and emotion. It was the lazy, expressionless mask which was sometimes
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her face. The portrait was terribly like; and at the same time it was the
most malicious of lies. Yes, it would be diabolic when it was finished,
Gombauld decided; he wondered what she would think of it.
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CHAPTER XXII.
For the sake of peace and quiet Denis had retired earlier on this same
afternoon to his bedroom. He wanted to work, but the hour was a drowsy
one, and lunch, so recently eaten, weighed heavily on body and mind.
The meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and
hopeless post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and
feared under the name of "accidie." He felt, like Ernest Dowson, "a little
weary." He was in the mood to write something rather exquisite and
gentle and quietist in tone; something a little droopy and at the same time-
how should he put it?--a little infinite. He thought of Anne, of love
hopeless and unattainable. Perhaps that was the ideal kind of love, the
hopeless kind--the quiet, theoretical kind of love. In this sad mood of
repletion he could well believe it. He began to write. One elegant
quatrain had flowed from beneath his pen:
"A brooding love which is at most The stealth of moonbeams when
they slide, Evoking colour's bloodless ghost, O'er some scarce-breathing
breast or side..."
when his attention was attracted by a sound from outside. He looked
down from his window; there they were, Anne and Gombauld, talking,
laughing together. They crossed the courtyard in front, and passed out of
sight through the gate in the right-hand wall. That was the way to the
green close and the granary; she was going to sit for him again. His
pleasantly depressing melancholy was dissipated by a puff of violent
emotion; angrily he threw his quatrain into the waste-paper basket and ran
downstairs. "The stealth of moonbeams," indeed!
In the hall he saw Mr. Scogan; the man seemed to be lying in wait.
Denis tried to escape, but in vain. Mr. Scogan's eye glittered like the eye
of the Ancient Mariner.
"Not so fast," he said, stretching out a small saurian hand with pointed
nails--"not so fast. I was just going down to the flower garden to take the
sun. We'll go together."
Denis abandoned himself; Mr. Scogan put on his hat and they went out
arm in arm. On the shaven turf of the terrace Henry Wimbush and Mary
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were playing a solemn game of bowls. They descended by the yew-tree
walk. It was here, thought Denis, here that Anne had fallen, here that he
had kissed her, here--and he blushed with retrospective shame at the
memory--here that he had tried to carry her and failed. Life was awful!
"Sanity!" said Mr. Scogan, suddenly breaking a long silence. "Sanity-that's
what's wrong with me and that's what will be wrong with you, my
dear Denis, when you're old enough to be sane or insane. In a sane world
I should be a great man; as things are, in this curious establishment, I am
nothing at all; to all intents and purposes I don't exist. I am just Vox et
praeterea nihil."
Denis made no response; he was thinking of other things. "After all,"
he said to himself--"after all, Gombauld is better looking than I, more
entertaining, more confident; and, besides, he's already somebody and I'm
still only potential..."
"Everything that ever gets done in this world is done by madmen," Mr.
Scogan went on. Denis tried not to listen, but the tireless insistence of
Mr. Scogan's discourse gradually compelled his attention. "Men such as
I am, such as you may possibly become, have never achieved anything.
We're too sane; we're merely reasonable. We lack the human touch, the
compelling enthusiastic mania. People are quite ready to listen to the
philosophers for a little amusement, just as they would listen to a fiddler or
a mountebank. But as to acting on the advice of the men of reason -never.
Wherever the choice has had to be made between the man of
reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the
madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion
and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and
supererogatory--reason."
They entered the garden; at the head of one of the alleys stood a green
wooden bench, embayed in the midst of a fragrant continent of lavender
bushes. It was here, though the place was shadeless and one breathed hot,
dry perfume instead of air--it was here that Mr. Scogan elected to sit. He
thrived on untempered sunlight.
"Consider, for example, the case of Luther and Erasmus." He took
out his pipe and began to fill it as he talked. "There was Erasmus, a man
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of reason if ever there was one. People listened to him at first--a new
virtuoso performing on that elegant and resourceful instrument, the
intellect; they even admired and venerated him. But did he move them to
behave as he wanted them to behave--reasonably, decently, or at least a
little less porkishly than usual? He did not. And then Luther appears,
violent, passionate, a madman insanely convinced about matters in which
there can be no conviction. He shouted, and men rushed to follow him.
Erasmus was no longer listened to; he was reviled for his reasonableness.
Luther was serious, Luther was reality-- like the Great War. Erasmus
was only reason and decency; he lacked the power, being a sage, to move
men to action. Europe followed Luther and embarked on a century and a
half of war and bloody persecution. It's a melancholy story." Mr.
Scogan lighted a match. In the intense light the flame was all but
invisible. The smell of burning tobacco began to mingle with the sweetly
acrid smell of the lavender.
"If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about
persuading them in a maniacal manner. The very sane precepts of the
founders of religions are only made infectious by means of enthusiasms
which to a sane man must appear deplorable. It is humiliating to find
how impotent unadulterated sanity is. Sanity, for example, informs us that
the only way in which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently
and intelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in their
customary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is a
maniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine with
the loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed of myself.
However"--Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand, made a
gesture of resignation--"It's futile to complain that things are as they are.
The fact remains that sanity unassisted is useless. What we want, then, is
a sane and reasonable exploitation of the forces of insanity. We sane men
will have the power yet." Mr. Scogan's eyes shone with a more than
ordinary brightness, and, taking his pipe out of his mouth, he gave vent to
his loud, dry, and somehow rather fiendish laugh.
