The vision flashed upon him with extraordinary conviction, so that he forgot for the moment how securely he belonged to the unstable. The smile of happiness spread, as it were, over his entire being. He glowed and pulsed with its delicious inward fire. Light filled his being for an instant—an instant of intoxicating belief and certainty and vision. The instant inspiration of a dream went lost and vanished. He had drawn upon childhood and legendary reading for the substance of a moment's happiness. He shook himself, so to speak. He remembered his patients and his duties, his colleague too....
Nothing, meanwhile, occurred to arouse interest or attention.LeVallonwas quite docile, ordinary; he needed no watching; he slept well, ate well, spent his leisure with his books and in the garden. He complained often of the lack of sunlight, and sometimes he might be seen taking some deep breaths of air into his lungs by the open window or on the balcony. The phases of the moon, too, interested him, and he asked once when the full moon would come and then, when Devonham told him, he corrected the datethe latter gave, proving him two hours wrong. But, on the whole, there seemed little to differentiate him from the usual young man whose physique had developed in advance of his mental faculties; his knowledge in some respects certainly was backward, as in the case of arrested development. He seemed an intelligent countryman, but an unusually intelligent countryman, though all the time another under-intelligence shone brightly, betraying itself in remarks and judgments oddly phrased.
Dr. Fillery took him, during the following day or two, to concerts, theatres, cinemas. He enjoyed them all. Yet in the theatres he was inclined to let his attention wander. The degree of alertness varied oddly. His critical standard, moreover, was curiously exacting; he demanded the real creative interpretation of a part, and was quick to detect a lack of inspiration, of fine technique, of true conception in a player. Reasons he failed to give, and argument seemed impossible to him, but if voice or gesture or imaginative touch failed anywhere, he lost interest in the performer from that moment.
"He has poor breath," he remarked. "He only imitates. He is outside." Or, "She pretends. She does not feel and know. Feeling—the feeling that comes of fire—she has not felt."
"She does not understand her part, you mean?" suggested Fillery.
"She does not burn with it," was the reply.
At concerts he behaved individually too. They bored as well as puzzled him; the music hardly stirred him. He showed signs of distress at anything classical, though Wagner, Debussy, the Russians, moved him and produced excitement.
"He," was his remark, with emphasis, "hasheard. He gives me freedom. I could fly and go away. He sets me free ..." and then he would say no more, not even in reply to questions. He could not define the freedom he referred to, nor could he say where he could go awayto.But his face lit up, he smiled his delightful smile, he looked happy. "Stars," he added once in a tone of interest, in reply to repeated questions, "stars, wind, fire, away fromthis!"—he tapped his head and breast—"I feel more alive and real."
"It's real and true, that music? That's what you feel?"
"It's beyond this," he replied, again tapping his body. "They have heard."
The cinema interested him more.Yetits limits seemed to perplex him more than its wonder thrilled him. He accepted it as a simple, natural, universal thing.
"They stay always on the sheet," he observed with evident surprise. "And I hear nothing. They do not even sing. Sound and movement go together!"
"The speaking will come," explained Fillery. "Those are pictures merely."
"I understand. Yet sound is natural, isn't it? They ought to be heard."
"Speech," agreed his companion, "is natural, but singing isn't."
"Are they not alive enough to sing?" was the reply, spoken to himself rather than to his neighbour, who was so attentive to his least response. "Do they only sing when"—Fillery heard it and felt something leap within him—"when they are paid or have an audience?" he finished the sentence quickly.
"No one sings naturally of their own accord—not in cities, at any rate," was the reply.
LeVallon laughed, as though he understood at once.
"There is no sun and wind," he murmured. "Of course. They cannot."
It was the cinemas that provided most material for observation, Fillery found. There was in a cinema performance something that excited his companion, but excited him more than the doctor felt he was justified in encouraging. Obviously the other side of him, the "N. H." aspect, came up to breathe under the stimulus of the rapid, world-embracing,space-and-time destroying pictures on the screen. Concerts did not stimulate him, it seemed, but rather puzzled him. He remained wholly the commonplace LeVallon—with one exception: he drew involved patterns on the edge of his programmes, patterns of a very complicated yet accurate kind, as though he almost saw the sounds that poured into his ears. And these ornamented programmes Dr. Fillery preserved. Sound—music—seemed to belong to his interpretation of movement. About the cinema, however, there seemed something almost familiar, something he already knew and understood, the sound belonging to movement only lacking.
Apart from these small incidents, LeVallon showed nothing unusual, nothing that a yokel untaught yet of natural intelligence might not have shown. His language, perhaps, was singular, but, having been educated by one mind only, and in a region of lonely forests and mountains, remote from civilized life, there was nothing inexplicable in the odd words he chose, nor in the peculiar—if subtle and penetrating—phrases that he used. Invariably he recognized the spontaneous, creative power as distinguished from the derivative that merely imitated.
He found ways of expressing himself almost immediately, both in speech and writing, however, and with a perfection far beyond the reach of a half-educated country lad; and this swift aptitude was puzzling until its explanation suddenly was laid bare. He absorbed, his companion realized at last, as by telepathy, the content of his own, of Fillery's mind, acquiring the latter's mood, language, ideas, as though the two formed one being.
The discovery startled the doctor. Yet what startled him still more was the further discovery, made a little later, that he himself could, on occasions, become so identified with his patient that the slightest shade of thought or feeling rose spontaneously in his own mind too.
He remained, otherwise, almost entirely "LeVallon"; and, after a full report made to Devonham, and the detaileddiscussion thereon that followed, Dr. Fillery had no evidence to contradict the latter's opinion: "LeVallon is the real true self. The other personality—'N. H.' as we call it—is a mere digest and accumulation of material supplied by his parents and by Mason."
"Let us wait and see what happens when 'N. H.' appears anddoessomething," Fillery was content to reply.
"If," answered Devonham, with sceptical emphasis, "it ever does appear."
"You think it won't?" asked Fillery.
"With proper treatment," said Devonham decisively, "I see no reason why 'N. H.' should not become happily merged in the parent self—in LeVallon, and a permanent cure result."
He put his glasses straight and stared at his chief, as much as to say "You promised."
"Perhaps," said Fillery. "But, in my judgment, 'LeVallon' is too slight to count at all. I believe the whole, real, parent Self is 'N. H.,' and the only life LeVallon has at all is that which peeps up through him—from 'N. H.'"
Fillery returned his serious look.
"If 'N. H.' is the real self, and I am right," he added slowly, "you, Paul, will have to revise your whole position."
"I shall," returned Devonham. "But—you will allow this—it is a lot to expect. I see no reason to believe in anything more than a subconscious mind of unusual content, and possibly of unusual powers and extent," he added with reluctance.
"It is," said Fillery significantly, "a lot to expect—as you said just now. I grant you that. Yet I feel it possible that——" he hesitated.
