To Edward Fillery, the deep pain of frustration baffling all his mental
processes, the end had come with a strange, bewildering swiftness. He
knew there had been a prolonged dislocation of his being, possibly,
even a partial loss of memory with regard to much that went on about
him, but he could not, did not, admit that no value or reality had
attached to his experiences. The central self in him had projected a
limb, an arm, that, feeling its way across the confining wall of the
prison house, groping towards an unbelievably wonderful revelation of
new possibilities, had abruptly now withdrawn again. The dissociation
in his personality was over. He was, in other words, no longer aware
of "N. H." Like Devonham, he now did not "perceive" "N. H.," but only
LeVallon. But, unlike Devonham, he _had_ perceived him....
He had met half-way a mighty and magnificent Vision. Its truth and
beauty remained for him enduring. The revelation had come and gone.
That its close was sudden, simple, undramatic, above all untheatrical,
satisfied him. "N. H." had "escaped," leaving the commonplace
LeVallon in his place. But, at least, he had known "N. H."
His whole being, an odd, sweet, happy pain in him, yearned ever to
the glorious memory of it all. The melancholy, the peculiar shyness
he felt, were not without an indefinite pleasure. His nature still
vibrated to those haunting and inspiring rhythms, but his normal,
earthly faculties, he flattered himself, were in no sense permanently
disorganized. Professionally, he still cared for LeVallon, disenchanted
dust though he might be, compared to "N. H." ... He approved of
Devonham's proposal to take him for a few days to the sea. He also
approved of Paul's advice that he should accept Father Collins'
invitation to spend a day or two at his country cottage. The Khilkoffs
would be there, father and daughter. The Home, in charge of an
assistant, could be reached in a few hours in case of need. The magic
of Devonham's wise, controlling touch lay in every detail, it seemed....
He saw the trio--for Nurse Robbins was of the party--off to Seaford.
"The final touches to his cure," Paul mentioned slyly, with a smile, as
the guard whistled. But of whose cure he did not explain. "He'll bathe
in the sea," he added, the reference obvious this time. "And--when
we return--I shall be best man. I've already promised!" There was a
triumph of skilled wisdom in both sentences.
"The time isn't ripe yet, Edward, for too magnificent ideas. And
your ideas have been a shade too magnificent, perhaps." He talked on
lightly, even carelessly. And, as usual, there was purpose, meaning,
"treatment"--his friend easily discerned it now--in every detail of his
attitude.
Fillery laughed. Through his mind ran Povey's sentence, "Never argue
with the once-born!" but aloud he said, "At any rate, I've no idea that
I'm Emperor of Japan or--or the Archangel Gabriel!" And the other,
pleased and satisfied that a touch of humour showed itself, shook hands
firmly, affectionately, through the window as the train moved off.
LeVallon raised his hat to his chief and smiled--an ordinary smile....
* * * * *
With the speed and incongruity of a dream these few days slipped by,
their happenings vivid enough, yet all set to a curiously small scale,
a cramped perspective, blurred a little as by a fading light. Only
one thing retained its brilliance, its intense reality, its place in
the bigger scale, its vast perspective remaining unchanged. The same
immense sweet rhythm swept Iraida and himself inevitably together. Some
deep obsession that hitherto prevented had been withdrawn.
She had called that very morning--Paul's touch visible here again, he
believed, though he had not asked. He looked on and smiled. After the
ordeal of breakfast with Devonham and LeVallon her visit was announced.
It was Paul, after a little talk downstairs, who showed her in. With
the radiance of a spring wild-flower opening to the early sunshine,
her unexpected visit to his study seemed clothed. Unexpected, yes, but
surely inevitable as well. With the sweet morning wind through the
open window, it seemed, she came to him, the letter of invitation from
Father Collins in her hand. His own lay among his correspondence, still
untouched. Her perfume rose about him as she explained something he
hardly heard or followed.
"You'll come, Edward, won't you? You'll come too."
