without quarrelling."

"In any case, we shall not quarrel," had said the other, closing the conversation, "for I shall always be too employed, and you, unless I am hopelessly out in my reading of your lines, too disdainful of the customary bones of contention."...

Saltfleet entered upon the moor, and ceased his reminiscences. Hardly anything was to be seen; merely the rocks, turf, gorse, ferns and heather within a circle of a few yards, all appearing grey and wet. The fog had become very thick. He turned up his coat-collar, while reflecting unpleasantly that from now onwards his chances of striking Drapier were extremely small.

At some time after twelve he reached the shoulder of the hill that faced the invisible Tor. Sensing that his destination lay beyond the dip at his feet, he began the descent, regardless of the slope's small slippery perils. At the bottom he crossed the stream, and at once met the beginning of the rockier steep, which could but be Devil's Tor itself. Without pause he went up, but never arrived at the top.

That girl's mention of a shattering of rocks had stayed in his mind, and, looming through the fog that here was nearly solid, there came to him, one after the other, two giant blocks which, as he passed by, he could distinguish were newly poised. It was the confirmation for him that he was on the right hill. Then, however, a third stone monster increased to darkness and definition—and something in connection with it moved him suddenly to run up towards what he saw. Underneath the granite mass appeared spread out the froglike figure of a lying man. …

The man's face was to the ground, and he was fairly pinned... probably dead. … The colour of his hair was red. So had been Drapier's—it must be he. His form was quite still and stiff; the face entirely hidden.

Saltfleet stood by, reflecting how to dislodge the block without causing further hurt; though, indeed, the tragedy obviously was consummated. The only way was to shove it off the victim's back forcibly, further downhill. …

It needed less exertion than he had supposed. The great rock thudded away through the fog, out of sight, towards the valley. He gently lifted the head a few inches in order to identify the face. Yes, it was Drapier's—but its colour was grey, and the eyes were glazed in death. The expression was not terrified, but stern. … Saltfleet then tested the heart, though only as a matter of form. There was no whisper of a beat. The dead man had spilt little blood.

He stood up, to rehearse what now he had to do. The first thing, of course, was for the body to be fetched down—but he thought not to the house. There was that young Miss Fleming there, and her mother. Dunn, of the "Bell", must suggest a place; and attend to the whole business. The news need not be broken to the women till he was brought down and things were decently fixed..

While he continued meditatively to eye the tragical form at his feet, he came to regard it as queer that the right hand should be clenched. It entered his consciousness that the action was unnatural. A man struck from behind, and falling forward, should have the instinct to open his fingers. … His perplexity became a curiosity to learn if the fist were empty or held something. …

Afterwards, however, he could not determine whether his identification of the thing recovered had been preceded by an inspiration of the fact, or had been completely unexpected on his first glimpse behind those prised-open fingers. It was Arsinal's stone. Only once before had he held it in his hand, but, finding it where he now did, there could be no mistake about it. Standing up again, he gazed at it on his own open palm for several blank seconds, and thought it the most astonishing solution of his difficulty. …

He slipped it into his pocket. There was nothing more to do on the spot.

He covered the dead man's head; then, having glanced at his watch, set off quickly down the hillside, to get back to the village.

It was after one o'clock when Saltfleet passed through the hotel entrance of the "Bell" and sought Dunn in his office.