"But I don't want power," said Denis. He was sitting in limp
discomfort at one end of the bench, shading his eyes from the intolerable
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light. Mr. Scogan, bolt upright at the other end, laughed again.
"Everybody wants power," he said. "Power in some form or other.
The sort of power you hanker for is literary power. Some people want
power to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in
persecuting words, twisting them, moulding them, torturing them to obey
you. But I divagate."
"Do you?" asked Denis faintly.
"Yes," Mr. Scogan continued, unheeding, "the time will come. We
men of intelligence will learn to harness the insanities to the service of
reason. We can't leave the world any longer to the direction of chance.
We can't allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, like
Napoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turning
everything upside down. In the past it didn't so much matter; but our
modern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War,
another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. In future,
the men of reason must see that the madness of the world's maniacs is
canalised into proper channels, is made to do useful work, like a mountain
torrent driving a dynamo..."
"Making electricity to light a Swiss hotel," said Denis. "You ought to
complete the simile."
Mr. Scogan waved away the interruption. "There's only one thing to
be done," he said. "The men of intelligence must combine, must
conspire, and seize power from the imbeciles and maniacs who now direct
us. They must found the Rational State."
The heat that was slowly paralysing all Denis's mental and bodily
faculties, seemed to bring to Mr. Scogan additional vitality. He talked
with an ever-increasing energy, his hands moved in sharp, quick, precise
gestures, his eyes shone. Hard, dry, and continuous, his voice went on
sounding and sounding in Denis's ears with the insistence of a mechanical
noise.
"In the Rational State," he heard Mr. Scogan saying, "human beings
will be separated out into distinct species, not according to the colour of
their eyes or the shape of their skulls, but according to the qualities of their
mind and temperament. Examining psychologists, trained to what would
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now seem an almost superhuman clairvoyance, will test each child that is
born and assign it to its proper species. Duly labelled and docketed, the
child will be given the education suitable to members of its species, and
will be set, in adult life, to perform those functions which human beings of
his variety are capable of performing."
"How many species will there be?" asked Denis.
"A great many, no doubt," Mr. Scogan answered; "the classification
will be subtle and elaborate. But it is not in the power of a prophet to go
into details, nor is it his business. I will do more than indicate the three
main species into which the subjects of the Rational State will be divided."
He paused, cleared his throat, and coughed once or twice, evoking in
Denis's mind the vision of a table with a glass and water-bottle, and, lying
across one corner, a long white pointer for the lantern pictures.
"The three main species," Mr. Scogan went on, "will be these: the
Directing Intelligences, the Men of Faith, and the Herd. Among the
Intelligences will be found all those capable of thought, those who know
how to attain a certain degree of freedom--and, alas, how limited, even
among the most intelligent, that freedom is!--from the mental bondage of
their time. A select body of Intelligences, drawn from among those who
have turned their attention to the problems of practical life, will be the
governors of the Rational State. They will employ as their instruments of
power the second great species of humanity--the men of Faith, the
Madmen, as I have been calling them, who believe in things unreasonably,
with passion, and are ready to die for their beliefs and their desires.
These wild men, with their fearful potentialities for good or for mischief,
will no longer be allowed to react casually to a casual environment. There
will be no more Caesar Borgias, no more Luthers and Mohammeds, no
more Joanna Southcotts, no more Comstocks. The old-fashioned Man of
Faith and Desire, that haphazard creature of brute circumstance, who
might drive men to tears and repentance, or who might equally well set
them on to cutting one another's throats, will be replaced by a new sort of
madman, still externally the same, still bubbling with a seemingly
spontaneous enthusiasm, but, ah, how very different from the madman of
the past! For the new Man of Faith will be expending his passion, his
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desire, and his enthusiasm in the propagation of some reasonable idea.
He will be, all unawares, the tool of some superior intelligence."
Mr. Scogan chuckled maliciously; it was as though he were taking a
revenge, in the name of reason, on enthusiasts. "From their earliest years,
as soon, that is, as the examining psychologists have assigned them their
place in the classified scheme, the Men of Faith will have had their special
education under the eye of the Intelligences. Moulded by a long process
of suggestion, they will go out into the world, preaching and practising
with a generous mania the coldly reasonable projects of the Directors from
above. When these projects are accomplished, or when the ideas that
were useful a decade ago have ceased to be useful, the Intelligences will
inspire a new generation of madmen with a new eternal truth. The
principal function of the Men of Faith will be to move and direct the
Multitude, that third great species consisting of those countless millions
who lack intelligence and are without valuable enthusiasm. When any
particular effort is required of the Herd, when it is thought necessary, for
the sake of solidarity, that humanity shall be kindled and united by some
single enthusiastic desire or idea, the Men of Faith, primed with some
simple and satisfying creed, will be sent out on a mission of evangelisation.
At ordinary times, when the high spiritual temperature of a Crusade would
be unhealthy, the Men of Faith will be quietly and earnestly busy with the
great work of education. In the upbringing of the Herd, humanity's
almost boundless suggestibility will be scientifically exploited.
Systematically, from earliest infancy, its members will be assured that
there is no happiness to be found except in work and obedience; they will
be made to believe that they are happy, that they are tremendously
important beings, and that everything they do is noble and significant.
For the lower species the earth will be restored to the centre of the
