The Place of the Lion (24 page)

It hung, and after many centuries it opened out, floating nearer, and within it was the earth itself. That which had been but a point resolved itself into a web of speeding and interwoven colours of so many tones that he could but recognize one here and there. He saw a golden Lion against that background, and again a Butterfly of sprinkled azure, and a crimson Phœnix and a white Lamb, and others which he could not know, so swift were the transmutations. But always the earth—already he could distinguish it, with masses of piling waters heaped back from the dry land between—was in the very forefront of whatever creature showed itself. Presently it hid them altogether, hid even the web of colour, though very dimly within it he could still see the pulsations of the glories. They were not to be denied; they thrust out from it; darkened and in strange shapes. If he had been among them—some million-year-old memory woke in his brain—
when
he had been among them, with undeveloped brain and hardly lit spirit, they had gone about him as terrifying enemies—the pterodactyl and the dinosaur, Behemoth and Leviathan. It was not until man began to know them by the spiritual intellect that they were minimized to his outer sight; it was to those who were in process of degrading intellect and spirit that, mentally or actually, they appeared again, in those old, huge, and violent shapes. When the holy imagination could behold them in forms yet nearer their true selves, even the present animal appearances would disappear; the Angelicals would be known as Angelicals, and in the idea of Man all ideas would be at one: then man would know himself. For then the Lion would not be without the Lamb. It was the Lamb of which he was again aware, aware vaguely of Damaris and Quentin somewhere at hand. His thought returned to his friend. Was Quentin to be exposed already to the full blast of those energies? what were Damaris and he doing but trying to redeem him from them? Nay, what else had he been trying to do for Damaris herself? Some dispensation of the Mercy had used him for that purpose, to moderate, by the assumption of his natural mind into living knowledge, the danger that threatened his lover and his friend.

His friend. The many moments of joy and deep content which their room had held had in them something of the nature of holy innocence. There had been something in them which was imparted, by Love to love, and which had willed to save them now. Much was possible to a man in solitude; perhaps the final transmutations and achievements in the zones on the yonder side of the central Knowledge were possible only to the spirit in solitude. But some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these the most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly. Only in such a balance could humility be found, humility which was a lucid speed to welcome lucidity whenever and wherever it presented itself. How much he owed to Quentin! how much—not pride but delight urged the admission—Quentin owed to him! Balance—and movement in balance, as an eagle sails up on the wind—this was the truth of life, and beauty in life.

But if so—and unconsciously he turned now from the window and wandered back through that place of friendship to the chair he most commonly used—if so, what of the world of men under this visitation? He thought first of Damaris's father, but also of the struggle in Dora Wilmot's house. One was in some sense beautiful—the other had been horrible; but even that first entire submission and absorption, was it quite the perfect end? This abandonment, awe-inspiring as it had been, surely lacked something; would the great classic poets have desired it for a conclusion? If man was perfectly to know.… And if Mr. Tighe had subordinated himself to one Idea, were not those others in process of being subordinated, each by an Idea to itself? And for others still, what awaited them but thunder, earthquake, terror, chaos—the destruction of patterns and the blasting of purposes?

Unthinkingly he put out his hand to the cigarette box which Quentin had given him one Christmas; given both of them, as he had himself pointed out, in remarking on the superior nature of his own present, which had been a neat kind of pocket-book and therefore an entirely personal gift. But Quentin had maintained that the cigarette box, as being of greater good to a greater number, had been nearer to the ideal perfection of giving. “For,” he had argued, “to give to you a means by which you can give to others, is better than to give a merely private thing.”

“But,” Anthony had persisted, “in so far as you are one of those others—and likely to be the most persistent—you give to yourself and therefore altogether deprive the act of the principle of giving”; to which Quentin had retorted that he was included only as one of a number, and that the wise man would not deprive others of good because he himself might be a gainer. “Otherwise what about all martyrs, missionaries, and philanthropists?” And so the comedy had been played to its end.

