"'Tis the deep music of the rolling worldKindling within the strings of the waved airÆolian modulations....Clear, icy, keen awakening tonesThat pierce the senseAnd live within the soul...."
"'Tis the deep music of the rolling worldKindling within the strings of the waved airÆolian modulations....Clear, icy, keen awakening tonesThat pierce the senseAnd live within the soul...."
"'Tis the deep music of the rolling worldKindling within the strings of the waved airÆolian modulations....Clear, icy, keen awakening tonesThat pierce the senseAnd live within the soul...."
"'Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
Æolian modulations....
Clear, icy, keen awakening tones
That pierce the sense
And live within the soul...."
He listened. It was a simple, natural, happy sound—simple as running water, natural as wind, happy as the song of birds....
HE became, again, vividly aware of the power and presence of "N. H."
He was not far from his house now on the shoulder of the hill. He turned his eyes upwards, where the three-quarter moon sailed above transparent cirrus clouds that scarcely dimmed her light. Like dappled sands of silver, they sifted her soft shining, moving slowly across the heavens before an upper wind. The sound continued.
For a moment or two, in the pale light of dawn, he watched and listened, then lowered his gaze, caught his breath sharply, and stood stock still. He stared in front of him. Next, turning slowly, he stared right and left. He stared behind as well.
Yes, it was true. The lines and rows of crowding houses trembled, disappeared. The heavy buildings dissolved before his very eyes. The solid walls and roofs were gone, the chimneys, railings, doors and porches vanished. There were no more conservatories. There were no lamp-posts. The streets themselves had melted. He gazed in amazement and delight. The entire hill lay bare and open to the sky.
Across the rising upland swept a keen fresh morning wind. Yet bare they were not, this rising upland and this hill. As far as he could see, the landscape flowed waist-deep in flowers, whose fragrance lay upon the air; dew trembled, shimmering on a million petals of blue and gold, of orange, purple, violet; the very atmosphere seemed painted. Flowering trees, both singly and in groves, waved in the breeze, birds sang in chorus, there was a murmur of streams and falling waters. Yet that other sound rose too, rose from the entire hill and all upon it, a continuousgentle rhythm, as though, he felt, the actual scenery poured forth its being in spontaneous, natural expression of sound as well as of form and colour. It was the simplest, happiest music he had ever heard.
Unable to deal with the rapture of delight that swept upon him, he stood stock still among the blossoms to his waist. Eyes, ears and nostrils were inadequate to report a beauty which, simple though it was, overbore nerves and senses accustomed to a lesser scale. Horizons indeed had lifted, the joy and confidence of fuller life poured in. His own being grew immense, stretched, widened, deepened, till it seemed to include all space. He was everywhere, or rather everything was happening somewhere in him all at once.... In place of the heavy suburb lay this garden of primal beauty, while yet, in a sense, the suburb itself remained as well. Only—it had flowered ... revealing the subconscious soul the bricks and pavements hid.... Its potential self had blossomed into loveliness and wonder.
The sound drew nearer. He was aware of movement. Figures were approaching; they were coming in his direction, coming towards him over the crest of the hill, nearer and nearer. Concealed by the forest of tall flowers, he watched them come. Yet as Presences he perceived them, rather than as figures, already borrowing power from them, as sails borrow from a rising wind. His consciousness expanded marvellously to let them in.
Their stature was conveyed to him, chiefly, at first, by the fact that these flowers, though rising to his own waist, did not cover the feet of them, yet that the flowers in the immediate line of their advance still swayed and nodded, as though no weight had lain upon their brilliance. The footsteps were of wind, the figures light as air; they shone; their radiant presences lit the acres. Their own atmosphere, too, came with them, as though the landscape moved and travelled with and in their being, as though the flowers, the natural beauty, emanated from them. The landscapewastheir atmosphere. They created, brought it with them. Itseemed that they "expressed" the landscape and "were" the scenery, with all its multitudinous forms.
They approached with a great and easy speed that was not measurable. Over the crest of the living, sunlit hill they poured, with their bulk, their speed, their majesty, their sweet brimming joy. Fillery stood motionless watching them, his own joy touched with awed confusion, till wonder and worship mastered the final trace of fear.
Though he perceived these figures first as they topped the skyline, he was aware that great space also stretched behind them, and that this immense perspective was in some way appropriate to their appearance. Born of a greater space than his "mind" could understand, they flowed towards him across that windy crest and at the same time from infinitely far beyond it. Above the continuous humming sound, he heard their music too, faint but mighty, filling the air with deep vibrations that seemed the natural expression of their joyful beings. Each figure was a chord, yet all combining in a single harmony that had volume without loudness. It seemed to him that their sound and colour and movement wove a new pattern upon space, a new outline, form or growth, perhaps a flower, a tree, perhaps a planet.... They were creative. They expressed themselves naturally in a million forms.
He heard, he saw. He knew no other words to use. But the "hearing" was, rather, some kind of intimate possession so that his whole being filled and overbrimmed; and the "sight" was greater than the customary little irritation of the optic nerve—it involved another term of space. He could describe the sight more readily than the hearing. The apparent contradiction of distance and proximity, of vast size yet intimacy, made him tremble in his hiding-place.
His "sight," at any rate, perceived the approaching figures all round, all over, all at once, as they poured like a wave across the hill from far beyond its visible crest. For into this space below the horizon he saw as well, though, normally speaking, it was out of sight. Nor did he see one sideonly; he saw the backs of the towering forms as easily as the portion facing him; he saw behind them. It was not as with ordinary objects refracting light, the back and underneath and further edges invisible. All sides were visible at once. The space beyond, moreover, whence the mighty outlines issued, was of such immensity that he could think only of interstellar regions. Not to the little planet, then, did these magnificent shapes belong. They were of the Universe. The symbol of his valley, he knew suddenly, belonged here too.
Silent with wonder, motionless with worship, he watched the singing flood of what he felt to be immense, non-human nature-life pour past him. The procession lasted for hours, yet was over in a minute's flash. All categories his mind knew hitherto were useless. The faces, in their power, their majesty, the splendour even of their extent, were both appalling, yet infinitely tender. They were filled with stars, blue distance, flowers, spirals of fire, space and air, interwoven too, with shining geometrical designs whose intricate patterns merged in a central harmony. They brought their own winds with them.
Yet of features precisely, he was not aware. Each face was, rather, an immense expression, but an expression that was permanent and could not change. These were immutable, eternal faces. He borrowed from human terms the only words that offered, while aware that he falsely introduced the personal into that which was essentially impersonal.
There stole over him a strange certainty that what he worshipped was the grandeur of joyful service working through unalterable law—the great compassion of some untiring service that was deathless.... He stoodwithinthe Universe, face to face with its elemental builders, guardians, its constructive artizans, the impersonal angelic powers ... the region, the state, he now felt convinced, to which "N. H." belonged, and whence, by some inexplicable chance, he had come to occupy a human body.... And the sounds—the flash came to him with lightning conviction—were those essential rhythms which are the kernels of all visible, manifested forms....
