I
In his bedroom, though excitement banished sleep in spite of the lateness
of the hour, he was too exhausted to make any effective attempt to reduce
the confusion of his mind to order. For the first time in his life the
diary-page for the day remained blank. For a long time he sat before it
with his pencil--then sighed and put it away. A volume he might have
written, but not a page, much less a line or two. And though it was but
eight hours since he had made the acquaintance of the Rev. Philip Skale,
it seemed to him more like eight days.
Moreover, all that he had heard and seen, fantastic and strained as he
felt it to be, possibly even the product of religious mania, was
nevertheless profoundly disquieting, for mixed up with it somewhere or
other was--truth. Mr. Skale _had_ made a discovery--a giant one; it was
not all merely talk and hypnotism, the glamour of words. His great
Experiment would prove to be real and terrible. He _had_ discovered
certain uses of sound, occult yet scientific, and if he, Spinrobin,
elected to stay on, he would be obliged to play his part in the
dénouement. And this thought from the very beginning appalled while it
fascinated him. It filled him with a kind of horrible amazement. For the
object the clergyman sought, though not yet disclosed, already cast its
monstrous shadow across his path. He somehow discerned that it would deal
directly with knowledge the saner judgment of a commonplace world had
always deemed undesirable, unlawful, unsafe, dangerous to the souls that
dared attempt it, failure involving a pitiless and terrible Nemesis.
He lay in bed watching the play of the firelight upon the high ceiling,
and thinking in confused fashion of the huge clergyman with his
thundering voice, his great lambent eyes and his seductive gentleness; of
his singular speculations and his hints, half menacing, half splendid, of
things to come. Then he thought of the housekeeper with her deafness and
her withered arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, of
Miriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever finding
his own, and of the intimate personal relations so swiftly established
between them....
It was, indeed, a singular household thus buried away in the heart of
these lonely mountains. The stately old mansion was just the right
setting for--for--
Unbidden into his mind a queer, new thought shot suddenly, interrupting
the flow of ideas. He never understood how or whence it came, but with
the picture of all the empty rooms in the corridor about him, he
received the sharp unwelcome impression that when Mr. Skale described the
house as empty it was really nothing of the sort. Utterly unannounced,
the uneasy conviction took possession of him that the building was
actually--populated. It was an extraordinary idea to have. There was
absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support it. And with it
flashed across his memory echoes of that unusual catechism he had been
subjected to--in particular the questions whether he believed in
spirits,--"other life," as Skale termed it. Sinister suspicions flashed
through his imagination as he lay there listening to the ashes dropping
in the grate and watching the shadows cloak the room. Was it possible
that there were occupants of these rooms that the man had somehow evoked
from the interstellar spaces and crystallized by means of sound into form
and shape--_created?_
Something freezing swept into him from a region far beyond the world. He
shivered. These cold terrors that grip the soul suddenly without apparent
cause, whence do they come? Why, out of these rather extravagant and
baseless speculations, should have emerged this sense of throttling dread
that appalled him? And why, once again, should he have felt convinced
that the ultimate nature of the clergyman's great experiment was impious,
fraught with a kind of heavenly danger, "unpermissible?"
Spinrobin, lying there shivering in his big bed, could not guess. He only
knew that by way of relief his mind instinctively sought out Miriam, and
so found peace. Curled up in a ball between the sheets his body presently
slept, while his mind, intensely active, traveled off into that vast
inner prairie of his childhood days and called her name aloud. And
presumably she came to him at once, for his sleep was undisturbed and his
dreams uncommonly sweet, and he woke thoroughly refreshed eight hours
later, to find Mrs. Mawle standing beside his bed with thin bread and
butter and a cup of steaming tea.
II
For the rest, the new secretary fell quickly and easily into the routine
of this odd little household, for he had great powers of adaptability.
At first the promise of excitement faded. The mornings were spent in the
study of Hebrew, Mr. Skale taking great pains to instruct him in the
vibratory pronunciation (for so he termed it) of certain words, and
especially of the divine, or angelic, names. The correct utterance,
involving a kind of prolonged and sonorous vibration of the vowels,
appeared to be of supreme importance. He further taught him curious
correspondences between Sound and Number, and the attribution to these
again of certain colors. The vibrations of sound and light, as air and
ether, had intrinsic importance, it seemed, in the uttering of certain
names; all of which, however, Spinrobin learnt by rote, making neither
head nor tail of it.
