Khilkoff, Edward Fillery and Paul Devonham, between them, it seems,
were wise in their generation. The story spread that the scene in
the Studio had been nothing but a bit of inspired impromptu acting,
to which the coincidence of the storm had lent a touch of unexpected
conviction where, otherwise, all would have ended in a laugh and a
round or two of amused applause.
The spreading of an undesirable story, thus, was to a great extent
prevented, its discussion remaining confined, chiefly, among the few
startled witnesses. Yet the Prometheans, of course, knew a supernatural
occurrence when they saw one. They were not to be so easily deprived
of their treasured privilege. Thrilled to their marrows, individually
and collectively, they committed their versions to writing, drew up
reports, compared notes and, generally, made the feast last as long as
possible. It was, moreover, a semi-sacred feast for them. Its value
increased portentously. It bound the Society together with fresh life.
It attracted many new members. Povey and his committee increased the
subscription and announced an entrance fee in addition.
The various accounts offered by the Members, curious as these were, may
be left aside for the moment, since the version of the occurrence as
given by Edward Fillery comes first in interest. His report, however,
was made only to himself; he mentioned it in full to no one, not even
to Paul Devonham. He felt unable to share it with any living being.
Only one result of his conclusions he shared openly enough with his
assistant: he withdrew his promise.
Upon certain details, the two men agreed with interest--that everybody
in the room, men and women, were on the _qui vive_ the moment LeVallon
made his entrance. His appearance struck a note. All were aware of an
unusual presence. Interest and curiosity rose like a vapour, heads all
turned one way as though the same wind blew them, there was a buzz and
murmur of whispered voices, as though the figure of LeVallon woke into
response the same taut wire in every heart. "Who on earth is that? What
is he?" was legible in a hundred questioning eyes. All, in a word, were
aware of something unaccustomed.
Upon this detail--and in support of the Society's claim to special
"psychic" perception, it must be mentioned--Fillery and Devonham were
at one. But another detail, too, found them in agreement. It was not
the tempest that caused the panic; it was LeVallon himself. Something
about LeVallon had produced the abrupt and singular sense of panic
terror.
Fillery was glad; he was satisfied, at any rate. The transient, unreal
personality called "LeVallon" had disappeared and, as he believed,
for ever; a surface apparition after all, it had been educated,
superimposed, the result of imitation and quick learning, a phantom
masquerading as an intelligent human being. It was merely an acquired
surface-self, a physical, almost an automatic intelligence. The deep
nature underneath had now broken out. It was the sudden irruption of
"N. H." that touched the subconscious self of everyone in the room with
its strange authentic shock. "N. H." was in full possession.
Towards this real Self he felt attraction, yearning, even love. He
had felt this from the very beginning. Why, or what it was, he did
not pretend to know as yet. Towards "N. H." he reacted as towards
his own son, as to a comrade, ancient friend, proved intimate and
natural playmate even. The strange tie was difficult to describe. In
himself, though faint by comparison, lay something akin in sympathy and
understanding.... They belonged together in the same unknown region.
The girl, of course, belonged there too, but more completely, more
absolutely, even than himself. He foresaw the risks, the dangers. His
heart, with a leap of joy, accepted the responsibilities.
Unlike Devonham, he had not come that afternoon to scoff; his smile
at the vagaries of what his assistant called "hysterical psychics"
had no bitterness, no contempt. If their excesses were pathogenic
often, he believed with Lombroso that genius and hysteria draw upon
a common origin sometimes, also that, from among this unstable
material, there emerged on occasions hints of undeniable value. To
the want of balance was chiefly due the ineffectiveness of these
hints. This class, dissatisfied with present things, kicking over the
traces which herd together the dull normal crowd into the safe but
uninteresting commonplace, but kicking, of course, too wildly, alone
offered hints of powers that might one day, obedient to laws at present
unknown, become of value to the race. They were temperamentally open
to occasional, if misguided, inspiration, and all inspiration, the
evidence overwhelmingly showed, is due to an intense, but hidden mental
activity. The hidden nine-tenths of the self peeped out here and there
periodically. These people were, at heart, alert to new ideas. The herd
instinct was weak in them. They were individuals.
