Brangwyn had begun to realize that Murchison's conversational powers resembled a car that was a poor starter, but ran well enough when the engine warmed up. There was a caution and reserve, even a surly suspiciousness about him which argued a life lived in an unsympathetic atmosphere. He wondered how much of the spontaneity of the lively young subaltern would be recovered in a congenial environment.
There was nothing to do but turn the conversational starting-handle till his companion got going.
‘Murchison,’ he said quietly, ‘do you know why it was I offered you this job?’
‘No,’ said Murchison.
‘As I was coming out from the British Museum reading-room yesterday I heard someone calling upon Pan as if they meant it. That is a subject which happens to be my special line of interest, and I went to the trouble to grope about in the fog until I found the person who was making the noise. At the time I had no thought of offering him, or anyone else, a job -’
‘I suspected as much,’ said Murchison.
‘It is not my custom to pick up casual strangers and ask them to hold my pocket-book in order to prove my faith in human nature; but I was sufficiently interested in this worshipper of the old gods to wish to make his acquaintance and compare experiences. But when I found that he was a man I knew, and a man whom I had proved to possess certain qualities, among which was reliability, I modified my plans; I thought, I can do more than compare experiences - I might be able to ask him to join me in experimentation. How does the idea appeal to you?’
Murchison played his usual trick of a long silence before reply. Finally he said:
‘Five pounds a week appeals to an unemployed man; naturally I'd like a job, but it's not in my power to guarantee to deliver the kind of goods you're asking for.’
‘I am not asking you to guarantee anything. All I should ask you to do is to carry out certain processes in a particular way and to put your heart into the job. I'll take all responsibility for the outcome.’
‘All right,’ said Murchison. ‘Subject to a week's notice on either side, I'm your man.’ And then, as an after-thought, he added, ‘Thanks very much indeed, sir, I'm very grateful for the chance.’
‘I dare say you've gathered that the secretarial duties are pretty negligible,’ said Brangwyn. ‘But what I want you to do is to familiarize yourself with the literature of the subject as a start. When you have got the general lie of the land in your head, we can proceed to details. I also want you to keep a record of your dreams and let me do a bit of analysis on them. As long as you are undertaking this job, I want you to be absolutely frank with me in the matter of your dreams and what comes out of them. That is the chief thing I ask of you. If you mislead me in even the smallest details in that matter, you will vitiate the result of the whole experiment. Are you prepared for that, Murchison?’
‘I am if you are,’ said Murchison, with a short laugh, ‘you've had one sample of my efforts. You needn't worry about me. I'll tilt the ash-bin while you rootle in it, if that's what you want.’
‘No, not precisely. We don't want King Charles’ head, or any other portion of his anatomy, cropping up in every conversation. We won't have any predestined goal in the nether regions; we'll just observe, and see what comes up under the different stimuli to which I shall subject you.
‘Oh?’ said Murchison, ‘so I am to be a laboratory animal, am I?’
‘Yes,’ said Brangwyn, ‘that is just exactly what you are to be. How do you like the prospect?’
‘I like it all right with you, sir, because I trust you. But I shouldn't fancy it with anyone else. I shall be selling you my immortal soul, you know, if I do this job properly.’
‘I am not going to put it that way, Murchison. No one can deal in immortal souls with impunity, either buying or selling. But I am hoping that you will get interested in the experiment and really muscle in on it. No one can command that. However much I could offer, and however much you wanted the job, it wouldn't make any difference.’
‘Well, anyway, you can rely on one thing, sir. I'll do my best to give you a square deal. I won't take your money and play you up. I'll tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to the best of my knowledge and belief. I can't do more than that, and I won't do less.’
‘That,’ said Brangwyn, ‘is all I require. The rest is up to me.’
He rose from his chair and went over to the cupboard, from which on the previous evening he had taken out the peacock and crimson robes, opened it, and extracted a flowing garment of dark green silk, the colour of leaves in summer.
‘Will you wear this, this evening?’ he said. The robes are part of the equipment. Tell me, when you wore the blue robe last night, did you feel anything?’
‘I felt as if my inhibitions loosened up.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I felt as if I could give my imagination rein without making a fool of myself.’
Brangwyn nodded, and Murchison saw that he was well content.
Murchison experienced a keen sensation of pleasure as he discarded his heavy everyday garments and wrapped the thin silk about him. Especially did he feel pleasure in the thin, light, glove-like slippers that enabled him to move so quietly over Brangwyn's thick carpets. He felt like a kid going to a pantomime as he came down the stairs from his own quarters and opened the door on to the gallery that surrounded the lounge.
It was not until he was on to the stairs that he suddenly realized with a shock of horror that Miss Brangwyn was going to see him in his fine feathers, and, looking down, saw her standing beneath him, watching his descent. Her appearance so amazed him that he completed the rest of the descent and came towards her without knowing what he did or where he was.
