“_A thousand ages onward led
Their joys and sorrows to that hour;
No wisdom weighed, no word was said,
For only what we were had power._”--A. E.
Meanwhile my intercourse with Nature now began to betray itself in
curious little ways, and none more revealing of this mingled joy and
nervousness than my growing excitement on being abroad after dark alone.
In the far more desolate Monzoni Valley a few weeks before I had passed
whole nights in the open without the least suspicion of uneasiness,
yet here, amid these friendly woods, covered by this homely, peaceful
valley, it was suddenly made clear to me that I had nerves. And the
reason, briefly put, was that there I knew myself alone, whereas here I
knew myself never alone.
This sense of a populated Nature grew. After dusk it fairly mastered
me, but even in broad daylight, when the September sunshine flooded
the whole trough of valley with warmth and brightness, there clung to
me the certainty that my moods and feelings, as my very footsteps,
too, were noted--and understood. This sense of moving Presences, as
in childhood, was stirred by every wind that blew. The feeling of
co-operation increased. It was conscious, intelligent co-operation.
“Over that limestone ridge against the sky,” I caught myself feeling,
rather than definitely thinking; “from just beyond the crests of those
tall pines, will presently come----” What? I knew not, even as the
child knows not. Only, it would come--appearing suddenly from the
woods, or clouds, or from behind the big boulders that strewed the open
spaces.
In the fields about the châlet this was manifest too, but especially
on the naked ridges above the forests and in the troughs that held the
sunlight. Where the wind had unobstructed motion, and where the heat
of the sun accumulated in the hollows, this sense of preparation, of
co-operation, chiefly touched me. There was behind it pressure--as of
purpose and direction, the idea that intelligence stirred within these
natural phenomena. Some type of elemental life, enormous yet generally
diffused through formlessness, moved and had its being behind natural
appearances.
More and more, too, I realised that “inanimate” Nature was a script
that it was possible to read; that certain objects, certain appearances
drew my attention because they had a definite meaning to convey,
whereas others remained unnoticed, as though not necessary to the
sentence of some message or communication. The Language of Happenings
that Julius talked about--the occurrences of daily life as words in
some deep cosmical teaching--connected itself somewhere with this
meaning that hid in common objects.
That my awareness of these things was known to others of the household
besides myself was equally clear, for I never left the immediate
neighbourhood of the châlet after dark without the Man following my
movements with a kind of anxiety, sometimes coming on my very tracks
for a considerable distance, or hanging about until I returned to light
and safety. In sleep, too, as I passed slowly into unconsciousness, it
seemed that the certainty of these Presences grew startlingly distinct,
and more than once I woke in the night without apparent cause, yet with
the conviction that they brooded close upon the châlet and its inmates,
pressing like a rising flood against the very walls and windows. And on
these occasions I usually heard Julius moving in his room just across
the narrow passage, or the Man astir in the lower regions of the house.
Outside, the moonlight, cold and gleaming, silvered the quiet woods and
limestone heights. Yet not all the peace and beauty of the scene, nor
the assurance of the steady stars themselves, could quite dispel this
conviction that something was in active progress all about me, and
that the elements themselves urged forward towards the deliverance of
some purpose that had relation to ourselves.
Julius, I knew, was at the root of it.
One night--a week or so after my arrival--I woke from a dreamless sleep
with the impression that a voice had called me. I paused and listened,
but the sound was not repeated. I lay quietly for some minutes, trying
to discover whose voice it was, for I seemed bereft of some tender
companionship quite recently enjoyed. Someone who had been near me had
gone again. I was aware of loneliness.
It was between one and two in the morning and I had slept for several
hours, yet this mood was not the one in which I had gone to bed.
Sleep, even ten minutes’ sleep, brings changes on the heart; I woke to
this sense of something desirable just abandoned. Someone, it seemed,
had called my name. There was a tingling of the nerves, a poignant
anticipation that included high delight. I craved to hear that voice
again. Then, suddenly, I knew.
I rose and crossed the room. The warmth of the house oppressed me,
although the wood-fire in the hearth downstairs was long since out,
and by the open window I drank in the refreshing air. The valley lay
in a lake of silver. There was mist upon the meadows, transparent,
motionless, the tinkling of the rivulet just audible beneath its gauzy
covering. The cliffs rose in the distance, gaunt and watchful; the
forest was a pool of black. I saw the lake, a round blot upon the
fields. Over the shingled roof occasional puffs of wind made a faint
rushing sound under the heavy eaves. The moonlight was too bright for
stars, and the ridges seemed to top the building with the illusion of
nearness that such atmosphere engenders. The hush of a perfect autumn
night lay over all.