Fillery had not come to scoff. His chief purpose on this particular
occasion had been to observe any reactions produced in LeVallon by
the atmosphere of these unbalanced yet questing minds, and by the
introduction to a girl, whose beauty, physical and moral, he considered
far far above the standard of other women. Iraida Khilkoff, as he saw
her, rose head and shoulders, like some magical flower in a fairy-tale,
beyond her feminine kind.
His hopes had in both respects proved justified. LeVallon was gone. "N.
H." had swept up commandingly into full possession.
If it is the attitude of mind that interprets details in a given
scene, it is the heart that determines their selection. Devonham saw
collective hallucination, delusion, humbug--useless and undesirable
weeds, where his chief saw strange imperfect growths that might one
day become flowers in a marvellous garden. That this garden blossomed
upon the sunny slopes of a lost Caucasian valley had a significance he
did not shirk. Always he was honest with himself. It was this symbolic
valley he longed to people. Its radiant loveliness stirred a forgotten
music in his heart, he watched golden bees sipping that wild azalea
honey, of which even the natives may not rob them without the dangerous
delight of exaltation; his nostrils caught the delicious perfumes, his
cheek felt the touch of happy winds ... as he stood by the door with
Devonham and LeVallon, looking round the crowded Chelsea studio.
Aware of this association stirring in his blood, he believed he had
himself well in hand; he knew already in advance that a spirit moved
upon the face of those waters that were his inmost self; he had that
intuitive divination which anticipates a change of spiritual weather.
The wind was rising, the atmosphere lay prepared, already the flowers
bent their heads one way. All his powers of self-control might well
be called upon before the entertainment ended. Glancing a moment at
LeVallon, tall, erect and poised beside him, he was conscious--it
was an instant of vivid self-revelation--that he steadied himself in
doing so. He borrowed, as it were, something of that poise, that calm
simplicity, that potential energy, that modest confidence. Some latent
power breathed through the great stalwart figure by his side; the
strength was not his own; LeVallon emanated this power unconsciously.
Khilkoff, as described, had then led the youth away to see the
sculpture, Devonham was captured by a Member, and Fillery found himself
alone. He looked about him, noticing here and there individuals whom he
knew. Lady Gleeson he saw at once on her divan in the corner, with her
cigarette, her jewels, her glass, her background of millions through
which an indulgent husband floated like a shadow. His eye rested on her
a second only, then passed in search of something less insignificant.
Miss Lance, who had heard of his books and dared to pretend knowledge
of them, monopolised him for ten minutes. A little tactful kindness
managed her easily, while he watched the door where LeVallon had
disappeared with Khilkoff, and through which Nayan might any moment now
enter. Already his thoughts framed these two together in a picture; his
heart saw them playing hand in hand among the flowers of the Hidden
Valley, one flying, the other following, a radiance of sunny fire and a
speed of lifting winds about them both, yet he himself, oddly enough,
not far away. He, too, was somehow with them. While listening with his
mind to what Miss Lance was saying, his heart went out playing with
this splendid pair.... He would not lose her finally, it seemed; some
subtle kinship held them together in this trinity. The heart in him
played wild against the mind.
He caught Devonham's eye upon him, and a sudden smile that Miss Lance
fortunately appropriated to herself, ran over his too thoughtful
face. For Devonham's attitude towards the case, his original Notes,
his obvious concealment of experiences in the Jura Mountains, flashed
across him with a flavour of something half comic, half pathetic. "With
all that knowledge, with all the accumulation of data, Paul stops short
of Wonder!" he thought to himself, his eyes fixed solemnly upon Miss
Lance's face. He remembered Coleridge: "All knowledge begins and ends
with wonder, but the first wonder is the child of ignorance, while
the second wonder is the parent of adoration." A thousand years, and
the dear fellow will still regard adoration as hysteria! He chuckled
audibly, to his companion's surprise, since the moment was not
appropriate for chuckling.
Making his peace with his neighbour, he presently left her for a
position nearer to the door, Father Collins providing the opportunity.
Father Collins, as he was called, half affectionately, half in awe, as
of a parent with a cane, was an individual. He had been evangelical,
high church, Anglican, Roman Catholic, in turn, and finally Buddhist.
