The Bright Messenger

by Algernon Blackwood

  CHAPTER XIII

  Lady Gleeson, owing to an outraged vanity and jealousy she was unableto control, missed the final scene, for before the song was actuallyfinished she was gone. Being near a passage that was draped only by acurtain, she slipped out easily, flung herself into a luxurious motor,and vanished into the bleak autumn night.

  She had seen enough. Her little heart raged with selfish fury. Whatfollowed was told her later by word of mouth.

  Never could she forgive herself that she had left the studio before thething had happened. She blamed Devonham for that too.

  For LeVallon, it appears, having passed the cup of coffee to herthrough a third person--in itself an insult of indifference andneglect--stood absorbed in the words and music of the song. Being headand shoulders above the throng, he easily saw the girl at the piano. Noone, unless it was Fillery, a few yards away, watched him as closely asdid Devonham and Lady Gleeson, though all three for different reasons.It was Devonham, however, who made the most accurate note of what hesaw, though Fillery's memory was possibly the truer, since his owninner being supplied the fuller and more sympathetic interpretation.

  LeVallon, tall and poised, stood there like a great figure shaped inbronze. He was very calm. His bright hair seemed to rise a little;his eyes, steady and wondering, gazed fixedly; his features, thoughset, were mobile in the sense that any instant they might leap intothe alive and fluid expression of some strong emotion. His wholebeing, in a word, stood at attention, alert for instant action of someuncontrollable, perhaps terrific kind. "He seemed like a glowingpillar of metal that must burst into flame the very next instant," as aMember told Lady Gleeson later.

  Devonham watched him. LeVallon seemed transfixed. He stared abovethe intervening tousled heads. He drew a series of deep breaths thatsquared his shoulders and made his chest expand. His very musclesached apparently for instant action. An intensity of wondering joyand admiration that lit his face made the eyes shine like stars. Hewatched the singing girl as a tiger watches the keeper who brings itslong-expected food. The instant the bar is up, it springs, it leaps, itcarries off, devours. Only, in this case, there were no bars. Nor wasthe wild desire for nourishment of a carnal kind. It was companionship,it was intercourse with his own that he desired so intensely.

  "He divines the motherhood in her," thought Fillery, watching closely,pain and happiness mingled in his heart. "The protective, selfless,upbuilding power lies close to Nature." And as this flashed across himhe caught a glimpse by chance of its exact opposite--in Lady Gleeson'speering, glittering eyes--the destructive lust, the selfish passion,the bird of prey.

  "_The dark firs knew his whistle up the trail_," the song in that softtrue voice drew to its close. LeVallon was trembling.

  "Good Heavens!" thought Devonham. "Is it 'N. H.'? Is it 'N. H.,' afterall, waking--rising to take possession?" He, too, trembled.

  It was here that Lady Gleeson, close, intuitive observer of herescaping prey, rose up and slipped away, her going hardly noticed bythe half-entranced, half-dreaming hearts about her, each intent uponits own small heaven of neat desire. She went as unobtrusively as ananimal that is aware of untoward conditions and surroundings, showingher teeth, feeling her claws, yet knowing herself helpless. Not evenDevonham, his mind ever keenly alert, observed her going. Fillery,alone, conscious of LeVallon's eyes across the room, took note of it.She left, her violent little will intent upon vengeance of a latervictory that she still promised herself with concentrated passion.

  Yet Devonham, though he failed to notice the slim animal of prey inexit, noticed this--that the face he watched so closely changed quicklyeven as he watched, and that the new expression, growing upon it asheat grows upon metal set in a flame, was an expression he had seenbefore. He had seen it in that lonely mountain valley where a settingsun poured gold upon a burning pyre, upon a dancing, chanting figure,upon a human face he now watched in this ridiculous little Chelseastudio. The sharpness of the air, the very perfume, stole over him ashe stared, perplexed, excited and uneasy. That strange, wild, innocentand tender face, that power, that infinite yearning! LeVallon haddisappeared. It was "N. H." that stood and watched the singer at thelittle modern piano.

