It was not long after the scene in the Studio that the Prometheans
foregathered at dinner in the back room of the small French restaurant
in Soho and discussed the event. The prices were moderate, conditions
free and easy. It was a favourite haunt of Members.
To-night, moreover, there was likely to be a good attendance. The word
had gone out.
The Studio scene had, of course, been the subject of much discussion
already. The night of its occurrence it had been talked over till dawn
in more than one flat, and during the following days the Society, as a
whole, thought of little else. Those who had not been present had to be
informed, and those who had witnessed it found it an absorbing topic of
speculation. The first words that passed when one member met another in
the street was: "What _did_ you make of that storm? Wasn't it amazing?
Did your solar plexus vibrate? Mine did! And the light, the colour,
the vibrations--weren't they terrific? What do you think _he_ is?" It
was rumoured that the Secretary was asking for individual reports.
Excitement and interest were general, though the accounts of individual
witnesses differed extraordinarily. It seemed impossible that all had
seen and heard the same thing.
The back room was pleasantly filled to-night, for it was somehow
known that Millington Povey, and possibly Father Collins, too, were
coming. Miss Milligan, the astrologist, was there early, arriving with
Mrs. Towzer, who saw auras and had already, it was rumoured, painted
automatically a strange rendering of "forces" that were visible to her
clairvoyantly during the occurrence. Miss Lance, in shining beads and
a glittering scarf, arrived on their heels, an account of the scene in
her pocket--to be published in her magazine "Simplicity" after she had
modified it according to what she picked up from hearing other, and
better, descriptions.
Kempster, immaculate as ever, ordering his food as he ordered his
clothes, like a connoisseur, was one of the first to establish himself
in a comfortable seat. He knew how to look after himself, and was
already eating in his neat dainty way while the others still stood
about studying the big white _menu_ with its illegible hieroglyphics in
smudged violet ink. He supplemented his meals with special patent foods
of vegetarian kind he brought with him. He had dried bananas in one
pocket and spirit photographs in another, and he was invariably pulling
out the wrong thing. Meat he avoided. "A man is what he eats," he held,
and animal blood was fatal to psychic development. To eat pig or cow
was to absorb undesirable characteristics.
Next to him sat Lattimer, a lanky man of thirty, with loose clothes,
long hair, and eyes of strange intensity. Known as "occultist and
alchemist," he was also a chemist of some repute. His life was ruled by
a master-desire and a master-fear: the former, that he might one day
project his double consciously; the latter, that in his next earthly
incarnation he might be--the prospect made him shudder--a woman. He
sought to keep his thought as concrete as possible, the male quality.
He believed that the nervous centre of the physical body which
controlled all such unearthly, if not definitely "spiritual," impulses,
was the solar plexus. For him it was _the_ important portion of his
anatomy, the seat of intuition. Brain came second.
"The fellow," he declared emphatically, "stirred my solar plexus, my
_kundalini_--that's all I know." He referred, as all understood, to the
latent power the _yogis_ claim lies coiled, but only rarely manifested,
in that great nervous centre.
His statement, he knew, would meet with general approval and
understanding. It was the literal Kempster who spoiled his opening:
"Paul Devonham," said the latter, "thinks it's merely a secondary
personality that emerged. I had a long argument with him about it----"
"Never argue with the once-born," declared Povey flatly, producing
his pet sentence. "It's waste of time. Only older souls, with
the experience of many earthly lives stored in their beings, are
knowledgeable." He filled his glass and poured out for others, Lattimer
and Mrs. Towzer alone declining, though for different reasons.
"It destroys the 'sight,'" explained the former. "Alcohol sets up
coarse vibrations that ruin clairvoyance."
"I decided to deny myself till the war is over," was Mrs. Towzer's
reason, and when Povey reminded her of the armistice, she mentioned
that Turkey hadn't "signed yet."
"I think his soul----" began Miss Lance.
"If he _has_ a soul," put in Povey, electrically.