Believing in reincarnation, he did not look for progress in humanity;
the planet resembled a form at school--individuals passed into it and
out of it, but the average of the form remained the same. The fifth
form was always the fifth form. Earth's history showed no advance as
a whole, though individuals did. He looked forward, therefore, to no
Utopia, nor shared the pessimism of the thinkers who despaired of
progress.
A man of intense convictions, yet open mind, he was not ashamed
to move. Before the Buddhist phase, he had been icily agnostic.
He thought, but also he felt. He had vision and intuition; he had
investigated for himself. His mind was of the imaginative-scientific
order. Buddhism, his latest phase, attracted him because it was "a
scientific, logical system rather than a religion based on revelation."
He belonged eminently to the unstable. He found no resting place. He
came to the meetings of the Society to listen rather than to talk. His
net was far flung, catching anything and everything in the way of new
ideas, experiments, theories, beliefs, especially powers. He tested
for himself, then accepted or discarded. The more extravagant the
theory, the greater its appeal to him. Behind a grim, even a repulsive
ugliness, he hid a heart of milk and honey. In his face was nobility,
yet something slovenly ran through it like a streak.
He loved his kind and longed to help them to the light. Although a
rolling stone, spiritually, his naked sincerity won respect. He was
composed, however, of several personalities, and hence, since these
often clashed, he was accused of insincerity too. The essay that
lost him his pulpit and parish, "The Ever-moving Truth, or Proof
Impossible," was the poignant confession of an honest intellect where
faith and unbelief came face to face with facts. The Bishop, naturally,
preferred the room of "Father" Collins to his company.
"I should like you to meet my friend," Fillery mentioned, after some
preliminary talk. "He would interest you. You might help him possibly."
He mentioned a few essential details. "Perhaps you will call one
day--you know my address--and make his acquaintance. His mind, owing to
his lonely and isolated youth, is _tabula rasa_. For the same reason, a
primitive Nature is his Deity."
Father Collins raised his bushy dark eyebrows.
"I took note of him the moment he came in," he replied. "I was
wondering who he was--and what! I'll come one day with pleasure. The
innocence on his face surprised me. Is he--may I ask it--friend or
patient?"
"Both."
"I see," said the other, without hesitation. He added: "You are
experimenting?"
"Studying. I should value the help--the view of a religious
temperament."
Father Collins looked grim to ugliness. The touch of nobility appeared.
"I know your ideals, Dr. Fillery; I know your work," he said gruffly.
"In you lies more true religion than in a thousand bishops. I should
trust your treatment of an unusual case. If," he added slowly, "I can
help him, so much the better." He then looked up suddenly, his manner
as if galvanized: "Unless _he_ can perhaps help us."
The words struck Fillery on the raw, as it were. They startled him. He
stared into the other's eyes. "What makes you think that? What do you
mean exactly?"
Father Collins returned his gaze unflinchingly. He made an odd reply.
"Your friend," he said, "looks to me--like a man who--might start a new
religion--Nature for instance--back to Nature being, in my opinion,
always a possible solution of over-civilization and its degeneracy."
The streak of something slovenly crept into the nobility, smudging it,
so to speak, with a blur.
Dr. Fillery, for a moment, waited, listening with his heart.
"And find a million followers at once," continued the other, as though
he had not noticed. "His voice, his manner, his stature, his face, but
above all--something he brings with him. Whatever his nature, he's a
natural leader. And a sincere, unselfish leader is what people are
asking for nowadays."
His black bushy eyebrows dropped, darkening the grim, clean-shaven
face. "You noticed, of course--_you_--the women's eyes?" he mentioned.
"It isn't, you know, so much what a man says, nor entirely his
looks, that excite favour or disfavour with women. It's something he
emanates--unconsciously. They can't analyze it, but they never fail to
recognize it."
Fillery moved sideways a little, so that he could watch the inner
studio better. The discernment of his companion was somewhat
unexpected. It disconcerted him. All his knowledge, all his experience
clustered about his mind as thick as bees, yet he felt unable to
select the item he needed. The sunshine upon his Inner Valley burned a
brighter fire. He saw the flowers glow. The wind ran sweet and magical.
He began to watch himself more closely.
