7
Across this altered world a faint new sound now reached his ears, as though a human wail of anguished terror trembled and changed into the cry of some captured helpless animal. He thought of a wolf apart from the comfort of its pack, savage yet abject. The despair of a last appeal was in the sound. It floated past, it died away. The woman moved closer suddenly.
“All is prepared,” she said, in the same low, silvery voice; “we must not tarry. The equinox is come, the tide of power flows. The sacrifice is here; we hold him fast. We only awaited you.” Her shining eyes were raised to his. “Your soul is with us now?” she whispered.
“My soul is with you.”
“And midnight,” she continued, “is at hand. We use, of course, their methods. Henceforth the gods—their old-world gods—shall work on our side. They demand a sacrifice, and justice has provided one.”
His understanding cleared still more then; the last veil of confusion was drawing from his mind. The old, old names went thundering through his consciousness—Odin, Wotan, Moloch—accessible ever to invocation and worship of the rightful kind. It seemed as natural as though he read in his pulpit the prayer for rain, or gave out the hymn for those at sea. That was merely an empty form, whereas this was real. Sea, storm and earthquake, all natural activities, lay under the direction of those elemental powers called the gods. Names changed, the principle remained.
“Their weather shall be ours,” he cried, with sudden passion, as a memory of unhallowed usages he had thought erased from life burned in him; while, stranger still, resentment stirred—revolt—against the system, against the very deity he had worshipped hitherto. For these had never once interfered to help the cause of right; their feebleness was now laid bare before his eyes. And a two-fold lust rose in him. “Vengeance is ours!” he cried in a louder voice, through which this sudden loathing of the cross poured hatred. “Vengeance and justice! Now bind the victim! Bring on the sacrifice!”
“He is already bound.” And as the woman moved a little, the curious erection behind her caught his eye—the piled brushwood he had imagined was the work of woodmen, picnickers, or playing children. He realized its true meaning.
It now delighted and appalled him. Awe deepened in him, a wind of ice passed over him. Civilization made one more fluttering effort. He gasped, he shivered; he tried to speak. But no words came. A thin cry, as of a frightened child, escaped him.
“It is the only way,” the woman whispered softly. “We steal from them the power of their own deities.” Her head flung back with a marvellous gesture of grace and power; she stood before him a figure of perfect womanhood, gentle and tender, yet at the same time alive and cruel with the passions of an ignorant and savage past. Her folded hands were clasped, her face turned heavenwards. “I am a mother,” she added, with amazing passion, her eyes glistening in the moonlight with unshed tears. “We all”—she glanced towards the forest, her voice rising to a wild and poignant cry—“all, all of us are mothers!”