I stood by that open window spellbound. For the clear loveliness seemed
to take my hand and lead me forth into a vale of beauty that, behind
the stillness, was brimming with activity. Vast energy paused beneath
the immobility. The moonlight, so soft and innocent, yet gleamed with
a steely brightness as of hidden fire; the puffs of wind were but the
trickling draughts escaping from reservoirs that stored incalculable
reserves. A terrific quality belied the appearance of this false
repose. I was aware of elemental powers, pressed down and eager to
run over. It came to me they also had been--called. Their activity,
moreover, was in some very definite relation to myself. The voice that
summoned me had warned as well.
I stood listening, trembling with an anticipation of things called
unearthly. Nature, dressed in the Night, stepped in and took my hand.
There seemed an enormous gesture; and it was a gesture, I felt, of
adoration. Somewhere behind the calm picture there lay worship.
And I realised, then, that I stood before a page of writing. Out
of this inanimate map that was composed of earth, air, fire and
water, a deep sentence of elemental significance thrust up into my
consciousness. Objects, forced into syllables of this new language,
spoke to me. The cosmic language which is the language of the gods
stood written on the moonlit world. “We lie here ready for your use,” I
read. “Worship is the link. We may be known on human terms. You can use
us. We can work with you.”
The message was so big, it seemed to thunder. Close to this window-sill
on which I leaned the rising energy swayed like a sea. It was obedient
to human will, and human will could harness it for practical purposes.
I was _feeling-with_ it. Immense, far-spreading, pouring down in
viewless flood from the encircling heights, the surge of it came round
the lonely châlet. The valley brimmed. The blindly-heaving lift of
it--thus it presented itself to my imagination--could alter the solid
rocks until they flowed like water, could float the trees as though
they were but straws. For this also came to me with a conviction no
less significant than the rest--that the particular elemental powers at
hand were the familiar ones of heat and air. With those twin powers,
which in their ultimate physical manifestation men know as wind and
fire, my mind had established contact. But it was with the spiritual
prototypes of these two elements my own small personal breath and heat
linked on. There was co-operation. I had been called by name; yet my
summoning was but a detail in some vaster evocation. There was no
barrier between the not-me, as I must call it, and the me. Others had
been called as well.
So strong was the sense that some unusual manifestation of these two
“elements” approached, that I instinctively drew back; and in that same
instant there flashed into me a vision, as it were, of sheeted flame
and of gigantic wind. In my heart the picture rushed, for outwardly
still reigned the calm and silence of the autumn night. Yet any moment,
it seemed, the barrier into visible, sensible appearance would be
leaped. And it was then, while I stood hesitating half-way between the
window and the bed, that the sound rose again with sharp distinctness,
and my name was called a second time.
I heard the voice; I recognised it; but the name was not the one I
answer to to-day. It was another--first uttered at Edinburgh many years
ago--Silvatela. And strong emotion laid a spell upon my senses, masking
the present with a veil of other times and other places. I stood
entranced.... I heard Julius moving softly on the bare boards of the
passage as he came towards my room; the door opened quietly; he held a
lighted candle; I saw him framed against the darkness on the threshold.
For a fraction of a second then, before either of us spoke, it was as
though he stood before me in another setting. For the meagre wood on
either side of him gave place somehow to pylons of grey stone, hewn
massively; the ceiling lifted into vaulted space where stars hung
brightly; cool air breathed against my skin; and through an immense
crepuscular distance I was aware of moving figures, clothed like his
own in flowing white with napkined heads, their visages swarthier than
those I knew to-day. He took a step forward into the room, and the
shifting shadows from the moving candle dispelled the entire scene as
though the light and darkness had constructed it. He spoke at once:
“_She_ calls you,” he said quietly.
He set the candle down upon the table by my bed and gently closed the
door. The draught, as he did so, shook the flame, sending a flutter of
shadows dancing through the air. Yet it was no play of light and shadow
that this time laid the strange construction on his face and gestures.
So stately were his movements, so radiant his pale, passionless
features, so touched with high, unearthly glory his whole appearance,
that I watched him for a minute in silence, conscious of respect that
bordered upon awe. He had been, I knew, in direct communication with
the very sources of his strange faith, and a remnant of the power still
clung to the outer body of his flesh. Into that small, cramped chamber
Julius brought the touch of other life, of other consciousness that yet
was not wholly unfamiliar to me. I remained close beside him. I drank
in power from him. And, again, across my thoughts swept that sheet of
fire and that lift of violent wind.
