The body I'm in and using is 22, as they call it, and from a man named
Mason, a geologist, I receive sums of money, regularly paid, with which
I live. They call it "live." A roof and walls protect me, who do not
need protection; my body, which it irks, is covered with wool and cloth
and stuff, fitting me as bark fits a tree and yet not part of me; my
feet, which love the touch of earth and yearn for it, are cased in dead
dried skin called leather; even my head and hair, which crave the sun
and wind, are covered with another piece of dead dried skin, shaped
like a shell, but an ugly shell, in which, were it shaped otherwise,
the wind and rustling leaves might sing with flowers.
Before 22 I remember nothing--nothing definite, that is. I opened my
eyes in a soft, but not refreshing case standing on four iron legs,
and well off the ground, and covered with coarse white coverings piled
thickly on my body. It was a bed. Slabs of transparent stuff kept out
the living sunshine for which I hungered; thick solid walls shut off
the wind; no stars or moon showed overhead, because an enormous lid hid
every bit of sky. No dew, therefore, lay upon the sheets. I smelt no
earth, no leaves, no flowers. No single natural sound entered except
the chattering of dirty sparrows which had lost its freshness. I was in
a hospital.
One comely figure alone gave me a little joy. It was soft and slim
and graceful, with a smell of fern and morning in its hair, though
that hair was lustreless and balled up in ugly lumps, with strips of
thin metal in it. They called it nurse and sister. It was the first
moving thing I saw when my eyes opened on my limited and enclosed
surroundings. My heart beat quicker, a flash of thin joy came up
in me. I had seen something similar before somewhere; it reminded
me, I mean, of something I had known elsewhere; though but a shabby,
lifeless, clumsy copy of this other glorious thing. Though not real, it
stirred this faint memory of reality, so that I caught at the skirts
of moonlight, stars and flowers reflected in a forest pool where my
companion played for long periods of happiness between our work. The
perfume and the eyes did that. I watched it for a bit, as it moved
away, came close and looked at me. When the eyes met mine, a wave of
life, but of little life, surged faintly through me.
They were dim and pitiful, these eyes; mournful, unlit, unseeing. The
stars had set in them; dull shadows crowded. They were so small. They
were hungry too. They were unsatisfied. For some minutes it puzzled
me, then I understood. That was the word--unsatisfied. Ah, but I could
alter that! I could comfort, help, at any rate. My strength, though
horribly clipped and blocked, could manage a little thing like that! My
smaller rhythms I could put into it.
The eyes, the smile, the whole soft comely bundle, so pitifully hungry
and unsatisfied, I rose and seized, pressing it close inside my own
great arms, and burying it all against my breast. I crushed it, but
very gently, as I might crush a sapling. My lips were amid the ferny
hair. I breathed upon it willingly, glad to help.
It was a poor unfinished thing, I felt at once, soft and yielding where
it should have been resilient and elastic as fresh turf; the perfume
had no body, it faded instantly; there was so little life in it.
But, as I held it in my big embrace, smothering its hunger as best I
could within my wave of being, this bundle, this poor pitiful bundle,
screamed and struggled to get free. It bit and scratched and uttered
sounds like those squeaks the less swift creatures make when the
swifter overtake them.
I was too surprised to keep it to me; I relaxed my hold. The instant I
did so the figure, thus released, stood upright like a young birch the
wind sets free. The figure looked alive. The hair fell loose, untidily,
the puny face wore colour, the eyes had fire in them. I saw that fire.
It was a message. Memory stirred faintly in me.
"Ah!" I cried. "I've helped you anyhow a little!"
The scene that followed filled me with such trouble and bewilderment
that I cannot recall exactly what occurred. The figure seemed to
spit at me, yet not with grace and invitation. There was no sign of
gratitude. I was entirely misunderstood, it seemed. Bells rang, as the
figure rushed to the door and flung it open. It called aloud; similar,
though quite lifeless figures came in answer and filled the room. A
doctor--Devonham, they called him--followed them. I was most carefully
examined in a dozen curious ways that tickled my skin a little so
that I smiled. But I lay quite still and silent, watching the whole
performance with a confusion in my being that baffled my comprehending
what was going on. Most of the figures were frightened.
Then the doctor gave place to Fillery, whose name has rhythm.
