The full account of "N. H.," with all he said and did, his effect upon
others, his general activities in a word, it is impossible to compress
intelligibly into the compass of these notes. A complete report Edward
Fillery indeed accumulated, but its publication, he realized, must
await that leisure for which his busy life provided little opportunity.
His eyes, mental and physical, were never off his "patient," and
"N. H.," aware of it, leaped out to meet the observant sympathy, giving
all he could, concealing nothing, yet debarred, it seemed, by the rigid
limitations of his own mental and physical machinery, as similarly
by that of his hearers, from contributing more than suggestive and
tantalizing hints. Of the use of parable he, obviously, had no
knowledge.
His relations with others, perhaps, offered the most significant
comments on his personality. Fillery was at some pains to collect
these. The reactions were various, yet one and all showed this in
common, a curious verdict but unanimous: that his effect, namely, was
greatest when he was not there. Not in his actual presence, which
promised rather than fulfilled, was his power so dominating upon
mind and imagination as after the door was closed and he was gone.
The withdrawal of his physical self, its absence--as Fillery had
himself experienced one night on Hampstead Heath as well as on other
occasions--brought his real presence closer.
It was Nayan who first drew attention to this remarkable
characteristic. She spoke about him often now with Dr. Fillery, for as
the weeks passed and she realized the uselessness, the impossibility,
of the plan she had proposed to herself, she found relief in talking
frankly about him to her older friend.
"Always, always after I leave him," she confessed, "a profound and
searching melancholy gets hold of me, poignant as death, yet an
extraordinary unrealized beauty behind it somewhere. It steals into my
very blood and bones. I feel an intense dissatisfaction with the world,
with people as they are, and a burning scorn for all that is small,
unworthy, petty, mean--and yet a hopelessness of ever attaining to that
something which _he_ knows and lives so easily." She sighed, gazing
into his eyes a moment. "Or of ever making others see it," she added.
"And that 'something,'" he asked, "can you define it?"
She shook her head. "It's in me, within reach even, but--the word he
used is the only one--forgotten."
"Perhaps--has it ever occurred to you?--that he simply cannot describe
it. There are no words, no means at his disposal--no human terms?"
"Perhaps," she murmured.
"Desirable, though?" he urged her gently.
She clasped her hands, smiling. "Heavenly," she murmured, closing her
eyes a moment as though to try and recall it. "Yet when I'm with him,"
she went on, "he never _quite_ realizes for me the state of wonder and
delight his presence promises. His personality suggests rather than
fulfils." She paused, a wistful, pained expression in her dark eyes.
"The failure," she added quickly, lest she seem to belittle him of
whom she spoke, "of course lies in myself. I refuse, you see--I can't
say why, though I feel it's wise--to let myself be dominated by that
strange, lost part of me he stimulates."
"True," interposed Dr. Fillery. "I understand. Yet to have felt this
even is a sign----"
"That he stirs the deepest, highest in me? This hint of divine beauty
in the unrealized under-self?"
He nodded. There was an odd touch of sadness in their talk. "I've
watched him with many types of people," he went on thoughtfully,
almost as though thinking aloud in his rapid way, "I've talked with him
on many subjects. The meanness, jealousy, insignificance of the Race
shocks and amazes him. He cannot understand it. He asked me once 'But
is no one _born_ noble? To be splendid is such an effort with them!'
Splendour of conduct, he noticed, is a calculated, rarely a spontaneous
splendour. The general resistance to new ideas also puzzles him. 'They
fear a rhythm they have never felt before,' as he put it. 'To adopt
a new rhythm, they think, must somehow injure them.' That the Race
respects a man because he possesses much equally bewilders him. 'No
one serves willingly or naturally,' he observed, 'or unless someone
else receives money for drawing attention loudly to it.' Any notion
of reward, of advertisement, in its widest meaning, is foreign to his
nature."