He was not aware that he was moving, that he had left the spot where he had stood—so long, yet for a single second only—and had now reached the corner of a street again. The flowers were gone, and the trees and groves gone with them; no waters rippled past; there was no shining hill. The moon, the stars, the breaking dawn remained, but he saw windows, walls and villas once again, while his feet echoed on dead stone pavements....
Yet the figures had not wholly gone. Before a house, where he now paused a moment, the towering, flowing outlines were still faintly visible. Their singing still audible, their shapes still gently luminous, they stood grouped about an open window of the second story. In the front garden a big plane tree stirred its leafless branches; the tree and figures interpenetrated. Slowly then, the outlines grew dim and shadowy, indistinguishable almost from the objects in the twilight near them. Chimneys, walls and roofs stole in upon the great shapes with foreign, grosser details that obscured their harmony, confused their proportion, as with two sets of values. The eye refused to focus both at once. A roof, a chimney obtruded, while sight struggled, fluttered, then ended in confusion. The figures faded and melted out. They merged with the tree, the reddening sky, the murky air close to the house which a street lamp made visible. Suddenly they were lost—they were no longer there.
But the rhythmical sound, though fainter, still continued—and Fillery looked up.
It was a sound, he realized in a flash, evocative and summoning. Type called to type, brother to brother, across the universe. The house before him was his own, and the open window through which the music issued was the bedroom of "N. H."
He stood transfixed. Both sides of his complex nature operated simultaneously. His mind worked more clearly—the entire history of the "case" in that upstairs room passed through it: he was a doctor. But his speculative, emotional aspect, the dreamer in him, so greatly daring, all that poetic, transcendental, half-mystical part which classed him, he well knew, with the unstable; all this, long and dangerously repressed, worked with opposite, if equal pressure. From the subconscious rose violent hands as of wind and fire, lovely, fashioning, divine, tearing away the lid of the reasoning surface-consciousness that confined, confused them.
To disentangle, to define these separate functions, were a difficult problem even for the most competent psychiatrist. Creative imaginative powers, hitherto merely fumbling, half denied as well, now stretched their wings and soared. With them came a blinding clarity of sight that enabled him to focus a vast field of detail with extraordinary rapidity. Horizons had lifted, perspective deepened and lit up. In a few brief seconds, before his front door opened, a hundred details flashed towards a focus and shone concentrated:
The Vision, of course—the Figures had now melted into the night—had no objective reality. Suppressed passion had created them, forbidden yearnings had passed the Censor and dramatized a dream, set aside yet never explained, that heredity was responsible for. Both were born of his lost radiant valley. His Note Books held a thousand similar cases....
But the speculative dreamer flashed coloured lights against this common white. The prism blazed. From the inter-stellar spaces came these radiant figures, from Sirius, immense and splendid sun, from Aldebaran among the happy Hyades, from awful Betelgeuse, whose volume fills a Martian orbit. Their dazzling, giant grandeur was of stellar origin. Yet, equally, they came from the dreadful back gardens of those sordid houses. Nature was Nature everywhere, in the nebulæ as in the stifled plane tree of a citycourt. That he saw them as "figures" was but his own private, personal interpretation of a prophecy the whole Universe announced. They were not figures necessarily; they were Powers. And "N. H." was of their kind.
He suddenly remembered the small, troubled earth whereon he lived—a neglected corner of the universe that was in distress and cried frantically for help.... Alcyone caught it in her golden arms perhaps; Sirius thundered against its little ears....
He found his latchkey and fumblingly inserted it, but, even while he did so, the state of the planet at the moment poured into his mind with swift, concentrated detail; he remembered the wireless excitement of the instant—and smiled. Not that way would it come. The new order was of a spiritual kind. It would steal into men's hearts, not splutter along the waves of ether, as the "dead" are said to splutter to the "living." The great impulse, the mighty invitation Nature sent out to return to simple, natural life, would come, without "phenomena" fromwithin.... He remembered Relativity—that space is local, space and time not separate entities. He understood. He had just experienced it. Another, a fourth dimension! Space as a whole was annihilated! He smiled.
His latchkey turned.
The transmutation of metals flashed past him—all substance one. His latchkey was upside down. He turned it round and reinserted it, and the results of advanced psychology rushed at him, as though the sun rushed over the horizon of some Eastern clime, covering all with the light of a new, fair dawn.
In a few seconds this accumulation of recent knowledge and discovery flooded his state of singular receptiveness—as thinker and as poet. The Age was crumbling, civilization passing like its predecessors. The little planet lay certainly in distress. No true help lay within it; its reservoirs were empty. No adequate constructive men or powers were anywhere in sight. It was exhausted, dying. Unless new help,powers from a new, an inexhaustible source, came quickly ... a new vehicle for their expression....
And wonder took him by the throat ... as the key turned in the lock with its familiar grating sound, and the door, without actual pressure on his part, swung open.
Paul Devonham, a look of bright terror in his eyes, stood on the threshold.
The expression, not only of the face but of the whole person, he had seen once only in another human countenance—a climber, who had slipped by his very side and dropped backward into empty space. The look of helpless bewilderment as hands and feet lost final touch with solidity, the air of terrible yet childlike amazement with which he began his descent of a thousand feet through a gulf of air—the shock marked the face in a single second with what he now saw in his colleague's eyes. Only, with Devonham—Fillery felt sure of his diagnosis—the lost hold was mental.
His outward control, however, was admirable. Devonham's voice, apart from a certain tenseness in it, was quiet enough: "I've been telephoning everywhere.... There's been a—a crisis——"
"Violence?"
But the other shook his head. "It's all beyond me quite," he said, with a wry smile. "The first outbreak was nothing—nothing compared to this." The continuous sound of humming which filled the hall, making the air vibrate oddly, grew louder. Devonham seized his friend's arm.
"Listen!" he whispered. "You hear that?"
"I heard it outside in the street," Fillery said. "What is it?"
Devonham glared at him. "God knows," he said, "I don't. He's been doing it, on and off, for a couple of hours. It began the moment you left, it seems. They're all about him—these vibrations, I mean. He does it with his whole body somehow. And"—he hesitated—"there's meaning init of some kind. Results, I mean," he jerked out with an effort.
"Visible?" came the gentle question.
Devonham started. "How did you know?" There was a thrust of intense curiosity in the eyes.
"I've had a similar experience myself, Paul. You opened the front door in the middle of it. The figures——"
"You saw figures?" Devonham looked thunderstruck. In his heart was obviously a touch of panic.
As the two men stood gazing into each other's eyes a moment silently, the sound about them increased again, rising and falling, its great separate rhythmical waves almost distinguishable. In Fillery's mind rose patterns, outlines, forms of flowers, spirals, circles....
