I 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO J
 
 THE COLUMN OF DUST
 
 " O dust, have faith according to the term 
 Of this life's lease ! Ere the corrupting worm 
 Have power to destroy the dust thou art ! 
 
 Ere the dark rust 
 
 Of death can clog the engine of thy heart ! 
 Great is thine honour, though thou walk in night ; 
 For fringes of thy darkness feel the Light 
 Which was ordained to be 
 
 When God, the Just, 
 From shadow shaping thee, 
 Put trust 
 In dust." 
 
 LAURENCE HOUSMAN.
 
 BY 
 
 EVELYN UNDERHILL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE GREY WIMLD," "THE LOST WORD," ETC.
 
 First Published in
 
 TO 
 
 ARTHUR AND PUREFOY MACHEN 
 
 FRIENDSHIP'S OFFERING
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE DANGERS OF CURIOSITY - I 
 
 II. HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM SOMEWHERE - 8 
 
 III. FURNISHED LODGINGS - 2O 
 
 iv. THE DAY'S WORK - - 32 
 
 V. A DOMESTIC INTERIOR - - 48 
 
 VI. THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE - - 59 
 
 VII. THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM - - 75 
 
 VIII. TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE - 98 
 
 IX. THE ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES - 117 
 
 X. HOW THOSE WHO LOSE THEMSELVES OFTEN 
 
 FIND SOMETHING MORE VALUABLE - - 128 
 
 XI. MARTIN UPON REALITY - - 144 
 
 XII. A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION - - l66 
 
 XIII. SIGHT-SEEING - 176 
 
 XIV. DEATH AND THE WATCHER - 1 86 
 XV. NEW FACTS FOR CONSTANCE AND ANDREW - 196 
 
 XVI. TWO LOVERS - 208 
 
 XVII. CONSTANCE AND THE REAL - 222 
 
 XVIII. THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES - 236 
 
 XIX. CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH - - 252 
 
 XX. HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS - 265 
 
 XXI. THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS - 278 
 
 XXII. HOW THEY WENT HOME - 296
 
 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE DANGERS OF CURIOSITY 
 
 " O Loveless, Hateless ! . . . past the sense 
 Of kindly-eyed benevolence, 
 To what tune danceth this Immense ?" 
 
 HARDY : The Dynasts. 
 
 I CHOOSE for the first act of rny comedy the 
 spectacle of a complete freedom cruelly mated 
 with an unquenchable curiosity. Such a liberty, 
 clearly impossible to those who are fettered by the 
 illusions of sense, is no natural prerogative even of 
 the intangible and spiritual populations. Constrained 
 by the unceasing pull and push of that love which 
 moves the worlds, these are drawn forward to the 
 joys of a selfless adoration, or downward to the 
 weary miseries of individual self-fulfilment : those 
 eternally opposing attitudes which an old-fashioned 
 and clear-sighted theology has crudely classified as 
 Heaven and Hell. 
 
 This is the story of a being a thing a spirit, if 
 you will who loved nothing, and therefore was free.
 
 2 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 It wished to serve neither its own interests nor those 
 of the Supernal Light ; and had no aim, only an 
 aching inquisitiveness. Now the itch to know* 
 coupled with the inability to care, produces there, 
 as here, that restless and unsociable disposition 
 which we classify as the result of an imperfect and 
 egotistical education. There, as here, it of course 
 frustrates itself; since those who do not love can 
 never understand. Hence this thing, which was 
 free, was also ignorant and very wretched. The 
 essence of its wretchedness was, that because it, its 
 ignorance and curiosity, had never been born, they 
 could never die. They existed in the unchanging 
 Idea, without hope of release. Fortunately, it did 
 not know this ; for spirit is as unable to conceive 
 ending as man to conceive endlessness. 
 
 This something, then, was alive and utterly alone, 
 with a loneliness that is only possible to the dis- 
 interested and discarnate. There was nothing for 
 it to do, since it could neither create, combine, nor 
 destroy. It could think, but possessed no medium 
 of self-expression, no apparatus by which it could be 
 linked up with other lives ; for it did not love, and 
 being immaterial, lacked the senses those oblique 
 and clumsy substitutes for love by which men reach 
 out towards each other's souls. 
 
 It came storming through eternity; through the 
 crystalline spaces of that which is spaceless, and 
 down the immeasurable periods of that which tran- 
 scends time. It was isolated, energetic, and desirous of 
 adventure ; hungry, restless, and alert ; a very vagrant 
 of the invisible. Avid of all knowledge, it perceived 
 with a certain enjoyment the general movement and
 
 THE DANGERS OF CURIOSITY 3 
 
 direction of things : the mighty figures of that dance 
 of angels at which philosophy has tried to peep. 
 But in the midst of the great pageant which the 
 Uncreated has dreamed for His own delight, it 
 suffered a crescent and incessant irritation because 
 of its own lack of understanding. The figures of 
 the dance might be comprehensible, but the steps 
 defied analysis. This uninstructed, and therefore 
 sceptical, observer was angrily aware of certain 
 complicated knots, turbulent manifestations of being, 
 which rudely disturbed the symmetry of the whole. 
 These he could not explain to himself; for they were 
 ugly, disorderly, irrelevant. Because they were in- 
 explicable, because he held them to be infringements 
 of the Plan, they attracted whilst they disgusted 
 him. He wondered and watched : forgot himself in 
 his occupation a dangerous business for egotists of 
 every grade. 
 
 Hence there was born a moment in which he saw 
 the many worlds and planes of being, which, from 
 the standpoint of eternity, are perceived under an 
 aspect of great and serene simplicity, interpene- 
 trating one another ; and the world of matter, turbu- 
 lent and many-tinted, crossing them all. Deep in 
 this world of matter he identified that lawless and 
 inconsistent element which had disturbed his first 
 placid classification of things. It was the faint, dis- 
 tressful cry of life, which came in a wailing cadence 
 from that writhing, tossing corner of the Dream, and 
 broke the profound silence of reality. 
 
 Within this disagreeable and meaningless maze 
 of noise, chaos, corruption, he presently perceived 
 the earth, as a peculiarly hideous and unresting 
 i 2
 
 4 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 tangle ; an irreducible blot upon that perfect process 
 of evolving Will whose shadow is the Universe. 
 He saw it teeming with horrible little organisms, 
 which devoured one another in their ceaseless effort 
 to preserve a visible and independent life; but, in 
 spite of all their care and cruelty, broke down after 
 a few moments of meaningless activity, and were 
 dissolved into the dust from which they came. The 
 sight was at once fascinating and revolting. He 
 wondered incessantly and with a growing irritation 
 why Being should manifest itself like that. Hence 
 the image of the earth expanded, until it filled his 
 horizon in a fashion that he knew to be absurd. 
 His consciousness was concentrated upon it; and 
 the great and free vision slipped away from him, as 
 happens to us when we turn from the largeness of 
 landscape to contemplate the inexplicable civilization 
 of the hive. 
 
 Thus this stupendous victim of petty curiosity 
 growthless, sexless, eternal brooded over that absurd 
 paradox of creation, a temporal world founded upon 
 the considerations, supported by the illusions, of 
 matter, growth, and sex. He heard the thud and 
 surge of life which echoed through it, and gazing 
 into its heart, saw the countless souls that clustered 
 upon its surface, each locked inexorably within the 
 transparent walls of the flesh. These he could 
 understand, for they, too, were spirits ; sexless and 
 solitary things. Being as yet impervious to the 
 false suggestions of appearance, he was peculiarly 
 susceptible to the currents which swayed them, 
 circulating in and about the visible world : the 
 subtle movements of expansion and contraction,
 
 THE DANGERS OF CURIOSITY 5 
 
 the loves and hates of the entangled souls. He felt 
 the curious withdrawal, like the ebbing of a strong 
 tide, with which many drew back from life, refused 
 it, as if dreading the impact of their waves of being 
 against its shattering cliffs. He felt the deadening 
 stagnation of those others, unconscious of life, who 
 drifted through it inert. Here and there he felt the 
 pull of a vortex of power amongst these negative 
 forces ; the eager vitality of those true lovers of life 
 who accepted it, rejoiced in it, making a whirlpool in 
 the spiritual sea. 
 
 Crossing all these there was still another influence, 
 by which he was bewildered and abashed. Out of 
 the turmoil, dragged or distilled from it as it seemed 
 by the very conflict of the Idea with the horrible 
 enigma of material things, there was poured forth a 
 strange ecstasy, a vivid and penetrating love, which 
 pierced its way to the very heart of that Divine 
 reality whose calm as he had ignorantly thought, 
 was disturbed by the fretfulness of the worlds which 
 lay upon Its breast. This love passed easily by the 
 status of those spiritual orders to which he belonged, 
 and merged itself in that End of Being for which 
 all creation hungers eternally. That such splendour 
 and such fragrance should come from this loath- 
 some and complicated dance of beauty and ugliness, 
 growth and decay, was an exasperating paradox, an 
 indication of essential lawlessness, which he watched 
 with disapproval, yet with a growing fascination. 
 He could not understand it, could not leave it alone. 
 It excited him, as life excites the virgin who watches 
 it with amazement and distrust. 
 
 But presently the Nemesis of the specialist over-
 
 6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 took him ; the transparent cell-walls thickened 
 beneath his curious gaze, and hid the dwellers within. 
 The illusion of solidity surged mist-like across the 
 landscape, dimming his sight : he had drawn too 
 near, and could no longer see the life in its depths. 
 That life was surely there, and the adorable Idea 
 behind it ; but, looking sedulously at the disconcert- 
 ing appearance, its ineptitude, its cruelty, its unrest, 
 he lost that consciousness of the Idea which is the 
 prerogative of the spiritual life. He was caught in 
 the chains of his own inquisitiveness ; and, weighted 
 by those chains, sank from plane to plane of per- 
 ception, ever narrowing the field of vision as he fell. 
 
 The desire to know, that mortal enemy of the power 
 to be, had forced him to accept the illusions that 
 he despised. He was slowly and inevitably pressed 
 into their deeps; concentrated, in spite of himself, 
 on one point in the turmoil, where, as it seemed, a 
 tiny and individual fight was going on. There was 
 a little furry thing that lived, and an agonized spirit 
 which looked out at him through two green windows ; 
 solitary in the midst of all the other life, and greatly 
 frightened. Something in the furry bag which held 
 the spirit hurt dreadfully. He wondered what it 
 could be, and why the prisoner within should mind 
 so much. Whilst he was still absorbed in his own 
 curiosity and the strangeness of this experience, 
 there was a struggle and a tremor that passed over 
 the bag of fur, and then a faint cry. The light left 
 the green windows : a small matter in itself, but 
 bringing to this immortal watcher the appalling 
 knowledge of things that could come to an end. 
 
 " What a loathsome dream I am looking at !" he
 
 THE DANGERS OF CURIOSITY 7 
 
 said; and, very naturally, he determined forthwith 
 to cease this foolish looking at a nasty and unprofit- 
 able world. 
 
 He turned towards the great spaces, the empty 
 and majestic Real. But the Real had withdrawn 
 beyond his range. Then horror fell on him, and 
 with it an utter helplessness ; for he perceived that 
 he could not leave off looking at the dream because 
 he was no longer looking, he was there. A cry came 
 from him a very bitter cry of wrath and fear. 
 
 " Ah, what has happened ? I am caught ! I 
 cannot get away !" 
 
 He had seen death ; and suddenly felt on him 
 the weight of the strange and dreadful fetters of 
 mortality.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME FROM SOMEWHERE 
 
 " Une pratique, mme superstitieuse, mme insensee, 
 est efficace, parce que c'est un realisation de la volont6." 
 ELIPHAS LEVI : Rituel de la Haute Magie. 
 
 WITHIN the bookshop a dusty darkness was 
 made noticeable by the existence of one low- 
 lying patch of light. At 10 p.m. business hours were 
 long over, and the place revenged itself upon 
 intrusion by the uncanny air of peopled solitude, the 
 suggestion that all trespassers will be prosecuted 
 with circumstances of occult terror, which lurks in 
 empty houses, deep forests, and solitary shrines. 
 Commerce was cast out, and seven other devils took 
 her place. 
 
 A woman stood within the patch of light, and also 
 within a small circle which she had traced with 
 charcoal upon the imperfectly scrubbed floor. She 
 seemed a healthy and a solid woman : body and 
 brain well balanced, soul asleep. She was studying a 
 stained and coarsely-printed duodecimo which lay 
 upon the desk beside her. It was a rare old English 
 translation of the " Grand Grimoire," which, having 
 recently been rebacked with new brown morocco by 
 strenuous and unsympathetic hands, was now kept 
 
 8
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME 9 
 
 open with difficulty by a heavy stamp-moistener and 
 two bulldog letter-clips. 
 
 The light was produced by two candles of that 
 brownish-yellow wax which Catholics always burn 
 about the biers of their dead. Since the agents of 
 death and birth are always one, it is hardly strange 
 that these should be the lights assigned by antique 
 tradition to help the incoming of another life. The 
 candles stood upon the floor ; with the spot on which 
 the woman was, they marked the points of a triangle 
 which had been carefully drawn within the charcoal 
 ring. Hence they at once proclaimed themselves as 
 instruments of ceremony, not of illumination ; be- 
 longing rather to the saucerful of incense, the little 
 pan of charcoal that stood on the gas-stove, than to 
 the daily apparatus of ledger, order-book, and 
 publishers' catalogues which crowded the neighbour- 
 ing desk. 
 
 A small mirror hung high up between the book- 
 shelves. It was tilted forward, giving an excellent 
 view of the floor. The flames of the candles were 
 reflected in it : two shining points, exhibiting with a 
 horrible thoroughness the vast and lonely dusk in 
 which they shone. Thus seen, winking and glitter- 
 ing out of the greyness, they seemed intimately, 
 unpleasantly alive ; and Constance Tyrrel, in spite of 
 a sound classical education, and much inherited and 
 carefully fostered common sense, felt them to be 
 watchful personalities, companions full of eerie 
 suggestion, poisoning her essential solitude by their 
 hint of terrible companionship. 
 
 She began, instinctively, to calculate the shortest 
 possible time in which her present business could be
 
 io THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 done; then, detecting in this operation the first 
 symptom of oncoming panic, she deliberately looked 
 away from the mirror, and again forced her attention 
 to the Grimoire and to the grotesque and varied 
 objects which were ranged upon her desk ready 
 for use. 
 
 There was a piece of cardboard, on which the 
 Pentagram, the Tetragrammaton, and the Caduceus 
 had been traced in coloured inks according to the 
 recipe of Eliphas Levi. Symbols in outline are 
 seldom impressive, and I am afraid that this talisman 
 had failed to affect her imagination as it should. 
 She hung it upon her breast with a piece of string ; 
 and, noting the effect, wondered whether this were 
 or were not the ancestor of the scapular. There was 
 also a forked hazel twig, its tips covered with little 
 thimbles of steel : the magician's wand. She took 
 it in her hand ; and, staying always within the circle, 
 reached out for the pan of charcoal and placed it on 
 the ground before her. The childishness of these 
 proceedings would have amused her had it not been 
 for the intense silence, the loneliness of the book- 
 shop, its dim uncertain corners, and the horrible 
 impression of looking out into infinite and cruel 
 darkness only possible to those who stand in a 
 restricted patch of light which she received when 
 she raised her eyes from the ground. This darkness 
 was made the more hateful by its very incomplete- 
 ness ; by the radiant mirror which swam out of it, 
 reflecting the two candle flames, like the glowing 
 eyes of some vigilant animal eternally imprisoned in 
 its depths. Now and then she heard footsteps in 
 the street ; the rattle and hoot of a motor, the
 
 HOW SOMETHING 'CAME n 
 
 barking of dogs. These noises reminded her that 
 she was shut in with another world, another century, 
 where she could claim no aid but that afforded by 
 her own curiosity and courage. 
 
 She took a little incense from her saucer, and 
 threw it on the charcoal. The perfumed smoke 
 ascended in a thick white cloud, veiling the dis- 
 concerting mirror and the surrounding bookshelves, 
 inappropriately filled with county histories, educa- 
 tional works, and cheap reprints. It placed itself 
 between Constance and the objects of her daily toil ; 
 shut her more closely with her undertaking. 
 
 She was in the midst of it now : this visible sign of 
 transcendental ambitions assured her of that. Its 
 scent in her nostrils assured her, too, of the solemni- 
 ties of the undertaking. It lapped herein the atmo- 
 sphere of ceremony, opened vistas of dream. She 
 turned with a new confidence to the Grimoire, and 
 began to read aloud the Ritual of Conjuration. It 
 was her first attempt to force the lock of that Door 
 which has no key. 
 
 '"Ego Constantia conjuro te per Deum vivum, 
 per Deum verum, per Deum sanctum et regnan- 
 tem.' " 
 
 She said it bravely : yet in the very act of reading 
 her judgment sat aloof. It refused to capitulate before 
 the fragrance, the darkness, the amazing phrases. 
 It reminded her that the thing was silly, whilst her 
 imagination murmured that the words were at any 
 rate stupendous. She read them the long elaborate 
 spell in the high-pitched, shaky, and shame-stricken 
 voice of one who rehearses some pretentious piece of 
 rhetoric alone, and dreads the mortification of being
 
 12 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 overheard. Also, to speak clearly seemed almost an 
 acknowledgment that there was, after all, something 
 present to which she could speak : it was an act 
 which peopled the dusky corners of the shop with 
 terrible presences. She shivered a little, and forgot 
 to attribute her discomfort to self-suggestion or over- 
 stimulated nerves. She kept her eyes fixed upon the 
 Grimoire, lest they should meet in the mirror the 
 reflection of some life other than their own. With 
 each fresh phase of the strange chant, the majestic 
 appeal to invisible peoples, intangible powers, the 
 suspicion that this life awaited the opening of her 
 eyes increased. 
 
 " ' Te exorcise ut nunc et sine mora appareas mihi 
 juxta circulum pulchra et honesta, animse et corporis 
 forma.' " 
 
 She paused. She wondered whether she really 
 desired this terrific result : conceived its possibility. 
 The smoke had cleared a little, and she could detect 
 the opposite side of the shop and the glint of some 
 unpleasant scarlet bindings ; standard English 
 novelists in half-roan with deckled edge. Every- 
 thing was very quiet. Her nervousness had passed 
 away. Nothing happened. 
 
 Constance discovered herself to be disappointed. 
 She believed nothing, and was therefore the more 
 ready to believe anything ; having all the transcen- 
 dental curiosity of the true materialist. Her present 
 undertaking was either perilous or absurd. She was 
 not disposed to take either of these risks for nothing. 
 Her fighting instincts were aroused. If success were 
 possible, she would not forego it. Hence the last 
 clauses of the incantation came from her lips with an
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME 13 
 
 imperious ring which was appropriate enough to that 
 superb procession of Divine names by which the 
 student of magic really compels himself to exaltation, 
 whilst he purports to be compelling the spirits of the 
 air. 
 
 " ' Per nomina maxima Dei deorum Dominus domina- 
 tium, Adonay Tetragrammaton Jehovah ! 
 
 O Theos Athanatos I 
 Ischyros Hagios, Pentagrammaton Shadday 
 
 Theos A thanatos ! 
 Tetragrammaton Adonay, Ischyros Athanatos, 
 
 Shadday ! 
 Cados, Eloy, Hagios ! 
 
 Theos A thanatos ! 
 Adonay ! Adonay ! Adonay !' " 
 
 The final phrases echoed through the empty shop 
 in a wild, an appealing cry which she hardly recognized 
 as her own. Thus recited, fresh from the book, by 
 one who knew nothing of its cipher, the necessity of 
 discovering the truly secret words beneath their con- 
 cealing signs, it would have sounded absurd enough 
 in the ears of a professional occultist ; but on this 
 woman's lips it was at once a prayer and a command. 
 She perceived for the first time why it was that these 
 eccentric substantives were known as Words of 
 Power. Their curious rhythms rose, as it were, to 
 waves inexorable waves of sound which battered 
 the cliff of uncreated things. As she ceased, she 
 realized that she was intensely fatigued : the over- 
 powering fatigue of a person who has worked beyond 
 her strength, and feels every limb to be invaded by 
 the languors of her brain. It seemed to her, too, that 
 the shop had become very cold. Evidently a gusty
 
 14 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 wind had arisen outside, and found its way under the 
 ill-fitting door ; for the two candle flames flickered 
 suddenly, as if blown sharply towards her, then 
 righted themselves and burned steadily again. 
 Nothing happened. 
 
 At the ending of the evocation, said the Grimoire, 
 if the spirit which is conjured by the Magus still fails 
 to appear, the operator will place the steel tips of his 
 wand upon the burning brazier, and make the last 
 and most violent assault upon the unseen world ; the 
 mighty and primitive spell called the Clavicle of 
 Solomon. " And be ye not afraid," adds the rubric, 
 " though ye shall hear the loud cries and groans of 
 the spirits who are now being forced to appear within 
 the circle of earth." 
 
 Constance had read these directions and this warn- 
 ing with some amusement during her furtive studies 
 of the occult. Upon a sunny afternoon in early 
 spring, in the interval of serving a lady addicted to 
 the literature of the Higher Health and a curate who 
 wished to read Pierre Louys for reasons unconnected 
 with French prose, she had found its careful en- 
 couragements quaint and delightful. Now, oddly 
 enough, she turned at once, though with a certain 
 tremulousness, to look for the page upon which the 
 strange syllables of the Clavicle were drawn within 
 their encompassing sign. She did it naturally and 
 inevitably ; as if it were now impossible to abandon 
 this adventure whilst any path remained untried. 
 
 But as she searched by the feeble light of her 
 candles, the tightly-bound leaves of the little book 
 escaped from fingers which were no longer very 
 steady in their grasp. It shut itself with a snap,
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME 15 
 
 and she caught sight between two fly-leaves of a 
 tiny slip of paper, so thin that a breath was needed 
 to disengage it from the page on which it lay. 
 There were on it a few lines of faded writing and 
 many curious signs. 
 
 In her rather hasty collation of the Grimoire she 
 had not seen this paper. Now, because she was 
 eager and somewhat disheartened by her non- 
 success, wide-eyed towards all chances of adven- 
 ture, she took it from its place, held it to the 
 light, and deciphered with difficulty the opening 
 words : 
 
 " Lo, my beloved son and very dear disciple, I 
 bequeath to thee this Grimoire, the companion of my 
 labours, wherein are faithfully set forth the true 
 Rituals of Magic, together with all things needful for 
 the prosecution of that most divine experiment on 
 which thou art set : to wit, the Word, the Sign, and 
 the Way. Guard well that secret knowledge, 
 remembering the four oaths of thy initiation : to 
 Dare, to Will, to Learn, and to Conceal. But as 
 to this book, have no fear lest the profane and those 
 unlearned in Philosophic discover aught therein, 
 since, even as the Ark within the Temple, all truth 
 here dwells behind a veil ; which veil the priests of 
 the Hidden Wisdom alone may pass. ..." Here 
 followed three lines of Cabalistic figures, which Con- 
 stance could not read. At the side there was a gloss 
 in tiny writing : " Nota. Take heed that thou dost 
 not forget to sing rightly, and according to the 
 manner of the adepts, these most powerful and all- 
 holy Names of God, and the great Key of Solomon, 
 our Master ; for it is very certain that upon the due
 
 16 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 observance of this matter the whole virtue of thy 
 evocation doth depend." 
 
 She replaced the paper in the Grimoire, feeling 
 herself to be little enlightened ; for she had no know- 
 ledge of that right singing of the adepts which it held 
 essential to the work. However, she turned to the 
 Clavicle, and laid the metal tips of her wand upon 
 the brazier carefully and efficiently, as if she were 
 busied over some intricate operation of cookery ; as 
 accurate in her ritual actions as any priest before the 
 altar of his God. She glanced at the mirror, and 
 saw reflected in it her own face. The candles lit it 
 from below, casting peculiar shadows upon the eye- 
 sockets and chin. It seemed a stranger's face : 
 white, peering, curious, and amazed. The contours 
 which gave to it its workaday expression of responsi- 
 bility and common sense had disappeared. 
 
 She began to read ; and now, to her amazement, a 
 third and almost horrible change came over her 
 voice. It was no longer the shamefaced muttering 
 thing of a person who suspects her own absurdity ; 
 had no more the sharp pitch of overstrung but 
 undefeated nerves. Constance was now impelled to 
 chant, in a loud tone and with a grave intense and 
 crescent determination, the strange old Hebrew 
 spell. The words drew from her she knew not for 
 what reason a long and rhythmic cry ; a wailing 
 music, with curious ululative prolongations of the 
 vowel sounds. It came from some obscure corner of 
 her spirit, which thus found for the first time a lan- 
 guage suited to its needs. She had ceased to be self- 
 conscious, and was far away from the bookshop ; her 
 whole will pressing against the barriers of an ex-
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME 17 
 
 perience which, as she had gradually and automatic- 
 ally come to believe, was close to her hand. And 
 as the walls of Jericho fell before the persistent 
 trumpets, so under the assault of her cry this barrier 
 seemed to tremble. 
 
 "Therefore appear, lest I continue to torment 
 thee with the Words of Power of the great Solomon 
 thy master." 
 
 The stream of strange and twisted syllables, the 
 unearthly wailing song, the rhythms which made no 
 appeal to the ear of sense, rose and lifted her with 
 them ; then gathered the whole strength of her spirit 
 for the supreme statement of exalted and illuminated 
 will : " Messias Soter Emanuel Sabaoth Adonay, te 
 adoro et invoco." 
 
 Her eyes were upon the mirror as she ended ; and 
 still it reflected her own strained face, but no other. 
 There was no hand laid on her shoulder, no veiled 
 form. 
 
 But there was surely something in the mirror 
 which she had not seen before. She saw a tiny dis- 
 turbance on the ground, close beyond the edge of 
 the charcoal ring ; as if the draught that blew 
 beneath the door had disturbed a little pile of dust. 
 It rose in the air a little way, and hung there like a 
 cloud. The thing was natural enough, for there is 
 always plenty of dust in a bookshop. Nevertheless, 
 the small movement in the dusk had jogged Con- 
 stance's weary nerves. She watched it, fascinated, 
 longing all the while to look away ; and as she 
 watched a fresh wave of overmastering fatigue came 
 on her, and with it, of course, a sudden gust of fear. 
 She knew that, in the impossible event of a spiritual
 
 i8 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 manifestation, she had but to conquer her will, to lay 
 her hand upon the pentagram, and command the- 
 Presence to obey, not to intimidate, its conjurer ; 
 but it takes great confidence in the unseen to attri- 
 bute to supernatural causes a phenomenon which 
 may well have been produced by a draughty door. 
 She stared, and struggled with a rising pulse and 
 feelings of great discomfort in the throat. 
 
 Meanwhile, the little column of dust rose with a 
 curious spiral motion, as if it were impelled from 
 within. It hung in the air ; a grey, faint, cobwebby 
 thing. And then she heard the crying of a sad and 
 frightened voice, which said : 
 
 " Ah, what has happened ? I am caught ! I 
 cannot get away !" And again an inarticulate cry, 
 that came in a rising cadence of anguish and dread. 
 
 She exclaimed : " My God ! What is it ? What 
 have I done ?" 
 
 The sound of her own voice, harsh and uncertain, 
 convinced her that the other voice had not been 
 heard by the outward ear. 
 
 She turned from the mirror, and looked with 
 horror at the floor. The column of dust had dis- 
 appeared. The candles burned clearly in the dusk. 
 
 Then she remembered that she was quite alone : 
 that there was nothing more to do, nothing that 
 she could do. It was late, and she longed to be 
 away. She went to the back of the shop, and 
 switched on the electric light. It seemed an almost 
 impious proceeding after all that had passed ; but 
 the nice commonplace click and the immediate 
 radiance comforted her. She extinguished her cere- 
 monial candles, packed away wand, pentagram, and
 
 HOW SOMETHING CAME 19 
 
 incense in her little leather bag, and carefully rubbed 
 the circle from the floor. The physical exercise 
 restored her to a sense of her own largeness, healthi- 
 ness, and solidity. She forgot the imaginary voice, 
 and remembered the real world. 
 
 She left the bookshop, locking the door behind 
 her. She held the keys, for Mr. Lambton was of a 
 slothful disposition, and left his manager as many 
 responsibilities as he could. She was glad to be out 
 in the air again, and looked forward to a brisk walk 
 through lighted streets. At this moment the mud 
 and motor-omnibuses, the drizzling rain that fell, 
 were familiar and delightful things ; freckles on the 
 beloved face of life. 
 
 There was a dead kitten in the gutter; a little bag of 
 fur. She stepped back when she saw it, and crossed 
 the road lower down. She was not a squeamish woman, 
 but this was hardly the moment for dead things. 
 It was evidently true, as Eliphas Levi had said, and 
 the best modern occultists agreed, that magical 
 operations did have some curious effect upon the 
 mind. She could not recover her normal poise ; 
 things wore an unusual air, and she was an alien 
 amongst them. She decided that she would go to 
 bed early ; she was not in the mood for sitting alone 
 that night. 
 
 She had yet to realize that she would never be 
 alone any more. 
 
 2 2
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 
 
 "Now I know that the walls of sense that seemed so 
 impenetrable, that seemed to loom up above the heavens 
 and to be founded below the depths, and to shut us in for 
 evermore, are no such everlasting impassable barriers as 
 we fancied, but thinnest and most airy veils that melt 
 away before the seeker, and dissolve as the early mist of 
 the morning about the brooks." ARTHUR MACHEN : The 
 House of Souls 
 
 IN common with the many persons who have some 
 imagination, but small taste for metaphysics, 
 Constance had conceived of the invisible world as 
 situated, somehow, in the air, crisply defined within 
 its own frontiers, and amenable to the usual classifica- 
 tions of geography. Its inhabitants were as safely 
 bestowed as the inhabitants of the Zoo ; they were 
 behind the strong bars of natural phenomena, and 
 could not get out. The spirit-world of the old and 
 the astral plane of the new occultists each suggested 
 to her separate cages, into which the curious might 
 sometimes look. 
 
 This woman had the mania of adventure, and few 
 opportunities of gratifying her taste. For years she 
 had moved within the dull boundaries of a wage- 
 
 20
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 21 
 
 earner's existence, which she abhorred, but could 
 not overpass. Once she had explored the deeps of 
 life ; now heights and deeps alike seemed shut from 
 her. She longed for new landscape, experience, 
 danger. Hence her sudden excursion into life's 
 uncharted outskirts ; those building estates which 
 the spirit of man has not yet decided to develop. 
 
 Though she was, in her own opinion, wholly free 
 from superstition, she had thought it possible that, 
 by deliberate recourse to the self-hypnotizing cere- 
 monial of the old magicians, she might at any rate 
 peep into the strange wild district beyond the 
 barriers of sense ; for much that is obviously absurd 
 when ascribed to the agency of unseen forces, 
 becomes acceptable to the educated mind if inter- 
 preted in terms of psychology. Explaining the 
 human soul with that precision which is so sadly 
 lacking in the Pentateuch, this science had taught 
 Constance that the release of her sublimal powers 
 was all that was necessary if she wished to perceive 
 the unknown but strictly natural world beyond the 
 threshold as an interesting extension of the known. 
 If you see in your incantation a method of shifting 
 the field of consciousness, and call your magic wand 
 an autoscope, these things no longer seem silly, but 
 take their place as part of the cosmic plan. A care- 
 ful study of the works of Professor James had further 
 convinced her that some forms of credulity are still 
 compatible with self-respect. 
 
 But the result of her temporary will to believe, and 
 of the experiment which it had prompted, was, as 
 she now felt, profoundly unsatisfactory. She was 
 left in complete doubt as to whether or no the
 
 22 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 invocation had worked ; and the sceptical state, so 
 convenient when its object is the dogma of a too 
 strenuous religion, is very uncomfortable when 
 applied to an individual ghost. If her conjuration 
 had indeed released supernatural powers, if it were 
 true that something had happened, the inner eye 
 been opened upon a hidden plane of being, then she 
 had seen what ? An unmeaning and horrible inter- 
 ference with that solid earth and those respectable 
 laws of Nature which she preferred to take for 
 granted : a column of dust that mounted and hung 
 in the air, as if endowed with some incomprehensible 
 life. The thought of it, of the intimate and unnatural 
 thing, was more dreadful than any phantom could 
 have been. It seemed to make all things unsafe. 
 She decided that it could not, must not, be true. 
 
 Science came to the assistance of its child, and 
 helped her to put a proper interpretation on an 
 adventure which refused to square itself with any 
 known theory of the unseen, but ranged itself easily 
 amongst the accredited varieties of optical and audi- 
 tory hallucination. To look at it in any other way 
 would have been too horrible. To connect the 
 strange and tormented voice which, as she assured 
 herself, she had not really heard with that vision of 
 the writhing, twisting, misty, yet living, thing which 
 rose, one knew not how, and vanished, one knew not 
 where : this was to knock the bottom out of all her 
 past experience, to acquiesce in the unreality of all 
 real things, even of life. 
 
 Constance adored life. She had clutched it and 
 been stung by it ; but, in spite of this rebuff, she 
 remained its lover, adoring the wonders which she
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 23 
 
 never tasted, passionately credulous of charms which 
 she was not permitted to enjoy. The world which 
 lived unconscious of life, as children sit upon the 
 knees of their mother and play indifferently with 
 little toys, never pausing to look into her face ; this 
 normal, practical, earning and spending world had 
 always seemed strange to her, its scale of values 
 unreal and remote. She had silently refused to 
 acknowledge that scale of values ; the importance of 
 demeanour and propriety, of buying and selling, of 
 food, furniture, games, change of air, and of all the 
 little sterile daily acts. Watching other women in 
 their attitude towards life, she was reminded of 
 persons who, suddenly confronted by a goddess, 
 confine their attention to the fact that she twiddles 
 her thumbs. 
 
 But in spite of brave theories, of curiosity, 
 boredom, an eternal readiness for the adventures 
 which so seldom came, she was invaded now by a 
 longing for ordinary trivial, homely things. The 
 instinctive human fear of the unseen had been 
 awakened by the evening's performance. As she 
 walked, she looked for a dog who might be persuaded 
 to lick her hand. She would have liked to gossip 
 with her landlady or struggle for bargains at a sale. 
 
 A beggar accosted her, and she, who had few pennies 
 to spare, took out her purse. She made a remark 
 about the weather, eagerly ; thirsting for the little 
 contact with humanity which would obliterate the 
 memory of that other contact with something, 
 perhaps, which was not human at all. But the 
 beggar was taciturn. He took the money and went 
 away. Constance's eyes followed him with regret.
 
 24 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 The mood of adventure was over, and the reaction 
 had come. 
 
 In the midst of her solitary and uncongenial life, 
 which a cultivated scepticism did little to cheer, she 
 had wished so much to open a new door, to satisfy 
 latent but passionate curiosities, add new territory to 
 her domain. Now that wish had departed, leaving 
 behind it the insecure sensations of one who has 
 peeped for a moment through a forbidden door in the 
 ramparts, and obtained from this glimpse a permanent 
 memory of great precipices all about her dwelling- 
 place, of the black gulf and soundless moat below. 
 
 She dreaded the four walls of her room, shutting 
 her in to a tete-d-tete with her own imagination. 
 Presently she came to those four walls, by way of a 
 grained door and three flights of linoleum-covered 
 stairs. She fumbled for matches, and lighted her 
 duplex lamp. It smelt as usual, in a refreshingly 
 real way. The dingy mantel-border maroon cloth, 
 with a faded embroidery of old-gold chrysanthemums 
 further reassured her ; but she avoided the mirror, 
 and would have liked to cover it up had it not been 
 that she was afraid of despising herself. Her own 
 contempt was the only humiliation that she could 
 not bear. 
 
 Vera's toys lay everywhere. Constance picked up 
 a doll's frock, upon which the child had evidently 
 wiped her mouth after eating bread and jam for tea. 
 Actuality was there, ready to encourage and support 
 its worshipper. She dropped the frock and went to 
 the window ; looking out from her empty, bright, and 
 hideous room, which distressed her, into the dim and 
 attractive night.
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 25 
 
 The soft rain, which was hardly more than a 
 determined dampness, had given a delicate sheen to 
 the sloping roof next her own : and she enjoyed it 
 with that cultivated taste for appearance which is the 
 prerogative of solitary lives. Her rooms, for cheap- 
 ness' sake, were high up ; and the vista was all of 
 slates, parapets, and chimney - pots, delightfully 
 various, full of quaint and unreasonable irregulari- 
 ties, with that character of ruggedness which is 
 peculiar to the tops of things. The moist roof com- 
 forted Constance. It gave to her suddenly an image 
 of the whole safe and mighty city enshrouded 
 in a benevolent mist of rain ; all the bright eyes 
 of its million houses peering with the utmost 
 assurance into the dusk, all the vivid streaks of 
 trains and trams running in and under its roads 
 without fear or hesitation. That solid, sharply-lit, 
 assertive city was full of living creatures : real ones. 
 It was so compact, so assured, so full of itself, that 
 there could be no room for the invisible populations 
 to creep between its close network of shops and 
 souls. 
 
 She heard the jingle of a hansom in the street 
 behind, the scrape and clatter of the hoofs as it 
 drew up. The iron cried, "Real! real! real!" as 
 it struck the ground. Constance knew the sound 
 very well. Once night had fallen, many hansoms 
 came to the house in the street behind. Sometimes 
 the noise, and all that was implied by it, saddened 
 and disgusted her. Now it echoed the beloved 
 music of the town, and brought her an inexplicable 
 sense of companionship and consolation ; for years 
 of intensest loneliness had taught her to extract
 
 26 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 from human noises, human sights, something of the 
 social warmth for which she often longed. She 
 suddenly found that it was quite easy to turn back 
 into the glaring and solitary room. It, too, was a 
 part of the sheltering town a cell, her cell, in the 
 great hive and therefore as friendly to her, as 
 protective as the streets. There was nothing 
 nothing real to differentiate this evening from other 
 evenings : no reason why she should not make her 
 cocoa as usual, read a while, and go to bed. She 
 went to the china cupboard, and discovered with 
 vexation that her favourite cup had been used for 
 painting-water and left unwashed. She turned and 
 glanced round the room, searching for further dis- 
 agreeable results of Vera's activity. 
 
 Then she saw near the fireplace a little column 
 of dust, that rose and hung in the air. 
 
 She stared at it with the dull and bewildered stare 
 of a backward child who is given a difficult task. It 
 was far beyond her power of assimilation ; but she per- 
 ceived it to be henceforward a part of her life, added 
 to experience by her own act and desire. Her nature 
 rose then, of its own accord, to meet it ; as usually 
 happens when the great things of life break abruptly 
 upon the soul. She was not particularly astonished. 
 She was hardly afraid. 
 
 She began to walk up and down the room, trying 
 to argue with herself; recalling to her remembrance 
 all that she had ever read upon self-suggestion and 
 hallucination. These considerations, however, wore 
 a hopelessly academic air, and brought no conviction 
 with them. At intervals her mind returned with a 
 jerk to the actualities of the moment, and she glanced
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 27 
 
 hastily and furtively at the corner of the room. 
 Always the cloud of dust hung in the air. 
 
 She knew it in her heart to be a sign of life, of 
 something that would communicate with her if it 
 could. She felt it there, as lonely and as curious as 
 herself ; but she was not softened by its need. She set 
 her whole will as a barrier against its coming : she 
 was determined to ward off this horrible companion- 
 ship, which pressed towards her with a certain 
 wistfulness, like some desperate and desolate creature 
 exiled in a foreign town. She felt the assault of its 
 desire, and resisted with all her strength. The 
 room grew cold as she stood there with clenched 
 hands and rigid knees. This time she recognized 
 the symptom as one that was proper to her state. 
 
 Then the little grey thing wavered and leaned 
 towards her. It was like a sudden sally from an 
 invested citadel. Constance wavered too, and knew 
 the battle to be lost. She screamed, and was not 
 even ashamed of herself. 
 
 There was an answering scream from the next 
 room. Vera cried out : " Tanta, Tanta, what's the 
 matter ? I wants you ! It's dark, and I'm awake." 
 
 She went to the child herself the more terrified, 
 the more childlike. She, too, was awake in the 
 dark, and accepted with gratitude the comforting 
 presence of a fellow-victim. There was a feeble 
 gas-jet in the passage, and by its light Vera's small 
 dark face, convulsed with fear, was discernible as a 
 shadowy patch amongst the tossed bed-clothes. 
 
 Constance gathered the little warm body on to her 
 lap. It shook with the terror of an animal which 
 scents panic in its neighbourhood. She said with
 
 28 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 unusual tenderness : " What is the matter, my little 
 one ?" for the spur of fear had touched her human 
 instincts on the quick. 
 
 Vera cried : " Oh, I don't know ; but it's dark it's 
 dreadful. And I heard a bogy scream in my alone." 
 
 " There are no bogies, darling. You were dream- 
 ing." As she said it she wished that it were true. 
 
 Vera curled herself tightly against the broad, firm 
 shoulder. " You hold me tight, and then they won't 
 come," she said. 
 
 Constance, sitting in the darkness on the uncom- 
 fortable bedroom chair, with the child's heavy body 
 in her arms, the querulous little voice in her ears, 
 saying : " Hold me tight ! You mustn't go you 
 shan't!" wished that she might thus sit for ever, 
 with the protective influence of the flesh between 
 her and the invading foe. It was a new sensation ; for 
 Vera was not an attractive child, and her many claims 
 upon attention had never included a sentimental 
 appeal. She seemed to present no promise of a 
 future womanhood ; but rather, in some elusive way, 
 a condensed history of those animal natures through 
 which her spirit had presumably climbed on its way 
 towards life. The squat stature, the heavy limbs, 
 the lowering brow, the wide and formless mouth, 
 were adapted to be the agents of instinct rather than 
 of character ; and instinct, elemental appetites and 
 uncontrolled passions, had already sealed them. 
 
 But at this moment Constance forgot these things. 
 She looked at the clumsy little body with a new 
 eagerness, a new possessive sense. She cuddled it 
 against her bosom, concentrated on its helplessness, 
 its happy ignorance, its warmth. By her own act,
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 29 
 
 her own arrogant curiosity, strangeness and terror 
 had been admitted to her universe. They must not 
 be permitted to infect this scrap of life which was in 
 her keeping. She perceived that she must endure 
 them alone ; must never entertain company in that 
 dreadful room of windows which looked out upon 
 the timeless, spaceless wilds. Everything, after all, 
 had to be attempted and endured alone, once child- 
 hood was past. The hive-like city of a myriad cells, 
 which seemed so social and so warm, was really a 
 city of a myriad prisons. Each inhabitant in some 
 unendurable hour, when the view from the windows 
 was too clear, the solitude of the four walls too keen, 
 would fling himself, as she had done, upon the door : 
 to find that an inexorable hand had turned the key. 
 
 But in some of the cells two were shut together ; 
 and they protected one another from the impact of 
 solitude and fear, so that the prison straightway 
 became a home. There was no one who would do 
 this for her ; no one in all the world to whom she 
 could tell her adventure, to whom she could appeal 
 for the sheltering love, the dear human presence, 
 the foolish comforting platitudes of common sense. 
 
 She had got to see it out ; and when she had seen 
 it out, no one would know, no one would blame her 
 curiosity, admire her courage. This fact added to 
 the old monotonous loneliness in which she had 
 lived so long a new and bitter sense of isolation. 
 
 Vera was quickly comforted. Soon she fell asleep. 
 Constance put her into bed very gently, left a 
 lighted candle and a chocolate cream by her side, 
 and returned to the sitting-room. As she entered, 
 she glanced quickly towards the corner; but the
 
 30 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 column of dust was not there. She was reassured, 
 and shut the door softly. 
 
 Then she perceived that there was a figure sitting 
 by the fireplace. It was, perhaps, less a figure than 
 a form : an impressionist sketch of humanity, without 
 detail and without sex. That unnerved her, and she 
 shrank with beating heart against the closed door, 
 hid her face with her hands, and stayed in that 
 comforting and self-imposed darkness for a period 
 which seemed to have no relation to ordinary 
 intervals of time. 
 
 At last she heard within her mind the sad and 
 wailing voice which had first attacked her in the 
 bookshop ; but it had lost its original accent of fear 
 and grief. It said : " If they are all cowards, what 
 am I to do ? And how shall I ever understand ?" 
 
 Because she could not endure the taunt of 
 cowardice, even from a voice which she suspected 
 was her own, she raised her head and looked again. 
 Then she saw two brilliant, wild, and hungry eyes, 
 which gazed into hers from the recesses of some 
 alien life that had caught them in its folds. 
 
 She said: "Ah, what are you? What have I 
 done?" And again the silent voice replied: "You 
 know." 
 
 She exclaimed : " No ! I do not understand." 
 
 It seemed to her that it was a sad and lost thing 
 which answered her with difficulty, and picking its 
 way, as it were, amongst the strange periods of a 
 foreign tongue. 
 
 It said : '* Nor do I ; but I think that you have got 
 to see me as a shape, as something which has a 
 limiting edge, because otherwise you will not let me
 
 FURNISHED LODGINGS 31 
 
 enter your experience. You are dreaming so deeply 
 that you cannot recognize spirit unless it enters into 
 the unreasonable illusions of your dream. So I 
 must attack your consciousness on its ordinary 
 earthly plane ; because I will get in, I will know, I 
 have got to understand." 
 
 She cried out suddenly : " Oh, it isn't real ! It 
 can't be real !" 
 
 The voice said : " No. A picture built of your 
 dream-stuff, that is all. But do not be deceived ; all 
 pictures represent realities. I am here, within the 
 appearance, as you are there within your clothes. 
 What does the shape matter ? It is only a little 
 dust." 
 
 But there was no one sitting by the fire. 
 
 She exclaimed in her astonishment : " I thought 
 I saw!" 
 
 And there was again a voice that replied : " And 
 you think you know, and you think you feel. What 
 strange and meaningless dreams !" 
 
 Then the last scrap of courage deserted her, and 
 she seized the lamp and fled ingloriously from the 
 room. But she turned at the door, and looked 
 swiftly and furtively at the corner by the fireplace, 
 from which she fled. It was a coward's glance, and 
 met a coward's retribution. There was a little eddy 
 of dust that rose from the floor and hung suspended 
 in the air. 
 
 Constance undressed hastily, and lay wakeful, 
 with Vera held tightly in her arms.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 
 
 " Petit a petit, il a penetr6 un plus grand nombre 
 (Tenements psychiques, les teignant pour ainsi dire de 
 sa propre couleur ; et voici que votre point de vue sur 
 I'ensemble des choses vous parait maintenant avoir 
 change." BERGSON : Les Donnees Immediates de la Con- 
 science. 
 
 THIS one rift in the solid stuff out of which 
 she had built her universe, this hateful and in- 
 consistent thing which her senses reported, left 
 Constance poised solitary in the midst of terrific 
 spaces. All that she called reality had been shattered, 
 and only consciousness remained as a certain fact. 
 
 She had seen, abruptly, the insecurity of those 
 defences which protect our illusions and ward off the 
 horrors of truth. She had found a little hole in the 
 wall of appearance ; and, peeping through, had caught 
 a glimpse of that seething pot of spiritual forces 
 whence, now and then, a bubble rises to the surface 
 of things. There were beings there living, and full 
 of horror because devoid of shape. She had opened 
 a door for them, and now they could press in on her ; 
 and she, loathing their companionship, could not 
 resist. All her robust and eager enjoyment of life 
 
 32
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 33 
 
 fled from her. It was not real any more. Only 
 that invisible and intangible eternity behind the 
 shadow-show was real ; that, and its detestable in- 
 habitants. 
 
 She had one consolation. She felt herself to be 
 unique in so perceiving the true proportion of things. 
 Many teachers, she knew, had referred to it ; but she 
 shared the conviction of all other tasters of supreme 
 experience that no one had seen reality face to face 
 before. It made this poor visible life seem futile, its 
 discipline absurd ; yet she was immersed in that life, 
 and it pressed in on her, forcing itself on her atten- 
 tion in a peculiarly exasperating way. There were 
 mysteries all about her, strange companions, a 
 knowledge of some actual and densely-populated 
 world here, at hand, penetrating her own body 
 perhaps, as well as all objects of her thought. Yet 
 Vera's bath must be faced every morning, and the 
 shop, that little universe, where souls and bodies 
 were but the material for a profitable distribution of 
 the real things cloth, leather, paper and ink. This 
 state of things constituted a paradox which would 
 have been amusing had it not been personal. As 
 she went to business in the morning, automatically 
 dodging the motor -omnibuses, staring out of her 
 dream in amazement at the people who surged up in 
 her path, all hurrying and all unreal, she repeated to 
 herself continually : " I have got to go on ! I have 
 got to go on !" 
 
 She came to the bookshop at the moment in which 
 
 the last of the shutters ran up with a bang, disclosing 
 
 a window in which Constance was accustomed to 
 
 take a certain professional pride. She gave it as she 
 
 3
 
 34 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 entered the scrutinizing glance which a good house- 
 wife bestows on the drawing-room curtains as she 
 goes up her garden-path. The window was wide 
 and uncrowded ; the loving amplitude of a museum, 
 not the tightly-packed practicalities of trade. It was 
 never without its MS. of the Decretals, its Flemish 
 herbal, open at a page at once decorative and 
 decorous, Burton's " Arabian Nights " placed dis- 
 creetly in the background, a cover in tooled Levant 
 from the Doves Bindery, or one or two of the rarer 
 products of the Kelmscott Press. Within, topo- 
 graphy and scandalous chronicles jostled the ancients 
 very comfortably upon the shelves. There were also a 
 few high-class remainders, and several piles of cheap 
 reprints ; for Lambton's was one of the many estab- 
 lishments which stand, Janus-faced, between culture 
 and commerce. One corner was devoted to current 
 literature : reviewers' copies, often uncut and always 
 very cheap. 
 
 Two tables stood in the wide space between the 
 bookshelves. On one Mr. John Lambton arranged 
 a permanent exhibition of book-lovers' trinkets : 
 limited editions, pocket classics, neatly - boxed 
 marvels of limp lambskin and rough calf. Thomas 
 a Kempis in twenty different dresses all worldly ; 
 the wisdom of the East in American spelling ; or the 
 " Ballad of Reading Gaol," clothed with a chaste 
 absurdity in white. The other table, which was 
 smaller, held large unreadable colour books, a few 
 works on Italian painters, and new copies of such 
 novels as Constance felt that cultured and bookish 
 people ought to read. 
 
 She looked up as she entered at the tight-ribbed
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 35 
 
 rows of books on the shelves ; little nests of words, 
 bewilderingly various. They were gay in the morn- 
 ing light, and wide awake. She stared at them, as 
 one stares at abnormal shapes ; seeing them no 
 longer as concrete things, but as odd agglomerations 
 of line and surface. 
 
 Little nests of words ! Ideas, those evanescent, 
 wandering things, caught and tucked up in paper ; as 
 unruly children are tucked up in bed. To open a 
 book, and let the soul of it gush out like perfume, 
 invading, overwhelming the mind ; this was a daily 
 miracle, and she the purveyor of such miracles ! 
 She had never thought of it before ; but at this 
 moment the mystery of it swept her, and with it 
 amazement that one should thus sell thoughts for 
 money, since thoughts were real and money was not. 
 How inconceivable an act, to communicate the 
 dream which came from the heart of Dante in three 
 volumes limp green leather for six shillings net ! In 
 the face of this and all other paradoxes of her 
 concrete life, she was suddenly infected with an 
 unworldly bewilderment. She looked out with 
 astonished vision on an incredible earth. All things 
 were made new ; for it seemed that she had abruptly 
 acquired the innocence of eye which we snatch so 
 easily from our children, to give back so tardily and 
 incompletely to our artists, poets, and saints. 
 
 She took off her hat, assumed her blue linen 
 overall, and sat down at her desk. The mirror was 
 opposite to her. She raised her eyes, saw it, and 
 at once the scene of the past night was re-created 
 for her : the dusk and solitude, all the ceremonial 
 absurdities, the perfumed smoke which had ascended 
 32
 
 3 6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 like a white pillar, that other pillar of grey and 
 shivering dust which had arisen from the floor, the 
 urgent and tormented voice that had addressed itself 
 to no earthly ear. Fire and all the eternities evoked 
 in a bookshop in that prison of a myriad cells ! 
 The tangible and intangible worlds were swept up 
 together, in one heap of confused experience, like 
 the surging clouds in a crystal-gazer's ball. But it 
 was the invisible side that seemed homely and 
 possible of comprehension ; the visible that was 
 alien and remote. When she questioned herself she 
 found nothing, save the nervous upheaval caused by 
 her late experience, to account for this state of 
 things. She was amazed by her own topsy-turvy 
 condition, conscious of it, and interested in it But 
 she seemed to have lost the useful art of taking 
 things for granted. She stared at the strange new 
 world of unmeaning colour and shape, and wondered 
 why it should exist at all. 
 
 Then Mr. John Lambton came through the glass 
 door from his private room ; and at once Constance 
 became the normal business woman, the useful 
 manager, the prudent and cultivated bibliophile. 
 Mr. John held a catalogue in his hand. He was 
 going to ask her advice ; a circumstance much 
 dreaded by Miss Tyrrel, since it .often compelled her 
 to exhibit an intellectual superiority which prudence 
 advised her to keep for the sole use of her customers. 
 It is one thing to bandy Horace with old gentlemen, 
 and another to improve inadvertently upon your em- 
 ployer's Latin pronunciation. 
 
 Mr. Lambton had engaged Constance because an 
 assistant who knew something about literature had
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 37 
 
 become necessary to his peace of mind. He was 
 one of those unfortunate persons whose short sight 
 and aquiline nose suggest a culture which their con- 
 versation cannot endorse. In such a superior class 
 of business as that of Lambton and Sons this was 
 particularly inconvenient ; for Elzevirs in the window 
 are held to imply erudition behind the counter. 
 There was scarcely a day in which some customer 
 did not embark upon a conversation which Mr. John 
 was obliged to terminate in a sudden and sometimes 
 tactless way. The thing came to a head on the 
 morning upon which a disgusted liturgiologist found 
 Dugdale's " Monasticon " and Haeckel's " Monism " 
 side by side on the shelf labelled " R.C. Theology." 
 Mr. John, stung by his client's contemptuous glance, 
 alarmed by his immediate exit, felt that the services 
 of a well - educated inferior had become no less 
 necessary to commercial prosperity than to personal 
 comfort and self-respect. 
 