Devonham looked uncomfortable. He fidgeted. He did not like the pause. A sense of exasperation rose in him, as though he knew something of what was coming.
"Paul," went on his chief abruptly in a tone that dropped instinctively to a lower key—almost a touch of awe laybehind it—"you admit no deity, I know, but you admit purpose, design, intelligence."
"Well," replied the other patiently, long experience having taught him iron restraint, "it's a blundering, imperfect system, inadequately organized—if you care to call that intelligence. It's of an extremely intricate complexity. I admit that. Deity I consider an unnecessary assumption."
"The love and hate of atoms alone bowls you over," was the unexpected comment. "The word 'Laws' explains nothing. A machine obeys the laws, but intelligence conceived that machine—and a man repairs and keeps it going. Who—what—keeps the daisy going, the crystal, the creative thought in the imagination? An egg becomes a leaf-eating caterpillar, which in turn becomes a honey-eating butterfly with wings. A yolk turns into feathers. Is that accomplished without intelligence?"
"Ask our new patient," interrupted Devonham, wiping his glasses with unnecessary thoroughness.
"Which?"
Devonham startled, looked up without his glasses. It seemed the question made him uneasy. Putting the glasses on suddenly, he stared at his chief.
"I see what you mean, Edward," he said earnestly, his interest deeply captured. "Be careful. We know nothing, remember, nothing of life. Don't jump ahead like this or take your dreams for reality. We have our duty—in a case like this."
Fillery smiled, as though to convey that he remembered his promise.
"Humanity," he replied, "is a very small section of the universe. Compared to the minuter forms of life, whichmaybe quite as important, if not more so, the human section is even negligible; while, compared to the possibility of greater forms——" He broke off abruptly. "As you say, Paul, we know nothing of life after all, do we? Nothing, less than nothing! We observe and classify a fewresults, that's all. We must beware of narrow prejudice, at any rate—you and I."
His eyes lost their light, his speech dried up, his ideas, dreams, speculations returned to him unrewarded, unexpressed. With natures in whom the subconscious never stirred, natures through whom its magical fires cast no faintest upward gleam, intercourse was ever sterile, unproductive. Such natures had no background. Even a fact, with them, was detached from its true big life, its full significance, its divine potentialities!...
"We must beware of prejudice," he repeated quietly. "We seek truth only."
"We must beware," replied Devonham, as he shrugged his shoulders, "of suggestion—of auto-suggestion above all. We must remember how repressed desires dramatize themselves—especially," he added significantly, "when aided by imagination. We seek only facts." On his face appeared swiftly, before it vanished again, an expression of keen anxiety, almost of affliction, yet tempered, as it were, by surprise and wonder, by pity possibly, and certainly by affection.
TO Devonham, meanwhile, LeVallon's behaviour was polite and kind and distant; he did not show distrust of any sort, but he betrayed a certain diffidence, reserve and caution. Trust he felt; sympathy he did not feel. To the amusement of Fillery, he suggested almost a kind of mild contempt when dealing with him, and this amusement was increased by the fact that it obviously annoyed Devonham, while it gratified his chief. For towards Fillery, LeVallon behaved with an intimate and understanding sympathy that proved his instantaneous affection based upon mutual comprehension. It seemed that LeVallon and Fillery had known one another always.
It was doubtless, due to this innate sympathy between them that Edward Fillery's rare gift of absorbing the content of another's mind, even to the point of taking on that other's conditions, physical and emotional at the same time, was so successful. By means of a highly developed power of auto-suggestion, he had learned so to identify his own mind, thought, feeling with those of a patient, that there resulted a kind of merging by which he literally became that patient. He felt with him. As a subject sees the pictures in the hypnotiser's mind, perceives his thoughts, divines his slightest will, so Fillery, reversing the process, could realize for the moment exactly what his patient was thinking, feeling, desiring. It was of great use to him in his strange practice.
This gift, naturally, varied in degree, and was not invariably successful. In some cases he only felt, the emotion alone being thus transferred; in others he only saw what the patient saw, or thought he saw, the accompanyingemotion being omitted; in others again, as in cases of vision at a distance, either of time or space, he had been able to follow the "travelling sight" of his patient, whose consciousness in trance was operating far away, and thus to check for subsequent verification exactly what that patient saw. He had shared strange experiences with others—with a man, for instance, in whom sight was transferred to the tip of his index finger, so that he could read a book by passing that finger along the printed line; with a woman, again, in whom "exteriorized consciousness" manifested itself, so that, if the air several inches from her face was pinched or struck, the impact was received and an actual bruise produced upon her skin.
This extension of consciousness, its seeds already in his nature, he had trained and developed to a point where he could almost rely upon auto-suggestion bringing about quickly the desired conditions. Its success, however, as mentioned, was variable. With "N. H.," especially now, this variableness was marked; sometimes it was so easily accomplished as to seem natural and without a conscious effort, while at other times it failed completely. Since it was in no sense an attempt to transfer anything from his own mind to that of the patient, Fillery felt that his promise to his colleague was not involved.
The following scene describes the first time in which the process took place with his new patient. Fillery himself wrote down the words, supplied the detailed description, filled in the emotion and psychology, but exactly as these occurred and as he felt them, both when these took place, respectively, in his own consciousness and in that of his patient. Part of the time he was present, part of it he was not visibly so, being screened from observation, yet so placed that he could note everything that happened. It is clear, however, that his mind was so intimatelyen rapportwith the thoughts and feelings of "N. H.," that he experienced in his own being all that "N. H." experienced. The description was written immediately after the occurrence,though some of it, the spoken language in particular, was jotted down in his hiding place at the actual moment.
The interlacing of the two minds, their interpenetration, as it were, one occasionally dominating the other, is curious to trace and far from difficult to disentangle. Similarly the interweaving of LeVallon and "N. H." is noticeable. The description given by Devonham of the portion of the occurrence he witnessed personally, or heard about from Nurse Robbins and the attendants—this description reduces the whole thing to the commonplace level of "a slight seizure accompanied by signs of violence and moments of delirium due to excitement and fatigue, and soon cured by sleep."
The occurrence took place precisely at the period when the moon was at the full.
THE body I'm in and using is 22, as they call it, and from a man named Mason, a geologist, I receive sums of money, regularly paid, with which I live. They call it "live." A roof and walls protect me, who do not need protection; my body, which it irks, is covered with wool and cloth and stuff, fitting me as bark fits a tree and yet not part of me; my feet, which love the touch of earth and yearn for it, are cased in dead dried skin called leather; even my head and hair, which crave the sun and wind, are covered with another piece of dead dried skin, shaped like a shell, but an ugly shell, in which, were it shaped otherwise, the wind and rustling leaves might sing with flowers.
