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THE ARGUMENT, vii INTRODUCTORY, ix

THE ARGUMENT

I have clung To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen Or felt but a great dream! O I have been Presumptuous against love, against the sky, Against all elements, against the tie Of mortals each to each....

... Against his proper glory Has my soul conspired; so my story Will I to children utter, and repent.

There never lived a mortal man, who bent His appetite beyond his natural sphere But starv'd and died.... Here will I kneel, for thou redeemest hast My life from too thin breathing: gone and past Are cloudy phantasms! --KEATS.

INTRODUCTORY

CONCERNING BINDON-CHEVERAL.

THE STAR DREAMER

BOOK I

Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart. WORDSWORTH .

THE STAR DREAMER

Alone and forgotten, absolutely free, His happy time he spends, the works of God to see In those wonderful herbs which here in plenty grow, Whose sundry strange effects he only seeks to know, And choicely sorts his simples got abroad, And dreams of the All-Heal that is still on the road.... --DRAYTON .

On that evening of the autumnal equinox Master Simon Rickart--the simpler or the student as he liked to call himself, the alchemist as many held him to be--alone, save for the company of his cat, in his laboratory at the foot of the keep, was luxuriating as usual in his work of research.

The black cat sat by the wood fire and watched the man.

As Master Simon moved to and fro, the topaz eyes followed him. When he spoke they became narrowed into slits of cunning intelligence. But when the observations were personally addressed to his Catship, Belphegor blinked in comfortable acknowledgment. "As wise as Master Simon himself," the country folk vowed: and indeed, wherever the fame of the alchemist had spread through the country-side, so had that of the alchemist's cat.

There were two fires in the laboratory. One of timber, that roared and crackled its life away and sank into an ever increasing heap of fair white ash. In the vault-like room this fire burned year in year out on a hearth hewn many feet into the deep wall; and from many points of view Belphegor found it vastly more satisfactory than the other fire, which generally engrossed the best of his master's attention. That was a stealthy red glow, nurtured on a wide stove built into another wall recess, sheltered behind a glass screen under a tall hood:--a fire productive of the strangest smells, at times evil, but as often sweet and aromatic: a fire also productive on occasions of coloured vapours and dancing flamelets of suspicious nature. There, as the cat knew, happened now and again unexpected ebullitions, disastrous alike to the nerves and to the fur. In his kitten days, Belphegor, led ostensibly by overpowering affection but really by the constitutional curiosity of his genus, had been wont to accompany his chosen master behind the screen. He knew better now. And there was a bald spot near the end of his tail, where no amount of licking on his part, no cunning unguent of Master Simon's himself could to this day induce a hair to grow again.

The old man had closed the door of the stove; rearranged, crown-like, a set of glass vessels of engaging shapes: alembics and matrasses, filled with decoctions of green and amber, gorgeous colours shot with the red reflection of the fire; tucked a baby-small porcelain crucible in its fireclay cradle and banked the glowing cinders around it. The touch of the wrinkled hands was neat, almost caressing. After a last look around, he emerged, blowing a breath of content:

"Everything in good trim, so far, for to-night's work, my cat."

And Belphegor blinked both eyes.

Faint vapours, herb-scented, voluptuous, rose and circled to the groined roof. The log fire on the hearth had fallen to red stillness. In the silence, delicate sounds of bubbling and simmering, little songs in different keys, gurgles as of fairy laughter, became audible.

"Hark to it!" said the simpler, and bent his ear with a smile of satisfaction. He spoke in a monotonous undertone, not unlike the muttering of the sleep-walker--"Hark to it! There is a concert for you--new tunes to-night, Belphegor. Strange, delightful! There is not a little plant but has its own voice, its own soul-song. Hark, how they yield them up! Good little souls! Bad little souls, some of them, he, he! Enough in that retort yonder to make helpless idiots, or dead flesh of a hundred lusty men. Dead flesh of eleven such fine cats as yourself and one kitten, he, he! Yet--for properly directed, friend Belphegor, vice may become virtue--enough here to keep the fever from the homestead for three generations...."

