AS upon a former occasion some twenty-four hours before, "N. H." seemed hardly aware that his visitor had left, though this time there was the vital difference—that what was of value had not gone at all. The essence of the girl, it seemed, was still with him. It remained. The physical presence was to him apparently the least of all.
He returned to his place at the open window of the darkening room, while night, with her cooler airs, passed over the world on tiptoe. He drew deep breaths, opened his arms, and seemed to shake himself, as though glad to be free of recent little awkward and unnatural gestures that had irked him. There was happiness in his face. "She is a builder, though she has forgotten," ran his thought with pleasure, "and I can work with her. Like Fillery, she builds up, constructs; we are all three in the same service, and the gods are glad. I love her ... yes ... but she"—his thoughts grew troubled and confused—"she speaks of another love that is a tight and binding little thing ... that catches and confines. It is for one person only ... one person for one other.... For two ... only for two persons!... What is its meaning then?"
Of her words and acts he had understood evidently a small part only; much that she had said and done he had not comprehended, although in it somewhere there had certainly lain a sweet, faint, troubling pleasure that was new to him.
His thought wavered, flickered out and vanished. For a long time he leaned against the window with his images, thinking with his heart, for when alone and not stirred bythe thinking of others close to him, he became of a curious childlike innocence, knowing nothing. His "thinking" with others present seemed but a reflection oftheirthinking. The way he caught up the racial thinking, appearing swiftly intelligent at the time (as with Fillery's mind), passed the instant he was alone. He became open, then, to bigger rhythms that the little busy thinkers checked and interrupted. But this greater flow of images, of rhythms, this thinking with the heart—what was it, and with what things did it deal? He did not know. He had forgotten. To his present brain it was alien. He grasped only that it was concerned with the rhythms of fire and wind apparently, though hardly, perhaps, of that crude form in which men know them, but of an inner, subtler, more vital heat and air which lie in and behind all forms and help to shape them—and of Intelligences which use these as their vehicles, their instruments, their bodies.
In his "images" he was aware of these Intelligences, perceived them with his entire being, shared their activities and nature: behind all so-called forms and shapes, whether of people, flowers, minerals, of insects or of stars, of a bird, a butterfly or a nebula, but also of thosementalshapes which are born of thought and mood and heart—this host of Intelligences, great and small, all delving together, building, constructing, involved in a vast impersonal service which was deathless. This seemed the mighty call that thundered through him, fire and wind merely the agencies with which he, in particular, knew instinctively his duties lay.
For his work, these images taught him, was to increase life by making the "body" it used as perfect as he could. The more perfect the form, the instrument, the greater the power manifesting through it. A poor, imperfect form stopped the flow of this manifesting life, as though a current were held up and delayed. For instance, his own form, his present body, now irked, delayed and hampered him, although he knew not how or why or whence he had come to be using it at this moment on the earth. The instinctivedesire to escape from it lay in him, and also the instinctive recognition that two others, similarly caught and imprisoned, must escape with him....
The images, the rhythms, poured through him in a mighty flood, as he leaned by the open window, his great figure, his whole nature too, merging in the space, the wind, the darkness of the soft-moving night beyond.... Yet darkness troubled him too; it always seemed unfamiliar, new, something he had never been accustomed to. In darkness he became quiet, very gentle, feeling his way, as it were, uneasily.
He was aware, however, that Fillery was near, though not, perhaps, that he was actually in the room, seated somewhere among the shadows, watching him. He felt him close in the same way he felt the girl still close, whether distance between them in space was actually great or small. The essential in all three was similar, their yearnings, hopes, intentions, purposes were akin; their longing for some service, immense, satisfying, it seemed, connected them. The voice, however, did not startle when it sounded behind him from an apparently empty room:
"The love she spoke of you do not understand, of course. Perhaps you do not need it...."
The voice, as well as the feeling that lay behind, hardly disturbed the images and rhythms in their wondrous flow. Rather, they seemed a part of them. "N. H." turned. He saw Dr. Fillery distinctly, sitting motionless among the shadows by the wall.
"It is, for you, a new relationship, and seems small, cramping and unnecessary——"
"What is it?" "N. H." asked. "What is this love she seeks to hold me with, saying that I need it? Dear Fillery," he added, moving nearer, "will you tell me what it is? I found it sweet and pleasant, yet I fear it."
"It is," was the reply, "in its best form, the highest qualityweknow——"
"Ah! I felt the fire in it," interrupted "N. H." smiling."I smelt the flowers." His smile seemed faintly luminous across the gloom.
"Because it was the best," replied the other gently. "In its best form it means, sometimes, the complete sacrifice of one being for the welfare of another. There is no self in it at all." He felt the eyes of his companion fixed upon him in the darkness of the quiet room; he felt likewise that he was bewildered and perplexed. "As, for instance, the mother for her child," he went on. "That is the purest form of it we know."
"One being feels it foroneother only," "N. H." repeated apparently ignoring the reference to maternal love. "Each wants the other for himselfalone! Each lives for the other only, the rest excluded! It is always two and two. Is that what she means?"
"She would not like it if you had the same feeling for another—woman," Fillery explained. "She would feel jealousy—which means she would grudge sharing you with another. She would resent it, afraid of losing you."
"Two and two, and two and two," the words floated through the shadows. The ideal seemed to shock and hurt him; he could not understand it. "She asks for the whole of me—all to herself. It is lower than insects, flowers even. It is against Nature. So small, so separate——"
"But Nature," interrupted Dr. Fillery, after an interval of silence between them, "is not concerned with what we call love. She is indifferent to it. Her purpose is merely the continuance of the Race, and she accomplishes this by making men and women attractive to one another. This, too," he explained, "we call love, though it is love in its weakest, least enduring form."
"That," replied "N. H.," "I know and understand. She builds the best form she can."
"And once the form is built," agreed the other, "and Nature's aim fulfilled, this kind of love usually fades out and dies. It is a physical thing entirely, like the two atoms we read about together a few days ago which rush togetherautomatically to produce a third thing." He lowered his voice suddenly. "There was a great teacher once," he went on, "who told us that we should love everybody, everybody, and that in the real life there was no marriage, as we call it, nor giving in marriage."
It seemed that, as he said the words, the darkness lifted, and a faint perfume of flowers floated through the air.
"N. H." made no comment or reply. He sat still, listening.