Before 22 I remember nothing—nothing definite, that is. I opened my eyes in a soft, but not refreshing case standing on four iron legs, and well off the ground, and covered with coarse white coverings piled thickly on my body. It was a bed. Slabs of transparent stuff kept out the living sunshine for which I hungered; thick solid walls shut off the wind; no stars or moon showed overhead, because an enormous lid hid every bit of sky. No dew, therefore, lay upon the sheets. I smelt no earth, no leaves, no flowers. No single natural sound entered except the chattering of dirty sparrows which had lost its freshness. I was in a hospital.
One comely figure alone gave me a little joy. It was soft and slim and graceful, with a smell of fern and morning in its hair, though that hair was lustreless and balled up in ugly lumps, with strips of thin metal in it. They called it nurse and sister. It was the first moving thing I saw when my eyes opened on my limited and enclosed surroundings. My heart beat quicker, a flash of thin joycame up in me. I had seen something similar before somewhere; it reminded me, I mean, of something I had known elsewhere; though but a shabby, lifeless, clumsy copy of this other glorious thing. Though not real, it stirred this faint memory of reality, so that I caught at the skirts of moonlight, stars and flowers reflected in a forest pool where my companion played for long periods of happiness between our work. The perfume and the eyes did that. I watched it for a bit, as it moved away, came close and looked at me. When the eyes met mine, a wave of life, but of little life, surged faintly through me.
They were dim and pitiful, these eyes; mournful, unlit, unseeing. The stars had set in them; dull shadows crowded. They were so small. They were hungry too. They were unsatisfied. For some minutes it puzzled me, then I understood. That was the word—unsatisfied. Ah, but I could alter that! I could comfort, help, at any rate. My strength, though horribly clipped and blocked, could manage a little thing like that! My smaller rhythms I could put into it.
The eyes, the smile, the whole soft comely bundle, so pitifully hungry and unsatisfied, I rose and seized, pressing it close inside my own great arms, and burying it all against my breast. I crushed it, but very gently, as I might crush a sapling. My lips were amid the ferny hair. I breathed upon it willingly, glad to help.
It was a poor unfinished thing, I felt at once, soft and yielding where it should have been resilient and elastic as fresh turf; the perfume had no body, it faded instantly; there was so little life in it.
But, as I held it in my big embrace, smothering its hunger as best I could within my wave of being, this bundle, this poor pitiful bundle, screamed and struggled to get free. It bit and scratched and uttered sounds like those squeaks the less swift creatures make when the swifter overtake them.
I was too surprised to keep it to me; I relaxed my hold. The instant I did so the figure, thus released, stood uprightlike a young birch the wind sets free. The figure looked alive. The hair fell loose, untidily, the puny face wore colour, the eyes had fire in them. I saw that fire. It was a message. Memory stirred faintly in me.
"Ah!" I cried. "I've helped you anyhow a little!"
The scene that followed filled me with such trouble and bewilderment that I cannot recall exactly what occurred. The figure seemed to spit at me, yet not with grace and invitation. There was no sign of gratitude. I was entirely misunderstood, it seemed. Bells rang, as the figure rushed to the door and flung it open. It called aloud; similar, though quite lifeless figures came in answer and filled the room. A doctor—Devonham, they called him—followed them. I was most carefully examined in a dozen curious ways that tickled my skin a little so that I smiled. But I lay quite still and silent, watching the whole performance with a confusion in my being that baffled my comprehending what was going on. Most of the figures were frightened.
Then the doctor gave place to Fillery, whose name has rhythm.
To him I spoke at once:
"I wished to comfort and revive her," I told him. "She is so starved. I was most gentle. She brings a message only."
He made no reply, but gazed at me with the corners of his mouth both twitching, and in his eyes—ah, his eyes had more of the sun in them—a flash of something that had known fire, at least, if it had not kept it.
"My God! I worship thee," I murmured at the glimpse of the Power I must own as Master and creator of my being. "Even when thou art playful, I adore thee and obey."
Then four other figures, shaped like the doctor but wholly mechanical, a mere blind weight operating through them, held my arms and legs. Not the least desire to move was in me luckily. I say "luckily," because, had I wished it, I could have flung them through the roof, blown down thelittle walls, caught up a dozen figures in my arms, and rushed forth with them towards the Powers of Fire and Wind to which I belonged.
Could I? I felt that I could. The sight of the true fire, small though it was, in the comely figure's and the doctor's eyes, had set me in touch again with my home and origin. This touch I had somehow lost; I had been "ill," with what they called nervous disorder and injured reason. The lost touch was now restored. But, luckily, as I said, there was no desire in me to set free these other figures, to help them in any way, after the reception my first kindly effort had experienced. I lay quite still, held by these four grotesque and puny mechanisms. The comely one, with the others similar to her, had withdrawn. I felt very kindly towards them all, but especially towards the doctor, Fillery, who had shown that he knew my deity and origin. None of them were worth much trouble, anyhow. I felt that too. A mild, sweet-toned contempt was in me.
"Dangerous," was a word I caught them whispering as they went. I laughed a little. The four faces over me made odd grimaces, tightening their lips, and gripping my legs and arms with greater effort. The doctor—Fillery—noticed it.
"Easy, remember," he addressed the four. "There's really no need to hold. It won't recur." I nodded. We understood one another. And, with a smile at me, he left the room, saying he would come back after a short interval. A link with my source, a brother as it were, went with him. I was lonely....
I began to hum songs to myself, little fragments of a great natural music I had once known but lost, and I noticed that the four figures, as I sang, relaxed their grip of my limbs considerably. To tell the truth, I forgot that they were holding me; their grip, anyhow, was but a thread I could snap without the smallest effort. The songs were happiness in me. Upon free leaping rhythms I careered with an exhilarating rush of liberty; all aboutspace I soared and sank; I was picked up, flung far, riding the crest of immense waves of orderly vibration that delighted me. I let myself go a bit, let my voice out, I mean. No effort accompanied my singing. It was automatic, like breathing almost. It was natural to me. These rhythmical sounds and the patterns that they wove in space were the outlines of forms it was my work to build. This expressed my nature. Only my power was blocked and stifled in this confining body. The fire and air which were my tools I could not control. I have forgotten—forgotten——!
"Got a voice, ain't he?" observed one of the figures admiringly.
"Lunies can do 'most anything they have a mind to."
"Grand Opera isn't it."
"Yes," mentioned the fourth, "but he'll lift the roof off presently. We'd better stop him before there's any trouble."
I stopped of myself, however: their remarks interested me. Also while I had been singing, although I called it humming only, they had gradually let go of me, and were now sitting down on my bed and staring with quite pleasant faces. All their dim eight eyes were fixed on me. Their forms were not built well.
"Where did you get that from, Guv'nor?" asked the one who had spoken first. "Can you give me the name of it?"