She, too, was dressed in green, but in the exquisitely delicate green of the youngest buds just opening. A loosely tied girdle of heavy gold cord confined the thin silk of her robe at the waist and defined her hips; two clasps caught the robe together on her shoulders, and the loose wide sleeves fell away from her arms like wings. Murchison felt as if her outer husk had dropped off, and for the first time he saw her as she really was.
Brangwyn, from his chair, was watching the descent of the stairs. He had seen his new secretary come striding along the gallery as if he had seven-league boots, evidently full of zest for the evening's entertainment, whatever it might prove to be, and thoroughly entering into the spirit of the game, like a small boy playing Indians with his uncle.
Then he had seen the sudden check and start as Murchison caught sight of Ursula, and watched him come down the rest of the stairs like a man in a dream. The game of Indians had become the real thing for him.
‘We don't feed till on towards midnight, Murchison,’ said his employer. ‘But there are some cocktails and biscuits over on the table. Help yourself. We don't want you fainting by the way.’
Murchison did as he was bid, pouring himself out a glass of sherry and starting to munch a handful of small biscuits.
‘What do you generally do in the matter of alcohol?’ asked Brangwyn. ‘I take it if it's there. I should never go out to fetch it if it wasn't. I'm afraid I don't know much about vintages. Do you want me to knock off drink while I'm on the job?’ He paused with the arrested glass half-way to his lips.
‘I want you to go easy on it,’ said Brangwyn. ‘One glass has its uses occasionally, because it loosens inhibitions. But more than one is apt to be a nuisance, because it makes you see things exaggeratedly. Distorts them just when you particularly want accuracy. There are some parts of the work when it isn't wise to risk it, because even a small amount of alcohol might lead to things getting out of hand. But we aren't on that aspect at the moment, so go ahead and enjoy your drink.’
Murchison tossed down the sherry as if it were beer, and joined them on the hearthrug.
‘I think Chesterton has the right idea,’ said Brangwyn. ‘He says that it is all right to drink because you like it, but all wrong to drink because you need it. All right to drink to make yourself super-normal at a party, but all wrong to drink to make yourself normal for your day's work. I wouldn't in the least mind bailing you out at Bow Street occasionally, but I should hate to see you nipping.’
‘Thank God you aren't a higher lifer, sir,’ said Murchison. ‘I should have found it very hard to bear.’
‘Now,’ said Brangwyn cheerfully, ‘since we are all going to work together, I suggest that we have a pleasant social evening and get to know each other a bit better.’ And he began to turn the handle of a cabinet gramophone.
‘I wonder what you mean by getting to know each other better?’ thought Murchison to himself, the sherry working valiantly inside him, as it was meant to do. ‘But here goes. I'm game for anything.’
Brangwyn put in a record. ‘I suggest you two have a dance together. My dancing days are over. And, in any case, I don't know the new dances.’
‘I thought my dancing days were over, too,’ said Murchison. ‘I haven't danced since I was demobbed. I am afraid I'm not very up to date. Miss Brangwyn will have to teach me the new steps.’
‘She'll do that all right.’ said Brangwyn.
Murchison thought it odd that all this time Miss Brangwyn had never opened her mouth. Neither now nor during tea.
A one-step began to bray from the gramophone, and the girl rose from her chair and held out her hands. He put his arm round her, and they moved off in the rhythmic walk of modern dancing. Brangwyn switched the rugs from under their feet and sent all his wheeled furniture flying into the corners, leaving a wide expanse of polished parquetry bare for the dance.
Murchison knew at once that the girl in his arms was a beautiful dancer; he himself had a keen sense of rhythm and the muscular control and balance that athletics gives, and they went together well enough, though, as Murchison thought to himself, nothing to write home about. By the end of the record, however, they had got into each other's ways, and were a rather more than presentable couple.
‘A gramophone's all right,’ said Brangwyn, ‘but there's no life about it. Let me get my violin and play for you.’
He took a violin from a case that lay beside the gramophone, tested it lightly, and began to play. Murchison noted that it was already tuned. He had a suspicion that the dance record on the gramophone had been a try-out, to see how he and Ursula went together, and, not having disgraced themselves, something more was about to commence.
‘Ever tried following a changing rhythm?’ said Brangwyn. ‘It's most amusing. Change your step as I change my rhythm and tempo.’
They moved off in a slow waltz, and Murchison noted at once the difference between dancing to the living player and dancing to the mechanical instrument. He felt the girl in his arms respond also.
The tempo quickened, and they found themselves moving in the old fashioned whirling waltz.
‘Don't reverse,’ called out Brangwyn, and slid into a one-step again, and they moved in a gliding walk till the incipient giddiness had worked off.
