The war was over, though the benefits of the long anticipated peace
still kept provocatively, exasperatingly, out of reach, when, about the
middle of September, Dr. Fillery received a letter that interested him
deeply.
The shattered world was still distraught, uneasy. Nervously eager to
resume its former activities, it was yet waiting for the word that
should give it the necessary confidence to begin. Doubt, insecurity,
uncertainty everywhere dominated human minds. Those who hoped for a
renewal of the easy, careless mood of pre-war days were dismayed to
find this was impossible; others who had allowed an optimistic idealism
to prophesy a New Age, looked about them bewilderingly and in vain for
signs of its fair birth. The latter, to whom, perhaps, Dr. Fillery
belonged, were more bitterly disappointed, more cruelly shocked, than
the former. The race, it seemed to many unshirking eyes, had leaped
back centuries at a single spring; the gulf of primal savagery which
had gaped wide open for five years, proving the Stone Age close beneath
the surface of so-called civilization, had not yet fully closed. Its
jaws still dripped blood, hatred, selfishness; the Race was still
dislocated by the convincing disproof of progress, horrified at the
fierce reality which had displaced the two-pence coloured dream it had
been complacently worshipping hitherto. Men in the mass undoubtedly
were savages still.
To Dr. Fillery, an honest, though not a necessarily fundamental
pessimism, seemed justified. He believed in progress still, but as
his habit was, he faced the facts. His attitude lost something of its
original enthusiasm. Looking about him, he saw no big constructive
movement; the figure who more than any other was altering the face
of the world with his ideas as well as his armies, was avowedly
destructive only. He found himself a sobered and a saddened man.
His Private Home, having accomplished splendid work, had just
discharged its last shell-shocked patient; it was now empty again,
the staff, carefully chosen and proved by long service, dismissed
on holidays, the building itself renovated and repaired against the
arrival later of new patients that were expected.
Devonham, his assistant, away for a period of rest in Switzerland,
would be back in a week or two, and Dr. Fillery, before resuming his
normal work, found himself with little to do but watch the progress of
the cleaners, painters and carpenters at work.
Into this brief time of leisure dropped the strange, perplexing letter
with an effect distinctly stimulating. It promised an unusual case, a
patient, if patient the case referred to could properly be called, a
young man "who if you decide after careful reflection to reject, can
be looked after only by the State, which means, of course, an Asylum
for the Insane. I know you are no longer head of the Establishment in
Liverpool, but that you confine yourself to private work along similar
lines, though upon a smaller scale, and that you welcome only cases
that have been given up as hopeless. I honour your courage and your
sympathy, I know your skill. So far as a cure is conceivable, this one
is hopeless certainly, but its unusual, indeed, its unique character,
entitles it, I believe, to be placed among your chosen few. Love,
sympathy, patience, combined with the closest observation, it urgently
demands, and these qualities, associated with unrivalled skill, you
must allow me, again, to think you alone possess among healers and
helpers of strange minds.
"For over twenty years, in the solitudes of these Jura forests and
mountains, I have cared for him as best I could, and with a devotion a
child of my own might have expected. But now, my end not far away, I
cannot leave him behind me here uncared for, yet the alternative, the
impersonal and formal care of an Institute, must break my heart and
his. I turn to you.
"My advanced age and growing infirmities, in these days of unkind
travel, prohibit my bringing him over. Can your great heart suggest a
means, since I feel sure you will not refuse the care of this strange
being whose nature and peculiarities indicate your especial care, and
yours alone? Is it too much to wonder if you yourself could come and
see him--here in the remote mountain châlet where I have tended and
cared for him ever since his mother died in bearing him over twenty
years ago?
"I have taught him what seemed wise and best; I have guarded and
observed him; he knows little or nothing of an outside world of men and
women, and is ignorant of life in the ordinary meaning of the word.
What precisely he may be, to what stratum of consciousness he belongs,
what kind of being he is, I mean...." The last two lines were then
scored through, though left legible. "I feel with Arago, that he is
a rash man who pronounces the word 'impossible' anywhere outside the
sphere of pure mathematics." More sentences were here scored through.