"Of course," he answered. But it was a song he heard, and no dull
spoken words. She ran dancing towards him through a million flowers;
her hair flew loose along the scented winds; her white limbs glowed
with fire. He danced to meet her. It was in the Valley that he caught
her hands and met her eyes. "It's happened," he heard himself saying.
"It's happened at last--just as you said it must. _Escape!_ He has
escaped!"
"But we shall follow after--when the time comes, Edward."
"Where the wild bee never flew!"...
"When the time comes," she repeated.
Her voice, her smile, her eyes brought him back sharply into the little
room. The furniture showed up again. The Valley faded. He noticed
suddenly that for the first time she wore no flowers in her dress as
usual.
"Iraida!" he exclaimed. "Then--you knew!"
She bent her head, smiling divinely. She took both his hands in hers.
At her touch every obstacle between them melted. His own private,
personal inhibition he saw as the trivial barriers a little child
might raise. His complex against humanity, as Paul called it, had
disappeared. Their minds, their beings, their natures became most
strangely one, he felt, and yet quite naturally. There was nothing
they did not share.
"With the first dawn," he heard her say in a low voice. "Never--never
again," he seemed to hear, "shall we destroy his--their--work of ages."
"A flower," he whispered, "has no need to wear a flower!" He was
convinced that she too had shared an experience similar to his own,
perhaps had even seen the bright, marvellous Deva faces peering,
shining.... He did not ask. She said no more. Life flowed between them
in an untroubled stream....
* * * * *
Like the flow of a stream, indeed, things went past him, yet with
incidents and bits of conversation thus picked out with vivid
sharpness. The dissociation of his being was still noticeable here and
there, he supposed. The swell after the storm took time to settle down.
Slowly, however, the waves that had been projected, leaping to heaven,
returned to the safe, quiet dead level of the normal calm.... The
depths lay still once more. And his melancholy passed a little, lifted.
He knew, at any rate, those depths were now accessible.
"I've seen over the wall a moment," he said to himself. "Paul is both
right and wrong. What I've seen lies too far ahead of the Race to be
intelligible or of use. I should be cast out, crucified, my other,
simpler work destroyed. To control rhythms so powerful, so different to
anything we now know, is not yet possible. They would shatter, rather
than construct." He smiled sadly, yet with resignation. There was pain
and humour in his eyes. "I should be regarded as a Promethean merely,
an extremist Promethean, and probably be locked up for contravening
some County Council bye-law or offending Church and State. That's
where he, perhaps, is right--Paul!" He thought of him with affection
and pity, with understanding love. "How wise and faithful, how patient
and how skilled--within his limits. The stable are the useful; the
stable are the leaders; the stable rule the world. People with steady
if unvisioned eyes like Paul, with money like Lady Gleeson.... But,
oh!"--he sighed--"how slow, ye gods! how slow!" ...
* * * * *
The visit was a strange one. Nayan sat between him and her father in
the motor. It was not far from London, the ancient little house among
the trees where Father Collins secreted himself from time to time upon
occasional "retreats."
Within the grounds it might have been the centre of the New Forest,
but for the sound of tramcar bells that sometimes came jangling
faintly through the thick screen of leaves. There were old-world paved
courtyards with sweet playing fountains, miniature lawns, tangles of
flowers, small sunken gardens with birds of cut box and yew, stone
nymphs, and a shaggy, moss-grown Pan, whose hand that once held the
pipes had broken off. Suburbia lay outside, yet, by walking wisely, it
was possible to move among these delights for half an hour, great trees
ever rustling overhead, and a clear small stream winding peacefully in
and out with gentle lapping murmurs. Nature here lay undisturbed as it
had lain for centuries.
The little ancient house, moreover, seemed to have grown up with the
green things out of the soil, so naturally, it all belonged together.
The garden ran indoors, it seemed, through open doors and windows.
Butterflies floated from courtyard into drawing-room and out again,
leaves blew through dining-room windows, scurrying to another little
bit of lawn; the sun and wind, even the fountains' spray, found the
walls no obstacle as though unaware of them. Bees murmured, swallows
hung below the eaves. It was, indeed, a healing spot, a natural
retreat....
