long had been rising, establish itself definitely in the luminous eyes.
That other colour fastened on them--the deep sea-green. “Mrs. LeVallon”
before my sight sank slowly down, and a completer, far more ancient
self usurped her. Small wonder that my description halts in confusion
before so beautiful a change, for it was the beginning of an actual
transfiguration of her present person. It was bewildering to watch
the gradual, enveloping approach of that underlying Self, shrine of a
million memories, deathless, and ripe with long-forgotten knowledge.
The air of majesty that she wore in the sleep-walking incident gathered
by imperceptible degrees about the uninspired modern presentment that
I knew. Slowly her face turned calm with beauty. The features composed
themselves in some new mould of grandeur. The perplexity, at first so
painfully apparent, but marked the singular passage of the less into
the greater. I saw it slowly disappear. As she lay back in that rough
chair of a peasant’s châlet, there was some calm about her as of the
steadfast hills, some radiance as of stars, a suggestion of power that
told me--as though some voice whispered it in my soul--she knew the
link with Nature re-established finally within her being. Her head
turned slightly towards me. I stood up.
Instinctively I moved across the room and drew the curtain back. I
saw the stars; I saw the dark line of mountains; the odours of forest
and meadow came in with sweetness; I heard the tinkling of the little
stream--yet all contained somehow in the message of her turning head
and shoulders.
There was no sound, there was no spoken word, but the language was
one and unmistakable. And as I came slowly again towards the fire
Julius stood over her, uttering in silence the same stupendous thing.
The sense of my own inclusion in it was amazing. He smiled down into
her lifted face. These two, myself a vital link between them, smiled
across the centuries at one another. We formed--I noticed then--with
the fire and the open window into space--a circle.
To say that I grasped some spiritual import in these movements of our
bodies, realising that they acted out an inevitable meaning, is as true
as my convinced belief can make it. It is also true that in this, my
later report of the event, that meaning is no longer clear to me. I
cannot recover the point of view that discerned in our very positions
a message of some older day. The significance of attitude and gesture
then were clear to me; the translation of this three-dimensional
language I have lost again. A man upon his knees, two arms outstretched
to clasp, a head bowed down, a pointing finger--these are interpretable
gestures and attitudes that need no spoken words. Similarly, following
some forgotten wisdom, our related movements held a ceremonial import
that, by way of acceptance or refusal, helped or hindered the advance
of the elemental powers then invoked. In some marvellous fashion one
consciousness was shared amongst us all. We worked with a living
Nature, and a living Nature worked actively with us, and it was
attitude, movement, gestures, rather than words, that assisted the
alliance.
Then Julius took the hand that lay nearest to him, while the other she
lifted to place within my own. And a light breeze came through the open
window at that moment, touched the embers of the glowing logs, and blew
them into flame. I felt our hands tighten as that slight increase of
heat and air passed into us. For in that passing breeze was the eternal
wind which is the breath of God, and in that flame upon the hearth was
the fire which burns in suns and lights the heart in men and women....
There came with unexpected suddenness, then, a moment of very poignant
human significance--because of the great perspective against which it
rose. She sat erect; she gazed into his face and mine; in her eyes
burned an expression of beseeching love and sacrifice, but a love and
sacrifice far older than this present world on which her body lay. Her
arms stretched out and opened, she raised her lips, and, while I looked
aside, she kissed him softly. I turned away from that embrace, aware in
my heart that it was a half-divined farewell ... and when I looked back
again the little scene was over.
He bent slightly down, releasing the hand he held, and signifying by a
gesture that I should do the same. Her body relaxed a little; she sank
deeper into the chair; she sighed. I realised that he was assisting
her into that artificial slumber which would lead to the full release
of the subconscious self whose slow approach she already half divined.
Stooping above her, he gently touched the hypnogenic points above the
eyes and behind the ears. It was the oldest memories he sought. She
offered them quite willingly.
“Sleep!” he said soothingly, command and tenderness mingled in the
voice. “Sleep ... and remember!” With the right hand he made slow,
longitudinal passes before her face. “Sleep, and recover what you ...
knew! We need your guidance.”
Her body swayed a little before it settled; her feet stretched nearer
to the fire; her respiration rapidly diminished, becoming deep and
regular; with the movement of her bosom the band of black velvet
rose and fell about the neck, her hands lay folded in her lap. And,
as I watched, my own personal sensations of quite nameless joy and
anguish passed into a curious abandonment of self that merged me too
completely in the solemnity of worship to leave room for pain. Hand in
hand with the earthly darkness came in to us that Night of Time which
neither sleeps nor dies, and like a remembered dream up stole our
inextinguishable Past.
“Sleep!” he repeated, lower than before.
Cold, indeed, touched my heart, but with it came a promise of some
deep spiritual sweetness, rich with the comfort of that life which is
both abundant and universal. The valley and the sky, stars, mountains,
forests, running water, all that lay outside of ourselves in Nature
everywhere, came with incredible appeal into my soul. Confining
barriers crumbled, melted into air; the imprisoned human forces leaped
forth to meet the powers that “inanimate” Nature holds. I knew the
drive of tireless wind, the rush of irresistible fire. It seemed a
state in which we all joined hands, a state of glory that justified the
bravest hopes, annihilating doubt and disbelief.
She slept. And in myself something supremely sure, supremely calm,
looked on and watched.
“It helps,” Julius murmured in my ear, referring to the sleep; “it
makes it easier for her. She will remember now ... and guide.”
He moved to her right side, I to her left. Between the fire and the
open window we formed then--a line.
Along a line there is neither tension nor resistance. It was the
primitive, ultimate figure.
CHAPTER XXX
A rush of air ran softly round the walls and roof, then dropped away
into silence. There was this increased activity outside. A roar next
sounded in the chimney, high up rather; a block of peat fell with a
sudden crash into the grate, sending a shower of sparks to find the
outer air. Behind us the pine boards cracked with miniature, sharp
reports.
Julius continued the longitudinal passes, and “Mrs. LeVallon” passed
with every minute into deeper and more complete somnambulism. It was a
natural, willing process. He merely made it easier for her. She sank
slowly into the deep subconscious region where all the memories of the
soul lie stored for use.
It seemed that everything was in abeyance in myself, except the central
fact that this experience was true. The rest of existence fell away,
clipped off as by a pair of mighty shears. Both fire and wind seemed
actively about me; yet not unnaturally. There was this heat and lift,
but there was nothing frantic. The native forces in me were raised to
their ultimate capacity, though never for a moment beyond the limit
that high emotion might achieve. Nature accomplished the abnormal,
possibly, but still according to law and what was--or had been
once--comprehensible.
