第30章

THE WARLOCKS

There is beyond question, in human nature, such a thing as an inherited consciousness of God, and this consciousness, if inherited through many generations, may defy apparent reason, all progress of vaunted civilisations, and even, it may be suggested, the actual challenge of death itself.

This consciousness of God had been quite simply the foundation of Mr.Warlock's history.In the middle of the eighteenth century it expressed itself in the formula of John Wesley's revival; the John Wesley of that day preached up and down the length and breadth of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and being a fighter, a preacher and a simple-minded human being at one and the same time, received a large following and died full of years and honours.

It was somewhere about 1830 that this John's grandson, James Warlock, Martin's grandfather, broke from the main body and led his little flock on to the wide spaces of Salisbury Plain.James Warlock, unlike his father and grandfather, was a little sickly man with a narrow chest, no limbs to speak of and a sharp pale face.

Martin had a faded daguerreotype of him set against the background of the old Wiltshire kitchen, his black clothes hung upon him like a disguise, his eyes burning even upon that faded picture with the fire of his spirit.For James Warlock was a mystic, a visionary, a prophet.He walked and talked with God; in no jesting spirit it was said that he knew God's plans and could turn the world into a blazing coal so soon as he pleased.It was because he knew with certainty that God would, in person, soon, descend upon the earth that he separated from the main body and led his little band down into Wiltshire.Here on the broad gleaming Plain they prepared for God's coming.Named now the Kingscote Brethren after their new abode, they built a Chapel, sat down and waited.Then in 1840 the prophet declared that the Coming was not yet, that it would be in the next generation, but that their preparations must not be relaxed.He himself prepared by taking to himself a wife, a calm untroubled countrywoman of the place, that she might give him a son whom he might prepare, in due course, for his great destiny.John, father of Martin, was born, a large-limbed, smiling infant, with the tranquillity of his mother as well as something of the mysticism of his father.

Upon him, as upon his ancestors, this consciousness of God had most absolutely descended.Never for a moment did he question the facts that his father told to him.He grew into a giant of health and strength, and those who, in those old days, saw them tell that it was a strange picture to watch the little wizened man, walking with odd emotional gestures, with little hops and leaps and swinging of the arms beside the firm long stride of the young man towering above him.

When young John was twenty-three years of age his father was found dead under a tree upon a summer's evening.His expression was of a man challenging some new and startling discovery; he had found perhaps new visions to confront his gaze.They buried him in Kingscote and his son reigned in his stead.

But they were approaching new and modern times.These old days, of simple faith and superstition were passing never to return.There were new elements in the Kingscote company of souls and these elements demanded freer play both of thought and action.They argued that, as to them alone out of all the world the time and manner of God's coming was known, they should influence with their activities some wider sphere than this Wiltshire village.

John Warlock clung with all his strength to the old world that he knew, the world that gave him leisure and quiet for contemplation.

He had no wish to bring in converts, to stir England into a frenzy of terror and anticipation.God gave him no command to spread his beliefs; even his father, fanatic though he had been, had cherished his own small company of saints as souls to whom these things, hidden deliberately from the outside world, had especially been entrusted.

So long as he could he resisted; then when he was about forty, somewhere around 1880, the Kingscote Brethren moved to London.In this year, 1907, John Warlock was sixty-seven and the Kingscote Brethren had had their Chapel in Solomon's Place, behind Garrick Street, for twenty-seven years.In 1880 John Warlock had married Amelia, daughter of Francis Stephens, merchant.In 1881 a daughter, Amy, was born to them; in 1883, Martin; they had no other children.

Martin was at the time of Maggie's arrival in London twenty-four years of age.

Upon a certain fine evening, a fortnight after Martin Warlock's first meeting with Maggie, he arrived at the door of his house in Garrick Street, and having forgotten his latch-key, was compelled to ring the old screaming bell that had long survived its respectable reputable days.The Warlocks had lived during the last ten years in an upper part above a curiosity shop four doors from the Garrick Club in Garrick Street.There was a house-door that abutted on to the shop-door and, passing through it, you stumbled along a little dark passage like a rabbit warren, up some crooked stairs, and found yourself in the Warlock country without ever troubling Mr.Spencer, the stout, hearty, but inartistic owner of the curiosity shop.