He broke off. Another pause fell between them, the girl the first to
break it:
"He suffers," she said in a low voice. "Here--he suffers," and her
face yearned with the love and help she longed to pour out beyond all
thought of self or compensation, and at the same time with the pain of
its inevitable frustration; and, watching her, Dr. Fillery understood
that this very yearning was another proof of the curious impetus, the
intensification of being, that "N. H." caused in everyone. Yet he
winced, as though anticipating the question she at once then put to him:
"You are afraid for him, Edward?" her eyes calmly, searchingly on his.
"His future troubles you?"
He turned to her with abrupt intensity. "If _you_, Iraida, could not
enchain him----" He broke off. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I have no power," she confessed. "An insatiable longing burns like a
fire in him. Nothing he finds here on earth, among men and women, can
satisfy it." A faint blush stole up her neck and touched her cheeks.
"He is different. _I_ have no power to keep him here." Her voice sank
suddenly to a whisper, as though a breath of awe passed into her. "He
is here now at this very moment, I believe. He is with us as we talk
together. I feel him." Almost a visible thrill passed through her. "And
close, so very close--to _you_."
Dr. Fillery made no sign by word or gesture, but something in his very
silence gave assent.
"And not alone," she added, still under her breath. It seemed she
looked about her, though she did not actually move or turn her head.
"Others--of his kind, Edward--come with him. They are always with
him--I think sometimes." Her whisper was fainter still.
"You feel that too!" He said it abruptly, his voice louder and almost
challenging. Then he added incongruously, as though saying it to
himself this time, "That's what I mean. I've known it for a long
time----"
He looked at the girl sharply with unconcealed admiration. "It does not
frighten you?" he asked, and in reply she said the very thing he felt
sure she would say, hoping for it even while he shrank:
"Escape," he heard in a low, clear voice, half a question, half an
exclamation, and saw the blood leave her face.
The instinctive "Hush!" that rose to his lips he did not utter. The
sense of loss, of searching pain, the word implied he did not show.
Instead, he spoke in his natural, everyday tone again:
"The body irks him, of course, and he may try to rid himself of it. Its
limitations to him are a prison, for his true consciousness he finds
outside it. The explanation," he added to himself, "of many a case of
suicidal mania probably. I've often wondered----"
He took her hand, aware by the pallor of her face what her feelings
were. "Death, you see, Nayan, has no meaning for him, as it has for us
who think consciousness out of the body impossible, and he is puzzled
by our dread of it. 'We,' he said once, 'have nothing that decays. We
may be stationary, or advance, or retreat, but we can never end.' He
derives--oh, I'm convinced of it--from another order. Here--amongst
us--he is inarticulate, unable to express himself, hopeless, helpless,
in prison. Oh, if only----"
"He loves _you_," she said quickly, releasing her hand. "I suppose he
realizes the eternal part of you and identifies himself with that. In
you, Edward, lies something very close to what he is, akin--he needs it
terribly, just as you----" She became confused.
"Love, as we understand it," he interrupted, his voice shaking a
little, "he does not, cannot know, for he serves another law, another
order of being."
"That's how I feel it too."
She shivered slightly, but she did not turn away, and her eyes kept all
their frankness.
"Our humanity," she murmured, "writes upon his heart in ink that
quickly fades----"
"And leaves no trace," he caught her up hurriedly. "His one idea is
to help, to render service. It is as natural to him as for water to
run down hill. He seeks instinctively to become one with the person
he seeks to aid. As with us an embrace is an attempt at union,
so he seeks, by some law of his own being, to become identified
with those whom he would help. And he helps by intensifying their
consciousness--somewhat as heat and air increase ordinary physical
vitality. Only, first there must be something for him to work on.
Energy, even bad, vicious, wrongly used, he can work on. Mere emptiness
prevents him. You remember Lady Gleeson----"
"We--most of us--are too empty," she put in with quiet resignation.
"Our sense of that divine beauty is too faint----"
"Rather," came the quick correction, "he stands too close to us. His
effect is too concentrated. The power at such close quarters disturbs
and overbalances."