"Dare I say--to you, as master, teacher, great open-minded soul--that
to _human_ life, as we know it, he does not, perhaps, belong?
"In writing--in this letter--I find it impossible to give you full
details. I had intended to set them down; my pen refuses; in the
plain English at my disposal--well, simply, it is not credible. But I
have kept full notes all these years, and the notes belong to you. I
enclose an imperfect painting I made of him some four years ago. I am
no artist; for background you must imagine what lay beyond my little
skill--the blazing glory of the immense wood-fires that he loves to
make upon the open mountain side, usually at dawn after a night of
prayer and singing, while waiting for the strange power he derives
(as we all do, indeed, at second or third hand), from the worship of
what is to him his mighty father, the life-giving sun. Wind, as the
'messengers' of the sun, he worships too.... Both sun and wind, that
is, produce an unusual state approaching ecstasy.
"Counting upon you, I have hypnotized him, suggesting that he forget
all the immediate past (in fact to date), and telling him he will like
you in place of me--though with him it is an uncertain method.
"I am now old in years. I have lived and loved, suffered and dreamed
like most of us; my hands have been warmed at the fires of life, of
which, let me add, I am not ignorant. You have known, I believe,
my serious, as also my lighter imaginative books; my occasional
correspondence with your colleague Paul Devonham has been of help and
guidance to me. We are not, therefore, wholly strangers.
"The twenty years spent in these solitudes among simple peasant folk,
with a single object of devotion to fill my days, have been, I would
tell you, among the best of my long existence. My renouncement of the
world was no renouncement. I am enriched with wonder and experience
that amaze me, for the world holds possibilities few have ever dreamed
of, and that I myself, filled as I am with the memory of their
contemplation, can hardly credit even now. Perhaps in an earlier stage
of evolution, as Delboeuf believes, man was fully aware of _all_ that
went on within himself--a region since closed to us, owing to attention
being increasingly directed outwards. Into some such region I have had
a glimpse, it seems. I feel sometimes there was as much fact as fancy,
perhaps, in the wise old Hebrew who stated poetically--recently, too,
compared with the stretch of time my science deals with--'The Sons of
God took to themselves daughters of the children of men...."
The letter here broke off, as though interrupted by something
unexpected and unusual; it was signed, indeed, "John Mason," but signed
in pencil and at the bottom of an unwritten blank sheet. It had not
all been written, either, at one time, or on the same day; there were
intervals, evidently, perhaps of hours, perhaps of days, between the
paragraphs. Dr. Fillery read, re-read, then read again the strange
epistle, coming each time to the same conclusion--the writer was dying
in the very act of forming the last sentences. Their incoherence, the
alteration in the style, were thus explained. He had felt the end of
life so close that he had written his signature, probably addressed the
envelope as well, knowing the page might never be filled up. It had not
been filled up.
Something behind the phrases, behind the intensity of the actual
words, beyond the queer touches that revealed a mind betrayed by
solitude, the hints possibly of a deluded intelligence--there was
something that rang true and stimulated him more than ordinarily. The
reference to Devonham, too, was definite enough. Dr. Fillery remembered
vaguely a correspondence during recent crowded years with a man named
Mason, living away in Switzerland somewhere, and that Devonham had
asked him questions from time to time about what he called, with his
rough-and-ready and half-humorous classification, "pagan obsession,"
"worshipper of fire and wind," referring it to the writer of the
letters, named John Mason. "Non-human delusion," he had also called it
sometimes. They had come to refer to it, he remembered, as "N. H." in
fact.
He now looked up those Notes, for the mention of the books caused him
an uncomfortable feeling of neglected opportunity, and John Mason was
an honoured name.
"You know, I believe ... my books," the writer said. Could this
be, he asked himself anxiously, John Mason, the eminent geologist?