"I love her," he whispered suddenly. "I love her inthatway—because I want everybody else to love her too—as I do, and as you do. But I do not want her for myself alone. Do you? You do not, of course. I feel you are as I am. You are happy that I love her."
"There is morality," said Fillery presently in a low voice, glad at that moment of the darkness. "There is what we call morality."
"Tell me, dear Fillery, what that is. Is it bigger than your 'love'?"
Dr. Fillery explained briefly, while his companion listened intently, making no comment. It was evidently as strange and new to him as human love. "We have invented it," he added at the end, "to protect ourselves, our mothers, our families, our children. It is, you see, a set of rules devised for the welfare of the Race. For though a few among us do not need such rules, the majority do. It is, in a word, the acknowledgment of the rights of others."
"It had to be invented!" exclaimed "N. H.," with a sigh that seemed to trouble the darkness as with the sadness of something he could scarcely believe. "And these rules are needed still! Is the Race at that stage only? It does not move, then?"
Into the atmosphere, as the low-spoken words were audible, stole again that mysterious sense of the insignificance of earth and all its manifold activities, human and otherwise, and with it, too, a remarkable breath of some larger reality, starry-bright, that lay shining just beyond all known horizons. Fillery shivered in spite of himself. Itseemed to him for an instant that the great figure looming opposite through the darkness extended, spread, gathering into its increased proportions the sky, the trees, the darkened space outside; that it no longer sat there quite alone. He recalled his colleague's startling admission—the touch of panic terror.
"Slowly, if at all," he said louder, though wondering why he raised his voice. "Yet there issomeprogress."
He had the feeling it would be better to turn on the light, as though this conversation and the strange sensations it produced in him would be impossible in a full blaze. He made a movement, indeed, to find the switch. It was the sound of his companion's voice that made him pause, for the words came at him as though a wave of heat moved through the air. He knew intuitively that the other's intense inner activity had increased. He let his hand drop. He listened. Their thoughts, he was convinced, had mingled and been mutually shared again. There was a faint sound like music behind it.
"We have worked such a little time as yet," fell the words into the silence. "If only—oh! if only I could remember more!"
"A little time!" thought Fillery to himself, knowing that the other meant the millions of years Nature had used to evoke her myriad forms. "Try to remember," he added in a whisper.
"What I do remember, I cannot even tell," was the reply, the voice strangely deepening. "No words come to me." He paused a moment, then went on: "I am of the first, the oldest. I know that. The earth was hot and burning—burning, burning still. It was soft with heat when I was summoned from—from other work just completed. With a vast host I came. Our Service summoned us. We began at the beginning. I am of the oldest. The earth was still hot—burning, burning——"
The voice failed suddenly.
"I cannot remember. Dear Fillery, I cannot remember.It hurts me. My head pains. Our work—our service—yes, thereisprogress. The ages, as you call them—but it is such a little time as yet——" The voice trailed off, the figure lost its suggestion of sudden vastness, the darkness emptied. "I am of the oldest—thatI remember only...." It ceased as though it drifted out upon the passing wind outside.
"Then you have been working," said Fillery, his voice still almost a whisper, "you and your great host, for thousands of years—in the service of this planet——" He broke off, unable to find his words, it seemed.
"Since the beginning," came the steady answer. "Years I do not know. Since the beginning. Yet we have only just begun—oh!" he cried, "I cannot remember! It is impossible! It all goes lost among my words, and in this darkness I am confused and entangled with your own little thinking. I suffer with it." Then suddenly: "My eyes are hot and wet, dear Fillery. What happens to them?" He stood up, putting both hands to his face. Fillery stood up too. He trembled.
"Don't try," he said soothingly; "do not try to remember any more. It will come back to you soon, but it won't come back by any deliberate effort."
He comforted him as best he could, realizing that the curious dialogue had lasted long enough. But he did not produce a disconcerting blaze by turning the light on suddenly; he led his companion gently to the door, so that the darkness might pass more gradually. The lights in the corridor were shaded and inoffensive. It was only in the bedroom that he noticed the bright tears, as "N. H.," examining them with curious interest in the mirror, exclaimed more to himself than to Fillery: "She had them too. I saw them in her eyes when she spoke to me of love, the love she will teach me because she said I needed it."
"Tears," said Fillery, his voice shaking. "They come from feeling pain."
"It is a little thing," returned "N. H.," smiling at himself,then turning to his friend, his great blue eyes shining wonderfully through their moisture. "Then she felt what I felt—we felt together. When she comes to-morrow I will show her these tears and she will be glad I love. And she will bring tears of her own, and you will have some too, and we shall all love together. It is not difficult, is it?"
"Not very," agreed Fillery, smiling in his turn; "it is not very difficult." He was again trembling.
"She will be happy that we all love."
"I—hope so."
It was curious how easily tears came to the eyes of this strange being, and for causes so different that they were not easy to explain. He did not cry; it was merely that the hot tears welled up.
Even with Devonham once it happened too. The lesson in natural history was over. Devonham had just sketched the outline of the various kingdoms, with the animal kingdom and man's position in it, according to present evolutionary knowledge, and had then said something about the earth's place in the solar system, and the probable relation of this system to the universe at large—an admirable bird's-eye view, as it were, without a hint of speculative imagination in it anywhere—when "N. H.," after intent listening in irresponsive silence, asked abruptly:
"What does it believe?" Then, as Devonham stared at him, a little puzzled at first, he repeated: "That is what the Raceknows. But what does itbelieve?"
"Believe," said Devonham, "believe. Ah! you mean what is its religion, its faith, its speculations!"—and proceeded to give the briefest possible answer he felt consistent with his duty. The less his pupil's mind was troubled with such matters, the better, in his opinion.
"And their God?" the young man inquired abruptly, as soon as the recital was over. He had listened closely, as he always did, but without a sign of interest, merely waiting for the end, much as a child who is bored by a poor fairytale, yet wishes to know exactly how it is all going to finish. "TheyknowHim?" He leaned forward.
Devonham, not quite liking the form of the question, nor the more eager manner accompanying it, hesitated a moment, thinking perhaps what he ought to say. He did not want this mind, now opening, to be filled with ideas that could be of no use to it, nor help in its formation; least of all did he desire it to be choked and troubled with the dead theology of man-made notions concerning a tumbling personal Deity. Creeds, moreover, were a matter of faith, of auto-suggestion as he called it, being obviously divorced from any process of reason. He had, nevertheless, a question to answer and a duty to perform. His hesitation passed in compromise. He was, as has been seen, too sincere, too honest, to possess much sense of humour.