"--is hardly in his body at all," concluded Miss Lance, less
convincingly than originally intended.
"It was love at first sight. His sign is Fire and hers is Air," Miss
Milligan said. "That's certain. _Of course_ they came together."
"A clear case of memory, at any rate," insisted Kempster. "Two old
souls meeting again for the first time for thousands of years,
probably. Love at first sight, or hate, for that matter, is always
memory, isn't it?" He disliked the astrology explanation; it was not
mysterious enough, too mathematical and exact to please him.
"Secondary personalities _are_ invariably memories of former selves, of
course," agreed young Dickson, the theosophist, who was on the verge
now of becoming a psycho-analyst and had already discarded Freud for
Jung. "If not memories of past lives, then they're desires suppressed
in this one."
"The less you think, the more you know," suggested Miss Lance. She
distrusted intellect and believed that another faculty, called instinct
or intuition, according to which word first occurred to her, was the
way to knowledge. She was about to quote Bergson upside down, when
Povey, foreseeing an interval of boredom, took command:
"One thing we know, at any rate," he began judiciously; "we aren't the
only beings in the universe. There are non-human intelligences, both
vast and small. The old world-wide legends can't be built on nothing.
In every age of history--the reports are universal--we have pretty good
evidence for other forms of life than humans----"
"Though never yet in human _form_," put in Lattimer, yet
sympathetically. "Their bodies, I mean, aren't human," he added.
"Exactly. That's true. But the gods, the fauns, the satyrs, the
elemental beings, as we call 'em--sylphs, undines, gnomes and
salamanders--to say nothing of fairies et hoc genus omne--there must
be _some_ reasonable foundation for their persistence through all the
ages."
"They all belong to the _Deva_ Evolution," Dickson mentioned with
conviction. "In the East it's been known and recognized for centuries,
hasn't it? Another evolutionary system that runs parallel to ours.
From planetary spirits down to elementals, they're concerned with the
building up of form in the various kingdoms----"
"Yes, yes," Povey interrupted impatiently. Dickson was stealing what he
had meant to say himself and to say, he flattered himself, far better.
"We know all _that_, of course. They stand behind what we call the laws
of nature, non-human activities and intelligences of every grade and
kind. They work for humanity in a way, are in other space and time,
deathless, of course, yet--in some strange way, always eager to cross
the gulf fixed between the two and so find a soul. They are impersonal
in a sense, as impersonal as, say, wind and fire through which some of
them operate as bodies."
He paused and looked about him, noting the interested attention he
awaked.
"There _may_ be times," he went on, "there probably _are_ certain
occasions, when the gulf is more crossable than others." He laid down
his knife and fork as a sympathetic murmur proved that the point he was
leading up to was favourably understood already. "We have had this war,
for instance," he stated, his voice taking on a more significant and
mysterious tone. "Dislodged by the huge upheaval, man's soul is on the
march again." He paused once more. "_They_," he concluded, lowering his
voice still more, and emphasizing the pronoun, "are possibly already
among us! Who knows?"
He glanced round. "We do; we know," was the expression on most faces.
All knew precisely what he meant and to whom he referred, at any rate.
"You might get him to come and lecture to us," said Dickson, the first
to break the pause. "You might ask Dr. Fillery. _You_ know him."
"That's an idea----" began the Secretary, when there was a commotion
near the door. His face showed annoyance.
It was the arrival of Toogood that at this moment disturbed the
atmosphere and robbed Povey of the effect he aimed at. It provided
Kempster, however, with an idea at the same time. "Here's a
psychometrist!" he exclaimed, making room for him. "He might get a bit
of his hair or clothing and psychometrize it. He might tell us about
his past, if not exactly _what_ he is."
The suggestion, however, found no seconder, for it seemed that the new
arrival was not particularly welcomed. Judging by the glances, the
varying shades of greeting, too, he was not fully trusted, perhaps,
this broad, fleshy man of thirty-five, with complexion blotchy, an
over-sensual mouth and eyes a trifle shifty. His claim to membership
was two-fold: he remembered past lives, and had the strange power of
psychometry. An archæologist by trade, his gift of psychometry--by
which he claimed to hold an object and tell its past, its pedigree,
its history--was of great use to him in his calling. Without further
trouble he could tell whether such an object was genuine or sham.