The comedy—but this was no comedy; the fierceness of the Lion was no comedy, nor any of those other apparitions, unless the Lamb … The Lion and the Lamb—and a little child shall lead them. Lead them where? Even a little child was in its own mind presumably leading them somewhere. Or perhaps not, perhaps a little child would be content just to lead. The Lion and the Lamb—if this were the restored balance? Friendship—love—had something in it at once strong and innocent, leonine and lamblike. By friendship, by love, these great Virtues became delicately known. Apart from such love and friendship they were merely destructive and helpless; man was never meant to be subjected to them, unless by the offering up of his being to “divine Philosophy.” In that very chair he had been mocked by Foster for hoping to rule the principles of creation, and he had answered that he had promised to do
everything
to help Damaris. How far such a profound intention sufficed to rule those principles he did not know—more perhaps than man normally thought. The balance in things—the Lion and the Lamb, the Serpent and the Phœnix, the Horse and the Unicorn: ideas as they were visualized and imagined—if these could be led … if …

He could not clearly understand what suggestion was being made to him. But an intense apprehension of the danger in which many besides Quentin were grew within him, a danger brought about by the disorder which had been introduced. He could not honestly say that in any sense he loved these others, unless indeed love were partly a process of willing good to them. That he was determined to do, and perhaps this willing of good meant restoration. By order man ascended; what was it that St. Francis had written? “Set Love in order, thou that lovest Me.” First for Quentin and then for all the rest.

So gradually abandoning himself to the purpose of the great Power that lived in him, he sat on. If the Eagle was to be served the Eagle must show him how to serve. In this place of friendship, among the expositions and symbols of friendship, he was filled with the intention of friendship. Quentin was not here, but here they had been received by the knowledge of good, by comparison with which only evil could be known. Friendship was one, but friends were many; the idea was one, but its epiphanies many. One winged creature—but many, many flights of birds. The sparrows in the garden outside his window—and the brown thrushes that sought in it sometimes—the blackbird and the starling—the pigeons of the Guildhall and the gulls of the Thames—the pelicans of St. James and the ridiculous penguins of the Zoo—herons in shallow waters—owls screaming by night—nightingales, skylarks, robin redbreasts—a kingfisher out beyond Maidenhead—doves and crows—ravens—the hooded falcons of pageantry—pheasants—peacocks magnificently scornful—migrating swallows of October—migrating—migrating—birds of paradise—parrots skrieking in the jungles of India—vultures tearing the bodies in the sands of Africa—flight after flight went by. He knew them in the spiritual intellect, and beheld by their fashioned material bodies the mercy which hid in matter the else overwhelming ardours; man was not yet capable of naked vision. The breach between mankind and the angelicals must be closed again; “a little child should lead them”—back. The lion should lie down with the lamb. Separately they had issued—strength divorced from innocence, fierceness from joy. They must go back together; somehow they must be called. Adam, long since—so the fable ran—standing in Eden had named the Celestials which were brought into existence before him. Their names—how should Anthony Durrant know their names, or by what title to summon again the lion and the serpent? Yet even in Anthony Durrant the nature of Adam lived. In Adam there had been perfect balance, perfect proportion: in Anthony——?

He was lying back, very still, in his chair. His desire went inwards, through a universe of peace, and hovered, as if on aquiline pinions, over the moment when man knew and named the powers of which he was made. Vast landscapes opened beneath him; laughter rang up towards him. Among the forests he saw a great glade, and in the glade wandered a solitary lamb. It was alone—for a moment or for many years; and then from the trees there came forth a human figure and stood also in the sun. With its appearance a mighty movement everywhere began. A morning of Light was on the earth; the hippopotamus lumbered from the river, the boar charged from the forest, the great apes swung down to the ground before a figure of strength and beauty, the young and glorious archetype of humanity. A voice, crying out in song, went through the air of Eden, a voice that swept up as the eagle, and with every call renewed its youth. All music was the scattered echo of that voice; all poetry was the approach of the fallen understanding to that unfallen meaning. All things were named—all but man himself, then the sleep fell upon the Adam, and in that first sleep he strove to utter his name, and as he strove he was divided and woke to find humanity doubled. The name of mankind was in neither voice but in both; the knowledge of the name and its utterance was in the perpetual interchange of love. Whoever denied that austere godhead, wherever and however it appeared—its presence, its austerity, its divinity—refused the name of man.