To him I spoke at once:
"I wished to comfort and revive her," I told him. "She is so starved. I
was most gentle. She brings a message only."
He made no reply, but gazed at me with the corners of his mouth both
twitching, and in his eyes--ah, his eyes had more of the sun in them--a
flash of something that had known fire, at least, if it had not kept it.
"My God! I worship thee," I murmured at the glimpse of the Power I must
own as Master and creator of my being. "Even when thou art playful, I
adore thee and obey."
Then four other figures, shaped like the doctor but wholly mechanical,
a mere blind weight operating through them, held my arms and legs. Not
the least desire to move was in me luckily. I say "luckily," because,
had I wished it, I could have flung them through the roof, blown down
the little walls, caught up a dozen figures in my arms, and rushed
forth with them towards the Powers of Fire and Wind to which I belonged.
Could I? I felt that I could. The sight of the true fire, small though
it was, in the comely figure's and the doctor's eyes, had set me in
touch again with my home and origin. This touch I had somehow lost;
I had been "ill," with what they called nervous disorder and injured
reason. The lost touch was now restored. But, luckily, as I said, there
was no desire in me to set free these other figures, to help them in
any way, after the reception my first kindly effort had experienced. I
lay quite still, held by these four grotesque and puny mechanisms. The
comely one, with the others similar to her, had withdrawn. I felt very
kindly towards them all, but especially towards the doctor, Fillery,
who had shown that he knew my deity and origin. None of them were worth
much trouble, anyhow. I felt that too. A mild, sweet-toned contempt was
in me.
"Dangerous," was a word I caught them whispering as they went. I
laughed a little. The four faces over me made odd grimaces, tightening
their lips, and gripping my legs and arms with greater effort. The
doctor--Fillery--noticed it.
"Easy, remember," he addressed the four. "There's really no need to
hold. It won't recur." I nodded. We understood one another. And, with a
smile at me, he left the room, saying he would come back after a short
interval. A link with my source, a brother as it were, went with him. I
was lonely....
I began to hum songs to myself, little fragments of a great natural
music I had once known but lost, and I noticed that the four figures,
as I sang, relaxed their grip of my limbs considerably. To tell the
truth, I forgot that they were holding me; their grip, anyhow, was
but a thread I could snap without the smallest effort. The songs
were happiness in me. Upon free leaping rhythms I careered with an
exhilarating rush of liberty; all about space I soared and sank; I
was picked up, flung far, riding the crest of immense waves of orderly
vibration that delighted me. I let myself go a bit, let my voice out,
I mean. No effort accompanied my singing. It was automatic, like
breathing almost. It was natural to me. These rhythmical sounds and the
patterns that they wove in space were the outlines of forms it was my
work to build. This expressed my nature. Only my power was blocked and
stifled in this confining body. The fire and air which were my tools I
could not control. I have forgotten--forgotten----!
"Got a voice, ain't he?" observed one of the figures admiringly.
"Lunies can do 'most anything they have a mind to."
"Grand Opera isn't it."
"Yes," mentioned the fourth, "but he'll lift the roof off presently.
We'd better stop him before there's any trouble."
I stopped of myself, however: their remarks interested me. Also while I
had been singing, although I called it humming only, they had gradually
let go of me, and were now sitting down on my bed and staring with
quite pleasant faces. All their dim eight eyes were fixed on me. Their
forms were not built well.
"Where did you get that from, Guv'nor?" asked the one who had spoken
first. "Can you give me the name of it?"
The sound of his own voice was like the scratching of a pin after the
enormous rhythm that now ceased.
"Ain't printed, is it?" he went on, as I stared, not understanding what
he meant. "I've got a sister at the Halls," he explained. "She'd make a
hit with that kind of thing. Gave me quite a twist inside to hear it,"
he added, turning to the others.
The others agreed solemnly with dull stupid faces. I lay and listened
to their talk. I longed to help them. I had forgotten how.
"A bit churchy, I thought it," said one. "But, I confess, it stirred me
up."
"Churchy or not, it's the stuff," insisted the first.
"Oh, it's the stuff to give 'em, right enough." And they looked at me
admiringly again. "Where did you get it, if I may ask?" replied Number
One in a more respectful tone. His face looked quite polite. The lips
stretched, showing yellow teeth. It was his smile. But his eyes were
a little more real. Oh, where was my fire? I could have built the
outline better so that he was real and might express far more. I have
forgotten----!