The sound of his own voice was like the scratching of a pin after the enormous rhythm that now ceased.
"Ain't printed, is it?" he went on, as I stared, not understanding what he meant. "I've got a sister at the Halls," he explained. "She'd make a hit with that kind of thing. Gave me quite a twist inside to hear it," he added, turning to the others.
The others agreed solemnly with dull stupid faces. I lay and listened to their talk. I longed to help them. I had forgotten how.
"A bit churchy, I thought it," said one. "But, I confess, it stirred me up."
"Churchy or not, it's the stuff," insisted the first.
"Oh, it's the stuff to give 'em, right enough." And they looked at me admiringly again. "Where did you get it, if I may ask?" replied Number One in a more respectful tone. His face looked quite polite. The lips stretched, showing yellow teeth. It was his smile. But his eyes were a little more real. Oh, where was my fire? I could have built the outline better so that he was real and might express far more. I have forgotten——!
"I hear it," I told him, "because I'm in it. It's all about me. It never stops. It's what we build with——"
Number One seemed greatly interested.
"Hear it, do you? Why, that's odd now. You see"—he looked at his companions apologetically, as though he knew they would not believe him—"my father was like that. He heard his music, he always used to say, but we laughed at him. He was a composer by trade. Oh, his stuff was printed too. Of course," he added, "there's musical talent in the family," as though that explained everything. He turned to me again. "Give us a little more, Mister—if you don't object, that is," he added. And his face was soft as he said it. "Only gentle like—if you don't mind."
"Yes, keep it down a bit," another put in, looking anxiously in the direction of the closed door. He patted the air with his open palm, slowly, carefully, as though he patted an animal that might rise and fly at him.
I hummed again for them, but this time with my lips closed. The waves of rhythm caught me up and away. I soared and flew and dropped and rose again upon their huge coloured crests. Curtains and sheets of quiet flame in palest gold flared shimmering through the sound, while winds that were full of hurricanes and cyclones swept down to lift the fire and dance with it in spirals. The perfume of great flowers rose. There were flowers everywhere, and stars shone through it all like showers of gold. Ah! I beganto remember something. It was flowers and stars as well as human forms we worked to build....
But I kept the fire from leaping into actual flame; the mighty winds I held back. Even thus pent and checked, their powerful volume made the atmosphere shake and pulse about us. Only I could not control them now.... With an effort I came back, came down, as it were, and saw the funny little faces staring at me with opened eyes and mouths, and yellow teeth, pale gums, their skins gone whitish, their figures rigid with their tense emotion. They were so poorly made, the patterns so imperfect. The new respect in their manner was marked plainly. Suddenly all four turned together towards the door. I stopped. The doctor had returned. But it was Fillery again. I liked the feel of him.
"He wanted to sing, sir, so we let him. It seemed to relieve him a bit," they explained quickly and with an air of helpless apology.
"Good, good," said the doctor. "Quite good. Any normal expression that brings relief is good." He dismissed them. They went out, casting back at me expressions of puzzled thanks and interest. The door closed behind them. The doctor seated himself beside me and took my hand. I liked his touch. His hand was alive, at any rate, although within my own it felt rather like a dying branch or bunch of leaves I grasped. The life, if thin, was real.
"Where's the rest of it?" I asked him, meaning the music. "I used to have it all. It's left me, gone away. What's cut it off?"
"You're not cut off really," he said gently. "You can always get into it again when you really need it." He gazed at me steadily for a minute, then said in his quiet voice—a full, nice tone with wind through a forest running in it: "Mason.... Dr. Mason...."
He said no more, but watched me. The name stirred something in me I could not get at quite. I could not reach down to it. I was troubled by a memory I could not seize.
"Mason," I repeated, returning his strong gaze. "What—who—was Mason? And where?" I connected the name with a sense of liberty, also with great winds and pools of fire, with great figures of golden skin and radiant faces, with music, too, the music that had left me.
"You've forgotten for the moment," came the deep running voice I liked. "He looked after you for twenty years. He gave his life for you. He loved you. He loved your mother. Your father was his friend."
"Has he gone—gone back?"
"He's dead."
"I can get after him though," I said, for the name touched me with a sense of lost companionship I wanted, though the reference to my father and mother left me cold. "I can easily catch him up. When I move with my wind and fire, the fastest things stand still." My own speed, once I was free again, I knew outpaced easily the swiftest bird, outpaced light itself.
"Yes," agreed the doctor; "only he doesn't want that now. You can always catch him up when the time comes. Besides, he's waiting for you anyhow."
I knew that was true. I sank back comforted upon the stuffy pillows and lay silent. This tinkling chatter wearied me. It was like trickling wind. I wanted the flood of hurricanes, the pulse of storms. My building, shaping powers, my great companions—oh! where were they?
"He taught you himself, taught you all you know," I heard the tinkling go on again, "but he kept you away from life, thinking it was best. He was afraid for you, afraid for others too. He kept you in the woods and mountains where, as he believed, you could alone express yourself and so be happy. A hundred times, in babyhood and early childhood, you nearly died. He nursed you back to life. His own life he renounced. Now he is dead. He has left you all his money."
He paused. I said no word. Faint memories passed through my mind, but nothing I could hold and seize. Themoney I did not understand at all, except that it was necessary.
"He thought at first that you could not possibly live to manhood. To his surprise you survived everything—illness, accident, disaster of every sort and kind. Then, as you grew up, he realized his mistake. Instead of keeping you away from life, he ought to have introduced you to it and explained it—as I and Devonham are now trying to do. You could not live for ever alone in woods and mountains; when he was gone there would be no one to look after you and guide you."
The trickling of wind went on and on. I hardly listened to it. He did it for his own pleasure, I suppose. It pleased and soothed him possibly. Yet I remembered every syllable. It was a small detail to keep fresh when my real memory covered the whole planet.
"Before he died, he recognized his mistake and faced the position boldly. It was some years before the end; he was hale and hearty still, yet the end, he knew, was in sight. While the power was still strong in him, therefore, he did the only thing left to him to do. He used his great powers. He used suggestion. He hypnotized you, telling you to forget—from the moment of his death, but not before—forget everything—— It was only partially successful."
The door opened, the comely figure glanced in, then vanished.
"She wants more help from me," I interrupted the monotonous tinkling instantly, for pity stirred in me again as I saw her eager, hungry and unsatisfied little eyes. "Call her back. I feel quite willing. It is one of the lower forms we made. I can improve it."
Dr. Fillery, as he was called, looked at me steadily, his mouth twitching at the corners as before, a flash of fire flitting through his eyes. The fire made me like and trust him; the twitching, too, I liked, for it meant he knew how absurd he was. Yet he was bigger than the other figures.
"You can't do that," he said, "you mustn't," and then laughed outright. "It isn't done, you know—here."
"Why not, sir?" I asked, using the terms the figures used. "I feel like that."