"The Race," he said, "or rather that portion of it into which you have been born, believes—on paper"—he emphasized the qualification—"in a paternal god; but its real god, the god it worships, is Knowledge. Not a Knowledge that exists for its own sake," he went on blandly, "but that brings possessions, power, comfort and a million needless accessories into life. That god it worships, as you see, with energy and zeal. Knowledge and work that shall result in acquisition, in pleasure, that is the god of the Race on this side of the planet where you find yourself."
"And the God on paper?" asked "N. H.," making no comment, though he had listened attentively and had understood. "The God that is written about on paper, and believed in on paper?"
"The printed account of this god," replied Devonham, "describes an omnipotent and perfect Being who has existed always. He created the planet and everything upon it, but created it so imperfectly that he had to send later a smaller god to show how much better hemighthave created us. In doing this, he offered us an extremely difficult and laborious method of improvement, a method of escaping from his own mistake, but a method so painful and unrealizablethat it is contrary to our very natures—as he made them first." He almost smacked his lips as he said it.
"The big God, the first one," asked "N. H." at once. "Have they seen and known Him? Have they complained?"
"No," said Devonham, "they have not. Those who believe in him accept things as he made them."
"And the smaller lesser God—how did He arrive?" came the odd question.
"He was born like you and me, but without a father. No male had his mother ever known."
"He was recognized as a god?" The pupil showed interest, but no emotion, much less excitement.
"By a few. The rest, afraid because he told them their possessions were worthless, killed him quickly."
"And the few?"
"They obeyed his teaching, or tried to, and believed that they would live afterwards for ever and ever in happiness——"
"And the others? The many?"
"The others, according to the few, would live afterwards for ever and ever—in pain."
"It is a demon story," said "N. H.," smiling.
"It is printed, believed, taught," replied Devonham, "by an immense organization to millions of people——"
"Free?" inquired his pupil.
"The teachers are paid, but very little——"
"The teachers believe it, though?"
"Y-yes—at least some of them—probably," replied Devonham, after brief consideration.
"And the millions—do they worship this God?"
"They do, on paper, yes. They worship the first big God. They go once or twice a week into special buildings, dressed in their best clothes as for a party, and pray and sing and tell him he is wonderful and they themselves are miserable and worthless, and then ask him in abject humility for all sorts of things they want."
"Do they get them?"
"They ask for different things, you see. One wants fine weather for his holidays, another wants rain for his crops. The prayers in which they ask are printed by the Government."
"They ask for this planet only?"
"This planet conceives itself alone inhabited. There are no other living beings anywhere. The Earth is the centre of the universe, the only globe worth consideration."
Although "N. H." asked these quick questions, his interest was obviously not much engaged, the first sharp attention having passed. Then he looked fixedly at Devonham and said, with a sudden curious smile: "What you say is always dead. I understand the sounds you use, but the meaning cannot get into me—inside, I mean. But I thank you for the sound."
There was a moment's pause, during which Devonham, accustomed to strange remarks and comments from his pupil, betrayed no sign of annoyance or displeasure. He waited to see if any further questions would be forthcoming. He was observing a phenomenon; his attitude was scientific.
"But, in sending this lesser God," resumed "N. H." presently, "how did the big One excuse himself?"
"He didn't. He told the Race it was so worthless that nothing else could save it. He looked on while the lesser God was killed. He is very proud about it, and claims the thanks and worship of the Race because of it."
"The lesser God—poor lesser God!" observed "N. H." "He was bigger than the other." He thought a moment. "How pitiful," he added.
"Much bigger," agreed Devonham, pleased with his pupil's acumen, his voice, even his manner, changing a little as he continued. "For then came the wonder of it all. The lesser God's teachings were so new and beautiful that the position of the other became untenable. The Race disowned him. It worshipped the lesser one in his place."
"Tell me, tell me, please," said "N. H.," as though henoticed and understood the change of tone at once. "I listen. The dear Fillery spoke to me of a great Teacher. I feel a kind, deep joy move in me. Tell me, please."
Again Devonham hesitated a moment, for he recognized signs that made him ill at ease a little, because he did not understand them. Following a scientific textbook with his pupil was well and good, but he had no desire to trespass on what he considered as Fillery's territory. "N. H." was his pupil, not his patient. He had already gone too far, he realized. After a moment's reflection, however, he decided it was wiser to let the talk run out its natural course, instead of ending it abruptly. He was as thorough as he was sincere, and whatever his own theories and prejudices might be in this particular case, he would not shirk an issue, nor treat it with the smallest dishonesty. He put the glasses straight on his big nose.
"The new teachings," he said, "were so beautiful that, if faithfully practised by everybody, the world would soon become a very different place to what it is."
"Did the Race practise them?" came the question in a voice that held a note of softness, almost of wonder.
"No."
"Why not?"
"They were too difficult and painful and uncomfortable. The new God, moreover, only came here 2,000 years ago, whereas men have existed on earth for at least 400,000."
"N. H." asked abruptly what the teachings were, and Devonham, growing more and more uneasy as he noted the signs of increasing intensity and disturbance in his pupil, recited, if somewhat imperfectly, the main points of the Sermon on the Mount. As he did so "N. H." began to murmur quietly to himself, his eyes grew large and bright, his face lit up, his whole body trembled. He began that deep, rhythmical breathing which seemed to affect the atmosphere about him so that his physical appearance increased and spread. The skin took on something of radiance,as though an intense inner happiness shone through it. Then, suddenly, to Devonham's horror, he began to hum.
Though a normal, ordinary sound enough, it reminded him of that other sound he had once shared with Fillery, when he sat on the stairs, staring at a china bowl filled with visiting cards, while the dawn broke after a night of exhaustion and bewilderment. That sound, of course, he had long since explained and argued away—it was an auditory hallucination conveyed to his mind by LeVallon, who originated it. Interesting and curious, it was far from inexplicable. It was disquieting, however, for it touched in him a vague sense of alarm, as though it paved the way for that odd panic terror he had been amazed to discover hidden away deeply in some unrealized corner of his being.