The passes grew slower, with longer intervals between; Mrs. LeVallon
lay motionless, the lips slightly parted, the skin preternaturally
pale, the eyelids tightly closed.
“Hush!” whispered Julius, as I made an involuntary movement, “it is
still the normal sleep, and she may easily awake. Let no sound disturb
her. It must go gradually.” He spoke without once removing his gaze
from her face. “Be ready to write what you hear,” he added, “and help
by ‘thinking’ fire and wind--in my direction.”
A long-drawn sigh was audible, accompanied by the slightest possible
convulsive movement of the reclining body.
“She sinks deeper,” he whispered, ceasing the passes for a moment. “The
consciousness is already below the deep-dream stage. Soon she will
wake into the interior lucidity when her Self of To-day will touch the
parent source behind. _They_ are already with her: they light--and
lift--her soul. She will remember all her past, and will direct us.”
I made no answer; I asked no questions; I stood and watched, willingly
sympathetic, yet incapable of action. The curious scene held something
of tragedy and grandeur. There was triumph in it. The sense of Nature
working with us increased, yet we ourselves comparatively unimportant.
The earth, the sky, the universe took part and were involved in our
act of restitution. It was beyond all experience. It was also--at
times--intolerable.
The body settled deeper into the chair; the crackling of the wicker
making sharp reports in the stillness. The pallor of the face
increased; the cheeks sank in, the framework of the eyes stood out;
imperceptibly the features began to re-arrange themselves upon another,
greater scale, most visible, perhaps, in the strong, delicate contours
of the mouth and jaw. Upon Julius, too, as he stood beside her, came
down some indefinable change that set him elsewhere and otherwise. His
dignity, his deep solicitous tenderness, and at the same time a hint of
power that emanated more and more from his whole person, rendered him
in some intangible fashion remote and inaccessible. I watched him with
growing wonder.
For over the room as well a change came stealing. In the shadows beyond
the fringe of lamplight, perspective altered. The room ran off in
distances that yet just escaped the eye: I _felt_ the change, though
it was so real that the breath caught in me each time I sought to
focus it. Space spread and opened on all sides, above, below, while
so naturally that it was never actually unaccountable. Wood seemed
replaced by stone, as though the solidity of our material surroundings
deepened. I was aware of granite columns, corridors of massive build,
gigantic pylons towering to the sky. The atmosphere of an ancient
temple grew about my heart, and long-forgotten things came with a
crowding of half-familiar detail that insisted upon recognition. It was
an early memory, I knew, yet not the earliest....
“Be ready.” I heard the low voice of Julius. “She is about to
wake--within,” and he moved a little closer to her, while I took up
my position by the table by the lamp. The paper lay before me. With
fingers that trembled I lifted the pencil, waiting. The hands of the
sleeping woman raised themselves feebly, then fell back upon the arms
of the chair. It seemed she tried to make signs but could not quite
complete them. The expression on the face betrayed great internal
effort.
“Where are you?” Julius asked in a steady but very gentle tone.
The answer came at once, with slight intervals between the words:
“In a building ... among mountains....”
“Are you alone?”
“No ... not alone,” spoken with a faint smile, the eyes still tightly
closed.
“Who, then, is with you?”
“You ... and he,” after a momentary hesitation.
“And who am I?”
The face showed slight confusion; there was a gesture as though she
felt about her in the air to find him.
“I do not know ... quite,” came the halting answer. “But you--both--are
mine ... and very near to me. Or else you own me. All three are so
close I cannot see ourselves apart ... quite.”
“She is confused between two memories,” Julius whispered to me. “The
true regression of memory has not yet begun. The present still
obscures her consciousness.”
“It is coming,” she said instantly, aware of his lightest whisper.
“All in due time,” he soothed her in a tender tone; “there is no hurry.
Nor is there anything to fear----”
“I am not afraid. I am ... happy. I feel safe.” She paused a moment,
then added: “But I must go deeper ... further down. I am too near the
surface still.”
He made a few slow passes at some distance from her face, and I saw
the eyelids flutter as though about to lift. She sighed deeply. She
composed herself as into yet deeper sleep.
“Ah! I see better now,” she murmured. “I am sinking ... sinking ...”
He waited for several minutes and then resumed the questioning.
“Now tell me who _you_ are,” he enjoined.
She faintly shook her head. Her lips trembled, as though she tried to
utter several names and then abandoned all. The effort seemed beyond
her. The perplexed expression on the face with the shut eyes was
movingly pathetic, so that I longed to help her, though I knew not how.
“Thank you,” she murmured instantly, with a gentle smile in my
direction. Our thoughts, then, already found each other!
“Tell me who you are,” Julius repeated firmly. “It is not the name I
ask.”
She answered distinctly, with a smile:
“A mother. I am soon to be a mother and give birth.”
He glanced at me significantly. There was both joy and sadness in his
eyes. But it was not this disclosure that he sought. She was still
entangled in the personality of To-day. It was far older layers of
memory and experience that he wished to read. “Once she gets free from
this,” he whispered, “it will go with leaps and bounds, whole centuries
at a time.” And again I knew by the smile hovering round the lips that
she had heard and understood.
“Pass deeper; pass beyond,” he continued, with more authority in the
tone. “Drive through--sink down into what lies so far behind.”
A considerable interval passed before she spoke again, ten minutes at
the lowest reckoning, and possibly much longer. I watched her intently,
but with an afflicting anxiety at my heart. The body lay so still and
calm, it was like the immobility of death, except that once or twice
the forehead puckered in a little frown and the compression of the
lips told of the prolonged internal effort. The grander aspect of her
features came for moments flittingly, but did not as yet establish
itself to stay. She was still confused with the mind and knowledge
of To-day. At length a little movement showed itself; she changed
the angle of her head in an effort to look up and speak; a scarcely
perceptible shudder ran down the length of her stretched limbs. “I
cannot,” she murmured, as though glancing at her husband with closed
eyelids. “Something blocks the way. I cannot see. It’s too thickly
crowded ... crowded.”
“Describe it, and pass on,” urged Julius patiently. There was
unalterable decision in his quiet voice. And in her tone a change was
also noticeable. I was profoundly moved; only with a great effort I
controlled myself.
“They crowd so eagerly about me,”--the choice of words seemed no longer
quite “Mrs. LeVallon’s”--“with little arms outstretched and pleading
eyes. They seek to enter, they implore ...”
“Who are they?”
“The Returning Souls.” The love and passion in her voice brought near,
as in a picture, the host of reincarnating souls eager to find a body
for their development in the world. They besieged her, clamouring for
birth--for a body.