  Then with the end of the song came the rush, the bustle of applause,the confusion of many people rising, trotting forward, all talkingat once, all moving towards the singer--when LeVallon, hithertomotionless as a statue, suddenly leaped past and through them like avehement wind through a whirl of crackling dead leaves. Only his deft,skilful movement, of poise and perfect balance combined with accurateswiftness, could have managed it without bruised bodies and angrycries. There was no clumsiness, no visible effort, no appearance ofundue speed. He seemed to move quietly, though he moved like fire. Ina moment he was by the piano, and Nayan, in the act of rising from herstool, gazed straight up into his great lighted eyes.

  It was singular how all made way for him, drew back, looked on.Confusion threatened. Emotion surged like a rising sea. Without aleader there might easily have been tumult; even a scene. But Fillerywas there. His figure intervened at once.

  "Nayan," he said in a steady voice, "this is my friend, Mr. LeVallon.He wants to thank you."

  But, before she could answer, LeVallon, his hand upon her arm, saidquickly, yet so quietly that few heard the actual words, perhaps--hisvoice resonant, his eyes alight with joy: "You are here too--with me,with Fillery. We are all exiles together. But you know the way out--theway back! You remember!..."

  She stared with delicious wonder into his eyes as he went on:

  "O star and woman! Your voice is wind and fire. Come!" And he tried toseize her. "We wilt go back together. We work here in vain!..." Hisarms were round her; almost their faces touched.

  The girl rose instantly, took a step towards him, then hung back; thestool fell over with a crash; a hubbub of voices rose in the roombehind; Povey, Kempster, a dozen Members with them, pressed up; thewomen, with half-shocked, half-frightened eyes, gaped and gasped overthe forest of intervening male shoulders. A universal shuffle followed.The confusion was absurd and futile. Both male and female stood aghastand stupid before what they saw, for behind the mere words and gesturesthere was something that filled the little scene with a strange shakingpower, touching the panic sense.

  LeVallon lifted her across his shoulders.

  The beautiful girl was radiant, the man wore the sudden semblance ofa god. Their very stature increased. They stood alone. Yet Fillery,close by, stood with them. There seemed a magic circle none dared crossabout the three. Something immense, unearthly, had come into the room,bursting its little space. Even Devonham, breaking with vehemencethrough the human ring, came to a sudden halt.

  In a voice of thunder--though it was not actually loud--LeVallon cried:

  "Their little personal loves! They cannot understand!" He bore Nayanin his arms as wind might lift a loose flower and whirl it aloft."Come back with me, come home! The Sun forgets us here, the Wind issilent. There is no Fire. Our work, our service calls us." He turned toFillery. "You too. Come!"

  His voice boomed like a thundering wind against the astonishedfrightened faces staring at him. It rose to a cry of intense emotion:"We are in little exile here! In our wrong place, cut off from theservice of our gods! We will go back!" He started, with the girl flungacross his frame. He took one stride. The others shuffled back with oneaccord.

  "_The other summons at the door._ But, Edward!--you--you too!"

  It was Nayan's voice, as the girl clung willingly to the great neckand arms, the voice of the girl all loved and worshipped and thoughtwonderful beyond temptation; it was this familiar sound that ranthrough the bewildered, startled throng like an electric shock. Theycould not believe their eyes, their ears. They stood transfixed.

  Within their circle stood LeVallon, holding the girl, almost embracingher, while she lay helpless with happiness upon his huge enfoldingarms. He paused, looked round at Fillery a moment. None dared approach.The men gazed, wondering, and with faculties arrested; the
womenstared, stock still, with beating hearts. All felt a lifting, splendidwonder they could not understand. Devonham, mute and motionless beforean inexplicable thing, found himself bereft of judgment. Analysis andprecedent, for once, both failed. He looked round in vain for Khilkoff.

  Fillery alone seemed master of himself, a look of suffering and joyshone in his face; one hand lay steady upon LeVallon's arm.