"I hear it," I told him, "because I'm in it. It's all about me. It
never stops. It's what we build with----"
Number One seemed greatly interested.
"Hear it, do you? Why, that's odd now. You see"--he looked at his
companions apologetically, as though he knew they would not believe
him--"my father was like that. He heard his music, he always used to
say, but we laughed at him. He was a composer by trade. Oh, his stuff
was printed too. Of course," he added, "there's musical talent in the
family," as though that explained everything. He turned to me again.
"Give us a little more, Mister--if you don't object, that is," he
added. And his face was soft as he said it. "Only gentle like--if you
don't mind."
"Yes, keep it down a bit," another put in, looking anxiously in the
direction of the closed door. He patted the air with his open palm,
slowly, carefully, as though he patted an animal that might rise and
fly at him.
I hummed again for them, but this time with my lips closed. The waves
of rhythm caught me up and away. I soared and flew and dropped and rose
again upon their huge coloured crests. Curtains and sheets of quiet
flame in palest gold flared shimmering through the sound, while winds
that were full of hurricanes and cyclones swept down to lift the fire
and dance with it in spirals. The perfume of great flowers rose. There
were flowers everywhere, and stars shone through it all like showers of
gold. Ah! I began to remember something. It was flowers and stars as
well as human forms we worked to build....
But I kept the fire from leaping into actual flame; the mighty winds
I held back. Even thus pent and checked, their powerful volume made
the atmosphere shake and pulse about us. Only I could not control them
now.... With an effort I came back, came down, as it were, and saw
the funny little faces staring at me with opened eyes and mouths, and
yellow teeth, pale gums, their skins gone whitish, their figures rigid
with their tense emotion. They were so poorly made, the patterns so
imperfect. The new respect in their manner was marked plainly. Suddenly
all four turned together towards the door. I stopped. The doctor had
returned. But it was Fillery again. I liked the feel of him.
"He wanted to sing, sir, so we let him. It seemed to relieve him a
bit," they explained quickly and with an air of helpless apology.
"Good, good," said the doctor. "Quite good. Any normal expression that
brings relief is good." He dismissed them. They went out, casting back
at me expressions of puzzled thanks and interest. The door closed
behind them. The doctor seated himself beside me and took my hand. I
liked his touch. His hand was alive, at any rate, although within my
own it felt rather like a dying branch or bunch of leaves I grasped.
The life, if thin, was real.
"Where's the rest of it?" I asked him, meaning the music. "I used to
have it all. It's left me, gone away. What's cut it off?"
"You're not cut off really," he said gently. "You can always get
into it again when you really need it." He gazed at me steadily for
a minute, then said in his quiet voice--a full, nice tone with wind
through a forest running in it: "Mason.... Dr. Mason...."
He said no more, but watched me. The name stirred something in me I
could not get at quite. I could not reach down to it. I was troubled by
a memory I could not seize.
"Mason," I repeated, returning his strong gaze. "What--who--was Mason?
And where?" I connected the name with a sense of liberty, also with
great winds and pools of fire, with great figures of golden skin and
radiant faces, with music, too, the music that had left me.
"You've forgotten for the moment," came the deep running voice I liked.
"He looked after you for twenty years. He gave his life for you. He
loved you. He loved your mother. Your father was his friend."
"Has he gone--gone back?"
"He's dead."
"I can get after him though," I said, for the name touched me with a
sense of lost companionship I wanted, though the reference to my father
and mother left me cold. "I can easily catch him up. When I move with
my wind and fire, the fastest things stand still." My own speed, once
I was free again, I knew outpaced easily the swiftest bird, outpaced
light itself.
"Yes," agreed the doctor; "only he doesn't want that now. You can
always catch him up when the time comes. Besides, he's waiting for you
anyhow."
I knew that was true. I sank back comforted upon the stuffy pillows and
lay silent. This tinkling chatter wearied me. It was like trickling
wind. I wanted the flood of hurricanes, the pulse of storms. My
building, shaping powers, my great companions--oh! where were they?
"He taught you himself, taught you all you know," I heard the tinkling
go on again, "but he kept you away from life, thinking it was best. He
was afraid for you, afraid for others too. He kept you in the woods
and mountains where, as he believed, you could alone express yourself
and so be happy. A hundred times, in babyhood and early childhood, you
nearly died. He nursed you back to life. His own life he renounced. Now
he is dead. He has left you all his money."