Once again Brangwyn swung them into the waltz and began to work up the tempo, always stopping them just on the verge of giddiness, and never permitting a reverse.
Murchison felt that Ursula preferred the waltz, but he liked the one step best himself. Then the one-step gave a few lilting bars and swung into a military march, and he found himself walking sheer heel and toe, with Ursula springing lightly backwards at his side. He shifted his hand from her waist to her shoulder to give freer play.
(‘Come on, my lass,’ he said to himself, ‘you're for it now. This is my kingdom!’) The fighting man had come into his own. These were the rhythms to which his heart answered. He swung Ursula round the corner in a way that would have sent anyone but a trained dancer off her feet.
Brangwyn slid into one of the old marching-songs of the War, and suddenly a deep baritone rang through the room as Murchison, all self consciousness forgotten in the exhilaration of the dance, burst into song.
‘It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go,
But there's a girl I know in Tipperary,
A lovely girl I know.’
Murchison had had his one brief day of self-fulfilment in the War; all else had been utter repression and negation. He was the fighting man par excellence, and there was not much he had to offer a commercial world in peace-time. The old tune took him back to his halcyon days, marching with the men of his company behind him; men who trusted him absolutely, who would follow him anywhere; into whom he had managed to infuse his own joy of battle, and who believed firmly that they bore charmed lives while under his command and that no Bosche could stand against them. He had had the glorious sense of being part of a vast whole, caught up in its life, moving with its momentum. He was hardly conscious of Ursula as he swept her round the room. What she thought, what she felt, whether his employer approved of his secretary bursting into song - he neither knew nor cared. He was away in another world, his head among the stars, his feet treading upon the mountains.
‘There's a long, long trail a-winding
To the land of my dreams -
Sang the violin, and the rapid toe and heel changed to a steady pacing, and then slid into waltz-rhythms based on ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’. Murchison gathered Ursula closer for the waltz, and the two listeners heard a strange and moving thing - the sulky and solitary Murchison, who was anything but a lady's man, singing the song of love and longing with his whole heart, moving to its rhythm, utterly forgetful of his audience, rapt away by the simple folk-music.
Brangwyn ceased playing as the last words of the song came from Murchison's lips, and the dance ended abruptly. Murchison blinked as if suddenly awakened from deep sleep and looked down to see who his partner was, and to his surprise saw that there were tears on Ursula's cheeks. He blinked again, and then let go of her hastily. Brangwyn mixed cocktails without a word’, and gave them one apiece.
Murchison sipped his glass and then stared thoughtfully at it. He would not look at Ursula, and did not know whether she was looking at him or not. As a matter of fact, she was. She was looking at him as if she had never seen him before; in the same way that he had looked at her when he saw her in her leaf-green robe, and Brangwyn, watching them, nodded to himself with inward satisfaction. The experiment had begun to move.
‘It's a little earlier than our usual time, but I think we'll have a meal,’ he said, knowing that food would rapidly bring them back to normal, for he did not want tensions to become too acute at the present moment, and one or the other to take fright.
Luigi, as usual, produced a meal out of his hat with the sweetest of smiles. His presence in and out of the room while it was in progress further assisted in the damping-down of the atmosphere, to Murchison's great relief, for he felt as if were skiing on unknown slopes, and did not know where he might land himself.
After the meal they returned to the lounge. The fire of logs was blazing brightly, its warm flickering light filling the room but leaving the high gallery in shadow and mystery. Brangwyn switched on a shaded reading-lamp, but left the wall lights extinguished, and in the flickering half-light Ursula Brangwyn made coffee with her electric kettle on the low tabouret at her side, and the two men lay back in their chairs and smoked, and watched her.
Brangwyn rose and fetched a portfolio, and, opening it, gave Murchison a handful of water-colour sketches. ‘These may amuse you,’ he said, ‘they are the fruit of my travels.’
Murchison bent down to bring the portfolio within the narrow circle of light thrown by the shaded reading-lamp, and began to look through them. They were studies of Egypt, but not the vivid poster-colours of the pictures in the children's books upstairs, but Egypt seen through the haze of time that gave the imagination a chance to work. The shadowy temples, half-seen in twilight or veiled in sun-glare, caught at his imagination. The forgotten splendour of that civilization was all about him, and sorrow at its irreparable loss took him by the heart. It seemed as if they lived in a dead world to-day, and could only remember ancient glories that were no more. The shades of the prison-house had closed about them; the great gods had departed and the temples were empty and desolate. He felt he would give his soul to see Horus mount the morning with the wings of a hawk and to hear the boom of the Kephra beetle in the dusk. These things were the gods to him, and the orthodoxy of today was stale, flat and unprofitable.
‘These also will interest you,’ said Brangwyn, handing him another portfolio, and he recognized the strange step-temples of Yucatan, festooned with creepers and jungle-weed.