"LeVallon is an interesting being," he admitted finally, "but you make
big deductions surely. A mind like yours," he added, "must have its
reasons?"
"Power," replied the other promptly; "power. 'The earlier generations,'
said Emerson, 'saw God face to face; _we_ through their eyes. Why
should not we also enjoy an original relation to Nature?' Your friend
has this original relation, I feel; he stands close--terribly close--to
Nature. He brings open spaces even into this bargain sale----" He drew
a deep breath. "There is a power about him----"
"Perhaps," interrupted the other.
"Not of this earth."
"You mean that literally?"
"Not of this earth quite--not of humanity, so to speak," repeated
Father Collins half irritably, as though his intelligence had been
insulted. "That's the best way I can describe how it strikes me. Ask
one of the women. Ask Nayan, for instance. Whatever he is, your friend
is elemental."
Like a shock of fire the unusual words ran deep into Fillery's heart,
but, at that same instant a stirring of the figures beyond the door
caught his attention. His main interest revived. The inner door of the
private studio, he thought, had opened.
"Elemental!" he repeated, his interest torn in two directions
simultaneously. He looked at his companion keenly, searchingly. "You--a
man like you--does not use such words----" He kept an eye upon the
inner studio.
"Without meaning," the other caught him up at once. "No. I mean it. Nor
do I use such words idly to a man--Fillery--like you." He stopped. "He
has what you have," came the quick blunt statement; "only in your case
it's indirect, while in his it's direct--essential."
They looked at each other. Two minds, packed with knowledge and
softened with experience of their kind, though from different points
of view, met each other fairly. A bridge existed. It was crossed. Few
words were necessary, it seemed. Each understood the other.
"Elemental," repeated Fillery, his pulse quickening half painfully.
At which instant he knew the inner door _had_ opened. Nayan had
come in. The same instant almost she had gone out again. So quick,
indeed, was the interval between her appearance and disappearance,
that Fillery's version of what he then witnessed in those few seconds
might have been ascribed by a third person who saw it with him to his
imagination largely. Imaginative, at any rate, the version was; whether
it was on that account unreal is another matter. The swift, tiny scene,
however, no one witnessed but himself. Even Devonham, unusually alert
with professional anxiety, missed it; as did also the watchful Lady
Gleeson, whom jealousy made clairvoyante almost. Khilkoff and LeVallon,
standing sideways to the door, were equally unaware that it had opened,
then quickly closed again. None saw, apparently, the radiant, lovely
outline.
It was a curtained door leading out of the far end of the inner studio
into a passage which had an exit to the street; Fillery was so placed
that he could see it over his companion's shoulder; Khilkoff, LeVallon
and the little group about them stood in his direct line of sight
against the dark background of the curtain. The light in this far
corner was so dim that Fillery was not aware the curtained door had
swung open until he actually saw the figure of Nayan Khilkoff framed
suddenly in the clear space, the white passage wall behind her. She
wore gloves, hat and furs, having come, evidently, straight from the
street. Ten seconds, perhaps twenty, she stood there, gazing with a
sudden fixed intensity at LeVallon, whose figure, almost close enough
for touch, was sideways to her, the face in profile.
She stopped abruptly as though a shock ran through her. She remained
motionless. She stared, an expression in her eyes as of life
momentarily arrested by wild, glorious, intense surprise. The lips were
parted; one gloved hand still held the swinging curtained door. To
Fillery it seemed as if a flame leaped into her eyes. The entire face
lit up. She seemed spellbound with delight.
This leap of light was the first sign he witnessed. The same second her
eyes lifted a fraction of an inch, changed their focus, and, gazing
past LeVallon, looked straight across the room into his own.
In his mind at that instant still rang the singular words of Father
Collins; in his heart still hung the picture of the flowered valley: it
was across this atmosphere the eyes of the girl flashed their message
like a stroke of lightning. It came as a cry, almost a call for help,
an audible message whose syllables fled down the valley, yearning
sweet, yet a tone of poignant farewell within the following wind.
It was a moment of delicious joy, of exquisite pain, of a blissful,
searching dream beyond this world....