"Of course, you do. But all you feel can't be expressed except at the proper times and places. The consent of the other party always is involved," he went on slowly, "when it's a question of expressing—anything you feel."
This puzzled me, because in this particular instance the other party had asked me with her eyes to comfort her. I told him this. He laughed still more. Caught by the sound—it was just like wind passing among tall grasses on a mountain ridge—I forgot what he was talking about for the moment. The sound carried me away towards my own rhythms.
"You've got such amazing insight," he went on tinkling to himself, for I heard, although I did not listen. "You read the heart too easily, too quickly. You must learn to hide your knowledge." The laughter which ran with the words then ended, and I came back to the last thing I had definitely listened to—"express, expressing," was the phrase he used.
"You told me that self-expression is the purpose for which I'm here——?"
"I believe it is," he agreed, more solemnly.
"Only sometimes, then?"
"Exactly. If that expression involves another in pain or trouble or discomfort——"
"Ah! I have to choose, you mean. I have to know first what the other feels about it."
I began to understand better. It was a game. And all games delighted me.
"You may put it roughly so, yes," he explained, "you're very quick. I'll give you a rule to guide you," he went on. I listened with an effort; this tinkling soon wearied me; I could not think long or much; my way, it seemed,was feeling. "Ask yourself always how what you do will affect another," Dr. Fillery concluded. "That's a safe rule for you."
"That is of children," I observed. We stared at each other a moment. "Both sides keep it?" I asked.
"Childish," he agreed, "it certainly is. Both sides, yes, keep it."
I sighed, and the sigh seemed to rise from my very feet, passing through my whole being. He looked at me most kindly then, asking why I sighed.
"I used to be free," I told him. "This is not liberty. And why are we not all free together?"
"It is liberty for two instead of only for one," he said, "and so, in the long run, liberty for all."
"So that's where they are," I remarked, but to myself and not to him. "Not further than that." For what I had once known, but now, it seemed, forgotten, was far beyond such a foolish little game. We had lived without such tiny tricks. We lived openly and unafraid. We worked in harmony. We lived. Yes—but who was "we"? That was the part I had forgotten.
"It's the growth and development of civilization," I heard the little drift of wind go whistling thinly, "and it won't take you long to become quite civilized at this rate, more civilized, indeed, than most—with your swift intelligence and lightning insight."
"Civilization," I repeated to myself. Then I looked at his eyes which hid carefully in their depths somewhere that tiny cherished flame I loved. "Your ways are really very simple," I said. "It's all easy enough to learn. It is so small."
"A man studying ants," he tinkled, "finds them small, but far from simple. You may find complications later. If so, come to me."
I promised him, and the fire gleamed faintly in his eyes a moment. "He entrusted you to me. Your mother," he added softly, "was the woman he loved."
"Civilization," I repeated, for the word set going an odd new rhythm in me that I rather liked, and that tired me less than the other things he said. "What is it then? You are a Race, you told me."
"A Race of human beings, of men and women developing——"
"The comely ones?"
"Are the women. Together we make up the Race."
"And civilization?"
"Is realizing that we are a community, learning, growing, all its members living for the others as well as for themselves."
Dr. Fillery told me then about men and women and sex, how children are made, and what enormous and endless work was necessary merely to keep them all alive and clothed and sheltered before they could accomplish anything else of any sort at all. Half the labour of the majority was simply to keep alive at all. It was an ugly little system he described. Much I did not hear, because my thinking powers gave out. Some of it gave me an awful feeling he called pain. The confusion and imperfection seemed beyond repair, even beyond the worth of being part of it, of belonging to it at all. Moreover, the making of children, without which the whole thing must end, gave me spasms of irritation he called laughter. Only the Comely Ones, and what he told me of them, made me want to sing.
"The men," I said, "but do they see that it is ugly and ludicrous and——"
"Comic," he helped me.
"Do they know," I asked, taking his unknown words, "that it's comic?"
"The glamour," he said, "conceals it from them. To the best among them it is sacred even."
"And the Comely Ones?"
"It is their chief mission," he replied. "Always remember that. It's sacred." He fixed his kind eyes gravely on my face.
"Ah, worship, you mean," I said. "I understand." Again we stared for some minutes. "Yet all are not comely, are they?" I asked presently.
The fire again shone faintly in his eyes as he watched me a moment without answering. It caught me away. I am not sure I heard his words, but I think they ran like this:
"That's just the point where civilization—so far—has always stopped."
I remember he ceased tinkling then; our talk ceased too. I was exhausted. He told me to remember what he had said, and to lie down and rest. He rang the bell, and a man, one of the four who had held me, came in.
"Ask Nurse Robbins to come here a moment, please," he said. And a moment later the Comely One entered softly and stood beside my bed. She did not look at me. Dr. Fillery began again his little tinkling. "... wishes to apologize to you most sincerely, nurse, for his mistake. He meant no harm, believe me. There is no danger in him, nor will he ever repeat it. His ignorance of our ways, I must ask you to believe——"
"Oh, it's nothing, sir," she interrupted. "I've quite forgotten it already. And usually he's as good as gold and perfectly quiet." She blushed, glancing shyly at me with clear invitation.
"It will not recur," repeated the Doctor positively. "He has promised me. He is very, very sorry and ashamed."
The nurse looked more boldly a moment. I saw her silver teeth. I saw the hint of soft fire in her poor pitiful eyes, but far, far away and, as she thought, safely hidden.
"Pitiful one, I will not touch you," I said instantly. "I know that you are sacred."
I noticed at once that her sweet natural perfume increased about her as I said the words, but her eyes were lowered, though she smiled a little, and her little cheeks grew coloured. I saw her small teeth of silvery marble again. Our work was visible. I liked it.
"You have promised me," said Dr. Fillery, rising to go out.
"I promise," I said, while the Comely One was arranging my pillows and sheets with quick, clever hands, sometimes touching my cheek on purpose as she did so. "I will not worship, unless it is commanded of me first. The increased sweetness of her smell will tell me."
But indeed already I had forgotten her, and I no longer realized who it was that tripped about my bed, doing numerous little things to make me comfortable. My friend, the understanding one, companion of my big friend, Mason, who was dead, also had left the room. His twitching mouth, his laughter, and his shining eyes were gone. I was aware that the Comely One remained, doing all manner of little things about me and my bed, unnecessary things, but my pity and my worship were not asked, so I forgot her. My thinking had wearied me, and my feeling was not touched. I began to hum softly to myself; my giant rhythms rose; I went forth towards my Powers of Wind and Fire, full of my own natural joy. I forgot the Race with its men, its women, its rules and games, its tiny tricks, its civilization. I was free for a little with my own.
One detail interfered a little with the rhythms, but only for a second and very faintly even then. The Comely One's face grew dark.