Had Devonham not realized who he was? Must he blame his assistant,
whose jealous care and judgment saved him so many foolish, futile,
un-real cases, reserving what was significant and important only?
The Notes established his mistakes and his assistant's--perhaps
intentional?--ignorance. The writer of this curious letter was
unquestionably the author of those fairy books for children, old
and young, whose daring speculations had suggested that other types
and races, ages even before the Neanderthal man, had dwelt side by
side with what is known as modern man upon this time-worn planet.
Behind the literary form of legend and fairy tale, however, lay a
curious conviction. Atlantis was of yesterday compared with earlier
civilizations, now extinct by fire and flood and general upheaval,
which once may have inhabited the globe. The present evolutionary
system, buttressed by Darwin and the rest, was but a little recent
insignificant series, trivial both in time and space, when set beside
the mightier systems that had come and gone. Their evidence he
found, not in clumsy fossils and footprints on cooled rocks, but in
the _minds_ of those who had followed and eventually survived them:
memories of Titan Wars and mighty beings, and gods and goddesses of
non-human kind, to whose different existence the physical conditions of
an over-heated planet presented no impossibility. The human species,
this trumpery, limited, self-satisfied super-animal man, was not the
only type of being.
Yet John Mason, in his day, had held the chair at Edinburgh University,
his lectures embodied common-sense and knowledge, with acutest
imaginative insight. His earliest writings were the text-books of the
time. His name, when Edward Fillery was medical student there, still
hovered like well-loved incense above the old-town towers.
The Notes now intrigued him. No blame attached to Devonham for having
missed the cue, Devonham could not know everything; geology was not in
his line of work and knowledge; and Mason was a common name. Rather
he blamed himself for not having been struck by the oddness of the
case--the Mason letters, the pagan obsession, worshipper of wind and
fire, the strange "N. H."
"A competent indexer, at any rate," he said to himself with a smile, as
he turned up the details easily.
These were very scanty. Devonham evidently had deemed the case of
questionable value. The letters from Mason, with the answers to them,
he could not find.
The slight record was headed "_Mason_, John," followed by an
address "Chez Henri Petavel, peasant, Jura Mountains, Vaud, French
Switzerland," and details how to reach this apparently remote valley by
mule and carriage and foot-path. Name of Mason's protégé not given.
"_Sex, male_; age--born 1895; parentage, couple of mystical
temperament, sincere, but suffering from marked delusions, believers in
Magic (various, but chiefly concerned with Nature and natural forces,
once known, forgotten to-day, of immense potency, accessible to certain
practices of logical but undetailed kind, able apparently to intensify
human consciousness).
"_Subject_, of extremely quick intelligence, yet betrays ignorance of
human conditions; intelligence superior to human, though sometimes
inferior; long periods of quiescence, followed by immense, almost
super-human, activity and energy; worships fire and air, chiefly the
former, calling the sun his father and deity.
"Abhors confined space; this shown by intense desire for heat, which,
together with free space (air), seem conditions of well-being.
"Fears (as in claustrophobia) both water and solidity (anything
massive).
"Has great physical power, yet indifferent to its use; women
irresistibly attracted to him, but his attitude towards other sex seems
one of gentleness and pity; love means nothing. Has, on the other hand,
extraordinarily high ideal of service. Is puzzled by quarrels and
differences of personal kind. Half-memories of vast system of myriad
workers, ruled by this ideal of harmonious service. Faithful, true,
honest; falseness or lies impossible ... lovable, pathetic, helpless
type----"
The Notes broke off abruptly.
Dr. Fillery, wondering a little that his subordinate's brief but
suggestive summary had never been brought to his notice before, turned
a moment to glance at the rough water-colour drawing he held in his
hand. He looked at it for some moments with absorption. The expression
of his face was enigmatical. He was more than surprised that Devonham
had not drawn his attention to the case in detail. Placing his hand so
as to hide the lower portion of the face, he examined the eyes, then
turned the portrait upside down, gazing at the eyes afresh. He seemed
lost in thought for a considerable time. A faint flush stole into his
cheek, and a careful observer might have noticed an increase of light
about the skin. He sighed once or twice, and presently, laying the
portrait down again, he turned back to the _dossier_ upon the table in
front of him.