"That's why, then, I always feel it strongest when he's left."
He glanced at her keenly.
"In his presence," she explained, "it's always as though I saw only a
part of him, even of his physical appearance, out of the corner of my
eye, as it were, and sometimes----" She hesitated. He did not help her
this time. "As if those others, many others, similar to himself, but
invisible, crowding space about us, were intensely active." Her voice
hushed again. "He brings them with him--as now. I feel it, Edward, now.
I feel them close." She looked round the empty room, peering through
the window into the quiet evening sky. Dr. Fillery also turned away.
He sighed again. "Have you noticed, too," he went on presently, yet
half as if following his own thoughts, and a trifle incongruously, "the
speed and lightness his very movements convey, and how he goes down the
street with that curious air of drawing things after him, along with
him, as trains and motors draw the loose leaves and dust----"
"Whirling," her quick whisper startled him a little, as she turned
abruptly from the window and gazed straight at him. He smiled,
instantly recovering himself. "A good word, yes--whirling--but in the
plural. As though there were vortices about him."
It was her turn to smile. "That might one day carry him away," she
exclaimed. They smiled together then, they even laughed, but somewhere
in their laughter, like the lengthening shadows of the spring day
outside, lay an incommunicable sadness neither of them could wholly
understand.
"Yet the craving for beauty," she said suddenly, "that he leaves behind
in me"--her voice wavered--"an intolerable yearning that nothing can
satisfy--nothing--here. An infinite desire, it seems, for--for----"
Dr. Fillery took her hand again gently, looking down steadily into
the clear eyes that sought his own, and the light glistening in their
moisture was similar, he fancied for a moment, to the fire in another
pair of shining eyes that never failed to stir the unearthly dreams in
him.
"It lies beyond any words of ours," he said softly. "Don't struggle
to express it, Iraida. To the flower, the star, we are wise to leave
their own expression in their own particular field, for we cannot
better it."
A sound of rising wind, distant yet ominous, went past the window,
as for a moment then the girl came closer till she was almost in his
arms, and though he did not accept her, equally he did not shrink from
the idea of acceptance--for the first time since they had known one
another. There was a smell of flowers; almost in that wailing wind he
was aware of music.
"Together," he heard her whisper, while a faint shiver--was it of
joy or terror?--ran through her nerves. "All of us--when the time
comes--together." She made an abrupt movement. "Just as we are together
now! Listen!" she exclaimed.
"We call it wind," she whispered. "But of course--really--it's
behind--beyond--inside--isn't it?"
Dr. Fillery, holding her closely, made no answer. Then he laughed,
let go her hands, and said in his natural tone again, breaking an
undesirable spell intentionally, though with a strong effort: "We are
in space and time, remember. Iraida. Let us obey them happily until
another certain and practical thing is shown us."
The faint sound that had been rising about them in the air died down
again.
They looked into each other's eyes, then drew apart, though with a
movement so slight it was scarcely perceptible. It was Nayan and Dr.
Fillery once more, but not before the former had apparently picked out
the very thought that had lain, though unexpressed, in the latter's
deepest mind--its sudden rising the cause of his deliberate change of
attitude. For she had phrased it, given expression to it, though from
an angle very different to his own. And her own word, "escape," used
earlier in the conversation, had deliberately linked on with it, as of
intentional purpose.
"He must go back. The time is coming when he must go back. We are not
ready for him here--not yet."
Somewhat in this fashion, though without any actual words, had the
idea appeared in letters of fire that leaped and flickered through
a mist of anguish, of loss, of loneliness, rising out of the depths
within him. He knew whence they came, he divined their origin at once,
and the sound, though faint and distant at first, confirmed him.
