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RESTORATION AND MEDITATION.

T that moment Cling-clang--clash-broke out the most discordant bell possible to imagine-certainly the worst bell even in this wide world of bad bells.

"Good Lord!" cried Gilbert, "what instrument of torture is that?"

"It is our bell. It rings for Restoration-at eight o'clock and one o'clock and six o'clock. And it wakes us up in the morning."

"I can well believe that," said Gilbert. "This bell would wake the Seven Sleepers."

"Let us go in to Restoration, then. Your place will be next to me-I have you on one side, and the other Englishman

"Him of the badness ?"

"Yes on the other side."

Oh, I shall have to meet him-sit opposite to him at Restoration-three times a day, shall I? Curious! For how many days, I wonder!"

The three long, narrow tables, which were the principal furniture of the hall, were now spread with table-cloths, not too white, for it was near the end of the week, and laid with dishes and plates. The Fraternity-brethren and sisters-were all assembled in their places; they filled the benches, and were in number about a hundred and twenty. There was no grace or formality of any kind-never was a monastery more free from rules, not even the famous House of Thelema, on the Loire. Each one as he arrived took his seat, seized knife and fork, and without further ceremony began to eat and to drink with zeal. Already, though the bell had only just stopped, there was audible from all parts of the hall the musical tinkle of knife and plate.

On the platform one of the Community played the piano. By his long fair hair, by his blue eyes, by his beard, by his glasses, he proclaimed himself a German. He played extremely well; soft, pleasant music, that dropped upon the ears with soothing, not stimulating, effect; he improvised, he played continuously: it was the pleasing custom of the House to take this soft music with evening Restoration, by way of preparing the mind for what followed after.

"This is my place," said the girl, taking the end of the middle table nearest

VOL. VIII.-No. 36.

Copyright in U.S.A. by Walter Besant, 1896.
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37

the door. "Sit here, Brother Gilbert, on my right. This is Brother Charles, the only other Englishman in the House."

Gilbert started. He ought to have known what to expect; but the thing startled him. Imagine, in a Community full of country people, rustics, sitting down to a rude and coarse supper of pork and steaks and other such preparations, the arrival of a guest with the manners and appearance of an aristocrat of the finest and most finished and most exclusive. In such a case one feels that it is not always dress that makes the man. This man this Brother Charles-was dressed like all the rest in the grey tweed: the difference lay in his face and his manner. All the West End was recalled by that face and by that manner.

He came in last of all: he looked round the room coldly, as a French noble would look upon the canaille, as if they did not exist; his appearance, his manner, were those of the ideal duke; he bowed slightly to Cicely, as one would acknowledge the presence of a woman who is just not one's servant; and he stared in the customary insolently fixed gaze upon the new comer. Then he took his seat and contemplated the steak in front of him doubtfully.

"Brother Charles," said Cicely, "this is Brother Gilbert our new comer." The man bowed slightly, but said nothing. Gilbert changed colour. The time had come, then, and the man. Before him sat the man whom he had hunted for two years. There he was-Sir Charles Osterley, Baronet, late M.P., and sometime Under Secretary of State for the Fisheries. You have heard that Gilbert had never met the man before he had left the world in order to join the devil. But he had heard of him, and he knew the photographs and portraits of him: a dark man, tall,

slight and spare of figure, pale, clean shaven, careful of dress, reserved in manner, said to be serious in his views. The man before him was tall, slight and spare, clean shaven, pale, looking serious and self-contained so far there was no change in him. As Gilbert looked, however, Brother Charles lifted his face. Then the swift, suspicious glance showed that there had been change it was the look of the hunted man, hiding in this home of Crankery, where no one was likely to find him, asking himself with sinking heart what a second Englishman wanted in the place. It was also the look of the hawk, relentless. With the prophetic power which often accompanies a full knowledge of the circumstances, Gilbert understood that searching look of inquiry and suspicion; and the hunted look; and the look of the hawk. "They are fine eyes," he thought, "keen eyes: they should be beautiful eyes; but . . .” He felt his breast pocket. "I have your portrait in my pocket, Sir Charles Osterley," but this he did not say. "When it was taken you were supposed to be a gentleman of England. Now you are undoubtedly a child of the Devil."