“Your thoughts invite them,” replied Julius, “but you have the power to
decide.” And then he asked more sternly: “Has any entered yet?”
It was unspeakably moving--this mother willing to serve with anguish
the purpose of advancing souls. Yet this was all of To-day. It was
not the thing he sought. The general purpose must stand aside for the
particular. There was an error to be set right first. She had to seek
its origin among the ages infinitely far away. The guidance Julius
sought lay in the long ago. But the safety of the little unborn body
troubled him, it seemed.
“As yet,” she murmured, “none. The little body of the boy is empty ...
though besieged.”
“By whom besieged?” he asked more loudly. “Who hinders?”
The little body of the boy! And it was then a further change came
suddenly, both in her face and voice, and in the voice of Julius too.
That larger expression of some forgotten grandeur passed into her
features, and she half sat up in the chair; there was a stiffening of
the frame; resistance, power, an attitude of authority, replaced the
former limpness. The moment was, for me, electrifying. Ice and fire
moved upon my skin.
She opened her lips to speak, but no words were audible.
“Look close--and tell me,” came from Julius gravely.
She made an effort, then shrank back a little, this time raising one
arm as though to protect herself from something coming, then sharply
dropping it again over the heart and body.
“I cannot see,” she murmured, slightly frowning; “they stand so close
and ... are ... so splendid. They are too great ... to see.”
“Who--what--are they?” he insisted. He took her hand in his. I saw her
smile.
The simple words were marvellously impressive. Depths of untold memory
stirred within me as I heard.
“Powers ... we knew ... so long ago.”
Some ancient thing in me opened an eye and saw. The Powers we evoked
came seeking an entrance, brought nearer by our invitation. They came
from the silent valley; they were close about the building. But only
through a human channel could they emerge from the spheres where they
belonged.
“Describe them, and pass on,” I heard Julius say, and there came a
pause then that I thought would never end. The look of power rolled
back upon her face. She spoke with joy, with a kind of happiness as
though she welcomed them.
“They rush and shine.... They flood the distance like a sea, and yet
stand close against my heart and blood. They are clothed in wind and
fire. I see the diadems of flame ascending and descending. Their breath
is all the winds. There is such roaring. I see mountains of wind and
fire ... advancing ... nearer ... nearer.... We used them--we invited
... long, long ago.... And so they ... come again about us....”
His following command appalled me:
“Keep them back. You must protect the vacant body from invasion.”
And then he added in tones that seemed to make the very air vibrate,
although the voice but whispered, “You must direct them--towards _me_.”
He moved to a new position, so that we formed a triangle again. Dimly
at the time I understood. The circle signified the union which, having
received, enclosed the mighty forces. Only it enclosed too much; the
danger of misdirection had appeared. The triangle, her body forming
the apex towards the open night, aimed at controlling the immense
arrival by lessening the entry. Another thing stood out, too, with
crystal clearness--at the time: the elemental Powers sought the easiest
channel, the channel of least resistance, the body still unoccupied:
whereas Julius offered--himself. The risk must be his and his alone.
There was--in those few steps he took across the dim-lit room--a
sense of tremendous, if sinister, drama that swept my heart with both
tenderness and terror. The significance of his changed position was
staggering.
I watched the sleeper closely. The lips grew more compressed, and the
fingers of both hands clenched themselves upon the dark dress on her
lap. I saw the muscles of the altering face contract with effort; the
whole framework of the body became more rigid. Then, after several
minutes, followed a gradual relaxation, as she sank back again into her
original position.
“They retire ...” she murmured with a sigh. “They retire ... into
darkness a little. But they still ... wait and hover. I hear the rush
of their great passing.... I see the distant shine of fire ... still.”
“And the souls?” he asked gently, “do they now return?”
She lowered her head as with a gesture of relief.
“They are crowding, crowding. I see them as an endless flight of
birds....” She held out her arms, then shrank back sharply. An
expression I could not interpret flashed across the face. Behind a
veil, it seemed. And the stern voice of Julius broke in upon the
arrested action:
“Invite them by your will. Draw to you by desire and love one eager
soul. The little vacant body must be occupied, so that the Mighty Ones,
returning, shall find it thus impossible of entry.”
It was a command; it was also a precaution; for if the body of the
child were left open it would inevitably attract the invading Powers
from--himself. I watched her very closely then. I saw her again stretch
out her arms and hands, then once again--draw sharply back. But this
time I understood the expression on the quivering face. The veil had
lifted.
By what means this was clear to me, yet hidden from Julius, I cannot
say. Perhaps the ineradicable love that she and I bore for one another
in that long-forgotten time supplied the clue. But of this I am
certain--that she disobeyed him. She left the little waiting body as
it was, empty, untenanted. Life--a soul returning to re-birth--was not
conceived and did not enter in. The reason, moreover, was also clear
to me in that amazing moment of her choice: she divined his risk of
failure, she wished to save him, she left open the channel of least
resistance of set purpose--the unborn body. For a love known here and
now, she sacrificed a love as yet unborn. If Julius failed, at least he
would not now be destroyed; there would be another channel ready.
That thus she thought, intended, I felt convinced. If her mistake
was fraught with more danger than she knew, my lips were yet somehow
sealed. Our deeper, ancient bond gave me the clue that to Julius
was not offered, but no words came from me to enlighten him. It
seemed beyond my power; I should have broken faith with her, a faith
unbelievably precious to me.
For a long time, then, there was silence in the little room, while
LeVallon continued to make slow passes as before. The anguish left
her face, drowned wholly in the grander expression that she wore. She
breathed deeply, regularly, without effort, the head sunk forward a
little on the breast. The rustle of his coat as his arm went to and
fro, and the creaking of the wicker chair were all I heard. Then,
presently, Julius turned to me with a low whisper I can hear to this
very day. “I, and I alone,” he said, “am the rightful channel. I have
waited long.” He added more that I have forgotten; I caught something
about “all the aspects being favourable,” and that he felt confidence,
sure that he would not fail.
“You will not,” I interrupted passionately, “you dare not fail....” And
then speech suddenly broke down in me, and some dark shadow seemed to
fall upon my senses so that I neither heard nor saw nor felt anything
for a period I cannot state.
An interval there certainly was, and of some considerable length
probably, for when I came to myself again there was change
accomplished, though a change I could not properly estimate. His
voice filled the room, addressing the sleeper as before, yet in a way
that told me there had been progress accomplished while I had been
unconscious.
“Deeper yet,” I heard, “pass down deeper yet, pass back across a
hundred intervening lives to that far-off time and place when
first--_first_--we called Them forth. Sink down into your inmost being
and remember!”
