"You have missed Mr. Thessaly by less than three minutes," he said, glancing at his watch. "I am his secretary, and upon me devolves the very delicate task of explaining his departure. In the absence of a hostess--this is a bachelor establishment--the position is peculiarly unfortunate--"

"Pray say no more, Mr.----"

"My name is Caspar."

"I beg you to offer no apologies, Mr. Caspar. Believe me, I quite understand and sympathise. Mr. Thessaly has been called away at the last moment by affairs of urgent importance."

"Exactly. I am indebted to you, Mr. Mario. The news--of a distressing nature--only reached us over the telephone five minutes ago. A groom was despatched immediately to Hatton Towers, but he seems to have missed you."

"Nothing of a family nature, I trust."

"Not exactly, Mr. Mario; but a matter of such urgency that there was no time for hesitation. Mr. Thessaly is already upon his way to London. He will write you a full explanation, and for that purpose took writing materials in the car. His letter should reach you by the first post in the morning. You will readily understand that the hospitality of Babylon Hall----"

Paul interrupted him. "My dear Mr. Caspar, I could not think of intruding at a time of such distress and uncertainty. I can return to Hatton Towers in less than twenty minutes and the larder is quite capable of satisfying my modest requirements. Please say no more.

Directly you are able to communicate with him express to Mr. Thessaly my sincere condolence."

"A car is at your service, Mr. Mario."

"I appreciate the kindness fully, but I should much prefer to walk.

Please banish from your mind any idea that you have inconvenienced me.

Good night, Mr. Caspar."

The several extraordinary features of the incident he did not come to consider until later, but as he walked contemplative along Babylon Lane he detected sounds of distant gunfire, distinct from the more remote rumbling which was the voice of the battle front. He stood still--listening. An air raid on London was in progress.

"Thank G.o.d that Yvonne is out of it," he said earnestly--"and may He be with every poor soul to-night who needs Him."

Jules Thessaly and Babylon Hall were banished from his mind, although the raid on London might very well prove to be the explanation of Thessaly's sudden departure. From the stricken area his imagination recoiled, and in spirit he stood in a quaintly rambling village street of Devon before a rose-smothered cottage, looking up to an open cas.e.m.e.nt window. It was there that Yvonne was, perhaps already sleeping--Yvonne, his wife. And all the old fear visited him as he contemplated their happiness, their immunity from the horrors, the sacrifices of an anguished world. Why was he spared when others, seemingly more worthy, suffered? True, he had suffered in spirit, which is the keenest torture of all; but he had emerged to a greater happiness, to a reunion with Yvonne which had been like a second and sweeter honeymoon. It could only be that he was spared for a great purpose, that he might perform a giant task. He was permitted, untrammelled, to view the conflict, the sorrow and the agony of mankind from an Olympic height, serene and personally untouched, only in order that he might heal the wounds laid bare before him. "The world is waiting for you," Don had said. Paul silently prayed that the world might not wait in vain.

"Master of Destiny, inscrutable G.o.d, grant me light that I may see to perform the duty laid upon me. Use me, mould me, make of me an instrument. Millions have offered all and lost all. Guide my steps. If death lies upon the path I will not shrink, but suffer me to be of some little use to thy scarred and bleeding world. Amen."

The ominous gunfire had ceased when he retired to his room that night after a lonely dinner, and even the more distant booming to which he was growing accustomed was not audible. The lantern of the moon hung above such a serene countryside that thoughts of war were all but impossible, and Paul likened the heavens to the jewelled dome of some vast mosque wherein were gathered together all the clashing creeds of mankind, their differences forgotten in a universal love.

XIV

The summer days slipped by, each morning bringing a letter from Yvonne, each night a longing that it might be the last of their separation. But the affairs of the late Sir Jacques' estate were not easily dismissed, and Paul, eager with the ardent eagerness of a poet to set to work upon his task, yet found himself chained to Lower Charleswood. The place itself enchanted his imagination, and had his mind been free (and if Sir Jacques had never occupied Hatton Towers and impressed his individuality upon the house) Paul might have been content to stay--with Yvonne for a companion. But London called him urgently and inaction grew irksome.

Flamby Duveen he never tired of studying; she fascinated him like some rare palimpsest or Pythagorean problem. But Flamby was going to London as soon as arrangements could be made for her mother and herself to leave Dovelands Cottage. Mrs. Duveen had raised no objection to the proposed change; Mrs. Duveen had never raised an objection to anything throughout the whole of her docile career; and already Paul was weaving this oddly a.s.sorted pair into the scheme of that book which he projected as a challenge to the latent good in man.

Some of his neighbours he met, w.i.l.l.y nilly, but they took no place in his mental record of things, save perhaps the place of punctuation marks, commas and semicolons for the most part, rarely rising to the definite degree of a full point and never approaching the dramatic significance of an exclamation mark. Already he floated above the common world, looking down upon its tortured contours and half-defaced frontiers--for the true poet is a fakir who quits his physical body at the beck of inspiration, to return laden with strange secrets.