 Miss Tyrrel, then, found herself obliged to main- 
 tain a carefully subsidiary position, whilst keeping a 
 vigilant eye upon her employer's bibliographical 
 aberrations. She was rather glad to find that on 
 this morning*he wished to consult her about nothing 
 more recondite than the "Romaunt of Syr Gawayne," 
 the large-paper edition of which had just gone into 
 remainder. Mr. John thought that it could be sold 
 very profitably at one-and-six, and he observed that 
 it was a fine large book for the money, and if cased 
 in velvet calf, with ribbon ties, would be singularly 
 suitable for presentation. 
 
 " You had better send an order to-day," he said, 
 " or else one of the other big houses will go and buy
 
 3 8 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 the lot. When they come, get them bound up and 
 put aside for the Christmas season. They'll fetch 
 half a guinea then." 
 
 " But I think it's only a facsimile of the Burdett 
 MS.," answered Constance " not at all a book for 
 general circulation : Middle English, very difficult to 
 make out, and a good deal of curious matter in the 
 notes." 
 
 Mr. John replied : " All the better. Looks 
 cultured, medieval, and so on. People don't want 
 to read the books they give away." 
 
 Constance wrote out the order in a spirit of dis- 
 gusted obedience, and then remembered how little 
 such things mattered to one who had attained to the 
 superb generalizations which characterized her 
 present view of life. This view had departed from 
 her at Mr. John's entrance ; now it began to 
 encroach by slow steps upon her orderly and busy 
 mind. She was enfranchised from that carefulness 
 about many bibliographical things which usually 
 obsessed her from nine till seven ; but she had only 
 cast off one set of chains to assume another. 
 
 It was gradually borne in on her that her senses 
 were no longer quite her own; there was a Thing 
 which used them, and she participated in that use, 
 but could not control it. She leaned, as it were, over 
 the shoulder of a new inhabitant, and peeped out of 
 the window with him. So peeping, she recognized a 
 fellow- victim of that impassioned curiosity, that cold 
 lust of knowledge, which had urged her to all the 
 adventures of her life. It seemed as though she, out 
 of the whole phenomenal world, had attracted her 
 antitype in the world of reality. When she turned
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 39 
 
 inwards and asked the persistent Presence, " Why 
 are you here?" he, using perforce the language with 
 which his hostess provided him, could only answer, 
 " I want to know !" All through life that had been 
 her own need. She respected it. 
 
 Presently a customer, who had been prowling 
 happily in the recesses of the shop, approached with 
 a copy of Balzac's " Contes Drolatiques." He had 
 unearthed it from the dark corner where those books 
 which are catalogued " curious " were usually kept, 
 and was turning it over with interest. Seeing a 
 young woman behind the desk, he hesitated ; but 
 reflected that shop-girls share with nurses a certain 
 immunity from the ordinary decencies of life, and 
 came boldly on. 
 
 " This," he said, " seems a very quaint, uncommon 
 sort of book most amusing, too. But it's well, 
 distinctly, don't you know?" he thought for a 
 moment, came to the conclusion that his French 
 was bound to be better than hers, and added firmly, 
 " lubrique." 
 
 Constance, hardly readjusted to West London 
 ideals, answered him calmly and vaguely : 
 
 " He writes entirely from the medieval standpoint : 
 puts everything down, of course, just as it really 
 happens, without leaving out the usual things. But 
 there's nothing uncommon in it really nothing but 
 life. The costume is different, and the people are 
 quite candid, that is all. Modern married life in the 
 suburbs is just as " she was determined to give him 
 his word again "just as lubrique." 
 
 The customer looked at her with surprise, and with 
 a noticeably joyous anticipation, but her smooth black
 
 40 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 hair and solid figure did not suggest pleasantries. 
 She added immediately : 
 
 " That copy is twelve-and-six. It's in a very good 
 state, and has all the Dor6 illustrations. I can give 
 you another, with the margins rather cut down, for 
 seven shillings, if you like ; but it isn't such good 
 value for the money." 
 
 The customer thanked her, and said that he would 
 think it over. He left the book lying on the desk, 
 and Constance carefully reinterred it in its dark 
 corner, returned to her ledger, and glanced at the 
 clock. It was after half-past twelve, and a quarter 
 to one was the hour of the Mid-day Friend. 
 
 Every prosperous bookshop has its gang of 
 prowlers, who pay their footing by a purchase once 
 in a while, but have their real commercial value for 
 the establishment in the fact that they stimulate the 
 prowling instincts of other passers-by. These may 
 be persons of a nicer conscience than your true adept 
 of the business, and feel that each delicious loiter and 
 surreptitious bout of reading must be paid for, if only 
 from the penny box. The conscientious prowler, 
 however, tends with the passing months to join the 
 more professional and less lucrative class. It was 
 the distinction of the Mid-day Friend that he had 
 moved in the opposite direction. 
 
 In that slow, unnoticed way which is peculiar to 
 great constitutional changes, his visits had ceased to 
 be an accident and had become an institution. 
 There had been first the involuntary glance at the 
 wide and open entrance as he passed, and then the 
 momentary lingering to read a title or so, and then 
 the day on which he ha'd entered the shop in chase
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 41 
 
 of a colour book whose vivid charms had forced it 
 into remainder a little before the usual time. He 
 had turned it over, looking with admiration at the 
 blue trees and orange castles, and the purple- 
 margined peasants silhouetted against greenish skies. 
 Then he had put it down with a sigh. 
 
 " I'm afraid I must not take it," he said. " The 
 truth is, my wife doesn't like these books, and it vexes 
 her to see them lie about. You see, she has made our 
 house very artistic whitewash, and all that." 
 
 This statement at once aroused sentiments of 
 interest and pity in Constance ; delightful and 
 stimulating emotions which her customers seldom 
 provoked. She conceived of this blunt, square, 
 bullet-headed man, wholesomely animal, poised un- 
 comfortably upon sparse and tasteful furniture ; his 
 very weight and virility an offence, his broad-toed 
 boots always in the way. The constant society of a 
 wife who condemned all that one thought ingenious 
 and beautiful seemed a more lonely business than 
 her own solitary lodgings, where there was, at any 
 rate, no one to set up irksome and exclusive canons 
 of taste. ..-* 
 
 On his next visit she learned that his name was 
 Andrew : a circumstance mentioned in connection 
 with Scotland, the national thistle, and the animals 
 which feed thereon. This form of humour seemed a 
 relief to him. She divined that it was not permitted 
 at home. She had laughed with such evident 
 good-humour and enjoyment that he could hardly 
 fail to index her as the sort of woman who under- 
 stands and appreciates a man. He bought a book. 
 On the next day he returned and bought another,
 
 42 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 with a pathetic air of trying to make his visits worth 
 her while. In a week they seemed intimate friends. 
 
 Upon this morning Constance looked forward 
 almost hungrily to Andrew's visit. She turned 
 towards the idea of his solid and unimaginative 
 personality with that instinct for a counter-irritant 
 which causes us to seek out our least appropriate 
 acquaintances in seasons of grief. He did not want 
 to be spiritual, he did not want to think. She saw 
 at this moment much to commend in such a point 
 of view. She loved her body, honoured it deliberately 
 as the medium of all great experience. The Mid-day 
 Friend took the body seriously ; was interested in 
 the clothes which it wore, the games that were good 
 for it, the things that one gave it to eat. His own 
 body was excellently groomed, warm, efficient, and 
 compact. He would have been shocked and puzzled 
 by the suggestion that it really had something in 
 common with a column of dust ; for outside the 
 pages of the Burial Service such metaphors were 
 clearly morbid and absurd. 
 
 He came. His " Morning, Miss Tyrrel. Hope 
 you're well. Beastly weather we're having!" at 
 once satisfied her craving for honest ordinariness. 
 But, to her surprise, he did not fidget in the usual 
 way ; flick the pages of the second-hand novels, or 
 otherwise try to find a reason for his presence. He 
 walked without hesitation towards the bookshelves, 
 and she found herself following him in the subdued 
 but attentive attitude of the expert saleswoman. 
 For once, it appeared, there was a definite object 
 in his visit. 
 
 " It's my wife's birthday," he said. " Forgot all
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 43 
 
 about it till I'd left the house this morning. Rather 
 awkward ! I must take something home. She's a 
 curious woman, you know childish in a way, as 
 many are, although clever. Doesn't like these little 
 things passed by. Seems to me I may as well give 
 her a book as anything else. She reads a good deal : 
 the right sort of thing, of course. It occurred to 
 me that you'd be able to find me something she 
 would like. It had better be thoroughly up to date 
 or else quite old-fashioned ; anything in between is 
 no good." 
 
 Constance successively suggested " Neolithic Pan- 
 theism"; "Southern Siberia: the Home of the 
 Soul "; and " The Duty of Duties : Development of 
 Self"; but he thought that she was sure to have 
 read all those. He wandered from one table to 
 another, picking up books with an uncertain hand. 
 She liked the air of manly helplessness with which 
 he confronted an intellectual choice. Clearly, it 
 was important that he should avoid any mistake. 
 
 " Women are queer," he said. " One doesn't 
 understand 'em. Not that one wants to, for that 
 matter ; but it's more comfortable not to do the 
 wrong thing if one can help it." 
 
 " If they really are women just that you can't 
 do the wrong thing, can you ?" 
 
 " That's it !" said Andrew eagerly. " That's what 
 one wants 'em to be, of course. But they never are 
 nowadays at least, not in our set. Don't seem to 
 understand what men want. Oh, very nice to us, 
 do their duty, and so on, of course. I'm not saying 
 anything. But clever, and always worrying about 
 it ; as if brains in women were a sort of disease. I
 
 44 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 beg your pardon ! Beastly of me. I forgot. Really, 
 you let me come chatting to you, and sometimes 
 one's tongue runs on." 
 
 Constance was aware of something which picked 
 up these utterances, looked at them curiously, and 
 laid them by with a helpless air of non-comprehen- 
 sion. But she resisted its companionship, expelled 
 it as it were from the neighbourhood of her mind, 
 and concentrated her will upon Andrew and his 
 interests. His robust humanity called out hers to 
 meet it. He found her, on this morning, peculiarly 
 sympathetic; and never suspected that her unusual 
 proximity of spirit was due rather to the repulsive 
 powers of another than to his own attractive 
 force. 
 
 He was greatly pleased by an expensive copy of 
 Browning's " Christmas Eve," printed in illegible 
 Gothic type, with fantastic bloomers, and bound in 
 naked millboards held together by linen braid. 
 
 "The binding," he said, "is just right for our 
 drawing-room so bare and simple couldn't be 
 better. But she wouldn't read it ; and I doubt if 
 she'd even let it lie about. You see, Browning, 
 from what I hear, is just a bit gone by in our set ; 
 and old-fashioned books are worse to them than last 
 year's clothes. Quaint, isn't it, the way things come 
 and go ? When we were first married, you know, 
 she got quite depressed because I couldn't stick him ; 
 and now he goes on the top shelf, with Ruskin and 
 George Eliot and Carlyle." 
 
 He was standing by her desk ; and having laid 
 down the blatantly austere " Christmas Eve," he 
 picked up a shabby duodecimo and began to flick its
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 45 
 
 leaves, gently and indifferently, as he talked. It was 
 the " Grand Grimoire." 
 
 " Now here," he said presently, " is a very rummy 
 little thing ! I wonder if that would do ? I shall 
 be late for lunch if I don't find something soon. 
 What is it ? Magic, eh ? That's quite a notion. 
 A bit out of the common, I suppose. She's not 
 likely to have seen one before ?" 
 
 " Hardly. They are getting very scarce. This is 
 the first copy we have had for years." 
 
 He gazed vaguely at the queer woodcuts and 
 strange garbled recipes, as precise and unemotional 
 as a cookery-book. 
 
 " Queer notions those old chaps had ! Look 
 here : ' To evoke the spirit of an angel, the magic 
 circle being drawn and the altar of incense pre- 
 pared !' God bless my soul what next ? First 
 
 catch your angel, eh ? Oh, I'll take this ; it will 
 just suit Muriel. She's keen on spooks and things, 
 and she hates the point of view of modern science. 
 Not much modern science here !" 
 
 Constance answered : " On the contrary, if you 
 know how to read its formulae, this is modern science, 
 and the things that modern science hasn't yet 
 got to." 
 
 " Oh, come !" said Andrew, humouring her. 
 " Modern science, you know, is practical, experi- 
 mental, constructive, and so on." 
 
 " Well, so is this. It is just a series of scientific 
 experiments ; nothing else. And they are real 
 enough and practical enough for those who know 
 how to perform them, goodness knows ! Other 
 people, of course, will find it about as enlightening
 
 46 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 as a collection of chemists' prescriptions ; and about 
 as dangerous, too, if they go meddling without 
 authority." 
 
 " Yes, but vampires and spells and salamanders, 
 you know !" insisted Andrew. " They're all here, 
 taking themselves quite seriously. You're not going 
 to tell me those are scientific facts, are you ? We 
 mayn't know much, but we are jolly well sure they 
 don't exist." 
 
 " You can't prove a negative." 
 
 " God bless my soul what next ?" said Mr. Vince 
 for the second time. Within his own mind, he 
 added : " She seemed such a sensible woman, too." 
 
 He felt puzzled for a moment, and slightly dis- 
 heartened. It was the first time that they had 
 disagreed. Then the word " angel " suddenly 
 occurred to him, and suggested that the queer little 
 book might perhaps have something to do with 
 religion, though it seemed on the surface to have 
 more in common with Maskelyne and Cooke. There 
 were so many new religions now. No doubt Miss 
 Tyrrel affected one of them a circumstance which 
 would explain her peculiar attitude at once. She 
 might even be a Romanist ; they believed a lot of 
 very curious things. He became shy and careful ; 
 for it was an axiom with him that one should never 
 disturb women's religion. They required it, poor 
 creatures ! 
 
 As for Constance, she asked herself with temper : 
 " What on earth can have made me play the fool, 
 and talk to him in that idiotic way ? For two 
 pins I should have told him the whole affair. Of 
 course, he is disgusted now, and thinks I am a
 
 THE DAY'S WORK 47 
 
 superstitious rotter ; and very likely that is what 
 lam!" 
 
 Her manner became constrained and business-like, 
 confirming his suspicion that he had somehow 
 shocked her by mistake. He paid for the Grimoire, 
 and retired in a mood of contrition. Constance 
 wrapped it up in brown paper, and tied thin green 
 string about it, with a certain relief. She still had a 
 vague idea that in the absence of all exciting sugges- 
 tions, it might be possible to banish the humiliating 
 memory of her experiment, and of the tiresome 
 hallucinations which it had induced. 
 
 But the protective influence of humanity seemed 
 to have departed with her friend ; and a puzzled 
 voice, which she was learning to recognize, murmured 
 in her ear : "It is all so very funny, but what does 
 it mean ?" 
 
 And once more she looked out on a world which 
 had become strange to her inconceivable, grotesque.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 
 
 "How much more dulcet the dulcis Amavyllidis ira, 
 when Amaryllis knows Sophocles and Hegel by heart !" 
 COVENTRY PATMORE : Religio Poetee. 
 
 A NDREW VINCE entered the drawing-room 
 Jr\. carefully. The floor was highly polished, and 
 the one small rug, which always skated before his ad- 
 vancing feet, added to its deceptive qualities. There 
 was a purple sofa near the window, a closed cupboard 
 in one corner. Four large fat cushions were arranged 
 upon the floor. The walls were white. There were 
 no curtains and no pictures. 
 
 Mrs. Vince who would have resembled a Domini- 
 can nun dressed by Liberty had it not been for the 
 masses of healthy-looking yellow hair which she 
 wore, with becoming austerity, in a coronal plait 
 sat upon one of the cushions, and spoke with her 
 accustomed earnestness about nothing in particular. 
 She had applied to the uses of society the journalist's 
 trick of skimming things with an air of intensity, and 
 many men called her a wonderful little woman. 
 " The blue butterfly," one of them had said of her ; 
 but this unusually irreverent epigram had been 
 
 48
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 49 
 
 generally condemned, though constantly repeated, 
 in her set. 
 
 A member of this set lounged before the fire and 
 listened to her hostess's conversation. She, like 
 Muriel, seemed at first sight too healthy to be 
 eccentric ; tall and pretty, with a mature and com- 
 fortable prettiness that suggested an easy disposition 
 and an absence of tiresome ideals. If Muriel was 
 the butterfly of her circle, Phoebe Foster was its 
 bumble-bee. She was prosperous, and dressed well ; 
 believing that luxurious surroundings and an ample 
 diet constituted as fine a discipline for the modern 
 soul as the tedious simplicities of the cloister or its 
 agnostic equivalent ; the workman's dwelling adapted 
 to the use of ladies living alone. " Anyone," she 
 said, " could be spiritual with self-denial, boiled 
 vegetables, and the ' Lives of the Saints '; but it is 
 much more difficult to feel that you are resting on 
 Eternity when there is a brocaded cushion in 
 between." 
 
 She was speaking of purity as Andrew entered ; 
 and one feels it to be characteristic of her point of 
 view that she did not think it necessary to change 
 the conversation. 
 
 "One is obliged," she was saying, "to leave the 
 static conception, the mere idle chastity, behind. 
 Where, otherwise, would be Woman's value to the 
 race ? The courtesan is a heretic, the nun is an atheist. 
 Do you remember ?" 
 
 " Purity in wifehood !" answered Mrs. Vince, with 
 
 the gentle didacticism appropriate to her youth 
 
 " Spiritual eugenics ! That must, of course, be our 
 
 ideal. To bear one or two children of beautiful 
 
 4
 
 5 o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 character, and shed an atmosphere of peace upon the 
 home." 
 
 Andrew, fresh from the tossing current of the 
 streets, the eager war with other brains which made 
 up his daily work, felt that there was something 
 chill and horrible in the peaceful grey light which 
 came through the curtainless windows, the peaceful 
 spaces of white walls and polished floor, and the 
 arrogant prattle of these women who sat safely 
 ensconced as in a fortress, protected from life and 
 truth by the earnings of the men whom they 
 despised. It threw him back upon himself, as 
 sudden entrance into a refrigerator forces the 
 organism to draw heavily on its stock of latent heat. 
 Domesticity, for him, had been drawn in outline, 
 with a pen of exaggerated refinement. Its conven- 
 tion was excellent, its design was complete, but it 
 still awaited the warm tints which should give it the 
 semblance of life. 
 
 However, the place was his, after all. He 
 spread his coat-tails, sat down deliberately upon 
 the purple sofa, checked its recoil by planting his 
 heels firmly on the floor, and said, " Where's the 
 boy ?" 
 
 The ladies looked at one another, and Muriel rang 
 the bell twice. The child who came in response to 
 it was fair and languid, as if the forces which brought 
 him to birth had wearied before the end of their 
 task. He ran to his mother, and leaned against 
 her with a pretty gesture of abandonment. His 
 hair was a little too long, his socks were a little 
 too short. His smile, if a trifle superior, was 
 seraphic.
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 51 
 
 Vince said to his son, " Well, Felix, what have 
 you been doing to-day ?" 
 
 The boy answered, " Bits of poetry and rhythmy 
 things, of course ;" and his mother put her arm 
 about him, as if she felt competent, at any rate, to 
 protect her child from the cruder follies of father- 
 hood and the degrading influences of an ordinary 
 education. One of his hands was within hers : with 
 the other, he began to trace the course of the black 
 embroidery which ran over her white dress. His 
 touch was dainty and bird-like. He and his mother 
 appeared to be wholly content. They had forgotten 
 Vince's presence. 
 
 Phoebe Foster said to him politely, " Felix loses 
 none of his prettiness. He is quite a little angel 
 still." 
 
 She spoke in a discreet and social murmur, and 
 neither the child nor his mother caught the words. 
 
 Andrew replied, " Perhaps ; but he's getting 
 rather beyond the angelic stage now. He's got to 
 be a boy before long, drat him ! That means coming 
 to terms with Old Nick as well as with Gabriel, you 
 know." His intonation was quite clear, and his in- 
 tention no less so when he added, " He will be 
 ready for the preparatory school in another year or 
 two, and then it's good-bye to poetry and long hair. 
 Takes a man to make a man. I sometimes think 
 you ladies don't quite know what a male thing 
 means." 
 
 "We know some of us what it ought to 
 become," said Phcebe gently. 
 
 It was noticeable that whilst Andrew's entrance 
 had only introduced constraint, that of Felix had 
 42
 
 52 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 brought with it a sense of active hostility. Already 
 camps were formed. The glove had been thrown 
 down, and a little encouragement would set the com- 
 batants to work. Miss Foster rose and said good- 
 bye. She loved tranquillity, and believed that she 
 had a right to it. 
 
 Andrew was now left with a forced option. He 
 could either change the conversation or continue it. 
 Silence was impossible, for he did not live in his 
 wife's universe. He therefore took the " Grand 
 Grimoire " from his pocket, and wished her, rather 
 tardily, many happy returns of the departing day. 
 
 Muriel accepted the little old book very graciously. 
 She had a keen sense of duty : and except in moments 
 of intellectual collision, always treated her husband 
 with kindness. Also, in spite of herself, she was 
 pleased and excited by the unusual nature of his 
 gift. 
 
 " This is quite interesting !" she said. " Only the 
 other day someone was speaking to me about auto- 
 suggestion and will-power, and the place which they 
 occupied in medieval magic. It is going to be an 
 important subject, from the point of view of 
 historical psychology : which is most interesting, of 
 course. But I am rather surprised that you " 
 
 Felix, still leaning against her knee, anticipated 
 her, exclaiming, " Fancy Father finding such a queer 
 little thing as that !" He would have pulled it 
 away, but his mother kept it within her own hands, 
 holding it open firmly and cruelly : the gesture 
 of a person who feels that her act of reading 
 is far more important than any domestic sanctities 
 which may happen to pertain to the thing read.
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 53 
 
 She pressed back the covers until the new morocco 
 hinges gave the despairing squeak of a stout 
 lady compelled to unsuitable athletics ; and said 
 "Look, Felix! This will interest you. That's 
 called a colophon, and those are woodcuts. Are 
 they not rough and funny? That's the way that 
 people first began to make the pictures for their 
 books." 
 
 Peace might have reigned in the room, for Muriel 
 was always amiable when she was imparting in- 
 formation ; but Felix, watching the turning of the 
 small torn brownish pages, suddenly arrested the 
 process, and broke the spell by planting a beautifully 
 clean little finger on the middle of a leaf. 
 
 "What's that?" he said. 
 
 Muriel's serenity departed. Felix had asked a 
 question which she could not answer ; an objection- 
 able and unheard-of situation, for which Andrew 
 and his extraordinary present must certainly be 
 blamed. She was silent. 
 
 Vince said cheerfully, " What have you got hold 
 of, old boy ?" 
 
 Felix began to read aloud, carefully, syllable 
 by syllable, " ' Vaychen stimulamaton y ezpares 
 Tetragrammaton oryoram irion esytion existion 
 eryoma !'" 
 
 " It is a spell, darling," said his mother. 
 
 " Sounds like one of my rhythmy things," answered 
 Felix : and Andrew laughed in a hearty and irri- 
 tating way. 
 
 " Modern education," he said, " does not seem to 
 be so very modern, after all ! I was told to-day 
 that this thing was full of modern science and the
 
 54 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 things that science has not got to yet ; and it really 
 begins to look rather like it." 
 
 " Who told you that ?" 
 
 " The woman from whom I bought it." 
 
 " But what does it mean ?" said Felix anxiously. 
 
 Andrew replied, " If you want to know what it 
 means, I fancy that you will have to ask Mummie to 
 take you to see the lady who sold me this book. 
 She knows all about everything." 
 
 " So does Mummie," answered Felix. " And I 
 don't like ladies ; they talk so. Oh, Mummie, what 
 does it mean ?" 
 
 Muriel left the question on one side, and spoke 
 directly to her husband : " Where did you pick it 
 up ?" she said. 
 
 " Oh, at a second-hand bookshop that I pass on 
 my way to the office." 
 
 " What made you get it ? Was it in the window?" 
 
 " No. I look in now and then," said Andrew 
 grudgingly. He began to feel that he might as well 
 have given her the Shorter Catechism at once. 
 
 Muriel became almost interested. " You look in ?" 
 she exclaimed. " At a bookshop ? What an extra- 
 ordinary idea !" 
 
 " I like a novel to read with my lunch sometimes," 
 explained Vince. 
 
 Muriel replied indifferently, " Oh, I see ; I thought 
 as they had things like this, it must be a good 
 bookshop." 
 
 " All sorts," said Andrew, " doggy books, travels, 
 Kipling, Corelli, and so on : and rows of these old 
 brown things at the back, all looking as if they'd 
 been dug out of a mousy cupboard."
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 55 
 
 " And this woman ? She sounds rather interesting. 
 Does she keep it ?" 
 
 " No. She's the manager. Curious thing : she's 
 quite a lady educated, nice manners. I suppose 
 the poor creature was left badly off and didn't find a 
 husband. Bad luck ! Must be over thirty now, but 
 she is a fine woman still. We've got quite chummy 
 one way and another. It makes a bit of a change 
 for her, I dare say, to have a little chat now and 
 then." 
 
 Muriel sprang from the middle classes, and had 
 the eye for minute social detail and all that is 
 implied by it which is peculiar to this caste. She 
 thought quickly and automatically, " If this girl 
 really finds it interesting to chat with a man like 
 Andrew, she cannot be quite a lady." 
 
 Felix had been amusing himself with the Grimoire, 
 and now offered another passage for interpretation. 
 " What is an Undine ?" said he. 
 Muriel answered, " It is a very beautiful story 
 which you shall read when you have grown a 
 bigger boy." 
 
 " No, it's not a story ; it's a thing, and you say 
 prayers to it," replied Felix. " There's one in here. 
 How funny ! Raymond Percy says prayers too ; but 
 I don't think they are about Undines. Shall I say 
 prayers when I'm a bigger boy ?" 
 
 " No, dear ; it will not be necessary," said his 
 mother. " Your little soul has been nurtured from 
 birth. It will, I hope, expand like a flower by its 
 own innocent strength." 
 
 Felix recognized the language and remembered 
 his supper ; a slice of bread and butter with brown
 
 56 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 sugar on it, which an old-fashioned and affectionate 
 nurse administered at half-past six o'clock. 
 
 " Please, may I go back to the nursery?" he said. 
 "Good-night, Father. Do you know, Mummie, 
 Raymond has got a lovely rocking-horse now, and a 
 little runny train, as well as prayers ?" 
 
 " Why on earth don't you let the child have some 
 toys ?" said Andrew when his son had gone away. 
 There was almost a growl in his voice. 
 
 Muriel answered him gravely and patiently. " I 
 have told you, Andrew," she said, "that the child's 
 training must be left wholly in my hands if I am to 
 undertake it at all. At this point, a divided influence 
 would be fatal. He has his poetry-books and dancing 
 and his singing-games; the newest authorities are 
 agreed that those are the proper agents for the 
 development of the subconscious mind. They awake 
 the sense of joy, which has no rational relation to 
 tin soldiers and mechanical ships. Such toys only 
 enchain the imagination, and cause children to attach 
 too much importance to material things." 
 
 " Poor little beasts ! It's rather rough luck to be 
 a modern child." 
 
 Muriel suddenly smiled at him, with an aggra- 
 vating and invulnerable radiance that seemed to 
 break from within. " I won't argue with you," she 
 said. " We speak to one another from such different 
 planes that it is useless, and controversy is almost 
 negative in its effects upon the soul. I like the little 
 book; it was dear of you to bring it. It is more 
 interesting to me than you can understand. Tell me 
 more about this woman. What is she like, and how 
 much does she really know about psychic things ?"
 
 A DOMESTIC INTERIOR 57 
 
 "Oh, she's tall dark rather solid!" answered 
 Andrew. " Looks as if she did Swedish gymnastics 
 after her bath ; that sort of type, don't you know ? 
 
 Very good teeth and nice complexion " He 
 
 caught Muriel's expression and stopped. 
 
 " Don't you know anything about her that 
 matters ?" said his wife patiently. 
 
 " Not much. I haven't a ghost of an idea who 
 her people are, or where she comes from. But she's 
 all right, don't you know. One can see that in a 
 second. She was rather queer this morning; a bit 
 upset by the damp weather, perhaps. It must be 
 chilly work in that shop at times, with the door 
 wide open all day. I'd always looked upon her as a 
 bright, business-like sort of woman ; full of sense ; 
 no frills. But she said some extraordinary silly 
 things about this book." 
 
 Muriel became interested, leaned forward a little, 
 and said, " Tell me." 
 
 " Well, she really seemed almost inclined to take 
 it seriously. Absurd, of course. Can't think what 
 she was driving at. Said it was like a lot of chemists' 
 prescriptions ; useful to the professional who knew 
 what to do with them, but dangerous to amateurs 
 who didn't." 
 
 " How curious !" exclaimed Muriel. " She must 
 have an interesting mind. Perhaps she is a practical 
 occultist. One finds them in the most unexpected 
 places : even on the Stock Exchange, I hear." 
 
 " Oh, she's not such a fool as that." 
 
 His wife hardly heard him. There was a glow of 
 excitement in her eyes. She had caught a glimpse 
 of a transcendental novelty ; and, eager for the chase,
 
 58 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 entirely forgot to be grateful to the man who had put 
 her on the scent. She said almost peremptorily, 
 " What is the address of the shop ?" 
 
 Vince gave it to her ; he had no alternative. 
 But it seemed a little hard that Muriel, who took so 
 much, should now annex this slight yet singularly 
 satisfactory friendship. No doubt she would sub- 
 jugate Miss Tyrrel. Few women could resist her; 
 for they all, in Andrew's experience, wished to be 
 clever, and Muriel invariably attributed this quality 
 to those persons who shared her spiritual and educa- 
 tional views. Constance would be taken in hand, 
 patronized, taught to sit on cushions on the floor. 
 She would soon cease to laugh at his jokes.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 
 
 " If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything 
 would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has 
 closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow 
 chinks of his cavern." BLAKE : The Marriage of Heaven 
 and Hell. 
 
 /"CONSTANCE stood high upon a ladder, vainly 
 \*~s trying to keep pace with the interminable 
 dusting and tidying which mingles domesticity 
 with literature in all well-ordered bookshops. The 
 tightly packed shelves rose like a stratified cliff from 
 floor to ceiling within a few inches of her eyes ; and 
 she was poised in the air amongst them, like some 
 climber hung upon the face of a precipice intent on 
 their service, as is the way with born librarians and 
 bibliophiles. There was something intimate, personal, 
 and homely in her relation with each volume. She 
 loved them, and it pleased her to tend them. The 
 monotony of her occupation induced, mechanically, 
 a feeling of security and peace. It was like knitting 
 raised to the intellectual plane. 
 
 Now and again, when a footstep caught her 
 attention and suggested the possibility of an early 
 customer, she turned for a moment and glanced 
 
 59
 
 Go THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 downwards. Then she obtained an excellent view 
 of the establishment, and also of the landscape which 
 was framed by the open door : a little patch of pave- 
 ment, some bits of dirty paper in the gutter, the 
 skirts and trousers of pedestrians, the tail tips of 
 the many passing dogs. These, because they were 
 living, moving things, exhilarated her. She longed 
 to touch them and feel their delightful warmth : the 
 exquisite children in white gaiters ; their nurses, who 
 hastened to Kensington Gardens with a novelette 
 peeping under the perambulator rug ; the active, 
 prosperous girls, taking their terriers for a morning 
 walk. 
 
 She was alone, and therefore wholly under the 
 dominion of the Watcher. So constant was his 
 presence, so rare were the moments in which she 
 obtained possession of herself, that this state of 
 things had begun to seem almost natural. She was 
 getting accustomed to his point of view; to the 
 curious mixture of ignorance and arrogance, the 
 breadth and pettiness that he displayed. She re- 
 gretted her experiment, for his companionship was 
 not pleasant ; and he gave as yet no illumination in 
 return for his lodging. She, as she divined, must 
 teach him the earth : he was busy with his lessons, 
 probing, guessing, questioning all the while. But he 
 had nothing to impart about the heavens in ex- 
 change, and this was disappointing. Seeking a 
 greater freedom, she had been caught in a peculiarly 
 exasperating slavery. 
 
 But the thing was done. With the fatalism that 
 was an aspect of her general acceptance of life, she 
 acquiesced quietly enough in the queer rearrangement
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 61 
 
 of things ; and this so completely that her outward 
 demeanour was unchanged by it. Mr. John had not 
 even suspected her of neuralgia ; much less of de- 
 moniac possession. The dust that she was had 
 dignity ; it was not easily thrown into turmoil by 
 the breezes of the abyss. She took up her existence 
 and dealt with it day by day, with her old solidity 
 and calm. 
 
 Nevertheless, she had had a hard week of it. 
 There was her ordinary work to perform, and the 
 spring publishing season was now upon them. 
 There was Vera to attend at the opening and the 
 close of every day. There were the innumerable 
 small duties, the makings and mendings, letting out 
 of tucks, inserting of clean collars, which wage- 
 earning women can never delegate. These things 
 had always filled the routine side of life to over- 
 flowing. Now, there was added to them the enter- 
 tainment of the sleepless Watcher, whose passionate 
 domination of her senses left her exhausted and 
 bewildered every night. He had a ceaseless eager- 
 ness to see, hear, touch, and smell the odd and 
 clumsy world into which he had pushed his way. 
 So her eyes, ears, and hands did the work of two ; 
 and whenever her will was dormant for a moment, 
 his seized the helm and drove the tired body on to 
 fresh experience, and the tired mind to fresh inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 There were no more visual hallucinations, no ap- 
 parent interferences with the laws of external life ; 
 only the constant presence of an alien point of 
 view, and of a Self, a Thing, an actual if intangible 
 personality, that put the machinery of her brain to
 
 62 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 its own purposes. This personality infected her, 
 gave her a new flavour, a new relation to the other 
 constituents of life; as, when an aromatic herb is 
 introduced into the casserole, its real spirit enters 
 into a permanent union with the chicken. Thus, 
 very often, she hardly knew whether the thoughts 
 she had and the words she said were symbols of the 
 Watcher's ideas or of her own. Already, she had 
 almost forgotten what the dear and natural world 
 had been used to look like, before her powers of 
 perception received this disagreeable twist. Now, 
 unnaturalness had become the standard of reality. 
 
 There was only one escape from his overpowering 
 companionship, only one door of return to her true 
 self. When other people entered into communica- 
 tion with her, when life real life put in a peremp- 
 tory claim, and she responded, there was civil war ; 
 her will to live struggling with his will to know. 
 Then, if the external forces of life were strong 
 enough, the human drove back the inhuman, and 
 the social, normal Constance emerged with a great 
 sense of relief. But even so, she was always acutely 
 conscious of the besieger at her gates, waiting till 
 the reinforcements should be withdrawn. Then he 
 was back again ; unfriendly, egotistical, rather con- 
 temptuous. Life, for him, was an odd and interesting 
 exhibition, and she the show-woman. He had a 
 right to her services. 
 
 He had recovered from the first horror of his fall, 
 and was prepared to enjoy himself. But he could 
 not understand existence, nor could she explain it ; 
 for she had never before noticed that it stood in 
 need of explanation. Violently and passionately he
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 63 
 
 demanded the grammar of life ; and she, who had 
 always spoken the language, of course knew nothing 
 of the rules. 
 
 He found some difficulty in trimming perceptions 
 which had been framed for eternity to the narrow 
 outlook of a bookseller's manager in a West-End 
 street. Bit by bit, he was learning the uses of her 
 senses ; eagerly practising these new, delightful tricks 
 of sight and hearing on every little object within range. 
 But all manifestations of energy seemed to him to 
 be much upon a level. They were but moments in v 
 the movement of the dream : and there was nothing 
 in his idea of things which could help him to distin- 
 guish the trivial from the important incidents of life. 
 
 Birth and death, trade and traffic, food and clothes, 
 each raised in him astonished curiosity. Hence he 
 assumed, absurdly, that all these new objects of his 
 knowledge must equally and of necessity be worth 
 the knowing; and concentrated eagerly upon the 
 plots of novels, the flavour of food, the very names 
 of the streets, trying to find out the meaning, or 
 with a more annoying particularity their use. 
 Worse ; when she, or those whom he viewed through 
 her eyes, acted, he presumed a reason for the act. 
 She was helpless before the misconceptions of a 
 creature who applied the standards of the infinite 
 to civilized daily life. 
 
 He was amazed by all that he saw : by that 
 love of the aboriginal burrow which constrains the 
 Londoner, whenever possible, to perform the secret 
 operations of storage, cookery, and travel under- 
 ground : by the teeming streets in which our urban 
 populations are everlastingly content to fidget. He
 
 64 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 could not comprehend the incessant pouring to and 
 fro of people by all the spacious highways and 
 plaited alleys. Seen from his universe, they were 
 like mercury scattered on a disc, which runs without 
 reason in a hundred little processions and solitary 
 drops, unites into a formless, wriggling mass, and 
 breaks away again to an unending repetition of the 
 process. 
 
 Now, from the top of the ladder, as he caught 
 glimpses of the eternal crawl of women past the 
 shops, the eternal vacant hurry of the men, his 
 questions began to besiege her : came between her 
 and the orderly and satisfying work on which she 
 longed to concentrate her weary mind. 
 
 " They are all alive, all conscious, I suppose, these 
 little creatures that I see run by ? At least, they 
 like to think that they are alive. But why should 
 they be always on the move ? What is the use of 
 it ? Are they not able to be still ? Their bodies 
 first run one way, and then they run the other. I 
 see them do it with a strange determination, as if it 
 mattered a great deal. But it makes no difference, 
 really ; does it ? They cannot get away yet. Life 
 means staying here, does it not ? being glued to 
 the ground ? And death means getting away ? 
 However much they run about, they cannot get out 
 of the knot until they die. Is this restlessness the 
 beginning of their dying ; the creeping of something 
 that is already corrupt ?" 
 
 Constance answered, " No; it is a proof of their 
 vitality. They cannot rest, cannot be idle, because 
 they are alive and have so many things to do." She 
 could think of no better explanation.
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 65 
 
 He retorted at once, " But there are no real 
 things to do. Reality does not change ; it is per- 
 fect, and very quiet. I have always existed in it, 
 and therefore I know. This activity is a loathsome 
 illusion ; it has no relation to the real." 
 
 " They think that it has." 
 
 " How can they think it ? They know about 
 death. They know that they are crumbling all the 
 time." 
 
 " They don't think about death. This is life, and 
 they want to live it whilst they can." 
 
 " What a foolish and unreasonable wish ! Surely 
 one may live, taste life, be in it, even acquiesce in the 
 decay, without the eternal fretfulness of doing things ?" 
 
 " I do not know," said Constance, " but it seems 
 to be implicit in the game. We are pushed, you 
 know, for the most part. We don't do very much 
 of it ourselves. Perhaps if you played the game 
 you would understand. You see, when these people 
 die, they will leave things behind them; children, 
 perhaps, whom they must set going in life. Humanity 
 is a chain, not a lot of little spots. When people 
 run to and fro, they are pulled by the other links." 
 
 " But the children will die in their turn. They 
 will all die. Then they will exist in the Real for ever 
 and ever, without earning or eating or any kind of 
 fuss. Why undertake this weariness and struggle, 
 just to stay a few more hours within the dream ? It 
 is so ugly, miserable, and meaningless ! Why do 
 they not all try to die as soon as they can ? Why 
 do not you try to die now, at once ? Disentangle 
 yourself from the dream ?" 
 
 Constance replied, to her own surprise, " That is 
 5
 
 66 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 against the rules." She had not known it before ; 
 now, she was certain of it. It was as if he, coming 
 behind, had pushed her on, beyond her normal 
 standpoint as well as his own, till she saw involun- 
 tarily things which were yet below his horizon. 
 
 "That is comprehensible," said the Watcher; 
 " but if there are rules the game must be real, and 
 there must be a meaning in it. The game that I 
 see with your eyes and your brain is lawless. It has 
 no prize and no object. Nothing happens within it 
 which is real." 
 
 Glancing back on her own experience, Constance 
 said, " Real things do happen, even in this corner ; 
 but only to one's self. I think that you would hardly 
 notice them ; they look so little, so unimportant, to 
 outsiders, compared with the beginning and strange 
 ending of the game." 
 
 " But they are hideous, these things," replied the 
 Watcher. " They are like the bubbles of putrescence, 
 which happen and die, but cause nothing, leave no 
 trace. They confuse the game, if there is one ; hide 
 the meaning. I suppose it is concealed somewhere 
 beneath the froth of action. If it is there, I must 
 find it. I will, and I shall." 
 
 Then Constance suddenly realized that the thing 
 which he was judging so harshly was not Life, the 
 great goddess, but her own life, the little circle of 
 sensation in which she moved and he with her. Seen 
 with_ a stranger's eye, it was indeed squalid, sense- 
 less. She thought with shame of her breakfast 
 table ; the dingy, threadbare cloth, which had to 
 last a week in spite of many brown and greasy 
 stains, the smutty, chipped and unpleasant appear-
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 67 
 
 ance of the milk jug, the smears and the sloppiness, 
 Vera's face when she had finished eating her egg. 
 Then she thought of the dreary streets, and the 
 bookshop, and Miss Reekyn, the next-door milliner, 
 who often offered her a cup of tea. That was 
 really all. Day by day she went round this little 
 ring of experience, with the docility and regularity 
 of a circus horse. 
 
 And she offered this to the Watcher, who had 
 been dragged out of infinity by his passionate 
 curiosity, his determination to know that mystery of 
 life which she saw even from the lodging-house 
 window as the lustrous and many-coloured garment 
 of her God. This was the thing that, with all her 
 opportunities, with the fierce flame of adventure 
 burning in her heart, she offered to Eternity as her 
 rendering of existence. She was ashamed, feeling 
 herself guilty of a lack of patriotism in that she 
 had shown this foreign guest no better thing. 
 
 She said to him suddenly, " Go ! Go ! find all 
 the wonders, look for the thread. Don't stay in 
 this corner with me." 
 
 But he answered, almost in anger, " I cannot go 
 for no one else will receive me ; and without a habi- 
 tation how am I to stay within the dream ?" 
 
 Her eyes were opened for an instant then. The 
 cliff of books fled far away ; and she saw the tideless 
 and everlasting sea of spiritual existence, and Life, 
 like a little iridescent ball of foam, blown across 
 the surface of the waves. She was an infinitesimal 
 bubble in that unsubstantial mass. In an instant 
 it would be dissolved, reabsorbed in the ocean ; 
 all its cherished separateness for ever gone. Mean- 
 52
 
 68 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 while, the Watcher nested within her bubble, and 
 was blown with her over the deeps. She shared in 
 this moment his contemptuous bewilderment, con- 
 fronted with the little coloured evanescent world of 
 sense, even admitted a hateful doubt when he 
 murmured : " I suppose you are alive real, eternal 
 somewhere : inside, behind it all ? Only caught 
 much tighter than I am, and able to believe in 
 nothing but the dream." 
 
 Shet bought, " Suppose that I were not real ? 
 Suppose that I, too, were a dream ?" She turned 
 from that vision in horror and fear. 
 
 The collector, who had been making up the order- 
 list in the back office, here passed through the shop 
 and said to her, " Torrington's traveller is here, miss ; 
 the governor says will you please see him as soon as 
 you are disengaged ?" 
 
 " Send him in," said Constance ; and she de- 
 scended the ladder with a feeling of gratitude for 
 unexpected rescue from a thickening web. 
 
 Mr. John came with the traveller ; a bearded, 
 intelligent person carrying a small black bag, who 
 might have been mistaken for an unsuccessful doctor 
 had he looked more convincingly antiseptic. 
 
 " I think," said Mr. John to his manager, " that 
 we can do with a dozen of their mixed poets in 
 quarter- vellum ?" 
 
 " They come three-and-nine apiece if you take a 
 quantity," interrupted the traveller. " Marvellous 
 value. Artistically tooled backs and assorted labels ; 
 the best thing our firm has done in presentation 
 poets. You won't regret them. A splendid window 
 line, and safe at five-and-six in this district."
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 69 
 
 Mr. John threw down the catalogue upon Con- 
 stance's desk. " Just make a good selling selection, 
 Miss Tyrrel," he said. The action looked dignified, 
 and he knew that it was judicious. 
 
 "Burns? Scott? Whittier ?" suggested the 
 traveller eagerly. 
 
 She shook her head. " No good to us. I'll take 
 Keats two, Shelley two, Milton one. We don't 
 do much in Miltons lately. Browning? Only the 
 earlier works, of course ? Oh, yes ; I had better 
 have three Robert and one Mrs. Four more to 
 make up the dozen. Put me in some Longfellows ; 
 we shall want them for the school prize season 
 later on." 
 
 " You're a good buyer, miss," said the traveller 
 grudgingly. 
 
 His voice was succeeded by a very sweet and 
 gentle one, which murmured, " See, Felix, that is 
 how they order the books we buy to read. Is it 
 not interesting ? This must be the lady whom 
 Father knows, I think. How sad and how sur- 
 prising to find that Longfellow still sells so 
 well !" 
 
 "Why?" said Felix. 
 
 Muriel answered, " He had bourgeois ideals, 
 darling. You will understand that when you are a 
 bigger boy." 
 
 Constance, catching this reply, at once divined a 
 customer of the more fastidious sort, assumed that 
 air of understanding which seemed so sympa- 
 thetic and was really so business-like, and said 
 in a reassuring tone, " He is not generally 
 read of course, but we have a large educa-
 
 70 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 tional connection, and I am obliged to buy for 
 that." 
 
 " Nothing, I think," said the lady firmly, "exerts 
 a worse influence on the developing emotions of 
 children than the feebler poetry of the Victorian era. 
 One should give them myth the myth of all the 
 religions for religions were invented in the child- 
 hood of the world, were they not ?" 
 
 Miss Tyrrel, whom these statements merely 
 amazed, glanced at the new customer, and was at 
 once wholly subjugated by her appearance; being 
 one of those women for whom the crucial encounter 
 and the overmastering appeal must always come 
 from one of her own sex. As she put it to herself, 
 men were interesting animals, but women mattered 
 most. This brilliant, young, absurd, self-conscious 
 creature, with her serene expression, embroidered 
 dress and artistically unusual hat, was like a pretty 
 novelty suddenly exhibited in the shop-window of 
 life. She revived Constance's drooping belief in the 
 resources of the establishment ; so that she at once 
 became interested, wanted the delightful thing, and 
 did not stop to ask the price. 
 
 Muriel, who often found it prudent to adopt a 
 deferential tone when speaking to those whom 
 she believed to be her inferiors, now said to 
 her, 
 
 " I really ought to apologize for coming in and 
 troubling you like this; and just, I am afraid, at the 
 busy time of the day. But, you see, my husband 
 mentioned you in connection with a very curious 
 little book on magic that he bought here lately. He 
 seemed to think that you would be kind enough to
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 71 
 
 tell me something about it; and, in fact,. it was he 
 who advised me to come." 
 
 She thought, " As Andrew is such a good 
 customer, she will have to be civil to me after 
 that." 
 
 As for Constance, she at once perceived that this 
 must be the wife of the Mid-day Friend ; and was 
 amazed that a creature who was at once beautiful, 
 intelligent, and ridiculous could fail to satisfy the 
 demands of any reasonable man. She had pictured 
 Mrs. Vince as austere, flat-waisted, even Early 
 Italian in type. But Andrew evidently possessed 
 a fascinating toy, and would not be content because 
 it refused to be turned into a companion. This was 
 foolish of him. Where he would not play, Con- 
 stance, whose toy-cupboard life had not furnished 
 very richly, was willing enough to enjoy the oppor- 
 tunity of a game. At this moment she felt a 
 desperate need of something to fall in love with ; 
 something that would restore her lost confidence in 
 the world of sense; and Muriel, being both silly and 
 pretty, seemed specially adapted to this purpose. 
 
 She said, " I think the little book that you mean 
 must be the Grimoire that Mr. Vince bought here 
 a few days ago. I am afraid I cannot tell you very 
 much about that. It was bought in with a number 
 of other old books at a country sale, and has no 
 history." 
 
 It was Felix who replied, "We don't want to 
 ask about history, thank you. Mummie knows about 
 that. We've really come because she doesn't know 
 about Undines, and if they are real. You see, it's 
 rather important, because, of course, if they are real,
 
 72 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 I shall have to know about them when I'm a bigger 
 boy. Father said you knew about everything." 
 
 " My husband," said Mrs. Vince, "is hardly what 
 one would call a bookish man, though he tells me 
 that he often comes here for novels and so on. But 
 I am interested in these subjects ; they are most 
 curious, as I dare say you know, from the psycho- 
 logical point of view, and I find few things so 
 satisfying to the intuitive sense as subliminal psycho- 
 logy. I fancied, from what he told me, that you 
 also were a student of psychic things, and of their 
 relation to the mystical and occult." 
 
 Constance fell. She did not seriously suppose 
 that Muriel's charming appearance indicated any 
 understanding of transcendental matters ; but she 
 was in the mood which makes a shipwrecked man 
 drink sea-water, knowing that it will only induce a 
 more maddening thirst, but unable to resist the 
 momentary consolation. She therefore said, " I told 
 Mr. Vince when he bought the little book that 
 it was not so absurd as it seemed. I am afraid 
 that he thought me very silly and credulous ; but 
 evidently you are more inclined to agree with me ?" 
 
 As she spoke, the troubled movements of the 
 Watcher reminded her that she was dealing dis- 
 ingenuously even frivolously with one of the 
 sparsely distributed realities which had enabled him 
 to forge a link between infinity and earth. 
 
 " You must not let my husband's remarks annoy 
 you," said Muriel. " All men are materialists ; and 
 really, I don't know that one wants them to be any- 
 thing else. But I do so entirely agree with you ! 
 Few things are so absurd as they seem, I think :
 
 THREE SORTS OF IGNORANCE 73 
 
 and even if they were, one should keep an open 
 mind towards the unseen. In the light of modern 
 thought, we are learning to understand these sub- 
 jects more and more." 
 
 Constance replied, " Modern thought makes no 
 difference, you know, really. The thing is there, 
 and always has been. At the most, we have only 
 given it new names, and invented a new explanation." 
 
 "How interesting of you to say so!" exclaimed 
 Muriel. " I see that you are a Medievalist. And 
 you are really inclined to take magic seriously ? You 
 believe that the old occultists were justified in the 
 claims that they made ? That there is something in 
 it beyond self-suggestion and hypnosis ?" 
 
 "I don't believe," said Constance, "because I 
 know. It's the people who don't know who have to 
 try and believe : and I should think they would find 
 it rather difficult." 
 
 She stopped ; but it was too late. Muriel, whom 
 unorthodox dogmatism always delighted, invited her 
 to tea with enthusiasm. The astonished voice of 
 the Watcher cried in its turn, " Go, go !" and 
 Constance, amazed by the suddenness of the event, 
 consented. 
 
 As they left the shop, Felix said to his mother, 
 " Mummie, I think this is a new kind of lady." 
 
 Muriel misunderstood him. " Darling," she 
 answered, "lots of ladies wear pinafores and do 
 work." 
 
 " Different inside, I mean," said Felix firmly. 
 
 Muriel, who shared the opinion of the best modern 
 authorities on family life, that we can learn more 
 from our children than they can ever learn from us,
 
 74 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 looked back at Miss Tyrrel with renewed interest. 
 She felt that her careful development of the boy's 
 subconscious mind was already having its reward. 
 She would be able to use him as a terrier in seeking 
 out those abnormal persons whose presence in her 
 drawing-room gave her so much delight. 
 
 She caught Constance's eye as she turned. The 
 Watcher had come back to the windows, and 
 Muriel noticed with surprise their wild and strange 
 expression of bewilderment, loneliness, and curiosity. 
 
 " Poor thing !" she thought. " I expect she has a 
 very dull time of it. Commercial society must be 
 most trying to such an intelligent woman as that. 
 My visit has been quite an excitement. I am glad 
 that I asked her to call."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 
 
 "The key of the great mysteries lies hidden in all 
 things around us, but the perplexities of the convention 
 hinder us from finding it." A. E WAITE : A Book of 
 Mystery and Vision. 
 
 "O ECAUSE she had made a little place for the 
 JD Watcher, "had accepted his presence, even took 
 a certain pride in her guardianship, Constance now 
 found herself subjected to a steady invasion, as one 
 after another the chambers of her mind opened their 
 doors to him. His vision was merged with hers in 
 all save immediately human matters. Thus she was 
 finally made aware of a new aspect of the universe ; 
 of an angle from which she might perceive the 
 splendour, aliveness, and mysterious qualities of 
 natural things, the inconceivable lunacy of most 
 man-arranged things. 
 
 This happened to her with a rush upon the 
 Saturday afternoon on which she went to tea with 
 Mrs. Vince. She had set out with eagerness : a little 
 excited, as always when adventure or new experience 
 was on hand, and therefore perhaps the more ready 
 to open her eyes on strange truth. It was early in 
 May, and there were moments of a shy and exquisite 
 
 75
 
 76 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 sunshine between the passing of the fluffy clouds. 
 Constance, alighting from her omnibus, came down 
 a steep and tree-planted street with her face to the 
 south. She was in a superior residential neighbour- 
 hood ; and the houses upon either hand were built of 
 red brick and had many large, clean windows, all 
 opened at the top, and furnished with casement 
 curtains of soft silk. Expensive tulips of discordant 
 tints grew in the little gardens. There were fan- 
 tastic knockers on many of the doors. 
 
 It was in this unexpected district that she saw the 
 Shining Tree. It sprang upon her consciousness out 
 of the patchy, sunny world of paving-stones, window- 
 boxes, and pale blue sky; complete, alive, a radiant 
 personality, whose real roots, she was sure, penetrated 
 far beyond the limitations of the material world. 
 
 She gazed, astonished, into the heart of it ; saw 
 the travail and stress of the spirit of life crying out 
 for expression, the mysterious sap rushing through 
 its arteries, the ceaseless and ritual dance of every 
 speck of substance which built it that eternal setting 
 to partners, which constitutes the rhythm of the 
 world. She perceived the long and eager fingers 
 fringed with tentacles too delicate for sight, which 
 clawed their way far into the earth ; their fervid and 
 restless search for food to nourish the arrogant and 
 tufted tail which they sent into the upper air. It 
 was as if, accustomed to glance carelessly at the face 
 of an agreeable and conventionally-clothed acquaint- 
 ance, that acquaintance were now revealed to her 
 in the awful dignity of the nude. 
 