And in her immediate answer there was a curious faintness as of
distance: “It is ... so ... far away ... so far beyond ...”
“Beyond what?” he asked, the expression of “Other Places” deepening
upon his face.
Her forehead wrinkled in a passing frown. “Beyond this earth,” she
murmured, as though her closed eyes saw within. “Oh, oh, it hurts. The
heat is awful ... the light ... the tremendous winds ... they blind,
they tear me...!” And she stopped abruptly.
“Forget the pain,” he said; “it is already gone.” And instantly the
tension of her face relaxed. She drew a sigh of deep relief. Before I
could prevent it, my own voice sounded: “When we were nearer to the
sun!”
She made no reply. He took my hand across the table and laid it on her
own. “She cannot hear your voice,” he said, “unless you touch us. She
is too far away. She does not even know that you are here beside me.
You of To-day she has forgotten, and the you of that long ago she has
not yet found.”
“You speak with someone--but with whom?” she asked at once, turning her
head a little in my direction. Not waiting for his reply she at once
went on: “Upon another planet, yes ... but oh, so long ago....” And
again she paused.
“The one immediately before this present one?” asked Julius.
She shook her head gently. “Still further back than that ... the one
before the last, when first we knew delight of life ... without these
heavy, closing bodies. When the sun was nearer ... and we knew deity in
the fiery heat and mighty winds ... and Nature was ... ourselves....”
The voice wavered oddly, broke, and ceased upon a sigh. A thousand
questions burned in me to ask. An amazing certainty of recognition and
remembrance burst through my heart. But Julius spoke before my tongue
found words.
“Search more closely,” he said with intense gravity. “The time and
place we summoned Them is what we need--not where we first learned it,
but where we practised it and failed. Confine your will to that. Forget
the earlier planet. To help you, I set a barrier you cannot pass....”
“The scene of our actual evocation is what we must discover,” he
whispered to me. “When that is found we shall be in touch with the
actual Powers our worship used.”
“It was not there, in that other planet,” she murmured. “It was only
there we first gained the Nature-wisdom. Thence--we brought it with us
... to another time and place ... later ... much nearer to To-day--to
Earth.”
“Remember, then, and see----” he began, when suddenly her unutterably
wonderful expression proclaimed that she at last had found it.
It was curiously abrupt. He moved aside. We waited. I took up my
pencil between fingers that were icy cold. My gaze remained fixed upon
the motionless body. Those fast-closed eyes seemed cut in stone, as
if they never in this world could open. The forehead gleamed pale as
ivory in the lamplight. The soft gulping of the lamp oil beside me,
the crumbling of the firewood in the grate deepened the silence that
I feared to break. The pallid oval of the sleeper’s countenance shone
at me out of a room turned wholly dark. I forgot the place wherein we
sat, our names, our meanings in the present. For there grew vividly
upon that disc-like countenance the face of another person--and of one
I knew.
And with this shock of recognition--there came over me both horror and
undying sweetness--a horror that the face would smile into my own with
a similar recognition, that from those lips a voice must come I should
remember; that those arms would lift, those hands stretch out; an
ecstasy that I should be remembered.
“Open!” I heard, as from far away, the voice of Julius.
And then I realised that the eyes _were_ open. The lids were raised,
the eyeballs faced the lamp. Some tension drew the skin sideways. They
were other eyes. The eternal Self looked out of them bringing the
message of a vast antiquity. They gazed steadily and clearly into mine.
CHAPTER XXXI
To-day retired. I remembered Yesterday, but a Yesterday more remote,
perhaps, than the fire-mist out of which our little earth was born....
I half rose in my chair. The first instinct--strong in me still as I
write this here in modern Streatham--was to fall upon my knees as in
the stress of some immense, remembered love. That glory caught me,
that power of an everlasting passion that was holy. Bathed in a sea of
perfect recollection, my eyes met hers, lost themselves, lived back
into a Past that had been joy. A flood of shame broke fiercely over
me that such a union could ever have seemed “forgotten.” That To-day
could smother Yesterday so easily seemed sacrilege. For this memory,
uprising from the mists of hoary pre-existence, brought in its train
other great emotions of recovered grandeur, all stirred into life by
this ancient ceremony we three acted out. Our purpose then had been,
I knew, no ordinary, selfish love, no lust of possession or ownership
behind it. Its aim and end were not mere personal contentment, mere
selfish happiness that excluded others, but, rather, a part of some
vast, co-ordinated process that involved all Nature with her powers and
workings, and fulfilled with beauty a purpose of the entire Universe.
It was holy in the biggest sense; it was divine. The significance
of our attitudes To-day was all explained--Julius, herself and I,
exquisitely linked to Nature, a group-soul formed by the loves of
Yesterday and Now.
We gazed at one another in silence, smiling at our recovered wonder.
We spoke no word, we made no gesture; there was perfect comprehension;
we were, all three, as we had been--long ago. An earlier state of
consciousness took this supreme command.... And presently--how long the
interval I cannot say--_her_ eyelids dropped, she drew a deep sigh of
happiness, and lay quiescent as before.
It was then, I think, that the sense of worship in me became so
imperative that denial seemed impossible. Some inner act of adoration
certainly accomplished itself although no physical act resulted,
for I remember dropping back again into my chair, not knowing what
exactly I meant to do. The old desire for the long, sweet things of
the soul burst suddenly into flame, the inner yearning to know the
deathless Nature Powers which were the gods, and to taste divinity
by feeling-with their mighty beings. That early state of simpler
consciousness, it seems, lay too remote from modern things to be
translatable in clear language. Yet at the time I knew it, felt it,
realised it, because I lived it once again. The flood of aspiration
that bore me on its crest left thinking and reason utterly out of
account. No link survives To-day with the state we then recovered....
And both she and Julius changed before my eyes. The châlet changed as
well, slipping into the shadowy spaces of some vast, pillared temple.
The soul in me realised its power and _knew_ its origin divine. Bathed
in a sea of long-forgotten glory, it rose into a condition of sublimest
bliss and confidence. It recognised its destiny and claimed all Heaven.
And this raging fire of early spiritual ambition passed over me as upon
a mighty wind; desire and will became augmented as though wind blew
them into flame.
“Watch ... and listen,” I heard, “and feel no fear!”
The change visibly increased; it seemed that curtains lifted in
succession.... The sunken head was raised; the lips quivered with
approaching speech; the pale cheeks deepened with a sudden flush that
set the cheekbones in a quick, high light; the neck bent slightly
forward, foreshortening, as it were, the presentment of the head and
shoulders; while some indescribable touch of power painted the marble
brows cold and almost stern. The entire countenance breathed the
august passion of a remoter age dropped close.... And to see the little
face I knew as Mrs. LeVallon, domestic servant in the world To-day,
unscreen itself thus before me, while its actual structure yet remained
unchanged, broke down the last resistance in me, and rendered my
subjugation absolute. Transfiguration was visibly accomplished....