The echo of that high spiritual mastery sounded through the inmost being of the child of Adam who lay tranced and attentive. His memory could not bear the task of holding the sounds, but it was not memory's business. The great affair of the naming was present within him, eternal, now as much as then, and at any future hour as much as now. There floated from that singing rapture of man's knowledge of man a last note which rose through his whole being, and as it came brought with it a cloud. “A mist went up and covered the face of the earth.” His faculties relaxed; his attention was gently released. He blinked once or twice, moved, saw, recognized, and drowsily smiled at the Landseer; then his head dropped down, and he was received, until his energies were renewed, into such a sleep as possessed our father when he awaited the discovery of himself.

Chapter Sixteen

THE NAMING OF THE BEASTS

The railway station at Smetham lay some half-mile out of the actual town, though it was connected by a row of houses and shops. The staff, therefore, though they soon heard whispers of strange things in the town, were still at work when Anthony, late in the evening, returned. He had spent the afternoon at his rooms in solitude and meditation and had then, rather to his own surprise, determined suddenly to go and have a good dinner. After this he had made his way to King's Cross, and got out of the train at Smetham about half-past nine. His room at the hotel was still kept for him, but he wanted first of all to see Damaris. From the station, however, he telephoned to the hotel to know if there were any messages. He was told that a gentleman was at that very moment waiting for him.

“Ask the gentleman to speak,” Anthony said, and in a minute heard Richardson's voice.

“Hallo,” it said. “That you, Durrant?”

“Rather,” Anthony answered. “How are things with you?”

“I don't know that they are,” the voice said. “Things, I mean. There seem a good many fewer, and anyhow I want to push one of them off on to you.”

“Sweet of you,” said Anthony cheerfully. “What particular?”

“I don't quite know,” Richardson said, “what may happen, though I know what, by God's extreme mercy, I hope. But there's this book of Berringer's—you know,
Marcellus noster
—it seems the kind of thing that might be more useful to you than to me, if anyone comes at all …”

“O we're all coming through,” Anthony interrupted. “Business as usual. Premises will be re-opened to-morrow with improvements of all kinds. But not, I fear, under entirely new management. The old isn't better, but it can't be shifted yet.”

“Can't it?” the other voice said, grimly. “Well, never mind. You think things will be restored, do you?”

“The way of the world,” Anthony said. “We shall jolly well have to go on making the best of both. ‘Vague half-believers'—not but what Arnold himself was a bit vague.”

“O stop this cultural chat,” Richardson broke in, but not ill-naturedly. “I want to give you this book.”

“But why?” Anthony asked. “Wasn't it you it was lent to?”

“It was,” Richardson said, “but I have to be about my Father's business, and it's the only thing I've got that I ought to do anything with. Where are you? And what are you doing?”

“I'm at the station,” Anthony told him, “and I'm going straight to Miss Tighe. You might come and meet me, if you've time. Where is the necessity taking you?”

There was a brief silence as if Richardson was considering; then he said, “Very well, I will. Don't walk too quickly. I'm in rather a hurry and I don't want to miss you.”

“Right,” said Anthony. “I'll walk like a—like the opposite of the Divine Horse till I see you. Unless the necessity drives me.” And he hung up.

That strange impulse however, to which in the serious and gay humour that possessed him he had given the name of the necessity, allowed him to wander slowly down the station road, till he saw Richardson walking swiftly along to meet him; then he quickened his own steps. They looked at each other curiously.