He paused. I said no word. Faint memories passed through my mind, but
nothing I could hold and seize. The money I did not understand at all,
except that it was necessary.
"He thought at first that you could not possibly live to manhood. To
his surprise you survived everything--illness, accident, disaster of
every sort and kind. Then, as you grew up, he realized his mistake.
Instead of keeping you away from life, he ought to have introduced you
to it and explained it--as I and Devonham are now trying to do. You
could not live for ever alone in woods and mountains; when he was gone
there would be no one to look after you and guide you."
The trickling of wind went on and on. I hardly listened to it. He
did it for his own pleasure, I suppose. It pleased and soothed him
possibly. Yet I remembered every syllable. It was a small detail to
keep fresh when my real memory covered the whole planet.
"Before he died, he recognized his mistake and faced the position
boldly. It was some years before the end; he was hale and hearty
still, yet the end, he knew, was in sight. While the power was still
strong in him, therefore, he did the only thing left to him to do. He
used his great powers. He used suggestion. He hypnotized you, telling
you to forget--from the moment of his death, but not before--forget
everything---- It was only partially successful."
The door opened, the comely figure glanced in, then vanished.
"She wants more help from me," I interrupted the monotonous tinkling
instantly, for pity stirred in me again as I saw her eager, hungry and
unsatisfied little eyes. "Call her back. I feel quite willing. It is
one of the lower forms we made. I can improve it."
Dr. Fillery, as he was called, looked at me steadily, his mouth
twitching at the corners as before, a flash of fire flitting through
his eyes. The fire made me like and trust him; the twitching, too, I
liked, for it meant he knew how absurd he was. Yet he was bigger than
the other figures.
"You can't do that," he said, "you mustn't," and then laughed outright.
"It isn't done, you know--here."
"Why not, sir?" I asked, using the terms the figures used. "I feel like
that."
"Of course, you do. But all you feel can't be expressed except
at the proper times and places. The consent of the other party
always is involved," he went on slowly, "when it's a question of
expressing--anything you feel."
This puzzled me, because in this particular instance the other party
had asked me with her eyes to comfort her. I told him this. He laughed
still more. Caught by the sound--it was just like wind passing among
tall grasses on a mountain ridge--I forgot what he was talking about
for the moment. The sound carried me away towards my own rhythms.
"You've got such amazing insight," he went on tinkling to himself, for
I heard, although I did not listen. "You read the heart too easily, too
quickly. You must learn to hide your knowledge." The laughter which
ran with the words then ended, and I came back to the last thing I had
definitely listened to--"express, expressing," was the phrase he used.
"You told me that self-expression is the purpose for which I'm
here----?"
"I believe it is," he agreed, more solemnly.
"Only sometimes, then?"
"Exactly. If that expression involves another in pain or trouble or
discomfort----"
"Ah! I have to choose, you mean. I have to know first what the other
feels about it."
I began to understand better. It was a game. And all games delighted me.
"You may put it roughly so, yes," he explained, "you're very quick.
I'll give you a rule to guide you," he went on. I listened with an
effort; this tinkling soon wearied me; I could not think long or much;
my way, it seemed, was feeling. "Ask yourself always how what you do
will affect another," Dr. Fillery concluded. "That's a safe rule for
you."
"That is of children," I observed. We stared at each other a moment.
"Both sides keep it?" I asked.
"Childish," he agreed, "it certainly is. Both sides, yes, keep it."
I sighed, and the sigh seemed to rise from my very feet, passing
through my whole being. He looked at me most kindly then, asking why I
sighed.
"I used to be free," I told him. "This is not liberty. And why are we
not all free together?"
"It is liberty for two instead of only for one," he said, "and so, in
the long run, liberty for all."
"So that's where they are," I remarked, but to myself and not to him.
"Not further than that." For what I had once known, but now, it seemed,
forgotten, was far beyond such a foolish little game. We had lived
without such tiny tricks. We lived openly and unafraid. We worked in
harmony. We lived. Yes--but who was "we"? That was the part I had
forgotten.
"It's the growth and development of civilization," I heard the little
drift of wind go whistling thinly, "and it won't take you long to
become quite civilized at this rate, more civilized, indeed, than
most--with your swift intelligence and lightning insight."