Swiftly behind them, moreover, born of no discoverable antecedents, it
seemed, rose simultaneously the phrase that Father Collins loved: "A
Being in his own place is the ruler of his fate." Father Collins, for
all his faults and strangeness, was a personality, a consciousness,
that might prove of value. His extraordinarily swift receptiveness,
his undoubted telepathic powers, his fluid, sensitive, protean
comprehension of possibilities outside the human walls, above the
earthly ceiling, so to speak.... Value suddenly attached itself to
Father Collins, as though the name had been dropped purposely into his
mind by someone. He was surprised to find this thought in him. It was
not for the first time, however, Dr. Fillery remembered.
* * * * *
In Nayan's father, again, an artist, though not a particularly
subtle one perhaps, lay a deep admiration, almost a love, he could
not explain. "There's something about him in a sense immeasurable,
something not only untamed but untamable," he phrased it. "His
gentleness conceals it as a summer's day conceals a thunderstorm. To
me it's almost like an incarnation of the primal forces at work in the
hearts of my own people"--he grew sad--"and as dangerous probably."
He was speaking to his daughter, who repeated the words later to Dr.
Fillery. The study of Fire in the elemental group had failed. "He's
too big, too vast, too formless, to get into any shape or outline _my_
tools can manage, even by suggestion. He dominates the others--Earth,
Air, Water--and dwarfs them."
"But fire ought to," she put in. "It's the most powerful and splendid,
the most terrific of them all. Isn't it? It regenerates. It purifies. I
love fire----"
Her father smiled in his beard, noticing the softness in her manner,
rather than in her voice. The awakening in her he had long since
understood sympathetically, if more profoundly than she knew, and
welcomed.
"He won't hurt you, child. He won't harm Nayushka any more than a
summer's day can hurt her. I see him thus sometimes," he mumbled on
half to himself, though she heard and stored the words in her memory;
"as an entire day, a landscape even, I often see him. A stretch of
being rather than a point; a rushing stream rather than a single
isolated wave harnessed and confined in definite form--as _we_
understand being here," he added curiously. "No, he'll neither harm nor
help you," he went on; "nor any of us for that matter. A dozen nations,
a planet, a star he might help or harm"--he laughed aloud suddenly in
a startled way at his own language--"but an individual never!" And he
abruptly took her in his arms and kissed her, drying her tears with his
own rough handkerchief. "Not even a fire-worshipper," he added with
gruff tenderness, "like you!"
"There's more of divinity in fire than in any other earthly thing
we know," she replied as he held her, "for it takes into itself the
sweetest essence of all it touches." She looked up at him with a smile.
"That's why you can't get it into your marble perhaps." To which her
father made the significant rejoinder: "And because none of us has the
least conception what 'divine' and 'divinity' really mean, though we're
always using the words! It's odd, anyhow," he finished reflectively,
"that I can model the fellow better from memory than when he's standing
there before my eyes. At close quarters he confuses me with too many
terrific unanswerable questions."
To multiply the verdicts and impressions Fillery jotted down is
unnecessary. In his own way he collected; in his own way he wrote them
down. About "N. H.," all agreed in their various ways of expressing it,
was that vital suggestion of agelessness, of deathlessness, of what men
call eternal youth: the vigorous grace of limbs and movements, the
deep simple joy of confidence and power. None could picture him tired,
or even wearing out, yet ever with a faint hint of painful conflict due
to immense potentialities--"a day compressed into a single minute,"
as Khilkoff phrased it--straining, but vainly, to express themselves
through a limited form that was inadequate to their use. A storm of
passionate hope and wonder seemed ever ready to tear forth from behind
the calm of the great quiet eyes, those green-blue changing eyes,
which none could imagine lightless or unlamping; and about his whole
presentment a surplus of easy, overflowing energy from an inexhaustible
source pressing its gifts down into him spontaneously, fire and wind
its messengers; yet that the human machinery using these--mind, body,
nerves--was ill adapted to their full expression. To every individual
having to do with him was given a push, a drive, an impetus that
stimulated that individual's chief characteristic, intensifying it.