"He knows you're in the house," said Devonham in a curious voice, relieved apparently no answer came to his question. "Better come upstairs at once and see him." But he did not turn to lead the way. "That's not auditory hallucination, Edward, whatever else it is!" He was still clinging to the rock, but the rock was crumbling beneath his desperate touch. Space yawned below him.
"Visual," suggested Fillery, as though he held out a feeble hand to the man whose whole weight already hung unsupported before the plunge. His friend spoke no word; but his expression made words unnecessary: "We must face the facts," it said plainly, "wherever these may lead. No shirking, no prejudice of mine or yours must interfere. There must be no faltering now."
So plainly was his passion for truth and knowledge legible in the expression of the shocked but honest mind, that Fillery felt compassion overpower the first attitude of privacy he had meant to take. This time he must share. The honesty of the other won his confidence too fully for him to hold back anything. There was no doubt in his mind that he read his colleague's state aright.
"A moment, Paul," he said in a low voice, "before we go upstairs," and he put his hand out, oddly enough meetingDevonham's hand already stretched to meet it. He drew him aside into a corner of the hall, while the waves of sound surged round and over them like a sea. "Let me first tell you," he went on, his voice trembling slightly, "my own experience." It seemed to him that any moment he must see the birth of a new form, an outline, a "body" dance across before his very eyes.
"Neither auditory nor visual," murmured Devonham, burning to hear what was coming, yet at the same time shrinking from it by the laws of his personality. "Hallucination of any kind, there is absolutely none. There's nothing transferred from your mind to his. This thing is real—original."
Fillery tightened his grip a second on the hand he held.
"Paul," he said gravely, yet unable to hide the joy of recent ecstasy in his eyes, "it is also—new!"
The low syllables seemed borne away and lifted beyond their reach by an immense vibration that swept softly past them. And so actual was this invisible wave that behind it lay the trough, the ebb, that awaits, as in the sea, the next advancing crest. Into this ebb, as it were, both men dropped simultaneously the same significant syllables: their lips uttered together:
"N. H." The wave of sound seemed to take their voices and increase them. It was the older man who added: "Coming into full possession."
The two stood waiting, listening, their heads turned sideways, their bodies motionless, while the soft rhythmical uproar rose and fell about them. No sign escaped them for some minutes; no words, it seemed, occurred to either of them.
Through the transom over the front door stole the grey light of the late autumn dawn; the hall furniture was visible, chairs, hat-rack, wooden chests that held the motor rugs. A china bowl filled with visiting cards gleamed white beside it. Soon the milkman, uttering his comic earthly cry, would clatter down the area staircase, and the servants would beup. As yet, however, but for the big soft sound, the house was perfectly still. This part of it, almost a separate wing, was completely cut off from the main building. No one had been disturbed.
Fillery moved his head and looked at his companion. The expression of both face and figure arrested him. He had taken off his dinner jacket, and the old loose golfing coat he wore hung askew; he had one hand in a pocket of it, the other thrust deep into his trousers. His glasses hung down across his crumpled shirt-front, his black tie made an untidy cross. He looked, thought Fillery, whose sense of the ludicrous became always specially alert in his gravest moments, like an unhappy curate who had presided over some strenuous and worrying social gathering in the local town hall. Only one detail denied this picture—the expression of something mysterious and awed in the sheet-white face. He was listening with sharp dislike yet eager interest. His repugnance betrayed itself in the tightened lips, the set of the angular shoulders; the panic was written in the glistening eyes. There were things in his face he could never, never tell. The struggle in him was natural to his type of mind: he had experienced something himself, and a personal experience opens new vistas in sympathy and understanding. But—the experience ran contrary to every tenet of theory and practice he had ever known. The moment of new birth was painful. This was his colleague's diagnosis.
Fillery then suddenly realized that the gulf between them was without a bridge. To tell his own experience became at once utterly impossible. He saw this clearly. He could not speak of it to his assistant. It was, after all, incommunicable. The bridge of terms, language, feeling, did not exist between them. And, again, up flashed for a second his sense of the comic, this time in an odd touch of memory—Povey's favourite sentence: "Never argue with the once-born!" Only to older souls was expression possible.
For the first time then his diagnosis wavered oddly. Why,for instance, did Paul persist in that curious, watchful stare...?
Devonham, conscious of his chief's eyes and mind upon him, looked up. Somewhere in his expression was a glare, but nothing revealed his state of mind better than the fact that he stupidly contradicted himself:
"You're putting all this into him, Edward," a touch of anger, perhaps of fear, in the intense whispering voice. "The hysteria of the studio upset him, of course. If you'd left him alone, as you promised, he'd have always stayed LeVallon. He'd be cured by now." Then, as Fillery made no reply or comment, he added, but this time only the anxiety of the doctor in his tone: "Hadn't you better go up to him at once? He's your patient, not mine, remember!"
The other took his arm. "Not yet," he said quietly. "He's best alone for the moment." He smiled, and it was the smile that invariably won him the confidence of even the most obstinate and difficult patient. He was completely master of himself again. "Besides, Paul," he went on gently. "I want to hear what you have to tell me. Some of it—if not all. I want your Report. It is of value. I must have that first, you know."
They sat on the bottom stair together, while Devonham told briefly what had happened. He was glad to tell it, too. It was a relief to become the mere accurate observer again.
"I can summarize it for you in two words," he said: "light and sound. The sound, at first, seemed wind—wind rising, wind outside. With the light, was perceptible heat. The two seemed correlated. When the sound increased, the heat increased too. Then the sound became methodical, rhythmical—it became almost musical. As it did so the light became coloured. Both"—he looked across at the ghostly hat-rack in the hall—"were produced—by him."
"Items, please, Paul. I want an itemized account."
Devonham fumbled in the big pockets of his coat and eventually lit a cigarette, though he did not in the leastwant to smoke. That watchful, penetrating stare persisted, none the less. Amid the anxiety were items of carelessness that almost seemed assumed.
"Mrs. Soames sent Nurse Robbins to fetch me," he resumed, his voice harshly, as it seemed, cutting across the waves of pleasant sound that poured down the empty stairs behind them and filled the hall with resonant vibrations. "I went in, turned them both out, and closed the door. The room was filled with a soft, white light, rather pale in tint, that seemed to emanate from nowhere. I could trace it to no source. It was equally diffused, I mean, yet a kind of wave-like vibration ran through it in faint curves and circles. There was a sound, a sound like wind. A wind was in the room, moaning and sighing inside the walls—a perfectly natural and ordinary sound, if it had been outside. The light moved and quivered. It lay in sheets. Its movement, I noticed, was in direct relation to the wind: the louder the volume of sound, the greater the movement of the air—the brighter became the light, and vice versa. I could not take notes at the actual moment, but my memory"—a slight grimace by way of a smile indicated that forgetting was impossible—"is accurate, as you know."