That there were definite results, though, he could not deny--psychic
results; for a name uttered correctly produced one effect, and uttered
wrongly produced another ... just as a wrong note in a chord afflicts the
hearer whereas the right one blesses....
The afternoons, wet or fine, they went for long walks together about the
desolate hills, Miriam sometimes accompanying them. Their talk and
laughter echoed all over the mountains, but there was no one to hear
them, the nearest village being several miles away and the railway
station--nothing but a railway station. The isolation was severe; there
were no callers but the bi-weekly provision carts; letters had to be
fetched and newspapers were neglected.
Arrayed in fluffy tweeds, with baggy knickerbockers and heavily-nailed
boots, he trotted beside his giant companion over the moors, somewhat
like a child who expected its hand to be taken over difficult places. His
confidence had been completely won. The sense of shyness left him. He
felt that he already stood to the visionary clergyman in a relationship
that was more than secretarial. He still panted, but with enthusiasm
instead of with regret. In the background loomed always the dim sense of
the Discovery and Experiment approaching inevitably, just as in childhood
the idea of Heaven and Hell had stood waiting to catch him--real only
when he thought carefully about them. Skale was just the kind of man, he
felt, who would make a discovery, so simple that the rest of the world
had overlooked it, so tremendous that it struck at the roots of human
knowledge. He had the simple originality of genius, and a good deal of
its inspirational quality as well.
Before ten days had passed he was following him about like a dog, hanging
upon his lightest word. New currents ran through him mentally and
spiritually as the fires of Mr. Skale's vivid personality quickened his
own, and the impetus of his inner life lifted him with its more violent
momentum. The world of an ordinary man is so circumscribed, so
conventionally molded, that he can scarcely conceive of things that may
dwell normally in the mind of an extraordinary man. Adumbrations of
these, however, may throw their shadow across his field of vision.
Spinrobin was ordinary in most ways, while Mr. Skale was un-ordinary in
nearly all; and thus, living together in this intimate solitude, the
secretary got peeps into his companion's region that gradually convinced
him. With cleaned nerves and vision he began to think in ways and terms
that were new to him. Skale, like some big figure in story or legend,
moved forward into his life and waved a wand. His own smaller personality
began to expand; thoughts entered unannounced that hitherto had not even
knocked at the door, and the frontiers of his mind first wavered, then
unfolded to admit them.
The clergyman's world, whether he himself were mad or sane, was a real
world, alive, vibrating, shortly to produce practical results. Spinrobin
would have staked his very life upon it....
And, meanwhile, he made love openly--under any other conditions,
outrageously--to Miriam, whose figure of soft beauty moving silently
about the house helped to redeem it. She rendered him quiet little
services of her own accord that pleased him immensely, for occasionally
he detected her delicate perfume about his room, and he was sure it was
not Mrs. Mawle who put the fresh heather in the glass jars upon his
table, or arranged his papers with such neat precision on the desk.
Her delicate, shining little face with its wreath of dark hair, went
with him everywhere, hauntingly, possessingly; and when he kissed her,
as he did now every morning and every evening under Mr. Skale's very
eyes, it was like plunging his lips into a bed of wild flowers that no
artificial process had ever touched. Something in him sang when she was
near. She had, too, what he used to call as a boy "night eyes"--changing
after dusk into such shadowy depths that to look _at_ them was to look
beyond and through them. The sight could never rest only upon their
surface. Through her eyes, then, stretched all the delight of that old
immense play-ground ... where names clothed, described, and summoned
living realities.
His attitude towards her was odd yet comprehensible; for though his
desire was unquestionably great, it was not particularly active, probably
because he knew that he held her and that no aggressive effort was
necessary. Secure in the feeling that she belonged to him, and he to her,
he also found that he had little enough to say to her, never anything to
ask. She knew and understood it all beforehand; expression was uncalled
for. As well might the brimming kettle sing to the water "I contain you,"
or the water reply "I fill you!"
Only this was not the simile he used. In his own thoughts from the very
beginning he had used the analogy of sound--of the chord. As well might
one note feel called upon to cry to another in the same chord, "Hark! I'm
sounding with you!" as that Spinrobin should say to Miriam, "My heart
responds and sings to yours."