 As for the tufted tail, it was no elastic and ingenious 
 arrangement of branch and twig, set with buds and
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 77 
 
 young leaves ; no convenient perching place of in- 
 numerable sparrows. It broke, like an imprisoned 
 angel, through the concrete prosperities of the 
 street ; its airy filaments enmeshed a light which 
 she had never seen before. In that light it dwelt, 
 solitary : apart, yet very near. There was some- 
 thing between them : something, in spite of her long- 
 ing, which kept them separate. She wondered what 
 it could be. She saw each leaf fierce and lucent as 
 an emerald, radiant of green fire : blazing passionate 
 with energy a verdant furnace, wherein trans- 
 cendent life was distilled, cast into the mould of 
 material things. Either, as she supposed for a 
 moment, it was not there at all, or else it had always 
 awaited the perceiving intelligence, in virtue of some 
 amazing significance that it had ; a nook which it filled, 
 a truth that it expressed, within the Universal Dream. 
 
 Its presence obliterated the clumsy shapes of 
 the ordinary world and their foolish limita- 
 tions. It gave her a vision of another universe ; of 
 the whirl through space of countless planets, all 
 teeming, feathery, flowering, to the angelic eye, with 
 some such radiant inflorescence as this. She saw 
 the Cosmos as God's flower garden, in which He 
 strode, well content, in the cool of the day ; and 
 man as the little scuttling insect, breeding and feed- 
 ing amongst the leaves. 
 
 She saw it thus for an instant, the shining, glassy, 
 pulsating thing. Then, as it seemed, another veil 
 was stripped from her eyes, and she saw it in its 
 unimaginable reality, as it is seen by the spiritual 
 sight ; remote, and more wonderfully luminous, the 
 fit object of her adoration.
 
 78 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 The Watcher's voice cried within her, " Ah, 
 beautiful, exquisite world ! Here at last is the mean- 
 ing, the Real, the Idea ! Why did I not understand 
 before ?" 
 
 As for her, she had nothing to say, nothing to 
 show him. She was too astonished and too full of 
 
 joy. 
 
 He said again, "Ah, what amazing happiness 
 you have, you little creatures ! All the shapes and 
 colours, and the sharp edges against the light, and 
 the lovely little differences of things ! What a 
 splendid dream ! What a gloss upon eternity ! 
 How satisfying ! But why do you always look at 
 the other side ? How greatly you are mistaken, and 
 how much joy you must miss, because of being busy 
 with unreal and ugly things !" 
 
 A woman passed, dressed in Isabella-coloured rags. 
 Her coarse hair was gathered in an unseemly knot 
 by the help of a bit of common string. Her dingy, 
 mottled stockings lay in folds about the ankles. 
 Her boots were unlaced. She carried a tiny baby 
 at her breast, and a few bunches of shabby violets 
 in a basket. The baby was a condensed statement 
 of human unpleasantness; the violets, in their pre- 
 sent condition of purplish pulp, still conveyed, like 
 kings in exile, a poignant suggestion of lost fragrance 
 and shy grace. 
 
 This smudged sketch of womanhood came bet ween 
 Constance and the Tree; unconscious of the thing 
 that was close to her, and of the parted veil through 
 which the other woman peeped. She was wrapped 
 closely in her own cares and discomforts : a ragged 
 vestal virgin to all delights save one so busy tending
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 79 
 
 the difficult flame of life that she never had time to 
 warm herself by its rays. The Watcher withdrew 
 from his look-out when she came within its field ; 
 one could feel the strong contractive movement of 
 loathing which her image had evoked. 
 
 He said, " Why do you let your earth breed such 
 horrible things ? Stamp them out ! Feed the 
 beautiful and starve the vile." 
 
 Constance answered, " I don't think one can, 
 because it is all one." 
 
 The Watcher replied, " No, no ! How foolish, 
 how blind you are ! Here is the true and lovely 
 dream close beside you. Look at it ; live in it. This 
 is the true projection of the Will. But the ugly 
 side of vision is all false. Leave that alone ; let it 
 die !" 
 
 The woman came nearer and said, " Violets, 
 lady ? Do buy some violets ! I ain't taken nothing 
 to-day." The hopeless effort of the myriad feeble 
 poor, all the teeming alleys, the indistinguishable 
 hordes, seemed to come as a wailing chorus to her 
 words. 
 
 Somewhere in Constance's mind an inhabitant 
 arose who knew that music ; who wrestled with the 
 Watcher for possession of her will, saying : " Cling 
 to the human, however loathsome. Do not refuse 
 life in all her implications." 
 
 But the Shining Tree was there, as it seemed, 
 with the other message, crying, " Open your eyes to 
 the light, to a world made luminous. Leave the 
 shadows. Come, come !" The Watcher applauded 
 those words. 
 
 There she was, between two worlds of experience,
 
 8o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 between the two great expressions of the Spirit of 
 Life ; the Shining Tree in its transcendental 
 splendour and security, and the shifting agonized 
 and pullulating deeps. Beauty called her through 
 the parted veil of perception, casting open door after 
 door upon the countless aspects of creation. But 
 pain, friendly, ugly human pain, was at her elbow, 
 whispering that this was a birthright which she 
 would only renounce at her cost. 
 
 The unsavoury baby stirred under its shawl at 
 this moment, and thrust out a tightly clenched and 
 grimy fist. Then Constance saw for an instant 
 Life the ever-lovely fertile, heedless, generous life 
 springing beneath the rags ; fresh and exquisite as 
 nascent corn beneath the mould. Its champion 
 within her acknowledged this presence ; recognizing 
 it as identical with that vision by which it had always 
 been guided and upheld, and unconscious of its 
 maimed, degraded face. The child and his mother 
 became a symbol, and Love was in the air, very 
 humble and glad, saying, "Vita, dulcedo et spes 
 nostra, salve !" 
 
 The woman had grown to the likeness of the 
 Shining Tree ; she too was radiant, eternal, and 
 sublime. The spirit of life ran like a divine fire in 
 her veins, and was given to the infant at her breast. 
 She had become a majestic link in the process of 
 creation ; an auxiliary of the angels. A fresh door 
 was thrown open upon reality, whereby it was seen 
 that even the prisoners in the dungeon still wore the 
 insignia of kings. The Tree was there, throwing, as 
 it were, the shelter of a transcendental loveliness and 
 knowledge about the poor efforts of those entangled
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 81 
 
 in the flesh. The woman and child, seen against it, 
 were an image of all life. 
 
 It seemed an anticlimax to give the woman six- 
 pence, to look with interest at the baby's moist and 
 smutty face ; but she did it. In this act that deep- 
 seated personality within her became dominant ; the 
 baffled and disgusted Watcher loosed the reins. Ac- 
 knowledging beauty, she had vindicated her humanity 
 by paying her deepest reverence to life ; a proceeding 
 which can only seem insane to those spiritual natures 
 which have not been passed through the furnace of 
 love. 
 
 She came to Mrs. Vince's drawing-room hardly 
 prepared by the curtain-raiser for a full appreciation 
 of that comedy which was the main business of her 
 afternoon. Andrew met her with surprise, for his 
 wife had forgotten to tell him of the invitation. He 
 looked thicker than ever in his own home ; and so 
 out of place that Constance found it difficult to re- 
 member that he was her host. 
 
 His civilities were automatic. He had said, " Very 
 good of you to come to us !" before he realized that 
 the goodness, for once, was actually on Muriel's side. 
 She was going to be kind to Miss Tyrrel. This, he 
 felt, would be a delicate matter ; but he was obliged to 
 acknowledge her conduct as perfect. It must clearly 
 be a point of honour with all three of them to forget 
 the bookshop ; and Vince saw it with a painful 
 distinctness when his friend was announced. There- 
 fore the curious sincerity of Muriel's welcome amazed 
 him. There were interesting people in the room ;
 
 82 . THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 but she turned from them all to attend on her new 
 guest. 
 
 She said, " I've been looking forward so much to 
 this : in fact, we all have ! I know you're wonderful ; 
 oh, yes ! I saw it the moment that I met you. My 
 little boy felt it too ; and you know how sensitive 
 children are they are near the Source, and have not 
 had time to forget. But you shan't be teased to tell 
 people things. I promise ! They are all longing to 
 meet you ; and if you would rather, they will have 
 to be contented with just that !" 
 
 She smiled at Constance with an air of secret in- 
 timacy, shutting her in the little circle of her own 
 comprehension. The effect was dazzling, for Muriel 
 was looking unusually pretty. Her hair was arranged 
 with a laborious and becoming simplicity ; her large 
 eyes shone with spiritual enthusiasm. If gaiety could 
 rightly be attributed to the really high-minded, she 
 was almost gay upon this afternoon ; and Andrew, 
 watching her, was amazed that such exaltation could 
 be produced by lectures, exclusive ideals, and a 
 vegetarian diet. The woollen underclothing which 
 he knew that she affected would have kept any 
 ordinary woman from attaining that air of esoteric 
 smartness which constituted Muriel's peculiar charm. 
 
 Constance drifted away, leaving her hostess at 
 liberty. Miss Foster at once took her place and 
 said softly, " Who is the big dark-haired woman in 
 impossible brown kid gloves ?" 
 
 " She is going to be interesting," answered Muriel. 
 " At least, I hope so ; but they are very tiresome 
 sometimes. Occult things, magic and so on. Talk 
 to her, there's a dear, and presently I'll get
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 83 
 
 Mrs. Reed to draw her out. It is her first visit. 
 I've just been putting her at her ease. Oddly enough, 
 it was Andrew who discovered her ; and, as a matter 
 of fact, she keeps a shop." 
 
 " Being in a shop, nowadays, is so very different," 
 said Phoebe. 
 
 " Yes ; but still, even now, a shop isn't quite. It 
 is books, you see. Rather a new idea, isn't it ? 
 And rather a pity, I think. Of course, if it 
 were hats, or old furniture, anyone would receive 
 her." 
 
 " I expect she is a lady ; she certainly moves like 
 one," said another guest, who had been listening to 
 the conversation. 
 
 " Yes, I noticed that at once," replied Muriel. 
 Then, recollecting herself, she added hastily : " But 
 at any rate she is a woman, which is of course a far 
 greater thing." 
 
 " And rarer," observed Andrew abruptly. 
 All the ladies in his vicinity looked at him with as 
 much surprise as if an infant in arms had made an 
 intelligible remark. 
 
 " I will go and talk to her," said Phoebe, in whom 
 Andrew aroused that instinctive dislike which all 
 women feel for the husbands of their more cultivated 
 friends. Also, she wished to help Muriel with her 
 party; and was aware that if the new acquisition 
 were first drawn out by the wrong person, her value 
 as an asset would be sensibly diminished. 
 
 She approached Constance ; but too late. Miss 
 
 Tyrrel had already been captured. A comfortable 
 
 lady in very worldly clothes sat by her on the sofa ; 
 
 and Phoebe, recognizing in Mrs. Wetherbee that 
 
 62
 
 84 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 hateful form of stupidity which is apt to make one's 
 own cleverness seem absurd, shortened sail, and 
 remained at a little distance in an attitude of 
 watchful detachment. 
 
 " I don't think," said Mrs. Wetherbee, without 
 further preliminary, "that I have seen you at one 
 of Mrs. Vince's parties before ?" 
 
 " No," said Constance. 
 
 " You were wise to come. I always do ; it amuses 
 me. She doesn't want me ; but there are some 
 people, you know, that even these clever young 
 women are obliged to ask. You see, I've known 
 Andrew ever since he was in petticoats. Very 
 unsuitable he looked in them such a little man ! 
 Muriel dislikes me because I haven't got a soul : but 
 as I live next door, she has never been able to drop 
 me. Tiresome for her, isn't it?" 
 
 She chuckled, stuffed a soft mauve pillow into the 
 space between her shoulders and the sofa, and 
 continued talking in that mood of unbridled confidence 
 about other people's business which the company of 
 an entire stranger will sometimes provoke. 
 
 " Muriel," she said, " is a pretty girl, isn't she ? 
 Piquante, unusual ; even artistic clothes never look 
 dowdy on her. One isn't surprised that Andrew fell 
 in love, although the little wretch hadn't a penny." 
 
 " I admire Mrs. Vince immensely," replied Con- 
 stance. 
 
 " Too much like a Madonna in a drawing-room to 
 please me," said Mrs. Wetherbee. " Give her a halo, 
 a blue tea-gown, and a baby but she never had 
 another after Felix, lazy creature! As for poor 
 Andrew, he is just in the position of a St. Joseph in
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 85 
 
 these nice little pictures you get at High Church 
 shops. I can't think how they do them only 
 eighteenpence in real oak frames. Well, that's what 
 he makes me think of: standing up behind, in a very 
 uncomfortable position, whilst Muriel is admired. 
 A good, honest fellow, with sound business instincts 
 and his living to get at his trade, shut up with a 
 painfully unique and exquisite wife. Everyone else 
 on their knees before her, and he feeling that attitude 
 rather fatiguing after a hard day's work. How 
 coarse and ugly all the ordinary little comfortable 
 bad habits must appear in such company ! Could 
 you drink bottled stout with that sitting at the other 
 end of the table ? Would it be possible to snore in 
 the presence of a really spiritual woman ? That is 
 Andrew's condition all over. Muriel enjoys her 
 own virtues thoroughly; but his don't agree with 
 the furniture, and so they have to be kept out of 
 sight." 
 
 Constance, who was too much interested in 
 Muriel's hair to care very much about her virtues, 
 was bewildered by this brutal frankness, and had 
 nothing to say. There was a short silence ; and 
 Miss Foster, seeing her opportunity, pounced. 
 
 " I want you," she said, " to talk to me a little, if 
 you will. We haven't been introduced, but I feel 
 that we know one another. Mrs. Vince told me one 
 or two things. You must not mind. I am sure that 
 we shall be sympathetic. I too have a great belief 
 in the undeveloped faculties of man." 
 
 Constance replied, " I am afraid that Mrs. Vince 
 is mistaken. I am a very ordinary person : and as 
 to the subjects which interest her, I know hardly
 
 86 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 anything ; beyond, perhaps, the immensity of my 
 own ignorance." 
 
 " Intuition," said Phoebe, " is greater than know- 
 ledge. And especially a woman's intuition, unhindered 
 by the love of carnal things." 
 
 Constance could see Andrew in the middle dis- 
 tance, moving to and fro with the awkward and 
 desperate motions of a man resisting to the utmost 
 his natural instinct for flight. He was so humbly 
 human, so desperately real, that she almost expected 
 house and tea-party to dissolve and leave him, in- 
 curably actual, poised in space. 
 
 Muriel had retreated to the window, whence her 
 gentle and earnest voice could be heard now and 
 then. She was conversing with two clean-shaven 
 and frock-coated youths, whose presence was obvi- 
 ously a tribute to the appearance rather than to the 
 opinions of the assembled ladies. One of them kept 
 a perpetual but unostentatious watch upon the move- 
 ments of Miss Foster. The other looked at his 
 hostess, whilst he listened to a heavy, sallow woman, 
 with greasy black hair, prominent eyes, and many 
 Egyptian ornaments. 
 
 The sallow woman, whose name was Mrs. Reed, 
 was speaking in a voice of extraordinary power and 
 sweetness. "Salt, sulphur, and mercury," she said, 
 " are really in their ultimate implications the Three 
 Maries at the sepulchre of Sol. When we have 
 learned this, we are at the threshold of the Grand 
 Arcanum; for complicity of myth merges in unity 
 of experience, if we could but understand." 
 
 " What is the Grand Arcanum ?" asked the youth 
 who was watching Miss Foster.
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 87 
 
 The sallow lady looked at him severely. " Osiris," 
 she said, "died a sacrifice; and of Isis Horus was 
 reborn. Alchemical gold is the fruit of destroying 
 fire. Does this tell you nothing ?" 
 
 The questioner was abashed, and his companion 
 muttered " Poor old Freddy!" in an almost audible 
 tone. 
 
 Muriel broke in. " We must not," she observed, 
 " attribute too much finality even to pre-Christian 
 myths, I think. Can they, after all, be more than 
 methods of training the subconscious mind to an 
 apprehension of Truth ?" 
 
 " No," said Freddy, moving away with a dexterity 
 which was clearly the result of long practice. 
 
 It was at this point that the Watcher, surging up 
 to the encounter of this inner nest of illusion and the 
 new existences that it contained, exclaimed in her 
 mind, " It is all unreal, confused, and hopeless ! 
 Ah, why will they pervert and spoil the dream ?" 
 
 She was off her guard, he was strong, and the 
 words were audible. She heard her lips say them. 
 They sounded strange and uncivil, and she wondered 
 what would happen next. Fortunately, Phoebe 
 understood them to be a reply to her last observa- 
 tion. She said approvingly, " That is so true ! 
 Knowledge without insight leads us from the light 
 instead of to it. I see that you are a mystic." 
 
 " All young people like to call themselves mystics 
 nowadays," interrupted Mrs. Wetherbee, with a 
 knowing air of kindly contempt. " I often wonder 
 whether they know what they mean by it." 
 
 " Surely," said Phrebe gently, " a mystic is one 
 who lives in reality instead of in appearance ?"
 
 88 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Constance heard her own voice saying, " Then 
 there can be no mystics on the earth." 
 
 " Oh, I cannot agree with you there," replied 
 Phoebe. " Indeed, we know to the contrary ; for 
 the great mystics have left their records behind. 
 Did we not know that ecstasy and meditation can 
 shift the threshold of consciousness and open the 
 soul's eyes upon the unseen, we should be miserable 
 indeed." 
 
 Constance, still at the mercy of her lodger, and 
 possessed by that curious exaltation and freedom 
 from self-consciousness which society sometimes 
 induces in those who live much alone, said, " That 
 is but one illusion the more." 
 
 "Just so !" agreed Mrs. Wetherbee. " A mystic's 
 experience is only valid for himself. All the books 
 say so. He may not be mad, of course, but you 
 can't prove it. Besides, these subjects make people 
 cold and unsociable. In a married woman, they 
 generally mean a husband who is either unsatisfied 
 or unsatisfactory. Probably both in the end. The 
 fact is, they aren't quite normal; and that is why 
 nice women have always felt that they are not 
 right." 
 
 Muriel had joined them. " A nice woman, dear 
 Mrs. Wetherbee," she said, " is unfortunately so 
 often called nice because she has not sufficient 
 character to suggest any other adjective." 
 
 " She always has womanliness," replied Mrs. 
 Wetherbee. " Oh yes, I know it's an old-fashioned 
 word ; and what's more, I don't care if it is ! 
 You may depend upon it, my dear, that the really 
 womanly woman is the grandest figure in the world,
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 89 
 
 and when you young people have got through with 
 your mysticism, the men will make you come back 
 to it." 
 
 " She is sublime as a mother, and often unac- 
 countably clever in making love," observed Phoebe 
 dispassionately, "if you mean by womanly the deep- 
 bosomed, quiescent creature with steady nerves. 
 For the rest, she is afraid of life ; like priests and 
 other people who are born to the perfect perform- 
 ance of a restricted job." 
 
 Constance took fire at that. "But she is life!" 
 she said. " She has it ! You, who watch and, 
 classify do you think that you live ? You are only 
 the wall-flowers at the ball. You haven't joined the 
 dance you haven't earned your supper ! I wonder 
 whether you'll get it in the end ?" 
 
 Phoebe looked at her in some surprise, and then 
 answered very placidly, " You do not take into 
 account the interior life of the soul, or the spiritual 
 children that it bears." 
 
 " No, you forget them," observed the youth called 
 Freddy, who had been waiting for an opportunity of 
 agreeing with Miss Foster's remarks. 
 
 "Yes!" said Muriel, "that is the real existence, 
 the higher consciousness, is it not? And it is all 
 here /" She tapped her chest mysteriously as she 
 spoke. 
 
 "Of course! In the solar plexus!" exclaimed 
 another lady ; a pretty, fluffy person, quaintly dressed 
 in the Early Victorian style. " What a wonderful 
 discovery, is it not ? Once it has awakened, they 
 say that even the most dyspeptic people may eat 
 anything without endangering their inner peace."
 
 go THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " And pray, how does one awake it ?" asked 
 Mrs. Wetherbee. 
 
 Phoebe replied, " By the practice of meditation." 
 
 " Yes, of course," said the fluffy lady rather plain- 
 tively, " meditation is the beginning of everything, is 
 it not ? At least, in spiritual things ; and now they 
 say it leads to success in business as well, which 
 would be so very delightful. Through the will-force, 
 you know, and concentration. But it isn't as easy 
 as it sounds, not by any means. The other day I 
 shut myself up in my bedroom and tried hard to 
 meditate on the Mystic Rose. They recommend 
 that, you know, in some of the books, and it is a 
 very sweet idea; but I must say it did not seem 
 particularly helpful. Nothing happened; and after 
 a little time I went to sleep." 
 
 "You should ask Miss Tyrrel to advise you," said 
 Muriel, anxious to show the positive aspects of her 
 new acquisition. " She is a student of the old 
 occultists ; and you know they practised all these 
 things under different names in the Middle Ages, for 
 v , ;magic has a great deal to do with the psychology of 
 the subconscious mind." 
 
 Constance looked at the fluffy lady, aware that in 
 the eyes of the angels the faint and delightful tints 
 of her complexion were of more importance than 
 many higher thoughts. She also noticed that Mrs. 
 Reed had drawn near, and formed part of a little 
 circle that seemed to wait upon her words. 
 
 She said, " But I don't quite know why you 
 should want to do these things. When you have 
 done them, life will never be the same again to J T OU. 
 All its proportions will have altered, and you may
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 91 
 
 not like it so well. You have so many worlds of 
 your own, that you can hardly miss the real world, 
 which is the one that you have not got. When you 
 have got it, all the others must go; and it is so 
 simple, that I think at first you might be rather 
 bored. As for me, I had very little that was worth 
 having in my world, and so I was tempted to explore. 
 But you " 
 
 She looked at them at the eager circle of small- 
 souled egotists at Muriel, who said appealingly, 
 " Isn't she wonderful ?" and at the other women, 
 who agreed without enthusiasm. She saw the little 
 struggling scraps of life within these curious and 
 fragile envelopes ; tiny flames, disguised and differ- 
 entiated by the variety of their enclosing lamps. 
 They all, as it seemed, took the lamps very seriously ; 
 forgetting that these were matters of artifice, built 
 up from the atmospheric gases and the substance of 
 the earth, and that their inhabitants were alike sparks 
 from the same Central Fire. But Constance was 
 not allowed to forget it. That hawk-eyed lodger of 
 hers pierced through the pretence, and saw the poor 
 bewildered flame struggling for air within its elabo- 
 rate prison. 
 
 The odd thing was that the crowd of little souls 
 some nearly smothered by the cobwebs that they 
 had gathered round themselves took no interest in 
 each other, but only in each other's lamps. The 
 polite life of the drawing-room was just that ; the 
 myriad inextinguishable flames, disdaining their own 
 immortal heat and radiance, feeding hungrily upon 
 the illusions which caused them to mistake coloured 
 glass for divine fire.
 
 92 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Constance finished her sentence. " You can live 
 your life, your dream-life, if you choose, in all its 
 richness; down to the bottom and up to the 
 heights. That is very close to reality, and the 
 only satisfying thing, I am afraid. If you explore, 
 all that you will learn will be the necessity of 
 getting back there if you can !" 
 
 " How interesting !" said Muriel, in a slightly dis- 
 appointed tone. 
 
 The fluffy lady looked displeased and bewildered. 
 Her pretty mouth was drawn into the beginning of 
 a pout. But presently her face cleared, and she said 
 triumphantly, " I think I know what you must mean 
 exactly. A friend of mine had a baby through 
 Christian Science last year. So you see it does all 
 fit in." 
 
 " Everything fits in," observed Mrs. Reed solemnly, 
 " for the Many are comprehended in the One." 
 
 When Miss Tyrrel left, Andrew followed her into 
 the hall, found her umbrella, and with more than 
 his usual obtuseness asked whether she wanted 
 a cab. 
 
 " I was wondering, don't you know," he said 
 slowly. His mind rambled -to the bookshop, and 
 back again to his own home. He wished to realize 
 Constance in both situations, and found the idea 
 difficult to deal with. Finally, he said, " We must 
 keep this up, eh ? Capital plan ; so good for Muriel. 
 Change of society. These women, don't you know, 
 are all alike." 
 
 Constance answered, " They seem all very 
 different to me ; quite a new world." 
 
 " That's it. They're a little lot all to themselves.
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 93 
 
 Don't seem to catch on to ordinary life, somehow. 
 It's been made too soft for them, I fancy ; and 
 they're mostly clever. Not that one minds clever 
 women ; but they ought to be given a toughish time. 
 They're like boys ; they need it." 
 
 She smiled. " Don't give Mrs. Vince a hard 
 time ; she's delicious." 
 
 He seemed pleased. "She has nice colouring," 
 he said ; " I thought you would admire her. But 
 these women never think of that ; they come 
 here because she lets 'em talk. Waste of a 
 pretty girl, isn't it, to give her up to that sort of 
 thing?" 
 
 Constance, who had been pursued all the afternoon 
 by a longing to enjoy Muriel in peace without the 
 disturbing follies of persons who were not pretty, 
 agreed cordially. He would have continued the 
 conversation, but Mrs. Reed appeared at the foot of 
 the staircase. Andrew shook hands hastily, said 
 " Mind you look us up again," and retreated. 
 
 Mrs. Reed came to the door and allowed the 
 parlourmaid to cover her dress with a shabby alpaca 
 dust-cloak. She looked almost ordinary, once her 
 scarabs were concealed. Oblivious of this abrupt 
 relapse into undistinguished dowdiness, she fixed 
 her large and solemn eyes on Miss Tyrrel's 
 face, and said, " Shall we go a little way to- 
 gether ?" 
 
 When the door was safely closed upon them, she 
 continued, " I have been wishing to talk with you all 
 the afternoon. I think this is your first visit, is it not ? 
 A delightful house ; quite a refuge for those who 
 long for a more spiritual environment than that
 
 94 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 provided by modern civilization. Mr. Vince, of 
 course, is very male; but one doesn't mind that. 
 But to-day people were not as receptive as usual ; 
 you, for instance, were not understood. I see so 
 well what you were trying to express to them. 
 These foolish young women know nothing of the 
 vast and secret forces with which they play." 
 
 " That's it !" said Constance eagerly. 
 
 " But you and I, who know, whom neither the 
 flux of time nor the wreck of dogma can disturb 
 we can safely accept the extended life that is offered 
 to those who have seen the Metaphysical Lover face 
 to face." She turned down a narrow lane beneath 
 the high wall of a church, stopped at a vivid red 
 brick portico marked "230 to 315," and added, 
 " Here is my little eyrie. Will you not come in 
 for a moment ? I feel sure that we have much in 
 common." 
 
 The long climb up cemented and uncarpeted 
 stairs, past distempered corridors speckled with in- 
 numerable front-doors that seemed to have strayed 
 out of doll's-house-land to relieve the hygienic 
 severity of germ-proof walls and fire-proof flooring, 
 concentrated the attention of both ladies on material 
 things. They clutched the fronts of their skirts, 
 husbanded their breath, and spoke little until Mrs. 
 Reed inserted her latch-key in a Yale lock on the 
 top floor. 
 
 Then Constance said politely, " How nice and 
 airy you must be up here !" and the Watcher 
 within muttered, " You certainly make the dream 
 as inconvenient as you can !" 
 
 It was with an almost conventional courtesy that
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 95 
 
 Mrs. Reed now led her visitor into the single sitting- 
 room of the little flat. Constance was not surprised 
 to find whitewash, rush carpet, a small cast of Isis 
 nursing the infant Horus, and a complete absence 
 of tablecloths and other textile amenities ; but she 
 was slightly astonished when she perceived a very 
 old and red-faced gentleman dozing by the small 
 fire. A large blue Persian cat was folded into a 
 compact parcel on his knee. The completeness of 
 Mrs. Reed's personality, the authoritative position 
 which she had seemed to occupy in Muriel's circle, 
 had suggested a detachment from the more ordinary 
 human relations. It seemed hardly credible that 
 the Metaphysical Lover could suffer a domestic 
 rivalry. 
 
 Yet Mrs. Reed now approached the old gentleman, 
 looked at him with profound interest and tender- 
 ness, and said, " Dear, have you had a good after- 
 noon ?" 
 
 " Eh, what ? You back, my love ?" said the old 
 man. " Been gallivanting with your young friends, 
 eh ? Had a pleasant party ? That's right I like 
 you to enjoy yourself. Ra and I have had a nice 
 quiet hour together ; very comfortable. In fact, 
 I fancy we have both had forty winks." 
 
 " You must have your milk now," replied Mrs. 
 Reed, " and you will have to entertain Miss Tyrrel 
 whilst I get it." She said to Constance, in a lower 
 tone, " Will you talk to my husband a little ? It 
 would be kind. He is rather deaf; but it will be 
 all right if you articulate distinctly." 
 
 " My wife," said Mr. Reed to Constance, when 
 they were alone, " is a dear good girl, and very intel-
 
 96 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 ligent, as I dare say you know. I'm proud of her. 
 I like to see her friends come here ; it shows that 
 she is appreciated. It is very providential that she 
 should have these interests, for we never had any 
 family ; and that's a sad misfortune for any woman. 
 As I sometimes say, I have to be father, husband, 
 and baby, all in one !" 
 
 He chuckled with immense and senile enjoyment 
 of this well-digested pleasantry. Mrs. Reed re- 
 turned with hot milk in a feeding cup, helped 
 him to take it, and said " That's a good old dear !" 
 as the last drop was neatly disposed of. 
 
 " My little Nell makes me quite lazy !" murmured 
 Mr. Reed, when the meal was over and his mouth 
 had been wiped. 
 
 His big head settled down again upon the shoulders, 
 the loose baggy cheeks almost touching the lapels 
 of his velveteen coat. His lips fell apart, and one 
 saw that a few dark yellow stumps still remained in 
 the sunken gums. His eyelids closed. 
 
 " A very comforting drop o' milk very comfort- 
 ing indeed !" he said sleepily. 
 
 Then the Watcher cried suddenly and silently in 
 his nest, " Vile ! vile ! Why feed the foul and use- 
 less body when it is beginning to decay ? Let it 
 go ! Let it die ! Nourish the beautiful things !" 
 
 Constance, in horror, exclaimed, " No, no !" 
 
 He said, " Why not ? This bit of the dream 
 is finished and done with. Why clutch it ? 
 Where is its value ? Let it pass away and join the 
 real." 
 
 Oddly enough, the only reply which came to her 
 mind was the word which Helen Reed had spoken,
 
 THE STREET AND THE DRAWING-ROOM 97 
 
 " The Many are comprehended in the One /" It seemed 
 inappropriate as well as absurd, for it suggested a 
 vital connection between ineffable beauty and the 
 old man who was huddled by the fire. Nevertheless, 
 she said it.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 
 
 " The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. " 
 
 BLAKE : Proverbs of Hell. 
 
 ONE day in the beginning of July, Andrew 
 asked Miss Tyrrel to go with him to the play ; 
 and the forces of Philistia and Bohemia went to war 
 in her mind. Muriel had been placed upon the 
 committee of the Psycho-Deistic league ; and its 
 annual meeting was to take place at her house. On 
 these occasions, Vince always took refuge in musical 
 comedy. He went, as a rule, alone ; laughed with- 
 out restraint at the horse-play, jokes, and topical 
 songs, luxuriated in the vague emotions which were 
 evoked by the more amorous passages, observed with 
 understanding the physical charms of the per- 
 formers. But this year, in one of those spasms 
 of philanthropy which are indistinguishable from 
 self-indulgence, he had conceived the notion of 
 giving Constance a treat. He spoke of it to 
 Muriel, who was depressingly tolerant but hardly 
 encouraging. 
 
 " Miss Tyrrel," she said, " will scarcely care for 
 your kind of theatre, will she ? I had been thinking 
 that next time there was anything good at the Stage 
 
 98
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 99 
 
 Society, I might give her your ticket. She is really 
 very cultivated, you know ; Girton in fact ; and she 
 reads all the right things. The popular drama 
 exasperates that type of mind. But you might ask 
 her. It will be a kindness, and I can't have her 
 here that evening. The Inner Circle meets, and 
 only members are admitted." 
 
 Andrew was a little grieved. He had hoped for 
 a jealousy which he would certainly have discounten- 
 anced; and the excessive breadth of Muriel's mind 
 in which he could not help seeing something slightly 
 unwomanly discounted the joys of the undertaking. 
 But his spirits were raised when he perceived that 
 Constance, at any rate, felt her decision to be 
 governed by considerations of propriety. No male 
 creature likes to feel harmless. Andrew's self-respect 
 was stimulated by the fact that he had to persuade 
 Miss Tyrrel that the civility he offered was neither 
 unusual nor objectionable in such a friendship as 
 theirs. 
 
 That friendship, founded on Vince's refreshingly 
 materialistic point of view, had been confirmed by 
 the addition of a new element : the hopeless deter- 
 mination, in both of them, to admire in Muriel all 
 those fascinations which were most at variance with 
 her intellectual claims. They talked, like rival lovers, 
 of her beauty, and disputed the supremacy of each 
 feature over the rest. She was the unending subject 
 of their conversation. Andrew had come to recog- 
 nize the bookshop as the one place in which he 
 might speak freely and enthusiastically of his wife ; 
 and Constance looked for his coming because he 
 brought with him some of the glamour which 
 72
 
 ioo THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 hung about the aggravating object of their adora- 
 tion. 
 
 To her, this was but the renewal of an experience 
 which had been constant in her girlhood. That 
 feverish and bewildering period, in which the sonorous 
 rhythms of the classics that she wished to love had 
 seldom succeeded in drowning the throb of life that 
 exasperated her nerves and confused her brain, had 
 been characterized by the savage and shamefaced 
 emotion which she poured out, unasked, at the feet 
 of certain chosen women. Her attitude towards 
 them, always shy and always passionate, was seldom 
 appreciated and never understood. Some had taken 
 advantage of it, and made demands on her. These 
 she had served with an almost tiresome eagerness ; 
 so that they soon became indifferent to her affection. 
 Others had never perceived the existence of this 
 sentiment. These she preferred ; for she was able 
 in their case to preserve her illusions intact. She 
 proposed if possible to keep Mrs. Vince in this 
 fortunate ignorance : an undertaking which was made 
 easier by the presence of a fellow- victim, upon whom 
 one could inflict the enthusiasms that might other- 
 wise have become tediously apparent to their object. 
 To these circumstances Vince owed the secure and 
 comfortable position which he now occupied in her 
 life. Few things seem safer than a Platonic friend- 
 ship which is founded upon a conspiracy to admire 
 the wife of one of the parties concerned. 
 
 Constance, then, accepted Andrew's invitation ; and, 
 to the amazement of the Watcher, devoted a Saturday 
 afternoon to the renovation of her only evening dress. 
 He wished to be out in the sun, seeing beautiful
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 101 
 
 shapes ; for Nature appeared to him now as the one 
 enticing aspect of the dream. Compared with this 
 exploration of beauty, these magical encounters with 
 the real, all other occupations seemed but foolish- 
 ness ; and he hated the necessity which made his 
 every movement dependent on his entertainer's 
 whims. Hence, when she paid no attention to his 
 reiterated hints, disgust grew on him ; and there was 
 a note of irritation in his remonstrances. 
 
 " Surely," he said, " you must see the extreme 
 absurdity of your behaviour ? that, even on your 
 own interpretation of the facts, your actions are 
 entirely inconsistent ? You shut yourself in a space 
 that has no beauty, in order that you may concentrate 
 on dress ! Dress ! How came you, I wonder, to 
 think of that insane device ?" 
 
 She was busy. His comments distracted her. 
 
 " We do it," she answered, rather angry, " because 
 we, also, like to add to outward beauty if we 
 can." 
 
 " Add to beauty ? How can you add to beauty 
 by these masses of queer and coloured rags, spun 
 from the poor patient plants and animals and 
 chopped to inconvenient shapes ? Why, it is but 
 more dust in different patterns, rolled round you, in 
 order to conceal the mysterious body underneath. 
 A curious mania, when all that matters is the 
 soul, which is already assured of secrecy, which no 
 one in the body can ever see. One body, I had 
 thought, were enough disguise for the shyest spirit ; 
 yet you must all, it seems, have two at least, and 
 elevate the fashioning of the second to a very solemn 
 thing. But the result of this fashioning can never
 
 102 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 add to beauty ; for it is meant to hide, not to express, 
 the real." 
 
 Constance was intent on the Lady's Own Magazine, 
 which assured its readers that a very French effect 
 might be secured by the application of two yards of 
 black crepe-de-chine and some spangled fringe to an 
 old white satin bodice : an operation which it de- % 
 scribed as well within the powers of the home- 
 worker. She was a woman. She was preparing 
 for a probably delightful evening with her only 
 friend. She was determined that he should have no 
 cause to be ashamed of her appearance. It is there- 
 fore hardly surprising that she found the phenomena 
 beneath her ringers more interesting than the inner 
 witness to their unreality. She went on with her 
 work, keeping one eye upon Vera who showed a 
 disposition to begin illicit doll's dressmaking at the 
 other end of the crepe-de-chine and resolutely turning 
 her attention from the fretful voice which urged on 
 her its ignorance, its annoyance, and her duty of 
 conciliation and enlightenment. 
 
 But he would not let her be. He said again, 
 " I suppose that you are compelled to believe in 
 your body, and this distresses you? And so you 
 cover it with pretences in which even you can hardly 
 believe." 
 
 Then, exasperated, she cried aloud, " No ! I am 
 proud of it I love it. I, at any rate, have never 
 been ashamed." 
 
 Vera loosed her end of the crepe-de-chine, dropped 
 the scissors, and said reproachfully " Tanta ! How 
 queer you shouted. You shouldn't. It made me 
 jump."
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 103 
 
 Constance was abruptly recalled to the considera- 
 tion of a body in which it was certainly very difficult 
 to take pride : for even when freshly washed, and 
 dressed in the clean clothes which she detested, Vera 
 always carried with her a curious suggestion of 
 squalor. She had hands which defied the nailbrush ; 
 and looked as though even her white pinafores had 
 come to her by mistake. They never remained white 
 very long ; for dirt of all kinds flew to her, as if 
 detecting congenial company. 
 
 Miss Tyrrel heard a regular liquid sound as of 
 surreptitious sucking, looked up, and exclaimed 
 sharply, "Take that stuff out of your mouth at 
 once !" 
 
 The child unwillingly extracted a dark and 
 glutinous mass, composed of a rag of black silk 
 which had met a half-dissolved piece of toffee and 
 become inextricably entwined with it. The resulting 
 compound was not pleasant to handle, but it was 
 necessary to take it from Vera, and ensure its de- 
 struction ; a proceeding which the victim watched 
 with a sullen scowl. She seldom cried, and never 
 failed to resent authority. 
 
 Constance, of late, had begun to detest these 
 episodes. It was a part, perhaps, of the growing 
 influence of the Watcher, whose home-sickness 
 betrayed itself in a passionate sestheticism. The 
 lens through which she had looked for an instant 
 on reality offered no renewal of that vision ; but it 
 persistently magnified the hideous properties of those 
 illusions to which she was chained. Upon this 
 stifling afternoon, with the usual summer smells of 
 London coming through the open window, the
 
 104 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 crooked Venetian blind moving in the draught and 
 making zebra- patterns on the shabby wall, this moist 
 chewed gummy rag which she must take between 
 her ringers nauseated her. When she had disposed 
 of it, she felt that Vera's neighbourhood had become 
 loathsome. She gathered her work, went into the 
 little bedroom, and gave herself with an almost 
 morbid pleasure to the contemplation and analysis 
 of her own fury of disgust. 
 
 She perceived that she hated her life. Standing 
 aside and looking at it, it seemed to her weary and 
 distorted vision a mere travesty of existence; an 
 uneventful sequence of sordid material acts. The 
 Watcher encouraged this attitude : crying out on his 
 incarceration, casting himself with fury against the 
 bars. Sometimes he was interested, but happy he 
 never was. Urged, then, as by a double spur, there 
 came to her mind a momentary longing to renew 
 the active revolt of her youth : when, stung, not by 
 squalor but by the hopeless inertia of the comfortable 
 class, she had cut her way out of the garden and 
 bartered all privilege for a little actuality. The 
 crushed primeval spirit of adventure rose and pricked 
 her this capable, wage-earning woman of thirty-five 
 or so reminding her of those wild raptures and 
 wonderful deeps of existence which form part of the 
 great and confused heritage of the human soul. 
 
 Then the recoil wave came, bringing a memory 
 of the savage tooth that waits behind those soft lips 
 of Nature whose kiss she had once accepted with 
 courage, even with delight. Thence a venom had 
 come which still worked in her life. That experi- 
 ment was not worth repeating.
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 105 
 
 The old white evening bodice slipped from her 
 knee; and her indifference was so great that she 
 did not put out her hand to save it. One of the 
 bones, which had cut its way through the covering 
 sheath, caught in a flounce of her skirt. It made a 
 little tear, and anchored itself. She rescued her work 
 then, and it reminded her of the brightening margin 
 of her life : of Andrew, who wanted her comradeship, 
 and of Muriel, whom she wanted even more. She 
 possessed, after all, the essentials of existence : a 
 little place in the dance, and a little opportunity of 
 service. 
 
 At a quarter to nine upon the following Monday 
 evening, Constance arrived at the Tottenham Court 
 Road Tube station, and took her place in the lift. 
 Her depression had passed away. She felt happy 
 and dreamy. After her long and sordid solitude, the 
 mere putting on of evening dress was an excitement. 
 It gave to her a curious sensation of well-being; 
 armed her, as it were, for the encounter with life. 
 
 As the platform rose, taking her to the surface, she 
 contemplated in a mood of slightly cynical amuse- 
 ment the advertisements which covered its walls ; 
 appeals, every one of them, to the supposed needs 
 of man. " You cannot afford to do your writing the 
 old way !" " You want our shirts ; we want You !" 
 " The New Note ! Decorative Smartness combined 
 with the Comfort of the Home !" 
 
 The Watcher too always entertained by our odd 
 habit of burrowing, our quaint conceits as to the 
 reality of levels, the air of importance which char- 
 acterizes the running to and fro of modern men 
 looked on these things with pleased surprise,
 
 io6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 saying, " Strange cries of one immortal spirit to 
 another!" 
 
 But there was another advertisement, less con- 
 spicuous, in little red and black letters without 
 ornament. " Be not deceived : GOD is not mocked /" It 
 wore so modest an air amidst all the heraldry of 
 trade, that it would hardly have held Constance's 
 attention had he not exclaimed, " What's that ? 
 That is different ! That is real. How has it got into 
 the dream ?" 
 
 The long absent note of fear had returned to his 
 
 voice, and he said again, "I'm caught we all are ! 
 
 ^How can we be other than deceived ? It is we that 
 
 are mocked : hoodwinked, and made helpless ! We 
 
 stand in great danger, with none to advise us, no 
 
 power of right judgment, no means of escape ! And 
 
 , beyond, the eternal Idea, and eternal seeking within 
 
 It. Oh, cruel, treacherous, and blinding dream !" 
 
 The words in their simple frame glared out as 
 from another dimension, and drew the great ring of 
 Eternity about the small illusions, the childish con- 
 veniences, the little scrambles and self-seekings of 
 twentieth-century London life. They followed Con- 
 stance and her lodger, indeed " not truly one but 
 truly two," to the doors of the theatre. They 
 obliterated the smiling portrait of Miss Sybil Selby 
 as " Yvonette, the Little Breton Bride." They shone, 
 fierce and accusative, under the arc lights, and 
 passed with them through the violently swinging 
 doors which seemed themselves infected with some 
 exalted and dramatic emotion. Thus they came 
 at last to the corner opposite the box-office, where 
 Vince awaited his friend.
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 107 
 
 He said to her, " Here we are, all ready for a 
 ripping evening, eh ? Jolly places. Stalls, fourth 
 row ; the nicest bit of the house. See everything 
 you want to see and nothing that you don't. I hate 
 to notice the wigs and the rouge. Plenty of them 
 outside in the street. Awfully good piece too; I've 
 seen it three times, and by Jove ! I don't mind if I 
 see it a dozen more. Nice voice that girl's got 
 Sybil Selby. Dances well ; neat ankles. Come 
 along ! it's time we were in our seats." 
 
 The curtain rose upon "The Little Breton Bride "; 
 upon a " set " which ingeniously utilized the quays 
 of Quimper, with their many little bridges, and a 
 strolling crowd of chorus-girls in coifs. The orchestra 
 struck up an airy, worldly waltz ; and the hero and 
 his party made a realistic entrance in a Daimler 
 sixteen horse-power motor, whilst the chorus-girls 
 sang an amorous and cheerfully unmeaning introit 
 appropriate to the business of the night. 
 
 At once they were in the thick of it : of the swirling, 
 dancing, softly sensuous world. Rhythm and senti- 
 ment, cloying melodies and pretty passions, were 
 poured out upon the audience ; producing in them an 
 agreeable anaesthesia, a forgetfulness of all they held 
 for real. Soon, their dreamy minds were enchained 
 by the deliberate measure of the dance, the monoto- 
 nous cadence of the songs. They were at the mercy 
 of those whom they had hired to amuse them : the 
 eternal paradox of the arts. Yet the drugs with 
 which the thing was done were very simple : merely 
 co-ordinated sounds and movements, expressing a gay 
 and incoherent love-tale in which light affections 
 triumphed and the deeps of life were carefully ignored.
 
 io8 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 At the end of the first act, Andrew, cheered 
 by Miss Tyrrel's evident enjoyment, said to her, 
 " Hope you are liking it ? Awfully good of you to 
 come, don't you know, just to a thing like this, 
 nothing out of the ordinary. Muriel was afraid you 
 might be bored." 
 
 Constance looked at him, and at the glittering 
 house with its air of sleek smartness, and then at the 
 box of chocolates in her lap ; and her mouth trembled 
 a little. She was, for the moment, in the position of 
 a protected woman ; back amongst the foolish 
 comforts and dear easy habits of a class that she 
 had deliberately left. 
 
 She answered, " It is about eight years since any 
 man waited on me, considered my pleasure, gave me 
 sweets. So, is it likely that I should be bored ?" 
 
 Vince was genuinely shocked and affected. " By 
 Jove!" he said, "By Jove! Poor girl!" He had 
 not supposed that bookselling entailed such social 
 ostracism as this. 
 
 Then he thought, with a little comforting spasm 
 of self-sufficiency, " I expect she is jolly particular 
 whom she does go out with." That explained it. 
 Faddy women always get left in the lurch. 
 
 The Watcher, meanwhile, clamoured for some ex- 
 planation of the proceedings of the night. The lurid 
 and untruthful simulation of an existence that was 
 itself untrue ; the crowd of attentive spectators, look- 
 ing eagerly at a false distorted picture of their own 
 false distorted lives : this paradox of the drama 
 was far beyond the understanding of a poor un- 
 educated spirit for whom even space and time were 
 still foolish and puzzling conventions.
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 109 
 
 " If you really like these curious ways," he said, 
 "to dance and to sing when you wish to express 
 your feelings, and to kiss one another a great deal 
 and after all this is not much more foolish than the 
 ordinary ugly earthly way why not do it yourselves 
 instead of watching other people pretend ? If this 
 be your standard of beauty, do you not waste time 
 in merely watching? Should you not participate 
 whilst you can ? Rush together embrace be 
 ecstatic? Why delegate these picturesque emotions 
 to a race of slaves ? Life has strange rules, but this 
 is the strangest ; that you should be impelled to enjoy 
 watching an imitation in a corner, when you might 
 go out and live the real before you die." 
 
 At the end of the second act, the high-born hero 
 had lifted his peasant bride into the motor-car, and 
 held her with one hand against his breast whilst the 
 other feebly grasped the steering wheel. He leaned 
 over her with a realistic gesture of protection, 
 singing, 
 
 " Dear little bride ! 
 
 Through the world wide 
 I'll carry my dove in her nest ! 
 
 They may offer us gold, 
 
 Or riches untold, 
 But we know that true love is the best!" 
 
 The chorus-girls tossed confetti in the air, until 
 Miss Sybil Selby, resplendent in lace coif and brocaded 
 apron, seemed another Danae beneath its significant 
 showers; and the curtain fell as the car moved slowly 
 away to the plaintive and haunting music of violins. 
 Then Andrew turned, and saw with astonishment 
 a woman whom he had never known before ; a being
 
 no THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 with softened eyes, absurdly entranced. The 
 magnetism of the play had affected Constance. Her 
 strained vision followed the ridiculous lovers ; her 
 strained ear extracted from the sentimental music 
 the regretful cry of all that she had missed in life. 
 There was a lump in her throat. It was as if some 
 magic powder had been mingled with the confetti ; 
 pollen from the divine flower which grows upon the 
 walls of Might-Have-Been. 
 
 She was invaded by a gentle, sensuous melan- 
 choly ; by an absurd longing to be kissed. The 
 disdain of reality, the rhythm of the dancers, the 
 mildly voluptuous music, came like an overpowering 
 perfume to enchain her mind : so that the crude 
 emotions of the lovers, the simple insistence on 
 happiness, on the joy and paramount importance of 
 the mating instinct, stung to life something that had 
 long slept. 
 
 All about them, triumphant sentimentalism was 
 having its way. People leaned forward with shining 
 eyes and slightly foolish smiles. The few detached 
 persons who were amongst the audience enjoyed the 
 ironic spectacle of a houseful of prosperous, civilized 
 and artificial beings tightly strapped, every one of 
 them, within the uniform of society ; each hair 
 assigned to its place by inexorable law responding 
 in spite of themselves to an irrational and primitive 
 appeal. In every part of the theatre Woman, at 
 that moment, looked at Man. 
 
 " How odd !" said the Watcher. " In order to 
 make people natural, you are obliged to resort to 
 artifice. So that is why you make a dream about the 
 dream ?"
 
 TWO SORTS. OF SOLITUDE in 
 
 But Constance took no notice. The burden of 
 reality had been shifted. She was swept away, into 
 a joyous, absurd, bespangled country, where her 
 starved heart was fed upon emotional meringues and 
 her aching senses were lulled and warmed. She sat 
 thus for a moment or two ; holding tight this lovely, 
 selfless sense of wonder, of vivid and exalted life. 
 Then Andrew rose and put her cloak about her 
 shoulders ; and she realized, with a stab of sorrow, 
 that her evening was at an end. 
 
 In him, also, the feast of sensuous melody and 
 mild emotion had woke a certain wistfulness. As 
 they came into the foyer, and stood a few moments 
 to let the crowd pass by, he said anxiously, 
 " It has been rather jolly, hasn't it ? Do it 
 again, eh ?" 
 
 Constance looked at him, but did not speak. 
 
 He continued, in an abrupt burst of confidence, 
 " We are both a bit out of it, don't you know, in 
 some ways; so it's natural enough we should be 
 friends." 
 
 She exclaimed, " You shouldn't feel out of it 
 you are not alone in the world, as I am. You have 
 so many things to care for in your life." 
 
 She spoke impulsively, and was astonished at her- 
 self: but his answer astonished her more. He said, 
 " Yes ; in a way, I know I seem to have. But 
 then, you see, the things aren't really mine. I can't \ 
 catch on ; don't fit. I'm rather like that Johnny in 
 the ' Arabian Nights,' who went out to dinner and 
 kept on seeing imaginary food he couldn't eat. 
 Nicely dished up one admires it ; but one's hungry 
 all the same. There's Muriel she's adorable ; and
 
 ii2 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 she's my wife, of course but her life's stuffed full of 
 other things. Very natural; she's clever, and I'm 
 not. But she's fenced round by 'em ; I can't 
 get near." 
 
 " She's so young," said Constance gently, " and 
 so pretty, and enjoying it so much. It must be 
 / rather nice to watch her being happy. And, after 
 all, she is yours." 
 
 " Oh, it's not that. I don't mind her having a 
 good time; lots of friends ; running about, and so on. 
 I'm not that sort of beast harem type. Girls must 
 play round, don't you know ; one likes it. They all 
 do it not peculiar in any way so, where's the 
 harm ? Very different from what it was in my poor 
 old father's time ! But these women they've got 
 her into a shell of fads. One can't get past. And 
 there she is all the time attractive as ever, and just 
 out of reach. It's a bit maddening " 
 
 His voice had the growl in it now ; and he spoke as 
 if to himself, deliberately and without self-conscious- 
 ness. There was no knowledge between them of the 
 outrageous quality of their conversation. It had 
 grown, as it were, out of the events of the night. 
 'His speech did not strike her as a complaint; a sin 
 against the code of married men. It seemed rather 
 an explanation which he was making to himself. 
 
 She saw something the essential man in him, the 
 creature of ideals struggling like a dumb animal 
 against the circumstances of his life. The sight 
 moved her to an almost maternal pity ; so that she 
 felt with him as well as for him when he said, 
 " One's growing older all the while, too ; losing 
 chances ; getting fixed ; and the whole thing is dreary
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 113 
 
 and jangled up. There she is, as I say, pretty, 
 fetching. People envy one. But we live in water- 
 tight compartments in our house. My fault ! It's a 
 silly mistake ; wish now I'd pushed things a bit at 
 the start. Then there's the boy. Bound to keep an 
 eye on him, protect him a bit from the women ; and 
 she doesn't like it, of course. So he's between us as 
 well as the culture and things. That's the damna- 
 tion of children : responsible for 'em. Must do it ! 
 You wait till you have one " 
 
 Constance blushed furiously: and Andrew, instantly 
 contrite, apologized for the violence of his language, 
 and returned to his normal state of clumsy shyness. 
 
 She said, " Oh don't be unhappy ! Just be fond 
 of them both. You might enjoy it all so very 
 much." 
 
 He replied, " I am awfully fond, really. If I 
 wasn't, don't you know, I shouldn't care. Fact is, ( 
 I'm a bit lonely it's just that. On my soul, I 
 believe it always is that at the bottom. When we 
 feel lonely, we're miserable ; and when we don't feel 
 lonely we're not. Other things don't matter, except 
 when they make us notice we're alone." 
 
 Constance looked at him with moist eyes, and 
 answered, " Yes ; I believe it is just that !" 
 
 He would have driven her home ; but she, with the 
 prudence of intrepid and experienced people, refused 
 it. Her landlady was a Puritan, who slept in the 
 basement and was easily disturbed. 
 
 As they said good-night, he asked anxiously, 
 " We're chums now, aren't we ?" 
 
 She counter-questioned with, "What do you 
 want ?"
 
 ii 4 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Oh, just to come in and out," he said with 
 eagerness. " Talk a bit, you know ; swop 
 ideas." 
 
