Part 22

As they drew near to the spot Quentin perceived that the great stones he remembered were overlaid with ornamental work, with vivid, bright-coloured paintings. The whole thing was a great circular building, every stone in its place. At a mile or two distant lay a town. And in that town, with every possible luxury, served with every circumstance of servile homage, Quentin ate and slept.

I wish I had time to tell you what that town was like where he slept and ate, but I have not. You can read for yourself, some day, what Atlantis was like. Plato tells us a good deal, and the Colonies of Atlantis must have had at least a reasonable second-rate copy of the cities of that fair and lovely land.

That night, for the first time since he had first gone to sleep on the altar stone, Quentin slept apart from it. He lay on a wooden couch strewn with soft bear-skins, and a woollen coverlet was laid over him. And he slept soundly.

In the middle of the night, as it seemed, Blue Mantle woke him.

'Come,' he said, 'Chosen of the Gods--since you will be that, and no stowaway--the hour draws nigh.'

The mammoth was waiting. Quentin and Blue Mantle rode on its back to the outer porch of the new temple of Stonehenge. Rows of priests and attendants, robed in white and blue and purple, formed a sort of avenue up which Blue Mantle led the Chosen of the Gods, who was Quentin. They took off his jacket and put a white dress on him, rather like a night-shirt without sleeves. And they put a thick wreath of London Pride on his head and another, larger and longer, round his neck.

'If only the chaps at school could see me now!' he said to himself proudly.

And by this time it was gray dawn.

'Lie down now,' said Blue Mantle, 'lie down, O Beloved of the Gods, upon the altar stone, for the last time.'

'I shall be able to go, then?' Quentin asked. This accidental magic was, he perceived, a tricky thing, and he wanted to be sure.

'You will not be able to stay,' said the priest. 'If going is what you desire, the desire of the Chosen of the Gods is fully granted.'

The grass on the plain far and near rustled with the tread of many feet; the cold air of dawn thrilled to the awed murmured of many voices.

Quentin lay down, with his pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the faint pinkiness of the flowers which we nowadays call London Pride.

And all eyes were fixed on the arch through which, at sunrise on Midsummer Day, the sun's first beam should fall upon the white, new, clean altar stone. The stone is still there, after all these thousands of years, and at sunrise on Midsummer Day the sun's first ray still falls on it.

The sky grew lighter and lighter, and at last the sun peered redly over the down, and the first ray of the morning sunlight fell full on the altar stone and on the face of Quentin.

And, as it did so, a very tall, white-robed priest with a deer-skin apron and a curious winged head-dress stepped forward. He carried a great bronze knife, and he waved it ten times in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the arch and on to the altar stone.

'Thus,' he cried, 'thus do I bathe the sacred blade in the pure fountain of all light, all wisdom, all splendour. In the name of the ten kings, the ten virtues, the ten hopes, the ten fears I make my weapon clean! May this temple of our love and our desire endure for ever, so long as the glory of our Lord the Sun is shed upon this earth. May the sacrifice I now humbly and proudly offer be acceptable to the gods by whom it has been so miraculously provided. Chosen of the Gods! return to the gods who sent thee!'

A roar of voices rang through the temple. The bronze knife was raised over Quentin. He could not believe that this, this horror, was the end of all these wonderful happenings.

'No--no,' he cried, 'it's not true. I'm not the Chosen of the Gods! I'm only a little boy that's got here by accidental magic!'

'Silence,' cried the priest, 'Chosen of the Immortals, close your eyes! It will not hurt. This life is only a dream; the other life is the real life. Be strong, be brave!'

Quentin was not brave. But he shut his eyes. He could not help it. The glitter of the bronze knife in the sunlight was too strong for him.

He could not believe that this could really have happened to him. Every one had been so kind--so friendly to him. And it was all for this!

Suddenly a sharp touch at his side told him that for this, indeed, it had all been. He felt the point of the knife.

'Mother!' he cried. And opened his eyes again.

He always felt quite sure afterwards that 'Mother' was the master-word, the spell of spells. For when he opened his eyes there was no priest, no white-robed worshippers, no splendour of colour and metal, no Chosen of the Gods, no knife--only a little boy with a piece of sacking over him, damp with the night dews, lying on a stone amid the grey ruins of Stonehenge, and, all about him, a crowd of tourists who had come to see the sun's first shaft strike the age-old altar of Stonehenge on Midsummer Day in the morning. And instead of a knife point at his side there was only the ferrule of the umbrella of an elderly and retired tea merchant in a mackintosh and an Alpine hat,--a ferrule which had prodded the sleeping boy so unexpectedly surprised on the very altar stone where the sun's ray now lingered.

And then, in a moment, he knew that he had not uttered the spell in vain, the word of compelling, the word of power: for his mother was there kneeling beside him. I am sorry to say that he cried as he clung to her. We cannot all of us be brave, always.

The tourists were very kind and interested, and the tea merchant insisted on giving Quentin something out of a flask, which was so nasty that Quentin only pretended to drink, out of politeness. His mother had a carriage waiting, and they escaped to it while the tourists were saying, 'How romantic!' and asking each other whatever in the world had happened.

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