I
A certain struggling incoherence is manifest in Spinrobin's report of it
all, as of a man striving to express violent thoughts in a language he
has not yet mastered. It is evident, for instance, as those few familiar
with the "magical" use of sound in ceremonial and the power that resides
in "true naming" will realize, that he never fully understood Skale's
intended use of the chord, or why this complex sound was necessary for
the utterance of the complex "Name."
Moreover, the powers concealed in the mere letters, while they laid hold
upon his imagination, never fully entered his understanding. Few minds,
it seems, can conceive of any deity as other than some anthropomorphic
extension of themselves, for the idea is too greatly blinding to admit
human thought within a measurable distance even of a faintest conception.
The true, stupendous nature of the forces these letters in the opening
syllable clothed, Spinrobin unquestionably never apprehended. Miriam,
with her naked and undefiled intuitions, due to utter ignorance of
worldly things from birth, came nearer to the reality; but then Miriam
was now daily more and more caught up into the vortex of a sweet and
compelling human love, and in proportion as this grew she feared the
great experiment that might--so Spinrobin had suggested--spell Loss.
Gradually dread closed the avenues of her spirit that led so fearfully to
Heaven; and in their place she saw the dear yet thorny paths that lay
with Spinny upon the earth.
They no longer, these two bewildered loving children, spoke of one
another in the far-fetched terminology of sound and music. He no longer
called her his "brilliant little sound," nor did she respond with "you
perfect echo"; they fell back--sign of a gradual concession to more human
things--upon the gentler terminology, if the phrase may be allowed, of
Winky. They shared Winky between them ... though neither one nor other of
them divined yet what Winky actually meant in their just-opening lives.
"Winky is yours," she would say, "because you made him, but he belongs to
me too, because he simply can't live without me!"
"Or I without you, Little Magic," he whispered, laughing tenderly. "So,
you see, we are all three together."
Her face grew slightly troubled.
"He only pays me visits, though. Sometimes I think you hide him, or tell
him not to come." And far down in her deep grey eyes swam the first
moisture of rising tears. "Don't you, my wonderful Spinny?"
"Sometimes I forget him, perhaps," he replied gravely, "but that is only
when I think of what may be coming if--the experiment succeeds--"
"Succeeds?" she exclaimed. "You mean if it fails!" Her voice dropped
instinctively, and they looked over their shoulders to make sure they
were alone.
He came up very close to her and spoke in her small pink ear. "If it
succeeds," he whispered, "we go to Heaven, I suppose; if it fails we
stay upon the earth." Then he stood off, holding her hands at arm's
length and gazing down upon her. "Do you want to go to Heaven?" he asked
very deliberately, "or to stay here upon the earth with me and Winky--?"
She was in his arms the same second, laughing and crying with the strange
conflict of new and inexplicable emotions.
"I want to be with you here, and forever. Heaven frightens me now.
But--oh, Spinny, dear protecting thing, I want--I also want--" She broke
off abruptly, and Spinrobin, unable to see her face buried against his
shoulder, could not guess whether she was laughing or weeping. He only
divined that something in her heart, profound as life itself, something
she had never been warned to conceal, was clamoring for comprehension and
satisfaction.
"Miriam, tell me exactly. I'm sure I shall understand--"
"I want Winky to be with us always--not only sometimes--on little
visits," he heard between the broken breathing.
"I'll tell him--"
"But there's no good telling _him_," she interrupted almost fiercely, "it
is _me_ you must tell...."
Spinrobin's heart sank within him. She was in pain and he could not quite
understand. He pressed her hard against him, keeping silence.
Presently she lifted her face from his coat, and he saw the tears of
mingled pain and happiness in her eyes--the eyes of this girl-woman who
knew not the common ugly standards of life because no woman had ever told
them to her.
"You see, Winky is not really mine unless I have some share in making him
too," she said very softly. "When I have made him too, then he will stay
forever with us, I think."
And Spinrobin, beginning to understand, knowing within him that singular
exultation of triumphant love which comes to a pure man when he meets the
mother-to-be of his firstborn, lowered his own face very reverently to
hers, and kissed her on the cheeks and eyes--saying nothing, and vaguely
wondering whether the awful name that Skale sought with so much thunder
and lightning, did not lie at that very moment, sweetly singing its
divinest message, between the contact of this pair of youthful lips, the
lips of himself and Miriam.