After a period of separation, however, he became charged with things he
wanted to say to her, all of which vanished utterly the moment they came
together. Words instantly then became unnecessary, foolish. He heard that
faint internal singing, and his own resonant response; and they merely
stayed there side by side, completely happy, everything told without
speech. This sense of blissful union enwrapped his soul. In the language
of his boyhood he had found her name; he knew her; she was his.
Yet sometimes they did talk; and their conversations, in any other
setting but this amazing one provided by the wizardry of Skale's
enthusiasm, must have seemed exquisitely ludicrous. In the room, often
with the clergyman a few feet away, reading by the fire, they would sit
in the window niche, gazing into one another's eyes, perhaps even holding
hands. Then, after a long interval of silence Mr. Skale would hear
Spinrobin's thin accents:
"You brilliant little sound! I hear you everywhere within me, chanting a
song of life!"
And Miriam's reply, thrilled and gentle:
"I'm but your perfect echo! My whole life sings with yours!"
Whereupon, kissing softly, they would separate, and Mr. Skale would cover
them mentally with his blessing.
Sometimes, too, he would send for the housekeeper and, with the aid of
the violin, would lead the four voices, his own bass included, through
the changes of various chords, for the vibratory utterance of certain
names; and the beauty of these sounds, singing the "divine names," would
make the secretary swell to twice his normal value and importance (thus
he puts it), as the forces awakened by the music poured and surged into
the atmosphere about them. Whereupon the clergyman would explain with
burning words that many a symphony of Beethoven's, a sonata of
Schumann's, or a suite of Tschaikovsky's were the Names, peaceful,
romantic or melancholy, of great spiritual Potencies, heard partially
by these masters in their moments of inspirational ecstasy. The powers
of these Beings were just as characteristic, their existence just as
real, as the simpler names of the Hebrew angels, and their psychic
influence upon the soul that heard them uttered just as sure and
individual.
"For the power of music, my dear Spinrobin, has never yet by science or
philosophy been adequately explained, and never can be until the occult
nature of sound, and its correlations with color, form, and number is
once again understood. 'Rhythm is the first law of the physical
creation,' says one, 'and music is a breaking into sound of the
fundamental rhythm of universal being.' 'Rhythm and harmony,' declares
Plato, 'find their way into the secret places of the soul.' 'It is the
manifestation,' whispers the deaf Beethoven, 'of the inner essential
nature of all that is,' or in the hint of Leibnitz, 'it is a calculation
which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.' It is 'love in search of a
name,' sang George Eliot, nearer in her intuition to the truth than all
the philosophers, since love is the dynamic of pure spirit. But I," he
continued after a pause for breath, and smiling amid the glow of his
great enthusiasm, "go beyond and behind them all into the very heart of
the secret; for you shall learn that to know the sounds of the Great
Names and to utter their music correctly shall merge yourself into the
heart of their deific natures and make you 'as the gods themselves...!'"
And Spinrobin, as he listened, noticed that a slight trembling ran
across the fabric of his normal world, as though it were about to vanish
and give place to another--a new world of divine things made utterly
simple. For many things that Skale said in this easy natural way, he
felt, were in the nature of clues and passwords, whose effect he
carefully noted upon his secretary, being intended to urge him, with a
certain violence even, into the desired region. Skale was testing him
all the time.
III
And it was about this time, more than half way through the trial month,
that the clergyman took Spinrobin, now become far more than merely
secretary, into his fuller confidence. In a series of singular
conversations, which the bewildered little fellow has reported to the
best of his ability, he explained to him something of the science of true
names. And to prove it he made two singular experiments: first he uttered
the true name of Mrs. Mawle, secondly of Spinrobin himself, with results
that shall presently be told.
These things it was necessary for him to know and understand before they
made the great Experiment. Otherwise, if unprepared, he might witness
results that would involve the loss of self-control and the failure,
therefore, of the experiment--a disaster too formidable to contemplate.
By way of leading up to this, however, he gave him some account first of
the original discovery. Spinrobin asked few questions, made few comments;
he took notes, however, of all he heard and at night wrote them up as
best he could in his diary. At times the clergyman rose and interrupted
the strange recital by moving about the room with his soft and giant
stride, talking even while his back was turned; and at times the
astonished secretary wrote so furiously that he broke his pencil with a
snap, and Mr. Skale had to wait while he sharpened it again. His inner
excitement was so great that he almost felt he emitted sparks.