Then Brother Charles spoke, courteously this time, but coldly. preserved the old manner. In fact, it was his principal asset.

He had quite

"This is an agreeable surprise," he said. "One does not often meet with a countryman in so secluded a spot. Have you been long in the States?"

"About two years," Gilbert replied.

"Ah! I have been here so long that I have left off counting the years: my name is Lee-Charles Lee."

"Mine is Maryon-Gilbert Maryon.”

"Maryon," the other repeated-"Maryon. I have heard the name. You have the appearance of a gentleman."

A dubious compliment. Perhaps he meant to be insolent. "Why should I not have that appearance? You yourself..." But remembering things, he did not finish the sentence.

"I mean only that it is unusual in this House, so far as I have discovered." He spoke coldly, with the manner of one who converses with a secretary—that is, he spoke as a master.

"My father was an English gentleman," said Cicely, "but we must not talk of such distinctions in this House. Here we are all alike; we have nothing to think about but Elevation. Otherwise we have no business here."

She looked from one Englishman to the other, comparing and wondering. One, she knew, was a bad man: the other, she was certain, was a good man. Yet they were both gentlemen.

Brother Charles politely bowed his head, with just the least, almost imperceptible, sneer upon his lips, such as any courtly devil might show on being invited to Elevation. Then he lapsed into silence.

The supper was plentiful, but coarse; the dishes illustrated the observation of Brother Charles as to the rank and station of the Brotherhood. There was pork and beans-a favourite dish: Gilbert presently remarked that it was exhibited at every-day Restoration, morning, noon, and evening; there were steaks, but not exactly the kind of steak which one can command in the City of London: a tougher and thinner variety of the delicacy; and there was pie-pie open, pie cross, and pie covered that is to say, pie in all its branches; an abundance of pie. Everything was put on the table at the same time, and there were no waiters. Between the dishes there were teapots and coffee-pots and jugs of iced water. It never entered into the head of any brother or sister that one could possibly hanker after whisky: of wine, probably not one in the room, except the two Englishmen, had ever heard.

Gilbert looked round the hall, studying the faces of his new friends. Alas! he could not disguise from himself the fact that they looked common-very common. They were all feeding like cattle; with avidity, seriousness, and silence. There was neither speech nor language among them. But, he reflected, if you were to take all the members of the House of Lords and dress them in a uniform of grey tweed, and then attire their consorts and their sisters and their daughters in the most hideous costume ever designed, and, lastly, cut off the feminine locks, you would produce a common appearance, even among those exalted beings. But lofty thoughts, sacred thoughts, Meditation on things too high for speech ought to produce their effect upon the face: they should stamp it, they should refine it, however rugged may be the first modelling. Except on the faces of the Master and of Cicely, he could see no sign of any such refining: the faces were common mostly vacuous, dull and .common. Just now, however, they were universally lit up by

eagerness after food.

They had already, as has been said, begun to break bread. Now, there is one test which never fails: it is a touchstone, it is the spear of Ithuriel. Gilbert observed by application of this test, which is that of table manners, that the Community belonged apparently, one and all, to what we call in this country quite the lower middle class.

Well, one cannot expect an ideal Community such as this to attract the rich and the luxurious. They would want such a house to be directed by an Archbishop of lenient disposition, and to contain none but themselves, with a fine cellar and good cigars. Among these people of the lower middle class there would be gifts and graces, no doubt, as yet unrevealed and unsuspected. The girl who had taken. him to his room, Sister Cicely, was, he observed with satisfaction, an exception. She possessed, apparently, the refinement of a gentlewoman; her father, she said, was an English gentleman: she knew how to sit, how to walk, how to speak, and how to approach the necessary subject of food. Gilbert was never insensible to an interesting person of the other sex: he began to talk to her.

"Is there," he asked, "a rule of silence, that no one speaks?"

"No," she replied. "There is no rule of any kind in the House, except that we must above all things respect Meditation."

