Act 5 — EXODE

He had no brains for the Royal Diadem to cover; and if Zeus should give him his Lightning and Thunder, he would be no more Zeus for that.—Plutarch.

The vacarme had ceased and the Strath was abandoned to its decay. The influence had done its work upon the minds of those brought beneath its sway. Punishment, sharp and summary, had been meted out upon Henry Reed with the cruelty for which Nature is notorious. A like punishment was to fall upon Dr. Berry. Both were weak men, although in other respects eminently dissimilar; the one a dull material creature, the other a sensitive spiritual being. The former attempted to arrest the working of the influence, while the latter essayed the equally impossible task of establishing himself as an active principle of that power. The active and hostile scepticism of the one was no whit more dangerous than the complete resignation of the other.

Mr. Price, a man of very simple nature who clung to his belief, never adding to it nor subtracting from it, emerged from the ordeal unchanged. Juxon found himself equipped with a knowledge which had come unsought. He was further rewarded by the affection and constancy of his wife. Even when wealth came to him, and he was pointed out with some awe as a man endowed with uncanny gifts, little Maude kept her head and her resolutions. The Strath had been kind to her, because her faults had sprung from weakness and vanity, not, as in Flora’s case, from a malignant growth. The latter was punished by being compelled to know herself; and that punishment endured.

Conway had been shown that idleness and debauchery are serious infringements of the laws of nature. He carried away with him from the ruined Strath a bitter hatred of his former life. As for Drayton, when his inheritance came, late in life, he knew he had not himself to thank. He had always done his best, but the parrot-like nature of his former labours had stunted his mind, and poverty had sapped his physical powers. He acknowledged to himself, when his fame as a dramatic writer became fully established, that those ideas which enriched his brain had been born in him during the weeks of dream and languor spent in the garden of the Strath.

After those days of the change Conway found for Lone Nance a congenial home and a kindly guardianship. In that condition her wild beauty increased and her face softened, although her mind never recovered the even balance to which it had attained during her stay in the Strath.

It was Maude’s last day in the country, and she walked—donkeys, cart, and silver bells having been consigned to the auctioneer—to Kingsmore, that she might say good-bye to Mr. Price, also to Flora and her mother who were about to leave. The little lady had sobered down her exuberance of colour; she wore a grey skirt with coat to match, and a black hat, where a trace of the old Eve survived in the shape of a small pink bow nestling as though ashamed beneath the brim. Her husband had gone away, full of confidence, by reason of the new strength which had been vouchsafed to him at the Strath; and Maude was about to follow, having a wild desire to live in two rooms, and cook her husband’s dinner with her own ignorant hands, and be nurse to Peggy, and lady of work generally. “For I am going to be a wife now, Herbert,” she had declared. “And not a caricature. I am very stupid and shall have to learn everything. If you will just be as good to me as you have always been, I don’t mind getting old and I won’t be afraid to lose my looks.” Such was Maude’s new and liberal doctrine.

The squire came riding in from the farm as the little lady entered the drive and seeing her lowered himself stiffly from his horse. She noticed for the first time that he was looking old and fragile; his legs, crooked by years of riding, were weak and unsteady, his shoulders were bending, his cheeks were growing hollow, and the fringe of hair above the nape of his neck was as white as wool. She ran forward and offered him her arm with a pretty smile.

“Why, young lady!” he cried in his hearty manner. “I did not recognise you at first. So you have come to say good-bye. Well, I am sorry to hear that, because at my age it is a serious matter to say farewell. Do you mean to say you have walked all the way? Come into the house and rest yourself. Flora is not well, I’m afraid. She will be glad to see you, and you may cheer her up. There is something on her mind, but she won’t tell me what it is. I hope and pray she is not going into religious mania, like my poor eldest sister who went and made a useless nun of herself. In my young days girls were not allowed to have opinions. They were given their religion, just as they were given their husbands, and very much happier and more useful they were.”

“Flora wants a change,” said Maude. “Autumn is so depressing.”

“You don’t look particularly downcast,” said the old gentleman. “The autumn seems to agree with you.”