II
And Philip Skale, meanwhile, splendid and independent of all common
obstacles, thundered along his tempestuous mad way, regardless and
ignorant of all signs of disaffection. The rest of that week--a week of
haunting wonder and beauty--was devoted to the carrying out of the
strange program. It is not possible to tell in detail the experience of
each separate room. Spinrobin does it, yet only succeeds in repeating
himself; and, as has been seen, his powers failed even in that first
chamber of awe. The language does not exist in which adventures so remote
from normal experience can be clothed without straining the mind to the
verge of the unintelligible. It appears, however, that each room
possessed its color, note and form, which later were to issue forth and
combine in the even vaster pattern, chord and outline which should
include them all.
Even the thought of it strained the possibilities of belief and the
resources of the imagination.... His soul fluttered and shrank.
They continued the processes of prayer and fasting Skale had ordained as
the time for the experiment drew near, and the careful vibratory
utterance of the "word" belonging to each room, the vibrations of which
threw their inner selves into a condition of safe--or comparatively
safe--receptivity. But Spinrobin no longer said his prayers, for the
thought that soon he was to call upon the divine and mighty name in
reality prevented his doing so in the old way of childhood--nominally. He
feared there might come an answer.
He literally walked the dizzy edge of precipices that dropped over the
edge of the world. The incoherence of all this traffic with sound and
name had always bewildered him, even to the point of darkness, whereas
now it did more, it appalled him in some sense that was monstrous and
terrifying. Yet, while weak with terror when he tried to face the
possible results, and fevered with the notion of entering some new
condition (even though one of glory) where Miriam might no longer be as
he now knew her, it was the savage curiosity he felt that prevented his
coming to a definite decision and telling Mr. Skale that he withdrew from
the whole affair.
Then the idea grew in his mind that the clergyman was obsessed by some
perverted spiritual force, some "Devil" who deceived him, and that the
name he sought to pronounce was after all not good--not God. His
thoughts, fears, hopes, all became hopelessly entangled, through them one
thing alone holding clear and steady--the passionate desire to keep
Miriam as she was now, and to be with her forever. His mind played tricks
with him too. Day and night the house echoed with new sounds; the very
walls grew resonant; the entire building, buried away among these
desolate hills, trembled as though he were imprisoned within the belly of
some monstrous and gigantic fiddle.
Mr. Skale, too, began to change, it seemed. While physically he
increased, as it were, with the power of his burning enthusiasm, his
beard longer and more ragged, his eyes more luminous, and his voice
shaking through the atmosphere almost like wind, his personality, in some
curious fashion, seemed at the same time to retire and become oddly
tinged with a certain remoteness from reality. Spinrobin once or twice
caught himself wondering if he were not after all some legendary or pagan
figure, some mighty character of dream or story, and that presently he,
Spinrobin, would awake and write down the most wonderful vision the world
had ever known. His imagination, it will be seen, was affected in more
ways than one....
With a tremendous earnestness the clergyman went about the building, down
the long dark corridors and across the halls, his long soft strides took
him swiftly everywhere; his mere presence charged with some potent force
that betrayed itself in the fire of his eyes and the flush of his cheeks.
Spinrobin thought of him as some daring blasphemer, knocking at a door in
the sky. The sound of that knocking ran all about the universe. And when
the door opened, the heavens would roll back like an enormous, flat
curtain....
"Any moment almost," Skale whispered to him, smiling, "the day may be
upon us. Keep yourself ready--and--in tune."
And Spinrobin, expecting a thunderclap in his sleep, but ever plucky,
answered in his high-pitched voice, "I'm ready, Mr. Philip Skale, I'm
ready! I'm game too!" when, truthfully speaking, perhaps, he was neither
one nor other.
He would start up from sleep in the nighttime at the least sound, and the
roar of the December gales about the house became voices of portent that
conveyed far more than the mere rushing of inarticulate winds....
"When the hour comes--and it is close at hand--we shall not fail to know
it," said Skale, pallid with excitement. "The Letters will be out upon
us. They will live! But with an intense degree of exuberant life far
beyond what we know as life--we, in our puny, sense-limited bodies!" And
the scorn in his voice came from the center of his heart. "For what we
hear as sound is only a section," he cried, "only a section of
sound-vibrations--as they exist."
"The vibrations our ears can take are _very_ small, I know," interpolated
Spinrobin, cold at heart, while Miriam, hiding behind chairs and tables
that offered handy protection, watched with mingled anxiety and
confidence, knowing that in the last resort her adorable and "wonderful
Spinny" would guide her aright. Love filled her heart, ousting that other
portentous Heaven!