Fillery did not interrupt, either by word or gesture.
"The increase of light was accompanied by colour, and the increase of sound led into a measure—not actual bars, and never melody, but a distinct measure that involved rhythm. It was musical, as I said. The colour—I'm coming to that—then took on a very faint tinge of gold or orange, a little red in it sometimes, flame colour almost. The air was luminous—it was radiant. At one time I half expected to see fire. For there was heat as well. Not an unpleasant heat, but a comforting, stimulating, agreeable heat like—I was going to say, like the heat of a bright coal fire on a winter's day, but I think the better term is sunlight. I had an impression this heat must burst presently into actual flame. It never did so. The sheets of coloured light rose and fell with the volume of the sound. There were curves and waves and rising columns like spirals, but anythingapproaching a definite outline, form, or shape"—he broke off for a second—"figures," he announced abruptly, almost challengingly, staring at the white china bowl in front of him, "I couldnotswear to."
He turned suddenly and stared at his chief with an expression half of question, half of challenge; then seemed to change his mind, shrugging his shoulders a very little. But Fillery made no sign. He did not answer. He laid one hand, however, upon the banisters, as though preliminary to getting to his feet. The sound about them had been gradually growing less, the vibrations were smaller, its waves perceptibly decreasing.
Devonham finished his account in a lower voice, speaking rapidly, as though the words burnt his tongue:
"The sound, I had already discovered, issued from himself. He was lying on his back, the eyes wide open, the expression peaceful, even happy. The lips were closed. He was humming, continuously humming. Yet the sound came in some way I cannot describe, and could not examine or ascertain, from his whole body. I detected no vibration of the body. It lay half naked, only a corner of the sheet upon it. It lay quite still. The cause of the light and heat, the cause of the movement of air I have called wind—I could not ascertain. They camethroughhim, as it were." A slight shiver ran across his body, noticed by his companion, but eliciting no comment from him. "I—I took his pulse," concluded Devonham, sinking his voice now to a whisper, though a very clear one; "it was very rapid and extraordinarily strong. He seemed entirely unconscious of my presence. I also"—again the faint shiver was perceptible—"felt his heart. It was—I have never felt such perfect action, such power—it was beating like an engine, like an engine. And the sense of vitality, of life in the room everywhere was—electrical. I could have sworn it was packed to the walls with—with others." Devonham never ceased to watch his companion keenly while he spoke.
Fillery then put his first question.
"And the effect upon yourself?" he asked quietly. "Imean—any emotional disturbance? Anything, for instance, like what yousawin the Jura forests?" He did not look at his colleague; he stood up; the sound about them had now ceased almost entirely and only faint, dying fragments of it reached them. "Roughly speaking," he added, making a half movement to go upstairs. He understood the inner struggle going on; he wished to make it easy for him. For the complete account he did not press him.
Devonham rose too; he walked over to the china bowl, took up a card, read it and let it fall again. The sun was over the horizon now, and a pallid light showed objects clearly. It showed the whiteness of the thin, tired face. He turned and walked slowly back across the hall. The first cart went clattering noisily down the street. At the same moment a final sound from the room upstairs came floating down into the chill early air.
"My interest, of course," began Devonham, his hands in his pockets, his body rigid, as he looked up into his companion's eyes, "was very concentrated, my mind intensely active." He paused, then added cautiously: "I may confess, however—I must admit, that is, a certain increase of—of—well, a general sense of well-being, let me call it. The heat, you see. A feeling of peace, if you like it better—beyond the—fear," he blurted out finally, changing his hands from his coat to his trouser pockets, as though the new position protected him better from attack. "Also—I somehow expected—any moment—to see outlines, forms, something new!" He stared frankly into the eyes of the man who, from the step above him, returned his gaze with equal frankness. "Andyou—Edward?" he asked with great suddenness.
"Joy? Could you describe it as joy?" His companion ignored the reference to new forms. He also ignored the sudden question. "Any increase of——?"
"Vitality, you want to say. The word joy is meaningless, as you know."
"An intensification of consciousness in any way?"
But Devonham had reached his limit of possible confession. He did not reply for a moment. He took a step forward and stood beside Fillery on the stairs. His manner had abruptly changed. It was as though he had come to a conclusion suddenly. His reply, when it came, was no reply at all:
"Heat and light are favourable, of course, to life," he remarked. "You remember Joaquin Mueller: 'the optic nerve, under the action of light, acts as a stimulus to the organs of the imagination and fancy.'"
Fillery smiled as he took his arm and they went quietly upstairs together. The quoting was a sign of returning confidence. He said something to himself about the absence of light, but so low it was under his breath almost, and even if his companion heard it, he made no comment: "There was no moon at all to-night till well past three, and even then her light was of the faintest...."
No sound was now audible. They entered a room that was filled with silence and with peace. A faint ray of morning sunlight showed the form of the patient sleeping calmly, the body entirely uncovered. There was an expression of quiet happiness upon the face whose perfect health suggested perhaps radiance. But there was a change as well, though indescribable—there was power. He did not stir as they approached the bed. The breathing was regular and very deep.
Standing beside him a moment, Fillery sniffed the air, then smiled. There was a perfume of wild flowers. There was, in spite of the cool morning air, a pleasant warmth.
"You notice—anything?" he whispered, turning to his colleague.
Devonham likewise sniffed the air. "The window's wide open," was the low rejoinder. "There are conservatories at the back of every house all down the row."
And they left the room on tiptoe, closing the door behind them very softly. Upon Devonham's face lay a curious expression, half anxiety, half pain.
DR. FILLERY, lying on a couch in his patient's bedroom, snatched some four to five hours' sleep, though, if "snatched," it was certainly enjoyed—a deep, dreamless, reposeful slumber. He woke, refreshed in mind and body, and the first thing he saw, even before he had time to stretch a limb or move his head, was two great blue eyes gazing into his own across the room. They belonged, it first struck him, to some strange being that had followed him out of sleep—he had not yet recovered full consciousness and the effects of sleep still hovered; then an earlier phrase recurred: to some divine great animal.
"N. H.," in his bed in the opposite corner, lay gazing at him. He returned the gaze. Into the blue eyes came at once a look of happy recognition, of contentment, almost a smile. Then they closed again in sleep.
The room was full of morning sunshine. Fillery rose quietly, and performed his toilet in his own quarters, but on returning after a hurried breakfast, the patient still slept soundly. He slept on for hours, he slept the morning through; but for the obvious evidences of perfect normal health, it might have been a state of coma. The body did not even change its position once.
He left Devonham in charge, and was on his way to visit some of the other cases, when Nurse Robbins stood before him. Miss Khilkoff had "called to inquire after Mr. LeVallon," and was waiting downstairs in case Dr. Fillery could also see her.