  Within the little circle these three figures formed a definitegroup, filling the beholders, for the first time in their so-called"psychic" experience, with the thrill of something utterly beyond theirken--something genuine at last. For there seemed about the group,though emanating, as with shining power, from the figure of LeVallonchiefly, some radiating force, some elemental vigour they could notcomprehend. Its presence made the scene possible, even right.

  "Edward--you too! What is it, O, what is it? There are flowers--greatwinds! I see the fire----!"

  A searching tenderness in her tone broke almost beyond the limits ofthe known human voice.

  There swept over the onlookers a wave of incredible emotion then, asthey saw LeVallon move towards them, as though he would pass throughthem and escape. He seemed in that moment stupendous, irresistible.He looked divine. The girl lay in his arms like some young radiantchild. He did not kiss her, no sign of a caress was seen; he did noordinary, human thing. His towering figure, carrying his burden almostnegligently, came out of the circle "like a tide" towards them, as onedescribed it later--or as a poem that appeared later in "Simplicity"began:

  "With his hair of wind And his eyes of fire And his face of infinite desire ..."

  He swept nearer. They stirred again in a confused and troubled shuffle,opening a way. They shrank back farther. They shivered, like cryingshingle a vast wave draws back. Only Fillery stood still, making nosign or movement; upon his face that look of joy and pain--wild joy andsearching pain--no one, perhaps, but Devonham understood.

  "Wind and fire!" boomed LeVallon's tremendous voice. "We return to ourdivine, eternal service. O Wind and Fire! We come back at last!" Animmense rhythm swept across the room.

  Then it was, without announcement of word or action, that Nayan,suddenly leaping from the great enfolding arms, stood upright betweenthe two figures, one hand outstretched towards--Fillery.

  At which moment, emerging apparently from nowhere, Khilkoff appearedupon the scene. During the music he had left the studio to find certainsketches he wished to show to LeVallon; he had witnessed nothing,therefore, of what had just occurred. He now stood still, staringin sheer surprise. The people in a ring, gazing with excited, raptexpression into the circle they thus formed, looked like an audiencewatching some performance that dazed and stupefied them, in whichFillery, LeVallon and Nayan--his own daughter--were the players. Hetook it for an impromptu charade, perhaps, something spontaneouslyarranged during his absence. Yet he was obviously staggered.

  As he entered, the girl had just leaped from the arms that held her,and run towards Fillery, who stood erect and motionless in the centreof the circle; and LeVallon's wild splendid cry in that instant shookits grand music across the vaulted room. So well acted, so dramatic,so real was the scene thus interrupted that Khilkoff stood staring insilence, thinking chiefly, as he said afterwards, that the young man'spose and attitude were exactly--magnificently--what he wanted for thefigure of Fire and Wind in his elemental group.

  This enthusiastic thought, with the attempt to engrave it permanentlyin his memory, filled his mind completely for an instant, when therebroke in upon it again that resonant voice, half cry, half chant,vibrating with depth and music, yet quiet too:

  "Wind and Fire! My Wind and Fire! O Sun--your messengers are come forus!... Oh, come with power and take us with you!..." Its rhythm wasgigantic.

  So extraordinary was the volume, yet the sweetness, too, in the voice,though its actual loudness was not great--so arresting was its quality,that Khilkoff, as he put it afterwards, thought he heard an entirelynew sound, a sound his ears had never known before. He, like the restof the astonished audience, was caught spell-bound. But for an instantonly. For at once there followed another voice, releasing the momentaryspell, and, with the accompanying action, warned him that what he sawwas no mere game of acting. This was real.

  "_I hear that other summons at the door!..._"

  Her hands were outstretched, her eyes alight with yearning, she wasoblivious of everyone but Fillery, LeVallon and herself.

  And her father, then, breaking through the crowding figures, packedshoulder to shoulder nearest to him, entered the circle. His mindwas confused, perhaps, for vague ideas of some undesirable hypnoticinfluence, of some foolish experiment that had become too real, passedthrough it. He knew one thing only--this scene, whether real or acted,pretence or sincere, must be stopped. The look on his daughter'sface--entirely new and strange to him--was all the evidence he needed.He shouldered his way through like an angry bear, making inarticulatenoises, growling.