This humming he now listened to, though normal and ordinary enough—there were no big vibrations with it, for one thing—was too suggestive of that other sound for him to approve of it. His mind rapidly sought some way of stopping it. A command, above all an impatient, harsh command, was out of the question, yet a request seemed equally not the right way. He fumbled in his mind to find the wise, proper words. He stretched his hand out, as though to lay it quietly upon his companion's shoulder—but realized suddenly he could not—almost he dared not—touch him.
The same instant "N. H." rose. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
Devonham, justly proud of his equable temperament and steady nerves, admits that only a great effort of self-control enabled him to sit quietly and listen. He listened, watched, and made mental notes to the best of his ability, but he was frightened a little. The outburst was so sudden. He is not sure that his report of what he heard, made later to Fillery, was a verbatim, accurate one:
"Justice we know," cried "N. H." in his half-chanting voice that seemed to boom with resonance, "but this—thismercy, gentle kindness, beauty—this unknown loveliness—we did not know it!" He went to the open window, and threw his arms wide, as though he invoked the sun. "Dimly we heard of it. We strive, we strive, we weave and build and fashion while the whirl of centuries flies on. This lesser God—he came among us, too, making our service sweeter, though we did not understand. Our work grew wiser and more careful, we built lovelier forms, and knew not why we did so. His mighty rhythms touched us with their power and happy light. Oh, my great messengers of wind and fire, bring me the memory I have lost! Oh, where, where——?"
He shook himself, as though his clothes, perhaps his body even, irked him. It was a curious coincidence, thought Devonham, as he watched and listened, too surprised and puzzled to interfere either by word or act, that a cloud, at that very moment, passed from the face of the sun, and a gust of wind shook all the branches of the lime trees in the garden. "N. H." stood drenched in the white clear sunshine. His flaming hair was lifted by the wind.
"Behind, beyond the Suns He dwells and burns for ever. Oh, the mercy, kindness, the strange beauty of this personal love—what is it? These have been promised toustoo——!"
He broke off abruptly, bowed his great head and shoulders, and sank upon his knees in an attitude of worship. Then, stretching his arms out to the sky, the face raised into the flood of sunlight, while his voice became lower, softer, almost hushed, he spoke again:
"Our faithful service, while the circles swallow the suns, shall lift us too! You, who sent me here to help this little, dying Race, oh, help me to remember——!"
His passion was a moving sight; the words, broken through with fragments of his chanting, singing, had the blood of some infinite, intolerable yearning in them.
Devonham, meanwhile, having heard outbursts of this strange kind before with others, had recovered something of his equanimity. He felt more sure of himself again.The touch of fear had left him. He went over to the window. The attack, as he deemed it, was passing. A thick cloud hid the sun again. "There, there," he said soothingly, laying both hands upon the other's shoulders, then taking the arms to help him rise. "I told you His teachings were very beautiful—that the world would become a kind of heaven if people lived them." His voice seemed not his own; beside the volume and music of the other's it had a thin, rasping, ugly sound.
"N. H." was on his feet, gazing down into his face; to Devonham's amazement there were tears in the eyes that met his own.
"And many peopledolive them—try to, rather," he added gently. "There are thousands who really worship this lesser God to-day. You can't go far wrong yourself if you take Him as your model an——"
"How He must have suffered!" came the astonishing interruption, the voice quiet and more natural again. "There was no way of telling what he knew. He had no words, of course. You are all so difficult, so caged, so—dead!"
Devonham smiled. "He used parables." He paused a moment, then went on "Men have existed on the planet, science tells us, for at least 400,000 years, whereasHecame here only 2,000 years ago——"
"Camehere," interrupted the pupil, as though the earth were but one of a thousand places visited, a hint of contempt and pity somewhere in his tone and gesture. "We made His way ready then! We prepared, we built! It was for that our work went on and on so faithfully."
He broke off....
Devonham experienced a curious sensation as he heard. In that instant it seemed to him that he was conscious of the movement of the earth through space. He was aware that the planet on which he stood was rushing forward at eighteen miles a second through the sky. He felt himself carried forward with it.
"What was His name?" he heard "N. H." asking. Itwas as though he was aware of the enormous interval in space traversed by the rolling earth between the first and last words of the sudden question. It trailed through an immense distance towards him, after him, yet at the same time ever with him.
"His name—oh—Jesus Christ, we call him," wondering at the same moment why he used the pronoun "we."
"Jesus—Christ!"
"N. H." repeated the name with such intensity and power that the sound, borne by deep vibrations, seemed to surge and circle forth into space while the earth rushed irresistibly onwards. A faintly imaginative idea occurred to Devonham for the first time in his life—it was as though the earth herself had opened her green lips and uttered the great name. With this came also the amazing and disconcerting conviction that Nature and humans were expressions of one and the same big simple energy, and that while their forms, their bodies, differed, the life manifesting through them was identical, though its degree might vary. For an instant this was of such overpowering conviction as to be merely obvious.
It passed as quickly as it came, though he still was dimly conscious that he had travelled with the earth through another huge stretch of space. Then this sense of movement also passed. He looked up. "N. H." was in his chair again at the table, reading quietly his book on natural history. But in his eyes the moisture of tears was still visible.
Devonham adjusted his glasses, blew his nose, went quickly to another room to jot down his notes of the talk, the reactions, the general description, and in doing so dismissed from his mind the slight uneasy effects of what had been a "curious hallucination," caused evidently by an "unexplained stimulation" of the motor centres in the brain.
THE full account of "N. H.," with all he said and did, his effect upon others, his general activities in a word, it is impossible to compress intelligibly into the compass of these notes. A complete report Edward Fillery indeed accumulated, but its publication, he realized, must await that leisure for which his busy life provided little opportunity. His eyes, mental and physical, were never off his "patient," and "N. H.," aware of it, leaped out to meet the observant sympathy, giving all he could, concealing nothing, yet debarred, it seemed, by the rigid limitations of his own mental and physical machinery, as similarly by that of his hearers, from contributing more than suggestive and tantalizing hints. Of the use of parable he, obviously, had no knowledge.
His relations with others, perhaps, offered the most significant comments on his personality. Fillery was at some pains to collect these. The reactions were various, yet one and all showed this in common, a curious verdict but unanimous: that his effect, namely, was greatest when he was not there. Not in his actual presence, which promised rather than fulfilled, was his power so dominating upon mind and imagination as after the door was closed and he was gone. The withdrawal of his physical self, its absence—as Fillery had himself experienced one night on Hampstead Heath as well as on other occasions—brought his real presence closer.