Once more she turned her head and looked at me. I met the eyes that
saw me and remembered. And, though I would have screened myself from
their tremendous gaze, there was no remnant of power in me that could
do so.... She smiled, then slowly withdrew her eyes.... I passed, with
these two beside me, back into the womb of pre-existence. We were upon
the Earth--at the very time and place where we had used the knowledge
brought from a still earlier globe.
* * * * *
“What do you see?” came in those quiet tones that rolled up time and
distance like a scroll. “Tell me now!” It was the scene of the lost
experiment he sought. We were close upon it.
She spread her arms; her hands waved slowly through the air to indicate
these immense enclosing walls of stone about us. The voice reverberated
as in great hollow space.
“Darkness ... and the Vacated Bodies,” was the reply. I knew that we
stood in the Hall of Silence where the bodies lay entranced while their
spirits went forth upon the three days’ quest. And one of these, I
knew, was mine.
“What besides?”
“The Guardians--who protect.”
“Who are they? Who are these Guardians?”
An expression of shrinking passed across her face, and disappeared
again. The eyes stared fixedly before her into space.
“Myself,” she answered slowly, “you--Concerighé ... and ...”
“There was another?” he asked. “Another who was with us?”
She hesitated. At first no answer came. She seemed to search the
darkness to discover it.
“He is not near enough to see,” she murmured presently. “Somewhere
beyond ... he stands ... he lies ... I cannot see him clearly.”
Julius touched my hand, and with the contact the expression on her face
grew clear. She smiled.
“You see him now,” he said with decision.
She turned her face towards me with a tender, stately movement. The
sterner aspect deepened into softness on the features. Great joy for an
instant passed into the strange sea-green eyes.
“Silvatela,” she whispered, slightly lowering the head. “He offered
himself--for me. He lies now--empty at our feet.” And the utterance
of the name passed through me with a thrill of nameless sweetness. An
infinite desire woke, yet desire not for myself alone.
“The time...?” asked Julius in that calm, reverent tone.
She rose with a suddenness that made me start, though, somehow, I had
expected it. At her full height she stood between us. Then, spreading
her hands from both the temples outwards, she bowed her head to
the level of the breast. Julius, I saw, did likewise, and before I
realised it, the same deep, instinctive awe had brought me to my feet
in a similar obeisance. A breath of air from the night outside passed
sensibly between us, enough to stir the hair upon my head and increase
the fire on the hearth behind. It ceased, and a wave of comforting heat
moved in, paused a moment, settled like a great invisible presence, and
held the atmosphere.
“It is the Pause in Nature,” I heard the answer, and saw that she was
seated in the chair once more. “The Third Day nears its end.... The
Questing Souls ... draw near again to enter. We have kept their vacated
bodies safe for them. Our task is almost over....”
She drew a deep, convulsive sigh. Then Julius, taking her right hand,
guided my left to hold the other one. I touched her fingers and felt
them instantly clasp about my own; she sighed again, the frown went
from her forehead, and turning her gaze upon us both she murmured:
“I see clearly, I see everything.”
The past surged over me in a drowning flood.
“This is the moment, this the very place,” came the voice of Julius.
“It was at this moment we were faithless to our trust. We used your
body as the channel....” He turned slightly in my direction.
“The moment and the place,” she interrupted. “There is just time.
Before the Souls return.... You have called upon the Powers.... Yet
both cannot enter! ... he ... and they....”
There was a mighty, echoing cry.
She stopped abruptly. Her face darkened as with some great internal
effort. I darkened too. My vision broke.... There was a sense of
interval....
“And the channel----?” he asked below his breath.
She shook her head slowly to and fro. “It lies waiting still in the
Iron Slumber.... You used it ... it is shattered.... The soul returning
finds it not.... His soul ... whom I loved ...”
The voices ceased. A sudden darkness dropped. I had the sensation that
I was rushing, flying, whirling. The hand I clasped seemed melted into
air. I lost the final remnant of present things about me. The circle
of my own sensations, my identity, the identity of my two companions
vanished. A remarkable feeling of triumph came upon me, of joyful
power that lifted me high above all injury and death, while something
utterly gigantic asserted itself in the place of what had just been
“me”--something that could never be maimed, subdued, held prisoner. The
darkness then lifted, giving way before a hurricane of light that swept
me, as it were, upon a pinnacle. Secure and strong I felt beyond all
possible disaster, yet breathless amid things too long unfamiliar....
And then, abruptly, I knew searing pain, the pain of something broken
in me, of spiritual incompleteness, disappointment.... I was called
back to lesser life--before my time--before some high fulfilment due to
me....
Julius and Mrs. LeVallon were no longer there beside me, but in their
place I saw two solemn figures standing motionless and grave above a
prostrate body. It lay upon a marble slab, and sunlight fell over the
face and folded hands. The two moved forward. They knelt ... there
was a sound of voices as in prayer, a powerful, drawn-out sound that
produced intense vibrations, vibrations so immense that the motion in
the air was felt as wind. I saw gestures ... the body half rose up upon
its marble slab ... and then the blaze of some incredible effulgence
descended before my eyes, so fiercely brilliant, and accompanied by
such an intolerable, radiant heat ... that the entire scene went lost
behind great shafts of light that splintered and destroyed it ...
and an awful darkness followed, a darkness that again had pain and
incompleteness at the heart of it....
One thing alone I understood--that body on the shining slab was mine.
My absent soul, deprived of high glory elsewhere that was mine by
right, returned into it unexpectedly, aware of danger. It had been used
for the purposes of evocation. I had met the two Powers evoked by means
of it midway: Fire and Wind....
The vision vanished. I was standing in the châlet room again, he and
the woman by my side. There was a sense of enormous interval.
* * * * *
We were back among the present things again. I had merely re-lived
in a moment’s space a vision of that Past where these two had sinned
against me. The memory was gone again. We now resumed our present
reconstruction, by means of which the balance should be finally
restored. The same two elemental Powers were with us still. Summoned
once again--but this time that they might be dismissed.
“The Messengers of Wind and Fire approach,” Julius was saying softly.
“Be ready for the Powers that follow after.”
“But--there poured through me but a moment ago----” I began, when his
face stopped my speech sharply.