He glanced at her pretty slim figure and delicate complexion, her hair, fine, plentiful and shiny, her dark eyes with a twinkle in them. She was an attractive, intelligent,experienced, young woman, tactful too, and of great use with extra sensitive patients. She was, of course, already hopelessly in love with her present "case." His "singing," so she called it to Mrs. Soames, had excited her "like a glass of wine—some music makes you feel like that—so that you could love everybody in the world." She already called him Master.
"Please say I will be down at once," said Dr. Fillery, watching her for the first time with interest as he remembered these details Paul had told him. The girl, it now struck him, was intensely alive. There was a gain, an increase, in her appearance somewhere. He recalled also the matron's remark—she was not usually loquacious with her nurses—that "he's no ordinary case, and I've seen a good few, haven't I? The way he understands animals and flowers alone proves that!"
Dr. Fillery went downstairs.
His first rapid survey of the girl, exhaustive for all its quickness—he knew her so well—showed him that no outward signs of excitement were visible. Calm, poised, gentle as ever, the same generous tenderness in the eyes, the same sweet firmness in the mouth, the familiar steadiness that was the result of an inner surety—all were there as though the wild scene of the night before had never been. Yet all those were heightened. Her beauty had curiously increased.
"Come into my study," he said, taking her hand and leading the way. "We shan't be disturbed there. Besides, it's ours, isn't it? We mustn't forget that you are a member of the Firm."
He was aware of her soft beauty invading, penetrating him, aware, too, somehow, that she was in her most impersonal mood. But for all that, her nature could not hide itself, nor could signs of a certain, subtle change she had undergone fail to obtrude themselves. In a single night, it seemed, she had blossomed into a wondrous ripe maturity; like some strange flower that opens to the darkness, thebud had burst suddenly into full, sweet bloom, whose coming only moon and stars had witnessed. There was moonlight now in her dark mysterious eyes as she glanced at him; there was the gold of stars in her tender, yet curious smile, as she answered in her low voice—"Of course, I alwayswasa partner in the Firm"—there was the grace and rhythm of a wild flower swaying in the wind, as she passed before him into the quiet room and sank into his own swinging armchair at the desk. But there was something else as well.
A detail of his recent Vision slid past his inner sight again while he watched her.... "I thought—I felt sure—you would come," he said. He looked at her admiringly, but peace strong in his heart. "The ordeal," he went on in a curious voice, "would have been too much for most women, but you"—he smiled, and the sympathy in his voice increased—"you, I see, have only gained from it. You've mastered, conquered it. I wonder"—looking away from her almost as if speaking to himself—"have you wholly understood it?"
He realized vividly in that moment what she, as a young, unmarried girl, had suffered before the eyes of all those prying eyes and gossiping tongues. His admiration deepened.
She did not take up his words, however. "I've come to inquire," she said simply in an even voice, "for father and myself. He wanted to know if you got home all right, and how Julian LeVallon is." The tone, the heightened colour in the cheek, as she spoke the name no one had yet used, explained, partly at least, to the experienced man who listened, the secret of her sudden blossoming. Also she used her father, though unconsciously, perhaps. "He was afraid the electricity—the lightning even—had"—she hesitated, smiled a little, then added, as though she herself knew otherwise—"done something to him."
Fillery laughed with her then. "As it has done to you," he thought, but did not speak the words. The need offormula was past. He thanked her, adding that it was sweet yet right that she had come herself, instead of writing or telephoning. "And you may set your—your father's mind at rest, for all goes well. The electricity, of course," he added, on his own behalf as well as hers, "was—more than most of us could manage. Electricity explains everything except itself, doesn't it?"
He was inwardly examining her with an intense and accurate observation. She seemed the same, yet different. The sudden flowering into beauty was simply enough explained. It was another change he now became more and more aware of. In this way a ship, grown familiar during the long voyage, changes on coming into port. The decks and staircases look different when the vessel lies motionless at the dock. It becomes half recognizable, half strange. Gone is the old familiarity, gone also one's own former angle of vision. It is difficult to find one's way about her. Soon she will set sail again, but in another direction, and with new passengers using her decks, her corners, hatchways ... telling their secrets of love and hate with that recklessness the open sea and sky make easy.... And now with the girl before him—he couldn't quite find his way about her as of old ... it was the same familiar ship, yet it was otherwise, and he, a new passenger, acknowledged the freedom of sea and sky.
"And you—Iraida?" he asked. "It was brave of you to come."
She liked evidently the use of her real name, for she smiled, aware all the time of his intent observation, aware probably also of his hidden pain, yet no sign of awkwardness in her; to this man she could talk openly, or, on the contrary, conceal her thoughts, sure of his tact and judgment. He would never intrude unwisely.
"It was natural, Edward," she observed frankly in return.
"Yes, I suppose it was. Natural is exactly the right word. You have perhaps found yourself at last," and again he used her real name, "Iraida."
"It feels like that," she replied slowly. She paused. "I have found, at least, something definite that I have to do. I feel that I—must care for him." Her eyes, as she said it, were untroubled.
The well-known Nayan flashed back a moment in the words; he recognized—to use his simile—a familiar corner of the deck where he had sat and talked for hours beneath the quiet stars—to someone who understood, yet remained ever impersonal. And the person he talked with came over suddenly and stood beside him and took his hand between her own soft gloved ones:
"You told me, Edward, he would need a woman to help him. That's what you mean by 'natural'—isn't it? And I am she, perhaps."
"I think you are," came in a level tone.
"I know it," she said suddenly, both her eyes looking down upon his face. "Yes, I suppose I know it."
"Becauseyou—need him," his voice, equally secure, made answer.
Still keeping his hand tight between her own, her dark eyes still searching his, she made no sign that his blunt statement was accepted, much less admitted. Instead she asked a question he was not prepared for: "You would like that, Edward? You wish it?"
She was so close against his chair that her fur-trimmed coat brushed his shoulder; yet, though with eyes and touch and physical presence she was so near, he felt that she herself had gone far, far away into some other place. He drew his hand free. "Iraida," he said quietly, "I wish the best—for him—and for you. And I believe this is the best—for him and you." He put his patient first. He was aware that the girl, for all her outer calmness, trembled.
"It is," she said, her voice as quiet as his own; and after a moment's hesitation, she went back to her seat again. "If you think I can be of use," she added. "I'm ready."
A little pause fell between them, during which Dr. Fillerytouched an electric bell beside his chair. Nurse Robbins appeared with what seemed miraculous swiftness. "Still sleeping quietly, sir, and pulse normal again," she replied in answer to a question, then vanished as suddenly as she had come. He looked into the girl's eyes across the room. "A competent, reliable nurse," he remarked, "and, as you saw, a pretty woman." He glanced out of the window. "She is unmarried." He mentioned it apparently to the sky.
The quick mind took in his meaning instantly. "All women will be drawn to him irresistibly, of course," she said. "But it is notthat."