It was Nayan who first drew attention to this remarkable characteristic. She spoke about him often now with Dr. Fillery, for as the weeks passed and she realized the uselessness, the impossibility, of the plan she had proposed toherself, she found relief in talking frankly about him to her older friend.
"Always, always after I leave him," she confessed, "a profound and searching melancholy gets hold of me, poignant as death, yet an extraordinary unrealized beauty behind it somewhere. It steals into my very blood and bones. I feel an intense dissatisfaction with the world, with people as they are, and a burning scorn for all that is small, unworthy, petty, mean—and yet a hopelessness of ever attaining to that something whichheknows and lives so easily." She sighed, gazing into his eyes a moment. "Or of ever making others see it," she added.
"And that 'something,'" he asked, "can you define it?"
She shook her head. "It's in me, within reach even, but—the word he used is the only one—forgotten."
"Perhaps—has it ever occurred to you?—that he simply cannot describe it. There are no words, no means at his disposal—no human terms?"
"Perhaps," she murmured.
"Desirable, though?" he urged her gently.
She clasped her hands, smiling. "Heavenly," she murmured, closing her eyes a moment as though to try and recall it. "Yet when I'm with him," she went on, "he neverquiterealizes for me the state of wonder and delight his presence promises. His personality suggests rather than fulfils." She paused, a wistful, pained expression in her dark eyes. "The failure," she added quickly, lest she seem to belittle him of whom she spoke, "of course lies in myself. I refuse, you see—I can't say why, though I feel it's wise—to let myself be dominated by that strange, lost part of me he stimulates."
"True," interposed Dr. Fillery. "I understand. Yet to have felt this even is a sign——"
"That he stirs the deepest, highest in me? This hint of divine beauty in the unrealized under-self?"
He nodded. There was an odd touch of sadness in their talk. "I've watched him with many types of people," hewent on thoughtfully, almost as though thinking aloud in his rapid way, "I've talked with him on many subjects. The meanness, jealousy, insignificance of the Race shocks and amazes him. He cannot understand it. He asked me once 'But is no onebornnoble? To be splendid is such an effort with them!' Splendour of conduct, he noticed, is a calculated, rarely a spontaneous splendour. The general resistance to new ideas also puzzles him. 'They fear a rhythm they have never felt before,' as he put it. 'To adopt a new rhythm, they think, must somehow injure them.' That the Race respects a man because he possesses much equally bewilders him. 'No one serves willingly or naturally,' he observed, 'or unless someone else receives money for drawing attention loudly to it.' Any notion of reward, of advertisement, in its widest meaning, is foreign to his nature."
He broke off. Another pause fell between them, the girl the first to break it:
"He suffers," she said in a low voice. "Here—he suffers," and her face yearned with the love and help she longed to pour out beyond all thought of self or compensation, and at the same time with the pain of its inevitable frustration; and, watching her, Dr. Fillery understood that this very yearning was another proof of the curious impetus, the intensification of being, that "N. H." caused in everyone. Yet he winced, as though anticipating the question she at once then put to him:
"You are afraid for him, Edward?" her eyes calmly, searchingly on his. "His future troubles you?"
He turned to her with abrupt intensity. "Ifyou, Iraida, could not enchain him——" He broke off. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I have no power," she confessed. "An insatiable longing burns like a fire in him. Nothing he finds here on earth, among men and women, can satisfy it." A faint blush stole up her neck and touched her cheeks. "He is different.Ihave no power to keep him here." Her voice sank suddenly to a whisper, as though a breath of awe passed into her."He is here now at this very moment, I believe. He is with us as we talk together. I feel him." Almost a visible thrill passed through her. "And close, so very close—toyou."
Dr. Fillery made no sign by word or gesture, but something in his very silence gave assent.
"And not alone," she added, still under her breath. It seemed she looked about her, though she did not actually move or turn her head. "Others—of his kind, Edward—come with him. They are always with him—I think sometimes." Her whisper was fainter still.
"You feel that too!" He said it abruptly, his voice louder and almost challenging. Then he added incongruously, as though saying it to himself this time, "That's what I mean. I've known it for a long time——"
He looked at the girl sharply with unconcealed admiration. "It does not frighten you?" he asked, and in reply she said the very thing he felt sure she would say, hoping for it even while he shrank:
"Escape," he heard in a low, clear voice, half a question, half an exclamation, and saw the blood leave her face.
The instinctive "Hush!" that rose to his lips he did not utter. The sense of loss, of searching pain, the word implied he did not show. Instead, he spoke in his natural, everyday tone again:
"The body irks him, of course, and he may try to rid himself of it. Its limitations to him are a prison, for his true consciousness he finds outside it. The explanation," he added to himself, "of many a case of suicidal mania probably. I've often wondered——"
He took her hand, aware by the pallor of her face what her feelings were. "Death, you see, Nayan, has no meaning for him, as it has for us who think consciousness out of the body impossible, and he is puzzled by our dread of it. 'We,' he said once, 'have nothing that decays. We may be stationary, or advance, or retreat, but we can never end.' He derives—oh, I'm convinced of it—from another order.Here—amongst us—he is inarticulate, unable to express himself, hopeless, helpless, in prison. Oh, if only——"
"He lovesyou," she said quickly, releasing her hand. "I suppose he realizes the eternal part of you and identifies himself with that. In you, Edward, lies something very close to what he is, akin—he needs it terribly, just as you——" She became confused.
"Love, as we understand it," he interrupted, his voice shaking a little, "he does not, cannot know, for he serves another law, another order of being."
"That's how I feel it too."
She shivered slightly, but she did not turn away, and her eyes kept all their frankness.
"Our humanity," she murmured, "writes upon his heart in ink that quickly fades——"
"And leaves no trace," he caught her up hurriedly. "His one idea is to help, to render service. It is as natural to him as for water to run down hill. He seeks instinctively to become one with the person he seeks to aid. As with us an embrace is an attempt at union, so he seeks, by some law of his own being, to become identified with those whom he would help. And he helps by intensifying their consciousness—somewhat as heat and air increase ordinary physical vitality. Only, first there must be something for him to work on. Energy, even bad, vicious, wrongly used, he can work on. Mere emptiness prevents him. You remember Lady Gleeson——"
"We—most of us—are too empty," she put in with quiet resignation. "Our sense of that divine beauty is too faint——"
"Rather," came the quick correction, "he stands too close to us. His effect is too concentrated. The power at such close quarters disturbs and overbalances."