“That ‘moment’ was sixty centuries ago! Keep hold now upon your will,”
he interrupted, yet without a trace of the vast excitement that _I_
felt, “lest they invade your heart instead of mine. The glory that you
knew was but the shadow of their coming--as long ago you returned _and
met them_--when we failed. Keep close watch upon your will. It is the
Equinox.... The pause now comes with midnight.”
Even before he had done speaking the majesties of Wind and Fire were
upon us. And Nature came in with them. A dislocating change, swift
as the shaking of some immense thick shutter that hides life behind
material things, passed in a flash about us. We stood in a circle,
hands firmly clasped. There was a first effect as if those very hands
were fused and ran into a single molten chain. There was no outer
sound. The silence in the air was deathlike. But the sensation in my
soul was--life. The momentary confusion was stupendous, then passed
away. I stood in that room, but I stood in the valley too. I was in
Nature everywhere. I heard the deer go past me, I heard them on the
soft, sweet grass, I heard their breathing and the beating of their
hearts. Birds fluttered round my face and shoulders, I heard their
singing in my blood and ears, I knew their wild desires and freedom,
their darting to and fro, their swaying on the boughs. My feet were
running water, while yet the solid mass of earth and cliff stood up in
me. I also knew the growing of the flowers by the forests, tasted their
fragrance in my breath, their tender, delicate essence all unwasted.
It passed understanding, yet was natural as sight, for my hands went
far away, while still quite close, dipping among the stars that grew
and piled like heaps of gathered sand. It all was simple, easy, mine
by right. Nature gave me her myriad sensations without stint. I had
forgotten. I remembered. The universe stood open. “I” had entered with
these other two beside me.
_She_ raised her arms aloft, taking our hands up with her own, and
cried with a voice like wind against great branches:
“They come! The Doors of Fire are wide, and the Gates of Wind stand
open! They enter the channel that is offered.”
And his voice, like a roar of flame, came answering hers:
“The salutations of the Fire and Wind are made! The channel is
prepared! There is no resistance!”
They stood erect and rigid, their outlines merged with some strange
extension into space. They were superb, tremendous. There was no
shrinking there. The deities of wind and fire came up, seeking their
channel of return.
And so “They” came. Yet not outwardly; nor was the terrific impact of
their advent known completely to any but himself alone who sought to
harbour them now within his little human organism. Into _my_ heart
and soul poured but a fragment of their radiant, rushing presences.
About us all some intelligent power as of a living wind brought in
its mighty arms that ethereal fire which is not merely living, but
is life itself. Material objects wavered, then disappeared, thin as
transparent glass that increases light and heat. Walls, ceiling, floor
were burned away, yet not consumed; the atoms composing all physical
things glowed with a radiant energy they no longer could conceal. The
latent heat of inanimate Nature emerged, not rebellious but triumphant.
It was a deific manifestation of those natural powers which are the
first essentials of human existence--heat and air. We were not alien to
Nature, nor was Nature set apart from us; we shared her inexhaustible
life, and the glory of the Universe in which she is a fragment.
“The Doors of the Creative Fire stand wide,” rang out her triumphant
voice again. “The golden splendour of the invisible Fire loosens and
flows free. The Breath of Life is everywhere ... our own.... But what,
oh what of--_him!_” The scene of their past audacious error swept again
before me. And, partially, I caught it.
Into a gulf of silence her words fell, recaptured from a mode of
invocation effective in forgotten ages. Quivering lightnings, like a
host of running stars, flashed marvellously about us, with bars of fire
that seemed to map all space, while there was a sense of prodigious
lifting in the heart as though some power like rushing wind drove will
and yearning to the summit of all possible achievement. I realised
simply this--that Nature’s powers and purposes became mine too.
How long this lasted is impossible to state; duration disappeared. The
Universe, it seemed, had caught me up, joyful and unafraid, into her
bosom. It was too immense for little terrors.... And it was only after
what seemed an interminable interval that I became aware of something
that marred; of effort somewhere to confine and limit; of conflict,
in a word, as though some smaller force strove to impose an order
upon Powers that resented it. And I understood the meaning of this
too. Julius battled in his soul. He wrestled with the Energies he had
invoked, exerting to the utmost a trained, spiritual will to influence
their direction into himself, as expiatory channel. Julius, after the
lapse of centuries, fought to restore the balance he had long ago
disturbed.
_Her_ voice, too, occasionally reached me with a sound as of wind that
rushed, but very far away. The words went past me with a heat like
flame. I caught fragments only ... “The King of Breath ... The Master
of the Diadems of Fire ... they seek to enter ... the channel of safe
return.... Oh, beware ... beware ...”
And it was then I saw this wonderful thing happen, poignant with common
human drama, intensifying the reality of the whole amazing experience.
For she turned suddenly to him, her face alight and radiant. She would
not let him accept the awful risk. Her arms went out to hold him to
her. He drove her back.
“I open wide the channel of my life and soul!” he cried, with a gesture
of the entire body that made it relaxed and unresisting. He stepped
backwards a little from her touch. “It must be through _me!_”
And there was anguish in her tone that seemed to press all possible
human passion into the single sentence:
“I, too, throw myself open! I cannot let you go from me!”
He moved still further from her. It seemed to me he went at prodigious
speed, yet grew no smaller to the eye. The withdrawal belonged to some
part of his being that I was aware of inwardly. Streams of fire and
wind went with him. They followed. And I heard her voice in agonised
pursuit. She raised her hands as in supplication, but to whom or what I
knew not. She fought to prevent. She fought to offer herself instead.
But also she offered the body as yet unclaimed--untenanted.
“He who is in the Fire and in the Sun ... I call upon His power. I
offer myself!” I heard her cry.
His answering voice seemed terrible:
“The Law forbids. You hold Them back from me.” And then as from a
greater distance, the voice continued more faintly: “You prevent. It
has to be! Help me before it is too late; help me ... or ... I ...
fail!”
Fail! I heard the awful word like thunder in the heavens.
The conflict of their wills, the distress of it was terrible. At
this last moment she realised that the strain was more than he could
withstand--he would go from her in that separation which is the body’s
death. She saw it all; there was division in her will and energies.
Opposing herself to the justice he had invoked, she influenced the
invasion of the elemental Powers, offering herself as channel in the
hope of saving him. Her human desire weighed the balance--turning it
just against him. Her insight clouded with emotion. She increased the
risk for him, and at the same time left open to the great invading
Powers another channel--the line of least resistance, the empty vehicle
all prepared within herself.
To me it was mercilessly clear. I tried to speak, but found no words to
utter; my tongue refused to frame a single sound; nor could I move my
limbs. I heard Julius only, his voice calling like a distant storm.
“I call upon the Fire and Wind to enter me, and pass to their eternal
home ... whence you and I ... and he ...”