"He's gone off asleep—actually," I heard her mutter, as she left the room with a fling of her little skirts, shutting the door behind her with a bang.
That bang was far away. I was already rising and falling in that natural happy state which to me meant freedom. It is hard to tell about, but that dear Fillery knows, I am sure, exactly what I know, though he has forgotten it. He has known us somewhere, I feel. He understands our service. But, like me, he has forgotten too.
What really happened to me? Where did I go, what did I see and feel when my rhythms took me off?
Thinking is nowhere in it—I can tell him that. I am conscious of the Sun.
One difficulty is that my being here confuses me. Here I am already caught, confined and straitened. I am within certain limits. I can only move in three ways, three measurements, three dimensions. The space I am in here allows only little rhythms; they are coarse and slow and heavy, and beat against confining walls as it were, are thrown back, cross and recross each other, so that while they themselves grow less, their confusion grows greater. The forms and outlines I can build with them are poor and clumsy and insignificant. Spirals I cannot make. Then I forget.
Into these small rhythms I cannot compress myself; the squeezing hurts. Yet neither can I make them bigger to suit myself. I would break forth towards the Sun.
Thus I feel cramped, confused and crippled. It is almost impossible to tell of my big rhythms, for it is an attempt to tell of one thing in terms of another. How can I fix fire and wind upon the point of a pin, for instance, and examine them through a magnifying-glass? The Sun remains. What I experience, really, when I go off into my own freedom is release. My rhythms are of the Sun. They are his messengers, they are my law, they are my life and happiness. By means of them I fulfill the purpose of my being. I work, so Fillery calls it. I build.
That, at any rate, is literally true. My thinking stops at that point, perhaps; but "I think" I mean by "release"—that I escape back from being trapped by all these separate little individualities, human beings each working on his own, for his own, and against all the others—escape from this stifling tangle into the sweep of my big rhythms which work together and in unison. I search for lost companions, but do not find them—the golden skins and radiant faces, the mighty figures and the splendid shapes.
Theywork without effort, however. That is another difference.
I, too, work, only I work with them, and never againstthem. I can draw upon them as they can draw upon me. We do draw on one another. We know harmony. Service is our method and system.
My dear Fillery also wants to know who "we" are. How can I tell him? The moment I try to "think," I seem to forget. This forgetting, indeed, is one of the limits against which I bang myself, so that I am flung back upon the tangle of criss-cross, tiny rhythms which confuse and obliterate the very thing he wants to know. Yet the Sun I never forget—father of fire and wind. My companions are lost temporarily. I am shut off from them. It seems I cannot have them and the Race at the same time. I yearn and suffer to rejoin them. The service we all know together is great joy. Of love, this love between two isolated individuals the Race counts the best thing they have—we know nothing.
Now, here is one thing I can understand quite clearly:
I have watched and helped the Race, as he calls it, for countless ages. Yet from outside it. Never till now have I been inside its limits with it. And a dim sense of having watched it through a veil or curtain comes to me. I can faintly recall that I tried to urge my big rhythms in among its members, as great waves of heat or sound might be launched upon an ant-heap. I used to try to force and project my vast rhythms into their tiny ones, hoping to make these latter swell and rise and grow—but never with success. Though a few members, here and there, felt them and struggled to obey and use their splendid swing, the rest did not seem to notice them at all.... Indeed, they objected to the struggling efforts of the few who did feel them, for their own small accustomed rhythms were interfered with. The few were generally broken into little pieces and pushed violently out of the way.
And this made me feel pitiful, I remember dimly; because these smaller rhythms, though insignificant, were exquisite. They were of extraordinary beauty. Could they only have been increased, the Race that knew and used them musthave changed my own which, though huge and splendid of their kind, lacked the intense, perfect loveliness of the smaller kind.
The Race, had it accepted mine and mastered them, must have carried themselves and me towards still mightier rhythms which I alone could never reach.
This, then, is clear to me, though very faint now. Fillery, who can think for a long time, instead of like me for seconds only, will understand what I mean. For if I tell him what "we" did, he may be able to think out what "we" were.
"Your work?" he asked me too.
I'm not sure I know what he means by "work." We were incessantly active, but not for ourselves. There was no effort. There was easy and sure accomplishment—in the sense that nothing could stop or hinder our fulfilling our own natures. Obstacles, indeed, helped our power and made it greater, for everything feeds fire and opposition adds to the pressure of wind. Our main activity was to make perfect forms. We were form-builders. Apart from this, our "work" was to maintain and keep active all rhythms less than our own, yet of our kind. I speak of my own kind alone. We had no desire to be known outside our kind. We worked and moved and built up swiftly, but out of sight—an endless service.
"You are the Powers behind what we call Nature, then?" the dear Fillery asked me. "You operate behind growing things, even behind inanimate things like trees and stones and flowers. Your big rhythms, as you call them, are our Laws of Nature. Your own particular department, your own elements evidently, were heat and air."
I could not answer that. But, as he said it, I saw in his grey eyes the flash of fire which so few of his Race possessed; and I felt vaguely that he was one of the struggling members who was aware of the big rhythms and who would be put away in little pieces later by the rest. It made me pitiful. "Forget your own tiny rhythms," I said,"and come over to us. But bring your tiny rhythms with you because they are so exquisitely lovely. We shall increase them."
He did not answer me. His mouth twitched at the corners, and he had an attack of that irritation which, he says, is relieved and expressed by laughter. Yet the face shone.
The laughter, however, was a very quick, full, natural answer, all the same. It was happy and enthusiastic. I saw that laughter made his rhythms bigger at once. Then laughter was probably the means to use. It was a sort of bridge.
"Your instantaneous comprehension of our things puzzles me," he said. "You grasp our affairs in all their relations so swiftly. Yet it is all new to you." His voice and face made me wish to stroke and help him, he was so dear and eager. "How do you manage it?" he asked point blank. "Our things are surely foreign to your nature."
"But they are of children," I told him. "They are small and so very simple. There are no difficulties. Your language is block letters because your self-expression, as you call it, is so limited. It all comes to me at a glance. I and my kind can remember a million tiniest details without effort."
He did not laugh, but his face looked full of questions. I could not help him further. "A scrap, probably, of what you've taught us," I heard him mumble, though no further questions came. "Well," he went on presently, while I lay and watched the pale fire slip in tiny waves about his eyes, "remember this: since our alphabet is so easy to you, follow it, stick to it, do not go outside it. There's a good rule that will save trouble for others as well as for yourself."
"I remember and I try. But it is not always easy. I get so cramped and stiff and lifeless with it."
"This sunless, chilly England, of course, cannot feed you," he said. "The sense of beauty in our Race, too, is very poor."
Once he suddenly looked up and fixed his eyes on my face. His manner became very earnest.