"That's why, then, I always feel it strongest when he's left."
He glanced at her keenly.
"In his presence," she explained, "it's always as thoughI saw only a part of him, even of his physical appearance, out of the corner of my eye, as it were, and sometimes——" She hesitated. He did not help her this time. "As if those others, many others, similar to himself, but invisible, crowding space about us, were intensely active." Her voice hushed again. "He brings them with him—as now. I feel it, Edward, now. I feel them close." She looked round the empty room, peering through the window into the quiet evening sky. Dr. Fillery also turned away. He sighed again. "Have you noticed, too," he went on presently, yet half as if following his own thoughts, and a trifle incongruously, "the speed and lightness his very movements convey, and how he goes down the street with that curious air of drawing things after him, along with him, as trains and motors draw the loose leaves and dust——"
"Whirling," her quick whisper startled him a little, as she turned abruptly from the window and gazed straight at him. He smiled, instantly recovering himself. "A good word, yes—whirling—but in the plural. As though there were vortices about him."
It was her turn to smile. "That might one day carry him away," she exclaimed. They smiled together then, they even laughed, but somewhere in their laughter, like the lengthening shadows of the spring day outside, lay an incommunicable sadness neither of them could wholly understand.
"Yet the craving for beauty," she said suddenly, "that he leaves behind in me"—her voice wavered—"an intolerable yearning that nothing can satisfy—nothing—here. An infinite desire, it seems, for—for——"
Dr. Fillery took her hand again gently, looking down steadily into the clear eyes that sought his own, and the light glistening in their moisture was similar, he fancied for a moment, to the fire in another pair of shining eyes that never failed to stir the unearthly dreams in him.
"It lies beyond any words of ours," he said softly. "Don't struggle to express it, Iraida. To the flower, the star, weare wise to leave their own expression in their own particular field, for we cannot better it."
A sound of rising wind, distant yet ominous, went past the window, as for a moment then the girl came closer till she was almost in his arms, and though he did not accept her, equally he did not shrink from the idea of acceptance—for the first time since they had known one another. There was a smell of flowers; almost in that wailing wind he was aware of music.
"Together," he heard her whisper, while a faint shiver—was it of joy or terror?—ran through her nerves. "All of us—when the time comes—together." She made an abrupt movement. "Just as we are together now! Listen!" she exclaimed.
"We call it wind," she whispered. "But of course—really—it's behind—beyond—inside—isn't it?"
Dr. Fillery, holding her closely, made no answer. Then he laughed, let go her hands, and said in his natural tone again, breaking an undesirable spell intentionally, though with a strong effort: "We are in space and time, remember. Iraida. Let us obey them happily until another certain and practical thing is shown us."
The faint sound that had been rising about them in the air died down again.
They looked into each other's eyes, then drew apart, though with a movement so slight it was scarcely perceptible. It was Nayan and Dr. Fillery once more, but not before the former had apparently picked out the very thought that had lain, though unexpressed, in the latter's deepest mind—its sudden rising the cause of his deliberate change of attitude. For she had phrased it, given expression to it, though from an angle very different to his own. And her own word, "escape," used earlier in the conversation, had deliberately linked on with it, as of intentional purpose.
"He must go back. The time is coming when he must go back. We are not ready for him here—not yet."
Somewhat in this fashion, though without any actualwords, had the idea appeared in letters of fire that leaped and flickered through a mist of anguish, of loss, of loneliness, rising out of the depths within him. He knew whence they came, he divined their origin at once, and the sound, though faint and distant at first, confirmed him. Swiftly behind them, moreover, born of no discoverable antecedents, it seemed, rose simultaneously the phrase that Father Collins loved: "A Being in his own place is the ruler of his fate." Father Collins, for all his faults and strangeness, was a personality, a consciousness, that might prove of value. His extraordinarily swift receptiveness, his undoubted telepathic powers, his fluid, sensitive, protean comprehension of possibilities outside the human walls, above the earthly ceiling, so to speak.... Value suddenly attached itself to Father Collins, as though the name had been dropped purposely into his mind by someone. He was surprised to find this thought in him. It was not for the first time, however, Dr. Fillery remembered.
In Nayan's father, again, an artist, though not a particularly subtle one perhaps, lay a deep admiration, almost a love, he could not explain. "There's something about him in a sense immeasurable, something not only untamed but untamable," he phrased it. "His gentleness conceals it as a summer's day conceals a thunderstorm. To me it's almost like an incarnation of the primal forces at work in the hearts of my own people"—he grew sad—"and as dangerous probably." He was speaking to his daughter, who repeated the words later to Dr. Fillery. The study of Fire in the elemental group had failed. "He's too big, too vast, too formless, to get into any shape or outlinemytools can manage, even by suggestion. He dominates the others—Earth, Air, Water—and dwarfs them."
"But fire ought to," she put in. "It's the most powerful and splendid, the most terrific of them all. Isn't it? It regenerates. It purifies. I love fire——"
Her father smiled in his beard, noticing the softness inher manner, rather than in her voice. The awakening in her he had long since understood sympathetically, if more profoundly than she knew, and welcomed.
"He won't hurt you, child. He won't harm Nayushka any more than a summer's day can hurt her. I see him thus sometimes," he mumbled on half to himself, though she heard and stored the words in her memory; "as an entire day, a landscape even, I often see him. A stretch of being rather than a point; a rushing stream rather than a single isolated wave harnessed and confined in definite form—asweunderstand being here," he added curiously. "No, he'll neither harm nor help you," he went on; "nor any of us for that matter. A dozen nations, a planet, a star he might help or harm"—he laughed aloud suddenly in a startled way at his own language—"but an individual never!" And he abruptly took her in his arms and kissed her, drying her tears with his own rough handkerchief. "Not even a fire-worshipper," he added with gruff tenderness, "like you!"