"No, no, of course it is not that," he agreed at once. "I should like you to see him, though not, however, just yet——" He went on after a moment's reflection, and speaking slowly: "I should like you to wait a little. It's best. Therehasbeen a—a certain disturbance in his being——"
"It's his first experience," she began, "of beauty——"
"Of beauty in women, yes," he finished for her. "It is. We must avoid anything in the nature of a violent shock——"
"He has asked for me?" she interrupted again, in her quiet way.
He shook his head. "And we cannot be sure that it was you—asyou—he sought and is affected by. The call he hears is, perhaps, hardly the call that sounds in most men's ears, I mean."
The hint of warning guidance was audible in his voice, as well as visible in his eyes and manner. The laughter they both betrayed, a grave and curious laughter perhaps, was brief, yet enough to conceal stranger emotions that rose like dumb, gazing figures almost before their eyes. Yet if she knew inner turmoil, emotion of any troubling sort, she concealed it perfectly.
"I am glad," the girl said presently. "Oh, I am reallyglad. I think I understand, Edward." And, even while he sat silent for a bit, watching her with an ever-growing admiration that at the same time marvelled, he saw the wonder of great questions riding through her face. The recollection of what she had suffered publicly in the Studio a few hours before came into his mind again. In these questions, perhaps, lay the only signs of the hidden storm below the surface.
"Are there—are there such things as Nature-Beings, Edward?" she asked abruptly. "We know this is his first experience. Are there then——?"
He was prepared a little for this kind of question by her eyes. "We have no evidence, of course," he replied; "not a scrap of evidence for anything of the sort. There are people, however, so close to Nature, so intimate with her, that we may say they are—strangely, inexplicably akin."
"Has he a soul—a human soul like ours?" she asked point blank.
"He is perhaps—not—quite—like us. That may be your task, Iraida," he added enigmatically. He watched her more closely than she knew.
She appeared to ponder his words for a few minutes; then she asked abruptly: "And when do you think I ought to come and see him? You will let me know?"
"I will let you know. A few days perhaps, perhaps a week, perhaps longer. Some education, I think, is necessary first." He gazed at her thoughtfully, and she returned his look, her dark eyes filled with the wonder that was both of a child and of a woman, and yet with a security of something that was of neither. "It will be a—a great effort to you," he ventured with significant and sympathetic understanding, "after—what happened. It is brave and generous of you——" He broke off.
She nodded, but at once afterwards shook her head. She rose then to go, but Dr. Fillery stopped her. He rose too.
"Nayan, I now wantyourhelp," he said with more emotion than he had yet shown. "My responsibility, as you may guess, is not light—and——"
"And he is in your sole charge, you mean." She had willingly resumed her seat, and made herself comfortable with a cushion he arranged for her. He was aware chiefly of her eyes, for in them glowed light and fire he had never seen there before—but still in their depths.
"Well—yes, partly," he replied, lighting a cigarette, "though Paul is ready with help and sympathy whenever needed. But the charge, as you call it, is not mine alone: it is ours."
"Ours!" She started, though almost imperceptibly, as she repeated his word.
"Subconsciously," he said in a firm voice, "we three are similar. We are together. We obey half instinctively the unknown laws of"—he hesitated a moment—"of some unknown state of being." He added then a singular sentence, though so low it seemed almost to himself: "Had we been man and wife, Iraida, our child must have been—like him."
"Yes," she said, leaning forward a little in her chair, increased warmth, yet no blush, upon her skin. "Yes, Edward, we three are somehow together in this, aren't we? Oh, I feel it. It pours over me like a great wind, a wind with heat in it." Her hands clasped her knee, as they gazed at one another for a moment's silence. "I feel it," she repeated presently. "I'm sure of it, quite sure."
She stretched out a spirit hand, as it were, for an instant across the impersonal barrier between them, but he did not take it, pretending he did not see it.
"Ours, Nayan," he emphasized, again using the name that belonged to everyone. "Therefore, you see, I want you to tell me—if you will—what you felt, experienced, perceived—in the Studio last night." After watching her a little, he qualified: "Another day, if you would like to think it over. But some time, without fail. For my part,I will confess—though I think you already know it—that I brought him there on purpose——"
"To see my effect upon him, Edward."
"But inhisinterest, and in the interest of my possible future treatment. His effect upon yourself was not my motive. You believe that."
"I know, I know. And I will tell you gladly. Indeed, I want to."
He was aware, as she said it, that it would be a satisfaction to her to talk; she would welcome the relief of confession; she could speak to him as doctor now, as professional man, as healer, and this, too, without betraying the impersonal attitude she evidently wore and had adopted possibly—he wondered?—in self-protection. "Tell me exactly what it is you would like to know, please, Edward," she added, and instinctively moved to the sofa, so that he might occupy the professional swinging chair at the desk.
"What you saw, Nayan," he began, accepting the change of position without comment, because he knew it helped her. "What you saw is of value, I think, first."
He had all his usual self-control again, for he was now on his throne, his seat of power; his inner attitude changed subtly; he was examining two patients—the girl and himself. She sat before him demure, obedient, honest, very sweet but very strong; if her perfume reached him he did not notice it, the appeal of her loveliness went past him, he did not see her eyes. He had a very comely and intelligent young woman facing him, and the glow, as it were, of an intense inner activity, strongly suppressed, was the chief quality in her that he noted. But his new attitude made other things, too, stand out sharply: he realized there was confusion in her own mind and heart. Her being was not wholly at one with itself. This impersonal rôle meant safety until she was sure of herself; and so far she had been entirely and admirably non-committal. No girl, he remembered, could look back upon what she had experiencedin the Studio, upon what she had herself said and done, before a crowd of onlookers too, without deep feelings of a mixed and even violent kind. That scene with a young man she had never seen before must bring painful memories; if it was love at first sight the memories must be more painful still. But was it a case of this sudden, rapturous love? What, indeed, were her feelings? What at any rate was her dominant feeling? She had felt his appeal beyond all question, but was it as Nayan or as Iraida that she felt it?
She was non-committal and impersonal, conscious that therein safety lay—until, having become one with herself, harmonious, she could feel absolutely sure. One hint only had she dropped—it was Nayan speaking—that her mothering, maternal instinct was needed and that she must obey its prompting. She must "care" for him....
Dr. Fillery, meanwhile, though he might easily have probed and made discoveries without her knowing that he did so, was not the man to use his powers now. Unless she gave of her own free will, he would not ask. He would close eyes and ears even to any chance betrayal or unconscious revelation.
"When you first looked in, for instance? You had just come in from the street, I think. You opened the door on your way upstairs. Do you remember?"
She remembered perfectly. "I wanted to see who was there. You, I think, were chiefly in my thoughts—I was wondering if you had come." Her voice was even, her eyes quite steady; she chose her next words slowly: "I saw—to my intense surprise—a figure of light."