The old man moved noiselessly in his slippers across the stone floor, flung a couple of fresh logs on the sinking hearth, then stretched out his frail hands to the blaze and laughed gently. The flame light played fantastically on his shrunken figure:--a being, it would seem, so aetherealised that it scarcely looked as if blood could still be circulating beneath that skin, like yellow ivory, tensely stretched over the vast, denuded forehead and the bold, high-featured face. Mind alone, one would have thought, must animate that emaciated body; mind alone light up those steel-blue eyes with such keenness that, by contrast with the age-stricken countenance, they shone with almost unearthly vitality.

The cat stretched himself, yawned; then advanced, humping his back and bristling, to rub himself against his master's legs. The fire roared again in the chimney, a score of greedy tongues licking up the last drops of sap that oozed forth, hissing, from the beech logs.

"Aha," said Master Simon, bending down somewhat painfully to give a scratch to the animal's neck, "that's the fire-song you prefer. I fear, I fear, Belphegor, you will never rise beyond the grossest everyday materialism!"

Purring Belphegor endorsed the opinion by curling up luxuriously on his head and stretching out his hind paws to the flame. The little scene was an allegory of peace and comfort. The old man, straightening himself, remained awhile musing:

"Well, it is good music--a song of the people. All of the stout woods of Bindon, of the deep English earth, of the salt English airs. No subtle virtue in it: a roaring good tune, a homely smell and a heap of ash behind--but all clean, my cat, clean!"

"And now we shall have a quiet hour before supper. What a good thing, my cat, that neither you nor I are attractive to company! The original man was created to be alone. But the fool could not appreciate his bliss, and so he was given a companion--a woman, Belphegor, a woman!--and Paradise was lost."

Again Master Simon chuckled. It was a sound of ineffable content, weirdly escaping through the nostrils above compressed lips. He took up a lighted candle, stepped carefully over the cat and, selecting between his fingers a key from a bunch at his girdle, approached a wooden press that cut off an angle of the room.

This was built of heavily carved black oak, secured with sturdy iron hinges; had high double doors and small peeping keyholes, suggestive of much cunning. It was a press to receive and keep secrets. And yet, when the panels were thrown open, nothing of more formidable nature was displayed than rows upon rows of inner drawers and shelves, the latter covered some with philosophical instruments, others displaying piles of neatly ticketed boxes, ranks of phials, and sealed tubes of various liquids or crystals that flashed in the light with prismatic scintillation.

Holding the candle above his head the old man selected:

He placed the materials on a glass tray and carried them over to the working table.

The cat roused himself, walked sedately but circuitously across the room, leaped up and took his position with feet and tail well tucked in on the bare space left, by right of custom, where the warmth of the lamp should comfort his back.

On Master Simon's table lay a row of small covered watch-glasses, thin as films, each containing a small heap of some greenish crystalline powder. A pair of chemical scales held out slender arms within the walls of its glass case. The neat array looked inviting.

"Nine o'clock!" muttered the self-communer. "Another hour's peace before even Barnaby break in upon us with his supper tray. Hey, but this is a good hour! This is luxury. I feel positively abandoned! Not a soul in this whole wing of Bindon, save you and me--unless we reckon our good star-dreamer above--good youth with his head in the clouds. Heigh ho, men are mostly fools, and all women! Therefore wisely did I choose my only familiar--thou prince of reliable confidants."

The man stretched out his hand and caressed the beast's round head. Belphegor tilted his chin to lead the scratching finger to its favourite spot.

"Hey, but man must speak--it is part of his incomplete nature--were it only to put order in his ideas, to marshall them without tripping hurry. And you neither argue nor contradict, nor give a fool's acquiescence. You listen and are silent. Wise cat! Now, men are mostly fools ... and all women!"

Master Simon lifted the phial of Java Water, a fluid of opalescent pink, between his eye and the light. He removed the stopper and sniffed at it. Then compared the fragrance with that of the Moorish powders, and became absorbed in thought. At one moment he seemed, absently, on the point of comparing the tastes in the same manner, but paused.