"I really believe the river rises in your library," exclaimed Fillery,
after a tour of inspection with his host, "and my bedroom is in the
heart of that big chestnut across the lawn. Do my feet touch carpet,
grass, or bark when I get out of bed in the morning?"
"I've learnt more here," began Father Collins, "than at all the
conferences and learned meetings I ever attended...."
The group of four stood in the twilight by the playing fountain where
the dignified stone Pan watched the paved little court, listening to
the splash of the water and the wind droning among the leaves. The lap
of the winding stream came faintly to them. The stillness cast a spell
about them, dropping a screen against the outer world.
"Hark!" said Father Collins, holding a curved hand to his ear. "You
hear the music...?"
"'Why, in the leafy greenwood lone
Sit you, rustic Pan, and drone
On a dulcet resonant reed?'"
He paused, peering across to the stone figure as for an answer. All
stood listening, waiting, only wind and water breaking the silence.
The bats were now flitting; overhead hung the saffron arch of fading
sunset. In a deep ringing voice, very gruff and very low, Father
Collins gave the answer:
"'So that yonder cows may feed
Up the dewy mountain passes,
Gathering the feathered grasses.'
"That's Pan's work," he said, laughing pleasantly, "Pan and all his
splendid hierarchy. Always at work, though invisibly, with music,
colour, beauty!..."
It was scraps like this that stood out in Fillery's memory, adding to
his conviction that Paul had enlisted even this strange priest in his
deep-laid plan....
"Each man is saturated with certain ideas, thoughts, phrases in a
line of his own. These constitute his groove. To go outside it makes
him feel homeless and uncomfortable. Accustomed to its measurements
and safe within them, he interprets all he hears, reads, observes,
according to his particular familiar shibboleths, to which, as to
a standard of infallible criticism, he brings slavishly all that
is offered for the consideration of his judgment. A new Idea stands
little chance of being comprehended, much less adopted. Tell him new
things about the stars, the Stock Exchange, the Stigmata--up crops
his Standard of approval or disapproval. He cannot help himself. His
judgment, based upon the limited content of his groove, operates
automatically. He condemns. An entirely new idea is barely glanced at
before it is rejected for the rubbish heap. How, then, can progress
come swiftly to a Race composed of such individuals? Mass-judgment,
herd-opinion governs everything. He who has original ideas is outcast,
and dwells lonely as the moon. How slow, ye Gods! How slow!" ...
Only Fillery could not remember, could not be certain, whether it was
his host or himself that used the words. Father Collins, as usual,
was saying "all sorts of things," but addressed himself surely, to
old Khilkoff most of the time, the Russian, half angry, half amused,
growling out his comments and replies as he sat smoking heavily and
enjoying the peaceful night scene in his own fashion....
It was odd, none the less, how much that the wild priest gabbled
coincided with his own, with Fillery's, thoughts at the moment. A
peculiar melancholy, a mood of shyness never known before, lay still
upon him. The beauty of the silent girl beside him overpowered him
a little; too wonderful to hold, to own, she seemed. Yet they were
deliciously, uncannily akin. All his former self-created denials and
suppressions, hesitations and refusals had vanished. "N. H."--He
wondered?--had provided him with the fullest expression he had ever
known. A boundless relief poured over him. He was aware of wholesome
desire rising behind his old high admiration and respect....
He watched her once standing close to Pan's broken outline among the
shadows, touching the mossy arm with white fingers, and he imagined for
an instant that she held the vanished pipes.
"After an experience with Other Beings," Father Collins's endless drone
floated to him, "shyness, they say, is felt. Silence descends upon the
whole nature" ... to which, a little later, came the growling comment
with its foreign accent: "Talk may be pleasurable--sometimes--but it is
profitable rarely...."
The talk flowed past and over him, occasional phrases, like islands
rising out of a stream, inviting his attention momentarily to land and
listen.... The girl, he now saw, no longer stood beside the broken
stone figure. She was wandering idly towards the farther garden and the
trees.
He burned to rise and go to her, but something held him. What was it?