“_She_ calls you,” he repeated calmly; and by the emphasis on the
pronoun I knew he meant her Self of older times.
“She----” I whispered. “Your wife!”
He bowed his head. “She knows, now for the first time, that _you_ are
here.”
“She remembers?” I asked falteringly, knowing the “you” he meant was
also of an older day.
“She lies in trance,” he answered, “and the buried Self is in command.
She felt your presence, and she called for you--by name.”
“In trance?” I had the feeling of distress that he had forced her. But
he caught my thought and set it instantly at rest.
“From deep sleep she passed of her own accord,” he said, “into the
lucid state. Her older Self, which retains the memories of all the
sections, is now consciously awake.”
“And she knows you too? Knows you as you were--remembers?” I asked
breathlessly, thinking of my first sight of him in the doorway.
“She is aware at this very moment of both you and me,” he answered,
“but as she knew us in that particular past. For the old conditions are
gathering to-night about the house, and the Equinox is nearer.”
“Gathered, then, by you,” I challenged, conscious that an emotion of
protection rose strong in me--protection of the woman.
“Gathered, rather,” he at once rejoined, “by our collective presence,
by our collective feeling, thought and worship, but also by necessity
and justice which bring the opportunity.”
He spoke with solemnity. I stared for several minutes in silence,
facing him and holding his brilliant eyes with an answering passion in
my own. Through the open window came a sighing draught of wind; a sense
of increasing warmth came with it; it seemed to me that the pictured
fire and wind were close upon me, as though the essential life of these
two common elements were rising upon me from within; and I turned,
trembling slightly, aware of the valley behind me in the moonlight. The
châlet, it seemed, already was surrounded. The Presences stood close.
“They also know,” he whispered; “they wait for the moment when we shall
require them--the three of us together. She, too, desires them. The
necessity is upon us all.”
With the words there rose a certainty in me that knew no vain denial.
The sense of reality and truth came over me again. He was in conscious
league with powers of Nature that held their share of universal
intelligence; we three had returned at last together. The approach
of semi-spiritual intelligences that operate through phenomenal
effects--in this case wind and fire--was no imaginative illusion. The
channels here were open.
“No sparrow falls, no feather is misplaced,” he whispered, “but it is
known and the furthest star responds. From our life in another star we
brought our knowledge first. But we used it here--on the earth. It
was you--your body--that we used as channel. It was your return that
prevented our completion. Your dread of to-day is memory----”
There broke in upon his unfinished sentence an interrupting voice that
turned me into stone. Ringing with marvellous authority, half sweet,
half terrible, it came along the wooden walls of that narrow corridor,
entered the very room about our ears, then died away in the open valley
at our backs. The awakened Self of “Mrs. LeVallon” called us:
“Concerighé ... Silvatela...!” sounded through the quiet night.
The voice, with its clear accents, plunged into me with an incredible
appeal of some forgotten woe and joy combined. It was a voice I
recognised, yet one unheard by me for ages. Power and deep delight rose
in me, but with them a flash of stupid, earthly terror. It sounded
again, breaking the silence of the early morning, but this time nearer
than before. It was close outside the door. I felt Julius catch me
quickly by the arm. My terror vanished at his touch.
The tread of bare feet upon the boards was audible; the same second
the door pushed open and _she_ stood upon the threshold, a tall, white
figure with fixed and luminous eyes, and hair that fell in a dark cloud
to the waist. Into the zone of pallid candle-light that the moon made
paler still, she passed against the darkness of the outer passage,
white and splendid, like some fair cloud that swims into the open sky.
And as wind stirs the fringes of a cloud, the breeze from the window
stirred the edges of her drapery where the falling hair seemed to
gather it in below the waist.
It was the wife of Julius, but the wife of Julius changed. Like some
vision of ethereal beauty she stood before us, yet a vision that
was alive. For she moved, she breathed, she spoke. It was both the
woman as I knew her actually To-day, and the woman as I had known
her--Yesterday. The partial aspect that used this modern body was
somehow supplemented--fulfilled by the presentment of her entire Self.
The whole series of past sections came up to reinforce the little
present, and I gazed upon the complete soul of her, rather than upon
the fragment that made bread now in the kitchen and had known domestic
service. The bearing was otherwise, the attitude another, the very
fashion of her features changed. Her walk, her gestures, her mien had
undergone enthralling alteration.