He stood spellbound himself a moment. The look in the girl's big
eloquent eyes threatened a cherished dream that lay too close to his
own life. He was aware of collapse, of ruin; that old peculiar anguish
seized him. He remembered her words in Baker Street a few days before:
"Please bring your friend"--the accompanying pain they caused. And now
he caught the echo on that following wind along the distant valley. The
cry in her eyes came to him:
"Why--O why--do you bring this to me? It must take your place. It must
put out--You!"
The reasoning and the inspirational self in him knew this momentary
confusion, as the cry fled down the wind.
"O follow, follow
Through the caverns hollow
As the song floats, thou pursue
Where the wild bee never flew...."
The curtained door swung to again; the face and figure were no longer
there; Nayan had withdrawn quickly, noticed by none but himself. She
had gone up to make herself ready for her father's guests; in a few
minutes she would come down again to play hostess as her custom was....
It was so ordinary. It was so dislocating.... For at that moment it
seemed as if all the feminine forces of the universe, whatever these
may be, focused in her, and poured against him their concentrated
stream to allure, enchant, subdue. He trembled. He remembered
Devonham's admission of the panic sense.
"It's the air," said a voice beside him, "all this tobacco smoke and
scent, and no ventilation."
Father Collins was speaking, only he had completely forgotten that
Father Collins was in the world. The steadying hand upon his arm made
him realize that he had swayed a moment.
"The perfume chiefly," the voice continued. "All this cheap nasty stuff
these women use. It's enough to sicken any healthy man. Nobody knows
his own smell, they say." He laughed a little.
Collins was tactful. He talked on easily of nothing in particular, so
that his companion might let the occasion slip, or comment on it, as he
wished.
"Worse than incense." Fillery gave him the clue perhaps intentionally,
certainly with gratitude. He made an effort. He found control. "It
intoxicates the imagination, doesn't it?" That note of sweet farewell
still hung with enchanting sadness in his brain. He still saw those
yearning eyes. He heard that cry. And yet the conflict in his nature
bewildered him--as though he found two persons in him, one weeping
while the other sang.
Father Collins smiled, and Fillery then knew that he, too, had seen the
girl framed in the doorway, intercepted the glance as well. No shadow
of resentment crossed his heart as he heard him add: "She, too, perhaps
belongs elsewhere." The phrase, however, brought to his own personal
dream the conviction of another understanding mind. "As you yourself
do, too," was added in a thrilling whisper suddenly.
Fillery turned with a start to meet his eye. "But _where_?"
"That is _your_ problem," said Father Collins promptly. "You are the
expert--even though you think--mistakenly--that your heart is robbed."
His voice held the sympathy and tenderness of a woman taught by
suffering. The nobility was in his face again, untarnished now. His
words, his tone, his manner caught Fillery in amazement. It did not
surprise him that Father Collins had been quick enough to understand,
but it did surprise him that a man so entangled in one formal creed
after another, so netted by the conventional thought of various
religious Systems, and therefore stuffed with old, rigid, commonplace
ideas--it did, indeed surprise him to feel this sudden atmosphere of
vision and prophecy that abruptly shone about him. The extravagant,
fantastic side of the man he had forgotten.
"Where?" he repeated, gazing at him. "Where, indeed?"
"Where the wild bee never flew ... perhaps!"
Father Collins's eyebrows shot up as though worked by artificial
springs. His eyes, changing extraordinarily, turned very keen.
He seemed several persons at once. He looked like--contradictory
description--a spiritual Jesuit. The ugly mouth--thank Heaven, thought
Fillery--showed lines of hidden humour. His sanity, at any rate, was
unquestioned. Father Collins watched the planet with his soul, not with
his brain alone. But which of his many personalities was now in the
ascendancy, no man, least of all himself, could tell. His companion,
the expert in him automatically aware of the simultaneous irruption and
disruption, waited almost professionally for any outburst that might
follow. "Arcades ambo," he reflected, making a stern attempt to keep
his balance.
"The subconscious, remember, doesn't explain everything," came
the words. "Not everything," he added with emphasis. "As with
heredity"--he looked keenly half humorously, half sympathetically at
the doctor--"there are gaps and lapses. The recent upheaval has been
more than an inter-tribal war. It was a planetary event. It has shaken
our nature fundamentally, radically. The human mind has been shocked,
broken, dislocated. The prevalent hysteria is not an ordinary hysteria,
nor are the new powers--perhaps--quite ordinary either."
