Vanished now are the beliefs that held our race for countless generations.Where now was that Path of the Dead, mapped so clearly, faced with such certainty, in which the heliolithic peoples believed from Avebury to Polynesia? Not always have we had to go alone and unprepared into uncharted darknesses.
For a time the dream artist used a palette of the doctor's vague memories of things Egyptian, he painted a new roll of the Book of the Dead, at a copy of which the doctor had been looking a day or so before.Sir Richmond became a brown naked figure, crossing a bridge of danger, passing between terrific monsters, ferrying a dark and dreadful stream.He came to the scales of judgment before the very throne of Osiris and stood waiting while dogheaded Anubis weighed his conscience and that evil monster, the Devourer of the Dead, crouched ready if the judgment went against him.The doctor's attention concentrated upon the scales.A memory of Swedengorg's Heaven and Hell mingled with the Egyptian fantasy.Now at last it was possible to know something real about this man's soul, now at last one could look into the Secret Places of his Heart.Anubis and Thoth, the god with the ibis head, were reading the heart as if it were a book, reading aloud from it to the supreme judge.
Suddenly the doctor found himself in his own dreams.His anxiety to plead for his friend had brought him in.He too had become a little painted figure and he was bearing a book in his hand.He wanted to show that the laws of the new world could not be the same as those of the old, and the book he was bringing as evidence was his own Psychology of a New Age.
The clear thought of that book broke up his dream by releasing a train of waking troubles....You have been six months on Chapter Ten; will it ever be ready for Osiris?...will it ever be ready for print?...
Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windy day in April.Suddenly he saw again that lonely figure on the narrow way with darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand.But this time it was not Sir Richmond....Who was it? Surely it was Everyman.
Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road, leaving love, leaving every task and every desire.But was it Everyman?...A great fear and horror came upon the doctor.
That little figure was himself! And the book which was his particular task in life was still undone.He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely path with the engulfing darknesses about him....
He seemed to wrench himself awake.
He lay very still for some moments and then he sat up in bed.
An overwhelming conviction had arisen--in his mind that Sir Richmond was dead.He felt he must know for certain.He switched on his electric light, mutely interrogated his round face reflected in the looking glass, got out of bed, shuffled on his slippers and went along the passage to the telephone.
He hesitated for some seconds and then lifted the receiver.
It was his call which aroused the nurse to the fact of Sir Richmond's death.
Section 6
Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr.Martineau's telegram late on the following evening.He was with her next morning, comforting and sympathetic.Her big blue eyes, bright with tears, met his very wistfully; her little body seemed very small and pathetic in its simple black dress.And yet there was a sort of bravery about her.When he came into the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses talking to a serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type.
She left her business at once to come to him."Why did I not know in time?" she cried.
"No one, dear lady, had any idea until late last night," he said, taking both her hands in his for a long friendly sympathetic pressure.
"I might have known that if it had been possible you would have told me," she said.
"You know," she added, "I don't believe it yet.I don't realize it.I go about these formalities--""I think I can understand that."
"He was always, you know, not quite here....It is as if he were a little more not quite here....I can't believe it is over...."She asked a number of questions and took the doctor's advice upon various details of the arrangements."My daughter Helen comes home to-morrow afternoon," she explained."She is in Paris.But our son is far, far away in the Punjab.I have sent him a telegram....It is so kind of you to come in to me."Dr.Martineau went more than half way to meet Lady Hardy's disposition to treat him as a friend of the family.He had conceived a curious, half maternal affection for Sir Richmond that had survived even the trying incident of the Salisbury parting and revived very rapidly during the last few weeks.