"Come," Gilbert objected; "you cannot meditate while you are eating. Pork and beans cannot possibly go with Meditation."

She shook her head.

"You know nothing as yet, Brother Gilbert. You have come from a world where there is no Meditation."

"May I talk with you, Cicely, or are you meditating?"

"You may talk with me if you like, but not so loud, so as to disturb the others; they may be composing their minds by silence after Restoration. You may go away if you like, but if you stay here you will very soon understand that you must not talk. Nothing disturbs the mind so much."

"I remember the name of Maryon," Brother Charles said after a long pause. "I have heard of people named Maryon, but at present I do not connect the name with any person or family."

must have heard of him.

Gilbert had given his own name boldly. He thought that Dorabyn's husband He forgot, however, that it was immediately after the honeymoon of a week that the future premier had begun his depredations on his wife's property; and that the pair had then virtually separated. Gilbert's name, in fact, had never been mentioned between them.

"I suppose," he replied, "that my name is known well enough among my

friends. Outside my own circle I see no reason why it should be known. I have never, for instance, distinguished myself in any way. Have you?"

The man winced visibly, and again shot a glance of suspicion across the table. In this frank-faced young Englishman he could see nothing to warrant any suspicion. Yet, what was he doing in this place?

Gilbert turned to consider his neighbour on his left. This, as he learned afterwards, was a certain Brother Silas, a young man of thirty or so. He was evidently a countryman, a rustic of the American type, which is not at all the English type; he belonged to the farming class, and was a man of Maine; his powers of working through Restoration were prodigious he uttered no words; when he wanted anything he just reached across his neighbours and helped himself; he drank tea with his pork and beans, and coffee with his pie; his table manners wanted polish; when he desisted for a moment and raised his head Gilbert observed that his features were naturally hard, but that his soft and dreamy eyes took away the rugged look. In the course of a day or two Gilbert learned to classify the Fraternity. There was the soft and dreamy eye which belonged to most; there was the restless, unsatisfied eye which belonged to some; there was the eye of sadness as for an unburied and unforgotten Past, which was also found among them; and there was the wolfish eye, which belonged to Brother Charles and to nobody else.

Restoration ended, every one rose not to say grace but to reverse himself. They now sat with their backs to the tables, and they all assumed the same position; they folded their hands; they inclined their heads slightly backward-a position necessary unless they wished to gaze in each other's faces; the men stretched out their feet. Then half a dozen of the sisters, including Cicely-a duty taken in turn-carried out the dishes and cleared the tables and rolled up the table-cloths. Some of the men lit the petroleum lamps which hung against the wall. The musician ceased and silence fell upon the place. Brother Charles leaned across the table.

"One is not obliged to stay," he whispered.

"I always go outside when the

foolishness begins. Come out and let us talk of London."

"I shall stay here," Gilbert replied coldly.

Brother Charles rose and went out, and came back no more.

And then the

Master came walking softly down the lines of white faces turned upward to the light of the lamps. He stood beside Gilbert and spoke in a kind of murmur.

"It is the hour of Meditation. It is the hour which sanctifies the day."

In these days everybody travels; everybody has seen everything, from nautch girls to dervishes. But Gilbert had never seen, or imagined, or heard of, or read of, anything more remarkable and wonderful than the thing which followed.

The bell rang, just one note and no more, like the last note of the Angelus ; the musician at the piano began to play again, more softly, more dreamily.

Then, suddenly, upon the faces there fell, as it were, a veil; it wasn't really a veil, it was the sudden withdrawal from nearly every face of all the life and expression that lay in it. The life went out of it; the face became vacuous; it became rigid; the people seemed all to be dead, to be suddenly killed; their open eyes saw nothing; through their parted lips there passed no breath.

Good heavens!" cried the new comer. "They meditate."

"What are they doing now?"”

"Meditate? They are all fallen into trance."

"You have read, doubtless, or heard, of miraculous trances and raptures of saints in days gone by. You have perhaps scoffed at them. It is the fashion of the day to disbelieve what we cannot understand. But even the wisest man of science