THE PROPHET
The year 1907 had four more days of life: it crept to its grave through a web and tangle of fog.It was not one of the regular yellow devils who come and eat up London, first this part, and then that, then disgorge a little, choking it all up only to snap at it and swallow it down all bewildered a quarter of an hour after.This was a cobweb fog spun, as it might be, by some malignant central spider hidden darkly in his lair.The vapouring-like filmy threads twisted and twined their way all over London, and for four days and nights the town was a city of ghosts.Buildings loomed dimly behind their masks of silver tissue, streets seemed unsubstantial, pavements had no foundation, streams of water appeared to hang glittering in mid-air, men and horses would suddenly plunge into grey abysses and vanish from sight, church-bells would ring peals high up in air, and there would be, it seemed, no steeple there for them to ring from.As the sun behind the fog rose and set so the mist would catch gold and red and purple into the vapours, strange gleams of brass and silver as though behind its web armies flaunting their colours were marching through the sky; down on the very earth itself horses staggered and stumbled on the thin coating of greasy mud that covered everything; men opened their doors to look out on to the world, and instantly into the passages there floated such strange forms and shadows in misty shape that it seemed as though the rooms were suddenly invaded by a flock of spirits.
Sometimes for half an hour the fog lifted and bright blue sky gleamed like a miraculous lake suddenly discovered in the heart of the boundless waste, then vanished again.Suddenly, with a whisk of the immortal broom, the web was torn, the spider slain, the world clear once more--but, in the obscurity and dusk, 1907 had seen his chance and vanished.
Warlock, long before this, had lost consciousness of external sights and sounds.He could not have told any one when it was that the two worlds had parted company.For many many years he had been conscious of both existences, but during his youth and middle-age they had seemed to mingle and go along together.He had believed in both equally and had been a citizen of both.Then gradually, as time passed, he had seemed to have less and less hold upon the actual physical world.He saw it suddenly with darkened vision; his wife and daughter, and indeed all human beings, except in so far as they were souls to be saved for the Lord, became less and less realities.
Only Martin was flesh and blood, to be loved and longed for and feared for just as he had always been.All the physical properties of life--clothes, food, household possessions, money--became of less and less importance to him.Had Amy not watched over him he would have been many days without any food at all, and one day he come into the living-room at breakfast-time clothed in a towel.All this had come upon him with vastly increased power during the last months.In Chapel, and whenever he had work to do in connection with the Chapel, he was clear-headed and practical, but in things to do with this world he was now worse than a child.
He was conscious of this increasing difficulty to deal with both worlds.It was because one world--the world of God--was opening out before him so widely and with so varied and thrilling a beauty that there was less and less time to be spared for the drab realities of physical things.
All his life he had been preparing, and then suddenly the call had come.Shortly after Martin's return he had known in Chapel, one evening, that God was approaching.It had happened that that day, owing to his absorption in his work, he had eaten nothing, and there had come to him, whilst praying to the congregation, a sensation of faintness so strong that for a moment he thought he would fall from his seat.Then it had passed, to give way to a strange, thrilling sense of expectancy.It was as though a servant had opened the door and had announced: "My master is coming, sir--" He had felt, indeed, as though he had been lifted up, in the sheet of Paul the Apostle, to meet his God.There had been the most wonderful sense of elevation, a clearing of light, a gentler freshness in the air, a sudden sinking to remoteness of human voices and mundane sounds.
From that moment in the Chapel life had been changed for him.He never seemed to come down again from that mysterious elevation.
Human voices sounded far away from him; he could be urged, only with the greatest difficulty, to take his food, and he frequently did not recognise members of his own congregation when they came to see him.
He waited now, waited, waited, for this visitation that was approaching him.He could have no doubts of it.
Then one night he woke from a deep sleep.He was conscious that his room was filled with a smoky light; in his heart was such an ecstasy that be would have thought that the joy would kill him.
Something spoke to him, telling him to prepare, that he had been chosen, and that further signs would come to him.He fell on his knees beside the bed and remained there in a trance until daylight.
He had heard the voice of God, he had seen His light, he had been chosen as His servant.Some weeks later a second visitation came to him, similar to the first, but telling him that at the last hour of the present year God would come in His own person to save the world, and that he must make this known to a few chosen spirits that they might prepare...
The whole brotherhood then was at length justified; they alone, out of all men in the world, had believed in the Second Coming of the Lord, and so God had chosen them.He had no doubt at all about his visions at this time.They seemed to him as real and sure as the daily traffic of the streets and the monotonous progress of the clock.