"Now, listen to me," he said. "I'm going to read you something; I want you to tell me what you make of it. It's private; that is, I have no right to show it to others, but as no one would understand it—with the exception possibly of yourself—secrecy is not of importance." And his mouth twitched a little.
He drew a sheaf of papers from an inner pocket, and I saw they were covered with fine writing. I laughed; this writing always made me laugh—it was so laborious and slow. The writing I knew best, of course, lay all over and inside the earth and skies. The privacy also made me laugh, so strange seemed the idea to me, and so impossible—this idea of secrecy. It was such an admission of ignorance.
"I will understand it quickest by reading it," I said. "I take in a page at once—in your block letters."
But he preferred to read it out himself, so that he could note the effect upon me, he explained, of definite passages. He saw that I guessed his purpose, and we laughed together a moment. "When you tire of listening," he said, "just tell me and I'll pause." I gave him my hand to hold. "It helps me to stay here," I explained, and he nodded as he grasped me in his warm firm clasp.
"It's written by one whomayhave known you and your big rhythms, though I can't be sure," he added. "One of—er—my patients wrote it, someone who believed she was in communication with a kind of immense Nature-spirit."
Then he began to read in his clear, windy voice:
"'I sit and weave. I feel strange; as if I had so much consciousness that words cannot explain it. The failure of others makes my work more hard, but my own purposes never fail, I am associated with those who need me. The universal doors are open to me. I compass Creation.'"
But already I began to hum my songs, though to please him I kept the music low, and he, dear Fillery, did not bid me stop, but only tightened his grasp upon my hand. Ilistened with pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore I hummed.
"'I am silent, seeking no expression, needing no communication, satisfied with the life that is in me. I do not even wish to be known about——'"
"That's where your Race," I put in, "is to me as children. All they do must be shouted about so loud or they think it has not happened."
"'I do not wish to be forced to obtrude myself,'" he went on. "'There are hosts like me. We do not want that which does not belong to us. We do not want that hindrance, that opposition which rouses an undesirable consciousness; for without that opposition we could never have known of disobedience. We are formless. The formless is the real. That cannot die. It is eternal.'"
Again he tightened his grasp, and this time also laid his eyes a moment on my own, over the top of his paper, so that I kept my music back with a great effort. For it was hard not to express myself when my own came calling in this fashion.
He continued reading aloud. He selected passages now, instead of going straight through the pages. The words helped memory in me; flashes of what I had forgotten came back in sheets of colour and waves of music; the phrases built little spirals, as it were, between two states. Of these two states, I now divined, he understood one perfectly—his own, and the other—mine—partially. Yet he had a little of both, I knew, in himself. With me it was similar, only the understood state was not the same with us. To the Race, of course, what he read would have no meaning.
"The Comely One and the four figures," I said, "how they would turn white and run if they could hear you, showing their yellow teeth and dim eyes!"
His face remained grave and eager, though I could see the laughter running about beneath the tight brown skin as he went on reading his little bits.
"'We heard nothing of man, and were rarely even consciousof him, although he benefited by our work in all that sustained and conditioned him. The wise are silent, the foolish speak, and the children are thus led astray, for wisdom is not knowledge, it is a realization of the scheme and of one's own part in it.'"
He took a firmer, broader grip of my hand as he read the next bit. I felt the tremble of his excitement run into my wrist and arm. His voice deepened and shook. It was like a little storm:
"'Then, suddenly, we heard man's triumphant voice. We became conscious of him as an evolving entity. Our Work had told. We had built his form and processes so faithfully. We knew that when he reached his height we must be submissive to his will.'"
A gust of memory flashed by me as I heard. Those small but perfect, exquisite, lovely rhythms!
"Who called me here? Whose voice reached after me, bringing me into this undesirable consciousness?" I cried aloud, as the memory went tearing by, then vanished before I could recover it. At the same time Fillery let go my hand, and the little bridge was snapped. I felt what he called pain. It passed at once. I found his hand again, but the bridge was not rebuilt. How white his skin had grown, I noticed, as I looked up at his face. But the eyes shone grandly. "I shall find the way," I said. "We shall go back together to our eternal home."
He went on reading as though I had not interrupted, but I found it less easy to listen now.
I realized then that he was gone. He had left the room, though I had not seen him go. I had been away.
It was some days ago that this occurred. It was to-day, a few hours ago, that I seized the Comely One and tried to comfort her, poor hungry member of this little Race.
But both occurrences help us—help dear Fillery and myself—to understand how difficult it is to answer his questions and tell him exactly what he wants to know.
"How long, O Lord, how long!" I hear his yearningcry. "Yet other beings cannot help us; they can only tell us what their own part is."
After the door had clicked I knew release for a bit—release from a state I partially understood and so found irksome, into another where I felt at home and so found pleasurable. In the big rhythms my nature expressed itself apparently. I rose, seeking my lost companions. They—the Devonham and his busy little figures—called it sleep. It may be "sleep." But I find there what I seek yet have forgotten, and that with me were dear Fillery and another—a Comely One whomhebrings—as though we belong together and have a common origin. But this other Comely One—who is it?
ABOUT a week after the arrival of LeVallon in London, Dr. Fillery came out of the Home one morning early, upon some uninteresting private business. He had left "LeVallon" happy with his books and garden, Devonham was with him to answer questions or direct his energies; the other "cases" in the establishment were moving nicely towards a cure.
The November air was clear and almost bright; no personal worries troubled him. His mind felt free and light.
It was one of those mornings when Nature slips, very close and sweet, into the heart, so close and sweet that the mind wonders why people quarrel and disagree, when it is so easy to forgive, and the planet seems but a big, lovely, happy garden, evil an impossible nightmare, and personal needs few and simple.
He walked by cross roads towards Primrose Hill, entering Regent's Park near the Zoo. An early white frost was rapidly melting in the sun. The sky showed a faint tinge of blue. He saw floating sea-gulls. These, and a faint breeze that stirred the yellowing last leaves of autumn, gave his heart a sudden lift.
And this lift was in the direction of a forbidden corner. He was aware of some exquisite dawn-wind far away stirring a million flowers, dew sparkled, streams splashed and murmured. A valley gleamed and vanished, yet left across his mind its shining trail.... For this lift of his heart made him soar into a region where it was only too easy to override temptation. Fillery, however, though his invisible being soared, kept both visible feet firmly onthe ground. The surface was slippery, being melted by the sun, but frost kept the earth hard and frozen underneath. His balance never was in danger. He remained detached and a spectator.
She walked beside him nevertheless, a figure of purity and radiance, perfumed, soft, delicious. She was so ignorant of life. That was her wonder partly; for beauty was her accident and, while admirable, was not a determining factor. Life, in its cruder sense, she did not know, though moving through the thick of it. It neither touched nor soiled her; she brushed its dirt and dust aside as though a non-conducting atmosphere surrounded her. Her emotions, deep and searching, had remained untorn. A quality of pristine innocence belonged to her, as though, in the noisy clamour of ambitious civilized life, she remained still aware of Eden. Her grace, her loveliness, her simplicity moved by his side as naturally, it seemed to him, as air or perfume.
