Part 47 (1/2)

Systems and Universes overpast, The Seraph came upon the Four, at last, Guiding and guarding with devoted mind The tedious generations of mankind Who lent at most unwilling ear and eye When they could not escape the ministry....

Yet, patient, faithful, firm, persistent, just Toward all that gross, indifferent, facile dust, The Archangels laboured to discharge their trust By precept and example, prayer and law, Advice, reproof, and rule, but, labouring, saw Each in his fellow's countenance confessed, The Doubt that sickens: 'Have I done my best?'

Even as they sighed and turned to toil anew, The Seraph hailed them with observance due; And after some fit talk of higher things Touched tentative on mundane happenings.

This they permitting, he, emboldened thus, Prolused of humankind promiscuous.

And, since the large contention less avails Than instances observed, he told them tales--Tales of the shop, the bed, the court, the street, Intimate, elemental, indiscreet: Occasions where Confusion smiting swift Piles jest on jest as snow-slides pile the drift.

Whence, one by one, beneath derisive skies, The victims bare, bewildered heads arise: Tales of the pa.s.sing of the spirit, graced With humour blinding as the doom it faced: Stark tales of ribaldry that broke aside To tears, by laughter swallowed ere they dried: Tales to which neither grace nor gain accrue, But only (Allah be exalted!) true, And only, as the Seraph showed that night, Delighting to the limits of delight.

These he rehea.r.s.ed with artful pause and halt, And such pretence of memory at fault, That soon the Four--so well the bait was thrown-- Came to his aid with memories of their own-- Matters dismissed long since as small or vain, Whereof the high significance had lain Hid, till the ungirt glosses made it plain.

Then as enlightenment came broad and fast, Each marvelled at his own oblivious past Until--the Gates of Laughter opened wide-- The Four, with that bland Seraph at their side, While they recalled, compared, and amplified, In utter mirth forgot both zeal and pride.

High over Heaven the lamps of midnight burned Ere, weak with merriment, the Four returned, Not in that order they were wont to keep-- Pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep, In awful diapason heard afar, But shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star.

Reeling a planet's...o...b..t left or right As laughter took them in the abysmal Night; Or, by the point of some remembered jest, Winged and brought helpless down through gulfs unguessed, Where the blank worlds that gather to the birth Leaped in the womb of Darkness at their mirth, And e'en Gehenna's bondsmen understood.

They were not d.a.m.ned from human brotherhood.

Not first nor last of Heaven's high Host, the Four That night took place beneath The Throne once more.

O lovelier than their morning majesty, The understanding light behind the eye!

O more compelling than their old command, The new-learned friendly gesture of the hand!

O sweeter than their zealous fellows.h.i.+p, The wise half-smile that pa.s.sed from lip to lip!

O well and roundly, when Command was given, They told their tale against themselves to Heaven, And in the silence, waiting on The Word, Received the Peace and Pardon of The Lord!

'My Son's Wife'

(1913)

He had suffered from the disease of the century since his early youth, and before he was thirty he was heavily marked with it. He and a few friends had rearranged Heaven very comfortably, but the reorganisation of Earth, which they called Society, was even greater fun. It demanded Work in the shape of many taxi-rides daily; hours of brilliant talk with brilliant talkers; some sparkling correspondence; a few silences (but on the understanding that their own turn should come soon) while other people expounded philosophies; and a fair number of picture-galleries, tea-fights, concerts, theatres, music-halls, and cinema shows; the whole trimmed with love-making to women whose hair smelt of cigarette-smoke.

Such strong days sent Frankwell Midmore back to his flat a.s.sured that he and his friends had helped the World a step nearer the Truth, the Dawn, and the New Order.

His temperament, he said, led him more towards concrete data than abstract ideas. People who investigate detail are apt to be tired at the day's end. The same temperament, or it may have been a woman, made him early attach himself to the Immoderate Left of his Cause in the capacity of an experimenter in Social Relations. And since the Immoderate Left contains plenty of women anxious to help earnest inquirers with large independent incomes to arrive at evaluations of essentials, Frankwell Midmore's lot was far from contemptible.

At that hour Fate chose to play with him. A widowed aunt, widely separated by nature, and more widely by marriage, from all that Midmore's mother had ever been or desired to be, died and left him possessions. Mrs. Midmore, having that summer embraced a creed which denied the existence of death, naturally could not stoop to burial; but Midmore had to leave London for the dank country at a season when Social Regeneration works best through long, cus.h.i.+oned conferences, two by two, after tea. There he faced the bracing ritual of the British funeral, and was wept at across the raw grave by an elderly coffin-shaped female with a long nose, who called him 'Master Frankie'; and there he was congratulated behind an echoing top-hat by a man he mistook for a mute, who turned out to be his aunt's lawyer. He wrote his mother next day, after a bright account of the funeral:

'So far as I can understand, she has left me between four and five hundred a year. It all comes from Ther Land, as they call it down here.

The unspeakable attorney, Sperrit, and a green-eyed daughter, who hums to herself as she tramps but is silent on all subjects except ”huntin',”

insisted on taking me to see it. Ther Land is brown and green in alternate slabs like chocolate and pistachio cakes, speckled with occasional peasants who do not utter. In case it should not be wet enough there is a wet brook in the middle of it. Ther House is by the brook. I shall look into it later. If there should be any little memento of Jenny that you care for, let me know. Didn't you tell me that mid-Victorian furniture is coming into the market again? Jenny's old maid--it is called Rhoda Dolbie--tells me that Jenny promised it thirty pounds a year. The will does not. Hence, I suppose, the tears at the funeral. But that is close on ten per cent of the income. I fancy Jenny has destroyed all her private papers and records of her _vie intime_, if, indeed, life be possible in such a place. The Sperrit man told me that if I had means of my own I might come and live on Ther Land. I didn't tell him how much I would pay not to! I cannot think it right that any human being should exercise mastery over others in the merciless fas.h.i.+on our tom-fool social system permits; so, as it is all mine, I intend to sell it whenever the unholy Sperrit can find a purchaser.'

And he went to Mr. Sperrit with the idea next day, just before returning to town.

'Quite so,' said the lawyer. 'I see your point, of course. But the house itself is rather old-fas.h.i.+oned--hardly the type purchasers demand nowadays. There's no park, of course, and the bulk of the land is let to a life-tenant, a Mr. Sidney. As long as he pays his rent, he can't be turned out, and even if he didn't'--Mr. Sperrit's face relaxed a shade--'you might have a difficulty.'

'The property brings four hundred a year, I understand,' said Midmore.

'Well, hardly--ha-ardly. Deducting land and income tax, t.i.thes, fire insurance, cost of collection and repairs of course, it returned two hundred and eighty-four pounds last year. The repairs are rather a large item--owing to the brook. I call it Liris--out of Horace, you know.'

Midmore looked at his watch impatiently.

'I suppose you can find somebody to buy it?' he repeated.