"Civilization," I repeated to myself. Then I looked at his eyes which
hid carefully in their depths somewhere that tiny cherished flame I
loved. "Your ways are really very simple," I said. "It's all easy
enough to learn. It is so small."
"A man studying ants," he tinkled, "finds them small, but far from
simple. You may find complications later. If so, come to me."
I promised him, and the fire gleamed faintly in his eyes a moment. "He
entrusted you to me. Your mother," he added softly, "was the woman he
loved."
"Civilization," I repeated, for the word set going an odd new rhythm in
me that I rather liked, and that tired me less than the other things he
said. "What is it then? You are a Race, you told me."
"A Race of human beings, of men and women developing----"
"The comely ones?"
"Are the women. Together we make up the Race."
"And civilization?"
"Is realizing that we are a community, learning, growing, all its
members living for the others as well as for themselves."
Dr. Fillery told me then about men and women and sex, how children are
made, and what enormous and endless work was necessary merely to keep
them all alive and clothed and sheltered before they could accomplish
anything else of any sort at all. Half the labour of the majority was
simply to keep alive at all. It was an ugly little system he described.
Much I did not hear, because my thinking powers gave out. Some of it
gave me an awful feeling he called pain. The confusion and imperfection
seemed beyond repair, even beyond the worth of being part of it, of
belonging to it at all. Moreover, the making of children, without
which the whole thing must end, gave me spasms of irritation he called
laughter. Only the Comely Ones, and what he told me of them, made me
want to sing.
"The men," I said, "but do they see that it is ugly and ludicrous
and----"
"Comic," he helped me.
"Do they know," I asked, taking his unknown words, "that it's comic?"
"The glamour," he said, "conceals it from them. To the best among them
it is sacred even."
"And the Comely Ones?"
"It is their chief mission," he replied. "Always remember that. It's
sacred." He fixed his kind eyes gravely on my face.
"Ah, worship, you mean," I said. "I understand." Again we stared for
some minutes. "Yet all are not comely, are they?" I asked presently.
The fire again shone faintly in his eyes as he watched me a moment
without answering. It caught me away. I am not sure I heard his words,
but I think they ran like this:
"That's just the point where civilization--so far--has always stopped."
I remember he ceased tinkling then; our talk ceased too. I was
exhausted. He told me to remember what he had said, and to lie down and
rest. He rang the bell, and a man, one of the four who had held me,
came in.
"Ask Nurse Robbins to come here a moment, please," he said. And a
moment later the Comely One entered softly and stood beside my bed. She
did not look at me. Dr. Fillery began again his little tinkling. "...
wishes to apologize to you most sincerely, nurse, for his mistake. He
meant no harm, believe me. There is no danger in him, nor will he ever
repeat it. His ignorance of our ways, I must ask you to believe----"
"Oh, it's nothing, sir," she interrupted. "I've quite forgotten it
already. And usually he's as good as gold and perfectly quiet." She
blushed, glancing shyly at me with clear invitation.
"It will not recur," repeated the Doctor positively. "He has promised
me. He is very, very sorry and ashamed."
The nurse looked more boldly a moment. I saw her silver teeth. I saw
the hint of soft fire in her poor pitiful eyes, but far, far away and,
as she thought, safely hidden.
"Pitiful one, I will not touch you," I said instantly. "I know that you
are sacred."
I noticed at once that her sweet natural perfume increased about her
as I said the words, but her eyes were lowered, though she smiled a
little, and her little cheeks grew coloured. I saw her small teeth of
silvery marble again. Our work was visible. I liked it.
"You have promised me," said Dr. Fillery, rising to go out.
"I promise," I said, while the Comely One was arranging my pillows and
sheets with quick, clever hands, sometimes touching my cheek on purpose
as she did so. "I will not worship, unless it is commanded of me first.
The increased sweetness of her smell will tell me."
But indeed already I had forgotten her, and I no longer realized who
it was that tripped about my bed, doing numerous little things to make
me comfortable. My friend, the understanding one, companion of my big
friend, Mason, who was dead, also had left the room. His twitching
mouth, his laughter, and his shining eyes were gone. I was aware that
the Comely One remained, doing all manner of little things about me and
my bed, unnecessary things, but my pity and my worship were not asked,
so I forgot her. My thinking had wearied me, and my feeling was not
touched. I began to hum softly to myself; my giant rhythms rose; I went
forth towards my Powers of Wind and Fire, full of my own natural joy. I
forgot the Race with its men, its women, its rules and games, its tiny
tricks, its civilization. I was free for a little with my own.