This to imaginative and discerning sight. But even upon ordinary folk,
aware only of the surface things that deliberately hit them, was left
a startling impression as of someone waving a strange, unaccustomed
banner that made them halt and stare before passing on--uncomfortably.
He had that nameless quality, apart from looks or voice or manner,
which arrested attention and drew the eyes of the soul, wonderingly,
perhaps uneasily, upon itself. He left a mark. Something defined him
from all others, leaving him silhouetted in the mind, and those who
had looked into his eyes could not forget that they had done so. Up
rose at once the great unanswerable questions that, lying ever at
the back of daily life, the majority find it most comfortable to
leave undisturbed--but rose in red ink or italics. He started into an
awareness of greater life. And the effect remained, was greatest even,
after he had passed on.
* * * * *
It was, of course, Father Collins, a frequent caller now at the Home,
betraying his vehement interest in long talks with Dr. Fillery and in
what interviews with "N. H." the latter permitted him--it was this
protean being whose mind, amid wildest speculations, formed the most
positive conclusions. The Prometheans, he believed, were not far wrong
in their instinctive collective judgment. "N. H." was not a human
being; the occupant of that magnificent body was not a human spirit
like the rest of us.
"Nor is he the only one walking the streets to-day," he affirmed
mysteriously. "In shops and theatres, trains and buses, tucked in
among the best families," he laughed, although in earnest, "and even
in suburbia I have come across other human bodies similarly inhabited.
What they are and where they come from exactly, we cannot know, but
their presence among us is indubitable."
"You mean you recognize them?" inquired Dr. Fillery calmly.
"One unmistakable sign they possess in common--they are invariably
inarticulate, helpless, lost. The brain, the five senses, the human
organs--all they have to work through--are useless to express the
knowledge and powers natural to them. Electricity might as well try to
manifest itself through a gas-pipe, or music through a stone. One and
all, too, possess strange glimmerings of another state where they are
happy and at home, something of the glory à la Wordsworth, a Golden
Age idea almost, a state compared to which humanity seems a tin-pot
business, yet a state of which no single descriptive terms occur to
them."
"Of which, however, they can tell us nothing?"
"Memory, of course, is lost. Their present brain can have no records,
can it? Only those of us who have perhaps at some time, in some earlier
existence possibly, shared such a state can have any idea of what
they're driving at."
He glanced at Fillery with a significant raising of his bushy eyebrows.
"There have been no phenomena, I'm glad to say," put in the doctor,
aware some comment was due from him, "no physical phenomena, I mean."
"Nor could there be," pursued the other, delighted. "He has not got the
apparatus. With all such beings, their power, rather than perceived, is
_felt_. Sex, as with us, they also cannot know, for they are neither
male nor female." He paused, as the other did not help him. "Enigmas
they must always be to us. We may borrow from the East and call them
_devas_, or class them among nature spirits of legend and the rest, but
we can, at any rate, welcome them, and perhaps even learn from them."
"Learn from them?" echoed Fillery sharply.
"They are essentially _natural_, you see, whereas we are artificial,
and becoming more so with every century, though we call it
civilization. If we lived closer to nature we might get better results,
I mean. Primitive man, I'm convinced, did get certain results, but he
was a poor instrument. Modern man, in some ways, is a better, finer
instrument to work through, only he is blind to the existence of any
beings but himself. A bridge, however, might be built, I feel. 'N. H.'
seems to me in close touch with these curious beings, if"--he lowered
his voice--"he is not actually one of them. The wind and fire he talks
about are, of course, not what _we_ mean. It is heat and rhythm, in
some more essential form, he refers to. If 'N. H.' is some sort of
nature spirit, or nature-being, he is of a humble type, concerned with
humble duties in the universe----"
"There are, you think, then, higher, bigger kinds?" inquired the
listener, his face and manner showing neither approval nor disapproval.
Father Collins raised his hands and face and shoulders, even his
eyebrows. His spirits rose as well.