 To be consigned, though it was of her own choice, 
 to a green and yellow omnibus full of brisk and dingy 
 people from the pit : to end the evening by a solitary 
 return to her lodgings, where lights would be out 
 and she must fumble for the chain of the front-door 
 all this gave to Constance a foolish but poignant 
 sense of isolation, of having missed fire in life. She 
 saw from the window of the omnibus bareheaded 
 women in exquisite cloaks, leaning upon the arms of 
 men who protected them, and walking delicately 
 beneath the great arc lights. There was something 
 intimate in the relation of each couple ; they carried 
 with them a suggestion of romance. She was shut 
 out from that aspect of existence : could only watch 
 it, with her own uncanny experience hugged tightly 
 in her breast. At this moment, she wanted it very 
 badly; the prettiness, the protection, all the airy, 
 fluffy way of taking things. 
 
 The omnibus brought her to the Tube station ; and 
 she sank into the burrow again, continuing, auto- 
 matically, the cheap and undistinguished scurry to her 
 cheap and undistinguished lair. But within the lift, the 
 real and dreadful words in their little frame awaited 
 her. Be not deceived ! The hard inexorable quality 
 of that Eternity which is behind these illusory 
 miseries and excitements struck her like a blow. She 
 thought bitterly of Andrew's simple statement, 
 " One is growing older all the while." She ran 
 forward along the years, and came upon the final 
 necessity of his death. Then she knew that even
 
 TWO SORTS OF SOLITUDE 115 
 
 whilst she knelt at Muriel's shrine, she needed 
 Andrew ; and she hated that knowledge. 
 
 Somewhere, somehow, even this, she supposed, 
 had beauty and significance; but she was blinded. 
 Altogether overcome by her lassitude, by the reaction 
 from the short and feverish evening, she, the brave 
 lover of life, whispered with inward tears, " I don't\ * 
 think I want to live any more !" 
 
 Then something within her exclaimed, " Ah, do 
 not be grieved ; I cannot bear it. It is horrible ; 
 I think it gives me pain. Surely it were better 
 to die than to be hurt by these little foolish 
 things ?" 
 
 Instantly and absurdly, the social instinct, the 
 craving for sympathy, awoke. Constance turned on 
 her inner companion and said, " I'm alone so 
 dreadfully alone ! I can't endure it !" 
 
 It was an astonished voice which answered, 
 " Alone? Is that what matters ? Must you always 
 for your comfort be linked up with other creatures ? 
 And is that why I do not understand ?" 
 
 She was intent on her own wretchedness, and did 
 not reply; until presently, to her amazement, he 
 said gently, " Am I no use to you ? Can I not 
 help ?" 
 
 Then she was conscious of a tiny inward revolution ; v 
 and with it of the birth of some new thing. 
 
 He said, " I do not want you to be lonely. Ah, 
 be happy again with the beautiful colours and shapes ! 
 Are these not sufficient for your joy ? A strange 
 pain has come between us : it pushes. Because of it, 
 I want to help you if I can. Do not suffer ! It is so 
 horrible that you should have a pain." 
 82
 
 n6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 She asked him with eagerness, " Do you really 
 care?" 
 
 He answered. " Yes, I don't know why, but 
 somehow, I am sorry for your sadness. It hurts 
 me ; and I want you to be glad." And then, as in 
 the glorious moment when he saw the Shining Tree, 
 he added, " I think that I begin to understand." 
 
 Grateful for this strange and unexpected sympathy, 
 companioned by it, she came home; crept up the 
 dingy staircase to her room. She took off the 
 evening dress slowly and wearily. Already the black 
 crepe-de-chine looked crushed and sad. The blind 
 was up, the window opened wide for coolness' sake. 
 As she raised her eyes from a careful folding of the 
 satin skirt which might have to do duty many other 
 times, she saw far up the mighty and eternal stars 
 that peered through the summer haze. Again she 
 had the sensation of a white and changeless Ring 
 set about her ; again she remembered the hateful and 
 incisive words that were set on the wall of the lift. 
 Then both were obliterated by Andrew's figure, solid 
 and imperturbable, fixed upon the margin of her 
 life. 
 
 The Watcher had exclaimed in his bitterness, 
 " It is we that are mocked, hoodwinked, and made 
 helpless !" But now there was a grieving and 
 strangely humanized voice which murmured, " I am 
 sorry for the sorrow of my friend."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 
 
 " Nature is never spent; 
 
 There lives the dearest freshness deep down things ; 
 And though the last lights from the black west went, 
 Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs !" 
 
 GERARD HOPKINS. 
 
 AS she fled through the coloured counties, under 
 the steady radiance of an August sun, Con- 
 stance had within her the astonished and friendly 
 voice of the Watcher, saying, 
 
 " See how the splendid trees stand up in the 
 field ! Ah, look at the curves, the lines, the incredible 
 shapes ! Open your eyes look, look ! Do not let 
 so much of the beauty escape you ! Your poor vague 
 senses are letting it slip by. It is far too wonderful 
 for that. Seize it feed on it ! Use the best of your 
 body whilst you can." 
 
 She let him have his way with her, for she was 
 bewildered and tired; and he, since his sudden 
 awakening to the wonderful experience of pity, had 
 cast off something of the arrogant inquisitiveness 
 which had led him to drive her senses so remorse- 
 lessly and exclusively in the interests of his own 
 investigations. Now, he offered her a share in his 
 
 117
 
 ii8 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 adventures. There had been a reversal of their 
 positions; so that she was mainly conscious of 
 looking through his nature at the world, and not as 
 before of lending her eyes and brain to his purposes. 
 Her summer holiday had come ; and she was out 
 with a sense of wild freedom that hardly felt the 
 body's weight, scurrying through an incredible 
 world. With a release from the monotony of work 
 there had come also a release from the craving for 
 humanity. She threw it behind her : Andrew and 
 Muriel, Helen Reed, who had lately made advances 
 towards intimacy, and all the anodynes which she 
 had clutched in her loneliness to lull the appetite for 
 natural joy. She was eager to take up the heritage 
 of sun and air ; nestled in a corner of the third-class 
 carriage, and let the pageant of England slip 
 past her. 
 
 As for the Watcher, he saw for the first time with 
 human eyes the most divine treasure of humanity 5 
 an earth not wholly smeared with toil, a fresh and 
 flowery country of waving grasses set with solemn 
 elms, of ripening harvest, rose-set hedges and cropped 
 downs. He and his friend, cuddled together, looked 
 joyously and dreamily into the sacred heart of living 
 things. The black blur of Leeds, that takes from its 
 neighbouring fields the very colour of hope ; the 
 entangled world of the West Riding, where hell- 
 mouth seems to have broken out in a singularly 
 inappropriate place; these moved them only to a 
 gentle interest. He was invaded by a new spirit of 
 tolerance ; and she, very tired, felt something of that 
 agreeable light-headedness which comes with a certain 
 quality of fatigue.
 
 ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 119 
 
 In the early afternoon, they came to the frontiers 
 of the North; the austere and stony country of 
 Ribblesdale. The sun lingered south of them, in the 
 more fertile and responsive Midlands ; and here there 
 was a little cloud spread very thinly over the sky. 
 In that cold strong light the rocks, cropping here 
 and there from the tight earth, looked blue, pale and 
 curious. They forced themselves up from the grass 
 with a menacing air which reminded man's body of 
 its softness and instability. They seemed to be 
 saying, "Verily, we are the people!" remembering 
 that when it came to the battle of the dust St. 
 Stephen was crushed back to primal earth but the 
 stones of martyrdom remained. 
 
 Vera, head out of window, said, " I think those 
 rocks are ghosts which growl at me !" 
 
 The Watcher whispered, " They are your mother 
 and your father; from that womb you came out, and 
 to that womb you will return, for dust is the founda- 
 tion of the dream." 
 
 The scamper of the train brought them through 
 the land of stone and into the country of the pine- 
 woods; and Constance, looking with her friend at 
 the shapes of dark trees against a brightening sky, 
 found them charged with a terrible significance. 
 They seemed the proper guardians of some im- 
 memorial secret ; of an antique land, a land of 
 earth sorcery, which the scumbling brush of man 
 had hardly touched. Already London was far dis- 
 tant ; already sanity, clear vision, and the healthy 
 exaltation of the hills began. She looked forward 
 with great eagerness, having now obtained that sense 
 of a door eternally ajar, which prepares the soul for
 
 120 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 romance, mystery, and all unreasonable truth. When 
 at last the train stopped at their small and wind- 
 swept station, she leapt out with a clear apprehension 
 that some mighty and definitive destination had 
 been reached. 
 
 The place to which they had been brought was 
 perched at the very margin of the fells. Those nude 
 angels of the North dominated the little village ; faint 
 and wonderful shapes, lifted up from the business of 
 earth, and running day by day the whole gamut of 
 prophetic emotion, from the regal gloom of Lamenta- 
 tions to the radiant expectation of Isaiah. Driven 
 perhaps to opposition by their splendours, the 
 sowing and reaping world which crept to their feet 
 had a sharpness of detail that had put the most 
 meticulous Pre-Raphaelite to shame. The middle 
 distance stood as distinct as some print by Diirer ; 
 with black woods, and the stripe and check of fields 
 and hedges. Each tree in the setting sun was a 
 sharp dark insistent shape; one out of many scattered 
 sentinels that seemed to guard the transfigured fells 
 from the profane investigation of field-glass, camera 
 and exploring feet. 
 
 Constance her luggage safely bestowed and early 
 supper ordered walked along the high road which 
 ran with prosaic straightness to Penrith, and saw 
 this mighty panorama unrolled in its infinite detail. 
 A weary London woman, tossed suddenly into this, 
 may well feel a certain flutter of the heart. Con- 
 fronted by the stupendous sacrament of natural 
 beauty that spotless and ineffable host which Earth, 
 the virgin mother, eternally brings forth and offers, 
 an oblation on the altar of life an ecstasy that was
 
 ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 121 
 
 not wholly joy invaded her spirit. Something, she 
 knew, was being offered ; something which her hard 
 and work-worn hands could scarcely grasp. The 1 
 Watcher was hushed, and asked no questions ; for 
 curiosity cannot survive in the presence of awe. 
 
 There was a hay-rick in the neighbouring field, its 
 patient shape responsive to the play of slanting 
 light. In the hedge by which they walked, the 
 sharp and eager fingers of a hawthorn were stretched 
 out against the greenish sky. Its clean crisp edges 
 were instinct with vitality ; and with beauty, which 
 is the spiritual aspect of intensest life. These leaves 
 and behind them, the teeming earth with all its 
 children cried out for recognition to this sister of 
 theirs, this impassioned amateur of experience. 
 Constance was glad with a vicarious vanity to think 
 her mother so beautiful : proud that she, who was 
 of the family, might show to her visitor one of the 
 lovelier moments of the dear earth. 
 
 As she lingered, the sun first left the valley, then 
 crept from the summit of the hills. At once, the 
 angels wrapped their blue veils around them ; being 
 dazzled by the radiant sky, where the game of 
 green and rose-colour had already begun. Then 
 the changeful play of the celestial opal, immortally 
 bright, was offered for a moment ; as if to exhibit 
 the true and natural darkness of the earth. 
 
 Gazing at the magic funeral of the sun, and caring 
 little where she stepped, Constance's foot came 
 sharply on some soft uneven thing that gave 
 beneath it. She moved quickly ; and Vera, forced 
 by the gathering dusk to abandon the quest of 
 wild raspberries, pounced and held up a few pitiful
 
 122 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 feathers, kept together by that which had once been 
 the wonder of flesh. 
 
 " Look !" she said. " What fun ! A dead bird 
 you trod on it." 
 
 Constance looked, and felt bitterly grieved, 
 ashamed, sickened by her own action. Absorbed 
 in a selfish feeding upon beauty, she had insulted 
 that poor little memorial of a radiant life. Out of 
 its corruption, it rebuked her. 
 
 She turned from the sunset, and the imperial hills, 
 that were putting on the purple mantle in which 
 they greet the night. Clouds were coming to them 
 now : tall violet-grey battalions, leaning towards 
 their goal and observing a steady and unhurried 
 march from the south-west. They came and rested 
 on the summit of the fell ; sank into the valleys and 
 cast fleecy folds about the pikes. Behind them, the 
 purple angels muttered angrily. They were pre- 
 paring to pour forth cleansing waters on an unwilling 
 world. 
 
 She walked back to the village ; and having her 
 face set towards it, where it spread itself with a 
 northern amplitude and independence about its 
 central green, she saw it in its unity. One or two 
 lights appeared in the windows, creating an instant 
 opposition between the dark and eternal hills and 
 this little, transitory, superficial patch of human habi- 
 tation, human dreams. The hills, the darkening 
 fields, were the more alive, the more insistent. They 
 pressed on her attention. 
 
 The Watcher whispered, " How they crowd about 
 one at this hour !" 
 
 She said, " Whom do you mean ?"
 
 ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 123 
 
 He answered, " Those who came first." 
 It was she who now said, " I do not understand." 
 He replied, " But surely you know them, surely 
 you are with them ? If one must not be alone, and 
 if one must love, it cannot be that you have only the 
 souls still entangled in their bodies, from whom to 
 choose your friends ?" 
 
 She repeated, " I do not understand !" Neverthe- 
 less, fear outran comprehension. 
 
 He went on, " I see theni on the hills ! How 
 wild they are, and how surprised at life ! Their 
 stones are there, the little dusty marks that they 
 erected ; and so they cannot get away. Your friends 
 have made no mark ; they have not rubbed out the 
 life that came before. It mingles with them yet. 
 Do you mean that they do not know, do not see it, 
 just because the dusty covering is not here?" 
 
 She asked, " Are you talking of the dead ?" She 
 shivered a little; for triumphant vitality hates to 
 meet a ghost. 
 
 He answered, " Why, yes ; the liberated ones. 
 In your busy gobbling up of one another, do you 
 take no notice of the part you cannot slay ? To- 
 night, the liberated hosts are in the hills ! I see 
 them at strange rites behind the hedges. I hear 
 their patter on the road. Oh, the little antique 
 spirits of slain children : the mothers of the people : 
 the keepers of the herds ! They are here ! Nothing 
 is changed. You have chased them from the cities, 
 or smothered them. Perhaps it may be that ; I am 
 not sure. Because of this, they are all the thicker 
 about the immemorial valleys. They come down to 
 drink at the changeless rivers they have always
 
 i2 4 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 known. Here are battle-fields. Here, in these wide 
 valleys, they surge to and fro and rehearse the 
 great drama of life. Troops of victorious souls that 
 escaped from bleeding bodies ; under these hills, and 
 deep in that bracken, which their hands tore up to 
 stanch the cruel wounds." 
 
 She answered, " Yes, yes ! Of course, in a way, 
 the past is always with us." 
 
 "Not past!" he said, "the dead have no past; 
 they live in the eternal Now. It is progress ; they 
 are nearer to the real. These I knew first, before I 
 had eyes to see the poor souls still imprisoned in the 
 dust. They have gone on ; they are the leaders of 
 your army. Surely you acknowledge their presence ? 
 Surely you owe them your homage and your 
 help?" 
 
 She was hastening towards the friendly houses 
 now : for the twilight deepened, and the conversa- 
 tion was little to her taste. They came past the 
 low wall of the churchyard. A slab of new white 
 marble peeped over the coping stone. She did not 
 like it : it seemed a pale hand stretched out from the 
 other side. But he would not let her by. He broke 
 his exhortation, and asked her, " What is that ?" 
 
 She said, " It is the graveyard, I suppose." 
 
 He asked again, " Is that where the worn-out 
 bodies are put away ?" 
 
 Then it occurred to her that the Watcher had 
 never seen a place of burial before : for London, the 
 polite centre of a secular civilization, is remarkable 
 for its tactful concealment of the dead. The mind 
 that is bred in the hills knows no such artifice. It 
 is of the opinion of the Silurist, that it were ill to be
 
 ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 125 
 
 unkind to a Jonathan, though in dust : and therefore 
 holds fast to this, the most intimate and pathetic 
 keepsake of its emigrated friends. This church and 
 its quiet company stood, as is there usual, at the 
 entrance to the village; a gentle, uninsistent link 
 between two worlds. With another step or two 
 they were at the lych-gate, and saw the dim path 
 which approached a plain doorway, then branched and 
 skirted the wall of the nave. There had been here no 
 artificial levelling of the earth. From its small emi- 
 nences and dimpling hollows, the plain old grave- 
 stones peered with a gracious and natural effect : as 
 if they were indeed at one with the land. 
 
 Beyond the church, this land rose suddenly ; in a 
 slope of rough grass unbroken as yet by the making 
 of little homes. Clearly an upland field had lately 
 been added to the graveyard, in the interests of a 
 generation yet to come. At its highest point a 
 monolith shot up against the skyline ; a strange, 
 great, formless thing, growing as it were from the 
 ground, and bearing no resemblance to the civil 
 futilities of the monumental mason and his art. 
 
 Night was upon them ; and already the grass was 
 grey, the little church vague in the dusk. Earth 
 now seemed built of some primal stuff, that existed 
 in chaos before there was light. Constance, un- 
 nerved by the evening's conversation, would have 
 hastened to sanctuary ; but she felt the spur of her 
 guest, who could not leave so great a matter un- 
 explored. He quelled her natural desire for the 
 neighbourhood of houses and live things, and uncjer 
 his direction, she scrambled and slipped in the 
 twilight up the steep dry grassy slope.
 
 126 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Coming to its summit, she saw a wider sky, where 
 brightness lingered on the horizon line. Beneath it 
 she divined the folded hills : knew that the deeper 
 blackness hid the woods. She peered at the 
 battered sandstone pillar which had beckoned her 
 to this solitary place, and saw that it was an arm- 
 less cross ; once covered, no doubt, with the plaited 
 patterns and lost symbols of the Celtic Church, 
 now only retaining upon its roughened surface a 
 memory of the artifice of man. It stood upon a 
 new pedestal, and in the step of the pedestal there 
 was an inscription cut. Although now the light 
 was very nearly gone, she stooped, and with eye 
 and finger traced the words. 
 
 " This Runic Cross, work of the first Christians 
 of our land, was discovered in the foundations of the 
 church. It is now again set up, by the village which 
 it once protected, as a memorial of the Nameless 
 Dead." 
 
 The Watcher remarked, " I knew that you were 
 mistaken. You see they are remembered after all ; 
 are given a gathering place." 
 
 The night breeze had sprung up, and blew from 
 the hills upon the churchyard. It seemed to Con- 
 stance's fancy that the wind was full of life antique, 
 barbaric life, the life of those old Christians of the 
 hills that They were coming to a trysting-place, and 
 that the Watcher already discerned them. There 
 were more words upon the pedestal ; and though her 
 instinct was all for the village and humanity, she 
 made haste to decipher them that she might the 
 sooner be gone. They seemed lacking in flavour 
 after that which went before ; and she deplored the
 
 ROAD TO PENRITH AND OTHER PLACES 127 
 
 uncertainty of clerical taste, even where it is combined 
 with a passion for archaeology. 
 
 "By Thy precioiis Death and Burial, good Lord, 
 deliver us /" It was only a fragment from the 
 Litany. She could not be impressed. 
 
 But the Watcher's comment on these words struck 
 her as peculiar. He said, " So, the Idea did once 
 break through ? And yet, you do not understand !"
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HOW THOSE WHO LOSE THEMSELVES OFTEN FIND 
 SOMETHING MORE VALUABLE 
 
 " That light did lead me on 
 More surely than the shining of noontide, 
 Where well I knew that One 
 Did for my coming bide ; 
 Where he abode, might none but he abide." 
 ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS: 
 The Dark Night of the Soul. 
 
 "XTOTHING would do but they must go, all 
 1 N three of them, into the heart of the fells ; and 
 qualify the distant glamour by the familiar touch. 
 The village produced a rough cart, and a short thick 
 pony of the kind that embarks willingly upon cross- 
 country exploration : and they were off, in the vivid 
 afternoon, through the tangle of dark woods and 
 bright cornfields which lay between them and the 
 road that runs along the hills. 
 
 There was a little stirring breeze, and the pale 
 green barley danced in the wind with a delicate airy 
 ecstasy as they passed ; so that the Watcher in his 
 nest reached out to this new loveliness with a gesture 
 that was almost adoration. The oats, faintly blue 
 like aquamarines, seemed of a more sober habit. 
 
 128
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 129 
 
 They made minuet steps, with tiny tossings of the 
 head. The deeper blue of the turnip fields brought 
 inappropriate hints of the wild ocean to the least 
 idyllic processes of agriculture. Behind, the stately 
 hills marched with them ; on one hand the sharp 
 Lake Mountains, on the other the fells. 
 
 Presently they plunged to the lowest point of the 
 valley ; a little breathless, I think, because of their 
 apprehension of the beauty that they might find 
 for this was a wonderful day, on which anything 
 might happen and the least credible of discoveries 
 might be made. They swung through space on a 
 jewelled planet ; and it was for them that the caskets 
 were flung open and the secret gems disclosed. 
 
 They crossed the beck, where it ran through deep 
 hayfields to the river beyond : a little eager splashing 
 thing, that called all other children to join its play. 
 There was a heavenly inflorescence at its margins, 
 all made up of those very simple plants which are 
 too dignified and too beautiful to compel the casual 
 eye. It was the Watcher who called his friend's 
 attention to the dear golden fluff of yellow bedstraw, 
 and to the woundwort and betony, standing up like 
 purple spears in the soft grass. Then, because her 
 eyes were directed to that marvellous and incom- 
 parable population, she saw, with his delight to help 
 her vision, the dyer's greenweed disowned Plan- 
 tagenet and the towering wild angelica, whose 
 mighty branches hint of old forests made of flower- 
 ing things. And since respectability is no more the 
 norm of hedges than of human life, she saw also the 
 ivory crown of the meadowsweet ; that fascinating 
 child of joy whose daintiness, in the eyes of the 
 9
 
 130 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 mangolds, is very certainly the measure of her 
 sin. 
 
 There they were, in their essential reality, their 
 unsullied radiance ; matter for the exploration of 
 many aeons, tossed into the pageant of one sunny 
 afternoon. Because he was unaffected by man's 
 arrogant standard of size, the Watcher was at once 
 satisfied and subjugated by this luxuriant outpour- 
 ing of beauty. It woke the slumbering virtue of 
 humility ; and washed his eyes, so that he caught, as 
 it were, a sidelong glimpse of God. It was a 
 definitive hour for both of them ; this first sight of 
 the flowered meadows of the North. There, Life 
 clothes herself in haste, and rushes out to meet the 
 sun in her short moment of fertility ; and hence the 
 significant personalities of the plants assert them- 
 selves as nowhere else in the full splendour of their 
 triumphant individuality. They blaze forth, and 
 hit the heart which opens itself to receive that holy 
 wound. 
 
 They climbed from the valley to dusty roads that 
 ran between stone walls. There they saw the Lady 
 of the Hills, the great wild cranesbill, lifting her 
 blue paten to the sky. Constance began to wonder 
 why she had so long neglected the easy and perfect 
 friendship of the flowers. It raised the heart to 
 some lucent and gentle plane of being, beyond the 
 fevers and anxieties of human intercourse. So 
 dreaming, she allowed the pony to ramble at loose 
 rein among the tangled roads. Life seemed divine. 
 The future mattered little. She was invaded by the 
 consciousness of heavenly peace. Vera had left the 
 cart to make dashes into hedge, ditch, and bypath
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 131 
 
 clutching vainly at scuttling beetles and nimble 
 flies. She was at her best under these circumstances 
 of action. There, the animal aspect seemed in 
 place, and Nature justified the coarse and tireless 
 frame. 
 
 They came presently to a gap in the stone wall, 
 and a wheel-track that went, as it seemed, directly 
 to the fells. Constance, who had the Londoner's 
 shadowy belief that all roads lead, somehow, the 
 right way, divined in this byway the short cut 
 which her landlord had described to her as going 
 back towards the village by way of the hills. She 
 turned the cart into the short rough grass ; and they 
 trundled slowly in and out of ruts, and through 
 gates, and by deep dark bracken that stretched 
 clawing fingers up the side of the sage-coloured hill. 
 Soon they were a long way from all roads and other 
 memories of civilization : being, indeed, upon an 
 outpost of the fells. The sun sloped, twilight began 
 to come, but there was no hint in their vague and 
 wandering path of a return to human habitations. 
 The pony lost his eager and exploratory manner. 
 He lingered and stopped doubtfully. The sun went, 
 and a chill came to the air. Then Vera, a little 
 way ahead, stopped to cry, " Tanta ! make the pony 
 come quicker. He's going dreadful slow ! It's dark 
 and nasty, and I want my tea." 
 
 Constance answered, "I'm afraid he is getting 
 tired and wants a rest." 
 
 Vera said with petulance, " Horrid little horse ! 
 He shan't be tired. He's ours he's got to go ! I 
 want my tea." 
 
 Then Constance, dragged back to the unlovely 
 92
 
 i 3 2 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 cares of common sense, halted, looked round, and 
 noticed for the first time their solitary position ; the 
 woman and child and the weary little animal, with 
 the great and pathless earth stretching from them 
 on every side rough, billowy, and very desolate. 
 She forgot that they had come but a few miles from 
 the road. She had no knowledge of the quarter in 
 which their destination lay. She did not mind ; for 
 they had achieved the object of the expedition, 
 were hidden in the hills. Already ancient mysteries 
 peeped from the stunted bushes, whispering frag- 
 ments of the primeval ritual of the wild. Anything 
 might stir and rise suddenly in the brake ; for if 
 conscious life were concealed there, it was a life, she 
 felt sure, far removed from the human plane. 
 
 The Watcher said, " It is well to be here ; one 
 discerns again the music of the stars." Her peaceful 
 heart repeated, " It is well !" She was brought to 
 a new place, immersed in a new experience ; and 
 that contented her. 
 
 But Vera was not content. She flung herself into 
 the cart, crying querulously. " Do let us go home ! 
 I'm tired I want my tea ! I think it is a very 
 nasty drive." 
 
 Then Constance suggested to the pony that his 
 respite was at an end ; but the encouraging rein and 
 very gentle lash had no effect upon his tired limbs 
 and stubborn mind. He hung his head and planted 
 his feet more firmly on the ground. She said, 
 " I'm afraid we must let him rest a little more." 
 
 Vera stamped her foot, and cried, " I won't ! I 
 shan't! I hate him. I want to go home to my 
 tea I"
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 133 
 
 She dashed from the cart and into the bracken ; 
 snatched a loose stick which lay there, and hit the 
 wearied pony with all her angry strength across the 
 ears. It leapt forward ; and Vera jumped into the 
 rocking cart, crying gaily : " There ! he only wanted 
 hitting ! I knew I'd make him go." 
 
 The pony went, indeed a poor bothered fevered 
 thing blindly and without sense of direction. It 
 ran with a sort of convulsive strength ; with miser- 
 able shudderings and settings back of the ears. So 
 they were flung into hollows and up little hills, 
 jerked this way and that. Constance had the reins, 
 but her strength was no match for a frightened 
 moorland pony who scents the neighbourhood of 
 the fell. She put her arm firmly about Vera, and 
 resigned herself to the event. 
 
 During a period that seemed infinite, the cart 
 raced through the twilight ; tilting, leaping, twisting, 
 but, by some miracle, never overturned. Theyfled 
 past a swift-dissolving vista of immense grey fields, 
 looming trees and shadowy corners; and past a 
 sudden black pine-wood, a thing of terror in the 
 dusk. Far off, they saw white roads that rushed 
 from an invisible highway into the heart of a dim 
 veiled land. Far up, they saw the fell. But they 
 were caught in the debatable land between the 
 two ; and in this situation there seemed for them no 
 hope. 
 
 Then one of the great limestone boulders that 
 push out from the earth on the lower slopes stood 
 suddenly in their path ; and the dazed and worried 
 pony could not elude it. Almost before the peril 
 reached their minds, one wheel met the obstacle with
 
 134 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 a crash ; the cart tried to mount it, failed, tottered, 
 and was overturned. Constance and the child half 
 leapt, half tumbled, from the low seat to the ground. 
 There they lay huddled, in a bewilderment that 
 excluded the more natural sensations of despair, 
 amidst a litter of broken shafts, a wheel torn from 
 its axle, and a pony which was kicking its way to 
 freedom as quickly as it might. 
 
 Constance rose, shook herself, and examined Vera. 
 Routine took charge of her ; and she acted without 
 thought and therefore with decision. The child was 
 sobbing with fear, anger and fatigue ; but she was 
 unhurt. Constance, suddenly alert to the realities of 
 their situation, said to her, 
 
 " Stop crying ; get up quickly. It's nearly dark, 
 and we have got to find our way home." 
 
 She went to the crestfallen and panting pony, 
 extricated his limbs from the entangled harness, took 
 a handful of bracken and rubbed him down. She 
 said to Vera, " I'm going to put you on the pony. 
 Don't be frightened hold tight, and let him go 
 the pace he likes. You will have a lovely ride, 
 just like a grown-up lady, and we shall soon find a 
 cottage to get tea." 
 
 She dared not ask herself yet in which direction 
 she should go to find it, or what were her chances of 
 success ; for their course had been a twisted one, 
 with doubling to and fro and the tracing of wild 
 circles, and she had no knowledge of the sky to 
 help her. 
 
 At this instant the voice of the Watcher said 
 urgently, " The light ! We must go to the 
 light."
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 135 
 
 Then she looked up, and saw with deep thankful- 
 ness a little sharp star that had flashed into being 
 and shone low down in the hills. Unquestionably 
 it called to them ; offering at least a certainty of 
 human life. It was no great matter to quiet the 
 pony, and place Vera upon his back. She did it, and 
 set out to wander up the pathless fell without any 
 sensation of anxiety. She was still sustained by the 
 mystic's delightful conviction that nothing really 
 matters in the least. 
 
 " What funny little things happen to us !" said the 
 Watcher, " and what infinite shades of experience 
 you have packed within the limits of the dream. I 
 like these dark and lonely places, where the foolish, 
 bustling people never come." 
 
 She might have agreed with him : for indeed the 
 wild and darkling earth about them cried messages 
 of wonder to the eager mind. But the vague and 
 crescent miseries of a cross-country walk, unwillingly 
 undertaken in the dusk, quelled her thirst for adven- 
 ture. She was hardly in training ; and sooner than 
 she had thought it possible, she grew breathless. 
 Breathlessness brought in its train indifference, 
 fatigue, at last exasperation. The approach to the 
 light was very long ; as they went, it seemed to 
 retreat from them into the bosom of the hills. It 
 led them upwards, with many miserable slippings 
 and scramblings on the dried heather, sudden sink- 
 ings into bracken and clambering upon harsh and 
 disconcerting stones, to a saucer-like valley scooped 
 out from a spur of the fell. There its presence 
 seemed to create a greater darkness, a terrible and 
 mysterious gloom. There were two little hillocks at
 
 136 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 the entrance, guarding perhaps the citadel of some 
 primeval and inhuman life. 
 
 The Watcher whispered, " Press on ! press on ! 
 We are drawing very near." He was like a hound 
 upon the scent : eager, excited. But she could not 
 respond. She stood dissociated from him at this 
 moment, and felt the lonelier for his evident air of 
 being at home. She was invaded, too, by a panic 
 terror : for there was nothing in her past experience 
 which could help her in dealing with the circum- 
 stances of this hour. A hare sat sentinel on one of 
 the little hillocks. It moved as they came up to it, 
 and Vera screamed. That scream made their condi- 
 tion seem unsafe : but they plodded on. When they 
 were come a little farther, they saw beyond the 
 saucer-like valley a narrower crevice in the hill ; and 
 within it the dark shape of a building, and the slit 
 of radiant window which had been their guiding 
 light. 
 
 It was the child, sharp-eyed, who exclaimed with a 
 sob of rage and hunger, " Oh, Tanta ! how perfectly 
 hateful ! It's only a church after all." 
 
 Constance, then, was aware of a certain sinking of 
 the heart ; and of a sense of helplessness, a distrust of 
 her situation, which the unpeopled hills had been 
 powerless to induce. The fears of the traveller faded 
 before the fears of the lost. Man had been there and 
 left his mark ; and it was a hieroglyphic that she had 
 no skill to read. 
 
 But the Watcher still cried, " Go to the light. It 
 is real ; it calls us. You cannot you must not 
 retreat I" 
 
 That drove her on ; and she led the pony up the
 
 LOSING ANDJF1NDING 137 
 
 last slopes of heather to the little limestone chapel 
 which stood solitary on its knoll. There was a 
 sudden uprising of shadowy grey forms from under 
 the wall as they came to it ; and a hoarse cry and a 
 scuttering in the dusk which jarred her weary nerves 
 and brought strange choking sensations to her throat. 
 Then the frightened sheep ran towards the hills, and 
 they were again alone. 
 
 The door of the place was shut, and through the 
 keyhole that mysterious light looked out on them. 
 She was past further adventure, and when her first 
 casual exploration failed to discover the latch of the 
 door, she abandoned it. 
 
 The Watcher murmured, "This is a place of 
 safety ; all is well !" But her heart did not echo his 
 words. 
 
 Because there seemed nothing else to do, she lifted 
 Vera from the depressed and weary pony. It 
 rambled a yard or so away, stopped, and began to 
 crop at the short grass. Presently it turned the 
 corner of the church and disappeared. 
 
 A man came out from the lean-to cottage which 
 was concealed at the little church's eastern end. 
 When he saw the bridled pony, he was surprised. 
 He went quickly towards the entrance, with such 
 rising feelings of anger and distress as might possess 
 a lover whose secret lair was suddenly unmasked. 
 When he was come round the north-west angle, he 
 saw a figure that sat upon the threshold of the 
 chapel and leaned against the door. He perceived 
 it to be the form of a very weary woman, and a 
 remark about damned tourists died stillborn. In- 
 stead, he approached and said to her, very gently*
 
 138 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 "That is Lancelot's attitude. But won't you 
 come inside ?" 
 
 The Watcher took Constance's lips for his own 
 purposes, and whispered, " Yes !" 
 
 Vera exclaimed with petulant relief, " Oh, here's 
 a man ! How lovely ! Tanta, do ask him if we 
 can't come in and have some tea." 
 
 The man said, " Poor child, of course you shall 
 be fed!" 
 
 Then he put his hand to an inconspicuous boss, 
 pressed it, and opened the church door. He held it, 
 and allowed Constance to pass him, followed her 
 and knelt upon the ground; an act which at once 
 made Miss Tyrrel feel awkward and obtrusive. 
 
 But before she had time to digest these unpleasant 
 emotions an amazing thing happened. A force 
 stronger than herself brought her, too, to her knees ; 
 and to an act of profound though involuntary adora- 
 tion. She knew not what she worshipped ; but knew 
 that worship she must. The hushed voice of the 
 Watcher whispered within her, " It is the Idea !" 
 
 She could not rise. She forgot to be self- 
 conscious. She knew only that her weariness was 
 strangely healed. When she had knelt with bowed 
 head for a few moments, feeling the unseen waves 
 beating upon her brow, she looked up and saw that 
 she was in a plain and oblong chamber, built of 
 rough stones and floored with beaten earth. There 
 were in it no pews, no place for priest and choir, 
 none of the customary conveniences of piety. Hence 
 the attention, undistracted, ran straight to the essen- 
 tial point ; to the one object which lifted this sanctuary 
 from a squalid desolation to an ordered austerity.
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 139 
 
 There was at the eastern end a little table, and on 
 it a red brocaded cloth heavy like a pall, and touching 
 the ground. This table bore no crucifix, no flowers, 
 nor any candles ; so that Constance said to herself, 
 " If this place is Church of England, it must be very 
 Low!" 
 
 But on the simple altar there was a curious metal 
 case ; of silver, inlaid with plaited patterns, angels, 
 and mysterious animals, whose wings were made of 
 enamels, gems, and gold. The doors of it stood 
 open, so that one looked within, as into a little 
 shrine. Inside, there was a rough glass cup, without 
 a base, and with one clumsy handle. A kitchen 
 teacup might have provided its model ; but not the 
 strange sheen of purple, black, and gold which ran 
 through the glass. With sudden and inappropriate 
 memories of South Kensington, she said to herself, 
 " Phrenician, I am sure of it ! But what is it doing 
 here ?" 
 
 Then she perceived that this antique vessel was 
 the thing to which she knelt ; the link with eternity 
 which her lodger adored. Even whilst she fought 
 its influence and speculated upon its meaning, it cast 
 its spells upon her soul. There was nothing else 
 within the chapel, unless it were the lighted wick in 
 its clay saucer which had guided them to this place. 
 
 Centuries slid from her, and she found herself united 
 to the primitive worship of the hills. Outside in the 
 dusk, those hills and their inhabitants were gather- 
 ing, brooding above the chapel, as if they would 
 guard its enigmatic treasure from the peering vision 
 of the modern world. Within, she a daughter of 
 that world little suited to such company and such
 
 140 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 rites, knelt with a man and a spirit who had been 
 caught into some ecstatic and unheard-of communion 
 by a symbol which only invoked in her the vague 
 sensations of wonder, of desire, and of unrest. 
 
 She glanced at the man. He still knelt at her 
 side, and had clearly forgotten that she was there ; a 
 circumstance which contradicted all that she knew of 
 human life. He gazed at the glass cup with an 
 ardent love which was without a taint of fatuousness. 
 His glance pierced through it to something beyond ; 
 clearly seen and intimately known. He was young, 
 spare, vivid, superbly alive. 
 
 There was a sudden shriek from the doorway 
 behind them, and Vera cried in panic, " Oh, get up 
 and speak to me quick ! Tanta ! It's lonely, it's 
 queer ! There's dreadful bogies in the hill. I hate 
 your nasty prayers I want my tea !" 
 
 He instantly rose to his feet, and said, " Come ! 
 we are forgetting. There is the child to be fed." 
 
 She followed him from the chapel with an unwill- 
 ingness that she could not understand. 
 
 When they were in the two-roomed cottage, and 
 he was cutting bread and setting milk to boil, he 
 said to her, " You are the first that has come." 
 
 She replied, " We lost our way and wrecked the 
 cart ; and then we saw your light upon the hill." 
 
 He said, " That may have been the manner of it, 
 but it could not be the cause." And because she 
 looked at him strangely, he added, " Surely you know 
 what it is you have seen to-night ?" 
 
 She answered, " No ; but I think that it was real, 
 and mattered very much." 
 
 " Real ?" he said. " I should think so ! In the
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 141 
 
 last resort, it is our earnest of the only thing that 
 matters; the transcendent link with reality. You, 
 no less than Parsifal, have looked upon the Holy 
 Graal." 
 
 She gazed at him then in amazement ; and the 
 feeble voice of common sense muttered that he must 
 certainly be mad, or at least a hysteric of the 
 religious type. He caught her eye, laughed at her, 
 and said, " Oh, yes ! Of course all knowing people 
 would think I was insane ; but you cannot, because 
 you knelt down." 
 
 " I didn't do it on purpose." 
 
 " All the better ! That counts one to us." 
 
 "To us?" 
 
 " Yes to the angels' side." 
 
 She said tentatively for of course it might be 
 desirable to humour him " Oh, but it can't be, you 
 know ! At least, not really. It's absurd, incredible. 
 And besides, how could you possibly be sure ?" 
 
 There was an alarming note of obstinacy in his 
 reply. 
 
 " No one can doubt, who has experienced the 
 power of great relics ; and this is the mightiest relic 
 of them all. And besides, there is tradition ; and I 
 am of those who hold that tradition may be mis- 
 read but cannot lie. Here, you know, in the West- 
 morland hills, was the last stronghold of the Celtic 
 Church. Here my predecessors in her priesthood 
 lingered with their treasures and their rites; long 
 after Italian bishops came to the north, and the 
 Isle of Saints was saintless, and the great 
 monastic hives had been dispersed. With them 
 was hid, adored, kept safe, the lost key of the
 
 i 4 2 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Middle Ages; that Graal which was sought by all the 
 chivalry of God. Sought mystically, and also sought 
 actually, because of the undying tradition of its 
 loss " 
 
 " But now- 
 
 " But now " he exclaimed, " it was given to me 
 me, the meanest of its lovers ! to find, hold, and 
 cherish. Never mind how. Grace did it, and that 
 is enough. Has any man of our generation a dearer 
 destiny, do you think ? I am permitted to stand 
 sentinel between it and a world that would not 
 understand. We must keep our realities safe where 
 we are able ; from moth and rust, from thieves that 
 break in and steal worse, from possible museums. 
 There are certain things spread up and down the 
 world, you know, which enshrine the Only Secret 
 and keep it safe. These are the most sacred of all 
 trusts, and all who have eyes to see them are born 
 to their guardianship. Some are in good hands ; 
 others are of such a nature that they cannot be 
 perceived by those who do not love, and therefore 
 they will never be profaned. But some are known 
 only at their own peril. I have brought one such 
 here to hide it. It is safe in the bosom of our hills ; 
 in the nest which has hid it so long !" 
 
 He went to a cupboard, brough t cups and plates, and 
 gave them warm milk, bread and butter, and oat-cake. 
 Miss Tyrrel looked at the little neat commonplace 
 cottage, and then at this eager man with hot blue eyes 
 who spoke the language of fairyland with fervour and 
 conviction. Side by side with her rebellious reason, 
 the spirit of the Watcher looked out on this new 
 slice of experience ; and he, she perceived, had left
 
 LOSING AND FINDING 143 
 
 his perennial aspect of astonishment. He seemed as 
 one who, sojourning in barbarous lands, where all is 
 bizarre and difficult to accept, suddenly hears the 
 dear accents of home ; more, hears something, some- 
 one, whose presence in that home had long been 
 desired, long needed, but never attained. They 
 were within the field of some mighty and spiritual 
 magnet, whose powers transcended time and space. 
 She had always eluded dogma, with an agility which 
 she doubtless owed to her excellent education ; but 
 here, in this crevice of the hills, was something 
 which she could not elude. The Watcher cried in 
 ecstasy, " The real ! the real !" She raised her head 
 with the gesture of a trapped and frightened thing ; 
 and again the man laughed. 
 
 " Tiresome, is it not ?" he said. " But inevitable, 
 I assure you. You had better acquiesce. The 
 Finger of God is not to be escaped : it pursues, it 
 caresses, it touches where it will." 
 
 It was the old and hateful message : God is not . 
 mocked. He was not. He had met her in the city. 
 He had chased her to the hills. He waited, inexor- 
 able, behind the veil. Here, there was a rent in that 
 veil ; and through it a Hand was stretched forth, 
 which offered her a gift. She was too far away to 
 see the wound upon that generous hand ; and as for 
 the gift, a woman of her superior intelligence could 
 only look upon it as the fruit of a fantastic even 
 perverse imagination. 
 
 It was merely a cup of rough glass, curiously iri- 
 descent, and stained with the colours of an imperial 
 grief.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 
 
 " En cette jonction et en cette joie adviennent souvent 
 de grands bonheurs a Fhomme ; et maintes mysterieuses 
 et secretes merveilles des tresors divins sont manifestoes 
 et decouvertes." RUYSBROECK L' ADMIRABLE : L'Ornement 
 des Noces Spirituelhs. 
 
 HE brought them, late at night, by an invisible 
 path, to the point at which they could see 
 their village close beneath them. He wrapped the 
 sleepy Vera in his old and faded plaid, and carried 
 her down the fell ; saying, " Though my name is 
 Martin, we will not divide the cloak to-night." At 
 the first hint of field and road, he parted from 
 them ; and turned again towards his friendly hills, 
 and the watchful lamp which was before the 
 shrine. 
 
 It was during this last solitary stage of their 
 descent that the Watcher, returning to his long- 
 abandoned mood of mockery almost as if he too 
 were over-tired had whispered within Miss Tyrrel's 
 mind certain bitter, surprising, and contemptuous 
 words. 
 
 "So," he said, "it appears that you know too 
 much to be deceived by reality, when at last you 
 
 144
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 145 
 
 meet it. It is well indeed that They have fed you 
 with illusion, since this is all that you are able to 
 digest ! The killing, eating, earning, quarrelling, the 
 meaningless wriggles of life; that is acceptable, it 
 seems, but not the Idea. It is offered to you, it is 
 present, it penetrates your very modes of being. 
 Even in the adventures of your body you may meet 
 it face to face. But you prefer the mdre rational 
 illusions fashion and morality and the Intellectual 
 Life. I have laughed to-night ; real laughter, which 
 is another thing than your disordered mirth. One of 
 you, I suppose, once knew of it : the one who spoke 
 about the ' laughter of the gods.' You have cherished 
 the phrase and the man ; you thought it clever, did 
 you not ? 7s it clever to perceive one's own humilia- 
 tion in perspective ?" 
 
 She, made meek by the experiences of the day, 
 said, " Oh, I know that I am blind and limited ; 
 but why were you able to apprehend something 
 wonderful there ?" 
 
 Then he replied more gently, " Because I have 
 dwelt always within It; although till I had sunk 
 into life I did not notice, did not understand. Seen 
 against that darkness, one can hardly fail to recognize 
 the light." 
 
 This was but an ill preparation for the return to 
 practical matters ; to their lodging, and to an 
 agitated landlady in whom abruptly relieved anxiety 
 effervesced as wrath of a quality difficult to appease. 
 Constance's assurance as to the safety of the pony 
 was received with distrust ; and her apparent in- 
 ability to describe its present whereabouts did but 
 exacerbate the situation. As a fact, it had been left 
 
 10
 
 146 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 in Martin's care, with an undertaking that she should 
 go herself the next day to retrieve it. 
 
 Martin had said, " I dare not risk discovery by 
 your village. It is full of summer visitors who go 
 to and fro seeking what secret beauty they may de- 
 stroy. They call it an object for a walk. They 
 would think that my hidden treasure-house was very 
 quaint ; and the more cultured and pestilent amongst 
 them would write descriptions of it and publish 
 them in the Spectator and the Westminster Gazette. 
 As it is, the place is well concealed ; I have passed 
 many summers in safety. Do not betray me ! That 
 were a treachery to two worlds." 
 
 She, seeing in vision with a housewife's eye the 
 necessary general shop the soap and soda, pepper, 
 sugar, rice and also the flour-mill and the weekly 
 butcher's cart, which certainly could never climb 
 the fell, said to him, " How do you manage, if you 
 never come ?" 
 
 " He replied, " I have another route ; over the 
 hills and far away to a little lonely uncommunica- 
 tive place. There, the people accept my existence 
 and wish to know no more. Hill-folk have so little 
 curiosity; their own concerns suffice them. I go 
 down amongst them, lend a hand if there is need, 
 buy what I require, and back again by the sheep- 
 tracks. No one thinks it worth while to follow and 
 question me. A taste for solitude is no novelty in 
 the North ; they are well accustomed to dour folk, 
 ill-tempered anchorites, and people stowed away in 
 odd nooks. Likely enough I am catalogued as daft ; 
 but were I sick and asked help, they would give it. 
 You see, they have wintered me and summered me
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 147 
 
 many a time; and I am part of their landscape 
 now." 
 
 Part of hers, too, he was destined to become ; 
 though the fitting of him in was a matter of hard 
 pushing and urgent faith. When she woke upon the 
 following morning and looked round her attic bed- 
 room, where relics of medieval discomfort were 
 mitigated by an aggressive wall-paper, and chromo- 
 lithographs of " The Good Shepherd," " Mother's 
 Sweetheart," and " The Coronation of Edward VII.," 
 she seemed far indeed from the austere chapel in 
 the fells. How could a sensible and industrious 
 woman, whose investigations of philosophy had 
 ranged from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, find room 
 in her consciousness for that incredible Cup, and its 
 fantastic guardian ? True, she found room there for 
 the more impossible Watcher; but the camel, as 
 usual, had left little place for the gnat. The Watcher, 
 after all, came from another universe, where anything 
 might happen and anything be true; but Martin's 
 claim involved the readjustment of a dimension as to 
 which she had already made up her mind. Although 
 she would have repudiated scholasticism with a 
 violence which was proper to her education, she was 
 still a dualist at heart. 
 
 Vera slept hard after her adventure ; and Con- 
 stance left her in bed, dressed, and descended to 
 the presence of a landlord whose low opinion of 
 Londoners had been confirmed by yesterday's per- 
 formance. She breakfasted in haste and discomfort, 
 being one of those who can ill endure the disapproval 
 of their inferiors. 
 
 But there was an encouraging voice within which 
 
 10 2
 
 148 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 said to her, " Dear friend, why let yourself be 
 troubled ? Are we not going back to the real ?" 
 
 As she came out in her short skirt and tam-o'- 
 shanter, she met the postman and received from him 
 a fat letter in a hand that she did not know. She 
 took it with her to read upon the way ; and at the 
 first halt, after the sharp, hot scramble which put a 
 patch of heather between her and the cultivated 
 land, she sat upon a boulder and spread it on her 
 knee. 
 
 The letter was from Mrs. Reed ; one of those 
 lengthy and intimate letters which are produced, 
 not by overpowering affection, but by long periods of 
 leisure enjoyed in an uncongenial spot. It was dated 
 from the Villa Medici Boarding Establishment, 
 Sandhill-on-Sea, a place which, as Mrs. Reed observed 
 in her opening paragraphs, had " no soul, and not 
 even a desirable body ; being but the dreary evolu- 
 tionary product of golf, gas-works and red brick." 
 
 " Of course," she said, " it is all maya, illusion ; 
 nevertheless, I own that an inexpressible disgust 
 makes me sad when I see Nature playing the Picca- 
 dilly harlot by the sea with the added horror of a 
 deliberate winsomeness. Here one perceives the 
 educative influence of phenomena in its negative 
 aspect ; the materialistic qualities of the modern sea- 
 side resort producing its appropriate population. I 
 see young men and young women who have no 
 thought beyond the sphere of Malkuth, in whom the 
 Universal Medicine has never worked. They rush 
 to and fro without hats ; and did they but know it, 
 also without hope. All their dreams, all their ideals, 
 are concerned with physical things ; the movement
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 149 
 
 of muscles and the touching of lips. Fortunately 
 the air is very good, and my husband benefits. He 
 spends many hours daily in a bath-chair upon the 
 promenade. You, I hope, are climbing happily the 
 ladder of dream in the lovely arena of the North ; for 
 I am sure that you were born with the vision that 
 can look upon the stars. Are they not the eyes of 
 Isis the Maternal One ? And are not our illusions 
 a progress to her arms ? There is no one here to 
 whom one can talk; and I spend much time in 
 preparing the lectures for my autumn class ; ' The 
 Egyptian Under-world as an English Over-belief.' 
 Mr. and Mrs. Vince passed through the town in 
 their motor the other day, en route for the South 
 Downs and Arundel, I think : but they only remained 
 with us a few hours. He was very healthy, and wore 
 mud-coloured clothes marked with grease. Is it a sin 
 against the light to say that this seemed appropriate ? 
 He spoke of carburetters, and appeared to be happy. 
 As for Muriel, she wore her dear look of detachment ; 
 but such a holiday, I think, can mean little to her. 
 Within the sublime heart of things all must of 
 course be unity ; one knows it. But it is hard to 
 
 realize the Absolute at Sandhill " 
 
 Constance put the letter in her pocket, and from 
 the height upon which she was poised dipped 
 dreamily into that other life. She had been con- 
 scious of an egoistic pang when she came upon the 
 image of Andrew, so far away, enjoying himself so 
 completely. She had no point of contact with that 
 prosperous and modern life which he took for 
 granted ; with hotels and motor-cars, all the impera- 
 tive claims of petrol-tank, maps, and lunch-basket,
 
 150 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 the delightful intricacies of cylinders and speeds. 
 Hence these things seemed to lift him far from her 
 
 s phere ; to constitute a slur upon their friendship. 
 
 M u riel, tied up in soft veils and whisked through the 
 air his hand upon the steering-wheel the one 
 barrier between her exquisite body and death could 
 hardly fail to be warmed to something like woman- 
 hood by such a contact with the simple elements of 
 life. Each, drawn closer to the other, was probably 
 drawn farther from her ; a gloomy idea indeed for 
 the woman outside their life who had learned to 
 depend on them. Andrew, between his carburetter 
 and his darling, with outlets for every energy, hold- 
 ing life by each hand, must be far from the mood 
 in which he had said to her, " I'm lonely it's just 
 that," and awakened by this cruel appeal a sympathy 
 that he did not really need. 
 
 She looked sorrowfully at the hills, which were 
 grey, cold, and sad, and at the close roof of trees 
 lying tufty beneath her. She got up with a sigh, for 
 existence had again become arduous. She had 
 ceased to acquiesce. 
 
 Then she turned to the ascent, and the Watcher 
 once more raised his head plumed himself, as it 
 were. He understood now the dignity and joy of 
 energy ; of earth moving on earth, spirit driving it, 
 mental concepts and determinations realized, if only 
 in the dust. But the odd entanglements of humanity 
 were still beyond him ; as we, whilst we feed, exer- 
 cise, and cherish our pet animals, hardly extend our 
 sympathy to their friendships, love-affairs and hidden 
 griefs. Hence his friend, when she turned to her 
 fellow-creatures, still turned from him ; and whilst
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 151 
 
 he was grieved by her troubles, he offered his con- 
 dolences at a threshold which he might not cross. 
 
 The sheep-track which she followed took her round 
 the shoulder of the hill and behind a knoll that hid 
 the village from her sight. Then she stepped 
 quickly from the credible to the actual ; being 
 hemmed in by the barren and majestic earth, roofed 
 by a very gentle morning sky, beckoned on by the 
 first glimpse of a tiny gable peering above the 
 heathered slope. She knew that in another instant 
 she would see the little window, and the faint 
 glimmer of its ritual light. She felt like a traveller 
 whose feet have come to the brink of a fairy ring ; 
 who, remembering the magic which invests it in the 
 dusk, hesitates, even in the daylight, to cross a 
 frontier which may delimitate that country from 
 which no wanderer returns unchanged. 
 
 She completed the ascent of the last little hillock, 
 and saw beneath her the chapel in its dell. Martin 
 was feeding his chickens. He wore tweed knicker- 
 bockers, and looked fresh, brisk, and British. The 
 pony stood near, comfortably tethered upon a patch 
 of appetizing ground. It was as simple, as ordinary, 
 and yet as unfamiliar as Snow-white's housekeeping 
 might have seemed to a casual tourist happening 
 upon that cottage in the wood. 
 
 Martin glanced upwards. He evidently possessed 
 the hermit's instinct for those delicate noises which 
 herald the approach of new life. When he saw her 
 standing on the hill, he smiled at her and cried, 
 " Wait ! I am coming to show you the easy way 
 down." 
 