Dealers in antiquities offered him big fees--but "No, no; I cannot
prostitute my powers, you see"--and he remained poor accordingly.
In his past lives he had been either a famous Pharaoh, or
Cleopatra--according to his audience of the moment and its male or
female character--but usually Cleopatra, because, on the whole, there
was more money and less risk in her. He lectured--for a fee. Lately,
however, he had been Pharaoh, having got into grave trouble over the
Cleopatra claim, even to the point of being threatened with expulsion
from the Society. His attitude during the war, besides, had been
unsatisfactory--it was felt he had selfishly protected himself on the
grounds of being physically unfit. Apart from archæology, too, his
chief preoccupation, derived from past lives of course, was sex, in the
form of other men's wives, his own wife and children being, naturally,
very recent and somewhat negligible ties.
His gift of psychometry, none the less, was considered proved--in spite
of the backward and indifferent dealers. His mind was quick and not
unsubtle. He became now au fait with the trend of the conversation in
a very few seconds, but he had not been present at the Studio when the
occurrence all discussed had taken place.
"Hair would be best," he advised tentatively, sipping his
whisky-and-soda. He had already dined. "It's a part of himself, you
see. Better than mere clothing, I mean. It's extremely vital, hair. It
grows after death."
"If I can get it for you, I will," said Povey. "He may be lecturing for
us before long. I'll try."
"With psychometry and a good photograph," Kempster suggested, "a time
exposure, if possible, we ought to get _some_ evidence, at any rate.
It's first-hand evidence we want, of course, isn't it? What do you
think of this, for instance, I wonder?" He turned to Lattimer, drawing
something from his pocket and showing it. "It's a time exposure at
night of a haunted tree. You'll notice a queer sort of elemental form
_inside_ the trunk and branches. Oh!" He replaced the shrivelled banana
in his pocket, and drew out the photograph without a smile. "This," he
explained, waving it, "is what I meant." They fell to discussing it.
Meanwhile, Povey, anxious to resume his lecture, made an effort
to recover his command of the group-atmosphere which Toogood had
disturbed. The latter had a "personal magnetism" which made the women
like him in spite of their distrust.
"I was just saying," he resumed, patting the elbow of the
psychometrist, "that this strange event we've been discussing--you
weren't present, I believe, at the time, but, of course, you've heard
about it--has features which seem to point to something radically new,
or at least of very rare occurrence. As Lattimer mentioned, a human
body has never yet, so far as we know, been occupied, obsessed, by
a non-human entity, but that, after all, is no reason why it should
not ever happen. What is a body, anyhow? What is an entity, too?"
Povey's thought was wandering, evidently; the thread of his first
discourse was broken; he floundered. "Man, anyway, is more than a mere
chemical machine," he went on, "a crystallization of the primitive
nebulæ, though the instrument he uses, the body he works through, is
undoubtedly thus describable. Now, we know there are all kinds of
non-human intelligences busy on our planet, in the Universe itself as
well. Why, then, I ask, should not one of these----?"
He paused, unable to find himself, his confusion obvious. He was as
glad of the interruption that was then provided by the arrival of Imson
as his audience was. Toogood certainly was not sorry; he need find no
immediate answer. He sipped his drink and made mental notes.
Imson arrived in a rough brown ulster with the collar turned up about
his ears, a low flannel shirt, not strictly clean, lying loosely round
his neck. His colourless face was of somewhat flabby texture, due
probably to his diet, but its simple, honest expression was attractive,
the smile engaging. The touch of foolishness might have been childlike
innocence, even saintliness some thought, and though he was well over
forty, the unlined skin made him look more like thirty. He enjoyed a
physiognomy not unlike that of a horse or sheep. His big, brown eyes
stared wide open at the world, expecting wonder and finding it. His
hobby was inspirational poems. One lay in his breast pocket now. He
burned to read it aloud.