"If they exist at all--and the assumption explains plausibly the
amazing intelligence behind all natural phenomena--they include
every grade, of course, from the insignificant fairies, so called,
builders of simple forms, to the immense planetary spirits and
vast Intelligences who guide and guard the welfare of the greater
happenings." His eyes shone, his tone matched in enthusiasm his
gestures. "A stupendous and magnificent hierarchy," he cried, "but
all, all under God, of course, who maketh his angels spirits and his
ministers a flaming fire. Ah, think of it," he went on, becoming
lyrical almost as wonder fired him, "think of it now especially in the
spring! The vast abundance and insurgence of life pouring up on all
sides into forms and bodies, and all led, directed, fashioned by this
host of invisible, yet not unknowable, Intelligences! Think of the
prolific architecture, the delicacy, the grandeur, the inspiring beauty
that are involved...!"
"You said just now a bridge might be built," Dr. Fillery interrupted,
while the other paused a second for breath.
Father Collins, nailed down to a positive statement, hesitated and
looked about him. But the hesitation passed at once.
"It is the question merely," he went on more composedly, "of providing
the apparatus, the means of manifestation, the instrument, the--body.
Isn't it? Our evolution and theirs are two separate--different things."
"I suppose so. No force can express itself without a proper apparatus."
"Certain of these Intelligences are so immense that only a series of
events, long centuries, a period of history, as we call it, can provide
the means, the body indeed, through which they can express themselves.
An entire civilization may be the 'body' used by an archetypal power.
Others, again--like 'N. H.' probably--since I notice that it is usually
the artist, the artistic temperament _he_ affects most--require beauty
for their expression--beauty of form and outline, of sound, of colour."
He paused for effect, but no comment came.
"Our response to beauty, our thrill, our lift of delight and wonder
before any manifestation of beauty--these are due only to our
perception, though usually unrecognized except by artists, of the
particular Intelligence thus trying to express itself----"
Dr. Fillery suddenly leaned forward, listening with a new expression
on his face. He betrayed, however, no sign of what he thought of his
voluble visitor. An idea, none the less, had struck him like a flash
between the eyes of the mind.
"You mean," he interposed patiently, "that just as your fairies use
form and colour to express themselves in nature, we might use beauty of
a mental order to--to----"
"To build a body of expression, yes, an instrument in a collective
sense, through which 'N. H.' might express whatever of knowledge,
wisdom and power he has----"
"Will you explain yourself a little more definitely?"
Father Collins beamed. He continued with an air of intense conviction:
"The Artist is ever an instrument merely, and for the most part an
unconscious one; only the greatest artist is a conscious instrument. No
man is an artist at all until he transcends both nature and himself;
that is, until he interprets both nature and himself in the unknown
terms of that greater Power whence himself and nature emanate. He is
aware of the majestic source, aware that the universe, in bulk and in
detail, is an expression of it, itself a limited instrument; but aware,
further--and here he proves himself great artist--of the stupendous,
lovely, central Power whose message stammers, broken and partial,
through the inadequate instruments of ephemeral appearances.
"He creates, using beauty in form, sound, colour, a better and more
perfect instrument, provides this central Power with a means of fuller
expression.
"The message no longer stammers, halts, suggests; it flows, it pours,
it sings. He has fashioned a vehicle for its passage. His art has
created a body it can use. He has transcended both nature and himself.
The picture, poem, harmony that has become the body for this revelation
is alone great art."
"Exactly," came the patient comment that was asked for.
"One thing is certain: only human knowledge, expressed in human terms,
can come through a human brain. No mind, no intellect, can convey a
message that transcends human experience and reason. Art, however, can.
It can supply the vehicle, the body. But, even here, the great artist
cannot communicate the secret of his Vision; he cannot talk about it,
tell it to others. He can only _show_ the result."
"Results," interrupted Dr. Fillery in a curious tone; "what results,
exactly, would you look for?" There was a burning in his eyes. His skin
was tingling.