“That is because I have made a heap of resolutions, and I am going to stick to them,” said the little lady. “I have done nothing all my life, except dress and laugh, and now it’s time to work.”

The squire was about to chaff her, but one glance at her face convinced him that she meant what she had said.

“There is nothing like work,” he said, with more feeling than was usual with him. “There is no happiness in life without work. The preacher, who advised his fellow-creatures to follow the example of the ant, knew what he was talking about, even if he hadn’t the sense to put his teaching into practice. I lose money every year over my farm, but it gives me plenty of healthy work, and it affords a living to the people of my village. I hope to go on working to the day of my death and to pass from the saddle to the grave. That is how my grandfather went. He came in from the hunt at six o’clock, and was dead by dinner-time.”

“Don’t,” said Maude gently.

“Ah, you think we are here for ever,” said the squire. “We all think so when we are young. But when past seventy we feel the ravages of time and lose our roast-beef stomachs, as somebody once said. Fill in your years unselfishly, child. Fill them in with work and laughter, help those who are in trouble, and do your duty elsewhere, and you will be happy when you’re old.”

The old man tramped away, gave his horse to a boy, then went round the yard, ferreting out eggs from the hen-houses, poking his riding-crop into the sides of fattening porkers, an replacing the hay which wasteful cows had tugged from their rack and were trampling underfoot. As he stood in the raw autumn afternoon, with his dogs jumping round him, and the pigeons fluttering down for a portion of the grain he always carried in his pockets, he looked what he was, the last of the plain old squires.

Flora was alone in the drawing-room, lying on a sofa, reading a book, which she tried to smuggle away when her friend was announced; but Maude jumped upon the volume and secured it. She merely opened her eyes a trifle wider when she read the title, “Plato’s education of the young,” and dropped the book without a word.

“I thought you would come, Maude,” said Flora in a heavy voice. “I am going to Italy with mother next week. I may very likely never see you again.”

“My girl!” cried Maude. “What do you mean? Why, of course we shall meet again. Do you know I am going to learn housekeeping—yes, it is rather late in the day—and when I am proficient you shall come and stay with me, and I will give you lessons. Herbert is fearfully hard up just now, but he is going to make heaps of money presently.”

“I may stop in Italy,” said Flora, in the same dull voice.

“Then I shall come and worry you,” said Maude with decision. “But, my dear, you won’t. You will come back in the spring, and marry a nice husband, and be a nice wife. And then you will be as happy as I am.”

“Are you happy?” said Flora. “Really happy?”

“Happy enough to whistle on a foggy day,” said the grey lady.

“You have changed, Maude.”

“I have found out Herbert’s good points, and some of my bad ones,” said Maude. “And you have changed since that day when we sat in the punt on the river, and you tried to persuade me you were horrid and unnatural. You have changed all that, haven’t you, girl?”

Flora flushed a little, and by way of reply introduced a fresh topic.

“I have received a letter since I last saw you,” she said hurriedly. “It is from—well, I need only say that I led him on, he proposed, and I refused. He must be fond of me if he wants me still.”

“You will say yes?” said Maude softly.

“I have said no.”

“You shall, you must, change your mind. Write the letter now. Or let me send a telegram as I go back through the village. You would be happy if you were married. And if you had a little girl like my Peggy, you would be so proud of yourself you would turn up your nose if you met all the queens in the world at a street-corner.”

Flora had never been demonstrative, therefore when she suddenly flung her arm round Maude’s neck the little lady was considerably astonished; but this was nothing compared to her consternation when she heard the communication which the fair-haired girl proceeded to whisper into her ear.

“Flora!” she exclaimed. “It is not true. You have always been imaginative. That is your idea because you are not well. When you get away from here you will soon change all that.”

“Don’t you know that the neglected faculty dies for want of use?” came the answer. “I cannot love now. The power is not in me. And without love I will not marry. I am as cold as any stone and my heart will not respond. When I read that letter not a pulse in me stirred. I have repelled the blind boy too long, and now he has left me for ever.”

