After a while the white man lifted his head and slowly raised his arms in a gesture of attention, as one who would call a great crowd to hear but there was no crowd, only the vast silence of the mountain and the sky, broken by faint bird voices down among the trees. The figure on the saddle of rock began to speak ponderously and with an inextinguishable pride.
You out there he cried in a trembling voice. You there ! He paused, his arms still uplifted, his head held attentively as though he were expecting an answer. John strained his eyes to see whether there might be men coming down the mountain, but the mountain was bare of human life. There was only sky and a mocking flute of wind along the tree-tops. Could Washington be praying? For a moment John wondered. Then the illusion passed there was something in the mans whole attitude antithetical to prayer.
Oh, you above there!
The voice was become strong and confident. This was no forlorn supplication. If anything, there was in it a quality of monstrous condescension.
You there
Words, too quickly uttered to be understood, flowing one into the other John listened breathlessly, catching a phrase here and there, while the voice broke off, resumed, broke off again now strong and argumentative, now colored with a slow, puzzled impatience. Then a conviction commenced to dawn on the single listener, and as realization crept over him a spray of quick blood rushed through his arteries. Braddock Washington was offering a bribe to God!
That was it there was no doubt. The diamond in the arms of his slaves was some advance sample, a promise of more to follow.
That, John perceived after a time, was the thread running through his sentences. Prometheus Enriched was calling to witness forgotten sacrifices, forgotten rituals, prayers obsolete before the birth of Christ. For a while his discourse took the form of reminding God of this gift or that which Divinity[47] had deigned to accept from men great churches if he would rescue cities from the plague, gifts of myrrh and gold, of human lives and beautiful women and captive armies, of children and queens, of beasts of the forest and field, sheep and goats, harvests and cities, whole conquered lands that had been offered up in lust or blood for His appeasal, buying a meeds worth of alleviation from the Divine wrath and now he, Braddock Washington, Emperor of Diamonds, king and priest of the age of gold, arbiter of splendor and luxury, would offer up a treasure such as princes before him had never dreamed of, offer it up not in suppliance, but in pride.
He would give to God, he continued, getting down to specifications, the greatest diamond in the world. This diamond would be cut with many more thousand facets than there were leaves on a tree, and yet the whole diamond would be shaped with the perfection of a stone no bigger than a fly. Many men would work upon it for many years. It would be set in a great dome of beaten gold, wonderfully carved and equipped with gates of opal and crusted sapphire. In the middle would be hollowed out a chapel presided over by an altar of iridescent, decomposing, ever-changing radium which would burn out the eyes of any worshipper who lifted up his head from prayer and on this altar there would be slain for the amusement of the Divine Benefactor any victim He should choose, even though it should be the greatest and most powerful man alive.
In return he asked only a simple thing, a thing that for God would be absurdly easy only that matters should be as they were yesterday at this hour and that they should so remain. So very simple! Let but the heavens open, swallowing these men and their aeroplanes and then close again. Let him have his slaves once more, restored to life and well.
There was no one else with whom he had ever needed to treat or bargain.
He doubted only whether he had made his bribe big enough. God had His price, of course. God was made in mans image, so it had been said: He must have His price. And the price would be rare no cathedral whose building consumed many years, no pyramid constructed by ten thousand workmen, would be like this cathedral, this pyramid.
He paused here. That was his proposition. Everything would be up to specifications and there was nothing vulgar in his assertion that it would be cheap at the price. He implied that Providence could take it or leave it.
As he approached the end his sentences became broken, became short and uncertain, and his body seemed tense, seemed strained to catch the slightest pressure or whisper of life in the spaces around him. His hair had turned gradually white as he talked, and now he lifted his head high to the heavens like a prophet of old magnificently mad.
Then, as John stared in giddy fascination, it seemed to him that a curious phenomenon took place somewhere around him. It was as though the sky had darkened for an instant, as though there had been a sudden murmur in a gust of wind, a sound of far-away trumpets, a sighing like the rustle of a great silken robe for a time the whole of nature round about partook of this darkness; the birds song ceased; the trees were still, and far over the mountain there was a mutter of dull, menacing thunder.