  But, before he reached the actors, before Nayan reached Fillery'sside, and while the voice of the girl and of LeVallon still seemedto echo simultaneously in the air, a new thing happened that changedthe scene completely. In these few brief seconds, indeed, so muchwas concentrated, and with such rapidity, that it was small wonderthe reports of individual witnesses differed afterwards, almost asif each one had seen a separate detail of the crowded picture. Itsincredibility, too, bewildered minds accustomed to imagined dreamsrather than to real action.

  LeVallon, at any rate, all agreed, turned with that ease and swiftnesspeculiarly his own, caught Nayan again into the air, and with one armswung her back across his shoulder. He moved, then, so irresistibly,with a great striding rush in the direction of the door into thestreet, and so rapidly, that the onlookers once more drew backinstinctively pell mell, tumbling over each other in their frightenedhaste.

  This, all agreed, had happened. One second they saw LeVallon carryingthe girl off, the next--a flash of intense and vivid brilliance enteredthe big studio, flooding all detail with a blaze of violent light.There was a loud report, there was a violent shock.

  "The Messengers! Our Messengers!..." The thunder of LeVallon's cry wasaudible.

  The same instant this dazzling splendour, so sparkling it was almostpainful, became eclipsed again. There was complete obliteration.Darkness descended like a blow. An inky blackness reigned. No singlething was visible. There came a terrific splitting sound.

  The effect of overwhelming sudden blackness was natural enough. Inevery mind danced still the vivid memory of that last amazing picturethey had seen: Khilkoff, with alarmed face, breaking violently intothe circle where his daughter, Nayan, swinging from those giantshoulders, looked back imploringly at Dr. Fillery, who stood motionlessas though carved in stone, a smile of curious happiness yet painupon his features. Yet the figure of LeVallon dominated. His radiantbeauty, his air of superb strength, his ease, his power, his wildswiftness. Something unearthly glowed about him. He looked a god. Theextraordinary idea flashed into Fillery's mind that some big energy asof inter-stellar spaces lay about him, as though great Sirius calleddown along his light-years of distance into the little tumbled Chelsearoom.

  This was the picture, set one instant in dazzling violet brilliance,then drowned in blackness, that still hung shining with intense realitybefore every mind.

  The following confusion had a moment of real and troubling panic; womenscreamed, some fell upon their knees; men called for light; variouscries were heard; there was a general roar:

  "To the door, all men to the door! He's controlled! There's anElemental in him!" It was Povey's shrill tones that pierced.

  "Strike a match!" shouted Kempster. "The electric light has fused. Staywhere you are. Don't move--everybody."

  "Lightning," the clear voice of Devonham was heard. "Keep your heads.It's only a thunderstorm!"

  Matches were struck, extinguished, lit again; a patch of dim lightshone here and there upon a throng of huddled people; someone found acandle that shed
a flickering glare upon the walls and ceiling, butonly made the shadows chiefly visible. It was an unreal, fantasticscene.

  A moment later there descended a hurricane gust of wind against thebuilding, with splintering glass as though from a hail of bullets, thatextinguished candle and matches, and plunged the scene again into totaldarkness. A terrific clap of thunder, followed immediately by a rushingsound of rain that poured in a flood upon the floor, completed thescene of terror and confusion. The huge north window had blown in.

  The consternation was, for some moments, dangerous, for true panic maybecome an unmanageable thing, and this panic was unquestionably real.The superstitious thread that lies in every human being, stretched andshivered, beginning to weave its swift, ominous pattern. The elementsdominated the human too completely just then even for the sense ofwonder that was usually so active in the Society's mental make-upto assert itself intelligently. Most of them lost their heads. Allassociated that picture of LeVallon and the girl with this terrificdemonstration of overpowering elemental violence. Povey's startled cryhad given them the lead. The human touch thus added the flavour ofsomething both personal and supernatural.