"Mental history repeats itself," Fillery put in, now more master of
himself again. "Unbalance has always followed upheaval. The removal
of known, familiar foundations always lets in extravagance of wildest
dissatisfaction, search and question."
"Upheaval of this kind," rejoined the other gravely, "there has never
been since human beings walked the earth. Our fabulous old world
trembles in the balance." And, as he said it, the dreamer shone in the
light below the big, black eyebrows, noticed quickly by his companion.
"Old ideals have been smashed beyond recovery. The gods men knew have
been killed, like Tommy, in the trenches. The past is likewise dead,
its dreams of progress buried with it by a Black Maria. The human mind
and heart stand everywhere empty and bereft, while their hungry and
unanswered questions search the stars for something new."
"Well, well," said Fillery gently, half stirred, half amused by the
odd language. "You may be right. But mental history has always shown
a desire for something new after each separate collapse. Signs and
wonders are a recurrent hunger, remember. In the days of Abraham, of
Paul, of Moses it was the same."
"Questions to-day," replied the other, "are based on an immense
accumulated knowledge unknown to Moses or to Abraham's time. The
phenomenon, I grant you, is the same, but--the shock, the dislocation,
the shattering upheaval comes in the twentieth century upon minds
grounded in deep scientific wisdom. It was formerly a shock to the
superstitious ignorance of intuitive feeling merely. To-day it is
organized scientific knowledge that meets the earthquake."
"You mentioned gaps and lapses," said Fillery, deeply interested, but
still half professionally, perhaps, in spite of his preoccupations.
"You think, perhaps, those gaps----?" One eye watched the inner studio.
The unstable in him gained more and more the upper hand.
"I mean," replied Father Collins, now fairly launched upon his secret
hobby, evidently his qualification for membership in the Society,
"I mean, Edward Fillery, that the time is ripe, if ever, for a new
revelation. If Man is the only type of being in the universe, well and
good. We see his finish plainly, for the war has shown that progress
is a myth. Man remains, in spite of all conceivable scientific
knowledge, a savage, of low degree, irredeemable, and intellect, as a
reconstructive force, but of small account."
"It seems so, I admit."
"But if"--Father Collins said it as calmly as though he spoke of
some new food or hygienic treatment merely--"if mankind is not the
only life in the universe, if, for instance, there exist--and why
not?--other evolutionary systems besides our own somewhat trumpery
type--other schemes and other beings--perhaps parallel, perhaps quite
different--perhaps in more direct contact with the sources of life--a
purer emanation, so to say----"
He hesitated, realizing perhaps that in speaking to a man of Edward
Fillery's standing he must choose his words, or at least present his
case convincingly, while aware that his inability to do so made him
only more extravagant and incoherent.
"Yes, quite so," Fillery helped him, noting all the time the suppressed
intensity, the half-concealed conviction of an _idée fixe_ behind the
calmness, while the balance of his own attention remained concentrated
on the group about LeVallon. "If, as you suggest, there _are_ other
types of life----" He spoke encouragingly. He had noticed the slovenly
streak spread and widen, breaking down, as it were, the structure of
the face. He was aware also of the increasing insecurity in himself.
"Now is the moment," cried the other; "now is the time for their
appearance."
He turned as though he had hit a target unexpectedly.
"Now," he repeated, "is the opportunity for their manifestation. The
human mind lies open everywhere. It is blank, receptive, ready. On all
sides it waits ready and inviting. The gaps are provided. If there is
any other life, it should break through and come among us--_now_!"
Fillery, startled, withdrew for the first time his attention from that
inner room. With keen eyes he gazed at his companion. With an abrupt,
unpleasant shock it occurred to him that all he heard was borrowed,
filched, stolen out of his own mind. Before words came to him, the
other spoke:
"Your friend," he mentioned quietly, but with intentional significance,
"and patient."
"LeVallon!"
But it was at this moment that Nayan Khilkoff, entering again without
her hat and furs, had moved straight to the piano, seated herself, and
began to sing.