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Read Ebook: Flames by Hichens Robert
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Ebook has 4718 lines and 170216 words, and 95 pages
"I didn't fight; I revelled in the enemy's camp."
"You have never told me this before. Did you suddenly get conversion, as Salvationists say?"
"Something like it. But my conversion had nothing to do with trumpets and tambourines."
"What then? This is interesting."
A certain confusion had come into Julian's expression, even a certain echoing awkwardness into his attitude. He looked away into the fire and lighted another cigarette before he answered. Then he said rather unevenly:
"I dare say you'll be surprised when I tell you. But I never meant to tell you at all."
"Don't, if you would rather not."
"Yes, I think I will. I must stop you from disliking yourself at any cost, dear old boy. Well, you converted me, so far as I am converted; and that's not very far, I'm afraid."
"I?" said Valentine, with genuine surprise. "Why, I never tried to."
"Exactly. If you had, no doubt you'd have failed."
"But explain."
"I've never told you all you do for me, Val. You are my armour against all these damned things. When I'm with you, I hate the notion of being a sinner. I never hated it before I met you. In fact, I loved it. I wanted sin more than I wanted anything in heaven or earth. And then--just at the critical moment when I was passing from boyhood into manhood, I met you."
He stopped. His brown cheeks were glowing, and he avoided Valentine's gaze.
"Go on, Julian," Valentine said. "I want to hear this."
"All right, I'll finish now, but I don't know why I ever began. Perhaps you'll think me a fool, or a sentimentalist."
"Nonsense!"
"Well, I don't know how it is, but when I saw you I first understood that there is a good deal in what the parsons say, that sin is beastly in itself, don't you know, even apart from one's religious convictions, or the injury one may do to others. When I saw you, I understood that sin degrades one's self, Valentine. For you had never sinned as I had, and you were so different from me. You are the only sinless man I know, and you have made me know what beasts we men are. Why can't we be what we might be?"
Valentine did not reply. He seemed lost in thought, and Julian continued, throwing off his original shamefacedness:
"Ever since then you've kept me straight. If I feel inclined to throw myself down in the gutter, one look at you makes me loathe the notion. Preaching often drives one wrong out of sheer 'cussedness,' I suppose. But you don't preach and don't care. You just live beautifully, because you're made differently from all of us. So you do for me what no preachers could ever do. There--now you know."
He lay back, puffing violently at his cigarette.
"It is strange," Valentine said, seeing he had finished. "You know, to live as I do is no effort to me, and so it is absurd to praise me."
"I won't praise you, but it's outrageous of you to want to feel as I and other men feel."
"Is it? I don't think so. I think it is very natural. My life is a dead calm, and a dead calm is monotonous."
"It's better than an everlasting storm."
"I wonder!" Valentine said. "How curious that I should protect you. I am glad it is so. And yet, Julian, in spite of what you say, I would give a great deal to change souls with you, if only for a day or two. You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation. Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept, and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen. You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But her image haunted him, maddened him. He slunk back to the convent, and found her dying in the arms of God. And he tried to drag her away, that she might sin only once again with him, with him, her saviour. But she died, giving herself to God, and he went out cursing and blaspheming. This is only a dramatic fable to me. And yet I suppose it is a possibility."
"Of course. Val, I could imagine myself doing as that monk did, but for you. Only that I could never have been a monk at all."
"I am glad if I help you to any happiness, Julian. But--but--oh! to feel temptation!"
Valentine smoked in silence for two or three minutes. His pure, pale, beautiful face was rather wistful as he gazed at the fire.
"Why can't these affairs be managed?" he sighed out at length.
"Why can't we do just the one thing more? We can kill a man's body. We can kill a woman's purity. And here you and I sit, the closest friends, and neither of us can have the same experiences, as the other, even for a moment. Why isn't it possible?"
"Perhaps it is."
"Why? How do you mean?"
"Well, of course I'm rather a sceptic, and entirely an ignoramus. But I met a man the other day who would have laughed at us for doubting. He was an awfully strange fellow. His name is Marr. I met him at Lady Crichton's."
"Who is he?"
"Haven't an idea. I never saw or heard of him before. We talked a good deal at dessert. He came over from the other side of the table to sit by me, and somehow, in five minutes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an occultist."
"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will? Come, Julian?"
"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any two men in London, I suppose."
"Surely!"
"Then half the battle's won--according to Marr."
"You are joking."
"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could accomplish an exchange of souls."
Valentine laughed.
"Well, but how?"
Julian laughed too.
"Oh, it seems absurd--but he'd tell us to sit together."
"Well, we are sitting together now."
"No; at a table, I mean."
"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of ourselves."
"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr--and he's really a very smart, clever chap, Val--denies it. He swears it is possible for two people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your eyes, and pass in procession like living things."
"He must be mad."
"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very lucidly, very ingeniously."
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