That was all. The wind died along the tall grasses of the valley. The dawn and the day resumed their place in a time, and the risen sun sent hot waves of yellow mist that made its path bright before it. The leaves laughed in the sun, and their laughter shook the trees until each bough was like a girls school in fairyland. God had refused to accept the bribe.
For another moment John watched the triumph of the day. Then, turning he saw a flutter of brown down by the lake, then another flutter, then another, like the dance of golden angels alighting from the clouds. The aeroplanes had come to earth.
John slid off the boulder and ran down the side of the mountain to the clump of trees, where the two girls were awake and waiting for him. Kismine sprang to her feet, the jewels in her pockets jingling, a question on her parted lips, but instinct told John that there was no time for words. They must get off the mountain without losing a moment. He seized a hand of each and in silence they threaded the tree-trunks, washed with light now and with the rising mist. Behind them from the valley came no sound at all, except the complaint of the peacocks far away and the pleasant undertone of morning.
When they had gone about half a mile, they avoided the park land and entered a narrow path that led over the next rise of ground. At the highest point of this they paused and turned around. Their eyes rested upon the mountainside they had just left oppressed by some dark sense of tragic impendency.
Clear against the sky a broken, white-haired man was slowly descending the steep slope, followed by two gigantic and emotionless negroes, who carried a burden between them which still flashed and glittered in the sun. Half-way down two other figures joined them John could see that they were Mrs. Washington and her son, upon whose arm she leaned. The aviators had clambered from their machines to the sweeping lawn in front of the château, and with rifles in hand were starting up the diamond mountain in skirmishing formation.
But the little group of five which had formed farther up and was engrossing all the watchers attention had stopped upon a ledge of rock. The negroes stooped and pulled up what appeared to be a trap-door in the side of the mountain. Into this they all disappeared, the white-haired man first, then his wife and son, finally the two negroes, the glittering tips of whose jeweled head-dresses caught the sun for a moment before the trap-door descended and engulfed them all.
Kismine clutched Johns arm.
Oh, she cried wildly, where are they going? What are they going to do?
It must be some underground way of escape.
A little scream from the two girls interrupted his sentence.
Dont you see? sobbed Kismine hysterically. The mountain is wired!
Even as she spoke John put up his hands to shield his sight. Before their eyes the whole surface of the mountain had changed suddenly to a dazzling burning yellow, which showed up through the jacket of turf as light shows through a human hand. For a moment the intolerable glow continued, and then like an extinguished filament it disappeared, revealing a black waste from which blue smoke arose slowly, carrying off with it what remained of vegetation and of human flesh. Of the aviators there was left neither blood, nor bone they were consumed as completely as the five souls who had gone inside.
Simultaneously, and with an immense concussion, the château literally threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose, and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay projecting half into the water of the lake. There was no fire what smoke there was drifted off mingling with the sunshine, and for a few minutes longer a powdery dust of marble drifted from the great featureless pile that had once been the house of jewels. There was no more sound and the three people were alone in the valley.
XI
At sunset John and his two companions reached the high cliff which had marked the boundaries of the Washingtons dominion, and looking back found the valley tranquil and lovely in the dusk. They sat down to finish the food which Jasmine had brought with her in a basket.
There! she said, as she spread the table-cloth and put the sandwiches in a neat pile upon it. Dont they look tempting? I always think that food tastes better outdoors.
With that remark, remarked Kismine, Jasmine enters the middle class.
Now, said John eagerly, turn out your pocket and lets see what jewels you brought along. If you made a good selection we three ought to live comfortably all the rest of our lives.
Obediently Kismine put her hand in her pocket and tossed two handfuls of glittering stones before him.
Not so bad, cried John, enthusiastically. They arent very big, but Hello! His expression changed as he held one of them up to the declining sun. Why, these arent diamonds! Theres something the matter!