One detail interfered a little with the rhythms, but only for a second
and very faintly even then. The Comely One's face grew dark.
"He's gone off asleep--actually," I heard her mutter, as she left the
room with a fling of her little skirts, shutting the door behind her
with a bang.
That bang was far away. I was already rising and falling in that
natural happy state which to me meant freedom. It is hard to tell
about, but that dear Fillery knows, I am sure, exactly what I know,
though he has forgotten it. He has known us somewhere, I feel. He
understands our service. But, like me, he has forgotten too.
What really happened to me? Where did I go, what did I see and feel
when my rhythms took me off?
Thinking is nowhere in it--I can tell him that. I am conscious of the
Sun.
One difficulty is that my being here confuses me. Here I am already
caught, confined and straitened. I am within certain limits. I can only
move in three ways, three measurements, three dimensions. The space I
am in here allows only little rhythms; they are coarse and slow and
heavy, and beat against confining walls as it were, are thrown back,
cross and recross each other, so that while they themselves grow less,
their confusion grows greater. The forms and outlines I can build with
them are poor and clumsy and insignificant. Spirals I cannot make. Then
I forget.
Into these small rhythms I cannot compress myself; the squeezing hurts.
Yet neither can I make them bigger to suit myself. I would break forth
towards the Sun.
Thus I feel cramped, confused and crippled. It is almost impossible
to tell of my big rhythms, for it is an attempt to tell of one thing
in terms of another. How can I fix fire and wind upon the point of a
pin, for instance, and examine them through a magnifying-glass? The Sun
remains. What I experience, really, when I go off into my own freedom
is release. My rhythms are of the Sun. They are his messengers, they
are my law, they are my life and happiness. By means of them I fulfill
the purpose of my being. I work, so Fillery calls it. I build.
That, at any rate, is literally true. My thinking stops at that
point, perhaps; but "I think" I mean by "release"--that I escape back
from being trapped by all these separate little individualities,
human beings each working on his own, for his own, and against all
the others--escape from this stifling tangle into the sweep of my
big rhythms which work together and in unison. I search for lost
companions, but do not find them--the golden skins and radiant faces,
the mighty figures and the splendid shapes.
_They_ work without effort, however. That is another difference.
I, too, work, only I work with them, and never against them. I can
draw upon them as they can draw upon me. We do draw on one another. We
know harmony. Service is our method and system.
My dear Fillery also wants to know who "we" are. How can I tell him?
The moment I try to "think," I seem to forget. This forgetting,
indeed, is one of the limits against which I bang myself, so that I am
flung back upon the tangle of criss-cross, tiny rhythms which confuse
and obliterate the very thing he wants to know. Yet the Sun I never
forget--father of fire and wind. My companions are lost temporarily.
I am shut off from them. It seems I cannot have them and the Race at
the same time. I yearn and suffer to rejoin them. The service we all
know together is great joy. Of love, this love between two isolated
individuals the Race counts the best thing they have--we know nothing.
Now, here is one thing I can understand quite clearly:
I have watched and helped the Race, as he calls it, for countless ages.
Yet from outside it. Never till now have I been inside its limits with
it. And a dim sense of having watched it through a veil or curtain
comes to me. I can faintly recall that I tried to urge my big rhythms
in among its members, as great waves of heat or sound might be launched
upon an ant-heap. I used to try to force and project my vast rhythms
into their tiny ones, hoping to make these latter swell and rise and
grow--but never with success. Though a few members, here and there,
felt them and struggled to obey and use their splendid swing, the rest
did not seem to notice them at all.... Indeed, they objected to the
struggling efforts of the few who did feel them, for their own small
accustomed rhythms were interfered with. The few were generally broken
into little pieces and pushed violently out of the way.
And this made me feel pitiful, I remember dimly; because these
smaller rhythms, though insignificant, were exquisite. They were of
extraordinary beauty. Could they only have been increased, the Race
that knew and used them must have changed my own which, though huge
and splendid of their kind, lacked the intense, perfect loveliness of
the smaller kind.