“He will come back,” said Maude earnestly. “He will come back in the spring and shoot a sharp arrow right through your poor little heart, and then you will forget all that has passed, and be a good wife—a much better one than I have ever been.”

“I called myself an asymptote and tried to live up to the part,” went on the girl. “Now I am the curve, and Cupid plays the asymptote. And yet it really matters very little,” she added firmly. “Love and marriage are, after all, only incidents in life. There is so much besides.”

“Oh, my dear! Take away love, and life is a tragedy. But I don’t know how to preach,” said the little lady with a laugh. “I will just hand you over to the mercies of time. Only promise that you will come and stay with me when you return.”

“If I return I will,” replied Flora; and with that delphic utterance Maude had to be content.

She never saw her friend again. The following year Flora offered her services to a missionary society, was accepted, and sent to Ceylon to work among the natives. There she became a Buddhist, accepting the religion she had gone out to fight against, an action which was typical of her. Maude gasped with horror when she heard, through Mr. Price, the news, for Buddhism and cannibalism were with her synonymous terms. She wrote several frantic letters to Flora, entreating her to leave the savage state and return to civilization. No answer came. Mrs. Neill lapsed ungrammatically to the grave; Mr. Price, with tears in his simple eyes, altered his will; and Flora, the original and strong-minded, was never heard of again.

Two characters remained upon the scene, the former leader of the dramatic mysteries, and he who had entered last. Biron would not leave until the whole of his duty had been accomplished. He conceived it incumbent upon himself to unravel the mystery of Reed’s end, that he might atone as completely as possible for the trouble brought upon the place by his great-grandfather’s actions. The day after Conway’s departure he drove to Thorlund and entered the dripping garden. There, hard by the sundial, he encountered the rector, closely muffled, and walking slowly with the aid of a stick. They greeted one another and fell into a conversation, which Biron quickly turned towards the subject he had at heart.

“This is a mournful sight,” he said, indicating what had been the house.

“And this a hateful wilderness,” replied the scholar weakly, waving his stick across the garden. “Once, I believe, I loved it.”

There was little remaining to inspire affection. The Strath had fallen. All that was left of the standing ruins were two blank walls, one gable, and a mass of ivy. Beyond were heaps of bricks, torn draperies smeared with mud, and shattered furniture. The unsupported walls appeared to sway gently, waiting for the blast which should level them with the ground; and the saloon window, still bearing the unbroken escutcheon of the Hooper family, stared vacantly across the unromantic tangle of garden. Illusion had left that haunted ground for ever.

“I can tell you nothing,” said the scholar, in answer to his companion’s question concerning Reed’s death. “Perhaps there are circumstances which later on I may recall, but at this present time my mind refuses to work. I have been very ill. There is a pain in my head as though my brain was wounded. It is strange to know that I was once so happy here. Now the whole place repels me.”

“It is certain that Reed came to a violent end,” urged Biron. “It is equally certain that no one was suspected of the crime of murder. I imagined that you, being in this garden so often, might have formed some theory.”

“He afforded an instance of a man whose folly brought its own punishment,” answered the rector. “I warned him that it would so happen, but he laughed at me. I do not believe that any man had a hand in his death. His life was removed by supernatural powers.”

“Those powers of which you speak can only work their will through human agency,” said Biron. “The masks might have supplied the influence, but the act could only have been consummated by material hands.”

“Come back with me,” said the scholar restlessly. “This damp wind cuts through my head.”

The fire was burning low when they entered the study where the scholar had dreamed his life away. So soon as Biron had seated himself his host emptied two drawers of a quantity of manuscript, and this mass he piled upon the glowing cinders, laughing foolishly when the flames blazed up. “Draw your chair near,” he cried to his guest. “That log of dry wood will soon warm the room.”

“Log of wood!” Biron muttered, with a quick glance at the scholar’s white face. “Do you call that paper wood?”

“Paper or wood, the chemical constituents of the two are alike,” came the answer. “Fire reduces each to carbon. I have finished my work,” he went on, with a touch of the old dreaminess. “I have nothing more to do. It is a false heat we find in poetry after all.”

“You have burnt your work?” suggested the other, his eyes fixed upon the stooping figure.