‘Do you see the likeness between the two styles of architecture?’ asked Brangwyn, and Murchison looked more closely and saw that the architecture of the New World seemed to be an archaic version of the architecture of ancient Egypt.
‘Did you ever hear of the tradition of the lost continent of Atlantis?’ said Brangwyn.
‘No, I can't say that I have.’
‘Plato heard of it from the Egyptian priests, and he was no fool, and neither were they. They believed that their civilisation was derived from the Lost Continent. And it is a very curious fact that there are remarkable points of resemblance between the two cultures, though there has been no communication between them within historical times. It has been one of my hobbies to trace out these points of resemblance, and the further you go, the more you see in it. At any rate, if Egypt did not get her culture from Atlantis, where did she get it from? There are no primitive Egyptian remains; it is always a full-blown culture, even from the first.’
The idea of a lost continent took hold of Murchison's imagination, as it has of that of many.
‘What happened to it. How did it get lost?’ he asked.
‘It is supposed to have been overwhelmed by volcanic catastrophe because of its extreme wickedness in its latter days. It is a curious fact that at the exact spot that Plato gives as its site there is the Great Atlantic Deep, an enormous gash in the ocean floor, like the Grand Canyon of Colorado, and it was not discovered until modern deep-sea sounding apparatus revealed it. It is also a fact, within my personal knowledge, that the psychic atmosphere is such that it completely capsizes the crews of a cable-ship when they have to hang about there doing cable repairs. They dread going there. There are some spots on the earth's surface like that, you know, Murchison. Spots where psychic influences have been concentrated, both good and evil, and anyone who is at all sensitive feels it.’
‘I went into the Polynesian Gallery at the British Museum the same time that I was mucking around with the winged bull,’ said Murchison, completely forgetting the silent presence of Miss Brangwyn. ‘And, my goodness, I came out quicker than I went in! It fairly stank. And when I was doing my invocation in the yard it suddenly struck me that I might be raising some of the critters upstairs, and it gave me quite a turn for a moment; but I reckoned they were the fag-end of something, and not the genuine article, and, as it turned out, I was right.’
Brangwyn, although he dared not look at his sister as this confession was being made, felt her prick up her ears.
‘The fag-end of anything is apt to be unpleasant,’ he said, ‘but I don't believe there is any such thing as innate evil, but only misplaced force. It was the same in Atlantis. It's end was evil, but its hey-day was great. There was knowledge there that we have never matched since, and that went down with the Lost Continent, save such as was preserved by the Egyptian priests. They bred for knowledge in those days, bred humans, I mean, just as we breed racehorses for speed. And they got their results. They say that it Is the Atlanteans' Intensive breeding that gave us the high human forehead, and that the primitive tribes tried to imitate it with the cradle-board, that squashes the heads of the babies into the aristocratic shape.’
‘Dashed sensible,’ said Murchison, ‘the breeding, I mean. Pity we don't do the same thing nowadays - heads of colleges at stud - I beg your pardon, Miss Brangwyn, I didn't mean to say that!’
Ursula's laughter restored the blushing Murchison to composure, and the ice seemed more thoroughly broken by the little touch of smut that makes the whole world kin than it would have been by hours of high browed exchange of views.
‘It was a wise old divine who said, Why should we be ashamed to speak of what God was not ashamed to create?’ said Brangwyn. ‘An enormous amount of the troubles of modern civilization come from our ignorance concerning the breeding of humans. I think that the Atlanteans were absolutely right when they gave very careful thought to the matter, and the priests kept the stud-books.’
‘It's the banks keep the stud-books nowadays,’ said Murchison, thinking bitterly of the remoteness of any prospect of a horne of his own.
Brangwyn nodded, watching him; but Ursula Brangwyn broke silence for the first time that evening.
‘I am afraid I don't understand that allusion,’ she said.
‘Well, Miss Brangwyn,’ said Murchison, ‘whom you marry, when you marry, or, for the matter of that, whether you marry at all, depends entirely on how much you have in the bank. If there's family money that comes to you as soon as you're twenty-one, you get the girl you want and marry while you're still young enough to enjoy life. If there isn't, you have to wait until you're both sere and yellow, and then you produce squint-eyed kids.
‘What the Government ought to do is to subsidize the breeding of humans instead of horses and cows. Give the hefty young chaps who are drawing the dole a chance to become fathers of families. It would be a dashed good national investment.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Ursula, ‘that humans are so fastidious. They would want to marry to please themselves, not the Government. The hefty young men would probably fall in love with girls with awful ancestors and the human stud-book would go all wrong.’
‘It would certainly require wisdom to arrange the matings,’ said Brangwyn, ‘and wisdom is one of the lost arts. I fancy it went down with Atlantis.’ He rose. ‘I am going to pack you two children off to bed. I have work to do.’