His voice fell curiously away into a gulf; there was weakness in it. I
saw her frail body shake from head to foot. She swayed as though about
to fall. And then her voice, strong as a bugle-call, rang out:
“I claim it by--my _love_....!”
There was a burst of wind, a rush of sheeted fire. Then darkness fell.
But in that instant before the fire passed, I saw his form stand close
before my eyes. The face, alight with compassion and resignation, was
turned towards her own. I saw the eyes; I saw the hands outstretched to
take her; the lips were parted in a final attempt at utterance which
never knew completion. And I knew--the certainty stopped the beating
of my heart--that he had failed. There was no actual sound. Like a
gleaming sword drawn swiftly from its scabbard, he rose past me through
the air, borne from his body, as it were, on wings of ascending flame.
There was a second of intolerable radiance, a rush of driving wind--and
he was gone.
And far away, at the end of some stone corridor in the sunshine, yet
at the same time close beside me upon the floor of the little mountain
châlet, I heard the falling body as it dropped with a thud before my
feet--untenanted....
CHAPTER XXXII
I remember what followed very much as one remembers the confusion after
an anæsthetic--fragments of extraordinary dream and of sensational
experience jostling one another on the threshold of awakening. Then,
very swiftly, like a train of gorgeous colour disappearing into a
tunnel of darkness, the memory slipped down within me and was gone. The
Past with a rush of lightning swept back into its sheath.
The glory and sense of exaltation, that is, were gone, but not the
memory that they had been. I knew what had happened, what I had felt,
seen, yearned for; but it was the cold facts alone remained, the
feelings that had accompanied them vanished. Into a dull, chilled world
I dropped back, wondering and terrified. A long interval had passed.
And the first thing I realised was that Mrs. LeVallon still lay
sleeping in that chair of wicker--profoundly sleeping--that the lamp
had burned low, and that the châlet felt like ice. Her face, even in
the twilight, I saw was normal, the older expression gone. I turned the
wick up higher, noting as I did so that the paper strewn about me was
thick with writing, and it was then my half-dazed senses took in first
that Julius was not standing near us, and that a shadow, oddly shaped
and huddled, lay on the floor where the lamplight met the darkness.
The moving portion seemed at once to disentangle itself from the rest,
and a face turned up to stare at me. It was the serving-man upon his
knees. The expression in his eyes did more to bring me to my normal
senses than anything else. That scared and anguished look made me
understand the truth--that, and the moaning that from time to time
escaped his lips.
Of speech from him I hardly got a word; he was inarticulate to the last
as ever, and all that I could learn was that he had felt his master’s
danger and had come....
We carried the body upstairs and laid it on the bed. I strove to regard
it merely as the “instrument” _he_ had used awhile, strove to find
still his real undying Presence close to me--but that comfort failed me
too. The face was very white. Upon the pale marble features lay still
that signature of “Other Places” which haunted his life and soul. We
closed the staring eyes and covered him with a sheet. And there the
servant crouched upon the floor for the remaining five hours until the
dawn, when I came up from watching that other figure of sleep in the
room below, and found him in the same position. All that day as well
he watched indeed, until at last I made him realise that the sooner he
got the farmer’s horse below and summoned a doctor, the better for all
concerned.
But that was many hours later in the day, and meanwhile he just
crouched there, difficult of approach, eyeing me savagely almost when
I came, his eyes aflame with a kind of ugly, sullen resentment, but
faithful to the last. What the silent, devoted being had heard or seen
during our long hours of sinister struggle and experiment, I never
knew, nor ever shall know.
My memory hardly lingers upon that; nor upon the unprofitable detail of
the doctor’s tardy arrival in the evening, his ill-concealed suspicion
and eventual granting of a death certificate according to Swiss law;
nor, again, upon his obvious verdict of a violent heart-stroke, or the
course of procedure that he bade us follow.
Even the distressing details of the burial have somewhat faded, and I
recall chiefly the fact that the Man established himself in the village
where the churchyard was and began his watch that kept him near the
grave, I believe, till death relieved him. My memory lingers rather
upon the hours that I watched beside the sleeping woman, and upon the
dreadful scene of her awakening and discovery of the truth.
For hours we had the darkness and the silence to ourselves, a silence
broken only by the steady breathing of her slumber. I dared not wake
her; knowing that the trance condition in time exhausts itself and
the subject returns to normal waking consciousness without effort or
distress, I let her slumber on, dreading the moment when the eyes would
open and she must question me. The cold increased with the early hours
of the morning, and I spread a rug about her stretched-out form. Slowly
with the failing of the oil, the little lamp flame flickered and died,
then finally went out, leaving us in the chill gloom together. All heat
had long since left the fire of peat.
It was a vigil never to be forgotten. My thoughts revolved the whole
time in one and the same circle, seeking in vain support from common
things. Slowly and by degrees my mind found steadiness, though with
returning balance my pain grew keener and more searching. The poignant
minutes stretched to days and years. For ever I fell to reconstructing
those vanished scenes of memory, while striving to believe that the
whole thing had been but a detailed vivid dream, and that presently
I, too, should awake to find our life in the châlet as before, Julius
still alive and close....
The moaning from the room overhead, where the Man watched over that
other, final sleep, then brought bitterly again the sad reality, and
set my thoughts whirling afresh with anguish. I was distraught and
trembling.... London and my lectures, the recent climbing in the
Dolomites, cities and trains and the business of daily modern life,
these were the dreams.... The reality, truth, lay in that world of
vision just departed ... Concerighé, Silvatela, the woman of that
ancient, splendid past, the re-capture of the Temple Days when we three
trod together that strange path of questing; the broken fragment of
it all; the Chamber of the Vacated Bodies, and the sin of long ago;
then, chief of all, the attempt to banish the Powers, evoked in those
distant ages, back to their eternal home--_his_ effort to offer himself
as channel--_her_ fear to lose him and her offering of herself--the
failure ... and that appalling result upstairs.
For, ever and again, my thoughts returned to that: the spirit of the
chief transgressor hovering now without a body, waiting for the River
of the Lives to bring in some dim future another opportunity for
atonement.
The failure...! In the glimmer of that pale, cold dawn I watched the
outline of her slumbering form. I remembered her cry of sacrificing
love that drew the great rushing Powers down into herself, and thus
into the unresisting little body gathered now in growth against her
heart. That human love the world deems great, seeking to save him
to her own distress, had only blocked the progress of his soul she
yearned to protect, so little understanding.... I heard her deep-drawn
breathing in the darkness and wondered ... for the child that she would
bear ... come to our modern strife and worldly things with this freight
of elemental forces linked about his human heart and mind--fierce child
of Wind and Fire...! A “natural,” perhaps a “super-natural” being....
