Where had he heard those words? Ah yes, was it not Elizabeth Barrett Browning who wrote them, wrote them while in Italy, where she sojourned with her husband, the greatest poet of his time?
Again he looked around him, but nothing could be seen by his natural eyes. The houses, the trees, the gardens all lay wrapped in the gloom of the cold and darkness of that wintry morning, there in the heart of London. All the same it seemed that something had been born within him, something which he could not define, and again he seemed to hear, as he had heard years before, the glorious words which turned to naught the ribald and trifling scepticism of men:
"The Eternal God is thy Refuge, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms."
The sublimity of the message appealed to him. Surely no greater words were ever spoken. They peopled the dark wintry heavens with angels, they made everything possible.
"Lord, tell me what to do."
The prayer came naturally to his lips. It seemed to him that there was nothing else for him to say. But there were no answering words. All was silent, save for the soughing of the wind across the square. And yet I am wrong. He did hear words; they might be born of his own consciousness, and have no objective reality whatever, but again the wind seemed to speak to him.
"Go to Wendover."
Why should he go to Wendover? He had no right to be there, and from the rumours that he had heard, Tony Riggleton had turned the old house into a scene of drunken and sensual orgies. But in answer to his question the wailing wind seemed to reiterate, as if in a kind of dreary monotony, the same words, "Go to Wendover, go to Wendover."
Then suddenly everything became mundane.
"Good-night, or good morning rather."