 She watched him as he came up the steep and
 
 152 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 invisible track with the effortless stride of a being 
 whose powers are perfectly adjusted to his needs. 
 When he was at her side, he said, " Well ! in the 
 morning light, I wondered whether I had dreamed 
 you. You, I suppose, were quite sure that you had 
 dreamed me ?" 
 
 " Acknowledge that you are difficult." 
 
 " That remark connotes rather a severe self- 
 criticism, doesn't it ?" 
 
 " Oh, no," she said, " I am justified. Consider ! 
 all your circumstances are so strange. You have so 
 long been parted from the world that you forget. 
 This chapel, for instance serving no village, no farm 
 even all by itself in the pathless hills ! Who could 
 have conceived of its existence ? It is unreasonable, 
 and yet appropriate : like Malory, perhaps, but not 
 like life." 
 
 He replied, " It is like unspoiled life : the life of 
 the West and the North, and the wild and ardent 
 hearts which they have bred. These secret little 
 chapels that they build, desolate places alone in the 
 wilds, far off from any habitation are they unreason- 
 able ? To say so, were cynicism indeed ! They 
 were meant to serve God, not man : to offer, not to 
 ask. 'Tis the Celtic spirit, I think : the austere 
 sentiment of lonely adoration. One sees the same 
 thing in Brittany, you know. Cornwall has yet the 
 wrecks of one or two ; but she does not use them, of 
 course. Her Methodism finds a nicer nook between 
 the grocer's shop and the police-station. As for this 
 place, I found it one day in my wanderings ; a for- 
 gotten ruin, so miserable that it was not even 
 picturesque. The door was broken down, and sheep
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 153 
 
 came in for shelter. I bring them here still in winter 
 when the snow is very deep " 
 
 " Into the church ?" exclaimed Constance. She 
 had considerable reverence for the externals of the 
 religion in which she did not believe. 
 
 " Yes ; into the church ! Why not ? I cannot 
 think that the Lamb would refuse a roof to His poor 
 relations in their need. He, who was born in a 
 stable, must be very patient with the habits of the 
 beasts. Of course I clean up after them. One likes 
 the work it brings Bethlehem to the English hills. 
 Once, a little lamb was born here ; right before the 
 altar! That was a wonderful night; Nature at work 
 renewing the eternal symbols. The snow was so 
 deep that everything was very silent : but I heard 
 the Gloria in the air ! " 
 
 She stared at him in growing discomfort; her 
 doubt as to his sanity had returned. 
 
 He said, " Oh, yes ! Of course it seems mad ; I 
 know that. But do not be afraid my manias are 
 quite harmless. There was no other way for me; 
 nor will there be for you, I think, when once you 
 have grasped. The world has come to that point in 
 its perversion of reality, at which one can hardly be 
 natural unless one is insane. I am not the first 
 person, after all, who has tried to domicile the truths 
 of one plane in the symbols of another 
 
 " ' And did those feet in ancient time 
 
 Walk upon England's mountain green ? 
 And was the Holy Lamb of God 
 On England's pleasant pasture seen ?' 
 
 Do you remember that ? Blake knew as he
 
 154 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 knew all things ! He, who touched the sky with his 
 finger, would not have been surprised." 
 
 She said, " I don't understand one bit ! It is 
 like hearing the Middle Ages through a gramo- 
 phone." 
 
 The Watcher asked her anxiously, " Is that a 
 patch of time when men were near the real ?" 
 
 She answered in confusion, " Perhaps. I do not 
 know." 
 
 They descended to the chapel; and again, with 
 shaking heart, she entered the door and knelt down. 
 Then her lodger, as if friendship itself must give way 
 before this mighty opportunity, seized her mind, her 
 powers, in his old passionate spirit of domination. 
 He threw himself, as it were, and these with him 
 humble, eager, and full of joy at the feet of that 
 Power which had been brought to a point in this 
 'place. By her side, another spirit rose beyond him ; 
 transfigured, made ardent, by that same vivid and 
 penetrating love. 
 
 When they were come out, she said to Martin, 
 " Ah, what is it ? what is it ? There is more here 
 than any mere relic, any dead symbol, I think." 
 
 He answered in the voice of one who tells his 
 dearest secret, " Yes ; you are in a lover's lair " 
 
 " But what is it, this illusive Thing you love ?" 
 
 The Watcher whispered, " Why, the Idea ! 
 What else could one love ?" 
 
 Martin, to her surprise, corroborated him, saying, 
 "Your mind is still clouded by practical things. 
 The breath of the world has tarnished it. If it were 
 not so, you could hardly help but see : for the 
 ' elusive thing ' which you have such difficulty in
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 155 
 
 accepting is just the one Thing that truly exists. 
 As for loving it, am I not a priest ? And are not all 
 priests in their essence just lovers deeply in love, 
 but only with ideas ?" 
 
 She, thinking of the ministers of many denomina- 
 tions whom she had met in the course of her work, 
 could not agree with him. 
 
 " Oh yes, they are !" he said. " At least, the real 
 ones, and the others do not count. I'll tell you the 
 life of a priest. He watches and waits and serves 
 the Beloved Thing, and steels his heart against the 
 misery of seeing it despised and rejected of men. 
 And after a time it happens that he cannot bear the 
 waiting and the watching any more, and so he runs 
 away with his darling to a desert and a secret place, 
 there to enter into possession of his joy. That is the 
 story of the hermits, and of many and many a person 
 who is supposed to have a morbid hatred of his kind- 
 Humanity is insulted, and says bitter things of them ; 
 just as many a mother is insulted when her son first 
 casts his eyes upon a woman and wants to leave his 
 home and make a nest for her somewhere in the 
 world. He feels the impulse he knows he has got 
 to go on and so do we. It is the next stage; to 
 leave the Mother of all of us, and turn from her to 
 the one and only love for whose possession she has 
 raised us up." 
 
 " Is that what brought you here ?" 
 
 " Yes ! Even before I found the Cup, I think that 
 I was destined to come. Sometimes, down there, I 
 dreamed I was a poet ; and then suddenly I awoke 
 and knew I was a parson. One couldn't combine 
 them ; so I aped St. Francis, stripped off my clerical
 
 i 5 6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 clothes, and went wandering. Because I was de- 
 tached, my destiny came ; the love-token was put 
 into my hand, and I was forced to find a nook where 
 I might hide it." 
 
 He broke off, and looked at her with authority. 
 " You are judging me !" he said. " But why shouldn't 
 I act thus? I defy you to say why I should not 
 have done it." 
 
 "You," she retorted, "are judging me and 
 through me, the race ! And why, pray, should not 
 / have done it ?" 
 
 " Howcan I say ? You have not unveiled your idol." 
 
 She answered, " Her name is Life ; but unbelievers 
 have another word for that aspect to which I made 
 my oblation." 
 
 " Was it a happy love ?" 
 
 She glanced back, and then said, " No. Not 
 really happy ; only exciting. Since I have seen you, 
 and because you are sharp-edged and simple, I know 
 that my worship fell short. It was ugly and had no 
 shape." 
 
 " Oh, no !" he said with great gentleness, " if it 
 was worship, it could not have been ugly. You may 
 have see"n it in ugly terms, of course. Wasn't that 
 it ? Real worship is always beautiful ; the eternal 
 Object of it sees to that. But we, when we would 
 judge what we are doing, will mix ourselves up with 
 the picture ; we do not stand far enough away " 
 
 She interrupted him. " But there is no standing 
 far away, when it's life. That is the terrible part ! 
 One lives up to that religion ; it is no mere academic 
 creed. One must plunge in, bathe in it. It is like 
 the initiation of Mithra ; every adept must be
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 157 
 
 baptized in the hot, horrible torrent of blood, endure 
 it to the dregs. Sometimes, you know, that leaves a 
 stain ; an unexpected stain, which cannot be effaced." 
 
 The sharp blue eyes looked at her ; and 
 then he answered quietly, " I know. It is 
 horribly painful ; but not in the least criminal, 
 of course." 
 
 " My initiation " she said, and stopped. Then 
 
 she began a different subject. " Did you notice the 
 child who was with me last night ?" 
 
 " Yes : an animal thing. That's all right ! There 
 are many such up here. They are left over ; they 
 linger in the corner. Sometimes they are fresh- 
 created by mistake." 
 
 " She was." 
 
 " Ah, well, you must not be fastidious ! Your 
 goddess is not always in her best bib and tucker ; 
 cannot be always on her knees. She must work, and 
 sometimes soil her hands in the process. As for me, 
 because I have lived close to the breeding earth for 
 many years, I have been taught to abandon that 
 delicacy which demands a constant crop of lilies but 
 cannot tolerate manure. It is all so splendid, so 
 holy ! Oh, it really is even one's own experience ! 
 The true lover, I fancy, can afford to see his mistress 
 at the dust-bin and love her none the less ; and so it 
 is with Life, with God " 
 
 " That's different." 
 
 " No, not really. Right through existence, from 
 beginning to end, and in every relation, one always 
 as a matter of fact loves in the same way." 
 
 Thinking of the foolish enthusiasms of the past, 
 she said, " No ! I hope not !"
 
 158 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Oh yes, but we do," he answered, " Why, isn't 
 that just our job ; to get the little loves right, so 
 that the big love may be in order too ? ' Ordina 
 quest' amore, tu che m' ami!' Friend, lover, toy, 
 ambition, and sacramental divinity ; we really turn 
 the same face to them all. Watch a woman with 
 her sweetheart, and you may guess pretty accurately 
 her attitude to her God. Don't you know ? Some 
 love in gusts of overpowering devotion ; and some 
 steadily and quietly, like a well-trimmed flame. 
 Some give give give, all the while, and never ask 
 back. These, I think, are already divine. Some 
 cry, ' Love me ! only show that you love me !" just that, 
 every minute of the day. Some love sternly, sulkily, 
 but unquenchably ; they turn the arrows of Eros 
 upon themselves, and wound themselves cruelly, 
 < v 'drawing the barbs through their flesh, with a strange, 
 fierce joy. And that which each does in the human 
 relation will govern his actions towards the Absolute 
 too." 
 
 She looked at him, rather puzzled. " I never 
 thought of it that way," she said. 
 
 The Watcher stirred within her, and muttered, 
 " Of course ! It is a training-ground, a school. 
 What else could it possibly be ? The Idea must be 
 there, underneath. Why did I not perceive it before ? 
 This, then, is the meaning of the foolish and deluded 
 human loves." 
 
 Martin went on. " You see, all that the joining 
 up of things, the matching of the outside with the 
 inner meaning one learns in these quiet places, as 
 nowhere else. In the cities it is difficult and con- 
 fusing : but here the silence helps it, and the meek
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 159 
 
 determination of the earth. When one is quite alone, 
 one hears it say so many beautiful things. This is 
 the secret of that contempt of the bustling, practical 
 world, which comes with such great simplicity to 
 the saints. I think I shall never quite forget the 
 cleansing of my own eyes on the day that I brought 
 the Cup to its home. It was a grey morning, and 
 misty. The sky was soft; and behind its softness 
 one divined a gleam. All the world seemed a little 
 different, I thought ; I was so warmed towards it by 
 That which I held to my breast. I wondered to 
 myself what was its place in that love; and how 
 near the dutiful and patient plants, the little simple 
 beasts, were drawn to Him. Then I looked up, and 
 knew : for I saw across the meadows and the forests 
 the majestic figure of a Priest, who passed to and 
 fro with unhurried steps and fed his creatures, some 
 with bitter bread and some with sweet. All the 
 flowers spread their corollas at his coming ; all the 
 little creatures raised soft faces and opened trustful 
 mouths for the receiving of this Host. And it was 
 of their substance and of his. Now, I see this God, 
 this Priest, in all his aspects. I see him laughing in 
 the riot as Dionysus did ; I find him passionate as a 
 lover in the oratory, austere as a judge in the con- 
 fessional, gentle as a mother at the grave. Shall I 
 not attribute to him the same range of emotion as I 
 find in his creation ? Why limit his immanence and 
 its effects ? ' Surely he hath borne our griefs, and 
 carried our sorrows '; as surely, he shares our con- 
 quests and our joys." 
 
 "Oh, no," she said; "not that! Think they 
 are so childish, so absurd 1"
 
 i6o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " You have no right," exclaimed Martin, " thus to 
 stigmatize the pleasures of your God. How arrogant 
 we are, turning back upon our parents, imposing our 
 little creeds upon their source ! Remember, if 
 Omnipotence enjoyed a game of marbles, He would 
 not be less, but the game of marbles would be more. 
 Is it not the Holy Ghost who looks through our eyes 
 at earthly beauty, and guides the hand of the artist, 
 the bridge-builder yes, and of the cricketer too ? 
 Does He not exult in the tempest and taste rapture 
 in the dance ? Have you ever thought, that as we 
 can only know Him in moments of ecstasy like 
 knowing like so the Divine Life must be one long 
 ecstasy of Being, marked by the spinning of the 
 worlds? And are we ever so godlike as in the 
 moments when we abandon ourselves without condi- 
 tion to those rhythms of the universe ?" 
 
 "A dangerous doctrine!" she said. "Sometimes 
 that abandonment breeds what the world calls sin." 
 
 " Yes, because the world generally judges sin 
 backwards; by its bodily seeming, as if one could 
 sin with the body alone. Absurd! You might as 
 well say that your clothes could sin of themselves ! 
 The body is nothing, after all ; only a little heap of 
 dust, wrapped round to hide the soul." 
 
 Then, because his last words roused in her vivid 
 and overwhelming memories, and in her lodger the 
 ecstatic recognition of a fellow-exile who really 
 understood, she said to him suddenly, " I think that 
 I am going to tell you something." 
 
 He replied, " I thought you would have to, when 
 I saw you come." 
 
 " I know that about the body about the dust
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 161 
 
 truly know it, I mean ; and it has made everything 
 seem unreal and useless, except the times when I 
 manage to forget." 
 
 The Watcher corrected her, saying, " But has it 
 not disclosed the real ?" 
 
 " Such knowledge anticipates death," said Martin 
 gravely. 
 
 She answered, " Yes ; and it comes of meddling 
 with the fringe of things. Life was so dull, so flat, 
 so lonely ; I thought that I must have adventure, 
 must anticipate. I could not be quiet : I longed to 
 know. I did not think it would be real could be ; 
 and now I am possessed by a reality from which I 
 can never escape." 
 
 " If you loved it, surely you wouldn't wish to 
 escape ?" 
 
 " I don't love it." 
 
 Martin said : " The things one does not love are 
 better left alone." 
 
 " But I did not think that it was really there. 
 How could I, on our sane and normal earth, where 
 everything fits, and every crevice is concealed ? How 
 could I conceive that the dust would break down 
 at a word, a ceremony, a wish, a song and another 
 universe intrude ?" 
 
 "Really," he said, "if your materialism was so 
 narrow and so arrogant as that, one cannot be very 
 sorry for its fall. I know that little knot of case- 
 hardened and well-educated rejectors of experience 
 from which you have come. They are like a party 
 of old ladies sitting in the drapery department of 
 the Stores, who see a man rush hastily through 
 bearing a pile of tin saucepans. When he has gone, 
 ii
 
 162 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 they rub their eyes and decide that he must be an 
 hallucination, because tin saucepans have nothing to 
 do with drapery. They forget that the universe 
 
 too may have other departments " 
 
 " I can't ; for my tin saucepan is always there." 
 He said very gently, " Will you not tell me ?" 
 and she, drowning the clamorous voice of the 
 Watcher, who was insulted by this too sudden dip 
 into homely metaphor, told him. The sun had 
 broken from its morning mists, and poured radiance 
 upon a singularly definite earth ; and there, sitting 
 in the narrow line of shade beneath the north wall 
 of the chapel, with the delicious roughness of the 
 heather caressing her bare hand, and in her ears 
 the soft noise of the pony's steady munching, she 
 related the history of her evocation and its answer, 
 of the column of dust and its wild-eyed inhabitant, 
 of her horror and her wavering will, of the invasion 
 of the Watcher and her bewildering dual life. As 
 she told it, the tale assumed for her a shape that 
 she had not perceived in it before. She appre- 
 hended a thread within it : the history of a progress 
 for both of them which, had she been a Darwinian, 
 she might have explained to herself as the natural 
 result of a changed environment. She saw clearly 
 for the first time the slow humanizing of the 
 Watcher, which had turned him from an intruder 
 to a friend warm interest replacing his chill 
 curiosity, sympathy modifying his supersensual con- 
 tempt. In herself also she saw a change ; the 
 "liberation within her of something, some power, 
 which could dispute his dominion, could meet him 
 v on his own plane.
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 163 
 
 At the ending of the tale, Martin said to her, 
 " Well, you have found a destiny ! Little cause for 
 discontent with that goddess of yours. She has 
 treated you handsomely enough ; given you no 
 casual help from her stock-pot, but served you a 
 special plat. You know, I suppose, what you are in 
 for? The saving of souls has always been looked 
 upon as a fairly big business ; but you have got some- 
 thing less usual than a soul to save." 
 
 " Do you think so ?" She stared at him. 
 "Think? It is obvious !" 
 " But how to do it ?" 
 
 " How ? Oh, don't worry about that. Just live. 
 Your goddess has a way of solving these problems 
 as she comes up to them. Sometimes she cuts her 
 way ; but she always does something, always goes 
 on, always arrives." 
 
 Constance replied rather sadly, " It is easy to be 
 optimistic here." 
 
 "Oh, no; not easy. The horizon, even here, is 
 overwide ; and one sees many grievous and difficult 
 things. But Hope is one of my three duties ; and 
 without it the other two could hardly be performed." 
 She exclaimed, involuntarily, "How sure you 
 are ! And this lodger of mine ; he apprehends your 
 secret, he loves it too, although I cannot find the 
 link and understand." 
 
 He replied, " There is nothing odd in that really. 
 It belongs to his world, of course. It came to the 
 spirits in prison as well as to the seed grounds of 
 earth. The curious thing the interesting aspect is 
 that he was forced to come here to find and recognize 
 the liberating hand." 
 
 II 2
 
 164 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Behind those terrible myths ! How could he find 
 it there ; in symbols that deal with nothing but the 
 most hideous animal accidents of our nature dying, 
 torment and blood ? Surely the real, the divine 
 what one longs for, what one needs is a reading of 
 reality that shall be radiant, permanent, serene : that 
 shall offer a promise of deathless and beautiful 
 things ?" 
 
 He took her by the shoulders. " Poor squeamish 
 child!" he said, "go back to Nature. Watch her 
 at the eternal game of death and birth. Life, you 
 say, is your idol. Listen to her, then, as she 
 expounds existence. She is a difficult mistress ; she 
 offers no self-evident syllogism to the pupils that 
 she loves. She has but one formula, and that a 
 paradox. It is the paradox of creation the folly 
 of the Cross." 
 
 In the afternoon, as she led the pony down the 
 hill, she knew herself too to be led, in a new spirit 
 of acceptance, back again from the heights to life, 
 to work ; to the constant struggle for beauty, shape 
 and significance. Behind her in the mountain, the 
 light burned and the Cup reigned on its little altar ; 
 remote, magical and serene. A ray of that light 
 went with her, illuminating certain recesses of her 
 spirit which had lurked in the twilight till this day. 
 As Martin bade her good-bye he had said to her, in 
 a low and diffident tone, yet almost with an accent 
 of entreaty, 
 
 " Oh, learn to love ! Do, please, learn to love. 
 It's such terrible waste if you don't. You are made
 
 MARTIN UPON REALITY 165 
 
 of the stuff that does things thoroughly ; and this is 
 the one thing which is worth doing well." 
 
 These words had moved Constance strangely; 
 making her feel humble, cowed and ineffectual. 
 They had even brought unwilling tears to her eyes. 
 Somehow, they reminded her of the Shining Tree, 
 and the more actual image of creative pain which 
 had crossed it. They addressed themselves to the 
 sleepy inhabitant which had roused itself at that 
 moment to struggle for the possession of her will. 
 That inhabitant took little interest in her personal 
 wants and failures. It was eager to endure all that 
 might be before it ; eager to co-operate with life. 
 
 Vera met her in the garden, joyous and muddy. 
 " Tanta," she cried, " I drowned a chicken. And 
 the mother hen did squeak."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 
 
 " Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem 
 reverteris." Roman Missal. 
 
 MRS. REED munched a biscuit, and thought of 
 transcendental things. The resulting sense 
 of beatitude might be attributed in part to the ex- 
 quisite crispness of a cream cracker which had come 
 from a newly-opened tin ; in part to the serenity of 
 spirit which is natural to any woman who is sure 
 that she knows what she means by a Categorical 
 Imperative. 
 
 Ra lifted a slate-blue nose from the protective 
 ambush of his tail, and snuffed the air ; preserving a 
 judicious mean between appetite and dignity. Helen 
 broke off a small piece of biscuit, offered it to him, 
 and carefully removed the inevitable crumbs from 
 the recesses of his fur frill. 
 
 Mr. Reed, watching these attentions with the 
 slight sensations of jealousy which they always 
 provoked, said, " You will spoil that cat, my love ! 
 If he were a baby, you could not fuss over him more 
 than you do." 
 
 Helen, who was completing Ra's toilet with a 
 1 66
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 167 
 
 brush and a comb, stopped and answered, " He has 
 all Egypt in his eyes ! What British baby brings 
 such credentials as that ? Also, he may come into 
 the room during the lecture ; and I prefer that he 
 should look his best." 
 
 Mr. Reed moved uneasily in his chair, and fumbled 
 for the stick at his side. His wife went to him, took 
 each hand firmly in her own, and helped him to his 
 feet with the unemotional precision of a hospital 
 nurse. 
 
 "Twenty past eleven!" he said. "Your young 
 friends will soon be here. I think I'll be going." 
 
 The woman who supported him waited patiently 
 until the stick was adjusted to his liking. Then she 
 put one arm about his shoulders, caught up a 
 cushion with her other hand, and led him across the 
 room. There was upon her face the guardian look 
 of a creeping anxiety, an apprehension which has not 
 yet been allowed to attain full consciousness. 
 
 " Poor old dear !" she said. " It seems a shame 
 to turn you out like this ; but you will really be more 
 comfortable in the other room. I lit the gas-stove, 
 and the rug and hot-water bottle are all ready. You 
 will feel quite cosy ; and as soon as the class is over 
 I shall come and get you ready for lunch." 
 
 "A very good arrangement very good arrange- 
 ment indeed," said the old man slowly. " I take my 
 morning nap while you young people have your 
 class. What is it ? The state of the dead, eh ? 
 Ah, very interesting, very interesting indeed! I 
 should have enjoyed it if I hadn't been quite so deaf. 
 Never do to deprive you of your pleasures, you know ! 
 You would mope shut up all day with an old fellow like
 
 1 68 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 me. As it is, we shall both be satisfied. Just as it 
 should be." 
 
 Helen was by no means sure that she was wholly 
 satisfied. Her husband seemed, she thought, more 
 somnolent, less alert than usual ; and she regretted 
 the necessity of immuring him in a gas-warmed 
 room for the rest of the morning. She said to herself 
 that it would certainly lower his vitality, and he 
 must have a little stimulant with his lunch. Also, 
 Mrs. Wetherbee had taken a ticket for her lectures ; 
 and whilst the growing expenses of beef essence, 
 Benger's Food, and new-laid eggs forbade her to 
 refuse the two guineas, she feared that they would 
 prove to be hardly earned. Between these diverse 
 anxieties, the mood of serenity departed, and the 
 material world surged in upon her with peculiar 
 obstinacy. She was depressed by this exhibition of 
 the power of circumstances ; and set about the 
 arranging of chairs, the placing of the ritual glass of 
 water on the table, in a state of mind which in an 
 inferior woman might almost have become fussy. 
 
 Mrs. Wetherbee arrived first. She carried a large 
 new notebook, and a fat stylographic pen of the 
 kind known as " Teddy Bear." Her demeanour 
 struck Mrs. Reed as excessively inappropriate. 
 
 " Well !" she said as she entered. " Now I am 
 going to improve my mind and find out what you 
 clever people really mean by it all. I was deter- 
 mined to come this autumn. Last winter, when 
 one went out to tea, one never knew what the women 
 were talking about. Besides, I always like a lecture ; 
 the questions afterwards are such fun. Muriel is 
 coming. I saw her motor trying to run into an
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 169 
 
 omnibus as I arrived. She has got Felix with her. 
 Quite the old-fashioned Calvinistic idea, to teach 
 children about hell before they've heard anything 
 about heaven. It is about hell, isn't it ? No ? 
 Well, it sounds like it. I hope you're not going to 
 show any pictures of those peculiar gods. As it is, 
 I expect the poor child won't sleep for nights. Here 
 they are " 
 
 Muriel came in, holding Felix firmly by the hand. 
 She said to Helen, " You do not mind my bringing 
 him, do you ? He has promised to be quite good. 
 Being Saturday, he does not go to Kindergarten to- 
 day. He will not understand one does not wish it 
 but I should like him to breathe the atmosphere 
 for a little while. Atmosphere is so important in 
 its influence on the developing mentality of the 
 child." 
 
 Felix removed his gloves, coat, and cap very care- 
 fully; revealing a thin little body clad in a pale 
 green jersey and short serge knickerbockers to match. 
 He cast a searching glance into the corners of the 
 room, peeped under the table, and then said, 
 " Where is Ra ?" 
 
 Mrs. Reed answered, " I am afraid that he is 
 asleep just now in my husband's room." 
 
 Felix observed, " When I'm a bigger boy, I shall 
 do like that, and sleep in another room when ladies 
 talk. Father does, and I've quite decided that I am 
 going to be a man too." 
 
 Muriel said hastily, " He is a little fractious and dis- 
 appointed to-day. Andrew wished to take him to see 
 the royal procession this afternoon, but I preferred 
 that he should stay with me. Children are so easily
 
 170 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 impressed by mere military display, and acquire false 
 standards of greatness. I tell him that when he is 
 bigger, he will understand the unimportance of these 
 things. Then, he will see more essential beauty in 
 the curves of Darwin's forehead than in a whole 
 regiment of life-guards." 
 
 Felix murmured regretfully, " Yes, but not lovely 
 prancy horses and bands and things." 
 
 " I expect Andrew was disappointed too," said 
 Mrs. Wetherbee.- " He enjoys taking the child 
 about with him so much." 
 
 " Oh, no," answered Muriel. " He gave the ticket 
 to Miss Tyrrel. He likes to take her out on Satur- 
 day afternoons when he can ; she is so very good- 
 natured, and appears to appreciate almost any little 
 expedition of that kind. It is a change for her, of 
 course, after being shut up in that shop all the 
 week " 
 
 " You are very unconventional, my dear," said 
 Mrs. Wetherbee. 
 
 " I try to be," replied Muriel simply. 
 
 The presence of other people prevented Mrs. 
 Wetherbee from making the observation which she 
 considered adequate. She therefore contented her- 
 self with an inarticulate sound which the more 
 worldly persons present had little difficulty in trans- 
 lating. 
 
 " Miss Tyrrel," said Phoebe quickly, " is also un- 
 conventional, I think ; though not, perhaps, in quite 
 the same way. She is one of those strange and 
 always interesting persons who appear to have no 
 attachments to existence. She wanders in a desert 
 of her own."
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 171 
 
 " The truth is," answered Mrs. Wetherbee, " that 
 none of us knows where she wanders ; or, for that 
 matter, where she comes from. It may be a desert ; 
 or it may be something very much the reverse. That 
 is the worst of London. In the country such a state 
 of things would be impossible. The Vicar would 
 call, and find it all out. I've been to her shop once 
 or twice. Pure curiosity, and I'm not ashamed of it. 
 There she is, very sensible and business-like, in an 
 extremely becoming overall. Always on the spot, 
 always attentive, no silly air of ' Don't forget that 
 I'm a lady.' I asked her to tea last week, and she 
 came ; talked pleasantly for an hour and a half and 
 gave me an excellent pattern for a pinafore 
 economical to cut out and easy to wash which I 
 own surprised me. And when she left I knew 
 nothing about her. Nothing at all ! By no means 
 the usual thing with reduced gentlewomen." 
 
 It was Phoebe who said, " One hardly conceives 
 of her as that. Circumstances do not seem to belong 
 to her, nor she to circumstances. She is wholly 
 detached, wholly alone. Unless, indeed, she has links 
 to life of which we know nothing." 
 
 " Well, that is what I am sometimes afraid of," 
 replied Mrs. Wetherbee. " Not that I have any 
 reason for saying it. But when you find a good- 
 looking woman of that age entirely unattached " 
 
 " It proves," said Muriel, " a certain wonderful 
 aloofness from existence." 
 
 " Not always, my dear. Aloofness of that kind 
 may come from cussedness in the young ; but it is 
 generally the result of compulsion where it exists in 
 the mature."
 
 i 7 2 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Phoebe observed very gently, " I feel so sorry for 
 her ! One divines that she is not really happy in her 
 solitude. Probably she has never made her peace 
 between the spirit and the flesh." 
 
 Mrs. Reed, at last seeing an opportunity, remarked 
 in her sweetest and most penetrating tone, " At best 
 that is but an armistice between irreconcilable 
 foes." 
 
 "Oh no I think not," replied Phoebe firmly. 
 " That is a mistake which the contemplation of 
 materialism is so apt to induce. But I see more 
 and more of late that spirit in its purest manifesta- 
 tions is bound to express itself by means of the 
 carnal veil." 
 
 " I had not supposed," said Mrs. Wetherbee, 
 " that Freddy Burroughs possessed such educa- 
 tional genius !" 
 
 There was a general sensation of surprise when it 
 was observed that these words had caused Miss 
 Foster to exhibit a quite commonplace embarrass- 
 ment. Her pretty face grew pink, and she looked 
 almost maidenly. Muriel, whose rather disintegrated 
 nature contained several kindly patches, said in- 
 stantly, 
 
 " I think it is so kind of you to go about with him 
 as you do. After all, an uncongenial friendship is 
 bound to tax one's tolerance, exhaust one's spiritual 
 strength. I wonder sometimes whether Miss Tyrrel 
 experiences anything of that kind with Andrew. 
 One can hardly suppose that they have much in 
 common." 
 
 " If a woman is lonely enough," observed Mrs. 
 Wetherbee, " she has something in common with the
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 173 
 
 crossing-sweeper ; but she would be rather surprised 
 if she were told what that something was." 
 
 Mrs. Reed was glad when the rest of her pupils 
 assembled and the lecture at last began. She had 
 prepared it carefully; and it combined mummies, 
 metaphysics, alchemy, and the Book of the Dead in 
 a very impressive way. Some of the ladies present 
 were puzzled, but all were interested. 
 
 " The Egyptian Under-world," said the lecturer in 
 hieratic accents, " calls to us for recognition across 
 the chasm of five thousand years ; and now, when 
 dogma crumbles under our touch, the eternal reali- 
 ties of the immortal soul's progress and transmuta- 
 tions the gates through which it passes to the 
 Central Fire, the crucible whence it emerges to be 
 united with Sol its source appeal to us as the most 
 rational of all over-beliefs. ..." 
 
 " Do they ?" said Mrs. Wetherbee as she made 
 her first note. 
 
 " The birth of Horus is for us the birth of the 
 deified soul ; for this is the mysterium magnum of 
 existence, the sanction of the Great Work, that 
 Osiris and Horus are truly one. Death is the coming 
 forth of the philosopher's stone from the crucible of 
 life. How joyous a moment, when the emancipated 
 soul, purged from its baser elements, breaks from its 
 envelope and is delivered into the hands of Thoth ! 
 The illuminated mind can but hail the deaths of 
 those whom it loves with triumph and delight ; for 
 there is a sense in which every living being wrapped 
 in matter is but a mummy, till death comes to undo 
 the swaddling-bands of carnal things. Then will the 
 beneficent action of salt, sulphur, and mercury,
 
 174 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 those loving attendants about the fiery sepulchre of 
 the grosser nature, permit the Artist to pour forth the 
 tincture of eternity ; and draw out from the furnace 
 the golden Osiris-soul, which shall return in its 
 splendour and purity to the ineffable Osiris- 
 source." 
 
 " How beautiful !" said Muriel. 
 
 The other ladies sat, for the most part, with their 
 mouths slightly open. Even Mrs. Wetherbee was 
 silenced ; for Helen, exalted by her own eloquence, 
 spoke with a dreamy and solemn fervour which her 
 astonishing symbolism did little to impair. 
 
 ***** 
 
 When the lecture was at an end and the last of 
 her pupils had departed, Helen fetched a small can 
 of hot water from the bath-room, and went down the 
 passage to the little bedchamber in which her 
 husband sat. She heard a faint scratching sound 
 within, and then a mew. As she opened the door, 
 Ra rushed out, and fled to the darkest corner of the 
 corridor. 
 
 She said in astonishment, " Why, what have you 
 done to Ra ? He seems quite frightened." 
 
 Mr. Reed did not reply ; and the hiss of the gas- 
 stove made the room seem curiously quiet. He sat 
 huddled in his chair, stooping forward a little. His 
 eyes were half open, and his heavy head rested on 
 one shoulder. When she was close to him, his wife 
 saw with horror that his tongue lolled from between 
 his lips. 
 
 She dropped the little can, and felt the soft warm 
 touch of the water as it poured over her ankles and 
 soaked the thin thread stockings that she wore. She
 
 A LECTURE AND A DEMONSTRATION 175 
 
 thought vaguely, " How stupid of me ! I shall 
 have to fetch a duster, I suppose." But she did not 
 move could not and presently the water spread 
 upon the varnished floor, forming a shining pool 
 which stretched from her feet to those of the corpse. 
 It lay between them like a barrier. She knew that 
 the barrier was an illusion ; but it represented a 
 Rubicon which she could not cross.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 
 
 "... I spoke as I saw : 
 
 I report as a man may of God's work all's love, yet all's 
 law. 
 
 ****** 
 . . . What, my soul ? see thus far and no farther ? when 
 
 doors great and small, 
 
 Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the 
 hundredth appal ?" 
 
 BROWNING : Saul. 
 
 THE idea of friendship, as also the idea of father- 
 hood, was vaguely connected in Andrew's 
 simple mind with the necessity of giving treats. 
 Hence, when he was disappointed of his first 
 intention, and forbidden to take Felix to see the 
 return of the Polish Emperor from his luncheon at 
 the Guildhall, he naturally and immediately con- 
 ceived the notion of offering to Constance the pleasure 
 which he might not give to his son. 
 
 The result had been odd and unexpected for both 
 of them. Constance, hitherto, had left these pageants 
 on one side ; as events hardly affecting even the 
 fringe of her consciousness. But Andrew's solid 
 acceptance of the thing as pleasant and important, 
 as something which counted in the Londoner's life, 
 had stirred her to interest ; and the Watcher's in- 
 
 176
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 177 
 
 evitable questions concerning the necessity of running 
 in crowds to see the ever-decaying bodies of other 
 little creatures carried by, had even urged her to a 
 justification of the performance. 
 
 In spite of her extended experience, she was still 
 bound by the emotional limitations of the citizen. 
 The return from the hills to the hive had not been 
 wholly destitute of joy. When she could forget the 
 cold Ring set about her, the adorable and incom- 
 prehensible Truth which had somewhere, somehow, 
 pierced the dream to tease her vision and elude her 
 grasp, she resumed that vicarious arrogance which is 
 the birthright of the London child ; and her new- 
 found adoration of beauty gave a touch of poetry to 
 her pride. Westminster Abbey, the Whitechapel 
 Road., the river, the shops, the streaming traffic, the 
 blue and golden lamps in the magic dusk, each 
 seemed to her now significant and delightful things, 
 fully charged with the spirit of life. Even the joyous 
 clatter of Smithfield market the sixpenny rabbits 
 and ninepenny pines, the shops devoted to instru- 
 ments of murder, the magnificent offices of the 
 London Offal Co. she had held worthy of exhibition 
 to the Watcher, whose nascent perceptions they 
 confused. 
 
 He said, " The chemical side of life the building 
 up of all your fragile tissues to make them last until 
 you have to go away all this seems to give great 
 pleasure ; you seem to think that the manner of it 
 matters a great deal ! It is surprising, but I am glad- 
 I think it is in the ecstasy of eating that many of you 
 come nearest the Idea. But having been so kind to 
 your bodies and cherished them, you must find it 
 
 12
 
 178 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 very hard at the finish to put them on one side. I 
 suppose, however, that there are also many places 
 where you may purchase food for the upbuilding of 
 the soul ?" 
 
 At that, in a dutiful spirit, she had shown him a 
 church. Of course it was empty, for there was no 
 service in progress ; and she felt that he was be- 
 coming unreasonable when he drew her attention to 
 this fact. The place was well kept, though naturally 
 enough it seemed a little dingy when one contrasted 
 it with the bright life of the theatre, the drawing- 
 room, and the street. But there was a thick expen- 
 sive sanctuary carpet ; and an extremely handsome 
 reredos behind the altar, carved and painted, in a 
 smart archaic style, with Early Italian seraphim 
 bearing a long curled scroll. " Therefore with Angels 
 and A rchangels, and with all the Company of Heaven, 
 we laud and magnify thy glorious Name" said the 
 scroll in golden Gothic letters. It flung this superb 
 declaration down the chill and desolate church, 
 which seemed to laugh cynically in reply. 
 
 Outside in the sun, the spirit of praise might be 
 active ; and with it the angels. That web of minister- 
 ing love which men call natural forces, there played 
 without hindrance about all living things, inviting the 
 crescent soul to adoration. Here, the stiff militant rows 
 of red hassocks, like vigilant constables ready to check 
 the results of a possible spiritual enthusiasm, re- 
 minded intending devotion that an established 
 religion looks to comfort and decorum, even in the 
 affairs of the soul. 
 
 " So people in general do know that we exist ?" 
 said the Watcher. " Really know it, have even gone
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 179 
 
 so far as to give us names, and talk about us as if 
 we were true? I am surprised. And here, they 
 say that they unite with us ? Unite in what ? 
 Nothing seems to be happening. There is no aspect 
 of reality here. If there were, surely some of you 
 would feel it and care about it ; as he did, whom we 
 found in the hills ? But you do not truly wish us to 
 be with you you would only be frightened and 
 astonished if we came you crowded peoples, who 
 build such dismal places as this out of respect for a 
 Reality that someone once told you about. It were 
 better to go back to your eating and growing and 
 begetting." Then he had whispered rather sadly, 
 " To laud and magnify ! How great a destiny ! 
 Helping the Idea loving it and increasing it. 
 Strange, mad little people ; to find so great a con- 
 cept, and write it up, and leave it all alone!" 
 
 Such experiences as these had not encouraged 
 Constance to hope that the royal procession could 
 make any pleasing impress upon so critical a creature, 
 who displayed, despite the varied opportunities that 
 she had offered him, such astounding tardiness in 
 the acquirement of common sense. As for her, she 
 looked as a child might for some glittering regal 
 thing, for an exhibition part splendid, part amusing, 
 and for the presence of a crowd, which always 
 delighted her. When she stood by Andrew at the 
 window in Oxford Street, where two admirable seats 
 had been reserved, and looked down on the wide 
 gravelled road and the thicket of heads on either side 
 of it, peering, anxiously, for the first sweep of the 
 soldiers, she caught their infection, and became in 
 her turn absurdly eager over this trivial passage of a 
 12 2
 
 i8o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 doubtless trivial personality from one end to the 
 other of the town. 
 
 Andrew was pleased, and en-couraged her, saying, 
 " Nearly time now ! I think I hear 'em cheering. 
 Hope he will get a good reception ; these foreigners 
 think a lot of that. By Jove ! there are the Guards 
 already ! Here he comes." 
 
 The crowd bristled, as if a breeze had passed over 
 it ; and down the centre of the wide pale street the 
 solemn Life Guards came trotting, with the steady, 
 unhurried air of dramatic things. And in the midst 
 of the pageant its very eye guarded and carried 
 as a sacred relic through the streets, there was a 
 little old and wearied man, whom all Europe knew 
 to be diseased, and whom some pitied, some despised, 
 but none ever reverenced. The flashing and mur- 
 derous swords of his bodyguard went before and 
 behind him, as a warning to the people that this 
 one ebbing and imperfect life should be protected, 
 even at the sacrifice of other growing lives. The 
 little grey man was almost swallowed up by his huge 
 carriage, and by the imperial richness of the cloak 
 that propped him in his place. He raised a claw- 
 like hand to return the salutations of the people. 
 
 Now here, as it seemed, was a manifest sham and 
 absurdity ; here was something, an inconsistent wreck 
 from the savage ages, which pure and emancipated 
 spirit could never understand. Where, indeed, could 
 it touch eternal matters : this temporary erection 
 of impotent dolls? Once it had passed, and the 
 cheering had died, Constance herself thought it 
 but foolishness ; pathetic perhaps, but evidently ripe 
 for the destroying hand of that progress which talks
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 181 
 
 so much about the trowel, but always seems more 
 ready with the sword. Therefore it was with amaze- 
 ment that she perceived the Watcher to abase 
 himself with an eager comprehension ; as if here 
 again he recognized something which had immediate 
 relations with reality. He, it was plain, did not see 
 the little huddled invalid, the remnant of a too 
 adventurous youth, who had set out upon his pro- 
 gress supported by stimulants and bore it by reason 
 of a careful disposition of hot-water bottles. As the 
 vision of the initiate passes unheeding beyond the 
 bread and wine, and sees unveiled the Object of all 
 love ; so he saw Sovereignty, the ruling and govern- 
 ing Idea, behind its poor image, and hardly perceived 
 the shabbiness of the symbol through which he 
 gazed. 
 
 Andrew, at her elbow, had whispered, " By Jove ! 
 the poor chap does look rocky. They say he can't 
 last very long." 
 
 Within her mind the Watcher said, " But this 
 will last for ever and for ever ! It is eternal, it is 
 true, it is a showing of the Will." 
 
 She answered, " No. You are mistaken. The 
 tendency of social evolution is against it. We are 
 eliminating these things from the modern state." 
 
 He said, " You cannot eliminate the Idea, though 
 apparently you find it very easy to forget." 
 
 " No, of course not. But monarchy has lost touch 
 with the real. It is just a survival now ; a picturesque 
 sham." 
 
 " It is all one all part of It !" he exclaimed. 
 " And that is why, in spite of all your talking, you 
 cannot, and never will, shake off its spell. Love
 
 182 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 law authority they all belong ! They are the 
 thinking, the living, the loving of the Will. Do you 
 not see the great rules, the huge lines of it ? The 
 meshes of the eternal web ? Love, and the Graal : 
 law, and the King ! If you do not, what is the use 
 of being here ? And what is the instinct that brings 
 you all to look upon this sight ?" 
 
 She had a glimpse of it then ; was moved by 
 the mighty ideal of government, and by this small 
 insistent emblem of a stability which owed nothing 
 to the individual, but transcended persons, asserting 
 itself as an actual expression of life. It was the 
 aggregate reality of the State brought to a point 
 and expressed in personality; as the ideal truths 
 which man is to assimilate must always be ex- 
 pressed. 
 
 They had an early tea together, with the friendly 
 and irresponsible sense of picnicking which is 
 peculiar to London's Saturday afternoons. She 
 already knew the exact amount of sugar that 
 Andrew liked ; and he was astonished that she should 
 so easily remember a fact which Muriel had never 
 learned. Then, because it was one of those soft 
 October days when languid pleasures seem the best, 
 they walked into the park, and sat there. The 
 gentle greyness of the landscape pleased Constance, 
 lulled her mind. London, when she dons her veil 
 of citizenship, is always very friendly to the soul. 
 The sky, she noticed, had the hint of coral pink in 
 it which only great cities seem able to impart ; and 
 against it the shrouded forms of the houses, the 
 great mass of Saint George's Hospital, stood up with 
 a mild but invulnerable dignity. The motors and
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 183 
 
 carriages as they passed were grey too, and had 
 grey people inside them. For this hour, the illusion 
 of colour was taken away from the world ; and she 
 obtained a new sight of it, freed from the chains at 
 least of one tyrannous sense. This, she thought, 
 might indeed be a part of that dreamy universe, that 
 projection of omnipotent Will, held in a ceaseless 
 state of flux by the thought that informed it, which 
 the Watcher's vague statements seemed to describe. 
 Even such traffic as there was went dimly and 
 silently. She gazed at it with sleepy eyes. When 
 suddenly a rider brought his shadowy horse to the 
 railings, and disclosed him as being brown after all, 
 there was a touch of faerie in the transformation ; 
 and she said gently and vaguely, 
 
 " Isn't it strange and colourless this afternoon ? 
 When that horse came up and disturbed things, I 
 was beginning to think that all the world was grey." 
 
 Andrew replied, "Afraid we shall have a foggy 
 night. Anti-cyclonic weather !" 
 
 " It is beautiful I love it !" 
 
 " Yes pretty effect !" said Vince, " but these 
 early autumn fogs are nasty things for people who 
 are weak about the chest." 
 
 She returned automatically to the plane which 
 her friend called actual and said, half to herself, 
 " I suppose they are. I must be careful of Vera. 
 At the beginning of the winter she so easily picks 
 up a cold." 
 
 "Ah?" 
 
 " My little niece, you know, who lives with me." * 
 
 " I didn't know," said Andrew, astonished. 
 "Awfully sorry no notion of it. Poor little kid!
 
 i8 4 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Why didn't you tell me? She might have come 
 with us to see the show." 
 
 " She has gone to the Zoo with some other 
 children." 
 
 They were her landlady's sons; but she did not 
 think this detail essential. 
 
 " I'm awfully glad," observed Andrew presently, 
 " that you've got a little girl to look after. It's an 
 interest. A woman all alone, no ties, no future, 
 nothing to pet ; one doesn't like the idea of it. 
 Against nature ! But children are ripping com- 
 panions even when they're not your own." 
 
 She had never looked upon Vera in this light. 
 She felt that she had been corrected : and, to her 
 ears, there was a new note of humility in her assent. 
 
 " Can't be bored by kids," continued Andrew 
 happily, " they're a sort of everlasting interest : 
 coming on all the while developing, don't you know 
 and so on. Look at Felix! The boy in him just 
 breaking out. A bit hard on Muriel, after having 
 him at her apron string for so long ; I'm afraid she 
 doesn't like it altogether. But life is life : it can't 
 be helped. You must bring your little niece to tea 
 one day. Good for Felix, having other children to 
 play with. Teaches them to give and take a bit, 
 don't you know." 
 
 " I don't let her go to parties," said Constance 
 hastily. 
 
 " You're quite right it excites 'em. I don't mean 
 a party. Just a feed of bread and jam and a few 
 games." 
 
 The soft grey city was spoilt for her now ; and the 
 pleasant idle companionship. The Watcher said,
 
 SIGHT-SEEING 185 
 
 " What is wrong, and why are you grieved ? Is not 
 this man your friend, and are you not together? 
 And is not this what human beings always desire ? 
 You tire me ; you are so full of confused wishes and 
 curious little griefs. I cannot help you ; for I cannot 
 find the thread." 
 
 She rose, in spite of Andrew's expostulations, with 
 the evident determination of saying good-bye. It 
 had come into her mind that she might call on 
 Mrs. Reed before returning home, and thus Vince 
 would be unable to escort her to her lodgings and 
 make the acquaintance of the child. She had wished, 
 if she might, to preserve her simple relation with 
 him, as a solitary woman about whom there was 
 nothing to be said. But Vera carried with her the 
 note of squalor and confusion which wrecks Platonic 
 friendships, and causes even the most cultivated and 
 tolerant of hostesses to experience a certain searching 
 of the heart.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 
 
 "And I, Fire, Acceptor of Sacrifices, ravishing away 
 from them their darkness, give the light ; not a natural 
 light, but a supernatural, so that, though in darkness, 
 they knew the Truth." The Divine Dialogue of St. 
 Catherine of Siena. 
 
 door of Mrs. Reed's flat stood ajar ; and 
 JL Constance, having rung the bell and received 
 no answer, pushed it open and went in. The sitting- 
 room was empty; and the chairs stood in disorder, as 
 they had been left after the morning's class. She 
 was surprised, and uncertain as to her next action ; 
 for even were Helen absent, she had expected to find 
 Mr. Reed dozing as usual before the fire, with the 
 blue Persian cat upon his knee. Whilst she stood 
 considering the matter, Ra appeared from some 
 recess of the establishment, and rubbed against her 
 skirt with an excess of affection which suggested 
 extreme loneliness, if not actual hunger and thirst. 
 She stooped to stroke his head, and he raised him- 
 self on his hind-legs to meet her hand ; an un- 
 precedented act of condescension. Then he purred 
 twice, mewed once, walked to the closed door of the 
 bedroom, and sat down on the mat. 
 
 1 86
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 187 
 
 Constance knocked, waited for a reply, and then 
 opened the door a little way; but Ra would not 
 enter alone. He rubbed against her skirts with 
 increased vehemence, and looked at her with im- 
 ploring golden eyes. She opened the door wider, 
 and then saw Mrs. Reed, who knelt before the gas- 
 stove. Her beads and scarabs hung round her neck 
 and jangled a little as she swayed to and fro. The 
 air of the room was thick and hot, as if the stove had 
 been alight for many hours. Constance, astonished, 
 halted upon the threshold; and then perceived the 
 huddled corpse in the chair, sleeping persistently, 
 despite the swaying wretched woman at its feet. 
 Death, it seemed, extending his right hand very 
 gently, had dealt a shrewd blow with his left ; tearing 
 away the tidy surface of existence, and disclosing 
 certain raw realities beneath. 
 
 " What is this ?" said the Watcher. 
 
 Constance whispered, awestruck, " I think that it 
 is death." 
 
 She felt his movement of withdrawal ; but resisted 
 it, saying, " No ! That would be cruel. We must 
 not leave her alone." 
 
 Mrs. Reed stopped swaying, and looked at Con- 
 stance without surprise. 
 
 She said apologetically, " I found the door ajar." 
 
 Helen answered, in a slow, monotonous explana- 
 tory voice, " Yes it does not matter. You see, I 
 am quite alone now. Yes, quite alone. I went out 
 to see if I were really alone ; and there was nothing 
 left. And then I thought perhaps if he wanted to 
 come back, you know. But that's a mistake, too. 
 I make a great many mistakes to-day. Of course
 
 i88 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 he's here. Oh yes, he's still here. He is waiting ; 
 he does not like to go alone. I must not forget 
 that." 
 
 Constance, made stiff and awkward by her sensa- 
 tions of horror and amazement, moved towards her ; 
 but she raised herself upon her knees, and shuffled 
 towards the chair. She took one of the dead man's 
 hands between her own, and began to stroke it. 
 " One must hold on to life by something," she ex- 
 plained, "as long as one can. Yes, as long as one 
 possibly can." 
 
 " Even by death ?" whispered the Watcher. 
 
 " You see, he is all mine ; quite mine. I earned 
 for him and arranged things. People think me 
 intellectual, but that is only for odd times. I always 
 washed his hands and brushed his hair. I did keep 
 him nicely, didn't I ? His hair is wonderful for his 
 age ; so thick and silky." She played with it for a 
 little while, then dropped it and said wearily, " But 
 I have nothing to do now nothing at all so that 
 nothing really matters any more." 
 
 Then Constance found the voice of conventional 
 consolation, and said, " But you will always have a 
 beautiful memory of the years you were together : of 
 the happiness you gave him, and all you were able 
 to do. You have nothing to be sorry for, nothing to 
 regret. You loved one another so well." 
 
 Helen stared at her. " Did we ?" she answered. 
 " Perhaps we did." 
 
 " And it is so much better for him to go like this : 
 to be saved from all the weariness and pain." 
 
 " Is it ? I don't know I can't see any farther," 
 said Mrs. Reed. Then she exclaimed in a tone of
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 189 
 
 horror, " It has all gone black ! Once I believed in such 
 beautiful spiritual things. I seemed to see them. I 
 thought I should rejoice when he died. I always 
 taught people to do that. But now don't you 
 understand ? it is this that is real this this." She 
 clutched the dead man's arm; and the corpse nodded 
 towards her and then fell back in the chair with a 
 soft thud " And it's going to decay ! I can't believe 
 it ; but it will. I shall sit here alone ; and somewhere 
 in the ground this will dissolve, and terrible things 
 will happen under the earth. And it will go ; and 
 the bones that I have never seen will be left. I shall 
 not recognize them ; and they will be him and the 
 thing I know will have gone ! The greedy earth 
 will eat it. I can see that going on. As long as I 
 live, I shall never see anything else !" 
 
 She spoke with passion, and Constance found no 
 words in which to reply. The sight of Helen's 
 neat universe, abruptly ruined, appalled her. It 
 seemed fatuous to offer hints for reconstruction in 
 the face of so utter a wreck. She wondered whether 
 life were full of such events ; of mistaken creeds, 
 crushed by the first contact with actuality ; of ordi- 
 nary people, who did not seem to matter, rising at the 
 touch of death to a sudden dominion and ruling the 
 living from under the poppy crown. 
 
 She looked at the quiet body, which resisted with 
 patience the onslaught of rebellious grief. Its in- 
 vincible serenity, in that feverish room, was an earnest 
 of its remoteness. Her vision was clarified, so that 
 she passed by its animal aspect and saw it in its 
 truer relation ; as a poor and battered house, ennobled 
 by the memory that it once held one who afterwards
 
 igo THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 became a king. She passed in imagination from 
 this heated and cupboard-like place, where opposition 
 to the Idea had quickened to agony. She saw this 
 dead body under the simple and eternal categories ; 
 against the amphitheatre of the sky, where no artifice 
 cloaks the august and rhythmic processes of nascent, 
 crescent, and cadent life. Then she perceived how 
 very beautiful, how very intimate, it was ; as if earth 
 in claiming her handiwork, had blessed it. She 
 was lifted again into the peaceful dimension where 
 the spirits of death and of life subsist side by side in 
 perfect unison. She and the Watcher together 
 rested, as it were, in this lucent place ; aloof from the 
 tormenting illusions of mortality. They accepted 
 the vicissitudes of the body, detecting therein certain 
 majestic harmonies which drowned the sharp cry 
 of those from whom this music was wrung. 
 
 They were at one in this wide and calm vision 
 of things. But there were odd and irreconcilable 
 differences in the reaction to which it urged them. 
 The Watcher, it seemed, endured the situation 
 unwillingly. He was stirred and grieved by the in- 
 curable torment that he witnessed ; and, alarmed by 
 his own sadness, wished to be away. But Constance, 
 though she felt herself to be raised with him beyond the 
 mortal dread of death, felt also a deep dissatisfaction, 
 a miserable shame, at being so lifted and fenced from 
 her sisters, who were yet immersed in the agonizing 
 sea of separation. She felt a sudden divine desire to be 
 down amongst them, to renounce in their favour her 
 strange inheritance, to share their mistakes. 
 