This sense of woe and passion, haunting my long, silent vigil from
night to dawn, and after it when the sunshine of the September morning
lit the room and turned her face to silver--this it is that, after so
many years, clings to the memory as though of yesterday.
And then, without a sign or movement to prepare me, I saw that the eyes
had opened and were fixed upon my face.
The whispered words came instantly:
“Where is he? Has he gone away?”
Stupid with distress and pain, my heart was choked. I stared blankly in
return, the channels of speech too blocked to find a single syllable.
I raised my hands, though hardly knowing what I meant to do. She sat
up in the chair and looked a moment swiftly about the room. Her lips
parted for another question, but it did not come. I think in my face,
or in my gesture perhaps, she read the message of despair. She hid her
face behind her hands, leaned back with a dreadful drooping of the
entire frame, and let a sigh escape her that held the substance of all
unutterable words of grief.
I yearned to help, but it was my silence, of course, that brought the
truth so swiftly home to her returning consciousness. The awakening
was complete and rapid, not as out of common sleep. I longed to touch
and comfort her, yet my muscles refused to yield in any action I could
manage, and my tongue clung dry against the roof of my mouth.
Then, presently, between her fingers came the words below a whisper:
“I knew that this would happen ... I knew that once I slept, he’d go
from me ... and I should lose him. I tried ... that hard ... to keep
awake.... But sleep _would_ take me. An’ now ... it’s took him ... too.
He’s gone for--for very long ... again!” She did not say “for ever.”
It was the voice, the accent and the words again of Mrs. LeVallon.
“Not for ever,” I whispered, “but for a little time.”
She rose up like a figure of white death, taking my hand. She did not
tremble, and her step was firm. And more than this I never heard her
say, for the entire contents of the interval since she first fell
asleep beneath her husband’s passes had gone beyond recall.
“Take me to him,” she said gently. “I want to say good-bye.”
I led her up those creaking wooden stairs and left her with her dead.
Her strength was wonderful. I can never forget the quiet self-control
she showed through all the wretched details that the situation then
entailed. She asked no questions, shed no tears, moving brave and calm
through all the ghastly duties. Something in her that lay deeper than
death understood, and with the resignation of a truly great heart,
accepted. Far stronger than myself she was; and, indeed, it seemed
that my pain for her--at the time anyhow--absorbed the suffering
that made my own heart ache with a sense of loss that has ever since
left me empty and bereaved. Only in her eyes was there betrayal of
sorrow that was itself, perhaps, another half revival of yet dimmer
memories ... “eyes in which desire of some strange thing unutterably
burned, unquenchable....” For the first time I understood the truth of
another’s words--so like a statue was her appearance, so set in stone,
her words so sparing and her voice so dead:
“_I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls as countries lieth silent-bare...._”
Her soul lay silent-bare; her grief was hopeless.... To my shame it
must be confessed that I longed to escape from all the strain and
nightmare of what had passed. The few days had been charged with
material for a lifetime. I knew the sharp desire to find myself in
touch once more with common, wholesome things--with London noise and
bustle, trains, telephones and daily newspapers, with stupid students
who could not even remember what they had learned the previous
week, and with all the great majority who never even dreamed of a
consciousness less restricted than their own. I saw the matter through,
however, to the bitter end, and did not lose sight of Mrs. LeVallon
until I left her safely in Lausanne, and helped her find a woman who
should be both maid and companion, at least for the immediate future.
It cannot be of interest or value to relate here. She did not cross my
path again; while, on the other hand, it has never been possible for
me to forget her. To this day I hear her voice and accent, I feel the
touch of that hand that drew me softly into such depths of inexplicable
vision; above all, I see her luminous, strange eyes and her movements
of strange grace across the châlet floor.... And sometimes, even now, I
half ... remember.
Yet never, till after this long interval of years, could I bring myself
to set down any record of what had happened. Perhaps--most probably, I
think--I feared that dwelling upon the haunting details that writing
would involve might revive too obsessingly the memory of an experience
so curiously overwhelming.
Now time has brought the necessity, as it were, of this confession;
and I have done my best with material that really resists the mould of
language, at least as I can use it. Later reading--for I devoured the
best authorities and ransacked even the most extravagant records in
my quest--has come to throw a little curious light upon some parts of
it; and the results of this subsequent study no doubt appear in this
report. At the time, however, I was ignorant of all such things, and
the effect upon me of what I witnessed thus for the first time may be
judged accordingly. It was dislocating.
Two facts alone remain to mention. And the first seems to me perhaps
the most singular of the entire experience. For the pages I had covered
with writing showed suddenly an abrupt and extraordinary change of
script. Although the earlier sheets were in my own handwriting, roughly
jotting down question and reply as they fell from the lips of Julius
or his wife, there came midway in them this inexplicable change that
altered them into the illegible scribble of a language that I could not
read, yet recognised. It changed into that curious kind of ideograph
that Julius used at school, that he showed me many a time in the sand
at the end of the football field where we used to lie and talk, and
that he claimed then was the ancient sacerdotal cipher we had used
together in our remotest “Temple Days.” I cannot read a word of it, nor
can any to whom I have shown it decipher a single outline. The change
began, it seems, at the point where “Mrs. LeVallon” went “deeper” at
his word of command, and entered the layer of memories that dealt with
that most ancient “section.” This accounts, too, for the confusion
and incompleteness of my record as written. A page of this script is
framed upon my walls to-day; my eye rests on it as I write these words
upon a modern typewriter--in Streatham.
The other fact I have to mention might well be the starting point for
study and observation of an interesting kind. Yet, though it sorely
tempted me, I resisted the temptation, and now, after twenty years,
it is too late, and I, too old. This record, if published, may fall
beneath the eye of someone to whom the chance and the desire may
possibly combine to bring the opportunity.
For some weeks after the events that have been here described, Mrs.
LeVallon gave birth to a boy, surviving him, alas! by but a single day.
This I heard long afterwards by the merest chance. But my strenuous
efforts to trace the child proved unavailing, and I only learned that
he was adopted by a French family whose name even was not given to me.
If alive he would be now about twenty years of age.
PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
Transcriber’s Note:
Variations in hyphenations have been retained as they appear
in the original publication. Changes have been made as follows:
Page 26
euclid, mathematics, and the dead languages _changed to_
Euclid, mathematics, and the dead languages
Page 36
the coming of a--third _changed to_
the coming of a--third.
Page 178
by surprise, as it were.” _changed to_
by surprise, as it were.
Page 271
Le Vallon’s personality and _changed to_
LeVallon’s personality and