  Some stood screaming, whimpering, unable to move; some were numb;others cried for help; not a few remained on their knees; the nameof God was audible here and there; many collapsed and several womenfainted. To one and all came the realization of that panic fear whichdislocates and paralyses. This was a manifestation of elemental powerthat had intelligence somewhere driving too suggestively behind it....

  It was Devonham and Khilkoff who kept their heads and saved thesituation. The sudden storm was, indeed, of extreme violence andferocity; the force of the wind, with the nearness of the terriblelightning and the consequent volume of the overwhelming thunder, werecertainly bewildering. But a thunderstorm, they began to realize, was athunderstorm.

  "Everyone stay exactly where he is," suddenly shouted Khilkoffthrough the darkness. His voice brought comfort. "I'll light candlesin the inner studio." He did so a moment later; the faint light wasreassuring; a pause in the storm came to his assistance, the windhad passed, the rain had ceased, there was no more lightning. With awhispered word to Devonham, he disappeared through the door into thepassage: "You look after 'em; I must find my girl."

  "One by one, now," called Devonham. "Take careful steps! Avoid thebroken glass!"

  Voices answered from dark corners, as the inner room began to fill;all saw the candle light and came to it by degrees. "Povey, Kempster,Imson, Father Collins! Each man bring a lady with him. It's only athunderstorm. Keep your heads!"

  The smaller room filled gradually, people with white faces and staringeyes coming, singly or in couples, within the pale radiance of theflickering candle light. Feet splashed through pools of water; thefurniture, the clothing, were soaked; the heat in the air, despite thegreat broken window, was stifling. One or two women were helped, somewere carried; there were cries and exclamations, a noise of splinteredglass being trodden on or kicked aside; drinks were brought forthose who had fainted; order was restored bit by bit. The collectiveconsciousness resumed gradually its comforting sway. The herd foundstrength in contact. A single cry--in a woman's voice--"Pan was amongus!..." was instantly smothered, drowned in a chorus of "Hush! Hush!"as though a mere name might bring a repetition of a terror none couldbear again.

  The entire scene had lasted perhaps five minutes, possibly less. Theviolent storm that had hung low over London, accumulating probablyfor hours, had dissipated itself in a single prodigious explosion,and was gone. Through the gaping north window, torn and shattered,shone the stars. More candles were brought and lighted, food and drinkfollowed, a few cuts from broken glass were attended to, and calm in ameasure came back to the battered and shaken yet thrilled and delightedPrometheans.

  But all eyes looked for a couple who were not there; a hundred headsturned searching, for in every heart lay one chief question. Yet,oddly enough, none asked aloud; the names of Nayan and LeVallonwere not spoken audibly; some touch of awe, it seemed, clung to amemory still burning in each individual mind; it was an awe that nonewould willingly revive just then. The whole occurrence had been toodevastating, too sudden; it all had been too real.

  There was little talk, nor was there the whispered discussion even thatmight have been expected; individual recovery was slow and hesitating.What had happened lay still too close for the comfort of detailedcomparison or analysis by word of mouth. With common accord the matterwas avoided. Discussions must wait. It would fill many days with wonderafterwards....

  It was with a sense of general relief, therefore, that the throng ofguests, bedraggled somewhat in appearance, eyes still bright withtraces of uncommon excitement, their breath uneven and their attitudestill nervous, saw the door into the passage open and frame the figureof their returning host. He held a lighted candle. His bearded facelooked grim, but his slow deep voice was quiet and reassuring--hesmiled, his words were commonplace.

  "You must excuse my daughter," he said firmly, "but she sends herexcuses, and begs to be forgiven for not coming to bid you allgood-night. The lightning--the electricity--has upset her. I haveadvised her to go to bed."

  A sigh of relief from everybody came in answer. They were only too gladto take the hint and go.

  "The little impromptu act we had prepared for you we cannot give now,"he added, anticipating questions. "The storm prevented the second part.We must give it another time instead."