"Shining, you mean? A shining figure?"
She nodded her head, as one little hand put back a straying wisp of dark hair from her forehead. "A figure like flame," she agreed. "I saw it quite clearly. I saw everything else quite clearly too—the inner room, various people standing about, the piano, the thick smoke, everything asusual. I saw you. You were in the big outer room beyond, but your face was very distinct. You were staring—staring straight at me."
"True," put in Dr. Fillery; "I saw you in the doorway plainly."
"In the foreground, by itself apart somehow, though surrounded by people, was this shining, radiant outline. I thought it was a Vision—the first thing of that sort I had ever seen in my life."
"That was your very first impression—even before you had time to think?"
"Yes."
"It struck you as unusual?"
"I cannot say more than that. I knew by the light it was unusual. Then it moved—talking to Povey or Kempster or someone—and I realized in a flash who it was. I knew it must be your friend, the man you had promised to bring—Ju——"
"And then——?" he asked quickly, before she could pronounce the name.
"And then——"
She stopped, and her eyes looked away from him, not in the sense that they moved but that their focus changed as though she looked at something else, at something within herself, no longer, therefore, at the face in front of her. He waited; he understood that she was searching among deep, strange, seething memories; he let her search; and, watching closely, he presently saw the sight return into her eyes from its inward plunge.
"And when you knew who it was," he asked very quietly, "were you still surprised? Did he look as you expected him to look, for instance?"
"I had expected nothing, you see, Edward, because I had not been consciously thinking about his coming. No mental picture was present in me at all. But the moment I realized who it was, the light seemed to go—I just saw a young man standing there, with his head turned sidewaysto me. The light, I suppose, lasted for a second only—that first second. As to how he looked? Well, he looked, not only bigger—heisbigger than most men," she went on, "but he looked"—her voice hushed instinctively a little on the adjective—"different."
Her companion made a gesture of agreement, waiting in silence for what was to follow.
"He looked so extraordinary, so wonderful," she resumed, gazing steadily into his eyes, "that I—I can hardly put it into words, Edward, unless I use childish language." She broke off and sighed, and something, he fancied, in her wavered for a second, though it was certainly neither the voice nor the eyes. A faint trembling again perhaps ran through her body. Her account was so deliberately truthful that it impressed him more than he quite understood. He was aware of pathos in her, of some vague trouble very poignant yet inexplicable. A breath of awe, it seemed, entered the room and moved between them.
"The childish words are probably the best, the right ones," he told her gently.
"An angel," she said instantly in a hushed tone, "I thought of an angel. There is no other word I can find. But somehow a helpless one. An angel—out of place."
He looked hard at her, his manner encouraging though grave; he said no word; he did not smile.
"Someone not of this earth quite," she added. "Not a man, at any rate."
Still more gently, he then asked her what she felt.
"At first I couldn't move," she went on, her voice normal again. "I must have stood there ten minutes fully, perhaps longer"—her listener did not correct the statement—"when I suddenly recovered and looked about for you, Edward, but could not see you. I needed you, but could not find you. I remember feeling somehow that I had lost you. I tried to call for you—in my heart. There was no answer.... Then—then I closed the door quietly and went upstairs to change from my street clothes."
She paused and passed a hand slowly across her forehead. Dr. Fillery asked casually a curious question:
"Do you rememberhowyou got upstairs, Nayan?"
Her hand dropped instantly; she started. "It's very odd you should ask me that, Edward," she said, gazing at him with a slightly rising colour in her face, an increase of fire glowing in her eyes; "very odd indeed. I was just trying to think how I could describe it to you. No. Actually I do not remember how I got upstairs. All I know is—I was suddenly in my room." A new intensity appeared in voice and manner. "It seemed to me I flew—or that—something—carried me."
"Yes, Nayan, yes. It's quite natural you should have felt like that."
"Is it? I remember so little of what I actually felt. I wonder—I wonder," she went on softly, with an air almost of talking to herself, "if it will ever come back again—what I felt then——"
"Such moments of subliminal excitement," Dr. Fillery reminded her gently, "have the effect of obliterating memory sometimes——"
"Excitement," she caught him up. "Yes, I suppose it was excitement. But it was more, much more, than that. Stimulated—I think that's the word really. I felt caught away somewhere, caught away, caught up—as if into the rest of myself—into the whole of myself. I became vast"—she smiled curiously—"if you know what I mean—in several places at once, perhaps, is better. It was an immense feeling—no, I mean a feeling of immensity——"
"Happy?" His voice was low.
Her eyes answered even before her words, as the memory came back a little in response to his cautious suggestion.
"A new feeling altogether," she replied, returning his clear gaze with her frank, innocent eyes that had grown still more brilliant. "A feeling I have never known before." She talked more rapidly now, leaning forward a little in her chair. "I felt in the open air somehow, withflowers, trees, hot burning sunshine and sweet winds rushing to and fro. It was something bigger than happiness—a sort of intoxicating joy, I think. It was liberty, but of an enormous spiritual kind. I wanted to dance—I believe I did dance—yes, I'm sure I did, and with hardly anything on my body. I wanted to sing—I sang downstairs, of course——"
"I heard," he put in briefly. He did not add that she had never sung like that before.
"The moment I came into the room, yes, I remember I went straight to the piano without a word to anyone." She reflected a moment. "I suppose I had to. There was something new in me I could only express by music—rhythm, that is, not language."
"It was natural," Dr. Fillery said again. "Quite natural, I think."
"Yes, Edward, I suppose it was," she answered, then sank back in her chair, as though she had told him all there was to tell.
Dr. Fillery smoked in silence for a few minutes, then rose and touched the bell as before, and, as before, Nurse Robbins appeared with the same miraculous speed. There was a brief colloquy at the door; the woman was gone again, and the doctor turned back into the room with a look of satisfaction on his face. All, apparently, was going well upstairs. He did not sit down, however; he stood looking out of the window at the drab wintry sky of motionless clouds, his back to his companion. It was midday, but the light, while making all things visible, was not light; there was no shine, no touch of radiance, no hint of sparkle beneath the canopy of sullen cloud. The English winter's day was visible, no more than that. Yet it was not the English day, nor the clouds, nor the bleak dead atmosphere he looked at. In a single second his sight travelled far, far away, covering an enormous interval in space and time, in condition too. He saw a radiant world of sun-drenched flowers "tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind";he saw a foam of forest leaves shaking and dancing against a deep blue sky; he say a valley whose streams and emerald turf knew not the touch of human feet.... The familiar symbols he saw, but inflamed with new meaning.
"Thank you, Edward, thank you"—she was just behind him, her hands upon his shoulders. "You understand everything in the world!" she added, "and out of it," but too low for him to hear.