"There's more of divinity in fire than in any other earthly thing we know," she replied as he held her, "for it takes into itself the sweetest essence of all it touches." She looked up at him with a smile. "That's why you can't get it into your marble perhaps." To which her father made the significant rejoinder: "And because none of us has the least conception what 'divine' and 'divinity' really mean, though we're always using the words! It's odd, anyhow," he finished reflectively, "that I can model the fellow better from memory than when he's standing there before my eyes. At close quarters he confuses me with too many terrific unanswerable questions."
To multiply the verdicts and impressions Fillery jotted down is unnecessary. In his own way he collected; in his own way he wrote them down. About "N. H.," all agreed in their various ways of expressing it, was that vital suggestion of agelessness, of deathlessness, of what men call eternal youth: the vigorous grace of limbs and movements,the deep simple joy of confidence and power. None could picture him tired, or even wearing out, yet ever with a faint hint of painful conflict due to immense potentialities—"a day compressed into a single minute," as Khilkoff phrased it—straining, but vainly, to express themselves through a limited form that was inadequate to their use. A storm of passionate hope and wonder seemed ever ready to tear forth from behind the calm of the great quiet eyes, those green-blue changing eyes, which none could imagine lightless or unlamping; and about his whole presentment a surplus of easy, overflowing energy from an inexhaustible source pressing its gifts down into him spontaneously, fire and wind its messengers; yet that the human machinery using these—mind, body, nerves—was ill adapted to their full expression. To every individual having to do with him was given a push, a drive, an impetus that stimulated that individual's chief characteristic, intensifying it.
This to imaginative and discerning sight. But even upon ordinary folk, aware only of the surface things that deliberately hit them, was left a startling impression as of someone waving a strange, unaccustomed banner that made them halt and stare before passing on—uncomfortably. He had that nameless quality, apart from looks or voice or manner, which arrested attention and drew the eyes of the soul, wonderingly, perhaps uneasily, upon itself. He left a mark. Something defined him from all others, leaving him silhouetted in the mind, and those who had looked into his eyes could not forget that they had done so. Up rose at once the great unanswerable questions that, lying ever at the back of daily life, the majority find it most comfortable to leave undisturbed—but rose in red ink or italics. He started into an awareness of greater life. And the effect remained, was greatest even, after he had passed on.
It was, of course, Father Collins, a frequent caller now at the Home, betraying his vehement interest in long talks with Dr. Fillery and in what interviews with "N. H." thelatter permitted him—it was this protean being whose mind, amid wildest speculations, formed the most positive conclusions. The Prometheans, he believed, were not far wrong in their instinctive collective judgment. "N. H." was not a human being; the occupant of that magnificent body was not a human spirit like the rest of us.
"Nor is he the only one walking the streets to-day," he affirmed mysteriously. "In shops and theatres, trains and buses, tucked in among the best families," he laughed, although in earnest, "and even in suburbia I have come across other human bodies similarly inhabited. What they are and where they come from exactly, we cannot know, but their presence among us is indubitable."
"You mean you recognize them?" inquired Dr. Fillery calmly.
"One unmistakable sign they possess in common—they are invariably inarticulate, helpless, lost. The brain, the five senses, the human organs—all they have to work through—are useless to express the knowledge and powers natural to them. Electricity might as well try to manifest itself through a gas-pipe, or music through a stone. One and all, too, possess strange glimmerings of another state where they are happy and at home, something of the glory à la Wordsworth, a Golden Age idea almost, a state compared to which humanity seems a tin-pot business, yet a state of which no single descriptive terms occur to them."
"Of which, however, they can tell us nothing?"
"Memory, of course, is lost. Their present brain can have no records, can it? Only those of us who have perhaps at some time, in some earlier existence possibly, shared such a state can have any idea of what they're driving at."
He glanced at Fillery with a significant raising of his bushy eyebrows.
"There have been no phenomena, I'm glad to say," put in the doctor, aware some comment was due from him, "no physical phenomena, I mean."
"Nor could there be," pursued the other, delighted. "He has not got the apparatus. With all such beings, their power, rather than perceived, isfelt. Sex, as with us, they also cannot know, for they are neither male nor female." He paused, as the other did not help him. "Enigmas they must always be to us. We may borrow from the East and call themdevas, or class them among nature spirits of legend and the rest, but we can, at any rate, welcome them, and perhaps even learn from them."
"Learn from them?" echoed Fillery sharply.
"They are essentiallynatural, you see, whereas we are artificial, and becoming more so with every century, though we call it civilization. If we lived closer to nature we might get better results, I mean. Primitive man, I'm convinced, did get certain results, but he was a poor instrument. Modern man, in some ways, is a better, finer instrument to work through, only he is blind to the existence of any beings but himself. A bridge, however, might be built, I feel. 'N. H.' seems to me in close touch with these curious beings, if"—he lowered his voice—"he is not actually one of them. The wind and fire he talks about are, of course, not whatwemean. It is heat and rhythm, in some more essential form, he refers to. If 'N. H.' is some sort of nature spirit, or nature-being, he is of a humble type, concerned with humble duties in the universe——"
"There are, you think, then, higher, bigger kinds?" inquired the listener, his face and manner showing neither approval nor disapproval.
Father Collins raised his hands and face and shoulders, even his eyebrows. His spirits rose as well.
"If they exist at all—and the assumption explains plausibly the amazing intelligence behind all natural phenomena—they include every grade, of course, from the insignificant fairies, so called, builders of simple forms, to the immense planetary spirits and vastIntelligenceswho guide and guard the welfare of the greater happenings." His eyes shone, his tone matched in enthusiasm his gestures."A stupendous and magnificent hierarchy," he cried, "but all, all under God, of course, who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire. Ah, think of it," he went on, becoming lyrical almost as wonder fired him, "think of it now especially in the spring! The vast abundance and insurgence of life pouring up on all sides into forms and bodies, and all led, directed, fashioned by this host of invisible, yet not unknowable, Intelligences! Think of the prolific architecture, the delicacy, the grandeur, the inspiring beauty that are involved...!"
"You said just now a bridge might be built," Dr. Fillery interrupted, while the other paused a second for breath.
Father Collins, nailed down to a positive statement, hesitated and looked about him. But the hesitation passed at once.
"It is the question merely," he went on more composedly, "of providing the apparatus, the means of manifestation, the instrument, the—body. Isn't it? Our evolution and theirs are two separate—different things."
"I suppose so. No force can express itself without a proper apparatus."