 Her goddess lifted that obstinate veil of hers, and 
 looked her between the eyes. It was a glance of
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 191 
 
 peculiar penetration, and carried with it a peremptory 
 command. She was infected by a sense of homeli- 
 ness, by a longing to stay, to stoop, to help. She was 
 in the ranks, and there was an obligation upon her 
 to raise the fallen as well as to prosecute her own 
 advance. Orders were on her, and that mysterious 
 inhabitant of hers started to attention at the call. 
 She must cast down the barriers that she had loved 
 and merge her experience with this life and this 
 death. " Oh, do learn to love!" said Martin. She 
 wanted to now; she was willing, even in this un- 
 attractive school, where a shabby, sallow woman 
 muttered crazily over the death of a tedious old 
 man. 
 
 Suddenly she lost herself ; and found instead the 
 mighty battle. She was on her knees beside her 
 fellow-soldier, her arm was about the shoulders 
 that carried themselves usually with so important an 
 air, and she was whispering scattered senseless frag- 
 ments of that immemorial language which all men 
 speak in the presence of death. 
 
 Helen turned and clutched her spasmodically. 
 " Oh, it's black it's black," she said, " and I'm 
 angry so angry with death. I've been a textbook 
 for other people all my life ; and now I'm done for, 
 and life has torn me up." 
 
 Constance answered, " Dear, you are dazed and 
 bewildered at the moment. Do not try to think. 
 It has been a terrible shock ; but presently you will 
 see clearly again." 
 
 " I see now. I had never seen death before. This 
 is final : this is the end." 
 
 "That is an illusion which will pass away."
 
 192 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Oh, I know," said Helen wearily. " I used to 
 say those sort of things." 
 
 As they sat cuddled together on the floor, Ra 
 climbed suddenly upon their knees and thrust a cold 
 and importunate nose into his mistress's face. He 
 was a true cat. The neighbourhood of the dead 
 induced in him a passionate appreciation of the 
 society of the living. 
 
 Constance said, " Have you fed Ra ?" 
 
 Helen replied indifferently, "What does that 
 matter ? He will die too." 
 
 " Shall I give him his dinner ?" 
 
 Mrs. Reed took no notice. She was again stroking 
 the dead man's hand. 
 
 Constance took the cat into the little kitchen, 
 found his plate of cold fish, filled his milk bowl, and 
 went back again to Mrs. Reed. 
 
 The Watcher whispered, " How it hurts ! Poor, 
 poor little men and women ; how horribly you 
 suffer in your blindness ! Always the same thing ; 
 the everlasting want of one another. So this is the 
 terrible cry that comes from the spinning earth ; the 
 wailing of the souls who are left behind !" 
 
 " Oh, what can I do for her ?" 
 
 " Tell her to let go. She is clutching as well as 
 loving. She is fighting with the Will. After all, she 
 will die too. She has forgotten that." 
 
 "That is one of the things which no one can 
 remember when they want to. It is all blurred for 
 her now." 
 
 " How strange ! Does Death cover the eyes of 
 the living when he steals the souls of the slain ?" 
 
 " Look at her 1 She thought she had the light."
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 193 
 
 "But it is still there," he said, "and the Idea 
 within it. Death cannot kill the real ; it changes 
 nothing. All is well." 
 
 " Can't you tell her ?" 
 
 He answered, " No. This pain comes of humanity, 
 and its healing must come by way of humanity too. 
 You are immersed in it ; you are bound to it ; you 
 know it. You must see to your own affairs. I 
 know, I see, that this must be the great matter. It 
 is a cruel illusion ; yet many great things are born of ' 
 it. It is your touchstone of truth. But here you 
 must help one another. It is not for the deathless 
 to interfere." 
 
 She, humbled by a knowledge of her own in- 
 effectuality, of the uselessness in this primary 
 situation of all her theories of life, could only hold 
 the hands of the half-stupefied woman, keeping her 
 as it were by mere physical contact in touch with the 
 human side of things. They sat in the dusk, 
 listening to the hiss of the gas-stove, clinging to one 
 another ; weighed down by a sense of finality, but 
 without any conscious thoughts. There was nothing 
 to say, and nothing to do. Constance felt all about 
 her a world of miserable women, sitting helplessly 
 beside the dead bodies of those in whom they had 
 rooted their lives. Her little heaven seemed stagnant 
 beside the vivid torment of these sisters in purgatory. 
 She longed to join hands with them, and share their 
 pain. Sacrifices were going forward ; and she stood 
 before the altar of life without an offering. 
 
 She saw now faced by this most ordinary of 
 events that her quest of life should have been, not 
 a curious seeking out of adventure, but rather a 
 13
 
 194 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 deliberate nurture, a devout acceptance, of the 
 . parents of all Being love and pain. She saw them 
 as they stretched through the height and breadth of 
 creation ; the sheltering Arm and the cleaving 
 Sword. Together they made that Cross whose 
 divine folly she had resisted with such a petulant 
 contempt. Helen, with her silly creeds and her 
 black despair, had them. She justified herself by 
 their presence : she, and a thousand other writhing 
 and tormented souls, who little understood the divine 
 quality of their anguish, the destination of that 
 mourning procession into which they had been 
 pressed. They walked a rough road, which wounded 
 their feet. They cried under the pain, not recognizing 
 in these ugly scars the birth-mark of the royal line. 
 As for Constance, she knew that the measure of her 
 serenity was the measure of her failure in the Way : 
 and, sitting between the living and the dead, she 
 wept tears of a genuine contrition because she could 
 not weep more. 
 
 The clang of a bell roused her. The neighbouring 
 church was ringing to evensong. Then she perceived 
 the gathering darkness, woke to practical affairs, 
 and said to Helen, " You will want some help, 
 won't you, and arrangements made? I must go, 
 I think, before it is too late, and send someone 
 to you. Do you mind being left alone for a little 
 while ?" 
 
 Helen answered, " No no. I shall be quite 
 busy. There are things plenty of things that I 
 must do." 
 
 She looked at her husband. " My old dear shan't 
 be neglected," she said brightly, " I am beginning
 
 DEATH AND THE WATCHER 195 
 
 to remember a little. He must not feel lonely, you 
 know." 
 
 She heard Constance go, and the door click 
 behind her. Then she rose and rambled heavily into 
 the kitchen. Ra was asleep in his basket. She 
 looked at him for a moment with pleasure, for he 
 was a living thing, warm, soft, and exquisitely 
 groomed : the only remaining creature that she loved, 
 the only helpless thing dependent on her care. As 
 if even in his sleep he divined her presence, he 
 cocked one ear and raised his nose a little way that 
 she might rub it. She was very glad of his existence. 
 He had always been adorable. At this moment he 
 was important too. But for him, she would be 
 alone with the dead. 
 
 Then she remembered that this good-fortune of 
 hers put the dead man at a disadvantage. It was he 
 who was solitary now in the midst of the living. 
 That was unendurable : that she should yet be sur- 
 rounded by visible and homely things, whilst he, who 
 had always needed them so much, went out from 
 amongst these domestic consolations. She owed 
 him, at the very least, a parting gift. 
 
 She stooped, and seized on the cat with firm and 
 merciless hands. " My old dear shan't be lonely !" 
 she muttered. " It is so terrible to be alone : to 
 be altogether alone !" 
 
 Ra only cried once a long, thin cry and then 
 lay quite still. 
 
 132
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 NEW FACTS FOR CONSTANCE AND ANDREW 
 
 " Pilgrimage to the place of the wise 
 Is to find escape from the flame of separation." 
 
 jELALU-'D-DlN. 
 
 AS tiny pebbles flung at random may cut a more 
 cruel wound than the heavy missile thrown by 
 a skilful hand, so it is often the little word, the little 
 action, which most deeply scars the heart. During 
 the following days, Constance became aware that 
 two such trifles had hit her mind with a sharp and 
 stinging impact ; leaving little bruises which she was 
 not able to forget. 
 
 One had been tossed, in all kindliness, by Andrew, 
 in the moment in which she had told him of Vera's 
 existence. That genial materialist had then affirmed, 
 casually as one endorses the unquestionable truths of 
 life, the sanctity, delightfulness, and immeasurable 
 importance of all growing, budding creatures ; the 
 enviable lot of their protectors. " I'm glad that 
 you've got a little girl to look after. It's an interest." 
 An interest ! She poor Constance had thought it 
 an embarrassment, and thus missed an opportunity 
 of selfless joy. Deceived by the shabbiness of the 
 
 196
 
 NEW FACTS 197 
 
 symbol, she had lost the secret gift. It was stupid ; 
 and she hated stupidity. 
 
 Andrew, because he was her friend, had not even 
 suspected this. That a child could be other than an 
 occasion of happy service to those who watched it, 
 that it could possibly be regarded as an obstruction, 
 a complication of the individual life, had not occurred 
 to him. The healthy dependence of bodily creatures 
 on one another, the family link, was his way of 
 seeing things. This pebble, then, had made a hole 
 in her carefully constructed defences ; and through 
 it she caught sight of the great and sunny landscape 
 from which she had fenced herself. 
 
 The second blow was sharper. 
 
 Mrs. Wetherbee, coming to the bookshop on 
 Monday morning, in pretended search of a magazine 
 which she knew that Lambton's did not stock, dis- 
 covered Constance in the act of making up accounts, 
 and naturally concluded that she was at leisure. 
 
 " I've just come from poor Mrs. Reed's," she said. 
 " I heard of the old man's death on Sunday night ; 
 Phrebe Foster called at her flat during the afternoon, 
 and she opened the door an inch or so and told her, 
 and then slammed it in her face. These clever people 
 are so unpractical that I thought I'd better go round 
 this morning and see if she had made any arrange- 
 ments for the funeral. I put my foot in the doorway, 
 so that she couldn't shut it on me ; it is a very good 
 thing to be forced to see people when you are in 
 trouble. Well ! I got into the sitting-room ; and 
 the first thing I saw was the dead body of the cat. 
 It seems it died the same evening, quite suddenly. 
 Extraordinary thing, that it and the old man should
 
 ig8 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 go off together like that. I wonder if she is quite 
 sure of her milkman. I don't know which of them 
 the poor thing is more upset about. She couldn't 
 look at it, and she wouldn't talk. I told her that she 
 could have a grave for it in my garden if she liked. 
 These horrible modern flats have no provision for 
 that sort of thing ; and you can't expect a woman 
 to put her last link with life into a sanitary dust- 
 bin." 
 
 Constance felt sick when she heard this story. 
 She had little doubt as to either the manner of Ra's 
 death or his place of burial. Evidently, it had not 
 entered Helen's mind that one could refuse even the 
 least appropriate of sacrifices to the beloved dead. 
 She had put her creed into practice ; a circumstance 
 which always fills the creedless with amazement and 
 unwilling awe. 
 
 Miss Tyrrel faced the thing in dull bewilderment. 
 She writhed, also, under the weight of a profound 
 mortification ; for this, which seemed to her so 
 morbid, so insane, so unreal an act, was accepted by 
 the Watcher with a sympathy which he seldom 
 extended to the normal proceedings of a civilized 
 society. He saw here a plain and natural manifesta- 
 tion of that friendship for the dead upon which he 
 had insisted so unpleasantly when she sat with him 
 in the graveyard amongst the fells; and the absurdity 
 of sacrificing a pet animal instead of an expensive 
 wreath of flowers did not strike his limited imagina- 
 tion. She had held herself his teacher ; but here, as 
 in the adventure of the Cup, she was baffled where 
 he divined a guiding thread. She groped for it; and, 
 stretching wild hands in the dark, came on strange
 
 NEW FACTS 199 
 
 forms, amazing living things, which defied her mania 
 for classification. 
 
 There was worse behind it. She might endure 
 the superiority of the Watcher, for he was a super- 
 natural being with whom she could hardly compete. 
 But in this dim strange tract of country on which 
 she had stumbled, in which the most ordinary objects 
 and events seemed charged with menace for those 
 who dared to walk alone, she had been forced to 
 learn from persons whom she had scarcely thought 
 it worth her while to teach. Helen and Andrew 
 the one earthy, the other absurd had taken her 
 hands and brought them into sudden contact with 
 certain unnoticed realities, aspects of that experience, 
 that life, which she had so loudly demanded and so 
 utterly missed. 
 
 Even now, her touch upon these things was vague 
 and clumsy. She was encased in the plate-armour 
 of her own personality ; fretted within by her re- 
 bellious will, but curbed and held safe by her well- 
 educated egotism. These other people, these foolish 
 givers and lovers, were unfettered. They rushed out 
 to the encounter of dreary responsibilities, childish 
 sacrifices, and hideous griefs. They had much to 
 endure, and little to show ; but they lived, were at 
 one with life. It was the only grace she had asked 
 of her goddess ; and now she knew that it had been 
 refused. 
 
 When the day's work was over, and Vera had been 
 put to bed, the imperative inner voice, which paid little 
 attention to her tastes, urged her to return to Helen, 
 to serve her if she might. Constance went un- 
 willingly ; for an attempt to gain admittance on
 
 200 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Sunday had failed, and this rebuff had wounded her 
 young self-conscious sympathy, even induced a certain 
 bitterness. She felt that her difficult attempts at 
 consolation had their importance : it was amazing 
 that Mrs. Reed should not desire them. Now, she 
 forgot this righteous anger : and something that was 
 almost diffidence took its place. She was going to 
 school, in a new spirit of humility. She even bought a 
 large bunch of white chrysanthemums on her way 
 to the flat, that there might be some visible excuse 
 for her visit. 
 
 She was surprised when the door was opened 
 quickly ; more, when Mrs. Reed said to her, " I am 
 glad that you have come again." She glanced hastily 
 about her as she entered, not knowing what she might 
 see ; but the little sitting-room looked much as usual. 
 There was no evidence of death. Mr. Reed's 
 spectacle-case and Ra's brush and comb had not 
 yet been put away. 
 
 Helen said, " When you knocked at the door, I 
 was afraid that perhaps it might be Mrs. Vince." 
 
 " Has she not been ?" 
 
 " No : but she will come she is sure to come, 
 isn't she ?" said Helen wistfully. " And then it 
 will be difficult. I must be so very careful what I 
 say." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " She believes in me ; she thinks I am spiritual, 
 you know. I must never let her see it's all gone black. 
 Then, she would lose it too, just as I have. She 
 would never believe in mysteries again. I must 
 prevent that from happening if I can. I have been 
 thinking and thinking, and I know that I have got to
 
 NEW FACTS 201 
 
 pretend. It will be something to do; and I must, 
 because I am responsible, you see. ' Death, the 
 Magnum Opus of the Divine /' Oh, one should never 
 see it, if one wants to think of it like that. It's all 
 emptiness. The symbols just melted away ; and 
 there was nothing nothing behind !" 
 
 The Watcher murmured, " I suppose this must 
 always happen when death touches the teachers of 
 your creeds. And yet they go on !" 
 
 Helen continued, almost as if she would reply to 
 him, " But I taught it ; and now I have got to stand 
 up to it ! It sounded so splendid; I felt so sure that 
 it was true. One seemed to see it ; and now I see 
 emptiness. But they mustn't. They are young and 
 hopeful. It helps them : and perhaps for them it 
 may go on being true." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 " You never believed in it !" said Helen. " You 
 always seemed to have a secret of your own. That 
 is why I want you now so much. You are solid 
 just yourself just alive and warm and I can say 
 what I like ; foolish, dreadful, hopeless things. But 
 with the others, what am I to do ? They fed on me ; 
 they had no experience ; they were convinced by the 
 rhythm of the words. To tell them the truth would 
 be cruel ; and I don't think being cruel can be 
 right." 
 
 " It would not be right to teach them your 
 new lie." 
 
 "7s it a lie?" 
 
 (" Why can she not see it ?" exclaimed the 
 Watcher. " Are blindness and suffering also of the 
 essence of the Idea ?")
 
 202 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Is it a lie ?" said Helen again. " Oh, I hope it 
 is ! Only, there's nothing else." She approached 
 Constance, held her arm, looked into her eyes. 
 " You know something, don't you ? You are dif- 
 ferent," she said. " Oh, tell me if you know it. If 
 only he is all right if he lives and is not lonely I 
 don't think that I mind being hurt, having nothing 
 to do." 
 
 Constance answered, " I know so very little : I 
 too am blinded. But somehow I am sure that we 
 are all together in one friendship ; the living and the 
 dead. You have only got to wait a little while. 
 Presently the light will come back, and you will 
 know." 
 
 " No. It will never come back for me any more. 
 But that does not really matter if my old dear is all 
 right ; and if I am able to pretend." 
 
 The bell rang sharply ; and Mrs. Reed went, 
 almost with alacrity, towards the door. Her mood 
 had changed, and she looked expectant. 
 
 " I knew," she said, " that Mrs. Vince would come !" 
 
 Constance heard a heavy footstep, and the sound 
 of an umbrella placed with decision in the stand. 
 Then Mrs. Reed came back, and Andrew followed 
 her into the room. 
 
 " I came," he said, " for Muriel. Bad headache 
 awfully sorry not fit to go out. Wanted to know 
 if there was anything we could do." He sat down 
 awkwardly, and eyed Constance. " Rather expected," 
 he remarked, " to find you here." 
 
 Helen looked crestfallen. In the midst of her 
 misery, one corner of her mind had remained aware 
 of her importance, both as a teacher and as a
 
 NEW FACTS 203 
 
 widow. She had supposed that she would be an 
 object of interest as well as of sympathy to her 
 followers ; having yet to learn that popularity seldom 
 survives in the presence of grief. Moreover, Muriel's 
 avoidance of her in the hour of desolation wounded 
 her heart as well as her pride. She was fond of her ; 
 and had thought of Mrs. Vince's delicate personality 
 as one may think in moments of weariness of soft 
 cushions and unattainable scents. The mere fact of 
 her prettiness would have made her visit comforting ; 
 would have restored to Helen's darkened universe 
 something of the light of life. But Muriel had a 
 headache, and the other woman understood. 
 
 She rejected Andrew's advances very gently ; 
 wanted nothing, would tell him nothing. The 
 arrangements, she said, were made. No ; not 
 cremation. The other was not so bad. She 
 looked appealingly at Constance, who interpreted 
 the message as a request to remove Mr. Vince as 
 quickly as she might. He rose, as she had expected, 
 when she did, shook hands warmly with Helen, and 
 muttered hastily, " Awfully grieved, don't you know ? 
 Dear old Reed man I always respected ! One 
 of the best!" 
 
 He opened the door and Constance would have 
 preceded him ; but Helen clutched her hand, held 
 her for a moment, and Vince went out into the little 
 hall. 
 
 " Come back !" she said. " You will come back, 
 won't you ? Promise that you will come back. 
 You see, the others are no good." 
 
 Constance replied humbly, " I'm no good either. 
 But I want to help you if I can."
 
 204 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 She was reminded, curiously, of Vince's first over- 
 tures of friendship. She seemed destined to take 
 Muriel's leavings; to console them for their idol's 
 indifference. It was hardly the part she would have 
 chosen ; but life thrust it into her hand, and she 
 knew that she must not reject it. 
 
 " I rather fancy," said the Watcher reflectively, as 
 they went down the long flights of stairs, " that you 
 make it worse for yourselves by being so obstinate 
 about it, do you not ? I see the Will plaiting you 
 together, forcing you to interpenetrate each other's 
 lives, to pass through, to let go, to move amongst 
 experience, perpetually to lose life and to find : and 
 you will not you make yourselves rigid you resist ! 
 You clutch at one another, crying, ' Mine, mine !' 
 and then you must be torn apart " 
 
 " But don't you see," she answered, " that they care 
 for one another ? If only I could learn to care like 
 that!" 
 
 " That is so foolish ! Do you wish to suffer ? 
 Stupid little creatures ; swept so quickly through the 
 dream, and feeling your chance encounters to be im- 
 portant, and making such a fuss ! Does no one 
 amongst you love that which dies not that which is 
 before, instead of that which is behind ?' 
 
 Vince replied for her, saying, " Shocking thing, 
 that poor woman left all alone ! Nothing to look 
 forward to." 
 
 " Only her death." 
 
 He looked at her with concern. 
 
 " It has evidently upset you a bit," he said. " Not 
 like you, to have these morbid ideas. Shouldn't 
 think about death ; might as well think about the
 
 NEW FACTS 205 
 
 dentist. Trying things, these visits. Muriel funked 
 it, poor girl, when it came to the point said it left 
 such a mark on the subconscious mind so she sent 
 me along in her place. I fancy she was afraid Mrs. 
 Reed might show her the old chap's body; these 
 people have such queer ideas. One thing, her views 
 and so on will be a comfort to her now. Not like a 
 woman without any religion." 
 
 " She's very wretched." 
 
 " Bound to be !" replied Andrew, " bound to be, 
 poor thing. After all, he was her husband." 
 
 " D'you think that makes any difference ?" 
 
 "Why, of course!" said Vince, astonished. "A 
 man, don't you know, who marries a woman, sticks 
 to her and so on she's bound to repay that with 
 affection. Husbands and children one takes care 
 of you, and you take care of the other and so 
 decent women even if they're clever always love 'em 
 at the bottom, and it is just at times like this they 
 find it out." 
 
 Constance brooded a little, and then said, " It 
 is because she took care of him that Mrs. Reed 
 is so desolate now. Being his wife does not come 
 in, really." 
 
 " Always counts must do ! After all, she had 
 the protection of his name." 
 
 " Do you think one would mourn for that ?" 
 
 " It counts counts more than you think," said 
 Andrew again. " Of course, poor creature, it's all 
 the worse for her because she has no family. 
 Pity she didn't adopt a child, as you did! Most 
 sensible thing I ever heard. Admire you for it. 
 Muriel is most interested. Anxious to talk to
 
 206 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 you about education, character-building, and so 
 on " 
 
 " I know nothing about that." 
 
 " Just as well just as well ! Bad for boys, all 
 this modern drivel ; and worse for girls in all 
 probability. Give her plenty of dolls and teach her 
 plain sewing, and she'll never miss the myths and 
 Nature study and all the other rot." 
 
 " I should like her to turn out satisfactorily." 
 
 " Of course you would. Main object of your 
 existence ; bound to be ! Something to leave be- 
 hind you. Just my feeling about the boy. Must 
 keep an eye on him ; see that he gets a proper 
 chance in spite of the women. Easy enough for 
 you ; got it all your own way." 
 / " She is rather a difficult child." 
 
 " 1 like them to have spirit. Shows they are 
 healthy. Namby-pamby children are no good !" 
 
 " She isn't that !" 
 
 " I'm awfully keen to see that youngster," said 
 Andrew, " I believe she's a ripping kid. When can 
 I come?" 
 
 It was only nine o'clock ; Vera looked her best 
 when she was asleep. Constance, swiftly reviewing 
 many dangers, chose the least. 
 
 "Come now," she said. "We are nearly there, 
 and you can have a peep at her in bed." 
 
 They climbed the shabby stairs, came to her 
 sitting-room, and Andrew helped her to light the 
 duplex lamp. Its smell did not seem to annoy him : 
 but he looked with pity and surprise at the poor and 
 dingy room, at the worn carpet, at the paralyzed 
 Venetian blinds. He wished all women to be com-
 
 NEW FACTS 207 
 
 fortable, and was shocked by this glaring testimony 
 to the poverty of his friend. 
 
 It came suddenly to Miss Tyrrel's mind that 
 Vince was the first guest to be admitted to her 
 lodging since the April night on which she had 
 brought the Watcher home. He sat by the fireplace, 
 in the chair whence that wild-eyed thing had first 
 gazed with fear and amazement on the life in which 
 it was entrapped. He too came as an inquisitor, 
 demanding admittance : but for him there were no 
 paradoxes, no difficulties, above all no mysteries 
 only the plain, straightforward, natural things. How 
 comfortable a destiny, she thought, to see life single- 
 eyed, and see it wrong ! 
 
 She crept to the bedroom, assured herself that 
 Vera slept, and called Vince softly to her side. They 
 stood together, looking in silence at the head sunk 
 deep in its soft pillow ; at the scattered locks of 
 black hair, so like Miss Tyrrel's own, and at the 
 little cruel face that they framed, which seemed to 
 have come from some alien strata of life. 
 
 When Andrew turned to his friend, there were 
 tears in his eyes. He took her hand, and squeezed it. 
 
 " Thank you," he said, " for allowing me to 
 come."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 TWO LOVERS 
 
 " Mortis vel vitae 
 Brevis est vox. . . . Ite : Venite. 
 
 Aspera vox Ite, 
 Vox est jocunda, Venite." 
 
 Fourteenth-Century Epigram. 
 
 IT was mid- December, cold and snowy, and the 
 Christmas season was in full swing. Lambton's 
 overflowed with children's books, colour-books, day- 
 books, anthologies, works of vague piety in pretty 
 covers, and reprints of the many classics which all 
 give and none wish to receive. There was Law's 
 " Serious Call," in pink brocade with pigskin labels 
 a new and dainty style and Congreve's Plays, 
 looking so respectable in pale grey buckram that old- 
 fashioned mothers often bought the volume for their 
 elder girls. The shelf of illustrated fairy-tales for 
 grown-up people was emptied daily ; and that con- 
 taining more solid books for the children's use was 
 nearly as popular. 
 
 Miss Tyrrel and her assistants lived at high pres- 
 sure, struggling to anticipate the unformulated wants 
 of peevish customers, leading on the more generously 
 disposed from shelf to shelf, probing and where 
 
 208
 
 TWO LOVERS 209 
 
 possible changing the minds of the many ladies who 
 knew the book they wanted, but could remember 
 neither its author nor its name. The more bookish 
 side of the business was now in abeyance. Its frankly 
 popular aspect triumphed ; and the rows of old 
 county histories, the early printed classics, the 
 Fathers, and the excellent collection of rare and 
 curious memoirs of the old French Court, were 
 hidden by piles of cheap Ruskins, the new sixpenny 
 Ibsen for which a great sale was expected " By 
 Airship to Dante's Inferno," the latest romance of 
 the religio-scientific school, and the " Baby's Shake- 
 speare," illustrated in auto-lithography by members 
 of the International Society. There was an inces- 
 sant crackling of brown paper, as the parcels were 
 folded, tied, and heaped upon the floor to await the 
 delivery van. Exercise, mental and physical, hardly 
 ceased, save for the slack interval at lunch time, 
 from ten in the morning until an hour or so after the 
 shutters were put up for the night. 
 
 Helen Reed, who had been engaged at Constance's 
 suggestion as an extra assistant during the busy 
 weeks, found that she had little time in which to 
 brood upon the destinies of the individual soul. She 
 was continually at the orders of persons who seemed 
 unaware of her intellectual importance and utterly 
 ignored her point of view. Their acceptance of her 
 as an ordinary shop-assistant was insulting; the 
 impervious ear which they turned to her advice 
 disappointed her ; but the resultant irritation re- 
 stored her interest in life, and Constance felt that 
 this first step in philanthropy was not to be wholly 
 unsuccessful. 
 14
 
 210 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 It had its disadvantages. She was compelled to 
 act as a buffer between Helen and Mr. John, who 
 detected in Mrs. Reed an unbusinesslike inclination 
 to direct the public attention to those thoughtful 
 works which are always published at net prices, and 
 therefore represent a small profit hardly earned. 
 
 " Your friend," he said, " has a very superior 
 indeed a clever appearance ; which is of course a 
 great point in a business of this kind. It is a pity 
 that she is so irresponsible. She seems unable to 
 grasp the importance of pressing the Christmas 
 stock on the public as much as one can." 
 
 " She is inexperienced at present." 
 
 " It isn't inexperience ; it is idiosyncrasy," replied 
 Lambton. " I watched her with an old lady 
 yesterday. I should have made her buy ' The 
 Gracious Gardens of our Land ' a book that ought 
 to be going very well. Instead of that, Mrs. Reed 
 actually allows her to order Danby's ' Development 
 of the Spirit of Man.' Single copy; small pub- 
 lisher ; net book ; hardly pay us for the trouble of 
 supplying it." 
 
 " I'm sure," said Constance meekly, " that she 
 tries to get people the books they really want." 
 
 " One doesn't run a house of this kind on the 
 people who know what they want. One runs it on 
 the people who are persuaded to want what they see." 
 
 " Still, she takes an intelligent interest in litera- 
 ture ; and that does encourage the customer." 
 
 " Not the right sort of customer," said Mr. John 
 crossly. " Only the cultured misers who buy cheap 
 copies of good stuff. I hate intelligent assistants ; 
 they always try to sell what they like."
 
 TWO LOVERS 211 
 
 He walked away, and the Watcher asked her, 
 " Is there any reason why you should try to sell 
 anything else?" 
 
 She was reminded of Martin's rule " The things 
 one does not love are better left alone " but even 
 he, she supposed, had hardly intended this austere 
 maxim to apply to commercial affairs. In these 
 hasty, busy days, with their constant scrimmage 
 between customer, cash-box, and order-book, it was 
 easy to forget Martin and the impracticable things 
 for which he stood. Even for her lodger and his 
 whims she had little attention to spare. The active 
 interests of the moment overpowered his influence. 
 His demands upon her senses were easily repelled, 
 his anxious questions seldom touched her mind. 
 Few women can realize the riddle of the universe 
 when confronted by the more pressing problem of 
 how to serve four impatient customers at one and 
 the same time without rousing their tempers or 
 making mistakes in their bills. Miss Tyrrel's con- 
 sciousness was monopolized by the practical and 
 had no time for the real. It danced upon the 
 surface ; seized by a myriad things, but seldom 
 resting long in any one. Sometimes as she crept 
 wearily to her lodging she wondered why she did it ; 
 but the answer to this question awaited her within. 
 
 The imprisoned Watcher, who had begun to 
 suspect in life some constant factor which spirit 
 might attain to understand, was bewildered anew by 
 the baby turmoil, the outrageous insincerities of 
 trade. Peeping through her eyes, when she could 
 spare them from the duties of poring over the ledger 
 or hunting through the disordered shelves, he saw 
 14 2
 
 212 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 this shop, this scrap of a seething world, at its 
 uttermost point of self-realization. It was become a 
 little throbbing centre of those absorbing and scatter- 
 ing forces, that systole and diastole movement, 
 credit and debt, which is the expression of life in 
 the body, the business, and the love of man ; perhaps, 
 too, in that of God. The shop collected and dis- 
 tributed. It gave, it took. It was fed, it brought 
 forth. It reminded him that all the puzzling knots 
 of infinity had been theatres where this one play was 
 ceaselessly performed. 
 
 Day after day, carts came to the door, and 
 deposited great packages of Christmas stock ; repeat- 
 orders of the best selling lines. Then cords were 
 cut, the outer cover, the inner padding of old news- 
 papers removed, and out came the potted thoughts, 
 the little diagrams by which men try to register 
 ideas. There for a few hours they lay upon the 
 tables, meek victims of the lust of men, waiting till 
 one out of the thronging purchasers should snatch 
 their bodies or dare to pry into their souls. It was 
 an omnivorous public ; and parcels that began with 
 " The Red Rose of Eros " often included " Ghosts," 
 " The Bab Ballads " and " Alice in Wonderland," and 
 ended with a copy of "Holy Living" or "The 
 Little Flowers of Saint Francis,' 1 which was very 
 popular in limp brown suede tied with a triple- 
 knotted string. Thus the books went out into new 
 lives, to form new concepts, new combinations, or at 
 least new ornaments of the more cultured kind ; and 
 others poured in, a constant stream, to take their 
 place. The Watcher longed for some equilibrium to 
 be struck ; for some moment when the ceaseless flux
 
 TWO LOVERS 213 
 
 of things should hesitate if only for an instant, that 
 he might recapture the lost knowledge of that 
 Reality which is at rest. But it never ceased ; it 
 was life. Suddenly he realized the need, the joy of 
 death ; and desired it greatly for these tired people 
 whom he had accepted as his friends. 
 
 They had, as he noticed, odd consolations, quaint 
 hints of reality thrust in upon them as they hastened 
 to and fro. At the least expected points, the veil 
 was lifted, and suddenly the light broke through : a 
 strong and shining beam, in which the dust danced 
 gaily. The Watcher was greatly interested in the 
 case of Phoebe Foster, who came often to the book- 
 shop since Helen had been added to its staff. Mrs. 
 Reed's friends vaguely supposed that in enriching 
 her employer they were somehow helping her ; a 
 course which offered all the advantages of a bazaar 
 and none of the disagreeables of unremunerative 
 charity. 
 
 Phcebe, then, frequented Lambton's at this season ; 
 most often in that slack interval about two p.m. 
 when the luncheon table competes successfully with 
 the shop. She seemed of late to be the seat of 
 subtle changes. There was a shifting of values ; as 
 if certain forces long suppressed and half forgotten 
 were rising, slowly but irresistibly, to a domination of 
 her personality. In this conflict, her self-assurance, 
 her intelligent freedom of speech, were worsted. Her 
 acquaintances saw with astonishment a new and in- 
 articulate Phcebe emerge ; a gentle, shame-faced, and 
 primitive thing, who was no longer able to speak of 
 the unspeakable with the scientific indifference which 
 is proper to her type. Muriel, who was distressed
 
 214 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 by her friend's condition, attributed it to some 
 obscure psychic disease ; to the sudden uprush into 
 conscious life of unfortunate ancestral traits latent 
 in the subliminal field. 
 
 " It is," she said, " a case of Pernicious Atavism ; 
 all the more acute because her education has held 
 it in check so long." 
 
 Expert opinion is not always correct. About a 
 week before Christmas Phoebe came to the book- 
 shop. There was upon her face a bashful radiance 
 which seemed to mark a new stage in her infirmity. 
 It was like the humble yet fiery joy which might 
 invest the newly inspired apostle of some singularly 
 ecstatic faith. She kissed Constance and Helen 
 with fervour, in spite of the disapproving presence of 
 Mr. John. 
 
 " How splendid it is," she said, " to be a woman !" 
 Helen replied, with a touch of her old solemnity : 
 " I cannot attribute great importance to the ac- 
 cident of sex." 
 
 " Oh, can't you ?" exclaimed Phcebe. " I can an 
 enormous importance. It is more than important, 
 really. It is deeply and wonderfully significant: 
 mysterious almost." 
 
 Constance said, " Yes ; that's true. Horribly 
 mysterious. Full of splendour, and full of evil 
 too." 
 
 Phoebe looked at her with soft eyes that were full 
 of a slightly patronizing sympathy, and spoke in the 
 gently authoritative tone of a person who is quite 
 sure of her ground. 
 
 " No," she said, " not evil ; that's a mistake. In 
 itself it is wholly beautiful because it's a vital, un-
 
 TWO LOVERS 215 
 
 changeable thing. Much too noble and beautiful to 
 be evil as well." 
 
 "I hope," said Mrs. Reed, "that you are not 
 going to be led away by merely sentimental views of 
 life." 
 
 " Some sentiments count," replied Phoebe obsti- 
 nately. " They arise in the soul, and show one the 
 meaning of things. And there is a strange enhance- 
 ment of life that comes from them from realizing 
 one's essential womanhood !" She looked at the 
 other women appealingly. " You don't know !" she 
 said, " or you would have to agree with me. I wish 
 I could describe it to you. It is extraordinarily in- 
 teresting I mean, of course, from the psychological 
 point of view." 
 
 Helen observed, " These transitory ecstasies are 
 seldom important to the soul." 
 
 " Oh, not transitory !" answered Phosbe. " I knew 
 you did not understand. This is true. One can 
 always tell the difference : at least, I can. Nothing 
 else matters. It changes the values of life : makes 
 everything perfectly plain." She thought that she 
 saw signs of amusement on Constance's face, blushed, 
 and added hastily, " As one penetrates below ap- 
 pearance, it is in the simple and elementary things 
 that one finds the deepest metaphysical meaning, I 
 think. And then " 
 
 Miss Tyrrel did not hear the end of the sentence. 
 The shop door had been pushed open ; the bell rang, 
 and she turned automatically to attend the incoming 
 customer. He stood for a moment with the pale 
 light behind him, staring into the shop. She stared 
 back at him, vaguely conscious of the arrival of some
 
 2i6 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 familiar, unexpected thing ; whilst he continued his 
 keen peering into the dimness, as if his coming had 
 some finer objective than the mere spending of money 
 and garnering up of books. The Watcher, too, 
 moved eagerly in her mind, as to the encounter of a 
 friend ; and before she had time to sift these sensa- 
 tions, Martin had discovered her and taken her hand. 
 She said, " You here in a city ? It's in- 
 credible !" 
 
 He answered, " I in a city ! Well, why not ? 
 There's a hiding-place for everything here." 
 " But why have you come ?" 
 He said in a lower tone, " Because I dared not 
 wait longer." 
 
 She looked at him then. Her first thought was 
 that he was curiously alive, with a white and ardent 
 life which made the spirits of her companions seem 
 but smouldering flames ; her next, that he was very 
 near to death. 
 
 He met her eyes. " I see," he observed, " that 
 you have guessed it. I am going. Is it not splendid ? 
 So quickly ! It came on me suddenly, and I knew 
 that there was no mistake." 
 
 She saw the unpeopled hills, the deserted shrine, 
 the extinguished light, the Cup unguarded and alone, 
 and exclaimed, " No ! you cannot go. You must 
 not!" 
 
 " Needs must, when marching orders come." 
 " But you, with a guardianship that cannot be 
 forsaken : ihziyou should be snatched !" 
 " I too." 
 
 " How cruel it is ! We are all slaves to this !" 
 " Slaves ?" he said. " Slaves to death ? What a
 
 TWO LOVERS 217 
 
 strange idea ! Why, it is our one earnest of liberty ! 
 Without that, how could we be more than self-con- 
 scious mildew, cumbering the wholesome surfaces of 
 things ? And it is actively beneficent, too : the 
 way, the truth, the life. The real life not the 
 dream. It was through death that the Cup came ; 
 it is the true discipline of the secret." 
 
 " But not for all." 
 
 " For all," he answered. " Each of us lives 
 towards that initiation ; every instant of our day, it 
 is going on. We can't be deprived of it we can't 
 miss it however stupid and cowardly, however evil 
 we may be." 
 
 " And you are glad to go ? You, with your 
 wonderful life ?" 
 
 " Why, yes. There was a wise physician once 
 who said, ' The misery of immortality in the flesh, 
 he undertook not that was Immortal.' So, how 
 could we want it ? How awful a fate : to wait the 
 home-going ship even in the Fortunate Isles, and 
 never sight it ! The Wandering Jew is really the 
 only denizen of the only hell." 
 
 "But you so soon why is it ?" 
 
 " I always knew that it would not be long ; and 
 this winter the snows have been heavy. It has been 
 an arctic business there these many weeks ; an ever- 
 lasting fight with the drifts, and plenty of rescue 
 work among the flocks in evil nights of the storm. 
 I've come near to anticipating my burial many a time, 
 and it has put on the clock rather quickly ; that 
 is all." 
 
 " Is it inevitable ? Are you sure ?" 
 
 He answered mockingly, " Do you wish to hear
 
 218 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 the name that is given to this particular method of 
 crumbling ?" 
 
 Then she saw with dismay the purest spot in her 
 world shine out, adorable, only to be snatched from 
 her. 
 
 The Watcher exclaimed, " What ! will you now 
 clutch at the dying, and risk the blackness and the 
 pain ?" 
 
 She turned from him and considered anew the 
 radiant face of Martin ; that thin and eager face, 
 smiling into the very eyes of corruption. She looked 
 with him, and saw Death, the faithful servant of true 
 lovers, preparing the bridal chamber of the soul. 
 Martin leaned forward, with a gesture of gratitude 
 and ecstasy, to the fruition of his long desire. 
 
 He was glancing about him now, full of the zest 
 for little things which is peculiar to the utterly de- 
 tached. He said, " So this is the place ! I have 
 often thought of it and of you since the day on 
 which you came." 
 
 Helen and Phoebe were looking at him with a very 
 human curiosity ; for this was the first time that 
 they had detected Miss Tyrrel in the possession of a 
 friend outside the limits of their own set. 
 
 Phcebe said to Mrs. Reed, " Do you think I 
 wonder ! She has never mentioned him ; but they 
 seem to be great friends. It would be so nice. I 
 am sure that her life is not a very happy one." 
 
 Helen replied, " No. But no life is really happy." 
 
 "Oh, it maybe it can!" exclaimed Phoebe quickly 
 
 and clumsily. " If you give yourself ; give yourself 
 
 altogether, I mean ; and join in. Then, you find 
 
 your place and are at peace."
 
 TWO LOVERS 219 
 
 Mrs. Reed received these words in silence. They 
 were delivered with an accent of authority, which 
 she disliked. But Martin, who had heard them, 
 turned and smiled. Phoebe smiled back. There 
 seemed, instantly, some link established between 
 them ; as if they had common possession of a secret 
 which the others sought in vain. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " that's it ! It seems such a 
 simple recipe, doesn't it, when once one has tried it?" 
 " It's wonderful it transforms the world." 
 "Yes; it really does fulfil the whole claim of 
 the philosopher's stone. It confers eternal youth, 
 transmutes dull matter, turns the dust to gold." 
 
 Mrs. Reed said with eagerness, "You are evi- 
 dently interested in alchemy." 
 
 Martin, who was considering Phoebe's gentle and 
 radiant face with approval, answered indifferently, 
 " Sometimes its language is useful, and approximates 
 
 to the truth " 
 
 Phoebe interrupted him " But truth isn't words ; 
 it's not definite and discoverable. It is just a new 
 way of seeing the ordinary things." 
 
 Martin said, " Yes : the way of love, that's all." 
 Phoebe, the word once mentioned, seemed to ex- 
 perience a certain relief. She looked at Constance ; 
 as if there, too, she might expect a measure of 
 comprehension. 
 
 " I came to tell you something," she said. " Only 
 you wouldn't understand me. I'm going to be 
 married." 
 
 The Watcher muttered, " Another link to be torn 
 apart. Another pain. How mad you are!" 
 
 " Of course," continued Phoebe hastily, " you
 
 220 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 understand, I would not do it in the ordinary, con- 
 ventional way. That would be disgusting. It is 
 because we feel the inner, personal link so strongly ! 
 Because I have become convinced that we complete 
 each other's lives. If we fell out of love, we should 
 separate. I told Freddy that. A mere material pro- 
 longation of a tie whose reality had gone would 
 become blasphemous ; the sin against Eros." 
 
 " I suppose," observed Martin, " that by falling 
 out of love, you really mean falling out of passion, 
 don't you ? How can one fall out of love, any more 
 than one can fall out of heaven ? It may be very 
 tiresome, very onerous : generally is, I think, in the 
 end. But it clings tight ; you carry it with you, 
 even to the deeps; and it flames up when it is 
 wanted. Flamma ceiernce caritaih" 
 
 "Yes I think I mean, I'm sure it is like that, 
 really," replied Phoebe, addressing him directly, and 
 in a very low voice. 
 
 The shop bell rang again ; and she became alert. 
 " I expect that must be Freddy," she said. " He 
 promised to call for me at half-past two." 
 
 Mr. Burroughs entered. He bore himself with a 
 new, possessive air ; at once absurd, charming and 
 pathetic. The ladies congratulated him, and he 
 answered with conviction that he was a lucky fellow. 
 
 " I've got a taxi at the door," he said. " And I 
 thought, Phcebe, that we might run down to the 
 Palace and hear the new singing-girl she's got a 
 matinee to-day and then tea at the Carlton and 
 stroll home in the dusk. That is, of course, if you 
 are quite sure you'd like it ?" 
 
 Helen, who knew Miss Foster's tastes, waited with
 
 TWO LOVERS 221 
 
 interest for her reply. But Phoebe agreed with 
 enthusiasm. She was radiant, plainly eager to be 
 gone. Freddy waited upon her with great care and 
 gentleness, hooked her fur coat, and adjusted her 
 muff-chain comfortably beneath the collar. She 
 accepted his ministrations with obvious pride. 
 
 Martin nodded at their departing figures, and 
 observed, " That's all right ; the simple but most 
 excellent way ! Later on, it will hurt ; and then 
 her chance will come. She will emerge : a completed 
 animal or a transfigured saint." 
 
 Constance said in a low tone, " Oh, why did I 
 miss it ? That's the way in to give up one's will 
 to be touched like that, with respect, by someone 
 who cares !" 
 
 He answered, " It is very agreeable ; but for some 
 there is a better and a harder way."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 
 
 " ... It is our own notion of the First and only Fair, yet 
 embodied in a substance, yet dissolving again into a sort of 
 imagination. . . . It is beyond me!" NEWMAN: Callista. 
 
 MARTIN sat by the fire. Once he shivered a 
 little, and coughed suddenly; and Constance 
 looked at him with terror. It was an evil night of 
 sleet and icy winds. He had come to her lodging 
 cold, wet and exhausted ; but with that invulnerable 
 radiance of his untouched by these outward dis- 
 abilities. The Watcher looked at him with sym- 
 pathy, with envy almost ; comprehending the haste 
 and ardour of the escaping spirit, hot-foot for the 
 Real. Martin now shone for him with a simple 
 light ; the more noticeable amongst the cloudy per- 
 sonalities of the town. He was assured in his 
 possession of something to which this comfortable, 
 wage-earning horde had never attained: something 
 which even Phoebe, lit by her selfless passion even 
 Constance, with her eager peering could not see. 
 
 The source of this splendour was not far to seek. 
 The shrine of the Cup stood upon the table between 
 them. Its doors were closed; a heavy covering of 
 
 222
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 223 
 
 tooled leather shrouded the jewelled angels and 
 winged animals, and the mystical plaits that went 
 about them, from an inquisitive world. Even thus 
 disguised, as it were, in travelling dress, it seemed 
 alien as any pilgrim angel amongst the nomad's 
 tents, from the busy, shabby civic life into which it 
 had been thrust. So remote and starry a thing 
 might be actual in the City of Sarras ; it was im- 
 possibly fantastic in cheap lodgings near Netting Hill. 
 
 Yet it stood there, as it had stood upon its altar, 
 defying the competition of material things whilst 
 meeting them on their own plane ; a tangible link 
 between two worlds. The spasmodic thunder of 
 the motor omnibuses in the main road, the rattle of 
 the lighter traffic, the crescendo of the postman as 
 he came house by house down the street : these 
 sounds, broken at intervals by those sudden, hateful, 
 inexplicable cries which puncture the London night, 
 had but thrown into a greater relief the deep silence 
 in which the Graal dwelt apart, ringed in by its 
 invulnerable reality. 
 
 She had exclaimed, when Martin stood with it 
 in the doorway, " Oh, not here ! Not here ! There 
 is no place for it in this world." 
 
 He had answered, " This world is its home." 
 
 " No, no ! The pure earth, the clean country, 
 perhaps. Not this foul city." 
 
 "This foul city," said Martin, "is many worlds, 
 not one. It lies fold upon fold ; and white folds are 
 hidden amongst the rest. And where there is one 
 mind left that can love it, it has a resting-place." 
 
 " Can you find such a lover, such a safe guardian, 
 here ?"
 
 224 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 It was the Watcher who answered this question ; 
 crying out in her mind humbly and urgently, casting 
 himself down before this Exile of Eternity, clamouring 
 for the control of his friend's human forces, that 
 therewith he might serve, even from the deeps of 
 the dream, the Idea which he loved. 
 
 Now, they sat, as it were, by consent, in silence. 
 Martin's words, the Watcher's answer, had loosed 
 activities too urgent to find issue in speech. Con- 
 stance glanced perpetually from him to her other 
 guest and back again ; trying hard to orientate her 
 mind amongst these incredible adventures. She 
 knew now the reason of his coming : knew, resented, 
 and opposed it with the whole strength of her will. 
 She was beset by emotions, alive with them. Each, 
 by turns, claimed dominion; announcing itself as the 
 accredited agent of that Self which sat shrouded 
 within. They grouped themselves, as it seemed to her, 
 into two camps : the army of human things, spread 
 very widely, terrible with the banners of life, and 
 over against it a little company most strange of 
 aspect, to which as yet she could not give a name. 
 
 There came first from the camp of humanity that 
 sad vague longing for the warm touch of common 
 life for respect, protection, the peaceful domination 
 of a cruder, stronger will which had tugged so 
 cruelly at her heart in the moment of Phoebe's 
 sudden exhibition of normal and irrational love. It 
 urged on her the joyous necessity of a descent to 
 the sweet and trustful intimacies of the earth ; to no 
 fierce appeasement of instinctive passions, but rather 
 to the gentler commerce, the domestic pieties, of 
 mutual help. It whispered, V<z solis ! and glossed
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 225 
 
 this bitter warning with a reminder of the years 
 that she had missed. It suggested to her, as no 
 mean objective, the completing as far as might be, 
 upon this human plane, of a life that was clearly 
 incomplete. 
 
 She foresaw the careful forging, the consolidation, 
 of friendships ; of the human, social link. She saw 
 Andrew, through the long years, coming to her for 
 the understanding which he could never return : 
 Muriel, taking an affection that she would not repay. 
 She conceived of herself giving and spending a 
 centre of selfless activities accepting on every hand 
 love, obligation, duty in the sacred name of Life ; 
 and of Life herself as rewarding the faithful initiate 
 with new and mysterious gifts. She saw also the one 
 blot upon this prospect Vera and decided that 
 she, too, must become the object of a wholesome 
 but not inconvenient interest; material for the 
 builder's hands. All her late adventures had but 
 seemed to endorse the propriety of these emotions ; 
 their vast opportunities, the finality of the experience 
 on which they converged. They broke it to her, as 
 it were, that the little things of life were taken 
 collectively worth while for the little animals which 
 life had bred : that the amenities of camp life mean 
 more to the private soldier than the far-off Idea for 
 which his war is waged. 
 
 This powerful attack was met by other forces 
 whose action she would have resisted had she dared. 
 Their battle was set against the claims of indivi- 
 duality ; against all the tossing banners of the 
 senses, however cunningly disguised. They came, 
 like auxiliaries from oversea, borne on a strong 
 '5
 
 226 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 tide, cold and pure, that seemed to have risen in 
 the soundless deeps. And as a great ship, coming 
 by canals into the heart of fertile country where 
 the watery path runs fine between the serviceable 
 mangold fields will bring landsmen certain tidings 
 of the hidden sea, a hint of far-off adventure lurking 
 in the tarry ropes : so with the intrusion of this 
 company from unseen immensities, Constance felt 
 upon her face the chill spray of the formless ocean 
 beyond time. 
 
 She knew but too well whence came these urgent 
 powers. Once she had been shut with them in 
 the chapel of the fells ; and they had poured forth 
 upon her, overwhelming her judgment and her will. 
 Then, she had fled their arms, though she could not 
 escape their remembrance. They had followed her ; 
 they were not to be eluded. They pursued, they 
 caressed. They held torches, from which a new 
 radiance was cast on the army of life ; so that its 
 ranks took another proportion, its very standards 
 shone with strange tints. 
 
 The centre, it seemed, of their influence, its 
 symbol, was that enshrined Chalice which Martin, 
 leaving the dream, must leave behind. Its coming 
 had brought close to her this terrible yet adorable 
 world ; it threatened to impose that world and its 
 unknown obligations upon her mind. She was 
 determined to refuse its presence : she would not 
 permit her life to be deflected by an accidental 
 encounter with a relic whose very meaning she 
 did not understand, whose legend her intelligence 
 refused. 
 
 Her unrest was accentuated by the Watcher's
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 227 
 
 distress. Possessed by the vision of an unimagin- 
 able Beauty, feeling close upon him the very bene- 
 diction of that Idea which he had ignorantly pursued 
 through eternity with such utter unsuccess, he yet 
 clung to the friend whom he loved. With an odd 
 touch of human feeling he now desired for her the 
 happiness which she had chosen rather than that 
 tranquillity which his reason would have accorded to 
 her. She was bent, clearly, on tasting it to the 
 full : this tangle of love and death, this terrible 
 combination of intimate union and utter loneliness. 
 Since she was set on it, even to his own despite he 
 would help her. And yet there was the one Love, 
 the one Will, the beautiful, the adored, the unat- 
 tained ; only to be reached by him now in so far as 
 he could drag her with him on the way. But she 
 did not wish to go, she would not lend herself to 
 his adventure ; and she too, as he dimly discerned 
 it, had her rights. The Watcher began to taste 
 something of man's awful choice between his neigh- 
 bour and his God. 
 
 When the silence had lasted a little while, Martin 
 said to her : " Suppose you talk to me about 
 it?" 
 
 "It?" 
 
 " The problem that is pulling you apart. Air it a 
 little. It is a splendid opportunity, you know, 
 because I am going to die. Confessors, I think, 
 should always be dying men." 
 
 " Detached." She corrected him. 
 
 "Am I not?" 
 
 " You are a lover," she said, " and a fanatic, which 
 is the same thing. You will show no mercy, because 
 152
 
 228 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 you are convinced. But I'm not, and I don't wish 
 to be." 
 
 "Your lodger is." 
 
 " But there is another side to my life a real, 
 warm, actual side and I want to live it. You 
 would think it commonplace, foolish, unworthy ; but 
 it's alive, it means that I matter to another human 
 being. It means that one is not alone. I have 
 tried solitude. I can't bear it. And you would 
 drive me back to loneliness for this !" 
 
 " You would not be lonely." 
 
 " I should ; alone with invisible things, the most 
 terrible solitude of all. And now, I am nearly 
 happy. Let me be. I've got a friend a stupid, 
 ordinary friend who is kind and another, a foolish 
 woman who's lonely, whom I can help. It is some- 
 thing to lean on and something to do ; something 
 solid in life. Oh, I know it seems absurdly vague 
 and scrappy ; I know that it will go when we are 
 dead. But I want it now, all the same." 
 
 " Well, why not ?" 
 
 " I don't know," she said. " But I'm afraid. I 
 think that when the white light is poured on it, 
 everything will change. There will be a shifting 
 of values and deepening of shadows, a lighting up of 
 hidden things: and I shall not be able to go on. 
 And yet, surely, my little satisfactions are innocent 
 and reasonable on their own plane ? May not my 
 heart know what loyalty, gentleness and gratitude 
 mean ? Once, I gave my body the privileges of 
 womanhood. That's over ; but my life is not over. 
 It goes on, and there are all the subtler senses to be 
 fed, the delicate joys of action and intercourse to be
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 229 
 
 tasted, the savouries of the emotional feast ! I 
 suppose they seem incomplete and unimportant ; 
 but they are important to me." 
 
 " They are small. You would find that a bigger 
 love would answer best." 
 
 She understood him, and exclaimed, " Don't make 
 me take it ! I can't. You do not know. I will not 
 have it. I am not worthy." 
 