“It is wood that is burning there,” said the poet irritably. “Dry, rotten wood. Let me show you my books. I have some rare books here.”

The short autumnal day drew on, but the visitor did not rise to go. His host was talking wildly, yet never mentioning the Strath, nor its owners, nor his own griefs. Psychology was the subject he dilated upon. So great was his tongue’s activity that Biron was given no opportunity for replying to the distorted theories which tumbled one upon the other from the scholar’s mind. He conjured up all manner of phantasies, delighting himself with them as the child happy with new toys, diving far into abstruse beliefs, passing from one problem to another, his mind never seeking after cause, never pausing to grope for a solution, but glancing off lightly and speeding into fresh whirlpools of theory. The accumulated learning of a life burst from his brain, deluging the ears of his listener, who sat amid a library of books which had been piled around him.

At length Biron was given a chance of speaking. Seizing the opportunity he opened his lips hastily to put the question, “What are your theories regarding involuntary action and the secondary personality?”

Straightway the scholar was started upon fresh roads leading into stranger realms; but as he talked unceasingly the words “bodily insensibility” detached themselves from the general outpour and struck Biron’s ears with a sinister sound. Also the word “sleep” became bracketed constantly with the phrase “unconscious action,” and the word “premeditated,” came with an ominous ring in conjunction with such expressions as “natural fear” and “subliminal self.”

As darkness crept into the room and the firelight grew more pronounced Dr. Berry’s eloquence failed and he sank back exhausted in his chair. Then Biron began to talk, but his mood was neither argumentative nor controversial; he spoke gently and soothingly, avoiding the subject of the Strath, merely describing certain of the places he had visited in the course of a life mainly devoted to travel, Venice, the Campagna, the secret ways of mediæval cities, the ancient castles of the Rhine; and when he saw that his purpose was likely to be fulfilled his musical voice went on to picture Athens, the calm Aegean, and the tombs of Grecian heroes. His voice sank into a whisper when he understood that the poet had succumbed.

Fifteen minutes passed—thirty, but the sleeper made no sign. Biron watched the white face with its sealed eyes until a mist formed before his own. Outside, darkness had settled. Within a long flame darted from the midst of the burnt paper flashing across that set face and brightening the silvered hair. Forty-five minutes, and no movement, although the bony watcher still exercised the hypnotic power. When the hour was proclaimed by a little marble clock some sense of shame entered Biron’s mind. The knowledge that he was grievously abusing the laws of hospitality forced itself upon him. Half rising he called gently, “Doctor Berry,” then sank back with a thrill. The poet was standing upright before him, his hands swaying loosely at his sides, his eyes wide open.

“Show me what took place upon that night when Reed died,” said the hypnotist firmly.

Dr. Berry moved to the writing table, and his fingers rustled among some papers. Then he turned to the window, put out his arms, and at once evinced what might have been surprise or annoyance when he found it closed. Biron approached the casements and flung them open. They passed out, one after the other, the scholar taking the well-trodden path through the churchyard which led to the Strath, walking quickly and without hesitation, while Biron groped and blundered behind.

The ragged wall streaming with ivy lifted before them. They reached the muddy moat, choked with dead leaves and rotting branches, but as they neared the edge Biron saw that the bridge had disappeared. The sleeper was walking on. The hypnotist sprang forward and seized him; there was a slight struggle, and Dr. Berry awoke.

He did not show any surprise at finding himself in that place. He had in the past awakened beside the sun-dial, or in the orchard, without any remembrance of having left his study; but he was clearly dismayed to see the ruins looming out of the gloom, and he was irritated at discovering Biron close to him, pointing to the handkerchief which he had twisted like a rope. He laughed unpleasantly when Biron addressed him, and turned away still laughing; but the traveller stood before him whichever way he would have gone.

“What would you do with that handkerchief?” he demanded. “Why have you twisted it?”

“To beat back those who follow me,” the scholar shouted, with a sudden burst of anger, stepping out and flicking Biron across the face. “Why are you with me now?” Then he laughed again, and said quietly, “Go your own way, my friend, and I will go mine. The Strath has fallen. I had resolved never to come here again.”