By golly![48] exclaimed Kismine, with a startled look. What an idiot I am!
Why, these are rhinestones![49] cried John.
I know. She broke into a laugh. I opened the wrong drawer. They belonged on the dress of a girl who visited Jasmine. I got her to give them to me in exchange for diamonds. Id never seen anything but precious stones before.
And this is what you brought?
Im afraid so. She fingered the brilliants wistfully. I think I like these better. Im a little tired of diamonds.
Very well, said John gloomily. Well have to live in Hades. And you will grow old telling incredulous women that you got the wrong drawer. Unfortunately your fathers bank-books were consumed with him.
Well, whats the matter with Hades?
If I come home with a wife at my age my father is just as liable as not to cut me off with a hot coal,[50] as they say down there.
Jasmine spoke up.
I love washing, she said quietly. I have always washed my own handkerchiefs. Ill take in laundry and support you both.
Do they have washwomen in Hades? asked Kismine innocently.
Of course, answered John. Its just like anywhere else.
I thought perhaps it was too hot to wear any clothes.
John laughed.
Just try it! he suggested. Theyll run you out before youre half started.
Will father be there? she asked.
John turned to her in astonishment.
Your father is dead, he replied somberly. Why should he go to Hades? You have it confused with another place that was abolished long ago.
After supper they folded up the table-cloth and spread their blankets for the night.
What a dream it was, Kismine sighed, gazing up at the stars. How strange it seems to be here with one dress and a penniless fiancé!
Under the stars, she repeated. I never noticed the stars before. I always thought of them as great big diamonds that belonged to some one. Now they frighten me. They make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth.
It was a dream, said John quietly. Everybodys youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
How pleasant then to be insane!
So Im told, said John gloomily. I dont know any longer. At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. Thats a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion. Well, I have that last and I will make the usual nothing of it. He shivered. Turn up your coat collar, little girl, the nights full of chill and youll get pneumonia. His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.
So wrapping himself in his blanket he fell off to sleep.
John Galsworthy
Indian Summer of a Forsyte
And Summers lease hath all too short a date.
ShakespeareI
In the last day of May in the early nineties, about six oclock of the evening, old Jolyon Forsyte sat under the oak tree below the terrace of his house at Robin Hill. He was waiting for the midges to bite him, before abandoning the glory of the afternoon. His thin brown hand, where blue veins stood out, held the end of a cigar in its tapering, long nailed fingers a pointed polished nail had survived with him from those earlier Victorian days when to touch nothing, even with the tips of the fingers, had been so distinguished. His domed forehead, great white moustache, lean cheeks, and long lean jaw were covered from the westering sunshine by an old brown Panama hat. His legs were crossed; in all his attitude was serenity and a kind of elegance, as of an old man who every morning put eau de Cologne upon his silk handkerchief. At his feet lay a woolly brown-and-white dog trying to be a Pomeranian[51] the dog Balthasar between whom and old Jolyon primal aversion had changed into attachment with the years. Close to his chair was a swing, and on the swing was seated one of Hollys dolls called Duffer Alice with her body fallen over her legs and her doleful nose buried in a black petticoat. She was never out of disgrace, so it did not matter to her how she sat. Below the oak tree the lawn dipped down a bank, stretched to the fernery, and, beyond that refinement, became fields, dropping to the pond, the coppice, and the prospect Fine, remarkable at which Swithin Forsyte, from under this very tree, had stared five years ago when he drove down with Irene to look at the house. Old Jolyon had heard of his brothers exploit that drive which had become quite celebrated on Forsyte Change. Swithin! And the fellow had gone and died, last November, at the age of only seventy-nine, renewing the doubt whether Forsytes could live for ever, which had first arisen when Aunt Ann passed away. Died! and left only Jolyon and James, Roger and Nicholas and Timothy, Julia, Hester, Susan! And old Jolyon thought: Eighty-five! I dont feel it except when I get that pain.