 " No one is worthy. Was I ?" 
 
 " I think you must have been, because you love it. 
 But I don't think that I love it ; and I know that I 
 don't want it." 
 
 " You don't know that you can't because you 
 don't know it" he said. " And you never will know 
 it until you care a bit. It's worth your while, too, 
 just for the beauty ; the intense, the incredible 
 romance. Why, this, the discovery of it and you've 
 got to discover, you know, to do your own hunting 
 from the first is the most splendid, the most thril- 
 ling, the greatest adventure in the whole world ! 
 It's the one love-affair that never wears out. It's 
 ecstasy on ecstasy the world re-made for you. 
 Fiat lux fresh every morning, and new things 
 gleaming in the ray. How dull not to have it in 
 your universe ! The dream and the discipline the 
 everlasting rapture and the never-ending quest !" 
 
 She caught for an instant his excitement ; trembled 
 under it. She had a glimpse as he spoke of that 
 high romance, that splendid passion. Martin's 
 phrases played upon her nerves as music might. 
 She blushed and breathed quickly, because they were 
 beautiful and exalted her. She heard behind them 
 the wild, solemn and exultant song with which the
 
 2 3 o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 ages move to their destiny beneath the hand of 
 Love. 
 
 Then the walls of the room ran back into per- 
 spective, and caught her as in a vice. The piercing 
 music faded : the sullen noises of reality returned. 
 She said to herself " Don't be a fool !" and to Martin 
 " No. It's no good I dare not. It is too over- 
 whelming. Against my will, against my belief, it 
 crushes me." 
 
 " It is," said Martin, " very inconvenient ; and 
 that is what you really mean. You are afraid of it ; 
 afraid of being deflected, of hitching your waggon to 
 a star and being dragged, perforce, up stony hills. 
 Don't be a coward !" 
 
 " I am not ; but I can't react to this." 
 
 " That inhabitant of yours can will. It is his 
 chance. Do you owe him no duty ?" 
 
 " That's dreadful, too. Here, he is too strong for 
 me. He is pushing, eager : he divines things ahead. 
 And I am confused in clouds ! Won't you help me 
 out tell me explain ?" 
 
 / " Enter the atmosphere of reality : you will get 
 your explanation there. That is all I ask you to do ; 
 and all that he asks. You are stifling him with your 
 frittered emotions, your little inconsequent loves and 
 hates. Get into the clearer air, the purer light ; and 
 from there, love life as much as you will." 
 
 " That is impossible," she said, " this is a strong 
 thing, a terrible thing, pulling : but the other, the 
 thing I really want, is pulling back. They are both 
 life, I suppose ; they should both be in it. But they 
 can't be for me. I am sure of that." 
 
 " Best not to be quite so sure," answered Martin,
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 231 
 
 " And to trust life a little when you cannot see your 
 way. There is a cosmic economy, you know, as 
 well as a political one ; the angels have their reserves. 
 Here is your opportunity a unique one a very 
 mighty thing. Take your talisman : live from that 
 centre, love from it. Throw down the barriers, 
 merge yourself in this. Don't quarrel with it be- 
 cause you do not see how it is going to fit. The 
 wind that bloweth where it listeth never fits in. As 
 well quarrel with that, because you do not see how 
 you are going to extract from it the oxygen that you 
 need. You can't get it any other way, you know ; 
 and you can't get the Real except in its rare penetra- 
 tions of the dream. Et Verbum caro factum est et 
 habitavit in nobis; and we said, " How very incon- 
 venient, how disturbing, how hopelessly incompatible 
 with practical life !" 
 
 " Well, it is," she said obstinately. " It makes a 
 cleavage ; you cannot blend it with the rest." 
 
 " Not a cleavage ; it is plaited right through. The 
 very essence, the actualization of life !" 
 
 " But Earth's got to be in it in human life I 
 think." 
 
 " That's the whole point ; the miracle of the link. 
 The only place where earth is sanctified and safe." 
 
 " And how," she asked, " is your link to be kept safe 
 in the flux and tangle of the dream ? How, when we 
 come to the concrete, am I to preserve your relic of 
 reality, here, as it should be kept ? Where is the 
 altar, the solitude, the adoration ?" 
 
 " I am glad you put the one essential last. As for 
 the rest, they matter nothing. It pleased me, whilst 
 I could, to make things orderly and appropriate ; to
 
 232 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 evoke again the atmosphere of the age that had loved 
 it best. But of course the whole world more than 
 the world, all Being is just a sanctuary for this." 
 
 His eyes were upon the shrine. They seemed to 
 look through and beyond it, into the very eyes of the 
 beloved : as if he had already begun to make his fare- 
 well to the dear visible sign of his joy, and passed in 
 imagination to the secret moment of rapture, the 
 extinguished torch, the silent embrace. 
 
 Presently he said in a meditative voice, considering 
 as it were from far off her curious case, " How 
 odd it must seem to the angels ! There you are 
 you, the clean and glorious soul of you 
 imprisoned, fettered, peeping out. And you, who 
 might break the fetters, might escape to the sunshine, 
 the splendour, the dalliance for which you were made, 
 are held back because you have persuaded yourself 
 that your fetters are delightful educative even 
 necessary toys." 
 
 " Ah !" she exclaimed, " the pretty words ! They 
 make me restless they remind me of the bars. But 
 if I am imprisoned, it's in a strong and cunning 
 fortress. How can one slip the fetters ? How can 
 one escape ?" 
 
 " If you're honest you will know, when the hour 
 strikes for it. Each goes out by his own gate. It 
 is always just wide enough to let one through ; im- 
 possible to prophesy anything more than that. 
 Yield yourself to love don't shirk it that is all ! 
 You are on the very verge of waking, you know. 
 You have fear and amazement ; and that is the 
 initiatory touch, the peep through the bars. But 
 awe is for those who only look upon the mysteries.
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 233 
 
 There is rapture within, and satisfaction of every 
 desire : a place of refreshment, of light, and of 
 peace." 
 
 The Watcher cried in her heart ; torn between 
 this fierce all-satisfying love the appeasement of his 
 torments, the End of Knowledge, the unknown object 
 of his quest and the troubled dim-eyed woman, 
 bent still on feeling her way by the touch of material 
 things along that pathway to reality which he dis- 
 cerned, straight and shining, before him. 
 
 Martin rose. 
 
 " Well, you have got to do it," he said, " you found 
 the Cup, and you recognized it you, or your lodger. 
 You are the only efficient guardian ; merely because, 
 in spite of yourself, you know" 
 
 " But can you trust me with it ? Anything might 
 happen." It was her last, unavailing wriggle under 
 his hand. 
 
 " Yes ; and if it does, it is all right." 
 
 " Don't you want to tell me what to do ?" 
 
 " No. Why should I know best ? I have finished 
 my trust. I hand it on. Now, it is yours. You 
 hold the key. Not for me to dictate." 
 
 As he was leaving her, she ran before him, barred 
 the door. 
 
 " I am afraid," she said, "to be alone with it ! 
 Oh, how wise the people were who invented rites and 
 priesthoods, to shelter them a little and stand be- 
 tween. I cannot endure the light, the power. Shut 
 in the room with it, day after day ; alone with the 
 Real ! It is too strong. I dare not." 
 
 " The rites and the priests," he answered, " are no 
 good, once one cares. Then, no shelter avails."
 
 234 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 "I fear it." 
 
 " So gentle," he said, " and so passionate ! His 
 feet amongst the lilies, his head girded with the 
 thorn. Humble, yet omnipotent. Desirous, and 
 elusive. The most intimate of mysteries ; the most 
 mysterious of intimates. A servant of his servants, 
 drinking with them the loving-cup of pain. Trans- 
 cendent personality, self-limited to the small powers 
 of your soul. ... Is it this that you fear ?" 
 
 The Watcher cried, " No ! It is this that I seek, 
 that I love !" 
 
 She put her hands over her eyes then, desperately : 
 as if she feared to share his piercing vision, would 
 draw across his only windows the heavy curtain of 
 the flesh. That by this action, she blinded herself 
 also, did not weigh with her. She was at a moment 
 in which too great a darkness seemed less terrible 
 than an excess of light. The blessed dimness shut her 
 in, soothed her. It lulled for an instant the torment 
 of her unavailing thought. Only Martin's last words 
 echoed, phrase by phrase, in her empty heart. Each 
 sentence struck sharp and clear, leaving a little 
 hammer mark upon the soul. She trembled, sick 
 with apprehension of that which she could not see. 
 But she was faintly conscious of strong and tender 
 hands, as it were, that held her ; and of her own 
 helplessness within them a weakness that was 
 peace. The meshes of the Will were close about 
 her. She divined them. They were plaited into 
 amazing patterns which she could not understand. 
 They clasped her crumbling body firmly, linking it 
 with the furthest fringe of things. 
 
 The darkness thickened, and the silence. Far
 
 CONSTANCE AND THE REAL 235 
 
 away, as in a dream, she heard the sound of a soft- 
 closing door. 
 
 Then within her mind she felt the gentle move- 
 ment of the Watcher. He said, " Dear child, poor 
 little one, have no fear : do not resist. I am your 
 friend; I desire your happiness. But without the 
 Idea, happiness is impossible in a world that con- 
 tains both Death and Love." 
 
 She stayed yet a little longer in the darkness, 
 hesitating on the verge of the new life. When she 
 looked up, she was alone with the Graal.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 
 
 " Oh, rash one, pause, and learn my name ; 
 
 I know not love, nor hate, nor ruth. 
 I am that heart of frost or flame, 
 Which burns with one desire the truth. 
 
 " Thou shalt indeed be lifted up 
 
 On wings like mine, 'twixt seas and sky ; 
 But canst thou drink with me my Cup ? 
 And canst thou be baptized as I ? 
 
 " The cup I drink can only rouse 
 
 The thirst it slakes not, like the sea ; 
 And lo, my own baptismal brows 
 Must be their own Gethsemane." 
 
 W. H. MALLOCK: The Veil of the Temple. 
 
 DURING the ensuing days, Constance perceived 
 with astonishment the unchanged demeanour 
 of visible things. Like most neophytes of the 
 mysteries, she had vaguely expected them to react 
 to the incredible conditions in which, with her, 
 they were now placed. For the second time in 
 her experience, the walls of the world had been 
 broken. Once they had given way before the 
 assault of a supersensual curiosity. Now they were 
 dissolved by the presence of a relic a symbol 
 
 236
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 237 
 
 wherein, unimaginably, Personality and Idea were 
 brought to a point, and pierced, as a flaming sword, 
 the barriers of time and space. 
 
 A terrible and starry perfection dwelt with her 
 now. Yet such was the stubborn quality of the 
 dream, that the shabby room, the shabby daily life, 
 were much as usual. The long, exhausting hours of 
 work : the cheap and hasty lunch two poached 
 eggs and a penny roll, eaten amidst the perennial 
 crumbs and cocoa-stains of a thriving tea-shop the 
 homeward tramp through the sodden streets : the 
 grate which smoked persistently since the northerly 
 winds had set in, the pile of mending with which 
 she never could keep pace : all these things were still 
 there, in the forefront of her consciousness. The 
 strange light which shone in her home did not alter 
 their values. They appeared insensible to its rays. 
 Even Vera, as recalcitrant to spiritual forces as the 
 least animate of things, seemed unaware of any 
 change in her environment. The snowy season had 
 added a chronic cold in the head to her usual dis- 
 abilities, and she took full advantage of this weak- 
 ness in pressing her claims upon attention and in- 
 dulgence. She spoke greedily and persistently of 
 Christmas : and mentioned the exact profit in food 
 and toys which the landlady's children usually ex- 
 tracted from this celebration of Holy Poverty. 
 
 " I've used five hankies to-day, as well as all the 
 times I did without; and hundreds of sniffing. 
 Billie had a little gun last Christmas one you can 
 hurt with when it shoots. Tanta! can't I have a 
 little gun ?" 
 
 " What would you do with it ?"
 
 238 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 " Hit things. Billie hit a puppy and it bled." 
 
 " That was cruel." 
 
 " Don't care !" said Vera. " I want to hit things. 
 And cats. And sparrows. Do let me have a gun 
 and try to shoot." 
 
 " We will see." 
 
 " Oh, I know about seeing," cried Vera stormily, 
 "the toys you see about are the ones that never 
 comes. I want to shoot. I want to hit things like 
 a boy. Say I'll have a gun ; or else I'll suck paint 
 off my soldiers and be sick when you isn't here." 
 
 "Santa Claus," said Constance with authority, 
 " brings whatever he likes. People have to take 
 what they get, and say Thank you : else he does not 
 come at all another year." 
 
 Vera muttered rebelliously, " Billie says there 
 ain't no Santa Claus." Nevertheless, she was half 
 convinced and retreated. 
 
 The Watcher, contemplating the scene, said, 
 " Strange ! yet I suppose that this also has its place 
 in the Idea ?" 
 
 Constance exclaimed, " Yes: but where, but how? 
 Where is the beauty, the love, and the law ? I 
 want a link, a guide." 
 
 He answered, " Is it not here?" 
 
 It was : but because she could not apprehend it, 
 it exasperated her. She stood, as it seemed, outside 
 the true field of its power: perceiving the light, 
 dazed by it indeed, but untouched by those chemical 
 rays whose fringe reached the Watcher, were received 
 by him with so humble a thankfulness. He said to 
 her, with disappointment, 
 
 " I had thought that it would have made you very
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 239 
 
 happy ; that the real might have solved the discords 
 of the dream. But, since it does not, I think you 
 had best leave it alone." 
 
 From the depths of her spirit, another voice 
 replied, " I cannot." 
 
 " Far better," he said. " It is not for you it does 
 not belong to your world. I see that now : I had 
 forgotten it. The stir and effervescence of this life 
 are ^against an understanding of its quietness. You 
 must wait for the settlement of death. It belongs to 
 us it calls us it awaits our knowledge. You can- 
 not cope with it from the midst of the dream." 
 
 The inner voice answered, "If we cannot, why is 
 it here ?" 
 
 " Some of you may. To do so you must leave all 
 else, I think, and go away, as Martin did, into a secret 
 place where there can be no scattering of your love. 
 But you hate solitude : and this is a solitary's affair. 
 So, leave it alone until you die. Turn to the life 
 that you wished for, for which your body was built. 
 That is best. Try your own recipe. Be happy with 
 the other little creatures. I wish you to be happy. 
 In this, too, there may be some secret elixir, some 
 syrup of truth. I will help you. You shall forge links, 
 and join with the others, as that man and woman 
 did who looked at each other with so quiet and 
 strange a joy. We will put the difficulties away. 
 I see them where you cannot. I am determined to 
 undertake your life." 
 
 She listened to him with astonishment : for he 
 seemed at this moment almost human. He had 
 moved far from his old attitude of arrogance, im- 
 patience, curiosity. He spoke as some generous
 
 240 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 parent, some indulgent friend, might speak to a 
 weaker comrade, to a dear and petted child : forbid- 
 ding, for very kindness' sake, the austere and honour- 
 able quest, and offering in its place the pleasant 
 valleys, with all that they held of homely, dulcet 
 life. He was for the hills. He longed for them ; 
 and she knew it. But because of his friendship he 
 would forego them yet a little. He was on her 
 side in this ; for her immediate happiness, for all 
 the human cares and pleasures that she loved. 
 
 It was the irony of the situation that this eagerness, 
 this sympathy in him, provoked in Constance's mind 
 no gratitude, but rather a stubborn opposition : an 
 unwilling opposition, which, though it hurt her, she 
 could not repress. It was forced on her by that 
 Inner Inhabitant of hers : the tiresome, unaccommo- 
 dating thing whose waking moments she had learned 
 to dread. In the presence of the Cup this dweller of 
 the innermost kept, as it seemed, incessant vigil. 
 It, too, loved, reverenced Life fertile, strenuous life 
 but loved it as a pilgrim loves the highway, not as 
 an animal desires its lair. Where she, with the 
 Watcher's approval, would have lingered, it was for 
 a forward march. Whither ? It could not tell her : 
 could only cry, " On ! on !" where the Watcher now 
 said, " Rest, enjoy, be passive ; do not seek to under- 
 stand." 
 
 " No use," she said to him then, "to try to under- 
 stand it. I cannot. But I feel the pressure none 
 the less." 
 
 " Is not your normal chance of pain love, death and 
 loneliness enough for you ?" he answered. "Must 
 you share our torment, too ? I can never rest till I
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 241 
 
 know the Idea in its fulness, because it is my End. 
 I have but a forced option : to suffer or to under- 
 stand. I think that is what you mean by heaven 
 and hell. But why add this burden to your own, 
 poor blinded little prisoner of the dust ?" 
 
 " Prisoner within the dream," said the imperious 
 Voice again. " But, when the dream is over 
 what ?" 
 
 " Time enough for that !" observed the Watcher. 
 " Here you are conditioned by it. It is the Will. 
 Since you cannot annihilate your selfhood, it is best 
 to accept its limitations. Live. Run to and fro. 
 Enjoy your toys." 
 
 The urgent voice replied, " Too late ! I have been 
 set upon the road." 
 
 " I will help you to turn back." 
 
 " Once," said the voice, " you were for my libera- 
 tion. You saw its possibility, and urged on me its 
 joy. You mocked at her blindness : condemned her 
 transitory toys." 
 
 " I did not love her then." 
 
 " 'Tis a short-sighted love." 
 
 " You taught it," said the Watcher. 
 
 Tossed between these combatants, Constance found 
 but little enjoyment in the position in which she was 
 placed. Whilst they fought, the Cup reigned in its 
 silence : and she recognized in it the true arbiter of 
 her fate. She had taken it grudgingly : determined, 
 if she might, to defend herself against its assault. 
 Now, there began to happen to her one of the most 
 disconcerting of all experiences : the steady pressure 
 of an influence which is purer than oneself. Soon, 
 she realized that it is vain to desire to sit in darkness, 
 16
 
 242 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 once one has assumed the guardianship of a great 
 light. That light pierced the doors which hid its 
 material symbol : it grew, unawares, upon her con- 
 sciousness. She began to understand something of 
 the mood of those old mystics, who imaged in the 
 Flaming Chalice the utmost secret of their love. 
 
 The interests, the values of temporal life slid from 
 her as she gazed at it : so softly, that she knew not 
 they had gone. Her will, her vision were chained 
 upon this point, where she looked on the eternal 
 self-renewing of that Creative Agony which is the 
 only fruitfulness. From its midst, as from the midst 
 of a furnace, a voice cried to its mate : and there was 
 that within her which answered the call. Through 
 the window of the Graal, through the sad colours, 
 the cloudy, faulty glass, she now gazed upon that 
 Ocean of Reality, that soundless sea, whose waves 
 had teased and buffeted her blinded soul. She 
 was gathered to a contemplation of that still activity. 
 She felt the searching tide of that inexorable yet com- 
 passionate love. She was of it and within it : saw, in 
 the mental light that bathed it, the tiny and various 
 flotilla of life, as it moved upon the quiet bosom of 
 Eternity: the very foundations of its being submerged 
 and supported in these mighty and unsuspected deeps. 
 
 All the pageant of creation was shown to her then, 
 as in a picture : the beautiful, the cruel, the sublime, 
 the obscene. She saw the plants in their still and 
 lovely acts of worship, the vivid marvels of dappled 
 beasts and glancing birds, soft fur and sharp talons, 
 clash and encounter, hatred and joy. Life bred them, 
 cast them forth, and claimed their dust. She saw the 
 teeming poor maimed bodies, stifled spirits, blinded
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 243 
 
 eyes patiently, stubbornly starving and breeding : 
 the cross-bearers of the race. She saw their rare 
 brethren, the toilers of the spirit, enduring all anguish 
 that they might give birth to an idea. She saw the 
 wise and the foolish, the dreamer and the worker, 
 the creedless and the credulous, critic, fanatic, artist 
 those who went log over taffrail and sextant in 
 hand, and those who voyaged without reckoning, 
 sailing because they must. She saw also the crowded, 
 aimless vessels behind them, drifting inert before the 
 kindly breeze. 
 
 Seen thus, the thing had an amazing aspect of 
 simplicity : an air, amidst all its fussiness the 
 trimming of canvas, the eccentricities of the helm 
 of moving towards one, inevitable, end. One wind 
 filled all the sails, though each wide-swinging compass 
 might give to it a different name. 
 
 To be faithful to their chosen course was plainly 
 the one duty of these navigators : to steer by their 
 sealed instructions, each one of them, however bizarre 
 the evolutions which those secret papers might or- 
 dain. In the terror, wonder, and majesty of that 
 voyage each sailing spirit on exploration bent, yet 
 homeward bound courage was seen as the supreme 
 virtue of the seaman. The demands of the in- 
 dividual, the mean and peevish cry for pleasure, 
 self-expression for smooth waters, favouring tides 
 sank to nothingness. 
 
 She looked deeper; considering her own life, her 
 own path upon that sea. She studied it dispassion- 
 ately : glancing backwards, as it were, upon her 
 wake. She saw it begin with daring and high 
 courage; the setting forth upon the crest of an 
 16-2
 
 244 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 erratic wave which had carried her far into the deep. 
 Then she saw the long and solitary days in the 
 rough waters, the constant effort, the monotony, the 
 fatigue : and then the twisted course, when she had 
 tried to snatch at a chance of smoother going, when 
 she had disguised her flag that she might range with 
 companion ships and leave her isolated voyage. In 
 the cold pure light of the Cup, in the great vision of 
 the measureless spaces, these natural and human 
 actions, these concealments, adjustments little 
 tackings to and fro in search of consorts, comfort, 
 change suddenly took on an unendurable aspect of 
 meanness. To choose your course and forsake it> 
 she saw as the unforgivable sin. She had called 
 Life her goddess : she had dared to take rank as a 
 worshipper at that shrine. Yet her behaviour to- 
 wards Life had been against all the canons of divine 
 courtesy. " Honestie," says Richard Rolle, " es 
 Maystresse of the Novyces." It was Honesty who 
 now stood before this postulant : and her scourge 
 was in her hand. 
 
 She said to herself, " I knew when I took it that 
 something would happen. But this ! That I should 
 have to pay now so cruelly so late !" 
 
 " What now ?" said the Watcher. " Are you not 
 satisfied yet ?" 
 
 " No. I can't go on being comfortable and dis- 
 honest. It shames me. I have got to go straight." 
 
 " Straight ?" 
 
 " No concealments. Tell the past." 
 
 " Well, what then ? Is that also a grief?" 
 
 " It is hell. It's final. It cuts me off." 
 
 " Then don't do it."
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 245 
 
 " I must," she exclaimed. " It's my way, my 
 path. I have got to go on. I can't bear this 
 accusing light. It is too pure. It's cold, but it 
 burns me." 
 
 "But how strange an idea," he said, "that you 
 should mind showing the other little creatures the 
 actions of your past ! Mere things that you have 
 done : impulses of the mind and movements of the 
 body. These, surely, have no importance, once they 
 are complete ? Yesterday's dinner is digested now : 
 it does not count any more." 
 
 " It reveals the taste that chose it, I suppose. 
 And I am different because I ate it : my make-up 
 is changed." 
 
 " But people know you see you," said the Watcher. 
 " Does a description of the processes that you have 
 passed through alter the result ?" 
 
 She answered sadly, " It does, for some of them. 
 And that is why one has to tell." 
 
 " But these actions of the past, these things that 
 made you they are in the Idea they are aspects of 
 the Real. So, why fear to reveal them ? At the 
 utmost you do but reveal the making of your soul." 
 
 " I don't wish to reveal it !" 
 
 "Then do as you wish. Keep silence, and be 
 happy." 
 
 " No, I must not." 
 
 "You shall." He opposed her: flung against her 
 determination his strange and lawless will. She 
 fought under it : with a sense of wild triumph in thus 
 meeting him, setting at last the purest flame of her 
 humanity its justice, dignity, and truth against 
 the contemptuous love which counted these things
 
 246 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 as nothing, if by chance they jeopardized her present 
 ease. She was going to give up that ease : to give 
 up everything in existence that she cared for. She 
 was in the act of expelling from her life all friendship, 
 dainty pleasure, social joy ; the one way of escape 
 from the hateful, sordid round. In this exalted 
 moment she was glad. Nothing counted now 
 nothing at all against the supreme necessity of 
 orientating herself to that cold, adorable, and all- 
 compelling light. 
 
 The Watcher said to her, " How strong you are 
 to-day ! And how foolish ! Why should you wreck 
 your little peace for That which you can neither see 
 nor know?" 
 
 It was the obstinate dweller of the innermost who 
 answered, " Blind obedience is as much my business 
 as loving vision is yours." 
 
 " I cannot understand you," he said again, " nor 
 the meaning of this thing which you would do. 
 Time is a dream, and your passage through it is 
 illusion. All that exists is you, within your Now. 
 Where, then, is the importance of your past ?" 
 
 " One may have done things in it that the world 
 thinks wrong." 
 
 " Wrong ? What is wrong ?" said the Watcher. 
 
 She turned from him to the shrine again ; as if she 
 would extort from it some consolation, a promise 
 that should carry her through the bitter waters to- 
 wards which she was set. But the light for her was 
 cold, inexorable. It called her on, but only that she 
 might share an inheritance of pain ; as the red cross 
 called the Crusader to the plague-stricken ship, the 
 parched desert shipwreck, misery and thirst but
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 247 
 
 gave no certain promise of the Holy City at the 
 end. 
 
 When she was out in the street, and the door was 
 shut on her; when she waited for the blue and 
 orange omnibus which went once in ten minutes to 
 the corner of the terrace in which the Vinces lived ; 
 there came on her the natural revolt against a 
 destiny which seemed so determined to wreck her 
 temporal content, whilst offering no eternal com- 
 pensation. 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon. The streets seemed 
 stagnant. A respectable ennui brooded about the 
 shuttered shops. It was that awful hour in which 
 the city ceases her courtship of visible things, to dis- 
 cover that she knows no fairer love to take their 
 place. Constance felt herself to be doomed to just 
 such a condition : to a perpetual wandering, in silence 
 broken only by the muffin-bell, down grey and muddy 
 roads, between blank walls and prosperous houses 
 which sheltered happy people from the world. She 
 did not want to do it. It was forced on her, as 
 Sunday is forced on an unwilling population, in the 
 interests of an ideal which she could not accept. 
 
 She reviewed the situation : looking for some 
 mitigating circumstance, some opportunity of an 
 honourable compromise with fate. She began to 
 reassure herself : remembering Muriel's liberal point 
 of view, that openness of mind which was ready to 
 receive all things even at the cost of retaining none ; 
 her insistence on the true dignity of womanhood, the 
 importance of individual concepts of life. Muriel, 
 who loathed conventional standards of morality, 
 would feel bound to pretend a certain sympathy ; or,
 
 248 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 at the least, to say she understood. All then might 
 be well : courage and honesty vindicated at a trifling 
 cost. These considerations upheld her during the 
 journey : and she rang the bell with alacrity, almost 
 with cheerfulness, when she arrived. 
 
 Muriel received her graciously. She was alone ; 
 and sat as usual upon the floor by the white-tiled 
 hearth where a small wood fire was burning. Her 
 slight and charming figure composed well against the 
 Persian rugs, the pale, unbroken surface of the wall. 
 Her wheat-coloured hair shone and flickered ; as if it 
 were infected by the spirit of the flames. Constance, 
 big and solid, heavily and plainly dressed, determined 
 upon a hateful sincerity, depressed and very tired, 
 was conscious of the absurdity of her encounter with 
 this dear and pretty thing ; this adorable butterfly 
 which she was about to place upon the judgment- 
 seat. 
 
 " I am so glad," said Muriel as she entered, " that 
 you came in this afternoon. You have saved me 
 from writing you a note : and in the stress of this 
 terrible season one is always grateful for that. Is 
 not the tyranny of Christmas one of the least 
 desirable legacies bequeathed to us by our ancestors' 
 over-beliefs ?" 
 
 Constance, obsessed by her horrible errand, full 
 of fear now that the moment was so nearly come, 
 longed only for immediate opportunity of speech. 
 She also wished to kiss Muriel before it was for ever 
 too late. Instead, she sat down and replied vaguely 
 and calmly, " It is a busy time." 
 
 " One does not regret the expenditure of energy : 
 for energy is always beautiful in some way, one feels
 
 249 
 
 that. And the celebration of a Birth a fatherless 
 Birth ! Seen in the light of our modern concepts, 
 it might well be the typical Feast of Woman- 
 hood !" 
 
 " Yes," said Constance eagerly. " Yes it might. 
 I'm so glad you think that I felt sure " 
 
 " But the acquisitive faculty of man has seized on 
 it," continued Muriel, " and there its poison lies. It 
 has become a festival of greed of our most material- 
 istic instincts. Our intellects may revolt, but 
 tradition addresses itself to the subliminal mind and 
 there meets a too-willing response. Is it not 
 degrading ? Do you know that I yes, even I 
 have felt forced to send away six hampers and 
 several dozen picture post-cards this year ?" 
 
 Constance refused to be deflected. " I wanted to 
 see you, if I could, before Christmas came," she 
 said, "to tell you something that I " 
 
 Muriel interrupted again. " I hoped that perhaps 
 you would come to us for it," she observed, " unless 
 you are engaged to other friends. In fact I was 
 going to write to you to-night. I haven't mentioned 
 it to Andrew yet : but I know that he will be pleased 
 too. He was telling me that you lived in furnished 
 rooms : and I felt sure you would find a certain 
 difficulty in getting your meals at such a time. 
 Here, we shall of course make no changes in our 
 menu. I could not stoop to that. I should not wish 
 Felix to associate ethical ideas with alterations in his 
 diet : and there is no reason why his digestion should 
 be upset because he is celebrating under an allegory 
 the emergence of his spiritual powers into conscious 
 life. So you must only expect our usual simple fare;
 
 250 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 but better a dinner of herbs than a drunken landlady, 
 after all." 
 
 " It's very kind," said Constance rather breath- 
 lessly, " but I'm afraid I could not come. You see, 
 there's Vera." 
 
 " Of course : that was one reason why I invited 
 you. The children will amuse one another. And 
 besides, I am anxious to see her. An adopted child 
 is always an interesting experiment. One obtains 
 the result of pure theory, unthwarted by that terrible 
 parental instinct which seems to militate against all 
 educational reform." 
 
 Constance answered, " I cannot bring her to this 
 house. It is unthinkable. Once, I intended that 
 you should never even know of her existence. I 
 wished to divide my life : to keep her apart. But 
 now I feel, before we go any farther I should like 
 you to understand, to know the truth. Vera is not 
 an adopted child : she is my daughter. I came here 
 to-day determined to tell you that." 
 
 " Do you mean have you been married ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 Muriel looked at her: first with great surprise, 
 and then, to her own intense annoyance, with an 
 uncontrollable horror. In her attitude towards both 
 sin and religion, she had always exhibited that 
 breadth of mind which is the prerogative of well- 
 read inexperience. Now she remembered, for the 
 first time after ten years of this intellectual freedom, 
 that her father had been an archdeacon of the 
 Established Church. Memory, in its most sardonic 
 mood, reminded her of much that she had said in 
 the interval concerning the pure nature of maternity
 
 THE MISTRESS OF NOVICES 251 
 
 and the unimportance of the sexual tie: but this 
 did not mitigate the dreadfulness of a visitor worse, 
 an intimate who confessed to the possession of an 
 illegitimate child. 
 
 Constance went on speaking. She seemed to be 
 talking about it : explaining her point of view. But 
 unconventional opinions on such a subject are only 
 decent in those who have never put them into 
 practice. Muriel did not listen. She was thinking 
 hard : trying to square her natural feelings of pro- 
 priety with her official theories of life. They 
 refused to adjust themselves. Those violent and 
 irrational prejudices which she recognized as rising 
 from the subliminal mind, as representing with a 
 painful accuracy the Victorian ancestors whom she 
 despised, took charge of her consciousness. They 
 said very plainly that it was impossible for Mrs. 
 Vince to continue Miss Tyrrel's acquaintance. 
 
 Presently, without looking at her visitor, she 
 stretched her hand towards the bell. Constance 
 got up, and went away.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH 
 
 "' Truth,' I cried, 'though the heavens crush me for 
 following her; no falsehood, though a whole celestial 
 Lubber land were the price of Apostasy." 
 
 CARLYLE : Sartor Rcsartus. 
 
 IN the evening, Andrew came to her. She looked 
 at him as he entered, surprised that he should 
 so quickly have undertaken this embarrassing visit 
 of farewell. 
 
 She said to him at once, " Muriel has told you, 
 I suppose ?" 
 
 " Yes yes ; she told me at dinner-time," replied 
 Andrew. " At dessert. So I thought I'd just come 
 round to say, I'm so awfully sorry it's happened, 
 don't you know ? You must have had a beastly 
 ten minutes of it. No notion that you meant to 
 confide in her in that way. Very fine of you, of 
 course very straight one admires it. But a girl 
 like Muriel all notions and no knowledge, so to 
 speak well, one hardly expects her to take a tolerant 
 view of these things." 
 
 " I thought, I hoped perhaps, as she was so 
 unconventional " 
 
 " Well, yes ; that's just where it is," said Andrew. 
 252
 
 CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH 253 
 
 " Just where people are apt to make a mistake. She 
 talks like that ; but at bottom, she is the usual thing. 
 Wish now that I had warned you ! I never thought 
 of it. Really, as a matter of fact, she's just wrapped 
 up in the boy. An intelligent mother; that's her 
 idea, and that is all she means though, mind you,, 
 she doesn't know it when she talks about Woman 
 and the Race. Contrives, somehow, to forget the rest. 
 In theory, she thinks it doesn't matter, because she 
 has always lived in a comfortable, married sort of 
 world. But when the thing is forced on her notice, 
 and not quite in order well, don't you know?" 
 He became red and embarrassed. 
 
 " Yes, I see it now. But I had to tell her." 
 
 " Quite realize your feeling. Christmas, and all 
 that. Still, it's a pity." 
 
 " But you are not shocked ?" Efer wreck, it 
 seemed, was not the total loss that she had feared. 
 
 " Well," said Andrew, " in a way, if you'll forgive 
 my saying so, one guessed, don't you know ? Little 
 niece, and so on. So papal ! Quite a natural idea, 
 mind you, and in my opinion quite a justifiable 
 deception. So much better for the child, if you can 
 keep it up. But shocked that's hardly a man's 
 feeling. Very sorry, for your sake, of course. Hate 
 to think of it ! Can't bear to see a woman badly 
 treated and left in the lurch. Like cruelty to 
 animals ; makes one sick ! It's a beastly shame, 
 the way some cads behave. And one has no hold 
 over them, worse luck. . . . Poor girl poor 
 Constance !" 
 
 She said very quickly, " Don't pity me ! I was 
 not badly treated."
 
 254 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 But he thrust the subject on one side. There 
 was determination as well as delicacy in the action. 
 Constance perceived that could she but rest at this 
 point, she might preserve not only his friendship, 
 but that more precious asset, his respect. 
 
 Nevertheless, she insisted, " Please make no 
 mistake. It was my own fault I did it !" 
 
 "Girls get infatuated," said Andrew, "and then 
 they lose their heads. Ignorant of the world very 
 properly so, of course. They don't know what's 
 before 'em. By Jove ! I often wonder that more 
 of them don't get into a mess." 
 
 " I was not infatuated." 
 
 " Eh ?" He was astonished. 
 
 " It was altogether different from that ; and I am 
 going to make you see it. I won't keep you with 
 half-confessions, foster pathetic illusions, let you be 
 kind. This is not a confession, either ; for there's 
 nothing in it of which I am ashamed. You shall 
 understand ; and then you can sympathize, or leave 
 me, as you please." 
 
 He expostulated. " Only gives you pain, raking 
 it all up like this. And makes no difference, really. 
 These things, old stories, between friends far better 
 to leave 'em alone." 
 
 " Between friends," she said, " there has already 
 been too much concealment. And it isn't an old 
 story; it is I myself." 
 
 " Not your real self," replied Andrew soothingly. 
 
 " My realms* self. My real, hungry, active self, 
 that longed to live. Don't you know can't you 
 imagine what it is to have powers, and ache to 
 use them ? To sit idle and vacant, and see your
 
 CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH 255 
 
 chances of legitimate satisfaction of life grow 
 hourly less ? Listen ! I come of middle-class 
 intellectuals; of the sterile class. I, with this 
 body " 
 
 She stood up before him, deep-bosomed, the 
 perfect maternal type ; and he thought of Muriel, 
 eager, nervous, narrow-hipped. 
 
 " When I was twenty-seven," she said, " I could 
 read in six languages, and I hadn't lived. I wanted 
 life. I was proficient in the higher mathematics, and 
 I knew nothing. I wanted to know. Can't you 
 realize the fate of such women as I am ; whole, 
 sound women, perfectly matured creatures, penned, 
 cooped up, wasted ?" 
 
 " Yes, it's rough luck," said Andrew slowly, 
 " when girls don't get their chance. A wholesome 
 woman wants a husband." 
 
 The words were kindly meant ; he was all for 
 excusing her. But they disclosed, instantly, the 
 ground upon which she faced him ; that foundation 
 of mutual contempt on which the relation of the 
 sexes is raised. They lit antagonisms. He ceased 
 to be Andrew, the friend whom she would enlighten, 
 comfort, and keep. He became Man, who dared 
 judge the vital womanhood which life had placed at 
 his mercy, and who should now, she was determined, 
 hear her case. Something took charge, spoke. 
 Constance, amazed, saw her life unroll before her as 
 she defended it ; and suddenly perceived a nobility 
 where once she had only supposed a mistake. 
 
 "And if no man needs us," she said, "what 
 would you have us do ? Read French novels ? 
 Had I not a right the right of all living tissue, the
 
 256 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 right of all conscious flesh to dip myself into life, 
 deep in ; to touch the ground, stir the muddy depths 
 if I chose ? I did it, and paid for it. I don't regret 
 it. Love ? This had nothing to do with love. I 
 had machinery at my disposal the powers of an 
 expert creative powers. I chose to use them. 
 There's the result !" 
 
 She held up the washed and faded frock that she 
 had been patching. " Nothing very grand, was it ?" 
 she said, " I know that. Don't blame me ; blame 
 the accursed and artificial world. What man of my 
 own class, what being on the upward grade, would 
 have done that which I asked ? Would you ? No ; 
 you would have talked about chivalry, and left me 
 to find a navvy to father my child. Anyhow, I made 
 her ; and it's the soundest, solidest, humanest bit of 
 work that I ever did. I'm justified now, my body is 
 ready for death, because I have handed on the torch. 
 It hurt, too ; and so I was sure that it was right. 
 She shall be saved in child-bearing. Paul knew 
 something when he said that." 
 
 She stopped, rather breathless. She wondered 
 what had driven her to this astounding candour. 
 Andrew was gazing at her ; trying, plainly, to extract 
 some endurable meaning from her words. His first 
 sympathy was crossed by a crescent anxiety. When 
 she paused, he said to her, " Why in God's Name 
 didn't you marry the man ? I suppose he wanted to 
 marry you ?" 
 
 " No." She was herself again. 
 
 " More blackguard he ! What was he ?" 
 
 " I don't know," said Constance slowly, " I never 
 knew his name."
 
 CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH 257 
 
 " Never knew his name ? Great heavens !" 
 
 " Is that unforgivable ?" 
 
 " But how could you ?" 
 
 "Oh, because I longed for life!" she said "for 
 something actual and aboriginal ; something that one 
 could not alter by thinking about it. I was sick of 
 thin theories and diluted dreams. I had been book- 
 fed too long. I wanted to get down to the processes 
 of creation ; to take my turn." 
 
 He said again, miserably, " How could you do 
 it?" 
 
 " I could, just because I had to ; because the 
 pressure of life was too great. First I was inquisi- 
 tive, and then I was on fire. I don't know why ; I 
 don't know what happened. On one side it still 
 seems beautiful, though the lining was hideous 
 enough. I wanted the great spaces of the world ; I 
 saw them there, stretched out, waiting. I went 
 towards them, and found the dust-heap." 
 
 Andrew writhed. " Why," he said, " have you got 
 to tell me all this ?" 
 
 " I don't know. It's a sort of honesty, I think. 
 You you represent the human side you're it. I 
 must explain to them, clear it up, before I go on " 
 
 He resented the necessity : thought her selfish. 
 Curious how women loved the confessional ! Poor 
 devils of priests he pitied them. But he was in for 
 it now. He braced himself, and she went on. 
 
 " The father of my child was a man just that. 
 I don't know any more. I went down into the crowd, 
 because I wanted the intense uncivilized thing. But 
 he threw open the gates of life and I saw the 
 workings of it for a moment. I entered into that 
 17
 
 258 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 part of my inheritance, anyhow; I didn't know then 
 about the other part." 
 
 " What other part ?" said Andrew, in a dull, un- 
 interested voice. 
 
 " The thing behind ; the real." 
 
 "This seems to have been real enough, God 
 knows!" 
 
 Amazement and chivalry, compassion and disgust, 
 fought in his slow mind. He was deeply unhappy. 
 The loss of an ideal is a serious matter for practical 
 men. He still wished to be very kind, very friendly. 
 One does not turn on a woman when she confesses 
 to incredible even to horrible acts. The past, 
 after all, was past. But he did not look at Con- 
 stance as he spoke. 
 
 She saw it. She saw his wretchedness. She came 
 up to him, and put her hands on his shoulders ; her 
 first familiarity of touch. It was a dominant action, 
 and coming at this moment he found it both 
 astonishing and unfair. 
 
 " Oh yes !" she said, " I am going to touch you ; 
 with my body, at least. That is different; and if 
 you understood it, you would leave off being disgusted 
 and grieved. I know you think me soiled, tainted ; 
 little better than " 
 
 He stopped her and denied it ; too clumsily. 
 
 Oh yes, you do !" she said. " Poor Andrew ! 
 How little you understand it all ! About as much, 
 I suppose, as a breeder of white rabbits understands 
 the evolution of the cherubim. One has got to work 
 out one's own way, you know ; and life, mere physical 
 life, is the raw material of that, nothing more." 
 
 " But need you have done this ?"
 
 " What else," she asked, "was I to do?" 
 
 Vince answered almost sharply, " I don't see that 
 don't see that at all ! Nowadays, there are so 
 many opportunities for educated women ; useful 
 careers open to them, and so on. Very different 
 from what it was in my poor old father's time. 
 
 Then, there was some excuse I don't say you 
 
 need have sat at home doing fancy-work all day. 
 Single women do a lot of good." 
 
 "Oh, a lot!" she said bitterly. "Paint, and 
 scribble, and cosset the imperfect. Games, to dis- 
 tract their attention and make them forget ! But I 
 know what I'm for what Life is for. I'm ready; I 
 am here. Look straight at the big thing, the move- 
 ment of it ; the living, teeming world. Is not the 
 gift of life great and holy ? What else counts ? And 
 isn't this potting question of our individual rights in 
 it poor and mean ? What do I care who my child's 
 father may be ? What does he do in it ? Starts the 
 machinery which ends in birth. His part is over 
 then, and I'm left in charge of the race. Rights of 
 woman ? Haven't we got them ? Do we not stand 
 side by side with God and share the very pangs of 
 creation ?" 
 
 " It's all very well talking like this," he answered. 
 " Claiming your rights, and the law of nature, and 
 all that. I've read these notions in books, though I 
 never met anyone who acted on them in this sort of 
 way before. But there's more than you in it ; there 
 is the poor little kid. One thinks a bit of her, don't 
 you know ? No name, and so on. No getting over 
 these things ; it's bound to crop up later on." 
 
 " Yes," she said gravely, " I know it. I owe her a 
 172
 
 260 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 great debt. Vera, the price of truth ! Oh, I counted 
 the cost, I had no illusions ; but even at that price, 
 I would know !" 
 
 As she spoke, she remembered another voice, which 
 had once cried in her mind, " I will know," and 
 recognized a fellow-victim of indomitable curiosity. 
 
 " And even then, with that, you still think it was 
 well a right sort of thing to do ?" 
 
 " Sure it was right, from the place where I was 
 then," she insisted. " And that's the point. You 
 see, I only knew that edge of reality, and I had to 
 live up to my vision. I lived the whole of my animal 
 life, fulfilled that part of my duty ; that's all. To 
 eat, and not to reproduce ; to take life, not to give 
 it ; is that fair ? Where I did go wrong was in not 
 walking straight on from that point ; not accepting 
 my portion, giving myself up to my job. I didn't 
 care enough I don't now and so I tried to be 
 happy instead of thorough. I looked on the path 
 that I had picked for myself as dreary. It was ; but 
 that did not matter, of course. And then, quite 
 slowly, I left off being honest ; attending to my 
 responsibilities. You came, and Muriel, and the 
 rest. I was lonely, and I wanted you all so much. 
 But the honest thing, the big fact of my life, was 
 Vera " 
 
 "Just so !" said Andrew, cheering up a little. 
 
 " But big facts are poor company. Living alone, 
 supporting an illegitimate child ; that is what my big 
 fact meant in the concrete, nothing more. Women 
 need little things as well. D'you remember that 
 evening at the play, when you were kind and 
 deferential, and gave me sweets? I couldn't bear
 
 CONSTANCE, ANDREW, AND THE TRUTH 261 
 
 it that night, going back to the squalid solitude that 
 I had made. It was then I determined that I would 
 keep you somehow you, and Muriel, and the others. 
 I loved Muriel. I wanted her : oh, far more than I 
 have ever wanted you ! I could not forego her : the 
 pleasure of her presence, her refinement, and the 
 pretty life to dip into now and then. So I took 
 advantage of your ignorance ; kept quiet. I knew 
 that the child would divide us, once I let her ; that 
 she would grow up like a barrier, to shut me from 
 friendship and joy " 
 
 " Yes," said Andrew, " they do, somehow. Odd 
 thing, if you think of it. First Muriel and I, and 
 Felix coming between us. Now you and I and 
 this little kid ! We always seem to split upon the 
 child ; it's always the key of the situation. I could 
 have stood all Muriel's rot indulged it, liked it, 
 laughed at it if I hadn't seen it being worked out 
 on the boy. And you, this affair of yours, she pays 
 the price, really, don't you know ? She represents 
 it. Always before one ! Impossible to forget !" 
 
 Constance replied, "Truths have to become in- 
 carnate before they count. At least, for solid folks 
 like you and me." 
 
 He had been speaking to her with a touch of the 
 old confidence ; but he caught the note of cleverness 
 in her answer, and remembered that in their new 
 relation it was clearly out of place. 
 
 " Oh, come, my dear girl !" he said kindly. His 
 tone was too kind; an intimation that the angel 
 had come to earth to muddy earth and might be 
 treated without ceremony by those who should still 
 choose to handle her.
 
 262 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 She said, " Well, that is all. It was good of you 
 to come. Now, you had better go home." 
 
 " It's quite early." 
 
 " No matter." 
 
 She stood up before him, plainly intending his dis- 
 missal. He rose and took his hat. 
 
 " When shall I see you again ?" he asked easily. 
 
 " You won't." 
 
 " Now, why on earth not ?" said Andrew. " Don't 
 be foolish ! I rather fancied you might try some- 
 thing of this kind. You mustn't imagine that I 
 that it makes any difference between MS. Muriel ; 
 well, that goes without saying. Can't expect a 
 woman to take a broad line in these things : above 
 all with her female friends. There's the boy to think 
 of. But you and I are old enough to take care of 
 ourselves, aren't we ?" 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "we are; and to know 
 what we want. I wanted two things your re- 
 spect, and my own. I couldn't have both, it 
 seems " 
 
 He reassured her. " You're mistaken quite. 
 Afraid I may have spoken hastily. One was sur- 
 prised, just at first, don't you know ? You mustn't 
 take any notice." 
 
 "I know!" she said, "you're very sorry for me; 
 and you are going to be horribly charitable about it, 
 and never remind me of the past. You will con- 
 descend to come to my home, though I may not 
 enter yours. And you think that is worth while? 
 Why, a curate could do as much ! Go. Do you 
 hear ? I won't have you. I can bear solitude ; yes, 
 and remembering too. But no more compromise !
 
 I have been alive for a bit. All these years ; and I 
 never knew how dead I was !" 
 
 She stopped, and laughed at him. " Oh, and if 
 only you knew why I did it !" she said. " Why I 
 told you had to be honest ! If you knew the rest 
 of the tale ! How mad how wildly mad you'd 
 think me." 
 
 Andrew replied, "Well, you are a bit cranky 
 to-day. If I don't see any objection in coming, 
 why the devil should you mind if I come ?" 
 
 " My affections have still their independence. 
 They shan't accept outdoor relief." 
 
 He did not understand this, and therefore resented 
 it. He was confused, for the interview had not taken 
 the course which his illusions had led him to expect. 
 There had been something pathetic, almost respect- 
 able, in his idea of Constance's fall from virtue. He 
 had seen in the little girl a possible link between 
 them ; had looked forward to his own broad-minded 
 acts of kindness, to an enduring connection which 
 should be faintly flavoured by a natural gratitude on 
 her side, a tolerant comprehension upon his. 
 
 But it was all very different from this. She did 
 not want him ; it was she, after all, who usurped the 
 prerogative of virtue, and cast him off. A dis- 
 appointing woman. In this respect he had once 
 thought her an exception to her sex. 
 
 Nevertheless, as he went down the long flight of 
 stairs he said to himself, " I'm damned if I don't 
 send that poor little kid a jolly Christmas present, all 
 the same !" 
 
 As for Constance, when he had gone her high 
 courage left her quickly. It is one thing to burn
 
 264 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 your boats when they have brought you to the 
 invasion of a desirable country, another to destroy 
 them when they have cast you upon the arid shores 
 of No-Man's- Land. She had obeyed orders blindly. 
 No more came. In this ghastly moment, when she 
 knew herself solitary in the world, cut off by her own 
 honesty from her kind, the Cup gave to her no com- 
 fortable light. 
 
 She sat huddled before it before the closed doors 
 of the shrine in the empty and hideous room. She 
 hated that triumphant chalice which had brought 
 her to this miserable pass : hated it, as children hate 
 in their gusty wrath the masters whom they are 
 impelled to obey. 
 
 The Watcher within whispered words of affection 
 and grief. But he was a spiritual thing : she could 
 not touch him. It is only at the end of our educa- 
 tion that we can learn to find our comfort in a 
 voice.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS 
 
 " files- vous couverts de blessures mortelles, que 
 1'amour vous embrasse, et vous voila sauves." 
 
 RUYSBROECK L* ADMIRABLE I LeS VirtUS. 
 
 ON Christmas Eve Constance returned late from 
 the bookshop to find Mrs. Reed sitting before 
 the fire, with Vera, rolled in blankets, in her arms. 
 
 Helen said, " I came in after supper to see whether 
 you would want me at the shop to-morrow morning. 
 Mr. Lambton had not decided when I left. The 
 child was awake : I heard her crying : so I could 
 not help going in to see whether there was anything 
 I could do. Sometimes, you know, a little drink of 
 water will send them off to sleep. But she seemed 
 so restless that at last I got her up, and stayed a 
 little while to comfort her." 
 
 Constance unpinned her hat, took off the cheap 
 fur and ready-made coat of grey tweed, went to the 
 mirror and patted her hair into place. 
 
 " Half-past ten !" she said. " What a day ! I'm 
 sorry you have had to wait so long. No : we need 
 not go to-morrow. All the arrears are cleared off at 
 last : I've been doing up parcels ever since we closed. 
 
 265
 
 266 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 You are free till Monday now. Let me take Vera 
 back to bed : you must be tired out ! She is far too 
 heavy to nurse for more than a few minutes at a 
 time." 
 
 " I don't think she is very well." 
 
 Constance parted the blankets and looked at the 
 child more carefully. Vera slept with her head sunk 
 forward, her mouth open. Her face had an odd and 
 waxen pallor : there were brownish shadows under 
 the eyes. Every now and then she gasped for 
 breath and curious twitchings ran along her limbs. 
 
 At once, the Watcher stirred eagerly, and 
 whispered, " The child is very sick ! Perhaps she 
 will die : and then, you will be free to live." 
 
 Helen said, " Let me keep the little thing for the 
 present. I am not over-tired. She's sleeping now : 
 she likes the warmth. If we move her, she may 
 wake again." 
 
 She replaced the blanket with infinite gentleness ; 
 brooding over her burden with that profound and 
 impersonal love which comes naturally to those who 
 have been disciplined in the service of the weak. 
 She looked, in spite of her uncomfortable attitude, 
 utterly contented and utterly at rest. Constance felt 
 herself cast out from the magic ring which was made, 
 easily and naturally as Giotto's circle, by the woman's 
 arms about the suffering child. She, the mother, 
 whose sublime opportunity was here, knelt at Helen's 
 side, agitated and helpless. Confused and horrible 
 emotions hopes, fancies, fears chased each other 
 through her mind. 
 
 " I am glad that I came in to-night," said Helen. 
 " It's so terrible to be alone when anything one
 
 267 
 
 loves is ill ! You will let me stay now, won't you ? 
 You may want some help later on." 
 
 " Oh, I can't do that ! It may mean sitting up all 
 night with her : and you have had a hard day, you 
 need rest." 
 
 Helen answered, " Rest ? Why, I have had 
 nothing real to do since October ! And I like it I 
 like to feel that I am useful. It takes the loneliness 
 away. I can do something, perhaps, to ease the 
 child a little. You see, I am used to nursing I 
 shall know exactly what to do. They are much the 
 same old men and children. Please let me stay ! 
 I am so very fond of little girls !" 
 
 Towards midnight, Vera left her sleep and broke 
 into bitter meanings. There was no longer any 
 doubt as to the grave nature of her malady. As the 
 Christmas bells began, Constance made up the fire, 
 set about the heating of blankets, the boiling of 
 water, and entered upon a night of struggle and 
 suspense. 
 
 Helen had gone out, in search of a doctor. She 
 was alone with the three mighty forces which dis- 
 puted dominion over her life. 
 
 There was first the hidden Cup. It reigned in 
 its austere silence, sequestered from the troubled 
 plane of human endeavour, surveying it. It gave 
 her no help. Contrasted with the actual griefs, the 
 harsh problems of life and death which she felt 
 clamorous about her, it seemed unreal, an incredible 
 thing. 
 
 There was the child in her arms, appealing at this 
 moment to all that she had of responsibility and 
 protectiveness, of simple natural love.
 