Biron seized the speaker’s wrists in his bony fingers. “You have much to forgive my family,” he muttered. “Had my great-grandfather not lived those masks would never have been here. Had you only been strong enough to abstain from this garden your mind would not have suffered. Had Reed not incurred your ill-will he might have been alive to-day.”

“Folly,” cried Dr. Berry angrily. “That Reed was a monster, who wanted to turn this place into a farm and keep pigs and poultry. But the Strath was well able to take care of itself.”

Biron gulped down the answer which was ready on his tongue. “I entreat you,” he said loudly, “I implore you to leave Thorlund, and that quickly, and try to forget all that has taken place here.”

Dr. Berry’s laughter ceased. Taking a match from his pocket he struck it, and held it above his head without moving, until the flame burnt his fingers. Then he dropped the glowing fragments, and said in a choking voice, “Go away! You have frightened me.”

Biron made one step back, then hesitated. Again he advanced and muttered, “After all there may be nothing to forget. You have been all these years under the influence of the masks. You are not guilty. It was the eighteenth century monster Cagliari who controlled your body and made use of your hands. He alone is guilty, and no man can call him to account.”

“Go!” shouted the scholar. “You white-faced shivering creature, you bone-faced ghost!”

He stumbled forward with threatening motions, and Biron backed away, his feet ploughing through the leaves. That moment the dark clouds parted and a glimpse of moonlight passed, revealing the wild features of the one man and the bony face of the other. Suddenly Biron started round and ran towards the road, alive to the knowledge that alone he would be unable to restrain the scholar, who began then to comprehend how that garden and fallen house had used his mind and brain.

Many minutes passed before the rector presented himself at the iron gates, and passed from that scene for ever. The moon had vanished; the muddy road wound away like a black river; there was not any creature in sight, nor within hearing of his mumbled complaint; and upon the hills all was silent. He walked out. From the gates, beside the lichened wall, and so round to his home, was a distance of three hundred yards, past some ruined barns, a deserted farmyard, a standing pool, and the worn patchwork of turf and mud known as the green; and so to the churchyard and the mossy little Bethel which was his official, but had never been his spiritual, charge.

He paced along the centre of this road, his fingers knotted together. And as he went there flickered across his vision a fantastic object, something which resembled a small white tassel, shaken violently at the corner of his eye. When he turned it was gone, but only that it might appear upon the other side. And opposite the pool his foot trod upon and snapped a rotten stick, which cried out to him as though in pain. And when near the churchyard a phantasm started from the wall of the Strath, and walked beside him. At the lich-gate this apparition vanished, and the ghostly tassel quivered wildly between his eyes.

Later the old housekeeper of the rectory heard strange noises in the house and a voice which she could not recognise. Lifting the lamp, she left the kitchen. The study was unoccupied. The sounds proceeded from the dining-room. And there she discovered her master. He had placed a chair upon the table, and was seated upon it, with a paper crown on his head and a ruler in his hand. And as she stood and trembled before him he bade her have no fear, because he was Zeus, king of gods and of men, sitting in judgment upon the world.

“Open that door which leads down to the world and you shall hear the din of cries ascending to me,” he cried. “All are asking for riches, honour, or long life. Not a single voice supplicates me for wisdom or for charity. Do you not wonder how I restrain my anger and allow my thunderbolts to lie idle?”

In the grey of the morning, when the wet hills were wrapped in mist and the valley was full of gossamers, a closed carriage entered Thorlund, Biron accompanying it, and presently rolled away, removing Dr. Berry from his charge. The scholar was seated between two grave black-coated men, who held their hands upon his wrists and only spoke to humour him. The poet’s mind, which had always sought to soar above the world, had left it altogether. He was equal with the gods. He was destiny, able to use men and women according to his will. He had been lifted to the stars. “I will teach you,” he murmured from time to time, as the carriage wheels jolted through the mud. “I will lead you into the ways of happiness. I will be merciful, for I know how weak you are. I was once a man myself.”

Exeunt Omnes