He came back with an effort, turning towards her. They were standing level now and very close, eyes looking into eyes. He felt her breath upon his face, her perfume rose about him, her lips were moving just in front of him—yet, for a second, he did not know who she was. It was as thoughshehad not come with him out of that valley, not come back with him.... An insatiable longing seized him—to return and find her, stay with her. The ache of an intolerable yearning was in his heart, yet a sudden flash of understanding that brought a bigger, almost an unearthly joy in its train. At the call of some service, some duty, some help to be rendered to humanity, the three of them together—he, "N. H.," the girl—were in temporary exile from their rightful home. The scent of wild flowers rose about him. He suddenly remembered, recognized, and gave a little start. He had left her behind in the valley—Iraida; it was Nayan who now stood before him.
He uttered a dry little laugh. "You startled me, Nayan. I was thinking. I didn't hear you." She had just thanked him for something—oh, yes—because he had left her alone for a moment, giving her time to collect herself after the long cross-examination.
He took both her hands in his.
"Ourpatient then—isn't it?" he asked in a firm voice, looking deep into her luminous eyes. He saw no fire in them now.
"I'll do all I can, Edward."
She returned the pressure of his hands. His keen insight, operating in spite of himself, had read her clearly.It was mother, child and woman he had always known. The three, however, were already in process of disentanglement. For the first time during their long acquaintance, what now stood so close before him was—the woman. Yet behind the woman like an enveloping shadow stood the mother too. And behind both, again, stood another wild, gigantic, lovely possibility. Was it, then, the child that he had left playing in the radiant valley?... The child, he knew, was his always, always, even if the woman was another's.... He laughed softly. These, after all, were but transitory states in human, earthly evolution, concerned with play, with a production of bodies and so forth....
He had lost himself in her deep eyes. Her gaze lay all over him, over his entire being, like a warm soft covering that blessed and healed. She was so close that it seemed he drew her breath in with his own. She made a movement then, a tiny gesture. He let go the hands his own had held so long. He turned from the window and from her. He was trembling.
"What came later," he resumed in his calm, almost in his professional voice, "you probably do not remember?" He went towards his desk. "We need not talk about that. No doubt, in your mind, it all remains a blurred impression——"
She interrupted, following him across the room. "What happened, Edward," she said very quietly in her lowest tone, "I know. It was all told to me. But my memory, as you say, is so faint as to be worthless really. What I do remember is this"—she tapped her open palm with two fingers slowly, as she spoke the words—"light, heat, a smell of flowers and a rushing wind that lifted me into some kind of exhilarating liberty where I felt—the intense joy of knowing myself somehow free—and greater, oh, far greater—than I am—now." Then she suddenly whispered again too low for him to catch—"angelic." A smile, as of glory, rippled across her face.
His voice, coming quickly, was cool, its tone measured:
"And you will come to see him the moment I let you know," he interrupted abruptly. "It may be a few days, it may be a week. The instant it seems wise——" He was entirely practical again.
She went to the door with him. "I'll come, of course," she answered, as he opened the door.
"I'll let myself out, Edward—please. I know the way. There's no good being a partner if one doesn't know the way out——" She laughed.
"And in, remember!" he called down the little passage after her, as, with a smile and a wave of the hand, she was gone.
He went back to his desk, drew a piece of paper towards him, and jotted a few notes down in briefest fashion. The expression on his rugged face was enigmatical perhaps, but the sternness at least was clear to read, and it was this, combining with an extraordinary tenderness, that drew out its nobility:
"Intensification of consciousness, involving increased activity of every centre; hearing, sight, touch and smell, all affected. Slight exteriorization of consciousness also took place. No signs of split or divided personality, but an increase of coherence rather. The central self active—aware of greater powers in time and space, hence sense of joy, heat, light, sound, motion. Distinct subliminal up-rush, followed by customary loss of memory later. Herwholebeing, together with neglected tracts as yet untouched by experience—herentirebeing—reached simultaneously. Knew herself for the first time a woman—but something more as well. Unearthly complex, visible.
"Appeal made direct to subconscious self. Unfavourable reactions—none. Favourable reactions—increased physical and mental strength...."
He laid down his pencil as with a gesture of impatience at its uselessness, and sat back in the chair, thinking.
The effect "N. H." had upon other people was here again confirmed. That, at least, seemed reasonably clear.Vitality was increased; heart and mind caught up an extra gear; thought leaped, if extravagantly, towards speculation; emotion deepened, if ecstatically, towards belief. All the normal reactions of the system were speeded up and strengthened. Consciousness was intensified.
More than this—with some it was extended, and subliminal powers were set free. In his own experience this had been the case; the sight, hearing, even a mild degree of divination, had opened in his being. It had, similarly, taken place with Devonham, an unlikely subject, who fought against acknowledging it. Father Collins, too, he suspected—he recalled his behaviour and strange language—had known also a temporary extension of faculty outside the normal field. He remembered, again, the Customs official, Charing Cross Station, and a dozen other minor instances.... Indications as yet were slight, he realized, but they were valuable.
Such abnormal experiences, moreover, each one interpreted, respectively, in the terms of his own individual being, of his own temperament, his own personal shibboleths. The law governing unusual experience operated invariably.
Was not his own particular "vision" easily explained? It might indeed, had it happened earlier, have found a place in his own book of Advanced Psychology. He reflected rapidly: He believed the industrial system lay at the root of Civilization's crumbling, and that man must return to Nature—therefore his yearnings dramatized themselves in personified representations of the beauty of Nature.
He could trace every detail of his Vision to some intense but unrealized yearning, to some deep hope, desire, dream, as yet unfulfilled. Always these yearnings and wishes unfulfilled!
Colour, form and sound again—he used them one and all in his treatment of special cases, and felt hurt by the ignorant scoffing and denial of his brother doctors. Hence their present dramatization.
His immense belief, again, in the results upon the Race when once the subliminal powers should have reached the stage where they could be used at will for practical purposes—this, in its turn, led him to hope, perhaps to believe, that this strange "Case" might prove to be some fabulous bright messenger who brought glad tidings.... All, all was explicable enough!
A smile stole over his face; he began to laugh quietly to himself....
Yes, he could explain all, trace all to something or other in his being, yet—he knew that the real explanation ... well—his cleverest intellectual explanation and analysis were worthless after all. For here lay something utterly beyond his knowledge and experience....
The note of another searcher recurred to him.
"Each human being has within himself that restless creative phantasy which is ever engaged in assuaging the harshness of reality.... Whoever gives himself unsparingly and carefully to self-observation will realize that there dwells within him something which would gladly hide up and cover all that is difficult and questionable in life, and thus procure an easy and free path. Insanity grants the upper hand to this something. When once it is uppermost, reality is more or less quickly driven out."
But he knew quite well that although he belonged to what he called the "Unstable," the "something" which Jung referred to had by no means obtained "the upper hand." The vista opening to his inner sight led towards a new reality.... Ah! If he could only persuade Paul Devonham to see whathesaw...!