The clue, it appears, came to the clergyman by mere chance, though he
admits his belief that the habits of asceticism and meditation he had
practiced for years may have made him in some way receptive to the
vision, for as a vision, it seems, the thing first presented itself--a
vision made possible by a moment of very rapid hypnosis.
An Anglican priest at the time, in charge of a small Norfolk parish, he
was a great believer in the value of ceremonial--in the use, that is, of
color, odor and sound to induce mental states of worship and
adoration--more especially, however, of sound as uttered by the voice,
the human voice being unique among instruments in that it combined the
characteristics of all other sounds. Intoning, therefore, was to him a
matter of psychic importance, and it was one summer evening, intoning, in
the chancel, that he noticed suddenly certain very curious results. The
faces of two individuals in the congregation underwent a charming and
singular change, a change which he would not describe more particularly
at the moment, since Spinrobin should presently witness it for himself.
It all happened in a flash--in less than a second, and it is probable,
he holds, that his own voice induced an instant of swift and passing
hypnosis upon himself; for as he stood there at the lectern there came
upon him a moment of keen interior lucidity in which he realized beyond
doubt or question what had happened. The use of voice, bell, or gong,
has long been known as a means of inducing the hypnotic state, and
during this almost instantaneous trance of his there came a sudden
revelation of the magical possibilities of sound-vibration. By some
chance rhythm of his intoning voice he had hit upon the exact pitch,
quality and accent which constituted the "Note" of more than one member
of the congregation before him. Those particular individuals, without
being aware of the fact, had at once responded, automatically and
inevitably. For a second he had heard, he knew, their true names! He had
unwittingly "called" them.
Spinrobin's heart leaped with excitement as he listened, for this idea of
"Naming True" carried him back to the haunted days of his childhood
clairvoyance when he had known Winky.
"I don't _quite_ understand, Mr. Skale," he put in, desirous to hear a
more detailed explanation.
"But presently you shall," was all the clergyman vouchsafed.
The clue thus provided by chance he had followed up, but by methods hard
to describe apparently. A corner of the veil, momentarily lifted, had
betrayed the value that lies in the repetition of certain sounds--the
rhythmic reiteration of syllables--in a word, of chanting or incantation.
By diving down into his subconscious region, already prepared by long
spiritual training, he gradually succeeded in drawing out further details
piece by piece, and finally by infinite practice and prayer welding them
together into an intelligible system. The science of true-naming slowly,
with the efforts of years, revealed itself. His mind slipped past the
deceit of mere sensible appearances. Clair-audiently he heard the true
inner names of things and persons....
Mr. Skale rose from his chair. With thumbs in the armholes of his
waistcoat and fingers drumming loudly on his breast he stood over the
secretary, who continued making frantic notes.
"That chance discovery, then, made during a moment's inner vision," he
continued with a grave excitement, "gave me the key to a whole world of
new knowledge, and since then I have made incredible developments. Listen
closely, Mr. Spinrobin, while I explain. And take in what you can."
The secretary laid down his pencil and notebook. He sat forward in an
attitude of intense eagerness upon the edge of his chair. He was
trembling. This strange modern confirmation of his early Heaven of wonder
before the senses had thickened and concealed it, laid bare again his
earliest world of far-off pristine glory.
"The ordinary name of a person, understand then, is merely a sound
attached to their physical appearance at birth by the parents--a
meaningless sound. It is not their true name. That, however, exists
behind it in the spiritual world, and is the accurate description of
the soul. It is the sound you express visibly before me. The Word is
the Life."
Spinrobin surreptitiously picked up his pencil; but the clergyman spied
the movement. "Never mind the notes," he said; "listen closely to me."
Spinrobin obeyed meekly.
"Your ordinary outer name, however," continued Mr. Skale, speaking with
profound conviction, "may be made a conductor to your true, inner one.