What could it be? Some strange hard little obstacle prevented. Then,
suddenly, he knew what it was that stopped him: he was waiting for that
familiar pet sentence. Once he heard that, the impetus to move, the
power to overcome his strange shyness, the certainty that his whole
being was at last one with itself again, would come to him. It made him
laugh inwardly while he recognized the validity of the detail--final
symptoms of the obstructing inhibitions, of the obstinate original
complex.
The outline of the girl was lost now, merged in the shadows beyond.
He stirred, but could not get up to go. A fury of impatience burned
in him. Father Collins, he felt, dawdled outrageously. He was
talking--jawing, Fillery called it--about extraordinary experiences.
"Gradually, as consciousness more and more often extends, the organs
to record such extensions will be formed, you see.... If our inventive
faculties were turned inwards, instead of outwards for gain and comfort
as they now are, we might know the gods...."
The sculptor's growl, though the words were this time inaudible, had a
bite in them. The other voice poured on like thick, slow oil:
"What, anyhow, is it, then, that urges us on in spite of all obstacles,
denials, failures...?"
Then came something that seemed leading up to the pet sentence that
was the signal he waited for--nearer to it, at any rate:
"... It's childish, surely, to go on merely seeking more of what we
have already. We should seek something new...."
A call, it seemed, came to him on the wind from the dark trees. But
still he could not move.
But, at last, out of a prolonged jumble of the two voices, one
growling, the other high pitched, came the signal he somehow waited
for. Even now, however, the speaker delayed it as long as possible. He
was doing it, of course, on purpose. This was intentional, obviously.
"... Yes, but a thing out of its right place is without power,
life, means of expression--robbed of its context which alone gives
it meaning--robbed, so to speak, of its arms and legs--_without a
body_...."
There, at least, was the definite proof that Father Collins was doing
this of deliberate, set purpose!
"Go on! Yes, but, for God's sake, say it! I want to be off!" Fillery
believed he shrieked the words, but apparently they were inaudible.
They remained unnoticed, at any rate.
"... Hence the value of order, tidiness, you see. Often a misplaced
thing is invisible until replaced where it belongs. It is, as we say,
lost. No movement is meaningless, no walk without purpose. All your
movements tend towards your proper place...."
A breeze blew the fountain spray aside so that its splashing ceased for
a brief second. From the rustling leaves beyond came a faint murmur
as of distant piping. But--into the second's pause had leaped the pet
sentence:
"Only a being in his _own_ place is the ruler of his fate."
The signal! He was aware that the Russian cleared his throat and
spat unmusically, aware also that Father Collins, a queer smile just
discernible on his face in the gloom, turned his head with a gesture
that might well have been an understanding nod. Both sound and gesture,
however, were already behind him. He was released. He was across the
paved courtyard, past the fountain, past the stone figure of the silent
old rough god--and off!
And as he went, finding his way instinctively among the dark trees,
that pet sentence went with him like a clarion call, as though sweet
piping music played it everywhere about him. A thousand memories shut
down with a final snap. In the stage of his mind came a black-out upon
a host of inhibitions. There was an immense and glorious sense of
relief as though bitter knots were suddenly disentangled, and some iron
kernel of resistance that had weighted him for years flowed freely at
last in a stream of happy molten gold....
He found her easily. Where the trees thinned at the farther edge he
saw her figure, long before he came up with her, outlined against the
fading saffron. He saw her turn. He saw her arms outstretched. He came
up with her the same minute, and they stood in silence for a long time,
watching the darkness bend and sink upon the landscape.
For, here, at this one edge of the tiny estate, the real open country
showed. Beyond them, in the twilight, lay the silent fields like a
gigantic brown and yellow carpet whose shaken folds still seemed to
tremble and run on beneath the growing moon. Along a farther ridge the
trees and hedges passed in a ragged procession of strange figures,
defined sharply against the sky--witches, queens and goblins on the
prowl, the ancient fairyland of the English countryside.