Pat Imson's ideal was an odd one--detachment; the desire to avoid all
ties that must bring him back to future incarnations on the earth, to
eschew making fresh Karma, in a word. He considered himself an "old
soul," and was rather weary of it all--of existence and development,
that is. To take no part in life meant to escape from those tangles
for whose unravelling the law of rebirth dragged the soul back again
and again. To sow no Causes was to have no harvest of Effects to reap
with toil and perspiration. Action, of course, there must be, but
"indifference to results of action" was the secret. Imson, none the
less, was always entangled with wives and children. Having divorced one
wife, and been divorced by another, he had recently married a third;
a flock of children streamed behind him; he was a good father, if a
strange husband.
"It's old Karma I have to work off," he would explain, referring to
the wives. "If I avoid the experience I shall only have to come back
again. There's no good shirking old Karma." He gave this explanation to
the wives themselves, not only to his friends. "Face it and it's done
with, worked off, you see." That is, it had to be done nicely, kindly,
generously.
An entire absence of the sense of humour was, of course, his natural
gift, yet a certain quaint wisdom helped to fill the dangerous vacuum.
He was known usually as "Pat."
"Come on, Pat," said Povey, making room for him at his side. "How's
Karma? We're just talking about LeVallon and the Studio business. What
do you make of it? You were there, weren't you?" The others listened,
attentively, for Imson had a reputation for "seeing true."
"I saw it, yes," replied Imson, ordering his dinner with
indifference--soup, fried potatoes, salad, cheese and coffee--but
declining the offered wine. The group waited for his next remark, but
none was forthcoming. He sat crumbling his bread into the soup and
stirring the mixture with his spoon.
"Did you see the light about him, Mr. Imson?" asked Miss Lance. "The
brilliant aura of golden yellow that he wore? _I_ thought--it sounds
exaggerated, I know--but to me it seemed even brighter than the
lightning. Did you notice it?"
"Well," said Imson slowly, putting his spoon down. "I'm not often
clairvoyant, you know. I did notice, however, a sort of radiance about
him. But with hair like that, it's difficult to be certain----"
"Full of lovely patterns," said Mrs. Towzer. "Geometrical patterns."
"Like astrological designs," mentioned Miss Milligan. "He's Leo, of
course--fire."
"Almost as though he brought or caused the lightning--as if it actually
emanated out of his atmosphere somehow," claimed Miss Lance, for it was
_her_ conversation after all.
"I saw nothing of that," replied Imson quietly. "No, I can't say I saw
anything _exactly_ like that." He added honestly, with his engaging
smile that had earned for him in some quarters the nickname of "The
Sheep": "I was looking at Nayan, you see, most of the time."
A smile flickered round the table, for rumour had it that the girl had
once seemed to him as possible "Karma."
"So was I," put in Kempster with kindly intention, though his
sympathy was evidently not needed. Imson was too simple even to
feel embarrassment. "She came to life suddenly for the first time
since I've known her. It was amazing." To which Imson, busy over his
salad-dressing, made no reply.
Povey, lighting his pipe and puffing out thick clouds of smoke,
was cleverer. "LeVallon's effect upon her, whatever it was, seemed
instantaneous," he informed the table. "I never saw a clearer case of
two souls coming together in a flash."
"As I said just now," Kempster quickly mentioned.
"They are similar," said Imson, looking up, while the group waited
expectantly.
"Similar," repeated Kempster. "Ah!"
"It was the surprise in her face that struck me most," observed Povey
quickly, making an internal note of Imson's adjective, but knowing
that indirect methods would draw him out better than point-blank
questions. "LeVallon showed it too. It was an unexpected recognition
on both sides. They are 'similar,' as you say; both at the same stage
of development, whatever that stage may be. The expression on both
faces----"
"Escape," exclaimed Imson, giving at last the kernel of what he had to
say. And the effect upon the group was electrical. A visible thrill ran
round the Soho table.