"No, sir, not to-night," he murmured. "We must keep our brain clear, our hand steady. But it will be an experiment of quite unusual interest--quite unusual.... I am convinced the essential components are the same.--Belphegor! Keep your nozzle off that gallipot! Do you not dream enough as it is?"

He pushed the turn-back cuffs still further from his attenuated wrists, and with infinite precaution addressed himself to the manipulation of his watch-glasses, silver pincers and scales: the final stage of weighing and apportioning the result of an analytical experiment of already long standing was at hand.

His great white eyebrows contracted. Now, bending close, he held his breath to watch the swing of the delicate balance; now with fevered fingers he jotted notes and figures. At times a snapping hand, a clacking tongue, proclaimed dissatisfaction; but presently, widening his eyes and moistening his lips, he started upon a fresh clue with renewed gusto.

The clock had ticked and jerked its way through the better part of the hour when the weird muttering became once more audible:

"Curious, curious! Yet it works to my theory. Now if these last figures agree it will be proof. Pshaw, the scales are tired. How they fidget! Belphegor, my friend, down with you, the smallest vibration would ruin my week's work. Down! Now let us see. As seventy-three is to a hundred and twenty-five ... as seventy-three is to a hundred and twenty-five.... A plague on it!" exclaimed Master Simon pettishly, without looking up. "There's that Barnaby, of course in the nick of wrong time!"

The door at the dim end of the room had been opened softly. A puff of wood smoke had been blown down the chimney. A tiny draught skimmed across the table; the steady lamplight flickered and cast dancing shadows; and Master Simon's tense fingers trembled with irritation.

"All to begin again. Curse you, Barnaby! You're deaf, I can curse you, thank Providence!"

Without turning round he made a hasty, forbidding gesture of one hand. The door was shut as gently as it had been opened.

Master Simon gave a deep sigh, and still fixedly eyeing the scales, stretched his cramped hands along the table for a moment's rest.

"Now, now? Ha--Ho--What? Sixty-nine to eighty-two? Impossible! Tchah! Those scales have the palsy--nay, Simon Rickart, it is your impotent hand. Old age, old age, my friend ... or stormy youth, alas!" His muttering whisper rose to louder cadence. "Had you but known then, in your young folly, the chains you were forging, for your aged wisdom! But sixty to-day, and this senile trembling! Not a shake of that hand, Simon, but is paying for the toss of the cup; not a mist in that brain but is the smoke of wanton, bygone fires. Well vast is the pity of it! Had you but the hand now of that dreamer up above! Had you but the virtue of his temperate life! And the fool is staring at his feeble twinklers ... worshipping the unattainable, while all rich Nature, here at hand, awaits the explorer. Oh, to feel able to trace Earth mysteries to the marrow of Man; to hold the six days' wonder in one single action of the mind ... and to be foiled at every turn by the trembling of a finger!"

He leaned back in his chair, long lines of discouragement furrowing his face.

Behind him, in the silence, barely more audible than the simmering sounds of the fires and the lembics, there was a stir of another presence, quiet, but living. But Master Simon, absorbed in his own world of thought, perceived nothing.

With closed eyes, he made another effort to conquer the rebellious weakness of the flesh and bring it into proper subjection to the merciless vigour of the mind. At that moment the one important thing on earth to the old student was the success of his analysis. And had the Trump of Doom begun to sound in his ears, his single desire would still have been to endeavour to conclude it before the final crash.

Light footfalls in the room--not caused by Belphegor's stealthy paws, certainly not by Barnaby's masculine foot--a sound as of the rustle of a woman's garments, a sound unprecedented for years in these consecrated precincts, failed to reach his faculties. Once more he drew his chair forward, leant his elbows on the table, and, stooping his head so that eyes and hands were nearly on the same level, set himself to the exasperatingly delicate task of minute weighing. And the while he muttered on with a droll effect of giving directions to himself:

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