The several extraordinary features of the incident he did not come to consider until later, but as he walked contemplative along Babylon Lane he detected sounds of distant gunfire, distinct from the more remote rumbling which was the voice of the battle front. He stood still—listening. An air raid on London was in progress.
"Thank God that Yvonne is out of it," he said earnestly—"and may He be with every poor soul to-night who needs Him."
Jules Thessaly and Babylon Hall were banished from his mind, although the raid on London might very well prove to be the explanation of Thessaly's sudden departure. From the stricken area his imagination recoiled, and in spirit he stood in a quaintly rambling village street of Devon before a rose-smothered cottage, looking up to an open casement window. It was there that Yvonne was, perhaps already sleeping—Yvonne, his wife. And all the old fear visited him as he contemplated their happiness, their immunity from the horrors, the sacrifices of an anguished world. Why was he spared when others, seemingly more worthy, suffered? True, he had suffered in spirit, which is the keenest torture of all; but he had emerged to a greater happiness, to a reunion with Yvonne which had been like a second and sweeter honeymoon. It could only be that he was spared for a great purpose, that he might perform a giant task. He was permitted, untrammelled, to view the conflict, the sorrow and the agony of mankind from an Olympic height, serene and personally untouched, only in order that he might heal the wounds laid bare before him. "The world is waiting for you," Don had said. Paul silently prayed that the world might not wait in vain.
"Master of Destiny, inscrutable God, grant me light that I may see to perform the duty laid upon me. Use me, mould me, make of me an instrument. Millions have offered all and lost all. Guide my steps. If death lies upon the path I will not shrink, but suffer me to be of some little use to thy scarred and bleeding world. Amen."
The ominous gunfire had ceased when he retired to his room that night after a lonely dinner, and even the more distant booming to which he was growing accustomed was not audible. The lantern of the moon hung above such a serene countryside that thoughts of war were all but impossible, and Paul likened the heavens to the jewelled dome of some vast mosque wherein were gathered together all the clashing creeds of mankind, their differences forgotten in a universal love.
XIV
The summer days slipped by, each morning bringing a letter from Yvonne, each night a longing that it might be the last of their separation. But the affairs of the late Sir Jacques' estate were not easily dismissed, and Paul, eager with the ardent eagerness of a poet to set to work upon his task, yet found himself chained to Lower Charleswood. The place itself enchanted his imagination, and had his mind been free (and if Sir Jacques had never occupied Hatton Towers and impressed his individuality upon the house) Paul might have been content to stay—with Yvonne for a companion. But London called him urgently and inaction grew irksome.
Flamby Duveen he never tired of studying; she fascinated him like some rare palimpsest or Pythagorean problem. But Flamby was going to London as soon as arrangements could be made for her mother and herself to leave Dovelands Cottage. Mrs. Duveen had raised no objection to the proposed change; Mrs. Duveen had never raised an objection to anything throughout the whole of her docile career; and already Paul was weaving this oddly assorted pair into the scheme of that book which he projected as a challenge to the latent good in man.
Some of his neighbours he met, willy nilly, but they took no place in his mental record of things, save perhaps the place of punctuation marks, commas and semicolons for the most part, rarely rising to the definite degree of a full point and never approaching the dramatic significance of an exclamation mark. Already he floated above the common world, looking down upon its tortured contours and half-defaced frontiers—for the true poet is a fakîr who quits his physical body at the beck of inspiration, to return laden with strange secrets.
Jules Thessaly's letter explaining his extraordinary breach of good behaviour had been characteristic of the man. For whilst it was couched in more or less conventional terms of apology, the writer obviously regarded his action as justified and assumed in Paul an understanding which rendered pique impossible. Paul's theory regarding Thessaly's sudden departure had been correct.