"What else but a widening, deepening, heightening of our present
consciousness," came the instant reply. "An extension of faculty, of
course, making entirely new knowledge available. A group of great
artists, each contributing his special vision, respectively, of form,
colour, words, proportion, could together create a 'body' to express a
Power transcending the accumulated wisdom of the world. The race could
be uplifted, taught, redeemed."
"You have already given some attention to this strange idea?" suggested
his listener, watching closely the working of the other's face. "You
have perhaps even experimented---- A ceremonial of some sort, you mean?
A performance, a ritual--or what?"
Father Collins lowered his voice, becoming more earnest, more
impressive:
"Beauty, the arts," he whispered, "can alone provide a vehicle for
the expression of those Intelligences which are the cosmic powers.
A performance of some sort--possibly--since there must be sound and
movement. A bridge between us, between our evolution and their own,
might, I believe, be thus constructed. Art is only great when it
provides a true form for the expression of an eternal cosmic power. By
combining--we might provide a means for their manifestation----"
"A body of thought, as it were, through which our 'N. H.' might become
articulate? Is that your idea?"
Behind the question lay something new, it seemed, as though, while
listening to the exposition of an odd mystical conception, his mind
had been busy with a preoccupation, privately but simultaneously, of
his own. "In what way precisely do you suggest the arts might combine
to provide this 'body'?" he asked, a faint tremor noticeable in the
lowered voice.
"That," replied Father Collins promptly, never at a loss, "we should
have to think about. Inspiration will come to us--probably through
_him_. Ceremonial, of course, has always been an attempt in this
direction, only it has left the world so long that people no longer
know how to construct a real one. The ceremonials of to-day are ugly,
vulgar, false. The words, music, colour, gestures--everything must
combine in perfect harmony and proportion to be efficacious. It is a
forgotten method."
"And results--how would they come?"
"The new wisdom and knowledge that result are suddenly there _in_ the
members of the group. The Power has expressed itself. Not through the
brain, of course, but, rather, that the new ideas, having been _acted_
out, are suddenly there. There has been an extension of consciousness.
A group consciousness has been formed, and----"
"And there you are!" Dr. Fillery, moving his foot unperceived, had
touched a bell beneath the table. The foot, however, groped and
fumbled, as though unsure of itself.
"You learn to swim--by swimming, not by talking about it." Father
Collins was prepared to talk on for another hour. "If we can devise the
means--and I feel sure we can--we shall have formed a bridge between
the two evolutions----"
Nurse Robbins entered with apologies. A case upstairs demanded the
doctor's instant attendance. Dr. Devonham was engaged.
"One thing," insisted Father Collins, as they shook hands and he got up
to go, "one thing only you would have to fear." He was very earnest.
Evidently the signs of struggle, of fierce conflict in the other's
face he did not notice.
"And that is?" A hand was on the door.
"If successful--if we provide this means of expression for him--we
provide also the means of losing him."
"Death?" He opened the door with rough, unnecessary violence.
"Escape. He would no longer need the body he now uses. He would
_remember_--and be gone. In his place you would have--LeVallon again
only. I'm afraid," he added, "that he already _is_ remembering----!"
His final words, as Nurse Robbins deftly hastened his departure in
the hall, were a promise to communicate the results of his further
reflections, and a suggestion that his cottage by the river would be a
quiet spot in which to talk the matter over again.
But Dr. Fillery, having thanked Nurse Robbins for her prompt attendance
to his bell, returned to the room and sat for some time in a strange
confusion of anxious thoughts. A singular idea took shape in him--that
Father Collins had again robbed his mind of its unspoken content. That
sensitive receptive nature had first perceived, then given form to the
vague, incoherent dreams that lurked in the innermost recesses of his
hidden self.
Yet, if that were so----and if "N. H." already was "remembering"----!
A wave of shadow crept upon him, darkening his hope, his enthusiasm,
his very life. For another part of him knew quite well the value to be
attributed to what Father Collins had said.
Instinctively his mind sought for Devonham. But it did not occur to him
at the moment to wonder why this was so.