"Very accurate and careful," he said to himself with satisfaction as
he noticed the date Devonham had set against the entries--"June 20th,
1914."
The war, therefore, had interrupted the correspondence.
Devonham had made further notes of his own in the margin here and there:
"Does this originate primarily from Mason's mind, communicated thence
to his protégé?" He agreed with his assistant's query.
"If so, was it transferred to Mason's mind before that? By the father
or mother? The mother was, obviously, his--Mason's--great love. Yet the
father was his life friend. Mason's great passion was suppressed. He
never told it. It found no outlet."
"Admirable," was the comment spoken below his breath.
"Boy born as result of some 'magical' experiment intensely believed
(not stated in detail), during course of which father died suddenly.
"Mason tended mother, then lived alone in remote place where all had
occurred.
"Did Mason inherit entire content of parents' beliefs, dramatizing this
by force of unexpressed but passionate love?
"Did not Mason's mind, thus charged, communicate whole business to the
young mind he has since formed, a plastic mind uninfluenced by normal
human surroundings and conditions of ordinary life?
"Transfer of a sex-inspired mania?"
Then followed another note, summarizing evidently Devonham's judgment:
"Not worth F.'s investigation until examined further. N.B.--Look up
Mason first opportunity and judge at first hand."
Dr. Fillery, glancing from the papers to the portrait, smiled a little
again as he signified approval.
But the last entry interested him still more. It was dated July 13,
1914.
"Mason reports boy's prophecy of great upheaval coming. Entire
race slips back into chaos of primitive life again. Entire Western
Civilization crumbles. Modern inventions and knowledge vanish. Nature
spirits reappear.... Desires return of all previous letters. These sent
by registered post."
A few scattered notes on separate sheets of paper lay at the end of
the carefully typed _dossier_, but these were very incomplete, and
Devonham's handwriting, especially when in pencil, was not of the
clearest.
"Non-human claim, though absurd, not traceable to any antecedent
causes given by letters. What is Mason's past mental and temperamental
history? Is he not, through the parents, the cause? Mania seems
harmless, both to subject and others. No suffering or unhappiness.
Therefore not a case for F., until further examined by self. Better see
Mason and his subject first. Wrote July 24th proposing visit."
Dr. Fillery's eyes twinkled. His forehead relaxed. He looked back. He
remembered details. Devonham's holiday that year, he recalled, was
due on August 1st; he had intended going out mountain climbing in
Switzerland.
The final note of all, also in half-legible writing, seemed to refer
to the treatment Mason had asked advice about, and the line Devonham
had suggested:
"Natural life close to Nature cannot hurt him. But I advise watch him
with fire and with heights--heat, air! That is, he may decide his
physical body is irksome and seek to escape it. Teach him natural
history--botany, geology, insects, animals, even astronomy, but always
giving him reasons and explanations. _Above all_--let him meet girls of
his own age and fall in love. Fullest natural expression, but guarded
without his knowing it...."
For a long time Dr. Fillery sat with the notes and papers before him,
thinking over what he had read. Devonham's advice was clever enough,
but without insight, sound and astute, yet lacking divination.
The twinkle in his eyes, caused by the final entry, died away. His
face was grave, his manner preoccupied, intense. He gazed long at the
portrait in his hand.... It was dusk when he finally rose, replaced
the _dossier_, locked the cabinet, and went out into another room, and
thence into the hall. Taking his hat and stick, he left the house,
already composing in his mind the telegram instructing Devonham, while
apologizing for the interrupted holiday, to bring the subject of the
Notes to England with him. A telegraph girl met him on the very steps
of the house. He took the envelope from her, and opened it. He read the
message. It was dated Bâle, the day before:
"Arriving end week with interesting patient. Details index
under Mason. Prepare private suite.
"DEVONHAM."