The connection between the two by a series of subtle interior links forms
gradually with the years. For even the ordinary name, if you reflect a
moment, becomes in time a sound of singular authority--inwoven with the
finest threads of your psychical being, so that in a sense you _become_
it. To hear it suddenly called aloud in the night--in a room full of
people, in the street unexpectedly--is to know a shock, however small, of
increased vitality. It touches the imagination. It calls upon the soul
built up around it."
He paused a moment. His voice boomed musically about the room, even after
he ceased speaking. Bewildered, wondering, delighted, Spinrobin drank in
every word. How well he knew it all.
"Now," resumed the clergyman, lowering his tone unconsciously, "the first
part of my discovery lies in this: that I have learned to pronounce the
ordinary names of things and people in such a way as to lead me to their
true, inner ones--"
"But," interrupted Spinrobin irrepressibly, "how in the name of--?"
"Hush!" cried Skale quickly. "Never again call upon a mighty name--in
vain. It is dangerous. Concentrate your mind upon what I now tell you,
and you shall understand a part, at least, of my discovery. As I was
saying, I have learned how to find the true name by means of the false;
and understand, if you can, that to pronounce a true name correctly means
to participate in its very life, to vibrate with its essential nature, to
learn the ultimate secret of its inmost being. For our true names are the
sounds originally uttered by the 'Word' of God when He created us, or
'called' us into Being out of the void of infinite silence, and to repeat
them correctly means literally--to--speak--with--His--Voice. It is to
speak the truth." The clergyman dropped his tone to an awed whisper.
"Words are the veils of Being; to speak them truly is to lift a corner of
the veil."
"What a glory! What a thing!" exclaimed the other under his breath,
trying to keep his mind steady, but losing control of language in the
attempt. The great sentences seemed to change the little room into a
temple where sacred things were about to reveal themselves. Spinrobin now
understood in a measure why Mr. Skale's utterance of his own name and
that of Miriam had sounded grand. Behind each he had touched the true
name and made it echo.
The clergyman's voice brought his thoughts back from distances in that
inner prairie of his youth where they had lost themselves.
"For all of us," he was repeating with rapt expression in his shining
eyes, "are Sounds in the mighty music the universe sings to God, whose
Voice it was that first produced us, and of whose awful resonance we are
echoes therefore in harmony or disharmony." A look of power passed into
his great visage. Spinrobin's imagination, in spite of the efforts that
he made, fluttered with broken wings behind the swift words. A flash of
the former terror stirred in the depths of him. The man was at the heels
of knowledge it is not safe for humanity to seek....
"Yes," he continued, directing his gaze again upon the other, "that is a
part of my discovery, though only a part, mind. By repeating your outer
name in a certain way until it disappears in the mind, I can arrive at
the real name within. And to utter it is to call upon the secret soul--to
summon it from its lair. 'I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by
name.' You remember the texts? '_I know thee by name_,' said Jehovah to
the great Hebrew magician, '_and thou art mine_.' By certain rhythms and
vibratory modulations of the voice it is possible to produce harmonics of
sound which awaken the inner name into life--and then to spell it out.
Note well, to _spell_ it,--spell--incantation--the magical use of
sound--the meaning of the Word of Power, used with such terrific effect
in the old forgotten Hebrew magic. Utter correctly the names of their
Forces, or Angels, I am teaching you daily now," he went on reverently,
with glowing eyes and intense conviction; "pronounce them with full
vibratory power that awakens all their harmonics, and you awaken also
their counterpart in yourself; you summon their strength or
characteristic quality to your aid; you introduce their powers actively
into your own psychical being. Had Jacob succeeded in discovering the
'Name' of that 'Angel' with whom he wrestled, he would have become one
with its superior power and have thus conquered it. Only, he asked
instead of commanded, and he found it not..."
"Magnificent! Splendid!" cried Spinrobin, starting from his chair,
seizing with his imagination potently stirred, this possibility of
developing character and rousing the forces of the soul.
"We shall yet call upon the Names, and see," replied Skale, placing a
great hand upon his companion's shoulder, "not aloud necessarily, but by
an inner effort of intense will which sets in vibration the finer
harmonics heard only by the poet and magician, those harmonics and
overtones which embody the psychical element in music. For the methods of
poet and magician, I tell you, my dear Spinrobin, are identical, and all
the faiths of the world are at the heels of that thought. Provided you
have faith you can--move mountains! You can call upon the very gods!"