Jules Thessaly's letter explaining his extraordinary breach of good behaviour had been characteristic of the man. For whilst it was couched in more or less conventional terms of apology, the writer obviously regarded his action as justified and a.s.sumed in Paul an understanding which rendered pique impossible. Paul's theory regarding Thessaly's sudden departure had been correct.

"The G.o.ds are all dead," ran one pa.s.sage in the letter. "A sh.e.l.l, one of our own, fortunately imperfect, entered the upper storey of my house and rudely forced a pa.s.sage through one floor and the outer wall. Some slight damage has been done to my collection"--etc.

The tangled details of Paul's legacy became disentangled at last, and he fixed a definite date for his departure. That same evening the weather broke and grey clouds veiled the stars. He was keenly susceptible to climatic changes, and this abrupt interruption of summer plunged him into a dark mood. Gone were the fairies from the meadows, gone the dryads from the woods. The birds grew mute and roses drooped their heads. He found himself alone facing a sorrowful world and sharing its sorrows. The shadow of the black hat in the dining-room portrait lay darkly on Hatton Towers.

When such a mood was upon him he would resign himself to it with all that spiritual and intellectual abandon of which he was capable, savagely goading himself to blacker despair and contemplating his own condition with the critical faculty of his mind, which at these times remained undisturbed. Whilst the rain beat upon the windows and draperies billowed eerily in the draught, he pa.s.sed from the library into the study and unlocked that high black oak bureau which concealed the private collection of works artistic and literary which had informed him of the true character of his late uncle. He had caused a huge fire to be made up in the old open hearth in the dining-room and he proposed to spend the evening in building a pyre which should consume the memory of the secret Sir Jacques.

The books, many of them in handsome bindings, he glanced at, in order that no one worthy of life should be destroyed. The verdict p.r.o.nounced he either laid the book aside or broke it up and threw it on to the great fire in the adjoining room. He worked for an hour, eagerly, savagely, his coat stripped off and his shirt sleeves rolled above the elbow. The collection, though valuable, was small, and within the hour the bulk of it was ashes. Paul the iconoclast then turned his attention to the portfolios of water-colours, etchings and photographs which occupied the lower and deeper shelves of the bureau.

Here he found exquisite reproductions of Pompeiian frescoes, ill.u.s.trations in line and colour to divers works, as Pierre Louys'

_Aphrodite_, the _Satyricon_ of Petronius, and Ovid's _Amours_. The crowning horror of the thing was the artistic skill which had been prost.i.tuted to such ends. Technically, many of the pictures were above criticism; morally all were beyond. He consigned the entire heap of them to the flames.

Only the photographs remained, and a glance at the first of these resulted in a journey to the dining-room with laden arms. By impish chance two large and tastefully mounted panels both representing a sun-kissed nymph posed beside a pool slipped from the bundle and fell at his feet. Kicking the ash-stifled fire into a blaze, he stooped to recover them. So stooping he remained, staring down at the pictures on the floor. Then slowly, dazedly, he took them up, one in either hand.

They were photographs of Flamby.

The fire roared up the brick chimney, the wind fought for entrance from above, rain beat dismally upon the high windows. The fire died down again, seeming to retire into the mound of grey ashes which it had created; and the photographs fell from Paul's grasp.

A wrought-iron poker hung from a rack in the hearth, and, his face set like a mask, Paul took the crude weapon in his hand, and slowly raised his head until he was looking up at the oil-painting above the mantelpiece. The sound of a dry and discreet cough close behind him drew his attention to the presence of Davison. He turned, a strange figure, something very menacing in his eyes. Davison glanced furtively under the gate-legged table.

"Mr. Thessaly has called, sir," he said, and held out a salver upon which lay a visiting-card.

"Where is he?"

"He is in the library, sir."

"Very good. I will join him there in a few moments."

The portrait of Sir Jacques had been spared to posterity by that admirable tradition which denies an English gentleman any display of emotion in the presence of a servant.

XV

"I have seized the first opportunity," said Thessaly, as Paul, composure restored, entered the library, "of offering a personal explanation of my behaviour."

Paul took his extended hand, waiving the proferred explanation. "Except as regards the damage done to your property, I am not interested. Had your disappearance been dictated by nothing more than a sudden desire for solitude I should have understood. If I should ever be called upon to act as you did on that occasion I should know that a friend would understand. If he misunderstood he would not be a friend. I fear I am somewhat dusty. I have been destroying a portion of my legacy."

Jules Thessaly, dropping back into the padded arm-chair in which he had been seated, stared hard at Paul.

"Not the ill.u.s.trations to that portion of Scheherazade's narrative invariably expunged from all respectable editions of the _Thousand and One Nights_?"

Paul nodded, pushing a box of cigars across the table. "You know them?"

"I know that Sir Jacques possessed such pictures."

"I have destroyed them."

"Why?"

Paul selected a cigar ere looking up to meet the faintly amused glance of Thessaly. "They bore witness to a phase of his life which he chose to conceal from the world. I could do no less."

"You speak with contempt."

"The hypocrite is contemptible. A frank libertine may be an amusing fellow. If we do not think so, we can avoid him."