The Race, had it accepted mine and mastered them, must have carried
themselves and me towards still mightier rhythms which I alone could
never reach.
This, then, is clear to me, though very faint now. Fillery, who can
think for a long time, instead of like me for seconds only, will
understand what I mean. For if I tell him what "we" did, he may be able
to think out what "we" were.
"Your work?" he asked me too.
I'm not sure I know what he means by "work." We were incessantly
active, but not for ourselves. There was no effort. There was easy and
sure accomplishment--in the sense that nothing could stop or hinder
our fulfilling our own natures. Obstacles, indeed, helped our power
and made it greater, for everything feeds fire and opposition adds to
the pressure of wind. Our main activity was to make perfect forms. We
were form-builders. Apart from this, our "work" was to maintain and
keep active all rhythms less than our own, yet of our kind. I speak of
my own kind alone. We had no desire to be known outside our kind. We
worked and moved and built up swiftly, but out of sight--an endless
service.
"You are the Powers behind what we call Nature, then?" the dear Fillery
asked me. "You operate behind growing things, even behind inanimate
things like trees and stones and flowers. Your big rhythms, as you call
them, are our Laws of Nature. Your own particular department, your own
elements evidently, were heat and air."
I could not answer that. But, as he said it, I saw in his grey eyes the
flash of fire which so few of his Race possessed; and I felt vaguely
that he was one of the struggling members who was aware of the big
rhythms and who would be put away in little pieces later by the rest.
It made me pitiful. "Forget your own tiny rhythms," I said, "and come
over to us. But bring your tiny rhythms with you because they are so
exquisitely lovely. We shall increase them."
He did not answer me. His mouth twitched at the corners, and he had an
attack of that irritation which, he says, is relieved and expressed by
laughter. Yet the face shone.
The laughter, however, was a very quick, full, natural answer, all
the same. It was happy and enthusiastic. I saw that laughter made his
rhythms bigger at once. Then laughter was probably the means to use. It
was a sort of bridge.
"Your instantaneous comprehension of our things puzzles me," he said.
"You grasp our affairs in all their relations so swiftly. Yet it is all
new to you." His voice and face made me wish to stroke and help him, he
was so dear and eager. "How do you manage it?" he asked point blank.
"Our things are surely foreign to your nature."
"But they are of children," I told him. "They are small and so very
simple. There are no difficulties. Your language is block letters
because your self-expression, as you call it, is so limited. It all
comes to me at a glance. I and my kind can remember a million tiniest
details without effort."
He did not laugh, but his face looked full of questions. I could not
help him further. "A scrap, probably, of what you've taught us," I
heard him mumble, though no further questions came. "Well," he went on
presently, while I lay and watched the pale fire slip in tiny waves
about his eyes, "remember this: since our alphabet is so easy to you,
follow it, stick to it, do not go outside it. There's a good rule that
will save trouble for others as well as for yourself."
"I remember and I try. But it is not always easy. I get so cramped and
stiff and lifeless with it."
"This sunless, chilly England, of course, cannot feed you," he said.
"The sense of beauty in our Race, too, is very poor."
Once he suddenly looked up and fixed his eyes on my face. His manner
became very earnest.
"Now, listen to me," he said. "I'm going to read you something; I want
you to tell me what you make of it. It's private; that is, I have no
right to show it to others, but as no one would understand it--with the
exception possibly of yourself--secrecy is not of importance." And his
mouth twitched a little.
He drew a sheaf of papers from an inner pocket, and I saw they were
covered with fine writing. I laughed; this writing always made me
laugh--it was so laborious and slow. The writing I knew best, of
course, lay all over and inside the earth and skies. The privacy
also made me laugh, so strange seemed the idea to me, and so
impossible--this idea of secrecy. It was such an admission of ignorance.
"I will understand it quickest by reading it," I said. "I take in a
page at once--in your block letters."
But he preferred to read it out himself, so that he could note the
effect upon me, he explained, of definite passages. He saw that I
guessed his purpose, and we laughed together a moment. "When you tire
of listening," he said, "just tell me and I'll pause." I gave him my
hand to hold. "It helps me to stay here," I explained, and he nodded as
he grasped me in his warm firm clasp.