They still stood silent, side by side, touching almost, their heat and
perfume and atmosphere intermingling, looking out across the quiet
scene. He was aware that her mind stole into his most sweetly, and that
without knowing it his hand had found her own, and that, presently, she
leaned a little against him. Their eyes, their mental sight as well,
saw the same things, he knew. The first stars peeped out, and they
looked up at them as one being looks, together.
"The wonder that you saw--in him," he heard himself saying. It was a
statement, not a question.
"Was yourself, of course," her voice, like his own, in the rustle of
the leaves, came softly. It continued his own thought rather than
replied to it. "The part you've held down and hidden away all these
years."
Her divination came to him with staggering effect. "You always knew
then?"
"Always. The first day we met you took me into the firm."
He was aware that everything about him pulsed and throbbed with life,
intelligence in every stick and stone. Angelic beings marched on
their wondrous business through the sky. A mighty host pursued their
endless service with a network of huge and tiny rhythms. The spirals of
creative fire soared and danced....
The moon emerged, sailing, sailing, as though no wind could stop her
lovely flight. She fled the stars themselves. The clouds turned round
to look at her, as, clearing their hair, she passed onwards with her
radiant smile. Heading into the bare bosom of the sky, she blazed in
her triumph of loneliness, her icy prow set towards some far, unknown,
unearthly goal, which is the reason why men love her so.
"And my theories--our theories?" he murmured into the ear against his
lips. "The way that has been shown to us?"
Both arms were now about her, and he held her so close that her words
were but a warm perfumed breath to cover his face as her hair was
covering his eyes.
"We shall follow it together ... dear."
It was as if some angel, stepping down the sky, came near enough to
fold them in a great rhythm of fire and wind. Bright, mighty faces in a
crowd rose round them, and, through her hair, he saw familiar visible
outlines of all the common things melt out, showing for one gorgeous
instant the flashings and whirlings that was the workshop of Their
deathless service.
"Look! Look!" he whispered, pointing from the darkening earth to the
stars and sailing moon above. "They're everywhere! You can see them
too? The bright messengers?"
For answer, she came yet closer against his side, holding him more
tightly to her, lifting her lips to his, so that in her very eyes he
saw the marvellous fire shine and flash. "We shall build together, you
and I," she whispered very softly, "and with Their help, the sweetest
and most perfect body ever known...."
But behind the magic of her words and voice, behind their meaning
and the steadying, understanding sympathy he easily divined, he
heard another sound, familiar as a dream, yet fraught with some
haunting significance he already was forgetting--almost _had_
entirely forgotten. From the centre of the earth it seemed to rise,
a magnificent, deep, stupendous rhythm that created, at least, the
impression of a voice:
"I weave and I weave...!" rolled forth, as though the planet uttered.
He stood waiting, transfixed, listening intently.
"You heard?" he whispered.
"Everything," she said, tight in his arms at once again, her lips on
his. "The very beating of your heart--your inmost thoughts as well."
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Hyphenation and spelling has been
retained as in the original publication except as follows:
Page 30
Khilkoff, the daugher of his _changed to_
Khilkoff, the daughter of his
Page 38
Butt puzzled--my God _changed to_
But puzzled--my God
Page 59
sets limits to it, Edward _changed to_
set limits to it, Edward
Page 70
Le Vallon was quite docile _changed to_
LeVallon was quite docile
Page 72
Yets its limits seemed _changed to_
Yet its limits seemed
Page 105
according to Bosé.... _changed to_
according to Bose....
Page 153
reaching the divan in its dimlit _changed to_
reaching the divan in its dim-lit
Page 157
went as unobstrusively as an animal _changed to_
went as unobtrusively as an animal
Page 185
was too convicing to be missed _changed to_
was too convincing to be missed
Page 282
with amazemnt. They were so _changed to_
with amazement. They were so
Page 299
Le Vallon went on, plucking the _changed to_
LeVallon went on, plucking the
all her life suppressed (because _changed to_
all her life suppressed because
Page 302
young girl wavered and hestitated _changed to_
young girl wavered and hesitated
Page 339
planetary spirits and vast Intelligenes _changed to_
planetary spirits and vast Intelligences
End of Project Gutenberg's The Bright Messenger, by Algernon Blackwood