The stream of time went backwards as I gazed, or, rather, it stopped
flowing altogether and held steady in a sea that had no motion. I
sought the familiar points in her, plunging below the surface with each
separate one to find what I--remembered. The eyes, wide open in the
somnambulistic lucidity, were no longer of a nondescript mild grey, but
shone with the splendour I had already half surprised in them before;
the poise of the neck, the set of the shoulders beneath the white linen
of her simple night-dress, had subtly, marvellously changed. She stood
in challenge to a different world. It seemed to me that I saw the Soul
of her, attended by the retinue of memories, experience, knowledge of
all its past, summed up sublimely in a single moment. She was superb.
The outward physical change was, possibly, of the slightest, yet wore
just that touch of significant alteration which conveyed authority.
The tall, lithe figure moved with an imperial air; she raised her arm
towards the open window; she spoke. The voice was very quiet, but it
held new depth, sonority and accent. She had not seen me yet where I
stood in the shadows by the wall, for Julius screened me somewhat, but
I experienced that familiar clutch of dread upon the heart that once
before--ages and ages ago--had overwhelmed me. Memory poured back upon
my own soul too.
“Concerighé,” she uttered, looking full at Julius while her hand
pointed towards the moonlit valley. “They stand ready. The air is
breaking and the fire burns. Then where is _he?_ I called him.”
And Julius, looking from her face to mine, answered softly: “He
is beside you--close. He is ready with us too. But the appointed
time--the Equinox--is not quite yet.”
The pointing hand sank slowly to her side. She turned her face towards
me and she--saw. The gaze fell full upon my own, the stately head
inclined a little. We both advanced; she took my outstretched hand, and
at the touch a shock as of wind and fire seemed to drive against me
with almost physical violence. I heard her voice.
“Silvatela--we meet--again!” Her eyes ran over in a smile of
recognition as the old familiar name came floating to me through the
little room. But for the firm clasp of her hand I should have dropped,
for there was a sudden weakness in my knees, and my senses reeled a
moment. “We meet again,” she repeated, while her splendid gaze held
mine, “yet to you it is a dream. Memory in you lies unawakened still.
And the fault is ours.”
She turned to Julius; she took his hand too; we stood linked together
thus; and she smiled into her husband’s eyes. “His memory,” she said,
“is dim. He has forgotten that we wronged him. Yet forgiveness is in
his soul that only half remembers.” And the man who was her husband of
To-day said low in answer: “He forgives and he will help us now. His
love forgives. The delay we caused his soul he may forget, but to the
Law there is no forgetting possible. We must--we shall--repay.”
The clasp of our hands strengthened; we stood there linked together by
the chain of love both past and present that knows neither injustice
nor forgetting.
Then, with the words, as also with the clasping hands that joined us
into one, some pent up barrier broke down within my soul, and a flood
of light burst over me within that made all things for a moment clear.
There came a singular commotion of the moonlit air outside the window,
as if the tide that brimmed the valley overflowed and poured about us
in the room. I stood transfixed and speechless before the certainty
that Nature, in the guise of two great elements, flooded in and shared
our passionate moment of recognition. A blinding confusion of times and
places struggled for possession of me. For a tempest of memories surged
past, driven tumultuously by sheeted flame and rushing wind. The inner
hurricane lasted but a second. It rose, it fell, it passed away. I was
aware that I saw down into deep, prodigious depths as into a pool of
water, crystal clear; veil lifted after veil; memory revived.
I shuddered; for it seemed my present self slipped out of sight while
this more ancient consciousness usurped its place. My little modern
confidence collapsed; the mind that doubts and criticises, but never
knows, fell back into its smaller rôle. The sum-total that was Me
remembered and took command. And realising myself part of a living
universe, I answered her:
“With love and sympathy,” I uttered in no uncertain tones, “and with
complete forgiveness too.”
In that little bedroom of a mountain châlet, lit by the moon and
candle-light, we stood together, our bodies joined by the clasp of
hands, and our ancient souls united in a single purpose.
I looked into the eyes of this great woman, imperially altered in her
outward aspect, magnificent in the towering soul of her; I looked at
Julius, stately as some hierophantic figure who mastered Nature by
comprehending her; I felt their hands, his own firm and steady, hers
clasping softly, tenderly, yet with an equal strength; and I realised
that I stood thus between them, not merely in this isolated mountain
valley, but in the full tide of life whose source rose in the fountains
of an immemorial past, Nature and human-nature linked together in a
relationship that was a practical reality. Our three comrade-souls
were re-united in an act of restitution; sharing, or about to share, a
ceremony that had cosmic meaning.
And the beauty of the woman stole upon my heart, bringing the
loveliness of the universe, while Julius brought its strength.
“This time,” I said aloud, “you shall not fail. I am with you both in
sympathy, forgiveness,--love.”
Their hands increased the pressure on my own.