"Certain of these Intelligences are so immense that only a series of events, long centuries, a period of history, as we call it, can provide the means, the body indeed, through which they can express themselves. An entire civilization may be the 'body' used by an archetypal power. Others, again—like 'N. H.' probably—since I notice that it is usually the artist, the artistic temperamentheaffects most—require beauty for their expression—beauty of form and outline, of sound, of colour."
He paused for effect, but no comment came.
"Our response to beauty, our thrill, our lift of delight and wonder before any manifestation of beauty—these are due only to our perception, though usually unrecognized except by artists, of the particular Intelligence thus trying to express itself——"
Dr. Fillery suddenly leaned forward, listening with anew expression on his face. He betrayed, however, no sign of what he thought of his voluble visitor. An idea, none the less, had struck him like a flash between the eyes of the mind.
"You mean," he interposed patiently, "that just as your fairies use form and colour to express themselves in nature, we might use beauty of a mental order to—to——"
"To build a body of expression, yes, an instrument in a collective sense, through which 'N. H.' might express whatever of knowledge, wisdom and power he has——"
"Will you explain yourself a little more definitely?"
Father Collins beamed. He continued with an air of intense conviction:
"The Artist is ever an instrument merely, and for the most part an unconscious one; only the greatest artist is a conscious instrument. No man is an artist at all until he transcends both nature and himself; that is, until he interprets both nature and himself in the unknown terms of that greater Power whence himself and nature emanate. He is aware of the majestic source, aware that the universe, in bulk and in detail, is an expression of it, itself a limited instrument; but aware, further—and here he proves himself great artist—of the stupendous, lovely, central Power whose message stammers, broken and partial, through the inadequate instruments of ephemeral appearances.
"He creates, using beauty in form, sound, colour, a better and more perfect instrument, provides this central Power with a means of fuller expression.
"The message no longer stammers, halts, suggests; it flows, it pours, it sings. He has fashioned a vehicle for its passage. His art has created a body it can use. He has transcended both nature and himself. The picture, poem, harmony that has become the body for this revelation is alone great art."
"Exactly," came the patient comment that was asked for.
"One thing is certain: only human knowledge, expressedin human terms, can come through a human brain. No mind, no intellect, can convey a message that transcends human experience and reason. Art, however, can. It can supply the vehicle, the body. But, even here, the great artist cannot communicate the secret of his Vision; he cannot talk about it, tell it to others. He can onlyshowthe result."
"Results," interrupted Dr. Fillery in a curious tone; "what results, exactly, would you look for?" There was a burning in his eyes. His skin was tingling.
"What else but a widening, deepening, heightening of our present consciousness," came the instant reply. "An extension of faculty, of course, making entirely new knowledge available. A group of great artists, each contributing his special vision, respectively, of form, colour, words, proportion, could together create a 'body' to express a Power transcending the accumulated wisdom of the world. The race could be uplifted, taught, redeemed."
"You have already given some attention to this strange idea?" suggested his listener, watching closely the working of the other's face. "You have perhaps even experimented—— A ceremonial of some sort, you mean? A performance, a ritual—or what?"
Father Collins lowered his voice, becoming more earnest, more impressive:
"Beauty, the arts," he whispered, "can alone provide a vehicle for the expression of those Intelligences which are the cosmic powers. A performance of some sort—possibly—since there must be sound and movement. A bridge between us, between our evolution and their own, might, I believe, be thus constructed. Art is only great when it provides a true form for the expression of an eternal cosmic power. By combining—we might provide a means for their manifestation——"
"A body of thought, as it were, through which our 'N. H.' might become articulate? Is that your idea?"
Behind the question lay something new, it seemed, asthough, while listening to the exposition of an odd mystical conception, his mind had been busy with a preoccupation, privately but simultaneously, of his own. "In what way precisely do you suggest the arts might combine to provide this 'body'?" he asked, a faint tremor noticeable in the lowered voice.
"That," replied Father Collins promptly, never at a loss, "we should have to think about. Inspiration will come to us—probably throughhim. Ceremonial, of course, has always been an attempt in this direction, only it has left the world so long that people no longer know how to construct a real one. The ceremonials of to-day are ugly, vulgar, false. The words, music, colour, gestures—everything must combine in perfect harmony and proportion to be efficacious. It is a forgotten method."
"And results—how would they come?"
"The new wisdom and knowledge that result are suddenly thereinthe members of the group. The Power has expressed itself. Not through the brain, of course, but, rather, that the new ideas, having beenactedout, are suddenly there. There has been an extension of consciousness. A group consciousness has been formed, and——"
"And there you are!" Dr. Fillery, moving his foot unperceived, had touched a bell beneath the table. The foot, however, groped and fumbled, as though unsure of itself.
"You learn to swim—by swimming, not by talking about it." Father Collins was prepared to talk on for another hour. "If we can devise the means—and I feel sure we can—we shall have formed a bridge between the two evolutions——"
Nurse Robbins entered with apologies. A case upstairs demanded the doctor's instant attendance. Dr. Devonham was engaged.
"One thing," insisted Father Collins, as they shook hands and he got up to go, "one thing only you would have to fear." He was very earnest. Evidently the signs ofstruggle, of fierce conflict in the other's face he did not notice.
"And that is?" A hand was on the door.
"If successful—if we provide this means of expression for him—we provide also the means of losing him."
"Death?" He opened the door with rough, unnecessary violence.
"Escape. He would no longer need the body he now uses. He wouldremember—and be gone. In his place you would have—LeVallon again only. I'm afraid," he added, "that he alreadyisremembering——!"
His final words, as Nurse Robbins deftly hastened his departure in the hall, were a promise to communicate the results of his further reflections, and a suggestion that his cottage by the river would be a quiet spot in which to talk the matter over again.
But Dr. Fillery, having thanked Nurse Robbins for her prompt attendance to his bell, returned to the room and sat for some time in a strange confusion of anxious thoughts. A singular idea took shape in him—that Father Collins had again robbed his mind of its unspoken content. That sensitive receptive nature had first perceived, then given form to the vague, incoherent dreams that lurked in the innermost recesses of his hidden self.
Yet, if that were so——and if "N. H." already was "remembering"——!
A wave of shadow crept upon him, darkening his hope, his enthusiasm, his very life. For another part of him knew quite well the value to be attributed to what Father Collins had said.
Instinctively his mind sought for Devonham. But it did not occur to him at the moment to wonder why this was so.