“The Lord thy God am a jealous God.”
So he is. The Lord thy God is the invisible stranger at the gate in the night, knocking. He is the mysterious life-suggestion, tapping for admission. And the wondrous Victorian Age managed to fasten the door so tight, and light up the compound so brilliantly with electric light, that really, there was no outside, it was all in. The unknown became a joke: is still a joke.
Yet there it is, outside the gate, getting angry. “Behold I stand at the gate and knock.” “Knock away,” said complacent, benevolent humanity, which had just discovered its own monkey origin to account for its own monkey tricks. “Knock away, nobody will hinder you from knocking.”
And Holman Hunt paints a pretty picture of a man with a Stars-and-Stripes lantern and a red beard, knocking. But whoever it is that’s knocking had been knocking for three generations now, and he’s got sick of it. He’ll be kicking the door in just now.
“For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.”
It is not that He is jealous of Thor or Zeus or Bacchus or Venus. The great dark God outside the gate is all these gods. You open the gate, and sometimes in rushes Thor and gives you a bang on the head with a hammer; or Bacchus comes mysteriously through, and your mind goes dark and your knees and thighs begin to glow; or it is Venus, and you close your eyes and open your nostrils to a perfume, like a bull. All the gods. When they come through the gate they are personified. But outside the gate it is one dark God, the Unknown. And the Unknown is a terribly jealous God, and vengeful. A fearfully vengeful god: Moloch, Astarte, Ashtaroth, and Baal. That is why we dare not open now. It would be a hell-god, and we know it. We are the second generation. Our children are the third. And our children’s children are the fourth. Eheu! Eheu! Who knocks?
Jack trotted over to Coo-ee on the Sunday afternoon, when he was staying with his wife’s people. He knew Richard and Harriet would most probably be at home: they didn’t like going out on Sundays, when all the world and his wife, in their exceedingly Sunday clothes, swarmed on the face of the earth.
Yes, they were at home: sitting on the verandah, a bit of rain spitting from the grey sky, and the sea gone colourless and small. Suddenly, there stood Jack. He had come round the corner on to the grass. Somers started as if an enemy were upon him. Jack looked very tall and wiry, in an old grey suit. He hesitated before coming forward, as if measuring the pair of unsuspecting turtle doves on the loggia, and on his face was a faint grin. His eyes were dark and grinning too, as he hung back there. Somers watched him quickly. Harriet looked over her shoulder.
“Oh, Mr Callcott—why—how do you do?” And she got up, startled, and went across the loggia holding out her hand, to shake hands. So Jack had to come forward. Richard, very silent, shook hands also, and went indoors to fetch a chair and a cup and a plate, while Jack made his explanation to Harriet. He was quite friendly with her.
“Such a long time since we saw you,” she was saying. “Why didn’t Mrs Callcott come, I should have liked so much to see her?”