"The very word," exclaimed Povey and Miss Lance together. "Escape!" But
neither of them knew exactly what they meant, nor what Imson himself
meant.
"LeVallon has, of course, already escaped," the latter went on quietly.
"He is no longer caught by causes and effects as we are here. He's got
out of it all long ago--if he was ever in it at all."
"If he ever was in it at all," said Povey quickly. "You noticed that
too. You're very discerning, Pat."
"Clairvoyant," mentioned Miss Lance.
"I've seen them in dreams like that," returned Imson calmly. "I often
see them, of course." He referred to his qualification for membership.
"The great figures I see in dream have just that unearthly expression."
"Unearthly," said Mrs. Towzer with excitement.
"Non-human," mentioned Kempster suggestively.
"Not of this world, anyhow," suggested Miss Lance mysteriously.
"Divine?" inquired Miss Milligan below her breath.
"Really," murmured Toogood, "I must get a bit of his hair and
psychometrize it at once." He was sipping a second glass of whisky.
Imson looked round at each face in turn, apparently seeing nothing that
need increase his attachment to the planet by way of fresh Karma.
"The _Deva_ world," he said briefly, after a pause. "Probably he's come
to take Nayan off with him. She--I always said so--has a strong strain
of the elemental kingdom in her. She may be his _Devi_. LeVallon, I'm
sure, is here for the first time. He's one of the non-human evolution.
He's slipped in. A _Deva_ himself probably." It was as though he said
that the waiter was Swiss or French, or that the proprietor's daughter
had Italian blood in her.
Povey looked round him with an air of triumph.
"Ah!" he announced, as who should say, "You all thought my version a
bit wild, but here's confirmation from an unbiased witness."
"Oh, well, I can't be certain," Imson reminded the group. If he
deceived them enough to change their lives in any respect, it involved
fresh Karma for himself. Care was indicated. "I can't be positive, can
I?" he hedged. "Only--I must say--the great deva-figures I've seen in
dream have exactly that look and expression."
"That's interesting, Pat," Povey put in, "because, before you came, I
was suggesting a similar explanation for his air of immense potential
power. The elemental atmosphere he brought--we all noticed it, of
course."
"Elemental _is_ the only word," Miss Lance inserted. "A great Nature
Being." She was thinking of her magazine. "He struck me as being so
close to Nature that he seemed literally part of it."
"That would explain the lightning and the strange cry he gave about
'messengers,'" replied Imson, wiping the oil from his chin and
sprinkling his _petit suisse_ with powdered sugar. "It's quite likely
enough."
"I wish you'd jot down what you think--a little report of what you saw
and felt," the Secretary mentioned. "It would be of great value. I
thought of making a collection of the different versions and accounts."
"They might be published some day," thought Miss Lance. "Let's all,"
she added aloud with emphasis.
Imson nodded agreement, making no audible reply, while the conversation
ran on, gathering impetus as it went, growing wilder possibly, but also
more picturesque. A man in the street, listening behind a curtain,
must have deemed the talkers suffering from delusion, mad; a good
psychologist, on the other hand, similarly screened, and knowing the
antecedent facts, the Studio scene, at any rate, must have been struck
by one outstanding detail--the effect, namely, upon one and all of the
person they discussed. They had seen him for an hour or so among a
crowd, a young man whose name they hardly knew; only a few had spoken
to him; there had been, it seemed, neither time nor opportunity for
him to produce upon one and all the impression he undoubtedly had
produced. For in every mind, upon every heart, LeVallon's mere presence
had evidently graven an unforgettable image, scored an undecipherable
hieroglyph. Each felt, it seemed, the hint of a personality their
knowledge could not explain, nor any earthly explanation satisfy.