"It's written by one who _may_ have known you and your big rhythms,
though I can't be sure," he added. "One of--er--my patients wrote it,
someone who believed she was in communication with a kind of immense
Nature-spirit."
Then he began to read in his clear, windy voice:
"'I sit and weave. I feel strange; as if I had so much consciousness
that words cannot explain it. The failure of others makes my work more
hard, but my own purposes never fail, I am associated with those who
need me. The universal doors are open to me. I compass Creation.'"
But already I began to hum my songs, though to please him I kept
the music low, and he, dear Fillery, did not bid me stop, but only
tightened his grasp upon my hand. I listened with pleasure and
satisfaction. Therefore I hummed.
"'I am silent, seeking no expression, needing no communication,
satisfied with the life that is in me. I do not even wish to be known
about----'"
"That's where your Race," I put in, "is to me as children. All they do
must be shouted about so loud or they think it has not happened."
"'I do not wish to be forced to obtrude myself,'" he went on. "'There
are hosts like me. We do not want that which does not belong to us. We
do not want that hindrance, that opposition which rouses an undesirable
consciousness; for without that opposition we could never have known of
disobedience. We are formless. The formless is the real. That cannot
die. It is eternal.'"
Again he tightened his grasp, and this time also laid his eyes a moment
on my own, over the top of his paper, so that I kept my music back with
a great effort. For it was hard not to express myself when my own came
calling in this fashion.
He continued reading aloud. He selected passages now, instead of going
straight through the pages. The words helped memory in me; flashes of
what I had forgotten came back in sheets of colour and waves of music;
the phrases built little spirals, as it were, between two states. Of
these two states, I now divined, he understood one perfectly--his own,
and the other--mine--partially. Yet he had a little of both, I knew,
in himself. With me it was similar, only the understood state was not
the same with us. To the Race, of course, what he read would have no
meaning.
"The Comely One and the four figures," I said, "how they would turn
white and run if they could hear you, showing their yellow teeth and
dim eyes!"
His face remained grave and eager, though I could see the laughter
running about beneath the tight brown skin as he went on reading his
little bits.
"'We heard nothing of man, and were rarely even conscious of him,
although he benefited by our work in all that sustained and conditioned
him. The wise are silent, the foolish speak, and the children are thus
led astray, for wisdom is not knowledge, it is a realization of the
scheme and of one's own part in it.'"
He took a firmer, broader grip of my hand as he read the next bit. I
felt the tremble of his excitement run into my wrist and arm. His voice
deepened and shook. It was like a little storm:
"'Then, suddenly, we heard man's triumphant voice. We became conscious
of him as an evolving entity. Our Work had told. We had built his form
and processes so faithfully. We knew that when he reached his height we
must be submissive to his will.'"
A gust of memory flashed by me as I heard. Those small but perfect,
exquisite, lovely rhythms!
"Who called me here? Whose voice reached after me, bringing me into
this undesirable consciousness?" I cried aloud, as the memory went
tearing by, then vanished before I could recover it. At the same time
Fillery let go my hand, and the little bridge was snapped. I felt what
he called pain. It passed at once. I found his hand again, but the
bridge was not rebuilt. How white his skin had grown, I noticed, as I
looked up at his face. But the eyes shone grandly. "I shall find the
way," I said. "We shall go back together to our eternal home."
He went on reading as though I had not interrupted, but I found it less
easy to listen now.
I realized then that he was gone. He had left the room, though I had
not seen him go. I had been away.
It was some days ago that this occurred. It was to-day, a few hours
ago, that I seized the Comely One and tried to comfort her, poor hungry
member of this little Race.
But both occurrences help us--help dear Fillery and myself--to
understand how difficult it is to answer his questions and tell him
exactly what he wants to know.
"How long, O Lord, how long!" I hear his yearning cry. "Yet other
beings cannot help us; they can only tell us what their own part is."
After the door had clicked I knew release for a bit--release from a
state I partially understood and so found irksome, into another where
I felt at home and so found pleasurable. In the big rhythms my nature
expressed itself apparently. I rose, seeking my lost companions.
They--the Devonham and his busy little figures--called it sleep. It
may be "sleep." But I find there what I seek yet have forgotten, and
that with me were dear Fillery and another--a Comely One whom _he_
brings--as though we belong together and have a common origin. But this
other Comely One--who is it?