"Iraida," he murmured to himself, with a smile of joy. "Nayan Khilkoff. All the men worship and adore you, yet respect you too. They cannot touch you. You remain aloof, unstained." And, remembering LeVallon's remarks in cinema and theatre, he could have sung at this mere thought of her.
"Untouched by coarseness, something unearthly about your loveliness of soul, a baby, a saint, and to all the men in Khilkoff's Studio, a mother. Where do you really come from? Whence do you derive? Your lovely soul can have no dealings with our common flesh. How many young fellows have you saved already, how many floundering characters redeemed! They crave your earthly, physical love. Instead you surprise and disappoint and shock them into safety again—by giving to them Love...!"
And, as he half repeated his vivid thoughts aloud, he suddenly saw her coming towards him from the ornamental water, and instantly, wondering what he should say to her, his mind contracted. The thing in him that sang wentbackward into silence. He put a brake upon himself. But he watched her coming nearer, wondering what brought her so luckily into Regent's Park, and all the way from Chelsea, at such an hour. She moved so lightly, sweetly; she was so intangible and lovely. He feared her eyes, her voice.
They drew nearer. From looking to right and left, he raised his head. She was close, quite close, a hundred yards away. That walk, that swing, that poise of head and neck he could not mistake anywhere. His whole being glowed, thrilled, and yet contracted as in pain.
A sentence about the weather, about her own, her father's, health, about his calling to see them shortly, rose to his lips. He turned his eyes away, then again looked up. They were now not twenty yards apart; in another moment he would have raised his hat, when, with a sensation of cold disappointment in him, she went past in totally irresponsive silence. It was a stranger—a shop girl, a charwoman, a bus-conductor's wife—anybody but she whom he had thought.
How could he have been so utterly mistaken? It amazed him. It was, indeed, months since they had met, yet his knowledge of her appearance was so accurate and detailed that such an error seemed incredible. He had experienced, besides, the actual thrill.
The phenomenon, however, was not new to him. Often had he experienced it, much as others have. He knew, from this, that she was somewhere near, coming deliciously, deliberately towards him, moving every minute firmly nearer, from a point in great London town which she had left just at the precise moment which would time her crossing his own path later. They would meet presently, if not now. Fate had arranged all details, and something in him was aware of it before it happened.
The phenomenon, as a matter of fact, was repeated twice again in the next half-hour: he saw her—on both occasionsbeyond the possibility of question—coming towards him, yet each time it was a complete stranger masquerading in her guise.
It meant, he knew, that their two minds—hearts, too, he wondered, with a sense of secret happiness, enjoyed intensely then instantly suppressed—were wirelessing to one another across the vast city, and that both transmitter and receiver, their physical bodies, would meet shortly round the corner, or along the crowded street. Strong currents of desiring thought, he knew, he hoped, he wondered, were trying to shape the crude world nearer to the heart's desire, causing the various intervening passers-by to assume the desirable form and outline in advance.
He reflected, following the habit of his eager mind; this wireless discovery, after all, was the discovery of a universal principle in Nature. It was common to all forms of life, a faint beginning of that advance towards marvellous intercommunicating, semi-telepathic brotherhood he had always hoped for, believed in.... Even plants, he remembered, according toBose....
Then, suddenly, half-way down Baker Street he found her close beside him.
She was dressed so becomingly, so naturally, that no particular detail caught his eye, although she wore more colour than was usual in the dull climate known to English people. There was a touch of fur and there were flowers, but these were part of her appearance as a whole, and the hat was so exactly right, though it was here that Englishwomen generally went wrong, that he could not remember afterwards what it was like. It was as suitable as natural hair. It looked as if she had grown it. The shining eyes were what he chiefly noticed. They seemed to increase the pale sunlight in the dingy street.
She was so close that he caught her perfume almost before he recognized her, and a sense of happiness invaded his whole being instantly, as he took the slender handemerging from a muff and held it for a moment. The casual sentences he had half prepared fled like a flock of birds surprised. Their eyes met.... And instantly the sun rose over a far Khaketian valley; he was aware of joy, of peace, of deep contentment, London obliterated, the entire world elsewhere. He knew the thrill, the ecstasy of some long-forgotten dawn....
But in that brief second while he held her hand and gazed into her eyes, there flashed before him a sudden apparition. With lightning rapidity this picture darted past between them, paused for the tiniest fraction of a second, and was gone again. So swiftly the figure shot across that the very glance he gave her was intercepted, its angle changed, its meaning altered. He started involuntarily, for he knew that vision, the bright rushing messenger, someone who brought glad tidings. And this time he recognized it—it was the figure of "N. H."
The outward start, the slight wavering of the eyelids, both were noticed, though not understood, much less interpreted by the young woman facing him.
"You are as much surprised as I am," he heard the pleasant, low-pitched voice before his face. "I thought you were abroad. Father and I came back from Sark only yesterday."
"I haven't left town," he replied. "It was Devonham went to Switzerland."
He was thinking of her pleasant voice, and wondering how a mere voice could soothe and bless and comfort in this way. The picture of the flashing figure, too, preoccupied him. His various mind was ever busy with several trains of thought at once, though all correlated. Why, he was wondering, should that picture of "N. H." leave a sense of chill upon his heart? Why had the first radiance of this meeting thus already dimmed a little? Her nearness, too, confused him as of old, making his manner a trifle brusque and not quite natural, until he found his centre of control again. He looked quickly up and down the street, movedaside to let some people pass, then turned to the girl again. "Your holiday has done you good, Iraida," he said quietly; "I hope your father enjoyed it too."
"We both enjoyed ourselves," she answered, watching him, something of a protective air about her. "I wish you had been with us, for that would have made it perfect. I was thinking that only this morning—as I walked across Hyde Park."
"How nice of you! I believe I, too, was thinking of you both, as I walked through Regent's Park." He smiled for the first time.
"It's very odd," she went on, "though you can explain it probably," she added, with a smile that met his own, increasing it, "or, at any rate, Dr. Devonham could—but I've seen you several times this morning already—in the last half-hour. I've seen you in other people in the street, I mean. Yet I wasn't thinking of you at the actual moment, it's two months since we've met, and I imagined you were abroad."
"Odd, yes," he said, half shyly, half curtly. "It's an experience many have, I believe."
She gazed up at him. "It's very natural, I think, when people like each other, Edward, and are in sympathy."
"Yet it happens with people who don't like each other too," he objected, and at the same moment was vexed that he had used the words.
Iraida Khilkoff laughed. He had the feeling that she read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed in red letters on his grey felt hat.