 268 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 There was the Watcher in her mind, vividly con- 
 scious of an approaching crisis. He sought, it was 
 clear, to govern her weakness, to save her from the 
 worst consequences of ideals which he found quixotic, 
 even insane. His attitude was marked by an affec- 
 tionate vigilance : he was like a kindly guardian, 
 determined on the social salvation of some young 
 bewildered creature, who is ready, in spite of 
 prudent counsels, to sacrifice its happiness to some 
 wild notion of honour or of truth. 
 
 All his supersensual powers of discernment con- 
 centrated now upon her service, he perceived in Vera 
 the one tangible obstacle to that full and pleasant 
 life which she desired and he would help her to 
 attain. He saw her chance at hand : his chance to 
 act for her, to straighten the tangle of her life. That 
 incomprehensible past which militated, as it seemed, 
 in this mad world against all pleasurable intercourse, 
 could be shut down, annihilated by the friendly hand 
 of death. 
 
 The child was desperately ill. The Watcher, for 
 whom physical symptoms had no meaning, yet dis- 
 cerned unerringly the loosening of the ties which 
 bound her little spirit to the dust. As a life she was 
 without value : ugly, evil, an abortive thing. He felt 
 that it was reasonable clearly implicit in the Will 
 that the imperfect should be swept from this teeming 
 world in order that the perfect might have air and 
 food and space. The Watcher was unaware of any 
 reason why the principles of natural selection should 
 be applied in the jungle and neglected in the 
 home. 
 
 Eye to eye with him, Constance saw it too : her
 
 HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS 269 
 
 freedom, the disappearance of many embarrassments, 
 social and financial ; of the dreary and difficult future 
 from which there was no other escape. Then, the 
 emergence of new opportunities, a fresh lease of that 
 life those chances of free action which she loved. 
 She saw the kaleidoscope abruptly shaken, and new 
 and glittering pictures made, with this one bit of 
 ugly glass eliminated from the scheme. 
 
 Then she realized with horror the prospect which 
 she had been contemplating so calmly : the prospect 
 of her child's death. She could not help but con- 
 template its possibility : for the Watcher, with 
 authority, held this picture perpetually before her 
 mind. 
 
 He said to her, " Why be disturbed ? All is well. 
 Death is acting in your interest. You do not love 
 the child." 
 
 " No," she replied, " I don't : but I want to. If 
 only I could !" 
 
 " Then, since you do not love, where is your 
 reason for clutching ? Why keep and cherish that 
 which you do not even need ? In this, you are more 
 foolish than your fellow-creatures. Surely it were 
 best to let her go ?" 
 
 " I cannot. You do not understand. Death is 
 the one thing in which we may never acquiesce. 
 We are bound to fight it : keep it at bay. Human 
 life is sacred." 
 
 " How absurd your illusions are !" said the 
 Watcher. " Human life ? What do you mean 
 by life ? The crawling dust ? Is this sacred ? If 
 you mean the spirit which it imprisons, that cannot 
 die ; it can only emigrate. And what is the differ-
 
 270 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 ence between one side of the veil and the other ? 
 They are both in the Idea." 
 
 She answered, " Perhaps that may be true I do 
 not know. But I must go on : must keep her as 
 long as I can. She is a bit of life my bit of life 
 given into my care. I've got to save her. I know 
 it is unreasonable, but I must." 
 
 " Even as a life, she is not worth saving. She is 
 twisted, imperfect : she will never grow, never be 
 beautiful, never transmit the Idea." 
 
 It was true : she knew it. 
 
 " Where then," he said, " is the value of this dis- 
 torted thing ? Of its little scamper through the 
 dream ?" 
 
 " It must have a value, somehow, somewhere. 
 Each of us counts." 
 
 " How convinced you are of your importance ! 
 Yet each one of you at a touch, an accident may 
 crumble to the dust. And another soul will come, 
 snatch your dust for its clothing, linger a little while, 
 and then away. This is your destiny : so, why not 
 accelerate the process, help the Will ? Imperfect, 
 misbegotten things embarrass life confuse it. Surely 
 it were best to expel them from the dream ?" 
 
 She answered, " Perhaps : but I can't have a hand 
 in it, I must not interfere. I may bring forth, but I 
 dare not undertake to destroy : to permit a destruc- 
 tion that I can by any possibility prevent. That is 
 beyond my province and life's. We can only 
 hand on." 
 
 He disdained to answer her. His will, as she felt, 
 was already active in this matter. Even whilst he 
 disputed with her, he was pressing the child's spirit
 
 HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS 271 
 
 from existence : forcing it as it were into the shadowy 
 dimension beyond the confines of the dream. It 
 came to this : if she were passive, Vera would die. 
 She had but to acquiesce, and the issue was already 
 decided. If she would save her, it could only be at 
 the sword's point ; all her will, all her strength, in- 
 fecting that little feeble body and fighting in it and 
 for it against the oblique charity of her friend. 
 
 She was appalled by the strength which he 
 brought to bear on her defences. At his coming, he 
 had desired nothing but an extension of his own 
 powers, an appeasement of his own curiosity. These 
 she could meet on their own level, combat if she 
 chose. Then, vaguely, he had shifted his centre of 
 interest. Her comfort, her joy had been objects at 
 least of sympathy, if not of care. These he had dis- 
 cussed, desired, but could hardly influence. Now, 
 suddenly, he saw action ahead of him. He intended 
 a definite outcome of the situation in which they 
 were placed : and she was face to face with the 
 strength of an immortal spirit which has at last 
 found something to serve and to love. 
 
 He said to her incessantly, " Leave it to me ! Let 
 me have my way. Be passive, and I will direct 
 your life. Let the child die ! Let her be pressed 
 from the dream ! She impedes you. It is better 
 that she should go. Then, you will be free to make 
 links with the other little creatures, to reconstruct 
 existence as you choose. This also in the light of the 
 Idea is but foolishness : nevertheless, since it is that 
 which you have chosen you shall have it. But you 
 must you shall be thorough, fulfil the essentials of 
 your dream."
 
 272 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 She listened, bewildered. Vera moved, sobbed a 
 little, and whispered, "Tanta, I'se very badly hurt 
 in my inside." 
 
 She turned to the child, seeking vainly and 
 desperately to mitigate her pain. She wanted to do 
 it had to and the human act of ministration at 
 once drove the inhuman influence away. 
 
 Vera's mouth was drawn down in the sad grimace 
 of anguish. She whimpered, feebly, each time that 
 she tried to breathe. Her knees were drawn up 
 under her flannelette nightgown, making queer angles 
 beneath its shabby folds. It was disease in its most 
 macabre, least lovely aspect : violently intrusive, 
 deliberately grotesque. There was nothing poetic ; 
 nothing to relieve the ugliness of this ill-staged 
 encounter with death. 
 
 But Constance perceived no squalor in the picture. 
 She was concentrated upon the duel which she was 
 so suddenly compelled to fight. She forgot the intense 
 fatigue of a body which had been employed in arduous 
 labour for very many hours : forgot the hesitations and 
 confusions of a spirit which was called to save, at all 
 costs, the one impediment to its own liberty and 
 ease. She was there, confronted by a human need. 
 She met it. Strength arose in her, she knew not 
 whence, to fight for this dreadful little life. As she 
 worked, the. in ward voice spoke words of encourage- 
 ment. She hardly heard them : as soldiers in the 
 ecstasy of battle are unconscious of the commands 
 which they obey. 
 
 But in the midst of her labours the wringing out 
 of fomentations, the arranging of pillows to keep the 
 weight of blankets from Vera's tortured little frame
 
 HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS 273 
 
 she became aware presently of a change in the 
 room, in the air of it. These determined acts of 
 menial service had, as it seemed, introduced her 
 automatically to a new dimension, where she found 
 her senses to be adjusted to the rhythm of a more 
 extended life. On this suddenly-revealed plane of 
 being, all the old objects of her perception had their 
 place : but they were no longer quite natural, quite 
 earthly. The walls and furniture, the hasty litter of 
 bath and kettle, towels, pillows, rugs the fire, which 
 burned like an ardent vision in the unsubstantial 
 grate were thin, strange, and shadowy : yet the life 
 which they decked seemed profoundly, amazingly real. 
 
 As once before, in the adventure of the Tree, 
 she had penetrated appearance : and stood suddenly 
 surrounded by truths. These truths, she observed, 
 were sparsely distributed. They were four in 
 number : herself and Vera, the Watcher and the 
 Graal. These things hung, actual, in the Abyss of 
 Being : they were at once veiled and supported by 
 the webby matter of the dream, which shook and 
 trembled incessantly about them. The misty earth, 
 the papery houses, the shrine and the hearth ; these 
 were there only that they might demonstrate or con- 
 ceal the thing which mattered the choice which she 
 must now make, the adjustment of her soul, her im- 
 mortal reality, to the three companions who went 
 with her on the way. 
 
 Suddenly, the will of the Watcher was upon her 
 again fiercely. He put the thing before her with 
 remorseless logic, saying, " Since appearance, move- 
 ment, change, the life and death of the body are but 
 illusion, why fight to avert the meaningless but in- 
 18
 
 274 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 evitable sequence of things ? Check this absurd 
 impulse whilst yet there is time. Let be. Do not 
 take sides : do not trouble. Can you not trust me to 
 create for you a happy dream ?" 
 
 That terrible fatigue which is the mother of 
 fatalism was creeping over her. She had done what 
 she could. Vera dozed now amongst her pillows. 
 Constance's hands were idle ; her tired brain at the 
 mercy of her friend. It would be a desperate 
 business, as she saw, this battle : a battle in which 
 she must meet and conquer the insidious counsel as 
 well as the assertive will. 
 
 (Where, she wondered, were the light and strength 
 which the Cup might have shed upon her in this 
 crisis ? What was it in her heart which blinded her 
 now to that pure radiance, shut her ears to the cry 
 of that love ? 
 
 But she knew, even whilst she complained cried 
 prayed for succour, the reason of her loneliness. 
 This was her hour, and she must meet it alone. She 
 had been flung, as it were, into the crucible : the fire 
 and the water must do their work. Her will must 
 stand free, unswayed, between good and evil, and 
 make its choice. The evil voice, disguised as 
 friendship, cried in her ears. The divine voice was 
 silent. It waited to pronounce judgment on the 
 issue of the day. 
 
 Yet she was not wholly solitary. She had at her 
 hand an auxiliary : the strongest of auxiliaries 
 , a weak thing for which she must fight. She and 
 Vera stood together in this struggle. It was im- 
 possible to separate their interests. She saw it : 
 saw them side by side, two human souls, poised
 
 HOW CONSTANCE KEPT CHRISTMAS 275 
 
 amongst the powers of the air. She forgot the 
 combat, forgot her own power of choice. Her whole 
 consciousness, her whole will, was merged in that of 
 the child, which stood at the very boundary of life 
 and death. This was a mother's business : the 
 moment of encounter, perhaps, for which that 
 mother had been made. Constance, at this hour, 
 forgot all else. She did not want heaven or earth ; 
 life or love. She was gone : she was not there : she 
 ceased to count. The floods burst. Love divine 
 love the selfless passion for imperfect things, came 
 on her. She perceived herself to be greatly blest in 
 suffering, struggling for this. To give oneself for 
 the unworthy : that, in this world of infinite grada- 
 tions, was the only thing worth doing. Was it not 
 the very pivot of creation ; the Secret of the Graal ? 
 
 Mysteriously, she found herself initiated into its 
 fraternity : sharing, from far off, in that ecstasy of 
 pain. Measured by this standard, her wretched 
 little sacrifice, her baby struggles, seemed con- 
 temptible : but its light fell on them, helped them, 
 lent them its own splendour. It gave them, as it 
 were, a consecration. This circumstance did not 
 make her happy ; did nothing to smooth the path 
 that she must tread. She did not want that : asked 
 for no personal reward. She was on the right side 
 in this eternal battle. She knew it, and it was 
 enough. 
 
 She understood now why all knightliness, all 
 honour the pure quest of perfection had ever 
 centred in the Graal. She seized, adored and 
 acknowledged it as the only thing that mattered: 
 the folly, the quixotry, the humanity of the Cross. 
 18 2
 
 276 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 Its transcendent chivalry, its joy in anguish, shamed 
 her. In her own quixotic fight with death for the 
 useless life which would but spoil her own, she drew 
 near it: and there found her lost maternity, her 
 selfless love. 
 
 The sun rose, hard and frosty, upon Christmas 
 Day. Its rays pierced, red and level, between the 
 houses, and lit the chill streets, where the lamps of 
 the night offered to it the faint and evil opposition 
 of artificial things. It shone into Constance's room, 
 where there were no visible preparations for the 
 honouring of the feast. 
 
 The doctor had come and gone, leaving a verdict 
 which obliterated all memory of times and seasons. 
 Suspense was in the air. Vera's state was declared 
 to be critical. The very forces of disease, it seemed, 
 were on the side of the Watcher : works must be 
 joined to faith if she were to be saved. Already the 
 faint scent of drugs, the piteous make-shifts of a 
 nursing which is conducted of necessity on the most 
 frugal plan, had made their invasion. The place 
 was littered with evidences of the battle of the 
 night. 
 
 Yet even here, in this unlikely corner, upon this 
 shabby stage, the Crib was set, the birth of love was 
 honoured. The light of the Cup shone now, white 
 and ardent, on a lodging which had become a shrine : 
 wherein, under an image, the essence of its worship 
 was preserved. It was companioned by that antique 
 symbol of incarnate divinity: a weary, selfless 
 mother wholly concentrated on the well-being of her 
 child. 
 
 But as she brooded over her daughter, tended her,
 
 277 
 
 Constance knew that she had but entered on the 
 first phases of a relentless struggle. Something, 
 indeed, she had conquered. Once for all, she had 
 dismantled the hard citadel of self. But the Watcher 
 was not defeated. He remained at large, very 
 active. He did not submit to her decision : he com- 
 bated it still. In the spirit of that civilization 
 which exterminates savage tribes for their own good, 
 he declared war the war of the wisest on his 
 friend. 
 
 In the cold street a belated singer, dragging his 
 way back towards the grateful paganism of home, 
 hurled at the irresponsive houses the first stanza of 
 a Christmas hymn. 
 
 " Christians, awake ! salute the happy morn 
 Whereon the Saviour of the world was born ; 
 Rise to adore the Mystery of Love.'' 
 
 " Dear me! I did not know they understood it," 
 said the Watcher.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 
 
 " Intravi, et vidi qualicunque oculo animae meae, supra 
 eundem oculum animae meae, supra mentem meam, 
 lucem domini incommutabilem : . . . Qui novit veri- 
 tatem, novit earn, et qui novit earn, novit aeternitatem. 
 Charitas novit earn. Augustini Confessionum, VII. 10. 
 
 r I ^HE New Year was come. Vera's sickness had 
 -L lasted for nearly ten days : with fluctuations of 
 hope, with sinkings and rallyings, as the silent battle 
 for her life went on. Her mother's strength was 
 poured out in this struggle, as if in the travail of a 
 new and more terrible birth. 
 
 The snowy weather had left them ; and a dark fog 
 brooded all day in the streets. It invaded the house, 
 adding to the difficulties of the nurses and to the 
 misery of the sick child, struggling for breath. Con- 
 stance, whose weary mind was at the point in which 
 any superstition seems more natural than reason 
 itself, was almost prepared to see in this some new 
 machination of the Watcher, whose malignant love 
 still sought to free her from the life-giving chains to 
 which she clung. 
 
 She was tired, sick at heart, desperately anxious. 
 All that she cared for now was the saving of her 
 
 278
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 279 
 
 child, living for her : yet she doubted whether her 
 vitality though she gave it to the uttermost 
 would avail against the terrible strength of the 
 Watcher, who never tired, never wavered from his 
 attack. She wanted to save that vitality too : that 
 she might devote it to Vera's service, to her educa- 
 tion, her happiness, her career. Every atom of the 
 child's body, every movement of her evil little mind, 
 was precious to her. Both, she was determined, 
 should reach such perfection as she was able to give. 
 
 But life, whose resources, whose kindness, she 
 needed so greatly at this moment, seemed inclined 
 to an increasing hardness, an enmity even. It was 
 not for nothing, as she saw, that she had made her 
 home into the sanctuary of the Graal. Upon every 
 aspect of existence it imposed its difficult interpre- 
 tation : dominated the future no less than the present. 
 The forces of the world were set angrily against it. 
 It turned to them an implacable face ; and demanded 
 the same loyalty in its friends. 
 
 It was a stern nurse. True to the tradition of 
 chivalry, it inculcated the great and military virtues, 
 valour as well as love ; crying Cibus sum grandium : 
 cresce, et manducabis me. She was reminded of a 
 cathedral of old France, visited in the happy days 
 of her ignorance. There, as she remembered, in a 
 porch that was the very picture-book of faith, St. 
 George and St. Martin stood sentinel on each side 
 of the great entrance : as if to assure intending 
 initiates of the Ineffable that only by courage and 
 charity could they attain to the mysteries within. 
 
 As she sat in the foggy room, by Vera's bedside, 
 watching the clock for the moment at which tern-
 
 2 8o THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 perature should be taken and medicine given, she 
 reviewed the difficulties, the problems, the changes, 
 which had flowed from its custody. 
 
 Her friends were gone : all but Helen, in whom 
 disclosure of the truth had but awakened a deeper 
 sympathy, an almost envious love, which enfolded 
 mother and child together in its embrace. 
 
 Her work, she knew, would go. Mr. John had 
 not as yet taken action in the matter : but Miss 
 Tyrrel's frank and abrupt disclosure of her mother- 
 hood had shocked him. He could not decide upon 
 the right way to take it. Her enforced absence 
 during the child's illness had kept the matter in the 
 foreground of his consciousness : and shown him, at 
 the same time, the extent to which he relied upon 
 her services. One may be sorry for Mr. John at 
 this juncture. He disliked the sudden necessity for 
 managing his own affairs, and naturally extended to 
 its cause his general sensations of resentment. He 
 wished very heartily that the subject had never been 
 mentioned to him. Miss Tyrrel's behaviour had 
 been tactless : he hated decisions, and this indis- 
 creet and unnecessary confession had thrust on him 
 a forced option of singular difficulty. She was an 
 excellent manager, and very cheap. But Mr. John 
 knew that the sums which are saved in salaries are 
 often paid for heavily in reputation : and Constance 
 was left in little doubt as to the course which he 
 would finally adopt. " With our large school and 
 theological connection," he said, " we are obliged 
 to be so very particular." 
 
 The Watcher observed, " You see you see ! Oh, 
 very foolish child ! what is the use of being honest
 
 of being true to the thing that you call life when 
 life itself is inimical, and the other creatures will not 
 understand ?" 
 
 Loneliness and poverty, then, she saw clearly for 
 the future. She did not flinch before them. She 
 only wished that she had greater strength for their 
 encounter: that some limit might be set to the 
 dreadful and growing fatigue wJiich dimmed her 
 energies and narrowed her outlook upon life. 
 
 Small things also conspired to hurt her ; to pull 
 at her powers of endurance. Not least amongst 
 them had been Andrew's intolerable kindness. He 
 had heard from Mrs. Reed of Vera's sickness : and 
 his persistent and extravagant gifts of invalid luxuries 
 which she dared not refuse, had at least made pos- 
 sible the child's ultimate recovery. That she should 
 owe it to him, this longed for and ruinous event, 
 was an irony which she found very hard to bear. 
 
 As she sat by the bed, therefore, she considered 
 all these matters : and, peering into the dimness 
 ahead of her, wondered what would be the outcome 
 of the fight. She looked to it with zest, whatever 
 it might be : for now her old love of life had received 
 a stimulus which it had never known before. She 
 was bound to the earth bound to the chariot of the 
 years by the blessed link of sacrifice. Vera needed 
 her : would monopolize in the future her time, her 
 strength, her love. She was very glad. 
 
 About two o'clock, Helen came in. She now 
 replaced Constance at Lambton's for a few hours 
 every day ; and called at her lodgings at lunch-time 
 to see whether anything was wanted for the child. 
 
 She said, " You are looking very white and seedy
 
 282 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 to-day, Con. The strain is beginning to tell. 
 Hadn't you better go out and get some air? The 
 fog is so thick this afternoon that shopping is at a 
 standstill : so I need not go back just yet. But it 
 is not dangerous : and, after all, anything is better 
 than a sick-room atmosphere when one is feeling 
 over-tired." 
 
 Constance answered gratefully, " I should like to 
 go for a little run ! And there's a new prescription, 
 which must be made up this afternoon. She has 
 the first dose at five. I might take it as I go, and 
 then call for it later on and bring it in." 
 
 She felt a sudden longing for space and silence, 
 for some release from that inward struggle which 
 was but exacerbated by the presence of the child. 
 She put on her things quickly, and fled out into the 
 street : not trusting herself to look back at Vera's 
 thin and wasted body, flat on the mattress, the 
 cropped head which tried feebly to raise itself, the 
 heavy eyes which followed her as she moved towards 
 the door. 
 
 The child broke into a wailing cry when she saw 
 herself about to be forsaken. 
 
 " Tanta ! don't go. I wants you. Wants a 
 shook-up pillow, and a fairy tale of giants. Wants 
 to be fedded with a little silver spoon !" 
 
 Helen said, " Darling, I'll tell you tales and feed 
 you. I will get you everything you want. Tanta's 
 going for a little walk, but I shall stay with you all 
 the time." 
 
 But Vera whimpered fretfully, " You isn't Tanta. 
 Wants her. Other peoples is no good." 
 
 Constance took with her that imperative cry :
 
 283 
 
 holding it tightly, savouring it, turning it in her 
 mind. It warmed her towards existence ; gave her 
 new strength. 
 
 She descended the stairs, and went out into the 
 roadway. The fog surged up before her, yellow and 
 impenetrable. It wrapped all things in the soft 
 folds of its mantle. At first she was blinded by it : 
 but after a moment of careful staring, she saw the 
 high dim cliff of a house against the tawny sky, 
 and then a spectral cab that went slowly past her. 
 The man drove with one hand, and with the other 
 slapped his chest ; for a little wind blew from the 
 east, and it was bitter cold. She walked a few steps 
 towards a radiant haze which shone very softly in 
 the distance. Presently she discovered it to be the 
 fish-shop at the corner, which was lit with a bluish 
 splendour by its great electric lamps. It seemed full 
 of jewelled things : mackerel, like little peacocks of 
 the sea, glittering upon the slab, and the triumphant 
 rose-colour of the mullet, and many little elfish silver 
 creatures which caught and threw back the lovely 
 broken light. The mysterious beauty of the world, 
 all the strange shapes of it, the incredible, exquisite 
 detail ever apt to break on one's vision from such a 
 corner as this, seized her, and aroused in her a 
 sudden agony of love. She perceived in herself a 
 new and abnormal sensitiveness to this divine play 
 of light and colour : a wild desire to hold it tightly, 
 a wild strange fear lest it should be snatched away. 
 
 But it could not be snatched away. This, at any 
 rate, was hers : none could deprive her of it. The 
 body and the heart might go hungry, but the eye 
 could never be starved. How she loved the world !
 
 284 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 The adorableness of it its intimacy came home to 
 her, after ten days of concentration on the battle 
 with disease. Its dust and hers were of the same 
 company. In loving it, she loved her own people : 
 her nearest kin. 
 
 Then she remembered that, after all, she was but 
 the foster sister of the pretty things she worshipped. 
 She had been put to nurse, as it were, amongst 
 them : but some time she would shed her dust and 
 go away. The thought of death smote her with a 
 sharp pain, and left behind it a sickening sense of 
 fear. Her life, even in the greyest days, had 
 possessed that quality of organic completeness which 
 prevents the idea of one's own death from being 
 more than a polite assent to a proposition which is 
 universally received. Now, she knew not why, she 
 thought of it as an actual, personal process : a 
 strange circumstance, for in spite of hardship ahead 
 of her, her zest for life had never been greater than 
 at this hour. 
 
 The Watcher seized on the horrid thought, and 
 forced it again and again upon her mind, saying to 
 her, " Sometimes in the battle it happens that fool- 
 hardy warriors are killed. Then, they must forsake 
 the lovely world, and all the excitements of the 
 dream." 
 
 He did not frighten her: it was so obviously 
 implicit in the very scheme of things that she should 
 live. 
 
 She came to the cash-chemist's: gave in her 
 prescription, and then turned to continue her walk. 
 But the fog had thickened : it closed about her, 
 brown and heavy. The effort that she had made
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 285 
 
 the driving of her weary limbs in quest of air, 
 seemed but a foolish travail, when this was all the 
 air to be obtained. She hesitated. She might wait 
 in the shop for the preparation of her medicine, then 
 go home : but the atmosphere of drugs, the odd and 
 aromatic smells, were, at the moment, hardly to her 
 taste. In spite of smarting eyes and difficult breath, 
 she walked a little way, vaguely. Then a thicker 
 wave of fog settled upon the streets, and she decided 
 that it were better to turn backwards after all. The 
 possibility of losing her way had suddenly occurred 
 to her : and the awful consequences for the sick child 
 who waited for the medicine at home. 
 
 She turned, as she supposed, completely round ; 
 began with assurance to retrace her steps. But in 
 a moment, her foot felt the kerb ; she came with a 
 jolt into the gutter-way, and was on the roughly 
 macadamized surface of the road, possessed by the 
 absurd but fear-inducing sense of being irretrievably 
 lost. The soft silence of the fog was all about her, 
 and converted the narrow street into a limitless 
 desert. She walked on. All her idea of direction 
 had vanished : and it was only after a period which 
 seemed very long that she felt another kerb-stone 
 rising against her foot, and was upon the pavement 
 again. 
 
 She edged from the roadway, slowly and carefully ; 
 till she came, with sensations of shock, on the wall 
 of a house. When she had crept by it for a little 
 way, an edgeless and colourless figure appeared in 
 the mist : another woman, who also as it seemed 
 was hugging the friendly wall. They proceeded side 
 by side for a short time : and presently the wall was
 
 286 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 broken by a door. The woman stopped there, rang 
 a bell, and said to Constance, "There will not be 
 many here to-day !" Perhaps because Miss Tyrrel 
 did not answer her, she added, " We are not really 
 very late." 
 
 The door opened a little way of itself and stood 
 ajar. The lady pushed it wide open : entered : and 
 held it, that her companion might pass. Because 
 she was lost and very tired, because of the thickness 
 of the fog, and her longing for some place of refuge 
 where she might at least be still, Constance went in. 
 She was blinded and stifled : wanted breathing 
 space. The other woman preceded her: and she 
 followed, up a flight of stairs and then through 
 another door. 
 
 Behind it she found, as she had vaguely expected, 
 a small and perfumed chapel. The fog, shrouding 
 the electric lamps, filled it with a hazy golden light. 
 Upon the simple altar were twelve candles : twelve 
 misty flames, like globes of dim fire. A few ladies 
 knelt at the chairs in the centre aisle. 
 
 No priest was present : but in the plain choir-stalls 
 which lined the little nave, there were perhaps 
 a dozen women. They looked somewhat like 
 Quakeresses of the old school, before chocolate 
 brought smartness in its train : somewhat like 
 respectable French women of the bourgeoisie, 
 brought from the recesses of a somnolent pro- 
 vincial town. They wore black woollen dresses, with 
 little capes fastened upon the breast ; and large 
 old-fashioned bonnets which covered the hair and 
 were tied beneath the chin, surrounding the face 
 with an upstanding black ruche. Incurably humble
 
 287 
 
 and demure, she judged them : full of kindness, but 
 without initiative. 
 
 As she seated herself upon a chair near the door, 
 one of these quaint and gentle persons evidently 
 prosecuting some ritual already begun cried in a 
 thin pure voice, with a wailing cadence hardly of 
 this world, " Hei mihi, Domine /" and the other voices 
 responded in the far-off accents of a selfless and 
 delicate lamentation, which even in its grief still 
 remembered the language of hope, "Ad Dominum, 
 cum tribularer, clamavi : et exaudivit me." 
 
 " When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord : 
 and He heard me!" What a strange statement, 
 made with an air of utter conviction by these 
 sequestered and unearthly women, living, unsuspected, 
 behind walls which fringed a busy London street ! 
 Were they, she wondered, speaking for themselves : 
 and what was the intention of the ceremony on 
 which she had chanced ? 
 
 At the ending of the psalm, the note changed. 
 The high clear voice which had chanted the antiphon 
 cried suddenly and fervently, " Requiem tzternam dona 
 eis Domine /" and its companion voices answered, " Et 
 lux perp&tua luceat eis" Then another psalm, and 
 another, and always at the end of each that same 
 bitter and imploring cry. 
 
 She began to understand it. She had come upon 
 one of those places, scattered throughout Christen- \ 
 dom, where the Ritual of the Dead is ceaselessly 
 performed. The Church, by these delegates of hers, 
 was doing what she could for those emigrant sons 
 and daughters who had gone out into a new world. 
 She was afraid for them, knowing that they shared
 
 288 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 her imperfection : she yearned towards them, pitiful, 
 longing to help them if she could. 
 
 Requiem csternam dona eis ! A whole generation of 
 mourners joined, as it seemed, in this impassioned 
 prayer. Give them rest : they shall have it ! We, 
 the living, will work for it. Rest and light more 
 light ! We have lit these little candles to mitigate 
 their dimness if we can. All the things which we 
 have not ourselves can never get, never enjoy 
 these we ask for them. Our own deprivation we can 
 endure. But help the poor dead, the lonely dead ! 
 Give them the calm illumination which we long for 
 and always miss. We cry in their name, for we are 
 one with them. Soon, we shall be with them. 
 They are here too: they implore us as we speak. 
 We send our hearts before us, and our ineffectual 
 wills, over that brink which we, too, shall presently 
 pass. We rush ahead of our experience : unite 
 ourselves to those already there. We ask nothing 
 for ourselves. We only assert our right to ask for 
 them : to use our bodies for the bodiless, our voices 
 for the silent, our tears for those who cannot even 
 weep. 
 
 Behind the veil of misty light, Constance seemed 
 to divine them ; the poor and helpless dead, waiting 
 so anxiously upon the supplications of their friends. 
 In the fog, where bodies became as phantoms, and 
 every standard of reality was at fault, it was easy to 
 believe in them : to feel all about one, caught perhaps 
 in the fog of personality, the mighty wistful company 
 of souls, called by the familiar rites to lean out from 
 their country into this. She discerned their very 
 gentle prayer for help : she too was impelled to ask
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 289 
 
 for them light and a clear horizon, a release from 
 the strained ear, the strained eye, from the ignorance 
 and helplessness which constitute the condition of 
 the lost. 
 
 Then she thought of the sick child at home, 
 hovering, itself, upon the edge of this multitude. , 
 Should Vera die, could she ask these things for that 
 elfish, cruel creature : that little heap of appetites 
 and habits which her own starved appetites had 
 brought to birth ? What was Vera, once her active 
 little body had been cast away? An incompleted 
 thing, for whom the lesson of the flesh remained 
 unlearned. 
 
 In the quiet chapel, where the chanting of psalms 
 had now given place to soft-recited prayers, Con- 
 stance regained the clear vision which had forsaken 
 her during the preceding busy days. From this 
 spiritual place, she looked temperately out upon life. 
 She saw her battle with the Watcher tending to its 
 crisis. Because something of the atmosphere of 
 infinity was caught between these walls, he had 
 gained in strength. He rose and dominated her. 
 She felt her own increasing weakness, saw that he 
 was her master, and trembled for the little child 
 whom she would save. There could be, it was clear, 
 no amicable termination of this contest : no final 
 living side by side, all three of them she, Vera, 
 and the subjugated lodger within. He would not 
 tolerate that. 
 
 Then she saw something else : a new and terrible 
 solution, which had not occurred to her before. 
 
 The Watcher must be expelled from the dream : 
 compelled to relinquish his hold on material things. 
 19
 
 ago THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 This was the one way to be rid of his influence : the 
 sole solution by which Vera's safety was assured. 
 If he stayed, he would have his will of the child : 
 push her remorsely from life. His hatred of her 
 intrusive personality was the complement of that 
 blind and narrow love which he lavished on his 
 friend. Her mother's strength could not avail 
 against him : but that mother might yet win a more 
 splendid victory if she would. 
 
 She might go, and drag him with her from the 
 field. So tightly was he enmeshed within her being, 
 that only thus could he depart. She saw it now, in 
 this place of light. Her very soul and body must be 
 torn asunder if she would extricate him from the 
 fetters of the dust. 
 
 There was no longer room in life for her and Vera. 
 One or other of them must perish. This cruel truth 
 grew, and filled her consciousness. Gradually all 
 other truths hopes plans melted before it ; 
 leaving it in possession of her mind. 
 
 But she did not want to die. She wished, she 
 longed to live for her daughter's sake : to offer, if 
 she might, reparation for the coldness of past years. 
 She had schemed it all her care, her tenderness, 
 her courage begun, already, to taste its joy. She 
 was going to concentrate herself on Vera : Vera, 
 who without her guardianship was helpless : a 
 nameless child, cast upon the world. Could such 
 an act of abandonment as this deliberate death be 
 called her duty ? Could this be the solution towards 
 which she was being pressed ? She exclaimed 
 within her mind, " I cannot bear it ! What a choice ! 
 To forsake her, or else to let her die ! Where could
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 291 
 
 she go ? Who would take her ? How cruel how 
 inexorable They are !" 
 
 "You see!" said the Watcher, "your sacrifice 
 would be a useless one. And even if it were not, 
 would you indeed give your very life for this ? Go, 
 in order that she may live in poverty and imperfec- 
 tion move to and fro add to the ugliness of things ? 
 How gross a folly ! You, who love it all so much, 
 to go for ever from the dream !" 
 
 She answered him meekly, pleading with him : 
 for now he had her at his mercy, and she was not 
 ashamed to sue him for her life. 
 
 " You see," she said, " the pass to which you have 
 brought me. Is this love ? Will you not have 
 patience yet a little wait give me time ? Do not 
 kill me ! Do not force on me this action ! I do not 
 want to go." 
 
 He answered, " I will not wait, for I see the future. 
 I see that since you will not yield, it is best that you 
 should die. If you live, there cannot be a happy 
 outcome : only eternal effort and wasted sacrifice." 
 
 "That too may make one happy. You do not 
 understand." 
 
 " I do not understand your wild illusions. They 
 weary me: I want to go away. I can no longer 
 bear this squalid corner, these perverse sufferings 
 and unworthy loves. To love the Cup, and the 
 reality behind it ; that were comprehensible. It is 
 indeed your destiny, your only joy ; but to this, it 
 seems, you hardly can attain. Therefore, if you 
 would live, let go, that I may extricate you from your 
 ugly tangles. Then we will wander freely through 
 the dream, and look for beauty, happiness, and life." 
 192
 
 292 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 She steeled herself against him : and he, sadly 
 conscious of the alienation of his friend, said, " Ah ! 
 let me go ! I loved you : and I longed to help you. 
 But I cannot make you happy, because you resist. 
 Therefore you must die and release me ; for I am 
 very weary of this confused and hopeless world." 
 
 There had been an interval of silence in the chapel, 
 when the Vespers of the Dead came to an end. 
 Suddenly it was broken : as it appeared, by a litany 
 of some kind. Constance was still deep in the fear 
 and amazement which her discovery had induced : 
 hoarding as it were her courage for the awful hour 
 which she discerned ahead. Hence the opening 
 phrases went past her very softly, without attaining 
 to her consciousness. 
 
 But presently she woke from her dream, called 
 forth by the high and urgent voice which led these 
 poignant ceremonies. She heard it cry with a 
 strange accent of authority a certainty that its 
 invocation could not be in vain " All ye orders of 
 Blessed Spirits /" and the congregation took it up, 
 finished the phrase, " Pray for the faithful departed" 
 They had gone, it seemed, beyond the limit of their 
 first petitions. The supplication of divine omnipo- 
 tence was over. Now they extended their appeal, 
 humanized it, claimed the help of the triumphant 
 dead in caring for their poorer kin. 
 
 " Saint Gregory Saint Augustine Saint Igna- 
 tius !" cried the appellant voice : and the eager 
 chorus followed with its supreme demand, " Pray 
 for the faithful departed !" None were excused from 
 this duty. One after another, the torch-bearers of 
 the faith were claimed, petitioned : and with so
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 293 
 
 assured an accent that Constance almost expected a 
 quiet presence to answer from beyond the radiant 
 mist. 
 
 It went on, that roll-call of the happy dead ; and 
 with each name the reiterated, imperative, united 
 cry for help. They called them down into this little 
 chapel, claimed their kinship : insistent on the 
 necessity of their suffrages, expectant of their 
 brotherly aid. They were reminded of their humanity, 
 these elect and shining spirits, snatched from the 
 study, the brothel, the battle-field, the court. " You," 
 these intent and amazing women seemed to say, 
 "you, even more than we, should work, should plead 
 for them. You have achieved : you have entered 
 the Light : you are there. We do our best, but we 
 are so far away. We lack your transcendent oppor- 
 tunity. Therefore we remind you of your fraternal 
 obligations all ye holy doctors, popes, and confessors, 
 pray for the faithful departed." 
 
 The woman who knelt alone, struggling with her 
 terror and astonishment, trying so hard to acquiesce 
 in the sacrifice which she must make, was inexplic- 
 ably consoled by this intimate colloquy; this assur- 
 ance of the reality, the friendliness, of the populations 
 who awaited her beyond the veil. It was but 
 another aspect of that world of the dead which the 
 Watcher had divined amongst the Westmorland 
 hills : whose friendship he had pressed on her then. 
 How peaceful, she thought, was the lot of this army, 
 resting thus in the ever-renewed memory of the race. 
 Here the fretting duties of the dust accomplished 
 was perfect unity, the social link, the unhindered 
 love. It seemed as though death alone could convey
 
 294 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 the fulness of life. Constance felt herself to be 
 initiated into a mighty society : held, welcomed, and 
 sheltered by it. Her terror passed away. 
 
 She turned on the Watcher. " You," she said to 
 him, " have nothing to do with this ! I am not 
 afraid now. All is well ! I see that it does not 
 matter where one is in it : living or dead, this side 
 or the other of the veil. You said that to me once. 
 I give it to you again. But Vera must stay ; because 
 she has not finished, is not ready to go out of the 
 dream." 
 
 He was astonished : a little crestfallen. " Do you 
 mean," he said, " that you are glad to go, as Martin 
 was ? You, who cannot see the light ?" 
 
 She answered, " Yes ! I believe I am. Glad to 
 make a good departure a death that is worth while ! 
 They shan't be ashamed of me if I can help it the 
 people on the other side." 
 
 She was very tired now. She could dispute with 
 him no longer : she only wished to sleep. The litany 
 continued, and she listened to it idly : till suddenly, 
 from out its rhythmic supplications came one, 
 startling in its supreme assurance, which obliterated 
 the walls of the chapel the very ramparts of the 
 world and set about those who could make it the 
 splendours of a house not built with hands. 
 
 " That Thou wouldst be pleased to admit them 
 
 the contemplation of Thy adorable Beauty, we 
 beseech Thee to hear us!" 
 
 These captives of time and space, from the very 
 deeps of their prison, offered this selfless prayer for 
 those who had passed from their sight. She rose on 
 the wings of it : she, for whom that prison door 
 
 to
 
 THE HELPERS OF THE HOLY SOULS 295 
 
 stood open. She asked it for herself, and for the 
 Watcher : for all the spirits of the living and the dead. 
 
 This was what she wanted ; what all men wanted. 
 This was the link still lacking, to unify the scattered 
 actions of her life. But one must, as she saw it, 
 share in that Beauty, contribute to it, as the one 
 condition of true sight. Did the Watcher, she 
 wondered, see it ? Had he done so, it had surely 
 purified his love, satisfied his thirst for reality, stilled 
 his unrest. 
 
 Others had the vision in some measure. It was 
 here in the world for those who had learned to see. 
 She remembered Martin : remembered the sacred 
 Thing to which she had given an unwilling guardian- 
 ship: remembered Helen, sanctified by a foolish 
 agony which she did not understand. Then, turning 
 on herself she asked, suddenly, passionately, the one 
 question of the awakened soul, " How can I serve it ? 
 What can I give ?" 
 
 The Inner Inhabitant was ready to reply to her: 
 but she knew the only answer before she heard its 
 voice. 
 
 As she went out from the chapel, hushed, shaken 
 and bewildered, there stood by its entrance one of 
 the demure and black-gowned sisters of the choir. 
 She looked at Miss Tyrrel with friendliness, as if 
 divining in her some quality appropriate to the 
 rites. 
 
 Constance said, " What is this place ? Who are 
 you?" 
 
 The woman answered in the sweet and nervous 
 accents of the cloister, " Madame, we are called the 
 Helpers of the Holy Souls."
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HOW THEY WENT HOME 
 
 " And at the end of woe, suddenly our eyes shall be 
 opened, and in clearness of light our sight shall be full." 
 JULIAN OF NORWICH: Revelations of Divine Love. 
 
 IT did not surprise either Helen, the doctor, or the 
 landlady that Constance's illness should follow 
 close upon the convalescence of the child. She had 
 not spared herself. Her devotion had even verged 
 upon foolishness ; including as it did an indulgence 
 of the patient's caprices, an attention to her mere 
 happiness, which no student of modern therapeutics 
 could approve. 
 
 During these last permitted days of her physical 
 existence, she was ceaselessly obsessed by the deso- 
 lating consciousness of awakened spirit that she 
 could never, under any circumstances, love enough. 
 In the life to which she went, as she conceived of it, 
 love would be effortless, a joy. It would spring, and 
 she with it, to its Source. In the life which she 
 must leave it had been a high and splendid duty : 
 difficult, full of enticements for the courageous soul. 
 But she had neglected that transcendent opportunity, 
 been blind to its romance : and her act of reparation 
 did nothing to assuage her remorse. 
 
 296
 
 HOW THEY WENT HOME 297 
 
 Hence, she devoted herself feverishly, whilst she 
 could, to the satisfaction of Vera's smallest fancies ; 
 waiting on her, playing with her, never absent from 
 her room. For this, she relinquished, as she knew, 
 her final chances of communion with the adorable 
 world from which she went. It meant something to 
 an impassioned lover of beauty to forego her last 
 opportunity of seeing the spare trees in their dress 
 of hoar-frost, the misty glory of the river when the 
 light begins to fade, the miracle of Oxford Street at 
 the moment in which its lamps flash splendid in the 
 dusk. These familiar and exquisite sights, always 
 friendly to her weary eyes, were going. Her very 
 eyes were going: all her senses: time and dimension: 
 shape and colour : sound and space. There were 
 moments when she could not bear it : when she 
 cried out in agony against her fate. To die in 
 furnished lodgings is not pleasant, even to the 
 amateur of death. Her regrets were made the more 
 tormenting by the fact that she here suffered, in their 
 extremest form, all those squalors and discomforts 
 which are incident to our departure from the 
 dust. 
 
 The Watcher, in the midst of his own eagerness 
 to be gone, was very sorry for his friend. He antici- 
 pated for her no happy future : her spiritual blind- 
 ness, as he saw it, would be as great a drawback to 
 the enjoyment of Eternity as his own supersensual 
 prejudices had been to the comprehension of Time. 
 She would exist, as he knew, in the Real for ever 
 and ever. What could she do there : this creature 
 who had not even been able to contrive her own 
 comfort in the dream ? To know : this, for him,
 
 298 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 was still the great matter. He perceived in Con- 
 stance a deep ignorance of the conditions on which 
 she must be cast. He would yet have offered her 
 place for repentance, had she desired it : for now he 
 was almost soft-hearted where this one woman was 
 concerned. But she was intent on his departure : 
 and even in the darkest hours, she did not flinch. 
 
 She struggled to expel him from her spirit : longing 
 to be herself, to be at peace, to regain the sole 
 possession of her senses before she laid them finally 
 away. He too fought within her against the clinging 
 fetters of the flesh : eager for home, anxious to be 
 gone from a lodging where he did not any longer feel 
 at ease. The battle tore at her body, racked it, with 
 a fever which no medicines could still. 
 
 She lay, hour after hour, alone in the dreary room. 
 She gazed vacantly at the faded pictures, counted 
 the drab daisies upon the slate-coloured wall. Time 
 was marked only by the perfunctory visits of the 
 landlady, who " looked in " to bring useless and un- 
 palatable nourishment, and see whether there was 
 anything required. Once every day, Vera came to 
 her : and this was the moment towards which she 
 lived. When Constance sickened, Mrs. Reed had 
 removed the child to her own lodging : delighted to 
 have again the whole custody of a living thing that 
 she could tend. 
 
 She had said to Miss Tyrrel during the first days 
 of her illness, " You must not worry about Vera 
 whilst you are laid up. She is quite safe with me, 
 and I am so pleased to be able to take her : I don't 
 know when I have enjoyed anything so much. It 
 makes such a difference, beginning the day by dress-
 
 HOW THEY WENT HOME 299 
 
 ing her, and ending it with putting her to bed. 
 Having her little clothes to mend and her feeding 
 to consider you cannot think what that all means 
 when one has been living alone, with nothing to 
 arrange for but oneself." 
 
 " Would you like it always ?" 
 
 " Always," answered Helen. " Sometimes, I feel 
 that I must keep her : must have something to serve. 
 I cannot bear to think about the moment when I 
 shall have to let you have her back again." 
 
 " Perhaps that moment will not come." 
 
 Helen looked at her nervously. Oh no no !" she 
 said, "you are quite mistaken. You're very weak 
 just now, and it makes you depressed. But the 
 doctor said to-day that he is sure there are no com- 
 plications : as soon as your temperature drops, you 
 will have nothing to do but get well." 
 
 " And if I don't ?" 
 
 " Then oh, then I hope she would be mine," said 
 Mrs. Reed. Fear and excitement strove together in 
 her voice. " And of course, it won't happen : it is 
 absurd to think of it but if it ever did, I should do 
 my best for her : my very best. And I wouldn't steal 
 her from you. I should always remember that she 
 was really yours. She should never be allowed to 
 forget you : I promise that !" 
 
 It was a promise which carried little conviction. 
 Helen spoiled the little girl, who already began to 
 turn to her ; pleased by her new and undisciplined 
 life, and resenting with her customary violence the 
 quietness and restraint which were imposed during 
 her morning visits to Constance's room. Vera had 
 the animal's instinctive hatred of the sick, and could
 
 300 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 hardly be persuaded to submit to her mother's feeble 
 embrace. 
 
 That mother, therefore, saw herself in the act of 
 withdrawing from a world which did not seem to 
 need her any more. She was going very quickly : 
 helped thereto by the Watcher, who wished that her 
 earthly pain at least might end. She had cast him 
 from her mind : he no longer governed her vision : 
 but he could not leave her, because he loved. 
 
 Mrs. Reed had looked in at lunch-time, and found 
 her sleeping. She thought the omen a good one, 
 and crept quietly away : for the day was fine and 
 she wished to take Vera for a little walk. She 
 arranged the bedside table, placing milk and medicine 
 within reach ; and warned the landlady that Miss 
 Tyrrel was best left undisturbed unless she rang 
 her bell. 
 
 When Constance awoke, the afternoon was waning, 
 and her room was grey and dim : being filled with a 
 wintry twilight which made this place of departure 
 seem one already with the colourless dimension of 
 the dead. She looked about her, rather puzzled. 
 The place seemed strange. It was so very large and 
 shadowy, and she so small : smaller than her body, 
 she thought. In some subtle way, she was changed : 
 yet she could not capture, analyze her new condition. 
 
 Things were becoming queer : very queer indeed. 
 She did not put it more definitely than that. She 
 was not frightened: but she was annoyed to dis- 
 cover that her mind was too weak to grasp the strange 
 experience to which, plainly, she had come the last 
 of her adventures, perhaps. 
 
 Opposite to her bed was the little cupboard, in
 
 HOW THEY WENT HOME . 301 
 
 which she had locked the shrine of the Cup. She 
 wished that she could reach it, unlock the door, and 
 look within. Somehow, she fancied, that might explain 
 things : give her something to rest upon, something 
 that would not display the confusing qualities which 
 now invested all visible objects of thought. She 
 stared at the cupboard very hard. Presently she 
 found herself going towards it, quite easily. Then, 
 as if she were looking through some glassy substance, 
 and in the very act of looking penetrated that on 
 which she gazed, she found herself in the presence 
 of the Graal. 
 
 She had forgotten everything else : was not strong 
 enough to attend to her body any longer. The 
 teasing question of life and death, of the conditions 
 of the transit, passed away. She did not think of 
 asking herself on which side of that veil she existed, 
 because the veil had disappeared. 
 
 She and the Chalice faced one another : but not 
 the cup of cloudy glass which she had known. It 
 had taken on the splendours of reality : and she 
 smiled, for she looked Perfection in the face. It 
 shone close to her, yet unseizable. It shone through 
 the whole world ; a lens which focussed and poured 
 out upon that piteous sphere of effort the benediction 
 of the Uncreated Light. 
 
 " Humble, yet omnipotent. Desirous, and illu- 
 sive." She wondered whence she had obtained those 
 words. They came back to her now, suddenly com- 
 prehended. They were all that remained within 
 her mind. Her eyes were opened on eternity : 
 easily, naturally, since they were shut for ever on 
 the illusions of the earth. She perceived Reality
 
 302 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 at her door, ever near her, patient and unsleep- 
 ing, awaiting the recognition of its child. 
 
 She saw it : but not alone. Even in her act of 
 departure she must, it seemed, carry out the redemp- 
 tive duties of her race. As Dante, gazing into the 
 eyes of Beatrice, there saw reflected the Light 
 Divine : so the Watcher, gazing into the soul of his 
 friend at this crucial moment of transcendent victory 
 and earthly loss, was permitted to see the trans- 
 figured Spirit the inmost inhabitant where it sat, 
 like a Mater Dolorosa, holding upon its knees the 
 slain self by whose death it was redeemed. 
 
 It seemed to him now a very holy thing and full 
 of wonder. He did not know that its sacrifice was 
 commonplace enough. There was no one to tell 
 him that, judged by the stupendous standards of 
 humanity, any other action had been a sin : that 
 Constance's passion took no heroic rank amongst 
 the sublime adventures of the dust. In the human 
 aspect of her death : in its determined quixotry, its 
 profound and unrewarded love : he recognized, 
 astonished, the key to all the mazes of the dream. 
 Out of this agony there was reflected for him a ray 
 of that divine Personality which he, the ignorant 
 and impersonal investigator of things, had little sus- 
 pected to be the energizing light in which alone it 
 was possible to see God. 
 
 In that light, eternity was remade for him. The 
 awful boredom of the Infinite, its incomprehensi- 
 bility, had passed away. He no longer noticed that 
 he did not understand, for the desire to know was 
 gone. He looked again, detached from the dream, 
 on the busy tangle of organic things : on a world
 
 HOW THEY WENT HOME 303 
 
 founded on the illusions, supported by the considera- 
 tions, of matter, growth and sex. But now he saw 
 no paradox, no confusion : only as it were a furnace, 
 whence, now and then, the Will drew forth a perfect 
 spirit made for Its own delight. 
 
 He heard now the voice of that Love in which all 
 subsists, crying through eternity with a sad voice 
 and urgent to its many errant sons. And the most 
 faithful of all answers to this appeal did not come 
 from the infinity which is Its home; but was dragged 
 and distilled from the turmoil of life, from the midst 
 of that sacrificial torment which he had so bitterly 
 and ignorantly regretted for her whom he had 
 learnt to call his friend. There, in the healing of 
 division, he saw perfect union attained. He, who 
 had now all knowledge, saw himself outstripped by 
 those who had a very little love : and saw also in 
 the satisfaction of his own lust of curiosity an end 
 which even the meanest human soul had hardly held 
 consistently through life. 
 
 But he had loved her a little. He had followed 
 her faithfully. He had done for her his mistaken 
 best. Now, he abased himself before her : before the 
 spirit of a tired and broken outcast, whom even 
 earth had held to be impure. 
 
 Her poor and weary body had fallen asleep : and 
 from between the lips of it her soul came out, as 
 gladly as a little bird from its cage. It was the soul 
 which he had watched and loved as it struggled to 
 burn in the difficult air of the earth : but had 
 hindered, because he never understood. Now it 
 shone very brightly without flickering : having 
 sloughed off the tedious apparatus of the flesh. It
 
 
 304 THE COLUMN OF DUST 
 
 shot up, a penetrating flame of love, straight to that 
 Heart of Being which all creation eternally desires. 
 
 And he, who had torn so violently from out its 
 prison the white soul of her whose life he dared to 
 judge, took with it his last lesson, and his release. 
 He was initiated into heaven, and stood there beside 
 her : humbled, glorified, redeemed by that humanity 
 into whose august secrets he had tried to look. The 
 dream was over. It faded before the splendours of 
 the Real. He rose from his sleep, wide-eyed, to see 
 the sacred spirit of man brought forth from a column 
 of dust. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
 
 A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY METHUEN 
 
 AND COMPANY: LONDON 
 
 36 ESSEX STREET 
 
 W.C. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 General Literature, . . . 2-22 
 Ancient Cities, ... 22 
 Antiquary's Books, \ -<. '*'. 'ff 22 
 Arden Shakespeare . . 'f'/*43 
 Beginner's Books, . .-, ,w.'. -j *3 
 Business Books, . '.",.'' 83 
 Byzantine Texts, ... 34 
 Churchman's Bible, (.':,' ' 34 
 Churchman's Library, . . '''. 34 
 Classical Translations, . 24 
 Classics of Art, ... 24 
 Commercial Series, ., r'-ni'nJP 
 Connoisseur's Library, . 25 
 Illustrated Pocket Library of 
 
 Plain and Coloured Books, 25 
 Junior Examination Series, 26 
 Junior School-Books, . . 27 
 Leaders of Religion, . . 27 
 Library of Devotion, . . 27 
 Little Books on Art, . . 28 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Little Galleries, . . . 28 
 
 Little Guides, .... 28 
 
 Little Library, ... 29 
 
 Little Quarto Shakespeare, 30 
 
 Miniature Library, . . 30 
 
 Oxford Biographies, . . 30 
 
 School Examination Series, 31 
 
 School Histories, ... 31 
 
 Simplified French Texts, . 31 
 
 Standard Library, ... 31 
 
 Textbooks of Science, . . 32 
 
 Textbooks of Technology, . 33 
 
 Handbooks of Theology, . 32 
 
 Westminster Commentaries, 33 
 
 Fiction, 33.39 
 
 Books for Boys and Girls, 39 
 
 Novels of Alexandre Dumas, 39 
 Methuen's Sixpenny Books, 39 
 
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 4 
 
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 9 
 
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 10 
 
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 12 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S CATALOGUE 
 
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 20 
 
 MESSRS. METHUEN'S CATALOGUE 
 
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 21 
 
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