III
And then Skale announced that the time was ready for rehearsals.
"Let us practice the chord," he said, "so that when the moment comes
suddenly upon us, in the twinkling of an eye, in the daytime or in the
night, we shall be prepared, and each shall fly to his appointed place
and utter his appointed note."
The reasons for these definite arrangements he did not pretend to
explain, for they belonged to a part of his discovery that he kept
rigidly to himself; and why Spinrobin and Miriam were to call their notes
from the corridor itself, while Skale boomed his great bass in the
prepared cellar, Mrs. Mawle chanting her alto midway in the hall, acting
as a connecting channel in some way, was apparently never made fully
clear. In Spinrobin's imagination it was very like a practical
illustration of the written chord, the notes rising from the bass clef to
the high soprano--the cellar to the attic, so to speak. But, whatever the
meaning behind it, Skale was exceedingly careful to teach to each of
them his and her appointed place.
"When the Letters move of themselves, and make the first sign," he
repeated, "we shall know it beyond all doubt or question. At any moment
of the day or night it may come. Each of you then hasten to your
appointed place and wait for the sound of my bass in the cellar. There
will be no mistake about it; you will hear it rising through the
building. Then, each in turn, as it reaches you, lift your voices and
call your notes. The chord thus rising through the building will gather
in the flying Letters: it will unite them; it will summon them down to
the fundamental master-tone I utter in the cellar. The moment the Letter
summoned by each particular voice reaches the cellar, that voice must
cease its utterance. Thus, one by one, the four mighty Letters will come
to rest below. The gongs will vibrate in sympathetic resonance; the
colors will tremble and respond; the finely drawn wires will link the
two, and the lens of gas will lead them to the wax, and the record of the
august and terrible syllable will be completely chained. At any desired
moment afterwards I shall be able to reawaken it. Its phonetic utterance,
its correct pronunciation, captured thus in the two media of air and
ether, sound and light, will be in my safe possession, ready for use.
"But"--and he looked down upon his listeners with a dreadful and
impressive gravity that yet only just concealed the bursting exultation
the thought caused him to feel--"remember that once you have uttered your
note, you will have sucked out from the Letter a portion of its own
terrific life and force, which will immediately pass into yourself. You
will instantly absorb this, for you will have called upon a mighty
name--the mightiest--and your prayer will have been answered." He stooped
and whispered as in an act of earnest prayer, "_We shall be as Gods_!"
Something of cold splendor, terribly possessing, came close to them as
he spoke the words; for this was no empty phrase. Behind it lay the great
drive of a relentless reality. And it struck at the very root of the fear
that grew every moment more insistent in the hearts of the two lovers.
They did not want to become as gods. They desired to remain quietly human
and to _love_!
But before either of them could utter speech, even had they dared, the
awful clergyman continued; and nothing brought home to them more vividly
the horrible responsibility of the experiment, and the results of
possible failure, than the few words with which he concluded.
"And to mispronounce, to utter falsely, to call inaccurately, will mean
to summon into life upon the world--and into the heart of the
utterer--that which is incomplete, that which is not God--Devils!--devils
of that subtle Alteration which is destruction--the devils of a Lie."
* * * * *
And so for hours at a time they rehearsed the sounds of the chord, but
very softly, lest the sound should rise and reach the four rooms and
invite the escape of the waiting Letters prematurely.
Mrs. Mawle, holding the bit of paper on which her instructions were
clearly written, was as eager almost as her master, and as the note she
had to utter was practically the only one left in the register of her
voice, her deafness provided little difficulty.
"Though when the letters awake into life and cry aloud," said Skale,
beaming upon her dear old apple-skinned face, "it will be in tones that
even the deaf shall hear. For they will spell a measure of redemption
that shall destroy in a second of time all physical disabilities
whatsoever...."
It was at this moment Spinrobin asked a question that for days had
been hovering about his lips. He asked it gravely, hesitatingly, even
solemnly, while Miriam hung upon the answer with an anxiety as great
as his own.
"And if any one of us fails," he said, "and pronounces falsely, will the
result affect all of us, or only the utterer?"
"The utterer only," replied the clergyman. "For it is his own spirit that
must absorb the forces and powers invoked by the sound he utters."
He took the question lightly, it seemed. The possibility of failure was
too remote to be practical.