Lord Glendover went away, gloomy and bewildered, feeling great national misfortunes gathering in the air. He visited his colleagues, and considered how the country could be saved.
But salvation was not to come from Lord Glendover.
XXXI
Parliament was dissolved, and the Great Policy was launched. The obscurity had been suddenly lifted from Dwala’s mind: a hectic strength and clearness took its place. He and Lady Wyse did not so much invent the New Charter as discover it: it was the revelation of a thing existent; as they sat pen in hand the words came to them from some far place, illuminating and inevitable.
XXXII
A month had passed. The General Election was over. The great drought, the heaviness, the dull unrest was ended. The Dragon of the myth, the monster which slowly sucks up the waters, condemning the land to infertility and pestilence, was slain, and the waters gushed forth again to fruitfulness. The myriad warriors who had helped to pierce his flanks went coursing over the plain, with a brandishing of spears and cries of ‘Victory!’ St. George turned in his long sleep and opened his heavy eyes. Well did he know those triumphing shouts. Was the race of dragons ended now, or would a new dragon spring from the blood of the old as heretofore?
XXXIII
Success is a strong wine. It was running vividly in Dwala’s veins. Every least thing he did seemed to him fate-ordered and conclusive. Oh, the pride of it, the joy of it, the ease of it! The acclamations and the consciousness of right!
The new Civilisation was like a poem, the scheme of which has come whole and organic to the poet, and which germinates therefore without constraint into its natural, necessary verses. The right men and the right ideas fell of themselves into their places, like particles forming a system of crystals. Dwala had found the basic idea, which all this turbid mass had been so long awaiting. He created life and received it. That same life flowed into his fibres, from the movement of the multitude, which flows into the peasant-woman’s baby out of the dust gathered on the busy highway.
Lady Wyse, seeing the easy joyful motion of his limbs and hearing the deep vigour of his voice, put her presentiments away. Dwala himself looked back in wonder at that grey mood when the world had faded from him. He was like the traveller who stands in the garish whirl of the fair, wondering if this can be the place that looked so grim on Sunday. He was enjoying the strong rush of life which a kindly Heaven sends to the consumptive as consolation for their early death.