"A most wonderful idea, Mr. Skale," faltered the other breathlessly,
"quite wonderful!" The huge sentences deafened him a little with their
mental thunder.
"And utterly simple," was the reply, "for all truth is simple."
He paced the floor like a great caged animal. He went down and leaned
against the dark bookcase, with his legs wide apart, and hands in his
coat pockets. "To name truly, you see, is to evoke, to create!" he
roared from the end of the room. "To utter as it should be uttered any
one of the Ten Words, or Creative Powers of the Deity in the old Hebrew
system, is to become master of the 'world' to which it corresponds. For
these names are still in living contact with the realities behind. It
means to vibrate with the powers that called the universe into being
and--into form."
A sort of shadowy majesty draped his huge figure, Spinrobin thought, as
he stood in semi-darkness at the end of the room and thundered forth
these extraordinary sentences with a conviction that, for the moment at
least, swept away all doubt in the mind of his listener. Dreadful ideas,
huge-footed and threatening, rushed to and fro in the secretary's mind.
He was torn away from all known anchorage, staggered, dizzy and dismayed;
yet at the same time, owing to his adventure-loving temperament, a prey
to some secret and delightful exaltation of the spirit. He was out of his
depth in great waters....
Then, quite suddenly, Mr. Skale came swiftly over to his side and
whispered in accents that were soothing in comparison:
"And think for a moment how beautiful, the huge Words by which God called
into being the worlds, and sent the perfect, rounded bodies of the
spheres spinning and singing, blazing their eternal trails of glory
through the void! How sweet the whisper that crystallized in flowers! How
tender the note that fashioned the eyes and face, say, of Miriam...."
At the name of Miriam he felt caught up and glorified, in some delightful
and inexplicable way that brought with it--peace. The power of all these
strange and glowing thoughts poured their full tide into his own rather
arid and thirsty world, frightening him with their terrific force. But
the mere utterance of that delightful name--in the way Skale uttered
it--brought confidence and peace.
"... Could we but hear them!" Skale continued, half to himself, half to
his probationer; "for the sad thing is that today the world has ears yet
cannot hear. As light is distorted by passing through a gross atmosphere,
so sound reaches us but indistinctly now, and few true names can bring
their wondrous messages of power correctly. Men, coarsening with the
materialism of the ages, have grown thick and gross with the luxury of
inventions and the diseases of modern life that develop intellect at the
expense of soul. They have lost the old inner hearing of divine sound,
and but one here and there can still catch the faint, far-off and
ineffable music."
He lifted his eyes, and his voice became low and even gentle as the
glowing words fell from his heart of longing.
"None hear now the morning stars when they sing together to the sun; none
know the chanting of the spheres! The ears of the world are stopped with
lust, and the old divine science of true-naming seems lost forever amid
the crash of engines and the noisy thunder of machinery!... Only among
flowers and certain gems are the accurate old true names still to be
found!... But we are on the track, my dear Spinrobin, we are on the
ancient trail to Power."
The clergyman closed his eyes and clasped his hands, lifting his face
upwards with a rapt expression while he murmured under his breath the
description of the Rider on the White Horse from the Book of the
Revelations, as though it held some inner meaning that his heart knew yet
dared not divulge: "And he had a Name written, that no man knew but he
himself. And he was clothed in a vesture dipped in blood: and his Name is
called The Word of God ... and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a
name written,--'King of Kings and Lord of Lords....'"
And for an instant Spinrobin, listening to the rolling sound but not to
the actual words, fancied that a faintly colored atmosphere of deep
scarlet accompanied the vibrations of his resonant whisper and produced
in the depths of his mind this momentary effect of colored audition.
It was all very strange and puzzling. He tried, however, to keep an open
mind and struggle as best he might with these big swells that rolled
into his little pool of life and threatened to merge it in a vaster tide
than he had yet dreamed of. Knowing how limited is the world which the
senses report, he saw nothing too inconceivable in the idea that
certain persons might possess a peculiar inner structure of the spirit
by which supersensuous things can be perceived. And what more likely
than that a man of Mr. Skale's unusual caliber should belong to them?
Indeed, that the clergyman possessed certain practical powers of an
extraordinary description he was as certain as that the house was not
empty as he had at first supposed. Of neither had he proof as yet; but
proof was not long in forthcoming.