The consciousness in each one, perhaps, had been quickened. Hence,
possibly, the extravagance of their conversation. Yet, since all
reported differently, collective hysteria seemed discounted.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, as the talk continued, and the wings of imaginative
speculation fanned the thick tobacco smoke, others had dropped in, both
male and female members, and the group now filled the little room to
the walls. The same magnet drew them all, in each heart burned the same
huge question mark: Who--what--is this LeVallon? What was the meaning
of the scene in Khilkoff's Studio?
Here, too, was a curious and significant fact about the gathering--the
amount of knowledge, true or otherwise, they had managed to collect
about LeVallon. One way or another, no one could say exactly how, the
Society had picked up an astonishing array of detail they now shared
together. It was known where he had spent his youth, also how, and
with whom, as well as something of the different views about him held
by Dr. Devonham and Edward Fillery. To such temperaments as theirs the
strange, the unusual, came automatically perhaps, percolating into
their minds as though a collective power of thought-reading operated.
Garbled, fanciful, askew, their information may have been, but a great
deal of it was not far wrong.
Imson, for instance, provided an account of LeVallon's birth, to which
all listened spellbound. He evaded all questions as to how he knew of
it. "His parents," he assured the room, "practised the old forgotten
magic; his father, at any rate, was an expert, if not an initiate, with
all the rites and formulæ of ancient times in his memory. LeVallon
was born as the result of an experiment, its origins dating back so
far that they concerned life upon another planet, I believe, a planet
nearer to the sun. The tremendous winds and heat were vehicles of
deity, you see--_there_."
"The parents, you mean, had former lives upon another planet?" asked
someone in a hushed tone. "Or he himself?"
"The parents--and Mason. Mason was involved in the experiment that
resulted in the birth of LeVallon here to-day."
"The experiment--what was it exactly?" inquired Lattimer, while Toogood
surreptitiously made notes on his rather dirty cuff.
Imson shrugged his shoulders very slightly.
"Some of it came to me in sleep," he mentioned, producing a paper from
his pocket and beginning to read it aloud before anyone could stop him.
"When the sun was younger, and moon and stars
Were thrilled with my human birth,
And the winds fled shouting the wondrous news
As they circled the sea and the earth,
"From the fight for money and worldly fame
I drew one magical soul
Who came to me over the star-lit sea
As the needle turns to the Pole.
"Conceived in the hour the stars foretold,
This son of the winds I bore,
And I taught him the secrets of----"
"Yes," interrupted Povey audaciously, "but the experiment you were
telling us about----?"
A murmur of approving voices helped him.
"Oh, the experiment, yes, well--all I know is," he went on with
conviction, calmly replacing the poem in his pocket, "that it concerned
an old rite, involving the evocation of some elemental being or
nature-spirit the three of them had already evoked millions of years
before, but had not banished again. The experiment they made to-day
was to restore it to its proper sphere. In order to do so, they had
to evoke it again, and, of course"--he glanced round, as though all
present were familiar with the formula of magical practices--"it could
come only through the channel of a human system."
"Of course, yes," murmured a dozen voices, while eyes grew bigger and a
pin dropping must have been audible.
"Well"--Imson spoke very slowly now, each word clear as a bell--"the
father, who was officiating, failed. He could not stand the strain. His
heart stopped beating. He died--just when _it_ was there, he dropped
dead."
"What happened to _it_?" asked Povey, too interested to care that he
no longer led the room. "You said it could only use a human system as
channel----"
"It did so," explained Imson.
The information produced a pause of several seconds. Some of the
members, like Toogood, though openly, were making pencil notes upon
cuffs or backs of envelopes.
"But the channel was neither Mason nor the woman." The effect of this
negative information was as nothing compared to the startling interest
produced by the speaker's next words: "It took the easiest channel, the
line of least resistance--the unborn body of the child."
Povey, seizing his opportunity, leaped into the silence:
"Whose body, now full grown, and named LeVallon, came to the Studio!"
he exclaimed, looking round at the group, as though he had himself
given the explanation all had just listened to. "A human body tenanted
by a nature-spirit, one of the form-builders--a _Deva_...."