Her eyes held mine as she replied: “This duty that we owe to Nature and
to you--so long--so long ago.”
“To me----?” I faltered.
With shining eyes, and a smile divinely tender, she answered: “Love
shall repay. We have delayed you by our deep mistake.”
“We shall undo the wrong we worked upon you,” I heard Julius say. “We
stole the channel of your body. And we failed.”
“My love and sympathy are yours,” I repeated, as we drew closer still
together. “I bear you no ill-will....”
And then she continued gravely, but ever with that solemn beauty
lighting up her face:
“Oh, Silvatela, it seems so small a thing in the long, long journey of
our souls. We were too ambitious only. The elemental Powers we tried to
summon through your vacated body are still unhoused. The fault was not
yours; it was our ambition and our faithlessness. I loved you to your
undoing--you sacrificed yourself so willingly, loving me, alas, too
well. The failure came. Instead of becoming as the gods, we bear this
burden of a mighty debt. We owe it both to you and to the universe.
Fear took us at the final moment--and you returned too soon--robbed
of the high teaching that was yours by right, your progress delayed
thereby, your memory clouded _now_....”
“My development took another turning,” I said, hardly knowing whence
the knowledge came to me, “no more than that. It was for love of
you that I returned too soon--the fault was mine. It was for the
best--there has been no real delay.” But there mingled in me a memory
both clouded and unclouded. There was a confusion beyond me to unravel.
I only knew our love was marvellous, although the fuller motives
remained entangled. “It is all forgiven,” I murmured.
“Your forgiveness,” she answered softly, “is of perfect love. We loved
each other then--nor have we quite forgotten now. This time, at
least, we shall ensure success. The Powers stand ready, waiting; we
are united; we shall act as one. At the Equinox we shall restore the
balance; and memory and knowledge shall be yours a hundredfold at last.”
The voice of Julius interrupted, though so low it was scarcely audible:
“I offer myself. It is just and right, not otherwise. The risk must
be all mine. Once accomplished”--he turned to me with power in his
face--“we shall provide you with the privilege you lost through us. Our
error will then be fully expiated and the equilibrium restored. It is
an expiation and a sacrifice. Nature in this valley works with us now,
and behind it is the universe--all, all aware....”
It seemed to me she leaped at him across the space between us. Our
hands released. Perhaps, with the breaking of our physical contact,
some measure of receptiveness went out of me, or it may have been the
suddenness of the unexpected action that confused me. I no longer fully
understood. Some bright clear flame of comprehension wavered, dimmed,
went out in me. Even the words that passed between them then I did
not properly catch. I saw that she clasped him round the neck while
she uttered vehement words that he resisted, turning aside as with
passionate refusal. It was--this, at least, I grasped before the return
of reason in me broke our amazing union and left confusion in the
place of harmony--that each one sought to take the risk upon himself,
herself. The channel of evocation--a human system--I dimly saw, was the
offering each one burned to make. The risk, in some uncomprehended way,
was grave. And I stepped forward, though but half understanding what
it was I did. I offered, to the best of my memory and belief--offered
myself as a channel, even as I had offered or permitted long ago in
love for her.
For I had discerned the truth, and knew deep suffering, nor cared what
happened to me. It was the older Self in her that gave me love, while
her self of To-day--the upper self--loved Julius. Mine was the old
subconscious love unrecognised by her normal self; the love of the
daily, normal self was his.
* * * * *
The look upon their faces stopped me. They moved up closer, taking
my hands again. The moonlight fell in a silver pool upon the wooden
flooring just between us; it clothed her white-clad figure with its
radiance; it shone reflected in the eyes of Julius. I heard the
tinkling of the little stream outside, beginning its long journey to
an earthly sea. The nearer pine trees rustled. And _her_ voice came
with this moonlight, wind and water, as though the quiet night became
articulate.
“So great is your forgiveness, so deep our ancient love,” she murmured.
And while she said it, both he and she together made the mightiest
gesture I have ever seen upon small human outlines--a gesture of
resignation and refusal that yet conveyed power as though a forest
swayed or some great sea rolled back its flood. There was this sublime
suggestion in the wordless utterance by which they made me know my
offering was impossible. For Nature behind both of them said also No....
Then, with a quiet motion that seemed gliding rather than the taking
of actual steps, her figure withdrew slowly towards the door. Her
face turned from me as when the moon slips down behind a cloud. Erect
and stately, as though a marble statue passed from my sight by some
interior motion of its own, her figure entered the zone of shadow just
beyond the door. The sound of her feet upon the boards was scarcely
audible. The narrow passage took her. She was gone.